How Infinite Love Fuels Human Potential: Colin O'Brady | Rich Roll Podcast

great to see you again we're here for round three so excited that they might be round four is it for waiting one two three is it I'm honored four Wow so I told you this beforehand but I woke up this morning and thought you know Colin's been on a bunch of times we never run out of things to say you're such a great guest it's gonna be awesome no matter what but you're always so quick to talk about Jenna and what an integral amazing part she you know she plays in this whole thing as your partner you know in every aspect of what you do and I thought well let's let's hear from her directly so I set it up with an extra mic and had it all ready to go cuz I'm pretty sure every other time I've seen you you you guys have been together so I had no reason to think that she wouldn't be coming as I knew she came to LA yes we are pretty much always together but she hopped on a plane last night to go get our dog and bring them back to Jackson Hole so so now I feel bad that I didn't think of this a couple days ago yes I'm bummed because I think hearing from Jenna is the most important well Jenna I always have a chair for for you here and we'll see how this goes today if it goes well then or maybe I'll just bring Jenna back without you yeah I think that that will be done with you dude we've talked about a good conversation and you know if this goes well we'll just delete it and we'll just come back I did hit play today though as far as I can tell right now it's recording so that's good Congrats man so many so many things to congratulate you on the book the 12 year anniversary of surviving the burns which you just passed that date comes ago right same as the book came out this past week and also the Drake crossing which we're going to talk about as well yes that's a lot it's been a it's been a busy period of time but yeah it was a coincidental that as you know books book published on Tuesdays that's right I don't know why that's the rule but that's the way it were I didn't know that it's my first book but it turns out all books are published on Tuesday and January 14th happened to be a Tuesday this year which coincided with the of 12 year anniversary of my sex was that coincidental or when you looked at dates did you work that out with it was actually shortly coincidental we actually originally the pub date was February 4th which is the day after the Democratic primary and Iowa caucuses I thought that might not be the best day so we moved it to January 28th but then when I was in the middle of the row kind of momentum was building towards the finish line of that and the publisher decided to move it up to the 14th and Jenna said okay we could do that just so you know it's a really you know special day in Colin's life so it was actually completely coincidental but as one of my more tragic moments of my life probably the most tragic on December or January 14th it's nice to have a beautiful rebirth of creativity and art to put into the world on that day so nice to have that memory going right so a year ago around this time I bumped into you in a hotel lobby you just got back from your solo expedition across Antarctica and you were doing a little press around it you hadn't even gone home yet and now one year later you've got another crazy adventure under your belt and a book to celebrate it and I look at the Drake crossing and I'm like that's the greatest book marketing trick of all time right not only do I have a book coming out actually it's something amazing that I can tell all these media people so there you are back on the Today Show back on you know Jimmy Fallon doing the rounds the whole thing you just came from New York yes it's been certainly humbling the interest and excitement and all of this and just really grateful to be able to have this book out in the world and I'm sure we'll get into it but you know the book is called the impossible first but really my biggest return on investment for this book and I've been saying this but I really mean it which is I'm grateful people that want to hear my story about my life and as you mentioned it's really not just about mine it's about jenna's it's about overcoming obstacles its hardships it's how we built this it's our heart it's our creativity it's all this but the biggest thing I want is when people sat down this book the impossible first it's not to call me up and be like wow Colin that was so amazing across an article I want people to set this book down and go wow you did something that people said was impossible now I can go do that and take that into my own life so that's that's all man that's the beauty the poetry and the other thing how was the writing process for you man you know I people think you know you've set these World Records you walked across an article solo never rode a boat across Drake Passage but I would say writing a book may have been the hardest thing I've ever done or certainly up there it really challenged me to you know flex a different muscle in the mind the creative process and also I've been I've been journaling since I was a kid so I've been journaling you know back into my early teenage years maybe even before that so I've Holly's journals and video recordings audio recordings in my life and so it was cool and cathartic to go back through that but it also kind of brings up different things when you're writing you know like I said it's not just a memoir of this you know 54 days of crossing Antarctica but as I'm in Antarctica and I'm having all these vivid memories in my mind I kind of flashback to all these you know important moments through my life and so to sift through that and to you know decide on which ones to share and how to bring those to life and you know maybe have deeper conversations with my family and other people that experience those moments that you know my parents divorce um different things in my life ultimately I'm really proud of how it came out but it was a challenging process and a beautiful one yeah I mean that's that's what you get from most people yeah write a book I mean David Goggin said the same thing I mean it certainly was my experience writing a book yeah it's yeah and we had we we share another thing in common which is that we had the same editor yes we did oh what a guy what a guy and I say rich I'm grateful grich's names on the back of my book and wears him wait the book it hey we got you guys go grab it's in it's in the container I thought I had it setting here well one of you guys go grab it so we have a sitting out here yeah that's the most important thing my blurb on the back cover most important thing is that rich rolls name on my book but no shout out to Rick Corrigan we both worked with the same editor that you worked with many years ago to complete coincidence that's the case yeah what a guy he did a great job on my book he certainly made it a lot better and he devoted a lot of time to it yeah I think he's a really great super talented to roll up the sleeves and kind of get in there and kind of live that side by side was I'm grateful to have him and amazing that we both had him work on both of our books yeah and how's it doing I mean it came out Tuesday it's killing it on Amazon I check the numbers yeah sure you have very here's the thing about you straight up dude super friendly you know jovial guy conversational charismatic but you're a stone-cold killer oh you are man there is no way that you do what you do without having like the eyes on the prize man I appreciate I'm gonna take that as a combat was what I wanted Jenna here to talk eyes like come on tell me what it's like when you know back at home when no one's looking and you're plotting it's like this this dude is competitive well I mean yes I guess I'll miss you too take that as a compliment there is a I'll taught the book writing process is interesting and that you know as times and as you know kind of I do think that I orient towards the positive and towards the positivity and that and as we dive into the roll up the sleeves in the book I'm working with my publisher Rick and the whole Scribner team over there you know is helping me with the editing process and you know choosing the photos that we choose and all this kind of stuff and there was kind of in the work session there there would be some tensions arise not negative but just implicit you know collaboration type of tensions and a couple of times I turned them and I was like you hired you you bought this idea of a book of a guy who walked across an article by himself you did realize that there was a intense really hyper focused element I mean ever like they're like yeah I guess that makes sense right so yeah of course there is the duality of that but I think that is you had to flex a little bit here and there not flex but I just I just care I know that some people I mean I don't I can't save anyone specific but I imagine there have been books written where people haven't cared as much maybe or have said like oh I want to write this I wanted to be good or whatever but I'm doing ten of other things I'm not like hyper focus on it for me if I was ever gonna sit down and write a book I really wanted you know I cared about every word every sentence every story of your life exactly in the chronicle of your life I think also a lot of authors particularly first-time authors don't realize that they have any power in the in the conversation like well these are the publishers they know they say you should do this so I guess that's what you're supposed to do and they end up with a weird cover ya know something that doesn't work or because they didn't feel like they they could actually assert themselves and be part of that conversation of course the publisher is gonna have final approval over all of this stuff but you know I found that if you pick your battles and and you're strong about the things that are most important that you know you can have a say you should have and I think that the thing to me ultimately that I'm most proud of about this book is there it is right there there it is rituals name on the back cover of the hardcover forget about this part yeah it's just right there on the back no but the thing that I think was the most important to me in this creative process that might have been initially at odds with the publisher but I think ultimately everyone is very pleased including you know Rick and the whole team are really pleased with the outcome was on the surface it was like wow you cross an article solo there is a genre of books that are about edge of your these'd adventure memoirs and I by the way I love that genre I'm very well-read in that genre I've read voraciously and like I've read them all I love I love that Krakauer kind of hundred percent or you know in you know endurance them you know about the Shackleton book I mean there's so many in that category again I love you know touching the void or these books that Chronicle like an epic intense like thing and my book the impossible first of course is about that it uses Antarctica as this you know sort of through line of the entire chronology of the book but to me that is not the book that I wanted to write the book that I wanted to write in the last chapter of the book is titled infinite love which might not be what someone might expect out of a book about you know a male guy doing this hard thing alone in Antarctica and so there is these gritty elements and the vulnerability of the intense things that I went to but it's woven through with you know relationships there's a lot of people who have read this book who you know female audience you know we know a single mother from or ever saying like hey I don't really read the genre but this touched me because of these universal elements of love or compassion or there's a whole piece on entrepreneurship and how we actually built behind the behind the scenes built this and so to me that was a little bit at odds initially with someone saying like we wanted to write a book about a hardcore adventure and I don't think the hardcore adventurer audience will be disappointed by this book but I think there is just a much broader reach to it which was super important to me because that's the the elements the human elements that I deeply care about sharing right I mean one of the conversations that I had at length with Rick when I was working on my book something he pointed out to me that I still think about all the time is the difference between inspirational and aspirational and he you know he's like listen you know LeBron James you know Michael Jordan they're like inspirational like you can read about them you can be inspired by their example but that reader can't aspire to be that person right and he's like you're he talking to me he was like you're aspirational like you've done some really hard things but you people can see some version of their own story in your story and so the narrative really that was kind of like the architecture around wit you know that kind of informed how I tell this story and I see like what you've done is much crazier and more difficult and all these world records and all of that but there is you know with kind of overcoming the obstacles and the burn burn you know like all the things that you've gone through in your life there is a there is a threat of that I think that that makes you relatable to an average person so they they're not going to go across Antarctica but I think in reading this and you did a phenomenal job you can see you know aspects of your own self and your shortcomings and your victories in the way that you tell the story and I think that that's the launchpad from which people can find their own you know inspiration to 100% and like I say you know it's a you started off with mentioning Jenna you know I always say it's a shame that my name is the the name on the front cover of this book cause it's not just my story it's my story it's Jenna story it's a story of my family it's you know the ups and downs of you know divorce and our family but ultimately this amicable crazy Ohana loving family but you know from the outside potentially broken look you know into that and there's a lot of different elements that are just were important for me to share which is just kind of my truth in my journey and hopefully that connects with people in a way even if it's not direct to like I said the walk if you want to walk Christ article by yourself I highly recommend it I have gotten a lot of tips and advice I'd love to love to see this is not on how-to there's a lot of how I'm crossing in America and you know you talk about like the creative process a little bit we've been talking about and one of the concepts that we talked about in there is this idea of you know Jenna and I sitting down with the whiteboard you know mapping out our idea and we would talk about in the book as from whiteboard into reality and one of the questions I've got from so many people including you know people who have reached out from hearing me on this podcast it says like I have a big idea I want to do this incredible thing I want to run across America or I want to you know could be anything I wanted to take a trip around the world with my best friend or something like that and I get I do get this how-to question which is like so how did you do it were you just born with the trust-fund you have like a ton of money and you can just do whatever you want you know I'm like you know the quote unquote real job and in this book and I do my best to answer those people's questions I love when people write reach out and I respond as many people as I possibly can but in this book we dive in this process of Jenna and I literally you know bring you to this room and so you know one-bedroom apartment we've got a whiteboard on the wall we're writing our ideas don't want to set a world record want to start a non-profit and inspire kids like you know want to reach people in this way this and then the bare bones facts come down it's like but you need a few hundred thousand dollars to do that how do you even start a non-profit all this red tape or whatever and the book also brings you through pieces of that journey of us you know taking our idea from the whiteboard and the struggles and the challenges and the thousand doors that slam in our face of people saying you're not going to do this in our interior dog a lot dialogue of us doubting ourselves and ultimately being able to come together with her and I and this sort of just perseverance through a not just the Antarctica crossing itself but the perseverance of actually taking an idea into action and that's the piece but I do think as many as others but certainly one of the pieces that I think connects widely in that I don't care who you are you're listening this I know you have a big idea inside of you I know you have your own impossible for something you want to achieve something that's out there but maybe in the back of your mind you're thinking oh I don't know maybe I'm not the right person for it if I listened to the first 999 people that told me that too we wouldn't be sitting here having this conversation and the book kind of brings through that process and like I said hopefully someone sets the book down and goes you know what I'm gonna actually go after that impossible first now cuz I believe I can do it but doing it through storytelling not through here's the 10 steps no it's like it's like this is how we let me walk you through like the nonlinear inelegant you know two steps forward five steps backwards you know the book is not a book it is a memoir written in prose and storytelling the entire time but can read between the lines of just our story and hopefully people take inspiration from it like I said it was humbling process to be act asked to write a book and I'm grateful to be able to share it with the world and hopefully it has well received and now it's in the world it's in the world just like that I was watching The Today Show and a clip that you shared after doing your interview you're outside and you're signing books and you're kind of like shaking hands with the people you know the people that kind of congregate outside the show and I was like wow that's so crazy I was just thinking it was only a year ago when I ran into you in New York and you were taking meetings on the book like it wasn't that long ago and like look what you've done in a year it was real make that happen it was it's crazy I know you're interviewing me but I actually would like to interview you for a sec when we were so you said so rich and I we've been friends for several years now but we coincidentally you were in New York City I was in New York City when I got back from my Nordica right you had texted me and said hey congratulations this seer in New York you probably slam but where are you we text each other we realize we're actually in the same boat we run into each other and elevator coming down but then the what was amazing is a group of my friends had asked to kind of come together and kind of hear the story after the press the media it was not like a press event it's just like my friends in the townhouse apartment kind of a fireside chat totally QA before I had done a bunch of interviews I've been asked about the story a million times and you came that night and that was first of all just really special to me that you came and you know sat there with my you know group of close friends and I was just it's one thing to talk to a roomful of strangers that do a lot in my public speaking but there's something about the intimacy of the actual people in your close community who you have deep connections with asking questions there's a first to me there's an added level of vulnerability to that and a question I guess have for you since I'm interviewing you now for ten minutes yeah I'm only pretty so far yeah which is I'm just curious for me the anchor point the anchor point for me writing this book actually was writing that I did myself and sure knowing that I did in the immediate aftermath so before I even left Antarctica and I'll Culp's it in through that first week or so in New York not to say that my brain or anything was like polluted from the authenticity of the experience but as you know with many things you've done in your life like you get a little bit further away from me and so I kept coming back to come of those anchors and particularly some of the writing that I did just myself and my journal alone on the ice before I even got picked up and flown away but I reflect on that moment that room that you happen to actually be sitting in as one of the I guess really pure moments of that entire experience for me to be able to sit there and share in the way I did and not that I don't think it's pure now but there was just something about I guess that it was just I was still hadn't slept in my own bright I mean it was a wild moment I have a vivid memory of that that evening and you know a couple things first of all yeah you it was literally right after you completed this so been alone New York City exactly to New York City you hadn't even gone home yet you still had all your gear and and yeah so I show up at this townhouse and I think these were people that you had gone to Israel with yes I'm from the reality community and Israel and other things yeah and so this small group of people gathered around you and you began to share your story and my recollection of that was that I was so impressed with how how much command you had over the story already like it it just happened but you rifled out you were telling these stories and you were kind of relating the experience but you've had such a command over what was important about it to convey with everybody else and I've seen you give your keynote that you go around and do frequently now in the wake of that and it's not that different than what you delivered on that night it's pretty much the same thing yeah so I remember thinking like wow he already has a grip I'm like how to tell this not only used to do it like he already knows how to tell the story like sometimes it takes a while for you to figure out like okay what is it about this that people are interested in and you got to have to play around with it in front of a live audience to figure out what those important things are and the more you tell it the more you the more it starts to inform you about what's what's interesting and what's not interested so I have the piece of writing that I was referring to I go a little bit deeper their thing it's actually pretty interesting ten years ago it's not something I really understood I've ever talked about this publicly but ten years ago buddy of mine named named Kip 2008 was living in Chicago at the time he wrote a handwritten letter to seven guys from his life he was at the time I was in my early 20s and he was about ten years older than me so he's in his early 30s around the same age that I'm 34 now I might have been a little younger than 31 32 probably and he writes a letter it's a seven of his friends handwritten letter and he says hey what you each of you don't you don't all know each other but each of you are a really close person from my life of a different phase of my life it was like a college roommate it was like the guy he sat next to at his first job I has a really new friend of his who just moved to Portland at the time and like we had become fast friends only there about six months and there was seven of these guys and he said but as we spread apart in our lives and we start having kids and get married and go these other places of our life I realize we're gonna see each other less and I'm afraid I'm gonna lose touch with some of you but I love you dearly so I'm gonna write you a handwritten letter about what's going on in my life at the very end of the letter he sent and I'm actually getting goosebumps telling the story cuz it's nice no story I've ever told ya he writes a handwritten letter note at the bottom he goes if anybody wants to send a letter to the rest of the other guys here's everyone else's address you don't know each other but if you want to send it just out in the world send it here's a CD to his other for his other friends that these people don't necessarily know don't necessarily everyone like maybe knew one of the other people because they're his group of friends so maybe you've met a friend of a friend but they're spread out across the country I'm living Chicago at the time not near any of these people I only knew Kip and one of the other guys and I was like this is a cool idea and so the next month I and this a handwritten letter put a CD in the mail of the music I listen his dates historic it was actually a burned CD yeah I didn't send like a Spotify playlist or something and I send it back out to these guys what ends up happening is every single month one of these guys writes back a letter and it ends up forming into this group it's been through a few phases but it's this group that we now call the fellas and what happened is we added a few couple a few other people over time and it's a locked-in group but I honestly highly recommend anyone doing this because it's been one of those meaningful things my life and I'll bring this back to why I'm telling the story it's just a random tangent but is that there's 12 of us guys in this group the fellows and a lot not everyone has even met everyone although we do try to get together once in a while but once per month we each have a month now cuz there's 12 of us my month is always December which is why it's pertinent to the story and we've made a lifelong commitment to one another the lifelong commitment is we are going to each share we've digitized it it used to be handwritten but we have we have a locked online forum blog you can't see it but we have password to sign in and we each send once per month in a life update or a poem or just something about our life with the idea being that over the course of a full lifetime commitment of sharing vulnerably in kind of a men's group format that this you know pieces of our life will form this long-form tapestry as we go through life together and now it's been 12 years and soybeans people will get married have their first child you know career ups and down success heartbreak you know losing parents you know people getting sick whatever that is or just joyful celebration sometimes you know some will just write for the month like yo I've been like really into cooking and these are the five recipes that I'm cooking it's not always like this you know one intense thing but my month was December and I finished my own article crossing that I wrote the book about on December 26 so the day after Christmas and I'm sitting alone in my tent for a few days waiting to congratulate Lew Rudd on his crossing as well as waiting to be picked up in the airplane and I sit down there and I realized it's my month for the fellows post and I've always been it's a super vulnerable forum to be able to share openly with this group of guys and so I sit there and I write this piece that says the six things I learned the most about the most important six things that I learned about in Antarctica and the top of lungs I mentioned it our before was infinite love this connection to this resident resident resident resident energy that I experienced out there and this peak experience of just infinite love and compassion and empathy and joy and this flow state that I experienced and the next was the importance of Jenna in my life the next was the importance of family and I was so grateful to this forum that I had with these guys because although I've been journaling avidly throughout my life it was just like it happened to be it was my month and it was the due day and I'm really big on not missing deadlines and so I sat in my tent and wrote my vulnerable fellows post out to this other group of 11 guys a 12 of us total and that piece of writing although it's not explicitly in the book actually formed the bedrock of what I wrote this book about because it was just my truth and the purity of that moment and the experience that you and I had together in that townhouse just you know a week later or whatever it was and the stories I was tell not I didn't think I'd put the dots together at the time but the stories you told me heard me tell vulnerably were derivative of taking that moment to actually kind of I don't know sit with it and think about it and write so distilling out you know what was most important yeah and what's beautiful about it for me was that I guess why it's a sacred piece of writing for me that ultimately poured my heart and soul into the book itself was that the forum the format of the fellows is this sacred space where none of the writing it's not narrative it's not like let me show you the highlight reel of my life it's not it's not necessary implicitly bad or good but it's raw like the point of the fellows and what Kipp did when he sent this letter out to all of us in 2008 was unknowingly he opened up this space and a lot of these guys aren't guys that are you know maybe you know in men's groups or doing men's works are doing ceremony or stuff like this you know there's a pretty like you know normal cross-section of you know amazing human beings but you know as you know as men and in our culture often times pretty gardened and it's become this really steak and se sacred space and the post are never shared it's not like anyone could ever see it so I know that the writing that I put down there was just coming was pouring out of my heart with purity and it was so important for me as we talked about the editors and different people in the room or other people sharing ideas I think your book might should be about this or that or the other thing to have this anchor point to go I wrote this down and the pureness and the authenticity of this experience and I want to make sure that the end product which I'm proud it does is reflective of those emotions that that those themes are what infused this and breathe life into the narrative yeah absolutely that's beautiful man I love that that's a very like rare thing to be able to maintain that level of connection especially its guy and it's beautiful it's like it kind of developed organically and then there was kind of a line in the sand moment or not in a bad way if it was just like if you're in you're in this is a life like an explicit right this is a commitment anybody like mr. macho or like you know people now you're out no one's ever missed it the from the first year one guy felt the commitment was too much and bad and rightfully so just said you know this isn't for me and and the 12 kind of callous won't we've had the 12 locked in around it it's been we've been there the whole time on this journey together and it's it's funny because we're 12 years into this kind of art piece or this project together and it's a really I'm an impatient person as you can see I wrote a book in a there's a calendar you're like I've gotta get this out I got to get this down on paper but for me it's actually one beautiful things in my life to go like oh we're twelve years in this project and like we're just getting started like I pictured these moments sitting around with these guys decades from now and you know readin posts from the the go the good old ought member back in 2009 when you wrote this or that you know and it's 20 50 or whatever if we're fortunate to continue to live healthy lives it's the private digital forum version of Richard Linklater's Brotherhood I thought you were gonna tell me that all 12 dudes showed up at that town house no no none of them they're in it and no I've you know I've I've I've been in person with all of them the twelve of us actually heard not brother the the 12 of us have actually never even been all in one place together think eight or nine is the most we've had we try to get together every year every other cup here but it really is a more than anything a kind of a writing Club and of course we're in touch but it is it's a beautiful thing it's a beautiful thing in anyways I would would love anyone to a copy the formax it's been an amazing experience in my life at school yeah well I would say that's one of at least three Ohana's that you know yeah you're a hot Ohana your family family you alluded to earlier I would consider that a certain kind of Ohana yeah and then we have this other Ohana that likes to be rowed across stormy waters right so how does this hold Drake Passage let's break this down how does this whole how does this whole thing come together yeah so the project that I just completed Christmas Day of this past year so a few weeks ago really not even a month ago it's just coincident that the possible first solo crossing misprint on December 26 and then this Drake row would happen 364 days later we finished on that but the objective was as a team to see if we could be the first team to row a boat across Drake Passage so that's from the southern tip of South America starting at Cape Horn in a tiny little rowboat so no motor no say oh nothing 29 foot Robo about 29 feet long I mean 460 rowboat that's pretty big because you think of a rowboat you know like a dude and a lake it's not like a seafaring vessel no no no you look at that you're like I don't want to see 40-foot swells in that thing let me tell you I did see 40-foot swells man it was pretty freaking scary but the that was the objectives and then to row that boat all the way to the Antarctic Peninsula which is a cross Drake Passage roughly you know six seven hundred miles and Drake Passage is known as kind of the most ferocious waterway in the world because it's the convergence of the Atlantic the Pacific and the southern ocean all kind of get funneled together through this Drake Passage and as of course as you get close to an article you're looking at icebergs you're looking at you know huge swells you know freezing cold water one degree Celsius or 333 Fahrenheit I mean it's literally close to us for you as you can get and the the goal kind of came together so the the project itself had been kind of a little bit in the dreaming for a long time by this guy named fian Paul who is pretty like your captain yeah so he's no it is it's worthy of noting that I have never wrote about anywhere in my life listen I just interject one thing here like when you were back in Portland like training with your trainer yes like McAskill you're doing these crazy exercises you kind of put it out on social media like guess I'm getting ready for a big expedition I'm gonna let you know in t-minus five days or whatever and you'd be doing me and you're like what do you think it is people are saying crazy stuff but I was like there's a lot of core going on here there seems to be like a lot of lat work I'm like this is this definitely involved some kind of water yeah you know like cold water yes I think I said you were gonna win sir you know yeah the Arctic Circle or something yeah I was pretty you were pretty close people are guessing water that's one of the funniest guest so I said I'm gonna give someone an emoji trophy on the comments of who gets the funniest one and one kid said you're gonna try to eat at every single Waffle House in the course of a month which for those of you on the west coast maybe don't know it but it's the you know diner chain and the South East even the southeast ever you seen Waffle House and the funniest thing I saw I posted that on social I said I was like winner that's the most hilarious one maybe I should take that into consideration just kind of joking around day later my phone rings random phone number answer the phone we have a thousand or 1100 different restaurants are you interested actually trying like maybe the next sex yeah I'm focused on this roaming project right now it's hilarious but but why this like why why did you have your sights set on that so a couple of reasons one was I I've always been fascinated by the ocean you and I both share the love of the water we both collegiate swimmers and my dad has been living in Hawaii for 20 years or so spent a lot of time in the open water coastally but I've never been in the wide open ocean never I've never known a sailboat in the open ocean certainly never been on a row and so I've always just kind of been fascinated by exploring that part of the world which I haven't explored before and then also the huh sea level and then the other piece of it that was kind of interesting for me was you know I had this kind of curiosity or this thesis of saying I have you know built up these skills of people if you call them miss you know swimming and then swimming in a triathlon and took triathlon into mountaineering and mountaineering into polar travel which are all somewhat different from each other but there's somewhat of a through-line certainly cold places or you know you know Everest in crossing Antarctica or a lot closer together than crossing Antarctica is to rowing a boat across an ocean and I was wondering if I could take that kind of with this beginners mindset or a growth mindset of saying is it possible in a short period of time to on a master would be if not a fair word but to be good enough or strong enough at a new discipline in a short period of time to then take that too that's a you know highest extreme and still be successful and then also most of my other projects clearly a solo Antarctica project is this although like I said it's really a huge team including Jenna and others around me to make these things possible the athletic feat itself has always been a solo experience as with swimming it's you know your main triathlon yeah it's been a pretty individual path for me you know you swam on Stanford it's like there's you know use the Stanford swim team at the end of the day like you're lining up swimming the 200 butterfly it's you in the lane like swimming the race you know and so for me it was interesting to say like oh I wonder what it'd be like to do a true team project like that is also flexing and exercising a different muscle for me in the athletic space that of course you know one hand when I was suffering from all the solitude and Antarctica would have been like god I've been great to have some people around on the other hand of course having six different people on a tiny little rowboat in different personalities from different parts of the country whatever of course is going to come with it some implicit challenges and can we come together as a high-performing team and be able to be successful together so that was really the intrigue for me was to kind of take a lot of lessons from previous expeditions but apply it in this a new discipline of rowing something I never done the ocean something I never done in a team environment something I never done to see if we could be successful in doing that so accomplished endurance athlete certainly accomplished adventure athlete but never a rower never right and so your your your depositing yourself into this team environment where like you know there's an argument to be made that you're the weak link like you're the least experienced person in this boat right because all these other guys are like like vastly experienced ocean rowers and collegiate rowers competitive rowers yeah so it was interesting kind of I don't mean that no like like so my first four I want you to answer what you say whatever gonna say but on top of that like how are these guys you know taking you in like oh we're gonna do this like super hard thing that were potentially putting our lives on the line and we got this guy he's never wrote a bow before all that so it's interesting so the you know in the formation of the team so Sophie on Paul who was very accomplished you know the most accomplished ocean roar in the world like the the rowing version of what you did with the mountain yeah so I mean he's the rowing Grand Slam I'm not sure if that like it's kind of a new thing that he's coin he's the only person to have rowed and now set records I believe as well on every ocean so the Indian the Pacific the Atlantic the southern ocean also the Arctic Ocean so really really accomplished his Icelandic I I've been thinking about this project for quite some time looking at the Drake Passage as an objective and via another guy that had been thinking about the project with him would guy named Andrew town he we went to college together so he wrote at Yale when I swam there we didn't really know each other in college but like because we were kind of both there at the same time had some mutual friends and things like that and he had climbed the seven summit so we're kind of aware of each other had a few phone calls over the years but like wasn't like oh my buddy that I hung out with every day in college or anything like that I'm so pretty unfamiliar with him as well but he calls me up right after I get back from the solo crushing I finally did go home and sleep in my own bed just after I saw you in New York but the phone call happened like I want to say like that week or something like that and I get this phone call from Andrew town and he says like hey man I know you just got back from Antarctica it's super cool what you did there you know I'm kind of brainstorming on another expedition like wondering if you might be interested like what is he's like you know to go back to an article and a robo and I was like delete my phone I was like I'm good I'm not going back to an article but then of course I got into thinking and talking to them about it and kind of what plans they had made and what you know what was it gonna take to get there and what we quickly realized of course my interests were piqued as I thought about a little bit more but also what they had kind of come to me with it's like a really interesting idea for a project but these projects and what Jenna and I and certainly I would say what Jenna is exceptional at and the couple call their people at work with us now a guy named Blake Brinker whose extraordinary at this kind of stuff as well as problem-solving these produce expeditions and it turns out that actually the logistics to do this project are really complicated so you need this rowboat mean it's like custom-built rowboat basically that's like custom-built for all this cold weather there are ocean rowing vessels but we needed to actually have it like retrofitted for like you know if we had an iceberg and all this kind of crazy stuff the only boat we could find is in the UK that boat needs to be like imported to southern Chile via the Panama Canal but to be able to go to Antarctica in a rowboat you can't just like rock up to Antarctica in the rowboat Antarctica for good reasons and I hope it is always this way is one of the most environmentally protected if not the most environmentally protected place on the planet so one able to go there to get all this permitting Antarctica is not an autonomous you know country so you actually have to apply for one of the through the one of the treaty nations and in this case we had to have a supervising vessel which meant to have a larger vessel with us not providing us any support from the second we left shore they weren't able to give us anything or touch our string like that but they provided the overall permitting to allow us to be in Antarctica aren't Arctic waters without creating all these problems and that's like you know pun intended I guess that's the tip of the iceberg here with the complications of this and so these guys have been dreaming up this project but it was kind of like but to pull this off not only is it gonna be very expensive too challenging to pull it off but this is like a full-time effort of sort of deep deep knowledge of how to run and facilitate logistics and so myself but really more than anyone Jenna and Blake rolled up their sleeves and took kind of took the CD I said said to feeling like hey can we like run with this can we like you know sink in and dig into this and see like the feasibility of this and they you know they worked on it you know Jenna and Blake worked on it you know all year long basically every single day to pull together these logistics and filled sanitation's there's one thing I brought to the table and the other thing was as you mentioned Andrew town another guy John Peterson who also wrote it was a captain the Yale rowing team when I was there incredible athlete like just absolutely outstanding athlete collegiate athlete etc but he's a college principal like since being AK elite' or sorry high school principal mmm all right yeah school principes the one there's no plan he wasn't Oakland high school might be I can't remember it's a high school rumor so he's a school principal um incredible guy but admittedly he's like I was a captain Leo rowing team I can put some big numbers up on a rowing ugh he's like but I've never been on an expedition other than a couple hunting trips with his dad he's barely you know you know he's not been on big camping trips or big mountaineering trips or big expeditions or stuff like that so it was interest like a Henley guy right and so is interesting to say I never looked at this team of you know maybe they looked at me as the weak link maybe not I have no idea it's neither here nor there really it was that every single person is coming together it's like fian visionary of the project dreamed it up knew everything about the ocean rolling and realized that no one had ever done this like amazing and obviously when we're on the ocean he's gonna have some really important skills but didn't quite have the ability to facilitate actual logistics of pulling off this large scale of a project Jenna and I come in and understand that have a lot of relationships through been going to Antarctica several times you have to be the profile gender a lot of confidence with the discoveries of the world right 100% yeah and the discovery got behind it to do a big film project which was cool we talked about that cuz was super interesting to kind of have that experience Jenna was on the supporting or the supervising vessel throughout the journey so she actually crossed the trach as well as a whole other story about that we can get into but then then you've got these you know great rowers but without the expedition experience so it actually ended up being I got the engine this yes it was like those guys can crank but like when the swells got up to 40 feet and they're wet and cold and sleep-deprived so we were rowing 90 minutes on 90 minutes off the entire time cuz we had to keep the boat moving the entire time you know that was new water for them because these guys used to crank in on a rowboat for five minutes or something like that and that's like a max effort so it was really cool too I mean it was challenging of course but ultimately really cool to see everyone and cuz every single person really brought something exceptional to this project and we were definitely stronger as a collective whole than we would have been separately yeah I mean on paper you look at it and you're like this could either work really well because everyone's bringing their own unique skillset to this equation and that could make it sing and make it make the sum much greater than the sum of its parts or it could just be a total disaster like in reading about this it's like you guys didn't it's you know the press says not a single argument like how is that possible like you you're facing these crazy obstacles and these swells and everything you know that we can get into about what happened during the crossing but to be able to maintain your equanimity in your composure and to you know make sure that you're communicating effectively and all of that to like get through this that's pretty amazing yeah I mean it I mean they're definitely inevitable you're gonna have some tension points or just tense moments not in this or interpersonally but like we got out in some pretty bad storms I mean there was a couple times when the swells were 40-foot high certainly for me that was pushing the edges of my comfort zone for sure and one of the things that was interesting is that a lot of people you know the the supervising vessel that was there with the permitting and stuff and also was housing the Discovery Channel film crew that was filming the entire thing which was really cool because we were able to share this in real time in social media basically as it was happening you could tune in from you were in Australia I guess and you were like oh I'm warming the summer in Collins you know freezing wet and cold in his time though we had show text beforehand I was like have a good time man I'm gonna be I'll be tuning yeah so it was cool to be able to share that in real time but what we quickly realized is with you know some people I kind of imagined and I can maybe in the back of my mind even imagine it this way it's like oh there's this other boat there so if we capsized our flip over they can just like come easily scoop us out of the water and like I mean that's my thought that was my thought like it must give you that you could like you know if you get into real trouble like you got the boat right so that there's there's two sides of the same coin one is these guys in this boat that boat was our boat the rowboat was called Ohana which is you know but the word that's been really special and throughout my life and not my own word obviously a Hawaiian word to mean family and that was the essence of this project was the family the six of us coming together but also their boat was called the Braveheart and that was the boat that Jenna was aboard the entire time as well as the film crew and the Braveheart crew came pretty pretty obvious to me the second we got out there that yes of course in an extreme emergency we wouldn't have been alone there would have been another boat there and would have done their very best to help us they had a zodiac on board they have a life raft on board stuff like that they never touched us and never taught us any support and so we did a complete it without taking any support from them throughout the entire time but worst case scenario they would have been there however when I started looking at the mechanics when I'm in this rowboat and there's this huge boat next to me I'm going like if that boat gets anywhere near us it's way more of a disaster help like 40 foot spell it's not you can just like cruise up next returns like hey guys come aboard like you're gonna be they're gonna just get you know capsized you even more and so there was like a yes ultimately was it safer because they were there I'm sure it was but there wasn't like this easy exit strategy like we might try to like throw you something and then we'll be here and we can call in the coastguard you know whatever that is and so it was certainly been if I'm not trying to pretend like that wasn't an extra safety valve but it wasn't as simple it's like we have a crane and we can just pull your boat out if something happens in a massive storm it was like you guys are gonna be in this storm and things are gonna get crazy the boat itself was our boat was built to self right and so really our first line of defense was get inside the cabins which pretty much couldn't fit inside really only five or six of us could get inside we're like all spooning each other some funny video clips of us like basically lying on top of each other and let the boat either flip or roll or get bashed around these swells and the boat itself and we tested it beforehand actually you know hopefully comes back up upright and self right so that was a that was more or less than the first line of defense is just hang on for dear life and hope the boat comes back up right so in those 40 50 foot swell moments or days or hours when look you're not gonna be rowing through that right like you just all hunker down and you're like well just ride it out now it's gonna be down here and let it pitch us however it's gonna pitch us yeah so the a couple of things one you know I'm new to seafaring but also learned a lot through training for this project and ultimately executing it so when the swell is lined up in the right direction we actually there was a couple times when just coincidentally it was like we're basically on the southeast heading and this you know 40-plus foot swell we're going the right way charge we could go with it yeah and it was like wild it was like riding like the wildest roller coaster of all time I felt like going down Splash Mountain or something like when you're a kid you're like fine like slow like luge you can feel the wave just like you're basically essentially surfing these waves and coming up over these swells and some of the shocks that the discovery took from the other boat you would like see us up on the crest the wave and then a full mean 29 foots not huge we see a full 29 foot sailboat or rowboat completely disappear and the ocean can't see it at all and then it would come back out and the full thing disappear in your life wow that gives you a perspective on how big these swells were so that was a then ah then one of the reasons this crossing is as challenging as it is in a rowboat compared to say crossing the Atlantic or something like that would be that not that safe crossing Atlantic is easy but if you cross the Atlantic from the east to west my understanding is this well and the predominant winds or the trade winds go usually east to west across that yeah whereas in the Drake Passage the wind shifts pretty much every single day in every single different direction so there were several times when the waves would either be side to our boat which could easily roll us if we approach to the waves or completely against us and in those instances way way way too unsafe to row at all and our only choice was to but basically throw this thing off our boat called a sea anchor for those that don't know what that is because I didn't know what it is before I started rowing a boat was basically a big parachute that fills with you know sea water but it holds you directionally into the into the swell so it would actually point the bow of the boat into the swell and kind of we couldn't row at all but we would get inside these tiny little cabins and hunker down now there was three cents for a couple times yeah so there was three seats for rowing and there was three of us not rowing at any given time so six of us but alternating 90 minutes on 90 minutes off the cabins were tiny you know two people in one cabin the bow cabin and then Fiona and I were alternating in the stern cabin because that had all the navigation and the SATA and the radio and stuff like that so him and I were the people on that kind of you know him as the captain and me as the first mate you know kind of operating those controls on our you know alternating shifts and that cabin was tiny for one person now when Fiona and I had to get in there this one picture this I super strapping Icelandic dude like 6 foot 2 6 4 3 oh no he's tall he's got you know he's really wide shoulders you're like that's a guy want to help row a boat you're like that's amazing like that is not the guy that I want to cuddle up with next to in a space like the size of you know it's like 2 foot tall and like 4 foot long and we're like both in the fetal position curled up next to each other and it's not like we get in there we're like you know look for the weather report when's the way they're gonna turn uh check back in 22 hours and the boat just well why am i I'm just bashing around smashing around and he ran i Fiona and I just jammed his wedge in this little cabin I'm just hanging on for dear life you know literally cuddling each other big spoon little spoon the whole deal it was quite an adventure I'm getting claustrophobic seasick thinking about it and I want to get into like the sleep stuff and you know the you know how do you poop and all that kind of stuff everyone wants to know about but one thing I want to point out and actually didn't realize this until this morning when I was kind of looking into your expedition a little bit more in depth the day before you guys push off a Chilean c-130 disappears with 38 people on it yeah I did not know that yeah it was a really eerie and obviously going across the train yeah so we were staging our expedition in the town of Puntarenas Chile we flew down there early with you know we got our rowboat through customs there and we were doing you know packing the boat and so we all arrived to puntarenas Chile which is the same town that I actually left for to go to Antarctica the two other times I've been there for the solo crossing and the Explorer screen same projects so we stated out there partially because Jenna and I have some relationships down there that could help facilitate that built up from the year so it's made sense and also it's either that or Russia why Argentina vehicon two ports that you could imagine staging this from to get down to Cape Horn so we stayed at a puntarenas and the day that we're leaving on the brave heart so Braveheart takes us from Puntarenas and actually takes us to Cape Horn the actual starting point for the rowboat we're all aboard the Braveheart we find out about that day that we're leaving that a plane crashed in the middle of Drake Passage a c-130 as you mentioned and that plane actually had left from Puntarenas so a plane took off basically where we are flying towards Antarctica it was a Chilean military plane and crashed in the middle of Drake Passage and ultimately 38 people lost their lives which is you know terribly sad terribly tragic and then an interesting kind of chain of events unfolded from there for us which is you know after a year of Blake and Jenna filling out all this permitting you know all this requirements you know dotting the i's crossing every T super complicated process to get us to this point we're driving south on the Braveheart towards Cape Horn and Chilean military boat pulls up right beside us and you know contacts our captain asked us to pull over and they board the ship and they asked us you know what we're doing what are we doing there what's this rowboat thing you have like attached to your outside of your boat like what the heck is going on and you know we talked to them and they ultimately are like you do know about this plane that just crashed right and we're like yeah we're aware of that they're like we're not sure that we can let this project go we're gonna detain not detain you in a bad way we're like we need to divert you to our military base so that was step one then eight hours kind of out of our way to go to this town called Porto Williams where we had there's a larger military outpost there of the Chilean military and then our captain had to get off the boat and meet with the Chilean military and they're like look like all of our search and rescue is diverted towards you know doing a grid-like formation to find any remnants of the plane or survivors or any of this in the middle of Drake Passage you can understand from our point of view while we wouldn't want someone else to launch seemingly kind of dangerous expedition while their resources are dispersed a hundred percent help you and candidly obviously as disappointed as I felt like wow we planned all this stuff and now it looks like we're not going to be able to go if I'm sitting in the same shoes as the Chilean you know military guy I'm looking at this and thinking the same thing I'm thinking like we can't like why we you know allow this to go forward and then the potential for - you know gigantic disasters exactly act about just right on top of each other so we were there for a day about a day I guess it was and really a testament to the entire team you know Jenna and Blake the people who worked in the permitting forest logistics and this is they kind of they they're like okay if we're gonna let you do this we need to come on your boat and just do like a top-to-bottom survey of what you guys have going on so we're come on we want to see the full row but we want to see all of your survival suits fian had designed these custom survival suits for us that we could row and these like bright orange suits that we have these photos and ended up being amazing I'm different from the dry suits yeah yeah yeah so this is the same thing I'm talking about but usually a dry suit you won't be able to row in it was like you really kind of bulky and so he designed specialty with all of his years of ocean knowledge experience that's just special custom-built suit that allowed us to both row but have the safety of a dry suit and they were like you know the Trillium Ocho it's like okay well well you've thought that through that's interesting and then they see all our flares in our eeper band all our safety protocol and everything's registered correctly and that like you know they look up all of our resumes and they're like okay like this guy is incredible for this person's cross Antarctica you know something guys haven't even mentioned like you know Cameron Bellamy is like a world renowned you know open water swimmer you know legendary of Horsham they're cobbling okay okay like the crew is like a legitimate group of guys attempting this and then they do top to bottom on Braveheart you know all their safety protocols all this stuff and in the paperwork that we had built with them you know Jenna and them had worked really closely together and actually built this kind of dossier it was end up being like a 30 page thing of all the different safety protocols if a happens B happens if C happens that you know all these kind of things and so you know fortunately for us certainly still deeply tragic of the people who lost their life out there but they took a look at and they said you know what like you guys actually you know have every piece of paperwork you need you've got the right resume you have all the safety protocols you have the backup safety protocols you know we're gonna let you launch this boat so ultimately we were only delayed by a day but it was a very kind of you know nervous thing and also just surreal and tragically sad for the people at lost their life and the the search and rescue that was going on yes that was going on kind of all swirling around you when I was pushed off right did they recover any of the passengers or um I'm not I don't think they found any survivors unfortunately I know they did find a few pieces of the wreckage altum Utley but it was you know not that much was recovered one of the other interesting things that did happen that was you know challenging for us as they said we will let you launch this however here is this air and they gave us four weight points that basically formed a square and said this is the grid where we're looking for wreckage you notice where boats and planes are flying over and all this kind of stuff and they drew it out on the map and it's literally like the entirety of the whole center of Drake Passage so like the first Kundra dorso miles up at Cape Horn we were fine but really quickly we're gonna get into that space and they said if you want to do this you can't come into this area until we call off the search and so when we did launch we kind of had to just make the call of like hey like we're gonna row in this direction we actually changed our course on a Western heading to see if we might have to add distance to avoid this but we'd know which way the current was going to sweep we ultimately got lucky and the the current and wind pushed that grid area kind of you know further away and we were able to continue our course but even though just the first cup it's almost like um you know you like you know jump off and begin a project and you just don't know if like you know three days later yeah it's gonna happen so two things I mean first of all why would you sort of you know passing through that area be problematic for the search and rescue because they just didn't want any other traffic in there any other boats any other thing there they were trying to spot so from airplanes like oh my god what's that little thing down there is that a piece of wreckage is that a piece of the plane just to like they're like stay we probably should be letting you do this anybody's if we're gonna let you do this like totally understandable second thing just problem you know a mental perspective like alright we're getting ready to do this thing and then like this plane crash is you know and thirty AP it's missing presumably dead and you're like a day away from like do it that's and from what I understand the weather conditions were not that bad that day right it was like it was supposedly fairly clear so surprising that was some some higher winds but it was really unevenness that happen that had to rent some crazy space in your head Oh a hundred percent is anybody like hey man I don't know like I might I might be pulling out of this I mean it definitely just gave us real it gave us all pause I was and I've heard Andrew and John reflect on the moment when the Chilean military boarded us and said hey this might not go like at first and then Andrew and John were telling me afterwards I can't remember which one I think it was Andrew was telling me this and he said he was like you know really upset and bummed but he realized in his subconscious he was like kind of relieved like it kind of said been like it's good you know like and so the the captain of the brave heart after meeting with the Chilean you know was gonna come back we're having a group meal and that's when he was going to share the news and actually I had kind of readied myself given the circumstances for at best case scenario they're gonna be like maybe in a week try again and we were gonna run out it we didn't have that time because we were renting this big boat and we couldn't afford to just keep renting it indefinitely and he basically he comes in and he's like I've got good news for you we're gonna be able to go and Andrew said to me that it was that moment that he was like oh we have to go just once you once you mentally check out a little bit trying to get back into that totally an ultimate game headspace my Andrew was an absolute amazing super strong and God his mind and body right but a momentary moment of like oh oh wow this is this is real and it does I mean you know people of course in looking what I've done and you know obviously I'm not gonna sit here and say what I've done is the safest choices in all the land I try to prepare I try to plan I try to put the safety protocols in place around the things I'm doing but there's some you know implicit risk in the activities I've in part and you know after the Antarctica crossing the solo crossing you know people said to me they were like you've done this set the speed record on seven summits you've done some of these other things like you think you're good now like don't be like don't try to be the next Evel Knievel and like keep like one up in this and that's never been my desire to just like do stunts or feats or anything like that but as this was unfolding I'll be honest in my own in eärnur dialogue was like this is this a step too far like Drake Passage Robo you know this idea of doing something I've never done you know ultimately we know how it turned out it's positive is able to achieve it but you know I have moments of doubt and my internal dialogue was definitely triggered a little bit in that moment of kind of like wait a second wait a second is this madness is that when you you know turn to Jenna and say like is this are we on the right class here so Jenna said to me it might not been right in the moment but within the last you know day or so before launch there had been a lot of actual I mean there have been a lot of challenges and getting this thing to launch and just just complications just with you know the the column bars that I used in Antarctica the special bars by the way I was entirely vegan the entire row talked about it but I was I was entirely vegan the whole row the column bars which are kind of specialty bars that my sponsor standard process created for me and this time for the entire team those got stuck in Chilean customs and we couldn't get them out and like our food wasn't gonna arrive there you know a number of things happen with like packing the boat and getting the boat and logistics and people's flights delayed and like all this kind of stuff and then this plane crashes and general looks over at me and she says it's kind of this interesting moment where she's like well this is one of two things that's happening right now there are so many red flags and this is the final red flag actually telling us you know what pack it in hmm get on a plane go home go spend Christmas with the family like you know enough it's enough she goes it's either that or the eternal optimist that she is or it's a stacking of all of these obstacles overcome and this is the final one to overcome before being able to kind of be set free and do this journey and she kind of asked me which one you think it is and knowing the difference knowing the difference is is the difference between life and death honestly like that's so tricky right because it can go either way it's like look all the evidence was there the universe was trying to tell you man write it with the heat you know that volume dying all right I just crashed a plane yeah like what else do you need to know about why this is a bad idea or like hey man life is about like overcoming these obstacles when they get thrown at you and yeah can you just can you maintain that level of focus yeah yeah and I mul tomorrow that we are able to come to gather and stick together and the team on the rowboat sucked together the Braveheart team was amazing Jenna's supervising role from the Braveheart you know worked out but it was hard-earned and some of these you know circling back on the concept I said and you know whiteboard into reality or something I read out on them in the book it's amazing to talk about the epic adventure the 40-foot swells or being alone in Antarctica what it felt to be pulling a 375 pound sled you know 12 hours a day alone across Antarctica you know those are the you know edge of the seat moments here and I of course love experiencing them and I love talking about them but there's a place that's maybe a little bit less sexy between writing the idea on the whiteboard and actually executing on your dreams and it's like toiling in those moments of that grind and then not always as high-stakes as you know what we're talking about here but it's like are you willing to just keep putting your head down when you know Oh to get a chilly boat in the Chilean customs you need these 17 pieces of paperwork and this thing lot of bureaucracy no you're like what are you willing to sit there filling out a fill that out like you know like that stuff's not sexy and no one ever wants to it's not cool to talk about necessary whatever like that is the dad is the difference between dreaming up to something versus dreaming up and actually doing the thing is being able to put all of those steps together and just knocking out those little things one by one because when you look at it from 10,000 feet or somebody just randomly happened upon your Instagram stories during this it looks like oh he's some kind of you know you know Richard Branson billionaire guys got money and he's gay and he's got this boat and it you know it's really hard to to see the reality of it because the grandeur is what you're kind of smacked in the face was right right yeah and I I mean I I love storytelling just in general but I think that something I often point to is the the NBC coverage of the Olympics it's like I don't know all the sports and Olympics I love the Olympics but you may have seen in the book Pablo Morales your college teammate put a really significant role inspiring like I to me when I was a little kid but you know you turn on it's the fencing or something like that and you're like I don't know anything about this but you get this backstory of actual guy and it's his village back home training for this and all of a sudden like you're engaged in that and it's not just at least for me when I look at high performance in sports as I've gotten closer and closer and lived - at my own life as much as I loved seeing the guy sprint the hundred meter dash and win the gold medal with his hands in the air whatever I look at that and the first thing I think about is not that you know 9.6 seconds or whatever it just took him to run that race I'm like huh I wonder like what was that journey like where was the first race where was the time he broke his ankle where was when no one cared when was then he lost the race to his you know the best guy in his high school and he came back again you know what is that entire process where was the people in his life that said you can't do this you're not gonna do this those quiet moments alone full of doubt full of fear but what was it that made him get up when his alarm went off the next day at 5:00 a.m. and get out to the track because that is ultimately what is manifest in this you know 10 seconds and there is it there isn't one athlete in that situation that doesn't have an incredible story and you know that that led them to that point and NBC does an incredible job of you know finding the best of those stories telling them well and that's what that's what like lights that Olympic spirit totally you're like cuz now you under it's like I don't follow fencing but if you tell me that story like I'm all in you know like I'm a hundred percent there for that person yeah so it's so like infectious I love that stuff and I you know not not an NBC documentary by any means but certainly through the book it's like it's not just like let me talk about 54 days cross Skynyrd's let me tell you about the totality of the life and experience and the mentors and the people that you know cuz I mean I think that that's the the things I've read and the things that I watch and things that I consume if they don't have the fabric of the reality of the journey and the story then well you're not you're you're a natural storyteller and I knew that when I was in that townhouse and you had just gotten back from that experience and you told this story so well you had such a command over you know what that narrative you know was and and what was impactful about it and you've done that in the book as well and you you really do it on the daily on Instagram like you're relentless like you're always like making sure that you know you're telling a good story you know it's not just like a clip of this like there's a story that's unfolding always you know through these adventures that you're having but and I was once again like I was like is he doing this on the like how is this working there's no there's no like self-service or internet in the Drake pack you know passage yeah and you're not allowed to like do anything with the Braveheart but right so how is how did all that so it was pretty cool you know we're talking about storytelling and that's something and I quickly alluded to but I'm gonna double click on it which is I have been so inspired by other people's stories in my life people have never met but that's reading a book that's watching a film that's watching the Olympics you know whatever that is and so I've realized that one of my great passions is you know in the duality of pushing my body in these extreme environments but sharing that in a storytelling medium and now we have the ability of social media and real-time storytelling to bring people into that story while what's happening with the hope of having that ripple effect of positivity we add you know 600,000 students are enrolled in my nonprofit programs of stem curriculums and they're falling along every single day they're learning about science technology engineering math building scale models of the boat or learning about weather or climate change or the ocean temperatures Ruby on 7 - yes - Evan - and we built these curriculums but these students all of a sudden they're there their mind is lit up because like wait this is a real thing that's happening right now it's on a dusty textbook of something that happened like way back when and that's the power of storytelling or for me as a young person I mentioned Pablo Morales you know when I was seven years old the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona I was a seven year old kid didn't have much money in my family you know really kind of you know basic childhood growing up my mother was young when she had me so you know she was a young mother and we have a TV set and there's a TV set showing me the Olympics you know halfway around the world in this city called Barcelona Spain that might as well been on a different planet compared you know I never traveled and when I was a kid and I see this 100-meter butterfly and this guy win this gold medal and it sparked a fire inside of me my mom was like she just said to me you know my mom's incredible and her guide it she giving me throughout my entire life including with the burn accent which you and I have talked about in depth but you know she says to me she's not like oh that was this cool thing we watched on TV she was like that inspired you like do you want to join the local swim team like we could do that and like shouldn't you remember her saying it's 1992 what's the peak age for a swimmer in the Olympics and I was like I don't know four men maybe you know we went and looked it up and you know maybe he's 19 or 23 or 20 I'm sure okay so what Olympics might you be able to swim at is it 2008 is it 2012 like my mom walked me down the path but where I'm going with that is the storytelling the element of somebody sharing their story NBC in this case sharing Pablo Morales story with a seven-year-old boy sitting in Portland Oregon changed the entire trajectory of my life what I believed in whatever and so with my expeditions I've always done my best to share the stories in real time and with this expedition in particular as we realized the need for the supervising vessel we all of a sudden realized that we were gonna have the best capability we've ever had to tell a life story in real time and that's when this amazing partnership came to life with Discovery Channel and they said we want to shoot this long-form documentary of this thing and we can shoot it from the Braveheart we're like that's amazing but what about in addition to that we invest in the best satellite technology possible to be able to be beam social media content so as you're watching you know Instagram stories of me getting bashed around in my little cabin on Christmas Day or arriving you know penguins jumping off the side of the boat or all the things I was able to just like capture with my iPhone we could send that out or in their case they created also 14 what they called mid form episodes about five or ten-minute episodes that you can go see on YouTube or you can see the long-form documentaries not out yet and the same thing they actually had an editor on board so the guys were shooting editor on board iridium partnered with us as well as a satellite company to have like the best most powerful satellite you still can't send like a ton it's not like it's not like you could just like you know beam content like right and left is if a normal internet connection but they could get enough content out to share these like little things and it was really cool to bring that to life I mean it took having a massive partner like a discovery it took you know Iridium believing in the project it took a lot of different bigger pieces that were able to pull together but ultimately it gave hopefully the experience of like I said there's six hundred thousand students following along this visceral real experience that just people who are falling on my so Graham and things like that a way to connect with the story as its unfolding and you know my hero is an exploration are the heroes of you know a hundred years ago and they'd go away for three years you know a Shackleton or someone like that and come back and maybe have a couple really grainy images and their journals the they could have transcribed or something like that but and no telling their story at the Yale Club right exactly what is it about Yale yeah ever but the thing about the thing about now and trust me I think there's a lot of things that are negative about social media and I've you know had my addictions and vices in the world of social media and going down the rabbit hole of a phone for sure and I see the the pitfalls of it I do think to see the beauty of it I do see the beauty of you want to share stories at scale and impact people in that positive way and I know you do as well and it's a cool thing I love that it all goes back to Pablo I mean that's just that's beautiful yeah you know I remember that 100-meter butterfly race in Barcelona like I could recount every second of that I've watched it so many times and you know I was somebody who who who grew up with pictures of Pablo on my wall as a kid even though I'm older than you and then had the opportunity to to train and be a teammate of his at at Stanford and I watched somebody who you know he was the most dominant swimmer in NC to a history I think he won like he won all of his races at NC to a championship it's up maybe one like we almost had a perfect record Wow between 84 and 88 the most dominant you know American swimmer this goes into the 88 Olympic Trials with the expectation that he'll not only make the team but he's going to be the captain of the team and whether he over trained or had a bad day or whatever he shows up at an Olympic Trials and he doesn't make the team crazy it's the craziest thing right so then he goes to law school and swimming like that there's no like oh wow you're done it's like you didn't decide when the day he didn't make one or top one or two in your event her career is over yeah so he goes the law school at Cornell does two years at Cornell and then decides hey I miss my family I've got some family stuff I'm gonna go back home for a while dips his toe back in the water and it's like maybe I can swim a little bit you know start swimming a little bit without any agenda it's like I feel pretty good and decides to go for it again man against all odds makes the team in 92 and then wins the gold medal this is a guy who is whose parents were were immigrants from Cuba and whose dad like very you know salt of the earth people like the nicest people in the world and and and Pablo is one of the most humble people you'll ever meet for being such an incredibly talented you know athlete I mean when you watch him swim it's like poetry it's just it's a beautiful beautiful absolutely and when he won that gold medal and they cut to his dad in the stands it's just I can't you know I cry every time I see that I have and I mean I am sitting here as a product of the guy who could have given up in 88 who could have not gone back to swimming and literally for me never met Pablo Morales but deep deep deep gratitude for him continuing on his path and be able to shine in the entire world and for me to be able to beam that signal from the other side of you know Europe into my living room to experience that moment you know as a little kid it certainly changed my life and it's funny I didn't you know when I first picked up your book several years ago I had no idea about any of the Stanford swimmer thing but I didn't think of the the orientation and I remember there's a photo of him and you graduating from law school together something in your show then then we there's an so then I went to Cornell Law School right I was there while he was back training so like he did two years and then I show up after he stopped out right and then we did our final year to go that's what it was and so I remember when I read your book the first time opening that in fact no way ritual problem we're out like it's just crazy how all those different kind of tentacles intertwine to be clear alright just so there's no confusion when I was swimming at Stanford you know they would like skip through the coach was like alright get in the lane with Pablo you know it's like are he done I'm behind him just watching his feet get further and further ahead of me like it's not like I was going toe to toe with this guy like I could not train at his lab but you were in the same Lane which is very was and that's what I wanted that's what I asked for you know what's Pablo up to these days he he has been coach of the swim team at University of Nebraska for quite some time cool yeah that's awesome so he he graduate from law school practice law for a little bit was like this isn't for me and got the head coaching gig at Nebraska he's been there for a long time well if you ever talked to him sending my deepest love and gratitude for inspiring the seventh of myself I love ya all right how'd you poop how'd you go to the bathroom you must be reading the Instagram comments certainly most asked question I know I know the answer like you know just in case there was no toilet facilities on the boat there was no amenities really of any kind on the boat there's three seats on the boat for the rowing there's what's called the stroke seat which is by the stern cabin obvious when you row you're facing backwards the direction that you're going same as like a rowing crew boat on on wanna river i sat in the bow seat so I was sitting towards the front of the boat but the third person in the line if that makes sense next to the bow seat we had our fancy toilet literally one inch from where I was sitting the entirety of this expedition which lasted just under two weeks we had a five-gallon bucket inside that bucket was how we used the bathroom so someone would say either me if I was while I was rowing or you know the guy Cameron or Jamie who was with two other guys that I rode with they would say hey man I got to the bathroom get out of your seat I would get up I'd switch into their seat you'd take care of their business and simple as that not glamorous but and just you just bailed up the bucket out yeah be able to book it out obviously not throwing any trash into the ocean but the human waste went over into the ocean and that's kind of the standard protocol of that it's it's not a lot of people want to know that it's you know yeah we had to go to the bath how do you think it's a bucket a bucket simple as that so there was one day where one of the dudes must have been Cameron yeah it's swimming yes yes and it looked like was he not wearing a wetsuit no Cameron Bellamy is just a legendary human being you would love this guy I yeah he gosh what a guy he is South African guy was in San Francisco now he's rode for the national team of South Africa when he's I think he's 38 or something now but wanting us on early 20s so he's a really accomplished rower and then later in life you can appreciate this much later in life in his late twenties maybe early 30s he got into swimming like did wasn't a pool swimmer didn't swim and you know you know how hard it is from your trotters are people just kind of learn how to swim like later in life you don't learn well at a young age yeah it's tough it's super tough and he just got way way way into swimming and so for the last several years he's accomplished a ton in the world of ocean water swimming so he's done I hope I don't get this wrong but he's done like whatever the ocean swimming Grand Slam is so we strummed all the major channels it's called something slightly different than major big pastures the one in Japan done that crazy story of some models jellyfish stings and almost no wetsuit always no wet - in a couple of those the one I think the one between the Ireland and the UK maybe is that one I might be getting this wrong forgive me ocean swimming community for getting it not the details specific that one was like free sinkhole that's like 50 degree waters or something like that or low 50s and you know Neil wetsuit on ocean away yeah ocean swimming is is no wet suit at the Vaseline Tana Vaseline on to then what he did is he swam around the entire circumference of Barbados which no one had ever done that before and that was last year and then this year while we were training for the row he actually was a lot more focused on a swimming project that he was doing and he completed what I believe is the longest or certainly one of lungs might be the longest open-ocean swim crossing ever which was 57 hours straight from st. from Barbados to st. Lucia he originally was trying to do the cubital or to swim but permitting and with you know the stuff with Trump and the Cuban stuff just kind of fell apart and so we pivoted but it was a like a hundred and a hundred and five miles something something like that again I'm probably going through these details a little wrong but it was like exceptional and the stories he has some that obviously I wrote about this guy you know 12 hours a day for you know two weeks I heard all of his stories and cause that's an incredible guy great spirit really really warm person he's like he's got like he was telling me every 30 minutes he got so many rashes on his mouth from being in the water for so long for 50 some hours he's taking these gobs of Vaseline and he's literally putting like hand fold and fistfuls of a saline into his mouth and it would like deteriorate with the salt water and so we keep extra smeared around his beard and he would like kind of like suction it from his beard into his mouth and then get another handful of ass I mean it was like brilliant up and he finished it which is extraordinary of anything in up in the hospital for a few days just because of like the jellyfish stings and this but talk about a guy who is a mental and physical absolutely stallion so we're on sea anchor this day day five or day six or something like that one of days when we had to wade out one of the storms when the storms and the winds were against us and we're getting ready to pull up the sea anchor so the storm was finally cleared enough that we think it's we're gonna be able to row in the next couple of hours so it's not huge swells at the time but we're kind of coming off an intense storm on the rowboat and he's this renowned ocean water swimmer at this point and he was like hey Colin how cold you think the water is and I was like whoa I don't know it splashed across my face met storm last night it was like you know coldest thing ever like it's all horrible no one was like wet and cold splash in the face we're taking this on and I was like I was like I know we're not fully to Antarctica and I know they're it's you know one degree so I don't know like maybe maybe it's like 38 Fahrenheit or you know four Celsius or whatever the conversion is like something like that also kind of something stupid cold right and he's like he's like I think I'm gonna go for a swim no I was like what and he's like dude we're in the middle of a passage man like you only live once man like what am I ever gonna be back here like I love swimming like I'm gonna swimming at of course I was like I think he's serious and I was like if you're gonna do this let me grab my iphone filmed it but second of all it's like but dude think this through first because like you got to get back in the rowboat there's no like warming you up there how is he gonna warm up warm there's no this is like could jeopardise kind of all this he was like he was like dude like I've got it and I was like if you believe in yourself bro like all four I will be here cheering you on and so sure enough strips down butt-naked he puts his second as I can't he brought a swim cap and goggles which I didn't notice we must have been thinking about this pulls out his swim cap and goggles from the base of his thing the South African flag on his head goggles on nothing else completely but naked and just does a full gonna dive jumps into the ocean you know swims around he wasn't in there for a long time you know maybe 30 seconds or a minute but plenty long trust me I wasn't looking to go for a swim there and so what a legend man he swam in the boat rake passage that's been one of the episodes that discovery did I'm sure it'll be in the future like how did he well so he gets out did you get right into the dry suit like how does it sound yeah is he he must be like a big dude with a lot of he's a big dude yeah he's like 220 pounds like kind of broad you know tall he put on some weight for the rowing project specifically he's done some other rows where he's lost some weight so no he had some weight on it means strong fit guy more than anything like fat at all but I don't know man he's just a beast like he's just he just got out with like a big eyes kept smiling the entire time he just gets out like oh that was cool man like whatever is we we uh you know had a Canada goose as a sponsor so he chives in the bow cab and wraps himself and a bunch of down jackets and shippers a little bit and he's like so we rowing let's go like he's just ready to go it's a complete Stav äj-- on the other side of that your boy Andrew had a little trouble with his ankle right yeah I'm in there I think you're I think maybe thinking of Jamie yeah so oh yeah it was Jamie yeah yeah yeah so ya know he so we got these boots and none of us had ever silly thing but we actually hadn't tried them out cuz we did a test row together in Scotland for a day but it wasn't like super super was wet and rainy and Scotland always was like 55 degrees so we kind of researched the best ocean rowing or ocean boot that we could find was for like cold water sailing and we had none of us had actually ever tried them on and before this row because we just adore there's no climate to actually truly test them in and all of my mountaineering experience and things like that always I try to test my gear but this is like one piece of gear there's no like opportune time to test and there's no since no one's ever done this before I wasn't like asking the guy like so what boot did you wear when you rode a boat across Drake Passage so I got these boots and they just started digging into his ankle like super super super bad and I he never mentioned it I mean God Jamie it was amazing to be with a group of guys that actually had such an orientation towards positivity because Jamie's that right in front of me and then Cameron was written for me the three of us were on our ship and John Andrew and Fiona were on the opposite opposite shift and Jamie's that right in front of me so closest to me and didn't say anything about it laughing playing joking around whatever it's like oh and finally one point is like kind of like you know my ankle hurts my you know you know I'm like you're all right and he's like oh it just kind of feels like maybe there's a little blister or this or that finally after like ten days or something like that he finally takes off his boot and shows somebody and he was like literally like ripped off all of the skin all of everything feet have been wet and cold for so long when we were getting in the cabinet on 90-minute downtimes myself included we weren't like taking off our gear we had these like these crazy you know dry suits on we had these boots on with this so we just be soaking wet and just like lie down and try to eat something real quick and get you know get to sleep for a few minutes and so he'd been doing the same thing that any of the rest of us has but turns out I mean I don't know how he got through it but he had just ripped apart his ankle and so when he finally pulled it off it was yeah I read that I was down to the bone yeah it was it was pretty it was pretty hard to like not say anything yeah and like it wasn't like he didn't say anything but then stopped rowing or didn't say anything of this like he rode the entire time with you know a smile on his face and this I mean he is a he's an interesting lineage his grandfather actually was the first person to fly over Mount Everest in a fixed plane in like the 1930s and those photographs were actually used to help Sir Edmund Hillary on the initial climb he's from Scotland Jamie SR just interesting story with kind of exploration in general and his family lineage but but yeah somehow I mean he was just like locked in and was like oh my ankle hurts love it like me the one time I heard of it and like bro like just like a could someone help me rip 20 minutes in like this boot doesn't feel good what was the gnarliest part like was there ever a moment where you thought you were just you know over your head here literally figuratively to me there were two moments I mean there's a lot of moments but I've had to like kind of circle on you know to really kind of full-on moments one was the first like major Dorman wrote in and for me it was you know a I'd never been in the open ocean like that and all the sudden like it's three days in a three or four days I camera exact day they kind of all blend together since there's 24-hour non-stop of rowing weird sleep schedule but just massive swells kicked up like I said that feeling of like riding this rollercoaster it's like fun for a little bit and then I remember this moment so John and I John was the school principal we would switch the same seat as each other like he was always in the back seat on the opposite chef and I remember the middle of this storm and to get to my seat is like you know just like getting jostled around just like switching into my seat you think I'm that's when he could easily fall off the ball that we were clipped in with a safety line and John looks over at me and he's also you know amazing row or like I said but he's not been in a massive storm like this either and he kind of looks at me with like this death-defying look and he's like he's like how do we get out how do we make this stop you know and I was like I think we just keep rowing it was just got Moe's moments of just like inarticulate but like I think it was a the subtext was I'm afraid I think the only way to stay safe is to keep rowing or key part the boat from turning and getting rolled over in this and so that was a race you're like growing but it's it's not exactly making you go forward no and it's like building and the swells get built right so it's like oh this is getting back oh this is pretty big oh this is really big oh is it gonna keep getting bigger like this and the craziest thing happened in that moment which is ultimately kind of joyful and reflection but it was bizarre it was this Matt and storm really cloudy and you know gray and it was getting dark there's not a lot of darkness but we're a little bit further north we had about two or three hours of darkness in the first week or so and it was you know getting getting towards dark or dusk anyways and all the sudden this huge cruise ship comes like out of like a ghost ship out of this and we hear this at first we have Frakes are like oh my god it looks like they're coming like straight Boris they don't see us thankfully they actually have been tracking the project and it was a cruise ship that was like taking you know passengers to the Antarctic Peninsula and they came by to like we heard that there's these crazy knuckleheads you know rowing a boat across Drake Passage and they came to like check us out so we're in the middle of this storm kind of like hanging on for dear life John are like how do we get out of this all of a sudden there's a cruiser planes people on vacation and people are on the deck and like dressed in these all these nice coach they're just waving and they're like hey sorry I feel like I should just started crying in this boat and I'm not sure why I'm just the kind of pure like strange bizarre scared happy elated the juxtaposition it was just super weird and then the other point the other piece that for me actually was the absolute scariest part of the entire expedition was the very last day we are we're getting close to an article so there's outer islands of Antarctica actually that are off the peninsula and so about a hundred miles from our finish point we wanted to finish on the actual continent of Antarctica on the actual true landmass on the peninsula there's outer islands and so we finally approach those when we saw land it was amazing I hadn't seen land for you know 12 days or 11 days or whatever it was and was like oh my god there it is there's just you me Erica particularly I'd never seen um you know the peninsula like this and it's just you know all the sudden you've got icebergs jutting out you've got you know tons of sea life penguins you've got these huge mountains it's just like I have a dream landscape there's amazing to see that after not seeing anything for so many days and we still have a hundred miles to go so it's kind of like we're here oh we're not here because we still have taro for like a day and a half and the weather is actually looking like it might turn and all these things so we keep rowing and finally we were thin about you know remember when maybe eight hours from you know proposed that we were maybe like within 20 miles or 15 miles or something like that the finish and the weather is not great and what's happening is there's basically there's big icebergs you know there's some big massive icebergs which are a little bit easier to steer around but there's also some smaller pieces of ice and things like that and obviously we don't want to damage our boat right at the end and this is kind of one of the trickier spots so what was happening Fiona and I were alternating each other being in the stern cabin you know with the navigation we had a rudder that we could like control we could put on a GPS or we could like do it manually and so we were communicating which everyone wasn't rowing would be like okay even though our course would take us towards that iceberg turned ten degrees to the right or turn ten degrees to the left or whatever and it would kind of like could we be able to steer around it because you can't see where you're going because you're rolling backwards right and so I have been doing that and this time we were also sleep-deprived it was like 4:30 in the morning we hadn't slept in so long and I had been like trying to steer while him so I'm not sleeping during my shift cuz I'm trying to help steer then all of a sudden we start going meet Cameron and Jamie on our shift we're rolling were rolling running now we're like you know five hours away from the finish we're kind of getting pretty excited and we're kind of putting a lot of power and orders is kind of cranking on it and whatever and then all this studying we hear the alarm of the Braveheart the supervising vessel just go as loud as possible and we're like oh my god like what is that like so an emergency like on their boat and thank God like Jamie looks over his left shoulder and we're like 10 feet away from a massive iceberg and I'm talking like I mean you say the tip of the iceberg is you know like you know 90% of its underwater but even what was above water was like you know god I don't know like three four stories high and like a hundred foot wide and I can just see this whooshing current just kinda like sucked underneath it in the bow which we were jamming to Andrew and Cameron are like blissfully asur John Cameron - John and Andrew like blissfully asleep and the cabin is like we smashed into that this iceberg just gonna crash the front of our boat and like just split it in half and all of a sudden it was like we're trying to paddle reverse in the other direction so how does he come up on you so quickly though I mean I know you thought you're not you're looking backwards but like something that large it's two things we're just a little nowhere yeah so we're two things one is that Theon had fallen asleep and like again we were delirious and there's none not me pointing to blame like he had like we're gone at all like in and out of this like weird consciousness and was like I mean I'd fallen asleep for a few minutes and no looking out there and as well as you were just we're just locked in so worth going backwards and again was probably our fault as well as like not you know we had some mirrors that we actually could try to see but they were like fogged up it was just kind of a lot of things conspiring but also more than anything it would be what I would say it is so easy to let your guard down towards the end of an expedition you're like we've made it like we're in Antarctic waters whatever and a similar thing falls flat totally and the a the interesting parallel my own life I did a crossing of Greenland when I was training for the Antarctic expeditions you know month-long crossing 400 miles of Greenland and I got to what was my last day my last night I'm I go tomorrow I'm gonna complete this or I'm gonna finish this and get out of here gonna get picked up and leave I'm 27 days in and find the entire time and that night I go to bed and every single night I had been diligently pushing around to find crevasses or things like that make sure I didn't set up my tent in the wrong place wherever I go it's my last night whatever but not here in Greenland lessons happened I said at my getting ready to set up my tent always kind of stuff taking my tent out of my slide it was calm weather so I wasn't like too worried about stuff blowing away I just kind of like let my guard down all the sudden boom fall through a crevasse all the way to my shoulders I put my arms out and catch myself and I looked down and my entire body is hanging over two hundred feet of nothing underneath me high fallin in this crevasse like no one's finding me down there I don't have my staff won't have any of my gear like nothing fortunately literally up to my shoulders I you know grab myself arms completely up over deck and was able to pull myself out no laying flat on the snow and the ice and it was you know a close call and nothing tragic happened but it's you know an inch from failure in that moment and it's another example I guess I should have learned the lesson the first time and did not have to learn it again on the trach but it's like so easier like I'm nearly there great or like last few hours of rolling this like two more shift let's just put her back into it whatever like smash into an iceberg like just so close and stuff like that so yeah it's a definitely a good lesson and that was that was that iceberg moment was definitely a scary one the scariest moments you know period so 12 days 600 miles how many miles was it so it's hard because I think the crossing is defined specifically the distance we did in a straight line was 650 miles but I saw the map attacking all over that like yeah so I think we actually rode something more like 750 whatever bad the classification of the record and ultimately I think there were six World Records in three world first associated with the crossing and derivative records I'm each other I don't pay too much attention to little granular details of that but the way that the ocean rowing society which is a world that I'm actually not that familiar with obviously they calculate it just what's the straight-line distance Oh straight line distance 650 miles I think we're owed something like a couple of times then sinker we got blown back like 15 miles then rode forward and to the side with the winds and currents and stuff like that so far enough so you finish and in another stroke of marketing genius you pull like a copy of the book come on that is unbelievable and you're like you got me laughs I was like that's pretty good my ration riding you brought a couple copies I brought three copies they're actually the advanced reader copy so they weren't the final draft and they actually say published eight one twenty eight twenty which you know they moved the publication date up so there's three copies we're doing a pre-order campaign anyone who prayer at the book was entered to a win one of the signed copies that actually came to drakes my book about Antarctica returned to Antarctica and of course we had to take a photo and she tried out in the world of course man who won those copies some amazing people yeah there was uh they got caught spread around this a really really cool girl name and nez gal Michi I was like I'm so about the names right I think I mispronounced them she had one we you know everyone that sent in to this email address that we set up got entered in the contest with the pre-order and then we did a random drawing from that but was really cool you know some people that one had just kind of written something and they're like oh hey like this and you know email back and forth and she had a really cool story that kind of touched my heart she said her and her brother her brother had started following me like I saw my aunt Arctic crossing last year and she had never heard of this but he kind of came home every night and was like really like talking about this over their family holiday except goin sided with Christmas and the holidays and stuff like that and you know she felt feelings a little bit disconnected from her brother she said and that like really brought them closer together just kind of having this thing to check in with every single day and talk about and all this kind of stuff so she enter for the drawing so that she could give it as a gift to her brother and so it was super cool and they want another another guy this this touched me his name was uh I think it's Dave goetzmann I remember because it Instagram handle was the at the underscore goatman I think he's like ultra runner cement that in New York State but he you know most people were sending in like Amazon pre-order links and stuff like that which is awesome great a normal way to preorder a book for sure but you can also proo it of course on independent booksellers in other places around and that's where all the books is sold and he and he live in Lake Placid in our local bookstore and so he had called up the local bookstore at a pier of the book the local bookstore which which touch me I was like oh well my book is you know in the small bookstore in Lake Placid so that's a new experience for me I suppose you've experienced that yourself seeing your own book and other places that was new for me and he had said he had sent this funny you know we swear any selected email we opened the email just to check to make sure that it had like the right you know actually period of the book and whatever so we could send him the prize and he had sent like a text message chain and like a picture of a receipt from this little bookstore and he was like does this count like I just want to make sure like this is actually the pre-order but from like a you know like a handwritten receipt and whatever it was totally legit he actually did a pre or the book but I just thought it was cool that you know he went to these like local shop and it was in there as well so there's some amazing people wanted I was just grateful for the love and support around the book and it's you know just just getting out into the world now their last five days or so so it's just I guess it's just beginning but so you're doing the thing you're in New York you're you know doing all the shows and all that kind of stuff and most of that stuff is you know the five minute you know thing you're kind of in you're out they ask you the same question what's next and all of that what do you think like like you ever leave those experiences thinking like like I wish they'd ask me this or what isn't you know here's what I think people are missing like do you think you're ever like misunderstood or is there anything that like you feel like you wish you were asked more but it doesn't come up or like where are people like not connecting in the way that you want them to I mean I will say this now and this is not just lip service because I'm sitting here in front of you because I've told you this in when you and I have spending time in private when you and I are climbing you know 29 Oh 29 together Utah this summer or you know the other times you spent this that I genuinely think and the cover of outside magazine calling you the Oprah of endurance sports I think is actually very apropos because you are an extraordinary interviewer and actually go in extreme depth so I've been humbled to be a guest on your show and I think the question although I know you weren't asking it in a self-serving way at all but I genuinely think you were just extraordinary exceptional at this and it's a gift it's a beautiful gift of your insight and your presence with all of your guests I have been not just a guest but a massive fan of your podcast for a long time but I appreciate that that was not but I think that is like when you if you're gonna talk for two hours totally totally but what I do think and I think particularly around the book that I do you know I this book is a harrowing tale like it is me raw there is some crazy things that happen out there that I had you know never really you know spoke super open there at least super in depth about about this story and I wanted to be raw and real and I wanted it to read in a way that kept people's attention so I you know hopefully and certainly the feedback we've gotten is that it's page-turning and it's engaging it's it's not a how-to book it's not a prescriptive you know self-help book by any means it is a you know edge-of-your-seat type of book but sometimes in these interviews like that quick you know you know three-minute four minutes pause I'm grateful for that you know attention I do think that people want to like they're like so we're here with adrenaline daredevil crazy you know thrill seeker Colin o Brady I think um even the headline on the Today Show which was so cool to be on the tatio and be able to share this when the book launches but I think then they put it up online it said like daredevil Colin Oh Brady returns from whatever and to me that does a little bit missed the point of what's going on here I think that I'm going out in the world and obviously pushing my body and you know trying to strike stretch limits of my own potential out in the world but there is so much more to that and so with the book it's not frustrating but you know for me your question was that people miss something and it's it's that if they do miss the essence of what this real this story is about and I've been you know grateful to see some reviews and stuff with a book go much deeper than saying like wow like I thought I was reading this but actually this book kept my attention as an adventure enthusiasts but it was so interesting to see all these other layers in the fabric of this book and it had me crying and it had me laughing and had me this and I don't think sometimes I wish that people would kind of go to that and I understand why they wouldn't initially you know in a three minute interview but you know that's the part of stuff that I care about yeah click-click yeah yeah it requires bandwidth and subtlety you know to really crock the whole thing yeah yeah that's why I love doing it this way yeah sure well let's round this out and end it with some thoughts on the untapped reservoirs of human potential that reside within all of us I think those are those are themes that we share in our advocacy and in our work and in our writing and in our speaking so maybe reflect on that a little bit and maybe also since you've just come out of this Drake experience has any of that like shifted or or or changed a little bit from when you wrote it in the book or where you were at last year compared to this year you mean the sort of NASA now you kind of reflect on on transformation yeah and you know the potential that resides within us and and you know how we can how we can better access and express that in our lives you know it's something that I've certainly said a lot and something that I I know that you've said a lot and something that I've been inspired by in your work as well is like that advocacy around that that belief that you know each one of us have these reservoirs of untapped potential inside of us the Drake Crossing is interesting and you know I've been asked this question and derivative is you know callin like are you a superhuman or oh like what what's your physiology that makes you so much different but I also get this really funny thing and it actually happened to me two days ago in DC I was doing this interview and you know journalist was interviewing me for Fox and he's like you know I don't really mmm I don't mean to say something hopefully I'm not offending it's like stomach I've had people say the same thing I kind of know it was expecting I'm like it's just that when I read your story I don't take this the wrong way but you're like a regular-sized normal looking guy like I'm not offended he was like it's just that like I figured like you know some like six I was gonna come out like it's a Winkle vibe I've had people come after speeches and things like that and say that and to me which certainly is not offensive I will say in the in the photos in the book there's a picture of you on the bike like racing ITU and your shoulders are looking pretty good no it's not I'm not to say that like I'm not fit and this is just that like you're not like oh god you're like some like super magically opposing person yeah and it goes back to that aspirational aspect though yeah I know what you do and I think that you know in you know I've said it kind of tongue-in-cheek but I do believe it as well I did believe it actually not just tongue-in-cheek but in truth and say like : are you superhuman like yeah I'm a superhuman and so are you like these reservoirs of untapped potential reside inside of all of us and the Drake Passage row and I'm to kind of have that through line was for me in writing this book about the impossible first which obviously I wrote before I did the Drake Passage row I really was you know I still have this thesis of saying like okay like I am giving this wisdom I'm sharing my story in the hope that someone takes the impossible first book sets it down and starts off on their own impossible first but where is the proof in the pudding of that in my own story obviously there's a lot of through lines being burned in a fire being told never walking and recovering etc but the Drake Row was actually an exercising at this point in my life of this thesis of saying okay I tell people all of the time you have a massive goal but you haven't started on it yet or you're a beginner or you have this huge idea but you're a novice and you look at all the other people who are so much better at you like I'm sure people say to you all the time like god I want to start a podcast but like podcasts are so saturated right now we're like you know you've already got millions of listeners like how could I ever catch up to and you're like yeah but like in 2012 or whenever was I was sitting in Kauai and like a garage and I like hit play on a tape recorder with mic kids around and like started talking into a microphone and so for me the Drake Row was my own way of saying like yes I'm not trying to pretend like I don't have other accomplishments in my past we all have a path that has led us to today to this moment who we are but can you then put something on the proverbial whiteboard for yourself that allows you to stretch and reach and to grow that actually exercises that muscle of taking that step towards it and for me it was to step into a place of endurance sports that I've never touched not even tangentially with ocean and rowing and etc and so I believe I mean III core believe that we have these reservoirs of untapped potential and the muscle it's not the physical imposition imposing you know character that I could or couldn't be I guess just the person that I am but I say that the muscle that's the most important to any of us is the six inches between our ears it's within our minds it's what we can create and I think that that really dictates a lot of this I yeah that's how I believe phenomenally articulated I mean I look at the Drake Passage experience as basically the manifestation or a manifestation of this sort of Angela Duckworth Carol Dweck like growth mindset like you're not a rower okay like you're an athlete like it would have been easier for you to pick some other kind of like expedition with which is you just you know doing what you've always kind of done or whatever right exactly but to put yourself in a situation that that you know in many ways is just completely unfamiliar and new I think it's really cool and I think that does convey that message of like hey man I you know like I'm you know I'm trying to learn this stuff as well and I'm gonna put I'm gonna I'm gonna be you know I'm going to walk the talk basically totally and I think also the other thing is I think we've all had that kind of you know impostor syndrome of in a room of certain people were like well I don't belong here I'm not good enough to be here I think anyone who's ever walked into a cocktail party or something has had that feeling at some point in their life you know I certainly have a lot of times and you know even on my Instagram if you saw when I posted hey I'm doing this project and here's this amazing team and have come together and here's what all these other guys have accomplished I mean you brought it up earlier in this interview I'm not offended by it at all and some like well you're obviously the weak link like in all of this and so the easiest thing for me to do would have been to say I was literally the first person history ever to cross an article solo people have died attempting this exact crossing and I did it so let me be now the master of that domain why would I line myself side-by-side up in a situation next to guys who are like been spending decades crushing this sport that they're exceptionally good with with world record hold you know record records around their neck and accolades you know you know list of accolades is you know a page long but it's like having the humility to say like but I still want to grow I still want to learn I still want to like learn from them and hopefully I am bringing something you know valuable to the table beyond just you know sort of the the logistics or resources to be able to do something like this and but humbly I'm gonna come into this and I think you know if they were sitting here they would say wow yeah like from a physical level mental level we all learn something from each other but it takes it's a humbling moment to go when I don't have to go stand next to people in this other domain it'll be in my own little area and so I think in any Avenue as we begin to set out on things people can feel that way people can feel like oh you know like you were you're like you're probably a great lawyer at what you were doing you hated it whatever I mean a long time you know and to like just redefine your identity you know you turn into an incredible endurance athlete but I imagine I don't know the story of your very first triathlon but I imagine it was like you're like I'm just a guy I trust my shoes you know whatever and so it's it's taking that but that is how these interesting moments grow and so don't be held back by being like I don't know how to do this right now I'm not good at this my neighbor's better than me at the guy around the water cooler he's the expert at this that or the other thing it's like why not start somewhere he started somewhere he had day one at his job or his expert or his skill at some point as well like your day could be today I thought you'd be bigger sorry to disappoint awesome man thank you beautiful I love you Colin Oh Brady I love you thank you for your example all the incredible work and advocacy that you do and I know we'll continue to do the book is extraordinary the impossible first I love it man and I'm just I'm happy to be in your life you like grateful for our friendship and I wish you the best of luck please pick up oh you have Angela Duckworth right there on the cover author of great thought you were no no I was like well you were talking about growth mindset I was deep yeah yeah that's very cool phenomenal man if you want to hook up with Colin Colin or Brady on Instagram is probably the best place right yeah and website collaborative all right love you peace [Music] [Music]

Channel: Rich Roll

Views: 15,635

Keywords: rich roll, rich roll podcast, self-improvement podcasts, education podcasts, health podcasts, wellness podcasts, fitness podcasts, spirituality podcasts, mindset podcast, colin o'brady, colin o'brady rich roll, colin obrady impossible row, colin obrady nat geo, colin obrady antarctica, colin obrady podcast, antarctica crossing solo, human potential, human potential podcasts, inspirational podcasts, motivational podcasts, polar explorer podcasts, adventure podcasts

Id: nVWz4x5EgBQ

Length: 111min 41sec (6701 seconds)

Published: Mon May 18 2020