World's Greatest Climber: If I Had One Last Climb It Would Be...

It drives me crazy that nobody else thinks about risk in this way. People look at my life and they're like, "Well, you're crazy. You're such a risk-taker." Well, at least I'm taking the risks that I'm choosing. Because think of all the people that, like, go out partying every weekend, and they get buzzed, and they drive home. And even sedentary people who are like, "Well, I don't take risks. I stay home and I play video games." No, you're at a much higher risk of heart disease. Like, they're taking all kinds of risk that they're not actually choosing to take, and you're still gonna freaking die either way. So you might as well take smart, calculated risks and do all the things that you wanna do, and at least die happy when you go. [chuckles] He's done it! Alex Honnold has made history again.

Scaling one of the world's tallest skyscrapers. But the conclusion that a lot of people have arrived at is that you don't experience fear. Because when they look at these two brain scans, your amygdala is lighting up less when you're shown scary images.

I, I actually hate all the brain stuff because people always put me in this box of like, "Well, you're different." And I'm like, "Well, not really." Like, I'm a middle-class suburban kid. Nobody in my family is athletic. I just... After 20 years of climbing five days a week and being really freaking scared, I respond differently than an average person. And there was tons of emotional turmoil throughout it, periods where you're just like, "I'm trying so hard, and I'm just, like, not as good as I want to be." You know, I was, like, living in a car, and I had, like, a couple hundred bucks a month for 10 years. Like, that's challenging, but you just can't master a craft overnight.

I guess that's what people don't see. And so how do you create the conditions to out-persist other people? And then in all your career, when is the moment where you were most scared?

On an expedition in Antarctica, I kept hoping that it's gonna get better, and it just kept getting worse, like I could die.

Do you have a conversation with your partner before you go and do something like this? Because she wrote a letter.

Oh, gosh.

"Obviously, this is your worst nightmare," she said, "but we all have to do scary things sometimes, Alex." [drumbeat] Guys, I've got a quick favor to ask you. We're approaching a significant subscriber milestone on this show, and roughly sixty-nine percent of you that listen and love this show haven't yet subscribed for whatever reason. If there was ever a time for you to do us a favor, if we've ever done anything for you, given you value in any way, it is simply hitting that Subscribe button. And it means so much to myself, but also to my team, 'cause when we hit these milestones, we go away as a team and celebrate. And it's the thing, the simple, free, easy thing you can do to help make this show a little bit better every single week. So that's a favor I would ask you, and, um, if you do hit the Subscribe button, I won't let you down, and we'll continue to find small ways to make this whole production better. Thank you so much for being part of this journey. It means the world, and, uh, yeah, let's do this. [upbeat music] Alex, to understand you, I think from everything I've learned about you, from the research I've done, from speaking to your wife, your agent, everybody I could speak to, I think to understand your context, we first need to understand the circumstances in which you were raised and the childhood you had, because it seems to be... I mean, for all of us, there's, like, fingerprints left on, left on us that define the anomaly, um, that many of us become, including yourself. So what do I need to know? What does the viewer need to know about the early context?