Alex Honnold: It drives me crazy that nobody else thinks about risk in this way. People look at my life and they're like, "Well, you're crazy. You're such a risk taker." Well, at least I'm taking the risks that I'm choosing because think of all the people that go out partying every weekend and they get buzzed and they drive home. And even sedentary people who are like, "Well, I don't take risk. I stay home and I play video games." No, you're at a much higher risk of heart disease. They're taking all kinds of risk that they're not actually choosing to take and you're still going to die either way. So, you might as well take smart, calculated risks and do all the things that you want to do and at least die happy when you go.

主持人: He's done it. Alex Honnold has made history again, scaling one of the world's tallest skyscrapers.

主持人: But the conclusion that a lot of people have arrived at is that you don't experience fear because when they look at these two brain scans, your amygdala is lighting up less when you're shown scary images.

Alex Honnold: I actually hate all the brain stuff because people always put me in this box. They're like, "Well, you're different." And I'm like, "Well, not really. I'm a middle-class suburban kid. Nobody in my family is athletic. I just after 20 years of climbing 5 days a week and being really scared, I respond differently than an average person." And there was tons of emotional turmoil throughout it. Periods where you're just like I'm trying so hard and I'm just not as good as I want to be. I was living in a car. I had a couple hundred bucks a month for 10 years. That's challenging. But you just can't master a craft overnight. I guess that's what people don't see. And so how do you create the conditions to out-persist other people?

主持人: And then in all your career, when is the moment where you were most scared?

Alex Honnold: On an expedition to Antarctica. I kept hoping that it's going to get better and it just kept getting worse. I could die.

主持人: Do you have a conversation with your partner before you go and do something like this? Because she wrote a letter.

Alex Honnold: Oh gosh.

主持人: Obviously, this is your worst nightmare, she said. But we all have to do scary things sometimes, Alex.

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主持人: Alex to understand you. I think from everything I've learned about you, from the research I've done, from speaking to your wife, your agent, everybody I could speak to, I think to understand your context, we first need to understand the circumstances in which you were raised and the childhood you had because it seems to be I mean for all of us there's like fingerprints left on us that define the anomaly that many of us become including yourself. So what do I need to know? What does the viewer need to know about the early context?

Alex Honnold: I mean, how deep do you want to go? I need get a sofa. I need to reply. All right. But yeah, certainly there's an imprint from my parents, my upbringing. I mean, they had a very fraught relationship. They eventually got divorced, but they stayed together for the kids and it was a whole tense home life because neither of them really liked each other. And then my mom is very driven, very, high performing. And then my dad was hard to say. I mean, I think my dad was deeply depressed basically the whole time I knew him because he was in this relation. It's hard to tell. He wasn't living his best life. And then sadly after they got divorced, he was he was much happier, but then he died. And so then never really got to see never really got to see him blossom that much.

主持人: And your mother's high performing. And did did she sort of implicitly demand that of you in any way?

Alex Honnold: Yeah, I mean my mother speaks like seven or eight languages. She plays every instrument. It's kind of crazy. She's very artistically minded in that way, like the arts and classical sense. But yeah, she I mean she wanted us to do all those things too. I'm a deep disappointment in that regard.

主持人: There was a phrase that I saw when I was watching the documentary that your your mother would continually say which I think translates to something like not good enough like pressing a ka like almost like almost doesn't count. It's funny because I feel like a lot of my adult life now one of my sort of go-to sayings is you know don't let perfect be the enemy of good. I'm really into like good enough. Like it's better to like try. It's better to do something, you know, it's better to fail quickly and learn and keep moving forward than to not try something. Like basically, I don't want to be crippled by perfectionism. Sort of like my mom is very much a perfectionist, you know, like if you can't do it right, don't do it. I'm sort of like I think it's better to try and learn and improve,

Alex Honnold: But she's accomplished a lot of things with that approach.

主持人: Yeah, she Yeah, she has for sure.

主持人: What about emotions? This is something you I've had heard you sort of talked about a lot is in that environment where your mother and father aren't getting along well. I think I I heard you say that your you hadn't seen your father really happy before he'd passed away.

Alex Honnold: Yeah.

主持人: Was it an emotional household in terms of affection?

Alex Honnold: No, it was a very unemotional household. That said though, it was a safe, relatively happy household. It was it was fine, you know, and and I was close to a lot of my extended family. And so I had a really good relation with my grandparents and some my aunts and uncles. And so I mean I basically would have characterized it as a totally happy family life until I became older and started seeing other people's families more and was kind of like, "Oh, this seems even happier." You know what I mean? It's like basically really good until you see what what else it can be and then you're like this seems even better.

主持人: And your mom wasn't ever affectionate.

Alex Honnold: You know, it always feels slightly conditional, you know, where it's like you know, she cares if you be you know, if you perform well, like if you do well, like if you're a good kid or whatever, you know what I mean?

主持人: Where where did climbing come into your life? Cause I've got some I have found some photos of you climbing and you look your like with your sister, I believe. Here we go. This one here.

Alex Honnold: Yeah. Classic. How old have you been?

主持人: I don't know. I mean, I don't know, like six or something or eight. It's hard for me to tell like medium-sized kids ages. Why? Why climbing?

Alex Honnold: Oh, why not? It's so freaking cool. Have you Have you rock climbed?

主持人: I've Yeah, I have.

Alex Honnold: You gone to a gym?

主持人: Yeah, I've I have. But

Alex Honnold: And wasn't it the freaking coolest thing?

主持人: It was fun. Yeah, for sure. I mean, saying I've climbed when I'm sat with you is I feel like

Alex Honnold: Yeah. But you have tried it.

主持人: Yeah, I have. Yeah.

Alex Honnold: As an adult, if you can imagine as a kid how fun that is. And then if you just keep doing that non-stop and then you find that you're, you know, have some aptitude for it, you enjoy it. It's like, you know, you can imagine going down that path. It's so cool.

主持人: But is there something about the challenge of climbing that you think just kind of like was a jigsaw piece for your for you your brain? Like problem solving?

Alex Honnold: Well, I think there's something elemental about climbing in the same way as like running or swimming. It's like a basic movement thing that I think is quite enjoyable. And I think that I also I I think I have an innate love of like being on top of things like, you know, being at the top. Basically, I love big views. I like the expansive, you know, I like air and so I like being up on stuff. So, I don't know. I think it just hit a few sweet spots like that where I was like, "Oh, climbing is just so cool." And

主持人: you I'm assuming you never thought this could be a career.

Alex Honnold: No. No. And actually, even when I started rock climbing sort of full-time, I still didn't think it could be a career because there just wasn't really professional climbing at that time. It was like much smaller. The industry is way smaller. Climbing was way more fringe and less of a thing. But you weren't motivated by like money or anything cuz one does not pursue rock climbing to become No. Rich.

主持人: Not to become rich. No. Well, so I said though, so my father died like the season before that. And because my parents had just gotten divorced, he basically left his retirement to my sister and me and she used it to finish college. I just put it into bonds and was living off like 300 bucks a month or whatever, which kind of like worked. I was like living in a car. I stole my mom's minivan at the time. I had like a couple hundred bucks a month and it was kind of enough to just like go to be a 19-year-old just like camping, you know.

Alex Honnold: Was it this minivan?

主持人: No, that's my second one. That's the Ford Econoline. That's the first actual van that I bought. I lived in that van for 10 years.

Alex Honnold: For 10 years?

主持人: Yeah. Yeah. So, I bought this van. I mean, this is this is classic. But so, I bought this van for 10 grand. And and then originally, this is the last buildout, which is the classiest buildout. The original one my uncle and I did for free with like scrap wood from his, you know, in his wood shop. basically. And so then I lived in that for 10 years and you're kind of like, yeah, when you live in it, I couldn't even stand in this van, you know, I was like, "Oh, my back." But you know, when you're living in your car for 10 years, you save quite a lot of money.

Alex Honnold: Between what ages did you live in your car for 10 years?

主持人: I probably bought this van when I was 20. So 20 to 30 basically.

Alex Honnold: Yeah, actually I think that's right because because I think I met my wife when I was 30 and that same year I switched from this van to the bigger van. And if you've seen the film Free Solo, that's I bought the the ProMaster, this like Dodge. It was like I could stand up in my van finally and I was like, I'm moving up in the world. I can stand

主持人: in there really well. Oh, there's there is a little stove in this one, but

Alex Honnold: Yeah. So, this though is the I did three different buildouts of this van over the 10 years cuz like the original one was super scrappy. The second build was like a little nicer and then this was like a pretty nice build that I had for I don't know, five or six years or something. When you live in your van for 10 years and you have a mother who is very performance focused, I've got her here. I believe you coming with her. Classic.

主持人: Do you not face a lot of external pressure to like go get a real job?

Alex Honnold: Honestly, less so than you would think. To her credit, my mom was always pretty supportive of the whole path. I think, I was kind of lucky that that I did a lot of this when I was like young enough that it's all part of like you're gappier like, you know, it's like you're young and you're finding yourself and then and then I think there was enough sort of external validation that that my family could at least look at and be like, well, you seem to be good at this random thing even though we don't get it and don't really know what you're doing, but at least other people think you're good at it. So, keep doing your thing.

主持人: And at this point, was it was it rock climbing? Was it free soloing? And

Alex Honnold: Yeah, it's all a little bit of everything, but basically just being a I mean, you know, like being a professional climber, quote unquote. Some of it's free soloing, some it's like speed climbing, some of it's just hard climbing, some of it's going on expeditions, doing new roots, like it's a little bit of everything.

主持人: And for the average person that doesn't know what free soloing is, what's the like definition of it?

Alex Honnold: That's climbing without a robe. So climbing without protection, which is definitely what I'm most well known for now, but in the context of professional climbing, I've done tons of other things in climbing. Like most of the time you have a rope on, most of the time you're doing other sorts of things. But it's like the free souling is what you might have been well known for because that like breaks into the mainstream a lot more.

主持人: I'm really intrigued generally by people like you who like take I mean take the path less traveled in their career and then maybe nearer the the end of the graph pick up traction. And I have this piece of paper in this pen because I'd love if you could from the age of let's say 80 you're now 40 years old.

Alex Honnold: Yeah I turned 40 this year old.

主持人: Could you draw a graph showing how your career looks in terms of success? You can measure that by money or attention or whatever. Let's see. So,

Alex Honnold: it was kind of like

主持人: nothing.

Alex Honnold: Slow a little bit and then like thisish.

主持人: Yeah.

Alex Honnold: And then kind of like and then basically just like in like this where you basically like kind of flat but growing and then you have free solo where it jumps a ton. It's like kind of crazy. And then and then it keeps kind of growing at a slightly faster rate than before and then it basically jumps a ton because of the building thing again.

主持人: I I find this fascinating because most people in their lives wouldn't be willing to endure this phase 18 to 29 where

Alex Honnold: It's not enduring. It's so great. I would do that again. I loved it so much. I mean I often think I'd be so happy to just start over from zero because like all the places that I go climbing now I've been climbing there for 20 years and I've like done most of the things I can do and you know I've sort of like tapped out a lot of stuff in the western US and I'm like man I would love to just hit the rezero button and start over because you'd have so much stuff to do and it's so amazing.

主持人: I guess that's the that's the different the fault of my question is that I said the word endure but you see it as

Alex Honnold: Yeah. You get to climb every single thing you see. It's amazing.

主持人: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and that's the thing is like from age 18 to to 30, I basically did try to climb every single thing I could see because I was just like, I'm learning. I'm growing. This is amazing. I climb everything. And like now I'm actually much more strategic about it because doing tons of easy climbing like doesn't really help me at this point. I'm not going to make like big technique gains. It basically just makes me tired without without the right kind of gains. It'd be like somebody it'd be like an elite runner just jogging for miles and miles every day. And you're kind of like that's not going to make you it's not going to improve your marathon time if you're already like an elite runner. It's it might be fun, but it's just not going to like move the needle for you. Through this period of your life, 18 to 30, you're optimizing for just having fun, doing things you enjoy.

Alex Honnold: Well, I mean, no, I was always I was always challenging myself. Like basically, I was optimizing for like what's the next thing I can do that pushes me a little bit.

主持人: But you weren't optimizing for how to get rich or

Alex Honnold: Well, then I would have gotten a job. If I was optimizing for getting rich, I would have finished my college degree and gotten a job.

主持人: I say this in part because I interview so many people who pursued careers that are often considered not real jobs, like comedians or magicians.

主持人: But until you become the dude that does the thing, you know, if you're like the best magician or the best comedian or the best whatever, then all of a sudden you make an insane amount of money. But when you're just like one of many struggling comedians, you're, you know, you're struggling. And so I think for me as a climber, you're sort of like, oh, I'm just a dude living in my van climbing. But then a certain point, I'm like the dude that, you know, I'm like, oh, you're that guy that climbs without the rope. And you're like, oh yeah, cool. And then all of a sudden your earnings are like

Alex Honnold: Was this um was this a difficult period of your life this 18 to 30?

主持人: No, it was like the best. Well, obviously it was like f, you know, I was like trying to juggle rel like I wanted to get a girlfriend. You're a young 20s man living alone in a car like wanting to be better at something than you are and not not quite knowing the way, not knowing what you're doing with your life. So no, so obviously there was tons of emotional turmoil throughout it, but no, I mean retrospectively it's like amazing.

主持人: And your your dad passes away which is in part I guess some of the catalyst for

Alex Honnold: Yeah. Honestly my dad passing away should be the beginning of that graph. It should be this should basically start at 19 cuz uh 18 I went to university and so then uh starting at 19 I guess I uh went on the road.

主持人: Your dad passing what impact did that have on you outside of it somewhat liberating you to to make decisions that outside of his expectations?

Alex Honnold: Well I mean obviously it was you know it's sad. It's hard like and especially now I'm sort of like oh it's too bad that that I don't have a relationship with my dad and he doesn't you know that my kids don't have a grandfather and all that kind of you know it's like yeah it's it's tough. I think that the most immediate impact that had maybe was just reminding me of my own mortality, you know, I mean, he he died unexpectedly at 55, just fell over in the airport and just fell over dead. Um, like heart attack. And so, you know, I mean, I think that that reminder of my own mortality has had a big impact on my career, my life, you know, my climbing world, whatever.

主持人: one might not expect you to go quote unquote do risky things because of

Alex Honnold: Well no because the thing is I think one of the reasons that people don't do risky things is because they have this uh you know mistaken idea that they can live forever basically and basically because people don't want to think about their own mortality and so they're like oh I don't want to take any risks I could die and you're like you know that you're going to die either way and either way when you die you're going to be bummed that you didn't live longer because you know it's like like the life expect 78 and you're like Say you make it to for men, whatever. Like, say you make it that far, you're still going to be like, man, I wish I had 22 more years to like watch my grandkids graduate college or whatever, you know, it's like it's still going to feel like too little.

Alex Honnold: And so, I'm kind of like, you're better off dying at 55 in an accident, but having done many things that you're proud of and, you know, like led a life that you're that you're proud of than dying at 78 and still wishing you had more, but having done none of the things you wanted to do.

主持人: It is interesting. It does appear that people live as if we think we're going to live forever. Yeah, it's totally insane. I mean, everyone's like, "Oh, I don't take any risk." And you're like, "Yeah, well, you can take no risk in your life and you're still going to die." So, you might as well take smart, calculated risks and do all the things that you want to do and at least die happy when you go.

主持人: What does this mean to you to like live intentionally?

Alex Honnold: Well, that's exactly it. Like choosing the the risk that you're willing to take, making choices, like using your time the way you want to use it.

主持人: I was looking at I think it was your your personality a personality test you did. You said you

Alex Honnold: like did I do a personality test? Um like how much material do you have? I'm like Jesus Christ. Like how many like things do you have?

主持人: I have unlimited things.

Alex Honnold: I know. I'm so impressed

主持人: on this uh personality test. It says you're you know higher on thrillseeking and sensation seeking but then also significantly higher than the average male on urgency which I think kind of overlays with what you were just saying there of like making the decision to do something.

Alex Honnold: Yeah. Basically because your time is short and you're going to die so get on with it.

主持人: It says here you're higher on conscientiousness.

Alex Honnold: Very polite. You know,

主持人: thrill seeking, sensation seeking, you're low on boredom.

Alex Honnold: I think low on boredom means that, you know, you don't get bored.

主持人: Perseverance. You're very high on perseverance.

Alex Honnold: Yeah, I think that's the same as low on boredom.

主持人: And low on neuroticism.

Alex Honnold: That's for sure.

主持人: And so, what's your what is what's the definition of the word neuroticism? Is it like

Alex Honnold: Well, I think it's like the Well, I'm sure there's a clinical definition, but I think of it as sort of general anxiety type stuff, like, you know, people spinning in their heads about things that don't matter.

主持人: And has that always been the case when you look back through your life and the feedback you've had as a kid and a teenager?

Alex Honnold: Kind of. Yeah. I think so. I think I've never been too concerned about I I don't spin. I mean, obviously, you know, occasionally I stress about things, but but just not the way I think a lot of people do.

主持人: I'm trying to figure out if that's a learned behavior or maybe a little bit learned and a little bit um from your upbringing, genetics, whatever it might be. Because can can one learn that? Can one learn to be less neurotic and

Alex Honnold: Well, presumably I mean like meditation, things like that. I think people can sort of find a way to let go of certain things.

主持人: Isn't this quite quite interesting when people ask you questions inevitably about fear and how you take on such you know to muggles like me terrifying challenges. There's an element of all of this which is you do have a nature and and a nurture which somewhat is impossible for someone like me to replicate

Alex Honnold: Because your brain and my brain are completely different. Your parents your early contacts when your brain was being wired and malated are completely different to mine. So, you know, I always find this is the like the trouble of giving people advice is um we're dealing with different different natures,

主持人: different natures.

Alex Honnold: But I I do feel like in my case, the biggest difference in nature is the fact that I've just always loved climbing, you know, because I basically I think that nurture is is the majority of this. Like if you spend 30 years training a thing, you're going to get better at the thing.

Alex Honnold: And so I think that the biggest difference between me and and somebody who's not into rock climb is I freaking love rock climbing. I could go I could do it 10 days a week if if I could, you know what I mean? But sadly, I get too tired and my body breaks down. And so, you know, I could I basically have like a limitless capacity to to do the thing. I just love doing the thing. And I think that that is probably the biggest difference in nature, you know, because everything else you can kind of overcome, you know, like if you loved rock climbing as much as I love rock climbing, no matter what your your genetic disposition towards like neuroticism and all that stuff, you would just kind of work through all that stuff and you'd find your own path to to getting good at climbing basically.

主持人: If your kids came to you, you have two girls, right?

Alex Honnold: Yeah.

主持人: If they came to you and said, "Dad, like give me advice on what I should aim at in life."

Alex Honnold: Would you tell I wouldn't I wouldn't give them advice. I'd be like, "You do you find the thing you love to do, go hard, you know, basically like learn some skills, get good at something, like what do you like to do?" I mean, that's kind of the thing for me, especially with climbing is like if someone had told me like, "You're going to train climbing for the rest of your life." I'd be like, "Oh, that sounds like kind of a grind, you know, cuz I mean, it is it is hard work. You're like hiking uphill with a heavy backpack and it's cold and it's windy. It's like it's basically physically uncomfortable." I mean, being a professional rock climber means that you're physically uncomfortable all the time, but like like often, you know, like it's you know, it's hard.

主持人: Yeah. But if you're doing it because you freaking love doing it, it doesn't feel very hard. And so, I mean, I think the key for a kid is find the thing that doesn't feel like hard work.

Alex Honnold: And when you started, were you scared of of big tall rock faces and stuff like that?

主持人: I mean, yeah, I had like a healthy intimidation of I mean, like my first season, the first time seeing Elcap as a climber, uh, I was 19 and it looks impossible. It looks completely insane. I was like, that's so big. But then, you know, within a couple seasons, uh, you know, I climbed some bigger walls, learned how to climb, and then a friend and I had the sort of season goal, like we were going to climb all season with the aspiration at the end to climb Elcap in a day. So, basically, there was this long progression on LCAP specifically where it's like you go from just trying to get up it to trying to get up it faster to trying to get up it with just your hands and feet, still using protection. But basically, there's like all these steps you can take. And so, over a bunch of seasons, you know, I climbed a cap like 60 times, different routes, all these different things. And then eventually you're sort of like, "Oh, maybe I can start thinking about freoling it." Which is where the film Free Solo comes in. And then eventually you do this thing. But then people like, "Well, aren't you scared?" And you're kind of like, "Wow, I've spent 10 years like building up on this thing."

Alex Honnold: I guess that's what people don't see.

主持人: Yeah. So they just

Alex Honnold: I mean like the documentary Free Soul I think does a pretty good job of showing the the direct preparation like the training involved in doing that specific climb, but it just doesn't show the uh like eight years before that I guess cuz the documentary was filmed over two years and I guess I've been going since 2006. So it's nine years before that that I've been going to use and I've been spending maybe three months a year climbing walls.

主持人: I guess that's the illusion of like all people that do great things and then become like athletes or sprinters or whatever Ronaldo or Messi is you you don't get to see the

Alex Honnold: Yeah. the whole life that they put into doing the thing.

主持人: Yeah.

Alex Honnold: Yeah.

主持人: So it looks it looks like a magic trick when we see the outcome. Like we show show up on Netflix to watch you climb Taipei like whoa

Alex Honnold: hanging with it from his leg.

主持人: Yeah.

Alex Honnold: I mean people watch some of those programs and they're like he just walked up and did it. And you're like well yeah after 30 years of practice like I just walked up and did it. But no it's not like just walking up and doing it. Hm.

Alex Honnold: I mean, like, yeah, I've literally been climbing 5 days a week for 30 years. Like, that's so much climbing. I freaking love climbing and I climb a lot.

主持人: On this on this idea of like exposure therapy as it relates to like fear and anxiety and confronting one's uh things that terrify them. Was there in the early days were you I'm trying to understand. Were you like scared at some point?

Alex Honnold: Oh, all the time. That's actually something that I think uh you know I've obviously done so many interviews around fear and like managing fear and all that and I've talked about fear a lot of different ways over over the years and I think as I've gotten older I've sort of come to realize that that actually you're just scared all the time as a climber like low-level fear low like but you're but climbing is fundamentally scary like it's always kind of scary because there always consequences like even if you're climbing with a rope you're still always visualizing like what happens if the rope breaks like what if you know like is this safe like you know is the gear good like is is actually safe. And so you're always a little bit scared. And so after years and years of always being scared, you get pretty good at managing that kind of stuff

主持人: because there's a lot of sort of misconceptions swirling around this brain scan you.

Alex Honnold: Yeah. I know. I hate all that stuff. That's just all from the film Free Solo.

主持人: It was like too short of a scene in the film. They needed a little more. They need to let it breathe, you know, explain things a little better, I think.

Alex Honnold: So they scanned a control subject. another person scanned you, looked at the amygdala in your brain, and that the conclusion that a lot of people have arrived at is that you don't experience fear because when they look at these two brain scans, your amygdala is lighting up less when you're shown scary images basically, right? But like shown just this image, like what does that even mean? Like my brain's purple and his brain is orange. You're like, like what does that mean? Like I don't know. But no, I mean the the thing is though, and this is what I wish was explained in the film better, is that this is we're being shown black and white photos inside an fMRI. So, you're inside a sealed metal tube. You're totally safe. You're physically safe and comfortable. And you're being shown black and white photos. And so, to me, obviously, that's not going to light up the fear response in my brain because you're looking at pictures. You're like, who cares? I'm totally safe. But in a control subject, uh, you know, apparently your brain sort of responds to images one way or another. But I'm kind of like, I've been climbing for 20 years, so I've been like scared quite a lot. And you're kind of like, well, black and white photos start to lose lose their edge if you've been scared all the time for 20 years. So, it's like obviously that's not going to trigger much.

主持人: Yeah. Yeah. And I imagine everybody in their life can think of a scenario where they have mastery that would sc like a stand-up comedian looking out at a stage probably wouldn't be as scared as me.

Alex Honnold: Yeah.

主持人: Because that would that would terrify me. Um so again, this is not necessarily some sort of neurological

Alex Honnold: No, I mean I think the real takeaway is that I have an amygdala and it works.

主持人: Mhm.

Alex Honnold: You know what I mean? like cuz I think if if the results had shown that I was missing my amygdala then I would have all kinds of I would have died already at youth cuz I wouldn't be able to function as a as a human basically but you know had it shown something like that where there are like structural differences or like some real change but this is basically just showing that after 20 years of conditioning I respond differently than an average person and you're like yeah no kidding like if you put a monk into an fMRI their brain responds totally differently than average person as well

主持人: which I actually think is a really inspiring conclusion because it means that we can all

Alex Honnold: grasp our fears better. And even, you know, people won't know this about me, but 10 years ago, I sat down on camera with my friend Ash in his apartment to record a two-minute video. And as I sat there, I couldn't I was so scared I couldn't get the words out. So, you actually in this 2-minute video that comes out, you see it go from night and day in the background just because we did that many cuts over 7 hours to try and get me to say 2 minutes on camera. And obviously, after 10 years of being on camera, I can now speak without [ __ ] myself. And I imagine my brain state looks significantly different because of our exposure therapy.

主持人: Totally. Yeah. Hey, you should do the fMRI. You should Yeah. You should have done 10 years ago cuz then you'd have your control and then you do it now and it'd be totally different.

Alex Honnold: But also, the psychologists I've sat with all confirm this. They talk about exposure therapy.

主持人: Yeah. And and I went through exactly the same thing with public speaking. Like I was always so afraid of public speaking. I was also very shy and like just not like it was terrifying. And now because of the free solo film tour and you know all the public things I've done since then, I'm like basically fine. And you know, it's like you still got a little nervous, but it's like basically easy now. You're kind of like, well, that's a total change. It's like obviously there's a tremendous capacity for humans to learn.

Alex Honnold: People talk to you about fear all the time because I mean your work cuz climate is really freaking scary. It makes sense. It's totally understandable. Yeah.

主持人: Yeah. And they also realize, I think, at some deep level that the thing holding them back from who they think they want to be or who they aspire to be is fear. Often it's judgment of someone else. It's taking a risk.

Alex Honnold: Totally. So, you've become for many people the like, tell me, tell me how to overcome.

主持人: Yeah. Well, I think that everyone's like, "What's your hack to overcome fear?" And you're like, "There's no hack. You just get really scared over and over for so long and eventually it's not that scary anymore." But I will say that that's like a very enduring way to overcome your fear is like if you're willing to go through that process, then you are actually unafraid, you know, because like you can do like hacks. I mean, you can you can like crank up loud rock music and just go for it, you know? Like, and there are plenty of examples of that in in what I'd call gravity assisted sports. Like, say if you're going to jump a cliff on skis, like you can get to the edge, be like, "This is really scary." And then be like 3 2 1 do it and just like go. In climbing, you can't really do that as much because it's so slow. Like when you climb, you make one move and then you make another move and then you're like, "Do I still want to be here?" Like it basically fear creeps in a lot more. But sort of in gravity assisted sports, you can have more of that moment where you just like overcome your fear and then it happens, you know, like making a big drop in a kayak or like skis or things like that where it's like once you commit, it's happening one way or another.

主持人: Anyway, there's a lot to get into with like

Alex Honnold: No, but I mean I want to get into it. I watched a video of you climbing Half Dome, I think it was, and it looks like you got scared halfway up or

主持人: Yeah. Yeah. Well, so that video is actually filmed later. So the voice over in that video is me talking about the experience of me freestyling when I was totally alone. And I did get really scared on halfdome and I had this whole somewhat traumatic climate experience near the top of the wall. But then when we went back to film it, I had a different traumatic experience while we were filming. Less traumatic but uh but like very scary for a moment and they got that on camera. So they basically in the film they just cut the two together as like a because it shows me like being really scared.

Alex Honnold: What's Half Dome to start with and then what was the traumatic experience?

主持人: Yeah. So Halfdme for anyone who hasn't seen is uh is this just totally amazing wall in Euseite. It's a 2,000 foot granite face. Actually it's the North Face logo. It's a It's freaking It's That's That's half dome.

Alex Honnold: Okay.

主持人: Yeah. So, it's like an iconic wall in Euseity. Um it looks like half of a dome, but actually it's more like a hockey puck just shoved in. It's actually a full dome depending how you look at it. But the Northwest Faces vertical for 2,000 ft is incredible. And so I freelled. That was one of the first like major free soulas I did in 2008. Um and one of the things that sort of made me a professional climber in a way. But when I did the climb, I did the bare minimum preparation. I basically like didn't know. It was it was the biggest thing I'd ever freed. I didn't quite know how to like go about getting ready for it. Anyway, I I climbed it and basically hadn't practiced enough. Was really freaking scared. Got off route, got confused, skipped some stuff, and then at the very top had this whole moment of extreme panic, you know? Basically, I got up into some stuff and all sort of like crumbled mentally and like sort of barely managed to finish this upper slab. Like the hardest part of the climb was like right near the top. I was trying to walk across this ledge. Basically, I've walked across that ledge face in and face out. you normally people hand traverse it or they crawl across it. There are like different ways to go across the ledge and I've done it every which way and then we were up there filming and I was like I'm going to walk it face out but it turns out when you walk it face out it's really freaking scary. And so I made it kind of halfway and was like oh my gosh and then bailed.

Alex Honnold: And when you say you having like a like a crisis in your your mind, what does what is that? Is that just oh my god what am I like how does that sound when you

主持人: Well, I mean so in this case so walking across this ledge it's like it starts maybe as a foot wide. So your foot is fully on the ledge and you're shuffling across it. But then at a certain point, yeah, I mean that's that's

Alex Honnold: the video I'll put on the screen for anyone watching.

主持人: Yeah, that's that's the ledge. But basically at the narrowest part, your feet are sticking out over the lip of it and the wall bulges ever so slightly. So it for forces your back out a little and so you're basically like rocking on your heels with I don't know like a 1700T drop or something, 18800t drop like straight down below you and so you know it's like pretty it's pretty intense. Anyway, and so I thought I was going to walk across it like that and I made it to the bulging part and was suddenly like, "Oh my god, this isn't like this isn't for me." And then managed to like shuffle back and and change my strategy.

Alex Honnold: Is it like panic in your head?

主持人: It's not panic, but you're like, "Oh, oh, I made the wrong choice. Like, this is bad. This is bad." You know? I mean, it's not like full like five alarm bell like panic panic, but yeah, you're like, "Oh, I'm so screwed."

Alex Honnold: And you have fallen a long long way before. I I was hearing about a time when you were younger you fell off a a mountain and called your mother, managed to call your mother in

主持人: Yeah, though that was like sliding down an icy cooler type thing. It's a little different than like free falling off of a cliff. That's like sliding down a mountain. But yeah, I got totally messed up and and uh Yeah. Yeah. And I've like broken my arm several times as a kid falling off things and and then with a rope as a climber, you take big falls like routinely, you know, when you have protection. That's like part of the sport basically.

主持人: M I mean it's certainly easy to visualize falling 700. You know when you're like standing on a little ledge and you're just bulging and you're looking down you're, you know, it's easy to be like, "Oh my god." You know, it's like if you just bend forward a little bit, you're just going to take a swan dive like 700 feet to the ground.

Alex Honnold: The stats in this sport are I mean of of fatalities. How do they compare to other sports?

主持人: Uh safer than you would think. That's the thing is everyone thinks it seems crazy, but uh it's not that crazy. I don't know actual statistics, but I suspect that it's actually pretty comparable to to skiing or something, you know, because like recreational skiers die all the time, like falling into tree wells or like going off cliffs by accident or things like that. Climbing is actually surprisingly safe, which is one of the things I love about climbing. I mean, climbing is very it's very uh sort of binary where it's like either you're totally safe or you're going to die. And the odds of you dying are very very very small. But because they're they're there, they always keep you on. You know what I mean? Like it basically keeps you alert, but you're never really gonna get hurt.

Alex Honnold: Is that including free soloing?

主持人: Yeah. I mean, for the most part, I mean, a couple people have died free soling. I mean, people occasionally die free soloing for sure, but actually most of the the sort of cutting edge free soloists have not died soling. They've like died in other things.

Alex Honnold: I think it was in in the um the documentary on Netflix um Free Solo where one of your colleagues

主持人: Yeah. Tommy Tommy is like most free solos are dead now. Um which is kind of true but it's slightly mis misstated. I mean you know he's just like speaking off the cuff and it's not like strictly true. Like a couple of the best free solos have died free soling though they died on very easy terrain. But then the majority of other great free solas have died in sort of climbing adjacent accidents like wings suit base jumping and uh like one got swept to sea by a rogue wave like while he was out climbing a sea cliff but he was like standing on shore and got swept out to sea. You know things like that where you're just kind of like you know obviously they're taking risks in their lives and they wind up dead but it's not the way that people think. You know, you see a photo like that and you're like, "Free soul, you're going to die for sure." And you're kind of like, "Well, people don't actually really die that way." I mean, they have. I mean, not to say that it doesn't happen, but way less frequently than people would suspect.

Alex Honnold: If I was to try and like, you know, professionally torture you, and again, I'm not talking in extremes here, but what life would I prescribe you to live?

主持人: Oh, being like a finance bro or something. Having to like just work spreadsheets my whole life. Is that what you mean? Like what what is my like worst

Alex Honnold: I don't know, something like that. or honestly being like a choreographer for dance or something like I just I couldn't do like or or being like an opera singer like I would just kill myself. I just couldn't do that.

主持人: Why Why would being a finance bro be like the worst thing for Alex?

Alex Honnold: Just the idea of sitting at a computer in a cubicle just like typing. I mean I'm kind of contrarian. I don't like rules. I don't want to like jump through hoops. I don't want to do arbitrary things. Like I don't want some manager to come and tell me like, "Oh, you got to file that report again. You like missed a line." I'd be like, "You go f," you I just like walk out of the building like it's just I just like don't know if I could take that be like no. But that's like how most of the world live. We kind of we all live in like you know

主持人: I just don't know if it's for me.

Alex Honnold: I don't know. I mean doesn't that just seem I mean I had this moment I've been in New York a couple days and I I took the subway down to see some see some friends and I was like coming out of the tunnel and it's like packed with people and I was just like looking at the ground and I was like just you know following someone else's footsteps up this like beat down path of stairs and I was like I couldn't live like this. like not day in and day out every day like this is just like feeling like you're just doing the exact same thing as everyone else around you. I'm like oh it seems so so boring.

主持人: It's funny cuz so so many of us look at your life and go wow that's not very normal but actually maybe at a foundational level you're living a much more normal life than I mean you're out in nature you're moving your body.

Alex Honnold: Yeah. Yeah. In that in that way for sure I'm like going on cool adventures and going out and I don't know. I think that's also part of why the the sort of attraction and allur with your life especially when you watch free solo is you do seem to be a free man in a way where most of us aren't free as such.

主持人: Yeah. I mean well I think we're all sort of aspiring to that to some extent. I mean most people see that though as like they get their vacation for the year. They they're planning to retire at some point and then they're going to have their freedom and you're kind of like I don't know. I mean maybe you got to try to live that way as much as possible.

Alex Honnold: If if your if your young girls came up to you June and Alice and said, "Dad, what's what is a meaningful life? like what are the principles of living a fulfilling meaningful life? Would you give them advice there?

主持人: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it'd be a long rambling multi-day conversation with them about But I mean, following your own goals is is I think, you know, certainly one of the the cores of having a meaningful life, like having things that you find valuable. I mean, really like living in line with your values, finding things that are important to you and pursuing them with as much as you can give them. you when you look at your early so 20s to 30s it kind of looks like you're living like a Buddhist a little bit.

Alex Honnold: I mean yeah I went on a a trip once where they called me the monk just because I was living such a sort of a seated lifestyle. I was like reading I've never I don't drink and I don't like party and I didn't just for personal preference whatever. So I'm just like living in my little van and reading books and climbing all the time like those are the things that I'm into doing you know. It's like it's yeah it's just doing what you want to do.

主持人: Have you ever been depressed or?

Alex Honnold: Yeah, probably not like deep clinical depression, but there's certainly periods from time to time where you're just like, what am I doing or why or what are my goals? Like, you know, what's And I think to me the most depressing thing is that, you know, I've put like my whole life into climbing, like trying to be the best you can be all the time. And sometimes you put tons of effort in and you just don't see results. Like for whatever reason, you just suck. You're like, I'm trying so hard and I'm just like not as good as I want to be. And like that's challenging, you know? But that's

Alex Honnold: I mean everybody faces that to some extent where you're like I'm working hard at a thing but I'm just not achieving the results that I want.

主持人: And between the between that the sort of that period of no man's 20 and 30 where your career hasn't taken off yet the documentary is not out. You've not climbed Taipei. How much money are you earning from climbing?

Alex Honnold: I mean the first my first couple years my sponsorship through the Northace was like uh I think my first year was like 10k a year. I was like this is amazing. cuz I was living in my car and uh you know making 10 grand when you live by yourself in a van is like more than you need basically. Um it obviously went up but beyond that at some point but it was you know like in the 10 to 100 range for the first for the whole yeah for years.

主持人: Then at some point it increases.

Alex Honnold: Yeah. And then it increases. I mean then free solo is obviously like a big thing and that sort of opened up all these opportunities. Uh because then I started doing corporate speaking and stuff like that. And I mean, as I'm sure you know, that's just like a whole different world. And so then you go from just like making some money from sponsors to like making money from from other corporations stuff. And then you're like, okay, now you're making some money.

主持人: One of the things when I was I was hearing you talk about some of your incredible climbing stories is um I was trying to understand what role visualization or or your preparation plays and how that's like transferable to to me and my life. We talked a little bit about just how much preparation you did for something like LCAP,

主持人: And then say impossible.

Alex Honnold: Yeah. Which is fair. I mean, I spent years looking at LCAP and being like, "That's too big. That's impossible." And then, you know, after years of that, I kept hoping that I would look at it and it would like look easy somehow and I'd be like, "Cool, now I'm going to do it." And it just never looked easy. And so then finally I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna have to like put some real work into it." And then I started slowly breaking it down and and and then once you like break it into pieces and start working on the pieces, then you're kind of like, "Okay, it starts to feel more reasonable."

主持人: Break it into pieces and start working on the pieces. What does that mean in terms of climbing? So if we I mean I've got this this uh model here of

主持人: But this is actually perfect because it's right here.

Alex Honnold: Yeah.

主持人: So I scouted this in September of this year. I did the climb in January. or whatever. In September, we went and um well, we had to like one make sure it was possible before you sort of like commit to it doing a whole TV program. We were kind of like, let's make sure we can do this. And then they also had to get all this sort of marketing material. You like get the photos with the building, like all the stuff that becomes the trailer and whatever. And so we went in September to sort of like do the prep. And so we I basically checked out all the different pieces. And so anywhere where you see it looking a little bit different, you know, it's like this whole bottom part is like a low angle slab. It's like punctuated with these two little rubies, these little like coin things or whatever the clouds or whatever they are. And then there the dragons on the corners. These are all overhanging. Like each of these eight blocks is like a big overhanging thing. It feels a little bit different. Then you get up here, there's like these balconies. These are actually overhanging. Like basically each little segment of this is quite different. And you know, obviously on this model like looks looks the same, but um each transition between the different pieces is like a thing. So I checked out all of them with ropes and and yeah, you just go piece by piece all the way up the whole thing.

Alex Honnold: And you hadn't ever climbed it before we saw it on Netflix live.

主持人: Well, I hadn't freed it. No, but I had climbed it. I climbed all the pieces with a rope for sure. I'd like checked out the different things.

Alex Honnold: Okay. So, so you you look at these as individual challenges every step.

主持人: Yeah. It's like you go Well, even like just getting off the ground, the first move is a slightly different move than any of the other moves. You have to like jump up to a thing and like press it out. Um then climbing over these little clouds is a different thing. Each dragon is a different thing. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's just, you know, there's a surprising amount of complexity to it. And so our first on the scout, you know, I had a note on my phone and I'm just like writing down all the different basically I'm trying to learn it the way you study anything where I'm just like making notes and sort of like from floor 54 to 72 it feels like this. I climb the southeast corner the left ar you know just and then yeah just writing it all down

Alex Honnold: and I mean there's this famous photo of you hanging with your leg.

主持人: Yeah, that's this these are the rings up here.

主持人: Well, I mean, what this this is what makes it exciting because you can't be sure. But, you know, I've done a lot of climbing in my life, and I've done a lot of climbs that were like 24 hours. I mean, I had this experience in Patagonia once. It was a 54-hour push. Like, the last 20 hours we hiked without food um cuz we got caught in a storm. It's a whole crazy story. But basically, you know, I've had a lot of experiences in my life where I've done hard exercise for more than 24 hours. And so this, you know, I expect it to take me somewhere in the hour and a half, two hour range. And I'm kind of like, yeah, I mean, I'll be tired after 2 hours of exercise, but I'm not going to be exhausted. You know what I mean? Like, I know that I have a much deeper reserve than that.

主持人: No, no, it's obviously much easier. I mean, I'm doing on live television, you know, it's like obviously it's easier, but what makes it cool is that it's different. It's fun. It's challenging. Like for me, it's really like in my sweet spot where it is challenging enough like it's it's not easy. You know what I mean? Like saying easier than LCAP, it doesn't, you know, LCAP was like a 10-year life project that I did in absolute secrecy. I did it on my terms on the correct day after years of effort. I had failed attempts. I you know what I like LCAP was like an all-consuming life project for years kind of like obviously you can't do that for live TV. It's like you just can't put anyway

主持人: but this was very much in my sweet spot where you're like oh it's hard enough that it's that it's hard like it's cool you know like it's fun it's interesting the climbing is engaging it's you know gave me something to train for for months it's like it's super fun but it's not you know it's not like the absolute limit of what I can do because you just can't do that on live TV. I mean, if nothing else, so I was climbing the southeast because it gets good morning light and it looks beautiful and it's like great for filming. But if I was trying to do the absolute most cutting edge climb I could do, I'd be climbing the northwest arette because it'd be full shade because it'd be good better conditions, you know, be colder. Like you just don't want to be in the sun. It makes your skin, you know, makes you hot and stuff.

Alex Honnold: Mhm.

主持人: And so, you know, just things like that. You're like, well, if you're doing it for TV and you're trying to broadcast it, then you want it to look good. But like, if you're trying to do it for hard climbing and good conditions, you do in full shade.

主持人: I mean, I'm sure part of it is in case you fall, but part of it's like, what if somebody unplugs one of the things or, you know what I mean? Like, it's so complicated. There's so much stuff going on, it's insane.

主持人: The thing I was most nervous about when I started was were the bamboo boxes, like doing these eight overhanging segments cuz they're just so relentlessly the same move and it's just it's pretty physical like you get tired for sure. I mean, the actual physical hardest moves, um, like actually randomly one of these corners up here would have been quite a hard move, but there was this freaking security camera bolted onto the wall. And so, you use the security camera as this handle. It was really freaking cool. And it was like bolted on with these giant bolts, so it like looked super safe and, you know, it was like very robust and secure, but it would have been kind of like this extreme jump, which I wasn't, you know, it's probably possible, but would have been like a major thing, but instead you just reef off the security camera. And I was like, that's so cool. It was uh so there are a few things like that like individual moves that are kind of muscly but overall it's the the stamina like the challenge of doing this over and over for hundreds of feet that was the hardest thing.

主持人: not with the kids cuz they're too young and like they wouldn't they don't understand it anyway. Um and not with her because she came with me to Taipei or she was there for like the whole end of I went a little bit earlier so I could adapt to the time zone more and like feel better. But um but basically she was with me so you know like we went to bed together that night and like woke up that morning and had breakfast together. So it didn't feel like a big goodbye. You know it was kind of actually she was with me at the base like we did the start together and then I literally was like okay bye and walked over and did the thing and saw her again going to the top. So we were only apart for like an hour and a half of the whole you know like and I saw her through the window a couple times and so it felt like she was just there having the whole experience with me.

主持人: I've scouted the Burge twice over the years. Um, back when this project, this project almost happened in 2013 or something and so I'd scouted some buildings then. The Burge was just a little too extreme. It's just too hard. But someday maybe, who knows?

主持人: Um, yeah, super slippery. Also, it's just the way the holds are. Like I mean, the beauty of Typo 101 is that the holds like they're good things to hold that are close together and you're just like and you can hold them and you feel secure. the Burge. I can barely span tip to tip to like reach between the holds.

主持人: The other thing that I saw um online after you'd climbed it about one or two days after everyone talk started talking about how much you were paid to do it.

主持人: It's funny. There were some quotes that were kind of taken out of context because yeah, a New York Times reporter asked me how much I was getting paid and I was kind of like I don't want to talk about it cuz it's kind of embarrassing cuz all my friends it's like an embarrassingly high amount for my community. Like in the climbing world if you're getting paid to rock climb you're like great success, you're getting paid to climb. That's insane, you know? And so I thought it was like sort of an embarrassingly large amount. I'm like this is kind of weird. But then he sort of poked around and he started comparing it to like boxing matches and stuff where people get paid like $20 million to like fight someone boxing. And I was like, "Well, no, compared to that, it's an embarrassingly small amount." You know, it's like or if you compare it to like major league baseball contracts and things and it's like, "Yeah, it's an embarrassingly small amount, but I was never complaining. Like, I thought it was great." I mean, I would do it for free. I mean, I've paid money to go up to the observation deck. The observation deck is way up here at the top and the view is insane and the city's incredible." And, you know, it's like 20 bucks or whatever to take the world's fastest elevator to the top of the building. And you know, I've done that in the Burge as well where you like pay the money and you go to the very top of the building and the view is insane. It's like I do that like anywhere I travel like the Se the Willis Tower, whatever the Sears Tower in Chicago. Like I've paid the money to go to the observation deck and see the view and it's so cool. And I'm kind of like if someone's willing to pay me to climb up to the observation deck, that's freaking cool.

主持人: They kind of are.

主持人: I know. Of course they don't see it as that. And that's totally understandable. I get that. But I see it as like anybody going into the boxing ring, particularly if they're very mismatched, you know, like you would think that there is some real chance of grievous injury or like death, you know? It's like it's insane.

主持人: And so I think that people over the thing is I think people that don't know anything about anything like don't know anything about climbing look at me climbing a building. They're like it's 50/50 if he lives or dies. Like no idea. And you're like no. If you put this in the context of all the things that I've gone in my life, I felt very confident that I wouldn't fall off the building. You know, I was like, you know, obviously it's never 100% because like whatever it's life, but you know, it feels like 100%. You're like, oh, there's no chance I'm falling off this building.

主持人: Throughout my whole like, you know, quote unquote career as a climber, I basically have never worried about money and I've always just tried to do the thing and let it all play out at the end. And so I've done a ton of work for free over the years. Oh, like actually we were talking about that Halfdme film earlier where it's like I'm shuffling along. It's like I did that film for free. I did tons of films like that for free. Uh just because you're kind of like, "Oh, it's part of being a professional climber and I get to go climbing and I'm up with my friends filming on a thing." You're just like, "You're working for free. It's fine." But by doing all that stuff for free, like I never I never stress the day rate. Never, you know, I was like, I don't need to get paid to go have fun with my friends on a wall. Like it's fine. But as a result of that film, you know, a year or two later, they wind up doing a photo shoot out there for the cover of National Geographic. And so you just wind up in other things and then and then that got seen and I wound up being profiled by 60 Minutes, which actually was one of the first sort of career inflection points. It was like the 60 Minutes profile in 2011 or something. But basically, I've done a ton of work for free over my life as all part of like it's all part of the game and I just love playing the game. And so you just like let it play out. And it's funny because with this building, a lot of people thought that I was sort of underpaid by it, but afterward, you know, some people have approached me about some bonuses and some other work stuff and like basically a lot has already sort of happened and it's only been a couple weeks since the building. And I'm kind of like, you know, you don't need to get paid for the thing itself cuz it always works basically. I'm kind of like I don't know. I'm like, don't get hung up on how much you get paid. Just do the thing. Make sure it's freaking rad and it all sorts itself out.

主持人: You're just doing a thing. You make it as good as you can and eventually it all sort of works and you're like cool.

主持人: He was like if you do once a day you won't make any money. And I was like

主持人: and you have no evidence but

主持人: Yeah. The Uber CEO Dario, was was sat here with me yesterday in that scene and he was telling me he was like the thing is there's this thing called Jevans paradox where when yeah when become more efficient whatever people think of things in linear progression but actually there's exponential progression. So when we launched Uber more people started taking taxis. So all of the models about how big this market were were all wrong. And I find the same in that and I found the same in about 5 years ago was yeah like you set me down and go well Steve CPMs you're going to have to be getting a million downloads to make like to earn a living like but

主持人: Yeah thing and let it let it happen.

主持人: Yeah. It's always better to focus your energy on being the best at the thing that you're trying to do than figuring out how to monetize it or you know make money off of it. It's like I don't know. I mean, my whole like life as a climber, I've always tried to focus on like how do you send, which in climbing terms means like do the hard thing. Like you always focus on sending and then everything else follows.

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主持人: It's funny you you talking about mortality earlier on and um I think in the last couple of years my mortality like realizing that I'm going to die someday has been such a a wonderful thing to to really remind myself of and like a frequent basis.

主持人: Just because Okay, so there's many things. One of them is um the whole idea of like sunk cost bias where you become successful at a thing and you and now you have something to lose. So people go into a state of loss aversion where they start to protect what they have. Totally.

主持人: And the other thing generally about knowing you're going to die and really like reminding yourself of that is it liberates you from getting caught up and worrying about things that in the grand scheme of like cosmic reality are like totally inconsequential.

主持人: I was I was hearing someone say the other day like do you know the the name of your great-grandfather?

主持人: Not really. And do you know the life they lived and what they were worried about and how they were embarrassed and their shame.

主持人: And the point is like if you don't even know your own family's

主持人: Like nobody else cares. Yeah.

主持人: Totally. Well, I'm already experiencing that with with this stuff, you know, like the building was like insane for a moment, but now it's the Olympics and there's a lot going on in the news cycle and it's like the world's moved on. I'm like great. I'll go back to just like being at home with my family and climbing as much as I can.

主持人: Yeah.

主持人: Mhm. And generally I just saw someone who probably is more on the um less affectionate, more commitment avoidant side of life. Is that accurate?

主持人: Has she ever given you feedback that she wishes you were more emotionally uh available? I mean, I get that.

主持人: Sonnie.

主持人: is her name.

主持人: Oh gosh,

主持人: Oh gosh, she she does know me.

主持人: That's She knows me so well.

主持人: She said, "I remember when you read a book once about a woman who said she was less affected by emotions than most people. For her entire life, people tried to convince her that she was wrong, that she was suppressing her feelings, but at the end of the day, she just wasn't." As you were reading, you turned to me and said something similar, something like, "Everyone wants to believe that I'm burying all these things, these feelings deep inside, but I'm just not." And I laughed and I joked, "Don't worry. I know you're dead inside. If I remember correctly, you gave me a hug. But I've thought about this conversation a lot because as the person married to you, I spend a lot of time trying to understand you. And while there obviously are emotions that drive you, I was mostly joking about the dead inside part. I do think you are far less affected by some feelings like anxiety, fear, shame, guilt, or self-doubt than many of us. But the longer I know you, the more I see an ocean of something else hiding beneath the surface. Filling the space that would normally be taken up by all these feelings is the ability to truly see things. You move through the world like a hawk while the rest of us are lost in thought. As a climber, you can see the way up a rock face, the climbability of a building, or the layered history of a mountain range. As a father, you notice the quiet intrinsic desires of your daughters or the chores that need doing around the house. And as a friend, you see the raw potential in every person that you meet. Sometimes this is the hardest thing about you. Nothing goes unnoticed. Neither the strengths nor the weaknesses, the moments of dedication or the moments of laziness. You are practical and blunt in your assessment of your choices and our lives. But that's also because you see us. And paying attention is love. Your ability to see the world so clearly allows you to also appreciate it more clearly. And that is a special form of your love. Perhaps there's a well of emotion in there after all. But but for the purposes of this letter, Alex, I want to give you your gift back to you and tell you what what I see particularly in the last four years since we had kids because I think the way you move through the world with us is a unique love story. I see you rushing down the trail from the climbing area so you can get back in time for dinner with me and the girls. I see you flying the red eye so you can be home a day sooner. I see you cramming in your gym session even when you have a huge goal on the horizon so that I have time for my workout too. I see you pushing your body to the absolute limit during the day but still managing to stay awake long enough to chat to me at night. I see you taking on an extra day of travel just to convince someone with money to donate to your foundation and help save the planet. I see you adjusting your whole training schedule for work opportunities in order to provide a wonderful life for me and the girls. I see the insane juggling act you do every day to not only be a great athlete, but a great dad and husband. I know it's not easy, but I see it and I appreciate it. We love you as you are, Alex. Not overly emotional, but present, committed, and always seeing what others miss. Yours, Sani."

主持人: Yeah. I learned a lot about you from reading this.

主持人: You know we all show our love in different ways and sometimes I think the conventional way that the world tries to measure love is through the like verbal expression of it and romantic gestures and those kinds of things. But there's another type of person who often struggles, I think, in in what life's expectations of what love looks like, who show it through acts of service. That was that was literally one of our last big arguments about something like in bed the other night, not like a total blowout, but basically she was sort of like, I just need more, you know, of the verbal kind. And I was kind of like, I'm literally doing all the things. And I always sort of say, you know, actions speak louder than words. I'm kind of like, if you're doing all the things, you're doing the correct things. you don't need to talk about them because you're doing the things, you know, and that was basically a a back and forth. I mean, you know, I took her point that like occasionally you have to say the right thing, too.

主持人: H she needs the words, too.

主持人: Yeah.

主持人: even growing up say calling someone my best friend somewhat made me cringe.

主持人: and so you can imagine me being ding and then I think like often times we go for the opposite in the person we end up mar like marrying or

主持人: Yeah. Well certainly.

主持人: Yeah, same.

主持人: it's like filling your blind spots basically.

主持人: No.

主持人: Uh yeah, progress probably. But very slow. But in a way that's great, you know, because we're going to be married the rest of our lives and so that could be another 50 60 years together. And so you need to see incremental progress, you know, because really there's nothing better in life than making progress. And I've started at such a low point and I'm making progress so slowly that I basically have a good project for the rest of my life.

主持人: Oh, um, we kind of touched on it before, but one of the things that's been in front of mind for me at the moment is, um, actually something I saw in your personality test, which was you were high in perseverance. And, uh, we talked earlier on about like mastery and how it's important to, um, persist to get good at something. But this has just been front of mind for me I think for a long time because even like as a podcaster I realize that a lot of the game I'm like five years in now and um when I look at someone like Joe Rogan he's been going for like I don't know 15 17 years

主持人: and I go like so much of the game in becoming great at something grinding it's just going unusual amount of

主持人: It's exactly that. And so I've been thinking about like

主持人: We'll put it on the screen so everyone can see.

主持人: It's the same. It's the same as this graph here that you drew of your career. Um it's the same as the podcast growth where three years no one was listening and then we have this

主持人: Um and I I think as a principle

主持人: Okay. So on that train of thought, I've thought a lot about how do I create the conditions to out-persist other people in the areas that I love. And one such thing, for example, with a podcast is like never have a conversation that I'm not looking forward to

主持人: Totally. Cuz then it feels like hard work as opposed to something like this is amazing.

主持人: But you're like I don't care about that person.

主持人: Yeah.

主持人: I mean, kind of. Yeah. I mean, I haven't had to think about it too much because I freaking love climbing in all its forms. And so, basically, climbing comes easily, but like in terms of the work stuff I do, um I forget I think I was talking to you before we started recording, but um but I host this podcast called Planet Visionaries. Uh it's like a Rolex Perpetual Planet. Like I interview scientists and conservationists and whatever. And for whatever reason, every time I do those podcasts, I come out of it feeling all energized and like, I should train more. I should study. I should learn something. Basically, because the people that I'm interviewing are all so uniquely good at what they do, and they're all trying to save the world in different ways. It's like, you know, marine biologists like exploring the deep sea floor and things like that. Yesterday, I interviewed these two uh women about the fact that we've only explored .001% of the deep sea, which represents two-thirds of the planet. So, basically, two-thirds of the planet we know like literally nothing about. And there's like this rich underwater world of like cool stuff going on in the ocean floor that we've never seen and know nothing about and it's insane. I was like that's so cool. And I got all fired up about it. And so I come out of work thing, you know, quote unquote work things like that and I'm like energized and excited to learn and grow, you know, push myself and I'm kind of like that's the type of work that I want to do as much as possible. And then there are other kinds of things where you know I'll do like corporate speaking or something where you show up at a conference and you just like get ground down you know when you leave and you go back to your hotel and all you can do is just like lie there on the bed for an hour being like h what am I doing with my life you know you feel like kind of wrecked.

主持人: Yeah. Someone said that to me in my career. I said like whenever you find domains that make you feel expansive like

主持人: you should double down on those domains cuz you're that's the path to mastery. You're going to be able to continue.

主持人: thankfully for climbing that's always just been that like I just freaking love climbing. It's so great. You should do it more.

主持人: That's one of the I think the great um consequences of watching you do something like Taipei. I mean, there was loads of kids in the streets of Taipei, I think, that were all trying to climb buildings. There was loads of like funny videos. Then, obviously, they were only getting like a meter up before they fell.

主持人: Have you already started thinking about what you're going to do next?

主持人: That's me.

Alex Honnold: Well, so at least, so I mean, I have climbing goals going back 20 years. I have all these notes on my phone. I always have like to-do lists. of especially when I lived in the van and I was traveling, you're like seasonally moving between climbing destinations non-stop. So I'd lay I'd layer out all these different types of goals. Like I want to do these types of things. Certain goals lead to other goals because they're same type of fitness, let's say. So like doing really big things help you do even bigger things later, but doing like really hard and intense things help you do other hard and intense things later, you know? So in some ways in the way you stack your goals, you can kind of build up to big things or like build up to really hard things or whatever. And so I've always had running to-do lists of like I'm going to try to do all these climbs this year. And realistically, I normally do like half of them or or some of them I never even get to because it's like the weather's not good. I wind up going to a different area or I like don't go to that that climbing destination at all. And so I never even try the project. But I've always had tons of goals like that. And looking back at years and years of that type of those types of lists, I just see that it's slightly hard to predict when you're going to achieve the things that are like cutting edge or groundbreaking or whatever. You just have to keep doing the things non-stop and every once in a while some of them rise to the top. I mean, this kind of goes back to the same like value creating things like you don't know which things are going to be rad. You just do all the things and some of them wind up being rad.

主持人: And the decision framework there is to just do things you love and that challenge you.

主持人: because it narrows them to the serendipity and opportunity and things that might happen if they're broad and openminded.

主持人: Mhm.

主持人: and it overlaps with what you said earlier about like not worrying so much about like how much it's going to pay me today or what the big thing is or

主持人: I would love if we could, you know, scan your brain and look at all the parts. It's especially in the context I learned of about this particular region of the brain called the anterior mid-sulate cortex.

主持人: Which I heard Andrew Hman been talking about. And it's a part of the brain they discovered quite recently that lights up when you do things that you don't want to do.

主持人: So um in your in the context of the way you've lived your life, you've continued to do things that are hard. I mean, you can love climbing, but you don't necessarily love

主持人: Yeah. And I think the thing I guess here is like about neuroplasticity which there's going to be a ton of people listening right now that are so far away from their type A from their type A 101. They're so far away from that. They're in a job they just don't like. They're maybe the finance bra that you know you talked about a second ago and their life is absent of ad adventure and they probably look at you and go well you know he just has something I don't have.

主持人: But with this in mind, and with all the neuroscientists that I've interviewed, your brain is different in part because you've taken you've done different things. And neuroplasticity says you can change your brain right the way up throughout your your entire life. One of my friends, um, Tom Bilu is a good example of that. He's a big podcaster. You might know Tom Bilu. Um, but he, you know, he was, I can't remember the rough age, but I'm going to say he was 30 years old. He was so, in his words, lazy that he would lay in bed all day. When his girlfriend came home, he said he would jump up out of bed just so she didn't believe that he was in bed all day. And he didn't want to be embarrassed. And when he asked his at the time girlfriend if if he could um asked her dad if he could marry her, dad said no. He was he just he was like lazy down and out. Over the next 10 years, he makes decisions to take on more difficult challenges, builds a billion dollar company, sells it. If you meet this guy today, you'd think like athlete, genius, super smart, motivated. You'd beg him for advice on discipline and motivation. Like he's that kind of guy.

主持人: He read a book about neuroplasticity and he realized that he wasn't stuck.

主持人: He he learned about neuroplasticity, which means that at any age in your life, the decisions you make change your brain. And that's why I love this discovery of this anterior mid-syncular cortex because it means that like maybe in part the reason why I'm not taking on my type A 101 is because I haven't taken on my type A 101.

主持人: I had a psychologist say to me about this idea of just setting yourself a type A1, like a small goal. The reason why people don't do it is because they see it as almost so embarrassingly small that they don't think it matters.

主持人: But that same psychologist told me that when they were dealing with a patient who was so demotivated um that they couldn't get out of their bedroom which was stacked to the ceiling with plates and cutlery that day one was bringing the Hoover into the room. That was day one. Day two was plugging it in. That was day two. And by day 30 they're outside. This is someone who was scared of going outside. They're outside walking around. The room is clean. But he he said to me that people don't take that first step because it's so embarrassingly small that it's almost shameful to say like today we're just going to bring the Hoover in. Yeah, but that's the thing is it's always better to take a step than to not take a step,

主持人: Goes back to this point of perseverance. I read a quote many years ago that said um greatness doesn't exist. Greatness is just good repeated.

主持人: it reminds me of um the Steve Jobs quote about how you can only really connect the dots looking backwards in a

主持人: Steve Jobs quote from his commencement speech was, "You can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards." So, you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. Clarity isn't a prerequisite for action. It's the reward you get after you move. And that's that's the thing I think cuz I do so many interviews like, you know, when was the moment you decided to be a professional climber? And I'm like, there's no moment. Like, I just did the thing for years and years. And now looking backward, it looks like this amazing arc, you know, but at the moment you're always, you know, I spent years being like, should I go back to college? Like, do I need a degree? Like, and then I spent a few years wondering if I should go back and get like an executive MBA or something or something because I was like, I don't want to go back to undergrad. I've been living in my van for 10 years. And but you're kind of like still, I need that validation. I need, you know, I want to jump through the hoops. And then really, it's only now that I'm kind of like, I don't think I need that. In part, I think the reason why we um we so many of us get forced into procrastination when we're trying to connect the dots looking forward is because we face these questions from society which is like what's your plan? What's your career? What are you aiming at? And we don't have answers. So, we fill in the gaps. We have to say something to mom and dad. You have to say like what's the plan for the future? You can't say nothing. No plan.

主持人: We'll see how it plays out cuz like either way it's going to play out with with me and them and everybody else dying. You're like, you know how it's going to play out at the end end. And so you're kind of like the whole space up to there is like, oh, you just try to fill it with as many things that you're proud of as you can.

主持人: Hm. Well, I mean, it doesn't need to be that complex, but this is why I think spending some time in nature like helps remind you of some of those sorts of things. This company that I've just invested in, it's grown like crazy. I want to be the one to tell you about it because I think it's going to create such a huge productivity advantage for you. Whisper Flow is an app that you can get on your computer and on your phone, on all your devices, and it allows you to speak to your technology. So, instead of me writing out an email, I click one button on my phone and I can just speak the email into existence and it uses AI to clean up what I was saying. And then when I'm done, I just hit this one button here and the whole email is written for me. And it's saving me so much time in a day because Whisper learns how I write. So on WhatsApp, it knows how I am a little bit more casual. On email, a little bit more professional. And also, there's this really interesting thing they've just done. I can create little phrases to automatically do the work for me. I can just say Jack's LinkedIn and it copies Jack's LinkedIn profile for me because it knows who Jack is in my life. This is saving me a huge amount of time. This company is growing like absolute crazy. And this is why I invested in the business and why they're now a sponsor of this show. And Whisper Flow is frankly becoming the worstkept secret in business, productivity, and entrepreneurship. Check it out now at whisperflow spelled w i s p r l o w.ai/Steven. It will be a game changer for you.

主持人: So I'm allowed to do like cutting edge futuristic things.

主持人: Oh, well then I'm like I don't know. I mean the Burrish like it'd be insane. But um but no uh like the the free triple in Euseite is like the three biggest walls in Euseite. Uh

主持人: the so it's LCAP, Halfdme, and Mount Watkins. Mount Watkins is kind of like a halfdome sized wall that's further up valley. So it was the three biggest walls in Euseite. So Tommy Caldwell and I have free climbed the triple. The two of us did it together with ropes, but we like climbed the whole thing. And then I've soloed the triple. So I've done all three with ropes by myself. It was like 18 or 19 hours or something of climbing. Um, but it's never been free sololed. Uh, I've freestolled Haft individually and I've free sololed Alcap individually. No one's ever free soloed Watkins. But the idea of doing all three in a day would be like I think totally like next generation achievement. There are certain things like that where I'm sort of like if I was starting over, if I was like an 18-year-old who was like trying to make it as a professional climber nowadays and had a higher level of skill than I do now and, you know, basically was like trying to do this again. There things like that that would be sort of like the obvious next generation challenge. free solo, all three in the same day.

主持人: What is your training regimen to these days? Is it go rock climbing a lot today?

主持人: Your hands are quite different. I was They're quite big hands.

主持人: Yeah, my fingers uh have taken a lot of abuse in their time

主持人: Yeah, crack climbing. It's like you basically put your fingers into a crack and then you torque them. And so like the side to side pulling uh does sort of make your connective tissue bigger.

主持人: Yeah, it hurts.

主持人: Anterior midsular cortex.

主持人: When I look at this kind of photo

主持人: Yeah.

主持人: sufficient. It makes me think you must have the world's greatest grip strength.

主持人: I mean, well, you have your your grip then. You can find out

主持人: Terrifying photo.

主持人: Yeah. Yeah.

主持人: I would like to see his brain scan.

主持人: Oh, it's actually uh I've had several moments, but it's actually mostly with ropes on. That's the thing is that because when you're freestyling, you generally keep it within a healthy margin or you practice ahead of time, you know, basically because you're going to die. You make sure that you can do it. But when you have a rope on, you're way more willing to push into the unknown because you're kind of like, surely I'll get some protection eventually. I'll just keep looking. I'll keep looking. And so like I've had I was on an expedition to Antarctica actually um in 2017 and did a bunch of climbing that was very extreme but like with a rope but it was you know it's Antarctica it's really freaking cold conditions are challenging the rock is crumbling everything is scary and you just keep hoping that it's going to get better and it just keeps getting worse instead and eventually you're sort of like because the thing is having a rope on doesn't mean anything unless you get good protection which means you have to be able to put gear into the rock and if you can't find places to put gear into the rock then you can go you know the rope is 200 feet If you go 200 feet without getting good gear, then you're looking at taking a 400t fall before the rope catches you. Uh, which is almost certainly fatal, you know. I mean, if you fall that far, even though the rope will catch your corpse, you know, but you're still just going to hit the wall after 400 ft, like you're screwed. So, anyway, my scariest experiences have all been situations like that for the most part. This is why I'm saying climbing, you get scared a lot.

主持人: And our like that expedition we were climbing basically day on, day off. Each day we would go climb one of these crazy spires and we'd have these experiences where I'd be like so scared and then the next day we would just sit in the tent because it's Antarctica. It's like really cold. You're in the cook tent and I would basically just spoon Nutella all day totally shell shocked like totally like just completely traumatized and then the and then you'd be like rested enough and you go out the next day and do it again and we just did like day on day off of like full trauma fear for the whole trip and then we climbed everything in the range. It was amazing. It was an incredible trip.

主持人: Yeah, I was so scared the whole time. Are there any techniques that are proven to be effective for you to deal with that fear? Like people talk about breath work and

主持人: And do you visualize falling ever?

主持人: So you don't avoid the confrontation with the negative outcomes.

主持人: but you can't let that stop you taking actions when the risk profile is okay.