The Rich Roll Podcast

I thought it would make me happy. So, I studied hard. Nailed the grades & aced my college applications — 7 for 7. Even Harvard gave me the green light. I snagged a degree from Stanford, eked my way through Cornell Law School, bagged the fancy job, worked ridiculous hours in overpriced suits and rode the elevator all the way up the corporate ladder, hammering impressive paychecks along the way. Pro...

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...

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...

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...

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 chasi...

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. Fo...

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 wh...

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, c...

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...

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...

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,...

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 ann...

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, drivin...

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 stran...

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 distr...

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....

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 rol...

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 dispos...

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 p...

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...

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...

We’re back with another long-awaited installment of Ask Me Anything — a twist on my normal format where we answer questions submitted by you, the listener. However, today is a twist on the twist. Instead of listener submitted questions we focused on one core inquiry — how to reach escape velocity on your life to step into your most actualized self. At the outset, Julie and I spend some time recapp...

Today's guest will challenge everything you thought you knew about human potential and leave you with one indelible, ineradicable truth: We are all sitting atop vast reservoirs of untapped, almost superhuman capabilities. Meet Wim Hof, aka The Iceman. A Dutch-born world record holder, adventurer, daredevil and human guinea pig, The Iceman is best known for his preternatural ability to withstand ex...

It's not that powerful female role models don't exist. They do. They're everywhere. We just don't do a good enough job celebrating them. So this week, I'm pleased to shine a bright spotlight on one of my favorite examples of female self-empowerment. Meet Robin Arzón. At the height of her corporate law career, Robin fearlessly left it all behind to embark on new adventures in the health and wellnes...

You've probably heard of GMOs. You might even have an opinion on the subject of genetically modified food. But I think it's fair to say most of us are woefully under-informed when it comes to truly understanding and fully appreciating the vast extent to which this rapidly evolving science impacts all of us on a daily basis. 54% of all Americans polled know little to nothing about GMOs despite the...