Outside Podcast

Endurance running is objectively terrible: the immediate quad and lung burn, the myth of runner’s high, the blisters, the chafing—running is brutal. And yet, there are brief moments when running can make you feel strong, capable, and proud. Just ask Anthony Clary. After a college football career, Anthony began running following a terrifying prediabetic diagnosis. But what started as a health scare transformed into a passion. Anthony battled through some of the worst things life can throw at you and found belonging, community, and purpose though running. And then he did something even more remarkable—he figured out how to make sure an entire community of people feel the same thing every time they lace up their shoes.

We use our smartphones in service of our outdoor time all the time. We plan trips, track our runs, hikes, and bike rides. Use compass and mapping apps to better navigate outdoor fun. We take photos and videos of our adventures, archive these precious memories in our Favorites folder. And if that’s all we used our phones for? Well, then we’d be happier and society would function better. Unfortunately, we live in the real world, which science journalist and author Catherine Price has documented rigorously and with depressing clarity in books like “How to Break Up With Your Phone.” Fortunately, she’s given equal thought to alternatives, in books like “The Amazing Generation” and “The Power of Fun.” That second one taught her a lot about the role time outside has to play in helping all of us redefine our relationship with technology and ourselves.

In the runup to the third annual Outside Days festival in Denver, Colorado, at the end of May, we’re revisiting a panel that podcast host PaddyO moderated—or rather tried to moderate—while stand up comic Eeland Stribling, Instagram and TikTok phenomenon Matt Lyons, and the new host of the Warren Miller ski and snowboard film Katie Burrell, riffed on the endless ways we can poke fun at our outdoorsy selves. After all, if you can’t laugh at yourself while sleeping in the dirt, running unreasonable distances, or applying chamois cream for the 57th time during an especially grueling bike ride that is, ahem, “fun” then you probably need a snack.  Take a listen and be sure to check out the full lineup of bands, panels, speakers, and events, and snag your tickets of course, for this year’s Outside Days festival at https://outsidedays.outsideonline.com. See ya in Denver at the end of May!

Hot Take: We should camp for camping’s sake! If you’re anything like me, your camping is often (always?) in service of some greater objective, whether it’s a backpacking trip or mountain you’re climbing or a weekend of mountain biking. But are those objectives actually greater than simply hanging out under the clouds and stars for a few days? Campthropologist’s Rolland Tizuela doesn’t think so. The San Diego-based creator focuses on making camping accessible and approachable for beginners, inspired in part by research he conducted on the culture of hiking and camping while getting a degree in sociocultural anthropology. In Rolland’s view, everything we do at camp—from cooking to tent siting to going to the bathroom—is a fascinating form of community building. It’s a conversation that has me excited to bring little more than a tent and a mellow attitude to my next overnight outdoors.

Every great character has a captivating origin story—the thing that explains not just the how but also the why of who they are. Santa Fe’s Katie Arnold is a great character: a writer, ultra runner, and Zen practitioner who rattles off insights about running, adventure, and the outdoors the way most of us rattle off to do lists. And her origin story is a classic: gal graduates college into a big city job, but a yearning for not just someTHING else but also someWHERE else rewrites her whole script. For Katie, the thing was a yearning for wide open space and where was Santa Fe, a place with the trail access, high alpine beauty, and an adventurous, irreverent community she didn’t realize she needed until she found it. What happened next was nothing short of life changing, and holds lessons for anyone with an itch they can’t quite scratch and yearning for wild places.

Today we are celebrating one year of PaddyO as host of the new interview format of your beloved Outside Podcast. We’ve got some big plans for this next year, and to commemorate the occasion we are revisiting one of our (and your) favorite chats. Enjoy this conversation with standup comedian and snowboarder Scott Losse. And thank you for tuning in! … An interesting thing happened when Scott Losse started poking fun at snowboarders and mountain bikers in his Instagram posts: He went from being sort of known around Seattle as a stand up comedian to blowing up across social media as the guy saying all the things a lot of us think when we’re at the mountain, on the trails, or in the bike park. Losse’s observational humor about the outdoors has transformed his trajectory as a comic; more importantly, it helps ensure our often painfully self-serious social feeds, filled with inspiring-but-totally-unrelatable accomplishments, get a little more silly.

In the mid-90s, the cultural collision of music and sports was everywhere in pop culture. You saw it through the brand new X Games and MTV Sports, in movies like “Point Break” and “Airborne,” and you heard it through what we used to call “alternative rock.” The band Third Eye Blind was a staple of this era, so you’d think that frontman Stephan Jenkins might have followed a similar trajectory to his rock god peers of the era. But you’d be wrong. Stephan, a surfer since childhood, grew up in the Bay Area and his break of choice is San Francisco’s notoriously big, dangerous, and sharky Ocean Beach. And he’s not just out in the water looking for stoke; he's a tireless ocean advocate. For as long as he’s surfed, Stephan has fought for kelp restoration and plastic reduction along the California coastline. He also regularly volunteers with the Jimmy Miller Memorial Foundation, which helps veterans treat PTSD through surfing.  This connection endlessly—even subconsciously—influences the music Stephan makes. Turns out, when you spend your life in the water and making music, the two things combine in ways that it takes a lifetime to understand.

You’re on a hike and the faff of daily life won’t stop clanging around your head. Then, all of a sudden, the to-do list instantly evaporates when you notice dappled light dancing on the trail. Calm sweeps over you and you’re filled with a great sense of connection and gratitude. This is the phenomenon of awe and it’s not just an ooey-gooey feeling; it’s a new area of scientific study. Just ask social psychologist Dr. Paul Piff. Through ingenious experiments conducted on the South Shore of Lake Tahoe, Piff and his research team have identified that corner of California as potentially the epicenter of awe. After hiking along its shores and gazing upon its iconic waters, Piff’s Tahoe participants have responded with increased feelings of selflessness, empathy, and happiness. And the good doctor believes that if we can harness the effects of awe we can tackle the greatest societal issues of our time:  the loneliness epidemic, digital addiction, and even the intractable polarization of society. This is all investigated in great detail in Outside TV’s new show “ Beyond Awestruck: The Scientific Search For Connection”, out now. And in this chat Dr. Piff outlines how our time outside is far more meaningful than cool views and handfuls of GORP.

Outdoor folks love to push themselves to go farther, faster, higher, etc., and there’s a good reason for it: When you climb a big mountain or finish that half marathon or ski that steep run, it can translate into a confidence that makes hard things in the rest of our lives seem less daunting. But most of us are just as—or maybe more—familiar with the feeling of talking ourselves out of big goals, because they seem too complicated or scary to pull off. When that happens, we’d all do well to listen to skier and artist Chris Benchetler. Chris’s latest film, “Mountains of the Moon”, literally stretched the boundaries of what’s possible in adventure filmmaking. The movie was shot almost entirely at night, often in sub-zero, rugged backcountry terrain where massive lighting installations were built to paint the darkness and capture the athletes in their one-of-a-kind glowing skeleton suits (did we mention all the music is from the Grateful Dead?). It’s astonishing that the film even got made, but Chris has built a career and a life based on a simple principal: don’t avoid doing the hard thing just because it’s hard.

“Chill”, “mellow”, and “relaxed” are probably not words you think of when you hear about the latest climbing feat from Alex Honnold.  ”Terrified” and “mesmerized” likely better describe what it felt like watching live as the ropeless wonder scaled the 1,667-foot Taipei 101 skyscraper. So you might be surprised to learn that Alex recently did something else for the TV camera that was, in fact, pretty chill, mellow, and relaxed. A new show on Outside TV called “Get a Little Out There”, showcases a side of him rarely seen—the one where he’s a husband and a father who just likes to get outdoors and explore everything his adopted home state of Nevada has to offer. It’s fascinating because, while watching Alex enjoy decidedly non-life-threatening adventures like stargazing and mountain biking and hanging out with a donkey in a bar—you know, normal Nevada stuff—he comes across as down to Earth and full of insights and ideas that will resonate with anyone looking for more everyday adventure in their own lives.

Big wall climbing is about as relatable as space travel to the average human. To whit: When Sasha DiGiulian and her partner Elliot Faber attempted the audacious Platinum route, they planned to spend 15 days on the massive wall. Then, 2,600 feet up, a freak winter storm pinned them inside their tiny portaledge tents for nine full days. But just because Sasha has the skill to get herself into that bonkers situation and the focus and pain tolerance to make it out—her and Elliot ultimately completed the climb in 23 (?!) days—doesn’t mean she herself is unrelatable. In fact, in a career racking up one of the most impressive big wall resumes in climbing, Sasha has developed a remarkably simple recipe for success. Fortunately for you, understanding it is a lot easier than hanging off a massive cliff for over a week.

In the 1980s and 90s, Bill Bradley was a video rental mogul. At his peak, he had stores all over Santa Rosa, California, was worth millions of dollars, and was seen as an industry innovator. That's  probably why he was dismissive when a little company called Netflix appeared and proceeded to lay waste to the entire video rental industry. In a whiplash-inducing turn of events, Bill lost everything—his riches, his business, his marriage, and his sense of purpose. Prior to this life explosion, Bill was a casual runner, plodding along in a few marathons and Ironmans. And when he was at his lowest, he dove head first into the world of ultra endurance sports. Since the collapse of his VHS empire in 2005, Bill has taken on the world’s toughest challenges, like the Arrowhead Ultra, the Badwater Ultra, swimming the English channel, and attempts at the world’s tallest peaks. And yes, he has set records along the way. But what is truly remarkable and what turned Bill into Epic Bill, is that he has come short far more often than he has crossed the finish line. Epic Bill believes that his failures have taught him more than any victory ever could. Because how you try at one thing is how you try at everything.

April Vokey turned a gift for fishing into a career as a guide, a TV personality, a podcast host, and the founder of an online community and education platform under the brand name Anchored. This gift set the direction of her life as a teenager, and it helped her after a drunk driver nearly killed her in her 20s. It’s powerful stuff, but possibly less powerful than April’s other gift: the gift of gab. It’s tough to describe the infectiously exciting way that experiences and insights pour out of her, so best to just sit back and enjoy the feeling of being swept away. Needless to say, April’s our first guest who managed to spin a single yarn that included catching the fish of a lifetime, a foiled backcountry skinny dip, a takedown of fishing bro culture, and the intersection of menstruation and adventure. Buckle up folks. You’re about to get the April Vokey experience.

If you’ve ever felt like forces beyond your control have grabbed the wheel of your life’s metaphorical car and are driving like a lunatic, there are no shortage of purported experts who claim to have the solution. Meditation, journaling, throwing away your possessions, saunas, ice baths, saunas then ice baths … it’s overwhelming. So here’s a different tip: ignore all that and take a cue from Brenna Huckaby. Brenna was forced to amputate her right leg above the knee after a devastating cancer diagnosis in her teens. She learned to snowboard as part of her recovery, and two years later she was a World Champion. Brenna has stood on the Paralympic podium three times, but if you’re thinking, “What an inspiration!”, hold that thought. She’ll represent the U.S. for the third time in a row at this winter’s Paralympics in Italy and, unlike the 2022 Games in Beijing, she didn’t even have to sue the International Paralympic Committee for the right to compete. Brenna’s perspective on disabilities and elite sports is hard won, and she wants you to watch this winter’s Games—but not for the reasons you might think. She doesn’t want your pity, but she demands your respect, and if you listen carefully you’ll learn a lot about what it means to take back control of your own life.

There’s no guarantee that your kids will be into the same things you’re into, so Jeremy Jones knows he’s lucky to have two who froth as hard about snowboarding as he does. But what do you do when your kids want to literally follow in your tracks, even though those tracks go down some of the biggest and most technically challenging lines in the history of the sport? Jeremy is a consensus pick for one of the best big mountain riders ever, and just as beloved for his pioneering work as a climate activist as the founder of Protect Our Winters. But it’s possible that his greatest accomplishment is raising a daughter and a son who are flashing the lines that made him famous—and not freaking out while watching them do it.

These days, traditional definitions of masculinity are in tension with the need for a more expansive understanding of how to be a man in the world. This is as true in the outdoors as anywhere, but the natural world also offers unique paths for men, toward emotional liberation, connection, and strength. For today’s episode, we dipped into our archive from last year’s Outside Festival (which is now called Outside Days) for a touching and deeply honest conversation with action sports legend Selema Masekela,  artist and author Mike de la Rocha, artist and Apache Skateboards founder Douglas Miles, and  cultural strategist and storyteller James Andrews. These four men credit their time outdoors with helping them make sense of complicated, often messy relationships with their parents, siblings, and friends. Listen in to explore how nature and community help a new generation of men redefine strength on their own terms.

Survivalist Max Djenohan sees your ultralight backpacking rig and chuckles. An eight-time contestant and fan favorite on the peak reality TV show “Naked and Afraid,” Max says roughing it with nothing more than a knife and a firestarter is both thrilling and gratifying in ways that belie the somewhat absurdist and lurid motivation for the show itself. In some ways, his run on the show revived his flagging relationship with the outdoors, following time as a professional snowboarder that ended in frustration. But, today, Max is back on snow while evolving the concept of survivalist TV in ways that are more engaging and fascinating than ever—and he doesn’t even have to get naked to do it.

The Olympics is a ridiculous mixture of hit-you-straight-in-the-feels origin stories and Greek god-level athletic prowess. Even in the endless parade of epic performances it inevitably serves up, Jessie Diggins’ will likely stand out. The most decorated American crosscountry skier of all time, Jessie was one of the most thrilling moments in Olympic history when she and teammate Kikkan Randall won the US’s first-ever crosscountry skiing gold in the team sprint at the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang. She heads to the 2026 Winter Games in Cortina, Italy as one of the U.S. team’s most recognizable faces and the only crosscountry skier your parents have ever heard of. It would be unfair to say that she doesn’t feel the pressure of carrying the expectations of a country every time she blasts off the starting line, but her perspective on that pressure might surprise you—it’s one that owes as much to her elite accomplishments as it does to her down-to-earth Midwestern roots.

The comeback is central to the mythology of sports, and when one plays out on the already mythic stage of the Olympics, athletes in relatively obscure sports can become legends. That’s the context in which halfpipe skier Nick Goepper finds himself as the U.S. Ski Team prepares to name its Olympians next week. An unlikely ski phenom from Indiana, who first drew attention in the park of his 400-vertical foot local hill, Nick is a three-time Olympic medalist … in slopestyle. A successful late career pivot to halfpipe would be more than enough to make the 31-year-old a compelling main character of the upcoming Milan Cortina Winter Games, but that’s not why these Games are a comeback. In the 12 years since earning Bronze at the 2014 Games in Sochi, Russia, Nick battled depression, panic attacks, and substance abuse, all of which culminated in a very public arrest for criminal mischief. Nick has been guarded about his mental health journey until now, as he opens up about how you can only chase your dreams if you’re bold enough to face your demons.

Adventuring outside is great for the beauty, the sense of awe, the fitness, but really…we’re all in it for the snacks. And no one chases down the munchies quite like skiers. Maybe you’ve seen a snowy wiggler pull a bratwurst out of a jacket pocket while on a chairlift. Maybe you yourself have devoured a towering plate of loaded tatter tots at apres. There’s just something about scarfing oodles of vittles during and after skiing that is far more satisfying than any other post mountain pursuit grubfest. And while it’s true that charging down a mountain in the cold empties your body’s glycogen stores, skiing and snacking has as much to do with your emotions as it does your legs. Because if you fail to refuel either your belly or your heart, well, there won’t be any pizza-french fry fun in your future. And in this classic episode from our vault, we explore the extremes skiers will go to fuel their powder day dreams.

Roman Dial is engaged in a five-decade exploration of Alaska by raft, mountain bike, and foot … but not trail. Over the course of locally legendary adventures like his 800-mile traverse of the Brooks Range and the 628 miles he once hiked with a single backpack’s worth of food and gear, Dial was forced to invent new means of transport, like the pack raft and a form of bushwack mountain biking called “hell biking.” His commitment to physical pursuits in his adopted home state is matched by intellectual traversing during a 30-plus year career as a professor of science and mathematics at Alaska Pacific University. As a teacher, Roman used his remarkable outdoor skills to lead research expeditions into the bush to mentor generations of scientists, all of which is beautifully captured in a new film about his life, “Arctic Alchemy.” After five decades of these sufferfests, Roman has a perspective on life and adventure that will change your attitude the next time you’re cold, wet, and many miles from home.

Even those of us who seek freedom and adventure in the wilderness are hardwired to keep themselves safe. It’s why we, as a species, outlasted the dodo and reached the top of the food chain. But there is a subset of outdoor athletes who seem to have found the genetic safety switch in their mitochondria and turned it off—folks like ski alpinist Christina Lustenberger. Lusti, as her superhuman friends call her, has racked up more first descents on mountains of consequence than arguably any other other woman in the last 10 years. These culminated in the past few years with the 20,000 foot Great Trango Tower in Pakistan, and Mount Robson, Canada’s tallest peak. But it’s in the less expected parts of her life that Lusti proves that she’s not always fearless. When it comes to facing the relationships in her life that aren’t going well, she feels the sharp end of fear that the rest of us might get staring up Robson. And what she does with that fear might surprise you.

When the mountains grab ahold of your heart, they have a way of directing your life, even becoming a keystone of your identity. But what happens when you associate your time adventuring outside with the lowest points in your life? Can you retire from the outdoors? That’s exactly what  photographer and mountaineer Cory Richards did. You may have heard Cory’s story: after nearly two decades of first ascents and award winning photos and films, he experienced a mental health crisis during an expedition in Nepal, and quit climbing and photography. Since then, Cory’s been on countless event stages and talk shows and published  a memoir, The Color of Everything, all of which has focused on his experiences leading up to that decision. But what about since then? When the mountains, with all their splendor and all their demons, never really leave you, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Something funky this way comes. All over the world, deep inside dark forests, hunters tip toe in secret for a wildly expensive delicacy: truffles. The aromatic fungi grows underground, tethered to tree roots, and is exceptionally difficult to find—which is why specially trained dogs are needed to sniff them out, and they’re worth their weight in gold. As it turns out, the truffle business is not too dissimilar from the illegal-drug business, filled with shady deals and even shadier characters. Back in 2022, host PaddyO interviewed Outside contributing editor Rowan Jacobsen about his journey into the mob-like underbelly of truffle hunting, from old world European forests to, very unexpectedly, the hills of Appalachia.

If you’ve ever been bucked off your mogul line, stuffed a front bike tire, caught a toe on a rock, or collapsed the leg of a camp chair, you know that to go outside is to have an intense relationship with balance. But recovering physical balance is a lot easier than emotional balance. Just ask climber and balance Jedi Kai Lightner. Kai has been a climbing savant since he scaled a 50-foot flagpole at 6-years-old. He then went on to casually win 10 youth national championship titles, five youth world championship medalist, then evolved from an indoor climbing phenom to an outdoor climbing force. Along the way, Kai had to deal with physical and emotional stress and pressure that outsized his abilities, but climbing provided a cathartic way through it all. In Kai’s view, the physical demands of climbing—having to embrace fear and doubt—provides a kind of balance that can carry us through whatever life throws our way.

Have you ever wondered why you feel a pull to go for that grueling trail run or long bike ride or demanding backcountry ski? We have an innate need for adventure, but why? According to paleoanthropologist and evolutionary biologist Ella Al-Shamahi, it’s in our DNA. Ella’s years of Paleolithic study focuses on the first humans and how they behaved—everything from community building to tool evolution to the world’s first sea crossing, which populated Australia. Her research has helped uncover a bonkers “Lord Of The Rings” era, when our foremothers and fathers existed alongside other human species that she calls things like “Hobbits” and “Dragon Men”…seriously. Ella believes that we have a genetic predisposition for adventure, which explains why homosapiens populated the earth and the Hobbits and Dragon Men did not. More importantly for our purposes, it helps explain why we still love to sleep in the dirt, climb mountains, and seek out the next big adventure.

They say it’s not the fall that gets ya, it’s the landing. Fear of falling, or smacking one’s face onto the cold hard earth, is an innate human emotion. Even for athletes who’ve spent a lifetime climbing mountains, traversing sheer cliffs, balancing on knife-edge ridgelines, this fear never disappears. And that’s why folks who paraglide, speedfly, and skydive are both fascinating and confounding. What do they know that the rest of us don’t? Well, champion wingsuit pilot and quantum physicist, Alexey Galda knows a lot about it. Alexey spends his weekdays  in quantum computing at the pharmaceutical giant Moderna. And his weekends are spent jumping out of perfectly good airplanes donning a  “squirrel suit” that lets him move horizontally through the sky at speeds exceeding 200 miles an hour. Even if these worlds seem drastically different, they both impact the other and allow Alexey to, ahem, fly through fear.

In 1978, skier and kinetic artist John King, along with two pals, set out on a singular and epic adventure: a backcountry ski tour from Durango, Colorado to the Medicine Bow Range near Fort Collins. Over six weeks, the trio skied 490 miles, climbed 65,000 vertical feet. They finished gaunt and sun cooked, with boots held together by tape. Their route influenced the design of the Colorado Trail and the locations of the 10th Mountain Division hut system, but the journey has never been repeated. It’s not an overstatement to call this one of the most audacious wintertime feats of endurance in the history of skiing—a new documentary called Moving Line captures all of that beautifully. And for John King the true triumph was the artistic merit of the pursuit itself. John believes that his tracks on that trip sketched lines that extend into his present day and beyond toward his future. In John’s estimation, movement is creation, expedition is art, and all of it guides him every step of the way.

Chitchatting is a natural part of any adventure you do with a pal—what else are you gonna do around a campfire or sitting on the tailgate at a trailhead or going for a long walk in the woods? But most of us don’t set out on a journey for the sole purpose of talking with strangers. That’s exactly what writer and standup paddleboarder Dan Rubinstein did. Over 11 weeks, he paddled 1,200 miles from his home in Ottawa to New York City and back, talking to whoever he came upon in the process. He was partially inspired by a fascination with the benefits of so-called “blue space,” which is the aquatic equivalent of green space. But he was also looking to revive a spirit that was flagging under some existential weight. Dan came away from his trip with a better understanding of how time spent on and in water improves your life; more importantly, he came away with a renewed appreciation for his fellow man and woman.

For most of us, mountain biking is a great way to get into the outdoors, get a workout, get an adrenaline rush, and hopefully avoid losing any skin or breaking a collarbone. For the mountain bikers of Red Bull’s annual Rampage contest, mountain biking is a means of defining the limits of human performance and fear tolerance. Every year, these men and women gather on a sprawling ridgeline near Zion National Park in Utah, and proceed to see who can ride the least rideable-looking line down a mountain bigger than your last 5 descents, combined. It is one of the most unbelievable spectacles in the world of action and outdoor sports, and since it’s about to go down this weekend, we asked our friends at the Pinkbike Podcast—who know more about mountain biking than just about anyone on Earth—to give us a little preview of the what, who, and why to watch.

Ruggedness, dependability, and handiness define a lot of outdoor archetypes, from the ski patroller to the river guide to the park ranger. So why would you find all three in a famous actor? Maybe because the actor in question—Nick Offerman—is an avid outdoorsman in his own right. Surely you know Nick from one of his many memorable roles,  like Ron Swanson on Parks And Recreation and General Sidney in the latest Mission Impossible. And, when he’s not acting or performing on comedy tours, you can find Nick paddling the Los Angeles River or scrambling up peaks in the nearest National Park.  Relying on himself in a pinch informs everything Nick does, from acting to woodworking. And his new book,  Little Woodchucks: Offerman Woodshop’s Guide to Tools and Tomfoolery, is Nick’s gospel of do-it-yourselfedness, a starting point to building a tough and resourceful identity. Because eventually, we’re all gonna have to fix a flat tire or build a little shelter in the woods.

Many outdoorsy folks will happily slog for hours toward outdoor fun, despite the fact that any number of adventure derailing smackdowns await us. Gear malfunctions, crummy weather, and bloodied limbs don’t stop us from heading into the unknown. No one puts this optimistic persistence to better use than lifelong surfer and CEO of the Surfrider Foundation, Chad Nelsen. Chad grew up in smog-choked Laguna Beach in the 1970s, when pipes spilled raw sewage into the ocean regularly. He was inspired to pursue environmental science and a PhD combining his love of surfing with sustainability, thus dedicating his life to protecting and preserving the world’s oceans, waves, and beaches. Despite bureaucracy, apathy, and disengagement, Chad pursues environmentalism like a surfer paddling into pounding beach break, confident that the wave of his life is just outside the shore pound.

Wood chopping is objectively awful for all the obvious reasons: blisters, back aches, over-the-counter painkiller expenses. But that’s not what you remember months later, when the fruits of your labor warm you and your loved ones on a cold winter night. See, wood chopping is really an investment—both in terms of that crackling fire, but also your emotional well being.  That is something Nicole Coenen knows all about. The internet’s self proclaimed “lesbian lumberjill” grew up an uncomfortable tomboy in the suburbs of Ontario, and she found both her refuge and her calling in the woods. She’s amassed a huge following from the forest that surrounds her adopted home of British Columbia, and her videos are more than just wholesome, self-effacing clips of her wood chopping skills. They’ve a living journal of a woman who was saved by trees.

Spend time outdoors, and you’ll eventually spend time in brutal, even scary weather. Dangerous winds, flash flood-inducing rain, and vision-erasing whiteouts are sometimes the cost of entry. By the same token, you’re as likely to remember the upsides to those experience—the belly laughter of relief, the rainbows after the rain, the waist deep powder—as the scary parts. Hank Schyma, aka Pecos Hank, built a career out of those upsides by becoming one of the internet’s most beloved storm chasers. For decades, he’s captured astonishing photos and video of tornadoes, gathering new data on how they work and discovering new phenomena. On his wildly popular Youtube channel, his new photo memoir Storm, and in this conversation, we get to see and hear it all—from a significantly safer distance.

Extreme adaptability and versatility can be found throughout the animal kingdom, but may have found their peak expression in Alexi Pappas. As a runner, Pappas was a two-time All-American for Dartmouth who set a national record running for Greece at the 2016 Olympics. As a performer, she was a member of Dartmouth’s gut-busting Dog Day improv group before going on to write, direct, and star in several feature films, including Tracktown, Olympic Dreams, and Not An Artist. The further into her career Pappas gets, the more running influences her art, and her art influences her running—all of which she talks about in a way that makes you understand how she’s risen so high in two fundamentally different worlds.

After Lawlor Coe lost his brother Hunter to tragedy, he did everything he could to avoid his pain. Then he laced up his joggers and began to run. At first, it was to elude his grief. But over time, as he began to log miles and miles, he found that the physical suffering he was enduring out on the trail helped him find his way to peace, and then back to joy. He was no longer running from his sorrow, from his anger, but toward a new sense of purpose. And along with the rest of his family, he found a way to honor Hunter’s life and the characteristics that made him one hell of a brother, son, and friend: by creating a fund that supports groups offering transformative experiences for young people in need of mental health support. And what Lawlor found in his runs and fundraising efforts is that after anger and sorrow is all used up, the only thing left to do is run toward love.

The blissed out, swell chasing surfer with a single-minded focus on the next great ride is a pervasive outdoorsy archetype that’s completely at odds with the lived experience of many surfers. Take historian Kevin Dawon, a professor at UC Merced, for whom surfing serves as his connection to a rich tradition of African aquatic culture. Dawson is credited with resurfacing the first account of surfing in Africa, from 1640—more than 100 years before Captain Cook’s famed account from Hawaii—and his research centers centuries of oceanic accomplishment by Black communities there and in North America that have been ignored or actively erased. Dawson’s experiences in the waters of Africa, the Caribbean, and his native California bear little resemblance to what many people think of when they hear “surfer,” but they’re drenched in a joy that’s recognizable to anyone who has ever played in the waves.

We love our outdoor archetypes, the folk heroes who reject the trappings of the 9 to 5 life and solely focus on the trail, the powder turn, or the frothing whitewater. River guides live a romantic sunburnt existence, ones in which bucket list adventures are their everyday. It’s not just their ability to read water and navigate huge standing waves day after day, but their spiritual connection to the power of the water and landscape they’re paddling through. Folks like professional Grand Canyon guide Cindell Dale. Cindell has been boating “the Big Ditch” since the early 1980s, piloting Ticaboo, her 16 foot dory–a high-sided, v-shaped wooden boat known for its balletic movement and apparent ability to transform a river trip into a religious experience. Cindell was mentored by the female guides who broke through river running’s glass ceiling, a legacy Cindell and her peers continue every summer on the Colorado River. And after countless trips through the heart of one of the world’s most spectacular natural wonders, boy oh boy, does she have stories of the power of paddling through the magical splendor of the Grand Canyon.

We love our stories of human endurance, from Shackleton’s famed expedition to the 11-hour Wimbledon match to days-long ultramarathons. Hell, even the Coney Island Hot Dog eating contest is broadcast on television; that’s just how much we celebrate a person pushing themselves to the brink. But the moments that inspire the most are the ones in which a solo athlete has spent everything physically and mentally, and is forced to find a new gear emotionally. And for Ironman World Champion Chelsea Sodaro, her moment had nothing to do with swimming-biking-running 140 miles. At the same time Chelsea was standing atop triathlon podiums, she was ravaged by postpartum depression, including near-constant anxiety about mass shootings. What is so stirring about Chelsea is not her ability to push herself past the edge of what’s physically possible, but her emotional abilities to handle what happened when that edge pushed back.

In celebration of summertime road trips, this week we’re revisiting an episode from our archives that is one of PaddyO’s favorites. In 2021, two men set out to do something seemingly impossible. And also pretty dumb. Motorcycle gurus and YouTube stars Zack Courts and Ari Henning would squeeze together, buttcrack to belt buckle, onto a minibike—a vehicle roughly the size of a children’s bicycle and powered by an engine that can barely run a lawn mower—and drive 400 miles from a cornfield in Nebraska to a little place called Aspen, Colorado. Sound familiar? It should. That’s right, this is the same iconic road trip that Hollywood stars Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels’ Harry and Lloyd took in the cult classic Farrelly Brothers film Dumb and Dumber. The big difference is that this time it wasn’t a hilarious 3-minute movie montage. This road trip was for real. And it hurt like hell.

Famous Hollywood actors aren’t outdoorsy, right? They’re too busy being…well, famous to enjoy the outdoors and certainly too fancy to listen to a podcast about the surprising impacts of a life outside, aren’t they? Turns out, HBO’s “The Righteous Gemstones” star, Tony Cavalero, is a longtime listener of the Outside Podcast because he’s been obsessed with outdoor adventure since first donning a Boy Scout uniform as a kid. And, Tony’s path crossed with host PaddyO’s decades before either of them decided to move out West to make something of themselves. But Tony and PaddyO have more in common than a “go West, young man” past. Both have felt the crushing weight of active alcoholism and drug addiction. Luckily, they also are both in long term recovery and have a shared joy and gratitude for the rekindling of dormant passions, like adventuring outside and laughing your ass off.

Alex Honnold is the most accomplished and daring rock climber since the invention of the chalk bag. He grabbed global attention for his free solo ascent of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, immortalized in the Academy Award®-winning documentary Free Solo. This monumental feat solidified his status as a superstar of the climbing community and a guru of staying calm in objectively terrifying situations. But…how? That is exactly what Shelby Stanger, host of REI’s Wild Ideas Worth Living Podcast sponsored by The REI Co-op Mastercard, set to find out on stage at the Outside Festival in Denver, Colorado. Turns out, Alex Honnold can push fear aside in order to achieve his goals, whether that’s climbing a sheer towering wall or advocating for conservation causes.

Throughout professional skier Sierra Schlag’s childhood, her Japanese heritage and cultural practices made her the target of racist bullying. Then, when she traveled to Japan to visit family as a child, and later as an adult, she was referred to as “Nisei”—a person born in North America whose parent(s) immigrated from Japan. She couldn’t make sense of being seen as white in Japan and Japanese in America, but she found an unlikely method of wholeness: skiing. Turns out,  catharsis comes in many forms, including with anxiety that ultimately helps us understand where we came from, where we are, and what defines us.

For decades, legendary magician David Blaine has completed record-breaking stunts that defy the impossible: He has held his breath for more than 17 minutes, was buried alive for seven days, frozen alive for three days, fasted for 44 days, caught a bullet fired from a gun in his mouth, and so much more. In his new National Geographic series David Blaine: Do Not Attempt, he travels the planet to learn from extraordinary performers. What drives him to probe our capacity for fear, risk, and pain? There’s nobody better to talk to Blaine about this than Diana Nyad, the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without the aid of a shark cage, covering 110.86 miles in just under 53 hours. In this riveting conversation recorded at the 2025 Outside Festival, these two icons explore the art of human endurance.

In 2020, David Litt, former senior speech writer to President Obama, moved from Washington DC to the Jersey Shore, and felt the need for a jolt of life amidst the pandemic. So he did what anyone would do: David decided he needed to learn to surf. As a sensible Yale-educated, New York Times best selling author, David knew he needed help. And that’s how he ended up bobbing in the ocean with someone who could not be more dissimilar to him, his tattooed, truck driving, death metal enthusiast, Joe Rogan superfan, brother-in-law, Matt. The sea salt comedy of errors, became the basis of David's brand new book "It's Only Drowning: A true story of learning to surf and the pursuit of common ground." And while it hilariously recounts David’s learning process, the book is also a surprising investigation of the current American culture war, the roles David and his brother-in-law have been cast into, and how, as unlikely as it would seem, a sport like surfing can help bridge the fissures of class and culture.

Craig Mod may think in binary code, but he does so from the perspective of a visual artist. Mod is…well, a lot of things. He’s a writer, a photographer, and a digital media designer. And he’s likely influenced your life, even if you have never heard his name. Craig worked on massive digital platforms, like Medium and Flipboard, and has spent two decades as a tech start up consultant. But to make sure he can unplug from his computer-centric work, Craig walks. As in many, many, many kilometers-long multi-day walks, mostly on the ancient pilgrimage routes that crisscross his adopted home of Japan. Craig has turned these walks into several fascinating books. In his most recent book, Things Become Other Things, Craig took on a 300-mile trek through Japan’s ancient Kumano Kodō, which transformed into a meditation on his life, the forces that shape us all, and the power of slowly moving through nature in an increasingly distracting digital world.

Three comedians walk into a festival…no, this isn’t a joke set up. This is exactly what happened in Denver, Colorado, at the second Outside Festival. Professional giggle-makers Matt Lyons, Katie Burrell, and Eeland Stribling joined host PaddyO on stage to discuss how the outdoors are really just one big punchline. After all, we spend our hard-earned dough on gear to help us sleep in the dirt, run unreasonable distances, hike in brutal weather, and fall booty over tea kettle into snow. Comedy not only abounds, it also thrives in the outdoors. Whether it’s Matt Lyons’ gear jargon satire, Eland Stribling's fly-fishing observations, or Katie Burrell’s roasting of outdoorsy relationships, these folks are here to remind us: if you can’t laugh at yourself in the outdoors, you’re probably dehydrated.

If your father is like PaddyO’s dad, he probably likes to spin a yarn about his wild youth. Hearing about a father’s daring, scruffy, comedy-of-errors adventures is hilarious, but it also gives you a glimpse into how your old man became a man. And also old. And that winds up being a kind of crystal ball into your own past, present, and future, too. So, in honor of Father’s Day (it’s this week – you better get your dad something), we bring you a pod from the archives: The story of PaddyO’s dad, and what adventure looked like back when the shorts were short, the gear was not waterproof, and there weren’t that many guys from Chicago crawling around the Colorado Rockies.

Griff Wasburn, better known to the world as musical act Goth Babe, had a drive to create since he was a child. He grew up in Tennessee running wild in the woods, skateboarding, and riding bikes on self-built tracks in his backyard. He filmed and scored short films of his adventures, and transformed old cardboard boxes into whatever he dreamt up. At 16 years old, he picked up a guitar and so began Goth Babe. In adulthood, Griff DIY’d truck bed campers, tiny homes, and trailers, drove them all over the country seeking out adventure and space to create. But a brutal surfing accident and its lasting effects on Griff’s brain threatened to derail the expansion and evolution of his music career and creativity. Lucky for Griff, life and creativity cannot stay constrained and contained.

Melissa Arnot Reid’s mountaineering resume is a jaw dropping list of accomplishments; hundreds of summits of the world’s tallest, most dangerous peaks, including becoming the first American woman to summit Everest without supplemental oxygen. Melissa has an uncommon athletic prowess, but what truly fueled her mountain pursuits was a long held and long protected emotional emptiness. In a gut-wrenching new memoir, Enough, Melissa details the childhood abuse that created harmful adult behaviors, like pushing her body to dangerous physical limits and pushing her psyche into abusive relationships. Both her trauma and her mountaineering accomplishments are singular, but everyone can understand the challenge of grappling with your parents and your past.