Consequence Over Probability: Will Gadd on Why True Safety Lies in Clarity

Aninder: It's not about overcoming your fear. It's about embracing it, figuring out what's going on and then making yourself actually strong. And I see this in every sport I do. It's like the guys you show up and they're like, I'm going to overcome my fear. I'm going to huck my carcass, whatever. They don't last very long. They either get killed or they wash out because they are actually afraid. You're an idiot if you're not afraid. I believe risk-taking is individual and super important. Try, listen, learn, adapt, do better. That's the kind of mantra that I, fighter pilots call it an OTA loop, observe, orient, decide, act. And, you know,

my personal one is like, you got to try. That's the first thing. Nothing cool happens if you don't take that little risk and try. And then you got to get out there and you got to listen. Like, what's the world telling me? What's shaking? Like, what is really going on? Not the bullshit in my brain. What's really going on? You know, you got to listen to it, figure it out. Then you got to learn. These things will happen. And have we built the capacity to manage them or not? You know, you're going to get sucked into a QNIM if you are not paying attention to the environment around

Aninder: you. This will happen. QNIMs are, you know, it's just part of flying. They're out there. But if you've developed the tools to pay attention to your environment and look at your phone, now you're developing capacity to avoid this situation, not just go.

Guest: Bill Gatt, this is such a big honor for me to host you on Paragliding Atlas. Welcome to the show, sir. Thank you for having me. It's an honor to

Aninder: be here. You're the next big thing, right? So it's going to be great. I'm looking forward to it. Before we got rolling here, we had, yeah, it's going to, it'll be good. Something will happen. And before we get going here, just I enjoyed our conversation leading up to this as well. And you're trying to do something cool and I admire that. So yeah, looking forward to it. Well, you happen to be one of the biggest inspiration

Guest: behind that dream. And you know, this also is the first topic that I wanted to dive into. Inspiration is something that we all seek when we start visualizing our goals. I mean, of course, goal setting is one thing, finding meaning, but getting inspired is the one which sets the ball rolling. So my dilemma, which I'm sure a lot of other pilots will also relate to is that when you start looking for inspiration, is there a blueprint to finding the correct inspiration? Because of course, I can get inspired by some of the top pilots in the sport. And for example, if I want to be an Olympian, it's like get inspired by an Olympian, start training like an Olympian, start acting, behaving like an Olympian,

and then you become an Olympian. Paragliding on the other hand. especially, you know, some of the few competitions. We have pilots who have a huge time where they've put in their effort and resources, which we do not see. Yet the inspiration is just like it is in other sports as well. While getting inspired, what is the way to do it safely? Oh, that's about 10 questions at once. So I know where to take that one. I mean, I

Aninder: would say that the first thing to ask ourselves maybe is, is what do you actually want to do? Like, and for me, that question is, is what is the coolest thing I can do with my life? What would be the ultimate thing? And it changes. You know, when I was, I left a pretty successful career in publishing and research and other media PR stuff when I was in my late twenties to chase this dream of being an adventure sports athlete. Cause that was the coolest thing I could imagine doing. And I was like, I'm willing to go back to waiting tables, to building houses. These are

all careers, things I've done to make money, you know, and I'm a hell of a dishwasher if it comes right down to it. But I am going to do these sports to the best of my ability. And if I have to wash dishes or whatever to do it, then I'm going to do it. That is the coolest thing I can see doing with my life. That's what I want to pursue. So you have to answer that question. And it's not always sports. Some people it is. But a lot of what I do is also the business side of things and a lot of writing and a lot of filmmaking and a lot of things that are not doing the sports. The pyramid, the sports

are at the top, but the... 90% of it is not doing the sport. It's all the other stuff. So I think that inspiration is to answer that question for yourself. And, you know, it's conflicting and you have to sit there in that conflict and in that lack of knowledge and try things out and go sideways. You know, I've tried to be a pro athlete in my early 20s. I was a sponsored kayaker. And so I was kayaking, you know, getting free boats to the occasional ticket or something to go kayaking. And I couldn't make a living at it. And I was also competing at a high level in sport

climbing comps. But all I could get for that was a free pair of shoes and the odd ticket. So I couldn't figure out a way to make it work. But by going through this sort of publishing PR world, I then understood how to make it work as a pro athlete later. So it wasn't a linear path. And I don't think it is for anybody else. But that basic question is, what's the coolest life I can imagine living that you really feel? It's not just about like, you know, whatever it is for you. Everybody always has like, you know, eating ice cream, sitting in bed. It's like, it's like

Aninder: whatever it is, but it's not actually, it's something you got to actually feel that like has meaning to you and then to go and try it. And you have to figure that out. Nobody else knows that. You know, I quit my job to be a professional icicle climber, right? Let's remember this. What a ridiculous job description. Because I was on TV for the X Games and I could turn that into media impressions and money. Everybody's like, you're an idiot. That won't work. Everybody said that to me. And, you know, I've done it. And so it's not what everybody else says you can or can't do. And how much are you willing to sacrifice, you know? This actually helps me clarify my question more, which is like when you are

Guest: chasing your, like you've set a goal and you're chasing that goal. Is there, there is a fine line between pushing too hard because we naturally do want to excel at things that we like or we plan to. And then pushing too hard and going into self-destruction mode or destructive pushing is very difficult to identify because hard work means failure. more results and in conventional sports like hockey soccer or running it's like you know just just go out there and do the 10 000 hour theory or something but when it comes to chasing adventure sports pushing too hard is a bit it has to be pulled back at some point so identifying that your inspiration isn't causing you to switch off and forget where the

fine line is drawn how do you answer how do you navigate that kind of a dilemma as an athlete who is growing up in these sports I think the first

Aninder: thing is to have a realistic appreciation of both how dangerous the sport is. And this is an idea in statistics called the base rate. So this is like just the base rate of accidents. And everybody says, well, I'm not the same as the base rate, but everybody kind of is. I'm like, well, I do it differently. I got it off. I got the secret sauce, which is almost universally not very accurate. So how dangerous is this? And given that, how do I want to proceed in this sport? And that is a you know, that's a it's an individual thing. What somebody is doing at a high level

competition or in a long XC flight where it really matters, you know, or a world record chase or whatever it is. You know, as long as you have that knowledge that things don't go well pretty regularly in these high risk sports and you're making decisions with that knowledge, then things generally get better. So another one that is really critical, another tool you can use is ask if you're making the decision off of probability or off of consequence. And what I've seen in a lot of sports and a lot of industrial settings, I do a lot of industrial risk work and so on as well. It's another part of my life. But the amateurs tend to make decisions based off of probability. So this will probably work out. And it

probably will. But if you're a professional, you're going to be exposed hundreds of thousands of times to that individual hazard. So if you're contemplating, you know, should I chuck this turn really close to the hillside? You'll probably get away with it. But if you're thinking in terms of consequence... and you know that you're going to do that a lot and start hitting those low probability numbers, then maybe you want to give yourself an extra 10 meters in case you take a big deflation and you don't hit the hillside. So I tend to think in high risk, high hazard environments in terms of consequence rather than probability. And can I increase my distance from that consequence? whatever it is. So if I'm

coming into a ridge, do I need to be on full bar or could I go back to feeling the glider and slowing it down? It might save me five seconds or 10 seconds if I stay on full bar, but I can decrease the consequence and severity, then I will. So thinking in terms of consequence rather than probability. Probability is for people who are going to do something a few times. If you're going to be a professional, you need to think in terms of that consequence and that number is going to hit. Everybody I know who's flown for more than 10 or 15 years, you know, has crashed. And

we all are going to do it. So right here, right now, your job is to avoid that consequence. And, you know, that's one way to think about it. And then another tool that I think is really useful is to build capacity. And, you know, in risk management for a long time, it was here's the problem and here's the mitigation and we're done. But most of our accidents don't come within this really defined box of, you you know, hazard and mitigation. The serious ones tend to come when something unusual starts happening or something we haven't seen before. And so how do you deal with that? And the answer is capacity. That's really, really helpful. So, you know, in paragliding, we do things like take a

Aninder: SIV clinics. so that we have more capacity when our wings blow up. But you can develop capacity a lot of ways. And I think that's one of the main reasons that I've survived as long as I have, is I've approached all the risk sports I've done, and I didn't have a term for it, I just did it this way, as trying to build capacity. So in kayaking, you know, whitewater kayaking, my friend would flip me over while we're standing in a lake, and then he'd try to hold the boat upside down, right? And if I did manage to roll up, he'd hit me in the head, you know, if you'd I was trying to knock

me back over. This sounds insane, but I don't miss rolls paddling to this day. And that was 40 years ago when I learned how to roll like that. I roll up no matter what. And in paragliding, I did some really unusual things. Like I practiced crashing. People are like, you're an idiot. But I went into a gymnastic facility, had mats on the floor, and I told the gymnast guy who happened to be a rock climbing friend of mine who was a gymnast coach, I was like, how do you teach a gymnast to crash? Because gymnasts crash all the time, right? They do studs off bars and things. They get

lost in the air. How do they survive that? And he was like, okay, you got to translate this vertical momentum into horizontal momentum. And here's how you do that. And so I'm in this gymnastics facility, jumping off this bar that's like three meters above the ground, wearing my paragliding harness and learning how to crash. And when I crashed, you know, I got banged up, but I didn't break everything. And that's probably because I had developed capacity to deal with that. So these are some tools. It's like, think first about consequences and not just probability, and then develop capacity so that when you still get it wrong, you can have better outcomes. So those are some tools. Does that

answer your question? 100%. I think you're saying mitigating the risk in the most effective manner, which is making peace in your head, is the

Guest: way to navigate risk versus reward spectrum. So you're out there, your original question was you're out there and you're thinking, you know,

Aninder: I'm in this competition and I'm going to do this glide into the low and, you know, if my glider blows up, you know, I could go in. But if I pull it off, I'll win. And for me in that situation, the usual, you know, First of all, if I blow my glider up, I'm not going to have my glider. That's going to be a pain in the ass. I'm going to have to call up Jim and say, really sorry, you know, can I get another glider or whatever? And then I might get killed. And it's not about any one day. You know, it's if you're making that, if you make decisions like that. you're not going to live

very long. But if I look at the consequence and I'm like, okay, well, I could blow up and I could crash into those rocks and I don't have it. I'm going to do three more circles in this thermal and then glide. And if I don't win, I'm okay with that. I made the decision that having a functional glider and a functional spine was more important than winning that day. And when you back up just a little bit, of course, that's really obvious, right? But if you're thinking about probability, it's like, I could probably get away with this. then you don't make good decisions and you don't balance that risk and reward at all. And then, you know, if you've still decided to go for it, you take a

big frontal and you've practiced that 50 times in an SIV, then you can recover the glider fast or maybe you crash into the trees, but you don't break yourself. So in that situation, knowing your goal is to survive that day. That's your first goal. Like if you land at the end of the day and you survived, you can be frustrated, but at least you survived. But if you're weighing out those consequences and are thinking about probability and don't have capacity, then you're going to get bad results. I think this does make it a bit more clear for me. But what I'm

Guest: really curious is I was racing in Macedonia with 150 other triple Cs and I was on a two liner C. I had just gone to two liner Cs, full bar, house thermal. You know, we're racing towards the first turn point and I'm kind of shitting my pants because it's my first few days on a two liner C, whereas everybody else around me is like 500 hour plus pilot at least. But there's a bit of a herd mentality coming around me that, hey, all the gliders are sailing smoothly. There's no visible turbulence in the air. So the probability, I'm not talking about capacity here. This was a

bit stupid on my part. The probability of me going down is also almost negligible because everybody else is handling it well, regardless of how much effort they have put in versus what I have put in. And guess what happens? I get a full frontal right away. Of you know thankfully i had the capacity to deal with full frontals and then i pulled back i was not an official part of that competition so that's why it was easy for me to pull back but what i do see is that regardless of how much ever practice i do something in me will say that hey man 150 other humans are going out and

pushing it and you are no less than any one of them so just go back on full bar as soon as possible so when your gut knows that you're doing something out of your comfort zone yet the herd mentality is trying to you know push you towards it is there a way that you can be very honest with yourself and say that you know what live to fly another day or is this something that only wisdom and age will drill into you as the time passes

Aninder: You know, it's interesting. When I was younger, I always wanted to be more brave, to push harder and be more comfortable, you know, like the other kids or whatever, just do something. And I'd be like, no, I can't do that, you know, and I would build up to it. So in your example right there, I would say that if you're feeling that fear just because you're on full bar, you have not built the capacity to handle that situation well, and you probably should be afraid. And if you're feeling that, I guarantee you that the person who's leading that day, the 10,000 hour pilot who is a

test pilot, he is not afraid. If you're feeling fear in that environment, a little bit of nervousness is fine. You know, that keys you up, gets your central nervous system going, all good. A little bit's good. But if you're like honestly having fear, I have learned over decades of high risk sports that if I am feeling fear, bluntly I'm fucking up and I need to step back, figure out why I'm feeling that fear or detune the situation. You know, when I was 16 or 17 and paddling very serious first descents in Canada, I used to throw up in the eddies at the top because I was so afraid to run the drop, right? And I paddled horribly as a result. You cannot paddle or fly a paraglider well when you're

Aninder: afraid. So if you feel that fear, it doesn't matter what 150 people are doing. If you feel that fear... If you get off the bar and you're flying along and you're like, well, this is really boring. I could be on a little bit of bar and you want to be on a little bit of bar. Great. Get on a bit of bar. You're not even in the competition. It doesn't matter at all. What matters is what's going on on you. So get off the bar and When I started paddling drops or flying in conditions that I wanted to fly in, then I performed way better. And that meant stepping back and not paddling

like class five first descents in the middle of nowhere, but paddling class three or four water and developing capacity in that water to hit any line I wanted perfectly. And I am not afraid. I'm paying attention on a river today or in the air, but if I'm feeling afraid, man, that's a sign that I need to back up, slow it down. It's not about overcoming your fear. It's about embracing it, figuring out what's going on, and then making yourself actually strong. And I see this in every sport I do. It's like the guys you show up and they're like, I'm going to overcome my fear. I'm

going to huck my carcass, whatever. They don't last very long. They either get killed or they wash out because they are actually afraid. You're an idiot if you're not afraid. Flying a paraglider in some conditions, you know, you should feel, I'm sorry, but if you don't feel that, you're not going to last long. You're going to hit the hillside. You know, if you've got that fear, then ask why and back it up until you don't have it and progress when you want it. You know, I remember I won the US Paraguay Nationals one year. We were all flying toward goal and I was down by like six points or something. I knew I had to win the day by, especially against two other people on that meet. And we're flying

along and it's fairly rough and I'm on full bar and I blew my glider up. I did not care whatsoever. I was back on that bar within 15 seconds. Yeah, that was, I wanted it and I was going for it and I was high. Whereas if I were racing in fear, I never would have won that comp. And I knew I could deal with that glider blowing up. And it blew up. I was just annoyed that I was going to lose 50 meters. I'm like, I didn't care. I was like, got the glider back on the park. That's where you want to be. The funny thing about that is that one of the guys I was racing against watched that

happen. And he watched me blow up. And then he, later I saw him at the award ceremony or whatever. And his exact, it was Bill Belcourt, another well-known US pilot. And He said, if you want it that bad, man, I'm just going to give it to you because it was clear you were going to go. So internally, I was at peace with it. And also as a competitive tactic, it was very clear that I was going to go that hard. But I was definitely not afraid. You can't be existing in that space. That's a really long answer to a short question. But if you have fear about anything, embrace it. You

know, it's normal to be a little bit worried or to have a bit of a bump in your, you know, when I get up in front of a thousand people to talk, it's something, man. I'm ready, but I've prepared well and I'm solid and I'm going to go do it. And if I'm feeling that on a paragliding launch or below a big climb or at the top of a big drop, I'm not in. Like, I'm out. I don't want to feel that way. Quickly, before we move on to the next one, fear of

Guest: unknown, is there a way that can be defined? Because of course, known fears, where to put in the effort, where to put in the hours, you know, round handle, airtime, everything else answers that. Yeah, I think, I mean, I think unknown, sorry, go ahead. Turbulence, clear air, which you can't see, you know, like for example, yesterday I was flying at my local site, flown there hundreds of times, came into land, my ground speed was 53. That was weird. Never happened to me before on that site. and i ended up landing hard on my left hand which kind of had to be bandaged up for the next 24 hours or something so now i'm kind of like you know if it's too thermic should i even give this a try with a compoundness which

is weighing seven kilograms so fear of unknown how do how do i navigate my way around that Well, I think the fear of the unknown is just the fear of

Aninder: the things that you don't know to fear yet, you know? So you could talk to other people about it. But for me, when I have a situation like that, the debrief is really important. And, you know, there's a... So how I would approach this, and this may not work for... I guarantee it won't work for everybody. But when I have an incident like that, and they become further and further apart over my decades of doing these sports, but I still have them, I would go, okay, so what happened there? Did I was I paying attention? Were the windsocks pointing the other direction the whole time I came in to land that I just didn't look at them? Was my situational awareness, you know, did my scan fall apart? Like why did

what happened? So I just I'd ask you that question. Why? Why did that happen? So just collecting the data points, analyzing them, and then

Guest: trying whatever it is to not repeat that unknown factors which you missed when the first incident happened. But did you actually, so this

Aninder: is a philosophical conversation, but did you actually miss any factors? Were the windsocks pointing completely like what happened?

Guest: Windsock just doesn't exist in that it's a soccer field. But the approach that I made was the usual approach, but the sink was substantial and the wind was probably from the tail. And by the time I realized it's tail, it was too low to turn. So then I was like, I just have to go in and slide. So it was an XR7 and it just had its own momentum. So I just hit the deck pretty hard. So this is the place you normally land?

Aninder: Every day, you know. There's no windsock? No. So this is the first thing. It's like, okay, this is a place you land every day. Why do you guys have a windsock? You should have three or four of them. It's a soccer field. It's like, this is not unknown. This happens when you don't know what direction the wind, and on a strong and variable day, you can have huge thermals ripping off that will change things. But if you're going to land here regularly, my man, you got to get some windsocks. Like that. So to me, this is like a lesson in what happened is never very interesting to

me. When a pilot says, oh, I crashed going downwind. Like, okay, great. You crashed going downwind. Awesome. What, you know, this is what happened. Why? That's the more interesting question. And sometimes you just get fantastic luck in paragliding. And sometimes you get bad luck. But in this situation, it's like quite clearly you guys need some windsocks if you're going to land there a lot. And then the other thing is, you know, if it's an unknown place, you had an idea in your mind of what was going to be happening in that place maybe. But the whole goal is to adapt to the environment. And it's a very, it's a very, there's the, the Buddhists call this like beginner's mind or whatever, but you have all

these preconceptions. And I find that the pilots who tend to last longer and have less in incidents are the ones that are not operating off of, you know, they have a plan, they have a goal, they're doing something, but they're also very, very attuned to the environment and change fast. Whether it's in a competition, the person is like, wow, the day just changed. We're not climbing at six meters a second. Now we're climbing at one meter a second. I need to slow down. Whereas people are hammering and don't take that information on board. They dirt. And they're like, what happened? And, you know, so digging into the why of something and what is going on there versus what you thought was going on, that's much

more interesting to me. So in your situation, you should have fear. Like that's an incident. You should have some, you hurt your hand. Like this is a really good call. Like something didn't work the way you thought it was. And it's not the world's fault. The world's not going to change. So how are you going to change so that you have less of these in the future? And I think that's a much more interesting question. Okay, just a very

Guest: small follow up because the windsock is, you know, very obvious, like the listeners must be thinking, what a stupid person. They're not stupid, just people do. City doesn't allow us to put windsocks there. So it's like either you give up on flying in this beautiful spot over Oslo, or you deal with this unknown that can take you by surprise at some time. So I'm like, this unknown is manageable for me. Like, okay, it was a sprained hand. Could have been a back. I'm not denying that. It is still stupid. But giving up on the flight because of that unknown was too big of a trade-off for me. So that's why I went ahead. Now, should I look back at this and say that, hey buddy, this is a warning call. Do not repeat such

unknowns again. Or it's like life is full of these anyways. Like how many variables can you really try and control? To me, in your situation,

Aninder: again, I would go deeper. I wouldn't just go, oh, I have to accept this shitty risk. It's like, okay, can the first pilot who lands put up a windsock, a temporary one, or hold up a string or something, right? You're not going to put up a flag. It sounds like they don't want you to do that. But ask them, hey, can we put up a streamer on this? The city doesn't own the whole area. It's like, I'm sure there's some place you can hang a streamer in a tree or something that will give you that. Like, this is not a very good excuse. So I'm sorry, my friend. There was a way you could get

Aninder: some indication. But even all of the things being equal, how could you change the outcome when there's absolutely no signs in the landing zone? Is this a ridge-soaring site? What is it? It's a small mountain and then the landing zone is a soccer field right by the side of it. Okay. And

Guest: it's kind of thermic. Okay, great. So when you come into it, it's a mountain, even a small mountain. So you can come in with an extra 30

Aninder: meters to do a circle in the LZ and that'll tell you right away what the wind speed is doing. Like that's what you do on cross-country flights in the mountains when it's not obvious. You can do a 360 and if it still isn't obvious, then it doesn't matter because the wind's 5k an hour, whatever direction you deal with it. So there's multiple ways to solve this, but accepting the risk is not really the way forward. If you're just like, oh, I'm going to accept the unknown. The deeper lesson is here. When I land in places that I don't have indicators, I need to allow enough altitude to do a 360 and figure out what that wind is. That's a deeper lesson that you can then... put into your hierarchy. Or, okay, now I've

done that and I've still, you know, the thermal from hell has kicked off right in front of me and is entraining all the air behind it. Now I'm doing, you know, I'm coming in at 50K over the ground. How am I going to land this? And, you know, am I going to surge it and then use some energy to stall it extra hard and run it out? I can run 10 kilometers an hour even with 20 kilos of shit on my back. I could still pull that off probably for a short distance. So this is still okay. Or am I going to try to slide it in and risk a back injury? Or if I have lots of good protection and I can...

It's a perfect field. Thinking it through and spending a lot of time, I very seldom just accept, oh, that's the risk. It's like... breaking it down and planning. So next time you go in there, it's like, okay, if I'm, if the ground isn't going that fast, I'm going to, I'm going to do an extra, I'm going to take an extra wrap, like landing a tandem in a downwind situation. And I'm going to like flare extra hard and I'm going to run it out or I'm going to surge it and slide it in. And I'm going to slide on my ass. Okay. The ground's too rough for that. I'm going to really, but

again, stepping back up, it's like, I'm going to do a 360 above it and try to figure that out. seldom does a thermal pull more than 10K an hour into it. I don't think that really happens very much. That'd be a rather amazing thermal if it did. So again, it's not about the fear. It's about listening to it and solving the problem. Does that make sense? 100%. And I just realized my mistake is that I tried to circle too low and then

Guest: eventually I got too low to do that S or box approach to figure out where the wind was coming from. So the lesson learned is that do not push in areas which don't have the capacity or the buffer that you will push. Because I just kept on circling until I was like, it's either now or I'll have to land on the roof of the houses. Yeah, and then leave options. It's like, it's better to land, it's probably better to land downwind than

Aninder: hit a house. You know, most people land downwind, it's just funnier. They spray their thubs or whatever, right? But if you hit a house, that kind of hurts. I've hit several. Don't do that. It's not agile. But yeah, having that, again, listening to that fear, and it's not the unknowns. An unknown is just something you haven't figured out yet. You know, there's base rates and accidents, and you got to know the base rates because that's really important in everything that we do. But also, then thinking about it, most of the flying that I do is not on my paraglider. It's while I'm out, you know, I'm playing soccer with my kids in the field across the street, and I'm feeling that wind. And it's

Aninder: like, when did it switch? When did it go adiabatic? When did it go katabatic? There's a canyon. There's two canyons right above my house. They switch. You know, and I land in that field all the time. And so I'm learning the whole time I'm out in these environments. Learning and learning and learning. And that has applicability for ski touring. It has... understanding instability. The more we know about the natural environment, the better we can perform there. So most of my learning doesn't come from doing the sport necessarily. It comes from being attuned to the world as much as I can, just walking around. Indeed. And I think when it comes to learning, I quickly want to hit upon the topic of

Guest: risk assessment, because obviously all of us have our own way to decode how risky a situation is. And that is based on the perception from our experiences, from what we consume. And social media is easy to blame here because it puts all sorts of things out there. But if we consume or I mean, we barely can choose what we consume because, you know, algorithms feed us all sorts of exciting things to play with our brain so that we stay on them. Are we subconsciously reducing our risk assessment by seeing radical things being normalized on platforms which host such things? Probably. One interesting thing I've seen across different sports, though, is that it's one thing to watch

Aninder: somebody do something really radical. And it's another thing to stand there yourself, contemplating doing it. You know, it's your brain could go, I could do that. And then you walk out there and you're like, wow, this is actually really, really dangerous and full on. So I think on an individual level, if we listen to that, when we're out there, again, it's our own software that we're running. And we get out there and we listen to it, you know, are we actually afraid or do we have even the knowledge to judge this situation? I think the progression has certainly accelerated radically in all the sports I do based off of YouTube and social media. You know, the things like how to launch

differently or how to do a trick differently, whatever it is, those are communicated so fast now. You know, when I was learning, we'd get like a magazine or something and there'd be like six photos and we'd have to piece together the entire thing. And now I want to learn how to like do whatever. I YouTube it from my fixing my brakes on my car to infinity tumbling or whatever. And there's a video. So I think those things can, but usually people have some sort of experience when they try to step up above where they are. Again, it's about you and listening to yourself and not necessarily sort of instinctual, but on some level, listening to that fear or lack of it. And then asking, is that what you actually

wanted to experience? You know, have you done some base jumping? You said at the beginning that you wanted to be a wing seat base jumper. Not

Guest: yet. Paragliding has taken all my money for now. Yeah, well, I mean, I wanted to be a wing seat base jumper for a while too. And so I went out there

Aninder: and learned how to base jump at a very low level. But, you know, everybody talks a big game. They're like, I'm going to huck it and I'm going to do this. And then you get out there and it's like things get toned down fast when you're looking it in the eye. So I think there probably is some social media push toward doing more extreme things. But what I've seen is that most of the time when people get out there and get confronted with the reality of it, they slow it down pretty quick. But the progression certainly happens a lot faster. And it's one thing to read and watch a

YouTube video about how to recover a really violent collapse on a two-lighter at speed. First one you have of those is pretty memorable.

You're like... This is not like the test pilot. Yeah, now we, you know, it's like, holy shit, things happen really fast and violently. And it's

Aninder: like, you get a little more respect for it. And now you have a more accurate picture of the world. And that's the goal is to, you know, develop our idea and our model of how the world works and then test it and refine it and get better at it. And then also recognize when the world just isn't working the way you think it should. You know, you're in that cop and you think it should be strong and it's not. And you got to slow down or whatever. And yeah. so figure it out my my question came from the fact that i i was listening to cloud base with gavin when i was growing up in the

Guest: sport early early years and he was telling the kriegel goes out and ground handles and not the conditions and i was like boom buddy you want to get there go out put in the effort so i go out there put in the effort and this there's of course a lack of knowledge which i don't have spiegel has done has put in the work and i get plucked over thrown and next thing i know my acl which was already blown is just like over the top and requires a surgery to get back on crown handling again so while this was happening it was a lot of adrenaline in that crown handle session but it was no fear

so what i'm wondering is should i have had fear because i was doing something which i did not have enough hours for Or is adrenaline a tool which kind of masks the fear and does make you do the stupid things because you're not nervous at that point in time? I mean, adrenaline is a

Aninder: really interesting drug. And if you study the physiology of it, a little bit is a good thing. It wires you up, gets you going. A little dose is good, but a big dose of it, like after you... broke your ACL, you probably got a big dose of adrenaline. And I'm going to guess it wasn't that fun. You're like, you felt clammy, your skin felt cold and sweaty, and your heart rate went too fast. And this is the usual response to too much adrenaline. So adrenaline is generally not the drug that gets people to do really stupid shit. It's probably testosterone. More so than it gets us, especially as men, to do incredibly... You know, the number of women who do incredibly stupid things in any sport that I'm involved with is a

lot lower than the number of men. And I don't know if that's straight up testosterone or social conditioning or whatever, but... I fear that. And to your credit, you were out there trying to build capacity and you didn't kill yourself and you did find some sort of limit. You did hurt yourself, but it's better to hurt yourself ground handling and blowing ACL than to try and be Kregel and launch in ridiculous conditions and kill yourself. So I would say you maybe learned an unfortunate but perhaps less costly lesson by doing that. And you do have to ground handle in stupid conditions. That's on my list of things that I don't feel current on right now is that, you know, I'm flying. I'm just not

flying 350 or 500 hours a year anymore. And my ground handling is junk. So I'm looking out the window and I'm hoping that later today we get a nice choppy, messy valley flow going and I go ground handle. And I may hurt myself, but it's lots better to figure out your limits doing what you did than to try and do it on the side of a mountain and have it go bad. Like... It's kind of a failure, but you actually learned something really useful there. So I wouldn't beat yourself up too much about that. But just one thing you just said there, just backing up one second here. But

what you just did there is you didn't fail totally safely and that you got hurt. But there's a big idea in risk management about failing safely, setting up environments so you can fail in our case in paragliding, not get killed or really badly injured. And you set that environment up and you built capacity there. you know, for the first 20 minutes before you hurt yourself for however long it was, you learned a lot and that is going to save you one day for sure. And you need to go do more of that. Maybe detune it a little bit, 5k less, you know, or whatever, just a little bit

less cycle conditions or a better place. I don't know how you hurt yourself, but you did fail safely before you failed catastrophically and you built capacity. So yes, you got injured, but you also learned a lot. And I think that's useful. 100%. Because that was the only thing

Guest: that I was telling myself. I was like, okay, my knee is getting swollen up and it's painful and whatever, and I still have to pack up this gear and walk back. But now at least I know what not to do. Yeah, and the other 10 times you controlled the surge or the asymmetric and got stayed on your

Aninder: feet, that's pretty awesome. You learned a lot. So maybe detune a little bit, but you've got to do that. If you don't have the capacity to handle bad conditions, then... then when you beat them you'll you know maybe you saved yourself from getting killed that day so i think that's could be you also learned an important lesson about how far is too far so i'd look at that as a super successful day yeah you got injured a bit but you didn't get killed so right on well thank you for boosting my confidence well helps a lot yeah Oh, it's really, most people don't do that. Everybody goes out and ground handles in perfect conditions and it teaches them nothing. It's like you put the glider up and like you get

yeeted off your feet and slammed, you learn something and you learn it in a way that's relatively safe. You know, I've crashed my paraglider a few times now and I credit both that crazy gymnastics training that I did with building capacity and learning how to crash. And then also knowing how to control my wing and non-standard configurations, you know, I for sure would have crashed so much harder if I didn't know how to do that. So,

Guest: yeah. This one's probably more apt for young pilots out there who are listening to us, but is there a way to, what do you say, navigating the invincibility syndrome where testosterone versus experience is like the only way forward that, you know, experience will tell you how to pull back, but... When you're 16, 17, you're like, I will take on the world and I will win. If anybody tells me otherwise, it's a fool. I think there's

Aninder: two ways to answer that. I think it's George Bernard Shaw that says, a quote from him that says, the reasonable man knows that progress is impossible. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. And 16 and 17-year-old young men are unreasonable, but they're the ones that are going to change the world. That's kind of their job is to do that. You know, they're the people who get out in the streets and protest and, you know, shake up the old guard. Like, we need that in both sport and politics and life. I think that's... True. So that is kind of the role of that when you are that age. But I would say that the same thing applies in terms of building capacity and being honest with yourself about how

something went and why. Not just what happened, but why. And digging into that. The people who tend to live longer in these sports tend to... Really think about what they're doing and why and what happened and not just go, oh, that was bad luck or I was really good. So that succeeded. You know, both those statements are not very useful. It's not just good luck and it's not just bad luck. It's like what happened and why and debrief it. And if you look at the people who are winning the PWCs or setting world records, they tend to be pretty thoughtful people. Usually they're not just, yeah, full sense. man, you know, that doesn't work. They're like trying to understand things and figure it out. And they do it in

different ways. Some people are very intuitive and instinctual, but they are thinking about it hard. And other people are like, well, the T-skew, that's sort of an instability, you know, whatever. I don't think that way, but some people do. So for the young people, it's like, yeah, think about it and decide, you know, if you want to push, great. But if you're pushing to overcome fear, then maybe have a look at that. But Again, it's everybody has to come up with their own software, right, their own model, and be honest about it, that it's like, it's brutal honesty with yourself. It's like, why did this happen? And, you know, sometimes it was completely unforeseeable. And now you're like, okay,

Aninder: now I've got a bit more information to foresee that, or I have an area that I need to build more capacity. But it's your model, and you have to develop it. And so, you know, to those young people, just be honest about what's going on and what you want to do. And, you know, if people want to do really dangerous things like wing seat base jumping six inches off the ground at 200K, go for it, man. As long as you're really clear that like pretty much everybody who does that for a long time dies. Are you cool with that? You are? Go for it. I feel sorry for the rescuers that have to

scrape your carcass up, but that's where your mind is at, giver. I mean, I really do. It's a shit thing for the rescuers. It's It's no good. But on an individual level, I believe risk-taking is individual and super important. Long answer to a short question again, but I think about this stuff way too much. That's why you're on the show, Will. You know, you're a podcaster's dream. I ask you one thing, you answer 20 others along with

Guest: it. Yeah, sorry. That's ADD too, man. No, I love it. Love it. I'm pretty sure the audience members listening to this are also having a ball of a time. But you know, this brings me to another one, which I had is like differentiating intuition from anxiety, because your heart rate goes up. And that's a little bit of fear, right? But if your heart rate goes up more than your comfort level, then you reach a point where you say that, hey, my heart rate is lying. Because there's a pseudo risk as well or something. I'm not sure if I'm able to put my question correctly, but intuition from anxiety is when I find it super hard to understand that, hey, I've trained enough, but there is still something that tells me

maybe I'm not good enough. For example, this interview right now, I had prepared for this for three or four days in a row. I looked up all your podcasts, I watched all your TED Talks and sat on your website but right now when I'm asking you I am stammering inside my heart rate is shooting up I'm not sure there you go so when this happens on the action or like the day of action or you know in the moment what is the way to pull back or still make peace with your reality and chase your goals as planned? So a lot of different answers to this. And I try to figure out the best way to come at

Aninder: this. So the classic sports psychology way to come at this, and this is a useful tool for sure. It has limitations, but the most useful thing is you're thinking about a paragliding competition or whatever, something that has meaning to you, but also is maybe risky in whatever way. And And it's really easy to spend a lot of time worrying about the worry and so on and all the things that you can't control. What if I make a mistake? What if I do this? You know, what if I ask this Will Gadd guy a really stupid question? You know, like he can't control any of that actually. So the basic sports psychology thing before anything you're going to do is to worry about the things you can control and have thought

through some of the things maybe you can't control and have solutions to them to the best of your ability. But game day, before you go out there, it's like you have to focus on what you can control. So in a paragliding competition, it's like, are you actually hydrated? Are you actually fed? Do you have calories if you're going to be in the air for the next six hours? Is your gear in good working order? Have you spent a lot of time working on your launching in thermal midday conditions? And if you haven't done some of these things, then maybe it's time to ponder if you should really be there. But if you've done the work... And you've decided it's important and you show up. And if you're still terrified,

then I don't think you've done enough work. You need to maybe stand down or go, right, I'm going to back off. I'm going to launch last today. I'm going to chase the gaggle. I'm going to see what people do. And I'm going to be okay with that. I don't want to fly in terror. This is not a high performance state. So sports psychology is control the things you're going to do and then back off. it down if you, if you can't, you know, take some load off and you can do that a lot of different ways. And then afterwards go, okay, I showed up there. I was terrified and I didn't feel

like I belonged there. And, you know, I felt that way my whole life. Most paragliding competitions, I'm like, oh, these people are all way better than me. And they, you know, more fancier gear or whatever, you know, I'm from small town Canada, you know, I should be like, you know, driving a taxi, which is I've done, but it's like, it's, you know, I'm not, I never show up there feeling like I know what I'm doing, but I, and then I'm like, well, okay, is my gear together more or less, you know, I've put the time in and that's just basic sport psychology. And then when you learn how to do that, it's the same tactic I use when I go out and do a speaking engagement. It's like, have I, you know, I use that worry to

prep for it. It's like, okay, this group is really into thinking about things in these ways, and I'm going to try to give them some tools to engage here. Okay, so how am I going to make that work? And breaking it down. And when I get up there, I'm really worried about presenting the ideas or executing well, but I'm not terrified of the experience because I've put enough time and effort into it and recognized that terror and kind of dealt with it beforehand. If I'm terrified in the air and my heart rate spikes, I'm basically... My primary problem is now not the other competitors. My primary problem is what is going wrong with me? Maybe I've missed something too. Maybe that's my body's way of

Aninder: telling me that I've missed something. That big QNAM over there that I've been not paying attention to because I'm paying attention to all the other competitors and so on. Like I should be, my heart should be spiking. That thing's massive. I've got like six minutes to get on the ground. Like, okay, well, how am I going to do that? You know, like... So long answer again, but sports psychology, worry about the things you can control and make sure those are done well. And then listen to that fear and engage with it. Don't ignore it. As we come to the closing one,

Guest: I'm so glad we spoke about this because I think I was listening to your talk with Alex Honnold. He's an interesting character. Yeah, I love how he put on some beautiful shots about you guys having five- minute conversations on YouTube and then the whole thing. And there you spoke about practicing risk-taking or increasing risk endurance, where the analogy was that if you don't pick up the phone and call up your date... then it's a definite no. So what I'm wondering is finding the courage to pick up the phone. I mean, of course, this can be, you know, how parallels can be drawn in various adventure sports. But how do you practice picking up the phone and calling in with full confidence rather than

shaking while picking up the phone just because that if you don't do it, then even that option is gone from your life? Yeah. Did I make my question clear? Yeah, and I think it's a really good question. I think a lot of people get stuck on looking at the phone and don't pick it up. So a couple

Aninder: of different things. In every worthwhile activity, the best thing to do for that activity is to do it. And then the next best activity to get better at is something that closely approximates it in some way. And then you sort of move further and further away and maybe you have to do the necessary physical therapy or job training or whatever that's way down there. But so if you, you know, if you can't pick that phone up and actually dial it and make the call, you can pick it up and practice what you're going to say. And you can detune it, again, detune the situation to where you can handle it. And I do that with a lot of different stuff, you know, whether it's kayaking and I'm like, well, what if I'm stuck upside

down against the wall and I can't roll up? What are my options? It's like, okay, well, you know, I can go to the other side. Maybe I can grab the wall and I think through 10 different things or just sticking with the analogy. What's the worst thing that the person can do? They can laugh at me. I've been laughed at all my whole life. People tell me I'm an idiot and what I'm going to do is impossible. That's a pretty normal reaction. But at a certain point, every time that happens, you get better at dealing with it. You don't take it personally. You're like, oh, this person

thinks what I want to do is crazy and they think I'm an idiot. Well, that's happened before. It loses its impact after a certain point. And when you've gotten up there and failed, you know, whether it's public speaking, flying a paraglider or whatever, when you screwed up enough times, you get more comfortable with getting up. I agree. So if you keep trying, you get better at trying. You know, if you keep working at things, you get better at it. So pick that phone call up. And the first time you get rejected, it's terrible. I used to be in sales. Call somebody up. Hey, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, what do you think? Nah. And don't call me again. Click. First time, that's devastating. The 50th time, you're

like, okay, one in 10 of these calls hits. That was call number nine. I got eight more to make. Here we go. You know, so you keep trying, but you do have to learn. Like, why didn't they respond well to what you were offering? Or maybe you need to listen to them more. Like, you got to learn. You know, try, listen, learn, adapt, do better. That's the kind of mantra that I, fighter pilots call it an ODA loop, observe, orient, decide, act. And, you know, my personal one is like, you got to try. That's the first thing. Nothing cool happens if you don't take that little risk and try. And then you got to get out there and you got to listen. Like, what's the world telling me? What's shaking with? Like,

Aninder: what is really going on? Not the bullshit in my brain. What's really going on? You know, you got to listen to it, figure it out. Then you got to learn, like put it into its place, put it into your matrix and your software and your brain. And then, you know, it's learn actually. And then you adapt, you change your game, you know, into what you're doing and you do better. And then you just do that over and over and over again. And sooner or later you... You either get to where you want to go or you realize that where you want to go is actually less interesting than this

other thing you need to go for. Well, I love it. What was the mantra of the fighter pilot? I'm going to put this in show notes after Googling it up. Oh, it's called an ODA loop. O-O-D-A. And so the classic fighter pilot ODA loop is you observe, orient, decide, and act. So my personal version of that is, is just, you know, try, listen, learn, adapt, do better. That's like every situation. It's like, you got to try, you know, and I respected that you tried. You sent me an email and said, Hey, you gave me a little bit of an interesting story about this. And I was like, Oh, this

guy seems interesting. So you tried. And I listened to that. And that's, that's, that's the first part of it. And we'll run into each other somewhere on a hill, hopefully in five or 10 years. And it'd be like, Oh, we did that podcast topic. What podcast? You'd be like the one with the, What with the guy, Oslo, you know, I come from Brobeck. Oh, you're that guy. That was awesome. You know, and we'll develop something cool. So anyhow, but try, listen, learn, adapt, do better. That's kind of mine. Oh, thank you. Thank you for the kind words, Gil. Is this the same thing

Guest: you do with your kids when you go out and ask them to the risk factor thing? I'm forgetting where you asked them that what risk factor we are and then they revert back to you with the findings. Yeah, well, this is something I've been doing with my kids. Like we're all running risk management

Aninder: software, right? Like everybody is, whether we realize it or not, we're making judgments about what's appropriate, what's not. And so I'm, you know, I'm out in the mountains a lot with my kids and we have sort of a three-level system that we develop together by listening to them. It's not something that's like mine, but... You know, our basic system is I'll ask them, you know, what hazard level are we at? And they'll be like, oh, dad, bumps and bruises. This is casual. Okay, what do we need to do about it? Because we also need to mitigate it. Well, not much here. You know, this is like a playground and I'm going to attack this playground on it. Awesome. And there will be someplace a little bit more hazardous.

You know, maybe we'll be hiking in the mountains and there'll be a drop off and I'll be like, okay. we're hiking along here. There's this drop off. What do you guys think? And they'll be like, ah, you know, this is definite hospital terrain, dad. Like you fall off of here, you get, you could get really hurt. And it's okay. So what are we going to do about it? Well, we're not going to run. We're going to hike on the inside of the trail, you know, and those rocks over there are slippery. So we're going to slow down and maybe keep a hand on the wall here or whatever, you know,

that's hospital terrain. And then we'll be in some very dangerous place like downtown Oslo when the bars let out at night or something, you know, and, And actually, Oslo is pretty good. But point being, some hideously, maybe we don't know the environment very well. We'll be getting ready to cross the street and, you know, like, OK, what hazard level are we at now? And the kids would be like, death, dad, death. You know, if we run out there, we'll get smoked by some drunk Oslo lead, although you've got really hard drinking laws there. So that probably won't happen, which is probably a good thing. But anyhow, that's, you know, it's bumps and bruises, hospital death. What are we going to do

about it? Oh, we're going to let those... Drunk Vikings go first and see what happens to them. Okay, cool. You know, this is how we're going to play this game. And the idea is not to terrify them in the world. Like, I don't tell my kids, be careful. I, you know, we get to a playground and I'm like, all right, what's got any issues here? And they're like, well, if you fall off the top of the buggy bars, you might break yourself. So... We're going to be a little more heads up and keep oriented our feet. Okay, great. And then they attack. And I watch other parents get to the

Aninder: playground. It's like, okay, kids, don't do anything dangerous. The kids don't even know what is dangerous. So the idea is to develop good risk management software and define it and redefine it and develop it throughout our lifetimes. So when I'm not watching the kids, that they can make good decisions. And it's the same with the people that I coach in mountaineering or paragliding or kayaking or whatever. The whole goal is to give them good systems to make good decisions in life and then get back to what we were talking about at the start of this conversation, which is to live our coolest lives. That's what we're all trying to do. That's what you're trying to do. And I think that's super cool. That's

the psychotic ideal. The unexamined life is not worth living, man. You've examined it and you're going for it. So I wish you the best and everybody who's making these decisions, best of luck with it. Thank you. Thank you for such kind words. These are going to stick with me and

Guest: going to be the seals for my, you know, oncoming journeys. I hope I make myself and everybody else around me proud. So fingers crossed. Yeah.

Aninder: Well, you're giving people, you're trying to give people some meaning. And I think as I've gotten older, that is more important to me. And if I just think about these things in a vacuum and we don't have these kinds of conversations, then it's not meaningful. I hope that people listen to this and you've given people some meaning. And that's the most precious thing in some ways is to give that and share that. So right on, man. And thank you for the time and doing the research that you did. And you did a great job. And so the next one, you're like, I interviewed that guy, Will

Gadd. He's kind of a pain in the ass. And I kicked ass, man. So go get it. I love it. Love your energy and your thoughts, Will. But before I let you

Guest: go, Will, we have a tradition on the show where I request my guests to share one flight from their life that has stuck with them. You know, if you have to choose one out of all these amazing airtime hours or not so amazing, whatever. Oh boy, so many. I mean, I've flown, I don't know how

Aninder: many thousands of hours, but so many good moments, you know, and it's interesting. So many good moments. I think one of my favorite moments would be chasing records in Texas. I was at about 18,000 feet really late in the day. And you never go, very rarely do you go that high over Texas. It's very, very rare. The base is normally just not that high. But I'm up there and I didn't set a record that day, but I remember being up there and the light was just stunning. It was the ground below me was already after sunset. And for some reason I hit a, I don't know why it happened, but I'm

just being up there in the sky so high over Texas. The ground's so low. I'm at like 5,000 meters. The ground's like 200 meters high. And just that much space between me and the earth. And then still thermaling and these swifts came in and they're eating bugs in the thermal and flying between my lines. And I was like, man, this is pretty special. Like this just doesn't happen. And that was a, but so many, just that memory being so specked out tall like that, you know, it was almost night. And it was really, really beautiful with these birds eating the insects. They're flying to my lines like fighter pilots. They would just go... And a lot of lines on the gliders at that point. So it was harder. So they were like

zapping through the line sideways and eating bugs. And I just thought, yeah, I'm pretty much the luckiest person on earth right now to be here. Wow. Pretty cool. And the most beautiful part is that no matter what technology we invent, such things usually happen. And our test

Guest: absorbed with naked eye and being in the moment and living the moment. So I think, you know, I'm so glad I could rekindle that. And thank you for that. Sharing it with our audience, I'm pretty sure they'll appreciate that thought. Before we close, I was listening to your Gavin show where you said that you were in wave and you got super high where you were getting a pinhole vision. Oh, yeah. Yeah. When things are happening like that, I mean, they happen fairly quickly. Does it make sense to do the risk management talk during that time? Or should you just make the best out of the situation kind of a thing? Like when you're in that kind of situation, so two things, you've got to do your best to be a participant

Aninder: in that situation as opposed to like a package. So even when things have gone horribly wrong, a 30% improvement in outcome is often quite meaningful, right? It's really, really important or 10% or 2%. It could be the difference. So to stay engaged and to stay focused on getting things better. And in the industrial world, they have an acronym, which is STKY, S-T-K-Y. And the acronym stands for shit that can kill you, sticky. And it's a really useful acronym. Usually when you're in one of those high intensity situations, there's only a few things that you actually need to manage. You're not worried about your bank balance, your mortgage, your love life. You got to worry about like, am I going to

Aninder: hit the hill? Like that'll kill you. And what am I going to do about it? How can I make this better? You know, if I flare really hard because I've misjudged my circle, you know, I'll hit it less hard. Okay, that's what I'm going to do. You know, in your downwind landing situation, it's like, if I fly into the high tension lines, that'll kill me. So I can't do that. Any outcome but that is probably best. So, you know, that... in those high intensity situations, knowing what's going to kill you and avoiding that is probably the useful thing to do. But, you know, I just wrote a big article about this, but the people always want to know what to do in these high intensity situations. Like, what do I do when I'm

getting sucked into a QNAM or I'm landing downwind in the, you know, my local LZ, what do I do? It's like, well, don't do that. You know, what happened is you got sucked into a QNAM. You didn't get sucked into a QNAM, you flew into a QNAM. I have never seen anybody get sucked into a QNAP. You know, they flew into them. I watched Ava go to 9,000 meters. She thermaled up underneath that QNAP. So rather than... It's useful to think about what I'm going to do in these super extreme situations. But the best thing to do is to avoid them and to think about, you know, I've

thought a lot about this. It's like, okay, I flew the Texas dry line for 20 years. This is the biggest... QNIM tornado alley area possibly in the world. Every day it's going to go ballistic. I'm planning to fly there. So what do I need to watch there so I don't fly into a QNIM? You know, this really bothers me. People are like, well, I got sucked in. No, you didn't. You flew in. And once you start taking kind of real responsibility for the outcomes, then you could fix those outcomes. But this is a problem, especially for some reason in paragliding where people are like, you know, I got sucked into a cloud. The clouds suck. This is a bullshit. Like every cloud, it's a thermal that goes into it.

Like, don't do that. Like, yeah. Okay. How are you going to not do that? Well, I'm going to start my glide out earlier in a day when it's overcast and I can't see the QNMs. I'm going to check the radar on my phone because you know what? You can do that in 90% of the world. Well, look at that. The one 15K in front of me is now going to 12,000 meters. I probably should go land. So it's... Yeah. Anyhow, long rant about that, but do focus on avoiding those situations and building knowledge to avoid them rather than just solving them. But people tend to want to solve them rather than

avoid them. Yeah. I think this is a bit personal to me because I think within my first year of flying, I was a 90-hour pilot or something. I had a

Guest: deployment over at Dharamsala in Bhutan. And that was just asymmetric, gone into cascade and went into double twisted auto rotation. So what I, my brain said fight it until it reached G point where I was like, hey man, either deploy or you're passing out. You know, that maybe that blackout was coming in. So my thing is, there was a point in time where I just accepted my fate and said that now it's either the handle or it's over. So If you are going towards an impact or a final undesirable state, is it okay to give up and brace for impact? Or should you kind of keep on

fighting until the last bit? Because that has eaten me up since that day that, hey, why did you just give up when you were 2,000 meters at least to clearance and bracing for impact? When should that come and should it be peaceful when that comes in your mind? So thank you for telling me that.

Aninder: And it sounds like it was personal and emotional and still driving you a little bit today. So a couple of quick responses to that. The first is that you did the right thing. You were in a situation that you did not see how it was going to get better and you're getting G'd out and you threw your reserve. Most everybody I know that's thrown their reserve has walked away. A lot of people, I'd say most everybody I've known that hasn't thrown the reserve, but has braced for impact, has gotten really messed up. So in my books, you did the right thing. You had a solution to a

problem. And if you're a very, very experienced pilot, maybe you have other solutions to that problem, but you didn't have the capacity anymore. So you did the logical thing, which is throw your reserve. I think that's awesome. I wish more people did that. If more people threw their reserves earlier, we'd have a lot less fatalities in paragliding. That is really clear to me. And people are like, oh, but you could go into a power line. Well, sure you could, but you could go into the power line fighting your glider all the way into the dirt and hit the tower going 120K an hour and break everything in your body. Very few situations are improved by riding the paraglider into the dirt. So you

threw early and I think that's awesome. I guess the second thing I'd ask you is a question. If you took that same asymmetric today, what would happen to you? Easy. I hopefully know how to come out of it. And how do you know that? Just went out and put in the work. Yeah. So you've built capacity to handle that. So your problem wasn't what, should I brace for impact or throw my reserve? Like these are not, neither one of these are like, like by the time you've gotten to that point, you did the right thing. You threw your reserve. But the bigger picture here is again, to

build capacity. Asymmetrics are an expected part of paragliding. So are frontals on speedbar on two-line gliders. These things will happen. And have we built the capacity to manage them or not? You know, you're going to get sucked into a QNIM if you are not paying attention to the environment around you. This will happen. QNIMs are, you know, it's just part of flying. They're out there. But if you've developed the tools to pay attention to your environment and look at your phone, now you're developing capacity to avoid this situation. Not just go. And I read, I listened to this article with this guy who got sucked into a, he flew into a QNAP and he's like, I need a faster glider so I can fly away

faster. This is total bullshit. You need to not fly into QNAPs. You need to have the understanding of the systems. It doesn't matter whether you're on a, you know, the hottest comp ship in existence or an A-wing. The difference is like not a lot, really, in terms of getting started. You know, the inflow to Acunium is going very, very fast. I've been in a couple of them. It's shit. I screwed up and you do not want to have this experience. It doesn't matter what you're on. So, you know, avoidance is, capacity is good, but avoiding it is more, is more better.

Guest: Love it. Love it. Well, I think this is one of the most comprehensive talks we have had on staying safe and yet having fun without, you know, normalizing or obsessing over risk assessment or something. And what you just said is really important. It's like people forget why

Aninder: everybody wants to make paragliding safe and it's not safe. I don't care who you are or what you do, you're going to hit the ground sooner or later. This is what happens. And some of the people are like, I've got it all figured out. I've got the perfect sauce. I fly safely. They hit the ground, man. I've seen this happen several times, worked that over the years. So you got to think that this is fun and worth that possibility. Like to me, it is. Flying paragliders is awesome. It's worth the risk to me. And I know that it's very likely that sooner or later I'll get it wrong

and I'll hit the ground. I'm not doing this safely. It's really dangerous. But I can make it somewhat safer and I can make good decisions and focus on the process of making good decisions. And then if it goes bad, you know, I'll be like, well, I really did think about this and I made a good effort and I, you know, I didn't hit it. But, you know, at least I put the work in and tried. So being process-intensive. driven, failing safely. You know, some of the tools we've talked about, I hope they resonate a little bit with people and with you. And then the ultimate goal is to come up with your own. I'm just making this shit up. It's like based on a lot of experience, but it's just my bottle and you got to

develop your own. Everybody does. And I wish them luck with that. Thank you for those words of wisdom and kindness for sharing them with us,

Guest: Will. And all I can say is that you, your lifestyle and the way you impart knowledge is an inspiration. So keep rocking and we will keep getting inspired. Thank you once again. It's a pleasure. Thank you. Thanks. I'm really glad you threw your reserve, man. You're here. Good decision. So

Aninder: right on. And I look forward to seeing you on a hill somewhere. Likewise, Will. Likewise.