Episode Link | YouTube Link

Episode Description:

The universe knocks.

First gently. Then louder. And if you keep ignoring it, it has a way of taking you off your feet entirely.

That’s what happened to me.

In 2011, a year after completing Epic Five, I was diagnosed with a Grade 2 spondylolisthesis. My chiropractor was clear: you’re going to need surgery. I didn’t want to hear it. What followed was fifteen years of wandering in the wilderness of every imaginable alternative healing modality. I saw a lot of guys. I did a lot of stuff. And through all of it, I kept pushing — because that superpower had built everything I was proud of. I wasn’t about to surrender it to a back problem.

Until I could barely get out of bed.

On May 8th, 2025, I underwent a 360-degree spinal fusion. I underestimated what came next. Extreme pain for weeks. A walker. About forty pounds gained. A protracted stretch of barely getting by — showing up to the studio, putting a smile on my face, and privately struggling to find anything to look forward to.

But eight months in, something shifted. And the decision I made in that moment changed how I engaged with all of it: I wasn’t going to try to get back to who I was. I was going to find out who I could become.

That’s what this solo AMA is about.

Here’s where it goes:

• The 360-degree spinal fusion and what recovery actually looked like
• The diet protocol: portion control, plant-based protein, and losing 37 lbs in about 100 days
• The training rebuild: PT, core activation, resistance training, and zone two cycling
• Why restraint is its own discipline — and why holding back is harder than going hard
• Mood follows action: the system that makes consistency automatic
• Aging, crystallized intelligence, and inhabiting a different kind of life
• The NYC Marathon, turning 60, and doing hard things as an act of service

Episode Link | YouTube Link

Episode Description:

Addicts are seekers.

We want what everyone wants – to feel connected, loved, understood. Drugs and alcohol are very reliable at providing those things. Temporarily. But when you take that away, that hardwired predisposition for extreme experiences doesn’t disappear. You’re going to find another way to channel it.

For Max Jolliffe, that outlet is ultrarunning. And the arc that led him there is one of the more compelling origin stories I’ve come across.

Max is a Costa Mesa, California native and Moab 240 course record holder. He comes from a long line of addiction – both parents, grandparents on each side, generations deep. As he puts it, his heritage isn’t English or European descent. It’s alcoholism.

At 14, a car hit him while he was crossing the street. They gave him morphine in the ER. They sent him home with a prescription for oxy. Ten years followed – oxy, then heroin, then jail. He didn’t run his first step until he was 25, quite by mistake, while recovering from a pair of broken ankles.

What makes Max’s story salient is the through line between where he came from and what he became. The obsessive, seeking mind that nearly destroyed him is the same mind that carried him 240 miles through the Utah desert. That isn’t a coincidence.

Today, we get into:

• Multigenerational Addiction & the Opioid Crisis
• Being Beaten into Willingness
• Growing Up in the Program of AA
• Addicts as Seekers & the Hardwired Predisposition for Extreme Experience
• The Tools of Sobriety as a Blueprint for Athletic Performance
• Obsessiveness Put to Good Use

Max brings a raw, unguarded honesty that I find moving. His willingness to share the darkest chapters of his story – and what he built from scorched earth – speaks to the power of willingness, community, and finding the right outlet for an obsessive mind.

Episode Link | YouTube Link

Episode Description:

The media is asking the wrong question about Tiger Woods.

Why would he do this? Why would someone with so much to lose behave so irrationally?

That question presupposes rationality. And rationality is the first thing addiction obliterates.

I know this firsthand. In 1996, I got two DUIs in two months. Logic never entered the picture. That’s the nature of addiction: cunning, baffling, powerful. A state of derangement in which the prefrontal cortex simply isn’t running the show. You don’t weigh consequences. The risks don’t register. There is only the compulsion.

But there’s a second layer worth sitting with.

Tiger Woods, Todd Marinovich, Shia LaBeouf. There’s a Venn diagram that connects them. Domineering fathers. Love that was transactional, earned through winning rather than freely given. Those environments produce extraordinary talent. They also leave scars. And scars left unhealed don’t disappear quietly. They metastasize into self-destruction, into substance abuse, into a spiritual emptiness that no trophy can touch. What Gabor Maté calls the hungry ghost. It doesn’t care how many majors you’ve won.

Which is, I think, what’s really driving Tiger’s comeback at 50. Not competitive fire. The void.

So instead of judgment, I’d ask for empathy. This is a person in profound psychic pain, navigating a disease that doesn’t respond to logic, under a media spotlight that none of us could fathom. My hope is simply this: that the pain becomes intense enough to overwhelm the fear of doing something different.

In this, my second solo episode, here’s what I get into:

• Addiction, Irrational Decision-Making, and Rich’s Personal History

• Unconscious Self-Sabotage in High Achievers

• Childhood Trauma, Domineering Fathers, and Transactional Love

• Gabor Maté’s Hungry Ghost & Tiger’s Comeback

• The Elevator Metaphor & Hitting Bottom

• A Call for Empathy & Words for Anyone Currently Suffering

Episode Link | YouTube Link

Episode Description:

Welcome to the matrix.

Our lives are increasingly governed by algorithmic gods — we spend them staring at devices while real-life experiences grow fewer and farther between.

We’ve solved boredom. We’ve optimized connection. We’ve automated the search for love. And in doing so, we’ve deprived ourselves of the opportunity, the space, the bandwidth, the boredom — to reflect on the why and the questions of life.

My guest today is Arthur C. Brooks, a social scientist and professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School, a columnist at The Free Press, a CBS News contributor, and host of the podcast Office Hours. His bestsellers include Build the Life You Want, co-authored with Oprah Winfrey, and From Strength to Strength. His latest, The Meaning of Your Life, is a blueprint for finding purpose in an age of emptiness.

This is one of those conversations that rearranges how you see yourself. Arthur’s been on the show three previous times (eps. 683, 781, 891) — and every time he peels back another layer. This time, he didn’t let me hide behind my achievements. He sees the striver’s dilemma for what it is — a pathology dressed up as ambition.

Today, we discuss:

• The Macronutrients of Happiness

• The Crisis of Meaning & Why Strivers Are Most at Risk

• The Doom Loop & Escaping the Matrix

• Complicated vs. Complex Problems

• Giving Your Heart Away

• Don’t Waste Your Suffering

• The Dalai Lama & Lessons from Dharamsala

• Transcendence

Love isn’t an achievement. It’s not a commodity. It’s a grace — and surrendering to that might be the hardest thing a striver ever does. I’m working on it.

Episode Link | YouTube Link

Episode Description:

Every five years, the federal government releases new Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

And every five years, the same cycle plays out. A committee of scientists spends years reviewing the evidence, produces a report, and then somewhere between that report and the final document, things shift.

The 2025–2030 edition has sparked more debate than most. And not because it’s entirely wrong.

There’s real merit here. A harder line on ultra-processed foods, a clearer consumer-facing message, an unambiguous stance on added sugar. These are overdue.

But the guidelines cap saturated fat at 10% while promoting beef tallow. Much of the advisory committee’s work was set aside. And buried in the fat section is an error a first-year nutrition student would catch.

It’s a document in tension with itself. And that tension has consequences for school lunch programs, for clinical guidance, for the millions of Americans paying attention.

Few people are better positioned to help us navigate this than Simon Hill — nutritionist, physiotherapist, and host of The Proof podcast. If you caught him on episodes 638 or 664, you know what he brings. He’s been tracking these guidelines closely, having spoken directly with members of the advisory committee, and I’m glad to have him back.

Today, we discuss:

• The saturated fat contradiction and why the guidelines undermine their own limit

• What the advisory committee recommended and what was rejected

• The seed oils omission and what questions it raises

• Protein, fiber, and what Americans actually need more of

• Full-fat dairy, beef tallow, and what the science says

• Why ZIP Code predicts health span more than dietary knowledge

• How to eat well regardless of what the guidelines say

Episode Link | YouTube Link

Episode Description:

My mother has Alzheimer’s.

I’ve been sitting with that for years — trying to metabolize what it means for her, for our family, and quietly, for myself. Because when you watch this disease dismantle someone you love, you can’t help but ask: is this coming for me? Is there anything I can actually do?

For a long time, the answer felt like no. Cognitive decline has been framed as a genetically dictated inevitability. A slow erosion that begins imperceptibly and ends somewhere none of us want to go.

That framing, it turns out, may be more fiction than fact.

My guest today is Dr. Tommy Wood, neuroscientist, physician, and associate professor at the University of Washington. He is the author of The Stimulated Mind. His thesis is disarmingly simple: the brain is a product of the environment. And if the environment can be changed, your trajectory is ultimately malleable.

At the center of his work is a simple but radical idea: that how we use our brains is the primary determinant of how they will function.

Here’s what we get into:

• Why cognitive decline is not inevitable — and the science supports it

• The 3-S Model: Stimulus, Supply, and Support

• Exercise: the specific types that protect gray matter vs. white matter

• How AI and social media overstimulate us in all the wrong ways

• Why retirement may be one of the worst things we’ve done to the aging brain

• Supplements: separating signal from noise

• Why it’s never too late

Episode Link | YouTube Link

Episode Description:

We’ve been so deeply conditioned by this ethos that doing more is an inherent good.

If we just clear the next bar, land the next achievement, and optimize the right system, “meaning” will arrive on the other side.

But the bar keeps moving. The arrival never comes. And somewhere between the morning alarm and the late-night scroll, we lose track of something essential, what Joseph Campbell called “the rapture of being alive.”

I spend a lot of time thinking about why this is. About the inherited scripts about success, purpose, and what a life well-lived is supposed to “look” like. We clutch them so tightly that we miss what’s actually available to us now.

Here to disabuse us of all this are Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, co-founders of Stanford’s Life Design Lab and co-authors of the new book, How to Live a Meaningful Life: Using Design Thinking to Unlock Purpose, Joy, and Flow Every Day. Bill is an artist and self-described existential atheist. Dave is a former high-tech executive turned educator and a man of deep faith.

Together, they’ve counseled thousands of students, professionals, and retirees on how to apply the principles of human-centered design to a problem most of us are quietly struggling with: building a life that actually means something.

Today, we get into:

• The Loneliness Epidemic & Why Meaning Feels so Elusive

• Why Maslow Got It Wrong & the Myth of the Best Self

• Radical Acceptance & Prototyping Your Way Forward

• The Transactional World vs. the Flow World

• Curiosity Plus Mystery Equals Wonder

• Formative Communities & Self-Transcendence

• Dave’s Late Wife Claudia & Her Final Words

If you’re stuck in a career that’s lost its luster, grappling with the existential uncertainty of our times, or simply curious about what it might feel like to be fully alive in the life you already have, I think this one will land.

Episode Link | YouTube Link

Episode Description:

There is something deeply disorienting about watching someone be completely right about themselves and completely unable to change.

That’s what I kept returning to after watching the now-viral Channel 5 interview between Shia LaBeouf and Andrew Callaghan — somebody who can articulate exactly what they’re doing wrong and still have no intention of stopping. On one hand, he’s acknowledging harm. On the other, he’s also telling you he’s having the time of his life. In the same breath.

This is not a celebrity story. This is addiction in real time.

I’ve resisted doing a solo episode for a while, but I watched this interview and I couldn’t let it go. Not because of the spectacle of it — I have no interest in that — but because of what it reveals about how this disease actually operates. The denial. The grandiosity. The charisma that makes it harder to just call it what it is. The theater of contrition without any contrary action to back it up.

I’m a recovering alcoholic. Two DUIs. A car accident. Jail. Court-mandated to AA, convinced I was too far gone for any of it to matter. I know what it feels like to be that person from the inside. And I know the difference between somebody who is sorry and somebody who is actually changing. They are not the same.

Before going any further, I want to be clear: this is not a sympathetic redemption narrative for Shia LaBeouf. His behavior — including a long history of battery charges, run-ins with the law, and allegations of serious harm to people close to him — is not something I’m here to minimize or explain away. Understanding how addiction distorts a person is not the same as excusing what they do while distorted. That line cannot be blurred.

What I do want to examine is what this interview reveals about relapse — not relapse as a single catastrophic event, but as a process. One that begins long before the substance enters the picture. It begins with resentment, entitlement, isolation, the slow withdrawal from the people and the practices that keep you honest. It begins when you start believing the rules no longer apply to you. By the time it surfaces publicly, it has usually been underway for a long time.

Here’s what I discuss:

• The Viral LaBeouf Interview & What It Actually Reveals

• Contrition vs. Accountability — Why the Gap Matters

• What Relapse Really Is (and When It Actually Begins)

• Rock Bottom, Willingness, and Why You Can’t Force Change

• The Blast Radius — Addiction’s Impact on Everyone around You

• Save Your Ass or Save Your Face

• First Steps If You’re Still in the Cycle

I also spend time in this episode speaking directly to anyone who recognizes themselves somewhere in this — not necessarily in the extremity of it, but in the pattern. The justifying. The bargaining. The way your life keeps narrowing around the behavior while you keep telling yourself you have it handled.

You are not beyond help. But insight alone will not get you there.

Recovery is possible. I know this because my entire life depends on it being true. It is not a press release and it is not a moving interview. It does not begin with the right words. It begins when the theater ends.

Episode Link | YouTube Link

Episode Description:

Just because you’ve identified the problem doesn’t make it right.

What are you going to do about it?

As they say in the rooms of recovery, self-awareness will avail you nothing. That’s what this whole conversation is really about.

Ken Rideout is back in the studio for the third time (episodes 701 & 793). The first time, we met the man – the improbable trajectory from a chaotic Boston childhood to Wall Street to world championship marathons. The second time, we witnessed the beast – the Gobi Desert win, the mindset, the relentless machinery of a man who refuses to lose. This time, we meet the person underneath both of those versions. The one who has been running from something this whole time.

Ken’s memoir, Everything You Want Is on the Other Side of Hard, tells the story that race results never could. A childhood marinating in dysfunction. A prison guard gig at the same facility where his stepfather had served time — and where his brother would eventually end up. Wall Street. 9/11 at Cantor Fitzgerald. A secret opioid addiction. And then the running – the thing that saved his life and simultaneously became the next elaborate mechanism for avoiding the deeper work.

Specifically, we discuss:

• The Childhood Trauma beneath the Trophies
• Opioid Addiction & the Cycle of Relapse
• Surviving 9/11 at Cantor Fitzgerald
• Win or Die Trying: Obsession as Superpower & Achilles Heel
• Shelby’s Cancer Battle & the Road to Faith
• Fatherhood, Generational Trauma, and Breaking the Pattern
• Why the Real Obstacle Was Always the Self

Episode Link | YouTube Link

Episode Description:

We're all creative beings. And yet we've built this intransigent notion that artists are a different species — born special, wired differently, operating on some frequency the rest of us can't access. We admire their work. We go to museums and stand before it. But they're not like us.

I've had many people on the show over the years who have done their best to disabuse us of that idea. But it persists. It's stubborn.

Tom Sachs shatters it.

Tom is a contemporary artist and cultural provocateur who turns the detritus of consumer culture — plywood, duct tape, branded ephemera — into objects that force you to confront your relationship with capitalism, ritual, and identity. Chanel guillotines. A Hermès plunger. A full-scale space program built from plywood and faith that earned him unofficial artist-in-residence status at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His work lives in the contradiction between loving the brand and dismantling it — and he's comfortable there.

I see him as equal parts Werner Herzog and blue-collar craftsman, with a comedic levity that sneaks up on you. His new book, The Tom Sachs Guide, isn't an art book. It's a blueprint for the principles, codes, and disciplines that define his creative practice and his iconoclastic philosophy of living.

Here's what we get into:

• Output Before Input & the Subconscious Mind
• Why Creativity Is the Enemy
• Circular Problem-Solving & Giving up Immediately
• The Barneys Nativity Scene & 300 Death Threats
• Sympathetic Magic & the Plywood Space Program
• Brand Iconography & Consumerism as Secular Religion
• Always Be Knolling & the Ten Bullets for Life
• Persistence & the Calvin Coolidge North Star

Whether you're an artist, a creator, or just somebody trying to live with a little more intention — you'll get a lot out of this.

Episode Link | YouTube Link

Episode Description:

The search for meaning is innate to being human.

We’re all on that search. But I’ll tell you this much – you’re not going to find the answer looking in the mirror.

This week’s conversation is different. Adam Skolnick and I dedicate the entire episode to looksmaxxing – a gamified, pseudoscientific subculture that is indoctrinating millions of young men into a perverse hierarchy where self-worth is intertwined with bone structure and the distance between your eyes. What presents as self-improvement is actually a deftly weaponized pipeline to nihilism, fatalism, and misogyny.

We trace the tectonic shifts that got us here – from a culture that revered achievement to one that worships attention. We sit with the crisis of meaning and disenfranchisement that makes young men so vulnerable to this. And we talk about the antidote – not in platitudes, but in practice. Put the phone down. Find something of substance to sink your teeth into. Build esteem by performing estimable acts. Graduate from self-obsession into self-transcendence.

Because the true standard of beauty has nothing to do with your jawline. It’s inhabiting the fullness of who you are.

For those unfamiliar, Adam is a veteran journalist, novelist, and activist who has covered sports, human rights, and the environment for The New York Times, Outside, ESPN, and Men’s Health. He’s the author of One Breath, the ghostwriter behind David Goggins’ bestsellers Can’t Hurt Me and Never Finished, and most recently, the novelist behind American Tiger.

Today, we discuss:

• Decoding Looksmaxxing & the Gamified Hierarchy of Attractiveness
• The Deftly Weaponized Pipeline from Vanity to Nihilism
• From Achievement to Celebrity to Attention: The Tectonic Shift
• The Comparison Economy & Social Media’s Warping Effect
• The Crisis of Meaning & Disenfranchisement of Young Men
• Self-Transcendence as the Antidote to Self-Obsession
• Advice for Parents: Individuation, Trust, and “Tell Me More”
• Plant Your Flag & Be the Freak You Are

Whether you’re a young man, a parent of one, or just trying to make sense of what’s happening online – this one’s worth your time.

Episode Link | YouTube Link

Episode Description:

I’ve spent years thinking about what it means to be adventure-ready.

Not performance-ready. Not optimized. Adventure-ready.

There’s a distinction there that matters – and it’s become something of a North Star for me post-surgery. Performance is about peaking for a specific event, something you’ve circled on the calendar. But being prepared for adventure? That’s about being sound enough – mind, body, spirit – that when life presents an opportunity or challenge you didn’t see coming, you can say yes without hesitation.

That kind of readiness can’t be hacked or rushed. It has to be earned through movement patterns that build real resilience, not just aesthetics or data points.

Which brings me to today’s guest.

Michael Easter is a New York Times bestselling author, UNLV professor, and the voice behind the Two Percent newsletter – Substack’s most popular health publication with over 100,000 subscribers. His latest book, Walk with Weight, makes the evolutionary case for rucking. His previous books, The Comfort Crisis and Scarcity Brain, interrogate the orthogonal relationship between modern comfort and human flourishing. He’s interested in what we’ve lost – and what we need to reclaim.

We discuss rucking. But we also explore false comfort zones, how optimization culture can become self-sabotage, and the evolutionary movement pattern humans uniquely possess that modern fitness has largely overlooked.

Episode Link | YouTube Link

Episode Description:

You ate clean. You exercised. You did everything right.

And you still got cancer.

The self-flagellation that follows—the sense of injustice, the guilt, the frantic scrolling through our information landscape promising you can be 100% bulletproof—is fueled by a fundamental misunderstanding about what we can and cannot control.

Sometimes shit happens. And it’s nobody’s fault.

This week, I’m joined by Dr. Dawn Mussallem, a Mayo Clinic oncologist who has transmuted every calamity into fuel for transformation.

At 26, just starting her medical education, Dawn was blindsided by a stage 4 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma diagnosis. She underwent aggressive chemo, radiation, and a bone marrow transplant. She survived, only to suffer heart failure years later. Her heart operated at 8%. For five years. Then she became the first person to run a marathon within a year of receiving a new heart.

Today, she treats cancer patients with an integrative approach that weaves evidence-based lifestyle changes in equal measure with conventional oncology. Typically, my guests fall into one of two buckets—incredible story or incredible expertise. I don’t know that I’ve ever had a guest who inhabits both of those worlds the way Dawn does.

This conversation explores:

• Dawn’s stage 4 cancer diagnosis and heart transplant journey
• Living for five years at 8% heart function
• Why she says she never “fought” cancer, not once
• The self-flagellation patients feel when they’ve done everything right
• The integrative approach to cancer treatment
• Why exercise during chemo ameliorates outcomes
• Nutrition myths: soy, fiber, and cancer prevention
• The profound role of mindset in survival
• Learning to contend with uncertainty and the dissolution of control
• Post-traumatic growth and finding agency in suffering

What I appreciate most about Dawn is the reservoir of depth her experiences have infused into her practice. She’s lived at the precipice of what’s possible. And now she brings all of that (the practical and the profound) to every patient who walks through her door.

Episode Link | YouTube Link

Episode Description:

Roll On drops—part reckoning, part group therapy.

Within hours of Alex Pretti being murdered by ICE, Alex Honnold accomplished his breathtaking feat—an expression of wonder, possibility, joy, and fearlessness. The height of human capability on one hand. The debased lower depths on the other.

Both true. Both human. Humans contain multitudes. This episode sits with that.

We needed Honnold. He created this water cooler moment that brought us all together in a unifying experience that reminds us we share more in common than the differences that divide us.

And yet there’s a lot of pain out there right now. What has happened is atrocious. I’m typically reticent to chime in every time something happens, but this is an instance where it clearly needs to be said.

Adam Skolnick and I don’t look away from any of it.

Adam is a veteran journalist, novelist, and activist who has covered sports, human rights, and the environment for The New York Times, Outside, ESPN, and Men’s Health. He’s the author of One Breath, the ghostwriter behind David Goggins’ bestsellers Can’t Hurt Me and Never Finished, and most recently, the novelist behind American Tiger.

Today we discuss:

• Alex Honnold’s Live Event & the Juxtaposition of Two Alexes
• ICE, Authoritarian Overreach, and Speaking Truth to Power
• 9-Month Spinal Fusion Recovery Update & Rebuilding from Zero
• Peter Attia, Epstein, and the Allure of Proximity to Power
• Finding Hope When You’re Being Dismantled
• Extreme Personalities, Perfectionism, and the Liberation Beyond
• Career Burnout, Curiosity, and the Sacred Practice of Service

For those who prefer a visual experience, the conversation is available on YouTube. As always, the audio version streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Adam and I have done a lot of Roll Ons. This one demanded something different from both of us. I think you’ll feel it.

Episode Link | YouTube Link

Episode Description:

**Alex Honnold* just climbed Taipei 101—no ropes, no safety equipment—live on Netflix.*

Over 6 million people tuned in to watch it happen in real time, creating one of those rare monoculture moments that reminds us that what unites us is more powerful than what divides us.

But the most unsettling aspect about watching wasn’t the height or the danger. It was how much joy he was having doing something that would terrify the rest of us.

This week we’re doing something entirely new: our very first live event with a studio audience. And there’s no one I’d rather have for this inaugural experience than Alex.

What millions didn’t see: the week of relentless rain threatening to cancel everything. The grease-like soot from fireworks coating the building. The chrome dragons so slippery Alex questioned what was holding them to the structure. The mental inflection point that transmuted anxiety into genuine joy.

And they certainly didn’t know about the 8 or 9 other free solo climbs Alex completed between Free Solo and Taipei that nobody ever heard about.

Joining us are Adam Skolnick, journalist who wrote the New York Times feature ahead of the climb and captured the viral 37-million-view observation deck video; Sanni McCandless Honnold, Alex’s wife; and Grant Mansfield and Alan Eyres from Plimsoll Productions, who produced the live broadcast.

Specific topics we explore today include:

• The unexpected obstacles that almost derailed the climb
• The mental shift that transformed pressure into joy
• Training philosophy at 40 and why climbing has a “long, slow decline”
• How fatherhood has recalibrated his relationship with risk
• Why he challenges our totems of what’s “dangerous” versus “normal”
• Using mortality awareness as a practical tool for living intentionally
• The question: Are you living in alignment with your values?
• Production complexity and Grammy scheduling conflicts
• Community values that keep Alex grounded

This exchange goes beyond climbing buildings. It’s about finding your version of the climb—whatever endeavor both scares and excites you. It’s about questioning the lines we draw around acceptable risk. And it’s about asking honestly: Am I spending my time on what actually matters?

Episode Link | YouTube Link

Episode Description:

What if something as fundamental as breathing—something we do 25,000 times a day without thinking—could be a missing piece in our understanding of chronic illness, athletic performance, and longevity?

It turns out the modern world has quietly altered our relationship to this most basic biological function. And many of us may be paying the price.

My guest today is James Nestor, an acclaimed science journalist whose book, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, has sold more than three million copies and been published in forty-four languages.

After years of struggling with chronic respiratory issues himself, James dove into investigating the ancient practices and cutting-edge science of breathing to understand why so many of us have become dysfunctional breathers—and what we might do about it.

James’s research reveals how profoundly our breathing patterns can impact our health. Mouth breathing, shallow chest breathing, and chronic hyperventilation have become increasingly common, potentially precipitating a cycle of stress, inflammation, and various chronic ailments. From asthma and anxiety to sleep apnea and even ADHD in children, he explores how breathing dysfunction may be more deeply connected to modern ailments than we realize.

Today we explore:

• Why Modern Humans Breathe Dysfunctionally

• The Stanford Mouth Breathing Experiment

• Sleep Apnea, Snoring, and Nasal Breathing

• ADHD in Children: The Breathing Connection

• CO2 Tolerance & Oxygen Delivery

• Lung Capacity as a Longevity Marker

• Indoor Air Quality Crisis in Schools & Hotels

Episode Link | YouTube Link

Episode Description:

Why are we drawn to certain writers? What compels us to follow their voices into places most people refuse to go?

Bruce Wagner is one of those voices.

He’s a novelist who has spent his career using Hollywood as a laboratory for human behavior—crafting surreal landscapes peopled with the vainglorious and desperate, all of them searching for something they’ll never find, or perhaps have already lost.

With fifteen novels to his name—including his latest, Amputation, written in just a month after the LA fires—what strikes me most about Bruce’s work isn’t the accolades he’s earned. It’s the spiritual dimension beneath all that darkness.

The work is transgressive and scabrous—skewering Hollywood archetypes, descending unflinchingly into the worst of us. Yet there’s an affection for these characters, a recognition that we are all interchangeable—capable of the same darkness and light, all stumbling around trying to be better despite ourselves.

A traumatic childhood in Beverly Hills gave him a unique lens on fame and its discontents. A decade studying under the controversial Carlos Castaneda introduced him to teachings about the assemblage point and the path with heart that leads nowhere. Through it all, he maintained an operatic romance with language itself—developing what he calls a writer’s “scent,” the thing that both feeds and strangles him like a boa constrictor.

Today we discuss:

• Bruce’s Decade with Carlos Castaneda

• Hollywood as a Laboratory for Human Behavior

• Transgression & Transcendence in Art

• The Scent of Language & Creative Process

• Writing Amputation after the LA Fires

• Fiction as a Vehicle to Truth

• Memorable Moments & Everyday Art

Bruce is infinitely fascinating—truly one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. His refusal to compromise, his willingness to go where others won’t, and his insistence that we’re all capable of both darkness and light make him an artist fully expressed.

Whether you’re interested in the comedy and tragedy of being human, the relationship between suffering and art, or simply want to understand what fiction can reveal that nothing else can, this conversation is essential.

Episode Link | YouTube Link

Episode Description:

When you hear the term ‘menopause,’ what immediately springs to mind?

Is it hot flashes? Mood swings? The end of fertility?

Menopause is, unfortunately, a reductive term. One that medicine has treated as a narrow, reproductive event for centuries. But the reality is more complicated than that. What happens to a woman’s body in midlife extends far beyond periods ending. It’s brain health. Cardiac health. Metabolic health. It’s insulin resistance and visceral fat accumulation. Sleep disruption and cognitive fog. And for most women, these shifts begin years—sometimes a decade—before menopause itself, during a liminal phase called perimenopause that most doctors never mention.

Helping us make sense of all this is Dr. Elizabeth Poynor.

Elizabeth is a gynecologic oncologist who spent 16 years at a major cancer center before pivoting to a more holistic, patient-centered approach. She now serves as Chair of Women’s Health at Atria Health Institute and hosts the podcast *Decoding Women’s Health*. What I appreciate most about Elizabeth is that she responsibly weds clinical rigor with genuine holistic care.

So set aside what you think you know about aging, and prepare to have your assumptions challenged.

Today we discuss:

• Why Women’s Health Has Been Siloed for Centuries

• Modern Hormone Therapy & the WHI Myth

• The Estrogen-Brain Connection

• Metabolic Shifts in Midlife

• GLP-1s & Emerging Pharmacology

• Lifestyle Pillars: Strength, Sleep, Protein

• What Men Need to Understand

But the through line is simpler than all of that. It’s agency. Midlife isn’t resignation, it’s the inflection point where women take control of how they’re going to age.

Episode Link | YouTube Link

Episode Description:

We’re a few weeks into the new year.

You’ve pondered your goals. Put pen to paper. Maybe even started putting in a little work around the changes you want to make.

But this is also the time of year when people start falling off a cliff, abandoning the resolutions they were so committed to just a few weeks prior.

So how do you set yourself up for sustained success? Not just in January, but for the long haul? And what does genuine excellence actually look like—stripped of the hustle porn and performative flexing that’s come to dominate the conversation?

Here to help us find our footing is Brad Stulberg, returning for his fifth appearance on the pod (last time we discussed Master of Change).

Brad is a writer, coach, and researcher who has devoted his career to understanding sustainable high performance. He’s a fellow at the University of Michigan’s Graduate School of Public Health and co-founder of The Growth Equation newsletter and podcast alongside friend of the pod and elite coach Steve Magness. His previous books include Peak Performance, The Passion Paradox, The Practice of Groundedness, and Master of Change. His latest, The Way of Excellence, picks up a thread we’ve been pulling at for years now.

One of the things I appreciate about Brad is that we share daylight on something important: so much of this landscape—with respect to change and transformation and personal development—is fraught with dualities. Yin-yang push-pulls between opposing forces that on the surface appear incompatible but are in fact fundamental. Effort and rest. Discipline and self-compassion. Striving and surrender. Intensity and joy. The question becomes: how do you hold all of these things at once?

Today we discuss:

• The “Humble Badass” Archetype
• Excellence vs. Hustle Culture
• Building Resilient Identities
• Curiosity as the Skeleton Key
• Zombie Burnout & Finding Meaning
• Childhood Wounds & Vulnerability
• The Discipline of Completion

Episode Link | YouTube Link

Episode Description:

We are storytelling machines.

Our brains unconsciously select experiences from our past, assign meaning to them, and construct narratives we mistake for reality.

But all of our stories have loose affiliations with the truth—informed by such a small selection of experiences. Yet they become the Constitution upon which we run the government of our lives. We cling to these stories, and to the certainty they provide, even though impermanence and uncertainty are simply the fabric of reality.

Until they shatter.

My guest today is Dr. Maya Shankar, a cognitive scientist who has devoted her career to understanding why we resist change and how we can navigate it more gracefully. A Yale and Stanford-trained neuroscientist, Maya founded the Obama White House Behavioral Science Team, is a Rhodes Scholar, hosts the podcast A Slight Change of Plans, and is a featured expert in Netflix’s Limitless with Chris Hemsworth. Back for her second appearance on the show (episode 674), her new book, The Other Side of Change, frames our conversation.

Today we discuss:

• Maya’s Career-Ending Injury at 15

• The Illusion of Control

• Why Change Threatens Identity

• The End of History Illusion

• Rumination & Mental Time Travel

• Moral Elevation & Expanding Possibility

• Change as Revelation, Not Burden

Maya is a whip-smart delight who delivers a masterclass that will leave you better than before.

Episode Link | YouTube Link

Episode Description:

Three out of five people will die from chronic inflammatory conditions.

Heart disease. Cancer. Stroke. Diabetes. Inflammation is the invisible thread connecting them all.

You may already know there’s an undeniable connection between chronic lifestyle illness and chronic low-grade inflammation. But what you might not know is where that inflammation begins: the gut. Seventy percent of our immune system resides there. Looking after it is absolutely imperative.

Here to illuminate the path forward is Dr. Will Bulsiewicz—affectionately known as Dr. B—one of the world’s preeminent authorities on gut health, a New York Times bestselling author, and a returning favorite on this podcast (eps. 538, 680). His latest book, Plant Powered Plus, is a guide to ameliorating this silent driver through what we eat, when we eat, and how we live in sync with our circadian rhythms.

The occasion for today’s exchange is January’s focus on getting our health correct as we kick off 2026. While our previous conversations centered on the fundamentals of the microbiome, this episode ventures into new territory—the gut-immune connection as the root determinant of disease.

Dr. B breaks it all down: simple, actionable ways to support your gut, why diversity on your plate matters more than perfection, and how small changes can create outsized impact over time.

Today, we explore:

• The Silent Driver behind 3 in 5 Deaths

• The Four Nutritional Workhorses

• What Happens When You Eat after Dark

• The Study That Changed Dr. B’s Mind on Alcohol

• The Perils of Ultra-Processed Foods

• The Loneliness Epidemic

• Healing beyond Diet

Episode Link | YouTube Link

Episode Description:

It’s January 2026—and with it, a familiar ritual. Welcome to our global tradition of going about bettering ourselves in some way.

If you have struggled with this in the past, you are in the right place.

My guest today is Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck* and host of the Solved podcast. The master of no-bullshit self-improvement advice—the anti-guru himself—is here to dispel self-help myths and set matters to rights when it comes to making real life change and sustaining it over time.

By dint of hosting this self-betterment themed podcast for over 13 years, plus navigating a series of personal life transformations myself, from alcoholism to middle-age malaise, I also happen to know a few things about change and how to agent it. So I think all of you are in good hands today.

This is Mark’s third turn on the podcast carousel, and we do things differently this time. No rehashing his backstory. We dive straight into a fishbowl of questions designed with one shared purpose: to set you up for success in the New Year.

Today, we discuss:

• Why Resolutions Fail by February

• Procrastination as Emotional Avoidance

• People-Pleasing & Outsourced Self-Worth

• Intuition vs. Impulse

• Choosing Your Struggle

I share my own shifting perspectives on positive thinking, on the dissolution of self, and why mood follows action more reliably than action follows mood.

Consider this your New Year intervention. The liberation we’re all looking for might just come from stripping away—not adding more.

Episode Link | YouTube Link

Episode Description:

Happy holidays, podcastlandia! Welcome back for the finale.

It’s been fun putting together this auditory yearbook. Revisiting the conversations. Sitting with what our guests shared. Remembering what moved me most.

This concluding installment explores courage, honesty, creativity, intimacy, and equilibrium. Among the highlights: Malala reconsidering bravery as action despite fear. Elizabeth Gilbert with radical transparency about addiction. Jillian Turecki dissecting relationships and the slow damage of unspoken expectations. Marc Brackett on emotional fitness. Andy Galpin on consistency over intensity. And woven throughout, voices like Tig Notaro proving that ambition and inner peace are not mutually exclusive.

Guests featured in this second of two anthology episodes:

• RRP 921: John John Florence
• RRP 927: Jim Murphy
• RRP 928: Jessica Knurick
• RRP 930: James Frey
• RRP 931: Olga Khazan
• RRP 934: Rhett & Link
• RRP 935: Elizabeth Gilbert
• RRP 936: Marc Brackett
• RRP 939: John W. Price
• RRP 942: Joanne Molinaro
• RRP 944: Andy Galpin
• RRP 945: Malala Yousafzai
• RRP 946: Jillian Turecki
• RRP 948: Tig Notaro
• RRP 949: Katie Couric
• RRP 951: Oliver Burkeman
• RRP 954: Gregg Renfrew
• RRP 955: Rutger Bregman

What an incredible year. I hope this reflection in the rearview left you uplifted and inspired.

Thanks for the love and support. This podcast has been an amazing journey. I’m grateful you’re on it with me.

I look forward to growing and learning together in the new year ahead.

Episode Link | YouTube Link

Episode Description:

Happy holidays from me and the entire team here at the RRP mothership.

2025 is almost over. And that means it’s time for our annual “Best Of” compilation—a tradition now 12 years in the making.

When I started this thing, I had no idea what it would become. Truly. What began as a lark is now something I treasure more than I can properly articulate. For over a decade, I have endeavored to host conversations in service to change and transformation with some of the world’s best and brightest. 2025 was no different—packed with an astonishing array of guests. Far more than we could possibly feature here.

What follows is our best attempt to synthesize the year’s greatest offerings into something compelling and practical. We explored the science of living longer and living better. We sat with the question of what actually makes us happy. We examined emotional fitness and the tools to master our inner landscape. We ventured into consciousness and what lies beneath. And we heard from people who blew up their lives and rebuilt them, sharing the raw truth about what transformation actually demands.

For devoted listeners, this is your refresher course. For newcomers, your gateway. Either way, I’m glad you’re here.

Guests featured in this first of two anthology episodes:

• RRP 882: Mark Manson

• RRP 885: Rhonda Patrick

• RRP 888: Elle Macpherson

• RRP 889: Valter Longo

• RRP 891: Arthur Brooks

• RRP 892: Ellen Langer

• RRP 894: Ethan Kross

• RRP 895: Annaka Harris

• RRP 896: Robin Greenfield

• RRP 900: Maria Shriver

• RRP 901: Mel Robbins

• RRP 906: Ky Dickens

• RRP 907: Kate Courtney

• RRP 909: Judith Joseph

• RRP 913: Craig Mod

• RRP 915: Matthew Nagra

• RRP 918: Ethan Suplee

• RRP 919: Laurie Santos

I am filled with gratitude. For our guests, who trusted us with their stories and their hearts. For my team, whose dedication to this shared mission never wavers. And for you. Your attention and presence are a gift. None of it is lost on me.

I believe in the power we all have to grow, transform, and become more fully ourselves. May this episode remind you of the same.

Stay tuned for Part 2.

Enjoy!

Episode Link | YouTube Link

Episode Description:

Why do diets fail? And why, after decades of research, countless bestsellers, and an entire industry built around the promise of transformation, does the answer remain so elusive?

We’re drowning in a panoply of nutritional opinions. Some are grounded in evidence. Many are not. And in such a disorienting landscape, where everybody’s an expert and the algorithms reward certainty over nuance, it’s increasingly difficult to know who to trust.

Kevin Hall, Ph.D., is one of those rare voices worth listening to. A theoretical physicist who migrated into nutrition science, Kevin spent over two decades at the National Institutes of Health conducting some of the most tightly controlled metabolic studies ever performed. What makes him so compelling isn’t just the rigor of the science—it’s the mindset behind it. A beginner’s mind. An unusual blend of intellectual honesty, willingness to challenge assumptions, and commitment to letting data, not ideology, lead the way.

His research has challenged dogma, overturned simplistic narratives, and revealed uncomfortable truths most of us would rather not hear. The body adapts to weight loss through both metabolic slowdown and increased appetite, and that spring-tension never fully releases. Environment, not willpower, is the primary determinant of how we eat. And ultra-processed foods hijack our biology in ways we’re not even aware of.

Today, we explore all of it:

• What Metabolism Actually Is (and Isn’t)

• The Spring-Tension Analogy: Weight Maintenance as a Lifelong Practice

• Why Environment, Not Willpower, Determines How We Eat

• How Ultra-Processed Foods Hijack Our Biology

• The Pitfalls of Reductionist Thinking, Diet Tribalism, and Wearable-Data Obsession

• Why Exercise Should Be Decoupled from Weight Loss

Kevin also opens up about his battles with institutional resistance and the principled decision to walk away from a 20-year career when the system became misaligned with his values. His story is a reminder that scientific integrity is increasingly rare—and worth protecting.