Travis M. Smith

In this quirky deep dive, Outside Magazine columnist Brendan Leonard explores humans’ weird proclivity for endurance, and how we express it—including, but not limited to distance running, factory work, benign masochism, improv comedy, and rooting for the Buffalo Bills.

Disillusioned with corporate London life and with no previous experience as a long-distance cyclist, Anna decides to clamber atop a beautiful pink bicycle (named Boudica) and set out on an 11,000-mile journey on her own, through each and every state of the USA. Dodging floods, blizzards and electrical storms, she pedals side by side with mustangs of the Wild West, through towering redwood forests, past the snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains and on to the volcanos of Hawaii.

Think and Grow Rich is the number-one inspirational and motivational classic for individuals who are interested in furthering their lives and reaching their goals by learning from important figures in history. The text read in this audiobook is the original 1937 edition written by Napoleon Hill and inspired by Andrew Carnegie - and while it has often been reproduced, no updated version has ever been able to compete with the original.

2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning memoirist of Barbarian Days William Finnegan had devoted his days to chasing waves as a lifelong surfer. When his adolescent daughter, Mollie, proves to be a natural-born climber, Finnegan follows his newfound passion toward rock climbing. It’s an arduous apprenticeship, and it turns the parent-child dynamic on its head, as Mollie slips into the role of coach and mentor, while her father has to push his limits to keep pace.

Around the time Elizabeth Gilbert turned 30, she went through an early-onslaught midlife crisis. She went through a divorce, a crushing depression, another failed love, and the eradication of everything she ever thought she was supposed to be. To recover from all this, Gilbert took a radical step. She got rid of her belongings, quit her job, and undertook a yearlong journey around the world, all alone. This is the absorbing chronicle of that year.

Destined to become a classic of adventure literature, The Last Season examines the extraordinary life of legendary backcountry ranger Randy Morgenson and his mysterious disappearance in California's unforgiving Sierra Nevada - mountains as perilous as they are beautiful. Eric Blehm's masterful work is a gripping detective story interwoven with the riveting biography of a complicated, original, and wholly fascinating man.

Blair Braverman fell in love with the North at an early age: By the time she was 19, she had left her home in California, moved to Norway to learn how to drive sled dogs, and worked as a tour guide on a glacier in Alaska. By turns funny and sobering, bold and tender, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube charts Blair's endeavor to become a "tough girl" - someone who courts danger in an attempt to become fearless.

When a man is found on a British beach, drifting in and out of consciousness, with no identification and unable to speak, interest in him is sparked immediately. From the hospital staff who find themselves inexplicably drawn to him, to international medical experts who are baffled by him, to the national press who call him Mr. Nobody, everyone wants answers. Who is this man? And what happened to him?

When Brendan Leonard moved to the West at age 23, he was a mess. He had a tenuous grip on sobriety, only six months after his last drink had landed him in yet another jail cell. It was the final mistake in a long list that included multiple arrests, wrecked cars, broken bones, fistfights, and ruined relationships. In Montana, he took his first steps into the Rocky Mountains, unwittingly beginning a decade-long obsession with climbing and a journey that would take him all over the West and Europe.

In January 2019, culture writer Anne Helen Petersen set the internet on fire with her viral BuzzFeed essay diagnosing “millennial burnout” - a chronic state of stress and exhaustion that’s become a “base temperature” for young people today. Now, she continues this generation-defining conversation in a brand-new format, interviewing millennials around the country about their own deeply personal experiences with burnout, and the culture that creates it.