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 center of the universe.

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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 began to learn about his body. What it could do, how good it could feel to run and hike through the canyons near his home. Then, one day, he encountered a family of moose. And they put his newfound trust in his body to the test.

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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 done about that.

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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.

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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 celebrity animals.

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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 with whales stacks up against the reality of being surrounded by some of the largest creatures on the planet.

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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 fast as he could?

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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 massages. And hike to powder so they could eat more great food. Then came the hard part: holding onto those feelings when it was all over.

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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 countless rescues, the state of Alaska decided they needed to solve this problem once and for all. Reporter Eva Holland wanted to know: Can you make the wilderness safe without ruining it? How do you take the Into the Wild bus out of the wild?

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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 and pies, and her copilot was a giant poodle. In this gem of an episode from our archives, producer Paddy O’Connell hangs on for dear life.

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