The Wild Idea Podcast
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Bob Marshall: The Haunting of Bill’s House
For Halloween, Bill Hodge channels Wilderness Society founder Bob Marshall (1901–1939) in a scripted séance, and Anders Reynolds interviews him about the Adirondacks, the Alaska Brooks Range, the roadless rules he wrote for the Forest Service, and why he insisted wild country belongs to everyone. A dramatized episode built on the historical record.
Sam Forstag: Smoke Jumping, Union Organizing, and the Fight for Montana’s First District
Sam Forstag, former smoke jumper and Forest Service union leader, joins Bill and Anders to talk about what the federal workforce cuts did to the people who manage wildfires, and what rebuilding those crews looks like from Montana’s First District. The conversation runs from the proposed U.S. Wildland Fire Service to the Prescribed Fire Act to the Windy Rock fire near Helmville, which Forstag says cost the state $56 million.
Cam Brensinger: NEMO’s Road from a Bivy Bag on Mount Washington to Recyclable Gear
Cam Brensinger, founder and CEO of NEMO, joins Bill and Anders to trace how a miserable night in a bivy bag on Mount Washington became a gear company built on the idea that nothing gets made unless it improves the outdoor experience. He weighs in on selling sustainability in 2026, the industry’s voice in Washington, and why a tent in a hundred years might look a lot like home.
Marshall Johnson: Conservation Ranching and the Birds That Depend on It
Marshall Johnson, Chief Conservation Officer for the National Audubon Society, joins Bill and Anders to trace how the Conservation Ranching Program turned ranchers into the easiest sell for a national certification effort, and why birds act as diplomats connecting urban and rural communities. He explains the tension between voluntary Farm Bill incentives and the political reality of passing legislation, while noting that birds serve as sentinels for environmental health, revealing crises like the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer years before human impacts become visible.
Amy Bowers Cordalis: Indigenous-Led Conservation and the Salmon That Came Home
Amy Bowers Cordalis, Yurok Tribe member, attorney, and author of The Water Remembers, on the legal and grassroots strategy behind the largest dam removal and salmon restoration project in U.S. history, and the first covenant that shaped her family’s fight for the Klamath River. Three days after the last dam came down, salmon swam past it for the first time in a century.
Mark Haggerty & Megan Lawson: The Economics of Public Lands and Rural Prosperity
Mark Haggerty of the Center for American Progress and Dr. Megan Lawson of Headwaters Economics on why some of the highest-output rural counties are losing people, why selling public land is a poor answer to the housing crisis, and what a permanent fund could do for counties that depend on federal land revenue. Around Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, inflation-adjusted per capita income has climbed 41 percent.
Fitz Cahall: The Million-Signature Push to Save Public Lands
Fitz Cahall, longtime host of The Dirtbag Diaries, has spent two decades telling other people’s outdoor stories. Now he’s stepping into the fight himself, leading Save Public Lands, a coalition effort to gather one million signatures against public land sell-offs, backroom deals, and giveaways before National Public Lands Day.
Jim Klug, Hal Herring & Alex Leone: River Access Is Not a Spectator Sport
Jim Klug of Yellow Dog Fly Fishing, journalist and podcaster Hal Herring, and Alex Leone of the Public Land/Water Access Association join Bill and Anders to trace how Montana’s 1985 Stream Access Law came to exist, the landowners who fought it in court for decades, and why they say the fight is never permanently won. The conversation closes on the Montana Stream Access Rally, a September 17 gathering in Bozeman meant to remind lawmakers that Montanans are still paying attention.
Christian Hunt & Kelly Cox: Can Wildlife Corridors Cross DC’s Political Divide?
Christian Hunt, director of Defenders of Wildlife’s National Wildlife Refuges and Parks Program, and Kelly Cox, the program’s senior policy and planning specialist, join Bill and Anders to break down the Wildlife Corridors and Habitat Connectivity Conservation Act of 2026, a bipartisan bill that would create the first legal framework for connecting fragmented wildlife habitat across federal lands. The conversation also turns to Defenders’ campaign at Cumberland Island National Seashore, where a National Park Service land exchange plan is raising questions about transparency and the seashore’s mandate to remain in a primitive state.
Adam Cramer: How Outdoor Recreation Became a Conservation Coalition
Adam Cramer, founding CEO of the Outdoor Alliance, traces the coalition’s start in a DC parking lot to its current fight to protect the Roadless Rule, why he believes a single public comment still carries weight even when agencies ignore it, and how outdoor recreation could become one of the few public lands issues with support across the political spectrum.
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What is The Wild Idea?
Humans have been part of Earth’s natural cycle for 300,000 years, with brains much the same as ours for the past 100,000 or so. What’s evolved isn’t our biology but how we understand our place in the natural world. As small populations grew into communities and then into societies, we created cultural, religious, and legal frameworks to help explain and define our connection to the rest of life on Earth.
