

A life-changing solitary walk to the South Pole led to Erling Kagge writing best-selling book Silence; in the Age of Noise and the Norwegian explorer has a new book out about how walking can change and indeed save your life. He was the first person in history to reach ‘the three poles’, he’s explored New York’s sewers – sleeping in tunnels and meeting wonderful characters who lived there, he’s been attacked by a polar bear and won and confounded even the scientologists who thought he was crazy. With philosophies about life, happiness and how walking is almost a time machine to really get you thinking.
On this episode we cover:
How growing up in Oslo
Norway inspiring his love of the outdoors
His father believing cars and TV were societal diseases
All of us being born explorers
Kids wanting to climb before they can walk
Wondering what’s beyond the horizon
Being the first ever person to reach ‘the three poles’: The North Pole, The South Pole and Everest
Kids exploring the world with devices
Never losing the explores spirit
The human urge to explore
How we shouldn’t waste our opportunity to have a rich life
His expeditions
Walking to the South Pole in total solitude for 56 days
The importance of silence
How silence can be a good friend
How silence can also be brutal
Humans needing more silence within
The physical challenges of reaching the South Pole
The incredible mental challenges of reaching the South Pole
Even a mouse can eat an elephant
Taking one step at a time to reach the South Pole
The life-changing solitary expedition
Being ‘almost born skiing and walking’
Feeling that you become part of nature
Starting to have a dialogue with the environment
Not needing to go to the South Pole
His books on silence and walking
How sadness and loneliness come from having lost touch with nature
How relating to man-made environments and phones is making people unhappy
How the snow and ice takes on beautiful hues and nuances
Learning to appreciate small helpings of beauty
Antarctica’s blue summer skies
Antarctica is a continent circumnavigated by oceans
And the Arctic is an ocean circumnavigated by continents
Where the names for the Arctic and Antarctic come from (bears!)
Penguins and birdlife of Antarctica
Antarctica being the world’s greatest desert, drier than the Sahara and with more sun than California
City life and London life being ‘not normal at all’
How humans adapt to circumstances
His new book Walking: One Step at a Time
His previous book Silence: in the Age of Noise
How walking can improve health and make you live longer
How walking helps you to get to know yourself
Walking being the greatest means of exploration
Lisa’s urban walks (and friends thinking she’s mad)
How walking beats driving every time (except maybe for speed)
Time passing so much faster inside a car
Time not being as linear as people think it is
How walking is like creating a time machine
How we all spend too much time on screens
How the average Brit could spend 90,000 hours watching TV
Making time to read
How walking makes us more curious about other people
His expedition to the North Pole being the toughest
Trekking in minus 58 degrees Centigrade
The shocking attack of a polar bear
Killing a polar bear at close distance
The fear he felt afterwards
Being one to one with something that wants to eat you
Whether there’s a flag at the poles
The American base at the South Pole
The emptiness after an expedition
Life being so fantastic with so many things to do
The people who live at the South Pole base
Taking rocks for granted
Carrying 98 rocks to the South Pole
Climbing Everest
Being in a rush to complete the ‘third pole’
Finding climbing Everest ‘tough’
How dying in the mountains means you stay young looking
Young mountaineer Mollie Hughes (former Big Travel Podcast guest)
Being too tired to worry about the dead people
The exhilaration of getting to the summit
The incredible view of the Himalayas
How the British called Everest the third pole because we failed to get to the North and South Poles first
Sailing across the Atlantic and down to Antarctica
Steve Duncan American urban explorer
Criss-crossing New York through subterranean tunnels in the sewers and tunnels
The beauty of the New York sewers
The people he met living in the tunnels
A girl called Brooklyn who’d lived there for 28 years
How Brooklyn was happy with what she’d got
The ‘happiness industry’ because humans are hard to satisfy
A walking expedition of Los Angeles
Lisa being checked for walking in LA
Prostitutes, junkies and walkers
Deeply fascinating to see the city from a different angle
Visiting the Church of Scientology on Sunset Boulevard
The scientologists thinking they were crazy (but salvageable!)
How LA is about ‘moving up’
‘Wonder being the very engine of life’
How there really ain’t no mountain high enough
How we all need to keep striving for our goals
Life being a long walk