Chris Ballard on Ice Swimming, Cold Water, and The Plunge

Speaker 10:00

[upbeat music] Podbean, your message amplified.

Mel Stewart· Host0:03

Ready to share your message with the world? Start your podcast journey with Podbean.

Speaker 10:08

Podbean, the AI-powered all-in-one podcast platform.

Mel Stewart· Host0:11

Record, edit, optimize.

Speaker 10:14

Publish, distribute.

Chris Ballard· Guest0:16

Thousands of businesses and enterprises trust Podbean to launch their podcasts.

Speaker 10:20

Launch your podcast on Podbean today.

Mel Stewart· Host0:23

[upbeat music] I'm Mel Stewart, and this is the GMM takeover of the Swim Swam podcast. Joining me today, Chris Ballard, author of The Plunge: Maverick Swimmers, An Unlikely Quest, and The Transformative Power of Cold Water. Chris Ballard is an award-winning author and longtime senior writer at Sports Illustrated, where he's crafted some of the magazine's most memorable long-form features. He's also an acclaimed author. He's penned The Art of the Beautiful Game and One Shot at Forever, which won an Alex Award and is being developed into a film. Our conversation today is all about The Plunge, which drops June 9th from Simon & Schuster. Chris spent three years traveling all over the world, Norway to Finland, Ireland to Italy, and he became an age group national champion in ice water, ice swimming. He also competed at world championships in Italy. This is a crazy story. If you're a fan of the book Born to Run, The Plunge is for you, and if you're, like, not convinced, we excerpt the book in our next issue of Swim Swam magazine. It's a 10-page layout. We never give 10 pages to an excerpt.