Armchair Explorer

In today’s Discover Destination guide, we’re taking a road trip across the Northern Territory of Australia, from crocodile close-encounters and aboriginal rock art to a wonder of the world that’s been drawing people to it for more than 30,000-years.

The Top End, as it’s known, is ancient, vast, deeply spiritual, and unlike anywhere else on Earth. This is a journey into its heart to discover one of the wildest and most

fascinating pla...

Today host Aaron Millar is sharing a bucket list bit of madness — literal adventure insanity he got up to about 15 years ago in the Scottish Highlands. It's called the Glen Nevis River Race, and it involves hurling yourself down two miles of white-water rapids with nothing but a novelty inflatable for company.

Picture part extreme white-water adventure, part Monty Python's Navy — competitors arrive bearing giant inflatable swans, ki...

Levison Wood is one of the world’s most well-known explorers, TV presenters and authors. Join him for a 5,000-mile journey through the heart of the Middle East, from the front lines of Iraq and Syria through the Empty Quarter desert to Yemen, the West Bank and beyond. 13 countries in five months, his most complicated and dangerous expedition yet.

Following in the footsteps of great explorers such as Lawrence of Arabia and Wilfred T...

Witnessing the Northern Lights is one of the most awe-inspiring experiences on the planet, and in today’s interview episode we’re going to hear what it feels like to stand beneath them - a cascade of color raining down from the sky all around you.

In Norse mythology the Aurora were the armour of the Valkyries. The Inuit saw spirits playing in the sky. The Sami hid indoors in fear. And science has its own story too, because what we ...

Today we are going to travel across all seven continents, through steaming craters and frozen summits, into the heart of the world's most active volcanoes. This is a story about chasing fire.

Ricardo Kaljouw is one of only a handful of people on Earth to have completed the Volcanic Seven Summits — climbing the highest volcano on every continent. From his first glimpse of Kilimanjaro rising above the Tanzanian savannah, to standing a...

The Black Hills are home to more than 100 known caves - including the world's third-longest cave system at Jewel Cave National Monument with it's miles of unmapped passageways, and the complex caves systems at Wind Cave National Park, which are not merely a geological wonder they also make up a sacred site for the Lakota people.

We join pioneer explorer Chris Pelczarski for some hands-on spelunking in seriously narrow caves (that ar...

Sometimes the wrong path is the best path. I was stumbling down the side of a steep mountain slope, pushing through thorny bushes, scratched, thirsty and utterly confused. But I was smiling. While on a week-long hike across the Ligurian hills in northwest Italy – I had become hopelessly lost.

But then something magical happened: I rounded a corner into a mountain meadow filled with dozens of wild horses - muscled stallions with jet...

"Humans are meant to excel. And when you start pushing that and seeing how capable we are, it's phenomenal what you can actually go and do."

-Justin Packshaw

When Justin Packshaw was trekking in Antarctica several years ago, he noticed something disturbing: The ice shelf had visibly melted since his previous visit, just a few decades prior. "In the grand scheme of how old our world is, and its present state, that's a really quite fri...

Every 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 on Armchair Explorer.

In this episode, we’ll be traveling from the craziest white water race in the world to the highest volcanoes on the planet, from ancient trade routes in Italy to the sacred storytelling landscapes of Australia and beyond.

If you like travel and ad...

There’s a moment before every journey begins — that flicker of anticipation when the map is still folded, the road still unknown, and the world feels impossibly wide.

That’s where this new season of Armchair Explorer begins.

In the coming episodes we’ll travel from the highest volcanoes in the world to the Arctic Circle, from ancient trade routes in Italy to the sacred storytelling landscapes of Australia.

These are immersive journey...

There are many beautiful countries in Africa, but none are like Namibia.

Today we will travel from the highest sand dunes in the world to the wildest coast on the planet. We will track the last free-roaming herd of rhinos on the continent, and watch desert elephants as we float above them in a hot air balloon.

But more than anything we will discover a sense of vastness and awe that is unmatched by almost anywhere else on Earth.

...

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 Lit...

“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 explore...

“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 coals th...

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 traps. ...

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...

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 desi...

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 com...

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 isolated from the...