The Rich Roll Podcast

→ WHAT IT COVERS Rich Roll and Andrew Yang examine smartphone addiction through a clinical lens, applying 12-step recovery frameworks to phone dependency. Yang introduces Noble Mobile, a T-Mobile-based carrier that pays users cash back for reduced data consumption, while both discuss AI's measurable cognitive toll and practical boundary-setting strategies.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Rich Roll and Adam Skolnick analyze the inaugural Enhanced Games in Las Vegas — 42 athletes across swimming, track, and weightlifting competing with permitted PED use — examining lackluster performances, the event's true purpose as a product marketing vehicle, and what the normalization of performance enhancement reveals about current cultural values.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Conservationist Paul Rosolie details his two-decade mission to protect a specific Amazon river basin through Jungle Keepers, an organization that has secured nearly 150,000 acres toward a 300,000-350,000-acre threshold required for Peruvian national park designation, while navigating uncontacted tribes, narco traffickers, and the Amazon's accelerating deforestation crisis.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Executive coach Joe Hudson joins Rich Roll to explain how emotional repression—not external circumstances—drives stress, self-sabotage, and poor decision-making. Hudson outlines his Art of Accomplishment framework, covering emotional fluidity, negative self-talk, the "golden algorithm" for breaking behavioral patterns, and why understanding yourself outperforms fixing yourself as a path to transformation.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Rich Roll describes his 72-hour Iboga root ceremony conducted in the Bwiti tradition in Mexico, distinct from clinical Ibogaine treatment. He details the physical and psychological intensity, his three core intentions, the feminine-led ceremonial structure, and measurable post-experience shifts including reduced coffee dependence, decreased hypervigilance, and improved relational presence with his partner Julie Piatt. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Iboga vs.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Ultra-endurance athlete and firefighter-paramedic Andy Glaze traces his path from crystal meth addiction at age 16, through multiple institutional experiences, divorce, and career trauma, to running 100-mile weeks for 320 consecutive weeks — examining how physical movement functions as a mental health tool and why it eventually reaches its limits.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Psychiatrist Dr. Paul Conti outlines a structured framework for mental health self-inquiry across a 145-minute conversation with Rich Roll, covering the five-part structure of self, three fundamental human drives, how trauma creates guilt-and-shame reflexes that distort self-narrative, and why compassionate curiosity — not professional intervention — is the primary starting point for most people seeking psychological change. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Symptom vs.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Rich Roll explains his 4 AM workout routine post-spinal fusion surgery, using daily clock photography as public accountability. He connects this practice to the "tortoise mindset" — prioritizing decade-scale thinking over short-term results — and the "pay now, love it later" principle of sacrificing instant gratification for long-term transformation.

→ WHAT IT COVERS David Epstein, author of *Range*, discusses his new book on how constraints drive creativity and well-being. He covers the BCS productivity framework (batching, commitments visible, satisficing), why unlimited freedom undermines creative output, how scientific research gets misrepresented, and why social integration and norm-based institutions predict long-term individual and societal flourishing.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Exercise physiologist Dr. Stacy Sims joins Rich Roll to explain why decades of male-centric research has produced fitness and nutrition advice that actively works against women's physiology. The conversation covers perimenopause-specific metabolic changes, why intermittent fasting backfires for women, optimal strength training protocols, circadian-aligned eating windows, creatine supplementation, and sauna and cold exposure sex differences.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Rich Roll and Adam Skolnick record a casual outdoor Roll On episode covering the evolution of podcasting toward authenticity over optimization, the self-improvement industry's psychological pitfalls, the Artemis II mission, music discoveries including Geese and Turnstile, the HBO Dean Potter documentary, and why collecting present-moment experiences matters more than personal optimization protocols.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Marcus and Amber Capone, founders of the veteran nonprofit VETS, recount Marcus's 13-year Navy SEAL career, subsequent PTSD and TBI diagnosis, failed conventional treatments, and eventual recovery through Ibogaine therapy in Mexico. Host Rich Roll shares his own 19-day-post-ceremony perspective, while a Stanford study documents 86–93% improvement in PTSD, depression, and anxiety among veteran participants.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Rich Roll speaks with journalist Nick Bilton — former New York Times columnist and Vanity Fair special correspondent — about how Silicon Valley billionaires like Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, and Sam Altman use deliberate myth-making to accumulate power, why AI represents an existential threat beyond nuclear weapons, and how storytelling shapes culture, democracy, and the future of human creativity.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Rich Roll details his recovery from L5-S1 360-degree spinal fusion surgery, covering how he lost 35 pounds in 100 days, rebuilt fitness from near-zero, and reframed a debilitating 15-year back condition as a catalyst for transforming his relationship with exercise, identity, and presence. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Weight loss sequencing:** Start dietary changes before reintroducing exercise. Without training-induced hunger and cravings, adherence is easier.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Rich Roll analyzes Tiger Woods' fourth driving incident through the lens of addiction science, drawing on his own two DUI arrests in 1996 to explain why high-achieving individuals with abundant resources repeatedly self-sabotage, and how unhealed childhood wounds drive destructive adult behavior patterns regardless of fame or wealth.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Harvard professor and social scientist Arthur Brooks joins Rich Roll to examine why meaning has collapsed since 2008, particularly among young strivers. Brooks frames happiness through three macronutrients — enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning — and explains how technology-driven left-brain dominance blocks the right-hemisphere activity required to answer life's fundamental why questions, offering concrete strategies to reverse the trend.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Simon Hill, host of The Proof Podcast, analyzes the 2025 U.S. Dietary Guidelines with Rich Roll, examining the disconnect between the scientific advisory committee's plant-forward recommendations and the final guidelines, which emphasize animal protein and full-fat dairy while simultaneously recommending saturated fat intake below 10% of total calories.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Neuroscientist Dr. Tommy Wood presents evidence that up to 45% of dementia cases are preventable through modifiable lifestyle factors. Using a three-part framework — stimulus, supply, and support — he outlines how exercise type, nutrition, cognitive engagement, and mindset interact across the lifespan to protect brain structure and reduce Alzheimer's and dementia risk. → KEY INSIGHTS - **The 3S Brain Health Framework:** Dr.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Stanford Life Design Lab founders Bill Burnett and Dave Evans explain how design thinking methodology — originally developed for product innovation at companies like Apple — applies to building a meaningful life. They introduce frameworks including radical acceptance, prototyping, simple flow, and formative communities as practical tools to address the current crisis of meaning affecting college students, mid-career professionals, and retirees alike.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Rich Roll, a long-term recovery alcoholic, deconstructs a viral Channel Five interview with actor Shia LaBeouf following his New Orleans arrest, using it as a framework to explain relapse mechanics, the difference between apology and amends, and what genuine recovery accountability requires. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Relapse timeline:** Relapse begins days, weeks, or even years before a person picks up a substance again.