Outside Podcast

After My Octopus Teacher won the Oscar for Best Documentary, the producers realized they had left an important voice out of their movie—indigenous South Africans who had been silenced and separated from the ocean by apartheid. In the new podcast “Back to the Water,” Pippa Ehrlich and Zolani Mahola explore the relationship between South Africans, their history, and the sea. Listen to the full serie...

Caroline Gleich is a renowned climber and skier, a climate activist, and now the Utah democratic party’s candidate for US Senate. But what would she actually do in Washington? And does she have a chance of getting elected? Gleich joined author and conservationist Luis Benitez onstage at the Outside Festival in Denver in early June to talk about how life in the mountains has prepared her for life i...

What does a professional kayaker do when he realizes he’s in the twilight of his career? He releases a rap album, of course. Producer Paddy O’Connell sits down with pro kayaker and musician Rush Sturges to find out how the many paths in his life have led to the most eclectic rap album you’ve ever heard. The Outside Podcast is made possible by Outside+ subscribers. Learn more about all the benefits...

Three days in total blackout darkness doesn’t sound that hard, until you hear this story about someone who tried to do it. Following in the footsteps of a famous quarterback who made headlines for his dark cave retreat, Outside writer Tim Neville went underground looking for nothing. And wow did he find it. The Outside Podcast is made possible by Outside+ subscribers. Learn more about all the bene...

If your family dog ran off on its first camping trip, how far would you go to get them back? Scott and Shelby Prue had to ask themselves this question repeatedly on a trip to West Virginia when Holly, their Labrador mix, took off into the forest. Things quickly got weird, then they got scary. The Outside Podcast is made possible by Outside+ subscribers. Learn more about all the benefits of a subsc...

Is the Aurora Borealis magic, science, or something in between? For photographer Hugo Sanchez, the Aurora is an obsession he discovered when he picked up a camera to photograph a meteor shower. He was hooked. And then tragedy struck. The Outside Podcast is made possible by Outside+ subscribers. Learn more about all the benefits of a subscription and subscribe now at outsideonline.com/podplus

When the British Empire finally put boots on top of the world on May 29, 1953, the news was entrusted to a young man named Ten Tsewang Sherpa, who ran 200 miles to Kathmandu. Likely the last piece of world news sent by runner, he delivered the message and died. And his story was lost until now. See pictures and videos from the original article here. The Outside Podcast is made possible by Outside+...

Athletes train for years to overcome pain, exhaustion, and fatigue. But some people take it too far and are never the same again. In this episode from 2019, Outside contributor Meaghan Brown started looking into this strange phenomenon, and found a bunch of frustrated athletes, and confused doctors. Read Meaghan's original story on Overtraining Syndrome. The Outside Podcast is made possible by Out...

When PTSD changed the course of Chad Brown’s life, the subtle art of catch and release fly fishing changed it back. In this episode, the filmmaker, fisherman, soldier, and survivor tells the story of how giving back—to his community, to the river, to the fish—gave him a template for rebuilding his life. The Outside Podcast is made possible by Outside+ subscribers. Learn more about all the benefits...

Movies don’t get much better than surfer-heist popcorn flick Point Break (1991). Movies don’t really get much worse than surfer-heist popcorn flick Point Break (2015). What happened? Each week on the movie and culture podcast Captive Audience, regular Outside contributor Alex Ward and his co-hosts break down a classic film that one of them hasn’t seen. This week, they invited Outside Podcast host...

'Forever Chemicals' keep mud out of your boots, and make rain jackets waterproof, but they’re about to be illegal. Back in 2013, footwear maker Keen decided to try and figure out the formula for keeping everyone dry without poisoning our drinking water and contaminating our soil. Could they make high performance boots and shoes without causing cancer and suppressing the immune system? Would the re...

Where did eagles come from? Why are grizzly bears so mean? In this Audible Original excerpt, host James Dommek Jr—the great-grandson of a famous Iñupiaq storyteller— travels around the state listening to legends from different cultures and traditions. The result is a beautiful portrait of life in the north, and a new twist on the idea of a survival story. Alaska isn't the last frontier, it's the c...

Singer-songwriter David Lindes found his way into running with help from the most unexpected teacher: a bull moose. Growing up in Guatemala David had learned to ignore his body. Thanks to beatings by his adults, his body was a source of pain, and not much else. So he didn’t play sports, he didn’t dance, he found out later he wasn’t even walking correctly. But as an adult, as he started to heal, he...

We think of New York as having a rat problem, but cats are doing just as much damage. They hunt staggering numbers of birds, they carry parasites that cause birth defects, they spread diseases that wash into the ocean and kill sea otters and seals. NYC’s cat population is exploding. There are more cats in North America than ever before. Reporter Meg Duff investigates what, if anything, might be do...

Look around the start line of an endurance race and you don’t see many tall competitors. Look on the podium, and you never see any. Why is that? Why don’t tall people win endurance races? Host Peter Frick-Wright and producer Paddy O’Connell are pretty much the two tallest athletes in all of the outdoors. Will they ever be champion runners? No they will not. But the reasons why might surprise you....

When Marty Moose strolled into Santa Fe looking for a mate, he became a viral sensation in New Mexico. But that did nothing to help his search for love—and it created big issues for wildlife managers. Moose don’t usually wander that far south. Marty got a lot of “likes” but eventually his notoriety began to cause problems. Producer Steph Joyce explores why we all have such a hard time around celeb...

People dream of boating or swimming with whales. But that’s based on the false assumption that they are gentle giants that don’t bother humans. But they’re not. And they do. Just ask Liz Cottriel and Julie McSorley, who found themselves kayaking off California’s Central Coast when a group of humpback whales began feeding all around them. Producer Aaron Scott reports on how the dream of boating wit...

How do you make the best of a golf addiction? Add running. That’s the formula contributor Alex Ward tried to perfect a few months ago, when he started figuring out a way to turn his rounds of golf into real exercise. Would golf be an endurance sport if he played sunrise to sunset? What if he wore running gear, carried just three clubs, and played this notoriously slow and calm sport absolutely as...

Adventures can provide fuel for romance, but only if you know how to take what you learned in the mountains back home. Just askPaddy O’Connell. Paddy loves two things: fresh pow, and his wife, Carly. On their one-year wedding anniversary, the cutest couple in all of the outdoors ventured to Portillo, Chile to contemplate their affection for skiing and each other. And eat great food. And get massag...

The abandoned vehicle where Chris McCandless died teaches us a lot about modern Alaska. Ever since Outside published Jon Krakauer’s feature about the young, adventurous drifter who attempted to live off the land near Denali National Park, people have been making the pilgrimage to Bus 142 to see it for themselves. But the hike involves a dangerous river crossing. So after two drownings and countles...

Before she became famous for her lawsuits against former President Trump, the writer took a road trip for an Outside story that had her asking total strangers if they had sex outdoors. Her destination: the many American towns named Eden. Were Americans copulating in the gardens of Eden? She was in a car that she had hand-painted with blue polka dots and green frogs, her snacks consisted of cakes a...

What’s an acceptable baseline of fitness? What should you be able to do off-the-couch? For some people it’s running a mile. For others, it’s a marathon. In the waning days of his presidency, Theodore Roosevelt decided that for members of the American military, it would be a 50-mile hike, completed in 20 hours. Late last year Outside contributing editor Tom Vanderbilt decided he wanted to get a sen...

Is Taylor Swift an elite endurance athlete? On the Eras tour, the singer-songwriter is performing three nights a week, singing and dancing for as long as it takes most people to run a marathon. When ultrarunner and Outside editor Zoë Rom read about the six-month fitness program Swift used to prepare for the tour, she decided to give it a try—and quickly learned that being a pop star is harder than...

After a certain number of hours, endurance races are basically eating competitions. We spend years training our bodies for peak performance on race day. Producer Maren Larsen wanted to know: how do you train your stomach? The Outside Podcast is made possible by Outside+ subscribers. Learn more about all the benefits of a subscription and subscribe now at outsideonline.com/podplus

In-N-Out Burger’s iconic palm trees are a reference to buried treasure, but they also make the restaurant a very unlikely climate change indicator. As the chain expands into places where palm trees can’t yet grow, science writer Meg Duff wondered: Does In-N-Out know something we don’t? The Outside Podcast is made possible by Outside+ subscribers. Learn more about all the benefits of becoming a mem...