Climber Conrad Anker on Suffering, Risk, Reward & The Allure of Meru

Imagine bivouacking in a portaledge — you and two other guys crammed into a small mountaineering tent pitched vertically and dangling on the side of a sheer Himalayan cliff 19,000 feet above solid ground with nothing but nothing below you. Then imagine staying put for 12 days straight to weather a ferocious storm, torrential winds and temperatures that dip into twenty below territory. That’s just one harrowing peek into the life of today’s guest, Conrad Anker – a man widely considered to be the most accomplished high altitude climber in the world and one of the most respected adventure athletes of all time. The team leader of The North Face climbing team as well as the subject of not one but several Outside Magazine cover profiles, Conrad is renown for specializing in not just the highest mountains but the most technically challenging ascents — conquering the trickiest peaks spread across the high Himalaya, Antarctica, Alaska and the big walls of Patagonia. Conrad has summited Everest 3 times, including a successful 2012 ascent without the aid of supplemental oxygen — a feat reserved for only the most elite mountaineers. In a 1999 Everest expedition, Conrad famously located the remains of George Mallory– the legendary British climber who disappeared in the midst of his historic 1924 attempt to be the first to summit the world's highest peak. Last seen about 800 vertical feet from the summit, speculation as to whether Mallory and his climbing partner Andrew Irvine had reached the summit before dying has been a subject of much dispute. But Conrad's discovery shed much light on the mystery of this and other pioneering climbs of early expeditions. On a personal level, in 1999 Conrad survived an avalanche in Tibet — a massive wall of snow and ice that tossed his body 100 feet, beat him up badly and took the life of his best friend and climbing companion Alex Lowe. Conrad would later marry Alex's widow Jennifer and raise his three sons, Max, Sam and Isaac. A few years ago I had the good fortune of meeting Conrad, including the privilege of hearing him share the story of his internationally celebrated 2011 attempt to summit a peak previously thought impossible – the Shark's Fin of Meru. Considered the most technically complicated and dangerous peak in the Himalayas, it's an astonishing tale. Now this expedition is the subject of a new documentary aptly named Meru, feted with the prestigious Audience Award at last winter's Sundance Film Festival. I had an opportunity to see the film and I can say first hand that it is extraordinary. Visceral. Harrowing. And terrifying as much as it is inspiring. “A meditation on life, death and everything in between” according to Newsweek, the film works as a true character study, winning mainstream hearts previously unfamiliar with the world of climbing. A redemptive deep look into the lives and complicated pasts of Conrad and his talented climbing teammates Jimmy Chin and Renan Ozturk (both responsible for not only scaling the peak but also capturing the entire experience on film), Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

  Eating well rarely falls apart because of one big failure. It's the daily question that wears you down. Like, what am I actually going to make tonight? What's in the fridge? And it's exactly why we built the Plant Power Meal Planner. It's a personalized, plant-based meal planning program that matches you with recipes based on your taste, your allergies, your cooking skills, and how much time you actually have. You build, through this program, a balanced, nutrient-dense plan for your entire household in a few minutes. Then it generates a grocery list for you with one click that plugs right into our delivery partners. All the recipes in the program are built by dietitians with culinary training. Plus, you get your own food coach to help you problem-solve along the way.

• 0:44Rich Roll?

  It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code RICHROLL20 at checkout.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  And I think for certain individuals, they're hardwired in their DNA to go explore and to have a higher risk acceptance level. And those have always been the explorers.

• 1:17Rich Roll?

  That's climber Conrad Anker. And this? This is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:36Rich Roll?

  Hey, everybody. What's happening? What's going on? What's the news? I am Rich Roll. That's my name. I am the host of this podcast. The podcast where I sit down with the outliers, the paradigm breakers, the big forward thinkers. And in the case of this week's guest, the courageous adventurers. People across all categories of excellence and positive culture change to mine the tools, the insights, and the principles that can help all of us unlock and unleash our best, most authentic selves. So, thank you for tuning into the show. Thanks for subscribing on iTunes. And thank you for subscribing to my weekly newsletter. If you want to support the show, do as quick, solid, give us a review on iTunes. We love that.

• 2:17Rich Roll?

  And before your next Amazon purchase, just click through the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com. It's right there on the podcast page. Won't cost you anything extra. And it's a great free way to support the mission and it really does put some nice wind in our sails. So, thank you guys. All right. So imagine this. Imagine you're bivouacking on a portal edge. What does that mean? That means that you are at high altitude climbing and that's when your mountaineering tent is pitched and dangling vertically on the side of a sheer cliff, let's say 19,000 feet up in the Himalayas, en route to the summit of the Sharksfin of Mayru with nothing but nothing below you. Then you're staying put

• 3:02Rich Roll?

  for four days to weather a storm in temperatures that reach 20 below. That's just one harrowing peek into the life of today's guest, Conrad Anker, widely considered to be one of, if not the, most accomplished high-altitude climbers in the world. Conrad is a beautiful, amazing guy, amazing, and I'm like over the moon to have him on the show today to share his extraordinary life. And I've got a lot more to say about Conrad before we get into the interview, but first...

• 3:39Rich Roll?

  All right, Conrad Anker. You might have seen Conrad gracing the July 2015 cover of Outside Magazine. He's been on the cover of that magazine like, I don't know, three or four times at least. He is one of the most respected adventure athletes of all time. In the world of adventure, this guy has pretty much done it all. He's the team leader of the North Face climbing team and he's famous for specializing in climbing not just the highest peaks, but the most technically challenging ascents in the high Himalaya, Antarctica, Alaska, and the big walls of Patagonia. He summited Everest three times, including a successful 2012 summit, without supplemental oxygen, a feat reserved for really only the most

• 4:21Rich Roll?

  elite mountaineers. And in a 1999 Everest expedition, he's the guy who located the body of George Mallory on Everest as a member of a search team looking for the remains of the legendary British climber who disappeared in the midst of the historic early ascent of Everest in 1924. And this was a discovery that shed much light on the pioneering climbs of early expedition. There's a cool documentary about it called The Wildest Dream. You should check that out. Anyway, I met Conrad a few years ago at an event hosted by Summit Series up in Eden, Utah, and I had the privilege of hearing him talk about May Rue, his internationally

• 5:00Rich Roll?

  celebrated 2011 attempt, along with fellow climbers Jimmy Chin and Renan Otsirk, to summit a peak previously thought impossible, the shark fin of May Rue in the Himalayas, considered the most technically complicated and dangerous peak in all of the Himalayas. And it's an astonishing tale. And now, it's the subject of a new documentary called May Rue that won the Audience Award for Best Documentary at Sundance this past winter. And I had an opportunity to see the film, and I can tell you that it's unbelievable. It's far more than your average adventure film. And it's really breaking out and connecting with wide

• 5:40Rich Roll?

  audiences. People that have no previous connection to climbing are really kind of connecting with this movie in a powerful way. It's visceral, it's harrowing, it's inspiring, and it's absolutely terrifying. But what distinguishes the film is that, at its core, it's really a character study. It's a redemptive, deep look into Conrad, Jimmy, and Renan's complicated past. It's a film about facing tragedy, family, friendship, risk, and the sheer suffering that's required to battle the odds and nature's harshest elements to achieve something extraordinary. Conrad is really an exemplary ambassador of adventure

• 6:21Rich Roll?

  and the outdoors. Not only is he a mountaineering savant, he is a passionate environmentalist working to combat climate change. And he's just a grounded, deeply mindful person who is very connected to nature with a truly palpable and laudable humility. I really love this man. I'm so proud and excited to share this conversation with you. So, without further ado, let's step into the amazing world of Conrad Anker.

• 6:56Rich Roll?

  Conrad Anker in the house. Good to see you, man. It's really great to see you, actually. This has been a long time in the coming, ever since we met up at Summit and I got to hear you give your talk and we bonded a little bit. I've been wanting to make this day happen, so it took a little while, but I'm really psyched to be sitting with you.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Thank you, Rich. I learned more about you from your podcast than you know about me.

• 7:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I don't know about that. There's plenty of information out there about you and I think the world at large is on the cusp of learning quite a bit more about you, coming in a couple of weeks, yeah, with the release of May Rue.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, that will be thanks to Jimmy, Ranon, and Chai for making a great movie.

• 7:44Rich Roll?

  It really is a great movie.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  I would just have a couple of snapshots and a campfire story from it, but they've put it there for many people to enjoy.

• 7:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and it's, I would say that it is exceptional on many levels. I think first and foremost because it has the potential to break through the typical kind of adventure movie genre to touch mainstream audiences, you know, and I think that that was, it's already been sort of pre-vetted in that regard by winning the Audience Award at Sundance, sort of proving its mettle in terms of having a broad appeal to a wider audience. So I'm interested in kind of exploring why you think, I mean, I have some ideas myself, but why you think this movie perhaps is a little bit different from the average climbing or adventure-themed movie?

• 8:38Speaker 01

  Great. Well, yeah, it'll be interesting to see how it, if it goes a bit bigger, but yeah, there's always... There's climbing movies and then there's movies about climbers and I think this one is about climbers and why we go out there and why we do it. And it's a real film. There's no recreation. Everything that we shot on Meru was there, so we didn't go back and make something up. And then interwoven into everything is the story of Jimmy and what led up to that point. And then Renan, and then mentorship and friendship, and then my personal story interwoven in it.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  So there's three or four stories that go into it in addition to the story of the Meru climb.

• 9:29Rich Roll?

  Right. And you just mentioned a whole bunch of inflection points that I want to get into. But I think in terms of the film, I mean certainly the cinematography and the storytelling is exceptional. I mean, I think, you know, from the very first, whoops, spill there, from the very first kind of sequence where it opens up and you guys are perched on that portal ledge and you can kind of hear the wind and you can hear very distinctly like the rippling in the tent and then there's that avalanche. I mean, it's so vivid and harrowing. It really transports you like right to that place and, you know, you can almost, you know, I wouldn't say empathize because I think only you guys know exactly what that's like,

• 10:14Rich Roll?

  but for an audience member to get about as close to what that must feel like as possible on film, I mean, it's really, you're gripped from the get-go. But then beyond that, it's a character movie. It's your story. It's the story of your teammates. It's the story of your families. And I think that that provides an entry point, an emotional connection point for the audience to kind of go on this journey with you and relate to it perhaps in a way that a more typical kind of climbing movie or adventure movie would allow you to. So, yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited. It's how many theaters is it gonna be rolling out in?

• 10:51Speaker 01

  It starts on the fourteenth of August and it opens in New York, Minneapolis, Denver, and Los Angeles. And then the next rollout is a few days later and then it has a broader. But each day, the people at Music Box are adding new theaters to it. So, yeah, it's, I'm pretty new to it. I've been in the outdoor industry for thirty years, but the big movie stuff is kind of not, I really don't know much about it. And so, it, I guess someone related to me that one theater picks it up and it starts going bigger and then all of a sudden they all, you get a dogpile effect. And so, well, hopefully that happens and people in Kansas and Arkansas are gonna, in Tennessee, they're gonna want

• 11:34Speaker 01

  to see something like this. So, that would be, that would be the best thing. Because obviously, within the circles that we travel and people that are, that are into exercise.

• 11:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they're gonna see it.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  They're already tuned into it.

• 11:48Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  But to, to break out into that larger audience, I think, has, there's a good potential.

• 11:55Rich Roll?

  I think so. I think so, for sure. Were you at Sundance when it screened, when it premiered?

• 12:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were there at Sundance. So, it was, it was really touching to, to see it. It was the first time I'd seen it on a large screen. And then to, to be in the back of the audience and to observe the, how the, how they're reacting to it. And they're sitting on the edge of their seat and they're, you can see them gripping their armrest or going, ah, like that. Or there's some of our little humorous moments in there that they, they chuckle at them too.

• 12:27Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  And at the end of the day, it's real stuff. And as you pointed out, the opening scene when we were there on the side of the mountain, it, we were living that. We were up on the side of that marou for twelve days on that 2011 journey. And so, it was like, that was the, that look on the faces, that's what happened up there.

• 12:51Rich Roll?

  Better you than me.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  And I'm not a good actor, so I'm always like...

• 12:55Rich Roll?

  Well, I mean, everyone looks really pretty calm, but there's a palpable kind of, not foreboding, because that's too negative, but like, sort of, undercurrent of tension and nervous expectation about what is to come.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, when you're up there on a big wall of that size, and so imagine this thing is probably 7,000 feet of gravity, and so you're in this ocean of gravity, and you drop your sunglasses, they're gonna go tumbling down, and if you don't have a backup, you're gonna go snow blind, because you're in the Himalayas and the sun's out. If you drop your ropes, you don't have a way to get down. So there's this sense of immediacy and urgency that you have to, it's you and your team that have to, everything you've prepared for is on the line at that moment, at that time. And I don't find that in day-to-day life, we're just so, we're oversubscribed, overstimulated, there's just too much stuff going on, and

• 13:55Speaker 01

  you're driving around, and this and that, and nothing's really that immediate or important. And when you're on a climb like that, it's like, you have a goal of making it to the summit, but if you screw up, gravity doesn't play favorites. It's going to let you know right away that you made a mistake.

• 14:13Rich Roll?

  Right. Certainly anchoring you in the moment in a way that is probably, you know, escapes you in your daily life, of course, right?

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Which is why I like it, is I'm a hyperactive, high-strung, you know, I was a bouncing-up-the-wall kid.

• 14:31Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right, right. Well, let's take it back and set the stage a little bit on, you know, kind of how you got into all of this. I mean, I know that you grew up, your dad was in the service, and your mother was, is German, right?

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:45Rich Roll?

  And they met when he was overseas. But you kind of grew up in a household where backpacking trips were, that was the summer vacation, right? So you were introduced to this culture.

• 14:55Rich Roll?

  At a fairly young age.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Yep, that's correct. And my father's side of the family is from Twomey County here in California. And my mother, sister and brother still live there. And so we would get up into the high Sierra and we'd go out with mules and fly fishing and and and that was what we did. We kind of lived, you know, went up there and ate pancakes and I would make little mud dams and float twigs down the creek. And we did that every summer for two weeks. And so that was my introduction to it. And then started out peak bagging and then into roped climbing in my teen years.

• 15:30Rich Roll?

  Was that something that you did with your dad? Or you just started, you started to kind of take it next level as you matured?

• 15:37Speaker 01

  He gave me introduction to it. So it was, we went rappelling with gold line and around your waist and and the dulfresits. And I remember getting a rope burn and all those things. And then it was like, okay, I'm gonna find, I'm gonna do more of that. So.

• 15:52Rich Roll?

  Was it something that during those early backpack trips, you locked in on and knew kind of from the get go, like, oh, I have a passion for this that maybe surpasses the other people that I'm doing this with? I mean, did, or did it happen gradually? Like your passion and your love for adventure sport?

• 16:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, there is, um, there's this one moment when we'd been out for two weeks and we would go up in the high country and we'd come back through the high Sierra camps. And so there are these pack animal stocked camps up in the high country. And we were coming back in and there was this moment after being out for two weeks and hiking down the trail that I was like, wow, this is the happiest I am. And I was 14. And it was just sort of, it wasn't like I needed to be competitive with someone else because it was, um, it wasn't like, oh, I'm gonna be a better climber than them. And, um, and part of the reason I really got into that is because I was turned off by competitive sports and the, the pressure and the, and just sort of the, the.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  The way that children are forced to antagonize other kids and to be competitive and to be better. And so I was like, wow, I'm not into that, but I'm into sports, I'm into physical activity. And so that moment hiking out of the mountains, it was like, wow, this is it. This is my happy place. And so I was like, whatever work I need to do, so.

• 17:16Rich Roll?

  This is it.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  Carpet and tree out, yeah.

• 17:17Rich Roll?

  This is what it's gonna be.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  I'm gonna work to live a good quality of life. And that was, I've always stayed true to that.

• 17:23Rich Roll?

  Uh huh, yeah, and it is a very unique sport in that regard. It isn't competitive. There certainly teamwork plays into, you know, plays in in a gigantic way. But it's about your relationship with yourself and your environment.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's for me is the most significant part of it. It was that if you and I go out climbing, or we do a long thirty mile run in the middle of nowhere, we're a team. We have to make sure that we're working together and that we're not going to make a mistake. And that, and the adversary is the elements. It's the mountain, it's gravity, it's the storm, it's the bad rock or something like that. So rather than, say if we're playing tennis where we go back and forth and then the goal is to sort of become a, is to, is to beat them and then you hop over the net and you shake your hand and this, this like false modesty and you're like, yeah, but I crushed them.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  And so you're like, it's, and that was always, it just was, it was a, it was, it just wasn't the right way to interact with humans. And I think that, I mean, part of it, playing football as a kid in middle school, I signed up and I played it and it was just this, I like sports, I had a lot of energy, a certain bit of energy, I had to put it somewhere. But then I realized that it was just so. Intense and then you're the verb of hitting someone. I mean, that's what they call it when you tackle them.

• 18:56Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  You come away from it and it's it's sort of like, wow, it's not a very healthy way to to have humans interact with other humans. And so I really latched on to scouting and I had a great scout master and he's this guy that was a Korean War vet and he was convinced all the youth of today, especially the young men, were turning into a bunch of candy asses. And it was his job to go out and instill character. So he would do the winter camping trips and all these these great things.

• 19:27Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. Well, he's right about that.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:29Rich Roll?

  By the way.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I still, yeah, I want to pass that on to the next generation, too. You go out and and you try something more challenging and you come away with a um, a sense of um, that what you can do and what and your ability, but you're also humbled by it. I think that that um, that being humble to other, to yourself and to other people is a really healthy foundation. And I think probably in the next sort of big meta-evolution of of of human mind of where we're going to be is that we're coming into a more kind and more reciprocal, a more loving society rather than something that's antagonistic.

• 20:15Rich Roll?

  I hope so.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  But that being said, I watch the Super Bowl every year. It is absolutely crazy. You're like, watch this.

• 20:23Rich Roll?

  Well, we live in the world, you know? You're not living in a cave like those amazing sadhus that you pass on the path on your way up to Meru.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 20:32Rich Roll?

  How beautiful are those guys? Unbelievable, right?

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, in the film where you're we're walking through there and they're just, their look in their eyes and the way that they bow and they touch their heart to you and just meeting them. I mean, that is the, every time those those um, all three expeditions that I went to Meru to go visit, it was uh, interacting with the sadhus and going and visiting with them, asking them for their blessing before we go and climb on the mountain and. They're like, "Yeah, tell us what's up there."

• 21:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  It's a really special place. They weren't like, "Oh, you can't go there. It's a bad thing." It's like, wow, you, there's something that's driven you are, you're a pilgrim and you are a seeker. And so they respected that.

• 21:13Rich Roll?

  Interesting, yeah. And I mean, they're holding a lot of energy, those guys, you know? They're carrying a certain vibration up there, I think. I mean, can you feel that when you interact with those guys?

• 21:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're, the, the sadhus and the matijis, the, the women that are of the holy life, they're, they've renounced material things and they're, they live off the benevolence of other people. And so here we are trekking up, going up to 14,000 feet. Tabu Vahn, which is the meadow at the base of shiveling. So we have all these sadhus that worship Shiva, which is a deity in the Hindu religion. And so they, they live there at 14,000 feet. And you'll have these, these, these really wise men and an occasional woman that are up there.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  And they're living under a rock with some tarps and, and a cotton sari type wrap clothing. And we're up there with insulated, like, "Oh, yeah, now we're the candy asses."

• 22:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, they're not quite taking it up to the notch that you are, but it is interesting. What was that ceremony that, that you attended that's in the film?

• 22:23Speaker 01

  The, um, yeah, the start, that ceremony is at the, in Gangotri, which is the jumping off point. So it's the end of the road and it's the town of Gangotri. And upstream is the source of the Ganges River. So the Ganges is the most sacred river for the Hindu religion. And this valley where shiveling and Bhagwati and Meru is steeped in the Hindu mythology.

• 22:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, that's, that's like the vortex.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you're going in there and it's like, wow. And Lord Shiva hung out on top of the shiveling for 40,000 years. And then brought the Ganga River down with his hair. And then his wife is the peak across the way. And then Meru is the center of the universe. And if we think about this, that when... Hindu religion came into being is probably three to five thousand years. It's a very old religion that when the pilgrims came up and they hiked up into this valley and saw these immense peaks that probably had more ice on them than they do now.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Forting the river was just an incredible thing. There was no bridges, not even rope bridges. I mean, they'd have to go on one side of the mountain. It was a real challenge to get there. And they finally got up and they looked at these peaks and they were just going all the way up to the sky. And I mean, now we're before we're even born, we know that jets exist and airplanes and you can have a building this tall as the Empire State Building, all these things. So but without knowing that, if you were you lived out in the plains of India and a seeker came and told you that there was a mountain that went to the to the top of the world and that was it. So that Meru and then seeing that peak and then having that come out and being a

• 24:17Speaker 01

  spreading all the way as far as Myanmar where they have in Indochina where the there is a temple of Meru there that's part of Anker Wat. So it's just kind of how that that reach of it and everything like that. So it's a pretty to there's many mountains in in the world, but there this having that that that sense of connection to the culture was pretty special.

• 24:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's cool. It has a whole, you know, history in that culture that I was not aware of. That's amazing. Very cool. So taking it back to you as this. I mean, you but you were you've sort of self-described yourself as a hyperactive kid, right? I mean, do you think that if you were growing up now, like you probably would have been medicated, right? Like, let's calm this guy down. Let's, you know, get him to fit in the box as opposed to, you know, you were lucky enough, fortunate enough to have, you know, a loving family that said, well, we got this kid, like, we got to figure out a way to get him to channel this energy that he has in a productive way.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:22Rich Roll?

  Right? You were supported in that.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think in the 60s, they were medicating children in at my age. And that was my mother. Particularly my mother and my father, too. But my mother was she was the one that put her foot down. She said, no. And she's still at this day doesn't. Like to go to the hospital or doctors or medications or anything like that. And I'm that way too. I'm averse to it. I'd rather, I just don't, I don't have a need for it. And so they, she said, no. And she simply attributed it to, okay, he's got too much sugar and there's enough physioex.

• 25:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  So it was like.

• 25:56Rich Roll?

  Let's just burn them out every day.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. More exercise and less sugar. That was her remedy for it. And I think it was, um, it really made sense.

• 26:03Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  And to, to see that. And it'd be great to, when we have children now, especially, um, young boys. And when I visit, um, classrooms and stuff.

• 26:15Rich Roll?

  Now, there's a weird buzzing noise. Hold on, let me just pause it for a second. Starting up again. Sorry about that. We had a weird buzzing noise. Had a little timeout. So where were we?

• 26:25Speaker 01

  We were talking about medicating children and this, um, this sort of level of, um, where we're at. And so I enjoy, uh, talking to children about science, fourth and fifth graders, giving them, going to classrooms. And I see these, these children, a lot of them, young boys that are just bouncing up the wall. They're hyperactive and there's all this energy in them. And, um, rather than trying to say, okay, we're going to solve this with Ritalin or something like that, or some sort of medication, what can we do to, to encourage these and work it to their benefit? And I think that's, I was just, as a kid, I was hyperactive, high strung. I can look back at my report cards from second and third grade. He couldn't sit still.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  He couldn't hold his attention for 20 minutes. He's a bright kid, but we just don't know.

• 27:13Rich Roll?

  What to do with them. Right.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  I'm like, ah. So, and I think to this, where I am now, I'm a very hyper situationally aware person. I mean, both you and I are, we heard the buzz in this microphone right away.

• 27:25Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Okay, we're gonna solve that problem.

• 27:27Rich Roll?

  Too distracting, like I had to stop.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so if I'm driving down the road, I'm, I'm like, okay, this is the, this is LA. It's four, four lanes wide of traffic and everyone's going 70. And there's a scrap hauler up there. Is this load secure? If there was to be a piece of metal that came off, what would I do?

• 27:44Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  If I'm climbing, if I don't protect the second, put a piece of gear in there, there could be a potential mistake. So I'm thinking about a worst-case scenario and then planning about it in reverse. And so if you have that hyper situational awareness, you will, you make for, to be a good pilot.

• 28:00Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  A good climber. You want someone that really takes in all that, all that data point. And in a classroom as a young kid, it was absolute craziness because I tried to attend to them all. And I still, when I sit down to my computer, if I don't have a list of the emails I need to do and how I'm going to structure my time, I just totally.

• 28:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I would imagine that.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  I'm going everywhere.

• 28:23Rich Roll?

  If you were, yeah, if you lived in New York City, you'd just, you'd be in a constant state of freak out, right? Like, because there's too much stimuli, right? But when you're, when you're on the mountain, you can channel all of that hyper vigilance onto the one task at hand because there's really just one thing you've got to do at a time. You're aware of all the variables, but it's like, what's the next thing? Like, you're just on a mission and you're doing one thing.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's what brings it into me. So, and climbing gyms provide that. And then I can, I'm that play with gravity where you're, where you're there and you step off the ground and you're pulling on the holds. And when you're outdoors rock climbing, that's that thing. And so the expeditions are sort of the culmination of all those experiences under one grand journey.

• 29:07Rich Roll?

  When you think of, you look back on your career as a climber, you know, I would imagine that this, you know, hypersensitivity, you would reflect on that as being part of your success equation, right? But like, what do you think it is about you specifically that distinguishes you from your peers? Or that's allowed you to kind of be in this, you know, pardon the pun, like rarefied air in terms of the world of climbers?

• 29:37Speaker 01

  I enjoy it every day, I guess. So there's always that sense of...

• 29:41Rich Roll?

  But they all enjoy it.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. But...

• 29:45Rich Roll?

  I'm gonna make you step out of your sense of modesty here for a minute.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  I've got good distal circulation, so my hands stay warm in cold places. There's sort of... And then, having done enough trips to the altitude, my lungs do well, and maybe I've self-selected to climb at altitude. That's another thing on that. But that sense of just being on the edge and being in a really remote place is incredible. And I remember as a kid, I would set up pillow forts, and I would pretend I was in a tent in Antarctica. And it would be like...

• 30:27Rich Roll?

  Really?

• 30:28Speaker 01

  There was nothing else out there, and that was like... You would just be like, make wind sounds, and it would just... It was... You know, I'd transport myself out of there. And those kid imaginations are always so rich and vivid.

• 30:40Rich Roll?

  Right. So it's almost like you came out of the womb like this, almost like you're channeling some past life experience, you know? Like, this was bred into your imagination from as far back as you can remember.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think for certain individuals, they're hardwired in their DNA to go explore and to have a higher risk acceptance level. And those have always been the explorers. You go back in the course of history and the great books, Homer's Odyssey is about that, where a few people would go out and leave the comfort of the tribe or the clan, and then seek something with a reward if they come back safely and successfully, but then also the risk of failure and not coming back, being part of it. And some people, that's still there, and it's still part of who they are. I mean, why do some people end up being astronauts? Because the confines of nine to five are not there.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  And they would rather do that than have some other...

• 31:44Speaker 01

  Path in life that wouldn't be as risk and with as much exploration.

• 31:49Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, I think it brings up a really interesting kind of point about our culture. I mean, we're, you know, our whole society is sort of founded upon this idea of, you know, security and having the good life and trying to create, you know, extra ease in our day to day existence. You know, at the same time, we herald the heroes, we herald the risk takers. You know, we love to enjoy those stories, but the message that we're getting is really not so much to pursue that. It's like, oh, you know, the life of moderation is best and, you know, you'd be best served by having this big screen TV or getting a nicer car or a nicer house. And so I'm always thinking about like, how to reconcile those two worlds.

• 32:33Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? Like, like, you know, a big part of your message is to go outside and explore, right? And at the same time, you know, we're telling schoolchildren, you know, we're putting helmets on them the minute they walk outside the house because we're a fear-based culture. So, you know, how does that play into how you communicate, you know, to the world and to young people? Because I know you talk to young people quite a bit.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. People, we are so conditioned and the media is a big part of it. They want us to buy a bigger house and more comfortable car, more food, more, and they want us to be less, take on less risk. They want us to be consuming members of society, which means you're productive and you have a job and you can afford more things. And status is accorded with fancier cars and all this and any sort of these material measures of life that are there. And, and we relate it to the children. We have it at a very young age. And on my part, that there's people that

• 33:43Speaker 01

  They're like, send me letters. And they're like, you're irresponsible. You can't be a parent. Alex already tied climbing. And come on, you're doing this to the kids again, and you're just incredibly selfish. It's the wrong thing to do. And get a life, grow up, all these things. And so I'm, one, I don't like to pass judgment on other people, and I accept everyone is good. And I won't say, okay, that's fine. That's your point of view. But we have this, we have to constantly be, growth in our society is like, we need to, we need 4% annually. We need to catch up with China. They're growing faster than we are. We're new. And so this growth versus quality is a thing.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  So it's that quantity versus quality of life type thing. And so rather than every time I go shopping for something that isn't essential, i.e. it's not food, I hold it and I go, do I really need this? Whatever it might be. And am I just getting it because it's a newer one? And that there's a, there's like the shopping crave, that urge, that reward, or I deserve it. I've earned it. Or I mean, life is hard. I should treat myself to these really nice headphones.

• 34:56Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  I'm always like, yeah. And so there's like that, there's that, and then

• 35:03Rich Roll?

  A push and pull.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. And yet I go over to the time I spent in Nepal, and Nepali people are some of the happiest people. I go into these villages, and they're like, they're really happy people. And they want to, they're, I mean, and yes, there are many people that are happy in the States, but oftentimes there's people that you interact in a public space, and they're just, they're not, there's some things wearing at them. And they just, I mean, they're, they're walking around with this weight of unhappiness. And sometimes I want to say hello, guess what? Life is really short. You can't go through thinking like this.

• 35:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  And so you see these people, these sadhus in India, the monks in Tibet. And so they're living in the moment. And they're, they realize life, success in life isn't equated to material acquisition.

• 36:00Rich Roll?

  What else about that culture do you think informs their happiness quotient?

• 36:08Speaker 01

  In Nepal, they're very resourceful people. I mean, yeah, certainly, there's unhappiness. There's tragedy and there's things that happen, but there's- Certainly recently. Yeah, and they, um, but, yeah, they, uh, they send, they tend to be, um, there's, they're- It's simple. Yeah, and I, and I'm struggling for words, because I really don't know what it is. And I guess I'm still trying to answer that, and when I go over there, and so, yeah, a lot of them do want to have, um, a new pair of jeans and a better cellphone and things like that. And it's easy for us, having all these, these things that make life comfortable and life easy,

• 36:49Speaker 01

  to say, "Oh, isn't it, wouldn't it be great to just go sit on the side of the mountain in a cave?" But, um, there, uh, I think, part of it is that there's, um, there's, in Nepal, it's pedestrian society, so people are walking, and when you walk on the trail, you interact with everyone. You, you see them in their eye, or if it's a friend or something like that, you say hello. And when you're walking with a friend from Nepal, and they, you see how they interact with their people, it's way different than we're driving in a, in a car, in a bus, or something like that, where it's, you don't have that, that sort of connection. Families are very connected and very tight, um, with it, so maybe that has a, an, an underlying

• 37:30Speaker 01

  part of it, and, um, that, uh, there's this, for most of Nepal is, is pretty rural. I mean, Kathmandu is, is a teeming metropolis, an overcrowded, polluted, southeast Asian city, and like Jakarta and Bangkok, and, I mean, it's, the world is full of those places. But the people, when you get out into the, the sticks, they're, um, I mean, there's roosters, and there's a simple life, and so there's a- There's some happiness there.

• 38:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, I think it's sort of like the Blue Zones. Have you heard of the Blue Zones? Yeah, so Dan, yeah, I've had Dan on the podcast and, you know, a big part of it, you know, from his exploration into this question is that communal aspect of having an extended family close and being close with your neighbors and, you know, and the walking and all of that, I think informs all of that. So, much to be learned, right?

• 38:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's nice to see that and it's nice to see Dan and his work looking at data-driven, not just, or...

• 38:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's not just observational, right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  Because you're always observational and then you end up extrapolating your own views. So if it works for me, then it's got to work for someone else.

• 38:44Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  And so, having that, those data points is really an important thing is now that we have more data, we can then work through those things and find out these cultures in Japan and other places that have a long life and what are they, what's part of that.

• 39:02Rich Roll?

  Right. Alright, so you're locking into climbing as a young person. When does it become, like, when are you taking the leap into, you know, alright, this is what I'm doing, this is my profession? And I know that like, you know, the line into becoming a professional climber isn't exactly like, you know, LeBron James entering the NBA, but, you know, at some point, this becomes basically all that you're doing. And, you know, what was the first big expedition for you?

• 39:31Speaker 01

  In, I was 23 and I received a grant from the American Alpine Club to go to Alaska and so, yeah, there was four of us and we got $400, $100 each.

• 39:44Rich Roll?

  Wow, party down.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, 1987, we were living big. And so, we drove a blue, a spray painted blue Ford Econo line from Salt Lake up to Alaska.

• 39:57Rich Roll?

  I love it.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  Climbed in the Alaska Range and had this great time. And so, that was, I think that was, it was a grant from the American Alpine Club, so it was sort of a, something going on with that. But it wasn't, I continued to climb full-time, so I would work, after I graduated from the University of Utah, I would work carpentry. And it was, I enjoyed that work and then it was... At the end of the day, my job was done and then I would work really hard for four or five months and I would go on a trip. So carpentry, high scaling work where you're working on rope access cliffs and buildings and things like that. And then working hard and then going climbing. And that was how I got my start. And then, starting in 92, working with the North Face.

• 40:43Rich Roll?

  Right. And you've been with them ever since. I mean, that's been an amazing relationship.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's been wonderful. And yeah, I started with them in 83 at my retail work. So selling, there was a Hallie Bar Gear Shop and there were the old Roy Hallie Bar, it was the sew your own down jacket kids. They sold carabiners. And that was my college job. I enjoyed that. And so, and then 92, working and helping with sports marketing to create the story the brand uses now.

• 41:16Rich Roll?

  Right. And what is your, what's your role with them today? I mean, I know you're, you're sort of the athlete team captain, right? Is that correct?

• 41:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:24Rich Roll?

  How does that work? I mean, I know they have like these summits where all the North Face athletes get together and from all disciplines, all different kinds of sports. And you guys share stories and all that kind of stuff. Like, I'm super jealous. Like, I want to know what that's like and kind of, you know, peek into the world of the North Face athlete team.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Well, I, yeah, on paper, it's athlete team captain, but probably maybe brand compass over the years. So, working with our marketing team and our strategic partnerships, corporate social responsibility, film projects, things like that. And having this sort of what is legitimate climbing, what's not climbing, what's good, what's not. And then with our athlete team, we have three areas, action, performance, and outdoor. And so, action is snowboarding, skiing, free skiing, things like that. Performance is predominantly trail running, and outdoor is climbing and ski mountaineering. And so, probably globally,

• 42:26Speaker 01

  about 40 athletes that we have. And so, recruitment and development of the athlete team, which is, I really enjoy doing, and meeting the prospective athletes. And with what we do is If you, at Usian Bolt, you run the 100 meters, you win. It's a quantitative win. We get that. But what we're doing is experiential. And when you go out in the mountains, whether you're in Shackleton's time or Lewis and Clark's time, you experience it and you come back and you share it. You would write about it and those guys, and then Shackleton, they had still cameras that came along and using these as examples.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  So that experiential part of it is key to what we do. So in finding athletes that are good at what they do and that have an ability to share their story with people that are nice, affable people, they're charismatic, they're intelligent, and all these sort of, these great things that we do. So it's been a great part of doing that. And then fostering sort of a team and then cross-pollinating between the various disciplines and being able to work with our, the product development team and the sales team to get

• 43:51Speaker 01

  what we hope the athletes can then do for the brand and then sharing them and helping them to go with that. Right. So it's nothing, I mean, all the big brands use athletes to, whether you're selling golf clubs or baseballs or anything like that, and we're selling outdoor gear. And so there's, it's been a great journey. I really enjoy the brand they've trusted with me and what we're doing. And then also now as we're trying to get more people outdoors and more people healthier and they're like, these ideas that we're going to touch on here in a little bit, they're like, here's the runway, go with that and find out the people that you can work with and what are we going to do to get this, to get this going?

• 44:35Speaker 01

  Because they're like, yeah, sure, we want to sell more raincoats, sleeping bags and tents, but at the end of the day, if we get, if we, the BMI of America is less and we're healthier and all these key metrics are lower, then we've done a good thing. And that's, you can look at it from any prism. You can look at it from the prism of, I'm an American, it's the patriotic thing to do, or you can look at it in the prism that I tend to look at things, it's the right thing, it's this next.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  Growth in terms of kindness and understanding of humans and that this fundamental experience of being outdoors is at the foundation of that.

• 45:16Rich Roll?

  Right, yeah, well, it's, you've done a great job and the brand's done a great job because the content that gets put out is always of a super high quality and the storytelling is always extraordinary and it's not really, you know, they're not ads, you know, it's like, yeah, you'll see like, oh, this is the North Face, you know, presents or something like that, but then it's really just about whatever adventure is being told in that film, so they're always really cool.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  That's the team over there that does that.

• 45:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know, I know, I know, but it's cool and I've had a couple of the runner guys, I had Timothy Olson on the podcast and I've had Dean Hurnaz on too and those guys are both, you know, they're in a, I mean, Dean's different because he's more, it's more like lifestyle with his running now, you know, Timothy's still competing, but he's such a charismatic, beautiful guy and he has such an adept way of like sharing his experience of the world, so I think it's a good fit with you guys, which is cool. So, all right, so when did the big, you know, like you've climbed Everest three times, you know, the big sort of things that have put you on the map, when does that start to begin?

• 46:21Speaker 01

  Probably in the mid 90s, so there's, probably most climbers have sort of a two decade window of their, when they're at their peak and their prime and so starting in the 90s was, that was my trips and 96 did an expedition to Antarctica with National Geographic, it was with Alex Low and Rick Ridgway and Gordon Wiltse, Mike Graber and John Krakauer and we climbed this granite tower in the middle of the ice cap and so that was a fun expedition and sort of a break going a little bit bigger and then on the

• 47:03Speaker 01

  1st of May 1999 on an expedition to the north side of Everest, I came across the frozen and well-preserved body of George Mallory and then, so that was, for better or worse, I mean, it went around the world and it was just in the nascent age of the internet and internet reporting and sort of the

• 47:23Speaker 01

  Mountain Zone was the conduit that all that information went out from. So it was, some people thought it was a great thing, other people it was vilified and understandable.

• 47:34Rich Roll?

  Well, yeah, I mean, from what I understand, I mean, for better or worse, that kind of put you in on the map in certain ways and overshadowed some of the other things that you've done. I mean, it is an amazing thing to discover his body. It was more in the, I mean, you didn't really have anything to do with how the photographs got disseminated, right? They just sort of leaked out and then that sort of cast a shadow on how the story was being told. Is that fair to say?

• 47:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, the photos went through a...

• 48:02Rich Roll?

  So the family got upset?

• 48:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, through an agency and then the agency went to the highest bidder and it was the tabloid press. So that was something as important as this, there was insignificant, it would have been, and that's many years back and neither here or there.

• 48:23Rich Roll?

  Right. So, but just explain who George Mallory was. I mean, he attempted this Everest climb in 1924, a very different age in climbing.

• 48:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. George Mallory was the one English climber that was part of all three of the early Everest expeditions. So he was there at 21, 22, and 24. And 21, they figured out how to get to the North Col via the Northeast Fork of the Rongbo Glacier. I mean, this is an area that was unmapped, it was blank. They had to walk all the way in over from Darjeeling up over the Chulapla, through Shigatse. I mean, just an incredible journey on foot with pack animals to get to the base. Came back in 1922. They were a little late in getting there and a monsoon avalanche came in and swept away seven of the Sherpas

• 49:14Speaker 01

  that were climbing with them and the expedition turned back in the face of that loss. They took 23 off because it was, they needed more time to organize and to get prepared. And then they came back in 24, early enough to beat the monsoon, which usually sets in around the 1st of June and lasts until the 1st of September. And that's when the majority of the moisture comes on at the Himalayas, especially at altitude. And they gave it a go and it was on the 8th of June that... They disappeared into the clouds around noon, local time, last seen by Noel Odell, a geologist, a day behind them in support, and he had commented that they were moving expeditiously as if to make up for lost time.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  Subsequently, the question always became, could they have made it to the top 29 years before Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay did in 1953? No one ever knew, no one, we, it's generally accepted, they didn't make it to the top, that they lost their lives somewhere in between the first step and the yellow band, or maybe moving up towards the second step, but not above the second step. And these are cliff features on the northeast ridge of Mount Everest. But he was a great character. He had served in the First World War, the Battle of Ypres, and so he'd seen the loss of life in combat and sort of that harsh end of things.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  But he was also passionate about climbing and the arts and letters. He was a schoolteacher, and his wife had given him a blessing to go on this expedition. And he disappeared on June 8th, left behind three children. Claire was still alive in 1999 when we made the discovery, and his son John is still alive, living in South Africa, and his grandson George is in Australia. So there's a connection with it.

• 51:16Rich Roll?

  And part of the intention of your expedition was to retrace these steps and perhaps solve this mystery, right?

• 51:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, could they have overcome this, the second step, this cliff band up at 28,300 feet?

• 51:30Rich Roll?

  Right, and as you're making your way up, you kind of diverged off the path that you were headed on, right? And then something caught your eye?

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, we had set out to look for George Mallory's body. That was, we were very clear about that. It was the Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition. It was funded by PBS and BBC, ZDF in Germany, and NHK. So most of those four countries, they're national, they're public television expedition, organized and led by Eric Simonson. So our goal was specifically to look for the body of George Mallory. I wasn't Specifically a searcher, I was more on the, to go have a go at the second step to have, to see how difficult that cliff band was. And that was, so we went on to a traversing, contouring around at 8,300 meters.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  I hadn't been to that elevation before. And in looking on the features of the mountain where, where when people fall on big mountains, not a cliff where you kind of, it's like a wily coyote anvil coming off the edge of a boom at the bottom and then the rotor gets up and runs away. But this, you tumble down.

• 52:46Rich Roll?

  You tumble, yeah.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  And you end up in certain places and eddies, just like you do in the rivers where a stick might come in behind a rock, something like that. And so there were certain places on the mountain that I realized that there was a good chance there would, a body would be there. And then it was a very dry year in 1999. And a very humbling moment to come across his body 75 years after he had passed away. And, yeah.

• 53:13Rich Roll?

  And so what did, what did, how did you deal with that discovery? I mean, did everybody come together and?

• 53:22Speaker 01

  We, we came together and we, we, from a very quasi-scientific point, we performed high altitude archaeology. I wish I'd had more archaeological training going into it. I would have treated the site vastly different in terms of measuring it in quadrants and, I mean, that was a...

• 53:42Rich Roll?

  But you're also at 24,000.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know? Out of air up there. But, yeah, we brought back some of his personal effects and they were returned to the family and performed a committal service, read the 103rd Psalm and did what we could to bury his body there at that moment and sort of bring circle to his life.

• 54:08Rich Roll?

  Right. And based on your observation and your rudimentary archaeological skills, I mean, were you able to make a reasonable conclusion about whether he had summoned it or not?

• 54:20Speaker 01

  The best of...

• 54:24Speaker 01

  I, yeah, the best of my, my understanding on it would be, this would be their summit day. They left June 8th. They were a little late leaving camp. They didn't leave, nowadays climbers leave at as early as 9:00 PM the night before, or we left at that time about 1:00 in the morning and climbed through the night. But when Odell had got to their camp, their flashlights were still in the tent. So they'd left the tent without taking their flashlights. And these were flashlights that were, they weren't headlamps, they weren't these fancy things, and batteries were, I mean, they'd hold these batteries on a ship through the Suez Canal all the way around. I mean, just gone for the longest.

• 55:02Rich Roll?

  Not to mention all the champagne, too.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  Champagne, foie gras, and all that stuff. So they finally get all this stuff there, and they left their, their flashlights in the tent. They headed out, and they climbed up through the, um, the yellow band, which is pretty tricky terrain. It's the steepest section on the north to northeast ridge at that point, the route that Mallory had pioneered. And they got above that, and they traversed over probably to the base of the first step. And it was in that vicinity that Odell had last seen them, as the clouds built up in the afternoon, which is typical pre-monsoon accumulation of clouds, condensation, they, they build, and then they dissipate in the evening as the clouds, as the temperature drops. And they had turned around, were coming back down, and one of the two of them had

• 55:48Speaker 01

  slipped descending the yellow band, which is, it's not outward facing, you're just marching downhill, you have to turn inside and climb. And they weren't using protection as we now use it, which is to put in a, either a peaton, which was the first type of protection, or a stopper, or a spring-loaded camming device, all three of those things. You can then put them in a cliff, and then you can attach a carabiner, and you clip your rope through there. And this is the technique that climbers use that came from sailing, so the original, the belay, the bollard. Carabiners, all these things came from sailing. So there was someone that cross pollinated between sailing and climbing and using those techniques, but they were not using those

• 56:28Speaker 01

  techniques in 1924. So they were probably down soloing. So each person, they have a rope between them and the rope has about as much security as say as when you're in the subway and it's rocking along and you grab the

• 56:41Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:42Speaker 01

  The, the, the

• 56:43Rich Roll?

  Little handle hanging from the ceiling.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it'll keep you from toppling over, but you're not putting a hundred percent of your weight on there. So if someone were to slip, you could grab that rope real quick and keep them from tumbling down. But it's not in the sense that, that say on the Meru film where you see that, I mean, it's very elaborate. We're using ropes and for upward progress and then we rappel down on them and how we use the, the modern climbing protection and equalizing them. And it's very much a different sport than it was in 1924. So one of them slipped, pulled the other one off and the rope snapped. Mallory fell down and had a compound fracture of his right leg. And my guess is that he was still cognizant at those last moments of his life because his body is, is resting uphill. Most of the

• 57:29Speaker 01

  time when you're unconscious, because we're top-heavy, we end up with our heads downhill. And so when you see someone that's had a bad fall, they end up body, head downhill.

• 57:40Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 57:40Speaker 01

  And so this case, his head was uphill and it seemed like he'd crossed his, like, I mean, he could have been moved by another climber in subsequent years, but he probably for a moment or two, he thought that he could, that rescue, someone would come help him out. But

• 57:56Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  Life left him and then he, there he was.

• 58:00Rich Roll?

  There he was, yeah. Well, in your occupation, I would imagine coming upon a dead body is part of what happens.

• 58:11Speaker 01

  We, especially on a mountain like Everest, there's, you get up above 26,000 feet, 8,000 meters and you're on borrowed time. I mean, the human body, we have not evolved to survive there. We use tools to, to get through there, insulative tools, crampons and supplemental oxygen on, along those lines. But if you are a climber, you have to make peace with death. You have to understand that, that it, that you could die. And then when you see a body in the mountains, it, it's a little bit shocking initially when you see that body, but then you

• 58:50Speaker 01

  You accept it. And I guess in that sense, I, I think that we've sort of taken mortality and morbidity and we've made it into a carnival type thing. You look at all the movies now and you'll be, people get killed 20 times in the movie and we're just sort of, it's like, well, it just happens. They got shot five times. You turn on the TV and there's like boom, boom, boom. And if you think back 200 years, there wasn't that, there might be a spy novel where, oh, he shot them.

• 59:22Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, it's a weird thing because, yeah, on television or in movies, it's, you're constantly bombarded with images of death. But in our daily lives, we walk around really not giving it its proper due. And we all sort of think that we're somehow going to be the exception to the rule or, you know, we defer thinking about it and try to deny its inevitability in our life. But with what you do, it's, it's ever-present, right? It's in the forefront of your consciousness, I would imagine, in a way that it isn't for most people.

• 59:55Speaker 01

  And it's a, I think it's a good thing. You know, I mean, you look at how we treat our elderly, rather than trying to embrace them and, you know, maybe it's one of these things in, in Dan's book about how you live with your elderly and you're there with them, rather than saying, okay, they're a burden to us, let's move them to the rest home. And then they go into the hospital. And when they finally expire, there's not that, maybe they might be surrounded by friends and family or something like that, but it's, we're just not there in that, in that full. And our whole industry is, is about, you have to be younger, healthier, fitter, happier, go to the plastic surgeon, go do this. And it's,

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  I think, accepting where you are in your stage of life, and that, the foundation of that is today is the best day of your life and tomorrow is going to be the next best day of your life. And that, yeah, I'm, I'm not as strong as I was in my 30s. And when I was in my 30s, I wasn't as strong as Alex in old days as a farmer. So I, and not trying to catch up and be competitive with them, but to celebrate that next generation being

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  Better artists, being better scientists, being better athletes, and that we're all on this spinning globe for just a very short period of time.

• 1:01:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, and that gets into mentorship and the importance of mentorship, and I want to get into that in a minute, but while we're kind of stuck on Everest here for a minute, you know, you've summited Everest three times, and, you know, I think to the average, you know, person, you know, Everest is the ultimate, you know, it's the highest peak, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's the most difficult ascent, as you, as becomes evident when you watch a film like Meru, but with respect to Everest specifically, you know, over the last, I don't know, 10 or 20 years, you would know better than me, it's almost become like this bucket list item for, you know, the investment banker

• 1:01:53Rich Roll?

  of the day to say, "I'm gonna do this," right, so you have this, you know, influx of more people than ever descending on this mountain, perhaps, you know, most of which or many of which are not, are ill-equipped or ill-prepared to do it, you know, how, what is your perspective on that, you know, in terms of the amount of people that are treading up, you know, this, to this hollowed peak, so to speak?

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  Everest will continue to attract people to go climb it. There is only one point, and it's, if only 3,000 people have climbed it, out of 7.5 billion people, it's still a sought-after goal, and the, the people of Nepal, the Sherpa, they have created an industry around getting people to the top, and they are hard workers, they, the route has fixed rope from the bottom all the way to the top, so it's not a conveyor belt, but it's a safety line that goes all the way to the top, and it's not-

• 1:02:53Rich Roll?

  This is permanently there?

• 1:02:54Speaker 01

  Each season it gets re-equipped, and so there is a tremendous amount of work that the Nepali, in particular the Sherpa people, are doing on behalf of these expeditions that go up there, and the standard route on the south side and the north side, both those routes are, they're unique, sort of Everest-type climbing, they're not adventure climbing, it's not first ascent climbing, it's not- A different type of climbing and to compare them to those other types of climbing, sort of like the climbing on Meru or the climbing on Yosemite is you're looking at apples to oranges. And so, yes, it is, there's a lot of people going up Mount Everest. It is a sought after peak.

• 1:03:32Speaker 01

  But in, at the end of the day, I'd rather see the investment banker going to climb a mountain because rather than hunting a rare animal. And I mean, we don't have enough animals left on this planet, especially those charismatic megafauna that look good above your mantelpiece.

• 1:03:52Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:03:53Speaker 01

  So, I mean, that's in the news last day or two.

• 1:03:56Rich Roll?

  It's not just investment bankers, it's dentists.

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, everyone. You could be a mechanic. Yeah. And so, there's, it's a real, climbing a big mountain is, it's a good thing, especially something like Everest. It employs a lot of people in Nepal. And Nepal and Tibet and as they are, they manage and regulate the mountain until they have done a, an overview of the carrying capacity and how that mountain can then be managed, it's going to be a bit of a, it's a goat farm over there.

• 1:04:34Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  But this year is the first year since 1974 or something like that, that Everest will not have a summit on it. So, it's gonna sort of recuperate and.

• 1:04:44Rich Roll?

  Oh, really? So, I didn't know that. So, what is that about?

• 1:04:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, the, with the avalanche that struck base camp as a result of the earthquake on the 25th of April 2015, they're.

• 1:04:55Rich Roll?

  It's just lockdown.

• 1:04:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, they closed up the season and I don't think there are any post-Mont Sime expeditions going over there. They'd be setting up right now and there'd be, it'd be in the news, but I haven't heard of anyone. So, yeah, giving the mountain a rest and, yeah, there is some talk in the mountaineering communities to have another rest year to say, okay, we're no, no climbing on Everest, everyone go climb other peaks.

• 1:05:29Rich Roll?

  Well, the amount of debris that must be accumulating up there has got to be vast, right, and extensive. I mean, when you're going up, you must see stuff all over the place.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  They're doing a good job.

• 1:05:39Rich Roll?

  Are they?

• 1:05:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. They're starting in the 90s, they had Everest Clean-up Expeditions, and now, when you go there, you have to post a bond per person of about $1,000 or so that you bring your rubbish down.

• 1:05:52Rich Roll?

  I see.

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  So, they're doing a good job with that. They're getting it out of there. Things like oxygen cylinders are souvenirs, so there's a value to them. So, you have a market force encouraging people to bring them down, and then the ones that can be reused are recycled. But, yeah, there's some... how we handle that many people, and the challenges of human waste and fresh water on a small village of 1,000 people that are trying to climb one route are pretty outstanding. And so, until Nepal and Sagamatha National Park comes up with a management plan similar to what Denali National Park has for climbing Denali, the highest point in Alaska and North America, there's... it'll be a little bit of a challenge

• 1:06:38Speaker 01

  of how they accommodate that many people.

• 1:06:42Rich Roll?

  Interesting. So, back to this issue of death, and the ever-present kind of awareness of its, you know, of its possibility with what you do. I mean, in your own personal story, you've, you know, you've suffered the loss of several friends, not the least of which was perhaps your best friend, Alex Low, right, who you lost in an avalanche, in which you were, you know, because you took a different tack, were able to survive, but you still... you were in an avalanche, yes?

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:15Rich Roll?

  And what year was that?

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  That was 99.

• 1:07:18Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:07:18Speaker 01

  October 5th.

• 1:07:20Rich Roll?

  And in the wake of that, you ultimately ended up marrying his bride and taking in his three sons. And you guys have been married now for 12 years?

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  14.

• 1:07:34Rich Roll?

  14 years?

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:36Rich Roll?

  And so, that's a very unique and interesting experience that the film explores in some respects. But what was that like, sort of stepping into, you know, that family and being responsible for raising those boys?

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  It was a gift. It's been a wonderful journey. And it's sort of, the Shijapangma is the one 8,000 meter peak that's entirely in Tibet. And by Tibetan culture, when there is a fatality, it's the brother that then steps in and takes care of the brother's family. And so, when we were there, the guys that were helping us out, and they were like, "Oh, my gosh." And even as we walked out of the mountains, and my shoulder was in a sling, and I had been banged up and cracked ribs, and they were like, "We've got to take care of them." And the conversations you have with a lot

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  of these people there, they're not, they're not the volume that you and I have had in our own native tongue, our mother tongue, back and forth, and big ideas and things like this. There's always sort of simple ideas. So that might have been the foundation to it. And then, coming back and being with Jenny, knowing Max, Sam, and Isaac since Max was two, and then being there for Sam and Isaac's birth, and being with them, and that love is a, you put love in the equation, it's a great healing thing. And Max is with us here, and Jenny's with us here, and when we're here in Southern California, and just

• 1:09:14Speaker 01

  working on a film together, and kind of, it's been a great journey to have a family in that sense. And to, yeah, it's a unique story, I guess.

• 1:09:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and I think, I think what's also, you know, an interesting kind of thing to mine is how that impacted your perception of climbing, your risk analysis, and, you know, how you made choices about future expeditions. Because at your core, you are a climber. This is who you are. This is what you do. And you could, you know, couldn't avoid climbing as much as you could avoid having to go to the bathroom. Like, this is, this is, you know, who you are. It's in your DNA, right? So how do you, so it's this journey of reconciling that with, you know, the fact that, that you're now responsible for these boys who

• 1:10:11Rich Roll?

  already lost their father, and this woman who already lost her husband. Does that change how you decide to tackle a climb?

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  Certain climbs that have a higher level of objective risk and that's walking under something with a potential to avalanche on you or ice block breaking off and that would be, that was what killed Alex and David and Shishapangla and so trying to avoid those type of climbs but that being said, having made 10 trips through the icefall that people can say, "Well, that's a load of malarkey." Yeah, he still went through it.

• 1:10:51Rich Roll?

  So, yeah, so like, "Oh, alright, so what is acceptable risk?" I mean, your definition is fluid and distinct from the average human being, right? Like, that's a moving target.

• 1:11:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I've spent a lifetime understanding the mountains and what they, dynamics of snow and ice and that's really the challenge in Himalayan peaks is that you have that level of all the ice that's hanging up there and how do you get around that? But there's, yeah, and if I were to go do, if I were to go into a surgery theater and perform a surgery, I would botch it and I would kill that person.

• 1:11:32Rich Roll?

  That's unacceptable risk analysis.

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so that, there's, you just, it's whatever you do and whatever you know best and a good firefighter is gonna know, well, every time they step into an incident, they're gonna learn more about that building and that's what we're built upon and in your experience in terms of where you are with your books and podcasting.

• 1:11:55Rich Roll?

  Podcasting.

• 1:11:56Speaker 01

  We all build on experience and so there was, there's a, but I, this might sound crazy, but I think that, yeah, what I do, I know when it's gonna be risky and that I'll go to Nepal again and I'll do another trip and I'll climb these climbs, but I'm there at that moment and then I have to make decisions and assess the situation and the locale and whether is it good to go up and things like that and make sound decisions the best I can whether or not and then also knowing that you can always turn around and come back and it's not, climbing ultimately isn't worth dying for and you wanna come back and share that experience.

• 1:12:41Rich Roll?

  But that moment of making that decision to turn around, that like critical... Decision point moment, I would imagine is informed by deep intuition, which is informed by a lifetime of experience, which is contributed to by your sense of hypervigilance, right? All of these things come into play to help you make that decision. So I would imagine when an instinct creeps up in you, like, "We gotta go down," or "We keep going," that's not coming out of nowhere. That's coming out of a lifetime of doing this.

• 1:13:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:19Rich Roll?

  So it's a much more reliable intuition or instinct than the investment banker's instinct.

• 1:13:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they might, they might be able to make sound decisions based on their experience with it. So, um, yeah, it goes, um, it's a, yeah, it's, I mean, but I could be a race car driver, that's dangerous stuff, or, or I could have played football for a bunch, I mean, there, we know there's risk associated with that, and there's, I mean, people that don't take care of their bodies, and they're, you know, where is that? And so...

• 1:13:54Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah, I mean, you know, people watch what Alex Honnold does, and it's absolutely mind-boggling that somebody could be so composed in, you know, in the process of, you know, climbing up, you know, those faces that he climbs without any ropes, without any safety net. But he will tell you that he's done a risk analysis and that there, that he's completely comfortable in, in what he's tackling, and to the average person, that it doesn't compute at all, right? So, that's what I mean about like a sort of moving target of risk analysis based on experience. But when you look at, like, on the subject of death, you know, we're kind of still in

• 1:14:39Rich Roll?

  the wake of Dean Potter's passing, and, and we're in this kind of phase of, of that version of climbing, which is a very different kind of climbing than you do, where the envelope is getting pushed and pushed and pushed, and it seems like to me, as a layperson, that it's accelerating at a quite rapid rate with the wingsuit jumps and the slack lining and all this sort of thing, to the extent that even, you know, Cliff pulled out of sponsoring some of these athletes, because they're freaked out at the risk level.

• 1:15:10Rich Roll?

  You know, what is your perception of that as somebody who knows more about these things than almost anyone else?

• 1:15:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I'm happy that people go out and they push the limit and they they accept risk and it's, um, yeah, people are gonna say, oh, they're absolutely crazy and, you know, these proximity wingsuit jumpers, the fellows that thread needles and all these things and they know what they're doing and they know what the risk and the consequences of those, um, of what's going on there and that, um, there's, I'm, I think it's a healthy thing. People need to go out there and need to push the envelope and it's, whenever this happens, everyone's like, oh, Dean and this and that and, you know, there's this huge burden and this cost to society and it's like, well, yeah, that having to do a body

• 1:16:00Speaker 01

  recovery in Yosemite is less expensive than someone going into, uh, critical care or chronic care as an old person or something like that. Using that is a very numbers-based type thing. So, yeah, Dean is a great guy, respect and, yeah, it's tragic and it's sad, especially for his family that that were there, that were so close to, to him and to be affected by it. But, um, to say that we should, any of these pursuits where your, where body injury is, is, is a chance is, should not be good is, is a little bit crazy. And so we're, we single out base jumpers and, and climbers, soloists and all these Himalayan

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  climbers because it's super risky. But yet, on the other side of it, it's like, well, you know, we love football and in football, you're probably eighty, ninety percent chance that you're going to have concussive cerebral injuries. And when you're my age, then, or we're about the same age, you're gonna be, there's challenges that you're gonna have because you played football that whole time. And so-

• 1:17:08Speaker 01

  Does Bud Light pull out of sponsoring NFL because they know it's injurious to people? And it's a bad thing. And yet, you know, everyone's like, we have an energy bar that says, oh, we can't do this on there. So there's, um, there's sort of, um, because it's, we do this on our own volition and there is a high mortality rate and that it's, um, that you, it's a very, very brutal death flying into the mountain. There's nothing.

• 1:17:39Rich Roll?

  Well, yeah, they're spectacular.

• 1:17:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:42Rich Roll?

  And now more and more they're being filmed because everybody's got a GoPro and that's a whole other, you know, conversation about, um, the sharing of these exploits and how they might fuel and inform, you know, some people taking an unacceptable level of risk, you know, to get the clip or whatever. Um, but at the same time, this is the burden of the explorer and the pioneer. It's sort of like they've accepted that mantle and that's, that goes with the territory. And culturally, you know, it's this, not love hate, but like this weird relationship where we want to see them do it, but then this weird schadenfreude when something bad happens and then we have to have a, you know, a cultural regrouping where we say, we can't do this anymore.

• 1:18:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:24Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? Like, we love our heroes, but we like to then attack them or criticize them as well. So, but it's fascinating to watch how climbing is progressing in that regard. Like I saw Valley Uprising and that was quite amazing to see kind of the history in Yosemite and how, how it's evolved by these guys, you know, sort of learning from each other and, you know, each person taking it to the next level. And, but it does seem like it's accelerating quite quickly right now.

• 1:18:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:53Rich Roll?

  I mean, what's next?

• 1:18:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I look at the mountain biking. It's like, it was sort of like, remember the coaster bikes with the reverse brake?

• 1:19:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:03Speaker 01

  And you'd like do a skid turn around the trees and that was like mountain biking.

• 1:19:06Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:19:07Speaker 01

  Riding these spines and.

• 1:19:09Rich Roll?

  Right. Or Danny McCaskill, what he does in those movies. It's unbelievable.

• 1:19:13Speaker 01

  So it's, um, and I'm happy for it. This is. Let's go. I mean, it's, um, we've got 350 million people in the United States and, and we are here because, or 320 or whatever million we have, seven and a half billion on this planet. And you can, as long as you're not harming other people and, and malicious and, and mean and things like that, go out and have fun. And so it, um, yeah, it's a, it's a intense conversation. And I'm at the, I have a very firm views on it because I get, I have a target on my back because of that. Because I'm, they're like, well, you know, here you

• 1:19:56Speaker 01

  are. You lost your best friend climbing and then you marry his widow and you raise his kids to be climbers and the same thing. And, and just, that's not a, a good thing. And so some people think it's their prerogative to come in and tell other people how to live.

• 1:20:09Rich Roll?

  Right. So how do you respond to that?

• 1:20:11Speaker 01

  I'm a, it's, um, well, there's one way you can say it. You know, opinions are like toothbrushes. Everyone has their own toothbrush. Um, you don't necessarily want to share them, but

• 1:20:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:24Speaker 01

  There's, um, air of, um, I, I generally don't, I mean, I don't.

• 1:20:34Rich Roll?

  Don't engage?

• 1:20:35Speaker 01

  I don't engage because it just doesn't, it doesn't, uh, the people that mean a lot to me, they understand. And people that are, are friends and they know where we're at and that have a, um, a meaningful life, they, they understand that. And there's, um, a meaningful life by my standards, people that have the same value set. And so, and you understand why we go out and do these things and what, what's important in life. And perhaps many of the listeners out there do too.

• 1:21:04Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I think that's one of the things that Mayru addresses, you know, like Mallory, isn't, isn't Mallory the one who's responsible for the quote when asked, like, why do you climb? And why do you tackle these mountains? And he said, because it's there.

• 1:21:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:19Rich Roll?

  So we all know that quote. We didn't necessarily know that it was Mallory who said it, but Mayru kind of updates that response in some regard.

• 1:21:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:27Rich Roll?

  And I won't spoil it. You should go out and see the movie. But it's a much more nuanced, um, thing in that, you know? And I've been thinking a lot about

• 1:21:37Rich Roll?

  Balance lately, subject of balance and moderation, you know, and as somebody who's done ultra endurance events and, you know, and I know what that's like and it's kind of a different version of what you do, it has some kind of overlap and, you know, last weekend I went out to Utah to help the Iron Cowboy finish his 50th Ironman in 50 states in 50 days and, you know, what he's accomplished is just extraordinary, you know, it really, it defies, I think it's one of the greatest achievements in human endurance. It was really touching and beautiful to be there to witness it and, and to see the response of people, like he had like over a thousand people there cheering him on in his home

• 1:22:20Rich Roll?

  state of Utah and it was the amount of love that was surrounding him, it was really cool. And yet we're in this culture where this idea of balance is reinforced, like live a balanced life and everything in moderation and all this sort of thing and, and I've always said, like, I struggle with balance, like, I vacillate between extremes and I'm just prone to that, I'm attracted to that, I'm magnetized to that, and what does that mean? Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? Should I refrain from judging that? But when you look at sort of the great achievements of mankind, these were achieved by people who were arguably out of balance by our sort of cultural paradigm, you know, definition

• 1:23:03Rich Roll?

  of what that is. It's sort of like, we're told to be in balance, yet we celebrate people that are out of balance, but then we tell them, "You're out of balance." You know what I mean? Like, does that make sense to you?

• 1:23:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:17Rich Roll?

  Like, what, how do you, how do you kind of, you know, approach balance? And, you know, I think, I think in the macro sense, you're living a very balanced life. You're a great dad to these three boys, you're, you know, you're a loving husband, you've been married 14 years, you go off and do these extreme things, but if someone's, you know, like when you're on the mountain, maybe your life is temporarily out of balance, but in the macro, like, I think you're living a balanced life where your priorities are in check.

• 1:23:46Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:23:47Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? Like, so I'm sure you get this question all the time, or, you know, that criticism of living out of balance. I mean, maybe that's just a different variation on the question I just asked you, but...

• 1:23:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:00Speaker 01

  Well, I hope that it is in balance and that being in the mountains and doing these expeditions brings some degree of balance back to it. So that it's that adventure out there. And yes, we do, you look at Lewis and Clark that marched across North America and they were, you know, they were seen as crazy and they weren't, and same thing with Shackleton at his time, in his time, he wasn't, he wasn't, when he came back not having made it across Antarctica in 1917 and that was, he became a hero later in life. So we're, um, yes, it's one of those things, public figures, it's a different.

• 1:24:43Rich Roll?

  Well, I also think that because being a climber is who you are and climbing is what you do, that when you're climbing, you are in your bliss. So you are balanced in that regard. Like you are grounded and present and you are, you are the best version of yourself when you are engaged in doing that. Because that's what you love to do.

• 1:25:04Speaker 01

  And if people can find that in whatever they do, and whether it's becoming the best barista that makes the most perfect flowers on the foam, or the best chess player or artist, or, when people have a sense of purpose and a drive and what they want to do, that is probably the most important thing. And a lot of people that I communicate with that are in HR and employing people, that's one of the things they look for is, is this person have something they're passionate about and they want to excel and they want to do good at? And then ask about that. And those are traits that then encourage people to do good. And I'm fortunate to have found that climbing was my calling and being able to follow it

• 1:25:49Speaker 01

  and especially thankful to society for allowing me to pursue it to the degree that I have.

• 1:25:55Rich Roll?

  But also giving back, right? Like, so let's talk about mentorship a little bit. I mean, you had great mentors and now you're at a point in your career where mentoring the younger generation has become an important thing to you. And that's reflected in the, in the movie as well with Jimmy and Renard. And it's, you know, I'm interested in exploring kind of what that means to you and how you carry that mantle.

• 1:26:22Speaker 01

  Well, we, we're the sum total of everyone that came before us. So if we look at this collective ball of knowledge and each generation passes it on and is able to add to it and then move it on to the next one. And so if you can get close to that ball of energy, or hold the ball, or touch it, and then you're there to, to bring it to the hands of the next generation, you're, I mean, that's sort of what mentorship is about. And you look at where we are as humans today with everything from technology and science and the arts and philosophy. It's all related to humans moving that ball of knowledge forward and then sharing it

• 1:27:06Speaker 01

  with the next, with the previous generation. And climbing is very particular in that way because it's so, it's a mechanical type thing. You have to set up the ropes, you have the carabiners, there's belay techniques, there's, you have to, setting things up. And so I had someone that literally showed me the ropes. And so there's that, that learning of how to do it. And yes, you can learn to climb as a kid without any prior education. You see kids climbing up trees and on boulders and it's just innate in them. They get out and they want to go to the top of that little hump there and they want to climb that tree and mom's like, ah, get down. Dad's like, be safe. So we're kind of untraining them from that.

• 1:27:50Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:27:51Speaker 01

  And then you want to see a mountain, you go, I want to go climb there. And then you have to learn from those, that rope and everything on that. And there's, in terms of like mentorship, there's nothing I can teach Alex in old. I mean, the guy's way better climber than I ever was, or ever will be. And so there's not like, from a climbing standpoint, but...

• 1:28:10Rich Roll?

  But he doesn't have experience in the kind of climbing that you do.

• 1:28:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, or life experience and things like that. And then encouraging them. And, and that was, for me, what my great, when Muggs, who was my mentor, said, yeah, you can do this. And then to, to say that you can do it and to give them that responsibility rather than sort of hanging on to it and, and, and saying, being possessive of it, but to say, okay, it's your turn now and you move on with it. And I think that's for an athlete that's our age to...

• 1:28:44Speaker 01

  Rather than trying to say, "I'm gonna try to be there with those guys and try to compete with them," and all this and that, you should be like, wow, age gracefully and be supportive of the people and realize that when you pursue it at whatever level you're doing, that the essence of doing it, that joy of doing it is the same as when you were doing it at the very highest level.

• 1:29:07Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:29:08Speaker 01

  So, there's, like, the old-time climbers

• 1:29:16Speaker 01

  that were climbing the gunks into their eighties, and so they had pioneered the sport, but they're still going out there and climbing at this very, at a level that gave them a ton of fun.

• 1:29:28Rich Roll?

  Right, interesting, yeah. And there's the beautiful moment in the movie where

• 1:29:34Rich Roll?

  you're about to finally summit Meru, and it's all lined up for you to be the first one up, and you sort of pass the mantle on to Jimmy, and that's sort of a very palpable, like, tactile way of saying, you know, "I'm the mentor and you're the next generation." It's a beautiful moment.

• 1:29:51Speaker 01

  It was, uh...

• 1:29:52Rich Roll?

  I heard that it wasn't originally in the movie either, right? Like, that's such a huge character, you know, moment in the movie.

• 1:29:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, Chi discovered it, so she's like, "Ah, this is it."

• 1:30:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:02Speaker 01

  It was, um, it was sort of like, uh, the, um... But at that point, we had, we were so close in 2008, and then, so we basically did the second ascent all the way up, except for those last two pitches.

• 1:30:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:30:16Speaker 01

  And one of them was really time-consuming and difficult. That was the one that we'd turned back on, that would have forced us in overnight, and it would have just been... We did the right thing. We got back and no one was injured. And looking back now on the story of Meru, that it, from 2003 to 2011, the time that took me eight years to climb it, was, it was fitting that it was there. But when we got to that, being that close, it was like, "Okay, Jimmy, it's your lead."

• 1:30:45Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:30:46Speaker 01

  "And we're gonna get to the top, but it's always, um, it's a..." When I'm with my climbing partners, I'm always like... You go first to the, and I remember this great guy, Jay Smith, that I climb with. We'd always be like, oh, no, you first. No, you get to the summit. We'd like almost get into like, no, no, no, no, no, after you. To be the first person to stand on this summit because you were kind of a team. And it's one of those.

• 1:31:13Rich Roll?

  The level of trust and the bond that you have with those guys. When your life is literally in their hands is gotta be like nothing else.

• 1:31:22Speaker 01

  And as a kid, I love running and I love going out and doing track. And I always hear about these races where there'd be two guys and they would be like struggling, doing the marathon and then they would come through the finish line hand in hand and win it as a team. I would be just like, wow, that's pretty cool. I mean, those things.

• 1:31:42Rich Roll?

  Well, that goes back to your earliest sort of perception of sport and being kind of, you know, anti the competitive aspect of it, the victor versus the also around.

• 1:31:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it was, I mean, there's probably other things in it, but it was, you know, having a unique name and kind of in just, you know, playing football on a military base in Frankfurt, Germany as a kid. And it was just like, whoa. I mean, it was, it was, it was sort of this, this, I didn't respond. It was just was difficult. I mean, the bullying that went on there as a kid. I was like, oh, so I'm gonna do the opposite whenever I see someone that can, I can lend a hand or help out too. Or so, I mean, even, I think it changed my life

• 1:32:36Speaker 01

  because I wasn't the one that was, I was, I had to be, and maybe it changed who I am. But it was, I sort of was like, oh, this isn't, at the end of the day, I didn't feel like a good person. I didn't feel like they were my, it was my team, but I just, it was just sort of like.

• 1:32:54Rich Roll?

  Wasn't you.

• 1:32:55Speaker 01

  I didn't.

• 1:32:55Rich Roll?

  Wasn't you.

• 1:32:57Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:32:58Rich Roll?

  Well, I realize that we didn't even set the stage about what Meru is and, and sort of the.

• 1:33:06Rich Roll?

  The mystique around this particular mountain, the Shark's Fin in particular, and how that had kind of defied climbers for 30 years of attempts, right? No one had been able to summit this, and you'd made a couple of attempts. And the movie is really a chronicle of, you know, trying to finally be the first guys up there.

• 1:33:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Is that accurate?

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was this one, there's three peaks on Meru. And the central has this Shark's Fin that looks like a, almost like a Shark's Fin, or like the flame of a candle that kind of comes up out of the base of this glacier. And it's really aesthetic looking. And teams had tried it, but it was, many climbs, you'll have the most difficult stuff at the lower part, and then intermediate stuff in the middle, and the easy stuff on the top. The middle stuff was still middle stuff on this climb, but the easy stuff was at the bottom, and the most difficult stuff was at the top. So that slow-going, big-wall climbing, like you have on Yosemite and El Capitan, that required, we had to get that equipment up to the base of that.

• 1:34:17Speaker 01

  And that brought the necessity of more equipment and more time going into it.

• 1:34:22Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. One of the themes that kind of comes across is your approach to climbing in terms of perceiving the long game, right? Like not just, not rushing things, being able to have a responsible level of patience, and, you know, knowing when to back down. And that goes back into acceptable risk, but always having the long game in mind, right? Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

• 1:34:51Speaker 01

  There, well, I guess the base of it, the mountain's always there another day. So if you don't make it up that day, you can try it again. But we're always climbing at the, being fortunate with the weather, that there's a break in the weather, and that we're not conquering it necessarily, but rather we're finding an opportunity to climb it that gives us the, sort of, a break in that.

• 1:35:18Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:35:19Speaker 01

  So that's sort of the basis of that. The, but also that...

• 1:35:29Speaker 01

  They're just to be always a little bit more patient. So it's you'll get there eventually.

• 1:35:39Speaker 01

  So which is tough because if you're too patient driving here in LA, you'll never get there. You know, I'm like, oh, you really want to get an epidemic, go ahead. People just drive fast and like, but you have to like swim.

• 1:35:53Rich Roll?

  This is not.

• 1:35:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, we will slow down and let pedestrians cross or something like that. But yeah, they're the long game. We're always live to see another day.

• 1:36:05Rich Roll?

  I'm interested in exploring something you I'm sure you get asked about all the time. So my apologies. But it has to do with, you know, your relationship with fear, right? Which I think is probably unique. And it's interesting because we kind of live in a fear based culture. Right? If you watch the news, everything is premised upon like making us very afraid. Right? Like, don't go outside or terrorist attacks or what have you.

• 1:36:37Rich Roll?

  And the kind of fear that you deal with is very different.

• 1:36:42Rich Roll?

  Is it about conquering fear? Is it accepting fear? Is it that you're not afraid? Like, how does that work for you?

• 1:36:50Speaker 01

  Fear and its very basic instinct is our self preservation instinct. And so that's what has driven humans to become where we are. So we can see what fear is and then change it and do and make decisions based upon it. And the fear that I encounter is on by my own volition. So I'm going to go up on this big wall and it's a scary place. Humans aren't meant to be with that amount of exposure and those type of temperatures and things like that. So I can overcome that fear with experience and by having the right equipment and things like that. And then that knowledge that I've been in a similar situation in the past and I can then do it. But I tend to.

• 1:37:35Speaker 01

  I'm very accepting of humans, so I'm not like, oh, I'm in a, this is a rough part of town. I should be afraid. I'll be like, okay, I'm here and I have good intent. I'm not, I'm not trying to do anything and I've never had any problems with that. And maybe I'm naive or something like that. And, but I think a lot of fear is, is conditioned upon what society tells us. And so we might be like, we make snap judgments. We're looking at a certain person and saying, well, that person is going to be bad. There's going to be problems with it and they're going to, to see things in a different way. And to really not make judgments about people particularly, or locations or places that

• 1:38:20Speaker 01

  you are, will make you less fearful. And there's a, you know, what do I fear in life? Driving because it's so fast and you see car accidents and you're like, oh my gosh.

• 1:38:36Rich Roll?

  Driving keeps coming up as a theme here. It's definitely something that triggers you.

• 1:38:40Speaker 01

  Well, I spent three hours driving yesterday and it was, I mean, yeah, you drive from Bozeman to Missoula and you put it on cruise control and you can download a couple of podcasts and you're just looking out there and then so, but yeah, when you're on the 405 in rush hour, like I was last night, it was a scary experience. I was like, white knuckling that.

• 1:39:05Rich Roll?

  Conrad Anker is terrified of the 405, but Meru is not an issue.

• 1:39:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, Meru, I, I knew what I was getting into and the cold is an adversary that I can understand and I can, I can work with it. But so the semi on the 405 and lane changers and the motorcyclists that are splitting lanes, I mean, those guys scare me because what if I wasn't paying a hundred percent attention at that time and I clipped them and they had a wipeout? And I don't want to have that on my shoulders. I mean, it's just like, all these things are landing on me trying to deal with them at one moment.

• 1:39:48Rich Roll?

  How do these high stakes adventures that you've been on kind of inform how you navigate your daily life? You know, I think, you know, somebody might say, well, you're so used to this extreme level of excitement that the rest of your life might be boring. But I have a feeling that that's not the case.

• 1:40:08Speaker 01

  It's things, if you, on most of these expeditions, the ones that I've done with Jimmy, like walking across Tibet, and you end up running out of food. So it's like, okay. And you end up dehydrating yourself and all those things. So when you come back, you're like, wow, this is tea. This is really cool. And I went to the coffee shop and the person made me a cup of coffee and it cost me $2. I mean, it's like really

• 1:40:33Rich Roll?

  Amazing.

• 1:40:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I'm like, happy and thankful for that person. And they're like, it's like a good human interaction. So that

• 1:40:41Rich Roll?

  And you're able to hold on to that.

• 1:40:43Speaker 01

  Not having so, not having all these creature comforts. I mean, so many people are like, they're just like, so like, my coffee is five degrees off and I'm in a rush and it takes you that long. And just a little bit of patience and courtesy with those things. And especially for the people that are working there. And that I think that that influences us. So sort of that being on these long expeditions makes you appreciate the simple things in life, like a soft bed and a well-prepared meal and conversations and your cellphone working, things like that. And I mean, nowadays, it's sort of like, we're so programmed that, my gosh, I don't have five bars on my 3G. That's a disaster. Or I spilled coffee on

• 1:41:28Rich Roll?

  You only have 3G?

• 1:41:29Speaker 01

  Oh, now it's 4G.

• 1:41:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:32Speaker 01

  But yeah, I guess I'm really out of it now. So I can get the fastest.

• 1:41:38Rich Roll?

  Come on, old man.

• 1:41:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, my phone has a clip-in loop on it.

• 1:41:43Rich Roll?

  I know, I noticed that.

• 1:41:44Speaker 01

  That's what I do with my

• 1:41:45Rich Roll?

  You clip that onto your belt? Like, how does that work?

• 1:41:47Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. So you can hang it there.

• 1:41:49Rich Roll?

  I'm gonna take a picture of that.

• 1:41:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. How you, you can also put it on your wrist. You can girth hitch it. You can hang it in your tent. So you could

• 1:41:56Rich Roll?

  Right. Gotcha.

• 1:41:58Speaker 01

  Listen to a Rich Roll podcast.

• 1:42:00Rich Roll?

  Of course, right.

• 1:42:01Speaker 01

  Sitting in your tent and which is, you know, download a bunch of them. These things have changed.

• 1:42:05Rich Roll?

  Up on the port-a-ledge.

• 1:42:06Speaker 01

  These have changed expedition climbing. I mean, it's sort of like I mean, back in the day, we would have Walkmans and we'd have cassettes. And I remember there's always one side of the cassette that was better than the other. And so you'd sit there and you'd get a number two pencil and you'd rewind the whole thing. So you could listen to that tape again. And then the batteries would get low and it wouldn't just shut off. It'd go.

• 1:42:25Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. Now you can watch movies and TV shows.

• 1:42:28Speaker 01

  Movies, TV shows, listen to all your music. You can, you can update your address book. I mean, it's, I mean, this technology, the way technology has advanced in the last 10 or 15 years has got me completely excited for what it's going to be doing in the next 10 to 15 years.

• 1:42:43Rich Roll?

  Hmm. Well, that gets into kind of, you know, you're also an entrepreneur. It seems like you've got, you know, 10 businesses going and all kinds of other stuff, uh, you know, off the mountain as well, right? What's going on? What's the, what's the latest thing that you're working on right now?

• 1:42:58Speaker 01

  We, um, yeah. If you have ideas, follow your ideas. And so I'm kind of a idea person. I get people excited about them and then I want to get them rolling on that idea and build them together. But, um, in working with, um, meeting various people from various disciplines. And so, uh, Bruce Johnson, who's a, uh, research, um, clinician from the Mayo Clinic in, um, Rochester, Minnesota. He and I were in Everest together in, in, uh, 2012. And then working with another fellow, Alex Philip out of Missoula, Montana, who's a data and another fellow, Stephen Marshall, who's out of London, San Francisco area. And so coming together with these different ideas that we can then, uh, pulling into

• 1:43:39Speaker 01

  different areas and that what we're working on now is this, our working, uh, title on this is working group. It's, is Metalist, which is, uh, medical data and lifestyle. And so if we have three, each of these three.

• 1:43:51Rich Roll?

  Metalists.

• 1:43:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. So there's, um, so it's just an acronym.

• 1:43:57Rich Roll?

  Right, I got you.

• 1:43:58Speaker 01

  So I pulled them all together. So we have, um, we're looking at the health of the people in the United States. So this, what we're talking about now is health, where people are, how they're staying healthy and, and the cost to it. So, um, Alex is a data guy, and so he works with big data. So he's from a GIS background, and so they've done mapping and things like that. And then now that we can keep adding layers and layers of data, so you can add in stuff from the census, you can add in stuff, data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and you can look at all these different areas and then kind of figure out the health of individuals. And it comes down to where you live, down to a really...

• 1:44:41Rich Roll?

  Again, another sort of Blue Zones analogy.

• 1:44:45Speaker 01

  It is. And so, working with that and trying to tie in with what Dan Boitner's been working on with that. So it's, again, extrapolating on that. So they're able to look at, say, if you are in an area that is downwind of an oil refinery, your chance, you're going to be that much more likely to have melanoma. If you live in East LA, and this is your demographic, and you live in a food desert, your risk of type 2 diabetes is going to be that much greater. And so, breaking it down into each of these individual areas, and you can look at it county by county in the United States of where people are healthy and what they're not doing. And so, taking that information, and then there's sort of a, that's the data part of

• 1:45:30Speaker 01

  it. So we can look at macro data, which is big amounts of data that looks at every level of where people are, where they're healthy, what they're doing in society. And then you have the micro data, which is the data that you would get off, say, of a fitness watch or your own medical test that tells you on a day-to-day basis how healthy you are. And that's improving all the time, because you can look on your...

• 1:45:52Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:45:53Speaker 01

  You can track what you're eating on your phone and be more aware of that, and the more aware of it that you are. So trying to combine big data, micro data, macro and micro data on that. So that's the data compartment. And then there's the medical component of this, and that is the hospitals, which are the providers, there's the insurance companies, which are the payers, and then there's pharma, which is the other part of that. And then the third component of it is lifestyle, and that's where guys like you and I fit in, because we're out there as proponents for a healthy lifestyle. What are we going to do to get healthier and be healthier? And so... Having read Dan's book, having met Dan at a conference and interacted with him, great guy, kind of like I'm fascinated by that. So he's taking data, he's not just saying,

• 1:46:37Speaker 01

  "Oh, I heard about guys, families that live in Georgia, or in the Caucasus, that eat yogurt, that live to be 120." He's actually gone down and mined the data, knows exactly where they are, and then trying to pull that out. And some of your podcasts are about those, you know, linking data, the guy that says, "Okay, there's more PhDs in Switzerland, they eat more chocolate, so if you eat chocolate, you're gonna be smarter." I mean, it's like, let's get really focused on this and looking at it. So then, working with our group that we have there, and we sort of meet in a way that we're just brainstorming, we're not trying to sell anything to anyone like that, but how can we bend the curve on the health of people? And so the lifestyle part of it is where we get out and we exercise, we encourage

• 1:47:18Speaker 01

  people to live a healthy life, to eat healthier, to be more mindful of what they're doing to their bodies. And then, the other part of the lifestyle is that it does come into our society, which is governed by government, and that is run by politics. So, you have an example in New York City where they say, "The 72 miles drinks," there's something, we have to sue that, and some people have to change that, there's too much sugar in there. And so other people are saying, "You're taking away the right to be in that point." So, bringing all of those groups together, and then brainstorming on ways that we can help create a healthier society, that's kind of our-

• 1:47:59Rich Roll?

  Right. That's a big lofty goal.

• 1:48:01Speaker 01

  It's a big lofty goal.

• 1:48:02Rich Roll?

  But it's a worthy one.

• 1:48:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, and if someone's got a-

• 1:48:04Rich Roll?

  It's a worthy one.

• 1:48:05Speaker 01

  And we have fun with it, and it's really, it's neat to see, to engage all these different areas, and so-

• 1:48:12Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah, it's interesting, I mean, it's really similar to what Dan's doing with his Blue Zones projects, and how he goes into these cities, you know, because he'll tell you, and he probably said to you, like- The best way to help people is to change their environment. So when you look at, for example, the example you used, you know, an East LA neighborhood that's a food desert, well, we now realize that the incidence of type 2 diabetes there is because it's a food desert. So how do we change that? Like, you know, we're not going to get all these people to move and, you know, you, they can all go see Meru and be inspired, but is that going to translate into them changing their habits? Like, that's a harder thing.

• 1:48:53Speaker 01

  That is very.

• 1:48:53Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? But if you can surround them with healthier options that are at an arm's length away, or, you know, build bike paths, or, you know, I don't know, you know, certain kinds of, you know, things that are in the environment that kind of foster a healthier lifestyle is the way that you're going to ultimately get these communities to improve.

• 1:49:17Speaker 01

  And the harsh reality is that people respond to economic incentive. And so the insurance companies are seeing this. They're saying, worse, a type 2 diabetic is going to cost us $200,000 or something like that, especially if it's, I mean, it can be really, and that's just one of the five top killers that are, that are lifestyle related. So they have an incentive to say, let's see if we can incentivize people to become healthier rather than paying for another three wings in a big hospital like that.

• 1:49:48Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, the employers too, because they're the ones who have to pay these insurance premiums, you know, for their workforce.

• 1:49:54Speaker 01

  Those are what wellness programs are doing. And as companies become more progressive and they understand their, their wellness programs and so it's, and it's, I'm, I'm excited because I'm a mountain climber, but I get to hang out with these really bright people in medicine and data and kind of get ideas going there.

• 1:50:14Rich Roll?

  I'm sure they're very excited to hang out with you too. That's probably, you're probably the coolest guy that they get to hang out with.

• 1:50:20Speaker 01

  I brought the basketball.

• 1:50:23Rich Roll?

  All right. So a couple of questions I want to ask you before we, before we wrap it up. The first one is, you know, in raising these three boys, you know, what are the, what are the values that are most important to you that you instill in them as they mature into men?

• 1:50:41Speaker 01

  The, um, I guess as a, a sense of decency and compassion for other humans is, is the, the end goal that we want to have with raising the children, Jenny and I. So to be kind and generous to other people. And so that's a good, um, foundation for that. And as a parent, to get there, there's, um, there's expectations and boundaries. So, and I've set them on myself. And so what do you, um, what are those expectations and boundaries? And everyone has a different set of them. And with our boys, the, our expectations is that you'll play an instrument in high school, you'll learn a second language in

• 1:51:25Speaker 01

  high school, and you will graduate university. And so to get those three things done, I think they'll have those. And we're fortunate to be able to do that. Not everyone has that ability. I realize that. And I don't want to sound like I'm, like, I want to sound, I don't want to sound pompous. I want to sound grounded.

• 1:51:45Rich Roll?

  No, I got you. I got you.

• 1:51:46Speaker 01

  Those are the values. And that's what's important to us.

• 1:51:49Rich Roll?

  The instrument thing though, because you were a trumpet player and your dad was a trumpet player, right?

• 1:51:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:53Rich Roll?

  So music.

• 1:51:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, there is a sense of tenacity that you, and repetition, practice. And then language and music, they build neural pathways that we now understand that are beneficial. So, and maybe computer games are doing the same things. We, they're still out there. But the computer games are kind of more of a treat. They're kind of like a soft serve of ice cream going. They're not really, like, you've got to go learn a second language. So.

• 1:52:21Rich Roll?

  Have any of your boys discovered, like, that passion that's going to fuel their life yet? Do they know what they want to do and be?

• 1:52:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, Max is the oldest and he's a photographer and videographer. He's really enjoying that, um, in the outdoor space. And so not as an athlete as Alex and I am, but more in sort of the sharing the story and doing things. He loves that. Sam is going into his senior year as a, uh,

• 1:52:53Speaker 01

  Film student at Montana State, so he loves stop animation and making movies and those kind of things. And Isaac is a freshman at Western Washington in Bellingham with a keen interest in the natural sciences and ecology. So they're, and it's-

• 1:53:08Rich Roll?

  That's cool. So they all have a pretty good idea of-

• 1:53:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, what they're interested in. They want to do something that's, that's really, that's good. And, you know, if they wanted to-

• 1:53:18Rich Roll?

  Well, good job.

• 1:53:19Speaker 01

  Lounge around and eat potato chips, I would, I would find joy in that. I wouldn't want to be too harsh on them, but I guess I'm, I'm a taskmaster.

• 1:53:28Rich Roll?

  Are you, are you, are you a little bit of a hard ass or no?

• 1:53:31Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 1:53:32Rich Roll?

  Are you?

• 1:53:33Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, my fellow teammates joke about it, and I'm on expedition, and I'm that way with myself. And it's, and it's, there's, you know, as when, those formative years, those, the, the boundaries and expectations, I think, are two key parts to parenting that, and that you can understand that. And so there's certain, certain things, so it doesn't come as a surprise. And you want to get your children set to when they eventually become, to go out into society, that it is, it's, you have to earn your keep. It's hard work out there. Not everyone's going to be friendly, but if you're friendlier, you'll, you'll have better luck, and you might be happier at it, so.

• 1:54:17Rich Roll?

  If you could go back in time and give a 20-year-old Conrad Anchor a little piece of advice, based upon what you've learned, what would that be?

• 1:54:29Speaker 01

  It would be, probably do more stretching and more yoga.

• 1:54:35Rich Roll?

  That's it?

• 1:54:36Speaker 01

  Well, like, there's probably other bigger, deeper things.

• 1:54:39Rich Roll?

  Philosophically, maybe.

• 1:54:40Speaker 01

  Philosophically.

• 1:54:41Rich Roll?

  We could all stretch a little more.

• 1:54:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, it's so, yeah, yoga's great. It's just, but the breathing aspect of it, probably, probably in your twenties, as a young person, you're kind of self-absorbed. I mean, the world's about you. You don't realize that your impact with other people and things like that. So, and that comes with, that, that knowledge, that wisdom comes with experience and age. And some people are born with it, and some people have it through circumstance and experiences that have changed them.

• 1:55:20Rich Roll?

  If you got a tap on your shoulder by the next president, said Conrad, I'd like you to be Secretary of the Interior. You know, as somebody who's more in touch with our natural resources and our natural environment, you know, if you were given that kind of responsibility over managing our resources, what do you think, what do you think needs us to, where do you think our attention should be focused?

• 1:55:54Speaker 01

  Well, hats off first to Sally Jewell. She's doing a great job as Secretary of the Interior, and she comes from a recreation background. She manages, her department and team manages more land in the United States than anyone along those lines. But the challenge is when, in the interior, is that you have national forests and you have BLM land, you have public land that has resources on them. And how do we look at those various, the assets that are held within those lands, whether it's timber, coal, or natural gas? Those are the three peak ones that were there. And yes, we need to have energy to run our society, and these microphones are powered

• 1:56:39Speaker 01

  by it, and we can't escape that. And the first step to understanding energy consumption is knowing that we consume it and at what level, and trying to be mindful of that. But some of the other ways that we would see the, the price that we pay for carbon fuel here as citizens of the United States is below the market value in the rest of the world. So I go to Nepal, and it's a poor landlocked country. They have no coal or natural gas. They have some hydro. And how do they, what is the price of gasoline for their vehicles?

• 1:57:24Speaker 01

  It's about four times what we pay here. So that influences their decisions and how they do that. And so, again, it comes back to what we were mentioning about the market economy affecting change within people. We look at Hawaii, where electricity is something...

• 1:57:43Speaker 01

  Far more expensive than it is here on the mainland United States that because all the the carbon that's used to generate electricity has to be imported. So all of a sudden, solar is very cost effective. So as the price of conventional electricity rises and the price of alternative energy, wind, solar and hydro drops, hydro is more fixed than those other two because the technology is continually improving, then it becomes more of a, it's a different change. And so if I had that job, and I wouldn't want it.

• 1:58:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it can't be, it can't be an easy job.

• 1:58:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, you have a lot of people that you're trying to keep happy. And it's, it's a lot of respect for anyone that takes on, that works in the government and always, I'm not, I always thank people that work in the government rather than being antagonistic and angry at them. But the finding that, that point where we can address that energy consumption is sort of the, the key thing that, that we need to get our, as a, as a country in the United States. And that's when we're something like 7% of the world's population, yet we consume about 30% of the world's resources. Although China emits

• 1:59:06Speaker 01

  more CO2 than we do, we are per capita far more, as each individual will use more energy. And so there's that, this point now where, where maybe peak oil isn't the debate that we're going to have as much because we, we become more efficient in terms of ways that we can get carbon out of the ground by being more resourceful and drilling deeper and, and cracking the rock and steaming it out of there, all these different techniques. We're becoming more efficient at it. But instead of peak oil becoming that, the point that we have to be concerned about, it might be peak carbon. So what do we do as we go above

• 1:59:45Speaker 01

  400 parts per million? And how is that ocean acidification, atmospheric CO2 and glacial recession, those are the three.

• 1:59:55Speaker 01

  Undeniable ways that we can measure our anthropogenic impact on climate.

• 2:00:00Rich Roll?

  Have you seen Cowspiracy yet?

• 2:00:03Speaker 01

  Cowsp-?

• 2:00:05Rich Roll?

  Cowspiracy, it's a documentary.

• 2:00:06Speaker 01

  Cowspiracy.

• 2:00:07Rich Roll?

  Cowspiracy.

• 2:00:07Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm familiar, I haven't seen it, but it's about the methane.

• 2:00:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:00:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:11Rich Roll?

  Actually, I think I got a DVD in my car, I'll give it to you. But it basically is looking, it's looking at that very issue through the prism of the impact of animal agriculture on the environment and, and, and really evaluating, you know, the extent to which that's kind of the elephant in the room that no one's talking about. But it really is having a devastating impact on, on everything from, you know, desertification, rainforest destruction, ocean pollution, you know, you name it, carbon emissions through the roof, all those sorts of things. But I think you'd be interested in checking it out.

• 2:00:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's, uh, yeah. And thanks to you for inspiring a healthier lifestyle, so.

• 2:00:48Rich Roll?

  Well, thank you.

• 2:00:49Speaker 01

  Since I've gotten to know you, I've changed my, uh, you know, it's a cool thing.

• 2:00:53Rich Roll?

  Oh, cool, man. That's good to hear, thank you. But, uh, I mean, you're the, you're, you know, you're quite the inspirational figure and, and, um, I hope that you continue doing what you do. Uh, I think you inspire a lot of people and your message is very powerful. And so I, I think the way to close it down is just to, um, maybe have you share a few words, um, for somebody who's out there who perhaps is yearning for a little bit more adventure or outdoors in their life, but they're stuck, you know? They're sitting in their cubicle, they're at work right now, listening to this, wishing they were outdoors, but, you know, that, that person who just has trouble taking that first step.

• 2:01:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, wherever you are, um, probably in North America where you're listening to this, or if you're in Europe, or pretty much anywhere, there is some degree of nature close by. Um, you can always find a place that has trees and plants and things that are, that the random beauty of nature. And so we're so, you're in a cubicle, you're in this human right angle construct, there's plastic, there's steel, there's concrete, and it's even like the tablecloth here has right angles and it's, everything is built into that. And when you go outdoors and you go for a run on the trail, even the trail and the dirt on it is, is, is chaos, it's random. And then there's the trees and all that.

• 2:02:17Speaker 01

  And that's, knowing that that wilderness, this might not be wilderness, but that nature is there. Can rejuvenate your soul and make you happy. So start out by going for a walk. Go for a run. Check out the climbing gym. It'll help you understand what climbing is. Go visit a cliff. But

• 2:02:40Rich Roll?

  Don't fall off the cliff.

• 2:02:41Speaker 01

  Don't fall off the cliff, but challenge yourself. But yeah, instead of, instead of doing something that you've always done, do something that challenges yourself and let that, that fear that grip of anxiety in your stomach saying, I can't do this, let that be your motivator.

• 2:03:00Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. And as you say, be good, be kind.

• 2:03:05Speaker 01

  And be happy.

• 2:03:06Rich Roll?

  Be happy, right?

• 2:03:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's my like.

• 2:03:11Rich Roll?

  That's your mantra.

• 2:03:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I like to share it with people. So because goodness leads to kindness and kindness plus goodness equals happiness. So, but it's nothing I created. I mean, it's out there. That's, there's people that are, that are there. So, thank you, Rich.

• 2:03:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Thank you so much, man. This is a joy and a pleasure and an honor. It's really great to talk to you. You inspire me every day and I love following your journey online as it continues to unfold. And I'm really excited for everybody to see this movie and learn more about not just climbing, but, but your life and, and kind of have that own dialogue with themselves about challenging themselves. So it's going to be cool, man. You're in for a good ride when this movie comes out, I think. It's going to be cool.

• 2:04:03Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:04:05Rich Roll?

  So if you're digging on Conrad, the best place to check him out, conradanchor.com. And his Instagram feed is epic. It's at Conrad underscore anchor, right? Anywhere else to check you out?

• 2:04:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Those are, yeah.

• 2:04:21Rich Roll?

  That's the main thing, right?

• 2:04:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's Facebook and, and those things. But yeah, they're, Instagram's a great community.

• 2:04:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:30Speaker 01

  Pictures and

• 2:04:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, your feed's amazing. I love it. So cool. All right, man. Well, come back and talk to me again.

• 2:04:38Speaker 01

  We'll talk soon.

• 2:04:38Rich Roll?

  Will you do that?

• 2:04:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:39Rich Roll?

  All right, man. Thanks so much. Peace. Plants.

• 2:04:49Rich Roll?

  Really special guy, that Conrad. It was an honor to talk to him, a privilege. I'm honored to call him my friend, and I really hope that you enjoyed it. Do yourself a favor and check out Meru. As of today, it's rolling out in theaters across the United States, and it's going to be continuing to expand throughout December. For a list of theaters, go to merufilm, M-E-R-U-film.com/theaters. For all your plant power needs, visit richroll.com. We've got all kinds of cool stuff there. We've got Julie's Guided Meditation Program, which has been a hot item lately. We've got nutrition products, signed copies of Finding Ultra, organic cotton garments. We've got Plant Power Tech Tees. We've got Peace and Plants sticker packs. We have fine art prints, temporary tattoos, all kinds of cool stuff.

• 2:05:34Rich Roll?

  Basically, everything you need to take your health and your life to the next level. We've got your bases covered at richroll.com. Keep sending in your questions for future Q&A podcasts, [email protected]. Having fun with that. If you're into online courses, I've got two at mindbodygreen.com. The Ultimate Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition, as well as The Art of Living with Purpose, which is about goal-setting. They're both multiple hours of streaming video content and online community. Really proud of these courses, very affordably priced. Just go to mindbodygreen.com, click on Video Courses, and you can find out much more information about them there. Thank you, everybody, for supporting the show. It really means a lot to me. Thank you for sharing it with your friends and on social media. I really appreciate all of that.

• 2:06:17Rich Roll?

  And thank you for using the Amazon banner at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases. Have a great week, everybody, and I'll see you back in a couple days with another episode of the RRP. Keep rockin'. Peace. Plants. I'm outta here.