The Tim Ferriss Show - #160: Assessing Risk and Living Without a Rope – Lessons from Alex Honnold

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 even appropriate time i'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over another 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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Starting point is 00:02:50 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, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss. And welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where each episode, it is my job to deconstruct a world-class performer, to tease out the habits, routines, tips, favorite books, et cetera, that you can use, whether that is someone like Jamie Foxx or a chess prodigy or a special operations commander and everybody in between. This episode, we have Alex Honnold. I've wanted to interview Alex for a very, very long time.

Starting point is 00:03:28 You can find him on facebook.com forward slash Alex Honnold, H-O-N-N-O-L-D. He is a professional adventure rock climber who's free solo. That means no ropes, no partner ascents of America's biggest cliffs have made him one of the most recognized and followed climbers in the world. If you want to sweat profusely from your palms, you can watch videos of Alex and I'll put them in the show notes at forourworkweek.com forward slash podcast. Honnold is distinguished for his uncanny ability to control fear while scaling cliffs of dizzying heights without a rope to protect him. And we really dig into that, how he looks at risk, fear, addresses both in training and with these first ascent attempts

Starting point is 00:04:12 and so on. His most celebrated achievements include the first and only free solos of the Moonlight Buttress. That's a 512D, which means super fucking hard. That's 1200 feet in Zion National Park in Utah. And the Northwest Face, that's a 512A of Half Dome, 2,200 feet. And that is in Yosemite in California, right in my backyard. Beautiful spot. In 2012, he achieved Yosemite's first triple solo climbing. That means in succession, the National Park's three largest faces, Mount Watkins, Half Dome, and El Capitan alone, and all in under 24 hours. He is the founder of the Honnold Foundation, an environmental nonprofit. And to this day, and perhaps one of the most fascinating aspects of Alex, is he maintains a very, very minimalist

Starting point is 00:04:56 dirtbag climber existence. And that's not meant as a slight, that is meant as a compliment. Living out of his van, and I think he's done that for the last 10 years or so, despite the fact that he has big sponsors and traveling the world in search of the next great vertical adventure. So we dig into all sorts of things. And with that further ado, I will let you hear the wide ranging conversation that I had with Alex Honnold. Alex, welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for having me. I have wanted to interview you ever since I first saw footage of you climbing because I trained long ago at Mission Cliffs here in San Francisco and did top roping, never have climbed outside except for Castle Rock. I don't know if you know. Yeah, by Santa Cruz.

Starting point is 00:05:45 Exactly. That's where I started as a kid, kind of. Really? Yeah, it's one of my local areas. So you grew up in Sacramento or am I making that up? Yeah, I grew up in Sacramento. And what was your upbringing like? I mean, if you had to describe your childhood, how would you take a stab at it?

Starting point is 00:06:01 Just normal suburban life, you know, Sacramento, good times. Good times. Sacktown. I haven't spent a lot of time there i mean mark bell who's a buddy has a gym called super training gym up there he's i think one of the top 10 in his weight class of all time that is the extent of my exposure to sacramento is just hanging out with him and feeling really weak which probably would have been the experience if i'd gone climbing with you even in the early days what did your parents do uh my parents are both teachers or professors what did they teach um they taught language like english is the second language in french where were your parents born in the u.s or they elsewhere um yeah they were both born in the u.s though mom uh was born to polish immigrants so i mean she's born in the u.s and she's american and her parents were

Starting point is 00:06:40 actually born here too but they were like Polish, like fresh off the boat style. How did you start climbing? I know it's probably a story that you've told a million times, but how did that begin? My parents just read about a gym opening in Sacramento and they thought I'd like it. And so they took me to a climbing gym. I mean, just like you were saying to Mission Cliffs, like there was a comparable gym in Sacramento. And so I went in there when I was maybe 11 and then just kept going all the time. What was the first day like?

Starting point is 00:07:06 Can you describe? I honestly have no recollection. I was like an 11-year-old. Then I probably went to the gym three to five times a week from 11 to 18. It all kind of blurs into one epic gym session. Did you know in the early days of going to that gym that you had a predisposition to it? No, not particularly. I mean, I loved climbing and I loved going in there and just playing all the time and climbing as much as I could, but I was never like gifted in the way that a lot of people are gifted rock climbers. And, you know, I wasn't like winning the competitions or anything.

Starting point is 00:07:36 I did some comps on and off throughout my teenage years and I never won, you know, I was never, I was never super strong, but I just like loved climbing all the time. Why do you think you didn't win? I mean, what? Well, because I wasn't very strong, you know. No, but strong meaning in what capacity? Like I like to dig into the details with this. So for example, I mean, this is kind of getting into the nitty gritty, but so like.

Starting point is 00:07:58 No, that's what this is about. Yeah, yeah. Okay, here we go. So Chris Sharma is like basically been the best climber in the world for the last 20 years. And he was like my hero when I was a kid. He was one of the people I watched videos of. And I was like, that guy's the man.

Starting point is 00:08:08 So he's from Santa Cruz. He started climbing when he was 14. And when he was 15, he put up a route called Necessary Evil outside of Las Vegas. And it was the first 14C in the country. So it was the hardest route in America. And he did it after one year of climbing as a 15-year-old. I mean, that's like a prodigy. I mean, he was like freakishly strong from the get-go. He could just always pull on really small edges. He had freakishly strong

Starting point is 00:08:29 fingers. He could do one arm pull-ups off like anything. And you're like, that guy's gifted. I was not that guy, you know, actually this season I tried to do that rudeness or evil this winter and I totally failed on it. I was like, I still couldn't do it. And I was like, God damn, I've been climbing for 20 years and I like try pretty hard, you know, and I still just can't climb as well as he did after one year. Well, I still can't climb as hard. Like I'm just not as strong as he was after one year. I mean, there are plenty of things that I'm probably better at than he is. You know, it's all relative technique and everything. What would, what would some of those things be that you're better at? Well, I've not necessarily, I mean, not to necessarily compare you to him,

Starting point is 00:09:04 but you're very good at, he's never done any alpine climbing he's never really done any big walling he's probably not super efficient logistically and um you know but he's very very strong and i'm just not strong like that but you know but i do other types of climbing for those people who are not familiar with the world of climbing could you describe some of the different types so the alpine big wall yeah so climbing is is pretty complicated because it ranges from say indoor bouldering which is probably the simplest thing you can possibly do um to alpine climbing you know like climbing in the himalaya or climbing huge walls around the world and so that involves like ice and mixed climbing where you're using

Starting point is 00:09:38 ice tools and crampons and that kind of gear and then you know there's big wall climbing which is basically climbing huge vertical rock walls where you're on the wall for multiple days. Um, then there's, I mean, there's just a ton of categories and the bouldering. So for people who don't know what that is, that's typically it's no ropes. Yeah. It's unroped. Um, it's, I mean, an easy way to think of it as practice climbing, right. You know, basically practicing movement. So you're climbing maybe three or four meters, maybe five max, but you're climbing small heights that you're comfortable falling off and landing on a pad. And you're basically just doing really hard physical moves. It's actually an easy way to compare it to the running world between sprinting and ultra running or something.

Starting point is 00:10:18 The spectrum of climbing ranges from short and super intense to super, super long, but obviously low intensity. And I've, I've always been more of the low intensity, long distance type of guy, you know, where some people are just freakishly strong. And you were attracted to that because of the, the relative lack of strength or was there something else that appealed to you about that? Um, I don't know. I mean, I think it might just be one of those things that are sort of naturally gravitated towards the thing that suits me, but I don't know. I mean, I think part might just be one of those things that I've sort of naturally gravitated towards the thing that suits me, but I don't know. I mean, I think part of it is just that I've always loved climbing. I like doing a lot of rock climbing. And so I've always been

Starting point is 00:10:50 attracted to high volume. I mean, I like to like take the roots in my guidebook, you know, be like, oh, I climbed this and I climbed that. And so I like to climb a lot of roots. Um, so it's just, yeah, I mean, I just, I like climbing a lot. It's certainly clear. I, uh, I wonder what, what do you think you were going to be or what did you fantasize about becoming when you grew up when you were a kid? I mean, as a kid, I thought I was going to become an engineer or something. You know, I just thought I would have some normal job. And, um, I mean,

Starting point is 00:11:19 when I was growing up, there really wasn't a professional climbing scene. Like you couldn't really be a professional climber cause the whole climbing industry hadn't really taken off and there weren't so many gyms and it was like a different world. So I never thought that I was going to be a climber. I just thought that I'd have some random job. You, uh, now I'm going off the internet here. So that's a, that's a risky business. But, uh, you ended up at one point at, was it UC Berkeley? Yeah. Planning to be an engineer.

Starting point is 00:11:44 Yeah. What type of engineering? Um, I'd applied for civil engineering. I was, was it UC Berkeley? Yeah. Planning to be an engineer. Yeah. What type of engineering? I'd applied for civil engineering. I was, yeah. Why civil? I mean, basically one of my uncles was a civil engineer. I was just like, that's cool. And I love, I liked building things

Starting point is 00:11:55 and the idea of like building bridges or like big, big projects like that. I mean, it's appealing, you know, the idea of like constructing something cool. Do you, did you collect anything as a kid or do you? Yeah, I was way into Legos. Legos. Okay. So no, this is like the theme, right? like constructing something cool do you did you collect anything as a kid or do you yeah i was way into legos legos okay so no this is like the theme right so the kind of large structures large walls uh how long did you collect the legos for i mean do you have any idea i'm not looking for

Starting point is 00:12:18 exact timelines here but well i don't know when i first started getting legos but probably when i was really small and then up until being a teenager, basically I had a ton of Legos. Did you have any, any like, uh, I'm not, coup de grace is not the right expression here. I'm looking for your landmark pieces or anything that you remembered. I like, I had friends who built like the death star out of Legos and that was like the pinnacle of their Lego career. No, I mean mean i think i had a few just epic forts and like really cool pirate ships and things and um no but i never constructed anything that was like the the culmination of my lego lego career i don't know the thing is i think i took almost as much pleasure in destroying the things afterward as you know because you create like this elaborate

Starting point is 00:13:02 city and then my sister and i would take like a golf ball or something and just like destroy it and be like, Oh, starting over. It's more of the process of building it. That was so fun. And do you have, uh, one sibling or do you have more? Yeah. I have an older sister. How, how much older? Two years older. Do you talk to her much? Yeah. We're, yeah. We're good friends. Very close. Fair amount. Yeah. What is, what does she do professionally? Um, I don't know. It's complicated. It's complicated?

Starting point is 00:13:26 She basically just makes the world a better place. Okay. She's lived in Portland since she went to college there. And she's vegan and has never owned a car. She's ultra earth-thirsty. And she basically does outdoor participation stuff with kids. And it's kind of like... I don't even know.

Starting point is 00:13:41 She's basically getting at-risk... It's like a work program for at-risk youth. I don't know. It's like a work program for at risk youth or so i don't know it's like a whole thing yeah but over the years she's also been like a middle school teacher and she's done like you know bike programs with kids and all kinds of you know wholesome things that make make the community better if you had to pick a fixed location we're definitely going to get to the van and everything surrounding that story. But if you had to pick a place to park up in the U.S. for, say, five years, yeah, let's make it a five-year timeline. Where would you pick at this point? I don't know. That's tough. That's tough. But I mean, the obvious choices as a climber would be somewhere like Boulder, Colorado,

Starting point is 00:14:23 or say Salt Lake, or Flagstaff, or any of the cities that are sort of known, or Las Vegas actually, places that are known as climbing hubs where you have great outdoor climbing all around them. And I could see living in any of those places if I had to. Or like say, you know, I got married to somebody that lived there or something crazy, and I'm like, well, I could see being happy in any of those cities. Though honestly, I love Portland too, though there's no real climbing there, and's not a great place to, to live as a climber and the climate's terrible with too much rain. But as far as progressive cities that go, it's like probably my favorite city in the country. They have voodoo donuts too. I'm not sure if you're a big donut guy. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not, no, I've eaten there and I was like, ah, you know, I didn't think it was that great though. Not the best. Yeah. I was like, I don't know. I was a little underwhelmed.

Starting point is 00:15:01 Yeah. Could have been my blood alcohol content at the time. But do you think, so I want to talk about climbing and the ability to climb full time. Because you touched on, I think, a really important point, which is when you began climbing, the prospect of becoming a professional climber just didn't really exist, right, as a notion. Yeah, I mean, there were a handful of professional climbers when i started but it was like such a small there wasn't like a climbing industry it was really small exactly yeah and uh you have a reputation for or you're well known for living as and this is a term i hadn't heard until i watched a documentary that yvonne chouinard was in, dirtbag, living as a dirtbag climber. Can you describe that? What does that mean, first of all? And what is your version of that? Well, so, I mean, I guess that just means somebody who is like a lifestyle climber, like somebody who just lives to climb. So, it's like the full

Starting point is 00:16:02 time on the road, you know know doing whatever it takes to be a climber i guess i mean being a dirtbag isn't isn't a negative thing in the climbing community it's just like oh that guy's committed to the the cause and i'm sure there's the same kind of term for like the surf community or whatever else you know people who just like live to go mountain biking or surfing or whatever you know taking odd jobs and just like doing their thing just to to be able to do their sport as much as they can and it seems seems, I remember years ago, I chatted with Steph Davis when I was wearing on the four-hour body. It seems like a very semi-monastic lifestyle. I mean, you're really dedicated. It makes me think of like the marathon monks in Japan. But instead of running every day,

Starting point is 00:16:41 you're climbing sort of this itinerant lifestyle uh now you live do you currently you still live in a van oh yeah i mostly live in my car but then i'm overseas a lot more now and then when i'm traveling for work stuff i get put up in hotels or whatever but um but yeah i mean i'm still focused in the van what kind of van well i just sold my old van so i lived in a van for nine years and then i just sold it to one of my cousins because i was just kind of over it i felt like i sort of outgrew it um and so now i have a dodge pro master which i can stand in which is a big big upgrade how tall are you life i'm like 5 11 what's so how have you have you kitted out this van to be suited to your needs so i actually just left it with a friend of mine who built it

Starting point is 00:17:19 out while i was on an expedition in pedigonia this winter and so he just made it nice i mean you know a super nice bed and like a kitchen and good cabinetry and, you know, a refrigerator. And yeah, I mean, it's basically a really small apartment. It's super nice. And coming back to the industry. So are there people who criticize the industry of climbing, the sponsor influx? And the reason I bring that up is not because I'm critical.

Starting point is 00:17:48 It's because I've seen, for instance, in the UFC and MMA, when in the very early days, it was really unfeasible for people to be professional MMA athletes. And as soon as sponsors came in and you had that sustainability, the level of athleticism and training and competency just went completely through the roof. Is there something similar in climbing? I mean, do you feel, how do you feel about the so-called climbing industry? I mean, I think it's, I think it's great. I mean, there is obviously criticism. I mean, you can find stuff online from, you can always find traditionalists and stuff who are like, this isn't the way it was when I grew up. So I don't think it should be this way. We're like, Oh, I feel like it's corrupting the art of climbing or whatever else, you know,

Starting point is 00:18:34 the, the having corporate money coming into the climbing world is, is tainting the, the artistic experience. I mean, whatever. I mean, you know, you can find criticism for it. Um, I think it's great. I mean, obviously since I'm making a living from it and I'm able to go climbing all the time, I'm very content with the whole situation. But mostly, I just feel like it's sort of a natural outgrowth. Climbing gyms are becoming much more popular because people enjoy climbing. If people are into it and the industry is making money, then power to it. Well, it also strikes me as not a self-fulfilling prophecy but a virtuous

Starting point is 00:19:05 cycle in so much as the more people see your exploits sharma people of that caliber the more they're inspired to try climbing the better the gyms do the more actually i don't i do not think that's well that might be true a little bit but um i honestly think that part of it is just having the facilities like the more good gyms there are in in urban centers the more people just wind up trying it with their friends or whatever you know when you have like a nice bouldering gym next to a college campus like everybody tries it because it's fun it's sociable everybody has a good time and i feel like that sort of like grows the sport yeah so the supply helps create the demand yeah to some extent but i really doubt that any particular climbing film can be

Starting point is 00:19:45 responsible for like growing the whole industry you know it has more to do with tons of people like going to gyms and trying it and enjoying it and going more often yeah i guess it uh it depends a lot on a multitude of factors i mean with not to belabor the point or the comparison to the MMA world, but like the ultimate fighter was kind of the breakthrough for them and then led to a lot of, uh, Jim's opening. Yeah. The climbing has never had anything quite that.

Starting point is 00:20:14 No, totally. Like I don't follow fighting at all, but I've even heard of ultimate fighter and that kind of stuff. And so I don't think climbing has really had that, you know, there's no like big hit reality TV climbing show, you know? No, though actually there, there have actually there have been uh pitches with that kind of stuff though

Starting point is 00:20:29 which are pretty comical i'd love to see the actual it's aliens meets bouldering or like no there was an ultimate solo thing they got like pitched to me once and i was like dude you can't just take random people off the street and like train them how to solo for six weeks and then just like set them off of a big wall it's like you know yeah i was like you may as well just have gladiators fighting lions in the pit you know it's like like people will literally die on your television show like you you don't want people dying on tv like no no no that's exactly what we want well i was like i was like are you guys kidding you know because you have to ensure the show and everything like no one's gonna make this because like half your contestants are going to die straight up.

Starting point is 00:21:07 That's so messed up. Yeah, we'll have some beer sometime and talk about exploits in television. But when you are getting ready to climb something that is going to be challenging, I'm not saying like a first descent or something like that, but really anything that you're expecting to be reasonably challenging. What does your self-talk sound like? Do you have any sort of prep, anything you ritualistically say to yourself before you get going? No, I don't really, I don't self-talk like that. But normally if I'm planning on doing something challenging, i spend the time sort of visualizing what the experience will feel like and what the individual section so i mean with climbing there's a there's a component to it just memorizing the actual moves so i'll

Starting point is 00:21:54 think through the sequences and make sure that i remember like which foot to move in which order and like how to do everything and then particularly if it's a free solo or something if i'm climbing ropeless then i'll think through what it'll feel like to be in certain positions. Because some kinds of movements are insecure. And so they're just like kind of scarier than other types of moves. And so it's important to me to sort of think through how that all feel when I'm up there. So that when I'm doing it, I don't suddenly be like, oh my God, this is really scary. You know, like I know that it's supposed to be scary.

Starting point is 00:22:22 I know that's going to be the move. I know what it's going to feel like. And I just that it's supposed to be scary. I know that's going to be the move. I know what it's going to feel like. And I just do it. So you rehearse the fear in a sense, or rehearse the sensation, one type of which could be fear. Yeah. And I think through, you know, how airy certain positions will feel. Cause sometimes you can be all spread out with like the void below you. And you're just like, wow, this is like quite the, quite the air around me. And so it's good to have like thought about that basically to think through all potential things beforehand. So that when you're up there, there's no unexpected thing that happens.

Starting point is 00:22:47 We were talking earlier about this odd-looking fellow, the white bust over on my counter, who is, for those of you who don't have a visual, is Seneca the Younger, which was a gift. And of course, those of you who listen to this podcast a lot know that I'm somewhat obsessed, compelled to read a lot of Stoic philosophy and Marcus Aurelius and so on. How would you describe your... If you had to take a stab at it, I know this is a hard question, but you're just like general. How does your philosophy or philosophies of life and living differ from most people? I don't know. I mean, I've never really thought of any comprehensive life philosophy or anything. You know, I don't feel like I have a particular set of principles that I live by, though, you know, I suppose I'm pretty minimalistic and, you know, I'm leading a fairly simple life. And I mean, I guess that's basically how I'm, how I live. I don't know. What are the benefits of living simply to you aside from the ease of travel? But I would imagine

Starting point is 00:23:52 at this point you could probably travel reasonably easily. Well, no, I mean, that's kind of it is that, um, yeah, just the ease of living, you know, basically it just cuts away everything except for what I want to be. I mean, cause my, my goal is basically to climb as much as I can. And that's what I enjoy most in life is climbing. And so everything else, to some extent, is a distraction from that. And so, you know, I basically just cut away at what I don't need. So I heard a story, and this was like a friend of a friend of a friend relaying something they had heard.

Starting point is 00:24:21 So we'll see where this is. Yeah, it's like telephone. Yeah, exactly. So who knows yeah but they they told this story about you free climbing and this is free soloing probably i'm sorry yeah that's right free soloing uh a big wall where at some point there were some people resting i don't know if they were in a how do you say a bivouac uh portaledge maybe portaledge the camp thing that you're right yeah and uh and you kind of ducked your head around the corner like hey can i borrow some chalk and they're like uh sure and gave you some chalk and then you're like thanks great and just kind of like

Starting point is 00:24:53 continued on your merry way did has anything like that happened or is that just yeah no so that is a real story sort of with some details okay can you can you tell the story yeah so i was um i was soloing the triple link up in yosemite. So I wasn't free soloing, but I was climbing by myself. So I had a little bit of, I had a small rope and I had some gear on me. I got it. I guess this is an important distinction. So, okay, got it. So solo climbing is just climbing by yourself. Yeah. Free soloing means that you're free climbing and free climbing means using your hands and your feet and not using gear. And so if you're free soloing, it means that you're climbing with just your hands and your feet by yourself, like no gear and no anything. Got it. But so in this case, I was

Starting point is 00:25:27 soloing. So I had gear and I was soloing the three largest faces in Yosemite in a day. So Mount Watkins, which is like way up at one end of the Valley. And I'd done that first. And then I came down and I was climbing the nose of El Capitan through the night and, uh, in the logistical shuffle and the darkness, whatever, I forgot my chalk bag. So I basically climbed the first thousand feet of the nose without a chalk bag and was like, which is kind of a bummer. I mean, that's definitely not ideal. It had actually rained a bunch the day before. So like the bottom pitches, which are lower angle were like fairly wet. And I was like constantly trying to dry my hands on my shirt and it was just all kind of scary. And so I got up to this ledge called

Starting point is 00:26:01 bolt tower, which is, you know, about a quarter of the way up the wall. And, uh, there were two groups bivvied on the ledge and two of the people were just like passed out and the other two guys were like cooking dinner and so i pop over the one side of the ledge and i'm like uh hey so could i borrow a chalk bag and uh they were like yeah i mean i guess like no problem you know it's uh one of the guys gave me this chalk bag it was like completely full of like fresh chalk i was so stoked and then i took his chalk bag and then i climbed to the top of the route and uh and then i left it like tied to the tree on top and the guy got it back i met him again later and uh and yeah so they got their chalk bag back like four days later do you have a particular type of chalk that you like no but, but I mean, any chalk feels amazing when you've just climbed a thousand feet of wall. Your hands are wet. Wet, you know. Yeah. What is, what's a story, and I realize a lot

Starting point is 00:26:53 of these questions are kind of out there, but what is a story that your, your family or parents like to tell about you? Oh, I don't know. I'll buy us some time and let you think about it so so one that my parents like to tell about me is i was uh completely infatuated with the incredible hulk when lou frigno was doing the tv show so i'd run into the into the living room when my parents had company and rip the cushions off of the couch and throw them on the floor and yell like the hulk and run out so my mom feels like that's in some way represents like me and my totality. Yeah. Which I don't know how to take, but that's a story that she likes to tell. Uh, anything come to mind? Um, I don't know. I mean, mom likes to talk about how I always

Starting point is 00:27:35 climbed on everything as a kid and how it was such a wild child. But, um, though I honestly feel like she's kind of like, she talks about that more now that I am an actual professional climber. You know, I feel like had I become an engineer, she would instead focus on stories of like how I always love to play with blocks or do whatever. But, and my whole family would always tell stories about how I was such a picky eater and how I'd only eat, you know, Cheerios and bread and like whatever. Just things, I don't know. What do you, we were talking just during the sound check about eating uh and i'd like to talk about that for a second uh what does your typical breakfast look like um generally well so i've kind of gone through two main phases i guess i

Starting point is 00:28:19 used to always do like an egg scramble for breakfast and now i pretty much always do some kind of muesli concoction with like fruit and some kind of alternative milk stuff and like flaxseed hemp parts, like random things, sort of like a wholesome muesli mix. And then I asked you about lunch and what do you have to say about lunch? Yeah. So I, I rarely eat a lunch per se. I pretty much always just snack for the several hours in the middle of the day. Um, normally like a couple pieces of fruit, maybe some nut butter, um, you know, a bar or two or something. And then I eat like a big dinner. I normally do a pretty big breakfast and a pretty big dinner and then just snack throughout the rest. Why, why no lunch? Well, the no lunch thing makes sense when you're up on a wall for the day

Starting point is 00:28:57 or if you're like out at the cliff or it's just like a bunch of work to take a real meal. So I wasn't going to get to this immediately uh this this early this is early for me i'm always premature so what was that i said i'm always premature it's like my friend when he drives we call him a premature accelerator but that's that's that's a whole separate story uh so this is from a friend of mine who's an elite athlete very high level female athlete i'll ask her main question first actually no i'll ask the related question first so the food real hassle so the question was what happens if you have to take a shit on the side of a mountain meaning oh like i've got so many good pooping stories okay we can do a whole podcast on poop stories well let's let's give a preview. That could be the round two.

Starting point is 00:29:46 But yeah, I was wondering, as soon as she brought it up, I was like, holy shit, yeah. Should I go straight to my most epic dump story? Yes, please. Okay. So two years ago, I guess, I was freesolving this route called Romantic Warrior and the Needles, which is actually a super- Romantic Warrior? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:30:02 It's actually one of the most striking granite walls in the world. this is totally beautiful route on this crazy spire it's it's an amazing amazing route it's something i thought about for a long time and it's actually quite difficult and so i was going up there to free solo it was like kind of a big thing for me and i was way stoked and typically when you get to the base of a free solo like that if if you have to poop at all like you have to go like then you know when you're at the base but i was like i don't know it just didn't quite happen and uh and so i started climbing and that route the first 400 feet or so or like pretty moderate terrain and then it goes into like some pretty extreme terrain for the second 400 feet and uh so basically right before i got into the real stuff i was like oh now i really need to shit i was like oh man you know

Starting point is 00:30:44 basically i was like oh it's about to get real up here. And like, now I need to poop. And so I basically hand traversed on this little feature. So I traversed off the route because it's really poor form to like shit on a route because obviously people have to climb that. So hand traverse meaning you're just traveling horizontally. Yeah. So I sort of just like meandered to the left 20 feet. And this flake that I was hanging off it was like fairly big and i had a backpack on me with like my shoes and some water and some food random things that you kind of need

Starting point is 00:31:08 for you know going up a long route like that and it had some tp in it so i like shoved my backpack into the flake and i just like hung there off of it and basically just took a poop like straight off the wall just like while hanging and then you know like wipe tidied up is all good and then like put my backpack on traverse back in and then finish the route. It's like, so no, I just want to really dig into this for a second. So I'm just like envisioning, I had bats. Uh, I grew up on long Island. We'd have these bats that would like crap off of the shingles and we'd be like, where the hell is that from? And then we'd see the bat kind of perched there. So what's the technique here? So you, you, you're hanging off this flake. You have your backpack shoved into it.

Starting point is 00:31:47 Like legs straight and straddled. Are you in like a crouched position? Sort of like a semi-seated crouch, you know, pushing away from the wall a bit. And are you going like out of the bottom of your shorts? Are you pulling them down? I'm pulling my shorts down just like normal. Like usual. Yeah. Okay.

Starting point is 00:31:58 Yeah. I mean, it was actually totally easy. I mean, I'd call it a space dump. Space dump. Yeah. A climber would call it like a perfect space dump. It's just like taking a dump in a free space and it just disappears so what are other challenges of climbing on big walls aside from the yeah don't let that give the

Starting point is 00:32:16 wrong idea because normally you try to like poo in better places you know preferably a toilet like or at least like burying it properly at the base or you know like being being responsible about it but like from time to time that happens you know things happen yeah what are other what are other issues that crop up that people might not think of when you're doing these climbs well people frequently ask like what do you do if you have to pee or whatever because they think i mean i think that people have the wrong impression that free-souling a big wall is just like holding on for dear life the whole time but they're actually all kinds of little ledges like even a ledge the size of say a pizza tray is big enough for you to stand there comfortably no hands right and so i mean that's an easy place that you could take a leak you could um you know take a sip of water you can eat a

Starting point is 00:32:55 little bar and anytime i'm on a ledge say the size of a sofa cushion or something i'll basically pop my shoes off and relax my toes for a minute because climbing shoes are quite tight so like your feet start to cramp after a while i mean, I mean, there's a lot more self-care going on up there than people might think. Do you carry for that self-care? Do you carry any other tools? Any like, I don't know, nail clippers, any particular type of like, I'm just making this up like lotion or anything. Not that you don't want that on your hands, but no, no. I mean, I normally just take food, water, and then a pair of say a pro shoes. I can walk down afterward. What type of food do you bring with you? Um, typically I just bring, you know, sports bar

Starting point is 00:33:33 type sports bar. I'm all, I'm obsessed with details. Um, I don't know. I mean, um, I mean, I used to be sponsored by cliff bar. So I do like, you know, shop blocks and Z bars. I love the Z bars, the little kids cliff bars, mostly because they're kind of half size they're like 100 calories and they basically taste like a cookie so i can like always eat them um because they're just kind of delicious but now i've been kind of getting more into like nut butters and things though the typical free solos are short enough that you don't really need like a full hearty meal you can kind of get by with like a pack of shot blocks or like one little one sugary thing to just kind of keep you going. It's on like bigger climbs like alpinism or something where you have to take like a lot of, you know, fatty, like higher calorie food.

Starting point is 00:34:14 So this is actually, I will be the first person to admit that I actually do not know what alpinism is. But one of the questions that came up is from Kelly O'Shea, one of my listeners, is ask Alex about his recent achievements in alpinism. What was it like as someone who's so accomplished in one discipline to be a beginner again in another type of climbing? Can you explain what alpinism is and then how you would answer that? So alpinism, I guess, is basically answer that so alpinism i guess is basically just climbing bigger mountains or big snowy or icy faces or you know granite walls that are also covered with ice i don't know i mean alpinism is just climbing the things that you see in posters where you're like whoa that looks like a big scary mountain you know because i've always been more of

Starting point is 00:34:59 a rock climber which is climbing like vertical dry granite walls um alpinism is like when you do that in more remote places and like you hike across a glacier you get to the bottom of some huge icy face and then you do all kinds of shenanigans to get to the top but so what uh what mistakes did you make if anyone first starting that type of climbing uh well so basically i mean i haven't done a lot of alpinism and i still i can't ice climb at all i've like never led a pitch of ice but i've actually done a handful of things that are considered like noteworthy alpine ascents now but it has more to do with choosing like the right partners because i go with somebody who's like way more experienced than me or just someone who has much more of a plan and then it's sort of about the division of labor you know like

Starting point is 00:35:43 someone who's good at one thing and then I'm obviously good at the rock climbing component of it. So even though I'm a total beginner with the ice climbing and with all the logistics and the camping and like dealing with living on a glacier, all that kind of stuff is totally new to me, but at least I know how to do the climbing pretty well. So then, you know, you just find the teammate who, who compliments the skillset well, and then you can go out and climb all kinds of crazy things. Now, I probably mentioned this in the intro, but just in case I haven't for people listening, I'm sitting in my living room. We are sitting in my living room and we have a whole like phalanx of people surrounding us because we're filming this. Now, one of the people here has actually

Starting point is 00:36:21 been on the podcast before. So Jimmy Chin, how does your climbing differ most from his? Well, Jimmy Chin is predominantly a photographer. So his climbing, it's not really climbing. It's mostly just going up behind people to take pictures, but I'm talking to you, Jimmy. No, I mean, but so Jimmy has been, Jimmy has been classically more of a big wall climber. Um, I mean, Jimmy's never been the best free climber. He's not doing one-arm pull-ups on small edges, and he's not climbing the hardest sport routes, but he's always been able to get to the top of big walls and then been able to do that in the mountains with ice and snow and bad conditions. And so the climbing that he's been good at has been farther along along the spectrum of, you know, big and bad-ass than the type of climbing, you know, cause I grew up in a climbing

Starting point is 00:37:07 gym, um, and then sort of gradually extended to like big rock walls, you know, and he sort of started on big rock walls and then extended into the bigger mountains. Who were, when you were getting started, just thinking back to say the first 10 years of climbing, how old are you now? I'm 30. 30. Getting old. I thought I heard your joints creaking. Yeah, I know. I feel like it right now. Who were some of your early mentors in climbing? I didn't have a lot of mentors. I mean, I kind of just grew up in the gym, just climbing a lot. So I didn't really have mentors. I mean, I definitely had people that I looked up to and people in the climbing community, but that's just sort of the typical

Starting point is 00:37:44 hero worshipy style. You know, like Peter Croft was a really prominent soloist from this generation before me, and I was like, oh, Peter's the man. And, you know, Chris Sharma obviously was like setting all kinds of world record type things when I was a kid, and I was just like, oh, he's so amazing. And Tommy Caldwell was also a big hero, which has been cool because now I get to climb with Tommy as an adult, and I'm just like, oh, that's pretty pretty cool i'm still always excited to climb with tommy but what uh if you were so i'm going to take like 20 different questions and hopefully wrap it into one question

Starting point is 00:38:15 and we can we can take some time on this but if you were taking a let's just say an athletic rope beginner so someone who's never done any climbing, but has a decent athletic background, right? 20, 25 years old. And they want to get really good at, say, bouldering. And you are going to kind of lay out, give them advice or train them for like eight weeks. What would you have them do?

Starting point is 00:38:44 What would that look like? I don't know. I'd have to think about it a lot because I mean, particularly with bouldering, it's sort of, it's interesting. So adults are more prone to injury than, than kids to some extent. And especially with, with something like bouldering where, um, it's really heavy on fingers. Like basically it's really easy to injure your fingers and hands because all the connective tissue and like tendons and ligaments take a very, very long time to strengthen. So, I mean, there's no real shortcut to,

Starting point is 00:39:07 to avoiding tendon injury. Whereas an adult, like a 25 year old male would gain muscle mass super fast. So really quickly they could exceed the capacity of their tendons and then basically just rip their tendons out of their arms, you know? And so it's like one of those things where, I mean,

Starting point is 00:39:22 if I was trying to train somebody to be a good rock climber, I would focus on, on movement and technique and footwork and all those kinds of things. But if somebody was like in eight weeks, I have to be able to boulder like a certain difficulty level. I'd be like, well, I mean, just start like training your fingers and hope that you don't get injured. But like, obviously that's not a sustainable, like if you're trying to be a good climber, that's not the way to do it. It's better to start with like the foundation. So if let's talk about the, the footwork and technique then, because I've,

Starting point is 00:39:46 we've, I mean, you've been to a ton of climbing gyms. I've been to mission clubs. I'm not a good climber. I would not say, uh, but I can also recognize,

Starting point is 00:39:56 but not dissect when I see good climbing versus bad climbing, right? Where people are just like shaking like a leaf and using all arm strength. Yeah. Uh, what, what types of advice would you give someone who wanted to do it the right way but they're like all right i just i want to focus on the right things what should i really focus on and i would say the right things are our movement and technique and so like how you move over the rock has nothing to do with how well you can hold on or like how hard you pull it has to do with you know knowing where your

Starting point is 00:40:24 center of mass is and like being able to move your body around in the right way so that you can stay balanced over your feet and you can move yourself upward with your feet. Uh, how do you conserve energy when you're climbing? I mean, leaving out the, the, the pizza sized pizza box and so on. Um, no, I mean, the main ways to save energy are to keep keep your weight on your feet which is kind of the same thing to stay balanced over your feet so that all as much weight as possible is on your feet so you're just standing and then to keep your arms straight or to keep all your limbs straight so that you're hanging off your skeleton more than

Starting point is 00:40:56 your muscles because if you have your arms bent at 90 degrees like a t-rex or something then you're like totally engaging your bicep and your lats and you're getting tired if you have your arms totally straight then you're only engaging just as much muscle as you need to keep your fingers holding on but everything else is relaxed because you're hanging off your bones so i want to underscore something you said a little earlier because uh a lot of sort of aggressive dudes listening to this podcast uh is aggressive dudes aggressive dudes meaning they're like eight weeks let's pout like slap on a ton of muscle on my arms and like biceps and lats and and go crush this bouldering wall but you made a really important point uh several one of which was that if you if you pack on a lot of muscular strength you can outstrip your sort of tendon and connect

Starting point is 00:41:39 really quickly well particularly as an adult i mean if you start climbing as a kid then then you gain muscle at the sort of the same, you know, that's why, yeah. You're in like hormonal nirvana as a adolescent. And this is something that also a guy named Chris Summer, Coach Summer, underscored for me. He is the former national gymnastics team coach for men's. And he was saying that unlike many other sports like it's contraindicated to say use anabolics in gymnastics because all you're going to do is end up rupturing a tendon or a ligament for the same totally yeah totally the same as climbing uh what do you worry about when you go to sleep at night if anything like when you worry before you

Starting point is 00:42:22 go to bed what kind of stuff do you worry about? Um, I was like, that's a quick one 80. Yeah. This is going to be full of all sorts of weird 90 degree turns. Yeah. Keep listeners on their toes, you know, so that people scrubbing through the podcast get confused. I don't want any storyline that they try to skip ahead. Yeah, exactly. Um, uh, no, I don't really worry that much when I, when I sleep. I mean, the stuff that I get stressed about is all like real life stuff with, you know, dealing with email and responding to calls and like, you know, hustling. And I don't know, like doing my taxes, you know, like all the stuff that I'm just like not good at.

Starting point is 00:42:54 So let me ask, this is like partially me turning this into a therapy session for myself. Should I just lay down? Oh, for yourself. How was I going to lay on this over here? I'm getting all psyched. That's usually my second day of podcast approach. Just relax. The question I'd like to ask is,

Starting point is 00:43:12 when is enough enough to fuel the climbing? Meaning, what do you hope to do with the additional money you make above and beyond what you need to sustain climbing often? Because it's not, at a certain point, you surpass that pretty easily. But you're certainly keeping busy. You have a number of sponsors. You're tremendously good at what you do. So what do you want to do with that? I mean, that is interesting because, uh, and I've, you know, thought about this a lot over the years because for say the first five or seven years that

Starting point is 00:43:50 I'm was living in the van, my overhead is probably 10 to 15 K a year. And I now obviously make a lot more than that through sponsorship and just doing like one commercial or something, you know, I can make many times what I need to, to live in the road for a long time. And so, you know, part of that, I mean, I'm obviously saving for retirement and things like that, trying to be responsible with money. But, um, and then I've also started a foundation where I've been giving probably a third of my income now to, to, uh, environmental nonprofit things. Um, but yeah, basically, I mean, honestly, the foundation was kind of my, my response to that kind of stuff. Cause I was like, I just don't need to make more. But the thing is is it is actually kind of fun to make more you know it's like fun

Starting point is 00:44:27 to do the random opportunities like to do a commercial project or to like give some talk to some interesting company or you know whatever i mean it's kind of fun to be able to hustle out money like that but then it's like equally fun to be able to you know use that money for something positive which is you know through the foundation basically what is the name of the foundation no it's just the Honnold Foundation. Easy to remember. Yeah, it's kind of douchey, but it kind of made sense. I don't think it's douchey.

Starting point is 00:44:51 I think it's easy to remember and just sensible. So the reason I was asking about the what do you worry about before you go to bed is because there are people... I have never seen so many questions about brass balls in my life when I've polled my readers for questions for you. And we've never had an in-depth conversation. But I know a lot of people say here in Silicon Valley

Starting point is 00:45:17 or other folks who give the appearance of being invincible. They never worry about anything. And it can be kind of demoralizing for people who feel like they need to be superhuman to achieve good things. And so what I always like to ask people who are spectacularly good at what they do or dig into is what challenges they've had or what they struggle with. So for those people who say like, that guy's got everything together. He doesn't worry about anything. I'm not like that. What are some of the challenges or dark periods that you've had, if any, come to mind? And if the answer is none, then that's a fine answer too.

Starting point is 00:45:53 I'm invincible. No, I mean, it's funny you ask me. Just in the last two months, I've had two sort of random injuries that are like super annoying, which I haven't really had any kind of injuries climbing in in years or like ever really um but like last month and in april i got a i got dropped by my partner so i got lowered off the end of a rope and like compression fracture to vertebrae my back and i was ultra bruised and so my hips and butt and stuff you know my back's been really tight i've been kind of achy um though that worked out kind of okay it was two days before i was supposed to fly to China for a climbing expedition.

Starting point is 00:46:26 And, um, and so I was like, well, all the travel time will sort of be like good rest, I guess. And then, you know, I got there and I was like a creaky old man, but I actually did manage to climb the thing that we were hoping to do. And it all kind of worked out okay in the end. But you know, there was definitely, it was a little touch and go. Cause I was like, at first, I mean, when I was going to the airport to fly to China, I couldn't even lift my duffel bags.

Starting point is 00:46:44 Cause like my back was too sore and everything was too, too creaky. Um, and then actually just like two days ago, I took a weird fall. Well, actually I took a totally normal fall, but I somehow tweaked my hand in a weird way. And, um, actually, I mean, you can probably see the back of my right hand. Yeah. I was looking at that. Yeah. My right hand is like all messed up right now. And, um, and you know, I mean, there's definitely a lot of uncertainty there. Cause I mean, I can't even like click the power button on my phone without like pretty serious pain with my right hand right now. But, you know, it's been two days and it's kind of improving and, you know, we'll see

Starting point is 00:47:13 like, and the thing is the forecast is rain for the next three days. So I'm like, well, I'll have three days to rest and then, you know, maybe it'll be okay or, or maybe it'll be good enough that I can at least work towards some of my other goals for the season. And then by the time it's recovered and say another two weeks, I'll be good enough that I can at least work towards some of my other goals for the season. And then by the time it's recovered and say another two weeks, I'll be like ready to, you know, do some of the things I want to do. I mean, we'll see. Which is kind of how China went. I was like, well, you know, I can at least do all the work towards what I'm trying to climb while I'm crippled. And then by the time it was ready,

Starting point is 00:47:41 by the time I was ready to actually try to climb the route, I was like, oh, I'm actually feeling good enough by now. And I was able to do it. Do you ever get depressed or have you ever been depressed? Yeah. Yeah. No, I think, I mean, I think I kind of gravitate towards being a somewhat depressed person. I don't know. Or I don't know, actually.

Starting point is 00:48:02 Or I'm just sort of like flat. We'll stick into that first part and we'll see what we come up with. So why do you say that you think... I definitely oscillate to fairly high highs and reasonably low lows. And I've been trying to take the edge, like take the top and bottom 20% off of those to make it a little more manageable. But why do you say that you might tend towards? See, I feel like I don't have any of the highs and I kind of go from,

Starting point is 00:48:31 from level to like slightly below level to back. You know, it's all like, it's all pretty flat. I feel like, and does that, when you, when you dip, does that, is that triggered by certain types of things or is it just a cycle that comes with time um i don't know yeah maybe it's just a cycle of time it's like sometimes you just feel useless you know but i mean in some ways though i embrace that as part of the process because you kind of have to feel like a worthless piece of poop in order to get motivated enough to go do something that makes you feel less useless but then but then ultimately that still doesn't make you feel any less useless so then you just have to keep doing more so that's perfect segue to the uh the the main question from the from the person who asked what you do when you have

Starting point is 00:49:17 to take a shit on the side of a wall is there or do you ever see a point where you'll feel that you've accomplished all that you can in climbing? Or is there always a what's next? I think there's definitely, you know, I can definitely see a point where I wouldn't continue pushing. I mean, there is always a what's next in climbing. And, you know, I mean, you can always try to improve in some way or like go to new places or do first ascents. I mean, you know, there is always something new to be done in climbing. Though I can definitely see personally a point at which I'm like, okay, I'm satisfied. I've done what I need to do.

Starting point is 00:49:56 We'll see. Though I will say climbing more than most other professional sports has quite a long career span because of that. Because there's always more you can do with trips and expeditions and first ascents. And, and there's a really creative process to it. You can always like come up with interesting challenges and just sort of like do things that nobody's thought up before. And so, you know, I mean, you know, they're professional climbers in their fifties that are still like getting after it like that. When, uh, when you are about to do a big climb or just a very strenuous, um, climbing workout, I'm not even sure if you do that anymore. Maybe you could talk about it, but how do you warm up

Starting point is 00:50:32 if you do? Um, I always warm up pretty, pretty gently when I can just, so just, um, I mean, it depends on where I am. If I'm in a climbing gym, um, then I just warm up on a handful of easy routes and then, and then start the harder ones later. Um, I mean for the last month and a half I've been stretching like every morning and every night because of the back thing and because of how tight my hips and everything feel right now. Um, so doing some stretching and some like light exercise to sort of warm up and then, yeah.

Starting point is 00:50:59 When you can't climb, uh, let's just say you're, you're on the road. What type of exercise do you do? I mean, I try say you're, you're on the road. What type of exercise do you do? I mean, I try to still climb when I'm on the road. Um, I mean, there's just so many gyms in different places that you can always do that. But, um, if there's absolutely nothing, then maybe I'll run or I'll go hiking or it kind of depends on what opportunities there are. I mean, I'd rather go mountain biking than, than other things, or I'd rather go skiing if, if that's available. Um, but I mean, as long as I'm getting some kind of exercise, I mean, even like standup paddleboarding or something, I'm like, well, at least I did something today. You know, a lot of recreational climbers deal with,

Starting point is 00:51:32 as we've touched on earlier, sort of, uh, hand issues, wrist issues, elbow issues. Uh, I'm, I mean, you saw me when, when, when you guys arrived today, I had myself wrapped up in this stuff called voodoo floss. Cause I, my elbows are killing me. Uh, and how have you seen climbers, uh, keep their elbows and joints in good health? Is there a, there any particular approaches that you think have, I don't think there's like an easy answer to that kind of stuff. I mean, I had some elbow issues for a while. Um, now it's like eight or nine years ago or something, but I had sort of like chronic elbow pain on and off for almost a year, but then eventually it just sort of resolved. And I mean, I think the best way with that kind of stuff is sort of prevention, you know, like maintain antagonist muscles and

Starting point is 00:52:16 just sort of like stay well balanced and everything. And just, and if you start to feel achiness or pain coming on then to, you know, take the appropriate rest or, or maybe change your training to some extent, or basically just not to let it become a big problem. Cause I feel like all those overuse injuries, like once they're a problem, then it's like really hard to deal with. So the antagonistic muscles, meaning if you're doing a lot of say like flexor work, kind of gripping that you're going to use like finger extension and wrist extension and so on. Yeah. Though i've actually never done the whole extension stuff with with hands i don't have but to me um antagonist muscles are more like doing push-ups or random you know or tricep pulls or things to balance out your arms a bit since you do so much pulling like to be able to do some kind of pushing sometimes

Starting point is 00:52:57 what's in your mind separates a great climber from a good climber and you can answer that however you want um i don't know i mean yeah i don't know okay i'll ask it i'll ask it differently who impresses you right now as a climber just one of i'm sure many but uh this kid mark andre leclerc mark andre leclerc the student of this canadian guy um he's been doing like all kinds of crazy alpine soloing you're just like whoa what makes it so crazy i don't know it just it just like kind of blows my mind a bit and it's funny because i actually don't ice climb or or alpine climb at a high enough level to quite understand what he's doing even like so it's hard

Starting point is 00:53:39 for me to probably appreciate just how hard it is but then a lot of my friends who do climb at a very high level are like whoa that's messed up i'm just like yeah respect like i don't know and for those people who want to see visuals on this stuff we'll we'll grab some video and uh links to the one of the interesting things with mark andre is that i don't know if there like is video of most of the stuff he's doing yeah i mean he's just going out and doing all this crazy stuff okay you're just like it's, it's pretty full on. Well, I will attempt. Jimmy, you know this guy?

Starting point is 00:54:10 You know of him? What in your mind makes him impressive as an alpinist or alpine climber? I bet Jimmy hasn't even heard any of the stuff he's recently been doing in the Rockies. It's pretty crazy. Yeah, I mean, the stuff he just sold in the Emperor Face. Yeah, it's like so crazy it's just i'll repeat for you guys listening and the level is like extraordinarily high and i think that in climbing there's like people who kind of call you know every generation

Starting point is 00:54:38 there's an evolution progression of the sport and every so often there's people who come in that like jump generation i feel like he's kind of in that space doing things that people aren't considering so he's his ears so just to try to paraphrase here so his commitment level is just next level and he's sort of pushing everyone else to consider things that haven't been done usually like all the time climbing that level is a back and in the middle based on how much experience you have and he's very young though he does have a ton of experience really i mean you know because he's just done so much of it yeah he's been doing like a but i mean for like you know normally yeah so the commitment level meaning pushing the envelope is usually predicated on experience level therefore you see the some of

Starting point is 00:55:24 the older guys doing it but not not even you see the, some of the older guys doing it, but not, not even, you know, because they're all like, that's messed up on the, on the, uh,

Starting point is 00:55:35 on the danger side. Um, this is a question from Paul Jones. So being the first sponsored superstar free soloing, do you ever have concerns about the influence that you could have on young climbers who may not put in the mileage and the training to get to a point where they can do it as safely? Yeah. Well, so there are two things. One, I'm definitely not the first superstar or whatever, because there are a bunch of European climbers who are well known for soloing who've, you know, come before me.

Starting point is 00:56:05 And even in the U S somebody like John Backer was like super well known in the 1970s and he was on all kinds of TV programs that might not have been sponsorship in the same way that we have today. Cause the industry wasn't the same, but he was definitely on, you know, like the evening news and all kinds of crazy things, free soloing. So, um, I mean, I'm definitely not the first by any means. Um, and, and it's interesting because,'s interesting because I was obviously a kid who was influenced by that kind of stuff. But then I've gone through years and years of practice or whatever.

Starting point is 00:56:34 I kind of feel like soloing is a bit almost like self-regulating in a way. Because the thing is that anybody can watch a video and be like, I want to do that. But then as soon as they climb 15 or 20 feet off the ground, they start to have a very frank discussion with themselves. Like, do I really want to do this? You know, like it suddenly feels very scary. Because, I mean, people have like an overwhelming fear response to the prospect of falling to their death. You know, and so. I have an overwhelming fear response just watching videos of you.

Starting point is 00:56:58 Well, yeah, exactly. I mean, that's kind of the thing is that hardly anybody sees that film and is like, oh, I'm going to go do that. And then even if they do, once they start trying to do it, I mean, it is actually quite difficult to climb these walls. So it's not as if some kid can just like wander up and do that. And even if they are strong enough or like well-versed enough in climbing to climb a little bit, then they're also like, wow, this is really, really scary. I didn't expect it to be this scary. And then they just climb back down. So, I mean, you know, I've thought a little bit about influencing kids and

Starting point is 00:57:26 like you know wondering if that's a bad thing but in general like you just don't really see copycat things like you see it a lot more in gravity assisted sports or like action sports so like kayaking or skiing or something where like anyone can just line up at the top of a cliff and be like i'm gonna huck this cliff and i'm gonna stick it and it's gonna be sick you know and then once they sort of commit and start going it's like they're going off the cliff one way or another. They can start the music, but they can't turn it off. Yeah, exactly. But with climbing, it's like each move that you make upward

Starting point is 00:57:51 is like a decision that you're going to continue going upward. You have to decide over and over, like, I want to keep going. I want to keep going. I want to keep. And at a certain point, you're like, I don't really want to keep going. I think I want to go down. And then you're just like, mommy. And then like, yeah, I think I want to go down. And then you're just like, mommy, you know? And then like, yeah, I mean, have you ever hit that point when it was, let's just say,

Starting point is 00:58:10 oh, I started screaming for mommy. Well, yeah. It's from mommy or like hundreds of feet up and you're like, I don't want to keep doing this. Yeah, no, I've definitely had a bunch of times so long where I'm like, I'm not into this. I'm going down. And what happens then? Because I've, i've never seen footage

Starting point is 00:58:26 of you climbing down well the thing is yeah but that's kind of a practical thing is that if you have people they're filming with you it's like obviously you're doing something that you've rehearsed or or you know a lot about or it's like a you know it's a classic enough route that it's worthy to film on like you have all those epic misadventures on things that like aren't that well known that you know people aren't climbing all the time but no so i've had tons of experiences where um especially when i was younger i didn't really know how to read topos that well the little maps that show you like where a climbing route goes so i'd look at it and be like okay i think i'm climbing that big corner and then i'd

Starting point is 00:58:56 go up there and be like this isn't even the right route like what the heck am i doing and then i'd start like questing way to the left or right being like well maybe if i traverse 200 feet that way then i'll get to the real route and then you're like oh god what am i doing and then it all starts to go south you know uh and and then you would climb down in an instant well or i would like quest over to some other route and escape off quest owner is just a traverse yeah or or whatever you know there have been a couple routes where i've been like especially when i was younger when i was selling a route and i get up and all of a sudden I'm like, Oh, I'm on a bolted face, but this route isn't supposed to have bolts. And then I'm like, Oh no, I'm on the wrong route. And then you like look over and you see that the

Starting point is 00:59:31 real route you're supposed to be on is like a hundred meters to the right. And then you're like, I wonder what route I'm on. And then you're like, Oh, I hope it's not hard. And then you're something like shit. And then you start like pulling on the bolts, which is cheating. Um, and you're just like, whatever it takes to like get off this wall, you know? And so you're like pulling on bolts and stepping on bolts and like doing whatever, just like get to the bolts which is cheating um and you're just like whatever it takes to like get off this wall you know and so you're like pulling on bolts and stepping on bolts and like doing whatever just like get to the top and then later you're like oh i wish i knew how to read the guidebook uh now so this is this is a related question uh from drew cordova so there's a video that shows alex climbing l cap free solo where he said he was freaking out. No, so that's...

Starting point is 01:00:06 Incorrect? Well, there are all kinds of incorrect answers. I'm sure there's lots of incorrect. Yeah, just go on and I'll respond at the end. Where he's freaking out on the cliff face at one point. I'd like to know from his perspective what it takes to overcome that fear. Okay, so the video clip that he's referring to, I'm actually free soloing the face of Half Dome, which is a different wall. Yep. clip that he's referring to i'm actually free soloing the face of half dome which is a different wall yep um and that's actually complicated because it shows me standing on this ledge on

Starting point is 01:00:29 half dome like having a moment being really scared but we shot that film like a year after my actual free solo so i'd gone up there and soloed it by myself nobody around which is kind of the point of free soloing normally and then we'd gone back and filmed on it and when we filmed on it i walked out on that ledge and like had a moment where I was a little bit afraid and then like sorted myself out, turned around and climb back. But then they use the voiceover of me talking about the original experience when I've actually been free soloing at the year before, um, where I had like a much more significant moment on a section, a hundred feet higher, which is actually quite difficult climbing. Cause like walking across a ledge is never that scary. You know what I mean? Like in the grand

Starting point is 01:01:04 scheme of rock climbing, like when you're standing on a ledge like you're not scared um it just happened in that case because i was standing face out which is like a little off balance and a little scary and i was like whoa this isn't what i expected but it's not that big a thing but the actual experience up higher it was like one of those things where they caught this moment on film and it kind of went well with the voiceover yeah exactly and so it made for a great film and it definitely like shares the free solo experience pretty well it was one of the things at first i was like i was sort of annoyed that it's not the literal like this isn't what happened but the thing is like nobody's there when it actually happens so then it does share the experience pretty well so in

Starting point is 01:01:35 the actual half dome experience when it was scary even though like you mentioned earlier you've kind of rehearsed what it's going to feel like as you're going up this, this route. What do you, what do you, and not to belabor this point, but it's, it's, uh, it's something I'm fascinated by what's going through your head and how do you get through that particular half dome free solo? I actually hadn't rehearsed it that much. Really. Um, I'd sort of intentionally chosen not to rehearse the route very much. Cause I was like, Oh, that's going to take the adventure out of it i want to just go up there and do it um which in retrospect like wasn't the best idea but so uh yeah on half dome i didn't i hadn't memorized the sequences i didn't really know like exactly what i should do i just knew that i could do it i knew that i'd gone up there and i'd done it it

Starting point is 01:02:18 was fine and that i was able to um you know in retrospect i probably should have spent a little bit more time and so why i got so scared was i got up to a certain sequence and i basically like didn't want to trust a specific foothold and i was like oh this feels like my foot's gonna slip and i don't want to fall and then i tried to use some other feet but i was like oh this doesn't these are worse and you know so you're standing there hesitating being like what should i do what should i do and then you start to get all gripped like oh god what if i can't figure it out and like you're obviously getting more and more tired as you stand there your calves are getting pumped and you know yeah it's just it's traumatizing all right we're back

Starting point is 01:02:54 back in action so during the little break we were just talking about some some past lives and uh i was mentioning that i wanted to be a comic book penciler was an illustrator for a period of time paying expenses in college, and had this other weird side gig of bouncing, which was terrible because I was always the smallest guy as a bouncer. But what are the best and worst jobs that you had prior to climbing? I haven't really had that many jobs. I mean, I worked at the climbing gym as a kid, just cleaning the bathrooms and doing summer camp stuff with kids. And then I worked doing night

Starting point is 01:03:28 security at Berkeley for, for a semester that I was there. I mean, I was only at Berkeley for a year. And so for my second semester there, I was doing night security. I was basically just like walking around campus at night, getting paid to like look at buildings. But, uh, when you were at Berkeley, how did you decide to leave and what was that calculus like i mean hell yeah i mean i didn't i didn't decide to just drop out of berkeley it was more that i wasn't really happy there and then um my first year at berkeley i happened to get second at uh the national at nationals and so i got invited to the youth world cup um which was during what would have been my second fall semester and so i decided to take the semester off and then go do you know

Starting point is 01:04:11 youth worlds and then travel a bit and climb and do whatever um and also my father happened to die the summer after freshman year and he was part of the pressure for like going to school and not really pressure but he just sort of like expected the kids to go to college type thing. And then when he died, it also left life insurance money for my sister and I to finish school. And so, you know, that sort of allowed me to not, to not go back to school. And so, uh, yeah. And so it just kind of a combination of events just led me to take the semester off. And then I just like, you know, I've just taken the next 10 or no, like 20 semesters off since then. Were you, uh, close to your dad? Um, I, I was fairly close to my dad.

Starting point is 01:04:49 I mean, we weren't super close and like talking about things and like having, having deep chats, but he definitely invested a ton of time in me. You know, he took me to the climbing gym all the time. He would drive me all over the state to competitions. You know, he would take me camping, take me outside. Like, you know, we, we, we would be doing family camping trips in the mountains and stuff. Um, so I mean, he definitely put a ton of energy into me. Do you, and I apologize, I don't know your status. Do you want to get married, have kids?

Starting point is 01:05:17 Um, yeah, I think I'd like to have a family someday. So that, that brings up something that I've wanted to talk about and I hes to ask in part because I'm sure you've been asked a million times. But as it relates to mortality, let's just say that somebody came to you. This is kind of two in one. They said, I have $10 million and I'm going to dedicate it to you, but with the following condition. You have to predict how you're going to die accurately. And in that case, it goes to the cause of your choosing.

Starting point is 01:05:50 So what would you predict? And what cause would it go to? Um, that's interesting. And if I predict wrong, it just like doesn't go anywhere. Disappears. Poof.

Starting point is 01:06:01 Um, okay. Um, I don't know. I mean, I think I would predict, I don't know i mean i think i would predict i don't know i'm sort of 50 50 between natural causes just like dying of old age at some point or like climbing accident in the grander scheme of like not necessarily um you know like falling to my death which is what people think with the free-souling but just the random stuff like you

Starting point is 01:06:22 know repelling in the mountains or like being swept by an avalanche or like being hit by a random rock because there's a lot of just like random chance or not a lot but there is random chance involved with climbing and just the fact that i am out climbing all the time like it wouldn't be shocking if some random thing just happened to me like that um though i mean that's kind of the you know price price to play you know like if you're going to be in those places, like there is just a random, random risk associated with it. Um, so yeah, I mean, I think, and then the cause I would devote it to, um, I don't know, some probably environment, I mean, basically the stuff that I'm supporting through my foundation, which is, uh, you know, any kind of environmental project that like improved standard of living, which has mostly

Starting point is 01:07:00 been, uh, like off-grid solar projects or like energy access and stuff for off-grid solar and energy access for for whom or where for like rural communities i mean i've been supporting a group that does that kind of work in africa which you know makes sense because folks have no access to energy and we've also been supporting grid alternatives here in the states which does uh like home pv systems for like low-income families basically it's just a way to like help you know folks that need some help and it helps the environment obviously. And just when we took a break, you were talking about, we were talking, talking about books and the fact that you read mostly nonfiction, uh, what nonfiction

Starting point is 01:07:38 books have had a, had an impact on you or the, or do you particularly like? Um, I mean, in the last several years, I mean mean some of the most noteworthy books i've read i guess um like a people's history of the u.s the howard zinn book totally changed the way i look at politics um and then in the same way i read a book recently called sacred economics that like totally changed the way i looked at economics sacred economics yeah it was actually totally interesting i forget who the author was now though i didn't know i will we will look it up you should put in the show sacred economics was like kind of awesome it like yeah changed my world a bit what uh what's what are the what's the kind of basic thesis of sacred economics or is it um i don't know what the author would say

Starting point is 01:08:20 the thesis but um but the things that i took away from it were, well, I mean, basically he's sort of envisioning different systems for like a more just kind of economics, you know, cause I mean, current, our current style of capitalism basically just concentrates wealth in the hands of the already wealthy, you know? And that's kind of like by definition, the way interest rates work and stuff. Like if you have a lot, you'll just continue to make a lot. And that's not a fundamentally fair system because if you don't have anything, you continue having nothing. But if you already have more than you need, you just get more and more and more. And that's just like not the way the world should work. I don't think,

Starting point is 01:08:54 or at least I don't. And so one of the ideas that he throws out in the book, which I found totally interesting was like negative interest rates. So like, um, if you have a lot, it basically just like slowly dwindles away unless you're actively using it for things like investing it into things. So, you know, just by having a lot of money is not going to guarantee that you continue to have a lot of money unless you're allocating it in a certain way. Exactly. Unless you're using it wisely to like create value. But how do you assess risk, whether that's with, uh, and you, and you can focus on one of these, but whether that's on a particular climb, on a business venture,

Starting point is 01:09:32 a decision to do A versus B, how do you think about risk? I don't know. That's an interesting question because obviously I spend a ton of time thinking about risk, but I just don't have a clear cut. I don't have like a clear cut, you know, like I don't have clear metrics for like, oh, you know, this is, and because with the climbing so much of it comes down to a feeling of like, I feel a lot of fear when I think about that.

Starting point is 01:09:53 Obviously it's not for me. Yeah, I don't, I don't know exactly. And I've never really had to evaluate business ventures and things. So when, so let's touch on something you just said, which is if you're very afraid of something, then that's something you shouldn't do. So do you then climb, say, hard routes in an absence of fear, or is it present and then you overcome it? That's a good question. I generally climb hard routes in the absence of fear. I generally don't go up on them unless I feel

Starting point is 01:10:25 comfortable and I don't have that fear, I guess. Though, yeah, though, I mean, it's important to sort of differentiate fear and risk and like all the terms, I guess. Definitely. Because, you know, I mean, if there is a high level of risk, I mean, you should be feeling fear. I mean, fear is sort of that warning that, you know, like that there is real danger. And so like, if there is danger present, like, I mean, you should be feeling fear. And so, you know, and there are times when maybe you should just suppress that fear and go for it anyway. Maybe not, I don't know. But so with the free-souling, typically if I'm feeling a lot of fear, then, um, I just, you know, wait and prepare more, or I don't know, some do whatever it takes to mitigate that

Starting point is 01:11:05 to feel comfortable and then do the climb when I feel comfortable and do you have a my suspicion says no but do you have a checklist like I have to do this with gear X number of times and then do this Y number of times before

Starting point is 01:11:20 I'm willing to free solo this I don't have a checklist but I definitely have a degree of comfort that I need to feel on the route before I'm willing to solo it. What does that feel like? Well, it just feels like a certain... I guess I need to have a certain amount of reserve, I guess. I need to feel like I can climb the route

Starting point is 01:11:38 in a variety of conditions and have some extra in the tank just in case. If I can climb the route only by the narrowest of razor-thin margins, that's probably not good enough for free soloing. And the definitions point is important. For instance, I'm involved with a lot of speculative startups. Or startups. They're all speculative.

Starting point is 01:12:02 Yeah, I mean, most would be considered very highly speculative. And people say, wow, that's a really high-risk investment. You have a very high risk tolerance, right, doing things in entrepreneurship and so on. And I've never felt that way. I actually feel like I'm focused on risk mitigation at all times. And so for me, I thought about it at one point, because they're like, oh oh you have a really high

Starting point is 01:12:25 risk tolerance risk risk risk and i was like well wait a second like we should try to figure out the definition of this term that we're using before we have a discussion isn't the thing with startups is that you're sort of willing to lose money on a certain number as long as like exactly some of them come out right no exactly so i mean so you're sort of just doing the math on the overall picture it's like doesn't matter if some of them fail that's exactly right and what's important at least in that game right is or that sport i mean you can look at it that way is following your own rules like if you set rules yeah and you understand say portfolio theory and the math if i follow these rules is going to is going to turn out likely this way therefore i need to make x number

Starting point is 01:13:02 investments yeah or at least having like a plan that you're willing to stick to and then not start to just get hog wild where you're like, well, this guy said that he could make money on it. Yeah, exactly. So what I realized for myself that risk in my mind is the likelihood of an irreversible negative outcome. And if I look at it that way, if I do something that fails, if I can get back to where I was very easily, then that's not a risk.

Starting point is 01:13:25 It's not a high risk, for instance. Do you think you relate to risk or think about it differently than other people? No, I mean, all that's pretty much in line with the way I look at risk. I mean, yeah, I mean, with the startup stuff, I wouldn't consider that particularly risky because like, obviously people make a lot of money off startups. It's just a matter of like doing it well. And like, you know, playing the stock market and things like that, people obviously make a lot of money off startups. It's just a matter of doing it well. And playing the stock market and things like that, people obviously make a lot of money. So it's not a fundamentally risky activity. It's just a matter of how you do it, how well you do it.

Starting point is 01:13:52 And obviously, I'm not in either of those worlds at all. So for me, it probably would be dangerous. Because I'd be like, well, now I have no money. But it's because that's not my thing. I don't know anything about it. What is the best decision you've ever made not to do something or a good decision that you've made not to do something well i think pretty much any of the free solos that i backed off of and climbed down were probably all pretty good decisions i

Starting point is 01:14:14 mean who's to say i mean maybe they all would have been fine and i would have just like climbed to the top and had a nice day but you know there's no point in second guessing that stuff i mean if you're not psyched you're not psyched, you're not psyched. But I haven't had any, like, clear or, like, near misses where I decide not to climb something, and then there's, like, a huge avalanche that sweeps the whole mountain, and you're like, thank God I wasn't up there. You have a very minimalist lifestyle. What is something that you spent too much on but don't regret? Or something that you spend too much on but don't regret or something that you spend too much

Starting point is 01:14:45 on but don't regret or a lot on too much is too judgmental um i don't know i don't think it's too much but um when i bought noise canceling headphones i was like this seems really indulgent but it made my life so much better like i love traveling with noise canceling headphones it's like my favorite possession i think how do you use? I just, I mean, I cancel noise with them. It's amazing. Do you use them all the time when you're traveling or are they specific? In the airport and on the plane, I pretty much have noise canceling headphones on the whole time. I love it. I'll just like listen to soft music and like read my book or work on my computer, do whatever, you know, just hang out. But I just like love not having all the crazy

Starting point is 01:15:24 bustly noise around me the whole time. what type of music do you listen to most often when you're flying um flying i do a lot of soundtracks like so it's sort of like classically type music but you know set to indiana jones let's say or whatever braveheart yeah exactly actually i've never done the braveheart soundtrack but like last mohegan's is a favorite that's a great soundtrack yeah uh do you ever climb to music um i'll do easy climbing to music for sure um i normally just have my phone in my pocket and we'll just blast it like you know stereo style um but that's only if i'm climbing something where there's nobody around and because i think it's super annoying when you like hike up to people on a trail with like a boombox going because obviously it's like dimensioning their outdoor experience what do you in those cases

Starting point is 01:16:07 what type of music do you listen to um i pretty much only listen to like modern rock like hate rock and stuff like what i said but like what yeah what kind of bands oh i don't know like i was listening to like bad religion we listened to metallica last night on the drive and like you know i don't know chevellelle or Tool or random, whatever. What is something that people, and this is in quotes, know about you that is wrong? I don't know. I mean, I think a lot of people, I mean, certainly online commentary, a lot of people think I have a death wish or like have never experienced fear, like't don't care about my safety i mean the thing is that if you just watch youtube videos you get the impression that i just like walk up to a wall and climb it

Starting point is 01:16:49 and like you sort of miss the 20 years of of climbing culture that's behind it you know the fact that i've that there's a huge history behind all these routes and i know a lot about them and i have tons of friends that have climbed them and i can i could like recite half the moves on them from memory you know what i mean like there's a ton that goes into it that people like don't see in a three minute YouTube short. And yeah, well, it's kind of like,

Starting point is 01:17:09 uh, you know, I had layered Hamilton on the podcast, right? The sort of undisputed King of big wave surfing and people would, it's funny how people look at that and they have a different judgment than when they look at you on a wall, even though in practical terms,

Starting point is 01:17:23 you think, I mean, don't people look at his big wave serve and be like that guy's crazy he has a death wish well because i kind of do i'm like that's so i think that it's slightly the degree the frequency with which i hear people say that is different because they look at a wall and they're like oh i could climb up things but they look at a 100 foot wave and somebody getting towed in on a jet ski and they like, I wouldn't even be able to stand up on the board while getting pulled on a jet ski.

Starting point is 01:17:48 Therefore assumption, assumption, assumption. Uh, what do you think of say, uh, free divers who try to break records in free diving? I mean,

Starting point is 01:17:58 I don't know much about it, but it does seem like it's one of the riskiest sports in the world. I mean, more people die doing that than virtually anything else. It kind of goes with wingsuiting or something. It's fair to say that it actually is quite risky because people do actually die all the time doing it.

Starting point is 01:18:13 Have you ever done any wingsuit stuff? No, I did my AFF, so I learned how to parachute out of a plane on the thought that I would maybe eventually learn how to base jump or something. And then I was basically just like, I'm not into this. I'm like, I don't think this is cool i don't like it just the just because the risk the downside risk no i mean downside is too high um no uh skydiving is not dangerous you know so i mean when you're learning out of the plane like it's not sketchy at all but

Starting point is 01:18:35 mostly i was like i just don't like this you know and like i don't want to devote the energy to like learning how to do this and i sort of realized how much it would take for me to to feel comfortable doing that and i was like this is just dumb i'm not into it. And then as it turns out, um, you know, like one of my good friends and climbing partners died wingsuiting. And then last year, notably Dean Potter died wingsuiting. And so, I mean, you know, climbing has lost a lot of high end climbers to wingsuiting accidents. It's like, yeah, I mean, it is a very dangerous activity. Uh, you mentioned Dean Potter. Do you. I mean, I think when I hear his name, I also associate it with slacklining. Exactly, slacklining.

Starting point is 01:19:10 You seem to have the perfect slacklining feet. I mean, maybe we could take a photograph. They're all messed up. Yeah, you've got some amazing functional feet. Do you slackline? Functional. That's a very kind way of putting deformed. But yeah, highly functional, yes. Do you slackline, or what's That's a very kind way of putting deformed. But yeah, highly functional. Yes. Do you slackline or what's your opinion?

Starting point is 01:19:28 I can slackline at like a low level. You know, I can like walk lines back and forth just because there's so many slacklines and campgrounds and climbing areas and things, you know, I definitely have done a fair amount of slacklining and I can do some like really easy tricks and things, but, but no, I'm definitely not a slackliner and I've never done any high lines and I'm not like, I'm not into slacklining. When you think of the word successful, who's the first person that comes to mind for you? When I hear successful? Yeah, just the word successful. I mean, when you just said it, I thought Elon Musk.

Starting point is 01:19:54 But then I have no idea. Because I don't know. But I don't know that much about business. But I'm just like, that's rad. Is there anyone that you would want to model your life after in any way um probably not but though i do like reading you know a biography or something and then sort of like i have some notes on my phone of like lists from random things i've read you know where you sort of choose little lessons out of like a book about somebody and you're like oh like that person

Starting point is 01:20:23 did these things well and those are all things that i could apply to my life but you know i wouldn't want to model my whole life on somebody that's more like you know cherry picking good lessons here and there uh which biographies have produced a lot of notes for you i've known this a few times but so i read um the biography of uh uh brad washburn who was like a big if you know him he was like an alaska explorer photographer he also ran the like a natural history museum in in boston i think um but so he just had like a wide and varied career and he was like a national geographic explorer type you know he just did a lot with his life and so after i finished reading

Starting point is 01:21:01 the book i was like whoa this guy like got shit done, you know? And I don't know, you know, I respect that. And so I just like kind of thought about it. What is something that you believe that other people think is crazy? That I believe that other people think is crazy. Well, I don't know. I mean, I think that my evaluation of risk and all the things we were just talking about, a lot of people think is totally crazy. But that's, I mean, I think it's because they don't have a full set of facts on it, you know, that they don't quite appreciate it in the same way that I do. But I don't know if I have any other like totally outlandish beliefs like that. I don't know.

Starting point is 01:21:39 Do you, I'm sure you've had this question before, but would you consider yourself a religious person? Do you have a particular belief system? No, I'm like strongly atheist and just like not into religion at all. Were your parents religious at all or no? Yeah, mom is at least used to identify as Catholic. She'd probably still say that she believes in God, though there's no evidence of it at all.

Starting point is 01:22:04 You know, like she doesn't go to church anymore or do anything but um yeah so as kids we were taking a church but at no point did i ever believe anything okay so there was no sort of transitionary period it was no i know day one it's funny like even though we were being taken to church i just always thought it was all a bunch of weird stories you're just like it made no sense to me i'm like why would you believe in some invisible thing that, you know, I'm like, like,

Starting point is 01:22:27 why would you ever believe any of that? Like, it doesn't make any sense. It's weird. It's weird. There's so many adults believe all that stuff. Cause it still doesn't make any sense. There's a lot of stuff that doesn't make a lot of sense that people believe to

Starting point is 01:22:37 a lot in the theater of politics and elsewhere too. But, uh, this is going to be a gear shift. I mean, I mean, we're shifting a lot of gears i'm grinding out the transmission of gears but uh food i want to talk about do you have any particular thoughts on food or how do you think about eating yourself

Starting point is 01:22:57 uh not literally eating yourself yeah yeah uh i mean i'm not much of a cook and i don't like love food or food prep or anything you know i mean if i could i'm not much of a cook and i don't like love food or food prep or anything you know i mean if i could i would just like take a pill and be like fully fully fed all day every day and just be like sweet i don't have to worry about it but um i don't know i mean in the last couple years i've i've gone vegetarian um which has more to do with all like the environmental non-fiction i've been reading it's more just as like one of the few things that I can do as an individual to like really have an impact on the world. Um, but yeah, I don't know. I mean, do you have any, uh, do you have any go-to dinners? Like what are your most common dinners? What do they look like?

Starting point is 01:23:37 Um, I mean, for all the years that I've lived in the van, one of my go-to dinners was like mac and cheese with, with stuff in it, you know you know like adding a vegetable i used to add tuna to it a lot then i've switched to just like vegetables or you know maybe some beans or whatever um you're like mac and cheese and chili though now i'm sort of easing away from mac and cheese too because i've kind of stopped eating dairy but so like you know rice and vegetable stuff or uh like lentils or whatever keeping it simple yeah so many questions so many questions i want to ask do you have any morning rituals like what or like lentils or whatever. Keeping it simple. Yeah. So many questions. So many questions I want to ask.

Starting point is 01:24:09 Do you have any morning rituals? Like what are the first 60 days, 60 days, the first 60 minutes of your day look like? Pretty much always just get up and have like a big breakfast and then go climbing. That's kind of the standard. And when is the usual wake up time?

Starting point is 01:24:20 For the last two months, I've been waking up, doing some 15 minutes of stretching, then eating my breakfast, then going climbing just because of the back stuff. What time do you generally wake up and go to bed? I generally, I'm pretty unstructured, so I basically just go to sleep whenever I need to or whenever it makes sense. Then I just wake up whenever. I try to sleep as much as I want to.

Starting point is 01:24:44 What is that typically amount i mean i people think they're like oh that four hour work week guy like i must sleep three hours a night i try to sleep eight to ten yeah no i'm all about the eight to ten for sure i think last night i mean i was sleeping in front of your house last night i think i slept uh i think i slept nine last night well because wait a second is that the van yeah yeah that's my car i just went to walk in my dog and i was like who's camped out in front of my house yeah that is fucking hilarious okay yeah with like the reflectors in the window i was like who is trying to kidnap me who is this that's my rape wagon parked in front of your house what was it's one of those things like yeah we drove to san francisco

Starting point is 01:25:18 last night and then i'm like well i don't want to park somewhere else then have to drive here in the morning so i'm like i'm just gonna go park there i'm gonna sleep as late as possible i'm gonna wake up and i'm gonna come in and do a podcast it's gonna be like totally chill from from what that's the thing about living in a car is you're all about like minimizing the waste of time you know there's no point like driving around in circles you just park where you need to be sleep and then do your thing that's amazing all right and the thing is after and i've lived in a van for like 10 years now you know it starts to become routine it's like hard to imagine like going to a hotel moving all your shit into a room moving it back into your car later moving the car you're just like what a waste of time i just want

Starting point is 01:25:51 to like park where i need to be so a lot of people have asked this and i'm kind of curious myself like the logistics of alex arnold so if you have a date and the date goes well what then they come back to the van. I mean, it's a nice van. It's like a, you call it a little mini home or whatever. You know, one of the micro home stuff or what's it called? Tiny homes. Yeah, tiny home.

Starting point is 01:26:13 I've got a bunch of tiny home books right over there. There you go. See, I have one up front. Yeah. It's a tiny little home. So now before you go out on the date, you're like, just in case this goes well, do you put out like some rose petals in a bowl of water? Preferably go back to their place. It's like a little class here uh do you have any favorite documentaries or movies um i don't know not particularly i guess um i mean my movie taste runs sort of just straight

Starting point is 01:26:40 like hollywood action movie like total fluff you know like gladiator or something just like fun times um like yeah roger all right we'll keep that it's all pretty yeah it's all just pretty like unimpressive but it's kind of because like movies because i do a lot of like reading non-fiction and stuff i feel like movies fill the fluff category you know like i hate heavy non-fiction or like heavy documentary type films i just like fall asleep just too much thinking after all the non-fiction computing what movies have you seen the greatest number of times is there anything you've watched like over and over again i have that habit um i've probably seen the star wars movies a lot a lot of times but that's partially just because i started when

Starting point is 01:27:21 i was a kid and then i've like re-watched them over the years um i don't know if i've seen anything else like more than that probably i think i have maybe weird numbers because for each of my books i i get very i feel very isolated if i'm writing at night in a dark house by myself so i always put this on certain movies i have movies for each book they're usually one or two movies that i'll just put on repeat and i'll put them on mute, and then listen to music, like the same tracks over and over and over and over again. Your brain might be hardwired in some weird ways here.

Starting point is 01:27:53 Well, that's definitely true. That's getting tweaky. I got a recommendation from this very, very, very brilliant and capable entrepreneur named Matt Mullenweg, who's a great coder. And he listens to the same single track over and over again, almost like a noise machine when he's coding. And I thought, okay, well, I'll try that with writing. And it worked really, really well. But the movies end up being really weird because... Yeah, so what movies are we talking about?

Starting point is 01:28:22 Well, for the four-hour work week, it was this isn't that weird i think these are fine movies but the born identity was the first and then for the four-hour body it was casino royale which i think is fantastic you're gonna say like rocky or something so being non-stop training montages well you know there are a lot of fight scenes and the parkour sequence in the beginning uh with sebastian yeah yeah yeah so that's yeah that's a whole separate i didn't know that was him oh oh yeah so cool and uh then for the four hour chef the this is super this is the off theme completely but i was just looking for a movie when i was just getting started and on amazon, the first movie that popped up was Babe. With the pig?

Starting point is 01:29:07 Yeah, Farmer Hoggett. And I watched Babe like a thousand times. I just put it on repeat and watch it like four or five times a night. Whoa. Go figure. Yeah, we could psychoanalyze that. Hardcore. Hardcore. Aside from the noise-canceling headphones, what purchase has most positively impacted your life in the last, say, six months?

Starting point is 01:29:27 Definitely my van. Definitely your van. Yeah. I mean, no question. I mean, the last van that I, you know, I bought a $10,000 van and lived in it for 10 years. And then, uh, this new van that I bought, it's the new van. So it's obviously a bit pricier, but it's like pretty awesome. And I'll probably live in it for another 10 years. Well, maybe not actually live in it, but you know, I'll be based out of it. Uh, again, returning to the, uh, this is, this is not directly related to the dating in the van, but this is, this is a question from Michael Cipriano. Uh, I've always found climbing to have a large positive effect on my libido. Do you,

Starting point is 01:30:01 does Alex find this to be the case well i've climbed for my entire life so i mean maybe it explains just permanent i mean is that for real that's a real question like i guess i don't know but i mean that's probably true of anybody who's like staying active and staying fit and you know you're just like it's the way your body's supposed to work. Yeah. Uh, are there ways that you've seen lessons learned or skills developed in climbing translate to other parts of your life? And if so, does any, are there any particular examples come to mind? Um, I don't know exactly. I mean, so I've gained a lot from being a professional climber, like having to go and

Starting point is 01:30:41 give talks and like do the whole work set of climbing. I mean, that's really like helped me grow as a person and feel comfortable doing public speaking and all that kind of stuff. Though I think from the actual climbing itself, maybe the most useful thing I've gotten has been sort of being able to differentiate, you know, risk and consequence and fear and like all these different things and sort of being able to separate my feelings from what's actually happening. You know, like, oh, I feel fear, but is that fear justified because I'm actually in danger? Or is that, like, totally irrational fear that I should just squish and, like, move forward with something? And I don't know.

Starting point is 01:31:12 I mean, I feel like climbing has sort of helped me understand, like, the different things that are going on there. You know, whereas I feel like a lot of people are just like, oh, I'm afraid. And then they're just like, oh, God, I'm afraid. You know, but sometimes, like, I mean, fear shouldn't necessarily control you any more than anything else, you know, desire or fill in the blank. Well, yeah. I'm like hungry, you know, when you're really hungry, you're not like, oh God, I'm hungry. I'm hungry.

Starting point is 01:31:32 I'm hungry. You know, just like, oh, I'll eat lunch in two hours, you know, and I feel like fear to some extent should be the same way where you can just register like, oh, I'm feeling fear right now. But sometimes that doesn't matter. I mean, sometimes it does and you need to be like oh you know i'm about to die like i should watch out for that but but a lot of times i mean you should be able to just set that fear aside and just do exactly what you're supposed to be doing yeah so i mean in a

Starting point is 01:31:54 way i mean you're a connoisseur of fear right i mean you can distinguish sort of the varietals yeah when you experience enough fear in your life you're like no now i can sort of differentiate between all the different types uh do you drink coffee or caffeine no though i don't have i just don't like coffee um and i don't really like tea and but i don't have any problem with caffeine i don't really even notice caffeine i don't think that much because you get it in like shot blocks and gels and goos and whatever all the little energy products like some of them have caffeine and some don't. I don't feel like I noticed an effect either way. Well, the reason I asked is that I find personally, I remember I did a three day meditation retreat, my first meditation retreat, and they disallowed caffeine. They said no caffeine and no alarm clocks. You wake up when you wake up. And when I came to my life,

Starting point is 01:32:42 I'm on a 20 year meditation retreat. Yeah, I need to do more of up. And when I came- Welcome to my life. Sounds amazing. I'm on a 20-year meditation retreat. Yeah, I need to do more of that. And I came back from that experience and went back into my normal routine, which was drinking not coffee at that point, but a lot of iced tea. Like I'd go to a restaurant and they would just endlessly refill my iced tea. And I felt like a complete crackhead, like a miserable crackhead. And I was like, is this what my normal was? Holy shit. And the reason that I brought it up is that it strikes me that at least in that state, I would have a lot of trouble distinguishing the fine

Starting point is 01:33:16 nuances of different types of fear because you're just overwhelmed. You're all jacked up on sugar from iced tea stuff and then you're in the caffeine. Who knows? Yeah, totally. There's a lot going on physiologically, and it's hard to differentiate what the finer points are. Yeah, the signal from the noise. At what climbing grades have you plateaued the most? This is from Liz Wolf, and she just said, 5.11 plateau has been really bad for me. Which probably means she hasn't got past the five,

Starting point is 01:33:45 11. She's just like mired in five, 11 land. Um, no. So I've basically, I pretty much progressed steadily to about mid five 14. It's like 14 B or C. And I've basically been plateaued there for like seven or 10 years or something. Um, though I feel like I've sort of plateaued there because I'm at the point um i mean because mid 514 is definitely a fairly high level of climbing though it's by no means elite by the world standard anymore like that's not that's not like super hard just to put in perspective what it would be the hardest thing in the world is 15c but only two people have climbed that but there are a lot of people climbing like 15a and 15b ish now and so climbing like 14b or c is like you know respectable but a lot of people can

Starting point is 01:34:27 do that like first try no not a lot but a handful of people can climb that first try no problem it's like trivial for them so you know i mean it's not it's by no means world standard but you know it's it's solid but so i think that for me that's sort of my natural plateau like that's kind of what i can climb um without having to train much to climb harder you know because the thing is i spend a lot of my year doing like adventure trips and expeditions and you know doing stuff through my foundation going to angola last year i mean trips like that that do not help your fitness at all like they won't help you climb harder but they definitely make you a more well-rounded climber and probably a better person and more interesting

Starting point is 01:35:01 you get to do fun stuff and so you know i've sort of been content being plateaued at, at mid five 14 for a long time, though I could see at some point in my life, I might devote a year or two to like actually trying to climb hard. Cause I'd love to climb the French grade nine a, which is 14 D and us grades. Um, it's just sort of like a meaningful benchmark grade that if I ever climbed nine a, I'd be like, respect, like I'm good. Like that's, that's hard enough for me. So if you wanted to do that hard climbing, what would the most important components of that training look like? Um, I'm not totally sure. I mean, I think for me it would require more fingerboarding or hangboarding, like basically just focusing more on finger strength because I think as a climber, that's probably what I'm worst at is just like the pure strength holding

Starting point is 01:35:41 onto things. Um, but also I think for me, it would just require more dedicated, focused, hard climbing for the year. You know, like right now I'm climbing in Yosemite and, uh, in my whole season of climbing Yosemite, I won't do a single hard move basically at the, you know, at the physical limit of like what I can actually pull on because I'm climbing these like great big walls and I'm trying to climb them quickly. And sometimes I'm climbing them ropeless, but anyway, I'm doing them in all these styles that like, it just doesn't help you pull harder. And so like, if I wanted to climb harder grades, I would have to just pull harder. If you could no longer climb, but had to pick a physical activity, what would you pick? If I couldn't climb, I don't know. I have a lot of respect for ultra runners, I think, um, because

Starting point is 01:36:25 they sort of interact with the landscape in the same way that I kind of like to, you know, like the, something like the ultra tour Mont Blanc, when you like run all the way around the Mont Blanc massive, I mean, that's pretty cool. And like, I would love to be able to do things like that, but I just like, don't really, I can't run that well. But, um, but the thing is, is that I really love running like mountain ridge lines and things. And then that quickly becomes actual rock climbing. And so I'm like, well, it's like,

Starting point is 01:36:48 I don't know, but yeah, ultra running is pretty awesome. Or, um, I don't know. I could be into like big mountain skiing too. Like it's the same,

Starting point is 01:36:57 but see, it all sort of gravitates back towards mountains. And I'm like, well, that's basically climbing. And then you get exposed to nasty things like avalanches. For those of you who haven't seen marrow, Jesus, Jimmy, both of you guys make me sweat. Not that I need any help.

Starting point is 01:37:10 I tend to run hot, drink a tea anyway. But I digress, as usual. What are you world-class at aside from climbing or within climbing that people might not realize? Or how would your best friends answer that question? I don't know. I mean, I guess when within climbing, I'd say that, um, isn't it? Cause I'm known as a free solist. I'm known for the rope was climbing and that's like what you'll see online and, you know,

Starting point is 01:37:39 all the videos and all that. But I'd probably still be a professional climber even if I didn't free solo at all. Um, like right now I hold the speed record on like pretty much every major formation in yosemite um but you know all the different faces like all the classic routes like um i mean i think that's basically true and so yeah i don't know i mean i'd probably still be like one of the more well-rounded climbers in America, even without the free soloing. But, um, but it's all sort of overshadowed by the like, oh my God, he's ropeless. And it's funny because I only do, you know, a handful of solos a year, if that. And then I spend the whole rest of the year climbing with partners and ropes and like

Starting point is 01:38:19 normal climbing with my friends, just like doing all kinds of interesting things and expeditions and whatever. And yet it still just comes down to like whoa free soloing but you know i'm fine with that because at least i get to go climb all the time what advice would you give to your 25 year old self 25 or 20 depending on who needed it the most and if you could just place like what you were doing where you were at the time well 20 is still slightly too, but like my 18 year old self, I would just tell, I would say, just not bother going to college at all.

Starting point is 01:38:50 Cause like the year that I spent at Berkeley was a total waste of my time. Basically not, not because there's anything wrong with Berkeley, but because I just wasn't passionate about what I was studying. And there's no, there'd be, there was no point in me like grinding out a year of studies that I didn't care about that,

Starting point is 01:39:02 you know, I should have just like gone climbing. Cause I mean, that's what I really cared about. And that's, what's been so funny over the years is that like with climbing, you know, I have no problem putting in, you know, 20 to 40 hours a week, every week, all year into climbing. Like, and I mean, that's a fair amount. I've been keeping a training journal. Um, so I have like sort of hours of exercise and last year, um, I counted up at the end of the, at the new year. And, uh, I basically averaged like 27 hours a week of exercise every week last year, which is, you know, like, I think that's kind of comparable to other, I mean, you would know more than me, but other sports like for training volume. But I mean, then when you think that I've probably been doing that for the last 10 years that I've

Starting point is 01:39:42 been on the road and actually, and last year was a particularly low volume year for me because I had a book come out. And so I did a month of book touring and I also did like a month of touring in South America. And so like I was climbing much less than I normally would. So presumably a few years ago, living in the van, I was probably doing like 30,

Starting point is 01:39:56 probably 30 or 32 hours a week of exercise, which is like a lot of time spent climbing. It is a lot of time. But what else do you put in your training journal what other details are in there um it's one line i do one line hours of exercise one line um any additional like strength training type stuff or like the stretching i've been doing recently and then one line diet which is like ate well ate poorly ate so so or like you know too many cookies like whatever things like that do you go? Do you eat a lot of cookies?

Starting point is 01:40:26 Uh, sometimes I have an unfortunate, what's, what's, what's, what's your go-to cookie? Should I just talk to you? Cookies like straight. Yeah. I can eat a lot of cookies. Yeah. Well, that's probably the only thing that athletically, well, not athletically that we share in common. Oh yeah. Do you go big on the cookies? Yeah. There are these looking towards your kid oh well i was looking i have this like secret stash i have to keep it out of sight yeah uh there are these chocolate chip cookies uh that are actually from long island tates i think they are there's somebody nodding over there imported chocolate chip well originally from long island and they

Starting point is 01:41:01 have there's their chocolate chip cookies then there are these i think they're gluten-free ginger cookies and i can't have those in my house or i will demolish the that's my thing with desserts too is i don't really buy dessert much because if i buy it i just eat it all immediately like i'm terrible with moderation so i generally don't have any dessert in the van and then when i do i just eat it all but uh if you were to i know this is this is a bit of a reach but you're 30 now let's say your idealized 40 year old self right uh what advice do you think that 40 year old would give you now i don't know i mean i feel like i'm doing pretty well right now oh i'm not saying you're not yeah no i don't i don't know i mean just you know feel like I'm doing pretty well right now. Oh, I'm not saying you're not. Yeah, no, I don't know. I mean, just enjoy the ride. Just enjoy the process. What would you like your life to look like in 10 years?

Starting point is 01:41:56 I don't know. I mean, maybe have a family or something or at least like a solid partner, solid something going on. I think I'd like to maybe own a home or like have have a place that i'm kind of living like more of a solid home base just because like living in a van is great but you know at a certain point you're like man it's nice to have like a bathroom but i'm having like a shower things so how do you deal with that actually now that now that because that's why when i came into your house i use your bathroom oh that's good but like last so like last night you're like oh man i had too much water well i have no i have a pee bottle i mean you know i've used a bottle forever and actually the thing is when you get used to using a pee bottle all the time like when i pull into

Starting point is 01:42:35 a grocery store or something i was just like peeing my bottle before i go into you know because you're like why would i ever go and find some like dank public bathroom when like i can just use my bottle so do you have do you have is it a disposable pee bottle like it's no no it's like i use like a nalgene no i use like a two liter bottle just like some random plastic bottle and i basically use it over and over until it's like this is repulsive and then i recycle it and then i move on to another but it's actually kind of this natural it's like the natural life cycle because i'll use the same water bottle for climbing it'll

Starting point is 01:43:05 just be like some random two liter bottle that's in my bag for like months but then eventually it starts to get disgusting or just kind of you know a little gross and so then i'm like well that becomes the pee bottle and then i get another bottle it's like the the four month cycle on my bottles you know do you do you label them or do you just know by smell yeah with a pee bottle you just know like you know when you open the bottle, you're like, oh, I shouldn't drink this. But also, I have systems with where things go. I'm never going to accidentally drink my pee bottle. Do people visit you in your van, like hang out in your van, aside from the dates?

Starting point is 01:43:40 Yeah, no. I mean, friends hang out in my van for sure. I mean, a lot of my climbing friends would be staying in a tent normally or staying wherever. So, I mean, for them, it's a big step up to hang out in my van for sure i mean a lot of my climbing friends would be staying in a tent normally or staying wherever so i mean for them it's a big step up to hang out in the van it's like climate controlled you know you can it's like sheltered you can cook on a nice stove it's lit i mean it's a nice place to hang out in the evenings uh if you could have one billboard with anything on it what would it say or what would you put on it so you can give a message to the world oh i don't know i mean like just like i don't know environmental propaganda or something or like uh the meat so i'm like pretty stoked on all the vegetarian type of stuff now just because it's

Starting point is 01:44:17 such an easy way to minimize your impact on the planet and it's just you know i mean it just solves so many different environmental issues but um i don't know but the thing is a billboard is not the best way to just say don't eat meat because it's like it's obviously a lot more complicated than that and nobody's going to read that and be like oh okay i'll stop right you know it's like requires requires more of a conversation yeah i mean it requires like a whole and and even then it's like it's not to say that like meat is fundamentally bad it's like how you get it where it's from what you're supporting i mean you know it's like a whole feedlot versus this versus yeah yeah i mean even that's like really complicated yeah because there are places in the world where it makes sense to to raise animals because like you can't raise anything else you can't grow crops you you know

Starting point is 01:45:02 yeah whatever and so uh what have you changed your mind about in the last few years if anything um i mean the first thing that comes to mind is like in high school i was reading a bunch of ayn rand or an rand whatever you know like objectivist all super black and white basically like f the poor people should work harder they should try harder and now as a 30 year old i'm basically like all about trying like F the poor people should work harder. They should try harder. And now as a 30 year old, I'm basically like all about trying to help the poor, trying to help the planet in different ways, trying to make the world a better place. It's like full one 80 from, you know, the black and white that I was into in high school. And then, yeah, I mean, I've had massive changes on all those kinds of things. I mean, I used to be way more harsh, you know, and like my political

Starting point is 01:45:43 views are like way further left now i'm just way more i mean i'm a lot more compassionate now i feel like that's funny not so much on a personal level because i don't really care but on like a societal level i'm a lot more compassionate all right i can't let that one go right away so well because i was like i can't self-describe as compassionate because none of my friends would agree you know because the thing is i'm not like nice to like my friends or on like a one-on-one level i'm not like a super kind person i don't think but um but definitely in the grander sense i mean i'm trying to make i'm i aspire to make the world a better place and like a more more just world you know on the macro

Starting point is 01:46:18 level yeah exactly so at a high level so if i took say a couple of your closest friends and gave them a bottle or two of wine, we're just hanging out, how would they describe you? I don't know. I mean, I mean, if you had to guess, I mean, well, I mean, I'm pretty frank, I think. And so people can, you know, I think I can kind of be a dick sometimes. And, um, though I just consider that being very honest, you know, keeping it real. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:46:43 I'm just keeping it real, keeping it real. No, I mean, I'd like to think that my friends would still call me a good person you know that i'm still like still trying to i'm doing my best you know uh do you have any we're going to wrap up here any ask or request for my audience that could be something you want them to think about something you would like them to try something like them'd like them to do. I feel like they're all MMA fighters. I'd ask them not to beat me up ever. They're not all MMA fighters. I assure you. I don't know.

Starting point is 01:47:12 Do something positive in the world. Not a bad place to wrap up. Where can people find more of you online? Best place to say hello, see what you're up to? I mean, my most personal outlet is probably my facebook fan page i'm like constantly posting stuff that i care about and it's all managed by me and so it's just like me posting articles that i think are interesting it's kind of like a combination of of the climbing stuff that i'm into and then like the environmental stuff that i'm into basically i post the environmental stuff is all the stuff I care about, and then I post just enough climbing so that everyone doesn't leave.

Starting point is 01:47:50 And what is the URL for that? Oh, it's just facebook.com slash alexonald, I think. But if you just search for it, it's like a fan page. It's like several hundred thousand people or whatever. H-O-N-N-O-L-D. Yeah. Well, Alex, I really appreciate you taking the time.

Starting point is 01:48:04 I've been hoping to meet you for a long time, given that we're not that far apart, oftentimes, with really appreciate you taking the time. I've been hoping to meet you for a long time, given that we're not that far apart oftentimes with Yosemite. Yeah, it's surprising. This has been fun. And once I fix my elbows, maybe I'll see if I can tackle a V0 or two and maybe actually get outdoors, which I would enjoy. So, yeah, I will hopefully do more than a three-dayday meditation retreat given that you've been doing it for 20 years. I think I might extend my ambition a little bit, but, uh, thanks very much. I really appreciate it. No, thanks for having me. Pleasure. And everybody listening for show notes, links to everything that we talked about, please just go

Starting point is 01:48:39 to fourhourworkweek.com forward slash podcast. And until next time, as always, 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 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,

Starting point is 01:49:32 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.

Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

The Tim Ferriss Show - #160: Assessing Risk and Living Without a Rope – Lessons from Alex Honnold

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Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

The Tim Ferriss Show - #160: Assessing Risk and Living Without a Rope – Lessons from Alex Honnold

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.