ROLL ON: The State of Podcasting In 2025 | The Rich Roll Podcast

Hey, everybody, Roland is back and it's coming right up.

But first. After hosting more than 900 episodes of this podcast, I have noticed a pattern.

And that pattern is that the highest performers don't buy into the latest trendy hacks.

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I'm just happy to have you here. I'm happy to be here.

Are you doing okay? I'm doing great. What's happening?

Oh, we've started. We are rolling. You know what?

A big moment happened a couple of weeks ago.

I wanted to tell you about, was out with Zuma.

You know, we do our breakfast bros. It's usually a Saturday or a Sunday.

It's going to be tomorrow for this week.

And he is how old now? He's going to be five on the 29th of August.

And so we went and he had to pee. And so we went into a public restroom This one had urinals, one little guy urinal and one big guy urinal right next to each other.

And so our first time ever, peeing in the urinals next to each other.

And it felt like a moment. It felt like a bit of a moment.

This concludes Skolnick's Corner. Rights of passage for healthy masculinity.

Locked. Yeah. This is a portal into the manosphere for you.

I can see it all unfolding. This is gonna be where it goes.

Yeah. Yeah. to your new thing? There I was looking over and we were having a conversation.

We were breaking the rules, you know, talking, he was laughing.

He thought it was so funny. I mean, come on.

I'm still in like the very fun moments of parenthood.

It's cool, man. Awesome, dude. Well, it's good to be back with you.

It's been a minute since we've done a roll on and we are appropriately showing up. to serve the passionate role on audience out there.

The small but very loyal roll on audience.

Size doesn't matter, Rich. No, it doesn't.

It's potency. Yeah. Did you notice the t-shirt that I'm wearing?

Do you see what that says? It says Stutz.

It says Stutz. Yes. Yes. Shout out to my friend, Jamie Rose, who gave me this as a gift recently.

She was wearing it at this book release party that I went to for Phil Stutz for his latest book.

And it sort of like has this Marvel overtones to it.

Like, you know what I mean? It does, it does. like a Batman kind of logo for this guy.

So I wanted to rock it today in honor of the great Phil Stutz.

I'm still wearing, The band that he gave me around my wrist, that reminds me of the Three Truths.

Do you remember what the Three Truths are?

Yes. Three Truths. I do. You're on the spot.

I'm on the spot. Can you read this far? Because you could probably see it.

Yeah, hard work. You can never get away from hard work.

Unavoidable truths of life. Yes. Suffering.

Starts with pain. A pain. Yeah. Pain is unavoidable.

Yeah. There will always be a need for constant work.

Yeah, constant work. And what's the third?

Life is uncertain, Adam. Uncertainty. But there's one thing for sure, which is that roll on must continue.

And here we are. Here we are. I can't believe – this is the problem with – this is another problem of parenthood is that you can't remember –

These kinds of things, they don't come to the front.

They don't come to the front of mind as quickly.

But yes, I know Phil Stutz three truths.

Yes, you just got back from Alaska. I did.

We can talk a little bit about that. I'm now past. the initial 90 days since my spinal fusion surgery.

So we can bring you up to speed on what that's been like. celebrated 22 years of being married as well as my wife's birthday the other week.

So yeah, three anniversaries, my wife's, birthday, our wedding and the anniversary, the three month anniversary of my surgery.

Holy shit. Yeah. Do you celebrate anniversary surgery?

Is surgery anniversary a thing? I don't know.

I'm making it a thing. You're making it a thing?

You gotta ritualize these goalposts. But they're 90 days, so you're at 90 days. days.

Let's go there first. The 90 days, is that like a signpost on the road to recovery usually with this kind of surgery?

It's the first... kind of major signpost in that you're emerging out of the very acute phase of the healing and into a more rehabilitative phase.

To date, I haven't even started PT. That 90 day mark was my permission to no longer have to wear a back brace every single day.

So I've liberated myself from that. I had an appointment the other week where they took x-rays and the surgeon looked at it and he said, and it's moving along and healing nicely.

But still, I'm in the very early stages of the fusion of it, like these bones are only starting to kind of grow together and there's a long way to go before that is completely locked in.

At least I have the green light to begin PT.

He told me he was gonna refer me, on that referral yet.

So I haven't really been doing anything except what I have been doing, which is walking and, of taking things very gently and lightly and still like feeling a little bit better, not as tired in the afternoons, like I can handle a little, a little bit more on the work front, but still fragile, still feeling weirdly uncomfortable, still,

You're not supposed to bend or twist or lean or all those sorts of things.

Yeah, it's been a massive test of patience.

I know there was a lot of people out there who were enjoying the walks that I was doing.

I'm one of them. It's like, weirdly, that was like a very popular thing, much to my surprise.

And then I just completely stopped doing it.

Did you stop doing the walks? I haven't been doing the walks as rigorously and as regularly as I was at least in the morning in that way, because I've been, using this time to advance the book project that I'm working on. pretty immersed in right now.

And my special creative time is in the morning, so I wanna capture that.

And so those walks and the other kind of nominal, the nominal amount of exercise that I'm doing is a little bit later.

But also the whole point of those is to, I keep talking about like, okay, well, this is the opportunity where you're forced to like be still with yourself. and to pay attention and to be present and to lean into the lessons and the opportunity this unique moment that I find myself in is making available to me.

And when I'm thinking about like, how am I capturing this to share it?

I'm completely out here. of that experience altogether.

I'm thinking about like, okay, should I film this?

And where's a good photo? And that's all that's occupying my mind. which is fun. in terms of like sharing the experience with other people, but it comes at the cost of what the whole endeavor is supposed to be about.

So I kind of stopped doing that, although maybe I'll, start doing it once in a while because people seem to enjoy it.

But I am still making sure that I'm getting my steps in and doing my meditation and really honoring um, the uniqueness of this experience that has forced me to basically stop everything.

And it's very uncomfortable, and it requires a tremendous amount of Patience that I don't always have, but it's forcing me to practice all of these principles that I talk about all the time. you can't train where you think you should be, or you feel like you used to be, you have to train where you're at.

And where I'm at right now is basically like ground zero.

And as much as I talk about the present moment being the, a place where all answers seem to reside.

I nonetheless am, you know, always looking for the escape hatch to distract myself.

And just noticing that in and of itself has been interesting and trying to bring myself back into the present moment. to sit with the discomfort of not being able to do the things that make me feel like who I am and knowing that It's our resistance to being present, to declining distractions, that always reveals the teachable moments that are lying in wait, if we're courageous enough to sit with that discomfort and lean into what those lessons might be. you gotta just do what you can with what you have.

And when I don't have much in terms of my physical capacity, it's definitely a sense of being limited, but also this understanding that I'm being prepared for something better.

I can't get back to doing what I love doing unless I really am patient with the moment that I'm in right now.

And I sort of been thinking about this in the context of the caterpillar becoming the butterfly and how Alexi Pappas says, you have to, you know, it's not like a transition from one to the other.

You have to the caterpillar has to be completely dissolved into a goo.

She calls it the glop, right? Like you have to go into your glop state before you can emerge into something else and be transformed by the experience. or Chip Conley calls it the chrysalis, right?

I mean, that's what it is, it's this chrysalis.

And really paying attention and honoring like, these transitions in life, but also my spin on it, this is my big like insight. which is that the caterpillar cannot become the butterfly unless it inhabits the mind of the tortoise first.

Okay, that's a mixed metaphor, but I like it.

I know, I'm using many animals here. But the caterpillar can't hair its way to the butterfly.

It has to, you know, adopt the mindset of the tortoise and take these things slow, I guess is what I'm saying.

Like slow and steady, patience. things I've always promoted, I try to live by, but now I'm kind of being forced to live at a whole entirely like new level.

Yeah. conjures all these questions around identity.

Like, who am I? Like, am I an athlete? Like, not right now I'm not, you know? a different kind of athlete, I suppose.

Am I a podcaster? Am I a writer? Are you a father?

Are you a husband, Adam? Like, yeah, we're all of these things, but we're also, none of these things and so much more.

And what happens when you kind of release your grip on this idea you have of yourself and who you think you are and how you hold yourself out to the world and how you would prefer to be perceived. relinquish like all of your energy around that you know what happens then like you're in this state of deeper surrender that makes space for something new, something more capacious, I suppose.

So that's a little bit about this exploration that I've been on, which is cool.

And it's like, you were talking to me earlier about this clip that I posted or that my team posted from a podcast that I did with Mike Gervais a while back where I was talking about these phases of life in which we find ourselves dismantled and how it's like, congratulations, like this is your opportunity, right?

Like this is where all the genius juice is to you know take the experience, learn from it and build upon it to emerge transformed as a consequence of that. taking that idea and layering it on top of like where I'm at right now, instead of like resenting the situation or trying to, emerge from it as quickly as possible instead to just like allow myself to, to completely be in it without resisting it.

And it's different, it's been a different experience.

I've got the expanded waistline to prove it.

It's like my pants aren't fitting so well these days.

You know, it's like, oh, that's interesting.

Right. You know. how long is it gonna take me at 58 to get rid of that?

Probably a little bit longer than it did 15 years ago.

But this is the reality that I'm in right now.

But I'm excited to start the PT and have something to... sink my teeth into that will distract me from the experience that I'm in.

Two questions. One is just I know you've some of the walks you've been doing pool walks, too.

Is that easier? Is that do you find that you can go longer on the in the pool?

I can go as long as... I can go long. That's not the limiter.

The limiter is like... what's hard is doing less than what you feel like you're capable of doing.

It's like, okay, you've done enough. The idea isn't to walk a mile longer than you did the day before. every single day until you're walking 30 miles.

This is not what we're doing right now. I could do that.

I wanna do that. but that's missing the point.

So yeah, I can do the pool walking and it's cool because you get a little bit more resistance any kind of strain on the lower back or any of that.

I would admit to doing a little bit of swimming and kicking in the pool just to see how it feels, which is nice.

So anyway. Enough on that. Enough on that.

When you feel the urge to escape and try to distract yourself, where do you go?

I go immediately to Netflix. I've watched a lot of stuff.

Yeah. Just to get your mind off it. I mean, I've plenty of work to do, so I can be a workaholic in the midst of all of this and I would plead guilty to indulging that. when you have a book deadline looming.

It's interesting what you said about the relinquishing because I was listening to my favorite mindfulness guy, Jack Kornfield from like some 1992 talk.

And he was referencing one of his teachers, And the subject was Nirvana.

I'm wearing the Kurt shirt. And the description of Nirvana, we think of Nirvana as the goal, like this enlightenment, boom.

You're a fully realized being. You have ultimate equanimity.

You have reached. you have reached the spiritual Jedi phase.

But in reality, There's moments of nirvana every day, and it's in the relinquishing of the grip.

It's in the letting go. and that feeling you have, it's after running hard and then you stop running and the running high hits you, it's in that moment, it's like, It's like we all have these moments of nirvana.

We just don't label it that way. And this is what these guys were saying, Buddhist scholars and people who've been pursuing this for years by that point.

And I just thought that's an interesting way of putting it in like the little moments of Nirvana we have in our day, because there's like, There's multiple things happening all the time.

There's the big tragic comedy that we're all immersed in and it feels very tragic a lot of times.

There's the stuff we're dealing with on our own plate, which can be at turn stressful or fun or whatever.

And then there's the real subtext, which is what you were saying were all of these things and to let go. in the course of your day, maybe 10, 12 times, you have these moments of nirvana and just to kind of focus on those and give them a little attention,

I found that that's a pretty cool experience.

So it just made me think what you were saying.

Yeah, I mean, those experiences happen before we have the, the mental acuity to label them as good or bad.

And we do that in retrospect. And I think to the extent that we can recede into the background and have it a more present state of awareness, we make ourselves available for those experiences. because it's our compulsion to rush in and slap a sticker on it and say it's this or that. that takes us out of the experience itself and robs us of the opportunity that's available to inhabit our lives from a more, I'm not saying like a perpetual state of nirvana, but to make ourselves available for those experiences when they arise.

Absolutely. The analysis paralysis. Did you have these experiences or an experience like that while inhabiting the vastness of Alaska watching-

Watching grizzly bears chomp down on salmon swimming upstream.

Alaska, man. Well, you know, Julie's homeland. where she emerged, the legend that she is.

Our first time in Alaska, it was, I know I'll be back.

I knew I was gonna love it. I knew we were all gonna love it.

It just felt... It recalls the same feelings you have in Hawaii and the Pacific Islands.

There's something about it. There's a frontier aspect.

There's a cultural kind of kinship there. with those places.

And there's actually a lot of travel between those places.

It's the last frontier. And we were only there for like a week.

A good friend of mine, Leah Barrett, who's an underwater photographer that got me into covering freediving, lives there now with her husband, Rob, and their kids, Mako and Tiger.

And so I'd never met her kids. She'd never met Zuma.

And so we... we've been talking about how to get the families together.

And finally they just moved back there for a job Rob got.

And so we just said, hey, we're coming. And so we stayed with them in Anchorage for a few days.

We did the float mate, float plane trip to, um, Katmai national park where the grizzlies that, that waterfall Brooks falls where the, where that famous picture of the grizzly, uh, just about to, I know you sent me that video and I was like, oh, that's exactly like that image that I've seen.

Like that actually is happening in real time in real life.

Dude, it was amazing. It was like. But it's funny when you do the day trip from Anchorage, you're like, wow, you can just do a day trip and go see these animals because we It was too late.

By the time we decided to do this trip, it was only a couple months ago.

So it was too late to like stay the night there or get any sort of lodging in the national park.

That stuff's like lottery two years in advance.

And so we just did the day trip, but then you get there, Like there was fog in the morning.

So we got a little bit delayed. Then we got there and you have to go to something called bear school.

So like a 30 minute primer from the national park to teach you what to do. and then you have to immediately eat because otherwise you won't eat.

And then you finally get on the trails and we had about five hours while in the park itself. and immediately you walk out.

Your whole concern is, are we gonna go there, spend all this money, take all this time and then see no bears?

Like that's what you're worried about. trails there's bears you know there's bears everywhere grizzly bears and so from the first lookout we watched some grizzly bears play and i let you know April's the photographer.

I mean, she's got the gear. She's got the eye.

She's got it all. She's very skilled. And so the whole thing was you go and Zoom and I had our own little experience.

And so it was fun. I'm just cruising the trails with Zuma.

And then finally we caught up to her because she's shooting a lot of photos.

And then we hit the falls and we saw everything.

We saw about eight bears. One crossed the path, like, 60 feet from us or 50 feet from us, just like the trail in front of us.

And so that was pretty fun. Our bear school kind of kicked in and I picked up Zuma and we just kind of Stayed quiet and let it pass.

Are they just unperturbed by human observation?

They seem it, they seem it. You know, if you probably asked them, they'd be like, man, get these, they're like mosquitoes, get these people out of here, you know? but they seem fine.

Like there didn't seem to be anything and like nobody's got weapons around.

They've got, the rangers have bear spray.

Yeah, spray. Yeah, and maybe some of them have sidearms, but for the most part, it's a very low stress, low concern thing.

The big concern. is if you don't do what they advise and you just stay in the trail and the bear is right there, the bear will just lay down and won't move for two hours and then nobody gets their plane and nobody leaves. leaves the park.

It's a big problem. To stand off. That's the big concern.

It wasn't like attack. Attack was never a concern.

And also make sure the food's out of the cabins and things like the normal stuff so that they don't just break in and associate food with people.

And so that's the main thing. But with this much salmon, I mean, the river was red.

I mean, with this much salmon... Right now, there's no concern, there's food everywhere.

And so that was fun. And then we went down to a place called Between Beaches, which is on a spit about four hours south of Anchorage.

Then you catch a boat to some place called McDonald's Spit in the Seldovia region.

And it's like this little spit of sand and rock and both sides there's a beach on the lagoon side and there's a beach there's a beach on the ocean side and it's just magnificent like you know snowy peaks and and bald eagles everywhere.

And it just was like magnificent. Did you get your cold water immersion?

I did. There is free diving in Alaska and I brought my fin and mask and my fin bag with me the whole time.

Like I'm carrying, like we do not travel light.

We had a guitar, we had my Finn bag, we had everything.

And so we got in, I got in, The viz was terrible, but I'm used to bad viz.

It was warmer than I thought. It was warmer than like the Oregon coast that summer I dove there.

So it was like 49 degrees at depth. Fahrenheit, but it was a blast.

Hung out with Alaska Free Diver. There's a new... a shop in Seldovia, shout out Chris and Amelia.

Chris took me out and had a great time. And so it was just, It was epic.

We're going to be back. And Between Beaches is a great spot.

Highly recommend for people who are looking for a remote kind of cabin on a beach in Alaska.

I'm looking for this new goggle that Speedo recently came out with.

I saw... an image of it on the internet and I'm trying to find it right now.

I was gonna send it to you and I forgot and I can't find it now, but maybe we can insert it. into this video later.

I need to see it. But the reason is that it's sort of a hybrid in between a scuba diving mask and actual goggles.

It's like goggles, but it has these that kind of go over your thing.

And I was like, oh, this is the compromise that Skolnick and I have been looking for.

Well, you need the nose, though, or you can't dive.

Yeah, it doesn't have the nose thing. Right, so then you can't dive.

So you won't even consider this, even for swimming.

Even though you don't need your nose to be covered.

No, for swimming, I have goggles. I have goggles.

Okay. I thought the whole thing was you insist on these masks when, you know, you should be wearing goggles because...

This is the etiquette, Adam. These are the rules.

My problem is I can't swim without trying to dive.

That's my problem. But yeah, no, it was a blast.

It was a good time. And Leah, like... fish to halibut off a paddleboard, which was pretty incredible.

Wow. So yeah, she's become a full on Alaskan.

You're picking berries, salmon berries and blueberries fresh off the bush.

You know, I'm boring people who've been to Alaska who know how great it is, but love it there.

And we'll be back. Been a while since I've been there.

Yes, Julie grew up there. She's got crazy stories. of living there, being a kid.

In the 70s. Yeah, latchkey situation, you know, and her and her friends are, you know, on a glacier with like and just a can with a rattle in it.

And that's basically it. And there's crevasses everywhere.

And it's just like amazing. Amazing. like they survived and people would die all the time.

Yeah, people did die. You know, like, is it just like a habit? the thing that happened like all the time because nature is so uncompromising and, So, you know, gigantic.

And apparently like the beaches off Anchorage, it's like they look like sand, but it's mud flats.

And so if you go down to the mud flats and try to like get in, you could get stuck there and the tide could come in and just suck you.

It'd be like the slow death of your nightmares.

And so like you, you see this water, it's flat and it looks amazing and inviting.

And it's like, do not go there. And there's no signs or anything, like any tourist could end up getting stuck.

But apparently there are stories in the newspaper, so-and-so stuck in the mud flats.

Are you old enough to remember when we were kids and it was just all about quicksand?

We would talk about quicksand all the time.

There was an obsession with quicksand and people dying in quicksand.

Yes. And then that just... went away at some point and people don't talk about that anymore.

But when I was 12, I can tell you. That was your phobia?

There was a conversation happening amongst my peers, my age group around quicksand.

Yes. the different ways to die. As you grow older, you learn more and more ways it could happen.

So I constantly find myself in this situation, a situation I suspect many of you can relate to, where almost every day it seems I'm being pulled in a thousand directions.

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All right. Let's talk about, well, first of all, this week we put up a podcast with Dr. Jessica Nurek.

I mean, it's Monday morning when we're recording this, this podcast that you're listening to or watching will go up on Thursday, but it's been cool to see this guest. be embraced by the audience somewhat somewhat of a, you know, controversial conversation that we have around the state of the Make America Healthy Again movement. which I felt compelled to have with her and I'm glad that I did and it's been,

Nice to see her message embraced right now.

Substack article that I published right before we started recording with some thoughts on that conversation. and kind of what's going on generally with the Make America Healthy Again movement and what is actually going on behind the scenes with those who hold power and the impact and implications of how that power is being used and leveraged. mostly in the context of deregulation in ways that are actually undermining any good faith attempt to actually make America healthy, setting aside the again part, which is debatable.

But anyway, I think it feels good to kind of take a stand on that. understanding that it might be divisive or controversial.

And it also feels good to begin to share thoughts on Substack because we're in the process of Really looking at how we can use and leverage Substack for the benefit of the community.

I think it's a really powerful and super cool and also very intuitive tool. platform that we really haven't been taking advantage of.

And I recently participated in this thing that Elizabeth Gilbert has on Substack.

She was a guest a while back on the podcast.

We still haven't. published that episode, but she has a thing called Letters From Love.

And she's developed this community of over 200,000 people.

And what she's doing is encouraging her community to practice this thing that she's been practicing for a long time, which is to write a daily letter to herself from this perspective of love.

Like, you know, dear love, what would you have me learn today as a prompt, right?

Yes. And it's an exercise in self-love and in kind of honoring yourself and showing yourself gratitude.

And she, every week, invites somebody to perform this exercise, write a letter, share that letter with her community and kind of make a video where they read it.

And she asked me to do it and I did it the other week.

And it's a confronting exercise for somebody who is challenged with the idea of self-love, which was kind of the subject of the letter that I wrote to myself and shared.

But it was cool, but I think even more cool than that was to see the engagement of her community around this one idea and it led us to thinking about what our version of that might look like, because I think the real benefit of Substack is the way in which you can cultivate community, which is something I've been thinking a lot about in the broader kind of context of podcasting itself and what I want to do with it as somebody who's been doing it for a long time. because it's changed quite a bit since I began. the humble beginnings where it was the kind of purview of the hobbyist where there was no business plan and it wasn't a, income generating adventure, let alone like a vocation.

But now things are very different. And so I thought it would be cool to kind of talk about that a little bit, like the state of the union of podcasting.

Like I said, it had a humble history. I had a sense when I started it that it would grow into something, bigger and more meaningful than it was at the inception, like back in 2012 when I began, which was early, I wasn't one of the first, but I was pretty early.

And what it's like now, which is it's essentially become almost mainstream media.

Yeah. All these people. It's going that way.

Basically all running their own public access television show.

Right. And working very diligently to Garner people's attention From my own experience What's happened is that?

In many ways, podcasting has become almost an adjunct of the publishing industry, publishers realized pretty early that the way to sell books is to book their authors on prominent podcasts.

And I've participated in that economy for our mutual benefit, I would say.

And it's been great because it gives me access to interesting people because they're making themselves available to promote their wares, their goods, their latest book, their latest offering.

But it's kind of gotten to the point now where it's harder and harder to create something that stands out and that's unique. and individuals who are good guests learn quickly that they are good guests and start making themselves available for lots of podcasts.

You know what I mean? So when the prominent individual, be it an author or whoever is like, okay, I need to get out in the world and promote something. they are going to book themselves on all of the podcasts that are similar to mine.

So you enter into this or this agreement where you know that you're gonna get access to this person, but you also know they're gonna go across the street and do the other guys and the other guys And by the time you publish this, this person is going to appear essentially simultaneously on all these shows.

And what happens over time is that all of these shows start to look similar and bleed together.

And when you layer on top of that, the incentives that are now in place in podcasting, it creates a very interesting situation where in order to stand out in what is now a very crowded marketplace, You need to... you need to learn about things like algorithms and analytics and what gets people to not only pay attention, but to sustain that attention and that has costs and benefits.

Like if you do it right, you can benefit by growing an audience and maintaining a large audience.

The cost, of course, comes at kind of the whole raison d'etre of the entire affair.

Like when you start to book guests based upon what you think is going to grow your audience or what's going to you know, constitute rage bait or, you know, incite people or is going to lend itself to creating a bunch of clips that have the potential to go viral, to me on some level, you're sort of losing the plot of the whole. affair and I've been thinking a lot about this and the ways in which it's impacted me and this show and and how I want to kind of move forward in the context of this environment that's now very different from the one in which I started.

I think while everyone's out kind of chasing trends, oh, this works or we need this kind of intro and that hooks people and here's your title and your thumbnail and all that kind of stuff. in this world that is increasingly video first as opposed to audio first, which is the way that we started.

Rather than chasing trends, where is the white space?

What are people not doing? or under appreciating in this whole thing.

And for me, much of it goes back to the very beginning, which is the whole appeal of this is that you're, crafting, curating, and cultivating something real, something honest, and something authentic that is appealing because it's not in a rush and it's not trying to manipulate you or game your attention.

That is why I've been doing these longer intros in the audio version of the podcast where I can share my thoughts and take my time.

I'm not interested in. whether you're gonna click away five seconds later, like that's up to you because I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do.

And I also think, in the context of this, when everybody is so focused on growth and audience capture and attention farming, that the real differentiator isn't the size of your audience, but more the depth of your audience.

Like how real is that audience how loyal are they and how well do they feel like you're nourishing them?

And the differentiator, in my opinion, is going to be that community piece.

Do they feel like they're being nourished and how can you rather than being focused on growth, like how can you really serve the people that are already there, who are taking time out of their day to pay attention to what you're doing?

And I think the answer to that is by emphasizing and investing in ways to bring them in even more, Why, you know, we have this new studio and we have this theater.

We're going to be doing live events and live podcasts and everything. creating more immersive experiences.

And it's why this Substack idea, leveraging it to bring the community in and try to create some kind of community based enterprise around it, I think is so vital and important and exciting.

Cool, man. There's a lot there to kind of unpack and tease out.

I love the... letter from love that you did.

And I'm, you know, Liz, an old friend, and she's asked me to do one and and at first I thought when I first got the instructions, I was kind of hastily read them.

And I thought it was like a letter to your younger self.

So I thought, okay, I have an angle on that.

And then when I realized what it was and I read yours and I'm like, oh, this is much more challenging than, actually than I thought and when she first approached me with it she goes she thinks it's such an important practice for men to do because we are less likely to be so sweet with ourselves or to even tap into that angle, not to that we're less likely to be sweet with ourselves, but we're just less likely to even consider that lens. to kind of filter our perspective.

And so, I thought I was gonna do it in Alaska, like my five or 10 minutes to go sit there and do it, but I haven't done it yet because I'm afraid of it.

The whole thing is like, don't spend more than five minutes on it.

Right. Nobody only spends five minutes on this.

I probably spent like two hours on it. Right.

You know? But you might have done the original thing and then played with it.

In terms of the Maha stuff, I thought in your post, you mentioned Trojan horse.

And I think that's like a perfect analogy because Maha was... kind of brought into the fold during the campaign as a way to lock down the election.

Right. So it was it was kind of a strategic It was never about, we believed in these things.

It was about, we believe that this thing could help us get what we want.

And so, and it worked, right? It totally worked.

And then as to your point, I don't wanna belabor it, but like in your essay, which I thought was brilliant, you lay out how Yes, red dye number 50 is being cast.

40. 40, getting cast aside. Seed oils, and you mentioned all the things.

But then you're like, yeah, but the Clean Water Act's being repealed, the Drinking Water Act's being repealed in certain ways.

And that is going to impact us in a much greater way.

And so I thought that was really well said.

I just want to reinforce that. Yeah, I mean, I think that what Jessica did such a brilliant job at elucidating was providing a sympathetic understanding around this groundswell of support because it is good that we get these dyes out of our food.

And it is important to, say out loud that big pharma and big food and all these companies have incentives that are at cross-purposes with with our individual health and our collective wellbeing.

It's just that the solutions to those problems are not actually what's happening.

Right. What's happening is massive deregulation that's giving all of these these, you know, kind of, quote unquote, like corrupt people. more and more bandwidth to do as they please.

And it's easier to continue for them to do as they please.

If every once in a while, they voluntarily say, we're gonna swap this for this and our ingredients, not because the government is making us, like they're volunteering it.

It's not like anybody's telling them they have to.

And they get like a little more latitude to play behind the scenes in ways that people are not paying attention to as much as perhaps they should.

That's all. all the information we're getting on how things are unhealthy is because there's a regulatory framework and because universities and institutions have had federal money to do certain kind of research.

Now the federal money is going away from universities.

So the research is gonna be much more privatized.

And so that means it's gonna be the hands of industry more and more.

It is already in some respects, but it's going to be more so.

And so the science, you're going to have less science to kind of be able to gauge what's healthy and what's not.

So there's so many, at least that's my limited understanding of it, but that seems to be at risk, right?

The ability to research what what is unhealthy and what is healthy is getting, is being compromised.

And then of course, the EPA is no longer going to be able to regulate pollution.

You wonder when power switches back because it always does cycles and cycles kind of fold in on each other. how much of this becomes the new norm because it's so hard to get things passed now.

Like does this, is it become the new norm?

Does it? It's a good question. So it's troubling.

One thing that history teaches us is that The more that you grant in our case, the executive branch power.

It's hard to then take that power back from them.

This tripartite system where we have the three branches of government that are supposed to operate in parity with each other is very much out of balance.

Like more and more of that power is obviously been transferred over to the executive branch.

And once it's there, it stays there regardless of who's in office.

Right, so there you go. But anyway, that's one piece of it, like the Maha piece of it.

And I've been following Jessica before. you know, when, when I found out she was on the pod, I was like, wow, cause, cause I've been following her on the same kind of track over the last few months.

And, um, you know she's explaining it very well like you can get You can understand why people are attracted to that movement, but then, like you say very well, but that's not... the whole story.

And sometimes these days where it's almost impossible to tell what's real and what's not, you can easily get roped into supporting something you're not supporting.

The great example of that is the hunters that had to rise up and scream and yell about the big, beautiful bill because the public lands that they rely on for recreation were getting sold if it went through.

And to their credit, credit Cameron Haynes, Yeah, Kim Haines made a big push.

A huge push. Raising awareness around that.

They were successful, they got that dealt with, but it took quite a bit.

It did. And short of the sort of Teddy Roosevelt Republicans, standing up and letting their voices be heard around this. it would have sort of surreptitiously just passed through.

Yeah, but part of it was the podcast podcast realm came in as well.

So Cam Haines kind of tapped into that and it just... like the Teddy Roosevelt aspect, like you said.

But the thing that I thought was amazing, the reason I wanted to bring that up, I know it's a little bit older news. and shout out Kyle Tierman, who also was public on this, is that Kyle, the environmentalist, also likes to to hunt occasionally and cam who who voted republican you know kyle did not kyle's uh democrat um It's one of the few times you actually see hunters and environmentalists coming together. you don't see it too much.

When it comes to marine protected areas and the ocean, the commercial fishermen, kind of have their take and those political takes usually get absorbed by the recreational fishermen. no regulation, please no more regulation.

Our waters are too over-regulated. And the same thing happens often in ranching and hunting communities in regards to open space and public lands.

This was the first time I can remember, and I've been involved in some ways in the environmental movement since the 90s. that these two groups came together to actually get something done like this.

It's almost always there at odds. And so I feel like that matters.

I don't know if it's something we can build on or not.

But I think it matters. And part of it is the intentionality behind a guy like Cameron Haynes, who cares deeply, he's deeply passionate for Now, how can we communicate with that side of the aisle and come together on other issues?

Yeah, to build from that. Yeah, exactly.

I mean, it is such an interesting thing because, you know, truly, at least in America, you know, environmentalism was born out of, you know, the Republican perspective, courtesy of Teddy Roosevelt, who said, we need to protect and we need to kind of exercise our federal power to make sure that they stay the way that they are and that they are preserved.

He's the original American environmentalist.

Right. And so then, you know, but then. these parties shift and morph in the tectonic plates of policy, move them in different directions. such that environmentalism became the purview of the Democratic Party and deregulation of the environment, that of the Republican Party.

Right, exactly. as in all cases when there's overreach in either of these, be it with the Republicans you know, allowing corporations to pollute these lands or trying to pass a bill that's gonna allow, you know, the privatization, like, you know, the sort of, building of developments, et cetera, on these lands, there's gonna be a backlash.

Similarly on the left, they get too crazy about the regulation, then there's gonna be pushback.

In the middle, you have Kyle and Cam who are kind of like avatars. at the center who are coming together to resolve an issue that I think we all, it was pretty much at least, you know, amongst the citizenry, you know, unanimous that like, we can't do that.

Right, exactly. And you look at a... So not to, I don't want to bring up names and have people get all scream and yell, but like, um, It's not like our health secretary doesn't understand the link between the environment and all this stuff.

He founded Waterkeeper. Waterkeeper is one of the great environmental organizations out there.

And he did a lot to clean up the Hudson and other rivers and that organization still exists.

Right. And they're amazing. Done a lot of good.

Yes. Which makes it, you know, all the more curious and bizarre.

Like the whole thing. The whole thing. Which brings us back to the podcast realm you're talking about.

It's so interesting because while this deregulation is happening, on the national level and in relation to the environment and food systems. where there's increased regulation on one hand in a narrow way, but more broad deregulation.

The broadcast universe is like, that's the tectonic plates that are shifting the most.

And we feel it here in Los Angeles where there's less work for, longtime crew and up-and-comers who want to start as PAs and get into production.

There's just so much less work in Los Angeles. partly because of that production work.

But then also it's just that the nature of the economy that is broadcasting and filmmaking in general is shifting.

And we come out here to this amazing studio that you guys built.

And you're one of... I didn't realize it at the time, like when you were putting this together, I've only learned it over the last year or so, but there are, you know, you are one of several now that have popped up kind of indie artists podcasters that have grown and grown and you have a footprint here that is a real part of the broadcast future and and you know we think of you, I think of Mel Robbins, Steve Rinella, that you can, obviously Joe Rogan was the first with his studio on Woodland Hills. and now in Austin, but you have kind of a small footprint in relation to the others, but but actually a growing one.

It's really interesting to see how that system is changing.

We're definitely in this flux state of transition in terms of the media landscape, writ large and small. we have the Colbert show getting canceled, you know, that's a whole, you know, sticky wicket, like, you know, why that's happening. at the same time that YouTube creators like Rhett and Link from mythical mornings.

Those guys are coming in later this week to do the show.

I'm excited about that. and a handful of others are being submitted on behalf of YouTube for Emmy consideration.

So the lines are getting blurred between, what is traditional or mainstream media and what is alternative or online digital media.

Essentially, everything's on a screen and we're in this position now where where it doesn't really matter if you call it television or you call it YouTube, like these things are all just buttons on a screen that we choose and whether it's being, broadcast by one of the big four three-lettered networks through an antenna and satellites, or it's coming through an ethernet or your wifi, into your office on a smaller screen really doesn't matter anymore.

All of these things are being put in the Vitamix and they're being blended together.

And we haven't really emerged yet from that with any clarity, like right now it's all confusing, but it is true.

Like here we are in Los Angeles, the global clap capital of, of content creation for as long as any of us have been alive.

And people who have had long careers in this industry can't find work. or at least can't find work that pays a habitable living wage.

And we're seeing these people move from working on television shows or movies into the digital space, looking for jobs at places like this, which I think is, incredibly fascinating.

It's so fascinating. And I feel so lucky to even have a foothold in all of this.

I mean, we're... a small operation in comparison to what many others are doing out there right now.

And it's really special and I'm so grateful to be able to do this thing and to kind of grow it and now to start to work with other creators and kind of expand what we're capable of doing, which I think is really,

But I think it's important to hold on to why it is that you're doing it in the first place.

Because with all of the incentives, like I was mentioning earlier that are out there, it's very easy to lose sight of the why and I I've borne witness to people who who are doing that and when you get to a certain size and scale and and you're staffed up with all kinds of people who know how the internet works, I've seen people kind of move into this place where their perspective on what they're creating and sharing is really entirely through the lens of like what's gonna go viral. what's gonna be the thing that is gonna travel across the internet the most fluidly.

And as a consequence of that, the programming starts to get reverse engineered rather than it being what perhaps it was at the outset, like this more authentic, original kind of organic exchange between people. has now become kind of completely, predetermined in advance.

And I think that comes at a certain cost.

It certainly works. People are There are people out there who have become very successful doing this and I don't begrudge them.

They're doing what they're doing. But I just think for me, And also, as somebody who's been doing it for a very long time and wants to continue to be able to keep doing it and be in love with it in the same way that I always have been like, I always want to come back to the why like and the why is like I want to serve the audience in a meaningful way I want to I want to create something that will have the potential to be impactful not on a surface level, but really on as profound a level as I'm capable of doing.

And in order to do that, I have to step outside all of the gamesmanship that I think is going on right now. and just lean into my strengths and try to double down on them. allow it to be what it wants to be rather than trying to force it to be something else because this is what other people are doing that's working really well.

It's interesting. It's like what we were talking about before you went into that was this the shift and the flux.

And like you said, people from professional broadcasting careers coming over to YouTube, Well, what you just described as gamesmanship or as like planning on the questions and having, you know, what you're gonna get back from the guest,

I mean, that's late night talk. That's talk show stuff.

Right. That's all. It's basically going back to.

Right. It's like. All of these things are moving in bi-directional.

You know what I mean? Like the talk shows have to become more like podcasts and the podcasts are becoming... more and more like the late night talk shows and the morning shows where it's like, here's my card with the question on it.

And this question has been, vetted, you know, based upon AB testing to solicit the answer that is going to be the most popular with our audience.

And it's like, okay, well, right. Now we're doing television.

Now you're doing television. And what you're talking about is, I got to stay true to my rudder and just keep going and stay indie.

But also stay indie in your own mind. It's probably like a Gen X thing, you know, it's like the Gen X, like don't sell out while you're selling out or like, you know, like you're guilty about it or something like that.

I mean, you're wearing a Kurt Cobain t-shirt, right?

This is like very Gen X. I am wearing the shirt, but I did find out, I read somewhere that like when the money started rolling in, Kurt somehow negotiated 75% of the royalties for himself.

Oh my God. Yeah. And he probably deserved them.

He probably deserved them. But it doesn't mean there wasn't a part of him that was like, you know, yeah, you know, like the guilt of selling it.

It's like, there's this sensibility for people of our age, like the way that we were raised in this sort of, you know, fuck you punk rock, like, it's not cool to care and everything is sort of, it's sort of like this veneer of nihilism over everything. where the worst thing you could do was sell out.

And now we're in a culture where like, Selling out is the point, you know, like this is the thing that everyone is celebrating and like look this is a this is a commercial enterprise.

Like I want it to be successful and I'm glad that it is.

And I'm very proud of it. And I get to employ all these people and do all this cool stuff.

I'm not necessarily hung up on that only when it comes at the erosion of the value system that gave birth to it.

Well, I think your intentionality comes through also.

And like I was telling you before we got on here that like, I called you a tastemaker, you called yourself a curator, more of a... a mindful curator and like someone people depend on for not just like we call tastemaker.

Usually it means what you, what you eat or what you consume media wise, but you're introducing concepts and experts as well as when we talk about like things to watch and books to read and things like that.

So you're bringing that and that intentionality kind of comes through, I think, because the way you started, which was, your kind of three niche, your three niches, the plant-based, the sober living and the endurance sports.

So those three niches crossed over and you were able to to kind of introduce them to each other.

And now you're continuing to do that, that's growing.

So that intentionality comes through. And the other thing I think of in that regard is, Even though guests rotate between shows and from a host perspective, it's gotta like make you a little nuts.

But from a user perspective, like how many websites do we actually visit on a daily basis?

Like if you really monitored, some people really range across the web.

I would venture to guess most people don't.

Most people have their favorite sites and they have their favorite shows.

And yes, though, you've had this person on and they and so-and-so's had the same guest on and you can name 10 people that have had that guest on, probably... a good chunk of your audience has only consumed that guest on your show.

So there's something about that too, And in the siloization of media, which is what we're talking about, and this is one silo, you've actually become a silo.

So you're kind of the filter through which some of this stuff gets in. one channel.

Yeah, I mean, I think there's some truth in that.

I think what I was getting at was more that and this is a little inside baseball or like how the sausage is made, but essentially when you get to, where we're at, it becomes very easy to program the show actively because you get so many pitches like every day, like 20 to 30 incoming emails with so-and-so in their book or whatever.

I'm on publicist lists and I get the galleys for all the self-improvement books. and all of that.

So it's really like, I can just pick and choose what appeals to me and just say yes to this and no to this.

And booking the show, cause I'm the only one who books, I know other people have like bookers, people might not realize that, but they hire bookers to like, get people to come on the show.

Like I'm the only one who books, I'm the only one who is reaching out to guests and making lists of people that I wanna have, et cetera.

But I will admit to having gone through periods where it's just like, it just becomes easy and you don't really think about it.

And I've sort of woken up from that phase to realize, in this space where yes, there are these respective silos and maybe there's some kind of cross-pollinization there, but maybe not also because people have their favorite hosts and they wanna hear their host talk to this person, et cetera.

At the same time, I think there's a lot to be said for really being proactive rather than reactive. and thinking hard and long about the people you really wanna have and going after them intentionally.

And so I'm trying to do more and more of that to step outside the ecosystem where you're just picking and choosing among the people that are doing the rounds. to find the hidden gems and the amazing people who maybe have never done a podcast. or maybe only did that tiny one, but it was amazing.

And you saw it or heard it and thought like, wouldn't it be cool to broaden their reach and amplify their voice by having them on?

And so that's kind of like where my head is at in terms of that.

And I think, The only way to distinguish yourself if your audience is cross-pollinated with a bunch of other people is to venture outside the lines a little bit and make your stamp by doing something a little bit different rather than going along to get along and just following, you know, whatever happens to be the trend at the moment.

I like it, man. I'm not in demand by the other podcasts, so that's why I'm a good guest for you right now.

I'm very much not in demand. I've tried.

I've tried my best, Adam. to like position you as an in-demand guest for other podcasts, but there's only so much I can do.

There's only one podcast that needs me. It's up to you at some point.

Exactly. Maybe I should have... AB tested a bunch of questions for you and then thrown them at you and we could rehearse before the podcast so that By the time you're behind the mic, you could just lay down some truth or some monologue and we'll clip that, we'll put it up there, it'll go crazy.

And then all those podcasters are going to be calling you.

I get invited. I say no. It's like I say no a lot.

I get invited to smaller podcasts sometimes.

There's a time and place. There's a time and place.

Maybe that day is coming. I am encouraged, though, by the fact that I think the most popular podcast that we've done in the last handful of months. was with Craig Maude.

Yes, love that one. And that's also like the longest and the, the kind of conversation that lends itself the least to the viral clip, you know what I mean? you gotta be in for the entire experience with this guy.

And if you go all in, you will be nourished and rewarded and you will emerge like better than you were before.

Yeah. And feeling that, like it's, you know, that was an incredible one.

And I love the fact that it was also popular because sometimes those really, deep and heartfelt explorations don't necessarily translate into and listens on the internet because people are busy or whatever for a million different reasons.

But to see that is like, oh yeah, This is what we do here.

You know what I mean? More of that, please.

Yeah, yeah. I love that one. Go for a long walk with Craig Maude.

Yeah, I know. Yeah, he's he's yeah, I love I mean.

It's so funny because when that one starts, it's like, here's this... really cool, nice guy who has these great insights.

But then as the podcast goes on, you realize he's like this incredible polymath that's great at a million things.

Like, great musician. Oh, I can create my own social media platform that is exactly like Twitter because I can code, but I can also... write better than everyone else and create these art books and I can walk for days and do, yeah.

Exactly, exactly. By the end, I was like, man, this guy's not an underdog.

This guy's one of the greats. I never said he was an underdog.

I think he's sort of a quietly under the radar, you know, like superhero type of figure.

He's brilliant, yeah. Big fan. Cool. Is there anything else I wanna say about that?

I think we said what we knew Right now, I'm excited for the future.

I'm excited to be able to expand our offerings and reach our tentacles deeper into you guys, the community, reward you for your attention and to hopefully strengthen our ability to not only feel connected to you and you to us, but to serve you better. in a more immersive way.

So there's a lot in development right now, as far as that goes.

And I'm psyched to be a part of it, partly because- in this new like in a way you didn't even mean to be doing this when you asked me to come on and start doing roll on kind of in the and as the pandemic hit.

But Like... when the New York Times shut down their sports section, like a lot of stuff's been shutting down outside fired and they're coming back and they're doing well, but they did fire everybody I worked for.

Yeah. Everybody got fired. Everyone at Outside Magazine got fired.

Like this is happening, you know, all across the board in publishing.

Right. In television, only movies that are getting made are these gigantic movies with the exception of a few we're gonna talk about in a sec.

Yeah, like we're in a weird state right now in terms of the business model for media.

Right, but then- But what we're doing, I really believe is the future and it holds promise. legacy media is dying right now.

You know, sort of network television programming, like all of that, like the business model is just eroding underfoot as we speak there.

And what is that gonna look like in a couple of years?

CBS is gonna cut its slate. Like all these networks, like they can't afford to continue to underwrite the programming that they always have been underwriting because the advertiser dollars are not there because the eyeballs aren't there.

And the eyeballs that are there, are basically geriatric.

Yeah, there's no doubt about it. And that's what I was getting at is that it's for me somewhat a professional in this space like always, you know, when I looking back, it's easier to see, but every story I've almost every story I've done is has been about expanding our awareness of what this world really is and what our life is really about.

Like if you look at it, everything from the Goggins books to some of my sports reporting to my own projects.

It's like, It's all about expanding that sphere of awareness. piercing the bubble and see that there's so much more.

And so for me to land here, it's like, I think that's where we kind of link up in that same idea.

And so to be a part of this and to have my small foothold here as part of what I'm doing, It just means a lot to me.

And especially because of this audience, this audience has been, incredibly affirming for me and just a great place to kind of to to share what I'm doing and receptive in that way.

And so it's like, it's been such a pleasure.

And I've said it before on social media, but to be able to say it now on the podcast, how grateful I am for the audience, for the listeners here, and to be part of what you're doing.

It's awesome. Yeah, well, it's been great doing this with you, man.

I love doing it. It's been fun. Thanks. But you know what the most fun is?

What's that? What I really wanna do? Yeah, I want to have like a movies podcast.

Hey, man. This is like... That's all I really want to talk about, Adam.

Let's do it. All this stuff about change and transformation.

It's great, you know? Yes. Let's talk about movies.

Yeah, like, let's dismiss audience receptivity and just, you know, talk about, like... stuff that I think is fun to talk about.

Let's do it, man. We should. But I think the role on audience now is relatively attuned to the fact that media diet has become a cornerstone.

It is a cornerstone. Of this edition of the show.

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What have you seen? I've been watching the first season of Deadwood.

Have you heard of that show? I have heard of it.

One of the greatest of all time. I'm a rewatchable.

By, you know, the great David Milch. Oh my God. who ask anybody who is a screenwriter and they'll all pretty much agree that He's like the goat in terms of television writing.

Well, he was Hill Street Blues, right? Hill Street Blues.

And then what did he do after that? He did Deadwood.

Deadwood. He had that show. Didn't he do the show about horse racing for HBO?

He did. I don't know how that did. That got canceled.

I'm sure he's done a lot of other stuff.

But Deadwood is, especially the first two seasons.

I'm only watching the first because that's to me the pinnacle of it.

And then I'll go back to trying to be a current person and not an old bastard.

But like that show that came on HBO right when Entourage was hitting.

And so like their big it was a big Sunday night one, two. was Entourage and then Deadwood. and maybe, um, six feet under was in that lineup.

I forget, but it was like this great murderers row lineup.

And, um, NYPD Blue, Deadwood, Hill Street Blues.

That's it, yeah, NYPD Blue. which by the way- True Detective also.

Oh, really? The first season, I think. Okay.

I'm looking on IMDb right now. Sorry, go ahead though.

But NYPD Blue was considered very much groundbreaking television and Deadwood is so Shakespearean and it's not just the writing.

But the acting is just incredible and to watch Just to watch it, it's like artistry.

I do like a Western. I do like an old West. and wild bill hickok and calamity jane and all that and um so if you haven't seen it You probably have seen it.

But if you haven't seen it, that's what I've been watching.

And if you love Deadwood, then maybe check out the podcast I did with Titus Welliver.

Oh yeah. He's on that show, who talks about Milch in that conversation.

Oh, does he? Okay. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

I mean, he comes in at the end of the first season.

I think so. It's been a while since I watched. it.

My boys love it. I think they recently rewatched the whole thing themselves and they talk about it all the time.

Yeah. Yeah. It's unbelievable. Swearingen is one of the great All right, so you're staking your, you're planting your flag.

At Deadwood? Yeah. I've been watching Deadwood, the Dodgers, and then I read a book.

I mean, it's media diet, so books do books count.

Yeah. I read- For now. Exactly. James Rebanks' new book, who shares an agent with you and I, a bird is his agent. called The Place of Tides.

He is, I think, the best naturalist writing today.

It's one of the best non-fiction books I've read since I would put it on a list of five or six top books.

It's very quiet. kind of earth based and earth and water based a book.

And it's about, he spends, he wrote, Shepherd's Life and Pastoral Song, which is his day job is running a farm in the north of England where he was born.

His family has been farming there, ranching there for 600 years.

And he basically did regenerative agriculture, brought that to bring his family farm back.

And so the first two books are kind of about that.

And this one, he embeds himself with the eiderdown duck ladies of the Norwegian islands.

And so he spends a season with a 70 year old woman who has brought back an age old custom, which is goes all the way back to the Vikings. which is to protect and provide shelter for eider down ducks, eider ducks to come on land, protect them from predators, and then let them hatch their eggs.

And then when they go back with their young to the ocean, they leave the down behind.

And so all this idea of like down is kind of cruel.

This is not that. Eiderdown is not that.

Eiderdown is like, they just leave it behind in their nests.

It's this way of life that has gone obviously vastly out of fashion.

Everyone's leaving the islands, the kids go to Oslo.

And she has brought back, she went to islands that were all built around this economy since the Vikings and since she was a kid.

The islands were still functioning this way in a vast way.

And thousands of ducks were coming to the point when she was having kind of her own midlife crisis.

The ducks weren't there. No one was doing it.

And she brought the custom back to several islands, she and some others.

And so he met her and he spent a season doing that.

And so that's the book and it's remarkable.

Well, I'm sure the writing is beautiful.

Yeah, it's poetic. And easy to read and just like you go on and he has these incredible insights about kind of our humanity and what it means and the nature of the modern world.

Because, you know, we're all kind of stuck, you know, what it is.

We're all like kind of cogs in this modern world and we have to detach and look around every once in a while to kind of realize that we're not that because it can become all consuming.

And I think that's really like heart of the book. is like that he is this high functioning guy doing running this.

He's written best selling books. He's in demand and he wants to be in demand because because, you know, somehow makes him feel validated.

And being with her, He realizes actually being part of the land and sea and the wind, and she's part of everything when she's doing her thing.

It makes him realize that that is actually the point.

Right. That's the whole thing. Yeah. I love it.

That's beautiful, man. Thanks, man. You've gone very highbrow.

I'm going highbrow. This week. Yeah, and one last thing, Eddie Palmieri. the great Salsero, the great musician, Latin jazz and salsa innovator, Latin music innovator, He died at 88.

He's one of the great, if you haven't, this is a media diet thing.

If you haven't ever listened to Eddie Palmieri, um, He is an absolute maestro.

He kind of was one of the first to put out like six, eight minute shows. songs on record, like the record companies weren't doing it.

And he did it because of the band he put together.

He started playing piano at eight years old in Washington Heights.

He's a Washington Heights kid. He's a New Yorker from Puerto Rican descent and just a master musician.

And I'm not going to. drone on too much, but there's an incredible obituary in the New York Times that I can give you the link if you want to add to the show notes and just Spotify. and I'll throw a few songs on there if you want for people who are interested in that kind of thing.

I love all kinds of music. And if you're not a big salsa person, give it a listen because it's funky and deep and really cool.

Nice, man. Yeah. That's a good one. Hey, thanks.

It made me think about a documentary that I'm excited to see that I haven't seen yet.

This documentary on Jeff Buckley. It's coming out soon.

I love Jeff Buckley. And, you know, I'm fascinated by his life. his music and this life that was cut short far too early.

I'm not sure when the date of that is coming out.

I'm starting to see previews around that.

It's a biopic or a documentary? It's a documentary.

Yeah, it's a documentary. But speaking of movies, I mean, I'm gonna pick the low hanging fruit here.

I mean, I saw Weapons this week and it's just like amazing.

This movie is fantastic. Marketing's amazing.

Looking at the posters, they freaked me out the minute I saw them.

I'm not like a huge horror guy. Okay. So I'm not necessarily like the... the prime audience for this kind of thing.

I like horrifying, but I'm not the guy who's like running out to see the latest scary movie or- Blow house. or whatever, Blumhouse or whatever.

Yeah, it's like, it's fine, but it's not like, that's not my sweet spot at all.

But I do admit to really enjoying this new trend of kind of auteur-driven movies. horror is high art, like the Midsommars, those types of movies that are- Get Out.

Yeah, Get Out, things like that. these directors who are pushing the envelope and kind of redefining horror.

And that's what obviously made me interested in weapons because it was clearly, if you watch the trailer, like this is in conversation with those filmmakers and those movies.

But I, steered away from reading anything about it or wanting to know too much about it. or even the director who created it and who has his own like really interesting story in and of itself.

Like it comes from improv comedy and it's like a very interesting origin story.

So I suppose I went into it with a projection or an assumption about what I thought it was gonna be.

And it just wasn't that at all. It's sort of a movie that keeps you on its toes because every time you feel like you have your footing and you feel like you understand the movie that you're in, it becomes a different movie.

And it's almost as if he's playing with these tropes or... these things that he's dropping into the frame that you're used to seeing and you're like, oh, when I see this, it means this, or this is what's gonna happen or,

Or I can foresee how this story is gonna play out.

And he's constantly subverting those expectations.

And it's really fun. Like it's, uproariously fun and it's funny also.

It wasn't necessarily, I mean, it has a, the construct of it is like a scary idea, but I wouldn't say like it scared me.

It has disturbing moments for sure. But it's wildly entertaining and super fun.

And I think. I mean, I checked like a day ago, it was scoring like a hundred percent on Rotten Tomatoes.

Like people love this. And when I went to the movie theater, it was packed.

And I think movies are really back in no small reason due to Sinners.

28 years later, which is also amazing. I heard that's great.

And now this movie, like these are These are really well done, very crowd pleasing movies that have brought audiences back into the theater in a moment where it's like, oh, theaters are dead. and the movie going experience is defunct.

But if you make great stuff, people will come.

They're coming out for this. It's great.

My kids went to go see Naked Gun, which is like, Not that interested in seeing it but apparently that is like really well done and they loved it and it was super fun and it's been a long time since like a broad comedy was in Is it the Zuckers again?

I don't even know. No, are they still making it?

I don't know. I should know. If I'm gonna host a movie podcast, I should know things like this.

Well, I'll watch these. I'll watch these.

The point being like, when was the last time there was a really broad comedy? that did really well at the box office, in theaters, like really, you know, like on the broadest level, like a movie like this.

Step Brothers probably? Yeah, that was a long time ago, right?

Like they're not making these kind of movies.

Probably because these movies don't... do well overseas.

So they don't have the global return. Yeah, so they're not making them because these things cost money and more money than they used to.

But anyway, weapons, that's my choice. I still want to see Eddington.

I haven't seen it yet. Okay. But I'm busy.

Right, we're busy. Even though I can't move my body.

You can't move your body and I can't get out at night.

So it's kind of like we're a little bit mixed, but I think Weapons is on Netflix, right?

Weapons is in the theaters right now. It's in theaters only?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's in the theaters. Okay, so I need to see it.

Yeah. I need to see weapons. How about F1?

Did you see F1? Yeah, I saw F1. I loved F1.

I mean, the cinematography is fantastic in that movie.

It's something you really should see on the big screen.

I don't think it's in theaters anymore, is it?

No, maybe not. I didn't see it in IMAX. I wish I had.

The story is incredibly basic, but I think it needs to be because there's so much else going on, like the sport is so complex.

And I think they did a really deft job of trying to explain it without too much exposition or leaning too much into the insane complexity of the whole thing by focusing on like tire choice and some kind of basic strategy stuff that a broad audience can understand and it's wildly enjoyable.

I was at the Formula One race in Austin a couple of years ago.

Right. With the boys. and had the opportunity to be in the paddock, and visit the Mercedes garage and like meet, I got to very briefly meet Lewis Hamilton and Toto and like, it was a wild experience.

That was his last year being the best too, I think.

Or was up there? That was the year that he was still, that he was starting to struggle a little bit.

But while in the, in the Mercedes garage where you get the, you have the headphones on and you kind of hear what everyone's saying, like it was, this was like the day before the race when they were, I think, no, actually this was during testing maybe. where the drivers are out and they're reporting back like how the car feels and what they feel needs adjusting and all that kind of stuff, which is super interesting to hear. but literally like standing next to me was Brad Pitt.

He was like, you know. And then we went into each of the teams. they have their own garage and then like across the little roadway paddock, in this paddock area, they have these hospitality suites where they have like it's a little cafe kind of situation.

And like Brad and Joseph Kaczynski are sitting with Lewis Hamilton and they're like, this is like two years before the movie comes out. figuring it out, which was wild.

That is wild because Brad Pitt's character is basically Lewis Hamilton now, right?

He's towards the end of his career. Brad Pitt is 60 years old.

Well, right, but that's the idea, right?

No, he's not playing a 60 year old though in the movie.

No, but he's playing a much more, have you seen the movie?

No. Okay, so you're talking out your ass right now.

I am too, even though I saw it, but anyway.

I wouldn't draw that much of a parallel.

Yeah, I think they were really careful to not over-identify the characters with any existing drivers in an unfair way.

And they also did a really, Great job, obviously it's immersive because they're filming this like in the midst of these races, is going on.

And so the real drivers and the real cars are part of the story. but not in a way that intrudes upon the narrative such that the real life drivers become characters necessarily. which I think was a smart choice.

But Joseph Kaczynski, who's an engineer by trade, like he was a mechanical engineer long before he was a filmmaker, Like he is engineering these movies in really fantastic and unique and creative ways.

Like they had to basically come up with all of these new, that separated the lenses from the bodies so that they could place them all over the cars and hide the bodies underneath the chassis. so the cars would still function properly in their weight balance and aerodynamics.

I mean, like you can go down the rabbit hole on YouTube and on sort of behind the scenes and how they actually did this.

And it's quite a masterstroke. Interesting.

It's like the way George Lucas had to create new cameras, he's creating new booms and new ways of holding cameras, I would imagine, right?

I would buy stock in Joseph Kaczynski because he sort of emerged as one of the most prominent filmmakers when it comes to super high budget action thrillers.

Cause he's able to do things no one's ever done before.

And it's thrilling to watch them. Well, I would agree that movies are back and TV is kind of like slumped.

You can't think... That's one of the reasons I'm watching... the first season of Deadwood is that like we just although we did watch the bear, but like we did watch the bear recently, we watched the You know what I started rewatching in my convalescence?

Because I just wanted something that made me feel good, that was earnest.

And so I went back to the beginning and started watching Friday Night Lights from the beginning.

And that show holds up. It's pretty good.

It's kind of awesome. Right, the show, not the movie, the show.

It's so earnest in a way that you don't, kind of see right now in culture.

And I found that to be heartwarming. Okay.

So that's it. I think that concludes Media Diet for this week.

It does. Any parting thoughts? Well, we should shout out some of the the shout out to friends of the pod.

Yeah. Friends of the pod. While we were all sleeping, David Goggins and Harvey Lewis were finishing Bigfoot 200.

A 200-mile race that I think is like 47,000 elevation gain and loss or something incredible.

Where does it take place? It's in the Cascades in Washington State.

And David hasn't competed in quite a while.

No, he keeps it super under the radar. Um, and, um, I didn't know he was competing until Ben Pryor.

Shout out Ben. Shout out Ben. Sent me a link to the tracking and I was tracking him.

And I haven't talked to him about the race or anything yet, but it was such a pleasure to watch him do it.

And I just... And I like I knew towards the end he was like picking up pace and just like like he always does and tracking people down.

And I think it was like a top 20 finish and Harvey was right there.

I think Harvey finished around the same time.

And so it was... It was cool to watch both those names and go and go and go, but it was a long one.

It was like, it's like, it must be harder than Leadville.

It's like a three, well, it's 200 miles, but it's-

Twice the distance. Twice the distance. I feel like was incredible too.

And that's 240 miles. This seemed to be the same amount of time for less miles.

So I think it's the terrain. Wow. Meanwhile, Kate Courtney won the Leadville 100 mountain bike race in record-breaking time.

Incredible. So shout out to her, which is cool.

Under seven hours. She's a machine, man.

Do not get in her way. That woman is so capable.

Whatever she chooses to focus on in her life, I have no doubt she will, you know, set whatever you would consider to be a course record in whatever pursuit it is that, you know, she decides to laser in on.

One of those. She's an extraordinary person.

And Tom Holland back in the Spider-Man suit, back on set.

People seem very excited about this. For all the Marvel heads out there.

I'm sure there's other people who have been on the show who are out doing interesting things right now.

Was there one other person that you had on mind?

Oh, Christian Blumenfeld. Oh, Blumenfeld.

What's he up to? He's been dominating. He's out there winning.

He's winning all the races he enters and he's just like crushing the comp because I think he had one down season where it was hard for him to get. on the podium and people wondered, is that the end of the Norwegians?

Yeah, I did a podcast with him in New York right after Kona.

So five years ago, Christian wins gold at the Olympics.

He moves into half Ironman and Ironman becomes a dominant force, uh, in that world and then decides that he wants to return to the Olympics in Paris to win gold again, this unprecedented thing. well, all did not go as planned.

He did not have a great performance in Paris.

He went from Paris to Kona to step right back into Ironman. where he was just throwing up and blew up.

So that didn't do very well. We did a podcast in New York City right after that and he kind of shared his experience and how he was going to pick up the pieces and move forward.

And it seems like he's done that because now he's back and he's crushing it once again.

Yeah, yeah, he just won... the Ironman 70.3 Championships, and then he won Ironman Frankfurt, which was the European Championships.

He's won his last three events. gold, gold, gold has dominated.

Awesome. Yeah. All right, man. Well, I think we did it for today.

I'm going to close this so I can get a review.

I'll close mine too. I feel good. I'm gonna look you right in the eye, Adam, tell you I love you.

Oh, thanks, man. So grateful for our time together.

I love you too. This friendship that we have.

Me too, man. It's great. It's a great time.

You know what? I appreciate your taking a stand in the health and well-being of our world and having me along for the ride.

Awesome, man. Thank you. Let's do this again soon.

Let's do it. All right, buddy. Peace. That's it for today.

Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation.

To learn more about today's guests, including links I'll see you next time.

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[Navigating Transitions, Media Landscapes, and the Art of Presence]-[ROLL ON: The State of Podcasting In 2025]

📋 Summary

Embracing the Chrysalis: Finding Strength in Stillness

The Evolution of Podcasting and Media Integrity

Critical Perspectives: Health, Environment, and Policy

The Media Diet: Cultivating a Mindful Consumption

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript