Rich Roll, ultra-endurance athlete and vegan advocate, defends Juicy Lady’s name against censorship while debunking corporate food conspiracies, noting his podcast The Tim Ferriss Experiment’s iTunes dominance—possibly inflated—and Joe Rogan’s surge from thousands to 14M monthly downloads. They critique factory farming’s waste (55% of California’s water for livestock), PETA’s polarizing tactics, and gut bacteria’s role in cravings, citing Blue Zones research and Roll’s 40 beehives for sustainable honey. Rogan highlights EMF interference disrupting bees and ants’ hive coordination, while Roll links it to broader environmental toxicity, from pesticide-linked cancers to Accutane’s severe side effects. Both praise mindfulness—Roll via Headspace’s Andy Puddicombe, Rogan through float tanks—as tools to silence self-doubt and unlock potential, before promoting Roll’s Plant Power Way cookbook as a family-friendly vegan guide. [Automatically generated summary]
Yeah commercials are fucking brutal whoever invented the idea of stopping a show every 15 minutes for three minutes or whatever the hell it is for commercials That's awful.
Well, it's crazy how you acclimate to that because as a kid, you know think about how many hours of your life You know, we're just basically watching commercials Well, you know what happened though?
It was like a standalone unit that hooked up to DirecTV.
I think it was, I want to say like 2003 or something like that, and I was like, this is amazing!
You can pause the TV! You know, you could pause it, you could go take a leak, you could record things, you could find, search things, and have them on a schedule, because I fucking, I had probably 10 VCRs in my life and never figured out how to record one of those bitches.
I don't know how many episodes it aired, but certainly not the entire 13 of the season.
And then it was just, you know, how it is in entertainment, like, you're just done, right?
They own the show, and even though they were all taped and locked and completed, nobody had seen them.
And somehow, he was able to get his show back, and he, I don't know, you know, through lawyering or what have you, And bought the rights back, got his show, and cut a deal with iTunes.
And it's premiered on iTunes this past week.
And I think it's like the top-ranked TV show on iTunes now.
You know, like if he's communicating an argument, he is not doing it to be deceptive.
These are his actual feelings and thoughts and agree with them or not agreeing with them.
This is his point of view.
As is hers.
I respect both of them very much.
I'm in the middle between both of them as well.
I'm not necessarily 100% her side.
I'm not necessarily 100% his side.
You're talking about death and war.
And anytime you can find any way to minimize or trivialize that, it's easily open for argument, open for criticism.
So that's why I see her point of view, but I also see his point of view.
There's a lot of fucking crazy people in the world.
A lot of awful, terrible people.
There's a lot of really dangerous ideologies that are being passed around and have been passed around for a long time, and the people that are embedded in these ideologies...
I'm married to them.
They're very, very committed to it.
And, you know, I see his point of view.
He knows what he's talking about, and so does she.
I mean, first of all, I'm always impressed with how you kind of navigate the treacherous waters of having guests on that you may disagree with, which may be me today.
I don't know, but...
You know, sort of, you'll have people with differing point of views, sometimes extreme, sometimes not, and the way that you kind of have to gracefully, like as a podcast host myself, that's always a challenge, you know, like how do you have a respectful, engaging conversation, but also make sure that you're asking the right questions so that you're not just people pleasing the whole time.
And in the case of Sam, I mean, he's traveled extensively.
He has firsthand experience with all these kinds of people.
So he has a basis for where he's coming from.
I was actually a funny story about him.
I've never met him.
I don't know him, but we were classmates.
We were in the same freshman class in college at Stanford.
Like I said, I don't know him, but we have mutual friends in common.
A couple guys that I'm close with that he's still close with.
And I was talking to one of them recently and he just said, we were talking about Sam because he's blown up and he's everywhere and, you know, he's so in Zeitgeist right now.
And he was telling me that in some freshman, I don't know if it was a freshman English class or something like that, that he, that Sam just distinguished himself immediately, like by challenging the professor and just everybody knew that he was on another level intellectually, you know, at a young age.
I forget what class it was in, but I can clearly remember going, oh, all right.
Well, now I have to just think only of the information, the actual numbers and the data that's being presented in this class, and ignore this person's opinion because they're a fucking idiot.
I believe it was either a philosophy class or a psychology class.
I don't even remember the exact circumstance, but...
Remember thinking like yeah, this is a real issue and then as I got older and I started paying attention to some of the things that get taught in school and some of the like very rigid Ideologies that some people especially like really super lefties like to impose on students and some of the ideas They try to impose on students are very it's very subjective ideas,
you know very very much personal opinions They get stuffed into kids heads and then you know it becomes an issue of whether or not Whether or not you want that in your head.
Are you going to get an A in this class if you disagree with this guy, but still present good arguments?
Or are you going to have to go along with the way this person is trying to portray the world in order to be graded accordingly?
I don't think critical thought is really taught to the extent that it should be in young people.
You know, we're on this, you know, our education system is about, you know, getting through as much information as possible and standardized testing and, you know, getting good grades and all that kind of thing.
And, you know, the idea that you should be questioning the ideas that are presented to you is really not something that is, you know, part of that world to the extent that I think it should be.
I agree and I also think that there's very little being taught especially at a high school level of how to think and Not just like this is mathematics.
This is the way you calculate things.
This is these are the facts of history that we're aware of instead of How do you deal with problems?
How do you address interpersonal relationships?
How do you look at yourself objectively?
Do you ever step back and try to look at yourself the way maybe someone else would and judge yourself in your own actions instead of protecting yourself with your ego?
And all those things that people do like almost naturally to protect themselves really wind up being traps.
They really wind up fucking you up, and you have to kind of clean up that mess as you get older.
For me, the most important thing, you know, as a parent, it's like, I want my kids to be excited about life and to be excited about something, to figure out a way to be passionate about something.
Because if they have that motor...
That drive, that is like half the game right there.
And then also to have that ability to critically, you know, to want to learn.
The desire to learn is much more important than whatever you're learning.
They try, yeah, like, and they're happy that I'm happy.
But it's very, you know, they're coming from a generation where, you know, look, I grew up in a really education-focused household, and I tried my best to live up to that, and to some extent I succeeded at that, but the whole idea was premised on, you know, this myth of the American dream, You know, study hard, get into the best school, get into the best graduate school, get the best job you can, you know, work hard and like do as you're told and ascend the ladder.
And the implicit promise, you know, at the end of that rainbow, of course, is not only, you know, sort of security and prosperity, but happiness.
Yeah, and for me I chase that without ever really without those critical thinking skills Because I never really intuited that I was just so focused on the prize.
And I'm very disciplined and determined.
But I wasn't able to step outside the box and look at it analytically in comparison to, you know, what would be best for me.
The amount of information that they had available to them back then in comparison to what we have today is unbelievably different now.
There's so much more information now.
And I think there's also a very...
There's a real lack of understanding of the landscape of the race you're in.
Like everybody wants to think of it as a race, the rat race.
But if you could get an aerial view of the actual race from birth to death, from the time you're born to the time you leave this planet and look at it as like you're looking at a Formula One racetrack.
And you can actually see the chorus.
You'd be like, oh, fucking Jesus Christ, what am I doing here?
I'm wasting all my time doing shit I don't want to do.
This race is not very long.
This race is going to end.
Like, this is...
Ah, fuck.
I thought there was, like, a happiness truck somewhere along the line that I was going to refuel with.
Are you going to change my tires when I get my PhD?
The bottom line is, whatever you leave, it's not going to matter.
Because it's going to matter to some people that you know, and they're going to leave too.
Everyone's going to leave.
But are you enjoying this?
Are you enjoying the moment?
Everyone's working towards this ultimate...
Like, the retirement years.
The golden years.
You're fucking almost dead when those years come.
You see those people holding hands and walking along.
They barely can walk.
Their knees hurt.
They're all fucked up.
That's not what you work for.
You don't work towards this ultimate point where you don't do anything anymore.
That's ridiculous.
What you should work towards is doing what you enjoy doing right now, enjoying your life Right now.
Enjoying your friends right now.
Enjoying whatever hobbies you like to pursue.
Whatever love affairs and friendships.
All that stuff is what life is.
Life is the moment.
Being in the moment.
And we somehow have turned it into this...
This weird, like, journey to a very specific point.
Specific points of high school graduation, college graduation, good job, marriage, children.
We have all these, like, milestones that are supposed to impart happiness in this race.
And they're not real.
They're social constructs.
And we've created these social constructs and we've fed into them and passed them down from generation to generation without anybody stepping back and going, Well, who set this up?
Who set up graduate school?
Who set up common core?
Who are these people?
Why is it this way?
We're just biological organisms trying to have as much happiness and good feeling while we're here as we can.
I think that if you talk to somebody who's in their 20s, the idea that you would work a corporate job and stay in that job for your career and collect your pension and then ride out your 60s and 70s playing golf is a foreign concept to a young person.
Whereas that was the kind of paradigm, right, for our parents' generation.
And when you look at the advent of the internet and what that provides and allows, you see this explosion in kind of lifestyle careers where you're not wed to a geographic location.
We live in a kind of subcontractor economy where people, you know, are more project-based than, you know, working for the big corporation or the plant.
And certainly all that stuff exists on some level.
But not to the extent that it used to.
And I think that's super interesting.
And I think that allows people to engage in critical thinking in a new and different way.
And I think you see young people who are asking themselves those very questions like, what do I want to do?
What makes me happy?
With that can come entitlement.
And that's why I think, you know, the millennials get a bad rap for that.
But at the same time, I think that they are...
Much more engaged in trying to grapple with who they are and what it is that they're passionate about expressing and then finding a way to tap into the economy somehow so that they can contribute and make a living doing that.
And I think that that's really cool to watch unfold.
They're gonna be in some, probably not on a podcast, but in some form of media, you know, 20 years from now, talking about how, you know, you and I are out to lunch.
You know, I had a long sit down with Ray Kurzweil.
And I interviewed him for the sci-fi show that I did, and we went back and forth over the possibilities of this new era that we're entering into.
We went to this Global 2045 Initiative.
They were having a New York City where all the futurists got together and they were all comparing notes and talking about the different possibilities for not just artificial intelligence but symbiotic relationships with computers downloading consciousness into databases and all this kind of crazy shit and you walk away thinking like I don't I don't know if anybody knows where this is going and It's not going to stop.
There's going to be continual innovation until we reach some event horizon of science, some point of no return, you know, some what they call ultimate novelty point.
That's what Terence McKenna used to call it.
You know, this ultimate novelty point.
And it's probably going to happen within our lifetime.
It's probably going to happen within the next 20 or 30 years.
But it's interesting that it's so difficult that, like, the best minds are having such a hard time figuring that out.
And it's almost like...
The universe has rigged it that way because human beings are such idiots that if they made it easy, our oceans would be dry deserts right now.
Because we can't help ourselves.
We cannot help ourselves.
And that is the same, you know, compulsion that is propelling technology forward and will ultimately catapult us into this AI universe that's going to destroy us.
Well, it's kind of emblematic of how we deal with problems, because instead of trying to solve the problem that got us to this place, we're just looking for another source of water, right?
It's sort of like taking...
It's like taking Viagra to deal with the fact that you can't get a boner instead of looking at why it is you can't get a boner.
So there is certainly one aspect of this that you can kind of point towards human beings, but the reality of the Earth, the absolute reality of the Earth is climates change, oceans, the levels change, they always have, and even if people didn't exist...
All I'm saying is, we have this idea that once we're in a spot, we should be able to stay in this spot.
Like, this is a spot.
But there are spots in North America, first of all, like...
Half of North America was covered in a mile of ice just 10,000 years ago.
That's a fact.
And we have to deal with the fact that if we want to set up a house and we want to have five acres right here, well, guess what?
In 20 years, for whatever reason, that might not be a good spot anymore.
And we have this idea that once we own property, that that spot should be livable and ideal forever.
Even if people didn't have anything to do with the climate, the climate will shift.
Things change.
They always will change.
We just have this really rigid idea of, like, where we should be able to put cities.
I mean, when they keep finding these cities from, like, several thousand years ago, like, did you ever see those concentric circles that they found in the water that they believe represents, like, something very similar to what Atlantis was described as outside of Spain?
Outside of Spain?
They've found many, many...
Underground cities where at some point in time the sea level changed and it was long before carbon emissions long before People were burning fossil fuels and using machines.
It's just things shift.
It's not to exonerate Large corporations coal our dependence on fossil fuel.
That's it's a totally separate argument I absolutely think all you have to do is look at LA from a fucking airplane or worse I got photos of Mexico City?
Whether it's Mexico City or L.A., you get this really kind of potent sense.
You see the lights and the grid, and you realize, and the car's driving on the freeway, and you realize it's just an organism.
These freeways carrying cars are the arteries, and the cars are the blood cells.
And we're feeding these cities like they're organs in this larger unit that is interdependent.
And it's interesting.
And I think it...
You know, what you said about this idea of human beings and this idea that we think everything is static.
I mean, I think that applies across the board.
Like, we think these cities will always be there, but we also think that our lives are somewhat static or that our relationships are static or our jobs are static or our bank accounts.
All of these things, you know, we kind of agree to in this social contract, but everything is fluid, man.
The only way a city got to be a city in the first place is things had to change radically.
If you looked at where that city is, you looked at Los Angeles, where it is, 400 years ago, there was absolutely nothing.
You know, there's probably some Native Americans and some Mexicans and some various people, back when it was Mexico, and they were wandering around and doing their thing, but there was no highways and sky rises and All that stuff was really, really recent.
And in terms of the actual age of the earth, my God, it's like blink your eye and then all of a sudden cities are out.
Literally a blink of an eye and then everything's polluted.
Everything's fucked and Malibu beachfront property is ridiculously overpriced.
But in the history of this planet, has there ever been more change planetarily, with the exception of natural disasters, than there has been in the last 200 years?
Well, the opening of my Showtime special from like 2005, I argued that if you looked at the earth as a living organism and you're flying over and you saw LA, you'd go, well, that's cancer.
That's a growth.
It's growing.
It's out of control.
It stinks.
It looks like it's a mess and it's getting bigger.
If they could agree with each other, they would probably do it.
They don't give a fuck about you.
Bears just shit wherever they walk.
They don't clean up.
They don't have a certain spot where they put all their shit.
They just don't have enough of an impact to really change the environment around them.
But if they could, they would.
I was listening to a Radiolab podcast about the Galapagos Islands, and it's very fascinating because they had to eradicate goats Because these sailors had brought goats over, you know, way back in the day.
And they had brought goats and they'd put them on the island so that they could come back and eat them, like they would have a food source.
But these goats just destroy everything in their path.
They just killed everything and they fucked it all up for the tortoises.
These poor tortoises were fucked.
They didn't have any plant matter anymore.
Because all these goats were coming along.
So then they hired these people to kill the goats.
So they flew over in helicopters and they gunned down the goats.
And then goats started getting smart.
So what they'd do was they would find goats.
They would capture them.
They would put radio collars on them.
They would scare them.
They would run over to where the other goats were.
And then they would find where the goats were.
They would kill all of them except the ones with the radio collars.
And so they became what they called Judas goats.
It's really fascinating how they set this up.
And then it got to a point where it was nothing but Judas goats.
That's all that was left.
And so then, you know, they tried to reintroduce tortoises.
It's really fascinating.
But the argument could be made that any animal acting purely in its own interest will ultimately fuck up everything around it.
And that's one of the reasons why there's got to be some kind of a balance.
There's got to be some kind of a balance between humans and the plants that we coexist with and the animals that we coexist with.
And the same can be said with animals.
Like, you know, you can't have too many predators in an area.
You can't have too many You know, too many deer in an area.
You run into them with cars.
They start starving to death.
You get ticks and people start spreading.
They start spreading Lyme disease.
There's like humans and animals and they all act in their own interest.
It's just we're the only ones that have fingers.
We can manipulate shit and change the environment in ways that no other animal can even come close to.
There is an infinitely complex play that's going on, and we insert ourselves into that, and we have this reductionist idea.
Oh, if we insert this one thing, then that will fix the problem.
And what we don't do is really understand that The extent to which the interdependency of everything else comes into play.
And I think that's true whether you're introducing an animal to an ecology to solve a problem and it creates a bigger problem or whether you're, you know, taking a drug to resolve one condition that has side effects or whether you're overly focused on one micronutrient or macronutrient as the solution to your health problem.
You know, everything is more complicated than that.
And, you know, I don't think that we...
Kind of embrace a more holistic approach to, you know, whether it's our problems or our health or what have you.
That's another thing that's like not part of our wiring and it's not part of the, you know, the scientific method is by definition reductionist because you have to isolate variables and look at one thing at a time.
And I think that there's also this weird hope that people have that if we fuck something up, then our backs get against the wall, then someone really smart will invent a solution and it'll all be better.
That someone right now is analyzing the Who knows how many fucking trillions of pounds of plastic we've dumped in the ocean?
And they're trying to figure out some way to suck all that stuff out and turn it into some sort of a fuel or some resource that we can capitalize on.
That kind of thinking is real common.
We always think that eventually someone smarter will figure out a way out of this mess.
No, but like, you know, you turn on like, when we were kids, it was like, it was all song and dance, you know, on the Spanish television shows, Spanish networks.
Well, there's a part of us that really, we really love base things.
You know, we love emotions.
Like, I was just thinking of this the other day.
The talk show host, like a Morton Downey Jr. or a Jenny Jones or a Geraldo Rivera, any of those shows, or like...
Montel Williams, where they would have guests, and then they would go to the audience, and the audience would say something that would get everybody to go, Oh!
Like, that...
That thing that they created, those are like the original YouTube commenters.
Those are like the original social media commenters.
The people that are in the audience, they don't have anything to do with what's on them, but they get to interject and say something, and then that becomes a part of the entertainment.
But it's really just, you know, it's this weird social interaction between human beings and us, like, sitting as sidelines.
You can't be Captain Save-A-Ho and go out there and fix the whole world and go to the Jerry Springle crowd and start hanging out kale leaves and, you know, pamphlets for yoga classes.
There's no air of moral superiority about it whatsoever.
It's a lifestyle that I choose, but I don't think that that gives me, you know, permission to levy judgment on any other human being and their choices.
So, you know, the way that I try to communicate the message is just to, you know, live my life and, you know, I sort of stand where I'm standing, and if people are interested, they'll come to me and I can communicate to them.
But it's not a proselytizing point of view that I adopt.
I think some people adopt certain behaviors just because it gives them license to be an asshole.
I really do.
I mean there are certain vegans that think that because they are vegans they can go out and attack and be really shitty to other people and somehow or another they're acting in a positive way and they're gonna enact some positive change by being really shitty to people.
It's like this idea of a social justice warrior falls into the same category by being really mean to people that you think Think the wrong way or behave the wrong way, that somehow or another you're going to shame them into changing by being really aggressive and offensive to them?
I mean, look, people change when they're ready to change.
It's really an internal willingness that drives change.
And somebody's either ready to make a change or they're not, and different people receive messages in different ways.
So if you look at...
Look, if you look at the vegan movement, because that's what we're talking about, you know, there are super hardcore animal rights activists, and they have a certain way of communicating, and there's a certain population of people that are receptive to that kind of communication.
There are other people that are interested in environmental issues.
They want to be better environmentalists.
And so there are people that speak to the vegan movement from that perspective.
And there's a certain audience that's receptive to that.
And the way that I communicate it or carry the message is in a different way.
And there's different people that are attracted to that.
So I think whatever your point of view is or whatever movement you're part of, and we can get into the whole idea of how we're wired to be on teams and how counterproductive that is.
You know, there's enough people out there that are, you know, there's a diversity of voices and a diversity of audiences that every kind of voice carries a frequency that other people respond to, I guess.
The only way anybody ever gets converted is if you can say something very thoughtful that penetrates past this wall of ideology they have in their head.
And they go, hmm, and then they have to consider it.
But they're not going to consider it if you're insulting.
They're just not.
It's going to be a contest.
It's going to be a you versus them.
You say something rude to them.
They're going to try to say something ruder to you.
I think, you know, my theory on it, the people that are kind of, you would characterize as, you know, vociferous and angry and judgmental, my theory is that, There's a certain percentage of the population that come out of the womb...
And from a very early age, they just find the idea of, you know, an animal dying for food to be the most intolerable concept they can imagine.
Right?
And they're just...
That's how they came into the world.
Right?
And so...
And so they kind of, you know, grow older and they navigate the world and they start, you know, becoming sort of more outspoken about this idea.
And when people are not receptive to it, or they're not seeing the world the way that they're seeing it, they become progressively more frustrated.
And that frustration turns to resentment.
That resentment can morph into anger.
And then, you know, you have what you see, which is people who are, they're just incensed that other people are not seeing the world the way that they're seeing it.
And I think that applies, you know, to any contingent of the population that holds a very strong point of view.
I think to the casual observer or somebody who's listening to this podcast, they may think that there's this giant gap between the way that you live and the way that I live.
And I think there's actually a bigger gap between the way that I live and the normal human being than yourself because of...
Look, you're a hunter.
I don't hunt.
It's not something that I'm interested in doing.
But you have a connection to where your food is coming from that is very close and primal.
And in the grand scheme of things, more sustainable than the way that the average typical American is.
See if you could pull that video up, Jamie, because it's insane to look at.
When you stop and think about the amount of Smithfield Foods factory farms, that's it right there.
This guy flies this drone, which is pretty fucking cool that they have these drones now that you could do this and get this A high-resolution video.
That's interesting.
Well, if you're dealing with a place like Los Angeles, 20 million people, 20 million people and 95% of them eat meat.
You're dealing with an insane amount of flesh that needs to be consumed on a daily basis.
And it has to be grown somewhere and shipped somewhere.
And conveniently, we want to...
Sort of ignore it.
That is a lake of shit and piss.
And it's all coming from these factories right there in front of you.
Those are housing units for pigs.
They're stuffed into these things, crammed next to each other, and they stand on these metal grates.
So the metal grates are porous, they piss and shit, it goes through the holes, and it all goes through these tubes that lead down into that giant lake.
Apparently the smell, if you're anywhere near there, is so bad, you literally feel like you could probably light the air on fire.
It's interesting that he's been able to do this with a drone.
And whether you eat bacon for breakfast every morning or you eat more like me, I think we can all agree that...
That transparency is important.
And these companies are not transparent about how they produce their food.
And there's a lot of problems with it.
And the waste that it creates and the amount of resources and, you know, what goes into this process is something that I think we could all benefit from taking a harder look at.
You know, what would be interesting is if you go to the Cowspiracy website, they have all these facts about kind of, you know, every sort of environmental impact of what animal agriculture does, from water use to CO2 emissions to land use to species extinction to rainforest destruction.
And when you look at the statistics, it's crazy.
It's absolutely crazy.
It's like the elephant in the room.
You know, when we talk about global climate change or greenhouse gas emissions, we talk about fossil fuel use.
We talk about fracking.
And rightly so.
These are important things to talk about.
But really, the thing that we're not talking enough about is the impact of our food system on all of these systems.
And when you look at, for example, water use, we're talking about water, right?
You know, there's PSAs in California.
We're not supposed to take long showers.
We can't water our lawns, all these sorts of things.
And the truth is, is that consumer water use in California is like 5%.
And animal agriculture accounts for like 55% of all water use.
I think it takes something like 660 gallons of water to produce a hamburger.
And like a thousand gallons of milk, or a thousand gallons of water to produce one gallon of milk, something like that.
Like the statistics are completely insane.
And that, because a lot of it is the water that's used to grow the grain that you're feeding to these animals.
So when you look at it systemically, you know, it's just...
If you were an alien who beamed down to planet Earth and said, take me to your leader and show me how you make your food, he would just be like, you guys are crazy.
It is a huge problem that is something that is outside of your normal thinking.
Your normal everyday thinking, you're getting on the highway, goddammit, there's traffic today.
You're getting to work, oh great, we've got this new project we have to deal with.
And your real existence, like all that stuff is bullshit if you don't have any food.
All that traffic, all the work stuff, like hey, you're gonna die.
You don't have any food.
Like, this is, like, here's a bunch of things that you need to have in place before you think about any other hobbies or projects or whatever you're trying to accomplish with your career.
You gotta have a place where you can breathe the air, okay?
I mean, I think that the amount of land that you need to grow food for vegans is like, you know, I don't know, a fraction, a tiny fraction of the amount of land that is required to raise animals for food.
And you find out how many different things at the supermarket, when they went through the supermarket, they looked at all the different things that have corn syrup in it, corn starch, corn this, corn that.
I mean, I think that we're entrenched in this system that is dependent upon these subsidies, right?
And so much of our economy, you know, functions in this way.
And I think if we really want to change our food system, we have to eradicate these subsidies.
You know, look, there's a reason why, I think we talked about this last time, I can't remember.
There's a reason why, like, you know, a Taco Bell taco is like whatever it is, like 89 cents or whatever, and it's like, it's the same price it was when we were 12. You know, it's like, how does that work?
You know?
A McDonald's cheeseburger is like two bucks or whatever it is, but if you factor in, like if you look at it from a meta perspective, and you take into account all the subsidies, You know, a Big Mac would actually cost something like $7.50 or, you know, it'd be like a multiple on its price.
There's a book called Metanomics by this guy called David Simon, where he, I'm sorry, Metanomics, and he really breaks down how these subsidies work and how that kind of fuels this food system that really is creating, you know, it's sort of It's making the lower socioeconomic class less and less healthy, because it's creating this wider gap between healthy living and unhealthy living.
Because in food deserts, in urban food deserts, where there is no farmer's market, but there's McDonald's and Jack in the Box on every corner, And, you know, you're on welfare and you got three kids.
And as a result of that, we're in this place right now where suddenly health and wellness have become elitist ideals, synonymous with spending a ton of money at Whole Foods.
If you're raising your own chickens, and they're like your pets, and they're laying eggs that are not going to be turned into chickens, then I think ethically, I don't really see a problem with that.
I think that if you have chickens at your home, and they're your pets, and your kids play with them, and they're laying eggs that are not going to turn into chickens, and you decide that you want to eat those eggs from a morality point of view, I don't really see how I could have a big problem with that.
Now, if you decide that you want to cut the head off that chicken and fry it up, Then it becomes an issue.
Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm not one of those people who's like, oh, it repulses me and I want to throw up.
You know, like, I got into it for health reasons, right?
And, you know, listen, I've eaten more meat in my lifetime than any human being ever should.
It's like, I'm not, you know, I like it.
I drive by McDonald's or Jack in the Box and I smell that, and that might disgust some people, but it triggers this addictive response in me where it's like, I will crave that.
Because so much time has passed between me and eating those foods, I don't have that sort of obsessive-compulsive thing that kicks in.
I'm a recovering alcoholic.
You know, I can get addicted to things pretty fucking easy, right?
So, that's part of my thing.
Like, for me to draw a line, you know, kind of a line in the sand and say, like, no more is kind of the way that I have to do it.
Diets that say, oh, you can have a cheat day, right?
So it's like if you told me that I could have In-N-Out Burger like once a week, like I would spend six days thinking about the day that I could have In-N-Out Burger.
You know what I mean?
Like in order to free myself from that prison, I need time away.
So it's really powerful with me, whether it's a cheeseburger or a drink or a drug.
And that's just me.
That's just my experience.
But when I smell that, yeah, it triggers that thing.
I'm like, oh, that smells good.
But it passes quickly.
But if I was eating those things, I might find myself driving into the drive-thru.
That's an issue with people that have eating disorders, where it's almost like the desire to have that forbidden food overwhelms their desire to be healthy.
It just becomes this thing, like, I've got to itch it.
Well, I mean, I'm not a nutritional scientist or a doctor, but I would say that...
A diet that's super focused on basically excluding anything with any carbohydrates in it and eating foods that are devoid of any fiber, which I think is really important.
We talk about protein a lot, but I think most people, I think that conversation should really be about fiber.
Like, nobody's protein deficient.
I think 3% of the population is protein deficient.
You know, there are people that are all about like being in ketosis.
And my understanding of that is that it's kind of a crisis state for the human body.
It's not a natural state of being.
It's sort of like what your body has to do when it's being deprived of other nutrients to be in this state.
Like you put these acid ketones in your body, which then are converted to some form of glucose because you're so glucose deprived, right?
Our brains run on glucose.
Our bodies need glucose.
You know, if you look at...
Look at, you know, the longest living pockets, pockets of civilization across the world where people live the longest and are the healthiest and are the happiest.
Like the Blue Zones.
Have you heard of the Blue Zones?
Right?
So, Dan Buettner, who's the guy who traveled all these places, is a friend of mine.
And then, you know, he became interested in indigenous populations.
He started working with National Geographic.
He became a writer.
And in his travels, he became obsessed with, you know, finding places where people are the happiest, live the longest, free of disease, etc.
And that ultimately became what are today known as the blue zones, like these little sort of hidden pockets of the planet that are kind of untouched from the gestalt of our modern society.
And, you know, they're little tiny places kind of off the beaten path.
You know, Ikaria, which is like an island off the coast of Turkey, Sardinia, Okinawa, and ironically, Loma Linda here, like not too far from here.
It's a cultural thing because it's a community of Seventh-day Adventists, and it's a very strong faith-based community that also basically subsists on a plant-based diet.
And so from studying these cultures, he extracted certain kind of guiding principles about how they live their life.
And one of them, to get back to the question about kind of Atkins and diet, is, you know, they all eat a very starchy, you know, fiber-rich, essentially plant-based diet.
It doesn't mean they're all vegans, like they eat a little bit of meat, but essentially their diet is founded upon Starchy vegetables, for the most part.
And community and accountability and kind of keeping your elders around and all these sorts of things have really, you know, distinguishes them as, you know, from the way that we live our lives now, right?
Like, you know, we're isolated, we're fast-paced.
All these sorts of, you know, kind of principles upon which we navigate our day are just very divorced from the way that these people are living.
Do you know, I had Aubrey de Grey on the other day, who's a life extension scientist at the forefront of the various technologies that are being developed to extend life.
He said the difference between the average and these cultures where they live far longer is four years.
That's this big goal that everybody's trying to attain.
Live like these people that live the longest, that's four years.
Well, I think, you know, in these blue zones, they have the highest percentage per capita of centenarians, like people living more than 100. But I think it's less about that age than it is about the quality of your years, right?
So, right now in America, you know, we can split hairs over, you know, should you take fish oil or not, or is it okay for you to eat the eggs from your chicken in your backyard?
But the truth is, this is not the problem that we need to be talking about.
We need to be talking about the fact that...
One out of every three Americans is going to die of a heart attack, and 70% of Americans are obese or overweight, and they're predicting that by 2030, 50% of Americans are going to be diabetic or pre-diabetic.
But if you look back through, you know, the sort of history of mankind, there are plenty of populations that existed for, you know, hundreds and thousands of years without any significant incidence of heart disease.
You know, especially in, you know, rural areas of China, you know, for long years until we started exporting our diet and lifestyle overseas.
And now, you know, it's sort of like...
The latest installment of the Avengers, you know, we're sending these fast food restaurants to these places and they're having, and as the sort of ascension of the middle class in China, you know, continues and they can afford to, you know, sort of purchase more meat products, they're having disease problems that they haven't seen, you know, it's unprecedented in the history of their culture.
So it seems also there's a real issue with human beings when it comes to patterns of behavior and habit that they're very very difficult to break and Like as you were saying before like if you could have a day where you could cheat that day That would become the habit and then it would just you would be thinking about that one day like it's very hard for people who are extremely obese Who just their their main form of pleasure is my pleasure, of course Of course.
It's hardwired.
They get that food, they stuff it in their face, and then that's what they're, oh man, that fucking corn dog is so good.
And that's where they're getting their pleasure from.
There's a great book called Salt, Sugar, Fat by this guy called Michael Morris.
And he kind of looks at these big food companies and draws an analogy to the tobacco companies in the 70s in the way that these companies are funneling money and research and marketing dollars into devising food products that are specifically designed to activate that pleasure center in your brain, right?
So that they know they're like they're trying to make that food impossible for you to just have one.
And once you kind of, you know, tap into that, that, you know, ability to trigger that response in somebody, and you create a habit out of that, an addictive response, then you have a customer for life.
Right?
You know, it's like, why is it so hard to eat one fucking chip?
You know, there's a reason behind that.
There's something about the proportion of salt And grease, you know, that will just trigger something in somebody.
It's like, why would you remove all the fiber from that plant?
Exactly.
I think juicing has its place, though, but there's a huge difference between that gallon of Tropicana at the grocery store and cold-pressing some kale and spinach with some turmeric in it.
It's like if you want a really concentrated dose of micronutrients and the kinds of highly compacted vitamins and minerals that you can get in some of these foods, these plants, then it has its place.
But to run 20 oranges through a juicer and drink that, you're getting a huge amount of sugar in that.
And you're depriving yourself of the digestive process and the fiber that comes with just eating the whole food.
Nature figured it out, man.
Why are you trying to...
The more you focus on eating these kinds of foods close to their natural state, your palate changes and you start to desire them.
I know these guys...
That are fruitarian.
All they eat is fruit.
Their whole lifestyle, right?
It's called the 80-10-10 diet.
80% carbs, 10% protein, 10% fat.
But essentially what it means is they eat fruit all day long.
From the Atkins ketosis low-carb camp will tell you that that's an extremely unhealthy thing to do.
Now, I'm not a fruitarian.
I don't have any direct experience with that.
I don't know what the long-term ramifications of living that lifestyle are, but I do know people that live this way, and they're super healthy people, and some of them are amazing athletes, like my friend Michael Arnstein.
He's fruitarian.
He has been forever.
And he was like the fifth fastest guy at the New York City Marathon not too many years ago.
Like an elite athlete, you know, who's eating this way.
He hasn't been a vegan his entire life, so it's not like he was reared that way.
But I think he's been that way long enough, and he will tell you that His strength training improved and his agility and his ability to recover was significantly enhanced when he changed his diet to this.
I mean, I think, you know, to your point, your question was, you know, do you think that somebody who's of that ilk or, you know, like a power lifter or strength athlete, if their protein requirements are higher?
I don't know.
I know that Patrick supplements with plant-based protein powders from time to time.
I don't know that...
He probably is taking in somewhere between 80 to 100 grams a day.
So it's not...
Yeah, like pea, brown rice, hemp protein.
I like hemp protein.
I think it's great.
Complete amino acid profile.
I mean, essentially...
Look, it's complicated, right?
We can't be reductionist about it.
But in the most general sense, when we're talking about protein, we're talking about amino acids, right?
We're talking about the building blocks of protein, and we're specifically talking about the nine amino acids, you know, the essential amino acids that we can't synthesize on our own, that we have to get from the foods that we eat, right?
So it's a question of making sure that we are ingesting those nine essential amino acids.
So does it matter where they come from?
In what form they are delivered to your body?
Does it matter if it's in hemp or if it's in steak?
I mean, there are, there's a difference between the way I feel when I eat, like, wild game versus the way I feel when I eat steak that's, like, raised, factory-raised steak or whatever.
There's a difference in the way your body reacts to it.
There's a feeling that you eat, especially like mousse.
Mousse is very unusual for whatever reason.
When you eat mousse, you almost feel like it's a stimulant.
It's very strange.
Because you eat it rare, it's very lean, and there's this weird like, ooh, like you get a charge after it.
Very similar to what I get when I eat kale shakes.
When I eat kale shakes, one of the things that I tell people, if you want to change your diet, here's one of the best ways.
Eat something healthy, get a positive reaction from that, and you want to repeat it.
And one of the best positive reactions I've ever gotten is I drink these kale shakes in the morning.
I call them Hulk loads.
I talk about it all the time.
It's kale, cucumber, celery, a large chunk of ginger, four cloves of garlic, coconut oil, and an apple.
Blend that sucker up together and there is a nutrient blast that you get in there that it's a tangible, stimulant sort of a feeling.
It's just, you know, I mean, whether it has, you know, you can have variations on a theme, like I do something similar, it's a little bit different, and it's never the same, you know, I change it from day to day or whatever.
But once you make that connection, and you're like, oh, wow, you know, then that starts to change the microbial ecology in your gut.
And I think we talked about this last time too, like all these studies that are coming out about how important your microbiome is to all kinds of things that impact your health and how there's some evidence to suggest...
That the quality of your gut biome can impact your cravings, right?
That's such a bizarre thing that you could have these organisms living inside your intestinal tract that are actually changing the way you crave things.
So they're sending some sort of stimulus that gets to your brain and it's altering the way you want to.
Well, it's an assault to your idea that you're a sentient human being who is in control of your thoughts.
And then that leads to, you know, the question of higher consciousness versus, you know, the sort of looping, you know, kind of thing that your brain can do, right?
Like, what is that?
You know, when you observe your own thoughts, what is it that you're, who's the observer?
Like, if you're having a dream, and you're having a conversation with somebody in a dream, and you're surprised at what somebody tells you, but you're imagining that, right?
The idea that there could be microbes in your body that are stimulating and changing the way your brain functions seems so alien to people because we like to think of ourselves as autonomous.
That GT's kombucha had to pull the really good stuff and put that watered-down horseshit because it's more than one half of 1% alcohol because of the fermentation process and the microbes.
And when I go on the road, most of the times, I'll find a Whole Foods and I'll stock up on it and leave it in my hotel room.
I think it's...
Probiotics are so...
I'm very rarely sick.
I mean, very rarely.
And I travel a lot.
And one of the things that I attribute that to is probiotics.
I think that you really...
It's one of the unsung heroes of the immune system that people don't take into consideration.
The symbiotic relationship that we have with all these weird microorganisms that you ingest.
And the more of those you have...
The less deficits you have in terms of your nutritional intake and the more positive microbes and positive bio-organisms that you take into your body, the more you're going to have, the whole system's going to function better and you're going to be able to fight off immune or fight off disease better.
It's from Super Size Me, the Morgan Spurlock documentary, where he decides he's going to eat McDonald's for 30 days straight.
And for people that saw the movie, you might remember that a couple days into this experiment, he can't imagine how he's going to make it through 30 days.
And there's that scene where he's in the car and he actually vomits out the window after he drinks a milkshake or something like that.
And he's just like, this is the worst.
And then fast forward like two weeks later, and there's a scene where he's like waking up in the morning, and he's like, I feel so sick.
He's like, I feel terrible.
He's like, let's go to McDonald's, you know, for his breakfast.
And then he eats his whatever he ate for breakfast at McDonald's that morning, and like, he walks out and he's like, I feel awesome.
You know, like, he had to get his fix.
And so...
What I see in that is somebody whose microbiome has adjusted.
He has replaced...
Because at the time, his girlfriend was a vegan chef, right?
So he was coming off of eating, essentially, a plant-based diet.
Goes into this McDonald's thing.
And by virtue of...
Bombarding his system with McDonald's food, he repopulates his gut biome with the kind of microorganisms that feed off McDonald's food, right?
So suddenly, you know, because those microorganisms are on the food that you're eating, right?
And then they seed into your gut, and then they start to propagate.
And suddenly, he's craving these foods that were making him sick two weeks earlier that he couldn't imagine continuing to eat.
It's almost like everything behaves in this sort of fractal manner where the bigger you get, and the Earth itself is probably a microbe in the greater sense of the galaxy, which is...
Microbe in the greater sense of the universe and it's all sort of connected in some weird way and the lower you get down to gut microbes and how you fuel those gut microbes and how it impacts the the health of the actual Superorganism itself the human being as a really fascinating it really is it really is when you stop and think about it because very few people think of themselves as being a host for life like I am just this I'm just trying to keep my garden healthy.
You know, the garden of my body, which is filled.
No, you think of it.
I am Rich Roll.
I am this one.
I am the one.
I am one.
I am one thing.
But you're not.
No one is one thing.
But the brain thinks it's one thing.
Which is a fucker, man.
What a weird thing that your brain doesn't realize, hey, you know, I'm getting all these signals to eat McDonald's because I've got all these weird asshole McDonald's bacteria living in my gut.
What I need to do, I need to get some cucumber bacteria down in there to fuck with the McDonald's bacteria.
It's a very fascinating thing to be a human being and to be completely disconnected from that reality without externally taking it in in the form of education and knowledge and then having to internalize it, having to think about it and go, okay, I need to take into consideration that I am not just a one.
I am a container for all these different organisms and the amount of Positive organisms will directly affect the way the brain works.
Then factor in the emotional override that takes over, that compels you to take an action irrespective of the logical choice after you've been educated.
Because I think that's equally as powerful, if not more powerful.
If you can just fucking force yourself into a pattern that's more positive.
Just somehow or another say, okay.
You know, like some people say, I'm going to start training for a marathon.
I'm going to start on Monday, and Monday I'm going to run, you know...
Two miles and then, you know, I'm gonna be on the system of recovery and this is what I'm gonna do.
And you're gonna go into training.
I'm gonna start a training camp.
It's all written down.
And if you can do that, if you can do that with your diet, I can't tell you how many people have come up to me and said, I have lost a tremendous amount of weight since listening to your podcast because I started incorporating kale shakes into my diet.
That's my primary breakfast is a kale shake and it changed everything.
I mean, I'm talking about hundreds.
It's almost like a joke.
Like, I run into people and they go, dude, I lost 100 pounds from your podcast.
He was only trying to raise like 100 grand or 200 grand or something and he raised like 4 million dollars in like no time because his invention is so astounding.
And so I think that You know, our family is trying to be of service by helping foster, you know, the cultivation of bee populations in a, you know, in a sustainable way.
Like, by being, by getting involved, you know, there's one school of thought, like, we'll leave it alone, right?
But this is a threatened, you know, population that needs a little bit of, you know, graceful intervention in order to help them, you know, foster their population.
So to the extent that, you know, I can play a small part in that, I think that's a cool thing.
Yeah, I mean, commercial honey production, you know, there's practices involved with that that are harmful to those insects, right?
So to the extent that you can find a better way to do it, where you're still, you know, able to harvest the honey in a way that is not, you know, kind of overly tapping into what they need to survive and thrive.
I don't know, you know.
Again, it gets into splitting hairs.
It's like, alright, we're going to talk about this when 55% of CO2 emissions is caused by animal agriculture.
We have bigger things.
I'm just trying to help bee populations in our tiny little way by educating my kids about it and by being a home to these 40 hives, which is a trip.
I've told this story before, but you might not have heard it.
When we were on Fear Factor, one of the stunts they had, they had these people, they had to get handcuffed to a pole or something like that, and then we covered them with bees.
And while we're doing this, the beekeeper told us that we had to stop filming because a local population of bees had came over to investigate his population of bees.
And they were above us in this cloud in the air sorting it out.
They weren't fighting.
They were somehow or another communicating.
Like, who the fuck are you guys?
Oh man, we're here for a TV show.
Okay, so you're not moving in.
No, we're not moving in.
Are you guys taking our pollen?
No, we're not.
Taking your pollen, like, and they had to work it out.
I mean, you know, just the idea that there's a queen, and the fact that the hive is lost without it, and that everything kind of falls into place when the queen is, you know, inserted into the population.
I mean, I can't begin to, you know, it's like, I know very little about How about the Queen's a murdering bitch?
Like, they had areas where these leaves would ferment, and then they had pipes that led, like tubes, that led through to the sky or to the surface area where they would hit air so that the fermentation process, the gases, could be released.
I think it's very underappreciated the the Uniqueness or they're just the just the Excentricities of the animal world or just how amazing and fascinating.
This is an ant death spiral and this is when the queen dies.
When a queen dies and the scent is no longer there, they don't know who to follow, they don't know what the fuck to do, and they go into this spiral and they will just do this until they run out of energy and food and they will fucking die.
I mean, I'm probably doing a really shitty job of explaining this.
I probably butchered it but the the idea being that they're following the scent of the Queen and somehow or another lose it and so they don't know what to do so they just start going in the spiral maybe someone stepped on the Queen or something happened they remove the Queen perhaps and a bird might have stolen the Queen mmm like a dragon come down swoop take away their Queen yeah world's crazy mysterious place Well,
insects in particular, we don't think of them that much because they're so small, but ants have the almost exact same calculated biomass as human beings when it comes to weight, meaning that there's exactly the same amount of weight for the bodies of ants on Earth as there are humans.
It's weird that not only did nature somehow or another have a need for this, but it came about, it developed, and it's been the same way, that way, for who knows how many millions of years.
The ant world is a ruthless, evil, vicious world, too.
You ever see when the female ants get a hold of...
I think it's leafcutters as well.
They get a hold of a male.
Males are larger and they have wings.
Might not be leafcutters, but whatever it is, they chop the wings off of the male, chop his arms off and legs, and then carry him to the hive to breed.
Because there were so many ants, and if the army ants found you, if they found you and one of them decided to bite you, just like they follow the scent, then millions and millions and millions and they would just eat you alive.
And people would regularly get killed by ants there.
It's another kind of NPR offshoot, you know, like how sort of Ira Glass at This American Life, all these producers that have worked for him have now started all these other podcasts.
Super interesting stories.
There was one recently about a guy.
Who I guess is a pretty well-known guy.
He's blind.
I think he went blind as a four-year-old or something like that.
He lost his sight.
In school, he started making these clicking noises with his mouth.
Like...
Like that.
And his teachers would say, you know, what are you doing?
Settle down.
Stop doing that.
And his mother realized very early on that there was some purpose to this.
But Daniel will tell you he sees his environment as a series of images created in his mind based on what he hears using echolocation.
So you're calling out into the environment.
You're essentially asking the environment what are you and where are you and you're receiving those answers.
So you're getting an image in your mind.
Yes, I definitely get Three-dimensional images with depth and character and richness.
And I can process those and I can interact with those.
From his modest bungalow in Long Beach, Daniel runs a small non-profit called World Access for the Blind.
Since being established in 2000, World Access has been the lone voice preaching echolocation.
In fact, every major blind organization in America does not support Daniel's mission.
So, Daniel, the National Federation of the Blind will say that echolocation is just too complicated for most blind people to grasp.
It's not so much the Federation that's a concern.
You have here a blindness profession, the blindness field, who by and large really kind of intractably remains We're committed, if you will, to a traditional approach which is about, in my opinion, restriction.
It is about, this is how you do things.
This is the right way for a blind person to do things.
You know, if we could figure that out, if there's a person like him that can figure out how to see things with his sound, making echolocations, what other possible senses could be developed to that extent, you know?
Well, in the animal kingdom, aren't they training these German shepherds that can smell cancer, like early onset of cancer?
They're doing similar things with rats.
I mean, obviously those animals have a more developed sense in that area, but to the extent that human beings have unlocked potential in areas that we haven't really looked at, I think it's pretty interesting.
Well, people certainly have finely developed senses, like certain people that play instruments have finely developed senses of sound.
Sommeliers have a finely developed sense of taste.
Have you ever talked to someone who's like a real wine sommelier and they can drink a glass of wine, have a sip of it, and tell you what part of the world it came from?
That's real.
I mean, they can sip it and tell you what part of France they're growing these fucking grapes.
It also makes you really wonder if there are fields, like we were talking about how bees can tune into the sound that a cell phone makes and it fucks with them.
I wonder if there's anything like that that's affecting us in some sort of a strange way that we're not aware of.
Because one of the things that I'm always really aware of when I go If I go to the wilderness, if I go to a real wild place, is the sound of it is different than the sound of silence here.
Like, if you're in a park here and it's beautiful and it's nature, it's nice, it's relaxing, but there's a certain tone to, like, Prince of Wales Island in Alaska is a perfect example.
We were there and we were on the top of this mountain.
We're sitting there and I was like, Do you hear that?
It sounds different.
It feels different here.
It's like you're getting a signal of no signal.
There's no cell phone.
There's no radio.
You're not tuning into anything other than nature itself.
And it has a different tone to it than a city has.
You know, listen, everything is vibration and energy.
And, you know, if you don't think that, you know, that isn't real, you know, go hang out with negative people for a week and see how you start behaving.
And we tend to believe that if we can't see something, that it's not real.
Here's, you know, Daniel, who, you know, is putting out sound waves into the world, and he's able to figure out what his environment is.
You can't see that.
He can't see that.
But to him, it's very real.
And, you know, we're surrounded by all kinds of crazy, invisible energies and waves, from cell phone towers to Wi-Fi signals and all this kind of stuff.
I mean, do we know how this is impacting us?
To Wi-Fi and cell phones like they get headaches and all kinds of stuff.
Some ninth graders in Denmark Did a test where they put, what they said was, or they tested, it's the same radiation a cell phone gives off, so they put some watercress, I think is what it's called, or gardencress, and six trays in one room, six trays in another, with two Wi-Fi routers, and essentially, as you can see in the picture, didn't grow.
You know, people want to think that that's hippie and woo-woo, but man, when you're around really negative people, they're just, oh, I've got to get away from this person.
And it's not just you've got to get away from them because they say certain things.
Like, they give off a vibe.
You know, that's a hippie thing to say, the vibes.
People are worried about that cleanup because what they're worried about is that if they start digging and cleaning up, that the dust is going to get into the air and it's going to blow through the valley.
And whatever trace elements of that rocket fuel.
Apparently there was a lot of disasters up there.
They did a lot of shit down there in the 50s and the 60s.
In 1959, they had something worse than Three Mile Island.
Huh.
I read a study on it, though, and one of the things that said the study, like, the half-life of the type of radiation that they had was very short-lived, so it's not something that, like, lingers in an area.
The real concern that the, apparently...
According to what I read, that the sober environmentalists are concerned with is the rocket fuel that's leaked into the ground and gotten into the well water in that area.
I knew a dude who lived near a golf course and the pesticides from the golf course leaked into the well and he got cancer, his neighbor got cancer, kids in his neighbor, like all throughout their neighborhood people got cancer and they got cancer because of the pesticides.
Like they all got a very specific type of bone cancer.
Scary shit, like he doesn't have a femur.
One of his femurs is like a metal rod that they replaced his femur with because he had cancer.
I mean, you know, our world is getting more and more toxic, right?
All these things we have to worry about and think about.
Think about, you know, you just look on the back of, you know, the average packaged food that you pick up at the grocery store and all the ingredients in it.
And like, you know, who knows what all that stuff is and whether it's safe.
And we're entrusting...
Regulatory bodies to make these decisions for us, right?
Well, I mean, the commercials are just comedic, you know, like literally way more, you know, disclosures about side effects than actual product information.
And again, what you were talking about earlier is you're using a medication to deal with an issue that if you take a holistic approach, what's causing you to have acne?
What is causing your skin to break out in some sort of a horrible way that you need this fucking bloody diarrhea inducing medication to combat it?
The best thing to do is just be proactive enough about your health so that you can do whatever's under your control to prevent you from getting any kind of, you know, acute disease.
Not to say that it doesn't happen, because of course it does.
But, you know, I think there's lots of things that could be more deeply explored than, you know, our culture really is, you know, sort of permittable to in kind of our, you know, what we accept as mainstream or not.
Like I started recently Going to acupuncture, which I'd never done before.
I mean, you know, I'm a pretty rational guy, you know, so the idea of sticking, you know, sort of like the idea of meridians and sticking needles into my forehead and all, you know, I was like, I didn't really, you know, I wasn't an immediate, you know, somebody who's going to immediately jump on that bandwagon.
But I know a lot of people who have benefited from it, and I was having some things that I wanted to address, like particularly sleep, like I've been challenged by sleep lately.
And so I went to see my friend who's a Chinese medicine doctor, and he started doing it on me, and it was really helpful.
It was really helpful.
It's so interesting, the idea of balancing energy systems and kind of how it works.
I mean, it's so ornate.
And this, you know, my friend who's, he's studying Chinese medicine and he's still kind of in his residency, so he's working underneath like this Chinese dude who's been practicing this forever.
And they come in and the guy, like literally this Chinese medicine doctor The only thing he wants to do is take my pulse on both wrists, and he takes it with his thumb in a couple different places.
And apparently his touch is so finely attuned that he can tell all kinds of things about where you're at based upon the pressure of your pulse and the frequency and the tempo and all these sorts of things.
So he wants to do that.
And then he wants to look at your tongue.
And he can tell by looking at your tongue all sorts of crazy shit about where you're at.
Well, I mean, I think, yeah, but is that better than saying I'm not gonna explore that because I think it's BS without having any direct experience with it?
Well, I mean, all I can tell you is that I was having issues with sleep and relaxation, and this seemed to benefit and alleviate my problem to some extent.
It certainly could be those things because you got to think about like sleep oftentimes is psychological Oftentimes sleep is a matter of your ability to relax and we've all been in that situation before where you know You have to be at work in five hours and if I go to sleep right now I can get four hours sleep And you look at that clock and for whatever reason you're stuck in that thing because you know that you have to go to sleep right this moment and the pressure of that keeps you awake even if you're tired.
If you take action to try to alleviate that by acupuncture or whatever it is, just the mere act of taking action will shift your focus.
Into a cure and you can oftentimes start thinking that whatever this placebo effect is, is real.
I'm not doubting that this guy has a real, a possible gift or whatever it is, but wouldn't it be nice if we just can prove it?
Like wouldn't you want to prove that?
Wouldn't you want to just work with a bunch of people and find out, oh look, you know, he's right, this guy does have a gallbladder issue or he's right, this guy does.
No, this is a dude that I knew that was in the mixed martial arts world.
He was dealing with all these different fighters and jiu-jitsu guys that had back injuries.
And he was a good chiropractor.
But this zone healing thing, as he was getting into it, the more I would listen to it, I was like, okay, what?
You're telling me you could touch the back of someone's head and press spots and tell if they have a thyroid condition?
Get the fuck out of here.
That's not true.
That's just not true.
And he kind of admitted it wasn't true.
He kind of admitted that ultimately what he's doing is, if you believe in what he's doing, it will fix what you have that's wrong with you.
Because ultimately, there's another great Radiolab podcast on placebo effect.
And there was one of them where they were talking about this guy They hypnotized this kid with this insane wart problem, skin warts.
Have you ever seen people that have warts all over their skin?
Where it becomes incurable by medication and they convinced this kid that they had hypnotized him and that it was going to go away and it went away on his arm.
His arm was like completely free of warts, which just never happens when someone reaches such an acute level of infection like this kid had.
And so in a sense, It is real.
In a sense, it's not hooey.
As long as you're gullible, as long as you're willing to wholeheartedly jump in and believe it.
And I think that might be what's going on with acupuncture.
That might be what's going on with a lot of, you know, quote-unquote Chinese medicine or Eastern medicine.
I think if you believe that they have found you a cure, your body starts producing whatever it actually needs to fix whatever ailment you have, and thus it becomes actually effective.
So the method is not correct.
The method is a trick, but that trick is effective.
And that effective trick does convince your brain to fix whatever the problem is.
And it's really baffling.
And it only works if you're not a discerning, critical person.
Because if you're a discerning person who's skeptical, it's not going to work.
Because then you're going to hyper-analyze whatever it is, or the potential possibilities of whatever it is, and it just won't work.
I mean, and also, like I said, like, the idea of any, you know, fill in the blank, whatever type of modality, any type of therapy that's actually effective, even though it doesn't have any real scientific basis to it, The effect is still real.
You still get a benefit from it.
Like, this zone healing shit.
Like, if you believe in it, it will affect you.
Which is kind of fucking crazy.
It's kind of crazy that, in some ways, there's merit to it.
I could tell you, well, I mean, listen, anybody who is a consistent, who has a consistent meditation practice will tell you that, you know, it improves their life.
It's not saying that this frog potion that I give you is going to cure your cancer and then your body cures the cancer.
There's a certain aspect of meditation that's undeniably beneficial.
But that aspect of it has really been scientifically analyzed.
They've done all these fMRI scans on people that are Buddhist monks that have spent years and years meditation.
They've done scans on people that were in, you know, deep REM sleep and different stages of the mind.
I mean, there's a lot of scientific work that's been done on, you know, what we call meditation, achieving certain brain waves, achieving certain states.
Those aren't fake.
And in a sense, placebo effect isn't fake either, right?
Because every drug that exists, exists because there's a receptor for it in the human mind.
The reason why those drugs are effective is because the mind knows how to actually produce that effect in some sort of limited quantity on its own.
That's one of the reasons why placebo effects work.
That's the reason why we have opiate receptors and cannabinoid receptors and all these different things and processes that the mind can engage in with or without medication.
That's why those medications have an effect on the body.
So in that sense, placebos If you believe in them, work.
And that's, I think, what we're talking about, just doing something.
The act of doing something to deal with it makes you focus on whatever that issue is.
You know, I mean how many issues that people have health-wise are just due to a complete lack of awareness of their physical body?
Just stumbling through life on this drunken momentum of coffee and donuts and stress and cigarettes and traffic and pollution and stress and cigarettes and coffee, and then just Just the mere act of taking the time to reassess what it means to be a person,
to just stop and pause and give thought to your day-to-day existence, might be enough to reset a lot of the processes that are in place.
I've played around with so many different techniques over the years.
You were talking about momentum earlier, right?
I've never been able to hit momentum with it.
I'll do it for a couple days, this version, that version, and I could never find a way to really stick with it.
And I downloaded the Headspace app, which is an iPhone app.
It's got guided meditation programs on it.
And it's started by this dude, Andy Pudicombe, who I've had on my podcast recently because I became so fascinated with this guy.
And they're very easy to follow.
And I put it like down in the dock, you know, like the bottom menu of my iPhone so I see it in the morning.
And it's a super simple app and you just open it up and it's got a whole series of programs that you can do.
And I just put the earbuds in and he just kind of talks you through it.
So he takes the thinking out of it and it just makes it easy.
And I've been able, Just something about the ease of that, I guess.
I've been able to kind of just do it and create momentum around it.
And like anything else, once you have momentum, and once you start to see the benefits of it, then you're more, you know, enthusiastic about pursuing it further.
And it's been cool.
And this guy, he's really, he's a cool dude.
He's like...
He's a British dude and he was in college.
What's his name again?
Andy Puddicombe.
P-U-D-D-I-C-O-M-B-E. He has a great TED Talk, by the way.
But he grew up in London and dropped out of college and went to Nepal and started studying Buddhist meditation and became a Buddhist monk.
And he lived basically in relative seclusion for like 10 years as like a Buddhist monk practicing meditation.
And then he had this kind of post-modern Siddhartha moment where he realized, like, you know, I need to go back to the West.
He had this calling to come back and be a teacher.
And he started this company, Headspace, that's become huge.
They've got, like, over a million subscribers on this app.
He's developed this huge business around it.
And he's very accessible.
Like, he's friendly and engaging and very modern.
And, you know, he's sort of like...
Where does he live?
He lives here in Venice now.
He moved from London.
He lives here in Venice.
He's a cool dude.
Yeah, there he is.
And then he, right before he, once he decided he wasn't going to be a monk anymore, and before he kind of returned west, he studied circus arts at the Moscow College of Circus.
The biggest thing that I found is that I'm able to navigate stressful situations much more gracefully.
I'm far less reactive to people.
I'm able to kind of calmly take information out, engage it, and then respond more mindfully.
And I'm able to, you know, I've got a lot of stuff going on right now.
It's like, you know, it's just, and to be able to kind of not get anxious over that and just be able to say, okay, you know, focus on one thing at a time and not get worked up about the smaller stuff.
And just ultimately, much more productive and constructive in my interactions with other people, focused when I'm working, present with my wife and my kids.
And calmer.
And that's impacted my sleep as well.
It's been cool.
I mean, it's been...
You know, I think the benefits have exceeded what I expected.
I don't know how...
You know, I didn't expect it to be any crazy difference, but it's been really great.
And it's sort of like...
It's powerful, too, to be able to kind of stand in your space and not get rattled by things.
Like, that's a pretty potent sort of skill to develop.
Like, just imagine yourself...
You're at work.
Your boss is coming at you.
He accuses you unfairly of something.
Your buttons are pushed.
You're on autopilot.
You react in a certain way.
But to be able to reprogram yourself and go, I have a choice here.
My brain is saying this, but...
I don't have to engage in that pattern.
I can actually tell a different story and react in a different way.
I think that's a pretty powerful life skill that's worth developing.
It removes the mind from the body, the influence of the body, and all the stimuli of the world evaporates.
It's the mind untethered from the body in a very weird way.
And the way I always describe it is if we were having this conversation, but right next to us there are people screaming at the top of their lungs, it would be very distracting.
We would want to go, let's go talk over here.
And that screaming is information, it's stimuli, it's stimulus.
You're constantly getting it right now.
Even though these are very comfortable ergonomic chairs from the Ergo Depot, Capisco chairs.
Very good for your posture.
My back used to kill me at the end of every show.
But because of these chairs, it's really fantastic.
But you're still in a chair.
Your ass is pushing against it.
You feel the weight of your body.
You're moving around.
There's a desk in front of you.
We have visual cues.
We're hearing things.
We have earphones on.
There's all this stuff that's going on constantly that...
We look at it as the world, but really what it is is data.
It's data coming into your brain that your brain has to process, and that data, life itself, is a distraction.
In that tank, there is no data.
I mean, you have a very limited amount of sensation of the fact that you're in water that will eventually go away if you stay still long enough.
The water is the same temperature as your skin, so you will get to a point where you don't feel it.
There's a thousand pounds of salt in that water, so you'll float effortlessly.
And you're in total darkness.
And as long as there's no banging around the room, as long as you're in a good silent area, you will experience quiet in a way that you never get.
You will experience physical quiet.
There will be no input.
And the absence of that input...
Your brain becomes supercharged.
It makes it so much easier for me to understand influences, objectives, all the things that I have been pushing to the back of my brain, avoiding, come to light instantaneously, highlighted.
All issues become highlighted.
Any stumbling blocks, any things that you really need to address, all come to the forefront.
And the way I describe it is the first 20 minutes or so seem like Like a seminar on my life.
Like my life is being explained to me.
If I went to a guru that could explain to me in no uncertain terms, like someone who really knows every aspect of my life, like if you could plug a USB drive into my head into some supercomputer that can fix things, they'd go, oh, well, look at all these issues you have.
You have to get rid of this, clean out this clutter, stop doing that because you don't like it, don't do this, don't hang out with this person.
But this idea that, you know, your thinking mind is distinct from your higher consciousness.
And to the extent that you have control and you can harness your thinking mind for your benefit and you're able to, you know, silence the idle negative chatter.
You know, most people, like you said, you know, it's coffee, you know, donuts, whatever.
There's a looping, you know, and my mind loops as much as the next person.
And generally, it's not very kind things that are looping.
You know, self-defeatist ideas, negative thoughts.
Oh, my God, I'm going to do Joe Rogan's podcast.
What if the death squad army gangs up on me?
You know, what's going to happen?
You know, like, whatever it is, you know what I mean?
Like, it's And meditation allows you to understand that you don't have to engage in that and gives you a toolbox to say, let me tell a different story.
I don't have to entertain that story, that story that I've been listening to my entire life that's led me down a certain path in my life and helped sort of forge a certain trajectory.
What if I tell a new story?
And let's put that story together and see where that leads.
Like, could there be anything more powerful than that?
Rich Roll, ladies and gentlemen, you can find him on Twitter, richroll.com, richroll.com, and check out his podcast, check out his book, The Plant Power Way, available right now, you fucks.