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Gregg fell into a crevasse: RISK! Reacts
00:50:57
Kevin hears Gregg LeFevre’s “Gregg fell into a crevasse” story for the first time and gives you his hot takes. You can also watch this episode on YouTube! This is part of our RISK! Reacts series, where we listen to a story told on another show and give our first reactions.
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- [00:01]
Kevin Allison
On this episode of Risk, I think I'm drowning. I think this is it. And a part of me said, oh, well. A part of me had that, like, ADHD frustration, like, oh, well, you idiot. Of course you did this. Risk. Hello, folks. This is Risk, the show where people tell true stories they never thought they'd dare to. I'm Kevin Allison, and this is another one of our Risk Reacts video episodes where I listen to a story for the first time and give you my instant reactions. Now, if you're hearing this on our podcast feed, just know there's a link to the video version on YouTube in the show notes of the episode. But if you're watching the video of this, make sure to check out our audio podcast. Risk has been putting out thousands of truly jaw dropping true stories since 2009, and you can find us on any podcast app or at risk-show.com. now, for the first time, I'm bringing on a guest with me for one of these episodes. Scott Johnson from the what Was that Like? Podcast is here to present today's story from his podcast. Welcome, Scott.
- [01:33]
Scott Johnson
Kevin, I am so happy to be here. I listen to Ross years. This is great. It's a lot of fun. And I was listening even before I had my own show. My podcast now is called what Was that Like? And each episode is a conversation with someone who's been through something extremely unusual like a plane crash or a grizzly bear attack or something like that. And the episode we're about to listen to is with my guest, Greg. He's a storyteller based in New York City, and he's gonna talk about something that happened to him. And also, just to let you know, it's an interview podcast. So when we start up, first you're gonna hear me speaking and then shortly after that, you'll hear Greg telling his crazy story.
- [02:17]
Kevin Allison
Phenomenal. All right, I'm really. Look, I'm already a fan of your podcast, so I'm really looking forward to.
- [02:27]
Greg
We'll be right back.
- [02:30]
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- [04:10]
Greg
We're back.
- [04:12]
Scott Johnson
This happened in Las Vegas. What were you doing in Las Vegas?
- [04:18]
Greg
I do these public art commissions all over the world. New York, I mean, just as far flung as Azerbaijan and Saskatchewan. And I won a commission to do the floor of the Las Vegas Terminal D airport. So I flew to Las Vegas. I stayed at the Rio casino. And then each day I come down the elevator and go through the den of the slot machines and then head over to the airport where I work on my public art project. And that project was I decided to take the flight map of Las Vegas and do the whole floor of the terminal in Terrazzo. And so I spent a lot of time on my hands and knees with a team of people laying out these zinc strips. There was this 80 foot tall huge glass wall which looked across the runways and across the desert. And I could see these mountains in the distance. And the highest mountain at the middle of it kind of fingering its way down a ravine was a glacier. And I said to myself, you know what I'm going to do? I was also pretty miserable in my life, going from the casino to the airport back and forth every day. I was not a happy puppy. So I said, what I'm going to do is I'm going to rent a car, get up early, I'm going to drive to the glacier and climb it. Now, I knew nothing about glaciers. I knew nothing about mountain climbing, but that was my mission.
- [05:51]
Scott Johnson
Now, you live in New York City, right? Obviously, New York does have mountains, but, I mean, you're in Lower Manhattan. What was the attraction of climbing a glacier?
- [06:05]
Greg
The attraction was. Well, there's a famous story about. I think it was Edward Mallory, who. He perished with his partner on his third attempt to climb Mount Everest. And he said, you climb a mountain because it's there. I was miserable in this very urban. Even though I was in Las Vegas, I was in this very tacky urban situation. The whole city is made out of smoke and mirrors, like, you know, cigarettes.
- [06:30]
Scott Johnson
Yeah, I know. Everything is fake.
- [06:31]
Greg
Of course everything's fake. Every column you knock on is fake. So I'm in this existence going back and forth between the airport and the hotel, and I just thought that would be just a great thing to do. I decided to do it.
- [06:45]
Scott Johnson
And you. You said Sunday was your day off. That was your day. You were gonna. You were gonna head to the mountains.
- [06:51]
Greg
Yes.
- [06:51]
Scott Johnson
And was this, like, at the end of your work there or in the middle of it, or, like, did you have to go back to work Monday?
- [06:58]
Greg
Yeah. Midway through.
- [06:59]
Scott Johnson
Oh, okay.
- [07:00]
Greg
I think it was. I think I was there for three months, which is a. A brutal three months. I mean, Las Vegas is just not a nice place to spend time. So in the middle of this, I picked my Sunday, ran in my car the night before, got up bright and early, you know, drove out of the casino and through the street grid of Las Vegas, and then I got to this state highway that just was a straight shot, interestingly enough, directly toward the mountain that had the glacier on it.
- [07:28]
Scott Johnson
How long did you think it was going to take you to get there?
- [07:31]
Greg
Yeah, I thought it would be. Again, I had. I never got a map. I was so incredibly unprepared. It's breathtaking. But I thought just from judging, and, of course, very hard to judge distances across, you know, a flat desert. So I thought I'd be there in half an hour. And in an. So I started to drive straight across, and it was a very hot. I mean, it was still early in the morning, very hot. And cars were, like, looming above the macadam through the heat waves as I drove across, which was a bad sign in my mind because it just meant it was going to be a really hot day. After half an hour, I was. You know, I was still halfway there. And then slowly I got to some. I wouldn't call them foothills. I would just Say that the desert began to rise up a little bit. I came to a scattering of ranch houses. And then above the ranch houses, there was a pine forest. And once I got into the pine forest, I stopped seeing the glacier. I couldn't see anything above me. It was pretty dense pines. I did roll down my window and there was this wonderful, sweet smell of nature that was so missing inside the casino or the airport. Oh, yeah.
- [08:38]
Scott Johnson
That's like going from one extreme to the other. You're in the middle of nature now.
- [08:42]
Greg
Exactly. I was very pleased with that. And so I drove up and I had no idea where I was going. Didn't have a map, as I mentioned, at each fork, and it was a dirt road. Each fork in the dirt road, I picked, the fork that went, ascended more. And, you know, my engine was sort of straining, and it was pretty steep at this point. My engine was sort of straining against the climb. And I just kept picking the right fork up and up and up. And slowly the trees got a little smaller. The altitude got higher. I could actually. I was a little bit slightly dizzy because I could sort of feel the altitude change.
- [09:18]
Scott Johnson
Okay, if you were. If the air density or the oxygen was lower, you're getting up in some altitude, then.
- [09:25]
Greg
Yes, I am. And it's taken me some time as the trees got shorter and more stunted. Every so often I'd come to a place where I could look through the trees and see the glacier. Just a glimpse of it. So I was very excited about, you know, it was going to work. I was actually going to get to the right place. And finally I broke out through some scrub, and there was. I was like. I couldn't have been better placed. I was like, right at the foot of the glacier or, you know, across some terrain to the foot of the glacier. So I was, like, really excited. And I got my. I had a little. It wasn't really a knapsack. It wasn't a belly pack. It was sort of halfway in between. I put that on and I got my water bottle and I started to walk across. And I was. I was very pleased that I had had the good sense. I mean, I didn't. It was very bright. I didn't bring sunglasses, which was a mistake, but I did bring my construction boots from the construction job. And those were. I'm glad I wore those because they were nice, hard construction boots. When I finally crossed over onto the glacier, it was pretty steep, and I had to herringbone of my feet, sort of smash my feet in in a herringbone pattern to keep from sliding backwards.
- [10:30]
Scott Johnson
How cold was it?
- [10:32]
Greg
It wasn't that cold, but you could feel the chill of the ice itself.
- [10:38]
Scott Johnson
Plus the fact that if you. I know whenever I've been out in really cold temperatures, as long as I'm moving, I don't feel cold. Yeah, exactly, because your blood's circulating. And so you. So you started to make your way up the side of this mountain. Were you walking on ground? On just frozen ground or on ice?
- [10:58]
Greg
It was icy. It was icy with sort of a. It was sort of corn snow on top, but it was ice. As I walked up, it was slow going. And I decided, first of all, I turned around a bunch of times and looked back, and I could see Las Vegas sort of in a haze in the distance. I was completely like gung ho for this experience.
- [11:19]
Scott Johnson
As an aside to this, how old were you when you did this?
- [11:22]
Greg
I was 52.
- [11:24]
Scott Johnson
And how would you describe your physical fitness, your condition at that time? I mean, were you intimidated by this climb? Or you say, hey, I can do this?
- [11:33]
Greg
Nope, I was completely gung ho. I've always worked out. So I was in pretty good shape. But I. I just was so hopelessly unprepared and unaware that I was unprepared. So I'm climbing up and I decide, you know, this would be a whole lot easier if I cut across to the rocks. So as I cut across, I could see there was a gap between the rocky ridge coming down and the glacier, which was formed because the rocks soaked up the sun and then they melted the glacier back a little bit. But what I was unaware of was that during the very cold nights, a strong wind would come across this glacier and make a little thin ice coating that extended over a larger part of the gap, which I was totally unaware of. So the gap was maybe a foot wide, and I thought I could walk right over and step across it. But in fact, this ice skin was another two or three feet that was completely invisible. I just thought it was more. That was the glacier. So as I approached it, there was a moment when I just. Suddenly I just fell and I fell about 30ft down into this crevasse. And as I fell, I hit my. Amazingly, I didn't hit my head on the rocks or the ice. I hit my right shoulder really badly and sort of bounced against the left one. Then I bloodied my knees, my shins. And at the bottom where the ice face and the rocks came together, it was sort of came to a point. And as when I hit, my feet were jammed into that point.
- [13:11]
Scott Johnson
Yeah, you Said it was a 30 foot drop.
- [13:14]
Greg
That's a guess. I mean, it might have been 40, but it was a long drop. It was a drop.
- [13:17]
Scott Johnson
It's enough that you can really pick up some speed as you're falling. So that when you hit, and you didn't hit like a floor, you hit where these two walls gradually came together. So it was exactly, it sounds like a very tight, claustrophobic position.
- [13:36]
Greg
It was the first thing I did when I hit. I just panicked and I, I sort of clawed with my fingers on both sides to try to get out. And that just bloodied all of my fingers, which was just a huge mistake. And then I, I, I said, greg, get a hold of yourself, man. And so I just held still. I let my breathing recover, let my heart rate go down. And then I thought to myself, wow, not a single soul in the world knows you're here. I told nobody on the job, I told nobody in an email, I told nobody in a phone call. I just planned this thing, you know, to do it. And I said, I said, God, Greg, you are so fucked. And when I said that, it sort of echoed up and down the, the crevasse. And you could see maybe the crevasse had had a slow curve to it. You could see maybe 20ft in one direction. It was very hard to turn in the other direction because of my shoulder, but it was about the same distance. And I just, you know, I just thought, God damn it, man. You just, you just totally fucked.
- [14:39]
Scott Johnson
I'm just trying to think of your, your mental state at this time, and you just kind of summed it up there. But it seems like the only options now for someone if you couldn't get out would be the airport. Your people that you were working for at the airport eventually are going to notice that you're not there.
- [14:57]
Greg
But they have no idea where I am.
- [14:59]
Scott Johnson
Right? They don't know where you are. And the, but what about the car rental company? I mean, did this, this was probably before they put GPS trackers in cars, right?
- [15:10]
Greg
Oh, yeah. Yep, Yep. And I don't think I told nobody I was going to do this, so there's no reason why they should think the guy rented a car to go climb a glacier, right?
- [15:18]
Scott Johnson
Yeah. You're not even close to where you were staying.
- [15:20]
Greg
Most of the crew I was working with also, I caught them cheating on the thickness of the terrazzo. And it was a crew out of, out of Los Angeles. And so they were not happy with me because I reported them to the general contractor, but that went nowhere. I found the letter in doing the research for this conversation where I reported nobody got back to me. So they were not happy with me. It was not a friendly situation. So there's no reason they would know that. A, I rented a car. B, I wanted to go to the glacier so it could be many months before anybody found me.
- [15:56]
Scott Johnson
So your, your current status? I'm just picturing this. You're injured, you're winded, afraid, of course, and you're in pain.
- [16:05]
Greg
Yep.
- [16:06]
Scott Johnson
What do you do at that point?
- [16:08]
Greg
Well, I thought to myself, God, what if, what if the glacier shifts? What if there's an ice slide? What if it gets really cold at night and I just freeze to death And I'm so scared. And then I'm also angry at myself. Also during the fall, my water bottle and my little belly pack, which had a sandwich and some fruit in it, didn't fall with me. They got caught along the way. I actually, I cried a little bit. And then I actually prayed. And I'm a lifelong atheist and I prayed to God to help me out, which I found kind of. That was the only momentary comic relief because I thought, you know, what are you doing, man? This is like nuts. But I asked God to help me. And then I think I also lost consciousness a couple times because when I, I all of a sudden I woke up and it was a little later. I was really cold and my blood sugar had dropped. I was shivering. And then I again, I thought, God, I thought of my family, my friends, I may never see them again. And all because of my own fault.
- [17:16]
Scott Johnson
You had mentioned that your blood sugar dropped.
- [17:19]
Greg
Yeah.
- [17:20]
Scott Johnson
What made you aware of that?
- [17:22]
Greg
I was shivering, which also could have been the cold. But I, I'm a little bit hypoglycemic, so I always know when it feels like, you know, I'm kind of faint because of my blood sugar level.
- [17:33]
Scott Johnson
Oh, so you know how to recognize that then?
- [17:35]
Greg
Yes. Yeah. I think I fell asleep and woke up really cold. I wasn't concerned about water because I, I just took some icy chips and put them in my mouth and I got my first taste of kind of bitter glacial water. But it definitely slaked my thirst. And I did that for a while. And then all of a sudden my little belly packed knapsack just dropped from the heaven. And it must have been dislodged by a wind or by maybe it was hooked. Funny. And all of a sudden it comes down. I can't quite reach it, but it's there.
- [18:11]
Scott Johnson
Did you have the slightest thought that. Thank You, God.
- [18:15]
Greg
Well, I kind of refused to go there and thought coincidence. That's. Anytime there's a kind of a religious miracle, I just say, you know, it's atoms in the void and it's just a coincidence. But I did. I certainly entertained the thoughts for a minute. I was able to twist and put aside the pain on my shoulder and get a hold of it and eat my sandwich and my piece of fruit and my crackers, which was a huge boost. And all of a sudden I started to feel better. And then I heard someone else down there around the curve. And I said, hello? Is anybody there? I'm hurt. Are you there? Who's there? And no noise. Then like 20 minutes later, I hear it again and I said, who's there? Help me. Do you need help? Again, nothing. It gets quiet again. And then I say, well, I can, you know, I can go around the corner with this new energy I have from my sandwich. I can sort of shinny along and go around the corner and see who's there.
- [19:25]
Scott Johnson
Could you unwedge your boots?
- [19:27]
Greg
Yes. It took a while. I had to play with different techniques and I was trying to protect my shoulder the whole time, which didn't work very well. But finally I just decided I'm going to go for it. And I just was able to kind of ignore the pain in my shoulder and turn a little bit and sort of. It was very hard going because my feet kept getting caught. And there was one more episode where I heard somebody and then they didn't answer and I thought, well, maybe they really hurt. So I finally got slowly at the curving crevasse. I get around it and there's a deer, a female deer, and she's bloodied and she's hurt as bad or worse than me. But when she sees me, she is completely freaked out. And she struggles to jump up. She actually jumps up and tries to flee from me. And because she has four sharp hooves and she's motivated by complete, flat out fear, flight fear, she goes around, she continues around the curving crevasse.
- [20:33]
Scott Johnson
Away from you.
- [20:34]
Greg
Yeah. And I, as I follow her and I, I couldn't keep up with it because she was moving. She started up the side of the. It's hard to describe the, describe actually the way it looked, but she disappeared around the corner. Then I caught up with her and she was struggling to get up the carass and the crevasse seemed to go be inclined a little bit or not as deep. And then she really got a hold and she took off like a bullet and she went up and up and up. And then she broke through the skin that was, you know, the ice skin that was there. And then she was gone. And I was able to more slowly work my way up. And suddenly I'm out and I'm just, I'm overjoyed. I mean, I'm crying, I'm laughing, I'm. I'm thankful. And I could see her bounding up the glacier. She was high with, hightailing it up the glacier and she's gone. And now I'm like, my emotions are all over the place because I'm. I'm going to live, I'm going to see my family. Everything is like, everything is great. Although I am bloodied pretty much top to bottom. And so I'm hobbling down the ice. I was feeling joy, for sure. Thankfulness. I'm not sure who I was thanking, but I was very thankful. I felt a little giddy because there is a funny side to joy. And then I also felt disappointed, I think, because I was just mad at myself that I had got myself in this predicament. I'm also hobbling along. I mean, I'm definitely, you know, it's like Valley Forge. I'm just definitely hobbling along to get to my car. So I had all these emotions going at once and I just sort of, as I hobbled down, I was experiencing all those. And then as I got to my car, another car pulled up, which was totally surreal because I had just been through this, you know, life and death situation. And here's another car. They get out and say, are you okay? And I said, oh, man, yeah, I'm okay, but let me give you some advice. And I started to explain to them about the edge of the glacier and they said, no, no, no, this isn't a glacier. There are no glaciers. There's no above ground glaciers in Nevada. This is just the last of the snow melt from the winter. So I thought, great. So not only have I made all these other mistakes, but I'm not even climbing up a glacier. I'm climbing up that last of the snow. And then the guy, he said, can we help you? And we went through a little negotiation. No, I think I'm okay. I just. I just want to get out of here, you know, I'm. I'm okay.
- [23:18]
Scott Johnson
So you were done with nature for that day, huh?
- [23:21]
Greg
Yes, exactly. Totally done with nature. And as I in the car, it was very hard to drive because my right shoulder was killing me. As I slowly went down the mountain, I started to get really abusive sort of self abusive because I just thought, you know, you just made so many mistakes. You told nobody where you were, you didn't have the right equipment, you didn't have sunglasses, you didn't have a map, you didn't do anything right. What is wrong with you, man? You got a problem. And while I was thinking about it, I thought, you know what's made me successful as an artist is that most art commissions have like thousand applicants or 200 applicants and you're going to fail. But I always head into them as if I'm going to win. And I have this kind of belief that I can do it and that is very helpful. And that sort of empowers you and makes you more of a winner. And so that's a good side of my fearlessness. I'm not afraid to fail. But the bad side of it is I also can charge into situations like this one where I have, I'm gung ho and I have no common sense and no nothing that holds me back. And as I drove along, I thought, you know, if you don't get a hold of this desire to run headlong into unknown situations where you don't know the terrain, you don't know the psychology, you haven't looked at a map, you haven't inquired of anybody who's done it, what it's like you haven't gone on Google, although Google didn't exist in those days, but you haven't inquired of any experts. And you know, this could cost your life. So you need to get a hold of this. And then I thought to myself, you know, maybe you should get a tattoo that says something like, never miss an opportunity to stop and think. And then I, I said to myself, you know what, not only that, but maybe you should do the tattoo in reverse and do it on your forehead so that every time you look in the mirror you see stop and think. And that's kind of the last self critical thought I had before I hit the straight highway back to that mirage of Las Vegas in the distance.
- [25:34]
Scott Johnson
The idea about having no fear, going into a situation where you really don't know what to expect. If you could change that, is that a character trait that you would eliminate?
- [25:46]
Greg
Well, it's very helpful in presentations. Most people get really uptight before they present. There's many situations where it's very handy to be fearless. One of the interesting things is for years, I mean, I've done like 200 plus public art commissions and everyone was a whole process which finally ended up in a final interview where there was usually three finalists. And then I would make my presentation and I had this trick. I would go into the room and it's usually a bunch of people behind a table. You're sitting in a hot seat. And I would find a reason to stand up and I'd bring a bronze sample or whatever it was I was going to do the project in and go around the table and I would touch people's shoulders and have them look at the samples. And this was a great technique because when you touch somebody, there's a physical contact and it really helped my batting average.
- [26:40]
Scott Johnson
Yeah, that's a, that's another level of intimacy. That is.
- [26:43]
Greg
Exactly. But also I'm not afraid to do it. Most people are sitting in the hot seat and they're just, you know, nervous.
- [26:50]
Scott Johnson
Do you still want to climb an actual glacier?
- [26:54]
Greg
Probably not. It's kind of hardwired in me now as a fear. I mean, I might. Maybe it's a good way to get over my fear.
- [27:02]
Scott Johnson
Well, I mean, if you're only going to have fear of one thing, that's a, that's a good thing to be afraid of, I guess.
- [27:06]
Greg
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, if I was going to climb a glacier, I would do it with a guide.
- [27:11]
Scott Johnson
Oh, that, yeah, that would, that would make sense. Yeah.
- [27:14]
Greg
And I would have incredible prep beforehand.
- [27:18]
Kevin Allison
Oh, my gosh. I, I feel like this story was specifically chosen for me.
- [27:28]
Scott Johnson
Do you have a fear of glaciers?
- [27:30]
Kevin Allison
No, I have that ADHD tendency to take a very risky opportunity to just leap into something without having thought it through. And that is actually like the number one advice from the, from the biggest of all ADHD researchers. Stop and think.
- [27:55]
Scott Johnson
Hence the name of your show. You're willing to take a risk.
- [27:58]
Kevin Allison
Yes, exactly. All right, let's take a quick break and when we come back, Scott and I will talk a bit more about Greg's story.
- [28:08]
Greg
We'll be right back. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
- [28:32]
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- [30:12]
Kevin Allison
We're back. Well, that was intense. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time and you know, I've noticed this about a lot of the interviews that you do where you must do some great prep to have people so good at the moment by moment scenic detail of things I do.
- [30:37]
Scott Johnson
I try to coach him on that.
- [30:39]
Kevin Allison
Yeah, that's phenomenal. And it did like it immediately. I was diagnosed with severe ADHD in 2019 and suddenly all of these stories that I had told for Risk made a new kind of sense to me because I started learning about this thing. Like there's literally this popular theory that ADHD is a natural evolutionary trait from the hunters in hunter gatherer society. The people who do head out into danger and are taking in all this, you know, like they have to be have all this stimulus, taking in all this information and then come back and share stories. So they're the people who would most likely be willing to take risks and maybe not make it right.
- [31:31]
Scott Johnson
Yeah, the ones that don't come back right.
- [31:35]
Kevin Allison
And yeah, you know, it's so funny. Like I was in Los Angeles maybe two or three years ago to do a Risk show there and was staying with a friend and he said, hey, just a few blocks away, there's a mountain that we like to climb every now and then. But, you know, you could probably just have fun walking around the park. And I got to that mountain, and I was like, no, I'm gonna climb that mountain. And I was wearing, like, the equivalent of, like, Chuck Taylor with, like, the soles worn off, and he had, like, no sunscreen. And it was just a disaster walking up that mountain. I was, like, damn near fried and, you know, hobbled. You know, my feet were. It was interesting that getting back down was far harder because I just couldn't get a good grip on the ground I was walking on. But, yeah, it was one of those cases of, oh, you know, the time to have stopped and thought through this would have been like, any time, like. Like any time before you're, say, 10% or 25% up the mountain.
- [33:03]
Scott Johnson
Yes.
- [33:04]
Kevin Allison
But there is that thing that can also kick in, which is to really be in the mood for it. You know, to really be like, no, I've. Now that I've started this, you know, I really want to follow through. And I'm just so in the mood for it. I loved his description of Las Vegas. I, too, am not a big fan. Like, I. Or Atlantic City, you know, these places that are filled with casinos. I'm just, like, not into that. And I could totally relate to his kind of despondency of three months between an airport and a casino sort of culture and wanting to get the hell out of there. But, yeah, you know, and it's so funny, too, because in retrospect, we. It all sounds super foolish.
- [33:57]
Scott Johnson
Oh, it's easy to look back on it now. Yeah, of course it's funny. You know, I was thinking this may be a good example of the Dunning Kruger effect. You know, we're the ones who are the most confident in the. Their skills or their knowledge are often the ones who that are completely unaware that they have no knowledge about it.
- [34:18]
Kevin Allison
Right, right.
- [34:19]
Scott Johnson
And he was just full of confidence. Misplaced confidence, unfortunately.
- [34:25]
Kevin Allison
Yes, yes. You know, there's a famous interview with Orson Welles about Citizen Kane that, you know, he had had such amazing success in the theater in New York and then with radio, especially after the War of the Worlds incident happened that, you know, in Hollywood, they were like this genius kid. Let's just give him full artistic control of his own movie and just let him direct it and. And. And go for it. And he said that one of the things that he attributes to that movie turning out so well is that he had no idea how to make a movie. And he would constantly pitch things to the cinematographer and the editors and that sort of thing. And they would say, no, no, you just don't do it that way. That's not the way movies are made. And he would be like, well, let's give it a shot anyway. And they grew to love that about him, especially as cinematographer. Was like, wow, this is really, really fun working with someone who's kind of willing to just keep doing shit that the Hollywood studios groundbreaking never allow. So, yeah, there is that thing where sometimes being a newbie, that's a lot of the reason that I stopped listening to other storytelling shows shortly after I started Risk. When I was in the process of developing Risk, I would listen to this American Life or the Moth podcast to get a feel for things. But I didn't want to expose myself to too much of that because I wanted to still be kind of a newbie, uneducated and trying. Whatever.
- [36:21]
Scott Johnson
I can see that for sure.
- [36:22]
Kevin Allison
Yeah.
- [36:23]
Scott Johnson
You look at these other shows and they're so successful and even subconsciously you might think we should do it this way, you know, because that's. We know that works, you know, but Absolutely, absolutely.
- [36:33]
Kevin Allison
I think that formulas can really set into place and become pretty hard locked in your mind. Yeah.
- [36:41]
Scott Johnson
And it can get boring.
- [36:42]
Kevin Allison
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's another ADHD thing is, oh my gosh, I need some stimulus. I need to do something that I've never done before. I'm about to move to Thailand in August or September and this is a fantasy that I've had for seven years now. And it's really interesting because I visited again in January and I sat down with a lot of people who have been there for a long time and they said there's only so much research you can do. The truth is you, you are going to get here and shit is going to start hitting the fan and you're just going to see if you can adapt or not.
- [37:28]
Scott Johnson
Yeah, as long as you're expecting that.
- [37:31]
Kevin Allison
Yeah, right, right, right. Oh, but yeah, it was. I so appreciate it. And also he sounds like such a down to earth guy, you know, like I was happy to relate to someone who otherwise sounds so, you know, level headed.
- [37:51]
Scott Johnson
Yeah, he's very good at a lot of his stories. They're self deprecating humor and he recognizes that in himself and he recognizes the value of that being entertaining, you know, to others.
- [38:04]
Kevin Allison
Yeah, absolutely. I think we, when we're especially teaching storytelling for business, we always show people the Steve Jobs commencement speech at Stanford University where he chose to tell three stories of the greatest failures in his Life, his biggest missteps. And people just love that, you know, because it's very, very relatable. It's more relatable, I think, than I climbed a mountain successfully, you know, for sure. And it's just so funny that he was, like, intent on it being a glacier, which sounds far worse even than a mountain, you know.
- [38:52]
Scott Johnson
Right. What challenge would there be in climbing a mountain? You know, it's got to be a glacier. And that's. I thought that was the funniest part of it. After all of that, the irony is he wasn't even on a glacier. It's so crazy.
- [39:08]
Kevin Allison
It was really funny when he said, oh, what if the glacier shifts? And I'm like, oh, Jesus Christ. Yeah, they do that, don't they?
- [39:16]
Scott Johnson
Yeah.
- [39:18]
Kevin Allison
Oh, my gosh. Yeah. And there's also the thing of asking for help or just kind of alerting people to what your plans are and having ways that you can ask for help if you need it. Like, sometimes I do so much asking for help that I go through a period of, oh, well, I'm just gonna do this thing on my own. And sometimes that works out just fine. And then sometimes it's like, oh, yeah, no, there's so many people who would have probably been able to give you some good advice about how to go about this. I really have learned because I was on a film shoot in the Pacific Northwest last. Not this January, but last January, and a friend of mine on the shoot is a big hiker, and he said, oh, there's this, like, medium to hard level mountain to climb, you know, near here. Do you want to go with me? And because I was playing a role in the movie of a sheriff who had, like, you know, tough boots and a nice big jacket and all that sort of thing, I was like, yeah, I think I can do that. And by the time we got back down from that mountain, I felt as if I was crippled. I felt like I was like, I hope I can continue walking when I'm back on camera tomorrow. And I was kind of trying to hide from him just how terribly hard I was finding the whole thing. So now I'm very, very. You know, I think of this about going to Thailand because there's, of course, the super famous story of the 12 boys and their soccer coach going into the cave up by Chiang Mai and just not having anticipated that the thing would flood because it wasn't the rainy season. And now I do every now and then think of that story and think of past times that I've done this sort of thing and just think to myself, okay, you know, do that thing that Dr. Bartlett suggests of stopping to think more often. So. Oh, my God. But it was also really beautiful how there's the deer in it. Yeah. And that. And that sort of tug of war between atheism and, you know, thanking something. Yeah. Yeah. It's really beautiful.
- [42:07]
Scott Johnson
Yeah.
- [42:07]
Kevin Allison
Yeah. I'm just so impressed with the work that you do.
- [42:12]
Scott Johnson
Well, I always say I'm never going to run out of content because there's crazy stories and weird things happening all the time. I don't do any paranormal, but these are, you know, real life things and people love them as, you know, the power of a good story.
- [42:28]
Kevin Allison
Yeah. And we both, both of our podcasts focus on, like, high stakes sort of stuff where, you know, it's funny. Like, what I really appreciate about these kind of stories is even if a person would never or has never been in a situation like that, there's some aspect of the emotion in the story or the. The thought patterns in a story that they. That they will be able to relate to.
- [42:55]
Scott Johnson
Oh, yeah, I definitely did when he was telling me this story the first time. And he's down there and his feet are wedged in that, you know, at the bottom and he's thinking, this. I may have just come to the end of my life.
- [43:08]
Kevin Allison
Totally it.
- [43:10]
Scott Johnson
And.
- [43:10]
Kevin Allison
Yeah.
- [43:11]
Scott Johnson
And for something that was totally preventable. It was his own mistake.
- [43:15]
Kevin Allison
Oh, God.
- [43:15]
Greg
That's just.
- [43:16]
Scott Johnson
Yeah, I just think that. What despair, you know.
- [43:20]
Kevin Allison
Yeah. It's funny. So I have this story about being on the Green Tortoise Bus, which is a hippie bus that goes from New York to San Francisco. I don't know if it still exists or not, but I went on that in the mid-90s when I was about 25 or so. And at one point the bus stopped at the Colorado river. And we were just so, like, tired of being in that bus at that point. And it was so hot and it just felt like freedom when the bus stopped right by this sparkling. I just remember how silvery and sparkling the river was. And I guess I didn't put two and two together that like the Germans. Cause there are a bunch of German tourists on the bus were athletes. A lot of them were athletes. And just like immediately just like tore off their clothes and started swimming across the river, which had like serious, like kind of rapid y sort of water flow. And. And you know, I was in this attitude that whole trip of you're supposed to say yes, you know, and jumped in there and, you know, about a Quarter of the way through realizing, oh, you know what? I never really took swimming lessons. I mean, I took the first round of swimming lessons where you're like, I don't know, blowing bubbles or you got something. And it's interesting you said that moment of him worrying, oh, my gosh, this might be the end of me. What struck me there is that he has all that time to think that. Whereas in the river, I thought, oh, my God, I think I'm drowning. I think this is it. And a part of me said, oh, well. A part of me had that, like, ADHD frustration, like, oh, well, you idiot, of course you did this. And then another part of me, like, that's the kind of main event of the story is that another part of me said, no, this is not the time to be beating yourself up and thinking like that. You gotta go. So it is surreal to hear about someone's story where they realize, oh, this might. Might be the end. And then they have. They have time to meditate on that.
- [45:51]
Scott Johnson
Hours. Yeah.
- [45:56]
Kevin Allison
Oh, my goodness. So tell me more about Greg.
- [46:00]
Scott Johnson
Greg is a really interesting guy. If I had to choose one word to describe him, I think it would be the word artist. He's got, as you mentioned in the story, he's got art installations all over the world, but a lot around New York City, like bronze reliefs. And that's why he was in Las Vegas as well, you know, doing something there at the airport. I was with him in Manhattan a couple of years ago because that's where he lives. And he showed me. Kevin, you probably seen this all around Union Square, in the sidewalk. Are these bronze. Big square bronze things that talk about the history and. Or some event that happened there.
- [46:40]
Kevin Allison
Yeah.
- [46:40]
Scott Johnson
Next time you're there, you look. Look in the corner. You'll see his name, Greg Lafette, right there.
- [46:43]
Kevin Allison
Oh, very, very cool.
- [46:45]
Scott Johnson
So, yeah, so he showed me all around and all the stuff that he's done. He's a pretty cool guy. But as far as artists, he's also an artist in terms of storytelling. He has his own podcast. It's called the Compulsive Storyteller. And it's all about his own personal stories from his life. And they all, a lot of them anyway, have this common theme. He gets himself into some kind of a jam, and somehow he gets out of it, and then. And he can wrap it up in 10 or 15 minutes, and it's a. You know, it's a funny story. So the story we heard today, he told on his show on that. On his show, it's it's the episode called Glacier. And. And that's at the.compulsivestoryteller.com and he's also on Instagram as well, at Greg Lefebvre, but pretty interesting guy.
- [47:33]
Kevin Allison
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And. And. And I think that that is so fun that. That kind of diving in, making mistakes. I think that's one of the reasons that both of our shows are so interesting, is that they tend to focus on situations where a person is in over their head. You know, how did I get here exactly? Right. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, how long ago did you start? What was that like?
- [48:05]
Scott Johnson
I started in 2018, so it's been almost not quite seven years that I've been doing this show.
- [48:12]
Kevin Allison
Wow. Amazing.
- [48:13]
Scott Johnson
Yeah. And I've got over 200 episodes.
- [48:16]
Kevin Allison
Amazing.
- [48:16]
Scott Johnson
A lot of them just like this. And it's just every. Every episode a regular person comes on. And these aren't typically public speakers or, you know, people of note. They're just some regular person who had this one weird thing happen to them. And they talk about. They tell all the details of what happened. You know, situations like being attacked by a shark or getting hit by a tractor trailer or falling into a volcano. We also do happy stories sometimes, too. Like, we had the woman who went on the Price is Right and won the showcase.
- [48:48]
Kevin Allison
Oh, amazing.
- [48:51]
Scott Johnson
And of course, and also on my show, Greg's story is available, the full version. What we heard today was sort of an abridged version version, but it's called Greg Fell into a Crevasse. And, yeah, anyone who wants to listen can search on any podcast app for the name. What was that like? Or at the website whatwasthatlike.com that's great.
- [49:12]
Kevin Allison
And I highly recommend it. You do such an incredible job of getting such stories that make you feel like you're really there along with them experiencing it.
- [49:25]
Scott Johnson
You do it as well. Kevin, you. You are the groundbreaker for this type of podcast, I think.
- [49:31]
Kevin Allison
Thank you so much, and thank you all for listening along with me. Our Risk React series is doing great so far. You can find all of these episodes at risk. Show.com riskreacts Let us know what you think. And. And if you've heard an amazing story on another podcast and you think, oh, Kevin, Allison has got to hear this one, let us know. Leave a comment below this video on this page or on the episode page of our website. Let us know the story title and who the storyteller is, but don't spoil it. Right. So I have to not know this information but our staff will find it. Don't spoil what the story's about and let the rest be a surprise to us. You can find us on social media, including YouTube, Risk show, and always on our website, risk-show.com. folks, today's the day.
- [50:36]
Scott Johnson
Hey, let's take a risk.
- [50:40]
Kevin Allison
Awesome. This is when I would be having an ADHD meltdown if I was in your shoes.