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It drives me crazy that nobody else thinks about risk.

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In this way, people look at my life and they're like, well, you're crazy, you're such

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a risk-taking.

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Well, at least I'm taking the risks that I'm choosing.

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Because think of all the people that go out partying every weekend and they get buzzed

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and they drive home and even send dirty people who are like, well, I don't take risk

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to stay at home when I play video games, no, you're at a much higher risk of heart disease,

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like they're taking all kinds of risk that they're not actually choosing to take, and you're

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still going to freaking die either way.

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So you might as well take smart calculated risks and do all the things that you want to

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do and at least die happy when you go.

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But the conclusion that a lot of people have arrived at is that you don't experience fear

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because when they look at these two brain scans, you're a mictilist lighting up less

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when you're shown scary images.

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I actually hate all the brain stuff because people always put me in this box of like,

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well, you're different.

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And I'm like, well, I'm not really like I'm a middle class suburban kid, nobody in my

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family is athletic.

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And just after 20 years of climbing five days a week and being really freaking scared,

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I respond differently than an average person.

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And there's tons of emotional turmoil throughout it periods where you're just like, I'm

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trying so hard.

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I'm just like, not as good as I want to be.

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You know, I was like living in a car, I had like a couple hundred bucks a month for

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10 years, like that's challenging, but you just can't master a craft overnight.

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I guess that's what people don't see.

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And so how would you create the conditions to out-passist other people?

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And then in all your career, when is the moment where you were most scared on an expedition

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and an article?

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I kept hoping that it's going to get better and it just kept getting worse, like a die.

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Do you have a conversation with your partner before you go and do something like this?

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Because she wrote a letter.

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Oh gosh.

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Obviously, this is your worst nightmare, she said.

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But we all have to do scary things sometimes, Alex.

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Guys, I've got a favor to ask before this episode begins.

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So when we have our best episodes on this show, the most shared episodes, the most rated

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episodes, I would love you to know.

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And the simple way for you to know that is to hit that follow button.

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Thank you so, so, so much.

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Alex, to understand you, I think from everything I've learned about you, from the research I've

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done, from speaking to your wife, the agent, everybody I could speak to, I think to understand

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your context, we first need to understand the circumstances in which you were raised

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and the childhood you had, because it seems to be, I mean, for all of us, there's like

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fingerprints left on us that define the anomaly that many of us become, including yourself.

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So what do I need to know?

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What does the viewer need to know about the early context?

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I mean, how do you two want to go?

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I don't want to get a selfie.

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I need to remind.

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It's just like, all right.

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But yeah, certainly there's an imprint from my parents when I was bringing, I mean, they

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had a very fraught relationship.

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They eventually got divorced, but they stayed together for the kids and it was a whole like,

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you know, say a tense home life because neither of them really liked each other.

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And then my mom is very driven, very, you know, high performing.

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And then my dad was hard to say, I mean, I think my dad was deeply depressed basically

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the whole time I knew him because he was in this relationship, you know, it's hard to tell.

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He wasn't living his best life.

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And then sadly, after they got divorced, he was, he was much happier than he did.

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And so then he never really got to see, never really got to see him blossom that much.

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And your mother's high performing.

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And did she sort of implicitly demand that view in any way?

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Yeah, I mean, my mother speaks like seven or eight languages.

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She like plays every instrument.

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It's like kind of crazy.

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She's very artistically minded in that way.

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Like, you know, the arts and classical sense.

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But yeah, she wanted us to do all those things to have a deep disappointment in that regard.

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There was a phrase that I saw when I was watching the documentary that your mother would

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continually say, which I think translates to something like, not good enough.

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Like, press going to Kompah, like almost, like, almost doesn't count.

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It's funny because I feel like a lot of my adult life now, one of my sort of good who's

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saying is, you know, don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

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I'm really into like good enough.

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Like, it's better to like try.

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It's better to do something, you know, it's better to fail quickly and learn and keep moving

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forward than to not try something.

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Like, basically, I don't want to be crippled by perfectionism sort of like my mom is very

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much perfectionist, you know, like, if you can't do it right, don't do it.

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I'm sort of like, I think it's better to try and learn and improve.

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But she's accomplished a lot of things with that approach.

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Yeah, yeah, she has.

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For sure.

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What about emotions?

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This is something I've had had sort of talked about a lot is in that environment where

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your mother and father are on getting along well.

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I think I heard you say that you hadn't seen your father really happy before he'd passed away.

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Yeah.

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Was it an emotional household in terms of affection?

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No, it was a very unemotional household.

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That said, though, you know, it was a safe, relatively happy household.

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Like, it was fine, you know, and I was close to a lot of my extended family.

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And so I had a really good relation with my grandparents and some of my aunts and uncles.

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And so, I mean, I basically would have characterized it as a totally happy family life

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until I became older and started seeing other people's families more.

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And it was kind of like, oh, this seems even happier, you know what I mean?

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Or it's like, basically, really good until you see what what else it can be.

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And then you're like, this seems even better.

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And your mom wasn't ever affectionate.

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You know, it always feels slightly conditional, you know, where it's like,

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you know, she cares if you be, you know, if you perform well, like if you do well,

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like if you're a good kid or whatever, you know what I mean?

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Well, when did climbing come into your life?

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Because I've got some, I have found some photos of you climbing and you look here

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like with your sister, I believe.

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Here we go.

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This one here.

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Yeah, a classic.

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How would I be there?

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I don't know, I mean, I don't like six or something or eight.

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And it served me to tell like medium sized kids ages, why climbing?

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Oh, why not?

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So freaking cool.

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Have you, have you rocked that?

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I've, yeah, I've had a gym.

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Yeah, I've, I have, but it wasn't that the freaking cool thing.

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It was fun.

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Yeah, for sure.

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I mean, saying I've climbed when I'm sat with you, I feel like yeah,

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but you have tried it.

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Yeah, I have, yeah, as an adult.

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If you can imagine as a kid how fun that is and then if you just keep doing that nonstop,

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and then you find that you're, you know, I have some aptitude for it, you enjoy it.

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It's like, you know, you can imagine going down that path.

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It's so cool.

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But is there something about the challenge of climbing that you think just kind of like,

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was a jigsaw piece for you, your brain, like problem.

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Well, I think there's something elemental about climbing in the same way as like running or

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swimming. It's like a basic movement thing that I think is quite enjoyable.

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And I think that I also, I, I think I have an innate love of like being on top of things,

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like, you know, being at the top.

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Basically, I love big views.

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I like the expansive, you know, I like air and so I like being up on stuff.

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So I don't know, I think it just hit a few sweet spots like that.

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I was like, oh, climbing is just so cool.

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And you, I'm assuming you never thought this could be a career.

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No, no.

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And actually, even when I started rock climbing sort of full-time,

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I still didn't think it could be a career because there just wasn't really professional climbing

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at that time. It was like much smaller. The industry is way smaller.

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Climbing is way more fringe and like less of a thing.

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But you weren't motivated by like money or anything.

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Because one does not pursue rock climbing to become rich.

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No, not to become rich, no.

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Well, so I said though, so my father died, like the season before that.

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And because my parents had just gotten divorced,

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he basically left his retirement to my sister and me.

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And she used it to finish college.

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I just put it into bonds and was living off like 300 bucks a month or whatever.

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Which kind of like worked, you know, I was like living in a car.

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I stole my mom's minivan at the time.

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I had like a couple hundred bucks a month.

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And it was kind of enough to just like go to be a 19-year-old just like camping, you know.

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Was it this minivan?

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No, that's my second one. That's the Ford economy.

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That's the first actual van that I bought.

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I lived in that van for 10 years.

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For 10 years.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, so I bought this van.

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I mean, this is, this is the classic.

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But so I bought this van for 10 grand.

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And, and then originally, this is the last build out, which is the classiest build out.

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The original one my uncle and I did for free with like scrap wood from his,

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you know, in his wood shop basically.

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And so then I lived in that for 10 years.

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And you're kind of like, yeah, when you live in it,

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I couldn't even stand in this van.

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You know, I was like, oh, my back.

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But, you know, when you're living in your car for 10 years,

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you say quite a lot of money.

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Between what ages did you live in your car for 10 years?

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I probably bought this van when I was 20, so 20 to 30 basically.

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To the actually, actually, I think that's right because, um,

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because I think I met my wife when I was 30 and that same year,

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I switched from this van to the bigger van.

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If you've seen the film, free solo, that's, um,

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I bought the, the pro master's like dodge.

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It was like, I could stand up in my van finally.

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And I was like, I'm moving up in the world.

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I can stand.

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It's pretty exciting.

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I didn't have any.

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Well, there was a little stave in this one.

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Yeah, so this though is the, I did three different build outs of this van over the 10 years.

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Because like the original one is super scrappy.

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The second bell was like a little nicer.

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And then this was like a pretty nice build that I had for, I don't know, five or six years or so.

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When you live in your van for 10 years and you have a mother who is very performance focused,

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I've got, um, for here, I believe you can't even go for a classic.

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Do you not face a lot of external pressure to like go get a real job?

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Honestly, less so than you would think, um,

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like to regret it, my mom is always pretty supportive of the whole path.

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I think, you know, I was kind of lucky that I did a lot of this when I was like young enough

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that it's all part of like your gap year.

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Like, you know, it's like you're young and you're finding yourself.

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And then, and then I think there was enough sort of external validation that that my family could

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at least look at and be like, well, you seem to be good at this random thing.

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Even though we don't get it and don't really know what you're doing,

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but at least other people think you're good at it.

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So keep doing your thing.

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And at this point, was it, was it real climbing?

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Was it free settling?

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And yeah, it's all a little bit of everything, but basically just being a, I mean,

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you know, like being a professional climber, quote, I'm quote, some of it's free

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soliding someone's like speed climbing, some of it's just hard climbing,

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some of it's going on expeditions, doing new routes, like it's a little bit of everything.

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And for the average person that doesn't know what free soloing is,

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what's the like definition of it?

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That's climbing without a rope.

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So climbing without protection, which is definitely what I'm most well known for now.

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But in the context of professional climbing, I've done tons of other things in climbing,

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like most of the time you have a rope on most of the time you're doing other sorts of things.

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But it's like the free soling is what you might have been well known for,

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because that like breaks into the mainstream a lot more.

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I'm really intrigued generally by people like you who I could take, I mean,

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take the path less traveled in their career.

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And then maybe near the end of the graph, pick up traction.

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And I had to squeeze a paper in this pen, because I'd love if you could,

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from the age of let's say 80, you're, you're, you're now 40 years old.

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Yeah, I turned 40 this year.

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Old, could you draw a graph showing how your career looks in times of success?

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You can measure that by money or attention or whatever.

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Let's see.

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00:10:21.000 --> 00:10:22.840
So there's kind of like,

231
00:10:23.800 --> 00:10:25.960
no things below a little bit.

232
00:10:25.960 --> 00:10:27.240
And then like this ish.

233
00:10:27.240 --> 00:10:27.560
Yeah.

234
00:10:27.560 --> 00:10:31.160
And then kind of like, and then basically just like in like this,

235
00:10:31.160 --> 00:10:33.240
where you basically like kind of flap a growing.

236
00:10:33.240 --> 00:10:35.400
And then you have free solo where it jumps a ton.

237
00:10:35.400 --> 00:10:36.600
It's like kind of crazy.

238
00:10:36.600 --> 00:10:38.520
And then and then it keeps kind of growing.

239
00:10:38.520 --> 00:10:39.960
And it's like faster rate than before.

240
00:10:39.960 --> 00:10:42.280
And then it basically jumps a ton because of the building thing again.

241
00:10:42.840 --> 00:10:46.360
I find this fascinating because most people in their lives

242
00:10:46.360 --> 00:10:50.040
wouldn't be willing to endure this phase 18 to 29.

243
00:10:50.040 --> 00:10:50.760
What?

244
00:10:50.760 --> 00:10:51.720
What are you doing?

245
00:10:51.720 --> 00:10:52.440
It's so great.

246
00:10:52.440 --> 00:10:53.400
Like I would do that again.

247
00:10:53.400 --> 00:10:54.600
I loved it so much.

248
00:10:54.600 --> 00:10:58.120
Like I mean, I often think I'd be so happy to just start over from zero.

249
00:10:58.120 --> 00:11:00.280
He's like all the places that I go climbing now.

250
00:11:00.280 --> 00:11:01.720
I've been climbing there for 20 years.

251
00:11:01.720 --> 00:11:03.320
And I've like done most of the things I can do.

252
00:11:03.320 --> 00:11:05.880
And you know, sort of like tapped out a lot of stuff in the Western US.

253
00:11:06.680 --> 00:11:09.560
And I'm like, man, I would love to just hit the re-zero button and start over

254
00:11:09.560 --> 00:11:12.200
because you'd have so much stuff to do and it's so amazing.

255
00:11:12.200 --> 00:11:14.040
I guess that's the that's the different.

256
00:11:14.040 --> 00:11:17.080
The fault of my question is that I said the one in dual.

257
00:11:17.080 --> 00:11:20.200
But you see it as yeah, you get to climb every single thing you see.

258
00:11:20.200 --> 00:11:20.680
It's amazing.

259
00:11:22.040 --> 00:11:25.320
Yeah, I mean, and that's the thing is like from age 18 to to 30.

260
00:11:25.320 --> 00:11:27.640
I basically did try to climb every single thing I can see.

261
00:11:27.640 --> 00:11:29.000
Because I was just like, I'm learning.

262
00:11:29.000 --> 00:11:29.560
I'm growing.

263
00:11:29.560 --> 00:11:30.200
This is amazing.

264
00:11:30.200 --> 00:11:31.480
I climb everything.

265
00:11:31.480 --> 00:11:34.120
And like now I'm actually much more strategic about it.

266
00:11:34.120 --> 00:11:37.800
Because doing tons of easy climbing like doesn't really help me at this point.

267
00:11:37.800 --> 00:11:39.800
I'm not going to make like big technique gains.

268
00:11:39.800 --> 00:11:43.000
It basically just makes me tired without without the right kind of gains.

269
00:11:43.000 --> 00:11:45.400
It'd be like somebody, it'd be like an elite runner.

270
00:11:45.400 --> 00:11:47.480
Just jogging for miles and miles every day.

271
00:11:47.480 --> 00:11:49.080
And you're kind of like, that's not going to make you,

272
00:11:49.080 --> 00:11:52.200
it's not going to improve your marathon time if you're already like kind of elite runner.

273
00:11:53.000 --> 00:11:56.840
It might be fun, but it's just not going to like move the needle for you.

274
00:11:56.840 --> 00:11:58.600
Through this period of your life, 18 to 30,

275
00:11:58.600 --> 00:12:00.600
you're optimizing for just having fun.

276
00:12:00.600 --> 00:12:01.480
Doing things you enjoy.

277
00:12:01.480 --> 00:12:02.200
Well, I mean,

278
00:12:03.000 --> 00:12:05.560
no, I was always, I was always challenging myself like basically,

279
00:12:05.560 --> 00:12:09.240
I was optimizing for like, what's the next thing I can do that pushes me a little bit?

280
00:12:09.240 --> 00:12:13.800
But you weren't optimizing for how to get rich or, well, then I would have gone to job.

281
00:12:13.800 --> 00:12:18.120
If I was optimizing for getting rich, I would have freaking finished my college degree and gone to job.

282
00:12:18.120 --> 00:12:19.880
I say this in part because I interview so many people who

283
00:12:21.160 --> 00:12:25.960
pursued careers that are often considered not real jobs like comedians or magicians.

284
00:12:26.440 --> 00:12:29.640
And I tend to find the same thing between the age of 18 and 30.

285
00:12:29.720 --> 00:12:33.320
They optimize for something that isn't necessarily being ritual famous.

286
00:12:33.320 --> 00:12:35.320
And then at some point, the graph looks like this.

287
00:12:35.320 --> 00:12:38.520
Well, it's because, I mean, I think, I'm sure you know this, but I mean,

288
00:12:39.400 --> 00:12:43.160
the world really, it's like a winner-take-all economy type deal.

289
00:12:43.160 --> 00:12:45.800
It's like, basically, if you're the dude that does the thing,

290
00:12:45.800 --> 00:12:47.320
all of a sudden, your earnings go insane.

291
00:12:48.120 --> 00:12:50.360
But until you become the dude that does the thing,

292
00:12:50.360 --> 00:12:53.720
if you're like the best magician or the best comedian or the best whatever,

293
00:12:53.720 --> 00:12:55.720
then all of a sudden, you make an insane amount of money.

294
00:12:55.720 --> 00:12:57.800
But when you're just like one of many struggling comedians,

295
00:12:57.800 --> 00:12:59.720
you're struggling.

296
00:12:59.720 --> 00:13:01.240
And so I think for me as a climber, you're sort of like,

297
00:13:01.240 --> 00:13:03.160
oh, I'm just a dude living in my van climbing.

298
00:13:03.160 --> 00:13:05.800
Then at certain point, I'm like the dude that, you know, I'm like,

299
00:13:05.800 --> 00:13:07.480
oh, you're that guy that climbs without the rope.

300
00:13:07.480 --> 00:13:08.680
And you're like, oh, yeah, cool.

301
00:13:08.680 --> 00:13:09.880
And then all of a sudden, your earnings are like,

302
00:13:10.680 --> 00:13:13.320
was this a difficult period of your life?

303
00:13:13.320 --> 00:13:14.360
This 18 to 30?

304
00:13:14.360 --> 00:13:15.480
No, it was like the best.

305
00:13:15.480 --> 00:13:16.680
Well, obviously, it was like Friday.

306
00:13:16.680 --> 00:13:19.000
You know, I was like trying to juggle really,

307
00:13:19.000 --> 00:13:20.280
like I wanted to get a girlfriend.

308
00:13:20.280 --> 00:13:22.280
You're a young 20s man living alone in a car,

309
00:13:22.280 --> 00:13:24.360
like wanting to be better at something than you are,

310
00:13:24.360 --> 00:13:27.000
but not quite knowing the way and not knowing what you're doing with your life.

311
00:13:27.160 --> 00:13:30.520
So obviously, there is tons of emotional turmoil throughout it,

312
00:13:30.520 --> 00:13:33.320
but no, I mean, retrospectively, it's like amazing.

313
00:13:34.360 --> 00:13:36.760
And your dad passes away, which is in part,

314
00:13:36.760 --> 00:13:38.280
I guess some of the catalysts.

315
00:13:38.280 --> 00:13:41.000
Yeah, honestly, my dad passing away should be the beginning of that graph.

316
00:13:41.000 --> 00:13:43.160
It should be, this should basically start at 19,

317
00:13:43.160 --> 00:13:45.560
because 18 I went to university.

318
00:13:45.560 --> 00:13:49.880
And so then starting at 19, I guess, I went on the road.

319
00:13:50.440 --> 00:13:51.320
You're dad passing.

320
00:13:52.920 --> 00:13:55.080
What impact did I have on you outside of it,

321
00:13:55.080 --> 00:13:57.640
somewhat liberating you to make decisions

322
00:13:57.640 --> 00:13:59.000
that outside of his expectations?

323
00:13:59.000 --> 00:14:00.600
Well, I mean, obviously, it's sad.

324
00:14:00.600 --> 00:14:01.240
It's hard.

325
00:14:01.240 --> 00:14:02.600
And especially now, I'm sort of like,

326
00:14:02.600 --> 00:14:05.240
oh, it's too bad that I don't have a relation with my dad.

327
00:14:05.240 --> 00:14:06.200
And he doesn't, you know,

328
00:14:06.200 --> 00:14:08.520
that my kid's not a grandfather and all that kind of,

329
00:14:08.520 --> 00:14:10.680
you know, I was like, yes, it's tough.

330
00:14:10.680 --> 00:14:13.080
I think that the most immediate impact that I had,

331
00:14:13.080 --> 00:14:15.560
maybe it was just reminding me of my own mortality.

332
00:14:15.560 --> 00:14:17.640
You know, I mean, he died unexpectedly at 55,

333
00:14:17.640 --> 00:14:19.400
just fell over in the airport and just fell over dead,

334
00:14:20.520 --> 00:14:21.160
like heart attack.

335
00:14:21.960 --> 00:14:23.720
And so, you know, I mean,

336
00:14:23.720 --> 00:14:26.200
I think that that reminder of my own mortality

337
00:14:26.200 --> 00:14:29.000
has had a big impact on my career, my life,

338
00:14:29.000 --> 00:14:30.600
you know, my climbing world, whatever.

339
00:14:31.880 --> 00:14:35.160
One might not expect you to go, quote, unquote,

340
00:14:35.160 --> 00:14:36.840
do risky things because of...

341
00:14:36.840 --> 00:14:38.840
Well, no, because the thing is I think one of the reasons

342
00:14:38.840 --> 00:14:41.320
that people don't do risky things is because they have this,

343
00:14:42.840 --> 00:14:46.120
you know, mistaken idea that they can live forever,

344
00:14:46.120 --> 00:14:48.600
basically, because I'm basically because people don't want to think

345
00:14:48.600 --> 00:14:49.400
about their own mortality.

346
00:14:49.400 --> 00:14:51.000
And so they're like, oh, I don't want to take any risks.

347
00:14:51.000 --> 00:14:51.800
I could die.

348
00:14:51.800 --> 00:14:53.800
And you're like, you know, that you're going to die either way.

349
00:14:53.800 --> 00:14:55.080
And either way, when you die,

350
00:14:55.080 --> 00:14:56.760
you're going to be bummed that you didn't live longer,

351
00:14:56.760 --> 00:15:00.440
because, you know, it's like life is back in the US 78.

352
00:15:00.440 --> 00:15:03.320
You're like, great, say you make it for men, whatever.

353
00:15:03.320 --> 00:15:04.920
Like, say you make it that far.

354
00:15:04.920 --> 00:15:05.880
You're still going to be like, man,

355
00:15:05.880 --> 00:15:09.240
I wish I had 22 more years to like watch my grandkids graduate college

356
00:15:09.240 --> 00:15:10.200
or whatever.

357
00:15:10.200 --> 00:15:12.280
You know, it's like, it's still going to feel like too little.

358
00:15:12.280 --> 00:15:16.440
And so I'm kind of like, you're better off dying at 55 and an accident,

359
00:15:16.440 --> 00:15:18.680
but having done many things that you're proud of

360
00:15:18.760 --> 00:15:21.800
and, you know, like, let a life that you're proud of,

361
00:15:21.800 --> 00:15:24.120
then dying at 78 and still wishing you had more

362
00:15:24.120 --> 00:15:25.720
about having done none of the things that you wanted to do.

363
00:15:26.600 --> 00:15:27.320
It is interesting.

364
00:15:27.320 --> 00:15:29.640
It does appear that people live as if we think we're going to live forever.

365
00:15:29.640 --> 00:15:31.080
Yeah, it's totally insane.

366
00:15:31.080 --> 00:15:32.760
I mean, everyone's like, oh, I don't take any risk.

367
00:15:32.760 --> 00:15:34.520
And you're like, yeah, well, you can take no risk in your life.

368
00:15:34.520 --> 00:15:36.040
And you're still going to freaking die.

369
00:15:36.040 --> 00:15:38.600
So you might as well take smart calculated risks

370
00:15:38.600 --> 00:15:40.280
and do all the things that you want to do.

371
00:15:40.280 --> 00:15:41.640
And at least die happy when you go.

372
00:15:42.360 --> 00:15:44.440
What does this mean to you to like live intentionally?

373
00:15:45.080 --> 00:15:45.960
Well, that's exactly it.

374
00:15:45.960 --> 00:15:48.200
Like choosing the the risk that you're willing to take,

375
00:15:48.200 --> 00:15:51.240
making choices, like using your time the way you want to use it.

376
00:15:51.240 --> 00:15:52.440
I was looking at, I think it was your,

377
00:15:52.440 --> 00:15:54.520
your personality, a personality test you did.

378
00:15:54.520 --> 00:15:55.560
You said you liked it.

379
00:15:55.560 --> 00:15:56.680
I do it personality test.

380
00:15:58.200 --> 00:15:59.560
My how many material did you have?

381
00:15:59.560 --> 00:16:00.760
I'm like, Jesus Christ.

382
00:16:00.760 --> 00:16:02.440
I've heard it like things do you have?

383
00:16:02.440 --> 00:16:03.560
I've unlimited things.

384
00:16:03.560 --> 00:16:05.400
I know. I'm so impressed.

385
00:16:05.400 --> 00:16:07.560
On this personality test, it says you're,

386
00:16:07.560 --> 00:16:10.280
you know, higher on thrill seeking and sensation seeking.

387
00:16:10.280 --> 00:16:13.480
But then also significantly higher than the average male on urgency,

388
00:16:13.480 --> 00:16:15.160
which I think kind of overlays with what you were just saying there,

389
00:16:15.160 --> 00:16:16.920
of like making the decision to do something.

390
00:16:17.560 --> 00:16:20.280
Yeah, basically because your time is short and you're going to die.

391
00:16:20.280 --> 00:16:21.320
So get onto it.

392
00:16:21.320 --> 00:16:23.400
It says you hear you higher on conscientiousness.

393
00:16:24.360 --> 00:16:28.120
Very polite, you know, thrill seeking, sensation seeking.

394
00:16:28.120 --> 00:16:29.240
You'll low on boredom.

395
00:16:30.200 --> 00:16:32.680
I think low on boredom is that, you know, you don't get bored.

396
00:16:32.680 --> 00:16:34.600
Perseverance, you're very high on perseverance.

397
00:16:34.600 --> 00:16:36.600
Yeah, I think that's the same as low on boredom.

398
00:16:36.600 --> 00:16:38.520
And low on neuroticism.

399
00:16:38.520 --> 00:16:39.240
That's for sure.

400
00:16:39.800 --> 00:16:42.520
And so what's your, what's the definition of the word neuroticism?

401
00:16:42.520 --> 00:16:43.720
Is it like, one thing is like to,

402
00:16:44.360 --> 00:16:46.200
well, I'm sure there's a clinical definition,

403
00:16:46.200 --> 00:16:48.280
but I think of it as sort of general anxiety type stuff.

404
00:16:48.280 --> 00:16:51.080
Like, you know, people spinning in their heads about things that don't matter.

405
00:16:51.880 --> 00:16:53.880
And has that always been the case when you look back through your life

406
00:16:53.880 --> 00:16:55.640
and the feedback you've had as a kid in a teenager?

407
00:16:56.200 --> 00:16:57.800
Kind of, yeah, I think so.

408
00:16:57.800 --> 00:17:01.320
I think I've never been too concerned about,

409
00:17:02.200 --> 00:17:03.000
I don't spin.

410
00:17:03.720 --> 00:17:05.880
I mean, obviously, you know, occasionally I stress about things,

411
00:17:06.680 --> 00:17:08.920
but which is not the way I think a lot of people do.

412
00:17:09.800 --> 00:17:12.280
I'm trying to figure out if that's a lot of behavioral or maybe a little bit learned,

413
00:17:12.360 --> 00:17:16.120
and a little bit from your upbringing, genetics, whatever it might be.

414
00:17:16.120 --> 00:17:17.240
Because come one learn that.

415
00:17:17.240 --> 00:17:18.760
Can one learn to be less neurotic?

416
00:17:18.760 --> 00:17:20.840
Or presumably, I mean, like meditation, things like that.

417
00:17:20.840 --> 00:17:24.920
I think people can sort of find a way to like go certain things.

418
00:17:24.920 --> 00:17:26.680
Isn't this quite, quite interesting?

419
00:17:26.680 --> 00:17:27.880
When people ask you questions,

420
00:17:27.880 --> 00:17:31.880
inevitably about fear and how you take on such, you know,

421
00:17:31.880 --> 00:17:33.960
to models like me, terrifying challenges,

422
00:17:33.960 --> 00:17:35.800
there's an element of all of this, which is,

423
00:17:35.800 --> 00:17:38.360
you do have a nature and a nurture,

424
00:17:38.360 --> 00:17:41.480
which somewhat is impossible for someone like me to replicate.

425
00:17:42.120 --> 00:17:44.440
Because your brain and my brain are completely different.

426
00:17:44.440 --> 00:17:47.240
Your parents, your early contacts when your brain was being wired

427
00:17:47.240 --> 00:17:49.160
and malinated are completely different to mine.

428
00:17:49.160 --> 00:17:53.880
So, you know, I always find this is the like the trouble of giving people advice is

429
00:17:55.800 --> 00:17:59.480
we're dealing with different, different natures, different natures.

430
00:17:59.480 --> 00:18:03.320
But I do feel like, in my case, the biggest difference in nature

431
00:18:04.040 --> 00:18:05.960
is the fact that I've just always loved climbing.

432
00:18:05.960 --> 00:18:08.760
You know, basically, I think that nurture is the majority of this.

433
00:18:08.760 --> 00:18:10.280
Like, if you spend 30 years training a thing,

434
00:18:10.280 --> 00:18:11.400
you're going to get better at the thing.

435
00:18:12.120 --> 00:18:14.920
And so, I think that the biggest difference between me

436
00:18:14.920 --> 00:18:17.480
and somebody who's not into rock climbing is that I freaking love rock climbing.

437
00:18:17.480 --> 00:18:19.800
I could go out, I could do it 10 days a week if I could.

438
00:18:19.800 --> 00:18:20.600
You know what I mean?

439
00:18:20.600 --> 00:18:21.640
But sadly, I get too tired.

440
00:18:21.640 --> 00:18:22.840
My body breaks down.

441
00:18:22.840 --> 00:18:26.280
And so, you know, I basically have like a limitless capacity

442
00:18:26.280 --> 00:18:27.080
to do the thing.

443
00:18:27.080 --> 00:18:28.200
I just love doing the thing.

444
00:18:29.000 --> 00:18:32.280
And I think that that is probably the biggest difference in nature.

445
00:18:33.000 --> 00:18:34.840
You know, because everything else you can kind of overcome.

446
00:18:34.840 --> 00:18:38.120
You know, like, if you loved rock climbing as much as I love rock climbing,

447
00:18:38.120 --> 00:18:41.800
no matter what your genetic disposition towards like neuroticism and all that stuff,

448
00:18:41.800 --> 00:18:43.640
you would just kind of work through all that stuff.

449
00:18:43.640 --> 00:18:47.480
And you'd find your own path to getting good at climbing, basically.

450
00:18:47.480 --> 00:18:49.320
If your kids came to you, you have two girls, right?

451
00:18:49.320 --> 00:18:49.640
Yeah.

452
00:18:49.640 --> 00:18:51.000
If they came to you and said, Dad, like,

453
00:18:51.000 --> 00:18:52.440
give me advice more, I should aim at in life.

454
00:18:53.160 --> 00:18:54.520
Would you tell me?

455
00:18:54.520 --> 00:18:55.640
I wouldn't give an advice.

456
00:18:55.640 --> 00:18:56.680
I'd be like, you do you.

457
00:18:56.680 --> 00:18:58.520
You find the thing you love to do, go hard.

458
00:18:58.520 --> 00:19:00.520
You know, basically, like, learn some skills,

459
00:19:00.520 --> 00:19:01.320
get good at something.

460
00:19:01.320 --> 00:19:02.120
Like, what do you like to do?

461
00:19:02.680 --> 00:19:04.680
I mean, that's kind of the thing for me, especially with climbing,

462
00:19:04.680 --> 00:19:06.200
is like, if someone had told me, like,

463
00:19:06.200 --> 00:19:08.200
you're going to train climbing for the rest of your life,

464
00:19:08.840 --> 00:19:10.600
I'd be like, oh, that sounds like kind of a grind.

465
00:19:10.600 --> 00:19:12.440
You know, because I mean, it is, it is hard work.

466
00:19:12.440 --> 00:19:14.200
You're like hiking uphill, the heavy backpack,

467
00:19:14.200 --> 00:19:15.160
and it's cold and it's windy.

468
00:19:15.160 --> 00:19:17.080
It's like, it's basically physically uncomfortable.

469
00:19:17.080 --> 00:19:19.720
I mean, being a professional rock climbing means that you're physically uncomfortable

470
00:19:20.760 --> 00:19:21.480
all the time.

471
00:19:21.480 --> 00:19:22.520
We're like, like, often.

472
00:19:22.520 --> 00:19:24.360
You know, like, it's, you know, it's hard.

473
00:19:24.360 --> 00:19:25.000
Yeah.

474
00:19:25.000 --> 00:19:27.160
But if you're doing it because you freaking love doing it,

475
00:19:27.160 --> 00:19:28.680
it doesn't feel very hard.

476
00:19:28.680 --> 00:19:31.320
And so, I mean, I think the key for a kid is

477
00:19:31.320 --> 00:19:33.080
find the thing that doesn't feel like hard work.

478
00:19:33.160 --> 00:19:34.120
And when you started,

479
00:19:34.120 --> 00:19:37.960
we used to get a big tool rock faces and stuff like that.

480
00:19:39.160 --> 00:19:41.400
I mean, yeah, I had like a healthy intimidation of things.

481
00:19:41.400 --> 00:19:42.840
I mean, like, my first season of e70,

482
00:19:42.840 --> 00:19:46.200
the first time seeing LCAP as a climber, I was 19.

483
00:19:46.200 --> 00:19:47.240
And it looks impossible.

484
00:19:47.240 --> 00:19:48.280
It looks completely insane.

485
00:19:48.280 --> 00:19:49.800
It's like, that's so big.

486
00:19:49.800 --> 00:19:51.960
But then, you know, within a couple seasons,

487
00:19:52.680 --> 00:19:53.800
you know, I climbed some bigger walls,

488
00:19:53.800 --> 00:19:54.440
I learned how to climb.

489
00:19:54.440 --> 00:19:57.560
And then a friend and I had the sort of season goal.

490
00:19:57.560 --> 00:19:59.000
Like, we were going to climb an e70 all season

491
00:19:59.000 --> 00:20:01.240
with the aspiration at the end of climbing LCAP in a day.

492
00:20:01.320 --> 00:20:03.560
So basically, there was this long progression on LCAP,

493
00:20:03.560 --> 00:20:05.720
specifically where it's like, you go from just trying to get up it,

494
00:20:05.720 --> 00:20:08.280
trying to get up faster to try to get up with just your hands and feet,

495
00:20:08.280 --> 00:20:09.720
still using protection.

496
00:20:09.720 --> 00:20:12.280
But basically, there's like all these steps you can take.

497
00:20:12.280 --> 00:20:15.160
And so, over a bunch of seasons, you know,

498
00:20:15.160 --> 00:20:17.000
I climbed LCAP like 60 times, different routes,

499
00:20:17.000 --> 00:20:18.120
all these different things.

500
00:20:18.120 --> 00:20:19.320
And then eventually, you're sort of like,

501
00:20:19.320 --> 00:20:21.240
oh, maybe I can start thinking about free selling it,

502
00:20:21.240 --> 00:20:23.000
which is where the film free selling comes in.

503
00:20:23.560 --> 00:20:25.160
And then eventually, you do this thing.

504
00:20:25.160 --> 00:20:26.440
Then people are like, well, aren't you scared?

505
00:20:26.440 --> 00:20:28.040
And you're kind of like, well, I've spent 10 years

506
00:20:28.040 --> 00:20:30.120
like building up on this thing.

507
00:20:30.840 --> 00:20:32.520
I guess that's what people don't see.

508
00:20:32.520 --> 00:20:32.920
Yeah.

509
00:20:33.720 --> 00:20:34.520
So they do something.

510
00:20:34.520 --> 00:20:35.560
I mean, like, the documentary free sold,

511
00:20:35.560 --> 00:20:38.360
I think does a pretty good job of showing the direct preparation,

512
00:20:38.360 --> 00:20:40.920
like, the training involved in doing that specific climb.

513
00:20:40.920 --> 00:20:44.040
But it just doesn't show the like,

514
00:20:44.040 --> 00:20:45.640
eight years before that, I guess,

515
00:20:45.640 --> 00:20:47.640
because the documentary was filmed over two years.

516
00:20:47.640 --> 00:20:49.960
And I guess I've been going since 2006.

517
00:20:49.960 --> 00:20:52.200
So it was nine years before that that I've been going to e70

518
00:20:52.200 --> 00:20:55.320
and I've been spending maybe three months a year climbing walls.

519
00:20:56.600 --> 00:20:57.640
I guess that's the illusion of like,

520
00:20:57.640 --> 00:20:58.760
all people that do great things,

521
00:20:58.760 --> 00:21:00.520
and become like athletes or sprinters,

522
00:21:00.520 --> 00:21:02.600
or whatever Brinaldo or Messi,

523
00:21:02.600 --> 00:21:04.520
is you don't get to see the...

524
00:21:04.520 --> 00:21:06.760
Yeah, the whole life that they put in to doing the thing.

525
00:21:06.760 --> 00:21:07.800
Yeah, yeah.

526
00:21:07.800 --> 00:21:10.440
So it looks like a magic trick when we see the outcome.

527
00:21:10.440 --> 00:21:12.840
Like, we show up on Netflix to watch you climb Taipei,

528
00:21:12.840 --> 00:21:13.960
we're like, whoa.

529
00:21:13.960 --> 00:21:15.240
Yeah, hanging with it from his leg.

530
00:21:15.240 --> 00:21:16.920
Yeah, I mean, people watch some of those programs,

531
00:21:16.920 --> 00:21:18.760
and they're like, he just walked up and did it.

532
00:21:18.760 --> 00:21:21.000
And you're like, well, yeah, after 30 years of practice,

533
00:21:21.000 --> 00:21:22.280
I just walked up and did it.

534
00:21:22.280 --> 00:21:24.200
But no, it's not like just walking up and doing it.

535
00:21:25.080 --> 00:21:25.880
Hmm.

536
00:21:26.920 --> 00:21:28.120
One of the illusions.

537
00:21:28.120 --> 00:21:30.520
Like, I've literally been climbing five days a week

538
00:21:30.520 --> 00:21:31.240
for 30 years.

539
00:21:31.240 --> 00:21:32.760
Like, that's so much climbing.

540
00:21:32.760 --> 00:21:35.400
Like, I freaking love climbing, and I climb a lot.

541
00:21:37.000 --> 00:21:39.000
On this idea of like exposure therapy,

542
00:21:39.000 --> 00:21:40.280
as it relates to like fear and anxiety

543
00:21:40.280 --> 00:21:43.160
and confronting one's things that terrify them,

544
00:21:43.160 --> 00:21:44.280
was that in the early days?

545
00:21:44.280 --> 00:21:45.160
Well, you, I'm trying to understand,

546
00:21:45.160 --> 00:21:46.760
will you like scared at some point?

547
00:21:46.760 --> 00:21:47.640
Oh, all the time.

548
00:21:47.640 --> 00:21:48.920
That's actually something that I think,

549
00:21:50.440 --> 00:21:52.040
you know, I've obviously not so many interviews

550
00:21:52.120 --> 00:21:53.960
around fear and like managing fear and all that.

551
00:21:54.600 --> 00:21:56.600
And I've talked about fear a lot of different ways

552
00:21:56.600 --> 00:21:57.640
over over the years.

553
00:21:57.640 --> 00:21:58.920
And I think as a friend older,

554
00:21:58.920 --> 00:22:00.280
I've sort of come to realize that

555
00:22:00.280 --> 00:22:02.280
that actually you're just scared all the time

556
00:22:02.280 --> 00:22:04.520
as a climber, like low level fear, low level,

557
00:22:04.520 --> 00:22:07.320
like, but you're, but climbing is fundamentally scary.

558
00:22:07.320 --> 00:22:08.360
Like, it's always kind of scary

559
00:22:08.360 --> 00:22:09.400
because they're always consequences.

560
00:22:09.400 --> 00:22:10.760
Like, even if you're climbing with a rope,

561
00:22:10.760 --> 00:22:12.200
you're still always visualizing like,

562
00:22:12.200 --> 00:22:13.320
what happens if the rope breaks?

563
00:22:13.320 --> 00:22:15.000
Like, what if, you know, like, is this safe?

564
00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:16.920
Like, you know, is the gear good?

565
00:22:16.920 --> 00:22:18.120
Like, is this actually safe?

566
00:22:18.760 --> 00:22:21.000
And so you're always a little bit scared.

567
00:22:21.080 --> 00:22:23.960
And so after years and years of always being scared,

568
00:22:23.960 --> 00:22:25.880
you get pretty good at managing that kind of stuff.

569
00:22:25.880 --> 00:22:27.560
Because there's a lot of misconceptions

570
00:22:27.560 --> 00:22:29.000
swirling around this brain scan.

571
00:22:29.000 --> 00:22:30.200
Yeah, no, I hate all that stuff.

572
00:22:30.200 --> 00:22:31.960
That's just all from the film Free Solo.

573
00:22:31.960 --> 00:22:34.200
It was like too short of a scene in the film.

574
00:22:34.200 --> 00:22:35.320
They needed a little more.

575
00:22:35.320 --> 00:22:36.280
They needed a little breath.

576
00:22:36.280 --> 00:22:38.120
You know, explain things a little better, I think.

577
00:22:38.120 --> 00:22:40.040
So they scanned a control subject.

578
00:22:40.040 --> 00:22:41.320
Another person scans you,

579
00:22:41.320 --> 00:22:42.760
looked at the amygdala in your brain.

580
00:22:42.760 --> 00:22:45.240
And the conclusion that a lot of people have arrived at

581
00:22:45.240 --> 00:22:47.240
is that you don't experience fear

582
00:22:47.240 --> 00:22:49.800
because when they look at these two brain scans,

583
00:22:49.880 --> 00:22:51.400
your amygdala's lighting up last

584
00:22:51.400 --> 00:22:53.480
when you're shown scary images, basically, right?

585
00:22:54.120 --> 00:22:55.400
But like, shown just this image,

586
00:22:55.400 --> 00:22:56.440
like, what does that even mean?

587
00:22:56.440 --> 00:22:58.360
Like, my brain's purple and his brain is orange.

588
00:22:58.360 --> 00:22:59.480
You're like, what does that mean?

589
00:22:59.480 --> 00:23:00.200
Like, I don't know.

590
00:23:00.200 --> 00:23:01.960
But no, I mean, the thing is though,

591
00:23:02.920 --> 00:23:05.640
and this is what I wish was explaining the film better,

592
00:23:05.640 --> 00:23:08.520
is that this is, we're being shown black and white photos

593
00:23:08.520 --> 00:23:09.480
inside an FMRI.

594
00:23:09.480 --> 00:23:11.080
So you're inside a sealed metal tube.

595
00:23:11.080 --> 00:23:11.960
You're totally safe.

596
00:23:11.960 --> 00:23:13.400
You're physically safe and comfortable.

597
00:23:13.400 --> 00:23:15.320
And you're being shown black and white photos.

598
00:23:15.320 --> 00:23:16.840
And so to me, obviously,

599
00:23:16.840 --> 00:23:18.600
that's not going to light up the fear response of my brain.

600
00:23:18.680 --> 00:23:19.560
Because you're looking at pictures.

601
00:23:19.560 --> 00:23:20.200
You're like, who cares?

602
00:23:20.200 --> 00:23:21.320
I'm totally safe.

603
00:23:21.320 --> 00:23:24.040
But in a control subject, apparently,

604
00:23:24.040 --> 00:23:26.760
your brain sort of responds to images one way or another.

605
00:23:26.760 --> 00:23:28.600
But I'm kind of like, I've been climbing for 20 years,

606
00:23:28.600 --> 00:23:30.200
so I've been scared quite a lot.

607
00:23:30.200 --> 00:23:31.560
And you're kind of like, well, black and white photos

608
00:23:31.560 --> 00:23:34.280
start to lose their edge if you've been scared all the time

609
00:23:34.280 --> 00:23:35.240
for 20 years.

610
00:23:35.240 --> 00:23:37.400
So it's like, obviously, that's not going to trigger much.

611
00:23:37.400 --> 00:23:38.920
Yeah, I imagine everybody in their life

612
00:23:38.920 --> 00:23:41.320
can think of it as a scenario where they have mastery.

613
00:23:41.320 --> 00:23:43.720
That would stand up comedian looking at a stage.

614
00:23:44.360 --> 00:23:46.520
Probably wouldn't be as scared as me.

615
00:23:47.080 --> 00:23:48.040
Yeah.

616
00:23:48.040 --> 00:23:49.400
Because that would terrify me.

617
00:23:50.280 --> 00:23:52.920
So again, this is not necessarily some sort of neurological

618
00:23:53.800 --> 00:23:54.280
difference.

619
00:23:54.280 --> 00:23:56.360
I think the real takeaway is that I have an amygdala

620
00:23:56.360 --> 00:23:56.840
and it works.

621
00:23:57.960 --> 00:23:58.360
You know what I mean?

622
00:23:59.160 --> 00:24:02.520
Because I think if the results had shown that I was missing my amygdala,

623
00:24:02.520 --> 00:24:03.560
then I would have all kinds of,

624
00:24:03.560 --> 00:24:04.760
I would have died already at youth

625
00:24:04.760 --> 00:24:08.040
because I wouldn't be able to function as a human basically.

626
00:24:08.040 --> 00:24:10.920
But it shows something like that where there are structural differences

627
00:24:10.920 --> 00:24:12.360
or some real change.

628
00:24:12.360 --> 00:24:15.480
But this is basically just showing that after 20 years of conditioning,

629
00:24:15.560 --> 00:24:17.400
I respond differently than an average person.

630
00:24:17.400 --> 00:24:18.520
And you're like, yeah, no kidding.

631
00:24:18.520 --> 00:24:20.280
Like if you put a monkey into an FMRI,

632
00:24:20.280 --> 00:24:22.680
their brain responds totally differently than an average person as well.

633
00:24:22.680 --> 00:24:25.560
Which I actually think is a really inspiring conclusion

634
00:24:25.560 --> 00:24:28.840
because it means that we can all grasp our fears better.

635
00:24:28.840 --> 00:24:31.400
And even, you know, people won't know this about me.

636
00:24:31.400 --> 00:24:35.320
But 10 years ago, I sat down on camera with my friend Ash

637
00:24:35.320 --> 00:24:37.640
in his apartment to record a two-minute video.

638
00:24:37.640 --> 00:24:40.440
And as I sat there, I was so scared I couldn't get the words out.

639
00:24:40.440 --> 00:24:42.040
So you actually, in this two-minute video that comes out,

640
00:24:42.040 --> 00:24:43.720
you see it go from night and day in the background

641
00:24:43.800 --> 00:24:45.480
because we did that many cuts over seven hours,

642
00:24:45.480 --> 00:24:47.080
trying to get me to say two minutes on camera.

643
00:24:47.080 --> 00:24:49.160
And obviously after 10 years of being on camera,

644
00:24:49.160 --> 00:24:50.920
I can now speak without shitting myself.

645
00:24:51.480 --> 00:24:53.880
And I imagine my brain state looks significantly different

646
00:24:53.880 --> 00:24:55.080
because of my exposure to that.

647
00:24:55.080 --> 00:24:56.040
Totally.

648
00:24:56.040 --> 00:24:57.400
Yeah, you should do the FMRI.

649
00:24:58.280 --> 00:25:00.120
Yeah, you should have done 10 years ago

650
00:25:00.120 --> 00:25:01.400
because then you'd have your control

651
00:25:01.400 --> 00:25:03.400
and then you do it now and it'd be totally different.

652
00:25:03.400 --> 00:25:05.480
But also the psychologists have sat with all confidence.

653
00:25:05.480 --> 00:25:06.600
They talk about exposure to that.

654
00:25:06.600 --> 00:25:07.400
Yeah.

655
00:25:07.400 --> 00:25:09.960
And I went through exactly the same thing with public speaking.

656
00:25:09.960 --> 00:25:11.960
Like I was always so afraid of public speaking.

657
00:25:11.960 --> 00:25:16.840
I was also very shy and just not like, it was terrifying.

658
00:25:16.840 --> 00:25:19.080
And now because of the free solo film tour

659
00:25:19.080 --> 00:25:21.720
and all the public things I've done since then,

660
00:25:22.360 --> 00:25:23.720
I'm like basically fine.

661
00:25:23.720 --> 00:25:25.240
You know, it's like you still got a little nervous.

662
00:25:25.240 --> 00:25:27.000
But it's like basically easy now.

663
00:25:27.000 --> 00:25:29.160
And you're kind of like, well, that's a total change.

664
00:25:29.160 --> 00:25:31.320
It's like obviously there's a tremendous capacity

665
00:25:31.320 --> 00:25:32.120
for humans to learn.

666
00:25:33.080 --> 00:25:34.840
People talk to you about fear all the time

667
00:25:34.840 --> 00:25:37.160
because I mean, you'll work

668
00:25:37.160 --> 00:25:38.440
because climate is really freaking scary.

669
00:25:38.440 --> 00:25:39.000
It makes sense.

670
00:25:39.000 --> 00:25:39.960
It's totally understandable.

671
00:25:40.680 --> 00:25:40.920
Yeah.

672
00:25:41.720 --> 00:25:44.040
And they also realize I think at some deep level

673
00:25:44.040 --> 00:25:45.160
that the thing holding them back

674
00:25:45.160 --> 00:25:46.440
from who they think they want to be

675
00:25:46.440 --> 00:25:48.280
or who they aspire to be is fear often.

676
00:25:48.280 --> 00:25:49.720
It's judgment of someone else.

677
00:25:49.720 --> 00:25:50.840
It's taking a risk.

678
00:25:50.840 --> 00:25:51.320
Totally.

679
00:25:51.320 --> 00:25:52.600
So you've become, for many people,

680
00:25:52.600 --> 00:25:55.880
the like, tell me how to overcome.

681
00:25:56.600 --> 00:25:57.080
Yeah.

682
00:25:57.080 --> 00:25:59.000
Well, I think that everyone's like,

683
00:25:59.000 --> 00:26:00.520
what's your hack to overcome fear?

684
00:26:00.520 --> 00:26:01.480
And you're like, there's no hack.

685
00:26:01.480 --> 00:26:03.560
You just get really freaking scared over and over

686
00:26:03.560 --> 00:26:05.720
for so long and eventually it's not that scary anymore.

687
00:26:06.920 --> 00:26:09.240
But I will say that that's like a very enduring way

688
00:26:09.240 --> 00:26:10.280
to overcome your fear.

689
00:26:10.280 --> 00:26:11.960
It's like, if you're willing to go through that process,

690
00:26:12.760 --> 00:26:14.360
then you are actually unafraid.

691
00:26:14.360 --> 00:26:16.280
You know, because like, you can do like hacks.

692
00:26:16.280 --> 00:26:17.800
I mean, you can, you can like crank up

693
00:26:17.800 --> 00:26:19.560
loud rock music and just go for it.

694
00:26:19.560 --> 00:26:21.560
You know, like, and there are plenty of examples of that

695
00:26:21.560 --> 00:26:23.560
in what I call gravity assisted sports.

696
00:26:23.560 --> 00:26:25.800
Like, say, if you're going to jump a cliff on skis,

697
00:26:25.800 --> 00:26:27.160
like, you can get to the edge and be like,

698
00:26:27.160 --> 00:26:28.040
this is really scary.

699
00:26:28.040 --> 00:26:29.560
And then be like, three, two, one, do it.

700
00:26:29.560 --> 00:26:30.200
And just like go.

701
00:26:31.000 --> 00:26:32.520
In climbing, you can't really do that as much

702
00:26:32.520 --> 00:26:34.040
because it's so slow.

703
00:26:34.040 --> 00:26:35.720
Like, when you climb, you make one move

704
00:26:35.720 --> 00:26:37.080
and then you make another move.

705
00:26:37.080 --> 00:26:38.440
And then you're like, do I still want to be here?

706
00:26:38.520 --> 00:26:40.200
Like, it basically fear creeps in a lot more.

707
00:26:40.760 --> 00:26:42.280
There's sort of in gravity assisted sports.

708
00:26:42.280 --> 00:26:43.480
You can have more of that moment

709
00:26:43.480 --> 00:26:44.840
where you just like, overcome your fear

710
00:26:44.840 --> 00:26:45.480
and then it happens.

711
00:26:45.480 --> 00:26:47.400
You know, like making a big drop in a kayak

712
00:26:47.400 --> 00:26:48.760
or like skis or things like that.

713
00:26:48.760 --> 00:26:49.720
Whereas like, once you commit,

714
00:26:49.720 --> 00:26:50.840
it's happening one way or another.

715
00:26:51.640 --> 00:26:53.080
Anyway, there's a lot to get into it.

716
00:26:53.080 --> 00:26:55.880
Like, no, but I mean, I want to get into it.

717
00:26:55.880 --> 00:26:57.960
I watched a video of you climbing half-dome.

718
00:26:57.960 --> 00:26:58.680
I think it was.

719
00:26:58.680 --> 00:26:59.000
Yeah.

720
00:26:59.000 --> 00:27:00.920
And it looks like you got scared half way up.

721
00:27:01.720 --> 00:27:02.360
Yeah.

722
00:27:02.360 --> 00:27:02.600
Yeah.

723
00:27:02.600 --> 00:27:04.280
So that video is actually filmed later.

724
00:27:04.280 --> 00:27:06.280
So the voice over in that video

725
00:27:06.280 --> 00:27:08.120
is me talking about the experience of me free-soling.

726
00:27:08.280 --> 00:27:09.080
When I was totally alone

727
00:27:09.080 --> 00:27:10.520
and I did get really scared on half-dome

728
00:27:10.520 --> 00:27:11.640
and I had this whole sort of

729
00:27:11.640 --> 00:27:13.000
so much dramatic climbing experience

730
00:27:13.000 --> 00:27:14.280
near the top of the wall.

731
00:27:14.280 --> 00:27:15.640
But then when we went back to film it,

732
00:27:15.640 --> 00:27:17.240
I had a different traumatic experience

733
00:27:17.240 --> 00:27:18.920
while we were filming less traumatic.

734
00:27:18.920 --> 00:27:21.080
But like, very scary for a moment

735
00:27:21.080 --> 00:27:22.120
and they got that on camera.

736
00:27:22.120 --> 00:27:23.160
So they basically in the film,

737
00:27:23.160 --> 00:27:24.280
they just cut the two together

738
00:27:24.280 --> 00:27:27.000
as like, because it shows me like being really scared.

739
00:27:27.000 --> 00:27:28.280
What's half-dome to start with?

740
00:27:28.280 --> 00:27:29.800
And then what was the traumatic experience?

741
00:27:29.800 --> 00:27:31.640
Yeah. So half-dome for anyone who hasn't seen

742
00:27:31.640 --> 00:27:34.840
is this just totally amazing wall in U70.

743
00:27:34.840 --> 00:27:36.440
It's a 2,000-foot granite face.

744
00:27:36.520 --> 00:27:38.120
Actually, it's the North Face logo.

745
00:27:38.120 --> 00:27:40.120
It's a freaking, that's half-dome.

746
00:27:40.680 --> 00:27:42.440
Yeah, so it's like an iconic wall in U70.

747
00:27:43.880 --> 00:27:45.080
It looks like half of a dome.

748
00:27:45.080 --> 00:27:46.520
But actually, it's more like a hockey puck

749
00:27:46.520 --> 00:27:47.320
just shoved in.

750
00:27:47.320 --> 00:27:48.360
It's actually a full dome,

751
00:27:48.360 --> 00:27:49.480
depending how you look at it.

752
00:27:49.480 --> 00:27:50.920
But the Northwest Face is vertical

753
00:27:50.920 --> 00:27:52.360
for 2,000 feet is incredible.

754
00:27:52.360 --> 00:27:53.560
And so I free-soled.

755
00:27:53.560 --> 00:27:55.080
That was one of the first major free-soles

756
00:27:55.080 --> 00:27:56.040
I did in 2008.

757
00:27:57.000 --> 00:27:58.520
And one of the things that sort of

758
00:27:58.520 --> 00:27:59.960
made me a professional climber in a way.

759
00:28:00.600 --> 00:28:01.560
But when I did the climb,

760
00:28:02.120 --> 00:28:04.600
I did the bare minimum preparation.

761
00:28:04.760 --> 00:28:06.040
I basically didn't know.

762
00:28:06.040 --> 00:28:08.360
It was the biggest thing I'd ever free-soled.

763
00:28:08.360 --> 00:28:10.200
I didn't quite know how to go if I got ready for it.

764
00:28:10.200 --> 00:28:11.480
Anyway, I climbed it.

765
00:28:11.480 --> 00:28:12.920
And basically hadn't practiced enough.

766
00:28:12.920 --> 00:28:14.280
It was really freaking scared.

767
00:28:14.280 --> 00:28:16.680
Got off-root, got confused, skipped some stuff.

768
00:28:16.680 --> 00:28:17.640
And then at the very top,

769
00:28:17.640 --> 00:28:21.320
had this whole moment of extreme panic.

770
00:28:21.720 --> 00:28:23.000
Basically, I got up into some stuff

771
00:28:23.000 --> 00:28:24.520
and all sort of crumbled mentally

772
00:28:24.520 --> 00:28:27.640
and barely managed to finish this upper slab.

773
00:28:27.640 --> 00:28:29.480
The hardest part of the climb was right near the top.

774
00:28:30.040 --> 00:28:31.320
I was trying to walk across this ledge.

775
00:28:31.960 --> 00:28:33.240
Basically, I've walked across that ledge,

776
00:28:33.240 --> 00:28:34.280
face in and face out.

777
00:28:34.280 --> 00:28:35.800
Normally, people hand traverse it,

778
00:28:35.800 --> 00:28:36.680
or they crawl across it.

779
00:28:36.680 --> 00:28:38.120
There are different ways to go across the ledge.

780
00:28:38.120 --> 00:28:39.640
And I've done it every which way.

781
00:28:39.640 --> 00:28:41.160
And then we were up there filming

782
00:28:41.160 --> 00:28:43.160
and I was like, I'm going to walk and face out.

783
00:28:43.160 --> 00:28:44.440
But it turns out when you walk and face out,

784
00:28:44.440 --> 00:28:45.800
it's really freaking scary.

785
00:28:45.800 --> 00:28:46.920
And so I made it kind of halfway.

786
00:28:46.920 --> 00:28:48.120
And it was like, oh my gosh.

787
00:28:48.120 --> 00:28:48.920
And then bailed.

788
00:28:49.480 --> 00:28:51.000
And when you say you're having

789
00:28:51.640 --> 00:28:54.120
like a crisis in your mind,

790
00:28:54.120 --> 00:28:55.480
what is that?

791
00:28:55.480 --> 00:28:56.680
Is that just, oh my god, what I mean?

792
00:28:56.680 --> 00:28:58.120
Like, how does that sound?

793
00:28:58.120 --> 00:28:59.480
Well, I mean, so in this case,

794
00:28:59.480 --> 00:29:01.000
walking across this ledge,

795
00:29:01.000 --> 00:29:03.400
it's like it starts maybe as a foot wide.

796
00:29:03.400 --> 00:29:04.920
So your foot is fully on the ledge

797
00:29:04.920 --> 00:29:05.960
and you're shuffling across it.

798
00:29:05.960 --> 00:29:07.640
But then at a certain point,

799
00:29:07.640 --> 00:29:08.920
yeah, I mean, that's, that's...

800
00:29:08.920 --> 00:29:10.760
Put the video up on the screen if anyone wants to.

801
00:29:10.760 --> 00:29:12.360
Yeah, that's, that's the ledge.

802
00:29:12.360 --> 00:29:13.960
But basically, at the narrowest part,

803
00:29:13.960 --> 00:29:16.040
your feet are sticking out over the lip of it

804
00:29:16.040 --> 00:29:17.560
and the wall bulges ever so slightly.

805
00:29:17.560 --> 00:29:19.320
So it forces your back out a little.

806
00:29:19.320 --> 00:29:20.600
And so you're basically like,

807
00:29:20.600 --> 00:29:22.840
rocking on your heels with, I don't know,

808
00:29:22.840 --> 00:29:24.360
like a 1,700-foot dropper.

809
00:29:24.360 --> 00:29:26.680
So they're 1,800-foot-drop, like straight down below you.

810
00:29:27.400 --> 00:29:29.800
And so, you know, it's like pretty,

811
00:29:29.960 --> 00:29:31.000
it's pretty at deaths.

812
00:29:31.320 --> 00:29:34.360
Anyway, and so I thought I was going to walk across it like that

813
00:29:34.360 --> 00:29:35.640
and I made it to the bulging part

814
00:29:35.640 --> 00:29:36.840
and was so they're like, oh my god,

815
00:29:36.840 --> 00:29:38.440
this isn't like, this isn't for me

816
00:29:38.440 --> 00:29:39.960
and then managed to like shuffle back

817
00:29:39.960 --> 00:29:41.720
and change my strategy.

818
00:29:42.600 --> 00:29:44.120
Is it like panic in your head?

819
00:29:45.080 --> 00:29:47.160
It's not panic, but you're like, oh,

820
00:29:47.160 --> 00:29:48.360
oh, I made the wrong choice.

821
00:29:48.360 --> 00:29:50.280
Like, this is bad, this is bad, you know?

822
00:29:50.840 --> 00:29:54.040
I mean, it's not like full like five alarm bell,

823
00:29:54.040 --> 00:29:56.680
like panic panic, but yeah, you're like, oh, I'm so screwed.

824
00:29:57.320 --> 00:29:59.960
And you have fallen a long, long way before.

825
00:29:59.960 --> 00:30:01.400
I was hearing it about a time when you were young

826
00:30:01.400 --> 00:30:03.720
and you fell off a mountain and called your mother,

827
00:30:03.720 --> 00:30:04.680
managed to call your mother in.

828
00:30:04.680 --> 00:30:06.360
Yeah, that was like sliding down a nice,

829
00:30:06.360 --> 00:30:07.080
cool art type thing.

830
00:30:07.080 --> 00:30:08.040
It's a little different than like,

831
00:30:08.040 --> 00:30:09.160
free falling off of a cliff.

832
00:30:09.160 --> 00:30:10.600
That's like sliding down a mountain.

833
00:30:10.600 --> 00:30:13.960
But yeah, I got totally messed up and, uh, yeah.

834
00:30:13.960 --> 00:30:15.400
Yeah, and I've like broken my arm

835
00:30:15.400 --> 00:30:17.160
several times as a kid falling off things.

836
00:30:17.960 --> 00:30:19.560
And then with a rope as a climber,

837
00:30:19.560 --> 00:30:21.400
you take big falls like routinely.

838
00:30:21.400 --> 00:30:22.440
You know, when you have protection,

839
00:30:22.440 --> 00:30:23.880
that's like part of the sport, basically.

840
00:30:23.880 --> 00:30:28.040
I mean, it's certainly easy to visualize falling

841
00:30:28.040 --> 00:30:28.520
like 70.

842
00:30:28.520 --> 00:30:30.040
You know, when you're like standing on a little ledge

843
00:30:30.040 --> 00:30:31.480
and you're just bulging and you're looking down,

844
00:30:31.480 --> 00:30:34.280
you're, you know, it's easy to be like, oh, my God.

845
00:30:34.280 --> 00:30:36.280
You know, it's like, if you just bend forward a little bit,

846
00:30:36.280 --> 00:30:37.480
you're just going to take a swan dive,

847
00:30:37.480 --> 00:30:39.000
like 70 under the ground.

848
00:30:39.000 --> 00:30:40.440
The stance in this sport, uh,

849
00:30:40.440 --> 00:30:43.240
I mean, of fatalities.

850
00:30:43.240 --> 00:30:44.760
How do they compare to other sports?

851
00:30:44.760 --> 00:30:46.440
Uh, safer than you would think.

852
00:30:46.440 --> 00:30:46.920
That's things.

853
00:30:46.920 --> 00:30:48.520
Everyone thinks it seems crazy,

854
00:30:48.520 --> 00:30:50.680
but, uh, it's not that crazy.

855
00:30:50.680 --> 00:30:52.120
I don't know actual statistics,

856
00:30:52.280 --> 00:30:55.640
but I suspect that it's actually pretty comparable

857
00:30:55.640 --> 00:30:57.560
to skiing or something, you know,

858
00:30:57.560 --> 00:30:59.800
because like recreational skiers die all the time,

859
00:30:59.800 --> 00:31:00.920
like falling into tree wells,

860
00:31:00.920 --> 00:31:02.760
or like going off cliffs backs and things like that.

861
00:31:03.800 --> 00:31:05.880
Climbing is actually surprisingly safe,

862
00:31:06.760 --> 00:31:08.120
which is one of the things I love about climbing.

863
00:31:08.120 --> 00:31:09.080
I mean, climbing is very,

864
00:31:10.120 --> 00:31:12.280
it's very, uh, sort of binary where it's like,

865
00:31:12.840 --> 00:31:15.160
either you're totally safe or you're going to die.

866
00:31:16.280 --> 00:31:19.160
And the odds of you dying are very, very, very small,

867
00:31:19.800 --> 00:31:22.360
but because they're, they're there,

868
00:31:22.360 --> 00:31:23.800
they always keep you on.

869
00:31:23.800 --> 00:31:24.280
You know what I mean?

870
00:31:24.280 --> 00:31:25.720
Like it basically keeps you alert,

871
00:31:27.080 --> 00:31:29.160
but you're never really going to get hurt.

872
00:31:29.160 --> 00:31:31.320
Is that including free salivating?

873
00:31:32.120 --> 00:31:33.480
Yeah, I mean, for the most part,

874
00:31:34.040 --> 00:31:35.640
I mean, a couple of people have died free souling.

875
00:31:35.640 --> 00:31:38.040
I mean, people occasionally die free souling for sure,

876
00:31:38.040 --> 00:31:39.160
but actually most of the,

877
00:31:40.120 --> 00:31:42.040
the sort of cutting edge free solists

878
00:31:42.040 --> 00:31:43.320
have not died souling.

879
00:31:43.320 --> 00:31:44.760
They've like died in other things.

880
00:31:44.760 --> 00:31:46.120
I think it was then in the, um,

881
00:31:46.120 --> 00:31:47.880
the documentary on Netflix, um,

882
00:31:47.960 --> 00:31:49.480
free salivate with one of your colleagues.

883
00:31:49.480 --> 00:31:53.400
Yeah, Tommy, Tommy is like most free solos are dead now, um,

884
00:31:53.400 --> 00:31:54.840
which is kind of true,

885
00:31:55.400 --> 00:31:57.240
but it's slightly misstated.

886
00:31:57.240 --> 00:31:59.160
I mean, you know, he's just like speaking off the cuff

887
00:31:59.160 --> 00:32:00.680
and it's not like strictly true.

888
00:32:00.680 --> 00:32:03.160
Like a couple of the best free solos have died free souling,

889
00:32:03.160 --> 00:32:04.920
but they died on very easy terrain.

890
00:32:04.920 --> 00:32:07.480
But then the majority of other great free solos have died

891
00:32:07.480 --> 00:32:10.360
in sort of climbing adjacent accidents,

892
00:32:10.360 --> 00:32:12.360
like wingsuit based jumping and, uh,

893
00:32:12.360 --> 00:32:14.680
like one got swept to sea by a rogue wave.

894
00:32:14.680 --> 00:32:16.360
Like while he was out climbing a sea cliff,

895
00:32:16.520 --> 00:32:18.600
but he was like standing on shore and got swept out to sea.

896
00:32:18.600 --> 00:32:20.040
You know, things like that where you're just kind of like,

897
00:32:20.840 --> 00:32:22.840
you know, obviously they're taking risks in their lives

898
00:32:22.840 --> 00:32:24.040
and they wind up dead.

899
00:32:24.600 --> 00:32:26.440
But it's not the way that people think,

900
00:32:26.440 --> 00:32:28.040
you know, you see a photo like that and you're like,

901
00:32:28.040 --> 00:32:29.400
free souling, you're going to die for sure

902
00:32:29.400 --> 00:32:29.880
and you're kind of like,

903
00:32:29.880 --> 00:32:31.720
well, people don't actually really die that way.

904
00:32:32.680 --> 00:32:35.160
I mean, they have, I mean, not to say that it doesn't happen,

905
00:32:35.480 --> 00:32:37.880
but way less frequently than people would suspect.

906
00:32:37.880 --> 00:32:39.480
If I was to try and like, you know,

907
00:32:39.480 --> 00:32:40.840
professionally torture you,

908
00:32:40.840 --> 00:32:42.680
and again, I'm not talking in extremes here,

909
00:32:42.680 --> 00:32:45.320
but what life would I prescribe you to live?

910
00:32:46.440 --> 00:32:48.040
Oh, I'll be in like a finance bro or something.

911
00:32:48.680 --> 00:32:50.360
Having to like just work spreadsheets my whole life.

912
00:32:50.360 --> 00:32:50.840
Is that what you mean?

913
00:32:50.840 --> 00:32:52.440
Like what is my like worst?

914
00:32:53.640 --> 00:32:54.680
I don't know, something like that.

915
00:32:55.480 --> 00:32:59.080
Or honestly being like a choreographer for dance or something like,

916
00:32:59.080 --> 00:33:00.520
I just said I couldn't do like,

917
00:33:00.520 --> 00:33:02.280
or being like an opera singer.

918
00:33:02.280 --> 00:33:03.480
Like, I would just kill myself.

919
00:33:03.480 --> 00:33:04.520
I just couldn't do that.

920
00:33:04.520 --> 00:33:05.880
Why would we be being a finance bro?

921
00:33:05.880 --> 00:33:08.360
It'd be like the worst thing for Alex.

922
00:33:08.360 --> 00:33:11.160
Just the idea of sitting in a computer in a cubicle,

923
00:33:11.160 --> 00:33:12.760
just like typing.

924
00:33:12.760 --> 00:33:13.800
I mean, I'm kind of contrarian,

925
00:33:13.800 --> 00:33:14.600
you know, like rules.

926
00:33:14.600 --> 00:33:15.800
I don't want to like jump through hoops.

927
00:33:15.880 --> 00:33:17.400
I don't want to do arbitrary things.

928
00:33:17.400 --> 00:33:19.240
Like, I don't want some manager to come and tell me like,

929
00:33:19.240 --> 00:33:20.680
oh, you got to file that report again.

930
00:33:20.680 --> 00:33:21.880
You like missed a line.

931
00:33:21.880 --> 00:33:23.560
I'd be like, you go after so, you know,

932
00:33:23.560 --> 00:33:25.000
I just like walk out of the building.

933
00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:27.400
Like it's just, I just like don't know if I could take that.

934
00:33:27.400 --> 00:33:28.040
I'd be like, no.

935
00:33:28.680 --> 00:33:30.120
But that's like how much to the world live?

936
00:33:30.120 --> 00:33:31.800
We kind of, we will live in like, you know,

937
00:33:31.800 --> 00:33:32.920
I just don't know if it's for me.

938
00:33:35.000 --> 00:33:35.800
I don't know.

939
00:33:35.800 --> 00:33:37.000
I mean, doesn't that just seem?

940
00:33:37.000 --> 00:33:37.800
I mean, I had this moment.

941
00:33:37.800 --> 00:33:38.840
I've been in New York a couple days,

942
00:33:38.840 --> 00:33:40.600
and I took the subway down to see some,

943
00:33:40.600 --> 00:33:43.080
see some friends, and I was like coming out of tunnel,

944
00:33:43.080 --> 00:33:44.280
and it's like packed with people.

945
00:33:44.280 --> 00:33:45.880
And I was just like looking at the ground,

946
00:33:45.880 --> 00:33:47.240
and I was like, just, you know,

947
00:33:47.240 --> 00:33:48.680
following someone else's footsteps

948
00:33:48.680 --> 00:33:50.920
up this like beat down path of stairs.

949
00:33:50.920 --> 00:33:52.680
And I was like, I couldn't live like this.

950
00:33:52.680 --> 00:33:54.280
Like not day in and day out every day.

951
00:33:54.280 --> 00:33:56.440
Like this is just, like feeling like you're just doing

952
00:33:56.440 --> 00:33:58.280
the exact same thing as everyone else around you.

953
00:33:58.280 --> 00:34:00.600
I'm like, oh, it seems so, so boring.

954
00:34:02.120 --> 00:34:03.720
It's funny because so many of us look at your life

955
00:34:03.720 --> 00:34:06.760
and go, wow, that's not very normal.

956
00:34:06.760 --> 00:34:09.000
But actually, maybe at a foundational level,

957
00:34:09.000 --> 00:34:10.840
you're living a much more normal life than,

958
00:34:11.720 --> 00:34:14.520
when you're out in nature, you're moving your body.

959
00:34:14.520 --> 00:34:16.840
Yeah, yeah, in that way, for sure.

960
00:34:17.960 --> 00:34:19.560
I'm like, going on a quadventure, isn't it?

961
00:34:19.560 --> 00:34:21.080
Going out and, I don't know.

962
00:34:21.080 --> 00:34:23.560
I think that's also part of what the sort of attraction

963
00:34:23.560 --> 00:34:25.400
and learn with your life, especially when you watch

964
00:34:25.400 --> 00:34:29.000
Free Solo is, you do seem to be a free man

965
00:34:30.200 --> 00:34:32.600
in a way where most of us aren't free or something.

966
00:34:32.600 --> 00:34:34.360
Yeah, I mean, I think we're all sort of aspiring

967
00:34:34.360 --> 00:34:35.320
to that, to some extent.

968
00:34:35.320 --> 00:34:36.600
I mean, most people see that there was like,

969
00:34:36.600 --> 00:34:37.960
they get their vacation for the year.

970
00:34:37.960 --> 00:34:40.040
They're planning to retire at some point,

971
00:34:40.040 --> 00:34:41.720
and then they're going to have their freedom.

972
00:34:41.720 --> 00:34:42.840
And they're kind of like, well, I don't know.

973
00:34:42.840 --> 00:34:45.320
I mean, maybe you got to try to live that way as much as possible.

974
00:34:45.320 --> 00:34:48.680
If your young girls came up to you, June, and Alice,

975
00:34:48.680 --> 00:34:50.360
and said, Dad, what is a meaningful life?

976
00:34:50.360 --> 00:34:53.240
What are the principles of living a fulfilling meaningful life?

977
00:34:53.240 --> 00:34:54.360
Would you give them advice there?

978
00:34:55.080 --> 00:34:58.280
Yeah, I mean, it'd be a long, rambling,

979
00:34:58.280 --> 00:35:00.360
multi-day conversation with them about,

980
00:35:00.360 --> 00:35:04.120
but following your own goals is, I think, you know,

981
00:35:04.120 --> 00:35:06.440
certainly one of the cores of having a meaningful life.

982
00:35:07.160 --> 00:35:10.200
Like, having things that you find valuable,

983
00:35:10.200 --> 00:35:11.800
I mean, really like living in line with your values,

984
00:35:11.800 --> 00:35:13.240
finding things that are important to you

985
00:35:13.240 --> 00:35:15.320
and pursuing them with as much as you can give them.

986
00:35:16.200 --> 00:35:18.440
You wouldn't look at your early 20s to 30s.

987
00:35:18.440 --> 00:35:20.360
It kind of looks like you're living like a Buddhist a little bit.

988
00:35:21.240 --> 00:35:24.200
I mean, yeah, I went on a trip once where they called me the monk.

989
00:35:25.640 --> 00:35:28.360
Just because I was living such a sort of a seated lifestyle,

990
00:35:28.360 --> 00:35:30.600
I was like, reading, I've never, I don't drink,

991
00:35:30.600 --> 00:35:34.280
and I don't like party, and I didn't just for personal preference, whatever.

992
00:35:34.360 --> 00:35:37.800
That's how I'm just like living in my little man

993
00:35:37.800 --> 00:35:39.720
and reading books and climbing all the time.

994
00:35:39.720 --> 00:35:42.360
Like, those are the things that I'm into doing.

995
00:35:42.360 --> 00:35:45.000
You know, it's like, it's, yeah, it's just doing what you want to do.

996
00:35:46.280 --> 00:35:47.480
Have you ever been depressed or?

997
00:35:48.760 --> 00:35:51.640
Yeah, probably not like deep clinical depression,

998
00:35:51.640 --> 00:35:54.680
but there's certainly periods from time to time where you're just like,

999
00:35:54.680 --> 00:35:56.600
what am I doing or why or what are my goals?

1000
00:35:56.600 --> 00:35:59.720
Like, you know, what's, and I think to me,

1001
00:35:59.720 --> 00:36:01.240
the most surprising thing is that, you know,

1002
00:36:01.240 --> 00:36:02.440
I've put like my whole life into climbing,

1003
00:36:02.440 --> 00:36:04.280
like trying to be the best you can be all the time.

1004
00:36:04.280 --> 00:36:05.960
And sometimes you put tons effort in,

1005
00:36:05.960 --> 00:36:07.720
and you just don't see results, like for whatever reason,

1006
00:36:07.720 --> 00:36:09.320
you just suck, you're like, I'm trying so hard,

1007
00:36:09.320 --> 00:36:12.040
and I'm just like, not as good as I want to be.

1008
00:36:12.040 --> 00:36:13.240
And like, that's challenging.

1009
00:36:13.240 --> 00:36:13.800
You know what that's?

1010
00:36:15.400 --> 00:36:17.000
I mean, everybody faces that to some extent.

1011
00:36:17.000 --> 00:36:18.280
And we're like, I'm working hard at a thing,

1012
00:36:18.280 --> 00:36:20.520
but I'm just not achieving the results that I want.

1013
00:36:21.400 --> 00:36:24.200
And between that, this sort of that period of moments,

1014
00:36:24.200 --> 00:36:27.480
like the 2030 where your career hasn't taken off yet,

1015
00:36:27.480 --> 00:36:30.280
the documentary's not out, you know, climbed Taipei.

1016
00:36:30.920 --> 00:36:33.960
How much money are you earning from climbing?

1017
00:36:35.000 --> 00:36:36.600
I mean, the first, my first couple of years,

1018
00:36:36.600 --> 00:36:38.120
my small show through the North Face was like,

1019
00:36:38.920 --> 00:36:40.600
I think my first year was like 10k a year.

1020
00:36:40.600 --> 00:36:41.720
I was like, this is amazing,

1021
00:36:41.720 --> 00:36:43.000
so I was living in my car.

1022
00:36:43.000 --> 00:36:46.520
And, you know, making 10 grand when you live by yourself

1023
00:36:46.520 --> 00:36:49.000
in a van is like more than you need, basically.

1024
00:36:49.640 --> 00:36:52.440
It obviously went up beyond that at some point.

1025
00:36:52.440 --> 00:36:55.560
But it was, you know, like in the 10 to 100 range

1026
00:36:55.560 --> 00:36:58.840
for the first, for the whole, yeah, for years.

1027
00:36:59.640 --> 00:37:01.000
And then at some point, it increases.

1028
00:37:01.000 --> 00:37:02.040
Yeah, and then it increases.

1029
00:37:02.040 --> 00:37:04.360
I mean, then free solos, obviously, like a big thing.

1030
00:37:04.360 --> 00:37:06.040
And that sort of opened up all these opportunities.

1031
00:37:06.920 --> 00:37:09.080
Because then I started doing corporate speaking and stuff like that.

1032
00:37:09.080 --> 00:37:10.600
And I mean, as I'm sure you know,

1033
00:37:10.600 --> 00:37:12.040
that's just like a whole different world.

1034
00:37:12.920 --> 00:37:15.640
And so then you go from just like making some money from sponsors

1035
00:37:15.640 --> 00:37:18.600
to like making money from other corporations.

1036
00:37:18.600 --> 00:37:20.520
So they're like, okay, now you're making some money.

1037
00:37:21.080 --> 00:37:22.760
One of the things when I was hearing you talk about

1038
00:37:22.760 --> 00:37:25.000
some of your incredible climbing stories is

1039
00:37:25.960 --> 00:37:28.600
I was trying to understand what role visualization

1040
00:37:29.400 --> 00:37:32.840
or your preparation plays and how that's like transferable

1041
00:37:32.840 --> 00:37:34.280
to me in my life.

1042
00:37:34.280 --> 00:37:36.120
We talked a little bit about just how much preparation

1043
00:37:36.120 --> 00:37:37.880
you did for something like LCAP.

1044
00:37:37.880 --> 00:37:41.080
But you, it sounds like you really break down the challenge

1045
00:37:41.080 --> 00:37:45.000
into smaller bits and then really go through those individual steps.

1046
00:37:45.000 --> 00:37:46.680
Whereas a lot of people just look at LCAP and go,

1047
00:37:46.680 --> 00:37:47.880
oh my god, they'll be terrified.

1048
00:37:48.520 --> 00:37:49.480
And that's the impossible.

1049
00:37:50.040 --> 00:37:51.000
Yeah, which is fair.

1050
00:37:51.000 --> 00:37:52.520
I mean, I spent years looking at LCAP,

1051
00:37:52.520 --> 00:37:54.040
me like that's too big, that's impossible.

1052
00:37:54.520 --> 00:37:56.520
And then, you know, after years of that,

1053
00:37:56.600 --> 00:37:59.480
I kept hoping that I would look at it and it would like look easy somehow

1054
00:37:59.480 --> 00:38:01.080
and I'd be like, cool, and now I'm going to do it.

1055
00:38:01.080 --> 00:38:02.840
And it just never looked easy.

1056
00:38:02.840 --> 00:38:04.920
And so then finally, I was like, okay,

1057
00:38:04.920 --> 00:38:06.680
I'm going to have to like put some real work into it.

1058
00:38:06.680 --> 00:38:08.680
And then I started slowly breaking it down.

1059
00:38:09.480 --> 00:38:10.840
And then once you like, break it into pieces

1060
00:38:10.840 --> 00:38:11.800
and start working on the pieces,

1061
00:38:11.800 --> 00:38:14.680
then you're feeling like, okay, it starts to feel more reasonable.

1062
00:38:14.680 --> 00:38:17.080
Break it into pieces and start working on the pieces.

1063
00:38:17.080 --> 00:38:18.760
What does that mean in terms of climbing?

1064
00:38:18.760 --> 00:38:21.800
So if we, I mean, I've got this model here.

1065
00:38:21.800 --> 00:38:23.000
Yeah, type of one.

1066
00:38:23.560 --> 00:38:27.320
So, you know, and this is also a metaphor for any challenge I have online.

1067
00:38:27.320 --> 00:38:28.920
Okay, but this is actually perfect because it's right here.

1068
00:38:28.920 --> 00:38:31.160
Yeah. So I scouted this in September of this year.

1069
00:38:31.160 --> 00:38:33.000
I did the climb in January or whatever.

1070
00:38:33.000 --> 00:38:34.840
In September, we went and, um,

1071
00:38:34.840 --> 00:38:37.800
well, we had to like one make sure it was possible before you sort of like commit

1072
00:38:37.800 --> 00:38:39.400
to it doing a whole TV program.

1073
00:38:39.400 --> 00:38:41.160
You're kind of like, let's make sure we can do this.

1074
00:38:41.160 --> 00:38:43.560
And then they all said to get all this sort of marketing material.

1075
00:38:43.560 --> 00:38:44.920
You like get the photos of the building,

1076
00:38:44.920 --> 00:38:47.320
like all the stuff that becomes the trailer and whatever.

1077
00:38:47.320 --> 00:38:49.400
And so we went in September to sort of like do the prep.

1078
00:38:50.120 --> 00:38:53.960
And so we basically checked out all the different pieces.

1079
00:38:53.960 --> 00:38:57.000
And so anywhere where you see it looking a little bit different,

1080
00:38:57.000 --> 00:38:59.880
you know, it's like this whole bottom part is like a low angle slab.

1081
00:38:59.880 --> 00:39:01.640
It's like punctuated with these two little Ruys.

1082
00:39:01.640 --> 00:39:04.440
These are like coin things or whatever the clouds are over there.

1083
00:39:04.440 --> 00:39:06.520
Now, and then there's the dragons on the corners.

1084
00:39:06.520 --> 00:39:08.600
These are all overhanging like each of these eight blocks.

1085
00:39:08.600 --> 00:39:09.640
It's like a big, overhanging thing.

1086
00:39:09.640 --> 00:39:10.920
It feels a little bit different.

1087
00:39:10.920 --> 00:39:12.040
Then you get up here.

1088
00:39:12.040 --> 00:39:13.400
There's like these balconies.

1089
00:39:13.400 --> 00:39:17.560
These are actually overhanging like basically each little segment of this is quite different.

1090
00:39:17.560 --> 00:39:20.040
And you know, obviously on this model, like looks the same.

1091
00:39:20.040 --> 00:39:23.480
But each transition between the different pieces is like a thing.

1092
00:39:23.480 --> 00:39:24.920
So I checked out all of them with ropes.

1093
00:39:25.480 --> 00:39:28.040
And yeah, you just go piece by piece all the way up the whole thing.

1094
00:39:28.040 --> 00:39:31.240
And you hadn't ever climbed it before we saw it on Netflix live.

1095
00:39:31.240 --> 00:39:32.440
Well, I hadn't free saw it.

1096
00:39:32.440 --> 00:39:33.560
No, but I had climbed it.

1097
00:39:33.560 --> 00:39:35.320
I climbed all the pieces with the rope for sure.

1098
00:39:35.320 --> 00:39:36.760
I'd like checked out the different things.

1099
00:39:37.880 --> 00:39:41.320
Okay, so you look at these as individual challenges.

1100
00:39:41.320 --> 00:39:42.040
Every step.

1101
00:39:42.040 --> 00:39:44.520
Yeah, it's like you go, well, even like just getting off the ground,

1102
00:39:44.520 --> 00:39:47.800
the first move is a slightly different move than any of the other moves.

1103
00:39:47.800 --> 00:39:49.880
You have to like jump up to a thing and like press it out.

1104
00:39:50.600 --> 00:39:52.600
Then climbing over these little clouds is a different thing.

1105
00:39:52.600 --> 00:39:53.800
Each dragon is a different thing.

1106
00:39:54.440 --> 00:39:58.360
Yeah, I mean, it's just, you know, there's a surprising amount of complexity to it.

1107
00:39:58.360 --> 00:40:00.920
And so our first on the scout, you know, I had a note on my phone.

1108
00:40:00.920 --> 00:40:04.280
And I'm just like riding down all the different, basically I'm trying to learn it the way

1109
00:40:04.280 --> 00:40:06.040
you study anything where I'm just like making notes.

1110
00:40:06.040 --> 00:40:09.960
And sort of like from floor 54 to 72, it feels like this.

1111
00:40:09.960 --> 00:40:12.920
I climbed this out of these corner, the left are at, you know, just, and then

1112
00:40:13.000 --> 00:40:14.360
you're just riding it all down.

1113
00:40:14.360 --> 00:40:17.080
And I mean, there's this famous photo of you hanging with your leg.

1114
00:40:17.080 --> 00:40:18.680
Yeah, that's this. These are the rings up here.

1115
00:40:19.240 --> 00:40:21.960
So you're hanging, you're hanging here from here with your leg.

1116
00:40:21.960 --> 00:40:25.320
Yeah, now I, this is really a question of endurance.

1117
00:40:25.320 --> 00:40:27.720
Like how would you plan to have the energy?

1118
00:40:28.920 --> 00:40:31.160
Like how do you know if you're going to have enough energy when you're up here

1119
00:40:31.160 --> 00:40:32.120
when you're just planning it?

1120
00:40:32.920 --> 00:40:35.560
I mean, well, this is what makes it exciting because you can't be sure.

1121
00:40:36.200 --> 00:40:39.240
But, you know, I've done a lot of climbing in my life and I've done a lot of climbs

1122
00:40:39.240 --> 00:40:42.680
that were like 24 hours. I mean, I had this experience in Patagonia once.

1123
00:40:42.680 --> 00:40:46.200
It was a 54 hour push with like the last 20 hours we hiked without food

1124
00:40:47.000 --> 00:40:49.400
because we got caught in a storm. It's a whole crazy story.

1125
00:40:49.400 --> 00:40:53.080
But basically, you know, I've had a lot of experience in my life where I've done hard exercise

1126
00:40:53.080 --> 00:40:57.880
for more than 24 hours. And so this, you know, I expected to take me somewhere in the hour

1127
00:40:57.880 --> 00:41:01.160
and a half, two hour range. I'm kind of like, yeah, I mean, I'll be tired after two hours

1128
00:41:01.160 --> 00:41:05.000
of exercise, but I'm not going to be exhausted. You know, I mean, like I know that I have

1129
00:41:05.000 --> 00:41:10.200
a much deeper reserve than that. So much of the conversation around, um, after you've done this,

1130
00:41:10.200 --> 00:41:15.240
or some of the conversation was around whether this was a harder challenge than alcapitan.

1131
00:41:15.240 --> 00:41:19.320
No, no, it's obviously much easier. I mean, I'm doing on live television, you know, it's like,

1132
00:41:19.320 --> 00:41:25.400
obviously it's easier. But what makes it cool is that it's different, it's fun, it's challenging.

1133
00:41:25.400 --> 00:41:28.680
Like for me, it's really like in my sweet spot where it is challenging enough.

1134
00:41:29.560 --> 00:41:33.880
Like it's not easy, you know what I mean? Like saying easier than alcap, it doesn't, you know,

1135
00:41:33.880 --> 00:41:39.400
alcap was like a 10 year life project that I did an absolute secrecy. I did on my terms

1136
00:41:40.120 --> 00:41:44.680
on the correct day after years of effort. I had failed attempts. I had, you know, I mean, like alcap

1137
00:41:44.680 --> 00:41:49.560
was like an all consuming life project for years. Kind of like, obviously you can't do that for

1138
00:41:49.560 --> 00:41:55.480
live TV. It's like, you just can't put. Anyway, but this was very much in my sweet spot where you're

1139
00:41:55.480 --> 00:41:59.880
like, oh, it's hard enough that it's, that it's hard. Like it's cool. You know, like it's fun.

1140
00:41:59.880 --> 00:42:03.480
It's interesting. The climb is engaging. It's, you know, gave me something to train for for months.

1141
00:42:03.480 --> 00:42:08.600
It's like, it's super fun. But it's not, you know, it's not like the absolute limit of what I can do

1142
00:42:08.600 --> 00:42:11.480
because you just can't do that on live TV. I mean, if nothing else, so I was climbing the

1143
00:42:11.480 --> 00:42:15.080
southeast to red because it gets good morning light and it looks beautiful and it's like great for

1144
00:42:15.080 --> 00:42:19.160
filming. But if I was trying to do the absolute most cutting edge climb I could do. I'd be climbing

1145
00:42:19.160 --> 00:42:22.600
the northwest to red because it'd be full shade because it'd be good, better conditions, you know,

1146
00:42:22.600 --> 00:42:25.640
be colder. Like you just don't want to be in the sun and makes your skin, you know, it makes you

1147
00:42:25.640 --> 00:42:30.040
hot and stuff. And so, you know, just things like that. You're like, what if you're doing it for TV

1148
00:42:30.680 --> 00:42:34.760
and you're trying to broadcast it, then you want it to look good. But like if you're trying to

1149
00:42:34.760 --> 00:42:40.120
do it for hard climbing and good conditions, you do in full shade. And Netflix had a 10 second delay

1150
00:42:40.120 --> 00:42:44.040
just in case you fell. I mean, I'm sure part of it's in case you fall, but part of it's like

1151
00:42:44.040 --> 00:42:47.880
one of somebody unplugs one of the things or you know what I mean? Like it's so complicated.

1152
00:42:47.880 --> 00:42:52.040
There's so much stuff going on. It's insane. Was there a hardest part of this? A part where

1153
00:42:52.040 --> 00:42:55.880
you were a little nervous? The thing I was most nervous about when I started with where the

1154
00:42:55.880 --> 00:43:00.040
Bamboo Box is like doing these eight Iranian segments because they're just so relentlessly the

1155
00:43:00.040 --> 00:43:05.000
same move. And it's just it's pretty physical. Like you get tired for sure. I mean, the actual

1156
00:43:05.000 --> 00:43:10.600
physical hardest moves, like actually randomly one of these corners up here would have been quite a

1157
00:43:10.600 --> 00:43:14.200
hard move, but there was this freaking security camera bolted out of the wall. And so you use

1158
00:43:14.200 --> 00:43:17.560
the security cameras, this handle, it was really pretty cool. And it was like bolted on these

1159
00:43:17.560 --> 00:43:21.880
giant bolts so it like looked super safe and you know, it was like very robust and secure. But

1160
00:43:21.880 --> 00:43:25.400
it would have been kind of like this extreme jump, which I wasn't, you know, it's probably

1161
00:43:25.400 --> 00:43:30.920
possible, but would have been like a major thing. But instead, you just refop the security camera.

1162
00:43:30.920 --> 00:43:34.600
And I was like, it's so cool. There's you said there are a few things like that like individual

1163
00:43:34.600 --> 00:43:39.880
moves that are kind of mussely. But overall, it's the stamina, like the challenge of doing this

1164
00:43:39.880 --> 00:43:45.160
over and over for hundreds of feet that was the hardest thing. Do you have a conversation with

1165
00:43:45.160 --> 00:43:49.560
your girls in their life before you go and do something like this about just in case you don't

1166
00:43:49.640 --> 00:43:53.480
come back? Not with the kids because they're too young and like they wouldn't they don't understand

1167
00:43:53.480 --> 00:43:58.440
it anyway. And not with her because she came with me to Taipei or she was there for like the whole

1168
00:43:58.440 --> 00:44:01.960
end of it. I went a little bit early so I could adapt to the times I'm more and like feel better.

1169
00:44:01.960 --> 00:44:06.680
But basically she was with me. So, you know, like we went to bed together that night and I woke

1170
00:44:06.680 --> 00:44:09.960
up that morning and had breakfast together. So it didn't feel like a big goodbye. You know, it was

1171
00:44:09.960 --> 00:44:13.800
kind of actually she was with me at the base. I mean, we did the start together and then I literally

1172
00:44:13.800 --> 00:44:17.640
was like, okay, bye and walked over and did the thing and started at the top. So we were only

1173
00:44:17.720 --> 00:44:22.520
a part like an hour and a half. And I started through the window a couple of times and so it felt

1174
00:44:22.520 --> 00:44:25.880
like she was just there having the whole experience with me. Did you look at the buildings in the

1175
00:44:25.880 --> 00:44:31.880
world like the badge? Yeah, I've scouted the birch twice over the years back when this project

1176
00:44:31.880 --> 00:44:36.120
almost happened in 2013 or something and so I scouted some buildings then. The birch was just

1177
00:44:36.120 --> 00:44:43.160
a little too extreme. It's just too hard. But someday maybe who knows? Because it's like there's

1178
00:44:43.160 --> 00:44:48.680
not enough. It's too slippery. Yeah, super slippery. Also, it's just the way the holds are like,

1179
00:44:48.680 --> 00:44:52.200
I mean, the beauty of type one or one is that the holds like they're good things to hold. They're

1180
00:44:52.200 --> 00:44:56.040
close together and you're like, er, and you can hold them when you feel secure. The birch I can

1181
00:44:56.040 --> 00:45:00.840
barely span tip to tip to like reach between the holds. And so then your face is like right

1182
00:45:00.840 --> 00:45:05.240
against the glass. You're like holding on like this and it's pretty hard. And you have to do the

1183
00:45:05.240 --> 00:45:09.080
same thing 112 times in a row. It's like pretty hard to do it once. Then you have to do a hundred

1184
00:45:09.080 --> 00:45:13.480
times. You're like it's kind of hard. There's a thing that I saw online after you'd climbed it

1185
00:45:13.480 --> 00:45:16.600
about one of two days after everyone took start talking about how much you were paid to do it.

1186
00:45:17.320 --> 00:45:20.200
I think because you didn't into it. There were some quotes that were kind of taking out a

1187
00:45:20.200 --> 00:45:24.200
context because yeah, a New York Times reporter asked me how much I was going to pay. And I was kind

1188
00:45:24.200 --> 00:45:27.640
of like, I don't want to talk about it because it's kind of embarrassing because all my friends,

1189
00:45:27.640 --> 00:45:31.560
it's like an embarrassingly high amount for my community. Like in the climbing world, if you're

1190
00:45:31.560 --> 00:45:35.480
getting paid to rock climb, you're like, great success. You're getting paid to climb. That's insane.

1191
00:45:35.480 --> 00:45:39.240
You know, and so I thought it was like sort of an embarrassingly large amount or I'm like,

1192
00:45:39.240 --> 00:45:43.640
oh, this is kind of weird. But then he sort of poked around and he started comparing it to like

1193
00:45:43.640 --> 00:45:47.560
boxing matches and stuff where people get paid like $20 million. Just like fight someone

1194
00:45:47.560 --> 00:45:51.240
boxing. And I was like, well, no, compared to that, it's embarrassing a small amount. You know,

1195
00:45:51.240 --> 00:45:55.560
it's like, or if you compare it to like major league baseball contracts and things. And it's like,

1196
00:45:55.560 --> 00:45:59.960
yeah, it's an embarrassing a small amount. But I was never complaining. Like I thought it was great.

1197
00:46:00.200 --> 00:46:05.480
I mean, I would do it for free. I mean, I've paid money to go up to the observation deck.

1198
00:46:05.480 --> 00:46:09.080
The observation deck is way up here at the top. And the view is insane. And the city's incredible.

1199
00:46:09.080 --> 00:46:12.600
And you know, it's like 20 bucks would ever take the world's fastest elevator to the top of the

1200
00:46:12.600 --> 00:46:15.960
building. And you know, I've done that in the burge as well where you like, pay the money and you

1201
00:46:15.960 --> 00:46:19.480
go to the very top of the building and the view is insane. It's like, I do that like anywhere I travel.

1202
00:46:20.040 --> 00:46:23.960
Like the seer, the Willis tower, whatever the Sears tower in Chicago. Like, I've paid the money

1203
00:46:23.960 --> 00:46:26.920
to go to the observation deck and see the view. And it's so cool. And I'm kind of like, if someone's

1204
00:46:26.920 --> 00:46:31.320
willing to pay me to climb up to the observation deck, that's freaking cool. Yeah. I think it's

1205
00:46:31.320 --> 00:46:36.600
because people again, they're saying that they believe that this is your risking your entire life.

1206
00:46:36.600 --> 00:46:40.520
Yeah. And so, yeah, they don't think of boxes as risking your entire life in the same way.

1207
00:46:40.520 --> 00:46:44.040
They kind of are. And they are. Yeah. But they don't see it as that.

1208
00:46:44.040 --> 00:46:46.920
I know. Of course, they don't see it as that. And that's totally understand why I get that.

1209
00:46:46.920 --> 00:46:51.000
But I see it as like anybody going into the boxing ring, particularly if they're

1210
00:46:51.960 --> 00:46:57.400
very mismatched, you know, like, you would think that there is some real chance of grievous injury

1211
00:46:57.400 --> 00:47:03.160
or like death. You know, I was like, it's insane. And so, I think that people over, the thing is,

1212
00:47:03.160 --> 00:47:06.200
I think people that don't know anything about anything, like don't know anything about climbing,

1213
00:47:06.200 --> 00:47:10.120
look at me climbing a building, they're like, it's 50-50 if he lives or dies, like no idea.

1214
00:47:10.120 --> 00:47:13.640
And you're like, no, if you put this in the context of all the things that I've caught in my life,

1215
00:47:14.200 --> 00:47:17.880
I felt very confident that I wouldn't fall off the building. You know, I was like, you know,

1216
00:47:17.880 --> 00:47:23.640
obviously it's never 100% because like whatever it's life, but you know, it feels like 100%.

1217
00:47:23.640 --> 00:47:27.880
You're like, oh, there's no chance I'm falling off this building. The room is whether you got 500 K

1218
00:47:27.880 --> 00:47:32.360
to climb it from Netflix. Throughout my whole, like, you know, quote-unquote career as a climber,

1219
00:47:32.360 --> 00:47:35.800
I basically have never worried about money and I've always just tried to do the thing and let it all

1220
00:47:35.800 --> 00:47:40.120
play out at the end. And so I've done a ton of work for free over the years. Like, actually,

1221
00:47:40.120 --> 00:47:43.720
we were talking about that half-dome film earlier, whereas like I'm shuffling long. It's like, I did

1222
00:47:43.720 --> 00:47:47.560
that film for free. I did tons of films like that from free. Just because you're kind of like,

1223
00:47:47.560 --> 00:47:50.600
oh, it's part of being a professional climber and I get to go climbing and I'm up with my friends

1224
00:47:50.600 --> 00:47:55.560
filming on a thing or just like, you're working for free. It's fine. But by doing all that stuff for free,

1225
00:47:55.560 --> 00:47:59.480
like I never, I never stress the day or eight. Never, you know, I was like, I don't need to get paid

1226
00:47:59.480 --> 00:48:04.360
to go have fun with my friends on a wall. Like, it's fine. But as a result of that film, you know,

1227
00:48:04.360 --> 00:48:08.600
a year or two later, they want to do in a photoshoot out there for the cover of National Geographic.

1228
00:48:08.600 --> 00:48:13.320
And so you just wind up in other things. And then, and then that got seen and I wound up being

1229
00:48:13.320 --> 00:48:16.680
profiled by 60 minutes, which actually was one of the first sort of career inflection points.

1230
00:48:16.680 --> 00:48:22.200
It was like the 60 minutes profile in 2011 or something. But basically, I've done a ton of work

1231
00:48:22.200 --> 00:48:26.440
for free over my life as all part of like, it's all part of the game. I just love playing the game.

1232
00:48:27.320 --> 00:48:31.320
And so you just like, let it play out. And it's funny because with this building, a lot of people

1233
00:48:31.320 --> 00:48:37.080
thought that I was sort of underpaid by it. But afterward, you know, some people have approached me

1234
00:48:37.080 --> 00:48:40.840
about some bonuses and some other work stuff. And like, basically a lot has already sort of happened.

1235
00:48:40.840 --> 00:48:43.560
And it's only been a couple of weeks since the building. And I'm kind of like, you know,

1236
00:48:43.560 --> 00:48:48.280
you don't need to get paid for the thing itself because it always works, basically.

1237
00:48:49.160 --> 00:48:53.800
I'm kind of like, I don't know. I'm like, don't get hung up on how much you get paid.

1238
00:48:53.800 --> 00:48:57.240
Just do the thing. Make sure it's freaking rad. And it all sorts itself up.

1239
00:48:59.240 --> 00:49:06.120
Yeah. Yeah. That's also been like, that's completely true for my life as well.

1240
00:49:06.200 --> 00:49:09.080
Even this podcast, like when we start the podcast in my kitchen, I mean, this is a wrap

1241
00:49:09.080 --> 00:49:13.240
here of my kitchen. And Jack was here. There was no, there was no payment when we started it.

1242
00:49:13.240 --> 00:49:15.560
Yeah. Exactly. You're just doing a thing. You make it as good as you can.

1243
00:49:15.560 --> 00:49:17.800
And eventually it all sort of works. And you're like, cool.

1244
00:49:17.800 --> 00:49:22.120
I've, because that, that pattern you've just described has played out for 15 years of my life.

1245
00:49:22.120 --> 00:49:26.040
I now, and again, my, my CFO, my commercial director might not love me saying this.

1246
00:49:26.040 --> 00:49:30.280
But they know this about me is, and we even talked about it recently with a particular project,

1247
00:49:30.280 --> 00:49:35.720
is like, don't let the inability to see where the money's going to come from in the near time.

1248
00:49:36.120 --> 00:49:39.160
Stop you pursuing something that you think is going to create value because

1249
00:49:39.960 --> 00:49:46.040
history shows that actually value, like giving value out into the world precedes

1250
00:49:46.920 --> 00:49:51.960
the, the economics. Totally. And so if it happened 15 years of my life,

1251
00:49:51.960 --> 00:49:54.040
where I remember when I started the social media business and people,

1252
00:49:54.040 --> 00:49:58.920
someone, a guy sat me down in Google in London and explained to me why I would never make money

1253
00:49:58.920 --> 00:50:03.560
from that business. He, like, he did the math for me. And the math was solid. He was like,

1254
00:50:03.560 --> 00:50:07.800
if you do once a day, you won't make any money. And I was like, you're like, yeah, but I don't

1255
00:50:07.800 --> 00:50:11.160
think that's true. You know, I just, and you have no evidence. But yeah, but you just know it's

1256
00:50:11.160 --> 00:50:15.480
going to work. Yeah. The Ubersio sat here with me yesterday in that sea. And he was telling me,

1257
00:50:15.480 --> 00:50:19.240
he was like, the thing is, there's this thing called Kevin's paradox, where when some things,

1258
00:50:19.240 --> 00:50:23.240
yeah, when they come to them, because more efficient, whenever people think of things in linear

1259
00:50:23.240 --> 00:50:27.560
progression, but actually there's exponential progression. So when we launched Uber,

1260
00:50:27.560 --> 00:50:31.000
more people started taking taxi. So all of the models about how big this market were,

1261
00:50:31.000 --> 00:50:35.080
well, all wrong. And I find the same in that, and I found the same in podcasting when we started

1262
00:50:35.080 --> 00:50:38.840
about five years ago was, yeah, like you set me down and get, well, Steve CPMs, you're going to have

1263
00:50:38.840 --> 00:50:45.560
to be getting a million downloads to make, like, to earn a living. Like, but you're like, wait and see.

1264
00:50:45.560 --> 00:50:49.480
Yeah. Like, let's catch on and let it, let it happen. I mean, you know, from example of that.

1265
00:50:49.480 --> 00:50:53.320
Yeah. It's always better to focus your energy on being the best of the thing that you're trying to do.

1266
00:50:53.960 --> 00:50:59.480
Then figuring out how to monetize it or, you know, make money off it. It's like, I don't know,

1267
00:50:59.480 --> 00:51:03.800
I mean, my whole life is a clamor. I've always tried to focus on, like, how do you send,

1268
00:51:03.800 --> 00:51:08.520
which in clamoring in terms of means, like, do the hard thing? Like, you always focus on sending,

1269
00:51:08.520 --> 00:51:09.720
and then everything else follows.

1270
00:51:15.000 --> 00:51:16.520
Whoa. What's that on your face?

1271
00:51:16.520 --> 00:51:19.480
This is my bun charge face mask. I've been wearing this for some time now.

1272
00:51:19.480 --> 00:51:23.800
They're a sponsor of the podcast. They put this on for 15, 20 minutes a day. I can sit here in

1273
00:51:23.800 --> 00:51:27.640
the chair and wear it. Boosts my collagen production, helps with fine line blemishes. My

1274
00:51:27.640 --> 00:51:31.480
complexion gets better. And then people, people listen to podcasts because I look better.

1275
00:51:31.480 --> 00:51:36.760
Professional grade equipment in such a small box. It's non-invasive. And having sat here with

1276
00:51:36.760 --> 00:51:41.080
so many of the world's leading health professionals, there's various things that I repeatedly hear

1277
00:51:41.080 --> 00:51:45.160
work and some things I'm a bit skeptical about. This is one of the things that almost all of my

1278
00:51:45.160 --> 00:51:50.200
guests on this show have confirmed works. It is really, really, really effective. And they offer

1279
00:51:50.200 --> 00:51:54.680
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1280
00:51:55.240 --> 00:52:00.120
warranty on all of their products. And their HSA and FSA eligible, giving you tax resavings

1281
00:52:00.120 --> 00:52:07.880
up to 40%. And you can get 20% off when you order through my link at buncharge.com slash D-O-A-C.

1282
00:52:07.880 --> 00:52:12.440
That's buncharge.com slash D-O-A-C. The deal applies sight wide.

1283
00:52:13.080 --> 00:52:17.560
I've had so many founders speak to me and say, why didn't this particular ad that I ran on this

1284
00:52:17.560 --> 00:52:22.040
platform work for me? Maybe the copy wasn't good, the creative wasn't strong, but usually the

1285
00:52:22.040 --> 00:52:26.120
problem is they're not having the right conversation because that ad never reached the right person.

1286
00:52:26.120 --> 00:52:31.320
And if you're in B2B marketing, that is much of the game. And this is where LinkedIn ads solves

1287
00:52:31.320 --> 00:52:36.680
that problem for you. Their targeting is ridiculously specific. You can target by job title,

1288
00:52:36.680 --> 00:52:42.600
seniority, company size, industry, and even someone's skillset. And their network includes over

1289
00:52:42.600 --> 00:52:48.520
a billion professionals, about 130 million of them are decision makers. So when you use LinkedIn ads,

1290
00:52:48.520 --> 00:52:52.920
you're putting your brand in front of the right people. And LinkedIn ads also drive the highest

1291
00:52:52.920 --> 00:52:58.280
B2B return on ad spend across all ad networks in my experience. If you want to give them a try,

1292
00:52:58.280 --> 00:53:05.400
head over to LinkedIn.com slash diary. And when you spend $250 on your first LinkedIn ads campaign,

1293
00:53:05.400 --> 00:53:12.680
you'll get an extra $250 credit from me for the next one. That's LinkedIn.com slash diary.

1294
00:53:12.680 --> 00:53:16.680
Terms and conditions apply. It's funny you're talking about mortality

1295
00:53:16.680 --> 00:53:20.920
early running. I think in the last couple years, my mortality, like realizing that I'm going to

1296
00:53:20.920 --> 00:53:26.040
die someday, has been such a wonderful thing to really remind myself of them like a frequent basis.

1297
00:53:26.920 --> 00:53:31.160
Where do I go? Just because, okay, so there's many things. One of them is

1298
00:53:33.880 --> 00:53:40.440
the whole idea of like sunk cost bias, where you become successful at a thing. And now you have

1299
00:53:40.440 --> 00:53:44.200
something to lose. So people go into a state of loss of version where they start to protect what

1300
00:53:44.360 --> 00:53:47.560
they have. And this narrows your life in a way where you stop taking time and just

1301
00:53:47.560 --> 00:53:50.680
stop taking rest, stop doing new things. And the other thing generally about knowing you're

1302
00:53:50.680 --> 00:53:55.080
going to die and really like reminding yourself of that is it liberates you from getting caught up

1303
00:53:55.080 --> 00:54:00.520
and worrying about things that in the grand scheme of like cosmic rally, I like totally inconsequential.

1304
00:54:00.520 --> 00:54:05.400
Yeah. I was I was hearing someone say the day like, do you know the the name of your great grandfather?

1305
00:54:06.680 --> 00:54:10.840
Juno. Juno's first name. Not really. And do you know the life they lived in what they were worried

1306
00:54:10.840 --> 00:54:14.760
about and how they were embarrassed in their shame? Yeah, exactly. No, you don't know any of that.

1307
00:54:14.760 --> 00:54:18.760
And the point is like if you don't even know your own families. Yeah. Yeah. Bullshit.

1308
00:54:18.760 --> 00:54:22.440
Like nobody else cares. Yeah. But even like extremely famous people, a couple of weeks after

1309
00:54:22.440 --> 00:54:26.520
they trend on Twitter and then a week later, everyone just like gets on with their life together.

1310
00:54:26.520 --> 00:54:30.120
Well, I'm already experiencing that with this stuff. You know, like the building was like insane

1311
00:54:30.120 --> 00:54:33.480
for a moment. But now it's the Olympics and there's like going on in the new cycle. And it's like

1312
00:54:33.480 --> 00:54:37.720
the world moved on. I'm like, great. I'll go back to just like being at home. My family and

1313
00:54:37.720 --> 00:54:41.080
climbing as much as I can. Being at home with your family, you said earlier that when you're in

1314
00:54:41.080 --> 00:54:46.280
that van for 10 years, you wanted a girlfriend. Yeah. Now I'm not being funny, but people that fit

1315
00:54:46.280 --> 00:54:52.200
your profile and to some degree, people that fit my profile struggle in intimate relationships

1316
00:54:52.200 --> 00:54:56.440
for a variety of reasons. And I think I actually saw this in the documentary when I watched Free Solo.

1317
00:54:56.440 --> 00:55:00.840
I saw you had a partner at the time. There was an accident on the cliff side where you fell and she

1318
00:55:00.840 --> 00:55:06.520
was supposed to be protecting you. And generally, I just saw someone who probably is more on the

1319
00:55:06.520 --> 00:55:10.920
less affectionate, more commitment avoidance side of life. Is that accurate?

1320
00:55:11.480 --> 00:55:15.160
I don't know about commitment avoiding it because actually I have had long-term girlfriends

1321
00:55:15.160 --> 00:55:19.320
and things. But yeah, definitely, I'm like less expressive. I'm less emotionally intelligent

1322
00:55:19.320 --> 00:55:23.720
than my wife. Has she ever given you feedback that she wishes you were more emotionally

1323
00:55:25.880 --> 00:55:32.600
available? I mean, I get that. I mean, yeah. Yeah. In different words, perhaps, but yeah, basically.

1324
00:55:33.560 --> 00:55:39.880
Sani. Yeah, Sani. It's her name. She wrote a letter. Oh gosh. That's funny because the first two

1325
00:55:39.880 --> 00:55:47.480
words are, oh gosh, an intimate letter out loud. Oh gosh. She does know me. Obviously, this is your

1326
00:55:47.480 --> 00:55:53.720
worst nightmare, she said. That's, she knows me so well. But we all have to do scary things sometimes,

1327
00:55:53.720 --> 00:56:01.880
Alex, my coach. She said, I remember when you read a book once about a woman who said she was less

1328
00:56:01.880 --> 00:56:07.080
affected by emotions than most people. For her entire life, people tried to convince her

1329
00:56:07.080 --> 00:56:12.200
that she was wrong, that she was suppressing her feelings, but at the end of the day, she just

1330
00:56:12.200 --> 00:56:17.640
wasn't. As you were reading, you turned to me and said something similar, something like,

1331
00:56:17.640 --> 00:56:22.520
everyone wants to believe that I'm burying all these things, these feelings deep inside,

1332
00:56:22.520 --> 00:56:28.040
but I'm just not. And I laughed and I joked, don't worry, I know you're dead inside.

1333
00:56:28.600 --> 00:56:34.280
If I remember correctly, you gave me a hug. But I've thought about this conversation a lot,

1334
00:56:34.280 --> 00:56:39.720
because as the person married to you, I spend a lot of time trying to understand you. And while

1335
00:56:39.720 --> 00:56:45.320
there obviously are emotions that drive you, I was mostly joking about the dead inside part.

1336
00:56:45.320 --> 00:56:50.200
I do think you are far less affected by some feelings like anxiety, fear, shame, guilt or

1337
00:56:50.200 --> 00:56:56.200
self-doubt than many of us. But the longer I know you, the more I see an ocean of something else

1338
00:56:56.200 --> 00:57:00.600
hiding beneath the surface, filling the space that would normally be taken out by all these

1339
00:57:00.600 --> 00:57:05.640
feelings is the ability to truly see things. You move through the world like a hawk,

1340
00:57:05.640 --> 00:57:10.920
while the rest of us are lost in thought. As a climber, you can see the way up a rock face,

1341
00:57:10.920 --> 00:57:16.360
the climber ability of a building, or the laid history of a mountain range. As a father,

1342
00:57:16.360 --> 00:57:21.640
you notice the quiet intrinsic desires of your daughters, or the chores that need doing around

1343
00:57:21.640 --> 00:57:27.320
the house. And as a friend, you see the raw potential in every person that you meet. Sometimes

1344
00:57:27.320 --> 00:57:33.960
this is the hardest thing about you. Nothing goes unnoticed. Neither the strengths nor the weaknesses,

1345
00:57:33.960 --> 00:57:38.760
the moments of dedication or the moments of laziness, you are practical and blunt in your assessment

1346
00:57:38.760 --> 00:57:46.360
of your choices and our lives. But that's also because you see us. And paying attention is love.

1347
00:57:46.360 --> 00:57:51.480
Your ability to see the world so clearly allows you to also appreciate it more clearly. And that

1348
00:57:51.480 --> 00:57:58.200
is a special form of your love. Perhaps there's a well of emotion in there after all.

1349
00:57:59.400 --> 00:58:05.080
But for the purposes of this letter, Alex, I want to give you your gift back to you and tell you

1350
00:58:05.080 --> 00:58:10.680
what I see, particularly in the last four years since we had kids. Because I think the way you move

1351
00:58:10.680 --> 00:58:17.320
through the world with us is a unique love story. I see you rushing down the trail from the climbing

1352
00:58:17.400 --> 00:58:23.640
area so you can get back in time for dinner with me and the girls. I see you flying the red eye

1353
00:58:23.640 --> 00:58:29.240
so you can be home a day sooner. I see you cramming in your gym session, even when you have a huge

1354
00:58:29.240 --> 00:58:35.320
goal on the horizon, so that I have time for my workout too. I see you pushing your body to the

1355
00:58:35.320 --> 00:58:40.360
absolute limit during the day, but still managing to stay awake long enough to chat to me at night.

1356
00:58:40.920 --> 00:58:45.880
I see you taking on an extra day of travel, just to convince someone with money to donate your

1357
00:58:45.880 --> 00:58:51.240
foundation and help save the planet. I see you adjusting your whole training schedule for work

1358
00:58:51.240 --> 00:58:56.520
opportunities in order to provide a wonderful life for me and the girls. I see the insane juggling

1359
00:58:56.520 --> 00:59:02.760
act you do every day to not only be a great athlete, but a great dad and husband. I know it's not

1360
00:59:02.760 --> 00:59:10.680
easy, but I see it and I appreciate it. We love you as you are, Alex. Not overly emotional,

1361
00:59:10.760 --> 00:59:18.760
but present, committed, and always seeing what others miss. Use sounding.

1362
00:59:21.640 --> 00:59:27.240
She is very astute. I was like this. I was like, that's why I'm married.

1363
00:59:30.760 --> 00:59:36.840
She is very astute. I learned a lot about you from reading this.

1364
00:59:37.400 --> 00:59:43.800
What do you think? We all show our love in different ways, and sometimes I think the conventional

1365
00:59:43.800 --> 00:59:50.280
way that the world tries to measure love is through verbal expression of it and romantic gestures

1366
00:59:50.280 --> 00:59:56.120
and those kinds of things, but there's another type of person who often struggles in life's

1367
00:59:56.120 --> 01:00:02.120
expectations of what love looks like, who show it through acts of service. That was literally

1368
01:00:02.200 --> 01:00:06.600
one of our last big arguments about something like him, Fedio and that, not like a total blow-up,

1369
01:00:06.600 --> 01:00:12.440
but basically she was sort of like, I just need more of the verbal kind, and I was kind of like,

1370
01:00:12.440 --> 01:00:16.120
I'm literally doing all the things, and I always sort of say, you know, action, speak louder

1371
01:00:16.120 --> 01:00:19.640
in the words. I'm kind of like, if you're doing all the things, you're doing the correct things,

1372
01:00:19.640 --> 01:00:23.240
you don't need to talk about them because you're doing the things, you know, and that was basically

1373
01:00:23.960 --> 01:00:29.000
back and forth. I mean, I took her point that occasionally you have to say the right thing too.

1374
01:00:29.000 --> 01:00:35.160
Well, I have the same argument on repeat with my fiance. She needs the words too.

1375
01:00:35.160 --> 01:00:38.120
Yeah, she has a different language. She's speaking Spanish, I'm speaking French.

1376
01:00:38.120 --> 01:00:43.480
Yeah. And also, by the way, I have to say, at some deep level, again, because of my early

1377
01:00:43.480 --> 01:00:47.880
context where, like you, I wished my parents would break up. I wish they would just get a divorce

1378
01:00:47.880 --> 01:00:51.880
because the model of love I saw was not a happy one. I think at some deep level, I have a commitment

1379
01:00:51.880 --> 01:00:56.680
problem or an intimacy problem where even growing up, saying, calling some of my best friend

1380
01:00:56.680 --> 01:01:01.240
somewhat made me cringe, like saying, saying affectionate words to someone at some deep level

1381
01:01:01.240 --> 01:01:06.200
made me feel deeply uncomfortable. And so you can imagine me being ding. And then I've,

1382
01:01:06.200 --> 01:01:11.080
I think like oftentimes we go for the opposite in the person we end up marrying or

1383
01:01:11.080 --> 01:01:16.520
yeah, certainly for me. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, my wife is like way more emotionally intelligent than

1384
01:01:16.520 --> 01:01:21.320
anyone in Mad Harryston family. Yeah, same. This is how you build a rich life is that you basically,

1385
01:01:21.320 --> 01:01:25.000
like, I mean, it's like hiring. You find members of the team who have all the strengths that you

1386
01:01:25.000 --> 01:01:29.080
need. Yeah. It's like the things that you can't do. And it's like filling your blind spots,

1387
01:01:29.080 --> 01:01:34.360
basically. Have you got better at saying the words? No. Any progress? Oh, yeah, progress,

1388
01:01:34.360 --> 01:01:39.000
probably, but very slow. But in a way, that's great. You know, because we're going to be married

1389
01:01:39.000 --> 01:01:43.240
the rest of our lives. And so that could be another 50, 60 years together. And so you need to see

1390
01:01:43.240 --> 01:01:47.960
incremental progress. Because really, there's nothing better in life than making progress. And I've

1391
01:01:47.960 --> 01:01:52.200
started at such a low point and I'm making progress so slowly that I basically have a good project

1392
01:01:52.200 --> 01:01:56.120
for the rest of my life. Oh, and we could kind of touch on it before, but one of the things that's

1393
01:01:56.120 --> 01:01:59.880
been front of mind for me at the moment is actually something I saw in your personality test,

1394
01:01:59.880 --> 01:02:06.120
which was you were high in perseverance. And we talked earlier on about like mastery and how it's

1395
01:02:06.120 --> 01:02:12.920
important to persist to get good at something. But this has just been front of mind for me,

1396
01:02:12.920 --> 01:02:16.600
I think for a long time, because even I like as a podcast, I realized that a lot of the game,

1397
01:02:16.600 --> 01:02:23.480
I'm like five years in now. And when I look at someone like Joe Rogan, he's been going for like,

1398
01:02:23.480 --> 01:02:30.200
I don't know, 15, 17 years or more. And I get like so much of the game in becoming great at

1399
01:02:30.200 --> 01:02:35.560
something. It's grinding. It's just going for an unusual amount. It's like compounding interest.

1400
01:02:35.560 --> 01:02:38.520
I'm like, look at Warren Buffett. Have you ever seen stuff with Warren Buffett where it's like,

1401
01:02:38.520 --> 01:02:42.360
you know, it took him whatever 40 years to make his first couple million or whatever,

1402
01:02:42.360 --> 01:02:46.520
took him another like 10 or 15 years to make his first billion. And then it took him like whatever,

1403
01:02:46.520 --> 01:02:49.720
in the last eight years, he's made like $100 billion, you know, because his whole wealth is like,

1404
01:02:49.720 --> 01:02:53.480
woo, you're kind of like basically if you put enough time into something and you let it compound,

1405
01:02:53.480 --> 01:02:57.480
it like slowly gets bigger and bigger. It's exactly that. And so I've been thinking about all

1406
01:02:57.480 --> 01:03:01.240
those numbers are incorrect, but the shape of the graph is correct. We'll put it on the screen,

1407
01:03:01.240 --> 01:03:07.880
so somebody correct my numbers. But the principle is correct. It's the same as this graph here that

1408
01:03:07.880 --> 01:03:12.600
you drew of your career. It's the same as the podcast growth where three years no one was listening

1409
01:03:12.600 --> 01:03:16.760
and then we have this. Yeah. And I think as a principle, that's why you focus on doing something

1410
01:03:16.760 --> 01:03:20.280
about you because with the podcast, like if you feel like you're doing something useful and that

1411
01:03:20.280 --> 01:03:23.880
you think it's cool and you think there's something there, you just keep doing it and eventually

1412
01:03:23.880 --> 01:03:31.400
people get on board. Okay, so on that train of thought, I've thought a lot about how do I create

1413
01:03:31.400 --> 01:03:37.560
the conditions to out persist other people in the areas that I love. And one such thing, for

1414
01:03:37.560 --> 01:03:41.560
example, with a podcast is like never have a conversation that I'm not looking forward to,

1415
01:03:41.560 --> 01:03:45.000
because that's unsustainable over the long term. Totally. Because then it feels like hard work

1416
01:03:45.000 --> 01:03:48.840
as opposed to something that we're like, this is amazing. Yeah. So when I look at my cat, they'll say,

1417
01:03:48.840 --> 01:03:53.160
oh, this person wants to come and they've got 160 gazillion followers. But you're like, I don't

1418
01:03:53.160 --> 01:03:57.320
care about that person. Yeah, because if I use that as a decision-free month or six, 10 years,

1419
01:03:57.320 --> 01:04:02.280
I'll quit. Yeah. Do you think about that like the conditions to out persist in your domain?

1420
01:04:02.280 --> 01:04:05.960
I mean, kind of, yeah. I mean, I haven't had to think about it too much because I freaking love

1421
01:04:05.960 --> 01:04:10.200
climbing in all its forms. And so basically climbing it comes easily. But like in terms of the

1422
01:04:10.200 --> 01:04:15.080
work stuff I do, I figured I think I was starting to need before we started recording. But I host

1423
01:04:15.080 --> 01:04:18.920
this podcast called Planet Visionaries. It's like a Rolex perpetual planet. Like I interview

1424
01:04:18.920 --> 01:04:23.160
scientists and conservationists and whatever. And for whatever reason, every time I do this podcast,

1425
01:04:23.160 --> 01:04:26.680
I come out of it feeling all energized and like, I should train more. I should study. I should

1426
01:04:26.680 --> 01:04:31.160
learn something basically because the people that I'm interviewing are also uniquely good at what

1427
01:04:31.160 --> 01:04:34.120
they do. And they're all trying to save the world in different ways. It's like, you know, marine

1428
01:04:34.280 --> 01:04:38.920
biologists like exploring the deep sea floor and things like that. Yesterday I interviewed these two

1429
01:04:39.720 --> 01:04:44.840
women about the fact that we've only explored .001 percent of the deep sea, which represents

1430
01:04:44.840 --> 01:04:48.760
two-thirds of the planet. So basically two-thirds of the planet we know like literally nothing about.

1431
01:04:48.760 --> 01:04:54.360
And there's like this rich underwater world of like cool stuff going on in the ocean floor that

1432
01:04:54.360 --> 01:04:57.880
we've never seen and nothing about. And it's insane. And I was like, that's so cool. And I got

1433
01:04:57.880 --> 01:05:01.800
all fired up about it. And so I come out of work thing, you know, quoting quote work things like

1434
01:05:01.800 --> 01:05:06.520
that. And I'm like energized and excited to learn and grow, you know, push myself. And I'm kind of

1435
01:05:06.520 --> 01:05:10.280
like, that's the type of work that I want to do as much as possible. And then there are other kinds of

1436
01:05:10.280 --> 01:05:13.320
things where, you know, I'll do like corporate speaking or something where you show up at a conference.

1437
01:05:13.320 --> 01:05:18.040
And you just like get ground down. You know, when you leave and you go back to your hotel and all

1438
01:05:18.040 --> 01:05:22.280
you can do is just like, why they're on the bed for an hour being like, oh, what am I doing my life?

1439
01:05:22.280 --> 01:05:26.360
You know, you feel like kind of wrecked. So it's like, if you can focus on the work where you come out

1440
01:05:26.360 --> 01:05:31.640
of feeling inspired and like excited to try hard versus the work that makes you want to

1441
01:05:31.800 --> 01:05:35.320
like mindlessly scroll on something for hours. You know, me because sometimes you're just like,

1442
01:05:35.320 --> 01:05:39.720
oh, I'm just so over it. Yes, once said that's I mean, in my career, they said like,

1443
01:05:39.720 --> 01:05:44.680
whenever you find domains that make you feel expansive, like totally, you should double down on

1444
01:05:44.680 --> 01:05:48.360
those domains because you're, that's the path to master. You're going to be able to continue.

1445
01:05:48.360 --> 01:05:53.160
Yeah, because you can just keep pushing super hard. And yeah, for climbing, that's always just been

1446
01:05:53.160 --> 01:05:57.560
that. Like I just forget love climbing. It's so great. You should do it more. I know you,

1447
01:05:57.560 --> 01:06:02.920
you make us all want to climb more Alex. That's one of the, I think the great consequences of

1448
01:06:02.920 --> 01:06:06.280
watching you do something like Taipei. I mean, there was loads of kids in the streets of Taipei.

1449
01:06:06.280 --> 01:06:09.640
I think that we're all trying to climb buildings. There was loads of like funny videos. Then

1450
01:06:09.640 --> 01:06:13.160
obviously they were really getting like a meter up. Oh, yeah, before they fell. I was like, hopefully,

1451
01:06:13.160 --> 01:06:18.360
it's, yeah, hopefully it's not too much copy-getting, but yeah, we got some crazy numbers from Netflix

1452
01:06:18.360 --> 01:06:23.720
that I think half of people or more than half of people who have an Netflix subscription in in Taiwan

1453
01:06:23.800 --> 01:06:29.160
watch the building climb on like in in Taiwan, it was like in sand, like literally everybody watch.

1454
01:06:29.960 --> 01:06:35.960
It's such a, it's such a singular striking building in Taipei. It's like a total national icon,

1455
01:06:35.960 --> 01:06:39.560
you know, it's like a, it's, it's insane. Have you already started thinking about what you're

1456
01:06:39.560 --> 01:06:43.160
going to do next? People are always like, you know, what's your next big thing? And I'm kind of like,

1457
01:06:43.160 --> 01:06:47.000
you know, if you just focus on doing lots of little things all the time, occasionally the big

1458
01:06:47.000 --> 01:06:52.520
thing just happened. And you can't totally know ahead of time. Well, so at least, so I mean,

1459
01:06:52.520 --> 01:06:56.200
I have climbing goals going back 20 years. I have all these notes on my phone. I always have,

1460
01:06:56.200 --> 01:06:59.560
like, to do lists of, especially when I lived in the band and I was traveling, you're like

1461
01:06:59.560 --> 01:07:03.320
seasonally moving between climbing destinations on stop. So I'd lay, I'd layer out all these

1462
01:07:03.320 --> 01:07:06.760
different types of goals, like I want to do these types of things. Certain goals lead to other

1463
01:07:06.760 --> 01:07:10.680
goals because they're same type of fitness, let's say. So like doing really big things help you do

1464
01:07:10.680 --> 01:07:15.240
even bigger things later, but doing like really hard and intense things help you do other hard and

1465
01:07:15.240 --> 01:07:19.160
intense things later. You know, so in some ways, in the way you stack your goals, you can kind of

1466
01:07:19.160 --> 01:07:24.600
build up to big things or like build up to really hard things or whatever. And so I've always had

1467
01:07:24.600 --> 01:07:30.040
running to do lists of like, I'm going to try to do all these climbs this year. And realistically,

1468
01:07:30.040 --> 01:07:33.800
I normally do like half of them or some of them I never even get to because it's like the weather's

1469
01:07:33.800 --> 01:07:37.800
not good. I wind up going to a different area. I don't go to that that climbing destination at all

1470
01:07:37.800 --> 01:07:43.080
and so I never even try the project. But I've always had tons of goals like that. And looking back

1471
01:07:43.240 --> 01:07:49.240
years and years of that type of those types of lists, I just see that it's slightly hard to predict

1472
01:07:49.240 --> 01:07:53.160
when you're going to achieve the things that are like cutting edge or groundbreaking or whatever.

1473
01:07:53.160 --> 01:07:57.640
You just have to keep doing the things nonstop. And every once in a while, some of them rise to

1474
01:07:57.640 --> 01:08:00.760
the top. I mean, this kind of goes back to the same like value creating things like you don't know

1475
01:08:00.760 --> 01:08:04.440
which things are going to be rad. You just do all the things and some of them wind up being rad.

1476
01:08:05.800 --> 01:08:10.440
And the decision framework there is to just do things you love and that challenge you.

1477
01:08:10.920 --> 01:08:14.680
Yeah, things that push you and like things that are new for you that are hard for you that are

1478
01:08:14.680 --> 01:08:19.960
challenging the right ways. But you just can't, you don't always know ahead of time which of those

1479
01:08:19.960 --> 01:08:24.840
things are going to stand out or not. But you just do them anyway because you're learning from them,

1480
01:08:24.840 --> 01:08:29.240
you're excited about them. They're hard. And then you know, some are cool. Some aren't. Some you

1481
01:08:29.240 --> 01:08:33.720
never even try. And like that's fine. You just keep doing things. The CEO of you, but Daryl was

1482
01:08:33.720 --> 01:08:37.720
was at the yesterday and one of the contrarian pieces of life advice he gave which is kind of

1483
01:08:37.720 --> 01:08:41.960
overlaid with what you just said. If he said people need to stop making young people in

1484
01:08:41.960 --> 01:08:47.400
particular need to stop making life, life plans. Because it narrows them to the serendipity and

1485
01:08:47.400 --> 01:08:53.160
opportunity and things that might happen if they're broader than mine did. Well, or my wife and I

1486
01:08:53.160 --> 01:08:57.240
sometimes joke, it's that we both have very strong opinions loosely held where it's like, oh,

1487
01:08:57.240 --> 01:09:00.840
I'm totally sure of a thing right up until I get some data that shows that that's wrong and then

1488
01:09:00.840 --> 01:09:03.720
you're like, I never ran through that way. And that's kind of how a lot of my to-do lists have

1489
01:09:03.720 --> 01:09:08.520
always been or like my goals where I'm like, oh, I have all these goals. But if I take a slight fork

1490
01:09:08.520 --> 01:09:13.240
in my year where it's like turns out, you know, for whatever reason, like something else lines up

1491
01:09:13.240 --> 01:09:16.440
and it makes sense to do all these other things. And I'm just like, oh, right turn and just change.

1492
01:09:17.160 --> 01:09:20.360
You know, and it overlaps with what you said earlier about like not worrying so much about like how

1493
01:09:20.360 --> 01:09:25.240
much it's going to pay me today or what the big thing is or it's kind of like just just keep doing

1494
01:09:25.240 --> 01:09:30.840
cool things and it all worked out. I would love if we could scan your brain and look at all the

1495
01:09:30.840 --> 01:09:34.440
cancers, especially in the context I learned about this particular region of the brain called the

1496
01:09:34.440 --> 01:09:39.000
anterior mid-singulate cortex, which I heard Andrew human talking about. And it's a part of the

1497
01:09:39.000 --> 01:09:44.360
brain they discovered quite recently that lights up when you do things that you don't want to do.

1498
01:09:45.000 --> 01:09:48.280
So not things that you enjoy doing that are somewhat like difficult like running a marathon,

1499
01:09:48.280 --> 01:09:53.320
but things that you actively avoid and resist but do anyway, pain, fear, effort, discipline.

1500
01:09:53.320 --> 01:09:57.560
This is the circuit that decides whether you quit or you push through and it grows the more you do

1501
01:09:57.560 --> 01:10:00.920
things you don't want to do. So it's like they now consider it to be the muscle of willpower in

1502
01:10:00.920 --> 01:10:06.920
the brain. Look at athletes, they have bigger ones when they make sense who are struggling or less

1503
01:10:06.920 --> 01:10:10.920
and more sedentary or struggling with their way. They often have smaller ones. Anyone that

1504
01:10:10.920 --> 01:10:17.480
avoids discomfort has a smaller one. So in the context of the way you've lived your life,

1505
01:10:17.480 --> 01:10:21.400
you've continued to do things that are hard. I mean, you can love climbing, but you don't necessarily

1506
01:10:21.400 --> 01:10:26.360
love yeah, but just doing like one more set every time is like that's that's always a challenge.

1507
01:10:26.360 --> 01:10:31.000
Yeah, always like my whole body hurts, but I'll just do a little more. Yeah, and I think the

1508
01:10:31.000 --> 01:10:34.600
thing I guess here is like about neuroplasticity, which is going to be a ton of people listening

1509
01:10:34.600 --> 01:10:40.120
right now that are so far away from their Taipei, from their Taipei 101. They're so far away from

1510
01:10:40.120 --> 01:10:43.720
that. They're in a job they just don't like. They're maybe the finance brother, you know,

1511
01:10:43.720 --> 01:10:48.680
you talked about a second ago, and their life is absent of adventure. And they probably look at

1512
01:10:48.680 --> 01:10:53.080
you and go, well, you know, he just has something I don't have. I know, but I just don't, you know,

1513
01:10:53.080 --> 01:10:57.000
I mean, I've structured my life in a different way, and I've made many different choices and all

1514
01:10:57.000 --> 01:11:01.560
that, but that's the things I don't really think I have anything different. I mean, I actually hate

1515
01:11:01.560 --> 01:11:06.920
all the like brain stuff because people always like use that to put me in this box of like,

1516
01:11:06.920 --> 01:11:10.360
well, you're different. And I'm like, well, I'm not really like I'm a middle class suburban kid,

1517
01:11:10.360 --> 01:11:16.200
both my parents like nobody in my family is athletic. Like nobody is good at sports at all, you know,

1518
01:11:16.200 --> 01:11:21.560
it's like like basically if you were to like look at the, you know, like if I was a video game

1519
01:11:21.560 --> 01:11:24.680
character and you were to look at all my little bars, you'd be like, that guy's not going to be an

1520
01:11:24.680 --> 01:11:28.200
athlete. Like he's not good at this. You know, it's like my parents professors and we freaking red

1521
01:11:28.200 --> 01:11:34.440
books. Like I'm not there's no aptitude for anything really. And I was like, bad at sports as a kid,

1522
01:11:34.440 --> 01:11:38.840
I'm not good with balls. Like, you know, there's no reason. But I mean, really, I just have loved climbing

1523
01:11:38.840 --> 01:11:43.000
enough that I've been willing to put in a tremendous amount of time and effort and eventually get good

1524
01:11:43.000 --> 01:11:46.280
at it. And I'm kind of like they hear people say like, oh, your brain's different. You're kind of

1525
01:11:46.280 --> 01:11:50.200
like, well, everybody's brain is a little bit different in some ways. It doesn't mean that you can't

1526
01:11:50.200 --> 01:11:54.440
devote yourself to something that you care about. But with this in mind, and with all the neuroscientists

1527
01:11:54.440 --> 01:11:59.560
that have interviewed, your brain is different in part because you've taken, you've done different

1528
01:11:59.560 --> 01:12:04.200
things. And neuroplasticity says you can change your brain right the way up throughout your entire

1529
01:12:04.200 --> 01:12:08.200
life. One of my friends, Tom Billews, a good example of that. He's a big podcast. You might

1530
01:12:08.200 --> 01:12:11.880
know Tom Billew. I don't know if you know so. But he, you know, he was, I can't remember the

1531
01:12:11.880 --> 01:12:17.480
rough age, but I'm going to say he was 30 years old. He was so in his words lazy that he would

1532
01:12:17.480 --> 01:12:21.640
lay in bed all day. When his girlfriend came home, he said he would jump up out of bed just so

1533
01:12:21.640 --> 01:12:25.960
she didn't believe that he was in bed all day. And he didn't want to be embarrassed. And when he

1534
01:12:25.960 --> 01:12:31.720
asked his, at the time, girlfriend, if he could ask her dad if he could marry her, dad said no.

1535
01:12:31.720 --> 01:12:36.680
He was, he described, it was like lazy and down and out. Over the next 10 years, he makes decisions

1536
01:12:37.400 --> 01:12:42.440
to take on more difficult challenges. Builds a billion dollar company sells it. If you meet this guy

1537
01:12:42.440 --> 01:12:46.760
today, you'd think like, athlete, genius, super smart, motivated. You'd beg him for advice on

1538
01:12:46.760 --> 01:12:51.240
discipline and motivation. Like, he's that kind of guy. What, yes, or what do you do? He ran a book

1539
01:12:51.240 --> 01:12:56.600
about neuroplasticity. And he realized that he wasn't stuck. He read, he learned about neuroplasticity,

1540
01:12:56.600 --> 01:13:00.280
which means that at any age in your life, the decisions you make change your brain. And that's why

1541
01:13:00.280 --> 01:13:05.720
I love this discovery of this anterior mid-sincular cortex, because it means that like maybe, in part,

1542
01:13:05.720 --> 01:13:12.520
the reason why I'm not taking on my Taipei 101 is because I haven't taken on my Taipei 101.

1543
01:13:12.520 --> 01:13:18.920
Yeah, well, you haven't taken on your Taipei 101. Your Taipei, your Taipei 12 or whatever,

1544
01:13:18.920 --> 01:13:23.160
just the little pieces at the bottom, because that's the thing is like, and actually, this is

1545
01:13:23.160 --> 01:13:27.880
why when you ask about any big goals, sometimes I think the big goals are slightly limiting,

1546
01:13:27.880 --> 01:13:33.160
because if you're your friend who's laying in bed, Taipei 101 is not the appropriate goal.

1547
01:13:33.160 --> 01:13:37.880
You know what I mean? You need Taipei four. You need to just get out and do a little thing.

1548
01:13:37.880 --> 01:13:41.320
You need to do a cheese from success. You need to see that you can do something. And you need to

1549
01:13:41.320 --> 01:13:47.640
take on appropriately sized challenges, because I think having a great white whale is great sometimes,

1550
01:13:47.640 --> 01:13:53.080
but that's not always what you need. And partially, for me, right now, we're raising two little kids,

1551
01:13:53.080 --> 01:13:56.920
and we're just like in the midst of it. It's like bed time right now is hanging. It's just like,

1552
01:13:56.920 --> 01:14:02.200
it's a lot. And I'm like, I don't need an LCAP size goal right now, because we're just trying to

1553
01:14:02.200 --> 01:14:06.840
make it through a certain phase of life, really. Not to say that I'll never have other big goals,

1554
01:14:06.840 --> 01:14:13.000
but you're kind of like, you want your goals to be appropriate to the time and space that you have

1555
01:14:13.000 --> 01:14:17.800
available. I have this psychologist say to me about this idea of just setting yourself a Taipei

1556
01:14:17.800 --> 01:14:23.640
one, like a small goal. The reason why people don't do it is because they see it as almost so

1557
01:14:23.640 --> 01:14:28.680
embarrassingly small that they don't think it matters. Yeah, but I mean, that's why you'd focus on

1558
01:14:28.680 --> 01:14:31.880
it doesn't matter to you. Like, is it something that you haven't done? Like, is it good for your

1559
01:14:31.880 --> 01:14:36.680
growth? Is it challenging for you? It's good enough. But that seems like college has told me that

1560
01:14:36.680 --> 01:14:40.680
when they were dealing with a patient who was so demotivated and that they couldn't get out of their

1561
01:14:40.680 --> 01:14:45.640
bedroom, which was stacked to the ceiling with plates and cutlery, that day one was bringing the

1562
01:14:45.640 --> 01:14:51.560
Hoover into the room. That was day one. Day two was plugging it in. That was day two. And by day 30,

1563
01:14:51.560 --> 01:14:54.520
they're outside. This is someone who was scared of going outside. They're outside walking around

1564
01:14:54.520 --> 01:14:59.080
the room is clean. But he said to me that people don't take that first step because it's so

1565
01:14:59.080 --> 01:15:02.200
embarrassingly small that it's almost shameful to say like today, what you're going to bring the

1566
01:15:02.200 --> 01:15:05.960
Hoover in. Yeah, but that's the thing is it's always better to take a step than to not take a step.

1567
01:15:07.400 --> 01:15:10.760
You know, and that's, yeah, I mean, that's how I've always felt with all these things.

1568
01:15:10.760 --> 01:15:13.240
You're like, well, you might as well go out and do the thing, like do something.

1569
01:15:15.000 --> 01:15:18.760
You remember the being I was like, you know, like perfect, be the enemy of good, like you do the

1570
01:15:18.760 --> 01:15:24.520
good thing, you know, because it like it's like don't let perfectionism cripple you. You know,

1571
01:15:24.520 --> 01:15:28.520
it's like, that's why I think, you know, type I 101 if that's kind of like your perfect goal.

1572
01:15:29.080 --> 01:15:33.080
It's like, don't let that hold you back from going out and climbing type A4 or type A8 or,

1573
01:15:33.080 --> 01:15:36.520
you know, like some of the surrounding little buildings, because it's like a practice on which you can.

1574
01:15:36.520 --> 01:15:39.000
I guess back to this point of perseverance, I read Equipment E as I go that said,

1575
01:15:39.000 --> 01:15:41.560
um, greatness doesn't exist. Greatness is just good repeated.

1576
01:15:42.440 --> 01:15:46.200
I mean, this is what I'm saying about having lots of little goals is that I would actually say that

1577
01:15:46.200 --> 01:15:50.200
if you repeat good enough, every once in a while some of those are great actually, but you just

1578
01:15:50.200 --> 01:15:54.840
don't totally know. You know, I noticed that a lot like in my climbing life, like in the long

1579
01:15:54.840 --> 01:15:59.640
arc of climbing, there are tons of things I did in E 70, we're like in a season I'd have like five

1580
01:15:59.640 --> 01:16:03.800
or six goals in E 70 and I do all the things. And one of them for whatever reason would wind up

1581
01:16:03.800 --> 01:16:08.520
being like that's rad and it would, you know, like makes climbing news and things like that.

1582
01:16:08.520 --> 01:16:12.120
And the other ones, you know, maybe less so, but you don't totally know ahead of time which ones

1583
01:16:12.120 --> 01:16:16.440
are cool or not and which ones are going to stand the test of time. Like at one point in the not

1584
01:16:16.440 --> 01:16:20.760
too distant past, I held a speed record on every major formation in E 70. Now a few of them have

1585
01:16:20.760 --> 01:16:24.600
been broken over time and, but those are the kinds of things where you never really know like how

1586
01:16:24.600 --> 01:16:27.960
long those types of records will last because sometimes you do them and then your friend comes and

1587
01:16:27.960 --> 01:16:31.080
breaks at the next season and you're like cool and you go back and forth and it's all part of a fun

1588
01:16:31.080 --> 01:16:35.400
game. And then some of them you set a speed record in the last like 15 years and you're sort of like,

1589
01:16:35.400 --> 01:16:39.720
oh, I didn't realize that this was going to be like such a milestone, you know, it reminds me of

1590
01:16:40.440 --> 01:16:43.880
the Steve Jobs quote about how you can only really connect the dots looking backwards.

1591
01:16:43.880 --> 01:16:49.080
Totally. Totally. Steve Jobs quote from his commencement speech was, you can't connect the dots

1592
01:16:49.080 --> 01:16:53.080
looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will

1593
01:16:53.080 --> 01:17:00.840
somehow connect in your future. Clarity isn't a prerequisite for action. It's the reward you get

1594
01:17:00.840 --> 01:17:04.440
after you move. And that's that's the thing is I think because I do so many interviews with like,

1595
01:17:04.440 --> 01:17:08.360
you know, when was the moment you decided to be a professional climber and I'm like, there's no moment

1596
01:17:08.360 --> 01:17:12.120
like I just did the thing for years and years and now looking backward, it looks like this amazing

1597
01:17:12.200 --> 01:17:15.800
arc, you know, but at the moment, you're always, you know, I spent years being like, I go back to

1598
01:17:15.800 --> 01:17:19.560
college, like, do I need to agree? Like, and then I spent a few years wondering if I should go back

1599
01:17:19.560 --> 01:17:23.080
and get like an executive MBA or something or something because I was like, I don't want to go back

1600
01:17:23.080 --> 01:17:27.160
to undergrad. I've been living in my band for 10 years and, but you're kind of like still, I need

1601
01:17:27.160 --> 01:17:30.680
that validation. I need, you know, I want to jump through the hoops and then really it's only now

1602
01:17:30.680 --> 01:17:35.720
that I'm kind of like, I don't think I need that. And part of the reason why we so many of us get

1603
01:17:35.720 --> 01:17:38.600
forced into procrastination when we're trying to connect the dots looking forward is because we

1604
01:17:38.600 --> 01:17:41.800
face these questions from society, which is like, what should plan, what should career, what are

1605
01:17:41.800 --> 01:17:45.800
you aiming at? And we don't have answers, so we fill in the gaps. We have to say something to

1606
01:17:45.800 --> 01:17:49.880
mum and dad. You have to say, like, what's the plan for the future? You can't say nothing. No, no, no,

1607
01:17:49.880 --> 01:17:54.040
are you just saying, I'm living. I'm just letting it play out or just see what happens. It's going to be

1608
01:17:54.040 --> 01:18:00.280
a grand adventure. And I mean, I kind of hope my kids feel confident with that, you know, just kind

1609
01:18:00.280 --> 01:18:04.120
of like, well, I'm doing the best I can. I'm practicing the things that I care about and we'll see

1610
01:18:04.120 --> 01:18:08.840
how it plays out. We'll see how it plays out. Because either way, it's going to play out with me

1611
01:18:08.840 --> 01:18:12.040
and them and everybody else dying. You're like, you know how it's going to play out at the end,

1612
01:18:12.040 --> 01:18:16.280
and so you're kind of like the whole space up to there is like, oh, you just have to fill it with

1613
01:18:16.280 --> 01:18:20.600
as many things that you're proud of as you can. It's a remarkably simple way to live in a world

1614
01:18:20.600 --> 01:18:26.280
that's increasingly complex, Alex. Well, I mean, it doesn't need to be that complex.

1615
01:18:28.040 --> 01:18:31.800
This is why I think spending some time in nature like helps remind you of some of those sorts of

1616
01:18:32.600 --> 01:18:35.720
things. This company that I've just invested in is growing like crazy. I want to be the one to

1617
01:18:35.720 --> 01:18:39.160
tell you about it because I think it's going to create such a huge productivity advantage for you.

1618
01:18:39.160 --> 01:18:43.320
This flow is an app that you can get on your computer and on your phone on all your devices,

1619
01:18:43.320 --> 01:18:46.520
and it allows you to speak to your technology. So instead of me writing at an email,

1620
01:18:46.520 --> 01:18:52.120
I click one button on my phone and I can just speak the email into existence and it uses AI to

1621
01:18:52.120 --> 01:18:56.120
clean up what I was saying. And then when I'm done, I just hit this one button here and the whole

1622
01:18:56.120 --> 01:19:02.520
email is written for me and it's saving me so much time in a day because Whisper learns how I write,

1623
01:19:02.520 --> 01:19:06.600
so on WhatsApp it knows how I am, a little bit more casual, on email a little bit more professional.

1624
01:19:06.600 --> 01:19:10.120
And also, there's this really interesting thing they've just done. I can create little phrases

1625
01:19:10.120 --> 01:19:14.760
to automatically do the work for me. I can just say Jack's LinkedIn and it copies Jack's LinkedIn

1626
01:19:14.760 --> 01:19:18.600
profile for me because it knows who Jack is in my life. This is saving me a huge amount of time.

1627
01:19:18.600 --> 01:19:22.920
This company is growing like absolute crazy and this is why I invested in the business and why

1628
01:19:22.920 --> 01:19:27.480
they're now a sponsor of this show. And Whisper Flow is frankly becoming the worst kept secret

1629
01:19:27.480 --> 01:19:36.840
in business productivity entrepreneurship. Check it out now at Whisper Flow, spot w-i-s-p-r-f-l-o-w-dot-a-i-slash-diven.

1630
01:19:36.840 --> 01:19:42.120
It will be a game change if you if you knew that you only had one week left to live and this was

1631
01:19:42.120 --> 01:19:47.240
the week and you could only do one last climb. You go back and recapture the record, go do our cap

1632
01:19:47.320 --> 01:19:53.160
again, I don't know, a different building. You have one week and assume you're sufficiently prepared

1633
01:19:53.160 --> 01:19:57.320
for whatever the climb would be. What would you do? I'm allowed to do like cutting-edge futuristic

1634
01:19:57.320 --> 01:20:02.600
things. Yeah. Oh, well, well then I'm like, I don't know. I mean the birch like it'd be insane.

1635
01:20:02.600 --> 01:20:08.280
But no, like the free triple in Yosemite is like the three biggest walls in Yosemite.

1636
01:20:11.160 --> 01:20:15.800
It's LCAP, Half Dome and Mount Watkins. Mount Watkins is kind of like a half-dome sized wall

1637
01:20:15.800 --> 01:20:20.200
that's further a valley. So it was a three big walls in Yosemite. So Tommy Caldwell and I have

1638
01:20:20.200 --> 01:20:24.040
free climb the triple. The two of us did it together with ropes, but we like climb the whole thing.

1639
01:20:24.680 --> 01:20:29.160
And then I've soloed the triple. So I've done all three with ropes by myself. It was like 18 or

1640
01:20:29.160 --> 01:20:35.640
19 hours or something of climbing. But it's never been free-solid. I've free-solid Half Dome

1641
01:20:35.640 --> 01:20:39.400
individually and I've free-solid LCAP individually. No one's ever free-solid Watkins.

1642
01:20:39.400 --> 01:20:43.640
But the idea of doing all three in a day would be like I think totally like next generation

1643
01:20:43.640 --> 01:20:46.760
achievement. There's certain things like that where I'm sort of like if I was starting over,

1644
01:20:46.760 --> 01:20:50.280
if I was like an 18-year-old who was like trying to make it as a professional climber nowadays and

1645
01:20:50.280 --> 01:20:55.000
had a higher level of skill than I do now, you know, basically was like trying to do this again.

1646
01:20:55.000 --> 01:20:58.760
There are things like that that would be sort of like the obvious next generation challenge.

1647
01:20:58.760 --> 01:21:05.640
Free-solid all three in the same day. Yeah. Yeah, I'd probably take a little bit under 24 hours,

1648
01:21:05.640 --> 01:21:10.840
probably. What is your training right, Sherman, to these days? Is it just going to rock

1649
01:21:10.840 --> 01:21:14.360
ramen a lot? Today I did a little workout in the hotel gym this morning. Your hands are quite

1650
01:21:14.360 --> 01:21:18.360
different. They're quite big hands. Well, that's something, you know, I think like a stone

1651
01:21:18.360 --> 01:21:23.240
basin just like grinding away their whole life. I see. I don't know if the people can see that on

1652
01:21:23.240 --> 01:21:30.440
camera but it does look like you have very wide fingers. Yeah, my fingers have taken a lot of

1653
01:21:30.440 --> 01:21:35.960
abuse in their time. Because I see you like putting them in in between walls and stuff. Yeah,

1654
01:21:35.960 --> 01:21:39.080
crack climbing is like you basically put your fingers into a crack and then you torque them. So like

1655
01:21:39.080 --> 01:21:43.800
the side-to-side pulling does sort of make your connective tissue bigger. And does that help?

1656
01:21:44.840 --> 01:21:48.600
Yeah, I was wondering when you're going up hell, when you're doing a well with good technique,

1657
01:21:48.600 --> 01:21:51.640
it's not that painful. It depends on the type of rock, but some rock is kind of sharp and kind of

1658
01:21:51.640 --> 01:21:56.760
painful. But yeah, this goes back to strengthening your, what's the part called in your brain?

1659
01:21:56.760 --> 01:22:00.280
I'm tearing my sinking of cortex. Yeah, exactly. That guy, I mean, that's the thing is that

1660
01:22:00.280 --> 01:22:04.120
even when done well, climbing like it hurts your fingers and toes, you know, crack climbing,

1661
01:22:04.120 --> 01:22:07.240
you're like jamming your toes into a crack and you're torquing them side-to-side and you're like

1662
01:22:07.240 --> 01:22:12.920
wedging your fingers in. I mean, when you're doing it well, it has a pleasant feel of safety to it

1663
01:22:12.920 --> 01:22:16.120
because you can really like lock into cracks and it feels comfortable and you feel like you're swimming,

1664
01:22:16.120 --> 01:22:19.560
you're like, this is beautiful. But when you really come down to the sensations, you're still

1665
01:22:19.560 --> 01:22:23.720
crushing your bones and you're a crack like a star. When I look at this kind of photo,

1666
01:22:24.440 --> 01:22:31.240
where you're, it looks like you're hanging by one and a half hands. Yeah. And you're going to fall

1667
01:22:31.240 --> 01:22:36.760
to your death if your grip isn't sufficient. It makes me think you must have the world's greatest

1668
01:22:36.760 --> 01:22:41.880
grip strength. I definitely don't. But I mean, while you have your grip thing, you can find out

1669
01:22:41.880 --> 01:22:46.520
what's below you there in this photo. Well, actually, so there is like a sloping cliff thing below

1670
01:22:46.520 --> 01:22:51.080
me. So I'm actually only like 30 feet off the ground, but if, or 40 feet, but if you fell,

1671
01:22:51.080 --> 01:22:54.840
you'd bounce off and you'd go, you know, basically to where it looks like down on the valley floor

1672
01:22:54.840 --> 01:22:59.240
down there. It's terrifying, for sure. It's funny, actually, have you seen Frisola? Yeah. Do you

1673
01:22:59.240 --> 01:23:03.160
remember the camera guy that like can't look? Yeah. The guy that's like shooting the long shot on

1674
01:23:03.240 --> 01:23:06.600
the ground, Mikey. He's a really good friend of mine. I've done tons of things to them. He shot

1675
01:23:06.600 --> 01:23:11.880
the Taipei climb as well. Now, Mikey was the photo assistant for this photo. He was like holding the

1676
01:23:11.880 --> 01:23:17.160
photos and he did the whole shoot just like looking into the wall. He just never looked at any of

1677
01:23:17.160 --> 01:23:22.120
the things happening. Like Jimmy Chen was taking the photo and Mikey was like did all the the

1678
01:23:22.120 --> 01:23:26.200
rigging and the lights and everything. And Mikey did the whole shoot just like looking into his arm

1679
01:23:26.200 --> 01:23:29.960
like looking at the other way. He was like, I'm not part of this. I'd like to see his brain

1680
01:23:30.040 --> 01:23:34.840
sky. He was stressed. But I mean, he's an elite climber himself and he's amazing. But like,

1681
01:23:34.840 --> 01:23:38.840
basically watching Frisola is stressful and nobody wants to do it if they don't have to.

1682
01:23:38.840 --> 01:23:41.720
When is the in all your career? When is the moment where you were most scared,

1683
01:23:41.720 --> 01:23:46.760
where you thought maybe you had pushed it too far? Oh, it's actually, I've had several moments

1684
01:23:46.760 --> 01:23:50.280
with actually mostly with ropes on. That's the thing is that because when you're Frisola and you

1685
01:23:50.280 --> 01:23:54.280
generally keep it within a healthy margin or you practice ahead of time, you know, basically because

1686
01:23:54.280 --> 01:23:58.200
you're going to die, you make sure that you can do it. But when you have a rope on, you're way

1687
01:23:58.280 --> 01:24:01.560
more willing to push into the unknown because you're kind of like, surely I'll get some protection

1688
01:24:01.560 --> 01:24:05.560
eventually. I'll just keep looking and I'll keep looking. And so like I've had, I was on an

1689
01:24:05.560 --> 01:24:12.040
expedition and an article actually in 2017 and did a bunch of climbing that was very extreme,

1690
01:24:12.040 --> 01:24:15.800
but like with a rope. But it's, you know, saying articles really freaking cold conditions

1691
01:24:15.800 --> 01:24:19.560
of challenging the rock is crumbling, everything is scary. And you just keep hoping that it's

1692
01:24:19.560 --> 01:24:23.400
going to get better and it just keeps getting worse instead eventually. You're sort of like,

1693
01:24:23.400 --> 01:24:26.680
because the thing is having a rope on doesn't mean anything unless you get good protection,

1694
01:24:26.680 --> 01:24:30.120
which means you have to be able to put gear into the rock. And if you can't find places to put

1695
01:24:30.120 --> 01:24:34.440
gear into the rock, then you can go, you know, the rope is 200 feet long. If you go 200 feet without

1696
01:24:34.440 --> 01:24:37.880
getting good gear, then you're looking at taking a 400 foot fall before the rope catches you,

1697
01:24:39.000 --> 01:24:42.840
which is almost certainly fatal. You know, I mean, if you fall that far, even though the rope will

1698
01:24:42.840 --> 01:24:46.520
catch your corpse, you know, but you're still just going to hit the wall after 400 feet like you're

1699
01:24:46.520 --> 01:24:51.720
screwed. So anyway, my scariest experiences have all been situations like that for the most part.

1700
01:24:52.040 --> 01:24:55.000
This is why I'm saying climbing, you get scared a lot.

1701
01:24:57.080 --> 01:25:01.000
And I was like, that expedition, we were climbing basically day on day off.

1702
01:25:01.000 --> 01:25:04.280
Each day, we would go climb one of these crazy spires and we'd have these experiences where I'd

1703
01:25:04.280 --> 01:25:07.880
be like, so scared. And then the next day, we were just sitting the tent because it's an article.

1704
01:25:07.880 --> 01:25:11.560
It's like really cold. You're in the cook tent. Now, basically just spoon, you tell it all day,

1705
01:25:11.560 --> 01:25:16.440
totally shell shocked, like totally, like just completely traumatized. And then you'd be like,

1706
01:25:16.440 --> 01:25:20.440
rest enough and you go out the next day and do it again. And we just did like day on day off of

1707
01:25:20.920 --> 01:25:25.880
full trauma fear for the whole trip. And then we climbed everything in the ranges. Amazing,

1708
01:25:25.880 --> 01:25:29.560
it was an incredible trip. So you do get scared. Yeah, so scared the whole time.

1709
01:25:29.560 --> 01:25:32.760
Are there any techniques that I've proven to be effective for you to deal with that fear?

1710
01:25:32.760 --> 01:25:36.760
Like people talk about breath work and yeah, it takes some deep breaths, try to compose yourself.

1711
01:25:36.760 --> 01:25:41.960
I mean, I try to stay rational, you know, like am I in danger? Because sometimes, like in this

1712
01:25:41.960 --> 01:25:47.080
case, in Antarctica, I am actually in danger, like if I fall, I could die. But oftentimes you feel,

1713
01:25:47.080 --> 01:25:51.000
you get those feelings of fear and you're not actually in danger. It's your mind running away from

1714
01:25:51.000 --> 01:25:54.120
you. And so sometimes you can sort of rationally rain in a little bit where you're like,

1715
01:25:54.120 --> 01:25:57.960
no, I am safe. The protection will hold me. The rope is, you know, my gear is good.

1716
01:25:57.960 --> 01:26:01.880
And then you just take it deep breath and you just carry on. And do you visualize folding? I'm a,

1717
01:26:01.880 --> 01:26:06.440
oh, yeah, I'm in, of course. Yeah, I mean, you have to understand what the consequences will be.

1718
01:26:06.440 --> 01:26:11.000
Because I mean, that type of visualization is also how you can know when you're safe.

1719
01:26:11.000 --> 01:26:14.840
Because like if you have a rope and gear and you're trying to visualize, like if I fall,

1720
01:26:14.840 --> 01:26:17.720
am I going to hit the ground or is the gear going to catch me before I hit the ground? I mean,

1721
01:26:17.720 --> 01:26:20.840
there are often situations like that where you're like, if I fall, am I going to hit that ledge

1722
01:26:20.840 --> 01:26:24.200
and break both my legs or am I going to clear the ledge and fall into free space in which case,

1723
01:26:24.200 --> 01:26:29.880
it's totally safe. And so it helps to be able to have a clear eyed visualization of, you know,

1724
01:26:29.880 --> 01:26:32.840
because most people visualize the worst case. Like if I fall, I'm going to die. And you're like,

1725
01:26:32.840 --> 01:26:36.920
well, oftentimes if you, I'm talking about with a rope, if you fall, you're going to be fine.

1726
01:26:37.480 --> 01:26:41.880
But it's important to know the difference. So you don't avoid the confrontation with

1727
01:26:42.680 --> 01:26:47.240
the negative outcomes. No, because you're trying to avoid the negative. Like you have to think

1728
01:26:47.240 --> 01:26:51.240
about it because of how else you mitigate that kind of stuff. But you can't let that stop you

1729
01:26:51.240 --> 01:26:56.600
taking actions when the risk profile is okay. Yeah, exactly. I mean, this is like a whole rant

1730
01:26:56.600 --> 01:27:01.320
about risk taking and everything. But like, I mean, that's the thing is you want to be taking the

1731
01:27:01.320 --> 01:27:05.880
risks that you want to take. And it drives me crazy that nobody else thinks about risk in this way.

1732
01:27:05.880 --> 01:27:09.640
Because think of all the people that like go out partying every weekend and they get like kind of

1733
01:27:09.640 --> 01:27:13.960
buzzed and they drive home and whatever. And it's like, they're taking all kinds of risk that they're

1734
01:27:13.960 --> 01:27:17.480
not actually choosing to take. You know, I mean, like they're just choosing to go out and party and

1735
01:27:17.480 --> 01:27:21.000
have a good time. But then they're like driving a little buzzed and they're like, no, it's fine,

1736
01:27:21.000 --> 01:27:25.240
but you're like, no, obviously, you're taking risk or like you're putting yourself into situations

1737
01:27:25.240 --> 01:27:29.400
where you're like in a vulnerable situation because you're in capacity because you're drunk or whatever.

1738
01:27:29.400 --> 01:27:33.400
And so, you know, you're putting yourself at a higher risk for crime, things like that. And so

1739
01:27:33.400 --> 01:27:37.800
you're taking risks. You just haven't chosen to take those risks. I'm kind of like the thing with

1740
01:27:37.800 --> 01:27:41.480
climbing is that I'm choosing to take the risks. And I'm pretty clear-eyed about the risk that I'm

1741
01:27:41.480 --> 01:27:45.640
taking. Like, I mean, I'm not going to say it's perfect. But for the most part, I think I have a

1742
01:27:45.640 --> 01:27:50.440
pretty good idea of which aspects are dangerous. Like when the consequences are high, what will happen

1743
01:27:50.440 --> 01:27:54.280
if I do fall? You know, it's like you try to think it all out as much as you can. And I'm kind of

1744
01:27:54.280 --> 01:27:57.720
like how many people in normal life actually think through all the risks that they're taking. And even

1745
01:27:57.720 --> 01:28:01.320
totally sedentary people who are like, well, I don't take risks. I stay at home when I play video games.

1746
01:28:01.320 --> 01:28:04.600
You're like, no, you're at a much higher risk of heart disease. Like you're going to die from other

1747
01:28:04.600 --> 01:28:08.920
things. You know, it's like, and you're still going to freaking die either way. That's, okay,

1748
01:28:08.920 --> 01:28:12.120
I'm done ranting. I'm sorry. No, no, but it's really important because you know, I think we are

1749
01:28:12.120 --> 01:28:17.160
all taking risks. But some of us on intentional about the risks we're taking essentially. That's

1750
01:28:17.160 --> 01:28:21.320
exactly it. Like even if you take no risk, you're going to die. You're taking a different set of

1751
01:28:21.320 --> 01:28:25.320
risks. And so people look at my life and they're like, well, you're crazy. You're such a risk

1752
01:28:25.320 --> 01:28:28.680
taken. I'm kind of like, well, at least I'm taking the risks that I'm choosing. And I'm choosing

1753
01:28:28.680 --> 01:28:32.120
them very intentionally. And I'm pretty careful about them. And I mitigate them as much as I can.

1754
01:28:32.120 --> 01:28:35.480
I'm kind of like, well, can you say the same for the risk that you're taking? Or, you know,

1755
01:28:35.480 --> 01:28:39.320
I'm sort of like the average person, I think, doesn't think about risk as much as they should.

1756
01:28:39.320 --> 01:28:42.840
And is there anything that you would give them as a framework to help them be more intentional

1757
01:28:42.840 --> 01:28:47.000
about those risks? Is it just that it's like, well, you're going to freaking die either way. So choose

1758
01:28:47.000 --> 01:28:54.280
the things that you care about and then do them well. And do them well. Prepare. Yeah, execute.

1759
01:28:54.280 --> 01:28:58.840
Like have a plan. You know, but don't just like take risk willingly. Like don't just get drunk and

1760
01:28:58.840 --> 01:29:02.360
go out and do a thing. You know, because like that's stupid. Like that's not the risk you should be

1761
01:29:02.360 --> 01:29:06.360
taking. You know, like don't put all your money on black and just like hope, you know what I mean?

1762
01:29:06.360 --> 01:29:10.600
Like basically don't just like roll the dice. Like don't let fate just like roll the roll the dice

1763
01:29:10.600 --> 01:29:16.040
with your life. Like make choices. And free soloing is, you know, there's a bigger existential risk

1764
01:29:16.040 --> 01:29:24.040
with no margin for error. But very intentional. Very intentional. Drinking as a risk is like a volume

1765
01:29:24.040 --> 01:29:28.440
knob. The more you do it, the more the risk increases. And the other one is kind of like an on-off switch,

1766
01:29:28.440 --> 01:29:35.000
which you can exactly today. And then yeah. So grip strength. I wouldn't be even a little bit

1767
01:29:35.000 --> 01:29:38.840
surprised if you can pull that more than I can actually. But look, I'm going to both try.

1768
01:29:38.840 --> 01:29:43.400
Okay. This is a grip strength meter. Okay. So let's see, we're zero kilograms would be extra

1769
01:29:43.400 --> 01:29:47.640
small. I mean, the thing with these like, okay, actually, let me just prep this with like I've

1770
01:29:47.640 --> 01:29:50.760
had tons of people be like, well, surely you're going to break the machine. I'm like, no, because

1771
01:29:50.760 --> 01:29:53.800
for climbing, you just have the strength that you need to do the things that you're trying to do.

1772
01:29:53.880 --> 01:29:59.240
And how much do you weigh right now, like 165, 165, which is actually basically the heaviest

1773
01:29:59.240 --> 01:30:07.640
ever been, maybe 163 if I'm lucky right now. So 165 pounds in kg is a quivicle to 75 kilograms

1774
01:30:07.640 --> 01:30:17.320
roughly. Yeah. Okay. Go ahead. 49 or 50, 45.9. I'm going to draw this one. It's just like,

1775
01:30:17.320 --> 01:30:23.960
yeah, 49. You know, but those are just kind of like, it's just, it's just a different thing.

1776
01:30:23.960 --> 01:30:27.880
You know, I mean, like, that's not climbing. 49 kg and pounds is

1777
01:30:29.560 --> 01:30:35.320
108 interesting. Yeah, let's see yours. But yeah, like I'm saying, it's about the same with both

1778
01:30:35.320 --> 01:30:45.160
hands. It should be 62. Yeah, see, there you go. I can't lift my body weight. Like I might be able to

1779
01:30:45.160 --> 01:30:53.800
like, yeah, I mean, I might be able to muster a little more in it, but 63. I don't think

1780
01:30:54.600 --> 01:30:58.200
do you work out like you do weights and stuff. I lift them dumbbells, but I'm not doing anything

1781
01:30:58.200 --> 01:31:02.680
grippy. I culled and stuff, but I don't do anything grippy. I know I'm at 50 and a half.

1782
01:31:02.680 --> 01:31:07.880
How many pull ups can you do? Don't know, but I can, yesterday I did, I did a couple one arms

1783
01:31:07.880 --> 01:31:14.440
like, like, yeah, I basically pull up. Yeah, which is very hard. Yeah, I don't think I can do one arms.

1784
01:31:14.440 --> 01:31:16.600
Yeah, well, that's the thing. That's why grip strength stuff. You're kind of like,

1785
01:31:16.600 --> 01:31:20.200
nah, we're actually so, like, have you done weighted pull ups in a gym?

1786
01:31:20.920 --> 01:31:26.280
Weighted pull ups. No, I just do, I'll just do my own body weight. And I, you know, I weigh a lot.

1787
01:31:26.280 --> 01:31:30.360
So I'm like, deceptively heavy. Really? Yeah. Very dense. Very dense.

1788
01:31:30.360 --> 01:31:35.400
Capsule and water. No, like, big bands. You're just six. How much kilograms do you think,

1789
01:31:35.400 --> 01:31:38.760
I wait, I mean, in pounds, you'd know, but this is one arm. No, I'm guessing. I don't know,

1790
01:31:38.760 --> 01:31:42.440
like, now that you're saying that you're big, I'm like, oh, maybe 185 or something.

1791
01:31:42.440 --> 01:31:46.280
What a two 11. Yeah, with actually each other, that's another thing with grip strength is like,

1792
01:31:46.280 --> 01:31:51.880
it makes sense to your grip strength is proportionate. I mean, you're like 25% bigger than me. Yeah,

1793
01:31:51.880 --> 01:31:57.400
yeah, like, you know, basically. Yeah. So it's like, you would expect it to at least 25% stronger

1794
01:31:57.400 --> 01:32:01.400
right there, just because like, you can do body weight pull ups. You're going to be much stronger. Yeah,

1795
01:32:01.400 --> 01:32:05.560
but we have, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the longest guest leaves a question

1796
01:32:05.560 --> 01:32:10.680
for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question for you is,

1797
01:32:12.680 --> 01:32:18.680
what do you want to achieve in your life outside of your mainline job that you haven't yet achieved?

1798
01:32:19.720 --> 01:32:23.320
No, I mean, that seems, there are basically two other avenues that I care about in my life.

1799
01:32:23.880 --> 01:32:27.400
You know, my family, I want to be a good dad. I want to make sure my kids grow to be

1800
01:32:28.040 --> 01:32:32.360
healthy, well-adjusted people that, you know, like, live their best lives. And then I have a

1801
01:32:32.360 --> 01:32:36.760
foundation that supports community solar projects around the world. And I'd love to see that thrive.

1802
01:32:36.760 --> 01:32:41.160
I mean, basically, I mean, you know, we give as much as we can to solar projects around the world.

1803
01:32:41.160 --> 01:32:46.520
I'd love to see that do more on that point of your foundation. What is, what is the sort of the thesis

1804
01:32:46.520 --> 01:32:50.520
that you want to facilitate projects? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, solar. It's basically energy access around the

1805
01:32:50.520 --> 01:32:55.560
world. Okay. Yeah, I think now we've given, I know, over 13 million to something like over 100

1806
01:32:55.560 --> 01:32:58.920
partners around the world, basically like small scale community solar projects. So people getting

1807
01:32:58.920 --> 01:33:05.800
access to energy for the first time, busy using solar for anything ranging from light to, you know,

1808
01:33:05.800 --> 01:33:10.760
say food refrigeration to pumping water, I mean, whatever, whatever people need energy for,

1809
01:33:10.760 --> 01:33:17.320
which is basically everything. 13 more than 13 million across 130 projects and 30 countries,

1810
01:33:17.320 --> 01:33:24.680
impacting 650,000 people and creating 1,200 plus jobs, protected 15 million acres of

1811
01:33:24.680 --> 01:33:30.040
bio diverse forest as well. Yeah, some of those things are sort of like the secondary and

1812
01:33:30.040 --> 01:33:33.640
tertiary benefits, where it's like when you empower certain kinds of communities, then they're

1813
01:33:33.640 --> 01:33:36.360
better able to take care of their lands and things like that. Some of that has to do with

1814
01:33:36.360 --> 01:33:40.920
indigenous sovereignty and things like in the Ecuadorian Amazon and places where it's like when

1815
01:33:40.920 --> 01:33:46.200
the local people have power, suddenly they can protect their land from illegal logging, illegal

1816
01:33:46.200 --> 01:33:50.040
mining, things like that. And so then you wind up having this knockoff like environmental benefit.

1817
01:33:50.040 --> 01:33:53.960
It's like also great. In addition to the human aspect where you're like, what these people are living

1818
01:33:53.960 --> 01:33:58.840
better lives and help save the planet. And you're giving away roughly a third of your wealth

1819
01:33:58.840 --> 01:34:04.520
to cover the majority of the foundation's overheads. So yeah, I've been given roughly a third of my,

1820
01:34:04.520 --> 01:34:11.560
of what I make every year since 2012. And that's basically just sort of coincidentally tracked with

1821
01:34:11.560 --> 01:34:14.840
the overhead for the foundation. So it just means that anything that people contribute goes straight

1822
01:34:14.840 --> 01:34:19.240
to projects, because I basically cover all the staffing and everything. How does one contribute to that?

1823
01:34:19.800 --> 01:34:23.480
Honolulu Foundation.org is the easiest way. You can support directly. I mean, you can see all the

1824
01:34:23.480 --> 01:34:26.920
projects that we're working with. And donors can go there if they want to contribute to this.

1825
01:34:26.920 --> 01:34:31.160
They can go to the website. Okay, but I'll link the website below. And if anyone is interested

1826
01:34:31.160 --> 01:34:35.080
in continuing to support the great work you're doing there, I highly recommend they go and make

1827
01:34:35.080 --> 01:34:39.880
a donation. It's also just a way I think to give back to you as a person for the inspiration,

1828
01:34:39.880 --> 01:34:45.480
you've given so many of us. I appreciate that. Yeah. I mean, to me, the foundation has always been

1829
01:34:45.480 --> 01:34:49.320
my attempt at doing something useful. It's like, I love raw climbing. I think it's so fun.

1830
01:34:49.880 --> 01:34:53.640
But at the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter in the world. And I feel like the work

1831
01:34:53.640 --> 01:34:57.960
that we're doing through the Honolulu Foundation, at least material improves the well-being of other

1832
01:34:57.960 --> 01:35:01.640
humans, you know, like it actually has a real impact both in environment and for people.

1833
01:35:01.640 --> 01:35:06.920
Well, I don't know. I think watching you climb Taipei and watching the millions of people

1834
01:35:06.920 --> 01:35:13.480
around the world climb Taipei was an expansive moment for all of us, because it holds a mirror

1835
01:35:13.560 --> 01:35:17.960
up to us in a really inspiring way and goes, what obstacles can you overcome in your life? And

1836
01:35:19.800 --> 01:35:25.320
the many, many millions of people now have that visual. And sometimes it isn't absurd visual,

1837
01:35:25.320 --> 01:35:30.760
that does that and is most memorable, like it etched into their brains. And that means that they

1838
01:35:30.760 --> 01:35:35.000
in their own life are looking for their own Taipei ones or Taipei servants or Taipei 101's.

1839
01:35:35.000 --> 01:35:38.760
And if you play that forward as like a ripple in the ocean of how people are going to strive and maybe

1840
01:35:38.840 --> 01:35:44.360
live more intentionally, maybe it does really really matter. Maybe the whole conversation, which

1841
01:35:44.360 --> 01:35:49.320
was my entire Twitter feed, for days and days and days of people saying, this is a miraculous human

1842
01:35:49.320 --> 01:35:54.360
achievement. There's like, that's the first half of a sentence. The other half of that sentence

1843
01:35:54.360 --> 01:36:00.120
which we never really hear is like, so now what can I do? And that is a profound thing. Well, that's

1844
01:36:00.120 --> 01:36:05.400
definitely the best frame. Like that's the framing that I hope for. And that's, you know, but I think

1845
01:36:06.360 --> 01:36:10.520
that's like the best case scenario for my climbing. And like I hope that that's how people take it.

1846
01:36:10.520 --> 01:36:13.640
But I will say that the work through the combination at least has a direct material

1847
01:36:13.640 --> 01:36:16.360
impact immediately. You're kind of like, oh, you don't have to hope for ripples or anything.

1848
01:36:16.360 --> 01:36:19.640
You're like, well, this person can now read after dark for the first time ever. And you're like,

1849
01:36:19.640 --> 01:36:23.560
that is game changing. If anything, you know, I've been talking a lot about like action speaking

1850
01:36:23.560 --> 01:36:27.560
a lot of the words. And I'm like, yeah, I hope to, you know, it's like, it's great if the climbing

1851
01:36:27.560 --> 01:36:31.240
I do inspires people like, that's all good. But at some point you just do a direct thing that

1852
01:36:31.240 --> 01:36:36.680
actually helps people's lives do. And you're doing both. Yeah, yeah, aspiring to do my best.

1853
01:36:36.680 --> 01:36:43.640
The tangible and the exactly tangible. Alex, thank you so much. Thank you. Amazing conversation. Thank you.