I mean, the first thing I'd say is what I sort of write in every book, which is there is nothing to fear but fear itself. Do not let fear control your life. You're either inferior and faith and one or two. And I think if you just try having some faith, trust the universe, follow your dreams, you'll start to see results. Are you just going to have that trust in? The second thing is the young creatives like, please, please, please follow your to do your creative.

Don't chase the money, because I in 35 years have never once woken up been like, I've got to go to work today. I once I get paid and made a living doing something I love to do, I wake up every day. I'm like, oh, I'm so excited to go create such a gift. You know, we only get one life and I definitely don't want to be seventy eight going. Oh I wish I always wanted to go here do this.

I always wanted to take pictures, do it I so short precious you have today. Forget about all your yesterdays. What are you going to do today to. That's Michael Mueller and this is Episode five 52 of the Retro Podcast. The Rich Roll podcast, if you're into great white sharks or even if you're terrified of great white sharks, if you dig great storytellers and creative geniuses, then you, my friends, are in for a treat because today's episode is absolutely killer and it's brought to you courtesy of juv.

Juv is a wall or a door mounted device. It's like this big white futuristic panel peppered with tons of little light bulbs that isolate and emit red and near infrared wavelengths of light. Basically, you stand in front of it in the comfort of your home and you bathe. I guess that's what you do. You bathe in front of it. Now, why would you want to do this? Because and I know this sounds weird, there's a correlation between light and health.

In other words, when we're exposed to certain colors of sunlight, in particular these red and near infrared colors, they stimulate the mitochondria in our cells and help us produce more energy. They enhance recovery. They support healthy skin and even enhance sleep and circadian rhythms. This is what you've done, delivering these wavelengths directly to your skin and your cells with none of the potential downsides of sunlight like skin damage. I've been using my juv consistently for many months at this point, just a few minutes a day.

And I can say it has had many positive impacts regulating my sleep cycle being one, but also helping to alleviate some joint pain in my hips and lower back. It's absolutely wild, modern witchcraft. I think not. You're going to have to see for yourself. And there's exciting news for you guys for a limited time. Juv wants to hook you up with an exclusive discount on your first order. Just go to juv dotcom rich roll. That's Jay Low Double V and apply my code.

Rich roll to your qualifying order exclusions apply limited time only again. That's Juv J of dotcom slash rich roll. Have I mentioned that today. Finally, after obsessively trying to make this happen for a very long time, I've got the great Michael Mueller on the pod. Michael is.

How do I describe this, he's like this larger than life, almost Hemingway character, who has lived quite the extraordinary life. He's an extremely talented artist and a charismatic figure who has packed millennia of adventure into his mere five decades here on Earth. This is a guy who traveled to 60 countries before he even entered high school account that's currently at 200. And after spending the greater part of his childhood living in Saudi Arabia, a passion for photography blossomed. The more he saw, the more he felt drawn to capturing his experiences in photographs in his mid teens, his passion quickly turned into a career, documenting initially the snowboarding and punk rock scenes across California.

And by the time he was 22, he had established himself as a leading Hollywood entertainment and fashion photographer. Today, Michael is the top dog in his game straight up. This is a guy who has photographed every one for every prominent media outlet out there, from Vanity Fair to Esquire, Joaquin Phoenix, Brad Pitt, Jeff Bridges, Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Scarlett Johansson, Nirvana, Leonardo DiCaprio and everybody in between. The question isn't who has he photographed?

It's who hasn't he? That iconic photo of Kobe Bryant baffling that graced the cover of Time magazine back in February. That's Michael, that iconic movie poster or billboard that you love. Chances are that's Michael to the man behind countless studio campaigns for everything from all the Marvel movies to Inherent Vice. But and here's the thing, really. Michael's truest passion and a primary focus of today's conversation is sharks, specifically great white sharks, documenting them on film, understanding them, educating others about them, and most importantly, preserving them.

It's an obsession that led him to invent and patent a studio lighting system which he now takes with him underwater to light the ocean life in ways never seen until now, shooting stunning and really surrendering photographs of these apex predators. He's currently transforming this imagery into an extraordinary virtual reality experience. He gave me a taste. It's really unbelievable in the hopes of dispelling the many myths about these creatures and helping people to overcome the common fears that we have about these creatures.

In addition, Michael has partnered with Dr. Andrew Huberman at Stanford, who you'll recall from Episode five three and also who helped make today's episode happen.

Thank you, Andrew. With this VR technology to help people with PTSD and anxiety. And finally, Michael is an avid philanthropist. He's worked in many capacities as a United Nations global advocate on behalf of refugees. He's also the co-founder of Kids Clicking Kids, which distributes cameras to children in hospitals and encourages them to photograph their world and many other philanthropic pursuits. So this conversation is many things. It's a recap of Michael's unbelievable life, which is more adventure novel than resume.

It's about creativity. It's about what drives him his philosophies on work, passion, service and the power of the image to shape culture. It's also keenly focused on preserving our oceans, specifically protecting our sharks. Over 100 million sharks are killed every year, and that number is really shocking. To put it in perspective, sharks kill about five people per year, five people per year in comparison to the hundred million sharks that we kill every year. It's unreal.

These apex predators are beyond vital to our oceans ecosystem. And without them, as you'll soon learn, our oceans will crumble. But aside from environmental service and preservation, I really think this conversation is about what the great whites represent, which is fear, and the only way to overcome them is to move towards them.

Yes, I'm talking about literally swimming at them to face them head on.

And it is with this that I give you Michael Muller. So I feel like we just had a whole experience together for the podcast we had we tried to get the VCR working the shark VCR thing, we might be able to get it working mid podcast, in which case we'll take a break. But I really wanted to see that before we talk today.

Technology. I love it. Right. It's crazy. Well, I was just saying, like, yeah, the whole Occulus thing is at a certain point where it's amazing, but also not super user friendly or it's kind of janky.

Right? Well, I'd say this.

If your sons or my daughters were here, he'd be like, yeah, right. They haven't figured out what you already are, generation. Yeah. I don't know if it's the tech or just us, but yeah. I mean, you know, that's why Apple has been so successful, in my opinion. Simple. Yeah. Kizzie really the user interface is always super intuitive.

Whenever I'm making like websites and stuff, I tell the developers and even ad Adkinson and like people are they're not dumb, but they're impatient. Like you got to be you know, when they go to a site or something, you're going to be able to get to it real quick. Yeah. You're trying to figure stuff out.

You leave. I know. And at like fifty three, forget about it, you know. Right. That ship has sailed, so leave it to the kids. Well, listen, man, I'm, I'm so excited to have you here. I've wanted to talk to you and meet you for a really long time. So thank you for coming out. I appreciate it, man, and my pleasure. This morning I woke up and I open up Twitter and I went hit the the Discover tab to see what the news was.

And the number one trending story this morning was a shark attack on the Gold Coast. Did you see that? No, I was about to make a couple of jokes in my head. I was yeah, it could have political jokes just going viral.

That actually makes my point even more strong, which is that, you know, the shark attack will always be the number one story despite all the craziness going on in the world right now. That's the number one story. And what got buried in that? Because I was reading about it, surfer, you know, attacked, lost his life, but it was the first shark attack, like on that whole coastline in, like over a decade.

Well, that doesn't get a couple of weeks ago because it was just like I went to the Hamptons a couple of weeks on the East Coast and that everyone was talking about because the woman, you know, got killed a couple of weeks back, the first time ever a shark attack. You know, this guy that you're talking about got attacked, lost his life or whatever. But if you look, you know, it's the first time in ten years, probably before that, that might have been the first one.

Like, the numbers are so right out of whack.

So one thing you always say is like, yeah, when we were all terrified of shark attacks, I swim in the ocean all the time, open water, swimming, and everyone is always like, what about sharks? What about sharks? Yeah, you have to bear it in mind. But the thing that you always say is there that we're killing a hundred something like 100 million sharks a year. Yeah. And that's then how many shark attacks are there?

Well, there's five deaths worldwide on average, five, five, five. And you think about the probably trillions of people that are in the ocean in that year, trillions not.

You know what I do because I'll be out surfing, you know, in Point Dume, especially if it's like a grey, cloudy day by myself or, you know, only one other guy out.

And I'll get the heebie jeebies because I'm trying. You know, when you're under when I'm diving, I can see the sharks like I know my environment. I'm here. When you're on the surface, you don't know.

It's that's that's when that's a fear because you can't see anything.

And that deep, which is what led me to sharks to begin with, that deep, you know, ingrained fear that I have of this animal coming and attack me. I'm like, oh, I can feel like I'll have the heebie jeebies. Like I can feel a shark in the area. I'm going to get attacked. It's going to bite my leg right now. And what I've learned to do this is my trick. To get that to go away is I go, OK, I am more likely to win the Super Lotto twice this month, not once, twice more likely for that to happen and for a shark to attack me right now.

And when I do those those facts, it goes away and I'm like, OK, you know, it's not going to happen. Yeah, but Jaws.

Well, and if it does, you know what I mean? Like, if a shark does attack me and if I die. So I'd much rather die by great white death than by cancer or any of the other. Seriously.

I mean, you know, I mean, like, it's going to be quick and they'll be a good story to sort of let go and let the thing jump. And I'm going to have a circle of life and I'm going to feed this animal that I don't know, just acceptance of if that's the way to go. It actually is not that bad of a way to go. I don't think, comparatively speaking. Do you know Paltalk Elder? Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've had him on the show. He's a body.

And it's just so cool that somebody who literally almost lost his life as a result of that has now devoted it to the preservation of the animal that almost killed him. Mike Coots. Bethany, you can go down the list. Shark attack victims, pretty much 99 percent of them are always going to seem to always come out the other side supporting the sharks conservation. You know, I'm not I'm not you know, I don't blame the shark, right. Rarely do you see someone that, like, lost their leg and like, I hate sharks.

I want to kill them all. I haven't seen that yet on the news when they see these.

It's a weird thing, right, that somebody who was almost killed by this animal then develops like a love affair with it.

Well, how many dogs how many people died by, you know, dogs this year? Yes, seriously, I think those icicles kill six hundred and seventy people a year.

I'm not kidding you falling from mostly in Russia, but six hundred and seventy people die from icicle death and exponentially higher number than shark deaths, way higher.

There's there's soda machine stats, too, you know. Right. I buy soda machine.

That's a weird one. I'd heard that recently. They tip over on people.

Exactly. More than more than sharks. You should be scared when you're getting a soda. Much more than just so you mentioned the fear.

Was that like a conscious thing, like I'm afraid of sharks, I'm going to move towards this.

It was, you know, Jaws. And it was a combination of jaws growing up surfing in northern California. Waters are populated by great whites. I mean, they would attack a seal with surfers out and I won't go and watch the shark and the blood in the water and two hours later, you know, go back out and surf again. Yeah. So I just had that fear. And about 15, 16 years ago, I'm like, you know what?

I want to I want to see what I want to photograph one. I want to go see like I want to face it.

Like I'm and sort of it's because of the fear or was that like the adventure impulse? It was the sort of both. You know, I sort of dive in at 10 years old in the Persian Gulf. I grew up in Saudi Arabia for four years and it was like untouched reefs. Actually, the first sort of photograph when I saw the power of photography, I took a picture of a picture of a shark with my waterproof camera like 11, and developed the film and then showed my buddies and told them I had taken it right away.

And then I had to like, say, oh, it wasn't me, it was Nat Geo. But I saw their reaction.

But the power of the image to inspire. Yeah. And so early, you know, I started talking about my wife for my birthday, got me one of those cards. Good for one short trip, you know, which previously I'd never collected the race car or anything. The next day I went down and signed up, went down to Guadalupe, first one in the one or six in the morning, still dark out.

Was that the IWC campaign or. That was the first year for myself. I was the first one in the cage and that shirt came up five minutes in the water comes up out of the darkness, swims by. And where you are about that far from me. And we locked eyes just like I'm doing with you. My life changed. I was like, Oh, I see you. You see me. You're not this mindless killing machine like it just from that moment.

And on that trip, I was like hanging out of the cage by my waist and, you know, which just like I'd love to be out there, but I still, you know, had a fear. And at the same time, I was shooting Michael Phelps and all the Olympians. I was doing the Speedo campaign for like nine years in a row. And a sort of combination of the two things. I was like, I want to I want to light a shark like I do Ironman, like I want to emulate it and studio like it more.

I can't bring the shark to the studio. I got him in the studio, the shark. So I went online figuring there would be lights. They didn't exist, 400 watt and then big movie lights. So long story short. And then I could also do that with the swimmers and, you know, surfing and all types of they didn't exist. So I set out to invent them. I'm like, wow, I'm going to have to make them.

And, you know, that's where fear comes in, in that place, too. Like, who are you to make a light?

How are you? You're not going to be able to make, you know, all that chatter starts happening. But, you know, one thing led to another. I met one guy who, you know, met a guy actually got ripped off and I almost gave up. And then I met this guy who looked at me was like, I can do it. And I believe that he believed he could. And I'm like, All right, well, I'll give you a little bit of the money.

And then when you deliver, I'll pay you at all. We got a guy from NASA, a guy from JPL Jet Propulsion Laboratories, and we actually made the most powerful underwater strobe light. It's a pro photo, basically, and I received four or five patents on and IWC. The president was in town and I was putting their watches on celebrities. And so they came up to my house and I showed them that one short trip, the one trip that I told about these lights that I'm making.

And he gave me their aqua time, her campaign on the spot, which was like nine months ahead. And all of his employees looked at him like you're giving this Hollywood portrait guy underwater campaign. And, you know, at the time, I'm not David do ballet or one of these award winning underwater guys. And I'm like, I'm going to crush this. I'm going to have these lights and everything. Minie The lights didn't exist at that point.

Aha. The day before we left the Galapagos, the lights arrived. I just. In my pool fired them, they worked and I went down to the Galapagos very naive. I'd done one short trip, didn't really know any of the statistics, and we were with UNESCO and the Charles Darwin Foundation, and that's where I got educated. What was happening to our planet? And this is, you know, 15 years ago we were killing 100 million sharks at the Great Barrier Reef, was gone at the time.

Now it's 60 percent. So we've already lost 10 percent in the last 15 years and all the other things. Right. Right.

Yeah, it's so interesting. I mean, this is clearly your you do lots of stuff, but this is your primary passion. And it seems, you know, in contrast to the other work that you do. But when you understand your full story, like looking backwards, you know, vision is always 20/20. It seems to make perfect sense. Right. You're taking all of this studio cred and all the acumen that you've developed over the years, like working with celebrities and these movie campaigns and commercial campaigns and then bringing that to the natural environment, like light these sharks underwater to create these images that are truly like iconic.

I mean, I was just looking at your book right now.

It's just stunning. Well, that's sort of on that trip. I went up to the roof of the boat one night and the stars were out. And I said to myself, I have three daughters. And I said, I don't think my kids are going to be able to see some of this stuff. You know, the whale sharks I was seeing in the schools, a hammerhead. And, you know, I still had that fear. Right.

So I went from one cage dive with great whites down with no cages and hundreds of hammerhead sharks and Galapagos sharks. You know, like I sort of got thrown into it, but I said, you know, I don't think they're going to see this. So I made a decision. And that's, I think anything in life. It starts with that decision, you know, I'm going to start biking or whatever it is, I'm going to, you know, create an app that's going to change the world.

Right. So I made this decision that I'm going to do everything I could to help sharks. That was the of all the issues in the ocean. I'm going to help sharks and do everything I can to raise as much awareness, as much money to help this animal that's been so misconstrued by movies and news. And the idea for that book hit me that on that trip, at that same time, I like to do a book and I saw the sharks coming out of light because I hadn't taken the lights yet and gone to the weights or anything.

And I'm like, if people see a shark in a way they've never seen him before, it's going to make them stop and look. And then I can educate them. And I'm like, I want to do a Taschen book, you know, 10 years before I got the Tarsha. Yeah, yeah. You know, the idea that seed, at least in my life, I see it. So I'm like, oh, I'm going to do a book and it's going to come in a cage and all this stuff.

And it might take a decade, but as long as I'm walking towards that vision, it usually manifests. It's amazing how, like our star, our minds are to, you know, bend reality and manifest, you know, what we want in our lives, which in my in my opinion or, you know, for me, it was to help our planet. And I hope I help this next generation. Yeah.

And by picking a very specific thing to focus on, you can have more impact than just being like, hey, I'm an environmentalist at large. Right. What does that actually mean? Whereas this is very directed and is pointing people in a specific direction to really reframe how they think about, like, their relationship to this animal that we fear.

That is a, you know, the the apex predator of the planet.

Yeah. You know, it also takes an amazing wife and daughters that supported me because I did thirty six expeditions, you know, that are self-funded. So I'm spending my own money on these trips. You know, it's not trying to charter boats and racial quotas, but, you know, thank God for Marvel because I was you know, she had all these big movie rights, the whole thing for you. They were paying me well, and I would take that money instead of buying a bigger home or more cars and go do shark trips.

So when you have that first experience with that shark in your your eye to eye, like you said, your life change, like, what was it about that? Like, what did you see there that shifted you like. Well, like, I want to know I want to understand that better.

Which you will at the moment. I will shortly.

When Jackie I that we are right because it's the closest thing to being there without getting wet you'll ever do that was the problem I had was how do I change people's perceptions, because that's what it is. It's a perception shift with photos. It's extremely difficult because you look at that photo of the shark, that's cool and it's beautiful, but it doesn't really help shift the fear. Even you might hear my experience. It might make me more afraid. Might make you more afraid.

Right. TV a little bit better. You might have a little bit more of a chance changing people's perceptions, watching a box. But what I found happened is the most powerful was every year. I've taken that every year, but quite a few trips. I've taken out friends, a lot of them sort of influencer types, actors and athletes to go out a little bit, put them on a boat actually in different parts of the world and brought them to see the sharks.

My wife's a perfect example. So I brought her out with Felipe and Ashland Cousteau. In his organization, we went out to Guadalupe and my wife, it's an 18 hour boat trip, cried almost the whole way, I'm going to die. I can't believe I'm doing this. It was so irresponsible. You know, of course, it's going to be the wife of white make the days, you know. Yeah. And I'm just like, OK, babe.

All right. Yeah. The second dive, I think it was she was not out of the cage with her flippers on, but standing on top of the cage, holding the chain. I thought she was going to jump on the back of the shark and swim away. That's how fast her perception shifted. And that goes for pretty much everyone that I bring out. They would go out.

So that's what causes that shift, like what is what is transpiring that defies the the preset in the mind.

Well, I think one is you're not seeing what we've seen so many times in the movies, which is this, you know, shark that just wants to kill you, you know, and they're watching me and my team out of the cage interacting with these animals. And you can clearly see that these great whites really are, you know, trying to kill us. There's incredibly smart. They're apex predators. You have to have a tremendous amount of respect because, you know, they will kill you if you're if you if you're scared or act like prey.

Yeah, but I. I can't tell you what's happening. What what's happening. I can give you as my experiences that I saw this animal in a different light than I did, you know, watching the movies. And I was like, oh, it's not what I was projected.

Yeah. You had mentioned in something that I read that that you can clearly see a difference in personalities across. Like, every shark has its own personality and you start to individuate and notice that. Yeah. And gender's you know, the females versus the males, you know, females are always a lot bigger.

They're more chill, they're more, you know, and and inquisitive, whereas the boys are aggressive and just sort of like swimming around fast and just sort of like people.

But they all are a little different. And you, you really assess the animals when when they come up.

And, you know, here's here's all other sharks. Here's tiger sharks and hammerhead like, you know, the tiger sharks. We have to, like, bait them to come in because they don't want anything really usually to do with us, you know, in Hawaii, different parts. They will they'll come right up. But for the most part, sharks went the other way. When they see people, you know, we're chum in the water and putting fish out so they'll come in.

So that's pretty much every other shark. And then there's great whites, right. So great whites are ambush predators. So when you swim with great whites outside of the protection of a cage, it's not the shark that you see because they'll be in the cage and there'll be a 25 foot, whatever, 72 foot where the wall is that far, like right there. And I look over as long as we have eye contact, I'm not even thinking about I mean, I am, but I'm not.

My head's like this on a swivel looking around, because eventually I'm going to usually look down and I'm going to see that tail going right. Two and a half tons going about twenty miles an hour coming up at me like a missile. So they're coming, which I then have to turn and swim head on at the shark coming at me at twenty miles an hour. And the minute I start swimming towards it, it, it looks at me and says, I don't like you, you're a potential predator.

And banks are. Wow. Now, that takes some serious balls. So how do you lemons charging you you've got a charge at it? Yeah, so this is you know, and that's the thing. There isn't like learn to swim with great white school, you know, and this is this is, you know, years and hundreds and thousands of hours underwater with all different types of other sharks. And my mentor, this this man, Mornay Hardenberg, who's in South Africa, he's the one that taught me the skills of swimming with white sharks out of the cage.

And how I learned that was about six years ago. I was out of the cage and my flippers were down. I was like this with my camera and I see a shark coming at me like full speed. And I grabbed my camera and I remember in my head going like rubber meets the road. Here we go. Like, I'm ready. I'm holding my camera. I'm looking down and off this shoulder. Mornay goes head on and it holding this red camera with the two arms and the lights and go straight on at it.

And I watch the shark tank off. And the first thought was, that's the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life. Second thought was he just saved my life. Third thought was looks like that's what you do. And when we got up to the surface, he said, OK, listen, when they come at you, you have to turn and swim head on at them. Right. Which goes against everything in your you know, especially after spending five, six years with them from the cage watching those teeth and how fat like, OK, the next day we were out of the cage and we had two of them come at us, one at him, one at me.

I had no choice. So I did it.

I'm like, all right, here we go. If you freeze your prey, if you freeze, you're done. So here's what happened. So everything in the ocean besides orcas swim away from that animal. So everything like freaks out everything. So the minute you start swimming towards it, that's not something they're like. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, right. The other thing is nothing touches that. And so if you go up and even give it a little pinch, it's just gone.

Wow. Gone.

What about the you always hear you're supposed to punch them in the nose. Is that. Yeah. Is that a myth.

Yeah. Urban myth. Yeah. Well here's what happens if you punch them in the nose, punch your hands mouth. No that mouth opens up which is really wide.

So one of the things I do is before I have an expedition where I know where to be, you know, outside the cage with white sharks for the weeks leading up in my mind, sort of like baseball players visualize I visualize that shark not turning and what I'm going to do and how I'm going to twist my body and hit my, you know, use my camera to the side of his gills on the sides, which I've only had to do one time.

And and all of the the diving and all the times I've spent with great white sharks, one time a shark came by and he looked like he was going this way. And at the last minute his head went like that. My daughter, my ten year old was in the cage watching behind me. So I was not taking any chances. They just gave it a little tap right when it had moved and swam off, but never been bit.

I mean, it's never, never even been really close to being bad. Right.

Wow. But you do have to be, you know, with the chum in the water, you have to be really aware of your surroundings because, you know, a piece of fish can float by your arm, you know, and the sharks go in for that fish and, you know, catches your arm. And, you know, for years people would ask me, like, why do you do this? Are you an adrenaline junkie? Was usually the common tag that would go with why I was doing this.

And I couldn't really I couldn't quantify I couldn't answer them why I was doing it. And I'd be like, no, no, it's not an adrenaline junkie thing. And then a couple of years ago, I don't know, four or five years ago, I was underwater. I was with the sharks and it hit me. They hit me like a bolt of lightning. I'm like, oh, my God, this is why I do this, because it was really the only time in my life that I felt like I was really in the moment, like in the moment, truly, you know, nothing else is going on.

And I was like, oh, my God. And the hairs on my arms stood up and my wetsuit and I was like, wait, I don't want to have to swim with sharks to have this this experience. I want this on land to which led me down a path of mindfulness and meditation. I'm seeking that that experience out, which I it's a practice that I try to do daily as much as I can of being right here right now in the moment and not up here in the future in fear.

Yeah.

Because I once I started this project, I thought I was sort of a fearless guy and I really had no idea how much fear, you know, ran my life.

But smaller things like, you know, jobs and work and little things. And then how much I would react on it, just robotically send an email, do this, try to do stuff, try to make the headset work, force it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Instead of just being like it's all cool and finding finding presents in the most treacherous environment, like we think of mindfulness in the context of, you know, a calm, quiet environment, that it's fear that brings us into the moment. Yeah. More than anything. Right.

I mean, I got to say for me, the more chaos and like when I'm on my shoots and there's a hundred people and people are, what do you want? And that's the most common. Like a giraffe. Yeah. Yeah. Like who? When I'm at home and my daughter starts having some emotional meltdown or whatever, that's when I'm just like going to wow, that's crazy.

How old was your daughter when she first swam with sharks? So I have three girls. I have a six year old and twin 13 year olds. Clara, the eldest, she started doing great white me at nine and a half. I got them certified at like nine and a half ten and sort of fudged their birthdays. And she's done four great white expeditions with me. And she literally asked me last year, I want to go out of the cage.

And I was like, I bet you do. Well, we'll talk in ten years after you put it all the time with all the other sharks. You have to earn that even though there's a part of me that so badly wants to take.

Pretty cool. I mean, my daughters are the same age. I got two daughters, 16 and 13, and I'm trying to visualize them doing something like I'm trying to visualize myself doing something like that. Like, that's it's just that's super cool.

Yeah. I mean, I grew up my father, you know, we lived like I said earlier, I lived in Saudi Arabia for four years and traveled to 60 countries before I started high school. And and it was one of the best. So when you're there, when you live in Saudi Arabia, they pay you three times your salary for your home, that most people just bank a bunch of money. And my dad was like like this is a one.

So I think we're going to travel and see the world. And every three months we had a big wall map. We're like, oh, let's go to India. Let's try. Right.

And you got 50 countries by the time you're in high school. Yeah. And I think that's you know, it planted that seed as a photographer. I travel a lot, you know, now since been to close to 200 countries. But it's something I try to do with my family a lot and show them the world sort of open their eyes to how good we have it here. So there's a lot of countries that, you know, people, I think really take it for granted in America, like how how blessed we are.

I mean, we have our fair share of issues. And in recent days and months and years, they're they're growing by the day. But we have an amazing country here. And it's just cool to see the world and all the different cultures.

How old were you when you moved to Saudi Arabia? Third grade. Third grade. What city did you move to?

My dad built it was built in a city called Jubayl. It was at the time the world's largest construction project. He worked for a company called Back Door, a big construction. You know, it's like Bacto Aramco and Floor. And he was the project manager. It was like, you know, building a massive, massive city.

So I've traveled throughout Saudi Arabia. I knew a bunch of cities there and spent some time in Bahrain. Yeah. And what I didn't realize that I learned when I was there was that at one time Bahrain had some of the most amazing coral reefs anywhere.

And the oil trade has just devastated. That's where I grew up. So Bahrain just right off. Jubayl Yeah. We would take D'Albert, you know, the Dow, the wooden boats that we'd take Dow boats out to Bahrain right before the bridge was built or was the bridge before?

This is this is like the late 70s, early 80s, right before Saddam let all the oil into the Persian Gulf, before this oil trade. And to this day, I can see those reefs. They were the most untouched, gorgeous reefs I've ever seen to this day. Yeah, that's what I've heard.

And they're gone. They're gone.

And I remember when the tanker they had to didn't have to control it so that it was deep enough for the tankers. I don't know exactly what I mean. I don't know. Oh, there's probably a bunch of different reasons why it's gone. I just remember Desert Storm and the war. What affected me the most. I remember CNN showing the beach with the waves crashing the oil waves. And I just saw those reefs wiped out. And I just was it crushed me.

And I was like, oh, my God, those reefs are all gone. That's where you learn to scuba dive, though. Yeah, that's where I learn to scuba dive and, you know, grew up watching Cousteau and that sort of also planted.

Right. So so dad had the adventure gene. Yeah. And photography was his reply. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So he had all the Nakumatt and icons was and gave me my first efore and I moved back to the United States in seventh grade and started shooting snowboarding. It was just starting like literally it was the inception of the sport and started shooting snowboarding when I was like fifteen and getting published. And me and my best friend at the time who was from Europe.

So his parents sort of thought came as college tuition. And we started the first snowboarding calendar, which the first year we lost our shirts that had broke even sort of actually made when you were in high school. Yeah. So you were you were where we were.

You were living in the office. Yeah. Yeah, right.

OK, so they traveled to Europe at sixteen, just the two of us shooting pro snowboarders and we drive to Colorado. So growing up overseas because we would get to like Hong Kong and I'm twelve years old and I would leave for two hours and come back and tell my parents like, OK, the market's over here and this is their right. It's just a different time.

Do you that now. Yeah. Wow, that's crazy. Yeah.

And then at some point you become this like unbelievable triathlete.

Yeah. Yeah. It's part of the story. It gets lost. But like, this is crazy. Yeah, you were like so champion triathlete, yes, I actually was at the same time, so in high school, you know, I like seventh grade was the worst year of my life, like can coming back from Saudi Arabia. All the other kids knew each other. I knew no one had to, like, socially claw my way up, you know, the ladder.

And sports wise, I started waterpolo. But a year behind all the other guys, I was as good as that as the other guys. But I wasn't getting played and I was in swim team. And this guy sort of telling me he was doing triathlons on bike and run. And I was like, oh, I want to try that. And I went home and told my parents, like, Are you serious? I'm like, I'm dead serious.

And they got me a bike and I started writing and live in the Berkeley Hills. So there's a lot of hills riding.

And I would ride 50 miles a day. And I was doing water polo and swimming. And I went and did my first triathlon, which was a half Ironman, the wildflower, which is a field that's a hard course.

Frickin gnarly. I didn't know any better though. So my first race as a half Ironman and I get in, 500 people search there, 700 people start to swim. And I can I remember to this day this guy grabbing my shoulder to pull me back and I'm coming out of water pool and I look back and just kicked him in the face. So I come out of the eye, come out of the swim in fifth place overall pros. And my dad was like, what the F is going on?

Like, there must be some, you know, some my son's. And to go out on the bike, come back from the bike in ninth place, so literally and this is out of everyone.

And then when I'm ready to run and hot. Yeah. Go out on the run, walk half of the, you know, thirteen mile run and finish ninety ninth overall and first in my age group and I was hooked. That was, that was that I started doing them, you know, 15 to 20 of them every summer, which was the season I 1920 sponsors, you know, revo sunglasses, Domino's Pizza, sight out sport and you know, placed fifth in the world at the world championships, probably would have done a lot better.

But I was heartbroken now at Olympic distance. Yeah. Yeah. Harpic distance and race against Lance Armstrong. Right. Because that's when he started doing triathlons before bike racing. And yeah. So I would do triathlons in the summer and do photography.

And then did you when did you move to San Diego for a spell. Right was right. When I graduated active senior year in high school I would get out of school at eleven because of my triathlon to go train. So you know, when I graduated high school the day after I graduated, like, you know, June 15th, I packed my car up, moved to San Diego because the two meccas of triathlon at the time were Boulder and San Diego and went down there and had a triathlon team.

At the time was I've always been a bit of an entrepreneur. And, you know, like I said, all the sponsors I got myself I right. Right. You know, and then I was also shooting snowboarding and rock and roll. So the other thing I did in high school was I would write the labels and say that I was shooting for the local paper, the Contra Costa Times, and to get the press pass. Right.

So I was going to roll you name the concert like backstage at Shoreline Exploits. I'm shooting rock and roll and I'm shooting snowboarding. And then I'm doing my triathlons and I go to San Diego and, you know, I moved down to the beach and it's just party sand. Right. And I'm looking around at these guys that are like 21. I'm 17, 18. And I'm like, if I don't get out of here, I'm going to end up a loser like these days.

And I'm like, what do I want to do? Swim, bike and run for ten more years? And then what?

Yeah, there's not a lot there's not a lot of bandwidth for rock and roll when live in that triathlon lifestyle. Yeah, well the reason I'm at that level, No. Is opposite.

There wasn't a lot of bandwidth for triathlon because I was planning my life. I'm like, what am I going to swim, bike and run for ten years? And then what? So what do I want to do? I didn't do well in school. Like it wasn't like going to Stanford or anything. So I'm like photography. That's what I do. So I packed up, went with my buddy from high school. We did the calendar, moved to Boulder, Colorado for a season.

And I was just heartbroken for my high school sweetheart, ripping my heart out and doing what they do at that first that first love, you know, and then was in Boulder. He got a girlfriend, was doing his thing. And my best one of my other best friend was was in L.A. He was a musician. He said, come to L.A., come to L.A. I packed up, moved here. I was eighteen. And the rest is sort of history started shooting, you know, model friends and activities and that sort of.

So you fell in pretty quickly into like the the the Leo and Balthasar crowd. Right. Balthasar prowling.

I was the first first non snowboarder. He was the first actor I shot. So I got here. Scott was really good friends with Balton Davis. So I shot Baldasaro in David Arquette and then just friends like we all went to the Formosa, all the under. It was the only guy that was there of the underage. But yeah, it was like Leo and Drew and you know, and at that time this is before the Internet film, you know, we just let's go take pictures, go shoot pictures.

No publicists, publicists only came about when the Internet came about and then bands because I knew all those labels. Right. I'm shooting the thing, so when I got to L.A., they were like, oh yeah, come on in. So I went and then I started shooting spin. And I remember Spin called me to shoot some band called Green Day. And I'm like, Green Day. What is Green Day? I went to Berkeley and we became like, you know, I shot all their stuff, shot their wedding shot, Billy Joe's wedding.

And I was the punk photographer when punk sort of blue and rancid and all those boys.

That's crazy. It seems like it happened really seamlessly and quickly. Yeah, I mean, it did. It's like you have to have the talent. I think, you know, I never went to school, so I didn't learn the rules. You know, I also because I was like, how am I going to learn to shoot people? Right. I was shooting and snowboarding and I found out about testing models. Right. Because I was like, I don't ever want to assist.

I don't want to watch you doing something I want to do to learn how to take. But now I can do this. So I figured that models need portfolios right. To go and get jobs. So I started testing models and I did a few for free and then I started charging fifty year old, you know, and then 100, A and 150. But every one of those shoots I treated like it was the cover of Vogue or the cover.

And I would be like, OK, I got to do six different looks within a three block radius and I would dress them and and then I was shooting my actor friends, which were, you know, it was like Leo before Titanic. Right.

And then but you're on the inside. You have their trust so you can go. I didn't go out of their atrocities and I, I earn their trust because I would get I would have photos that I could have made a lot of money with the National Enquirer, but I didn't. Because you do that once, you might get a good payday, but you're never going to you know, people aren't going to trust you. So I was their friend.

So I would, you know, shoot stuff and shoot at parties and do stuff. But I you know, I obviously have that compass of knowing. Right. There's a boundary there where there is. Yeah. And yeah. And then I got agents and started shooting, you know, the rest are sort of and never like technically trained, never apprenticed.

So I to persons for one semester they had advanced placement because of my snowboarding work as a junior and whatever. Right. And I was like what do I need a diploma for. Do I need to show this to jobs? And they're like, no, just if you want to be a teacher, I'm like, OK. And I got paid to learn by these models, you know, because I was trying new films and and doing different things like that.

And how does the studio work start to happen? I mean, did not begin with you starting to photograph like the superheroes outside of the Chinese theater studio where it started happening in the second lifetime of my career.

So. Right. I'm in my 20s. I'm shooting young Hollywood. I'm shooting all the rock and roll. This is early 90s Nirvana and, you know, young kids in Hollywood with money and success.

And, you know, I like everyone I knew at the time, started doing drugs, had a big ego that like because I travel and mentor like I would, you know, nothing's going to I'm never going to have a problem and and, you know, formed a drug habit that got me by the back.

And what was the what was the drug of choice is the problem.

I'm going to move to New York. Yeah. The geographic that was great. The geographic you know, this is the problem. I'm not realizing that I'm taking the problem everywhere I go because Michael's the problem. That took me years to learn that.

Yeah. So that played itself out over a while. A long, long how many years. Yeah.

It was like, you know, four or five years. I was smart enough to go like, OK, I've got a drug problem here. If I don't put my camera down, I'm going to burn every bridge. And I made a conscious decision to like be like, OK, if I'm going to be a drug out, might be a professional. And that's sort of the same same triathlon mindset. Exactly. All in exactly. But in the back of my head, I sort of knew I just knew I was going to find my way to the other side.

You know, my dad was got cancer diagnosed with cancer. So he started to, you know, die from cancer. That was sort of the end of my using. And when he, you know, passed away, I moved back to northern California, you know, got arrested one last time and he passed away and I got out. And that was sort of it. I, you know, sort of going to a 12 step program. Yeah.

So that was the bottoming out was just your dad passing was at the moment. Ah, yeah. That was a really pivotal moment. I think I had so much shame and guilt that what I let happen to me that, you know, I felt like I don't know if I would have ever gotten sober if he hadn't passed because it was so bearing on me. You know, I had this great career in this life that I had built and I, you know, sort of flushed it all down the toilet.

And, you know, when I remember, they've got sort of got me started this second, got sober, whatever the new part of my life in Sacramento. And I remember going there. I'm like, I'm I'm staying here six months and I'm moving back to L.A. like. This is the armpit of California. Don't you know who I am and I've shut Drew, right? And I ended up saying I remember two years because when six months came, I was like, I'm not ready to go back to L.A. but I milked Sacramento for all his worth.

I mean, you go there for treatment or y you go to school. I mean, sort of. I went there I went there under the tutelage of like a spiritual adviser and then got introduced to 12 step stuff. So I got into all that and then started shooting and searching all the local bands and was and then started slowly making trips down to L.A. and went into bondage because I was shooting all these bands and I loved their clothes. The owner saw my portfolio, took me to line Tony, Tony, Tony Noton.

I know who is so tiny. There was a guy to make a and then this taekwando Swedish guy named Tony who were the two owners of bondage.

Aha. That's because a lot of politics. Then Tony kicked me out and brought in Christian agilely or whatever and the Tom Hardy, all that after that, the bondage campaign came out. I mean, like Paris Hilton came in for it. But that campaign launch and sort of put me back on the map and the ad agency started calling and I started doing these like big cause campaigns were giving me the money to come back. So I moved back to L.A. and I remember I was like, you know, two years into this new life of mine.

And when I was up in Sacramento, I was, you know, dating, just dating a lot of girls. But being really honest, I'd be like, listen, I'm not emotionally available. I'll take her on dates or have fun. But that's all I can give you. And they're like, yeah, cool. And then like six weeks or a couple chaos ensues.

They'd be like, I can't do this anymore. So I have feelings for you. But you told me. But I'll tell you, my guy, the one thing my spiritual adviser gave me, which saved my life and a lot of regards was he looked at me, said, you know what you're looking for in a wife? And I'm like, Yeah, yeah. It's like, what? And I gave him the generic, you know, I don't know if I need to say, no, no, you're going to go home tonight.

You're going to write down the ten core principle things you want in a wife. And I was like, OK, and I did. And I was like, you know, good relationship with dad. No kids. I want to create a family, not marry into one, you know, has her own life, spiritual man, all these things. And I shortly thereafter met this girl who was like a hairstylist and a boyfriend. And I was like, oh, she might be the one.

She had two kids on my list. I'm like, you're not the one. So I moved back to L.A. two months into moving back. I met my wife to this, you know, who's my wife now? It was like, check, check, check, check, check. Now, Balthasar and his wife Roseanne are actually the while, the ones who I met. But that list, because they look back in retrospect, you can ever like you to said.

Yeah. And I was like, oh my God, if I hadn't made that list and went with that, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you right now.

Who's that spiritual adviser? Just you're being cryptic about that. But I'm like, oh, no, no, you're not God. No one knowing you would know. I've had I've had many of those over the years. I tell you, those are the those mentors that have you know, there's there's been a dozen you know, there's been a bunch that giving me those. And, you know, it's just a matter of being open and seeking, you know, it's like the the Kabbalist say the the darker the darker you are, the more opportunity of light to reveal.

Right. So I went really dark and which means on this new path and seeking the light like no other.

Yeah, but the darkness is the teacher. When I think of a photographer of your caliber, I think of a particular kind of lifestyle. Lots of women, lots of parties. And you did all that. You had your moment with that. And now you have this kind of spiritual path where you're into all this holistic stuff and the environmentalism. And I know you're part of like the and Gabbi morning workout with Wim Hof breathing and the ice baths and like all the stuff that you do to, you know, be this, you know, be the most authentic, best version of who you are so you can express yourself and share your your gift and raise your family and, you know, be the man that you know, you're meant to be.

Yeah. You know, one of the one of the sort of aha. Moments was the realizing the PTSD that I had that I didn't know. I used to talk about that.

I mean, I you know, I've read that you've had that and that you deal with that. But what is the origin of that?

Well, I thought you had to go to Vietnam to have PTSD. You know, I was naive, like PTSD. I don't have PTSD. I remember when I first the first time I started doing, you know, therapeutic work with me, you know, with the council looking at my trauma. And I'm like, yeah, it's not that they looked at me as like Michael.

I work with, like, soldiers that come right off Afghanistan and you've seen more shit than 95 percent of them. Like, don't think for a second that you don't have some serious issues. So, you know, when you have PTSD, there's big P and small P, which I've learned a lot from Andrew Huberman and different people about fear and just different things, but. When you when you see anything that's perceived death, death or near death, experience imprints you, right.

And I have a different emotional reaction than, say, a normal person or a person that doesn't. So like, when my wife yells, like, I feel like I'm dying, like it's crazy, this emotional reaction. And if you don't deal with those emotions, it's like a pressure cooker stuff, stuff, stuff explode. Right. Or medicate. Right. You know, which I think if you look at the the core reason why people abuse drugs, they're medicate in pain.

I would say probably 95 percent of them. That's why they're taking drugs. They want to medicate. They want to numb that pain. Now, that's one way of going through this life. You can numb the pain, right. And then you're numb and all the joy, you're numb and all the happiness. You're numbing everything. Or you can realize those wounds, right? Bandage, patch, let them heal. Look at them as scars. Like I have a scar on my face that I see every time I look in the mirror.

It's there. But do I still feel that fence ripping open doesn't affect me? But that takes work. It takes looking at those wounds where the origins and a lot of childhood trauma, you know, from emotional, physical abuse, you know, and then those dark years that I was, you know, abusing the drugs I saw and did a lot of things that were just dark, just. Yeah. One of the things you do in the trauma therapy I did is a trauma egg.

And you start from your first you know, your first memory of any near-death, you know, and had a big piece of paper about half the size of this table and started with a circle down here circles. And I literally almost filled the egg up with these, you know, near or death that I'd seen people being killed, whatever it might be. And, you know, I still looked at that, like I was saying, and was like, yeah, it's not that bad.

You know, it's not that bad.

You didn't drive your Humvee over and, you know, an IED. Yeah, it's more like death by a thousand cuts. Right. Like these just exactly. These incidences that would recur in your life that accumulate over time to create this situation. And everyone everyone has them. Yeah, life. You have these experiences in life, right. That are traumatic and that are.

Who helped you realize this? Were you working with a therapist or.

Yeah, I think, like I said, all those different, you know, different spiritual people or mentors over the years that have guided me. How did I find out about trauma? I I had a guy that I was working with and a 12 step program come over to my house, looked at me and he was like, Listen, Michael, I don't think I can help you. And this guy had worked with like Mike Tyson and different people.

And he said, you have something that's beyond which took a lot for him because the ego said, I can help, you know, and he had the humility to look at me and said, I can't help you. I think you have something that's beyond my skill set.

I was like, was it Howard? Well, this person, I'm going to remain nameless. But he said, I want you to call this guy. So I cold called this guy West, and he was a guy who was 25 years sober with a gun in his mouth. He also had, you know, PTSD that he didn't know about. And he told me the story and he's like, Michael changed my life. And then he gave me the number of my first trauma therapist named Ryan Suave, who I called Ryan.

And he actually flew out here. And we spent four days together out in Malibu, 24 hours a day doing therapeutic work. And it was one of the gnarliest experiences of my life. Like it was extremely tough, you know, for breath work, like hour and a half long sessions a day. Like it was it was hardcore. And that was my first. And, you know, now I do some MDR work, which is another form of trauma therapy where you're looking at a yeah thing, your eyes going back and forth.

Right.

And it's been really cool because I talk about it and there's been, you know, a number of people that have come up to me and said, I can't thank you enough. I didn't know anything about it and I actually hadn't have addressed it. And I can't tell you my life is, you know, and that's that's what it's all about. Yeah. When you can sort of pass on what was sort of so freely given to me.

And so how how is it for you now? Does it still show up? Like, is it something that you just unconsciously have, you know, you know, sort of resort to these tools to manage it? Or is it quelled and kind of in your past daily practice?

Yeah, I man, I'm stuck with Michael till right till I, I till I also when the wife yells the bell still go off.

They do. And you know, I something I'm working on like literally today is not reacting, not taking it personal, not like realizing it's her thing. It's not mine, it's just me. I want to take another oh my God it and when I do that, when I don't react, it's freaking amazing what happens because I don't know about your wife but wife's like to pull the pin and throw a grenade. Right. An emotional grenade that just blows up.

Like where did that come from. Why are you blowing. Coming up, and when I react it just last all night, right, and when I don't, it's crazy because she'll throw the grenade or she'll say the things and then two minutes later say, hey, love, come over here. And I'm just saying, well, you're uninstalling the buttons. Yeah. Yeah, right.

Yeah. That's you know, and, you know, one of the things that's been apparent is this you feel this need to protect your kids from any of those traumatic experiences, like, oh, I don't want them to feel that. I don't want them, you know, or at least sometimes my wife and I'm more like they need to go through these things. The only way to learn is for their friends to destroy them and not invite them to that party so they realize what it feels like when they don't invite people to things.

Yeah, it's a conundrum because the most interesting people that I know have had those dark moments of the soul and have figured out for themselves how to, you know, repair their lives and they come out of it and become these incredibly interesting, amazing, productive people. And then, you know, you sort of have some success and you're able to provide for your kids in a certain way that maybe you weren't able to to have. And by doing that, you're depriving them of certain life experiences that can be formative in the most positive way.

Yeah.

And then you you also I know I have to own the things that I've passed on that I go, oh, my God, because I think in my head I had that illusion, like, I'm never going to do the things my parents did. I'm going to be this great dad. And then, you know, in retrospect, I'm like, fuck, I, I wasn't perfect, you know?

And my daughters let me know every day. But what the beautiful thing is, I do have today, you know, I have this moment to either undo or do things differently and, you know, try to fix. I have, you know, pretty good, amazing relationships with my daughters. I hear from other fathers that get the hand or whatever. I get the door slammed, which would suck. I don't. But I you know, that was a choice.

I remember when Clara was six months old, a couple studio heads, different people told me that they had missed they were working all the time. They missed their kids growing up. They were getting remarried and they had their new baby. And they're like, Michael, don't do it. And I've made a conscious decision. I did a job when Clara was six months, a Nike gig and grease whatever and missed the vacation or left for part of it.

I was sort of sad from that moment on.

I made a decision that when I'm on vacation, no matter what comes up, I'm with my kids and I pass on some of the biggest jobs of my life doing that right. Also going to all my kids games when I'm in town. But what I have today is a relationship with my daughter, and I'll get the hand and I'll get the door slammed. And are they perfect? By no means. That's beautiful, man. We should we should take you into something.

Yeah. Let's do the V.R..

We'll take a quick break and report back. We'll be right back. But first, we're brought to you today by Squarespace, it's four people, 20, 20, and all its strangeness will be coming to a close in a flash. Remember that New Year's goal to update your website launched that brainchild project of yours. Finally make that e-commerce site to start selling your swag. Stop flogging yourself for not getting on it. It's not too late to make it happen.

And with Squarespace, it's easier than ever. Gone are the days of dropping thousands of dollars on a website with Squarespace, you can craft your own beautiful site, blog, online store portfolio, you name it. No complex coding or design master's degree required. Squarespace is award winning templates easy to use? Tools and customizable specs make it simple to whip up your own authentic online presence. And don't worry, site's come out looking professionally designed irrespective of your technological acumen.

And if you come across an issue, Squarespace team has got your back with 24/7 customer service. More good news, get a free domain if you sign up for a year. Even more good news. If you go to Squarespace dot com, slash rich roll and use the offer code rich role, you'll get 10 percent off your first purchase. So go to Squarespace dot com slash rich. Roll it. Make sure to use the offer code rich role at checkout to get 10 percent off your first purchase.

Make a move today with Squarespace and finally were brought to you today by Woop. Recently I've been having tons of people sliding into my DBMS asking for recovery and training tips. I love helping you guys out and I do the best that I can to advise. But the truth is all our bodies are vastly different to really hone recovery and hit that PR you've been shooting for. You've got to understand your personal individual biometrics. And that's where Woop comes in, like this technological guru right on your wrist.

Woop is basically a fitness membership via a fashionable wristband tracker and app. It doesn't just track your steps, though. It focuses on much more meaningful metrics and biomarkers like Strain based on how strenuous your day was. WOOP provides personalized sleep and recovery recommendations and insights, including how many hours of sleep you need, a breakdown of your sleep cycles and ideal wake and sleep times tied to your circadian rhythm. And after your recovery is fine tuned up goes as far as to recommend exertion levels.

So, for example, when you start an activity, WOOP will show you in real time whether you need to push harder or if you're overdoing it or if you've reached your goal. I absolutely love this thing. I never take it off my wrist. I really like checking out all the data like HRR, heart rate, heart rate variability, respiratory rate. And I love the team's function that lets you share your data with a couple of friends to help you stay accountable to your goals.

I'm looking at UDCA. Time to pick it up, my man. This is truly the future of physical education. If you're looking to be smarter about how you sleep, recover and train so you can be at your best, you got to check out Woop. And right now for my listeners, whoopers offering 50 percent off. When you use the code, Rich, roll a check out. Go to woop dotcom. That's OPIS dotcom and use the code.

Rich, roll a check out to save fifteen percent off your order. Unlock your best self today. Alrighty. Back to the show.

We're back. I just had the VR experience. That was insane. That's my first legitimate VR experience period. But then to have it be your work and just to have that experience of being underwater, immersed, surrounded by these creatures, I mean, it was magical, man. Yeah, crazy.

Is that publicly available? Like, what is it?

It's going to be you know, it's it was a year and a half crisscrossing the planet, capturing all that. You know, that baseball run is like the holy grail of where was that was at the Port St. John. The like the armpit of Africa, like Port St. Johns. It's it's one of these you know, you see it on, like Blue Planet and so. Right. It is so hard to actually get on one because it's twenty miles of of ocean.

Right. And, you know, you'll see the birds flying down. But if the if the ball's moving right, you can't do it. So you need the people to stay static. You need the dolphins. You sure you need everything to come together. So it's taken me three years. Multiple trips, right. Twelve hours at sea in a zodiac all day long looking for it. Right. Because you'll see in the race we have a spotter plane, but the planes I've seen it happen takes you have to get there in this boat anyways.

And with this new technology, so the only way to shoot VR was with GoPro underwater VR, right, which is Dobros and I'm like, I am not making the blue planet of your GoPro. So I had these this I met this company, Vertue, who had figured out how to do stereoscopic. But this is like the first iteration of it, 120 pounds. The camera was this big with 14 black magic cameras. And it was sort of a science experiment.

Right.

So if one camera went down, you lost the whole right, because then you don't have the stereo, which happened on a number of dives.

Right. So on this one, I was just so many. So stress can make that can happen. Like, I don't get a second chance with this. Yeah. And I just remember we were we were in the boat and I saw some birds are in the drop and it wasn't like a big amount. It wasn't like the one where you're like, that's the one. And Mornay was like, you don't really I'm like, wow, I'm going like, I don't care.

I'm going to talk. And we came up and came up on it, which the Brewster Whale. We had a 36 minute baseball, like just the two of us. One of the best days of my life. The Brewster Whale came like three feet from me and hit the baseball. We hadn't seen bruised whales in eight years. It was like the cherry on top. And I remember putting the camera up on me. Please tell me you used to live there and they were like their homework.

I'm like, because to this day I would have it would bug me to show you that and be like, I wish you would see Lahar.

And you're a pilot too. No, no. Flying that little that microlight. Like, I was more scared to get in that than anything looked pretty sharply.

You know, it's like an iPhone for your GPS. I sent my producer up in it. I spent like four people up before I went up in the van. And then, of course, I told the person I did. Don't try to impress me. Like, you don't need to fly to feed off the water. I don't need that. It's like a go karts. He did it because if you go down there, there's no Coast Guard in this part of Africa like you're done.

Right. And it is the most shark infested. Like he's up there and he sees great whites on the surface, like there's sharks all over the place there.

So it's been a year and a half doing that. And then, you know, we are such I'm like a couple of years ahead of like it's just it's in its infancy. Yeah, of course. And we just didn't know what we knew. We're seeing I'm sitting on this mountain of footage and this mountain of IAP. But, you know, the outlets for it are just sort of discovering themselves. Yeah.

So everybody has an occulus like are you're supposed to. Well, I mean, you can watch it on your phone and move your phone around, but that's not the experience that you know.

But that is a cool experience. So that's one of the things that most of the viewers haven't done. So we're putting it out on mobile so everyone will be able to watch it on your phone, which is cool because not everyone has a headset. But since covid started, you can't buy headsets are sold out everywhere. Oh, really? Yeah. And everyone's, I think, just sort of sick of Netflix and all the shows that they've seen. So they're grabbing their heads.

Well, let me see what's on here. So we have it's done. We're talking with and I don't know if we're in the talks with the huge brand to sponsor the series. They're a little bit or the middle. It's a little bit dragging its feet. So I might just have to release it without them attached. I really want them attached, but it's going to come out in the next month or two.

Right. So it's not publicly available yet, but soon.

So there's an entertainment component to it. It is like the you know, the blue planet of VR experiences underwater. But there's a therapeutic component to this as well, which is where Dr. Andrew Habermann enters. Right. And when he was on the podcast, he was sharing a little bit about it. And he was doing it in the context of explaining how he was using this modality to help people confront and work through their fears. We were talking about David Gorgons and his fear of sharks, and he was, you know, basically had an experience with your work.

But how did you connect with Andrew? And what is that that aspect of this whole VR thing all about?

That was like the universe transpiring is what it was, because I had the idea for this about four years ago. I was sitting at LAX on my way to Antigua and I was sort of done with sharks. I spent 15 years, I sort of did the book, I did some TV show. I just was like, I don't know what else I can do, really. And it's so hard to change people's perceptions. Guess I can bring in I can't bring everyone, you know, and I'll still do a trip a year, whatever, but I'm not going to do what I've been doing.

And I'm to start my horse project, which I hope my next book With Passion is a horse book. And I'm sitting in and I'm like VR, that's the future. And I'd never put a hat on, never tried it. I just was in my head going, That's the future. Where do people want to explore space? NASA ends up underwater on that. And I started in my head like it's a camera that has a ball of cameras pointed everywhere.

So if I put that camera on a stick and it's. Everywhere I'm taking you with me, Juan, I can take you on all the drives with me and I picked up the phone before we boarded and I called my media company, I said, I want to make the Blue Planet VR, but I want to do it for Nat Geo Discovery. I want to own it. Will you call the top five production companies and see if they're interested in and he will call you in three weeks.

When I'm back, I get back. I land like Miami and my phone's like Boyland and he's like they all want to meet. I'm like, oh, great. I mean, that's a good idea. So I get home on a Wednesday, start making those calls. Two days later, Saturday, I get a phone call out of the blue from Andrew Huberman, who knew Ryan Suave, my trauma, you know, guy. And he said, hey, I'm interested in your shark work.

And I'm like, yeah, OK. He's like, this is human head of neuroscience, Stanford. But he's like, were you scared of sharks? And I said, Yeah, I was petrified of them. And he's like, OK. And now you swim with great whites with no metal, no protection, just your camera. And I'm like, What you've done in the neurology is like the free climbing of neurology and you've rewired your brain. And I want to bring you up here so we can start working with you and studying with you, because I want to use VR technology to help people overcome PTSD and anxiety.

And he didn't know about later and are interested in VR. I'm starting a VR project right now and I have PTSD and he's like, no way. Yeah, we ended up talking for like two hours that night. You guys are kind of cut from the same cloth. Totally, but I didn't know. I'm thinking a scientist with the white lab coat and I ended up flying up to Stanford and we met and like, of course, when I met him, I'm like were two, you know, he's like not your typical scientist.

He is in the rock and roll and, you know, all the things. So I do remember the first thing he did say to me, because I'm going to tell your listeners something. Some of them might enjoy hearing this. He's like, do you smoke? And I'm like, no, but I chew Nicorette because when my daughter was born, I stopped smoking and I saw a giant Nicorette. And at that time, my daughters and my wife and everyone was on me to quit.

And I really didn't want to. But I was like, yeah, whatever. And I'm like, no, actually, they're going to say, Oh, that's actually good for you. Sort of what he said. We actually that's the first thing we give Alzheimer's and Parkinson's patients is Nicorette to chew. It's the perfect delivery because nicotine is a stimulant and helps their memory and it helps their focus. And it doesn't work with smoking or chewing tobacco, just Nicorette.

And I'm like, yes, no wonder that's why I love it.

Yeah, well, then I'm not stopping. I don't want an addict that I don't want Parkinson's or Alzheimer's. And then I was with a big actor buddy of mine whose doctor told him the exact same thing as each other. And so I'm like, yes, I'm not trying. Anyways, we started you know, we he built his VR lab at the time. You know, he had nothing. You know, he'd started building lab. I brought five of his scientists out to Guadalupe because I'm like, so the first thing I was like, I need to make a proof of concept, right?

To raise money. I needed to raise money. Right. To make a VR the blueprint of your I need money. And I didn't know I needed cameras at the time, but I got the GoPro went out to Guadaloupe with him and four of his scientists. And that year, I don't know if you ever saw the great wait. They got caught in a cage now and went viral, was on every news. CNN So a great white guy, they pulled the bait and there's little windows, four cameras in the cages.

And this little juvenile great white, you know, it's tail and it squeeze through and it's thrashing around inside the cage. Someone's filming all this and they're watching in like 45 seconds. Thirty seconds. And they pull up the top and the shark, you know, jumps out, swims out, and then a person pops up and there was someone in the cage the whole time. And there's a whole politics with that anyways that went viral. So there's a lot of pressure at that time on all the boats.

And the Mexican government was pissed and like, you guys look like you're responsible. So here I am asking to go out of the cage, which is illegal and, you know, whatever, with a big VR ball camera. And they said, we're going to let you do it because you're doing it for PTSD. Like we're going to turn out, give you an example. We're going to turn away the other end. So I made it and my take away coming back was, all right, I need to raise millions of dollars and I need to build a whole new camera system that doesn't exist because I'm not using GoPro and I need to do both of those things in like three months because animals are migratory.

So if I don't get it done in three months, I have to wait a whole other year. And I went up to Facebook and I started because Blue Planet took six years and sixty million dollars somewhere in that five years and fifty million whatever, a lot to get done. And I was like, I'm going to do this in a year and I need, you know, not that much money, but you know, whatever. Ten percent a lot.

And no one was putting money into VR, especially this type of VR like, you know, face was against really cool. Because when I cut it when I put it together, I was like, holy shit, this is like this is amazing.

And I wanted it to be stereoscopic. Anyways, long story short, and this sort of I don't know, the universe transpire with the whole thing. So I met Andrew doing that, which we got a permission to exit the cage because. The scientific work with it, with Mercy Hoyas were allowed legally to leave the cage and film when we were down there. My chiropractor of all people has this book in his office signed and he does you know, he does the Clippers and you know, who's who in Hollywood or whatever.

Right. Rihanna is walking to be. You know, he's that guy and he calls me. He said, hey, one of my clients wants to meet you. He saw your book. And I'm like, Yeah, dude, anything for you. Sure. Tomorrow Peninsula Hotel, the great thing, I come back and I'm like, oh, my mean, you can be anyone who know. But I call them back in my old room. I mean, because this could be say, oh, it's great.

Guys diary's like a billionaire and he loves the ocean. I'm like, OK, great. So I go down the next morning I bring the V.R. with the little two minute sizzle thing, show it to him and he's like, oh you know, it takes off and it's like, holy shit. Like, Wow, that is amazing.

I'm like, I'm looking for an investor. We have a business plan. My guys are gonna send it to me, you know, maybe I'll do it my send it to them. Radio silence for three weeks. So I remember laying down like three weeks later and then I'm like, that guy is, you know, flaking. All right. I'm going to put out the great white thing and I'll try to sell that, raise the money to do the rest.

The next morning, I get a text from him. He's like, so sorry. I was in the Cayman Islands. I want to invest. Can you be in Texas tomorrow? And I'm like, Yeah, yeah, I'll be in Texas tomorrow. So I went out and I sat across and I said, listen, we don't have the time to, like, do a month long negotiation. I need the money. And you're like, tomorrow we're going to miss and we hammer out a deal.

And he was like the dream investor sort of blank check. Wow. With his only his goal was to go in some cool days with me. And that was all he wanted out of the deal. He didn't expect like anything special to be made or whatever. You want to go on some cool dives, which he got to go on some days of his life, I got to say. And we cut that film that you saw, but it's back film festival and it blew up at the Cannes Film Festival called.

And I brought it there. And then, you know, we decided to just put it out ourselves instead of making like four films, of course, the the artist, as you say. And me, I'm like, I'm going to do all of them at once and writing and editing nine different films. And it's taken me a good year and a half and an amazing Academy Award winning composers and rock, paper scissors like one of the best editing.

Right. Just amazing, you know, people around me. And it's been it's been a really amazing experience.

So the full series is, what, like nine hours long or.

No, no, no. It's it's it's almost two hours. So there's nine films that range between five minutes and ten minutes. And I had, like Eli Roth do the video on one of them because I was like, I don't want to hear my voice on every single one. And then, like Laird and his daughters and my daughters came on a trip. So the great way trip sort of from the eyes of the kids and their dads, you know, being me and layered and layered talking and so and those ORCA's like sort of rays and manatees and ocean crocodile saltwater crocodiles, it's it's cool.

That's super cool. So coming to your occulus soon.

Yes. Coming here. Archila coming to your Arculus or your HTC coming in any headset and then come into your mobile phones and Preysing it so that in a way that everyone or no one has an excuse because most of the VR out there that's priced, in my opinion, is too much. People aren't in a pain. But if it's and that's a couple bucks for the whole series.

What about the work that you're doing with Andrew specifically, though, like taking this footage and using it in a way that's helping people overcome their fears or about their PTSD?

Well, I know he's in the process. They're, you know, doing some writing some papers. So I don't know what I'm really allowed to talk about. I know they've had some amazing successes up there with the reduction in stress, doing prep work, protocol, different things to help people relieve their stress. And what he created was like a VR space where they go in because how do you face a near-death experience? You know, I mean, like a realistic one.

Like if you go to the frontlines of Afghanistan and bring a VR camera where people are shooting at you, like going out of a cage with a shark is sort of a near-death experience in a way that I can sort of film it and control it.

They see it being used in various ways, like you could go cave diving or you can just all these the classic these kind of things that that create fear in people. Yeah. And they're monitoring people, imagery, sweat glands, like everything going on.

So when you're wired up and you're in the lab in the video, you see you and Andrew, what are they monitoring? And like what did they you have to ask him because I asked him and they wouldn't tell me because it will it would affect what he did. Tell me one thing. So one of the first test they did is where you put on the headset and you basically around a high wire in between buildings or your plank, so to speak, and they say that's terror.

Take four steps out, which I do turn to your right. And and then they're like, step, you know, take a step forward. And I'm like in my mind and in my head that I'm like, OK, well, this is you know, this is what it's like to kill yourself. So I'm going to enjoy it. And I jump off and then I hear them outside of the headphones, like mumbling and rebooted. OK, we're going to have you do it again.

So I did it again. And this time I'm like, well, I'm going to look down this time to see what's with the ground. Like, if you're going to jump off a building, like watch it come up you, which I did. So after that, he said, I can't tell you about your other reasons, but I will tell you this. You were the first and only person that's ever done that experience that sort of didn't, like, tiptoe out like you just jumped off.

No one does that. And he said, we thought you messed up. So we had you do it again and you did it again both times. And he just was like you. That means what? That you've worked through your fear response.

And he wouldn't tell me what that means. But it was interesting. I was when you watch, like, the documentary Free Solo with Alex Honnold. Sure. I was doing the MRI and his you know, the front part of his brain isn't lighting up.

So one of the things for me to talk to him about that I had him on the podcast. I talked all about that. Yeah. I actually just saw Jimmy Chin like he's a really good friend of mine. Well, he's been on the show. Yeah, he's the boss. I to me, you know, me and Alex, I mean, me and Andrew have a trip. We're planning on going in two months. You know, we think that they'll allow us because of the scientific work out Guadaloupe, because it's close, because it everything is close.

But one of the things, you know, we really want to study is when we're out of the cage. So, like, if we take you out of the cage, it's never done it. What's going on? Your reaction compared to what's going on? And my reaction was lighting up like eventually we'd love to be able to look at our brains while out of the cage and see, you know, what's lighting up and what's lighting up. So stuff like that.

And, you know, one of the things I have been doing is like human guinea pig testing colors, like do sharks see color? So I had Patagonia, which is a company that I work with, make me different colored wetsuits to see the reactions of the sharks, which sure enough from the small study that I've done, they definitely are attracted to yellow. Yeah, not any other color, but the yellow. They were so choo choo choo coming at me really.

And then I found out Mick Fanning, when he got attacked and Jabe his the bottom of this board was yellow. So I'm like, oh, so that's good knowledge to have because you can tell divers and you can tell, you know. Yeah. People that are in shark infested waters, all them avoid yellow. Not that I've seen, but there's a you know, there's those companies that make supposed shark repellent wetsuits that are striped and what have you.

I didn't have. So that's I'd like to get my hands on one of those to sort of show that it works or doesn't work. My guess is that at least with great whites, it's not going to work. Huh? That's interesting about yellow. Yeah, I've had some funny I had a company called me up and say they were making stickers for the bottom of surfboards and this is this is true story. And they were like, were you put on.

So it's like two eyeballs and like a scary mouth to make your surfboard look like a monster. And this guy really thought that it would he literally was dead serious. I want you to go out and guadaloupe and paddle on a surfboard to show that this will scare away. And I'm like, have you ever seen a great white? And he's like, Now I'm like, Yeah, I didn't think so. Why don't you go out on a surfboard and paddle your little stickers on the board?

Because I am not going to do that. And I can't believe that you're asking me like you're insane. So people there's some good ones out there.

It always struck me as odd that that most seats are black, though, because then you just look like a seal. Like a seal, right?

Yeah. Well, you got to think when when you you know, I'm sure you've seen those on Shark Week or whatever, when they show a seal on a surfer up at the surface, it wouldn't matter what color wetsuit because you're silhouetted against. Right. So you're going to look like you're looking like a seal.

But sharks are so smart. We've put cameras and decoys. So in South Africa, we we tow fake seals behind the boat to get them to breach on them, to take photos of them and see, etc.. Right. So we've put cameras and literally nine times out of ten, the shark realizes it's fake before and it turns off. You know, I was actually able and you'll see in the book to capture the first great white breaching at nighttime, which no one the scientist sounds like.

Does it breach at night? Because I had my lights, so I like the strobe. Doesn't work during the day when you're back at night. It went back at night and we had one and it and it hit and I took the photo too quick. I got too excited because all you got to see is white water exploding at night and you're in the back of the boat. And like Huck, because I got the head, not the body out.

And I put the camera back and they never, never breached twice on a on a on a decoy ever. And I, for whatever reason, put my camera back in like ten seconds later, the shark. Hit it again, and I waited a tenth of a second and hit it and got the first ever, which ran the New York Times Magazine, it was it was really cool to be able to show scientists a behavior that had never been captured before.

That's the gutshot. Yeah, it was a proud. So in the book, there's you have both, right. There's one where that you just see the head kind of coming out and you have the full breach. Yeah. So that was the first one, right. Yeah. That's the same shark.

Yeah, it was a little one, but it was, it was really cool to see all lit up like that. Crazy. Yeah. It's neat having those, you know, I mean it's it's when I would go down to Guadaloupe and, you know, six assistants holding lights in different places and historically you can't talk. Right.

But I did get an OTS system so I could talk and my assistants because, you know, otherwise they're looking at me donating all of this, which your hand signals I'm like, and all they're seeing is bubbles.

And me doing this, you know, it's for us. I never yell at my guys, like when I'm shooting in the studio, whatever that was, I'm not that guy. A lot of photographers are, I guess, but I don't. But I've never yelled at them more than underwater. Of course, none of them heard it. I just going for bubbles.

But I was. But you're also in a situation where all you can do is set the stage. You can't control what transpires on that stage. You can't tell them, hey, you got to yell at me when we'd come up and be like, hey, next time would you try to do this? And, you know, but these guys are like they're holding lights and they're singing show. They're not like right in the day. They're like, oh, my God, that's so cool.

And the lights go.

And it's got to be wild, though, like you just mentioned, the photograph of the shark running in The New York Times, like when you see your work out in the wild, like your works everywhere, we didn't even talk about all the studio work that you do. I mean, you've photographed the posters for every blockbuster, essentially, at least all the Marvel stuff. Like everywhere you turn, your work is like omnipresent in the world.

Yeah. Yeah. I've done a lot of a lot of, you know, out campaign, a lot of images. People have seen that, you know, people. Giacomini, like the most famous photographer you've never heard of. Yeah. You're kind of oh shucks about the whole thing.

But yeah, you know, it's pretty fucking awesome. I learned I learned a while I was guilty of having that. Like, I want to shoot the cover of Vanity Fair. I want to do this. And I did realize, like, none of that stuff fulfills you. Like the minute you get that, like, OK, what's next? Well, I want to do this, like, it's never going to be enough. And I remember it was sort of around the same time that like Herbits, Helmut Newton and I think it was Irving, three master photographers died within a year.

And I watch the photography world not miss a beat. And I remember just going like, it really doesn't matter what pictures like if I was the day to day lives another guy. Yeah, it's like a Nissan. Yeah. Like it's it's going to go. And then when my time comes I'm not going to say, oh, bring me bring me that photo of that Marvel Avengers thing. Now I'm going to want my family and the people I love around me.

Right. And so what are my priorities. And I just sort of stop. I mean, I do have the once like when Koby passed the cover of Time magazine, I thought that was cool just because he was he is such an amazing guy. He was a huge shark fan. And, you know, he's an icon. And that was an honor. It was more of an honor. I was humbled at that. Yeah. You know, yeah.

We should just say for people that are watching or listening, who don't know, you're the person who photograph that iconic image of Kobe that ended up on Time magazine. He was used bat right now and that has become the definitive, most iconic photograph of Kobe that in his passing has kind of resurfaced, as you know, the emblem of who this individual was.

Yeah. Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was. You know, that's those are the bitter swing incomer. Yeah. But like, there's a part of me that is like really like this is how I'm getting Time magazine, because Kobe I like it. I don't want Kobe to get the cover of time. At the same time, I know Kobe would want the coolest shot of him on the cover of Time magazine. I mean, so, you know, it was right.

I thought that photo that was the last ad campaign he did for Nike before he retired as a Laker. So it was like his last shoot. But what people might not know is that Kobe was a huge shark freak, like he had a foot a print in his locker to fire him up. And he we talk because I shot him quite a few times. Well, you hear about the mamba, but you don't hear about the sharks. Now, that's why I'm giving him a little a little back story.

So he he really wanted to go see great whites. Right. And he was like, well, can you can I take a helicopter out there? Because it's an 18 hour boat trip to Guadalupe. And I've tried over the years because I have some sort of high profile friends who don't have the time to go do it so well. Can I get a, you know, a jet? How can I take a plane? So I've looked in all those and there's like a sea plane where I because I can I do a helicopter.

I'm like, no, but then I stopped. I'm like, well, if there's any way to figure out a helicopter. Dorridge, you so I'm not going to say no, but I don't think you can maybe nine months later he came in, I think it was four Turkish air. I don't know what it was, but he comes literally there's, you know, 80 people on the set and people are like, hey, and he he I could see him lasering.

I mean, he comes right out and say, hey, I did it, I did it. And I was like, you got the helicopter. He's like, no, no. I went on the short trip. I'm like, OK, how did you get there? He's like, I didn't take the boat like I knew it. But he did it without you, though. Yeah, I know he did it. He yeah, he did do it without me.

Wow. So you spent quite a bit of time with him.

Yeah. I mean, I didn't spend I mean, I just shot him quite a few times over the years. He was one of my when I first shot him, I was doing a lot of work with ESPN magazine and the editor. I gave him my like I really want to shuko because I had Laker season seats for six years. Me and my daughters would go to all the games when they won their championships and he was on my list. It was him, Muhammad Ali.

I was like two hours. And I remember when she was like, OK, I'm getting New Year. And I was like, no way. And I did my, you know, shoot with them. Then I, you know, I ended up shooting for the other stuff.

But, yeah, I just you know, there's a lot I feel like most of the higher profile celebrities, actors and a lot of me, that they they have a fascination with sharks. And people love good guys especially. But there's some criminals out there, alpha mentality. What is that? Yeah, I think it's that. And and they're the apex predator over the oceans, you know. I mean, they're, you know, they're great white sharks like, you know, everyone watches Shark Week, I feel like and you know.

People love sharks, love to hate them, love, you know, it's that fear fascination thing when you look at that image of of Kobe and, you know, given that it's it's become so iconic, like to you, what is that? What makes the difference between, like, a good photograph and a timeless photograph like that? Well, I know that every time I'm shooting, I'm trying I'm aiming for iconic. You know, I'm aiming for Thomas.

I'm aiming to show something or someone in a way that you haven't seen before. That's my goal. So whenever I'm shooting people, I'm trying to pull out of them. Also, they're real. They take the mask off, so to speak, and give me that emotion, show me who you really are. And I do that in a way that I usually shoot very quickly and I direct so that the person because in my experience, no one really likes getting their photo taken.

It's a very vulnerable. Their insecurities come out right. Like, oh my God, my double chin. Oh, I'm balding. Like when you show anyone 90 photos of themselves, they're not looking at the one and being like, God, I look amazing. Look at that shot. Look how good I look. They're going right to the one that they're like, oh my God, I'm so fat. I need to, you know, I mean, like, well, I don't know if you know what I mean, but that's what happens when you show people and if 99 of them are good and one's like whatever, they're going to the one.

So I try to you know, I go for that. And, you know, with Kobe, obviously, it was circumstances and, you know, the positioning of the shots and what have you. But, you know, it's it's something I don't look at photography. I don't go down a magazine racks. I don't look online. I don't want to be. And I want to be influenced by anyone else. Right. I really shoot in the moment and go for what what I'm going for, you know, so.

But it is Hollywood, right? So it's that it's that that trope of like that's why they're hiring you, because they want your unique perspective, your specific look. But then there's a whole committee of people that like I would imagine if you're shooting like a Marvel campaign, they want it to be a very specific way. Right. So there's got to be some kind of tension, creative tension there.

No, not well, yes and no. Like, you know, Marvel, I started with Iron Man one from the beginning. You created the look then I didn't create the look, but I helped create the look. I played a part in it. And I think they respect that my my experience and my talent. So it's a collaboration. It's me, it's the actors, it's the studio. It's the marketing people. You know, I'm one part of the machine.

It's definitely by no means me. But I do play a part and they they look for for my input. And that's why I think they come to me, because I've never you can approach those like, oh, it's just another job and go in and do the routine, like put the weights in assumption things do the lights. The hero shot. I am. And I think my clients see that always trying to raise the bar. So like I remember on one of The Avengers, you know, I brought in bands because we were going to do a big battle scene.

So instead of having them sort of posed like fight things, I had those elastic bands that they could really get into, you know, their legs and boxing all their veins in their neck, because I want it to feel real. I want it to be a real moment. You know, when I'm shooting actors or a person and I want to laugh, you can't be like, hey, laugh, because then they're like, ha ha. And it's there's nothing resonates on I will say something to make myself look like an idiot or something to get them to laugh.

Or if someone says something and they laugh, my finger is always on the trigger. So I'm like up and I get that real in.

And when you look at the photo, it resonates through, you know. Yeah. So in shooting these all the quote unquote like superheroes, like what is your what do you think is your strength or your superpower? Because like you said, there's tons of talented photographers out there, but there's a reason why you're the guy who gets selected to shoot all these massive campaigns, like what is it?

And it's it's got to be more of them. Like, well, I, I have a unique angle on it or I try to make it real. Like, what is it about you that you're the guy? I think it's a combination of things. I think it's a combination of my my abilities, the light I, I have mastered lighting, you know, that's what photography is, is lighting how you light. And I can light things in a variety of ways.

My relationship with talent and how I can disarm people and get actors to maybe do things that they don't want to or like give us the extra time that are willing to do that because I respect them, I respect their time and I respect their opinions what they're comfortable and not comfortable doing. I never force someone to do something they don't want or try to trick. Or so there's that respect level. There's the creativity that I bring to to my jobs.

And like I've said, I'm always and I guess I have a bit of people pleasing to me and I'm always trying to raise the bar and I'm trying to make my clients happy. And at the end of the day, when it comes to the big movies, these things are three hundred million dollar investment. They know that I'm going to deliver no matter what happens. And when you've got actors and I can't tell you how many films I remember on a few of the Wolverines or whatever, you know, we Hugh for eight minutes because they're they're making a movie.

Right. And we're like the illegitimate stepchild that like, you know, right here, you can have it for ten minutes, even though it's the biggest it's what gets but it's the most forward facing aspect of the whole movie.

When people go to movies because of the trailer on TV and because of those billboards and you look up and you go, oh, that looks no. And you're going to go or that looks so bad and you're probably not going to see it in an incredibly important part of it, but for some reason does not get the priority that it, in my opinion, should. And so I no matter what happens, we'll get those shots. And, you know, I've had Hugh for eight minutes and done three different lighting setups and got them everything from the intense portraits to the fighting to the death in that.

And I think they know that. And they're not going to you know, it's like, do you want to try this new guy? Right. Yeah. You know, and have duplicable you have Robert be like, yeah. You know, so. Right. I mean, you know, I've had that I remember I remember Robert on Iron Man two.

The first time in the suit was I up to he had like half of his body or whatever rate things are not comfortable for the actor. Yeah. The real suits and what have you. And on Iron Man to wear at this, we at the studio, whatever. He's not going to care if I talk about this studio B paparazzi. Oh, he was like they were like, will you he won't put the suit on. He won't put the headpiece on the shoulder piece.

He won't do it. We've all asked, will you ask them? And I'm like, are you kidding? You want me to go ask him? You. Oh, he said, no, please. Because he likes you, Hilda. Oh, my God. So I go over and I'm like, Robert, listen, you know, I can Photoshop your face, but it's not the same. It's not the same organic because I mean, he's like he literally looked there was like six of us and he's like, I'll bleed them.

And like that he's like, listen for you, I'll do it. Ten minutes. All right, great. Start this up. I'm like, no, no, no, no, ten minutes. A shooting like I need ten minutes is like, yeah, that's fair. That's fair. Right. So he sat down. He's I start the stopwatch. They started it. I shot five hundred and eighty frames in ten minutes and I got it all like the hand out in it all and that was it.

Iron Man three and a black with green dot like he's never put the suit on again and I would never ask him to Kandahar.

Right. But you had that trust. You didn't generate enough goodwill with a guy like that. Yeah, no, I have that right. And I think I have that with with with the accuracy you this I've been shooting for 35 years in this town. I've pretty much shot them all like they've either either shot them or, you know, I think they're going to know coming in my my pedigree and respect that I know what I'm doing right. But at the end of the day, they want to get in and out and actors are used to being directed.

I think everyone wants direction, like tell me what to do and I tell them, you know what I mean? And it's you know, it's an interesting position when you're a photographer and you have some of the most powerful people on the planet and you're like, you know, Barack Obama, I look here like I knew you're right. Look at you're telling people what to do and say it's a little exhilarating, like doing what you tell. It doesn't matter.

Just you you get to be in charge of them. And when you watch them, my say I am in charge and it starts with me from the from the stylist, the hair, everyone. And if there's any indecision, if there's any fear, any of that, it's like a virus. Right. So no matter what's happening, I can be a and 12 of my 13 lights blow up and I'll still be fine. I'll be like cool as a cucumber.

They take that one light, bring it over here, get that bounce, or I'll never show fear because it's just like, what's the silly feel secure and safe that you're in control and you know what you're doing.

Yeah. And the motto. And my motto and. I think it's what life is, what's the solution, not what's the problem, what's the solution, what are we going to do? What do we need to do? You know, and I think a approach that with life to, you know, what is what is what is your relationship with creativity like?

How do you think about that as an energy? We talked about earlier that moment, you know, like when you're meditating, when you quiet everything down and that channel, because I don't think great ideas come from me. I think they're given to me from the universe. I think they come down. And I truly do believe if you have a good idea, like ten people are getting that at the same time and it's whose first implement. Yeah, I don't feel like I'm some terminally unique, that I'm the only one getting ideas.

But really, did you read Elizabeth Gilbert's book, Big Magic? It's all about that. It's all about the idea that that like, great ideas are out there and it's about honing your antenna. And there's a reason why people kind of have those ideas at the same time. And it's about who's the right receiver for that.

Yeah, I started reading Buddha in the badass Waha, which is really implementing the same type of thing, bending reality and manifesting. He gave me words to things I've been doing my whole life, but I never had a word for it. And there's like a little step process in there about getting the right team around you, because when you have an idea, which I believe is really true and the universe will give you all the things really quickly to get it done, if you believe in you're in the right place and like a bus, you need the right people in the right seats to get things done.

And especially big our projects. Right, which I know I've shared with you a couple. I'm working on a I'm working. I'm a founder and a company. We have a new material that looks X feels like plastic but dissolves in water. And in five to ten minutes it's a game changer. You showed me some stuff about this. It's a great example of, you know, starting a company, starting a project and having the right people around and, you know, the right people coming in to then implement it.

And then only in the future will I be able to look back and see the dots that connected, you know, to to to get us to where we're going. But you have to be open for those anyways. But the balance is great book.

Yeah. And you're going to solve the plastic problem. I'm going to yeah. I'm going to help because I'll tell you, diving the amount I do, the plowing, the amount of plastic that in our ocean is just mind boggling. And the micro plastics and you go look at the beach and you see all those little pieces of plastic well that the fish are eating and then we're eating the fish, which means plastic is going into us and it's nine million tons enter our ocean every year.

Nightmare. So to have a solution for single use plastic that's going to about to come out. And I think it will be it'll be revolutionary and it'll be it's exciting to be part of it. When you hear a hundred million sharks are killed every year, what what is what is going on?

Why are they being I mean, you hear about shark fin and all of that, but is it at that scale? One hundred million sharks. Yeah, for that. Yeah.

It's it's it's been gut wrenching to look at. There's twenty five hundred I think, fishing vessels off Ecuador right now, sorry to say, but they're all from China. You can see them on satellite because of covid. Right. There's no they're not out. People aren't out protecting. And literally I remember when I was in the Galapagos a year and a half ago, they had captured an illegal fishing vessel that had ten thousand and thousand tons, just some obscene amount, number of dead sharks.

They a dead pregnant whale shark in there. And they just, you know, they go and they just drop and they just kill everything in its path. And then there's long where they're killing everything to get a certain fish, but like they're killing dolphin and turtle. What I don't understand is if you went to any country and you put a line of hooks out in a forest and you kill all the birds and squirrels and raccoons and you kill the animals, at that level, people would be up in arms, up in arms.

But we do it in the ocean. And when you kill the top predator, very fragile, the top of the very fragile ecosystem which the sharks are, they keep the oceans healthy. They the it's like a domino effect that's going to happen. And then you look at ecosystem unstable. Seven of eight people on our planet live off the ocean. You know, that's where they get their substance. And when you start having no fish, then when you go to, you know, Africa, these they're going they keep having to go out further and further to try to find a fish like they may catch one shark in a month where they used to catch one every day.

Yeah. I mean, isn't that part of why the Somali pirate thing started to happen? Because the fishing dried up, right?

Well, in these countries, certain countries will go in and say, we'll build you a power plant. We want all the fishing rights. Right. I go get my powerplant, then he just pillage the whole ocean. So there's nothing like they throw dynamite out onto the reefs to just. Kill all the fish. You know, it's it's insane the way we treat our planet. Yeah. You know, I do believe, though, that mother, I've just seen Mother Nature, I've seen the power that you know, and I think we see it now more and more with the fires and everything, like if we don't solve it, Mother Nature will for us, you know, swat us off her back like fleas off a dog.

You know, on that tip, you're like really good friends with Joaquin Phoenix, right. Who's really, you know, at the forefront of getting the animal welfare message out to the mainstream. Yeah. So where did that kind of come together? How did that you go way back with him, right? We do.

He is he is a really good friend. I will say he I'm going to keep it really brief because I respect his privacy, which is why we're really good friends. He's been an amazing inspiration to me, the way he leads his life, the roles he takes with his work, with his creative work, the roles he takes with our planet and how he lives his life. He lives by example. And he's been in an amazing example to me and an amazing friend.

One of just an amazing I keep saying the word amazing, but just a really big heart. I love him and I'll leave it at that. Yeah.

Have you been to any of the cow vigils I have, yeah. You should you should shoot those. I did want to make a VR. Do you know Sean Monsen? I do, yeah. He just actually texted me on the way here. I went down with him and a couple of people, but I was thinking about making a VR of it, you know, like so you could see. I mean, it's it's gut wrenching, right?

Seeing those poor cows and people spraying the water. And yeah, it's in fact, I just got a text from the guy who did game changers. You see that, James? Yeah, it's it's cool to see movies like that take an impact. You know, I think that's what I made this series for, is in our generation, like I've written off our generation, it's this next one. You know, these kids, they're the ones we've got to.

And I am excited. I don't know if it's just an L.A. thing. I live in L.A., so I see young people in L.A. I don't know if this is how they are in Kentucky or Ohio, but like a lot of them are vegan, like they're really pissed off at the climate, you know, that they're inheriting. And they're sort of like activists. I feel like they they're they're I mean, you have that. It's like one or the other.

They're either really lazy and don't want to do shit and expect, you know, they want to be a millionaire by the time they're twenty one, but not really do anything to get the millionaire. Right. And then at the flip side, you see these activists, these young you know, it's like Grétar like you see these kids Drew and they're like, hey have you man, you're really giving us a planet. There's this mesclun which boggles my mind.

And you know, I go like, how does the owner of Shell or Mobil, they have to have kids and grandkids, like, don't you care about our planet? Like, I think there's such a level of of denial and a distribution of responsibility and those massive organizations that allows them to, you know, lay their head on the pillow at night and feel like they're not as culpable as they really are. And I think the accumulation of that has created this next generation who are so hip to like what's going on and so committed to change and so open to these new ideas.

And that really gives me hope. I mean, our generation, you know, it's like trying to get people to change their minds, especially right now about anything. Good luck with that.

Right. But, yeah, it's it's like the sharks, you know, people are scared or some jaws and stuff. You know, I think our movies and TV and we have promoted this like money makes you happy. Like, you got to have a lot of money and success. And and it's when you look at the facts that, like, you have a baseline of fifty percent happiness and no happiness comes from any type of financial. Forty percent of happiness comes from giving.

So when you give is where you get your joy and happiness from. It's not making a bunch of money. And you get the same effect of if you got if I handed you twenty five thousand dollars, what you would feel. Right. Twenty five thousand cash. And if you also do this and you smile the same feeling like you get the same. Yeah. Euro. Yeah. Yeah. From his smiling straight from Huberman's mouth. Straight from scientific not humor man.

But I did hear from scientific. So it's like, you know giving like it's like yeah. Just and that's been, that's been the law. And I've my peers asked me how do you work somebody. You work more than anyone I know. And I look at them. Every single person asked me, they say the same thing because I give them a U.N. global advocate. I go to Africa and all over the and document refugees. And then I try to help with the sharks like I constantly.

And it's a universal law. It's a law. If you give it comes back and it does and it comes back tenfold. Yeah. People just but they're afraid, you know. So I know I need the next, you know. Right. Yeah. I mean I've experienced that in my life a thousand times I. Over and I've seen it happen in so many other people's lives, and it's something that, you know, we here and we can intellectually kind of understand, but on some level, we feel like it doesn't really apply to us.

Like I can imagine somebody listening to this saying, that's all great because you're so successful. But, you know, if I got that billboard or if I got that job, then, you know, it would be different for me. And it's just not the case. There is a spiritual law. Yeah. That takes place. And actually, you can use it selfishly, like if you're desiring to advance your life in a certain way, just start giving more, even if it's not coming from a place of heart purity.

It's coming from a place of like personal a personal desire to advance your life. It doesn't matter. Yeah, it's still will work. It's still totally you know, I don't know why. Neither do I. But I love you know, it's sort of like, you know, Grey Gardens when the is giving people I've ever met. That's why I'm bringing them up. As an example, when the Kobe image, you know, I knew people wanted they're going to want that image imprinted, that image.

And as an artist, you know, I make a gallery, I make additions, I sell shark prints. Right. So the first thing I did was I made that Kobe print available like eight by 10 is sort of smaller size for a very affordable like thirty forty dollars. I called Greg well, he had called me and we both thought and I was like, I want to give 100 percent of it away. And he's a great guy who I like this because most business.

Well what about 50 percent. You know, people are like, I want to give it all away, which we did. And we gave to this amazing organization called Genesis. And she actually just kind of was like, I cannot tell you how much that money, like, you know, just open up a ton of doors. But, you know, look at his business. You know, I just love meeting people that they use that in their life.

And you get to see the fruits of the largesse of their own life. Yeah. You know, expands, you know, to a degree that's exponential in proportion to the amount of giving. Yeah. And you see it time and time again. And I think that print, you could buy it on the sideshow website right now, you can buy it on Saijo.

And then I made an addition of twenty four much larger fine art prints that I'm selling at a site called Plastic Gallery that's on artsy as well. And we are also giving the genesis and those are color and black and white. And then there's like sixteen other images I think, or seventeen but all edition of twenty four and once the twenty four years old, I'll never make that Kobe ballad. I said, yeah that's great. That's right. All right.

Well we can, we can wrap this up. What else do you have any other projects that are going on right now, like the new books you're working on? The horse book? I'm doing a horse book for for Tashan. You know, I'm getting ready to release the VR series. I have I have my, you know, other business with the material that I'm doing. And then I am working on an app which we are going to put out that's sort of augmented reality, which I have heard about for four years and never have been impressed with any of it.

And then I saw something that just blew me away. So we have the developers working on that. And so are you going to say about that? Have to say about that want like I don't even know what you're talking about, but.

All right. But I think it'll blow your mind, too. Okay.

The final thing, advice to the young creative out there, the young photographer who's just starting out or the young activists who are seeking to make an impact in the world. What do you say to that person? I mean, the first thing I'd say is what I sort of write in every book, which is there is nothing to fear but fear itself. So. Do not let fear control your life, you're either inferior and faith and one or two and I think if you just try having some faith, trust the universe, follow your dreams, you'll start to see results.

You just got to have that trust in. The second thing is the young creatives like, please, please, please follow your to do your creative. Don't chase the money, because I in 35 years have never once woken up been like, oh, I got to go to work today. Not once I get paid and made a living doing something I love to do. I wake up every day. I'm like, oh, I'm so excited to go create.

It's a it's just a gift. Yeah. It's such a gift and it's you know, we only get one life. Well I don't know, make it a bunch, but this is the only life I have and I definitely don't want to be seventy eight going. Oh I wish I always wanted to go here do this. I always wanted to take pictures and do it like so short precious you have today. Forget about all your yesterdays. What are you going to do today to.

Good talking to you, man. Good talking. Thank you, man, I appreciate it. That was powerful. If you're digging on Michael, you're easy to find on the Internet. Instagram, keep sharing those ice bath stories are seven. Michael, Mike, what's the seven? You know what is like someone had Michael Muller, but they don't post. There's like one, two posts. They took my name. Yeah. The I, I love the man from traveling the ice and he changed my life from when I get off a plane after six hours it resets my body.

All the information out. It's phenomenal. So right from ice up to my neck, two to four minutes into the sauna and then back in the ice, back in the sauna, Darren was telling me, you always show up at a workout with, like, the big cupping marks on your back. Yeah, yeah. I get a lot of cupping then. I do a lot of I mean, my body. I'm like an old beaten up gladiator.

So to keep this 50 year old machine working, it requires a lot of like Thai massage with them walking on me, you know, and then a lot of like just it's almost sadistic what they do to me. But my body's like Kevlar. It's like knotted Kevlar. Yeah, but it's great, except when they take the cup and go like that. Yeah. All right.

We'll come back and talk to me again when when the VR thing is out in the world we go back and. Sure, sure, sure. When the viewers out when comes out. Yeah. We'll definitely come back any time. This was great. All right. Thank you, brother. Thank you. Everyone plays. Holy shit, man, wasn't that unbelievable, isn't Mike Mueller incredible? Probably one of the most badass people I've ever met.

So delighted to have him on the show today. I hope you guys enjoyed that. If you dig what he's about, give him a follow on the Sociales at Michael Muehler seven on Instagram and at Michael Mueller, 77 on Twitter. Also, check out his website, Muehler photo dot com for some insanely gorgeous photography that will absolutely blow your mind. As always, check the show notes on the episode page. Rich Roll Dotcom. We got tons of links to immerse yourself in the life experience of Michael and all the amazing work that he has done and is doing.

We have another role on Amay edition of the podcast coming up soon. If you'd like your question considered and answered on the show, leave me a voicemail at four two four, two three five four six two six. If you'd like to support the work we do here on the show, subscribe, write and comment on it. On Apple podcast, on YouTube and on Spotify. Hitting those subscribe buttons is super important. If you haven't done that yet, please do me a favor and do that.

Very helpful. Only takes a second. Thank you. Also, please share the show and your favorite episodes with friends or on social media. I love seeing all the screen grabs on Instagram and you can support us on patriotic ritual dotcom slash donate thanks to everyone who worked very hard to produce today's show. Jason Kamela for audio engineering, production, shout outs and interstitial music like Curtis for videoing and editing today's program for YouTube. Jessica Miranda for Graphics. David Greenberg for Portraits DKA.

David Conn for advertising relationships and theme music as always, by Tyler, Pietje, Trapper Pietje and Harry Mathis. Appreciate you guys. I love you. How good was that today? That was so good setting the bar high. See you back here soon with another great episode. Until then, face your fears. Move towards them. Don't be afraid. Inch towards it, leap towards it and see what happens. These plants stay.