The Rich Roll Podcast - For Colin O'Brady, Infinite Love Fuels Human Potential

Episode Date: May 18, 2020

Returning for his fourth appearance on the podcast, Colin O'Brady is here to elaborate. Longtime listeners are well acquainted with Colin's story from burn victim to boundary eclipsing adventurer. Even if you're new to the podcast, chances are stumbled across his story by way of his appearances everywhere, from the Today show to the Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon. If you missed our previous conversations (RRP#207, RRP#235 and RRP#439), they're an excavation of Colin's origin story growing up on a commune. How he survived an almost lethal burn accident that left him unlikely to walk again. His phoenix-like transformation into a professional ITU triathlete and Olympic hopeful. And how he morphed into a mountaineer with the audacity to attempt such incomprehensible feats of adventure athleticism is well worth the time invested. Today we pick up where our ongoing series last left off. Note: we recorded this conversation many months ago on January 18. My initial plan was to share this episode on February 9. However, on February 2, National Geographic published an article entitled The Problem With Colin O’Brady - a 7,000 word take down that accuses Colin of embellishing his accomplishments. It’s an upsetting piece that left me confused. I’ve known Colin for many years. I’ve spent quite a bit of time with him and his wife Jenna. I consider him a good friend. And myself a decent judge of character. However, in light of this development, it also felt tone deaf to release the podcast as scheduled. So I put a pin it. Two weeks later, Colin published a thorough, 16-page point-by-point refutation of the National Geographic article. I thought it only fair to provide Colin an opportunity to comment on the allegations. So, on March 8 (still pre-pandemic), we sat down again for a subsequent conversation to discuss the controversy particulars. Today I share both conversations. First, the original interview we conducted in January. It's an exploration the hows and whys behind The Impossible Row. The intention behind his new book and the process of birthing it. And a deep dive into human potential and the infinite love that fuels his. Immediately following this initial exchange is an additional 30-minute discourse specific to the National Geographic scuffle appended to the audio version of the podcast and viewable as a stand-alone piece here & below. The visually inclined can watch it all go down on YouTube -- where we separated the main podcast conversation and Colin’s thoughts in response to the article into two distinct videos. And as always, the audio version streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. As Colin and I are both fond of repeating, we all sit atop mountains of untapped potential. May this conversation help you tap yours. Peace + Plants, Rich

The biggest thing I want is when people set down this book, The Impossible First, it's not to call me up and be like, wow, Colin, that was so amazing across the Arctic. I want people to set this book down and go, wow, you did something that people said was impossible. Now I can go do that and take that into my own life. These reservoirs of untapped potential reside inside of all of us. And I say that the muscle that's the most important to any of us is the six inches between our ears. It's within our minds. It's what we can create. And I think that that really dictates a lot of this.

I am giving this wisdom. I'm sharing my story in the hope that someone takes the Impossible First book, sets it down and starts off on their own Impossible First. That's Colin O'Brady. And this is The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Greetings, earthlings of the apocalypse.

My name is Rich Roll. This is my podcast. Welcome. I hope this finds you well, safe, mentally, and emotionally emotionally sound, intact as we collectively and quite delicately tread these uncharted waters. And listen, if you're not feeling it, if you're depressed, if you're having a crisis of motivation, I get it.

It's part of the human condition. We're all trying to figure this out. Give yourself a break, be gentle on yourself. My guest today is Colin O'Brady. Colin is returning for his fourth appearance on the podcast. You can catch him on episodes 207, 235, and 439 if you missed him the first time around. Long-time listeners, of course, know Colin well,

but even if you're new, there's a good chance you may have heard of his story or are at least familiar with his boundary-pushing feats of adventure. But for the few who might not know who I'm talking about, Colin is a former Yale swimmer turned professional triathlete turned elite adventure athlete with a slew of world records to his name. Among his palmares, Colin is both the youngest and the fastest to complete the Explorer's Grand Slam, which basically entails scaling the highest mountains on each of the seven continents and treks to both the North and the South Poles, breaking the previous record by a quite astonishing 53 days. Then, about a year and a half ago,

Colin became the first person in history to cross the continent of Antarctica solo, unsupported, and unaided, pulling a 300-pound sled, 932 miles in just 54 days, a feat he dubbed the impossible first, and I got more on that in a minute. But in his latest adventure first, this past December, Colin and five crewmates became the first and only human-powered ocean row across the Drake Passage, which is a treacherous 13-day, 600-nautical-mile excursion from the southern tip of South America to the edge of Antarctica. That accomplishment coincided with the release of his book titled The Impossible First, which is essentially his memoir that chronicles his incredible life from his triumphant recovery

from a tragic accident all the way through last year's landmark Antarctica Crossing and the many lessons he learned along the way about human potential, possibility, and the power of infinite love. I got several important things that remain to be mentioned about the conversation to come, but first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts

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recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, Colin O'Brady. So if you missed our earlier conversations, Colin's origin story is really quite something from his unique upbringing on a commune, his experiences swimming for Yale, how he survived an almost lethal burn accident that left him unlikely to walk again. And then this Phoenix-like transformation

into a professional ITU triathlete and Olympic hopeful, and how he then morphed into this mountaineer with the audacity to attempt such incomprehensible feats of adventure athleticism. Good news, you can read all about it in his new book, The Impossible First, which along with his recent Drake passage crossing forms the focus of today's conversation. One important note worthy of mention, we recorded this conversation quite a long time ago, back on January 18th. Seems like forever ago at this point. And my initial plan at that point was to publish the episode on February 9th. However, on February 2nd, National Geographic published an article called The Problem with Colin O'Brady, which is essentially this 7,000-word takedown, sort of character assassination, that accuses Colin of embellishing his accomplishments, among other things. It's an

upsetting piece. It left me confused because I've known Colin for many years. I've spent quite a bit of time with him and his wife, Jenna. I consider him a friend, a good friend, but it would have been utterly tone deaf and irresponsible, I think, to publish the podcast as scheduled in light of that development. So I put a pin on it. Two weeks later, Colin published a very thorough point-by-point rebuttal of the National Geographic article. And I thought it only fair to provide him an opportunity to comment on the allegations. So we sat down again for a second conversation on March 8th, still pre-pandemic, for a subsequent exchange to discuss all of this. So this is how this is going to go. First up is the original interview we conducted in January,

completely unedited, followed immediately by the subsequent exchange, an additional 30-minute conversation, discourse, on the aforementioned issue, which is appended at the end. I hope that makes sense. at youtube.com forward slash richroll, where we decided to separate the main podcast conversation and Colin's thoughts in response to the article into two distinct videos. So that's it. Here we go. This is me and Colin O'Brady. Well, great to see you again.

We're here for round three. So excited to talk to you. I think it might be round four. Is it four? Wait, one, two you again. We're here for round three. So excited to talk to you. I think it might be round four. Is it four? One, two, three. Is it? I'm honored. Four. Wow. So I told you this beforehand, but I woke up this morning and thought,

you know, Colin's been on a bunch of times. We never run out of things to say. You're such a great guest. It's going to be awesome no matter what, but you're always so quick to talk about Jenna and what an integral, amazing part. She plays in this whole thing as your partner in every aspect of what you do. And I thought, well, let's hear from her directly. So I set it up with an extra mic and had it all ready to go because I'm pretty sure every other time I've seen you, you guys have been together. So I had no reason to think that she wouldn't be coming as I knew she came to LA.

Yes, we are pretty much always together, but she hopped on a plane last night to go get our dog and bring him back to Jackson Hole. So now I feel bad that I didn't think of this a couple of days ago. Yes, I'm bummed because I think hearing from Jenna is the most important. Well, Jenna, I always have a chair for you here

and we'll see how this goes today. If it goes well then, or maybe I'll just bring Jenna back without you. Yeah, I think that that will be- I'm done with you, dude. We've talked enough. A good conversation. And if this goes well, we'll just delete it

and we'll just come back. I did hit play today though, as far as I can tell right now it's recording. So that's good. Congrats, man. So many things to congratulate you on. The book, the 12 year anniversary of Surviving the Burns, which you just passed that date a couple days ago, right?

Same as the book pub date. The book came out this past week, and also The Drake Crossing, which we're going to talk about as well. Yes. So that's a lot, man. It's been a busy period of time, but yeah, it was coincidental that, as you know, books are published on Tuesdays. That's a thing, apparently. I don't know why that's the rule, but that's the way it works. I didn't know that.

This is my first book, but it turns out all books are published on Tuesdays. That's a thing apparently. I don't know why that's the rule, but that's the way it works. I didn't know that. This is my first book, but it turns out all books are published on Tuesdays. And January 14th happened to be a Tuesday this year, which coincided with the 12-year anniversary of my brand accident. Was that coincidental? Or when you looked at dates, did you work that out with the publisher? It was actually completely coincidental. We actually, originally the pub date was February 4th which is the day after the Democratic primary in the Iowa caucuses so we thought that might not be the best date so we moved it to January 28th

but then when I was in the middle of the row kind of momentum was building towards the finish line of that and the publisher decided to move it up to the 14th and Jenna said okay we could do that just so you know it's a really special day in Colin's life so it was actually completely coincidental but as one of my more tragic moments of my life, probably the most tragic on December or January 14th, it's nice to have a beautiful rebirth of creativity and art to put into the world on that day. So nice to have that memory going forward.

So a year ago around this time, I bumped into you in a hotel lobby. You had just gotten back from your solo expedition across Antarctica, and you were doing a little press around it. You hadn't even gone home yet. And now, one year later, you've got another crazy adventure under your belt and a book to celebrate it. And I look at the Drake Crossing, and I'm like, that's the greatest book marketing trick of all time. Right? Not only do I have a book coming out, I actually have something amazing that I can tell all these media people. So there you are back on the Today Show, back on Jimmy Fallon doing the rounds, the whole thing. You just came from New York. Yes. It's been certainly humbling, the interest and excitement in all of this, and just really

grateful to be able to have this book out in the world. And I'm sure we'll get into it, but the book's called The Impossible First, but really my biggest return on investment for this book, and I've been saying this, but I really mean it, which is I'm grateful to people that want to hear my story about my life. And as you mentioned, it's really not just about mine, it's about Jenna's, it's about overcoming obstacles, it's hardships, it's how we built this. It's our heart. It's our creativity. It's all this. But the biggest thing I want is when people set down this book, The Impossible First, it's not to call me up and be like, wow, Colin, that was so amazing across Antarctica. I want people to set this book down and go, wow, you did something that people said was impossible. Now I can go do that and take that into my own

life. So that's the goal, man. That's the beauty. That's the poetry in the whole thing. How was the writing process for you? Man, you know. People think you've set these world records. You walked across Antarctica solo. Now rode a boat across Drake Passage. But I would say writing a book may have been the hardest thing I've ever done or certainly up there. It really challenged me to flex a different muscle in the mind, the creative process.

And also, I've been journaling since I was a kid. So I've been journaling back into my early teenage years, maybe even before that. So I have all these journals and video recordings, audio recordings of my life. And so it was cool and cathartic to go back through that. But it also kind of brings up different things when you're writing. Like I said, it's not just a memoir of this 54 days of crossing Antarctica, but as I'm in Antarctica and I'm having all these vivid memories in my mind, I kind of flash back to all these important moments through my life.

And so to sift through that and to decide on which ones to share and how to bring those to life and maybe have deeper conversations with my family and other people that experienced those moments of my parents' divorce and different things in my life. Ultimately, I'm really proud of how it came out, but it was a challenging process and a beautiful one. Yeah, I mean, that's what you get from most people that write a book.

I mean, David Goggins said the same thing. I mean, it certainly was my experience writing a book. It's a lot harder, I think, than people think. Yeah. And we share another thing in common, which is that we had the same editor. Yes, we did. Shout out to Rick Horgan.

Yeah, Rick Horgan. What a guy. What a guy. And I say, Rich, I'm grateful. Rich's name is on the back of my book. I know. Wait, the book, one of you guys go grab,

it's in the container. I thought I had it sitting here. Well, one of you guys go grab it so we have it sitting out here. Yeah, that's the most important thing. My blurb on the back cover. The most important thing is that Rich Roll's name is actually on my book. But no, shout out to Rick Horgan.

We both worked with the same editor that you worked with many years ago. Complete coincidence that's the case. But what a guy. He did a great job on my book. He certainly made it a lot better. And he devoted a lot of time to it. I think he's a really great editor. Super talented to roll up the sleeves and kind of get in there and kind of live that side by side.

I'm grateful to have him and amazing that we both had him work on both of our books. Yeah. And how's it doing? I mean, it came out Tuesday. It's killing it on Amazon. I checked the numbers. I'm sure you have. Here's the thing about you. Straight up, dude. You're like super friendly, you know, jovial guy, conversational, charismatic, but you're a stone cold killer. You are, man. There is no way that you do what you do without having like the eyes on the prize, man.

I appreciate, I'm gonna take that. I'm gonna choose to take that as a compliment. That was what I wanted Jenna here to talk about. I was like, come on, tell me what it's like when, you know, back at home when no one's looking and you're plotting. It's like, this dude is competitive. Well, I mean, yes, I guess I'm going to choose to take that as a compliment. There is a, the book writing process is interesting in that, you know,

there's times, and as you know, kind of, I do think that I orient towards the positive and towards the positivity in that. And as we dive into the roll up the sleeves in the book, I'm working with my publisher, Rick, and the whole Scribner team over there. You know, it's helping me with the editing process and, you know, choosing the photos that we choose and all this kind of stuff. And there was times in the work session where there would be some tensions, not negative, but just implicit, you know, collaboration type of tensions. and there would be some tensions, not negative, but just implicit collaboration type of tensions. And a couple of times I turned to them and I was like, you bought this idea of a book of a guy who walked across Antarctica by himself.

You did realize that there was an intense, overly hyper-focused element. They were like, yeah, I guess that makes sense. So yeah, of course, there is the duality of that. But I think that it- So you had to flex a little bit here and there. Not flex, but I just care. I know that some people, I mean, I can't say for anyone specific, but I imagine there have been books written where people haven't cared as much maybe, or have said like, oh, I want to write this and I want it to be good or whatever, but I'm doing 10 other things and

I'm not like hyper-focused on it. For me, if I was ever going to sit down and write a book, I really wanted, you know, I cared about every word, every sentence, every paragraph. It's the story of your life. Exactly. This is the chronicle of your life. I think also a lot of authors, particularly first-time authors, don't realize that they have any power in the conversation. Like, well, these are the publishers, they know, they say you should do this. So I guess that's what you're supposed to do. And

they end up with a weird cover, something that doesn't work because they didn't feel like they could actually assert themselves and be part of that conversation. Of course, the publisher is gonna have final approval over all of this stuff. But I found that if you pick your battles and you're strong about the things that are most important,

that you can have a say, you should have a say. And I think that the thing to me, ultimately that I'm most proud of about this book. Here's what you need to see right there. There it is, Ritual's name on the back cover of the hardcover. Forget about this part. Yeah, it's just right there on the back.

No, but the thing that I think was the most important to me in this creative process that might've been initially at odds with the publisher, but I think ultimately everyone is very pleased, including Rick you know, Rick and the whole team are really pleased with the outcome was on the surface was like, wow, you crossed Antarctica solo. There is a genre of books that are about edge of your seat adventure memoirs. And I, by the way, I love that genre. I'm very well read in that genre. I read voraciously and like, I've, I've read them all. I love, I love that. Like the crack hour kind of vibe.

A hundred percent or, you know, in, you know, endurance, the, you know, about the Shackleton book. I mean, there's just so many in that category that again, I love, you know, touching the void or these books that chronicle like an epic, intense like thing. And my book, The Impossible Verse, of course is about that. It uses Antarctica as this sort of through line of the entire chronology of the book. But to me, that is not the book that I wanted to write. The book that I wanted to write in the last chapter of the book is titled Infinite Love, which might not be what someone might expect out of a book about a male guy doing this hard thing alone in Antarctica.

And so there is these gritty elements and the vulnerability of the intense things that I went to, but it's woven through with relationships. There's a lot of people who have read this book who, female audience, single mother from wherever saying like, hey, I don't really read this genre, but this touched me because of these universal elements of love or compassion,

or there's a whole piece on entrepreneurship and how we actually built behind the scenes, built this. And so to me, that was a little bit at odds initially with someone saying like, we wanted you to write a book about a hardcore adventure. And I don't think the hardcore adventure audience will be disappointed by this book, but I think there is just a much broader reach to it, which was super important to me because that's the elements, the human elements that I deeply care about sharing. Right. I mean, one of the conversations that I had at length with Rick when I was working on

my book, something he pointed out to me that I still think about all the time is the difference between inspirational and aspirational. And he's like, listen, LeBron James, Michael Jordan, they're like inspirational. Like you can read about them. You can be inspired by their example. But that reader can't aspire to be that person. Right. And he's like, you're talking to me.

He was like, you're aspirational. Like you've done some really hard things, but you, people can see some version of their own story in your story. And so the narrative really, that was kind of like the architecture around, you know, that kind of informed how I tell this story. And I see like what you've done is much crazier and more difficult and all these world records and all of that.

But there is, you know, with kind of overcoming the obstacles and the burn, you know, like all the things that you've gone through in your life, there is a threat of that, I think, that makes you relatable to an average person. So they're not going to go across Antarctica. But I think in reading this, and you did a phenomenal job, you can see, you know, aspects of your own self and your shortcomings and your victories in the way that you tell the story.

And I think that that's the launch pad from which people can find their own inspiration to achieve things in their own lives. A hundred percent. And like I said, you started off with mentioning Jenna. I always say it's a shame that my name is the name on the front cover of this book because it's not just my story, it's my story.

It's Jenna's story. It's a story of my family. It's the ups and downs of divorce in our family, but ultimately this amicable, crazy Ohana loving family. But, you know, from the outside, potentially broken look, you know, into that. And there's a lot of different elements that are just were important for me to share, which is just kind of my truth and my journey. And hopefully that connects with people in a way, even if it's not direct to, like I said, the walk, if you want to walk Crest Arnica by yourself, I highly recommend it. I have got lots of tips and a piece of advice. I'd love to see some of that.

This is not a how-to book. This is not a how-to book on crossing Antarctica. And you talk about the creative process a little bit. We've been talking about, and one of the concepts that we talk about in there is this idea of Jenna and I sitting down with a whiteboard, mapping out our idea. And we talk about in the book as from whiteboard into reality. And one of the questions that I've got with a whiteboard, you know, mapping out our idea. And we talk about in the book as from whiteboard into reality. And one of the questions that I've got from so many people, including, you know, people who have reached out from hearing me on this podcast, it says like, I have a big idea. I want to do this incredible thing.

I want to run across America or I want to, you know, it could be anything. I want to just take a trip around the world with my best friend or something like that. And I get, I do get this how to question, which is like, so how did you do it? Were you just born with a trust fund? Do you have like a ton of money and you can just do whatever you want? So I'm like a quote unquote real job. And in this book, I do my best

to answer those people's questions. I love it when people reach out and I try to respond as many people as I possibly can. But in this book, we dive in this process of Jenna and I literally bring you to this room. And so one bedroom apartment, we've got a whiteboard on the wall. We're writing our ideas down, want to set a world record, want to start a nonprofit and inspire kids. Like, you know, want to reach people in this way, this, and then the bare bones facts come down. It's like,

but you need a few hundred thousand dollars to do this. How do you even start a nonprofit, all this red tape or whatever. And the book also brings you through pieces of that journey of us, you know, taking our idea from the whiteboard and the struggles and the challenges and the thousand doors that slammed in our face of people saying, you're not going to do this in our interior dialogue of us doubting ourselves and ultimately being able to come together with her and I in this sort of just perseverance through not just the Antarctica crossing itself, but the perseverance of actually taking an idea into action.

And that's the piece that I do think, as many as others, but certainly one of the pieces that I think connects widely in that I don't care who you are, you're listening to this, I know you have a big idea inside of you. I know you have your own impossible for something you want to achieve, something that's out there, but maybe in the back of your mind you're thinking, oh, I don't know, maybe I'm not the right person for it. And if I listened to the first 999 people that told me that too, we wouldn't be sitting here having this conversation. And the book kind of brings through that process. And like I said,

hopefully someone sets the book down and goes, you know what? I'm going to actually go after that impossible first now, because I believe I can do it. But doing it through storytelling, not through, here's the 10 steps that you need to do it. It's like, this is how we did it. Let me walk you through like the nonlinear, inelegant, you know, two steps forward, five steps backwards. You know, the book is not a how-to. Wait, it unfolded. It's not a how-to prescriptive book. It is a memoir written in prose and storytelling the entire time, but can read between the lines of just our story. And hopefully people take

inspiration from it. Like I said, it was a humbling process to be asked to write a book, and I'm grateful to be able to share it with the world. And hopefully it is well-received. And now it's in the world. It's in the world, just like that. I was watching the Today Show, and a clip that you shared, after doing your interview, you're outside and you're signing books, and you're kind of like shaking hands with the people that kind of congregate outside the show. And I was like, wow, that's so crazy. Like, I was just thinking it was only a year ago when I ran into you in New York and you were taking meetings on

the book. Like it wasn't that long ago. And like, look what you've done in a year to make that happen. It's crazy. I know you're interviewing me, but I actually would like to interview you for a second. This is about you, dude. No, no, no. So you said, so Rich and I, we've been friends for several years now. But coincidentally, you were in New York City. I was in New York City when I got back from Antarctica. And you had texted me and you said, hey, congratulations, this. See you in New York. You're probably slammed, but where are you? And we text each other.

We realize we're actually in the same hotel room on like two different floors yeah we run into each other in an elevator coming down but then the uh what was amazing is a group of my friends had asked to kind of come together and kind of hear the story after the press the media it was not like a press event it was just like my friends in the townhouse apartment um kind of a fireside chat totally Q&A before I had done a bunch of interviews or been asked about the story a million times. And you came that night. And that was, first of all, it was just really special to me that you came and sat there with my group of close friends. And I was just, it's one thing to talk to a room full of strangers, which I do a lot in my public speaking, but there's something about the intimacy

of the actual people in your close community who you have deep connections with asking questions. For me, there's an added level of vulnerability to that. And a question I guess I have for you since I'm interviewing you now for 10 minutes, five minutes. I guess you are. I'm only permitting this so far. Which is, I'm just curious, for me, the anchor point for me writing this book actually was writing that I did myself and journaling that I did in the immediate aftermath. So before I even left Antarctica, and I'll say it in through that first week or so in New York, not to say that my brain or anything was polluted from the authenticity of the experience. But as you know, many things that you've done in your life, like you get a little bit further away from it. And so I kept coming back to come to those anchors and particularly

some of the writing that I did to myself and my journal alone on the ice before I even got picked up and flown away. But I reflect on that moment, that room that you happen to actually be sitting in as one of the, I guess, really pure moments of that entire experience for me to be able to sit there and share in the way I did. And not that I don't think it's pure now, but there was just something about, I guess, it was just, I still hadn't slept in my own bed at that moment. It was a wild moment. I have a vivid memory of that, that evening. And, you know, a couple of things. First of all, yeah, you, it was literally right after you completed this. So. Been alone in Antarctica for how long and now I'm in New York City. Exactly. You went like straight to New York City. You hadn't even gone home yet. You still had all your gear. And, and yeah, so I show up at this townhouse and I think these were people that

you had gone to Israel with. Yeah. A bunch on the reality community and Israel and a couple other things. And so it was a small group of people gathered around you. And you began to share your story. And my recollection of that was that I was so impressed with how much command you had over the story already. Like it had just happened, but you rifled off, you were telling these stories and you were kind of relating the experience, but you had such a command over what was important about it

to convey with everybody else. And I've seen you give your keynote that you go around and do frequently now in the wake of that. And it's not that different than what you delivered on that night. It's pretty much the same thing. So I just remember thinking like, wow, he already has a grip on like how to tell this, not only does he do it, like he already knows how to tell the story. Like sometimes it takes a while for you to figure out like, okay, well, what is it about this that

people are interested in? And you kind of have to play around with it in front of a live audience to figure out what those important things are. And the more you tell it, the more it starts to inform you about what's interesting and what's not interesting. So I have the piece of writing that I was referring to. I'll go a little bit deeper there because I think it's actually pretty interesting.

10 years ago, it's not something I've really, I'm sure I've ever talked about this publicly, but 10 years ago, a buddy of mine named Kip, it was 2008. I was living in Chicago at the time. He wrote a handwritten letter to seven guys from his life. He was, at the time I was in my early twenties and he was about 10 years older than me. So he's in his early thirties, around the same age that I am, 34 now. He might've been a little younger than I am, 31, 32 probably. And he writes a letter to seven of his friends, a handwritten letter. And he says, hey, each of you, you don't all know each other, but each of you are a really close person from my life of a different phase of my life. It was like a college

roommate. It was like the guy he sat next to at his first job. I was a really new friend of his. He had just moved to Portland at the time. And like we had become fast friends. We'd only been together for about six months. And there were seven of these guys. And he said, but as we spread apart in our lives and we start having kids and get married and go to these other places of our life, I realize we're going to see each other less. And I'm afraid I'm going to lose touch with some of you. But I love you dearly.

So I'm going to write you a handwritten letter about what's going on in my life. At the very end of the letter, he sends, and I'm actually getting goosebumps telling this story because it's the best story I've ever told. He writes a handwritten letter, a note at the bottom. He goes, if anybody wants to send a letter to the rest of the other guys, here's everyone else's address. You don't know each other. But if you want to send it just out in the world, send it. Here's a CD. To his other friends. To his other friends. That these people don't necessarily know other, but if you want to send it just out in the world, send it. Here's a CD. To his other friends. To his other friends.

That these people don't necessarily know. Don't necessarily know. Everyone like maybe knew one of the other people because they're his group of friends. So maybe you've met a friend of a friend, but they're spread out across the country. I'm living in Chicago at the time, not near any of these people.

I only knew Kip and one of the other guys. And I was like, this is a cool idea. And so the next month I penned this, a handwritten letter, put a CD in the mail of the music I had listening. It was Dates Historic. It this is a cool idea. And so the next month, I penned a handwritten letter, put a CD in the mail of the music I had listened to. It was Dates Historic, so it was actually a burned CD. I didn't send a Spotify playlist or something. And I send it back out to these guys. What ends up happening is every single month,

one of these guys writes back a letter. And it ends up forming into this group. It's been through a few phases, but it's this group that we now call the fellas. And what happened is we added a few other people over time and it's a locked in group, but I honestly highly recommend anyone doing this because it's been one of the most meaningful things in my life. And I'll bring this back to why I'm telling this story. It's just a random tangent. But is that there's 12 of us guys in this group, the fellas.

And not everyone has even met everyone, although we do try to get together once in a while. But once per month, we each have a month now, because there's 12 of us. My month is always December, which is why it's pertinent to the story. And we've made a lifelong commitment to one another. And the lifelong commitment is we are going to each share,

we've digitized it, it used to be handwritten, but we have a locked online forum blog, you can't see it, but we have a password to sign in. And we each send once per month a life update or a poem or just something about our life. With the idea being that over the course of a full lifetime commitment of sharing vulnerably in kind of a men's group format, that this, you know, pieces of our life will form this long form tapestry as we go through life together. And now it's been 12 years. And so we've seen people get married, have their first child, you know, career ups and downs, success, heartbreak, you know, losing parents, you know, people getting sick, whatever that is, or just joyful celebration. Sometimes, you know, someone will just write for their month, like, yo, I've been like really into cooking and these are the five recipes that I'm cooking.

It's not always like this, you know, really intense thing. But my month was December and I finished my Antarctica crossing that I wrote the book about on December 26th, so the day after Christmas. And I'm sitting alone in my tent for a few days waiting to congratulate Lou Rudd on his crossing as well as waiting to

be picked up in the airplane. And I sit down there and I realized it's my month for the fellas post. And I've always been, it's a super vulnerable forum to be able to share openly with this group of guys. And so I sit there and I write this piece that says the six things I learned the most about, the most important six things that I learned about in Antarctica. And the top of lungs, I mentioned it already before, was infinite love. This connection to this resonant energy

that I experienced out there and this peak experience of just infinite love and compassion and empathy and joy and this flow state that I experienced. And the next was the importance of Jenna in my life. And the next was the importance of family. And I was so grateful to this forum that I had with these guys, because although I've been journaling avidly throughout my life, it was just like, group of 11 guys, the 12 of us total. And that piece of writing, although it's not explicitly in the book, actually formed the

bedrock of what I wrote this book about, because it was just my truth and the purity of that moment and the experience that you and I had together in that townhouse just a week later, whatever it was. And the stories I was telling, I didn't think I put the dots together at the time, but the stories you told me, heard me tell vulnerably were derivative of taking that moment to actually kind of, I don't know, sit with it and think about it and write. Right. Distilling out, you know, what was most important about it for you. Yeah. And what's beautiful about it for me was that I guess why it's a sacred piece of writing for me that ultimately poured my heart and soul into the book itself was that the forum,

the format of the fellas is this sacred space where none of the writing, it's not narrative. It's not like, let me show you the highlight reel of my life. It's not necessarily implicitly bad or good, but it's raw. Like the point of the fellowism, what Kip did when he sent this letter out to all of us in 2008, was unknowingly he opened up this space. And a lot of these guys aren't guys that are maybe in men's groups or doing men's works or doing ceremony or stuff like this. There's a pretty normal cross-section of amazing human

beings. But as men in our culture are oftentimes pretty garden and it's become this really sacred space. And the posts are never shared. It's not like anyone can ever see it. So I know that the writing that I put down there was just coming, was pouring out of my heart with purity. And it was so important for me, as we talked about the editors and different people in the room or other people sharing ideas, I think your book might should be about this or that or the other thing to have this anchor point to go, I wrote this down in the pureness and the authenticity of this experience.

And I wanna make sure that the end product, which I'm proud it does, is reflective of those emotions. That those themes are what infuse this and breathe life into the narrative. Yeah, absolutely. That's beautiful, man. I love that. That's beautiful, man. I love that.

That's a very rare thing to be able to maintain that level of connection, especially amongst guys. And it's beautiful. It's like it kind of developed organically and then there was kind of a line in the sand moment. Not in a bad way, but it was just like, if you're in, you're in.

This is a life, like an explicit, like this is a lifelong commitment. Did anybody like miss their month or like, or like, you know, people, you're out. No one's ever missed it. Um, uh, the, in the first year, one guy felt the commitment was too much and, and, and rightfully so just said, you know, this isn't for me. And, and the, the 12 kind of cows, when we've had the 12 locked in around it, it's been, we've been there the whole time on this journey together. And it's funny because we're 12 years into this kind of art piece or this project together. And I'm an impatient person, as you can see.

I wrote a book and it's a calendar year. I've got to get this out. I've got to get this down on paper. But for me, it's actually one of the beautiful things in my life to go like, oh, we're 12 years into this project and we're just getting started. I picture these moments sitting around with these guys decades from now and

reading posts from the good old aughts. Remember back in 2009 when you wrote this or that? And it's 2050 or whatever if we're fortunate to continue to live healthy lives. It's the private digital forum version of Richard Linklater's brotherhood.

Exactly. I thought you were going to tell me that all 12 dudes showed up at that townhouse that night. No, none of them were there. And I've been in person with all of them. The 12 of us actually- Boyhood, not Brotherhood. I said that on this set.

Go ahead. The 12 of us have actually never even been all in one place together. I think eight or nine is the most we've had. We try to get together every year, every other couple of years, but it really is a more than anything, a kind of a writing club. And of course we're in touch, but it is, it's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing. And anyways, I would love anyone to copy the format because it's been an amazing experience in my life. That's cool. Yeah. Well, I would say that's one of at least three Ohanas that you have. You have your Ohana Ohana, your family family that you alluded to earlier.

I would consider that a certain kind of Ohana. Yeah. And then we have this other Ohana that likes to be rowed across stormy waters, right? Yes. So how does this whole Drake passage, let's break this down. How does this whole thing come together? Yeah, so the project that I just completed Christmas Day of this past year, so a few weeks ago really, not even a month ago, it's just coincident that the possible first solo crossing was finished on December 26th and then this Drake row happened 364 days later,

we finished on that. But the objective was as a team to see if we could be the first team to row a boat across Drake Passage. So that's from the Southern tip of South America, starting at Cape Horn in a tiny little rowboat. So no motor, no sail, nothing. 29 foot rowboat, about 29 feet long, about four and a half feet wide. I mean, for six dudes. For a rowboat, it's pretty big. Because you think of a rowboat, you know, like a dude in a lake. Okay. Yes. Fair enough. For a rowboat, it's like a professional rowboat. Yeah, I know. It's not like a seafaring vessel. No, no, no. You look at that and you're like, I don't want to see 40 foot swells in that thing. And let me tell you, I did see 40 foot swells in that and it was pretty freaking scary. But that was the objectives.

And then to row that boat all the way to the Antarctic Peninsula, which is across Drake Passage, roughly, you know, six, 700 miles. And Drake Passage is known as kind of the most ferocious waterway in the world because it's the convergence of the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Southern Ocean all kind of get funneled together through this Drake Passage. And as of course, as you get close to Antarctica, you're looking at icebergs, you're looking at, you know, huge swells, you know, freezing cold water, the water is, you know, one degree Celsius or three degrees, 33 Fahrenheit.

I mean, it's literally close to as freezing as you can get. And the goal kind of came together. So the project itself had been kind of a little bit in the dreaming uh for a long time um by this guy named fionn paul um who is uh pretty he's like your captain yeah so he's no it should it's worthy of noting that i have never rode a boat anywhere in my life let me just interject one thing here like when you were back in portland like training with your trainer yeah that's the guy's name again? Mike McCassell. You're doing these crazy exercises and you kind of put it out on social media, like, guess what?

I'm getting ready for a big expedition. I'm gonna let you know in T minus five days or whatever. And you'd be doing the, and you're like, what do you think it is? And you're getting all these, people are saying crazy stuff. Funniest answer. But I was like, there's a lot of core going on here.

There seems to be like a lot of lat work. I'm like, this definitely involves some kind of water, you know, like cold water. I think I said you were going to windsurf, you know, in the Arctic Circle or something. I was pretty close. Yeah, you were pretty close. People were guessing water, people were guessing this.

One of the funniest guests, so I said, I'm going to give someone an emoji trophy on the comments of who gets the funniest one. And one kid said, you're going to try to eat at every single Waffle House in the course of a month, which for those of you on the funniest one. And one kid said, you're going to try to eat at every single Waffle House in the course of a month. Which for those of you on the West Coast, maybe you don't know it,

but it's the diner chain on the Southeast. If you've been to the Southeast ever, you've seen Waffle House. And the funniest thing, so I posted that on social. I said, I was like, winner, that's the most hilarious one. Maybe I should take that into consideration.

Just kind of joking around. A day later, my phone rings, random phone number, answer the phone. CEO of Waffle House. Oh my God. We have a thousand or 1100 different restaurants. Are you interested in actually trying to eat all of them? I was like, maybe the next expedition. I'm focused on this rowing project right now. So it's hilarious. But- But why this? Why did you have your sights set on this?

So a couple of reasons. One was I've always been fascinated by the ocean. You and I both share the love of the water. We're both collegiate swimmers. And my dad has been living in Hawaii for 20 years or so. So I spent a lot of time in the open water coastally. But I've never been in the wide open ocean, never. I've never been on a sailboat in the open ocean,

certainly never been on a rowboat. And so I've always just kind of been fascinated by exploring that part of the world, which I haven't explored before. And then also there was- You're like, huh, sea level. This is interesting. I'm not used to this. I can like breathe. And then the other piece of it that was kind of interesting for me was, you know, I had this kind of curiosity or this thesis of saying, I have built up these skills, if you call them this, swimming and then swimming into triathlon and took triathlon into mountaineering and mountaineering into polar travel,

which are all somewhat different from each other, but they're somewhat of a through line, certainly cold places or Everest and crossing Antarctica are a lot closer together than crossing Antarctica is to rowing a boat across an ocean. And I was wondering if I could take that kind of with this beginner's mindset or a growth mindset of saying, is it possible in a short period of time to,

I don't know if master would be not a fair word, but to be good enough or strong enough at a new discipline in a short period of time to then take that to its highest extreme and still be successful. And then also, most of my other projects, clearly the Solo Antarctica project is this, although like I said, it's really a huge team, including Jenna and others around me to make these things possible.

The athletic feat itself has always been a solo experience, as with swimming. Swimming, triathlon, same thing. Yeah, it's been a pretty individual path for me. You swim on Stanford, it's been a pretty individual path for me. You know, you swim on Stanford. It's like there's the Stanford swim team. At the end of the day, like you're lining up swimming the 200 butterfly. It's you in the lane, like swimming the race, you know?

And so for me, it was interesting to say like, oh, I wonder what it'd be like to do a true team project. Like that is also flexing and exercising a different muscle for me in the athletic space. Like that is also flexing and exercising a different muscle for me in the athletic space that, of course, you know, on one hand, when I was suffering from all the solitude in Antarctica, would have been like, God, it'd been great to have some people around. On the other hand, of course, having six different people on a tiny little rowboat and different personalities from different parts of the country or whatever, of course, is going to come with it some implicit challenges. And can we come together as a high performing team and be able to be successful together. So that was really the intrigue for me was to kind of take a lot of lessons from previous expeditions, but apply it in this a new discipline of rowing, something I've never done, the ocean, something I've never done in a team environment, something I've never done to see if we could be successful in doing that.

be successful in doing that. So accomplished endurance athlete, certainly accomplished adventure athlete, but never a rower. Never. Right. And so you're depositing yourself into this team environment where like, you know, there's an argument to be made that you're the weak link. Like you're the least experienced person in this boat, right? Because all these other guys are like, like vastly experienced ocean rowers and collegiate rowers, competitive rowers. Yeah, so it was interesting kind of- I don't mean that in a pejorative way, but like-

No, not at all, not at all. But like, so my first, I want you to answer what you, say whatever you're gonna say, but on top of that, like how are these guys, you know, taking you in? Like, oh, we're going to do this, like, super hard thing that we're potentially putting our lives on the line. And we got this guy who's never rowed a boat before, thinks he's all that. So it's interesting. So the, you know, in the formation of the team, so Fionn, Paul, who was very accomplished, very accomplished, the most accomplished ocean rower in the world at this point.

He's done the rowing version of what you did with the mountains. Yeah, the rowing Grand Slam. I'm not sure if it's kind of a new thing that he's coined, but he's the only person to have rowed and now set records, I believe, as well on every ocean. So the Indian, the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Southern Ocean, also the Arctic Ocean. So really, really accomplished. He's an Icelandic guy. Been thinking about this project for quite some time, looking at the Drake Passage as an objective. And via another guy that had been thinking about the project with him, a guy named Andrew Town, we went to college together. So he rode at Yale and I swam there.

We didn't really know each other in college, but because we were kind of both there at the same time, had some mutual friends and things like that, and he had climbed the Seven Summ there. We didn't really know each other in college, but because we were kind of both there at the same time, had some mutual friends and things like that, and he had climbed the Seven Summits, we were kind of aware of each other, had a few phone calls over the years, but it wasn't like, oh, my buddy that I hung out with every day in college or anything like that. So pretty unfamiliar with him as well.

But he calls me up right after I get back from the solar crashing. I finally did go home and sleep in my own bed just after I saw you in New York. But the phone call happened, I want to say that week or something like that, and I get this phone call from Andrew Town, and he says, hey man, I know you just New York, but the phone call happened that week or something like that. I get this phone call from Andrew Town. He says, hey man, I know you just got back from Antarctica. It's super cool what you did there.

I'm kind of brainstorming on another expedition. We're wondering if you might be interested. I'm like, what is it? He's like, to go back to Antarctica in a robo. I was like, delete my phone number. I was like, I'm good. I'm not going back to Antarctica. But then, of course, I got into thinking and talking to them about it

and what plans they had made and what was it going to take to get there. And what we quickly realized, of course, my interests were piqued as I thought about it a little bit more. But also, what they had come to me with is a really interesting idea for a project. But these projects and what Jenna and I, and certainly I would say what Jenna is exceptional at, and a couple of other people that work with us now, a guy named Blake Brinker, who's extraordinary at this kind of stuff as well, is problem solving these expeditions. And it turns out that actually the logistics to do this project are really complicated. So you need this rowboat,

you need this like custombuilt rowboat, basically, that's custom-built for all this cold weather. There are ocean rowing vessels, but we needed to actually have it retrofitted for if we hit an iceberg and all this kind of crazy stuff. The only boat we could find is in the UK. That boat needs to be imported to southern Chile via the Panama Canal,

but to be able to go to Antarctica in a rowboat, you can't just rock up to Antarctica in a rowboat because Antarctica, for good reasons, and I hope it is always this way, is one of the most environmentally protected, if not the most environmentally protected place on the planet. So, unable to go there to get all this permitting, Antarctica is not an autonomous, you know, country. So, you actually have to apply for one of the, through one of the treaty nations. And in this case, we had to have a supervising vessel, which meant to have a larger vessel with us, not providing us any support from the second we left shore. They weren't able to give us anything or touch us or anything like that.

But they provided the overall permitting to allow us to be in Antarctic waters without creating all these problems. And that's like, you know, pun intended, I guess. That's the tip of the iceberg here with the complications of this. And so these guys have been dreaming up this project, but it was kind of like, but to pull this off, not only is it going to be very expensive, challenging to pull it off, but this is like a full-time effort of sort of deep, deep knowledge of how to run and facilitate logistics. And so myself, but really more than anyone, Jenna and Blake rolled up their sleeves and took kind of took the CD. I said, said to Fionn like, hey, can we like run with this? Can we like, you know, sink in and dig into this and see like the feasibility of this? And they,

you know, they worked on it, you know, Jenna and Blake worked on it, you know, all year long, basically every single day to pull together these logistics and the field salutations. That's one thing that I brought to the table. And the other thing was, as you mentioned, Andrew town, another guy, John Peterson, who also wrote it, you know, as a captain of the rowing team, when I was there, incredible athlete, John Peterson, who also rode at Yale, was the captain of the Yale rowing team when I was there. Incredible athlete, just absolutely outstanding athlete, collegiate athlete, et cetera. But he's a college principal.

Since being a high school principal. Yeah, a school principal. He's the one who lives in Oakland? He lives in Oakland. High school. I can't remember if it's a high school or a high school. He's a school principal. Incredible guy.

But admittedly, he's like, I was a captain of the rowing team. I can put some big numbers up on a rowing erg. He's like, but I've never been on an expedition other than a couple hunting trips with his dad. He's barely, you know, he's not been on big camping trips or big mountaineering trips or big expeditions or stuff like that. So it was interesting. He's like a Henley guy. Right. And so it was interesting to say i never looked at

this team of you know maybe they looked at me as the weak link maybe not i have no idea it's neither here nor there really it was that every single person is coming together it's like fion visionary of the project dreamed it up knew everything about the ocean rowing and realized that no one had ever done this like amazing and obviously when we're on the ocean he's going to have some really important skills but didn't quite have the ability to facilitate actual logistics of pulling off this large scale of a project. Jenna and I come in and understand that, have a lot of relationships through been going to Antarctica several times. You have the profile to engender a lot of confidence with the discoveries of the world, right?

A hundred percent, yeah. Then discovery got behind it to do a big film project, which was cool. We should talk about that because it was super interesting to kind of have that experience. Jenna was on the supporting or the supervising vessel throughout the journey. So she actually crossed the Drake as well. There's a whole other story about that we can get into. But then you've got these great rowers,

but without the expedition experience. So it actually ended up being- They got the engine. Yeah, so it was like, those guys can crank, but like when the swells got up to 40 feet and they're wet and cold and sleep deprived, so we were rowing 90 minutes on 90 minutes off the entire time. Cause we had to keep the boat moving the entire time. You know, that was new water for them. Cause these guys used to crank in on a rowboat for five minutes or something like that. And that's like a max effort. So

it was really cool to, I mean, it was challenging of course, but ultimately really cool to see everyone. And cause every single person really brought something exceptional to this project. And we were definitely stronger as a collective whole than we would have been separately. Yeah. I mean, on paper, you look at it and you're like, this could either work really well because everyone's bringing their own unique skillset to this equation and that could make it sing and make it make the sum much greater than the sum of its parts, or it could just be a total disaster.

Totally. Right? And like in reading about this, it's like you guys didn't, it's, you know, the press says not a single argument. Like, how is that possible? Like you're facing these crazy obstacles and these swells and everything, you know, that we can get into about what happened during the crossing, but to be able to maintain your equanimity and your composure and to, you know, make sure that

you're communicating effectively and all of that to like get through this, that's pretty amazing. Yeah. I mean, it, I mean, they're definitely inevitably, you're going to have some tension points or just tense moments, not necessarily interpersonally, but like we got out in some pretty bad storms. I mean, there was a couple of times when the swells were 40 foot high. Certainly for me, that was pushing the edges of my comfort zone for sure. And one of the things that was interesting is that a lot of people, you know, the supervising vessel that was there with the permitting and stuff and also was housing the Discovery Channel film crew that was filming the entire thing,

which was really cool because we were able to share this in real time and social media basically as it was happening. You could tune in from, you were in Australia, I guess, and you were like, oh, I'm warm in the summer and Colin's freezing wet and cold in his tiny little We had some texts beforehand. I was like, have a good time, man. I'm going to be in Australia at the beach. I'll be tuning in. So it was cool to be able to share that in real time. But what we quickly realized is with some people, I kind of imagined it. And I can maybe, in the back of my mind,

even imagine it this way. It's like, oh, there's this other boat there. So if we capsize or flip over, they can just come easily scoop us out of the water and we'll be fine. I mean, that was my thought. It must give you, if you get into real trouble, you got the boat right.

So there's two sides of that same coin. One is these guys in this boat, that boat was our boat. The rowboat was called Ohana, which is, you know, the word that's been really special throughout my life and not my own word, obviously a Hawaiian word to mean family. And that was the essence of this project was the family, the six of us coming together. But also their boat was called the Braveheart. And that was the boat that Jenna was aboard us coming together. But also their boat was called the Braveheart. And that was the boat that Jenna was aboard the entire time, as well as the film crew and the Braveheart crew. Came pretty obvious to me the second we got out there that yes, of course, in an extreme emergency, we wouldn't have been alone. There would have been another

boat there and would have done their very best to help us. They had a Zodiac on board. They have a life raft on board, stuff like that. They never touched us. They never offered us any support. And so we did be able to complete it without taking any support from them throughout the entire time. But worst case scenario, they would have been there. However, when I started looking at the mechanics, when I'm in this rowboat and there's this huge boat next to me, I'm going like, if that boat gets anywhere near us, it's way more of a disaster than it is a help. Like 40 foot 12, it's not like you can just like cruise up next to each other and be like, hey guys, come aboard. Like you're going to be, they're going to just get, you know, capsize you even more. And so there was like a, yes, ultimately was it safer because they were

there? I'm sure it was, but there wasn't like this easy exit strategy. They're like, we might try to like throw you something and then we'll be here and we can call in the coast car, you know, whatever that is. And so it was certainly a benefit. I'm not trying to pretend like that wasn't an extra safety valve, but it wasn't as simple as like, we have a crane and we can just pull your boat out if something happens in a massive storm. It was like, you guys are going to be in this storm and things are going to get crazy. The boat itself was, our boat was built to self-right. And so really our first line of defense was get inside the cabins, which we pretty much couldn't fit inside. Really only five out of six of us could get inside.

We're like all spooning each other, some funny video clips of us basically lying on top of each other, and let the boat either flip or roll or get bashed around these swells. And the boat itself, and we tested it beforehand, actually hopefully comes back up upright and self-right. So that was more or less the first line of defense is just hang on for dear life and hope the boat comes back upright. So in those 40, 50-foot swell moments or days or hours when, look, you're not going to be rowing through that, right? Like you just all hunker down and you're like, well, just ride it out, man.

We're just going to lay down here and let it pitch us however it's going to pitch us? Yeah. So a couple of things. One, I'm new to seafaring, but also learned a lot through training for this project and ultimately executing it. So when the swell is lined up in the right direction, we actually, there was a couple of times when just coincidentally, it was like we're basically on a southeast heading and the 40 plus foot 12 are coming the right way. We could go just coincidentally, it was like we're basically on a southeast heading, and the 40-plus foot swells were coming the right way.

Turbo charged. We could go with it. Yeah. And it was like wild. It was like riding the wildest roller coaster of all time. I felt like going down Splash Mountain or something. When you're a kid, you're flying in this little luge, and you can feel the wave.

You're basically essentially surfing these waves and coming up over these swells. And some of the shots that the Discovery took from the other boat, you would see us up on the crest of the wave. And then a full, I mean, 29 foot's not huge, but you see a full 29 foot sailboat or rowboat completely disappear in the ocean, can't see it at all. And then it would come back out and the full thing would disappear. And you're like, wow, that gives you a perspective on how big these swells were. So that was a, then one of the reasons this crossing is as challenging as it is in a rowboat compared to, say, crossing the Atlantic or something like that would be that, not to say crossing the Atlantic is easy, but if you cross the Atlantic from the east to west, my understanding is the swell and the predominant winds or the trade winds go usually east to west across that.

Whereas in the Drake Passage, the wind shifts pretty much every single day in every single different direction. So there were several times when the waves would either be side to our boat, which could easily roll us if we were broached to the waves, or completely against us. And in those instances, way, way, way too unsafe to row at all. And our only choice was to basically throw this thing off our boat called a sea anchor, for those that don't know what that is, because I didn't know what it is before I started rowing a boat, was basically a big parachute that fills with, you know, seawater, but it holds you directionally into the swell. So it would basically point the bow of the boat into the swell and kind of, we couldn't row at all, but we would get inside these

tiny little cabins and hunker down. Now, there was three seats for- Happened a couple times. Yeah. So there was three seats for rowing and there was three of us not rowing at any given time. So six of us, but alternating 90 minutes on, 90 minutes off. The cabins were tiny, two people in one cabin, the bow cabin,

and then Fionn and I were alternating in the stern cabin because that had all the navigation and the radio and stuff like that. So him and I were the people on that, him as the captain and me as the first mate, you know, kind of operating those controls on our, you know, alternating shifts. And that cabin was tiny for one person. Now when Fionn and I had to get in there, this, and picture this, I super strapping Icelandic dude, like six foot two, six foot three. I don't know. He's, he's tall. He's got, you know, his really wide shoulders.

You're like, that's a guy I want to help row a boat. You're like, that's amazing. You're like, that is not the guy that I want to cuddle up with next to in a space like the size of, you know, it's like two foot tall and like four foot long. And we're like both in the fetal position curled up next to each other. And it's not like we get in there, we're like, you know, look for the weather report. When's the weather going to turn? Check back in 22 hours. And the boat's just wham, wham wham wham just bashing around

smashing around and here and i fion and i just jammed this wedge in this little cabin um just hanging on for dear life you know literally cuddling each other big spoon little spoon the whole deal it was uh quite an adventure i'm getting claustrophobic and seasick thinking about it um and i want to get into like the sleep stuff and the how do you poop and all that kind of stuff that everyone wants to know about. But one thing I wanna point out, and I actually didn't realize this until this morning

when I was kind of looking into your expedition a little bit more in depth. The day before you guys push off, a Chilean C-130 disappears with 38 people on it. Yeah. I did not know that. Yeah. It was a really eerie and obviously ultimately super tragic. Going across the Drake Passage.

Yeah. So we were staging our expedition in the town of Punta Arenas, Chile. We flew down there early with, you know, we got our rowboat through customs there and we were doing, you know, packing the boat. And so we all arrived at Punta Arenas, Chile, which is the same town that I actually left for to go to Antarctica the two other times I've been there for the Solo Crossing and the Explorers Grand Slam projects. So we staged that there partially because Jen and I have some relationships down there that could help facilitate that built up from the years. So it's made sense. And also it's either that or Ushuaia, Argentina would be the kind of two ports that you could imagine staging this from to get down to Cape Horn.

So we staged that at Punta Arenas. And the day that we're leaving on the Braveheart, so Braveheart takes us from Punta Arenas and actually takes us to Cape Horn, the actual starting point for the rowboat. We're all aboard the Braveheart. We find out about that day that we're leaving that a plane crashed in the middle of Drake Passage, a C-130, as you mentioned, and that plane actually had left from Punta Arenina. So a plane took off basically where we are flying towards Antarctica. It was a Chilean military plane and crashed in the middle of Drake Passage and ultimately 38 people lost their lives, which is, you know, terribly sad, terribly tragic. And then an interesting kind of chain of events unfolded from there for us, which is, you know, after a year of Blake and Jenna filling out all this permitting, you know, all this requirements, you know, dotting the I's,

crossing every T, super complicated process to get us to this point, we're driving south on the Braveheart towards Cape Horn and a Chilean military boat pulls up right beside us and, you know, contacts our captain, asks us to pull over and they board the ship and they ask us, you know, what we're doing, what are we doing there? What's this rowboat thing that you have like attached to your outside of your boat? Like what the heck is going on? And, you know, we talked to them and they ultimately are like, you do know about this plane that just crashed, right? And we're like, yeah, we're aware of that. They're like, we're not sure that we can let this project go. We're going to detain, not detain you in a bad way, but like we need to divert you to our military base. So that was step one, then eight hours kind

of out of our way to go to this town called Porta Williams, where we had, there's a larger military outpost there of the Chilean military. And then our captain had to get off the boat and meet with the Chilean military. And they're like, look, like all of our search and rescue is diverted towards, you know, doing a grid like formation to find any remnants of the plane or survivors or any of this in the middle of Drake Passage. You can understand from our point of view, while we wouldn't want someone else to launch seemingly kind of dangerous expedition while this is happening. Their resources are dispersed. A hundred percent. They wouldn't be able to help you.

And candidly, obviously as disappointed as I felt like, wow, we planned all of this stuff and now it looks like we're not going to be able to go. If I'm sitting in the same shoes as the Chilean military guy, I'm looking at this and thinking the same thing. I'm thinking like, we can't, like why would we allow this to go forward? Yeah, and the potential for two gigantic disasters to happen back to back. Exactly, just right on top of each other. So we were there for about a day, I guess it was, and really a testament to the entire team, Jenna and Blake and the people who worked

on the permitting forest logistics and this, they were like, okay, if we're going to let you do this, we need to come on your boat and just do a top-to-bottom survey of what you guys have going on. So we're, come on, we want to see the full rowboat. We want to see all of your survival suits. Fionn had designed these custom survival suits for us that we could row in these bright orange suits that we have these photos in, which ended up being amazing.

Is that different from the dry suits? They're special dry suits too, right? Yeah, so it's the same thing that I'm talking about. But usually a dry suit, you wouldn't be able to row in it was like really kind of bulky and so he designed specialty with all of his years of ocean knowledge experience that's a special custom-built suit that allowed us to both row but have the safety of a dry suit um and they were like you know the trillion military's like okay well well you've thought that through that's interesting and then they see all our flares and our e-perb and all our safety protocol and

everything's registered correctly and that like you know they look up all of our resumes and they're like okay like this guy's incredible or this person's crossed Antarctica you know some of the other guys we haven't even mentioned like you know Cameron Bellamy is like a world-renowned you know open water swimmer um you know legendary open water swimmer they're kind of looking okay okay like the crew is like a legitimate group of guys attempting this. And then they do top to bottom on Braveheart, you know, all their safety protocols, all this stuff. And in the paperwork that we had built with them, you know, Jenna and them had worked really closely together and actually built this kind of dossier. It was ended up being like a 30 page thing of all the different

safety protocols. If A happens, B happens, if C happens, you know, all this kind of things. And so, you know, fortunately for us, certainly still deeply tragic of the people who lost their life out there, but they took a look at it and they said, you know what, like you guys actually, you know, have every piece of paperwork you need. You've got the right resume. You have all the safety protocols. You have the backup safety protocols. You know, we're going to let you launch this boat. So ultimately we were only delayed by a day, but it was a very kind of, you know, nervous thing and also just surreal and tragically sad

for the people that lost their life and the search and rescue that was going on. Yeah, so that was going on kind of all swirling around you when you guys pushed off, right? Did they recover any of the passengers or? I'm not, I don't think they found any survivors, unfortunately. I know they did find

a few pieces of the wreckage ultimately. But it was, you know, not that much was recovered. One of the other interesting things that did happen that was, you know, challenging for us is they said, we will let you launch this. However, here is this area and they gave us four wait points that basically formed a square and said, this is the grid where we're looking for wreckage. You know, this is where boats and planes are flying over and all this kind of stuff. And they drew it out on the map and it's literally like the entirety

of the whole center of Drake Passage. So like the first hundred or so miles off of Cape Horn, we were fine, but really quickly, we were gonna get into that space. And they said, if you wanna do this, you can't come into this area until we call off the search. And so when we did launch, we kind of had to just make the call of like, hey, like we're going to row in this

direction. We actually changed our course on a Western heading to see if we might have to add distance to avoid this, but we didn't know which way the current was going to sweep. We ultimately got lucky and the current and wind pushed that grid area kind of, you know, further away and we were able to continue our course. But even though just the first cup, it's kind of, you know, further away and we were able to continue our course. But even though just the first cup, it's almost like, you know, you like, you know, jump off and begin a project and you just don't know if like, you know, three days later, it's just going to completely, yeah, it's going to happen. So two things, I mean, first of all, why would you sort of, you know, passing through that area be problematic for the search and rescue?

Because they just didn't want any other traffic in there, any other boats, any other thing. They were trying to spot stuff from airplanes. Like, oh my God, what's that little thing down there? Is that a piece of wreckage? Is that a piece of the plane? Just to like, they're like, stay. We probably shouldn't be letting you do this to anybody.

If we're going to let you do this, like kind of stay out of our, you know, zone. Totally understandable. Second thing, just from, you know, a mental perspective, like, all right, we're getting ready to do this thing. And then like this plane crashes, you know, and 30 AP go missing, presumably dead. And you're like a day away from like, do it. And from what I understand, the weather conditions were not that bad that day, right? It was like, it was supposedly fairly clear. So it was surprising. Yeah, it was clear. There was some higher winds, but it was really unclear as to why that happened. That had to rent some crazy space in your head. Oh, 100%.

Was anybody like, hey, man, I don't know. I might be pulling out of this. I mean, it definitely gave us— This just got real. It gave us all pause, I will say that. And I've heard Andrew and John reflect on the moment when the Chilean military boarded us and said, hey, this might not go like at first. And Andrew and John were telling me afterwards, I can't remember which one, I think it was Andrew was telling me this. And he said, he was like, you know, really upset and bummed, but he realized in his subconscious, he was like kind of relieved. Like it kind of had been like,

it's going to get off the hook. You know what? Like it's not my fault. And so the fault. Like this. And so the captain of the Braveheart, after meeting with the Chilean, was going to come back. We were having a group meal, and that's when he was going to share the news. And actually, I had kind of readied myself, given the circumstances, for at best case scenario, they're going to be like, maybe in a week, try again. And we were going to run out of time. We didn't have that time because we were renting this big boat, and we couldn't afford to just keep renting it indefinitely. that time because we were renting this big boat and we couldn't afford to just keep renting it indefinitely um and he basically he comes in and he's like i've got good news for you we're gonna be able to go and andrew said to me that it was that moment that he was like oh we have to go yeah because once you once you mentally check out a little bit, trying to get back into that game headspace.

Ultimately, Andrew was an absolute amazing, super strong and got his mind and body right. But a momentary moment of like, oh, wow, this is real. And it does. I mean, people, of course, in looking what I've done, and obviously I'm not going to sit here and say what I've done is the safest choices in all of the land. I try to prepare. I try to plan. I try to put the safety protocols in place around the things that I'm doing.

But there's some implicit risk in the activities that I've imparted. And after the Antarctica crossing, the Solo crossing, people said to me, they were like, you've done this. You set the speed record on the seven summits. You've done some of these other things. Like, you think you're good now? Like, don't be like, don't try to be the next Evel Knievel and like, keep like one upping this. And that's never been my desire to just like

do stunts or feats or anything like that. But as this was unfolding, I'll be honest, my own in earner dialogue was like, is this a step too far? Like Drake Passage, Robo, you know, this idea of doing something I've never done. You know, ultimately we know how it turned out. It's positive I was able to achieve it. But, you know, I have moments of doubt and my internal dialogue was definitely triggered a little bit in that moment of kind of like, wait a second, wait a second. Is this madness? Is that when you, you know, turn to Jenna and say like, is this, are we on the right course here? So Jenna said to me, um, it might not have been right in that moment, but within the last, you know, day or so before launch, um, there had been a lot of actual, I mean, there had been a lot

of challenges in getting this thing to launch and just, just complications just with, um, you know, the, the column bars that I use in Antarctica, the special bars. By the way, I was entirely vegan the entire row. We should talk about that. There you go, nice. But I was. I was entirely vegan the whole row. The column bars, which are kind of specialty bars that my sponsor, Standard Process, created for me

and this time for the entire team. Those got stuck in Chilean customs and we couldn't get them out. It looked like our food wasn't going to arrive. A number of things happened with packing the boat and getting the boat and the logistics and people's flights delayed and all this kind of stuff. And then this plane crashes and Jenna looks over at me

and she says, it's kind of this interesting moment where she's like, well, this is one of two things that's happening right now. There are so many red flags and this is the final red flag actually telling us, you know what? Pack it in. Get on a plane, go home, go spend Christmas with the family. Like, you know, enough is enough. She goes, it's either that or the eternal optimist that she is, or it's a stacking of all of these obstacles overcome. And this is the final one to overcome before being able to kind of be set free

and do this journey. And she kind of asked me, which one do you think it is? And knowing the difference. Knowing the difference. Is the difference between life and death. Honestly, like that's so tricky, right? Because it can go either way. It's like, look, all the evidence was there.

The universe was trying to tell you, man. Right. With the heat, you know, that volume dials how many more times can i all right i just crashed a plane you know like what else do you need to know about why this is a bad idea or like hey man life is about like overcoming these obstacles when they get thrown at you and can you just can you maintain that level of focus yeah yeah and i'm ultimately proud that we're able to come together and stick together. And the team on the rowboat stuck together. The Braveheart team was amazing.

Jenna's supervising role from the Braveheart worked out. But it was hard-earned. And some of these, circling back on the concept I said, whiteboard into reality or something I read out in the book, it's amazing to talk about the epic adventure, the 40-foot swells or being alone in Antarctica, what it felt to be pulling a 375 pound sled, you know, 12 hours a day alone across Antarctica. You know, those are the, you know, edge of the seat moments here. And I, of course, love experiencing them and I love talking about

them, but there's a place that's maybe a little bit less sexy between writing the idea on the whiteboard and actually executing on your dreams. And it's like toiling in those moments of that grind and they're not always as high stakes as you know what we're talking about here but it's like are you willing to just keep putting your head down when you know oh to get a Chilean boat into Chilean customs you need these 17 pieces of paperwork and this thing a lot of bureaucracy you know you're like are you willing to sit there for a lot of fill that out like you know like that stuff's not sexy and no one ever wants to it's not cool to talk about this or whatever like that is the that is the difference between dreaming up to something versus dreaming up and actually doing the thing is being able to put all of those steps together and just knocking out those little things

one by one because when you look at it from 10,000 feet or somebody just randomly happened upon your Instagram stories during this, it looks like, oh, he's some kind of, you know, you know, Richard Branson billionaire guy. He's got all this money and he's got this boat. And it, you know, it's really hard to see the reality of it because the grandeur is what you're kind of

smacked in the face with. Right. Right. Yeah. And I, uh, I mean, I, I love storytelling just in general, but I think that, uh, uh, something that I often point to is the NBC coverage of the Olympics. It's like, I don't know all the sports Olympics. I love the Olympics, but, um, you may have seen in the book, Pablo Morales, your college teammate played a really significant role, inspiring the heck out of me when I was a little kid. But you turn on and it's the fencing or something like that. And you're like, I don't know anything about this. But you get this backstory of the actual guy and it's his village back home training for this.

And all of a sudden, you're engaged in that. And it's not just, at least for me, when I look at high performance in sports as I've gotten closer and closer and lived to it in my own life. me when I look at high performance in sports as I've gotten closer and closer and lived to it in my own life as much as I love seeing the guy sprint the 100 meter dash and win the gold medal with his hands in the air whatever I look at that and the first thing I think about is not the you know 9.6 seconds or whatever it just took him to run that race I'm like huh I wonder like what was that journey like where was the first race where was the time he broke his ankle where was when no one cared when was then he he lost the race to his, you know, the best guy in his high school and he came back again? You know, what is that entire

process? Where was the people in his life that said, you can't do this, you're not going to do this? Those quiet moments alone, full of doubt, full of fear, but what was it that made him get up when his alarm went off the next day at 5 a.m. and get out to the track? Because that is ultimately what is manifest in those, you know, 10 seconds of learning. And there isn't one athlete in that situation that doesn't have an incredible story. And that led them to that point. And NBC does an incredible job

of finding the best of those stories and telling them well. And that's what lights that Olympic spirit fire. Totally, totally. When you're like, because now you under, it's like, I don't follow fencing, but if you tell me that story, I'm all in you know like i i'm 100 there for that person yeah yeah so

it's so like infectious i i love that stuff and i you know not not an mbc documentary by any means but certainly uh through the book it's like it's not just like let me tell you about 54 days across your network it's let me tell you about the totality of the life and experience and the mentors and the people that, you know, because to me, I think that that's, the things I've read and the things that I watch and things that I consume, if they don't have the fabric of the reality

of the journey and the story, then it falls a little bit flat. Well, you're a natural storyteller. And I knew that when I was in that townhouse and you had just gotten back from that experience and you told the story so well, you had such a command over what that narrative was and what was impactful about it. And you've done that in the book as well.

And you really do it on the daily on Instagram. Like you're relentless. Like you're always like making sure that you're telling a good story. It's not just like a clip of this, like there's a story that's unfolding always through these adventures that you're telling a good story. It's not just like a clip of this. There's a story that's unfolding always through these adventures that you're having. And I was, once again, I was like,

how is he doing this on the, how is this working? There's no cell service or internet in the Drake passage. Yeah. And you're not allowed to do anything with the Braveheart boat. Right. So how did all that work?

So it was pretty cool. We're talking about storytelling, and that's something, and I quickly alluded to it, but I'm going to double-click on it, which is I have been so inspired by other people's stories in my life. People who I've never met, but that's reading a book, that's watching a film, that's watching the Olympics, whatever that is. that's reading a book, that's watching a film, that's watching the Olympics, whatever that is. And so I've realized that one of my great passions is in the duality of pushing my body in these extreme environments, but sharing that in a storytelling medium. And now we have the ability of social media and real-time storytelling to bring people into that story while it's happening with the hope of having that ripple effect of positivity. We had 600,000 students are enrolled in my nonprofit programs of STEM curriculums

and they're following along every single day. They're learning about science, technology, engineering, math, building scale models of the boat or learning about weather or climate change or the ocean temperatures or this. Is that through Beyond 7-2? Yeah, it's my nonprofit Beyond 7-2. And we've built these curriculums,

but these students all of a sudden, their mind is lit up because they're like, wait, this is a real thing that's happening right now. It's not a dusty textbook of something that happened like way back when. And that's the power of storytelling. Or for me as a young person, I mentioned Pablo Morales. You know, when I was seven years old,

the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, I was a seven-year-old kid, didn't have much money in my family, really kind of basic childhood growing up. My mother was young when she had me. So she was a young mother. And we have a TV set. And there's a TV set showing me the Olympics halfway around the world in this city called Barcelona, Spain, that might as well been on a different planet compared, I never traveled when I was a kid. And I see this hundred meter butterfly and this guy win this

gold medal. And it sparked a fire inside of me. My mom was like, she just said to me, you know, my mom's incredible and her guidance she gave me throughout my entire life, including with the burn accident, which you and I've talked about in depth. But, you know, she says to me, she's not like, oh, that was this cool thing we watched on TV. She was like, that inspired you? Like, do you want to join the local swim team? Like we could do that. And like, she remember her saying, like, it's 1992. What's the peak age for a swimmer in the Olympics? And I was like, I don't know, for men, maybe, you know, we went and looked it up. And, you know, maybe it's 19 or 23 or 23.

I'm just like, okay, so what Olympics might you be able to swim at? Is it 2008? Is it 2012? Like, my mom walked me down the path. But where I'm going with that is the storytelling. The element of somebody sharing their story, or NBC in this case, sharing Pablo Morales' story with a seven-year-old boy sitting in Portland, Oregon, changed the entire trajectory of my life, what I believed in and whatever. And so with my expeditions, I've always done my best

to share the stories in real time. And with this expedition in particular, as we realized the need for this supervising vessel, we all of a sudden realized that we were going to have the best capability we've ever had to tell a live story in real time. And that's when this amazing partnership came to life with Discovery Channel. And they said, we want to shoot

this long form documentary of this thing and we can shoot it from the Braveheart. And we're like, that's amazing. But what about in addition to that, we invest in the best satellite technology possible to be able to beam social media content. So as you're watching, you know, Instagram stories of me getting bashed around in my little cabin on Christmas Day or arriving, you know, penguins jumping off the side of the boat or all the things I was able to just like capture with my iPhone. We could send that out. off the side of the boat or all the things I was able to just like capture with my iPhone, we could send that out. Or in their case, they created also 14, what they called mid-form episodes, about five or 10 minute episodes that you can go see on YouTube or you can see the

long form documentaries not out yet. And the same thing, they actually had an editor on board. So the guys were shooting editor on board, Iridium partner with us as well as a satellite company to have like the best, most powerful satellite. You still can partnered with us as well. It's a satellite company to have the best, most powerful satellite. You still can't send a ton. It's not like you could just beam content right and left as if a normal internet connection, but they could get enough content out to share these

little clips, these little episodes, these little things. It was really cool to bring that to life. It took having a massive partner like a Discovery. It took Iridium believing in the project. It took a lot of different bigger pieces that we're able to pull together. But ultimately, it gave hopefully the experience of, like I said, there's 600,000 students following along this visceral, real experience that just people who are following along on my Instagram and things like that, a way to connect with the story as

it's unfolding. And, you know, my heroes in exploration are the heroes of, you know, a hundred years ago when they'd go away for three years, you know, like Shackleton or someone like that and come back and maybe have a couple of really grainy images and their journals that they could have transcribed or something like that. And telling their story at the Yale club. Right, exactly. What is it about Yale?

I don't know. I'm like the least Yale guy ever. But the thing about now, and trust me, I think there's a lot of things that are negative about social media. And I've had my addictions and vices in the world of social media

and going down the rabbit hole of a phone for sure. And I see the pitfalls of it. I do see the beauty of it. I do see the beauty of you on to share stories at scale and impact people in that positive way. And I know you do as well. And it's a cool thing. I love that it all goes back to Pablo.

I mean, that's just, that's beautiful. You know, I remember that 100 meter butterfly race in Barcelona, like I could recount every second of that. I've watched it so many times. And you know, I was somebody who grew up with pictures of Pablo on my wall as a kid, even though I'm older than you, and then had the opportunity to train

and be a teammate of his at Stanford. And I watched somebody who, you know, he was the most dominant swimmer in NCAA history. I think he won, like he won all of his races at NCAA championships except maybe one. Like he almost had a perfect record. Wow. most dominant swimmer in nc2a history i think he won like he won all of his races at nc2a championships except maybe one like he almost had a perfect record wow between 84 and 88 the most dominant you know american swimmer there was goes into the 88 olympic trials with the expectation that he'll not only make the team but he's going to be the captain of the team and whether he

over trained or had a bad day or whatever he shows up shows up at Olympic trials and he doesn't make the team. Crazy. It's the craziest thing, right? Yeah. So then he goes to law school. And swimming's brutal like that. There's no like, oh, let me coach his selection. It's over, yeah.

It's like, you didn't perform in the day. You didn't make one or top one or two in your event. That's it. Career's over. Yeah. So he goes to law school at Cornell, does two years at Cornell, and then decides, hey, I miss my family.

I've got some family stuff. I'm gonna go back home for a while. Dips his toe back in the water and is like, maybe I can swim a little bit. Start swimming a little bit without any agenda. It's like, I feel pretty good and decides to go for it again. Amazing.

And against all odds makes the team in 92 and then wins the gold medal. This is a guy whose parents were immigrants from Cuba. His dad, like very, you know, salt of the earth people, like the nicest people in the world. And Pablo is one of the most humble people you'll ever meet for being such an incredibly talented, you know, athlete. I mean, when you watch him swim, it's like poetry. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing. And when he won that gold medal and they cut to his dad in the stands,

it's just, I can't, I cry every time I see that. Yeah, I have goosebumps just hearing it. And I mean, I am sitting here as a product of the guy who could have given up in 88, who could have not gone back to swimming. And literally for me, never met Pablo Morales, but deep, deep, deep gratitude for him continuing on his path and be able to shine in the entire world. And for me to be able to beam that signal from the other side of, you know, Europe into my living room to experience that moment, you know,

as a little kid, it certainly changed my life. And it's funny, I didn't, you know, when I first picked up your book several years ago, I had no idea about going to do the Stanford swimmer thing, but I didn't think of the orientation. And I remember there's a photo of him and you graduating from law school together or something in your book, right? Then we, so then I went to Cornell Law School, but I was there while he was back training. So like he did two years and then I show up after he stopped out. Right. And then we did our final year together. That's what it was.

And so I remember when I read your book the first time, opening it up, I'm like, no way, ritual, Pablo Morales. Like, it's just crazy how the, all those different kinds of tentacles intertwine. To be clear, all right, just so there's no confusion. When I was swimming at Stanford, they would like skip through the coach. He was like, all right, get in the lane with Pablo. You know, it's like, all Stanford, you know, they would like skip through the coach. He was like, all right, get in the lane with Pablo. You know,

it's like, all right, you know, and I'm behind him just watching his feet get further and further ahead of me. Like, it's not like I was going toe to toe

with this guy. Like I could not train at his level. But you were in the same lane, which is very cool. And that's what I wanted. That's what I asked for, you know. What's Pablo up to these days?

He has been the head coach of the swim team at university of nebraska for quite some time oh cool yeah that's awesome so he graduated from law school he practiced law for a little bit and was like this isn't for me um and got the head coaching gig at nebraska and he's been there for a long time well if you ever talk to him send him my deepest love and gratitude for inspiring uh the seven yearold version of myself. That's a beautiful thing. I love that. All right. How'd you poop? How'd you go to the bathroom?

You must be reading the Instagram comments because it's certainly the most asked question on all my extensions. I know the answer, but just in case anybody's listening and everybody wants to know this. There was no toilet facilities on the boat. There was no amenities really of any kind on the boat. There's three seats on the boat for the rowing. There's what's called the stroke seat, which is by the stern cabin. Obviously, when you row, you're facing backwards the direction that you're going, same as like a rowing crew boat on a river. I sat in the bow seat. So I was sitting towards the front of

the boat, but the third person in the line, if that makes sense. Next to the bow seat, we had our fancy toilet, literally one inch from where I was sitting the entirety of this expedition, which lasted just under two weeks. We had a five gallon bucket. And inside that five gallon bucket was how we used the bathroom. So someone would say, either me while I was rowing, or the guy, Cameron or Jamie, who was with two other guys that I rowed with, they would say, hey, man, I got out of the bathroom. Get out of your seat. I would get up.

I'd switch into their seat. Take care of their business. And simple as that. Not glamorous. And you just bail the bucket out? Yeah, bail the bucket out. Obviously not throwing any trash into the ocean, but the human waste went over into the ocean.

And that's kind of the standard protocol of that. It's not, a lot of people want to know that. It's, you know, yeah, we had to go to the bathroom. I mean, how do you think? Yeah, exactly. I'm like, oh. It's a bucket, man. A bucket, simple as that.

So there was one day where one of the dudes, it must've been Cameron, went swimming? Yes, yes. And it looked like, was he not wearing a wetsuit? No, Cameron Bellamy is just a legendary human being. You would love this guy. Yeah, he, gosh, what a guy. He's a South African guy, lives in San Francisco now.

He's rowed for the national team of South Africa when he's, I think he's 38 or something now, but when he was kind of early 20s. So he's a really accomplished rower. And then later in life, you can appreciate this much later in life in his late 20s, maybe early 30s, he got into swimming. Like it wasn't a pool swimmer, didn't swim. And you know how hard it is from your travel audience people just to kind of learn how to swim like later in life. But if you don't learn it well at a young age. Yeah, it's tough. It's super tough.

And he just got way, way, way into swimming. And so for the last several years, he's accomplished a ton in the world of ocean water swimming. So he's done, I hope I don't get this wrong, but he's done whatever the ocean swimming Grand Slam is. So he's swam all the major channels. It's called something slightly different than that. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Someone's going to put it in the comments. You do the straight of Gibraltar and all those major channels. It's called something slightly different. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Someone's going to put it in the comments. You do the straight of Gibraltar.

Yeah, exactly. You swim across the English Channel and all the major big passages. The one in Japan, done that. Crazy stories from that. All these jellyfish things. No wetsuit, always no wetsuit. And a couple of those.

The one I think, the one between the Ireland and the UK maybe is that one. I might be getting this wrong. Forgive me, ocean swimming community for getting it not the detail specific. That one was like freezing cold. That's like 50 degree waters or something like that or low 50s.

You had no wetsuit. No wetsuit. You just put on a ton of weight? Yeah, ocean swimming is no wetsuit. Put the Vaseline on? Ton of Vaseline on. So then what he did is he swam around the entire circumference of Barbados,

which no one had ever done that before. And that was last year. And then this year, while we were training for the row, he actually was a lot more focused on a swimming project swam around the entire circumference of Barbados, which no one had ever done that before. Um, and that was last year. And then this year, while we were training for the row, he actually was a lot more focused on a swimming project that he was doing. And he, uh, completed what I believe is the longest, or certainly one of the longest might be the longest, uh, open ocean swim crossing ever, which was 57 hours straight from St, uh, from Barbados to St. Lucia he originally was trying to do the Cuba to Florida swim but permitting and with the stuff

with Trump and the Cuban stuff just kind of fell apart and so we pivoted but it was like a hundred and 105 miles something like that again I'm probably getting a few of these details a little wrong but it was like exceptional and the stories he has from that obviously I wrote about this guy you know 12 hours a day for you two weeks, I heard all of his stories and such an

incredible guy, great spirit, really, really warm person. He's like, he's got like, he was telling me every 30 minutes, he got so many rashes on his mouth from being in the water for so long, for 50 some hours, that he's taking these gobs of Vaseline and he's literally putting like handfuls and fistfuls of vaseline into his mouth and it would like deteriorate with the salt water and so we'd keep extra smeared around his beard and he would like kind of like suction it from his beard into his mouth and then get another handful of that i mean it was like brutal he ended up in the he finished it which is extraordinary but then he ended up in the hospital for a few days just because of like the jellyfish stains

and this but talk about a guy who is a mental and physical absolute stallion um so we're on sea anchor this day uh day five or day six or something like that one of the days when we had to wait out one of the storms when the storms and the winds were against us and we're getting ready to pull up the sea anchor so the storm is finally cleared enough that we think it's we're going to be able to row in the next couple of hours so it's not huge swells at the time but we're kind of coming off an intense storm on the rowboat. And he's this renowned ocean water swimmer at this point. And he's like, hey, Colin, how cold do you think the water is? And I was like, whoa.

Cold enough to not want to know anymore. I was like, I don't know. It splashed across my face in that storm last night. And it was like the coldest thing ever. It felt horrible. No one wants a wet and cold splash in the face when we're taking this on. And I was like, I know we're not fully to Antarctica, and I know there it's one degree, so I don't know.

Maybe it's like 38 Fahrenheit or 4 Celsius or whatever the conversion is. Something like that. I was like, I don't know, something stupid cold. And he's like, I think I'm going to go for a swim. And I was like, what? And he's like, dude, we think i'm gonna go for a swim and i was like what and he's like dude we're in the middle of trade passage man like you only live once man like when am i ever gonna be back here like i love swimming like i'm gonna swim and i first i was like i think he's serious and i was like if you're gonna do this let me grab my iphone it's like i'll film this

but second of all it's like but dude think this through first because like you got to get back in the robot and there's no like warming you up there's no how is he gonna warm up there's no like heater there's no this like could jeopardize kind of all this he was like he was like dude like i've got it and i was like if you believe in yourself bro like all for it i will be here cheering you on and so sure enough strips down butt naked he puts his set he has a cat he brought a swim cap and goggles which i didn't know so he must have been thinking about this pulls out a swim cap and goggles which I didn't know so he must have been thinking about this pulls out a swim cap and goggles from the base of his thing

the South African flag on his head goggles on nothing else completely butt naked and just does a full you know dive jumps into the ocean

you know swims around he wasn't in there for a long time you know maybe 30 seconds or a minute but plenty long trust me I wasn't looking to go for a swim there

and so what a legend man he swam in the middle of drake patchett's it's been one of the episodes uh that that discovery did i'm sure it'll be in the future then how did he so he gets out does he get right into the dry suit like how does that work and he uh we had is he he must be like a big dude with a lot of he's a big dude yeah he's like 220 pounds like kind of broad you know tall he put on some weight for the rowing project specifically. He's done some other rows where he's lost some weight. So he had some weight on him.

He's a strong, fit guy more than anything. He's not like fat at all. But I don't know, man. He's just a beast. He just got out with a beast. The guy kept smiling the entire time. He just gets out like, oh, that was cool, man, like whatever. That's insane.

We had a Canada Goose as a sponsor so he jives in the bow cabin wraps himself in a bunch of down jackets and shivers a little bit and he's like so we rowing let's go like he's just ready to go it's complete savage uh on the other side of that your boy Andrew had a little trouble with his ankle right yeah um what happened there I think you're um I think maybe you're thinking of Jamie. Was it? Yeah. Oh, yeah. It was Jamie. Yeah. Yeah. So we got these boots and none of us had ever, and it's a silly thing, but we actually hadn't tried them out because we did a test row together in Scotland for a day, but it wasn't like super, super, it was wet and rainy as Scotland always is. It was

like 55 degrees. So we kind of researched the best ocean rowing or ocean boot that we could find. It was for like cold water sailing. And we had none of us had actually ever tried them on. And before this row, because we just said there was no climate to actually truly test them in. And all of my like mountaineering expeditions, things like that, always try to test my gear, but this is like one piece of gear. There's no like opportune time to test.

And since no one's ever done this before, it wasn't like asking the guy, so what boot did you wear when you rode a boat across Drake Passage? So he got these boots, and they just started digging into his ankle super, super, super bad. And he never mentioned it. I mean, God, Jamie, it was amazing to be with a group of guys that actually had such an orientation towards positivity because Jamie sat right in front of me

and then Cameron was right in front of me. The three of us were on our shift and then John, Andrew and Fionn were on the opposite, opposite shift. And Jamie sat right in front of me. So closest to me and didn't say anything about it, laughing, playing, joking around, whatever. He's like, Oh, and finally at one point he's like, kind of like, you know, my ankle hurts. And I, you know, I'm like, you're all right. And he's like, Oh, it around, whatever. He's like, oh, and finally at one point, he's like, kind of like, you know, my ankle hurts. You know, and I'm like, you all right? And he's like, oh, it just kind of feels like maybe there's a little blister or this or that. Finally, after like 10 days or something like that,

he finally takes off his boot and shows somebody. And he is like literally like ripped off all of the skin, all of everything. Feet have been wet and cold for so long. When we were getting in the cabin in our 90 minuteminute downtimes, myself included, we weren't like taking off our gear. We had these crazy dry suits on.

We had these boots on. So we'd just be soaking wet and just like lie down and try to eat something real quick and get to sleep for a few minutes. And so he had been doing the same thing that any of the rest of us has. But it turns out, I mean, I don't know how he got through it, but he had just ripped apart his ankle. And so when he finally pulled it off, it was- Yeah, I read that it was down to the bone. Yeah, it was pretty gnarly.

And for him to like not say anything? Yeah. And like, it wasn't like he didn't say anything, but then stopped rowing or didn't say anything of this. Like he rowed the entire time with a smile on his face and Um, and this, I mean, he is, uh, he is, he is, he is an interesting lineage. His grandfather, um, actually was the first person to fly over Mount Everest in a fixed plane in like the 1930s. And those photographs were actually used to help, uh, Sir Edmund Hillary on the initial climb. He's from Scotland, uh, Jamia. So just an interesting story with kind of exploration in general and his family lineage. But, um, but yeah, somehow, I mean, he was just like locked in and was like, oh, my ankle hurts a little bit.

Like I mean, the one time I heard of it, I'm like, bro, like at what point you're just like, hey, can someone help me here? Like I've like ripped a hole in my leg. 20 minutes in, like this boot doesn't feel good. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Wow, what was the gnarliest part? Like, was there ever a moment where you thought you were just in over your head here, literally, figuratively?

To me, there were two moments. I mean, there's a lot of moments, but I've had to like kind of circle on, you know, two really kind of full-on moments. One was the first like major storm we rode in. And for me, it was, you know, i'd never been in the open ocean like that and all of a sudden like it's three days in or three or four days i can't remember exact day they kind of all blend together since there's 24 hour non-stop of rowing um weird sleep schedule but um just massive swells kicked up like i said that feeling of like riding this roller coaster it's like fun for a little bit and then i remember this moment so john and i john was principal. Um, we would switch the same seat as each other. Like he

was always in the bow seat on the opposite shift. I remember the middle of the storm and to get to my seat is like, you know, just like getting jostled around, just like switching into my seat. You think I might, that's when you could easily fall off the ball that we were clipped in with the safety line. And John looks over at me and he's also, you know, amazing rower, like I said, but he's not been in a massive storm like this either. And he kind of looks at me and he's also you know amazing rower like i said but he's not been in a massive storm like this either and he kind of looks at me with like this death defying look and he's like he's like how do we get up how do we make this stop you know and i was like i think we just keep rowing like it was just kind of those moments of just like uh inarticulate but like i think it was a the subtext was i'm afraid i think the only way to stay safe is to keep rowing or keep the boat

from turning and getting rolled over in this. And so that was a really intense. Because you're like rowing, but it's not exactly making you go forward. No, and it's like building. Obviously, it builds, right? And so it's like, oh, this is getting back. Oh, this is pretty big. Oh, this is really big.

Oh, is it going to keep getting bigger like this? And the craziest thing happened in that moment, which is ultimately kind of joyful and reflection, but it was bizarre. It was this storm, really cloudy and gray, and it was getting dark. There's not a lot of darkness, but we're in a little bit further north. We had about two or three hours of darkness in the first week or so. And it was getting towards dark or dusk anyways. And all of a sudden, this huge cruise ship comes of like a ghost ship out of this and we hear this

and at first we were afraid so i'm like oh my god it looks like they're coming like straight for us they don't see us thankfully they actually have been tracking the project and it was a cruise ship that was like taking uh you know passengers to the antarctic peninsula and they came by to like we heard that there's these crazy knuckleheads, you know, rowing a boat across Jake Passage. And they came to like, check us out. So we're in the middle of this storm, kind of like hanging out with Dear Life John.

They're like, how do we get out of this? All of a sudden there's a cruise ship. All these people on vacation. And people are on the deck and like dressed in all these nice coats. And they're just waving and they're like, hey. Like, it was bizarre the most bizarre feeling. I actually just started crying in this moment.

I'm not sure why. I've just the kind of pure, like, strange, bizarre, scared, happy, elated. The juxtaposition of those two things. It was just super weird. And then the other point, the other piece that for me actually was the absolute scariest part of the entire expedition, was the very last day we are getting close to Antarctica. So there's outer islands of Antarctica actually that are off the peninsula. And so about 100 miles from our finish point, we wanted to finish on the actual continent of Antarctica,

on the actual true landmass on the peninsula. There's outer islands. And so we finally approached those. And when we saw land, it was amazing. We hadn, I hadn't seen land for, you know, 12 days or 11 days or whatever it was. And it was like, oh my God, there it is. There's just, I mean, particularly I'd never seen, you know, the peninsula like this. And it's just, you know, all of a sudden you've got icebergs jutting out. You've got, you know, tons of sea life, penguins, you've got these huge mountains. It's just like kind of a dream landscape. And it's amazing to

see that after not seeing anything for so many days. But we still have a hundred miles to go. So it's kind of like, we're here. Oh, we're not here. Cause we still have to row for like a day and a half. And the weather's actually looking like it might turn and all these things. So we keep rowing. And finally we're within about, I remember when maybe eight hours from, you know, proposed, we were maybe like within 20 miles or 15 miles or something like that of the finish. And the weather is not great. And what's happening is there's basically, there's big icebergs, you know,

there's some big massive icebergs, which are a little bit easier to steer around, but there's also some smaller pieces of ice and things like that. And obviously we don't want to damage our boat right at the end. And this is kind of one of the trickier spots. So what was happening is Fionn and I were alternating each other being in the stern cabin, you know, with the navigation.

We had a rudder that we could like control and we could put on GPS or we could like do it manually. And so we were communicating, whichever one wasn't rowing would be like, okay, even though our course would take us towards that iceberg, turn 10 degrees to the right or turn 10 degrees to the left or whatever. And it would kind of like, we'd be able to steer around it. Because you can't see where you're going because you're rowing backwards, right? And so I had been doing that, and this time we were all so sleep deprived.

It was like 4.30 in the morning, we hadn't slept in so long, and I had been like trying to steer, so I'm not sleeping during my shift because I'm trying to help steer. Then all of a sudden, we start going, me, Cameron, and Jamie on our shift, and we're rowing, we're rowing, we're rowing. Now we're like, you know, five hours away from the finish. We're kind

of getting pretty excited and we're kind of putting a lot of power and oars is kind of cranking on it and whatever. And then all of a sudden we hear the alarm of the Braveheart, the supervising vessel, just go as loud as possible. And we're like, oh my God, like, what is that? Like, is there an emergency like on their boat? And thank God, like Jamie looks over his left shoulder and we're like 10 feet away from a massive iceberg. And I'm talking like, I mean, you say the tip of the iceberg is, you know, like 90% of it's underwater, but even what was above water was like, you know, God, I don't know, like three, four stories high and like a hundred foot wide. And I can just see this ocean current just getting like sucked underneath it. And the bow,

which we were jamming to it, Andrew and Cameron are like blissfully, or John, Cameron, or John, excuse me, John and Andrew are like blissfully asleep in the cabin. It was like, we smashed into this iceberg, just going to crash the front of our boat and like just split it in half. And all of a sudden it was like, back up, back up, back up, back up. We're trying to paddle in reverse in the other direction. So, um, how does it come up on you so quickly though? I mean, I know you're not, you're not, you're looking backwards, but like something that large. It's two things. We're just out in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. So we're two things. One is that Fionn had fallen asleep and again, we were delirious.

And that's not me pointing the blame. Like he had like, we're kind of all like in and out of this like weird consciousness. And it was like, I mean, I'd fallen asleep for a few minutes and, you know, looking out there and as well as you were just, we're just locked in. So we're going backwards. And again, it was probably our fault as well as like not, you know, we had some mirrors that we actually could try to see, but they were like fogged up. It was just kind of a lot of things conspiring, but also more than anything, it would be what I would say, it is so easy to let your guard down towards the end of an expedition. You're like, we've made it. Like we're in Antarctic waters,

whatever. And a similar thing falls flat. Totally. And the interesting parallel in my own life, I did a crossing of Greenland when I was planning for the Antarctica expedition. It's a month-long crossing, 400 miles of Greenland. And I got to what was my last day, my last night. I'm like, oh, tomorrow I'm going to complete this or I'm going to finish this and get out of here. I'm going to get picked up and leave. I'm 27 days in and fine the entire time. And that night I go to bed and every single night I had been diligently pushing around to find crevasses or things like that, make sure I didn't set up my tent in the wrong place, whatever. I'm like, oh, it's my last night, whatever. I've been out here and green on that's been tapping. I set up my, getting ready to set up my tent, all this kind of stuff, taking my tent out of my sled. It was calm weather. So I wasn't like too worried

about stuff blowing away. I just kind of like let my guard down. All of a sudden, boom, fall through a crevasse all the way to my shoulders. I put my arms out and catch myself. And I look down and my entire body is hanging over 200 feet of nothing underneath me. I've fallen in this crevasse like no one's finding me down there. I don't have my sat phone. I don't have any of my gear, like nothing. Fortunately, literally up to my shoulders, I, you know, grab myself, arms completely out, pull my dick. I was able to pull myself out, you know, laying flat on the snow and the ice.

And it was, you know, a close call and nothing tragic happened. But it's, you know, an inch on the snow and the ice. Um, and it was, you know, a close call and nothing tragic happened, but it's, you know, an inch from failure in that moment. And it's another example, I guess I should have learned the lesson the first time and not have to learn it again on the Drake, but it's like so easy. You're like, Oh, I'm nearly there. Great. Or like last few hours of rolling, this is like two more shifts. Let's just put our back into it whenever, like smash into an iceberg, like just so close and stuff like that. So yeah, it's definitely a good lesson. And that was that iceberg moment was definitely a scary one,

the scariest moments, you know, period. So 12 days, 600 miles, how many miles was it? So it's hard because I think the crossing is defined specifically the distance we did in a straight line was 650 miles. But I saw the map, you're tacking all over the place. So I think we actually rode something more like 750, whatever, but in the classification of the record,

and ultimately I think there were six world records and three world firsts associated with the crossing and the derivative records of each other. I don't pay too much attention to little granular details of that, but the way that the Ocean Rowing Society, which is a world that I'm actually not that familiar with, obviously, they calculate it, just what's the straight line distance. So the straight line distance is 650 miles. I think we rode something, like a couple of times on Sea Acre, we got blown back like 15 miles and then rode forward and to the side with

the winds and currents and stuff like that. So far enough. So you finish and in another stroke of marketing genius, you pull like a copy of the book that you had on the boat. And I'm like, come on, man. Really? I was like, that is unbelievable. And you're like, you can win the copy of the book. I brought it with you.

You gotta let me laugh at that a little bit, man. You can laugh at me. I was like, that's pretty good. My writing. How many, you brought a couple copies with you, right? I brought three copies. They were actually the advanced reader copies. They weren't the final draft and they actually say publish date 12820, which they moved the publication date up. So there's three copies. We were doing a pre-order campaign. Anyone who pre-ordered the book was entered to win one of the signed copies that

actually came to Drake's. My book about Antarctica returned to Antarctica. And of course, we had to take a photo and show it out in the world. Of course, man. Who won those copies? Some amazing people. Yeah, they got spread around. This really, really cool girl named Inez Galmiche. I'm so about the names, right? I think I mispronounced them.

She had one. Everyone that sent into this email address that we set up got entered in the contest with the pre-order, and then we did a random drawing from that. But it was really cool. Some people that won had just kind of written something in there, like, oh, hey, like this, and emailed back and forth. And she had a really cool story that kind of touched my heart.

She said her and her brother, her brother had started following me, I guess, on my Antarctic crossing last year, and she had never heard of this, but he kind of came my heart. She said her and her brother, her brother had started following me, I guess, on my Antarctic crossing last year. Um, and she had never heard of this, but he kind of came home every night and was like, really like talking about this over their family holiday. Cause it coincided with Christmas and the holidays and stuff like that. And, you know, she felt, I was feeling a little bit disconnected from her brother. She said, and that like really brought them closer together, just kind of having this thing to check in with every single day and talk about and all this kind of stuff. So she entered for the drawing so that she could give it as a gift to her brother. And so it was super cool.

And they want another guy. This touched me. His name was, I think it's Dave Goatsman. I remember because his Instagram handle was at the underscore goat man. I think he was like Ultra Run or something like that in New York State. But he, you know, most people were sending in

like Amazon pre-order links and stuff like that. Which is awesome. It's great. A normal way to pre-order a book for sure. But you can also pre-order it of course on independent booksellers

and other places around and that's where all the books are sold. And he, I think he lived in Lake Placid in our local bookstore. And so he had called up the local bookstore to pre-order the book to the local bookstore,

which touched me because I was like, oh, wow, my book is in the small bookstore in Lake Placid. So that's a new experience for me. I suppose you've experienced that yourself, seeing your own book in other places, but that was new for me. And he had sent this funny, you know, we selected the email. We opened the email just to check to make sure that it had the right, you know, actually pre-ordered the book and whatever. So we could send him the prize. And he had sent like a text message chain and like a picture of a receipt from this little bookstore. And he was like, does this count? Like, I just want to make sure, like this is actually the pre-order, but from like a, you know, like a handwritten receipt

and whatever. It was totally legit. He actually did a pre-order of the book, but I just thought it was cool that he went to his local shop and it was in there as well. So they had some amazing people on it. I was just grateful for the love and support around the book. And it's just getting out into the world now, the last five days or so. So I guess it's just beginning.

So you're doing the thing. You're in New York. You're doing all the shows and all that kind of stuff. And most of that stuff is the five-minute thing. You're kind of in, you're doing the thing you're in new york you're you know doing all the shows and all that kind of stuff and most of that stuff is you know the five minute you know thing you're kind of in you're out they ask you the same question what's next and all of that what do you think like like do you ever leave those experiences thinking like like i wish they'd ask me this or or why doesn't you know here's what i think people are missing like do you think you're ever like misunderstood or is there anything that you feel like you wish you were asked more but it doesn't come up?

Or where are people not connecting in the way that you want them to connect? I mean, I'll say this now, and this is not just lip service because I'm sitting here in front of you because I've told you this when you and I are spending time in private, when you and I are climbing 29029 together, Utah this summer,

the other times you spent this, that I genuinely think, and the cover of Outside Magazine calling you the Oprah of endurance sports I think is actually very apropos because you are an extraordinary interviewer and actually go in extreme depth. So I've been humbled to be a guest on your show. And I think the question, although I know you weren't asking it in a self-serving way at all, but I genuinely think you are just extraordinary, exceptional at this. And it's a gift. It's a beautiful gift of your insight and your presence

with all of your guests. I have been not just a guest, but a massive fan of your podcast for a long time, but- I appreciate that. That was not, I wasn't fishing. I wasn't like doing that, but- But I think that- It is like when you you if you're going to talk for two hours totally totally but um what i do think and i think particularly around the book that i do you know i this book is a harrowing tale like it is me raw there is some crazy things that happen out there that i had you know never really you know spoke super openly or at least super in depth about about this story and i wanted to be raw and real and I wanted it to read in a way that kept people's attention. So hopefully and certainly the feedback we've gotten is that it's page turning and it's engaging. It's not a how-to book. It's not a prescriptive self-help book by any means. It is an edge of your seat type of book.

But sometimes in these interviews, that quick three minute, four minute spot is I'm grateful for that attention. I do think that people want to, like, they're like, so we're here with adrenaline, daredevil, crazy, you know, thrill seeker Colin O'Brady. And I think, um, even the headline on the today show, which was so cool to be on the today show, um, and be able to share this when the book launches. But I think when they put it up online, it said like daredevil Colin O'Brady returns from whatever. I think when they put it up online, it said like, Daredevil Colin O'Brady returns from whatever.

And to me, that does a little bit miss the point of what's going on here. I think that I'm going out in the world and obviously pushing my body and trying to stretch limits of my own potential out in the world. But there is so much more to that. And so with the book, it's not frustrating, but for me, your question was, do people miss something? And it's that if they do miss the essence of what this real, this story is about, and I've been grateful to see some reviews and stuff of the book go much deeper than saying like, wow, I thought I was reading this, but actually this book kept my attention as an adventure enthusiast. But it was

so interesting to see all these other layers and the fabric of this book. And it had me crying and it had me laughing and it had me this. And I don't think sometimes I wish that people would kind of go to that. And I understand why they wouldn't initially in a three minute interview, but that's the part of stuff that I really care about. Click, click, click.

Yeah, it requires bandwidth and subtlety to really grok the whole thing. That's why I love doing it this way. Yeah, it requires bandwidth and subtlety to really grok the whole thing. Yeah, yeah. That's why I love doing it this way. Yeah, for sure. Well, let's round this out and end it with some thoughts on the untapped reservoirs of human potential that reside within all of us.

I think those are themes that we share in our advocacy and in our work and in our writing and in our speaking. So maybe reflect on that a little bit. And maybe also, since you've just come out of this Drake experience, has any of that shifted or changed a little bit from when you wrote it in the book or where you were at last year compared to this year? You mean the sort of around that topic? a little bit from when you wrote it in the book or where you were at last year compared to this year? You mean the sort of... Just in terms of how you kind of reflect on transformation and the potential that resides within us and how we can better access and express that in our lives.

You know, it's something that I've certainly said a lot and something that I know that you've said a lot and something that I've been inspired by in your work as well is that advocacy around that, that belief that each one of us, of these reservoirs of untapped potential inside of us. The Drake crossing was interesting. And I've been asked this question and derivative is, Colin, are you a superhuman or what's your physiology that makes you so much different? calling like, are you a superhuman or, Oh, like what, what's your physiology that makes you so much different. But I also get this really funny thing. And it actually happened to me, um, uh, two days ago in DC, I was doing this interview. Um, and, uh, uh, you know, journalist was interviewing me for Fox and he's like, you know, I don't really, uh, I don't mean to say something that hopefully I'm not offending. He's like stumbling over as I've had people say the same

thing. I kind of know what was expecting. I'm like, it's just that, um, when I read your story, I, um, don't take this the wrong way, but you're like a regular size, normal looking guy. And I'm like, I'm not offended. He was like, it's just that, like, I figured like, you know, some like six foot five. It's a W come in all, it's a Winklevii. Right, exactly. And I've had people come up to me after speeches and things like that and say that. And to me, which certainly is not offensive to me at all. I will say in the photos in the book, there's a picture of you on the bike racing ITU and your shoulders are looking pretty dead.

That's because I just came out of a crazy open water swim. It was full of blood. I know, but go ahead. No, it's not to say that i'm not like i'm not fit i haven't done this it's just that like you're not like oh god you're like some like super physically imposing person yeah and it goes back to that the aspirational aspect of yeah you know what you do and i think that you know in you know i've said it kind of tongue of tongue in cheek, but I do believe it as well. And I do believe it actually not just tongue in cheek, but in truth and say like, Colin, are you superhuman? I'm like, yeah, I'm a superhuman. And so are you like these reservoirs of untapped potential reside inside of all of us. And the Drake passage row to kind of have that

through line was for me in writing this book about the impossible first, which obviously I wrote before I did the Drake passage row. I really was, you know, I still have this thesis of saying like, okay, like I am giving this wisdom. I'm sharing my story in the hope that someone takes the impossible first book, sets it down and starts off on their own impossible first. But where's the proof in the pudding of that in my own story? Obviously there's a lot of through lines being burned in a fire, being told never walk in, recovering, et cetera. But the Drake row was actually an exercising at this point in my life of this thesis of saying, okay, I tell people all of the time, you have a massive goal, but you haven't started on it yet.

Or you're a beginner or you have this huge idea, but you're a novice. And you look at all the other people who are so much better at you. Like, I'm sure people say to you all the time, like, God, I want to start a podcast, but like podcasts are so saturated right now. You know, you've already got millions of listeners. Like, how could I ever catch up to you all the time, like, God, I want to start a podcast, but like podcasts are so saturated right now. We're like, you know, you've already got millions of listeners. Like, how could I ever catch up to you? And you're like, yeah, but like in 2012 or whenever it was, I was sitting in Kauai in like a garage and I like hit play on a tape recorder with my kids around and like started talking into a microphone. And so for me, the Drake row was my own way of saying

like, yes, I'm not trying to pretend like I don't have other accomplishments in my past. We all have a path that has led us to today, to this moment, who we are. But can you then put something on the proverbial whiteboard for yourself that allows you to stretch and reach and to grow that actually exercises that muscle of taking that step towards it? And for me, it was to step into a place of endurance sports that I've never touched, not even tangentially with ocean and rowing and et cetera. And so I believe, I mean, I core believe that we have these reservoirs of untapped potential and the muscle, it's not the physical imposition, imposing character that I could or couldn't be, I guess, just the person that I am. But I say that the muscle that's the most important to any of us is the six inches between our ears. It's within our minds. It's what we can create. And I think that that really dictates a lot of this. Yeah, that's the way I believe.

Phenomenally articulated. I mean, I look at the Drake passage experience as basically the manifestation or a manifestation of this sort of Angela Duckworth, Carol Dweck, like growth mindset. Like you're not a rower, right? Like you're an athlete. Like it would have been easier for you to pick some other kind of like expedition with, which is you just, you know, doing what you've always kind of done. Yeah, people are like, you're going to do a bigger expedition in North Pole. Right, exactly. But to put yourself in a situation that, you know, in many ways is just completely unfamiliar and new, I think is really cool and impressive. And I think that does convey that message of like, hey, man, I, you know, I'm, you know, I'm trying to learn this stuff as well. And I'm going to put, I'm going to, I'm going to

be, you know, I'm going to walk the talk, basically. Totally. And I think also the other thing is, I think we've all had that kind of, you know, imposter syndrome of in a room of certain people you're like, well, I don't belong here. I'm not good enough to be here. I think anyone has ever walked into a cocktail party or something has had that feeling at some point in their life. You know, I certainly have a lot of times. And, you know, even on my Instagram, if you saw when I posted, hey, I'm doing this project and here's this amazing team that have come together and here's what all these other guys have accomplished. I mean, you brought it up earlier in this interview. I'm not offended by it at all. And someone's like, well, you're obviously the weak link in all of

this. And so the easiest thing for me to do would have been to say, I was literally the first person in history ever to cross Antarctica solo. People have died attempting this exact crossing and i did it so let me be now the master of that domain why would i line myself side by side up in a situation next to guys who are like been spending decades crushing this sport that they're exceptionally good with with world record hold you know records around their neck and accolades you know you know list of accolades is you know a page long but it's like having the humility to say like, but I still want to grow. I still want to learn. I still want to like learn from them. And hopefully I am bringing something, you know, valuable to the table beyond just, you know, sort of the, the logistics or resources to be able to do something like this. And, but humbly,

I'm going to come into this. And I think, you know, if they were sitting here, they would say, well, yeah, like from a physical level, mental level, we all learn something from each other. But it takes, it's a humbling moment to go when I don't have to go stand next to people in this other domain, be able to be in my own little area. And so I think in any avenue, as we begin to set out on things, people can feel that way. People can feel like, oh, you know, like you were, you're like, you're probably a great lawyer at what you were doing, but you hated it. But like, whatever. I mean, you had done it for quite a long time, you know, and to like just redefine your identity, you know, you turn it into an incredible endurance athlete.

But I imagine, I don't know the story of your very first triathlon, but I imagine it was like, you were like, I'm just a guy at a triathlon. How do you like put my shoes on, you know, whatever. And so it's, it's taking that, but that is how these interesting moments grow. And so don't be held back by being like, I don't know how to do this right now. I'm not good at this. My neighbor's better than me at the guy around the water cooler. He's the expert at this, that, or the other thing. It's like, why not start somewhere? He started somewhere. He had day one at his job or his expert or his skill at some point as well. Like your day could be today. I thought you'd be bigger.

Sorry to disappoint. Awesome, man. Thank you. Beautiful. I love you, Colin O'Brady. I love you too, my man. For your example, all the incredible work and advocacy that you do and I know will continue to do. The book is Extraordinary,

The Impossible First. I love it, man. And I'm happy to be in your life. I'm grateful for our friendship and I wish you the best of luck. Please pick up, oh, you have Angela Duckworth right there on the cover, author of Grit. I thought you were ripping off that. No, no, no. I was like, well, you were talking about growth mindset, so I had that on my mind. I was deeply grateful for her. Yeah, that's very cool. Phenomenal, man.

If you want to hook up with Colin at Colin O'Brady on Instagram, it's probably the best place, right? You got your website, colinobrady.com. Boom. All right. Love you. Peace. Lance.

All right. Hope you guys enjoyed that now as promised I give you our subsequent exchange in which Colin and I discuss the National Geographic piece on Colin and his response all right man Colin O'Brady back in the house how's it going good man how are you I'm good thanks for taking the time to come back here and fill in the gaps a How's it going? Good, man. How are you? I'm good. Thanks for taking the

time to come back here and fill in the gaps a little bit. Always a pleasure, my friend. You know, being in the Rich Roll Podcast studio, it's like a second home. Love this place. It's been an interesting month for you. Some high highs and some hiccups along the way. And I thought it the right thing to do, the wise thing to do to provide you the opportunity to come in and fill in the gaps and provide us with your perspective on the events that have kind of unfolded over the last month or so. Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate it. Thanks for doing it. Of course, man.

Of course. Just for context and so everyone kind of understands what we're talking about, let's provide a little timeline. So you came in, well, first of all, you did the Drake Passage between December 9th and 25th, right? Yes, of this, of 2019. Right, so you finished that like Christmas time. I was in Australia. I invited you to come back on the podcast. You came in on January 18th.

We recorded the conversation that you just listened to. And I planned to publish that podcast on February 9th. But on February 2nd is when National Geographic published this article about you that we're going to talk about. this article about you that we're going to talk about. And I made the decision at that time to kind of put a pin in the podcast and table it until I got, you know, a sense of the lay of the land. It just didn't feel, it felt like had I put that podcast up at that time, it would have been tone deaf without really understanding the terrain. And also, I mean, not in service to the audience, but also not in service to you as well. No, it makes sense.

We talked about it. And in the wake of that conversation, then you published a response to the Nat Geo article that was on the 14th. We talked again. The Polar Explorer community has also issued their perspective on this that went up a couple of days ago and let's talk about it, man. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's like you said, it's been,

uh, it's been an interesting month for sure. Um, you know, I think, uh, when I was on the podcast, like you said, it's January 18th, my book had come out on January 14th, you know, poured my heart and soul into, uh, writing this book, which I which I'm so deeply proud of and certainly stand behind every single word that I wrote. And then I'm literally walking my dog. I think you said February 2nd. In my mind, it was February 3rd, but it's one of those dates. Maybe, I don't know. Right around there.

I was walking my dog, Jack, with my wife, Jenna, back at home in Jackson Hole. And we had just heard the news a few days earlier that my book had hit the New York Times bestsellers list. You know, kind of obviously a proud moment for us. And that Friday, I was going to be back at my hometown bookstore in Portland, Oregon, Powell's Books, which most people know about books, even if you've never been to Portland, have kind of heard of that bookstore. And so I was just looking forward to, home, walked around that bookstore my entire life as a kid,

and all of a sudden I'm going back to address my hometown audience as a New York Times bestselling author, a very humbling and kind of proud moment. And then ping Google alert comes in, and there's this National Geographic article that is long form, 7,000 words, which takes you a half hour to read it or something like that. And, you know, it's incredibly scathing. And what was the most shocking for me is that it was just widely, widely inaccurate. And, you know, as a human being, it's hurtful, obviously. Right. So the article is called The Problem with Colin O'Brady. Yes. Right. So the article is called The Problem with Colin O'Brady. Yes.

And it sets about sort of deconstructing this narrative around kind of what you've accomplished and what it means. And they have a variety of arguments, and I think it would be good to kind of just walk our way through them. And we should say at the outset that there's nothing in the article, and there's nobody out there sort of saying, like, you didn't do what you did. Like, you crossed Antarctica, 932 miles, 54 days, 300-pound slide. Like, nobody's saying you didn't do any, like, the feat stands, right? So, it's more about the story around the feat and how it's been positioned and also how it's been positioned and, and also how it's been, your story has been received by the Explorer community. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You know, we can definitely go through that. I think the kind of initial, obviously, you know, reading through the article was it hits, you know, Google alerts and whatnot, and it pops up, you know, two paragraphs in the second paragraph of the entire article gives you kind of a sense of the level of unethical journalism out there. You know, you've got two paragraphs, two quotes from my book, one from

page 50 and one from page 214 conflated into one singular message that were about completely separate parts. And so the totality of the article kind of follows the same methodology, which is I was never properly interviewed for this. It was never fact-checked. I was never contacted by a fact-checker in the complaining quotes. I mean, it was a shame overall. But really kind of what it boils down to and what kind of makes me the most sad about this entire thing is there's kind of this mainline premise that I'm somehow taking something away

from this incredible Norwegian explorer by the name of Borg Ausland. And so who Borg Ausland is is incredible Norwegian explorer by the name of Borg Ausland. And so who Borg Ausland is, is a Norwegian explorer who in 1996, 1997, over the course of that Antarctic season, so, you know, 20 years long before I, you know, even knew about really exploration in Antarctica the way I do now, obviously. I was 10, 11 years old. He did this crossing of Antarctica, which is absolutely extraordinary. He crossed not only the landmass of Antarctica, which is what I crossed, 932 miles, but he also crossed the ice shelves. So there's these ice shelves, the Ron Ice Shelf and the Ross Ice Shelf. And his entire journey was about 1800 miles. And one of the premises of the article

is that I never give him enough credit or I haven't congratulated him enough on his epic accomplishment. I don't speak about him, which is just, you know, factually inaccurate and untrue. And it's really a shame. Even you and I actually on our podcast, I think a year ago, talked about Borga Ausland and my admiration for him. I haven't re-listened to that, but I'm pretty certain that you and I talked about it actually a year ago, even on this podcast. And I've been a vocal advocate. What separates the two of us and why they're different is that there's ALE, which is Antarctic Logistic and Expeditions. The people that facilitate the logistics have a very specific criteria of what considers solo. Both Borga and I were both solo. So the same there.

What constitutes unsupported? So unsupported means, and it's very explicit on their website. It's not like something I'm making up. It's hand, you know, very explicit. It's unsupported means no use of resupplies. So no food or fuel or anything, no depots. You're taking everything you can with you.

Hence why my sled started at 375 pounds and Borg's I believe was, you know, over 400 pounds because he was going even further distance. But the kind of distinction between the two of us is something called unassisted, which again is very explicit on Antarctica Logistics and Expeditions website. It's posted everywhere. And what that pertains to is they consider an assisted expedition something that uses more than just human power to propel them.

And so in this instance, a kite is the main sort of wind aid in this case. And Borga Ausland very famously did this crossing using two very large kites. Oh yeah, two? Yes. So this is something that I've actually come to realize even going deeper into this, and it was never my desire to debunk him, but- The article made it sound like the kite was of nominal assistance i think i can't remember the exact phraseology but it's something along the lines of you know he pulled it out from time to time and he kind of jerry-rigged it on the spot and it was it wasn't

that beneficial but when you look at the distances covered over the number of days i mean he almost he did almost double the distance that you did. Yeah. Right. So he did about double the distance that I did. 1800 miles? 1800 miles, I think 1850. 64 days? Yeah. And I did 932 in 54 days. And he talks about it again. What's interesting. And again, it makes me sad. It feels like, you know, the journalists himself clearly didn't read my book and I'll definitely going to read a page from it because it talks about how I'm really admiring Borg-Alson in my own book, in my own words. But also, Borg-Alson wrote a book that was published in 1997 that I've had a chance to have a look at now recently, actually. And there's photographs of this kite, actually these two kites.

One's 12 square meters, the other's 24 square meters. The big one he actually calls Big Boy and talks about it over and over again. But then when he's quoted in the article, it says, oh, it's this jerry-rig thing. Or he also says in a New York Times op-ed that was written a year ago that it was like a tiny square piece of cloth that I pulled out

from time to time. Now, National Geographic, after I wrote a 16-page letter in response to this, which anyone can see linked to my Instagram, it's very thorough. It's not like a argumentative, he said, he said type of thing. It's just a very concise, well, it's not concise, it's 16 pages. It reads like a legal brief. Yeah. I mean, it's citations, documentations. You must have help writing that. I mean, that's quite a comprehensive document. Yeah, you know, as with most things to do, it's me and Jenna and a few other people helping out. We should say, I mean, there was a call,

that was accompanied by a request that Nat Geo pull the article. They've declined to pull the article. Apparently they made a few alterations or changes to it. Right, and so one of the things that they have made as a correction is this thing about the jury-rigged kite. They've actually said, you know what, we got that wrong. This was a manufactured kite. And what they still, I guess, are getting

wrong is that it's not just one kite, but it was actually two large sails. And these are things, like these photographs are in Borga Ausland's own book. He talks, and as he should, with great pride that on a single day over the course of 15 or 16 hours, he covered 226 kilometers, which is roughly 125, 130 miles. In a day, in a 24 hour period. In a 15 hour period. So he also slept in there. You're hauling ass. I mean, I'm sure there were days where he wasn't moving very much at all, but that's a huge day. I mean, clearly, you know, the kite played a large role in that. There are just two different things. What why do you suspect then that Borga is one of the people who's taking issue with your account of this?

We'll get into that in a second, but I think it's important to note just for this is that they say in the article, one of the key premises is Colin does not acknowledge Borga Ausland. But on page 49 of my own book, this is my book in my own words, it couldn't be more clear. It says, the Norwegian adventurer Borga Ausland, right? But on page 49 of my own book, this is my book in my own words, it couldn't be more clear. It says, the Norwegian adventurer Borga Ausland in many ways defined the terrain of astonishing modern Antarctic feats, becoming the first person to cross Antarctica solo when he traveled 1800 miles alone in 63 days from late 1996 to early 1997. Not only did he cross the entire landmass of Antarctica,

but he also crossed the full Ron and Ross ice shelves from the ocean's edge. Alson's expedition, which had deeply inspired me, was unsupported in that he'd hauled all his food and fuel

with no resupplies, but importantly, assisted in that he used a parachute-like kite called a parawing, harnessing the wind to pull him across in the ice.

And the thing is, I think the thing that's the saddest part about all of this for me, I mean, there's a number of things that are sad about it, but like, I think what Borga Alston did was extraordinary. The day after I finished my crossing, I didn't wait to write my book and put a paragraph in there about that. The day after I finished my crossing, it's December 26th, the day I finished. And on December 27th, my Instagram post, I'm still sitting alone in my tent in Antarctica. I've had no contact with the outside world other than like a brief phone call with Jenna and my family. I write an Instagram post called Standing on the Shoulders of Giants, which was a very humble post that acknowledges Borja Olsen as well as many other pioneering Antarctic explorers and saying, hey, like, you know, I'm really proud of this thing, but there's no way I could have done this without the inspiration from so many people have done extraordinary things on this continent, you know, over time. And so I think there's a deep sadness

for me. And even in this conversation, you know, it's very clear to me what the different distinction is between using a kite and the fact that he went 226 kilometers in a single day and that it wasn't just a scrappy piece of cloth that he jury rigged. It's a manufactured thing, whatever. But even in that, my purpose here is not to tear down or asterisk somebody as extraordinary as Sporga Ausland. My hope in doing any of this is to spread positivity and inspiration.

But of course, I have to stand my ground, which is like, as you said from the top of this, no one is debating. I walked 932 miles by myself across the the sort of Southern, the final chapter in the adventure was on like this graded, what's it called? The Leveret. Yeah, so there's the Leveret Glacier. It's like, they characterize it as a bit of a graded road.

I mean, even in one of your Instagram posts, you can kind of see that there's some grading in there. And this sense that that that on some level constitutes assistance that, you know, may or may not measure up to having a sale, but qualifies as, you know, something that should have been put more in the forefront. Yeah. So, I mean, again, I write about it in my book. It's called the Leverett Glacier is the actual land map or the feature of the terrain. But the traverse that you're talking about is called the spot traverse. It's an acronym for the South Pole Overland Traverse. And so McMurdo Station, which is on the coast, the U.S. military state or U.S. government station on the coast, resupplies the South Pole station every season by driving this like convoy up there. So it's funny, the use of the word road is a little bit of hyperbole in that, yes, big trucks drive on this section of Antarctica, but it is frozen ice and snow. And the second Antarctica blows, it's, you know, the crazy wind that it blows out there,

it's pretty quickly blown over. But yeah, absolutely. There's some flagging out there. I never saw any of the vehicles of the convoy myself out there, but certainly I saw traces of the South Pole Overland Traverse. There's a photograph of me during my crossing. Then I talk about it in my book. The point being is it's not something that was hidden from public view. Again, I write about it in my book. The point being is it's not something that was like hidden from public view. Again, I write about it in my book. The only distinction here, and the reason that's a little bit disappointing, is that everyone in the polar community knew the route I was doing when I left to do it. And it was acknowledged as being fairly within the Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions distinctions that the, you know, quote unquote, South Pole overrun traverse was not something that was considered aid in their qualifications of unassisted and unsupported.

Even more so, which is really disappointing from the National Geographic article, is that I was not the first person to attempt this exact same goal using the Leverett Glacier. So there's a guy by the name of Ben Saunders, the year before I set off attempted a crossing. He started at a slightly different spot. So the front half of his was about 70 miles longer in duration to reach the South Pole, but his intended route from the South Pole to complete what he was calling

the first unsupported unassisted crossing, which in my mind, it 100% would have been in the mind of everyone else following, it would have been as well, was to go down the Leverett Glacier using the South Pole Overland Traverse. And this is something that's widely in the public domain. Anyone in polar exploration would have known this. And the journalist says that he interviewed 70 different experts in polar history. He wrote 7,000 words about this and fails to mention that the year before I did this, a very, very highly

respected polar explorer by the name of Ben Saunders was attempting the same thing and somehow paints both me and let's be honest, Captain Lou Rudd, who also did the exact same thing as me. And unfortunately, I mean, fortunately for him, and of course, I don't want Lou's name to get drugged through the mud because I, you know, he's a friend and I think what he did was amazing, but Lou and I both did the exact same thing. And Lou is a very, very highly regarded polar explorer as well. So it's not as if like I came up with some random thing that no one had thought about. I vetted this. I talked to many polar explorers. I have, you know, emails and

links to people saying, yep, that's a great route. Yep, that qualifies. And all those things are in my 16 page thing. And the fact that National Geographic wrote this article at 7000 words and fails to, you know, conveniently not mention this other very, you know, proud polar explorer who is attempting the same thing on the same route, you know, kind of is just, to me, very unfair treatment. And I don't really understand that. Yeah. I mean, well, Lou Rudd declined to comment for the piece, as far as I could tell, except he did say one thing, which was that, and it has to do with the idea

that you were unable to be rescued if something went wrong, right? And he sort of said, look, I've never said that, I was in that position and there were all these other people who are saying, look, he could have been, you know, they could have landed a plane there or they could have gotten some kind of vehicle to you if you ran into that kind of trouble. And then I know in your response, you've got text messages and screen grabs of this and that to kind of state your case. So explain to me what's going on with that. Yeah, so again, one of the other, the same company that dropped me off, the same company that dropped Borg Allison off 20 years before.

It's basically this one company that has somewhat of a monopoly on the facilitation of logistics in this part of the world. They have this plane. It's called a Twin Otter plane. It's a small little plane that's equipped with a ski landing gear. So imagine you've probably seen a float plane land on water. It'd be like that, but landing on ice and snow. As you can probably picture from that, it's pretty amazing that this plane can land in all these you

know hard to reach places now that becomes nearly impossible if not impossible in certain circumstances for example really high winds that are creating whiteout so strugy which is these huge kind of speed bumps that are on the snow, basically this ice and snow formations that create like endless, you know, fields of speed bumps. And so I was told by a number of people, including Antarctic Logistic and Expeditions, which I talk about in my book, which is that there were certain areas of the continent, particularly in this area called the Sestrugi National Park, which is kind of a, you know, a pet name for this area that has really bad Sestrugi, that rescue in that area is, you know, very, very, very unlikely to happen and not in any sort of timeframe that would, you know, be able to make sense. So you

lose your tent in a storm and they're saying, oh, you can call an Uber and a plane lands. It's like, no, 50 mile per hour wind, sastrugi everywhere. Like there's no plane landing. And you, you know, you mentioned that I kind of make this, they are kind of making the case that I sort of, you know, made up this no rescue zones. But this is something that has been like widely reported by all sorts of people, including Borga Ousland, like including the guy that's like on one hand speaking out against me, it's like they're trying to like talk out of both sides of his mouth. I mean, Borga Ousland writes in a response to a question in 2018, this is not like 20 years ago, this is very recently, he said, what would happen in certain areas of the continent in terms of rescue? And he writes,

in some places, rescue is just hours away. Other places on the route are beyond rescue. For example, in the Sastrugi fields that stretch for several hundred kilometers, no plane can land there. And there's several other quotations I have in my 16-page article, including one from Ben Saunders, who they conveniently left out of this article. Felicity Astin, who's an incredible female British explorer who was on the Leverett Glacier, the same part that they're talking about here. And she wrote, now I felt stripped of, she writes this in her own book, now I felt stripped of all safety nets. Whatever happened on this glacier, there would be nobody coming to rescue me, no one there to help. coming to rescue me. No one there to help. And so what I'm reporting has been reported by the same people who have been on the same part in Antarctica, Ben Saunders and Felicity Astin, specifically on

the Leverett Glacier, Borg Alsland, of course, on a slightly different part of Antarctica, but talking about the challenging for plane landings. But even like furthermore, you know, Captain Lou Rudd and I, when we were initially supposed to be dropped off on the Messner Start, which is where we began our expedition, both in the same plane, our plane actually had to abort landing us the very first time they tried to attempt and landed us two days later. Because there was not even a bad storm, but there was just low clouds in this area. And the plane dived down and tried to land and pulled up, dived down and tried to land. So I've actually been in a Twin otter plane in not even severe conditions. And the pilot looks over at us and is like, we're flying back to the base. No can do. And so it's not just like this kind of made up thing. And I think the thing that's probably the most frustrating in this, I guess,

obviously was the pattern with this journalist over and over. I was never properly interviewed. Explain to me why you didn't get your say in this article. Did he not reach out to you? Did he just decide that he wanted to print it without getting your input? Or what went down? Yeah, so I mean we'll definitely talk about it. So let me finish that last thought, which just kind of dovetails into that, which is specifically, if you don't even want to believe my quotations or the quotations from all these different explorers on this topic, there is a document that Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions sent to me on this exact same thing.

It's a actual proper document that they sent me. And I sent this to the journalist. And they, you know, basically, I don't have it right here, actually. But it's on my 16 page thing. And I have the screen grab of sending it to the journalist. And it says in Strugy National Park, I'm paraphrasing, you can see the exact quote, off strip plane landings are not normally possible. So literally, there's a document from the people who own and fly the planes that is sent to me that I sent to the journalist, I have a screen grab of him and I talking about this. And just instead he chooses to just like not put this in the article at all. And so that I think goes into your question, which is I was never really formally interviewed for

this at all. The first time I ever heard from the journalist was on a, the afternoon, I believe it was of the 16th of January. I forget the exact date, but I obviously have it in my notes. And he says, I'm researching this thing. It's publishing by end of business day to day. It was 1 p.m. on the East Coast when I got this. Do you care to comment on these four things or five things in an email? And basically like, you have an hour or two to respond to this and I'm publishing this article. And the comments were, the things he was asking were somewhat alarming because he was trying to say certain people were contradicting me and all this kind of stuff and I was very confused. you know, an hour or two under time pressure. And I'm on my book tour. I'm in the middle of a bunch of events and stuff like that. And I'm actually, um, about to board a plane in Washington, DC for the West coast. And so I picked up the phone and I called him and I said, Hey, I just got your

email. Um, you know, I've got a lot to say on this topic. Would you like to set up a formal interview, um, to talk about this long form? And he's like, no, no, no. Like, you know, I don't just, I want you to comment on these two things. And I was like, okay, like I have documentation, including actually what we were just talking about, the talking about the no rescue zones and that ALE, you know, sent me these specifics, uh, things on this topic. Um, and I send it to him while I'm sitting on the, you know, on the plane. Um, and you know, I said, but Hey, I'm happy, you know, over and over again, happy to set up a formal interview. It sounds like you want to talk through all this. I'm happy to do this. No word.

Never, never set up a formal interview. And then the only other time that I spoke to him, I guess he just chose not to publish the article, even though he was kind of pressuring me that day, was a couple weeks later. And I got a text message from him that said, hey, I've just got a quick question for you. And I wrote back, hey, I'm on my book tour. I have five minutes before my next event hey, I've just got a quick question for you. And I wrote back, hey, I'm on my book tour. I have five minutes before my next event, but I can give you a quick call and gave him a quick call. And we spoke for, I think, about four and a half minutes as I'm walking into another meeting. And again, he comes at me with a very sort of aggressive line of

questioning. And I said, oh, wow, sounds like you want to have a long form conversation about this. I'm super happy to schedule this. Let's schedule a conversation. You know, we can get on my schedule. I'm in the middle of my book tour. I'm like back to back on a number of things. And again, he declined to grant me a formal interview for this. And so, you know, kind of when I look at those couple of things, it's like, you know, if

you're going to write 7000 word article about somebody, it seems like you'd probably want to just, you know, so that he says he interviewed 70 different people. He says he researched it for over three months, yet, you know, the things like the main person in the article. Couldn't find a time to talk to you. I mean, after he said he was publishing it like the following day and then a couple of weeks went by, did you just think it went away or did you, what were your. You know, like so many things were going on in my own life. So it wasn't like the thing I was thinking about every second of every single day. Obviously I get

contacted by different journalists. I'm always very cooperative and happy to talk. And it's still, in this case, I'm very happy to sit down and have a long form, formal interview and go through all of this. But in that case, um, you know, I, he had said a couple of things that he's commenting on and I sent him documentation that kind of disproved the thing that he was asking. And I thought, oh, maybe like, oh, he just, he had it wrong. And now he's seen the document, which obviously he chose not to publish actually. But in my mind, I was like, oh, well maybe, you know, that's all cleared up. Great. You know, we're good to go. I'm going to continue on my life. Right. And then clearly he had, you know, a narrative that he wanted to spin. It's unfortunate that, you know, he didn't give you the opportunity to speak to him.

My sense is that on some level, this is a reaction to you being a relative newcomer to the explorer community. Look, it's a subculture that's steeped in tradition. And I would imagine certain rules of etiquette, you kind of come up in a certain way and you approached it from a different tack and accelerated your trajectory upward. And perhaps that ruffles some feathers or you didn't comport yourself in a manner that is expected of somebody who kind of does what you do. In either case,

it's positioned you as somebody who's incredibly accomplished, but also kind of an interloper to the community. Is that fair? Or what do you, how does that feel for you? Yeah. You know, I think there's probably a generational difference if you look at the people that have like come down. I mean, Conrad Anker is a friend of mine. You know what I mean? Like, and he's, you know, a legend. You know what I mean? And so when I see that he's, you know,

where he's lining up on this, it's like, it's disheartening to me because I'm friends, I'm a friend. You know, I'm your friend, dude. Like, you know, it was important to me to be able to have you come here and tell your side of the story. And, you know, I'm not part of that community. Totally. I have friends in that community, dude. Like, you know, it was important to me to be able to have you come here and tell your side of the story. And, you know, I'm not part of that community. I have friends in that community. So. No, and look, I mean, just like Borg Allison, I have the most respect in the

world for Conrad and him and I have actually been messaging this week. And we're talking, I think tomorrow is we have a scheduled conversation. And I said, hey, man, like, I have all the respect in the world for you. You know, let's talk this through. And he's been nothing but actually once I've engaged in that level, gentle and kind in the way that I, you know, anticipate him to be because he really is, you know, someone who I have a great deal of respect for and his accomplishments as well as his stewardship of the environment and things like that are definitely worthy of applause.

And so, you know, what this all boils down to, you know, I'm not so sure. What I do know is, you know, it's disappointing that Nat Geo was not willing to, you know, retract the entirety of the article. But the, you know, editor-in-chief did make very clear when she responded. She says, Colin, your 932-mile crossing in Antarctica is, you know, quote from her, worthy of respect. And you followed all of the regulations of the ALE guidelines that set forth at the time, which is, you know, again, that's a little bit of

polar nuance, but basically you followed all the rules that you said you were going to follow. And so for me, it's not as full of resolution as I would like to see, because certainly this, you know, the entirety and the slanted bias this article has left a negative taste in some people's mouth that haven't kind of, you know, looked at the entirety of the thing. But I think it is very telling to at least have the editor in chief of National Geographic say like, hey, like, we're going to correct these things, which they made some corrections. And also, you know, what you did is worthy of respect. And yes, you're not like this horrible human being, you actually did follow all the rules transparently the way that you said they were. Now, is there a debate within the polar community at large, you know, ex post facto of this whole

thing about how they might want to reclassify or characterize different things? Like, that's up for them, like, that's up for them to debate and discuss. I know there's a lot of ongoing things, but like, to vilify me for explicitly following all of the rules, you know, consulting with a number of polar experts, working with the company, doing something that the venerated Captain Lou Rudd, who's, you know, is worthy of praise and what he's done. And of course I talk about him long form in my book and all of the, you know, all of our relationship. I was on the phone with him last week. Like we're friends. Like he also did the same thing as me. He wasn't doing, there's not like some crazy weird thing that he was doing. Like he looked at the entirety of Antarctica. He's been going to Antarctica for a decade and decided

this was a worthy thing to attempt to do the first solo unsupported, unassisted crossing of the land mass of Antarctica. And we, and we both, you we both accomplished that, and I'm proud of our accomplishments. And I think that for me, the lasting impression, one of the things that I think that is possible, it's clear that the journalist himself didn't read my book, given he didn't quote that I was talking about Borg-Alstom. But also, if you read my book, which I know you have, and you blurbed it and things like that,

I don't even, the end of the book, not to give it away to listeners, but at the end of the book. He survives. Yes. The end of the book, I actually stopped the last chapter ends a quarter mile from me finishing this journey. There's of course an epilogue that has to like wrap up some of the details, but there's no part in this book where I'm even actually crossing the finish line, i.e. beating my chest. I just did this amazing thing that no one's ever done. Like the last chapter of my book is called Infinite Love. It is about the inspiration that I gathered,

the positive energy that I want to spread in the world, the ripple effect of positivity and energy. And I've said this over and over and I'll say it again here, which is the best thing that I compliment anyone could ever give me for writing this book is not, wow, your accomplishments are extraordinary. You're better than this other polar explorer. Like I don't care about any of that. What I care is someone puts this book down and they're inspired to break through the own boundaries in their own life to go after their own impossible first. And that's really the essence of this book. And so it's sad to be somehow mischaracterized as if I wrote some like book that's like me pounding the chest of the greatest, whatever. I walked 932 miles across Antarctica by myself.

It was a deeply introspective journey. I learned a ton of things about myself and growing. And my really hope is to spread inspiration and positivity to people all around the world. And it's a shame that this has come out to really mischaracterize all of those things. Yeah, well, two insights on that. I mean, the first is that subcultures, you know, tend to have, you know, rule books for how they do things. I alluded to that earlier, like in the open water swimming community, you know, when Diana Nyad, you know, attempts to swim from Cuba to Florida, I think she put her hand on the side of the boat or something like that. And it created like a huge uproar. And, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's a little bit of losing for details matter and it's

important to have standards and to understand, you know understand the lay of the land so that everybody's clear about who's first and all of that. But sometimes we lose the forest for the trees. And to the extent that this story has been extrapolated upon to kind of undermine what you did, which is not in dispute, is disheartening. And I think second to that is, you know, how this article closes with a bit of a character assassination, you know, and I've known you for years. I've seen you in groups of people. We did the 29-0-29 thing together. So I've done like, you

know, it's not crossing Antarctica, but I've seen you, you know, physically exert yourself in a community of people. And I pay attention to how people interact with others. And at no point, like, I think I even, I mean, we did our pockets a little while ago. I'm pretty sure I said to you like, dude, you're a nice affable guy, but I know you're a killer because like you don't do what you, you don't accomplish what you've accomplished

without being, you know, ferocious in your healthy ambition to achieve your goals. But that doesn't mean that you're an asshole. I've never seen you comport yourself in that way. And the examples that are laid out in that article are kind of strange because it shows you like switching expeditions, perhaps at the last minute, but because you're in pursuit of a world record

and you found yourself with groups of people that are there for vacation or for other purposes, like it just, you guys were on different tacks. Like it, to me, I look at that and I was like, well, it makes sense. Like he's, he's trying to do this as quickly as possible. And he's with groups of people that have other, you know, rationales for what they're doing. I could see how, you know, perhaps some friction arose there, but you know, I but I've never seen any indicia in all the time we spent together, and it's quite a bit, of you being somebody who is lashing out at people

and treating people in a not so nice way. No, and I appreciate that. But I haven't seen you under incredible strain either. No, no, I appreciate that. And you're alluding to a North Pole expedition that I did in 2016, and that's exactly what happened. It wasn't, you know, necessarily a negative thing at all. It was just that we were some kind of logistics lined up for me to be with this family of people.

And then we got stuck there because of the cracking of the sea isolate us for eight days. And all of a sudden, they weren't going to complete the full expedition that I needed to complete for my world record. And so, you know, we found an alternative solution to that. And, you know, what I regard as a pretty affable way, I'm still friends with the two young British kids. So I guess they're not so young anymore, but they're in their early twenties at the time. It was five years ago. Those are the guys who were with their dad? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It was a family. It was a guy, you know, and his two kids, I mean, they're, you know, grown kids, 20, 22, something like that. But, you know, you know, I think to your greater point, you know, which is, you know, that is,

that is not my character. You know, am I a human being who at times throughout my 30, you know, nearly 35 years on this planet has, you know, gotten upset at some point or lost my temper or, you know, I've hurt someone's feelings. I'm sure that's the case. And for all of every one of those instances, you know, I'm, I'm deeply sorry. You know, I'm a, you know, I'm a complete human being with good days and bad days and ups and downs and all of the rest that we all go through. But in general, I would say, and I appreciate, you know, what you've said and knowing me all these years is that, you know, my orientation is towards the positive. My orientation is towards uplifting other people. My orientation in terms of writing this book, again, is not about me, but it's about inspiring other people to break through. And I think,

you know, 29029 is a great example of that. And what you just talked about, it's this, you know, this is event where we actually explicitly in founding the event say, this is not a race. This is you against you and you and you against yourself. And, you know, you were there with me when we're, you know, at the finish line and people are finishing, you know, in tears and every single person is getting a hug from me, a high five from me. We're congratulating and celebrating every single person's success. And to me, that's really my orientation towards the world. I want to see every single person achieve their own personal goals, their own personal best and uplift other people. And I

think that in a time right now where, you know, we've got, you know, partisan politics ripping apart the country, we've got so much divisiveness and whatever, like I really orient towards, you know, how can we bring people together? How can we unify even people that see different perspectives on the world? How can we share and evolve in a way that is uplifting, inspiring everyone? And, you know, this entire situation that we're discussing right here is sad to me because in a time when we could be focused on things like, you know, climate change and uniting around really positive outcomes in the world and uplifting each other and celebrating so many people's accomplishments, it seems like over the last month we've been stuck,

you know, debating the finer points of nuance of, you know, who's better than the other person. Honestly, you know, that's not really of a huge concern to me. I think everyone should be celebrated for what they've done and we should move together in a positive and united way. All right, man. Well, thank you for elucidating. Thanks for having me. Always a pleasure, my brother.

Any final remarks you want to make or anything like that? No, I think it's great. I really appreciate it and look forward to the whole conversation from a month ago and this one being put up. Yeah. Well, I'm glad we had the opportunity to do this. So thanks for coming. Thanks for having me. All right, man.

Yeah. Peace. Plants, plants, plants. All right, we did it. A twofer. What do you guys think? How'd that go for you? Share your thoughts with Colin

directly at Colin O'Brady on Twitter and Instagram. Pick up his new book, The Impossible First. And don't forget to check out the show notes where I've got tons of information, including links to everything that we discussed today. If you'd like to support our work here on the show, subscribe, rate, and comment on it on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube. Hit that subscribe button on YouTube, people. Share the show or your favorite episodes with friends or on social media, and you can support us on Patreon at richroll.com forward slash donate. I appreciate my team who endeavored mightily to put on and produce today's show. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, and interstitial music. Blake Curtis and Margo Lubin for videoing and editing the podcast.

Margo is now out on maternity leave. She's about to have a baby. So what's up, Margo? Hope you're feeling good. Jessica Miranda for graphics, Allie Rogers for portraits, Georgia Whaley for copywriting, DK for advertiser relationships, and theme music as always by Tyler and Trapper Pyatt and Hari Mathis. Appreciate you all. Thanks for the love. See you back here in a couple days, a few days, let's just call it shortly. Until then, peace, plants, namaste. you