Men's Journal magazine profiled the world's 25 most adventurous men...

... and a few things surfaced about parenthood and fatherhood. And Mars.

Jimmy Chin: Yeah, my parents had a fairly fixed view of what I'd be: lawyer, doctor, professor. They had me playing the violin at three, swimming competitively, and starting martial arts at 5. But I also had that rebel phase – well, not phase, 'cause I'm still in it – where I got expelled from my boarding school.... I had a problem with authority. My dad was so strict that he was the only person that I feared, so everybody else was like a joke.

Richard Branson: I think sometimes when you come from a conservative background you want to rebel a little. I dropped out of school at 15 and learned early in life that saying yes was a lot more fun than saying no.... I was damned if I was going to sit around watching television...

Ben Stookesberry: My father was really good at reverse psychology: He'd tell me I couldn't do something to give me a shove. He'd been hoisted into the family lumber business and had that dream that I'd follow my passion in some way. He passed away in a car accident when I was 21, but the day before we lost him, he got to watch me on the river. I remember how happy he was...

Jimmy Chin (when asked how his parents took it when he announced, after college, he intended to live out of his car and climb Yosemite): Well, they stopped speaking to me for a while, so not great. I'd told them it was for a year, to get it out of my system. But then one year turned to two, which turned to three or four, and I was doing expeditions in the Himalayas and, well, you know, there went law school. (But his mother got over it, apparently.) So we were in the Karakoram Mountains, on these walls that hadn't been climbed because it was a war zone and no one had gotten access. We were sending back daily dispatches via satellite phone when I took a big fall, and my teammates were like, great, let's post that! Two days later, we're about to summit and we see this team of soldiers at the base of the wall. We're all freaking out – are they here to arrest us? – till one of them goes: "Jimmy Chin... your mother wants to know if you're okay?!" Somehow, she'd gotten hold of the brigadier general and demanded they send a team to check on me. It was the most mortifying moment of my life.

Jimmy Chin: We've evolved not to just sit and let our fingers do all the work. We're programmed to do certain very physical things, and if we don't do them, we get depressed and sick. If you don't get in the sun, and feel the bite of cold, you start to dull or fucking die. Steel sharpens steel, and I'll never forget it. That's something my dad taught me, and I'll teach my kids.

Richard Branson: Ten years ago, Larry Page and I posted an April Fool's Day ad asking for volunteers for a one-way mission to Mars. Within four hours, 10,000 people signed up! Needless to say, we had to come clean about it being a joke, and I can tell you, a lot of those people were sorely disappointed. But one day in the not-too-distant future, there will be a one-way journey to Mars, and that will be the ultimate adventure.