When the Outdoors is Bad For Your Mental Health, with Cory Richards

Outside Podcast

Sports, Wilderness

4.3 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 2 December 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When the mountains grab ahold of your heart, they have a way of directing your life, even becoming a keystone of your identity. But what happens when you associate your time adventuring outside with the lowest points in your life? Can you retire from the outdoors? That’s exactly what photographer and mountaineer Cory Richards did. You may have heard Cory’s story: after nearly two decades of first ascents and award winning photos and films, he experienced a mental health crisis during an expedition in Nepal, and quit climbing and photography. Since then, Cory’s been on countless event stages and talk shows and published a memoir, The Color of Everything, all of which has focused on his experiences leading up to that decision. But what about since then? When the mountains, with all their splendor and all their demons, never really leave you, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode of The Outside Podcast is brought to you by Case Knives. Case can trace their history of hand crafting knives all the way back to 1889.
0:10.0	Today, every single blade is crafted in Bradford, Pennsylvania, the heart of American knife making.
0:15.0	And in all that time, Case Knives have been the go-to daily carry for countless hardworking Americans, helping folks
0:22.4	tackle any task. Like, I mean, any task. These suckers have been to war and to the moon for crying
0:29.2	out loud. They're sturdy, dependable, precise. They make jobs easier and weekends more adventurous.
0:34.7	And Case has more knife options than there are furs in my mustache, which is to say a lot.
0:41.3	Make the holidays a cut above the rest and pick out one or 12 or 57 for you and your loved ones.
0:48.0	Case knives make for the perfect stocking and pocket stuffer.
0:52.1	Visit casenives.com to get yours today.
0:59.0	This is the outside podcast with Paddyo.
1:08.0	Well, how do you know you're seeking the positive effects of solitude, not the dark appeal
1:13.2	or negative effects of isolation, from everyday life to standing on top of the roof of the world?
1:19.9	And part of this is the quote from the book, a certain amount of loneliness is necessary
1:25.1	in the service of an objective.
1:27.1	It's a very, very good question,
1:29.1	and I think it's a complicated answer. No doubt. Or maybe it's a simple answer in some ways,
1:34.7	which is just I don't know, honestly, sometimes. I just don't know. Like there's a conceptual
1:39.2	knowledge there, but I guess it's more of a feeling that requires that I really check in and go, well, wait,
1:45.8	what am I doing here? Am I isolating or am I seeking quiet to find myself again? Am I trying to
1:52.1	escape myself or am I trying to find myself? Am I trying to escape my mind or am I inviting my
1:58.9	mind back into the conversation? Am I trying to find my body or escape it? You see what I mean? So it's more of like a deep practice of like, what am I actually experiencing in my nervous system right now? And what's that signaling to me? And again, see, that's the thing. It's like, fuck, man, I don't know. I don't know. I want to have, like, really clear answers for people.
2:20.3	But to me, life is not, it's fucking murky.
	...

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