If you share our politics you might be a nervous wreck right now, but one thing that both Deondre and Isabel like to do for our physical and mental health is go rock climbing. So we have on a super fascinating guest, David Liu, who works at a popular rock gym chain called Movement. He talks to us about how rock climbing has ballooned massively in popularity, and is now an Olympic sport. But the thing is, when rock climbing was introduced to the Olympics in 2020, they combined a number of different types of rock climbing that are pretty different from each other (bouldering, lead climbing, and speed climbing). We talk through why these different types of climbing require really different skills, and so in 2024, the International Olympic Committee actually did split the rock climbing event into 2 separate events: speed climbing and bouldering and lead. And while this is definitely better, anyone who has done bouldering and lead climbing will tell you that these are still quite different from each other.
We also talk about other aspects of climbing, like the difference between outdoor climbing and indoor climbing (the hardest climb in the world is called The Burden of Dreams in Finland, which is level V17; apparently people have been making 3D-printed replicas of this climb to try to practice on it) and whether or not we should be trying to preserve outdoor climbs as much as possible (sometimes people will try to chip away at outdoor climbs to make it more traversable).
And what makes something satisfying to climb? There are some obvious metrics, like not being too hard or too easy for your particular level, but there are also equally difficult climbs that can still be more or less satisfying to climb than others. In this way, setting a climb is sort of like music in that it is often really difficult to understand or articulate why we like certain climbs and not others, which can feel almost spiritual.
David has clearly thought a lot about the philosophy, mechanics, and power dynamics of rock climbing, and this conversation is a fascinating reflection of that.
Links:
Burden of Dreams Climb: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_Dreams_(climb)#:~:text=Burden%20of%20Dreams%20is%20a,climbing%20film%2C%20The%20Lappnor%20Project.
Climbing at the 2024 Olympics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport_climbing_at_the_2024_Summer_Olympics
David's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/r2dliu/?hl=en