Epic Adventure From Mountain to Sea

This is Extra Point: A weekly guide on what to watch, listen to and read in the world of fitness culture.

Watch

Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR. In 2017, Alex Honnold was the first to climb El Capitan in Yosemite National Park without ropes. His “free-solo” became the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary of the same name. In his latest film, he completes free-solo climbs in the Italian and French Alps but this time, you can go with him using a Meta Quest VR headset. It’s an experience that may be as unsettling as it is awe inspiring. “I think for some people it might be one of the most intense things they’ve ever watched,” he says.

100 Foot Wave. This six-part documentary series explores surfer Garrett McNamara’s all-consuming goal to ride a 100-foot wave in Nazare, Portugal. His efforts transformed the small fishing village into a premiere big-wave surfing spot and changed his life in unexpected ways. Season one is now streaming on HBO Max.

Listen

The Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. You may recognize Dave Asprey, often referred to as “the father of biohacking,” as the host of Bulletproof Radio. The Human Upgrade is a continuation of that decade long podcast and similar in tone and theme. Asprey interviews, as he puts it, “bright thinkers and radical doers who push the boundaries of science, technology, personal development, and human performance.” Recent episodes discuss treatments for body-based anxiety, interventions for inflammation and controlling genetic destiny with synthetic biology.

Read

Why a College Athlete Union Seems Inevitable-and How it Could Work. College athletes are making legal strides in the battle against the NCAA’s ban on athlete compensation. Will the organization’s unwillingness to recognize athletes as employees be the next target? If it is, college athletes could potentially unionize. In this piece, Alex Kirshner lays out what a labor union might look like for athletes who historically have had little power.