Most Replayed Moment: Fear Is A Skill You Can Train! Lessons From The World's Greatest Climber

What if fear isn’t something you need to overcome? Alex Honnold is the legendary professional rock climber behind Free Solo, best known for becoming the first person to free solo Yosemite’s 3,000-foot El Capitan without ropes or safety equipment. In this moment, Alex explains why he still feels fear, and how decades of repeatedly confronting it have changed the way he responds to it. He reveals how to make seemingly impossible challenges feel manageable, and shares a provocative perspective on modern life and what it means to feel free. Listen to the full episode here! Spotify: https://g2ul0.app.link/ZkT5tn2Wz5b Apple: https://g2ul0.app.link/abbjfEaXz5b Watch the Episodes On YouTube: ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Alex Honnold: https://www.alexhonnold.com/

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

• 0:04Steven Bartlett?

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

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:06Steven Bartlett?

  If they came to you and said, "Dad, like, give me advice on what I should aim at in life", would you tell them?

• 0:11Speaker 01

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

• 0:40Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 0:41Speaker 01

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

• 0:49Steven Bartlett?

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

• 0:55Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, I had like a healthy intimidation of the, I mean, like, my first season in Yosemite, the first time seeing El Cap as a climber, I was 19, and it looks impossible, it looks completely insane. I was like, "That's so big", but then, you know, within a couple of seasons, you know, I climbed some bigger walls, learned how to climb, and then a friend and I had the sort of season goal, like, we were gonna climb Yosemite all season with the aspiration at the end to climb El Cap in a day. So basically, there was this long progression on El Cap specifically, where it's like, you go from just trying to get up it, to trying to get up it faster, to trying to get up it with just your hands and feet, still using protection. But basically, there's like all these steps you can take. And so, over a bunch of seasons, you know, I climbed El Cap like 60 times, different routes, all these different things, and then eventually, you're sort of like, "Oh, maybe I can start thinking about freestyle it", which is where the film Freestyle comes in.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  And then eventually, you do this thing. Then people are like, "Well, aren't you scared", and you're kind of like, "Whoa, I've spent 10 years, like, building up on this thing."

• 1:47Steven Bartlett?

  I guess that's what people don't see.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50Steven Bartlett?

  So they just...

• 1:50Speaker 01

  I mean, like, the documentary Freestyle, I think, does a pretty good job of showing the direct preparation, like, the training involved in doing that specific climb, but it just doesn't show the, like, eight years before that, I guess, because the documentary was filmed over two years, and I guess I've been going since 2006, so it was nine years before that that I've been going to Yosemite, and I've been spending maybe three months a year climbing walls.

• 2:12Steven Bartlett?

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

• 2:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, the whole life that they put into doing the thing.

• 2:23Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24Steven Bartlett?

  So it looks, it looks like a magic trick when we see the outcome. When we show up on Netflix to watch you climb Taipei, we're like, "Whoa", just hanging with it from his leg.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, people watch some of those programs, and they're like, "He just walked up and did it", and you're like, "Well, yeah, after 30 years of practice, like, I just walked up and did it", but no, it's not like just walking up and doing it.

• 2:41Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm. Part of the illusion, yeah.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  Like, I've literally been climbing five days a week for 30 years, like, that's so much climbing. Like, I freaking love climbing, and I climb a lot.

• 2:53Steven Bartlett?

  On this, on this idea of like exposure therapy, as it really is like fear and anxiety and confronting one's things that terrify them, was that, in the early days, were you, I'm trying to understand, were you like scared at some point?

• 3:03Speaker 01

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

• 3:42Steven Bartlett?

  Because there's a lot of sort of misconception swirling around this brain scan you do.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, I hate all that stuff. That's just all from the film Freestyle. It was like too short of a scene in the film, they needed a little more, they needed to let it breathe, you know, explain things a little better, I think.

• 3:54Steven Bartlett?

  So they scanned a control subject, another person scanned you, looked at the amygdala in your brain, and that the conclusion that a lot of people have arrived at is that you don't experience fear, because when they look at these two brain scans, your amygdala is lighting up less when you're shown scary images, basically, right?

• 4:10Speaker 01

  But like, shown just this image, like, what does that even mean? Like, my brain's purple and his brain is orange, you're like, you're like, "What does that mean?", like, "I don't know". But no, I mean, the, the thing is though, and this is what I wish was explained in the film better, is that this is, we're being shown black and white photos inside an FMRI. So you're inside a sealed metal tube, you're totally safe, you're physically safe and comfortable, and you're being shown black and white photos. And so, to me, obviously, that's not gonna light up the fear response in my brain, because you're looking at pictures, you're like, "Who cares, I'm totally safe", but in a control subject, you know, apparently, your brain sort of responds to images one way or another. But I'm kind of like, I've been climbing for 20 years, so I've been like scared quite a lot, and you're kind of like, "Well, black and white photos start to lose, lose their edge if you've been scared all the time for 20 years", so it's like, obviously, that's not gonna trigger much.

• 4:53Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, and I imagine everybody in their life can think of it as a scenario where they have mastery, that would, like, a stand-up comedian looking at his stage probably wouldn't be as scared as me.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:04Steven Bartlett?

  Because that would, that would terrify me. So, again, this is not necessarily some sort of neurological...

• 5:10Speaker 01

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

• 5:39Steven Bartlett?

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

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Totally. Yeah, you should do the FMRI. Yeah, you should have done 10 years ago, because then you'd have your control, and then you do it now, and it'd be totally different.

• 6:20Steven Bartlett?

  But also, the psychologists I've sat with all confirm this, they talk about exposure therapy.

• 6:23Speaker 01

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

• 6:49Steven Bartlett?

  People talk to you about fear all the time, because, I mean, your work...

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Because climbing's really freaking scary, it makes sense, it's totally understandable, yeah.

• 6:57Steven Bartlett?

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

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 7:07Steven Bartlett?

  So you've become, for many people, the like, "Tell me, tell me how to overcome".

• 7:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I think that everyone's like, "What's your hack to overcome fear", and you're like, "There's no hack, you just get really freaking scared over and over for so long, and eventually, it's not that scary anymore", but I will say that that's like a very enduring way to overcome your fear. It's like, if you're willing to go through that process, then you are actually unafraid. You know, because like, you can do like hacks, I mean, you can, you can like crank up loud rock music and just go for it, you know, like, and there are plenty of examples of that in, in what I'd call gravity-assisted sports, like, say, if you're gonna jump a cliff on skis, like, you can get to the edge, be like, "This is really scary", and then be like, "Three, two, one, do it!", and just like go. In climbing, you can't really do that as much, because it's so slow. Like, when you climb, you make one move, and then you make another move, and then you're like, "Do I still want to be here?", like, it basically, fear creeps in a lot more.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  But sort of in gravity-assisted sports, you can have more of that moment, where you just like overcome your fear, and then it happens, you know, like, making a big drop in a kayak or like skis or things like that, where it's like, once you commit, it's happening one way or another. Anyway, there's a lot to get into with, like...

• 8:10Steven Bartlett?

  No, but, I mean, I wanna get into it. I watched a video of you climbing Half Dome, I think it was.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:15Steven Bartlett?

  And it looks like you got scared halfway up, or...

• 8:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, well, so that video is actually filmed later, so the voiceover in that video is me talking about the experience of me freestyle it when I was totally alone, and I did get really scared on Half Dome, and I had this whole somewhat traumatic climbing experience, and you're at the top of the wall. But then, when we went back to film it, I had a different traumatic experience while we were filming, less traumatic, but, uh, but like, very scary for a moment, and they got that on camera, so they basically, in the film, they just cut the two together, as like, because it shows me like, being really scared.

• 8:43Steven Bartlett?

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

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Half Dome, for anyone who hasn't seen, is, uh, is this just totally amazing wall in Yosemite. It's a 2,000-foot granite face. Actually, it's the North Face logo. It's a...

• 8:55Steven Bartlett?

  It's freaking, it's...

• 8:56Speaker 01

  That's Half Dome.

• 8:56Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's like an iconic wall in Yosemite. It looks like half of a dome, but actually, it's more like a hockey puck just shoved in. It's actually a full dome, depending how you look at it, but the Northwest Face is vertical for 2,000 feet, it's incredible. And so, I freestyle, that was one of the first, like, major freestylers I did in 2008, and one of the things that sort of made me a professional climber in a way. But when I did the climb, I did the bare minimum preparation, I basically like didn't know. It was, it was the biggest thing I'd ever freestyle it, I didn't quite know how to like go by getting ready for it. Anyway, I climbed it, and basically, hadn't practiced enough, was really freaking scared, got off route, got confused, skipped some stuff, and then at the very top, had this whole moment of... Extreme panic, you know, basically I got up in some stuff and all sort of like crumbled mentally

• 9:41Speaker 01

  and like sort of barely managed to finish this upper slab. Like the hardest part of the climb is like right near the top. I was trying to walk across this ledge. Basically, I've walked across that ledge face in and face out. Normally, people hand traverse it or they crawl across it. There are like different ways to go across the ledge and I've done it every which way. And then we were up there filming and I was like, I'm gonna walk it face out. But it turns out when you walk it face out, it's really freaking scary. And so I made it kind of halfway and was like, oh, my gosh, and then bailed.

• 10:06Steven Bartlett?

  And when you say you're having like a like a crisis in your your mind, what does what is that? Is that just, oh, my God, what I mean, like, how does that sound?

• 10:14Speaker 01

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

• 10:25Steven Bartlett?

  Video, put it on the screen for anyone.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's that's the ledge. But basically, at the narrowest part, your feet are sticking out over the lip of it. And the wall bulges ever so slightly, so it forces your back out a little. And so you're basically like rocking on your heels with, I don't know, like a seventeen hundred foot drop or something, or eighteen hundred foot drop, like straight down below you. And so, you know, it's like, pretty, it's pretty intense. Anyway, and so I thought I was gonna walk across it like that. And I made it to the bulging part and was suddenly like, oh, my God, this isn't like, this isn't for me. And then managed to like shuffle back and and change my strategy.

• 10:59Steven Bartlett?

  Is it like panic in your head?

• 11:01Speaker 01

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

• 11:13Steven Bartlett?

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

• 11:21Speaker 01

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

• 11:42Speaker 01

  I mean, it's certainly easy to visualize falling seventy hundred. You know, when you're like standing on a little ledge and it's bulging and you're looking down, you're. You know, it's easy to be like, oh, my God. You know, it's like if you just bend forward a little bit, you're just gonna take a swan dive like seventy hundred feet to the ground.

• 11:55Steven Bartlett?

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

• 12:01Speaker 01

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

• 12:45Steven Bartlett?

  Is that including free soloing?

• 12:48Speaker 01

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

• 13:01Steven Bartlett?

  I think it was then in the the documentary on Netflix, Free Solo, where one of your colleagues.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  Tommy Tommy is like, most free solos are dead now, which is kind of true, but it's slightly misstated. I mean, you know, he's just like speaking off the cuff and it's not like strictly true. Like, a couple of the best free solos have died free soloing, though they died on very easy terrain. But then the majority of other great free solos have died in sort of climbing adjacent accidents, like wingsuit base jumping. And like one got swept to sea by a rogue wave, like while he was out climbing a sea cliff, but he was like standing on shore and got swept out to sea. You know, things like that where you're just kind of like, you know, obviously, they're taking risks in their lives and they wind up dead. But it's not the way that people think, you know, you see a photo like that and you're like, free soloing, you're gonna die for sure. And you're kind of like, well, people don't actually really die that way.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  I mean, they have. I mean, not to say that it doesn't happen, but way less frequently than people would suspect.

• 13:54Steven Bartlett?

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

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Oh, being like a finance bro or something, having to like just work spreadsheets my whole life. Is that what you mean? Like, what is my like worst? I don't know, something like that. Or honestly, being like a choreographer for dance or something like I just I couldn't do like. Or being like an opera singer, like I would just kill myself. I just couldn't do that.

• 14:21Steven Bartlett?

  Why why would being a finance bro be like the worst thing for Alex?

• 14:25Speaker 01

  Just the idea of sitting at a computer in a cubicle, just like typing. I mean, I'm kind of contrarian. I don't like rules. I don't want to like jump through hoops. I don't want to do arbitrary things. Like, I don't want some manager to come and tell me like, oh, you got to file that report again. You like missed a line. I'd be like, you go after so, you know, I just like walk out of the building. Like, it's just, I just like, don't know if I could take that. Be like, no.

• 14:45Steven Bartlett?

  But that's like how most of the world live. We kind of, we all live in like, you know.

• 14:48Speaker 01

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

• 14:51Speaker 01

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

• 15:18Steven Bartlett?

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

• 15:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And that in that way, for sure. I'm like going on cool adventures and going out and I don't know.

• 15:37Steven Bartlett?

  I think that's also part of why the the sort of attraction allure with your life, especially when you watch free solo is you do seem to be a free man. In a way where most of us aren't free as such.

• 15:49Speaker 01

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

• 16:01Steven Bartlett?

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

• 16:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, it'd be a long, rambling, multi-day conversation with them about. But I mean, following your own goals is is, I think, you know, certainly one of the the cores of having a meaningful life. Like, having things that you find valuable. I mean, really like living in line with your values, finding things that are important to you and pursuing them with as much as you can give them.

• 16:32Steven Bartlett?

  When you look at your early, you see twenties to thirties, it kind of looks like you're living like a Buddhist a little bit.

• 16:37Speaker 01

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

• 17:02Steven Bartlett?

  Have you ever been depressed or?

• 17:05Speaker 01

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

• 17:32Speaker 01

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

• 17:38Steven Bartlett?

  And between the between that, the sort of that period of no man's land, the twenty and thirty, where your career hasn't taken off yet, the documentary is not out, you've not climbed Taipei. How much money are you earning from climbing?

• 17:51Speaker 01

  I mean, the first, my first couple of years, my sponsorship through the North Face was like, I think my first year was like ten K year. I was like, this is amazing because I was living in my car and, you know, making ten grand when you live by yourself in a van is like more than you need, basically. It obviously went up beyond that at some point. But it was, you know, like in the ten to a hundred range for the first, for the whole, yeah, for years.

• 18:16Steven Bartlett?

  And at some point it increases.

• 18:17Speaker 01

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

• 18:37Steven Bartlett?

  One of the things when I was I was hearing you talk about some of your incredible climbing stories is I was trying to understand what role visualization or or your preparation plays and how that's like transferable to to me in my life. We talked a little bit about just how much preparation you did for something like LCAP. But you you, it sounds like you really break down the challenge into smaller bits and then really go through those those individual steps. Whereas a lot of people would just look at LCAP and go, oh, my God, they'll be terrified and that's impossible.

• 19:06Speaker 01

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

• 19:31Steven Bartlett?

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

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:39Steven Bartlett?

  Taipei. So, you know, and this is also a metaphor for any challenge I have in my life.

• 19:44Speaker 01

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

• 19:45Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  So I scouted this in September of this year. I did the climb in January or whatever. In September, we went and, well, we had to like one make sure it was possible before you sort of like commit to it, doing a whole TV program. You're kind of like, let's make sure we can do this. And then they also had to get all this sort of marketing material. You like get the photos with the building, like all the stuff that becomes the trailer and whatever. And so we went in September to sort of like do the prep. And so we basically checked out all the different pieces. And so anywhere where you see it looking a little bit different, you know, it's like this whole bottom part is like a low angle slab. It's like punctuated with these two little rupees, these little like coin things or whatever, the clouds or whatever they are. Now, and then there are the dragons on the corners. These are all overhanging, like each of these eight blocks is like a big overhanging thing. It feels a little bit different.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  Then you get up here, there's like these balconies. These are actually overhanging. Like basically, each little segment of this is quite different. And, you know, obviously on this model, like looks, looks the same, but each transition between the different pieces is like a thing. So I checked out all of them with ropes. And and yeah, you just go piece by piece all the way up the whole thing.

• 20:44Steven Bartlett?

  And you hadn't ever climbed it before we saw it on Netflix Live?

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Well, I hadn't free soloed, no, but I had climbed it. I climbed all the pieces with a rope for sure. I'd like checked out the different things.

• 20:54Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so you look at these as individual challenges.

• 20:57Speaker 01

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

• 21:30Steven Bartlett?

  And I mean, there's this famous photo of you hanging with your leg.

• 21:33Speaker 01

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

• 21:35Steven Bartlett?

  So you're hanging, you're hanging here from here with your leg.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:38Steven Bartlett?

  Now, I, this is really a question of endurance. Like, how do you plan to have the energy? Like, how do you know if you're gonna have enough energy when you're up here, when you're just planning it?

• 21:49Speaker 01

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

• 22:23Steven Bartlett?

  So much of the conversation around, after you'd done this, or some of the conversation was around whether this was a harder challenge than El Capitan.

• 22:31Speaker 01

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

• 23:13Speaker 01

  it's, that it's hard, like, it's cool, you know, like, it's fun, it's interesting, the climate's engaging, it's, you know, gave me something to train for for months, it's like, it's super fun. But it's not, you know, it's not like the absolute limit of what I can do, because you just can't do that on live TV. I mean, if nothing else, so I was climbing the southeast direct, because it gets good morning light and it looks beautiful and it's like great for filming. But if I was trying to do the absolute most cutting-edge climb I could do, I'd be climbing the northwest direct, because it'd be full shade, because it'd be good, better conditions, you know, it'd be colder. Like, you just don't want to be in the sun, it makes your skin, you know, it makes you hot and stuff. And so, you know, just things like that, you're like, well, if you're doing it for TV and you're trying to broadcast it, then you want it to look good. But like, if you're trying to do it for hard climbing in good conditions, you're doing it in full shade.

• 23:54Steven Bartlett?

  And Netflix had a ten-second delay, just in case you fell.

• 23:58Speaker 01

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

• 24:06Steven Bartlett?

  Was there a hardest part of this, a part where you were at all nervous?

• 24:10Speaker 01

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

• 24:51Speaker 01

  of muscly, but overall, it's the stamina, like, the challenge of doing this over and over for hundreds of feet that was the hardest thing.

• 25:00Steven Bartlett?

  Do you have a conversation with your girls and your wife before you go and do something like this about, just in case you don't come back?

• 25:07Speaker 01

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

• 25:41Steven Bartlett?

  What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode. If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below, check the description. Thank you.