Women's outdoor stories from host Gail Straub, spanning ski culture, wilderness therapy, and subarctic life.
She Explores treats the outdoors as more than scenery. Through gentle interviews, contributor stories, and occasional shared episodes from kindred shows, it follows women thinking through curiosity, belonging, change, recovery, creativity, and the places that reshape them.
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She Explores was produced by Ravel Media and hosted throughout its run by Gail Straub. Most episodes are one-on-one interviews with women connected to outdoor recreation — authors, photographers, nonprofit founders, and industry professionals — though the catalog also includes narrative-style episodes built around a single guest's story, and occasional panel or crossover episodes featuring multiple past guests. Recurring subject matter includes access and equity in outdoor spaces, such as ski town housing pressure and gentrification, BIPOC representation, and body size or disability; mental health as it intersects with the outdoors, including wilderness therapy programs, depression, and chronic illness; and personal accounts of solo hiking, backpacking, and relocating to remote or extreme environments such as the Canadian subarctic. The show sometimes shared crossover episodes from other outdoor-focused podcasts, such as Out There, and drew on a recurring network of past guests and collaborators who returned to contribute reflections. Episodes are conversational and reflective rather than instructional, centered on guests' personal growth and identity rather than gear reviews or trip logistics. The series ended in July 2023 with a retrospective final episode compiling closing reflections from eight past guests. Listeners drawn to the show tend to be interested in women's outdoor narratives, equity and representation issues within outdoor recreation culture, and the overlap between mental health and nature. The tone throughout is personal and candid, with guests speaking openly about setbacks, injuries, and identity struggles alongside their outdoor pursuits.
Made for: Listeners interested in women's perspectives on outdoor recreation, equity in access to nature, and how mental health and identity intersect with hiking, skiing, and wilderness experiences.
What sets it apart: Unlike gear- or trip-focused outdoor podcasts, She Explores centers women's personal and identity narratives, from ski town gentrification to wilderness therapy, through in-depth interviews rather than instructional content.
Come find inspiration with women in the outdoors. Interviews, in-the-field recordings, and listener submissions make up a tapestry of episodes covering themes such as solo hiking and camping, entrepreneurship, outdoor equity, aging, conservation, motherhood, chronic illness, and more as they intersect with outdoor experiences. Hosted by Gale Straub.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
She Explores connects outdoor experience to identity, access, environmental work, and the stories people carry into wild places.
Gail Straub treats outdoor life as a way into larger questions about work, identity, belonging, and care for the environment. She Explores moves between framed interviews, personal narrative, and occasional stories from another program, giving guests enough room to explain how…
A ski slope becomes a question about belonging, and your lift ticket suddenly has footnotes.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
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.
A calm look at science, communication, and a life shaped by water.
Mugda Flores moves from marine biology into science and policy communication, and the episode stays with the way that shift shaped her work, her time in water, and her life outdoors.
A ski conversation about belonging, access, and the uneasy line between critique and care.
She Explores treats skiing as a question of belonging. It asks who gets folded into the culture, who gets laughed at from the sidelines, and how a sport built on expertise can still sting people who arrive from outside it.
A wilderness-therapy story about resistance, buy-in, and the harder path to change.
Sarah Dealy's Indoor Kid follows a young woman through depression and wilderness therapy, and its strength comes from staying with how change can feel both promised and uncertain.
A quiet winter story about choosing Yellowknife and learning to live with the cold.
The episode centers on Kristen Berkley's move from Toronto to Yellowknife, and that choice gives the conversation its shape. What starts as a job move becomes a practical story about learning how to live in the subarctic, from winter hikes and year-round camping to the simple…
Nilay Patel presses tech and media CEOs on how they actually run their companies.
Physician Shoshana Ungerleider pairs TED talks with interviews on aging, drug prices, and menopause.
Gail Straub announces the final episode of She Explores after seven years and more than 200 episodes, citing the unsustainable demands of maintaining an independent digital media platform with a small team.
Mugda Flores joins She Explores for the Women in Water series and introduces herself as a marine biologist who moved into science and policy communication.
Host Gale Straub returns to She Explores after a summer break, sharing updates on her team and podcasting work, including producing About the Journey.
Heather Hansen starts with a question.
Gail eases listeners into Out There's new season through Sarah's story of depression, wilderness therapy, and the weird pressure to become rugged outdoors.
Kristen Berkley chose Yellowknife.