The Rich Roll Podcast

At the highest echelon of elite performance, all the athletes possess otherworldly talent. Their thirst for glory is equally preternatural. All of them train to the outer limits of physical possibility. And they are all extraordinarily adroit at focusing on almost inhuman, impossible goals. So what accounts for the distance between the Olympic gold medalist standing proudly atop the podium and the athlete watching the games on television at home? Is it luck? Talent? Support? Resources? Of course every result is significantly influenced by some combination of these important variables. But all things being equal, the difference between the champion and the also ran boils down to one distinct variable: The mind. Once the embarrassing last stop on a flailing athlete’s career, the world's top sports psychologists now enjoys a highly influential and respected role proactively honing the mental and emotional edge of today's most successful athletes, CEOs and creatives looking to elevate peak performance beyond the

Religion was never for me. Despite many a youthful hour spent kneeling on hardwood church pews, it just never connected. What do all those stained glass windows, depressing organ dirges, and uptight people have to do with art and beauty and meaning and love and purpose and mystery and ultimately what it means to be human? Nothing as far as I could tell. So I searched for answers elsewhere. In the bottom of a bottle. Prowling underground after parties in lower Manhattan. In a mental institution called rehab. In midnight conversations with skid row junkies. In the sound of my breath, lost on a mountain trail run at dawn. During afternoons spent undulating with dolphins in Hawaii. In the overwhelming love I feel simply watching my children sleep. My search didn't lead back to religion. But it did lead to faith. A deep faith of my own design. Faith in an undefined, unlimited power greater than myself. A faith that quite literally saved my life when I was utterly lost, completely broken and unconditionally beyond

Some people exude a calm, confident quietude. Others exuberantly burst with exciting ideas. But it's the rare individual that combines understated self-assurance with a spark so powerful, it incites lasting positive change in all who enter his orbit. Jonathan Fields is one such human. His mission? To humanize and empower the process of creation. To help people and organizations conceive and build better, more conscious businesses, art, and lives in less time, with more joy and less effort. On a personal level, Jonathan is guy I can deeply relate to – a dad and husband who (like me) decided to leave the gilded, protective hallways of mega-law firm life and risk everything in search of a life path of greater meaning for himself and others. Reinventing himself as a socially conscious, serial entrepreneur and mindful innovation strategist, today Jonathan is an A-list blogger, award-winning author, speaker, and founder of Good Life Project –empowering people to live more engaged and connected lives via a global ed

Two British ex-pats walk into a room. One, a writer and filmmaker. The other, a global adventurer and environmentalist. Upon cursory glance, it's an odd pairing — two exceedingly talented and accomplished yet very different people with little in common beyond their homeland of origin. But peer just beneath the surface and you'll quickly discover certain common passions unite them. A zeal for chasing dreams. An appreciation for cultivating imagination. And a deep understanding that a story well told holds the potential energy to change the world. My very good friend for over 16 years, Sacha Gervasi is the hyper-charismatic screenwriter behind the Steven Spielberg-Tom Hanks vehicle The Terminal and the director of 2012's Academy Award nominated Hitchcock, starring Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren and Scarlett Johannson. But Sacha is perhaps best known for Anvil! The Story of Anvil — his critically acclaimed rockumentary about an also-ran Canadian heavy metal band. A true-to-life Spinal Tap the London Times dubbed 

There is extreme. Then there's Charlie Engle – a man who has run across deserts, summited ice-covered volcanoes, swam with crocodiles, overcome crack addiction and survived a stint in federal prison. The story goes like this: after a hair-curling, decade-long love affair with booze and crack cocaine that culminated in a near-fatal six-day binge and a hail of bullets, Charlie finally gets sober. For solace, he turns to running, which becomes his lifeline, his pastime, and his salvation. He begins with marathons, but it wasn't enough. Ultramarathons soon became the focus of his affection, a new love affair that takes him to stunning heights and accolades. During this second act, Charlie would clock a handful of impressive top-10 finishes at prestigious races like Badwater, a 135-mile jaunt across Death Valley widely considered to be the toughest footrace on Earth. But his athletic zenith is an unprecedented, absolutely astonishing 111-day, 4,500-mile run across the Sahara Desert — a feat chronicled in the Matt

In the mid-1800's, this radical dude living alone in the woods famously wrote, the mass of men lead lives of quite desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. As set forth in the enduring Walden, the words of Henry David Thoreau were revelatory for the time. But it's an idea that more than holds up. Not only do I consider it daily, I would contend it perfectly encapsulates what has become the unfortunate, yet defining affliction of modern man. This week's guest has devoted his life to helping others avoid Thoreau's foreboding lament – a self-experiment in purposeful living he calls The Art of Non-Conformity. Ripe with wanderlust after a 4-year stint as a NGO volunteer executive in West Africa, Chris Guillebeau embarked on a multi-year quest to travel to every country in the world, all 193, before his 35th birthday. Along the way, he decided to share his adventures on a newly hatched blog. But what began as a rather ignored and somewhat turgid travelogue soon morphed into a globally rever

There are people that run. There are others who run fast. But few people on Earth run like the remarkable Shalane Flanagan.  Over the course of her distinguished 16-year professional career, Shalane has made 4 consecutive Olympic teams, won an Olympic medal and set a variety of American records across a wide array of distances on both the track and the road. To put her excellence in perspective, consider this: in 2010, she finished second at the prestigious New York City marathon — her very first 26.2 ever — clocking the best finish by an American female at that race in 20 years. She's also run the fastest time ever by an American woman at the Boston Marathon and in 2014 set her personal best in Berlin with a blazing 2:21.14, the second-fastest time ever by an American woman. But what’s truly unique about this assassin in compression socks is the extraordinary extent to which Shalane has distinguished herself across a multitude of distances & disciplines. On dirt, she's won collegiate national championships i

Humans love duality. But there is great beauty in the grey that lives between the lines. Black and white. Good and bad. Evolution and regression. We are hard wired to categorize. To pick a team and stick with it. It’s our way of making sense of the world. But too often this inclination to self-identify only serves to isolate and divide — working at cross-purposes with our competing desire to more deeply connect with our fellow humans. So what happens when we resist the urge to judge another? This week on the podcast Julie and I peer beyond dogma, belief systems and categories to embrace the grey. Consider it a thought experiment in forsaking judgment for empathy as a path to better understand others and the environments we co-inhabit. Specific topics include: * creating and cultivating community * the difference between discernment and judgment * enhancing sustainability in consumer choice * finding your authentic voice We end the episode with a rendition of the Hedy West song 500 Miles by Julie (aka SriMa

Today finds us mired in an unprecedented health and environmental crisis of cataclysmic proportions. Heart disease, America's #1 killer, currently claims one out of every three lives. 70% of Americans are obese or overweight. By 2030, experts indicate that 30% of Americans will be diabetic or pre-diabetic. The heartbreaking culprit? SAD. But the Standard American Diet isn't just killing people, it's annihilating the planet. In fact, our system of industrialized animal agriculture is the #1 culprit when it comes to almost every single man made environmental ill on the planet. From mass species extinction to disappearing rainforests to giant algal ocean blooms, it's an indefensible and unsustainable modality wrecking unrivaled havoc on our oceans, rivers, streams, soil and animals. Meet Alexis Fox and Micah Risk — two entrepreneurs leveraging cutting edge technology to turn our epidemic of SAD into an outbreak of happy, healthy and sustainable for people and the planet alike. Their solution has a name. It's cal

One of the most respected and revered figures in sport, George Raveling is basketball — and so much more than basketball. The current Director of International Basketball for Nike, he was the first African American basketball coach at Villanova, University of Maryland, Washington State and University of Iowa before closing out a storied career at USC. He is an inductee into several halls of fame, including the College Basketball Hall of Fame and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. He is a civil rights activist, outspoken on a wide array of social issues at the intersection of race, education and athletics. A world-class educator, he is a moulder of boys into men, and men into better men. Bottom line? George Raveling is the mentor you wish you had. But you can just call him Coach. This week I sit down with a truly remarkable man. A 79-year old with the vibrancy and energy of a college student, I was immediately struck by George's insatiable thirst for learning. His passion for ideas. And his devotio

There's nothing I can do — it's genetic. Without a doubt, many of us have predispositions to developing certain diseases. But predisposition is a far cry from predetermination. In fact, you might be surprised to learn the vast extent to which we can control the expression of genetic inclinations when it comes to so many of the chronic illnesses that are unnecessarily killing millions of people annually — including modern-day plagues like heart disease, diabetes and Alzheimer's. This week I'm thrilled to sit down for a long overdue conversation with my friend Neal Barnard, MD to discuss the innate, incredible power we all possess to prevent and even reverse the onset of these illnesses through implementation of fairly simple simple diet and lifestyle alternations. A pre-eminent authority on the impact of diet & nutrition on atherosclerosis, diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer’s, Dr. Barnard is an adjunct associate professor of medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences as we

It's hard to imagine, but in 1985 — the year this week's guest co-founded America Online — only 3% of Americans were connected to the internet, online for an average of a measly one hour per week. It took a decade, many near-death experiences and back to the wall pivots, but under the leadership of Steve Case, AOL would go on to become the world’s largest and most valuable internet company, driving worldwide adoption of the medium that has literally transformed every aspect of modern day life. The story is legend. After AOL became the first internet company to go public, Bill Gates gave Steve a choice — sell his upstart to behemoth Microsoft or get crushed. Believing in himself, his team and the renegade idea of community over content, Steve decided to take his chances. David against Goliath, the odds were not in his favor. But not only did AOL survive, it went on to become the top performing stock of the 1990s. At its peak, nearly half the users in the United States used AOL to access the internet. When AOL'

Why do we love dogs, but eat cows? Cooking up your golden retriever would be an unthinkable abomination. But barbecued beef? That's about as normal as it gets. It's just the way things are.  But why? The logic and social mechanisms behind why we eat some animals and not others is a behavioral inconsistency unexamined to the point of absurdity — both psychologically complex and strange — very strange indeed. Many guests on this podcast have elaborated on why we shouldn't eat meat. This week I sit down with Melanie Joy, Ph.D, Ed.M to explain why we do eat meat. An idea she coined carnism, Dr. Joy's work centers around the psychology of eating meat, what is known as the “meat paradox” – our irrational, inconsistent and species specific attitudes toward various animals – why we express affection towards certain animals while eating others – and the cognitive dissonance this entails. A Harvard-educated social psychologist, Dr. Joy is a celebrated speaker, organizational consultant, author of the award-winning book

Ask today's guest and he'll tell you our culture is currently mired in an unprecedented epidemic of ego — a societal blight of apocalyptic proportions precipitated by the advent of selfie-crazed social media, self-esteem parenting and spurious self-help gurus fomenting an illusory sense of entitlement. The result is a woefully misplaced celebration of ubiquity over meaningfulness: Of endless distractions over devotion to work ethic. Of self-congratulatory passion over fidelity to process. Of unbridled hubris over humility. And of rampant self-seeking over service. We often equate ego with confidence, self-assuredness and ultimately success. The domain of the great visionary.  But what if this notion is utterly false? A personality trait that, at every turn, thoroughly undermines that which we seek? And what if modesty, humility and self-honesty are not actual weaknesses but in fact our greatest asset? This week Ryan Holiday graces the podcast to explain. An autodidact of astute intellect that belies his 29 ye

What do you get when you combine Underdog with the spinach-chomping Popeye The Sailor Man? Griff Whalen. Currently serving up wide receiver and punt return duties for the Miami Dolphins, today’s guest is the only (to my knowledge) 100% plant-based athlete currently active in the National Football League. But Griff's unique nutritional protocol is only a part of a larger, more compelling narrative. An inspirational tale of determination, tenacity and self-belief. The story begins with a scrappy kid from Ohio with an insane dream — to one day play professional football. But at 5’11” and 190 pounds, Griff doesn’t strike the typical NFL pose. He's quiet, studious and understated in a culture of brash egos. Undersized on a field of gargantuan colossuses. Merely fast on a field of lightning-footed Greek gods. Griff, be serious. It's just not going to happen. Although a standout high school player, the phone wasn't exactly ringing off the hook with scholarship offers to the big NCAA Division I programs. Undeterred,

Imagine winning an Olympic gold medal in swimming at age 19 at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. A feat never-before achieved by a swimmer of African-American descent, the frenzied media swarms. The only problem? You’re only half-black. You definitely don’t look black. And you know nothing about what it’s like to be part of the black experience. The unrelenting crush of public expectation to fulfill a role at odds with your private sense of self becomes so intense, you retreat from your Olympic experience not with any lasting sense of happiness, satisfaction and pride, but rather a numb confusion. This isn’t anything like I thought it would be… Over time, the confusion metastasizes into disillusionment. And it’s not long before depression sets in. Lost and lacking the tools to cope, life begins to pivot away from the dreaded black line at the bottom of the pool and towards a dreadlocked blur of rock ‘n roll, boozy, drug-fueled binges, rampant womanizing, cigarette haze, and death-defying motorcycle crashes. Nonethele

When I was a kid, shopping for new clothes was a treat. A special, infrequent occasion. Why? because even inexpensive garments challenged our middle-class family budget. By comparison, the mega-conglomerate retailers of today — Target, H&M, Gap, fill in the blank — allow the average, penny-pinching consumer to fill a closet for a $100 or less. How and when did clothing become an essentially disposable product? What exactly is going on? The answers to these questions will shock you. Andrew Morgan is the young, talented filmmaker behind the beautiful and heartbreaking documentary The True Cost. Premiering at last year's Cannes Film Festival, it's a movie about the untold story of fashion. It's about the clothes we wear, the people who make them, and the impact the garment industry is having on the world we share. The film centers around the human rights and environmental implications of fast fashion — a term used to describe the increasingly rapid pace at which fashion houses push new trends at deflated prices

In documented history, only 44 people have successfully completed the extraordinary feat of adventure athleticism known as the Explorers Grand Slam — a challenge that encompasses scaling the highest mountain on each of the seven continents and treks to both the North and South Poles. Of these 44, only 2 have done it under a year. Not only is today's guest the youngest person to conquer this most prestigious undertaking, Colin O'Brady absolutely smashed the world record by an incredible 53-day margin, completing the EGS in a mere 139 days. Along the way, he simultaneously broke the 7 Summits world record by two days. A Yale grad turned professional triathlete and Olympic hopeful, Colin is one very impressive young man. But perhaps more admirable than his mind boggling achievements is Colin's commitment to service by way of his non-profit organization Beyond 7/2 – a directed mission to combat childhood obesity by raising $1 million on behalf of the Alliance For A Healthier Generation, a non-profit founded by t

We’re back with what I like to call a mini-sode. Last week I posted a long-awaited installment of Ask Me Anything — RRP 232. That episode is about an hour in length, but the last several minutes were pretty great — pure gold. I realize not everyone has time to digest all the content I produce. So, in case you skipped it or didn't make it to the end — and because I didn’t want you to miss the best part — I thought I'd make it easy by excerpting the most impactful 7 minutes out of that conversation and repurposing it here as a brief mini-sode experiment. It's all about waking up, getting real and taking responsibility for your path, growth and evolution. It's about resolving imbalance so that you can fulfill your mission. And it's about devoting yourself to something greater than you — because we're not in kindergarten anymore. It's time to up your game. Enjoy the listen. Peace + Plants, Rich

Prepare yourself for a supernova blast of pure energy, unbridled positivity and infectious enthusiasm certain to inspire you to next level wellness. David & Stephen Flynn are the joined-at-the-hip identical twin brothers behind The Happy Pear. What is the Happy Pear you ask? Take a 30-minute drive south from Dublin to Greystones, a picturesque seaside town nestled along the Irish coast and you'll stumble upon an impossible-to-miss family run natural food store overflowing with local, organic and seasonal produce. It’s also two whole food cafés as well as evening restaurant, where the brothers conduct wildly popular health education courses for the community. But venture beyond the welcoming Happy Pear storefront and you'll quickly discover this isn't just a veg shop — it's an empire in the making. A vast and growing enterprise that encompasses a superfood sprout farm and a 14,000 sq. ft. facility aptly called Pearville where the twins' team of 100 craft and distribute a prodigious line of organic, locally har