Armchair Explorer: Travel and Adventure Inspiration
Award-winning podcast featuring interviews with the world’s greatest adventurers, immersive travel documentaries recorded on location, deep dives into cultures around the world, and inspiration for how to life to the fullest. Hailed as “inspiring storytelling” by the New York Times, and “Ear candy for listeners” by the Washington Post, past guests include Conrad Anker, Ed Stafford, Kristine Tompkins and many more legends of travel and adventure.
Episodes
November 21, 2025 • 25 mins
The Black Hills Powwow is the biggest powwow in the U.S., where dancers, singers, artists, and spectators come from across North America to honor the spirit and beauty of the Great Plains Indigenous culture. The powwow comes alive through handcrafted regalia and the spirited dancers who embody history.
Join us as we take in the sounds and stories from this enduring celebration that bridges generations and cultures. We meet Ruben...
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“There is something in us,” nature writer Jay Griffiths says, “that detests the tepid world of net curtains … the chloroform world where human nature is well schooled, tamed from childhood on, where the radiators are permanently on mild and the windows are permanently closed.”
Lost with her life and desperate to escape the confines of the modern world, Jay set out on a journey to explore the world’s wildest places. She would...
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November 4, 2025 • 13 mins
“The medicine man sits before a pile of hot coals spread out on the compacted red earth floor of his Hogan – the traditional home of the Navajo. “This is Native American church,” he tells me, pulling shiny black arrowheads and Golden Eagle feathers from his wooden medicine box, and twisting a thick translucent crystal before the flames.
Sweat beads on my forehead: medicine men are believed to see premonitions in the burning coal...
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October 28, 2025 • 49 mins
Whether you known him as Sasquatch, Bigfoot, Yeti, Thla'Thla, Sninik, or something else, you've heard the legends - the stories of the hairy mountain man who lives, as writer John Zada says, "in primeval nature and collective memory." And today, we're plunging deep into Canada's ancient forests to find him.
But make no mistake - this isn't Bigfoot searching like you've seen before. There are no infrared cameras, scanners, or tra...
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October 22, 2025 • 39 mins
Botswana is the Africa in our heads, the one we see in nature documentaries, and think of when we say the word.
It is a vast and untempered land filled with one of the richest concentrations of wildlife on the continent. In a single game drive you could see up to 50 different species: elephant, lion, buffalo, leopard, hippos, baboons and more.
But beyond the wildlife there is something else too. Africa is our home. They cal...
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October 16, 2025 • 12 mins
Do you want to know what it's like to go kayaking with a whale?
How about climbing to the top of Crater Lake National Park to see one of the most beautiful views in America?
Well, that’s what we’re doing today. Our Bucket List episodes highlight what we think are the best adventures on the planet, and these two certainly fit the bill. Recorded on-location in surround sound audio, this bucket list episode is designed to put y...
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October 7, 2025 • 38 mins
Today, we’re sharing a special episode honouring a true explorer who we lost last week.
Dr. Jane Goodall was a pioneering primatologist, and conservationist best known for her groundbreaking work with wild chimpanzees in Tanzania. With no formal scientific training at the time, she began observing chimpanzees in 1960 and soon made discoveries that redefined our understanding of animals — including tool use, emotional depth, and c...
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September 30, 2025 • 40 mins
In this episode, recorded on location, we’ll discover a side to Rocky Mountain National
Park that most people don’t even know exists. Beyond the beautiful mountains and
trails, the park is a Living Laboratory of science with about 100 scientific projects
happening at any one time. Some of the most cutting-edge ecology, biology and
conservation in the world is being done right here.
Rocky Mountain National Park may feel isolate...
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September 22, 2025 • 39 mins
Bhutan is the last of the great Himalayan kingdoms. Still largely untouched by outside influences, shrouded in mystery and magic, this Buddhist country, hidden for centuries on the roof of the world, is like nowhere else on the planet.
Follow British Travel Writer of the Year Emma Thomson as she explores the culture and majesty of Druk Yul, Land of the Thunder Dragon, as it's known by its people. Shunning the usual group tour, ...
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September 15, 2025 • 44 mins
"A life worth living is lived at the edges, where it is wild"
- Rick Ridgeway
Rick Ridgeway is one of the greatest mountaineers of all time. In this in-depth interview he shares the adventures that have come to define his life, and the wisdom he has learned along the way.
Highlights include
Getting lost while sailing across the Pacific Ocean in search of Tahit.i
Taking the famous newscaster Tom Brokaw to ...
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September 10, 2025 • 38 mins
Every month on Pathways, host Aaron Millar and producer Jason Paton crack open a few stories, play their favorite clips, and take you on a whirlwind preview of what’s coming up this month on Armchair Explorer. It’s part travel hangout, part behind-the-scenes, and a whole lot of part “wait, you did what?”
Special Offer: we’ve revived our NEWSLETTER! (scroll to the bottom of our homepage to signup)
And contact us for a free copy ...
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September 1, 2025 • 31 mins
Our Bucket List episodes showcase the greatest travel experiences on the planet. Today, we’re going to the deserts of Arabia to go stargazing with the Bedouin and learn their secrets of the stars.
This episode is about learning to see the stars through the eyes of a people who have lived in the Arabian desert for thousands of years, and whose very existence, and survival,l was shaped by the night sky.
Recorded on location in our ...
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August 25, 2025 • 35 mins
Today we’re sharing an episode from the Red Bull podcast: How to be Superhuman.
How To Be Superhuman is about pushing the limits of human potential, from conquering terrifying climbs and kayaking down jaw-dropping waterfalls to swimming the world’s longest rivers, running through uncharted mountain kingdoms, and embarking on solo expeditions to the most remote corners of the globe. In each episode, host Rob Pope and the athlete...
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August 19, 2025 • 18 mins
“The first time I entered here I was 18 years old…I'd always heard about the Pendleton Roundup, it's just iconic. I was driving in thinking, I've made it, you know, I've made it”
“You can name any sport, basketball, football, whatever. [Rodeo] just isn't that way. These events started and evolved from ranching. They've molded it into a sport, and that's just outta cowboy try. I have a ranch, Pat has a ranch, and for the people tha...
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August 14, 2025 • 59 mins
Alastair Humphreys is a legend in the world of adventure. If you haven’t heard of him, here’s a few of things he’s gotten up to over the years …
“Aged nine, he completed the 20 mile Yorkshire 3 Peaks challenge, then the National 3 Peaks in 24 hours aged 13. At 15 he cycled off-road across England … Then after leaving school, he cycled from Pakistan to China, Land’s End to John O’Groats, Turkey to Italy, Mexico to Panama and acro...
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August 4, 2025 • 31 mins
In this series, we’re going to take you on a journey into the heart of one of the most ancient kingdoms on Earth. Located in the northwestern corner of Saudi Arabia, Alula is an oasis in the desert layered in 200,000 years of human history. But, until recently, it was closed to outsiders, and to this day only a handful of visitors have ever been.
If you haven’t listened to our three-part on location documentary series, the Eleme...
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July 28, 2025 • 24 mins
We thought we knew the Oregon Trail…
Turns out, we only knew half the story.
“The settling of the West,” says Bobbie Conner, “was the unsettling of the West for our people.”
In this episode of The Hidden Trails of Oregon, we’re exploring the past, present and future of the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla tribes, whose ancestral homelands stretch across Eastern Oregon.
In 1993, the 150th anniversary of the Oregon Trail, tr...
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July 15, 2025 • 39 mins
"There are people out there that have found incredible success in ultra-running and things by being tough as nails…and it just doesn't work for me. But what I can do is wake up in the morning and be like, oh, like I'm gonna stop for a coffee in 10 miles and that coffee's gonna taste so good…Relying on speaking positively to myself and…to other people, I think offers a lot more potential”
– Chris McCaffrey
Chris McC...
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July 8, 2025 • 48 mins
Every month on Pathways, host Aaron Millar and producer Jason Paton crack open a few stories, play their favorite clips, and take you on a whirlwind preview of what’s coming up this month on Armchair Explorer. It’s part travel hangout, part behind-the-scenes, and a whole lot of part “wait, you did what?”
Special Offer: we’ve revived our NEWSLETTER! (scroll to the bottom of our homepage to signup)
And contact us for a free copy ...
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July 1, 2025 • 34 mins
Follow Atlas Obscura co-founder Dylan Thuras on a quest to discover South America’s hidden wonders. From the Last Incan Bridge and the Machu Picchu of the North to the Everlasting Lightning Storm and a statue of a squid fighting a whale the size of the statue of liberty (yes, you read that right), this is an epic ride through Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia and Peru’s weirdest and wildest wonders. The stuff glittering in the shadows t...
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