Outside Podcast

Even those of us who seek freedom and adventure in the wilderness are hardwired to keep themselves safe. It’s why we, as a species, outlasted the dodo and reached the top of the food chain. But there is a subset of outdoor athletes who seem to have found the genetic safety switch in their mitochondria and turned it off—folks like ski alpinist Christina Lustenberger. Lusti, as her superhuman friends call her, has racked up more first descents on mountains of consequence than arguably any other other woman in the last 10 years. These culminated in the past few years with the 20,000 foot Great Trango Tower in Pakistan, and Mount Robson, Canada’s tallest peak. But it’s in the less expected parts of her life that Lusti proves that she’s not always fearless. When it comes to facing the relationships in her life that aren’t going well, she feels the sharp end of fear that the rest of us might get staring up Robson. And what she does with that fear might surprise you. 

When the mountains grab ahold of your heart, they have a way of directing your life, even becoming a keystone of your identity. But what happens when you associate your time adventuring outside with the lowest points in your life? Can you retire from the outdoors? That’s exactly what  photographer and mountaineer Cory Richards did. You may have heard Cory’s story: after nearly two decades of first ascents and award winning photos and films, he experienced a mental health crisis during an expedition in Nepal, and quit climbing and photography. Since then, Cory’s been on countless event stages and talk shows and published  a memoir, The Color of Everything, all of which has focused on his experiences leading up to that decision. But what about since then? When the mountains, with all their splendor and all their demons, never really leave you, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Something funky this way comes. All over the world, deep inside dark forests, hunters tip toe in secret for a wildly expensive delicacy: truffles. The aromatic fungi grows underground, tethered to tree roots, and is exceptionally difficult to find—which is why specially trained dogs are needed to sniff them out, and they’re worth their weight in gold. As it turns out, the truffle business is not too dissimilar from the illegal-drug business, filled with shady deals and even shadier characters. Back in 2022, host PaddyO interviewed Outside contributing editor Rowan Jacobsen about his journey into the mob-like underbelly of truffle hunting, from old world European forests to, very unexpectedly, the hills of Appalachia. 

If you’ve ever been bucked off your mogul line, stuffed a front bike tire, caught a toe on a rock, or collapsed the leg of a camp chair, you know that to go outside is to have an intense relationship with balance. But recovering physical balance is a lot easier than emotional balance. Just ask climber and balance Jedi Kai Lightner. Kai has been a climbing savant since he scaled a 50-foot flagpole at 6-years-old. He then went on to casually win 10 youth national championship titles, five youth world championship medalist, then evolved from an indoor climbing phenom to an outdoor climbing force. Along the way, Kai had to deal with physical and emotional stress and pressure that outsized his abilities, but climbing provided a cathartic way through it all. In Kai’s view, the physical demands of climbing—having to embrace fear and doubt—provides a kind of balance that can carry us through whatever life throws our way.

Have you ever wondered why you feel a pull to go for that grueling trail run or long bike ride or demanding backcountry ski? We have an innate need for adventure, but why? According to paleoanthropologist and evolutionary biologist Ella Al-Shamahi, it’s in our DNA. Ella’s years of Paleolithic study focuses on the first humans and how they behaved—everything from community building to tool evolution to the world’s first sea crossing, which populated Australia. Her research has helped uncover a bonkers “Lord Of The Rings” era, when our foremothers and fathers existed alongside other human species that she calls things like “Hobbits” and “Dragon Men”…seriously. Ella believes that we have a genetic predisposition for adventure, which explains why homosapiens populated the earth and the Hobbits and Dragon Men did not. More importantly for our purposes, it helps explain why we still love to sleep in the dirt, climb mountains, and seek out the next big adventure.

They say it’s not the fall that gets ya, it’s the landing. Fear of falling, or smacking one’s face onto the cold hard earth, is an innate human emotion. Even for athletes who’ve spent a lifetime climbing mountains, traversing sheer cliffs, balancing on knife-edge ridgelines, this fear never disappears. And that’s why folks who paraglide, speedfly, and skydive are both fascinating and confounding. What do they know that the rest of us don’t? Well, champion wingsuit pilot and quantum physicist, Alexey Galda knows a lot about it. Alexey spends his weekdays  in quantum computing at the pharmaceutical giant Moderna. And his weekends are spent jumping out of perfectly good airplanes donning a  “squirrel suit” that lets him move horizontally through the sky at speeds exceeding 200 miles an hour. Even if these worlds seem drastically different, they both impact the other and allow Alexey to, ahem, fly through fear.

In 1978, skier and kinetic artist John King, along with two pals, set out on a singular and epic adventure: a backcountry ski tour from Durango, Colorado to the Medicine Bow Range near Fort Collins. Over six weeks, the trio skied 490 miles, climbed 65,000 vertical feet. They finished gaunt and sun cooked, with boots held together by tape. Their route influenced the design of the Colorado Trail and the locations of the 10th Mountain Division hut system, but the journey has never been repeated. It’s not an overstatement to call this one of the most audacious wintertime feats of endurance in the history of skiing—a new documentary called Moving Line captures all of that beautifully. And for John King the true triumph was the artistic merit of the pursuit itself. John believes that his tracks on that trip sketched lines that extend into his present day and beyond toward his future. In John’s estimation, movement is creation, expedition is art, and all of it guides him every step of the way.

Chitchatting is a natural part of any adventure you do with a pal—what else are you gonna do around a campfire or sitting on the tailgate at a trailhead or going for a long walk in the woods? But most of us don’t set out on a journey for the sole purpose of talking with strangers. That’s exactly what writer and standup paddleboarder Dan Rubinstein did. Over 11 weeks, he paddled 1,200 miles from his home in Ottawa to New York City and back, talking to whoever he came upon in the process. He was partially inspired by a fascination with the benefits of so-called “blue space,” which is the aquatic equivalent of green space. But he was also looking to revive a spirit that was flagging under some existential weight. Dan came away from his trip with a better understanding of how time spent on and in water improves your life; more importantly, he came away with a renewed appreciation for his fellow man and woman.

For most of us, mountain biking is a great way to get into the outdoors, get a workout, get an adrenaline rush, and hopefully avoid losing any skin or breaking a collarbone. For the mountain bikers of Red Bull’s annual Rampage contest, mountain biking is a means of defining the limits of human performance and fear tolerance. Every year, these men and women gather on a sprawling ridgeline near Zion National Park in Utah, and proceed to see who can ride the least rideable-looking line down a mountain bigger than your last 5 descents, combined. It is one of the most unbelievable spectacles in the world of action and outdoor sports, and since it’s about to go down this weekend, we asked our friends at the Pinkbike Podcast—who know more about mountain biking than just about anyone on Earth—to give us a little preview of the what, who, and why to watch.

Ruggedness, dependability, and handiness define a lot of outdoor archetypes, from the ski patroller to the river guide to the park ranger. So why would you find all three in a famous actor? Maybe because the actor in question—Nick Offerman—is an avid outdoorsman in his own right. Surely you know Nick from one of his many memorable roles,  like Ron Swanson on Parks And Recreation and General Sidney in the latest Mission Impossible. And, when he’s not acting or performing on comedy tours, you can find Nick paddling the Los Angeles River or scrambling up peaks in the nearest National Park.  Relying on himself in a pinch informs everything Nick does, from acting to woodworking. And his new book,  Little Woodchucks: Offerman Woodshop’s Guide to Tools and Tomfoolery, is Nick’s gospel of do-it-yourselfedness, a starting point to building a tough and resourceful identity. Because eventually, we’re all gonna have to fix a flat tire or build a little shelter in the woods.