Wild Ideas Worth Living

When we’re fantasizing about our next outdoor trip, we often conveniently forget about the less-than-glamorous parts. Backpacker Diana Helmuth talks about the realities of getting on the trail in her hilarious book “How to Suffer Outside: A Beginner's Guide to Hiking and Backpacking”.  Diana is skilled at making even the most mundane subjects funny, interesting and informative for everyone. In thi...

Maria Hines is an award-winning chef and an avid rock climber and adventurer. In 2005 Maria was named one of Food & Wine Magazine’s 10 Best New Chefs, and she’s competed on TV shows like Top Chef Masters and Iron Chef America. But when Maria is on the trail for an early morning hike or climb, she doesn’t have time to bring a five course meal. Instead, she’s figured out a way to bring healthy, conv...

You can find new episodes every Tuesday with these guests and others on Wild Ideas Worth Living. Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or wherever you get your podcasts. This month's lineup:  March 1st: Chef Maria Hines is a James Beard Award-winner and author of Peak Nutrition, a book all about the food we can use to fuel our bodies for outdoor adventures. March 8th: Diana Helmuth is the author of...

Life coach and author Nicol Hodges is a lifelong runner. In high school and college, running track taught her discipline and training techniques. As an adult, running has improved Nicol’s mental health and helped her move through challenging seasons. Now, Nicol is running for justice. ​​After Black healthcare worker Breonna Taylor was murdered by Louisville police in 2020, Nicol printed out a race...

Angela Medlin is a legendary outdoor and athletic gear designer, with a resumé boasting positions at the Jordan brand at Nike, Adidas, The North Face, Eddie Bauer and Levi Strauss. During her 25 year career, she was often the only person of color in her design department. It’s a big reason she decided to leave the corporate world — instead of working at these brands herself, she wanted to train an...

This spring, Eddie Taylor will be one of the climbers making history on the first all-Black team to attempt to summit Mount Everest. Their trek is called The Full Circle Everest Expedition. By day, Eddie is a high school Chemistry teacher and track coach in Colorado, but before work and on the weekends, he’s out scaling rock faces or ice climbing frozen waterfalls. Now, he is embarking on a new ty...

When facing struggles in his own life, Marcus Bridgewater found solace in the garden. By taking care of plants, he was inspired to take better care of himself. Now, Marcus is sharing his garden-inspired insights with the masses on social media. As one of the nation’s most noteworthy plant influencers or “plantfluencers”, Marcus has gone viral on platforms like TikTok . He shares tips, tricks, and...

Adaptive athlete and podcast host Tim Brown is a lifelong outdoor sports enthusiast. But an accident while working ski patrol in 2011 rendered him quadriplegic. After years of therapy and a lot of hard work, Tim made it his mission to get back out into nature, doing the sports he loves. In 2021 he launched a podcast called The Unexpected Journey, where he speaks with other disabled folks about the...

When Elena Cheung first took a yoga class, she didn't like it. It was harder than she had anticipated and she wasn't flexible. She started to love it when she leaned into the discomfort and realized the benefits of doing something that was both physically and mentally challenging.  Fast forward to today, and Elena is a movement specialist and yoga teacher who has worked with a wide range of people...

Connor Ryan is a professional skier and proud Hunkpapa Lakota. As an athlete who spends his days in the mountains, Connor is always exploring how he can weave together his Indigenous culture and his love of winter sports. To highlight the relationship between skiing and his heritage, Connor recently made a film with Natives Outdoors and REI Co-op Studios called Spirit of the Peaks. The film is all...

Wild Ideas Worth living features high-impact interviews for those who love adventure and the outdoors. Host and journalist Shelby Stanger interviews world-class explorers, athletes, authors, scientists, health experts, and entrepreneurs about how they’ve taken their own wild ideas and made them a reality, so you can too. Some of the wildest ideas can lead to the most rewarding adventures. Take a l...

Our guests this season were all about breaking boundaries, shaking things up  and challenging the norm. There were some wild ones: the most enthusiastic birder, a Bigfoot scholar, some of the world’s fastest athletes and a handful of musicians. We talked to a lot of people working to make the outdoors a more inclusive, accessible place. We learned about why nature is good for us from advocates and...

The third and final episode in our series with On Running is all about recovery with professional steeplechaser Leah Falland. In combination with great training and a strategic recovery plan, in 2021 Leah has become one of the top 20 steeplechasers in the world, and this past season, she ran a personal best for the first time in five years. Leah’s success wouldn’t be possible without a big focus o...

The second episode in our bonus series with On Running is all about training. Sometimes when you’re working on improving your endurance, speed, or form, you can get stuck in a running rut. That’s why it’s important to train your mind and your body. In 2014, pro trail and mountain runner Allie McLoughlin won the World Long Distance Mountain Running Championship, and in 2020 she won the US Trail Mar...

As the new year rolls around, there’s a lot of talk of resolutions. For some of us, that means creating new goals that help us get outside and move our bodies. In that spirit, we’ve partnered with On Running to bring you a series of episodes about three important aspects of running.  This first episode is all about nutrition and features internationally renowned long distance runner Alicia Monson....

When Gina Lucrezi fell in love with trail running in her 20s, she didn't see many other women out on the trail. Gina craved a community of female runners that she could connect with, so she decided to create Trail Sisters, a national organization that supports and inspires women to get into trail running. Now, Trail Sisters has over 130 chapters across the U.S., Canada, and Europe. By starting thi...

Christian Gering is a multimedia artist and one of the fastest ultra runners in America. Even though he’s built a career as a sponsored athlete, he doesn’t just run to win races. For Christian, running connects him with his Indigenous heritage and inspires him to create. Hailing from Katishtya (San Felipe Pueblo) and the Pi'pil people of El Salvador, Christian discovered that running can be a form...

When he’s not running, Lesford is the Senior Director of Programs at Outdoor Outreach, an organization that connects kids to the transformative power of nature. It’s not just about surfing or climbing — Outdoor Outreach teaches them about sustainability and advocacy. When these kids spend time outside, they’re discovering new passions, building confidence and connecting with peers and mentors.  Ot...

Ryan Kinder isn’t your average Nashville musician. In addition to recently releasing his full length album Room to Dream, Ryan is an endurance athlete. What started as a way to honor a friend’s passing has now become a full blown obsession with Ironman triathlon competitions. With six Ironman races under his belt, Ryan spends time between recording sessions training hard for his next race, and he’...

Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, is the subject of campfire stories and heated conversation as people ponder Bigfoot’s existence. You can go down a YouTube rabbit hole and find convincing evidence on either side of the debate. Cliff Barackman has dedicated much of his life to studying Bigfoot. He owns the North American Bigfoot Center in Boring, Oregon, and he was one of the main experts featured...

Professional surfer Pete Devries surfs waves that not many have experienced. That’s because he lives in Tofino, B.C., and spends most of his time surfing the frigid waters up north. Pete has traveled to plenty of more tropical locales during his career, but he feels at home in Tofino. Plus the chilly temps mean he’s often the only one in the water. He spends his days traveling to untouched rocky c...

Climber Alannah Yip spent her summer competing on the international stage in Tokyo, Japan. Even though she’s been a competitive climber since she was six years old, this competition was unlike anything she’d ever done before. It was the first year that rock climbing was included on the international athletics circuit, and in order to participate Alannah had to overcome some major obstacles. Follow...

Florence Williams has spent years researching the physical and mental impact of spending time outside. She’s a journalist, author and podcaster whose work focuses on how our environment shapes our wellbeing. In Florence’s book, The Nature Fix, she sets out to explain how the outdoors can improve our health, promote reflection, stimulate innovation, and strengthen our relationships. In this episode...

In early 2021, Misha Euceph spent six weeks on the road visiting national parks and recording a new podcast series for REI Co-op Studios called Hello, Nature . As a Pakistani-American writer, podcast host and journalist, Misha set out to find the new, lesser known stories of America's national parks through the lens of Black, Indigenous, and people of color.  Misha’s interest in national parks is...

When we’re alone in nature, all of our senses are heightened — which can be wonderful, but it can also be intimidating. There's a lot of messaging out there that tells us doing things alone isn't safe. Nicole Snell, self defense instructor and owner of Girls Fight Back , believes in solo adventuring and wants to provide people with the tools and confidence to get out there. Nicole has trained so s...