The WALKING podcast

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Grief Mistaken for Joy Jan 07, 2020

Show notes

Sometimes you're walking in the woods and stumble upon a wedding. Sometimes what looks like a wedding is a memorial service.

This week's walk is brought to you by our friends at North Light, the friendliest all-day bar and kitchen, with a specially curated book and record shop, in Oakland, California.

BONUS: Holiday Special! Dec 17, 2019

Show notes

Exploding the usual format of the show to bring you a star-studded, Yuletide spectacular that harkens back to the homespun, holiday podcast specials of days gone by!

With special guest appearances by: Decemberists guitarist Chris Funk, fine arts photographer Meghann Riepenhoff and friends, TV producer Jesse Ziebart, Grammy-nominee Korum Bischoff, and restauranteur and businessman Harvey Wolff from Proper Fish. Come along on a wintry ramble around the island, chasing away a case of the holiday blahs!

The WALKING Podcast Holiday Special is brought to you by Dresden Stollen Bakers. When Irmgard Maron came to the United States in 1928, she brought a cherished recipe for stollen from her native Dresden. She began baking for friends and relatives during the holidays and, at their urging, started a small bakery business. Ninety-one years later, three generations of her descendants still gather to bake this deliciously rich holiday bread once a year and sell it to families like yours around the world.

The WALKING Podcast will be back to normal next week, i.e. no talking.

Put 'Em In a Tree Museum Dec 10, 2019

Show notes

The school carpool collapses last minute, scrambling my morning agenda, but I manage to sneak in a walk anyhow before getting in the car and journeying down to Portland for a meeting. Sometimes you have to walk before you can drive. Lace up and come along as we encounter a dissonant and grave disturbance in the woods.

This week's walk is sponsored by: RICHARD'S FAMOUS FOOD PODCAST. It's a food podcast that's "more like Pee Wee's Playhouse than the Splendid Table," from creator Richard Parks III. Wow, I encourage you to give it a listen! Tagline: "Jump into the Brine" (with a little tm next to it.)

And don't forget: You can be a Stickfluencer! Send $5 to The WALKING Podcast (via Venmo) and I'll thank you during the ad break for "sticking up" for the show. Also, if you want, I'll mail you a stick I pick up along the way. A real-life stick!

Cold Open Dec 02, 2019

Show notes

Welcome back! It's Season 2 of The WALKING Podcast. Brrrrrr.

The theme of Season 2 will be BUILDING BRIDGES (SEO interlude: Jeff Bridges, Phoebe Bridgers, Phoebe Waller-Bridge,) so let's bundle up and take a walk to an actual, new bridge, built by local non-profits and civil servants! Setting out at dawn, as a sleepy Thanksgiving weekend comes to a close, we'll hear along the way: the crunkle of boots on frost-stiffened grass; vigorous sniffling; the startling, low moan of a fog horn; a prudent jogger approaching from behind; a neighborly convergence full of cheer.

This week's walk is sponsored by Mat Honan on behalf of birds. Mat encourages us to appreciate birds and to help them. You can check this out, he says.

BONUS: Scary Crossover Episode Jun 12, 2019

Show notes

I'm proud to present this very special crossover episode of the WALKING podcast, in collaboration with 10 Things That Scare Me from WNYC Studios. Well, I am proud and also mildly mortified. Our most vulnerable episode to date! I took a walk and recorded myself listening to a recording of myself taking a walk--and also talking. That's what's different this time around: the talking.

I trust you are all enjoying being alive on planet earth during this ongoing hiatus of the WALKING podcast. Hope to be back with you before too long. Until then, let's all keep putting one foot in front of the other.

"Things Have an End, But Feeling is Infinite" Mar 22, 2019

Show notes

This is the Season 1 Finale of the WALKING podcast, and possibly the last one period. I read some prepared remarks at the ad break, while sitting on a stump, on a cliff, as the sun went down.

This week's walk is brought to you by an anonymous stranger, in memory of Bear and Elmer, two good dogs who loved walks.

Thank you to everyone who listened. That was nice. See you at #FootForceDelta.

Bottle Episode! Road trip! Mar 19, 2019

Show notes

"Sometimes finding a key is not the start of a grand adventure, but the end of one." - Jon Mooallem, right now.

Friends, I bumbled my way into a high-intensity snafu while recording the walk this morning. A boatload of genuine drama ensued, relative to our typical walks together, at least. It was so bad that I felt obligated to initiate the WALKING podcast's first-ever "take two." And so, here it is: take two.

The other day, I heard Gwyneth Paltrow interviewed on fellow podcaster Dax Shepherd's Armchair Expert podcast. (Incidentally, both Dax--if I may--and I appear on Vulture's new list of 100 podcasts you should be listening to. Then again, not to be ungrateful, but I'm not sure how worthwhile that list is, being that all lists are sort of silly and that Mystery Show wasn't on it.) Anyway, in addition to confessing how much she loved a good walk, and extolling the emotionally curative powers of walking, Gwyneth (if I may) told Dax (if I may) something that stuck with me. She said that, as a public person, she feels obligated to share her foibles and insecurities and mistakes with the world; as uncomfortable as it might be, the alternative--to merely broadcast curated images of her supposedly poised, perfect lifestyle--would be dishonest and cruel. In that spirit, I decided to share the details of my snafu at the ad break.

Also, this week: Squirrel chirps, a happy encounter with my friend Zach, barbed wire (inaudible), a rustic foot bridge.

This week's walk is sponsored by the always-fascinating podcast THE MEMORY PALACE , by Nate DiMeo. It's another of the hundred podcasts you should be listening to, according to the aforementioned list which, as noted, I feel some skepticism toward, even as I also feel great delight. It's complicated.

Mr. Cool Mar 12, 2019

Show notes

It's been a busy couple of weeks here at Mooallem SuperValue™ (That's my private nickname for myself when I'm working hard to meet deadlines, and when I feel less like a human writer than a scrupulously-optimized, prose-production corporation—you know, checking facts and cashing checks, etc.) I was working so hard, finishing a big magazine story and the book simultaneously, that I didn't have an opportunity to go for a single walk—or for much self-reflection of any kind--and didn't even realize that until the work-week was over. By Friday evening, I was beat, and settled in to read the local paper. There was an obituary for a longtime islander I'd never heard of, a man named Gale Cool.

"Gale Cool was a visionary," the notice began. I read that Gale Cool was an architect and developer, with an energetic commitment to showing people the value of "living in nature not next to nature." In an era when everyone was starting to build big homes on small lots, he started building small homes on big lots, and clustering them together, to show humans their relative size on the landscape of the island. He did this for a while. Then, something happened. Mr. Cool was an avid salmon angler, and he noticed it was getting tougher to catch fish; the local fisheries were declining. He "declared he'd never build another building," the obituary said, and became a self-described "undeveloper" instead. "He assembled 80 acres of land, dug ponds, raised the water table with a weir, and reintroduced beavers"—that land is now a city park. Then he revamped an estuary not far from my house, gradually drawing in waterfowl and seabirds, and salmon that spawned. It's gorgeous there—I walk by it often. I had no idea that it hadn't always been so beautiful, or so full of life.

The morning after I read the obituary, I got up at dawn and headed out for a walk. I was thinking about change—how it happens; who makes it happen; the blurry line between making it happen and letting it happen. I didn't come to any great conclusions, except that I ought to make this episode a little tribute to Gale Cool.

This week's walk is brought to you by Jamie Lowe on behalf of the podcast Food on Franklin, where there is always stimulating conversation about food on Franklin Ave. Have a listen!

Hearts and Thoughts They Fade Mar 05, 2019

Show notes

I continue to be confused as to whether anyone reads these summaries. Anyway: It's been almost four years since we moved to the island from San Francisco. Two or three nights after we moved, my wife and I took the ferry into Seattle to attend a dinner for a friend's non-profit. It was so fun! And we met lots of fascinating people. These included: a very kind muckety muck at Starbucks; podcaster-rockstar double-threat John Roderick; and a wonderful guy who worked for Pearl Jam. A great many quintessentially Seattle-seeming things were happening in that one room. The experience left me exhilarated and optimistic; I thought to myself, "Wowzers! I just got here and I'm already having dinner with someone high up in the Pearl Jam organization!"

Four years later, I get into Seattle very rarely and live a pretty quiet life on the island. Do I feel like I'm missing out sometimes? Absolutely. Is this the life I imagined for myself? No way. Still, I'm happy. I feel lucky. I take a lot of nice walks. So...did I change? I changed by not changing at all. Small town predicts my fate.

Special thanks to this week's guests: Michael Barbaro and a mylar balloon whose flying days are through. This week's walk is sponsored by my old neighbor, San Francisco-based certified professional life coach Pam Daghlian. Pam is great, and offering a special rate for WALKING listeners at: pamdaghlian.com/walking

You Like Me? You Really Like Me? Feb 26, 2019

Show notes

Busy week here on the Internet, with a sterling write-up of the show on Vulture and oodles of new listeners. Meanwhile, in real life, the same old silent trees and trails. I mean, wow: it took walking alone in the woods for me to feel a part of things online. Anyway, since it's still not apparent to me that anyone reads these show descriptions (do you?) I'll just provide this short summary of this week's walk and be done with it.

THIS WEEK'S WALK by Jon Mooallem

Stopped right away:

boots needed tying.

Spooked some ducks,

watched them flying.

Beach rocks crunchin'.

New house construction.

This week's walk is brought to you by media mogul Max Linksy, who calls your attention to the remarkably good and remarkably bananas new book THE MASTERMIND by Evan Ratliff. Go buy it!

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