The Best Of 2023: Part One

29:15Like, what's the deal? And they're like, well, there's a few different reasons. So the reasons they give me, they say, well, sometimes it's because we know what you're going to say. So I'm upset because I messed up my math test. And it's the math test that you asked me if I was ready for. And I told you I was, but it turns out I was not. And so if I tell you that that's the issue, I'm going to basically get an I told you so. And I don't want to hear it. So I can't tell you. Another reason they'll give me is they'll say, you're going to blab, right? So I'm going to tell you about something that's happening for me or a friend.

29:47And then the next thing I know, you're going to be on the horn either with the school or with the neighbor or with your sister. And I did not mean for this to leave the house. And so I'm not telling you stuff. and then I thought this was so beautiful a girl said to me here's the deal by the time I get home I am 90 % of the way over whatever I was upset about and rehashing the whole thing from my parents is not going to help me feel better so I think we sometimes want to be attentive like they know us we may have stepped in it and if we have we have to apologize and try to you know repair that and I think teenagers can be pretty forgiving You know, if you're earnestly apologetic, I think you can open channels of communication.

30:31There's so much in that, yeah. I mean, allowing the teen to set the parameters for these types of discussions, not trying to force them, trying to refrain from judgment or, you know, stepping into the, you know, on these landmines that are typically the things that cut off communication, right, resisting the urge to try to solve the problem or step in and intervene or like tell some story about what happened to you when you were that age, which is like the worst, right? You wanna end a conversation. I would say that's the last thing they wanna hear, right? When I was a teenager is like the most conversation ending thing you can possibly say as a parent.

31:11When I was a teenager. I mean, I've just learned because we have a quieter child and it's funny because just the other night, like that exact thing happened, like right when I was going to bed, you know? and you have to just like you live for those moments because you can't compel them. So you have to like be in a place of sort of surrender around it. And then when they happen, you have to have the awareness like, oh, okay, I have to turn on now because this is a fleeting thing. You know, it doesn't happen that often. It requires a lot of patience. It does. It really, really does. So here's how I think we summon that patience.

31:54First of all, this is really short-lived. And one of the things I'm so glad about is that I was practicing before I had kids and I had so many people I was caring for, so many parents say, oh my gosh, it goes so fast. Like they're out so fast. because my personality is a bit more on the controlling side. And I know that if I didn't have that professional reminder all of the time about how short-lived this would be, I know I would have been like, clean up your shoes. They're in the wrong place and let me go to sleep. I mean, I know I would have demanded more in that way. And now I have a kid in college, right?

32:32And it's true. And so for me, in those moments where I'm like, oh, really right now? I think, you know what? In three years, I would give my left arm to have you come in to talk to me, right? Like, I'm not going to know where you are at 11 o 'clock at night. So I think that helps. And then the other thing I think is more important than it's ever been is that the single most powerful force for adolescent mental health is strong relationships with caring adults. So we have to meet them more than halfway. We just have to. Don't go anywhere. We got a lot more on the horizon, but first, a quick word from the partners who make the show possible.

33:16After hosting more than 900 episodes of this podcast, I have noticed a pattern. And that pattern is that the highest performers don't buy into the latest trendy hacks. Instead, they obsess on what actually works, which is always the unassuming basics. and there is nothing more basic than hydration. But here's the kicker. Your body can't hold onto water without the right minerals. Without them, water is just like this temporary visitor. But Element has cracked the code on this, which is why I've been using it religiously for years. Zero sugar, no artificial junk, just sodium, potassium, and magnesium in the ratios that actually work.

33:57And look, I'm not exactly crushing ultras right now, healing from this surgery, but in some ways I need it even more. In order to properly recover, I need to treat my body even better than ever so it can heal properly and expeditiously while also maintaining my focus and my energy levels to rock out all of these podcasts, write a book, be a husband and a dad. And I gotta say, Element keeps my brain firing in a way that water alone can't. Their new sample pack features their most popular flavors, citrus salt, raspberry salt, watermelon salt, that's my favorite, and orange salt. Eight stick packs total, perfect for finding your favorite or sharing with a friend.

34:40Get a free eight-count sample pack of Element's most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase at drinklmnt.com slash richroll. Find your favorite Element flavor or share it with a friend. When it comes to health, sleep is a big deal, and there's just so much science out there to back up the role that it plays in every facet of well-being, from heart health to mental health, recovery, cognition, and just being able to show up as your best self. Getting a quality eight hours per night is a personal non-negotiable that I go to great lengths to ensure. It's sort of a commitment not only to myself, but to my career and to those that I love that all begins with what I'm sleeping on.

35:24Now, I've tried many mattresses, but the one that's really won my heart is Birch, There's many reasons for this, all of which boil down to the simple fact that Birch just does things right. In addition to being incredibly comfortable and cool, helping you regulate temperatures at night, which are essential for quality rest, Birch mattresses are also firm in all the right places, and all their materials are sustainably sourced, including organic fair trade cotton. and also everything is hypoallergenic and toxin-free, meaning no harmful off-gassing typical of most mattresses. Birch is so confident in their product.

36:01They're offering both a 100-night risk-free trial as well as a 25-year warranty. Plus, they provide free delivery right to your door in a conveniently-sized box-up. And so I wanna offer all of my listeners the chance to enjoy a deep and restful night's sleep with a new mattress from Birch. So right now, you can get 27 % off site-wide, plus two free EcoRest pillows with mattress purchased. Just go to birchliving.com slash richroll.

36:39Globally renowned epidemiologist, geneticist, and co-founder of the data science company, Zoe, Tim Spector dropped by the studio to bust diet myths, share the importance of plant diversity in one's diet, and teach us how to optimize our microbiome for whole body health. In general terms, the microbiome is the term we use for the community of microbes, microorganisms that live in our bodies. And we generally refer to the 99 % that live in our lower intestine, our colon. And the microbiome really refers to the genes of those microbes, should technically be called the microbiota, but we just use them as microbiome because I'm not fussy about words and everyone now understands that.

37:28So there are some dispute about how many there are, but there are certainly trillions, maybe 100 trillion or so, roughly the same numbers of cells in our body. Most of them are the ones we know about are bacteria, but they're also these other related species called archaea, and there are fungi and yeasts, and there are viruses, five times as many viruses as bacteria that feed off them called phages, which also have a role in health. And there are even parasites that virtually all of us have to some extent in our guts and some of which turn out to be beneficial as well. So it's this whole community, a bit like an ecosystem that is living within us and it best considers a virtual organ.

38:19Stick them all together, they weigh about two kilograms, same as your brain. And they're basically, as I said, these mini pharmacies pumping out chemicals, which send signals all over a body, but particularly to all the immune cells, the majority of which are immune cells are actually lining our gut. And so they interact with those immune cells on a constant basis, signaling whether to be aggressive or be passive and modifying them, tuning them up and down. That helps fight aging, helps fight cancer, sorts out allergies, etc., etc., fights infections. And they also produce lots of chemicals that might go to our brain, responsible for serotonins and many other pathways in the brain as well.

39:09So it affects our mood and obviously our metabolism and how we digest food amongst others. Right. Like so many things, right? Infinite things. If there are any kind of concrete rules or recommendations for the person who's brand new to the idea of the microbiome even being a thing and who's grappling with the idea of making healthier choices for themselves beyond the 30 kind of plants a week, what are some other principles top of mind? What sits atop the kind of most important of those? Well, we've covered some of them. So obviously eating the rainbow is, the colors are there for a reason and they're actually really good.

39:51So don't eat beige. Yeah. Don't eat beige. Yeah. Go colorful. That's the title of this podcast. Go bitter. Many bitter things are actually good. You know, one reason coffee is so healthy for you is it's got full of polyphenols and, you know, I recommend coffee over orange juice any time as a health drink. It should be in the health section. Dark chocolate's another surprising one. Cook with extra virgin olive oil rather than any other oil. Don't believe all this nonsense about... Heating points. Yes, all the stuff that's all rubbish. But the way you eat is also important. So we've talked about what to eat, but time-restricted eating we've discussed.

40:46We didn't discuss that actually has a really big benefit on your gut microbes. So all the studies show that if you leave a big gap overnight, so your gut is rested just as the hunter-gatherer tribes did, you know, they're not nibbling snack bars or protein bars at night. They're resting just as they're sleeping, giving that full circadian rhythm, real chance to real synchronize. So I think that's an important part. So there's reducing the snacking time, less meals, giving yourself, you know, at least 12 hours overnight, ideally 14, is a good way for your gut to repair itself and enhance. Eating more slowly.

41:33We all eat too fast. I think one in five American meals are consumed in the car. You know, it's difficult to have a leisurely meal in the car. um just you know wait do like the mediterranean countries you know just don't have snacks wait and have a proper meal you know make it a social good occasion enjoy the food um and uh you know learn to try something new every uh every week you should be aiming something something new as extra so part of this 30 plants is to discover new things you haven't eaten and you know get your taste buds to try something something new all the time and introduce that to your family and make make food something exciting rather than a chore because we all get into these ruts in our choices we find something we like and we think it's healthy we have the same thing well that you know our microbes don't like that we you know they like to be tested all the time so i think it's all about an adventure experimenting find out whether you're someone who does well, you know, with this long overnight fast and not snacking, or whether you are someone who does need to eat.

42:45There are different people. Are you an early morning person, a late morning person? Try skipping breakfast. Try changing your breakfast for, you know, from a high carb one to a high fat one. See how you feel. Try and just think about how your body's working. Don't accept that everything's the same for everybody. And I think the more we can all experiment and understand our bodies, the better we get to understand food and live with it. And always think about your food now, again, in these food choices. If you care about the planet, really think about those food choices you're making. Because as an individual, it is the number one thing we can all do to save our planet.

43:25And I think it's not about that one thing that you do or you don't do. It's about the holistic view of that. What can you get on your plate? Clearly, if you've got a big, if three quarters of it's filled with a giant steak, there's not much room for your plants. Right. So the top level rule just being 30 plants a week and diversity of plant life in your diet on the most consistent basis possible is producing the diversity in that gut microbiome ecology that is going to be, you know, the sort of front lines of keeping you healthy. Yeah. And it's a nice simple rule that means you don't have to be too strict about anything else, because if that's your number one rule, then everything, you know, yes, it's nice to have, you know, the rich, colorful polyphenol rich foods.

44:21It's nice, You know, the fermented foods we know are good as well, avoiding ultra-processed foods, etc. But that, to me, is still number one. And I think that's been a good, you know, a really good way of communicating it also to the public about understanding why you want to feed your gut. Why feed your gut microbes? You do it by eating right. For anyone in any creative pursuit, weathering rejection is one of the most difficult parts of making your dream manifest. So here to give us guidance on how to build creative tenacity is writer, actor, and director Zoe Lister-Jones, who joined me this year to talk about the creative process behind her newest binge-worthy comedy, Slip.

45:13When you look at the studio system, there's such an attention to creating something for a mass audience. And I think what's misguided about the process a lot of the time is that the idea is that you're supposed to water it down. And when you see a company like A24, who instead is sharpening the singularity of a vision, and that's what's actually speaking to such mass audiences, Like, what a great lesson. I also think like making something with an audience in mind to me is always sort of like the death knell, you know, like make something that you want to make, like what is the story you want to tell?

45:56and that's what you put out into the world because when you start to be i think product oriented over process oriented yeah it can get you into some trouble and yet it is a business and you know there are people sitting around conference room tables trying to figure out if it's going to work in china or it's going to work in this other place and those are the things that dictate budgets. Yeah. I mean, when I say it's like, figure out what story you want to write. If I was talking to like a filmmaker, I would say, figure out what story you want to write, what story you have to write. And then think about a way to make it cheaply.

46:39You know, like I'm not taking business out of the equation because I think you do have to be pragmatic. If you're a first time filmmaker and you write some huge epic, it's never going to to get made. And that might be the story you think you need to tell, but what's, if you distilled that story down, what's the contained version of it? And then go, you know, figure out a way to make that because every single project I've ever made has had 1 ,000 no's before there's been any yes. So how do you like weather the rejection? Because you're in a business, you've become very successful in this business, But it's a business of, like you said, you know, mostly no's.

47:20Yeah. And being able to kind of like hold true to yourself and what you're doing and not, you know, get overly dissuaded by that. I guess it comes back to confidence, which is hard, right? Like because no's will diminish your confidence. I've always had something where I don't believe them it doesn't mean that I don't take notes, right? like if someone says no I have to look at what they're saying no to and what I can shift

48:03but it requires such tenacity to keep going And that tenacity is ultimately like an unwavering sense of self or a sense that you have something that deserves a voice. And I don't know how to cultivate that necessarily, except for to just keep going. I think you just have to keep going. and I think making your own work is really important. Like Daryl and I made work in the face of 1 ,000 No's by just going and doing it ourselves. And, you know, that's a real stress test of the work. Yeah, I feel like just in looking at like the projects that you guys did together, it feels like you just pulled the shit out of your ass.

48:59Like you're like, well, we're gonna go make this movie and I'm like, what? And then like somehow you're like out in the street, like shooting, like you just, you progress as if, like even if all the pieces aren't together, like you're just in motion moving forward. And, you know, when you create that momentum, somehow everything else, you know, those other problems that seem insurmountable start to get resolved. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, it's like manifesting, I guess 101 is like, I am doing it. You can tell me no and I can take a note and shift something. You can tell me no and say, well, we have something else like it, which is what you're always hearing.

49:40Or, you know, like, and it's like, well, but do you? And can't there be many things that are in the same world but have different voices behind them? And I guess the best advice I ever was given was by a producer named Alex Madigan who took me to coffee and said, you should direct. And I didn't know that. And it's like a wildly simple piece of advice. But I think that it does take sometimes, I think for many people, but especially for women and especially for women in film, like this sense of confidence, even if you don't know, or if you haven't gone to film school, if you don't have every answer, you don't know every lens, you know, that someone saw that and said, go do it.

50:31You got it. and that's really all it took to have that outside external voice see something in you that maybe you're not ready to see in yourself yeah um even when i was in high school and i was acting i i was in the chorus of a musical i had no confidence as an actor and some like parent in the pta was like you're really good you're the one i'm watching in the background and and so i guess tell people when you think they're talented because it's really meaningful and it's It's a really hard world across all industries. And those are really character-building moments in terms of giving someone a sense of value in the craft they might be interested in but too afraid to pursue.

51:24Everyone wants to be happy, but why does it feel so complicated? Well, here to simplify and clarify our happiness equation is the author of a series of books on all things awesome, my friend, Neil Pasricha, who just delivered this amazing, powerful primer on how to build a life of purpose, how to cultivate fulfillment and allocate your time here on Earth more intentionally. Here's a piece. so just zooming out like a huge level before we get into like my my views let's just remember that 2400 years ago in ancient athens aristotle at the world's first university plato's republic had a very famous quote happiness is the meaning and purpose of life the whole aim and end of human existence that if you want to talk about people that have made a career out of happiness or you You know, there's the OG guy right there.

52:21He's the original happiness influencer. Well, before that, it was like survival. Like, we just got to make it through this thing, you know? He's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The whole purpose is also, we got to enjoy it too. 2 ,400 years ago, they put that down, right? Then flash forward 2 ,000 years, they write the Declaration of Independence. You know the famous phrase they put in there? Everybody gets life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But you're a lawyer, Rich. You know it's the legalese in there. You don't get happiness. You get to pursue it. You get to pursue it. You get the pursuit of it.

52:51Life, liberty, you get those for sure, but happiness, you just get to chase it, right? So now we flash forward all the way up to 1998. Let's say Martin Seligman and Michal Csikszentmihalyi are co-founders of a new field that they invent called positive psychology, right? And for a lot of your listeners who have heard that phrase before, positive psychology, we should remember that phrase didn't exist in our culture before 25 years ago. So that's still a relatively new phrase. So from 1998 to today, hundreds and hundreds of studies have been done applying the scientific model to the study of happiness, right?

53:26Carol Dweck on growth mindset, Slatcher and Pennebaker on journaling, Emmons and McCullough on gratitude, Zahia Loba Mirsky at University of California. There's this massive, huge, emerging body of work and literature. So I just use those three points to just say, like, just look what's happened here. Like, 2000, we say this is important. Then we write it into the declaration. We got to chase it. And now we're, like, starting to actually study it only really 25 years ago. Now, I think that the underpinning of how we think about happiness in our society is totally backwards, okay? Okay, we, when I was a kid, what my parents said to me was, we've already talked about this a few times, but it's like, come on, you know, study hard, you know, get straight A's and you go be a doctor.

54:12The model therefore is great work leads to big success, leads to be happy, right? And that model is also, if you're listening to this and you're a parent, it's like, don't you say to your own kid, come on, we want you to get into a good school. Come on, we want you to get a good job. Come on, we just want you to be. That's common parental wisdom, and it's totally false. So after combing through all these studies, there's a really formative study done by Sonia Lubomirsky with Ed Diener and King, Jane King. And they show that actually that model is totally backwards. It's not great work, big success, be happy.

54:49It's the opposite. It's you got to train your brain to be happy first. Then if you can do that, if you can think of happiness, like a practice, like a habit, like something you can invest in. You invest in your physical health so beautifully. We see that. We aspire to it. We see that you're a model. But how many people do you look around and you see them investing in their happiness the same way? We aren't as a culture doing this yet. Then the great work follows. Happy people are 31 % more productive. They have 37 % higher sales. They're 300 % more creative. You can go down the litany of all kinds of things that happy people show up better.

55:23They're more connected. and then the big success comes at the end. What kind of success? Two kinds. If you want to go on the career point, which I was on for a second there, happy people are 40 % more likely to get a promotion in the next 12 months. But just zooming up a level, there's this really famous study called the Nun Study that shows, you know what? Happy people also live longer. And if going back to our earlier conversation, you only got 30 ,000 days here. Well, if I told you, you could get 3 ,000 more bowls of ice cream, kissing your kids at night, watching the sunset, running on the trails behind this place, wouldn't you do it?

55:57So again, it's not great work, big success, be happy. It's the reverse. You've got to train and prime your brain to think of happiness like a practice, like a habit, like something you invest in. Then being happy leads to doing great work and the great work leads to having big success. And on top of all that, a lot of the practices that turns out that do help you cultivate happiness have got real bad ad campaigns. They don't have the benefit of anyone advertising trees. No one's advertising trees right now. Well, because you can't profit from it. That's exactly what I'm saying. That's exactly what I'm saying.

56:30The vast majority of things that I'm about to tell you about that can actually imbue our lives with a bit more happiness. They don't have great giant ad campaigns and we aren't talking about them. What our culture is trying to teach us is that you got to buy more stuff. You got to click more links. You got to buy more things. And that path to happiness is, you know, whatever's on a billboard that looks pretty, that, you know, someone's smiling, that implicit thing is that that's going to lead to happiness. It's not. Zooming up a level, look, you're a paragon of this, Rich, but like, just getting outside and being in nature.

57:09And by the way, I'll just preface this point by saying we have the lowest ever levels of nature exposure in our children in history. According to the American TimeU study, 7 % of a kid's day right now is spent outside. 7%. Well, do the math. Multiply 7 % by seven days in the week. That's 49%. It takes a kid a whole week to get half a day outside now, right? So what's the solution? Michael Babik and a team of researchers have shown that even three 30-minute exercise or outdoor windows a week Thank you. ultimately results in higher happiness levels than people taking antidepressants or people doing both.

57:49They compared it to a subgroup doing both the walking and taking the antidepressants. So this, I said trees have a bad ad campaign. It's like we're missing the amount that we really need to be outside. And one of the biggest ways I tell people to do this is if you have a meeting on your calendar with someone you know that you like already, that you trust already, whether it's your boss, whether it's your direct report, whether it's a weekly meeting that you always have, just say to the person, let's both do it outside. Let's just both do it outside. The average person walks six kilometers an hour.

58:20You move one hour meeting a week outside, you get 6K of walking. Move two, you got 12. Move three, you got 18. It's a simple way to just introduce a little bit more outdoor activity in your life. It doesn't cost anything and it has a huge positive disproportionate effect on your happiness. How do we access our intuition? How do we make decisions from a place of inner peace? And how do we become more integrated and healed humans? Answering these important questions is the life's work of Dr. Richard Schwartz, author of No Bad Parts and creator of something called Internal Family Systems, or IFS.

58:59Here's a glimpse into our powerful exchange. What is internal family systems, IFS? Set the stage and explain your perspective on your particular modality of treating people. Okay. What it is, it began as a form of psychotherapy, and it's kind of expanded to being more like a life practice or a way of understanding human beings. That's a bit of a different paradigm. And, you know, the basic assumption is none of us are unitary personalities. It's the nature of the mind to have lots of different, what I call parts, but other people call other names, ego states, things like that, subpersonalities, that it's natural and that those parts are all valuable.

59:58So I wrote a book, No Bad Parts. I've been doing this 40 years and I've done it with people who've done heinous things. And even those parts, if you listen to their secret history, will reveal how they're just stuck in a place in the past and they're trying to best protect the person and they carry this energy of their perpetrator and so on. So, in that sense, it's quite a radical shift in paradigm. Right. Given that the conventional, traditional, psychological paradigm is one of mono-mind as opposed to this multiplicity of minds that is kind of the pathway in understanding your perspective. Yeah.

1:00:41And when I started talking about multiplicity, the big paradigm was from what's now called the DID literature, which would be multiple personality disorder originally. And they would acknowledge the existence of these, what they called alters, but it was thought that they were fragments of the broken vase, that you were initially unitary and then trauma produced all these fragmented personalities that took on a life of their own. And so I've been fighting that paradigm for a long time too because for me, they preexisted the trauma and then they got into extreme roles because of the trauma, sometimes just because they were trying their best to keep you safe when you were young when it happened.

1:01:31But they exist. They're real. It's not the product of the trauma. So in other words, there is this, I guess for lack of a better word, immutable, there's an immutable self and ancillary to that immutable self are all of these parts that are swimming around and they're in relationship with each other. And they're performing various roles depending upon things that happened to you, et cetera. And your way of kind of approaching this and trying to understand it is premised on a systems approach, like trying to understand it like a technology or like code, right? So walk me through, what does that mean when you say family systems?

1:02:20Family systems therapy is, so if you're working with an acting out kid, for example, you assume that that kid isn't just whatever diagnosis he carries, but that in some ways he's serving a function in the family of distracting or he's trying to protect himself from something that's happening in the family and that our assumption was we could reorganize the family and try to improve whatever relationships were producing his symptoms and that he would stop doing that and a lot of times that that worked but as this family therapist I was determined to prove that. I was in a department of psychiatry and decided to do an outcome study with eating disorders because my hero at the time was a guy named Salvador Mnuchin who had used his structural family therapy with anorexia and claimed a lot of success.

1:03:18So I was going to do it with bulimia and found, to my dismay, that we could reorganize the families just right and still a bunch of my kids didn't realize they'd been cured. and they kept going. How dare they? I know. Right? So this is sort of an external family systems model, right? That's right. Organize the people around the person afflicted with the condition you're trying to treat. That's right. And resolve with less than stellar results is what you're saying. Yeah. And then out of frustration, I began to ask these kids, why are you still doing it? And they started talking this very weird language to me at the time, talking about these different parts of them and how they were doing all this stuff inside.

1:04:06And, you know, an example would be something happens in my life. It triggers this critic who's brutal and makes me feel horrible. And that brings up a part that feels young and empty and alone and worthless. And that feeling is so distressing that then this binge comes in to get me away from it. But the binge triggers the critic again, who's calling me a pig on top of the other names. And that goes right to the heart of that empty, worthless young one. So the binge has to come back. And I was lucky. I had a couple of clients who were extremely articulate about that whole thing. And at first, because I didn't know from parts, at first I thought, these kids are sicker than I thought.

1:04:51Maybe they have multiple personality disorder. And then I listened inside myself and, oh my God, I've got them too. And I've got this critic and I can binge on food sometimes and other things. And I have a piece of worthlessness in there. And so then I calmed down and got really curious and just started to ask a lot of questions about how do they relate to each other and how does it work in there. and you know I was lucky that I hadn't studied any psychoanalytic or psychodynamic therapies so I came with fresh eyes right like a beginner's mind beginner's mind I was just going to say that so I really had to trust what they were saying about the phenomena and that's partly why this is different I think than a lot of things both that and the systems frame where rather than just focusing on one part trying to figure it out I was really trying to understand the way this whole network operated as a system.

1:05:49And that's what we go to change. We're trying to change the whole network rather than just one at a time. And my contention is these aren't just little voices or thought patterns or emotions. Those are the manifestations of these parts. But if I were to have you focus on one of them exclusively for a second and get curious about it and just ask, you'd find out that it's a full range personality that really has a lot to tell you besides the little thought it's giving you and that it's stuck in an extreme role often if it's an extreme part because of something that happened in your childhood maybe or uh yeah and that through trial and error over time we found out how to help all these parts change and to actually leave their extreme roles and become who they're designed to be.

1:06:45So that's the goal of the model. A lot more still to come, but first.

1:06:56I own a bunch of spectacles, and I made the grave error the other day of donning a normal non-Roka pair on my indoor trainer when I was riding my bike indoors. and I gotta tell you, it was a disaster. Every three to five seconds, I had to take my hands off the handlebars and push my glasses back up my nose until I got so frustrated, I just tossed them aside. This is the dilemma of every active but optically impaired person I know. And as someone who has relied upon eyewear every single day since I was five years old, it is also the source of endless aggravation. thankfully now eradicated thanks to Broca, the stylish performance eyewear company founded by two former Stanford swimming teammates of mine who have gifted everyone like me and quite frankly, the world with their fashionable line of super lightweight prescription glasses and sunglasses with patented no-slip nose and temple pads that are just impervious to sweat.

1:08:00And no matter what you do remain locked on your mug no matter how intense your workout. Without the dork factor, these things go everywhere with me from the trail to the dinner party. Put them on, feel the difference, and wear without limits. Unlock 20 % off your order with the code RICHROLL at ROKA.COM. That's R-O-K-A dot com.

1:08:32Also returning to the podcast this year was the wise and gentle Rainn Wilson. He came on board to wax and wane philosophically on the positives and the negatives of religious belief, how to build a movement of change, and why spirituality is a necessity. We threw the spiritual baby out with the religious bathwater. So in our kind of, especially secular left, urban, contemporary America, we have rejected anything and everything having to do with religion for a very good reason, for a very, very good reason. Let me underline that. For very good reasons, religions have brought some of the worst pain and suffering and grotesque aspects of human nature to bear over the last couple of thousands of years that you could ever possibly imagine.

1:09:25And every decade you read about some new horror that the Catholic church or that evangelicals have engendered. But I do think that we are missing something by throwing out religion categorically. We're missing some things that religion gives us, which is purpose, meaning, community, and a sense of the transcendent, the sense that there is something more to strive for. there's a lot more to the very best of religion. And I try and I have a chapter on kind of the universals of religious faiths, why Buddhism and Islam and Christianity are, why and how they're connected, the essential ideas that bind them together.

1:10:11And I even have a chapter called, hey kids, let's invent a new religion, where I'm like, let's take the very best that religion has brought humanity over the last three or 4 ,000 years. Let's take the best ideas from that put it together in a jambalaya and make our new religion because we, which you call soul boom. I call it soul boom trademark. Um, but I also refuse categorically to be any kind of guru or leader of the soul boom religion, but I, I posit it kind of jokingly, but at the same time, there are some, by throwing out religion and we see this current mental health crisis. And if you, have you have you read the work of dr lisa miller uh the awakened brain yeah i had her on the podcast oh great okay she's amazing sorry i missed that one yeah i love that come on uh she's great but there's hard data that supports how spirituality and religion itself makes people happier greater well-being greater community uh more resilient uh which you know resilience is one of the big factors in the mental health crisis.

1:11:22So it's something to be explored, you know, and I can already hear all the people right now switching off the podcast and like throwing things across the room. Fuck that. I'll never be a part of religion. That's so evil. And it's like, I get it. I get it. It has been, it's true, but there are some universal, beautiful truths in religious practice. And let me say this, spirituality, there has to be some kind of systemic sensibility to spirituality if we want to achieve social transformation. If we want that Star Trek world, there has to be some kind of systematic practice that leads in that direction.

1:12:00So that's how I would say different, that the Baha 'i faith offers some, again, I'm not trying to like convert people, but what I love about the Baha 'i faith is that it fosters grassroots community spiritual movements in a systematic way. Right, and I think, sorry, go ahead. People gathering to pray together, bringing diverse people together, being of service together, children and youth classes that are focused on spiritual virtues, divine virtues, the very best kind of character and leadership qualities that humanity has to offer. These are ways of building a grassroots community movement that you don't have to be a Baha 'i to partake in this, but some kind of systematization other than a, like you say, bespoke spirituality, I think is crucial to move forward.

1:12:50Why do you think it's worthwhile and meaningful for somebody to cultivate a spiritual connection or to really grapple with these ideas that kind of transcend the material world in which kind of predominates our daily experience. For somebody who's listening to this or watching it, for whom maybe they have a negative reaction to religion because of the way they were brought up or they have an allergy to anything spiritual, make the case for why this is worthwhile for somebody to kind of mine or explore. Gladly. Thank you. Great question. So the first thing I will say is the reason why spirituality is important is because it is reality.

1:13:47So what is reality? I am fully in agreement with Teilhard de Chardin, who said, we are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. I fully know, it goes beyond belief, I fully know that I am a soul and that I am inhabiting or attached to or in connection with a bodily form for who knows how long, 60, 70, 90 years. I'm not sure how long it'll last. And that is my reality. And who I am and what I am is not my body. It's not even my personality. It's not even like the background that I, you know, it's not the trauma I suffered. it's not what I've been through, that there is a little spark of the divine inside of me or that is part of me that is reflecting the majesty of the divine, of God, the divine presence, the creative force, just like a sunflower turns to the sun and follows the sun throughout the course of the day.

1:14:53That is reality. So for me to deny my reality is not beneficial to anyone, at least I'm not myself. self. So now if you are a hardcore atheist and you're like, that's bullshit, prove it to me, prove to me this divine spark of which you speak. I want to see it in a laboratory or in an algorithm or on a computer screen. Well, that's not quite how it works because every spiritual tradition will show you that we live in a matrix, that we live in an illusion. And when we wake up from this corporal form, we're going to be in some greater reality. And this has come from the atheists, this idea that, you know, perhaps we're living in an avatar.

1:15:38The simulacrum. The simulacrum, you know, and we're living in a fleshy avatar and we're going to wake up to some greater reality. But putting all that aside, I would say to the atheist or agnostic that try it and see if your life is better because there is hard, we talked about Dr. Lisa Miller and her work. There's hard data that shows around mental health and wellbeing that having serenity, meaning, purpose, focus, a sense of service to others, a losing of oneself to a transcendent self of the divine, the transcendent, the abundance that's around us, increases greatly the quality of our lives.

1:16:23When we see ourselves in true humility with the size and scope of the universe and whatever infinite universes are beyond this universe, that it makes the quality of your life better. So cost-benefit analysis, putting in a small amount of time every day, I'm talking about 40 minutes in your day to some kind of spiritual opening and or practice has incredible benefits. This has been found time and time again. It's found in the 12-step programs. It's found in Buddhist meditation. It's found in the most ancient texts that humanity has ever created, the Vedas and Upanishads from 3 ,000 years ago. This sense that we are a wave on the sea of creation and the wave crests and the wave falls.

1:17:16we're a part of something much greater and much more beautiful than ourselves. And in living in that state can greatly enrich your life. How is that? Boom. Next up is one of the greatest music producers of all time, founder of Def Jam Records and a former president of Columbia Records, Rick Rubin. Rick shared his deeply spiritual approach to artistry, one that is gloriously explored in his deeply impactful book, The Creative Act. here is a slice of that exchange for me the the success happens when we sign off on a finished thing and say okay send it out into the world that's the moment of success and once that happens onto the next onto the next yeah um because that's the only part i have any participation and that's the only part I can control.

1:18:10Everything else is based on market conditions, on stars aligning, on... One of the stories we heard today in what we were doing was many of the people whose music came out on 9-11, their music got lost and their careers never recovered just because it happened to come out on 9-11. and it's fascinating and that's out of everyone's control that's again it's a it's universal intervention we don't know how it works but these are all um one of the things we talk about in the book is watching these occurrences sometimes they're good sometimes they're bad and thinking of it as riding a wave and that these universe is pushing us in a direction and we can ride with that energy.

1:19:05And like when you're surfing, if you really try to fight the wave, it's probably not going to work. You know, we try to use the power of the wave where we're almost dancing with the wave, not against the wave. And that's the work of creativity as well. Certain projects come together very easily and they happen quickly and they have a momentum to them and others others are a real fight and sometimes we fight that fight and other times we decide is there is there another a path of less resistance around this is there a better way in let's rethink what if it's so hard something's up not supposed to be so hard again it's it's wildly time-consuming, takes a great deal of focus, takes patience.

1:19:59But if there are no signs that something's working for a long time, that might be a time to step back, step away. There's so much packed into what you just said. I mean, first off, it being very counterintuitive or opposite to this notion that if you want to be successful, you just, you push, you hustle, you force things into existence. In the book, you say the work is the work, right? What is the work? The work is lots of things. The work is hard, but it's play. It's about sharing and it's about passion. It's about structure, of course. Like it's very elusive and it is ephemeral. So it's understandable.

1:20:50You're like, I don't know what it is, but I know what it's not. Yes. And I don't know how to do it. That's another thing. Like before I start any new project, I always have a lot of anxiety because I have no idea what's going to happen. Now I have a lot of experience that helps now, but that doesn't make it happen. It takes a tremendous amount of patience to wait for it to reveal itself. And I guess now I have the wisdom to know this, that be patient. And I have the discipline to stay with it for a long time. And I want to make that point because we were just talking about sometimes you have to bail.

1:21:37But while you're in it for a long time, there are usually clues. And it might be a radical course change. You could start out, you have a moment, something beautiful happens, think, ah, this is what it's going to be. And you start running in that direction. And then you realize we're going in the wrong direction. And then you have to set a new course. Be nimble enough to be able to walk away from that, even when you've invested some ungodly amount of time and effort into that direction that's not functioning. It's something that we see often is the initial moment when an idea springs forth, that first sketch, the first demo, the very first rough, often has some energetic charge in it that's really compelling.

1:22:25And we hear many stories in music where records come out and people don't respond, and then they go back to, oh, well, but we missed it. It was all in the demo. The record screwed up. and being aware of that's helpful because you can, just because you put more time in, like from the time you've made the demo, you may put in, let's say we'd work for a month after we've made a demo, we work on something for a month, might work on a song for a month. We might realize at the end of that month, if we listen back, which is the key, always checking back. See, I know we're putting time in, but are we progressing?

1:23:06Right. Is it different or is it better? Right. Like just because you're working on it a lot doesn't mean that it's better. And after hearing it 10 ,000 times, you're so close to it and you become like sort of immune to its allure and you think there's something wrong with it. And so you tinker and then you actually end up dismantling the whole thing. It's true. Many just get overdone. So in the cases when the demo is the best version, luckily we recognize it and that ends up being the version now you know that but it takes discipline confidence and experience to recognize that the original garage band version of it is actually better than the highly polished studio version yes and even if it has mistakes sometimes you fix sometimes you hear mistakes you fix the mistakes and it's not as good right you you wouldn't expect It's drained of its energy.

1:24:03It's drained of its humanity. Yeah. And we don't know, this is the other part, we don't know why it's good. You hear it. That's the thing. There are no metrics for this. The idea that one person says, my art is better than your art, it's an insane idea. It's like they're all, it's always apples and oranges. It's like saying my diary entry is better than your diary entry. It's insane. The things we make are a reflection of who we are in this moment. And that's all it is. It's not more than that. It can go on and mean more than that, but that's not in our control. And that's not the reason to do it.

1:24:52No. And it's something that cripples artists thinking, I have to make the greatest thing ever made to humankind. And then they basically psych themselves out of being able to make something good. They give in to the pressure of thinking it's more than it is. So one of the things we talk about in the book is lowering the stakes where we're not setting out to make the greatest album of all time. We're not setting out to make the greatest song of all time. we're there to have fun in the studio we're going to entertain each other we're going to see if something happens that's interesting to us and there's no better um i found luckily over the course of my life that the things that i truly believe in that that really feel like something to me other people resonate with i don't know if that's the case for everybody, but I don't know of a better metric to use for anyone than I really feel this.

1:25:55If I really feel it, it's much better than I think someone else might like this. It's not really from, you know, it's not really me, but I think someone else might like it. That's a, it's a losing game. The audience comes last in service to the audience. The audience wants the best thing. they don't get the best thing while you're trying to service them they get the best thing when you're servicing yourself

1:26:24beneath countless problems in our society lies this sleeping giant which is this profound disconnect that we have with nature so here to remind us of the important links between human biology on the one hand and planetary biology on the other is none other than my friend, Dr. Zach Bush, who joined us for his, I don't know, umpteenth appearance on the podcast back in episode 751. I want to maybe come back to that thought of, you know, some of these technologies are good and doing things. I think we can't actually make any real honest or accurate judgment on any of our technologies being good or bad until maybe a few more thousand years goes by and we have a different perspective.

1:27:12Because there's so many unintended consequences of human engineering that is outside of biology. And it's scary for me to think that we're making judgments and that's a good technology or bad technology. Is AI a bad technology? I don't know. We'll find out. I mean, human innovation is the story of unintended consequences. It's the story of unintended consequences that are born out of a fundamental disconnect from nature at its beginning. Well, and also a hubris. No, obviously the hubris is the result of the ego that steps in to protect the individual that thought it got rejected, right? And so our original wound was rejection.

1:27:51We all have an abandonment disorder at our root. And then we developed an egoic mind and social behavior to try to staunch the fear, guilt, and shame cycles that happen once you're in that abandonment disorder that keeps us addicted. Great work on addiction that I'm fascinated by is T.J. Woodward's work around conscious recovery. And he's really good at helping people get down to this route of abandonment disorders, the reason they have addiction to anything. I've never heard of him. That's fascinating. Oh, you would love to have him on. Does he have a book? Yeah. He's got not only books, he's got an incredible curriculum that kind of comes alongside AA as like a much more robust look at kind of what is the root cause and then what is your relationship back towards addictive substances.

1:28:37And he changes the paradigm completely, you know, to really look at substance abuse as a genius, you know, tool for survival of a species that's in this, you know, deep abandonment disorder for an individual that's in deep abandonment disorder from their parents that rejected them, the father that abused them, whatever it is. And so it's a beautiful model of, again, fractals of what we've done to nature down at the individual level. But what you see when you're working through T.J. Woodward's work is, oh my God, this is the whole human condition. We're all addicted to something. And right now, a lot of us are addicted to our biohacking data.

1:29:13And so we are so addictive because we have this fundamental abandonment disorder way upstream. What I love about this simplicity is then rethinking the word technology. we think of technologies of things that we can build that are not of nature. That's our current concept of technology, which discards the possibility that a human cell with trillions of atoms that have self-organized into this thing is not a technology. That diminishes the possibility that my 14 quadrillion mitochondria are not technologies living inside of myself. I believe we are the greatest technology expressed by nature so far.

1:29:56This human body is the greatest technology that's been made by nature this far. I have a high degree of confidence of that. My trust in that supersedes anything that I can make that looks outside of nature. We've defined nature that way even. If you go to the Oxford English Dictionary, nature is defined as everything on the planet, minerals, plants, animals, everything except humans or things humans have made. Really? Not only wrote ourselves out of nature - It doesn't encapsulate humans as part of nature, which is a perfect encapsulation of the problem, the dualistic nature of how humanity contemplates our role.

1:30:39So what if the greatest technology ever made is this human body? What is it capable of doing to shift from victim perpetrator into this true creative state where it can create universes. Is there an opportunity for me to tap into something so much deeper than my five senses or my two hands could ever create because I am a generative center. And if I can think it, it's occurring somewhere in the multiverse. If I can imagine it, it's occurring somewhere out there. And there's a lot of people that believe that's true from indigenous peoples all the way through. If you've dreamed it, it's happening somewhere right now in the multiverse.

1:31:16How would I possibly get there? How would I get to this place where I switch from victim perpetrator on a daily basis to true creator? And of all places that maybe shoved a huge sign and posted my face on this, it was the Course in Miracles. There's this extraordinary description in there of how humans have become addicted to human relationship in the effort to complete ourselves. We see something different than ourselves. We feel incomplete and we figure, oh, that's the other half. If we put that together, then I'll be whole. And we become codependent in those relationships. So that's defined in that space as special relationship.

1:31:56The beauty that is the opposite of that, that is this promise that kind of sits there is that at some point in the near future, two human beings could come together that have completed themselves, no longer looking outside of themselves to realize that they are a complete technology. They are a complete being. They have all that was ever intended at the highest technological level of nature's whole expression right within themselves. And it says that when those two people saw each other for the first time, they would truly be seen. Because in the split state of the egoic mind that's protecting ourselves from this addictive abandonment disorder, we can only see a mirror of ourselves.

1:32:35So as much as I love you, as much as I can talk to you about all of your incredible attributes, every time I look at you, I'm only either seeing the best of me or the worst of me. and that is the result of this schism, this split psychology of the egoic mind, which is too afraid to see you ultimately for the incredible nature that you really are. And so we protect ourselves behind these egoic shields so that we cannot be seen and we cannot see. When we stop with the addiction to the outside world through our relationships, through our things, and we become whole for a split second, if two would see each other, the amount of love and awe and just magnanimous sense of just amazement and wonderment that would come out of that moment would send ripple effects to the whole energies of the planet and through the species and we will make our paradigm leap and so it just takes two people to finally see each other to be that next technology of humanity is what we're told in that incredible course so is that possible that we will let go down that egoic shield long enough and heal our deep abandonment disorder to become whole enough for a moment that this observer effect that we talked about earlier, that if we really see the universe for all its beauty, it will switch completely.

1:33:49Every atom will change. We only have to do that to one other human, only see one other human completely. And that observer effect will change everything, I believe. Next up is Senator Cory Booker, a truly remarkable person who has dedicated not only his career, but his life to fighting for social justice, fighting for civil rights, and also environmental protection. My conversation with Corey centered on a topic that is near and dear to both our hearts, food policy reform. Here's a look into our fractured food system and what we can do to fix it. We are a country in a health crisis that we're not speaking about.

1:34:31We are the wealthiest country in the world, but we have some of the highest rates of diet-related diseases that are mushrooming in cost. In just a handful of years, or like five, our spending on diabetes has gone up 25%. Half our population now is diabetic or pre-diabetic, but it's not just diabetes. It's Alzheimer's, heart disease, strokes. And so one out of every$3 in our government right now is being spent on healthcare, close to one out of five of our dollars in our economy. And I ran for president where the debate people wanted to have was how do you provide healthcare? But it's almost like saying, it's like, well, how do you mop up the floor when the water faucet's never turned off?

1:35:16Should we talk about why we need so much healthcare? Yes. So 80 % of that spending is for diet-related diseases. And I'm all for freedom. I want this country, eat what you want. But we have designed a system in which the things that we tell you not to eat are being subsidized. And the things we tell you to eat, we don't subsidize at all. So when my kids walk into a bodega in Newark, they can get a Twinkie-like product cheaper than an apple because we as a society have said, we're gonna subsidize everything in that Twinkie-like product and not the apple. In fact, fruits and vegetables get about 7 % of our ag subsidies.

1:35:53While the commodity crops that go to the corn syrup and the things that, again, that are not making us healthy or to feed animals get the most of our subsidies. And everybody along the chain is getting hurt. Farmers are getting hurt right now. Their suicide rates, I think, are two or three times higher than the average American. The independent family farmer is being eviscerated. People are losing their farms at other numbers. Again, it's a massive corporate consolidation. Small amounts of company are controlling our food system, and they're benefiting from ag policies designed in the 1950s by people who thought, let's just make calories readily available and that can stay on shelves forever when we know a lot better about nutrition now.

1:36:36This food system that we have is being done in a way that is all about those commodity crops, which now are being doused with chemicals that we don't fully know what does to our bodies. But you and I both have glyphosates in our blood, other endocrine disruptors, because we've created this roundup ready crops and seeds which are hurting our ecology, streams, rivers, full of these chemicals, runoff of, we're losing quality of our soil. So farmers are losing, the ecology is losing, climate change is one of our biggest contributors to the problem. All these climate activists seem to always forget that our food system is one of the major contributors to that.

1:37:17Farmers could be leading us out of that with us incentivizing them to do farming practices, cover crops and other things that preserve soil, nutrient-rich soil, biodiverse soil, as opposed to the dirt that's created when you douse it in glyphosate. So it's a climate change issue. It's an ecology issue. It's about our farmers, but it's also about our food workers. People who work in our food system, first of all, overwhelmingly undocumented immigrants from our farms that are picking most of the food we eat, even to our slaughterhouses, which are more corporate concentrated than during the time of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.

1:37:54So you go all the way to the end users. As a guy that, you know, Ron Finley says in South Central, he says, in South Central, we got drive-bys and drive-thrus. And the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys. The number one killer of African-Americans is diet-related diseases. So this food system is so broken, it's hurting us in every single way from the farmers who are producing our food, who now get 14 cents on the dollar of every consumer dollar spent because of, again, massive corporate concentration all the way down to very, very sick population. And so I think we as a society, no matter that you're right or left, I told you about the cattlemen who are getting hurt by this system all the way to the people in communities like mine.

1:38:39We need to begin to expand consciousness about that this is not a fait accompli, that this system is by design producing the results that we're seeing, where pharmaceutical companies are making incredible profits, where literally I was shocked when I saw this that a major health organization says, well, obesity in children is such a bad thing. We are advising them to have their stomachs stapled. So we have created a system where people are profiting off of it, but the rest of us all are losing. And we can redesign it so farmers thrive and consumers thrive in health. Because we know, as you've said many times on your show, food is medicine.

1:39:18I can show you study after study that for taxpayers, If you're fiscally conservative, what a return on investment if you make fresh fruits and vegetables accessible for people with diabetes or hypertension or the like. And so I want to be a disruptor now. I want to find ways to take the next farm bill, which is coming, and see what ways we can make improvements on it to begin to show people there's a better way. Specifically to the food systems issue, like how do you kind of encourage people to get more involved? Like, are there certain things that you could advise or recommend people to look into or how to use their voice specifically?

1:39:57Well, every dollar you spend in your life is a vote. And I'm trying to think more about everything from where my clothing comes from to where my food comes from. And if you have the flexibility to make choices, you can endorse a lot of good practices that are starting. And so, what I try to remind myself is that this is that word you said earlier. it is a practice that trying every day to get up, to live your values is something that's not hard, but it demands of us that whether we stumble, we fall, we just get up every day and try our best to live our light. And a life of that, it's not a straight line.

1:40:42It takes stumbles, you get hit, you get knocked down, but getting up every day and trying to practice kindness, decency, and love, I think that that's the highest calling of life. Whether you are an elected leader, whether you are a coach, whatever you have, that to me are the people, people who live that kind of life. Those are the people that help light my path, like Kevin Batts, that encourage me in my way. It's kind of a pinch me moment. the very talented and very handsome actor, writer, and director Zach Braff joined me to teach us about how to understand, how to accept, and how to process difficult emotions through art.

1:41:26Here's an excerpt from our conversation back in episode 744. Well, the first impetus for writing about tragedy and trauma was I lost my—my sister had an aneurysm in 2016. and she actually survived, although in not a fully conscious state, in some tiny percentage of herself was alive for two more years. And my mom and brother in particular were by her bedside almost every day because they lived up north and I would go visit her and she was not, only a fraction of herself was there. Then she eventually passed. And soon after my father, who was 84, but I can't help but think that it kind of expedited his demise.

1:42:22He died of cancer. after I went into the COVID still grieving all of these things. And then my best friend was living in my guest house. He and his wife and their newborn baby were searching LA for a home. They found a home. They went back to New York to collect their things. And literally like the first day of lockdown, they were they came back from new york and he had contracted covid and this was at the very beginning right early early nobody knew what the hell you know it's the mayhem of the beginning of i think march was of 2020 right uh he's 41 years old very healthy a broadway star um trying to get his life going as a tv and film actor and um and he was very sick and they put him on a ventilator and he never came off of it so not only was i uh on the front lines of losing someone who was close to me to covid but his wife and baby were living in on my on my property in the guest house you know trying to digest this this horrible thing and and it was it was so traumatic because we we didn't know if she had covid or we didn't know you know it was so i mean that was back when And we're all like sort of spraying our groceries in the front lawn and all that kind of craziness.

1:43:46And so she'd be sobbing in a pile on the ground and we were like, can we hug her? Is it safe to hug her? She might have been exposed to it. So it was really, really horrific. And it was in that head space during the lockdown that I sat down to write this film about grief and about loss, but also about how one stands back up after such things. I've really just been battling, I've battled depression and anxiety my whole life. And I had OCD pretty bad as a child. And I think I found writing and performing as a way of dealing with that, particularly humor. Making people laugh was a high for me. I didn't play sports at all.

1:44:40I had no connection to sports. I didn't know how to make friends. So I became, because I was a funny kid, I became a class clown and that's how I made friends. And then when I was around 13 years old, my, you know, I lived in the East Coast in Jersey and well, sleepaway camp was very popular. And a lot of the kids would go to a traditional sleepaway camp that was about sports. And I didn't shine and I felt alienated and I was like, what's wrong with me? I loved performing. And my parents found this theater camp for me that was called Stage Door Manor. And I went there and it was like epiphanous.

1:45:14It was utopia. It was a place where everyone was a performer and everyone was like me. And I didn't know that there were other kids, that many kids out there like me. So just from an early age, the way I would manage anxiety and depression was creating art, whether it was as a performer or as a writer. I have a very early memory of being in fifth grade and the teacher said, we had to write an essay and who's gonna get up in front of the class and read their essay. And I did. And I had written other kids in the class into the essay and made a very funny essay, but the protagonists were kids in the class.

1:45:50And I got up there and they were belly laughing as I read it. And I remember clocking the teacher in the back of the classroom, holding her stomach and laughing. And I thought, this is probably the highest high I've had in my life so far. So is there any chance this is a career? When's career day? Yeah. So that's a long-winded way of saying, that's why I became a writer and a filmmaker, was a way of trying to find shared community with these feelings that I have. And to answer your other question about, is it cathartic? It's most cathartic when I finally watch it with an audience and I see their reaction.

1:46:32When they laugh at the right moment, when they swipe a tear at the right moment, when they're pin drop silent at the right moment, that's when I feel like, oh, I'm not alone in these emotions. Yeah, it's an antidote to loneliness. These emotions that I'm feeling are collective. Absolutely, absolutely. That's the best, that's better said than I could have said it. It's an antidote to loneliness. I think it was the way I was processing all of these things, but I didn't wanna write specifically the story of my life. I didn't wanna write about COVID. I didn't wanna write about my sister's aneurysm.

1:47:02right but all of that was you know it's like as a writer i'm sure you know and other writers can relate you you have all of this this is what's gurgling inside of you and when you sit down and stare at the blank cursor to see what's going to come out or a songwriter i imagine would be the same this is what came out this story is it was sort of my interpretation of all these feelings I had, including recovery and things I'm wrestling with, with my own relationship to alcohol. And all of that stuff became a part of it, but it's by no means directly my story. Writing is sitting alone at a blinking cursor, telling yourself you suck.

1:47:51It's hard. That's what I would tell people. I won't be as, try and scare anyone away from it, but know that it's, that I'm this deep into it and I battle procrastination, I battle working. So I would say develop very early on. I mean, you've had some of these amazing people on your podcast, the guy who wrote War of Art. Steven Pressfield. Yeah, Steven Pressfield and the like. you know you have to develop a system very early on something I never did that that is fail safe for you working and producing content and that is in 2023 that is very much turning off your wi-fi and getting your phone out of the room there are so many distractions and then I believe with Mr.

1:48:46Pressfield. It's about putting your butt in the chair and not being afraid to not know what it is today, but getting in the chair and showing up.

1:48:58But it's like running with an elephant on your back if you're trying to do it with your phone in your hand.

1:49:08Renowned futurist, thought leader, co-founder of Wired Magazine. Who am I talking about? I'm talking about Kevin Kelly, who came on the podcast and just dropped wisdom gold on so many subjects. We talked about careers, relationships, parenting, finances, innovation. Basically, excellent advice for living, which also happens to be the title of his latest book. Here's a look into that conversation. it's it's really clear right now that the major engine of wealth and i would also uh suggest personal happiness is is um being able to think different that's that's the engine and when we're when we're all connected 24 hours a day around the world with our little devices the the true value is being able to think a little differently that's the source of innovation that's how you make great things.

1:49:59That's how you make great art. And anything that can help you think differently, including AI, which we'll talk about later, I'm sure. But travel and other experiences, doing, having, reading different books than other people read. I mean, there's lots of ways to do that, but you want to really cultivate that ability to think differently in a world where everybody's connected together all the time. And so I would argue, yes, zig while everybody's zagging, you know, and try and do something different. And, you know, travel is a tremendously efficient and productive and inexpensive way to do that.

1:50:40And taking time off, goofing off is another great way to do that. Sabbatical Sabbath is another great way. So there's, that's the assignment really for most people is to have different ideas, to approach things differently. You're going to need help doing that. And my kids sort of have heard it many times. But every couple of years, I sit them down. I have three kids. And I say, I have a magic wand. I'm going to give you a billion dollars. But only if you tell me what you're going to do with it. What are you going to do with a billion dollars? And they'll go through the kind of lists. Maybe they're imagining.

1:51:19They're young adults and stuff. You know, I would maybe buy a house or something, and I would go on a trip somewhere, and I would have this. And I said, okay, you haven't spent any of your money yet. Because in six months, that will probably interest will pay back, and you're back with a billion dollars. Now what are you going to do? Oh, well, maybe I'm making something up. Maybe I'll start a little shop selling knitwear, or I want to do a little daycare center, or whatever it is. And it's like, okay, you don't need a billion dollars for that. So this idea, I mean, most people's dreams are not a matter of, they're not gated by money.

1:52:01They're gated by other things. And it's very clear in my own experiences that that dream of wanting to work to have the fortune to do what it is, is that's a really convoluted and unnecessary way around of getting what you want your dreams to do. So I've concluded, this is not in my advice book, but this is a piece of advice I have now, which is my advice is if you can all help it, do not earn a billion dollars. Okay? Please give me a favor. I'll try to avoid that. Exactly. You'll be much happy. Do not earn a billion dollars. Well, the real calculus is, is the money that you're earning creating freedom for you, or is it creating a more calcified prison for yourself?

1:52:47Exactly, right. Because it can do either of those things. I'm sure there are billionaires who've been able to figure out how to create freedom out of that for themselves. Maybe not, I don't know. I don't even know that I know any billionaires, but you do. But if your wealth can provide that, then okay. But if it's just creating misery for yourself, then what's the point? Right. And so that level of getting what you need comes way before a billion dollars, is what I'm saying. It's like, you know, and so at that point of a billion dollars, it is a burden. It is something that really weighs on the people who have it.

1:53:24It's kind of like fame. It's my advice. It was just you really don't want to be famous either. If you just read any biography about a famous, really famous person, it's another type of imprisonment. And most of the people who are really, really famous really regret that that is because they have to deal with it all the time. And it's a real, what's the word again, hinders them in many ways. And so it's not freedom at all. And it's the same thing. So you really want to focus on, this is my favorite piece of advice from the book, which is don't aim to be the best. Aim to be the only. Right. And that only is where you'll be much more satisfied, happy.

1:54:13You'll probably have enough. And that is the route. The Billions is another person's success. That should not be your success. It's someone else's movie if you're trying to make a billion dollars. You want to be the star in your own movie. Sure. But explain that a little bit more because the idea of being the only is an intimidating prospect, right? Like how do you become the only? The only at what? And I think becoming the only at anything, even if it's the most obscure thing on the planet, does require, again, back to what we were talking about earlier, kind of being contrarian or cutting against the grain and doing things a little bit differently.

1:55:00And I don't know that everyone is sort of cut out for that. Yeah. So first of all, it is a high bar. It is a very, very high bar. And the second thing, in my experience in both my own life and looking at other people, it will take most of your life to arrive there. There might be the really weird, freakish person who's born and has a clear idea of what they're really great at that nobody else can do, and they go for it. But most of us, it's a long and meandering winding road with lots of detours and right turns and setbacks and turnarounds and everything else. To arrive there and you actually don't ever arrive, you're always on that journey of trying to figure out what it is about yourself that is special and unique.

1:55:49But it doesn't... And okay, so there is a paralysis I've seen in young people. It's like, I don't know what I'm passionate about. I don't know. And so I can't really start. I can't give my 100 % until I know what that is. And I become convinced that the proper way to start is to master something. And in that mastery, that becomes a platform that you begin to kind of move towards discovering what it is. Passion is a product of action. Exactly. It's not the other way around. Exactly. So waiting around until you're struck with what you're passionate about as a precursor to action is the way most people think about it.

1:56:33And that just leads to paralysis and like a protracted period of confusion. Exactly. So you almost, and it doesn't matter where you start because that's not where you're going to be ending. And that's true. Again, if you look, any remarkable person that you admire, they didn't start there. They arrived at their, and the more kind of distinctive, unique, special, and only they are, the more likely they started way away from where they actually discovered what they were good at. And so don't, doesn't really, don't be concerned about where you're starting. As long as you're moving forward in that way of really deliberately trying to get better, you will arrive in the right direction.

1:57:17Fostering your own best work is one thing, but how do you foster the best work in others? Well, there's no one better to answer that question than Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull, a leader and also a leadership authority who shaped Pixar's supremely innovative company culture. Here are some philosophies he's leveraged to build effective teams and why he believes failure is a path to growth. your original motivation into rethinking management and leadership and and on some level the impetus of the book was trying to figure out why great companies when they reach a certain level of scale suddenly no longer are great right for me it's a fascinating thing because i see it just happened in company after company is what is actually going on what are people thinking.

1:58:09One of the difficulties that companies have is that because of underlying changes that take place, and this in particular, it's true with computer-related companies, but now it's happening everywhere, is there are fundamental changes that are taking place, not only in the technology, but in its applications. And now because of the use of more computers and cell phones and the whole web system of transferring information, but also societal changes, environmental changes, a lot of things are happening pretty rapidly. And people have difficulty conceiving of what it means to change their business plan, let alone other things they need to do in their lives.

1:59:01But it's very hard for them to conceive of it. And Steve was unusual in that his focus was on what is the right thing to do when they were working on the iPhone, but when it was secret. So he went up to the secret lab to see it. And what he said was, we're reaching the point where there isn't really any, you know, a lot more growth in the laptop computers, including the portable computers. So we're going to need to have a different business model going forward. Now that in itself is very unusual. Right. So that's one thing that I found interesting, just okay, that sort of sets me apart from other people.

1:59:53The underlying thing Steve did understand was that you have to find out what the truth is. and adapt to it. If something wasn't right, he would switch. You commit to something with passion. And when you're wrong, you change. And that's hard for people to hold onto their head because you think if I'm committed, then I'm committed, I'm not going to listen to things that's going to change my course because I'm committed to the course. But if I'm not committed, then I change course too easily. So what does it mean to both be committed and at the same time say, oh, I've just realized I'm wrong. We're going to change.

2:00:35That's very hard. And I'd say the best leaders and the best filmmakers, that's what they do. We're going to get on this path. Okay, it's not working. We're going to change. Yeah. So how do you do both at the same time? And it is possible. But that's when the, I think that's when the best stuff happens. Yeah, well, the way that it's possible is through these many kind of systems and philosophies that you end up implementing at Pixar that creates this unbelievable run of extraordinary movies over the tenure of your leadership there. The overarching idea here is how do we get the most compelling, innovative, creative work out of this group of people?

2:01:24And what is the environment that we need to cultivate in order to facilitate that? And the opportunity to fail and fail fast can be part of the environment to make something new and better and different. Actually, we don't use the term failure very much inside of Pixar. Now, if we actually have something that fails, we say that it fails. We're not trying to avoid it. But the word's too loaded.

2:01:58Because, you know, starting at school, if you fail in a class, then that's a bad thing because it means you weren't smart enough or you didn't work hard enough. But also, when you get out, bridges fail, relationships fail. So there's a real and palpable aura of danger around failure. While we also would say that we learn a lot from our failures, because we have, we all recognize that, is that meaning of failure is actually sort of overridden by the danger part of failure. If we recognize that, and say, well, okay, There are a lot of times when we should be using a somewhat different terminology, which is that we're trying to make something work.

2:02:46Let's try this. The light didn't work. Let's try this. We don't need to overload it. So I try to be very careful about the words and how they're used. I think it should be used for things where you really do have a major problem. And the other one is people get stuck for different reasons. We all do this. you're trying to work on something, bang your head on the wall. And I remember this, you know, from like just doing homework or making school, right? Yeah. Sometimes you're trying to do it. You got to do it. You got to schedule. I'm sorry, my brain is fried. I'm stuck. Well, for me, the big step is that when you see that there's a problem, you have to ask why.

2:03:32And it isn't one of those things that you can, force on them. You say, you need to do this. You need to fix it this way, which is a natural thing for people to do. I don't think it's the right thing to do, though. It's like, okay, this isn't going the way I would hope it's going. Why isn't it going this way? What's getting in their way? And what can I do to solve the thing that's getting in their way? Because they may not see it. And if they don't see it, and I'm not paying attention, then we all miss it. And then it It sits there and festers and it affects people. But we can ask and figure out what actually happened.

2:04:10Why did it happen? And what can we do about it? I think we can all agree that our media landscape is rapidly changing. It's shifting. It's always evolving. And in a world inundated with so much new technology, the growth of artificial intelligence and the power of social media, where is our shared humanity? Well, Emmy-nominated writer, comedian, and cultural critic Baratunde Thurston joined me to talk about all of this, the impact of technology and social media on society, and the current perils of our democratic system. You know, where are we in the world of media right now? How do you make sense of it?

2:04:56With great difficulty. it's we're in a tectonic shift like like the tectonic word and everything's changing really really rapidly you know i'm 45 years old i was born in 77 washington dc my mom was a computer programmer for the federal government and so i had a computer in my household for longer than most people my age regardless of the economic and racial situation i came out of which made it even more rare. And so it's always been an enabler. It's been fun. Uh, and it's been this connective tool. And so we've got the internet. Cool. Everybody gets a voice. And then you're like, oh, we got the internet, man.

2:05:34Everybody gets a voice and things that used to be hard for organizing and amplifying are easy. And that, that can be great for trans kids. It's also great for like white supremacist organizers too. And there's no like morality in that. So with the speed of like what I see with media now is a bunch of stuff. I think of its role as being this mirror that reflects us back to us and helps tell us who we are and who we're capable of. And that's where my frustration is greatest because I think we're getting a very narrow reflection of ourselves back to ourselves. And what these tools are capable of is beautiful, but what we're actually using them for is a vast subset of that beauty.

2:06:17And so we get like ad driven monetization of stuff. We get a hyper focus on conflict and discord versus collaboration and creativity. We get subservience and following versus kind of ownership and setting your own course. And we are what we eat. And I think we become what we see and we become what people tell us we already are. So So there's a lot of responsibility in the media game and technology is just adding fuel to an already raging fire in terms of like possibility, confusion, and sometimes chaos. The acceleration of change is so massive. But truth is always truth. There's always wisdom that transcends whatever is happening.

2:07:02We may not be able to relate to the specific experience of what it's like to grow up with technology X, but there are still, you know, some, some, there's a, there's an architecture of, of, you know, how to be in the world. There's an, there's something underneath that superficial reality, right? Whether it's virtual or physically tangible, our humanity has some consistency, right? We have an emotional experience. We have desires and needs. We have fears. We have a A sense of belonging or its opposite, a sense of purpose or its absence. And so we have to figure out a way to tap into that deeper frequency.

2:07:46If you're trying, I mean, I remember telling businesses when I would advise them on social media strategy, you know, don't ask me what your Vine strategy should be. Vine will one day not be here. What's your story, right? And then you figure out how you're going to express it in the medium of the moment. we all need to kind of get below the surface. It's increasingly important because the surface is ever changing. And I don't have a simple answer for that, but I just acknowledge it as a major contributing challenge to the sense of rupture and disruption that we're all facing. That part is unprecedented.

2:08:22Yeah, the big thing here is, you know, we already feel like we're in a post-truth world, but we ain't seen nothing yet. But the undercurrent of humanity is that truth, you know, this notion that truth is important, right? Like we agree on that, right? I mean, you and I do. What's true and not true, like understanding the difference between that is important. But I feel like we're creeping towards a situation where there's gonna be a lot of people who would rebut that and say, actually truth is not important. What's important is winning or, you know, audience capture or just making sure that your narrative is the one that's on top.

2:09:00And when you have, when the deep fake technology and it's like the ability to obscure truth or tell whatever story that you wanna tell in the most convincing way, completely untethered from anything real or true, it becomes pretty apocalyptic. We don't just need a sort of competitive system. We don't just need a system in which truth competes with untruth, we need a system in which the incentives for truth compete with the incentives for untruth. And where we are now, that is not really the case. You know, like you can be outlandish and dishonest and generate the markings of reward through attention, through likes, through money for being untruthful.

2:09:52And the punishments aren't quite aligned with that either. So the downside could be turned up and the upside could be turned down. Meanwhile, for those of us who love and value truth, we've also got to build a system that rewards it and offers demerits for undermining it. We've got to be able to show transparently that truth has value. And I don't want to just sit here and say, yeah, the truth is always better. Like clearly, historically speaking, it doesn't always win because untruths have been able to attach themselves to things that people value. And ultimately, we value belonging, perhaps as an example, more than we value truth.

2:10:36We value self-preservation more than we value truth. Genocides are built on lies, all of them. They somehow compelled millions of people to participate actively or passively in them. because they saw something in it for them. Self-preservation, belonging, lack of ostracization, to uphold a lie. So lies had a lot of co-conspirators. And we've got to make sure we rally when it's so much easier to create and spread a lie. We need the truth to have some allies and some rewards built in. I haven't thought about that at all. This is a real-time, like, oh, snap, what does that even mean for us? But I think if we ignore or try to pretend that the truth is just obviously better, we're in for a world of hurt because it isn't obvious a lot of times.

2:11:29We have accomplished magic, literal magic from the perspective of most humans who've ever lived. Rockets and all the technological advances and the wealth creation. So we're capable of so much more than hiding from the truth. And I just think we need to hear that more. We need someone to believe in us and not just demand that we accede to them. This year, one of the greatest basketball players of all time graced the show, NBA legend and author of 61, Chris Paul. Chris imparted valuable life lessons on the importance of prioritizing consistency, falling in love with the work, mentorship, and more.

2:12:11Here's a slice of episode 762. I think one of the biggest things is community, right? If you look at any business plan, anything that tries to grow, it's all about community, right? About sharing with others and finding that connectivity that we may be from different backgrounds. I mean, at the end of the day, that's the premise of my book. My book is about my grandfather, but there's other people who have had mentors and family members that they were connected to like that. And so the importance of community and sharing your experiences with other people and not necessarily forcing it on people, because even like with a plant-based lifestyle or anything, a lot of times people don't want things forced on them, but sometimes you got to nudge it.

2:13:02You know, you got to keep at least giving them the information and it may take him a while to actually try it. And when I think about change, right, I just think about stacking days, stacking days. My son is small, right? He's small, just like I was. And I've talked to him about the training and how hard it is and this, that, and the third, but he's finally starting to see a little bit of change, right? In his game or whatever, and his ability. And all I keep telling him is just keep stacking days. Just keep stacking days. As long as you keep stacking days, I promise you, I promise you, you will see the change.

2:13:46But my coach used to always say, everything that you want is on the other side of hard, right? He had another, I think I said in the book, he said, reps removed out, right? Reps removed My biggest frustration with my son used to be, we would go outside at the house and he would shoot a shot and he'd be mad. He'd be like, dang, I'd be like, what you mad for? You don't get up enough reps, you know? So those are the only things you can control anyway. Your effort and the consistency of your effort, right? There's a quote in the book that I love, which is hard work is my preferred language and I try to speak it fluently.

2:14:25Like that's fucking great. Yeah. You know? And just stack it up. That's all you can do and walk away. What is your relationship to failure also? Like missing that shot. Is it a big deal or are you just moving on? Another rep, another rep, another rep. I was in the gym last night. I was telling you with the kid, Mercy, Mercy Miller last night. We had to end this drill. We had to end with this drill that I do where you shoot a three in this corner, and then you run to the other end of the court, shoot a three in this corner, run to this corner, come to this corner, right? So that's four shots. Then you go to this wing, five, that wing, six, this wing, seven, this wing, eight, top of the key, nine, this top, 10, nonstop.

2:15:17So sprint, sprint, sprint, 10 shots. Got to make seven out of 10, and we done with the workout for the day. I went, knocked it out, whatnot. Now Mercy got to go. 10 for 10? I went 8. I went 8 out of 10. Mercy's turn to go. First time, I think he might have got 5 out of 10. Went again, didn't get it. Went again, didn't get it. Went again, didn't get it. Kept getting the 6 out of 10, and he would have to, because he had to just make 7, 7 out of 10. He'd get to the last one, missed it. He might have did this drill 10 times, 10 times. And my son was there too. And I told Chris, I said, listen, Mercy can work out with me any day because he didn't complain.

2:16:06He didn't do nothing. This kid is about to be a senior in high school. He didn't complain. He just kept breathing. I kept talking to him like, don't worry about it. Just keep going, keep going. And sure enough, after 10, 11 tries, he got it. He got it. And I appreciated that from him. And I told him at the end of our workout, because he was like, man, appreciate you letting me come work. I said, no, thank you. Because you make it fun for me. And that's the fun part about having 12 kids in NBA, having all of these young kids coming up and training with them and working out with them. Because that's the exciting part for me is to know that when I'm done playing, I'll still be watching and be like, man.

2:16:50Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's cool, man. And I'm sure, within the NBA, because you're more of an elder statesman now, you have all these young players who are looking up to you for that kind of guidance and for you to recognize, like that brings you joy, to kind of give back in that way, I think is cool. So any parting words for the aspiring athlete out there, somebody who's trying to tap into a little bit more mastery into their life? Yeah, I mean, you hear all these sayings all the time, where they say you're only gonna get out of it what you put into it. But I would say fall in love with the work, right?

2:17:33Like I always say about the NBA, I've had guys, I've had teammates and it's fine. Some guys be like, I don't watch basketball when I go home because I play too much. I don't know, I'd be like, listen, you think if somebody work on Wall Street, when they go on vacation, they not checking, the stock exchange, you know, but to each his own, right? So if you fall in love with the work aspect of it, then the success and the accolades that come with it, but you got to fall in love with the work. Don't just fall in love with the showers of people telling you how good and great you are. Like if you fall in love with the work aspect of it, than everything else I promised to fall into place.

2:18:21Thanks for going on that ride with me. It really has been such an incredible year on the podcast. I really hope you enjoyed this look in the rear view. Links to all the full episodes and the social media accounts for all the guests excerpted today can of course be found in the show notes as well as on the episode page at richroll.com. Part two with a bunch more awesome excerpted conversations will be up later in the week. Until then, stay tuned. Peace.

2:18:56That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive. as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.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.

2:19:40Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo, with additional audio engineering by Cale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake.

2:20:18Portraits by Davey Greenberg, graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis. Thank you, Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste.