The Fearless Brain of Alex Honnold

Guest: Jane Joseph, PhD, Professor of Neuroscience, Medical University of South Carolina The first Saturday in June, a guy named Alex Honnold, arguably the best rock climber in the world, got up early, clipped a small bag of chalk to his waist, and climbed straight up the face of Yosemite’s El Capitan in less than four hours. El Capitan is sheer granite and is as high as a 277-story skyscraper. Honnold was often hanging on by his fingertips, jamming his hands and feet into small cracks in the cliff as he worked his way up. And he did it with no safety gear, nothing to save him if he slipped and fell. The entire climbing world is in awe. The rest of us are pretty sure Honnold is crazy, wondering if he even feels fear. Neuroscientist Jane Joseph also wanted to know, so she put Alex Honnold into an fMRI and took a close look at his brain.