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Alex Honnold: Fear, Finding Purpose, Climbing
January 30, 2024
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If you do a 24 hour to 48 hour push in the mountains and you like watch the sun come up for the second morning in a row, you will have a transformative experience. Whether that's transcendence or spiritual anyway, as you start to get ground down physically, you get way more open emotionally and then sort of psychologically to have crazy experiences.
Alex Honnold, widely known from the Free Solo documentary, is now venturing on a new challenge in Arctic Ascent, a National Geographic series.
This documentary chronicles his journey in Greenland, and today we explore the themes central to Honnold's career and life, fear, risk, and purpose. How does confronting fear in extreme physical contexts translate to broader life lessons? What does it even mean to confront fear? Should we confront it? Or should we listen to it? What does treating fear as a mentor mean? What is Alex's approach to risk, both in climbing and in personal philosophy?
Furthermore, we talk about the search for meaning and purpose. I recommend you watch his new series Arctic Ascent on Disney Plus. It's also on Hulu and National Geographic. For those of you who don't know, my name is Kurt Jaimungal, and I use my background in mathematical physics to analyze theories of everything from, again, a math and physics perspective, an analytical perspective, but as well as I'm interested in broader questions of what is consciousness, what lies at the fundament, and even what is free will? Do we have it? Enjoy this podcast with Alex Honnold.
Alex, some people think of fear as an obstacle to overcome, but can you talk about some times where fear has served as a guide or a protector to you? Yeah, I think fear is often an obstacle to overcome, but it's always a useful indicator. I mean, think of fear as a signpost. It's often warning you that you're in danger. When I think of fear,
I mean, this could be a whole long chat if we really go into it. But sometimes I equate fear to hunger, where it's, you know, hunger is your body giving you a physiological sign that at some point you should eat something. And I think fear is much the same way. It's like a physiological response. It's your body telling you that you're probably in danger. And sometimes you are, sometimes you aren't. And it's worth sort of rationally evaluating whether or not you are in fact in danger, like if your fear is well founded or not.
And so sometimes it's worth ignoring that fear and just moving on because you are in fact safe. And so it's not worth, you know, heating that fear, but, but sometimes you are in danger and you probably should mitigate it. You know, it's like you should, you should take steps to correct it. So I think that, you know, I think that sometimes people think of fear almost with a sense of shame, you know, it's like, Oh, I was afraid and that's bad. I mean, there's nothing wrong with feeling fear. It's whether or not you let the fear control you. That's more of the problem.
So how do you distinguish between an irrational fear and a legitimate one? Well, I think that's where you use reason. Basically, you think about it, you're like, am I actually in danger? I mean, so in climbing, you feel fear all the time because you're you're up high and not just in freesailing. It sounds like you're in danger all the time, though. Sounds like those are all legitimate fears. No, because when you're
You know, when I'm climbing, you know, 95% of the time, I'm climbing with ropes and climb with partners and just kind of climbing normally. And almost all of the time you can fall. I mean, you're using safety equipment. You have a rope. It's totally safe, but it's still pretty scary because you're still way up high off the ground. And there's still always that sense of uncertainty around like, you know, you have the equipment on, but you're like, but if you fall, what will happen? Like maybe you'll fall a little further than you want. Like maybe you'll hit the wall. Maybe, you know, there's just a little bit of unknown around it. And so there's always a little bit of fear that creeps in.
Even though it is technically safe. So I think with climbing, you're constantly in this conversation with yourself as to whether or not your fear is founded. So do you have a relationship with fear other than you listen to it and then you assess? Is there something like you have an understanding with your fear? Like in some Jungian sense, you see it as another personality? No, that's almost like too. I think it's just something that you're experiencing all the time.
And, and you, and you, you know, learn how to like, you get to know it, but I think in the same way that hunger, like, because people experience hunger all the time and like throughout the day, you always experience small, small amounts of hunger and you almost always ignore it because you already have a plan and you already know that at some point you're going to eat again soon. So you're not really concerned about it. And I think that as a climber, your relationship with fear is, is relatively similar.
You know, it's like you're experiencing low grade fear almost all the time. Most of the time you ignore it because it doesn't you know that it doesn't mean anything. But occasionally it does mean something and then you have to act on it. I see. Have you experienced shifts in your consciousness during the climb? I mean, yeah, well, it depends what you mean by shifts in your consciousness, I guess. I mean, I definitely have experienced. Not like.
I've never had like out of body experiences. And you know, I have friends and things who have sort of described like seeing themselves climb and things like that. Oh, you have not have that. I've never experienced that. Though I do occasionally experience what I sort of call like a feeling of autopilot, where you feel like your body is just executing without any sort of mental function on your own part, you know, or like you're no longer controlling your body, your body is just doing what it's supposed to do.
And you're observing your body doing so? No, you're not really observing. You're like, it's almost like you're a, you're a passenger inside of a high performing machine. You know, it's like, I think, in some ways, I think that's the best sensation while free soloing is when you and this is super rare, but you can occasionally tap into that where you're almost like witnessing your body do, you know, do what it's supposed to do. And that happens more on the climbs that you've practiced.
Or even sometimes when you haven't, uh, more so on the times that you practiced, because I think that for that to occur, it helps to be able to get out of your own head, like not have to think about things nonstop. And in climbs that you haven't practiced, you're often, uh, you know, sort of second guessing, you're thinking about route finding, you're thinking about, like, because you've never been up there before, you're legitimately trying to figure out where you're supposed to go. And you're, and you're legitimately wondering if you're on the right path, if there's a better path further to the side or, you know, things like that.
How do you mentally prepare for a climb? Is each climb different?
Yeah, because but also for Arctic Ascent. So for people who haven't watched the intro, there's a new documentary series with you, a three part series produced by National Geographic called Arctic Ascent with Alex Honnold. When you're preparing for something like, let's say people know you from two major facets, free solo, so LCAP, but also Arctic Ascent. So why don't you contrast those two and what mentally preparing looks like? Yeah, that's interesting. So, I mean, with free solo, the mental preparation
Was extreme, you know, in involved, like, you know, it's years of practice and visualization and, and, you know, fantasizing about the route and just kind of generally, you know, I sort of lived it for years. And then in many ways, the, the climbs that I did in Arctic ascent are the, I was about to say the polar opposite. And then I was like, pun intended because it's in the Arctic, but, uh, it's, uh,
Because those were first ascents so nobody's ever done it before nobody's ever seen the walls before nobody's ever touched them before So you can't really mentally prepare for them in the the same way Really for a climb like that. The preparation is just being ready for the unknown sort of embracing the unknown and then just entering the experience Totally open, you know, just like whatever happens happens. We'll adapt to it as it occurs and we'll just do our best You know, but the other key distinction is that with Arctic Ascent is
Yeah, I was with partners, I was with a team, we're roped up, we're using safety equipment. But then, but then it's interesting, because it's like, we're using safety equipment, but that doesn't actually make it safe. Because, you know, the equipment, you still have to be able to find, you know, cracks and things to put the gear into. And so you're often still climbing quite a long ways without protection. And you know, like, if you have a rope on, and you go 100 feet without protection, that means you're looking at potentially taking a 200 foot fall.
And a 200 foot fall on that type of terrain in the middle of nowhere in the Arctic could still potentially be fatal. And so, you know, I mean, falling more than 20 feet could be could be a huge problem if you're out in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. So it's one of those things that, you know, even though you're using safety equipment, it doesn't exactly make it safe. And so you're still constantly involved in the same dialogue around fear and, you know. All that to say, using safety equipment can still be quite scary sometimes.
How do the camera people do this? Because often people associate or identify with the person on screen and it's extremely difficult for them, obviously. But then I'm always wondering, yeah, the camera people are doing almost as much and then lugging gear and then having to concern themselves about shots and did I get the sound and so on. So what do you make of the? Well, what about the camera people? Do they have extra assistance that we don't see? Are they helicoptered up there?
What's going on? They typically do have more assistance in some ways. So like with the film Free Solo, I was doing most of my preparation work and the camera guys were doing all their prep work by hiking to the summit of El Cap, which is sort of like an extreme hiking route. It takes a couple hours. You know, it's hard physical work, but but it is safe and relatively fast and you can just get to the summit. And then from the summit, you can rappel down ropes to get into position. And so the camera guys
You know, we're all skilled climbers themselves, though to do their job, they're not they're not required to climb. They hike to the top, they rappel down ropes. So they're hanging on ropes the whole time. And so it's still, you know, it's still the vertical environment. I mean, they still have to be comfortable hanging 2500 feet off the ground and spinning around in space and like, you know, dangling. But but it's not the same as climbing up into that position. And then with Arctic Ascent, it was maybe a little bit more complicated for the camera guys in some ways, because
We were doing first ascent, so nobody had ever been there before. You know, there's no easy way to get to the summit of the peaks, which is why we're climbing them. And so on Arctic Ascent, the camera guys had to be more comfortable on skis because we were traversing glaciers. You know, but for the most part, we would climb and then fix ropes behind us, like leave ropes in place so that the camera guys could ascend up and down those ropes to kind of get there. OK. And then they also just did a lot more with drones and with long shots and an overall
You know, I mean, if you watch Arctic Ascent, the cinematography is totally beautiful and it's, you know, it's incredible, like it looks amazing. But realistically, they use easier shots than in Free Solo. You know, I mean, there's way less like top down photography. There's like they just kind of get by with more long shots, drone shots, like other things, because it's just so hard to shoot in that environment. Does the presence of the cameras impact the climb? Like, let's say both in LCAP and in Arctic Ascent?
Sometimes like an Arctic send it doesn't impact that much because realistically you're up there with your team either way you have climbing partners so the the camera guys are basically just another member of the climbing team and you're all up there working together to try to get up the wall on free solo the camera guys could impact the experience for sure because when you're doing something that's hard and scary by yourself having somebody else next to you totally changes the experience or can
And so in the case of free solo, the whole camera team was very mindful of trying not to affect my experience. I mean, they're trying to shoot a documentary about me attempting this difficult thing. So they didn't want to impact it too much. But, you know, it's hard not to impact it a little bit. Yeah, I mean, like, like one easy example of that is that, like with with free solo,
Typically if you're going free soloing, like if you're going to go climb something by yourself without a rope, you don't really tell anybody about it ahead of time because you want the option to back down. Like if you wake up and you hike up to the wall and you just don't really feel it, you want to feel comfortable just walking back down and not climbing that day. You don't want any pressure on yourself one way or another because if it's not your day, you don't want to force it. The thing with free soloing is you never want to force it if you don't feel it. But when you have a bunch of camera people around,
They all have to get into position hours ahead of time because it takes, you know, it's a lot of work to hike to the summit, rappel in, get all the ropes ready, like do all that kind of prep work. So if I'm going to go free soloing at six in the morning, that means that the camera crew is up at three in the morning or probably up at two in the morning to pack their bags and then three in the morning to hike. And then they're already in position on the wall. And so I know that if I walk up to the base at seven in the morning and I'm just like, you know, I don't feel it today. I think I'm just going to call it.
All my friends just busted their ass for six hours that morning. Right. For nothing. And and even though like that shouldn't sounds like far more pressure. Well, exactly. I mean, it doesn't need to be more pressure. Like it's not it's not like they're trying to put pressure on you, but you just know that you're wasting your friend's time if you don't perform. And so, yeah, you know, it definitely is more pressure. Do you find that climbing is an artistic expression? Yeah, that's some climbers definitely do.
For me, I think it's, uh, I think I've always skewed more towards the athletic side of the spectrum. Like if you think of like an athlete versus an artist, I think I personally have always cared more about the athletics than the artistic side. But, but even for me, I appreciate the artistry. I mean, it is beautiful and aesthetics certainly play a role. I mean, looking up at a beautiful cliff and like caring about it. And, uh, you know, I mean that, that means more than just the pure athleticism of it.
So for me as an outsider who I think I rock climbed once in my life in an extremely safe indoor situation. Which gym? It was in Toronto. I'm from Toronto. It was somewhere on Bloor Street. I don't know if you know Toronto, but I've been to a couple of the gyms in Toronto. Yeah. Cool. Cool. I can't imagine how anyone would see it as artistic. I can see it as athletic as well.
But what the heck does it mean for you mentioned some of your climbing friends see it as somehow some expression. I agree that if you learn how to climb indoors and I learned how to climb indoors when I was a kid, I think it's definitely more athletic that way. You think of it more as a sport that you're training for. But if you grew up climbing in the mountains, then it's much more artistic, you know, aesthetic pursuit. Yeah, but that's just the scenery. No, is there something that they think about? Sorry. So there's different
dances that you can do that are called contact dances where you're with another person and you're always supposed to keep at least one or two points of contact. And I can imagine that as artistic. And so when I heard that some people think of climbing as artistic, I imagine it was that not just they see a vista. No, I think so. Yeah, the sort of balletic performance like the I mean, in the same way that I suspect if you asked a gymnast,
They would probably see gymnastics as as partially artistic expression and like the way they move their body and the beauty of the movement. But then also largely athletic, you know, and like how well they can mechanically move their body. And I think that climbing is very similar in that way. But there are definitely there. There have been many climbers in there and there are climbers who are very motivated by the beauty of the act and the feeling of sort of flowing over stone.
You know, I'm I'm I'm less on that spectrum, you know, I sort of prefer the like hard physical effort, like the training side of it. But I don't know. I mean, there have been a lot of very successful, you know, very high performing climbers that see it as a as a beautiful interaction with nature, where it's like you're dancing together with nature. Yeah, you mentioned the word flow. There's a technical term called flow about being in the optimal zone between something that's difficult and something that's not. And
Do you find yourself operating in that zone? Yeah, I mean, in a lot of ways. No, I mean, a lot of climbing, I think, is really a search for flow. You know, it's like it's such an elusive. It's so rare that you really tap into sort of a peak, like optimal flow state. And I think a lot of climbing is basically searching for that feeling. Yeah, I want to ask you a question. I'm not sure if you're comfortable. So no, no, just go. Love it. Push me. Yeah, let's see. OK. Have you done any psychedelics or had any interesting trips?
No, not really. I would say I'm like, so this summer, I'm like, is it legal to talk about illegal drug use? Yeah, yeah. You'd be surprised.
Yeah, okay. No, um, like this summer on an expedition, uh, my partner and I attempted to take psychedelic mushrooms, but then it turns out that like we sat and watched this beautiful sunset and it was all really beautiful. And we were both like, I don't, I don't think it did anything. Like, I don't think like somebody had given us some mushrooms. But then afterward my buddy was like, I think it was oregano. It was like too old or too dry or like there've been a few things like that where I've sort of like tried to do something, but never quite had, I've never had like a transformative psychedelic experience.
Okay, do you meditate? I have a little bit, but never to the point that I've experienced anything that I would consider profound. Do you think of yourself as a courageous person? I've never thought of myself that way. But I probably I mean, what's the definition of courage like being able to do something you don't want to do? Basically? Yeah, sure. While pushing through fears, but there's also a relative component to it. Like, well, I can do this, but most people can't like I can
Get a spider from the wall while my wife screams at it. Am I more courageous or does it just impact me less? Yeah, I think it does impact you less. I think, yeah, I wouldn't say I'm particularly courageous, but I would say I'm probably less impacted by a lot of things like that. What would be a way of humanizing Alex? Because many people, when I said, hey, I'm interviewing Alex, they're like, man, ask him, where does he get his boxers to hold his balls? Yeah.
You'd be surprised how many comments were like that. That's funny. So to humanize you, what would be something that many people wouldn't think you'd be timid about, but you are? Like, are you afraid of mice? No, that's the thing is that most of those kinds of physical fears, I think I've mostly let go. I mean, I used to be more afraid of snakes and spiders and things like that. But I think with time, I just kind of learned that doesn't matter that much, you know. Yeah, you said you let go. What do you mean?
So it used to impact you like the the sort of the phobia level fear where you're like, oh my god, it's a spider. It was like now I'm a little more rational about it where I'm kind of like, oh, well, if it's a really fast moving exotic spider that I've never seen, then I'll give it a wide berth because I'm like, who knows what that could do to me. But if it's a slow moving cat, you know, like we get tarantulas near where we live. I live in Las Vegas in the desert. And so you see tarantulas pretty frequently. And in the morning when it's cold, the tarantulas are really, really slow, like really chill.
And you know, you can like pet them basically. And I mean, they're not venomous anyway. Like they don't they're not like dangerous spiders, even though they're so big and intimidating. And so I think now I'm just a little bit better at differentiating the things that I should be afraid of from the things that I shouldn't be. What does the word sacred mean to you or transcendent mean to you? Oh, man. Yeah, I don't even know. Like beyond
Do you have a relationship with the sacred or the transcendent? Hear that sound?
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I would say no. I mean, I've always been totally unreligious. So I think that, you know, when you say the sacred, I think that often brings up sort of religiosity like the feeling of
Whatever and and I've always been sort of anti-dogma anti-religion and it's just You know on the other hand, you know, you can have transcendent experiences climbing for sure though they typically revolve around the the beauty of nature and and also just being in a environment for a long time, you know like if you do a 24 hour to 48 hour push in the mountains like if you're out like doing something hard in the mountains for 36 hours straight and you like watch the Sun come up for the second morning in a row and
You will have a transformative experience, you know, like whether that's transcendence or, you know, that spiritual anyway, like maybe not. But like, as you start to get ground down physically, you get way more open, you know, emotionally and sort of psychologically to have crazy experiences. And then you're like, Oh, that's so incredible. I'm one with nature. It's you know, but I'm like, is that is that transcendental or something? Like, I don't know. So there's this guy named Wim Hof. I don't know. Yeah, I know. Iceman. Right, right.
When someone does one aspect of their life in an extreme way, it tends to generalize and they do a couple other activities that are extreme. So with Wim Hof, he would do these cold plunges, I believe at first. Then it was fasting, extreme fasting and so on. So are there other aspects of your life that you feel like are something that you do to the extreme? Do you do prolonged fasts? No, no, I don't not. The thing with prolonged fasting,
I mean, I think in general, if you're trying to perform at a high level, athletically, uh, fasting is, is, I don't want to say that it's not the right course because I'm sure there's somebody out there who performs really well and they fast a lot, but I'm like, I bet if he pulled the Olympians, none of them are fasting. Seriously, because of its impact on muscles. Uh, yeah, we're just fueling workouts. You know, it's like, it's hard to,
I think it's hard to wake up and try your hardest if you never eat, you know, it's like, that's just, it just kind of makes sense. But randomly the other day, my, my sister,
It's like, Oh, did I tell you that, uh, the, the, you know, my brother-in-law, this guy, James, that, uh, that he fasted and I was like, Oh, cool. Like, what does that mean? And she was like, Oh, he went eight days without eating. And I was like, what the fuck? It's his first time ever doing anything like that. Yeah. He went like seven and a half days and then kind of, I think went to eight, like just to have a nice round number. Like I think it's seven days. He started having an electrolyte drink cause he didn't feel amazing. And then he like, so that doesn't count.
So what precipitated James to do this?
Yeah, that's astounding. This mental resilience seems to run in your family even if it's an in-law. Well, honestly, that's the thing is I was like, you know, when you're talking about
Like courage and things like that. I was like, could I just not eat for a week? I mean, I'd like to think that I could maybe not eat for a week if I had a reason to if I had to. But I'm like, man, it's hard to imagine like what I ever want to. That seems crazy to me. So what gives your life what gives it meaning? I mean, that's I don't know what gives yours meaning. My wife gives my life a tremendous amount of meaning in my work. Hmm. Yeah, I'm like,
I really like my wife. I don't know if it gives like meaning though. It's like, I think she's amazing. Like your wife. No, I mean, I love my wife. My wife is amazing and my family's amazing. But I just don't know if it gives. I mean, if you really get into meaning, I'm like, I think that's a real struggle. Like is, is, is there meaning? I mean, other than what you assigned to it, like what you choose for yourself, what you, what you decide to do with your time.
Yeah. Do you think you can assign your own meaning or is it something that you recognize? Yeah. Like as an instinct in you? Yeah, I think so. Well, I just, I don't know. I don't know if I really subscribe to any other form of meaning. So I think that at some point it's all a little arbitrary and you're just deciding for yourself what you think is important. Someone wanted to know what is your concept of failure and how is it tied to you staying motivated? I don't know. I mean,
I think climbers have a different relationship with failure than a lot of other sports people because with climbing,
It's not really zero sum, there's never like a winner and loser. It's like basically you're just working at doing something difficult for a prolonged period of time. And for most of that time, you're going to be failing because it's too hard for you. But the idea is that eventually you'll learn how eventually you'll gain the capabilities, you know, whatever you'll train physically or mentally, or eventually you'll get there. And then eventually you will succeed. So as a climber, you don't really fail until you give up on something. You know, it's like,
You're expected to fail over and over and over until you eventually succeed. And so you just don't really see it as failing. You just see it as part of the natural process of eventually working through this thing that you're trying to do. If that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. So you've never had a problem with motivation. What is it that drives you? I'm sure this is a question many people say like, why is it worth it to take these risks? What drives Alex?
I mean, it's an interesting, it's an interesting time to be having this whole conversation because for the last like three weeks, maybe I've been really unmotivated. And though actually, it's hard to say if I'm unmotivated, or if it's just that I've been kind of sucking and
And that often affects motivation because it's like you can spend your whole year just like grinding and like putting in the time, putting in the effort, like doing workouts, like getting up, eating well, like doing all the things, you know, like living well. And then if you just don't see results from it and you or you see like negative progress from it, then it's really hard to stay motivated for all that kind of stuff. Because you're like, why am I eating well? Why am I sleeping? Why am I doing all these things if it doesn't even matter? And I'm just like sucking anyway. You're sucking at what? Sorry. Oh, like
Life, you know climbing just like not quite having the energy like not being able to not being able to do the things that you think you should be able to do. I think it's like or like if like in my case for the last two months I was kind of working on on a hard climb near my home and and I was making good progress on it and then for like a month I basically just submitted like negative progress and I felt worse felt more tired like just not able to do what I had been doing the month before and so but with no obvious reason as to why really.
It feels like you're still doing all the right things, but you're just not seeing the results that you think you should. And so then that's always a little demoralizing and you're like, oh man. But I think that when you talk about motivation though, in a lot of ways, it's all about the big picture, the long-term motivation. Because even right now, even in the last couple of weeks that I've been kind of in a slump,
I'm still training. I'm still doing, you know, I'm still roughly eating well and like still basically living well because I know that at some point I'll come back out of my little slump and, and I'll still have the foundation there to, to climb hard and try and train hard again, whatever else, you know? So I think motivation is like trying to stay on a path, even when, even when it feels a little rocky, you know, like a little bumpy pun intended. Yeah. So can you not view the slump, the current sucking phase,
As another stumbling in the same way that when climbing you view stumbling as well, that's just necessary. No one's expected to skateboard and do great tricks right off the bat. So why should I expect climbing to be any different? Why should I expect life to be any different? Yeah, no, you're right. I mean, I probably should think of it that way. It's just I think it's harder when
Cause when, when you feel like you're sucking at life, it's like weeks and weeks of suck, you know, with it, with climbing, I think the timeframe matters because like with the climb, you know, you try a climb and you know, it's like 10 or 15 minutes of like trying really hard and you don't succeed and you're like, that's fine. I'll try again later today. I'll try again later today. But when it's like weeks of that or months of that, you're like, okay, it's starting to be a little bit of a grind. Like I just want some kind of, some kind of change. This sounds foreign to you. Has there ever been a period of your life of depression or
Of lulls like this, is this new? No, no, it's not totally new. I mean, there are periods.
I don't, I don't know if I'd ever say I've been clinically depressed. I would say my whole emotional band is pretty narrow. Like, you know, if people operate from a one to 10, I could sort of operate between a four and six. I think, you know, like I'm never that down. I've never that up. I'm like, or maybe I operate between like a five and seven, you know, because I'm generally like pretty, pretty content and rarely that down. But, um, but it's just never like wild swings one way or another. But, um, but no, I definitely go through periods of, of,
Though I sort of suspect that my down periods coincide with just being worn down physically, you know, just like basically over overdoing it for months at a time and then just being totally freaking worked. Yeah. Going back to the topic of drive, are there additional motivators at play? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, just. I mean, wanting to feel like a good climber, basically like wanting to feel like I'm good at what I do or that
I mean, one of the actually, I mean, one of the things is like the, the sensation of improving, you know, feeling like, like I'm doing better than I have in the past, which I think, yes, is a, is a tough thing to motivate you though, because obviously as I age, that'll just get harder and harder because eventually they will become a point where it's like impossible to outdo previous performances because you just don't have the same physical body that you did, you know, 20 or 30 years ago or something. And so, you know, I mean,
It's funny because that's always been pretty motivating, the feeling of progress, the feeling of improvement. But I kind of know that at some point that's going to disappear. And, you know, I definitely need something else to motivate me. I mean, and that's, that's, I mean, this is all kind of deep. I mean, I'm also just motivated by the sheer fun of, you know, I love climbing, and I love the sensation of I love going out and just enjoying climbing. I mean, what you're talking about, like what drives you is like the deeper
I mean, there's also just the sheer pleasure of it. Like I do. I just love going climbing. So for me, I'm similar. And that what drives me is I want to be extremely good. But I'm also egotistical in that I want to be the best. So not only do I have to be better than I was previously, but I have to be better than someone else that I would consider to be in my category or find a way to mentally tell myself that I'm in some different category that is Blue Ocean in the marketing sense. And so for you, I heard you mention that you would like to improve on it.
Say monthly basis, but is there also an aspect of you that is comparing yourself to what's external like someone else? I mean, yeah, yeah, obviously a little bit, but I think actually in some ways I'm lucky that climbing is a really broad sport. And so they're basically you wind up a specialist, be like people who just boulder, people who just sport climb, people who just Alpine climb or like ice climb, you know, basically there are these different categories of like different types of climbing you can do.
And I've always been a little bit of a generalist where I do a lot of different things at a relatively high level, but I'm not the best at any of those things, except maybe for free soloing. But even that I'm not, you know, depending on how you categorize it, I wouldn't be the best. I've just done some things that other people haven't done. And so I think it actually in some ways keeps a healthier frame on climbing for me because I just know that I won't be the best in any of these disciplines.
You know, like on a given on like a daily basis, I climb with other people who are better than me at at the things that they do. I see. And so it like I just, you know, it's easy to not be too competitive in that way when you just know that there's just no, you know, like, I just can't be the best of those things.
I've never even been remotely close to the best of those things. When I was a kid, I did youth competitions and all the little league-style competitions. Obviously, I was good, but I was never the best. I wasn't winning nationals. Just by sheer coincidence, there were a couple other climbers who wound up being elite professional climbers, but they grew up in the same region as me at the same time.
And so when I was going to youth comps, I was always getting second or third to a couple of these other guys that also wound up being great climbers. But, you know, by the time they were 15, they'd moved on to doing the adult competitions because they could win money that way. And I was still doing the youth comps and I was like, and I'm still not winning, you know, and the good guys have already moved on to like the big leagues. And, you know, and so I think I've known from the beginning that that I'm not and never will be the best physically.
But that doesn't mean that I can't have great adventures and have a good time climbing and push myself and improve and, you know, it's like I still love climbing, but I just know that that I'm not physically gifted in any way. How are you measuring this progress? Well, just doing things that I haven't been able to do before. I mean, climbing is broken into grades and things, so there are easy, objective ways to measure your progress in terms of difficulty. But you can also measure your time on route sometimes like speed records, things like that.
And then, I mean, also a very unquantifiable way, though, is just to to sort of evaluate your sensations when you climb, because occasionally you do things that you didn't think you could do. And I think that's honestly one of the best experiences in climbing is when you're sure that you can't do something, but you try and then you do it and you're like, oh, my God. You know, like because a lot of time you're really, really fatigued and like the next hold looks really far away and you're like, oh, I could throw for that hold, but there's no way that I'm going to be able to grab it. It's like I'm for sure going to fall off.
Sounds like a metaphor for life. So many people had questions about your dreams. I don't know if you've mentioned this before, but there were several questions like, what does Alex dream about and does he have recurring dreams? You mean actual dreams like during sleep? Yeah, yeah.
Um, I basically never remember dreams. Like I couldn't tell you, I mean, maybe like once or twice a year, I'll actually remember dreams and even then normally by within an hour or two of waking up, but I don't remember them. So, uh, dreams mean basically nothing to me. Like actual, you know, like I have aspirations and things, but, uh, but actual like literal dreams, uh, like mean nothing to me. And it's the,
It's not like a point of contention in my relationship, but my wife has very vivid dreams and is always telling me I had the craziest dream then goes into this long story and I just do not care at all because I'm like, you know, that's not real, right? Like who cares? Like I've never had a vivid dream. I don't remember them. I just it means nothing to me.
And what is she asking you to do to interpret them or she's just relaying it? No, she just relays it. Or, you know, she wakes up and she's like upset with you because you're like, you did the craziest thing in my dream last night. You're like, what are you smoking? Like, that's not even a real like I did, you know, like what? Yeah, there's a comedian who had this whole joke about how his wife would get upset with him. I think it was Ray Romano. You know, Ray, everybody loves Raymond. Yeah, I know the name. Yeah, I wish I could remember the joke.
His wife would beat him up because he's like, she's like, Yeah, you slept with someone in my dream. He's like, I didn't say but you would you would if this was exactly that's exactly my wife all have the same kinds of things. And you're like, you know that, that I have no control over that. And it means nothing to me. And it didn't actually happen. You're like, this is crazy. How has having a child influenced not only your dreams, like your aspirations, but well, what your goals are, and what you're allowing yourself to do, what your limits are,
Yeah, I think that the big change in having a child, and I mean, it's hard to know because I'm only two years into parenting. Actually, we're about to have a second child in a couple of weeks. Congratulations. Yeah, thanks. So I suspect that if you ask me the same question in another couple of years, it might be a different answer, or maybe not. Maybe I've already gotten to that point, but basically it's hard to know because it's kind of just beginning in the process here. But what I'm seeing so far is that
The real change is in the kinds of goals that I set for myself as a climber because I'm choosing projects that are closer to home. I'm choosing things that don't keep me away as much because I want to be at home more and want to be there with the family. It's not so much that I feel any obligation.
I don't know, like a lot of people ask me questions like, Oh, has your perspective on risk change now that your father is sort of implying that, you know, now that you have something to live for, are you less willing to take risk? And, and, you know, I'm like, I don't know if that's true or not. But I think the difference is that I'm just setting different goals. Like, I'm just not setting big free selling it like I'm not
It's just different lifestyle. You know, I'm like, I'm trying to climb close to home and that that lends itself more towards physical training and like training in the gym, things like that, like a little more routine, a little more structure, which which is fine. It sounds to me like free soloing would be the most risky. And then even when watching the free solo movie, you practice that route over and over and over to minimize the risk. So it's not as if at least my interpretation isn't
My point here though is that now as a father, it's not so much that I'm not willing to take the risk, but when you talk about free-saling in the film, in order to do that, I spent two months in Yosemite in the spring, two months in the fall, plus a trip to Morocco. I basically spent like six months.
Just all in working on that specific, I mean, I'd spent years training for it ahead of time and everything, but just in the, in the year leading up to the actual climb, you know, I spent say six months like specifically training, uh, you know, on the roots and I was, I adjusted my whole lifestyle, uh, in terms of training and diet and everything. I was going to bed at like eight and getting up at four, uh, because I needed to be up before sunrise to, to climb some of the stuff while it was so cool, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, my point was that it was all encompassing and took over my whole life.
and which, which was great. I mean, that's what it took to get, get that done. But now as a father, I'm sort of choosing not to embrace any goals like that because I'm kind of like, I don't really want something to take over my whole life like that. Like I want to, like I've been choosing climbing goals where I can train four hours in a day and go work on it for a while, but it doesn't have to be all encompassing and take over my whole life. You know, I still have time to be at home. I'm still,
Like right now, the climbing projects that I'm working on, I'm able to get my daughter out of bed every morning, have breakfast with her, go climb for the day, come home, still do afternoon, evening, you know, still do dinner with the family, put her to bed. I'm kind of like, to me, that's an ideal type of climbing goal for this point in my life, where I'm like, I can still do something that's hard for me, that's challenging, that's interesting, but I can still do breakfast and dinner with my daughter every night. So you don't have these obsessions, nor do you want them. Hear that sound?
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Yeah, right now, I don't have anything that I'm obsessed over in the same way. And yeah, exactly. And I'm not really seeking out anything like that. Because, you know, I'm like, I just don't need that right now. And has your wife impacted what some people may say as a more balanced perspective? Balance is this word that well, you're a climber. So there's many puns in this. But anyhow, has your wife contributed to the balance in your life in the same way that your daughter has? Or is there a different
I think there is a different degree in quality because I mean I think my wife definitely has impacted the balance of my life in much the same way sort of you know encouraging me to have more balance but I think that with my wife or certainly when we were dating when it's just you know a relationship you kind of see it as like I didn't necessarily want that balance and so you're kind of like oh you know being in a relationship is is
Is pushing me down a path that I'm not sure I want for myself, but I think now as a father, I'm like, no, I definitely want this path for myself. Like I think it's better for my daughter. I think it's, it's nice. You know, I don't know. I'm into it. Or maybe it's just that now I'm several years further into the marriage and yeah, but I, I mean, I do frequently grapple. Like, is this the essence of middle age when you just don't care about your goals enough to push everything else aside?
I'm like, or is this just being a good dad, you know, and like actually for your family? Like, it's hard to know. I mean, I think ideally, I'd aspire to still do very difficult things like sort of cutting edge things and climbing and still be there for my family. But you know, the actually, I mean, you know, we were talking about Arctic Ascent, the the the expedition we just did, I just did to Greenland, the summer before last.
You know, in some ways that to me is a perfect example of still getting to do some cutting edge climbing that matters, you know, sort of some some meaningful climbing while having a family. You know, and I mean, I had to leave the family behind for six weeks, which is hard for everybody. But I think it's it's worth it for the right kind of objective. And then I can sort of balance that out by being very much present at home for the many months around that expedition. For people who watched Free Solo and loved it,
And they just heard about Arctic Ascent, either from the news or from here or from you. What can they expect in this documentary series that's different than Free Solo? Well, I think, I mean, honestly, almost everything about it is different because it's the the landscape is totally surreal and almost fantastic. I mean, Greenland, like remote part of eastern Greenland is incredibly beautiful, but also
It's a totally different dynamic with the with the team and all of us climbing together. And, you know, Heidi has your vestry, this climate scientist, this glaciologist who is with us, we were doing various research projects along the way. And so, you know, there's like, yeah, I mean, free solo really focuses on the singular athletic feet like this, this thing that I really want to do. And it's kind of like a quixotic, you know, it's like me on a quest. And I think that that with Arctic Ascent,
It's a little bit more grounded, you know, it's just, it all makes a little more sense in a way. You're kind of like, okay, it's a team going to climb routes in a beautiful place where they can also do, uh, make, you know, meaningful contributions to climate science. Sure. Like, oh, it all kind of like makes more sense in a way where you're kind of like, okay, like these remote unclimbed walls, you assemble the right team, do something useful while you're there. It's all totally beautiful. You're like that, that totally makes sense for television.
Yeah, as I was watching Arctic Ascent, it was clear there was a passion of yours of saving the environment or something environmental. Can you please speak to that? Yeah, I think there's a passion towards trying to do something useful.
It's like wanting to do something proactive for the environment. I mean, I started a foundation more than a decade ago now that supports community solar projects around the world. And so I've been doing that for a long time in an effort to both help the environment and to help human populations. And so, I mean, I think in general,
You know, I mean, you're asking questions around purpose and like, what's the point, all those kinds of things. And I think that the idea of just doing anything useful, making some kind of positive contribution to the world, I would say that I'm totally open to whatever is the, you know, my highest calling, like whatever is the best use, you know, like, like I say, I'm open to anything that really is helpful.
You know, it's like basically trying to find purpose where you can. And so I think that through, through the Honolulu Foundation, I'm sort of like, Oh, this is a good way to do good work in the world, you know, that helps the environment, helps people. I'm like, this, this makes sense. And I think with Arctic Ascent is much the same. I'm sort of like, Oh, this is a good opportunity to, to contribute to science in an interesting way and, and to highlight it on television. I mean, when you think of like how much terrible stuff is on television,
Kind of like why not have more programs like this we're kind of like a legitimate exploration in a beautiful place and a place that is both incredibly fragile and incredibly important to the. I mean you know we think there hundreds of millions of people that live on the coast in the world.
Yes, you know, if the Greenland ice sheet melts, it's predicted to raise sea levels, something like 20 feet. And so that literally affects hundreds of millions of people. And yet none of those people ever think about the Greenland ice sheet. You know, and so it's one of those things where if you can at least help educate in some small way through a program like this, it feels like a very useful, you know, like it feels like the like a good use of my time.
Please talk more about your foundation. What is it? Where can people find out about it? Why did you start it? You mentioned purpose. Yeah, so the the Honolulu Nation, I mean, for anyone who's interested, you can find out more about it at HonoluluNation.org. The website, you can see all the the grantee partners that we support and the work that we've been doing for the last decade. But basically, we support community solar projects around the world. And I mean, I started the foundation
I mean, largely because of everything we're talking about here, I mean, questions of purpose, like, what's the point? You know, I was, I was looking for, I had a year where I was kind of looking at ways to minimize my own environmental footprint to basically do less harm in the world. Cause I was reading a ton of environmental nonfiction and it was basically just kind of stressed about human impact on the environment and climate in general. And I sort of like, Oh, what are the things that I should be doing personally to, to leave a better impact on the world? And.
And there are a bunch of other things that kind of went into this. I mean, like one of which was the fact that at the time my sister was working as a public school teacher and basically making almost nothing.
And I was just sort of starting as a professional climber, but but I had a few opportunities where I participated in a TV commercial where I literally did nothing. It was completely stupid and it used like one shot of my face and it wasn't even like me as a as a climbing celebrity endorsing a product. It was literally just my face. I guess a model is just like, oh, there's some guy climbing on a rock. You know, it's just like a fit outdoor model and
Just that that glimpse of my face that they use the ad all over the world way more than was expected. So I want to making an insane amount of money and residuals cuz like every time it's all screen actor guild rates you know every time somebody errors the commercial you make like a nickel like some tiny amount but they just used a bunch and so.
Basically this TV commercial that I'd spent, you know, two days shooting with my good friends in the desert basically I was like, it's all climbing filmmaker people. I thought it was super fun. There was like a helicopter, you know, it all felt like Mission Impossible I was like, this is crazy. This is super fun. It's like engaging interesting work It's cool and I got paid an insane amount and so at the time my sister is a public school teacher and I made more in two days of fun than she would make in like two years of educating kids and I was like
This is insane, you know, and I was like, there's no justice in this like, you know, society. I was like, in some ways, an example that society is totally mismanaging its its its resources goals. And like when you think that sports and entertainment are so wildly overpaid compared to what we pay, you know, like educators and, you know, people that actually help society in different ways. And so in some ways, starting the Honolulu Foundation felt like an effort to address that kind of
structural inequality or sort of like that mismanagement of, of, of our collective values and goals. I don't, you know, I was just like, this is not the way the world should be. But the thing is, I like doing that work, you know, like it's fun, it's interesting. And I felt like I had this opportunity, like, I don't want to say no to TV commercials and things like that, because it is fun to do. But you get paid so much from it. And you know, I was living in a van, I'm climbing full time, I'm just living my life. I'm like, I don't need that.
But it's, it seems like a shame to turn it away. And so it makes more sense to just say yes, and then put it into things that matter. And so that's where the Haunton Foundation came in, where I was like, well, this is a great way to funnel this type of money to things that actually matter. Right. As you wind down, well, I don't want to say that, but as you enter a different stage in life, let's say, do you think that the foundation is what will have
The majority of your attention. Are you not sure yet what the future? Yeah, I wonder. So I started the foundation over a decade ago when I was very much focused purely on rock climbing as hard as possible. But even then, I sort of suspected that as I got older, the foundation would mean more to me and climbing would probably mean less to me because I knew that eventually I would just be too old to to push my absolute hardest as a climber or. I mean, I also just kind of wondered, like, would I even care enough to
to go hard all the time forever. You know, it's like, I mean, at some point you run out of roots, like you run out of things that you care about doing. Uh, you know, like with free selling specifically, I've done basically everything that I've ever wanted to do. And so, you know, I could try to dream up other goals and dream up other things, but you know, I've done most of the classics in the Western U S like, uh,
You know, like if you're a, like if you're a climber and somebody asks you to make a list of all the best, best multi-pitch, like best, you know, thousand foot type of routes in the, in the Western, Western North America, like I've probably free sold like almost all the routes on the list. And so, um, you know, and I could think up some others, maybe there, there's some things here or there, but I've done the great ones, you know, like I've kind of plucked the low hanging fruit, the stuff that I really cared about.
And so at a certain point, I'm like, do I have to just keep, keep picking more fruit? Like, or do I just call it good? Let somebody else like think up the next, next round of things to do.
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So let's say you finished all the fruit, the majority of the fruit. Do you then care that you finished the fruit or are you just like, you know what? I finished the fruit. Great. Cool.
Yeah, well, that's the thing is I think I'm kind of like, yeah, that's great. That's cool. Like I can focus on my family. I can focus on the foundation. I mean, I'm still trying to climb my best and I'm still interested in climbing goals. So, I mean, it's not to say that I've retired from climbing by any means, but I think, you know, people often ask like, oh, what's the next big project? Like, what's the next big soloing thing? I'm kind of like nothing obvious springs to mind. You know, like, like I've kind of done most of the things that I care about sort of like, you know, maybe I'll get really inspired by something, but
Now, like actually this summer, we're thinking about going to Europe to climb in the Dolomites as a family trip. But the Dolomites is a really historic, like Northern Italy. It's really historic for free soloing, like people have been been soloing there since like the 1920s and 30s. And so for me, it might be a fun opportunity to sort of rekindle a little bit of the the fun of soloing on stuff that's like classic and historic and, and somewhere that I haven't really climbed before, because I've, I've done very little there. And so
You know, maybe having like green pastures, you know, will sort of rekindle the rekindle the fire a little bit. But. You know, but I need something like that to get me fired up. Rekindle which fire? Well, like wanting to free solo hard things or like, you know, pushing myself in that way. Like basically, you need the right goals to push yourself. And if you've already achieved a lot of your goals, you're kind of like, oh, like why why keep pushing on the same in the same direction?
That's interesting. You need the right goals. What don't you think? Yeah. Yeah. How do you find the right goals? Well, that's the freaking challenge, isn't it? I mean, you know, trying to find something that inspires you that like makes you want to get out of bed early and like train and do all the things you're kind of like. Yeah, I mean, finding the right goal is like the the crux. I mean, all these questions about purpose and motivation and things like that. I mean, I think the right goals is a big part of that.
Do you feel like you were blessed? Well, maybe not that word, but in the colloquial sense, you feel like you were blessed because you found something that makes you excited to get up. Yeah, no, I totally know what you mean. Yeah, I found my calling or whatever cliche you want to use. Yeah, totally. No, I think and actually now as a parent, I really think that that's kind of the goal of parenting is to help your child find something that they're passionate about that that they want to get out of bed every day.
You know, it's like, I think that that my goal as a parent is to help my daughter find whatever it is that she gets lit up about, you know, the find the things that make her super excited, you know, whether that's, you know, music or art or sports or whatever writing like, but like, I feel like everybody out there has something that they really love to do, or they care about doing or the or that they could be uniquely good at or like, or uniquely passionate about or whatever else. And I think that finding that is is in many ways the goal of life.
If you weren't able to climb for whatever reason, what do you think you would be doing? Not the foundation, but because that's the obvious answer. What would you be doing? Yeah, it's hard to say. I don't know. Maybe just thinking like like reading and writing. And, you know, I don't know. I mean, I studied engineering for a year before I dropped out to climb full time. And so I could imagine just, you know, trying to build things or
I don't know. I mean, I can sort of imagine almost any other path in life if, you know, if it had played out that way. But but this this is the path I took. Yeah. Speaking of paths of all the paths that you've taken, what are you most proud of in your life? Oh, I think I think
At this point in my life, I think I'm most proud of sort of my body of work as a climber, if you can call it that, like the things that I've done as a climber. I mean, I suspect that when I die at some point, I'll probably be more proud of my family or the work that my foundation has done or things like that. But at this point, my family's so young and I'm still pretty proud of the things that I've climbed. Yeah, and you also mentioned that you want to climb
in italy with your family but your daughter is two okay so next year she'll be three when you say with my family no i mean the whole family goes on a trip so like you know my daughter and we'd be going hiking and stuff but uh but on a trip like that i'd probably be able to dip out in the mornings and go soloing for a few hours and like go scramble some peaks and do some historic like do some fun climbing
And your wife climbs with you a bit. Yeah, my wife climbs as well. Like a trip like that. When I say a family trip, though, I mean that we would be predominantly focused on, you know, doing tourism in Italy and going for family hikes and like hanging out at the park and like doing whatever. And then in in the extra time, I would go and climb things that I'm excited about. Right. Right. No, I don't mean that I'm taking the babies climbing up things.
Though I will say my daughter is really into scrambling on things and it does make you wonder about nature versus nurture kind of stuff where it's like, you know, but we'll just see as she gets older. Do you have any advice for your former self? Let's say when you were 15 or someone who's 15 now and they would like to follow a similar journey in climbing. I understand that those questions may be different, so feel free to make an admixture or a confection of them both. I don't know. I mean,
My advice to my former self would be a little bit more specific, I think. Sure, let's start with that. I mean, I sort of wish that I had maybe trained in a slightly more systematic way a little bit sooner and maybe been a little bit more disciplined about some things, just a little more strategic. But that's the thing is I think that that for me, advice would be
More specific to like I should have started doing finger strength stuff like a little earlier in my life and I wish I'd like train cardio and like I kind of wish I'd done other high school sports like I was already climbing full time but I was kind of like too shy to do stuff but I kind of wish I'd like run cross country or done some other things like that to like have a little bit broader of an athletic base you know or like done track and you know maybe swam I don't know just to like be exposed more to those sorts of things and I was younger
Um, that said, I mean, obviously I have loved climbing my whole life, so I'm not like stressed about it, but I do feel like I maybe could have done a little more athletically. But I think my advice to like the average person who just is starting to climb and is psyched on climbing. My advice would be just to, just to go and climb, you know, just to, if you like doing it, just go and do it, like go into the gym, uh, enjoy yourself.
I mean, my general advice to beginner climbers is to focus on your footwork, like focus on technique and like learn how to move well rather than rather than trying to get big muscles. Basically, like, don't worry about the strength side of it. Worry about the quality of your movement. I heard you mentioned that one of the reasons you started free soloing when you were younger is because you had social anxiety and didn't want to ask other people to come with you. Is that the case or am I misremembering? Yeah, that's that's a
Yeah. Yeah, that's fair enough. I mean, I don't know about social anxiety, but like, but yeah, I was kind of a loner, kind of a loser, kind of a, you know, I just, I just didn't have, um, and part of that's growing up in suburban California. Like I was growing up in a non-climbing family with non, like I wasn't really tied into the climbing community per se. And so, and I didn't really know how to like make new friends. And so rather than talk to strangers and try to find people to climb with, it was sort of easier just to, just to go do my own thing.
Which in retrospect, I'm like, what a psycho. I probably should have just talked to people. And why do you say that you wish you had done more sports? If you had done other sports, I imagine you would have liked soccer or football or basketball. And I imagine that would have taken away from the climbing and you wouldn't be as great a climber. Does that or no? You think that it would have accelerated your climbing skill?
I think that I probably could have been a better climber with a broader athletic base. I mean, the thing is, I've just always loved climbing more than any other sports. So it's not as if I was really a risk of like going down a different path. I don't think because also I don't have any talent for ball sports and I'm not like, you know, I'm not particularly coordinated. I'm just kind of whatever. But I do think that there's something to be said for
I don't know. So like even now, like I do a little bit of weight training stuff, but like, I don't really know how to lift weights and I don't really know good form for that kind of stuff. Uh, whereas I think a lot of high school athletes learn all the foundational principles of the weight room. Like, you know, if you're a high school wrestler, like you kind of learn the basics of using a weight room when you're 15, you know, and I think that I maybe could have been served by, by learning sort of the basics of, of like weight training and you know, cardio training, like running things like that.
I'm curious how it would have contributed to your climbing ability. So the cardio, again, I'm not terribly familiar with the climbing world other than watching you. So to me, it doesn't look like a strenuous cardiovascular activity.
No, okay. So I've, I've said a lot of speed records as a climber and I really enjoy speed climbing. And at a certain point, if once you have a sort of the, the minimum threshold of climbing skill, speed records become more about the quality of your engine, like how, how fast you can go uphill. And that is basically cardiovascular fitness. And so, you know, the, the better your engine, the faster you can go. And so, you know, I've, I've done a lot of speed records, but most of the things that I've done,
I could imagine doing them a lot better if I had a better engine, which I just don't really have. And, and, and that's, you know, it's tough because it's always trade-offs because if you want to develop a better engine, like if you want to do a lot of cardiovascular training, you're basically going to wear yourself out for hard climbing. Uh, like, you know, like you're too tired. Like if you're training for a marathon, let's say, uh, it's hard to also climb at a high level at the same time because you're just tired. And so, uh,
You know, it's always trade offs as to like how big of an engine you want to develop versus, you know, how skilled you want to be as a climber. But that's why I think that there's room for developing a broad athletic base when you're young. Yeah, you mentioned thinking because you used to be an engineer, at least for about a year or so. And maybe you would do some reading and writing when you're climbing. Have you ever had an aha moment because you're just your mind is thinking,
No, no, it's like you want to think that you're having these amazing, you know, transcendental experiences in nature. And I just I just never am. And I think that's funny because there's so many writers who, you know, I mean, even like the writings of John Muir or something. I don't know if you know any of those, but like, but.
I've been to many of the same places. He was instrumental in the founding of Yosemite as a national park back in the day and his writings about his experiences in nature contributed to the founding of national parks. And he writes about all these sort of
you know, yeah, big thoughts that he has while in nature. And I'm kind of like, I've literally been in the same places, having the same experiences in nature. And I'm just not having the same big thoughts. You know, I'm just kind of like, wow, I'm wet, I'm cold, I'm tired. Like I should probably try to get home. And it's just, it's just a totally different thing. But then it's like probably because he's raised by a minister or whatever. And like he read the Bible 10 billion times and he's, he's sort of queued for that, that transcendental experience. Like he's, he's ready for something.
the opposite, like you were cued to not have experiences like that rather than just not being cued if you were cued in the opposite direction. Yeah, maybe. I mean, I'm sort of like a natural skeptic and natural cynic, like anti-authority, like anti-dogma. You know, yeah, exactly. I'm cued the opposite direction. We're like even in the most epic display of nature's beauty and power, I'm still just kind of like, ah, but it's just nature. Yeah, yeah. But you still enjoy it. No, I do still enjoy it. Yeah, that's it's
I'm not that much of a skeptic or or cynic or whatever. No, no, you're just being facetious. Yeah, I mean, I do. I do love and I will say I've been I've been, as you say, blessed to to go to a lot of the most beautiful places on Earth. You know, it's like to see natural beauty in ways that I think most humans don't get to see. It's like it is incredible. You mentioned that you do it for the fun of it, like that's partly or in large part what motivates you. But I didn't hear the word thrill and much of the time people will say, yeah, I do it for the thrill of it.
What is that actually true of what is that true of anybody that does something routinely for, you know, I've been climbing for 28 years now. Is it still thrilling? You know, when people do something for the thrill, it's generally something they do sort of infrequently or, you know, like as like basically nothing is thrilling if you do it five days a week for 28 years.
You know, like, I still love climbing and I can still get thrills through climbing. I mean, there are occasional things where you're like, wow, this is an incredible wall or like a place I've never been or a thing I've never done. But after five days a week for 28 years, you're like, there's not that much thrill. I mean, it's still deeply fun and very satisfying, but it's not thrilling. Yeah. Great point. Great point.
Like I suspect I suspect you'd say the same about a marriage or something, you know, where you can have like an incredible relationship. But after 28 years, you're probably not thrilled by it every day. You're just kind of like, oh, this is deeply satisfying and an incredible in its own way, but it's not thrilling. What I was going to ask is if it was thrilling, at what point would it be? I imagine it would be when you finish, but you have a much more explicated notion of what it is to climb.
And so maybe it would be at certain points, maybe there's a halfway point, maybe it's when you accomplish a certain thumb movement. And I apologize that I don't know the correct terminology here, because we're not going to talk about the thrilling aspect. What about the fun? When does the fun come in? Is it at every point in the journey? Is it more points than others? Like what makes the fun occur? I think for me, the fun is the movement. It's like the feeling.
I think in the same way that if you if you throw a kid into a pool, they have a good time just paddling around and moving in the water. I think that moving on rock is the same kind of of fun. And actually, I kind of think that climbing is the same sort of elemental movement pattern as running or swimming. You know, it's basically the same idea is like you're moving through terrain except once vertical, once horizontal, whatever. But but I think that the
The, the fun of climbing is just the movement itself. Like you're, and I mean, you see that when you see kids at jungle gyms and stuff, I've been going to the playground now with my daughter and you watch all the other kids playing around and you're like, there is something, you know, thrilling or something fun about clambering over things and like overcoming obstacles. And that seems pretty innate because virtually any little kid you see enjoys like getting up on top of something and like, you know, I think it's,
I think it's a pleasing sensation because you're using your body in a way that it's intended to be used, you know, in the same way that like walking and jogging is fundamentally pleasing. So what's coming up that you're excited about? Forget about big projects. I know everyone asks you about big projects other than the Italy trip. What are you excited about? No, the biggest project is that daughter number two arrives in a couple of weeks. So that's a, you know,
The timing of the Greenland to bring this back to the Arctic Ascent, you found out around then? No, no. Arctic Ascent was when our daughter was six months old. So then baby number two is like six months after that. Basically, baby number two is due on baby number one second birthday.
which is just a coincidence, but you know, we'll have to see how it plays out. But either way, our two daughters will have like almost the same birthday with two years apart. But, um, but no, so things that I'm excited about for this year, I mean, basically it's, it's like a parenting year. You know, it's like, I've been at home for months because my wife is really pregnant and just being supportive. Uh, and you know, and then baby number two comes and then we have a couple different family climbing trips planned.
But again, they're more around going somewhere cool with the family and being there and climbing a bit, but they aren't like big goal focused trips, you know, where I'm like trying to achieve something. I mean, they're just going to climb somewhere for fun with the fam. And then other than that, that's basically the year there are a few things I want to do in Yosemite this year. And I think that that those trips I'll probably try to do without the family so that I'm able to. A couple grams of mushrooms. Yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe.
That might be actually I read I did a big I did a big expedition this summer where I bike toured from Colorado to Alaska with a partner and did a whole crazy thing, which will also be a show for National Geographic next year sometime. But on that trip, I listened to the Michael Pollan book, how to change your mind while while I'm biking.
And and that's what inspired us to to get some mushrooms off of some random dude along the way but then turns out they didn't do anything sadly but we were sort of like primed we were like ready to have a transformative psychedelic experience but but it just didn't happen but um.
But so on that on that bike tour, though, I finished reading the book and then I downloaded meditation app because I was like, oh, well, while you're biking, there's not a whole lot you can do. So I was doing meditation stuff like while I was biking, because you just have so much time on the bike every day. I was kind of like, well, I may as well sort of explore the mind a little bit while while pedaling. And now, yeah.
I don't know if i really learned anything but what were the results of the meditation app what app was it i was using the waking up app you know that the sam harris i've used a little bit in the past because i kind of like the combination of of like lectures and and podcast type material on it with the actual you know guided meditations and so so i mostly wound up listening to the different lectures and and
You didn't find the meditations to be helpful? I did a little bit, but I just found that on the bicycle, it's hard to really meditate when you're bicycling. One, your eyes are open the whole time. We were getting passed by logging trucks non-stop. We were in Northern British Columbia. There were big trucks going past you all the time. Obviously, you can still meditate through that, but for a beginner like me, it's all a little more challenging.
You know, it's like, it's hard to like really tap into some kind of altered consciousness when you think you're about to get hit by a truck. Right. Yeah. So so I was doing the meditations, but I felt like I was kind of doing them poorly, you know, and also like trying to focus on your breathing, focus on your breath. But then all of a sudden you start going uphill and you're like, you're like pretty hard for a while. So the only thing that gave you the idea to use the meditation app while biking was that you had time to kill. It wasn't like this is the ideal circumstance for me.
I mean, a little bit. Yeah, it's like, well, because I just finished this how to change your mind. It's all about like alter station consciousness. But there is really any great ways to alter your consciousness. I mean, you can do breath work and things like that. But while you're bicycling, there's not a whole lot you can do other than then sort of a mental journey. I mean, I suppose I could have been doing hallucinogens on the bike. But one, we didn't have any and two, I'm just not that trucks are passing. Yeah, exactly. It's all just like not it's not really the right way.
I could have been like micro dosing or doing whatever, but I'm like, I just I just don't know if I care quite that much. Meditation seemed like a perfect way to to dabble and sort of experience. It seemed like a good way to explore while while still biking eight hours a day. Yeah. Alex, I know that you do 15 minute interviews and I appreciate you spending over an hour with me. So thank you so much, man. It's been a blast. No, no, no. My pleasure. It's I'd say it's a very different kind of conversation. Now I'm going to
Sit for a while being like, what is the point and what is my personal like? I don't freaking know. I'm just trying my best. All right, man. Oh, I'm glad. Let me know if you've got any answers. Yeah, we're getting if I get any big answers. I'll reach out so we can chat again. I'm like, I've got something profound for you this time. Like, we'll see. All right, man. No, pleasure chatting and good luck. Good luck. Bye bye.
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"text": " The Economist covers math, physics, philosophy, and AI in a manner that shows how different countries perceive developments and how they impact markets. They recently published a piece on China's new neutrino detector. They cover extending life via mitochondrial transplants, creating an entirely new field of medicine. But it's also not just science they analyze."
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"text": " Where senior editors argue through the news with world leaders and policy makers in twice weekly long format shows. Basically an extremely high quality podcast. Whether it's scientific innovation or shifting global politics, The Economist provides comprehensive coverage beyond headlines. As a toe listener, you get a special discount. Head over to economist.com slash TOE to subscribe. That's economist.com slash TOE for your discount."
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"text": " With TD Early Pay, you get your paycheck up to two business days early, which means you can grab last-second movie tickets in 5D Premium Ultra. TD Early Pay, that's how TD makes payday unexpectedly human. Surprise bill? Need fast funds? Cash that USA can help. When you need money fast, be the hero."
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"text": " If you do a 24 hour to 48 hour push in the mountains and you like watch the sun come up for the second morning in a row, you will have a transformative experience. Whether that's transcendence or spiritual anyway, as you start to get ground down physically, you get way more open emotionally and then sort of psychologically to have crazy experiences."
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"text": " Alex Honnold, widely known from the Free Solo documentary, is now venturing on a new challenge in Arctic Ascent, a National Geographic series."
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"text": " This documentary chronicles his journey in Greenland, and today we explore the themes central to Honnold's career and life, fear, risk, and purpose. How does confronting fear in extreme physical contexts translate to broader life lessons? What does it even mean to confront fear? Should we confront it? Or should we listen to it? What does treating fear as a mentor mean? What is Alex's approach to risk, both in climbing and in personal philosophy?"
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"text": " Furthermore, we talk about the search for meaning and purpose. I recommend you watch his new series Arctic Ascent on Disney Plus. It's also on Hulu and National Geographic. For those of you who don't know, my name is Kurt Jaimungal, and I use my background in mathematical physics to analyze theories of everything from, again, a math and physics perspective, an analytical perspective, but as well as I'm interested in broader questions of what is consciousness, what lies at the fundament, and even what is free will? Do we have it? Enjoy this podcast with Alex Honnold."
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"text": " Alex, some people think of fear as an obstacle to overcome, but can you talk about some times where fear has served as a guide or a protector to you? Yeah, I think fear is often an obstacle to overcome, but it's always a useful indicator. I mean, think of fear as a signpost. It's often warning you that you're in danger. When I think of fear,"
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"text": " I mean, this could be a whole long chat if we really go into it. But sometimes I equate fear to hunger, where it's, you know, hunger is your body giving you a physiological sign that at some point you should eat something. And I think fear is much the same way. It's like a physiological response. It's your body telling you that you're probably in danger. And sometimes you are, sometimes you aren't. And it's worth sort of rationally evaluating whether or not you are in fact in danger, like if your fear is well founded or not."
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"text": " And so sometimes it's worth ignoring that fear and just moving on because you are in fact safe. And so it's not worth, you know, heating that fear, but, but sometimes you are in danger and you probably should mitigate it. You know, it's like you should, you should take steps to correct it. So I think that, you know, I think that sometimes people think of fear almost with a sense of shame, you know, it's like, Oh, I was afraid and that's bad. I mean, there's nothing wrong with feeling fear. It's whether or not you let the fear control you. That's more of the problem."
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"text": " So how do you distinguish between an irrational fear and a legitimate one? Well, I think that's where you use reason. Basically, you think about it, you're like, am I actually in danger? I mean, so in climbing, you feel fear all the time because you're you're up high and not just in freesailing. It sounds like you're in danger all the time, though. Sounds like those are all legitimate fears. No, because when you're"
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"text": " You know, when I'm climbing, you know, 95% of the time, I'm climbing with ropes and climb with partners and just kind of climbing normally. And almost all of the time you can fall. I mean, you're using safety equipment. You have a rope. It's totally safe, but it's still pretty scary because you're still way up high off the ground. And there's still always that sense of uncertainty around like, you know, you have the equipment on, but you're like, but if you fall, what will happen? Like maybe you'll fall a little further than you want. Like maybe you'll hit the wall. Maybe, you know, there's just a little bit of unknown around it. And so there's always a little bit of fear that creeps in."
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"text": " Even though it is technically safe. So I think with climbing, you're constantly in this conversation with yourself as to whether or not your fear is founded. So do you have a relationship with fear other than you listen to it and then you assess? Is there something like you have an understanding with your fear? Like in some Jungian sense, you see it as another personality? No, that's almost like too. I think it's just something that you're experiencing all the time."
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"text": " And, and you, and you, you know, learn how to like, you get to know it, but I think in the same way that hunger, like, because people experience hunger all the time and like throughout the day, you always experience small, small amounts of hunger and you almost always ignore it because you already have a plan and you already know that at some point you're going to eat again soon. So you're not really concerned about it. And I think that as a climber, your relationship with fear is, is relatively similar."
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"text": " You know, it's like you're experiencing low grade fear almost all the time. Most of the time you ignore it because it doesn't you know that it doesn't mean anything. But occasionally it does mean something and then you have to act on it. I see. Have you experienced shifts in your consciousness during the climb? I mean, yeah, well, it depends what you mean by shifts in your consciousness, I guess. I mean, I definitely have experienced. Not like."
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"text": " I've never had like out of body experiences. And you know, I have friends and things who have sort of described like seeing themselves climb and things like that. Oh, you have not have that. I've never experienced that. Though I do occasionally experience what I sort of call like a feeling of autopilot, where you feel like your body is just executing without any sort of mental function on your own part, you know, or like you're no longer controlling your body, your body is just doing what it's supposed to do."
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"text": " And you're observing your body doing so? No, you're not really observing. You're like, it's almost like you're a, you're a passenger inside of a high performing machine. You know, it's like, I think, in some ways, I think that's the best sensation while free soloing is when you and this is super rare, but you can occasionally tap into that where you're almost like witnessing your body do, you know, do what it's supposed to do. And that happens more on the climbs that you've practiced."
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"text": " Or even sometimes when you haven't, uh, more so on the times that you practiced, because I think that for that to occur, it helps to be able to get out of your own head, like not have to think about things nonstop. And in climbs that you haven't practiced, you're often, uh, you know, sort of second guessing, you're thinking about route finding, you're thinking about, like, because you've never been up there before, you're legitimately trying to figure out where you're supposed to go. And you're, and you're legitimately wondering if you're on the right path, if there's a better path further to the side or, you know, things like that."
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"text": " How do you mentally prepare for a climb? Is each climb different?"
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"text": " Yeah, because but also for Arctic Ascent. So for people who haven't watched the intro, there's a new documentary series with you, a three part series produced by National Geographic called Arctic Ascent with Alex Honnold. When you're preparing for something like, let's say people know you from two major facets, free solo, so LCAP, but also Arctic Ascent. So why don't you contrast those two and what mentally preparing looks like? Yeah, that's interesting. So, I mean, with free solo, the mental preparation"
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"text": " Was extreme, you know, in involved, like, you know, it's years of practice and visualization and, and, you know, fantasizing about the route and just kind of generally, you know, I sort of lived it for years. And then in many ways, the, the climbs that I did in Arctic ascent are the, I was about to say the polar opposite. And then I was like, pun intended because it's in the Arctic, but, uh, it's, uh,"
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"text": " Because those were first ascents so nobody's ever done it before nobody's ever seen the walls before nobody's ever touched them before So you can't really mentally prepare for them in the the same way Really for a climb like that. The preparation is just being ready for the unknown sort of embracing the unknown and then just entering the experience Totally open, you know, just like whatever happens happens. We'll adapt to it as it occurs and we'll just do our best You know, but the other key distinction is that with Arctic Ascent is"
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"text": " Yeah, I was with partners, I was with a team, we're roped up, we're using safety equipment. But then, but then it's interesting, because it's like, we're using safety equipment, but that doesn't actually make it safe. Because, you know, the equipment, you still have to be able to find, you know, cracks and things to put the gear into. And so you're often still climbing quite a long ways without protection. And you know, like, if you have a rope on, and you go 100 feet without protection, that means you're looking at potentially taking a 200 foot fall."
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"text": " And a 200 foot fall on that type of terrain in the middle of nowhere in the Arctic could still potentially be fatal. And so, you know, I mean, falling more than 20 feet could be could be a huge problem if you're out in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. So it's one of those things that, you know, even though you're using safety equipment, it doesn't exactly make it safe. And so you're still constantly involved in the same dialogue around fear and, you know. All that to say, using safety equipment can still be quite scary sometimes."
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"text": " How do the camera people do this? Because often people associate or identify with the person on screen and it's extremely difficult for them, obviously. But then I'm always wondering, yeah, the camera people are doing almost as much and then lugging gear and then having to concern themselves about shots and did I get the sound and so on. So what do you make of the? Well, what about the camera people? Do they have extra assistance that we don't see? Are they helicoptered up there?"
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"text": " What's going on? They typically do have more assistance in some ways. So like with the film Free Solo, I was doing most of my preparation work and the camera guys were doing all their prep work by hiking to the summit of El Cap, which is sort of like an extreme hiking route. It takes a couple hours. You know, it's hard physical work, but but it is safe and relatively fast and you can just get to the summit. And then from the summit, you can rappel down ropes to get into position. And so the camera guys"
},
{
"end_time": 717.585,
"index": 27,
"start_time": 688.422,
"text": " You know, we're all skilled climbers themselves, though to do their job, they're not they're not required to climb. They hike to the top, they rappel down ropes. So they're hanging on ropes the whole time. And so it's still, you know, it's still the vertical environment. I mean, they still have to be comfortable hanging 2500 feet off the ground and spinning around in space and like, you know, dangling. But but it's not the same as climbing up into that position. And then with Arctic Ascent, it was maybe a little bit more complicated for the camera guys in some ways, because"
},
{
"end_time": 746.92,
"index": 28,
"start_time": 718.08,
"text": " We were doing first ascent, so nobody had ever been there before. You know, there's no easy way to get to the summit of the peaks, which is why we're climbing them. And so on Arctic Ascent, the camera guys had to be more comfortable on skis because we were traversing glaciers. You know, but for the most part, we would climb and then fix ropes behind us, like leave ropes in place so that the camera guys could ascend up and down those ropes to kind of get there. OK. And then they also just did a lot more with drones and with long shots and an overall"
},
{
"end_time": 774.787,
"index": 29,
"start_time": 747.432,
"text": " You know, I mean, if you watch Arctic Ascent, the cinematography is totally beautiful and it's, you know, it's incredible, like it looks amazing. But realistically, they use easier shots than in Free Solo. You know, I mean, there's way less like top down photography. There's like they just kind of get by with more long shots, drone shots, like other things, because it's just so hard to shoot in that environment. Does the presence of the cameras impact the climb? Like, let's say both in LCAP and in Arctic Ascent?"
},
{
"end_time": 805.213,
"index": 30,
"start_time": 775.708,
"text": " Sometimes like an Arctic send it doesn't impact that much because realistically you're up there with your team either way you have climbing partners so the the camera guys are basically just another member of the climbing team and you're all up there working together to try to get up the wall on free solo the camera guys could impact the experience for sure because when you're doing something that's hard and scary by yourself having somebody else next to you totally changes the experience or can"
},
{
"end_time": 827.602,
"index": 31,
"start_time": 805.589,
"text": " And so in the case of free solo, the whole camera team was very mindful of trying not to affect my experience. I mean, they're trying to shoot a documentary about me attempting this difficult thing. So they didn't want to impact it too much. But, you know, it's hard not to impact it a little bit. Yeah, I mean, like, like one easy example of that is that, like with with free solo,"
},
{
"end_time": 858.148,
"index": 32,
"start_time": 828.575,
"text": " Typically if you're going free soloing, like if you're going to go climb something by yourself without a rope, you don't really tell anybody about it ahead of time because you want the option to back down. Like if you wake up and you hike up to the wall and you just don't really feel it, you want to feel comfortable just walking back down and not climbing that day. You don't want any pressure on yourself one way or another because if it's not your day, you don't want to force it. The thing with free soloing is you never want to force it if you don't feel it. But when you have a bunch of camera people around,"
},
{
"end_time": 884.957,
"index": 33,
"start_time": 858.814,
"text": " They all have to get into position hours ahead of time because it takes, you know, it's a lot of work to hike to the summit, rappel in, get all the ropes ready, like do all that kind of prep work. So if I'm going to go free soloing at six in the morning, that means that the camera crew is up at three in the morning or probably up at two in the morning to pack their bags and then three in the morning to hike. And then they're already in position on the wall. And so I know that if I walk up to the base at seven in the morning and I'm just like, you know, I don't feel it today. I think I'm just going to call it."
},
{
"end_time": 915.35,
"index": 34,
"start_time": 885.469,
"text": " All my friends just busted their ass for six hours that morning. Right. For nothing. And and even though like that shouldn't sounds like far more pressure. Well, exactly. I mean, it doesn't need to be more pressure. Like it's not it's not like they're trying to put pressure on you, but you just know that you're wasting your friend's time if you don't perform. And so, yeah, you know, it definitely is more pressure. Do you find that climbing is an artistic expression? Yeah, that's some climbers definitely do."
},
{
"end_time": 944.718,
"index": 35,
"start_time": 915.879,
"text": " For me, I think it's, uh, I think I've always skewed more towards the athletic side of the spectrum. Like if you think of like an athlete versus an artist, I think I personally have always cared more about the athletics than the artistic side. But, but even for me, I appreciate the artistry. I mean, it is beautiful and aesthetics certainly play a role. I mean, looking up at a beautiful cliff and like caring about it. And, uh, you know, I mean that, that means more than just the pure athleticism of it."
},
{
"end_time": 970.282,
"index": 36,
"start_time": 945.589,
"text": " So for me as an outsider who I think I rock climbed once in my life in an extremely safe indoor situation. Which gym? It was in Toronto. I'm from Toronto. It was somewhere on Bloor Street. I don't know if you know Toronto, but I've been to a couple of the gyms in Toronto. Yeah. Cool. Cool. I can't imagine how anyone would see it as artistic. I can see it as athletic as well."
},
{
"end_time": 1000.316,
"index": 37,
"start_time": 970.555,
"text": " But what the heck does it mean for you mentioned some of your climbing friends see it as somehow some expression. I agree that if you learn how to climb indoors and I learned how to climb indoors when I was a kid, I think it's definitely more athletic that way. You think of it more as a sport that you're training for. But if you grew up climbing in the mountains, then it's much more artistic, you know, aesthetic pursuit. Yeah, but that's just the scenery. No, is there something that they think about? Sorry. So there's different"
},
{
"end_time": 1026.664,
"index": 38,
"start_time": 1000.845,
"text": " dances that you can do that are called contact dances where you're with another person and you're always supposed to keep at least one or two points of contact. And I can imagine that as artistic. And so when I heard that some people think of climbing as artistic, I imagine it was that not just they see a vista. No, I think so. Yeah, the sort of balletic performance like the I mean, in the same way that I suspect if you asked a gymnast,"
},
{
"end_time": 1054.667,
"index": 39,
"start_time": 1028.097,
"text": " They would probably see gymnastics as as partially artistic expression and like the way they move their body and the beauty of the movement. But then also largely athletic, you know, and like how well they can mechanically move their body. And I think that climbing is very similar in that way. But there are definitely there. There have been many climbers in there and there are climbers who are very motivated by the beauty of the act and the feeling of sort of flowing over stone."
},
{
"end_time": 1084.701,
"index": 40,
"start_time": 1055.469,
"text": " You know, I'm I'm I'm less on that spectrum, you know, I sort of prefer the like hard physical effort, like the training side of it. But I don't know. I mean, there have been a lot of very successful, you know, very high performing climbers that see it as a as a beautiful interaction with nature, where it's like you're dancing together with nature. Yeah, you mentioned the word flow. There's a technical term called flow about being in the optimal zone between something that's difficult and something that's not. And"
},
{
"end_time": 1115.282,
"index": 41,
"start_time": 1085.35,
"text": " Do you find yourself operating in that zone? Yeah, I mean, in a lot of ways. No, I mean, a lot of climbing, I think, is really a search for flow. You know, it's like it's such an elusive. It's so rare that you really tap into sort of a peak, like optimal flow state. And I think a lot of climbing is basically searching for that feeling. Yeah, I want to ask you a question. I'm not sure if you're comfortable. So no, no, just go. Love it. Push me. Yeah, let's see. OK. Have you done any psychedelics or had any interesting trips?"
},
{
"end_time": 1126.169,
"index": 42,
"start_time": 1115.862,
"text": " No, not really. I would say I'm like, so this summer, I'm like, is it legal to talk about illegal drug use? Yeah, yeah. You'd be surprised."
},
{
"end_time": 1154.821,
"index": 43,
"start_time": 1126.254,
"text": " Yeah, okay. No, um, like this summer on an expedition, uh, my partner and I attempted to take psychedelic mushrooms, but then it turns out that like we sat and watched this beautiful sunset and it was all really beautiful. And we were both like, I don't, I don't think it did anything. Like, I don't think like somebody had given us some mushrooms. But then afterward my buddy was like, I think it was oregano. It was like too old or too dry or like there've been a few things like that where I've sort of like tried to do something, but never quite had, I've never had like a transformative psychedelic experience."
},
{
"end_time": 1185.043,
"index": 44,
"start_time": 1155.64,
"text": " Okay, do you meditate? I have a little bit, but never to the point that I've experienced anything that I would consider profound. Do you think of yourself as a courageous person? I've never thought of myself that way. But I probably I mean, what's the definition of courage like being able to do something you don't want to do? Basically? Yeah, sure. While pushing through fears, but there's also a relative component to it. Like, well, I can do this, but most people can't like I can"
},
{
"end_time": 1213.575,
"index": 45,
"start_time": 1185.555,
"text": " Get a spider from the wall while my wife screams at it. Am I more courageous or does it just impact me less? Yeah, I think it does impact you less. I think, yeah, I wouldn't say I'm particularly courageous, but I would say I'm probably less impacted by a lot of things like that. What would be a way of humanizing Alex? Because many people, when I said, hey, I'm interviewing Alex, they're like, man, ask him, where does he get his boxers to hold his balls? Yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 1243.131,
"index": 46,
"start_time": 1213.951,
"text": " You'd be surprised how many comments were like that. That's funny. So to humanize you, what would be something that many people wouldn't think you'd be timid about, but you are? Like, are you afraid of mice? No, that's the thing is that most of those kinds of physical fears, I think I've mostly let go. I mean, I used to be more afraid of snakes and spiders and things like that. But I think with time, I just kind of learned that doesn't matter that much, you know. Yeah, you said you let go. What do you mean?"
},
{
"end_time": 1272.142,
"index": 47,
"start_time": 1243.422,
"text": " So it used to impact you like the the sort of the phobia level fear where you're like, oh my god, it's a spider. It was like now I'm a little more rational about it where I'm kind of like, oh, well, if it's a really fast moving exotic spider that I've never seen, then I'll give it a wide berth because I'm like, who knows what that could do to me. But if it's a slow moving cat, you know, like we get tarantulas near where we live. I live in Las Vegas in the desert. And so you see tarantulas pretty frequently. And in the morning when it's cold, the tarantulas are really, really slow, like really chill."
},
{
"end_time": 1299.582,
"index": 48,
"start_time": 1272.637,
"text": " And you know, you can like pet them basically. And I mean, they're not venomous anyway. Like they don't they're not like dangerous spiders, even though they're so big and intimidating. And so I think now I'm just a little bit better at differentiating the things that I should be afraid of from the things that I shouldn't be. What does the word sacred mean to you or transcendent mean to you? Oh, man. Yeah, I don't even know. Like beyond"
},
{
"end_time": 1309.206,
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"start_time": 1300.06,
"text": " Do you have a relationship with the sacred or the transcendent? Hear that sound?"
},
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"end_time": 1336.323,
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"start_time": 1310.128,
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"text": " I would say no. I mean, I've always been totally unreligious. So I think that, you know, when you say the sacred, I think that often brings up sort of religiosity like the feeling of"
},
{
"end_time": 1484.735,
"index": 56,
"start_time": 1455.862,
"text": " Whatever and and I've always been sort of anti-dogma anti-religion and it's just You know on the other hand, you know, you can have transcendent experiences climbing for sure though they typically revolve around the the beauty of nature and and also just being in a environment for a long time, you know like if you do a 24 hour to 48 hour push in the mountains like if you're out like doing something hard in the mountains for 36 hours straight and you like watch the Sun come up for the second morning in a row and"
},
{
"end_time": 1513.2,
"index": 57,
"start_time": 1485.23,
"text": " You will have a transformative experience, you know, like whether that's transcendence or, you know, that spiritual anyway, like maybe not. But like, as you start to get ground down physically, you get way more open, you know, emotionally and sort of psychologically to have crazy experiences. And then you're like, Oh, that's so incredible. I'm one with nature. It's you know, but I'm like, is that is that transcendental or something? Like, I don't know. So there's this guy named Wim Hof. I don't know. Yeah, I know. Iceman. Right, right."
},
{
"end_time": 1541.886,
"index": 58,
"start_time": 1513.831,
"text": " When someone does one aspect of their life in an extreme way, it tends to generalize and they do a couple other activities that are extreme. So with Wim Hof, he would do these cold plunges, I believe at first. Then it was fasting, extreme fasting and so on. So are there other aspects of your life that you feel like are something that you do to the extreme? Do you do prolonged fasts? No, no, I don't not. The thing with prolonged fasting,"
},
{
"end_time": 1567.312,
"index": 59,
"start_time": 1543.029,
"text": " I mean, I think in general, if you're trying to perform at a high level, athletically, uh, fasting is, is, I don't want to say that it's not the right course because I'm sure there's somebody out there who performs really well and they fast a lot, but I'm like, I bet if he pulled the Olympians, none of them are fasting. Seriously, because of its impact on muscles. Uh, yeah, we're just fueling workouts. You know, it's like, it's hard to,"
},
{
"end_time": 1579.411,
"index": 60,
"start_time": 1567.756,
"text": " I think it's hard to wake up and try your hardest if you never eat, you know, it's like, that's just, it just kind of makes sense. But randomly the other day, my, my sister,"
},
{
"end_time": 1605.06,
"index": 61,
"start_time": 1580.043,
"text": " It's like, Oh, did I tell you that, uh, the, the, you know, my brother-in-law, this guy, James, that, uh, that he fasted and I was like, Oh, cool. Like, what does that mean? And she was like, Oh, he went eight days without eating. And I was like, what the fuck? It's his first time ever doing anything like that. Yeah. He went like seven and a half days and then kind of, I think went to eight, like just to have a nice round number. Like I think it's seven days. He started having an electrolyte drink cause he didn't feel amazing. And then he like, so that doesn't count."
},
{
"end_time": 1633.456,
"index": 62,
"start_time": 1605.06,
"text": " So what precipitated James to do this?"
},
{
"end_time": 1657.773,
"index": 63,
"start_time": 1633.968,
"text": " Yeah, that's astounding. This mental resilience seems to run in your family even if it's an in-law. Well, honestly, that's the thing is I was like, you know, when you're talking about"
},
{
"end_time": 1688.285,
"index": 64,
"start_time": 1658.387,
"text": " Like courage and things like that. I was like, could I just not eat for a week? I mean, I'd like to think that I could maybe not eat for a week if I had a reason to if I had to. But I'm like, man, it's hard to imagine like what I ever want to. That seems crazy to me. So what gives your life what gives it meaning? I mean, that's I don't know what gives yours meaning. My wife gives my life a tremendous amount of meaning in my work. Hmm. Yeah, I'm like,"
},
{
"end_time": 1712.995,
"index": 65,
"start_time": 1688.729,
"text": " I really like my wife. I don't know if it gives like meaning though. It's like, I think she's amazing. Like your wife. No, I mean, I love my wife. My wife is amazing and my family's amazing. But I just don't know if it gives. I mean, if you really get into meaning, I'm like, I think that's a real struggle. Like is, is, is there meaning? I mean, other than what you assigned to it, like what you choose for yourself, what you, what you decide to do with your time."
},
{
"end_time": 1742.09,
"index": 66,
"start_time": 1714.002,
"text": " Yeah. Do you think you can assign your own meaning or is it something that you recognize? Yeah. Like as an instinct in you? Yeah, I think so. Well, I just, I don't know. I don't know if I really subscribe to any other form of meaning. So I think that at some point it's all a little arbitrary and you're just deciding for yourself what you think is important. Someone wanted to know what is your concept of failure and how is it tied to you staying motivated? I don't know. I mean,"
},
{
"end_time": 1752.602,
"index": 67,
"start_time": 1744.241,
"text": " I think climbers have a different relationship with failure than a lot of other sports people because with climbing,"
},
{
"end_time": 1779.684,
"index": 68,
"start_time": 1753.268,
"text": " It's not really zero sum, there's never like a winner and loser. It's like basically you're just working at doing something difficult for a prolonged period of time. And for most of that time, you're going to be failing because it's too hard for you. But the idea is that eventually you'll learn how eventually you'll gain the capabilities, you know, whatever you'll train physically or mentally, or eventually you'll get there. And then eventually you will succeed. So as a climber, you don't really fail until you give up on something. You know, it's like,"
},
{
"end_time": 1804.002,
"index": 69,
"start_time": 1780.111,
"text": " You're expected to fail over and over and over until you eventually succeed. And so you just don't really see it as failing. You just see it as part of the natural process of eventually working through this thing that you're trying to do. If that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. So you've never had a problem with motivation. What is it that drives you? I'm sure this is a question many people say like, why is it worth it to take these risks? What drives Alex?"
},
{
"end_time": 1819.77,
"index": 70,
"start_time": 1805.265,
"text": " I mean, it's an interesting, it's an interesting time to be having this whole conversation because for the last like three weeks, maybe I've been really unmotivated. And though actually, it's hard to say if I'm unmotivated, or if it's just that I've been kind of sucking and"
},
{
"end_time": 1847.125,
"index": 71,
"start_time": 1820.435,
"text": " And that often affects motivation because it's like you can spend your whole year just like grinding and like putting in the time, putting in the effort, like doing workouts, like getting up, eating well, like doing all the things, you know, like living well. And then if you just don't see results from it and you or you see like negative progress from it, then it's really hard to stay motivated for all that kind of stuff. Because you're like, why am I eating well? Why am I sleeping? Why am I doing all these things if it doesn't even matter? And I'm just like sucking anyway. You're sucking at what? Sorry. Oh, like"
},
{
"end_time": 1875.674,
"index": 72,
"start_time": 1847.551,
"text": " Life, you know climbing just like not quite having the energy like not being able to not being able to do the things that you think you should be able to do. I think it's like or like if like in my case for the last two months I was kind of working on on a hard climb near my home and and I was making good progress on it and then for like a month I basically just submitted like negative progress and I felt worse felt more tired like just not able to do what I had been doing the month before and so but with no obvious reason as to why really."
},
{
"end_time": 1900.282,
"index": 73,
"start_time": 1876.442,
"text": " It feels like you're still doing all the right things, but you're just not seeing the results that you think you should. And so then that's always a little demoralizing and you're like, oh man. But I think that when you talk about motivation though, in a lot of ways, it's all about the big picture, the long-term motivation. Because even right now, even in the last couple of weeks that I've been kind of in a slump,"
},
{
"end_time": 1930.657,
"index": 74,
"start_time": 1900.981,
"text": " I'm still training. I'm still doing, you know, I'm still roughly eating well and like still basically living well because I know that at some point I'll come back out of my little slump and, and I'll still have the foundation there to, to climb hard and try and train hard again, whatever else, you know? So I think motivation is like trying to stay on a path, even when, even when it feels a little rocky, you know, like a little bumpy pun intended. Yeah. So can you not view the slump, the current sucking phase,"
},
{
"end_time": 1949.428,
"index": 75,
"start_time": 1931.118,
"text": " As another stumbling in the same way that when climbing you view stumbling as well, that's just necessary. No one's expected to skateboard and do great tricks right off the bat. So why should I expect climbing to be any different? Why should I expect life to be any different? Yeah, no, you're right. I mean, I probably should think of it that way. It's just I think it's harder when"
},
{
"end_time": 1979.087,
"index": 76,
"start_time": 1950.265,
"text": " Cause when, when you feel like you're sucking at life, it's like weeks and weeks of suck, you know, with it, with climbing, I think the timeframe matters because like with the climb, you know, you try a climb and you know, it's like 10 or 15 minutes of like trying really hard and you don't succeed and you're like, that's fine. I'll try again later today. I'll try again later today. But when it's like weeks of that or months of that, you're like, okay, it's starting to be a little bit of a grind. Like I just want some kind of, some kind of change. This sounds foreign to you. Has there ever been a period of your life of depression or"
},
{
"end_time": 1985.094,
"index": 77,
"start_time": 1979.582,
"text": " Of lulls like this, is this new? No, no, it's not totally new. I mean, there are periods."
},
{
"end_time": 2014.548,
"index": 78,
"start_time": 1985.913,
"text": " I don't, I don't know if I'd ever say I've been clinically depressed. I would say my whole emotional band is pretty narrow. Like, you know, if people operate from a one to 10, I could sort of operate between a four and six. I think, you know, like I'm never that down. I've never that up. I'm like, or maybe I operate between like a five and seven, you know, because I'm generally like pretty, pretty content and rarely that down. But, um, but it's just never like wild swings one way or another. But, um, but no, I definitely go through periods of, of,"
},
{
"end_time": 2044.394,
"index": 79,
"start_time": 2015.282,
"text": " Though I sort of suspect that my down periods coincide with just being worn down physically, you know, just like basically over overdoing it for months at a time and then just being totally freaking worked. Yeah. Going back to the topic of drive, are there additional motivators at play? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, just. I mean, wanting to feel like a good climber, basically like wanting to feel like I'm good at what I do or that"
},
{
"end_time": 2074.957,
"index": 80,
"start_time": 2045.623,
"text": " I mean, one of the actually, I mean, one of the things is like the, the sensation of improving, you know, feeling like, like I'm doing better than I have in the past, which I think, yes, is a, is a tough thing to motivate you though, because obviously as I age, that'll just get harder and harder because eventually they will become a point where it's like impossible to outdo previous performances because you just don't have the same physical body that you did, you know, 20 or 30 years ago or something. And so, you know, I mean,"
},
{
"end_time": 2100.077,
"index": 81,
"start_time": 2075.367,
"text": " It's funny because that's always been pretty motivating, the feeling of progress, the feeling of improvement. But I kind of know that at some point that's going to disappear. And, you know, I definitely need something else to motivate me. I mean, and that's, that's, I mean, this is all kind of deep. I mean, I'm also just motivated by the sheer fun of, you know, I love climbing, and I love the sensation of I love going out and just enjoying climbing. I mean, what you're talking about, like what drives you is like the deeper"
},
{
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"index": 82,
"start_time": 2100.572,
"text": " I mean, there's also just the sheer pleasure of it. Like I do. I just love going climbing. So for me, I'm similar. And that what drives me is I want to be extremely good. But I'm also egotistical in that I want to be the best. So not only do I have to be better than I was previously, but I have to be better than someone else that I would consider to be in my category or find a way to mentally tell myself that I'm in some different category that is Blue Ocean in the marketing sense. And so for you, I heard you mention that you would like to improve on it."
},
{
"end_time": 2160.094,
"index": 83,
"start_time": 2131.067,
"text": " Say monthly basis, but is there also an aspect of you that is comparing yourself to what's external like someone else? I mean, yeah, yeah, obviously a little bit, but I think actually in some ways I'm lucky that climbing is a really broad sport. And so they're basically you wind up a specialist, be like people who just boulder, people who just sport climb, people who just Alpine climb or like ice climb, you know, basically there are these different categories of like different types of climbing you can do."
},
{
"end_time": 2186.544,
"index": 84,
"start_time": 2160.657,
"text": " And I've always been a little bit of a generalist where I do a lot of different things at a relatively high level, but I'm not the best at any of those things, except maybe for free soloing. But even that I'm not, you know, depending on how you categorize it, I wouldn't be the best. I've just done some things that other people haven't done. And so I think it actually in some ways keeps a healthier frame on climbing for me because I just know that I won't be the best in any of these disciplines."
},
{
"end_time": 2203.166,
"index": 85,
"start_time": 2186.988,
"text": " You know, like on a given on like a daily basis, I climb with other people who are better than me at at the things that they do. I see. And so it like I just, you know, it's easy to not be too competitive in that way when you just know that there's just no, you know, like, I just can't be the best of those things."
},
{
"end_time": 2228.166,
"index": 86,
"start_time": 2204.206,
"text": " I've never even been remotely close to the best of those things. When I was a kid, I did youth competitions and all the little league-style competitions. Obviously, I was good, but I was never the best. I wasn't winning nationals. Just by sheer coincidence, there were a couple other climbers who wound up being elite professional climbers, but they grew up in the same region as me at the same time."
},
{
"end_time": 2252.875,
"index": 87,
"start_time": 2228.166,
"text": " And so when I was going to youth comps, I was always getting second or third to a couple of these other guys that also wound up being great climbers. But, you know, by the time they were 15, they'd moved on to doing the adult competitions because they could win money that way. And I was still doing the youth comps and I was like, and I'm still not winning, you know, and the good guys have already moved on to like the big leagues. And, you know, and so I think I've known from the beginning that that I'm not and never will be the best physically."
},
{
"end_time": 2281.903,
"index": 88,
"start_time": 2253.302,
"text": " But that doesn't mean that I can't have great adventures and have a good time climbing and push myself and improve and, you know, it's like I still love climbing, but I just know that that I'm not physically gifted in any way. How are you measuring this progress? Well, just doing things that I haven't been able to do before. I mean, climbing is broken into grades and things, so there are easy, objective ways to measure your progress in terms of difficulty. But you can also measure your time on route sometimes like speed records, things like that."
},
{
"end_time": 2311.305,
"index": 89,
"start_time": 2282.278,
"text": " And then, I mean, also a very unquantifiable way, though, is just to to sort of evaluate your sensations when you climb, because occasionally you do things that you didn't think you could do. And I think that's honestly one of the best experiences in climbing is when you're sure that you can't do something, but you try and then you do it and you're like, oh, my God. You know, like because a lot of time you're really, really fatigued and like the next hold looks really far away and you're like, oh, I could throw for that hold, but there's no way that I'm going to be able to grab it. It's like I'm for sure going to fall off."
},
{
"end_time": 2339.974,
"index": 90,
"start_time": 2311.305,
"text": " Sounds like a metaphor for life. So many people had questions about your dreams. I don't know if you've mentioned this before, but there were several questions like, what does Alex dream about and does he have recurring dreams? You mean actual dreams like during sleep? Yeah, yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 2364.94,
"index": 91,
"start_time": 2340.162,
"text": " Um, I basically never remember dreams. Like I couldn't tell you, I mean, maybe like once or twice a year, I'll actually remember dreams and even then normally by within an hour or two of waking up, but I don't remember them. So, uh, dreams mean basically nothing to me. Like actual, you know, like I have aspirations and things, but, uh, but actual like literal dreams, uh, like mean nothing to me. And it's the,"
},
{
"end_time": 2381.186,
"index": 92,
"start_time": 2365.589,
"text": " It's not like a point of contention in my relationship, but my wife has very vivid dreams and is always telling me I had the craziest dream then goes into this long story and I just do not care at all because I'm like, you know, that's not real, right? Like who cares? Like I've never had a vivid dream. I don't remember them. I just it means nothing to me."
},
{
"end_time": 2405.265,
"index": 93,
"start_time": 2381.954,
"text": " And what is she asking you to do to interpret them or she's just relaying it? No, she just relays it. Or, you know, she wakes up and she's like upset with you because you're like, you did the craziest thing in my dream last night. You're like, what are you smoking? Like, that's not even a real like I did, you know, like what? Yeah, there's a comedian who had this whole joke about how his wife would get upset with him. I think it was Ray Romano. You know, Ray, everybody loves Raymond. Yeah, I know the name. Yeah, I wish I could remember the joke."
},
{
"end_time": 2434.087,
"index": 94,
"start_time": 2405.657,
"text": " His wife would beat him up because he's like, she's like, Yeah, you slept with someone in my dream. He's like, I didn't say but you would you would if this was exactly that's exactly my wife all have the same kinds of things. And you're like, you know that, that I have no control over that. And it means nothing to me. And it didn't actually happen. You're like, this is crazy. How has having a child influenced not only your dreams, like your aspirations, but well, what your goals are, and what you're allowing yourself to do, what your limits are,"
},
{
"end_time": 2460.862,
"index": 95,
"start_time": 2435.111,
"text": " Yeah, I think that the big change in having a child, and I mean, it's hard to know because I'm only two years into parenting. Actually, we're about to have a second child in a couple of weeks. Congratulations. Yeah, thanks. So I suspect that if you ask me the same question in another couple of years, it might be a different answer, or maybe not. Maybe I've already gotten to that point, but basically it's hard to know because it's kind of just beginning in the process here. But what I'm seeing so far is that"
},
{
"end_time": 2483.882,
"index": 96,
"start_time": 2461.34,
"text": " The real change is in the kinds of goals that I set for myself as a climber because I'm choosing projects that are closer to home. I'm choosing things that don't keep me away as much because I want to be at home more and want to be there with the family. It's not so much that I feel any obligation."
},
{
"end_time": 2503.848,
"index": 97,
"start_time": 2484.616,
"text": " I don't know, like a lot of people ask me questions like, Oh, has your perspective on risk change now that your father is sort of implying that, you know, now that you have something to live for, are you less willing to take risk? And, and, you know, I'm like, I don't know if that's true or not. But I think the difference is that I'm just setting different goals. Like, I'm just not setting big free selling it like I'm not"
},
{
"end_time": 2532.142,
"index": 98,
"start_time": 2504.855,
"text": " It's just different lifestyle. You know, I'm like, I'm trying to climb close to home and that that lends itself more towards physical training and like training in the gym, things like that, like a little more routine, a little more structure, which which is fine. It sounds to me like free soloing would be the most risky. And then even when watching the free solo movie, you practice that route over and over and over to minimize the risk. So it's not as if at least my interpretation isn't"
},
{
"end_time": 2555.606,
"index": 99,
"start_time": 2532.637,
"text": " My point here though is that now as a father, it's not so much that I'm not willing to take the risk, but when you talk about free-saling in the film, in order to do that, I spent two months in Yosemite in the spring, two months in the fall, plus a trip to Morocco. I basically spent like six months."
},
{
"end_time": 2585.913,
"index": 100,
"start_time": 2555.998,
"text": " Just all in working on that specific, I mean, I'd spent years training for it ahead of time and everything, but just in the, in the year leading up to the actual climb, you know, I spent say six months like specifically training, uh, you know, on the roots and I was, I adjusted my whole lifestyle, uh, in terms of training and diet and everything. I was going to bed at like eight and getting up at four, uh, because I needed to be up before sunrise to, to climb some of the stuff while it was so cool, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, my point was that it was all encompassing and took over my whole life."
},
{
"end_time": 2613.865,
"index": 101,
"start_time": 2586.493,
"text": " and which, which was great. I mean, that's what it took to get, get that done. But now as a father, I'm sort of choosing not to embrace any goals like that because I'm kind of like, I don't really want something to take over my whole life like that. Like I want to, like I've been choosing climbing goals where I can train four hours in a day and go work on it for a while, but it doesn't have to be all encompassing and take over my whole life. You know, I still have time to be at home. I'm still,"
},
{
"end_time": 2642.927,
"index": 102,
"start_time": 2614.565,
"text": " Like right now, the climbing projects that I'm working on, I'm able to get my daughter out of bed every morning, have breakfast with her, go climb for the day, come home, still do afternoon, evening, you know, still do dinner with the family, put her to bed. I'm kind of like, to me, that's an ideal type of climbing goal for this point in my life, where I'm like, I can still do something that's hard for me, that's challenging, that's interesting, but I can still do breakfast and dinner with my daughter every night. So you don't have these obsessions, nor do you want them. Hear that sound?"
},
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"text": " That's the sweet sound of success with Shopify. Shopify is the all-encompassing commerce platform that's with you from the first flicker of an idea to the moment you realize you're running a global enterprise. Whether it's handcrafted jewelry or high-tech gadgets, Shopify supports you at every point of sale, both online and in person. They streamline the process with the Internet's best converting checkout, making it 36% more effective than other leading platforms."
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"text": " Yeah, right now, I don't have anything that I'm obsessed over in the same way. And yeah, exactly. And I'm not really seeking out anything like that. Because, you know, I'm like, I just don't need that right now. And has your wife impacted what some people may say as a more balanced perspective? Balance is this word that well, you're a climber. So there's many puns in this. But anyhow, has your wife contributed to the balance in your life in the same way that your daughter has? Or is there a different"
},
{
"end_time": 2801.578,
"index": 108,
"start_time": 2775.725,
"text": " I think there is a different degree in quality because I mean I think my wife definitely has impacted the balance of my life in much the same way sort of you know encouraging me to have more balance but I think that with my wife or certainly when we were dating when it's just you know a relationship you kind of see it as like I didn't necessarily want that balance and so you're kind of like oh you know being in a relationship is is"
},
{
"end_time": 2827.824,
"index": 109,
"start_time": 2802.398,
"text": " Is pushing me down a path that I'm not sure I want for myself, but I think now as a father, I'm like, no, I definitely want this path for myself. Like I think it's better for my daughter. I think it's, it's nice. You know, I don't know. I'm into it. Or maybe it's just that now I'm several years further into the marriage and yeah, but I, I mean, I do frequently grapple. Like, is this the essence of middle age when you just don't care about your goals enough to push everything else aside?"
},
{
"end_time": 2853.302,
"index": 110,
"start_time": 2828.131,
"text": " I'm like, or is this just being a good dad, you know, and like actually for your family? Like, it's hard to know. I mean, I think ideally, I'd aspire to still do very difficult things like sort of cutting edge things and climbing and still be there for my family. But you know, the actually, I mean, you know, we were talking about Arctic Ascent, the the the expedition we just did, I just did to Greenland, the summer before last."
},
{
"end_time": 2883.677,
"index": 111,
"start_time": 2853.695,
"text": " You know, in some ways that to me is a perfect example of still getting to do some cutting edge climbing that matters, you know, sort of some some meaningful climbing while having a family. You know, and I mean, I had to leave the family behind for six weeks, which is hard for everybody. But I think it's it's worth it for the right kind of objective. And then I can sort of balance that out by being very much present at home for the many months around that expedition. For people who watched Free Solo and loved it,"
},
{
"end_time": 2909.889,
"index": 112,
"start_time": 2884.224,
"text": " And they just heard about Arctic Ascent, either from the news or from here or from you. What can they expect in this documentary series that's different than Free Solo? Well, I think, I mean, honestly, almost everything about it is different because it's the the landscape is totally surreal and almost fantastic. I mean, Greenland, like remote part of eastern Greenland is incredibly beautiful, but also"
},
{
"end_time": 2939.104,
"index": 113,
"start_time": 2910.316,
"text": " It's a totally different dynamic with the with the team and all of us climbing together. And, you know, Heidi has your vestry, this climate scientist, this glaciologist who is with us, we were doing various research projects along the way. And so, you know, there's like, yeah, I mean, free solo really focuses on the singular athletic feet like this, this thing that I really want to do. And it's kind of like a quixotic, you know, it's like me on a quest. And I think that that with Arctic Ascent,"
},
{
"end_time": 2967.466,
"index": 114,
"start_time": 2939.872,
"text": " It's a little bit more grounded, you know, it's just, it all makes a little more sense in a way. You're kind of like, okay, it's a team going to climb routes in a beautiful place where they can also do, uh, make, you know, meaningful contributions to climate science. Sure. Like, oh, it all kind of like makes more sense in a way where you're kind of like, okay, like these remote unclimbed walls, you assemble the right team, do something useful while you're there. It's all totally beautiful. You're like that, that totally makes sense for television."
},
{
"end_time": 2987.91,
"index": 115,
"start_time": 2967.875,
"text": " Yeah, as I was watching Arctic Ascent, it was clear there was a passion of yours of saving the environment or something environmental. Can you please speak to that? Yeah, I think there's a passion towards trying to do something useful."
},
{
"end_time": 3011.323,
"index": 116,
"start_time": 2988.985,
"text": " It's like wanting to do something proactive for the environment. I mean, I started a foundation more than a decade ago now that supports community solar projects around the world. And so I've been doing that for a long time in an effort to both help the environment and to help human populations. And so, I mean, I think in general,"
},
{
"end_time": 3034.224,
"index": 117,
"start_time": 3011.459,
"text": " You know, I mean, you're asking questions around purpose and like, what's the point, all those kinds of things. And I think that the idea of just doing anything useful, making some kind of positive contribution to the world, I would say that I'm totally open to whatever is the, you know, my highest calling, like whatever is the best use, you know, like, like I say, I'm open to anything that really is helpful."
},
{
"end_time": 3062.108,
"index": 118,
"start_time": 3035.657,
"text": " You know, it's like basically trying to find purpose where you can. And so I think that through, through the Honolulu Foundation, I'm sort of like, Oh, this is a good way to do good work in the world, you know, that helps the environment, helps people. I'm like, this, this makes sense. And I think with Arctic Ascent is much the same. I'm sort of like, Oh, this is a good opportunity to, to contribute to science in an interesting way and, and to highlight it on television. I mean, when you think of like how much terrible stuff is on television,"
},
{
"end_time": 3079.753,
"index": 119,
"start_time": 3062.637,
"text": " Kind of like why not have more programs like this we're kind of like a legitimate exploration in a beautiful place and a place that is both incredibly fragile and incredibly important to the. I mean you know we think there hundreds of millions of people that live on the coast in the world."
},
{
"end_time": 3107.039,
"index": 120,
"start_time": 3080.589,
"text": " Yes, you know, if the Greenland ice sheet melts, it's predicted to raise sea levels, something like 20 feet. And so that literally affects hundreds of millions of people. And yet none of those people ever think about the Greenland ice sheet. You know, and so it's one of those things where if you can at least help educate in some small way through a program like this, it feels like a very useful, you know, like it feels like the like a good use of my time."
},
{
"end_time": 3134.121,
"index": 121,
"start_time": 3108.148,
"text": " Please talk more about your foundation. What is it? Where can people find out about it? Why did you start it? You mentioned purpose. Yeah, so the the Honolulu Nation, I mean, for anyone who's interested, you can find out more about it at HonoluluNation.org. The website, you can see all the the grantee partners that we support and the work that we've been doing for the last decade. But basically, we support community solar projects around the world. And I mean, I started the foundation"
},
{
"end_time": 3163.234,
"index": 122,
"start_time": 3135.606,
"text": " I mean, largely because of everything we're talking about here, I mean, questions of purpose, like, what's the point? You know, I was, I was looking for, I had a year where I was kind of looking at ways to minimize my own environmental footprint to basically do less harm in the world. Cause I was reading a ton of environmental nonfiction and it was basically just kind of stressed about human impact on the environment and climate in general. And I sort of like, Oh, what are the things that I should be doing personally to, to leave a better impact on the world? And."
},
{
"end_time": 3174.531,
"index": 123,
"start_time": 3164.445,
"text": " And there are a bunch of other things that kind of went into this. I mean, like one of which was the fact that at the time my sister was working as a public school teacher and basically making almost nothing."
},
{
"end_time": 3198.695,
"index": 124,
"start_time": 3174.974,
"text": " And I was just sort of starting as a professional climber, but but I had a few opportunities where I participated in a TV commercial where I literally did nothing. It was completely stupid and it used like one shot of my face and it wasn't even like me as a as a climbing celebrity endorsing a product. It was literally just my face. I guess a model is just like, oh, there's some guy climbing on a rock. You know, it's just like a fit outdoor model and"
},
{
"end_time": 3217.824,
"index": 125,
"start_time": 3198.695,
"text": " Just that that glimpse of my face that they use the ad all over the world way more than was expected. So I want to making an insane amount of money and residuals cuz like every time it's all screen actor guild rates you know every time somebody errors the commercial you make like a nickel like some tiny amount but they just used a bunch and so."
},
{
"end_time": 3244.445,
"index": 126,
"start_time": 3217.824,
"text": " Basically this TV commercial that I'd spent, you know, two days shooting with my good friends in the desert basically I was like, it's all climbing filmmaker people. I thought it was super fun. There was like a helicopter, you know, it all felt like Mission Impossible I was like, this is crazy. This is super fun. It's like engaging interesting work It's cool and I got paid an insane amount and so at the time my sister is a public school teacher and I made more in two days of fun than she would make in like two years of educating kids and I was like"
},
{
"end_time": 3273.66,
"index": 127,
"start_time": 3244.701,
"text": " This is insane, you know, and I was like, there's no justice in this like, you know, society. I was like, in some ways, an example that society is totally mismanaging its its its resources goals. And like when you think that sports and entertainment are so wildly overpaid compared to what we pay, you know, like educators and, you know, people that actually help society in different ways. And so in some ways, starting the Honolulu Foundation felt like an effort to address that kind of"
},
{
"end_time": 3300.674,
"index": 128,
"start_time": 3274.206,
"text": " structural inequality or sort of like that mismanagement of, of, of our collective values and goals. I don't, you know, I was just like, this is not the way the world should be. But the thing is, I like doing that work, you know, like it's fun, it's interesting. And I felt like I had this opportunity, like, I don't want to say no to TV commercials and things like that, because it is fun to do. But you get paid so much from it. And you know, I was living in a van, I'm climbing full time, I'm just living my life. I'm like, I don't need that."
},
{
"end_time": 3328.302,
"index": 129,
"start_time": 3301.698,
"text": " But it's, it seems like a shame to turn it away. And so it makes more sense to just say yes, and then put it into things that matter. And so that's where the Haunton Foundation came in, where I was like, well, this is a great way to funnel this type of money to things that actually matter. Right. As you wind down, well, I don't want to say that, but as you enter a different stage in life, let's say, do you think that the foundation is what will have"
},
{
"end_time": 3358.166,
"index": 130,
"start_time": 3328.609,
"text": " The majority of your attention. Are you not sure yet what the future? Yeah, I wonder. So I started the foundation over a decade ago when I was very much focused purely on rock climbing as hard as possible. But even then, I sort of suspected that as I got older, the foundation would mean more to me and climbing would probably mean less to me because I knew that eventually I would just be too old to to push my absolute hardest as a climber or. I mean, I also just kind of wondered, like, would I even care enough to"
},
{
"end_time": 3387.261,
"index": 131,
"start_time": 3358.814,
"text": " to go hard all the time forever. You know, it's like, I mean, at some point you run out of roots, like you run out of things that you care about doing. Uh, you know, like with free selling specifically, I've done basically everything that I've ever wanted to do. And so, you know, I could try to dream up other goals and dream up other things, but you know, I've done most of the classics in the Western U S like, uh,"
},
{
"end_time": 3417.363,
"index": 132,
"start_time": 3388.046,
"text": " You know, like if you're a, like if you're a climber and somebody asks you to make a list of all the best, best multi-pitch, like best, you know, thousand foot type of routes in the, in the Western, Western North America, like I've probably free sold like almost all the routes on the list. And so, um, you know, and I could think up some others, maybe there, there's some things here or there, but I've done the great ones, you know, like I've kind of plucked the low hanging fruit, the stuff that I really cared about."
},
{
"end_time": 3432.978,
"index": 133,
"start_time": 3418.131,
"text": " And so at a certain point, I'm like, do I have to just keep, keep picking more fruit? Like, or do I just call it good? Let somebody else like think up the next, next round of things to do."
},
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"text": " So let's say you finished all the fruit, the majority of the fruit. Do you then care that you finished the fruit or are you just like, you know what? I finished the fruit. Great. Cool."
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"text": " Yeah, well, that's the thing is I think I'm kind of like, yeah, that's great. That's cool. Like I can focus on my family. I can focus on the foundation. I mean, I'm still trying to climb my best and I'm still interested in climbing goals. So, I mean, it's not to say that I've retired from climbing by any means, but I think, you know, people often ask like, oh, what's the next big project? Like, what's the next big soloing thing? I'm kind of like nothing obvious springs to mind. You know, like, like I've kind of done most of the things that I care about sort of like, you know, maybe I'll get really inspired by something, but"
},
{
"end_time": 3555.674,
"index": 139,
"start_time": 3527.824,
"text": " Now, like actually this summer, we're thinking about going to Europe to climb in the Dolomites as a family trip. But the Dolomites is a really historic, like Northern Italy. It's really historic for free soloing, like people have been been soloing there since like the 1920s and 30s. And so for me, it might be a fun opportunity to sort of rekindle a little bit of the the fun of soloing on stuff that's like classic and historic and, and somewhere that I haven't really climbed before, because I've, I've done very little there. And so"
},
{
"end_time": 3583.677,
"index": 140,
"start_time": 3556.22,
"text": " You know, maybe having like green pastures, you know, will sort of rekindle the rekindle the fire a little bit. But. You know, but I need something like that to get me fired up. Rekindle which fire? Well, like wanting to free solo hard things or like, you know, pushing myself in that way. Like basically, you need the right goals to push yourself. And if you've already achieved a lot of your goals, you're kind of like, oh, like why why keep pushing on the same in the same direction?"
},
{
"end_time": 3611.869,
"index": 141,
"start_time": 3584.462,
"text": " That's interesting. You need the right goals. What don't you think? Yeah. Yeah. How do you find the right goals? Well, that's the freaking challenge, isn't it? I mean, you know, trying to find something that inspires you that like makes you want to get out of bed early and like train and do all the things you're kind of like. Yeah, I mean, finding the right goal is like the the crux. I mean, all these questions about purpose and motivation and things like that. I mean, I think the right goals is a big part of that."
},
{
"end_time": 3638.251,
"index": 142,
"start_time": 3612.944,
"text": " Do you feel like you were blessed? Well, maybe not that word, but in the colloquial sense, you feel like you were blessed because you found something that makes you excited to get up. Yeah, no, I totally know what you mean. Yeah, I found my calling or whatever cliche you want to use. Yeah, totally. No, I think and actually now as a parent, I really think that that's kind of the goal of parenting is to help your child find something that they're passionate about that that they want to get out of bed every day."
},
{
"end_time": 3668.507,
"index": 143,
"start_time": 3638.592,
"text": " You know, it's like, I think that that my goal as a parent is to help my daughter find whatever it is that she gets lit up about, you know, the find the things that make her super excited, you know, whether that's, you know, music or art or sports or whatever writing like, but like, I feel like everybody out there has something that they really love to do, or they care about doing or the or that they could be uniquely good at or like, or uniquely passionate about or whatever else. And I think that finding that is is in many ways the goal of life."
},
{
"end_time": 3696.681,
"index": 144,
"start_time": 3669.531,
"text": " If you weren't able to climb for whatever reason, what do you think you would be doing? Not the foundation, but because that's the obvious answer. What would you be doing? Yeah, it's hard to say. I don't know. Maybe just thinking like like reading and writing. And, you know, I don't know. I mean, I studied engineering for a year before I dropped out to climb full time. And so I could imagine just, you know, trying to build things or"
},
{
"end_time": 3717.978,
"index": 145,
"start_time": 3697.978,
"text": " I don't know. I mean, I can sort of imagine almost any other path in life if, you know, if it had played out that way. But but this this is the path I took. Yeah. Speaking of paths of all the paths that you've taken, what are you most proud of in your life? Oh, I think I think"
},
{
"end_time": 3742.619,
"index": 146,
"start_time": 3718.37,
"text": " At this point in my life, I think I'm most proud of sort of my body of work as a climber, if you can call it that, like the things that I've done as a climber. I mean, I suspect that when I die at some point, I'll probably be more proud of my family or the work that my foundation has done or things like that. But at this point, my family's so young and I'm still pretty proud of the things that I've climbed. Yeah, and you also mentioned that you want to climb"
},
{
"end_time": 3761.715,
"index": 147,
"start_time": 3743.063,
"text": " in italy with your family but your daughter is two okay so next year she'll be three when you say with my family no i mean the whole family goes on a trip so like you know my daughter and we'd be going hiking and stuff but uh but on a trip like that i'd probably be able to dip out in the mornings and go soloing for a few hours and like go scramble some peaks and do some historic like do some fun climbing"
},
{
"end_time": 3783.916,
"index": 148,
"start_time": 3762.073,
"text": " And your wife climbs with you a bit. Yeah, my wife climbs as well. Like a trip like that. When I say a family trip, though, I mean that we would be predominantly focused on, you know, doing tourism in Italy and going for family hikes and like hanging out at the park and like doing whatever. And then in in the extra time, I would go and climb things that I'm excited about. Right. Right. No, I don't mean that I'm taking the babies climbing up things."
},
{
"end_time": 3813.439,
"index": 149,
"start_time": 3784.599,
"text": " Though I will say my daughter is really into scrambling on things and it does make you wonder about nature versus nurture kind of stuff where it's like, you know, but we'll just see as she gets older. Do you have any advice for your former self? Let's say when you were 15 or someone who's 15 now and they would like to follow a similar journey in climbing. I understand that those questions may be different, so feel free to make an admixture or a confection of them both. I don't know. I mean,"
},
{
"end_time": 3835.418,
"index": 150,
"start_time": 3813.763,
"text": " My advice to my former self would be a little bit more specific, I think. Sure, let's start with that. I mean, I sort of wish that I had maybe trained in a slightly more systematic way a little bit sooner and maybe been a little bit more disciplined about some things, just a little more strategic. But that's the thing is I think that that for me, advice would be"
},
{
"end_time": 3861.698,
"index": 151,
"start_time": 3835.794,
"text": " More specific to like I should have started doing finger strength stuff like a little earlier in my life and I wish I'd like train cardio and like I kind of wish I'd done other high school sports like I was already climbing full time but I was kind of like too shy to do stuff but I kind of wish I'd like run cross country or done some other things like that to like have a little bit broader of an athletic base you know or like done track and you know maybe swam I don't know just to like be exposed more to those sorts of things and I was younger"
},
{
"end_time": 3883.524,
"index": 152,
"start_time": 3862.193,
"text": " Um, that said, I mean, obviously I have loved climbing my whole life, so I'm not like stressed about it, but I do feel like I maybe could have done a little more athletically. But I think my advice to like the average person who just is starting to climb and is psyched on climbing. My advice would be just to, just to go and climb, you know, just to, if you like doing it, just go and do it, like go into the gym, uh, enjoy yourself."
},
{
"end_time": 3910.452,
"index": 153,
"start_time": 3883.848,
"text": " I mean, my general advice to beginner climbers is to focus on your footwork, like focus on technique and like learn how to move well rather than rather than trying to get big muscles. Basically, like, don't worry about the strength side of it. Worry about the quality of your movement. I heard you mentioned that one of the reasons you started free soloing when you were younger is because you had social anxiety and didn't want to ask other people to come with you. Is that the case or am I misremembering? Yeah, that's that's a"
},
{
"end_time": 3938.353,
"index": 154,
"start_time": 3911.152,
"text": " Yeah. Yeah, that's fair enough. I mean, I don't know about social anxiety, but like, but yeah, I was kind of a loner, kind of a loser, kind of a, you know, I just, I just didn't have, um, and part of that's growing up in suburban California. Like I was growing up in a non-climbing family with non, like I wasn't really tied into the climbing community per se. And so, and I didn't really know how to like make new friends. And so rather than talk to strangers and try to find people to climb with, it was sort of easier just to, just to go do my own thing."
},
{
"end_time": 3963.131,
"index": 155,
"start_time": 3939.019,
"text": " Which in retrospect, I'm like, what a psycho. I probably should have just talked to people. And why do you say that you wish you had done more sports? If you had done other sports, I imagine you would have liked soccer or football or basketball. And I imagine that would have taken away from the climbing and you wouldn't be as great a climber. Does that or no? You think that it would have accelerated your climbing skill?"
},
{
"end_time": 3986.527,
"index": 156,
"start_time": 3963.592,
"text": " I think that I probably could have been a better climber with a broader athletic base. I mean, the thing is, I've just always loved climbing more than any other sports. So it's not as if I was really a risk of like going down a different path. I don't think because also I don't have any talent for ball sports and I'm not like, you know, I'm not particularly coordinated. I'm just kind of whatever. But I do think that there's something to be said for"
},
{
"end_time": 4015.435,
"index": 157,
"start_time": 3987.79,
"text": " I don't know. So like even now, like I do a little bit of weight training stuff, but like, I don't really know how to lift weights and I don't really know good form for that kind of stuff. Uh, whereas I think a lot of high school athletes learn all the foundational principles of the weight room. Like, you know, if you're a high school wrestler, like you kind of learn the basics of using a weight room when you're 15, you know, and I think that I maybe could have been served by, by learning sort of the basics of, of like weight training and you know, cardio training, like running things like that."
},
{
"end_time": 4034.241,
"index": 158,
"start_time": 4016.493,
"text": " I'm curious how it would have contributed to your climbing ability. So the cardio, again, I'm not terribly familiar with the climbing world other than watching you. So to me, it doesn't look like a strenuous cardiovascular activity."
},
{
"end_time": 4063.183,
"index": 159,
"start_time": 4034.804,
"text": " No, okay. So I've, I've said a lot of speed records as a climber and I really enjoy speed climbing. And at a certain point, if once you have a sort of the, the minimum threshold of climbing skill, speed records become more about the quality of your engine, like how, how fast you can go uphill. And that is basically cardiovascular fitness. And so, you know, the, the better your engine, the faster you can go. And so, you know, I've, I've done a lot of speed records, but most of the things that I've done,"
},
{
"end_time": 4091.254,
"index": 160,
"start_time": 4063.797,
"text": " I could imagine doing them a lot better if I had a better engine, which I just don't really have. And, and, and that's, you know, it's tough because it's always trade-offs because if you want to develop a better engine, like if you want to do a lot of cardiovascular training, you're basically going to wear yourself out for hard climbing. Uh, like, you know, like you're too tired. Like if you're training for a marathon, let's say, uh, it's hard to also climb at a high level at the same time because you're just tired. And so, uh,"
},
{
"end_time": 4120.742,
"index": 161,
"start_time": 4091.766,
"text": " You know, it's always trade offs as to like how big of an engine you want to develop versus, you know, how skilled you want to be as a climber. But that's why I think that there's room for developing a broad athletic base when you're young. Yeah, you mentioned thinking because you used to be an engineer, at least for about a year or so. And maybe you would do some reading and writing when you're climbing. Have you ever had an aha moment because you're just your mind is thinking,"
},
{
"end_time": 4139.565,
"index": 162,
"start_time": 4121.886,
"text": " No, no, it's like you want to think that you're having these amazing, you know, transcendental experiences in nature. And I just I just never am. And I think that's funny because there's so many writers who, you know, I mean, even like the writings of John Muir or something. I don't know if you know any of those, but like, but."
},
{
"end_time": 4157.056,
"index": 163,
"start_time": 4140.009,
"text": " I've been to many of the same places. He was instrumental in the founding of Yosemite as a national park back in the day and his writings about his experiences in nature contributed to the founding of national parks. And he writes about all these sort of"
},
{
"end_time": 4185.162,
"index": 164,
"start_time": 4158.882,
"text": " you know, yeah, big thoughts that he has while in nature. And I'm kind of like, I've literally been in the same places, having the same experiences in nature. And I'm just not having the same big thoughts. You know, I'm just kind of like, wow, I'm wet, I'm cold, I'm tired. Like I should probably try to get home. And it's just, it's just a totally different thing. But then it's like probably because he's raised by a minister or whatever. And like he read the Bible 10 billion times and he's, he's sort of queued for that, that transcendental experience. Like he's, he's ready for something."
},
{
"end_time": 4216.408,
"index": 165,
"start_time": 4187.585,
"text": " the opposite, like you were cued to not have experiences like that rather than just not being cued if you were cued in the opposite direction. Yeah, maybe. I mean, I'm sort of like a natural skeptic and natural cynic, like anti-authority, like anti-dogma. You know, yeah, exactly. I'm cued the opposite direction. We're like even in the most epic display of nature's beauty and power, I'm still just kind of like, ah, but it's just nature. Yeah, yeah. But you still enjoy it. No, I do still enjoy it. Yeah, that's it's"
},
{
"end_time": 4246.032,
"index": 166,
"start_time": 4216.766,
"text": " I'm not that much of a skeptic or or cynic or whatever. No, no, you're just being facetious. Yeah, I mean, I do. I do love and I will say I've been I've been, as you say, blessed to to go to a lot of the most beautiful places on Earth. You know, it's like to see natural beauty in ways that I think most humans don't get to see. It's like it is incredible. You mentioned that you do it for the fun of it, like that's partly or in large part what motivates you. But I didn't hear the word thrill and much of the time people will say, yeah, I do it for the thrill of it."
},
{
"end_time": 4267.654,
"index": 167,
"start_time": 4246.596,
"text": " What is that actually true of what is that true of anybody that does something routinely for, you know, I've been climbing for 28 years now. Is it still thrilling? You know, when people do something for the thrill, it's generally something they do sort of infrequently or, you know, like as like basically nothing is thrilling if you do it five days a week for 28 years."
},
{
"end_time": 4287.125,
"index": 168,
"start_time": 4267.995,
"text": " You know, like, I still love climbing and I can still get thrills through climbing. I mean, there are occasional things where you're like, wow, this is an incredible wall or like a place I've never been or a thing I've never done. But after five days a week for 28 years, you're like, there's not that much thrill. I mean, it's still deeply fun and very satisfying, but it's not thrilling. Yeah. Great point. Great point."
},
{
"end_time": 4314.804,
"index": 169,
"start_time": 4287.671,
"text": " Like I suspect I suspect you'd say the same about a marriage or something, you know, where you can have like an incredible relationship. But after 28 years, you're probably not thrilled by it every day. You're just kind of like, oh, this is deeply satisfying and an incredible in its own way, but it's not thrilling. What I was going to ask is if it was thrilling, at what point would it be? I imagine it would be when you finish, but you have a much more explicated notion of what it is to climb."
},
{
"end_time": 4339.275,
"index": 170,
"start_time": 4315.128,
"text": " And so maybe it would be at certain points, maybe there's a halfway point, maybe it's when you accomplish a certain thumb movement. And I apologize that I don't know the correct terminology here, because we're not going to talk about the thrilling aspect. What about the fun? When does the fun come in? Is it at every point in the journey? Is it more points than others? Like what makes the fun occur? I think for me, the fun is the movement. It's like the feeling."
},
{
"end_time": 4365.998,
"index": 171,
"start_time": 4339.718,
"text": " I think in the same way that if you if you throw a kid into a pool, they have a good time just paddling around and moving in the water. I think that moving on rock is the same kind of of fun. And actually, I kind of think that climbing is the same sort of elemental movement pattern as running or swimming. You know, it's basically the same idea is like you're moving through terrain except once vertical, once horizontal, whatever. But but I think that the"
},
{
"end_time": 4392.654,
"index": 172,
"start_time": 4366.681,
"text": " The, the fun of climbing is just the movement itself. Like you're, and I mean, you see that when you see kids at jungle gyms and stuff, I've been going to the playground now with my daughter and you watch all the other kids playing around and you're like, there is something, you know, thrilling or something fun about clambering over things and like overcoming obstacles. And that seems pretty innate because virtually any little kid you see enjoys like getting up on top of something and like, you know, I think it's,"
},
{
"end_time": 4416.664,
"index": 173,
"start_time": 4392.927,
"text": " I think it's a pleasing sensation because you're using your body in a way that it's intended to be used, you know, in the same way that like walking and jogging is fundamentally pleasing. So what's coming up that you're excited about? Forget about big projects. I know everyone asks you about big projects other than the Italy trip. What are you excited about? No, the biggest project is that daughter number two arrives in a couple of weeks. So that's a, you know,"
},
{
"end_time": 4444.821,
"index": 174,
"start_time": 4418.268,
"text": " The timing of the Greenland to bring this back to the Arctic Ascent, you found out around then? No, no. Arctic Ascent was when our daughter was six months old. So then baby number two is like six months after that. Basically, baby number two is due on baby number one second birthday."
},
{
"end_time": 4474.787,
"index": 175,
"start_time": 4445.606,
"text": " which is just a coincidence, but you know, we'll have to see how it plays out. But either way, our two daughters will have like almost the same birthday with two years apart. But, um, but no, so things that I'm excited about for this year, I mean, basically it's, it's like a parenting year. You know, it's like, I've been at home for months because my wife is really pregnant and just being supportive. Uh, and you know, and then baby number two comes and then we have a couple different family climbing trips planned."
},
{
"end_time": 4503.422,
"index": 176,
"start_time": 4475.23,
"text": " But again, they're more around going somewhere cool with the family and being there and climbing a bit, but they aren't like big goal focused trips, you know, where I'm like trying to achieve something. I mean, they're just going to climb somewhere for fun with the fam. And then other than that, that's basically the year there are a few things I want to do in Yosemite this year. And I think that that those trips I'll probably try to do without the family so that I'm able to. A couple grams of mushrooms. Yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe."
},
{
"end_time": 4524.787,
"index": 177,
"start_time": 4503.763,
"text": " That might be actually I read I did a big I did a big expedition this summer where I bike toured from Colorado to Alaska with a partner and did a whole crazy thing, which will also be a show for National Geographic next year sometime. But on that trip, I listened to the Michael Pollan book, how to change your mind while while I'm biking."
},
{
"end_time": 4540.828,
"index": 178,
"start_time": 4525.333,
"text": " And and that's what inspired us to to get some mushrooms off of some random dude along the way but then turns out they didn't do anything sadly but we were sort of like primed we were like ready to have a transformative psychedelic experience but but it just didn't happen but um."
},
{
"end_time": 4561.169,
"index": 179,
"start_time": 4541.271,
"text": " But so on that on that bike tour, though, I finished reading the book and then I downloaded meditation app because I was like, oh, well, while you're biking, there's not a whole lot you can do. So I was doing meditation stuff like while I was biking, because you just have so much time on the bike every day. I was kind of like, well, I may as well sort of explore the mind a little bit while while pedaling. And now, yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 4583.933,
"index": 180,
"start_time": 4561.476,
"text": " I don't know if i really learned anything but what were the results of the meditation app what app was it i was using the waking up app you know that the sam harris i've used a little bit in the past because i kind of like the combination of of like lectures and and podcast type material on it with the actual you know guided meditations and so so i mostly wound up listening to the different lectures and and"
},
{
"end_time": 4610.742,
"index": 181,
"start_time": 4584.206,
"text": " You didn't find the meditations to be helpful? I did a little bit, but I just found that on the bicycle, it's hard to really meditate when you're bicycling. One, your eyes are open the whole time. We were getting passed by logging trucks non-stop. We were in Northern British Columbia. There were big trucks going past you all the time. Obviously, you can still meditate through that, but for a beginner like me, it's all a little more challenging."
},
{
"end_time": 4639.121,
"index": 182,
"start_time": 4610.742,
"text": " You know, it's like, it's hard to like really tap into some kind of altered consciousness when you think you're about to get hit by a truck. Right. Yeah. So so I was doing the meditations, but I felt like I was kind of doing them poorly, you know, and also like trying to focus on your breathing, focus on your breath. But then all of a sudden you start going uphill and you're like, you're like pretty hard for a while. So the only thing that gave you the idea to use the meditation app while biking was that you had time to kill. It wasn't like this is the ideal circumstance for me."
},
{
"end_time": 4664.326,
"index": 183,
"start_time": 4639.906,
"text": " I mean, a little bit. Yeah, it's like, well, because I just finished this how to change your mind. It's all about like alter station consciousness. But there is really any great ways to alter your consciousness. I mean, you can do breath work and things like that. But while you're bicycling, there's not a whole lot you can do other than then sort of a mental journey. I mean, I suppose I could have been doing hallucinogens on the bike. But one, we didn't have any and two, I'm just not that trucks are passing. Yeah, exactly. It's all just like not it's not really the right way."
},
{
"end_time": 4694.258,
"index": 184,
"start_time": 4664.633,
"text": " I could have been like micro dosing or doing whatever, but I'm like, I just I just don't know if I care quite that much. Meditation seemed like a perfect way to to dabble and sort of experience. It seemed like a good way to explore while while still biking eight hours a day. Yeah. Alex, I know that you do 15 minute interviews and I appreciate you spending over an hour with me. So thank you so much, man. It's been a blast. No, no, no. My pleasure. It's I'd say it's a very different kind of conversation. Now I'm going to"
},
{
"end_time": 4716.049,
"index": 185,
"start_time": 4694.582,
"text": " Sit for a while being like, what is the point and what is my personal like? I don't freaking know. I'm just trying my best. All right, man. Oh, I'm glad. Let me know if you've got any answers. Yeah, we're getting if I get any big answers. I'll reach out so we can chat again. I'm like, I've got something profound for you this time. Like, we'll see. All right, man. No, pleasure chatting and good luck. Good luck. Bye bye."
},
{
"end_time": 4740.947,
"index": 186,
"start_time": 4716.903,
"text": " The podcast is now concluded. Thank you for watching. If you haven't subscribed or clicked that like button, now would be a great time to do so as each subscribe and like helps YouTube push this content to more people. You should also know that there's a remarkably active Discord and subreddit for theories of everything where people explicate toes, disagree respectfully about theories and build as a community our own toes."
},
{
"end_time": 4758.933,
"index": 187,
"start_time": 4740.947,
"text": " Links to both are in the description. Also, I recently found out that external links count plenty toward the algorithm, which means that when you share on Twitter, on Facebook, on Reddit, etc., it shows YouTube that people are talking about this outside of YouTube, which in turn greatly aids the distribution on YouTube as well."
},
{
"end_time": 4779.735,
"index": 188,
"start_time": 4759.087,
"text": " Last but not least, you should know that this podcast is on iTunes, it's on Spotify, it's on every one of the audio platforms. Just type in theories of everything and you'll find it. Often I gain from re-watching lectures and podcasts and I read that in the comments, hey, toll listeners also gain from replaying. So how about instead re-listening on those platforms?"
},
{
"end_time": 4809.019,
"index": 189,
"start_time": 4779.735,
"text": " iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, whichever podcast catcher you use. If you'd like to support more conversations like this, then do consider visiting patreon.com slash Kurt Jymungle and donating with whatever you like. Again, it's support from the sponsors and you that allow me to work on toe full time. You get early access to ad free audio episodes there as well. For instance, this episode was released a few days earlier. Every dollar helps far more than you think. Either way, your viewership is generosity enough."
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{
"end_time": 4852.142,
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"start_time": 4824.121,
"text": " Some things are obvious. Water is wet, all roads lead to somewhere, and paying half price for pizza is better than paying full price. This week at Domino's is half off pizza week. Get 50% off all menu price Domino's pizzas. What's for dinner? The choice is obvious. Get half off pizza at Domino's during half off pizza week now until June 9th. Select this offer online only at participating locations. Prices, participation, delivery area, and charges may vary. Offer applies to pizza portion of your order only."
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]
}No transcript available.