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The other day, during a particularly brutal heatwave near my home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, I took my dog, Ollie, on a shaded hike that ran alongside a stream. After being cooped up inside for a few days, he desperately needed to burn off some energy—and cool down—so I let him dive in.

In the middle of his dip, I noticed a clump of green algae creeping toward him. I’ve seen horror stories about dogs dying after ingesting toxic blue-green algae (and just last month, a woman claimed in a viral TikTok that her sweet pup, Cora, died after ingesting blue-green algae in Lake Tahoe), so I ushered him out of the water, snapped a photo so he could get properly treated if he got sick, and wrapped up our hike. I was being a total helicopter dog mom, I figured, primarily because I wasn’t exactly sure how to tell the difference between safe and dangerous algae. But I’d much rather err on the side of caution, especially when it comes to Ollie’s health.

It turns out my concern was…

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Popular interest in living longer is hardly new, but it spiked in the past few years. Reasons for this aren’t exactly clear. The pandemic reminding us of our mortality? A growing number of Boomers looking to redline their retirements?

Our fixation on longevity is rising at the same time that our health appears to be sinking. A 2018 study from researchers at the University of North Carolina made waves by concluding that only 12 percent of Americans are metabolically healthy. What’s more, according to data from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, average life expectancy fell between 2019 and 2021, the biggest decline since the early 20th century. Granted, that statistic was affected by COVID-19, but chronic disease played a significant role as well.

The renewed obsession with healthier living has given rise to some longevity-oriented products and services, many with a fitness slant. No doubt the success of Outlive helped prime the market. Equinox, the upscale fitness chain, recently launched a $40,000-a-year wellness and longevity package called Optimize, which includes blood analysis, a personal…

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I never expected to destress from double-postponing my wedding by staring into space, yet there I was, spying on the heavens from my backyard in light-polluted Cleveland for the umpteenth night in a row.

“That one’s Jupiter,” I whispered to my dog, Harry, who’d come to expect this backyard astronomy ritual. We were months into the pandemic and my now-husband, Frank, and I had spent the evening finalizing an email to alert friends and family that, yet again, we’d delayed our wedding due to spiking COVID-19 transmissions. Pairing this stress with the questionable status of my career—how can I be a travel writer without, well, traveling?—plus Frank’s front-line emergency physician job had my stomach in neverending knots. But the tension slackened each night as I sprawled beneath the stars, letting my mind recall those old Astronomy 101 lessons from college—particularly the vastness of the universe, and just how tiny my problems felt within it.

While life has returned to normal, I still turn to the cosmos for stress relief today—and I’m not the only one. Mindful stargazing, an activity that harnesses…

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I keep seeing headlines about bird flu, and it’s freaking me out. I have a big trip coming up to climb a bunch of fourteeners in Colorado, but it sounds like bird flu is all over the state right now. I’m wondering how worried I should be and whether I should cancel my vacation. What can I do to protect myself from getting the bird flu? — Anxious Traveler

If you’re just about packed for an adventure in a new state, your newsfeed might be giving you some jitters—especially if you’re consistently seeing headlines about a viral disease jumping from animals to people. You might feel worried about that hiking trip in Colorado, especially given the rampant bird flu outbreak in the state. However, the current H5 bird flu (also called avian influenza or H5N1), which has jumped from birds to cows to people, is much different than COVID-19, according to experts who spoke to Outside. Right now is a time to build awareness, not pull a Crowdstrike on your travel plans.

At the time of publication, there have been 14 cases of H5 bird flu in people since 2022. It’s running rampant in cows and has been since March of this…

Peter Frick-Wright (Host): This is the Outside Podcast

Last year, in March, track and field authorities announced new regulations: some athletes wouldn’t be able to compete in the female category unless they lowered their body’s naturally occurring testosterone levels.

These are not athletes who have artificially raised their body’s testosterone levels. These are also not athletes who present as male but identify as female, or athletes who underwent any kind of gender transition or reassignment surgery. Many of the people that this new rule affects, didn’t even know that they had high testosterone.

The regulations were and are controversial, and it left some athletes with a choice between artificially suppressing their hormones, and sitting out the Olympics.

So when I heard that the CBC was making a podcast all about this exact thing, called Tested, and that the host of this podcast was Rose Evelyth—who is super creative and fun and has produced really awesome stuff like ESPN’s 30 for 30 podcast, and Flash Forward, which is an audio drama about technology from the future—I jumped at the chance to share an episode here.

You can find a link to the full series in the show notes. Here’s Rose.

Rose Eveleth: Sometimes the best way to begin a complicated story…

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At the 2008 World Cross Country Championships in Edinburgh, Scotland, a few miles into the senior men’s 12K race, Kenenisa Bekele’s shoe came off. I was in that race, and I remember hearing the announcer’s breathless play-by-play of the incident and thinking, “Wow, I might actually get to be in front of the GOAT in a race!” Alas, it was not to be. Bekele stopped, undid his dislodged shoe, pulled it back on, re-tied it, and set off again. I never even got within sight of him, and he went on to notch his record-extending 11th individual cross country gold medal.

By that time, the Ethiopian superstar already held the track world records over 5,000 and 10,000 meters. Later that summer, he won both events at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He was at the height of his powers, and few would have disputed that he was the greatest long-distance runner the world had ever seen. Since then, though, Uganda’s Joshua Cheptegei has broken both of Bekele’s track world records, and Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge’s rise as the philosopher-king of the marathon has brought him greater renown than Bekele ever received. Bekele’s current…

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If you’ve ever tripped while trail running, crashed onto the mat below a bouldering wall, or taken a tumble off your bike, you know that how you land can mean the difference between standing up and continuing your workout or heading to the ER. To give yourself the best chance of getting off the ground in one piece, consider spending more time there.

Once we learn how to walk, we spend most of our waking hours sitting or standing. Growing evidence suggests that we should get back on all fours for at least a few minutes a day through a practice called quadrupedal movement training (QMT), which can improve core strength, coordination, balance, mobility, and range of motion. For athletes, it can also mitigate some of the risks associated with falls and crashes.

How to Prevent Falls (and Fall Safely) with Animal Flow     

The ground is “where we first learned how to move and control ourselves through space,” says Freyja Spence, a health and movement coach and the Head of Standards for Animal Flow, a QMT-based training program. Once we begin spending most of our time upright, we tend to rely heavily on our…

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Shorts can be boring. They’re just short pants, often made out of a lightweight but durable polyester blend—which makes them great for warm weather running, hiking, gardening, lounging, biking, camping, or just about any outdoor activity—but predictable. Earlier this summer, however, I discovered the pure joy of pulling on a pair of terry cloth shorts. After long days of wearing a wet bathing suit, they felt like slinking into a plush, terry cloth bathrobe in a fancy hotel, or the best beach towel on the planet.

Terry cloth isn’t the first material that comes to mind when I think “summer shorts,” but the stellar experience made me wonder: Are there other out-of-the-norm, funky summer shorts out there that are equally great, for other reasons and applications? I went on a short shorts quest, and here’s what I found:

If you buy through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission. This supports our mission to get more people active and outside. Learn more.

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For Post-Water Sports Lounging And Harkening Back To Days Gone By

OuterKnown Hightide Sweatshorts 

$88 at…

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As I jogged up an arroyo at high-noon on a local trail near my home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I felt the sun beating down on my head and shoulders. I glanced at my phone’s weather app, which informed me that it was 78 degrees Fahrenheit, but the “real feel” was 87 degrees. My shirt was drenched in sweat and my fingers had started to swell. I reached for the last sip of water from my running vest as I hit mile three.

In my late-twenties and early-thirties, I ran ultramarathons, and sports drinks filled with electrolytes were part of my training kit. Powders to dump into my water sat alongside my collection of GUs and energy bars. But I haven’t run an ultra in years, and my electrolytes stash has dwindled along with my average weekly mileage. These days, when I head out for a run, I grab my phone, a hat, and maybe a water bottle, depending on how long I’m planning to be out.

I squeezed the last drops from my water bottle and checked the map. Just one mile to go. As my shoes pounded the sandy trail, I began to wonder if I was hydrated enough for my quick lunch run. I’d definitely underestimated how hot 78…