The Greatest Climber Alive: I Shouldn't Have Attempted That Climb!

26:04And eventually it's not that scary anymore. But I will say that that's like a very enduring way to overcome your fear. It's like if you're willing to go through that process, then you are actually unafraid. You know, because like you can do like hacks. I mean, you can, you can like crank up loud rock music and just go for it, you know, like, and there are plenty of examples of that. And in what I'd call gravity assisted sports, like say, if you're going to jump a cliff on skis, like you can get to the edge and be like, this is really scary. And then be like, three, two, one, do it. And just like go in climbing.

26:31You can't really do that as much because it's so slow. Like when you climb, you make one move and then you make another move. And then you're like, do I still want to be here? Like it basically fear creeps in a lot more. But sort of in gravity assisted sports, you can have more of that moment where you just like overcome your fear. and then it happens, you know, like making a big drop in a kayak or like skis or things like that, where it's like once you commit, it's happening one way or another. Anyway, there's a lot to get into it. Like, no, but I mean, I want to get into it. I watched a video of you climbing half dome.

26:58I think it was. Yeah. And it looks like you got scared halfway up or. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so that video is actually filmed later. So the voiceover in that video is me talking about the experience of me free soloing when I was totally alone. And I did get really scared on half dome and I had this whole somewhat traumatic climbing experience near the top of the wall. But then when we went back to film it, I had a different traumatic experience while we were filming. Less traumatic, but like very scary for a moment. And they got that on camera. So they basically, in the film, they just cut the two together as like, because it shows me like being really scared.

27:27What's Half Dome to start with? And then what was the traffic experience? Yeah, so Half Dome for anyone who hasn't seen is this just totally amazing wall in Yosemite. It's a 2 ,000 foot granite face. Actually, it's the North Face logo. It's a freaking, that's Half Dome. Oh, okay. Yeah, so it's like an iconic wall in Yosemite. it looks like half of a dome but actually it's more like a hockey puck just shoved in it's actually a full dome depending how you look at it but the northwest face is vertical for 2 ,000 feet it's incredible and so I free sold that was one of the first like major free solos I did in 2008 and one of the things that sort of made me a professional climber in a way but when I did the climb I did the bare minimum preparation I basically like didn't know it was it was the biggest thing I'd ever free soloed I didn't quite know how to like go by getting ready for anyway I I climbed it and basically hadn't practiced enough.

28:13I was really freaking scared, got off route, got confused, skipped some stuff. And then at the very top had this whole moment of extreme panic, you know, basically like got up into some stuff and all sort of like crumbled mentally and like sort of barely managed to finish this upper slab. Like the hardest part of the climb was like right near the top. I was trying to walk across this ledge. Basically, I've walked across that ledge face in and face out. Normally people hand traverse it or they crawl across it. There are like different ways to go across the ledge and I've done it every which way.

28:39and then we were up there filming and I was like oh I'm gonna walk it face out but it turns out when you walk it face out it's really freaking scary and so I made it kind of halfway and was like oh my gosh and then bailed and when you say you're having like a like a crisis in your mind what does what is that is that just oh my god what I mean like how does that sound when you well I mean so in this case so walking across this ledge it's like it starts maybe as a foot wide so your foot is fully on the ledge and you're shuffling across it but then at a certain point yeah i mean that's that's the video put on the screen for anyone yeah that's that's the ledge but basically at the narrowest part your feet are sticking out over the lip of it and the wall bulges ever so slightly so it forces your back out a little and so you're basically like rocking on your heels with uh i don't know like a 1700 foot drop or something or 1800 foot drop like straight down below you and so you know it's like pretty it's pretty intense anyway and so i thought i was gonna walk across it like that i made it to the bulging part and was something like oh my god this isn't like this isn't for me and then managed to like shuffle back and and change my strategy is it like panic in your head it's not panic but you're like oh oh i made the wrong choice like this is bad this is bad you know i mean it's not like full like five alarm bell like panic panic but yeah you're like oh i'm so screwed and you have fallen a long long way before i was hearing it by the time when you were young and you fell off a mountain and called your mother managed to cool your mother yeah that was like sliding down an icy couloir type thing it's a little different than like free falling off of a cliff that's like sliding down a mountain but yeah i got totally messed up and and uh yeah yeah and i've like broken my arm several times as a kid falling off things and and then with a rope as a climber you take big falls like routinely you know when you have protection that's like part of the sport basically i mean it's certainly easy to visualize falling 700 you know when you're like standing on a little ledge and you're just bulging and You're looking down.

30:32It's easy to be like, oh, my God. It's like if you just bend forward a little bit, you're just going to take a swan dive like 700 feet to the ground. The stats in this sport are, I mean, of fatalities. How do they compare to other sports? Safer than you would think. Everyone thinks it seems crazy, but it's not that crazy. I don't know actual statistics, but I suspect that it's actually pretty comparable to skiing or something. Because recreational skiers die all the time, like falling in tree wells or like going off cliffs backs and things like that climbing is actually surprisingly safe which is one of the things i love about climbing i mean climbing is very it's very uh sort of binary where it's like either you're totally safe or you're gonna die and the odds of you dying are very very very small but because they're they're there they always keep you on you know i mean like it basically keeps you alert but you're never really going to get hurt.

31:29Is that including free soloing? Yeah, I mean, for the most part. I mean, a couple people have died free soloing. I mean, people occasionally die free soloing for sure. But actually, most of the sort of cutting edge free soloists have not died soloing. They've like died in other things. I think it was in the documentary on Netflix, free solo, where one of your colleagues... Yeah, Tommy is like, most free solos are dead now, which is kind of true, but it's slightly misstated. I mean, you know, he's just like speaking off the cuff and it's not like strictly true. Like a couple of the best free solos have died free soling though they died on very easy terrain.

32:04But then the majority of other great free solos have died in sort of climbing adjacent accidents like wingsuit base jumping and like one got swept to sea by a rogue wave like while he was out climbing a sea cliff but he was like standing on shore and got swept out to sea. You know, things like that where you're just kind of like, you know, obviously they're taking risks in their lives and they wind up dead but it's not the way that people think you know you see a photo like that and you're like free so long you're gonna die for sure and you're kind of like well people don't actually really die that way i mean they have i mean not to say that it doesn't happen but way less frequently than people would suspect if i was to try and like you know professionally torture you and again i'm not talking in extremes here but what life would i prescribe you to live oh being like a finance bro or something having to like just work spreadsheets my whole life is that what you Like, what is my, like, worst, I don't know, something like that.

32:55Or honestly, being, like, a choreographer for dance or something. Like, I just, I couldn't do, like, or being, like, an opera singer. Like, I would just kill myself. I just couldn't do that. Why would being a finance bro be, like, the worst thing for Alex? Just the idea of sitting in a computer in a cubicle, just, like, typing. I mean, I'm kind of contrarian. I don't like rules. I don't want to, like, jump through hoops. I don't want to do arbitrary things. Like, I don't want some manager to come and tell me, like, oh, you've got to file that report again. and you like missed a line, I'd be like, you go F or something.

33:23I would just like walk out of the building. I was just like, I don't know if I could take that. I'd be like, no. But that's like how most of the world live. We all live in like, you know. I just don't know if it's for me. I don't know. I mean, doesn't that just seem – I mean, I had this moment. I've been in New York a couple days, and I took the subway down to see some friends. And I was like coming out of the tunnel, and it's like packed with people. And I was just like looking at the ground, and I was like just, you know, following someone else's footsteps up this like beat down path of stairs.

33:50and I was like, I couldn't live like this. Like, not day in and day out every day. Like, this is just, like, feeling like you're just doing the exact same thing as everyone else around you. I'm like, oh, it seems so, so boring. It's funny because so many of us look at your life and go, wow, that's not very normal. But actually, maybe at a foundational level, you're living a much more normal life than, I mean, you're out in nature, you're moving your body. Yeah, yeah, in that way, for sure. I'm, like, going on cool adventures and going out. I don't know. I think that's also part of why the sort of attraction and allure with your life, especially when you watch Free Solo, is you do seem to be a free man in a way where most of us aren't free as such.

34:32Yeah, I mean, I think we're all sort of aspiring to that to some extent. I mean, most people see that, though, as like they get their vacation for the year, they're planning to retire at some point, and then they're going to have their freedom. And you're kind of like, well, I don't know, I mean, maybe you've got to try to live that way as much as possible. If your young girls came up to you, June and Alice, and said, Dad, what is a meaningful life? What are the principles of living a fulfilling, meaningful life? Would you give them advice there? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it'd be a long, rambling, multi-day conversation with them about, but I mean, following your own goals is, I think, certainly one of the cores of having a meaningful life.

35:07Like having things that you find valuable. I mean, really like living in line with your values, finding things that are important to you and pursuing them with as much as you can give them. When you look at your early, so 20s to 30s, it kind of looks like you're living like a Buddhist a little bit. I mean, yeah, I went on a trip once where they called me the monk. Just because I was living such a sort of acetic lifestyle. I was like reading. I've never, I don't drink and I don't like party and I didn't just for personal preference, whatever. So I'm just like living in my little van and reading books and climbing all the time.

35:41Those are the things that I'm into doing, you know. It's like, yeah, it's just doing what you want to do. Have you ever been depressed or? Yeah, probably not like deep clinical depression, but there's certainly periods from time to time where you're just like, what am I doing or why or what are my goals? Like, you know, what's and I think to me, the most depressing thing is that, you know, I put like my whole life into climbing, like trying to be the best you can be all the time. And sometimes you put tons of effort in and you just don't see results. Like for whatever reason, you just suck. You're like, I'm trying so hard and I'm just like not as good as I want to be.

36:12And like, that's challenging. You know, that's. I mean everybody faces that to some extent where you're like I'm working hard at a thing but I'm just not achieving the results that I want and between that sort of that period of no man's love the 20 and 30 where your career hasn't taken off yet the documentary's not out you've not climbed Taipei how much money are you earning from climbing? I mean the first my first couple years my sponsorship through the North Face was like I think my first year was like 10k a year I was like this is amazing because I was living in my car and, you know, making 10 grand when you live by yourself in a van is like more than you need, basically.

36:49It obviously went up beyond that at some point. But it was, you know, like in the 10 to 100 range for the first, for the whole, yeah, for years. And at some point it increases. Yeah, and then it increases. I mean, then free solo is obviously like a big thing. And that sort of opened up all these opportunities. Because then I started doing corporate speaking and stuff like that. And, I mean, as I'm sure you know, that's just like a whole different world. And so then you go from just like making some money from sponsors to like making money from other corporations. So then you're like, OK, now you're making some money.

37:21One of the things when I was hearing you talk about some of your incredible climbing stories is I was trying to understand what role visualization or your preparation plays and how that's like transferable to me in my life. We talked a little bit about just how much preparation you did for something like LCAP. But it sounds like you really break down the challenge into smaller bits and then really go through those individual steps. Whereas a lot of people just look at LCAP and go, oh my God, they'll be terrified. And that's impossible. Yeah, which is fair. I mean, I spent years looking at LCAP and being like, that's too big, that's impossible.

37:54And then, you know, after years of that, I kept hoping that I would look at it and it would like look easy somehow. And I'd be like, cool, now I'm going to do it. And it just never looked easy. And so then finally I was like, okay, I'm going to have to like put some real work into it. And then I started slowly breaking it down. And then once you break it into pieces and start working on the pieces, then you're kind of like, okay, it starts to feel more reasonable. Break it into pieces and start working on the pieces. What does that mean in terms of climbing? So if we, I mean, I've got this model here of Taiwan.

38:24So, you know, this is also a metaphor for any challenge I have in my life. But this is actually perfect because it's right here. Yeah. So I scouted this in September of this year. I did the climb in January or whatever. In September we went and, well, we had to, like, one, make sure it was possible. before you sort of like commit to it doing a whole TV program. You're kind of like, let's make sure we can do this. And then they also had to get all this sort of marketing material. You'd like get the photos with the building, like all the stuff that becomes the trailer and whatever. And so we went in September to sort of like do the prep.

38:50And so we basically checked out all the different pieces. And so anywhere where you see it looking a little bit different, you know, it's like this whole bottom part is like a low angle slab. It's like punctuated with these two little Ruiz, these little like coin things or whatever, the clouds or whatever there are. And then there are the dragons on the corners. these are all overhanging like each of these eight blocks is like a big overhanging thing it feels a little bit different then you get up here there's like these balconies these are actually overhanging like basically each little segment of this is quite different you know obviously on this model like looks looks the same but um each transition between the different pieces is like a thing so i checked out all of them with ropes and and yeah you just go piece by piece all the way up the whole thing and you hadn't ever climbed it before we saw it on netflix live well i hadn't free solo but i had climbed it i climbed all the pieces with a rope for sure i'd like checked out the different things okay so you so you you look at these as individual challenges every step yeah it's like you go well even like just getting off the ground the first move is a slightly different move than any of the other moves you have to like jump up to a thing and like press it out um then climbing over these little clouds is a different thing each dragon is a different thing yeah i mean it's just you know there's a surprising amount of complexity to it and so our first on the scout you know i had a note on my phone and i'm just like writing down all the different basically I'm trying to learn it the way you study anything where I'm just like making notes and sort of like from floor 54 to 72, it feels like this.

40:09I climb the Southeast corner, the left are at, you know, just, and then yeah, just writing it all down. And I mean, there's this famous photo of you hanging with your leg. Yeah. That's this, these are the rings up here. So you're hanging, you're hanging here from here with your leg. Yeah. Now I, this is really a question of endurance. Like how do you plan to have the energy? Like, how do you know if you're going to have enough energy when you're up here, when you're just planning it? I mean, this is what makes it exciting because you can't be sure. But, you know, I've done a lot of climbing in my life and I've done a lot of climbs that were like 24 hours.

40:40I mean, I had this experience in Patagonia once that was a 54-hour push. Like the last 20 hours, we hiked without food because we got caught in a storm. It's a whole crazy story. But basically, you know, I've had a lot of experience in my life where I've done hard exercise for more than 24 hours. And so this, you know, I expected to take me somewhere in the hour and a half, two hour range. I'm kind of like, yeah, I mean, I'll be tired after two hours of exercise, but I'm not going to be exhausted. You know what I mean? Like, I know that I have a much deeper reserve than that. So much of the conversation around after you'd done this or some of the conversation was around whether this was a harder challenge than El Capitan.

41:15No, no, it's obviously much easier. I mean, I'm doing it on live television, you know, it's like obviously it's easier. But what makes it cool is that it's different. It's fun. It's challenging. like for me it's really like in my sweet spot where it is challenging enough like it's not easy you know what i mean like saying easier than el cap it doesn't you know el cap was like a 10-year life project that i did in absolute secrecy i did on my terms on the correct day after years of effort i had failed attempts i you know i mean like el cap was like an all-consuming life project for years kind of like obviously you can't do that for live tv it's like you just can't put But anyway, but this was very much in my sweet spot where you're like, oh, it's hard enough that it's hard.

41:58Like, it's cool. You know, like it's fun. It's interesting. The climb is engaging. It's, you know, gave me something to train for for months. It's like it's super fun. But it's not, you know, it's not like the absolute limit of what I can do because you just can't do that on live TV. I mean, if nothing else, I was climbing the Southeast Arette because it gets good morning light and it looks beautiful and it's like great for filming. But if I was trying to do the absolute most cutting edge climb I could do, I'd be climbing the Northwest Arette because it'd be full shade. because it'd be good, better conditions, you know, be colder.

42:23Like you just don't want to be in the sun. It makes your skin, you know, it makes you hot and stuff. And so, you know, just things like that. You're like, well, if you're doing it for TV and you're trying to broadcast it, then you want it to look good. But like, if you're trying to do it for hard climbing in good conditions, you do it in full shade. And Netflix had a 10 second delay just in case you fell. I mean, I'm sure part of it's in case you fall, but part of it's like, what if somebody unplugs one of the things? You know what I mean? Like, it's so complicated. There's so much stuff going on.

42:48It's insane. Was there a hardest part of this, a part where you were at all nervous? The thing I was most nervous about when I started were the bamboo boxes, like doing these eight overhanging segments because they're just so relentlessly the same move. And it's just, it's pretty physical. Like you get tired for sure. I mean, the actual physical hardest moves, like actually randomly one of these corners up here, would have been quite a hard move. But there was this freaking security camera bolted onto the wall. And so you use the security camera as this handle. It was really freaking cool. And it was like bolted on with these giant bolts.

43:18So it like looked super safe. And, you know, it was like very robust and secure. But it would have been kind of like this extreme jump, which I wasn't, you know, it's probably possible, but would have been like a major thing. But instead, you just reef off the security camera. I was like, it's so cool. So there are a few things like that, like individual moves that are kind of muscly. But overall, it's the stamina, like the challenge of doing this over and over for hundreds of feet that was the hardest thing. Do you have a conversation with your girls and your wife? before you go and do something like this about just in case you don't come back i know not with the kids because they're too young and like they wouldn't they don't understand anyway um and not with her because she came with me to taipei or she was there for like the whole end of it i went a little bit earlier so i could adapt to the time zone more and like feel better but um but basically she was with me so you know like we went to bed together that night and i woke up that morning had breakfast together so it didn't feel like a big goodbye you know it's kind of actually she was with me at the base like we did the start together and then i literally was like okay bye and walked over and did the thing and saw her get into the top so we were only apart for like an hour and a half of the whole you know i was like and i saw her through the window a couple times and so it felt like she was just there having the whole experience with me did you look at other buildings in the world like like the burge some yeah i've scouted the burge twice over the years um back when this project this project almost happened in 2013 or something and so i'd scouted some buildings then the burge was just a little too extreme it's just too hard but someday maybe who knows because it's what like there's not enough it's too slippery um yeah it's super slippery also it's just the way the holds are like i mean the beauty of type 101 is that the holds like they're good things to hold that are close together and you're just like and you can hold them and you feel secure the burge i can barely span tip to tip to like reach between the holds and so then your face is like right against the glass you're like holding on like this and it's pretty hard and you have to do the same thing 112 times in a row it's like pretty hard to do it once then you have to do 100 times you're like it's kind of hard the other thing that I saw online after you'd climbed it about one or two days after everyone talked, started talking about how much you were paid to do it.

45:17I think cause you didn't interview. There were some quotes that were kind of taken out of context because yeah, a New York times reporter asked me how much I was getting paid. And I was kind of like, Oh, I don't want to talk about it. Cause it's kind of embarrassing. Cause all my friends, it's like an embarrassingly high amount for my community. Like in the climbing world, if you're getting paid to rock climb, you're like great success. You're getting paid to climb. That's insane. You know? And so I thought it was like sort of an embarrassingly large amount where I'm like oh this is kind of weird but then he sort of poked around and he started comparing it to like boxing matches and stuff where people get paid like 20 million dollars to like fight someone boxing and I was like well no compared to that it's an embarrassingly small amount you know it's like or if you compare it to like major league baseball contracts and things and it's like yeah it's an embarrassingly small amount but I was never complaining like I thought it was great I mean I would do it for free I mean I've paid money to go up to the observation deck.

46:05The observation deck is way up here at the top and the view is insane and the city is incredible. And, you know, it's like 20 bucks or whatever to take the world's fastest elevator to the top of the building. And, you know, I've done that in the Burj as well where you like pay the money and you go to the very top of the building and the view is insane. It's like, I do that like anywhere I travel. Like the Willis Tower or whatever, the Sears Tower in Chicago, like I've paid the money to go to the observation deck and see the view and it's so cool. And I'm kind of like, if someone's willing to pay me to climb up to the observation deck, that's freaking cool.

46:30Yeah. I think it's because people, again, they're saying that they believe that this is you're risking your entire life yeah and so yeah they don't think of boxers as risking their entire life in the same way kind of are unless they are yeah but they don't see it as that i know of course they don't see it as that and that's totally understandable i get that but i see it as like anybody going into the boxing ring particularly if they're very mismatched you know like you would think that there is some real chance of grievous injury or like death you know it's like it's insane and so i think that people over the thing is i think people that don't know anything about anything like don't know anything about climbing look at me climbing a building they're like it's 50 50 if he lives or dies like no idea and you're like no if you put this in the context of all the things that i've climbed in my life i felt very confident that i wouldn't fall off the building you know i was like you know obviously it's never a hundred percent because like whatever it's life but you know it feels like a hundred percent you're like oh there's no chance i'm falling off this building The rumors were that you got 500K to climb it from Netflix.

47:29Throughout my whole, like, you know, quote unquote career as a climber, I basically have never worried about money. And I've always just tried to do the thing and let it all play out at the end. And so I've done a ton of work for free over the years. Like, actually, we were talking about that Half Dome film earlier, where it's like, I'm shuffling along. It's like, I did that film for free. I did tons of films like that for free. Just because you're kind of like, oh, it's part of being a professional climber. And I get to go climbing and I'm up with my friends filming on a thing. You're just like, you're working for free.

47:52It's fine. But by doing all that stuff for free, like I never, I never stressed the day rate. Never, you know, I was like, I don't need to get paid to go have fun with my friends on wall. Like, it's fine. But as a result of that film, you know, a year or two later, they wound up doing a photo shoot up there for the cover of National Geographic. And so you just wind up in other things. And then, and then that got seen and I wound up being profiled by 60 Minutes, which actually was one of the first sort of career inflection points. It was like the 60 Minutes profile in 2011 or something. But basically, I've done a ton of work for free over my life as all part of like, it's all part of the game.

48:25And I just love playing the game. And so you just like let it play out. And it's funny because with this building, a lot of people thought that I was sort of underpaid by it. But afterward, you know, some people have approached me about some bonuses and some other work stuff. And like basically a lot has already sort of happened. And it's only been a couple weeks since the building. And I'm kind of like, you know, you don't need to get paid for the thing itself because it always works, basically. I'm kind of like I don't know I'm like don't get hung up on how much you get paid just do the thing make sure it's freaking rad and it all sorts itself out yeah yeah I mean that's also been like that's completely true for my life as well even this podcast like when we started the podcast in my kitchen I mean this is a replica of my kitchen and Jack was here there was no payment when we started it yeah exactly you're just doing a thing you make it as good as you can and eventually it all sort of works and you're like cool Because that pattern you've just described has played out for 15 years of my life.

49:22I now, and again, my CFO, my commercial director might not love me saying this, but they know this about me, and we even talked about it recently with a particular project, is like, don't let the inability to see where the money's going to come from in the near term stop you pursuing something that you think is going to create value. Because history shows that actually value, like giving value out into the world, precedes the economics. And so it happened 15 years of my life. I remember when I started the social media business and people, a guy sat me down in Google in London and explained to me why I would never make money from that business.

50:00He did the math for me, and the math was solid. He was like, if you do once a day, you won't make any money. And I was like, yeah, but I don't think that's true. And you have no evidence. Yeah, but you just know it's going to work. Yeah, the Uber CEO sat here with me yesterday in that scene. And he was telling me, he was like, the thing is, there's this thing called Jevons Paradox, where when something was more efficient or whatever, people think of things in linear progression, but actually there's exponential progression. So when we launched Uber, more people started taking taxis. So all of the models about how big this market were were all wrong.

50:32And I find the same in that, and I find the same in podcasting when we started about five years ago, was, yeah, like you set me down and go, well, Steve CPMs, you're going to have to be getting a million downloads to earn a living. You're like, wait and see. We'll just do the thing and let it happen. I mean, you're a prime example of that. Yeah. It's always better to focus your energy on being the best at the thing that you're trying to do than figuring out how to monetize it or make money off of it. It's like, I don't know. I mean, my whole life as a climber, I've always tried to focus on, like, how do you send, which in climbing terms means, like, do the hard thing.

51:06Like, you always focus on sending. and then everything else follows.

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52:51And LinkedIn ads also drive the highest B2B return on ad spend across all ad networks, in my experience. If you want to give them a try, head over to linkedin.com slash diary. And when you spend$250 on your first LinkedIn ads campaign, you'll get an extra$250 credit from me for the next one. That's linkedin.com slash diary. Terms and conditions apply. It's funny you're talking about mortality earlier on. I think in the last couple of years, my mortality, like realizing that I'm going to die someday, has been such a wonderful thing to really remind myself of on a frequent basis. How come? Just because, okay, so there's many things.

53:30One of them is the whole idea of like sunk cost bias, where you become successful at a thing and now you have something to lose. So people go into a state of loss aversion where they start to protect what they have. And this narrows your life in a way where you stop taking challenges, stop taking risks, stop doing new things. And the other thing generally about knowing you're going to die and really like reminding yourself of that is it liberates you from getting caught up and worrying about things that in the grand scheme of like cosmic reality are like totally inconsequential. Yeah. I was hearing someone say the other day, like, do you know the name of your great-grandfather?

54:06Do you know his first name? Not really. And do you know the life they lived and what they were worried about and how they were embarrassed and their shame? Yeah, exactly. No, you don't know any of that. And the point is, like, if you don't even know your own family's bullshit. Like, nobody else cares, yeah. But even, like, extremely famous people, a couple of weeks after, they trend on Twitter. And then a week later, everyone just, like, gets on with their life again. Well, I'm already experiencing that with this stuff. You know, like the building was like insane for a moment. But now it's the Olympics and there's a lot going on in the news cycle.

54:33And it's like the world's moved on. And I'm like, great, I'll go back to just like being at home with my family and climbing as much as I can. Being at home with your family. You said earlier that when you were in that van for 10 years, you wanted a girlfriend. Now, I'm not being funny, but people that fit your profile and to some degree people that fit my profile struggle in intimate relationships for a variety of reasons. And I think I actually saw this in the documentary when I watched Free Solo. I saw you had a partner at the time. There was an accident on the cliffside where you fell, and she was supposed to be protecting you.

55:03And generally, I just saw someone who probably is more on the less affectionate, more commitment-avoidance side of life. Is that accurate? I don't know about commitment-avoidance, because actually I have had long-term girlfriends and things, but yeah, definitely I'm less expressive. I'm less emotionally intelligent than my wife. Has she ever given you feedback that she wishes you were more emotionally, available. I mean, I get that. I mean, yeah, yeah. In different words, perhaps, but yeah, basically. Sani. Yeah, Sani. Is her name. She wrote a letter. Oh, gosh. That's funny because the first two words are, oh, gosh, an intimate letter out loud.

55:43Oh, gosh. She does know me. Obviously, this is your worst nightmare, she said. She knows me so well. But we all have to do scary things sometimes, Alex. My coach. She said, I remember when you read a book once about a woman who said she was less affected by emotions than most people. For her entire life, people tried to convince her that she was wrong, that she was suppressing her feelings. But at the end of the day, she just wasn't. As you were reading, you turned to me and said something similar. Something like, everyone wants to believe that I'm burying all these things, these feelings, deep inside.

56:22But I'm just not. And I laughed and I joked, don't worry, I know you're dead inside. If I remember correctly, you gave me a hug. But I've thought about this conversation a lot. Because as the person married to you, I spend a lot of time trying to understand you. And while there obviously are emotions that drive you, I was mostly joking about the dead inside part. I do think you are far less affected by some feelings like anxiety, fear, shame, guilt or self-doubt than many of us. But the longer I know you, the more I see an ocean of something else hiding beneath the surface. Filling the space that would normally be taken up by all these feelings is the ability to truly see things.

57:03You move through the world like a hawk, while the rest of us are lost in thought. As a climber, you can see the way up a rock face, the climbability of a building, or the layered history of a mountain range. As a father, you notice the quiet, intrinsic desires of your daughters or the chores that need doing around the house. And as a friend, you see the raw potential in every person that you meet. Sometimes this is the hardest thing about you. Nothing goes unnoticed. Neither the strengths nor the weaknesses, the moments of dedication or the moments of laziness. You are practical and blunt in your assessment of your choices and our lives.

57:40But that's also because you see us. and paying attention is love. Your ability to see the world so clearly allows you to also appreciate it more clearly and that is a special form of your love. Perhaps there's a well of emotion in there after all. But for the purposes of this letter, Alex, I want to give you your gift back to you and tell you what I see, particularly in the last four years since we had kids. Because I think the way you move through the world with us is a unique love story. I see you rushing down the trail from the climbing area so you can get back in time for dinner with me and the girls.

58:21I see you flying the red eye so you can be home a day sooner. I see you cramming in your gym session even when you have a huge goal on the horizon so that I have time for my workout too. I see you pushing your body to the absolute limit during the day but still managing to stay awake long enough to chat to me at night. I see you taking on an extra day of travel just to convince someone with money to donate to your foundation and help save the planet. I see you adjusting your whole training schedule for work opportunities in order to provide a wonderful life for me and the girls. I see the insane juggling act you do every day to not only be a great athlete, but a great dad and husband.

59:01I know it's not easy, but I see it and I appreciate it. We love you as you are. Alex. not overly emotional, but present, committed, and always seeing what others miss. Yours, Sani. She's very astute I was like, that's why I married her, you know. I don't know. She's very astute. Yeah. I learned a lot about you from reading this. What do you think? You know, we all show our love in different ways. And sometimes I think the conventional way that the world tries to measure love is through the verbal expression of it and romantic gestures and those kinds of things. But there's another type of person who often struggles, I think, in life's expectations of what love looks like, who show it through acts of service.

1:00:01That was literally one of our last big arguments about something like in bed the other night, not like a total blowout. But basically she was sort of like, I just need more, you know, of the verbal kind. And I was kind of like, I'm literally doing all the things. And I always sort of say, you know, actions speak louder than words. I'm kind of like, if you're doing all the things, you're doing the correct things, you don't need to talk about them because you're doing the things. And, you know, that was basically a back and forth. I mean, you know, I took her point that, like, occasionally you have to say the right thing too.

1:00:29Well, I have the same argument on repeat with my fiancé. She needs the words too. Yeah, she has, like, a different language. She's speaking Spanish, I'm speaking French. Yeah. And also, by the way, I have to say, at some deep level, again, because of my early contacts where, like you, I wished my parents would break up. I wished they would just get a divorce because the model of love I saw was not a happy one. I think at some deep level I have a commitment problem or an intimacy problem where even growing up say calling someone my best friend somewhat made me cringe like saying saying affectionate words to someone at some deep level made me feel deeply uncomfortable and so you can imagine me being ding and then I've I think like oftentimes we go for the opposite in the person we end up like marrying or yeah certainly for me yeah yeah my wife is like way more emotionally intelligent than anyone in my entire extended family.

1:01:18Yeah, same. This is how you build a rich life is that you basically like, I mean, it's like hiring, you find members of the team who have all the strengths that you need. Yeah. It's like the things that you can't do. And it's like filling your blind spots, basically. Have you got better at saying the words? No. Any progress? Oh, yeah, progress, probably. But very slow. But in a way, that's great, you know, because we're going to be married the rest of our lives. And so that could be another 50, 60 years together. And so you need to see incremental progress. Because really, there's nothing better in life than making progress and i've started at such a low point and i'm making progress so slowly that i basically have a good project for the rest of my life i wouldn't we kind of touched on it before but one of the things that's been in front of mind for me at the moment is um actually something i saw in your personality test which was you were high in perseverance and we talked earlier on about like mastery and how it's important to um persist to get good at something but this has just been front of mind for me I think for a long time because even as a podcaster, I realize that a lot of the game, I'm like five years in now, and when I look at someone like Joe Rogan, he's been going for like, I don't know, 15, 17 years.

1:02:25Or more, yeah. Or more. And I get like, so much of the game in becoming great at something, is just going for an unusual amount of time. Well, it's like compounding interest. I'm like, look at Warren Buffett. Have you ever seen stuff with Warren Buffett where it's like, you know, it took him, whatever, 40 years to make his first couple million or whatever. took him another like 10 or 15 years to make his first billion. And then it took him like whatever. In the last eight years, he's made like$100 billion. You know, because his whole wealth is like, ooh. They're kind of like, basically, if you put enough time into something and you let it compound, it like slowly gets bigger and bigger.

1:02:55It's exactly that. So I've been thinking about like - Also, all those numbers are incorrect, but the shape of the graph is correct. We'll put it on the screen so everyone can see it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Somebody correct my numbers. But the principle is correct. It's the same as this graph here that you drew of your career. It's the same as the podcast growth where three years no one was listening and then we have this whoop. Yeah. And I think as a principle. That's why you focus on doing something of value. Because with a podcast, like if you feel like you're doing something useful and that you think it's cool and you think there's something there, you just keep doing it.

1:03:23And eventually people get on board. Okay. So on that train of thought, I've thought a lot about how do I create the conditions to out persist other people in the areas that I love. And one such thing, for example, with a podcast is like never have a conversation that I'm not looking forward to because that's unsustainable over the long term. Because then it feels like hard work as opposed to something that we're like, this is amazing. Yeah. So when I look at my cat, they'll say, oh, this person wants to come and they've got 160 gazillion followers. But you're like, I don't care about that person.

1:03:54Yeah, because if I use that as a decision framework for the next 10 years, I'll quit. Yeah. Do you think about that, like the conditions to out persist in your domain? I mean, kind of. Yeah. I mean, I haven't had to think about it too much because I freaking love climbing in all its forms. And so basically climbing comes easily. But like in terms of the work stuff I do, I forget. I think I was talking to you before we started recording. But I host this podcast called Planet Visionaries. It's like a Rolex perpetual planet. Like I interview scientists and conservationists and whatever. And for whatever reason, every time I do this podcast, I come out of it feeling all energized and like I should train more.

1:04:26I should study. I should learn something. Basically because the people that I'm interviewing are all so uniquely good at what they do. And they're all trying to save the world in different ways. It's like, you know, marine biologists like exploring the deep sea floor and things like that. Yesterday, I interviewed these two women about the fact that we've only explored 0.001 % of the deep sea, which represents two thirds of the planet. So basically two thirds of the planet, we know like literally nothing about. And there's like this rich underwater world of like cool stuff going on in the ocean floor that we've never seen and nothing about.

1:04:55And it's insane. And I was like, that's so cool. And I got all fired up about it. And so I come out of work thing, you know, quote unquote work things like that. and I'm like energized and excited to learn and grow, you know, push myself. And I'm kind of like, that's the type of work that I want to do as much as possible. And then there are other kinds of things where, you know, I'll do like corporate speaking or something where you show up at a conference and you just like get ground down, you know, when you leave and you go back to your hotel and all you can do is just like lie there on the bed for an hour being like, oh, what am I doing with my life?

1:05:22You know, you feel like kind of wrecked. So it's like if you can focus on the work where you come out of it feeling inspired and like excited to try hard versus the work that makes you want to like mindlessly scroll on something for hours you know i mean because sometimes you're just like oh i'm just so over it yeah someone said that to me in my career they said like whenever you find domains that make you feel expansive like totally you should double down on those domains because you're that's the path to master you're going to be able to continue yeah because you can just keep pushing super hard in that yeah thankfully for climbing that's always just been added like i just freaking love climbing it's so great you should do it more i know you you make us all want to climb more alex that's one of the i think the great um consequences of watching you do something like taipei i mean there was loads of kids in the streets of taipei i think that were all trying to climb buildings there was loads of like funny videos then obviously they were only getting like a meter up oh yeah before they fell i was like hopefully they don't yeah hopefully it's not too much copycatting but yeah we got some crazy numbers from netflix that i think half of people or more than half of people who have a netflix subscription in in taiwan watch the building climb on uh it's like in in taiwan it was like insane like literally everybody watch it's it's such a it's such a singular striking building in taipei it's like a total national icon you know it's like a it's it's insane have you already started thinking about what you're going to do next people are always like you know what's your next big thing and i'm kind of like you know if you just focus on doing lots of little things all the time occasionally the big things just happen and you can't totally know ahead of time explain that to me well so at least so i mean I have climbing goals going back 20 years.

1:06:54I have all these notes on my phone. I always have like to-do lists. I've, especially when I lived in the van and I was traveling, you're like seasonally moving between climbing destinations nonstop. So I'd lay, I'd layer out all these different types of goals. Like I want to do these types of things. Certain goals lead to other goals because they're the same type of fitness, let's say. So like doing really big things help you do even bigger things later, but doing like really hard and intense things help you do other hard and intense things later. You know, so in some ways, in the way you stack your goals, you can kind of build up to big things or like build up to really hard things or whatever.

1:07:23And so I've always had running to-do lists of like, I'm going to try to do all these climbs this year. And realistically, I normally do like half of them or some of them I never even get to because it's like the weather's not good. I wind up going to a different area or like don't go to that, that climbing destination at all. And so I never even tried the project, but I've always had tons of goals like that. And looking back at years and years of that type of those types of lists, I just see that it's slightly hard to predict when you're going to achieve the things that are like cutting edge or groundbreaking or whatever.

1:07:53You just have to keep doing the things nonstop. And every once in a while, some of them rise to the top. I mean, this kind of goes back to the same like value creating things like you don't know which things are going to be rad. You just do all the things and some of them wind up being rad. And the decision framework there is to just do things you love and that challenge you. Yeah, things that push you and like things that are new for you that are hard for you that are challenging in the right ways. You know, but you just can't, you don't always know ahead of time which of those things are going to stand out or not.

1:08:22But you just do them anyway because you're learning from them, you're excited about them, they're hard. And then, you know, some are cool, some aren't. Some you never even try. I'm like, that's fine, you just keep doing things. The CEO of Uber, Daria, was sat there yesterday and one of the contrarian pieces of life advice he gave, which is kind of overlaid with what you just said, is he said people need to stop making, young people in particular need to stop making life plans because it narrows them to the serendipity and opportunity and things that might happen if they're broad and open-minded.

1:08:50Well, or my wife and I sometimes joke that we both have very strong opinions loosely held where it's like, oh, I'm totally sure of a thing right up until I get some data that shows that that's wrong. And then you're like, oh, nevermind, throw that away. And that's kind of how a lot of my to-do lists have always been, or like my goals, where I'm like, oh, I have all these goals. But if I take a slight fork in my year where it's like, turns out uh you know for whatever reason like something else lines up and it makes sense to do all these other things and i'm just like right turn and just change you know and it overlaps with what you said earlier about like not worrying so much about like how much it's going to pay me today or yeah what the big thing is or it's kind of like just just keep doing cool things it'll it'll work out i would love if we could you know scan your brain and look at all the parts it's especially in the context i learned about this particular region of the brain called the anterior mid-singulate cortex okay which i heard andrew huberman talking about and it's a part of the brain they discovered quite recently that lights up when you do things that you don't want to do so not things that you enjoy doing that are somewhat like difficult like running a marathon but things that you actively avoid and resist but do anyway pain fear effort discipline this is the circuit that decides whether you quit or you push through and it grows the more you do things you don't want to do so it's like they now consider it to be the muscle of willpower in the brain when they look at athletes they have bigger ones when they look at people who are struggling or are more sedentary or struggling with their weight.

1:10:08They often have smaller ones. Anyone that avoids discomfort has a smaller one. So in the context of the way you've lived your life, you've continued to do things that are hard. I mean, you can love climbing, but you don't necessarily love. Yeah, but just doing like one more set every time is like, that's always a challenge. You're always like, my whole body hurts, but I'll just do a little more. Yeah, and I think the thing I guess here is like about neuroplasticity, which is going to be a ton of people listening right now that are so far away from their type A, from their type A 101. They're so far away from that.

1:10:40They're in a job they just don't like. They're maybe the finance bro that, you know, you talked about a second ago. And their life is absent of adventure. And they probably look at you and go, well, you know, he just has something I don't have. I know, but I just don't, you know. I mean, I've structured my life in a different way. And I've made many different choices and all that. But that's the thing is I don't really think I have anything different. I mean, I actually hate all the like brain stuff because people always like use that to, to put me in this box of like, well, you're different. And I'm like, well, not really.

1:11:08Like I'm a middle-class suburban kid. Both my parents, like nobody in my family is athletic. Like nobody is good at sports at all. You know, it's like, like basically if you were to like, look at the, you know, like if I was a video game character and you were to look at all my little bars, you'd be like, that guy's not going to be an athlete. Like he's not good at this. You know, it's like my parents are professors and we freaking read books. There's no aptitude for anything, really. And I was bad at sports as a kid. I'm not good with balls. There's no reason. But really, I just have loved climbing enough that I've been willing to put in a tremendous amount of time and effort and eventually get good at it.

1:11:43And I'm kind of like, to hear people say, oh, your brain's different, you're kind of like, well, everybody's brain is a little bit different in some ways. It doesn't mean that you can't devote yourself to something that you care about. But with this in mind and with all the neuroscientists that I've interviewed, Your brain is different in part because you've taken, you've done different things. And neuroplasticity says you can change your brain right the way up throughout your entire life. One of my friends, Tom Bilyeu, is a good example of that. He's a big podcaster. You might know Tom Bilyeu.

1:12:09I don't think so. But he, you know, he was, I can't remember the rough age, but I'm going to say he was 30 years old. He was so, in his words, lazy that he would lay in bed all day. When his girlfriend came home, he said he would jump up out of bed just so she didn't believe that he was in bed all day and he didn't want to be embarrassed. and when he asked his, at the time, girlfriend if he could, asked her dad if he could marry her dad said no he described it as lazy and down and out over the next 10 years he makes decisions to take on more difficult challenges builds a billion dollar company, sells it if you meet this guy today you'd think athlete, genius, super smart, motivated you'd beg him for advice on discipline and motivation he's that kind of guy he read a book about neuroplasticity and he realised that he wasn't stuck he learned about neuroplasticity which means that any age in your life the decisions you make change your brain and that's why i love this discovery of this anterior mid-singulate cortex because it means that like maybe in part the reason why i'm not taking on my type a one-on-one is because i haven't taken on my type a one-on-one yeah you have well you haven't taken on uh your type a one you know your type a uh your type a 12 or whatever you know like just the little pieces at the bottom because that's the thing is like and actually this is why when you ask about like any big goals i'm like i sometimes i think the big goals are slightly limiting because like if you're your friend who's laying in bed type 101 is not the appropriate goal you know what i mean like you need you need a type a4 like you need to just get out and like do a little thing you need to achieve some success you need to see that you can do something and you need to take on appropriately sized challenges because i think having a great white whale you know is is great sometimes but that's not always what you need, you know?

1:13:50And, and partially like for me right now, you know, we're raising two little kids and we're just like in the midst of it, you know, it's like bedtime right now is hanging. It's just like, it's a lot. And I'm like, I don't need like an El Cap size goal right now because, you know, we're just trying to make it through a certain phase of life. Really not to say that I'll never have other big goals, but you're kind of like, you want your goals to be appropriate to the time and space that you have available. I had a psychologist say to me about this idea of just setting yourself a type A1, like a small goal.

1:14:19The reason why people don't do it is because they see it as almost so embarrassingly small that they don't think it matters. Yeah, but I mean, that's why you focus on it doesn't matter to you. Like, is it something that you haven't done? Like, is it good for your growth? Is it challenging for you? Like, it's good enough. But that same psychologist told me that when they were dealing with a patient who was so demotivated that they couldn't get out of their bedroom, which was stacked to the ceiling with plates and cutlery, that day one was bringing the Hoover into the room. That was day one. Day two was plugging it in.

1:14:48That was day two. And by day 30, they're outside. This is someone who was scared of going outside. They're outside walking around. The room is clean. But he said to me that people don't take that first step because it's so embarrassingly small that it's almost shameful to say, like, today we're just going to bring the Hoover in. Yeah. But that's the thing is it's always better to take a step than to not take a step. You know, that's, yeah. I mean, that's how I've always felt with all these things. You're like, well, you might as well go out and do the thing, like do something. You remember at the beginning, I was like, you don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

1:15:18Like you do the good thing, you know, because like it's like don't let perfectionism cripple you. You know, it's like that's why I think, you know, type A101, if that's kind of like your perfect goal, it's like don't let that hold you back from going out and climbing type A4 or type A8 or, you know, like some of the surrounding little buildings because it's like you practice on what you can. It goes back to this point of perseverance. I read a quick many years ago that said greatness doesn't exist. greatness is just good repeated. I mean, this is what I'm saying about having lots of little goals is that I would actually say that if you repeat good enough every once in a while, some of those are great actually, but you just don't totally know.

1:15:51You know, I noticed that a lot, like in my climbing life, like in the long arc of climbing, there are tons of things I did in Yosemite where like in a season I'd have like five or six goals in Yosemite and I'd do all the things. And one of them for whatever reason would wind up being like, that's rad. And it would, you know, like makes climbing news and things like that and the other ones you know maybe less so but you don't totally know ahead of time which ones are cool or not and which ones are going to stand the test of time like at one point in the not too distant past i held a speed record on every major formation in yosemite now a few of them have been broken over time and but those are the kinds of things where you never really know like how long those types of records will last because sometimes you do them and then your friend comes and breaks it the next season and you're like cool and you go back and forth and it's all part of a fun game and then some of them you've set a speed record and it lasts like 15 years.

1:16:34You're sort of like, oh, I didn't realize that this was going to be like such a milestone, you know? It reminds me of the Steve Jobs quote about how you can only really connect the dots looking backwards. Totally, totally. Steve Jobs quote from his commencement speech was, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. Clarity isn't a prerequisite for action. It's the reward you get after you move. and that's the thing is I think because I do so many interviews with like you know when was the moment you decided to be a professional climber and I'm like there's no moment like I just did the thing for years and years and now looking backward it looks like this amazing arc you know but at the moment you're always you know I spent years being like should I go back to college like do I need a degree like and then I spent a few years wondering if I should go back and get like an executive MBA or something or something because I was like I don't want to go back to undergrad I've been living in my van for 10 years and but you're kind of like still I need that validation I need you know I want to jump through the hoops and then really it's only now that I'm kind of like I don't think I need that.

1:17:32In part, I think the reason why we, so many of us get forced into procrastination when we're trying to connect the dots looking forward is because we face these questions from society, which is like, what's your plan? What's your career? What are you aiming at? And we don't have answers. So we fill in the gaps. We have to say something to mom and dad. We have to say, like, what's the plan for the future? You can't say nothing. No, no plan. Or you just say, I'm living. I'm just letting it play out. We'll just see what happens. It's going to be a grand adventure. And I mean, I kind of hope my kids feel confident with that, you know just kind of like well i'm doing the best i can i'm practicing the things that i care about and we'll see how it plays out we'll see how it plays out because like either way it's going to play out with with me and them and everybody else dying you're like you know how it's going to play out at the end end and so you're kind of like the whole space up to there is like oh you just try to fill it with as many things that you're proud of as you can it's a remarkably simple way to live in a world that's increasingly complex alex well i mean it doesn't need to be that complex but this is why I think spending some time in nature like helps remind you of some of those sorts of things this company that I've just invested in is growing like crazy I want to be the one to tell you about it because I think it's going to create such a huge productivity advantage for you whisper flow is an app that you can get on your computer and on your phone on all your devices and it allows you to speak to your technology so instead of me writing out an email I click one button on my phone and I can just speak the email into existence and it uses AI to clean up what I was saying.

1:18:53And then when I'm done, I just hit this one button here and the whole email is written for me. And it's saving me so much time in a day because Whisper learns how I write. So on WhatsApp, it knows how I am a little bit more casual, on email, a little bit more professional. And also there's this really interesting thing they've just done. I can create little phrases to automatically do the work for me. I can just say Jack's LinkedIn and it copies Jack's LinkedIn profile for me because it knows who Jack is in my life. This is saving me a huge amount of time. This company is growing like absolute crazy.

1:19:21And this is why I invested in the business and why they're now a sponsor of this show. And Whisperflow is frankly becoming the worst kept secret in business, productivity and entrepreneurship. Check it out now at Whisperflow, spelled W-I-S-P-R-F-L-O-W dot A-I slash Stephen. It will be a game changer for you. If you knew that you only had one week left to live and this was the week and you could only do one last climb, go back and recapture the record, go do our cap again. I don't know, a different building, you have one week, and assume you're sufficiently prepared for whatever the climb would be.

1:19:54What would you do? So I'm allowed to do, like, cutting-edge futuristic things? Yeah. Oh, well, then I'm like, I don't know. I mean, the Burge, like, it'd be insane. But no, like, the free triple in Yosemite is, like, the three biggest walls in Yosemite. The free triple. So it's El Cap, Half Dome, and Mount Watkins. Mount Watkins is kind of like a Half Dome-sized wall that's further up valley. so it was the three biggest walls in yosemite so tommy caldwell and i have free climbed the triple the two of us did it together with ropes but we like climbed the whole thing and then i've soloed the triple so i've done all three with ropes by myself it was like 18 or 19 hours or something of climbing um but it's never been free soloed uh i free solid hafton individually and i free sold el cap individually no one's ever free solid walk-ins but the idea of doing all three in a day would be like i think totally like next generation achievement there's certain things like that where I'm sort of like, if I was starting over, if I was like an 18 year old who was like trying to make it as a professional climber nowadays and had a higher level of skill than I do now, you know, basically was like trying to do this again.

1:20:55There are things like that that would be sort of like the obvious next generation challenge. Free solo all three in the same day. Yeah. Yeah, I'd probably take, well, I'd take a bit under 24 hours probably. What is your training regimen these days? I just go rock climbing a lot. Today I did a little workout in the hotel gym this morning. Your hands are quite different. I was, they're quite big hands. Well, that's, I mean, you know, I think like a stone mason just like grinding away their whole life. I see. You have, I don't know if people can see that on camera, but it does look like you have very wide fingers.

1:21:28Yeah, my fingers have taken a lot of abuse in their time. Because I see you like putting them in between walls and stuff. Yeah, crack climbing. It's like you basically put your fingers into a crack and you torque them. And so like the side to side pulling does sort of make your connective tissue bigger. And does that hurt? yeah it hurts i was wondering when you're going up when you're doing it well with good technique it's not that painful it depends on the type of rock but some rock is kind of sharp and kind of painful um but yeah this is this goes back to strengthening your what's the part called in your brain anterior mid-singulate cortex yeah exactly that guy i mean that's the thing is that even when done well climbing like it hurts your fingers and toes you know crack climbing when you're like jamming your toes into a crack and you're twerking them side to side and you're like wedging your fingers in i mean when you're doing it well it has a pleasant feel of safety to it because you You can really like lock into cracks and it feels comfortable and you feel like you're swimming.

1:22:16You're like, this is beautiful. But when you really come down to the sensations, you're still crushing your bones into a crack like it still hurts. When I look at this kind of photo where you're, it looks like you're hanging by one and a half hands. Yeah. And you're going to fall to your death if your grip isn't sufficient. It makes me think you must have the world's greatest grip strength. I definitely don't. You don't? I mean, where you have your grip then, you can find out. What's below you there in this photo? Well, actually, so there is like a sloping cliff thing below me. So I'm actually only like 30 feet off the ground or 40 feet.

1:22:50But if you fell, you'd bounce off and you'd go, you know, basically to where it looks like down on the valley floor down there. Terrifying photo. It's funny, actually, have you seen Free Solo? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you remember the camera guy that like can't look? Yeah. The guy that's like shooting the long shot on the ground, Mikey? He's a really good friend of mine. I've done tons of things with him. He shot the Taipei climb as well. Mikey was the photo assistant for this photo. he was like holding the photos and he did the whole shoot just like looking into the wall like he just never looked at any of the things happening like jimmy chin was taking the photo and mikey was like did all the the rigging and the lights and everything and mikey did the whole shoot just like looking into his arm like looking the other way he was like i am not part of this i'd like to see his brain sky he was stressed but he i mean he's an elite climber himself and he's amazing but like basically watching free soloing is stressful and nobody wants to do it if they don't have to.

1:23:39When is it in all your career? When is the moment where you were most scared, where you thought maybe you had pushed it too far? Oh, it's actually, uh, I've had several moments, but actually mostly with ropes on. That's the thing is that because when you're free soloing, you generally keep it within a healthy margin or you practice ahead of time, you know, basically because you're going to die, you make sure that you can do it. But when you have a rope on, you're way more willing to push into the unknown because you're kind of like, surely I'll get some protection. Eventually I'll just keep looking.

1:24:03I'll keep looking and so like i've had i was on an expedition to antarctica actually um in 2017 and did a bunch of climbing that was very extreme but like with a rope but it was you know it's antarctica it's really freaking cold conditions are challenging the rock is crumbling everything is scary and you just keep hoping that it's going to get better and it just keeps getting worse instead and eventually you're sort of like because the thing is having a rope on doesn't mean anything unless you get good protection which means you have to be able to put gear into the rock and if you can't find places to put gear into the rock then you can go you know the rope is 200 feet long if you go 200 feet without getting good gear then you're looking at taking a 400 foot fall before the rope catches you uh which is almost certainly fatal you know i mean if you fall that far even though the rope will catch your corpse you know but you're still just gonna hit the wall after 400 feet like you're screwed so anyway my scariest experiences have all been situations like that for the most part this is why i'm saying climbing you get scared a lot and i was like that expedition we were climbing basically day on day off each day we would go climb one of these crazy spires and we'd have these experiences where I'd be like so scared and then the next day we would just sit in the tent because it's Antarctica it's like really cold you're in the cook tent I would basically just spoon Nutella all day totally shell-shocked like totally like just completely traumatized and then and then you'd be like rest enough and you'd go out the next day and do it again and we just did like day on day off of like full trauma fear for the whole trip and then we climbed everything in the range it was amazing it was an incredible trip so you do get scared yeah I was so scared the whole time are there any techniques that are proven to be effective for you to deal with that fear?

1:25:32Like people talk about breath work and... Yeah, take some deep breaths, try to compose yourself. I mean, I try to stay rational, you know, like, am I in danger? Because sometimes, like in this case in Antarctica, I am actually in danger. Like if I fall, I could die. But oftentimes you feel, you get those feelings of fear and you're not actually in danger. You just, it's your mind running away from you. And so sometimes you can sort of rationally rein in a little bit where you're like, no, I am safe. The protection will hold me. The rope is, you know, my gear is good. And then you just take a deep breath and you just carry on.

1:25:59And do you visualize falling ever? Oh, yeah. I mean, of course. Yeah, I mean, you have to understand what the consequences would be. Because, I mean, that type of visualization is also how you can know when you're safe. Because, like, if you ever open gear and you're trying to visualize, like, if I fall, am I going to hit the ground or is the gear going to catch me before I hit the ground? I mean, there are often situations like that where you're like, if I fall, am I going to hit that ledge and break both my legs or am I going to clear the ledge and fall into free space, in which case it's totally safe?

1:26:25And so it helps to be able to have a clear-eyed visualization of, you know, because most people visualize the worst case. Like, if I fall, I'm going to die. And you're like, well, oftentimes if you, I'm talking about with a rope, if you fall, you're going to be fine. But it's important to know the difference. So you don't avoid the confrontation with the negative outcomes? No, because you're trying to avoid the negative outcomes. Like, you have to think about it because how else do you mitigate that kind of stuff? But you can't let that stop you taking actions when the risk profile is okay? Yeah, exactly.

1:26:55I mean, this is like a whole rant about risk taking and everything. But like, I mean, that's the thing is you want to be taking the risks that you want to take. And it drives me crazy that nobody else thinks about risk in this way. Because think of all the people that like go out partying every weekend and they get like kind of buzzed and they drive home and whatever. And it's like they're taking all kinds of risk that they're not actually choosing to take. You know what I mean? Like they're just choosing to go out and party and have a good time. But then they're like driving a little buzzed and they're like, no, it's fine.

1:27:21But you're like, no, obviously you're taking a risk. or like you're putting yourself into situations where you're like in a vulnerable situation because you're incapacitated because you're drunk or whatever. And so, you know, you're putting yourself at higher risk for crime, things like that. And so you're taking risks. You just haven't chosen to take those risks. I'm kind of like the thing with climbing is that I'm choosing to take the risks and I'm pretty clear eyed about the risk that I'm taking. Like, I mean, I'm not going to say it's perfect, but for the most part, I think I have a pretty good idea of which aspects are dangerous, like when the consequences are high, what will happen if I do fall?

1:27:51You know, it's like you try to think it all out as much as you can. I'm kind of like, how many people in normal life actually think through all the risks that they're taking? And even totally sedentary people who are like, well, I don't take risks. I stay home and I play video games. You're like, no, you're at a much higher risk of heart disease. Like, you're going to die from other things. You know, it's like, and you're still going to freaking die either way. That's, okay, I'm done ranting. I'm sorry. No, no, but it's really important because I think we are all taking risks. But some of us aren't intentional about the risks we're taking, essentially.

1:28:17That's exactly it. Like, even if you take no risk, you're going to die. you're taking a different set of risks. And so people look at my life and they're like, well, you're crazy, you're such a risk taker. And I'm kind of like, well, at least I'm taking the risks that I'm choosing and I'm choosing them very intentionally and I'm pretty careful about them and I mitigate them as much as I can. I'm kind of like, well, can you say the same for the risk that you're taking? Or, you know, I'm sort of like the average person I think doesn't think about risk as much as they should. And is there anything that you would give them as a framework to help them be more intentional about those risks?

1:28:43Is there, is it just - Well, it's like, you're going to freaking die either way. So choose the things that you care about and then do them well. and do them well. Prepare. Yeah. Execute, like have a plan, you know, but don't just like take risk willy nilly. Like don't just get drunk and go out and do a thing, you know, cause like that's stupid. Like that's not the risk you should be taking. You know, like don't put all your money on black and just like hope, you know what I mean? Like basically don't just like roll the dice. Like don't let fate just like roll the, roll the dice with your life.

1:29:11Like make choices. And free soloing is, you know, there's a bigger existential risk with no margin for error, But it's very intentional. Very intentional. Drinking as a risk is like a volume knob. The more you do it, the more the risk increases. And the other one is kind of like an on-off switch, which you can do it today. Yeah. So grip strength. I wouldn't be even a little bit surprised if you can pull that more than I can, actually. But, I mean, we'll both try. Okay. This is a grip strength meter. Okay. So let's see. We're at zero. Kilograms would be extra small. I mean, the thing with these, like, okay, actually, let me just preface this with, Like I've had tons of people be like, well, surely you're going to break the machine.

1:29:49I'm like, no, because for climbing, you just have the strength that you need to do the things that you're trying to do. And how much do you weigh? Right now, like 165. Which is actually basically the heaviest I've ever been. Maybe 163 if I'm lucky right now. So 165 pounds in kg is equivocal to 75 kilograms roughly. Okay, go ahead.

1:30:1349 or 50. 49.9. I'm going to draw this for you. it's just like yeah 49 you know but those are just kind of like it's just a it's just a different thing you know what I mean like that's not climbing 49 kg in pounds is 108 interesting yeah let's see yours but yeah like I'm saying are you stronger with different arms? it's about the same with both hands it should be

1:30:4062? yeah see there you go you're twice as strong I can't lift my body weight like I can climb up a wall I might be able to like yeah I mean I might be able to muster a little more in it but 63 on that one let me try again but like I don't I don't think uh do you work out like you do weights and stuff I lift them dumbbells but I'm not doing anything grippy I curl and stuff but I don't do anything grippy I'm at 50 and a half how many pull-ups can you do don't know but I can yesterday I did oh I did a couple one-arms like uh like yeah I basically yeah yeah which is very hard yeah I I don't think I can do one arms.

1:31:14Yeah, well, that's the thing. That's why grip string stuff, you're kind of like, nah. Or actually, so, like, have you done weighted pull-ups in a gym? Weighted pull-ups? No, I just do my own body weight. And, you know, I weigh a lot. So I'm, like, deceptively heavy. Really? Yeah. Very dense. Very dense. Can't float in water. No, like, big bones. You just sink straight to the bottom. How much kilograms do you think I weigh? I mean, in pounds, you'd know. Well, now I'm guessing. I don't know. Like, now that you're saying that you're big, I'm like, I don't know, maybe 185 or something. Whatever. I'm 211.

1:31:44Yeah, but actually, so that's another thing with grip strength is like it makes sense that your grip strength is proportionate. I mean, you're like 25 % bigger than me. Yeah, yeah. You're like, you know, basically. Yeah. So it's like you would expect it to be at least 25 % stronger right there just because like if you can do body weight pull-ups, you're going to be much stronger. Yeah. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question left for you is, oh. What do you want to achieve in your life outside of your mainline job that you haven't yet achieved?

1:32:19I don't know. I mean, that seems there are basically two other avenues that I care about in my life. You know, my family, I want to be a good dad. I want to make sure my kids grow to be healthy, well-adjusted people that, you know, like live their best lives. And then I have a foundation that supports community solar projects around the world. And I'd love to see that thrive. I mean, basically, I mean, you know, we give as much as we can to solar projects around the world. And I'd love to see that do more. On that point of your foundation, what is the thesis there for solar projects? Yeah, solar.

1:32:49It's basically energy access around the world. Yeah, I think now we've given over$13 million to something like over 100 partners around the world, basically like small-scale community solar projects, so people getting access to energy for the first time, basically using solar for anything ranging from light to, say, food refrigeration to pumping water, I mean, whatever people need energy for, which is basically everything. More than 13 million across 130 projects in 30 countries, impacting 650 ,000 people and creating 1 ,200 plus jobs, protected 15 million acres of biodiverse forest as well. Yeah, some of those things are sort of like the secondary and tertiary benefits, whereas like when you empower certain kinds of communities, then they're better able to take care of their lands and things like that.

1:33:35Something that has to do with indigenous sovereignty and things like in the Ecuadorian Amazon and places where it's like when the local people have power, suddenly they can protect their land from illegal logging, illegal mining, things like that. And so then you wind up having this knockoff like environmental benefit that's like also great in addition to the human aspect where you're like, well, these people are living better lives and to help save the planet. And you're giving away roughly a third of your wealth to cover the majority of the foundation's overheads. Yeah, I've been given roughly a third of what I make every year since 2012.

1:34:08And that's basically just sort of coincidentally tracked with the overhead for the foundation. So it just means that anything that people contribute goes straight to projects, because I basically cover all the staffing and everything. How does one contribute to that? Honolfoundation.org is the easiest way. You can support directly. I mean, you can see all the projects that we're working with. And donors can go there if they want to contribute to this. They can go to the website. Yep. Okay, well, I'll link the website below. And if anyone is interested in continuing to support the great work you're doing there, I'd highly recommend they go and make a donation.

1:34:35It's also just a way, I think, to give back to you as a person for the inspiration you've given so many of us. I appreciate that. You know. Yeah. I mean, to me, the foundation has always been my attempt at doing something useful. It's like I love rock climbing. I think it's so fun. But in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter in the world. And I feel like the work that we're doing through the Haunted Foundation, at least material improves the well-being of other humans. It's, you know, like it actually has a real impact both for the environment and for people. Well, I don't know, Alex.

1:35:03I think watching you climb Taipei and watching the millions of people all around the world climb Taipei was an expansive moment for all of us. Because it holds a mirror up to us in a really inspiring way and goes, what obstacles can you overcome in your life? And the many, many millions of people now have that visual. And sometimes it is an absurd visual that does that and is most memorable. like etched into their brains and that means that they in their own life are looking for their own Taipei 1s or Taipei 7s or Taipei 101s and if you play that forward as like a ripple in the ocean of how people are going to strive and maybe live more intentionally maybe maybe it does really really matter maybe the whole conversation which was like my entire twitter feed for days and days and days of people saying this is a miraculous human achievement it there's like that's the first half of a sentence the other half of that sentence which we never really hear is like so now what can i do and that is a profound thing well that's definitely the best frame like that's the framing that i hope for and that's you know but i think that's like the best case scenario for my climbing and like i hope that that's how people take it but i will say that the work through the combination at least has a direct material impact immediately you're kind of like oh you don't have to hope for ripples or anything you're like well this person can now read after dark for the first time ever and you're like that is game changing if anything you know i've been talking a lot about like action speaking louder than words.

1:36:24And I'm like, yeah, I hope to, you know, it's like, it's great if the climbing I do inspires people like that's all good. But at some point you just do a direct thing that actually helps people's lives too. And you're doing both. Yeah, yeah, aspiring to. Doing my best. The tangible and the... Exactly. ...intangible. Alex, thank you so much. Thank you. Amazing conversation. Thank you.

1:36:54Thank you.