The Tim Ferriss Show - #151: How to Overcome Fear - Lessons from Firefighter and Luger, Caroline Paul

Episode Date: April 5, 2016

Caroline Paul (@carowriter) is a blast and can also probably kick my ass... seriously. Caroline is the author of four published books. Her latest is the New York Times best seller The Gutsy Girl: Escapades for Your Life of Epic Adventure. Once a young scaredy-cat, Caroline decided that fear got in the way of the life she wanted--of excitement, confidence, and self-reliance. She has since flown planes, rafted big rivers, climbed tall mountains, and fought fires as one of the first female firefighters in San Francisco. In this episode, we discuss various types of fear and how to overcome them, using stories, habits, and tactics. Enjoy! This podcast is brought to you by Wealthfront. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive (in a good way) set-it-and-forget-it investing service, led by technologists from places like Apple. It has exploded in popularity in the last two years and now has more than $2.5B under management. Why? Because you can get services previously limited to the ultra-wealthy and only pay pennies on the dollar for them, and it’s all through smarter software instead of retail locations and bloated sales teams. Check out wealthfront.com/tim, take their risk assessment quiz, which only takes 2-5 minutes, and they’ll show you—for free–exactly the portfolio they’d put you in. If you want to just take their advice and do it yourself, you can. Well worth a few minutes to explore: wealthfront.com/tim. This podcast is also brought to you by Audible. I have used Audible for years and I love audio books. I have two to recommend: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman Vagabonding by Rolf Potts All you need to do to get your free 30-day Audible trial is go to Audible.com/Tim. Choose one of the above books, or choose between more than 180,000 audio programs. That could be a book, a newspaper, a magazine, or even a class. It's that easy. Go to Audible.com/Tim and get started today. Enjoy!  ***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

optimal minimal at this altitude i can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking can i ask you a personal question now what is the appropriate time i'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over metal endoskeleton this episode is brought to you by ag1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement, and the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven

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That's Tim.blog forward slash Friday. I get asked a lot how I meet guests for the podcast, some of the most amazing people I've ever interacted with. And little known fact, I've met probably 25% of them because they first subscribed to Five Bullet Friday. So you'll be in good company. It's a lot of fun. Five Bullet Friday is only available if you subscribe via email. I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else. Also, if I'm doing small in-person meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing, special deals, or anything else

that's very limited, I share it first with Five Bullet Friday subscribers. So check it out, tim.blog forward slash Friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you. Hello, druids and droelves. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job every episode to deconstruct people who are exceptionally good at what they do, whether they are chess prodigies, performers, athletes, politicians, military strategists, or otherwise. And this episode, we have a very fun guest, Caroline Paul,

at Caro Writer on the Twitters, C-A-R-O-W-R-I-T-E-R. She's a blast. And she was recommended to me by two close friends who've both been on the podcast, Chris Saka, and we'll get to his introduction in the interview itself, and Maria Popova. And Maria, I hope to God that I'm getting your last name correct this time around. And Maria said that Caroline is all about living courageously and embracing adventure in our culture of safe achievement. And that is music to my ears because I feel like we have grown soft, we've grown weak, and it is time to remedy that with habits, practices, and stories that impart lessons. On top of that, Caroline can probably kick my ass and I'm actually not kidding whatsoever about that. She's the author of four published books. The latest is the New York Times bestseller, The Gutsy Girl, subtitled Escapades for Your life of epic adventure. And that does not mean this podcast is only for

girls or women or females. It is about overcoming fear. Once a scaredy cat herself, Caroline decided that fear got in the way of the life she wanted, including a life of excitement, confidence, self-reliance, et cetera. She has since fought fires as one of the first female firefighters in San Francisco, flown planes, rafted big rivers, climbed tall mountains like Denali, and much, much more. In this episode, we discuss various types of fear and how she has overcome them or minimized them and how you can do the same. So please enjoy my conversation with Caroline Paul. Caroline, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Tim. I'm really happy to be here. It's nice to see you again. And I thought we could start with an email that you haven't seen, which was an introduction from Chris Saka, who's been on the podcast. And I hate to use the B word, but he's a very, very esteemed startup investor, billionaire, and all-around good guy. And famous for his introductions, I would say. He's very good at writing mutual intros, or in this case, a one-sided intro. And this was his email to me about two weeks ago. Hey, man, remember Caroline Paul from Italy? You guys hit it off big time. She's a fucking badass. One of the only ever San Francisco female firefighters, a pilot who walked away from

a crash, a surfer, adventurer, etc. Her twin sister was actually one of the star lifeguards on Baywatch too. Did I mention she can probably lift as much as you? I don't know exactly what her supplement regime is, but she looks like she's teetering on the edge of not entirely natural. Can I re-intro you, Chris? Now, the last part, for those of you who don't know Chris... That's a lot of Bs. Billionaire, badass, Baywatch. Oh, it's a lot. It's a lot. And I remember meeting you in Italy very briefly and just wanting to ask so many questions. And so this is now my opportunity. And it also gave me an opportunity to dig into your background and do a lot more reading. And I feel like there's so many different pieces of the

puzzle. I don't know where to start. So I will begin with the one that just jumped out at me when I was reading an op-ed of yours in the New York Times, and that is pulling a bloated body from the bay. Can you provide some context for pulling a dead body from the bay? Yes. Well, I was a San Francisco firefighter from 1989 to 2003, and I worked on a rig called Rescue 2. And we were trained not only to rescue in fires, but to do all sorts of technical rescues. And one of them was to be a dive rescuer, mostly not a rescuer, a recoverer. We did body recoveries. And so I must have been talking about one of my attempted body recoveries. What does that feel like? And specifically, the first time you went to potentially recover a body or did recover a body? What was that experience like?

Yeah, there's lots of mixed emotions because first of all, it's really exciting and I love adventure. So it's adventurous. But I've never been great with dead bodies. I know that sounds weird. Who's great with dead bodies? I don't love them. I mean, I don't love coming upon them. I always get a little bit of the heebie-jeebies right before I walk up to someone who I know is dead. I have to gird myself just a little. And so when you're looking for a body in the bay, it's kind of like searching for a monster because bodies in the water decompose very fast. They bloat. Fish, crabs eat the eyes. Yeah, I know. And the, I mean, visibility is generally next to nothing in the bay, or am I making that up? It's nothing. It's nothing, right? It's literally nothing. I mean, the first couple feet, it's sort of, you can see a little, then it gets murky brown. And then the bay, the bottom of the bay is actually a couple feet, I think, of silt. Oh, wow. And so when you drop down to search, you drop down and you can feel mud, even though you're wearing like a super thick suit.

You can still kind of feel the mud. And then you have to sink even lower to hit the actual bottom. So you're actually swimming very slowly through silt. So you can't see anything. It's terrifying even without the dead body. And in that case, I mean, the bay is certainly larger than a swimming pool by many orders of magnitude. If you have such low visibility, how do you search for a dead body?

The worst way you feel for a dead body? So you swim very slowly, one hand holding a rope because you're guided from the top because you want to do a certain pattern. And the other hand just reaching out very slowly and feeling. And if you do the search pattern right, you pretty much cover a pretty wide area. But you don't see anything. And I'll tell you, the things at the bottom of the bay are amazing. I mean, shopping carts, tires, uh, I don't even, you know, pipes, cans. I had this experience just, uh, since I've had enough caffeine to feel like I need to

chime in that scared me tremendously in the bay. I was at aquatic park. And for those people who don't know aquatic park, it's like this somewhat safeguarded portion of the bay where you can swim laps. And there are a number of swimming clubs. So I put on my swimming cap, went in without a wetsuit at some ungodly point in the season, not realizing that I would kind of freeze my extremities and went for a swim. And about 15 minutes into it, I had a gigantic mammal or animal of some type come up and brush my side. No. And it wasn't sandpapery. So I figured it wasn't a shark, but it was like a gigantic sea lion. I was just doing freestyle stroke and it just went boom and bumped me like five feet off of my

lap. And I was like, okay, I think I'm done. There was no fin? No fin that I saw. But I was like, you know, I'm not sure what that was, but I'm going to get out of the water now. So if we then backtrack and rewind. So we start the movie and you're coming out of a burning building. And then suddenly there's like a fragmented kind of a memento type movie cut to you in the bay,

pulling out a dead body. But then we have this flashback and there are milk cartons involved. Can you tell us the story of the milk cartons please yeah when i was a kid i i was obsessed with adventure pretty young how did that how did it start i don't know i mean maybe one is born with this i really love the outdoors and we grew up in the country so we where did you grow up uh cornwall connecticut so it's a rural part of Connecticut, northwest corner. And we basically spent our days biking all over the place. We were not adult supervised.

Just come home by dark. We skateboarded. We went cross-country skiing. We rode horses. We basically had an outdoors life. We built forts. We weren't allowed to watch TV. We had no TV then. And so I guess that sort of fed that or gave me the idea that adventure was possible.

Well, the default activities seem to be also pretty adventurous, being forced out into the wilderness. Yeah. Adults paid no attention to us, which was awesome. Like, I didn't even know that you were supposed to actually interact socially with adults until as an adult I saw kids doing that. It was a different time. And how did the milk cartons come into the picture? Well, I was a big reader.

I read a lot of books. And also my parents had the proverbial National Geographic all lined up. My parents, too. Right? The's all lined up. My parents too. Right? The yellow binding. Yeah. Stack over there. Yeah, right?

It was sort of decorative and also practical. So I would read those voraciously. And in one of them was this article about a milk carton boat race. And I thought, I want to do that. I want to build a milk carton boat. So I had this grand plan of a pirate ship. Because these boats in these pictures were amazing. What I forgot was I don't know how to build anything.

My dad doesn't know how to build anything, but that didn't matter. I collected milk cartons for months and failed to wash them out because I was a kid and I didn't. And so they started to really reek. They were all under my bed so I had to wash them out that was uh revelation and then I asked my dad to help me and so we built

a milk carton boat what happened to the boat well let me just it wasn't really a boat it was more like a raft because like I said my dad didn't know anything. So we ended up downgrading the pirate shit up idea to basically, you know, a bunch of milk cartons wrapped in garbage bags, taped, and then put between plywood and nailed together. And then I made a flag. I picked my crew and uh my crew basically was my twin sister and uh my friend charlie and then this poor exchange student from france i think she just didn't understand what i was saying i was like so anyway she we and we set sail on this river in our town called the housatonic which of course is where they hold these really high have you heard of it uh i haven't uh they

they hold big whitewater kayak races on that river i could go wrong my poor i mean my parents were good parents but they knew nothing about rivers they didn't they didn't care this is like i think they helped us like ferry this big square to the river and then we set sail. And so I don't usually bring this up until much later in interviews, but I want to compliment you. So this story, the reason I knew this story for those people wondering why I knew the story, it wasn't from our conversations. It was from a book that you've published called The Gutsy Girl and the subtitles Escapades for Your Life of Epic Adventure. And I wanted to compliment you. I get sent a lot of books,

and I always have a high degree of trepidation because I get sent books by a lot of friends or friends of friends. You are a really, really good storyteller. I just wanted to compliment you on that. Oh, thank you. It is a really compelling read, and I sat down with a glass of wine at a Japanese restaurant yesterday and just tore through half of it.

It was great. It's totally up your alley though, Tim. Oh, it is. It's like crazy. Not even as crazy as things you would do. Not even close. Well, it gave me a shot of half nostalgia, half regret, because I remember trying to become, at one point, a Boy Scout. I wanted to be an Eagle Scout.

And there weren't enough adult volunteers at the time to do the program. So after two meetings, it got shut down. And it was just so sad to me, but it also brought back memories of my mother who would always take me, my brother, and a few friends camping and hiking every summer. And it was very similar to the, I'm not going to say lack of adult supervision, but let's call it minimalist adult intervention style of parenting in the outdoors. They call it free range parenting. Free range parenting. And-range parenting. Yeah.

And I really recall these experiences with my mom. Now, you talk about, at least in the first half of your book, your dad quite a lot. And in one of your op-ed pieces, which, could you remind me of the title again? I want to say it has two titles. I'm looking at one. Why do we teach girls that it's cute to be scared? And I think the alternative in print was it's not cute to be scared or something along those lines. You mentioned in this piece, and this is going somewhere, I know this is meandering a bit, that your mom encouraged you to be more adventurous,

in part because her mother was so timid and protective. Were you closer to your father though in that kind of hands-on activity sense of thinking about it? Actually, neither of my parents were very hands-on activity. Again, it was parenting, you know, by sort of pushing him out the door and telling you to come back before dark. This was one of the few times, actually, that my dad and I sort of built something or made something. And so I was definitely closer to my dad, though, than my mom until later in life. And then, of course, you know, it's the mother-daughter sort of relationship, which is much more complicated, just like the father-son, I think.

So, but it's funny because my mom, I didn't give her really any credit for my sort of ability to run off and have adventures or develop that spirit of adventure. And in fact, I showed her the op-ed before it was done and she read it. And that's when she turned to me and she said, you know, my mom was a real scaredy cat. And she never let us do anything, her and her sister. And when I was 21, I went on a ski trip. And it was a revelation. It was so fun. And she realized everything she'd been missing. And so when she became a mom, she didn't want that for us. So in fact, it turns out, and I didn't know this. And of course, as kids, we never give our parents their due. And so now I get to, and I'm glad.

But I think it was actually more my mom who really wanted us to go experience a lot of things. And while neither of my parents were outdoorsy, they definitely wanted us to try everything just a little bit. So we had to play an instrument and we're so not musical. That was fine. We had to play it for a certain amount of time and then we could drop it. They taught us to ski. They took us sledding, that kind of thing. So they opened up our life. They were not outdoorsy and they didn't participate, but they allowed it and encouraged it.

How would you describe your childhood? Can I have multiple choice? Can you have multiple choice? Somber, A. Ecstatic, B. No, in general terms, I'm really curious. I mean, because you have a very eclectic life live in San Francisco from Connecticut I just don't know much about the the the background the childhood I'd just

be very curious to hear you sort of describe the family dynamic and what it was like growing up we had we had a varied life for sure. I have an identical twin and a younger brother. And we grew up in New York City until about third grade. And in fact, my mom, she's a bit embarrassed about this now, but when I was eight, I took two public buses to school on my own, which is unheard of now. And this was the 70s. New York was not, I mean, it was a dangerous place then. So my mom feels a bit bad about this, but I think it was great. So we lived in New York City, and then moved to the

country, moved to actually to Paris for two years years with my father's work. What was the work? He was a banker with Morgan Stanley, so he was transferred there for two years. Actually, he had been transferred there two years earlier, so he spent four years total in my childhood. And then moved to Connecticut and lived in the country. And I sort of think of myself as a country girl, but when I really parse it out, I've probably not spent most of my time in the country. But I definitely think of myself as somebody who grew up in a rural setting. When did you decide or even begin to think about firefighting? How did that happen?

Oh, I mean, that was, I never thought about firefighting. I didn't grow up thinking about firefighting i wasn't one of those kids who wanted to be a firefighter it wasn't an option when i was a kid no there were no female firefighters and uh the only firefighters i knew were the volunteer firefighters in our small town and they were all men and uh so firefighting I fell into literally, not literally, but I tripped into it. I graduated from Stanford and I graduated.

What was your major? Communications, an easy major. By the way, I wouldn't get into Stanford these days. It's crazy. I wouldn't either. No. So I graduated from Stanford and really was sort of on the trajectory to lead a sort of briefcase-carrying life of sorts, which I didn't want.

Didn't want to be in an office. Couldn't imagine it. But I wanted to be maybe a documentary filmmaker or journalist, somewhere where I could be outside in the field somehow. And so I was volunteering at the time at KPFA in Berkeley. I don't know what that is. Is that a radio station? Yeah. It's part of the Pacifica chain of radio, sort of public radio-esque.

More radical, though. And they have a great internship program where basically most of the station is run by volunteers. And you don't come in and push papers. They throw you right into making, to doing stories. That's awesome. Yeah. So I was the news reporter for quite a few years there at KPFA in the 80s. And at the time, all these stories were coming across my desk about the San Francisco Fire

Department and how racist and sexist it was. This was 86, 87. And I thought, oh, well, maybe I'll do an undercover story. So I'll sign up to take this test to become a firefighter, which is, I mean, as far as my life as you can imagine, because I had grown up going to boarding school, going to Stanford. And it just wasn't in my purview. It's funny, you think the whole world's open to you, but in every situation, really, I think we're sort of acculturated to certain things. Never occurred to me. But I did go through this test process. And of course, racism and sexism doesn't show up in the obvious ways we expect it to or think it does.

It's so pervasive, I think, because it's more insidious than that. You can't just encapsulize it in like a two-day test-taking situation. So I had no story, but I went through the process, and every segment I passed, which surprised me because I'm not that great a test taker. I'm not that interested in academics, really. I mean, I know I'm… This is the written portion of the test. The written portion, which was the big gatekeeper.

I came in really high. And I think, you know, obviously I knew how to take tests is really what it was about. And then the physical portion was easy for me because i had been a a rower and at stanford and it was very always been very physically fit and uh and all of a sudden they said you're in what was okay so i'm going to come right back to that but what was the physical what did the physical test look like do do you recall? What were some of the components? I can't quite remember now. It's been a long, long time.

But they were at the time struggling to make it relevant. It's when tests were really coming under scrutiny. So you didn't just do a bunch of push-ups because push-ups aren't relevant to firefighting. Right, they don't translate directly. Right. So I think they were still struggling. And, you know, the test at the time was definitely if you were not fit, you couldn't pass it. But I think that it should have been more stringent. I'm a big believer that, I mean, being a firefighter is a really, really tough job.

And physically it's tough. You're wearing 100 pounds of equipment on you. That's a lot. You need to be fit. on you you need to be fit yes you need to be strong you need to be fit you're wearing a hundred pounds of equipment that's minus anything or anyone else that you need to carry yeah or drag or you know or yeah yeah for anyone who's wondering how heavy that is just as someone who I'll admit has a tough time carrying, like we're looking at the wall here, there's a caribou skull that I, this is not a hunting story, but anyway, if you haven't conditioned like your glute meds and your hips and everything else. So for those people wondering, like get a weight vest and try that with like 20 or 30 or 40 pounds. Yeah. Our packs, our air packs, mine was heavier because we had to be in there for longer. The rescue squads were in there, you know, for longer without hose to protect us.

So our packs were heavier than most people's. I weighed them. I think they were 30 pounds. So just the air pack was 30 pounds. And then you're wearing. So within the fire department, and then I'll rewind back to where you passed the test, you said rescue squad. So how is it divided up? What are the different squads?

This is funny. Cause it's when I grew up, like it seemed like the boys just automatically knew the difference between an engine and a truck. And, uh, so an engine carries the water and a truck carries the ladders. And do you mind if I give you this primer? Oh,

I would love you to, I don't, I couldn't find my ass with both hands when it comes to fire department. So fire engine, fire truck, they're actually different things. So the fire truck is responsible mostly for ventilation in a fire and rescue. So they'll throw the ladders, go up to the roof, start destroying the building. The fire is destroying the building and also the truck people are destroying it by putting holes in the roof to ventilate so that when the engine crew gets there, they have the water. They're going in. The conditions aren't as terrible. They're trying to ventilate that smoke and that heat, the truck. So letting the hot air and smoke rise and

leave. So it's a sort of semi-coordinated effort. I mean, ideally, it's very coordinated, but it's just a chaotic situation, obviously. So the engine crew will crawl in with a hose, and the truck helps them make entry if necessary. And the truck is also responsible for search and rescue. But in San Francisco, we have two specialized units called the Rescue Squads, Rescue and rescue two and i was a member of rescue two for probably most most of my career 10 years was in for 14 so uh and our responsibility was just to search and rescue every so often they'd say hey squad grab a hose and uh and we'd do that but mostly that was our job get in there so. So we carried an axe and an entry tool. Do you still have your axe?

No. I don't. I do not, unfortunately. Did you have to relinquish it like the 1980s cop movie, like badge and weapon? I cannot confirm or deny what I relinquished and what I did not. Okay. So you pass the test. Then what what then what goes through your head what happens then well then then i was like wow this i did not expect this my father will be so bummed and uh my whole circle of friends will be shocked

if you if you were to accept your man yeah i, I mean, this was a completely different strata of life. And for me, by the time that I had gone through the test, I was completely enamored with the job and really realized that it was full of incredibly smart people. Well, maybe I didn't quite realize this yet, but I was on the verge of realizing that there were smart and brave people leading really an extraordinary life. But I said no. I didn't actually say no. I deferred. I was so confused.

But I was also in my – I was 25 at the time. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I was really at the time. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I was really adrift. So instead of making a decision, I said maybe. I said deferred, which really kind of meant no. And then I went on this expedition with a friend of mine to Bolivia, where we just rode mountain bikes through the Andes there, just he and I mountain biking. And I thought a lot about leading a life where I could

do this sort of thing. And when I came back, so that was 88, 89. I guess I took the test in 88, went to Bolivia, came back, was working odd jobs, and then the earthquake hit. And when the 89 earthquake hit, I read a lot about what the firefighters were doing, and there were some amazing stories about the bravery of these men. And so I thought, okay, I mean, this is an institution that has issues with racism and sexism for sure, but there are some amazing people in this institution, and it's really an amazing job.

And so I called and said, I'd like to take that position. And they said, okay. And then I had to wait a while. And then in December of 89, I got in. What was your first day or week or month on the job like? My first day was really scary, frankly. I walked in and I remember one of the first things I did was I put on the medical gloves to check the equipment that I was supposed to do. I was called a probie, probationer.

And then I went to the bathroom and didn't take my gloves off and forgot that there's like powder all over. So I walk out and there's powder all over my crotch where I've zipped up my pants. I was so mortified. It was. They were so nice to me. I mean, they were not. They gave me a hard time, but in a really nice way. Those guys were... Basically, I came in that Stanford grad, that vegetarian. My twin sister at the time was on Baywatch, which was the most watched show in the world. So if I wanted to be a little bit under the radar, it just wasn't going to happen. And then I had to blend in. Right.

Oh my God, the powdered crotch that's ready for film adaptation. What in your mind makes a good firefighter? That's a great question. It's funny. I noticed that in the fire department, the guys that I really respected as firefighters were often not the strongest ones. They were, of course, fit, but they were often smaller. And they had a lot of street smarts. And what I, at first, just confused me, because supposedly firefighting, you have to be this huge brute, because it's such a physical job job and it is a physical job, but it's a combination of physicalness and

smarts. And when that, at that intersection, you get a really amazing firefighter. So you need to understand your physical limitations because everybody has them, even the strongest guy. And you understand your physical limitations, everybody has them, even the strongest guy. And you understand your physical limitations, which often the smaller guys did, and they use their smarts and their grace. There was an elegance to the way they figured things out. And I remember very clearly being on a stairwell once, super smoky. And I was like third down on the stairwell, lying there waiting for the guy up top to make entry. And he was wailing on the door with an axe.

He was a big guy. And the door just wasn't giving way. And I had a door opener, a Chicago door opener, which is a pry bar, basically. And usually you never give up your equipment. Because if you give up your equipment, you're useless. And I would never give up my equipment. But he was up there. And I also had an axe. So I said my pry bar take my pry bar and he's like no and he kept wailing at that door and I'm telling you it took so long for that door to come open because he thought as a big guy he could

get that door open whereas for me I knew I had a pry bar I would have just stuck it in there someone you give it one hit on the head, and that door would have popped open. That's the kind of thing you need as a firefighter as well. Seeing the second option or the third option. Yeah, knowing that you've got to work within your human limitations. And I think those of us who have to, like women and the smaller guys, we know right away where our limitations are. So we're going to just compensate with other things. Well, you see that in a lot of places.

For instance, when I, years ago, I've had elbow surgery, which took me out of this sport for a long time, but would train at, say, Planet Granite or Mission Cliffs and rock climbing. I always wanted to take lessons with the best female climbers because they were more, generally speaking, self-aware when it came to the physics of proper technique. They couldn't just like muscle with dinos or compensate for bad technique with a lot of upper body strength, generally speaking. So you would just get these elegant lines and decisions and you'd be like, oh wow, I never would just get these elegant lines and decisions and you'd

be like, oh, wow, I never would have thought to solve that part of the wall in the way that she did. It was just so elegant. And what you're describing sounds a lot like the dynamic that I've observed in the special forces, for instance, Navy SEALs as well. Like you have literally these guys called the door kickers or like these big brutes who aren't necessarily in elegant, but the, the, the, the guys who often impress me the most, not always are very unassuming. I mean, they're like 170 like to run long distances and just happened to be able to close a number three captains of crush gripper and do all this other crazy stuff uh what is the so when you describe the the situation with the door kicker or the the person trying to get entry with wailing on the store with an axe it seems like pride can get you into a lot of trouble uh in firefighting. I mean, is that, how do, do you get to choose the people that you

have on your team or is that a dynamic that you just have to try to manage to the best of your ability? Because it seems like that person, not to make an example of this person, I'm sure it was a very good firefighter, but could have gotten you guys all in a lot of trouble if this building's collapsing and it takes five minutes to open a door instead of two minutes. How do you contend with something like that? Well, I can't. I mean, I had a lot of pride when I was a firefighter. I think as I get older, I'm able to sort of put that in its place, but especially as being one of the few women in the fire department. When I got in, I was the 15th woman, and there were 1500 men. And so if I made a mistake, it wouldn't be, oh, Caroline made a mistake. It would be all women just made

a mistake. And so for me, pride worked a little because my fear of failure was way more than my fear of fire. I didn't often feel fear of fire, to be totally frank. I'm not trying to pretend I'm so brave. It's just that I had a bigger fear, which was humiliation, failure, letting down women. So pride can be a really great motivator, I think, too. Definitely. I agree. Yeah. You don't get to pick your crew, but everybody puts stuff aside when you're in a fire. And if you're not getting along with your crew, which I had a great crew for many, many years,

and I had a great station. I was at Station 7 here in the mission, the biggest station in the city. And it's like a village, the fire department, so there's always people that are, you know, the drunks, the mean person, the, like, gossip. You have all that. It's a small town.

But in general, I think crews learn to work together. And the truth is, in a fire, it's pitch dark. And so you often don't know who is to your left or your right from another crew. So squabbles aren't going to – they're not relevant in a fire. What lessons did you take to other areas of your life from firefighting you know i was really comfortable fighting fires for me that really i loved fighting fires and i not in a weird way being a fire bug 50 shades of fire i just just love, I mean, I love the excitement of a fire. It's hot and smoking, pitch dark, and you're either, if you're on the hose, you're trying

to find the seat of the fire, and it's your heart's going, and you have this goal. Everything else just falls away. So I really, a big fire, or really, as we call it, a good fire, was what I loved. What I learned more about myself in was the medical calls. The fire department does a lot of medical calls, especially these days as fire goes down with better building inspections and people smoke less, they drink less. Real estate in San Francisco is so expensive. People aren't burning stuff down like they were when I was a firefighter. We do way, way more medical calls. And medical calls, I think, are really where I myself called upon really my human attributes, like compassion and patience.

So I learned a lot in that. I know that sounds like, oh, the women should be really good at that. No, I mean, that's not what came to my mind. What are some of the, are there any particular memories or experiences that come to mind when you think of your medical calls? Yeah. I mean, I had,

I remember doing CPR on a baby, which was very, I'm not a parent myself, but I was surprised how absolutely overwhelming that is. And we knew the baby had died, but we're transporting the parents too. And to be in that hospital where the mother and the father are waiting in the waiting room i i just wept after what happened to the baby uh sids got it yeah and then it's you know sudden infant death syndrome yeah and they were it was really sad they were running their baby to the hospital along the street so we had to try to find them because we we went to the the address and they said they've already gone they're running

their baby to the hospital so we had to find them do cpr in the address and they said they've already gone. They're running their baby to the hospital. So we had to find them, do CPR in the street, take the baby into the ambulance and go with them. And then it was really interesting. Two weeks later, I got a call, happened to be working for a woman who, I don't know what the call came in as, but we got to this church, and this woman was completely catatonic, would not respond to anything, just lay on the ground and stared straight up. And it turned out it was the baby's mother,

and I recognized her. How does an experience like that impact you subsequently? If it does, I mean, does that have a lasting impact? Aside from the imprint of such a strong memory, of course. I think the best firefighters and also, I mean, this extends to maybe emergency room doctors and soldiers, police officers, anyone who works in a profession where it's highly traumatic emotionally, you have to learn to walk this line between efficiency and being able to do the job practically, like administer that CPR and maintain your emotions about it because it's very easy just to block it out. And I think that's why there was a lot of drinking in the fire department.

It was part of the culture all up until the 90s. And because that's the way one handles emotions. It's like doctors and prescription medications. Exactly, yeah. So walking that line is really difficult. I'm not sure I did a great job of it. And I know I used to come home and I often used to sort of cry in my car. And then I'd get out and go home.

And it's hard to talk to someone who's not a firefighter about what you're seeing. And I think later in life, I think it gave me a depth. But there's also a wall, I think, as well. So I keep trying to climb that wall or maybe put that wall up, depending. This is a conversation or this particular type of choosing to be compassionate versus choosing to compartmentalizing or trying to balance the two. I talked quite a bit with a number of friends of mine who've worked in ER shifts. And I remember this one story from a friend of mine, I'll leave nameless for now, who is, he was describing to me the experience of looking into someone's eyes as they go from alive to dead, eyes open, not an experience I've had, but, and he was telling me this story with

a burn victim actually, who was getting, of course, Matt covered with, I think, second or third degree burns, throat was starting to inflame, but the guy was able to talk and he said to him, I need to give you an emergency tracheotomy. Like I need to put this into your throat or you are probably going to die. And in his head, he knew with 99% certainty, the guy was going to die anyway. And he, he, but he made the decision to break protocol that time. And he said, do you want to make any phone calls on my phone? And the guy made, he was able to make two phone calls, his throats closing to his loved ones. And he's like, I want to make one more phone call. And the doctor had to make the decision. Then he's like, I'm sorry, you can't make one more phone call. I have to give you the tracheotomy. Gave him the tracheotomy

and the guy died anyway. And it's just like, holy shit. You hear these stories and it's like, fuck, how could you do that? Week in, week out. It's hard for someone like me as a civilian to just even fathom that. So to shift gears just a little bit, although it's very closely related. So there's a trainer now past named Cus D'Amato. He was Mike Tyson's trainer who sort of rescued him, brought him to the Catskills and got him to, I guess at the time, youngest heavyweight champion of the world ever. And custom auto, I'm sure it's not his quote originally. And I'm going to paraphrase this would say the, the coward and the hero feel the same thing. It's what the hero does that makes him different or her different. So we're talking a lot about fear, contending with fear, and this is going to come back to the op-ed.

But when you think of the moments you've been most terrified, what are those moments that come to mind? They don't have to be physical danger. They could be. But what are the moments that first come to mind for you? Well, I think the time that I was probably the most physically scared, and it was a bit of an unusual feeling for me, and I'm not trying to say that I'm super brave. I just had this ability to really take fear and put it way, way back in line of all my other emotions when I was a firefighter. But I was in a, I talk about this in the book, actually, I was in a fire building,

and I was with my crew, and I was, we're in teams of two. So the, the, the, the team who was ahead of me, Frank and Andy, and then I had my crewmate was behind me, Victor. He and I were together, but we were all crawling down the same hallway and we had a hose line, which was unusual, but they couldn't find the fire. So the chief goes, Hey guys, we, you guys grab a hose line. So we're psyched to do that. It's awesome to go find the heat, the seat of the fire. And it's super smoky, hot and kind of quiet in this weird way and then all of a sudden a huge explosion which pushed us all out of the hallway and we're what we realized later was that there had been a flashover not in the hallway which would have killed us but somewhere close

enough by to just blow us over a flashover is when the room gets so hot that even the particles in the air simultaneously ignite. So it's basically this just huge... It's like a gas blast. Basically, yeah. I've been in those too, and those are not... Those will knock your mask off and throw you backwards. And I remember being sort of discombobulated and those will knock your mask off and throw you backwards.

And I remember being sort of discombobulated and in the garage, and my friend Frank goes, where's Victor? Victor was my crewmate. And I look around, and there was just three of us instead of four. And I remember thinking, I have to go back into that hallway? And the fear was paralyzing. This all took milliseconds. And I see Frank, who's super brave, really great firefighter, just turn and start to just catapult himself towards that door to find Victor. And for me,

it was only a millisecond. But I was scared. And I recognized that fear. And that fear scared me more than the fear itself. Because when you're paralyzed as a firefighter and your friend is missing, that's the worst. And so, of course, I was right on his heels. But that feeling of overwhelming fear was really sobering for me. But what I learned, of course, is that you can be scared. That's okay, but you still have to take action if it's necessary. And my friend was fine. He had actually been blown out too, but he took shelter on the other side. We found ourselves in the garage. So it all ended up fine, but it was a moment I'll never forget. So you've mentioned in your writing, for instance, your ability to put fear behind your other emotions.

And the story that comes to mind for me is the – and we don't necessarily have to go into the details of this right now – but the climbing of the Golden Gate Bridge, which, by the way, folks listening, illegal. I wouldn't recommend doing it. Especially now after 2001. Yeah. They will shoot you. They will shoot you. So not advised. It was all a lark in the 90s, but not anymore.

760 some odd feet or something along those lines. Maybe 720. I don't know. You probably have a better memory of the television than I, but where did you develop that ability or how did you develop that ability? Like for someone listening who's like, God, you know, I'm so fearful. How can I develop that same ability to take say courage or desire or whatever it might be, enthusiasm, and try to put it in front of this dominant emotion that I have and default emotion, which is fear, what would you say

to them? And I guess that's two questions. How do you develop it and what would you say to them? But you can tackle it any way you'd like. Well, I am not against fear. Let me just say right up front. I think fear is definitely important. It's there to keep us safe.

But I do feel like some people give it too much priority. It's one of the many things that we use to assess a situation. So I'm not against fear, but I am pro-bravery. So that's my paradigm. So once I know that, fear is just one of many things that are going on. So, for instance, when we climbed the bridge, which was five of us deciding we wanted to walk up that cable in the middle of the night. Please don't do that. But we did.

And it was a really, I mean, talk about fear. I mean, you're walking on a cable, you have to put one foot in front of the other and you get higher and higher until you're basically on as high as a 70 story building and with nothing below you and holding on to these two thin wires on either side. It's just a walk, technically. Really nothing's going to happen unless some earthquake or sudden catastrophic gust of wind, which was really not going to happen. You're going to be fine as long as you keep your mental state intact. Don't panic. It's just a walk. And so what I do in those situations is I look and look at all the emotions I'm feeling, which is anticipation, exhilaration, focus, confidence, fun, and fear. And then I take fear and say, well, how much priority am I going to give this? I really want to do this.

And then I put it where it belongs. And it's kind of like bricklaying. I don't know. You just look at all the bricks. Or making a stone wall, you fit the pieces together. So do you or have you literally, I should use that word more carefully in my life in general, but visualized the bricks or like to someone who hasn't had this practice and you're going to give them sort of a meditation exercise, right? The next time you're feeling fear, do this. What would you advise them to do?

Yeah, I actually want someone to partition each emotion as if it's a little separate block, and then put it in a line. Because once you not only look at your emotions, but also assess your own skill and the situation, often things change. I mean, we're scared, supposedly, I hear people say, I'm so scared of fill in the blank, picking up an insect. Really? What is really so scary about an insect? Seriously? Is it going to eat you? No. So as long as you stop and really look, I think people's lives will change kind of radically, especially for women, because women are very, very quick to say they're scared. And that's something I really want to change.

So let's talk about that. I mean, I have a million more questions for you. But actually, you know what, I'm going to ask you, and you can feel free to decline. But I'd like to ask about being gay. When did you come out of the closet to your family and or friends about that? Not until I was 21. 21. Yeah, though I knew when I was two. Was it intimidating to you to come out? Oh, yeah.

I mean, this was a totally different time. So I'm 52 now. So that was, I can't do the math, was the 80 Oh, yeah. I mean, this was a totally different time. Yeah. So I'm 52 now, so that was... I can't do the math. It was the 80s, right? So it was the 80s. Yeah. I mean, it was just different.

It was a bizarre thing to be. How did that happen? I didn't know anybody growing up who was gay. Nobody. In Connecticut? Yeah. Nobody. How did you break the news? What was the conversation like? did how did you break the news what was the conversation like

or how did you deliver that or did your parents already know but they didn't explicitly they didn't know they didn't know no so what what how did you how did you go about having that conversation and why well my twin sister guessed. I mean, I have an identical twin. I can't keep anything from her, who is, by the way, like so straight. So it's kind of interesting. I mean, I guess we're or little correlation between sexuality and genes. And yet, it feels very biological.

So I think it's epigenetics, I think, or hormonal. Got it. Yeah, hormones are environment that are triggering different genes to flip on or off. I guess, but I feel like I was born this way. So I think it happened in the womb. Like my sister got that hormone and I got this.

And, you know, so, I mean, really as gay as I am, she's straight. It's kind of funny. And yet we're so alike in so many ways. And so your sister guessed early on. You knew early on. No, she guessed around 20.

Around 20. Yeah, because basically she was calling my dorm room at Stanford and this woman was answering. And it was like, what? It's 7 in the morning. My sister's not dumb. Really early study session. At Stanford, we really are into studying

uh how'd the conversation with your parents go or did you talk to one before the other i and i if this is uncomfortable i'm happy not to talk about i'm just so curious because i remember my dad talking to my dad i know my sister told me to do this is actually really great because I was a big secret keeper. And I think you just learn that if you're not sort of part of the mainstream, you learn to keep those secrets because it's just easier, you think. And my sister said, my dad was the last of my family my brother's like oh that's cool i love women too he was so he was the cashiest about it my sister it took my sister a while because being an identical twin it made her think all about her own identities and you, neither of us are, my sister's an amazingly beautiful, very well-known actress who was in Baywatch. So you would think her femininity would not be questioned, but she's definitely not like a girly girl.

Neither of us are. Both of us kind of walk like a truck driver, you know? So she had to question her own identity, I think. Not just, it just brings up a lot of things. So that, I think, it was more difficult for her than my brother. And now she's just psyched, basically. I know that sounds weird, but she's like, God, I'm so glad that you're not straight because it's so much more interesting.

Mm-hmm. that you're not straight because it's so much more interesting. And maybe that's fetishizing it too, but at any rate, she's just awesome. And my dad, though, super conservative, voted for Nixon, still believed that Nixon was a great president up until his death. Definitely like a true blue Republican.

That he, I didn't tell for a long time until my sister said, why are you keeping secrets? Secrets are a buffer to intimacy. And I said, no, he doesn't need to know. She said, it's a part of your life

that he's not hearing about and you're keeping from him. And even though he might not realize it, that is keeping a distance. So you need to tell him. And in fact, she was so right. And so I told him and I was petrified and he sort of was really sweet about it. He was shocked. And then he sort of struggled and he sort of was really sweet about it. He was shocked and then he sort of struggled and he said, well, I know some gay people. And then he started listing like the gay people he knew. It was really cute. Your mom?

My mom, she also like, it wasn't that she thought that being gay was bad. It was just that she had to then rework her whole... Paradigm or lens through which she viewed the world. And she became immediately defensive for me. So she said that the way she worked it out, she would tell everybody immediately, almost in the first sentence, that she had a gay daughter. And then she'd wait. It was almost a litmus test.

And if they had any sort of flicker of... Look for the micro expression. Yeah. Then she'd like cut them off. So she was sort of testing the world as well as testing herself. And again, it's a readjustment for people. And I understood. Now it's no big deal. But back then it was pretty huge. And also I think it really shaped me to carry that, to be, I'm actually grateful for it because I always knew I was different. And I think that gave me an empathy that I probably wouldn't have had if I had just been easily part of the norm. Definitely. Well, it forces you to, I would imagine, question assumptions about other people when there's something about you that is different that people might assume is otherwise, if that

makes any sense. So lots to unpack there. But I want to talk about, in a good way, the op-ed. So I really enjoyed the... And you have multiple op-eds, but this particular one, why do we teach girls that it's cute to be scared? And I was hoping to have you elaborate on a particular passage here. And this is about three quarters of the way through. So when girls become women, this fear manifests as deference and timid decision-making.

We try to counter this conditioning by urging ourselves to, quote, lean in, end quote. Books on female empowerment proliferate on our shelves. I admire what these writers are trying to do, but they come far too late. Can you provide the background to that comment and what what catalyzed the writing of this op-ed why do we teach girls that it's cute to be scared well i wrote the gutsy girl as sort of an antidote for what i see is happening and it maybe has happened for a long time, but certainly still keeps happening today, in that we acculturate our girls to be fearful. And I see it in my peers now. So I was really curious about that and where that started after I wrote the book. So I went and looked at some studies.

It had been bothering me for a long time. And it actually, one of the incidents that really probably was part of the, that catalyzed this whole thing was years ago, a friend of mine lamented to me that her daughter was a scaredy cat. And I was a firefighter and she looked up to me. Could I hang out with her? And yes, she was sort of a scaredy cat. But what I really noticed was that her parents were anxious on her behalf,

always telling her to be careful, no, watch out. And when I did some research, it turns out that yes, parents, both moms and dads, caution their daughters way more than their sons. And when I say caution, it's basically tell them, watch out, that's dangerous. You're going to get hurt and discourage them from trying something. Whereas with boys, there's an active encouragement, despite the possibilities that you'll get hurt, and guiding the son to do it often on his own. And when a daughter decides to do something that might have some risk involved, the parents, after cautioning her, will then much more likely to assist her doing it.

So what is this telling girls except for that they're fragile and that they need our help? And that is acculturated so early. So of course, by the time we're women and we're in the workplace or in relationships, that is going to be a predominant paradigm for us, fear. And this is, and I'm going not off the rails, but maybe going on a tangent here. So for women who are listening and say to themselves, my God, she's totally right.

I was raised in a bubble of sorts. I don't want to have this default anymore. I want to condition myself to be able to contend with fear, to put it in line like you described. What would you say to them? Well, I would say that it's time to adopt a paradigm of bravery instead of a paradigm of fear. I think that's what, I mean, weren't you acculturated much more to bravery? Like fear wasn't really part of the conversation. It's the flip side, which is bravery. a woman facing the exact same situation, they will take two, there'll be two emotional reactions to it that are sort of opposite, but it's the same situation. The man will be trying to access his bravery and the woman will be accessing her fear.

Well, I mean, so this is something, and just, I think this, I'm going to underscore something that I think is important, which is that courage takes practice. It's a skill that you have to develop. And I feel like a coward sometimes. And I don't. So this is we're sitting here in my house. We're doing this interview and on my coffee table. And I'm going to I'm going to butcher this name.

You might be able to get this right. But the quote, which is on a piece of driftwood, says, life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. And I literally have this on my coffee table, so I see it every single day. Now, I don't know how to pronounce that name properly. Do you? Oh, Anais Nin. There we go. Thank you. Thank you, Stanford. And if I were to look back at my upbringing, and you talk about this in your Sunday op-ed piece also, I think that being outdoors and playing sports had a huge role in inoculating me with small doses of constant fear and realizing that the worst case scenario just was not that bad and so i think it was also a process of just i don't know if it would be operant or classical conditioning but just like or more of like a hormetic response

kind of like iocane powder and the princess bride um maybe that's too arcana reference but he the so the dread pirate roberts makes himself immune to Iocane powder and he kills the Sicilian when death is on the line. And the princess brought the point being that if you constantly expose yourself, and this was Eleanor Roosevelt who said every day, do something that scares you. If you just give yourself these small doses of fear, you begin to expand your comfortable sphere of action, if that makes any sense. So how did you choose the activities then in The Gutsy Girl? The activities...

So you have all the things that I wanted to do as an Eagle Scout and many more in the book. But how did you think about putting the book together? Oh, I see. Yes. The activities, meaning the daring do's. That's right. I have a bunch of sort of fun exercises that girls can do and they range. Some of them are survival tips, like how to get water from a tree, which is that you put a clear plastic bag over it and the tree will sort of perspire actual water through photosynthesis which i think is cool i love those kind of mciver like tips how to find the north star which is um not only practical beautiful to look at the night sky and then i have a lot of confidence building exercises, like standing in the Wonder Woman pose, based on Amy Cuddy's talk, TED Talk.

Yeah, great TED Talk. Yeah, which talks about how if you stand with your posture straight, taking up space, you'll actually trigger confidence chemicals. And if you stand in what she calls a low power pose, which is slouched, you're actually triggering cortisol, which makes you feel worse. So the key is not to be brave in that moment or confident is to actually stand like you're brave, and then the confidence will come. So there's exercises like that. So I wanted a full range because this book takes place in the outdoors because I think it's a great training ground for bravery and learning bravery because, yes, bravery is learned. But obviously, it's not the only place where gutsiness comes into play. I mean, we need it in all parts of our life. So that's why the exercises range. But again, it's in the outdoors because that's fun. And it's great to read about adventures in the outdoors. Let's talk about, there's so much we could talk about. We're not going to have time for all of this.

But I mean, you have an incredible story about getting cloud sucked, is that the expression? Into not a cumulus, but a cumulonimbus. Am I getting this right? That's terrifying. We might not have time to get into that. But you mentioned the outdoors, you mentioned books, and one thing that you've written about is reading, correct me if I'm wrong, Harriet the Spy as a kid. Am I getting that right? Oh, yeah. So what books have you gifted most to other people besides your own? I don't gift my own.

Just so you know. Oh, I never do that either. Everything that I own. Yeah, yeah. I wouldn't hold it against you if you gift your own books, by the way. No, I don't. But I'm trying to remember books that I pass on. I'm kind of blanking, to be honest.

I'm so sorry. That's okay. We can always come back. Let's talk about, because I was uh astonished when you said you said you're 52 so i'm not hitting on you you do not look 52 you look a lot younger uh but what does your current training regimen look like so i become become a much more efficient worker outer I used to be a complete gym rat. And obviously, when I was a firefighter, I was working out all the time. I ran six miles a day and I lifted

a lot. But now I enjoy being outside much more. So my workout consists of surfing, hopefully, if the waves are right. And if not, I'll swim in an outdoor pool and I do a very quick lifting workout. I unfortunately have a replaced knee. My knees are shot. So there's a lot I can't do anymore, like run, which makes me sad. But I've just become way more efficient with my workouts. What does the lifting workout look like? Oh, I'm so old school. And I'm embarrassed about it because I realized that everybody these days are into functional workouts that mean swinging kettlebells. And it's funny because I actually worked with Charles Poliquin like 20 years ago. No kidding.

Yeah, because one of my really close friends is a trainer with him. I met my friend Andre when I was a, a loser. I was actually, uh, not to be convinced. I was a, L U G E R.

Yes. I had an, I thought that was a very, a very strong Connecticut accent on loser for a second. Yeah, that too. I was a loser as a loser, but I had determination as as most people who know me

know and maybe who've read this book. I had an Olympic dream. And so my theory was, well, I'm not really good at anything, but I'm super dogged and determined. So let me find a sport where there's hardly any people. And lo and behold, it's lugeing. At least back in 1984, it was lugeing. Basically, the only people on the Olympic team for luge in the United States all lived in Lake Placid. That was the only place there was a track. So I went and I did luge. And I was terrible. I crashed all the time. Sounds dangerous. Yes. Yeah, it is. You go at high speeds. And if you're me... Now, lugeing, just for people who aren't familiar, that's effectively you're laying on your back with your kind of feet internally rotated, going feet first, like inches off

the ice. Yes. And then in fact, I was terrible. I had a nickname. What was your nickname? Crash. This is so bad. And I talk about this in the book. It was, I had such spectacular crashes that people would gather at this turn. I can't remember. I think it was 14. That's the one I remember. And they would just watch me just take these incredibly flippy, turny, topsy-turvy. Just yard sales. Oh, yeah.

And I even was taken to the hospital once. But I just wanted to be an Olympian. And I was determined, but when I found out about the sport of skeleton... That's the one. This is... All right, you flip it around, you're going headfirst, sport of skeleton. That's the one. This is, all right, you flip it around. You're going head first, right? Yeah. That's insanity.

It seems. It is actually. And at the time, there was really a ragtag team. They didn't have any uniforms. They wore jeans and like work boots and motorcycle helmets. And I looked at it. I was like, that's the sport for me. And when they said there are absolutely no women doing it, I was like, oh, doubling down on black here.

I figured that, oh, there's no women doing it, then I'll for sure make the Olympics in this sport. And they said, well, we're not in the Olympics yet, but we plan to be. I was like, that's good enough for me. And that's an amazing sport. I actually think because you're literally your eyes are like three inches from the ice. When I first went, the guy said, yeah, come here. I'm going to show you someone. There was no learning. They basically put you on a sled. But he did take me to the side of the track.

And he said, watch Mike or whoever it was. And I remember standing at the corner and this guy goes around the corner around us and I hear this scream. And I looked, I said, was that a scream? He said, oh yeah, Mike, his chin almost hits the ice on this turn. Don't worry about it. Now, were you in Lake Placid or were you somewhere else? Yeah, in Lake Placid.

It was the only, that was the only, now they have a couple tracks, but at the time. Now, were you in Lake Placid, then you decided to do the lugeing and skeleton or were you like, saw it, you're like having a beer at a bar and you're like, what the hell is that? Luge? Fuck it. I'm moving to Lake Placid. No, actually, I was super lucky. It just so happened that the number, the highest placing American luge loser at the time was a woman named

bonnie warner and she went to stanford and she was determined to break this lake placid kid only team so she held these tryouts out here which basically consisted of putting wheels on sleds and pushing us down alpine road near stan. And like, I don't know why. And I was like, this is for me, for sure. And I got picked along with my really good friend Blaze. He and I were pals. Blaze? Yeah, good name, right?

That's a good nickname. That's a good nickname. He and I were really good friends, and we were both pilots, so we flew together a lot and so then we went to lake placid and then he left to go back to stanford and i'm like i'm i'm staying and i took a semester off or quarter at stanford so you you started the luce story by mentioning charles poliquin and saying that you're old school right sorry so right. Sorry. So then when I was at Lake Placid, all these athletes from around the world trained there. It was an amazing experience.

And I met my friend Andre, who was a turned, he turned into a Canadian Olympian. His nickname was not crash. He was really good at what he did. And he became a trainer under Charles Poliquin and trained many Olympic teams. And so that's how I met Charles.

And when he came to San Francisco to do a class with Andre, I was there. And so how has that informed your current, as you put it, old school training? Well, I was doing training in unstable environments, which is what Poliquin pretty much pioneered here in the United States. I think he took it from Russia, but, uh, using Swiss balls or Swiss balls. Yeah.

Swiss balls was his big thing. I mean, he can do squats on a Swiss ball. I know that's, you can probably do that too. I, I think I would end up in a YouTube blooper reel of people hitting walls on Swiss balls if I tried it,

but it doesn't surprise me that Charles would be able to do that. He's been on the podcast. He's a very smart and very hilarious guy for people who are interested in physical training. And he's just super interesting. And his techniques were really new at the time. This idea of training in an unstable environment was completely new. And so I do incorporate that in my workouts still. But in general, I'm old school, free weights. Just compound movements like squat, deadlift, whatever it might be. Yeah.

Nothing wrong with that. Sorry. No, no, no. There's no sorry. Are you still a vegetarian? I am a lapsed vegan who is pretty much a vegetarian now. When you were a firefighter, you were also vegan? No, I was vegan right before.

The thing about the fire department is part of the biggest social times are the meals. And so being a vegan was not going to really help me at all. So I became a vegetarian. And there were a couple other vegetarians in the fire department, some old timer guys who were vegetarians. But in general, we were an anomaly. And people hated it when I cooked. I hated it when I cooked. I hated cooking. Cooking completely terrified me way more than any big fire could. So what now? All right. So I take it then there was some type of rotation where you would end up with cooking duty. So people would try to, they would like, I would trade out of it or they would come up to me and say, well, you want to like trade this and you take my night watch next time?

I was like, yes. they didn't want me to cook either what was your did you ever when you had to cook did you have a go-to meal oh yes i had probably three that was actually the trick well there were two three tricks and once i remember a guy coming up to me and he said you just don't put any love into this meal. I was so shocked. This big, burly firefighter wanted love in his meal. And he was right, actually. I was so sullen about cooking that I didn't. And he actually was a little indignant about that. And now I try to put love in my meals when I cook. The other thing was make it colorful. That was another advice that I got and I thought was great advice.

Very hard for me to do. Everything was kind of gray. Oh, and then the third was have three to set meals that you do. What were they? I can't remember. I blocked it out. I remember doing vegetarian chili and someone threw it against the wall that was their protest basically i mean they're very funny i mean firefighters are

hilarious uh and i really you learn to have a thicker skin someone throws your meal against the wall so speaking of thicker skin i it strikes me i'd love to hear your thoughts on this. It's a very broad subject and question, but I get the impression, at least in the US, and I know this is true in many other English-speaking countries, Australia, it's true. For instance, the UK, also true. It seems that people are getting thinner and thinner skin, not thicker and thicker skin when it comes to discussing important or unimportant topics that might be uncomfortable. To people who are easily offended or hurt, what would you say to them? Because you strike me as very tough,

very resilient, very capable of like exacting your sort of philosophies and goals in life. And it strikes me that people who are very easily offended are just poor resource allocators. They waste a lot of energy and time with sort of getting upset by small things they shouldn't get upset by in the same way that some people are afraid of things they shouldn't be afraid of necessarily or get dominated by that um that is one hell of a a diatribe that has went on but do you have any any you don't strike me as someone who's easily offended and do you have any thoughts for people who are i'm actually not easily offended mostly because i think in general like for instance being in the firehouse i learned one really interesting thing at first i thought a lot of the men were ignoring me. I'd literally say hello to them or ask them something, and they would not speak to me.

It turned out a lot of them are deaf. I kid you not. I totally believe it. And then I suddenly realized they're not ignoring me because they wouldn't do that. I mean, of course, there were a couple bad apples for sure who would do that. But in general, they were super respectful. And there were a lot of amazingly kind and open-minded men who were really struggling. I mean, it's hard when you have your homogenous club, which we all do.

If you look at your friends, they all look like you. And then suddenly it's forcibly opened and it's just difficult. It's right. You shouldn't have your club necessarily. You don't have a right to it, but still it's going to be hard. And I really did empathize with that, especially when I looked around and saw that my own life was as homogenous as the fire department had been. And in fact, my life opened up a lot with the fire department, met a lot of people I

would not have met who were very different from me. So just understanding that the motivation is obviously is, is often not malice. Yeah. And they might be deaf. They might be deaf on top of it. When you think of the word success, who's the first person who comes to mind and why probably wendy okay so for people who don't know wendy please uh please describe

wendy and why he's my partner of eight years and and she's a very successful illustrator. And she's illustrated – she illustrated Gutsy Girl, and she illustrated the book that I wrote before called Lost Cat, A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology. And she's done – illustrated many books and been in the New York Times. She's a rock star. Yeah, total rock star. But – so she's very successful because she's doing exactly what she wants to do. She's an artist who has her own business. The great thing about Wendy too is she's so great at laughing at herself.

Something that I really want to embrace more in my own life is just to laugh at myself. And she's also great about pointing out her own flaws all the time, whereas I try very much to hide my flaws. And it's just so endearing when someone bears their flaws, because the truth is, you know, our flaws are usually fine. They're usually what makes us so lovable. What, for people who want to look up Wendy, what is her last name? McNaughton. M-A-C-N-A-U-G-H-T-O-N. Wendy McNaughton.

Yeah. Wendy has the career that I wanted for about 10 years when I was growing up. I wanted to be an illustrator. Really? I was actually an illustrator in college. I was the graphics editor of the, I guess it was the Princeton Tiger, or I might be getting the name of the magazine wrong. But in any case,

I wanted to be a comic book illustrator, a penciler. Jim Lee, I'm going to get you on the podcast eventually. Okay. So I'm going to try again. I'm going to step up to bat and try this book question again. But it doesn't have to be most gifted book, although that usually sometimes triggers a book or two. Do you have any favorite books? I'll give you three options. Third option,

you are giving a commencement speech at Stanford, and you can give every graduating senior, undergrad, one to three books. Which books would you give them? I would say that the books, first of all, the book, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. I've never heard of it I'm embarrassed to say oh it's a beautiful book uh by a writer who went to who fought in Vietnam and when he came back he became a writer and a lot of his writing at least initially was about Vietnam either in sort of thinly veiled autobiographical form but fiction the things they carried is a beautiful book it actually got me back to reading because I think when you go to college reading gets kicked out of you a little bit. It's just, you know, you have to read all

these things. And I didn't read until from my friend Eric, who was a Whitewater rafter with me, handed me this book and said, this is great. And I started reading again after that um i really love uh the book by peter heller is it peter heller gosh i can't um and that book is called the dog stars which i picked up because i love the stars basically i was like oh it's gonna he's gonna be talking about the main character will be an astronomer and i'll learn something about the stars. It turns out it's an apocalyptic book. It's beautifully written. That main character is a pilot.

And since I fly a lot of different things with varying degrees of success, obviously, I love that book. But these are books I'd give just to say these are amazing stories. And you'll probably learn something from them. If you had to pick a historical figure that you identify with, who would you pick? Two people. I don't identify with Rosa Parks, but I would love to have her sort of courage, her ability to overcome what was then the social norm, sit in the back of the bus. And the other person would be Beryl Markham, who's a pilot.

How do you spell that? Markham is M-A-R-K-H-A-M, Beryl Markham. She wrote an autobiography called West with the Night. It's about flying. I think she's also one of the highlighted women in your book. Is she not? I don't actually mention her because I think she's probably too well known. That makes me feel like a total idiot.

I don't know. Well, she's actually not in the book, but I have little sidebars of women throughout history and also around the world who have done adventurous, super badass, kick-ass things. And she certainly could be. Quick side note. I was pleased to see the first one. And I might be, if I'm getting the name wrong, tell me, but Laura Decker, was it? The Dutch girl, 14, was it, that she circumnavigated the globe? There's a documentary about her.

It's just incredible. Great documentary. Yeah, she actually wanted to go around the world, and her parents said fine on her own. And the Dutch courts and the court of public opinion freaked out. It was a really interesting question i think but she was clearly a very talented sailor incredibly gifted yeah i mean i have a quote where she's like yeah because i have some a lot of quotes in the book too and her quote i'm not going to do it quite right but it's something like yeah we had sort of a boring day to she wrote writing in her journal

i had sort of a boring day today hurricane lucy came by but that's about it yeah i mean just the some of the footage and the stories going around the cape south africa and these experienced sailors saying yeah like almost anyone would have been killed on that route. This girl is beyond talented. There's something psychological about doing something alone. I was a paraglider for many years, and I remember always when I would launch feeling, okay, now I'm really alone. No matter what happens, it's just me. At the time, we didn't even carry radios now i think probably paragliders carry all sorts of you know paraphernalia but so when you fly in the air you

feel alone and she's in the middle of the ocean in a storm very different yeah really good doc if you could have a billboard anywhere that said anything, what would you put on the billboard? I know these questions. Are you? Be brave? I don't know. I'm not good. I write books, not sentences. Or they're comprised of sentences. Yeah, you're right. What would you put on a billboard, Tim?

You know, the first one that comes to mind, which I've been, it's just really burned into my memory, is actually from someone else's answer. So I'm going to cheat here a little bit. But Amelia Boone. Cheating. I know. Amelia Boone, sitting right where you're sitting, and I interviewed her for the podcast, and I asked her this question,

and she's the world's most successful female obstacle course racer. So Spartan Race, world's toughest mudder. To put it in perspective, too, because I feel like the modifying it, even though it's true, modifying it with female doesn't do her quite enough justice at all, because she competed. I might be getting it. I don't think I think I'm getting this perfectly right. Actually in the 2012 world's toughest mutter, where there are more than a thousand

competitors, you have to qualify to compete. It's like the world series. And predominantly men, as far as I understand, competing. It's a 24-hour race where you have to do as many cycles or reps as possible of an obstacle course. No sleeping. And she finished second out of everyone. And the man who won beat her by a total of eight minutes, 24-hour race. She's a huge, just an incredible athlete. Really funny, very smart. Is an attorney at Apple. I mean, but she's effectively a full-time professional athlete. She's just winning at life. And her answer was, no one owes you anything. That was her answer. I was like, I like that. I really like it. It's just, you have to go out and get amongst it. And so I might steal that. If I had to choose a second...

That's mine. I want to put that. That's mine. That's my answer. Okay. Glad we figured it out. We'll change it. Nobody knows you anything at all. At all. Yes. Underscore, underscore. Do you have any morning routines? We were talking earlier, I asked you what you had for breakfast and you said coffee and two balance bars. I'm a creature of habits. So let's talk about habits. Do you have any particular morning routines or daily routines that you absolutely must do or feel better if you have done them? I am such a creature of habit, which often surprises people because they think someone

whose love's adventure would be incredibly spontaneous. And I can see why, because when you're outside, let's say, I don't know, I did first descents with a whitewater team. You do not know what's going to happen next on a river that's never been done before, even if you've scouted it along the banks. Yet I need a routine in my daily life. I guess that makes sense because it balances that out. It's like Obama who wants to wear the same tie because he makes way too many decisions in other areas. So yes, I love, I get up early, even if-

What time? Six. Even if it's a vacation, I set my alarm and get up. I feel if I sleep in that I've sort of wasted the day. And then I immediately, I eat within an hour just because that's important for my metabolism. And it's Pete's coffee, French roast, really strong, two balance bars, and I feel set for the day kind of thing. Do you do, do you have any evening routines? Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Go to sleep?

I cannot stay up late. I wish I could. I wish I could hardly sleep at all because I'm not one of those people who loves sleep. But I need to go to bed. At about 10, it drives Wendy crazy, but at about 10, I'm checked out. Powered off. Yeah. Do you have any trouble sleeping, getting to sleep?

I do. I have a lot of trouble sleeping. Now I have my medical marijuana card, actually. I've never liked pot, ever. But my mom recently had lung cancer, and she's fine. But she was really nauseous from the drugs, and she had a friend giving her pot, some pot paste, which we said, just take that pot paste.

It'll probably help your extreme nausea. And she's English. She was like, and she's almost 80. She's like, oh no, I'm not going to smoke pot or I'm not going to take pot. And then she did. And it was miraculous for her. And she said she slept well. And I said, you slept well?

And I don't smoke pot either. But I said, oh, I sleep terribly. And I took it and I slept like a log. So now I take pop before I go to sleep. Do you smoke it or small amount of paste? Or how do you consume it? I actually use an e cigarette because i don't like the effect when i i wouldn't i don't smoke anything right general like i don't smoke

cigarettes never have but i do use the vape i guess i'm right i'm so uncool i don't know any of the you know i was i was about to out one of our close mutual friends who's an expert in this field but i won't oh i have many close mutual friends who's an expert in this field, but I won't. Oh, I have many close mutual friends. I used to be in the Bay Area. You could throw a stone and hit a pot professional. Have you always had trouble sleeping or is that something that cropped up recently? I think I don't remember having trouble sleeping. Like the last 10 years, I don't know if it's an age thing, but it's a drag when you can't sleep because, well, part of it is I used to get injured a lot.

And then I couldn't sleep because of my injuries. You know, I basically had my knee replaced. That was a very, because I fell in a fire while firefighting. And eventually that knee had to be replaced. And once it was, it took years for, for me to feel, to be able to sleep. And then,

uh, so that kind of thing, I think probably threw me off track. So you, do you wish people, this is going to sound funny. Maybe. Do you wish people would break more bones when they were kids?

And the reason I bring that up is just going back to the op-ed and maybe the way we've been acculturated and socialized socialized when i meet a guy who's never broken a bone i always get very suspicious i'm just uh but it's just it's perfectly accepted if you meet, say, a girl who's never broken a bone. It's like, oh, yeah, it's not a non-topic, right? Do you think kids should get injured more in the process of growing up? That's interesting. I mean, I think the parents will hate me if I say they should. I had my first stitches when I was five when my parents put me on a sled and I immediately sledded right into the tree at the bottom of the hill. Thus, my lugeing career was foretold.

But it was not treated as if it was something catastrophic. It just was part of childhood. And I had a couple stitches and it broke my thumb and blah, blah, blah. So I guess what I think is that I hope no one gets injured, but I think injury is not as bad as people think. And to not do something because you might get injured is a terrible reason not to do something because we could get injured in anything. I mean, just getting into your car is very dangerous. And so I think we should just put that in its place where it should be. And so girls are often told, oh, you could get hurt.

And this specter of getting hurt takes on these huge proportions. Whereas for boys, that's not emphasized. And they've done studies with this. And yet, the interesting thing is that girls and boys before puberty are physically the same. They break the same, and they're as able as each other, if not girls being more able at that time. So the fact that girls are told and treated as if they're more fragile doesn't make sense at all. And it primes them to be very sort of over cautious about this idea of being hurt. Yeah. Just on that point, being in some cases more capable. I remember getting my

ass kicked in fifth grade because I was playing Shinobi this uh ninja video game i was a little boy at the time and this gigantic towering girl came over and just restarted the game to just terrorize me and i just started bubbling i was on the verge of tears and i called her squid face and she proceeded to just mop the floor with me ah The trauma. Never call. Good face. Yeah, it was trying to think lesson learned. Yeah. If you've ever seen blood sport,

like Frank Dukes, put up your Dukes, right? And the huge kind of like redneck American who just like hammer fists, the first opponent in the face. It was kind of like that. It was, it was a very short fight.

We could talk for hours and hours and hours. I think this is a good round one, and people can certainly let us know if they'd like a round two. But do you have any requests before we wrap up, and we'll talk about where people can find you and social and so on, but any requests of the audience, suggestions for them to anyone listening? Yeah. If you're a parent, I really want you to look at the way you are guiding your girls versus guiding your boys. Because I hear a lot of parents say, oh, no, no,

no, I treat my boy and my girl the same. And then the more we talk about it, the more it becomes clear that maybe they don't. So for instance, I was talking, and I referenced this in my op-ed, I was talking to this woman and she said, no, I don't really treat my boy and my girl differently. Oh, but my girl's actually more klutzy. So I do caution her more because she's more klutzy. And so in fact, she was actually already treating her girl differently without realizing it. I think if we look, because I'm guilty of this too, this bias of thinking that girls and women are more fragile, are more in need of help. And that is just so not true and so detrimental. And just on the klutzy point, because I thought this was really good.

And I just pulled it up on the piece here. But she's very klutzy, the mom explained. I wondered, wasn't there a way even a klutzy child could take risks? Such a good question. And my friend agreed there might be, but only half-heartedly. And I could see on her face that maternal instinct was sparring with feminism and feminism was losing. I love this book. And I very rarely say that because I get sent a shit ton of books and i don't want to get 10x the number of books sent to me because i would do nothing more than read books but i i'm really a fan of the message and the writing it is i i was expecting it to read like a kid book

in a derogatory no no offense intended but it's like to be kind of pandering to kids. And it's a hilarious book to read. Even as an adult, I really enjoyed it. So where can people find more about the book, more about you on the web, on social? I have a website, carolinepaul.com, and my book is there. And we actually have an Instagram called The Gutsy Girl Club that's doing very well, where we highlight girl heroes or girls that are great role models for gutsiness and bravery. And we also have a website for the book, thegutsygirl.org. And if people wanted to say hello, wave a digital hand at you on social media,

at Kara Writer. Is that right? Yes. I'm terrible on social media, I have to say. Probably makes you better in every area of your life. Better to send me an email, which is on my website. That's the best way to put it.

That'll give you some time to potentially modify that to a contact form. Just as a point of reference, Derek Sivers, who I've had on the podcast after two and a half hours or something like that, he was like, ah, nobody's going to be listening anyway. Gave out his email of course, Caroline's books and so on will be in the show notes. So if you're wondering what we said, you don't want to have to go back and listen two or three times to the podcast. You can go to fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out, forward slash podcast. And Caroline, this was so much fun. I really appreciate you taking the time. So fun. Thank you, fun. I really appreciate you taking the time. So fun. Thank you, Tim. I'm a fan. Well, the feeling is very mutual.

I'm super inspired to go out and do something daring. I need more injuries in my life. And to everyone listening, as always, until next time, thank you for listening. Hey, guys. this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel

of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the, uh, the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and

you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.