The Joe Rogan Experience - #1626 - Alex Honnold

Episode Date: March 30, 2021

Alex Honnold is a professional adventure rock climber, author, and co-host, with Fitz Cahall, of the "Climbing Gold" podcast.

the joe rogan experience train by day joe rogan podcast by night all day all right hello alex hello good to see you again man yeah good to see you what's happening how you doing i'm i'm just living i'm doing just living crawling giant shit that freaks people out yep yep that's that's what i'm trying to do what is the the same stuff as always. Crawling giant shit that freaks people out? Yep. Yep. That's what I'm trying to do. What is the latest? What have you been up to? I know you're doing a podcast now, right?

Yeah, I know. I know. Do you feel a certain satisfaction? I do. Yeah, I don't know if you remember, but you went off for quite a long time and you used to do a podcast. You used to do a podcast. Sure enough, it's like, yeah, I did a podcast.

Well, I mean, you have an interesting perspective and you have a fascinating life. Yeah. Actually, we don't really get into it that much. I don't actually talk about myself very much. It was sort of leading up to the Olympics. You know climbing's in the Olympics this year? No, I did not. Yeah, so climbing's in the Olympics for the first time this summer.

And so the podcast was supposed to be sort of a primer leading up to the Olympics. More like here is the state of the sport leading up to this singular moment in climbing. But then the Olympics got canceled last summer. Well pushed. And so then we decided to sort of go a little deeper in backstory stuff. And so that's the first season that's basically premiered right now.

So you, did you record them all in advance? No, it's ongoing. We've done 10 of them. And now we're going to do the ones leading up to the olympics like over the next you know four months or whatever so we've got kind of a structure planned out though yeah yeah the idea is that we wanted to well i mean you know as you can imagine climbing is a very broad sport you know starting from sort of classical alpinism in the alps and and like mountain climbing now to olympic climbing where the people who win the olympic climbing where the

people who win the olympics this summer most of them are super young and they're basically like gym kids sort of like gymnasts who just train indoors non-stop and so the podcast is sort of an exploration of this spectrum of full adventure to full athleticism and like where climbing has moved in between you see what i'm saying like it's um I don't know because you know when I grew up as a like I was one of the first climbers in America to sort of grow up climbing in a climbing gym and so that's part of the reason I wound up as a professional climber is I sort of had access to better training facilities than like the generation before me and now we're looking at the next generation who's going to the Olympics and it's like even more of that athletic background

and it's like you know it changes the sport and And so a big part of the podcast that we started was basically to see how it changes the sport. And to try to, you know, save some of the best stories of climbing. You know what I mean? Like to preserve some of that adventure. Oh, that's great. What are the events in the Olympics? Like how is it measured? It's a combined format.

So in the World Cup circuit for climbing, like they're already established climbing competitions in the world, and normally they do three different styles, speed climbing, difficulty, and bouldering. So difficulty and bouldering are basically just like how high you can climb up a wall before you fall off. Difficulty is with a rope, and bouldering is without a rope, but smaller walls. And then speed climbing is naturally just how fast you can climb a set course.

So the first one is how high you can climb before you fall off yeah yeah basically really you're climbing with a rope and you're climbing say a 15 meter well say up to like a 50 foot wall and the they set a very very difficult course and then everybody basically falls as they get higher really because it just gets to a point where no one just get pumped out of your gourd yeah yeah ideally if if setters have done a good job then it means that the world champion or whoever wins will wind up making it to the top and everybody else will fall progressively lower and the world champion if he does make it to the top clearly someone else is going to come along that's maybe a little bit better than him in the future yeah so they're going to make it more difficult exactly they set different they set different routes for every competition okay and who how does a route get established does it get established by someone like yourself

who understands the difficulty levels yeah how does it yeah so they're professional route setters that do that and so they're sort of internationally certified for competitions and and there's a whole there's a whole art to the route setting and that's a big part of what we explore in this podcast leading up to the Olympics is like, you know, who are the international organizing committees that choose these people? And like, who makes the root? And like, are the roots fair? You know, it's things like that. I mean, the roots are. They try to be fair.

But it's interesting because in a given competition, the root setters are aware of who the competitors are going to be so like if one of the women is much taller than the rest they kind of have to bear that in mind a little bit to keep the roots like kind of fair oh they do i mean kind of at least try you know or if they know that most of the you can kind of always guess who's going to make it into finals let's say say like the top six climbers top eight climbers in the world you have like a rough sense of who's going to make finals and then i think the setters try to differentiate the finalists in some way, you know, like basically find things that separate their strengths and weaknesses. Is it possible that if everyone made it to the top, that they would just go on based on how much time it takes you to get to the top?

Like what would they do then? Yeah. Sometimes they do like a super final. I'm actually not sure what the format is for the Olympics, but they normally do some kind of super final thing where they make a harder route or they change it in some way,

and then eventually they count back on time. Or they also count back to semis and qualifiers, like whoever got higher on the previous rounds of the competition. They look back

at your cumulative points, basically. There's no drug testing in regular climbing. No, no no there is there is oh not in the olympics yeah in the olympics of course yeah and in the world cup circuit there is because actually there are a few very uh sort of famous stories of of some of the best climbers in the world having world cups taken away for testing positive for weed and stuff like really yeah really well but uh but just but climbers who like don't even care you know they just enter the competition like i don't know everybody knows classic chris harmer story he was like the most famous and and best climber in the world for a whole generation basically and uh he sort of won a world cup by by fluke you know he just entered

and he won he's like yeah because he's the best climber in the world. But then I think they took it away for weed. And he's like, well, yeah, of course. It's so dumb. Yeah, but I mean not like he cares because he's the best in the world. He still won. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, once you win, you win.

I mean it's not like he's taking steroids. Well, and a couple of Spanish competitors had like a medal taken away for, it was for cocaine, I think. Really? I mean, he had some kind of statement about the, using it to relieve the stress of the heavy training volume, all that kind of stuff. You know, basically it was like, oh, it's just partying on the side. And you're like, yeah, obviously it's not performance enhancing.

You know, it's like, that's recreational, like on the side of his training. I wonder what would be performance enhancing other than like anabolic steroids like what would be performance enhancing for climbing would it be something that makes you hyper focused like a ritalin or something like that or i i honestly i'm not sure um i mean if there were drugs that vastly improved your recovery that probably would be performance enhancing because it would allow you to train at a higher volume right but but even anabolic steroids i'm not sure if they actually help for climbing because it's so much about strength to weight ratio and then and i've heard that um and i don't know if this is true but um that some steroid use affects tendons and ligaments

like you wind up with like damage to connective tissue what it does generally at least i'm not really an expert but what it's been explained to me is the muscle tissue gets too strong for the tendons and the ligaments and so the idea is that you um you're growing muscle at a ridiculous rate because you're taking steroids but generally it's guys who are like power lifters and bodybuilders i don't think that would apply to climbers because you're not putting on massive amounts of muscle so the idea is that you're pushing heavier and heavier weights because your muscles is growing at this extraordinary rate, but that your tendons don't, don't keep up. So that same principle though, is actually a very common problem for beginner climbers.

Cause like if you're an 18 year old man who gets into climbing in the gym, it's really easy to get stronger biceps. But the connective tissue, like the tendons in your forearms, basically the tendons that control your fingers that go down your forearm and touch on your elbow, takes a very long time for those tendons to get stronger. So it's really easy for your muscle to get stronger and then basically pull your tendons off. So it's actually pretty common for sort of beginner climbers to sort of outpace their development, you know, and then injure themselves in different ways. How do you hold someone back?

Like, I know you're not like really training climbers, but if you were, how would you hold a young person back? Would you put them on, is there like an established training protocol for beginners? There, yeah, it depends. But yeah, there are some now. Um, yeah, it depends. But yeah, there are some now. I mean, if you were really serious about like, I'm young, but I want to be elite, like you would probably do sort of a regimented finger training cycle as you go. Like finger boards? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you'd be progressively loading your fingers in sort of a systematic way and trying to make sure that you don't exceed, you know, a certain rate. Are there programs like that where a young climber can find online?

Yeah, there are there. There's several. several i mean that's an interesting thing about climbing going to the olympics is like the sport is is is changing you know there's more knowledge there's more coaching available there's more information about it there are a lot of different training protocols they're different yeah i mean there's way more information out than there was say when i started 25 years ago yeah people watch videos like my friend whitmings is dating a guy who's into climbing and he's a climber and he was she had it on her Instagram today she was making fun of him and she that he's watching videos of girls climbing she's like should I be concerned about this like what's going on here like in these you know climbing

sort of competitions it's so people are watching technique they're watching like what what did this person do wrong and trying to gather information and learn from it i guess yeah when i think and more and more they're just watching the competitions just to see who wins you know the same way that people watch other sports they're just like oh who's the best climber in the world i mean that's going to be the the appeal of the olympics it's going to show you know the best climber in the world and i mean, that's going to be the appeal of the Olympics. It's going to show the best climber in the world. And I guess also you're really into climbing. You just want to

watch people do it too. Yeah, you want to see greatness. Yeah, sure. Yes, see mastery. Like anything else. Like watching people play chess. Well, that might be a little more boring because that's pretty slow. But the people who love chess like watching people play chess. Maybe, but I think that there's a dynamicism, like a movement to it.

It'd be like watching ballet or something where you're like, oh, this is an incredible movement. Right. You know, it's like. Well, I like watching people play pool. And people have often said, like, why are you doing that? But to me, it's like I like watching it. It's like I play pool. So when I watch pool, I kind of like I think the same thing would hold with climbing. You like climbing, so you're watching people climb, and someone

who's really good specifically too would probably be inspiring, right? Yeah, though I think that climbing might have a more elemental appeal than something like pool, let's say. Because anybody can appreciate the athleticism, the movement, and the grace, and sort of the way in which people climb. But with pool, if you don't know the rules, you'd be like, why didn't you just put the ball in the hole? It's so much easier. You know what I mean? It's like, why is he using that pointy stick?

That's stupid. Right, right, right. And with chess, like if you don't understand. Yeah, if you don't know the rules of chess, you're just like knock them all off the board and walk away. You know, you're like, dude. Yeah, that's true. Climbing is very universal.

Like it's got a primal appeal. Totally. Yeah. I mean, you know, I mean, we were once arboreal. You know, it's like that is exactly, that's where we came from. Yeah. A friend of mine had a squirrel expert on his podcast, my friend Steve Rinella. And this squirrel expert was talking about these squirrels climbing.

And they, apparently squirrels only, the females only come into estrus for like six hours a year it's like a very maybe maybe multiple times a year maybe once or twice a year but the period the window is very small where you can breed with them so there's the competition is very fierce and a lot of times males will throw other males out of trees so squirrels can fall like 70 80 feet and just bounce off the ground with no damage yeah so so funny you mentioned that so i actually once walked up to a cliff like a huge overhanging wall like this giant like imagine like an overhanging like leaning it's almost like a amphitheater like a huge thing it's a local sport hike in kayak and sack. And I walked up, we were the only people at the wall. And we looked up and there was a squirrel attempting to surmount the cliff, which, you know, you see squirrels run up

and down trees and, you know, vertical cliffs sometimes, but not like massively overhanging ones. And these are like big basalt blocks, like big overhanging things. Basically, there's no way the squirrel is going to make it. It had like more than 100 feet to go. And we just stood there transfixed being like, that squirrel is going to die for sure. Like there's no way the squirrel was going to make it. It had, like, more than 100 feet to go. And we just stood there transfixed, being like, that squirrel's going to die for sure. Like, there's no chance it's going to make it up this cliff. And it was, like, skittering. You know, it's, like, holding onto these blocks, and, like, its feet are all... It's, like, trying its best.

It made it about 20 feet further, and then it fell. And we were like, oh, the squirrel fell off the cliff. And then, sure enough, it stuck this, like... There's one tree growing at the base of the cliff. And with, like, this one little limb sticking out out and the squirrel fell probably 25, 30 feet and then hit like one little twig and basically landed on it and ran into the tree. And it was like total. I mean, basically like kind of hit it, you know, as the tree bends, the squirrel just like skitters away and like made it into the tree and stuck the landing. We were like, that was incredible.

But like we're just standing there like, did anybody see that? It's like anytime you have nature experiences where you see animals basically fall you know basically when you see animals struggle in their natural habitat you're like that's cool right especially something completely rare like watching a squirrel fall totally totally like i watched a bighorn fall down a talus field once whoa like uh you know and we were actually admiring the bighorns like oh they're moving so great because we were having a really hard time getting up this big mountainside. It's like really big challenging boulders. And we're like, this is so difficult.

And then we're like, look, those bighorns are so graceful. And then one of them fell down and just tumbled down the rocks. And we're like, oh, even the bighorns have a hard time. There's a gnarly series of photographs that this guy took of a mountain lion encounter with a bighorn. And they both wound up dead on the highway. But the mountain lion encounter with a bighorn and they both wound up dead on the highway but they both the mountain they fell off the cliff yeah the mountain lion attacked the bighorn and they both went off the side of the cliff and landed on the highway so you can find that because it's fairly famous uh series of photographs because it's so intense that like kind of makes you sad

though it is sad for the bighorn sad for the mountain lion yeah it's sad for the driver who's like holy shit it's like two large animals fall out of the sky yeah that's it oh geez so they're both like leveled on the side of the highway and there's quite a few photos like that the blood coming out of the horn is where his horn came off so his horn came off from the impact and you see it there big horns don't lose their horns like like a deer does and then the mountain lion dead too yeah it's kind of a small mountain lion he's got in his mouth the fur from the big horn yeah yeah isn't that wild that is oh that's so gnarly bones poking out i out. I mean, that is a fucking giant fall. Did it say where?

I think it's in California. No, no, Utah? Montana? Okay. Jeez. Wow. Fighting on a mountain fell to their immediate death. Jeez.

Man, that's wild. That is also well done Googling that so quickly. Yeah. It's a fairly famous series of photographs because it just shows you how difficult life is for those animals. I'm like, now do we take a moment of silence for that poor mountain lion? For both of them. For a big one. I'm like, oh, that's kind of dark.

Yeah. A friend of mine had an – my friend Josh had an encounter with a mountain lion just two days ago. Really? He was on a ranch in northern California, and he saw these deer just squirt – like take off. They just hauled ass out of there. And he was 100 yards away from what he described as a 200-pound mountain lion. He said it was the biggest mountain lion he's ever seen in his life. Has he seen many?

Yeah. Because I've never seen one. I've seen tracks everywhere. I've seen, like, you know, I've been around mountain lions a ton and never seen one. Yeah. I've seen two, but the ones I saw were small. I saw one that looked like it was pretty far away. It was, like, small dog size.

Not small dog size, like, you know, 50, 60 pounds. And the second one was basically the same size. The second one, though, one of them i saw in the mountains of colorado and the second one i saw was in santa barbara and it was on the street full suburbia yeah full suburbia that's the funny thing about mountain lions yeah yeah they they eat dogs that's funny just the other day i was like hiking up a mountain and we passed some bighorns and then they were like strolling uphill and there were we followed cat tracks for probably half a mile up oh wow and like passed some big horns and then we were like strolling uphill and we followed cat tracks for probably half a mile up. Oh wow.

And like big fresh in the snow cat tracks. Obviously there are mountain lions around but I've never seen one. Probably because they're always right behind me. They're always looking at you. Crazy. I was going to eat that dude but I wanted to watch him climb.

Yeah I wish. I i wish how often are you doing these free solo climbs uh you know i'm i'm working on things yeah like fairly frequently i don't know i was just on this expedition uh in the jungle in guyana it was like a national geographic tv show thing and uh and i free sold the wall we put up just just because the type of rock we were on no one's ever sold a wall like that before so i felt like since we were there was felt almost an obligation to do it just for like this climbing history you know you're like oh if you're there and you have the opportunity you kind of have to now when you see something like that do you make a route first with ropes always yeah yeah so our i mean because we were there i mean it's a whole like complicated

natural graphic tv thing so we were there with a biologist we're like studying these endemic species of the tapuis there's like this whole interesting natural history component to it um or sort of biology component but um but we were just trying to climb this mountain that had never been climbed before so the priority is obviously just to get up it to like find these species of frogs to like do all the things that are important for the tv show but then but then because i was there i oh, you know, on the side I can at least do something that I'm proud of in climbing that's also pretty cool. Oh, wow. That's pretty cool. Yeah. So it was like this pretty,

and it wound up being totally insane climbing, like really cool, like this overhanging wall of 600, 700 feet high, you know, like dangling. It was kind of the best style of climbing to solo because it felt secure. Like it's the type of climbing where you feel safe. It's a very, very good rock, so anything you hold on to is solid and it's not going to break. And it also lends itself to these sort of striations in the rock where you can wedge your hand in and feel really secure.

But also, it's incredible exposure because it's really steep. Because you're in the jungle, you can only climb stuff that's overhanging because anything that's like less anything else accumulates like water and dirt and winds up with plants all over it so like the only stuff that's really climbable is the stuff that is sheltered from the rain so that doesn't have plants on it so so it's difficult just by nature yeah so it's difficult because you're hanging and so you're like in these crazy positions where you're dangling from your arms but you feel safe doing it because the rocks are good and the holds are so good and you're just like what a crazy place it's really cool but then when you get to the the very edge you have to somehow yeah yeah and that's a bummer yeah that seems like the most gnarly part of it

it actually probably in terms of risk it probably was the final 20 or 30 feet of like getting onto the top it's all like rotten soil and this rocks and like you know yeah it wasn't ideal but how do you decide which way to go when you get to something like that just what's the most likely path to success yeah well so in that particular case um we had already established the route you know like because it's this tv thing we'd already climbed it we'd put ropes up but we'd like worked on it the camera guys had gone up and down we'd like camped up on this ledge to look for these frogs uh we'd like done this whole experience so for the free solo i already had a pretty good sense of like how i should tackle that part because you know we'd already been sort of living up there a bit but

wow yeah but i'm like what do you do in february you know like that's that's my february so these frogs like the the idea is to is it really an excuse to climb or is it like, do you really, are you really there for the frogs to check out these weird species? It's a little bit of both. Yeah. Well, I'm like, I know this is a long form show. Do you want to like go deep into it? Cause it's actually really interesting. So, um, all right. Long form. So, so, okay. The trip was, the trip is crazy i mean we just started with the whole time uh i've read freaking eight books while we were there because it's the jungle and you know it's the tropic so it's dark from six to six every day it's like 12 hours of

dark and uh we're in our own little hammock so i was just in my cocoon like reading books every day and so like a headlamp yeah yeah i have a headlamp um because you have nothing else to do it's like raining and you're just in your own little like personal cocoon just like reading. But so I read like Natural History of Guyana, Natural History of like, you know, sort of the geology. So like have you seen the movie Up? Like the Pixar or Disney movie? The cute thing with the flying house and the balloons? Yeah.

Yeah, so you know that's all modeled on like where they fly to the big rock things with the waterfalls those are tapuis which are like real things in south america um that's in venezuela guayana and the northern part of brazil or if you've seen the new point break they filmed down there on the same rock features i didn't see that but so you're not missing anything no it's really bad but uh but a lot of my friends worked on it so it's like it's cool and it is like an incredible climbing place out of respect for patrick swayze i just yeah exactly yeah you didn't miss anything i actually fell asleep watching it on a plane oh really when you fall asleep during an action movie you're kind of like come on yeah but um but the climbing in it's cool and it anyway so it's

on these things called the pooey's which are like these big quartzitic sandstone walls that stick out of the jungle. And so if you imagine a huge raised area of land that because it's in the jungle has been massively eroded by the constant rain over the last 40 million years. So now you wind up with all these like slender sort of towers and mesas, you know, so like, do you know Angel Falls? Like, no, it's one of the biggest waterfalls in the world here. Like pull up a picture. Angel Falls is a it's like, oh, yeah, yeah, there we go. It's one of the biggest waterfalls in the world. Here, like, pull up a picture. Angel Falls is a... It's like... Oh, yeah, yeah. There we go.

Dude, that's a rhino. That's, you know... That is wild. That's what we were climbing next to. God, that's so beautiful. So, if you could... It looks fake. Yeah, it does look fake.

Isn't that crazy? I'm pretty sure that one is a rhino. And if you look to the left of the one you were just on, we climbed this little wall to the left of it. Can you go back to that one, Jamie? Because, if I was a dummy, I would think someone built that. Totally. So if you could pan that photo to the left though, obviously you can't cause it's not in the frame. We climbed this little mountain to the left. And so this is a really famous peak cause the summit of it marks the boundary between Brazil, Venezuela, and Guyana. It's used as like

the marker to separate those three countries. And so we were climbing this sort of little bastard step brother next to it. But that peak though had never been climbed and was like new to science for the different species of frogs and all that kind of stuff. If you're an explorer and you've stumbled upon that, you would think that that was like a structure.

Like it's so square and flat on the top. And some of them did. Like European explorers that first came into the region had all kinds of names like the White Cathedral and things like that, like that tower. They're just a bunch of – Wow, look at that one. Click on the one your cursor's on, Jamie. That's so wild.

Oh, actually, so again – so actually you see on the left side of that, there's like the hint of a little thing in the distance. I'm pretty sure that's the thing we were climbing, the thing to the left that's like just starting to appear out of the clouds. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's the peak that we climbed. God, it's so beautiful. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. Except, to be fair, the sun only comes out.

So we were there in the dry season, and it rained like eight hours a day, and we were in the clouds nonstop. It was totally grim. And that's the dry season. Yeah, and so you see these pictures where you're like, it's so beautiful. And you're like, yeah, for 30 minutes a day, you know. And the rest of the time, you're just in the water. Yeah, getting worked. That's so wild, man.

Like, really, if I stumbled upon upon that i would think someone built that yeah no it's totally incredible what is the g i didn't even get to the cool part of this oh yeah well so yeah asking about the geology yeah like how does something like that form it's so strange yeah so that's the stuff i was reading while we there so it's like this huge bed of sandstone, which then gets metamorphosed, like compressed into quartzite. So like really, really hard sandstone. And then, you know, the Andes. So you have Gondwana,

like one of the mega continents that predates Pangea, I think. Really? Like, yeah. So like, you know, if you imagine all the continents on Earth were one sort of combined. So South America and Africa,

you know, fit together at the the horn and so this rock is most similar to rock in parts of africa actually and so and part of what makes the the biology there so interesting is that the creatures on the summit of some of the tapuis are more closely related to creatures in africa than they are to the ones in the jungle below them because because the summits have been separated for so long. You see what I'm saying? Because the top of those islands, basically, they've been separated from the jungle below for so long

that they more closely resemble where they came from in Africa than the creatures that live in the rainforest below. It's like this totally incredible... I mean, it's just an interesting part of Earth. Are you aware of the Olmecs? Do you know what the Olmec civilization was? No. The Olmecs, it's really quite a mystery.

They don't exactly know what they did or what their culture was all about. But they had these heads that they left behind, these sculpted, gigantic stone heads that resemble resemble african people that's not the easter island stuff no no that's different that's different this is the olmecs oh wow where and where were the olmecs in south america oh yeah it says olmecs yes south america mexico central america and there's a lot of them and these these images are very African-looking faces. And they don't really know what the history of them were. Huh. And they think some of them existed in the neighborhood of 6,000 years ago.

But, you know, when you're looking at stone, it's hard because they carbon date the stuff that's around the stone as they unearth it but that doesn't really necessarily give them an accurate sense of when it was constructed it just gives an accurate sense of how the sediment yeah of where it's around covers it so the stuff the stuff in guyana though is um on a on totally different scale like the the stuff that i'm talking about the i think the dapuis have been eroded away, like isolated for 40 million years or something. Wow. Which, you know, far predates humans. And then I think the rock itself is like 1.5 billion years old.

It's like ancient, ancient. It's an incredible rock. It's really cool. It's just so wild, the way it formed, the look. Yeah. It's funny because, I mean, you saw the pictures. It looks like islands and you know early explorers thought that they must be islands or something but it's actually

uh just the eroded remnants of what was once like a giant you know elevated plateau oh yeah totally so this is what the summits look like i have a bunch of photos like that on my phone it's just like scrappy little iphone pics of uh like here we are on this crazy you know because you're like in the clouds you're in the mist it's like kind of grim and it's raining. But then the summit is like this totally wild. So like all those plants are incredibly well adapted to this harsh environment. And they're really high rates of carnivory, like plants that eat things because they're basically no soil. One of the books I read said that described it as a rain desert. Like you think of a desert normally as having lots of soil, but no water. And there you have infinite water, but no soil because it's

a stone surface that's getting rained on so much that it washes all the soil away. Oh, wow. So for any of the vegetation to live there, they basically all have different strategies where they're rooted straight to the stone. And then they, they eat, you know, they eat, uh, bugs and things that, you know, they eat insects or they eat other bugs and things that you know they eat insects or they eat other plants or they you know they lots of plants that grow on plants and it's just like a whole crazy web of life that's like really different than what you expect it's weird because it's so abundant yeah it's got it's an unusual form of life but it's everywhere yeah like that's so rich and green like you'd have yeah though actually i bet if in that photo

if you'd pan the photo a bit to the side there'd be like big expanses of bare rock because the summit's like yeah they're little pastures and things it's almost like alpine meadows if you go into the mountains and in the northern hemisphere um there'll be like high tundras and things where it's like yeah it feels really lush but then there's also a lot of exposed rock because when the sun comes out you know you're at seven to nine thousand feet in the tropics so it's really intense uv exposure and it dries things out instantly so it's really hard hard climatic conditions for life wow that's wild yeah and so these uh organisms these creatures that live up there they're closely resembling creatures that live in africa and so that was part of what you're studying yeah so we were with this biologist who was trying to do an

elevational transect of of the river basin that we were in. So basically starting from the rainforest where the frogs are pretty well known and then going up through the cloud forest, which is kind of as you gain elevation to the actual wall. And then the species all changes as you gain elevation, which is kind of normal. And then the things on the summit of the Tapuis on the summit of the Tipuis, on the summit of the stone island, are completely different again. And so he was basically doing research on how the different species, you know, basically what the deal is. And it's really difficult to get there too, right? Yeah. It took a very long time to walk through the jungle to get there.

And then no one had ever been to this wall before. So cutting a trail up to the wall was totally insane. And then just, yeah, it was crazy. And you guys are sleeping in hammocks. So do you have like some sort of canopy above the hammock? Like how do you have it set up? Yeah, just a little hammock and then a little rain fly, just like a tarp above it. Oh, wow.

But it was pretty, it took me a while to sort of dial in my scene. I was basically sleeping in a puddle for, you know, most, a lot of the time. Yeah. And I'm sure your books were soaking wet too, right? No, no. Everything's in your little dry bag. Yeah. Well, that's true. But you keep your stuff in your dry bags and like you know keep it all organized but it is true that like your clothing once it got wet it's just wet just wet yeah just i mean it dries in your body but yeah yeah so i was in you know all synthetic

clothing and synthetic sleeping bags so i was warm enough but then you're just laying in a puddle like a little puddle of water because you know the, the bottom of the hammock, it all sags to the bottom. So it is all just pooling. And you're sort of like, oh, man. Does the synthetic stuff act like merino wool acts? Like they have that dialed in where even when you're wet, you can still stay warm? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Yeah, it maintains all the insulation without, even when it's wet. What company do you use for that stuff? The North Face. Okay. I've been sponsored by the North Face for a long time. Well, they're really dialed in with that shit, right? Yeah, but all synthetic clothing. I mean, it's all good.

When it comes to mountaineering, hiking trips. Yeah. So this trip, how long were you there for? We were there a month. Wow. Or like four weeks. A month sleeping in a hammock in the rain. Yeah, totally. But you're a guy who's used yeah rain yeah i know totally totally but you're guys

used to living out of a van so you kind of know but a little bit but a van is like a small little apartment it's actually pretty comfortable you're dry you're cooking for yourself you know it's pretty good scene in the van the hammock was a little more grim what were you guys eating out there did you have to bring a month's worth of food? No. So we had local sort of logistical support. So like an outfitter in Guyana had hired a bunch of Amerindian porters or the local indigenous folks, like basically all the men from this last village that we hiked out of, like all hiked into the jungle with us and helped carry things for the team and the film crew and everything. Oh, wow.

But so the logistical sort of operator in country had you know provided rations for the trip um but it was basically just top ramen for the whole trip oh really dude the hike out was so grim they would uh they'd cook like a bucket of maybe 20 packs of top ramen and uh you know we'd get ramen and then whatever was left over they'd save and then in the morning they'd reheat and we'd get ramen for breakfast. And you're just like, oh, man, top ramen for breakfast and dinner. What about protein? They had some little freeze-dried.

We just didn't have, you know. We brought a bunch of snacks, you know. And I'm normally a vegetarian. But on that trip, I was eating, like, salmon jerky and just whatever, like, team snacks that we brought. But, yeah, I mean, when we were at the wall so so the that kind of logistical support was when we were trekking through the jungle both ways but when we got to the wall you couldn't really establish a camp because we were like right on the side of a cliff and so we were all just kind of dangling on the side of the cliff oh and so we

were taking care of ourselves more yeah but so then we were eating trail mix for basically breakfast and lunch and then a couple bars things like that like energy bars and then having uh freeze-dried dinners at night and that was just like our whole scene basically we did like a week or 10 days of just kind of like trail mix and bars and and it was it was kind of a grim you know we were like oh really you know really hurting for a salad or something get out of there and have real food well so funny enough i made it back to georgetown the capital and we were staying in like the nice hotel in georgetown or whatever and i got the worst food poisoning my life in town i was kind of like oh ironic yeah yeah but when i got home i was like oh sweet like crunchy vegetables and things you know like it's so nice

the hot shower yeah yeah dude the the camping off cliff thing, that is the one that freaks me out the most when I watch those images or see videos of people that are climbing that pause in the middle of the face and set up a camp and they have like a little hammock thing. It's pretty cozy. You should try.

Oh, how dare you. No, honestly, you're always so tired anyway, you're just like, oh, at least I get to lay down and relax. It's like, and it's nice. Yeah, but you

don't freak out in the middle of the night and just think oh my god i'm dangling off the side of a fucking cliff a thousand feet in the air at a certain point you're just like if you fall you know you just relax it's like i mean you sort of commit to it at the get you know it's like when you go to sleep you're totally committing to like all right this all had better work this better hold right and and if you and if you actually think that you're in danger then you keep a backup line you keep you know you stay tied into other things stuff like that you well sometimes you don't well so like where we were at the base of the wall was like pretty solid um but the thing is the base of the wall it's not like flat ground comes up to a cliff it's like a steep talus field where all

the chunks of the cliff that have fallen off over the years and then that steep talus gets overgrown with like bushes and shrubs and like roots and things and then bromeliads like all these crazy plants that just kind of stick together so we were camping on this like really steep hillside but technically there were plants so like my hammock was strung between two trees but they were like pretty scrabby little trees and you are kind of like huh if the whole thing fell off the cliff you'd be like but you don't but it seems unlikely to happen because you're kind of like realistically the load if the whole thing fell off the cliff. But it seems unlikely to happen. Because you're kind of like, realistically, the load that your hammock's putting on the tree is a lot less than the load that the wind does when it's storming or something. So you're kind of like, I think it's fine. And you just sort of evaluate the risk.

Oh, boy. No, that is not what we had going on. Oh, boy. It's gnarly. Describe it for the people that are just listening. We're looking at what looks like a greenhouse that's fucking just

hanging off the side of a cliff it's a hotel this is like that's like a Swiss glamping option or something a thousand dollar hotel room dangling from the side

of a Peruvian mountain no but that is like oh Christ that's like strictly for an Instagram influencer type shit that's for assholes yeah no

I'm not into that thank you good you and I are on the same page I love it the thing is that looks like the thing for me i find that very contrived because it's like if you're gonna stay in a hotel stay in a hotel you know like like have running food and like yeah like where do you get your running water in there you know it's like i don't know but the thing is when you have to stay on the side of a cliff then you do then you do it in the nicest way you can there's a hotel i think it's in iceland that's constructed entirely of ice and people go there

to uh just to say they were there what is iceland so i mean isn't the whole society made of ice seems like it should be but it's not um iceland's like more green and greenland's more ice right yeah so there's this it's a luxury hotel and when you go inside of it the entire hotel is who do we know that went in there jamie was it a guest or did i talk to somebody about that says it's in sweden that was in sweden maybe a couple of them maybe there's more than one of them maybe i just it up there's five isotels in scandinavia oh wow really there's a top five so there's more than that there's no chance that's standing what no

i shouldn't say that i might say yeah totally totally on the one hand i'm like that's dumb on the other hand if i think if i saw it i'd be like that's incredible yeah i just the sleeping inside of it's got to suck. Would be really well insulated, just like an igloo. I guess, but still, it would suck. What if you have to pee in the middle of the night? Yeah, you're sleeping on a block of ice. Dude, have you never camped on snow?

Camping in snow is amazing because if you have to pee, you just pee. And your pee burrows its own little tunnel straight down into the snow. I did an expedition to Antarctica. I was peeing out the same back flap of my tent every night, and your little pee tunnel just gets, like, Deeper and deeper. I think it went to the center of the earth by the end of the trip. You know, it's like going just deeper and deeper into the glacier,

and you're like, it just goes forever. Yeah, I've camped in cold climates before. It's not comfortable. It's not nice. Oh, if you have a good sleeping bag and, you know, a good pad, it's it's not comfortable it's not nice if you have a good sleep meg and you know good bad and it's pretty cozy you're just used to things that are less comfortable than most i think cozy in your perspective you know but i get it yeah yeah but this uh ice hotel my friend who stayed i can't remember who told me they stayed in it they did it one night just to say they did it they weren't their kids kids, too. Sounds like David Blaine.

I think you're right. David Blaine Classic. I think you're right. I know David. Yeah, he's great. Yeah, dude. For him, an ice hotel is like a normal thing. He'd probably just lay there on the ice the whole time

just to see if he could. Just to see if he could. He's a strange person, right? Strange and powerful at the same time. A very unusual human being. Dude, I met with him years ago now. Did you see his Real or Magic documentary? No. It's really

good. I would totally encourage you to watch it. Basically, it's all these sort of magic tricks, except they aren't actually tricks. I'm allowed to curse, right? Yeah. That's hilarious. These fucked up things that he does that people assume must be magic but aren't like he puts an ice pick through his hand i put an ice pick through his arm oh well there you go that's

like the same kind of like made me yeah exactly i'm like come on man what are we doing here exactly that would know exactly and you're like you're like you hope it's a trick but it's like look at you dude exactly dude he bought me an iphone right randomly he uh it was one of those classic things he uh i forget he yeah so i met him in new york for this thing for real magic because uh he was talking about maybe doing a climbing thing and i was totally into teaching him how to climb the outside of a building basically because it's one of those things that people would assume there's a trick to it but it's in some ways it's actually easier just to learn how to do it well enough that you can just do it rather than do a trick you know what i mean like because that's kind of the whole thing with the ice pick is people assume there must be a trick to it but you can just do it rather than do a trick you know what i mean like because that's kind of

the whole thing with the ice pick is people assume there must be a trick to it but you actually just do this crazy thing you just learn how to do it right right and so so i went climbing with him a few times and he like you know gave me a tour around town and chat and stuff i don't know i was totally into his whole scene i was like such mind over matter you know i was like wow he he has got a strong mind for just like making himself do things that other people would think are impossible slash yeah it's just mostly his mind mostly the ability to deal with uncomfortable feelings yeah like the ice pick through the arm like we had to stop because i hit a nerve and then we did it again so it hit a nerve and then

there was one point in time where after we did it, he was concerned that maybe blood was pooling up in a weird way, so he had our medic look at it. So we stopped twice, right? We stopped once, and I put it back in again, and then we go all the way through, and then after it came out, we had to stop again, and then one of our guys had to look at it because it was just bleeding in a weird way he was worried that was creating a hematoma and it could be yeah if you ever watch the the show

you know real or magic whatever it's it's really good but in one of them like he puts the ice pick through his hand and and then he pulls it out and he's like look see it's fine and it's like and it looks totally fine like it's not bleeding you know it's because your hand is so elastic or whatever but i asked him about it you know i was like oh what's the deal with that because you pull out you know it's like is it a trick and he's like no you pull it out and as long as you're holding your hand above your heart it doesn't bleed for a little bit he's like but when you put your hand down obviously it bleeds because you have fucking a hole through your hand i was like oh jesus it's like i was like that's not a bunch of a trick that's that's messed up but one of the things that he showed us was there was a guy that was famous back in the

day for putting swords through his body. Like the whole way? The whole way. Like a really narrow sword? Yeah, but they got progressively larger. Until he got progressively deader? Is that how he died?

Do you remember, Jamie? I feel like that's how it ended up going. He got cocky. Yes, he got cocky. Or he sneezed halfway through and just like lacerated. Eventually made his way to like a broadsword size. It was really weird to see, though, because there's video of this guy. And there's photos.

Video? Is there video? I've got video of it. There's video? Yeah, this guy slid like right through his organs oh geez yeah so look at this oh geez i mean they just puncture his lung with a fucking sword i mean this is not a trick this is when you watch action movies and people get shot or stabbed a bunch of times and you're like that's so unrealistic he did like when you watch john wick you know and he gets shot like 27 times like apparently people can actually uh take quite

a beating and just keep going or they can get one small look they're going right to this right to his fucking dude yeah right to his organs and look how he just sat sits there and i guess who's this doctor who's like good enough to poke a sword straight through him? He's not really a doctor. Well, but he must be an incredible... Maybe he works in a deli. What year is this, Jamie? Did it say what year this is? What are the things on his forearms, by the way?

Oh, so now he's going into an x-ray machine to make sure that... So this guy had scars all over his body from the times that he did this. Dude. Yeah yeah yikes that's a fucking fairly thick blade like definitely bigger than a pencil that the doctor's examining it looks good and now he's going to eat except it's all going to fall out the hole yeah it's going to score it out that's a hard-looking man imagine having a conversation with that dude i bet he has a very weird way of looking at things dude he died at 36 oh well there you go he looked like he was 50 already fill the holes i wonder how painful that is i mean it's gotta be pretty painful yeah you would assume how could it not be yeah you know i mean fucking piercing your ear is painful i've never

pierced my ear too afraid that's hilarious you're too afraid to pierce your ear is painful. I've never pierced my ear. I'm too afraid. That's hilarious. You're too afraid to pierce your ear. No, I just don't want a hole in my ear. So did he die from that, Jamie? I'm double checking on how he died. Yeah. You need like a team of researchers that you're just like pulling up, like, yeah, checking facts. I know.

It's all Jamie one-handed Googling. Like a wizard. He moved to Switzerland and was granted a license to perform without the ability to speak to the public. I don't know. That sounds strange. A license to perform without the ability to speak. Oh, maybe if you performed, you had to talk to people.

They had mimes back then, though, no? Maybe you had a great character. I don't know. Did they get mad at you? But that seems like so maybe he couldn't say it. He was like, ow, it hurts. And they're like, shh. I don't know. This is so mad at you? But that seems like, so maybe he couldn't say it. He was like, ow, it hurts. And they're like, I don't know. It's just so silly to even have a thing like that.

To be fair, the act is less inspiring if the guy screams in pain the whole time. Because then nobody wants to watch. Right, yeah. I mean, the same guy doing the same thing, screaming like he's being tortured. That would be sick. I mean, it'd be the same for David Blaine.

Like, when you watch the David stuff, it's like, if you were putting an ice pick through his arm and he was just sobbing the whole time, you'd be like, I don't want to watch this. I wouldn't do it. I'd stop. It says in 1948 he was alleged, he was instructed by voices to eat a steel needle.

And two days later, it was surgically removed. I don't know. I think he got cocky. It's fair to say he might have some weird things going on yeah he's probably trying to kill himself and couldn't believe he kept surviving yeah he was laying on a bed they didn't I guess they didn't know he was dead and then they finally got a doctor to check him turns out he'd already been dead for a day yeah it sounds a little we need we

need like three more research interns Googling his whole scene as fast as they can because they're like, wait, none of that makes any sense. And this was because of swallowing a needle. Mm-hmm. He said he thought he had guardian angels. He said he was telepathic. He could heal people.

Well, he didn't heal himself very well. Maybe he did. That's how he survived so many... You know, being impaled so many times. I guess you can just do it, though. It can be done, you know, because they're fairly small holes, although they do go through the length of your entire body. I mean, you just think you'd get infected.

I think that's part of what that video was, was him proving to doctors that it wasn't all fake. Because that's what it says. He proved to Zurich doctors that his act wasn't based on fakery. Why do I get so uncomfortable just talking about this? I'm breathing heavy. Maybe you need to practice a little bit. Have somebody start putting needles through little parts of your arm.

There's just something weird about people that are willingly hurting themselves and causing themselves pain no i i kind of agree with that i do i do find it slightly but david very well adjusted man it seems very friendly you know super nice guy and his card tricks are legitimately mind-blowing dude so fun fact about his card tricks i don't know if you'd be so he uh he took me to lunch once and like did a whole thing in card tricks and i was totally i love magic and i think it's cool and you know i like obviously they're all tricks but i was like this is incredible the execution is incredible i was totally into it i was super impressed and then uh at the time i was i was

dating this girl in new york really briefly and um and a couple days later we all went to the climbing gym together because like i said i was kind of encouraging him to like do some, some climbing thing. And he, then we went to lunch again and he basically did the same set of car tricks for this girl that I was dating, but having already climbed for like an hour or two. And it was funny because his execution in the car tricks was noticeably worse for me. Like, you know, I could tell that he was like doing all his tricks worse once his arms were like totally wrecked from climbing for two hours. Like basically his fingers and his forearms are totally wrecked. And that actually made me appreciate how difficult the tricks are even more. So I was like,

oh, wow. Like if your fingertips hurt and your muscles are wrecked and it's hard for you to hold your arms steady, then it's like very hard to fan the deck, you know, evenly and to like pick cards properly. And it made me appreciate just how much skill is involved in what he was doing i was like oh dude it's pretty cool you know basically to see somebody do something at their peak and then when they're also totally wrecked and then to see kind of the overlap you're like oh this is actually quite hard like what he's doing is is is a challenge you know you know what it's like he's like he's got the fine motor skills that we have for tying our own shoes totally but for a deck of cards yeah yeah when he can just cut to the 27th card or whatever you know and he's like let me just cut this deck and he's

like oh there's card number 24 and you're like really can do that yeah he's done it so many times that he has that you know that because there is that feeling that you have when you tie your shoe where your hands just communicate so fluidly you know's what people strive for in jiu-jitsu. In jiu-jitsu, you strive. That's actually what my coach, Eddie Bravo, he uses that as an example. That when you tie your shoe, you don't think about tying your shoe.

You just tie your shoe. And in a certain situation, you'll flow into a technique. A technique will happen, and it'll happen and because you your repetitions you've hit so many times it'll just be so fluid and so for david it's got to be like that but with like the very tips of his fingers i know for somebody like me with you know very callous i can't even imagine feeling anything that right like honestly decks of cards

i just like crumple them all together i'm just shove them like is it shuffled you know like i can't even manipulate them that well yeah i would imagine right like your hands have to be like super rough right yeah normally pretty rough and then also just really calloused on the tip so i mean often you know i can pick up like hot things and like not really notice it quite the same way or you know things like that of course i mean if you're grabbing like grabbing very coarse rock all the time it's like you have to wind up with really callous fingertips of course yeah but the so in something like manipulating the edge of a card it's like I can't even imagine feeling it have you seen there's there was a guy that was on this television show called dual survivor and

he was known for walking that was called dual survivor I think one of them goofy survivor shows that's the sequel to sole survivor no no no it was these two guys would go together and they would you know and the idea was that they would help each other out but his feet he always walked barefoot everywhere like you never wore shoes so the bottoms of his feet were thick like a giant thick fat piece of leather see if you can that kind of show yeah there's one of the bottom is the middle image you can see the of thing though yeah there's one of the bottom is the middle image you can see the bottom of his foot is just like this disgusting i'm kind of not into that

because i mean you know there there are probably a billion people on earth that basically don't have access to to footwear you know like there's a billion people on earth who do that just because that's how they live right and dude it's funny because i've been thinking a lot about this kind of thing because you know having just spent the month of february in guyana with with uh we had all these amerinian porters helping us carry all the stuff in for the show and and i was thinking a lot about survival shows in the u.s because it's so popular to be like oh we're surviving in the woods and you're like dude there there are at least tens if not hundreds of millions of humans on earth that basically live in survival shows like that you know that's just their day-to-day yeah it's not

a survival thing they're like that's that's a freaking that, you know, that's just their day to day. Yeah. It's not a survival thing. They're like, that's, that's a fricking Tuesday, you know, they're like, no, I'm going to wander into the woods with my machete. I'm going to cut some stuff down and make myself a little shelter. I'm going to start a fire, even though it's raining. It's like, what else? And being on this trip and like watching the Amerindians and just how, how easily and effectively they could live relatively comfortably in the jungle. It made a total mockery out of reality TV style survival stuff you know because we'd get to a new camp zone and you see like eight or ten guys just kind of like fan out with their machetes and kind of like chit chat and like an hour later there's a camp erected with a fire going and water boiling and they've

all changed clothes they're all clean they're all happy they're dry they're like having a good time and you're like they just made a village you know with just a machete and like it's totally insane yeah you know and then you watch survival shows where it's like he will now do such and such and you're like come on like somebody doing that for show is just so different than people doing that literally every single day for their life right well at least like survivor man used to actually do it but then there was the other guy what was the other guy's name the other guy then there was the other guy. What was the other guy's name? The other guy who was the other show? The guy who was the British handsome fellow who was in the...

Bear Grylls. Yeah, Bear Grylls. What's his show called? Well, he's got one now called Running Wild with Bear Grylls, which I know because I did it with him last year or two years ago, which actually is cool, but that's more like an interview-style show where he takes people on experiences.

But don't you go to Man vs. Wilder? Oh yeah, Man vs. Wilder. Is that what it is? That was his original. But the thing about him is like people got mad because they found out he would go to a hotel at night. No, no, no. So that was a different thing. So I actually talked to him a bit about it while we did the thing. So originally he was just doing the full, and I think maybe his show predated the Survivor Man thing.

No, it didn't. I think it may have. No, it definitely didn't. I'll tell you why I know. Okay, you're sure? Because Les Stroud is a friend of mine and he's been on the show. And the reason this show with Bear Grylls was created is because Les wouldn't fake things. Les refused to go.

They wanted to do things to set things up for him to make it look like it was more difficult than it is. And he didn't want to do any of that. He filmed everything himself, the entire Survivor Man show. What network is Survivor Man? I don't remember. Okay.

It was all, but it was the same people that were producing it. They go, well, we'll show you. And then they went and did this other show and then he got busted for sleeping in hotels. Well, so the way he,

the way Bear Grylls tells it is more that the first several seasons of the show was basically like surviving where it's like, everybody's just out in the bush, like doing the hard thing. And it's kind of grim. And then basically he said, over time, you just realize that the show is as well received either way.

Like basically people enjoy the entertainment of the show regardless. And he's like, you don't need the whole crew to suffer. You don't need to suffer. Like nobody needs to be out there, like getting worked and wherever for nine days when you can make a good show and two that sounds like what i would say if i got busted well sleeping well and so anyway but now his new show though basically has just taken a different track because ultimately the the what's the thing running wild burger the thing he does now is basically just take other people

out and like have an experience with them and it's basically just a format for interviewing like interesting people oh okay which is a wild environment yeah yeah so it's like taking uh like he took obama out into uh like a uh a reserve in alaska you know to like like a wild places or something imagine if he took obama somewhere and obama got killed by a bear dude well i think i mean i think there were secret service snipers like ready to shoot a grizzly yeah i think so wow. That's a pretty cool gig. Once you leave, you get Secret Service protection for life. But do you want that?

No. Do you want people following you around? With a gun everywhere? In like a walkie and stuff at all times? Yeah, but that's the problem is that people legitimately want to kill you. That's why the Secret Service is there. Yeah, that's the real bummer. Yeah, do you want to have a lot of people that want to kill you your whole life? That sucks.

Yeah, the thing – I understand what you're saying, though, about that guy walking around barefoot. But I think in his – he's like a serious survivor guy. And I think in his eyes, you don't want to depend on shoes. So he's developed his feet to the point where he could walk on hot rocks and walk everywhere. Yeah, the thing is, though, that people who actually don't have shoes all want shoes. You know what I mean? Not necessarily. Mostly, though.

I mean, that's the thing. It's like all this, like, survivory stuff. You know, it's like when you go into, like, indigenous villages in the Amazon, like, they want refrigeration. They want electricity. They want DirecTV. Like, actually, this village we were in, the guy was like, I want DirecTV. And we were kind of like, well, you need power first.

You need connectivity in some way. You need any kind of infrastructure. But it's like people want solid wooden floors. They want medicine. I mean, communication. I mean, there's so much. I just think it's a little weird to celebrate the survivory stuff where it's like, oh, you should toughen yourself up and get back to nature. And you're like, yeah, that's cool.

But the vast majority of people that live that way don't want are like actively seeking a slightly more comfortable and slightly more secure lifestyle. Yeah, I totally understand what you're saying. But my friend Steve Rinella spent some time with an indigenous tribe in South America when he filmed his show Meat Eater. And they actually either offered them shoes or let them try on shoes they didn't want them and these guys it's the weirdest shit ever have you seen what happens when someone grows up living and walking in the forest barefoot their feet splay

out like a hand have you seen it yeah or just like yeah yeah i know what you're talking about see if you can find there's i forget the name of the tribe i'm trying it's it's escaping me but they they live uh deep in the jungles of south america and he spent a bunch of time with them hunting and fishing and they they eat a lot of monkeys which is really crazy like they they cooked and ate a monkey on the show and that's like their preferred food they actually enjoy monkeys and they eat all these other you know birds and whatever creatures they can find they do a lot of fishing and they do a lot of uh bow and arrow fishing but yeah yeah the folks we were with were doing the same thing and they had different arrows for shooting fish versus shooting game right i was like oh that's so interesting

it's like these barbed things for fish and i was like i never even arrows for shooting fish versus shooting game. I was like, oh, that's so interesting. It's like these barbed things for fish. And I was like, I never even thought about shooting fish before. I was like, oh, this is cool. This is what their feet develop and start looking like. Yeah. I don't know. I feel like that might be an unusual photo. No, there's a bunch of them like that.

This is what Rinella described. This is what he described to me. And then we started finding photos of these when he was on the show talking about it we went and looked at him those from him because I see you have sort of like are you sure that that that's not from his pages trying to find something like that but that's what we've looked at every time I was like is that because that those feet look like they just have some vitamin deficiency type like we don't thing going on you know i don't think it's that i think it's from actively gripping the ground like that you know how your hands sort

of splay yeah totally from grabbing our we're so used to our toes being in shoes in a you know what you would call like a cast like the the the way these there's a lot of different feet of different humans that live like that, walking around barefoot. You can see that splay out like that. Yeah. No, our porters were mostly wearing Wellington boots, rubber boots. And then there were a handful that were just barefoot. And you'd be like, oh, dude, we're like five days from a village in the middle of nowhere.

And you're just trekking barefoot through the mud. Though the jungle is actually a more hospitable environment for going barefoot than a lot of places it's soft yeah because it's like kind of muddy and like you know i mean there are like thorny things but not it's not the desert you know it's not like sharp rocks and cactuses and things and so this show is it aired this show no it's uh it'll be in the fall i think and so you're there for a month filming this how How many episodes is it going to be? No, it's just one episode. Wow. Yeah. That's crazy.

Yes. I mean, you know, it's not like my show. I was just there to climb this wall. What is the show called? I think it's Nat Geo Explorer. I think Explorer is like the series. I mean, you know, we'll see. But no, I was just there as a climber to climb this new wall. And just because, you know, on a personal level, it's like an incredible life experience to have a trip like that put together where you get to go somewhere totally wild, learn about an incredible place.

Like, you know, yeah, climb on New Rock. You know, it's cool. It sounds amazing. It sounds pretty wild to see. I can't wait to watch it. I mean, my last couple of years, you know, I had like the whole crazy free solo film tour, which is like a year of crazy travel and work. And then a year of COVID, which is also, you know, really different with like no expeditions, no travel. And so I hadn't really done like a overseas climate expedition in that way in a couple of years. And it felt good to get

back to just to remember that, you know, there are hundreds of millions of humans on earth that live in completely different ways that it's hard to even remember if you're, if you're not reminded of it from time to time. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I can, I understand your distaste for people that are kind of posing too. Yeah. It's not, it's not distaste for posing. I just, I hate, I hate glamorizing. I hate looking backward too much. You know what I mean? This whole like, Oh, we should get back to our roots, like back to nature, all that kind of stuff. Because it's like people who live in nature full stop, you know, I mean, they might appreciate it. They might love nature in its way, but they still want like a lot of the stability of modernity.

You know what I mean? Like there's a reason that people have developed power grids and like communication infrastructure and all those kinds of things. Like it's because it makes life safer and more comfortable. For sure. And it's like, and on the whole, humanity infrastructure and all those kinds of things. Like it's because it makes life safer and more comfortable. For sure. And it's like, and on the whole humanity has embraced all those things. So I, you know, I kind of hate the backward looking like,

Oh, we should just get back to our roots, you know, like, like the Thoreau style, you know, like, you know,

get rid of all this stuff. You're like, no, like we have all this stuff for a reason. It's freaking great. You know, well, we have all this stuff for a reason because human beings have a deep fascination with innovation.

And some of it, you could argue, makes our lives less happy, though. I don't know. When you get to social media, when you get to constantly staring at screens, when you get to living in cubicles off of fluorescent lights. Totally. There's an argument about it. Yeah, that kind of nitty-gritty stuff, yeah. It's like, perhaps social media makes your life less rich. But having a power grid, having communication, like having a roof, having, you know, like roads.

All those things are incredible. And if they bring extra attacks on our attention, then, you know, so be it basically. And then it just requires discipline to not fall into those traps. And also, you know, an understanding of the path that you choose can lead to deep disappointment if you decide to live that cubicle life. Like, understand that this is not normal for people. This is somewhat close to cubicle life, actually. This is, first of all completely voluntary voluntary no no of course but i mean the actual the the feeling of like we are inside this tiny little thing yeah we are

inside a weird thing but you've seen the new one you're one of the rare people that's in the new one which is a little bit bigger but um have you ever seen uh werner herzog's documentary uh happy people no it's uh life in the taiga it's about people that live in siberia well they're not it can't be happy people it's very happy you'd be shocked i mean that's the point of the film yeah the the point is these people are trappers and hunters and gat well they're no gathering really but they're they're hunters and fisher people and they they live uh in the taiga which is a yeah like the woods yeah of siberia and it's like this incredibly harsh environment and they rely on dogs and sleds and they make their own

skis and they uh have a most of these guys have uh snowmobiles and they have a trapping run that they go from one place they have these cabins that they have set up with plastic windows. Are they the indigenous people of that area? No. They're human. Are they like Russians? They're Russians, yeah. And they're really happy.

It's really weird. You know, like you see them all together laughing and there's like very few instances of mental health issues and they they live this subsistence lifestyle what's it's i mean the subsistence lifestyle though is just so on edge you know i mean like through all of human history most subsistence uh you know basically human groups that live in that way are always one famine away from death, basically. Sure, or one broken leg away from death. Yeah, exactly.

Especially if you're in the woods, right? Yeah. Might not make it out. Yeah, I mean, where we were in the jungle, totally. You break your leg and it's like, oh, it's a six-day walk to civilization. People carrying you. Yeah. But that happened to Ashley Judd.

Did you hear about that? No. What? Yeah yeah just like last week really yeah she was in the congo and she was uh doing some stuff in the rainforest with the pygmies and she fell uh she i think she fell like tripped over a log and snapped her leg and uh it was a harrowing experience to get her out and i think she almost lost her leg yeah it was a big deal do you know how many days or like how far they had to carry her out or like what happened it was a long journey and um i'm i'm pretty sure she she might still be in the hospital

she was fucked up though that's crazy crazy. And they said that she came, well, she may be crippled for life and she came very close to losing her leg. And they showed pictures of it. I wonder if that's happened before where an A-list celebrity actor or actress loses a limb in a terrible accident. Seems like it would really...

She was almost the first. She was almost the first. I know. There must be some examples of that, but that seems unusual. Yeah. That was a horrible accident. Yeah. He became paralyzed with his neck down for the rest of his life.

But see if you can find photos of Ashley Judd's leg. Because she was in the Congo. One of my good buddies, Justin Wren, he runs a nonprofit where they go to the Congo and build wells. And we actually help support it. It's Fight for the Forgotten. And it's this incredible thing that he does where he's got malaria three times doing it. He spends months and months and months at a time. They're carrying her out here.

Yeah, so they had these poor dudes. Those guys are not very stout either. Skinny little fellas. Yeah, but I bet they're very strong. That's the whole thing. In all parts of the world, you just wind up like... Look at her leg.

Look at how they have it strapped together. She's fucked. I don't know how long it took her, but I'm pretty sure it was like i said 55 hours just to get to a hospital or something to get checked i think dude 50 yeah 55 hours with a broken leg you know those guys were going in shifts every you know every 30 minutes of carrying a full-grown woman they're just like oh man crazy wow yeah that's tough rough on her yeah i once had to carry a partner for four hours out

from the mountain but after he broke his heel but that's a lot different than 50 hours out from the jungle you know yeah you could actually see the road but it's just four hours of hiking to get there how did you carry him on your shoulders yeah just piggyback just carried him wow actually it was dark and we didn't have headlamps so i would take our backpacks with an iphone and like walk down to sort of scout the path and then dump our stuff and then go back and pick him up and then carry him down whoa took a long time so you had to go like little stops yeah yeah but the thing is realistically it was really difficult terrain um you know a couple thousand feet of like vertical loss down this down this mountainside like crazy rocky and stuff it wouldn't be was it was the environment really cold?

Would it be easier to leave in there and come back? It was really cold, but also, I mean, but he would have just had to come out eventually. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, we could have left him until morning, but then we'd both just be, like, cold and tired and still have to do the same thing. You know, it's better just to, like, do it in the dark

and get down eventually. But, yeah, it was really cold. That was in Red Rock outside of Las Vegas. Oh, really? Yeah, it's like home area now. It gets cold as fuck out there at night. It gets very cold. You live in Vegas now?

Yeah. Didn't we talk about that the last time? Yeah, I would have been living there like a year or two last time we chatted. But now I'm like I fully just live in Vegas. I'm totally into it. It's awesome. Vegas is weird with the lockdown, the quarantine. It's come back to life now.

Actually, I haven't been to the strip at all. At all? Since you've moved there? No, no. For all of COVID. Oh, all of COVID. Yeah. We drove right at the beginning of lockdown.

We drove the strip like right when it was all happening. And it was completely empty like ghost town. And then it had all the flashing neon signs saying like, wear your mask and we'll get through this together. And I was like, this is the beginning of a zombie movie. There's like no one on the street and there are all these like apocalyptic lights still going. Like, stay safe. We'll see you on, you know, next time. And you're just like, dude, I just wanted to see a zombie come running out of like the entrance to the Bellagio or something.

I was like, this is crazy. Yeah, we got to the door of Zombieland. That's what we got. You know, we didn't get into Zombieland, but we got to like, oh, I can see where Zombieland is. Totally. We almost knocked on the door to Zombieland. Yeah. Weird shit, man.

But it was weird. Vegas was particularly strange because it relies entirely on tourists. That's the entire business is people visiting vegas and and going and gambling and doing all that stuff so the first couple events that we did with the ufc there were no crowd and uh you would drive around in vegas and you'd see no one no one on the streets like the occasional car and i'm like god this seems so strange around the strip i bet but like where i live in suburbia over on the west side of town by the mountains, it, like, feels pretty normal.

I mean, traffic's a little lower, but it's basically just people living and, like, getting food and doing their thing. So, yeah. Like, for the climbing community in Vegas, you couldn't even really tell that COVID was a thing, you know, because the governor of Nevada explicitly allowed outdoor recreation throughout lockdown,

so it's like you're still able to go hike and climb. That's a very good thing, because they didn't do that in California. It was one of the problems with California's lockdown The governor of Nevada explicitly allowed outdoor recreation throughout lockdown, so it's like you're still able to go hike and climb and look for cliffs. That's a very good thing because they didn't do that in California. It was one of the problems with California's lockdown is that it's nonsensical. And, you know, when they were trying to pretend that it's science-based, if it's science-based, you would know that the science says that COVID dies almost instantly with contact with sunlight. So why can't people go outside?

I know. That kind of bummed me out with all the, like, public beaches and stuff it's like yeah it makes sense that you don't want people congregating in big crowds necessarily but it's like if you're going to lock down you have to do it sustainably in a way that like people can actually live that way and like going outdoors is kind of one of the best ways to make it sustainable because like people can spread out they can still feel happy and like you know and you get vitamin d which is one of the best things to combat covid that's they found that% of the people in the ICU with COVID had insufficient levels of vitamin D. Only 4% had sufficient levels.

Is that what's true in the normal population? Like are most people just deficient in vitamin D? Most people are deficient. It's a giant problem with people in general. And they think it's a giant contributing factor to low immune systems. Weakened immune systems because of vitamin D is apparently a huge issue. We're just not designed, first of all, to wear clothes. To be indoors all the time.

Second of all, to be indoors. Yeah. We evolved to be outside. Actually, I think really pale people like us probably do need clothing. Because if we're outside all the time, we'd be, my skin would be in trouble. Well, we're pale because our ancestors lived in Europe. They moved to a climate from Africa. Yeah, when they needed clothing.

Yeah, that's what's weird. It's like we're just basically like a solar panel for vitamin B, or vitamin D, rather. That's the reason why we're white. Yeah, yeah, totally. Because we needed more vitamin D that we can get. Oh, yeah. I see what you're saying.

Totally. Yeah, that's what it is. It's also the reason why brown folks and black folks have a much harder time with COVID with vitamin D levels. Like, my friend is a doctor, and he said that he was working in New York City, and some of the patients that he had that were black people, he would test them, and they had indetectable levels of vitamin D. That's interesting. Yeah, because cold environment, clarity. Is it true that the dark-skinned folks generate less vitamin D yeah from the Sun yeah from the Sun vitamin D is one of the rare things that we actually require sunlight to generate and the reason why black people have it obviously is when you're from really hot climates totally your

body is actually sunny climate protected and you're from really hot climates. Totally. Your body actually needs to be protected. And you're getting plenty of vitamin D. But your body's protected from the dangers of the sunlight with more melanin. So the darker skin gives you less vitamin D. But you're getting plenty because you're outdoors. Yeah, because you're in the sun so much. And you're probably, a lot of your skin is exposed. I never thought about that.

To me, how important it is for darker skinned people to supplement with vitamin D is a huge issue. And just most people need vitamin D. Yeah, I mean if you're living indoors all the time, it's kind of like, I mean it's tough. Well, it's a hormone too. That's what's weird about vitamin D. It's not really a vitamin. It's a hormone. Yeah.

Yeah, they call it vitamin D it's it's an actual hormone and it's responsible for a lot of different things in the body not just your immune system but it's a brain function it's it's it's responsible for muscle tissue development there's a lot going on with vitamin d never i've never even thought about it that much. I'm just like – I know you're a vegetarian, but do you supplement? Do you take vitamins at all? Not that much. The last couple of months I've been taking athletic greens.

Do you know what that is? Oh, I love that stuff. Yeah, I'm pretty into it. I know it's really good. It's really good. Actually, they sponsor my podcast, and so I started using it because I was like, oh, cool. They're getting on board with the podcast. Yeah.

But now I've gotten really into it, I think. Yeah're like getting on board with the podcast. Yeah. And then, um, but now I've like gotten really into it. I think. Yeah. I'm a, it's like one of those classic things that feels really helpful. And like, the more I do it, the more I'm like,

I think this might be helping. It's super legit. I mean, they've worked on the same formula for over 10 years. This is the 53rd iteration of, uh, athletic greens. I know.

I kind of like that. They're just constantly improving it rather than like rolling out different products. It's just like, this is a good product that just continues to get better. I know. I kind of like that. They're just constantly improving it rather than like rolling out different products. Exactly. This is a good product that just continues to get better. Yeah. I respect that.

I love that stuff. I bring those travel packs with me everywhere. Yeah, I did for the jungle. Yeah. Every morning, I would take my travel pack to Athletic Greens and then my Malarone pill for malaria.

And then, oh, the Malarone pill. Yeah. Did that stuff fuck you up? I didn't notice anything. Oh, really? But I took it for all the times that we were in populated areas around the villages. But then once we were like at the wall and we were, because basically once we were camped

on the wall, we didn't even have any porters around us anymore because we were sort of separated from like the main camp. We were just like at the wall. So there wasn't enough of a population base around for us to worry about mosquitoes. Oh, really? And so then I stopped taking it for like the week or two so is that how it works mosquitoes only exist if there's a population of humans no no there are still mosquitoes but they just wouldn't have malaria because the thing is they have to be getting the malaria from somewhere so if you're like in the

full-on middle of nowhere where there are no other like living things around there wouldn't be malaria because there's nothing to carry the malaria oh so it's a what came first the chicken the egg type deal yeah yeah so like well i mean it's kind of true for all you know diseases that plague humanity is they're more uh you know they're found more in villages and towns and like around population centers but if you get out in the middle of nowhere there's not there are not enough people to to host the the virus you know and it's all stagnant water right that's where well the stagnant water mosquitoes are coming from yeah the stagnant water breeds the mosquitoes yeah but then the mosquitoes have to get malaria from from somebody that's carrying the virus and they can

transmit it around so is that stuff that you were taking is that like a prophylactic does it prevent you from getting it or is it a treatment i think it's both actually oh so it's yeah so if you did get stung with a mosquito that had it and you would take that yeah oh wow that's great um i i think i didn't know that much about it we there was a team doctor on the trip and he basically just told us like do this and but it didn't fuck you up at all i didn't notice anything what was it could have been the athletic greens you know just keep keeping y'all right keep you on track yeah exactly what is the stuff meflo mefloquine that's the stuff that just gives you the crazy dreams and stuff justin my friend who was telling you that runs fight for the forgotten he took that mefloquine stuff and it fucked him up

and he was taking way more than you should be taking apparently didn't realize it until it was too late yeah i've heard of other types of malaria meds that are really hard on you yeah that's supposedly what we were taking is the most low impact and then we only took it just for the periods where we thought we really needed it and you didn't feel anything from it didn't notice the thing oh that's people say they get crazy dreams but i never remember my dreams anyway so i was like i didn't get well i've wanted to bring my kids to Africa. You definitely should. Yeah.

I want to bring them there, but I'm worried about the medication. I've done, oh, I wouldn't stress it. I've done, I don't know, probably 10 plus trips to Africa and never taken malaria meds there. Really? Depends where you're going. That's the thing. And so I've gone to, well, also I'm always going to mountainous zones or like places in the middle of nowhere. But basically if you're going to the middle of nowhere, you don't really have to worry about malaria that much.

Yeah, but I would want to bring them where animals are. I'd want them to see safari. Yeah, that'd be fun. Yeah, I've done safari stuff a couple times. And you don't have to worry about malaria in those places? I don't know. I never have. The other place I want to go to is Egypt. Do they have malaria in Egypt?

I'm sure it must exist, but again, I don't know like i've gone to morocco three times spent a month each time never even thought about it but um but i've also been in the mountains you know climbing mountains and things like that but um yeah i mean you should look at it case by case because you know like i did a month-long expedition in chad and uh technically like if you looked at a global health thing you know chad is a malarial zone because the southern part of Chad is like near the Congo. It's like sort of, you know, tropical. But the whole rest of it is full on desert. Like there's no water.

And so, you know, we were in the desert-y part. And so, like obviously, we're not worried about malaria the whole time. Have you ever gotten any funky diseases doing these crazy journeys of yours? Well, I've gotten sick. No, I've never gotten anything crazy. You know, knock on wood, I don't think I've had any parasites or anything like that. But the trip to Chad, I had the worst stomach stuff going on the whole trip. But I think we were drinking sort of dirty water and the food was kind of weird.

And so I was basically sick the whole time. But I think it was like normal sick. Normal parasitic sick? No, I don't think it was a parasite. Dirty water sick? No, I mean mean and i took um cipro and uh with antibiotic and was like fine eventually now when you drink water at those places do you bring like um those little iodine tabs or do you use a steripen or yeah it depends

on the it depends on the place but so like on this trip in the jungle we were using iodine a little bit using steripens mostly and then and then untreating uh like just having a bunch of untreated depending on circumstances yeah rainwater and then some of the creeks and rivers that we were passing when we were in the middle of nowhere um it's actually pretty crazy the water like runs brown there's so many uh tannins in it like the organic material from the like the biomass of the jungle the water actually runs kind of like black brown water but um like tea colored even though it's just like clean you know it's not like sediment inside the water right it's like the water is just brown um but apparently tannins make it more acidic and make it slightly better for drinking so did you drink the brown water yeah yeah we were cool i mean so far so good we'll see though one of the

one of my partners on the trip came home and thought he had a parasite, so then I was really paranoid about having a parasite for a couple weeks. But I haven't checked, and I think it's all good. So we'll see. Justin had a gnarly one that lasted more than a year. Yeah, they didn't know what it was because, you know, he was deep in the Congo, and they think he might have gotten some sort of unrecognized parasite or undiagnosed parasite or, you know, undiscovered. Totally, unknown to science.

Yeah. And so they gave him – he had, like, I don't know how many different treatments. And then eventually they got it dialed in. That stuff is tough because even the treatments are kind of hard on you. You know, so it's like the parasites having some impact the treatments have some impact is at all kind of like oh it's Rick I wrecked his body yeah he wrecked everything his hormone balance is fucked everything was fucked huh for a long time like for more than a year his health was fucked that's what I'm trying

to avoid yeah we'll see yeah well he said he got it from bathing he said he got it from bathing in the river he's it from bathing in the river. He's pretty sure that's how it got him. Not drinking? No. How did it enter his body, though? It could be just little holes, little scratches. The same thing with staph infections, right? I guess.

You just little scratches and stuff gets you. That'd be a tiny little parasite. I don't know, man. I mean, your body absorbs things through the skin, right? Your skin's an organ. Like, who knows what kind of weird parasites we're talking about here. But it got into his brain. Yeah.

Just heavy-duty stuff, man. Yeah. Well, that's why I typically don't go to the jungle. It's all about the mountains and, like, deserts, you know, big rocky places. But this particular trip is just such a unique wonder of the world, basically, to climb rocks like that, sticking out of the jungle. It's just so crazy. Is that what you look forward to the most,

like going to these sort of uncharted places and climbing these structures? Kind of. I mean, I put up new routes on all seven continents. It's cool to go to new places and experience the world, basically. And sort of experience the richness of the world. Because there's so many crazy things like that where you're like, who knew that this sort of thing existed on Earth?

It's nice to experience that. Which is why you need a podcast to talk about these things. Yeah, like I said, my podcast, I don't talk about those things. But that's crazy. That's such an interesting aspect of your life. Yeah. Well, perhaps once we run out of all the content that we're trying to cover, then we'll just start telling crazy stories. So mostly what you're trying to cover is the content of the sport itself.

Yeah. So far, we've been interviewing some of the biggest names in climbing and then sort of drawing out specific themes. So like basically getting the best stories from some of the best climbers to speak to specific aspects of climbing. And it's all, you know, it's being produced. So like we're editing it afterward. We're cutting things together, adding sound effects and stuff. But basically trying to tell very specific stories about like how the sport started,

how different aspects of it came to be. You know, we're trying to be a bit of an educational resource for people who are interested in climbing, but don't totally know where it's come from or like what's happening with it. You know, because basically with climbing, going to the Olympics, there's like this huge influx of attention and climbing. And, and on it, like, I mean, I went to the climbing gym here yesterday and, uh, and I have this experience more and more when I go to the gym, it's like tons of of very passionate climbers but they all started climbing like three years ago or four years ago and they started climbing in the gym and it's just such a different world culturally than then where climbing came from in the past

right and so it felt like an important time to tell some of those stories and kind of bridge that gap a little bit um I'm sure you've seen the documentary dirtbag no no what is it you never seen, I don't know. What is it? You've never seen that? What's it about? It's about a famous climber, about a guy who they called him a dirtbag because he just sort of like slept anywhere he could and just wanted to climb constantly. Who though? Fred Becky.

Oh, yeah, yeah, totally. Did you ever meet him? Yeah, I'd met him. Yeah, I mean, I know Fred Becky. I haven't seen the... It's really good. Do you want a CBD drink? This is actually for you if you'd like it.

No, I'm okay, thanks. I don't know what would happen to me. Oh, it's not psychoactive. It's just 25 milligrams of CBD. It just tastes good. What happens to you? Nothing. I don't know.

I've never had CBD. Really? It's great for inflammation. It's got B vitamins. If you've got aches and pains. I'll take a sip. We'll see what happens. Yeah, tell me what you feel like. Actually, is it bubbly. I've never had CBD. Really? It's great for inflammation. It's got B vitamins. If you've got aches and pains. I'll take a sip. We'll see what happens. Yeah, tell me what you feel like. Actually, is it bubbly?

I kind of hate bubbles. Yeah, it's bubbly. I don't like bubbles. Okay. It's mine. It's got my face on it. Does it really? Yeah, look.

There's my face. That's your face? Yeah, I designed it. This is you? Yeah, this flavor is... I know, it's not the best drawing of me. I don't know if you see the resemblance, but... Well, it's not the best drawing of me it's um see the resemblance but well it's me as a pineapple flaming joe it's um it's uh jalapeno and pineapple that's

right you got ufos you got the whole thing the whole deal man there's a bow and arrow in there somewhere classic yeah there it is there's an arrow shooting a pineapple yeah classic no i don't like bubbles which um you don't drink beer or anything? No, no. Do you drink alcohol? No. Don't drink alcohol. Don't drink soda. Yeah, don't really drink much. Wow.

Just water? Yeah, basically. You boring motherfucker. No wine? Nothing? No. Though, I mean, I'll probably drink wine when I'm old or something. I wouldn't do it.

You're going to wait. Pull up the documentary of Fred Becky. It's really good, man. And I watched it on a whim one night. I was just flipping through iTunes and I just saw it. I was like, what is this? And then I watched a preview of it. I'm fascinated by people that are really into a thing, whatever that thing is.

Yeah. Yeah. And this guy was just absolutely absorbed with climbing his whole life and never gave a shit about making any money. And all he cared about was making these routes and then writing these routes down. And he had these insanely detailed handwritten notes that he kept in boxes. And he had like stacks and stacks of these notes of all these different places that he climbed.

And then it's also interesting watching because, spoiler alert, towards the end of the movie, he's really old. And he can't, I mean, you look at his body, it's incredibly frail. And he just can't climb. They're still pretty fit for a 90-year-old. You know, when you think of it. Oh, yeah. I mean, because he was still climbing as a 90-year-old, it was pretty impressive.

He was still going into the mountains at like 85. Oh, yeah. They filmed that. They filmed him doing that. It's just that he couldn't do the things that he used to be able to do, but he still loved them. He still loved to do those things.

He had to accept at certain points in time that he still loved to do those things and you know he had to accept at certain points in time that he just couldn't do it anymore yeah i met him uh at several different events like toward the end of his life basically as an 87 year old or whatever like yeah and it's it's pretty amazing you'd be like whoa it's the fred becky but i mean obviously i've climbed tons of his roots all over the country it's like yeah i mean he's a visionary for for lines but i mean but that's exactly what we're trying to sort of preserve through, through clowning gold through the podcast that we've been working on. It's like, um, so, you know, I mean, he had that, that first ascent vision, um, our actual, our second episode, which is out right now, um,

is with his woman, Joanne Uriosti, who lives in Las Vegas, who basically put up all the classic roots in Vegas. So she was kind of like Fred Becky on a local scale where she's like lived in Vegas her whole life but and and like now Vegas like Red Rock in particular is like a global climbing destination people come from everywhere to climb there because it's incredible rock but in the 70s no one was interested because they thought it was like it's the desert it's too hot it's too sandy they're like who cares like let's go to Yosemite. Let's go somewhere good. And so she and her husband sort of had the run of the place. And they basically put up all these incredible routes, which are now extremely popular. Like on a typical weekend day in Red Rock, you know, in the canyons, there's probably no joke,

a hundred different parties of climbers climbing on different routes of theirs scattered throughout the canyons. Wow. You know what I mean? And so, and I think about it because all those climbers are all, you know, they all started climbing in the gym in LA like three years ago, basically. I mean, people come into Vegas, like a lot of them are road tripping up from LA. A lot of them started climbing within the last few years and they're climbing these routes and you know, they're having an incredible adventure on the route. They're like, this is rad. We're like climbing this big wall in the canyons. This is cool.

But they never really think like who put the bolts in, like who did this the first time? You know, because now when you climb a lot of the routes in Red Rock, they're like buffed in chalk. Like all the holds are like have, you know, chalk all over them. And it's like really obvious where to go and how to climb them. And they're like really clean and safe. But when they first got put up in like 1974, they were like wild, full on adventures and largely done by this woman, Joanne. And so our second episode is like interviewing her and sort of exploring what it takes to do First Ascent and what it takes to have that vision of like we're going to go somewhere totally different and do things that no one's ever done before. You know, it's just yeah, it's interesting.

How old is Joanne? She's 70 now. Oh, wow. Or turning 69 maybe. And how old was she when she first started climbing uh started i guess in university or maybe and even in high school i think um i mean it's all in the episode because her whole i mean that's what's so crazy is that when we're talking to these old school climbers who are like have done incredible things over the

last 50 years they all started with these outrageous stories of like oh i hitchhike across the country to go climb this one mountain with a buddy who I'd like corresponded with by mail, you know, things like that, you know, because it's like, it's such a different world than nowadays, where it's like, oh, I went to the climbing gym for a birthday party. And I liked it. So I kept going and I got a lesson. Right, right, right. So like birth of the climbing gym, if you think that's responsible for the escalation of the sport? Yeah, I think that's a huge part of it um and then even also just pop culture type stuff you know i mean something like a film like free solo like obviously popularized a little bit or films like valley uprising or the dawn wall or like other sort of

relatively mainstream climbing films that reach a broad audience they just bring more people into the sport and then because climbing gyms have become so much popular there's a venue for all those people to to try it you know there's like an access point for the sport and people find it really challenging in terms of like an exercise yeah but also really fun you know it's like it's like all the all the challenge of you know doing crossfit or something let's say but with you know more maybe more of a social element and also just more like hanging out you know it's like more chill and like easier in a way than something like crossfit but still like great you know full body workout and toning and all that yeah and the the social aspect is a big factor too right it's like just getting

all when you go to a bouldering gym most people are just laying on the pads like chit-chatting and then every once in a while you get up and you try the boulder problem and you try really hard and then you have to rest again and so i mean it's fundamentally a relatively chill and social sport yeah you know when you're in the gym like that there's a lot of jujitsu guys who got into rock climbing as a supplemental activity that's funny because i know climbers go the other way oh really climbers get in jujitsu yeah there's like a small contingent of like high-end climbers that got into because it is kind of the same stuff with hands and grappling like especially with the gi i would imagine is that the like holding on and the the you know like hands and grappling. Especially with the gi, I would imagine. Is that the holding on?

The kimono? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The idea of that, because you need a lot of grip strength. Yeah, totally. The no-gi, which is what you do like rash cards usually or shorts and t-shirts, is a lot of like gable grips and hand grips and learning how to grip your hands together as opposed to gripping other people's stuff, gripping the clothes. But the jiu-jitsu guys find it like a great supplemental exercise for hand strength.

And the whole idea is, you know, using your own body weight. Like they like that idea of it too because you don't have to pack any weight on. It's like adult gymnastics but more fun and more relaxed. And slightly more cool. Especially right now, it's like going through a cool moment where people are like, oh, that's a fun, new, sort of edgy thing. Because when I was a kid, it was edgy, but it was too edgy because no one knows what it is and they all think it's weird. Now it's edgy in a cool way. And you're like, oh, yeah, let's go do that.

It is funny that climbing has been around for so long as a human activity, but then as a sport and now as a popular sport, it's experienced this renaissance. It's really weird, right? Because it's such a prime, like we said earlier, such a primal activity. Well, and that's why we did the podcast. I mean, that's exactly the thing. Because we're like, yeah, it is interesting because real technical rock climbing has been going on for more than 100 years but and you know mountain climbing predates that and then like you said as a human activity and people have climbed trees forever for sustenance

you know or to escape predators or whatever else i mean you know it's like yeah i mean climbing is is deeply ingrained in humans and yet right now it's really cool and you're like all right you know it's like it's an interesting time to explore it it's crazy how things happen like that where they just catch fire and then all of a sudden it's in the public zeitgeist and totally well i imagine you know skateboarding snowboarding yeah other sports have gone through that but i was slightly too young to realize that that was happening when they happened you know because i was like a little kid when skateboarding was getting cool and and you know and snowboarding i think has arguably gone full circle and it's just like not cool anymore nobody really does it now but really i think so i think if you actually

look at numbers snowboarding is is gone way back down that's kind of interesting so i could be wrong though instead of snowboard well i think snow sports in general are kind of suffering because the freaking there's no snow because oh really oh because of global warming yeah well i mean think of like western like each year it's kind of like oh you know the the resorts didn't open until super late they closed super early they have kind of bad snow it's like there's been a bunch of like pretty bad years in the last decade you know that's interesting and they're so expensive park city has has been pretty consistent. Going off. Yeah, consistently snowy. No, like Tahoe, I mean, I'm from Sacramento in California, so I know Tahoe pretty well.

But the snow line is now sort of more like 7,000 feet instead of 6. Like the lake is at 6. And now it's like you kind of expect snow going from 7 up. And you're kind of like, you know, it is slowly sort of drying out. You know, it's like the resorts just don't you're kind of like you know it is slowly sort of drying out you know it's like the resorts just don't have have the kind of snow you'd expect you know we got hit with a giant snowstorm here right in austin oh yeah i do that was while i was in the jungle oh really yeah well so funny enough so while i was in the jungle so i came out and i had like a mountain of email and i had an email from my utility in nevada that was like entitled

you know could what happened in texas happen here and I was like, what happened in Texas? Then I do a little Googling. I was like, Jesus, what happened in Texas? That all happened while I was away. I was like, wow, that's momentous. It was a wild week trapped at home. I have a 1995 Land Cruiser that's

built to drive over anything. I got around. There were a few stores that were open but the majority of the roads wasn't power out and everything my power was not out but some power was out it depends on where you were crazy it's uh some power would come on and go off again they'd cycle it like every few hours but it was a weird experience like lines at the supermarket to get in like we had to get in. Like we had to wait in line an hour.

I was like, is that a COVID line or is that an apocalypse line? It was apocalypse line. It was like people were thinking that this snowstorm was going to continue for a week. And you're below freezing for a week. In Austin? In Austin, yeah. Does it normally snow in Austin? You wouldn't think so. Very rarely, but it snowed once this year, and it was cute.

And everybody's like, yeah, it snowed, because it was only snowing for a day. And then it snowed for a fucking week, and it was zero degrees outside. And everybody's like, holy shit, this is not good. There were apparently four minutes plus from the power grid completely going down. The power grid is not established to deal with a week of that kind of cold yeah it's just not designed that way and it's weird that the texas power grid is its own grid it's like why isn't tied into the east or the west you know it's totally stupid that it's independent because it's texas i know but like that's so weird because i mean all all systems

are more robust when they're tied into more things sure i mean yeah it's like i mean realistically it should be tied into both and then you'd actually have a national grid and the whole system would be more stable well hopefully now they'll recognize it's possible for it to freeze for a fucking week but the concept of global warming is interesting because it's like yeah overall it is warming well that's why people say climate change instead because it's more like more variability yeah exactly yeah where it's like when you get your whole season's rainfall in two big storms that basically like dump a ton of rain it's like that's not good for anybody you know yeah like even if the numbers wind up like oh we had you know this much rain this season but

all came at once and it washed the whole mountainside away. You're kind of like... They're starting to build these electric exploring vehicles, like electric adventure vehicles, which is pretty interesting. There's a company called, I think it's called Rivian. Yeah, Rivian. Dude, I'm sponsored by Rivian. Are you really? Yeah, yeah. Oh, cool.

Yeah, and Rivian, they support my foundation, like work that my foundation does with solar. I've never seen one in the wild. Well, it's because they don't exist yet. Oh. They're shipping to customers in like two months or something like that oh interesting yeah yeah rivian um did you see um there it goes yeah there you go look at that what does it say what's the tagline keep the world adventurous forever that's a dope looking truck that's i was that's a dope looking series of rocks right there. You're so into it. It's so funny.

Yeah, so these pickup trucks are fully electric. Yeah, so I've driven them for photo shoots. It's like, dude, so awesome. Yeah, imagine. So great. I drove my Tesla here. Tesla is apparently their cyber truck. It goes into production very soon.

And there's another company. Oh, GM. GM has, you know know they used to have that stupid hummer well now they reinvented the hummer and it's an electric incredible off-road adventure vehicle is it actually commercially available yet it's not it's not but it's going to be and it has a thousand horsepower and it has a full like skid plate underbelly. It's fully designed for legitimate off-road use. I'm like, I think I'm more into Rivian. I feel like that's a bit much.

Well, not just they pay me, but also it's a little bit of the design ethos behind it. Basically, Rivian has a second life application in mind for their batteries. They design the battery packs knowing that eventually they won't be in vehicles anymore and they will be used for say like grid scale storage and things like that it's like one of the projects that rivian is working with my foundation on is this micro grid in puerto rico and it's like the idea is that you know i mean so rivian has a hundred thousand uh electric delivery vans ordered from amazon already so like in theory they're providing a hundred thousand vans ordered from Amazon already. So like in theory, they're providing 100,000 vans to Amazon

for electric delivery. They're connected to Amazon, right? Amazon is one of the... Investors. Yes. Not founders. Basically, Amazon has just pre-ordered a shitload of vans

because they need electric vans. And so, you know, just right there, you know that eventually there'll be a pipeline of 100,000 used van batteries going offline in like 10, 15 years or whatever. And so the way you design those battery packs matters because, you know, in 10 years, you're going to have to reuse them for something, either recycle them or reuse them for something else. And like

Rivian's put a lot of thought into how it will eventually reuse its batteries. And, you know, I don't really know about Tesla batteries. and I would just assume that GM is probably, that's almost certainly not built into their brand in the same way. You know what I mean? GM is just kind of like, oh, the Hummer is a brand that people already care about. Let's just revamp it with electricity now because it's cooler. It's a completely redesigned thing, though.

The way they've done it, I know what you're saying, but the way they've done it is, it's more in some ways of an expression of the possibilities of technology because they've incorporated all sorts of – like a crab walk. But do you need 1,000 freaking horsepower in an off-road car? You don't. That's like a tank, you know? You don't, but the idea is that it can do things because of that horsepower that perhaps it wouldn't be able to do like go up a vertical wall yeah literally if you hit it with enough speed well it can crab walk it's designed as a feature what that means is like in certain things where

it's almost impossible to gain traction this thing can actually go like this and crab walk it's it's interesting it's a it's actually like you can set it it's a crab walk setting and you press it and it'll do the the crab walk thing for see if you can find that it's pretty wild the video of hum hummer 2021 hummer crab walk they're not released yet but i think they're really soon and then um another thing I want you to look up after that, Jamie, there's a new startup that I think is Austin-based that has developed a new kind of battery, or they're in the process of developing a new kind of battery

that has a 1,500-mile range to it. So this is this thing. So this is what it looks like see it's not outrageous looking but they have two different models and one of them the roof comes off so the the entire top of where the passengers are comes off so this is obviously cgi so the when it gets to i guess we'd have to watch the whole thing. So when it gets to some place where it's having a difficult time, see how it's doing that?

It got, it went sideways to get through that little path. Did it actually do that? It was hard to tell. Like that's like right here. Like no human driver that would ever try to take their truck through something like that. Oh, they definitely do though.

These people do this for fun. No, no, this is all CG. Like, right. I'll believe that stuff when someone's actually driving their real hummer because also there's that's not even that's for sure just a post truck you know like a rivian sports spokesperson this uh well i mean actually if anything i'm saying this more because i've worked with rivian through their whole design process is that, you know, I've done photo shoots with them where we were driving like the prototype truck. And so it's all like a carbon fiber frame.

Like it's not the real production like metal truck. Sure. It's just like a one off like model. And it was pretty crazy because the engine like it's still it's still a lot of get up and go. You know, it still feels like a rocket ship. But the seatbelts were held on by Velcro. It's all just all just ornamental you know to like make it look good for like an auto show like none of it's like road safe or like legal or anything we're just using it for like photo shoots on dirt roads but like it's pretty crazy like one of the shoots we did uh all the

electronics were being controlled by an ipad and there's an engineer like laying down behind the seat in the back using the ipad to like keep the suspension working and keep everything like working properly because because you know it's like a model one-off like demonstration and you're kind of like anything you know I mean I don't know that much about cars but you assume that something that's like not in production yet is for sure like that you know it's like some mock-up model until it's actually being built especially something that has that much technology. Totally, where it's actually brand new. As soon as you start to find new features like that that don't technically exist yet,

you're kind of like, you know that there's some engineer in the backseat frantically pushing buttons, being like, come on, baby, work this time, work this time. Exactly. Like when Elon Musk had the new Cybertruck and they said, look, the window doesn't work, but it's shattered.

Exactly, exactly. Yeah. See if you can find this startup because what they're going to be able to do is instead of charging your battery, you know, it goes to 1,500 miles and then they can swap it out in 90 seconds. And it's got 15,000 miles of range

or 1,500 miles of range rather, which is pretty incredible. I'm all for like better solutions to this problem. And apparently, the energy storage capacity of this particular type of battery, whether or not it actually exists or it's vaporware, is substantially better. Because the new Tesla Plaid, which is their new Model S. Why is it Plaid? What is that? I don't get that. It's crazy. I don't know. But does it mean Plaid like

the material? I just, what he calls it. It doesn't look Plaid. This is the company? Okay, Ample. And so this company, I read an article about it actually this morning. And this company is going to, they'll be able to swap out your battery in 90 seconds.

So is this it? it modular battery swapping and so it just kind of puts it back in place and then you're good to go so like you'll pull into a place they'll take out your battery deliver 100 charge in minutes if nothing else at least their cgi looks way better yeah it's like because obviously none of this actually exists yet either so it's like modeling but at least it looks really good you're like oh this that's the problem is with a lot of this stuff is like i've met a lot of these startup guys and they they want to sell it so hard not this particular but other technologies you're just like hey how much of this can you do and how much of this are you just trying to get funding for totally i'm kind of into it though because i feel like if everyone just keeps pushing as hard as they can

at the thing they're interested in you do wind up with good ideas you know i mean like teslas are great and they've done like great things for you know like i'm realistically the faster humanity can transition to electrics or basically transition away from fossil fuels the better and so it's like the more interested people with good ideas the the better. Porsche has developed fuel for their internal combustion engines that is completely clean and it has less environmental impact than electric cars do. What's the clean? I mean, what do you mean? Zero idea.

I just glanced at this. I read the first paragraph of this new fuel that they've developed here it is porsche is working on synthetic fuel to make uh internal combustion cars as clean as evs it's a hydrogen-based fuel be ready to testing for testing in 2022 including the new porsche 911 gt3 cup race car i'm pretty sure that so far uh far, biofuels and things like that haven't really lived up to the hype. Yeah, that's why they're doing this. And so it is one of those things

where you're like, oh, if it totally plays out and it works, then great, let's move forward with it as quickly as possible. But you're kind of like, yeah, it seems like electricity is probably the better option overall. Oh, for sure.

But in Porsche's defense, they have been at the front lines of making cleaner exhaust fumes to the point where the 911 Turbo, if it moves through, like I saw this on Top Gear, they were saying that if it went through a polluted place, like whether it's downtown LA or Calcutta. It's making the air cleaner? The air is cleaner coming out than it is going in. That's interesting. That's awesome. It's pretty wild. Yeah.

That's cool. Their ultimate goal is to develop internal combustion engine fuel that is just completely clean. Dude. So there's no impact. Speaking of this kind of thing, I did Jay Leno's garage the other day. I don't know if you ever met him or seen it. Yeah, I've done it. It's pretty classic.

Yeah, it's awesome. And did you tour the garage and stuff? Yeah. yeah it's totally insane he's got 11 of those garages by the way well what do you mean he's got 11 buildings oh yeah but they're all connected right but he's got more of them like i don't know if you've saw all of them that guy has the most insane car collection totally i've ever seen in my life but yeah it was well yeah definitely the most insane thing i've ever seen because like i don yeah it was well yeah definitely the most insane thing i've ever seen because like i don't you know i don't know any car collectors i was like what the fuck yeah insane but uh but the my takeaway from so the tour that we had from one of his uh you

know his helpers basically gave us this pretty cool tour of of the garages and uh he said it was something like 160 something cars 180 180-something motorcycles. And it's like through all of human history. You know, it's like from 1890 type or like 1905. But my takeaway was that there were so many interesting false starts and sort of dead ends in technology where you have like a steam engine car. And then the ones that I keep thinking about are the 1950s like jet turbine cars. They were like cars with jets in them from the 50s. Yeah. When like turbine engines were like a cool new thing for for aerospace and they're like let's do it in a car and you're like well that obviously didn't play out because i've never seen like a jet

car going by me on the highway but you know i think it's cool that the humans have explored so many different avenues like that you know it's like when you have a new technology you kind of have to try every different version of it yeah like see what actually works you know henry ford had made hemp fenders and hemp bodied cars in the early 1900s it's kind of too bad that didn't take off fucking yeah and where he literally there's a demonstration where he's bouncing a hammer off of them because if you ever fucked with hemp you ever like felt like eat a mean, I eat it a little bit. Yeah. The wood itself, it's incredible. Where it's really light, like balsa wood, but it's really hard like this table. Interesting.

It's hard like oak, but really light. Huh. And they can make hempcrete, like a concrete with ground up hemp that is supposed to be incredibly fire resistant, really has high insulation values. But for cars, like I don't know why it didn't take off. Probably because of the problems with marijuana illegalization back then. Yeah, true.

You needed a tax stamp to grow hemp in the 1930s because of the prohibition. But they developed this, and there's a cool video of him demonstrating the durability of these fenders. I think it's a Model T, and he's got a fucking hammer, and he's bouncing it off of this fender. See if you can find that, because it's pretty wild to see,

but that was one of the false starts of innovation that just, for whatever reason, never kicked back up again or think of uh or think of early electrics you know like the very first cars were split with electrics but then battery technology wasn't there and it just wasn't well sure and then there's a documentary called who killed the electric well but that was like in the 90s but i mean like 1905 you know like the original cars were like how interesting the world would be if it had gone all electric at the beginning instead of having a century of internal combustion engine cars.

I mean think of like urban air pollution and stuff if there had just never been internal combustion cars. Not that I'm like condemning that because obviously for tractors and all kinds of uses. Diesel, yeah. Well, yeah. I mean there are plenty of great things about internal combustion cars and like I drive one. It's like mobility is important. But you're sort of like it would be interesting if humanity had taken a fully different path down that road sure no it is you know i actually talked to elon about tesla's idea of broadcasting electricity through the sky that was one of the things oh this hit okay his hemp

car from 1941 so this was a car that I guess it's not a model T like, what is that? So I'm on 1941. I mean, some, I don't know what it is, but look, he's bouncing a fucking hammer off of this.

Whatever this, this thing is made out of. Look at this. Pretty crazy, right? I'm like, how do you, how have you seen this before?

And how do you remember it? Me? Oh, I don't know. Also, I mean, that number is 6,000 views. You're like, I mean, that video only has 6,000 views. You're like, that's weird.

My memory is weird. It's good and terrible at the same time. Like sometimes I forget people's names. It's like a junk drawer. You just have all kinds of like interesting shit in there. That's a good way to describe it. It's a perfect way to describe it. Yeah.

But Elon was talking about Tesla's idea, Nikola Tesla's idea of Westinghouse put the kibosh on it, but he wanted to develop these towers to broadcast electricity the same way radio waves were broadcast. Is that possible? It is possible. But, he goes, it would have made electronics impossible. It would have ruined the idea of computing and all the other things that we developed through electronics. Because you have to think of back then, electricity was just the lights. You just basically had the lights on and you had like a refrigerator. If you even had a refrigerator back then.

Yeah, not yet. So his idea would have been great, but if it had been implemented, it would have completely stifled the concept of electronics and computers. Yeah, I understand. Because, yeah, all that shit in the air would have just cooked everything. Huh. Or computing would just be a totally different thing. Yeah, they would have to figure a new way around it. Really, really fast abacuses.

Yeah. Like little, you know, steam tubes, like moving things up and down on the counter super fast. It's really wild how relatively fast things have moved. Because in our lifetime, we recognize that things move fast, but they seem normal. It seems normal to have an iPhone. Honestly, it feels slow as it happens in your life, doesn't it? It's like, oh, you know, like, doesn't it a little bit? I don't know.

The only thing that feels a little slow to me is virtual reality because I've assumed that would be way ahead. It's pretty cool right now, but I assumed it would be like impossible to detect by now. That it would be like you put this thing on and you'd be like in this new world. Yeah, it's not quite there. It's not quite there yet. I'm supposed to be shooting a VR climbing thing this year. Oh, wow. I'm pretty psyched for it.

I think it'll be cool. Does one exist currently not really so the guy that i'm working uh with it on uh shot an everest vr experience so like he went to the summit of mount everest in vr and it's these totally incredible episodes and that's actually because i'd always felt like it wasn't that cool and then he sent me the headset and and his episodes like the content that he'd made and was like watch this and then i did in my living room and i was like i was fully blown away super immersive which is is pretty impressive in a way because you know i'm like a pretty discerning viewer of climbing content you know and i was still fully into it i was like this is this is crazy and i've like read so many books about everest and things in my life but then to do the vr experience and actually feel i'm there it was like this is this is incredible anyway so i was like i'm on board like i'm totally

gonna do a project with him did it make you want to go to everest i mean yeah a little i mean really i was like oh it's pretty cool isn't it funny that even a guy like you who has done all these experiences loves climbing still looked at climbing everest like fucking what's that all about well it's like i would be i mean i like climbing things and you know if it's the tallest thing to climb you're like oh that's cool i'm just sort of turned off by the the crowd you know the popularity the like it's just too too commercial basically you know what i think i lied to you i don't think this has any bubbles in it i know sorry no it's fine drank it yeah it's all part of your plan how do we not know that doesn't have any bubbles in it also hadn't you? Sorry. No, it's fine. Drank it. Yeah, it's all part of your plan. How do I not know that it doesn't have any bubbles in it? Also, hadn't you just drank the other one?

Yeah. You just didn't notice. I just assumed it had bubbles in it. Or maybe you're so desensitized to bubbles. I assumed it was carbonated. Yeah, I've just drank so much carbonated stuff. You just don't know the difference. I don't know.

I don't think it's carbonated. It sounded carbonated when you opened it. Does it? That's true. It did have that satisfying like... Right. But if you like look at how it comes out, it doesn't come out like bubbles. See?

How's it look in the can? This is mildly carbonated. Oh, yeah. No, it's bubbly as fuck. I know, but it doesn't taste carbonated. It doesn't look like juice. No, that just means that your throat is so desensitized to bubbles, you can't tell the difference. Maybe.

You've been drinking too many bubbles. So mildly carbonated. You know what it is? I drink Zevia a lot. You ever... No, I don't know what that is. Anything with bubbles in it. I don't like bubbles, yeah.

It's a soda that's sweetened with stevia. Huh. It's great. It's really good for you. It's like, you know, I mean, it's not as good for you as water. Yeah, it's like, this water's pretty good for me. It's pretty close. It's pretty close.

You're in the neighborhood. Stevia is... You know what stevia is, right? Yeah, this water's pretty good for me. It's pretty close. It's pretty close. You're in the neighborhood. Stevia is, you know what stevia is, natural sweetener. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. Yeah, it's carbonated, but very mildly.

There's a rumor there's a new Apple headset coming out that's going to be lighter than an iPhone. Really? That might make viewing these things

easier, better. I don't know the word that it would be, but like less cumbersome but isn't the issue really uh yeah immersiveness is the issue and and also programming like the real issue is like getting people to develop these experiences yeah to make the content which right now i think it's pretty hard because i don't think the the market like the market for something like call of duty is spectacular, right?

Like, so many people play those kind of games or Fortnite. I mean, these markets are immense. Yeah. But the markets for VR are relatively small comparatively. But that's also because nobody has the headsets yet. I mean, that's so chicken and the egg. Because, like, once there's great content, more people will get it. But, you know, which has to come first?

Well, we've had headsets for years, though. We've had. We had the HTC Vive three or four years ago. We've had headsets for years though. We've had the HTC Vive three or four years ago. We have Oculus now. Just today I just saw that Doom 3 is now available in VR on Playstation. How dare they. How fun does that sound?

I bet it's crazy. These motherfuckers. Can you play multiplayer? There are games I know you can. You know what you do? You get a unidirectional treadmill and it bolts have you seen how they do that no it's wild yeah they um pull that up jamie vr with a unidirectional treadmill unidirectional treadmills essentially you have like a halo around your waist and it's got these cables that connect you to like these the circular post that goes around you and then on you on these cables that connect you to like these uh the circular post

that goes around you and then on you on the ground rather what you're standing on is uh this circular treadmill that's self-propelled like have you ever do you run at all i mean i have yeah there's a thing called air runner where you are it's it's like 15 harder in my old studio i had one it's 15 harder than running on a treadmill because you're actually propelling the treadmill yeah you're moving up excuse me 15 harder than regular running not not just running yeah running on treadmills a little bit easier than regular running so this this uh idea of these omnidirectional treadmills these people are on these things and you're you're actually moving them so as it's see how that guy's running yeah see how it works there so you're running into this vr world shooting things i wonder if uh gamers will be less into it if they

actually feel worked after playing for an hour sure i mean because if you're actually running through all those games for like two hours you'd be be like, oh my God, I'm so pooped. It really depends on if the juice is worth the squeeze. So if you have a game that is as wild as Doom, right, especially the new Doom, what number is the new Doom?

I think they were five. Yeah. They stopped calling it numbers again. Right. Who was the dude that we had on that was the Doom guy that worked on Doom and he showed us

like the most immersive? Hugo? Yes. Hugo Martin. Hugo Martin came in here, and whew, it's so wild. It's so gory and crazy. You're pulling heads out of people and stuff. But if you get to a point where a game like that,

if you have an omnidirectional treadmill, and it comes with some sort of a gun that feels like a gun, you get to a point where a game like that if you have an omnidirectional treadmill and you they you know it comes with some sort of like a gun that feels like a gun that has some heft to it you can actually shoot things but if it has heft to it then you get worked after an hour of playing so it's like yeah but then you get in shape like you know how people place dance dance revolution you know a lot of people lost a lot of weight playing that game yeah it's a it's famous for it for people who are just gamers who like would love to go to the you know the amusement park and whatever it is arcade and

put money in and play dance dance revolution they got obsessed with it and they they lost like shit loads of weight because it's cardio yeah because you're doing this fucking i know it's actually uh uh my in-laws have been playing vr games uh something called beat saber i think we're basically using like a lightsaber to like cut blocks but it's kind of the same deal where it's like quite there's a lot of movement yes a lot of movement yeah it's totally it's pretty classic to see my father-in-law like sweating where he's like yes chopping blocks and it's virtual reality and it keeps you in shape john carmack who is he speaking of doom he actually designed doom the original doom for id software he worked

for oculus when the last time we saw him and came into the studio that's what he gave us an oculus and and showed us he's an expert at this thing like he he's a martial artist too and so he's like really got great hand-eye coordination and he he has his ramped up to expert level and so he's these these fucking things are coming that's like totally he's moving around like this i'm like my god he's like it's actually quite a workout i'm like yeah i think so like it's like you're shadowboxing in the air against like five people that's what it looks like there's nothing they do too that's uh speaking of shadowboxing they have these boxing games and that's one of those that

dana white was was advertising recently. Not even advertising, just saying that he did it. So you put on the Oculus headset and you have these little hand things that you hold on to. No, you need the headset to constrict so it feels like you're getting punched in the head over and over.

Right, haptic feedback. But you do get a flash of white when you get hit. Oh, interesting. When the glove hits you, you flash light. So it actually does flash of white like when you get hit oh understand the glove hits you flash like so so it actually does would kind of feel like it kind of without the pain yeah yeah but the workout is intense because you're really throwing your hands like you're boxing someone yeah yeah well the vr thing if you know we're supposed to be doing this year it would be more like a film that you you know it's less like a game and you're just like watching something in vr so you don't move at all um well you can

move as much as you want like looking around right you know but um but basically you're you're sort of experiencing a climb from you know a bird's eye view where you can either watch somebody climbing through the frame or like look at the mountains and see the exposure and see the scenery all that so will they see your hands reach up and grab them? No, no, no. So they would see me climb through the frame. Basically they'd be able to watch like an entire climb from a certain perspective. Oh, okay.

So like the perspective of a drone, like something hovering and watching. Yeah, though it can't be hovering because that's the thing, what you're talking about with software for VR, for like full 360 video, you can't really do it from, you kind of have to have it on a wall, I think. So it's like bolt kind of have to have it on a wall, I think.

So it's like bolted in place to be more stable. Because I think the challenge of like watching things in VR is that people get really motion sick if the whole frame of reference is moving nonstop. So ideally you have the filming sort of stationary and then interesting things happening around you so that you feel like you're stable when you're watching it, but you can see other things happen around you. You know what I'm saying? because like if you did pov in vr it would make you super motion sick because then when you're the viewer everything would be rushing all around you at all times you'd be like holy shit i feel like i'm gonna die you know but if we like a lot

of people get really motion sick in vr like my wife is like full hard no like won't won't do vr there's a company called sandbox and they have these warehouses set up, and you do these VR experiences, and they have this one that I'm obsessed with called Deadwood Mansion. And I had third place in the world at one point in time in this zombie-killing game. It's fucking wild, man. You're in this zombie experience where you're in this haunted house and zombies come falling out of the ceiling they come running at you there's rats that run at you if you

have to shoot them it's wild shit but it gives you a taste of what it's going to be like because this is you're actually moving around so you have a haptic feedback vest you have the the headsets on and they give you plastic guns and then you're running around shooting zombies and you bump into each other and shit like my whole family does it that's like uh this is like the new version of laser tag it's like why do you laser tag when you can actually like do crazy zombie killing missions yeah and it's pretty graphically intensive like when the zombies attack you you see red like when they scratch at you you see like splatters in front of your face like the idea is that they're getting you and you feel it in your chest because you have a haptic feedback vest on i didn't realize

the haptic feedback was like so far along and they're so developed it's not that it's not that cool yeah it's good but you feel like like you get zapped a little bit. It doesn't hurt, but you're recognizing that something's happening, and it just sort of accentuates the experience. Yeah, it's all like Ready Player One soon. Yeah, that's coming. That's the future of it all for sure. That's coming, man.

That's coming without a doubt. And then we're fucked. Or then that'll be the norm, and then the cool thing will be to do things in real life yeah i'll be like oh shit that guy actually climbs that's cool yeah exactly so that guy touches real rock doesn't hurt his real people yeah yeah yeah yeah right so but you know the things that have like real physical limitations like you're actually under the the influence of real gravity as opposed to just flying around yeah totally yeah i'm analog i'm an analog guy man i'm not out there in your digital

world yeah it's coming it took me a really long time to get a smartphone and you know i was like a total late adopter and i'm like i'll be i'll probably be was david blaine the guy who got you your first smartphone no not first uh i think he got me my second i think i forget what the deal was but i think i met him and he was like what is that because i pulled out some like ancient you know thing and he was like wtf and he just like went to the mac store and got me a phone why were you carrying around a flip phone well no i just uh it may even been a smartphone but it was like really old and you know i don't know we were like having lunch and i was like oh yeah this thing

is like a piece of junk and he was like i'm gonna fix that and he just like fixed it it's funny though because in classic magician style he didn't like make it appear he just went to the apple store and was like ding and then he made it appear did you want that i mean it's not well i was well like we were we were like doing errands around new york city and it just i don't know it took him to like 20 minutes apparently in in i don't know there's some like vip apple thing it was like weird he just like walked in it happened i was like crazy really there's a vip apple thing apparently well or at least at the one store in downtown manhattan or something oh maybe he's got like a like had a guy or something i have no idea but like you're not broke like is that something that you wanted but didn't go ahead and buy?

It was like a while back and I just – you know, I don't know. It's like I don't care. You should see my phone right now. Why? What kind of phone do you have? Show me. What do you got? Everyone makes fun of it now, but it's the original.

It's the old SE. No, no. That's like the 5 or the 6 or something, I think. These are great. Well, the case is for mountain biking, but the phone is just like. You know what's great? It's so easy to text on. Well, exactly.

That's the thing. It's really easy to use one-handed. And the main thing for me is that it stays under my loop on a harness. Like it fits in your pocket. It's so little. I know, exactly. Look how little. Yeah, exactly.

When you see the screen, it's so's the screen is smaller than my thumb well i mean there you go see that's crazy yeah it's easy to use oh yeah super easy to use but how's the battery on this thing no it's it's fine yeah i don't know actually i started um it's been really suffering recently but i think it's uh because i started using a Whoop because they also sponsor the podcast. Oh, yeah. And I think the Whoop kills the battery more because it's like constantly. For sure. Bluetooth.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Because he's using Bluetooth all the time. Also, that thing's ancient as fuck. And Whoop is designed for like new phones. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Whoop is designed for the Ferrari phones. And I've got the.

Yeah, you've got an Edsel. Yeah, exactly. You should get one of the minis have you seen i know i've thought about it i've thought about it but then i'm like it still works like why bother you know you're one of those guys well just wait until it dies you know but how much wait not one night you know oh look at you that's nice but they recycle those yeah i'll get there eventually i guess you could sell it to somebody who's not into whoop dude so classic story two days three days ago something i was climbing with a friend of mine in red rock we were doing this big solo link up where

we traversed like a bunch of peaks and we were both soloing by ourselves and um he'd been making fun of my phone all day he had like the brand new 12 max plus mega pro or whatever it's called you know it's like a small ipad or whatever it's like this giant phone and like crazy camera looks great whatever and uh and we were down climbing this route so like we were traversing i've been working on this traverse of the whole red rock range have you you've been to red rock right i've only outside of vegas i've only driven by it i've never actually never gone hiking in red rock all your time in vegas you've never hiked in the mountains no no dude you gotta do it once dude i'll do it okay yeah actually when you're there yeah no text me i'll like take you on a

dude i could take you on an adventure in red adventure take me on an adventure dude the thing about uh vegas is usually when i'm there i'm just there for the fights and it's a usually a six to seven hour experience that i'm commentating one day was eight because we had 15 fights yeah but this past weekend it's like six but they're in the evening i go in the morning do a little nature thing it'll keep you usually fly in in the morning especially during covid and then i fly and i land at like one the first fight's at four that's how it usually works well if you ever have time hit me up and we'll do an adventure in red rock next time there's no covid i will i'll fly in on friday because i'll probably wind up doing a gig out there that's when covid's when everybody's so yeah when it's chill yeah yeah so anyway red rock all these peaks beautiful

peaks i've been working on traverse of all the peaks like up and over each one type thing it's like a fun backyard project so i'm gonna um it's quite challenging um just to like piece it's really complicated terrain with like crazy fluted sandstone towers and like how you get over one to the next and like how you connect them and so a friend was doing a little section of it with me just to like piece together some of the fun climbing and we were down climbing this classic route so the two of us are both soul line and we had like summited the peak via the other side and we were coming down this like classic route that people normally climb it's like a really famous climbing route and there's this woman climbing up below us and my friend was like oh damn it his

phone just fell out of his pocket his giant new new 12 plus mega whatever. It fell out. It bounced off the wall. And this woman caught it like 30 feet below him. Really? She was like climbing. She was like, just play some piece of gear. You know, she has a rope and everything. It's all normal.

And it just like bounced. And then she just snagged it out of the air. Wow. Saved his phone for him. And then as we down climbed, she just gave it right back to him. And then we just carried on. But so then the whole. That lady's badass.

I know. It was really impressive. I would want to be friends with her. Totally. That's like a person who comes through in the clutch dude it was it was very impressive but you know my takeaway was that it helps to have a phone that doesn't fall out of your freaking pocket because it's so big you know i was like my phone's never just falling out well it seems like he's got a stupid case or just not handling his phone well i think i think his pocket was just a little tight and then it's just a big phone. So it's easy to put it in, but it's not quite all the way in.

And then when you're down climbing, obviously you're moving your legs a bunch, and it just fell out. I have the middle ground. I have the regular one. Let's see. That's the regular 12. Yeah, but look at that. Yeah, it's quite a bit bigger. Yeah, this guy could live inside yours. Yeah. it's quite a bit bigger. Yeah, this guy could like live inside yours, you know?

Yeah. The Mini, though, is pretty close to yours. It's slightly larger, but it's all screened. That's probably what I'll go to eventually. Yeah. But, you know, I'll wait for this to die. The main complaint about the Mini is the battery life is horrible. Oh, yeah?

Yeah. Oh, sad. But, I mean, I'm sure it's better than yours. That's actually probably true. Yeah, that's funny. It's horrible battery life. it's twice as good as what you have but it's horrible probably is literally twice as good as what you have i will say yeah i'm sort of i mean everything keeps working and so i'm like you know why mess with something that works yeah i think the battery is like i think you could use it full stop all day like you could play four hours of

video on it and it'll eventually die whereas these things are like eight hours or something really yeah who's gonna watch eight hours of video on assholes well it's just like that's that's a lot of time on your phone people that hate their job and they pretend they're working and just watch youtube all day yeah because if you're working security or something you're just like at a desk and you just like have you know you have one earbud and you're just like listening to a show it's under the desk and you're just like uh-huh uh-huh sign the form uh-huh and you barely paid attention yeah there's a lot of that going on in this life that's that makes me a little bit sad i mean i know i know you're right but you're also kind of like that's too bad it is

well especially coming from a guy like you that does exactly what he wants to do with his life. You know, that's where you see people living unfulfilled lives. It's kind of sad. This morning at a hotel, I was reading my book. You know, I was eating by myself and just like reading. And the server came over to be like, what are you reading? It's so interesting to see someone reading a book, not on their phone. I was like, huh, it makes me slightly sad in a way. But also, you know, I was like, I'm reading this book, Fate of Food. Someone could be reading a book not on their phone i was like huh that makes me slightly sad in a way but also you know i was like i'm reading this book fate of food sorry

someone could be reading a book on their phone too i know you're sad no i know it's funny because i've thought about i've tried to get into e-reading stuff like you know the kindle or on the phone and i've just uh it doesn't really take you know because i feel like there are so many other distractions right there it's hard to really get immersed in your book when like you know with a double click your thumb something like more exciting pops up you know i mean it's like what you're saying with the phone i get what you're saying yeah i like kindles because they're they have that flat white surface where it really does look like paper i forget what the technology is called but it looks great yeah you can no i i know i store a hundred books i know i know no it is it is definitely like it makes sense it's practical but i just find that i i read more

with physical books yeah and so at a certain point you just have to use the medium that works for you and just go with it for sure it's like the tactile feedback exactly there's a thing and and honestly the sense of progress they're like oh i'm working through this thing and when i finish it i set it down you know like that kind of like there's a satisfaction in like working through a thick book that that a kindle i mean in some ways the kindle feels like this insurmountable thing because it's like you have the whole complete works of shakespeare on there and you're like you literally could be clicking away at it for the rest of your life and never actually finish anything and you're like damn that's true you know it's like it's like infinity whereas if like

you're working way through a library cabinet yeah a shelf yeah i mean it's kind of satisfying to be like oh i finished this stack of books and also with books that i give them to my friends afterward give them to other people you pass them around like you know share the ideas but with the kindle it's like yeah you have the you know all of human knowledge on one tiny i mean eventually we will have probably all of human knowledge on one little tiny tablet. But it's almost too much. It's overwhelming. Well, what's really scary is that the technology that we're utilizing, whether it's with solid-state drives or hard drives or what have you,

if something happened, if there was an immense solar flare and it killed the grid or killed a large percentage of the population, we could conceivably lose most of human knowledge like if you think about what we have written down versus what we have stored in our minds the disparity is astronomical right there's very little stored in our minds and so much on hard drives that if something big happened some huge reset super volcano that kind of shit asteroid impact that kills 50 of the populations do you think that's true right now because i feel like most most things right now are still written down in physical form

i can see what you're saying like 20 or 30 years from now you would expect that if digital devices were wiped out that humanity would lose an immense amount of knowledge but right now i'm sort of like oh i feel like we're still sort of on the edge we're like most things that are really important still get written down in physical form in some way sort of no i think most things are in digital form particularly most things pertaining to digital forms. Yeah, and business. Like all things business are in digital. How about the entire economy? Yeah.

Yeah. But I think the real thing would be all of the information that's, you know, in regards to like how they constructed these solid state drives, how they constructed these motherboards. What's in, you know. I bet some of that's written down. You hope. I don't know.

But like you're not doing it i'm not doing i don't know but presumably whoever is doing it wrote down an instruction manual just in case well jamie's more technologically astute than both of us maybe what do you think yes and no but if it's written down one person maybe wrote it what language is it in is it legible do they write in pencil if it gets wet does it like turn into pulp and now it's gone right how many of these books are available and where are they stored yeah we still don't know what was lost in library of alexandria right kind of things disappeared never going to be able to figure back out again where did those heads come from they probably

lost the instruction manuals for the pyramids well they did like literally the library of alexandria that's where they believe they stored the historical works of how the pyramids were constructed. Because there's really no work anywhere that depicts. I believe there's some hieroglyphs that depict one or two methods of moving stone, but that's it. But, you know, when you get something like the great period of giza that's 2 million 300 000 stones that were the way between i think 2 and 80 tons are the the side i think i

think the smallest ones might be like a half a ton and the largest are like 80 tons in the king's chamber there's some math and some of them some of of them, they cut from a quarry that was hundreds of miles away. Like what did you do? Who fucking mapped this out? How did you get it so perfect? We don't know. We have to guess. Armies of human labor.

Not just that because you can get armies of human labor and you're not going to get that kind of precision because if you're off even slightly when you get to the top of the 2,300,000 stones, you're going to be way off. So it's not – Then you wind up with a balcony. You're like, oh, that one sticks out a little bit. You're like, damn it. You're like, no, no, it's a design feature. Well, not only that.

It was originally covered in smooth limestone. Oh, yeah? Yeah. That eroded away? Well, they stole it when they when they um when they uh built cairo they like you know how the outside of the uh pyramid is all jagged yeah like steps up that's not what it was it was completely smooth i don't know yeah it was completely smooth and then you know people don't respect the past especially people or they're like look at this giant pile of rock that we can use to build our home they're

like perfect somebody already piled it here for us. It wasn't a pile of rock at the time, though. It was a smooth surface. Well, totally. But if it's not fulfilling a purpose, then you're like, a better purpose would be building my home. It's like you can see how that stuff gets pilfered. Well, there was also a long history of robbing these tombs and robbing these sites and a lot of money especially when you're dealing with extreme

poverty and you can dig a hole in the ground and find a fucking golden sarcophagus that's worth more money than your family will ever spend for the rest of your life dude can you imagine you're out like digging an irrigation ditch in your field or something and you find a golden sarcophagus you're like oh

well some of the stuff that they found in Egypt some of the most spectacular shit they really did just find you know like um the where they found uh tutankhamen where his uh site was that some i think it was a kid that was carrying water noticed that there was like this weird sort of like curved or sharp edge and so he starts kicking it and moving it around. And then they realize like, hey, this is an actual stone that was carved and put into this position. And then they clear it out more. And next thing you know, they discover the tomb of King Tut. And then that little kid's like, yeah.

No, they probably killed that kid. Shut your mouth. You don't know shit. I mean, probably did actually. Yeah, but that's that's the thing about the library of alexandria is that that could conceivably be like all the information that we have about bitcoin or about you know honestly if it goes it goes you know you're like uh i feel like that might when we were talking about sort of societal like non-starters and interesting paths that technology goes like i kind of think that

cryptocurrency is like maybe not going to be one of the winning paths but we'll see ah well we'll see long term but i think it's growing in popularity it's incredibly energy intensive to do something it's like you're basically reinventing a system in a more energy intensive way which doesn't really make sense because in general, most technologies get more and more efficient. But it's decentralized. That's the appeal of it is it's decentralized. But it uses way more material.

You know what I mean? How so? Because all the data processing, all the number crunching, like basically the amount of power and infrastructure required to make it work is far more than currency. I don't know if that's true. Because I think all currency requires data crunching now. Not like crypto.

Because the whole thing about blockchain is you have a crazy... But all banking, almost all currency right now is just ones and zeros and hard drives. But banking, the like financial sector would exist whether it's you know on on normal currencies or cryptocurrency because either way like banking and trading and all that kind of stuff would be happening in something but i'm just talking about

like printing money and distributing money versus like generating cryptocurrency you know i don't know because i've heard estimates that that sounds right but you have to print paper currency which means you got to use water right there's a whole lot of yeah it's almost double according to the thing i'm looking at right now says uh the energy use of fiat versus crypto is like double what bitcoin is yeah that would make sense to me interesting i wonder what yeah i think electrical grid and i don't like it's a lot like per unit of currency or whatever yeah i don't know we'll see but either way um if the power goes out and they can't figure out i mean all crypto's gone forever you know yeah the power goes out if hard drives stop working

and i mean there's going to be people that remember how to build houses there's going to be people that remember how to make it you mean there's ways to build generators that work off of the flow of rivers like my friend uh steve renell that i was talking about earlier he has a cabin in alaska and the electricity is powered by water flow from a river you know they would have one of those yeah situations yeah you can i mean that's all people are going to remember how to do that kind of stuff but when it comes to the people that wrote the algorithms for blockchain you know bitcoin type stuff some of them probably remember how to do that again too some of them might not make it and we're talking about half the

population's dead wait are we doing zombie apocalypse we're doing some sort of a natural i thought we were doing solar flare that wipes out electronics. Solar flare is going to kill a lot of people. Oh, you think? Like the big ones? Yeah. Something big like some sort of hypernova in a distant galaxy. How about we do two-thirds of the people just to make it more edgy?

That's scarier. And then a third come back as zombies. Well, if we do two-thirds of the people the problem is what third lives the ones that were all in their bunkers the ones that were all in their like prepper hole the ones that are walking around barefoot developing thick calluses at the bottom of their feet no those guys don't even notice anything happened i mean they were like oh it's really bright for a day and whatever and then they go back to like planting their cassava fields and they just like live their normal life i'm not talking about those guys i'm talking about the fake guys that are out there oh yeah glamping

yeah exactly yeah preppers those guys they're probably not they probably won't make it ironically people will come and pillage their prepper caches i just think that we do have a lot of our knowledge in these um these digital forms that if you know we had to reinvent society again like according to people that study history and you know we know that human beings have survived multiple uh extinction events there's been many times where like the humans have yeah what do you mean human beings got down to i think it was uh 7 000 people at one point in time after a super volcano in um uh where was that but you're talking about like original human populations yeah 60 000 people 60 000, rather. Somewhere in that range. Human beings got down to about 7,000 people.

I want to say it was New Guinea, somewhere like there. There was some massive... The Toba catastrophe? Is that the one you're talking about, right? I think so, yeah. How many years ago was that? Did you put it up on the screen? 75,000 years ago?

Yeah, that's it. Yeah, 75,000 years ago, people got down to like almost nothing. How human beings almost vanished from the earth 70,000 years ago. There you go. Click on that. Though it also is labeled the controversial catastrophes, which... It's NPR. I chose NPR.

All of 7 billion human beings on earth. Keep scrolling, keep scrolling. Yeah. Super volcano, Toba. Okay. 70,000 BC, a volcano called Toba, Sumatra, that's where it is in Indonesia, went off blowing roughly 650 miles of vaporized rock into the air. It's the largest volcanic eruption that we know of, dwarfing everything else.

And scroll down. So the idea is that human beings got down to, I think, in the neighborhood of 7,000 to 10,000 people. So the part on top, it says that one study says it could have been as low as 40 reproducing adults. Or breeding

pairs, which means 80 people, I guess. But either way, they know we got down to a very low number. And they know that this volcano, this super volcano eruption did happen. And they also know that this is not uncommon. Well, it is kind of uncommon if it happens 70,000 years ago. No, but it's not when you think about 4.6 billion years of Earth. Totally. But if you think of human history and certainly our lifespans, if happens once every 75 000 years you're like oh we're good we're good

your kids are good you know yes your kids are good probably but your grandkids are probably good too society it's it's it's it's entirely possible that society could get hit yeah for sure one of these things for sure yellowstone you know but yellowstone's crazy like they have thousands that's why you have uh that's why you have elon on here talking about you know making Yeah, for sure. One of these things. For sure. I mean, Yellowstone. You know about Yellowstone. It's crazy. They have thousands of earthquakes a year. That's why you have Elon on here talking about making humans multi-planetary. Yeah, what do you think about that? I'm into it. Climb rocks on Mars?

I would totally go. You would climb rocks on Mars? If he'll send me, I'll go. Get him on here again. Tell him I'm willing to go. How many years would you be willing to stay? It used to be that they thought you'd have to stay there for the rest of your life. Now they think they can get you back in a couple of years.

I'd be willing to go for the rest of my life later in my life. Like as a 70-year-old or something, I bet I would. I don't know. I'm into exploration like that, just like full, interesting new places. Yeah, but maybe you'd be like Fred the Dirtbag Guy, and you'd want to be climbing when you're 85 years old. Maybe, but I think basically if I felt like there was something useful I could contribute by going to Mars, I would definitely go. Because I do think that that is sort of the future of humanity, going to different places.

It'd be pretty wild. You'd be able to climb a little higher without Earth's gravity holding you back. I know. I know. I need all the help I can get, especially at that age, you know. That's the way you think, Jamie. Yeah, maybe that's the move. When you get older, you go to mars for climbing low gravity places fucking easy yeah

but by the time we get people to mars they'll probably extend life lifespans yeah pretty far we'll see they're doing some weird shit now um i read a study out of i think it was out of um i think it was jerusalem where they they've done they're doing these intensive hyperbaric studies where they take people and they put them in hyperbaric chambers on a regular basis these rich oxygen

environments and they found that they you know the way they determine biological age is the length of your telomeres and they've determined that through this hyperbaric chamber uh therapy they were able to reduce people's biological age by 20 years hmm yeah fucking wild dude i mean but does that wind up having health implications i don't know i don't know but they're there I don't

think they know they're just like whoa it's interesting because this is a fairly recent study and it's a fairly new discovery so they're trying to figure this out and hyperbaric chambers they've used in the past like I know fighters have used them for injuries hmm I know that people that have broken bones they found that heals things quicker in these oxygen rich environments and then some people have used them for for those but as far as like health and wellness the use of them is i think it's pretty recent that people started using them just for elective health and wellness type situations where you're just trying to improve

your health let's see you can find that study. I mean, I have the study, but it's literally the study. I'm trying to dig through it to find the... Hyperbaric oxygen therapy increases telomere length and decreases immunosensitivity and isolated blood cells. Pretty interesting shit.

That's what I read for fun at night you know i think this is from 2020 yeah there it is september 3rd 2020 and is that the one from israel i mean look at the names on it it certainly seems like it yeah tel aviv yeah weird shit man you know so you got to imagine that and there's plenty of like normal ways to extend life, like severely restricted calorie diets, like basically being fasted forever. You can extend rats' lives by like double or something. Yeah, isn't that wild that the more food you eat, the shorter your life is? Yeah, exactly.

I might be fucked because I eat like a pig. It's a real issue. Better. It's all balanced. Right. I know. Do you want to be hungry and live longer or just full and happy? Yeah, I mean, arguably full and happy.

Yeah, arguably. Certainly you want a full and happy life. Yeah. Because that's the thing is if you're in a restricted calorie state for your whole life, I mean, it means that you're lacking the energy to do things you know to like go running or like right play in the mountains like all the things that i care about obviously you couldn't do in that kind of restricted calorie state right but um but i do kind of wonder sometimes like you know if i was a painter or something and i was just sitting inside like thinking up crazy ideas and like drawing or whatever it's

like might be worth it you know only eating 600 calories a day and like living to 150 yeah or seeing if it works out that way do you anticipate a time where climbing is no longer interesting to you and you want to pursue other things or do you feel do you ever feel in any way that you are um a prisoner to your earliest passion because that's that's interesting no because i still love it i'm still coming up with the good idea things that i think at least are good ideas i'm like oh that'd be cool and i'll do this thing and it'll be interesting and i mean and i am sort of following the natural progression of like you know doing the podcast it's like now you're talking about it and you're sort of sharing i'm supposed to be doing commentary for the olympics so it's actually not unlike your whole scene where it's like you talk about fighting and then you like talk to interesting people about you know it's

like you know as you wind up being sort of like a spokesperson for your sport in some way. And I'm like, and I'm great with that if it means that I still get to climb as much as I want. That's really cool that you're going to do commentary for the Olympics. Yeah, well, we'll see because this year is unusual since Japan doesn't really want foreigners to come.

So we'll see how it all plays out. But in theory... Could you do it remotely? Yeah, yeah. Though that really takes a lot of the appeal out of doing commentary for the olympics if i'm just watching a live stream and talking about it well what if you're in like one of those buffalo wild wing screens big giant fucking 50 foot screen watching it like sitting and i mean it might be okay yeah it's better than nothing for sure yeah

for sure no i mean i'm excited to participate in any way because I think it's such an important moment for climbing. It's cool to just be part of that. Yeah. You're a spokesperson for climbing. You're not just a climber. Do you feel like added responsibility because of that or do you just welcome it because you love climbing so much? Yeah, I just welcome it. I just love climbing. And, I mean, I think I am actually in a good position to be a bit of a spokesperson for it because I do kind of come from a different generation of climbers I am more by nature I kind of prefer the adventurous side

of climbing like I like the big you know sort of adventurous endeavors in the mountains which really speak back to sort of the history of climbing you know like those are those are the the places that climbing came from and so it is easy for me to talk about that kind of stuff and yet I also you know try to train in a modern way and train in gyms and you know i kind of know the the elite you know modern athletic side of climbing as well so i don't know you know i'm happy to be able to talk about both you know one of the things that came up in uh free solo and i guess just as a reality of later in your life is you started getting injured. No, that was actually just bad luck and free solo.

It's funny because literally since the film I've had zero injuries of any kind. That's crazy. I'm pretty sure. And actually in the – and I think there's a line in the film where I'm like, oh, I hadn't been injured in years and then I got injured a couple times in a couple months like after I started dating my now wife and stuff like that. But no, a lot of that's just total, that's just a fluke. Just dumb luck.

Yeah, it's just a fluke at times. Well, that's good to hear. Yeah, and part of it is because since I've lived in Vegas, I see a dude for body work in town. Oh. Actually, I'll give him a shout. Pat, my buddy Pat, he's the man. Shout out to Pat. Yeah, he listened to your show a bunch.

He sucked. But so, Pat's like this incredible body worker. And I see him as regularly as I can when I'm in town. And I really think that's actually helped quite a bit. It's like getting the oil changed basically whenever you can. It keeps the engine running well. Yeah. So I mean, I think that basically having a home, eating well, getting body work done,

all that kind of stuff, good healthy lifestyle. I don't think I've had any injuries. So you live a house now yeah yeah my god i know crazy what is that like no it's nice it's comfortable there's a shower there's a bathroom you can like you can do you watch tv uh we don't have a tv whoa of course you don't have a tv but we have a computer i mean watch stuff on the computer right you don't have a tv i've never owned a tv wow i don't know it just means that it makes me a little more strategic about my my digital media you know what i mean like because if i want to watch something you know i can download it and watch it right but i only by choice you know and it's only gonna

be that appealing because you're watching a little screen yeah i kind of like the little screen though because it sits right in front of you the thing is you need a big screen because it sits way across the room but if you have your laptop on your lap then you don't need a big screen it's a good point i see what you're saying like hey those those uh virtual reality things that the samsung created that slide into like a it's like a phone samsung had a vr situation that's a google cardboard you know they actually did a cardboard box that's designed for a smartphone that's right they did it too yeah yeah that's right because there's like a real simple thing right yeah this is for educational stuff so that like school kids can just have a smartphone and then go to like world-class aquariums and stuff like that and experience like

crazy you know like go to the great barrier reef or and fry your retinas and kill your vision real quick because it's all like inches in front of your face yeah so do you do other stuff um to supplement your climbing like any other kind of working out or stretching or anything like that yeah stretch like this morning i did this like shoulder mobility stuff and like opposition stuff sort of like you know push-up hand standing type like shoulder stuff um and then some core and then some stretching and just i mean it's all like basic normal stuff do you go to a trainer to teach you this stuff or did you learn it from books no just i mean it's all i mean it's all basic body weight exercises so it's like but i mean i have read some books about i've you know all my friends are professional climbers i've obviously talked to everybody about it you sort of hear best practices the shoulder

mobility things that i was playing with today um i actually just learned from uh one of the other climbers on the jungle trip that i was just on uh one of the climbers was a venezuelan guy named fuko that uh trains basically the venezuelan world cup team and so he had a bunch of sort of like new school training exercises and things and i was like oh that's cool so i started doing you know his workout technique and this is just something he developed for himself no i'm sure he learned it from some book but i just hadn't really seen it applied in that way i mean it's all just i think it's totally stupid which is like moving your arms in different ways and like shoulder mobility but because my shoulders are not great at that kind of thing it feels useful for me because

that's like a personal weakness i mean so much of climbing is identifying your personal weaknesses and working on those because like what's good for some people isn't going to be useful. Like I don't do that much stretching and it's because I'm naturally like moderately flexible. And, you know, being extremely flexible doesn't help that much as a climber. But if you were extremely tight, it would be a hindrance. You know, so I kind of fall in the middle ground where it's like it's not really worth putting a lot of effort into because it's not going to give me that much more of a gain. putting a lot of effort into because it's not going to give me that much more of a gain. Is it one of those things where if someone was extremely flexible, would it be possible for them to reach areas like particularly with their legs? Yeah. Yeah. If you can just easily do the full

splits, I mean, it does open up all kinds of technique that, that a normal climber wouldn't be able to do. But you know, the thing is me being relatively tall and relatively flexible, I can get most of the way there without actually being able to do the splits and it'd be like a lot of work for me to do the splits i'm kind of like that's you think so yeah i think so why i don't know because i've stretched stretched a lot and i can't do the splits you know so i'm like i don't know it's like i bet you could i i mean can you do the splits yeah you can do the splits yeah i don't even have to warm up i can do the splits look at that lady yeah so that splits? Yeah, I don't even have to warm up. I can do the splits. Look at that lady.

Yeah, so that, exactly. That's the kind of thing. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, on the other hand, though, I'd probably be able to use those same footholds because I'm taller, you know, because they're a certain length apart. Right. Like, you know, really, if you're short, you kind of have to make up for it in a lot of ways like that.

Like, you have to be able to stretch really far. But I would imagine you being taller and also if you were as flexible as her yeah it would help yeah it would help it's not that hard man i could help you with that wait when you're off i want to see you yeah yeah i could help you with that oh yeah no i'm interested in the picture on my instagram of me with a straddle leaning all the way forward like flattening my chest out on the ground with my legs out like this really yeah i can do that you're supple man yeah well i've been doing martial arts since i was a little kid and i never stopped yeah see that's wait that's you that's me dude wtf yeah i could do all that shit still wait i don't know dude is the one on the left you? No, that's not. Oh, yeah. Below that is me, but that's an easy stretch.

Yeah. That's me from when I was like 29. Damn. How old are you now? 53. Oh, wow. Damn. 29.

Respect. Yeah. Just keep going. The thing is to just keep doing it. That's the thing. A lot of people, their life gets in the way. Respect. Yeah. Just keep going. The thing is to just keep doing it. That's the thing. A lot of people, their life gets in the way. Totally. But I don't ever allow that as an option. I don't ever allow long periods of time where I don't work out or long periods of time where I don't stretch.

So that's the thing with climbing is that I would never allow a long period without working out like hand stuff or arm stuff. The stretching is like so peripheral where you're like, yeah, it helps a little, but it's not required. And so I don't know, actually I just started stretching again because I'm, I'm trying this project in Vegas, like this thing I want to do. And, uh, basically I like, couldn't really get my foot onto this one foothold easily. I mean, I could get it up there, but I had to kind of like lurch and, you know, sort of fall back sideways a little bit. And I was like, Oh, I need to like limber up a little bit yeah you know now that i have a purpose for it i'm like okay then it's like fun to start doing my stretching again have you ever tried hot yoga yeah i hate it i hate it it's like it's really popular in vegas i don't know if you've ever been

in suburban vegas but like the whole it's like really big with suburban housewives and stuff and i'm i theorize that people are into hot yoga because they sweat so much they feel like they did something. And they're like, oh, I went to a workout class. But you're like, no, you just freaking stretch for an hour. I'd much rather just stretch on my living room floor. I hear what you're saying. And I understand why you would think that. But it's very difficult.

It's not just you're sweating because you're stretching. And you're not just stretching. You're definitely working out. It is really hard to do, especially if you do like, I know Bikram's a douchebag, but his classes that the, the,

the, it's not even his, the thing about that guy is like that sequence of postures has been around for thousands of years. Yeah. I've never done Bikram yoga. I've done like a conventional yoga class in an incredibly hot room and it's just kind of like flow you know yeah it depends on what you're doing how you're doing it and who's teaching it to you I went I went with my wife and at the end there were too many people in the room

and it was like too hot and then everyone sweat so much that it became like humid in a way that was like crazy like there was a cloud at the top and everyone was like about to die and I just remember the end of the class my wife just being just laying on the mat just like shallow breathing like trying to survive basically for the class to end you know it's like dude we're all just gonna die in here it's like way too hot you get accustomed to it though you do yeah it's like 105 degrees and you do 90 minutes you get accustomed to it yeah i remember the first time i did it i was like this is the craziest fucking thing i've ever done totally but then after a while i was doing it two three times a week my other bummer with that is that i normally do yoga like as part of the day and if you do the

hot yoga like that you have to shower you have to go home you have to change it's like it's like its own thing that has to kind of stand alone because it's like an experience yeah you know that's true and you you definitely need electrolytes after that too totally you can't like do that and then go get your groceries on the way home and like run a bunch of errands because you're like a total it's like a disaster no no no i would always shower and even then i would go to the supermarket to grab some lunch and i'd be drenched you just keep sweating even though you're like dry off and everything you just start sweating again because your body's like what the fuck did you just do it's funny like i yeah i uh i don't normally sweat that much in exercise like i'm not a big sweater and i was the first times i did high yoga i was like oh you know i'm sure i'm not gonna sweat

that much and you start the class and you're like yeah it's not that crazy not that crazy and then i was like oh i'm like sweating it's like running down and then pretty soon it's like dripping off my nose like pooling and i was like i'm sweating like i've never sweat before it's like this is fucking disgusting yeah it's pretty radical like when you do it this there's one when you're standing on one leg and you're extending your other leg backwards and then you're leaning your body in a straight line with your i think it's like standing stick pose or something like that i forget what it's called but it's dripping off my face and dripping off my arms but it's so gross because then the whole mat's so wet,

and then you're, like, slipping and sliding, and you're just like, oh, man. It's a little gross, but the benefits are tangible. You really develop a lot of strength and flexibility and stability of your joints. It's really good for your knees. Yeah, I mean, if I saw that it helped performance, you know, I'd get on board because I'd be like, oh, yeah, yeah, you're gross for an hour. You take a shower or whatever. Like, if it's worth it, then I'm into it.

The key to learning how to stretch properly, though, is little incremental pushes through pain and breathing exercises. So most people get to this where they're like, eee, and they're like, bleh, and then they back off. But you've got to learn how to, whew, you've got to learn how to just slowly ease into it. And then you've got to learn how to... You got to learn how to just slowly ease into it. And then you got to learn how to just deeper. And then deep. And then hold it. And it just takes... It's just...

You have to be consistent too. It might be what I'm lacking in my stretching. I stretch to like a point where I'm like, this is comfy and it's keeping me fine. But I hardly ever like push my stretching. It's painful. I did it today for 45 minutes. Oh, yeah. Geez. Yeah, I do my workout and then I hardly ever push my stretching. It's painful. I did it today for 44 minutes. Oh, yeah? Geez.

Yeah, I do my workout, and then I did 45 minutes of stretching. I remember when I was chatting to you. I was like, that's awesome. You can stop me doing that. Well, no. Yeah, but that was only when you were 29. No, the bald one was not me 29. Well, yeah, I know.

That was like two years ago. Yeah, I can do it right now. Classic. Yeah. Classic. It's just a thing where you just keep doing it. As long as you keep doing it, you maintain flexibility. Oh, yeah.

That's me like a week ago. Crazy. Yeah. You just got to keep doing it. I don't think I can do that. You could. You definitely could. Yeah, I certainly could build up to it, obviously.

You might not be able to do it right now, but you definitely could. But there's a real benefit to that because the more pliable your tissue is, the more range of motion you have, I think the more you can alleviate injury. And I think it's one of the reasons – it's got to be one of the reasons why I can still do the kind of workouts that I do in terms of martial arts stuff because I didn't for a while – I did – like jiu-jitsu doesn't require the same kind of flexibility and uh for a while I wasn't even doing that I was just lifting weights and then I went from that to kickboxing again and I noticed I was pretty stiff I was like there's a lot of like my movements

weren't as fluid anymore and then I started stretching out again and got it all back so it just there's a range of motion that you just don't have if you're not stretching i'm like i feel like i start stretching my back and stuff i always have like shoulder stuff right when people start talking about flexibility i feel the same way instantly like gosh that stretch yeah yeah it's funny because i'm pretty much always sore from something like you know i mean i go climbing six days a week or something so i'm always a little achy or sore And especially right now with the stuff I'm working on in Vegas, I'm sort of alternating like leg day and arm day, like basically like hard climbing,

which is more in your arms. And then sort of adventures like mountain, what I was talking about traversing all the mountains, that's like more in your legs. Cause ultimately you're just going up and over all these mountains. And so on any given day, I'm always kind of like, Oh, my legs, my back, my feet, whatever. Or like, whatever. That's why I'm surprised that you've never fucked around with CBD. It's really good for inflammation. It's really good for sore muscles. There's a bunch of topical stuff that – Honestly, well, it's kind of new and it's like good for everything.

And I'm like anything that's good for everything I assume is like good for nothing. Yeah, I know what you're saying. It's good to be skeptical like that, but it really is good for inflammation. Some people, they find it good for inflammation. Yeah. Some people, they find it good for a lot of different things, like psychological things, even like anxiety.

Yeah. I'm so untroubled by that stuff that I'm just like, whatever, you know? You're not, you're so mellow. Like when you were talking about climbing, like free soloing the face of a fucking mountain,

it's mostly mellow. I'm like, that's hilarious. What is mellow? I know, but that's... Well, if it wasn't mellow i'm like that's hilarious what is like you know i know but that's well if it wasn't mellow you wouldn't want to do it you know your state of like mellowness in the face of insurmountable impossible heights so so so funny random thing so i did a podcast with the ceo of whoop the other day is like because they're the title sponsor for my podcast. So classic style, you're doing podcasts about podcasts or whatever.

And we were talking about REM sleep because, you know, the Whoop like tracks your sleep stuff. And it was a bit of a weird like personal, I don't know, it was like a moment of enlightenment almost. But apparently I get significantly greater percentage of my sleep in REM sleep than average. And it's funny because every day the app says like

your REM sleep is much higher percentage than than whatever like you must be making up for for you know mist or something but like it's just always super high and apparently that's the REM sleep is a stage sleep that that you know sort of gives calmness and like you know mitigates anxiety and things like that and I am sort of like it is it is interesting if I'm like maybe my whole thing in climbing just comes down to the fact that I'm a naturally really heavy REM sleeper, you know? And I just like, my mind is always kind of calm. Cause I get like an extra, you know, 15% of my time in REM sleep every night. That's sort of like, yeah, it was one of those weird things. Cause you know, I've literally spent years with people doing interviews being like,

what's the secret, what's the thing? Like, how do you do this? You know, totally insane seeming thing. I'm like, maybe I'll just sleep really well and then i'm really relaxed as a result you know it's like it's kind of it's kind of interesting it is interesting it's like you're born for it like well i mean yeah possibly or you never know chicken in the egg because maybe it goes the other way like maybe because i'm in such like high anxiety situations all the time that but i don't think so because it subjectively feels very chill you know like everything i'm doing feels relaxed when you go back like what age did you start climbing uh 10 so you probably don't remember before 10 no i literally don't and

before that i mean i still love climbing on things you know i was like climbing the school buildings and trees and all that there's also also, I think, something that comes from when you are accustomed to doing things that are physically taxing and you've done it since you were little. I think you have like more calmness and you're more mellow, period. Yeah, totally. Because you're just so accustomed. Anything you've done for 25 years is going to feel pretty relaxed when you do it well also i just think you're exerting a lot of energy like i think one of the things that stresses a lot of people out i believe your body has certain requirements just from an evolutionary perspective we our bodies were designed to run away from

predators to to fend off enemies to do whatever we had to do to survive in terms of like trekking and doing things and for most people they don't use their body like that at all and i think this extra energy manifests itself as anxiety as depression as this is like bad feelings because you're just like because your body's just not getting what it deserves what it needs or what it requires your body is constantly doing that so your body's gotten not getting what it deserves, what it needs, or what it requires. Your body is constantly doing that. So your body has gotten what it's required since you were 10. So you've sort of evolved. That's an interesting way to look at it.

It is kind of true. I mean, I have been. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, like, you know, that fight or flight flight response like what you're describing the like fleeing from predators i mean i think that is kind of a root of anxieties like modern life like things trigger fight or flight that shouldn't necessarily you know it's like stress at work and your boss or whatever and it like triggers that same thing yes but um yeah it is true that that in my life at least the things that trigger fight or flight are like legitimate life or death sorts of situations where it's like oh you you know you are about to fall off a cliff or like oh you know like the storm is coming and you're out in the middle of nowhere and you're like i'm about to get worked

you know it's like right like typically when i feel that kind of major anxiety it's like for a real reason and um i mean it is interesting yeah i mean it is it is appropriate that way it's like it's like it's like the correct outlet for that kind of stress. It really does completely make sense. And also, most of the guys that I've met that do what you do, and I don't know if I've met anybody that does exactly what you do, but guys that climb a lot, they're pretty chill. Yeah. It's a pretty...

Well, dude, I think part of that is because you get worked by nature so often that then when you're in sort of normal life, everything feels pretty relaxed because you're kind of like, oh, I comfortable i'm fed i'm hydrated i'm like you know my body is fine i'm not about to just get hammered by by nature you know yeah like yeah that's my my philosophy about really difficult exercise it's really important because it makes other things seem easy and the stresses of regular i think we have just like a standard base level of stress and when you artificially impose a higher base level electively like whether it's through climbing or other kind of exercise totally whatever you're doing it makes the rest of life seem easy seem easy yeah

dude i had uh earlier this year there was a winter storm warning for vegas it does snow in vegas sometimes in the mountains especially like get get snow there's a winter storm warning for Vegas. It does snow in Vegas sometimes, and the mountains especially get snow. There was a winter storm warning for this storm coming through, and I'd climbed like 20 days in a row basically or something, and I wanted to use the storm day to try to hike this one section of the traverse that I'm trying to do of all these peaks. I figured I would take advantage of a non-climbing day to do the one walk-in section to figure out where the route goes.

And so I went out in this crazy storm. And when I started, it was like snowing a little. And I was like, ah, and crazy wind. It's really cold. And I was trying out these new like waterproof layers just to see how – actually, I wanted to try them out before the jungle to see if they'd be good jungle layers. And so I go up into the mountain. Anyway, long story short, I get completely worked. It turns out visibility is nothing.

I didn't know where I was going. I get lost in the mountains. And it wound up being basically too difficult of terrain to travel through uh in the snow like uh because i'd sort of taken it for granted but in red rock on those mountains you you walk on these like exposed sandstone slabs all the time but when you cover them in like six inches of snow it's like really kind of horrifying you can't just like walk up the slabs anymore it's like now a total tobogganing death trap where you're gonna like slide down you know so i was like anyway so i go up quite a ways eventually i just had to give up and like turn around but i'm now you know 2500 feet like up this mountainside and then i turn

around and then it all is way more socked in i couldn't even see my tracks anymore because everything's like filled in and visibility is nothing and so i had like a garmin watch on so i kept like looking at the little track on my watch being like am i to the left or the right of the track that i came up you know like no idea where i am full mountains i keep falling down and you know there's like you were falling yeah but like sliding over things or tripping on rocks it's really steep hillside with like and you're stepping through you know say six or eight inches of fresh powder but underneath it's still like loose rocks and cactuses and things like that so it's like you know the terrain is it's not like a snow base or something right like you're just stepping through it and falling over anyway so i fell into cactuses a bunch of times and so

the thing is i was totally have a thermic completely wet totally worked and my hand had all these cactus thorns in it and my other hand was too numb to like manipulate anything so i wound up like biting the biggest thorns out and then just left the rest of them because it's just I just couldn't use my hands and just keep staggering down the mountain. Anyway, eventually I like made it back to the car, made it back to the house. And then I had my wife pull all the thorns out because I like I couldn't really use my hand. That was so worked. But I was kind of like but that was like my rest day adventure. You know what I mean?

That's like I mean, it turned out being it turned out being way more. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was hoping that it was going to go better than that, and it didn't really work out. But that is kind of the point that when you take on that elective, you know, I was like, I had a goal that I wanted to piece together this section of a hike. It didn't work out that way. I wound up, you know, building a bunch of character instead. But, you know, you're just like, that's just a normal day out.

You know, it's like when you're adventuring in the mountains, sometimes those winter storm advisors actually happen, you know. It's just easy living in the desert. You're like, it'll be fine. It'll be fine. And then you're like, no, it was not fine. It was totally crunk. That's pretty crazy. And that does speak to what we're saying.

If you're doing that kind of shit. Yeah, and that's just like a normal day. That's not even like the crazy, oh, I thought I was going to die. I was just deeply uncomfortable and sort sort of on edge for you know a while yeah when i got home my wife was like this is the most worked i've ever seen you like it's totally like like a like a wet dog that's been beaten too hard you know but i was like i need a hot shower i need like towels i need hot soup i need you to get the tweezers out and do some but you probably felt amazing once you were back home right and you did have a hot shower except for your hands i think i was kind of worked for i was i think i just lay down the rest of the

day basically i was like oh what if i died but didn't you feel happy that you were home well yeah no totally that's the whole thing with all these types of climate experiences is then you're just so glad i mean because we live in just like normal little suburban house you know but you're like there's a bathroom with hot water like so great i was like yeah it doesn't take much to feel very comfortable do people in your neighborhood recognize you no i mean my neighbors all three of my neighbors are seven-year-old ladies that have lived in the neighborhood since it was first built in 89 it's pretty classic oh wow that is classic yeah yeah it's pretty funny actually one of them just

had to move into a home which is kind of sad but oh that sucks yeah yeah she had like a stroke or something oh that sucks death comes for all of us yeah totally the um the climbing community in vegas is is it a pretty robust community yeah yeah and like more professional climbers are sort of moving i mean it is the best four season climbing in the country it's like it's for sure the best climbing in the country wow so um so there's definitely a reason for climbers to live there and i think the climbing scene in vegas is actually even more robust than i know because i'm constantly at the cliff and i meet someone i'm like oh where are you from they're like we live here and you're like really and that happens consistently that i meet people you know and we're just like out at the cliff climbing and you're like you live in town i've never seen you or

heard of you before and you're you know like you just live here too so That's the weird thing about Vegas. You wouldn't realize it, but it is very small in terms of the outside area, like a small townish. I don't know. What do you mean? How many people live there? Two million people live in Vegas. In Vegas?

I think so. But you're in the outskirts, right? Well, yeah. I live in the suburbia, but it's like, no. It's all just Vegas. Oh, it is? I mean, almost all the climbers live on the west side because that's where the rock is and that's where like red rock and all the cool limestone is and so most of the climbers live on one side of town

but still i mean it's just suburbia you know it's like yeah i think it's two million people living in the basin it's like it's a pretty big town yeah but it's just like i think of austin as being pretty small and austin is basically 2 million people too. Austin is a million in the city and then a million in the outside areas. Interesting. I just wonder how it feels. The other thing about Vegas is there's literally nothing else around for hundreds of miles. So it's like the people that live in Vegas are the only people around.

Whereas there are, how far away is San Antonio? An hour. Yeah, okay. So that's kind of the thing is that you know or certainly like la especially you're like oh well la you know the city of downtown la has a certain population but there's so many people living within a two-hour drive that it's like it's this crazy bowl it blends la there's no line between la and orange county and orange County and San Diego. Yeah, exactly. It's all just mass. Exactly. Massive human beings.

It's sprawled into like a mega city that you're just like, oh, it's just too much. It's so, so too. I didn't realize how much it was too much until I came here. Or like your old studio in the hills or whatever. What's it called? In the valley, whatever that was like north. I mean, that's like totally, you know, you're like, it's LA, but it's actually like an hour drive away in crazy traffic with millions more people.

And you're like, where the fuck is it? There's no end. Dude, actually, fun story. You know, last time I talked to you was in that studio and it was during the free solo tour and I had to leave because I was like going to the airport. And I was like super late because we always chat so freaking long. And it was like, you know, an hour to lax from there or something with traffic and my driver canceled like basically the driver got there like saw that it was supposed to be going to lax and just like bailed and drove away so then i had to wait for like another driver

to come you know i was using lyft and um then another driver gets there and i'm now like fully gonna miss my flight and uh i was like dude i'm gonna miss my flight if you can get me to lax you know basically in time for my flight you'll get the tip of your life anyway the dude was like uh he was i was like either bangladeshi or uh like i think he's bangladeshi or something basically he was like indian driver and was he it was like it was like setting a fish loose in the sea he was like you want me to do what and then he he basically just drove in the shoulder and did anything. He got me to LAX in like half an hour. It was totally incredible.

It felt like I was driving in Bangalore or somewhere. Did you get nervous though? No. Basically, I was like, if he feels safe, I feel safe. I was like, you do whatever you want. It's like, you take me. I forget where he said he was from, but it was Indian subcontinent. And he just went.

Old school. Like, dude. And fully like, yeah, yeah. Like driving on the sidewalk type. Like anything goes. Like I was thinking of it recently because, you know, I was just on this trip to the jungle. And the driving in Georgetown, like the capital of Guyana, it really felt like that where it's kind of fish in the sea. Everyone's kind of doing their thing.

Like all the stoplights are out. so people just kind of like figure their way through the intersections nobody hits each other but it's all all feels kind of weird you know i was remembering yeah driving from your studio and full like action movie like totally insane insane drive the craziest i've ever driven in is uh i wasn't driving but i was being driven it was in mexico city where they don't give a fuck about traffic lights. It doesn't mean a goddamn thing. People were running red lights left and right, and I was like, dude, is this normal?

He's like, my friend, this is Mexico City. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Anything goes. Anything goes. The intersections were just at rush hour. We had done the UFC weigh-ins, and then we were headed back to the hotel. It was essentially rush hour. And the intersections were fully jammed up 100% of the time.

People were just trying to make their way through it. No, it's like two schools of fish going through each other. That's the thing. It's just full. Nobody hits. No, no, no. No, it wasn't? No, it wasn't efficient at all.

Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's amazing how everything just kind of swarms through, and it all kind of works. And you're like, it's a miracle. Maybe in some places. The place i was at in mexico city that was not the case and it was also weird too because the elevation was very high i think it's like 7 000 feet above sea level but the pollution was fucking insane like we were flying into it it was like there was a fire it was so i put it on my instagram because it's so it was

so nasty i was like this is great and i had a headache the entire time i was there and i was like am i do i have a headache because of pollution or altitude like i didn't know huh i've never i've never flown in mexico city i have heard that it's like pretty intense pretty intense and this it was unfortunately for the people that were fighting it was there was a it was a heavyweight title fight so imagine being a giant person which you're already a hard time with cardio anyway and then being at 7 000 feet above sea level and more cardio requirements and then pollution dude they're presumably they go early for that kind of thing and like spend some time getting used to it glad what you said that one guy did and he won and one guy didn't he lost. And the guy who lost is known for having spectacular cardio.

Interesting. And he wound up fucking up. But did he lose because he just got punched in the face too hard? No, he got tired, and he never gets tired. He got there two weeks before, or the other guy was there months before. Really? But two weeks, you think, would still be enough to sort of traumatize him? No, they say two weeks is that you're better off like two days than two weeks.

Oh, really? Yeah, your body doesn't really acclimate. Your body really needs a lot of time to acclimate to 7,000 feet above sea level, like months. And this first guy, Fabricio Verdum, he did it for months, but Cain Velasquez only did it for a couple weeks. I think he had like 11 days, actually, somewhere in that neighborhood of a couple weeks. I don't remember exactly. But they were saying when you talk to actual experts, you're almost better off coming in right before the event than – whereas you can get all the work and do the hard cardio leading up to that and then have the –

you're going to be diminished because of the altitude. But at least your body has gone through the hard work. You still will have been on your own program. Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, there's two schools of thought when it comes to high altitude training. Some, when it comes to fighting at least. Some, the current school of thought is you should train at low altitude but sleep at

high altitude. They used to think you should train at high altitude because when you train at high, but now they think, no, because your workload is not as great yeah you can't work your muscles hard so they they want you to train you know for the couple hours that you're training be that at low altitude and then so like a lot of guys will fighters will train down in the valley and then drive up to big bear in california because because you can make that trip in a day, in a couple of hours. And so they live up there and sleep up there. And where do they fight, though?

Well, it depends on where they're fighting. But even if they're fighting in Vegas, there's still a cardio benefit to sleeping at altitude. I mean, but Vegas, though, is like 2,000 feet or like 1,500 or something. But it's not about the requirement of Vegas. It's about having higher red blood cell counts so you have, in general, greater cardio. that true though yeah yeah it is true yeah okay it's one of the reasons why a lot of people uh like big time teams uh come out of like denver has a really good big time team team elevation and uh trevor whitmore's uh his whitman's his uh team is up there too and Jackson Winklejohn which is in Albuquerque, New Mexico

which is I think 5,000 feet quite a few camps where they work at a higher altitude and they seem to be pretty successful I'll be doing that this week because I'm supposed to be climbing Mount Whitney this week which is like 14.5, the highest peak know the highest peak in in the u.s and uh so i i'll sleep in the van like at the highest

point i can around vegas which is like 8400 feet oh wow like yeah it's like at least something you know like basically sleep it out through a couple nights to acclimatize a little bit so when you go mountain climbing you don't feel quite as bad yeah yeah i think that's fine for climbing but i think for like a heavy endurance sport well no no either really be acclimated well also if i was trying to set a record in climbing then i'd have to go live at like 10 12 000 feet exactly what you're describing but if i'm just trying to like get by then yeah you can you can just you know spend a night or two at eight and hope that you feel good enough when you set out to do your podcast did you have a format in mind did you have

like uh did you see yourself doing it for a long period of time like how long did you think about it before you got into it so my podcast is um with this uh guy fitsca hall from duct tape than beer who like does this podcast called the dirtbag diaries and so he's like a professional like he's done this a long time so he brought he brought all the technical expertise and like sent me the equipment everything sent me the mic that's convenient yeah and taught me how to use it which is super helpful um and you know explained how to do all the levels and then his team is doing all the post-production and editing and like dealing with everything and he sort of approached me about the idea of of doing it as lead up to the olympics we called the climbing

gold and it's just like an it was going to be just a look at the competitors and kind of the state of of climbing as it goes into the Olympics and then when the Olympics got pushed we kind of found that we had the extra time to go a little bit deeper into real climbing like what are you know like what is bouldering like who does first ascents like who puts the route up first like why does that matter you know and then in our first episode with this guy Peter Cro, who's like a personal hero of mine is about vision and sort of inspiration and climbing. Like why does one generation's vision and, and another generation surpass it? You know, like basically, you know, why can the last generation of climbers not see past into what the next generation is going to do? I mean,

it's just interesting because like Peter was an incredibly talented climber, and he kind of took free-soloing to a certain level. And I basically started at the level that he ended at and then took it to a different level. But now I'm sort of like, you know, I wouldn't say that I'm necessarily at the very limit of my vision, but, you know, I'm close. Like, doing El Cap and the film Free Solo, all that kind of stuff, definitely represents the edge of what I consider possible. But then already now I see sort of Olympic competitors

who are just physically so much more gifted that in theory they'll have a totally different vision. Anyway, so those are the sorts of ideas that we've been exploring. It just seems like a good time for it. And there's nothing like that in climbing podcasting right now. I mean, there are a handful of sort of long- form interview podcasts, kind of like what you do in climbing, where they like chat with interesting climbers and tell long stories. But it's not edited down to be thematic. You know, it's not explaining the sport in an approachable way.

So yours is more, it's more produced. Yeah, it's much more produced. And that's the intention and so the idea was always to have sort of a limited run um like 10 to 20 episodes leading up to the olympics and sort of explaining the sport in a way that people can can access and then once you've done that do you anticipate continuing it for years or do you know the idea was just to do this one-off thing but um but i'm sure as you know you just never know where it's gonna it's gonna go are you enjoying it yeah i've really been enjoying talking to the guests because so many of them are personal heroes of mine. Like people I've looked up to my whole life are like, oh.

And then some of the stories, like I was telling you, the woman, Joanna Ariosti, the first Ascensionist in Vegas. Like hearing her stories, I was like, this is crazy. So I find it like really personally inspiring. You know, like it excites me to go out and climb other things just because i'm like wow like i can't believe she was doing that in the 70s like it's so wild you know like keeps me keeps me excited about it that's awesome but and what is it called again tell everybody uh climbing gold climbing gold yeah and it's available everywhere everywhere spotify apple wherever you get your uh wherever you do podcasts well listen man thanks for being on here again i

appreciate it it's always fun to talk to you and sit down with you. We just did three hours, believe it or not. Did we do? Jesus Christ. Yeah, it's already 4 o'clock. Is it really? Yeah. That is crazy.

It's crazy. That is crazy. Well, that's the thing. It's always the experience. It's the Joe Rogan experience. You never know where it's going to take you. Well, it's always fun talking to you, my friend. Thank you very much.

Great to see you. I want to see the splits now. Yes. Okay, I'll show you right now. Bye, everybody. Bye.