Showing results by narrator "Adam Verner" in Sports & Outdoors

Smells are the colour that enrich our experience of life. Ask anyone to reflect on their sense of smell, and they immediately start talking. First there are discussions about food, but quickly they move on to personal topics: about the smells that evoke memories of childhood, dead relatives, pregnancy, love and sex. When people talk about their sense of smell, they also tell us something about themselves, their feelings, thoughts and relationships. Thus, the sense of smell not only reflects the chemical world outside us, but also bears witness to our inner world, our feelings and thoughts.

Dave Hahn, a local of Taos, New Mexico, is a legendary figure in mountaineering. Elite members of the climbing community have likened him to the Michael Jordan, Cal Ripkin, or Michael Phelps of the climbing world. The 2015 expedition he would lead came just one short year after the notorious Khumbu Icefall avalanche claimed the lives of 16 Sherpas. Dave and his team spent weeks honing the techniques that would help keep them alive through the Icefall and the Death Zone. None of this could have prepared them for the earthquake that shook Everest and all of their lives on April 25, 2015.

It's in our food, our clothes, and our homes. It's microplastic and it's everywhere—including our own bodies. Scientists are just beginning to discover how these tiny particles threaten health, but the studies are alarming. In A Poison Like No Other, Matt Simon reveals a whole new dimension to the plastic crisis.

In Surviving the Shark, Jonathan Kathrein describes his incredible shark attack experience. The book covers all aspects of Kathrein’s survival, beginning with the eerie moments just before the attack, when something smashes into Kathrein’s hand as he paddles on his board, waiting for a wave off Stinson Beach in northern California. Realizing it is probably shark, and possibly a great white, Kathrein tries to paddle away, furiously trying to make it toward shore, where he sees some of his friends on the beach.

Former Navy Air Rescue swimmer Brian Dickinson was roughly 1,000 feet from the summit of Mount Everest, also known as "the death zone", when his Sherpa became ill and had to turn back, leaving Brian with a difficult decision: Should he continue to push for the summit or head back down the mountain? After carefully weighing the options, Brian decided to continue toward the summit, alone. Four hours later, Brian solo summited the highest peak in the world. But the celebration was short lived.

Shifting into High Gear charts the course of Kyle Bryant's transformation as he journeys on a recumbent tricycle across the United States in the throes of Friedreich's ataxia, a life-shortening and disabling disease. Full of humor and reflection, it's a heroic journey of a man driven to reframe the language of disease through action and service.

Mike Mentzer was a strikingly handsome man with a brilliant mind and a "perfect" physique—the first bodybuilder to receive a perfect score in both amateur and professional competitions. In the late '70s, Mentzer rose to the very top of his sport (despite the efforts made by industry power brokers, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger), was featured in GQ magazine, and profiled on national television. But he was also a man who wrestled with mental illness his entire life and ended up living on the streets and being sent to prison.

You’re stressed, tired of answering the beeps on your phone and computer. Your kids get too much screen time. You don’t know where your next meal was grown or raised. One of the best forms of therapy is simple: Get out and stay out - as often and for as long as you can. In Both Feet on the Ground, Marshall Ulrich champions “disconnecting to reconnect”, urging you to spend time unplugged, eat food whose origins you understand, and push yourself to try something bold and personally compelling.

On his 43rd birthday, Dick Conant, a golden boy who never quite grew up as those around him expected, stepped into a homemade boat to embark on a journey despite a gathering snowstorm. Among his possessions was a Gideon Bible and biographies of Einstein and Bismark. It was the beginning of an all-consuming odyssey by an unconventional man into the watery arteries of America, a journey to the unreported margins of society.

On April 6, 2018, sixteen people died and thirteen others were injured after a bus taking the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team to a playoff game collided with a transport truck in a rural intersection. Crossroads is the story of Kaleb Dahlgren, a young man who survived the crash and faced life after the tragedy with resiliency and positivity. In this chronicle of his time with the Broncos and the loving community of Humboldt, Saskatchewan, Dahlgren takes a hard look at his experience of loss, but also revels in the outpouring of love from across Canada and around the world.

A dozen years into his dream job keeping watch over the Gila National Forest of New Mexico, Philip Connors bore witness to the blaze he had always feared: a megafire that forced him off his mountain by helicopter and forever changed the forest and watershed he loved. It was one of many transformations that arrived in quick succession, not just fire and flood, but the death of a fellow lookout in a freak accident and a tragic plane crash that rocked the community he called home.

Burned-out after years of doing development work around the world, William Powers spent a season in a 12-foot-by-12-foot cabin off the grid in North Carolina, as recounted in his award-winning memoir Twelve by Twelve. Could he live a similarly minimalist life in the heart of New York City? To find out, Powers and his wife jettisoned 80 percent of their stuff, left their 2,000-square-foot Queens townhouse, and moved into a 350-square-foot "micro-apartment" in Greenwich Village.

Be inspired by the story of Kevin Atlas (formerly Laue), whose faith and perseverance helped him become an NCAA Division I basketball player, despite being born with only one arm. Even before entering the world, Kevin Atlas was a fighter. He should have died in childbirth, as the umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck twice, but he survived because his left arm was in the middle of it, allowing blood to flow to his brain. But since circulation was cut off in that arm, he was born with his left arm ending just below his elbow.

One of America's most heralded young divers, David Boudia twice went for Olympic gold, training obsessively and wholeheartedly for success. In his first Olympics, he failed miserably, not winning a single medal. Four years later saw a different story: He mounted the podium twice, winning both gold and bronze. The difference? In the intervening years, he'd changed the focus of his quest from seeking glory for himself to giving glory to God.

Nick Saban called his boys the “ultimate team,” but it wasn’t just because they kicked the ever-living hell out of everyone on the football field. It was because the team leveraged a power and influence born of Southern pride to push back against a hateful legacy of racism that a populist president was exploiting to divide the nation. At a time when Americans needed real leaders in the face of so much hate, the sports world answered the call and fought back for the soul of the country.

Discover the David vs. Goliath rise of Catholic college basketball, from Villanova to Georgetown to Gonzaga, where small schools perennially shoot past the big power conference programs.

In 1998, Spielman's wife, Stefanie, was diagnosed with breast cancer, launching an eleven-year journey that brought joy and suffering to the Spielmans and hope and inspiration to thousands of others. In That's Why I'm Here, Spielman traces his storied career, recalls his courtship with Stephanie, cherishes the growth of their four children, and invokes the deep, spiritual faith that gave their family wisdom and comfort in times of struggle.