Hey everyone. A few weeks ago, we talked with author and international bestseller, Michelle

Wicker, about how humans take risk. She's written two books on Risk, You Are What You Risk,

and the gray rhino, and they both influence how we thought about putting this season together.

You Are What You Risk introduces a couple key concepts that we found particularly applicable to

climbing. Each of us carries our own unique risk fingerprint. It's created at the intersection

of our genetics, lived experiences, and the choices we make moving forward. Amongst other things,

how we climb, who we climb with, and how we prepare. But it also relates to every aspect of

life, whether it's our personal lives, careers, and family. So we want to dig deeper because,

one, we found it interesting, and two, because we are all trying to make the

best decisions possible in a pursuit where physical risk is baked in. During our conversation,

Michelle asked Alex a couple of questions. As you listen, I think it's kind of cool to ask those

questions of yourself, too. Some might be easier to answer. Others are more difficult.

Welcome to climbing gold.

Like what is the definition of risk?

You know, like what is risk taking?

Like start us at the beginning and then we can get into the finer, you know, like how do people differentiate it?

Sure.

Well, when I started delving into the finer points of risk, I realized that nobody talks about it in the same way.

The classical economic definition of risk is an uncertainty that you can assign a probability

to. So it's actually not so uncertain you can assign a number, although that number may be pulled out of the air.

You know, who knows where the number came from. So, you know, in finance, people talk about

risk as something that's very quantifiable. And people in daily life often mean uncertainty when

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