Cory Richards shocked the world when he abruptly ended his climbing career at the foot of Dhaulagiri in 2021. He is ready to tell his story.
Introduction
Perhaps no one has quit their job like my guest today, Cory Richards. Richards, still a world-renowned photographer, abruptly ended his career as an elite mountaineer in April 2021 at the foot of the world’s seventh-highest peak. Over several days, Richards experienced what he later described as a mixed bipolar episode.
With one hundred thousand dollars spent and a film in the works, Richards announced to his team at Dhaulagiri’s cold and windblown base camp that he was quitting—not just the expedition, but climbing altogether. He told his livid teammates he planned to move to Los Angeles to pursue filmmaking and writing. The pressure cooker of personal history, fame, high achievement, and perhaps the exhaustion of living someone else’s life boiled over.
In 2011, Richards became the first and only American to climb one of the world’s 8000-meter peaks in winter. On the descent, the team narrowly escaped death in an avalanche. In the aftermath, Richards snapped the iconic frozen selfie that adorned the cover of National Geographic’s 125th-anniversary issue. He was the 2012 National Geographic Adventurer of the Year and a 2014 National Geographic Photographer Fellow. He summited Everest without oxygen, garnering over two billion media impressions with his partner Adrian Ballinger as they Snapchatted their way up the mountain in 2016.
For years, people lived vicariously through him. He garnered over a million Instagram followers. Everyone told him he had the dream job. He traveled nine months each year across the globe to distant and stunningly beautiful lands to climb and take pictures. But in his own words, he “hated it.” He was an addict, fueling a burning fire with alcohol, sex, and tremendous pressure to do more and go bigger in increasingly deadly circumstances. Then it all fell apart.
His memoir, The Color of Everything, is set to release on July 9. It’s a gripping and shockingly frank account of Cory’s life struggles. From his adolescent mental health diagnosis to a life of addiction and denial, he’s found the slow path toward acceptance. This is a story of personal growth, societal pressures, and the complex interplay between vulnerability, achievement, and emotional resilience.
Listen to the Podcast
Topics Discussed with Cory Richards
- The dramatic end to Cory’s climbing career
- High achievement and the potential for mental imbalance
- Cory’s mixed feelings on mental health advocacy
- Using vulnerability to hijack intimacy
- The difference between being a victim and living in victimhood
- The potential for self-fulfilling prophesies with mental health labels
- The contagion effect in mental health discourse
- How Cory felt cheap when his mental health weaknesses were being publicly celebrated as his strengths
- Fame: attention and feeling like we matter
- Seeking increasingly big or complicated ways of feeling important
- Social media, 24-7 news, and environments of negativity
- Generational fragility, validating emotional experience
- Why Cory is “ridiculously optimistic” about the state of the world
- The importance of critical thinking
- The importance of storytelling, how to identify purpose
- Cory’s success with psychedelic therapy
- How the mind persuades us that we’re on the right path even when we’re not
- Transitioning from traveling nine months each year
- Cory’s typical day
- Work today without climbing or photography
- The importance of “turning off” online feedback: Separating art and creation from public reception
- Sharing deeply personal accounts with the world
- The daunting reality of men’s emotional health, the importance of men’s groups and brotherhood
- Letting go of anger to be more empathetic and compassionate
- So much more!
Get in Touch with Cory Richards
Preorder The Color of Everything
Other Resources Mentioned
Should a Mental Health Emergency Derail a Dangerous Climb? (The New York Times)
The Blue Dot Effect: Pessimism in a Beautiful World (Clipping Chains)
Books
The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within (Cory Richards)
Ego is the Enemy (Ryan Holiday)
Man’s Search for Meaning (Viktor E. Frankl)
The Creative Act: A Way of Being (Rick Rubin)
Into Thin Air (Jon Krakauer)
Start with Why (Simon Sinek)
The Artist’s Way (Julia Cameron)
The Power of Myth (Joseph Campbell)
The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (Bell Hooks)
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (Jeanette Winterson)
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