Podcast appearances and mentions of christopher keyes

As it turns out, being a grown-up novice offers all kinds of surprising benefits. Just ask journalist Tom Vanderbilt, who spent a year attempting to pick up a variety of challenging skills, from surfing to singing to drawing. Ultimately, he didn’t become amazing at any of these things, but his humble quest taught him something far more valuable: that despite your age or how busy you think you are, introducing yourself to a new skill is one of the most life-enhancing things you can do. Vanderbilt chronicled his efforts and hard-won wisdom in his latest book, Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning. For this episode, Outside magazine’s editor, Christopher Keyes, gets Vanderbilt to explain what really happens to us when we dare to be a beginner again. This episode of the Outside Podcast is brought to you by L.L. Bean, a company that wants to help you experience the power of being outside this winter. Visit llbean.com to find inspiration and how-to advice for active outdoor fun this season, plus ready-for-anything outerwear to keep you cozy. L.L. Bean, Be an Outsider.

You’ve been breathing wrong your whole life. That’s the message journalist and outdoor athlete James Nestor delivers in his new bestseller Breath, which explains how the human species has lost the ability to breathe properly and why this is so bad for our health in all kinds of ways. But his reporting also shows that with minor adjustments in how we inhale and exhale, we can dramatically improve on everything from the quality of our sleep to our athletic performance to our posture. Nestor, who’s interest in breathing began when he wrote a feature for Outside on the sport of freediving, talks with editor Christopher Keyes about his years-long investigation into the history and science of human breathing, and his own journey to becoming a better breather. This episode of the Outside Podcast is brought to you by Feetures, socks that help you perform at your best. See for yourself why Feetures has become the number one running sock in America. Outside Podcast listeners receive $10 off your first pair. Go to feetures.com and enter the code "outside" at checkout.

The first question most people have when they hear about Lance, the new documentary series about the world’s most infamous cyclist, is: Why now? Back in 2013, we watched Armstrong give his first doping confessions to Oprah. That same year, Oscar-winning director Alex Gigney released The Armstrong Lie, a documentary that had the cyclist offering lengthy admissions of guilt and claims of sincere remorse. Since then, there’s been a number of tell-all books by seemingly anyone who had the slightest connection to the story. Armstrong himself has launched multiple apology tours. So what’s the point of reexamining the saga yet again? According to Lance director Marina Zenovich, the answer is that Armstrong—and the rest of us—are still wrestling with the same big questions about cheating, forgiveness, and recovery. And the answers keep changing. Zenovich, a veteran filmmaker who’s crafted portraits of Roman Polanski and Robin Williams, manages to get Armstrong to open up in a way we’ve never seen before. In this episode, Outside editor Christopher Keyes asks her how she pulled it off and why she was so drawn to the project. This episode of the Outside Podcast is brought to you by Visit Florida, one of the country’s great adventure destinations. Have you met a manatee? Airboated in the Everglades? Snorkeled the coral reef? Plan your next Florida adventure at visitflorida.com/outside

Author Richard Louv is best known as the author of Last Child in the Woods, his 2005 bestseller that established the phrase nature-deficit disorder and helped spark an international movement to examine the health benefits of spending time outdoors. His ideas were initially seen as radical—recall that in 2005, the iPhone didn’t exist yet—but today they’re ubiquitous. Now Louv is back with a new book, Our Wild Calling, that presents more radical ideas, this time about the need for humans to rekindle our relationships with other species. Outside editor Christopher Keyes spoke with Louv about the basis for his theories and why even the most serious scientists get that something special happens when we engage with wild creatures.

No one has had a greater influence on modern recreational running than writer Christopher McDougall. His 2009 book Born to Run introduced the masses to barefoot running and became a revolutionary bestseller. As a result, the multibillion-dollar running-shoe industry went through a dramatic upheaval, and today runners have a broad range of shoe types to consider, from minimalist slippers to ultra-cushy maximalist fatties. Now McDougall is back with a new book that chronicles his work training a sickly donkey to be an endurance athlete (no, seriously). Titled Running with Sherman, it tells the story of an unexpected journey that was really good for the donkey—but also for McDougall. Outside editor Christopher Keyes spoke with McDougall about this surprising turn of events and whether it means the rest of us should be running with animals, too.

In the world of athletics, the idea is that if you want to be the best, you have to specialize young and maintain near laserlike focus. The archetypal example is Tiger Woods, who, as the legend goes, started swinging a golf club before he could walk. More recently the focus has shifted to grit. The secret to success, we’re told, isn’t skill or raw talent but the ability to persevere. But that may not be the whole story. In his new book Range, author David Epstein challenges the arguments for specialization and grit, arguing that a more generalized approach is the surest route to excellence. Outside editor Christopher Keyes spoke with Epstein to about the advantages of doing a bit of everything.

Even if you worry about using your smartphone too much, the idea of simply unplugging or ditching it altogether just isn't an option for most of us. So how can we strike the right balance between our tech usage and important stuff like interacting with our family, friends and the world around us when we're not looking at a screen? It's a topic the 'Outside' podcast gets into in a new 4-part series called 'The Nature Cure'. In the first episode, Christopher Keyes speaks to digital minimalist Cal Newport, who wants us to radically re-imagine our relationship with technology.

These days our smartphone addiction has gotten so intense that many of us now habitually use the devices even when we’re supposedly unplugging. We listen to podcasts on our trail runs and endlessly document our weekend adventures for Instagram. All this has author Cal Newport deeply concerned. Newport has made a name for himself as a sort of canary in the digital coal mine, writing about the perils of our screen-dependent modern lifestyles. Last winter he published Digital Minimalism, a manifesto that proposes a reimagining of our relationship with technology that begins with a 30-day digital diet. Outside editor Christopher Keyes talks with Newport about his radical—but very simple—approach to technology and how it can work for everyone. 

As the host and creator of the MeatEater podcast and Netflix series of the same name, Steven Rinella spends a lot of time talking about hunting, fishing, and cooking. He is a proud voice in what’s often called the hook-and-bullet crowd. But he’s also a staunch conservationist, a longtime contributing editor of Outside magazine, and the author of American Buffalo, a book that explores the important role of the buffalo hunt throughout North American history. This makes him uniquely qualified to bridge the divide between hunters and outdoor recreationists. In a recent column for the magazine, Rinella argued that it’s never been more important for these two groups to forge a political alliance. Outside editor Christopher Keyes chased him down to talk about the need to find common ground in order to protect our most cherished public lands.

Former Navy SEAL David Goggins has spent the past two decades exploring the outer limits of human performance, both in the armed forces and as an endurance athlete with more than 60 ultras under his belt. But what makes Goggins truly unique is the hardship he faced long before he began his athletic career. A brutally abusive father. A learning disability. Depression. Even obesity—he once weighed nearly 300 pounds. Goggins found strength in putting himself through hell and relying on mental toughness to find his way through. Christopher Keyes spoke with him about his remarkable journey and the tough-love lessons in his new memoir, [Can’t Hurt Me](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1544512287/ref=aslitl?ie=UTF8&tag=outsonli02-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1544512287&linkId=eb8a244e4fffe38c2c30ce40c987c1b6).

If you’ve ever beaten yourself up after eating an entire pint of ice cream, know this: it’s really not your fault. According to obesity researcher and neurobiologist Stephen Guyenet, author of The Hungry Brain and founder of the wellness and science blog Whole Health Source, millions of years of evolution have hardwired us to seek out sugary, fatty, and salty foods. All those calories kept us alive back when we were hunter-gathers. Today they just make us fat. Outside editor Christopher Keyes sits down with Guyenet to discuss why we feel so powerless in the face of decadent desserts, how different systems in our brain compete for dominance, and what we can do to combat all this temptation.

Peak performance has always been about getting as close to your genetic potential as possible. The limits of your training, nutrition, and recovery are dictated by your DNA. But what if they weren’t? What if you could change the genetic code you were born with? As sequencing DNA gets cheaper and faster, and gene-editing tools get more precise and easy to use, we’re progressing toward a world where we might all have perfect DNA for our chosen sport—and be able to change it whenever we want. But getting there will be risky. In this final installment of our four-part look at the science of performance, Outside editor Christopher Keyes looks at the efforts of Josiah Zayner, who is taking a damn-the-torpedoes approach to doing everything he can to bring gene editing to a laboratory—or even a garage—near you.

For most athletes, achieving peak performance means training hard, eating right, and maybe some stretching. But when you get to the elite level, where everyone’s doing that, it’s the mental game that makes winners and losers. How hard can you push your body? How much pain can you tolerate? How can you avoid getting psyched out before a big event?  If you’re a top-tier professional athlete trying to train your brain, you’re likely going to turn to Michael Gervais, a renowned expert in high-performance psychology. His clients include the Seattle Seahawks, various Olympians, and Felix Baumgartner, that guy who jumped to earth from the edge of space. In this second installment of our four-part look at the science of performance, Outside editor Christopher Keyes sits down with Dr. Gervais to ask what advice he has for the rest of us.

More than two decades after he radically transformed big-wave surfing, Laird Hamilton is still a dominant force in the sport. As detailed in the new documentary Take Every Wave, Hamilton is again pushing the edge with his new obsession, hydrofoil surfing. His wife, Gabby Reece, is a former professional volleyball player, model, author, and currently the host of the NBC reality show Strong. At their home in Malibu, Hamilton and Reece have created an elite training boot camp where they torture themselves daily, run extreme pool training classes, and constantly experiment with new approaches to exercise and nutrition. In this first installment of a four-part look at the science of performance, Outside editor Christopher Keyes pays the super couple a visit to try and understand the methods behind what sure looks like total madness.

What’s the cure for our modern malaise of stress, distraction, and screen addiction? Nature, of course. But while many people advocate the benefits of getting outside, we are only just beginning to understand what really happens to us when we venture out the door. For her new book, The Nature Fix, Outside contributing editor Florence Williams expands on a 2012 feature she wrote about Japanese forest bathing, delving deep into the fascinating science behind the restorative power of wild places. Outside editor Christopher Keyes talks with Williams about the research being done around the world to investigate how spending more time in nature can make us healthier, happier, and even more creative.