Episodes

  • Long Read! Hot Pools, Waterslides, and Cocktails: Inside the New Supersized Spas

    Long Read! Hot Pools, Waterslides, and Cocktails: Inside the New Supersized Spas
    Aug 8 2026
    This week's Long Read feature story, with Outside Magazine's Features Editor Fred Drier, follows writer Bill Gifford as he explores a European company called Therme, which is turning wellness concepts like hot springs, saunas, and cold plunges into gigantic destinations that look like bewildering mashups of spas, cruise ships, and casinos. They're already popular throughout Europe, and, now, Therme has set it's sites on the U.S. Are we ready?
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    33 mins
  • It’s True, Boating the Grand Canyon Will Change Your Life, with Steve Kenney

    It’s True, Boating the Grand Canyon Will Change Your Life, with Steve Kenney
    Aug 5 2026
    Steve Kenny has spent nearly three decades rowing boats and has the rippling shoulders and permanent tan to prove it. But under his ZZ Top-length beard, weather-battered Hawaiian shirt, and woman’s skirt he often sports, Steve is a lot more than an ace boatman. He’s a poet with a recently published collection of work—Scribblins: Poetry from Mountains, Deserts, and Rivers—and he had three careers before settling on this one: as a basketball coach, a college professor, and an investment banker. Steve thought he committed to life on the river for the thrill of the white water, but over the years he’s realized the real reason is the way time on the river inspires, invigorates, and even heals his guests. PaddyO talked to Steve in the midst of his own life-affirming trip through the Grand earlier this summer.
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    1 hr and 6 mins
  • Long Read! 40 Years, Zero Kills. We Spent a Weekend with Colorado's Least-Successful Elk Hunter

    Long Read! 40 Years, Zero Kills. We Spent a Weekend with Colorado's Least-Successful Elk Hunter
    Aug 1 2026
    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.
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    27 mins
  • LIVE! Proof That World-Feeding Chef José Andrés is an Actual Superhero

    LIVE! Proof That World-Feeding Chef José Andrés is an Actual Superhero
    Jul 29 2026
     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.
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    1 hr
  • Long Read! To Hold His Breath for 24 Minutes, a Freediver Learned to Turn Off His Brain

    Long Read! To Hold His Breath for 24 Minutes, a Freediver Learned to Turn Off His Brain
    Jul 25 2026
    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.
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    37 mins
  • Don’t Worry, the Yellowstone Super Volcano Won’t Kill Us All, with Ben Bradford

    Don’t Worry, the Yellowstone Super Volcano Won’t Kill Us All, with Ben Bradford
    Jul 22 2026
    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.
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    56 mins
  • Long Read! 32 Hours, 135 Miles, and 118 Degrees: What It Takes to Crew the Hardest Race on Earth

    Long Read! 32 Hours, 135 Miles, and 118 Degrees: What It Takes to Crew the Hardest Race on Earth
    Jul 18 2026
    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.
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    31 mins
  • LIVE! Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien on How the Welsh Countryside Saved His Soul

    LIVE! Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien on How the Welsh Countryside Saved His Soul
    Jul 15 2026
    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.
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    48 mins