Outside Podcast

Outside

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, and have since expanded our show and now offer a range of story formats, including reports from our correspondents in the field and interviews with the biggest figures in sports, adventure, and the outdoors.

Subscribe Listen in podnod RSS feed Show website

468 episodes
Updated Saturday

Episodes468

Newest first

Saturday · 26 min
Long Read! 40 Years, Zero Kills. We Spent a Weekend with Colorado's Least-Successful Elk Hunter
It's Saturday, which means it's time for another Long Read, with Outside Magazine's Features Editor, Fred Drier. This week's story is "40 Years, Zero Kills. We Spent a Weekend with Colorado's Least Successful Elk Hunter", by Devon O'Neill. This story profiles a guy named Carl Cochiarella, a dedicated Colorado bow hunter who, despite his best efforts, hasn't ever killed an elk with a bow and arrow. Devin pitched us this idea to write about a regular guy who's wildly passionate about his outdoor sport, yet hasn't had any real success at it, and we immediately knew it was an Outside story. Carl's story is pretty relatable to anyone who's ever raced a bicycle, competed in a marathon, or tried to set a PR and ultimately has come up short. If your favorite way to read is with your ears, we encourage you to join OutsidePlus. It gives you unlimited access to everything in the Outside Network, including more audio stories from Outside, Backpacker, Climbing, Ski, and more. Plus, you get mapping apps like Trailforks, Gaia GPS, and Map MyFitness.
Wednesday · 59 min
LIVE! Proof That World-Feeding Chef José Andrés is an Actual Superhero
Today, we are taking you back to the Ideas Stage of this year’s Outside Days festival in Denver. Outside’s media GM, Mary-Frances Heck (a James Beard Award winner herself) interviews chef and humanitarian José Andrés. José is an award-winning chef. Maybe you’ve been lucky enough to eat at one of his 40 restaurants around the globe. José doesn’t just cook up tasty vittles in his restaurants though. He’s the founder of World Central Kitchen, a non-profit food relief organization that has served over 500 million meals worldwide. And his calling to serve people around the planet is real, as is his calling to be absolutely hilarious on stage. Did José pour wine into the crowd before tossing ham around the concert hall like a frisbee? Well, you’ll just have to listen to find out.
July 25 · 36 min
Long Read! To Hold His Breath for 24 Minutes, a Freediver Learned to Turn Off His Brain
It's Saturday, which means it's time for another Long Read, with Outside Magazine's Features Editor, Fred Drier. This week on the podcast, we have a story titled The Man Who Held His Breath for 24 Minutes, written by Sean Williams. This story was published in October of 2025. The story focuses on a Croatian freediver named Budimir Sobat and the amazing transformation he went through in order to become one of the world's best athletes at holding his breath underwater. Now, Outside has written about freediving before, most famously in 2020, when author James Nestor wrote the piece Open Your Mouth and You're Dead about the World Freediving Championships. What Sobot is doing is slightly different. Rather than diving hundreds of feet below the surface, he's descending just a few feet below the water. But he's holding his breath there for a really, really long time. Without further ado, the man who held his breath for 24 minutes by Sean Williams.
July 22 · 55 min
Don’t Worry, the Yellowstone Super Volcano Won’t Kill Us All, with Ben Bradford
There are plenty of spooky things out there to make your palms extra sweaty: brown recluse bites, a flat tire in the backcountry, what to do when folks sing “Happy Birthday.” But things like climate change, nuclear war, or any other number of human world enders have a special way of keeping us up at night. In his new show, “Are We Doomed?”, journalist Ben Bradford explores the existential threats facing humanity, everything from the Yellowstone Super Volcano to another Big Bang to AI overlords. Despite the dark cloud subject matter, Ben investigates through the lens of awe and hope, something he learned from his time hiking and camping. It wasn’t until recently that Ben was (mostly unwillingly) dragged into the outdoor life by friends and his much-more-athletic-than-him girlfriend. And after witnessing the Perseids burning up in our atmosphere and comprehending our place in geologic time while staring at desert rock formations, Ben discovered the thing that has kept humanity going and will continue to keep us going despite the capital S scary stuff: Hope.
July 18 · 31 min
Long Read! 32 Hours, 135 Miles, and 118 Degrees: What It Takes to Crew the Hardest Race on Earth
Check out the new Long Reads, now with a real human voice! Outside Magazine Featured Editor Fred Drier is here to spin a tale about ultrarunning grit, determination, and transcendence ... and we're not even talking about the competitors. You may have heard about the Badwater 135. It's a running race that starts at the depths of Death Valley and goes all the way up to the trailhead at Mount Whitney. It's 135 miles, the runners go across scorching desert terrain and they cover a ton of elevation gain. You can't do the Bad Water 135 all by yourself. You need a crew to drive behind you in a follow car, get your food and drink and sunscreen ready, and also pace you across crucial stretches. This past year, Devin embedded with a crew for a Badwater 135 runner and told a story about what it's like to be in a hot van driving over more than a hundred miles following a person and keeping them going from start to finish. We hope you enjoy it.
July 15 · 48 min
LIVE! Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien on How the Welsh Countryside Saved His Soul
Ed O’Brien is a songwriter and guitarist best known for his work with Radiohead, one of the most influential bands of the past three decades. What Ed isn’t known for—at least not until now—is the crushing mental health challenges he faced during the COVID pandemic. That “dark night of the soul,” as he refers to it, was only relieved by a re-ordering of his life around the Welsh countryside, where Ed was able to regain control and perspective thanks to barefoot walks in winter and birdsong. The whole experience is captured in his new album, and the accompanying short film, “Blue Morpho.” Ed joined PaddyO on the Ideas stage at Outside Days to tell us more.
July 8 · 31 min
PaddyO’s in the Hot Seat in Our First Ever Mailbag
A few months back, we asked you to send us any and all the questions you have on what it takes to create a weekly podcast about the surprising impacts of a life outside. And, dear listener, you sent in some stellar inquiries. Today, angry Care Bear co-producer Micah Abrams is flipping on his mic and turning the tables on host PaddyO. Micah acts as your proxy, asking PaddyO your questions. Ever wonder why he wanted to do an ultramarathon? Or what his favorite post-adventure meal is? Or what HIS hottest outdoor hot take is? You have questions, we have answers.
July 1 · 49 min
How to Deal With a Shark (and Other Wildlife Lessons), with Pippa Ehrlich
Even people who are uncomfortable getting in above their waist can be transformed by the ocean. But most of us connect with being on the water, not under it. What lies beneath our oceans is closer to another planet than anything on land, and the intrepid few who feel at home in this alien world are more like astronauts than typical outdoors folk. Filmmaker and diver Pippa Ehrlich is one of these astronauts. Pippa is the co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary “My Octopus Teacher,” which explores the unique relationship between an octopus and a free diver. The film was a natural extension of a life lived largely underwater—scuba and freediving have defined her adult life, and inspired her to explore the human/wildlife connection through other films like the more recent “Pangolin: Kulu’s Journey.” Above water or below it, Pippa’s a keen observer of our outdoor environments, the creatures we share them with, and how all three things intersect in beautiful and surprising ways. And, if you don’t believe, just ask her about the baboon who stole her phone.
June 24 · 50 min
Why Raw Cookie Dough is Worse Than Cooked Possum, with Andrew Zimmern
If you’re a fan of food TV, you’ve probably seen chef and TV host Andrew Zimmern, whose hit show “Bizarre Foods” ran for 13 seasons and had him eating everything from guinea pigs to clotted cow’s blood. Andrew has made a career following the rumble in his belly—and a love of fishing and hunting—on way-out-there adventures in places like Madagascar and Colombia. Before his big break on TV, Andrew was one of the hottest young chefs in New York City. Then drug addiction and alcoholism derailed his career, his outdoor pursuits, and nearly his life itself. When Andrew uprooted to Minnesota to get sober, he learned two things that saved him: You’ve got to ask for help in order to get it and when you don’t believe in anything, go outside to find something. Which, of course, led him to the opinion that possum tastes better than raw cookie dough, and gas station pizza may just be the best post adventure food of all time.
June 17 · 46 min
Are You a “Struggle Runner”? With Mrs. Space Cadet (aka Erin Azar)
Chances are you have a storage space, garage, car trunk, and slash or cornucopia of plastic bins double stuffed with outdoor gear; anything and everything you need to get outside and get rad. But the most valuable piece of gear is something you can’t buy at your local shop: a sense of humor. Professional struggle runner Erin Azar knows this all too well. Erin is a runner and social media personality better known by her online persona, “Mrs. Space Cadet.” She amassed nearly 2 million followers by posting hilarious, unfiltered videos documenting her triumphs and mostly sweaty, out of breath trials as a burgeoning runner. In 2019, a few months after giving birth to her third child. Erin made a funny video about trying to run to the end of the road and back. It…blew up and she’s been lacing up runners and turning the camera on ever since. But she’s no formulaic, overly manicured, highly produced, and typical running influencer. Erin is just a regular ole person who likes to run and knows it’s a helluva lot more fun and a helluva lot easier to make it a few more miles when she's laughing at herself.
June 13 · 43 min
BONUS! I Traced an Anthropologist's Deadly Obsession with the Dark World of Kanaima
Do you have opinions about our use of automated voices on the Long Reads episodes? Tell us! https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/8881338/11781bd91e29 Every now and then, the writers at Outside discover a story that is set in the outdoors, but is about something much, much larger—sometimes these stories are about universal truths or paradigm-shifting discoveries. And sometimes, they cross into areas that escape our comprehension altogether. Today’s tale is one of those, and, after listening, you’ll never look at a moving leaf in the woods the same way. Join Frank Bures as he retraces the journey of an anthropologist named Neal Whitehead through the forests and indigenous communities of Guyana. Whitehead begins looking for evidence of the societies that gave rise to the legend of El Dorado, but stumbles instead upon an ancient tradition of witchcraft known as “kanaima.” (kah-knee-muh) What follows is a story of curiosity turned to obsession, and several brushes with apparently supernatural forces that are anything but benign—and that’s before Bures arrives in Guyana nearly twenty years after Whitehead, after which it just gets weirder. Please enjoy “I Traced an Anthropologist's Deadly Obsession with the Dark World of Kanaima” by Frank Bures … unless you don’t like ghost stories, in which case, maybe sit this one out?
June 10 · 47 min
All Gas No Brakes Adventure, with Comedian Brooks Wheelan
Sandbagging is a right of passage in adventure. When a pal or significant other deliberately undersells the difficulty or intensity of an adventure in order to convince you to join, despite the fact that you’re either new to the sport in question or woefully under-trained slash unprepared for the outing, has a special way of pushing you out of your comfort zone and revealing that we are pretty tough after all. Sandbagging always involves two people: the ass kicker and the ass kick-ee. Unless of course you’re stand up comedian Brooks Wheelan and you enjoy kicking the crap outta your own ass. Brooks is a devoted outdoorsman who has deployed an “all gas, no brakes” attitude when it comes to both adventure and his career. Never been rafting before? No problemo, Brooks will boat the Grand Canyon. Get hired on Saturday Night Live without ever being on TV? Pssh, piece of cake. Turns out there is immense value in getting pushed beyond your limits, even when—or maybe especially when—you’re the one doing the pushing.
June 6 · 1 hr 19 min
BONUS! Death on Shishapangma
Howdy pals. It’s Saturday, which means it’s time for another Long Read podcast from the Outside Archive. Tragic endings are all too common in the Himalaya, but the 2024 deaths of Anna Gutu and Gina Rzucidlo on the relatively obscure Tibetan mountain Shishapangma resonated beyond the cloistered world of 8,000-meter climbing. The two women died in separate avalanches on the same day, raising troubling questions about how accessible these peaks have become and how the business of guiding has evolved. Outside always covers these incidents with empathy, authority, and exacting attention to detail, and journalist Gloria Liu’s comprehensive reconstruction of both women’s journeys to Shishapangma—as well as her breathless hour-by-hour account of the final day—is no different. She tells the story of two women who were accomplished and driven but not elite level climbers, who both set out to become the first American woman to climb all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks. Coincidence found them trying to claim that prize on the same mountain, on the same day; competition had them each making decisions that everyone on the mountain that day would come to regret. This is “Death on Shishapangma”, by Gloria Liu, read by a friendly robot.
June 3 · 48 min
Vermonters are Tough; Adaptive Vermonters are Even Tougher, With Allie Bianchi
We will look for all sorts of things to fuel our adventures: the new electrolyte drink mix, the fancy sport goo, any and every type of futuristic gear. But mostly the best thing to get us outside is already inside of us in the form of a good old fashioned eff this attitude. Allie Bianchi grew up in the gritty Vermont outdoor community. A skier, hiker, mountain biker, no matter the weather or circumstance, Allie was always outside. So even after a life-altering mountain bike crash forced her to relearn everything from a wheelchair, Allie was determined to remain active in her pursuits. But doctors told her that she had to accept a sedentary wheelchair-bound life, needing round the clock assistance. Allie said, “F*ck that! I’m going outside.” She has set her sights on The Driving Range, the nation’s first fully adaptive mountain bike trail network in the US. Located in Bolton, Vermont. With the help of adaptive sports organizations like the Kelly Brush Foundation and Vermont Adaptive, as well as the devoted outdoor community she comes from, Allie is indeed still out there, getting after it.
May 30 · 37 min
Bonus! Want to Climb Mount Everest? The Training May Leave You Breathless
Howdy pals. It’s Saturday, which means it’s time for another Long Read podcast from the Outside Archive. We assume, dear listener, that you find Mount Everest interesting. We assume that because, over the decades, many of our most popular articles and podcasts have been about the world’s tallest mountain, and the fascination it inspires in climbers and non-climbers alike. And today’s Long Read podcast is a story that connects the dots between both kinds of people. Over the last twenty years, climbing Everest has evolved from something only attempted by elite mountaineers to the apex of adventure tourism. And this evolution has had all kinds of interesting impacts on how these climbers train for their attempts. So our Long Reads editor, Fred Drier, went deep into training mode with two very different amateur Everest aspirants, to learn how you train to get to twenty nine thousand feet if you only live at five thousand feet. Or zero thousand feet. Depending on your personal disposition, this story will either convince you that you have what it takes to climb the world’s tallest mountain, or make you perfectly comfortable in the knowledge that you’re never going to try. Either way, you’re going to be entertained. Please enjoy “Want to Climb Mount Everest? The Training May Leave You Breathless” by Fred Drier, read by a friendly robot. f your favorite way to read is with your ears, I encourage you to join Outside Plus. It gives you unlimited access to everything in the Outside Network, including more audio stories from Outside, Backpacker, Climbing, SKI, and more. Plus mapping apps like Trailforks, Gaia GPS, and MapMyFitness. And for our podcast listeners, we have a special offer for 25% off. Head to outside.watch/listen to learn more.
May 27 · 51 min
Cracking Open the Outdoors (And Maybe Spacetime) Through Sculpture, with Cannupa Hanska Luger
Unless you grew up inside a tumbleweed, chances are you remember your outdoorsy firsts. The first time your dad took you hiking, the time your mom helped you reel in your first fish, the first big family camp out or ski trip or the road trip to your first National Park. But there are those special few whose connection to the outdoors predates every single memory, folks like artist Cannupa Hanksa Luger. Cannupa is a sculptor, painter, author, and performer, and his work and worldview is rooted in an understanding he developed as a kid working, playing, and living on his family’s ranch on the Standing Rock Reservation. Cannupa’s art defies genre, but he is always playing with a multidimensional concept of time and memory and uses the natural world to shape his pieces. If that sounds pretty out there, well, it is. But it’s because Cannupa and his art exist in a world where the past and future are always present, and there’s no such thing as “inside” at all.
May 23 · 23 min
Bonus! The Great Bedrock Clog Heist
It’s Saturday, which means it’s time for another Long Read podcast from the Outside Archive. Today’s story combines two things that you don’t expect to go well together but wind up really working, like peanut butter and cucumbers (try it, seriously). In this case, those two things are cool camp footwear and … international grand larceny? Writer Scott Yorko tells the unlikely story of how Bedrock Sandles—one of those great “if you know, you know” outdoor brands—was pushed to the brink of insolvency when its first shipment of a new clog was hijacked by thieves after arriving at a Los Angeles port. It’s one part underdog business profile and one part hardboiled detective tale. By the end, you’re both rooting for the scrappy team at Bedrock and feeling significantly less comfortable with how vulnerable our entire economy is to the growing threat posed by these crime rings. And, it’s a great reminder that, no matter how intricate and snarled global supply chains become, there’s always a human being at the other end of every purchase you make. Now, please enjoy “The Great Bedrock Clog Heist”, by Scott Yorko, read by a friendly robot. And remember, if your favorite way to read is with your ears, I encourage you to join Outside Plus. It gives you unlimited access to everything in the Outside Network, including more audio stories, plus mapping apps like Trailforks, Gaia GPS, and MapMyFitness. And for our podcast listeners, we have a special offer for 25% off. Head to outside dot watch slash listen to learn more.
May 20 · 28 min
The Unexpected Ultrarunning/Rock and Roll Connection, with Ben Gibbard
The Outside Days festival Denver is coming up fast, and you should come! If you need further convincing, check out one of our favorite episodes from the vault, which just so happens to feature the frontman for festival headliner Death Cab For Cutie: Ben Gibbard. The singer, songwriter, and guitarist applies the same approach to ultramarathons that he does to touring: just keep moving. Ben got into distance running almost by accident, randomly entering a trail race in Northern California without realizing the trail went uphill, then dowhill…and back uphill. Somehow, he instantly fell in love with the grind of long distance endurance running. Ben has since entered close to 50 races, training hard even when he’s on the road with Death Cab For Cutie. For Ben, running is a way to connect back to the playfulness of childhood and embrace the unknowns that come with pushing your body and soul to the limit. Enjoy the episode and check out Death Cab For Cutie and more at this year’s Outside Days.
May 16 · 18 min
BONUS! Why Does Yellowstone National Park Turn Us All into Maniacs?
Howdy folks. PaddyO here with a special treat: We’re going to be sharing some of our favorite feature stories from Outside Magazine and Outside Online every Saturday. We call these our “Long Reads,” and they’re the kind of eye-opening, sometimes heart-pounding, always inspiring-you-to-go-outside storytelling Outside has done for decades. Think of it as a weekend couch read type thing, but one you can do with your eyes closed. These stories are made possible, first and foremost, by the intrepid reporting and deft phrase-turning of our ace writers. And, second, by wild advances in text-to-audio technology—I bet you won’t even notice that you’re listening to a robot. If your favorite way to read is with your ears, I encourage you to join Outside Plus. It gives you unlimited access to everything in the Outside Network, including more audio stories from Outside, Backpacker, Climbing, SKI, and more. Plus mapping apps like Trailforks, Gaia GPS, and MapMyFitness. And for our podcast listeners, we have a special offer for 25% off. Head to outside.watch/listen to learn more.
May 13 · 1 hr
How a Normal(ish) Woman Got To The South Pole Unsupported, with Monet Izabeth
We love our spur of the moment adventuring. Maybe a pal calls us up for a self-inflicted, day-long backcountry sufferfest, maybe we decide on a whim to see how many miles we can push it on a bike ride, maybe we sign up for a Turkey Trot 10k with no training. But there is one woman who has taken that “maybe I’ll get off the couch and just try this hard thing” mindset to the ends of the Earth. Literally. This past January, Monet Izabeth became the first American woman to ski solo and unsupported to the South Pole; 700 miles, 57 days, whiteouts, extreme wind, and minus 40 temps. Monet is no elite athlete. She’s a self proclaimed normal-ish woman who asked, “I wonder if I can do this?” And then went to the ice sheets of Antarctica to find out.