Episodes

Dean Potter once called Timmy O’Neill his “secret weapon.” With Dean back in the spotlight through Dark Wizard, I went back to this conversation with Timmy — and realized how much of it deserves to be heard again. Timmy shares stories from their extraordinary years climbing together in Yosemite, but this conversation goes somewhere deeper: how our relationship with risk changes as we age, why Timmy fears not living more than dying, and his idea of cultivating a “life wish” — even if you’re no...

At 82, Cherie Gruenfeld is still racing IRONMAN. She’s a 14-time world champion and is considered a GOAT of the sport. Wildly, she didn’t even start running until 42 or triathlon until 48. Her lesson after four decades of training: if you want to preserve strength, power, and muscle as you age, you can’t keep training the way you did when you were younger. We talk about what Cherie does differently now and, the mindset behind performing into your 80s More about Cherie: https://cheriegruenf...

Allison Aubrey has spent more than two decades reporting on health and science for NPR. But when she put herself through a longevity assessment, some of the results caught even her off guard. In this episode, we talk about what she learned from that experience, why being active and lean doesn’t necessarily mean you’re as prepared for aging as you think, and the health markers that may actually be worth paying attention to. Then we get into the bigger stuff: strength, purpose, connection, r...

Paul Pritchard is one of the most significant figures in British climbing. He became one of Britain’s leading rock climbers and mountaineers, with major first ascents across the UK, Patagonia, Baffin Island, Yosemite, Kyrgyzstan and the Karakoram. His first ascent of the West Face of Mount Asgard in 1994 remains one of his defining achievements. He was also the first author to have won the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature twice — for Deep Play, and later, The Totem Pole. In 19...

We spend a lot of time preparing our bodies for the next 30 or 40 years. Strength. Mobility. Sleep. Recovery. Longevity. But almost nobody prepares for how sex, desire, intimacy, and pleasure may change over that same stretch of time. In this conversation, I speak with Joan Price, one of the best-known voices on sex and aging, about what changes, what can actually get better, and what we should understand long before we think we need to. Joan is 82, but much of what she shares may be most use...

Ageless Athlete Newsletter. Weekly longevity insights + behind-the-scenes. No spam ever. 🚨 You can train hard, stay fit, and still lose physical abilities you are no longer asking your body to use. Dan Edwardes has spent more than two decades at the forefront of parkour as a practitioner, coach, and movement educator. His work has helped shape parkour into a global movement practice, with coach education programs delivered internationally through Parkour Generations and ADAPT. In this episode...

Ageless Athlete Newsletter. Weekly longevity insights + behind-the-scenes. No spam ever. 🚨 What do the world’s best athletes over 50 do differently? After more than 140 conversations with elite climbers, cyclists, surfers, runners, mountaineers, and coaches, I went back through the Ageless Athlete archive looking for the patterns. The sports are different. The principles are surprisingly consistent. In this episode: Why older athletes still need intensity and power Why recove...

Ageless Athlete Newsletter. Weekly longevity insights + behind-the-scenes. No spam ever. 🚨 If you’re over 40, one of the hardest truths to accept is that the body and training approach that got you here may not be the one that carries you forward. In this episode, Rob Lea, 45, shares what it took to become the first person in history to complete the Double Seven — climbing the highest summit on every continent and swimming the Oceans Seven — while navigating injuries, recovery, changing body ...

Ageless Athlete Newsletter. Weekly longevity insights + behind-the-scenes. No spam ever. 🚨 At 66, Joe Barr rode 2,448 miles along Route 66 in just over ten days and set a new world record. What makes that achievement even more remarkable is that Joe believes he became a better athlete in his sixties. In this conversation, Joe explains how experience changed the way he trains, recovers, manages fatigue, and responds when his mind tells him to stop. He also challenges the usual story about agin...

Ageless Athlete Newsletter. Weekly longevity insights + behind-the-scenes. No spam ever. 🚨 The fittest people do not always reach the summit. Luis Benitez has climbed Everest six times and spent years guiding on the world’s highest mountains. What he learned is that success depends on more than strength. Patience, judgment, adaptability, and the ability to stay steady when the plan falls apart often matter more. But this conversation goes well beyond Everest. Luis speaks with rare clarity abo...

Ageless Athlete Newsletter. Weekly longevity insights + behind-the-scenes. No spam ever. 🚨 Most athletes know how to train hard. Far fewer know how to go truly easy. Matt Fitzgerald is one of the most influential writers and coaches in endurance sports. After developing severe long COVID, Matt lost the ability to run for nearly three years. Then, despite the risks, he committed to running a 100-kilometer ultramarathon through the Arizona desert. For Matt, it was about much more than rea...

Ageless Athlete Newsletter. Weekly longevity insights + behind-the-scenes. No spam ever. 🚨 Sleep is not just about feeling tired tomorrow. In this episode, Stanford sleep researcher Dr. Martin Kawalski explains why sleep often gets harder after 50, why older adults do not simply “need less sleep,” and why getting the basics wrong for long enough may affect how well we age. One of the biggest ideas from this conversation: sleep regularity may matter more than total hours. Martin explains why c...

Bob Becker didn't discover running until he was 57. Twenty-five years later, at the age of 80, he returned to Badwater 135—one of the world's toughest ultramarathons crossing California's Death Valley in temperatures exceeding 120°F—and became the oldest official finisher in the race's history. This is Bob's second appearance on Ageless Athlete. In our first conversation, we explored how he discovered endurance sports later in life and the remarkable story of missing the Badwater cutoff by ju...

Ageless Athlete on Substack - 1-2x / month. No spam. Longevity insights + behind-the-scenes. 👌🏾 Ethan Pringle has climbed some of the hardest routes in the world. But this episode is about the kind of strength climbing does not train you for. After his father suffered a devastating stroke, Ethan found himself living two lives: pro climber on the road, and son/caregiver back home. We talk about grief, fear, failure, aging parents, turning 40, becoming a father, and what strength means when lif...

Most of us think aging happens slowly in the background. Dr. Bill Andrews thinks we may be aging faster than we need to. Bill is a molecular biologist, founder of Sierra Sciences, and a longtime researcher in telomere and telomerase biology. He has spent most of his life asking whether aging itself can be slowed, reversed, or even cured. He is also an ultra runner. At 74, Bill still runs every day, has completed 100-mile races, and continues to test what the body may be capable of as the decad...

Beth Rodden is one of the most influential climbers of her generation—known for major Yosemite free climbing, multiple free ascents on El Capitan, and routes that helped push standards forward. I came into this conversation expecting more about training, aging, and climbing goals. Instead, Beth took us somewhere rarer: the inner work behind the highlight reel. She speaks with a kind of directness that’s almost unfamiliar—about self-doubt, insecurity, injury, and what it feels like to be seen as...

Some guests make you want to train harder. Mike Wardian makes you want to live wider — and stop postponing the things that matter. Mike is 52, a runner, adventurer, and lifelong “yes” person. What stood out here wasn’t a race résumé. It was how he builds a life where training fits inside the day, curiosity stays lit, and progress keeps happening even when time is tight. Mike’s story has that real-life Forrest Gump energy — he ran 3,200 miles across America on Running Home. But the reason he be...

A few weeks ago, I attended Vitalist Bay in Berkeley, surrounded by scientists, doctors, founders, and researchers exploring the future of longevity. A few days later, I was in the Eastern Sierra, recovering from ankle surgery, mountain biking instead of climbing, soaking in hot springs, and thinking about a different side of healthspan: the lived side. In this solo episode, I share 7 lessons from 70+ athletes on what it really takes to stay strong, curious, and capable over decades. I also in...

Joe Friel is 82, still training, and still paying attention. In the last five years, he felt the shift—power fading on climbs, muscle disappearing even with a lifetime of lifting—and he’s not sugarcoating what that feels like. This episode is about the mistakes that quietly accelerate decline after 50: training like your recovery is unchanged, letting ego run the plan, and waiting too long to adjust. Joe’s approach is simple, honest, and earned—adapt early, stay consistent, and keep your identi...

Astronauts come back from space describing the same strange shift: a sudden connection to humanity, compassion for living things, and this visceral understanding of how fragile Earth really is. They call it the overview effect. Caroline Paul has spent years thinking about a version of that shift closer to home—through flying, through attention, and through awe. And her new book, Why Fly, is built around that question: what changes in us when the world suddenly feels bigger than our problems? ...

Ed Viesturs was a childhood hero of mine. When I was younger—dreaming about mountains—his story helped shape what I thought “greatness” actually was: more than bravado, but also patience, judgment, and the discipline to come home. In this episode, Ed takes us inside an 18-year mission: climbing all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks without supplemental oxygen—with Annapurna as the final, most dangerous obstacle. We talk about the real risk near the end of any long goal: when attention, press...

Greg Benning is a masters single sculler outside Boston — and at 64, he’s still finding ways to get faster. I came into this conversation not knowing much about rowing, but that’s exactly what made it powerful: once Greg translates the sport, what emerges is a universal framework for longevity performance. For the last 15 years, Greg’s question has been simple: can marginal gains in efficiency offset age-related decline? In this episode, he shares the practical systems that keep him sharp — f...

Amelia Boone rose to prominence in the early 2010s as one of obstacle racing’s most dominant competitors — known for thriving in long-format, high-suffering events and earning the “queen of pain” reputation. But this conversation is less about grit-as-identity… and more about what it takes to stay capable for decades. We talk about the hidden cost of over-optimizing, why Amelia stepped away from tracking sleep and HRV, and how longevity often demands a shift: from proving toughness to practicin...

What happens when the moment that changes your life doesn’t come from the “dangerous” thing… but from an ordinary day at home? Cedar Wright has spent decades in the vertical world—professional climber, storyteller, and filmmaker whose adventures helped bring climbing culture to a wider audience. But in this conversation, the sharpest lesson isn’t about climbing at all. It’s about how quickly capability can disappear—and how “next year” is never guaranteed. In this episode The freak accident t...