On this episode, we explore life's pivotal question "What Is Love?" with Rick Ringbakk – an accomplished television director and producer who received two primetime Emmys for his work on "The Amazing Race." Rick explains how he sees love, and how all of us can create love in our own lives, as he shares about his past and present family and career. Rick’s expertise spans from wildlife documentaries to reality competitions and game shows, having produced over 1,000 hours of programming for major networks like NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, Discovery, MTV, TNT, and TBS. An only child from a small, tight-knit family, Rick has been married for more than 20 years to, as he says, “the only girl I’ve ever loved.” Learn more about love – how to create it and live it – in this special episode of “We’re Not Blowing Hot Air.”
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About Rick Ringbakk:
Rick Ringbakk is a highly respected, creative and accomplished television developer, director and producer, having filmed in more than 80 countries across six continents. His expertise spans from wildlife documentaries to reality competitions and game shows, having produced over 1,000 hours of programming for major networks like NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, Discovery, MTV, TNT, and TBS. Notably, he received two primetime Emmys for his work on "The Amazing Race." An only child from a small, tight-knit family, Rick has been married for more than 20 years to, as he says, “the only girl I’ve ever loved.” Together with his wife, Promise LaMarco Ringbakk, they adopted their daughter, Music, at birth. Music has Down Syndrome, autism, is legally blind and “is the greatest thing ever!” A Florida native, Rick recently returned to the Sunshine State after a long stint in Los Angeles. Regardless of his location, Rick lives for his family, friends, laughter, and his passions—creative endeavors, travel, the ocean and live music!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Lauren Carlstrom (00:00):
Welcome to the "We're Not Blowing Hot Air
podcast powered by Oxygen Plus.
This season we're zoned in onmental wellness as we explore
some of life's biggest, mostimportant questions with
fascinating guests.
Get ready for a colorful,curious exploration of this
thing called life with today'sremarkable guest.
My BFF used to text the song"What Is Love To Me Whenever she
(00:24):
was struggling with the conceptof love.
The lyrics express longing andconfusion over the definition of
love.
While the song's majesticcrescendo and expression of love
as a raw, surging chemical andbiological experience is
captivating, the song misses outon how we can see and feel love
in a bigger way.
(00:45):
For me, love is veryidentifiable.
It is patient and kind.
It respects and honors.
It shows up and works throughLove laughs, hugs, holds and
stays.
Love is action, not just words.
But it also has to be words and, as we'll hear more about on
(01:07):
this episode, it is anever-ending, all-around-us,
ever-building magical energy.
When reflecting on love, it'susually the unsung heroes of the
inner circle that takes centerstage a grade school teacher, a
friend or, in my case, my mom.
I also find a profound exampleof love in my cousin, rick
(01:28):
Ringback.
Strikingly, rick is also anaccomplished television producer
and director and creator,having produced over 1,000 hours
of programming for majornetworks like NBC, cbs, abc, fox
, discovery, mtv, tnt and TBS.
He also won two prime-timeEmmys for his work on "he
(01:52):
Amazing Race.
Anyone who is lucky enough toknow him would agree Rick
consistently and authenticallylives a life that can be
described only as love.
Let's welcome the amazing RickRingbakk as we explore life's
pivotal question what is love?
Rick Ringbakk (02:12):
Well, it's one of my favorite subjects, for sure.
It's something that obviouslyis one of the most important
things in our lives in terms ofgiving meaning to our lives, but
it's also something that Ithink about a lot.
I think of love like the fuelfor our souls.
(02:33):
So we have to have nutrition todrive our bodies, but our
bodies are just one part of us.
They're really not actually usright, like our bodies are just
kind of what we're in, and thereal us needs fuel as well to
survive, to thrive, to grow, andI personally believe that that
(02:54):
fuel is love.
I think of us as energy, right.
I think of people as energy,and I feel like everybody's got
their own frequency that theyvibrate at, and I think love is
like the ultimate tuning fork tohelp you find that perfect
frequency for yourself indifferent parts of your life.
(03:16):
So when you can feel likeyou're not yourself and you kind
of know that you're just not inthe right headspace, I think
that a lot of that whether it'sstress or whatever, like on an
almost physiological level we'rekind of vibrating at the wrong
frequency for ourselves, we'reout of tune, right, and so that
(03:37):
easiest, best, most dependabletuning fork to get ourselves
back into being able to be ourkind of best, fully expressed
selves is love.
So it's something that we needand it's something that we seek
out.
I think it's kind of magical.
I think it may have been Newtonwho originally had the law of
(03:58):
thermo, thermo first, law ofthermodynamics, but then
Einstein sort of expressed itslightly differently, and Kelvin
actually really, whether it wasabout heat.
But Einstein ultimately endedup saying, giving us the famous
quote, that matter can either becreated.
Energy can either be created ordestroyed, just transferred
from one form to another.
And I think that's true.
But I would posit the potentialargument that the one thing
(04:20):
that flies in the face of thattheory is love, because I do
think that love is an energy andI think that we grow it out of
thin air like magic, and so it'sthis very, very.
There's a reason that we lookat love and we think about love
in such sort of sacred kind of,with such a sacred vibe around
(04:43):
it, because we recognize thatlike, ok, almost every one of
our other emotions get triggeredby little things and it's a
very kind of up and down kind ofchart.
Love becomes this kind ofbedrock, it's this foundational
thing that you can build all theother things in your life on
top of, and we find it in somany places right, we find it in
(05:08):
, obviously, like there's themost.
I think.
A lot of times, when people justthink of love, they think of,
oh, true love, finding my truelove and falling in love.
And yes, that is a verypowerful kind of love, but it's
far from the only kind.
Just like we have thousands offoods that we eat that give us
our nutrition to drive ourbodies, we have thousands of
(05:30):
ways of feeling love andexpressing love and getting love
and giving love, and some of itrevolves around that finding
that special someone.
But that's not a requirement.
No one of them is a requirement.
It's just a requirement, justlike nutrition, that you find it
somewhere right, and so weoften find it through our
(05:50):
personal relationships, but wealso can find it in completely
solitary contemplation and total, total isolation, right, if you
have a passion for a creativityor a passion for like.
For me, the ocean has alwaysbeen a great, great love.
Music and live music have alwaysbeen a great, great love.
(06:13):
You could take all the peopleout of my life and it would be
awful, but there are still thesekind of pillars that I could
derive love from, that I couldreceive love from, because we're
so good at creating it.
I mean, I think it's actuallywe're social creatures,
(06:33):
naturally right, so we want tocome together, we want to be
bonded to each other.
It's just part of ourhardwiring and within that we're
far more prone to want to likeand ultimately love somebody or
something than we are to want todislike or hate somebody or
something.
It actually takes a superconcerted effort by major forces
(06:57):
to kind of create the dividesthat we have in this country
right now, if you set asidebigotry and things like that.
We're hardwired to want to findthe things about us that we can
relate to each other andultimately we keep wanting to
find a way to love things right,like it's what we do.
I think one of the thingsthat's really special about
(07:17):
people it's why I love people isthat our natural inclination is
towards that and it reallytakes a lot of exterior factors
to kind of take us out of thatdefault mode of looking for love
, trying to make love, give love, receive love.
It's like, again, it's the gas.
It's the gas that our enginesrun on.
Lauren Carlstrom (07:37):
Yeah, so interesting.
So a couple of things.
I just got from you, rick, inthis and I'm so excited too for
our listeners to know you,because I know you, you are
family, you are someone that I,over the years, I've had the
privilege of getting to seeemblematically what love looks
like through you and how yourelate with people and your
(07:57):
world, and I'm excited for ourlisteners to get to see this
today.
And what I just heard from youis that it's sort of our
responsibility to have love andto make love and to find love.
That really.
And then secondly, just likefor me, I also heard, when
you're already in the groove oflove, it's easier to stay there,
(08:19):
like for I Object in motion.
Rick Ringbakk (08:21):
If we're going to go back into science, I think
that object in motion tends tostay in motion right.
Lauren Carlstrom (08:25):
Yes.
Rick Ringbakk (08:27):
I wouldn't say that it's a responsibility.
I would say it's a necessity.
It's like it's not ourresponsibility to eat food.
It's a necessity, right Like wehave to have it or our bodies
will die.
I think that love and findingthings that fill our souls and
that fuel our souls is anecessity.
(08:47):
Or you know, or we wither.
So it's more than aresponsibility.
Lauren Carlstrom (08:51):
It's just like we need it, we have to have it,
but I can't say I don't havelove.
So it's someone else's fault orit's like you know I'm not.
Rick Ringbakk (08:59):
I don't live by the ocean.
Lauren Carlstrom (09:00):
I don't get to hear live music.
I can't, I can't have that be.
I'm just saying it's like theonus.
Rick Ringbakk (09:07):
No, I don't think so.
I think that we find itliterally everywhere.
It's what's so magical about it.
You know what I mean.
Like, think about, like I'm notinto gardening, but I know
people who really are and theylove those flowers and they talk
to their flowers, and so theyare creating a love affair with
plants, right, because they needit.
It's a way to you know, it's away to create that we do it with
(09:29):
our pets, right.
Like you know, almost anybodycan figure out a way to at least
have a gerbil and love theirgerbil, or a goldfish and love
their goldfish.
Like there's all these differentsort of you know levels of it.
But I think that you know we doseek it out.
Some people everybody does itin a different way, right, like
everybody loves kind of uniquely.
(09:50):
That's where I think that sortof true love, that romantic love
is sort of does sit in its owncategory.
That requires it's like thelove of what makes a great
friendship.
And the love of what makes agreat friendship is that sort of
chemistry of bond of like youknow, when you're doing
something with somebody it'sjust better because you're doing
(10:12):
it with them.
You know what I mean.
Like we're here at the beach.
But if I was here at the beachwith a bunch of people, I didn't
know it'd be one thing.
But if I'm here with thesepeople that I love, it's just
this completely differentexperience.
You know, like I'll go see aband that I love by myself,
because I do love the band and Ilove the music, but it's I'll
(10:33):
really think about it if it'sgonna be effort to do it by
myself, whereas the moment thatI can go with my wife or my
friends or you know, then that's, you know, that changes the
equation for me and it becomes amore powerful draw.
Like those experiences, you know, like certain experiences kind
(10:55):
of almost aren't real unlessyou're sharing them with
somebody that you love.
You know what I mean.
But then, on the other hand,like you can that same thing,
the fact that you have a love ofmusic.
So let's say I didn't have awife and I didn't have friends,
right?
Well, the reality is, if I goto this band that I love or this
football game to see thisfootball team that I love, that
(11:18):
I'm passionate about, I careabout my emotions rise and fall
with the ups and downs of theseason, that sort of thing right
?
Well, guess what?
Like, if I'm open to it, I'mprobably going to be able to
make a friend there.
Like, even if I didn't have asingle friend, I am entering a
world where we have a sharedlove and that, if you just give
(11:39):
it a chance, you'll findsomebody that you love.
Lauren Carlstrom (11:41):
Maybe not fall in love, that's so beautiful.
But if you love as a friend,that's so beautiful and that's
been like.
That's been my experience aswell and I've seen that in you.
I think I'm curious how did youget to it?
Took me a while to get there,you I.
As soon as I met you years agoback in LA, you had that where
in your childhood.
What was something from yourchildhood where you really grew
(12:05):
up learning this?
Rick Ringbakk (12:05):
So I was really fortunate Not that I was an only
child, because there arecertain kinds of love that you
may want but you can't create Ifyou don't have a brother or
sister.
You may wish you could havethat kind of love, but you're
not.
You're just not going to beable to do it.
It required two other people tomake that happen Right, or if?
they don't.
They don't.
My parents did, but my parentsmy mom passed a year and a half
(12:30):
ago, but they were together for55 years and they had this like
truly fairy tale, likeincredible relationship.
So they were they got engagedtwo weeks after they met.
They were married one monthafter they met and they worked
together for 55 years like themost awesome partners in crime
(12:52):
I've ever seen.
And so I think that it startedin a really young age, as almost
everything in our learningprocess does, through the
observation of my parents andseeing how they were, of course,
receiving the love that, youknow, a parent gives a child.
But seeing how they were witheach other shaped a lot of my
(13:16):
desire to have that, notnecessarily even romantically,
but to have that, that, thatkind of a support network of
some.
You know a person or peoplearound me that made me feel the
way I could see the two of themmade each other feel.
So I think it started longbefore I can remember.
(13:38):
That definitely shaped my, myview of what a romantic
relationship could and shouldlook like and like.
I guess you know one of thethings we have talked about,
talking about love, is likeobviously you've got to love
yourself right Like you got to.
You know you, there are going tobe days that you don't like
(13:58):
yourself right Like we all havedays where it's just like we
know we are not operating atlike the level we should be or
want to be, or we are makingchoices that we know we are
going to look back to, you know,with not regret, because I
never liked to have regrets, butwith chagrin.
(14:20):
But we have to always loveourselves.
We have to always loveourselves, and so you know my my
mom especially was was so goodat making me feel special and
making me feel like you know,gosh, ricky, you know you've got
the sunshine in you and you'rejust this light and you'll never
and you'll never, you're never.
You honestly like you're alwaysgoing to attract people to you
(14:42):
but you'd be fine, just justshining on your own right and so
with that and then and thenseeing what their relationship
looked like, I didn't have a lotof serious romantic
relationships.
I dated a lot, I flinged a lot,but I never really got settled
down a lot because I knew in mymind I had this sort of gold
(15:04):
standard of what it was supposedto look like.
Lauren Carlstrom (15:07):
Yes, I'm so with you.
Rick Ringbakk (15:09):
It was my mom and dad and it was this incredible
kind of like perfect shiningexample.
And what's interesting is thatyou know, my, my, my amazing
wife promised she sort of cameto me having had almost the
opposite, you know, sort ofexample, which is that you know
her dad had been throughmultiple marriages, was on his
(15:30):
third marriage when we met, ison his fourth you know, marriage
now.
So she had kind of come to itthrough a bunch of examples of
what she didn't want it to looklike.
Right, but I had.
I think that I was lucky inthat it's you know like, as
opposed to process ofelimination.
I was just shown the answer,right.
Lauren Carlstrom (15:50):
Well, it's interesting because it both of
you were tuned into the vibeperspective that you were
espousing earlier of like it'sjust, it's this sort of energy,
and I actually remember the day.
Do you remember how you guys?
Of course you remember how youand Promise met?
Yeah, yeah, I was staying withher at her place I don't know if
(16:11):
you remember that part, but youguys were had the music was
bumping too loud and you wereher neighbor and she was like,
oh, these guys, they're just hadthe loudest music, like you
know.
And then, and then I think likeshe went over and ask you to
politely turn it down, and itended up, you guys, slightly
different, got married, gotmarried.
How did it go?
Rick Ringbakk (16:33):
I love this story .
So I was doing wildlifedocumentaries and I would go on
the road for like 12 to 14 weeksand then I would come back and
I would only have two weeks athome and I had this unbelievable
friend network that, like youknow, I I mean, I loved that
part of my life creatively.
I loved that I was, you know,what I got to do was be in
(16:55):
nature and following humpback,whale, mark migrations and, like
my other loves, like my lovesfor nature, my love for the
ocean, my love for creativeexpression, all like feeding,
feeding, feeding, feeding.
But you know, and I would havemy cameraman, my sound man, etc.
When I, you know, while I wasout there, it was, you know, I
later moved on to do kind ofmuch bigger shows with big crews
(17:17):
, but this was usually likethree or four of us on the road
in the middle of the jungle oron a boat, you know, going out
to the great white sharks orwhatever.
And so when I would get home,what I needed to feed was that
friend glove I needed, I neededthat, you know, I needed that,
and so I would typically throwkind of a two week long nobody
(17:42):
needs to leave my apartment,gathering right when kind of an
open door policy, you know, likeyou know, sleeping whatever
bedroom that you want, and etc.
Kind of policy.
And it was just me living therewhen Promise and I met.
I had, I had, I had gotten ridof my roommates and I it was
(18:02):
just me and I had a threebedroom place and so I just, it
was this you know, all myfriends would be over and we
would, we would, we would, wewould have a great time for a
couple of weeks.
So I think Promise knew me asthis loud guy next door.
Lauren Carlstrom (18:14):
Yeah, right.
Rick Ringbakk (18:16):
So and then one of my oldest friends from from
college, tiffany, when I wasaway, was talking to Met Promise
and was talking to Promise andwas like oh my God, my friend
Ricky Ringback is going to loveyou and.
And then I came back and, as Iwas want to do, I immediately
threw a party and Promise's momcame to the party.
(18:39):
Promise's mom came over to theparty and she stayed at my
apartment until like fouro'clock in the morning and then
went back and you know thank God, you know, like I didn't know
that she was the mother of thepretty girl next door went back
and championed to me a littlebit and said actually, you know,
this guy's pretty cool, youmaybe, you know, I know it's
(19:01):
loud, but give him a chance.
So that was kind of how, how,how that started, but yeah, like
.
Lauren Carlstrom (19:07):
I knew that was an awesome moment for me.
I have to.
I was at Pepperdine and I wasin college at the time, crashing
with the cousin and and andseeing you guys.
How I saw you guys, how youfirst met.
I saw you how you treat eachother.
You know, at your wedding inBaja and I've seen you like many
(19:28):
times throughout the years upuntil last Christmas how you
have always loved each other andtreated each other so well and
that you I've told you thisbefore, rick you, your marriage,
is the one I want to have aswell and why I'm also have this
gold standard.
I'm more.
You know, my, my, my mom isawesome as well, but you know I
(19:49):
didn't see that same marriagethat that you had.
I was more for differentreasons, more like promise, my,
my cousin, right.
So, it was just, it's just beenlike.
You truly are one of the guysthat I'm like.
I need a guy like that, like inmy life to make my life with no,
and that's how important loveis and that's why, like this is
leading the the season, openingit up, because I think people
(20:12):
really need to know what whatlove can look like in a
relationship.
It's so important to me that noone lets their you know or or
in their world, no one likemisses out on this magic Right,
so I didn't want me to cut youoff but I just wanted to make
sure I got that in there.
Rick Ringbakk (20:30):
I appreciate that as somebody that's always kind
of told my parents that you knowyou y'all's was the
relationship that I alwayswanted to have to hear, that,
that promise and I are after 20,gosh almighty 24 years together
and 22 years married in 2002.
Yeah, it'll be 20, it'll be 22years in May and we got together
(20:52):
in April of 2020.
So, yeah, 24 years, almost aquarter century.
To hear that we're, you know,have become an example is the
highest, highest compliment.
But yeah, I like, I feel, likeyou know, that that partnership
relationship, that romantic lovethat you know person that's
(21:16):
going to truly be you can havebest friends.
But let's be honest, that,should that becomes your real
best friend, is is kind of theone relationship that that you
just don't want to settle onRight, like it's because it
requires so much energy, becauseit requires so much compromise.
(21:37):
You know, really like.
You know, like, like it doesrequire it because it is two
people kind of becoming one life.
It requires both people to havesuch a level of investment into
.
Oh, my God, I'm so grateful andand and and blessed to have
(21:57):
this person and thisrelationship that it allows you,
in the difficult times, to beable to make the compromises or
get through the tight squeeze,whether it's financial or, you
know, losing someone that youlove, all the stuff that life is
going to throw at you.
Like Life will try and throw arelationship that isn't really
(22:19):
grounded and really reallystrong off course.
With all sorts of things itwill try and shake you out.
You know what I mean, and it'snot like life is trying to do
that, but it's like there aretoo many variables, there are
too many unforeseen, there aretoo many.
It's not always going to lookexactly like it looks on day one
(22:41):
in terms of where you are inlife and where you live and what
the job is.
There's just things evolve andthe relationship has to be
strong enough to go through theevolution together and that, I
think, is why we don't have the.
I think back in the day therewas maybe this just sort of
divorce was anathema and youwere just like, because it was
(23:06):
frowned upon, there was a socialstigma around it, so people
didn't get divorced, but thenpeople ended up kind of staying
together miserably for theirentire lives and I think that
now you see lots of people whoare finding their love in so
many different ways.
You know what I mean Throughtheir in personal endeavors,
(23:27):
through their passions aroundnature, their passions around
the arts, their passions aroundyou know, whatever it may be
something again as silly as afootball team there are so many
different ways that a person canfind a have a full kind of
enriched lives, and we're livingthese dual lives, right, our
real world life and our digitallife, and so that creates all
(23:50):
these additional kind of levelsof connection in this network
that you know, the divorce ratehas gone down a lot because the
young marriage rate has gonedown a lot, right, people aren't
feeling like they have to raceinto getting married and promise
and I didn't.
I was 30, right, I was like nowthat would be probably
considered like the normal time,right, but when I was getting
(24:11):
married 24 years ago, that wasstill considered like ah.
My mom was probably like, ah,is he ever going to do it?
Yeah, oh, geez, what's hewaiting for?
She's great and I didn't waitlong.
Yeah, that's what I foundpromise.
But I think that you can't make.
You can't make it happen, justlike you either jump into the
(24:33):
ocean and go oh my God, I lovethis or you jump into the ocean
and go oh my God, I'm reallynervous about maybe around the
water, you know, with me andlike I have a friend by a good
buddy.
Lauren Carlstrom (24:44):
Well, is the water warmer Cool?
Is that not a factor?
It's warmer where you are.
It's warm yeah.
Rick Ringbakk (24:50):
Almost, unless it's so freezing, like, if you
really love it, it almostshouldn't matter, right?
Like I remember being in Norway.
I mean, I remember being inNorway, you know, when I was
like four years old, five yearsold, with my parents and going
out with my dad on his uncle'slittle fishing boat in the
summertime and a few are jumpingin the water and like it was
(25:11):
cold, but like in the ocean.
I just loved it, right.
So, like you know, like mostpeople love the beach, right,
but I got a buddy, greg Good,who feels like sand is dirty.
He's like I don't like the feelof it, I don't like to go to
the beach, I don't like being onthe beach, right.
So that's the thing.
Like you know, we're drawn todifferent things and we can
(25:34):
always find plenty of thingsthat we naturally want to have,
make a connection with andnaturally want to love.
That's why we don't choose tospend our free time doing things
that we're not that drawn to,and that's why, when you choose
to create a relationship withsomebody that you're not that
drawn to, it's probably notgoing to get through the
(25:56):
gauntlet that life's going tohurl at it, you know.
Lauren Carlstrom (26:01):
Wow, very well said and insightful and wise.
And it's not a requirement.
Rick Ringbakk (26:07):
I have so many friends.
Like I have so many friends Imean, look at, you have so many
friends are like, yes, it wouldbe great, but also like it's
fine if it doesn't.
If that doesn't happen, for meit's the same Like we're
evolving, right.
Like the number of friends thatI have that don't have kids
today is more than the number offriends that I have that do
have kids today.
(26:27):
And I saw it especially livingin Los Angeles this weird trend
break where suddenly, likepeople were just not having kids
right.
I have my own theory on thatthat like the earth is sort of
sending out a signal that weneed to slow down on the making
more people in the making morepeople department because it's
not sustainable.
But there is some sort of signalthat we're picking up because
(26:49):
it was a real, it's a realovernight kind of thing from my
parents generation to boomers,to my generation, Gen X, where
suddenly it just stopped beingand I think, especially in
bigger cities and things likethat, it's stopped being this
like pre-wreck that you gotta,you gotta have kids right and
when that stopped kids and thatsort of does that procreation
(27:14):
kind of hardwiring.
I think that was a big part ofthe thing that kind of drove the
like, well, I have to getmarried thing right.
And so like I really separatethe idea of love and what love
is and how it's going to get,why and how we need love and all
the ways we can find love fromthings like marriage and
children and things like that,because I see people living
(27:35):
these fully expressed, amazinglives that are filled with love
and filled with real deepmeaning and deep connection that
aren't married and they don'thave kids, and so when I see
enough examples of that, thatsays that's not a pre-wreck to
love, it's just not.
Lauren Carlstrom (27:52):
Yeah.
Rick Ringbakk (27:52):
Yeah.
Lauren Carlstrom (27:54):
I mean because I think that that actually
might hopefully will free peopleto learn that.
I know it did me as I, like,saw it.
Rick Ringbakk (28:00):
I just said that's not a drive through a
relationship that they'remiserable in.
Lauren Carlstrom (28:05):
You'd be amazed, though, how many people
still are.
Rick Ringbakk (28:09):
I was in a relationship where, literally I
came home.
It was the only long kind oflong term relationship I had
before promise, and I was with agolfer about three years and
about a year and a half into itI realized it was just no way
this was going to work.
But I didn't want to break herheart and I didn't want to like,
so I just stayed in it and itwas like I'm going to see if I
(28:31):
can make this.
I think this is what happens toso many people.
Right, I'm going to see if Ican make this work.
And it wasn't until like Istarted realizing that.
Like I was driving home in thecar by myself, day after day,
verbally, like talking throughand rehearsing the breakup, like
fantasizing like tonight, I'mgoing to do it tonight, and then
(28:54):
like God, I can't do it tonight, she had a hard day, et cetera,
and I let it go for like over ayear.
Over a year to where you know,my friends and the people who
knew me best are like what'sgoing on?
Like you don't seem likeyourself, like I think sometimes
, like we want something likethat more than something like
that might want us, orespecially when it's not the
(29:14):
right person, right Like.
You're trying to make it happenand you can't.
You can't make it happen.
It's like the oldest cliche inthe book, but it's like you'll,
you know you'll know it when youfeel it.
You know you'll know it whenyou feel it and it's, and the
first five years are the tell.
If it's stronger five years inthan it was on day one, you've
(29:38):
probably punched your ticket foran awesome lifelong
relationship.
You cannot, I don't believe.
I think my parents are theabsolute like exception case
where you meet somebody, getengaged after two weeks, get
married after four weeks andlive and are together like
really happy, for 55 years.
The odds are astronomicallystacked against that because,
(30:02):
again, like romantic loves inits own category, that it
requires so many other elementsto be in place properly because
of the level of commitment andbecause of the life journey
you're now going to go on tiedto the hip right.
Lauren Carlstrom (30:17):
Like you give up.
Rick Ringbakk (30:18):
You give up.
I don't want to, I don't wantthis to come across negatively
but, like you, give up a lot ofyour own ability to kind of be,
live life completely freely andmake decisions.
I'm not talking about, like youknow, like one night stands,
and now I'm not talking aboutsex.
I'm just talking about likelife decisions that will chart
the course.
Lauren Carlstrom (30:38):
Now you've got where you can live right.
Rick Ringbakk (30:41):
Yeah To each other, right?
So, you know, is there a jobthat's trying saying let's go
like we moved?
You know, promise is amazing.
My mom was diagnosed withAlzheimer's six years ago and
we've been in LA you know bothof us since 1992.
And we had started dating in2000 and this was now 2017.
(31:07):
My mom got diagnosed and by 2019, it was like eating me alive
that I was not here in Florida,very close to my mom, like she
was still together at that point, but like you were starting to
see the little chinks in thearmor.
And there was suddenly a clockon it.
(31:28):
Right, there was a clock onthis incredibly important
relationship, the person thathad taught me what love looks
like.
Right, there was a clock on it.
I was going to lose my mind ifI didn't move back here and
wasn't close to her for howevermany good days and amazing
moments and however much morelove we could share left before
(31:51):
she was either just gone interms of from the Alzheimer's,
or gone completely right, andboth those things ended up
happening.
So promise now, right, this iswhat I'm talking about.
Like life curveballs, we havethis insane friend network,
right, like promises and actressand auditioning and all this
stuff.
And all of a sudden I look ather literally kind of out of the
(32:12):
blue.
When it hit me like a revelationthat I didn't know what I was
having anxiety about.
I actually thought it was aboutwe had just adopted our
beautiful little daughter, music.
I thought maybe it was aboutbeing a dad and our daughter has
special needs.
And when I was having anxietyabout that and then I began
having these dreams about mymother and I realized it was
about my mom.
So this is all going leadingsomewhere.
(32:35):
So there was a day when I saidto promise, I'm like maybe I
don't know how to tell you this,but I have to be close to mom.
I don't know how much timethere is left and we got to go
quick.
Like it was almost like there'sa fire, we have to get out
right.
So, like I have this revelationin May and we moved to Florida,
uproot after 20 plus 30 yearseach of us in LA, we uproot in
(33:02):
18 years together.
In our 20 years together in LA,we uproot in three months and
move to Florida.
That only works If therelationship is strong enough
that promise can go.
He needs this.
I can put him in front ofliterally everything and make
(33:24):
this Massive, massive lifechange in order for it to go and
help his family.
Lauren Carlstrom (33:29):
Yeah, I mean I could, I had promise on today.
Rick Ringbakk (33:33):
Yes, I can tell you not only she have been much
better to look at than me, butshe is a far more deeply
spiritual person than me and hertakes on love would probably be
More interesting than mine.
Lauren Carlstrom (33:51):
I wonder, next year we have a bigger audience.
Rick Ringbakk (33:55):
You may have blown it on this one.
Lauren Carlstrom (33:58):
No, I'm gonna have our next year to talk about
something else, when we have abigger audience.
Rick Ringbakk (34:02):
Rick, I can already see, the podcast is
gonna start like this so highpromise.
Lauren Carlstrom (34:07):
So, as you know, we were gonna have your
husband on, but we went back andlooked at it and decided no, I
don't have that kind of time,but uh, no, but no, this she is
amazing and I agree like what aphenomenal couple I was.
I do want to get into your,your work.
I think that that our listenerswould love to hear about how
(34:30):
your passions fueled your timeas a producer, on Shows like the
amazing race, which she, whichpromise, actually traveled with
you to do all the things, likebungee jumping, and Maybe like
if you could regalus with a fewstories of how love has Ignited
and fueled your, your work withtheir friends, family.
(34:51):
That would be, I think, reallycool.
I could give us an inside peekat that.
Rick Ringbakk (34:55):
So so, as I said, like I have a love of the ocean
from a really, really, reallyyoung age.
It's fascinated by it.
I can, you know, learn to scubadive when I was, when I was 12,
the moment I could get, was oldenough to get my paddy divers
like dry, you know diversized.
I got that and then I became adive master by the time I was 17
, the moment that I could dothat.
(35:16):
And when I was in college, Iworked as a dive master in the
Florida Keys.
I went to, I literally chose mycolleges based on where would I
be able to be close to the ocean.
That Forced me to choose aninitial major around, because my
dad wanted me to go to like anIvy League school or Stanford,
neither of which I was gettinginto.
(35:38):
But but so I had to come up witha reason that the places I
wanted to Apply were theUniversity of Miami, the
University of Hawaii and theUniversity of California, san
Diego.
Now, truth be told, I justwanted to be somewhere where I
could go diving and where Iwould be near the ocean, and
that's that's what I wanted,right, because I love, love,
(36:01):
love the ocean.
And so I kind of backed intothis almost scheme where I said,
you know, I've decided I wantto be a marine scientist and
that's what I want to do with mylife.
And I actually ended up gettinga scholarship to the University
of Miami, miami, which has oneof the best marine science
schools in the country, thosethree schools like the best
three marine science schools.
(36:22):
So that sort of satisfied mydad's, my dad's Conditions.
And then I actually got ascholarship to go to the
University of Miami and, as itturned out, as I probably could
have suspected, I Was very goodat the marine part and very bad
at the science part.
Lauren Carlstrom (36:43):
I.
Rick Ringbakk (36:45):
Unfortunately there was no just.
Lauren Carlstrom (36:50):
You were coding Einstein earlier.
Are you sure you didn't doalright?
Rick Ringbakk (36:54):
I was very bad at the science part and so I
decided like, well, how, whatelse can?
And it was.
I mean, I really was fascinatedwith the idea of being a
scientist.
I just thought like, if this isa Career where that could have
me be in the ocean all the time,you know, and traveling to
these amazing places and beingunderwater and exploring this
incredible world, like you know,that would be incredible.
(37:16):
And Then when I, when I wasgonna lose my scholarship
because the science part wasreally hard for me, I switched
gears into the film school withthe idea of, well, I will make
wildlife documentaries, I willbecome somebody who shoots
wildlife documentaries and, youknow, focus on the ocean, and
and that's that even better.
(37:36):
Now I don't worry about scienceat all, now I just have to
figure out how to use a camera.
And so let's, let's do that.
And I actually, by the time Iwas like a junior in college, I
was leading dives in the FloridaKeys as a dive master and
making my beer money by filming,you know, my, the tourists who
I was taking out and thenslapping together the tapes of,
like all the good b-roll that Ihad shot, like you know, over
(37:59):
months of diving there, slappingthat together with the dive
that I just shot of them andselling them to them for like 20
bucks a piece and it's like, doyou want it to like you choose
beautiful day, or this song orthat song.
I was kind of, you know like,and I was feeling like, okay,
this is really what you know Iwant to do and so so the love of
the ocean kind of.
(38:21):
I discovered my love for, for,for filmmaking, for television,
through my love of the ocean.
I actually, you know, startedout thing, I'm just gonna be
able to get right into wildlifedocumentaries and then, as it's
so often the case with careerpaths like, the doors don't just
open.
So I had to bounce around anddoing a couple of different
(38:42):
types of shows and differenttypes of jobs.
I moved to Los Angeles as soonas I got out, thinking that's
where I'll be able to you knowall the networks are, etc.
And and eventually I did Firstdid a show called Sea Tech.
That was all underwater for thelearning channel back when TLC
was not.
Here comes honey, boo, boo.
(39:03):
Back when TLC was actually likethe learning channel.
It was all about underwatertechnologies and then I got onto
this show called wild thingsand wild things.
I was doing underwater camerawork and then I began producing
and directing on wild things andthat was where I really kind of
, you know, fell in love.
When it fell in love with, youknow, I've been coming back and
(39:25):
and and watching the tapes in mytent at night after we've been
following orangutans through thejungle in In Borneo, you know,
and and you know, say you,putting together the paper cup
for whenever we got down riverto a town where I could get to a
Place to send the tapes that Iwould have all the notes and
stuff back, and I really kind offell in love with it.
So it was like one love begat,another love.
(39:46):
Right, like I was a person Ithought it was more science but
I hated the science but I stilllove the marine, and then that,
let me kind of led me into thisand I did that for for five
years.
That's all I did.
Was you know was wildlife stuff.
I did a couple of other things.
I did the like eco challenges,which were a big adventure race
that was on Discovery Channel.
I did the Olympics in in Nagano, japan, in 1998.
(40:10):
I produced all the firstsnowboarding events At the know
that.
Yeah, for CBS.
And and so slowly I was kind oflike like the Long ago aquatic
animals before us that you know,that had flippers and grew feet
as they dragged themselves outof the water.
(40:31):
I was sort of doing the samecreatively, like like the ocean
had taken me to this creativeendeavor that I loved, and then
I began to realize that therewere other things that that I
loved as well, and so I was likeyou know, I'm beginning to
explore that more.
And then after that, like thethat was right when reality TV
(40:51):
was taking off, so survivor hadjust launched, a big brother had
just launched, and my boss fromthis wildlife show that I've
been doing, this guy, amazingguy Bertram, called me up one
day and said hey, my wife hasthis crazy idea for people
racing around the world.
Do you want to come to Indiawith us?
And we'll go and try and figureit out.
(41:12):
And we went to India for threeweeks and that was kind of how
the amazing race got born andthat show, of course you know,
blew up and and was where I wasable to, you know, win a bunch
of Emmys.
But as that was going on, soright before the amazing race,
like I met promise.
The show Wild Things has wasfinished.
I Was in this little lull whereI didn't have, you know, a gig.
(41:36):
I like a full-time kind of gig.
Lauren Carlstrom (41:38):
So you're having parties back?
Rick Ringbakk (41:40):
I mean yeah right , I continue to do wildlife,
like you know 42, 43 weeks ayear on the road, which is what
I was doing.
I was home Maybe eight or tenweeks to ten weeks a year and
only in like ten day to two weekPocket.
So it probably been pretty hardand some other lucky dude was
snatched her up, but there justhappened to be, you know.
You know, stars aligned and andand promise, and I met and then
(42:02):
amazing race.
We sold amazing race and thatshow started and and the first
season of amazing race.
I Knew that I was gonna befinishing in Thailand.
Promise, and I had been datingfor a couple of months.
We had just started dating.
I knew that, that I was gonnabe finishing in Thailand, and so
(42:23):
I invited promise to come overand join me in Thailand.
I wasn't gonna be.
Can go in with the race fromThailand back to America to
finish line, so I couldpresumably was already there.
I had all this wrap-out stuff Ido.
I had, you know, paid for hotelroom and hey, want to come to
Thailand for a couple of weeks,and etc.
And I and she came over alittle bit early Before the race
(42:47):
actually came in where I wasgonna be in that, really in the
thick of it, and there was anincident with a Chinese jet and
an American jet in Chineseairspace.
There was this really close call.
This is back in 2000.
And it created this instantsudden like, oh my God, there's
(43:08):
going to be potentially a warbetween America and China.
It was this very tense moment.
It was right as the race wascoming out of China and into
Thailand and the contestants allgot out.
But then Americans that were inChina got held and that
included my production designerand art department who were
supposed to be coming down andbuilding a big pit stop for me.
(43:30):
Oh wow, now I was short thatand there was nobody there that
I could hire, and my sort ofgirlfriend that I had just
started dating had literallyjust arrived.
It was waiting for me to getthrough these last, you know
this last week and then we weregoing to spend a couple of weeks
getting to just hang out and wewere in Southern Thailand, down
in the amazing island area andI needed this pit stop built and
(43:51):
I basically had to look at herand say, I know we essentially
still don't even know each othervery well, but and I can't pay
you and you're not allowed to behere because I'm not allowed to
have a girlfriend on the shoot.
It's one of my bosses like hard, fast rules.
But here are 30 Thai workers.
I need this beach that's beenbeing used as a party palace for
(44:12):
locals to be completely cleanedup and I need like a Shangri-La
built for the end of an episodeof the amazing race.
And I left her with a bunch ofThai workers who spoke no
English and I flew up to Bangkokbecause the race was coming
into Bangkok.
First, I had no idea what I wasgoing to find when I got back
down there.
And I got back down there andit was this unbelievable.
(44:35):
She had fired answers thatshe'd hired on the beach.
She'd found 300 pound massivegiant clam shells that she would
had created like a seafoodbuffet on the beach.
What Fast pit stop.
She had masseuses for not onlythe contestants but for the
cameramen and sound men there onthe beach.
And you know, bert, my boss ofcourse knew that.
(44:58):
You know we didn't have our artdepartment and we were both
kind of expecting.
I'm like I was telling her likeI don't know, like you know, I
found an American and I justkind of put her to work.
She seemed like maybe we shouldbe capable what I have no idea.
And it was this unbelievablething.
And he's like, okay, who didthis?
You know, I want to meet thisperson.
(45:18):
Wow, I'm not going to lie to myboss that this person's kind of
you know my girlfriend and so Ipromise out, and then he was
Bert, was just like this isamazing.
You know, if you ever want ajob on show, you know, then just
let us know what you want to doand you can come and work on
the show.
And so that started thisincredible journey for the two
(45:39):
of us.
My job when we weren't shootingthe amazing race was to go and
plan all of the stops and routes.
And what are the things we'regoing to do?
From bungee jumping in NewZealand to rolling wheels of
cheese down a hillside inSwitzerland to, you know, hang
gliding in Rio de Janeiro, justlike all this amazing stuff had
to get figured out and tried.
(45:59):
And the thing we had realizedafter season one was like we
needed, like a regular citizen,just like a non-adrenaline
junkie, person who had not beento these places, to film we were
kind of filming ourselves, youknow, like it could be this or
that to show the network, butwouldn't it be great if we could
find so the original plan hadbeen.
Where does find somebody ineach place to be like?
(46:21):
Go to a hostel and find youknow a kid who's like hey, do
you want to go roll a wheel ofcheese down a hillside today?
Lauren Carlstrom (46:27):
Or do you want to go?
Rick Ringbakk (46:28):
bungee jumping.
But what we were able to do waspromise and I ended up being
able to go out and do thattogether.
So she and I would get to dotravel all over the world, with
her trying out all this crazystuff and me shooting her doing
it, and then we would go backand pitch it to the network Like
this is what a regular persongoing on bungee jump that you
(46:48):
know, this is what that lookslike, this is the kind of
reaction we can expect, etcetera.
Lauren Carlstrom (46:52):
So we got to have this unbelievable
experience for several years andactually you know that gig
lasted several years for you, toboth for the body.
Rick Ringbakk (47:04):
It was honestly.
It was honestly you know thereis such thing as too much of a
good thing we realized thatafter about four or five years
of doing it together, that whenwe weren't on the amazing race,
we did not want to travel Likewe did not.
We just wanted to lay on ourcouch and like Netflix and chill
, you know, and and I think thiswas back when you still had to
(47:27):
order DVDs from Netflix yeah,yeah, like Netflix and chill.
And we kind of looked at eachother one day we're like this
show could go forever, like wecould just keep doing this, like
running around the world likecrazy, and it's awesome, but
like, is this?
Is this what we want our lifeto be?
And both of us were like I lovetravel and I'm starting but I'm
(47:51):
starting to not like travel.
Lauren Carlstrom (47:53):
There you go.
You went back to you, bothtapped back into the vibration.
You're like you know likeowning your love and what that
looks like.
Yeah.
Rick Ringbakk (48:02):
But it was so.
That was, you know like.
So, in a roundabout way, I canthank the ocean.
I can thank the ocean for thejourney that took me all the way
to my wife, because even aninteresting story once we had
initially started dating, I wentand did a, produced and
directed a music documentaryaround a band that I liked down
(48:25):
in Costa Rica and promise and Ijust started dating this band
string cheese incident andpromise wanted to come and I was
nervous, I was going to bedistracted and so I told her I
didn't want her to come.
And while I was gone, a suitor,this guy, dave Boyles, that we
know is a really good musician,better looking guy than me and
certainly have a lot betterguitar player than me showed up
(48:48):
with roses out, promisesapartment and I'm in Costa Rica
and he is there to court her.
You know she has a gentlemancaller and while he was there he
gets a phone call from a buddyof his that says turn on the TV,
turn on the TV.
Rick's on TV right now and itwas a rerun from my wildlife
(49:10):
days of this show called WildThings and it was a thing where
I was filming sea snakes inIndonesia and this crazy, the
most venomous snake in the worldby like a long shot, like a
bite, can kill 300 people.
It was this crazy story where Iwas being chased by literally
being chased by them and kind ofswimming for my, for my life,
from these sea snakes andpromise, you know, watches this
(49:34):
with him and she's like thanksfor the roses.
But I think I'm going to haveto give Rick a chance so we
really can go all the way backto the ocean and like thank it
for everything.
You know what I mean, like allthat first love of a thing that
wasn't a person that I canremember, the first thing that I
was just like, so drawn to, hasbeen.
You know that one love hasgiven back in so many ways and
(49:59):
through the cycles of my ownlife.
Lauren Carlstrom (50:02):
That's so beautiful I'm going to think
that we all even come from theocean Like that's where like and
the water and the you knowwhat's.
Rick Ringbakk (50:10):
what's the water in our bodies is the exact same
sailing content as the ocean.
Like, we are made up primarilyof ocean.
We think it's blood, but it'sactually sailing ocean water,
Crazy.
Lauren Carlstrom (50:24):
It definitely makes me want to come visit you
again.
Speaking of just if you couldshare, you balance a lot you
have.
You still have an awesomecareer, even if it's not TV
production a little bit.
So TV production, or what areyou doing right now?
Rick Ringbakk (50:40):
Yeah, no, so I so Promise.
And I, six years ago, adoptedthis amazing, amazing little
girl.
At birth, her name is music,and so we get live music in the
house every night now, and musicis just the coolest thing on
(51:02):
earth.
Music has a lot of challenges.
Music has Down syndrome, musichas severe autism.
Music was born legally blind.
She had cataracts that were sothick that one of her eyes, the
lens of her eyes, was completelycracked because the cataract
was so thick very rare so shehad to have surgery and have the
(51:23):
lenses of her eyes removedwithin the first six weeks of
her life.
So we, you know, that obviouslyis a big, is a big change.
We weren't, and we weren't whenwe were trying to adopt, we
weren't thinking special needsLike.
We learned that she was specialneeds.
The mother gave birthprematurely.
We flew to Illinois and wedidn't learn that she had Down
(51:45):
syndrome until after we hadtaken her from the hospital and
we were in Chicago with her.
She spent the first couple ofweeks of her life in the NICU
when we were in Chicago waitingto for a judge to say it's cool
for us to fly back to Californiawith this baby that we're
adopting, and so Do you know bythe way, do you know how I heard
you guys decided to moveforward with the adoption?
Lauren Carlstrom (52:06):
I heard the story.
I think it was from Promise.
She said we looked, we heardthe news, we cried a little bit
with each other and we saidabsolutely, we're going forward.
Is that correct?
Yeah?
Rick Ringbakk (52:18):
Yeah, and we actually had already decided, no
matter what the news was, wewere going forward.
But we, we, we did.
We got the news and then we hadthis kind of moment where we
it's amazing, like you know wejust kind of let go of the image
(52:38):
that we'd had in our heads ofwhat this was going to look like
and kind of instantaneouslylooked at this amazing tiny.
She was four pounds Like.
She was so, so tiny.
It was like put her in yourpocket cabbage patch, yeah Right
, and we went out, we put her inthe stroller and we went out
and we went through, walkedaround Chicago and we ended up
(53:01):
in this amazing beautiful emptychurch and we prayed for all the
love and joy and happiness andsuccess, for a little music that
we could have, and by the endof the day we were like thrilled
with whatever this was going tobe, whatever this was going to
mean.
But it was challenging.
(53:22):
Those first couple of years inLA where I was still working
like 60, 70 hours a week.
I worked crazy hours.
My company was being funded bya company in Germany and so I
would be up in the middle of thenight with phone calls, you
know, to them, and then you knowhow pitching and you know, et
cetera, and then when we haveshows, shooting.
So I began was alreadyrealizing that after 25 years of
(53:46):
doing a lot of physicalproduction right, a lot of like
building the crew and gettingout there in the field and
either producing and directingor just producing and going on
the road for weeks of time, likethat needed to shift.
And so I began it was alreadyin my brain starting to kind of
shift myself towards.
I want to be more just on thedevelopment side.
I just want to ideate, I wantto come up with show ideas, I
(54:07):
want to help companies thatmight have an idea flush that
idea out, and so that, combinedwith my mom's diagnosis, and
like we need to move to Florida,we moved to Florida and like we
got here in in September,october of 2019.
And then, like four months later, the pandemic hits right, the
world shuts down, and then wecome out of it and everything is
(54:31):
this right, what we're doingright now, like there are no
more in person meetings, thereare no more in person pitches
and they're still up.
And so, for four years later,and the industry is still
running completely virtually,like, like this, because it's
just more efficient.
So so I ultimately was, youknow, weirdly, the pandemic kind
of like like smoothed over thefact that, like if it had still
(54:55):
been like, where's Rick?
Why is he in the room, why arewe having to?
People are going to pitch andthen they're having to like,
zoom me in.
That would have really changedthe dynamics and I'm not sure if
it would have worked right.
But the pandemic created it.
Where you know, I don't think alot of people even realize that
I'm not in California, I don'tknow.
So I was lucky that way, yeahthat's phenomenal.
Lauren Carlstrom (55:19):
So you are still doing TV production.
Is there anything you can talkabout now?
A lot, less hours.
Rick Ringbakk (55:23):
Like, look, I don't want to miss a moment of
music's life and the experiencewith music.
And so I've sort of changed,switch gears a lot.
I've cut my workload down by60%.
I work more like 20 or 25 hoursa week as opposed to 60 to 70
(55:46):
hours a week, and I do it kindof create a scenario where
almost all of the work that I dois like me sitting on my dock
with a laptop on my lap, youknow, just brainstorming ideas
for, like what do we?
How do we fix this one part ofa show or what's the twist that
(56:07):
could happen?
And it's a very writer based,you know, kind of job.
Now.
So I miss the, I miss the juiceand like of kind of the making
and I miss, you know, in LA,like if you're in the
entertainment industry andthat's what you want to do,
you're like you're right, you'reright next to the campfire,
you're getting all the heatthat's coming off of the
(56:29):
campfire.
You can really feel it, right,it's driving the whole city Move
across the country, and it'snow it's like I'm still getting
my heat from the campfire, butlike I'd have to make an effort
to get burned, you know, and Ihave to make an effort to go to
get that far back into it.
So it still scratches the itchfor me.
But like we, again we evolveright.
(56:49):
You know I had 30 amazing yearsof you know pouring every you
know ounce of energy that I hadin that wasn't being poured into
my, to my wife and my friendsinto that kind of work, and so
being able to pull back a littleis a huge blessing.
Lauren Carlstrom (57:05):
That's so cool .
It's just you, just always.
It's a constant retuning ofthat love fork.
Then isn't it To like?
Rick Ringbakk (57:13):
it is and it's allowing you know, at different
times, different aspects of loveto become the thing right.
You know, like now, now music'sthe thing, right, Like music's
the thing.
And so it doesn't mean that youcan't kind of, you know,
embrace and feed and be fed fromall the same avenues of that
(57:37):
you've derived love fromthroughout your life.
But you know that for us,especially with all you know,
her unique situation is verymuch the like the time and
energy kind of part of it.
But fortunately we've also putourselves in a situation where
the ocean is right outside thedoor and we've got a little boat
(57:57):
that can take us out on it andwe can be out with dolphins in
an hour or on the beach in 30minutes, and so we're super,
super, you know, lucky that wayand still feed that part of our
soul, you know.
Lauren Carlstrom (58:11):
Rick, the way you love, the way you live.
It's inspirational to me.
I hope I believe to ourlisteners too, that we're really
lucky to get to know you.
Anyone who knows you is luckyto know you.
Rick Ringbakk (58:23):
And I think that.
Lauren Carlstrom (58:25):
I think our listeners will agree.
Thank you for everything youshared today and all the color
that you bring to your world.
Rick Ringbakk (58:35):
Thank you.
Thank you for having me andgetting a chance to talk about,
like the best subjects on earth,the thing that makes our lives
have meaning and makes the wholemerry go around.
Keep spinning, you know it's.
We can never give up on love.
Lauren Carlstrom (58:50):
Never Any last word on love you want to share
with our listeners.
Rick Ringbakk (58:55):
You know, just let let it happen.
And there's many places in yourlife as you can.
It wants to happen, itnaturally wants to occur.
It is a naturally occurringphenomenon that we are a part of
and we can, you know, we canallow.
I think the only thing thatkind of gets in the way from
(59:16):
having you know a hundreddifferent called revenue streams
of love is us, is us putting upbarriers and sort of not being
open to.
You never know where the nextperson, place thing that you are
going to fall in love with isgoing to come from.
You just got to be open to.
Lauren Carlstrom (59:37):
All right, amen, I like it All right.
Rick Ringbakk (59:39):
Thanks, so much Thanks so much for having me.
Thanks for listening.
Lauren Carlstrom (59:42):
Do us a solid and smash that subscribe, share
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That way more people canelevate their mental wellness as
they explore some of life'sbiggest, most important
questions with remarkable andfascinating guests.
Oxygen Plus powers this episodeof "e're Not Blowing Hot Air.
Nice guy.
(01:00:02):
Creative services is ourproducer.
Leslie Blenner has it asdesigner.
I'm Lauren Carlstrom.
I'm a producer.
I'm a producer.
I'm a producer, I'm a producer.
I'm Lauren Carlstrom,concepting and host.
Arlene Applebaum is editor.
Thank you, valued listener.
Keep breathing easy so togetherwe can color our world.
Welcome to the "We're Not Blowing Hot Air
podcast powered by Oxygen Plus.
This season we're zoned in onmental wellness as we explore
some of life's biggest, mostimportant questions with
fascinating guests.
Get ready for a colorful,curious exploration of this
thing called life with today'sremarkable guest.
My BFF used to text the song"What Is Love To Me Whenever she
(00:24):
was struggling with the conceptof love.
The lyrics express longing andconfusion over the definition of
love.
While the song's majesticcrescendo and expression of love
as a raw, surging chemical andbiological experience is
captivating, the song misses outon how we can see and feel love
in a bigger way.
(00:45):
For me, love is veryidentifiable.
It is patient and kind.
It respects and honors.
It shows up and works throughLove laughs, hugs, holds and
stays.
Love is action, not just words.
But it also has to be words and, as we'll hear more about on
(01:07):
this episode, it is anever-ending, all-around-us,
ever-building magical energy.
When reflecting on love, it'susually the unsung heroes of the
inner circle that takes centerstage a grade school teacher, a
friend or, in my case, my mom.
I also find a profound exampleof love in my cousin, rick
(01:28):
Ringback.
Strikingly, rick is also anaccomplished television producer
and director and creator,having produced over 1,000 hours
of programming for majornetworks like NBC, cbs, abc, fox
, discovery, mtv, tnt and TBS.
He also won two prime-timeEmmys for his work on "he
(01:52):
Amazing Race.
Anyone who is lucky enough toknow him would agree Rick
consistently and authenticallylives a life that can be
described only as love.
Let's welcome the amazing RickRingbakk as we explore life's
pivotal question what is love?
Rick Ringbakk (02:12):
Well, it's one of my favorite subjects, for sure.
It's something that obviouslyis one of the most important
things in our lives in terms ofgiving meaning to our lives, but
it's also something that Ithink about a lot.
I think of love like the fuelfor our souls.
(02:33):
So we have to have nutrition todrive our bodies, but our
bodies are just one part of us.
They're really not actually usright, like our bodies are just
kind of what we're in, and thereal us needs fuel as well to
survive, to thrive, to grow, andI personally believe that that
(02:54):
fuel is love.
I think of us as energy, right.
I think of people as energy,and I feel like everybody's got
their own frequency that theyvibrate at, and I think love is
like the ultimate tuning fork tohelp you find that perfect
frequency for yourself indifferent parts of your life.
(03:16):
So when you can feel likeyou're not yourself and you kind
of know that you're just not inthe right headspace, I think
that a lot of that whether it'sstress or whatever, like on an
almost physiological level we'rekind of vibrating at the wrong
frequency for ourselves, we'reout of tune, right, and so that
(03:37):
easiest, best, most dependabletuning fork to get ourselves
back into being able to be ourkind of best, fully expressed
selves is love.
So it's something that we needand it's something that we seek
out.
I think it's kind of magical.
I think it may have been Newtonwho originally had the law of
(03:58):
thermo, thermo first, law ofthermodynamics, but then
Einstein sort of expressed itslightly differently, and Kelvin
actually really, whether it wasabout heat.
But Einstein ultimately endedup saying, giving us the famous
quote, that matter can either becreated.
Energy can either be created ordestroyed, just transferred
from one form to another.
And I think that's true.
But I would posit the potentialargument that the one thing
(04:20):
that flies in the face of thattheory is love, because I do
think that love is an energy andI think that we grow it out of
thin air like magic, and so it'sthis very, very.
There's a reason that we lookat love and we think about love
in such sort of sacred kind of,with such a sacred vibe around
(04:43):
it, because we recognize thatlike, ok, almost every one of
our other emotions get triggeredby little things and it's a
very kind of up and down kind ofchart.
Love becomes this kind ofbedrock, it's this foundational
thing that you can build all theother things in your life on
top of, and we find it in somany places right, we find it in
(05:08):
, obviously, like there's themost.
I think.
A lot of times, when people justthink of love, they think of,
oh, true love, finding my truelove and falling in love.
And yes, that is a verypowerful kind of love, but it's
far from the only kind.
Just like we have thousands offoods that we eat that give us
our nutrition to drive ourbodies, we have thousands of
(05:30):
ways of feeling love andexpressing love and getting love
and giving love, and some of itrevolves around that finding
that special someone.
But that's not a requirement.
No one of them is a requirement.
It's just a requirement, justlike nutrition, that you find it
somewhere right, and so weoften find it through our
(05:50):
personal relationships, but wealso can find it in completely
solitary contemplation and total, total isolation, right, if you
have a passion for a creativityor a passion for like.
For me, the ocean has alwaysbeen a great, great love.
Music and live music have alwaysbeen a great, great love.
(06:13):
You could take all the peopleout of my life and it would be
awful, but there are still thesekind of pillars that I could
derive love from, that I couldreceive love from, because we're
so good at creating it.
I mean, I think it's actuallywe're social creatures,
(06:33):
naturally right, so we want tocome together, we want to be
bonded to each other.
It's just part of ourhardwiring and within that we're
far more prone to want to likeand ultimately love somebody or
something than we are to want todislike or hate somebody or
something.
It actually takes a superconcerted effort by major forces
(06:57):
to kind of create the dividesthat we have in this country
right now, if you set asidebigotry and things like that.
We're hardwired to want to findthe things about us that we can
relate to each other andultimately we keep wanting to
find a way to love things right,like it's what we do.
I think one of the thingsthat's really special about
(07:17):
people it's why I love people isthat our natural inclination is
towards that and it reallytakes a lot of exterior factors
to kind of take us out of thatdefault mode of looking for love
, trying to make love, give love, receive love.
It's like, again, it's the gas.
It's the gas that our enginesrun on.
Lauren Carlstrom (07:37):
Yeah, so interesting.
So a couple of things.
I just got from you, rick, inthis and I'm so excited too for
our listeners to know you,because I know you, you are
family, you are someone that I,over the years, I've had the
privilege of getting to seeemblematically what love looks
like through you and how yourelate with people and your
(07:57):
world, and I'm excited for ourlisteners to get to see this
today.
And what I just heard from youis that it's sort of our
responsibility to have love andto make love and to find love.
That really.
And then secondly, just likefor me, I also heard, when
you're already in the groove oflove, it's easier to stay there,
(08:19):
like for I Object in motion.
Rick Ringbakk (08:21):
If we're going to go back into science, I think
that object in motion tends tostay in motion right.
Lauren Carlstrom (08:25):
Yes.
Rick Ringbakk (08:27):
I wouldn't say that it's a responsibility.
I would say it's a necessity.
It's like it's not ourresponsibility to eat food.
It's a necessity, right Like wehave to have it or our bodies
will die.
I think that love and findingthings that fill our souls and
that fuel our souls is anecessity.
(08:47):
Or you know, or we wither.
So it's more than aresponsibility.
Lauren Carlstrom (08:51):
It's just like we need it, we have to have it,
but I can't say I don't havelove.
So it's someone else's fault orit's like you know I'm not.
Rick Ringbakk (08:59):
I don't live by the ocean.
Lauren Carlstrom (09:00):
I don't get to hear live music.
I can't, I can't have that be.
I'm just saying it's like theonus.
Rick Ringbakk (09:07):
No, I don't think so.
I think that we find itliterally everywhere.
It's what's so magical about it.
You know what I mean.
Like, think about, like I'm notinto gardening, but I know
people who really are and theylove those flowers and they talk
to their flowers, and so theyare creating a love affair with
plants, right, because they needit.
It's a way to you know, it's away to create that we do it with
(09:29):
our pets, right.
Like you know, almost anybodycan figure out a way to at least
have a gerbil and love theirgerbil, or a goldfish and love
their goldfish.
Like there's all these differentsort of you know levels of it.
But I think that you know we doseek it out.
Some people everybody does itin a different way, right, like
everybody loves kind of uniquely.
(09:50):
That's where I think that sortof true love, that romantic love
is sort of does sit in its owncategory.
That requires it's like thelove of what makes a great
friendship.
And the love of what makes agreat friendship is that sort of
chemistry of bond of like youknow, when you're doing
something with somebody it'sjust better because you're doing
(10:12):
it with them.
You know what I mean.
Like we're here at the beach.
But if I was here at the beachwith a bunch of people, I didn't
know it'd be one thing.
But if I'm here with thesepeople that I love, it's just
this completely differentexperience.
You know, like I'll go see aband that I love by myself,
because I do love the band and Ilove the music, but it's I'll
(10:33):
really think about it if it'sgonna be effort to do it by
myself, whereas the moment thatI can go with my wife or my
friends or you know, then that's, you know, that changes the
equation for me and it becomes amore powerful draw.
Like those experiences, you know, like certain experiences kind
(10:55):
of almost aren't real unlessyou're sharing them with
somebody that you love.
You know what I mean.
But then, on the other hand,like you can that same thing,
the fact that you have a love ofmusic.
So let's say I didn't have awife and I didn't have friends,
right?
Well, the reality is, if I goto this band that I love or this
football game to see thisfootball team that I love, that
(11:18):
I'm passionate about, I careabout my emotions rise and fall
with the ups and downs of theseason, that sort of thing right
?
Well, guess what?
Like, if I'm open to it, I'mprobably going to be able to
make a friend there.
Like, even if I didn't have asingle friend, I am entering a
world where we have a sharedlove and that, if you just give
(11:39):
it a chance, you'll findsomebody that you love.
Lauren Carlstrom (11:41):
Maybe not fall in love, that's so beautiful.
But if you love as a friend,that's so beautiful and that's
been like.
That's been my experience aswell and I've seen that in you.
I think I'm curious how did youget to it?
Took me a while to get there,you I.
As soon as I met you years agoback in LA, you had that where
in your childhood.
What was something from yourchildhood where you really grew
(12:05):
up learning this?
Rick Ringbakk (12:05):
So I was really fortunate Not that I was an only
child, because there arecertain kinds of love that you
may want but you can't create Ifyou don't have a brother or
sister.
You may wish you could havethat kind of love, but you're
not.
You're just not going to beable to do it.
It required two other people tomake that happen Right, or if?
they don't.
They don't.
My parents did, but my parentsmy mom passed a year and a half
(12:30):
ago, but they were together for55 years and they had this like
truly fairy tale, likeincredible relationship.
So they were they got engagedtwo weeks after they met.
They were married one monthafter they met and they worked
together for 55 years like themost awesome partners in crime
(12:52):
I've ever seen.
And so I think that it startedin a really young age, as almost
everything in our learningprocess does, through the
observation of my parents andseeing how they were, of course,
receiving the love that, youknow, a parent gives a child.
But seeing how they were witheach other shaped a lot of my
(13:16):
desire to have that, notnecessarily even romantically,
but to have that, that, thatkind of a support network of
some.
You know a person or peoplearound me that made me feel the
way I could see the two of themmade each other feel.
So I think it started longbefore I can remember.
(13:38):
That definitely shaped my, myview of what a romantic
relationship could and shouldlook like and like.
I guess you know one of thethings we have talked about,
talking about love, is likeobviously you've got to love
yourself right Like you got to.
You know you, there are going tobe days that you don't like
(13:58):
yourself right Like we all havedays where it's just like we
know we are not operating atlike the level we should be or
want to be, or we are makingchoices that we know we are
going to look back to, you know,with not regret, because I
never liked to have regrets, butwith chagrin.
(14:20):
But we have to always loveourselves.
We have to always loveourselves, and so you know my my
mom especially was was so goodat making me feel special and
making me feel like you know,gosh, ricky, you know you've got
the sunshine in you and you'rejust this light and you'll never
and you'll never, you're never.
You honestly like you're alwaysgoing to attract people to you
(14:42):
but you'd be fine, just justshining on your own right and so
with that and then and thenseeing what their relationship
looked like, I didn't have a lotof serious romantic
relationships.
I dated a lot, I flinged a lot,but I never really got settled
down a lot because I knew in mymind I had this sort of gold
(15:04):
standard of what it was supposedto look like.
Lauren Carlstrom (15:07):
Yes, I'm so with you.
Rick Ringbakk (15:09):
It was my mom and dad and it was this incredible
kind of like perfect shiningexample.
And what's interesting is thatyou know, my, my, my amazing
wife promised she sort of cameto me having had almost the
opposite, you know, sort ofexample, which is that you know
her dad had been throughmultiple marriages, was on his
(15:30):
third marriage when we met, ison his fourth you know, marriage
now.
So she had kind of come to itthrough a bunch of examples of
what she didn't want it to looklike.
Right, but I had.
I think that I was lucky inthat it's you know like, as
opposed to process ofelimination.
I was just shown the answer,right.
Lauren Carlstrom (15:50):
Well, it's interesting because it both of
you were tuned into the vibeperspective that you were
espousing earlier of like it'sjust, it's this sort of energy,
and I actually remember the day.
Do you remember how you guys?
Of course you remember how youand Promise met?
Yeah, yeah, I was staying withher at her place I don't know if
(16:11):
you remember that part, but youguys were had the music was
bumping too loud and you wereher neighbor and she was like,
oh, these guys, they're just hadthe loudest music, like you
know.
And then, and then I think likeshe went over and ask you to
politely turn it down, and itended up, you guys, slightly
different, got married, gotmarried.
How did it go?
Rick Ringbakk (16:33):
I love this story .
So I was doing wildlifedocumentaries and I would go on
the road for like 12 to 14 weeksand then I would come back and
I would only have two weeks athome and I had this unbelievable
friend network that, like youknow, I I mean, I loved that
part of my life creatively.
I loved that I was, you know,what I got to do was be in
(16:55):
nature and following humpback,whale, mark migrations and, like
my other loves, like my lovesfor nature, my love for the
ocean, my love for creativeexpression, all like feeding,
feeding, feeding, feeding.
But you know, and I would havemy cameraman, my sound man, etc.
When I, you know, while I wasout there, it was, you know, I
later moved on to do kind ofmuch bigger shows with big crews
(17:17):
, but this was usually likethree or four of us on the road
in the middle of the jungle oron a boat, you know, going out
to the great white sharks orwhatever.
And so when I would get home,what I needed to feed was that
friend glove I needed, I neededthat, you know, I needed that,
and so I would typically throwkind of a two week long nobody
(17:42):
needs to leave my apartment,gathering right when kind of an
open door policy, you know, likeyou know, sleeping whatever
bedroom that you want, and etc.
Kind of policy.
And it was just me living therewhen Promise and I met.
I had, I had, I had gotten ridof my roommates and I it was
(18:02):
just me and I had a threebedroom place and so I just, it
was this you know, all myfriends would be over and we
would, we would, we would, wewould have a great time for a
couple of weeks.
So I think Promise knew me asthis loud guy next door.
Lauren Carlstrom (18:14):
Yeah, right.
Rick Ringbakk (18:16):
So and then one of my oldest friends from from
college, tiffany, when I wasaway, was talking to Met Promise
and was talking to Promise andwas like oh my God, my friend
Ricky Ringback is going to loveyou and.
And then I came back and, as Iwas want to do, I immediately
threw a party and Promise's momcame to the party.
(18:39):
Promise's mom came over to theparty and she stayed at my
apartment until like fouro'clock in the morning and then
went back and you know thank God, you know, like I didn't know
that she was the mother of thepretty girl next door went back
and championed to me a littlebit and said actually, you know,
this guy's pretty cool, youmaybe, you know, I know it's
(19:01):
loud, but give him a chance.
So that was kind of how, how,how that started, but yeah, like
.
Lauren Carlstrom (19:07):
I knew that was an awesome moment for me.
I have to.
I was at Pepperdine and I wasin college at the time, crashing
with the cousin and and andseeing you guys.
How I saw you guys, how youfirst met.
I saw you how you treat eachother.
You know, at your wedding inBaja and I've seen you like many
(19:28):
times throughout the years upuntil last Christmas how you
have always loved each other andtreated each other so well and
that you I've told you thisbefore, rick you, your marriage,
is the one I want to have aswell and why I'm also have this
gold standard.
I'm more.
You know, my, my, my mom isawesome as well, but you know I
(19:49):
didn't see that same marriagethat that you had.
I was more for differentreasons, more like promise, my,
my cousin, right.
So, it was just, it's just beenlike.
You truly are one of the guysthat I'm like.
I need a guy like that, like inmy life to make my life with no,
and that's how important loveis and that's why, like this is
leading the the season, openingit up, because I think people
(20:12):
really need to know what whatlove can look like in a
relationship.
It's so important to me that noone lets their you know or or
in their world, no one likemisses out on this magic Right,
so I didn't want me to cut youoff but I just wanted to make
sure I got that in there.
Rick Ringbakk (20:30):
I appreciate that as somebody that's always kind
of told my parents that you knowyou y'all's was the
relationship that I alwayswanted to have to hear, that,
that promise and I are after 20,gosh almighty 24 years together
and 22 years married in 2002.
Yeah, it'll be 20, it'll be 22years in May and we got together
(20:52):
in April of 2020.
So, yeah, 24 years, almost aquarter century.
To hear that we're, you know,have become an example is the
highest, highest compliment.
But yeah, I like, I feel, likeyou know, that that partnership
relationship, that romantic lovethat you know person that's
(21:16):
going to truly be you can havebest friends.
But let's be honest, that,should that becomes your real
best friend, is is kind of theone relationship that that you
just don't want to settle onRight, like it's because it
requires so much energy, becauseit requires so much compromise.
(21:37):
You know, really like.
You know, like, like it doesrequire it because it is two
people kind of becoming one life.
It requires both people to havesuch a level of investment into
.
Oh, my God, I'm so grateful andand and and blessed to have
(21:57):
this person and thisrelationship that it allows you,
in the difficult times, to beable to make the compromises or
get through the tight squeeze,whether it's financial or, you
know, losing someone that youlove, all the stuff that life is
going to throw at you.
Like Life will try and throw arelationship that isn't really
(22:19):
grounded and really reallystrong off course.
With all sorts of things itwill try and shake you out.
You know what I mean, and it'snot like life is trying to do
that, but it's like there aretoo many variables, there are
too many unforeseen, there aretoo many.
It's not always going to lookexactly like it looks on day one
(22:41):
in terms of where you are inlife and where you live and what
the job is.
There's just things evolve andthe relationship has to be
strong enough to go through theevolution together and that, I
think, is why we don't have the.
I think back in the day therewas maybe this just sort of
divorce was anathema and youwere just like, because it was
(23:06):
frowned upon, there was a socialstigma around it, so people
didn't get divorced, but thenpeople ended up kind of staying
together miserably for theirentire lives and I think that
now you see lots of people whoare finding their love in so
many different ways.
You know what I mean Throughtheir in personal endeavors,
(23:27):
through their passions aroundnature, their passions around
the arts, their passions aroundyou know, whatever it may be
something again as silly as afootball team there are so many
different ways that a person canfind a have a full kind of
enriched lives, and we're livingthese dual lives, right, our
real world life and our digitallife, and so that creates all
(23:50):
these additional kind of levelsof connection in this network
that you know, the divorce ratehas gone down a lot because the
young marriage rate has gonedown a lot, right, people aren't
feeling like they have to raceinto getting married and promise
and I didn't.
I was 30, right, I was like nowthat would be probably
considered like the normal time,right, but when I was getting
(24:11):
married 24 years ago, that wasstill considered like ah.
My mom was probably like, ah,is he ever going to do it?
Yeah, oh, geez, what's hewaiting for?
She's great and I didn't waitlong.
Yeah, that's what I foundpromise.
But I think that you can't make.
You can't make it happen, justlike you either jump into the
(24:33):
ocean and go oh my God, I lovethis or you jump into the ocean
and go oh my God, I'm reallynervous about maybe around the
water, you know, with me andlike I have a friend by a good
buddy.
Lauren Carlstrom (24:44):
Well, is the water warmer Cool?
Is that not a factor?
It's warmer where you are.
It's warm yeah.
Rick Ringbakk (24:50):
Almost, unless it's so freezing, like, if you
really love it, it almostshouldn't matter, right?
Like I remember being in Norway.
I mean, I remember being inNorway, you know, when I was
like four years old, five yearsold, with my parents and going
out with my dad on his uncle'slittle fishing boat in the
summertime and a few are jumpingin the water and like it was
(25:11):
cold, but like in the ocean.
I just loved it, right.
So, like you know, like mostpeople love the beach, right,
but I got a buddy, greg Good,who feels like sand is dirty.
He's like I don't like the feelof it, I don't like to go to
the beach, I don't like being onthe beach, right.
So that's the thing.
Like you know, we're drawn todifferent things and we can
(25:34):
always find plenty of thingsthat we naturally want to have,
make a connection with andnaturally want to love.
That's why we don't choose tospend our free time doing things
that we're not that drawn to,and that's why, when you choose
to create a relationship withsomebody that you're not that
drawn to, it's probably notgoing to get through the
(25:56):
gauntlet that life's going tohurl at it, you know.
Lauren Carlstrom (26:01):
Wow, very well said and insightful and wise.
And it's not a requirement.
Rick Ringbakk (26:07):
I have so many friends.
Like I have so many friends Imean, look at, you have so many
friends are like, yes, it wouldbe great, but also like it's
fine if it doesn't.
If that doesn't happen, for meit's the same Like we're
evolving, right.
Like the number of friends thatI have that don't have kids
today is more than the number offriends that I have that do
have kids today.
(26:27):
And I saw it especially livingin Los Angeles this weird trend
break where suddenly, likepeople were just not having kids
right.
I have my own theory on thatthat like the earth is sort of
sending out a signal that weneed to slow down on the making
more people in the making morepeople department because it's
not sustainable.
But there is some sort of signalthat we're picking up because
(26:49):
it was a real, it's a realovernight kind of thing from my
parents generation to boomers,to my generation, Gen X, where
suddenly it just stopped beingand I think, especially in
bigger cities and things likethat, it's stopped being this
like pre-wreck that you gotta,you gotta have kids right and
when that stopped kids and thatsort of does that procreation
(27:14):
kind of hardwiring.
I think that was a big part ofthe thing that kind of drove the
like, well, I have to getmarried thing right.
And so like I really separatethe idea of love and what love
is and how it's going to get,why and how we need love and all
the ways we can find love fromthings like marriage and
children and things like that,because I see people living
(27:35):
these fully expressed, amazinglives that are filled with love
and filled with real deepmeaning and deep connection that
aren't married and they don'thave kids, and so when I see
enough examples of that, thatsays that's not a pre-wreck to
love, it's just not.
Lauren Carlstrom (27:52):
Yeah.
Rick Ringbakk (27:52):
Yeah.
Lauren Carlstrom (27:54):
I mean because I think that that actually
might hopefully will free peopleto learn that.
I know it did me as I, like,saw it.
Rick Ringbakk (28:00):
I just said that's not a drive through a
relationship that they'remiserable in.
Lauren Carlstrom (28:05):
You'd be amazed, though, how many people
still are.
Rick Ringbakk (28:09):
I was in a relationship where, literally I
came home.
It was the only long kind oflong term relationship I had
before promise, and I was with agolfer about three years and
about a year and a half into itI realized it was just no way
this was going to work.
But I didn't want to break herheart and I didn't want to like,
so I just stayed in it and itwas like I'm going to see if I
(28:31):
can make this.
I think this is what happens toso many people.
Right, I'm going to see if Ican make this work.
And it wasn't until like Istarted realizing that.
Like I was driving home in thecar by myself, day after day,
verbally, like talking throughand rehearsing the breakup, like
fantasizing like tonight, I'mgoing to do it tonight, and then
(28:54):
like God, I can't do it tonight, she had a hard day, et cetera,
and I let it go for like over ayear.
Over a year to where you know,my friends and the people who
knew me best are like what'sgoing on?
Like you don't seem likeyourself, like I think sometimes
, like we want something likethat more than something like
that might want us, orespecially when it's not the
(29:14):
right person, right Like.
You're trying to make it happenand you can't.
You can't make it happen.
It's like the oldest cliche inthe book, but it's like you'll,
you know you'll know it when youfeel it.
You know you'll know it whenyou feel it and it's, and the
first five years are the tell.
If it's stronger five years inthan it was on day one, you've
(29:38):
probably punched your ticket foran awesome lifelong
relationship.
You cannot, I don't believe.
I think my parents are theabsolute like exception case
where you meet somebody, getengaged after two weeks, get
married after four weeks andlive and are together like
really happy, for 55 years.
The odds are astronomicallystacked against that because,
(30:02):
again, like romantic loves inits own category, that it
requires so many other elementsto be in place properly because
of the level of commitment andbecause of the life journey
you're now going to go on tiedto the hip right.
Lauren Carlstrom (30:17):
Like you give up.
Rick Ringbakk (30:18):
You give up.
I don't want to, I don't wantthis to come across negatively
but, like you, give up a lot ofyour own ability to kind of be,
live life completely freely andmake decisions.
I'm not talking about, like youknow, like one night stands,
and now I'm not talking aboutsex.
I'm just talking about likelife decisions that will chart
the course.
Lauren Carlstrom (30:38):
Now you've got where you can live right.
Rick Ringbakk (30:41):
Yeah To each other, right?
So, you know, is there a jobthat's trying saying let's go
like we moved?
You know, promise is amazing.
My mom was diagnosed withAlzheimer's six years ago and
we've been in LA you know bothof us since 1992.
And we had started dating in2000 and this was now 2017.
(31:07):
My mom got diagnosed and by 2019, it was like eating me alive
that I was not here in Florida,very close to my mom, like she
was still together at that point, but like you were starting to
see the little chinks in thearmor.
And there was suddenly a clockon it.
(31:28):
Right, there was a clock onthis incredibly important
relationship, the person thathad taught me what love looks
like.
Right, there was a clock on it.
I was going to lose my mind ifI didn't move back here and
wasn't close to her for howevermany good days and amazing
moments and however much morelove we could share left before
(31:51):
she was either just gone interms of from the Alzheimer's,
or gone completely right, andboth those things ended up
happening.
So promise now, right, this iswhat I'm talking about.
Like life curveballs, we havethis insane friend network,
right, like promises and actressand auditioning and all this
stuff.
And all of a sudden I look ather literally kind of out of the
(32:12):
blue.
When it hit me like a revelationthat I didn't know what I was
having anxiety about.
I actually thought it was aboutwe had just adopted our
beautiful little daughter, music.
I thought maybe it was aboutbeing a dad and our daughter has
special needs.
And when I was having anxietyabout that and then I began
having these dreams about mymother and I realized it was
about my mom.
So this is all going leadingsomewhere.
(32:35):
So there was a day when I saidto promise, I'm like maybe I
don't know how to tell you this,but I have to be close to mom.
I don't know how much timethere is left and we got to go
quick.
Like it was almost like there'sa fire, we have to get out
right.
So, like I have this revelationin May and we moved to Florida,
uproot after 20 plus 30 yearseach of us in LA, we uproot in
(33:02):
18 years together.
In our 20 years together in LA,we uproot in three months and
move to Florida.
That only works If therelationship is strong enough
that promise can go.
He needs this.
I can put him in front ofliterally everything and make
(33:24):
this Massive, massive lifechange in order for it to go and
help his family.
Lauren Carlstrom (33:29):
Yeah, I mean I could, I had promise on today.
Rick Ringbakk (33:33):
Yes, I can tell you not only she have been much
better to look at than me, butshe is a far more deeply
spiritual person than me and hertakes on love would probably be
More interesting than mine.
Lauren Carlstrom (33:51):
I wonder, next year we have a bigger audience.
Rick Ringbakk (33:55):
You may have blown it on this one.
Lauren Carlstrom (33:58):
No, I'm gonna have our next year to talk about
something else, when we have abigger audience.
Rick Ringbakk (34:02):
Rick, I can already see, the podcast is
gonna start like this so highpromise.
Lauren Carlstrom (34:07):
So, as you know, we were gonna have your
husband on, but we went back andlooked at it and decided no, I
don't have that kind of time,but uh, no, but no, this she is
amazing and I agree like what aphenomenal couple I was.
I do want to get into your,your work.
I think that that our listenerswould love to hear about how
(34:30):
your passions fueled your timeas a producer, on Shows like the
amazing race, which she, whichpromise, actually traveled with
you to do all the things, likebungee jumping, and Maybe like
if you could regalus with a fewstories of how love has Ignited
and fueled your, your work withtheir friends, family.
(34:51):
That would be, I think, reallycool.
I could give us an inside peekat that.
Rick Ringbakk (34:55):
So so, as I said, like I have a love of the ocean
from a really, really, reallyyoung age.
It's fascinated by it.
I can, you know, learn to scubadive when I was, when I was 12,
the moment I could get, was oldenough to get my paddy divers
like dry, you know diversized.
I got that and then I became adive master by the time I was 17
, the moment that I could dothat.
(35:16):
And when I was in college, Iworked as a dive master in the
Florida Keys.
I went to, I literally chose mycolleges based on where would I
be able to be close to the ocean.
That Forced me to choose aninitial major around, because my
dad wanted me to go to like anIvy League school or Stanford,
neither of which I was gettinginto.
(35:38):
But but so I had to come up witha reason that the places I
wanted to Apply were theUniversity of Miami, the
University of Hawaii and theUniversity of California, san
Diego.
Now, truth be told, I justwanted to be somewhere where I
could go diving and where Iwould be near the ocean, and
that's that's what I wanted,right, because I love, love,
(36:01):
love the ocean.
And so I kind of backed intothis almost scheme where I said,
you know, I've decided I wantto be a marine scientist and
that's what I want to do with mylife.
And I actually ended up gettinga scholarship to the University
of Miami, miami, which has oneof the best marine science
schools in the country, thosethree schools like the best
three marine science schools.
(36:22):
So that sort of satisfied mydad's, my dad's Conditions.
And then I actually got ascholarship to go to the
University of Miami and, as itturned out, as I probably could
have suspected, I Was very goodat the marine part and very bad
at the science part.
Lauren Carlstrom (36:43):
I.
Rick Ringbakk (36:45):
Unfortunately there was no just.
Lauren Carlstrom (36:50):
You were coding Einstein earlier.
Are you sure you didn't doalright?
Rick Ringbakk (36:54):
I was very bad at the science part and so I
decided like, well, how, whatelse can?
And it was.
I mean, I really was fascinatedwith the idea of being a
scientist.
I just thought like, if this isa Career where that could have
me be in the ocean all the time,you know, and traveling to
these amazing places and beingunderwater and exploring this
incredible world, like you know,that would be incredible.
(37:16):
And Then when I, when I wasgonna lose my scholarship
because the science part wasreally hard for me, I switched
gears into the film school withthe idea of, well, I will make
wildlife documentaries, I willbecome somebody who shoots
wildlife documentaries and, youknow, focus on the ocean, and
and that's that even better.
(37:36):
Now I don't worry about scienceat all, now I just have to
figure out how to use a camera.
And so let's, let's do that.
And I actually, by the time Iwas like a junior in college, I
was leading dives in the FloridaKeys as a dive master and
making my beer money by filming,you know, my, the tourists who
I was taking out and thenslapping together the tapes of,
like all the good b-roll that Ihad shot, like you know, over
(37:59):
months of diving there, slappingthat together with the dive
that I just shot of them andselling them to them for like 20
bucks a piece and it's like, doyou want it to like you choose
beautiful day, or this song orthat song.
I was kind of, you know like,and I was feeling like, okay,
this is really what you know Iwant to do and so so the love of
the ocean kind of.
(38:21):
I discovered my love for, for,for filmmaking, for television,
through my love of the ocean.
I actually, you know, startedout thing, I'm just gonna be
able to get right into wildlifedocumentaries and then, as it's
so often the case with careerpaths like, the doors don't just
open.
So I had to bounce around anddoing a couple of different
(38:42):
types of shows and differenttypes of jobs.
I moved to Los Angeles as soonas I got out, thinking that's
where I'll be able to you knowall the networks are, etc.
And and eventually I did Firstdid a show called Sea Tech.
That was all underwater for thelearning channel back when TLC
was not.
Here comes honey, boo, boo.
(39:03):
Back when TLC was actually likethe learning channel.
It was all about underwatertechnologies and then I got onto
this show called wild thingsand wild things.
I was doing underwater camerawork and then I began producing
and directing on wild things andthat was where I really kind of
, you know, fell in love.
When it fell in love with, youknow, I've been coming back and
(39:25):
and and watching the tapes in mytent at night after we've been
following orangutans through thejungle in In Borneo, you know,
and and you know, say you,putting together the paper cup
for whenever we got down riverto a town where I could get to a
Place to send the tapes that Iwould have all the notes and
stuff back, and I really kind offell in love with it.
So it was like one love begat,another love.
(39:46):
Right, like I was a person Ithought it was more science but
I hated the science but I stilllove the marine, and then that,
let me kind of led me into thisand I did that for for five
years.
That's all I did.
Was you know was wildlife stuff.
I did a couple of other things.
I did the like eco challenges,which were a big adventure race
that was on Discovery Channel.
I did the Olympics in in Nagano, japan, in 1998.
(40:10):
I produced all the firstsnowboarding events At the know
that.
Yeah, for CBS.
And and so slowly I was kind oflike like the Long ago aquatic
animals before us that you know,that had flippers and grew feet
as they dragged themselves outof the water.
(40:31):
I was sort of doing the samecreatively, like like the ocean
had taken me to this creativeendeavor that I loved, and then
I began to realize that therewere other things that that I
loved as well, and so I was likeyou know, I'm beginning to
explore that more.
And then after that, like thethat was right when reality TV
(40:51):
was taking off, so survivor hadjust launched, a big brother had
just launched, and my boss fromthis wildlife show that I've
been doing, this guy, amazingguy Bertram, called me up one
day and said hey, my wife hasthis crazy idea for people
racing around the world.
Do you want to come to Indiawith us?
And we'll go and try and figureit out.
(41:12):
And we went to India for threeweeks and that was kind of how
the amazing race got born andthat show, of course you know,
blew up and and was where I wasable to, you know, win a bunch
of Emmys.
But as that was going on, soright before the amazing race,
like I met promise.
The show Wild Things has wasfinished.
I Was in this little lull whereI didn't have, you know, a gig.
(41:36):
I like a full-time kind of gig.
Lauren Carlstrom (41:38):
So you're having parties back?
Rick Ringbakk (41:40):
I mean yeah right , I continue to do wildlife,
like you know 42, 43 weeks ayear on the road, which is what
I was doing.
I was home Maybe eight or tenweeks to ten weeks a year and
only in like ten day to two weekPocket.
So it probably been pretty hardand some other lucky dude was
snatched her up, but there justhappened to be, you know.
You know, stars aligned and andand promise, and I met and then
(42:02):
amazing race.
We sold amazing race and thatshow started and and the first
season of amazing race.
I Knew that I was gonna befinishing in Thailand.
Promise, and I had been datingfor a couple of months.
We had just started dating.
I knew that, that I was gonnabe finishing in Thailand, and so
(42:23):
I invited promise to come overand join me in Thailand.
I wasn't gonna be.
Can go in with the race fromThailand back to America to
finish line, so I couldpresumably was already there.
I had all this wrap-out stuff Ido.
I had, you know, paid for hotelroom and hey, want to come to
Thailand for a couple of weeks,and etc.
And I and she came over alittle bit early Before the race
(42:47):
actually came in where I wasgonna be in that, really in the
thick of it, and there was anincident with a Chinese jet and
an American jet in Chineseairspace.
There was this really close call.
This is back in 2000.
And it created this instantsudden like, oh my God, there's
(43:08):
going to be potentially a warbetween America and China.
It was this very tense moment.
It was right as the race wascoming out of China and into
Thailand and the contestants allgot out.
But then Americans that were inChina got held and that
included my production designerand art department who were
supposed to be coming down andbuilding a big pit stop for me.
(43:30):
Oh wow, now I was short thatand there was nobody there that
I could hire, and my sort ofgirlfriend that I had just
started dating had literallyjust arrived.
It was waiting for me to getthrough these last, you know
this last week and then we weregoing to spend a couple of weeks
getting to just hang out and wewere in Southern Thailand, down
in the amazing island area andI needed this pit stop built and
(43:51):
I basically had to look at herand say, I know we essentially
still don't even know each othervery well, but and I can't pay
you and you're not allowed to behere because I'm not allowed to
have a girlfriend on the shoot.
It's one of my bosses like hard, fast rules.
But here are 30 Thai workers.
I need this beach that's beenbeing used as a party palace for
(44:12):
locals to be completely cleanedup and I need like a Shangri-La
built for the end of an episodeof the amazing race.
And I left her with a bunch ofThai workers who spoke no
English and I flew up to Bangkokbecause the race was coming
into Bangkok.
First, I had no idea what I wasgoing to find when I got back
down there.
And I got back down there andit was this unbelievable.
(44:35):
She had fired answers thatshe'd hired on the beach.
She'd found 300 pound massivegiant clam shells that she would
had created like a seafoodbuffet on the beach.
What Fast pit stop.
She had masseuses for not onlythe contestants but for the
cameramen and sound men there onthe beach.
And you know, bert, my boss ofcourse knew that.
(44:58):
You know we didn't have our artdepartment and we were both
kind of expecting.
I'm like I was telling her likeI don't know, like you know, I
found an American and I justkind of put her to work.
She seemed like maybe we shouldbe capable what I have no idea.
And it was this unbelievablething.
And he's like, okay, who didthis?
You know, I want to meet thisperson.
(45:18):
Wow, I'm not going to lie to myboss that this person's kind of
you know my girlfriend and so Ipromise out, and then he was
Bert, was just like this isamazing.
You know, if you ever want ajob on show, you know, then just
let us know what you want to doand you can come and work on
the show.
And so that started thisincredible journey for the two
(45:39):
of us.
My job when we weren't shootingthe amazing race was to go and
plan all of the stops and routes.
And what are the things we'regoing to do?
From bungee jumping in NewZealand to rolling wheels of
cheese down a hillside inSwitzerland to, you know, hang
gliding in Rio de Janeiro, justlike all this amazing stuff had
to get figured out and tried.
(45:59):
And the thing we had realizedafter season one was like we
needed, like a regular citizen,just like a non-adrenaline
junkie, person who had not beento these places, to film we were
kind of filming ourselves, youknow, like it could be this or
that to show the network, butwouldn't it be great if we could
find so the original plan hadbeen.
Where does find somebody ineach place to be like?
(46:21):
Go to a hostel and find youknow a kid who's like hey, do
you want to go roll a wheel ofcheese down a hillside today?
Lauren Carlstrom (46:27):
Or do you want to go?
Rick Ringbakk (46:28):
bungee jumping.
But what we were able to do waspromise and I ended up being
able to go out and do thattogether.
So she and I would get to dotravel all over the world, with
her trying out all this crazystuff and me shooting her doing
it, and then we would go backand pitch it to the network Like
this is what a regular persongoing on bungee jump that you
(46:48):
know, this is what that lookslike, this is the kind of
reaction we can expect, etcetera.
Lauren Carlstrom (46:52):
So we got to have this unbelievable
experience for several years andactually you know that gig
lasted several years for you, toboth for the body.
Rick Ringbakk (47:04):
It was honestly.
It was honestly you know thereis such thing as too much of a
good thing we realized thatafter about four or five years
of doing it together, that whenwe weren't on the amazing race,
we did not want to travel Likewe did not.
We just wanted to lay on ourcouch and like Netflix and chill
, you know, and and I think thiswas back when you still had to
(47:27):
order DVDs from Netflix yeah,yeah, like Netflix and chill.
And we kind of looked at eachother one day we're like this
show could go forever, like wecould just keep doing this, like
running around the world likecrazy, and it's awesome, but
like, is this?
Is this what we want our lifeto be?
And both of us were like I lovetravel and I'm starting but I'm
(47:51):
starting to not like travel.
Lauren Carlstrom (47:53):
There you go.
You went back to you, bothtapped back into the vibration.
You're like you know likeowning your love and what that
looks like.
Yeah.
Rick Ringbakk (48:02):
But it was so.
That was, you know like.
So, in a roundabout way, I canthank the ocean.
I can thank the ocean for thejourney that took me all the way
to my wife, because even aninteresting story once we had
initially started dating, I wentand did a, produced and
directed a music documentaryaround a band that I liked down
(48:25):
in Costa Rica and promise and Ijust started dating this band
string cheese incident andpromise wanted to come and I was
nervous, I was going to bedistracted and so I told her I
didn't want her to come.
And while I was gone, a suitor,this guy, dave Boyles, that we
know is a really good musician,better looking guy than me and
certainly have a lot betterguitar player than me showed up
(48:48):
with roses out, promisesapartment and I'm in Costa Rica
and he is there to court her.
You know she has a gentlemancaller and while he was there he
gets a phone call from a buddyof his that says turn on the TV,
turn on the TV.
Rick's on TV right now and itwas a rerun from my wildlife
(49:10):
days of this show called WildThings and it was a thing where
I was filming sea snakes inIndonesia and this crazy, the
most venomous snake in the worldby like a long shot, like a
bite, can kill 300 people.
It was this crazy story where Iwas being chased by literally
being chased by them and kind ofswimming for my, for my life,
from these sea snakes andpromise, you know, watches this
(49:34):
with him and she's like thanksfor the roses.
But I think I'm going to haveto give Rick a chance so we
really can go all the way backto the ocean and like thank it
for everything.
You know what I mean, like allthat first love of a thing that
wasn't a person that I canremember, the first thing that I
was just like, so drawn to, hasbeen.
You know that one love hasgiven back in so many ways and
(49:59):
through the cycles of my ownlife.
Lauren Carlstrom (50:02):
That's so beautiful I'm going to think
that we all even come from theocean Like that's where like and
the water and the you knowwhat's.
Rick Ringbakk (50:10):
what's the water in our bodies is the exact same
sailing content as the ocean.
Like, we are made up primarilyof ocean.
We think it's blood, but it'sactually sailing ocean water,
Crazy.
Lauren Carlstrom (50:24):
It definitely makes me want to come visit you
again.
Speaking of just if you couldshare, you balance a lot you
have.
You still have an awesomecareer, even if it's not TV
production a little bit.
So TV production, or what areyou doing right now?
Rick Ringbakk (50:40):
Yeah, no, so I so Promise.
And I, six years ago, adoptedthis amazing, amazing little
girl.
At birth, her name is music,and so we get live music in the
house every night now, and musicis just the coolest thing on
(51:02):
earth.
Music has a lot of challenges.
Music has Down syndrome, musichas severe autism.
Music was born legally blind.
She had cataracts that were sothick that one of her eyes, the
lens of her eyes, was completelycracked because the cataract
was so thick very rare so shehad to have surgery and have the
(51:23):
lenses of her eyes removedwithin the first six weeks of
her life.
So we, you know, that obviouslyis a big, is a big change.
We weren't, and we weren't whenwe were trying to adopt, we
weren't thinking special needsLike.
We learned that she was specialneeds.
The mother gave birthprematurely.
We flew to Illinois and wedidn't learn that she had Down
(51:45):
syndrome until after we hadtaken her from the hospital and
we were in Chicago with her.
She spent the first couple ofweeks of her life in the NICU
when we were in Chicago waitingto for a judge to say it's cool
for us to fly back to Californiawith this baby that we're
adopting, and so Do you know bythe way, do you know how I heard
you guys decided to moveforward with the adoption?
Lauren Carlstrom (52:06):
I heard the story.
I think it was from Promise.
She said we looked, we heardthe news, we cried a little bit
with each other and we saidabsolutely, we're going forward.
Is that correct?
Yeah?
Rick Ringbakk (52:18):
Yeah, and we actually had already decided, no
matter what the news was, wewere going forward.
But we, we, we did.
We got the news and then we hadthis kind of moment where we
it's amazing, like you know wejust kind of let go of the image
(52:38):
that we'd had in our heads ofwhat this was going to look like
and kind of instantaneouslylooked at this amazing tiny.
She was four pounds Like.
She was so, so tiny.
It was like put her in yourpocket cabbage patch, yeah Right
, and we went out, we put her inthe stroller and we went out
and we went through, walkedaround Chicago and we ended up
(53:01):
in this amazing beautiful emptychurch and we prayed for all the
love and joy and happiness andsuccess, for a little music that
we could have, and by the endof the day we were like thrilled
with whatever this was going tobe, whatever this was going to
mean.
But it was challenging.
(53:22):
Those first couple of years inLA where I was still working
like 60, 70 hours a week.
I worked crazy hours.
My company was being funded bya company in Germany and so I
would be up in the middle of thenight with phone calls, you
know, to them, and then you knowhow pitching and you know, et
cetera, and then when we haveshows, shooting.
So I began was alreadyrealizing that after 25 years of
(53:46):
doing a lot of physicalproduction right, a lot of like
building the crew and gettingout there in the field and
either producing and directingor just producing and going on
the road for weeks of time, likethat needed to shift.
And so I began it was alreadyin my brain starting to kind of
shift myself towards.
I want to be more just on thedevelopment side.
I just want to ideate, I wantto come up with show ideas, I
(54:07):
want to help companies thatmight have an idea flush that
idea out, and so that, combinedwith my mom's diagnosis, and
like we need to move to Florida,we moved to Florida and like we
got here in in September,october of 2019.
And then, like four months later, the pandemic hits right, the
world shuts down, and then wecome out of it and everything is
(54:31):
this right, what we're doingright now, like there are no
more in person meetings, thereare no more in person pitches
and they're still up.
And so, for four years later,and the industry is still
running completely virtually,like, like this, because it's
just more efficient.
So so I ultimately was, youknow, weirdly, the pandemic kind
of like like smoothed over thefact that, like if it had still
(54:55):
been like, where's Rick?
Why is he in the room, why arewe having to?
People are going to pitch andthen they're having to like,
zoom me in.
That would have really changedthe dynamics and I'm not sure if
it would have worked right.
But the pandemic created it.
Where you know, I don't think alot of people even realize that
I'm not in California, I don'tknow.
So I was lucky that way, yeahthat's phenomenal.
Lauren Carlstrom (55:19):
So you are still doing TV production.
Is there anything you can talkabout now?
A lot, less hours.
Rick Ringbakk (55:23):
Like, look, I don't want to miss a moment of
music's life and the experiencewith music.
And so I've sort of changed,switch gears a lot.
I've cut my workload down by60%.
I work more like 20 or 25 hoursa week as opposed to 60 to 70
(55:46):
hours a week, and I do it kindof create a scenario where
almost all of the work that I dois like me sitting on my dock
with a laptop on my lap, youknow, just brainstorming ideas
for, like what do we?
How do we fix this one part ofa show or what's the twist that
(56:07):
could happen?
And it's a very writer based,you know, kind of job.
Now.
So I miss the, I miss the juiceand like of kind of the making
and I miss, you know, in LA,like if you're in the
entertainment industry andthat's what you want to do,
you're like you're right, you'reright next to the campfire,
you're getting all the heatthat's coming off of the
(56:29):
campfire.
You can really feel it, right,it's driving the whole city Move
across the country, and it'snow it's like I'm still getting
my heat from the campfire, butlike I'd have to make an effort
to get burned, you know, and Ihave to make an effort to go to
get that far back into it.
So it still scratches the itchfor me.
But like we, again we evolveright.
(56:49):
You know I had 30 amazing yearsof you know pouring every you
know ounce of energy that I hadin that wasn't being poured into
my, to my wife and my friendsinto that kind of work, and so
being able to pull back a littleis a huge blessing.
Lauren Carlstrom (57:05):
That's so cool .
It's just you, just always.
It's a constant retuning ofthat love fork.
Then isn't it To like?
Rick Ringbakk (57:13):
it is and it's allowing you know, at different
times, different aspects of loveto become the thing right.
You know, like now, now music'sthe thing, right, Like music's
the thing.
And so it doesn't mean that youcan't kind of, you know,
embrace and feed and be fed fromall the same avenues of that
(57:37):
you've derived love fromthroughout your life.
But you know that for us,especially with all you know,
her unique situation is verymuch the like the time and
energy kind of part of it.
But fortunately we've also putourselves in a situation where
the ocean is right outside thedoor and we've got a little boat
(57:57):
that can take us out on it andwe can be out with dolphins in
an hour or on the beach in 30minutes, and so we're super,
super, you know, lucky that wayand still feed that part of our
soul, you know.
Lauren Carlstrom (58:11):
Rick, the way you love, the way you live.
It's inspirational to me.
I hope I believe to ourlisteners too, that we're really
lucky to get to know you.
Anyone who knows you is luckyto know you.
Rick Ringbakk (58:23):
And I think that.
Lauren Carlstrom (58:25):
I think our listeners will agree.
Thank you for everything youshared today and all the color
that you bring to your world.
Rick Ringbakk (58:35):
Thank you.
Thank you for having me andgetting a chance to talk about,
like the best subjects on earth,the thing that makes our lives
have meaning and makes the wholemerry go around.
Keep spinning, you know it's.
We can never give up on love.
Lauren Carlstrom (58:50):
Never Any last word on love you want to share
with our listeners.
Rick Ringbakk (58:55):
You know, just let let it happen.
And there's many places in yourlife as you can.
It wants to happen, itnaturally wants to occur.
It is a naturally occurringphenomenon that we are a part of
and we can, you know, we canallow.
I think the only thing thatkind of gets in the way from
(59:16):
having you know a hundreddifferent called revenue streams
of love is us, is us putting upbarriers and sort of not being
open to.
You never know where the nextperson, place thing that you are
going to fall in love with isgoing to come from.
You just got to be open to.
Lauren Carlstrom (59:37):
All right, amen, I like it All right.
Rick Ringbakk (59:39):
Thanks, so much Thanks so much for having me.
Thanks for listening.
Lauren Carlstrom (59:42):
Do us a solid and smash that subscribe, share
and five star rating button orlink for the show.
That way more people canelevate their mental wellness as
they explore some of life'sbiggest, most important
questions with remarkable andfascinating guests.
Oxygen Plus powers this episodeof "e're Not Blowing Hot Air.
Nice guy.
(01:00:02):
Creative services is ourproducer.
Leslie Blenner has it asdesigner.
I'm Lauren Carlstrom.
I'm a producer.
I'm a producer.
I'm a producer, I'm a producer.
I'm Lauren Carlstrom,concepting and host.
Arlene Applebaum is editor.
Thank you, valued listener.
Keep breathing easy so togetherwe can color our world.
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