Ron Elliott has had more encounters with great white sharks that perhaps anyone on the planet -- and he was recently attacked by one while filming sharks off the coast of San Francisco. Ron and filmmaker Josh Berry discuss their new short film, "Near Miss," which chronicles one of Ron's close encounters.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pro skier Cody Townsend reflects on his career so far, his conflicted thoughts on social media, performing "marketing turns," and his latest project to ski 50 iconic lines across North America.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The ultramarathon pioneer and best-selling author talks about getting older, how the sport of ultrarunning has grown and changed, and his big project to run in every country on Earth.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

San Francisco big-wave surfer Bianca Valenti has been leading the fight for pay equity in professional surfing. Earlier this year, she and her organization pushed the World Surf League to pay male and female surf contest winners the same, which is a huge deal. Now she’s gearing up for the Mavericks Surf Contest and what promises to be an epic winter surfing season.

Cedar Wright is a fixture of rock climbing, having grown up scaling walls in Yosemite, and has recently established himself as a crafty filmmaker as well. His new film, "Queen Maud Land," follows a group of elite climbers, including Alex Honnold and Jimmy Chin, as they scale unclimbed peaks in Antarctica in sub-zero temperatures. 

Bay Area rower Lia Ditton is mentally preparing for 5 months at sea alone by immersing herself in sensory deprivation chambers and ice baths, among other things. We talk about contending with freighters in the open ocean, the benefits of rowing totally naked for days on end (which she’s been known to do), and how to survive a typhoon in a rowboat by yourself.

Big-mountain snowboarder Jeremy Jones talks about how naturalist John Muir inspired his new documentary, 'Ode to Muir,' and what's at stake if we let climate change go unchecked.

Adrian Ballinger and Emily Harrington are one of the pre-eminent power couples in outdoor sports. He’s a mountain guide who has summited Mount Everest eight times, once without the aid of oxygen tanks; she’s a professional rock climber with five national sport climbing titles under her belt. Together, they live with their dog, named Cat, in Squaw Valley, where they spend their days backcountry skiing, climbing, trail-running, and planning their next international expeditions. In a...

Alex Honnold, Jimmy Chin, Chai Vasarhelyi and Sanni McCandless answer audience questions about the making of the new documentary film 'Free Solo.' The filmmakers, Chin and Vasarhelyi, and stars Honnold and McCandless attended a late-night screening of the film in San Francisco for a Q&A. 

For this podcast, I met Alex in Yosemite Valley in the midst of his whirlwind media tour to hype his new film, 'Free Solo.' We took a walk through El Capitan Meadow to sit in the dirt under his favorite tree and talk while watching groups of climbers on El Cap inching their way up the wall in the distance. In addition to discussing how 'Free Solo' came together, we also cover the magic of #vanlife, the inherent danger of rockfall in Yosemite, and the future of free soloing.

The US Supreme Court this week declined to take up the case of tech billionaire Vinod Khosla's attempt to privatize a popular beach near Half Moon Bay, California. Locals rejoiced with a gathering at the beach this week, but the fight isn't over and Khosla is sure to regroup. To explain what's going on at Martins Beach and what could happen next, I called up Chad Nelsen, CEO of the Surfrider Foundation, the group that sued Khosla over public access to Martins Beach and won, We cover the whole...

Open water swimmer Kim Chambers has endured just about the most frightening things the ocean has to offer: great white sharks, jellyfish stings, hypothermia, brutal currents and fierce winds. She has conquered the Oceans Seven, a series of marathon swims in channels around the world, and is the only woman to complete the 32-mile swim between the Golden Gate Bridge and the Farallon Islands. The documentary film of that swim, "Kim Swims," comes out Oct. 2.

With the highly anticipated release of "The Dawn Wall" documentary this month, we speak to climber Kevin Jorgeson about his drive to accomplish one of the hardest rock climbing feats in history. Jorgeson was one half of the duo that free climbed the Dawn Wall on El Capitan in Yosemite in 2015, an achievement that made national headlines and is enshrined in climbing lore for all time. We cover his concerns about the climb (5:27), his motivations (10:03), dealing with the huge media scrum...