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This week on National Geographic Weekend host Boyd Matson speaks with guests about climbing Mount Everest for the 10th time, going behind the scenes at the National Museum of Natural History, seeking out bizarre festivals, giant space umbrellas, running through Death Valley, training sea lions, riding dune buggies across Mongolia, and running an ultramarathon with a blind man.

HOUR 1

• High-altitude mountaineer Ed Viesturs recently returned to Mount Everest for the tenth time as part of the First Ascent team. Viesturs tells Boyd about his seventh summit, and how he climbed Everest without supplemental oxygen.

• Boyd takes his own behind the scene look at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History with National Geographic Emerging Explorer Kristofer Helgen as a tour guide. Helgen, who is also the curator of mammals for the museum, shows Boyd specimens that the publics rarely, if ever, get to see.

• National Geographic Young Explorer grantees Ross McDermott and Andrew Owen are on a journey across the United States. They are searching for and photographing America’s small, bizarre and hidden festivals. McDermott joins Boyd to talk about the annual Hick Beauty Contest, the Hobo Convention and other recent festival finds.

• In this week’s “Did you know?” segment Boyd discusses alternative options for saving the planet from global warming, including a massive outer space umbrella.

HOUR 2

• The Badwater Ultramarathon is a running race through the lowest, hottest and driest place in North America. The challenge: 130 miles in 135-degree heat for 60 hours. It’s a competition unlike any other. Rebecca Byerly joins Boyd in the studio to talk about the highlights and lowlights of this year’s race.

• Boyd takes a trip to Sea World in Orlando where he talks to the sea lions and their trainer, Todd Coffman. Coffman tells Boyd how many of the sea lions at Sea World had to be rescued from the wild because they were over eating.

• The brother and sister team of Sarah and Eric McNeil-Landry are used to cold weather expeditions. Their expeditions have taken them across Greenland, Antarctica and Baffin Island. This time, however, they decided to tackle the Gobi desert. Sarah and Eric join Boyd to talk about their trip across Mongolia in dune buggies hooked to kites.

• Some people like a challenge, and some people like to make that challenge even harder. Boyd shares a story of running an ultramarathon across the Gobi desert along side a blind man.