Outside Podcast

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 Florence Williams takes a rambling walk with Garrison around Washington, D.C.

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 protectors of Alabama’s swamps, this presents a terrifying question: If the rivers can no longer support sturgeon, what does that say about the water we swim in and fish in and drink?

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 revolutionized women’s participation in sports and launched what’s become a multi-billion-dollar industry. Today, high-tech boob labs are helping designers make ever more effective—and stylish—iterations, even for athletes with DDD cups. Outside contributing editor Florence Williams, author of Breasts, looks back at the game-changing invention, takes measure of just how far we’ve come, and points towards an even brighter, bounce-free future.

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 commentators, and, of course, the curiously misshapen bodies. The film sends up all that with a gonzo storyline that clocks in at a breezy 38 minutes and features—spoiler alert—no less than four shots of full frontal male nudity plus recurring commentary by Lance Armstrong. We caught up with Samberg to find out how the film came about, why he chose to pick on cycling, and his fetish for wiener gags.

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 suffered a stroke, which meant time was everything: the longer it took to get him to a hospital, the more brain cells he’d lose. If it took more than a few hours, he’d die. So Scott zipped his friend into his sleeping bag, begged him to stay put, and paddled off at a sprint into dense fog. What happened next forever changed both men.

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 buggy, among other journeys. Last year, she led a team that towed kayaks 400 miles across Greenland to run a river they'd seen on Google Earth. That was the plan, anyway—but almost nothing went as they expected. Outside contributing editor Florence Williams sat down with McNair-Landry at Mountainfilm, in Telluride, Colorado, to talk about sailing in frozen landscapes, close encounters with polar bears, and where she’s going next.

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.

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, and sea sickness. Now she's turned the experience into a one-woman play that she wants to bring to Broadway. Outside contributing editor Florence Williams drops in on the unstoppable athlete and amazing storyteller at her LA home to talk about her long journey—and where she's headed next.

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 from riding bicycles in public. They can be arrested for showing too much skin or hair. In the United States, that sort of stuff is pretty much all we hear about female athletes—and women generally—in the Middle East. But it’s only part of the picture. Outside contributing editor Florence Williams talks with Seraji to get the real deal and hear how the athlete's powerful ambition enabled her to break new ground. 

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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