Outside Podcast
Outside Magazine
Outside's longstanding literary storytelling tradition comes to life in audio with features that will both entertain and inform listeners. We launched in March 2016 with our first series, Science of Survival, which was developed in partnership with PRX, distributors of the idolized This American Life and The Moth Radio Hour, among others. We have since expanded our show and now offer a range of story formats, including interviews with the biggest figures in sports, adventure, and politics, as well as reports from our correspondents in the field.
Holiday Adventures Gone Wrong
Escaping the craziness of the season to head into the wild can sound amazing—right up until that overnight snowstorm crushes your tent. Because while the appeal of getting out there, away from the bustle of parties and gifts and eggnog, can inspire especially bold trips, there might be nothing more disappointing than a holiday mission that ends in disaster. For our final episode of 2022, we bring you a collection of tales from intrepid travelers who learned the hard way that eating dry
The Real Magic We See in the Northern Lights
Witnessing the Aurora Borealis can feel like you’re glimpsing another world. For some people, that’s exactly what’s happening. Photographer Hugo Chavez captured his first images of the spectacle accidentally, when he was taking shots of a meteor shower. But soon he became hooked, and then, when his young son died, the dancing lights took on a whole new meaning. In this replay of one our favorite episodes from our archives, we hear the story of a man who found a sense of purpose in the w
What Happens to Drivers Who Hit Cyclists
Talk to the victims of crashes and their families, and they’ll tell you: when a motor vehicle injures or kills a bicyclist, the American justice system lets drivers off the hook. The harsh truth is that our roads are frighteningly dangerous for cyclists, and our country has a high tolerance for traffic deaths. In this episode, part of Outside’s ongoing coverage of cycling crashes and deaths, we chronicle two incidents that reveal deep problems with our legal system and consider the work that nee
Weekend Read: The Supposed Dream Life of a Ski Patroller
Racing around a mountain resort to aid injured skiers sounds like the ultimate adventure job. But with housing and other costs soaring, getting paid in fun is no longer cutting it. Last year a battle over wages in the ski industry sparked conversations about what those workers—who frequently put their lives on the line—deserve. In the final episode of our fall Weekend Read series, we bring you the story of a Utah patroller who is doing everything he can to raise a family in the winter p
Weekend Read: The Adventures of a Pony Named Legend
He was born to a herd of wild horses on an island off Virginia and found his way into the heart of a little girl on the dusty trails of the Southwest. Legend was a descendant of fabled swimming ponies: every year, cowboys lead them across a quarter-mile crossing between the islands of Assateague and Chincoteague, where 60 of them are put up for auction. In this episode of our Weekend Read series, we hear how Legend’s journey took him thousands of miles West, and eventually to a child th
What it Takes to Survive a Winter War
As Ukraine prepares for months of frigid conflict with Russia, its troops might look to another nation that held its own against the Red Army in the cold: Finland. During the winter of 1939-1940, Finnish soldiers, many on skis and using snow caves as shelters, weaponized the freezing conditions, fending off the much larger Soviet Union army for 105 days and ultimately conceding only a small amount of their borderlands. Today, Finland’s soldiers are some of the most advanced winter warfa
Weekend Read: An SOS from the Middle of the Ocean
Richard Carr was halfway across the Pacific, alone on a 36-foot yacht, when he began sending frantic alerts that he was being kidnapped by pirates. The retired psychologist had set off from Mexico 26 days earlier and was bound for the Marquesas Islands on the first leg of a lifelong dream: sailing around the world. But when his family woke up to a series of frightening and confusing messages, it became their nightmare. In this episode of our Weekend Read series, Carr’s daughter, Alicia
Humanity’s Most Confounding Survival Epic
People encounter all kinds of threats in the natural world, but a virus presents an especially ominous challenge, as Outside contributing editor David Quammen can attest after decades of research on the topic. Quammen forecast a COVID-19–like pandemic in his 2012 book, Spillover, and beginning in the 1980s, he wrote a column for Outside called Natural Acts that had him pursuing fascinating scientific questions around the planet. He eventually took a special interest in zoonotic diseases
Weekend Read: The Obsessive Dedication of the World’s Greatest Rock Skipper
Kurt Steiner has spent his life skipping stones, developing a technique to produce throws that defy the laws of physics. Ask him why he’s committed his entire adulthood to this lost art and he’ll say he has no choice. This is the first episode in another Weekend Read series, offering you exceptional Outside features—both new articles and gems from our archives.
This episode was brought to you by New Balance. Learn more about its commitment to responsibly made products and find gear t
Bear Grylls Wants to Talk About Your Mental Health
The exuberant king of survival TV insists that our wild adventures are about more than just chasing fun—they can help get us through the struggles of our everyday lives. And that’s the undercurrent of his new book, Mind Fuel: Simple Ways to Build Mental Resilience Every Day, which contains a year’s worth of daily, bite-size prompts to explore our relationship to things like joy, trust, and courage. Sound corny? It might. But this is no puffy celebrity self-help tome: informed by input f
He Fought a Bear with a Pocketknife
Alone in the wilderness, facing a grizzly that was determined to kill him, Colin Dowler had only one option: fight for his life. The 44-year-old had been on a solo hike to scout routes up a coastal mountain in British Columbia when the animal attacked. Without bear spray, and miles from the nearest help, he thought he was as good as dead. It wasn’t until the grizzly was tearing into his abdomen that he remembered his pocketknife. In this remarkable tale from our archives, we hear about
A Perilous Chase on the Open Sea
It began in the waters off Antarctica: a crew of eco-vigilantes found the illegal fishing ship they’d been hunting. It wouldn’t end for some 10,000 miles, when one of the vessels sank. So went the longest law-enforcement chase in nautical history. In this episode from the new series The Outlaw Ocean, investigative journalist Ian Urbina chronicles the pursuit of one of the world’s most notorious scofflaw fishing ships through deadly ice floes and into the heart of a massive storm in the
What I Learned About Survival and Motherhood from Two Lambs
Farmers aren’t supposed to get emotionally attached to their livestock. But when you suddenly find yourself caring for two newborn sheep, these things happen. Outside contributing editor A.C. Shilton had long dreamed of becoming a farmer when she and her husband purchased a plot of land in Tennessee and began managing chickens and horses and cows. Then she added a few sheep with the idea of slowly raising a flock—and very unexpectedly came face-to-face with what she was really missing i
Paralyzed by a Scorpion in the Grand Canyon
When a rafter was stung by a scorpion, she assumed she’d be fine. Within hours she lost her ability to see or speak clearly. It was the beginning of a nightmare that nobody in her group of experienced adventurers saw coming. After all, there aren’t supposed to be deadly scorpions in the United States. But as her condition grew more frightening, they began to believe they had a serious emergency on their hands. In this episode, a collaboration with the Out Alive podcast, we investigate h
The Unshakeable Spirit of the World’s Greatest Surfer
John John Florence has remarkable physical talents, but his greatest asset as an athlete might be his enduring positive attitude. The 29-year-old is often his happiest when things go sideways and he’s forced to adapt. This explains why, after suffering a major knee injury earlier this year during a competition, the two-time world champion surfer decided to spend his rehab sailing from his home in Hawaii to Fiji, a 3,000-mile open-ocean crossing that was loaded with unpredictable weather
Why You Can’t Stop Watching Survival TV
There’s a reason that reality shows set in wild places hold our attention: we can’t help but imagine that it’s us out there. This is especially true when we watch Alone, the hit series on the History Channel that has contestants truly by themselves in all kinds of brutal environments, doing their best to both survive while also filming themselves. This raw approach to voyeuristic entertainment ultimately make us empathize with these hungry, tired, and frightened people—so much that we j
Why Outdoor Sports Make You Cry
Spoiler alert: It’s not because you’re a wuss. Adults rarely cry because of pain or physical discomfort, so why do so many of us cry during outdoor sports? It happens to almost everyone, of all genders, including professional athletes like skier Cody Townsend and climber Emily Harrington. Writer and athlete Gloria Liu investigated this phenomenon, which she calls the Sports Cry, to figure out what causes us to get teary out there and whether it helps or hinders us.
This episode is br
Why Outdoor Adventures Make You Crave a Giant, Juicy Burger
There’s a reason a strenuous outing makes you desire a greasy mound of meat: it has a lot of what your body needs. This we learned from talking to six Outside writers and editors about their greatest aprés-adventure burgers, and by unpacking their stories with the help of two registered dietitians. As it turns out, most of us are underfed when we head into the wild, and the result is a deep hunger for carbs, protein, and fat. Which means that, physiological speaking, a burger delivers.
Summer Read: They Chose Death over Life Apart
Eric and Pam Bealer were living in a cabin in rugged coastal Alaska when they made a dramatic decision: they would exit the world together. Pam was suffering from multiple sclerosis and did not want to see her disease through; Eric did not plan to live without his wife. When they set off into the wild for the last time, they left behind instructions for whoever entered the cabin first. For the final episode of our Summer Read series, author Eva Holland explores the mystery and meaning o
The Obsessives Who Hunted Forrest Fenn’s Treasure
When retired art dealer Forrest Fenn hid a million dollars’ worth of gold in the Rocky Mountains, he sent thousands of people on a desperate journey. One of them, an ex-cop from Seattle named Darrell Seyler, risked everything on his search. In this first episode of the new series Missed Fortune, created by former Outside Podcast host Peter Frick-Wright and inspired by his magazine story for Outside, we join Seyler at the start of his obsessive quest.
Missed Fortune is an Apple Origin
Summer Read: My Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Dream Job
For Caitlin Giddings, leading cross-country bike tours was supposed to be the ultimate escape from the monotony of normal life. Instead it was a kind of torture. Giddings was in her twenties when she was seduced by the idea of turning her passion for cycling into a paycheck. She wanted freedom and adventure! What she got, however, was a lot of whining and grief from troublemaking clients, including a deranged madman and a guy who kept peeing on another rider’s tent. In this episode of o
How Viggo Mortensen Became a Cave-Diving Legend
To portray the hero of the Thai cave rescue in the new film Thirteen Lives, the Hollywood star had to go deep—literally. Mortensen plays the part of Rick Stanton, the legendary British cave diver who helped lead the rescue of 12 boys and their soccer coach from the far reaches of a flooded cavern in northern Thailand. The actor’s preparation included months of conversations with Stanton and a harrowing cave-diving adventure of his own. In this episode, producer Paddy O’Connell talks wit
Summer Read: A Mount Hood Tragedy We’ll Never Forget
A group of high school sophomores set off on what was supposed to be a grand climb. Instead, it became one of the deadliest alpine disasters in North American history. It was 1986, and the Oregon students were seeking to complete an adventure program with the support of professional guides. As they made their way toward the 11,235-foot summit, a vicious storm hit. In this episode of our Summer Read series, we revisit a feature by writer Pauls Toutonghi that chronicles the tragedy and it
A Frantic Escape from a Wildfire
Greg and Julie Welch were relaxing at their campsite in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in August, 2011, when a tiny fire in a nearby bog suddenly exploded into a massive inferno that began racing toward them. At first they were confused: they knew there were small wildfires in the area, but all forecasts suggested there was nothing to worry about—it was humid and rain was on the way. However, an extremely rare convergence of atmospheric events had set in motion what w
Summer Read: Testing Love on the Open Sea
Can a relationship survive a grand adventure? That was the big question hanging over two novice sailors as they set out on a voyage off the coast of New England. It all began when Claire Antoszewski had the idea to refurbish an old boat with her partner Will Grant, a man who is most comfortable on a horse. With dreams of a leisurely cruise, they got to work—and soon found themselves at the helm of the Lower Goose in high seas and nasty weather. Not surprisingly, they have different takes on what
A Bold New Way to Poop in the Outdoors
Long-standing rules for how we do our business in the wilderness are changing in a very big way—and it’s about time. For decades we’ve been taught standardized methods to ensure proper disposal of our waste, most notably burying it in a cathole far away from water sources. But now, with exploding numbers of people recreating on public lands, those approaches aren’t viable. Simply put: the land can’t handle all our poop. This has scientists and land managers saying it’s time to take dras
Summer Read: A Little Boy Lost in the Woods
When Cody Sheehy was six years old, he disappeared into the wilderness of northeast Oregon. Now, more than three decades later, he insists that the harrowing experience gave him an invaluable life lesson. In this second episode of our Summer Read series, we recount how he wandered into the forest and made his way back to safety some 18 hour later, all on his own. The story, written for Outside by environmental journalist Emma Marris, investigates what it takes to get through such an ordeal at a
Bad Decisions, Good Stories
Presenting three delightful tales of adventures gone very, very wrong. Because when the weather turns, your gear breaks, you get lost, or you simply realize that your foolproof plan was actually foolish—well, that’s when you learn the most, right? Join us by the campfire for three stories of misadventure from Outside writers and editors who suffered through pain, shame, and humiliation but still came out the other side with smiles.
This episode was brought to you by Go RVing, which w
Summer Read: The Sinking of the ‘Henrietta C.’
A father and son working a crab boat in Chesapeake Bay were caught in a rising storm when they realized that something was very wrong: water was coming up through the floor. They radioed for help and then did everything they could to save themselves, while the isolated community of Tangier Island quickly launched a desperate bid to rescue two of their own. So began the saga of the Henrietta C., a riveting story chronicled in Outside by Virginia-based writer Earl Swift. This is the first
How I Met Your Motherland
For his new PBS show, America Outdoors, comedian and activist Baratunde Thurston connects us to our natural environments through the most interesting of creatures: humans. A former writer for political comedy outlets like The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and The Onion, Thurston is also a prominent activist with a passion for teaching us about our culture and society. He authored a comedic memoir, How to Be Black, delivered a powerful TED Talk in 2018 titled "How to Deconstruct Racism," a
What it Feels Like to Fight a Wildfire
As an out-of-control blaze approached their home, a couple made what seems like a crazy choice: they ignored evacuation orders and stood their ground. Fire officials tell us that decisions like this puts lives at risk, including the lives of firefighters who may need to come to the rescue. In the U.S., authorities universally agree that escaping to safety is the only reasonable thing to do. And yet some people still insist on staying put to defend their own homes. In this replay of an e
Jack Johnson Reaches for Hope
On his first album in five years, the singer-songwriter brings us a collection of heartfelt tracks that offer warmth and comfort when we really need it. Making folks feel good is, of course, what Johnson does best. For more than two decades, his music has served as the soundtrack to our fun times: hanging at the beach, taking a road trip, kicking back with friends after surfing or biking or skiing. But on Meet the Moonlight, which drops on Friday, June 24, he had to work a little harder
How Blockchain Technology Can Get Us Outside
Amid all the noise surrounding Web3, something fascinating is emerging: a new kind of immersive adventure storytelling. An innovative effort is underway to leverage the same technologies that get gamers excited about buying an outfit for their avatar to instead reward people for engaging in real-world outdoor experiences. The shift is going to have an enormous impact on how writers, photographers, and filmmakers tell their stories—and equally as important, how they connect with you, the
Swimming for Your Life in the Open Ocean
After two young pilots crashed their small plane into the water off Hawaii, they realized their best hope for survival was to make it back to land on their own. Sydney Uetmoto and David McMahon had been on a regular route between Oahu and the island of Hawaii, but now they were just specks in the sea with no way to call for help. In this riveting tale from the Out Alive podcast, we hear about their remarkable endurance in the face of overwhelming odds.
This episode is brought to you
How We Find Love in Wild Places
Is there something about adventure and risk that opens our hearts? Absolutely. In this episode, created in concert with an Outside article about love in the wild, we bring you tales of romances that bloomed outdoors. You’ll hear about two ultrarunners who fell for each other during a 60-mile dash through the Alps, a high-altitude climber who led her wary date down iced-over ski runs (it all worked out eventually), a pair of whitewater kayakers whose attraction for one other caused them
A Thriller from the Death Zone
Writer Amy McCulloch was a young adventurer looking to challenge herself when she set her sights on 26,781-foot Manaslu, in the Himalayas. On a guided expedition, she encountered the expected risks of high-altitude mountaineering, as well as a darker threat she’d never imagined: members of her own team harassing and sexually propositioning her in an environment where she was incredibly vulnerable. She returned home with a harrowing true tale of resilience—and an idea for an epic novel.
The Many Ways Dogs Can Heal Us
Our furry friends are the best of adventure playmates. But they can also provide pure, unconditional love that gets us through the darkest times. A series of dogs have supported Colorado outdoor writer Annette McGivney since childhood, as she endured domestic abuse, the loss of family members, and a bitter divorce. She’s not alone: after McGivney published a pair of essays for Outside Online detailing her relationship with her dogs, she was flooded with responses and questions from rea
What It Feels Like When You Eat a Deadly Mushroom
There’s a distinct pleasure to eating wild foods that you forage yourself—unless you pick the wrong thing. Imagine the horror you’d feel upon realizing that the risotto you cooked for your dinner party was made with *Amanita phalloides*, a.k.a. the death cap. You’d found the fungi off a trail near your home, sure they were common meadow mushrooms. But you were mistaken. Now you and your friends are in the hospital, fighting for your lives. In this classic episode from our archives, we p
The Sometimes Shady, Always Weird World of Truffle Hunters
In forests across the planet, secretive hunters are searching for that rare and insanely expensive wild delicacy: the truffle. The organism, which grows underground, tethered to tree roots, can fetch thousands of dollars per pound from upscale restaurateurs. The only way to find these particular fungi are dogs specially trained to sniff them out. Not surprisingly, the truffle business is not unlike the illegal-drug business, with lots of sneaking around in the night and powerful characters vying
One Woman’s Wholesome Mission to Get Naked Outside
Outdoor athlete and Outside contributing editor Gloria Liu very much wanted to be one those people with the confidence and carefree spirit to occasionally hike, bike, or ski in the nude. Unfortunately, the decade-old memory of an uncomfortable event at a backcountry hot spring kept her clinging to her knickers. So, like any good competitor, Liu underwent a three-step training plan designed to get her comfortable playing in her natural state while in the woods—not to mention grant her all the sci
Learning to Listen to Wild Sounds
When we open our ears to the marvels of natural soundscapes, we experience the energies of the world in a unique way—and begin to understand the mysteries behind them. But when we habitually ignore what we’re hearing, we both miss out on one of the best parts of being human and enable the loss of an enormous diversity of species on this planet. So argues biologist and acclaimed author David Haskell in his new book, Sounds Wild and Broken. Considered by many as the premier nature writer
Is TikTok Motivating People to Get Outdoors?
Something surprising is happening on the video app best known for silly dance moves: users are finding inspiration for adventure. There are some fundamental differences in the way TikTok works that make it stand out from other social media platforms, and those differences may make it a space that’s more prone to bringing different kinds of people together to try new things. Camping. Hiking. International travel. It’s no utopia—like other social apps, TikTok has been called out for causi
Cheryl Strayed’s ‘Wild’ Decade
In the ten years since Cheryl Strayed published her memoir about grief, addiction, and hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, her life has changed dramatically. When the book came out in March 2012, she was a working mother of two, snatching whatever time she could to write. But within months, Wild was picked for Oprah’s Book Club and became a bestseller. Strayed has since published two more books and become a beloved advice columnist with a popular podcast, Dear Sugar. Meanwhile, the PCT has
An Agonizing Endurance Race Around a Single City Block
What motivates someone to run more than 3,000 miles around a single city block? Transcendence. Just ask the entrants in the Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence 3100 Mile Race, which takes place every year in Queens, New York. In order to get to the finish line ahead of the cutoff, competitors must complete the equivalent of two marathons a day for 52 days in a row. As physically grueling as that sounds, the greatest challenges are mental. In this replay from our Sweat Science series from a f
How a Vigilante Botanist Became a Cult Icon
An ex-punk and former train engineer who is self-taught in the sciences, Joey Santore does not fit the mold of the stereotypical botanist. He has lots of tattoos and no college degree and is known for illegal tree-planting projects. Then there’s his voice: a native Chicagoan, he can sound like he’s on an SNL skit about Da Bears. Maybe all this explains why his YouTube channel, Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't, has more than a quarter-million subscribers. We join Santore on a peyote hunt in
A Professional Athlete’s Battle with Mental Illness
On the outside, Drew Petersen seemed like a guy who was living the dream. He is extremely fit with a powder-snow-catching beard, and he’s prone to hoots of joy when skiing down amazing mountains around the world. But on the inside, he was for many years hiding loneliness, anger, and a deep sadness. Only recently, in the wake of a near-death accident on Oregon’s Mount Hood, has he begun to face the mental health challenges that nearly drove him to oblivion. He’s also made the bold choice
Can Nature Heal Heartbreak?
In recent years, research has demonstrated that spending time in nature can help with everything from anxiety to attention deficit disorder to high blood pressure. Florence Williams knows this as well as anyone: her celebrated 2017 book The Nature Fix, explained the science behind the many physiological and emotional benefits of being in natural environments. So when she went through a painful divorce from her husband of 25 years, she turned to the outdoors for healing—and chronicled he
When Athletes Dare to Dream Like Artists
Professional skier Markus Eder had a fantasy of an impossible descent that would take him across glaciers, through frozen tunnels, into a terrain park, even out of the back of a pickup truck. It made no sense. And yet somehow, over eight years, he found a way to make it happen by thinking more like an artist than an athlete. The result is [The Ultimate Run](http:// https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbqHK8i-HdA), a wildly creative stoke film that’s loaded with gnarly stunts and stands out
A Father’s Death in the Mountains—and What Came After
In 1999, Alex Lowe was a star climber and father to three young boys when he died on Tibet’s 26,335-foot Shishapangma along with expedition cameraman David Bridges. The lone survivor of the accident was Conrad Anker, Alex’s climbing partner and best friend. A year after the tragedy, Anker married Jennifer Lowe, Alex's widow and mother to their three young boys, Max, Sam, and Isaac. Ever since, storytellers have been captivated by this tale, but now a powerful new documentary by Max Lowe
Olympics Special: The Doubts that Power Mikaela Shiffrin
The most dominant ski racer on the planet is constantly questioning her talents—which may be the secret of her greatness. Mikaela Shiffrin has won two Olympic gold medals and more than 70 World Cup races, but unlike fellow American skiing stars Lindsey Vonn and Bode Miller, she isn’t known for her speed-demon recklessness. Instead, she’s lauded for her perfect form, tactical brilliance, and workaholic approach to training. In this episode, based on excerpts from an exclusive extended interview w
What Surviving an Avalanche Can Teach You About Risk
Over two decades of ambitious adventures, elite skier and climber Zahan Billimoria has had some very close calls in the mountains. That doesn’t make him unique. What does is his passionate belief that we all have a lot to learn about the true meaning of risk. As the founder of Samsara Experience, a training program for outdoor athletes, he’s developed an approach to safety that instills a crucial caveat: danger is inevitable, and it's ultimately up to each individual to decide how much exposure
To Save a Life on the North Shore
For more than 60 years, the Hawaiian island of Oahu has beckoned surfers hoping to drop into some of the world’s biggest waves. The result has been many epic rides, all kinds of brutal wipeouts, and the occasional harrowing rescue. In each case, the experience and skills of those involved can make all the difference. And of course, there’s sheer luck. In this replay of one of our favorite episodes from a couple winters ago, we hear the story of a young lifeguard who set out to prove him
A Man, a Plan, a Steam Room
Outside reviews editor Jeremy Rellosa needed something—anything—to cure his winter COVID blues. Then he remembered the rather dank steam room in the magazine’s office, which had briefly become a sanctuary for him before the pandemic. Digging into research on heat therapies, he learned that the popular Finnish wellness routine of going back and forth between hot and cold could dispel seasonal depression. Thus began a purposely discomforting journey, one that offers lessons for all of us
Who Killed the Ski Bum?
It’s been one of the most enduring archetypes in mountain sports: that great wintry countercultural hero, who will work any job and live in squalor so long as they can ski 100-plus days a season. But now, after decades of inspiring people everywhere to chase their powder dreams, the ski bum has at last been extinguished by… well, that’s the question. Was it the crazy cost of mountain-town housing? The corporatization of the ski industry? No, wait! Of course—it was the Man. Or, just mayb
Forces of Good: So a Drag Queen Walks into a Mountain Town…
What makes a queer person choose to live in an outdoorsy hot spot instead of an urban gayborhood? A spirited grassroots organization working to make its town a haven for LGBTQ+ nature lovers. Photographer Wyn Wiley, who moonlights as drag queen Pattie Gonia, was living in Nebraska and dreaming of making a move. The most obvious choice was a big city, where queer people often go find their community. But then a group called Out Central Oregon invited Wiley to Bend to host an event on Mou
Forces of Good: Pearl Jam’s Jeff Ament is on a Mission to Build Havens for Young Skateboarders
In recent years, rock-star bassist Jeff Ament has dedicated himself to developing world-class skateboarding parks in the rural American West, particularly in his home state of Montana. For him, the point isn't just to create concrete playgrounds so kids have somewhere to rip: he wants to give young people in small towns similar to the one he grew up in a place to gather and build community. This is desperately needed. America’s youth are facing a mental health crisis that was in the mak
Forces of Good: Hiking 48,000 Miles to Create Community
Lo Phong La Kiatoukaysy, a.k.a. Lil’ Buddha, started thru-hiking America’s trails after 9/11 in hopes of creating the same powerful human connections with backpackers that he’d made with New Yorkers in the wake of that tragic day. In many ways, his whole life has been an ongoing journey. His parents fled the violence of the Vietnam War while his mother was pregnant with him, eventually immigrating to the United States and settling in Kansas. When he was a boy, his family took regular trips to th
Forces of Good: Running in the Name of Love
After Lawlor Coe lost his brother Hunter to tragedy, he did everything he could to avoid his pain. Then he began to run. At first it was to retreat from his feelings. But over time, as he began to complete longer and longer distances, he found that the physical suffering he was enduring out on the trail helped him find his way back to joy again. He was no longer running from his grief but toward a new sense of purpose. And along with the rest of his family, he found a way to honor Hunte
Forces of Good: Teaching the Psychology of Survival
When we head into the wild, we prepare for emergencies involving broken limbs and lots of bleeding. Which makes sense, because injuries are serious when you’re in the middle of nowhere. Yet there’s another kind of crisis that can be just as difficult to handle in remote locations: a mental breakdown. Unfortunately, few people, including experienced guides and even first responders, have the training to properly care for someone experiencing acute psychological distress when help is far away. But
Forces of Good: A Herculean Quest to Make a Difference
Mike McCastle has found a very unusual way to benefit others: by enduring agonizing physical challenges. A Navy veteran with a penchant for philosophy, plus a very high tolerance for suffering, McCastle has taken on a series of tasks inspired by the Greek myth of the Twelve Labors of Hercules to raise funds and awareness for important causes like cancer research and mental health services for military veterans. Since 2013, he has run an ultramarathon while wearing a 40-pound weighted ve
Forces of Good: The Gearhead Librarian Who Revived a Town
When you think of heroes in American culture, you probably conjure images of astronauts and Olympians, scientists and social activists, soldiers and ... well, maybe the occasional politician. What you don't picture are a group of dedicated, ingenious innovators who almost never get the credit they deserve: small-town librarians. Working with limited resources and a whole lot of spirit, they find the most creative ways to support their communities. In this installment of our Forces of Good series
Forces of Good: A Comedian Faces Her Fear of Nature
Ivy Le was an avid indoorswoman with severe allergies and a burning curiosity about wild places. She was obsessed with nature shows but had no relationship with the natural world. So she decided to go camping and, of course, make a podcast about her experience. The result is FOGO: Fear of Going Outside, which chronicles Le’s efforts to understand what’s so great about the outdoors. Because she’s a talented comic, her approach to the most basic questions of how and why we play in the woo
Forces of Good: Getting All Bodies Outdoors
When Raquel Vélez caught the skiing bug in her late twenties, she wanted to spend every waking moment on the slopes. But she couldn’t find snow pants that fit. So the Silicon Valley engineer left her tech job and began a yearslong mission to learn to sew her own, which culminated in the launch of Alpine Parrot, a company that recently began selling innovative, adventure-ready pants designed for plus-size bodies.
Meanwhile, cyclists Kailey Kornhauser and Marley Blonsky have been on thei
It Happened Deep in a Cave in the Amazon
David Kushner always knew that his assignment to write about a mysterious cave in the rainforest of Ecuador would be challenging and a bit risky. Cueva de los Tayos, or Cave of the Oilbirds, has for decades beckoned adventurers and tantalized fans of the occult who believe that it contains artifacts that could rewrite human history. In recent years, though, Tayos has attracted different kinds of seekers—artists and storytellers hoping to capture its energy and bring it out into the worl
Why We Love an Internet Dog
When sled-dog musher Blair Braverman first started posting about her team on Twitter, it was just for fun—a distraction from her work as a journalist. But soon she had legions of devoted followers, who couldn’t get enough of her high-energy pups’ and their training routines in Wisconsin. Then there’s ultrarunner Jen Golbeck, who found an enormous fan base for the aging and sickly golden retrievers that she and her husband care for in the Florida Keys. So what is it about looking at othe
Forces of Good: W. Kamau Bell Seeks a United America
As host of the Emmy Award–winning CNN show United Shades of America, W. Kamau Bell travels across the country to learn about the wide variety of challenges we face—and also to show us how we can begin to talk to one another. Which is why we asked him to be on the cover of Outside’s 2021 Best Towns issue: he helped us present a decidedly new take on dream destinations compared to past editions of this annual bestseller. Because Outsiders want more than just exceptional adventure playgrou
Finding Freedom Through Climbing
Growing up in the urban heart of Los Angeles, the only real connection Maricela Rosales had to wilderness were secondhand adventure magazines. She had boundless energy and loved to climb—as a little girl, she often scrambled on piles of old auto parts her dad used to fix cars—but at age seven was diagnosed with scoliosis, a sideways curvature of the spine that caused her chronic pain and frequently left her bedridden. So when her doctor recommended climbing as part of a treatment plan w
Nick Offerman Gets Down to Earth
For Hollywood stars, there might be nothing harder than staying grounded. Just ask Nick Offerman, who became famous for his portrayal of Ron Swanson on the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation. Ever since, Offerman, who was raised on a pig farm in rural Illinois, has strived to stay connected to his roots. He does this through woodworking (he crafts a mean canoe), seeking out discomfort (hiking in the cold, laboring on a sheep farm in England), and reading foundational environmental writers
A Rock Star’s Guide to Road Tripping
As the lead singer of the band Sleigh Bells, Alexis Krauss has spent a whole lot of time on the open highway. And as she has learned the hard way, the life of a touring musician isn’t all that glamorous—especially in the early days, before you have a hit album. Think: eating at gas stations, showering (literally) with light beer, and occasionally peeing in Big Gulp cups when you don’t have time to stop. All of that offered great training for what became Krauss’s other passion: rock climbing. Bec
The Musicians Capturing the Power of Wild Places
For many of us, there’s no quicker way to feel good than listening to a song we love. We press play, and the music instantly transports us to a different place. Not surprisingly, many songs that do this have their origins in experiences and emotions connected to wild places. In this third installment of our series exploring pathways to happiness, we talk with two very different artists, indie singer-songwriter Jesca Hoop and British rapper Testament, about the inspirations they’ve taken
A Scientist Finds Her Way in the Rainforest
Early in her career, wildlife ecologist Rae Wynn-Grant joined an expedition to Madagascar to track the elusive ring-tailed lemur. But the trip had an unexpected personal outcome: it convinced her that this was the work she was meant to do. That was a long time coming for Wynn-Grant, who’d grown up loving TV shows on nature but found herself initially hating her college ecology courses because she felt out of place as a Black woman who’d never been camping and surrounded by people with v
What the Mountains Teach Us About Patience
It sounds like a predictable journey for a brainy young person seeking happiness: a trek in the Swiss Alps to contemplate the works of a great philosopher who found purpose and meaning in the mountains. But as John Kaag discovered, following in the footsteps of a legend, especially in an Alpine environment, can get tricky fast. Kaag dodged a near disaster on his trek, but the adventure was the start of a relationship with the Alps that would bring both exhilaration and darkness into his life as
A Wild Ride into the Garden of Eden
It was an especially bold (and perhaps questionable) idea for a road trip: America’s most fabulous advice columnist, E. Jean Carroll, would drive to towns named Eden throughout the East and South, where she would ask people: “Have you ever made love outside—in Eden?” Her car was painted with blue polka dots and green frogs, her snacks consisted of cakes and pies and pretzels, her copilot was a giant poodle. But out there roaming the byways she learned something. First, that all kinds of
When Wild Animals Misbehave
Every day, critters all around the planet break human laws. They steal food and destroy our stuff. They kill. And, naturally, humans take it upon ourselves to intervene—often with all kinds of unfortunate consequences. For this episode, fearless journalist Mary Roach shares wild tales from her new book, Fuzz, which had her traveling to animal crime scenes from Colorado to North India to investigate human-wildlife conflicts. As Roach tells it, thieving bears, murderous possums, and muggi
Why Thinking About Death Makes Us Happier
In the United States, we rarely think about death—especially our own death. And when we do, it tends to make us sad and uncomfortable. But there are powerful benefits to regularly contemplating the fact that our time in this world will eventually come to an end. The shift in perspective can be profound and lead to a kind of deeply felt and enduring appreciation for life. In this first episode of a new series exploring pathways to happiness, we hear from journalist Michael Easter, who makes the c
The Dumbest, Greatest Road Trip Ever
Earlier this year, two men set out do something that seemed impossible. And also just dumb. They would squeeze together 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 the mountain town of Aspen, Colorado. If that sounds familiar, it should: this is the iconic road trip that Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels took in the cult classic Farrelly Brothers film Dumb and Dumber. Ex
What It Takes to Be Alex Honnold’s Climbing Partner
Alex Honnold is the planet's most famous rock climber, known for scaling massive walls without ropes. He’s at the absolute peak of his abilities. So it would seem rather surprising that his go-to climbing partner is Cedar Wright, ten years his senior and often not in the best physical shape. Honnold calls him “the world’s weakest professional climber,” and he’s only half joking. Yet despite their differences, the two friends share a unique bond that has them calling on each other for su
Desperate Road Trippers Saved by…Instagram?
Here’s the often forgotten truth about road trips: the best moments are usually when everything goes sideways. We might dream of cruising open roads, rolling into authentic eateries, and blissing out to the perfect playlist, yet the magical experiences that really stick with us tend to involve blown head gaskets and getting very, very lost. More often than not, we depend on strangers to save our adventure from total disaster. But for the modern nomad, reaching out for help can be very d
A Soldier’s Long Road Back from Afghanistan
When Army captain Luke Bushatz returned home from the war in Afghanistan, he was seemingly in one piece. Yet he was struggling far more than either he or his wife, Amy, realized. The first signs of a problem were lapses in his short-term memory. Soon, though, he found it impossible to connect with other humans, especially those closest to him. He tried to numb himself with alcohol and sex, and ended up struggling with addiction. Then, at his lowest point, he sought out the one place whe
A Runner’s Terrifying Fall—and What Came After
Elite runner Hillary Allen was at the top of her sport when she fell 150 feet down a mountain slope during a race. She was lucky to survive but suffered numerous serious injuries, and in the aftermath of the accident found herself struggling to get through the simple challenges of daily life. Even worse, she was now defined by a moment that she had almost no memory of experiencing. In this episode from our friends at the podcast DNF, from Trail Runner magazine, Allen recounts her long, winding j
How to Date an Athlete
Learning how to love to someone who is constantly pushing the edge of their physical abilities can be one of the strangest challenges to overcome in a romantic relationship. What does it take to stick with a partner who runs or rides dozens of hours a week? Who forgets to close the bathroom door before applying full-body sports lubricant? Who always leaves you in the dust? This week, Paddy O’Connell takes us deep inside his relationship with an endurance runner, and talks to partners of
The Rattlesnake Bite That Changed Everything
When we head into wild places, we accept a certain amount of risk. Often, we don’t think much about it, because we’re excited to be in an extraordinary place. But then something happens, and we are forced to reckon with the potential costs of our quest for adventure. So it went for Kyle Dickman, whose life had been defined by a strong exploratory spirit until he was bitten by a rattlesnake in a remote section of Yosemite National Park during a trip with his wife and infant son. In this
The Stinky Truths About Your Sweat
Sweating is evolution’s most efficient cooling strategy, allowing humans to stay on the move far longer than most fur-covered animals. But how much sweat is too much? Where should we be perspiring the most? (Our armpits? The backs of our knees?) And why does some sweat smell so much? These are among the questions that journalist, amateur athlete, and heavy sweater Tom Vanderbilt has pondered for years. In this episode, he finally gets them answered by Canadian chemist Sarah Everts, auth
Saved by Far-Flung Travel
Today, Melinda Spooner is the founder and CEO of the SheTravels Adventure Company, which designs trips and experiences for women of color. It's the most meaningful work she could imagine—but getting here was a long journey. After growing up in subsidized housing in Chicago, Spooner committed herself to earning as much money as possible as a management consultant. She was successful, but also miserable and at a crisis point with her physical health. It took a series of powerful outdoor e
The Many Upsides of Taking On Unreasonable Challenges
Every so often, Outside magazine publishes a collection of stories that fit into what we call a “zero to hero” package. The idea is to send our contributors out into the world to try something new that pushes them far outside their comfort zone. They might be asked to learn a new skill, break a bad habit, or even confront a long-held fear. For our most recent version of the package, our hope was to inspire our readers to set some ambitious goals for themselves after the long months of C
The Most Painful Record in Sports
When we watch an elite endurance competition like the Tour de France, it’s easy to get caught up in the drama of moments that generate headlines—particularly the gnarly crashes that send riders slamming into the pavement. But while a crash is undeniably painful, the most agonizing part of professional biking is almost always the pedaling. If don’t believe that, talk to any racer who has dared to pursue the hour record—the longest distance cycled in an hour. In this favorite from our arc
The Wild Songs in Thomas Rhett's Heart
All too often, life gets in the way of the things we really care about. So it was for Thomas Rhett, one of the biggest names in country music, whose rise to superstardom meant that he no longer had time for the outdoor experiences that had been such a formative part of his childhood. But then the pandemic struck, and suddenly he had time to play in the mud with his kids and return to adventuring. The result was a creative catalyst that gave birth to his latest album, Country Again: Side A, which
A Pro Climber’s Coming-Out Story
In May, professional climber Jordan Cannon celebrated his birthday by publicly announcing that he was gay. Getting to this point wasn’t easy for Jordan—he’d had a hard time coming out even to close friends. But something inside him began to change after he met legendary Yosemite climber Mark Hudon, who became his mentor as well as a father figure. The two men, who are separated by 38 years, soon agreed to work together on an ambitious climb of Yosemite’s El Capitan. But what began as an
The Adventures That Made a Super Dad
When our fathers tell us tales of their wild youth, we usually listen closely. This is partly because hearing about pop’s bolder, bearded past is entertaining. But more importantly, when your dad shares an experience from his younger days, you learn something about who he is—which gives you a glimpse into your own origins. This week, in the run-up to Father’s Day, we bring you the story of a family that wanted to better understand the meaning behind dad’s crazy stories. What they discov
A Pro Climber and the Disorder that Brought Him Down to Earth
When he was in his early twenties, Mason Earle was living the dream. After dropping out of college so he could climb full-time, he signed a sponsorship deal with a major outdoor brand and began taking climbing trips all around the world. But then, as he approached his 30th birthday, he was on a trip to Yosemite when he began experiencing flu-like symptoms that wouldn't go away. He would later be diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis, commonly called chronic fatigue syndrome. In this
An Agonizingly Thirsty Crawl Through the Desert
Just how long can someone last in the desert without a drink of water? That’s something listeners asked us after last week’s episode about Claire Nelson (“Alone and Injured in the Wild”), a solo hiker who took a fall in Joshua Tree National Park and ended up spending days waiting on the ground for a rescue. In this episode, we provide the answer in the form of a remarkable story from our archives. In 1905, a gold prospector named Pablo Valencia reportedly wandered through 110-degree hea
Casting out of Darkness
After years of family trauma, Kayla Lockhart was desperate for relief from the panic that plagued her. At her lowest moment, she picked up a fly-fishing rod and headed out to a stream—and for the first time in her life, she was able to quiet all the alarm bells in her head. For the final episode in our spring Wild Files series, we tell the story of Lockhart’s brave journey from a painful childhood to the healing waters that she now wants to share with everyone.
This episode of the Outside Podca
Alone and Injured in the Wild
There’s a special kind of appeal to a solo adventure—being out on your own, away from everything and everyone. Unless, of course, something goes wrong and you find yourself in serious trouble. For the latest installment of our Wild Files series, we tell the story of Claire Nelson, who was seeking peace and solitude in the desert but ended up badly injured, all alone, and unable to call for help. To survive, she would have to hold on to the hope that eventually someone would find her.
Running from the Truth
Most tales of adventure follow a predictable arc: someone sets off on an epic trip, they encounter moments of great peril, and they come out the other side stronger. But every so often you hear about a different kind of transformational journey—one that takes place beyond the parameters of a wilderness expedition or a global quest, and one that allows you to truly understand the experiences of another human in a deeper way. For this episode of our Wild Files series, we bring you the sto
The Wild Trips That Transformed a Scientist
Biologist M. Sanjayan has traveled to remarkable places around the world, crossing a vast desert in Namibia, tracking man-eating tigers in Bangladesh, and studying a despised rodent in California. Along the way, he’s become a well-known television personality and an outspoken advocate for an approach to conservation that’s less about fencing off wilderness and more about safeguarding nature to benefit humanity. In this episode of our Wild Files series, Sanjayan, now the CEO of Conservat
The Story Behind the Forrest Fenn Treasure Hunt
A decade ago, Santa Fe art dealer Forrest Fenn filled a box with a box with treasure, placed it somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, then published a poem containing clues to its location. Thousands of searchers would go looking for the loot, and five of them would die in the process before it was discovered last year. Nobody has followed this saga more closely than journalist Daniel Barbarisi, who broke the news of how the treasure was found and is now coming out with a book about the hun
A Quest to Expose the World’s Most Dangerous Frontier
Investigative journalist Ian Urbina had a bold plan: he would journey to the unpatrolled waters of the open ocean and bring back stories about the last regions on the planet where laws have almost no power. Over three years, he traveled some 12,000 nautical miles and reported on the traffickers, pirates, poachers, and other clandestine characters who operate outside the reach of authorities. His resulting chronicle became a bestselling book, The Outlaw Ocean, but that only spurred Urbin
When the Tornado Chased the Storm Chaser
Jennifer Brindley Ubl had become obsessed with tracking down something that most of us hope never to see: tornados. Every spring, she would close up her portrait photography business in Milwaukee and head off to capture images of what she calls “beautiful storm systems.” Seeing a twister left her in awe—and always wanting more. Then, one day, she found herself fleeing for her life from the largest tornado ever recorded. In this episode of our Wild Files series, we hear the story of how
A Journey to the Strange World Beyond Our Screens
After more than a year of pandemic living, our lives have migrated online to a remarkable degree: we Zoom and tweet and Slack all day, then Netflix and Hulu ourselves to sleep. Now, as we emerge into a hopeful spring and summer, our challenge is to awaken the adventurous sides of ourselves that have gone dormant. In this episode, Chris Colin, author of the brilliantly funny new book Off: The Day the Internet Died, puts forth a simple solution: just start talking about all the awesome ou
An Elite Adventurer Reckons with Risk
Professional outdoor athletes can seem invincible—like no matter what crazy thing they do next, they’ll come out the other side alive (and probably smiling). But if you actually ask these athletes about their relationship with risk, they’ll likely be quick to tell you about the moment they realized that no matter how good they are at their sport, sometimes bad things happen. For the latest episode of the Wild Files, we share the story of photographer, filmmaker, and climber Savannah Cum
An Appalachian Trail Horror Story
When we venture into the wilderness, we accept that there are certain dangers, like bears and snakes and crazy weather. Truth be told, a bit of risk is what attracts many people to the backcountry (even if normal urban life is much riskier). But there are times when the usual natural threats are replaced by something far more menacing: an aggressive human. In this gripping story from our friends at Backpacker’s Out Alive podcast, we hear the tragic tale of a group of hikers who found th
Biking the Iditarod in Search of Pain
Among people who spend a lot of time in the wilderness, there’s a notion that the trail is our teacher. And if you talk to serious outdoor adventurers, you quickly realize just how powerful trail lessons can be. Take the case of professional endurance athlete Rebecca Rusch, who was schooled over the last several winters while riding a bike across the Alaska Range as a racer in the 350-mile Iditarod Trail Invitational. Rusch has long been lauded for her ability to push through the most agonizing
Life and Death Among the Polar Bears
There are few places on earth where humans aren’t at the top of the food chain, but the Arctic sea ice is one of them. Photographer Kiliii Yuyan saw this firsthand while documenting the Inupiat people’s spring whale hunt. A hungry polar bear began stalking the party, forcing the hunters to defend themselves. The dramatic experience was a harsh lesson in the realities of survival in a truly wild place, but Yuyan was even more impacted by what he witnessed in the aftermath. As the Inupiat continue
A Bold Plan to Make Pro Cycling Cool Again
American road racing has struggled in the past decade. Following the downfall of Lance Armstrong, road racing became almost synonymous with doping, sponsors walked away, and fans became disenchanted. But new energy is emerging again in the longtime American discipline of crit racing, or criterium, which has riders hammering out laps on courses through city streets. It’s fast, rowdy, and full of crashes—cycling’s version of Nascar. “If you love football, if you like watching people get smacked an
When an Athlete Refuses to Be Broken
For survivors of harrowing events, the most challenging part of the saga often comes after they’ve lived through what seemed like an impossible scenario. Such was the case of Joe Stone, who was a high-flying athlete addicted to the thrills of sports like skydiving and BASE jumping before a brutal accident left him paralyzed from the chest down and with limited fine motor skills in his hands. And so he faced a giant question: What am I supposed to do now? His answer was to do things that
Embracing a Fear of Falling
If you’re a climber, the risk of falling is always there—it's an essential fact about the sport. And for a lot of climbers, this is actually part of the appeal. That was definitely how Brendan Leonard saw it. Today Leonard is best known as a trail runner and the creator of Semi-Rad, where he publishes essays and illustrations about life as a nonprofessional athlete. But back in his twenties, climber was the identity Leonard latched on to while he was recovering from alcohol addiction an
How the Ski Bum Was Made
It’s the ultimate mountain-town caricature: the shaggy semi-athlete who lives in a van (or truck or crowded apartment), works a number of crappy jobs (pizza delivery, barback, liftie), and skis 100 days every winter. This is the ski bum: a hero to some, a loser to others, and an enigma to everyone—until now. In this episode, bona fide ski bum Paddy “Paddy O” O’Connell presents irrefutable evidence that the campy ski flicks of the eighties and nineties—cult classics like Hot Dog, Ski Pat
A Desperate Need for the Mountains
People are drawn to the mountains for all kinds of reasons—the desire to challenge themselves physically or emotionally, a hunger for risk or perhaps solitude, the need for a sense of accomplishment. But for some, the appeal is both deeper and far more complicated. So it is with Sequoia Schmidt, whose father and brother died on K2, the world’s second-tallest and most dangerous peak. That tragedy ultimately propelled her into the mountains herself—to, as she says, “find my soul.” In this
“It Was a Way to Keep His Spirit Alive”
In 2001, when Caroline Gleich was 15 years old, her half-brother Martin died in an avalanche while skiing in the Utah backcountry. That tragedy didn’t prevent Gleich from becoming a professional skier—quite the opposite—but it has led her to develop a unique approach to managing risk. The truth is, avalanches are largely predictable: they only occur on certain slopes and under certain conditions. The problem is that such slopes and conditions coincide almost perfectly with the most fun
Buried Alive—and Running Out of Time
It was a glorious powder day in the Sierra Nevada when three friends set off into the backcountry at dawn. They had tons of experience and all the essential emergency gear, so they were unfazed by the fact that the local avalanche center had listed the danger that day as considerable. As the trio saw it, if you wanted to enjoy good skiing conditions in the backcountry, you had to accept some risk. But then, in an instant, a slide buried one of them and the other two began a frantic sear
A Climbing Disaster Interrupted by a Love Story
When a groups of friends in their twenties set out to climb Mount Rainier, they felt like they were ready for anything. But on the upper slopes of the peak, trouble found them. A storm moved in, and members of the party began to suffer from altitude sickness and dehydration. As climbers began turning around, two decided to push on: an aggressive military athlete who was on a quest for the summit and a first-time mountaineer who wanted to prove herself. It didn’t take long for them to end up in t
The Pure Joy of Bionic Skiing
It sounds like something out of a James Bond film: a robotic exoskeleton that helps you ski better. But the real thing exists. A San Francisco–based startup called Roam has developed a breakthrough device that pairs clever mechanics with artificial intelligence to give your lower body a boost when you need it most. For able-bodied skiers, it’s a performance-enhancement tool that will let you ignore your creaky knees. And for athletes who’ve suffered debilitating injuries, it’s a chance
A Veteran Surfer’s Big-Wave Nightmare
It began as every surfer’s dream: an empty point break, a rising swell, and a good friend to share the rides. But what happens when you’re out there and the waves just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger? So it went for William Finnegan at a break off the Portuguese island of Madeira. This happened decades ago, back when surfers had to more or less guess at the conditions they’d encounter on any given day. In this episode, Finnegan, whose surfing memoir Barbarian Days won the Puli
How a Surfer Survived Being Stranded in the Open Sea
Serious surfers train themselves to be ready for difficult moments: a brutal wipeout, being held down underwater by waves, losing a board and being forced swim a mile to shore. Then there are the kinds of experiences that nobody is really prepared for, like getting pushed out to sea by winds or currents and set adrift where nobody can see you. To get through that scenario alive, you need extraordinary fortitude. In this episode, we revisit one of the most surprising tales we’ve ever tol
Why Learning a New Skill Is So Good for You
As it turns out, being a grown-up novice offers all kinds of surprising benefits. Just ask journalist Tom Vanderbilt, who spent a year attempting to pick up a variety of challenging skills, from surfing to singing to drawing. Ultimately, he didn’t become amazing at any of these things, but his humble quest taught him something far more valuable: that despite your age or how busy you think you are, introducing yourself to a new skill is one of the most life-enhancing things you can do. Vanderbilt
Inside Emily Harrington's Triumph on El Capitan
Serious athletes are used to digging deep. But there’s pushing yourself, and then there’s what climber Emily Harrington did on November 4, when she became the first woman, and the fourth person ever, to free-climb the Golden Gate route up Yosemite’s El Capitan in a single day. It was an insanely challenging endeavor: a 3,200-foot ascent up the sheer granite wall using only her hands and feet. For Harrington, it was the culmination of a long effort that included a fall on El Cap in 2019,
Life Lessons from Elite Explorers
Ask a professional adventurer to share the most important lesson they’ve learned from their time in the wild, and you’re bound to get a good story. Which is exactly why we posed this question to Steven Rinella, host of the Netflix series MeatEater, and Krystle Wright, an adventure photographer based in Australia. For Rinella, a dangerous decision on a trip to Alaska’s Arctic made him see how being steadfastly committed to a goal is a kind of recklessness. On a footloose pilgrimage to th
Tim Cook on Health and Fitness
With the latest version of its Watch and the imminent launch of its online training platform Fitness+, Apple is positioning itself as a leader in the health and wellness space. For CEO Tim Cook, this effort has been many years in the making. A fitness obsessive, Cook works out daily, passionately believes that exercise is key to our quality of life, and he sees extraordinary opportunity in the ability to democratize health science by enabling millions of his customers to anonymously sha
Two Wild Trips with Surprisingly Happy Endings
When we embark on a big adventure outdoors, the truth is that we rarely know what we’re getting into. Usually, the reasons we give for taking a trip are rarely what make it so memorable. You might go into the mountains with dreams of perfect powder turns but come away marveling about something you saw in the sky. These novel experiences and surprises are why so many of us keep going back. In this episode, we share a pair of stories about people finding unexpected delight in the wilderne
How BASE Jumping Saved Jeb Corliss's Life
Jeb Corliss is one of the original madmen of BASE jumping. For more than two decades, he flung himself from the top of massive waterfalls, bridges, and skyscrapers, and managed to miraculously survive multiple crash landings in a sport that rarely gives second chances. But now he’s 44, and no longer chasing the edge of risk. Instead, Corliss has embarked on a journey into the depths of his own troubled mind. And he’s reached a surprising conclusion: BASE jumping, one of the most deadly sports on
Latria Graham’s Love Letter to Black Adventurers
In the past couple of years, South Carolina–based writer Latria Graham has published a pair of essays in Outside magazine about the challenges that Black people face in the outdoors. Both stories generated a great deal of attention to this matter and also spurred a number of readers to write to her to ask questions, as well as share their own personal experiences. For Graham, one category of letters proved to be a heavy burden: those from people of color asking her advice on where they
How a Fight over Trees Transformed American Politics
It wasn’t all that long ago that protecting the environment was an issue considered to be above partisanship. In 1970, it was Richard Nixon who announced the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency and signed the Clean Air Act into law. So how did the environment become one of the most divisive issues in American politics? The answer is a fight over trees. In the 1990s, a fierce confrontation in the Pacific Northwest pitted loggers against activists and scientists trying to defend ancie
A Snowboarder's Quest to Get Out the Vote
For many years, Jeremy Jones had a simple job: he was the king of freeride snowboarding, traveling the planet to carve lines down jagged peaks for action films. But then he began to notice changes in the mountains he was visiting: less snow, shrinking glaciers, and other signs that matched what scientists were saying about the growing menace of climate change. After struggling for a way to respond, he founded an organization to do something about it, Protect Our Winters. Over the past 1
The Climbers Speaking Up About Eating Disorders
To become an elite climber, you need to get very good at defying gravity. This requires developing extraordinary control of your body while also maximizing your strength to weight ratio. To do that, you train constantly and also pay attention to your diet. At the upper echelons of the sport, where every move counts, there’s pressure on athletes to do all they can to make themselves stronger, while also getting smaller and lighter. For professional climbers Kai Lightner and Beth Rodden, that pres
How the Pandemic Is Teaching Us to Listen to Nature
One of the defining aspects of modern life is our inability to hear the sounds of nature due to noise pollution. But since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, people across the world have remarked that they’re hearing birds and other creatures more clearly than ever before. This includes professional listeners like Chris Watson, the legendary field recordist who for decades has captured the sounds of wildlife heard in David Attenborough’s films, including The Green Planet, which will pr
A First-Time Hunter Gets a Lesson from #WomenWhoHunt
Of all the people who might end up on a deer hunt in Arizona, Rachel Levin has to be among the least likely candidates. Growing up, her closest connection to hunting was Elmer Fudd cartoons. Today she’s a food writer in San Francisco, where she knows just one person who hunts. But like a lot of food obsessives, Rachel was often curious about how the meat on her plate got there. Earlier this year, she got a chance to find out when she joined a bow hunt for mule deer with two rising stars
Changing How You Breathe Could Change Your Life
You’ve been breathing wrong your whole life. That’s the message journalist and outdoor athlete James Nestor delivers in his new bestseller Breath, which explains how the human species has lost the ability to breathe properly and why this is so bad for our health in all kinds of ways. But his reporting also shows that with minor adjustments in how we inhale and exhale, we can dramatically improve on everything from the quality of our sleep to our athletic performance to our posture. Nest
A Harebrained Dream of Building a Cabin in the Woods
It sounds like a fantasy: join forces with a good friend to build a sweet little cabin in the woods. And for Bryan Schatz and Patrick Hutchison, that’s exactly how it felt. They took time away from promising careers to pursue a dream of crafting a base camp for adventures in an idyllic spot in Washington’s Cascade Range. There was just one problem: they had no idea what they were doing. Their planned summer project turned into a yearlong saga that drained their bank accounts and stressed their r
What We Really Know About Life in Outer Space
In recent years, the search for extraterrestrials has been accelerated by a wave of new technologies that allow us to better probe distant reaches of the galaxy. Meanwhile, a pair of events have generated enormous excitement among those who believe that aliens might already be among us. In 2017, when the first interstellar object was detected in our solar system, a highly respected Harvard astrophysicist suggested it might be a probe that was sent by aliens. That same year, the public l
Why Big Wild’s Songs Feel Like Adventures
You know how when you listen to certain songs, you feel you feel like you’re being transported to a totally different place? Most of the time, this is exactly what the musician was trying to do—especially if the musician is Jackson Stell, who creates music under the name Big Wild. Stell is a rapidly rising artist in the electronic and dance scene, though his songs don’t fit neatly in that genre. As a producer, musician, songwriter, and vocalist, he’s crafting works that are inspired by
Ayana Elizabeth Johnson Wants YOU to Save the Planet
Marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson has to be among the busiest scientists in the world. She runs a conservation consulting firm, Ocean Collectiv, as well as a think tank focused on the future of coastal cities called the Urban Ocean Lab. She was an advisor to Elizabeth Warren’s campaign. In June, she wrote an influential op-ed for The Washington Post that explained to white environmentalists why it’s critical for them to join the movement for racial justice. She’s currently editing an anth
Trapped Underwater and Running Out of Air
If you were to try to come up with the most outlandish survival story imaginable, you’d be hard pressed to do much better than the tale of Michael Proudfoot, a scuba diver who found himself trapped alone in a shipwreck deep under the sea and running out of air. It’s the ultimate nightmare scenario for a diver, and yet somehow Proudfoot managed to live through it. Or maybe not. Maybe none of it ever happened. This week on the Outside Podcast, we revisit a classic episode from our archive
The Dirty Awesome Truth About Summer Camp
There’s a misguided notion that the ultimate kid’s paradise would look something like a cross between Disneyland and Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory. The truth is that for a lot of kids, paradise is nothing like that. Instead it’s sleepaway summer camp—especially a camp that lets you do crazy stupid things and get really, really dirty. In the second installment of our two-part exploration of the specialness and weirdness of camp, we present a collection of stories that capture camps an
That Time the Camp Snake Tried to Eat a Counselor
Amazing things happen when young people spend their days outside and their nights sleeping among new friends—and a week far, far away from their parents. Kids learn to take care of themselves, and each other. But strange things happen, too, like that time a camp’s beloved pet snake chomped down on a counselor’s hand and wouldn’t let go. Or when a moth flew deep inside a camper’s ear and had to be extracted with an ancient and bizarre technique. Then there was the camper who brought her
A Close Encounter with the Real Moby Dick
For a good number of travelers, the ultimate bucket-list experience is swimming with whales. There’s something about the idea of being in the water with these enormous creatures that calls to people. And if you talk to people who have swum with whales, chances are they’ll tell you it changed their lives. This is true even for veteran adventurers who’ve seen it all—people like Outside contributing editor Rowan Jacobsen, whose past assignments include a journey to the Amazon to seek out the source
A Kayaker’s Brush with Death
Nouria Newman is one of the best whitewater kayakers in the world. She’s won numerous prestigious competitions and has completed historic first descents of some of the planet’s most dangerous rapids. But it wasn’t until she nearly drowned on a solo expedition in the Himalayas that she was able to truly reckon with the deadly toll of her sport—and discover what matters most.
This episode of the Outside Podcast is brought to you by Visit Florida, one of the country’s great adventure dest
Running While Black in New York
There’s been a running boom in the age of coronavirus, with veteran runners and newbies alike lacing up their shoes to get outside. But the experience has not been the same for everyone. Coffey, a well-known figure in New York City’s vibrant running scene as well as a multitalented creative artist, has continued to get his miles in during the pandemic. And like other runners whose skin is black or brown, he has faced the same risks of harassment and violence that were present before the
A Love Story Interrupted by a Bison Attack
It’s an established fact that outdoorsy people have the best stories about dating. Getting to know a potential partner while climbing, paddling, or otherwise exploring an unpredictable environment just offers more opportunities for memorable surprises. Usually, these experiences are shared with friends over beers. Sometimes they make their way into wedding toasts. And then there are the incidents that make headlines. So it was with Kayleigh Davis and Kyler Bourgeous’s encounters with some ornery
How Kara Goucher Stood Up to Running's Goliath
When Olympic marathoner Kara Goucher went public in 2015 with her accusation that her former coach, the legendary Alberto Salazar, had skirted antidoping rules with the elite runners of the Nike Oregon Project, she suffered an onslaught of criticism and harassment. The blowback set her back financially and competitively—and made her wonder if she had made a terrible mistake. Then last spring, Goucher spoke up again, joining former Nike teammates in a New York Times op-ed about the company’s prac
The Filmmaker Who Cracked Open Lance Armstrong
The first question most people have when they hear about Lance, the new documentary series about the world’s most infamous cyclist, is: Why now? Back in 2013, we watched Armstrong give his first doping confessions to Oprah. That same year, Oscar-winning director Alex Gigney released The Armstrong Lie, a documentary that had the cyclist offering lengthy admissions of guilt and claims of sincere remorse. Since then, there’s been a number of tell-all books by seemingly anyone who had the s
What Happens to a Cyclist's Body When It's Hit by a Car
Last summer, 34-year-old Andrew Bernstein, known to his friends as Bernie, was riding his bike alone on a road outside Boulder, Colorado, when he was struck by a vehicle. The driver fled the scene and left him laying in a ditch, where he would have soon died if a passerby hadn’t noticed him and called 911. Bernie was a passionate amateur cyclist who competed regularly in elite track races, but in an instant his body was shattered and his life was forever changed. Unfortunately, his experience is
A Half-Baked Trip that Ended with a Magical Eclipse
As every seasoned traveler knows, the most meaningful trips are the ones where everything goes wrong. Take, for example, climber and longtime Outside contributor Mark Jenkins’s recent quest to witness a total solar eclipse from the top of a 20,000-foot peak. A veteran of historic expeditions including an attempt on the North Face of Mount Everest, a first descent of the Niger River, and a bicycling odyssey across Siberia, Jenkins was in the mood for something different. So he recruited his old p
The Switch in Your Brain That Turns Down Stress
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a technique that would allow us to vanquish fear and beat back stress? There just might be. In his latest book, The Wedge, bestselling author Scott Carney explains that when humans face challenging situations, our automatic responses tend to make us feel terrible. But the good news is that there are a number of simple methods we can learn to take control of our reactions to stimulus—whether it’s a circling shark or a scary news headline. Over the past f
Chased by a Jaguar in the Heart of the Amazon
The longer we’re stuck at home, sheltering in place, the greater our hunger for tales of far-flung journeys. For this week’s episode, we’re offering one of our favorite adventure stories from our archives, about a daring crew of twentysomethings who, back in 1970, had a crazy idea to canoe remote rivers though the Amazon Basin. Their half-baked plan was to hunt, fish, and forage for food until it wasn’t fun anymore. They had no jungle experience and few supplies beyond a machete and a
Why You Desperately Want to Jump in a Lake
Unlike most other animals, humans have to be taught to swim, and yet many of us feel an irresistible pull to the water. There’s something about submerging ourselves that makes us feel very much alive—even as we enter an environment where the risk of death is suddenly all around us. (That’s why the lifeguard is watching.) In her new book, Why We Swim, journalist Bonnie Tsui explores how this unique sport rekindles the survival instincts we inherited from our ancestors, heals some of our
Is the Battle Over Nike’s Vaporfly Ruining Running?
Over the past few years, the sport of running has been upended by a debate over shoe technology. It all began in early 2017, when Nike announced a prototype called the Vaporfly that was billed as improving a runner’s efficiency by 4 percent—a claim that was hard to believe until that spring, when Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge came seconds away completing a marathon in under two hours. The running community’s reaction was swift, with many claiming that the shoe wasn’t a breakthrough, it was a ch
An Unsettling Crime at the Top of the World
In the isolated Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, some 800 miles from the North Pole, the tiny town of Longyearben is the kind of place where people go to start their lives over. With brightly colored homes laid out neatly against a mountainous backdrop, it seems out of a fairytale. There’s almost no crime, so residents leave their front doors unlocked and their keys in the car. In the surrounding Arctic wilderness are abundant polar bears, arctic foxes, and reindeer. But when an eerie crime ha
When 18 Tigers Were Let Loose in Zanesville, Ohio
Now here’s a mind-boggling fact: there are more tigers in captivity in the United States right now than all of the wild tigers in the world combined. This is due to loopholes in the laws governing big-cat ownership in this country—and it’s a dangerous problem. Besides tigers, people keep lions, cougars, leopards, and other big cats as pets. It’s not great for the cats that are locked in cages and basements, but it’s really not great for the people nearby when, inevitably, those cats get
What It’s Really Like Being on ‘Naked and Afraid’
When experienced wilderness guide Blair Braverman was invited to audition for the Discovery Channel reality show ‘Naked and Afraid,’ she saw it as a chance to live out a childhood fantasy. Here was an opportunity to have a totally wild—if somewhat absurd—adventure that would allow her to prove her mettle or fail trying. Having crossed the Arctic twice by dogsled, she felt she could handle all kinds of discomfort and physical challenges. Pus, it’s just a TV show, right? Then she found he
The Dawn of a New Sports Bra Era
Recent years have seen all kinds of major progress in outdoor sports equipment, from maximalist running shoes to electric bikes to crazy-lightweight camping gear. But the most important breakthroughs of all have been in the design and manufacturing of sports bras. New research and technologies have paved the way for an advanced class of support systems that are comfortable, look good, and fit a wider variety of bodies. In this episode, we talk to Outside associate editor Ariella Gintzler about h
How Nature Heals an Injured Brain
After suffering a brain injury in a bicycle accident, Sarah Allely found it difficult to read, write, and watch television. She struggled with everyday tasks. Eventually, she realized that the only way for her to get better was to spend time in nature. As a journalist, her instinct was to chronicle her experience and also investigate the science behind nature’s health benefits. The result is Brain on Nature, a podcast that’s deeply personal but offers invaluable insights for anyone seek
What A.I. Hears in the Rainforest
Topher White founded the nonprofit Rainforest Connection with the intent of creating a low-cost monitor that could help remote communities in their efforts to halt illegal logging, which is an enormous threat to tropical habitats. As it turns out, the best way to track people who are cutting down trees is sound. Using old cell phones linked to an artificial-intelligence platform in the cloud, White developed a system that can detect chainsaws in real time and send automated alerts to au
A Tale of Two Dramatic Big-Wave Rescues
Every winter, the Pacific Ocean produces massive swells that roll across the open sea and crash into the Hawaiian island of Oahu. For more than 50 years, the surf world has gathered here, on the North Shore, along a stretch of legendary beaches that are collectively known as the Seven Mile Miracle. A lot of drama is to be expected: epic rides, agonizing wipeouts, and every so often, a heroic rescue. In this episode, we share two stories from the latter category. One comes from photograp
A Long-Shot Bid to Save the Monarch Butterfly
Conservationists hoping to protect a threatened wild species tend to take a standard set of actions. These can involve political campaigns, lawsuits, and media outreach. But sometimes it’s the unexpected approaches that can make the difference. Over the past several years, artist Jane Kim has been creating large-scale public murals of the monarch butterfly, an insect that’s in a state of crisis. Recent surveys indicate the that the population of the western monarch in California has plummeted to
Ben Greenfield’s Radical Fitness Strategies
In today’s fitness space, self-experimentation is the name of the game. All kinds of people are embracing new technologies and diets in the hope of finding faster strategies for getting in the best possible shape. In this crowd, few are pushing things further than Ben Greenfield. The exercise physiologist and personal trainer has made his mark by exploring the limits of what seems reasonable (Example A: injecting his penis with stem cells) and voicing controversial ideas, including skep
The Only Time It's OK to Jump Off a Chairlift
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
Seeking Magic and Solace in the Northern Lights
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 fo
Rich Roll Is the Oprah of Endurance Sports
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 suf
How a Ski Accident with My Daughter Changed Everything
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 he
How Kikkan Randall Keeps Coming Back
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 *c
When Nature Gets Heavy Metal
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 involve
Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi’s All-In Partnership
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 husba
Getting Stung by the Nastiest Creatures on Earth
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 th
Richard Louv Wants You to Bond with Wild Animals
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
The Hardest Part of a Rescue Comes Later
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
When Our Podcast Host Shattered His Leg in a Canyon
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
The Curious Rise of Adult Recess Leagues
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
Why the Godfather of Barefoot Running Trains with a Donkey
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 tra
A Wild Odyssey with the World’s Greatest Chef
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,
Dispatches: The Wrong Way to Fight Off a Bear
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
Dispatches: Getting Past Our Fear of Great White Sharks
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 l
Science of Survival: Defending Your Home from a Raging Wildfire
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
The Outside Interview: David Epstein on Why the Best Athletes Like to Dabble and Frequently Quit
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 argument
Dispatches: Doug Peacock on the Fight to Protect Grizzly Bears
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, Peac
Dispatches: Will Drinking a Gallon of Water a Day Make You Healthier?
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. Out
Dispatches: This Is What a Runner Looks Like
When Mirna Valerio first began running ultramarathons, she immediately got a lot of attention, but not for the reasons you might expect. Because of her body size, she didn’t fit the accepted image of a long-distance runner. Her story isn’t about an average athlete trying to get better. It’s about what happens when people assume that someone can’t possibly be an athlete because of the way she looks—and then how they how they react when she takes on enormous challenges and finds a way to keep goin
Dispatches: Is Sunscreen the New Margarine?
Earlier this year, Outside contributing editor Rowan Jacobsen wrote a feature that questioned whether our efforts to avoid skin cancer have caused us to develop an unhealthy relationship with the sun and sunscreen. Looking at controversial new research that challenges established guidelines for sun exposure, Jacobsen suggested that more direct sunlight on our unprotected skin might actually be good for our health. The story struck a nerve, becoming the most popular article in the histor
What Awe in Nature Does for Us
A large and growing body of research has found that time outdoors makes us happier and healthier, but there’s relatively limited science explaining why. According to findings published last summer in the journal Emotion, a big part of the answer may be awe. Studies conducted by psychologists at the University of California at Berkeley showed that feeling awe during a nature experience has a singular ability to lower stress and improve our overall well-being. Even more compelling, the research su
Dispatches: Bundyville, The Remnant
For the past few years, journalist Leah Sottile has been looking at the question of who owns public lands in the West. Her reporting began with the Bundy family, which infamously challenged the authority of the federal government on its ranch and then with an armed occupation of Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. That investigation resulted in the award-winning audio series Bundyville. Now, Sottile is back with a new project that begins with the case of a man named Glenn Jones,
The Doctors Prescribing Nature
In recent years, a grassroots movement of physicians have begun prescribing time outdoors as the best possible treatment for a growing list of ailments, from anxiety and obesity to attention deficit disorder and high blood pressure. Meanwhile, research institutes for nature and health are opening at major medical centers and a couple bold insurance companies are embracing the idea. For this third episode in our Nature Cure series, we sit down with science writer Aaron Reuben, who reported on thi
Sweat Science: The Mysterious Syndrome Destroying Top Athletes
A while back, Outside contributor Meaghen Brown noticed a strange phenomenon among the elite ultrarunners that she was training with. Runners would come on the scene, win races and smash records, and then a few years later succumb to a mysterious ailment that left them a shadow of their former selves. Top athletes were suddenly lethargic, depressed, and unable to train, and doctors couldn't tell them why. Their problem, it turned out, was overtraining syndrome, or OTS. One researcher ca
Why a Walk in the Woods Cures the Blues
About six years ago, ecologist Chris Morgan was sitting in a doctor’s waiting room when he picked up a copy of Outside and read the cover story, “Take Two Hours of Pine Forest and Call Me in the Morning.” The article, written by Florence Williams, explored the scientific basis for something that Morgan had intuitively felt all his life: being in nature is inherently healing and leaves us feeling more alert, alive, and content. Ever since, he wanted to have his own guided nature experien
Science of Survival: Snakebit, Part 2
For the last 19 years, Tim Friede, a truck mechanic from Wisconsin, has endured more than 200 snakebites and 700 injections of lethal snake venom—all part of a masochistic quest to immunize his body and offer his blood to scientists seeking a universal antivenom. For nearly two decades, few took him seriously. Then a gifted young immunologist stumbled upon Friede on YouTube—and became convinced that he was the key to conquering snakebites forever.
The Radically Simple Digital Diet We All Need
These days our smartphone addiction has gotten so intense that many of us now habitually use the devices even when we’re supposedly unplugging. We listen to podcasts on our trail runs and endlessly document our weekend adventures for Instagram. All this has author Cal Newport deeply concerned. Newport has made a name for himself as a sort of canary in the digital coal mine, writing about the perils of our screen-dependent modern lifestyles. Last winter he published Digital Minimalism, a manifest
Science of Survival: Snakebit, Part 1
When Kyle Dickman set out on a spring road trip with his wife and infant son, he was fueled by a carefree sense of adventure that had defined his life. Then he got bit by a rattlesnake in a remote part of Yosemite National Park. The harrowing event changed his entire outlook on the world. Now he’s on a quest to understand the toxins that nearly killed him—and trying to come to terms with a world where everything slithers.
Dispatches: Buried Treasure and Duct Tape
So you just found a buried treasure. Hooray! But wait, what do you do next? Are other treasure hunters going to stalk you day and night? Are you going to have to pay taxes on your new riches? How do you turn gold and jewels into usable money anyway? If these are the kinds of questions that keep you up at night, then this episode is for you. Or maybe you’ve been wondering about something more practical, like what’s the craziest thing duct tape has ever been used to repair? This week our
Dispatches: Bob Ross’s Strategies for Survival
Bob Ross is one of the most beloved painters of his generation, and he focused almost exclusively on the outdoors. Depicting the “happy trees” and “friendly mountains” of Alaska and the greater western US for his TV show, The Joy of Painting, he earned a following that has only grown since his death. But surprisingly little is known about his life. Famously private, he granted only a handful of interviews and never really spoke about his deeper motivations. So how should we remember Bob
Sweat Science: The Keto Conundrum
The ketogenic diet, a.k.a. “cutting carbs,” is all the rage in the fitness world. But is it better for you than any other kind of diet? And does it actually make athletes stronger or faster? These questions have been debated for hundreds of years, and every few decades the idea that cutting carbs can unlock your true athletic potential comes back into fashion. Canadian race walker Evan Dunfee was part of the most recent and most rigorous testing of the low-carb high-fat diet, which took him stra
The Outside Interview: Bill McKibben on the End of Nature
No one has done more to sound the alarm about climate change than writer and activist Bill McKibben. He’s been doing it since 1989, when he wrote his first big scary book on the topic, The End of Nature. Thirty years later, he’s still at it, and climate change is even scarier. The result is the book Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Out? In many ways it’s his darkest book yet, drawing on even more scientific evidence while investigating new threats, like genetic engineering and a
Dispatches: Can You Outrun Anxiety?
In 2008, Katie Arnold was hiking a trail near her home in Santa Fe with her baby daughter strapped to her chest when a man attacked her with a rock. Two years later, Arnold’s father died shortly after being diagnosed with cancer. Overwhelmed with grief and anxiety, she tried many remedies but the only one that worked was running. Eventually she began racing ultras and became an elite competitor, winning the iconic Leadville 100. In this conversation with Sarah Bowen Shea, the host of An
The Outside Interview: Steven Rinella Wants Hunters and Hikers to Hold Hands
As the host and creator of the MeatEater podcast and Netflix series of the same name, Steven Rinella spends a lot of time talking about hunting, fishing, and cooking. He is a proud voice in what’s often called the hook-and-bullet crowd. But he’s also a staunch conservationist, a longtime contributing editor of Outside magazine, and the author of American Buffalo, a book that explores the important role of the buffalo hunt throughout North American history. This makes him uniquely qualif
Dispatches: Sports Recovery Secrets from Scientists
Recovery is the new frontier of athletic performance. The quicker you recuperate, the more you can train, and pro athletes across sports have been revitalizing their careers by taking time off. Now a wave of new recovery technologies are being pitched to a broader market: boots that improve blood flow, cryochambers, infrared pajamas. Science writer Christie Aschwanden saw all this and started looking into some of the product claims—and into classic recovery techniques like ice, massage,
The Outside Interview: Mindfulness for Peak Performance
Every day there’s more research showing the benefits of mindfulness. It reduces stress, lowers blood pressure, boosts the immune system, and may even slow the aging process. What we’re only starting to figure out, however, is how meditation might improve athletic performance. Outside Editor Christopher Keyes caught up with Pete Kirchmer, program director of mPEAK, an eight-week class developed by neuroscientists at the University of California at San Diego. Their research shows that tea
Dispatches: The Mountain Bikers Fighting New Trails
Since the sport’s early days in the seventies, mountain bikers have carved illicit trails on public and private land. Pioneering riders create winding singletrack in their favorite nearby hills, then carefully share the location with only a handful of friends. But in recent years, as the sport has grown bigger and bigger, government agencies and some adventurous entrepreneurs have sought to adopt pirate trails into official networks. This usually means better maintenance, maps and signa
Dispatches: Bianca Valenti Is on a Big Wave Mission
Over the past year, professional surfing has undergone a remarkable and very unexpected evolution. Beginning in 2019, the World Surf League is offering equal prize money to men and women at all of its events, making it one of very few global sports leagues to do so. A key part of this story was the push to get women included in the big-wave contest at Mavericks, on the Northern California coast, an effort headlined by 31-year-old Bianca Valenti. In a way, her whole career had been leadi
The Outside Interview: Using Pain to Reach Your Potential
Former Navy SEAL David Goggins has spent the past two decades exploring the outer limits of human performance, both in the armed forces and as an endurance athlete with more than 60 ultras under his belt. But what makes Goggins truly unique is the hardship he faced long before he began his athletic career. A brutally abusive father. A learning disability. Depression. Even obesity—he once weighed nearly 300 pounds. Goggins found strength in putting himself through hell and relying on men
Sweat Science: The 3100-Mile Run Around the Block
There are a lot of really tough endurance races out there, but perhaps none are harder—both mentally and physically—than the Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence 3100 Mile Race in Queens, New York. The whole thing takes place on a single city block, and in order to finish before the cutoff, runners have to run the equivalent of about two marathons a day for 52 days in a row. In the race’s first 22 years, only 43 people finished. This past summer producer Stephanie Joyce headed to Queens to ta
Dispatches: Can We Please Kill Off Crutches?
Almost everyone who’s used underarm crutches agrees: they are terrible. They’re hard on your wrists, they cause falls, they cause nerve damage. This is why almost every country in the world has abandoned them. Except the U.S., where if you go to the hospital with a leg injury, you’re most likely going to leave with adjustable aluminum crutches. In this third installment of our series exploring how gear gets made, we look at the fascinating history of why better designs for crutches have
Sweat Science: Loving the Pain
There’s no more painful pursuit for a cyclist than the hour record.It’s just you, by yourself, on a bike, going as far and as fast as you can in 60 minutes. Eddie Merckx, considered by many to be the greatest pro racer in history, called it the longest hour of his career and only attempted it once. Others describe it as death without dying. When her father passed away, Italian cyclist Vittoria Bussi decided she wanted this record for herself. For her father’s memory. For history. When s
Dispatches: What Dogs Really Think about Dog Gear
For more than two decades, Ruffwear has been reinventing gear for dogs. The brand makes booties, jackets, collars, toys, and pretty much anything else you could want for your pup. But how do you design something when the end user can’t give you feedback other than incessant tail wagging? And don’t dogs get just as much enjoyment out of an old stick as the latest and greatest chew toy? In this second installment of our series exploring how gear gets made, producer Alex Ward reports on th
Sweat Science: Don’t Waste Your Breath
Pararescue specialists—known as PJ’s in the military—are the most elite unit in the Air Force. But if you want to be a PJ you have to make it through Indoc, a brutal nine-week training course that’s designed to test your motivation and resolve. And there’s no easier way to make someone uncomfortable than sending them underwater for a long, long time. Staff Sergeant Travis Morgan had spent what felt like his whole life preparing for Indoc. He knew that only a small percentage of candidat
Dispatches: Can Nature Heal Our Deepest Wounds?
Wilderness therapy has been used for decades to help troubled teens and addicts, and recently all kinds of people are seeking out guided nature experiences to detox from their hyper-digital modern lives. The classic approach of such programs is to push participants to challenge their limits in order to build character. That can work great, but it’s not a smart recipe for those trying to recover from emotional trauma. Not long ago, contributing editor Florence Williams, author of the The
Sweat Science: The Pull-Up Artists
John Orth is a violin maker from Colorado. Andrew Shapiro is a college kid from Virginia. They have little in common except that for the last two years they’ve been trading back and forth the world record for the most pull-ups in 24 hours. Over the summer, they both set their sights on 10,000 pull-ups. It’s a number that would have been unthinkable two years ago; a number that seemed like it would reveal the very limits of what the human body can do. Instead, they found a different limi
Dispatches: One Fork to Rule them All
In this first episode of a new series exploring how gear gets made, we investigate the origin of arguably the most refined fork in history. When designer Owen Mesdag was a graduate student in the late-1990s, he fell in love with a particularly clever spoon. Engineered by outdoor brand MSR, it doubled as a stove repair tool. Mesdag was enamored with it and he thought, I want to make a matching fork. And how hard could that be, really? A fork is a fairly simple tool. Except Owen’s fork di
Dispatches: Alex Honnold on “Free Solo”
The new movie Free Solo is arguably the greatest film about climbing that’s ever been made. In just over 90 minutes, it chronicles Alex Honnold’s astonishing no-ropes ascent of the 3,000-foot sheer face of Yosemite’s El Capitan, which he completed one morning in June, 2017. Even more impressively, it captures the unique mindset of Honnold, a perfectionist whose years-long obsessive pursuit of his dream gets complicated by an ever-present camera crew and his growing love for his new girl
Dispatches: Wild Thing
Journalist Laura Krantz doesn’t believe in Bigfoot. She’s trained to be skeptical, and all the best Sasquatch sightings and photos have been debunked. Except, then she heard about Grover Krantz, a serious academic and long lost relative who had spent his career researching the possibility that an upright, bi-pedal homonid had once roamed the forest. Some of the evidence was pretty compelling, and so Laura dove into the subject headfirst. The result is Wild Thing, a nine-part series that
Science of Survival: Burnout
Maybe you saw the fire coming, maybe you didn’t. Maybe you were ready for it, maybe you weren’t. Maybe you did everything right. Maybe not. Maybe you just lost everything. Maybe that’s not even the worst of it. For this final episode of our wildfire series, we asked fiction writer Joseph Jordan to imagine the experience of someone whose home has been destroyed by flames. He came up with a haunting story that captures our modern relationship with wildfire, in which a single catastrophic
Science of Survival: The Future of Fire
To reduce the intensity of megafires in America, we’d need to treat and burn about 50-80 million acres of forest. So, how do we do it? What would it cost? How long would it take? Is it possible? In this episode we look at whether or not there’s anything we can do about wildfires in the West and the likelihood that we’ll take action on potential solutions.
Science of Survival: Fighting Fire with Fire
How do you protect yourself from wildfire on a warming planet? You burn everything on purpose. No, seriously. Thanks to climate change, the whole world is a tinderbox. Fire season now starts sooner and ends later, and scientists say lightning will become more frequent, and winds more powerful. Our only defense may be intentional fires. In this episode, our friends at Outside/In take a close look at the ecology of prescription burns. Why are our forests so dependent on wildfires? And why
Science of Survival: The Sky is Burning
There are between eight and ten thousand wildfires in the United States each year, but most quietly burn out, and we never hear about them. The Pagami Creek Wildfire in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area was supposed to be like that. It was tiny and stuck in a bog that was surrounded by lakes. It was the kind of fire you could ignore. Computer models predicted that it would just sit there. But those models didn’t account for a rare convergence of atmospheric events had prepped the f
Dispatches: The Hidden Graves of Kuku Island
Carina Hoang grew up in a wealthy family in Vietnam. She had a nanny to take care of her and a maid who cleaned up after her—she didn’t even wash her own hair. But when the Vietnam War broke out, she and two siblings fled the country on a boat, landing on Kuku beach, in Indonesia. It was supposed to be a refugee camp, but it was actually a deserted island. No food, no water, no buildings, people, or tools. Just sand and jungle. Produced in collaboration with Snap Judgment, with funding
Science of Survival: Struck by Lightning
Most of the time, when lightning makes the news, it’s because of something outlandish—like the park ranger who was struck seven times, or the survivor who also won the lottery (the chances of which are about one in 2.6 trillion), or the guy who claimed lightning strike gave him sudden musical talent. This is not one of those stories. This is about Phil Broscovak—who was struck by lightning while on a climbing trip with family in 2005—and the confounding, bizarre science that can’t fully
The Outside Interview: The Simple Secrets to Athletic Longevity
Everyone gets older, but not everyone bows out of competition in middle-age. Journalist Jeff Bercovici wanted to know: Why? Why do some athletes flame out in their 30s and 40s, while others are still going as senior citizens? Is it genetics? Special training? Diet? And could amateur athletes achieve similar results? Outside editor Chris Keyes talks with Jeff about his new book, Play On: The New Science of Elite Performance at Any Age, and what it takes to reverse the effects of getting
Dispatches: Shelma Jun Can Flash Foxy
Climbing was Shelma Jun’s fallback sport. A snowboarder and mountain biker, she found her way into a climbing gym after injuring her shoulder and looking for an activity where she wouldn’t risk more impact. As a friend told her, you can’t fall very far if you’re attached to a rope. In 2014, she created an Instagram account called Flash Foxy to celebrate the crew of hard-charging New York women she’d begun climbing with. After gaining thousands of followers, she co-founded the Women’s Cl
Dispatches: Knox Robinson Crafts Running Culture
Knox Robinson grew up watching his dad run and went on to race track himself at a Division I college, but he was never defined by the sport. He’s more of a renaissance man. For years, he gave up athletics, studying and living in Japan, then managing rock stars and rappers in New York City. It was only as an adult—and after having a son of his own—that he returned to running, eventually co-founding a running collective called Black Roses NYC. Grounded in New York street culture, the group seeks t
Dispatches: Ayesha McGowan Wants to Be First
Ayesha McGowan came late to competitive cycling. An accomplished violinist, she didn’t enter her first organized biking event until after college. Despite riding an old steel bike with a milk crate on the back and wearing jean shorts in a peloton of spandex, she impressed the other women, who encouraged her to start competing. A year later, she took fifth place in her first race, then kept winning on the amateur circuit. Now she’s aiming to be the first African American female cyclist o
Dispatches: Mikhail Martin is a Brother of Climbing
When Mikhail Martin started climbing at a Brooklyn gym in 2009, he was one of very few African Americans to rope up. Today, his group, Brothers of Climbing, is working to change that. BOC is tackling diversity in rock climbing, which includes bridging the gaps in lingo, jargon, and etiquette that keep people of color out of the sport. Nobody understands these issues better than journalist James Edward Mills, author of The Adventure Gap, a book that looks at the challenges minority group
Dispatches: Bundyville
In 2014, the federal government rounded up Cliven Bundy’s cattle over a matter of unpaid grazing fees. So the Bundy family gathered a posse and took them back at gunpoint. Two years later, they took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. The Bundys are making a habit of taking on the federal government and winning. For the past two years, reporter Leah Sottile has been following this story, trying to figure out what all this means for the future of public lands in the American West,
Dispatches: Kellee Edwards’s Story is a Trip
Kellee Edwards had a dream of getting her own show on the Travel Channel. She also had a plan. As a black woman trying to break into the overwhelmingly white and male world of travel television, she figured she would have to be overqualified to get noticed. So she got certified as a scuba diver, learned to pilot her own aircraft, and traveled solo to remote corners of the planet. In just a few years, she went from working as a bank teller to hosting the Travel Channel show Mysterious Is
Dispatches: Alexi Pappas Dreams Like a Crazy and Runs Like One, Too
Distance runner Alexi Pappas is the rare dual-threat of Olympic athlete and movie star. In the 2016 film Tracktown, which she wrote, directed, and plays the lead character in, she set out to capture the running-obsessed culture of Eugene, Oregon—a place where recreational runners share the trails with pros, and local farms and butchers step up as beef and vegetable sponsors for hungry athletes. Outside contributor Stephanie Joyce talked to Pappas about how her life as an Olympic hopeful
Science of Survival: A Very Old Man for a Wolf
One day in 2005 or 2006, a young wolf in Idaho headed west. He swam across the Snake River to Oregon, which was then outside the gray wolf’s range. After he established a territory, he became the most controversial canid in the state. Dubbed OR4 by Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, he was the alpha male of the first pack to live in Oregon in more than half a century. For years, biologist Russ Morgan tracked him, collared him, counted his pups, weighed him, photographed him, and pr
Dispatches: The Woman Who Rides Mountains
Maverick’s, the monster surf break off the Northern California coast, has long been a proving ground for the world’s best big-wave surfers. But the contest held there most years has never included women, despite the fact that female surfers have been dropping in on giant swells for decades. In fact, the inaugural event at Maverick’s, held in 1999 and called Men Who Ride Mountains, took place several weeks after Sarah Gerhardt caught her first wave there. She wasn’t a professional surfer
Dispatches: Kris Tompkins’s 10-Million-Acre Life
After building Patagonia into an internationally renowned apparel brand, the company’s first CEO, Kris Tompkins, walked away from the job, following her heart to South America. She landed on a small farm in Chile, where she and her soon-to-be husband, The North Face founder Doug Tompkins, set to work conserving one of the last wild places on earth. But just as their dream of creating a network of parks stretching across Argentina and Chile was coming to fruition in 2015, she lost Doug in a kayak
Science of Survival: “F/V Destination, Do You Copy?”
It was the kind of disaster that wasn’t supposed to happen anymore. On February 11, 2017, the fishing vessel Destination disappeared in the Bering Sea on its way to the crab grounds. The boat went missing with an experienced crew, in unremarkable weather conditions, yet there was no mayday and rescue crews could find no life raft or survivors. For the past year, reporter Stephanie May Joyce has been following the investigation into what went wrong and how this mysterious tragedy has cha
Dispatches: Bear Grylls Will Never Give Up
Apparently nobody told Bear Grylls that reality TV stars never have long careers. A dozen years after the cheeky Briton exploded onto American television, the king of survival entertainment is charging harder than ever, guiding A-listers into the wild for his NBC show Running Wild with Bear Grylls and launching innovative new series for Facebook and Netflix. He’s also building an adventure theme park in England and hosting a new survival race this spring outside Los Angeles that’s open to anyone
Dispatches: Cheryl Strayed’s Wild Creativity
In her acclaimed 2012 memoir, Wild, Cheryl Strayed delivered a fresh take on outdoor writing—a redemption story set on the Pacific Crest Trail. The book spent seven weeks on the New York Times Best Seller List and reminded people everywhere that a grueling journey through the wilderness can help us overcome almost anything. At last year’s SXSW conference, Tim Ferriss sat down with Strayed for an episode of The Tim Ferriss Show to ask her about her creative process and philosophy. He has
Dispatches: An Amazingly Crappy Story
In 2009, Canadian researcher Geoff Hill asked park managers across North America what problems they needed solved. Every single one of them said human waste. Since then, Hill has been on a quest to figure out what to do about the fact that U.S. national parks get more than 300 million visitors each year, and at some point most of them have to take a dump. So far, every solution has failed. And so with every trip to the outhouse, we’re contaminating groundwater, spreading disease, and co
The Outside Interview: Your Hungry Brain is Making You Fat
If you’ve ever beaten yourself up after eating an entire pint of ice cream, know this: it’s really not your fault. According to obesity researcher and neurobiologist Stephen Guyenet, author of The Hungry Brain and founder of the wellness and science blog Whole Health Source, millions of years of evolution have hardwired us to seek out sugary, fatty, and salty foods. All those calories kept us alive back when we were hunter-gathers. Today they just make us fat. Outside editor Christopher
Dispatches: Red Dawn in Lapland
On the 833-mile border between Finland and Russia, a band of elite Finnish soldiers are preparing to defend the country if Russia decides it wants to again redraw the map of Europe. With tensions still high after the Kremlin’s invasion of Crimea and Ukraine, writer David Wolman went to Finland to find out what this tiny band of Finns can possibly do if the Russian war machine heads their way. Quite a lot, it turns out.
The Outside Interview: Susan Casey Might Have Gills
To write her three bestselling books on the ocean, Susan Casey went deep with great white sharks in California, big-wave surfing icon Laird Hamilton in Hawaii, and wild dolphins around the world. Her willingness to literally immerse herself in the topic of the ocean—she’s a former competitive swimmer—has allowed her to craft captivating stories that chronicle our relationship with the sea. And yet she’s a relative newcomer to the life aquatic. In the mid-nineties, she was Outside’s crea
Science of Survival: He That is Down Need Fear No Fall
Falls are the leading cause of death in the backcountry. Nothing else comes close. And while many are freak accidents that amount to nothing more than bad luck, some are more nuanced and interesting—and personal. If you found yourself stuck at the bottom of a canyon with a broken leg, what would you do? And why? In this episode, we go inside the thought process of a real-life survivor—one who happens to host a podcast about survival.
The Outside Interview: The Whole Life Challenge Is Easier Than You Think
Andy Petranek and Michael Stanwyck know fitness. Petranek was a former adventure racer and RedBull Athlete before founding one of the first CrossFit gyms. Soon after, Stanwyck walked in looking for a new type of workout and quickly became CrossFit LA’s manager. But while their classes made gym members stronger, the pair longed to have a more holistic impact on their clients. In 2011, they created the Whole Life Challenge, a six-week program that focuses on seven lifestyle changes that o
Science of Survival: Bee Still My Heart
Bee venom is similar to a rattlesnake’s. It rapidly disperses in your tissue, and when you’re stung, the pain you feel is a combination of proteins and peptides attacking your cell membranes. Each sting contains enough venom to incapacitate a small mouse, but bees won’t really hurt you unless you’re allergic. Or at least, that’s what you thought until you disturbed a hive of Africanized bees, which have been known to chase attackers for more than ten hours.
Science of Survival: Dangerously Delicious
There are several thousand species of mushroom, but only a handful that will kill you. And the toxins found in poisonous mushrooms are some of the deadliest natural poisons on earth. Just seven milligrams—one quarter of a grain of rice—is enough to kill an adult. When you picked some mushrooms off the forest floor, you planned to make a nice risotto. But now you’re in the hospital, fighting for your life.
Dispatches: The Secret History of Biosphere 2
What if you could opt out of society and go live in a completely self-contained glass bubble in the desert? You and your team would be cut off from the rest of society. For two years, you’d have to grow every morsel of food that you wanted to eat and fix anything and everything that went wrong. That was the plan for the team of scientists that entered Biosphere 2 in the mid-nineties. You may remember that they didn’t make it, but why was it the people on the outside who broke the glass
Science of Survival: Adrift
What happens to people who are swept out to sea? Some survive for months and even years, alone in lifeboats eating whatever they can catch and drinking rainwater. In this episode we ask you, the listener, to imagine a surfing session gone very wrong when a strong offshore wind blows you out into the ocean. You’re alone on your board, at the mercy of the weather. No one knows you’re out here and you have no way of calling for help. Do you have what it takes to endure until a rescue arriv
Science of Survival: Frozen Alive Redux
As we get ready to roll out new Science of Survival episodes beginning November 14, we wanted to replay the one that started it all. This thrilling re-creation of the classic Outside feature by Peter Stark leads the listener through a series of plausible mishaps on a bitterly cold night: a car accident on a lonely road, a broken ski binding that foils a backcountry escape, a disorienting tumble in the snow, and a slow descent into delirious hypothermia before (spoiler alert!) a dramatic
The Outside Interview: Can’t Hack It? Gene-Hack It
Peak performance has always been about getting as close to your genetic potential as possible. The limits of your training, nutrition, and recovery are dictated by your DNA. But what if they weren’t? What if you could change the genetic code you were born with? As sequencing DNA gets cheaper and faster, and gene-editing tools get more precise and easy to use, we’re progressing toward a world where we might all have perfect DNA for our chosen sport—and be able to change it whenever we wa
The Outside Interview: Doc Parsley Solves Your Sleep Crisis
If you want to understand sleep deprivation, you want to talk to a member of the Navy SEALs, who go nearly a week without rest during training. And there’s probably no better Navy SEAL to talk to than Kirk Parsley, the physician who started noticing all sorts of problems with his fellow elite soldiers. They weren’t recovering from workouts, they had trouble concentrating, and they were emotionally unstable. The culprit: they weren’t getting enough zzz’s. After a decade studying the bene
Dispatches: Can Humans Outrun Antelope?
Several decades ago, radio producer Scott Carrier and his brother Dave tried to chase down an antelope on foot. That might sound crazy, but Dave was an evolutionary biologist and had just come up with a radical idea: during the heat of the day, humans can outrun most any creature, even one of the world’s fastest animals. His theory was that humans had evolved as endurance predators, able to hunt without weapons. So the brothers gave it a shot, and Scott produced a story about the effort
The Outside Interview: Dr. Michael Gervais on Mental Mastery
For most athletes, achieving peak performance means training hard, eating right, and maybe some stretching. But when you get to the elite level, where everyone’s doing that, it’s the mental game that makes winners and losers. How hard can you push your body? How much pain can you tolerate? How can you avoid getting psyched out before a big event? If you’re a top-tier professional athlete trying to train your brain, you’re likely going to turn to Michael Gervais, a renowned expert in hi
Dispatches: Captain Jackass
Kevin Fedarko is a celebrated and well-heeled journalist, accustomed to dropping in on an exotic place and extracting a story, often in less than a week. But in 2004, he left his job at Outside and went looking for something deeper and more meaningful: a story forged over months and years. He ended up at the bottom of the Grand Canyon at the helm of a boat full of poop called the Jackass.
The Outside Interview: Laird Hamilton and Gabby Reece on the Extreme Edge of Fitness
More than two decades after he radically transformed big-wave surfing, Laird Hamilton is still a dominant force in the sport. As detailed in the new documentary Take Every Wave, Hamilton is again pushing the edge with his new obsession, hydrofoil surfing. His wife, Gabby Reece, is a former professional volleyball player, model, author, and currently the host of the NBC reality show Strong. At their home in Malibu, Hamilton and Reece have created an elite training boot camp where they to
Dispatches: The Fine Art of Weaponizing Critters
Killer frogs! Forest-destroying moths! Bird-eating mongooses! These may sound like biblical plagues, but they’re the result of bad human decisions. All too often, after an invasive species shows up in an ecosystem and wreaks havoc, our response is to import another species that will eat the first one. Then, of course, the predator turns out to be even worse for the environment. Except now, maybe, we’ve figured out how to do biocontrol right. And as it turns out, some of those infamous m
Dispatches: Jack Johnson Loses His Cool
Jack Johnson is known as the world’s mellowest pop star. A surfer raised on the north shore of Hawaii, his acoustic strumming has been the default soundtrack to good-times beach living for more than 15 years. But these days, something’s up with Jack Johnson. He’s decided that in the current political and social climate, quietly supporting environmental non-profits and greening the music industry isn't enough. He’s ready to speak up, beginning with his new album, All the Light Above It T
XX Factor: 1200 Miles on Blood Road
Rebecca Rusch is called the "Queen of Pain" for a reason. She's a three-time world champion in the 24-Hour Mountain Bike race, the 2011 National XC single-speed champion, and she's won the Leadville 100 mountain bike race four times.
But a couple years ago, Rusch decided to take on an entirely new kind of pain. It would involve an epic ride along the Ho Chi Minh trail to find the crash site where her father, a U.S. Air Force pilot, was shot down when she was just three years old. Her e
XX Factor: Vanessa Garrison Walks the Walk
In 2012, Vanessa Garrison co-founded GirlTrek, an organization with a simple goal: get women walking for 30 minutes a day. Now 110,000 walkers strong, GirlTrek is a national force. The story of GirlTrek is about health, justice, power, and survival. But mostly it’s the story of trying to change your community, and the world, through something as simple as going for a walk. To understand how GirlTrek was started, how it blew up, and where it’s going next, Outside contributing editor Flor
Science of Survival: A Very Scary Fish Story
The swamps of Alabama are one of the most biodiverse places on earth. They’ve been called America’s Amazon for the remarkable number of species of fish, turtles, mussels, and other aquatic creatures that live there. Not so long ago, the Alabama sturgeon was a staple of life in these parts. The funny looking fish swam here for millennia, migrating hundreds of miles up streams to spawn. They were caught and eaten in the tens of thousands. Then, a decade ago, they vanished. To the protecto
XX Factor: How the Sports Bra Changed History
Among most important advances in sports technology, few can compete with the invention of the sports bra. Following the passage of Title IX in 1972, women’s interest in athletics surged. There was just one problem—actually, make that two problems: their breasts. Boob bounce hurts, as women getting in on the jogging craze found out. Then some friends in Vermont had an idea to stitch a couple jock straps together to build a contraption to keep things in place. Their creation revolutionize
Dispatches: Andy Samberg’s Tour de Farce
Nearly every sport can point to a comedy taking aim at its flaws. Hockey has Slap Shot. Car racing has Talladega Nights. Skiing has Hot Dog. And dodgeball has, well, Dodgeball. Now cycling can claim its own: HBO’s Tour de Pharmacy, featuring executive producer Andy Samberg and a laundry list of A-List celebrities. It’s about damn time. Is any sport riper for parody? Besides the rampant doping, there’s the leg shaving, the spandex, the team names, the whiteness, the stuffy British commen
Science of Survival: Racing a Dying Brain
When something goes wrong in the wilderness, someone needs to evacuate and get help. When that someone is you, and every minute counts, the stress is enormous. And you just might not be fast enough. Scott Pirsig and Bob Sturtz were on a spring canoeing adventure in the Boundary Waters, a million-acre wilderness in northern Minnesota, when Bob suddenly started acting weird. He complained of a headache. Then he became disoriented, lost control of his hands, and stopped speaking. He’d suff
XX Factor: The Ice Queen Cometh
You hear about how the Arctic changes people—how it can lead them to lose their minds a little bit, or make dumb mistakes. Then there are those adventurers like Sarah McNair-Landry who are at their best on the ice. McNair-Landry grew up near the Arctic Circle, on Baffin Island. At 18, she joined a skiing expedition to the South Pole. A year later, she became the youngest person to reach both poles. She has since crossed the Greenland ice sheet five times and traversed the Gobi Desert in a kite b
Science of Survival: Drinking Yourself to Death
Water is life, we’re told. But what if you drink too much? As it turns out, there’s a little-discussed flipside to dehydration called hyponatremia—and it's been on the rise, killing athletes and otherwise healthy people every year. And while you may think you know how much you need to drink, chances are you're wrong.
XX Factor: Diana Nyad Goes the Distance
What does it take to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage? According to Diana Nyad, the answer is passion bordering on obsession. Nyad first attempted the 111-mile crossing in 1978. Thirty-five years later, at the age of 64, following four failed efforts that left her devastated, she became the first person to complete the crossing, stroking for 53 hours almost nonstop. During her swims, Nyad encountered near-deadly box jellyfish stings, horrendous saltwater chafing, hallucinations, an
XX Factor: Snowboarding While Iranian
Mona Seraji is the first snowboarder from the Middle East to compete professionally in the Freeride World Qualifier, a series of big-mountain events that attract the best riders in the world. She's also a talented surfer, rock climber, and mountain biker. All this is more impressive when you consider the fact that in her home country of Iran, Seraji faces strict rules about how women can participate in athletics. Women aren’t allowed in sports stadiums, for example. They’re discouraged
Science of Survival: Cloudbusters
Human beings spent centuries trying to control the weather. Then, about 70 years ago, we figured out the basics of what it takes to make it rain. Now, we're controlling more weather than you might think—and on the brink of a technology that may save us from the effects of climate change. But only if we're ok with playing God.
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Science of Survival: The Death Blow
Science can’t fully explain why and how tornadoes form. But on May 31, 2013, all the factors we do understand pointed towards off-the-charts risk in central Oklahoma. Hundreds of amateur storm chasers, professional meteorologists, and thrill-seekers flocked to the area expecting an incredible storm. What actually touched down blew them all away.
XX Factor: A Woman’s Place is on Top
Back when men still believed the “weaker sex” were inferior climbers, Arlene Blum led a women’s ascent of Annapurna, the world’s tenth-highest peak. The 1978 climb put the first women—and first Americans, period—on the summit, but the death of two climbers sparked a controversy. Outside contributing editor Florence Williams talks with Blum and Alpinist editor in chief Katie Ives about why the expedition continues to inspire climbers and stir debate.
XX Factor: Beth Rodden Unpacked
In the 1990s, Beth Rodden was a climbing prodigy, celebrated for her athletic gifts and unwavering discipline. Then, while on an expedition in Central Asia in 2000, she and her small team of friends were kidnapped. That terrifying ordeal—and their daring escape—changed her life in ways she has only recently begun to understand. In a revealing conversation with Outside contributing editor Florence Williams, Rodden opens up about the price of perfectionism, blowing up her marriage to climbing supe
Science of Survival: After the Crash, Part 2
Once Joe Stone learned how to use his paralyzed body, he immediately set an audacious goal: he would race in an Ironman triathlon—despite the fact that no quadriplegic athlete had ever attempted the event. And after that? Well, Joe decided he could go much, much bigger.
Science of Survival: After the Crash, Part 1
Joe Stone doesn’t do anything halfway. Back when he was a skater, he went big. When he partied, he went hard. When he took up skydiving and speed-flying, he flew almost every day. Then one day he crashed and became a C7 quadriplegic. What do you do when you’re addicted to adrenaline but confined to a wheelchair? A lot of stuff that no one else has ever done before.
Science of Survival: The Everest Effect
On the morning of May 25, 2006, Myles Osborne was poised to become one of the last climbers of the season to summit Mount Everest. The weather was perfect, and it seemed nothing would stop his team. Then a flapping of orange fabric caught his eye. He believed it to be a tent—until the fabric spoke: “I imagine you’re surprised to see me here.” The speaker was Lincoln Hall, who'd been reported dead the night before. He was gloveless, frostbitten, and hallucinating—but alive. Osborne's ex
The Outside Interview: Florence Williams on The Nature Fix
What’s the cure for our modern malaise of stress, distraction, and screen addiction? Nature, of course. But while many people advocate the benefits of getting outside, we are only just beginning to understand what really happens to us when we venture out the door. For her new book, The Nature Fix, Outside contributing editor Florence Williams expands on a 2012 feature she wrote about Japanese forest bathing, delving deep into the fascinating science behind the restorative power of wild places. O
Science of Survival: Treed by a Jaguar
In the summer of 1970, Ed Welch and Bruce Frey put in a canoe at the headwaters of the Amazon and shoved off into the current. Their only plan was to travel downstream until it wasn’t fun anymore. They had a rifle, they had a machete, they had a vague idea of how to survive in the jungle. Then a jaguar chased both of them up a tree.
Science of Survival: Line of Blood in the Sand
Denmark's rugged Faroe Islands are known for sheep, rowboats, and a brutal tradition called “The Grind” in which Faroese men butcher hundreds of pilot whales by hand, on the beach, in full view of locals and tourists. Reporter Joel Carnegie traveled to the islands last summer to try to understand the cultural forces that sustain the bloody practice. What's the point if the whales are no longer needed for income or food (and the meat may contain toxic levels of mercury)? And what happens when an
The Outside Interview: Mark Sundeen on the New Pioneers
Writer Mark Sundeen spent the last three years chronicling the lives of three couples who have dropped out of mainstream society, trading cars, technology, and electricity for freedom and hard work on the new American frontier. The result is his latest book, The Unsettlers: In Search of the Good Life in Today's America, a fascinating, timely, and deeply personal examination of what it means to be a non-conformist in the modern age. Editor Chris Keyes talks with the frequent Outside cont
Dispatches: Call of the Wild Things
Wolf howls, bird songs, crickets, frogs—soundscapes contain clues to not only what's going on around us but also who we are. Not just as individuals, but as human beings. Or at least, that's what Bernie Krause says. Krause is a soundscape artist who's spent decades collecting the sounds of the natural world and contemplating their meaning. In this piece, producer Tim Hinman from the podcast Sound Matters talks to Krause about how soundscapes work, what they can tell us about our world,
The Outside Interview: Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell
“If you're not at the table, you're on the menu,” says Sally Jewell. Hopeful, thoughtful, slightly ticked-off, and surprisingly emotional, the outgoing Secretary of the Interior talks with Outside editor Chris Keyes about the presidential election and what it means for the future of public lands. Can environmental protections be dismantled? Will they? Are we going to see an increase in Malheur Wildlife Refuge-style occupations? America's chief steward reflects on leaving her post and wh
Science of Survival: Cliffhanger, Part 3
Dan Futrell and Isaac Stonerand are back from searching through the wreckage of Eastern Airlines Flight 980 on a remote mountain in Bolivia, and their findings have prompted a whole new set of questions. Will anyone look at the material they brought back to the U.S.? Who hired climber Bernardo Guarachi to get to the crash site back in 1985? And why did he never speak to anyone about his ascent? Have the details of the crash remained a mystery because of international cover up or just b
Science of Survival: Cliffhanger, Part 2
Since colliding with a Bolivian mountain in 1985, Eastern Airlines Flight 980 has been frozen inside a glacier perched on the edge of a 3,000-foot drop. With wreckage now melting out of the ice at the base of the cliff, Dan Futrell and Isaac Stoner travel to the debris field at 16,000 feet, battling altitude sickness and a roller coaster of emotions as they search for 980’s missing flight recorder.
Science of Survival: Cliffhanger, Part 1
Since colliding into a Bolivian mountain in 1985, Eastern Airlines Flight 980 has been frozen inside a glacier perched on the edge of a 3,000-foot drop. With wreckage now melting out of ice at the base of the cliff, Dan Futrell and Isaac Stoner travel to the debris field at 16,000 feet, battling altitude sickness and a roller coaster of emotions in search for 980’s missing flight recorder.
Dispatches: National Parks Don’t Need Your Stinkin’ Reverence
John Muir rhapsodizing about Yosemite is one thing, but Outside contributing editor Ian Frazier has had it with people calling their favorite outdoor spots “cathedrals,” “shrines,” and “sacred spaces.” When he made his case in an issue of Outside, it struck a major nerve with readers. Frazier explains his argument, reacts to reader letters, and reads the story that ignited a firestorm.
Dispatches: The Sound of Science
Scientists are compiling huge amounts of data on the impact of global warming, but the story of that data often gets lost. Enter NikSawe, a researcher at Stanford who is transforming big data into music. Two parts science, one art, data sonification turns the numbers we tend to ignore into a very human story, and could potentially help scientists identify new trends and correlations that are easier to hear than to see.
The Outside Interview: The Hard Lessons of Climbing Superstar Conrad Anker
For two decades, Conrad Anker has been at the forefront of climbing, evolving into America’s best all-around alpinist. With skills on rock, ice, and big peaks, he's now something of an elder statesmen and mentor to a new generation of elite athletes. Though perhaps best known for finding the body of legendary British mountaineer George Mallory on Mount Everest in 1999, he is celebrated among climbers for scaling a variety of difficult and dangerous routes on technical peaks around the world. Out
The Outside Interview: The Secret History of Doping
Author Mark Johnson argues that performance enhancing drugs are hardly a recent phenomenon. In his new book, Spitting in the Soup, he traces doping all the way back to the 1904 Olympic marathon in St. Louis and shows how doping and sport have been fundamentally intertwined for more than a century. The only thing new, says Johnson, is our increasingly moralistic view of the practice and the demonization of athletes who get caught. Chris Keyes talks to Johnson about the surprising history of dopin
The Outside Interview: Tim Ferriss Overshares
Tim Ferriss is many things. A bestselling author. A kickboxing champion. A horseback archer. The first American in history to hold a Guinness World Record in tango. He has built an enormous following by doing just about everything—and, more importantly, figuring out how to do it all better than most experts and then sharing what he’s learned with the rest of us. He calls himself a human guinea pig. Outside editor Chris Keyes talks to Ferriss about the origins and evolution of his unique
The Outside Interview: Jason Motlagh on the Darién Gap
Jason Motlagh and his crew were the first journalists in years to successfully cross the Darién Gap, a lawless, roadless jungle on the border of Colombia and Panama. Teeming with deadly snakes, drug traffickers, and antigovernment guerrillas, it has become a pathway for migrants whose desperation to reach the U.S. sends them on a perilous journey. He talks to Chris Keyes about the risks and logistics of the assignment, his motivations as a reporter, and the emotional toll of working in conflict
The Outside Interview: Robert Young Pelton
Robert Young Pelton has made a career of tracking down warlords and interviewing people in the most dangerous places in the world. He's been kidnapped in Colombia, survived an assassination attempt in Uganda, and joined the hunt for Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Outside editor Chris Keyes wanted to know how spending that much time on the edge has affected him in the long term. But the answer's not what you'd think.
Science of Survival: In Too Deep
It could be one of the most incredible, yet perplexing, survival stories of all time: In 1991, a man named Michael Proudfoot was supposedly SCUBA diving on a shipwreck off the coast of Baja, Mexico, when his regulator—or mouthpiece—broke. He was alone, deep underwater inside a sunken ship, with only minutes to survive before he would run out of air. The string of bizarre events that take place next seem unreal.
Science of Survival: Under Pressure
When you’re stuck underwater in a submarine, the number of ways you can die is long and varied—crushing, burning, asphyxiation, exploding, the list goes on and on. Escaping alive requires maintaining calm and making all the right choices. Which makes it all the more surprising that one of the first known submarine survival stories—which includes a 19th century Prussian carpenter and a military crew—involves the first-known undersea fistfight.
Science of Survival: The Devil’s Highway, Part II
For centuries, the Devil’s Highway—a waterless pathway through desert in southern Arizona—was one of the deadliest places in North America, killing thousands of Spanish conquistadors, gold prospectors, and migrants. Construction of a circumnavigating railroad allowed fatalities to taper at the end of the 19th century, but in the early 2000s, the route again became lethal. As immigration crackdown increased along other sections of the U.S.–Mexico border, illegal immigrants resorted to using the d
Science of Survival: The Devil’s Highway, Part I
Thirst is an unpredictable threat. In its early stages, it’s much like mild hunger. For centuries, hydration was as much superstition as science. But historical events at Devil’s Highway—a notoriously deadly path in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona—are proof of dehydration’s deadly risk. It was 1905 when Pablo Valencia, a gold prospector in his 40s, came stumbling into a geology camp, desperate for water. Valencia had spent the past six days wandering a 110-degree desert, where water sources can be
Science of Survival BONUS: Whatever Happens, Happens
One of the most famous accidents in wingsuit history.
Science of Survival: Struck by Lightning
Most of the time, when lightning makes the news, it’s because of an outlandish happening, seemingly too strange to be true. Like the park ranger who was struck seven times. Or the survivor who also won the lottery (the chances of which are about one in 2.6 trillion). Or the guy who claimed lightning strike gave him sudden musical talent. This is not one of those stories. This is about Phil Broscovak—who was struck by lightning while on a climbing trip with family in 2005—and the reality
Science of Survival: Frozen Alive
This thrilling re-creation of the classic hypothermia feature by Peter Stark brings the listener through a series of plausible mishaps on a bitterly cold night: a car accident on a lonely road, a broken ski binding that foils a backcountry escape, a disorienting tumble in the snow, and a slow descent into delirious hypothermia before (spoiler alert!) a dramatic rescue. "I started thinking about how one little mistake leads to another and another in an accumulation of mistakes that leads
Science of Survival
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