Jason Ellis is the new voice of extreme sports. He is the host of The Jason Ellis Show, one of Sirius’ most listened-to programs. Before he owned the radio waves, he owned the skate ramps, competing for twenty years alongside extreme sports legends like Tony Hawk. Drugs got in the way of his ultimate success in the sport, but he was known for his fearlessness.

But before all that, Jason Ellis was a kid in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. His mother, an alcoholic, was only 16 when he was born, and split from his dad soon thereafter. He was raised by his mother, among the parties with her druggie crowd, where partygoers tried to feed him crystal meth. And when he was just five years old, he was molested by a much older man. He moved in with his father after his sixth birthday, and he was given his first dirt bike, marking the beginning of a lifelong passion for extreme sports. It was from his tough-as-nails father that he learned to be hard and tough, fearless, and to take it all out while he’s skateboarding.

Ellis moved to the U.S. when he was 17 to pursue pro skateboarding, and continued to live in extremes. He fell in love with a Penthouse Pet, and after discovering she was cheating on him, revenge-married her best friend, a stripper. He spent a few years wasted and avoided coming home after a night of binging. Eventually they got divorced.

Soon thereafter, he met the right girl and they had son, Devin. Then tragedy struck… twice. His father died of a heart attack, and a year later his younger half-bother died in an accident near the family’s vacation home. His brother had been using drugs and hotwired a steamroller which he attempted to drive up a windy, mountain road. He couldn’t control the vehicle and it rolled off the cliff.

It was the death of his brother that made Ellis realize he had enough. He quit booze and drugs. He got straight, married his girlfriend, and threw his efforts into being a good father. His success is now, in part, a tribute to his father and his brother, their legacy.