Leave a rating and / or review in the Apple Podcast app or on the Spotify app.
This free, 30-second action on your part lets us know you value all the time & energy that goes into producing & publishing the Blister Podcast, and it ensures that we can keep the show going.
How to Leave a Rating / Review on Apple Podcasts
- Open the Apple Podcast App
- (if you’re on your phone, simply click this link)
- Go to the icons at the bottom of the screen and choose “search”
- Search for “Blister Podcast”
- Click on the SHOW — *not* the specific episode
- Scroll down to “Ratings and Reviews”
- Click on “Tap to Rate” and leave us a 5-Star Rating!
- Below that, you can click Write a Review if you’d like to share a few words
How to Leave a Rating on Spotify
- Currently, you can only rate a podcast in the Spotify mobile app
- (if you’re on your phone, simply click this link)
- Navigate to the Blister Podcast show on Spotify (not to a specific episode)
- Tap the star icon underneath the podcast description and if you like the show, leave a 5-star rating
- On Spotify, you need to listen to at least one episode before you can rate a podcast.
Mt. Everest: for some people, it still represents the holy grail of adventure. For others, it conjures up images of long queues, lots of trash, and a tourism industry that has gotten out of hand. So what is the truth about Everest, and why does it generate such strong feelings for so many of us?
Our guest today is Adrian Ballinger, a climber, skier, mountain guide, and the founder and CEO of Alpenglow Expeditions. In this conversation, Adrian does an outstanding job of explaining the multiple sides of Everest, and the many different ways to approach it.
Adrian also offers his perspective on the recent high-profile criminal convictions and credible allegations of sexual abuse in the climbing and high-altitude mountaineering world, and we discuss what needs to be done across the broader outdoor sports world to stamp out this behavior.
RELATED LINKS:
BLISTER+ Get Yourself Covered
Blister Summit 2025
TOPICS & TIMES:
First Love: Skiing, Climbing, Or Mountaineering (6:53)
Progression in Skiing High Peaks (13:46)
Your Season on Everest (15:47)
North Side vs South Side of Everest (24:06)
How Accessible Should Everest Be? (34:57)
Supplemental Oxygen (38:27)
Alpenglow Expeditions’ “Rapid Ascent” (47:32)
Other Mountains that Deserve More Attention? (56:13)
Fixing High-Altitude Mountaineering & Outdoor Sports Culture (1:01:20)
The Need for more Female Guides (1:05:25)
Adrian’s Duffel Shuffle Podcast (1:10:41)
CHECK OUT OUR OTHER PODCASTS (click each to learn more):
you completely lost me with this episode. often preference plays a big part of gender disparity among vocations. how many women plumbers are there? how many male preschool teachers are there? please stop the simp parade
When there _is_ disparate preference as you describe, you also have to look at why that preference came to be. Maybe certain people aren’t attracted to the job at all, and that’s fine. But it’s also possible that those people have had horrible experiences when they tried to enter it and gave up.
When I’ve actually done that sort of listening and scrutiny (probably not as often as I should have) it has consistently often turned out that many women are initially interested, but they avoid the profession because their forebearers have told then that it’s a hostile. My profession (computer science) that has low female uptake, and I’ve seen first-hand how vast numbers of them are run out of the profession by abusive dudes. I’ve also seen and experienced how guys who try to do the right thing, like Lonnie Kauk in the Charles Barrett situation, are similarly expelled from the community.
If that makes me a “simp” then I’ll wear that label proudly. I care a lot more about how the women in my teams feel working with me than about anything incel randos on the Internet say.
I fully agree with all of this. Well said.