(PART 1) The Climb Out of Pain is Taller Than Everest with National Geographic photographer Cory Richards

0:00So you are officially the first guest who, when I said, would you like a drink? You said, I'd love a scotch. Yeah. And so you're preparing yourself for what this conversation might be, and you are actually drinking. But let's be clear, you know, you didn't pour it here. No, I didn't pour a tumbler of it. It wasn't like drunk history? No, it's not drunk history. Let's do the drunk history of your life. What happens after you reach the top? There's only one place to go. Corey Richards has literally reached the top of the world. As a National Geographic photographer and filmmaker, he climbed Mount Everest without oxygen.

0:34He's also the first American to climb an 8 ,000-meter or 26 ,000-foot peak during the winter. You may know him from the iconic cover of National Geographic, the one with the selfie he took after he survived an avalanche. But there's a twist. After all that success, Corey did not find peace. Instead, he found chaos. Corey's journey is about more than conquering mountains. It was raw, vulnerable, and deeply moving in ways I did not expect. In fact, we talked for so long that we decided to cut his episode into two. It's about conquering mental health, identity, and what happens when we mistake our biggest goals for our true purpose.

1:19This is a bit of optimism.

1:25speaking of whiskey you put in a tobacco thing yeah you got a glass of whiskey yeah I've got all the pathologies all the crutches all the crutches all the pathologies people think they're like oh he's just totally you know he's gotten rid of all this I mean I think that's one of the points of this is the crutches aren't necessarily bad so long as you see them as for what they are. Like I'm self-soothing. My nervous system is a wreck right now, you know? And like, so long as it doesn't go down this like highly destructive path, I think giving yourself some grace around that is actually probably far more beneficial.

2:05We're jumping right in. Yeah, of course. I think you're a hundred percent right. And I think the crutches are not the unhealthy thing. It's that some of the crutches are unhealthy. Yeah. Right? Because maybe you smoked, but now you just chew gum. Right, right. So, or maybe you did X, you know, you did something very unhealthy. Yeah. And now you just go to the gym every day. Right. You know, you go for a run every day. Like they're all forms, they can all be forms of crutches. Right. And so I think you're right. I think we confuse, crutches are good. Yeah. Not all crutches are good. Not all crutches are good, but also like, to be fair, substances in moderate doses are also not terrible.

2:48Yeah. Yeah, totally enjoyable. Yeah, they're totally enjoyable. It's just having your value system or barometer set to be like, okay, well, am I in a storm now or am I just riding the edge of the weather? Okay, so that's a perfect preview now. So let's go backwards. Yeah, let's go backwards. Why do you have crutches? Why is your nervous system shot? Didn't you survive an avalanche? Oh my God, I love it. It's so funny. I did survive an avalanche. So I can tell the story. I mean, sure. Let's go for it. Yeah, let's hear it. Everybody wants that story. So let's do it. It's like, unfortunately, you're like Aretha Franklin.

3:29Like you have to sing Respect. You got to play the hits. You got to sing Respect. Like, so, well, and it's a very important, it's like a very interesting point of the story. Because I, so I went to climb this mountain called Gashabram 2, which is a mountain. It's the 13th highest mountain in the world. It's in Pakistan. And just to give people some context, I can run through this because people need to know. There are 14 mountains in the world that are higher than 8 ,000 meters. That is roughly 26 ,240 feet or something like that. One is in India. Eight are on the border of Nepal and Tibet. And then five are in Pakistan.

4:07After they were all climbed in the early 80s, the Polish, who are some of the best climbers in the world, were just like, all right. So those were hard. Now let's just make it harder. Let's go climb all of them in the winter. And so all of the nine south of Pakistan had been climbed by 2000, the winter of 2010, 11. And I got invited by... Which is surprisingly late. Yeah. Like only the past sort of, you know, 10, 15 years. Yeah, exactly. None of the ones in Pakistan had been climbed. Wow. And so I got invited by a guy named Simone Moro, who's an Italian climber, and another guy, Dennis Arubko.

4:43Dennis didn't invite me, but Dennis became a very good, he's Russian. And you would just sit there and be like, but Simone, why we bring stupid American boy? Bro, I'm standing right next to you. He's like, yes, Corey, be quiet, men talking. And I was 29 at the time. And by the way, Simone has this voice that is just epic. He's, and I'm not exaggerating. He talked like this the whole time. He talked like this. Very, very funny man, isn't he? And I tell the story of sitting in the tent with him and he's like, I mean, I've told this story a lot, but it's hysterical. It's worth repeating. He's like, Corey, you must come to Italy.

5:20Most beautiful beaches in the world. And I'm like, bro, what? And he's like, most beautiful beaches ever seen. And I'm like, what are you? And I was like, oh, he's talking about beaches.

5:32Like beaches. All right. Yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. The beaches. I'll come see the beaches. You know, I'll come to the Amalfi or whatever. It was just most beautiful beaches in the world. um so anyway we're in the middle of pakistan in winter 26 years 16 expeditions have tried and failed to climb one of these mountains in the winter people have died whatever i didn't really know that these were just like my heroes so i was like yeah of course i'll go and i wasn't even planning on going to the summit necessarily they just wanted sort of a camp i was on the north face team at the time and and so we end up climbing it like we get this very very narrow weather window.

6:07We leave the tent. It's minus 51 centigrade in the tent in the morning, or I guess at night, 11 o 'clock. We climb through the night on February 2nd and we get to the top and up there it's about minus 80. The weather window, centigrade. So it's colder than that Fahrenheit at that point. Yeah. So you're like, and there's really no way to calculate it other than like, it's colder than it was a lot and there's a lot more wind so we get to the top the weather window starts to close and we get hit by this incredible storm on the way down and we make it back to our tent that night just barely we make it down to camp one the next day and you're in this huge glacial valley big big glacier with huge crevasses and on either side there are these big mountains Now they have three feet of snow on them and the wind's been blowing.

6:59So it's created a very hazardous situation. And we're, we're just left the tent and you have to go sort of in this flat area and very low cloud ceiling. And I hear this like crack and I'm just, I'm like, I know what that is. And it's an avalanche. And I look over my shoulder. I see it coming. I say run, but there's no way to run. I mean, you're in waist deep snow and with heavy backpacks on and the avalanche just hit us and pushed us. We were mostly taken by the air blast because we were on very flat ground, which is also very, very powerful. And the air blast is the wind that the snow is pushing.

7:37Yeah, yeah. So it just picks us up and throws us 500 feet. And of course, in my mind, I'm like, okay, I'm dying. Everything's like I'm dying. and uh long story short we all ended up on top I would say miraculously we went got thrown over these big crevasses and there's ice chunks everywhere around it and I um immediately after as soon as I could get my camera out I turned it on and I and I took this video of me crying just like sobbing because I think there was this sort of dissociation I was trying to get away from the experience. So I put a camera between me and it. So, you know, there's always been this barrier.

8:16It's very interesting about photography is that there's always literally a barrier between you and what's happening. You're not present, you're witnessing. And then about an hour later, I took this other photo of me because I could just feel my face and it's just me looking at the camera and I've got all this ice all over my beard and just, I look shell-shocked, very confused. and that photo became arguably my most famous photo ever. Cover of National Geographic. Got put on the cover of National Geographic. This whole trip opened the door to National Geographic. It opened the door to the sort of the skyrocketing of my career.

8:54And at the same time, because of complex post-traumatic stress, all of the stuff that happened in childhood, I experienced a profound and prolonged episode of PTSD. And that was really the beginning of starting to dive in really deep to the mental health journey. But it took, you know, really up until I was about 41. So just two years ago, you know, it took over a decade for me to start to learn the language. Then I could talk about it. Then I was hiding behind it. Then I was sort of using it as a faux shield of vulnerability, but I hadn't really internalized it. And then finally the embodiment came, right?

9:34Right. But it was also so I look at the photo. It's also kind of what fractured my life in that it it elevated me to a place where I could hide behind the external. And there was this talk about no values. Right. Because now I'm in survival mode, which is what PTSD is. So I'm constantly just trying to survive and sustain while living this high stimulation external life and being eaten inside in my internal life. and using all of these coping mechanisms to try to calm that down. So that's where the problem drinking comes in. That's where the sex addiction comes in. And then you start hiding these secrets and you're harboring all this deep shame.

10:17Secrets are the termites of intimacy and love. The more secrets you hold, the more it will erode and fall apart. And eventually the tension between what you're projecting and who you are will become so great that you collapse. What kind of kid were you? I was, uh, I was volatile, meaning that like I was a moody kid and my, somebody just as a piece of the backstory, my mom took me to see a psychologist when I was one. Right. So there's this very deep story of mental health that comes on the scene pretty much immediately. Were you the first kid? I was the second. So my brother who factors very heavily into this story.

11:01Also, he was just more self-assured and more sturdy, but that also kind of made him an island. We had a really marvelous early childhood. Like my parents were, they were awesome. And where'd you grow up? Salt Lake City. Okay. Where'd you grow up? All over the place. But my former interviews were in New Jersey, outside of New York City. Oh, no, what exit? but two off of nine W. Okay. Yeah. So I mean, we started skiing when we were two. We started climbing when we were five and the whole early childhood development piece, at least externally was really beautiful. And we spent a lot of time outdoors.

11:40Both my parents were in education and yet there were some things going on that laid the groundwork very much for what I encountered later, which was very tumultuous adolescence, which we'll get to in just a second. But my mom had postpartum depression with both of us, which if you look at the sort of the psychological machinations of early childhood development has a profound impact, specifically in attachment styles and how we relate to our parents and getting our emotional needs met and finding coping mechanisms to navigate that disconnect. And my mom also worked full-time, So my dad was kind of our primary caregiver because he was a school teacher.

12:18So we formed this very tight bond with dad early on. And my mother did nothing wrong. There's no blame here at all. It's just the way it was. And then as we got into our adolescence, and both of us were smart kids, right? So we were accelerated learners. Both of us went to high school two years early. And both of us were kind of smashing, getting good grades. And then there was this development of violence. It was very rageful. And you were in the family? Between my brother and I. Okay. And mostly aimed at me, which for the longest time I was like, oh, poor me. Look, my brother kicked the shit out of me.

12:58No brothers fight. It's normal. But this was different. It was very rage fueled. And so to the point of like child protective services being called, right? Like it was, it was dark. Right. More than just, it was more than brothers fighting. And so that had a deep impact on me as it did on him. But, but I, you know, I was like, oh, he beat me up. And that was the story for a long time. And then really in reflection, looking back on it, I was like, well, yes. And I learned that if he beat me up, I got a lot of attention. So then I started feeding into the, my own cycle of violence or, or abuse, if you want to call it that.

13:37And again, there's no, I don't blame my brother in any way, shape or form. It was just the dynamic that was there. And so my grades went from straight A's to dropping out basically. I got put on medication. I got hospitalized. How old are you at this time? I was like 13 when I got hospitalized the first time. What was the diagnosis? Well, it became bipolar II. Okay. I got put in this long-term inpatient, outpatient care facility. I was there for eight months. I ran away three times. That's where I got put on my bipolar medication, which sort of sedated me. Impacted your personality? I mean, I was just dull, glassy-eyed and sort of sleeping all day.

14:22And when we had school time at this facility, I'd go under the table and just, they'd be like, do your schoolwork. And I was kind of like, no. And there's nothing they can do. They can keep extracting privileges, but ultimately when you learn that the rules are arbitrary. And have no teeth. And have no teeth, right? Like you just do whatever you want. That was part of it. So I ran away three times every time I'd come back. The second time was I was out for quite a while before they found me. And there was a really dark experience that happened where I ended up staying at this guy's house squatting.

15:02I was 15 at the time and he was 19 and he was gay. And, you know, some people would qualify what happened as rape. Others would just say sexual abuse. And I write about it in more of a like, it was complicated. It was complicated because there was my own curiosity. And yet there was this profound power dynamic where I was staying in a stranger's home. and so it was as if I was trying to find something there. It was also sort of some sense of artificial safety, right? For sure. You're left, you're in a home, you're lonely, you're with a person. I mean, you're projecting a lot of need on somebody or something.

15:48And we know like, yes, we think of a 19-year-old as an adult and a 15-year-old as a child, but really we're both children. And so I think it was a search for belonging on my part too, because I really didn't feel like I belonged anywhere. They didn't want me at home. So that almost definitely had a profound psychological impact on me, especially as it relates to sex and sexuality, which I'm sure we'll get to later. I can pour you another drink. Yeah. When do I start crying? And then the third time I ran away, my dad, who was very big on agency, was like, all right, but you can't be at home. And so - This is when you're 15.

16:27I was 15. Did your parents just not know what to do? They tried everything, man. Yeah. They tried everything. And then that's why there's no blame. I mean, like, what do you do? At some point, there is a threshold that gets crossed. Yeah. And - This is outside the borders of, you know, normal child rearing. Right, right. And so I ran away and then I ended up being on the street, mostly kept off the street, but, you know, I'd stay with friends or I'd, but I do say I was homeless because I didn't have a home. You had no home, sure. And there were times where I was squatting or in the park or whatever.

17:01And then finally, I got taken in by some family friends in Idaho. And I stayed there for eight months. I got my GED when I was 16. I was like, was this all I was supposed to learn in high school? You know, it's just like, this is ridiculous how surface that test is. But anyway, I'm happy we have that system to provide people with a good enough diploma, which is what GED stands for. Um, so, and then I ended up in the hospital again. I came home, my brother got, and I got in a huge blowout. I mean, it took three minutes and we were on the front lawn and, and I, you know, I remember I, that, that sense of my mind being out of control when, when these violent eruptions would happen, my brain would speed up to a place where I just, it was like there was like energy in me that had to move and I didn't know what to do and I remember I stood up and I just kicked out the windows in the car that I was driving at the time and and I drove up to my mom's office and I said I need to go back to the hospital and it was at that time finally where my parents were like Corey what do you need and it actually gave me a sense of agency.

18:25I ended up living with my aunt and uncle in Seattle. So now I was 17, got three jobs because that's what bipolar people do. It's all or nothing, right? And then that's where I felt - It's all and nothing. Yeah. All and nothing, which is, yeah, wow. Great point. But that's where I kind of rediscovered climbing. I mean, we had been so indoctrinated with it. Like that's what my dad read to us as children was climbing books. And so I had always kept an identity of being an outdoors person. And my uncle took half of every paycheck. It's like rent. And then at the end, he was like, look, I'm going to give you all this money back if you choose an experience to spend it on.

19:06And I chose to go climbing. And right before I went on that trip, I asked my mom if I could borrow her old camera. So she, that was, that was that. And that was sort of the entree. and that's not resolution by any means, but that's the very abridged version. And so where'd you go climbing? Where did you go for your adventure? It's really interesting because through all that time, my parents were still very supportive. It wasn't as if they checked out. Yeah, yeah. They just, it was like the guiding arm from a distance. So actually I think their system ended up really working. Because you didn't feel alone.

19:41I felt alone. I felt very isolated, but I didn't feel outside of totally outside of the bounds of safety. Right. It still brought up questions of belonging. Sure. And it still brought up questions of value and do I matter, but it wasn't like there was a container for me. So what did that climb do for you? Well, so all that to say, I called a whole bunch of my dad's old climbing partners, like old guys. They're like in their 60s at that point. And I was like, do you guys want to go climbing and go to this place called the Ruth Gorge in the Alaska range? And they're like, yeah. So we just did very, very easy stuff.

20:19But it just changed. It was as if photography was a way to tether myself to this world that I felt like I could see but never touch. And climbing was in some ways an expression of what was happening inside of me. and so marrying those two being an artistic kid always gravitating towards art that was the only place that my brain shut the fuck up it was like a perfect match and it also gave me some level of motivation to keep a job take care of myself so what was your job did you become a photographer eventually yeah i mean i started calling myself a photographer at 18 but like i don't think i made money until I was like 24, you know?

21:06So, I mean, did you always know you were going to write? No, I was never a writer. Yeah. I was never a writer. I knew I could write because I did well on essays in college, but I'd never written anything long form. Yeah. I think the longest thing I ever wrote was probably like, I mean, I purposely didn't want to do a thesis because I didn't want to write a hundred pages. Right. It just sounded like too much work. So what was the first long form? The book that I wrote. Start with Y. Start with Y. Huh. Because I had to. Yeah. Because I had a contract that said I had to. Isn't it scary? Nobody knew that I could.

21:38I didn't know that I could. That's actually interesting. A lot of the men's work I do is actually, this guy, Kenny Kane, who lives here, started our men's group based on a lot of the start with why principles and just cause, right? Oh, very cool. Yeah. So it actually works. It's really interesting that I'm here with you because it's so much of like the idea that like the just cause part of it would be there's an assumption that the internal emotional lives of men is incredibly challenging and the space for that expression is incredibly limited, right? and the why would be to, you know, basically create a safe space where men can be seen and heard in a context that is both gentle and hard where it creates accountability.

22:31So you can see it's all, it's, it was all modeled after that in some ways. It's really cool. That's neat. Yeah. Yeah. I love finding out, you know, it's work goes off and it does its own thing. Yeah, for sure. And you never know where it's going to go. Yeah. It's lovely to hear. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's amazing. So at what point did you, I'm very curious when you decided you were going to be quote unquote a climber. Yeah. Like, Hey, is that a career? It's like, I'm a professional climber. Does that mean sponsors and things? Yeah. Yeah. So as, as I started climbing more and more and certainly taking pictures more and more, then you could go to bigger and bigger places, bigger mountain ranges and the climbs get harder, they get more severe.

23:08And by virtue of that, obviously you get better and then you get sponsorship dollars and so and how do they what is i'm just no no no and i'll tell you why i have a strange point of view about climbing in a moment but which is and like how to what is the value to them of giving you sponsorship dollars like they need to get some value from that as companies is like photographs of you standing on peaks in their gear kind of thing basically i mean it's marketing value yeah right you're basically a glorified raincoat salesman at that point. Okay. Yeah. And, and so you wear their stuff, you take a picture of yourself, you give them the pictures.

23:43That's what they want. So they want you to be a successful climber. They want you to be a successful climber. And they also want you to do the harder and bigger and more extreme. And by virtue of that, the more dangerous, the more older, more rugged, because obviously their clothes. Right. Exactly. So you, you naturally push that envelope further and further and further. And then, you know, they get more sort of like cool cred. Right. Like look what our athletes did. Right. You know, whose athletes are big logos. Yeah. Yeah. Logo. We call it LPSI logos per square inch. You wanted to maximize your LPSI.

24:17You know, I've got a bank logo here, a camera logo here. Like a race car driver. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. In a space suit, in a down space suit. Yeah. That's really. So, so you're now a legit professional climber. Yeah. So what did you get out of it other than money? I mean, money, money fuels the sport right because it's an expensive sport it requires time and tickets and gear and you know infrastructure infrastructure and planning and all of this stuff where if you had a day job you you you could only do less technical less difficult things in general hobbyist yeah professional yeah um so so but i understand that as a as a job but did you what did you get out of it like what was the reason you wanted to go climb the mountain hmm is it like edmund hillary because it was there and no i've i've always hated that answer i think it's so lazy but i like look i love ed hillary right like climbed everest um it and tenzing and tenzing i think tenzing technically probably did it first you know probably did a few times yeah yeah so um what i got out of climbing was a sense of purpose a sense of fulfillment and a sense of expression.

25:31I also got a deep sense of validation where the more notoriety I got, the more I could mistake external validation for love. Because it felt good. It feels good. Just like getting attention when you were a kid. Of course. And the other thing that's so interesting about it is that so often people with chaotic childhoods, violent childhoods, traumatic childhoods gravitate towards very high risk endeavors because their minds are uniquely adapted to it. We don't have any future forecasting. So it's like, hold my beer. I'm going to try something, you know? And, hey man, watch this. Terrible for life.

26:13Fantastic for extreme sports. Exactly. And so you can see there is some maladaptation there for sure. It very like, It works. It works. It works. No future forecasting, which means it limits the fear because you limit the ability to even conceive of what could go wrong. Well, yeah, because if you raise like, I don't know what's coming next. Well, okay, so I don't know what's coming next. But there's also, this is where I have, so I went on a trek with a bunch of people in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco. Okay, yeah. One of my boots got some water in it. Yeah. As we got higher, it got colder. And I was like, and I could see the, it wasn't that high.