276: How Surviving an Avalanche Taught Cory Richards That True Exploration Begins Within

In this episode of The Light Watkins Show, adventure photographer and storyteller Cory Richards takes us on a journey through his extraordinary life—one filled with raw honesty, unexpected pivots, and hard-earned wisdom. From a childhood marked by undiagnosed bipolar disorder and turbulent family dynamics to living in abandoned buildings and dropping out of school, Cory's path was anything but conventional.

But it was that unconventional journey that led him to some of the highest peaks in the world—both figuratively and literally. After borrowing a simple point-and-shoot camera, Cory discovered a passion for photography that would eventually land him on assignment with National Geographic, capturing some of the most remote and treacherous landscapes on the planet. He became one of the most sought-after adventure photographers in the world, climbing Everest twice and documenting human resilience in extreme conditions.

Yet, despite the accolades and success, Cory made a shocking decision: he walked away. In the middle of an expedition, at the peak of his career, he left. Not just the climb, but the entire identity he had built as a photographer and mountaineer. In this deeply introspective conversation, Cory opens up about why he chose to step away, how he navigated personal demons, and what it means to truly listen to your inner voice.

We discuss the tension between passion and burnout, the struggle of defining oneself beyond external validation, and the courage it takes to let go of a version of yourself that no longer serves you. Cory also shares insights into storytelling, the power of imagery, and how his life experiences shaped the way he sees the world—both through a camera lens and beyond it.

If you've ever felt trapped by success, struggled with mental health, or wondered when it's time to walk away from something you've outgrown, this episode will resonate deeply. Cory's story is a testament to the beauty of exploration—not just of the world, but of oneself.

Tune in for a candid, unfiltered, and inspiring conversation about what it truly means to embrace change, redefine purpose, and find meaning in the unknown.

Transcript

CR: “When this happened, I was sobbing in my tent. My mind was racing and I couldn't track the thoughts and I just, and I knew, I knew, I knew I was just like, I can't, I can't keep doing this. I can't. I'm miserable. And I had felt a certain sense of misery for a long time, especially going out on these assignments. AndThe more troubling part of it was so often people were like, you have the best job in the world. You like, look at you. And I felt this deep sense of like, well, why do I hate myself so much? Why do I hate what I'm doing so much? And then there was this sense of guilt around it all. Like, why? Like you're telling me everything's perfect, but I feel like everything's fucked. What is this? And I just rejected it and rejected it and rejected it until I couldn't.”

[INTRODUCTION]

Today's guest is Cory Richards, whose life reads like a fever dream of both triumph and turbulence. As a high school dropout battling bipolar disorder, Cory found himself squatting in abandoned buildings before discovering that a borrowed camera could become his compass to a different life. 

And what's remarkable about Cory's journey isn't just his rise to becoming one of National Geographic's most celebrated photographers, or even the fact that he summited Mount Everest twice once without oxygen. It's how he transformed his struggles with mental health into a lens for capturing humanity in its rawest form from the Arctic to Antarctica, always searching for those milliseconds of truth that tell our shared story. 

And just when he seemed to have it all the acclaim, the career, the epic film projects, Cory walked away from an expedition on the world's seventh highest peak in what appeared to be a dramatic public breakdown. But that experience led Cory to write two groundbreaking books that reframe how we see mental health and adventure and the stories that we tell ourselves. 

Through Cory's lens, we discover how embracing our full story, especially its darkest chapters, can lead to our most profound transformations.

Let's dive in…

[00:01:59] LW: Cory Richards. It's a pleasure having you on the podcast, sir. 

[00:02:04] CR: Light. Thanks for having me. I love it. I've been, we've, we've been 

[00:02:07] LW: trying to do this for a minute, so

yeah, yeah, yeah. You were in the Atlantic somewhere.

What the hell was going on in the Atlantic?

[00:02:14] CR: I went on this really interesting, how do I even describe it? It was, an Atlantic Crossing hosted by Earth One, which is an organization that tries to bring Sort of a, wholeness to, problem solving specifically focused on climate. And so they bring together, you know, indigenous elders with people who are, coming up with solutions to solve these issues and then funders. So in some ways it's similar to like a summit, you know, summit at sea, that, kind of thing. But with sort of less of a party, I find that Summit can end up being sort of like Learning Man. And, um, but it's a lot of the same crowd, but I think it's a little more focused and they, work on this really beautiful guild structure where they have different guilds.

So, you know, like new economies, artificial intelligences, like things like that. and people who specialize in those fields, then sort of, their fellows and chaplains that guide it. And then there are people that just join the guilds. And sort of discuss how do we fix this? But the idea of the container of a crossing is that you can't leave.

Right. So you're sort of forced into a longer form conversation that hopefully yields actionable solutions that then you have a financial commitment to support. So that's what I was doing, but it was really interesting because I was kind of like, this whole thing is an allegory for my life, which is. I'm in the middle of the ocean. I don't know what's going on. I trust that there's land out there somewhere, but I'm kind of confused. And you know what I mean?

[00:03:53] LW: Were you going as a guest or a keynote speaker?

 [00:03:56] CR: I was going as my friend Ryan, who runs the story guild asked me to come and take photographs. And my caveat for that was like, yes, and I'm probably going to do 99 percent of it on my iPhone, which I think is jarring for people, but it really does, you know, there's no people that phones are so ubiquitous that they don't really pay attention to you in the same way.

And that's really helpful.

[00:04:20] LW: Yeah. It must be interesting for you too, because as a professional photographer, you know, at the highest level, when someone asks you to come on board as a photographer that, you know, in their mind, you're thinking, yeah, I'll pay him a few hundred bucks and,

[00:04:33] CR: Yeah.

[00:04:34] LW: and, you know, have him come on. He'd be happy to do it for exposure.

Like, do you, think about that when you, when people make these kinds of requests for you? or do you have a rule? Like, I just don't, I'm not going to take any pictures for anyone anywhere because it's just not, it's not worth my time.

well, no, I mean, I definitely, I feel very honored first and foremost that people would ask. The right people, obviously not like my cousins having a pizza party. Can you come by and take some pictures?

[00:05:01] CR: Which I'd also do, but I, you know, it's, I don't even really identify as a photographer anymore. I've really stepped away from that, very intentionally. And so I have a bit of a, um, tenuous relationship with it because in some ways it feels like a step back and yet complicated. It's almost paradoxical because the camera is what's getting me invited.

Right. And yet it's not what I want to be doing necessarily. And by virtue of being a photographer, there's a necessary separateness. So you're sort of other to begin with, and you don't really fit anywhere. And so you're always in this observational mode, which can perpetuate or deepen that feeling like you're on the outside looking in.

So you're never really a part of it, but you're a part of it.

You're very intimate part of it without being part of the conversation. and that was also part of this idea of, a bit of the lostness, In my life right now, I'm really trying to reframe loss to be something more generative versus the idea of lost often implies There's a negative connotation to it but also that feeling of being afloat and not really part of it was interesting

[00:06:15] LW: Yeah. That's an interesting way to phrase it to considering the context, the broader context of your life story, which you obviously outline in the color of everything. And I'd love to just go back to those earlier days, just to give the listener and viewer context into how you have become the person that you are today, who is no longer identifying as photographer as Mountaineer, your keynote speaking, you're doing all these wonderful things, men's groups and whatnot.

 but it didn't start off that way.

 And the way it looked on paper is that this kid is very much lost, but to your point, I don't know if that's the best way to describe it. You know, when you can see the whole movie,

if you can't judge the first, you know, 20 minutes of the movie without understanding where this whole thing is going.

So maybe, we replace that word lost with exploration

[00:07:06] CR: Yeah, well, it's, that's actually something that's one of the things that I've kind of been playing with this idea that to be an explorer means that you spend most of your life lost, right. And that's. Intentionally, right? And so you cast off into the unknown, which mirrors very much the hero's journey archetype of the story, which is, you know, the hero.

I'm not saying I'm a hero, but in the story, Of that, the hero is called to the unknown, something happens, and then they intentionally sort of set out not knowing what they're doing. They might have a loose goal, but I would say even in my life, I didn't have necessarily a loose goal until a little bit later.

But the way it started was, you know, The Color of Everything is very much, and you've read it, it's about mental health. And it's about my journey with bipolar disorder, addiction. and the book really covers all of that, but the way it started was, you know, I grew up, I had a pretty, what I would call sort of at least an outwardly idyllic childhood where, you know, we were a white middle class family in Utah that,played outside a lot.

My parents were very adamant that. Our education was best served by being outside as well as in the classroom. And so for the early years, you know, we were learning how to ski when we were two, my brother and I, I started climbing when I was five and we'd spend our weekends outside, as much as we could.

My parents both worked, you know, my dad worked seven days a week in the winter. My mom worked six days a week in the winter. And then in the summers, we'd have weekends off, my dad worked construction. And so it wasn't as if we were hugely privileged. It just, you know, we never had money, but, we had opportunity.

 and so that, part of my childhood was really quite lovely, but there was immediately a sense of something was a little different with, the way I functioned. I was a very, very, hard baby. And, so much so that my mom took me to see a psychologist when I was one, which you can see how that already sort of starts to craft a narrative around, if you follow the traditional thinking or even what we would refer to as the stigma of mental health, there was sort of the sense of brokenness or otherness.

 and that, grew and grew and grew and, sort of as my brother moved into his adolescent years, he had a lot of anger. And I've, sort of traced that back to insecure attachments, potentially related to postpartum depression, and then being two years apart. We did everything. We did all the same things.

So there was this amplified competition between the two of us. And certainly as he got into his adolescence, and I was very, very emotionally needy.by the way, I speak, about this without any blame. or without any sort of negativity. I think. He felt and I don't want to say too much about his story, but I feel Like he probably felt a certain degree of neglect and the way that But my parents were just doing the best they could but the way that manifested was through violence and he Learned that if he you know beat me up He got attention and I learned that if he beat me up I got attention and it just so happened that it put me in the victim role You And both things were serving a purpose.

And for a lot of my life I was like, Oh yeah, my brother was this very violent person, and there was this abuse, and that is true. And at the same time, I was very much feeding into it, because I also understood that, at least subconsciously, that it was giving me attention. And at the same time, there was also a degree of neglect that I felt, inadvertently, that was like, well, you know, why am I not being protected from this violence?

[00:11:04] LW: How did it usually end? You mentioned many brawls in the book. did you pass out? Did your brother just,

[00:11:09] CR: He, there was blood, but I, and there was blood and bruises, and I always say that, Ahem. Look, a certain amount of, sibling rivalry and to some degree violence between boys is pretty normal, you 

know, it's, not, brothers beat each other up and it's part of the hard knock school of life and I don't think it's necessarily always bad.

 I think there's some, value to that. I think some people in the wellness community, especially, they're like, well, they, they give me pushback, but trauma is part of life, right? I think the thing that was really, really tough for me was the degree of rage that I felt from 

him. and that was the scary part, right?

 but I also see that he was, you know, we all come to this, we all come to the table with our own stuff. Yeah. 

And to lay it squarely at the feet of him would, I mean, it's, just an interconnected, interwoven family dynamic that manifests in a very specific way. Even when you're ticking all the boxes of like, this is a, you know, look at this family, they're, you know, all the things we said, there's a certain degree of cultural privilege.

and yet, all of this is going on behind the scenes. And so, you know, we were both gifted kids. We went to high school two years early, both of us. 

and then because of this tumultuous home life that was getting more and more and more violent, you know, I sort of went from a straight A student to a, to dropping out.

 and then I was put in the hospital, for, you know, You know, basically I, just stopped going to school when I was about 13 years old. and my parents were, they didn't know what to do. So I ended up in a

[00:12:48] LW: How does that look? you just refused to leave the house or you told them you announced it. You,

was it a formal decision? 

[00:12:55] CR: I went to school and then would leave school, 

you know, I'd like get the ride to school. And then before the first period, whoever was going to go ditch that period or smoke cigarettes in an alley, I was with them. Um, 

you know, and then my mom was like, Hey, you know, and I knew something was amiss, you know, it was, I, they put me on Prozac and then we went down the list of all the popular SSRIs.

I was diagnosed with, you know, clinical depression and anxiety And then it was when they put me in the hospital. And then in this long term inpatient outpatient care facility that I was diagnosed with bipolar two. And that's when I sort of announced I'm never going back to school.

[00:13:36] LW: Was there, you mentioned something about art class in the book. Was there anything that you did towards in school, even though the rest of it was not really holding your attention?

[00:13:46] CR: Art. I mean, you know, I loved that class. Oh my God, I could go and I could just get lost and I could narrow my focus onto the page and, create. It was like breathing, you know, and even as a really young child, that's how I spent most of my time, whether it was drawing or painting or crafting, you know, I was obsessed with, indigenous American cultures.

And I, you know, I'd go to the leather store and I'd buy all these, you know, books about how to make native crafts and I'd bead and I, but that was this, that was a place where I was like, Oh, I love this. You know, everything else was just boring. It was just You couldn't hold my attention.

[00:14:27] LW: Yeah, 

I don't know if you've seen that Ted talk with Sir Ken Robinson, who's talks a lot about education, modern day education and how, ineffective it is. And he 

talks about some study where they were observing some little girl who was misbehaving and she wouldn't pay attention and seemed like she was, you know, had ADHD and anyway, turned out that she flourished when they put her in a dance class.

And that was what she was like most. longing to do, and I feel 

like a lot of systems in our society today, even in addition to education are sort of, they're kind of like, I've been thinking a lot about this lately, like, The TSA is the bane of a lot of people's existence. 

 mine included, but they kind of have to be that way.

They have to yell at you. They have to scream at you because they're adhering to the lowest common denominator, the people who 

don't pack for the trips properly, and they don't take off their stuff properly. And so if 

you're being sort of shuffled through with that. The masses, then that's what's going to happen.

And the same thing happens in education. It's sort of geared towards the lowest common denominator or the people who just aren't really, self starting or able to gravitate towards anything in particular, but what ends up slipping through the cracks are people, kids who would thrive.

In certain areas of interest, like art or music or, you know, science, but it never gets cultivated, you know,

and, 

[00:15:49] CR: it's, he's the one that says like, he's like our, modern education school or our modern education systems are basically breeding. They're sort of, they're like, slowly,

they, they, Yeah,

and they,rob children of creativity 

 and it's funny because I think about this a lot because as a high school dropout, there's sort of this, it ends up getting celebrated in some ways later on in life, especially if you excel.

I don't think that's quite the messaging. what I think is interesting is certainly as we live in sort of an overmedicated society. Which again, I think is not black or white. I think medications are marvelous. I still take, lamotrigine to manage sort of my upswings with, bipolar.

but it's so interesting that we have these kids and we're like, okay, sit down in school for eight hours a day. And then we're like shocked that they can't sit still. And then we're like, well, they've got ADHD. And in my mind, I'm like, We're not supposed to sit down for eight hours a day. we're not designed that way.

That's not our biological evolution. We are supposed to move and bounce and throw 

rocks and explore 

exactly. and then we're like, well, the kid's not conforming. we should put them on meds. So they, and that can help, but undermines and sort of betrays the reality of our species.

At a very fundamental level. And I also think that kids are really good at self selecting. They know what they want to do, you know, and you put, you give them an opportunity, some are going to naturally just read all day and others are going to go out and build things with sticks and paying it and some are going to dance.

Some are going to make art, some are going to, and sort of in a perfect world. like observing what these kids are naturally self selecting towards would then predicate or at least help us guide children into what their highest, efficacy or output would be, you know, and look, we're not going to have any shortage of people who want to go into finance.

Right. Like some people are going to be like, no, I want to make money. That's like, I want to learn systems and I want to, great. And, some of those people are going to be like, I have an idea about how to invent something and they're going to go on to invent Uber, you know, so it's, yeah, I, there's something flawed about it.

[00:18:13] LW: So, you know, since we're dreaming about the future of school and how that may or may not play a role with mental health, if you had a magic wand, Cory,

[00:18:24] CR: I do. It's 

[00:18:25] LW: and now that you're in your forties and you've gone through all of the experiences you've gone through, and we're going to get more into detail on more of those experiences.

But if you could wave that one and create a system that encourages the kind of exploration that you have. You've been privy to in your life, but as a younger person, knowing what the struggle can be like for someone who would be labeled as disruptive, 

but also keeping into keeping in mind that most teachers aren't trained in how to nurture curiosity.

Like someone like you, if you went back and taught elementary school. 

Today, 

[00:19:07] CR: having had all the experiences you've had been on top of the world, literally and everything, you could probably pose questions, tell stories that would just have the kids captivate it. 

[00:19:20] LW: Right. But. I would say the majority of teachers probably haven't even done much exploration outside of going to university and learning how to be a teacher. And so they're facilitating these sort of memorization exercises and, you know, essay writing exercises and grading based on grammar and structure and things like that. And do you know the capital of Montana, 

which is not exactly getting 

kids to where We want them to go, but yeah, 

I'm just curious what, knowing what, you know, now, and I know you're not a trained teacher, but you are kind of a teacher because you're a speaker and you're a writer and you're a photographer and that's telling stories.

And that's all teaching really is, is telling stories in a way that captivates the audience. It makes them curious about wanting to learn more. What, would you say we could do to evolve the schooling?

[00:20:10] CR: Oh my God, dude. I adore this conversation. look, a couple of things. My dad was a teacher. so

[00:20:17] LW: You 

taught math, right? 

[00:20:18] CR: Yeah. Yeah. And so, and my mom worked in education as well. She raised money for the university of Utah. So we were, an education oriented family. , Secondly, I'd say to the point of storytelling, everything is storytelling.

Teaching is storytelling that draws children and students into, the sphere of what the study is, but the best teachers are the ones that tell the best stories, just like the best politicians are the ones that tell the best stories. What I would say, and this would be just a traumatic overhaul.

If I could wave a magic wand, I'd go back to the teachers to begin with. First of all, I think there would be sort of a minimum age of teachers, and that would come after as much education as doctors. that would put, You know, these teachers in a position where they have undergone and been weeded out on some level, to produce the, highest,what would I say?

The most qualified teachers that understand the importance of curiosity and creativity in whatever field. And, beyond that, I would. Raise the wage of teachers to be incredibly high so that this is a incredibly competitive field. Hugely competitive. So it would select the best and the brightest and, you know, so shifting the allocation of funds and taxpayer money to support the absolute highest qualified best teachers, would then create a pool of teachers that is going to amplify the student body, you know, writ large.

 and, That would be where I would start, right? And that is a huge, huge, huge shift, and one that I think is and potentially possible. but, In doing so, you already have generated a community that is going to be thinking more critically and more curiously about what is best for students. And in doing so again, then you're going to We have teachers who understand the fundamentals of what is most effective for the transmission of information and by that degree story, because when you look at it, almost everything comes from a taught source.

This is about the transmission of knowledge, right? And so if, we're really paying attention, we would. know, yes, doctors save lives. But where do doctors come from? Well, they come from teachers. And so if you paid the teachers more and made it so, so hard to do, and you get older, more mature teachers who have gone through this gauntlet of critical thinking and curiosity, um, You know, you would just amplify the student's ability to excel in every way.

That's just one way to do it, you know, and that would extend all the way down to, you know, that's K through 12 and of course beyond.

[00:23:27] LW: Yeah, I heard Malcolm Gladwell float an idea about he wrote this book a few books ago about World War Two and this, 

battalion of pilots,

[00:23:37] CR: uh, what was it? The Bomber Mafia.

[00:23:38] LW: the bomber mafia. 

Exactly. and so he talked about how, what we could do with schools is you could take the whole year to study. An event like World War Two 

and the math class could be about, you know, understanding the statistical effects, impacts on the population and the number of bombs that were dropped and how they used to figure out what the munitions were that they needed and stuff like that.

And the sociologies class could be focused on the impact it was having on culture and the geography class could be focused on, you know, the effect that it was having on the land. And. So you just take every single aspect and by the end of that year, that student becomes basically a world expert on this event because they know it from every single angle and it gives context to why 

they're learning math and why they're learning geography and why they're learning sociology.

So I thought that was really interesting as well.

[00:24:32] CR: I love that idea. imagine that world where, you know, education is so near and dear to my heart. And it also breaks my heart, you know, to see how we're educating students.

[00:24:43] LW: Even like building model planes. You could like have kids who want to do that. And, you know, maybe 

some people want to focus on certain things and not other things. So 

that could be really interesting. It'd be really interesting world. 

In any case, back to your 

[00:24:57] CR: Yeah, I know. We're like deep. I love it.

[00:24:59] LW: stories, it's going to sound.

 like diss when I say this, but it's actually a compliment you're, all over the place. You know, you, 

want to be a youth pastor in one moment GED the next moment, all these jobs getting fired constantly escaping from the, youth recovery centers. I mean, there's so much in there.

And so my, question for you. Cause I've, interviewed a lot of people who've written memoirs and I'm always fascinated by how people remember all these little, I couldn't remember anything from my earlier life. And you have such a vivid recounting of these experiences that you've had. And I know that when you're emotional, that causes you to remember certain things, but I'm just 

curious what your technique was. did you go through old photos? did you keep a journal? Like, how did you recall all these moments?

[00:25:46] CR: Well, one thing I'd say is that, and I've said this before, that all memoir is part fiction and all fiction is part memoir. What I found is the more I read and I really read a lot of memoir when I was writing, some people don't like to read when they're writing. Some people do. you know, Stephen King basically says books are brain food.

And so the more you're reading, the better your writing becomes. And I tend to agree with that. And I would read these memoirs and I would pay very close attention to how they were creating memories. And some of them were very vague and some of them were very, Very detailed. What I remember, and I do remember things very clearly, but they come in shards, right?

And so it's kind of piecing together those shards in a mosaic that creates a very vivid memory. and so, You know, whether or not something happened exactly like I wrote it is less consequential to the idea that I know all the pieces are, factual, but how it exactly happened is less consequential.

The other thing that I really tried to focus on was not just what it looked like. And I think a lot of times,Writers tend to go too deep on the, specific detail versus the entire, sensory experience. What did it smell like? What did it sound like? What did it feel like? what was the, and feel, I mean, touch.

And because we're having a, you know, a complete sensory experience in any given situation. So I. You know, I would close my eyes and try to remember things. And there were some things that were vague and I'd ask my parents and I'd go back and look at photos. But, uh, for the most part, it was just pulled from those shards and then put together, you know, as best I could, but again, I say, you know, like.

 a lot of memoir, it's, almost hard to call it historical unless it's somebody who's writing a biography because our memory is inherently flawed, right? We, there's all sorts of studies that, you know, show two minutes after an event, somebody doesn't remember whether the person had hair, glasses, what color they were wearing, you know, and they just create it out of there.

And it can be, it's so influenced by suggestion too. So, 

but I just tried to be accurate. 

[00:28:03] LW: Have you heard of, 

the term hyperosmia?

[00:28:06] CR: No, tell me everything.

[00:28:11] LW: Hyperosmia is someone who has a keen sense of smell. And I 

felt that throughout your book that you were always describing what the aroma or the smell was, wherever 

you were, whenever you were, experiencing more so than any book I think I've ever read, which I thought was really cool. Is that something that you consciously did?

[00:28:30] CR: Hyper Osme. That is so cool. Where did you learn that?

[00:28:34] LW: No, I just looked it up. I was like, will you call someone who has it? You always describe what the thing smelled like, whatever 

it was, there was the smell. And so I'm just, uh, yeah, I was wondering, like, is that something that is, you're very sensitive about the smell or do you just want to add that in to round out the image?

[00:28:52] CR: No, I didn't, I wouldn't, that wasn't conscious by any means. It was just something that I vividly remembered, that, you know, when you're climbing, especially when you're on these big mountains, there's a very specific smell that your clothes take on. And it's not all sweat gross. it's, moisture.

It's, You know, metal, it's the smell of, ropes that have been run through metal that then rubs off on your gloves that then have this interior smell from your sweat and the moisture in there and whether they're synthetic or leather, you know, these things just and they would strike me and I'd be in a tent.

And, know, you're boiling water, you're boiling snow and people would think, well, boiling water doesn't have a smell, but it absolutely does, especially when you're doing it in that environment, it mixes with the smell of gas and it mixes with the smell of breath and it mixes with the smell of everything that's in the tent.

And so that experience became more dimensional when I would remember the smell and try to recall what it was like or walking over this very specific gravel. and there's always a smell of. whether or not gunpowder actually smells like this. That's what I thought of it. You know, you're grinding these rocks together and it would have this sort of, um, this, yeah, the smell of gunpowder, which is more of a mineral smell and, taste too, you know, the taste of water that's been boiled in aluminum, is very distinct, especially if you've been using that aluminum pot to eat ramen or whatever, you see what I mean?

Like it just 

it just built on itself.

[00:30:21] LW: no, there's, I feel like there's a lot of self awareness within the storytelling itself. And I found that to be quite, beautiful to, read through 

because it really took you there to those moments. And there are a lot of moments that you take 

us to. 

[00:30:35] CR: Some 

[00:30:35] LW: I mean, it looks like you've lived 80 years, you know, in all of the, in your short 40 years, but the way you describe it.

So let's continue to round out your developmental years so that we can get to the point where. You are introduced to, Professor Phelps or 

Dr. Phelps 

[00:30:52] CR: Andrew. He doesn't have a title, it's great. He's just Andrew.

[00:30:57] LW: just give us a sort of montage up until that moment where you leave to study abroad and just maybe choose two or three of the craziest, experiences that kind of guided you along without realizing you were being guided along that path and some of the 

lessons you learned along the way.

[00:31:14] CR: I mean, the first one that I, just, it's so funny, I was this treatment facility for eight months. It was called Lifeline. 

And again, very well intentioned, but I just, I couldn't stand it was 12 hours a day. and most of that was in group therapy.

It was based on the 12 steps and I ran away three times. And one of the times I just remember, you know, they basically lock you in a room that had no furniture. It was just. So you'd go home at night to people who had been in the program longer. You'd go home to their homes and there was room where everybody slept.

And it was called the newcomer room or nuke room for short. And they'd taken out all of the, furniture, all of it. And then there was a lock on the door that locked from the outside, which again, I sort of mentioned in the book is like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Um, You know, but, and then they'd lock the windows. And I remember this with this time, the second time I ran away. I was in this, nuke room and, um, and I was like, I gotta get out of here. I gotta get out of here. And there's nothing in the room. And I noticed there was like, you know, one of those, I think it said perseverance, it was one of those sort of inspirational posters on the wall, but it was framed and I was like, huh.

And, and so I took it off the wall, mind you there, I think two or three other people sleeping in the room. And I took it off the wall and there was a nail with a head, you know, like a flat head on it. And I took it out of the wall and I. One of the windows could open, but they had taken the crank off, right?

And, So I, took the nail and I unscrewed the screws that, put the crank on one of the other windows that was, you know, locked shut. And the reason this one wasn't locked shut, cause it's been sort of the paint was old and it, you know, it never opened or closed. and I screwed the crank on that one.

And I remember I was just like, Cranking it as much as just quietly against the broken paint. And then it just popped. And I, I was like, oh, shit. Did that wake, it didn't wake anybody up. And then I, and then the window was free and I,opened it and I jumped out into the night, and ran away. And then the next day I got caught and put back.

But after. Three attempts at running away. Finally, my parents were like, all right, well, we're not going to send you back, but you can't live with us. And it sort of started this stint of quasi homelessness where I was mostly not on the street. Occasionally it was, I squatted. I, you know, I ended up in this very sort of dismal situation, squatting with this guy who was a couple of years older, but I'll leave that to the reader.

and then I ended up living with family friends. They took me in, I ended up living, I got put back in the hospital and it was then that my parents were like, what do you want to like help us help you? And I ended up living with my aunt and uncle in Seattle. And it was there that, you know, it was, about, I lived with them for about eight months, but I got very religious for a time.

 I was very, very Christian and cause I didn't have a place to belong. And so I felt, you know, this community just took me in rather than telling me what I needed to do and where I needed to be. Well, you should be in high school. You should be in school. it was very inclusive because we shared this belief.

I'm no longer Christian at all. I, my sense of spirituality has changed entirely, but it gave me a lot of respect and reverence for what faith does. Does and how it holds communities together. It has obviously some dark sides as well, but living with my aunt and uncle, that faith, that community structure allowed me to sort of kind of get my life back together.

And I got three jobs. I was catering. I worked at a Birkenstock store. I worked at an REI and my uncle was like, Hey, you know, you've got to give me half of every paycheck. and I thought it was sort of for rent and then at the end of that period, he was like, and it was also during that time that I kind of got back into climbing, you know, and I was climbing in a climbing gym and stuff like that.

 and at the end of that period, he said, well, I'll give you all the money back if you choose an experience to spend it on something that we all agree is healthy for you. And then I chose. To go climbing and I'd saved enough that I could actually go to alaska into a place called the ruth gorge and it was right then that I asked my mom my parents which and this relationship was still very strained but I you know, I said can I borrow your camera and she gave me this little rico point and shoot that had film in it and I or I bought film and and I went on this trip and And it wasn't hard climbing, but it just opened my eyes up to the world.

And I started taking pictures. And then after that, you know, as my life story sort of started to write itself in some ways I did, I was curious about school. And that was when, you know, first I applied to a seminary school in Redding, California called Simpson college. And I was convinced I was going to go be a youth pastor.

You know, and, but something felt off about that. And so I applied to another school. My SAT scores were terrible. but I wrote an essay and they accepted me to Rocky Mountain College in Montana. And it was there that after about a year and a half, again, I was feeling restless. I was interested in writing.

 All I wanted to do is take pictures and climb. I worked at a gear store, like an outdoor gear store, and I applied to go study abroad. And my parents, you know, said, okay, you know, you can, and we're going to help with that, but don't fuck it up, you know, kind of thing. Cause there was a lot of like, Cory, don't fuck it up.

And that plays into the narrative that I was always going to fuck something up. Excuse my language, but, and it was in Salzburg, Austria that I met this guy named Andrew Phelps. And Andrew changed everything.

[00:36:53] LW: All right, so before we get to that, I just want to go back to Ruth Gortz really quickly. Speaking of not fucking it up.

Obviously when you spend your own money to do something, it's a different quality of experience. 

Had you shifted away from being a fuck up at that point? Or were you still a fuck up even though you were spending your own money at Ruth Gorge?

[00:37:12] CR: I mean, look, I think by all conventional means, I kind of was a fuck up for a long time, but probably until I was, I kept burning down my life, you know, well into my thirties, there's idea of, maybe not being worthy of success, maybe not being. really mattering so Whenever success came it was sort of like well, I don't deserve this.

So so I still very much I don't you know, fuck up. I kind of wore it like a badge of honor, you 

[00:37:42] LW: Yeah, I guess what I mean, like when you were escaping, you were basically running from the thing that you thought that people thought you should be doing. But with 

Ruth Gorge, you're actually running towards that. Like that's what you chose. 

That you wanted to do for yourself with the camera go climbing.

 is that sort of the gateway to this new phase of Cory, where even though he's fucking up, you're making the choice to keep exploring intentionally and consciously, and you want to do well, obviously, but you're now battling your own inner demons.

[00:38:13] CR: Right. I'm battling myself. I'm battling 

self sabotage, but absolutely. And in fact, living with my aunt and uncle was, I think, the very first time. You know, I was in the hospital the second time and the hospital's like, Hey, you should send your kid to Lifeline. And my parents were like, he was already in Lifeline.

What are you 

talking about? And I remember, I remember we were in this, Family therapy session and they were like, you know, core, even my parents looked at me and they're just like, what do you want to do? And they were just helpless. and that was when I felt like somebody for the first time was considering what I wanted and potentially was even paying attention to the idea that maybe I knew.

What I 

wanted, you know, um, and so, yeah, I think, you know, going into going to Alaska that year, with a group of men has become a big theme in my life, and these were all like my parent my dad's old climbing friend You know, these guys are in their 50s and 60s at that point And so they were all in a willing position to be, you know, mentors of some sort, and they all knew my history.

And so there was this willingness to take, me on, a very specific way. And yeah, it was, I was making a choice that potentially if I pursued this, there would be some freedom From this idea that I was a fuck up and you know, lisa oz who's dr Oz's wife she made a very interesting comment.

She said do you think there was sort of a like a return to eden? Aspect of this where I was trying to get back to that beautiful idyllic moment of childhood, you know when I was five six eight years old I think that's kind of true. You know, I was gravitating towards this unbridled freedom because it felt like my adolescence had been so caged in the whole time.

I was just trying to break free of it. And so the mountains, I think, potentially represented a freedom, that I hadn't felt way to be a place to be that was nothing was demanded of me. Yeah.

[00:40:20] LW: Also, what's interesting about that choice is being a mountaineer requires a degree of meticulousness that can't afford to fuck up, right? Because 

it's life or death consequences.

[00:40:30] CR: Yeah, exactly. 

You can't afford to be a fuck up, you

[00:40:34] LW: If I'm a group of men in my fifties and sixties, and this kid who has a history of, you know, not 

being up to any good, wants to come along and, you know, be a part of my crew, it's interesting that they accepted you and they allowed you to, obviously they saw something in you and they maybe tested you.

was there any way that they tested you to make sure that you were of sound mind and body before you got up there with them on the mountain?

[00:41:01] CR: It wasn't so much a test as a clear conversation that wasn't, you know, sort of undercover where they were. I think they just trusted. I think they could see that the narrative that had sort of been surrounding me was potentially somewhat flawed. You know, cause it's hard to say that somebody who at one point was a gifted child and went to school to high school two years early is, all, it's all that messed up inside.

And that potentially there was some piece of this that for lack of a better term was a misdiagnosis. And I'm not talking about a clinical diagnosis. I'm just saying there was a misdiagnosis in terms of, what was really going on. You know, and certainly that the violence at home and things like that they were self evident that environment was not it was having its consequences 

And so potentially being outside of that environment Would write the course a little bit and it did

[00:41:57] LW: Maybe they saw themselves in you a little bit as well. And they understood the journey of how you grow out of things and how you, you know, kind of need to stick your hand in the fire a little bit to understand not to do that anymore. And that's as a rite of passage as a becoming a man.

[00:42:14] CR: I so agree with that and it's something that I haven't really considered, but I'm sort of surprised I haven't, but you know, absolutely. Yes, there's Again, this is sort of something about how we raise children these days where there's an over protectiveness. 

There is a, you know, a coddling. and it's very clear that, especially in young life, unstructured playtime and unsupervised playtime is really, really healthy for childhood development.

And I think we're sort of overdoing it. We're over indexing, know, I don't want to say the attention to emotion because I think that's really important, but we're over indexing the safety of our kids. And I think, this is just my opinion, but I think you're absolutely right. You're hitting at something where, you know, kids need to burn their hands on the stove.

 not necessarily literally, but there is real value in learning real world consequence and there's no better place for that than in an environment where, like you said, there's really no room for, um, It's a very playful environment, but it's also a very high consequence environment. and yes, it was supervised in that they were there with me, and guiding in some ways, but we're all in it together.

And I also found that the adults that I paid attention to, the adults that I listened to, and this is something that I, really, really, Wish I saw more in parenting is the adults that I was really happy to engage with are those that treated me as an equal, even though, yes, you're not an equal, but, you are, your personhood is equal in value.

And when people would speak to me as an adult, even though, you know, obviously I wasn't, I listened to them, whatever they said, I would take on, I would take on that wisdom, because they weren't, there wasn't sort of that condescension that can even come through a sort of an over care, you know, well, let me tell you what's best.

No, no, don't do that. No, no, you don't like that can come from a place of care. But these guys were like, okay, no, we're going to go do the thing. and we're, you know, and that's going to teach a lot of lessons,

[00:44:26] LW: So going back to Salzburg now, speaking of which, what are some of the things that Andrew Phelps taught you that enlightened you and made you curious about wanting to pursue photography more seriously?

[00:44:40] CR: man. You're so good at this, by the way, you really are. Um, You really, you know, you're great at letting it go and then bringing it back. I just want to say that that's You know, you're you're really good at it. Andrew was a guy that, again, he just treated me like an equal. I, you know, at the time he was so much older.

I was, I think I was 19 and he was probably 35. He felt so much older. Right. 

But what he, you know, he was a fine art photographer. So the way he made pictures, you know, I took photographs and he made photographs 

and there was something so much more intentional and slow about that process and the idea of noticing the world in a more, Dimensional way and a more holistic way and slowing down, and engaging with the curiosity rather than the way I describe it in the book is I was just all about like catching moments as they fell past me.

And he was like, Okay, what happens if you slow it down and you notice the world. in a less fantastic moment and make something beautiful from it. And that opened my mind in a very big way because the way that I think that evolved is I started noticing what the, certainly there were still moments of climbing where you're just taking a beautiful picture, but what I started to notice is that I was really more excited about the emotional expression that came with the action.

And sort of the stripping bare of the human experience, the climbing necessarily did because you were in a fundamental act of survival. And so how people were relating to those environments through their moods and what those expressions looked like, again, this wasn't conscious necessarily. I think it just, that's what started to happen because there was a slower, there was a more observational, more voyeuristic, Component to it versus like just grabbing the chaos of life as it fell past me

He was man Andrew and he's still a dear dear friend and I just I can't say enough about this guy he just Had a way and ease to him not to say that he didn't have his own internal and doesn't have his own internal battles We all do but he just had an ease to him that allowed for my messiness You And how did he had a very specific way of directing it without being, you should, you know, there was no, he didn't should on me.

I'll 

say that 

he suggested and he talked to me like an adult and it, and then he was like, you have something here. I don't know what it is necessarily, but you have something and you know, go get it if you want it.

[00:47:20] LW: Were you guys in the lab? Were you developing? Were you 

[00:47:23] CR: Yeah. That's another smell I remember. Oh my God. You know, 

we were like, we were tucked into this dark room. It's before digital. And, you know, I had just been taking pictures on slide film. Cause that was sort of what you did, you know, in the climbing world. and it was with Andrew that I learned how to develop my own film and then print film.

And, he. You know, that dark room. Oh my God. So these buildings, I think it was built in the 1500s and there was obviously it must have been a back closet or where they stored stuff that could be slightly damp. I don't know. But the dark room was the back wall of the dark room was stone. It was the actual cliff side.

And I just remember the smell of like Fixer and developer and that red glow and that deep deep deep sort of You know musk of it all and just and it was warm, you know Because the earth would hold that heat and you'd go in there and I could just get lost in there for hours Trying to make a print perfect and you know what?

I wasn't very fucking good at it But I loved it, you know There's this idea that like oh, I was just naturally talented. I was not naturally talented Have you ever heard Ed Sheeran's like first thing that he put out on YouTube?

[00:48:41] LW: Yeah. 

He played it on Howard Stern in that interview. Yeah. It was awful. Yeah.

[00:48:46] CR: It's awful and look at Ed Sheeran now, and I think he's somebody that I He is so much, like, I really admire so much because he breaks that idea that you have to be a Savant.

You don't like, by the way, Salzburg is where Mozart was born and we hold Mozart in this very. But like, that is so rare and so much talent can be learned. and I, you know, I think it's so important to say I was not ever a talented climber. There are so many more talented athletes.

 I was not ever the most talented photographer. I just kept trying. and over time, the collection of those experiences climbing and the collection of experience taking photographs came together as something that I was able to do at a very high level, but I wasn't necessarily the best at either.

[00:49:35] LW: you wrote, that photography is an art of hundreds of thousands of seconds, which makes for slim odds at, perfection. 

And the moment of any image is preceded by an infinite number of events that coalesce in a single instant. And it evaporates just as quickly as it appears. And, you know, it's been said that you can't teach someone how to have an eye for.

Whatever, art, photography, but to your point, and I think this is something that we as a society under appreciate is how our life experiences, which may seem to be completely disconnected from whatever it is that we find ourselves passionate about in life, how they prepare us. 

In hindsight. Looking back at your, you know, bipolar childhood squatting, escaping and doing all kinds of sexually quotes deviant activities. would you say that prepared you in these early days of exploring photography? Yeah,

[00:50:42] CR: great question. I think, you know, when we grow up in chaotic environments and when we naturally tend people who grow up in chaotic environments oftentimes tend to have a higher risk tolerance and another thing that happens is there's often a degree of hypervigilance. So noticing and being hyper aware of, surrounding its environments, because you have to be, it's a defense mechanism.

you know, where's this, like, what's gonna be harmful? Where's it coming from? How do I navigate it? How do I escape it? and so, you know, I think in those ways it really prepared me for photography because I was capable of noticing external things and almost anticipating them. And it's not to say that it was like to escape them, it was just a skill that I think I had developed that was then I was Capable subconsciously to harness, to use, to, to notice.

 and that could be noticing an environment. It could be noticing light. It could be noticing, an expression of mood. It could be anticipating, something that was going to be more difficult or more fantastic as an image and just kind of knowing where to point more than anything else. I also just really quickly, I was, you know, that, passage about photography being hundreds and thousands of seconds in it.

When you think about the magnitude, everything, and I'm talking about everything, you know, the 13. 8 billion years of existence or the universe spinning and spitting out and creating and turning and churning. Every single moment in front of us is the sum of that. And. Understanding that has been a fundamental shift for me where literally everything, nothing is happening to me.

I'm existing in something that is literally the sum total of Everything. And that is a, monumental. It's so big that it's hard to really internalize. It's more of a conceptual thing, but when you, can internalize it and it becomes like, Oh my God. And the reverence for that.

And I think potentially, I don't want to give myself too high praise, but I think on some level I understood that. And so I was looking for the biggest expression of that. And again, I could be, I could, that could be revisionist history. I don't know, but I like to think that I was that internally cued in, but I probably wasn't.

[00:53:16] LW: you also have, you know, if someone doesn't have a trained eye for the various, categories of photos and the quality of different photos, photography is very much art, right? let's be honest. It's a part of art. And I don't know if you saw that article ofthat art exhibition in Art Basel, where they had the banana tape to

the wall. Yeah, 

And it's sold for like 6 million or something 

like that. 

[00:53:41] CR: yeah.

[00:53:41] LW: Well, you talk about in your book, you talk about your earlier days, you know, what's the difference in like these images, these blurry images that don't seem to have any composition. and so Andrew Phelps kind of schooled you on this. And I just, I think it'd be interesting for the listener to just understand from someone who has operated at those highest levels.

What those differences are in those, when we look at, when we crack open the copy of National Geographic or Life Magazine or something like that, what are we looking at? Like, why are these photos selected over any other photo that we may, that could have been in there? Hmm.

[00:54:19] CR: a good question. There's a quote and I forget the name, but use it in the book. Like basically it says, all you can photograph is light reflecting off of things. That's all a photograph is. It's a reflection of light bouncing off a collection of atoms that have come together in this very specific form.

That's it. And, that's also huge. Right. and again, I don't want to be too esoteric about it, but like the, difference is at least the way I understand photography is I think anybody can be a decent photographer once they learn the principles of composition, light, just the sort of the technicality of it, right?

 you can make a good photograph. I tend to think of photographs very distinctly. There's good photographs. There's great photographs. There's transcendent photographs and then there's bad photographs, right? And most of them, most of my photographs are bad. They're not good there, but it's, that expression of trying.

It's like throwing spaghetti at the wall. And the more you do it, the more you learn again, how to anticipate what light is going to look like and what might be interesting and what's unexpected. in my opinion, the best photographs are the ones that are unexpected. 

 they make you stop and go, wait, what is going on? But then the transcendent photographs, They don't have to be technically good. They don't have to be technically perfect at all. In fact, I think some of the most transcendent photographs are the ones that are not. and I, referenced them in the book.

 you know, you think about the, napalm girl, By, Nick Ut and, you think about the Burning Monk by Kwong Duk and these are the ones that I talk about. They are, you know, or Eddie Adams, where the guys, the Viet Cong is getting executed in the street. These are not technically perfect photographs.

They're, but they transmit. A story that is so profound and so gut wrenching at times, usually gut wrenching that they, transcend the still image into something so complete and so felt that they almost hijack empathy and, they dig into the limbic system in our brain and they ignite these mirror neurons.

So I think these photographs that are so transcendent, and even in great photographs, they tap into that limbic system and they ignite those mirror neurons. So we're able to, on some level, step into that moment and feel The profundity, the bigness of them and what it means and how, oh, like shocking it is, this human experience.

And they can be blurry. They can be all fucked up. The good light can be terrible, but it pulls at something so deep in us that it's impossible to ignore. And that's truly transcendent photography. You know, they're timestamps in history in a more monumental way, in a more fundamental way that we'll never forget.

You know, you think about the V Day parade and the guy kissing the, you know, the, sailor kissing the gal and, Muhammad Ali standing over, what was it, George Foreman, or I forget who it was. but, Benson was a great photographer who, you know, I don't want to go too far down this rabbit hole, but like the, Beatles having a pillow fight, it's like a timestamp in history.

 yeah. Photography is magical.

[00:57:42] LW: I had a friend who had a dog pass away and I hadn't seen this friend in a long time and we caught up and had dinner one night in New York and he told me the story about his dog and how, you know, obviously, you know, traumatic that was because it just happened spontaneously, like in the middle of the night, 

the dog was totally fine. And then a couple hours later, the dog had sort of had a bit of a seizure and then 

died and he was traumatized. And I said, you know, show me a picture. Of your dog. And he showed me this really fucked up picture of the dog. It was like blurry. The dog was barely in the frame. It was 

like blown out because of the flash.

And it was like taken in a dark room and all this stuff. And I was thinking to myself, this is the picture you chose to show me of your

dog. And then the story was he had just switched from an Android to an iPhone and his photos, none of them translated over. He lost 

all of his photos of his dog. That was the only photo he had of his dog.

[00:58:38] CR: Oh,

[00:58:39] LW: That was the only one he took that night by. I think he took it by accident of his dog. And so that's the only memory out of 14 years. 

And just knowing that it gave that picture so much more gravity and so much more weight. 

And so I think the story attached to the photo, it can make it even more of a profound moment in time, you know, based on whatever was going on around during that.

So I think that's as important when you're showing photos is the story you tell. that's why I think when I read your story, you have so I think the ability to tell these stories. You know, it gives so much more context to just your life itself is a miracle. Just you. And I know you talk about this a lot, but you being in a position to do the things you're doing, even though you're a white guy, even though you're from a middle class family and all that, but there are a lot of white guys from middle class families who don't do anything and who don't, you know, ever really break out and find what they consider to be their path and their purpose.

And so you've done that. And that's, remarkable. You know, that's remarkable. I was talking to somebody about Elon Musk the other day and they were like, I don't like Elon Musk. I was like, why? Oh, because you know, he's, he had family money. I was like, there are a lot of people who have family money.

They don't turn into Elon Musk,

you know, they don't risk it all multiple times and do it for the passion of it and all of these things. 

[01:00:07] CR: no. It's just, it's interesting because I think it's so easy to extend compassion to people who have less. It's much, much harder to extend the compassion to people who have more. And the And th reality, when I look at somebody like Elon Musk, while I might not, necessarily agree with his ideas around a lot of things these days.

 what I do see is that there is, he's coming to the table with a full plate of experience and you're absolutely right that there are so many people that have started on that same foot and done relatively little with it, if nothing at all. And so. I think it's, beautiful to extend compassion upwards and see like, okay, I might not disagree.

Well, I can extend compassion into that and say, you know what? I know he's coming to the table with a whole bunch. And I can, in that moment, then I can switch from my judgment into, wow, What, what, wow, like, wow, look at what he's created. Even if I might not like some of it, it's still fantastic. And that starts to create room for, the totality of somebody's experience.

And it makes room for the stories that they've inherited and told and retold that have led them to do the things that they've done. And even if you disagree with them, even if you have disparate ideas, you can still engage with the magnificence of that life.

and some people would say, well, that's bullshit, you know, but it's like, man, it's only bullshit until you do it. And then all of a sudden you go, fuck man, I don't have to agree with everything that somebody's done. I don't even have to like it, but man, I can appreciate what they've created. Despite this color of their skin, where they come from. I think that can really, that's necessary. Those conversations are really important and it also can get really in the way of, extending compassion in every direction.

[01:02:04] LW: Yeah. And like you said before, that's kind of a lazy judgment to do that, to pick that apart because what you're ultimately doing is you're excusing yourself from being bold. Let's just be 

honest. Right. That's what 

people are doing. You have an opportunity to be bold and you're excusing yourself from it by putting someone else down who has been bold 

based on certain characteristics that they, you know, may or may not have had a choice in.

And 

so, 

[01:02:27] CR: And, and yeah, it's not helpful. It's not helpful. It 

doesn't do anything. 

 it just, I love that 

[01:02:34] LW: And it doesn't inspire either. Like, you know, when you're around your friends and your family and what's inspiring is, yeah, I had all these severe mental health challenges and I still did it anyway. And 

it was hard and you know I still did it anyway and I cheated and I still did it anyway and I, you know, wanted to quit every day but I still did it like that's what's more interesting and that's Why people write books and come on the podcasts is to share those kinds of stories.

So, 

 yours is an example of that in my eyes. and there's still, again, there's so much to dig into. we're not even hitting on the tip of the iceberg 

of your story. There's too much, 

 but question I want to 

ask you about your photography career. Is in having all the experiences you've had and then in traveling, you've traveled all over the world.

You've been in all these, what quotes third world countries. I would have called them advanced societies because they're still doing things in the very basic ways, which are the more sustainable ways. Cause we think we have, we tend to think in our Western society that, you know, mental health is just how things are, 

you know, people struggle, but did you see yourself in a lot of the subjects? A lot of the people that you were around when you were out. Making pictures. Did you, because you're, again, you're telling their story,

or did you notice some sort of contrast between what we experienced in the West and what you were seeing in these other, well, what people in the West would consider less developed societies 

when it comes to their lifestyle and their mental health?

[01:04:03] CR: well, it's a yes. And it's both things, right? Where I'm noticing. the, shocking contrast and one of the things that tends to, if, when I let things get under my skin, which is, know, let's be honest, I'm human, is this idea in the West that, Oh, everything's, just screwed up.

Everything is so, so screwed up and we have it so hard and taxes and this and that. And I'm like, man, you have not seen. Anything, you know, like we, it is so good here. and in many ways it's so good. And in many ways it is deeply flawed, right? There are big issues, with wealth distribution and, you know, how different races, genders, all of that are impacted by old school thinking and old legislation.

Of course, that's true. And I don't discount it at all. And when I was exposed to, you know, the, profound, contrast of how other people live in different parts of the world, specifically in developing nations, or however we want to call them. I found also a deep sense of gratitude, but to your point, you know, if I was relating to anything at all, it said that so often we get lost in the minutia of, You know, the specifics of what we have, what we don't have, what we want in the context of our own culture.

What I did find that was accessible is the ubiquity and sort of the sameness of the human family and how similar we all are. And then we're really all trying to find and structure our lives in a way to get the things that we need. And then once we have those, get the things that, that we want and mental health as it relates to that is Something where we, you know, that experience again is transcendent across the human family.

People struggle and people struggle in very specific and similar ways. And in that way, when I saw deep trauma, when I saw profound mental health issues, it was more accessible to me to, at least relate on some level. And I think if anything, that just gave me a softer touch when approaching these things, which maybe helped open the doors to allow people to relax in the presence of a camera.

I don't know. So does that make sense?

[01:06:33] LW: Yeah, 100%. 

100%. And, You got to the point where you had sort of a Forrest Gump moment where you decided to retire yourself in the middle of, enforces situation. You were, you know, he was running and then he said, I'm done. done. And people were like, what, what's going on? You know, you kind of created this whole movement.

And so let's, I think that's also really important moment because. you can feel like, Oh, I found my purpose. I found my calling. I'm in it. It's going to be hard. I'm going to want to quit. Right. How do you know when it's time? How do you know, what are some of the signs? What are some of the indicators that, because would suggest that you did the right thing for yourself, you know, at the perfect 

time for yourself.

It wasn't perfect for everybody else, but it was perfect for you. So what were the indicators that made that moment different from any other moment that you may have thought about I don't, I think I'm done with this 

[01:07:28] CR: again, it's, what a great way to phrase that, you know, how do we know when it's time to stop and, 

 um, just for real. Yeah. Right. Like when is enough, enough, and it is enough possible. And I believe it is, you know, enough is possible, but it, just to give people some backstory, this comes at, you know, on the heels of a, You know, a decades long, highly intense, deeply traumatic at times, uh, career, you know, 20 years of climbing 12 or 15 years of shooting for National Geographic, um, you know,

being in and out of, you 

know, an avalanche, being in and out of rehab, a divorce that was marked by profound dishonesty and infidelity on my part.

 so, you know, and that makes up the meat of the sort of, unwinding of the book, you know, this external rise and this internal, Unwinding this internal sort of disintegration that was really perpetuated by my own unwillingness to, I wouldn't even say that. I was trying to, I was trying to face it all, but I was very much locked in a story of my own brokenness, my own mental health, and I used it as an excuse a lot of times.

You know, I lived very much as a victim for a long time, somewhat unknowingly, andat the end of all of this, you know, there was a, painful sort of separation from my career at National Geographic that I think was very illuminating for me. but long story short, I wasn't taking photographs 

anymore.

There was a pandemic. George Floyd happened. the only thing I really had anymore was my climbing career and photography had sort of gone by the wayside and my dad was diagnosed with cancer in this time period. And so he was dying and I was, you know, I was confronted by this reality of my own finitude you know, and I was still, it was like climbing was what I had.

 so I was trying to do, you know, by this time I had climbed Everest twice and once without oxygen and, you know, the pomp around it all and the, Cache of it all, had exploded. And I, we were making a film about my dad dying and, trying to go back and climb a new route on Everest, something that had never been climbed before, and we'd tried it once and failed and then the pandemic hit.

And so we were training and we went to, Everest season got canceled. So we went to a mountain called Dhalagiri, which is the seventh highest mountain in the world. And, long story short, I had. A very severe mixed bipolar episode, at base camp. And I didn't know it. I didn't know that's what it was at the time.

I was just convinced that something was really wrong in my life. And. And I walked away. I walked away from base camp. like I left and you know, there's hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in the film. There's, we're in the middle of nowhere and I'm, you know, I literally had a breakdown and that nobody really saw at the time.

I mean, they saw it, but they didn't know what it was. And I just said, I'm leaving. And they're like, you're leaving, you're leaving what? And I said, well, I'm leaving the expedition. They said, I mean, what do you mean? And I was like, and I'm leaving photography and I'm leaving climbing and I'm moving to LA and I, and it looks crazy.

And you know what? It kind of fucking was crazy. And, but, to answer your question. I think we oftentimes know the reality and the truth of the situation long before we're willing to accept it, whether that's addiction, whether that's needing to leave a relationship, whether that is whatever the hell it happens to be, but we fight it and we want to stay the same because we know it and it's comfortable and we don't want to listen to that internal thing and I think that moment happens when you become willing to accept the truth of what you're experiencing internally and that, is oftentimes, manifested in outward ways where our body, our literal body just goes into full revolt because it finally, it's saying, I can't do this anymore.

That could present as anxiety that can present as stress rash that could present as anything, you know, but our body by virtue, because we are an integrated system, this is not. We don't, the body does not operate independently of the mind. And so if your mind is under some deep subconscious stress that is trying to assert itself, you're going most likely to have a moment of, break.

And. The, the invitation there is to look deeply at what's causing that. And so when this happened, you know, I was sobbing in my tent and I was, my mind was racing and I couldn't track the thoughts and I just, and I knew, I knew, I knew I was just like, I can't, I can't keep doing this. I can't, I'm miserable.

And I had felt a certain sense of misery for a long time, especially going out on these assignments. AndThe more troubling part of it was so often people were like, you have the best job in the world. You like, look at you. And I felt this deep sense of like, well, why do I hate myself so much?

Why do I hate what I'm doing so much? And then there was this sense of guilt around it all. Like, why? Like you're telling me everything's perfect, but I feel like everything's fucked. What is this? And I just rejected it and rejected it and rejected it until I couldn't. And so how did I know it was the time to walk away?

Because I didn't have a choice. At least in that moment, I could have gone back to it. But I didn't, and I still am working to extract myself from it. That doesn't mean that I won't go climb again. And I still take pictures sometimes. but I just, I knew, I knew in my heart That it was time to stop and I knew it because I couldn't sustain the energy of it, the stimulation of it, the stress of it.

I was living in toxic stress, meaning that I was, so focused on these goals and these big goals, these potentially deadly goals. That I would, you know, when I was training, I would just live in this cage of imagining these terrible things happening. So it was like these long meditations on death.

 and as we know, when you picture something in your mind, your body starts to experience it. So you imagine living in these long meditations about your own mortality in horrific ways. Well, that's going to present. 

[01:13:52] LW: listed off a lot of people, friends of yours, people who you knew who had died doing

this. And then you're also friends with the Conrad anchors of the world, you know, who are in their fifties and sixties. They've been doing it forever. 

What do you see in them that. you would have had to sort of develop more of in order to stay engagedin that pursuit,

not good or bad, just what sort of trait do these guys have?

You know, how Alex talked about in free solo, he's got a big, amygdala or something like that, which 

makes him immune to fear 

do these guys have that in common or what do you see?

[01:14:28] CR: I think there's a willingness to, and a rationalization to, accept the consequence or deny the consequence, that allows people to continue to hang it out there for a long time. And I think it can be both. And I think, you know, Both can be helpful in specific circumstances and both can be maladaptive too, right?

Where, you know, if you're accepting the consequence, that can be a really beautiful thing because it's relinquishing of Your, mortality and this, it's a relinquishing of this idea of your own invincibility, which is, you know, the denial of death talks about this a lot. It's a beautiful Pulitzer winning book that talks about, you know, You know, how we, the, the, the, the idea of dying is too huge for us to really take on.

So we create our own hero stories. So that can be really beautiful on the flip side, the acceptance of it, and sort of throwing it away and just like, well, fuck it. I can die can also be like an excuse, a rationalization in the same way that a rejection of it. It's like, I'm not going to believe that.

And that allows you to step into the, arena. Right. And, then on the flip side of that is like the rejection of it creates a degree of hubris that allows you to be completely in defiance of reality. And either way, it usually catches up with you. And so that list of people that have died in my life, some of them near and dear, some of them more acquaintances, but all of them, people that I resonated with, that I found some, you know, like I said in the bookthey were kindred, is just a reminder of, you know, it doesn't matter if you're, why you're sidestepping it.

If you hang it out there long enough, especially in high level alpinism or mountaineering or free soloing. the consequences are more and more and more, near they're, closer. Some people would say statistically that actually isn't the truth. Like every time you go out that the statistics are the same.

Right. And my dad's a mathematician, not me. So I don't know how we square that, but yeah, it's, in, I don't know what they have. but I would say this, I've always been a person who, once I've done something at like a certain level, I'm right. I like, I, it wears out and maybe that you could call that ADHD.

You could call it whatever the fuck you want. The name is less, like I've done it and I did it at a high level and I'm proud of those things and, time to move on and time to evolve. I don't want to stay the same because even because I can't, so I'd rather step into the flow of change and just be like, okay, you know, let's let go of this and let's let go of the identity and let's shed it and let's move on.

And that's going to be painful and tumultuous and hard and scary, but let's move on because. Staying the same is no longer teaching me anything, aside from I'm committed to my own suffering, I'm committed to my own ideas. Well, fuck that. You know, what fun is that?

[01:17:49] LW: Okay, so you have two books 

that came out three months apart, which I don't even know how that works. Right? Because you were you Prince or why are you releasing books three months apart? First of all,

[01:18:00] CR: because, honestly, it's so funny because, you know, if you talk to my partner, who's amazing, she's so great, but she, you know, I'm sitting here constantly going, I'm not doing enough. I'm not doing enough. I need to create, I need to make, and she's like, Cory, you put out two books within three months of each other.

Like, what are you talking about? And it's just so funny how the internal experience can be so different from the external,

[01:18:20] LW: was that the plan where you, got the book deals and then you just concurrently working on them and then. 

You had to schedule, cause you know, these things like schedule like a year, or two out, like when it's going to come out. So that was the original plan. Your publisher was like, okay, is this the same publisher?

[01:18:35] CR: So yeah, TenSpeed is an imprint of Random House. So the memoir, The Color of Everything, is with Random House. TenSpeed is an imprint of Random House that does beautiful photo and art books. 

 you know, they did Jimmy Chin's book. so they, you know, it was a natural fit. It was a natural home. I wasn't even, I didn't start.

I didn't set out to do a photo book that came after I got the deal for the color of everything And I was like, well, let's do a one two, you know, like let's do a one two punch and everybody was like you sure about that? And i'm like, yeah, no, I can do this. I can do this, you know, and wow Wow, wow.

Wow. Wow. What am I like? What a sort of a haul that was but as soon as I got through the first draft of the color of everything. And it was in revisions. I could really focus on putting together the photo book, which is titled bipolar, which is, well, you know, we can talk more about that, but anyway, yeah, they both came out within three months of each other and it was, yeah, it was a lift.

It was a haul.

[01:19:35] LW: I noticed that the style was kind of the same too. Like you would list your age and bipolar and you write like in present tense, but you also project onto the future. 

I'm talking to this person in 10 years, he will kill, he will hang himself or, you 

know, whatever, which is really interesting way of presenting the information.

So was that something that, because again, I heard on your ritual interview, you talked about how you initially were presented with the idea of a ghost writer, 

which after reading your book, there's no way you needed a ghost writer, just because I consider ghost writers are probably better for people who just can't tell

a 

[01:20:11] CR: have time.

[01:20:13] LW: or don't have a time, 

mostly can't tell a story, but you clearly are one of the better, best writers that I've read recently and telling stories and describing things. and it's interesting because you also talked about how that initial essay you submitted to, I think it was, I can't remember, was it National Geographic, it got rejected, they said it was garbage because it was, 

[01:20:33] CR: it was, it was, like Sea Canoe and Kayaking Canoe magazine or 

something like that. Like this is garbage. What are you talking about? You know?

[01:20:41] LW: But that's kind of the same style, right? That's just like your style. That's how you've been telling those stories. Maybe just in your head for a long time. And now you sit down to write. It's a pretty impressive 

first 

[01:20:53] CR: well, 

[01:20:54] LW: memoir.

 what inspired you to, well, why now?

Why did you think now's the 

[01:20:59] CR: well. 

[01:20:59] LW: it to, to write a memoir?

[01:21:01] CR: I mean, that's, that, you know, after walking away from it all, I didn't have any idea what I was going to do, and I've always been interested in film, and I've always been interested in, And, so I wanted to learn, I wanted to like write a script and I had this story that I, you know, it's still out there in my mind, but it's fiction.

and so I was like, well, people always say, write what you know. So what if I just took my life story and tried to put it in script form? not to say that my life should be a movie, and as I started writing again, I was like, I don't know how to write a script. I can read all the books, but that just seems weird.

So I just started writing and collecting, sort of the stories. And, and also, you know, I was encouraged at one point to just write these single page stories, of people in like cafes. And that sort of helped push me into the fuller writing process. So it almost was like it was forced out of me, but also on the heels of that Dalai Giri thing, I was so confused about the totality of what had happened and sort of transpired in my life.

And there was this vacuousness. There was this big space behind me now or around me, and I didn't really have any sort of anchor. I didn't have a creative purpose or an outlet or anything like that. So I. started writing and, I started to unwind this onion and I, you know, I'd already been advocating for mental health.

I've been talking about it. So my base knowledge around it was, pretty solid. But I realized that I wanted to write something that was. It's about the mind and why we do the things we do, and just use my story as a vehicle to tell that. And at first, and I've said this before, at first it was very much about me.

And then as I started to finish this, and you hear a lot of people who have written memoirs talk about this experience where all of a sudden the story doesn't, it's no longer about you. It's an offering and it becomes your way of, you know, catharsis and deep therapy. And at the same time, I've noticed that a lot of people, it's very easy to get entrenched in a story that you've already told or cemented in a way, specifically sometimes around victimhood.

And this is what's happened to me. And look at how much I've overcome or look at how, fucked up things were and look at this. And, you know, by the end of it, I was like, none of that really. I don't like that. I just want this to be. You know, a human experience. and I want people to feel seen in their own experience.

 and I think that's what's happened. I think, I don't know. You know, hope, I hope.

[01:23:39] LW: Yeah. And your photography book, Bipolar, it's not like this, but it kind of reminded me of the Peter Beard.

Books. Is that, was he one of your inspirations for how you 

[01:23:48] CR: Oh man. 

[01:23:48] LW: book?

[01:23:49] CR: I love Peter Beard and I'll take that as very high praise. You know, I've always wanted to do more art like Peter Beard, you know, the sort of The collage like blood 

and like writing and I love 

that. 

[01:24:02] LW: Hmm. 

[01:24:03] CR: really thinking about Peter when I did my book, I just knew that I didn't, when I did Bipolar, I just knew that I didn't want to do sort of a standard photography book, which is this, year, this place, this time, this, you know, chronologically, geographically, all of that.

I just, that didn't reflect sort of my, again, it didn't reflect. How I've experienced the world. And so, and I talk about it in bipolar where I'm talking, you know, like I didn't know how to present it. I was talking with Dan Buechner and he had some, like, you know, who did blue zones, he was a mentor of mine and we did an article on happiness together and we were just sitting there and we batting ideas around.

He said something about mental health. And, and I think maybe it didn't click at that moment. It clicked later, but I was like, Oh shit. I've photographed from, the Arctic to Antarctica. And I carry this diagnosis. I have all sorts of ideas about diagnosis and how beneficial and hurtful they can be.

 but. also carry this diagnosis of bipolar. and then I was like, okay, well, now I've got the basic structure. How do I organize the stories that I've shot? And then it was, you know, sort of the polarity of emotions, which was, you know, hope only exists the presence of fear.

Isolation is understood. through camaraderie and vice versa on contempt are always present in this. And so I organized it in these emotional polarities and then place the stories in those, you know, like the American West, this idea of, pride and shame where we are so prideful about, about, you know, the American West.

And there's this story, this mythological, this story of carving out, and there's this deep pride around the American West. And yet at the same time, there is, at least I feel this deep shame around what was required to create this environment, which is the absolute evisceration of ecosystems and wildlife and indigenous cultures.

So you have both of these things at once. And so I, you know, I placed that story there. and, you know, on contempt looking at, this, the Okavango Delta in, Africa, in Botswana, and how You know, 70 percent of this water that feeds into the Okavango Delta and creates the sort of this, ecological jewel of Southern Africa comes from the Angolan Highlands, and the Angolan Highlands have been deeply affected by this 30 year civil war and so much of that water has been kept safe by all these landmines that are in the ground.

So you have this deep awe and reverence for, the wildlife and how beautiful that is and what it's, and yet at the same time you have this humanitarian crisis that has, killed and maimed people and yet is keeping this thing safe. And it's, so that's how I wanted to organize it and that's how it, you know, that's how it kind of came out.

[01:26:54] LW: When you said on Rich's podcast that you didn't understand gratitude until you were 39, that's a very 

specific thing to say. Well, what did you mean? What, what happened at 39? Hmm. 

[01:27:04] CR: well, 

[01:27:05] LW: Hmm.

[01:27:06] CR: and foremost, I, after Dalgieri and I was, deeply depressed, still in this bipolar sort of tumult, and I did ketamine, my first foray into psychedelic therapy and it was odd. I, after I think two treatments. I had this experience where, you know, we always talk about the heart. and I always thought it was a metaphor, but all of a sudden I could feel my heart and I could, I was aware I wasn't so stuck in myself.

I was aware of this marvelousness of the world around me and, And it was like, I woke up and I was like, Oh, this is what people mean when they say gratitude. This is what they're referring to. And it was like, a revelation. I had always said, I'm so grateful.

I'm so grateful. But there's a very different experience when you say that. And when you connect it to that feeling, literally a physical feeling in your heart where you go, Oh my God, this is what people are talking about. So I don't want to delay it all at the feet of psychedelics. I don't, I think psychedelics can get really misused and overblown, but I will say that was an entree into that world. that was an entrance point for me where I started to explore through different modalities, know, what it really means to be in your heart. and what that can allow in terms of seeing the world more in its totality and appreciating it for what it really is, Which is marvelous

[01:28:41] LW: Hmm. And talk about, the dollar Gary incident where you kind of had to shift the internal shift, you weren't alone. You were with other people, Topo and the rest of the crew. And then writing that story in your book, you know, anytime you write down things and you write it in context, it causes you to reflect. And whenever we have messy endings in life. Sometimes we don't really go back and clean it up. Did you end up going back and like, did that whole thing kind of rectify? Is it all smoothed out now? Is everybody understand everything? And, or where are they now?

[01:29:19] CR: You know So what happened? I mean I talked about a little bit I just pulled out of this and it caused a huge upheaval because there were lots of dollars spent on 

this film project and and there was a lot of anger a lot of anger towards me and You know, because I had, I'd walked away from my climbing partners and I'd walked away from a filmmaking partner.

 Tommy and Man, there was some kickback and that really fueled the depression that I was experiencing And at the same time it was so clear why they were so angry I would be angry. it was confusing because it was a mental health thing, but it was also confusing because it would be easy to just use mental health as an excuse.

Right. and so over time, I think, you know, Topo and Carla really, they understood it more in its totality. I think, you know, and I don't want to speak too much for them, but I think. They're the initial reaction of anger. They look back on and we're a little bit like, Oh yeah, I see it a little differently.

Now. I have deep love for them and I understand all of that anger and I take full responsibility for the, situation as it was. And I understand, I really understand it. We're not necessarily close. I don't think that is, it's prohibitive of being close in the future. I don't even think it's prohibitive of going climbing in the future, but, um, Tommy and I haven't reconciled it.

And I don't think that either of us necessarily feel a need to, but I will say this, he is. So talented and he became sort of like a brother in those, in that filmmaking process. And so, my hope, my deep hope is that we will find our way back to each other as friends because, he's really meaningful, you know, and he played a very big, significant role in a very significant moment in my life.

So, you know, but again, I don't think either of us need it. And I think that it's just laid to bed in a way that, if it stays that way, it's okay in the same way that, like with my brother, you know, people always want to know, well, what happened to you guys close? We're not close. And my hope is certainly someday, like we will be.

 but also holding onto this deep need to, for people to be okay with who you are. Oftentimes it's a trap and I just try to focus on the love that I have for them and be okay with whatever eventuality happens, you know.

[01:31:53] LW: what's your relationship like with success these days? Having had all the experiences you've had.

[01:31:58] CR: That's so weird because I've never really viewed myself as wildly successful. I think from outward perspective, it would be very easy to be like, Oh, you were so successful. I know like, Objectively, that's true. What I'm very clear on is like, you can get all the praise in the world. You can get all the success and you can get all the money in the world, but that doesn't necessarily quite often has the inverse effect on leading you to your happiness because, and this has been something that's been said for thousands and thousands of years.

It's the most ancient wisdom ever, but like none of that can make you whole. None of it can make you whole. And it feels like it does, especially when you first get it, all the accolades, all the attention, all the love, which is not love at all. It's just attention. And so I'm cautious of any time there's a success.

I'm cautious of, I'm certainly like almost disregard social media numbers. I mean, they're interesting. They're sort of. You know, their metrics, right? But it's very easy to be like, well, this got, you know, there was a reel with rich where we talk about triggers and it's, you know, it's got three and a half million views and, 

 that's interesting, I think, but what's more interesting about it is not how that makes me feel, because I know in some ways that's very hollow, what's interesting about it is what, why that's resonating with people.

And so. Shifting the lens of success to why is whatever I'm doing having an impact versus the success is filling me up, I think is a meaningful inquisition. It's a meaningful curiosity. It's a meaningful journey. you know, it's, success is weird. and it really, has probably 8 billion different definitions, 

and you know, today I, you know, I 

got up and I cleaned the kitchen and, I went and worked out and I saw, you know, three dear friends at the gym and did this workout and I came home and I, got my girlfriend some flowers and I'm doing a podcast with you and I'm having a meaningful conversation. That's success. You know, I win. That's enough. And certainly could I have more money in the bank account? You bet. Do I want more money in the bank? Yeah, of course I do. Right. Like, but being able to have coffee on a Monday at 3 PM with a friend is success. being able to quiet your mind to some degree, that's a success.

I've got my men's group tonight and I'm going to go and I'm going to sit with a group of guys that I care deeply for three hours. And I'm not going to talk because, you know, now I'm more in a position of facilitating some of these groups and that's a success. so it's all about reframing it. To understand that getting to come home focus on a person you love, even if it's just one or your dog, that's success.

That's a beautiful thing.

[01:35:04] LW: Lovely. I love that. I love asking that question because I just love hearing all the different, like you said, 8 billion different answers on what

success is. And it also depends on the day you ask somebody, you know, 

[01:35:16] CR: Totally. Like, do most people, how do most people define it? Is it, or is it all, is it kind of around that same structure or like, I'm just curious

[01:35:25] LW: Yeah. Nobody ever says money. Nobody ever says I didn't need to make as much money as possible. I think people, by the time they get to an interview like this, they've transcended that idea that money is associated with success. And I think most people get to the point where it's about feeling fulfilled.

It's about feeling useful. It's about feeling present, you know, these kinds of things.

[01:35:44] CR: Identifying your purpose. Being able 

to articulate that. yeah. 

Living in purpose. Living in integrity. I'd say that's success.

[01:35:51] LW: And I think we need to hear that over and over again, even though it may sound like a broken record and it may sound obvious, but it's, we're so indoctrinated in society to believe otherwise, to believe that it is getting to the top of Mount Everest.

That's going to make you successful or whatever 

your version of that is, and that's 

[01:36:08] CR: Right. It's just not true. It's 

just another, it's just another summit in a series of false summits.

[01:36:15] LW: And who better to say that than someone who's been there twice with him once without 

[01:36:19] CR: Ha ha. Trust me. It ain't there. It's not said. There's no pot of gold. You know.

[01:36:25] LW: Robert Persick, who wrote Zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance said the only Zen you're going to find at the top of the mountain is Zen you bring up there with you.

[01:36:33] CR: Yeah. Yeah. and the reality that for me, it was like, okay. And I'm saying, again, this is something I've said before, but it's like, and I used to talk about it in the book, it was just like, oh shit, there's no place I can go. I've literally come to the highest point. It's not here. Like it's not, you know, I've done the thing and it's not here.

So yeah.

[01:36:55] LW: So you're doing keynote speaking. What's your talk about? is it an overcoming adversity talk?

[01:37:01] CR: I mean, I talk about overcoming adversity. I talk, you know, a lot of it is mental health focused with, you know, just using the through line of these experiences to sort of illuminate again, the shared experience of humanity. You know, you need. We always talk about a hook and, I always sort of remind people that crisis is the point of growth.

And, when we can step into that, fire with some level of awareness and willingness, that's generally when we start to actually change, when there's genuine. True transformation and lasting transformation. So it's about overcoming adversity. It's about shifting the story of mental health into a celebration of neuro divergence that allows us to experience it more holistically.

And sort of the idea of we can turn these, hurdles and these struggles into. Tremendous gifts if we're willing to embrace ourselves in our totality and, lean into what that requires and lean into that honesty. But yeah, it's risk and reward and overcoming, you know, obstacles and overcoming adversity.

 and what internal leadership looks like and, how we, you know, I, don't like the word happiness, but how we live more fulfilled lives.

[01:38:19] LW: I know a lot of keynote speaking. I do keynote speaking myself. And, one of the challenges is narrowing your focus. Cause you only have 45 minutes or an hour. You, have so many stories that you could tell what sort of like your key story that you, anchor your talk around, you don't have to get into the story.

I'm just curious

what, which story is it out of all the 

[01:38:39] CR: It's, again, it's not one, but the story that I'm actually talking about is story itself. Right. And that like, so I use collection of stories to lead people through this idea, that's a story, you know, and here's this other story. And here's the story I'm telling within it. And here's the story I'm telling within it.

And here, and so this idea that like, okay, yes, you're climbing a mountain, but what story are you telling about the mountain and what story are you telling about yourself in that experience? And is that story actually true? Is that story honest? Is that story freeing you or is it holding you captive? And how do we start to just strip away story?

And how can we catch ourselves in moments of storytelling? That is, that's holding us back.

[01:39:26] LW: Did you have an Andrew Phelps of keynote speaking? Like, how did you know how to do that? How do you know how to tell that story in such a compelling way? Cause it's not obvious in my experience.

You have to really like, I got mentors and stuff. Hmm.

[01:39:40] CR: it's something I really enjoy. So I just followed that instinct. I followed the same storytelling instinct that I have in photography and writing to sort of, you know, my, is often, it's very interwoven, and people, one of the feedback points I always get is, I was lost in the middle of it.

 and then they're like, but I don't know how you did it, but you brought it back. And that is kind of the point where you're like, okay, I'm going to take you down a rabbit hole and we're not going to know where we're going at times. And quite frankly, there's times where I don't practice it.

You know, I know the material really well, but sometimes I'll just mix it up 

 and start into it and be like, look, I haven't done this one. So we're going to get a little lost. And I know we're going to find ourselves at the end. because I think that keeps it more authentic. It keeps it more honest.

It keeps it more real. you know, but I know where I'm going. You know, it's kind of like sailing the Atlantic. I know where I'm going. I'm leaving Portugal and I'm landing in Puerto Rico. How we're going to get there. Let's go find out.

[01:40:48] LW: Beautiful. I think that's a great place to end it, man. Thank you so much for coming on and for sharing your wisdom and your insights with us. The book is the color of everything. And then bipolar is the, it's the photo book. And you also have a documentary called cold

[01:41:04] CR: Yeah.

[01:41:05] LW: and you have a massive social following.

What's the best way into the Cory Richards, ecosystem.

[01:41:12] CR: it's probably Instagram. Yeah, it's just at Cory Richards. you know, I, what I'm encouraging people to do is if, you know, if you like the, if you like this conversation, I've loved this conversation, read the book, and if you like the book, just pass it on, that is the full ecosystem, the books are themselves an ecosystem, they're two sides of the same coin, but yeah, Instagram is the best way to find me or my website, which is just great.

Cory Richards. com, but, 

[01:41:37] LW: And you're in L. A. has your book been optioned yet for a movie? 

[01:41:40] CR: it hasn't been, hasn't been, you know, and, there is a lot of excitement around that and 

my sense is it will happen, but you know, again, what is success? That'd be really cool. That'd be a fun ride. So 

[01:41:59] LW: it, man. Well, thank you. Thank you again. I really appreciate you.

[01:42:02] CR: Thanks, thanks for having me. This has been so lovely. such a beautiful conversation. I really appreciate it, man.

[END]

Thank you for tuning into today's episode with Cory Richards. If you'd like to follow Cory's remarkable photography and storytelling work, you can find him on the socials @coryrichards that's C O R Y Richards. 

And if you enjoyed Cory's journey of self discovery, check out episode 250 with Cecilina Gracie who had just six and a half weeks to prepare for climbing Mount Everest, which is a journey that typically requires about a year of training. She discovered that our greatest challenges, whether mental or physical often reveals strengths that we didn't know we had. And also don't miss episode 248 with Tom Turcich, who spent seven years walking around the world, facing illness, danger, loneliness, but discovering far more kindness than cruelty. Tom's story shows how embracing uncertainty can lead to our most profound transformations. 

And if you know of someone else who's out there making the world a better place through their work or their story, please send me your guest suggestions to light@lightwatkins.com. Also take a few seconds to rate and review the show.

And I hope to see you next week for another amazing story about an ordinary person doing extraordinary things. And until then keep pushing your boundaries. Keep embracing your truth. Keep remembering that your greatest struggles often become your greatest strengths. And if no one's told you lately that they believe in you, I believe in you. Thank you and have a fantastic day.