The Rich Roll Podcast - The Ultimate Test of Human Endurance: Conquering the 4 Deserts Race Series

Episode Date: March 6, 2015

Futurist and science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke famously said, the only way to find the limits of the possible is by going beyond them to the impossible. An apropos theme for my conversation with Jennifer Steinman, a documentary filmmaker who spent well over a year following four seemingly normal, far from professional athletes as they prepare for and undertake one of the most grueling, backbreaking endurance challenges on the planet — a collection of ultra-distance adventure footraces teetering on the absurd dubbed the 4 Desert Series. WHAT IS THE 4 DESERTS? Named by TIME magazine as one of the world's Top 10 Endurance Competitions, the 4 Deserts is the world's leading rough-country endurance footrace series. A unique collection of world-class events that take place over 7 days and 250 kilometers in the largest and most forbidding deserts on the planet. Jennifer has a more poetic take on this lunatic fringe: Imagine you’ve been dropped off in the middle of one of the largest, driest deserts in the World. Over the next six days you will have to run, jog, walk or crawl 155 miles through incessant heat, across soft sand and hard-packed gravel, over sand dunes multiple stories high and down razor-sharp rocky cliffs. You must do this carrying everything you need to survive — clothes, food, sunscreen, emergency medical supplies, sleeping bag — in a 20-pound pack on your back. Now imagine doing this not just once, but four times in one calendar year, through the driest, windiest, hottest, coldest and ultimately the most treacherous four deserts in the world: the Atacama Desert in Chile, the Gobi Desert in China, the Sahara in Egypt … and then, the final stage, a 150-mile footrace across the single most inhospitable landscape in the world: The Last Desert in Antarctica. Any single race in RacingThePlanet’s 4Desert Ultramarathon Series is an extraordinary, life-threatening challenge– something we would only expect the most accomplished, elite athletes on the planet to try. But most of the courageous men and women who come from all over the world to compete in these Herculean events are not professional athletes at all, they’re ordinary people—people with families and day jobs and mortgage payments– people like you and me who have decided, for a variety of personal reasons, to take on this extreme physical challenge. Why do they do it? This week's guest set out to answer this question. The result is Desert Runners– a feature length character-driven documentary that follows a remarkable collection of brave souls on an extraordinary year-long adventure, racing to the four corners of the Earth.

The thing I really learned was that the difference between the people who made it and the people who didn't make it had nothing at all to do with fitness. It had purely to do with the belief that they thought they were going to make it. That is Jennifer Steinman, and this is The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. All right, everybody. You can breathe a sigh of relief. All is well in the world.

My name is Rich Roll. I am back, and we are here again for another awesome episode of the podcast, episode 133. Thank you for listening. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for spreading the word to your friends, to your colleagues, to your family members, to your coworkers. Maybe you even sent an email to your aunt saying, hey, aunt, guess what? This is a great podcast. Check it out. Listen to it. I appreciate that. Thank you for subscribing to my newsletter. Thank you for clicking through the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases. What do we do here? Well, we, and I say we, because this is not about me. I'm just the steward. This is about us. This is about this collective

experience that we are having as a community. We unpack the tools necessary to live our best lives. So each week I have the distinct and pleasurable honor of sitting down with the best and the brightest and the most forward-thinking paradigm-busting minds in health, wellness, fitness, diet, sports, nutrition, entrepreneurship, and like today's guest, the arts, to tap into their experience, their knowledge, and their insights to help you and me discover, uncover, unlock, and unleash our best, most authentic selves. 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 and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices.

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I met so many amazing people, including some really extraordinary runners. I met German Silva, who won the New York City Marathon back-to-back in 1994 and 1995. And this guy will go down in the annals of history because near the end of the race, he was running neck and neck, shoulder to shoulder with his countryman, Benjamin Paredes, who was also at this event. And on Central Park South, he took a wrong turn. I don't know exactly how it happened, but when he realized his mistake, not only did he catch up to Benjamin, who of course had run ahead, he passed him and won the race. It's pretty extraordinary. Also at the event was Martin Patayo, who won the Chicago Marathon in 1990. And most importantly, or most touching for me, was meeting Silvino Ramirez, who is a Tarahumara runner, a guy

living in the indigenous tribes down in the Copper Canyon of Mexico. If you read Born to Run, you're familiar with this culture, this running culture of indigenous peoples untouched by the modern world who have a culture and a passion for running extraordinary distances in either bare feet or tiny little sandals. And Silvino is the goods. The guy is the real deal. He's a very special guy and an extraordinary runner and a large spirit. And it was really an honor and very cool to meet him. So I left inspired, inspired by the people and inspired by running and by the unlimited potential of the human spirit. You know, I was just, I was reminded of these facts then. And I thought that that made for a great timing to share this interview,

this interview with filmmaker Jennifer Steinman, because she directed a film that I really like called Desert Runners, which is kind of an extraordinary look at a group of four average people, not professional runners, just average people, as they prepare to tackle this ludicrous endurance challenge called the Four Desert Series. This is a challenge that Time Magazine named one of the top 10 most grueling endurance challenges in the planet. And it goes like this. Imagine you've been dropped off in the middle of one of the largest, driest, hottest deserts in the world. For the next six days, you're going to have to run, jog, walk, crawl, do whatever you need to do to traverse 155 miles through extraordinary heat, upwards of 120 degrees, on soft sand or hard pack gravel, and over sand dunes multiple stories high and down razor sharp rocky cliffs.

And the kicker, you got to do all of it carrying everything you need to survive. A 20-pound pack on your back that contains all your clothes, all your food. There's no aid station, sunscreen, emergency medical supplies, your sleeping bag, all of it. Now, imagine that you're not doing this just once, but you're going to do it four times over a calendar year through the four most treacherous deserts in the world, the Atacama in Chile, the Gobi in China, the Sahara in Egypt. And then the final stage, imagine this, 150 mile foot race across the single most inhospitable landscape in the world, Antarctica. Did you know there was a desert in Antarctica? Apparently it's that dry. So this is wild stuff, right? And you would think that this is a race that's tackled by professional runners mostly, but that's not the case.

They are only the 1%. Almost everybody that does this, that undertakes this extraordinary challenge, is an average person. That's what's extraordinary. is really a character-driven story that follows this remarkable collection of four brave souls who undertake this year-long adventure racing the four corners of the earth. And it really reveals, it's very revealing about the human character. It's less about running than it is about what drives us to tackle these kinds of challenges. And so my conversation with Jennifer is really about this drive, this drive to discover one's limits, how we perceive our limitations. It's a conversation about seeking the adventure in life and going beyond the edge and taking that leap of faith in the unknown.

So even if you don't care at all about ultramarathon running, please understand this. We are all ultramarathoners. We are all ultra marathoners. We are all ultra marathoners. And I don't care if you've never run a single mile in your life, because you know what, man? Life is an ultra marathon. Let's talk to Jen. So thanks for making the trip all the way down here to do the podcast. I'm honored. Yeah, thanks for inviting me. I really appreciate it.

And I love the movie. I mean, it hits on everything that I love. So what's not to love? You know, ultra running, endurance, overcoming your fears, kind of delving into the dark recesses of the spirit to see what you're all about. Like, you know, you don't have to be interested in ultra running to be impacted by the movie, which I really like about it. And what's really interesting about it is that you're following average people. You pick these four people and you decide you're going to follow them for a year as they prepare for and endure this insane ultra endurance contest. So why don't you tell me, first of all, tell me what the contest

is and we can kind of get into the movie itself. Sure. So the challenge is, it's called the Four Desert Ultramarathon Series, and it's put on by an outfitter called Racing the Planet. And it's four extreme races. They're about 155 miles each through the Atacama Desert in Chile, the Gobi Desert in China, the Sahara Desert, and then the final race is through Antarctica. And the way they were chosen is they're the driest, the windiest, the hottest, and the coldest deserts on Earth. Right.

And it's surprising to find out that Antarctica is a desert under the formal definition, which is based on annual rainfall, right? Exactly, which is a little piece of trivia that none of us knew before we started this movie. Although when I was watching the movie, it looked to me like it was precipitating there. It didn't rain on us. It snowed a lot, but actual rainfall. Right, right, right. So you're in the hottest places on the planet and then you go to the, you finish off in the coldest place basically. Yeah. Right. It's quite extraordinary. I mean, these are each one of these desert runs is 250 kilometers, 155 miles. And it's, they're broken down into stage.

Each one is a stage race. So there are like six stages each, right? Yeah, there are really five stages. The sixth stage is a sprint to the finish. It's maybe 10 kilometers. But it's basically a marathon a day for the first four days. And then the fifth day is what they call the long day, which is anywhere from a double marathon, you know, 50 miles all the way up to 100 kilometers was the longest long day

in the Gobi Desert. And so this is a series that was conceived by Racing the Planet, but it hasn't been around that long, right? Like they founded it only... I want to say less than 10 years. it's less than 10 years old and and um there's about 150 people do each race but then my film actually follows a group of people who decided to do all four races in one year so that's that's a challenge called the grand slam and the year that i was out there filming um dean karnasas who's a famous ultra runner he was the first person on earth to ever have the idea to run all four in the same year. And he finished it and one other gentleman finished

with him the year that he did it. And so the following year, 13 people decided to try it. Right. Now that Dean's done it, now everybody wants to see if they could do it. Right. And I always tell Dean, I feel like you're the Roger Bannister of the Grand Slam, right? Because nobody ever thought to do it until you did it. And now all these other people who are not professional runners want to try to do what he did. And that was the year I was out there filming. So I followed more or less those 13 people through their year of attempting all four races in the same year. And I think to date there are only like 28 people who have done all four in a calendar year, right?

Something like that. Yeah, you're probably more. So, yeah, it wasn't. I was expecting like other probably a couple hundred, but really not that many. Yeah, you probably checked more recently than I have. But I have noticed that more and more people try every year, which is cool. Of course. Well, that's the nature of this sport, I think, you know.

Of course. Well, that's the nature of this sport, I think, you know, and you address it in the movie a little bit where one of the runners, I can't remember who, is sort of talking about, you know, the popularity of marathons. But what's next? And people are really becoming increasingly interested in these ultra distance races, which, you know, not this particular series, but many, many of them have been around for a long, long time. particular series, but many, many of them have been around for a long, long time. And it was always kind of a fringe thing, but now you're really seeing it emerge into the mainstream and grow, which is pretty exciting to watch. Yeah. And when I first found out about this race series, I thought it was the most extreme thing on earth. And then when I got into making the movie, come to find out there's other races that put these races to shame. I mean, there's some things I've heard of since then that are like, I can't believe humans do that with their bodies, but they do. There's no shortage of crazy. Exactly.

Well put. This ranks right up there. I mean, Time Magazine listed it as one of the 10 most challenging or 10 hardest endurance challenges or something like that. And I was looking at that list and it was interesting because like I think three or four of them were auto sports races like Le Mans and there's like Dakar Rally or something like that. One was a horse race. So it was a mishmash of different things. But this Grand Slam challenge

is definitely up there, you know, in terms of wacky and difficult. And it's funny because Dean's a friend of mine. I'm actually going to have him on the podcast a friend of mine. I'm actually going to have him on the podcast next week. So I'm looking forward to that. Uh, and I crewed him at the bad water race, not this past year, but, but the year before. So I got to experience firsthand what he goes through and what, you know, a race of that kind of dis, I mean, bad water is essentially like doing one of these races in one day with equivalent kind of heat.

It's a different variation on a theme. You don't have to do it, you know, multiple times throughout the calendar year. But I got a taste of what that's all about. And it's no joke. Yeah, I've seen pictures from Badwater. It is no joke. Right. So this is cool because, again, you know, it's these people that are not professional athletes.

And I think there's this idea when you start to describe these races that most of the people that are showing up at them are professional athletes. And what you realize and what I've realized in my experiences in the ultra endurance world is that that's really not the case. I mean, there's maybe 5% of the athletes are there to try to win it. But you see all shapes and forms of people, including people, you look at them at the starting line, you're like, you're going to try to do that they just don't look like, you know, the kind of people that you would imagine are going to be showing up. And I think that that kind of dovetails nicely into, you know, the sort of spiritual and mental aspects of what this is all about and the different kinds of drivers that motivate people to want to participate in something like this.

Yeah, I mean, that was absolutely my experience. And when I went to the first desert race with my cameraman, we got there and I was expecting when we arrived to see these like, you know, superhuman athletes with chiseled physiques and, you know, the perfect specimen of athlete. And instead, when we got there, what we found is exactly what you described, a whole bunch of ordinary people, some of whom, you know, looked like they were not athletes at all. elites at all, but really ordinary people and people who had just decided for a variety of reasons that this was something that they wanted to try and that they wanted to try to push themselves physically and mentally. And, you know, we can talk about this more later, but really one of the biggest things I learned in the making of this movie is that the difference between the people who finish and the people who don't finish, it has absolutely nothing to do with fitness. Right. And that's the heart of what I want to get into in a minute. But I do want to kind of

break the origin story here a little bit. I mean, I think there'd be a presumption that you must be an ultra runner. This is the world from which you come. And so you just naturally gravitated towards it as a filmmaker, but that's not your story. No, it's actually the opposite. So I'm not a runner. And I was at a conference, actually a health and nutrition conference. I am a bit of a nutrition nut. What conference was that? I've been known to show up at a few of those.

Really? Well, it's actually one of our sponsors is this nutritional supplement. They're called Juice Plus, and it's a whole food-based nutritional supplement. And so they were having a conference, and one of the speakers at this conference was this kooky, wacky Irish guy named David O'Brien. And he was up on the stage, and he was giving a talk. He had run the Marathon de Saab, which is a race through the Sahara Desert. He had run this one ultra marathon in his 40s, but he was now 56 years old, and he was recounting this story of something that had happened over 10 years earlier. But it was the first time I had ever even heard of an ultra marathon of that. I had heard of the Dipsy Race in Northern California, which I think is like 50 miles.

But that was the furthest I ever knew humans ran. And this was sort of my first exposure to these desert ultras and this like world of people that were out there doing those things. And I just remember sitting in the audience listening to him tell the story. And you know, he's a he's a good character. And I'm a filmmaker. And I'm always, you know, out in the world looking for interesting characters and interesting stories. So I remember sitting in my seat and thinking to myself, this guy is a great character. But he's telling the story about something that happened 12 years ago. But he's funny.

He's a great character. And then at the end of his talk, he says, so now what I've decided is at the age of 56, I'm going to run not just one of these races. I'm going to run four of them, the four hardest ones in the whole wide world through four different deserts. There's only one guy in the whole world who's done this before. He's a very famous professional athlete. But I've decided that this year at the age of 56, I want to try. And I just remember sitting in the audience and I was like, what? Like, what are you talking about? Who are you? And also a little backstory is that my mom had been really sick at the time she had been in the hospital. And I remember thinking to myself, you know, my mom is not that much older than Dave.

And my mom doesn't even think she can walk around the block. What makes this guy think he can run a thousand kilometers through the desert? And like, what's that all about? And so I was really drawn to this idea of like perceived limitations. Like why does one person think that something is possible that other people would say is impossible? And how do we decide those things for ourselves? Like how does someone decide, yes, I can do that or no, I can't. And these perceived limitations that we each create for ourselves and kind of what's that all about so I just went up to him and after the after his talk

was over and I said you know have you thought about filming what you're going to do next year and the next thing I knew that was in October I think and the first race was the following March and I called a friend of mine who was a cameraman and I said, you know, I met this kooky guy. He's going to do this crazy thing. Like, do you want to just go with me to this desert in Chile and check it out and just see what these races are all about? And so we just hopped on a plane and we went. Wow. That's, that's, that's great. And that brings up a lot of interesting points. I mean, the first, first thing is, you know, you articulated the central question of the movie, like the driving, the driving question, you know, you articulated the central question of the movie, like the driving question. You know, what is it that makes somebody think that, you know, they have these limits and other people are seeing it differently?

You know, what is the demarcation line between somebody who sees possibility and somebody who does not? And that's the through line, I think, that anchors the whole narrative, which is great. But also in the world of filmmaking, October to March, that's not very much time. I mean, that's like, all right, we're starting now, right? And I think that that also dovetails nicely into the theme of the movie because anybody who's made a film, there's so much preparation that goes into it, the finances alone, but, you know, even setting aside the finances, just the pure logistics and the organization and the team building and everything that has to kind of fall into place for a great film to get made.

It's almost a miracle that any movie gets made. And I see, you know, just in my experiences in the entertainment industry, you see lots of incredibly talented people who have great movies inside of them that never get made because they're paralyzed by fear or they're waiting for the stars aligned to align perfectly before they're even willing to take the first step. And so the result is paralysis. So, you know, the message, you know, that you're kind of putting out there by virtue of the course that you took is really that you have to just, you have to start, you don't have to know where it's going to go, but you made that commitment and you just began making this movie like right away without knowing much more than you met this wacky guy at a conference. Yeah. And I didn't even at the time,

I didn't know, I had just finished another film and one of the investors from that film said to me, you know, I want to give you $10,000 to start your next film. And so anybody who's made a film knows that $10,000 is about the equivalent of 0.001 cent in the film business. But, you know, it was something and I sort of looked at his development money and I just said, you know, and I was lucky. I have a friend who's a great cinematographer. And we had been bouncing around the idea of making something together. And, you know, he's an outdoorsy guy.

He's an athlete. He's a CrossFitter. He loved stuff like this. So I just said, you know, will you come with me and check this out? And, you know, we just took two cameras, the two of us. And we just, the $10,000 was enough for our plane tickets and our gear to get there and that was it. But we really didn't know, is this going to be a movie?

Is this going to be interesting? Is this guy going to be interesting? Are these races going to be interesting? And so when we got there, we just sort of figured whatever happens on this first desert, we're going to go for it, try it, see what happens. Worst case scenario, we come home to go for it, try it, see what happens. Worst case scenario, we come home and we try to edit a little video that we can sell and make $10,000 back and

that's all we're out. But it was definitely a leap of faith to say the least. So the first frames that you filmed were when you showed up in Chile for Atacama? We actually went to Ireland to visit Dave in January when he was training. Right, because the movie starts with backstory on all of these people. So I was wondering how you found the, you know, you have, so you have Dave, but then you find these three other people and kind of what led you to choosing these people over maybe some of the others? Well, so we went to Ireland and filmed Dave training before the first race. But when we got to the first race, we did think we were just making a film about Dave. And this is actually a kind of funny story that Dave gets a little mad at me for telling.

He's not listening. He's not here. He's not listening. So we got to the first race and we get to the hotel on the very first day. And Dave shows up and he turns to, and the first thing he says is, so I didn't really train that much. And I was like, excuse me? And he's like, yeah, I mean, I got a little chest cold, and then I, you know, I ran like 15 miles two weeks ago, but I just didn't really train that much. I didn't really have time. And I remember

he walked away and I turned to Sevan, my cameraman, and I said, oh my God, we just flew all the way to Chile to make a movie about this guy and he's going to be out on the first day. And what are we going to do? So I said, okay, plan B, start shooting everyone. Talk to everyone you meet, interview everyone you meet. We got to find some interesting people and we got to find them quick. Yeah, you got to diversify. We got to diversify. Spread your risk out a little.

Yeah. So that's what we started doing. We just started talking to people. And then that was when, you know, kind of what I was talking about earlier when I started realizing how many interesting people were out there, how many interesting stories there were, how many interesting reasons people had for being out there. You know, the commonalities and the differences between people. You know, in the end, my film ends up being about these four people primarily. But, you know, we talked to, it was so hard to cut it down.

We talked to so many amazing people out there with great, great stories. Was there anybody that you followed around the whole time and just said, this narrative's not working? Yeah, I mean, in the end, you know, yeah, got to go for the drama. So some people hit the cutting room floor merely because nothing that dramatic happened to them, unfortunately. But, yeah, I mean, it's hard. Right, right. So to so to really kind of set the stage and clarify what these races are all about. You know, one of the things we didn't touch on is that the stage races, each athlete has to carry all of their provisions on their back. So they're carrying like a 20 pound backpack that has all their food in it.

And there are every 10K or so there's medical tents where they can get water or medical assistance, but no food, right? And then they have tents at night in the middle of the desert where they sleep, but they're not providing food there, right? Like they have to, they can only eat the food that they've brought. They provide water and hot water. That's it. So you have to be completely self-sufficient. You don't have any crew members pacing you or anything like that. You're pretty much just out there fending for yourself. Yeah, and you actually have to carry your own medical supplies as well. They do have medical staff, but unless it's a serious emergency, they're not really supposed to even provide the medical supplies. And to say, okay, a marathon a day and then the final day, the big stage is generally around a

double marathon. That doesn't really accurately reflect the difficulty, the degree of difficulty here because they're literally running up sand dunes and up and down mountains and craggy surfaces and all kinds of craziness. And, you know, anybody who has any familiarity with Marathon de Sauve, you've probably seen like the gators that they wear on their shoes. It's all about keeping the sand and the water out of your feet. And, you know, there's all sorts of insane preparation that goes into, you know, making sure that you have the right gear and, you know, how do you preserve your feet? And then how do you tend to the blisters that you're getting? And, you know, it's,

it's pretty dramatic, right? And it's pretty involved. I mean, it's, it's definitely for the obsessive compulsive when you see these athletes like packing their packs and what they're deciding to bring and not bring and, you know, counterbalancing that decision against weight and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. It's pretty interesting on the first night after the first stage, what ends up in the trash can that night after people have carried it for one day and they realize they're not going to make it for five more days with that much stuff. What are some of those things that they end up tossing? Lots of extra food. Really? Because that would be the thing I'd be most worried about. I'm like, all right, I can get water every 10K, but what am I going to

eat at night when I get back? I want a full dinner. I'm not going to be able to carry six days worth of dinner. Yeah. A lot of people bring those backpacker meals that are freeze-dried and you add water to them, but a lot of people think that's too heavy. A lot of people do noodles and things that are light that you just add water to. Dean actually told me, you know, he just goes for what's the highest fat and most caloric per, like, cubic centimeter. Yeah, per gram. So, like, nuts are really huge because they're light, but they carry a big punch, things like that.

And also counterbalancing that against, you know, what's going to digest easily. Right. Because as you see in the movie, problems with digestion become crippling to some of these athletes. Yeah. They can shut you down quick because it leads to dehydration so quickly. Right. All right. So for the personal stories with these guys, we have Dave O'Brien, the 56-year-old guy.

Brian, the 56 year old guy. And he, what's what wasn't clear to me is kind of what his day job is and what was really driving him. I mean, he seemed to have some unresolved issues with his dad, but I wasn't totally clear on kind of what his true motivation was, like what was inspiring him to do this. You know, you know, for his day job, he's a sales guy. Does he work for Juice Plus? I mean, why was he at that conference? He's a representative. Yeah, that's what he sells. And so he's really into health and nutrition, and that's his thing.

He eats all plant-based diet as well. And he's very, I mean, I can be the armchair therapist here, but I think everybody out there had something to prove to themselves at some kind of deep level. Well, you'd have to. You'd have to. And so it's like, I think he needed to know that he could do it for himself. he could do it for himself. And when I showed the scene of him talking about his dad, that's my theory into why he has that deep need is his father left him when he was a little kid

and he's always thought it was, was it because of me? Was it because of me? And I think that brings out some psychological need in him to need to prove himself. And I think he would, I'm not saying anything that he wouldn't say himself. But yeah, I think he was really driven. I also think part of it is about getting older and about needing to know that you can still do the things that you did when you were younger.

And he's very young at heart. I think there's a piece of him that needs to prove to himself that he's not getting too old to do these kinds of things. And I don't know, there was just something in him. He just needed to do it. And beyond Dave, so then we have Samantha, who's the young Australian law student who she must've been, I don't know, 24 or something like that. She was 25 at the time. And then we have Ricky, who is an American expat living in London, who had played like semi-pro baseball, but really hadn't done anything athletic in a long time.

Had never even run a half marathon when he decided he was going to try it for the Grand Slam, which is completely insane. And then you have this guy, Tremaine, who is like an ex-military guy who teaches like self-defense and combat sports, who had lost his wife to cancer and was suddenly found himself to be a single dad of two kids. So everybody has their own, you know, kind of interesting, compelling, unique backstory that brings them together in these various desert terrains. And what you see over the course of the movie is the challenges that they face in their own unique ways. And I won't spoil the movie. Everybody should go and watch the movie of what happens. But, you know, not everybody makes it the way they think they're

going to make it. And, you know, some people have to overcome extraordinary obstacles and still get back up on their feet and, and get it done. And I think one spoiler that I, that I think that I will give away is what, what I think was really the most emotionally impactful aspect of a whole movie to me was when, um, Samantha had that episode in, was when Samantha had that episode in, that was in the Sahara, right? When she's running along, she's well into, was it day four?

Can't remember what day it was. It was day two, I believe. Oh, it was day two. So she was only on the second day of that. She's by herself running and she runs by some bushes and a guy jumps out and pulls her into the bushes and tries to attack her to sexually assault her, which I can't, I mean, that just doesn't even enter into your mind of anything within the realm of possibility of happening in the middle of like an ultra marathon. You know,

that just had to be so devastating to her. I mean, you could see her crumbling, like trying, it all ends up being okay. She, the guy runs off. Luckily there was a Jeep there to scare him off or something like that. So it wasn't as bad as it could have been. But you know, I know from experience that when you're in the middle of an ultra endurance event, like even the slightest external stimuli becomes overwhelming. So something as that's so life altering and cataclysmic as, as a physical attack of that nature. I mean, that, that could cripple somebody, just a normal person from living their daily life. And, and, you know, she's in the middle of this race that she's trying to finish and she meets her maker and says, I'm done. I can't do

this. You know, she's emotionally devastated. She can barely contain herself. And then she finds the wherewithal to start again, you know, and it's, that is really, that is quite extraordinary to watch. Yeah, it was quite extraordinary to witness in person. And, you know, I didn't know yet when I left that desert, if I was going to include that scene or not. You know, it was pretty raw and pretty fresh for all of us at the time. But over time, you know, I came to believe that, A, it was super important to show that for women runners everywhere, like that this, and for men too, even, that this is something that can happen. And I felt like it would be a disservice to hide the fact that that had happened

from the public. But also, it was really important to me to not get into the details of what happened, but really to have a conversation about who she was as a character and how she dealt with what happened. Because to me, that was the most inspiring thing. me, that was the most inspiring thing. One of the most inspiring things I ever saw was her, uh, the, her process in how she dealt with it and what she decided to do next. Um, and I think there's huge lessons in that for, for people everywhere when you hit those obstacles or when things happen to you that you don't see coming, you know, how it's not about what happened. It's about how you deal with it. And that, that, and that, that lesson is so huge and so universal for all of us. Yeah. I mean, it's extraordinary. The amount of strength that she demonstrated to, to weather that and get through it. I mean, you know, I can

understand the consternation as a filmmaker grappling with whether to show that or not, but that, that is the most demonstrative, you know, sort of character, you know, reveal of who that person is. I mean, what an extraordinarily, you know, strong human being. Yeah. It's kind of amazing. Yeah. And she goes on to be the first female and the youngest person to have ever conquered

the Grand Slam, right? Yeah. And actually, as we are speaking today, she is running across the Freedom Trail in South Africa. She's on day 26 of a 32-day, 3,000-mile run. Oh, my God. Wow. Yeah. Is she still trying to be a lawyer? No, I don't think so. Come on. She left the law firm. Yeah. She's got other things to do, I think. Yeah. You know, good. I'm glad that she's found her way with that. Yeah. She's got other things to do, I think. Yeah. You know,

good. I'm glad that she's found her way with that. Yeah. It's, it's incredibly inspiring. The movie kind of opens with a, with a quote, which is the only way to find the limits of the possible is by going beyond them to the impossible. Right. Or I said, I saw that quote somewhere, maybe it's on the website. Yeah. And I think that really encapsulates, you know, what the movie is all about. And this theme of, you know, it's not just in order to find out what you what you really can do. You have to go to that point where you're tested to go beyond it. Or maybe you have to step over that line and pull yourself back to know where that line is. Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things I really learned from all the people I met out there was that there's pain and there's discomfort and there's a point at which those things become dangerous and maybe not a good idea. But most of the time, pain and discomfort are just pain and

discomfort. And we give it so much meaning like, oh, well, does that mean I should stop? Does that mean I should quit? Does that mean it's not good what I'm doing? And really, it's like, no, it's just pain. It's just discomfort. I just breathe and I keep putting one foot in front of the other. And I feel like that's so metaphorical for life. It's like pain and discomfort or challenges are all, it's just, it's all part of it, but none of it's reasons to stop. It just is what it is. And we let things stop us so often that we don't need to let stop us. Yeah. It's a choice, right? It presents a choice. So what choice are you going to make? And then we create stories around this pain. And then we try to rally support for whatever decision we're going to make.

And usually that decision is like, see how hard it is. I'm stopping. But then you have this whole argument about why it's the right thing to do. And then you get a bunch of people to applaud that and pat you on the back and say, you're right, you know, and, and not always, but, you know, more often than not, you're probably selling yourself short. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. And, and the movie really kind of, uh, you know, navigates that on both sides of that equation, because you have Ricky whose body's shutting down. He's got a very serious, you know, decision to make about whether it really is the right thing to continue or not. And it's not a joke because as we see in the Gobi Desert race, there's a guy that passes away, right? So what,

what happened there? Nobody really knows. I mean, he was, he was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Basically he just got stuck up on the top of the sand dune at the hottest point of the day at a place where, you know, he was as far away as he could possibly get from either checkpoint on either end of him. And he, you know, the story we heard was that he was with a group of people and they were going slow and he wanted to just keep going. So he went off by himself and that 15 minutes later, they found him passed out on the ground. And, but they were four miles away from the finish line. And so someone, and these are the, these are, they were already the back

of the pack. They were probably the last 15 people up there at the end of the day. And, and from what I heard, you know, so one of the slowest runners of the entire race ran as fast as he could, the four miles they had to get, go four miles down. And then doctors had to hike four miles up. There was no, there's no way you could get like a Land Rover up there or anything like that. No access. They took a camel and they carried him. That's what brought him back, right? They took a camel and they carried him down the side of the mountain on camel. So, so what was it heart failure or dehydration or do they know what happened you know i i'm just be spreading rumors if i told you the things i've heard i don't know if any of it's

true you know but um he was in a coma for the first four days and then on the very last day at the other race we found out he had passed oh Yeah. There's a scene in the movie where you're at the sort of the post-race banquet where they make that announcement at the top of the banquet. And then it kind of cuts and I'm like, how is the rest of that banquet after that? You know, like how emotionally devastating for everybody else who I'm sure, you know, these communities are very tightly knit. Everybody knows each other really well. And, you know, while that top 1% is trying to win, everybody's trying to help everybody else finish. It's a very communal kind of, you know, situation. Yeah. I mean, the banquet was very melancholy, but to speak to what you're talking about,

the camaraderie that's out there, that was another thing I've never seen before in any kind of competitive sport was, you know, even the top five guys who are, you know, neck and neck and trying to beat each other. A lot of the time they're running next to each other and chatting, you know, or they're helping each other, you know, up a sand dune or, you know, dune. And everybody's helping each other. People go back to help people all the time. There's a spirit of we're all in this together out there that's really beautiful to witness. Yeah, and I really do think it's endemic to ultra endurance events. I mean, I haven't seen that in other sports. And you capture it beautifully. There's the one scene where Samantha's running and she's on the final stage.

I forget which desert it was, but she's running alongside that very, very accomplished ultra marathoner. I don't know, she'd run like, you know, 100 ultras or something like that. And they're literally running next to each other, holding hands. It was like my favorite moment of the whole year. holding hands. It was like my favorite moment of the whole year. We were in our, we were traveling in a four-wheel drive vehicle and we hadn't seen them in a couple

hours and we were driving along the road and all of a sudden I saw them up in the distance. They'd been running together. They were on 75 miles of non-stop running and they'd been running for like 12 hours straight and I was like, I turned to Savon and I said, oh my god, they're holding hands. Get out

of the car, run. And he ran up there to catch up with them. And they were literally dragging each other down the road, but they were, and holding each other up. And I was like crying. It was like, it was so moving. It was so, so moving. Yeah. It's beautiful. And even to the extent they go into the medical tent together, if one of them's not ready to go, the other one waits, you know. And there's something to be said for, you know, the sort of wind under your sails that you get from being with somebody else as opposed to trying to do it alone. And that was her advice, right? The experienced runner was like, you don't want to do this. You don't want to do the long stage by yourself.

Like, we got to do it together. Yeah, Lisa has actually written a book about the long day since then. Like we got to do it together. Yeah. Lisa has actually written a book about the long day since then. She has not, I mean, not just the Gobi long day, but the, all the long days of all the races that she's done. And I actually, I haven't read that one yet, but she's a, she's a great writer. She's got amazing stories. Right, right, right.

So what are some of the medical conditions that, that you were witnessing these people undergoing? I mean, we see the dry heaving, we see the blisters, but kind of what, what was your firsthand account of being around it? Uh, you know, people are tearing themselves up out there. It's pretty brutal. You know, I mean, it's funny before I got there, I didn't really actually think about the blister thing cause I'm not a runner. It didn't cross my mind, but you know, people, you know, you're running through heat, heat, heat, your feet are sweating. Then you run through a river bed, then you're in soaking wet shoes, then sand gets in those shoes. And then it's like, it's like running on sandpaper with soggy, wet feet and people's feet. I've just, I've never seen anything like it. Right. Torn up, you know, taped every, every limb you could think of taped in every which way. Aorn up, you know, taped every limb you could think of, taped in every which way.

A lot of puking, a lot of digestion issues. The digestion issues are tough because, you know, we're also in foreign countries and God forbid someone ate something at the hotel the night before the first race. And that takes people out a lot. bid someone ate something at the hotel the night before the first race and and that takes people out a lot right um uh you know twisted ankles sprained knees pulled hamstrings um you name it and and and the really tough ones keep going and uh and then some you know there's one very accomplished woman runner who uh would take herself out on the first day every time because of her knee. And I kept wondering why she came back. But she also has a running career and didn't want to do anything permanent.

Oh, so she's showing up for all of these four races but dropping out after the first day. Two of them. She was there for two of them. And both of them she dropped out of the first day. I was like, what? Just take the year off. First of all, how much does all this cost? You know what I mean? You're flying all these crazy places all over the world. Like what? I mean, you know, first of all, like how much does it cost to even sort of get the entry fee and all this? This cannot be a cheap endeavor. I mean, back in 2010, it was $3,500 per race just for the entry fee. And that includes all the support and the medical and the tents and the water. But then you have to pay for

your flights on top of that and all your gear. Right. So you're looking at like when you add it all up at the end of the day for the year of doing these races, it's probably like 40 grand, 50 grand. Oh, doing all four races? Yeah. In the 50 grand range. And a lot of them were sponsored. Like a lot of them had their companies sponsor them or did fundraisers or things like that. So it's kind of a mix.

I mean, it definitely draws a certain financial class of people for sure. But then there's also a mix of people who've done a lot of fundraising or who found sponsorship. And you're right in there in the middle. I mean, you're having your own ultra endurance experience because you've got to film all this stuff. So you may not be running, but you're probably working from six in the morning till midnight or whenever the last person comes in. Yeah, it was pretty grueling for us. I mean, I love it. Film festivals when people say to me, you know, what about your crew? And how'd you get that helicopter shot? And it's like, when people find out that it was just the two of us with two

cameras and nothing else making this movie, we were we can be proud of ourselves, I think. But yeah, I mean, we were living in the same conditions as them. We were sleeping in those tents on the ground. We had to haul our own gear. We had to bring all our own food. We did have four-wheel drive vehicles, but a lot of the time those vehicles couldn't reach the race course. So we did a lot of hiking, a lot of running, a lot of climbing, a lot of scaling sand dunes. Every panoramic shot you see in the film is because the two of us climbed to the top of some cliff to get it um so it was it was pretty physical and

yeah we were up at five six a.m every morning and we were the last ones in at night at you know at midnight and uh so you know no showers for seven days right uh so we were gross we were dirty it was gnarly as seven likes to say you know you can do anything when you know it's only for seven days. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, but it was also like we were part of the adventure. We, these people became our friends. We all bonded. You know, we were all in it together.

And I mean, we really became a part of that whole experience that they were having. And it's interesting, like Tremaine said something to me at the end of the year, he said, which was probably like the greatest compliment I've ever had as a filmmaker, where he said, you know, it was amazing that I decided to do this challenge, but it was so much better because you guys were out there with me because he said, you were asking me questions all year long, making me give you answers, making me articulate what I was going through in a way that if you hadn't have been there, I might've never asked myself those questions. I might've never thought about those things. I might've never thought about why am I doing this? I might've never thought about what does this mean for me? But you were always there with your camera in my face asking me, and I had to think about it, you know? And I really, it made my experience that much richer.

So that was something I had actually not thought about for them either. And that came as- Well, plus the pressure. They're like, this is going to be a movie? I'm going to be in a movie? I better finish. I don't want to be the guy, you know? When did you realize like, oh, there is a movie. I'm going to be in a movie. I better finish. I don't want to be the guy, you know? When did you, when did you realize like, oh, there is a movie here? Like you go to Chile and you film,

you're worried about Dave. I mean, Dave finishes, but, but did you come back from that trip saying, oh yeah, there's a, there's a movie here for sure. Or was there any, something that clicked in where you're like, oh, this is, this is for real. I can see how this is going to work. I got it in the first desert. Just purely the people. Like, they were all so interesting in so many ways. And there was so much depth and richness there. And I just knew that it was a movie. I knew that there were great characters. I also knew the carnage I saw in the Atacama Desert alone, which was the first race.

I was like, something's going to happen. Like, like, I don't know what it's going to be. And I would obviously never wish anything terrible on anybody in these races, but something dramatic is going to happen over the course of this year. It can't, it can't not like, how can you, how can you attempt something this intense without something happening? And, and, you know, but things happen that I never in a million years would have thought would have happened. Um, you know, and other things didn't, I mean, it's, you're always, I mean, as a documentary filmmaker, your job is to take that leap, take that leap of faith. I mean, when the people that made Hoop Dreams started out, they had no idea how that story was going to unfold. And you have to trust in the miracle.

Exactly. And the story will present itself. Yeah. And there's a lot of other running films out there where the people start the race and the people finish the race and not much happens in between except them running the race. And I kind of knew it. A lot of boring movies out there. But they're still entertaining in their own right, even though nothing really happened. But I did know that it wasn't going to really be interesting to me unless something happened in my movie.

And so that's, but that is, that's the leap of faith. And that's what you're always sort of, you know, hoping and counting on happening in some way. And usually, you know, a trip like this, which is in some ways a road trip movie, has a built-in beginning, middle, and end. So as far as story structure goes, you know, you know you're on the right path to something. You know you're going to have a finish line no matter what.

You know that there's going to be something that happens in the middle. But it's always, you never know what's going to happen. Right, right, right. But this idea of the leap, taking the leap, I mean, that's another predominant theme. And I watch your TED Talk. That's part of that as well. predominant theme and I watch your TED talk, you know, that's part of that as well. And, you know, it's applicable to these runners and this risk that they're sort of willingly undertaking and,

and, you know, the huge unknown that that carries with it. And, you know, I was thinking about, you're talking about people are asking you, you know, how, how can these runners even conceptualize what they're going to do? And you're speaking about how they break it down into these tiny little chunks. They don't think about, you know, the four deserts. They don't think about Antarctica. When they're in the Gobi Desert, they're thinking about the next aid station, right? Yeah. And how that can be applicable to how we confront our own fears and our own sort of personal limitations and the stories we tell

ourselves about ourselves that hold us back. Yeah. I mean, the thing I always tell people about this film is that it is a film about running, but it's not really about running. It's about life. And I'm not a runner, so I didn't make a film about running. I made a film about life. That's what I'm interested in. and that's the thing that always drives me, is what are these universal lessons that you can learn through this metaphor of this ultramarathon, right? So for me, it's whatever you choose to do. It's whatever turns you on in life, whatever your thing is that you choose to do. For these people, it's to run an ultramarathon.

For me, it's to make a movie. Like for me, the movie is absolutely my ultra. And I hit every possible landmine you could think around the way along the way to get this movie made. And it took me three and a half years until it premiered. And it was right because the races you're profiling were in 2010 yeah and we premiered in 2013 so it's um it's a everybody's got the challenges and the obstacles they hit and the things that try to stop you and and and your own way of dealing with that and are you going to let that stop you are you going to let it shut it shut you down are you going to live in fear or are you going to constantly be looking for what do I need to do next? What do I need to do next?

Like one foot in front of the other, what do I need to do next? And that was the thing I learned from those guys out there. That's how they approached these ultras was one foot in front of the other. What do I need to do next? Never about the whole. Always about what do I need to do next? How do I get to the next checkpoint? always about what do I need to do next? How do I get to the next checkpoint?

So breaking it down into these little doable goals that eventually add up to the whole, but the whole is pretty overwhelming if you were to try to like bite that whole thing off at once. So how do I do it? And so I just really feel like it's applicable to whatever you want to do in life. Yeah, of course. I mean, as trite as it sounds, you know, life is an ultra marathon. It just is. And you're not going to tell it, you know, if you, you know, a kid doesn't walk around going, oh my God, how am I going to make it to 90? Like it's so hard, you know, it's never going to happen. You know, like just forget it, you know? No, he's like, what are we having for dinner? Right. You know? Right. So it really... That's good. Can I steal that? You're more than welcome to steal that. That's a good one.

As somebody who came into this experience without, you know, any kind of background in running or understanding of that world, you know, what did you witness about that community? I mean, was there some specific strain of human characteristic that kind of, you know, rose up and struck you as something indelible? Yeah. So I touched on this a little bit before, but I was really looking for that. I really wanted to know, I was, I was like trying to, trying to make it my case study and like human mindset, you know, what is it that makes these people think a thousand kilometers is possible when almost everybody else I talked to on planet earth says it's impossible. So like, what is it specifically about them? And the thing that I really came to over the course of the year was, the thing I really

learned was that the difference between the people who made it and the people who didn't make it had nothing at all to do with fitness. It had purely to do with the belief that they thought they were going to make it. This idea that it's not, can I make it or not make it? It's, I'm going to make it. And therefore, what do I need to do next? And it was interesting because I noticed it when I would ask people questions like, well, how's it going to feel if you don't make it? And their answer would be, well, I'll make it.

And then I'd say, no, no, no. And my joke is like, you know, I'm a California girl filmmaker. And I'm like, how's it going to feel if you don't make it? I live in Marin. That's right. And they're like, and they're Berkeley, even worse. And they're like, you know, these Brits. and they're like, well, I'll make it. And I thought they just weren't answering my question for a while. And then after I kept getting that same sort of non-answer, you know, 10, 20 times, I started to realize, oh, it's not that they're not answering my question.

It's that they literally haven't even thought about that. Like they haven't even considered the possibility that they're not going my question. It's that they literally haven't even thought about that. Like they haven't even considered the possibility that they're not going to make it. That's not a conversation they're even having. The conversation they're having with themselves is I've decided to do this thing and I'm going to make it. Therefore, what do I need to do next? And they really weren't entertaining doubt at all. It wasn't a conversation that they were even having. And I saw the fittest girl you'd ever seen in your entire life looked like she could run 12 of these things who was out on the second day. I saw this heavyset 50-plus guy who'd never run a marathon before wearing Teva sandals walk the entire Sahara Desert race. No way.

And finish. In Tevas? Yeah, in Tevas. Tevas with socks or Tevas with bare feet? He had socks on, socks and Tevas. And he walked 155 miles through the Sahara Desert and finished just because he knew he could. It transcends having a positive mental outlook and it transcends visualization. It really, and it transcends belief in a positive, in a positive outcome. It's living in the certainty of a positive reality right like there's a distinction like we

can visualize success but if you're really a fear-based person who's harboring doubt all the time you're up against you know a berlin wall so what is it you know what do you think it is that that plants that seed in those people like how do they develop that kind of outlook? And how does that distinguish them from the average person walking around? Is it just innate? I don't know. Driven out of like a deep-seated desire? You could put on your Berkeley psychology.

You know, I don't know. I think what you're touching on is sort of like, God, it's the magic pill. Like, I wish we could all take it and have it. I don't know the answer to that question. Like, how could you, like, if someone's listening and saying, well, how can I get to that place? You know, I guess if you could bottle that and sell it, you'd be, you know, A bazillionaire. I mean, I know what it is for me. I do have an innate belief that no matter what I do, I'm going to be okay, more or less. And I do believe for me personally, that came from my family, that that was my parents' belief in me allows me that gift of knowing that, like, I can go out in the world and I can jump off the high dive and that there's water in my pool no matter what. Um, and, and that's the foundation that I was, you know, blessed enough to get from my family. Um, and, and that's what I, you know, account that

to in my own life. Um, I think maybe there's something different for everyone, you know, um, own life. I think maybe there's something different for everyone. You know, what makes, you know, an African American little girl in the South who's sexually abused as a child grow up to be Oprah? And when there's hundreds of others like her, that that wasn't the story, right? So I do think maybe it's innate or it's just like who you're meant to be in this lifetime or what you came here to do or what you're up to. I think everybody has a different sort of belief around that. Yeah, I think it comes in different packages and sizes. I mean, if you look at Dean Karnazes, it's easy to say, oh, well, Dean's just a freak of nature. But, you know, it wasn't always that way for him.

He's run a million of these races and he's worked his way up to being the person that he is. And he's clearly living out his karma. Like he's this is what he's supposed to be doing. You know, this is his gift to the world. And he's very, very good at it. For another person, you know, maybe one of the athletes you profile, they have this deep body that's so large that it's literally a life or death thing that they have to do this because of some meaning that they've attached to it psychologically. Like it doesn't always come from a healthy place. No, not at all.

No, there's definitely whack shots out there. No, and it's interesting because we were out there and we were all bonding and they all would say, you know, you're going to come run the next one with us, aren't you? And they were like, they kept inviting us to, like, you know, join them and run, you know. And next year, are you going to do one? Are you going to do one? Are you going to do one? And, you know, we thought about it. I thought about it.

Like, how can you not think about it when you're out there with them? And, you know, a couple times I was like, well, maybe. And then I just kind of came to this place where I was like, nope. It's just not my thing. But I have my thing that they would never do. Like everybody's got their thing, right? That is the way that they need to express that thing. For me, it's not running.

For me, it's filmmaking. And everybody's got their thing. But for them, this is the thing that allows them to play out whatever it is they need to play out. Yeah. I remember watching Running the Sahara with my wife. I'm sure you've seen that movie, right? I've had Charlie Engle on the podcast, who's wildly entertaining and great. But I love that movie. And I remember watching it. And, and, you know, my, my experience of watching that movie,

and my wife's were two totally different things. Like I'm watching it going, I'm in like, I could, I could get excited about doing something like that. That looks awesome. And my wife's like, why would anybody want to do that? You know, like, it's just how you're wired, I think, you know, and I had the same experience watching your movie. I mean, I'd heard of this challenge before. I was aware of these ultra marathons, but I'd never seen it depicted in film. And I was thinking, that could be pretty cool. How many people have done this? Oh, only 28?

Hmm. You know, what would that be like? I started living in the reality of what it would entail to tackle something like that. And I've been thinking about it, you know, and it's just because that's, I'm wired that way, you know, I don't know whether I will do it or not. I'm not making any commitment right now. I highly recommend it. I think, I mean, it is an amazing, amazing thing to do if that's the kind of thing that turns you on. It's pretty amazing out there. I mean, the landscapes are just extraordinary. I mean, we went to places that blew my mind in ways that I'll, you know, it was an experience of a lifetime.

Absolutely. And the race organizers have, you know, they've organized it that way on purpose. I mean, it's meant to be a cultural experience as well. It's meant to be, you know, a global experience, meant to expose you to parts of the world that you've never been exposed to before. Right. And it's a charitable organization as well, right? Like Racing the Planet, they contribute to Operation Smile and a couple other charities, I believe. I don't think. You might see. You've been on the website more recently.

Well, and also all the athletes are raising money. So there's a lot of money raised through as a result of this thing. And what I also noticed, I don't know if you know this, but they've added this fifth rogue race every year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's in like, every year it's someplace different. Do they like not disclose it? It's supposed to be like a secret or something like that? No, I think they announced it the year before, but there were actually two of the 13 guys I was following did all five that year. They did.

I was wondering if anybody had done all five. They did all five. I don't know if you remember in the film, the really thin Asian guy from Canada, Stan. Yeah. Stan Lee. Stan Lee. He did all five that year. Yeah. And there was one guy who looked really fit. And I was just thinking, oh, that guy probably won the whole thing. Cause you don't really talk about the guy who wins them all or the people that are coming in first place. It's not, the movie is not about that. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people ask me about that.

And again, I think it's, it comes from the fact that, you know, I'm, I'm not an ultra runner. So that wasn't my, really my area of interest. My, my cameraman is definitely more of an athlete and he was always filming the guys up in front, always interested in the competition, always interested in what gear do they have and what shoes are they wearing and all that kind of stuff. And, and I was like, let's talk about to this guy in the middle back here. I want to hear about his wife. But, um, but anyway, yeah.

So Ryan Sands, I don't know if you know who he is. Uh, he's a South African ultra runner. Um, he was on, um, two out of the four races that year that I was there, but he has done all four, just not in the same year. And his goal was to not just win every race, but to win every single stage of every single race in the four desert series. And every stage of every race. And he did it. Oh my God. Wow.

He's pretty phenomenal. Him and Dean actually ran the Gobi together, I believe, and he beat Dean in the Gobi and Dean came in second, but Dean waves his hat to him happily. That's quite an accomplishment. He really is a freak of nature. Nicest guy in the world, but like, I mean, he really, I think in the Atacama desert, he broke the record by like 30 hours. Oh my God. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. He's fast. Yeah. That's cool. So you come back from Chile and you realize you have a movie here, but you probably burned through your $10,000. So does this come together through like Indiegogo? You crowdsourced. Cliff Bar came on board as a sponsor, and that got us through the production.

So we knew that we could at least go and film all four deserts. And I still had no idea how I was going to edit it when I got back, but at least I knew we could shoot it and then figure the rest out later. So we got through to the end of the year on the corporate sponsorship. And then I did a Kickstarter campaign, and I raised some money to start the editing process. So it was for post primarily. Yeah. And then that got us through about three or four months of editing. And then I had a couple of private investors come on in the end to help me finish it.

And so the choice was made that you're going to take a shot at the festival circuit. That was the approach to distribution. Yeah. I mean, we've done a little bit of everything. The television rights in the States were sold to DirecTV. And it still loops on there sometimes. I don't know when. And then, really, I mean, it's such an international film. We knew we'd have a really huge international market.

And we've sold the film in all you know, all over Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South America. I mean, it's really, we've done really well with the film. So we did the festival circuit all over the world. And then we've, we've made a lot of sales, both broadcast sales, theatrical, and now we're mainly selling the digital downloads off our website now. Gotcha. And it did pretty well in the festival circuit. I mean, you won like Best Documentary in Hamptons and Edinburgh and Vancouver. Yeah. Some nice awards. That's cool.

Yeah. And most of them were audience awards, which is my favorite award because it means the people like you. The other ones are the stodgy filmmaker people that are passing judgment. That's right. But you're no stranger to the festival circuit, right? You've had movies at South by Southwest and Sundance. Yeah.

Well, I've been a film editor for 20 years, so I edit a lot of films that did well on the festival circuit. And then my first feature film premiered at South by Southwest in 2009. And that was Motherland? That was Motherland, yeah. So what was that movie about? Completely different subject. I followed a group of women

who were six moms who had all lost a child. But they're not runners. They're definitely not runners. Well, I'll tell you this in a second. So I took them to South Africa to volunteer with children there and we filmed the whole trip.

And the idea was, can volunteering and being of service and giving of yourself be a healing thing to do, especially for people who've suffered a tragedy like this? I've always personally really believed in the healing power of service. And so it was sort of my thesis project, if you will, to sort of test that. And so it was sort of my thesis project, if you will, to sort of test that. So it was interesting because I had, after I made that film, which was sort of this like, you know, pretty deep, pretty weighty subject matter. For my next film, I was like, I'm going to go film these runners going through the desert, you know, let's all get happy about running. But it was interesting because being back on the festival circuit with Desert Runners, a lot of people started pointing out to me, you know, these similarities in the two films and really the biggest similarity being, you know, this cross-cultural perspective.

You know, what does it mean to take people from different cultures and have them learn from each other? And why am I sort of drawn to those kind of subject matters? Which is really was interesting because, you know, I felt like the press thought about that before I did. And I was like, yeah, you're right. That's the way it works. I do think about that. That's the way it works. And that's the good part of film criticism, right?

Like sort of pointing out through lines through, you know, an artist's work and trying to extrapolate, you know, kind of consistent themes that arise. Yeah. And so what are you working on now? I'm pitching a bunch of ideas. I'm looking for ideas. If anybody out there has a good idea, email it to me. I know there's this race. I get a lot of those every day.

I get a lot of those on my website. But I, you know, I'd love to do a portrait of an artist. I'm really interested in, I really interested in process in general, which is one of the reasons I loved making Desert Runners so much, is about the process from beginning to end. And now I'd love to bring that into either a fine artist or a dancer or a musician. I've sort of been researching people like that and seeing who. Kind of like that, of of course his name's escaping me

right now but the artist who worked on peewee's playhouse there's that wonderful documentary about this incredible artist i'm spacing right now look it up starts with a w his name i'll put it in the show notes but anyway it's an amazing documentary i'll email you when i think okay all right great of course terrible to be on the spot recording. You can cut this part out. Yeah, I know. That's cool, but you're like a triple threat. You produce, you direct, you edit.

I mean, editing is kind of like your main gig, right, to just sort of work all the time. It has been, although I'm transitioning more into directing more and more. But I really feel blessed that I have that background. I mean, I find that when I'm out in the field shooting, I'm already editing in my mind. I already know what's going together with what, and did I get that line that I'm going to need here or there? I have an editor's brain,

so that really comes in handy out in the field. Some directors just have to let the camera roll because they're not sure yet. And I'm like, nope, we got it. Let's go cut next. Um, so that, I think that that serves me well. And, um, yeah, I decided, uh, about, you know, six, seven years ago that I didn't want to grow old sitting in a chair in front of a computer monitor. And it was time to get out into the world and, and not be an editor till the day I died. But I do still love that process. I think editing is super creative, and I'm obsessed with creative people.

And I think particularly in the documentary film context, I mean, editing is directing. You know, that's when you find the movie. You can go out and get a bunch of footage and beautiful images, but it doesn't mean anything. The storytelling is in the cutting. A good editor is just, you know, it's genius when it works right. images, but it doesn't mean anything. The storytelling is in the cutting. I remember the first- A good editor is just, you know, it's genius when it works right. Yeah. I remember the first time I had edited a lot of docs and I remember the first time I cut a feature film. I was like, this is so easy. They give you a script and you just follow along.

You don't have to like figure out the story. It's right there for you. Right. So people are always amazed like why it the story. It's right there for you. Right. So people are always amazed like why it takes so long to cut a documentary because that's where you're finding it. Yeah. Yeah. It's all about story making. My friend, I have a good friend, Sasha Gervasi. He made a documentary called Anvil, the story of Anvil.

Love that movie. Yeah. Love those guys. So, yeah, it's an incredible documentary. But I was with him through the whole process of when he first brought Lips out to Los Angeles. And I was like, who is this guy? He's like, I think there's a movie here. And he started following these guys around. I was like, what is this movie going to be?

And he was editing that thing for, I think, two years to get it to where it was to really find the story. It's super hard to do. Super hard. And that's a really good example, too, of what you were talking about earlier that, you know, he didn't know going out on that road trip following them around that they were going to get in a big, huge fight one day. Or that they were going to end up playing, you know, Budokan in Japan at the end. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Like, he didn't know any of that stuff was happening. You're just kind of going on this, like, you know, hunch that with great characters who are up to interesting stuff, that something good is going to happen sometime, but you never know when, and you never know how or what. It takes courage. And I think our culture, our society is rigged against that. You know, it's not encouraged. It's frightening. And we're very fear-based. And I don't think that we encourage or talk enough about kind of getting, especially young people, to take that leap of faith and to allow themselves to fail and to take those risks.

Just to know that you can fail and you're still going to be okay. Like what you said, like you always knew you could jump off the high dive and there'd be water in your pool. Well, most people believe there's not going to be water in their pool. And so they make decisions accordingly. Also, I mean, you mentioned my TED talk earlier. This is something I kind of brought up a lot in that too. I also think there's this idea that it's not just about water in the pool. It's this idea that every step of the way should be a success on the way to success. And that if you are, if there's any moment of, you know, struggle, there must be something wrong. And that's so not true. And that it's really about how we manage ourselves in those moments of difficulty

and, and how we can be in them that, and not have them ruin our time on the way there, you know, like, like to be able to like manage yourself through the hard times, manage yourself through the difficulties, manage yourself through the challenges, manage yourself through the fear so that, you know, you just keep going. You don't like fear happens, but it's not, fear doesn't equate. Yeah. It has, it only has the weight and importance that you give it or you allow it to have. That's my iPod ringing again. But, and it's insane. You know, But, and it's insane. You know, I've often thought like, if I could like rewire high school curriculums across the country, like I would dispense with 90% of what they teach.

And I'd have courses like, why you should fail. You know, we're gonna spend a whole year on this. You know, like things that really kind of forge character and serve you in the long run well beyond, you know, what year did this happen? Or how do I solve this math equation? And then I also, I've been thinking about this a lot when I'm on the film festival circuit, because it's also the way we organize, you know, the finish lines in our lives. Like, you know, I stand up on these stages that, you know, at film festivals with a finished film, you know, wearing a pretty dress, looking like a great success. And everybody in the audience is like, you know, applauds and says, you know, great job, you're amazing. And I get all these accolades and I'm like,

and they, everybody thinks that's who you are, is this, you know, star at the finish line, but nobody sees what it took to get there. Like what, like the whole process, everybody just thinks you're great and you must always have been great. It was easy for you. It's hard for me. And it's like, and the thing I keep wanting to tell people is like, it's not easy for me either. I just kept going. Like a lot of people stopped. Yeah. You're just getting to the next aid station. The only, exactly. The only difference between me and the other guy who doesn't have his movie done yet is that I, I kept going, but that's it. Not, we didn't have any less struggles. We didn't have any, you know, any less obstacles. You just got to keep going. Yeah. I mean, we were talking earlier about just,

you know, how I was saying that it's a miracle that any movie gets made. It's so difficult. was saying that it's a miracle that any movie gets made. It's so difficult. And, you know, I've been to Sundance many, many times and I never leave not inspired. Like I find it so inspiring, whether I liked a movie or not. My favorite thing is when the filmmakers get up on stage after their movie and you can just see on their faces, like the level of elation and pride, because you can tell like, this has been hard. This has been really, like, you can't imagine how hard this has been. And just to be standing up there, like they just can't even believe it, you know? And it's just, I find that to be very impactful. Yeah. I wish everybody went to film festivals can have that experience. I remember going to a,

you know, even big blockbuster films, Moneyball, that's the film with Brad Pitt about the Oakland A's. I went to a Producers Guild screening of that where the producers came up afterwards. They spent 15 years trying to get that movie made. And it wasn't until two years earlier that Brad Pitt signed on and they were able to get the money and get it made. But for 15 years, they had that script and they were trying to get that movie made. And nobody sees that process. You know, everybody sees a big, awesome Brad Pitt movie, but it was, it's pretty, you know, awe-inspiring when you realize that a certain group of people were that dedicated to that film and wanted to see it made. And now it's harder than ever. I mean, with the shift in

the economics of the business, I mean, the idea of being an independent producer, it's, you have to be like insane, you know, how are you ever going to make like, all they want to do is make Marvel and DC comics movies for the next 20 years. There is no room for that middle budget film or that adult fare, serious drama, et cetera. And, uh, you know, it's putting a lot of people out of work and, and, and to, they always say, like my friend Sasha, the same filmmaker, he's like, you just have to keep doing it. You can't sit around waiting for people to respond to what you're doing. Just move on to the next thing. Just always be moving forward. What are you writing now?

Okay, you finish that? What are you writing now? Just always be propelling yourself forward. And it goes to those issues of doubt and fear, you know, not allowing them to creep in and not letting your sense of self or your mission or your direction be impacted by a third party's reaction to what you're doing, which requires a really strong constitution. Yeah, absolutely. And I, you know, I do believe there's an audience for everything. And as a filmmaker, you know, your job is number one to make the movie, but number two, to find those people to find that audience. And it's, it can be hard if you have a really

niche subject. You know, there's bigger audiences for certain subjects and smaller audiences for other subjects, but I do think they're out there. And I think that is definitely the challenge we're up against these days is, is finding them. The good news is, you know, we can find them in way, you know, Google searches are amazing. Like, you know, we didn't have those 15 years ago. So you can, you can find them if you do your due diligence. And once you find them, and once you find your fans, they tell their friends and they tell tell their friends, and they tell their friends. So that's really, that's kind of the work of distribution these days, I think. Right. It's been very, it's weird, because on the one hand, it's a lot more difficult than it's ever been to make an independent movie. And yet, on the other hand, it's never been more democratized, you know, and if you can make a

movie, you don't need these third parties to distribute it. You find your audience and you can serve that audience and you can make a living and pursue your art. So it's exciting in that regard, I think. Yeah, it is. I mean, I've definitely, my experiences with, you know, third party distribution on this last film, it's probably the last time I'll ever do it. You know, purely because of what you're talking about. There's some stories there I can tell. Yeah. Well, you know, why give someone a cut if you don't need to? Right, right, right, right. Which, you know, is becoming less and less necessary.

Yeah. It's happening in publishing. It's, you know, it happened in the music business, obviously. So it's shifting all around. It's pretty exciting to watch how it's kind of all unfolding and this kind of, you know, power shift back to the people in certain respects. Yeah. That's a nice way to put it. I like that. In the experience of making this movie, I mean you're like okay i'm going to spend a year following these runners around i'm going to go all these insane places and a bunch of crazy shit's going to happen right but what were some of the things that kind of happened that you didn't expect or what did you take away from that that's really kind of colored your perspective on how you live your life?

You know, I made friends for life out there. I don't think that I expected that. I feel like I have a community all over the world, which is really special. I have a much more global outlook, I think. I mean, I've always been a pretty avid traveler since my 20s, twenties. But I, I mean, I made this movie on purpose. Like I wanted to go to these places when I, I mean, that was definitely a big draw to the subject matter was like,

I want to go there, there, there, and there. So even the Antarctica, we haven't talked about that. We got to talk about that for a little bit. That's another story. But yeah, like I wanted to go to those places and I think that, you know, I have a much more global view of the world. Just, you know, when you spend a week out in the desert around a campfire with people from 40 different countries, you really learn your place in the world as an American in a way that, you know, growing up in America, I don't think I understood at all. up in America, I don't think I understood at all. I mean, I feel like growing up in America, I was taught that America's number one and everybody else should be learning from us. And that was pretty much what was, you know, what I felt like was my, you know, cultural

lesson being an American. And then you get out into the rest of the world and you're like, hmm, actually, maybe we have some stuff to learn from the rest of them, you know? So, and that's... Like what would be an example of that? Oh, you know, well, that was really what the subject of Motherland was about, you know, about healing, about grief, about how we deal with, you know, grieving. You know, that film is about, you know, in America, when something sad and bad happens to us, we go into our house and we close the door and we go into our bedroom and we close the door and we climb under the covers and we cry by ourselves.

And in Africa, when a child dies, all the mothers gather together as a group and they heal and they cry and they grieve and they tell stories and they sing together. And even though there's, you know, statistically more loss and more grief there, there's also a feeling of lightness around it that doesn't exist here because they have each other and they have these communities. And that was such a beautiful lesson, like, that we can all learn from, I think. So, you know, and that was really what I learned in making that first film. I think, I think that idea of community is something that we've lost here. And I think it's such an integral part of wellness in general, right? And like everything from the

Blue Zone studies that, that demonstrate that this is crucial for longevity and health and happiness. And, you know, we hear a lot of talk about, you know, small town values and, you know, all this kind of stuff, but it's kind of nonsense. You know, it's kind of BS because we really do live in this incredibly segmented, isolating, you know, isolating kind of world here. Very isolated. I remember I went to Belize about 10, 12 years ago, just on a family vacation with my, with my family, my parents. And we were driving through, you know, a row of shacks, basically, you know, people living way below any standard that we would ever consider the poverty line. And there were, you know, these mothers sitting on the porches and these

kids running around playing together. And they were, you know, they had no stuff, they had no things. And they looked so happy. And I remember having this like deep feeling of jealousy. Like, how amazing would that be to like, not even know that there was stuff you wanted or needed and not be obsessed with wanting stuff all day long and to not care where your kid was running because they're safe and and they're playing with your neighbor who and you know and all these women were together raising these i mean that's where like it takes a village came from is that idea of you know people living together in a community where everybody's watching out for each other. And I just remember feeling like, wow, like we think we have something figured out, but really we don't have anything figured out.

Like these people have it figured out, you know, and we like somehow have this dichotomy where we think we are doing better than them. And I'm not so sure that that's true. It's like what's your measure of better versus worse? What's your measure of value? Yeah, I mean I think that we have this cultural imperative that prioritizes security and comfort and be very, very afraid and make sure you buy a lot of stuff and that the secret to happiness is to possess. And intellectually, we know this is all nonsense, but you know, our, our reptile brain still responds to the marketing messages that we're inundated with. And I think it leads to an existential crisis that I think translates into more people wanting to run ultras, you know, and to bring it back because it speaks to something very primal about who we are.

Like, who are we if we strip away everything and get to the core of, you know, what makes us tick? What are our fears? What are our limits? You know, because we're not tested in that way in this world. limits, you know, because we're not tested in that way in this world. And I think we're genetically hardwired to be more tested than we are, to be more exposed to the elements, to be outdoors, to be moving our bodies, to be, you know, I don't know. You know, I hate that word primal because it's been so co-opted, but, you know, on some level, I think there's, you know, wisdom in that.

Yeah. I mean, I'm glad you brought it back to that. Cause it actually was one of my biggest questions when I was filming Desert Runners was that I realized, you know, there's people all over the world who are living at a level of survival. Like every day is just about how do I get food? How do I get water? You know, how do I, do I have a roof over my head tonight? You know, there, there's hundreds of thousands of people all over the world that that, that is the reality of their lives. And then you take this group of people who are most, most of which are very financially well off, you know, living in the upper 10%. And what do they choose to do for fun? They choose to go out into the desert and say, how do I get food? How do I get water?

Where am I going to sleep? Not only choose, they pay $50,000 for this. Yeah. Which is like its own sort of, it's lunatic. It's fascinating though. I was like, what is that? And I can't even tell you the number of times I talk to people out there and I would say, why are you out here? And they'd say, well, this is the only place on earth where my cell phone doesn't ring. And they said it as a joke, but it wasn't a joke. It was the real answer. Yeah.

They're out running in the middle of the Gobi Desert. How can I Instagram this? Didn't happen if I didn't, if I don't Instagram. Yeah. I mean, what I hear all the time is this is where I feel most alive, you know? So what do we need to do to feel alive? What is truly being alive? What does that mean? Yeah, that, that really is what it's about. And it's, um, are you asking me like, what's my theory on that? Or are you just, will you please answer that question for me right now? What do we need to be due to be most alive? Um, no, but I, well, I don't expect to answer that question, but, but, uh, you know, walking away,

coming away from this experience and seeing this sort of triumph of the human spirit, I would imagine it must inform, you know, your life and your work to take bigger risks or to push yourself harder or to, you know, not buckle down when maybe a couple of years ago you might have. Absolutely. I mean, absolutely. All of the things that I talked about today, you know, all of the lessons I learned from them, they, I use them every day in my life, you know, every day it's like, you know, when something hard comes up, it's like, you know, oh, it's just pain. One foot in front of the other. It's just pain.

Like, you know, I, there is another side of this. There is a lesson in this. There's a gift in this, which I think for me is a huge one is like, I use on myself every day is like, this might really suck right now, but there's a gift in it. And it's, and that's all I got to keep my eyes open for, right. Is like, this is, you know, it's funny. My boyfriend always says, I'm sick of that phrase. Everything happens for a reason. And I'm like, me too, except, it's funny. My boyfriend always says, I'm sick of that phrase. Everything happens for a reason. And I'm like, me too, except for it's kind of true. You know, and I do believe in it. I do believe like everything, even the worst things that you can imagine, I have to believe that there's, you know, there's a, there's a bigger reason why those things happen and lessons

in it for everyone. And, and, and I, yeah, I mean, the things these runners taught me I use every day. Yeah, when I look back on my own life, and I look at all the things that I decide to label as being bad or terrible. Generally, when you put time and distance between yourself and that event, I look back on those things now. And I'm like, thank God that happened. You know, that doesn't apply to everything, you know, a family member dying or something like that. But usually I'm the architect of my own disasters. And there are lessons that I either learn or don't learn from those things.

But most of the things that I thought at the time were absolutely horrible. Now I'm just grateful for. So I think it's important when you're living in the context of the now to try to be mindful of that and to reserve your judgment of these events and to be more neutral about them and to look for that. What is that lesson? Yeah. And I think, you know, I'm also conscious of the fact that there's personality types and that, you know, as an artist and as a filmmaker and coming from the family I came from, like I have a very distinct personality type. I know I am more likely to jump off that high dive than a lot of other people I know purely because that is my personality and, and I'm an experiential person. And I, I learn by being the architect of my own disasters. Like I love that

stuff. Like, like that's, that's what turns me on. I'd so much rather learn from a disaster that I created by myself than sit still and not create that disaster. Like to me, the, the sitting still and not doing anything feels like death. Um, but I, but I honor the fact that that's me and that's my personality and that might be you and your personality and, and, and our friends that we surround ourselves by. But there's a lot of other people where, you know, they don't feel the need to, to orchestrate disaster in order to learn something. And, and, and so maybe it's just like the little steps, maybe it's just something, it's something smaller. You don't have to don't have to jump on a plane and go to four deserts. But maybe it's, I don't know, but it doesn't have to be that.

I think it is more going back to what you were saying earlier about courage, just having the courage to whatever that thing is for you in life to really just go for it and embrace it and not be scared and don't not have fear be something that stops you. Right. And, and that does bring up the quote that is in the movie, which is, I think it's, is it Roosevelt who said credit belongs to those in the arena. So whether you've, you know, if you're going to, if you're going to fail, you know, you got to try, maybe you'll fail, maybe you'll fail miserably, but there's valor and honor in the trying. And too many people, I think in our culture, are afraid to try, you know, they want to know how it's going to work out before they even dip their toe in the pool, let alone jump off the high dive and wonder whether there's going to be water in the pool. And I think that, you know, people say to me all the time like you know what is your message to

young people and my message is like live lean and invest in adventure and experience like try things travel how are you supposed to know who you are or what you're you know what you're here to do when you're that young you're supposed to already know what your major is in college and what you want your career to be you're a baby you know? And I don't think that we can make educated decisions about those things until we have had experiences and developed a better connection and level of connection with ourselves and a level of self-understanding that, you know, might not be possible for people that are 22 years old. You know, there are people that know from the womb, oh, I'm going to be a concert violinist, but those are the exceptions, I think. And we're so fast

tracked to get onto this path so that we can start accumulating that, you know, our culture is just littered with, you know, dreams deferred. I mean, I did it too. I did too. In my 20s, I was working my butt off. I was a career girl. I had the boyfriend that I thought I was going to marry in 2.2 years and have the house and the picket fence and the children. And I... Right on, girl.

I mean, I blew that all up. So was that before you were a filmmaker? Yeah, no, I was editing. You were editing. But I was, you know, I was, it was all about making money and it was all about buying houses and it was all about, you know, we're on this path, we're doing this thing. And then I turned 30 and I looked around my life and I was like, what life is this? This isn't the life I chose. This is the life that I thought I was supposed to want.

But what if I don't want any of it? Like, and I spent the next 10 years, like throwing it all away, you know? Um, and, and on purpose, you know, scaling down. I remember I had a three bedroom house. I sold that. I bought a two bedroom condo. I sold that. I moved into a one bedroom apartment. I, I got rid of that. And I went couch surfing. Like I just,. I couldn't downscale enough. It was just this desire for adventure, for getting out there, for doing things and realizing how much all that stuff had just paralyzed me and weighed me down. And I couldn't do anything because I had these mortgage payments. I couldn't go anywhere.

I couldn't do anything. Once I was free of those, I could go anywhere I wanted. So when you started to make that shift, did you have friends telling you you were crazy or making the wrong decision? All my friends think I'm nuts. Absolutely. That just goes with the territory with you? Yeah. But after, you know, 10 years of doing it, you have new friends. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I think all of my friends look at me and say, there goes Jen doing that thing Jen does again. And I, that's a little bit of what I meant before about the personality type. Like, I'm not like, I don't want to be this, the spokeswoman for,

you know, selling your house and, and, and going couch surfing around the world. But, you know, I am here to say, like, if you've ever thought you might want to do it, I am here to say, like, if you've ever thought you might want to do it, you should probably should. There's no excuses anymore. You can buy a camera for almost nothing. You could use it for a year and return it to Best Buy and they'll refund you the price, right? You could use, you know, I mean, it's to make a movie now, the ceiling on, you know, what's involved has been so lowered that really the only thing preventing anybody from making a movie is themselves yeah truly yeah although i wouldn't say just because you buy a set of paints you're picasso you do have to learn the art of filmmaking right but uh but

yes but i'm talking about the excuses the border the barriers yeah yeah and especially the victim mentality of like well i can't do it because you know I don't have this or I don't have that. Oh, yeah. I mean, when I was in school, you know, it was a $100,000 thing just to edit your movie. You know, I mean, the equipment you needed to buy was $100,000. Now I cut all of Desert Runners on my laptop. Did you go to film school? I did as an undergrad.

I studied film. Do you go to film school? I did as an undergrad. I studied film. Do you think that was helpful? Yes, in certain ways. I mean, yes, in the art and the theory of filmmaking, which I think is, you know, I mean, not in any kind of practical way. But I did love learning. I mean, I love art history. I love film theory. I love all that stuff.

I did love learning. I mean, I love art history. I love film theory. I love all that stuff. I think it definitely provided a great foundation for just being an artist of any kind. And I think school is good for teaching you how to think critically and how to analyze things in a way that I didn't learn in growing up in public high school. But for the most part, the real filmmaking happened, making films. With experience. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. So in your experience of traveling around with this particular movie, you know, what are, what are some of the audience reactions that you get, like that have surprised you? Oh, it's just been really fun. It's been really gratifying how much people have loved it and how runners and non-runners alike are really connecting to it. I think that's been really, really fun.

The press has been great. I mean, I haven't had any really, I should knock on whatever, knock on wood, but so far it know, 95% really super positive reaction. And I just, I think people connect to the subject matter in a way that's pretty universal, which is really nice. And you feel like you're transported to these places that you might never get to go, which I think is really special too. Right, right, right. I remember before watching it thinking, I hope this movie's good. Because there's a lot of books and movies, documentaries, whatever,

about whether it's running or some other kind of cultish kind of sport that are crafted really to just speak to that niche, you know, and I find those to not be that interesting. You know, it has to have some kind of universal theme that speaks to some truth about humanity. So I was really, you know, I was like, oh, this is, yeah, this is great. This is exactly, you know, what a movie about this world should be about these real human stories. So thank you for making the movie. Thank you. That was such a nice compliment. Thank you. It's cool. I mean,

I remember when I wrote my book, I was like, if this book only works for people that are interested in like ultra men, ultra distance sports, then that's a failure. Like, first of all, there aren't that many people that do it. So you read it, but it better be able to, you know, function beyond that because what's the point otherwise, I think. Yeah. I had a really big compliment. I had a high school teacher contact me and say that she wanted to theme her semester based on the lessons in Desert Runners to her class. And I was like, oh, that's the coolest one ever. You know, so things like that are really, really fun when they happen.

That's cool. So now you have no choice but to be extra bold in your next movie. I know. Inspired by the stories of these incredible athletes. But I want to talk about Antarctica because we didn't get to that part. So yeah, we're going to end cap it with that. But you have these beautiful landscapes of running in these crazy, amazing deserts. And then suddenly they're on a barge, you know, from Argentina going to the South Pole. And then they're in Zodiac boats getting off on some island with penguins and like running around in circles. And I was like, that's crazy.

Like I can get into, I can sort of romanticize the desert, you know, and you know, the sort of culminating moment of running up to and seeing the pyramids. And there's something really kind of like poetic and beautiful about that. But then when I saw Antarctica, I was like, oh man, I don't know if I could deal with that. You know, that's a whole new different level of harshness. So, and it was like minus four or something

like that. On a good day, yeah. And they just have to figure out where they're going to go, right? Because of weather conditions constantly changing, they're not even sure exactly what the course is going to be. So they end up running these loops. Yeah. Well, because of the environmental restrictions are so strict there, they were just given these really small plots of land that they could run on and so they would run loops and then the whole idea was okay well it's going to be for time and whoever runs the most number of loops in a given amount of time is in front and um but then you never knew so they said you're going to run during these hours and then and then we're going to call it a day at the end of the day?

Yes, except for it was all based on weather. So it was like, okay, today we're going to run for 12 hours. And then you'd be in hour two and they'd be like, blizzard coming. Everybody back on the boat. Go. And so they'd stop the race and everybody get back on the boat. And then it'd be like, you didn't know if you were going back out or not. So you don't like, am I running more today?

Am I not running more today? Am I not running more today? And then, and I'm going to have a three hour break and eat lunch and want to go to sleep and then be told I have to go run again. Like it was like, it was so challenging in such a different way. And they're taking these Zodiacs to and from the landmass and this bar and they're sleeping on the barge, right? They're sleeping in tents. No, no, we had, we lived on the boat, but they still had to only eat the food that was in their backpack? Or did they have food on the boat? They had food on the boat.

I don't know how long they were going to be there, right? Honestly, it was kind of worse because the food on the boat was like super heavy, rich, like meat and cheese and bread. And it was like, you would eat and you just felt enormously huge and weighed down

and then they'd be like okay go run for 12 hours in a circle and it was it was it was rough people seem to do there seemed to be the least amount of attrition in that stage though because i don't know whether it was because it was in the cold and not in the heat, but people seemed to do fine, even though it looked like it was absolutely freezing. Yeah, it was also a smaller group. I think the group that started was only about 75 or 80 people. There were a couple people who, I mean, something that would happen commonly is there were a lot of like hidden puddles and hidden uh places where the snow had melted so you'd be running along and all of a sudden you'd face plant in one of them then you'd be soaked from head to toe and then it was negative 10 outside you can't go back to the barge and dry off no and if you

went back you're out so that was that was a thing that took people out a lot i don't remember exactly the count of how many people didn't finish but but one guy, they took him out on the first day because he took too long of a break at the checkpoint. And he's like, I'm just going to keep running because I'm here. What am I going to do? Sit on the boat for the next five days? Play solitaire by himself. And this kind of goes back to what we were talking about together about the camaraderie. He was awesome. He ran alongside other people. He kept them company. He talked to people when they were hurting.

He like, he just, he like ran the whole time, even though he wasn't officially in the race anymore. It was really lovely to watch. Yeah, it was pretty cool. That's pretty cool. Yeah. But Antarctica, you know. I feel like they should do that one first and then it should end at the pyramids. I think if they did that one first, no one would would come back i think it's strategically planned that way i'd just be dreading the whole

time going antarctica one is the last yeah it was pretty brutal and then they do it in the winter does it matter if it's winter or summer there it's november there is there is like their summer oh that's their summer okay so it's light all the time probably. It was light a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. It was quite an experience.

Cool. I guess I wanted to check off the bucket list, but not one that I can tell you I would do again. Right, right, right. All right. Well, we got to wrap it up here. All right. But this was delightful. Thank you so much.

Yeah. So nice talking to you. I loved it. I love the movie. And are you still doing screenings of it? I mean, I know it came out in 2013, much. Yeah, so nice talking to you. I loved it. I love the movie. And are you still doing screenings of it? I mean, I know it came out in 2013, so. Yeah, I mean, it's in Australia, New Zealand now and in Europe. But in the States, the best way to watch it is download it, desertrunnersmovie.com.

Desertrunnersmovie.com. And you're selling DVDs there, too. And there's DVDs there, too. It's also on iTunes, Amazon, but go to our website. It's better. Not on Netflix, right? Not on Netflix. No, they make you wait a year before you can go on Netflix.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. Well, exciting stuff. Congratulations. Thanks. And go make another movie so you can come back and talk to me on the podcast. Yes, sir. I'll be back.

I promise. All right. Cool. come back and talk to me on the podcast. Yes, sir. I'll be back. I promise. All right. Cool.

If you're digging on Jennifer and you want to learn more about her world and what she's all about, so go to desertrunners.com. That's the main place, right? But you're on Twitter at JenFilm, one N, right? And Desert Runners has a Twitter also, right? Yeah. It's at Desert Runners. At Desert Runners. At Desert Runners.

And you have your own website as well. JenniferSteinman.com. S-T-E-I-N-M-A-N, right? That's right. That's all the places? That's right. DesertRunnersMovie.com. Are you Snapchatting?

I'm not. My boyfriend has teenagers. I'm just learning about that. It's making me feel old. As a filmmaker though, I started doing it. It's pretty fun because they have the, my story function now.

So you can just be making a little movie about your day. But my thing about being a filmmaker is like, I don't want my pictures to be gone right after I send them. I want to keep them all. I know, but that's, that's a generational thing. That is everything is transient now,

right? We only have, we only have attention span for what's in the now. It's a good, it's a good, uh, as a filmmaker, it could be a good exercise in non-attachment. All right. I'll go to my Zen place and I'll try it. Okay, cool. Thanks so much, Jen. Thanks for having me. Peace. All right. So how'd you like them apples? I thought that was pretty inspirational. I mean, every time I hear stories of average people doing the extraordinary, I mean, you just can't help but

reflect on that and kind of think about how you're conducting your own life. So hopefully that helped inspire you to raise your own ceiling on the expectations you place upon yourself and your potential. That's what it did for me anyway. Okay. A couple announcements before we close it down. We are going to be doing more Q&A podcasts. So please send your questions, stuff you want us to talk about. Go to richroll.com. We got tons of garments, t-shirts, nutritional products. We have a meditation program, all kinds of good stuff. Basically, everything you need to take your health, wellness, fitness, and self-actualization to the next level. If you like video courses, a little online education never hurt anybody, I got a couple of those too.

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