What a family happy December in case you haven't heard we now have official genius life merch turn heads while showcasing your love for this podcast with t-shirts socks and even a fanny pack my excitement whenever y'all tag me wearing the new merch is unparalleled and I just got a sneak peek at the hand-dyed tie-dye sweater up for pre-order now and it is dope if you order this week, that's right this week. You should have your Merchants time for Holiday gift-giving. You can check out all the genius life merch at the genius life.com the thought of y'all reppin the genius live outside of your headphones. Well, that's the
holiday gift I need and now welcome to episode 140 of the genius
life. That's
We're back. What up, everybody? Welcome to
another episode of The Genius life. I'm your host Max Lou Guevara filmmaker health and science journalist. And the author of The New York Times best-selling book genius foods and the genius life team. I'm so pumped for you to listen to today's episode. This episode is the epitome of what the genius life stands for a dynamic conversation between two different Lifestyles today. I welcome the one and only Rich Roll rich is a vegan Ultra endurance athlete and full-time wellness and plant-based nutrition Advocate popular public.
Her husband father for and inspiration to people worldwide as a transformative example of courageous and Healthy Living Rich continues this journey today with his chart-topping podcast and best-selling books Finding Ultra the plant power way the plant power way Italia and his latest offering voicing change y'all his newest book voicing change is epic. I feel like there's a misconception that meat eaters and vegans don't get along or that we have complete opposite beliefs. Well rich and I are here to tell you that is totally false. You can always learn from someone who does things differently than yourself. Rich is a
Vegan and Ultra endurance athlete and I'm a mediator who generally picked up running during quarantine save the drama for your mama in this episode Rich shares his health Journey including what led to his decision to be plant-based. We chat through how his approach has changed over time and what modifications he makes to support his training. We discuss intermittent fasting and why Rich believes it's been a powerful tool to support his well-being. But also how it might be to the detriment of more advanced fitness goals and finally the rich and I differ in our own nutritional approaches. We are definitely aligned in terms of how we both believe nutrition discourse.
Especially online should respect science and personal ethics and we dive into that a bit as well. Rich is open-minded and I find his tenacity to be tremendously inspirational plus many of Rich's most publicly celebrated achievements occurred later on in life after he hit the age of 40. So for any late bloomers out there, this episode is definitely going to be one that you are going to want to pay close attention to one of my favorite parts of the holiday season is sharing big yummy meals with family and friends, however, although delicious and enjoyable these meals always leave me confused as to what to do during snack time a solid snack is a
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In for life right now new members can get bacon for live when they sign up at butcher box.com genius. That's a package of free bacon and every box for the life of your subscription when you go to Butcher box.com genius act quickly for this sizzling hot offer. All right guys before you race into my conversation with Rich. I absolutely must share this heartfelt iTunes review from one of our genius Li family members run for podcasts States. I look forward to every new episode put my headphones on and run with Max. I learn something new every podcast Thanks Max. Thanks so much for your
Your view run for podcasts. Today's run is accompanied by the ultimate Runner Rich Roll. It's going to be a fun one guys. Do you ever listen to an episode of my show and loved it so much that you want to share all that you learned with friends and family first up. Thank you second up. You can always head to Max Luke of your.com podcast to learn and therefore share more. We have a ton of great resources that allow you to learn more but it's also a great spot to direct friends if they want to expand their knowledge keep the genius Life Community growing both in size and wisdom. If you don't find the answer you're looking for
You can join the text Community by texting the word genius 2310 2999 401 I've had so much fun with this text community. So shoot me a text and we can chat I try to get to a few questions each day. So send all your thoughts feelings concerns my way. Let's connect and with all that said let's now roll into episode 140 with the inspiring Rich Roll Rich Roll. What's happening? What's going on? Happy to be here man. Thanks for having me. Do you thanks for coming out in these perilous times it is it's scary out. There it is. I don't know what's scarier.
Adore the fact that it was like a hundred and sixteen and Valley the other day so hot. It's been hot over here. It's been like really kind of murderous and like oppressive weirdly humid. Weirdly humid. I was remind myself that it's like the heat shock proteins, right? It's like the heat stress. So, you know, I'm fostering antifragility. Hmm, you know, every time I feel like complaining about the weather. Yeah. I like it. I like the heat. It doesn't bother me that much. I mean it can be oppressive but I'd rather have it like this then cold and dreary.
In rainy Sam Sam. Well, dude. I'm excited to talk to you. We've been friends for a while. We've bumped into each other at a bunch of different like Health, you know venues and events and things like that. But this is a cool opportunity to get to get to know you on a deeper level and I'm sure many of my listeners are familiar with your work. But yeah, I mean, I guess for those who aren't I know that you've got this like amazing sort of back story and you've gone through multiple transitions in your life you started as yeah a couple but
Like how did you I mean if you can't just like walk me through the Journey like in a way, you know, like what has led to the ritual that today we know of as being this like super aspirational inspirational Ultra Mega Thon athlete podcaster. Well, first of all, thanks for that a lot of Tory intro. I don't know that I can live up to that. But yeah, I mean I've gone through a couple different incarnations. I mean I grew up in a middle-class household in Washington DC parents that love
Other that are still together education was a priority. I was always kind of a misfit kid. I was insecure introverted have difficulty making friends was very much to myself showed zero athletic prowess as a youth I was the kid who was picked last for kickball and all that kind of stuff. You were ridiculed, you know bullied and the like and the one thing that I discovered that I would actually showed some innate Talent out with swimming and I really
Gave myself to that sport as a young person and as I matured through that sport, it helped me academically. So by the time I graduated from high school, I was one of the top swimmers in the region in the Washington Metro Area got recruited all these colleges finished top of my class got into all the fancy places ended up going to Stanford, which was the number one swimming program in the country at the time, but I went as a benchwarmer. I was not a scholarship athlete I had a choice.
Going somewhere else and being one of the top guys, but I thought I can go here and train with Olympic gold medalist and world record holders. Like I'll never know if I reach my potential if I don't take advantage of this opportunity. Plus I just love a group growing up on the East Coast. I visited Stanford. I just thought I can't even believe this is a college like in that I get to you know, I got into this place is crazy. So that's where I went and my freshman year I distinguished myself on the swim team.
And things were looking pretty Rosy. But I also discovered alcohol around that time and from the outset. I'm just one of those people who had a very unhealthy relationship with that drug from the beginning and it's something that you know, as any alcoholic will tell you starts out fun and actually fills a need like it turned me into a social creature. It brought me out of my skin. I could go to parties and talk to girls and stay up late and do all these things that I never did.
I
was in high school because I was getting up at 4:30 in the morning to go to swim practice going to 2 hours more of some practice after school doing my studies and crashing. Like I was a very good studious highly motivated highly driven young person and that all went out the window when I discovered partying and it was a slow decline, but but my life began to erode first slightly and then precipitously somehow I you know, I got through Stanford.
I didn't spend my senior year. I never swam fast again after my freshman year just wasn't important to me. I was just looking for where the next good time would be lived in New York City for a couple of years, which was really kind of graduate school for an alcoholic and that's where I really learned how to drink and party and had a lot of fun there and got into some trouble went to law school after that. I think at the time mostly to find some like stable ground for myself because I knew I was starting to spin out.
Troll but my alcoholism goes where I go. And that continued to progress. I still don't know how I graduated from law school, but somehow I did got a job at a law firm in San Francisco started drinking more there ended up down in Los Angeles with another job had a marriage that got derailed during the honeymoon. That's a whole other crazy. I could be a whole podcast that story, you know, like life was going sideways quickly. Then I got two DUIs in a row blowing insane numbers like point.
29.2 7g the rear-ended an old lady the other time. I was driving the wrong way down a one-way Street and Beverly Hills went to jail almost got fired from my job because my boss knew the arresting officer. It was like a, you know, a lot of stuff happen to compress period of time that made me realize like my life was headed in a very tragic direction if I didn't course-correct started struggling with trying to get sober going to AA meetings in ela and trying to figure it out kept relapsing and ultimately just
At this really dark place where my family didn't want anything to do with me anymore. I lost all of my friendships. I was going to get fired. I couldn't pay my bills. I was sleeping on a bare mattress on the floor of and like basically an unfurnished apartment right around the corner from here whoa, and and had nowhere to turn and that's when I kind of had that Moment of clarity that you here and realize like I have to do something drastic, so I went to a treatment center.
In Rural, Oregon where I ended up living for a hundred days, I got sober there and that began a brand new chapter of me when I got back to LA after that. It was all about creating a foundation of sobriety. That was my number one priority. I went back to the law firm but quickly realized as I started to become a more integrated individual that I chosen a career path that was completely at odds with this person that I was becoming but it took a many years for me to figure out what the right
Earth would be and ultimately I continue to pursue law in various different forms for many years until I was in my late 30s and I put on 50 pounds. I was a junk food addict. I was just basically like I wasn't I was never like a morbidly obese guy was just like I look like a guy who's spending too much time in a law firm right like working too much and eating too much shitty food and not taking care of himself and it all came to a head shortly before I turned 40 when I had a health scare.
There one evening just going up the flight of stairs to my bedroom and had to pause that tightness in my chest and you know winded, you know felled by simple flight of stairs because you know, I don't ways despite how I appeared. Like when I would look in the mirror, I still thought I was a Stanford swimmer, you know, it's like denial is very powerful and that was like a second Moment of clarity for me where I was like, I'm just not living properly and because I'd had that experience where I made the
Decision to go to rehab I had a hyper-vigilance or a hyper awareness around how special these these kind of epiphanies can be and how they can change your life in such a dramatic way. If you just grab onto them and I felt like I was being visited by one of those moments again, and I was not going to let it pass because I know how easy it is to go. Well, you know, yeah, but, you know, maybe I should go to the gym and just kind of go back to some status quo, but I didn't do that. I was like I'm changing and I'm changing now and I need to do something drastic.
Right away to kind of trigger that and create some momentum. So I thought well I went to rehab for drugs and alcohol. Like how can I recreate some version of that experience for me around food and lifestyle? So the first thing that I did was like a week-long fruit and vegetable juice cleanse not because I wanted to rid my body of toxins, but I wanted to do something that was difficult that was hard that would that would you know, put me through the
Acres of what it's like to wean yourself off drugs and alcohol because that's a very painful experience and something that I was intimately familiar with. So I recreated that experience with food so that it would trigger that same kind of mental connection to a recovery path that I had with drugs and alcohol and that work that was very difficult. But at the end of that seven-day period I felt amazing like I don't know if you've ever done any kind of prolonged fasting or you know, detox protocol or anything like that.
That but you know, I'd never gone a single day in my life without eating food and then you know, the first couple days are horrible. I felt like I was like, you know, I felt like I was a heroin addict and I was shaking and sweating but by the seventh day I had this Resurgence of Vitality and energy and I thought how can I feel so I felt better than I've felt in as long as I could remember and I and I remember thinking like, how can I figure out a way of living and eating where I can feel like this all the time and that kind of prompted this exploration of died in
All that ultimately culminated in me adopting a plant-based diet. And then with all of this energy that I had I got interested in becoming fit again, and that led me into the world of endurance and later ultra-endurance and all these crazy challenges that I've done and everything has flowed really from there. Not because I white boarded it and made some master plan. It was really just organically an inorganic outgrowth or manifestation of continuing to try to live more authentic.
To who wow, so you have that Health crisis when you were about to turn 40. Hmm. And so we so you weren't just an athlete in high school and college. You became an ultra the ultra athlete that we know Rich role to be in your like late 30 my in your for my mid-40s in your mid-40s. Yeah. Wow, that's like insane so impressive. Yeah. So I mean, you know, I had I knew how to push my body like, you know, I don't know if you're familiar with
Like to train as a swimmer at a certain level but like you're putting in like 20,000 meters a day. Like I I'm a Workhorse and I had a certain amount of talent as a swimmer, but there were plenty of swimmers who were much more talented than me, but I learned quickly in early as a young person that I could bridge that Talent deficit Gap by out working the person next to me. And so I developed this capacity for load like endurance load and I knew how to do that as a swimmer. So when I got interested in Endurance Sports
It's I didn't take the time to educate myself about what it would mean to excel as a triathlete, but I have this engine, you know, and it was a matter of tapping back into not just those practices, but I think that the that endurance machine remains latent throughout your life. Like if you've done it in the past you're able to connect with that again much more easily than somebody who's doing it for the first time. Wow, and during that time and I had you given up on your law career or were you still practicing law? I was still practicing law, but I'd left the big Law Firm.
And I gone through a different a couple different versions of I was a solo practitioner and I have partner had two partners for a while and then I had one partner but I was losing interest in it as I was going and I started training for these crazy races, which would require me to be out of my bike for like 5 hours in the middle of the day and as a solo practitioner lawyer and this is you know, this wasn't a work from home ERA. This is a time where I was entertainment lawyer like you got to be at these lunches and Beverly Hills, and I'm sure
If I'm not doing any of that anymore, but I'd get these phone calls when I was out training and I have to pull over and do like a conference call with people sitting in offices in Century City thinking if they could if they actually knew what I was doing right now, but I would always get the work done. But because I was essentially self-employed I would do it at odd hours and work around this training schedule so that I could basically pursue this goal that I had that's so interesting prior to the the Health crisis you you were eating all kinds of things you reading you mentioned like a lot of
On food mostly Jack-in-the-Box. Mostly jacking them. Yeah. Wow, that's a lot of jack-in-the-box. Wow, it was bad. Yeah fast food. No bueno. And then so you made the switch to as you mention a plant-based diet what I mean what kind of like research and stuff like when into your into your decision and what did your diet look like, you know after having made that after you made that switch. I wish I could tell you that I went down some big scientific rabbit hole and started, you know, reading a bunch of PubMed. It wasn't like that. It was really experiential after that cleanser.
Was over I played around with a vegetarian diet and then I ate like a very high protein diet for a while. I played around and every time it I could never really recapture how I felt on that seventh day of that cleanse and I did that for about six months and I didn't do it scientifically or even all that diligently to be honest with you and after 6 months. I was kind of ready to give up. I just thought like, you know, maybe I can't feel that way and I'm 40 and maybe I'm just
To kind of not feel as good as I used to and I was ready to give up but the one thing that I hadn't tried was going a hundred percent plant-based because it just sounded too ridiculous and extreme and I couldn't imagine that it would be giving me all the nutrients that I needed but I noticed on Facebook that in this is a time when like Facebook was a thing, like people actually were on Facebook. I had a buddy that I used to swim against called Rip esselstyn.
In Ripon died rip was two years older than me, but we kind of came up at the same time. Like I didn't really know him, but we would be at the same meats and he was an All-American backstroker. He went to Texas which was our number one rival. So I knew of him and we were Facebook friends and he started posting on Facebook about this plant based diet and how he had this book coming out called engine to diet. It hadn't come out yet and he was sharing the work of his father Caldwell esselstyn who had experienced, you know, some pretty significant.
reversals of arterial of our of arterial damage with heart patients and that just struck me as compelling and I thought you know and rip was like super fit and I was like plant-based really so I was like well, maybe I'll try that, you know, because that's the one box that I haven't checked and I think part of me also was thinking I kind of wanted to go back to just eating junk food and just say well I tried all this stuff doesn't work like whatever, you know, I'm just going to you know live the rest of my life the way I was living it before but I thought like all give us a go and
And and within you know for five days of doing this experiment, I started to feel like I felt on that seventh day of that you like I really felt a Resurgence of Vitality and and I thought well I'm going to this is this is agreeing with me for some reason in a way that I didn't expect and I just never look back like I've been doing that ever since it's been coming up on 14 years at this point. That's amazing. Has it even
Moved over time or has it been have you been pretty sort of like consistent? Like what do you know now about nutrition about you know, your your biology, you know, I guess you could say that you wish you had known back when you first started out. That's a great question. I think it hasn't evolved dramatically. I would say that it kind of Ebbs and flows depending upon how focused I am on training like
Like when I have a fitness goal or I'm training for a race, then everything gets super dialed in and I'm paying excuse me extreme attention to everything on and putting in my body when I'm not training for a race. It's easier to just be you know, like God. I too much pasta or whatever like I've been eating plant-based for so long right now that I don't think about it that much it's so wrote and second nature to me and everything in our house and our kitchen is plant-based so I don't spend a lot of time.
Like overanalyzing it I guess and I keep it really simple. Like I eat proper food. I tons of beans I tons of greens, you know, when I am training I'm upping my, you know, micronutrients upping my calories obviously and I'm paying more attention to making sure that I'm not going to be deficient and anything things like that. The one thing that I think I have learned that might have benefited me earlier is some of the intermittent fasting stuff.
I'm now experimenting with and and enjoying but you know, all of the science is always developing like when I started this I knew rip, you know was this plant-based athlete and that was it and now there's so many more resources. There's so many more athletes who are experimenting with these kinds of things and in different ways at the same time. There's also this explosion in meat and dairy analogues. There's so many more delicious processed Dairy and animal
Addict free products that you can get at the store and the challenge then becomes to understand that this is about Whole Foods. It's not about just being vegan. You can have a terrible diet, you know eating just vegan now more so than ever and just like when I would look in the mirror and see that Stanford swimmer when I was 50 pounds overweight, I'll find myself going. Oh, well, you know like that coconut ice cream or that whatever it is, you know, like a let's plant Bay. So how bad can it be but it's
Is really no better than any of the other junk foods that are out there. So that's the thing that is now like there's more Temptations to stray and still call yourself plant-based than there used to be. Yeah. I mean, I love to have conversations with with people who are plant-based. I mean my listeners. No, I'm not playing plant-based but I love nothing more than to be able to reach across the aisle and learn from people who have been who have been steeped in their lifestyle, you know in a conscious way so that I can learn from them quick break y'all when it comes to
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Off my go-to soup again head over to Kettle and fire.com Max. It is like a security blanket on a cold winter night or as we like to say and I LOL any time the temperature dips below 60 and now back to my chat with the one and only Rich Roll. Are there any things that like, you know as somebody who Embraces the plant-based diet that that you think like, you know, the omnivore world like ought to know about I'll give you an example if that question doesn't see it doesn't appear to make a lot of sense. I just
Nutritional yeast a couple of years ago and it's like one of my favorite things on the planet is great. But it on salads you can put it on tons of stuff. Yeah. It's amazing. It's like one of my favorite condiments, but I'm just wondering if there's like anything else like that that like the the vegans and plant-based eaters have been sort of keeping to themselves that like more people need to know about mmm. It's so hard because I'm so steeped in it that I don't know what you don't know. I would say that omnivores.
And to think of adopting a plant-based diet as something that's a very difficult that's going to be very time-consuming and that unless you are supplementing with all kinds of supplements. You're going to be deficient and you're going to have to pay attention to all these things and perhaps do a lot more blood panels that a normal person and all I can tell you is that hasn't been my experience. I've gone through phases where I'm doing all kinds of supplements and I've wean myself off of those and gotten blood work done and been fine. So, you know again,
And its proper food, I keep it really simple. I tons of gigantic salads. I tons of rice and beans and vegan burritos. I've traveled all over the world. That's the other thing. Like, how do you travel? What do you eat on a plane? Well, I don't need anything on a plane that's only a couple hours. You know, like you're gonna be fine and everywhere I go. I'm always able to make it work. So it doesn't rent a lot of space in my head in terms of prep and all that kind of thing that I think people think that it does. So I take B12 I've been
Eating a little bit more extra width D lately because of covid I take zinc I take but you know, it's basically it, you know, the the nutritional yeast is B vitamins in it to it also serves as a B12 that stuff is so mad. Yeah and it has a very kind of like the texture of it for people that are craving Dairy it helps like take the edge off of that and and also this idea like, oh, I can't live without food X your Cravings are malleable. Your Cravings are dictated by what your
Eating into your body and you know as somebody who's got a lot of experience with drug and alcohol addiction you think there's no way I could go one day without drug X and you realize through a detoxification process that you're craving subside. When you deprive your body of a certain thing like for me the hardest thing was kicking Dairy, like I just couldn't imagine dairies in so many things it's very difficult to figure out how to rid your system of dairy and the Cravings were
Significant for me and it took weeks before that began to subside and now I don't think about it. Like I don't like I don't create and that doesn't mean that every once in a while. I smell something and I think that would be good to eat. But it's a it's a very passing thing. Yeah, are there any special considerations that you make being an athlete, you know, like are you do to supplement with you talked about, you know supplementing with vitamin B12 but like protein supplements things like that, or do you do find it pretty I mean I do I
Do a plant-based protein supplement occasionally, but I want to disabuse people have the idea that unless you're putting scoops of protein powder and your smoothie every day that you're not going to be able to build lean muscle mass or recover. Like that's not been my experience either when I first began this I was overdoing it and then I thought
Is this stuff doing anything? Like I need to wean myself off of it and not use any of it and see and it made very little difference. So I think these things have their place and when I'm training hard, I do want to make sure that I'm meeting my protein requirements. So I will put a scoop in and I've got a bunch of different, you know Brands. I'm not like wet to any particular brand and I seem to do fine with that. Have you ever experimented with like creatine? I don't know like what your stance? Yeah, I have I have on and off a little bit.
Creatine is very effective. Super. Yeah. Yeah, I don't actually know I guess it's like purely synthetic like creatine money. Yeah. Yeah. I was when I first thought about trying that I was like is this vegan? Like how do they extract this stuff? Does it come from an animal? Like I just didn't even know but I think it is synthetically created super interesting. Do you still routinely fast like to you know, because you had such success of the beginning like for example, it kind of got me thinking about the pro Lon like fasting mimicking strategy, you know, like a super
low calorie juice cleanse for five days here and there. Yeah. I mean, I'm familiar with that. I've had valter on my podcast. I've never done his protocol and I haven't done any other kind of long fasting protocols either but I do do like intermittent fasting. So there's plenty of days where you know, I'll eat it eight o'clock at night and then I won't eat again until you know, six or seven the following day. I don't do that every single day. Like I think that you can get away with that for a certain period of
I'm depending upon how hard your training but at some point it's going to start to impede your body's ability to repair itself and recover. So when you're trying to make gains and move forward and progress has an athlete you got to be careful to not do that too often. I think it's good for to shock your body and a train in a kind of semi starve State because it forces your body to respond to that. But ultimately you're going to pay a toll if you're doing that too much. Yeah. What's your training look like these days? So I'm
Through a little bit of a pivot in my training so I so I'm 53 right now. I started training for these Ultra endurance races when I was like 41 and I've been doing that, you know to varying degrees of intensity for you know, the last 12 years tons of trail running tons of cycling and swimming and I started experiencing some lower back pain about a year and a half ago and some sciatic nerve issues.
And also just general generally starting to feel like I was feeling a little bit more beat down than I would like and I think that's because I wasn't paying adequate attention to functional strength like I was so like when you're when you're like as an endurance athlete takes up so much time like, you know to go out and ride your bike for two hours is nothing like I need 5 or 6 hours. If I'm running, I need two and a half hours like it was it just eats up a huge amount and when you're busy and you're doing other things
It crowds out your ability to attend to these other Port important things that are increasingly important as you age stuff, like core strength and functional strength and just being speaking overall solid like in an unbreakable, you know kind of way robust rub exactly and I overlooked that and I felt like I was starting to pay the tax for that. So a couple weeks ago. I just put a pin in what I was doing and I thought we're in covid. There's no races like well, I don't need to go out and first of all,
Don't need to prove anything to anybody. I'm starting to feel a little bit more fragile than I would like. So I'm going to stop what I'm doing and I'm going to and I'm going to go back to basics and I'm going to begin at zero and rebuild my body in the gym. So I'm going to go from 95% endurance five percent strength to 95 percent strength 5% endurance for the next I turned 50 for an October. So my goal is by my birthday, too.
Be you know, just like strong. Wow for the first time in a very long time so completely, you know changed my perspective on how I'm training because I feel like to head into my mid and late 50s. If I don't have that, you know, I'm going to I'm putting myself at Peril and I also I want to cure my back without having to do anything severe like surgery. Yeah. I think the key to doing that is to strenght is to be strong. Yeah, you know all the pounding from the running over the many
A many years. I think it's taken its toll. I've I've had chronic like low back issues for the past five six years and I got it from an acute. Like I just was one day I squatted without warming up without doing some of that like functional, you know, those those functional warm up moves and and yes strengthening strengthening. My core has been super helpful, but recently during during quarantine. I got into boxing. I don't have you ever have you ever known a never? I'm never boxed, dude.
It's the best. Where do you go to do that ever? I have like a private trainer. He doesn't cost an arm and a leg out in West Hollywood, but you can find I mean there's a lot of boxing like private boxing trainers that need work these days, you know, and and it's been it's the most taxing on your core, you know, it's just it's just been incredible. And since I started boxing I've found that my low back pain has just like plummeted for the first time. Wow in five years and I'm a guy who consistently resistant strains and those yeah or and all the yeah.
Jim interesting. Yeah, it's a it's fascinating. But so I love this. So you're getting into resist. Do you have like a gym like a weight set up in your in your house or I have some pretty rudimentary stuff and I've got stretch bands and things like that, but there is a gym near my house where they moved everything outdoors and you can book one our windows so I can only get into it for an hour a day, but that forces me to be really diligent when I go in and to get it done and the thing that I've realized is, you know as somebody
Wants to train like four or five hours a day to just go in for one hour and hit it. Then I feel good throughout the day. My appetite is much lower than I'm used to like. I'm experiencing this like shift right now that I'm trying to get a grip on it's been cool and it's just doing new things. What is like an ultra like an ultramarathon look like because I'm you know, I feel like I've got a few friends that are that are probably as insane when it comes to like Ultra endurance.
As you but I don't know what that looks like. What is that? Like one, two, three. I mean, it means different things to different people. I mean an ultra marathon is by definition any running race longer than a marathon so it could be it could be 35 miles or it could be a hundred and thirty-five miles. The race that I specialize in is an ultra distance Triathlon called Ultraman and it's a three-day double Ironman race where over the three-day period you circumnavigate the big island of Hawaii. Wow.
The first day you start where the Ironman world championship start in that bay in Kona, but you do a 6.2 miles swim 10 kilometers swim and then you ride your bike 90 miles up to Volcano National Park and then you go to sleep you wake up the next day. It's like a stage race the next day you it's a hundred and seventy one mile bike race. And then the third day is a fifty two point Four Mile Run. So you've got that you come and then you end up where you started in, Hawaii.
So I've done that raised a couple times and done well in that race and then I did in 2000. What year was a 2010 I did this thing that my buddy Jason Lester came up with called epic fiber. We did five iron Mounds on five wine Islands. The idea was to do it in five days took a little bit longer. It was a logistical nightmare, but basically in Iron Man every day on each of the five Hawaiian Islands, we did it in like six and a half days.
Damn, that's kind of teach you a lot about life. Go. Yeah and yourself and yourself, you know, I mean endurance ultra-endurance has been one of my greatest teachers in the training and preparation for something like that. It's so rigorous and it's so lonely like you're with yourself for an extraordinarily long period of time in a state of discomfort that forces you to meet your maker. So to speak like I and at the
The time that I was doing it what I didn't I wasn't consciously aware of this at the time but I was really unhappy in my professional life. I was very confused about what I wanted to do. What I wanted to express who I wanted to be. I'd never thought about these questions like I grew up go to the school get into the best college like, you know, get go to law school. Like I was on this track, right and it never wants to I stop and go and step outside of that and think what do I want to do? You know, like what it what is it that gets
Excited though. It was not part of that equation at all. And I was you know kind of around the time that I had that Healthcare. I always having this existential crisis about what to do and I didn't know how to answer those questions for myself. But all of that time training really helped me wrestle with that identity problem that I was having and helped me kind of resolve it and you know it teaches you a lot like not just your ability to weather adversity and
And to be resilient and to show up when you don't want to show up but also the incredible power and potential that all of our bodies hold to do things that we didn't think we're possible like yeah, I'd been a swimmer but I couldn't imagine running a marathon let alone like running 52 miles on the third day. It's not like I've been doing this all along like I signed up for this Ultra man. I'd never done an Ironman. Like there was just something I was like, I gotta do this race. I got to figure it out.
Remember training for it in the buildup in the hardest part of the the kind of training period leading up to this race. We would do these simulation weekends where I would do 70% of the Ultraman race over a three-day period and then two weeks later I do 80% of it and then I do 90% of it and on this 90% block the third day. I had to do a 40 mile run and I just thought it's no fucking way. I can run 40 miles like I you know, I hadn't done a marathon and I
Did it that day and I just remember how empowered that made me feel. Like I just couldn't believe it. I could do that and it made me realize that we're all like I'm not unique in this like we're we all walk around with a very limited scope of our capabilities and I think you know if there's anything to be cleaned like universally about the experiences that I've had is that that capability is within all of us like we don't all have a desire to be an ultra endurance athlete but we all want to be more than who
We are today and to think more broadly about our capacity. I think is something that I encourage everybody to do constantly at such great advice. I feel that so many people exercise to merely to punish themselves for what they ate. Mmm, right as opposed to exercising to celebrate what your body can do. I mean, there's like that quote that I've said that I see all the time on social media don't exercise to punish yourself for what you ate exercise to celebrate what your body can do. It's such an empowering.
Message yeah that we are infinite. Ultimately. I love that and there's also a difference between exercising and training like excerpt I think I encourage everybody to exercise to move your body to engage with your physical selves that's different from when you're like, okay, here's this thing that I want to accomplish. Like, how am I going to get there and every day I show up for that and there's a purpose and an intentionality that goes into what I'm doing and why that's moving you forward towards that goal. Hmm.
What's the difference then but what would you say is the difference between exercise and training? So like exercise would be like I wake up in the morning and I'm like I got an hour and a half like oh, it's nice day. I'm going to go hit that trail. That'll be fun. Nothing wrong with that. I do that all the time, especially with covid. There's no races anyway, so I'm just going out and trying to enjoy myself training. It's like break out the calendar get expert input get a coach. What's the goal? It's a running this it's doing this. Okay. So for the next two weeks we're going
To do this is the program. We're going to evaluate at the end of every two or three days to see how you're recovering. We're going to adjust here's how we're going to build up towards that like it's very it's a focused application of exercise for a stated purpose interesting. Yeah. I like to I like to think of myself as somebody who trains but your yeah. I don't really have any clearly delineated goals. So I guess I'm just more of an exercise her, but well, yeah, I guess I guess
Depends on
how limited your definition of training like your training but I you know, I think of it in a different way I suppose but if you're just trying to be your best self, yeah, you're training for that. Yeah. You're an athlete. I'm not I mean, I love your by couldn't trust me. I'm not hiring the boxing coach. I would be you know end up on funny or die or something dude, it's fun. I've I never in a million years would have thought that I would enjoy it because precisely because I've never been an athlete and not only have I never
I've been an athlete. I've always been very conservative when it comes to physical risk, like putting myself In Harm's Way and when you're boxing you you always you're constantly running a risk of getting clocked in ahead by your data, which is terrifying. It had some say it's not good. Especially somebody cares about brain health. Like it's a it's a funny proposition right you of all people. Yeah, right. It's insane, but it's incredibly good for the core. I will so then it's awesome. So
What's like, what's what's coming up for you? What are you excited about? Are you your I don't know if I could share what you have a book coming out idea. Yeah. I have a book coming out in November November 10th is called voicing change and it's basically a it's sort of inspiration and Timeless wisdom excerpted from my podcast, which I've been doing for over eight years at this point or an OG, so I went through the catalog and identified 50 people that I wanted to highlight.
Light and we had all of those conversations transcribe. We took the best parts out of them. So so it's it's transcriptions from the podcast but it's also beautiful photography. It's like a coffee table book like a beautiful art book where you can open up to any page and you know experienced some wisdom from one of the many guests that I've had. So I'm excited about that. So I'm working on that, you know, trying to parent teenage girls through through a pandemic which is
all of my wits to try to figure out how to do that in a healthy way that's been challenging and continuing to do the podcast were moving into a new studio space that we're working on now, so that's exciting and just you know, basically doing what you do trying to find interesting people to sit down with and continue to host the show, you know, I've had to Pivot and do more remote stuff than I would like to but you know, there's still plenty of people around who are willing to sit down and person so enjoying that
That yeah, I mean men eight years. You've been doing the podcast. Did you start it when you were while you were still a lawyer still practicing law now, so so I wrote a book in 2011 that came out in 2012 is called Finding Ultra. It's my it's like a memoir and on the date that that book came out. I said, I'm not officially cutting ties with being a lawyer. So I let go of that and then so and having an end and haven't gone back to that which is going good. So I wrote that book.
Wife and I wrote a couple cookbooks over the years. So we have four books between us total. Now. She started a plant-based cheese company called SRI Mo which is often running right now and very exciting. So it's amazing that's going on. I was meant to do a live tour multi-city tour this year. I did a live event in La last year that went really well and was hoping to take the podcast on the road this year, but obviously that's not happening. Yeah and happened. So we've all had
Adjust it's been a wacky year. So interesting. Yeah the podcast thing I think is like it's such a it's such an amazing medium like to be able to reach out to people who you admire you feel that you can learn from and to create content with them. It's the greatest like grift in the world because you can call up these people that you respect and you're like, hey, man, will you come and talk to me? And for some sometimes they say yes and they come over and you get to hold them hostage and ask them everything you it's like amazing looks like the
Incredible thing. I just I love everything about it. I feel so privileged to you know, be part of this part of this space and I just I can't imagine doing anything else and it's enriched my life in so many ways like the these, you know, I don't know about you but like, you know the people when you sit across from somebody and you have like an honest heartfelt conversation for a couple hours like you are connected to that person like you will always have that right
Right and a lot of these people become my friends, they're like my mentors and people that I call for advice and it's just you know, it's become like just this my life is expanded exponentially as a result of doing this and I think anybody who hosts a show would you know, say the same I find myself recommending two friends on a regular basis that they launched their own podcasts. It's sort of like, you know, when you have all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. I find that a lot of people would be very
You know, if you're if you're curious person it really is like an amazing, you know an amazing outlet and it also can give birth to so much potential. You know, there's so much possibility when you're putting content out on a regular basis it attracts people to you get to figure out your tribe. You get to figure out your voice. It makes you a better listener. It makes you a better person. I think yeah, I would agree with that. I think a lot of people now want to start podcast though because I think it's an easy way to make money. What itself evil enough
That's not the case, you know, it's changed a lot but it's also like way more competitive now than it used to be. I wouldn't want to be starting a podcast. Now I benefited from do you know beginning mine when there was like nobody else doing it? What are the kinds of topics that you find yourself gravitating to these days on the podcast it changes, you know, I think when I started it's funny in writing this book. I went back and listened to my very first episode which I just did with my wife and we just turned on a microphone.
And did it as an experiment. It wasn't like I'm launching a podcast. It was like well, let's do this and then see if we want to do it again and I love doing it, but I went back and listened to it and I specifically said like I don't want this to be like a triathlon training podcast like I you know, I'm not a scientist. I'm not a doctor like I just want to follow my curiosity wherever that leads me and I want to leave it open like whoever and happens to inspire me at the time and I've really remained true to that. I
Think and it, you know, look I have all different kinds of doctors and nutritionists. I have Olympic athletes that I have entrepreneurs all kinds of actors, like all kinds of different people. I would say that that it was very much a health and fitness focused podcast for many years and maybe it's less I still do that, but but it might be less focused on that now than it has in the past.
A stand part of that and I'm interested in your take on this is is due in some part. I think to just the fatigue of the vitriol around like, you know, the nutritional Wars that take place on places like Twitter. Like I just I'm fucking done with it. Now. You don't want any part of it. I don't want to participate in it. I want to live my life. I want to share inspiration happy to talk about my experience, but that like kind of whole culture subculture is
If I don't want to I don't want to be part of that. Yeah, they like the the warring the the eternally warring nutrition factions. Yeah online its volume is really, you know, just continues to get more dialed up on that. Mmm. Yeah, how do you I mean, how do you stay out of it? I just don't chime in you just don't I mean I get tagged and all kinds of crazy bullshit. But like I just don't you know, the key is just never dip your toe in it. Yeah, here's the thing. I want to go on record as saying that I really have no.
Interest in like nutrition debates or you know, like, you know, my ideology is better than yours or anything like that. But I do like some sometimes people that don't typically follow me. We'll come over and they'll like they'll leave a comment usually like a mean comment, you know, it's usually it's not like it's not like a fact-based, you know, it's usually like some kind of ad hominem attack and it triggers me and I want to get better at not being so triggered by those by those comments as sometimes I
I do end up dipping my toe into the into the sort of one. How does that go? It never goes? Well, right. Yeah, so you just learned from experience. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's so true. There's a there's a lot of it especially on Twitter. I find on Twitter like the nutrition sphere on Twitter is very it's not a it's not a it's not a paradigm that setup for a resolution of those issues. Like I think that look,
Setting aside the nutrition Wars when you think even more macro like we are experiencing a breakdown in our ability to communicate in general as a culture and it's very dispiriting to me to watch that to see people so polarized and so entrenched in their respective news and information cycles, and I see that getting ratcheted up and exacerbated and I think that's only going to increase as we near this November election.
and
I think we're at a perilous moment. And the only thing that I can think of to help us see our way through this.
begins and ends with conscious long-form conversation like conversations that matter about important things with a priority on Nuance is really the cure to what ails us and to your point that you encourage all your friends to start podcasts like I agree with that because this is a format that lends itself to Greater understanding to the
amount of empathy to listening to being present to trying to understand rather than reply like all of these things that Twitter is very bad at podcasting is good at and I really think that it is a salve that is much needed right now as we kind of perilously, you know, walk this tightrope where we could very easily
I just you know fall to our Peril. So well said is there anything that you think and I'll I'm I will totally answer those for you know, the sort of nutrition spheres that I'm kind of more associated with but is there anything that you think that the plant based Community can do better can be better at in terms of how it engages with these sort of online trician debates.
How's that for? It's such a loaded question. Is it well, it's product will look here. I will say this.
Whether you're you know of the carnivore ilk or the Paleo ilk or the plant-based ilk every one of these communities has good actors and Bad actors hundred percent. We see the Bad actors because they're loud and up front on Twitter. So there are sort of the tip of the spear who are you know going to battle with each other and you know, and it's a spectator sport for the rest of us. The plant based Community is not immune from that. There are people who are just as in
Just in their information Silo and just as resistant to any kind of outside influence, whether it be scientific or anecdotal or what have you so I don't I'm not you know, I'm not saying that the plant based Community is any better at this than any others. I think we're all we all have we all share equal culpability and some people are louder than others, but I you know, I just take heart like I again, that's another
The reason why I don't participate in any of this, I just don't think it's I mean I would have I thought it was productive. I don't think it is. I don't think it I think it just foments anger and resentment and isn't it doesn't change anybody's mind like anything right? So I don't know that that that the advice that I would give the plant based Community would be any different than I would give any one of these other communities. Yeah. No, I mean I would I would agree with that and I definitely feel that you know, I don't actually personally
Associate with any of the sort of the group's I would say that maybe you could paint me as having a sort of slight bias for like low-carb, you know eating or what have you but like the keto Community, I mean the solution to every health problem isn't keto, you know, carnivore Community. I love plants too much, you know, so I yeah and and being plant-based isn't going to isn't going to make you live forever you
I mean like and I think it becomes more complicated because we're talking about we're talking about personal health talk about environmental health and then it brings in a discussion about sustainability and compassion. So all of these are cofactors that that that complicate the discussion because and and perhaps specific to the plant-based or vegan Community. There are people that enter that who adopt that lifestyle for different reasons like
You don't become keto because you're compassionate about animals, right? Like it's so there's there's different on-ramps for these things. And I think that that creates a situation in which worldviews Clash. Yeah, and sometimes like things are going to clash even like internally like I like I actually I mean, I love animals like that's not a secret I've written about my family, you know, the fact that I love animals in fact my mother
Other who Inspire who basically inspires my work the fact that she was a lifelong animal rights Advocate and I internally like there's a discomfort in the fact that I believe both that animals are you know should have a voice and should be a You Know spoken for and and they have the right to live and to not suffer and also My Views about nutrition, you know, and things like that. And so I that's like a conflict that I that I live with and
Think like truth is you know is often nuanced and sometimes the truth is not easy, you know for well for me. Well, yeah, I mean, you know real world problems require difficult situations and they mandate that we immerse ourselves in the gray a little bit in order to find the best Solutions and I think that what happens is a lot of these conversations and debates center around Fringe.
In cases, when what we should be doing is figuring out where we can all agree to solve the biggest problems that we have like regardless of your fiefdom your your nutritional fiefdom. I don't think anybody thinks that factory farming is good. So why don't we just start there right now and align ourselves to you know, transcend this terrible institutionalized way of creating food for people and find a better way thousand percent.
Yeah, I would cosine that in a heartbeat. Well, this is a really fun. I feel like we got to a truce actually do we feel like maybe we're a sweet we train we we change things. Maybe this is going to be like the this is going to be the butterfly effect. You know, it's going to Ripple out and people are going to listen to this this podcast and our conversation and feel that you know, feel what what I think is to be true is that we have a lot more in common than than what divides us, you know, and and we should embrace our commonalities.
I hope so man. I hope so. Yeah, so yeah, I enjoyed talking to you. Thank you Sam. Thank you for for being here for coming out where can listeners find you connect with you on social media. You can find me at Rich world.com. That's where everything's going on for the stuff that I'm doing the ritual podcast anywhere you listen to podcasts. I also film mine and they're on YouTube. You can find them there. My Memoir is called Finding Ultra find that anywhere you buy books voicing change is coming out November 10th.
And that's it. Don't Manuel the last at Rich role on the socials easy to find keep an easy re is roll your real last name it is that's amazing. That's the full think I like that it's stage name or something. I don't know. I mean, you're the only role I think Ronnie. Yeah, Rich World born rich roll. That's amazing. Great. Great. Last name. The last question that gets asked to everybody on the show. What does it mean to you to live a genius life? Wow, I wish I'd known this ahead of time. I would have prepared something. What is
I mean to live a genius life. I think I think what it means let me think about this because I want to get this right.
I guess I would say that to live a genius life would be to align to be very clear about what your values are and to align your actions with your values and to dedicate yourself to a lifetime of personal growth a Fidelity to authenticity to who you are and to Greater self actualization. We don't need you to be who other people want you to be. We need people to.
Be who they really are. We need everybody's unique authentic voice and the more that you can
Probe what that is for yourself and bring expression to that. I think again that is also the cure to what ails us as a society. You know my God beautiful. I hope your words Ripple out resonate that people share this episode of the show. We covered some epic topics. And yeah, man, I just want to celebrate you and say thank you for for being who you are and for coming out and now those beautiful Thanks Max. I appreciate.
It doesn't work you're doing as well. Thank you. Thank you brother to all you guys out there in podcast land. Thank you for tuning in share this episode of the show and text me to let me know what you thought of our conversation. My number is 310 2999 for a one and I will catch you on the next episode Peace.
