The Backcountry Manifesto

His Mother Vanished. 20 Years Later He Found Her in the Amazon. | David Good | Ep. 035

David Good grew up with one foot in suburban Pennsylvania and the other in the Amazon rainforest. His father, anthropologist Ken Good, spent 12 years living with the Yanomami — one of the last relatively isolated peoples on Earth — and married David's mother, Yarima, the daughter of a headman. Then, when David was six, Yarima walked back into the jungle and didn't come out. He wouldn't see her again for 20 years.
This is the story of what happened next: two decades of trying to bury his own identity, and then a bug-fearing 24-year-old's decision to travel days up the Orinoco River to find the mother he thought had abandoned him. What he found reframed his entire life — a family, a new name, a brother he would later grieve in a Yanomami funeral, and a scientific calling studying the Yanomami gut microbiome, which may hold clues to the diseases of the modern world.
David is a microbiome researcher at the University of Guelph, the founder of the Yanomami Foundation, and the subject of the new documentary WAYUMI. This is one of the most singular life stories we've ever had on the show.
Venezuelan Earthquake Relief Fund: https://welove.foundationWAYUMI Official Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3aWDwQNTqkYanomami Foundation: https://www.yanomamifoundation.org/David's book, The Way Around: https://www.amazon.com/Way-Around-Finding-Mother-Yanomami/dp/0062382128David's book, GOOD: https://nbmpub.com/products/goodDavid's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidalexandergood

The Disappearance of Amelia Earhart | Laurie Shapiro, Journalist & Biographer | Ep. 034

Who was responsible for the disappearance of Amelia Earhart? Was it her oft-drunk but undeniably brilliant navigator, Fred Noonan? Her publicist husband, George Putnam, who pushed his wife toward the PR stunt of the century despite her relative mediocrity as a pilot? Or was it Earhart herself, whose sudden fame had begun to cloud the thing a pilot needs most: her judgment?
Journalist Laurie Gwen Shapiro — a contributor to The New York Times and The Atlantic — spent five years going where no Earhart biographer had gone before. What she found isn't the flawless icon, but a real and complicated woman. Today, Laurie gives us a portrait of the person behind the legend and a deep dive into Earhart's final flight and July 1937 disappearance over the Pacific: a stretched budget, a dropped antenna on the Lockheed Electra, an alcoholic navigator hired because he was cheap, and a pilot who was sick, exhausted, and out of fuel as she searched for tiny Howland Island.
We get into the enduring mystery and the theories it spawned — and why the real story of what happened to Amelia Earhart may be sadder, and more human, than any of them.
Shapiro's book, The Aviator and the Showman: Amelia Earhart, George Putnam, and the Marriage That Made an American Icon, was named a New Yorker Best Book of 2025.
 
Laurie Gwen Shapiro Website
Amelia Earhart Project Recordings
The Aviator and the Showman
 
Copyright Outdoor Visions Media LLC, 2025

Are Survival Shows Real? | Cody Lundin, Dual Survival's Original Host | Ep. 033

Cody Lundin has spent 34 years keeping people alive. Almost none of it looks like what you've seen on TV. He's the founder of Arizona's Aboriginal Living Skills School, an EMT since 1993, the author of 98.6 Degrees: The Art of Keeping Your Ass Alive and When All Hell Breaks Loose, and one of the two original hosts of Discovery's Dual Survival. He built (and nearly broke) his career by refusing to fake it for the camera.
We flew Cody up to Bozeman, took him duck hunting at the crack of dawn (his very first time), and then sat down for one of the most no-BS survival conversations we've ever recorded. Hayden throws him a series of escalating worst-case scenarios: a desert breakdown, a broken leg in the Colorado high country, a hiker lost at an alpine lake. Cody refuses every easy answer, demanding context and walking through what staying alive actually requires (hint: it's rarely the sexy stuff). Along the way: the physics of freezing to death, why your survival shelter should be invisible, the truth about what survival television did to his profession, and the on-camera stand that cost him his show. Producer Andrew even gets pulled in to defend his off-grid cabin.
 
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
The Survival ShowKeep Your Ass Alive PodcastCody's Book 98.6 Degrees: The Art of Keeping Your Ass Alive (2003)Cody's Book When All Hell Breaks Loose (2007)
 
Copyright Outdoor Visions Media LLC, 2025

The Worst Possible Way to Cross the Atlantic | Steven Callahan, Adrift | Ep. 032

Steven Callahan should have died at sea. In early 1982, roughly a week out of the Canary Islands, something — he's convinced it was a whale — holed his self-built 21-foot sloop Napoleon Solo in the middle of the night. What followed became one of the most famous survival stories ever told: 76 days adrift in a five-and-a-half-foot inflatable raft, alone, crossing nearly the entire Atlantic before a handful of fishermen found him off Marie Galante.
In this conversation, Steven walks us through all of it — diving into the flooded, pitch-black cabin to grab his ditch kit, coaxing a single pint of fresh water a day out of a temperamental solar still, spearfishing the dorado that became both his food and his "spiritual companions," and the Day-43 disaster when his spear gun punctured the raft a thousand miles from land. But this is less a blow-by-blow than a master class in the psychology of survival from a philosophy major who treats reality as something to be accepted exactly as it is. We get into the divided self, the brutal "recoil" of giving up, why denial is the number one enemy, and how an ocean nearly killed him and gave him a life.

Mutiny, Cannibalism & How America Really Began | Peter Mancall, Historian | Ep. 031

Your social studies teacher gave you Henry Hudson in about two sentences: a guy, a river, New York. Dr. Peter Mancall — USC historian and author of Fatal Journey and the new continental history Contested Continent — is here to give you the other 99%. We start with Hudson's doomed final voyage: iced into the bottom of Hudson Bay for a brutal winter, a starving crew, a mutiny, and a captain set adrift in a rowboat never to be seen again. Then we zoom all the way out.
This is a two-hour tour through the early America that gets left on the cutting-room floor — the fur trade and the "perfect trade good" of alcohol, John Adams' filthiest joke, the cannibalized girl of Jamestown, Columbus's fall from hero to villain, Cahokia's lost pyramid city, the Vikings who quit North America, and the 1680 Pueblo Revolt that scrubbed an empire off the map. It's bloody, it's funny, and it'll permanently change how you hear the word "Thanksgiving."
If you love history that refuses to flatten people into heroes or villains, this one's for you.
 
CREDITSHosting by Hayden SammakProduction by Andrew O'Neill“Welcome to the Backcountry” theme song by Logan Roth, Will Brown, Arjun Dube and produced at Treacle Mine Studios, Phila, PA
Copyright Outdoor Visions Media LLC, 2025

Free Soloing is Actually Really Easy | Lincoln Knowles ft. Cedar Wright & John Long | Ep. 029

Lincoln Knowles is 21 years old, lives out of his Jeep, and has the climbing internet at war with itself. To half the community he's a reckless idiot free soloing a harder route every day until he falls; to the other half he's the funniest, most self-aware thing to happen to the sport in years. The truth — as Hayden finds out — is that the kid is a genuinely elite climber (a sub-10-hour Nose-in-a-Day, on-sight free solos in Yosemite, V11 on the board) who's running the most committed satire in outdoor media.
This one goes everywhere: Lincoln's Yosemite "tear" and a storm-soaked bail off the Nose, a surprise call to climbing legend John Long, the Alex Honnold text and the Climbing magazine hit piece, and an extended phone-in from Cedar Wright, who makes the full punk-rock case for why this stuff matters. It's funny, it's genuinely unsettling when the talk turns to mortality, and it's impossible to look away from. Whether you think he's the future of the sport or a tragedy waiting to happen, you'll understand exactly why everyone's arguing about him.
In this episode, we talk about:
The Yosemite Tear: El Cap & the Nose-in-a-Day
Phoning John Long About the Nose Record
Bailing Off the Nose in a Snowstorm
Viral Clips & the Parody of Climbing Ego
How Free Soloing Began
College Dropout to Content Hustle
Courting the Haters
Risk, Death, and Mindset
Family Silence & Attempted Interventions
Honnold's Text & the Climbing Magazine Drama
Climbing Idols: Honnold, Croft & Dean Potter
Teaming Up with Cedar Wright
Lifetime Bucket List: Free Rider to Everest
Free Solo vs. Trad: The Pinnacle Debate
 
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODEhttps://www.instagram.com/lincolnclimbs/https://www.youtube.com/@UCynU0ZTas1hr6HMg-XAnTBA Our episode with Jamie Leibert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FHdEmyKRQwOur episode with John Long: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kDnVzaNE7gClimbing Magazine Article: https://www.climbing.com/culture-climbing/lincoln-knowles-going-viral-free-soloing/Jayme Moye: https://jaymemoye.com/published/
 
Copyright Outdoor Visions Media LLC, 2025#podcast #rockclimbing #freesolo #climbing

Deathtraps, Hantavirus, and the Other Joys of Caving | Adam Weaver, Caver | Ep. 029

Adam Weaver holds the world record for the farthest anyone has ever traveled from a cave entrance — miles of crawling and climbing into a place no helicopter or rescue team can reach. He edits NSS News, America's only national caving magazine, and was recently tapped by ABC News to break down the Laos cave rescue for the public.
In one of the most genuinely unsettling episodes we've recorded (Andrew does NOT like caves), Adam gets into the gear, the 9-inch passages, and the very real ways a cave can kill you — plus the full story of a teenager trapped a mile deep, 24,000-year-old mummified animals, and a quarter-mile traverse with no floor.
 
In this episode, we talk about:
Becoming a Caver: Beyond "Spelunking"
The Record: The Farthest You Can Get From Rescue
Cave Conservation & the Technical Side of Caving
Mummified Animals & 1890s Newspapers
The Real Hazards: Lost, Stuck, and Hypothermic
A Teenager Trapped a Mile Underground
Surface Chaos, Three Agencies & "Lavender Larry"
The "Atom Smasher" & Making a Cave PassableWhat Lies Beneath: A Quarter Mile With No Floor
Living Underground: Multi-Day Cave Camps
Who Owns a Cave? Permits & Land Access
Nutty Putty & How Dangerous Caving Really Is
Naming Discoveries: "To Boldly Go"
How You Actually Map a Cave (and the LiDAR Future)
Black Hills Institute: Dinosaurs & a New Plesiosaur
Where to Start Caving & Farewell
 
CONNECT! 
Catch up with Hayden on IG, TikTok, and more: https://linktr.ee/Hayden_Sammak
Follow TBM on Youtube, IG, and everywhere else: https://linktr.ee/BackcountryManifesto
 
CREDITS
Intro and Animations by Barry Thompson
Photograph Contributions for Animation by Carver Weeks
Additional Graphics by Andrew O’Neill 
Production Assistance by John Stock 
“Welcome to the Backcountry” theme song by Logan Roth, Will Brown, Arjun Dube and produced at Treacle Mine Studios, Phila, PA
 
Copyright Outdoor Visions Media LLC, 2025
#podcast #cave #rescue #cavediving #laos

Has Everest become too commercialized? | Thom Pollard, Everest Historian | Ep. 028

Is Everest still a climber's ultimate test, or has it become too crowded and controversial?
This week on The Backcountry Manifesto, Everest historian, climber, and 1999 Mallory expedition participant Tom Pollard joins host Hayden Sammak in PART 3 of our discussion to share his gripping firsthand stories. We dive into Tom's four Everest attempts, his 2016 summit triumph, the evolution of guiding from pre-1996 pioneers to today's high-stakes operators, and the raw power of Sherpa climbers. Plus, breakdowns of key landmarks like the Hillary Step and South Col, the perils of avalanches and bottlenecks, debunking myths around "Into Thin Air," and reflections on what Everest truly represents beyond the hype. If you're fascinated by high-altitude adventure, mountaineering history, or the human spirit against nature's extremes, this episode is your summit push.
We talk about:
The landmarks on the route of an Everest summit
The DEATH ZONE
Khumbu Icefall
Sherpas
Commercialization of the mountain
Permits in Nepal and China
Minecraft Youtuber turned Everest summiteer
Links mentioned in this video
Everest Mystery Youtube Channel
Minecraft Youtuber turned Everest Summiter
Connect
Catch up with Hayden on IG, TikTok, and more: https://linktr.ee/Hayden_Sammak
Follow TBM on Youtube, IG, and everywhere else: https://linktr.ee/BackcountryManifesto
Get yer limited-run TBM X Out Yonder Co. merch: https://outyondercompany.com/pages/shop-the-out-yonder-x-backcountry-manifesto-collab
Partners
Special thanks to our partners at Shared Pour! Visit SharedPour.com to purchase the VERY FIRST Backcountry Manifesto barrel pick, available right now!
Credits
Intro and Animations by Barry Thompson
Photograph Contributions for Animation by Carver Weeks
Additional Graphics by Andrew O’Neill
Production Assistance by John Stock
“Welcome to the Backcountry” theme song by Logan Roth, Will Brown, Arjun Dube and produced at Treacle Mine Studios, Phila, PA
Copyright Outdoor Visions Media LLC, 2025

Dr. Hoby's Backcountry Adventure | Dr. Hoby Wedler, Guide to Life's Greatest Things | Ep. 027

On this episode of the Backcountry Manifesto, we're taking you on a Montana backcountry adventure guided by the one and only Dr. Hoby Wedler. Dr. Hoby is a wildly popular sensory storyteller who explores the world around him using sound, smell, taste and touch to offer his fans and followers a unique perspective on the world around him. 
From foraging early-season chanterelles in undisclosed forests (complete with their apricot-plum aroma), to metal detecting for gold nuggets in historic mining districts, and mastering fly fishing on the Yellowstone River amid thunderstorms and swallow-filled caves, Hoby describes his backcountry adventure. We also dive into whiskey tastings, elk dinners with wild mushrooms, and life lessons on embracing challenges, preparation for adventure, and positivity. Later, Hoby ranks his favorite experiences during his Montana mission and offers his thoughts on fearlessness in the face of new experiences.
You've likely listened to countless podcasts on backcountry adventure, but none quite like this.
Links mentioned in this video
Hoby's Instagram
Hoby's TikTok
Hoby's Youtube
Connect
Catch up with Hayden on IG, TikTok, and more: https://linktr.ee/Hayden_Sammak
Follow TBM on Youtube, IG, and everywhere else: https://linktr.ee/BackcountryManifesto
Get yer limited-run TBM X Out Yonder Co. merch: https://outyondercompany.com/pages/shop-the-out-yonder-x-backcountry-manifesto-collab
Partners
Special thanks to our partners at Shared Pour! Visit SharedPour.com to purchase the VERY FIRST Backcountry Manifesto barrel pick, available right now!
Credits
Intro and Animations by Barry Thompson
Photograph Contributions for Animation by Carver Weeks
Additional Graphics by Andrew O’Neill
Production Assistance by John Stock
“Welcome to the Backcountry” theme song by Logan Roth, Will Brown, Arjun Dube and produced at Treacle Mine Studios, Phila, PA
Copyright Outdoor Visions Media LLC, 2025

JAWS: A Soon-To-Be True Story? | White Shark Expert Dr. Greg Skomal | Ep. 026

On the 50th anniversary of Jaws, are we headed for a real-life Amity Island catastrophe with rising shark encounters off Cape Cod, or is the hype around white sharks getting way overblown? What's really drawing these apex predators back to our shores, and how worried should beachgoers be?
This week on The Backcountry Manifesto, Dr. Greg Skomal -- the leading expert on Atlantic white sharks -- dives deep into the world of sharks, fatal attacks, and close calls. From the chilling 1936 Massachusetts man-eater incident that shaped public fear, to how Jaws ignited his career and sparked a frenzy of shark tournaments, we break it all down. Greg unpacks naval disasters like the USS Indianapolis, pioneering tagging tech from the '60s, the Marine Mammal Protection Act's role in seal population booms (and shark comebacks), revolutionary underwater robots like Shark Cam, epic expeditions to Guadalupe Island where sharks attacked his gear, and his heart-stopping near-miss while tagging a massive white shark. Plus, we tackle the tragic 2018 fatal attack, community fallout echoing Jaws, and lingering mysteries like white shark breeding grounds. Greg also shares stories from his book Chasing Shadows, blending adventure with science from Arctic Greenland sharks to Red Sea whale sharks.
If you're hooked on sharks, marine biology, or the thrill of ocean predators without the sensationalism, this episode is your ultimate deep dive.
Links mentioned in this video
Chasing Shadows Book
Greg's Instagram
Greg's Facebook
Greg's X
Our episode with Jack Horner, Paleontologist
Our episode with Molly Curran, WHOI
EuanArt Instagram
Connect
Catch up with Hayden on IG, TikTok, and more: https://linktr.ee/Hayden_Sammak
Follow TBM on Youtube, IG, and everywhere else: https://linktr.ee/BackcountryManifesto
Get yer limited-run TBM X Out Yonder Co. merch: https://outyondercompany.com/pages/shop-the-out-yonder-x-backcountry-manifesto-collab
Sponsors
Special thanks to our partners at Shared Pour! Visit SharedPour.com - Use code “BACKCOUNTRY” for 10% off at checkout.
Special thanks to our patterns at Out Yonder Company! Visit OutYonderCompany.com and use code “BACKCOUNTRY15” for 15% off at checkout.
Credits
Intro and Animations by Barry Thompson
Photograph Contributions for Animation by Carver Weeks
Additional Graphics by Andrew O’Neill
Production Assistance by John Stock
“Welcome to the Backcountry” theme song by Logan Roth, Will Brown, Arjun Dube and produced at Treacle Mine Studios, Phila, PA
Copyright Outdoor Visions Media LLC, 2025