Conquering Fear with Alex Honnold

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Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk, special edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And when it's special edition, it is Gary O'Reilly. Hey, Neil. Hey, man. Chuck, how are you doing? Professional comedian? Yes, sir. All right, dude. Feeling good, man. All right, so Gary, you cook these topics up. Got a good one. I'm impressed every time. Yeah, man. Tell us what you brought us. Got to give a shout out to Lane Unsworth over in LA. All right, so getting to the top, reaching the summit. They are goals for millions, maybe if not billions of people daily around the world. Yes. Either literal or figurative summits. Totally, yes. But not all of us can get over our fears to reach it. But then there are some of us who can. So we've got to think about that. Today we're going to talk about the science of fear. Yes, the science of fear. And how we can change... The neuroscience of fear. Of course. Change our brains to overcome it. And who better to discuss that with a neuroscientist and a freestyle rock climber? Plus, I want to find out about his podcast. What's it called? Planet Visionaries. Yes, it's with Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiatives. Okay, we'll find out more about that. Yes. Yeah, all right. So, Neil, please introduce our first guest. I will be delighted. Good to. We have in our midst, sitting right here in my office at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. We have world-renowned freestyle climber. Oh my gosh, Alex. Alex Hennel. Alex, welcome to Star Talk. Thanks. Thanks for having me. I mean, everyone learned about you through the indelible film Free Solo on a climb that you did of El Capitan. Yes. This is a mountain in Yosemite. Could you just explain what Free Solo means? So before you do that, let me just say. Because I don't think we gave Alex the proper reverence. This guy is the best climber in the world that we have sitting here. Like there is no one better. You understand what I'm saying? Like he's a rock star. And what I love is he's like, yeah, whatever. You know, I just like to climb stuff. Wait, wait, he's a rock star? Ah, did you see what I did there? I see what you did there. Okay. You weren't supposed to point it out. So explain what it means. Yes. Free Solo climbing is climbing without a rope or harness. Just climb with your hands and feet up a cliff. So no extra tools or no gear. No gear. Clips or hammers or safety net. Which means if we think things through just a little bit. Yeah, if you fall, you die. Thank you. Thank you. I didn't want to say it because I didn't want to be in the car. Because if Free Solo equals you fall, you die. Yeah, basically. Yeah. Unless you trip in the first five feet. Well, that's exactly. Because if you fall and you don't die, then you were bouldering. Because that actually is another discipline of climbing that's going to bouldering, which is what most people do in gyms. Which I'm actually going to do in the gym here in New York as soon as we're done chatting. Go to the gym and go bouldering to like train. And so that's when you climb without a rope and everything as well, but you're climbing 10 or 15 feet. You fall onto pads. It's all safe. But basically if you go much beyond that and you're looking at serious consequences. The laws of physics will kill you. Yeah, then you're Free Solo. Wow. Free Solo is kind of defined once you cross that line where you have serious consequences. Come play with that guy. Wow. So I've had a few rock climber friends in my life, one of whom is dead. In a climbing accident? Yes. Yes, in a climbing accident. Back in college. What impressed me was the things they could do, they were kind of lean and lanky. So just like you can do one arm push ups and finger pull ups. Just tell me the kinds of things you can do that most of us can't or none of us can. I mean, nothing that crazy. I can do one arm pull ups, obviously. One arm pull ups. That's not crazy. Yeah, of course. Everybody does that. All my friends can do that. Really? Yeah, but you hang out with rock climbers. Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're friends with rock climbers. You're friends with professional climbers. But I can't do one arm push ups because basically I have good pulling muscles, not back. Not pushing muscles. Yeah, pushing. I never push the rock. You need to push this very... You're not toward me. Yeah. So I hadn't thought about it. In a push up, you're pushing things away, which is not something you would ever do as a climber, typically. I mean, you do a little bit of pushing as a climber because you have to press onto things, like pressing over the top of it. Like imagine getting out of a pool if you're trying to get onto the top of a cliff. But that's pretty minimal compared to how much you're pulling. You're pulling all the time as you're pulling yourself. So you got good biceps relative to your body weight. Yeah, I guess. What do you mean you guess? Well, not this discipline specific muscle group. That's what I'm enchanted by discipline specific muscles. Yeah. But that's kind of the thing is that people assume that because you're a good rock climber, you must be very strong in different ways. And really climbing is so much around technique and waiting your feet and like having open hips and balancing on your toes and doing all these things that, you know, I'm sure some random CrossFit bro can probably pull stronger than I can. Then you don't want to be muscle bound because you need an amazing amount of flexibility. Yeah. But like a gymnast is almost certainly more flexible and stronger than me. But it doesn't mean that... But you're not doing a back flip off the rock. Yeah, exactly. I'm just saying that it's like you train for what you need. Yeah. Gotcha. And you know, as well as I can, but I don't know, but by any metric of strength is not that accessible. Okay. So this is where we transition because if we get line up five people with similar strength to weight ratios and similar agility, not everyone makes it to the top. There's a certain mental state that you have to enter. I'm presuming that might distinguish you from other rock climbers who are equally as physically fit and capable of lifting their own weight. Yeah. That's actually probably a more apt transition than you might have even have thought because yeah, if you lined up five of my friends who are all professional climbers and we're all relatively the same strength and weight and size and build and everything, you know, why are some of us more successful than others? And yeah, that starts to come down to the sort of indelible factors like mental things. Is there a, I'll say prototypical physiology attached to climbing or can any body type do it? Any body type can do it, but strength to weight matters. So I mean, there are some really big climbers, you know, because if you're strong enough, you can be big, but in general, people are relatively live. Okay. So when you like, I'm kind of a big climber. Okay. Interesting. Right. I'm kind of a big climber. And in that movie. Which movie? With Sylvester Stallone. Oh, Cliffhanger. That's not the best. Yeah, but he, to me, he looked almost too muscular for that. Yeah, but I think Sylvester Stallone would argue that you can never be too muscular. Right, exactly. Plus he can always just, you know, grunt at the rocks to get them to cooperate. That's true. I had not. Yeah. And you know. All right. So enough about Sly. So when you're planning a major ascent, are you physically training for that particular climb or have you got all of your toolkit ready? You just need to polish it up and get going. Yeah. Well, always a little bit of both. So you're, so you're always trying to stay fit, like base level fitness, like to be capable of doing a climb. Then you do the specific training on that, that route. So like in the film free solo, you see a ton of practice on the actual wall, minimizing the specific moves of that route. Cause it's one thing to have the physical capability where like my muscles are strong enough, but it's another thing to actually remember how to use your muscles the right way. You know, like left hand or right hand, or should I raise my left foot or, you know, like remembering how to do it. And then beyond that, then there's the whole mental side of it of like, do I believe I can do it? Do I want to do it? Is it too scary? Like, you know, okay. So you landed on that button. How are you working with the development mentally when you're looking at the bottom up at this climb? How do you then configure how you address that with your own thoughts? At the base level, there's the confidence that comes from knowing that you're physically able to do something. So it's like, if you've done the physical preparation, if you're trained for it, then obviously it's much easier to have the self-confidence required. Just about as standard any athlete would have. The confidence comes from all the work they've done in the history of the day. And particularly with rock climbing, you know, like the medium is unchanging, like the rock is always there and it's always the same. So if you climb it with a rope a bunch of times, you know that that's how it feels. That's how it always feels. And so if you can do that in a variety of conditions and in a variety of personal conditions, like when you feel tired, when you feel strong, or whatever, and you know that you can always do it, then you kind of know that you can do it. And is that the process that you climb with a rope multiple times as kind of a means of solidifying your path and your technique in your brain and then you go without the rope? Yeah, that's the ideal. I mean, I've certainly done a lot of things without prep beforehand, but that's typically because you've looked at a map, like you kind of know that the route is supposed to be a certain grade that you can do it and you're just like, oh, I'll go up and figure it out. And then you also are typically free-solving far enough within your comfort zone that if it starts to get weird, you can just down climb or bail. You just do it right. Yeah, you just escape. And is that more exciting? If you're kind of, because that seems to require a bit more improvisation. Yeah, yeah. That's the word. Improvisation. I mean, there are a few things in the world probably quite as stimulating as being like a loan on a cliff that you've never climbed just questing. I mean, that's like real. Yeah, suppose, you know, I have pretty long arms, but for anyone, if you're climbing, if a grip is like a few inches out of reach, can that happen? He said, I got to give up because I have no place to ascend from here. Or typically you would raise your feet and you'd get closer to it. What do you mean, raise your feet? Climb. Yeah, it's funny because so most people when they're climbing the gym, they're like, I can't reach the next hold. And you're like, well, raise your feet. Basically, if you raise your center mass, like if you lift, if you put your feet on the next level up, then you're like, oh, suddenly I can reach the next hold. Oh, because your hands already got past that level. So wherever your feet are standing, your hands used to be there. Yeah. So there's got to be something above where your current feet are. If you're trying to reach a higher point above that. In theory, or you can always just paste your feet against the wall. You're wearing these rubber shoes, so they kind of stick to rock a little bit. And so with enough body tension, you can just push and lever your body higher. The general idea that you're saying, like, what if there's a gap that you can't surmount? And then it's like, yeah, I mean, if there's a gap gap and you can't surmount it, then then you bail. That's a gap gap. Yeah. Or you have to jump. Most people though, like, well, yeah, I mean, sometimes you jump from one hold to another. Jump. And then you have to rope. Yes. So while you're ascending, there's a point where you are not in contact with rock at all. But typically you only do that when you're, when you have a rope on and things. Ah. Okay. But when you're roped up though, that's relatively common. Whereas like you run out of holes and you jump or you fly. However, if I remember the movie correctly, the impasse for every other climber was this one particular point where it did, it wasn't necessarily a jump, but it required something like that. It was a big kick out and you and that's actually something that I had solved with a jump in the past. Like you could jump that part, but the idea of free soloing that way seemed totally out of the question. Right. Because you just don't want to, you don't want to get up to a point and be like, now my whole life has come down to this moment. Right. I just jumped for a hold. I was like, no. But let's get back to your brain. Or lack thereof. Are you now or have you ever been afraid of heights? Oh. No. I think actually most people who say they're afraid of heights, I don't think they're actually afraid of heights. I think they're afraid of falling to their death, which I think is totally fair and that's what like I'm afraid of falling to my death. The comedian Stephen Wright said, I'm not afraid of heights. I'm afraid of widths. And I said, that's very insightful because if you're very high up, but you're walking on a broad swath of. Well, that's exactly. Yeah. You're afraid of falling to your death. Right. If something's narrow, that's when you're afraid of the height. But the higher you are, isn't that more scary than if you're not as high? No. I mean, once you're more than 40 or 50 feet off the ground, you're basically going to die either way. Right. So what's the difference between a thousand feet or three thousand feet? Yeah. I mean, in general, I like being really high. Don't be so calm about that sentence. No, that's so pragmatic. No, that makes sense. It's like this. You're dead anyway. So what's the difference? You know what? I used to be afraid for a very short period of time. I used to be afraid of flying and I would get in the plane and I'd be white knuckling and I'd be like, oh my God, oh my God. I don't remember the exact flight, but I remember when the plane took off and we were no longer on the ground, something said to me, it's over. So relax. If the plane crashed right now, you're going to die. Most likely you're going to die. So what difference does it make if it crashes from 30,000 feet? Because here you are not even a hundred feet off the ground and if this plane went down, you would die. So it's the same thing. The psychology is he's taken away, you have taken away this issue and minimized it because you've said it doesn't matter if it's a thousand or 50, the death is the outcome. So you've just made something that could be big and dramatic like Chuck's fear of flying and put it in its own box. Yeah, or you've just kept it. Basically, I have a fear of death. I have a fear of falling to my death just like anybody. Yeah. I try my absolute best to not fall. I don't believe you. Why not? Because if I honestly didn't care, then I wouldn't do any practice. I wouldn't prep. I wouldn't train. I wouldn't screw it. If it works out, it works out. Of course, I don't want to die. Want to die. So if you've seen the film, Frisola, that documents two years of direct training for this one climb. But before that, I'd spent another six or seven years sort of building up to it. So I'm like, oh, I spent eight or nine years building up to this one climb. And then people are like, you have a death wish. And I'm like, well, if I had a death wish, I would have just gone and done it. I wouldn't have spent nine years training for it. Okay, so is it fair to say? Yeah, get drunk and say yee-haw. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's the death wish. If I was like, hold my beer, I'm going for it. This one time. Yeah. Is it fair to say that your level of preparation systematically reduced your fear factor? Yeah. So I mean, if you take risk as sort of the likelihood of something bad happening. I change my risk. You know, with the Frisola, if you look at the risk is, you know, the consequences are basically always death. But the likelihood of falling off is determined by how much you've practiced, how well trained you are, the weather, you know, like all kinds of factors. So you tell me, you were so prepared for this climb, we should be less impressed than we all were for having watched you accomplish it. Well, I think that the impressive part is the amount of effort that goes in to the preparation. Which the film captured. Yeah, which I think does a good job of. Now, I think the impressive part is the doing because let's be honest, are you still the only one who's done it? Yeah, exactly. Look at him. This guy. This is what a guy. I don't know what's wrong with you. All this climbing them, your brain because I ain't never seen nobody who has summited achievement like you have. Yeah, I guess. I mean, you know, whatever. I kind of did it. Very, very Mike Tyson about it like, well, whatever. Are we alone in the universe or just early to the party in my latest book, Take Me to Your Leader? I explore how aliens might find us, what they'd be like and what we should do next. Curious? You should be. Take Me to Your Leader is available now in print and in audiobook, which I narrated. Don't wait until after you've had your first alien encounter to grab a copy of Take Me to Your Leader because then it would be too late. Is it possible to be overconfident and then you sort of let down your cautions? And is that a part of your brain that you access and think about actively? Yeah, you're definitely trying to avoid being. I don't think I've ever been too overconfident. I don't know. Other people might say differently. I don't know. But yeah, that's certainly something to avoid. I mean, the thing with free soul language is you definitely never want to overstate your or like over. You don't want to exceed your capabilities. Right. So you have to give a pretty clear eye. You have to match your expectations with your abilities at all times. Yeah, exactly. That's cool. Okay. So your planning, I'm guessing, is pretty much meticulous. For hard free soul, is for sure. So what point is there when you think, I've overthought this and all of a sudden these things start to spiral around in your mind? Do you get to that point? Are you disciplined enough just to keep it at meticulous? Yeah, it's about discipline, I guess. I don't know if I've ever been accused of overthinking anything. All right. No, I don't know. So it was interesting. So part of my process with free souling El Cap was I knew that it would be the most consequential climb in my life. I knew that it would be the most important thing I'd ever done. I knew that the film had the potential to be great. I knew it would be a big deal. But I didn't want to put it on too much of a pedestal in my mind because I already knew that there was a big mental challenge involved in believing that I could do it and whatever else. And so by building it up even higher, being like, this will be the most important thing you ever do. I don't really need added pressure because there was already just the fact that it's a 3000 foot face and it hasn't been done. It's really hard. And I felt like that was enough. And so I was kind of like, why don't want to when so actually. So part of my planning was that I had a couple of months in Yosemite in the springtime, which is kind of like the time to do the free solo. But right after that, I'd agreed to go on this expedition to Alaska to climb some walls and that was kind of training for this expedition and article later in the year to climb some other walls. And so I was kind of looking at the article as well. Yeah. Some insane like a granite. Face. I know like granite teeth, like just giant jagged faces sticking out of the glaciers. Absolutely wrong. I was in an article a year and a half ago. I must have been the wrong part of it. Were you on the coast or in the coast? Yeah. Yeah. No. In the interior, they're giant mountain sticking up all over. Okay. It's totally amazing. Yeah. 40 below zero. Yeah. Okay. Well, actually in the sun, I mean, it's chilly. But it's not that chilly. Okay. You can climb barehanded in the sun. Wow. Sometimes. It's unpleasant, but it's fun. I've been in these other expeditions with the intention of making my Yosemite season feel like training for these other trips. And so obviously I was intending to free solo cap. I wanted to climb all cap. I knew that'd be so important to me. But at the same time, I'm kind of like, well, this is just practice for these other trips. And you know, it's all part of my year because I didn't want to put undue pressure. I didn't need to put extra pressure onto something that already felt like a lot. Do you have that point where you're mid climb and you think, shit, I left the light on in the bathroom and you've lost your concentration? Or are you able to discipline yourself and it goes back to that point of discipline? You have a better example than leaving a light on in the bathroom. No, you know, something comes up. I left the stove on. I left the lights on in the van. You look down and you see your van parked down at the bottom in El Cap Meadow and you're like, God damn it, I left the lights on on the inside. Yeah. I've done that a bunch of times where your headlights are on and you're like, oh man. But then if you get down fast enough, you haven't killed your battery. So it's fun. So you're able to shut that down in your own mentality quickly? Well, it's not even that. So I mean, with free selling El Cap, it took almost four hours. And so, you know, realistically, unless you're a highly trained monk or something, everybody's mind wanders all the time for four hours. So how do you remember the Iron Man? Yes. And it wasn't until later in his career that he was able to get out of his own head and finish the race in first place. But it took that time to not listen to the sort of things about whatever it was going on in his head. So are you able to shut that down? Yeah. I don't think it's a matter of discipline. I think that with hard free selling, when you're doing something hard, you're just focused. You're just doing the thing. Actually, it's kind of a kind of running. I'm sure you've spent a lot of time running in your life. Too long. Yes. You know, it's like, if you're doing some casual jogging, you're thinking about all kinds of things. You're thinking about your life and your friends. But if you're sprinting all out, you know, if you're chasing the ball towards a goal, you're not thinking about anything. That's a very good point. Can I ask you this? Does this ever happen where your brain somewhat bifurcates into two distinct consciousness where one is totally locked in on what you're doing so much so that it opens up another part of your brain where you're kind of thinking about other things, not like I left the lights on, but like deep philosophical issues that are running through your brain. Why am I doing this? That's very funny. No, no. I mean, I think for me, the closest thing to a bifurcation like that is occasionally when I'm really doing something like I'm performing, then you're like so on autopilot that it's almost like your body's just doing a thing and you're not really, you're like long for the ride on. It's almost like you're there for the ride. But I've never really experienced the other part where it's like, but the some part of my mind is thinking about other things. It's just that you're just doing it and you're not thinking about things. It's like, I mean, I've always assumed that it's kind of like what a gymnast must feel like when they're executing their routine or something. Yeah. They're just like their body is moving and they're doing a thing. They're not thinking about it. They're not. Yeah. For me, the closest thing is like riding a motorcycle. I ride motorcycles. And so when you're traveling at, you know, 90, 110 miles an hour. You're focused. You're very focused. And the deal is if I'm not focused, I'm going to die. But the longer you stay focused because you can't, the longer you stay focused, your mind starts to not wonder, but it starts to think about other things in a different level of consciousness. That's all I was asking. Well, so evolutionarily, fear was a very important feature in the history of our species because that preserves our species. Yeah. It's like, no, I'm not going to do that. And where does that come from? Because everyone who said, that's a cuddly lion. I want to go pet it. If you didn't fear the lion, you were summarily removed from the gene pool. Yeah. By the way, I love those videos. I love them. So are you, however, the subset of people who are fearless and managed to not die actually have outsized impact on the advance of civilization, unlike we all still be in the cave. So are you one of these people in our species that retained a level of fear that was genetically removed by other forces, but you're still there helping our species? I don't think so. I think that's overstating. I think that, I mean, I experienced fear just like anybody else. I put you up on an evolutionary pedestal. He was like this. No, let's not get crazy. I'm still scared of the dark. I mean, I think that if anything, I've just had so much practice being scared that I've gotten good differentiating, you know, what's well. I love that. Oh, I love that. It's like a muscle memory. Yeah. That's yeah. We just get used to, I mean, I think that most people who are really crippled by fear, it's because they don't experience so much fear. Like they're not scared enough in a way or they haven't had to manage their fear enough. Do you have a fear appetite so that you got to go see scary movies all the time as well? Or jump out of air planes? I have to jump out of air planes, but no, I hate horror because I actually think that the whole genre is stupid because like jump cuts and startling moves and weird things. That's always going to startle you. That's designed to scare you. And like, I don't really want to feel fear. Like as a, I'm with you. I'm with you. Like I wouldn't intentionally go. Let me just say that. I just think the whole thing is stupid. As a black man, my life is scary enough. I don't need to sit and watch things. If you don't climb a rock face risking death after a certain amount of time, do you get antsy? And you have to go back and put your life at risk. Is he the climb? Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. You know, we call that an adrenaline junkie. Yeah. It's so hard to say. I mean, I get itchy to climb, but like I'll go climbing this afternoon, but it'll be in a gym and it'll be totally safe. But I'll still be excited. But you're still excited. You're excited. Yeah. Well, that's tapping into something. Motivation. The motivation to do El Capitan, the motivation to do, then we haven't discussed it, the Taipei 101, which you streamed live on Netflix. So what's the motivation? Because for me, I'm in competition with opponents or, you know, for tennis pro or soccer player. You were just in competition with yourself? Yeah, it's like a journey of self. I mean, I hate to say self-mastery or whatever, but basically just, you know, I spend most of my year climbing in the gym doing like what I'm going to do this afternoon. You know, you just go, you train, you work out, you climb, and then every once in a while, you kind of want to test yourself or see if you're capable of the things that you wish you were capable of or that you want to be capable of. You're competing against yourself. Yeah. I mean, basically, because we only just met, but as best as I can judge, you don't look like a publicity hound. Well, someone would say it's streaming a building climb live on Netflix is about as public-facing as it gets. But that is a very good point. However, however, to be fair, I would have done it for free. That's what I was going to say. I was going to say, however, you're not the guy with the camera. Yeah, exactly. Right. It's everybody else. Yeah. Who's riding your pie there. Yeah. Was it, I'm trying to remember the documentary. If I recall correctly, they were showing you as a little kid climbing everything, everything in the house, no matter what it was, you were up on it. You were never down on the ground. Yeah. I'm seeing that with my kids a little bit now. Oh, really? I'm not a nature nurturer. Very cool. You got something wrong with the ground? You got a problem with the ground? Oh, I just, well, actually, I love the view, honestly. I love being up high. I love seeing lots of things. I like getting on top of things. Let me just throw in a little bit of physics here, if I may. Please. Okay. As you ascend, you're putting energy into that ascent, obviously, muscle energy. 100% of that energy is what kills you when you hit the ground if you fall. Oh, wow. So your... Your exact match. You're storing up potential energy. Correct. So that if you were to fall, it's that energy that hits the ground. You basically killed yourself with the energy that you used to ascend. That's kind of wild. And... I'll remember that if I ever fall. I'll be like, I was saving for this. On the way to the house. On the way to the house. New, new toys! And on Earth, we have surface gravity that gives you your current weight. You had 160 pounds, really. Yeah, 160. Okay. Nice. Those were the days. I was gonna say, I remember those days. Dang. Yeah. He doesn't want to carry up any more fat than is necessary. I got you. Yeah. So on Earth, you weigh 160 pounds. But on a pulsar, the gravity is... It's like a dense ball of neutrons. The gravity is so severe that the energy to ascend the thickness of a sheet of paper equals what it would take to climb a thousand foot rock face just to step onto that sheet of paper. Wow. So rock climbing would be very different on different surfaces, planetary surfaces. Yeah, pretty hard on pulsars. And a little easier on the moon and even on Mars. Yeah. On Mars, you'd weigh 100 pounds or no, 46, 4. You weigh 60 pounds on Mars. That would really help. That'd be tremendously beneficial to my climate. That's excellent. A long time ago, I was in a mild car accident. Nobody, no blood. But I found it hard to get back into a car for weeks after that. It was such an assault on my concept of safety. I guess if they say the same thing about if you fall off a horse, get back on the horse. So does this happen among rock climbers? If you made a mistake or you fall, is there a barrier that prevents you from recovering? Yeah, I believe it's how fast you can clean your underwear. Thank you. I think there's probably two different scales that so there's if something happens, like say you're free-solving something and you break a handheld, like a very quick immediate thing that sort of jolts the panic system, you know, where you're something like, oh, I'm flooded with adrenaline. I just had a near-death experience. There's recovering from that, which there's no real trick to. I don't think I mean you take some deep breaths, you can pose yourself, you try to pull it together and you just carry on. But then what you're describing if you have an actual accident, some kind of a small fender, maybe not a real accident, but you know, if somebody actually has real trauma, like they have a horrendous, like something happens to them, they need a surgery. I mean, that's kind of a different level of coming back from it. I've thankfully never really experienced. I'm saying I felt it with no physical trauma. It was just emotional for me. So you're drawing a line between. Well, I'm trying. I'm recovering from something that had no real consequences to something that did. Yeah, I feel like emotional sort of mental recovery is different between like acute small scale things and then big picture giant things. I don't know, but I just think that the small scale things, at least for me, I've just gotten better at with practice because you just have so many little things happen while you're climbing. Well, I'm really scared. And then you're like, well, what am I going to do other than just pull myself back together, take some breaths. So you voluntarily had your brain scanned. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Actually, a journalist had approached me for a science magazine about doing a profile basically around this brain scan. And it was with a woman that was doing research on high sensation seeking individuals, which I think in her case was more on drug addicts and things and people like struggling with addiction, but it's kind of the same personality traits, I guess. And anyway, so yeah, I had an fMRI and they looked in my brain a bit. They'd have been looking at the amygdala. So that sort of fear factor. And from memory, you kind of registered less than the control during the test. So are you putting that down to nature or is this something you've nurtured? Yeah. So in the film free solo, there's this very short scene where they kind of show the brain scan and it's like, oh, it's less than normal. And so I think most people watch that scene and they come away from it being like, there's something wrong with this brain. But with the long form version in the magazine article and all that, it's kind of exactly that is like, is this nature versus nurture or whatever. I think that to me, the obvious thing is that it was more nurture, not so much that was nurture, but basically just practice. I think what you're saying is that the repetition of what you do over a very long period of time blunted your amygdala response. Yeah. So the fMRI scan, you know, you're in this like safe metal tube, you lie there and then you see black and white photos that are range. They're just like random black and white photos and they light up different parts of your brain, depending on what you're seeing. And so some of them, you know, there'd be like a black and white photo of like a handgun or something. That's like triggers fear and people are like the fear response, but I was kind of like, I was in my whole life getting deeply afraid for my life on cliffs. I'm kind of like lying in this whole tube looking at photos is just not scary. You know, it's like, had they thrown a snake into the tube, it would have been freaking scary. Why did it have to be snakes? Yeah, or like a rat, you know, had they thrown like a rat or like a big spider. Like, you know, there are plenty of things that could have lit up my fear response for sure, but looking at black and white photos, not one of them. To me, that's nurture. It's like, if you spend your whole life getting scared, you just require a higher threshold. That's a good answer. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, let's jump into your foundation, the Honnold Foundation. You like, remember the surfer, Kai Lenny? Yes. He's well into environmental projects, just like you are. Good. Solar energy projects. So please expand on this whole foundation that you formed and does it have its roots in the fact that you spend so much of your time in the great outdoors? Yeah. I mean, I was, I founded the Honnold Foundation in 2012, I think, and I was living in my van at the time and I started earning more than you did. You're living in your van? I lived in my... Down by the river. Well, down by the cliff. Part of the basic cliff, yeah, for sure. All right. So you're living in a van which is pretty inexpensive life. Yeah, I was living on 10 or 12 K years. Sometimes it's pretty easy lifestyle because you're literally only spending money on food and gas and you're just driving around climbing full time. And the thing is that I was living exactly the life that I wanted. You know, I was super happy. I was pursuing all these climbing goals. I was, you know, basically I was living my best life. And did you stink? Well, I mean, there was nobody around to know. So I didn't even have to have a van. So you were living in a van and that was your question? He didn't say on shower or bathing or soap. Yeah. But listen, they kept the bears away. Yeah, exactly. But so, you know, I started earning more than I needed and I felt like I should give what I didn't need to things that mattered. And so, you know, I obviously cared about the environment because I was living in nature quite a bit. And then basically came down to what could have the most benefit for environmental causes but also help human populations in some way because we basically, I traveled enough through climbing that I was like, nobody cares about the environment unless their basic needs are met. Like, you know, when you travel to rural communities, that's always the case. Such a great thing. Yeah. So it's kind of like, well, if you're going to try to protect the environment. It's a luxury to compare with that. Exactly. I mean, yeah, basically. And so it's kind of like, if you're going to support environmental projects, they have to improve standard of living. Like they have to help human communities in those places. And so that's why we've been supporting community solar ever since then. Fantastic. Another quote from my father. It's not good enough to be right. You also have to be effective. And your foundation takes... Yeah, I mean, I think energy access is the base of so many different things. Yeah. Yeah. Worldwide, yeah. Yeah, globally we're talking. Yeah. So it's still going strong? Yeah. This year, we'll pass 20 million in total giving. What? Congratulations. Way to go, way to go, man. It's crazy because when I started the combination, I donated 50K the first year. I sort of like went from me giving 50K a year to now, yeah, we've passed 20 million. 20 million. I feel like God's pretty cool. And by the way, once again, whenever this comes up, I feel it incumbent upon me to remind all of you watching that solar energy is still the cheapest energy on the planet. Okay. And in space. That's right. So I don't care what you've been told, you know, drill, baby, drill is not the way to go. Yeah, I feel the exact same way. Yeah. You know, since 2012, I was like, this is obviously the future. Like this is where the energy should be coming from. Absolutely. And you've got a podcast. It gives you some platform there. Yeah, it was a podcast called Planet Visionaries. Planet Visionaries, yeah, good. Yes. Others of like mind and soul? Well, it's supported by Rolex. And so I'm mostly interviewing Rolex ambassadors and basically conservationists, people who are working a lot of like marine biologists and divers and, you know, sort of, I don't know, like marine photographers and things like that. Yeah, they've definitely been supporting conservation and exploration type efforts for, you know, I don't know, 80 years. Wow. Super cool, man. Like a hundred years. Way to go Rolex. Who knew? I know it is surprising, but actually it's been a real pleasure hosting the podcast because just like you guys, I mean, you get to meet all these interesting people who are doing incredible things. And so it's always pretty inspiring because people who have devoted themselves to one niche, like, you know, we're like restoring coral in certain places. And you're like, who knew that you could restore, you know. Yeah. And what platform do they possibly have to tell people? Right. Without what you're providing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you ain't going on a tonight show restoring coral. Well, good to hear about this. And it's not just you climbing mountains. Is you making a difference in the world. Not enough people think or feel this way. What's the classic, I mean, I love climbing mountains, but at a certain point you're like, maybe I should try to do something useful as well. Yeah, make something of your life. Yeah, exactly. Well, Alex, thanks for sharing some of your day with us. It's a pleasure. Thank you. Did you climb up the side of the fifth floor? Give me permission. I will for sure. I got on my climbing stove with me. You got to never leave home without it. All right, this, we got to wrap. Well, we got to wrap this segment. This segment. Oh, yes. Yes. That's right. We got to get inside the man's brain. Coming up. Yes. We're going to reach out to our neuroscientist at large, Dr. Professor Heather Berlin. Oh, right. We come back on StarTalk Special Edition. I'm Joel Cherico and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson. Gary, time to bring in our next guest. Yes. Which is one of my faves. She is, without a doubt, one of our favorites. Fascinating guest, Alex Honnold. Fascinating because all of the achievement and the modesty was just, the humility was amazing. We got to get inside his brain. Let's do it. And that's what Heather is here for. Yes. Heather Berlin. Hello. Yes. Clinical psychologist. That's your, that's your, is that your day job? Clinical psychologist. Neuroscientist, clinical psychologist. Yeah. And crime fighter at night. You're at the Icon School of Medicine, Mount Sinai, New York. I was born in that hospital, Mount Sinai. Most people, most amazing people are born in Mount Sinai. You guys born there? They don't have that, I'm Philly. Yeah, you don't have, they don't have, they don't have Mount Sinai. All right, all right. So tell us, how does fear manifest in the brain? And I've heard the, a big dilla, blah, blah, blah, blah. What is that, what is that? Yeah, I mean, there's- Which I've surely mispronounced. I'm just. The amygdala is a key brain region involved in fear, but it's this, I think a lot of people think that fear lives in the amygdala, and that's not quite how it works. The amygdala is more like the smoke alarm. It detects something happening in the environment. It says, danger, danger, something, you know, could be happening. We need to gear up. So then it activates other parts of the brain, which then decide whether we need to sort of act on this or not. So it's a trigger. It's a trigger. It's sort of an alarm response that can be trained to either sort of be louder or to kind of dampen down, depending on our experience. And so what, I'm curious, because we just take it for granted, that a lion with big teeth that's chasing you is something that you should fear. But is that evolutionary? The portfolio of things that scare us. That's not learned, is it? So it's a bit of both. We are actually born, a research has shown that we're born with certain predispositions, evolutionarily sort of programs, that we're more likely to be fearful of certain things like spiders or heights, right, because of our history and our interaction with them than we are to say of, you know, electrical sockets. Right. Oh, because electric sockets are modern, and we didn't have a chance to evolve, being afraid of, oh, okay, so what should... That's why all my kids have afros. Wait, so that's an interesting point. If we wanted evolution to continue to work, you would just let kids put stuff in the socket and they would die, and those who did would die, they would move from the gene pool. Those who watched the others die would learn. That would be whatever we would be feeding the amygdala of what you should be afraid of. Right, so I mean, there's a bit of both though, I said, because you can also learn fears, right, by either watching something happen to someone else or having an experience yourself, let's say you get into a bad car accident, you might start to fear that, right? So you have lived experience, which can program, and then you also have kind of pre-installed predispositions to be more likely to be fearful of these things that we've learned from our past. Okay. So, we get a point where fear can almost paralyze or does paralyze a person? Yes, I mean, fear can be maladaptive. Not literally paralyze, it can just prevent you from reacting. So there's a healthy amount of fear, and you don't want too little, you don't want too much, right? Too much, and if you freeze and you can't respond or run, let's say, from the tiger, you're dead, right? Yes. But if you're not afraid enough, you're dead. So it's this middle ground that is really the healthy fear, and then when we get into psychological disorders, sometimes it's too little or too much, and that's where the problems start to arise. How much do we need people in modern society who are fear-resistant? And there are people who might don't fear getting arrested. I mean, there's the bad side of this curve. People who don't fear repercussions for wrongdoings. That's right, and that's because, quite frankly, I'm made of Teflon. Well, I mean, when you look at it, like, if you look at population genetics, like, there's things that remain in the population because it's an adaptive niche, right? So if everyone's playing by the rules, it's actually adaptive for those to be outside of that, to be more risk-taking, risk-takers, and so we find that genetically speaking, there's a certain gene that codes for people who are more risk-averse, but also who take more risks. And there's niches within the population for both those people to have an advantage. Now, if everyone, like, once you get past a certain amount, you know, percentage of the population, then it becomes maladaptive. So it kind of like we work together as a whole organism, if you think of us as a population, to keep a certain amount of risk-takers, because that's adaptive for us as a society. They're the ones who are going to look and go a little further and explore. Right, because I said in the first segment, because it made sense to me, not because I researched it the way you have, that we need some risk-takers that remain among us lest we all still be living in the cave. Absolutely, exactly. So it's actually adaptive for there to be certain people out there who are more likely to take risks. Right. And when does it be? For the benefit of us all. For the benefit of us all. Exactly. The other ones are going to taste that fruit and see if it's, you know, poison or not, and... Right, exactly. Yeah. The head swells up. If you're not already this person that would go and do something adventurous, how do you sort of push your own envelope when it comes to fear? Are there techniques and skills? Absolutely. You know, so something that I kind of prescribe to patients, especially people who are risk averse as well, so they kind of are avoiding things too much, is to kind of take these micro-risks, where your brain is just making predictions all the time about what it expects, and you have to kind of change this algorithm, and you do that by training it, by actually being a little uncomfortable, letting yourself, you know, do it in a, where it's not overwhelming, where you're flooding, it's called flooding, where it's just too much, but you feel a little uncomfortable, and your brain starts, and then nothing bad happens. Your brain starts to learn, okay, you know, discomfort isn't, doesn't mean danger. In that case, it's not justified. Right. Like, let's say you're afraid of taking elevators, you know, maybe you just, I say, okay, you're going to take just the elevator one floor and get off. I know it's going to be uncomfortable, you're going to feel, but after that, you're like, oh, nothing bad happened. The brain starts to change its prediction, and that alarm response, the amygdala, it starts to go down, and that's how you gradually train yourself. And if you take someone like, you know, like, like, the rock climbing or free-soullowing, where, you know, you don't just start out climbing El Capitan. No, right. You're doing it little micro-risks over and over, where every time you do it, you feel a little bit safer, and a little bit safer, and then you build up to these things where, you know, So you expand the comfort zone. Yes. What happens in the brain when the fear becomes irrational, and then what do you do to deal with that? You feel like fear of the number 13. Yes. Trichedecophobia. Trichedecophobia. That's a phobia. Just phobia. Phobia in general. So it becomes irrational. You have to kind of attack it from both ends, like top down, bottom up. So the bottom up is you kind of have to train, you have to embody it. You have to actually do the things, like let the number 13 sit there, and, you know, you still do the thing you're afraid to do, because the number 13 is there, or whatever it may be. And then nothing bad happens. It starts to train the brain at a sort of unconscious level. But then there's the top down, where you can, it's called cognitive reframing. So you think of things in a slightly different way. So let's say you're afraid of something, the heart is racing, you're thinking, oh my god, I'm panicking, something bad's going to happen. You reframe it and say, you know what, my body is preparing for action. You know, this isn't such a bad thing. I can still do things even if I'm feeling afraid, if you reframe it in that way. So there's a cognitive aspect to it, and then there's the sort of just behaviorally, you have to keep doing it over and over again to teach your brain not to fear it. And over time, the fear goes down. This sounds like what a psychologist would help a person to achieve. But in the future, the future of neuroscience seems to me, you just go in there and nip tuck a few neurons, and then the symptoms go away like this. Is that the future of your field? There are some, and even with drugs, that you can sort of unlearn. So fear is about association. You associate something, a stimulus, it's fearful. You can pull apart that association with certain drugs. So you train someone to fear, like Pavlov's dogs can be trained to hear the bell and saliva starts coming. You can train people to fear something, let's say a white rabbit, right? And then you can unpair that with certain drugs. I don't think it's dramatic as you have to go in with certain neural implants. Ultimately though, the fear circuits, they understand so well that we could potentially go in there. You admit it, that's what you really want to do, manipulate people's brains. So when Alex was talking about, you know what, if I fall from 50 feet, it's the same as falling from 1,000 feet, how is he dealing with that fear aspect? How does he cognitively arranged himself? Yeah, that's a really good question. So that's something that I call controlled surrender. So basically, and I used to actually also, you had mentioned ice of a fear of flying, and the way that I got over it, it's not like knowing the statistics cognitively or all that, it's a feeling, right? It's a feeling, right. And it comes up from, so when I finally, it's acceptance. Okay, when I get in the plane, I have no control, it's letting go. I don't have control, and if this plane goes down, I'm going to die, and once you fully accept that, the fear starts to go down, because it's the holding on of control that actually is creating the anxiety, but once you just accept it, and you know, Buddhists and mystics and all, Stoics have said this. And there's that Christian prayer, which is, God, give me the power to change the things I can and to accept the things I can't. Exactly. That's the soul of this. Yes, which is why I'm drunk on every flight. But this is, I mean, with Alex, like he, you know, once he passes, let's say whatever it was, 50 feet, there's an acceptance, no matter what, if I fall, I'm going to die, and once you accept it, it kind of comes the fear circuit. I said it kind of made it smaller, less of a threat to not allow it to just be in your head and start to eat away at you. So I was a geek kid, and I would always have data override my feelings. I could do it like that. The plane is shaking, and I said, no, I know how many planes fall out of the sky, and it's this little, and it had this many flights. So you were able to, like, cognitive your way out. Well, that's the top down. You must have a very strong top down processing that you can, yeah, very good prefrontal cortex. That's the part of the brain that's involved. That's the part right here. Yeah, right in front, above the eyes. And sometimes control like that is really good. Like we need that, right, to override. But other times, like with Alex, once he's trained so well, and his kind of body and brain know what to do, when you start putting in that top down, you start becoming too consciously aware and thinking too much, it messes you up. Because the training, it's, and then you actually, once you've trained, like to perform it your best, you actually have to stop trying so hard. You have to let go. It's almost like your body knows better than your thought process. That's a conscious brain, yes. So how, is that what's going on in, like, professional athletes? Mm-hmm. So yeah, it's, you know, not even just athletes, musicians, surgeons, right? They've trained to the level that they don't have to think about it. And in fact, if they start to think about it, because consciousness is very good at certain things, but has a limited capacity. Right. The unconscious and like, it has so, it's so large. If you start to consciously think about it, it kind of messes up the flow of things. Like if you had to think about how am I walking and balancing at the same time and all that, it wouldn't work as well. Or when you're, you know, a professional athlete, right? What angle am I going to hit that ball? It will mess you up. So when you're in, once you've trained, the training lives in your neural circuits. And what your job is. Is what people call muscle memory. Muscle memory, yeah. Absolutely. And it, so letting go isn't chaos. It's actually trusting the control you've already built in. Gotcha. And once you have your whole job is to not think about it, because when you, when you start to infuse that top down processing, it will all, it's good in some cases. In those particular cases, it can be detrimental. So is it, is it kind of like you've actually trained this, these neurological pathways to fire in a certain way. And then if you just let them do it, then they'll just do it? Pretty much. Yeah. Pretty much. And, and you know, we've seen that even just with patients with brain damage. You know, this one patient, he actually had his hippocampus, the part of the brain having to do with long-term memories, was completely damaged. And so he couldn't even hold consciousness from one minute to the next. Dang. He was forget. So every minute he felt like, I'm just waking up now. I'm just, he had a diary just that I'm waking up now. I'm just waking up now. And so he was, you know, in an institution, he couldn't function, but he was a pianist. And if they could get him to start playing the music, he could play an entire beautiful piece through all the way to the end. Because it was, it was a different part of his brain. And once you activated that part of the brain or with Alzheimer's patients, if you get them to start, they can't even speak at some certain point, you get them to start singing a song from their era of their childhood or happy birthday. They can suddenly sing the whole thing to completion. So that reminds me, we interviewed Daniel Leviton, who, he was a musician and a neuroscientist. And he wrote a whole book on how music just manifests differently in your brain and how anything sort of rhythmic changes what would otherwise be manifesting if it was not rhythmic or was not serenaded by music and fascinating. Music is really powerful and it's related to language as well. And it's how we remember things, right, with rhythm and dance. And so it goes very, you know, deep to our evolutionary roots as well. But the thing about it's just- Especially since every culture has some musical tradition. Yes. Yeah. So before we could write things down, you know, the way we remember things with song. Well, we probably sung them. Right, song and rhyme and rhythm. And so, you know, I think it's deep in sort of our subcortical parts of our brain. And like I said, the prefrontal cortex is important for certain things. And some people who are too under control, they need more control. They need more prefrontal cortex function. And others need less to actually do their best. So our guy, Alex, would you say because he was very comfortable in himself, it was balanced for whatever his desires and needs were. But for someone else, it could put their life at risk. Oh, absolutely. I mean, if you're too much of a risk taker without the training, you know, that's dangerous. If you overthink too much though on the other end of the spectrum, that can be dangerous too. And that also leads to anxiety. So, you know, the difference between fear is that something is in your present moment and it triggers this whole neurological response. Actually happening. It's actually happening. And anxiety is just anticipation of a future threat. It's fully cognitive. And certain people who are just obsessing and thinking and worrying all the time, that's not adaptive, you got to train them to actually turn that part of their brain down. Now, did you put all this, I heard, rumor, I heard tell, you put all this together in a TED Talk? Yes. And what was the title of the TED Talk? The TED Talk is related to, it's similar, the book I'm working on as well. It's the fine art of losing control. Nice. And it's about how to control the dial, how to turn it up when you need it and turn it down. Cool. So gaining control by letting go in a controlled way. See, my book would be called The Hot Mess of Losing Control. So when you say about dialing up, dialing down, if you have certain areas of the brain that you were talking about, the hippocampus that was damaged in one patient, is there a way to circumnavigate that you as a person can control yourself with a dial up, dial down sort of scenario? No, you need professional help. That's why you have to book time with her on a couch. I wasn't talking about me. I'm asking for a friend. Exactly. Someone I know, I've heard of. He looks a lot like me. There are techniques that you can learn how to basically control your brain. Once you understand how it works, then we can figure out ways to control it. And everybody's brain is slightly different, right? So it's like everyone's brain is like a thumbprint. So some people need more of one thing, some people need more of another. Some people, like I said, need more control. So we have to turn up the prefrontal cortex and there are techniques to do that. Some people need less and we have to train them how to turn it down. So they have to be less fearful and less anxious. Yeah, in terms of up and down, I was once at a funeral of a 17-year-old kid who died of brain cancer. And I played with him once when I was just a child, but he was a family friend. So I went to the funeral in a church with an organ playing and they brought the busloads of kids from the high school and they were weeping as they're holding each other. Very, very sad. And I started welling up and I said, I don't know this kid. I played with him when I was three. So why am I crying? I'm crying because everybody else is crying, but I don't know him. And then I did the math on how many people die every day in the city versus how many people are born. And I just sucked back up the tears and I watched it anthropologically. Damn, that's cold blooded. It's interesting getting insight into how your mind is. I'm sorry. We're not going to get an energy spray. I'm not going to use. You should have just cried. Yeah, I just, I rationalize. I don't mind crying, but I want a reason for it, not just because everybody else is. Everybody has different defense mechanisms and one of them is rationalization. I mean, not that this is a bad thing. I mean, it could be very adaptive. Yeah, it's adaptive in certain contexts. That's why the brain evolved these mechanisms, right? To be able to sort of rationalize your way out of it or intellectualize your way out of certain trauma, let's say. You know how this manifested September 11th. I'm four blocks from the collapsed buildings. There are people adults weeping, carrying their kids to safety and I'm completely in control. And we got to get my kid, he's there. Let's load up the supplies, come out. It's adaptive to be able to be in control when emotions are heightened and to train yourself. I mean, I don't, you know, maybe there were things that you've done in the past that allow you to have gotten to that place. Yeah. And what about this? Because I'm just the opposite. I am very, I am great in a crisis. But I think it's because I've actually experienced a lot of trauma. Right. I'm serious. Right. No, no, no, but you've trained yourself that it's just a situation in which you, it's almost like this, you know, micro risks or micro fear, like micro over trauma over time. You've expanded your comfort zone. So normally what might stress you 10 years ago, you've had that much experience now when it falls within that space. That's your comfort zone. This is to say though, I'm not, I'm not saying trauma is a good thing. You know, but there's everybody get traumatized. Yeah. You know, trauma is not good and that can lead to PTSD and all sorts of things. But they're opposite of that, you know, coddling, you know, there's, if you protect your children too much from any kind of feeling of being uncomfortable, that's actually not a good thing. And that can lead to more anxiety and inability to be able to cope in a, you know, a threatening situation. It also leads to your kids saying stuff like, F you Carol, you know. Yeah, we got to land this plane. Do you have just some final reflective thoughts on what power we have over our own risk taking? We all have much more control than we think we have. And I think it's really powerful to imbue yourself with that knowledge that you can actually make changes and you can improve, let's say, if you're afraid of things. Like there's science behind it and it works. People can overcome fears. That being said, as much as, you know, being able to control your brain and yourself is, is can be really important and empowering. It's also just as important to be able to let go sometimes and stop thinking and just be. Yeah. And just have acceptance and be present and let go of control. Party! What's up with the party? I don't think that was Heather's message. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. Maybe I heard something about this. Party, but just like don't overdo it. So Heather, will you come back when your book comes out? Absolutely. Alright, excellent. You're our conduit to the neuroscience universe. I love that. If it will. Put that on my business card. Thanks for coming back to Star Talk. Thanks for having me. Alright, Chuck, Gary, always a pleasure. And that's another wrap for Star Talk, special edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist, as always. Keep looking up. Thanks for watching. I'll see you next time.