Speaker 1: Pushkin. I definitely always felt like adversity is what brings
Speaker 1: us to life, but this turned up the volume on
Speaker 1: that in a pretty incredible way. That's Tommy Caldwell, who's
Speaker 1: considered one of the best rock climbers in the world.
Speaker 1: When he was on a climbing expedition, he had a
Speaker 1: near death experience where he was held hostage for six days,
Speaker 1: and he says what he endured on that mountain unlocked
Speaker 1: a completely new state of mind, one he describes as
Speaker 1: a flow state. To me, that flow state in its
Speaker 1: most pure form, is like this moment where it's almost
Speaker 1: like everything slows down. You feel weightless, you feel like
Speaker 1: your vision is a queue. You notice detail in this
Speaker 1: incredible way. It's like in the moment where all odds
Speaker 1: are against you, suddenly it's like the clarity comes. Tommy
Speaker 1: tapped into this elusive, intoxicating mental state more than twenty
Speaker 1: years ago, and he's been relentlessly chasing it ever since.
Speaker 1: I'm maya Shunker and this is a slight change of plans,
Speaker 1: a show that died deep into the world of change
Speaker 1: and hopefully gets us to think differently about change in
Speaker 1: our own lives. So to jump in I would love
Speaker 1: to just hear a bit more about how it is
Speaker 1: that you got into climbing. I mean, I got into
Speaker 1: climbing because of my father. He was a mountain god,
Speaker 1: pretty extraordinary human being. He was a bodybuilder in the
Speaker 1: like eighties and early nineties, like big, super macho man.
Speaker 1: He had this incredible love of adventure, and he was
Speaker 1: a middle school teacher, and so he blended all those
Speaker 1: things together and used me kind of as his test subject.
Speaker 1: Like I was actually, at least socially and probably mentally
Speaker 1: a pretty meek, delayed child in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not good at the mental things. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm socially really shy and having a really macho down.
Speaker 1: He's like, we got to figure out ways to like
Speaker 1: toughen this kid up so that he can deal with
Speaker 1: the world. And he might have overcompensated a little bit.
Speaker 1: But I did not have a cool or adventurous childhood.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious to know what that's like. Like, what's
Speaker 1: an example of something you would do with your dad.
Speaker 1: I mean to a lot of people, my childhood seemed
Speaker 1: pretty insane, especially back then. I mean, one example is
Speaker 1: we hyped to the Lost Arrow Spire, which is the
Speaker 1: spire that sits two thousand feet above the valley floor
Speaker 1: or in Yusemite National Park, And we repelled down four
Speaker 1: hundred feet off the rim of Usemite Valley with you know,
Speaker 1: two thousand feet of exposure below us. Wow, I did
Speaker 1: this as like maybe six or seven years old. Were
Speaker 1: you scared? Like did this stuff come naturally to you?
Speaker 1: Or was it really hard? I think there are there's
Speaker 1: a couple moments from my childhood where I remember feeling
Speaker 1: pretty scared, like this was a bit much. But those
Speaker 1: were definitely the exceptions, Like I developed a sort of
Speaker 1: fear tolerance that it's probably part of the reason I've
Speaker 1: been able to excel the way I do now. But
Speaker 1: there's certainly been times in my life where I wonder
Speaker 1: if it's unhealthy, Like I don't get scared when I should.
Speaker 1: But can you say a little more about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the types of climbing that I do in
Speaker 1: the higher mountains, like when I go to Patagonia, for instance,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of objective hazard, Like there's instances where
Speaker 1: you're climbing up a mountain and you know, some rockfall
Speaker 1: event happens, and like a big rock will fall and
Speaker 1: land on alleged twenty feet away from you, and most
Speaker 1: people get freaked out by that kind of thing, like
Speaker 1: they have this emotional kind of adrenal reaction, and I
Speaker 1: don't have that so much, And I wonder if that's unhealthy.
Speaker 1: Was this just a natural trait that you had, or
Speaker 1: did you feel like you were building it over time
Speaker 1: as a kid. I feel like for me, I was
Speaker 1: building it over time. Like there are certain climbs that
Speaker 1: I go and do, climbs where I might fall twenty
Speaker 1: thirty fifty feet at a time before I get caught
Speaker 1: from the rope. That feels incredibly terrifying at first, early
Speaker 1: on in the season, but I get more and more
Speaker 1: used to it over time. So I think that can
Speaker 1: happen within a season or on a certain climb, but
Speaker 1: I think it can also happen in a way over
Speaker 1: the length of your life. And so since I started
Speaker 1: really young doing this stuff, I believe that that's why
Speaker 1: I am the way I am. I guess. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: so interesting, As you were simply describing that, I felt
Speaker 1: tingles in my fingers in a pit in my stomach
Speaker 1: imagining being at that height, so sadly. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: my brain architecture is slightly different from yours. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's probably more healthy your way. When Tommy's twenty two,
Speaker 1: he gets invited to go on a climbing trip with
Speaker 1: three other climbers to Kyrgyzstan, this beautiful mountainous country in
Speaker 1: Central Asia. Tommy being Tommy, is of course excited for
Speaker 1: the challenge, but the real reason he wants to go
Speaker 1: is because of another climber on the trip, Beth Rodden. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was certainly my main motivation behind the trip. I
Speaker 1: would saying, we're really really kind of early on in
Speaker 1: our dating period at that time, So this was during
Speaker 1: the like still wooing her stage. Is that why you
Speaker 1: were so excited to go? Absolutely? Yeah, okay, got it.
Speaker 1: So can you paint a little bit of a scene
Speaker 1: for me about when you first arrived in Kyrgistan, Like
Speaker 1: what is it like and what climbing lies ahead of you? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we flew in, come around the corner and we
Speaker 1: see these magnificent snow covered peaks. If you've ever been
Speaker 1: in a region like the Himalayas or something, the mountains,
Speaker 1: they are just so big and so beautiful that it's surreal.
Speaker 1: I mean, it looks like you're looking at a painting.
Speaker 1: It looks completely unreal. And so those big snow covered
Speaker 1: mountains are in the background, and then these big rock spires,
Speaker 1: these incredible rock spires with perfect rock, the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that climbers dream of, were kind of in the foreground.
Speaker 1: So we flew and there was a bit of a
Speaker 1: valley kind of below all of the rocks spires, and
Speaker 1: so that's where we made our base camp. And some
Speaker 1: of the people that live in the valley came and
Speaker 1: visited with us and brought us, you know, yak milk
Speaker 1: and butter and fresh baked bread, and it was like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was pretty idealistic. Like they hadn't they had they
Speaker 1: had encountered climbing teams like us in the past, because
Speaker 1: this is the place that people had been coming and
Speaker 1: climbing for ten or fifteen years, so we knew that
Speaker 1: we would encounter them. So we brought ways to play
Speaker 1: with the kids and bits of candy and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was absolutely beautiful. It's certainly sort of
Speaker 1: a dream trip. Everything I kind of expected and hoped
Speaker 1: for at first. Can you describe the moment when you
Speaker 1: realize that you were in danger. Yeah, so it's very distinct.
Speaker 1: We had been in the valley for five or six days.
Speaker 1: We had sort of walked around and scope the rocks
Speaker 1: and decided that we were going to do our warm
Speaker 1: up climb on this mountain, which is about a two
Speaker 1: thousand foot nearly vertical rock cliff. And then we had
Speaker 1: spent the first day climbing about halfway up that wall,
Speaker 1: so a thousand feet up. We know the style of
Speaker 1: climbing we're doing. You climb one hundred or two hundred
Speaker 1: feet up, and then you haul all of your equipment up,
Speaker 1: which is food, water, portal ledges. There's no horizontal places
Speaker 1: to sleep, so you set up your portal ledges. And
Speaker 1: we had this hanging camp a thousand feet up this wall.
Speaker 1: And that was actually the night of my birthday. Beth
Speaker 1: presents me with this candle. We're seeing happy birthday. It's
Speaker 1: like there's no light pollution at all in this place
Speaker 1: because you're literally fifty miles from the nearest source of electricity,
Speaker 1: and the stars are brilliant and these you know, the
Speaker 1: moonlight is illuminating these these snow covered peaks up valley
Speaker 1: and it's Yeah, it's a pretty incredible scene. And so
Speaker 1: we go to beds feeling like everything's great, and then
Speaker 1: at very first light the next morning, we awake to gunshots,
Speaker 1: like just startled awake to gunshots. And first we thought
Speaker 1: that it was just some hunters in the valley, probably,
Speaker 1: but then bullets started to hit this roof of rock
Speaker 1: that was right above us, and so we realized that
Speaker 1: they were actually shooting at us. They were close by.
Speaker 1: We had a big camera with us with a long
Speaker 1: telephoto lens, and so we pulled out that camera and
Speaker 1: we could look down to the ground, almost like looking
Speaker 1: through you know, binoculars, and we could see these heavily
Speaker 1: armed militants on the ground. We felt very vulnerable, like
Speaker 1: we're expecting bullets to just rip through the bottom of
Speaker 1: the portal edge at any moment. Wow. So in that moment,
Speaker 1: are you thinking, Okay, they might have missed slightly the
Speaker 1: first with the first few shots, but you know we're
Speaker 1: going to die. Yeah, that's exactly what we're worried about.
Speaker 1: There's no way to run away them, and it's just
Speaker 1: complete vulnerability. It's like somebody shooting at you and you
Speaker 1: can't hide behind anything. Yeah, you're literally affixed to a
Speaker 1: vertical wall in a tent, right, there's literally no escape
Speaker 1: rut right, Yeah, I mean moving out of the way
Speaker 1: would have been, you know, a several hour process to
Speaker 1: just get up and around the corner or something. Okay,
Speaker 1: So then so you hear this these gun shots. What
Speaker 1: happens next through our telephoto camera lens, we see them
Speaker 1: sort of waving at us to come down, and we
Speaker 1: know that we have no other option. Basically, they've got
Speaker 1: these big guns. They've proved that that they're good shots
Speaker 1: with these guns, and so we're like, we have to
Speaker 1: go down. So we have a discussion and we decide
Speaker 1: that John Dickey, who is the oldest member of our expedition,
Speaker 1: will go down and try and talk to them. We're
Speaker 1: just trying to be super optimistic at this point. Maybe
Speaker 1: they just want information, we don't really know. And so
Speaker 1: John starts descending down the wall. Takes him probably nearly
Speaker 1: an hour, and he gets down there and we have
Speaker 1: these two way radios and he had taken one of them.
Speaker 1: When he gets down there, he he just sounds very serious.
Speaker 1: He radio's back to us and he's like, you guys
Speaker 1: are just gonna have to come down. So the other
Speaker 1: three of us just start descending down the wall, and
Speaker 1: when we get to the ground, we're confronted with a
Speaker 1: pretty scary scene. I would say, there's two heavily armed
Speaker 1: men that are wearing this combination of like army fatigues,
Speaker 1: so they look pretty scary, but their demeanor is actually
Speaker 1: pretty chill. They wait for us. We get to the
Speaker 1: ground and they're just kind of sitting around, not really
Speaker 1: saying that much, and then and then they just kind
Speaker 1: of wave us on to follow them back to base camp.
Speaker 1: A conflict had broken out in the country between the
Speaker 1: Kyrgi's army and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Up on
Speaker 1: the mountain, a small group of the militants had captured
Speaker 1: a Kyrgi soldier, and when Tommy and the rest of
Speaker 1: his climbing crew were forced down the mountain, they were
Speaker 1: able to get a closer look at the soldier. He
Speaker 1: just looked very stern, you know, he looked kind of
Speaker 1: scared and very stern, and he had blood all over
Speaker 1: his pants. And I think there was that one moment
Speaker 1: in there where John looked over at us and he's like,
Speaker 1: we're hostages. I think we're hostages, and so that's kind
Speaker 1: of when it struck us. The militants waste no time.
Speaker 1: They lead Tommy and Beth and the other climbers into
Speaker 1: the mountain side at gunpoint, and as they start to
Speaker 1: cross the river, a group of Kyrgi soldiers appear at
Speaker 1: the top of the hill and start shooting at them.
Speaker 1: This battle breaks out essentially, and we hide in this bush,
Speaker 1: and Beth and myself and this Kurgy soldier end up
Speaker 1: in this bush together. The next thing that happened is
Speaker 1: the rebels told us one by one to run up
Speaker 1: behind this boulder, and the Kurgy soldier went first, and
Speaker 1: as soon as he got up behind the boulder, we
Speaker 1: heard these handgun shots which were different than the rifle shots,
Speaker 1: and they had just shot him in the shot him
Speaker 1: in the head right there, and then the rest of
Speaker 1: us had to go up and hide behind that boulder.
Speaker 1: As this battle sort of erupted around us. It was
Speaker 1: a full on like war scene. We were hiding behind
Speaker 1: this boulder. The boulder was getting you know, bullets were
Speaker 1: ricocheting off the boulder. We were behind it, sitting on
Speaker 1: the dead body of this other Kurgy soldier, and they
Speaker 1: were shooting these these mortars across at us. I mean,
Speaker 1: we were kind of certain that we were going to
Speaker 1: die at any moment. I'm just imagining the juxtaposition of
Speaker 1: going from these immensely peaceful climbs in this expansive valley
Speaker 1: too absolute life or death, insanity. What do you remember feeling?
Speaker 1: Definitely writing on adrenaline, totally surreal. I feel like that
Speaker 1: is not like the rest of life at all. And
Speaker 1: I think it was fear that was more intense and
Speaker 1: far different than anything I had noticed. Like, in some
Speaker 1: ways I was used to dealing with fear because of
Speaker 1: my climbing life, but this was just way different. Tommy,
Speaker 1: Beth and their crew managed to make it out of
Speaker 1: this skirmish alive, but they're still being held captive by
Speaker 1: two militant rebels. They can't communicate with their captors because
Speaker 1: they don't speak the same language, but from what they
Speaker 1: can glean, there's an older guy who seems to be
Speaker 1: in charge, and then a teenager named Scherapov. During the day,
Speaker 1: the militants lead them around and what ultimately ends up
Speaker 1: being a big circle looking for hiding places, and we
Speaker 1: don't have any food. We had to abandon all of
Speaker 1: our food, except I had managed to shove like five
Speaker 1: or six energy bars into my pocket. So each day
Speaker 1: we would in the evening, we would split one of
Speaker 1: those energy bars between the six of us, and that's
Speaker 1: the only food we had, and we do kind of
Speaker 1: feel like we're all in it together, like we share
Speaker 1: our food with them. They didn't just take all of
Speaker 1: our food. They shared it with us, those six, you know,
Speaker 1: energy bars that we had, and the demeanor became pretty
Speaker 1: friendly a lot of the time. And then during the
Speaker 1: daylight hours we would hide in usually just absolutely miserable
Speaker 1: hiding spots like you know, buy rivers, under boulders. It
Speaker 1: was always super cold, were our teeth were chattering all
Speaker 1: day long, every day, to the point where where our
Speaker 1: jaws and our mouths got really sort We'd be sitting
Speaker 1: there hiding for fourteen hours of daylight or whatever, and
Speaker 1: it would feel like a week. Did you ever worry
Speaker 1: that you were going to die of hypothermia, so it's
Speaker 1: not just the potential of being killed, but also you
Speaker 1: just might die from extreme conditions. Yeah, no, that was
Speaker 1: definitely a worry of ours. We were probably on the
Speaker 1: verge most of the time, and we're at a point
Speaker 1: where where we can't really just sit through these conditions anymore.
Speaker 1: But then weirdly at times, I think this is sort
Speaker 1: of a proven thing that happens when you go through
Speaker 1: this severe hunger, as you have these moments of like
Speaker 1: mental clarity, like you feel like you are almost more
Speaker 1: alive than ever as you're starving to death, your body
Speaker 1: sort of starts to kick into this like survival mode,
Speaker 1: and so you sort of an alternate between that and
Speaker 1: then other times of just feeling really lethargic and really
Speaker 1: slow and you know, really hungry. So we just traveled
Speaker 1: around like that for six nights, getting progressively weaker, and
Speaker 1: then finally on that last night, things are pretty desperate,
Speaker 1: and so we were left on this night with just
Speaker 1: the young scared soldier Chapov, and told to climb up
Speaker 1: this incredibly steep mountain. It was, you know, true rock climbing,
Speaker 1: Like it was kind of terrain that if you fell
Speaker 1: on it didn't seem like you would stop. You would
Speaker 1: continue falling until you got you know, bouncing down the
Speaker 1: mountain until you got to the bottom. And and Shariffov
Speaker 1: was really scared. Um we were actually having to lead
Speaker 1: the way because we're climbers. We would you know, grab
Speaker 1: his hand and pull him up over rock steps. We
Speaker 1: would point out footholds for him to step on. We
Speaker 1: would sort of spot him in case he stumbled, we
Speaker 1: could catch him so he didn't just fall down the mountain.
Speaker 1: And so in all of our minds like if if
Speaker 1: there was a time to escape, this was it. So
Speaker 1: I'm curious, and it seems like the very natural instinct
Speaker 1: to help others was kicking in for you. Right, you're
Speaker 1: spotting the sky, you're leading the way, you're helping him.
Speaker 1: Who are these competing feelings towards him and the situation
Speaker 1: leading to kind of bizarre behaviors in you. It's so fascinating,
Speaker 1: right that you can build this kind of camaraderie with
Speaker 1: a person who might ultimately lead to your death, if
Speaker 1: you have that kind of empathy towards their circumstance in
Speaker 1: their situation. I mean, I think I think it felt
Speaker 1: different at different times, Like at times I was like,
Speaker 1: we should outlast this, We should be good human beings
Speaker 1: as long as we can. In a way, these rebels,
Speaker 1: I didn't see them as super evil people, especially Cherpov
Speaker 1: who were with like he was just a he was younger,
Speaker 1: or he was probably about my age or maybe even younger.
Speaker 1: I think he was eighteen years old at the time.
Speaker 1: He was a hired mercenario. He was obviously super frightened himself.
Speaker 1: You know, Like, who's to say if I didn't grow
Speaker 1: up in a circumstance, I wouldn't have been right there
Speaker 1: with him. So I thought it was sort of morally
Speaker 1: wrong to try and take these guys lives. But I
Speaker 1: think on this last night, clouds started to roll in
Speaker 1: and started to reign a tiny bit, and all of
Speaker 1: us were like, if we don't escape this scene pretty soon,
Speaker 1: we are going to succumb to hypothermia. Yeah, So as
Speaker 1: we were getting to the top of the mountain, I
Speaker 1: knew that our opportunity to push him was going to
Speaker 1: be gone soon. And Beth had been adamantly against killing
Speaker 1: somebody this whole time, but it was getting pretty dire.
Speaker 1: So I looked over her when we're at her, when
Speaker 1: we were maybe fifty or one hundred feet below the
Speaker 1: top of this mountain, and I was like, do you
Speaker 1: think I should And she didn't say anything, which to
Speaker 1: me that meant that she thought she'd come around like
Speaker 1: she thought that this was probably the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: And so when he saw the top of the mountain
Speaker 1: kind of close, he got a little bit excited. He
Speaker 1: started to sort of rush up ahead of all of us.
Speaker 1: He is in Sharipov and I then started to sort
Speaker 1: of sneak up behind him. And he was so focused
Speaker 1: on like staying attached to the mountain, you know, like
Speaker 1: grabbing the right hand holds and stuff, that he really
Speaker 1: didn't even notice me. And I ran up behind him,
Speaker 1: and I just grabbed his gun strap and just tugged
Speaker 1: backwards on it, and he started to fly off off
Speaker 1: the mountain side. He fell about twenty feet, hit this
Speaker 1: ledge that was below us, bounced off of it like
Speaker 1: the slipping ledge, and then out of sight, just in
Speaker 1: the blackness. We'll be right there. With a slight change
Speaker 1: of plants, I'm maya shunker and this is a slight
Speaker 1: change of plans. Tommy called Wells made the bold decision
Speaker 1: to push one of his captors off the cliff. Years later,
Speaker 1: a journalist working on the story discovers that Cheripov did
Speaker 1: not actually die from the fall, but at the time
Speaker 1: Tommy assumes he's killed Cheripov. And for Tommy, the reality
Speaker 1: of what he just did comes crashing down on him.
Speaker 1: It's just like this flood of emotion is going through me.
Speaker 1: I like can't believe what I've just done. I remember
Speaker 1: like closing my eyes incredibly tight and like seeing like
Speaker 1: weird starry visions. I mean, it was just like it's
Speaker 1: almost hard to explain it. It was just it was
Speaker 1: just like emotionally overwhelming that I've never experienced. You know.
Speaker 1: Beth was really comforting me. I mean she like I
Speaker 1: like I said, I was deeply in love with this woman,
Speaker 1: and she was. And I didn't know if she suddenly
Speaker 1: think that I was like this evil person because we
Speaker 1: haven't really been able to talk it out what I
Speaker 1: was about to do. So she was the one was
Speaker 1: like you, you're my hero. You We're gonna be okay
Speaker 1: because of you, and trying to say the right things
Speaker 1: to help me in that moment. The moment doesn't last long, though,
Speaker 1: with one of their captors pushed off the mountain and
Speaker 1: the other one out of sight. Tommy and his team
Speaker 1: know they need to seize the moment and get out
Speaker 1: of there as quickly as possible, so they run down
Speaker 1: the mountain and find safety at a military outpost, and
Speaker 1: eventually they all make it back to the US. Almost immediately,
Speaker 1: Tommy's dad notices a change in him. I mean, I
Speaker 1: felt like for a time I sort of receded into
Speaker 1: a ball. I didn't talk to anybody except for Beth
Speaker 1: about personal things. But Beth and a few other close friends.
Speaker 1: I didn't talk to my parents that much about it,
Speaker 1: So I think he probably had that take more than
Speaker 1: most because he knew me a lot. And then I
Speaker 1: just didn't want to discuss this with him. What aspect
Speaker 1: of the experience made you most uncomfortable talking about with
Speaker 1: your dad? I think I was just I just didn't
Speaker 1: know how to think about the experience. Like I didn't
Speaker 1: know for a while whether whether I, you know, it,
Speaker 1: was kind of an evil person for having done this thing,
Speaker 1: or whether I was kind of a hero for saving us.
Speaker 1: I was both. But I'd also learned. I think very
Speaker 1: few people get to find out how they will react
Speaker 1: and super intense experiences like that, everybody sort of wonders.
Speaker 1: And I now knew that when when things are really bad,
Speaker 1: I was able to kind of like rise to the
Speaker 1: occasion and do something that was really hard for me
Speaker 1: and really fight for survival in this way that I
Speaker 1: think I was. I was a bit proud of at
Speaker 1: the time, but I didn't want to seem proud. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to feel I didn't want to feel proud
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. But I think kind of
Speaker 1: deep down I was a little bit proud, like I
Speaker 1: felt empowered. Interesting, so, so did the adversity faced in
Speaker 1: Kyrgyzstan change your understanding of yourself or actually just reinforce
Speaker 1: what you had believed all along about what you were
Speaker 1: capable of. I think it it reinforced more than changed,
Speaker 1: but it also revealed a lot. It opened up a
Speaker 1: ton of curiosity, like I wanted to learn more. I
Speaker 1: wanted to in some ways get back to that place
Speaker 1: of being in this incredibly meditative like flow state that
Speaker 1: I felt like I had experienced it at times in Kyrgyzstan.
Speaker 1: I think in some ways my climbing ever since then
Speaker 1: has been an effort to almost get back there in
Speaker 1: a way and learn more. Yeah, almost like an addiction. Potentially.
Speaker 1: I think I saw Kyrgyzstan as this like fuel to
Speaker 1: put me on this higher plane where I could like
Speaker 1: use that adversity to fuel my life in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, and and sort of my pursuit of my raft,
Speaker 1: which continues to be climbing to this day. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: you are such a climber at heart, Like the fact
Speaker 1: that you were You're describing Kergusson as being a flow
Speaker 1: state in which you had like you know, deep mental acuity,
Speaker 1: and you're that that's as a layperson, right, that is
Speaker 1: a truly astonishing way of interpreting those events. Yeah. Well
Speaker 1: I didn't go there first. I probably win a lot
Speaker 1: of places. Yeah yeah, and that's the place that I
Speaker 1: ended up finding to be the one that suited me.
Speaker 1: But if you think about it, like you know, I
Speaker 1: can I can equate it to situations as a child
Speaker 1: where I was up on some big wall with my
Speaker 1: dad and you know, surrounded by some incredible thunderstorm and
Speaker 1: things get really real and my dad would look at
Speaker 1: me in these kind of moments with these wild eyes
Speaker 1: and be like, this is what brings us to life.
Speaker 1: So that was built into me from a really young age. Interesting, Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think my parents were like, why don't we go inside?
Speaker 1: Now there's thunder you would prefer not to die? Um? Okay? Anyway, anyway,
Speaker 1: can you describe more? I think for a lot of
Speaker 1: listeners will be curious what you mean by this flow
Speaker 1: state that you experienced in Kyrgyzstan, Like, what what does
Speaker 1: it feel like? What were you what were you trying
Speaker 1: to reach psychologically when you came back and started climbing again.
Speaker 1: To me, that flow state in its most pure form
Speaker 1: is like this moment where it's almost like everything slows down.
Speaker 1: You feel weightless, you feel like your vision is a
Speaker 1: cute you notice detail in this incredible way. It's like
Speaker 1: a physiological change that is incredibly easy to notice when
Speaker 1: it happens. You know, it's like in the moment where
Speaker 1: all odds are against you, suddenly it's like the clarity
Speaker 1: comes and it's completely surreal and completely magical. I feel
Speaker 1: like I had experienced that in Kyrgyzstan, and so I
Speaker 1: was trying to get back there in climbing, but I wasn't.
Speaker 1: I wasn't finding that flow state in that way. So
Speaker 1: I did start to shift some of my climbing to
Speaker 1: like these mega endurance days where you are out, you know,
Speaker 1: sleep deprived for you know, fifty hours in a row,
Speaker 1: and a lot of times these climbs would take four
Speaker 1: or five days, and I started to do them in
Speaker 1: one day, like twenty four hour pushes. Okay, So I'm
Speaker 1: pausing only because if I were an alien descending on
Speaker 1: this planet, and I heard that there's this guy named
Speaker 1: Tommy Caldwell who went through a harrowing experience in Kyrgyzstan,
Speaker 1: who's now trying to replicate aspects of that trip on
Speaker 1: his own volition in normal life. I think I think
Speaker 1: the alien would bat and I that's all. It's It's
Speaker 1: why I admire climbers so much. It's the relentless focus
Speaker 1: and resolve. And again, I flirted as a musician with
Speaker 1: flow right in my childhood, and I, in my own way,
Speaker 1: I crave that too. There's there's something about engaging with art,
Speaker 1: and I guess I see climbing as an art form
Speaker 1: too that can put you in a certain mental state
Speaker 1: that's really hard to You can't you can't recruit it
Speaker 1: in daily life at will. Right, it's not. It's one
Speaker 1: of these elusive things that happens when all the stars align,
Speaker 1: right at least that's how it's been in my own experience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Now I can tell you have like you have the
Speaker 1: craving and the thirst for it, And yeah, I felt
Speaker 1: like I need to pursue that a lot in my
Speaker 1: life since then. But in some ways I never got
Speaker 1: back to that place that I was in Kyrgyzstan, like
Speaker 1: that flow state that I experienced that really comes from
Speaker 1: this you can really only access when when your life
Speaker 1: really is on the line up. Even though I was
Speaker 1: pushing way harder than I was before, I wasn't. I
Speaker 1: wasn't ever getting back to that, to that place, to
Speaker 1: that incredible flow state. Tommy spent the next year after
Speaker 1: his return from Kyrgyzstan trying to access that high, that
Speaker 1: flow state in his climbs. Whatever downtime he had, he
Speaker 1: spent with Beth in this little fixer upper cabin they
Speaker 1: bought the mountains of Colorado. Then one day I was
Speaker 1: working on the house. I was trying to use the
Speaker 1: tools and not knowing how to use them properly. I
Speaker 1: ended up chopping off my index finger on my left
Speaker 1: hand with a table saw. So this is kind of
Speaker 1: like worst case scenario. Can you describe the moment where
Speaker 1: you realize that your index finger is no longer on
Speaker 1: your hand. I felt this numbness, and I looked down
Speaker 1: at my left hand and saw that the finger was
Speaker 1: completely severed, like I didn't know where the other part
Speaker 1: of it was. So I think I immediately panicked. I
Speaker 1: yelled to Beth. I was just like, oh, I just
Speaker 1: cut off my finger, and and she came over and
Speaker 1: we found it like laying on the ground, ran into
Speaker 1: the house, put it on ice, and drove to the hospital.
Speaker 1: What is going through your head on the drive to
Speaker 1: the hospital, I mean I was. I was certainly panicking.
Speaker 1: I mean all I could think about was climbing. Like
Speaker 1: I had gotten to this place where I was, I
Speaker 1: was a professional climber. I was living kind of my
Speaker 1: ultimate life. I had all this curiosity about where I
Speaker 1: could take it. It was sort of my coping mechanism
Speaker 1: for Kyrgyzstan in some ways, like this was the thing
Speaker 1: that I could focus on that could both distract me
Speaker 1: and empower me, and that was what was keeping me
Speaker 1: happy and stable in life. And then suddenly maybe that
Speaker 1: has gone too. So I was panicking. I mean, at first,
Speaker 1: we're just we're just holding on to hope. I had
Speaker 1: heard stories about people chopping off fingers and then reattaching
Speaker 1: them and everything being just fine. You know, like finger
Speaker 1: reattachment surgery is usually relatively successful thing, at least it
Speaker 1: was in my mind. The doctor came into the room
Speaker 1: and he you know, sat Beth and me down and
Speaker 1: he's like, we've done everything we can. Your finger is dead.
Speaker 1: We're going to do one final surgery and remove it.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm sorry. And he was a climber.
Speaker 1: Actually our doctor ended up being a climber as well,
Speaker 1: and he and so he along with that, he said
Speaker 1: that he told us that he's like, you should start
Speaker 1: thinking about what else you want to do in life,
Speaker 1: because you're not going to you're not going to be
Speaker 1: able to like be a professional climber anymore. And when
Speaker 1: you first heard that, do you agree with him? I mean,
Speaker 1: did you believe that that was going to be the case? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I think I heard that, and I was
Speaker 1: just like incredibly sad and trying to absorb that. I mean,
Speaker 1: once again, I feel like this has been a theme
Speaker 1: in my life. I have these things that are said
Speaker 1: or things that happened to me that are almost like
Speaker 1: too grand for me to comprehend in the moment, and
Speaker 1: it takes a long time to really figure it out.
Speaker 1: But he left the room, and then Beth looked over
Speaker 1: at me and she's like, fuck that guy, he has
Speaker 1: no idea what what you're capable of? It. That was
Speaker 1: like the perfect thing to say, you know, I think
Speaker 1: I came out of that hospital with like kind of
Speaker 1: this conviction that was driven partially from like this idea
Speaker 1: that I might be able to overcome, but also driven
Speaker 1: a lot by the fear that I just lost this
Speaker 1: thing that was incredibly important to me, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to do everything I could, like I might as well
Speaker 1: do everything I can at that point to try and
Speaker 1: prove him wrong. Do you think you're experiencing Kyrgyzstan increased
Speaker 1: your resolve to give climbing another go? You think you
Speaker 1: would have actually tried if that experience hadn't happened and
Speaker 1: you hadn't seen your limits. Um. I think what it
Speaker 1: did for me is that it made me not fear
Speaker 1: failure in a weird way, like I'd had to confront
Speaker 1: the worst things that I can imagine in my life
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, and in some ways it
Speaker 1: like wasn't so bad, you know. I mean it was,
Speaker 1: it was really bad in some ways, but in other ways,
Speaker 1: I'm like I lived through it. I can find strength
Speaker 1: through this. And that drive, that drive that you can
Speaker 1: feel only in those moments is it's like this moment
Speaker 1: that you have to seize, you know. It's like that
Speaker 1: only lasts for so long, and so you have to
Speaker 1: capture it, absorb it and let it, let it like
Speaker 1: push you forward. Yeah. Yeah, a big change can do that. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: what were those early first few climbing days, Like, so
Speaker 1: I went straight to the climbing gym, I think from
Speaker 1: the hospital, Like I don't only think we would. I've
Speaker 1: been You're so passionate about it, you couldn't wait to
Speaker 1: get back on. Yeah. I mean I've been laying in
Speaker 1: a hospital bed for two weeks, so I was pretty
Speaker 1: excited to move. And then the doctor had told me
Speaker 1: that since the finger was gone, I couldn't really do
Speaker 1: any more harm. And so I was really curious to
Speaker 1: see how my you know, newly remodeled hand was going
Speaker 1: to work. And we went straight to the gym and
Speaker 1: it was. It was really hard at first, and I
Speaker 1: was like, okay, this is a starting point. I can
Speaker 1: I can take this and improve on it. And then
Speaker 1: you know, I went back to the climbing gym at first,
Speaker 1: like basically every day, and each day I would feel
Speaker 1: a little bit stronger and a little bit stronger, and
Speaker 1: before I knew it, I was sort of exceeding my
Speaker 1: own expectations and that started this pretty incredible flywheel where
Speaker 1: I was like, Wow, this is actually working. My strength
Speaker 1: is coming back. And within a couple of months, I
Speaker 1: actually was back at the level of climbing that I
Speaker 1: had been before I chopped off my finger, Like I
Speaker 1: went back to other climbs that I had had a
Speaker 1: climbing project, and I was able to do them again,
Speaker 1: and I was like, Wow, this is working. I can't
Speaker 1: believe I'm overcoming. This is so exciting. And then I
Speaker 1: didn't stop there. I just kept on getting better and better,
Speaker 1: and you know, in some ways it was like a
Speaker 1: super magical time for me. There's no manual for how
Speaker 1: to climb with nine fingers, so you're also having to
Speaker 1: relearn key form elements of climbing, right, how does that happen?
Speaker 1: Like do you have to fully adjust your strategy like
Speaker 1: the way that you climb a wall. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's experimental. Climbing is always experimental, like you're always playing
Speaker 1: with how to do moves differently, and so I was
Speaker 1: just doing that but without a finger. You know, I
Speaker 1: sort of cherished that experimenting, Like my dad actually welded
Speaker 1: me up this specific finger strength like weightlifting machine just
Speaker 1: for your fingers though, and so I started using that
Speaker 1: a bunch and I got more more scientific about building
Speaker 1: finger strength. Okay, so you just side to climb one
Speaker 1: of the most impossible rock faces I think in the world,
Speaker 1: is that right, I mean, the Dawn Wall. Most people
Speaker 1: deemed it impossible. And I want to know what was
Speaker 1: your motivation for that? What were you hoping to achieve? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean so this was after my you know, after
Speaker 1: I came back from chopping off my finger. You know,
Speaker 1: that was sort of when I was kept just doing
Speaker 1: harder and harder roots, and I became the person that
Speaker 1: knew more about big wall free climbing on El Capitan
Speaker 1: than any you know, I'd spend more time up there,
Speaker 1: I'd done more roots than anybody. The Dawn Wall, it
Speaker 1: is by far the hardest big wall free climb in
Speaker 1: the world to anybody except for me at the time.
Speaker 1: Just look like a pane of glass, Like you look
Speaker 1: up at the wall and you're like there's nothing to
Speaker 1: hold onto. There's no way you could ever climb this thing.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I had spent so much time up
Speaker 1: there that I knew that sometimes these little edges formed
Speaker 1: on these faces that looked totally blank from below. But
Speaker 1: this is just it was such a big scale that
Speaker 1: piecing it together was this incredible puzzle, which ended up
Speaker 1: taking me a year just to figure out the route,
Speaker 1: and then another like seven years to build the strength
Speaker 1: and everything to pull it together. I guess I saw
Speaker 1: pushing that venue to be the one place in the
Speaker 1: world where I could really explore something that nobody else
Speaker 1: had At any point, did you experience the intensity of
Speaker 1: the Kyrgyzstan flow state when you were climbing the down wall.
Speaker 1: I feel like I did actually on the final on
Speaker 1: the final go, like when we successfully climbed to the thing.
Speaker 1: So me and my partner Kevin Jorgenson, you know, we
Speaker 1: spent seven years. We would fix ropes to the wall,
Speaker 1: and we would to send up and down the ropes,
Speaker 1: and we would try all the different sections and we
Speaker 1: would learn it all. And then when we finally went
Speaker 1: up and successfully climbed the route, I think when I
Speaker 1: climbed those pitches, it was this moment of incredible flow,
Speaker 1: like sudden. There was so much pressure and anxiety and
Speaker 1: excitement wrapped up in the seven years of preparing for
Speaker 1: this that when it happened, it felt magical, like that
Speaker 1: clarity merged. I felt weightless. There was this incredible flow.
Speaker 1: It was yeah, very magical. Hey, thanks for listening. See
Speaker 1: you next week. When I talked with Megan Phelps Roper,
Speaker 1: she grew up a develout believer in the Westboro Baptist Church,
Speaker 1: one of the most rapid hate groups in America, but
Speaker 1: then in her mid twenties she walked away from it all.
Speaker 1: It felt like this physical like like I had a
Speaker 1: giant boulder sitting on my chest and I couldn't breathe,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't see around it, and I had no
Speaker 1: vision of the future. I had no idea what my
Speaker 1: life was going to look like. A slight change of
Speaker 1: Plans is created an executive produce by me Maya Schunker.
Speaker 1: Big thanks to everyone at Pushkin Industries, including our producer
Speaker 1: Mola Board, associate producers David Jaw and Julia Goodman, executive
Speaker 1: producers Mia Lavelle and Justine Lange. Senior editor Jan Guera
Speaker 1: and sound design and mixed engineers Ben Taliday and Jason Gambrel.
Speaker 1: Thanks also to Louis Gara who wrote our theme song,
Speaker 1: and Ginger Smith who helped arrange the vocals, incidental music
Speaker 1: from Epidemic Sound, and of course a very special thanks
Speaker 1: to Jimmy Lee. You can follow a slight change of
Speaker 1: plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker. I have to
Speaker 1: say I'm a little bit I was a little bit
Speaker 1: sheepish about doing this interview because I was like a
Speaker 1: budding concert violinist as a kid, and then when I
Speaker 1: was fifteen, I had a hand injury in which I
Speaker 1: tore tendons in my hand, and doctors told me that
Speaker 1: I could never play again. So my life had to
Speaker 1: take a totally different route from that point forward. But
Speaker 1: I feel like you would have been the dude to
Speaker 1: play the violin with like four fingers and like crush it.
Speaker 1: So I just feel like, yeah, didn't really step up.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, the doctor said I can't play,
Speaker 1: I guess I won't play. But anyway, some of us are.
Speaker 1: I'm glad we could start the interview by me