Rich Roll
Rich Roll is a vegan ultra-endurance athlete, recovering alcoholic, Stanford Law grad turned plant-based evangelist, and host of one of the world's most-listened-to wellness podcasts. His 2008 Ultraman finish at age 42 and 2010 EPIC5 Challenge (five Ironman-distance triathlons on five Hawaiian islands in under a week) rewrote what a middle-aged 'regular guy' could do.
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Rich Roll was born October 20, 1966 in Washington, DC. He grew up as a competitive swimmer, earned his way to Stanford University, and graduated from Stanford Law School in 1994. On paper he had the life. In practice he was unraveling.
By his late twenties he was a functioning alcoholic working as an entertainment attorney in Los Angeles, secretly drinking his way through billable hours. On June 10, 1998, at thirty-one, he hit bottom and checked into rehab. He has been continuously sober ever since.
Sobriety saved his life but did not save his body. By the time he turned forty he was fifty pounds overweight, clinically depressed, and couldn’t climb a flight of stairs without stopping. Standing in his kitchen one night in 2006 staring down a heart attack in the making, something cracked open.
He adopted a plant-based diet almost overnight. Then he started training. Two years later, at age forty-two, he finished the Ultraman World Championships in Hawaii — a 320-mile, three-day run, swim, and bike event — in eleventh place overall. In 2009, Men’s Fitness named him one of the “25 Fittest Men in the World.” In 2010 he and fellow athlete Jason Lester attempted the EPIC5 Challenge: five Ironman-distance triathlons on five Hawaiian islands in under seven days. They finished. No one had done it before.
In 2012 he published Finding Ultra, his memoir of addiction, transformation, and endurance. It became a New York Times bestseller and a cornerstone text for the plant-based movement. The same year he launched The Rich Roll Podcast, a long-form interview show that has since published more than 800 episodes and consistently ranks among the top health and wellness podcasts in the world. Guests range from David Goggins and Wim Hof to neuroscientists, plant chefs, trauma researchers, and cultural critics.
With his wife Julie Piatt (Srimati), he co-authored The Plantpower Way in 2015 and The Plantpower Way: Italia in 2018. He published Voicing Change (2020) and Voicing Change Volume II (2023), photographic anthologies of podcast guest wisdom.
Rich’s work sits at an unusual crossroads — endurance sport, addiction recovery, contemplative practice, and plant-based nutrition — and his core message is consistent: the body you have today is not the body you have to keep.
Books by Rich Roll
Finding Ultra
Rejecting Middle Age, Becoming One of the World's Fittest Men, and Discovering Myself — the memoir that started it all
Voicing Change
Wisdom from ten years of The Rich Roll Podcast — Volume I
Common questions
What is Rich Roll best known for?
Rich Roll is best known for Finding Ultra, plant-based endurance, sobriety, and long-form conversations about wellness, performance, spirituality, and transformation.
What Rich Roll book should I start with?
Start with Finding Ultra because it tells the recovery, reinvention, endurance, and plant-based transformation story that anchors the rest of his work.
Which profiles pair well with Rich Roll?
Pair Rich Roll with David Goggins for endurance, Andrew Huberman for protocols and health science, and Michael Singer for the spiritual side of inner change.
