Extreme Travel Odysseys Mike Klein

How do you survive in a desert town that has a record high temperature of 117F? You go into hiding, literally. The mining town of Coober Pedy, Australia uses the dirt for both their livelihood and their lives. CNET Senior Editor Claire Reilly visited recently as part of her web site's "Road Trip 2018" series. She joins the show to discuss her venture into one community's existence in the subterranean Outback!

Want to be part of something that only a few hundred people have done? Grab a map of the U.S. and get going, visiting the highest elevation of each state. It doesn't matter how you get there, but it's going to take a while for all 50. Today we meet Woody Connette, whose first job as a teenager was right at the summit of Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina. He gradually knocked off more and more states, but it wasn't until his 60s that he completed this grand quest! See how Woody did it, and hear his tips for specific states and for the overall challenge of a lifetime.

From the East Coast to the West Coast to the Rockies to Iceland, Will Wood knows a good trail. Now, he gets paid to hike. He began with the Appalachian Trail, sharing his videos along the way. That led to some gear recommendations, and fidelity to the ultralight products of the revolutionary Zpacks company. After also going northbound on the Pacific Crest Trail, Zpacks came calling and asked Will to join their team. See what it's now like for Will to get paid to follow his passion!

This episode chronicles the making of host Mike Klein's favorite travel documentary of all time, "180 Degrees South." Guest Jeff Johnson discusses how me met Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, and how finding some lost tapes of Yvon's early vagabonding led to the making of the film. Jeff learned how to sail, was briefly marooned on Easter Island, but eventually made his way to Southern Chile to reunite with Yvon and they attempted to recreate the climbing trip that inspired the making of the company of Patagonia.

What's bigger than the Olympics and the Super Bowl? The soccer (football) World Cup, which took place this summer in Russia. In this episode meet Manoj Viswanathan, who traveled to his first World Cup alongside podcast host Mike Klein and other friends. Manoj shares his thoughts on St. Petersburg, the Russian people, the experience in general, the rest of his travels in Estonian and Latvia. He also explains what life was like as a person of color in a mostly-white environment. Anyone planning to go to the next World Cup, or to Eastern Europe, will want to hear about his odyssey!

Just 12 men have walked on the moon, and only three more than that have completed the Barkley Marathons, a fantastically quirky and random endurance test in the rugged mountains of Tennessee. One of those men is John Fegyveresi, a man who didn't even take up competitive running until adulthood, but on that weekend ran for nearly 60 hours into immortality. Oh, and did we mention that he spends most winters in Antarctica studying glaciers and other effects of climate change? Yeah, he's also run a marathon at the South Pole, too. Who hasn't? Listen to how John took a down moment in his life to begin living fully!