Rich Roll is among the most prominent podcasters in the game, but he had a difficult journey getting to where he is today. In this podcast, we delve into his life story- from his childhood, to being an alcohol addicted lawyer, to becoming a plant-based ultra endurance athlete and successful podcaster. Rich is living proof that it’s never too late to change your life.

Listen to the Rich Roll podcast | https://apple.co/3zuX0kF

AUBREY: Your story, if we were going to use a metaphor, a floral metaphor, I mean, we're talking lotus flower here. It was some heaviness or some muck or some depth, some mud that you had to go through. And then the flowering of your life has really been incredibly profound to see where you went as an athlete and now where you are as a podcaster and just an inspirational figure, out in the world. But to tell the story, let's go back into the darker times, into the heavier times, the denser times, the mud, the muck, the Genesis of some challenge that led you into addiction and a lot of challenges in your early life. 

RICH: Yeah, sure. I mean, I would couch it initially by saying that all my needs were met as a child. Like I didn't have a hard childhood, I didn't have a David Goggins type of experience growing up. I have two loving parents who met my needs and I was taken care of and they're still married. So I didn't experience a traditional type of childhood trauma. That's not really part of my narrative. But I think we all have dark moments in our soul and no one gets out of life alive. We all have our issues. Mine may have been pedestrians, but they were painful for me. I mean, I was a very insecure introverted kid who really struggled to make friends as a young person and was somewhat self isolated from people. I was the kid that got bullied on the playground and wore an eye patch and headgear and just was not a vision for you. I have a weak eye. It's still weak. It didn't resolve the problem. So I'm sort of cross-eyed if I'm not wearing my glasses. And the idea was you put a patch on. Your strong eye strengthens your weak eye. It didn't really work out though.

AUBREY: If you had true black beard the pirate fucking intensity, you could have maybe pulled it up.

RICH: Yeah, maybe I could have willed my way into resolving the problem 

AUBREY: Or at least scare away the boys

RICH: I’ve been wearing glasses for 50 years, so that remains unresolved. But yeah, so I think that drove me into books and just kind of being a bit of a loner. I discovered swimming at a pretty young age, and that was the only physical athletic thing that I showed any kind of aptitude in whatsoever. It wasn't like I was a star, but I was like, Oh, I can actually do this. And it was fun and I could make friends there. And so that just sort of slowly became more and more of my world. And by the time I was 14 or 15, I really doubled down on that. And I was the kid who was going to swim practice in the morning before school and after school. And that was the safe place for me where I felt at home. There was something about being underwater, I think that helped mute out whatever angst or pain I was experiencing that I didn't have the cognitive tools to really understand. 

AUBREY: I don't think that's personal. I think that's kind of universal. When you're in the water–

RICH: There is–

AUBREY: It's just the sound is different. It's when you feel safe. 

RICH: Yeah, and I loved it and it loved me back eventually. I learned tools for life in the swimming pool. I realized pretty early that I was never gonna be the super talented kid, but I had a capacity for suffering and work, outworking the guy in the lane next to me. And made hay with that. So by the time I was a senior in high school, I was one of the top swimmers in the area. I grew up in the Washington, DC area. And that kind of workhorse mentality. I found it applicable in academics, so I went from being a kid who really struggled academically to figuring that out and being a very good student, and that opened up all kinds of doors for me. I got into Harvard. I got into Princeton. I got into Stanford. I ended up going to Stanford, which was the number one swimming program in the world. Collegiate swimming program in the world and was swimming with Olympic champions and world record holders, even though I was very much a bench warmer. Like I was not a scholarship athlete, but I was like, this is my chance to play with the big boys and see if I can mix it up with them. And I remember making a very conscious choice of choosing to try to be a small fish in a big sea as opposed to being a big fish in a small sea, but it was around that time that alcohol entered the picture and I was 3,000 miles away from home and I went from living in a pretty controlled environment with parents who set very high expectations for me that I never could quite meet to being completely free. And like a lot of kids, I think, who transition from that type of environment into that kind of freedom, go a little bit haywire, which is exactly what I did.

AUBREY: So, Dr. Gabor Mate would say that all addiction is an attempt to solve a problem. And there is, all of us, when we have that moment and we go off to college, I think drinking is pretty ubiquitous, like most of us have this experience. But for some people, this becomes an addiction. And given your story, this is even more interesting because there wasn't that thing that you're running from desperately because it was so difficult. But it was subtle and it was subtle little things that actually switched from, all right, this is me exploring my own consciousness with these different substances, going a little overboard, puking this one night and whatever, to it becoming a consistent problem that stayed with you till you're what, 31?

RICH: Yeah. 

AUBREY: Yeah.

RICH: I did a podcast with Gabor years ago and as he's wanted to do– 

AUBREY: Yeah, for sure. 

RICH: Makes it a therapy session, which I was all about. I was like, bring it on. I need this. And he lulled me into this place of acknowledging that because his primary thesis is that addiction stems from childhood trauma. And my whole thing was like, yeah, but like I said at the outset, like my parents were loving, like they took care of me and all of that. And he's like, “it's not about blame, it's about some need of yours that wasn't being met.” Whether it's trying to measure up or seeking validation and accomplishment, whatever it was. Drove a certain kind of disposition in me where nothing was ever enough, if I could put a pin on it. So, yeah I wouldn't have consciously characterized myself as an alcoholic at that time, but I was definitely the guy who you had to drag out of the party the last to leave, the guy who when the keg was tapped would look for the half empties, and the guy who just went a little bit too far and was going out maybe one or two extra nights a week compared to everybody else. And as the nature of alcoholism at least in my case was that it progresses slowly over time. So I was able to keep a cap on it for a while. But the drama sort of slowly intensified over time until it got really dark and lonely and really sort of pathetic and sad.

AUBREY: Some of that shyness that you expressed, that was a part of you. I mean, alcohol is a solution for that. And it's not the right solution, but it is a temporary solution where inhibitions drop because of the flood of GABA in your brain. And you're like, Oh, okay, now I feel more confident. There's people who call it literally liquid courage for that reason. Right?

RICH: Yeah, and even though I had accomplished certain things as a swimmer and had sort of distinguished myself academically, I was still very much a navel gazer. I couldn't talk to a girl. I just wasn't comfortable in my own skin, I felt like, and you hear this in AA a lot, like, everybody else had the rule book for life and I was sitting on the outside, marveling at how people seemed to gracefully navigate the world, where I just felt anxious all the time and alcohol solved that problem like I have a lot of love for it. Like it gave me social tools that I lacked and taught me how to be a social animal in a social situation. Suddenly I could go to a party and crack a joke and flirt with a girl and do all these things that were beyond my capacity to handle, prior to that. So it's not all bad. Like it worked, you know what I mean? Which is why I doubled down on it.

AUBREY: Yeah, if it didn't work at all, nobody would do it. 

RICH: The cure for alcoholism isn't removing alcohol. Alcohol is the solution to the problem and it works until it stops working. And it took a while before it stopped working in my case. But the ism remains once you remove the substance. 

AUBREY: Right. Yeah, it's interesting to think about that in your situation. And for me, I'm on the precipice of having my own children. And I guess I wonder personally, and this is an age old question. Your shyness, was this something that was taught, conditioned, by the nurture of your family and your environment, or was this just something that came through in your soul as it shows incarnation? And it was just like, this is me from the start. It's a very interesting thing to think about. Neither one is good nor bad. It just is what it is. But do you feel like this was something that you always had kind of innately? Or was this something that you just kind of learned from, maybe not feeling like you weren't doing the right thing or whatever it might have been? 

RICH: Yeah, I spent a lot of time thinking about this and I think to an extent it's a productive thought experiment, especially when you're looking down the barrel of becoming a parent and I've got four kids. I don't know the answer to that, I've often thought, if this certain need that I had was met in a different way by my parents who did the best that they could, would that have alleviated whatever thing was inside of me that wouldn't have made it necessary for me to abuse substances in the way that I did. Ultimately, though, that thought experiment doesn't really provide me with a solution for life. So I've learned over time to kind of let go of that, and I'm much more focused on what I'm doing today and how I can leverage these tools that I've learned to ameliorate, the disease as it rears its head and other kinds of behavioral stuff. Like, it's very rare that I would crave alcohol these days. Like, I don't think about it. It's been so long. But I still have the ism and that pops up in all kinds of ways and makes me an asshole or resentful or frustrated or grinding on this problem like we were talking when I walked in. We're both enjoying amazing lives. We're very privileged to get to do what we get to do and meet these amazing people and support our families, by doing it. So why don't I wake up inherently grateful every day and it's like, that's what I use most of my mental energy trying to focus on.

AUBREY: It seems to me that we're all deeply addicted if to nothing else being the self that we've been and this is for me as I look at that. And as I was expressing to you, I'm in a position now where I literally cannot blame a single external thing for any discomfort or this ease I have in my own psyche or in my own life. There's nothing I can look at. So it's just a pure mirror looking at myself, but nonetheless, I put myself continually because I have to acknowledge that it's me putting myself continually into situations where I'm stressed or situations where I'm melancholy or situations where I'm just gritting my teeth and thinking that the stakes are pressing down on me and things are so difficult that I don't know if I'm going to make it out or whatever mental construct. And it feels like I'm just addicted to being the self that I was and the self that I learned to be. And I'm trying to get now unaddicted to being that version of myself and get addicted to being a new version of myself, or at least, have some kind of neutrality where I'm not constantly, subconsciously, drawn into creating situations that can activate the same neurochemical hormonal cocktails of the old Aubrey.

RICH: Yeah, sure. That level of self awareness is both terrifying and free, right? Because you can't blame anyone else. And it's not about anything external. It's only about your relationship with you. And you're still going to be impulsed by your innate biases and however your hard wiring has set you up to perceive the world, but you get that extra little moment of recognition to course correct. I got sober in 98. So I've been in this thing for a long time and when I came in, I just thought, Oh, it's drug addicts and alcoholics. That's what addiction is. But I've become convinced that addiction lives on this massive spectrum and we are all victims of addiction on some level, some mild and some extreme from the guy lying in the gutter with a bottle to the guy who can't pull the needle out of his arm to the compulsive scrolling while we're taking a shit or the guy who, or the woman who–

AUBREY: That one runs deep.

RICH: Yeah. Who goes from bad relationship to bad relationship repeating a certain pattern because there's something about that that they can't, there's a compulsivity to that that they can't control. So, I think thinking about addiction more broadly makes it applicable. and instructive and useful for people as they develop enough self awareness to have objectivity on how they maneuver the world and the daily habits that they continually find themselves, falling prey to that are leading their lives in the wrong direction.

AUBREY: And the impulse to addiction, the way that we're wired, it doesn't have to all be bad because I knew someone, I dated her before I got with my wife and name is Maya. And we actually did a podcast on gratitude. And what I found about her is she had a daily gratitude practice that was unbroken for seven years and she was addicted to gratitude. Like literally addicted to gratitude and it was amazing. She was such a happy person and it was like–

RICH: I'm so jealous.

AUBREY: Yeah, exactly. But she forged that addiction.

RICH: It is a practice, right? 

AUBREY: Absolutely.

RICH: It didn't come. She didn't necessarily wake up feeling grateful, but by dint of her allegiance to that practice becomes that which she aspired to become.

AUBREY: And it was a 30 minute practice. Like it was like a legit practice that she did and there was different versions. It wasn't the same thing every day. She had a whole curriculum that she had developed and being grateful for different aspects of her life. Well, sometimes it was air. Sometimes it was money itself. Sometimes it was love. And there were different practices. Some involved journaling, but really feeling it. Obviously she chose that because at some point prior to that, she wasn't feeling grateful. She was solving a problem and she just chose a solution that she could become addicted to. That's pretty much if we're going to choose something. I mean–

RICH: That's a pretty good one to lash out. 

AUBREY: Yeah, exactly. And so that's possible with the same mechanism that drives people to all of the things that you mentioned prior, the same mechanism can kick in and get you addicted to those things, or perhaps in your case, you became addicted to running and triathlons.

RICH: Yeah, I mean, I think it's important to frame addiction in the context of behaviors that are leading towards some negative outcome in your life. Yes, you can have an addictive relationship with something that's good, but the pernicious kind of definition of addiction would be something that you continually repeat in your life that is wreaking havoc or causing problems for you. But yeah, I mean, people say to me. “Oh, you got into ultra endurance sports and you just shifted from one addiction to the next.” And I'm like, “yeah, probably.” Like they're expecting me to fight back on that and I'm like, no, I acknowledge that. But I will say that there's a qualitative difference in that pivot, which I've gone through phases of obsession with, I'm not obsessed with it now, moved my life in a positive direction and we're more like spiritual odysseys of self discovery than ego driven or performance oriented.

AUBREY: Or escapism.

RICH: Yeah, I mean, there's an escapist element to it, I think. But what's particular to endurance sports, especially ultra endurance sports, is you're forced to spend an unbelievable amount of time alone. And I was going through a lot of existential angst at the time that I was heavily involved in that. Because I had problems that I was trying to solve about who I wanted to be and what I was here to do, and I wasn't finding ready answers to those questions, but all of that solace that came with hours and hours on the bike or trail running or what have you, allowed all of that to percolate and ultimately have kind of led to everything that I've been able to create and manifest as a result.

AUBREY: Let's go to this middle period between 31 and 40. 31 things must've been at 30 ish. Things must've gotten to their darkest point. So we can talk maybe just for a moment about what that darkest point was like before you actually decided to become sober. And then carrying on to this next little stretch where it seemed like potentially eating and eating the wrong type of food became the next kind of challenging step.

RICH: Yeah. The kind of final chapter in my alcoholism just to disabuse everybody of any kind of romantic bukowski notion of what it was like I was not penning the great american novel or doing anything creative I was by myself drinking alone, often waking up in the morning and having a vodka tonic in the shower and working as a lawyer and trying to sneak drinks throughout the day. Like, it was exhausting. It was sad and lonely. I had burned bridges with friends. I was unreliable. My parents didn't want anything to do with me. And ultimately. I had a marriage that ended on the honeymoon. I created a lot of chaos and wreckage and destroyed a lot of relationships and just became an irresponsible, unreliable member of society. Living two blocks from here, sleeping on a bare mattress on the floor of a shitty apartment with no furniture and the phone wasn't ringing. I'd gotten two DUIs, I was looking at possible jail time, I was going to get fired from my job and just woke up one day, after a bender and nothing particularly terrible had happened that night. But I had kind of reached that nadir where I was like, I can't do this anymore. And I had been seeing an addiction therapist and he was like, are you ready? And he's like, I got a bed for you and ended up going up to Oregon and checking into a rehab thinking I was going to do a quick couple of weeks spin dry. Because I was so important and I had to get back to my job. And had this epiphany coming to that, my best thinking, I thought, oh, I'm a smart guy. I was literally institutionalized. And that landed on me like a ton of bricks. And I just realized I better figure this out because the future is not looking bright. And started opening up and taking direction and listening and letting go of how I thought things should be. And for the first time I was honest about the things that I was doing and the ways that I was behaving. And then I remember a counselor telling me, “You have a case of alcoholism that we typically only see in 65 year old men who come in here who have been drinking for the better part of their lifetime.” And if you don't get this like you're probably going to die. And he just said it so point blank, like I'll never forget it. And it scared the shit out of me. So he said, “I know that you think you're gonna spin out of here in 28 days, but we think you should stick around.” And I just said, “I'll stay here as long as you think I should be here.” And I ended up living there for a hundred days. Which is kind of a long time to be in rehab. But that saved my life. I came back to Los Angeles. Went back to my job, but my real job was sobriety, like I just took it super seriously. I was going to multiple meetings a day and really committed to building a strong foundation of sobriety. As if my life depended on it because it did but in the decade that kind of ensued the other thing that kind of came in was this and it's part of that like achievement thing or trying to get approval like I was on this path to becoming that successful person that society and my parents would approve of. In my mind that meant like, being a partner in this law firm and having a nice car and a nice condo or whatever it is. And I was really intent upon making that happen and just transferred a lot of alcoholic energy into workaholism. And grinded until I was 39 years old and 50 pounds overweight. And brushing up against this existential crisis that I mentioned because never once for a minute did I stop or pause to consider like what am I doing? Is this what I want? Who am I doing this for? Am I doing this for approval and approval of whom? It's sort of like the great Tyler Durden quote, we work jobs we hate to make money to buy things we don't need to impress people we don't care about, paraphrase loosely. And I was successful in that, like I had achieved a certain level of success and I repaired my relationships with my family and my friends. And from the outside looking in, it all looked pretty good, like I was on a good path, but inside I was really dying. But I didn't know where to put that energy, even though I had these tools from sobriety and I was very plugged in to 12 steps and all of that.

AUBREY: You had a good community? 

RICH: Yeah. I mean it's so strong here in LA. I needed all new friends. It's like all my other friends were partying and going to bars. And what's great about LA is that there's so many young people who are doing cool things, who are full of life, who are all about sobriety. And I really tapped into that and that was huge for me and still is like they're still–

AUBREY: I would say probably essential.

RICH: So the friendships I made in 98 like the people that I got sober with are still some of the people that I'm closest with. And just were eating like shit and on a fast food diet. And a lot of like–

AUBREY: What was your favorite fast food jam back in the day?

RICH: I mean the ultimate double cheeseburgers from Jack in the box on the way home.

AUBREY: I had a few of those between sourdough Jacks, 

RICH: Yeah. A couple of those. Maybe like, I mean–

AUBREY: Did you ever get into the double Western bacon cheeseburger? 

RICH: A couple of those. I mean plenty of that shit. And just take out Chinese food in the law firm and working long hours and hitting the drive thru and medicating myself with food as much as anything else. And kind of still in denial that I wasn't a collegiate swimmer. Like when you're swimming, you have this crazy appetite. You can just throw down so many calories. So a lot of my eating habits were formed during that period of time. And you think, even though you're 39 years old, that you're still that 21 year old who can metabolize food that way. So of course, you're going to put on a bunch of weight. So I was never morbidly obese or anything. I just look like a heavy dude who works in a law firm. My energy was terrible. I was depressed and this all kind of came to a head when I was 39 when I worked late one night and I was coming home and walked up a flight of stairs. I've told the story many times, but was too winded to complete the staircase like I had to stop halfway up the stairs. I was breathing heavily and sweat on my brow and had a tightness in my chest and it scared me. It was like another bottom in my life and heart disease runs in my family. My grandfather, who was a champion swimmer almost made the Olympic team, had died of a heart attack at 54. I'm now 54. So I think about that a lot these days. And I just had this moment and I think these moments are visited upon all of us if we have the aptitude to be paying attention, I didn't just know I needed to change. Like I had this spark of willingness and it reminded me of the day that I decided to go to that rehab like that one decision or that one moment where I was willing. And I picked up the phone and called my therapist and said I'm ready to change my life forever. Little moments like that. And I felt like I was having another one of those experiences and because I had that prior experience I knew how powerful they could be if I could hold on to that energy and leverage it immediately into some kind of action that would reframe my experience. 

AUBREY: When I was refreshing myself on the timeline of your story, preparing for this podcast and recognizing that it was 39 when this happened, this is a very inspirational and important thing for people to digest because there's a lot of people listening right now that are in what all kinds of ages, but I remember being 28 and I wasn't happy with what I was doing for my work. I was partying way too much then, probably close to some kind of addictive tendencies. Cause I was so dissatisfied with myself and telling myself, fucking Alexander, the great conquered the world at 25 and look at me, a piece of shit doing nothing at 28. But these are just the ways that the psyche works. And so many of us can think it's too late, or maybe we're out of shape and we're 35 and like, ah, it's too late to do anything, but it's not, and you hear stories like this all the time and we cannot hear enough of these stories if you were 39. You'd solved one problem with your addiction. You maybe had a few different talents. Like you said, in the swimming pool, you had a tendency to be able to outwork people. You had the ability to withstand some suffering. You learned a few skills, but you also took a lot of lumps along the way, a lot of hardships. It's not like you were coming with some extraordinary advantage from what you did there forward. We all similarly have our own challenges and our own strengths at any age. And if it wasn't 39, it could have been 45 or 50 or whatever. But at that age, then you made another choice. And then so much epic shit in your life has come forward after that.

RICH: And sort of looking at it, it feels like it all happened really quickly, but I am 54, it took a long fucking time, and painfully long when I was in the moment of it and in the pain of trying to figure it out. Even after some of the big successes, I've had major failures too, and it's not been a linear journey by any stretch. But yeah, it wasn't like I up, and quit my job, and just changed my life overnight. Like, it was a very slow process. But, yeah, it began with changing my relationship with food, 

AUBREY: Was that when you decided to go vegan? At that point? 

RICH: No, not right away. I mean, after that staircase incident I knew I needed to do rehab. I need to go to detox for lifestyle. You know what I mean? How can I create that in my life? I wasn't gonna go away again. But how can I have a version of that that will allow me to shut the laptop off and reboot the operating system. And the first couple of days, of course, like on the way to rehab, I drank the whole way. I showed up just sloshed and loaded and it took like three days for the cobwebs to clear and they put me in a shitty room with rubber sheets and the whole thing. And I was like, I need that. So how do I do that? Well, I was like, I'll do a seven day juice cleanse. Like I'd never done anything like that. Now everybody's doing them. I'm sure they were doing them before, but it seems much more in the zeitgeist than it was at that time. I'd never gone a single day without eating solid food. That seems hard. Like I needed to do something hard, like a challenge. And that was what I arrived upon. I didn't really give it that much thought. I was like, this will be hard. I'll do that. It'll be difficult. And it was. It was the first couple days. I'm sure you've done versions of this. 

AUBREY: First two days. 

RICH: Yeah, it's terrible. 

AUBREY: Brutal.

RICH: I was sweating and I'm lying. I was like, this is like what coming off of drugs is and I relish that suffering. I was like, I wanted it to be hard, but by the seventh day, as you know, like when everything clears. Even though you haven't eaten any food, you feel unbelievable. You have this crazy energy. 

AUBREY: For people who've never experienced it, it’s absolutely remarkable. You have no idea how good that feels. But you really do have to earn it. Because as good as you–

RICH: Like anything in life, you have to earn it.

AUBREY: Yeah. Right. So that must have been a really powerful moment for you to feel that for the first time, because that kind of fasting ketosis cleansed, your body is truly rested, the clarity of mind. That's the thing, right? That's just unbelievable. Like, what can't you do when you're that clear? That's what I think to myself. And still, I don't go back to it nearly enough now. I'm like, here's this glorious golden opportunity, I’ll do it later. 

RICH: But I don’t do it. I know. Yeah. It was a watershed moment and I just thought, I want to feel like this all the time. The alcoholic in me is like more. And I told my wife, I'm like, I'm just not going to eat food anymore. Like, why should I eat food? I feel better without eating food. She's like, yeah, call your sponsor. I don't think that's such a good idea, but that's what motivated me to find a way of eating that would approximate, for me, that experience of how I felt. And I tried a bunch of things and I would always lapse back into bad habits. And I went vegetarian for a while, but that quickly pivoted to pizzas without pepperoni on them or whatever. And I just felt as shitty as I ever had. And I was like, what can I do? And the one thing that I left last on the list was going 100% plant based because it just seemed so severe and restrictive. It wasn't appealing to me and it's not like I was driven towards it out of compassion or a sense of environmental responsibility or anything like that. But it was purely vanity and just wanting to personally see if I could find a way to feel better. I ultimately decided I would give it a try. And I had a friend who lives in Austin, actually Rip Esselstyn, who had been a swimmer at Texas and had been a professional triathlete, incredible swimmer, all American, became a firefighter. Had gotten some press and notoriety because he had a challenge in his firehouse, Engine 2 in Austin, where he had a bunch, they're all competitive. These firefighters, but they did a challenge to who could lower their cholesterol the most. And he started cooking in the firehouse. He's plant based. His dad's like a legendary doctor in the space. And by virtue of cooking healthy food for these guys they lowered their blood markers tremendously and that led to him writing a book. But the point I'm making is that he was a Facebook friend of mine at the time. We kind of grew up around the same time swimming and knew of each other and he was my first kind of point of contact. I was like, oh you're writing up. He was writing this book about this at the time and I was like tell me how you do this. 

AUBREY: That became a phenomenon that engines too.

RICH: Yeah. It's a big place. So he was like my first sort of person that I could look to was also an athlete who made it seem accessible and the truth for me personally and I'm just sharing my own personal experience. I'm not telling anybody how to live or eat. It agreed with me, in a really profound way. And I did feel very close to how I felt on that seventh day of that juice fast. And within seven to ten days of making that switch I just thought this is agreeing with me, and I got to learn more about how to do this because this seems to work for me. And that was fourteen years ago, at this point. So it took me about, I don't know, six or eight months after that cleanse of finally settling into that and I've just sort of been doing it ever since.

AUBREY: Yeah, just to touch on that, a little more briefly. People can sometimes get lost in the rules of the thing, but then you can play in the rules of a thing and totally make a mess of it. As you said vegetarian, you can go to Pizza Hut and eat Pizza Hut pizzas. You can go to Olive Garden and get some kind of Alfredo dish with whatever processed breadsticks and be like, yeah, I'm vegetarian. Well, you're not really doing anything good for yourself at all at that point.

RICH: And now there's so many meat and dairy analogs that are available. They're figuring out how to make that stuff taste good and it doesn't necessarily mean it's healthy. So you can very easily be a very unhealthy vegan. So it's about whole foods, it's about doing it right, it requires some education. I'm not perfect, I'll indulge in the vegan junk food.

AUBREY: Yeah, sure. 

RICH: And then convince myself that I'm being healthy, I do just like everybody else. 

AUBREY: Yeah, I think that's just that important lesson of follow your heart, listen to your body, but don't get so lost in the rules that, you're not actually paying attention to what you're doing for your body, I think that's just one of the things that I would recommend is really think about what you're eating and how close to the earth it is, how much nutrients are actually coming through this, how much other crap is in it. These are the very important things. Of course, there's the environmental debates and there's all these other debates and moral reasons and all of that. But all that aside, just really listen to what your body really wants, rather than what the rule book says about it. 

RICH: The powerful thing about the juice cleanse for me was that reboot. Like it's a tabula rasa, like you wipe the slate clean. You realize that your body is capable of feeling better than it typically does. If you're just eating shit all the time. You lose your connection with that. So you have to clean things up first before you can kind of calibrate that tuning fork, so that you can listen to your body and in a meaningful way. But yeah, I think you're exactly right. Try a bunch of shit, see what works for you, journal it, write it down. Like, Oh, an hour after I ate this thing, I felt like shit. When I eat this, I feel better. Okay. Noted. And just be in a perpetual state of refining that. 

AUBREY: And have the discipline to back up what. Because it's so funny what different bargains will make for a short little amount of mouth pleasure. Or some kind of social, like I try not to eat sugar desserts, but I'll be out to dinner with somebody and they'll want desserts and they'll hand out four spoons and it's like, I kind of want the bread pudding, but I don't really want the bread pudding, but I feel like there's four spoons and we're all doing it.

RICH: Yeah. But even more than that, I would say. I remember in early sobriety, people would talk about their food addiction or emotional eating. And I was like, what are you talking about? Like, I didn't understand that, but it wasn't until I've gone on this nutrition odyssey that I've become very attuned to the way in which my eating habits will mirror whatever I'm going through emotionally. And when you do that math and you realize like, Oh, I impulsively grabbed for this, right after I had the fight with my wife. What is the feeling inside of you that is so painful that you need to numb, that you're reaching out for some food product to ameliorate that and I think we all do that on some level.

AUBREY: That level of awareness is crucial. So you make this decision. And then at some point you started training, right? Because you went on to accomplish, and we'll talk a bit about this, some pretty incredible things in the ultra space, but at some point you had to decide, all right, if I can't make it up a stairs without getting winded, I got to start training. So like, what was that like? 

RICH: It was gradual also with the change in my nutrition, I had this resurgence of vitality. I suddenly had a ton more energy than I was used to. I'd be tapping my foot and my body wanted to move. And in that 10 year period after getting sober, I was just working, I wasn't taking care of myself. I wasn't training. Movement is such a big part of who I am and has brought me so much joy as a young person. I just had put that in the rear view mirror. Like that's what kids do. I'm an adult now. I don't do that anymore, but I couldn't ignore my body anymore. My wife was like, “will you please get out of the house? You're driving me crazy.” So yeah, I just started jogging a little bit and there's a pool near my house. I went and checked it out for the first time. I hadn't swam in years. My wife bought me a bike for my birthday and it was all very casual. It was a slow process of just reconnecting with my physical self and I had no aspirations of becoming a competitive athlete. I was just enjoying the process of recapturing that aspect of who I am and realizing like this epiphany that that brought me joy. And this commitment that I made to myself that I was going to honor that, no matter what. I like doing this. I know, I'm a lawyer and I'm supposed to be like this but I'm going to continue doing this because there's something very primal about this that is fundamentally who I am and I'm done ignoring it. But that just slowly started to build. I got fit pretty quick. I lost the weight really quickly. I was recovering really fast. And I'd never really been a runner, but my volume and my mileage was escalating really quickly. 

AUBREY: A vegan diet is typically very low information. Do you think that the lack of systemic inflammation from your diet helps you recover from post exercise inflammation? 

RICH: Huge. I mean, I think that's a big part of it, and there's a lot of ultra runners that are plant based. And I wouldn't say that eating a plant based diet fundamentally makes you a better athlete, but it is, if you're doing it correctly, it's very anti inflammatory. And as you know, recovery is everything. It's one thing to train really hard, but if you're not recovering properly, you're not able to repair your body and bounce back and do it again and again and again. The gains that you want to see are the result of the rapidity with which your body can do those repairs overnight so that you can train harder, you can go longer, you can go faster and all of that, like you're able to pack in a lot more quality training into a shorter period of time, which over the course of the season or a number of years is going to translate into, fundamentally more gains.

AUBREY: Yeah. So you went on to compete and you're competing in the open division with people of all ages. And when you're talking about some of your iron man competitions in the epic five challenge, which I want to get into. I mean, you're ranking with the best in the world in the top 10 of this, and you're not exactly in the age category of someone who's typically in the prime of their athletics.

RICH: I mean, I would say that in ultra endurance, there's a lot of older athletes. There's something about the human body's ability to continually improve endurance that isn't the case necessarily with speed and power and agility. So that probably played in my favor, but yeah, unusual for a guy to go, even though I had this swimming background and knew how to suffer and knew how to push myself, hadn't done it in a very long time. And then at 43, distinguishing myself in some pretty crazy, outrageous ultra endurance races. 

AUBREY: Tell us about that, the epic five, because that seemed like the craziest ones. 

RICH: Yeah. So leading up, prior to that, the race that I really honed in on and distinguished myself was a race called ultra man, which is a double iron man race. For people that don't know an iron man sort of accept it as the ultimate endurance challenge over the course of a day, you swim 2.4 miles, you race your bike 112, and then you run a marathon. This race is twice that distance, you circumnavigate the entire big island of Hawaii, but you do it in three days, so it's a three day stage race. The first day you swim 6.2 miles and ride your bike 90 miles ending up in Volcano National Park, so there's tons of elevation gain. 

AUBREY: It's a long swim. 

RICH: Yeah, it's a long swim. But it's the one triathlon where swimming actually makes a difference and swimming is my strength. So I was able to just crush everyone on the swim and get out 10 minutes ahead of everybody and just be looking behind myself the whole time because I'm a very average cyclist. The second day is 171 miles on the bike. And then the third day is a double marathon run 54.2. So I did, I got six in that race, the world championship race. I got six in that race in 2009. And then a year later I did this thing called Epic five, which wasn't a race, it was an adventure that my friend Jason Lester concocted, and the attempt was to do five Ironmans on all five Hawaiian islands in five days. And we just set about doing it ourselves. We had a couple people helping us out, but it was very much a DIY homespun thing. We ran into all kinds of crazy logistical challenges with bikes breaking and luggage getting lost and because you got to finish by a certain time to get the plane.

AUBREY: Amazing race. 

RICH: Yeah, it's kind of like that. It was super hard and crazy and wild and fun. And we didn't end up doing it in five days. We ended up doing it in like six and change, but we got it done. 

AUBREY: For most, for people who don't realize, like most people run just a marathon. And a lot of times they get a cold or they get sick afterwards and they recovering deeply for days or a week or however long after one of these things. An Ironman is particularly considered the gold standard of this, because not only are you doing a marathon, you're also doing the swim and you're also doing the bike. And it was like, “Whoa.” But then you were doing double that and then over the course, and then you're like, ah, screw it. Let's do five of them and figure it out. It's hard to fathom for people who haven't been exposed to that or haven't participated. I've never done it. I've just spoken to a lot of people who have and understand it. And so I don't know experientially, but to even try to grasp that, it's like, Whoa, this is something else. It's very difficult for someone who hasn't experienced something like that to really get it. What an accomplishment that is. 

RICH: Yeah, it's some time has passed, like I haven't raced in a couple years now. So I feel like I have a little bit more perspective on it now. And what's cool is that there's always people out doing crazier stuff. So I'll always minimize. I'm like, yeah, I did that. But like this other guy did this other thing. And so just honoring that and being like, yeah, I did that. That was really fucking cool. But I think that the way it works is like the frog in the water that gets a little bit hotter and hotter and hotter until it's boiling. Laird Hamilton doesn't just drop in on jaws. He's surfing waves his whole life and they're getting bigger very slowly and incrementally until he's totally comfortable dropping in on the biggest wave in the world. In ultra endurance you're just kind of slowly acclimating to greater and greater volume until it suddenly feels normal. So as outlandish as it sounds and intimidating and as scary as it was, the prospect of attempting that, I'd done enough where I felt like we could probably do that. But that only comes from putting in the time and the experiences that you garner and the fitness that you accumulate through many years of training. I mean, when I was training for those things, I mean, it was a job, I was training like 20, 25 hours a week. And when you're not training, you're doing all the recovery stuff and the nutrition stuff and taking care of all the little details and all the logistics and all that kind of stuff. So it was sort of all consuming. 

AUBREY: When you are telling yourself that you gotta keep going, you need to suffer more. Because this is about suffering tolerance, ultimately. Whether you're talking to Lance Armstrong or talking to someone like yourself, you have to coach yourself. You have to be a good coach to yourself in this process. Because it is very much mental. What's your kind of inner monologue as the inner coach of yourself in these points where you need to push yourself through the suffering? 

RICH: For me it's all about being present and comfortable with the discomfort. I think if you get caught up in, I gotta make it to here or I'm thinking about some destination, then it detracts from your ability to get there because you can't get there if you're not anchored in the moment that you're actually in. And I think what happens is time becomes very malleable, like if I'm doing an eight hour ride and you're in this suffering state of mind you're not used to that. It's gonna feel like an eternity. But when you build up to it, like suddenly an eight hour ride feels like a two hour ride. So there is a weird thing that happens with that that I think any endurance athlete would recognize. But for me, it's always bringing myself back to the present moment and not trying to run away from it or distract myself from it.

AUBREY: That's good advice. 

RICH: And I think back to the piece about solving this existential kind of crisis that I was having. Like the suffering is, for me, it was necessary, but it was also this amazing teacher because when you're at that point where you feel like you can't go any further, you can't lie to yourself, like there's ultimate truth to be mined in who you are, like that is when character is revealed, like who are you actually, are you able to go a little bit farther, or are you the guy who pussies out and tells everyone you actually did something that you didn't do. All of that percolates to the surface and those were the things that I was trying to figure out for myself. It's like Kali, you gotta burn. You gotta burn in order to emerge. Carrying a different type of frequency and for me there was no shortcut to that. There was no end run around that and I think there was something that I relished about that. That I missed because my life is busy now and I have lots of responsibilities and I do lots of other things. So I'm not able to kind of connect with that part of me in the way that I was doing at that time. But it was a very powerful teacher.

AUBREY: The surrender to the discomfort is so important in all different things. Of course, in a workout, physical activity is a great way to practice this universal life skill, but it could be anything. It could be that you're tired. And if you're tired and you have that fatigue kind of setting in and you have to keep staying alert or awake or working or something, you can be constantly reaching for the next stimulant, coffee, nicotine, whatever, and then thinking about how long you have and then obsessing about all these future things and all these solutions. Or you can just get into this deep acceptance of this is how I feel. Okay. And really be there with it. And then it loses the edge and the gravity to it. Same with physical pain or any discomfort or anything that you're uncomfortable with. A conversation that is uncomfortable or whatever it is. If you can really just get back into the present without allowing your mind to jump to all of these other places, like you're talking about, then so much of the difficulty collapses. 

RICH: Right. Because you project all this meaning onto it. But if you can just be with it, you realize, oh, it's not going to kill me. I thought it was going to kill me. I was so desperate to run away from this, but actually just being in it isn't as bad as I feared. And it always changes. Like it's always in flux. There's nothing static about life, and there's certainly nothing static about whatever emotion you're experiencing.

AUBREY: And apply it to, let's say someone's inspired after hearing us talk to do a juice cleanse. Alright, like embrace it. Don't be thinking about when you're going to get to eat. I mean, although it is sometimes hard to stop the food fantasies from coming. Or when that comes 

RICH: Or when that comes up, like deconstruct it. Like, wow, that's interesting. How can I be curious about that rather than just obsessive about it? 

AUBREY: Yeah. And just be in the moment of the thing that you're going through and the time will pass. Like you're able to do that. All of us have so much more capability than we think we do. It's inherent. It's not like you have superpowers. You've just accessed something that we all have available to us. 

RICH: And I'm the first one to say, and I say it all the time, like I am not a talented athlete. I'm just not, like I'm pretty average. But if I have a talent, it's that I’m willing to suffer. And maybe I'm willing to suffer a little bit more than the other guy, but I don't have any kind of crazy athletic gifts. 

AUBREY: You went on from that to now have one of the most successful podcasts in the world, different set of skills, different requirements. What do you think has been some of the attributes, mindset, some of the understanding of yourself that's allowed you to experience success in this field that's just continued to grow as well as you've continued to grow within it. 

RICH: Yeah, I don't know. It's a good question. I mean, people ask me that a lot. I think, well, first and foremost, I've been doing it for a long time. I started in 2012. When did you start? Shortly thereafter, right? 

AUBREY: Yeah, I was pretty inconsistent for a while. I think I got consistent around 2016. But yeah, I started around then too. But it was just like a show every four to six weeks, something like that.

RICH: Yeah, so I started when stakes were lower. So I was doing shows when the audience was a fraction of what it is now. So, I did my reps, I put in the time to learn how to be a better listener and to learn how to think more deeply about the people that I'm sitting across from and learn how to curate the experience that I want to share with audiences. But I think the thing that has been really helpful is being in 12 steps. Like I've sat in thousands of meetings and born, witnessed people get up and bear their soul and tell their story and share their pain and do it with such courage and authenticity and raw vulnerability. And it never ceases to amaze me. And through that same container, I've learned how to do the same myself and gotten comfortable sharing things that a lot of people are too afraid to share about their truth. And there's something so powerful about that. So part of the spark or the original Genesis in doing a podcast was I wanted to be able to share that type of experience with a broader audience. Like it doesn't have to be an AA meeting, but I wanted to create a space where I could help people feel comfortable sharing their emotional truth in a vulnerable way. And I've learned to do that by leading with vulnerability, you can't expect somebody else to. Share that if you're not willing to do it yourself and to create a safe container for people to do that. So I think that's a big piece with it. And I think that's why you see a lot of successful podcasters who are in recovery. Like I think that's a big reason why Dax Shepard is so successful and so good at what he does. Because he comes from that tradition and he understands that peace. But there's a lot of people in recovery who are podcasts. Because you're just around people who are so comfortable sharing at a deeper level than you typically experience in your day to day interactions. 

AUBREY: And this is part of a practice that I've been in, in the medicine spaces that I've been a part of, whether it's an ayahuasca circle or whether it's something that I'm cultivating in the fellowship that I lead Fit For Service, or a men's group where people are sharing similarly. This is really important to be able to, as you say, bear witness, hold space, see somebody and then allow yourself to be seen.

RICH: And it gives everybody else permission to indulge that part of who they are in a way that maybe they're not getting in their daily lives. And when I look at you, Aubrey, I think your talent and your superpower is this unique facility that you have to merge, the traditional masculine being like a relatively alpha guy yourself. With this deep love and appreciation for the mystical, which is, traditionally considered the purview of the feminine or the flaky version of the male and recalibrating that and giving it a new language and giving other men the permission to have their exploration with that because, to me, and I think we're aligned on this, my spiritual life is the most important thing and for a lot of guys, like they're just not comfortable talking about that or there's a lot of trepidation around that or uncertainty or it doesn't feel safe for them. And I feel like you give men permission to explore that in a way. And I think that's really powerful. 

AUBREY: I appreciate that. And I think it's essential if we're locked and restricted in some way from the full expression of who we are, because yeah, we are physical beings and it's nice to go out there, swing some kettlebells and go sparring, do whatever you want to do. Roll jujitsu, whatever that expression is. Like I celebrate that, but if you don't also celebrate our spiritual access and potential, man, you're missing out on a big part of life or vice versa, if you're just focused on spirit, but you've never seen what this amazing body is capable of when you just allow it to push a little bit, it's just kind of a tragedy to only be able to experience one side of it or let's say your emotional depth. If you ever really allowed yourself to sob or break down in awe of life, like if you haven't experienced that, come on, that's what we're here for. 

RICH: But when I was 28 years old and had this very limited view of what success looked like and what it meant to be a man. My sense was you're one thing like if you can't be both of those things, you can't be an athlete and an artist. You can't be a strong man and a sensitive man. And I think it's important, to really throw that out the window and provide tools for people to realize that we're dynamic, complicated people that are multi faceted and fucking multi dimensional, man.

AUBREY: Yeah, exactly. And as much as I've dedicated myself to all this, I'm still messing stuff up constantly. I still have my own struggles and my own challenges. I think it's also a big disservice when people project some image of perfection, like, Aha, look at me, I've got shit figured out. Alright, I got some shit figured out. Hooray, but there's always more shit. There's always other stuff that's there.

RICH:  Yeah. There's a lot of that in the podcast space. 

AUBREY: Yeah, for sure. 

RICH: Let me tell you how you need to do it. That's another thing I've learned in recovery. Like you don't give advice, you share your experience. And when you asked me about tools that I've learned to be a better host. It's always about sharing experience and not trying to tell people how to live or give advice specifically. And you do that through storytelling. And in order to tell a story that's going to resonate with people, you've got to figure out a way to connect with them emotionally. So leading with a heart and figuring out how to connect with another human being. Which is why during COVID the Zoom thing, man, I need to be with that person. I need to read the energy, I need to figure out what's the way in how can I really lock in on this human being? Figure out how to extract the nuggets. Whatever information they have to impart, whatever tools or whatever that's secondary. First has to come the connection, because if you don't have that, then the information doesn't land or it doesn't stay with the person who's experiencing the conversation.  

AUBREY: That's the thing when I'm getting interviewed. I can always feel when someone's really there with me or when they have 23 questions and I've given them 60 minutes and they're going to just plow through those things, regardless of what happens. 

RICH: You answer and then they go, awesome. 

AUBREY: Exactly. That's brutal. And also the ones that are trying to find little unexplored areas. And this is for friendships, even if you're not a podcast host, like just when you're getting to know people, have curiosity. One of my favorite people to spend time with is my friend, Aaron Alexander. You might know him from, 

RICH: I know who he is.

AUBREY: Yeah. But he always finds a way to ask a question just to me when we're hanging out, he's also a podcaster, but he'll find a way to ask something about me that I haven't thought about or haven't answered in a little while. And so we'll get to know each other a little better and I'll try to return the favor or he'll challenge something that I've just taken for granted. And I'll be like, you sure about that? And I'm like, Well, no, actually I'm not anymore. I was at some point. Let me go look, and that's a real gift.

RICH: You need people like that in your life. 

AUBREY: Yeah. It's essential. Well, this has been a pleasure to reconnect with you and inspiring for me. I think we can all let our own self limiting beliefs about age or beliefs about where we are, what we've done or what we're capable of. Just be that voice of resistance that keeps us from doing the next best thing. And I'm 40 years old now and some part of me is like, ah, the athletic stuff, it's still fun, but there's nothing really that I can do now, that's not true. There's always something else that I wanted. 

RICH: My athletic year was 43.

AUBREY: And that's cool. It's cool to think maybe I will, maybe I won't, but to just remove that possibility of saying, Oh no, it's not possible anymore. Let's just take that off and say like, whatever you want to do, man. Like there's a chance, there's an opportunity. 

RICH: Yeah, man. I mean, if I've learned anything, it's that it's never too late and that journey of self discovery is always just sitting out there waiting for you to tap on it. And I continue to mind that I'm full of all kinds of character defects and problems, but at 54, I feel like I'm just starting, man. And it's so silly and dumb to say. Age is just a number, but I've stayed young. My peers are all much younger than me, and then I'll be like, Oh yeah, like our age. And they're looking at me like, dude, you're old. But I thought when I was 40, that was all shit. And when I was playing around with nutrition and thought, well, maybe I'm just supposed to feel like shit I'm 40 now. And you get into this mindset of resignation. So it's just about summoning that energy and realizing that there's so much capability that resides within all of us. And like yourself, I've had the privilege of sitting across from so many people who've done extraordinary things and you see the humanity and all of them and we project this superhero quality on all these people, but they're all just human beings who had a dream and worked hard to achieve it. And it's inspiring to really own and grasp the idea that we're all sitting on top of deep reservoirs of potential that remain untapped. And our job is to figure out how to authentically connect with that voice. That is telling us to unlock something and share it with the world. And if you can do that and then share that story and tie it in some way to service as a teacher or in some way that can inspire other people or pave the way for a better world. I mean, that to me is the recipe for a good purpose driven, fulfilling life. 

AUBREY: Indeed. Well, thank you for being an inspiration. Thank you for your amazing show. I don't get time to listen to a lot of other different shows, but every time I've dove in to check out your show, I've been deeply grateful for that experience. So I encourage everybody who's watching now. 

RICH: Thanks, man. 

AUBREY: Check out the show. 

RICH: I really appreciate it and honored to be here with you today and love what you're doing and I'm at your service.

AUBREY: Beautiful, my man. Thank you so much, everybody, for tuning in. Thank you, Ryan, as always.