The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1429 - Colin O'Brady

00:00:01.000 Three, two, one, boom. 0.99

00:00:03.000 Hello, Colin.

00:00:04.000 Welcome back.

00:00:04.000 What's up, man?

00:00:05.000 Good to see you.

00:00:06.000 You wrote a book?

00:00:06.000 I brought a book.

00:00:07.000 You wrote it?

00:00:07.000 You wrote yourself?

00:00:08.000 I wrote this book last time, since I saw you last.

00:00:10.000 The Impossible First?

00:00:12.000 Indeed, indeed.

00:00:13.000 Yeah, about my solo journey across Antarctica and kind of diving deep through my whole life and kind of what brought me there and other expeditions and the ups and downs of it all.

00:00:22.000 And you're coming back from another crazy trip, right?

00:00:25.000 I am, indeed.

00:00:25.000 What is that nonsense that you did on a kayak?

00:00:28.000 Ha ha! 0.86

00:00:29.000 What did you do?

00:00:31.000 So, after I got back from the Impossible First, the Antarctica crossing, right about the time I saw you last year, I got a funny phone call, actually, of all things.

00:00:41.000 People were asking me, you know, what's the next expedition going to be?

00:00:43.000 What are you going to do?

00:00:44.000 And I said, you know, I just walked 54 days by myself across Antarctica.

00:00:47.000 Give me a minute.

00:00:48.000 Give me a minute to relax.

00:00:50.000 And I get a phone call via a buddy of mine from college.

00:00:53.000 Connects me to this...

00:00:56.000 This guy, this Icelandic guy, I've never met him before.

00:00:58.000 His name's Fionn Paul.

00:01:00.000 Don't know his story.

00:01:00.000 I do now.

00:01:01.000 He's an absolute legend.

00:01:02.000 And he says, hey man, you were just in Antarctica, right?

00:01:05.000 And I was like, yeah.

00:01:06.000 And he's like, I think we should go back to Antarctica.

00:01:08.000 And I was like, alright, well what do you think?

00:01:10.000 And he's like, in a rowboat.

00:01:12.000 I think we should row a boat from the southern tip of South America to the peninsula of Antarctica across Drake Passage.

00:01:19.000 How far is that?

00:01:20.000 About 700 miles.

00:01:21.000 Can I see what that looks like on a map?

00:01:24.000 And I said, please delete my phone number.

00:01:28.000 700 miles rowing a boat.

00:01:30.000 Yeah, so Drake Passage is known to be, you know, in seafaring, one of the most treacherous, if not the most treacherous kind of passageway in the world.

00:01:38.000 You know, you've got the Atlantic and the Pacific and the Southern Ocean kind of all converging between the Antarctic Peninsula and the southern tip of South America.

00:01:44.000 So you've got...

00:01:44.000 40 foot swells.

00:01:46.000 You got crazy waves, icebergs as you get close to Antarctica.

00:01:50.000 And the mission or the goal was to see if we could...

00:01:53.000 That's it?

00:01:54.000 That whole area?

00:01:55.000 That whole area, yeah.

00:01:56.000 From there to there?

00:01:57.000 From there to there.

00:01:58.000 All the way down to the main peninsula there of Antarctica.

00:02:01.000 How long did this take?

00:02:02.000 So ultimately, it took us just less than two weeks to do the entire row, but it was a long journey in the planning from that phone call all the way through to that year, but it was a 12-day crossing.

00:02:13.000 So in the two weeks, you had to have two weeks' worth of food, two weeks' worth of drinking water.

00:02:18.000 On the boat.

00:02:19.000 Yeah, so, well, water actually, we have a desalinator, so off of solar panels, everything's, you know, solar, there's no engine, no sail, nothing like that.

00:02:28.000 It's just completely human-powered rowing.

00:02:30.000 We have a portable desalinator?

00:02:32.000 Yeah.

00:02:32.000 How big is it?

00:02:33.000 It fits inside one of the tiny...

00:02:35.000 So the boat's tiny.

00:02:36.000 The boat's like 25 feet long.

00:02:38.000 Three guys rowing at a time.

00:02:39.000 So six of us total in the team, ultimately.

00:02:42.000 You know, barely anywhere to sleep in this tiny little compartment.

00:02:45.000 It's like the size of sleeping in the hatchback of a Honda Civic or something like that.

00:02:51.000 But yeah, so you've got this desalinator that's basically kind of in one of the central compartments.

00:02:55.000 So it's probably like, I don't know, maybe...

00:02:57.000 Two feet by two feet square, something like that.

00:03:00.000 And it doesn't make water real fast.

00:03:02.000 You can make 10 liters of water in an hour or two, depending on how hot the sun is.

00:03:07.000 That's pretty good.

00:03:07.000 But it gets it done.

00:03:08.000 Yeah, it gets it done.

00:03:09.000 Does it taste like... 0.92

00:03:10.000 Whale dicks? 1.00

00:03:11.000 What does the water taste like? 0.86

00:03:13.000 It was weird.

00:03:14.000 As we got closer to Antarctica, I think it started messing up because it got real salty.

00:03:19.000 It wasn't doing quite as good of a job.

00:03:20.000 The water near Antarctica was like 1 degree Celsius, so 33 Fahrenheit, practically frozen cold water, and I think that was kind of starting to tweak out the system.

00:03:28.000 So you're drinking salt water.

00:03:30.000 As we got closer, it was still potable, but it was like, this isn't working as well.

00:03:34.000 But early on, it worked just fine.

00:03:35.000 It was pretty much cold drinking water.

00:03:38.000 Like bottled water.

00:03:39.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:03:40.000 Does it only do it for a certain amount of time?

00:03:42.000 Does the filter get filled up or anything?

00:03:45.000 It worked for the entire 12 days that we were out there.

00:03:47.000 There's guys who have gone on longer rowing expeditions across the Pacific or the Atlantic or longer stretches of ocean that works the entire time.

00:04:06.000 How much food?

00:04:10.000 So, there were six of us, like I said.

00:04:12.000 Pretty much all the compartments were full.

00:04:14.000 You know, there were some tiny little compartments, but we basically ate two things.

00:04:17.000 So, we had freeze-dried meals, so like Mountain House freeze-dried meals.

00:04:22.000 We had this little jet boil that we were kind of as crazy as the waters, like it's 40...

00:04:25.000 You know, 40 foot waves are bouncing around on this trying to hold a jet boil to try to boil some water.

00:04:30.000 It was pretty tough, but some close calls with that.

00:04:32.000 But we also had these bars.

00:04:34.000 So last time, I think we talked about last time I was on here, I had these kind of custom nutrition bars that were made.

00:04:41.000 And so that worked really well for me in the Antarctica crossing.

00:04:43.000 We had done all this kind of blood work.

00:04:45.000 Can you explain that again?

00:04:45.000 Like how you made, how those were made?

00:04:47.000 Yeah, so when I was doing my Antarctica crossing, one of the kind of challenges is basically, can you take enough food with you?

00:04:52.000 Because what I was doing was called unsupported.

00:04:54.000 So no resupplies of food or fuel, you know, crossing the landmass of Antarctica 54 days.

00:04:59.000 And so I wanted to get like the most optimized nutrition.

00:05:02.000 And so I work with this company called Standard Process, who's all like a whole food supplement company.

00:05:06.000 And they've got all these sort of doctors, food scientists and this.

00:05:09.000 And I went in their lab for a year and they did all this kind of custom blood work on my body.

00:05:13.000 I'm trying to figure out, you know, basically my exact sort of physiology.

00:05:17.000 And they created these bars based on all of the research that they did that basically were these really high-calorie bars because it was the most high calories that I needed to optimize space.

00:05:26.000 And they were kind of – they were all – they're all plant-based and ended up – and I know there's – And what's in them again?

00:05:32.000 Coconut oil, nuts, seeds, different phytonutrients in a particular macronutrient blend that I needed.

00:05:39.000 It was about 45% fat because I needed the high fat, about 40% protein, and then 15% carbs.

00:05:49.000 Excuse me, sorry, I re-alternated the protein-carb quotient there.

00:05:53.000 But yeah, it worked really well for that.

00:05:55.000 And so when I was doing the row, I called up Standard Process again.

00:05:57.000 They've been an amazing partner of mine.

00:05:59.000 They were like, hey, I'm doing this row.

00:06:01.000 Those bars worked so good last time.

00:06:02.000 And like I just said, with trying to boil water and all this stuff is really challenging on the rowboat.

00:06:07.000 The best would be to have this really kind of high optimized nutrition that we could use again for a project like this.

00:06:12.000 But the parameters are different.

00:06:13.000 You know, the humidity is different.

00:06:15.000 The temperature is different.

00:06:16.000 There's six of us now.

00:06:16.000 There's not just one of me.

00:06:18.000 You know, can we optimize it for that?

00:06:19.000 So they kind of made a specialty blend of the bars again that they've called the column bars.

00:06:24.000 They've probably come up with a better name.

00:06:26.000 But it worked really well.

00:06:28.000 They're not for sale.

00:06:30.000 We've talked about doing that, so maybe in the future, but you can see online on their website all the different supplements and stuff that went into it, so you can kind of buy the component parts.

00:06:38.000 But yeah, one day we might make them, but they've been kind of just custom for these two projects.

00:06:41.000 But they've worked really, really well, particularly in the rowing.

00:06:44.000 I mean, they worked amazing in the Antarctic Crossing as well, but in the rowing, it was 90 minutes of rowing on, 90 minutes of rowing off, continuous, 24 hours a day.

00:06:52.000 So we're kind of in two sets of three, six of us total.

00:06:55.000 Three people rowing, three people resting.

00:06:57.000 And in that 90 minutes that you're off, that's also when you've got to eat, drink, sleep.

00:07:01.000 It's your only time to rest, basically.

00:07:03.000 And so, as much time as you can kind of optimize eating and stuff meant more sleeping.

00:07:07.000 And so, to have these bars, get done with a 90-minute rowing shift, be able to eat a 1,000-calorie bar, highest quality nutrition in your body.

00:07:15.000 I mean, Standard Process nailed it again.

00:07:17.000 It was amazing to have these bars and have it work really well for all of us to kind of optimize not just the food, but also the efficiency of sleep because the sleep got... 0.97

00:07:24.000 It's fucking crazy out there. 0.98

00:07:26.000 I can imagine. 0.99

00:07:27.000 So you're basically sleeping every 90 minutes for one hour or so?

00:07:33.000 Yeah, exactly-ish.

00:07:34.000 If you can get it.

00:07:35.000 Once the swells start cranking up, you're in this tiny compartment.

00:07:39.000 I don't know if we can pull up a picture of the boat for a visual.

00:07:41.000 There's some on my Instagram.

00:07:43.000 Not covered at all?

00:07:43.000 Not covered.

00:07:44.000 Like, really not covered at all.

00:07:46.000 Like, so, well, there's covered in the tiny compartment.

00:07:48.000 So the rowing part's not covered at all.

00:07:49.000 So when you're rowing, waves are splashing up, like, over top of you.

00:07:52.000 I mean, you're getting completely soaked.

00:07:54.000 Like, you're getting, you know, completely soaked the entire time.

00:07:56.000 And then the tiny compartment, you know, it's like, it's like lower than this table.

00:08:00.000 Like, you'd be, like, kind of crouched down, like, in there.

00:08:02.000 Yeah.

00:08:03.000 Yeah, this is the robot right here.

00:08:05.000 So that's us.

00:08:06.000 So that's the floor.

00:08:08.000 Is that where all the food is stored underneath?

00:08:10.000 Yeah, underneath there's compartments.

00:08:11.000 So you can see that tiny little kind of compartment on either side.

00:08:14.000 One's smaller and one's bigger.

00:08:15.000 And that's where you guys would sleep?

00:08:16.000 That's where we'd sleep.

00:08:17.000 Well, the bigger one, that's the waves.

00:08:19.000 It's hard to believe that there's 12 people in that little thing.

00:08:21.000 Six people.

00:08:22.000 Oh, excuse me, six people.

00:08:23.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:08:23.000 But still.

00:08:25.000 So you got, you know, three people rowing and three people in the compartment sitting in town.

00:08:30.000 I think if you kind of scroll up to the top, maybe there's one just that shows like the whole boat or like what it looks like maybe there.

00:08:35.000 There's kind of a shot of it.

00:08:37.000 So yeah, so you can see in there, like the back little compartment, that's where I was.

00:08:41.000 I was alternating with this guy, Fionn, who I mentioned, the Icelandic guy, who was the captain of the boat, really experienced ocean rower.

00:08:48.000 And we alternated inside this little cabin, and then the other four guys, they alternated two people, because that one's a little bit bigger in the front, though it's the bow cabin in the front.

00:08:56.000 But you're like head to toe in there, or you're crouched into a little ball.

00:08:59.000 It's not glamorous at all.

00:09:01.000 Did you know these guys at all before you did this?

00:09:03.000 So, not really.

00:09:05.000 Not really.

00:09:06.000 Yeah, it was a deep dive into the team.

00:09:08.000 And after doing something solo, I was pretty excited to do something, you know, as a team and doing something in a completely, you know, exploring a completely different kind of avenue of exploration in the ocean, something I'd never done before.

00:09:18.000 And I had actually, not only did I not know these guys, a couple of them I went to college with, but we like really loosely knew each other.

00:09:23.000 Like I kind of like maybe like, oh, recognize their face a little bit, but it didn't.

00:09:26.000 We weren't like good friends or anything like that.

00:09:27.000 Three of them I'd never met in my entire life.

00:09:30.000 And I also have never rode a boat in my life ever before.

00:09:35.000 And so when Fionn, he called me up and told me about the project, he's one of the world's most renowned ocean rowers.

00:09:42.000 He's got 30 world records or something like that.

00:09:45.000 Complete legend.

00:09:46.000 He's rode boats across every single ocean.

00:09:47.000 This was kind of the last big ocean that he'd never crossed.

00:09:51.000 No one had ever done it just like this before.

00:09:54.000 And so he kind of said, hey, I wanted this idea, but the logistics are super complicated.

00:09:59.000 Like going to Antarctica, there's all this sort of like treaties that you need, all this paperwork, getting a boat down to South America, importing it through the Panama Canal, etc.

00:10:07.000 I mean, it's like a tough thing.

00:10:08.000 And he'd been like kind of thinking about it for a year or so.

00:10:10.000 And he said like, hey...

00:10:11.000 I've seen you pull off some big projects together.

00:10:13.000 Can we kind of team up?

00:10:14.000 And I know, you know, your team has got really good at figuring out these logistics.

00:10:17.000 Would you be interested?

00:10:17.000 And I'd actually looked at ocean rowing a couple years ago as something that I always wanted to do one day.

00:10:22.000 And so it was kind of a, after I kind of got that first phone call, like I said, like, I'm like, dude, I just got back from Antarctica.

00:10:27.000 I don't want to go back there.

00:10:28.000 Tomorrow.

00:10:29.000 But, you know, of course, the curiosity inside of me got the best of me and I called him back up and I said, hey, let's do this.

00:10:34.000 What are you thinking?

00:10:35.000 And kind of dove into it from there.

00:10:37.000 My team kind of wrapped our arms around the sort of like logistic and building out the project and he was definitely the visionary of something he dreamed up and it was super cool to team up with him after doing something alone.

00:10:48.000 Now, this thing that you did when you walked across Antarctica, very impressive.

00:10:55.000 Incredible.

00:10:55.000 But I'm sure you've seen the National Geographic article they wrote about you.

00:11:00.000 And they said that there was another man from, was it Norway?

00:11:04.000 That had done it already.

00:11:06.000 Yes.

00:11:06.000 That it wasn't the first time someone had gone across Antarctica.

00:11:09.000 Yeah.

00:11:09.000 He had gone actually...

00:11:12.000 Yeah.

00:11:13.000 So, something I've been talking about super openly, including in my book, which is the Nat Geo article.

00:11:19.000 You know, it's a little bit unfortunate.

00:11:20.000 I actually just published a 16-page letter asking Nat Geo to retract the entire article.

00:11:27.000 And the reason it's 16 pages is, unfortunately, the entire article they wrote is just so riddled with Yeah.

00:11:56.000 From the edge of the coastline, across the ice shelf, all the way across the landmass, across the other ice shelf, roughly 1,800 miles.

00:12:04.000 And what he used to propel himself was he used a kite for a good portion of the time.

00:12:08.000 And it's an absolute extraordinary project.

00:12:11.000 And what's really weird about sort of this National Geographic article, a number of sentences is one of the premises of it was saying, you know, Colin never talked about Borg Ausland.

00:12:18.000 Like, he never talked about him in his book.

00:12:20.000 He never mentioned him.

00:12:21.000 He never this.

00:12:22.000 And in my book...

00:12:23.000 What's really bizarre and why we're asking for a retraction because it's just really ineffectual is that, you know, here I am on page 49 of my book.

00:12:31.000 Literally, it says, From 1996-1997.

00:12:44.000 Not only did he cross the entire landmass of Antarctica, but he also crossed the full Ron and Ross ice shelves from the ocean's edge.

00:12:51.000 Allison's expedition has deeply inspired me and was unsupported that he hauled all of his food and fuels with no resupplies.

00:12:56.000 So it was weird.

00:12:57.000 It's like the journalist wrote this article without reading your book.

00:13:01.000 It's not surprising.

00:13:02.000 And I had done, I don't know, there's a lot of speculation.

00:13:06.000 I did this big project and the film project around the road was with Discovery.

00:13:09.000 I don't know if Nat Geo is coming at Discovery or whatever, but it's really bizarre.

00:13:13.000 I mean, we could talk about all the different kind of fine points of that.

00:13:16.000 But the big distinction, and I'll say it, I've said it, shout it from the rooftops, but I'll say it here again.

00:13:22.000 Borga Ausland is absolutely incredible.

00:13:25.000 Like, I am in awe of the guy.

00:13:26.000 What he did in 96 is phenomenal.

00:13:28.000 That's why I write about it in my book.

00:13:29.000 That's why I've written about it in my social.

00:13:31.000 The day after I finished my crossing, I wrote about it on there as well.

00:13:34.000 And I said, wow, so many people have inspired me.

00:13:36.000 I'm standing on the shoulders of giants the only way I was able to do this.

00:13:39.000 Right, but this says impossible first, right?

00:13:42.000 So he did it first.

00:13:43.000 Right.

00:13:43.000 So the difference is, is there's kind of two really specific distinctions in the world of polar travel.

00:13:48.000 There's unsupported, which means not getting resupplied with food or fuel, like I was talking about with the food.

00:13:57.000 And then there's unassisted.

00:14:00.000 Which means not using anything to propel you other than your own body.

00:14:04.000 So that's called human-powered alone.

00:14:06.000 So what he did is considered assisted in that he used a kite.

00:14:10.000 But he was able to go twice the distance of me, which is amazing.

00:14:13.000 And how often did he use the kite?

00:14:16.000 Because what I'd read that he had only used the kite in a few instances where the wind was right.

00:14:20.000 Right.

00:14:21.000 So that's another one of the things that the National Geographic article unfortunately got wrong.

00:14:26.000 And in my 16-page letter that anyone can read, it's on my website, colinabrady.com slash blog, letter to Nat Geo, or it's linked to my Instagram.

00:14:34.000 It's not like a he said, he said thing where I'm like, oh hey, this got wrong.

00:14:37.000 It's just actually a really kind of documented and sourced document that has links to everything.

00:14:42.000 And one of the links it shows is actually his entire kind of project afterwards in the aftermath of him talking about it, including talking about...

00:14:49.000 We're good to go.

00:15:16.000 So he traveled further, but he used some assistance.

00:15:20.000 Yeah, so there's basically these different distinctions in the world of polar travel, and that's another one of the things, again, I'm not sure how they got this wrong.

00:15:28.000 In the link on the 16-page thing, I show the text message when the journalist asked me, well, tell me about these definitions of unsupported and unassisted.

00:15:35.000 I sent him the link, and there's these links, it's kind of a published thing on this website called Antarctica Logistics and Expeditions, the main sort of expedition facilitator, the person who runs logistics down there.

00:15:46.000 It's very clear, unsupported means no use of resupplies, unassisted means no use of kites or dogs.

00:15:52.000 And so the thing that I did solo, that people I guess have gotten somewhat confused about at first, was I was the first person to cross the landmass of Antarctica, Solo, unsupported, no resupplies, and unassisted, no kites.

00:16:07.000 What Borga Auslan did is he was the first person to cross Antarctica, not just the landmass, but also the ice shelves.

00:16:15.000 So there's frozen ocean on these ice shelves.

00:16:17.000 So from the coast, across the ice shelf, across the landmass, and across the other ice shelf.

00:16:22.000 And no one yet, including myself, has ever done a solo, unsupported, unassisted crossing of both the landmass and the ice shelves.

00:16:32.000 I hope someone does it, man.

00:16:33.000 It would be amazing.

00:16:34.000 I had a 375-pound sled, and I almost ran out of food at the end, crossing the landmass.

00:16:40.000 And if you'd need maybe a 600-pound sled or something like that, or maybe a more optimized food solution that no one's thought of yet, but it hasn't been done yet.

00:16:48.000 How big was Ousland's sled?

00:16:50.000 Similar size to me.

00:16:51.000 So he was out there for...

00:16:52.000 I think he was out there for 63 days, roughly.

00:16:55.000 I was out there for 54 days.

00:16:56.000 So we were not out there a lot different in duration of time.

00:16:59.000 Oh, okay.

00:16:59.000 So the sled really did make a big difference, that if he's going that much further than you...

00:17:04.000 Exactly.

00:17:05.000 Exactly.

00:17:06.000 Okay.

00:17:06.000 Yeah, so...

00:17:08.000 So one more time, you were out there how many days?

00:17:10.000 I was out there 54 days.

00:17:11.000 And he was out there 60?

00:17:12.000 63 days.

00:17:13.000 Okay, that's not that different.

00:17:14.000 Right.

00:17:14.000 And so he, like I said, on some of the days he talks about it openly, that he went, he does it in kilometers, but if you calculate back to miles, like 125 miles in a 15-hour period of time.

00:17:23.000 That's unfathomable just walking, pulling a sled.

00:17:26.000 They're just two different things.

00:17:27.000 It's like the difference between sailing across an ocean and rowing a boat across the ocean.

00:17:31.000 Why do you think National Geographic got that wrong then?

00:17:34.000 Because the way they wrote it, it was, you know, it's...

00:17:37.000 They made it look like you're just a fame whore and that, you know, there was a bunch of other explorers and outdoors people that were in support of the fact that Auslan was the only one, the first one to do it.

00:17:48.000 They didn't make this distinction and they actually made it seem like as if the sled was an ingenious solution.

00:17:55.000 But it seems like that was a planned thing and that was an engineered thing and that it wasn't something that he built up on the fly.

00:18:03.000 This was the method that they used to help him get across the snow.

00:18:07.000 Totally.

00:18:07.000 And like I said, if you look in the pet letter that I wrote, it's got links to actually the manufacturer.

00:18:12.000 They kind of talk about it as being this elegant solution.

00:18:14.000 It's like you put a kite up randomly.

00:18:16.000 You figure it out.

00:18:16.000 Hey, I got an idea.

00:18:17.000 But it's like a fully manufactured thing.

00:18:19.000 It's a legit kite.

00:18:20.000 And like I said, this is not me knocking on that.

00:18:22.000 I actually think that project, it's one of the projects that inspired me the most to do what I did.

00:18:26.000 It is amazing.

00:18:27.000 It sounds amazing.

00:18:28.000 Can we see what Auslan, is there any photograph of Auslan's kite?

00:18:32.000 I want to see what it looks like.

00:18:34.000 Whenever someone does something extraordinary, there's no doubt just what you did.

00:18:40.000 How many days again?

00:18:41.000 54 days.

00:18:42.000 Alone. 0.99

00:18:42.000 It's fucking crazy. 0.99

00:18:43.000 It's crazy. 1.00

00:18:44.000 And for anybody to shit on that is nuts. 0.99

00:18:46.000 And you're the first one that's ever done it just pulling that thing. 0.99

00:18:50.000 And you showed us what it was like last time you were here.

00:18:52.000 Totally.

00:18:53.000 And some of the areas where you had to pull it.

00:18:55.000 It seems like an insane physical undertaking.

00:18:58.000 Totally.

00:18:59.000 I mean, so yeah, it definitely tested me to the edges of my potential.

00:19:03.000 There was many times that it felt impossible.

00:19:05.000 I think we talked about it last time, but the second chapter of my book is called Frozen Tears because on the first hour of trying to pull my sled, 375 pounds, fully loaded of food and fuel...

00:19:15.000 I started crying.

00:19:16.000 I literally started crying.

00:19:17.000 The tears are freezing in my face. 0.97

00:19:19.000 It's an all-time pathetic feeling. 0.80

00:19:20.000 I mean, it was really, really brutal and really challenging. 0.73

00:19:23.000 And one of the things, for sure, in the National Geographic article, they're not disputing that I did this.

00:19:28.000 It's not like they're saying, you didn't walk 932 miles by yourself across Antarctica.

00:19:32.000 They kind of grudgingly gave you credit for doing something really freaky.

00:19:36.000 They also didn't mention the difference between the time it took you to travel that and the time it took Auslan to travel a far greater distance or that he used that kite to go more than 100 miles in a day.

00:19:47.000 Those are pretty big, important things.

00:19:48.000 Totally.

00:19:49.000 And I think that, yeah, hopefully you can pull up a picture of Auslan with the kite.

00:19:55.000 It's linked in there.

00:19:56.000 I'm finding kites there, but not with him.

00:20:00.000 If it's out there, Jamie will find it.

00:20:02.000 Yeah, we'll find it in a second.

00:20:03.000 But, you know, like I said, it's an unfortunate thing.

00:20:07.000 I wrote this letter.

00:20:08.000 The editor of National Geographic actually responded and said they're reviewing it.

00:20:10.000 I think they're going to hopefully do the right thing.

00:20:12.000 The facts are pretty clear on this one.

00:20:14.000 Well, hopefully we can pressure them by just explaining it here.

00:20:16.000 Here it is.

00:20:18.000 Okay.

00:20:18.000 Yeah, that's a big difference.

00:20:20.000 That's a big-ass fucking kite. 1.00

00:20:22.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:20:22.000 I'm sure that has a lot of power behind it, too, and I bet that really helped him. 1.00

00:20:26.000 Totally.

00:20:26.000 Because you can ski with those things.

00:20:29.000 Like, the fact that he's got skis on and he's getting pulled by that kite, I mean, you're gliding.

00:20:36.000 Yeah.

00:20:37.000 You're not propelling yourself.

00:20:39.000 They're both really cool things.

00:20:40.000 Hold on.

00:20:40.000 Go back to that, Jamie.

00:20:41.000 Go back to that.

00:20:42.000 Look, he doesn't have poles in his hands.

00:20:44.000 No, he's just holding onto the kite being pulled along by it.

00:20:47.000 So he's probably strapped to that kite.

00:20:49.000 Yeah, it's like if you imagine a kite board.

00:20:51.000 Like a kite boarding on the water or something like that.

00:20:53.000 So he's probably strapped at the waist.

00:20:54.000 He's holding onto that kite.

00:20:57.000 But it's pulling him while he's on skis.

00:21:00.000 Yes.

00:21:00.000 Whereas what you did was pull with trekking poles.

00:21:04.000 Yeah, trekking poles and cross-country skis with skins, but just to give me traction so I didn't sink too deep in the snow.

00:21:10.000 But I'm just walking, basically, just pulling it with my own body fully.

00:21:13.000 He's not doing that.

00:21:14.000 It's a different thing.

00:21:15.000 They're just two different things.

00:21:16.000 I'm sure there was times where you had to walk.

00:21:18.000 Right?

00:21:19.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:21:20.000 He manhauled for parts of it as well, like a significant distance, but a lot of it, when the wind was with him, you know, he put up his kite and pulled along.

00:21:26.000 The fact that he was able to go more than 100 miles in a day makes me go, wait a minute, what?

00:21:31.000 Yeah.

00:21:32.000 Come on, that's a different thing.

00:21:33.000 Totally different thing.

00:21:34.000 That's a different thing.

00:21:35.000 National Geographic did not recognize that, that that's a different thing, that he can go on the snow, pulling 300 pounds, more than 100 miles, how many?

00:21:44.000 He went 125 one time in 15 hours. 1.00

00:21:46.000 That's fucking ridiculous. 1.00

00:21:48.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:21:48.000 That's a totally different thing. 1.00

00:21:50.000 Completely.

00:21:51.000 National Geographic.

00:21:52.000 Jesus Christ.

00:21:54.000 Yeah.

00:21:54.000 I mean, they should have been really clear about that.

00:21:57.000 Yeah.

00:21:57.000 Because they were trying to make it out like some elegant solution that he occasionally used, not a big deal, but what he really did was amazing.

00:22:04.000 What he did was fucking amazing. 0.96

00:22:06.000 There's no doubt about it. 0.98

00:22:07.000 No doubt.

00:22:07.000 But that, what we just saw in that image of him getting pulled by that giant-ass fucking kite on skis, strapped to this harness with all the weight behind him also being pulled by that giant-ass kite, that's a different thing.

00:22:22.000 124 miles in a day, perfect. 0.99

00:22:23.000 Pulling 300 plus pounds? 0.98

00:22:26.000 Get the fuck out of here. 0.99

00:22:27.000 It's hard to walk 124 miles in a day. 0.99

00:22:30.000 Let alone with nothing on your back.

00:22:31.000 Zach Bitter, who holds the American world record for the fastest 24 hours ever run, ran it full clip in 11 hours.

00:22:42.000 He ran 100 miles.

00:22:43.000 Wow.

00:22:44.000 So, 124 miles in 15 minutes while dragging.

00:22:48.000 15 hours, yeah.

00:22:49.000 Hundreds of pounds, or 15 minutes, I say 15 minutes, 15 hours, 124 miles while dragging hundreds of pounds of gear all in 15 hours is insane.

00:23:01.000 That's insane.

00:23:02.000 Yes.

00:23:03.000 If Zach Bitter can run 100 miles in 11 hours and break a world record or an American, is it a world record or an American record?

00:23:11.000 American record.

00:23:13.000 Yeah, that's a crazy record.

00:23:15.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:23:15.000 100 fucking miles in 11 hours is crazy running, and that guy did 124 with hundreds of pounds of gear and a sled in 15 hours. 0.99

00:23:24.000 Exactly. 0.99

00:23:24.000 That's a different thing. 0.99

00:23:25.000 It's two different things, man.

00:23:26.000 It's two different things.

00:23:27.000 World record correction.

00:23:29.000 Zach's the world record.

00:23:30.000 Yeah, Zach won the world record.

00:23:31.000 He had the American record first, and then he broke the world record in his latest attempt.

00:23:35.000 Zach Vitter's a monster.

00:23:37.000 Yeah. 0.96

00:23:37.000 Shout out to Zach. 0.96

00:23:39.000 But...

00:23:40.000 Him being able to do that running is incredible.

00:23:44.000 That guy being able to go further in just four hours longer, pulling hundreds of pounds of gear.

00:23:52.000 Come on, National Geographic.

00:23:54.000 They're just two different things.

00:23:55.000 And it's not unimpressive.

00:23:57.000 It's incredibly impressive.

00:23:58.000 That guy has... 0.99

00:24:00.000 Fucking steel resolve to be able to do that and get all the way across the ice shelves and all that shit that he had to do. 0.99

00:24:05.000 Absolutely. 0.99

00:24:06.000 And I mean, the biggest thing for me is, unfortunately, it was portrayed in a certain way.

00:24:10.000 I don't know if it wasn't fact-checked or what that, but for me, the whole purpose of any of this, the whole purpose of writing the book and sharing it with the world and talking to people via your podcast or whatever, my whole goal is to inspire other people to step outside of their comfort zones, do things in their life, challenge themselves.

00:24:25.000 This is not about me.

00:24:26.000 It's not about notches in the belt.

00:24:28.000 What's got to be?

00:24:28.000 A little bit about you.

00:24:29.000 You wrote a book.

00:24:30.000 I like it.

00:24:31.000 Have you written a book?

00:24:32.000 No, I have not.

00:24:33.000 Really?

00:24:33.000 No.

00:24:33.000 That surprises me.

00:24:34.000 I started writing a book at one point in time, but I had a deal with a book publisher, and the notes were so brutal, I gave them the money back.

00:24:42.000 Really?

00:24:43.000 Yeah.

00:24:43.000 They were like, they didn't like it?

00:24:44.000 They wanted me to write essentially the way I write stand-up.

00:24:48.000 They wanted me to be like, set up, punchline, set up, punchline.

00:24:50.000 I was like, this is not how you write things, guys.

00:24:54.000 Different without the intonation of the voice.

00:24:56.000 Yeah, they actually wanted to take my stand-up.

00:24:59.000 They offered to just take my stand-up and transcribe it into a book.

00:25:03.000 I said, I'd never do that.

00:25:04.000 And they're like, well, George Carlin did it. 0.99

00:25:06.000 I go, it's because he owed the fucking IRS a billion dollars. 0.99

00:25:09.000 Come on, man. 0.99

00:25:10.000 If you ask George, it was a good idea.

00:25:12.000 I bet he would say no.

00:25:13.000 Yeah.

00:25:13.000 He needed money.

00:25:14.000 George Carlin was like deep in the hole with the IRS. He did a lot of things I'm sure he didn't want to do.

00:25:19.000 Yeah.

00:25:19.000 But that doesn't mean it's a good idea to write a book that way.

00:25:22.000 Well, I'll tell you, I have walked across the landmass of America by myself.

00:25:25.000 I've rode a boat. 0.99

00:25:26.000 I've done some other crazy shit in my life. 0.85

00:25:28.000 But the hardest thing I've ever done is write a book. 0.91

00:25:29.000 Really?

00:25:30.000 Yes, man. 1.00

00:25:30.000 No shit. 1.00

00:25:31.000 Is that hard? 1.00

00:25:31.000 It really was, you know. 1.00

00:25:33.000 I'm proud of the outcome.

00:25:34.000 You know, I really poured my heart and soul into it, but it was challenging.

00:25:37.000 I've been journaling since I was a little kid, like since I was 12 years old.

00:25:39.000 So, going back through all my journals and thinking about, you know, there's the Antarctica piece of this, but the subtitle is From Fire to Ice.

00:25:46.000 So, I talk about, you know, being burned in this fire in Thailand, being told I would never walk again normally, going through all these pieces of my life.

00:25:51.000 But one of the things that happened when I was in Antarctica, which...

00:25:55.000 It was interesting to me, maybe you'll find it interesting, is as I was out there by myself in this empty white landscape, 24 hours of daylight, endless white nothingness, my mind started filling in with all of these memories.

00:26:07.000 So I deleted almost all my music, I'm in silence, I'm in full solitude.

00:26:10.000 Like if I said to you, hey Joe, remember the day you graduated from high school?

00:26:14.000 And like, something's going to pop in your mind right now.

00:26:15.000 We're going to keep talking and you're going to move on from that.

00:26:18.000 But when I was walking out there by myself, someone would pop in my head like, hey Colin, remember your first swim race when you were a little kid?

00:26:22.000 And all of a sudden, like, I'd be back there.

00:26:25.000 Like, I could like dive in and I could see my mom on the edge of the pool deck and the, you know, the winds blowing across my face and I can see the kid next to me and I can taste the chlorine in my mouth.

00:26:33.000 I mean, visceral memories, like a lucid dream were coming back to me.

00:26:37.000 Whoa.

00:26:37.000 Throughout for weeks and weeks and weeks at a time.

00:26:41.000 So the book itself, it reads about Antarctica, but it intersperses the way my experience was in Antarctica, which was actually going back in through my life in this kind of tapestry of visceral memories and flashbacks of other expeditions and childhood and the ups and downs in my personal life and kind of all of these things kind of conspiring into one.

00:26:59.000 But it was wild to go deep into the brain like that.

00:27:02.000 I'm sure.

00:27:03.000 We should probably point out, we've had a podcast before, and this podcast that we did before was right after you got back from this journey in Antarctica, and you described the whole thing in Thailand, you described getting burned, and how you never thought you were going to walk again, and all that stuff.

00:27:17.000 So we should tell people.

00:27:18.000 So stop, right?

00:27:19.000 Pause.

00:27:20.000 Go back the other one.

00:27:21.000 And then come back here again.

00:27:23.000 Did it upset you when the National Geographic article came out?

00:27:27.000 Did you feel like, well, they just got it wrong, let me straighten them out?

00:27:31.000 You know, it's one of those things.

00:27:33.000 I'd be curious to hear your perspective on media and stuff like this.

00:27:36.000 You've been around doing type of stuff more longer than me.

00:27:40.000 It hurt my feelings, obviously, and it was bizarre because it was so factually inaccurate.

00:27:46.000 And National Geographic is a magazine or an outlet that I've looked up to throughout my entire life.

00:27:51.000 It's just a really beautiful platform.

00:27:54.000 And so I was just surprised.

00:27:55.000 I was surprised that I was never asked for a proper long-form interview of this.

00:27:59.000 I was surprised that I was never contacted by a proper fact checker.

00:28:02.000 There was just some things that were just weird and out of place.

00:28:04.000 And I guess it was a freelancer.

00:28:06.000 Again, I don't know the whole story behind it.

00:28:08.000 That's probably what it is.

00:28:09.000 If I had a guess, look, there's very little in, like, praising people.

00:28:16.000 There's a whole lot in taking people down.

00:28:18.000 Yeah.

00:28:18.000 If they could find that you did something, that you did something incorrect, or you lied about something, or exaggerated about something, I mean, they made you out to be a liar.

00:28:27.000 Yeah.

00:28:27.000 I mean, I read it, and I was like, wow, like, they're saying he's a liar.

00:28:31.000 Yeah.

00:28:31.000 They're saying how much of it is fiction.

00:28:33.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:28:39.000 54 goddamn days across Antarctica. 0.98

00:28:41.000 Not only that, the kind of weird parts about it is not only that, but I also had a GPS on me the entire time. 0.98

00:28:46.000 It was completely transparent.

00:28:48.000 Every 10 minutes, the entire journey, we're live for the sea.

00:28:51.000 The New York Times covered it.

00:28:53.000 They had my GPS tracker up live.

00:28:55.000 The map of my route is in the first page of my book, let alone online 24-7.

00:29:00.000 There's been hundreds of articles written about this by outlets who have fact-checked and researched or whatever.

00:29:04.000 So for Nat Geo to make all those claims, it's like saying, like, Colin somehow...

00:29:08.000 He tricked every person ever from every news outlet that's covered this and fact-checked it and reported on it and his editors of the book and some hacked his jeep.

00:29:17.000 I mean, it's like a crazy conspiracy weird kind of stance on it.

00:29:21.000 Do you think it's because everyone...

00:29:22.000 How do you say his name?

00:29:23.000 Ausland?

00:29:23.000 Ausland, yeah.

00:29:24.000 That Ausland had done it.

00:29:25.000 Everybody knew that Ausland had done it.

00:29:27.000 Maybe they just didn't understand the details of it, so they started complaining.

00:29:29.000 Hey, he didn't do it first.

00:29:31.000 Ausland did it first, and this guy's like, I got a story.

00:29:34.000 So he goes to try to go after you, but then realizes, like, Oh, it's kind of...

00:29:39.000 He kind of did it first, but the other guy did it...

00:29:42.000 Well, let's just say that the kite was cool.

00:29:45.000 Right.

00:29:45.000 He had a cool kite.

00:29:46.000 But, I mean, he did even weirder things.

00:29:47.000 Like, in the first paragraph or second paragraph of the entire article, he takes a quote from page 50 of my book and a quote from page 214 of my book.

00:29:57.000 And parses them together as if they're a single statement.

00:30:00.000 And I'm like, they're about two completely different things that I'm talking about.

00:30:03.000 And you're like, dude...

00:30:05.000 That's what people do, man.

00:30:06.000 They want to sell dirt. 0.85

00:30:08.000 Or he says, like, Colin made up this thing about no rescue zones.

00:30:12.000 No one's ever written about the fact of in Antarctica, and he talks about me getting picked up in Antarctica like I can call an Uber.

00:30:18.000 He literally says in there, uses somebody else's quote, he says, I mean, getting picked up in Antarctica is like calling an Uber, which is by itself just- He really said that?

00:30:25.000 He literally says that in the article, which is just crazy.

00:30:27.000 That's hilarious. 0.99

00:30:27.000 Bitch, try getting an Uber in the woods in Montana. 0.99

00:30:31.000 Okay? 1.00

00:30:32.000 I'm like an Uber, and then the craziest thing, and again...

00:30:35.000 That is so crazy if someone says that.

00:30:36.000 My response to this is just factual.

00:30:38.000 It's not, you know, I just try to not be too defensive or anything about it, but it's just...

00:30:42.000 Well, the good news is this will reach way more people than that article.

00:30:46.000 Yeah, but I'll say one last thing about it.

00:30:48.000 The irony of this is if you Google Borca Auslan...

00:30:52.000 In 2019, right after I finished my crossing, he's interviewed about all this.

00:30:56.000 And in a quote, and I link to this in my letter, him saying, there are parts of Antarctica, particularly in the large Sestrugi zone, which is exactly what I was talking about, where rescue is impossible.

00:31:06.000 The guy who's against me is also quoted saying the other thing, but then he says, it's like, the whole thing is just, you know, it's crazy, man. 0.98

00:31:14.000 There's so much money in shitting on someone. 0.99

00:31:16.000 That's what it is, I'm sure. 0.99

00:31:17.000 And I'm sure this guy...

00:31:19.000 Well, I'm sure this guy who wrote that article is probably a little bit of a hater.

00:31:22.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:31:22.000 You know, probably saw you and like, fuck this guy, you know? 1.00

00:31:26.000 It's the world we live in, unfortunately. 1.00

00:31:28.000 I try to, you know, keep my head up.

00:31:29.000 Like I said, I wrote this book to inspire other people to step outside their comfort zones.

00:31:33.000 I'm sure they paid for it too, right?

00:31:35.000 I got paid for it as well.

00:31:36.000 Yeah, I got...

00:31:36.000 It's also like...

00:31:37.000 Is that so wrong?

00:31:38.000 No, you definitely should get paid.

00:31:40.000 You should get paid for the whole thing.

00:31:41.000 But the fact that they're trying to diminish what you did and what you really did do was walk by yourself for 54 days through Antarctica.

00:31:52.000 And one of the things he was even saying something about it was on a road. 0.98

00:31:56.000 And I'm like, hey, bitch, why don't you walk dragging 300 pounds on a road? 1.00

00:32:01.000 Like, does that matter? 1.00

00:32:02.000 Everything's covered in snow and ice. 0.99

00:32:04.000 Like, what fucking road is this? 0.99

00:32:06.000 Yeah, so there's basically this 300-mile stretch. 0.98

00:32:09.000 It's the last third of my part of my journey, which, by the way, was on my GPS, which, by the way, I talk about in my book, which, by the way, I widely acknowledge.

00:32:17.000 And it's called the South Pole Overland Traverse.

00:32:19.000 And so...

00:32:20.000 The South Pole Station, the U.S. research station that's at the South Pole was resupplied throughout the summer season from the coast, and they drive this kind of bunch of tractors basically up this area called the Leverett Glacier.

00:32:35.000 It's not like a paved road.

00:32:36.000 This is them driving over ice and snow and filling in crevasses along the way, etc.

00:32:40.000 And there's some tire tracks and some flagging that are out there.

00:32:43.000 So, first of all, I've already traveled almost 600 miles without any of that.

00:32:48.000 And then as I get there, and we know this is part of it, and I've talked about widely with all the polar experts, all of the people that make the classifications, and unassisted refers specifically to kites and dogs.

00:32:58.000 And they're trying to make this claim that the Road somehow, quote unquote, big air quotes, road.

00:33:03.000 Basically, some rutted up tracks in the snow.

00:33:06.000 You know, I'm out there.

00:33:07.000 This is not a paved road.

00:33:08.000 No, there's not a paved road out there.

00:33:10.000 And the thing is, Antarctica is so brutal.

00:33:12.000 We showed some clips last time.

00:33:13.000 He's sitting at my tent in 50, 60 mile per hour winds that it was like.

00:33:15.000 Yeah.

00:33:16.000 When that blows over, imagine driving a tractor over snow and then 50, 60 mile winds come in.

00:33:21.000 What do you think happens?

00:33:21.000 It's blown over immediately.

00:33:23.000 So I never saw these tractors.

00:33:24.000 I never saw these vehicles.

00:33:25.000 I never saw this.

00:33:26.000 I saw some flags, of course.

00:33:27.000 I saw some rutted tracks, but I linked to it on my letter to this.

00:33:31.000 So it's really not much difference in walking on flat ground.

00:33:34.000 No, not at all.

00:33:35.000 And still, there's still the Sestrugi, so there's still huge bumps of snow.

00:33:38.000 And a lot of the time, I was completely whited out.

00:33:41.000 I couldn't see 5 or 10 feet in front of me.

00:33:42.000 So it's not like I could...

00:33:43.000 A lot of times, these flags are every 100 or 400 meters.

00:33:46.000 It's not like I'd even see those.

00:33:47.000 So it's just a shame.

00:33:48.000 And I've been very transparent about the fact that I used that route.

00:33:52.000 It was the safest route.

00:33:53.000 It was the only route the logistic company wanted to support.

00:33:55.000 And it falls completely in the distinctions of what is known as unassisted.

00:34:01.000 And he kind of makes this claim about that's not true, where people are Rethinking it.

00:34:07.000 Right.

00:34:07.000 So they're now, because of some of this, the polar community have gotten together after my project.

00:34:13.000 So my project squarely falls in the definitions as they were, followed all of the rules and all of this.

00:34:18.000 Now, now they're sitting together and they're saying, you know, maybe we should rewrite some of these rules or make certain definitions different.

00:34:25.000 Which, by the way, if they want to change rules, that's totally fine.

00:34:28.000 The problem is, it would be like this.

00:34:30.000 This is like, well, them calling me sort of like a liar or something would be equivalent of this.

00:34:34.000 With Major League Baseball got together and said, you know what?

00:34:37.000 All games in baseball are going to be 10 innings now instead of 9 innings.

00:34:41.000 And all of those guys over the last hundred years that played 200,000 games or whatever, who played nine innings, they cheated, they lied, they didn't play the full game.

00:34:50.000 If they want to change whatever distinctions or classifications or stuff forward-looking, great.

00:34:56.000 And what would the distinctions be that they would change?

00:34:58.000 You can't do it on a road?

00:35:00.000 So I think they're trying to make it finer grained, which is like there would be like a kite distinction.

00:35:04.000 There would be a no supported distinction.

00:35:07.000 There would be a distinction for using, you know, partial of a, if there was a flagging or this like, you know, road, which by the way, is not a road to be clear.

00:35:14.000 It's snow and ice.

00:35:15.000 Do you have images of this road?

00:35:17.000 I don't.

00:35:18.000 I don't.

00:35:18.000 There's a...

00:35:20.000 But at no point in time, was it like flat ground?

00:35:24.000 No, it's ice and snow where a tractor, you might see like some wheels.

00:35:28.000 And in fact, Lou Rudd, who's the other guy who I was racing out there in Antarctica, he wrote a whole blog post about that's linked to in my letter.

00:35:34.000 And, you know, of course, he did the exact same thing as me, by the way.

00:35:37.000 The exact same thing, same distinction.

00:35:39.000 And, you know, I finished a couple days ahead of him, but what he did was...

00:35:42.000 Absolutely incredible is this race, and we talk a lot about it in the book, and a ton of respect for that guy as well.

00:35:47.000 He's a friend of mine.

00:35:48.000 And he writes about this quote-unquote road or the South Pole Overland Traverses.

00:35:53.000 It's actually known.

00:35:54.000 And he's like, it's rutted up tracks.

00:35:56.000 Even in the parts where I saw tire tracks, it's actually worse than- Because you don't slide across it.

00:36:01.000 Because you don't slide across it.

00:36:02.000 The snow is all rutted up.

00:36:03.000 It's chunked up.

00:36:04.000 It's actually tripping you.

00:36:05.000 It's even worse.

00:36:06.000 Like skiing on broken ice versus powder.

00:36:09.000 Yeah.

00:36:09.000 So this journalist and other people who are saying this, this is not like they've been out there before.

00:36:13.000 The thing is, it's an attractive thing to say.

00:36:17.000 Part of his journey was actually on a road. 1.00

00:36:19.000 You're like, oh, fuck that guy. 1.00

00:36:20.000 There's a road in Antarctica? 1.00

00:36:21.000 Yeah.

00:36:21.000 But that's how it sounds.

00:36:24.000 When you say part of it was on a road, it sounds like this is the road.

00:36:27.000 Oh, Christ.

00:36:28.000 That's it?

00:36:29.000 That's the road. 0.99

00:36:30.000 But that ain't not really a fucking road, man. 0.99

00:36:33.000 That's just flat snow. 0.98

00:36:35.000 Exactly.

00:36:36.000 And that would be like the best case.

00:36:37.000 Most of the time it's wind blowing across it.

00:36:39.000 Like that's on the perfect conditions, perfect sunny day.

00:36:42.000 But look to the left and look to the right.

00:36:44.000 Like it doesn't make a difference.

00:36:46.000 It's the same.

00:36:47.000 That's really deceptive that they wrote that.

00:36:50.000 Yeah.

00:36:51.000 That's really deceptive.

00:36:52.000 Because they made it seem like, oh, and then he gets to the highway and he's just walking.

00:36:55.000 It's like hitchhiking, put my thumb out, pick up a bus.

00:36:58.000 Come on, man. 0.99

00:36:58.000 He still went 54 fucking days across Antarctica. 0.99

00:37:01.000 And I know they acknowledged that in a small way in the article, but they really... 0.98

00:37:07.000 Like, just that.

00:37:09.000 Just the description, calling that a road.

00:37:11.000 Like, that is, I mean, sort of technically a road. 0.99

00:37:14.000 There's no fucking ground, man. 0.98

00:37:15.000 It's just all ice and snow. 1.00

00:37:17.000 You don't see the ground.

00:37:18.000 Exactly.

00:37:19.000 And like I said, I was transparent about it.

00:37:20.000 That was my route.

00:37:21.000 Asked all the people.

00:37:22.000 They're like, yep, you're within the rules.

00:37:23.000 You're doing the right thing.

00:37:24.000 No one's ever done this before.

00:37:26.000 And then, you know. 1.00

00:37:26.000 Damn, everybody's a fucking hater. 1.00

00:37:28.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:37:28.000 That's the world we live in, unfortunately. 1.00

00:37:30.000 Crabs in a bucket.

00:37:30.000 You know that expression?

00:37:31.000 No, tell me that.

00:37:31.000 Throw crabs in a bucket, none of them ever get out, because when they try to get out, the other ones grab them and drag them down.

00:37:36.000 Oh, yeah, exactly, exactly. 1.00

00:37:39.000 They're piling on top of each other, the other crabs, just get out in here with me, fuck, I can't walk 54 days, you can't either, bitch. 1.00

00:37:46.000 Just drag you. 1.00

00:37:47.000 Onward, onward, onward.

00:37:49.000 Onward is nice, but man, it's really disturbing.

00:37:51.000 Have you thought about suing them?

00:37:54.000 Drop the hammer, son. 1.00

00:37:55.000 Call the Jews. 0.99

00:37:56.000 Yeah.

00:37:57.000 Do you know any good Jews? 1.00

00:37:59.000 They're attorneys.

00:38:01.000 Is that racist to say?

00:38:02.000 I don't think it is because they're positive.

00:38:04.000 They're really good at it.

00:38:05.000 Some would say they're not, that it is racist or anti-Semitic.

00:38:11.000 Yeah.

00:38:11.000 Do you have a Jewish attorney?

00:38:12.000 I do not have a Jewish attorney.

00:38:14.000 You do?

00:38:14.000 Yeah.

00:38:15.000 Just get one.

00:38:15.000 All right.

00:38:17.000 I'm sure there's some Irish attorneys that are awesome too.

00:38:20.000 That's a weird one, right?

00:38:21.000 Racism when it's positive. 1.00

00:38:23.000 If you say black guys have big dicks, people will get mad at you. 1.00

00:38:26.000 I'm just saying they're awesome. 1.00

00:38:28.000 That's true.

00:38:29.000 That's a weird one.

00:38:30.000 It's not really racist.

00:38:33.000 Italians make really good pizza.

00:38:35.000 Is that racist?

00:38:36.000 I love pizza.

00:38:37.000 I do too.

00:38:39.000 Sorry, we got way off track.

00:38:40.000 So put this stuff aside.

00:38:43.000 Have you considered legal action?

00:38:47.000 Like I said, I published this 16-page document that's on my website.

00:38:53.000 I sent it to the editor of National Geographic.

00:38:56.000 They have acknowledged that they've received it, and like I said, it's been a holiday weekend, so they've had a few days to have it, and hopefully they do the right thing.

00:39:03.000 Ultimately, it's defaming.

00:39:05.000 It's ultimately painting the wrong picture.

00:39:06.000 Is it in print?

00:39:09.000 Their version is in print as well as online, or just online?

00:39:13.000 Oh, their article is just online.

00:39:14.000 I hope they take it down.

00:39:16.000 But the problem is then someone's already seen it.

00:39:19.000 Exactly. 1.00

00:39:20.000 People are writing on my Instagram like, you liar, I fucking hate you, I hope you die. 1.00

00:39:26.000 And you're like, whoa, man. 1.00

00:39:28.000 And that hurts, man.

00:39:29.000 I'm not going to lie, I'm a human being.

00:39:30.000 It hurts my feelings to see that, particularly when it's about something that's completely not true. 0.94

00:39:34.000 People are saying, I heard you took a fucking Uber out there and you just walked on this road. 0.95

00:39:40.000 That's hilarious. 0.99

00:39:41.000 Yeah, but, you know.

00:39:42.000 That is the problem with those kind of articles.

00:39:44.000 That right there, in a nutshell, is that especially people that sort of peripherally look at them.

00:39:49.000 Exactly.

00:39:49.000 You don't really go through it extensively and examine what this guy's saying.

00:39:53.000 Yeah.

00:39:53.000 So hopefully it doesn't come to legal action.

00:39:54.000 Hopefully they do the right thing here.

00:39:56.000 They've reviewed the facts and we can move on.

00:39:58.000 Dude.

00:39:59.000 Yeah.

00:39:59.000 Call a lawyer.

00:40:00.000 Yeah.

00:40:00.000 Make it happen.

00:40:02.000 So now you get through this, right?

00:40:05.000 You write your book and you get in this rowboat journey.

00:40:09.000 Had the rowboat journey been done before?

00:40:12.000 So the rowboat before, there's a storied history of ocean rowing.

00:40:17.000 So ocean rowing...

00:40:19.000 I'm sure the Polynesians.

00:40:53.000 Yeah, so Drake Passage Had never been rode fully and completely before. 0.97

00:41:00.000 There was a guy who's a fucking legend as well. 0.55

00:41:04.000 I wish he was still alive because I'd love to sit down more than anything with this guy. 0.98

00:41:07.000 His name is Ned Gillette.

00:41:09.000 A true, true explorer.

00:41:11.000 He actually got killed in the late 90s, I believe, when he was climbing in the Himalayas or in Pakistan.

00:41:16.000 He got shot by someone who came through the camp.

00:41:19.000 I don't know the whole story.

00:41:19.000 It was a super sad story.

00:41:20.000 But he's done all of these projects.

00:41:22.000 Before social media and stuff like this, this guy was out there doing these badass things.

00:41:25.000 And he...

00:41:27.000 He made this boat called the Sea Tomato, and he took it down to Chile to try to kind of do what was kind of a hybrid row and sail.

00:41:35.000 And so he has a sailing mast on there.

00:41:37.000 He's got oars.

00:41:38.000 He's got four guys with him.

00:41:40.000 They try it the first season.

00:41:41.000 They actually can't even launch their boat off of Cape Horn.

00:41:44.000 So they wait a whole other year.

00:41:45.000 And then the second year, they launch the Sea Tomato under sail.

00:41:49.000 Why do they have to wait a year?

00:41:50.000 Because the weather, I mean, Drake Passage is, we'll get to that, but it is gnarly, bro.

00:41:54.000 Like, it is like, I mean, people, you know, as you say, going around the Horn, people say that in sailing.

00:41:58.000 Like, Cape Horn is known to just be, like, just treacherous, brutal water as the two of these oceans kind of collide and these huge standing waves come up.

00:42:06.000 So a whole season, they sat down there with the rowboat and didn't even launch it.

00:42:08.000 Then the next year came back, him and four guys.

00:42:11.000 How small is the window where you can make it across?

00:42:15.000 So, basically, the best time of year to do it would be December, January, because that's the Southern Hemisphere summer.

00:42:21.000 And so the temperature is a little bit warmer, you've got longer days.

00:42:23.000 We purposefully did it over the summer solstice, so December 21st, you know, that'd be June 21st for us in the Northern Hemisphere, the longest day of the year.

00:42:32.000 We still had night, you know, a few hours of darkness every single night, but we at least had the longer days, because once it gets dark, and there's waves coming at you from every single direction, I mean, it is... 0.91

00:42:41.000 Fucking scary, man. 0.87

00:42:43.000 This is it? 0.99

00:42:44.000 This is Drake Passage, obviously, as seen from a bigger boat than mine, but, you know. 1.00

00:42:48.000 Oh, fuck that. 0.98

00:42:51.000 Can I see what it was like in your boat? 1.00

00:42:53.000 Yeah.

00:42:53.000 If you pull up my Instagram...

00:42:55.000 That's insane, dude.

00:42:56.000 If you pull up my Instagram...

00:42:57.000 How many people die out there?

00:42:59.000 I mean, I don't know the numbers, but a plane crash happened the day we were leaving and 38 people died in a plane crash in Drake Passage as we were about to depart on our road.

00:43:09.000 That's a whole other crazy story.

00:43:12.000 But, you know, there's shipwrecks out there.

00:43:15.000 There's boats that have gone down.

00:43:16.000 There was a...

00:43:17.000 A cruise ship, I think, that went down in the 2000s.

00:43:20.000 In Drake Passage?

00:43:21.000 In Drake Passage, yeah.

00:43:22.000 Oh, Jesus Christ.

00:43:24.000 I hope I don't get that story completely wrong, but I'm pretty sure a big boat went down in the last 10 years or so. 0.98

00:43:28.000 What the fuck is a cruise ship doing there? 0.97

00:43:29.000 They go to Antarctica. 0.99

00:43:30.000 Who wants to see that?

00:43:30.000 They go to the Peninsula of Antarctica.

00:43:32.000 So actually, there's quite a few cruise ships.

00:43:35.000 Yeah, so here's me.

00:43:37.000 So it's actually fairly calm sometimes.

00:43:40.000 I mean, some of the times.

00:43:42.000 Yeah, you got some swells, but I mean...

00:43:44.000 You'll see this next part.

00:43:45.000 So this is me in the tiny little cabin.

00:43:48.000 I mean, waves coming over.

00:43:50.000 They're crashing us pretty good.

00:43:51.000 So where's the cabin closest to us?

00:43:54.000 Yeah, closest to us, there's the little cabin I was in.

00:43:56.000 There was just one of us in there.

00:43:57.000 And this is us putting out something called the sea anchor.

00:44:01.000 That's when the waves got so big or the wind and swell was against us so much that we couldn't row anymore.

00:44:05.000 And it's like throwing a parachute that basically kind of tries to hold you in place.

00:44:10.000 How does the sea anchor work?

00:44:11.000 What is it?

00:44:12.000 So it's like a huge parachute, basically.

00:44:14.000 It's in the water?

00:44:15.000 And you put it in the water and it fills with water and it holds the boat into place.

00:44:19.000 I mean, not very well.

00:44:19.000 Even in this, if we had the volume up, it's me basically talking about how we're getting pushed back in the wrong direction, but we don't have the strength to row against it anymore.

00:44:28.000 Just getting hammered.

00:44:30.000 How far did it push you back?

00:44:32.000 I think that time it pushed us back like 15 or 20 miles.

00:44:36.000 Whoa! 0.71

00:44:36.000 So you lose 15 or 20 miles of progress. 0.71

00:44:39.000 Yeah.

00:44:39.000 And that was the longest sea anchor.

00:44:40.000 I believe we were on it for 26 hours.

00:44:42.000 And so what happens is, like you saw on the boat, there's three people rowing, three people in the cabins at any given time.

00:44:47.000 And the cabins are tiny.

00:44:48.000 Even with one person on one side like I was, two on the other side, you're like smashing there like a sardine.

00:44:53.000 But then when you put the sea anchor out, no one's rowing anymore.

00:44:57.000 And that open decking, it's like really dangerous to just be sitting out there.

00:45:00.000 So we all try to get in the cabins.

00:45:01.000 But like this Icelandic dude who's the captain, Fionn Paul, I mean, he's like amazing rowing, six foot two, broad shoulders, whatever.

00:45:08.000 All of a sudden, the two of us are jammed inside of like the smallest little compartment.

00:45:12.000 It's like two feet, around three feet wide by three feet tall.

00:45:15.000 We're like spooning each other.

00:45:16.000 We're wet.

00:45:17.000 We're cold.

00:45:18.000 We're in there for 26 hours that time.

00:45:20.000 How did you guys poop?

00:45:22.000 So if you look, this one shows kind of the wave, the big swell.

00:45:26.000 I'm the one in the back there, and I'm sitting right next to a really fancy toilet, a little something called a five-gallon bucket.

00:45:34.000 Oh, that's what you did. 0.96

00:45:35.000 You pooped in a bucket.

00:45:36.000 Pooped in a bucket, not too fancy.

00:45:37.000 And then chuck it overside.

00:45:38.000 Yeah, and then the fish can snack on that.

00:45:42.000 But you obviously get, not only were we spooning under sea anchors, smashing these little things, and oftentimes those other guys in the other compartment were either three Three of them were inside the compartment at a time and one would be sitting out and taking shifts or they sometimes smashed four in there.

00:45:56.000 But I mean, they're like literally on top of each other.

00:45:58.000 So we got close.

00:45:59.000 But then also, obviously, there's no space on the deck.

00:46:01.000 So it's like, hey, man, just turn your head away.

00:46:03.000 I'm going to be, you know, pooping basically a foot away from you while you row into this bucket.

00:46:06.000 Like, don't mind me.

00:46:08.000 Those mountain houses will create some horrible smells on your body.

00:46:12.000 I've had those mountain houses while hunting.

00:46:13.000 They're rough.

00:46:15.000 Especially for me because I don't eat a lot of carbs.

00:46:17.000 It's all like, you know.

00:46:20.000 They taste good though.

00:46:21.000 They do taste good.

00:46:22.000 Especially when you're in the middle of the ocean.

00:46:23.000 I bet they're delicious.

00:46:24.000 I loved them.

00:46:25.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:46:25.000 They're really good.

00:46:26.000 That and the bars.

00:46:27.000 I was happy with the eating was good. 0.93

00:46:29.000 When you're halfway out there, was there any point in time where you're like, what the fuck is wrong with me? 0.89

00:46:33.000 Why am I doing this?

00:46:34.000 Yes, 100%.

00:46:36.000 So, one of the things, like, you know, people have asked me, was, you know, solo Antarctica crossing harder in the row, whatever, and it's like, they're very different.

00:46:43.000 But one of the things that was so rude about this, Antarctica and the crossing was a lot colder than the Drake Passage row.

00:46:49.000 It was about average temperature when we were out there was probably like...

00:46:52.000 In the low 30s, you know, dipped below a few times.

00:46:54.000 But the ocean temperature, like I said, it's 32, you know, 33, you know, just above freezing.

00:47:00.000 There's icebergs in the water when we're getting close to it.

00:47:01.000 And you're just getting splashed the entire time.

00:47:04.000 So from like minute one, hour one, leaving Cape Horn, we are soaking wet.

00:47:09.000 And what kind of equipment are you wearing?

00:47:12.000 What kind of gear are you wearing that keeps you from...

00:47:14.000 Getting really cold.

00:47:15.000 So we started out in just this Gore-Tex, this thick saline Gore-Tex basically, and that worked pretty well for the first few days.

00:47:23.000 But one of the other cool innovations that Fionn thought of having done so much ocean rowing is he was like, dude, the only way this is going to work is if we have some sort of dry suit.

00:47:32.000 It's just too cold.

00:47:33.000 But you start looking at dry suits and you're like, you could never row.

00:47:36.000 You couldn't be functional wearing this crazy dry suit, right?

00:47:40.000 And so, he basically says, he spends the year, one of the things that he did is he found this, like, Polish manufacturer, and we all got our bodies measured, you know, 25, 6 different measurements and all this, and basically created these custom dry suits that were a lot thinner than a typical dry suit,

00:47:55.000 but kept us dry, but also allowed us to have the mobility on the oars, and it was really actually built for the sitting position and the leg, you know, the leg press and the arm motion and all that of rowing.

00:48:05.000 So it was awesome innovation.

00:48:07.000 And we got just, I mean, thank God we had those because we were getting soaked.

00:48:12.000 I mean, we were getting so, so, so soaked out there.

00:48:14.000 And in the 90 minutes, you would think like, oh, in the 90 minutes, quote unquote, rest phase, you would get in there, you know, maybe change clothes or something like that.

00:48:21.000 No, absolutely not.

00:48:22.000 Like we had these suits on.

00:48:24.000 We're soaking wet.

00:48:25.000 We'd get in the cabin.

00:48:26.000 We were all sharing like one sleeping bag.

00:48:27.000 Like I had just one sleeping bag that Fian and I were alternating.

00:48:30.000 It's soaking wet after the first day.

00:48:32.000 Yeah.

00:48:32.000 It's basically like, if I showed you what it looked like on the last day, you'd be like, I wouldn't sit in there for one minute, let alone try to sleep.

00:48:38.000 There's no pail.

00:48:39.000 There's brown water on the bottom.

00:48:43.000 It's the smells from us living in and out of there.

00:48:45.000 I mean, it was grimy and wet and cold.

00:48:48.000 But these suits suited us pretty well.

00:48:50.000 The one thing that was great, obviously, we were clipped in for safety.

00:48:54.000 So we were clipped into basically these ropes that you saw on the edge there.

00:48:57.000 So if we were going to get knocked off...

00:48:58.000 The boat hopefully we would be able to clip in, or the boat itself actually fully self-right, so if it rolls over, it hypothetically rolls back over the top.

00:49:06.000 We had some close coals, but we never fully rolled it, thank God, but we did test that.

00:49:11.000 But one of the things about the suits is the suits basically have like neoprene booties.

00:49:15.000 It's all like one piece, like you would have in a dry suit, which was awesome for keeping us safe and dry, but I didn't take the suit off for the last six or seven days at all.

00:49:26.000 And so when I finally took the suit off, my feet, like you think about your fingers getting like pruney maybe like, you know, in a swimming pool for a couple hours or hot tub or something like that.

00:49:35.000 Like imagine seven days of wet and cold and sweat and like all the things.

00:49:41.000 Like when I took the suit off, like I almost threw up on the ground.

00:49:44.000 Because it was just gnarly, festering skin, and skin was ripping off of my feet.

00:49:50.000 It was nasty.

00:49:52.000 How long did it take you to recover from that?

00:49:54.000 I don't know exactly.

00:49:56.000 It's hard to put the point on, like, oh, I'm recovered, but it definitely took a few weeks to just kind of get everything back, the stability back in the body, mind, all of that.

00:50:04.000 So, yeah.

00:50:05.000 It was interesting, for sure.

00:50:09.000 What are you going to do next?

00:50:11.000 Because I know you.

00:50:12.000 You're one of those dudes.

00:50:13.000 You have to keep doing these things.

00:50:15.000 Once you've done two of these things, you're going to keep doing these things.

00:50:18.000 Yeah, I did a couple before that, too.

00:50:20.000 But I think last time your advice to me was stop.

00:50:25.000 Stop while you're alive.

00:50:27.000 But you didn't listen, obviously, so don't listen to me anymore anyway.

00:50:30.000 Just keep doing what you gotta do.

00:50:32.000 You know, look, I'm passionate about these things.

00:50:35.000 It's super fun.

00:50:37.000 I do them because I like testing the edges of my potential.

00:50:39.000 I like exploring different places.

00:50:41.000 Like I said, I'd never rowed a boat before and to kind of take this project on and say, I've done expeditions before.

00:50:48.000 I've pushed my body in deep and interesting ways.

00:50:51.000 But one of my biggest curiosities is certainly about the mind, but particularly growth mindset.

00:50:56.000 Can I say, I'm not a rower, But in the course of a year of training, I'm going to train myself up, get on a team with some amazingly accomplished watermen, and learn the skills required to make this crossing.

00:51:08.000 And it was cool to kind of prove that out this year because I think that that really applies across so many things.

00:51:13.000 And I'm just a generally curious person.

00:51:16.000 And I think I'll keep pushing myself and pushing my body because that's one of the things I love to do.

00:51:21.000 But I think that curiosity throughout my life is going to be, you know, a lifelong path of diving into sort of different things and taking them on.

00:51:28.000 I think that to me, one of my biggest sadnesses and one of the things I like to say to people is like, you know, people come to a certain point in their life and they're like, I'm a lawyer, or I'm good at math, or I'm terrible at art, or I could never do comedy because I'm not the funny one.

00:51:43.000 These limiting beliefs inside of us.

00:51:45.000 I could be like, dude, I've never rowed ever in my life.

00:51:48.000 I'm 34 years old.

00:51:50.000 I've never rowed a boat, but it doesn't mean I can't learn now to row a boat.

00:51:54.000 Seems pretty straightforward.

00:51:56.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:51:57.000 How hard could it be?

00:51:58.000 You had a little leg action, too.

00:52:00.000 What did you do to prepare for it physically?

00:52:04.000 The physical prep was pretty cool.

00:52:07.000 I don't know if you remember from last time, but I have this coach.

00:52:10.000 His name is Mike McCassle.

00:52:12.000 He's just this legendary guy.

00:52:14.000 He's done 5,800 pull-ups in 24 hours.

00:52:18.000 He's pulled a We're good to go.

00:52:38.000 Was he had me, you know, I was doing planks with my hands in ice buckets.

00:52:42.000 And, you know, as my heart rate's getting jacked up, he's having me hold that.

00:52:45.000 And all of a sudden, he's like, all right, get out.

00:52:46.000 And I'm doing a wall sit, but now my feet are in the ice buckets.

00:52:49.000 And he puts a weight plate on top of my legs.

00:52:52.000 And he's like, okay.

00:52:53.000 And then he hands me these Legos.

00:52:54.000 And he's like, solve these Lego problems.

00:52:56.000 And until you don't solve this Lego and build this little, like, you know, aircraft Lego man or whatever, you know, you can't get your feet out of the ice bucket.

00:53:02.000 I'm like, what?

00:53:03.000 What the hell is going on?

00:53:04.000 But he's like, look, you're going to be in Antarctica.

00:53:06.000 Your life is going to depend on you securing your tent right or tying down the ropes properly or this and that and the other thing.

00:53:12.000 You're going to be cold.

00:53:13.000 Your hands are going to be frozen.

00:53:14.000 You're going to be tired, but you're going to need your mind, your dexterity to be there.

00:53:17.000 Yeah, there's a picture of that, of Mike bringing me through that.

00:53:21.000 And so with the row...

00:53:24.000 It was super cool to come to him again and say, hey man, there's no blueprint for this.

00:53:28.000 There's no blueprint for this.

00:53:30.000 There's no one that's done a fully human power crossing of Drake Passage before to the Antarctic Peninsula.

00:53:36.000 There's some ocean rowers, but this is different.

00:53:38.000 How should we prepare for this?

00:53:39.000 And Mike, it's not like he's like, well, I know everything about ocean rowing, but that same curiosity, that same growth mindset, I trust his ability to train me.

00:53:47.000 He's like, I don't know, man.

00:53:48.000 Let's start thinking through this.

00:53:50.000 And so in the gym, I mean, we did all sorts of creative things.

00:53:52.000 He brought the ice back.

00:53:53.000 He started putting a rowing machine on BOSU balls, like half BOSU balls, basically.

00:53:59.000 And I'd start rowing, you know, doing normal rowing motion, but he'd start shaking it around because basically the ocean is going to be moving me around so much.

00:54:05.000 So just the rowing motion isn't going to prepare me for the lateral movements, you know?

00:54:09.000 The lats, the obliques, you know, all the kind of side-to-side stability stuff.

00:54:13.000 Then he took it one step further, which is he actually shows up at my house, knocks on my door at 2 o'clock in the morning.

00:54:19.000 I think he had prearranged it with my wife.

00:54:21.000 Knocks on the door and he's like, get up.

00:54:23.000 And I'm like, what?

00:54:23.000 What's happening?

00:54:24.000 And he's like, we're going.

00:54:25.000 We're training right now.

00:54:26.000 And he gets me.

00:54:27.000 He's got those BOSU balls, but now it's the middle of the night, so I'm sleep deprived. 0.80

00:54:30.000 I'm kind of disoriented.

00:54:32.000 Now he's got me on the BOSU balls and he had brought these buckets of It says training for the drake the impossible row episode three you could find it online jamie it's on the discovery channel youtube page What did you

00:55:04.000 do for rowing?

00:55:05.000 For the specific muscles of rowing yourself?

00:55:08.000 Did you lift weights?

00:55:08.000 Did you do rows?

00:55:10.000 Did you use a rowing machine?

00:55:11.000 Yeah, so the rowing machine on the BOSU balls, that's like in the gym.

00:55:15.000 Also, a lot of deadlift was really useful.

00:55:18.000 And then a lot of stability stuff.

00:55:20.000 So Mike would have me do certain things like we'd have, you know, like a seated row or something like that.

00:55:24.000 Or monathons, I thought that was the most interesting because it was going to be destable.

00:55:27.000 So the waves are usually coming from, they change directions, but at any given time they're coming generally from one direction.

00:55:32.000 So you're either leaning in really hard to your left side or you're leaning in really hard to your right side.

00:55:36.000 That's a difference to the ocean rowing than just like a pure river rowing.

00:55:39.000 And, you know, he would have me basically like holding, imagine like a deadlift bar, and then I'd have my eyes closed, I'd be holding it there in kind of an isometric motion, and then he would pull the plate A light plate off one of the sides and so I'd have to stabilize and catch you know either my left side or my right side so a lot of stabilization and balance stuff and then the other piece that was huge you know Mike you know admittedly doesn't know a lot about rowing specifically in terms of the technique of rowing and the technique of rowing is actually very specific

00:56:10.000 and so A friend of mine, a guy named Chris Woida from Portland, I called him up and he's like this champion rower, collegiate rower, rowing coach, and he took me out on the Willamette River in Portland in a single man, like, rowing skull.

00:56:24.000 So very different than an ocean rowboat.

00:56:25.000 You know, an ocean rowboat's a lot bigger, different, different waves.

00:56:28.000 But he taught me on the river the actual purity of the rowing motion.

00:56:31.000 So a lot of the training and the physical aspects of getting stronger was with Mike and the mindset and the ice and all the things we did there.

00:56:38.000 But certainly the stuff that we did on the river in the Willamette with Chris was huge for me to actually understand the motion.

00:56:47.000 I just like you when you're like, how hard can it be?

00:56:49.000 Just kind of push your arms, you know, back and forth.

00:56:51.000 It's a pretty complicated motion.

00:56:53.000 It's a full body thing.

00:56:54.000 It's a coordinated, right?

00:56:55.000 It's a very coordinated thing.

00:56:56.000 You know, you're powering out of different things.

00:56:58.000 And certainly on river rowing, you're having to, you know, square.

00:57:02.000 It's called squaring the blades.

00:57:05.000 You know, you've got to take some blades out of the water and, you know, turning them so they can just glide across the top and get back in and glide and all that kind of stuff.

00:57:11.000 So there's a lot to the motion.

00:57:13.000 And so it was a short period of time.

00:57:15.000 I didn't take my first stroke in a rowboat until July in the river and then August in the ocean rowboat when we came together as a team for the first time to train in Scotland.

00:57:24.000 And then I was rowing across the Drake in December.

00:57:26.000 So it was a pretty short period of time to kind of learn about rowing and get stronger.

00:57:31.000 But it was a fun process to dive into something completely new.

00:57:34.000 So all from August, September, October, November into December, did you train and row all the time?

00:57:40.000 You know, quite a lot, but there was other things going on.

00:57:43.000 I was writing a book.

00:57:44.000 Oh, you were writing the book at the same time?

00:57:45.000 Yeah, I was writing the book at the same time.

00:57:47.000 You know, I was traveling, doing different things.

00:57:49.000 But yeah, I mean, obviously the training was the core focus.

00:57:51.000 But it wasn't like I was like, every day I was always doing is rowing 10 hours a day or something like that.

00:57:56.000 There was, you know, other things going on.

00:57:58.000 I would imagine you would need some pretty spectacular endurance to do that 90 minutes on the hour every 90 minutes.

00:58:05.000 Yeah, so you got 90 minutes on, 90 minutes off, 90 minutes on, 90 minutes off.

00:58:08.000 How did you guys devise that strategy for doing it that way, just to not burn yourselves out too much?

00:58:12.000 Yeah.

00:58:13.000 Yeah, so like I said, Fion has a lot of ocean rowing experience, and from his other expeditions, we kind of collectively talked about it as a team, and he was just like, okay, this is what he felt has worked the best for people to do a long stretch, get enough rest, but obviously maybe the first day or two,

00:58:30.000 you think, oh, I could row for...

00:58:31.000 Four hours at a time or something like that, and you get a longer stretch of rest.

00:58:35.000 But over time, your body really starts to wear it down, and so he kind of felt that was the happy balance.

00:58:40.000 I was delirious.

00:58:43.000 We were all delirious and sleep-deprived, and it got weird out there for sure, but I think it was the best.

00:58:47.000 My body actually held up pretty well.

00:58:49.000 Did you hallucinate at all?

00:58:51.000 Yeah, it was wild.

00:58:53.000 The things going on in my mind.

00:58:55.000 The night shift was really crazy.

00:58:58.000 The light nights weren't super long.

00:59:01.000 You got about three hours of darkness every single night, but that meant at least one 90-minute shift.

00:59:07.000 I don't know where you're going And a guy named Cam Bellamy,

00:59:30.000 a South African guy.

00:59:31.000 I've got a funny story about him.

00:59:32.000 He's an absolute legend.

00:59:33.000 So there's the three of us out there rowing on our shift, and the other shift was Andrew, John, and Fion.

00:59:38.000 And on our shift, in the middle of the night, I don't know how it started, but it was one of the first nights that we were out there.

00:59:43.000 It's kind of like, you've been rowing all day, and then all of a sudden, now you're wet and cold and it's dark. 0.87

00:59:47.000 It's just like, this sucks.

00:59:48.000 Those are those moments when you're having your lowest moments. 0.97

00:59:51.000 And you might make fun of me, but we started singing, man.

00:59:54.000 We just started singing out there.

00:59:56.000 Why would I make fun of you for singing?

00:59:57.000 I don't know.

00:59:57.000 I didn't make funny for rolling across the ocean.

00:59:59.000 Yeah, there you go.

01:00:00.000 You know, we started singing.

01:00:01.000 Like, I think I just started belting out one day.

01:00:04.000 You know, I was actually born on a hippie commune.

01:00:06.000 My mom played Bob Marley Redemption Thong throughout my entire birth.

01:00:09.000 There's like, you know, people watch my birth on my futon.

01:00:11.000 So I started, oh, pirates, yes, they rob I, sold I to the merchant ships.

01:00:17.000 We're just belting it out.

01:00:18.000 No, I mean, my voice is terrible, but we're having fun.

01:00:20.000 Did you hate these guys by the end of the trip?

01:00:22.000 You know, no.

01:00:24.000 No.

01:00:25.000 It was intense.

01:00:26.000 Did anybody hate you?

01:00:28.000 I don't know.

01:00:28.000 You have to ask them, I guess.

01:00:30.000 No, no.

01:00:31.000 Honestly, it was a crazy social experiment.

01:00:34.000 We've got guys from four different countries, three different continents.

01:00:37.000 No one knows each other super well.

01:00:39.000 A few of them had done a project before in the past, so they know each other a bit better.

01:00:43.000 But in general, it's not like it was six guys who were like, oh, we've done a bunch of stuff together.

01:00:48.000 We're bros.

01:00:49.000 We both hang out.

01:00:51.000 And it really, you know, required some really diligent kind of human dynamics to bring it all together.

01:00:57.000 One of the things, we came together in Scotland in August and we rode for the first time.

01:01:00.000 That's the first time we all met each other.

01:01:01.000 We came together.

01:01:02.000 That's where our rowboat was.

01:01:03.000 We were getting it custom built and built out.

01:01:06.000 And then that was the only time we saw each other in person.

01:01:10.000 We had these Skype calls and stuff.

01:01:11.000 And then we got down to Punta Reina, which is where we staged it out of in Chile, in Southern Chile there.

01:01:17.000 That's kind of, we got our robo, we imported it, we're getting everything going.

01:01:20.000 And those 10 days in preparation were some of the absolute hardest of the entire project, getting to the start line, right?

01:01:29.000 You know, there's gear everywhere.

01:01:31.000 We're trying to figure out how it all fits.

01:01:32.000 Like, you know, how are we going to fit all this food in here and our personal gear and there's nowhere this.

01:01:36.000 We're trying to pack the boat and like, you know, tensions are elevated.

01:01:38.000 Everyone's just kind of like nervous.

01:01:39.000 Like the reality of what we're about to do is setting in.

01:01:42.000 And, you know, there was kind of some breaking points.

01:01:45.000 And to credit where credit's due, one of the guys named Andrew Town, absolute amazing guy.

01:01:51.000 We're good to go.

01:02:11.000 Let's set some intentions.

01:02:13.000 And, you know, at first I think we're all maybe a little bit skeptical, but he sits us down and we have this conversation about like, you know, let's talk, let's talk, let's talk real.

01:02:21.000 Like, what are our real fears going into this?

01:02:23.000 Like, what are our vulnerabilities?

01:02:24.000 What are our weaknesses?

01:02:25.000 How can we trust one another?

01:02:26.000 And, you know, we all were very honest with one another.

01:02:29.000 And I think it really set the tone for the entire thing.

01:02:31.000 One of the guys is a school principal.

01:02:32.000 He's got a two year old daughter at home and he's like, Hey guys, like, I want to do this.

01:02:35.000 Like, I want to be a part of this project, but like, here's some of my fears.

01:02:38.000 And for me, I'm like, look, we've got to have a communication.

01:02:41.000 We've got to be able to stay to each other.

01:02:43.000 If we're having a bad day, we've got to just be honest.

01:02:44.000 Like, hey, I'm not having a good day, but it's not because I'm a bad person.

01:02:48.000 We've got to support one another.

01:02:49.000 And really having that facilitated conversation as a team early on before we were out in the water and the intensity, I think carried us through.

01:02:56.000 And I'm so, so, so grateful that Andrew facilitated that conversation because that was a really turning point in the group dynamics.

01:03:01.000 And so the Discovery Channel was their idea for this thing?

01:03:04.000 No.

01:03:04.000 Did they come to you guys?

01:03:05.000 Yeah, so the whole discovery thing is a really cool part of this.

01:03:09.000 So basically what happens, Fion had the idea for it, this legendary ocean rower, but the component parts of pulling it all together are really complicated.

01:03:19.000 One of the reasons is because...

01:03:22.000 So, say you owned a yacht or something like that, and you're like, you know what, Colin, I want to take my yacht to Antarctica.

01:03:28.000 Like, that's not really something that you can just do.

01:03:32.000 There's a whole bunch of environmental protections and laws and things like that.

01:03:35.000 There's, like, specific boats that have, like, permitting.

01:03:37.000 It's called the Aedo Treaty, and it's basically what governs, like, tourism in Antarctica.

01:03:42.000 We're good to go.

01:03:59.000 Is to have one of the IEDO certified boats there and a part of this.

01:04:04.000 And so what we realized is we needed what was called a supervising vessel.

01:04:08.000 Not a vessel that would give us support in the middle and hang out with us and we could jump off and take a hot shower, but a boat that's basically overseeing the totality of the project and also has us being fully permitted throughout that.

01:04:19.000 And so we're like, okay, that's interesting.

01:04:21.000 There's going to be this other boat out there.

01:04:23.000 We've got to figure out who this is.

01:04:24.000 It's super expensive.

01:04:25.000 So we've got to raise the money to make sure we can have that.

01:04:27.000 You know, all these types of things.

01:04:28.000 The only way it can work.

01:04:29.000 We kind of got set to work on doing that.

01:04:31.000 Myself, my wife Jenna, she builds these projects with me.

01:04:34.000 Blake, who works with me, and a bunch of people kind of working on kind of the details of it.

01:04:37.000 And we quickly realized, like, wow, what an amazing opportunity.

01:04:41.000 If we have this other boat out there...

01:04:43.000 We can film this thing.

01:04:45.000 And I've wanted to film some of my projects and share them really widely before, but when you're walking across Antarctica, dragging a 375-pound sled, and the whole purpose of the goal was to be solo, it's not like you can have a cameraman just hanging out there shooting you.

01:04:57.000 I mean, although there's just a road, so there's just people hanging out there.

01:05:01.000 L-O-L. L-O-L. But basically, that's when we said, hey, let's see if someone will be interested in coming on as a media partner of this and really filming this and sharing this in a big way.

01:05:15.000 And so we got to talking with Discovery.

01:05:18.000 They got on board of it.

01:05:19.000 And it was a really cool vision.

01:05:20.000 It was kind of a combined vision of theirs and ours.

01:05:22.000 Through all my other projects, I mentioned the GPS through my last, you know, Antarctica Crossing and my other previous world records before.

01:05:28.000 I always carry this GPS and share it in real time.

01:05:30.000 I have this non-profit where...

01:05:31.000 During the row there were 600,000 school kids and school curriculums we built around like ocean and environmental learning and stuff like that all incorporated into the kind of daily following along with the science and curriculum.

01:05:42.000 So I always wanted to share the projects in real time.

01:05:44.000 And so we talked to Discover and they're like, this is super cool.

01:05:47.000 Let's do three different things at once here.

01:05:49.000 So we invest in all this satellite technology with Iridium, the Iridium satellites.

01:05:53.000 And they were able to basically allow us to do social media during the time.

01:05:57.000 So if you're sitting at home on Christmas Day as we're arriving in Antarctica, like you watching me bouncing around on this rowboat, you can follow the whole thing.

01:06:03.000 And who's doing this?

01:06:04.000 The other boat?

01:06:05.000 So yeah, they have the satellites on the other boat, but I'm shooting the social media and the content on my boat.

01:06:11.000 And the other boat is powered how?

01:06:13.000 It's like a 120-foot boat with a proper engine.

01:06:17.000 Well, that's nice that they were with you, too. 1.00

01:06:19.000 So shit goes sideways. 1.00

01:06:20.000 Absolutely. 1.00

01:06:22.000 So definitely had that as the...

01:06:24.000 Why didn't you tell them to carry the food, too?

01:06:26.000 So the unsupported part of the project means the second we launched, they couldn't touch us.

01:06:31.000 If they touched us, it's catastrophic.

01:06:33.000 It's over.

01:06:33.000 That's the end of the thing.

01:06:35.000 And so my wife was on board that.

01:06:38.000 She runs all the best projects for me in the background.

01:06:40.000 So she crossed the Drake in this larger boat, which for Drake Passage standards is still a much smaller boat.

01:06:45.000 There were five guys who ran the boat and then five guys on the Discovery film crew.

01:06:50.000 But they rigged our ocean rowboat up with all these GoPros and batteries and all this kind of stuff.

01:06:55.000 So we were completely self-sufficient on the boat itself and just had to switch out memory cards and stuff for ourselves.

01:07:01.000 But what ended up happening is there was a social media component happening live.

01:07:04.000 I think?

01:07:28.000 There's been some really cool footage of ocean rowing expeditions in the past, but to have a boat out there and to be able to shoot it from the perspective of not on the rowboat.

01:07:35.000 Sometimes on the rowboat, it's weird.

01:07:36.000 You've seen boats in really big swells, but because of the perspective on the rowboat, it's kind of moving with it.

01:07:40.000 You can't kind of dwell how big it is.

01:07:42.000 But I think there's a video, actually the last video maybe I posted on my Instagram, where you can see my boat just completely disappearing and going up and down and completely disappearing in the waves.

01:07:50.000 And they're able to shoot back and get drone footage and all this sort of stuff.

01:07:54.000 So the feature-length documentary should come out in a couple months.

01:07:56.000 It will be really cool on Discovery.

01:07:58.000 That's awesome.

01:08:00.000 It's just a crazy thing that you've done, and it begs the question.

01:08:05.000 When you do crazy things, like, does this change you as a person?

01:08:11.000 Walking across Antarctica is one.

01:08:14.000 Rowing across the Drake stretch, is it what it's called?

01:08:17.000 Drake Passage.

01:08:18.000 Drake Passage is another.

01:08:19.000 Is this changing you as a person?

01:08:23.000 Because these are experiences where you told someone, hey, you're going to sleep 90 minutes at a clip, and then you're going to row for 90 minutes, and you're going to poop into a bucket, and you're going to sleep like a sardine with a bunch of other dudes on this boat.

01:08:36.000 You're not going to sleep much.

01:08:37.000 You're probably going to hallucinate.

01:08:39.000 Sometimes you're going to row in the dark.

01:08:41.000 Sing songs.

01:08:42.000 Yeah.

01:08:43.000 You'll get through it, though.

01:08:44.000 A couple weeks later, you'll be done.

01:08:45.000 Yeah.

01:08:46.000 Like, these are weird things that you're doing that's sort of changing.

01:08:51.000 Your personal life experiences are so much more extreme than the average person's.

01:08:56.000 Yeah, 100%.

01:08:57.000 I mean, you know, one of my reasons for doing this, for sure, is to test the limits of my own potential and grow.

01:09:03.000 I'm not doing them just so that I can be the exact same person on the other side of Antarctica or the other side of Drake Passage.

01:09:09.000 It's to take that learning.

01:09:10.000 Right.

01:09:11.000 I've been asked a similar question, I guess, before.

01:09:14.000 My answer, or the way that I think about it, is I've started to think about life and the totality of life experience between, say, a numerical 1 in 10. 1 being...

01:09:27.000 The worst day of your life and 10 being the best day of your life.

01:09:31.000 And, you know, one might be, you know, a day that a family member passes away or one might be being wet and cold and freezing in an ocean rowboat, you know, spooning with this other guy and, you know, been shit in a bucket and being exhausted and tired, you know, like just like rough moments in your life, right?

01:09:45.000 And 10 is this hedonistic joy, the most pleasure-filled day ever, just happy, joyful, maybe you've succeeded in something you've accomplished, like all this kind of stuff.

01:09:53.000 And as I've kind of looked around at the world, people say, what are you afraid of?

01:09:58.000 You must not be afraid of being alone or you must not be afraid of, you know, these hard challenges and stuff like that.

01:10:02.000 I'm like, well, maybe not.

01:10:03.000 But what I'm really afraid of is actually living a life range bound between four and six.

01:10:09.000 I think too often people, you know, the typical life experience, unfortunately, because we have some creature comforts, particularly in the Western world, where, you know, you can live a life just stuck between four and six.

01:10:20.000 So maybe the happiest day of your year or your week, it's like the Super Bowl and your team wins the Super Bowl and you crush a couple beers with your buddy and you high five and you're like, oh, that was awesome.

01:10:28.000 Like, that was cool.

01:10:29.000 But it's not 10. I mean, it's a six.

01:10:30.000 And then like maybe the worst day of your week, it's like a Monday and your boss yells at you or something like that.

01:10:35.000 And you're just like, you're like, oh man, like, That's kind of a bummer, but you know what? 0.92

01:10:38.000 I don't really give a shit about my job anyways, so I'm not really that bummed about it. 0.92

01:10:41.000 It just is. 0.95

01:10:42.000 I'm just kind of in this life of quiet desperation in the middle.

01:10:46.000 And I think a lot of that has to do with because we're hedging or we're afraid of the ones.

01:10:50.000 We're just like, I don't want to experience a one.

01:10:52.000 I don't want to experience discomfort.

01:10:53.000 I don't want to experience pain.

01:10:55.000 Anything to do that.

01:10:56.000 But what I've realized, I think of it like kind of a pendulum, like swinging the totality of life experience.

01:11:00.000 Like, to get to the tens, you also need to embrace the ones.

01:11:05.000 Like, the totality of life and the experience, it's not, I'm not experiencing these high highs or these hedonistic joys or these beautiful flow states or things like that, you know, in spite of the ones, in spite of the challenge, but it's because of them.

01:11:19.000 Yeah.

01:11:19.000 By pulling my sled, you know, 53 days, on my 53rd day of pulling my sled across Antarctica, I get there, my hips are poking out, my ribs are sticking out, I'm exhausted.

01:11:29.000 I can barely pick my duffel bag up to put it in my sled.

01:11:31.000 My body's completely compromised.

01:11:33.000 I'm exhausted.

01:11:34.000 But then I tap into the deepest flow state of my entire life.

01:11:38.000 I find this place in my mind, in my body, in my soul, and, you know, I push 32 hours without stopping to the finish line.

01:11:46.000 And I wouldn't have gotten there had I not pushed myself, had I not, you know, gone through this difficulty.

01:11:51.000 You know, I like to say that, you know, pain is mandatory.

01:11:54.000 These challenges are painful, straight up.

01:11:56.000 Pain is mandatory.

01:11:57.000 Make no mistake about this.

01:11:58.000 The obvious things I'm doing are painful, they're hard, whatever.

01:12:01.000 But the suffering part is optional.

01:12:03.000 Yeah.

01:12:04.000 You know, you don't have to be in these moments so wanting to be like, oh my god, this is horrible, I'm in this, and why did I get my stuff out there, this is terrible, blah, blah, blah, blah, and go down this path.

01:12:11.000 You're like, I'm doing this because when I step outside of my comfort zone, I grow.

01:12:15.000 And as I grow, I can share that with other people and hopefully have that ripple effect of positivity and inspiration that's lasting in the world for others as well.

01:12:23.000 Yeah, you mentioned one of my favorite quotes ever, the Thoreau quote, most men live lives of quiet desperation.

01:12:29.000 I love that, yeah. 0.98

01:12:29.000 That's a great fucking quote and so damn true. 0.98

01:12:32.000 I think you're right. 0.99

01:12:33.000 I think you really need very difficult things in your life in order to appreciate real comfort and relaxation.

01:12:40.000 Absolutely.

01:12:40.000 I don't think you hit it if your whole life is just soft cushions and everything's made out of velour and people are feeding you grapes.

01:12:47.000 I think you live like an asshole. 1.00

01:12:49.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:12:49.000 I think... 1.00

01:12:50.000 We don't like that because suffering is hard.

01:12:55.000 It feels uncomfortable.

01:12:56.000 But you don't realize that unless you suffer, you don't appreciate calm.

01:13:02.000 You don't appreciate peace.

01:13:03.000 I think there's just far too many people out there seeking comfort.

01:13:07.000 I agree with that.

01:13:08.000 And I think that it's funny because people are going towards that.

01:13:10.000 They're hedging against discomfort.

01:13:12.000 Like, okay, how to make this as comfortable as possible?

01:13:14.000 And then they sit there and they're like, why am I unsatisfied?

01:13:16.000 Why am I not happy?

01:13:17.000 And it's like, because you're hedging against discomfort.

01:13:21.000 Because you're trying to make, like you said, it's poor education, really.

01:13:24.000 People are not educated on what it takes in order to be fulfilled in life.

01:13:28.000 The idea is that material possessions or some modicum of success is the goal.

01:13:33.000 It's not.

01:13:34.000 You know, difficult tasks is what make you do something that's hard to do.

01:13:40.000 Do something that's interesting.

01:13:42.000 Do something that's complicated and intricate.

01:13:44.000 Do something that requires you to stretch your boundaries.

01:13:47.000 Absolutely.

01:13:47.000 So that's why I'm asking you because you're stretching your boundaries into some weird life, you know, death-defying sort of thing.

01:13:56.000 You've done two of these so far.

01:13:57.000 Like, what is next?

01:13:58.000 Are you going to do ultramarathons?

01:14:00.000 Are you going to try to climb mountains?

01:14:02.000 Like, what are you going to do?

01:14:03.000 I know you got something going on.

01:14:05.000 I did a big mountaineering project before any of this.

01:14:08.000 For these last two projects, I did something called the Explorers Grand Slam.

01:14:12.000 So I climbed the tallest mountain on each of the seven continents and went to the North and South Pole for the last degree of latitude, faster than anyone's done that.

01:14:18.000 So I was 139 days back in 2016. So Everest, Danali, Kilimanjaro, etc., back to back.

01:14:23.000 The next actual physical project that I have, it's not some world record-breaking thing or anything, but my wife, so one of the things that we do, we have this non-profit, as I mentioned, and love speaking to young people, kind of opening their minds to the outdoors and being stewards of the land and really Inspiring young people to think about,

01:14:40.000 you know, doing hard things and testing themselves.

01:14:43.000 It doesn't have to be in the outdoors at all.

01:14:45.000 It could be anything, music, art, culture, whatever it is, but to aim high in their life.

01:14:48.000 And one question we started asking young people was this question, which is, what's your Everest?

01:14:53.000 You know, it's a really obvious metaphor for kids.

01:14:55.000 It's like, you know, what's your big goal?

01:14:56.000 You know, what is your Everest?

01:14:58.000 And kids are amazing.

01:14:59.000 In a gymnasium, I get, you know, kids raising their hand going, you know, my Everest would be the first person in my family to graduate from college or, you know, whatever amazing things kids, you know, dream of.

01:15:06.000 And help facilitate them towards those goals.

01:15:09.000 But about a year ago now, my wife, who's not, you know, didn't grow up, you know, climbing mountains, didn't grow up as an avid athlete or anything.

01:15:18.000 She's been wildly supportive of the work we've done.

01:15:20.000 A lot of the book is really about our love story and building these projects together.

01:15:23.000 But she looks at me and she goes, Colin, my Mount Everest is now to climb Mount Everest.

01:15:29.000 And so, we are going back in April.

01:15:32.000 I've climbed Mount Everest once before from the Nepalese side, but we're going to go back and climb Everest.

01:15:36.000 We'll be there in April, May of this year, so in a couple of months, to climb Mount Everest from the north side.

01:15:42.000 And really, for me, that's to be a support, a facilitator of her goal.

01:15:48.000 So, the next thing I'm doing kind of in the athletic or outdoor space is actually to support Jenna in climbing Kudanku.

01:15:54.000 Literally, her Mount Everest being Mount Everest.

01:15:57.000 And it's really cool to see her, you know, just someone so close to me, commit to a goal.

01:16:01.000 It's an audacious goal for her.

01:16:03.000 For her back, I mean, she's amazing.

01:16:04.000 She's strong.

01:16:04.000 She's fit.

01:16:05.000 She's trained.

01:16:06.000 She's ready.

01:16:06.000 But like, just like six months ago, I never rode a boat.

01:16:09.000 You know, a year ago, yeah, she's climbed some big mountains.

01:16:11.000 But to say, hey, I want to climb Mount Everest was a massive goal for her.

01:16:14.000 Do you think you're going to do stuff together?

01:16:15.000 Like do some death-defying thing together? 1.00

01:16:18.000 Are you going to get her addicted to this shit now? 1.00

01:16:20.000 You know, I think, we'll see. 0.99

01:16:21.000 I think for her, this, I don't want to say it's one and done, but I'm sure that, you know, I don't think she has the huge desire to keep doing these types of things.

01:16:29.000 I think the next journey for both of us probably after that is a parenthood, having kids.

01:16:33.000 Yeah, that's a journey.

01:16:34.000 That's a whole other journey.

01:16:36.000 Everest seems very commercialized now.

01:16:39.000 I watched some of the footage of the giant line of people trying to summit.

01:16:45.000 It's a weird thing now.

01:16:47.000 Yeah, so that's from the south side.

01:16:48.000 That's the side that I climbed in 2016 from Nepal.

01:16:51.000 That photograph was taken from that.

01:16:52.000 What a wild and bizarre thing that was, to say the least.

01:16:56.000 That's strange.

01:16:56.000 Traffic jam.

01:16:57.000 Yeah.

01:16:57.000 So on the north side, there's less crowds, what we'd be climbing from.

01:17:01.000 But also that day, I mean, look, I don't have the answer to the problem.

01:17:06.000 That certainly was a problematic thing that happened up there.

01:17:08.000 It's kind of a weird, perfect storm a little bit where it was actually really stormy for a while and then people got delayed and the ropes were delayed getting in and all of a sudden there's one good day and everyone goes at the same time.

01:17:18.000 Yeah.

01:17:18.000 Again, I don't know what the solution is, but everyone going up at the same time on the same day on one day in May is obviously clearly based on that picture.

01:17:25.000 Did anybody die that day?

01:17:26.000 Yeah, people did die that day.

01:17:28.000 I don't know the exact count, but people did die that day because they got stuck out there and couldn't move one way or the other.

01:17:34.000 When I was climbing in 2016, it was actually a somewhat crowded day.

01:17:39.000 Nothing like that photo, but it was a more crowded day.

01:17:43.000 I was climbing with a Sherpa by the name of Pasang Bode, an incredibly strong guy.

01:17:47.000 When we summited together, it was his seventh time on the summit.

01:17:49.000 Just an absolute legend.

01:17:51.000 And him and I talked about it, and we were behind all these people.

01:17:54.000 And we actually made the decision.

01:17:56.000 He said, we've got to weigh the kind of pros and cons here.

01:17:59.000 If we stay behind people, you're moving as slow as the slowest person in this line.

01:18:03.000 And it's just like you've seen those photos.

01:18:04.000 It's just not a great situation.

01:18:05.000 It's cold.

01:18:06.000 You can get frostbite and all that kind of stuff.

01:18:08.000 And so we actually made the choice to unclip people From the ropes, the fixed rope there on the first half of the summit day, all the way up to a section called the balcony, we actually climbed unroped, but beside the people, because we actually made the call that we said, you know, actually climbing unroped of this section felt safer,

01:18:25.000 you know, risking a slip or a bad fall with no ropes felt safer than being stuck behind some other people.

01:18:31.000 And then eventually it did get too stape and too falling off.

01:18:34.000 Yeah, that's the photo that Nims Dye took.

01:18:36.000 That's a crazy picture.

01:18:38.000 I never saw anything like that.

01:18:40.000 And that's, I mean, that's definitely the exception, not the rule on Everest.

01:18:44.000 But the fact that exists is just horrible.

01:18:46.000 I mean, there's horrible, you know, there's nothing good to say about that other than it's just, it's tragic for sure.

01:18:52.000 So, you know, I think that, again, I don't know what the solution is.

01:18:56.000 I'm proud of Jenna for setting this goal.

01:18:58.000 And, you know, I think that people should, you know, set that goal.

01:19:00.000 I think people...

01:19:01.000 If that's what they want to do, great.

01:19:02.000 If they want to climb mountains, if they want to do anything, they don't want to stop people from doing that.

01:19:06.000 But certainly a situation like that where people are stuck on ropes and dying in a situation where that shouldn't happen like that is a terrible thing.

01:19:13.000 So this book, The Impossible First, it's out now.

01:19:17.000 People can go get it, right?

01:19:18.000 Yeah, it's out now.

01:19:19.000 It came out a month ago.

01:19:21.000 Are you going to write a book about your rowboat experience as well?

01:19:23.000 Do you think I should?

01:19:24.000 Why not? 1.00

01:19:25.000 Fuck it. 1.00

01:19:25.000 The book, it's also an audio book, so if you don't like reading and you like listening instead, you got the audio book. 1.00

01:19:30.000 I narrated it myself.

01:19:31.000 That's good.

01:19:31.000 Yeah, I narrated it myself.

01:19:33.000 It's out.

01:19:33.000 It came out a month ago.

01:19:34.000 Just hit the New York Times bestsellers list.

01:19:36.000 Beautiful.

01:19:37.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:19:38.000 Well, congratulations.

01:19:40.000 Don't die. 0.96

01:19:41.000 Come back again next time you do something else crazy. 0.97

01:19:43.000 Yeah, you got it, man.

01:19:44.000 What have you talked about?

01:19:46.000 Good?

01:19:46.000 No?

01:19:47.000 Jamie looked over at me like something's going on.

01:19:49.000 So, The Impossible First.

01:19:50.000 It's out right now.

01:19:52.000 Go get it, folks.

01:19:53.000 Thanks, Colin.

01:19:54.000 Yeah, appreciate it.

01:19:54.000 Thanks very much, man.

01:19:55.000 Thank you.

The Joe Rogan Experience - February 20, 2020

Joe Rogan Experience #1429 - Colin O'Brady

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