The best podcasts for walking

If you walk an average of 10 hours a day for 140 days, you have 1,400 hours of walking. It’s a struggle to entertain yourself and keep your mind preoccupied. Hikers don’t usually have the luxury of using their phone freely. Typically, charges are few and far between. You can only carry enough cargo bricks to get where you need to go with a little wiggle room. If you have a short distance between cities that week, or ration your battery well, you might be lucky enough to listen to podcasts! If that’s the case, here are the podcasts I listen to along the way…

ear hustle

Artist: Damien Linnane

This is one of my favorite podcasts of all time. Ear Hustling is prison slang for eavesdropping. This podcast takes you into the everyday lives of inmates. It was ingeniously created and produced in 2017 at San Quentin State Prison in California. I have always been fascinated by what life in prison is like. I changed for the better when I found this podcast. It is so full of emotion and information.

Ear Hustle’s main goal is to break down the walls surrounding prison in a way that helps change the stigma about prison life. The podcast shows that life in prison is much more than whippings and gang violence. It humanizes people who are locked up in a way that can help them reform and reintegrate into productive members of society, which should be the goal. It’s a great podcast to listen to along the way because it takes you into your own mind and makes you question your own thoughts, beliefs, and morality, which I think is an important part of growing up. What is a walk for if not for growth? Grow your calves and your mind.

Everything with Anderson Cooper

I didn’t know much about Anderson Cooper before this podcast. He seemed smart and has great hair, but after coming across this podcast, I feel enlightened. This might be the podcast that caught my attention the most while I was on the road. This is surprising because your podcast focuses on grief. I personally haven’t lost many people in my life, so it was surprising why it stuck with me so much. Anderson experienced the great loss of his father at a young age and then the death by suicide of his brother as a young adult. Much later in life, he loses his mother to the cruel rule of age. After that, she realized that she had bottled up so much pain in her life that she wanted to get it out, hold it, and understand those feelings. I think this is what makes it a great podcast for hiking.

I have found that my emotions work overtime when I go on long distance hikes. It’s stressful, confusing and difficult. These experiences leave you receptive to expanding your mind. The pain they talk about in the podcast makes you feel grateful to be alive and grateful to be willing and able to undertake such a great adventure. I feel like this podcast prepared me for the inevitable pain I will feel when losing my loved ones. Lastly, it gave me a better understanding of those who struggle with grief. I was able to connect better with people along the way.

Criminal

Finally, the moment you’ve all been waiting for, a podcast about crime. This one is different. Every episode is not about murder. There are no gory details. Criminal is a podcast about crime in the most interesting ways. Each episode has a unique story that presents any aspect of the crime.

One episode is about a dog who was given a steak for saving a drowning child. After saving many, the town discovered that the dog was pushing the children to get the free steak. One of my favorite episodes is heavy and hears the story of Benjamin Ferencz, a 27-year-old prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. They have an episode about 2,000-year-old bodies found perfectly preserved in a swamp and another about the time they visited the body farm at Texas State University. Podcast host Phoebe Judge has a calming voice that can make you walk a dozen miles without even realizing it.

this is love

This is love, it’s lovely. I obviously have a special place in my heart for Phoebe Judge because this is her Criminal spin-off podcast. Of course, it is very different. Each story shows some type of love that appears in all facets of life.

The fourth season is special since each story has something to do with animals. This includes an episode following the wolf reintroduction project in Yellowstone. Another in which a swimmer helps guide a baby whale back to its mother. One of my favorite episodes tells the story of a couple who finds an abandoned baby on the subway. These stories make me cry and give you more faith in humanity, which is something we need more of. Many people hike to get away from humanity, so remembering that humans can be cool will help you overcome the anxiety of days in the city.

Honorable mentions

Really, the best trail podcasts are simply whatever podcast is your favorite. If you ask my mom, you MUST listen to The Moth, which features wonderful true stories told by the people who lived them. My dad would recommend Sam Harris, whose podcast touches on the delicate topics of politics and philosophy. If you’re still trying to learn about future hikes you plan to take, or remember past hikes, Backpacker Radio is probably your best option. Another of my favorite podcasts is Modern Love. I love real stories of love and humanity. If you know of a podcast that’s perfect for trail riding, leave a comment and share it with the rest of us.

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