Ed Caesar is a contributing writer to The New Yorker whose work has taken him on a number of adventures, while covering stories about the mysterious owners of London’s largest private residence, Russian money-laundering scams, and Mount Everest in his latest book, The Moth and Mountain. Speaking to Sally from lockdown in his home in Manchester, the UK, Ed talks about craving fun, feelings of restlessness and his approach to research. 

Earlier this year, Todd Heery was already preparing himself for a year of isolation. Todd is the plumber at Mawson Research Station in Antarctica – the only continent so far untouched by the coronavirus. When he boarded the boat for departure, he never expected that the world he was leaving behind would change the way it has. In this episode, Todd speaks to Sally Warhaft about life in Antarctica, the importance of ritual and surviving isolation. 

There’s walking, and then there’s walking. When Lisa Dempster set out to tackle the Shikoku Pilgrimage – a 1200km, 88 temple route through regional Japan – she was at a nadir of mental and physical health; desperate for something to bring major change to her life.

'People really do see walking now as a solution, and an answer to things.'

As she describes the gruelling journey, laid out in her travelogue Neon Pilgrim (2009; re-launched in 2017), it surprised her with unexpected spiritual encounters. Yet the sense of an inner shift was still elusive and intangible – and something which only later emerged through writing about the experience.

Walking Princes Park with doctor and author Leah Kaminsky, Dempster recounts the circumstances of her adventure, her writing of it, and how it’s impacted her life in the near-decade since.

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