Outside Podcast

At some point, almost every skier or snowboarder who has sat on a stalled chairlift has wondered, Could I just jump off here? The resounding reply from the experts is no, no, no. Don’t jump off the chairlift. Not ever. In addition to the high risk of getting injured yourself, you’re putting the people on other chairs around you in danger in ways you don’t understand. So stay put, and wait for the lift to restart. Or, in those rare instances when the chair really is broken, wait for ski patrol to get you down. But there are those truly unique cases when breaking the rules may be the only option. In this episode, we tell the story of very unlucky snowboarder who was forced to make the worst kind of choice. 

Ask scientists about the aurora borealis and they’ll explain that the spectacular display of lights we see in the wintertime sky is caused by solar winds that send charged particles into the earth’s upper atmosphere, where they smash into gases. But witness this otherworldly show yourself, and ancient beliefs about magic often feel more true. It was the magic that mattered to Hugo Sanchez, a self-taught photographer who fled civil-war-torn El Salvador and moved to Canada. But tragedy followed him, and it was chasing the perfect shot of the northern lights that gave him a new sense of purpose.

As host of one of the most popular interview shows in the podcast universe, Rich Roll is known for his limitless empathy. That approach grew out of his long personal journey. A talented college swimmer, he developed an alcohol problem that later destroyed his first marriage and nearly derailed his career as a lawyer. He sobered up but became a miserable workaholic, until, at age 40, he went vegan and started endurance training. Soon he was a top finisher at the Ultraman, an infamous sufferfest in Hawaii. On his weekly show, Roll interviews everyone from elite athletes to spiritual leaders to bestselling authors, all in the interest of empowering the rest of us to make better decisions. In this episode, he shares his inspiring story and the many hard lessons learned.

It’s around this time of year that we tend to ask ourselves the big questions: Am I living the life I want to be living? Am I a good a person? And, of course, is this going to be an epic ski season, or a bust? This week, we present a story that miraculously addresses all of these questions. It comes to us from the good folks at the Dirtbag Diaries, and has outdoor industry veteran Dan Kostrzewski sharing a very personal tale about a skiing accident with his young daughter, and how it helped him gain a new perspective on the sport that has long been at the center of his personal and professional identity.

Of the many story lines that came of the New York Marathon this November, perhaps the most inspiring was the performance of Kikkan Randall. The 35-year-old was racing in her first-ever marathon, yet she finished 51st among all women and 12th in her age group. It was impressive, even for Randall, one of the most accomplished cross-country ski racers in American history, especially when you consider that just 18 months earlier, she’d been diagnosed with Stage II breast cancer. *Outside *contributor Stephanie Joyce talks to Randall about her pattern of coming back stronger from tough times and failure, and where she goes from here.

Search a major online music platform for “nature” and you get a lot of stuff designed to help you relax. Recordings of chirping rainforest creatures, gently tumbling waves, a pulsing didgeridoo—it’s what you expect to hear during a massage treatment. The reality, of course, is that nature is often far from tranquil. It can be barbaric, dissonant, and downright metal. In that spirit, this week’s episode presents two tales that pay homage to nature’s thrasher tendencies. The first involves a threatening predator that was fought off with Metallica. After that, we’ll hear from a professional hard rocker who attempted to be the hero of a shipwrecked crew, and shared his experience at a live storytelling event hosted by The Moth.  

When Free Solo was released last fall, it was an instant sensation—the movie that everyone was telling their friends they had to see. The picture, which won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature chronicled Alex Honnold’s quest to climb the 3,000-foot sheer rock face ofYosemite's El Capitan without a rope. It also captured his emotional growth as he fell in love with Sanni McCandless, a relationship that made his goal much more complicated. One giant reason Free Solo was so special was the husband and wife directing team of Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, whose unique backgrounds made them the perfect duo to tell the story. In this conversation with Outside’s Michael Roberts, recorded earlier this month at Summit LA, they open up about the life and work that they’ve created together—and where it goes from here.

On the new History Channel show Kings of Pain, Rob “Caveman” Alleva and cohost Adam Thorn get bit and stung by the nastiest insects, reptiles, and fish on the planet—on purpose. They’re following in the footsteps of entomologist Justin O. Schmidt, whoOutside profiled back in the nineties while he was developing the first-of-its-kind pain scale for stinging insects. But for the TV show, Alleva and Thorn are pushing this brand of experimentation even further by subjecting themselves to the agony-inducing defense mechanisms of snakes, fish, and lizards, with sometimes horrifying results. Outside* *Podcast host Peter Frick-Wright wanted to know: What’s it like to be in so much pain, so often? And why were they willing to take this job?

Author Richard Louv is best known as the author of Last Child in the Woods, his 2005 bestseller that established the phrase nature-deficit disorder and helped spark an international movement to examine the health benefits of spending time outdoors. His ideas were initially seen as radical—recall that in 2005, the iPhone didn’t exist yet—but today they’re ubiquitous. Now Louv is back with a new book, Our Wild Calling, that presents more radical ideas, this time about the need for humans to rekindle our relationships with other species. Outside editor Christopher Keyes spoke with Louv about the basis for his theories and why even the most serious scientists get that something special happens when we engage with wild creatures.

In our last episode, Peter Frick-Wright told the story of the time he broke his leg at the bottom of a remote canyon and was saved through the efforts of multiple search and rescue teams. Now, more than two years later, Peter is still processing what happened to him. Meanwhile, the rescuers who cared for him have participated in numerous other high-stakes incidents in the wilderness. This week, Peter speaks with one of the people who hauled him out of the canyon about the coping strategies that have worked—and haven’t—in the aftermath of a life-altering trauma. This episode was produced for the podcast Rescuer MBS, a show that aims to increase the resilience of the volunteer search and rescue community.

About two years ago, Outside Podcast host Peter Frick-Wright was canyoneering in Oregon when he jumped off a ledge and broke his leg. He was stuck at the bottom of a canyon, and it took an epic effort by search and rescue teams to get him out of there. The experience was rough on Peter and rough on the many volunteers involved with transporting him safely to a hospital. Many of them had to go right back to work the next day. This week we’re going to replay our 2017 episode about the accident to set the stage for an upcoming conversation between Peter and one of his rescuers about a part of the healing process most people don’t talk about.

Recent years have seen a surge in adult-recess leagues across the United States. By some estimates, there are now 1.6 million grown-ups participating in these leagues across the country, and they’re only growing more popular. Today’s adults are seemingly desperate for more playtime—and so we’re eagerly bounding outside after work for all kinds of kid-style activities, from kickball and flag football to capture the flag and cornhole. But it’s not all fun and games: some of the leagues are highly competitive, with team names, uniforms, and strict scheduling. To find out what’s really going on, reporter Mimi Montgomery and producer Alex Ward visit rec fields in Washington, D.C., and Portland, Oregon, to observe grown-ups at play.

No one has had a greater influence on modern recreational running than writer Christopher McDougall. His 2009 book Born to Run introduced the masses to barefoot running and became a revolutionary bestseller. As a result, the multibillion-dollar running-shoe industry went through a dramatic upheaval, and today runners have a broad range of shoe types to consider, from minimalist slippers to ultra-cushy maximalist fatties. Now McDougall is back with a new book that chronicles his work training a sickly donkey to be an endurance athlete (no, seriously). Titled Running with Sherman, it tells the story of an unexpected journey that was really good for the donkey—but also for McDougall. Outside editor Christopher Keyes spoke with McDougall about this surprising turn of events and whether it means the rest of us should be running with animals, too.

At midlife, food writer Jeff Gordinier felt like he was sleepwalking. His marriage was crumbling, and he’d lost his professional purpose. Then he got a curious invitation: René Redzepi, the superstar head chef and co-owner of Noma, in Copenhagen, one of the world’s most influential restaurants, asked Gordinier to join him on a quest to Mexico to find exceptional tacos. Thus began a yearslong series of global adventures—foraging for sandpaper figs in Australia, diving for shellfish in the Arctic, seeking cochinita pibil in a remote part of the Yucatan—that reawakened Gordinier passion for both life and food. In his book Hungry, Gordinier describes how Redzepi’s raw energy and philosophy of constantly moving forward were an intoxicant as well as a kind of medication. For this episode, Outside’s Michael Roberts spoke with Gordinier about the wildest moments along his journeys with Redzepi and his new habit of saying yes to just about everything.

The odds of getting seriously injured by a bear in North America are slim. There are just a few dozen bear attacks on the continent every year, and only a handful of them put someone in the hospital. But bear-human encounters are on the rise, in part because more people than ever before are heading out into bear country. This year in particular there have been a lot of stories of people fighting off attacks in dramatic ways, including that guy in British Columbia who ended up killing a black bear with a hatchet. But Colin Dowler has the most incredible story of them all, and his tale offers potentially lifesaving lessons for anyone venturing into the wild.

Recent months have seen a media frenzy around the return of great white sharks to the waters surrounding Cape Cod. And with good reason: over the summer, great whites were routinely spotted off the iconic vacation destination’s most popular beaches. In 2018, a Cape boogie boarder died after being bitten by a shark—the first fatal attack in Massachusetts since 1936. But behind the headlines about freaked-out tourists and angry locals, the real story on the Cape is about how we learn to live with fear—or, just maybe, get past it. Produced in collaboration with our friends at the Outside/In podcast, this episode investigates the extreme reactions we have to living alongside one of the world’s most terrifying predators.  

The 2018 Carr Fire was one of the worst wildfires in California history. By the time it was contained, it had burned 359 square miles, destroyed close to 2,000 buildings, and killed seven people. It also spawned a massive fire tornado—only the second ever recorded. Meteorologists examining the damage afterward estimated that the vortex had generated winds of up to 165 miles per hour. When a blaze like that is coming your way, the only sane thing to do is run for your life. But Gary and Lori Lyon did the opposite, staying to defend their home. Outside contributor Stephanie Joyce has the story on why, in an era of increasingly intense fires, someone would dare to stand and fight an inferno.

In the world of athletics, the idea is that if you want to be the best, you have to specialize young and maintain near laserlike focus. The archetypal example is Tiger Woods, who, as the legend goes, started swinging a golf club before he could walk. More recently the focus has shifted to grit. The secret to success, we’re told, isn’t skill or raw talent but the ability to persevere. But that may not be the whole story. In his new book Range, author David Epstein challenges the arguments for specialization and grit, arguing that a more generalized approach is the surest route to excellence. Outside editor Christopher Keyes spoke with Epstein to about the advantages of doing a bit of everything.

Doug Peacock took an unlikely path to becoming an icon of conservation. Following two tours in the Vietnam War as a Green Beret medic, he sought solace and comfort in the American Wilderness, where he began observing and then filming grizzly bears. He believed the bears saved his life, and he felt compelled to return the favor. Many people know Peacock as the inspiration for George Hayduke, the infamous character inThe Monkey Wrench Gang, the 1975 novel by Ed Abbey. Over the years, Peacock authored a number of books about his journey. At the 2019 Mountainfilm festival, in Telluride, Colorado, he sat down with veteran radio producer Scott Carrier to offer an enlightened perspective on the history of bears in this country, share some hysterical stories about his own encounters with the animals, and give his take on the big challenges that grizzlies face today.

Water is critical to human life. Our bodies are more than 50 percent water. We can survive months barely eating, but even a few days without water and we’ll die. Water flushes toxins out of our organs and cools us down after a workout. But how much do really need? And how much is too much? Lately there’s been a lot of attention on the internet to what’s known as the Water Gallon Challenge: drinking a gallon per day for a month, with the promise of glowing skin and a lot more energy. Outside editor Aleta Burchyski took on this challenge, which for her was all the more daunting because she hates the taste of plain tap water. In this episode, we talk to her about her quest and check in with a leading hydration expert, who explains that we don’t know as much about how water effects our bodies as you might think.