Endless Curiosity (The Last Episode)

July 19, 2023·38 min·3 clips

Jamie Shearer learned she's more capable than she believed while running a marathon distance through the Sierra.

1. She Explores, a podcast hosted by Gail Straub covering women's outdoor adventures, publishes its final episode after seven years and more than 200 episodes. 2. Host Gail Straub explains the closure: the demands of maintaining a weekly independent podcast and digital media platform with a small team became unsustainable, despite slowing to a reduced schedule the prior year. 3. The episode's thesis is drawn from a Helen Bright Tumblr quote: 'something can be good and also end. And that thing was still good.' 4. Gail invited eight past guests to share an outdoor lesson from the last few years, structuring the episode as a final collective transmission of the platform's recurring themes. 5. Photographer Jamie Shearer describes how backcountry running in the Sierra — including a solo marathon-distance day through terrain she had only backpacked before — helped her process a breakup in which she had stopped believing in herself. 6. Shearer draws a direct contrast between the self-doubt she experienced in the relationship and the consistent self-trust the outdoors provided, identifying that contrast as what ultimately led her to leave. 7. Shont, who shared her story of adventure after divorce in an earlier episode, describes completing the W trek in Torres del Paine National Park in Patagonia while openly acknowledging to her group beforehand that she was a slower hiker and would 'hike her own hike.' 8. Shont reflects that arriving 10-15 minutes after the front of the group at each destination required her to remove comparison and competition from her experience, and that her transparency created space for others in the group to move at their own pace as well. 9. Gabacia, who served as She Explores' host in residence in 2021 and hosted the See Us Outside miniseries, describes attempting a solo thru-hike of the Continental Divide in New Mexico and exiting the trail on day two or three due to injury. 10. A friend's response to Gabacia's injury — 'injuries are slow-me-down medicine' — reframed the forced exit from a dream into a necessary rest after a period of being overworked. 11. Sydney Williams, author and founder of the Hiking My Feelings nonprofit, calls in from the parking lot immediately after hiking the Desolation Trail to the Salt Lake Overlook, where using the Seek by iNaturalist app triggered a realization about the 'know-it-all' label she had carried since childhood. 12. Williams reframes that label as 'curious person' rather than know-it-all, and says the misattribution had been quietly dimming her enthusiasm for sharing knowledge for five years. 13. Hiranya Diawas-Jassinger, who appeared in an earlier episode about her hike on the Welsh coastal path, describes watching her four-month-old son become absorbed by wind-shaken palm leaves at the zoo, and choosing to pause and watch with him rather than move to the next exhibit. 14. Hiranya frames this as a resistance to productivity culture — noting that breastfeeding and napping with her son in a garden hammock can trigger the 'lazy' narrative even while she is, as she states, keeping him alive and growing. 15. Photographer Gretchen Powers describes completing a 36-mile cross-country ski race — more than double her previous longest ski distance — on a course designed primarily for snowmobile travel, finishing in approximately eight and a half hours. 16. Powers identifies perseverance, fueling well, and calling her mom, sister, and best friend during the race as the keys to finishing, and uses the story to argue that adequate food is an act of self-worth for any distance. 17. Tori Duhame, a photographer and dancer who worked on the She Explores team for two years, describes rediscovering play and community after moving from Utah to Richmond, Virginia, having previously felt excluded from outdoor culture by its emphasis on expertise and professional rigor. 18. Tori credits the She Explores podcast — which they discovered in 2017 during a miserable office job — with making them feel that 'the walls were cracking and falling down' and pointing them toward community and beginner's mind. 19. Haley Hurst, who designed the She Explores website, and Noelle Russell, another longtime partner, each offer brief closing submissions centered on 'curiosity as a constant' — the show's consistent throughline — with Noelle citing a street art mural that read 'love is 75% curiosity.' 20. Gail closes the episode with a story about a small glass stone she carried from her mid-20s apartment on Electric Avenue in Somerville, Massachusetts — a trinket that caught the light as a reminder to slow down — and uses it as a metaphor for the lessons of She Explores that will resurface when listeners need them most.

As heard by us

A quiet farewell that uses gardening and self-revision to land its final note.

She Explores ends on a quiet note, treating the show's close as something carefully tended rather than staged. Gail Straub explains why the podcast has slowed, then lands on a garden image that fits the show's long habit of patience, care, and steady work.

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Why you'd press play

A soft goodbye from the final She Explores episode, after seven years and more than 200 episodes, that turns curiosity into a way of staying open.

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