This New Podcast Is the Survival Obsession You've Been Waiting For

Blair Braverman dogsledding(Photo: Nathaniel Wilder)

On May 12, Blair Braverman, a longtime columnist forOutside, launched a new podcast,What to Carry, What to Burn, that explores what we can learn from epic survival tales about overcoming adversity—in the wilderness and in daily life.

Braverman is no stranger to survival. As a long-distance dogsledder, she’s spent days and sometimes weeks alone with her dogs in the frozen wilderness. Both her memoir,Welcome to the God Damn Ice Cube,and her novel,Small Game,touch on themes of survival. Andshe appearedon the showNaked and Afraidin 2018.

“I’ve always loved survival stories. As a kid, my copy ofHatchetwas falling apart from the number of times I read it in my treehouse,” Braverman says.

For years, Braverman has appeared on the podcastYou’re Wrong Aboutas the survival correspondent. On it, she tells host Sarah Marshall wilderness stories, like aboutFlight 571,Balto, andChris McCandless. “I’ve loved doing that so much that I’ve been thinking, for a while, of making a similar podcast of my own,” she says.

What to Carry, What to Burndedicates its episode to different true survival stories. It first tells the historic tale of Ada Blackjack, who went on an Arctic expedition in the early 1900s as a 23-year-old seamstress and ended up completely alone on a frozen island, trying to survive.

“My goal is to tell the kinds of stories that make people drive around the block for an extra half-hour because they don’t want to stop listening, and then call their friend because they can’t wait to talk it through,” says Braverman. “I think that in order for survival stories to resonate deeply like that, they can’t just focus on sensational details; they have to be told in a way that’s kind, emotional, and human.”

Braverman says she’s enjoyed diving deep into the research for her new podcast. She doesn’t wantWhat to Carry, What to Burnto focus only on the big questions like what they ate, how they were injured, and whether they survived. Instead, she wants listeners to really feel what it was like: the sounds, smells, and tastes of survival.

And most of all, she wants the stories in her new podcast to inspire people to tackle their own challenges. “Survival isn’t just something that happens on glaciers and desert islands,” says Braverman. “But when we learn about how people handle that kind of extreme, impossible-seeming situation, it can give us courage in our own lives, too.”

What to Carry, What to Burnlaunched on May 12. You can subscribe and listen onSpotify,Apple Podcasts, andYouTube.