Raising Wild

What does it take to raise a kid who's willing to do scary things? When professional mountain runner and world champion Grayson Murphy was four years old, she climbed to the top of a 30-foot diving platform and jumped. Not long after, her dad took her and her twin sister down a black diamond ski run, despite their tears and protests. For Grayson, those experiences weren't just about adrenaline. They helped shape a lifelong confidence in her physical abilities and a willingness to try things that scare her. In this episode of Raising Wild, Ashley talks with Grayson about growing up in an...

Bill Hodge has spent much of his life working to protect wild places and connect people to public lands. But that story started long before conservation became his career. In this episode of Raising Wild, Ashley sits down with Bill—Wild Idea Media founder and honorary “Wilder Parent” to her two boys—to trace his relationship with the outdoors back to its beginning. Bill shares memories of traveling with his family in an old pop-up camper, hiking through the mountains of North Carolina and learning from parents and relatives who gave him the freedom to be curious about the world around him....

Genevieve King grew up on the Flathead Reservation in western Montana, spending long days outside with her brothers, building hideouts in the hedges and feeling completely at ease among the trees—even after dark. As a teenager, she participated in an outdoor survival class where students made ammunition, learned to identify edible plants and snowshoed into the woods to build their own shelters. Those experiences helped shape Genevieve’s belief that children need freedom, meaningful challenges and a deep relationship with the natural world. After more than 25 years in early childhood...

Writer, teacher and mother Jennifer Case grew up backpacking Minnesota’s Superior Hiking Trail, where time outside gave her a sense of safety, belonging and connection to something larger than herself. Years later, she saw a photo of her daughter at ecology camp, sitting on a rocky overlook with a journal—having a version of the same experience. In this episode of Raising Wild, Ashley and Jennifer explore what it means to raise children who care deeply about other people and the living world without asking them to carry the full weight of its problems. Drawing from her new book, The Carework...

Joey Pointer grew up working six days a week on his family’s tobacco farm in rural North Carolina. He shucked truckloads of corn, drove tractors long before he could legally drive a car and learned that the work still had to get done—even when the weather changed or the plan fell apart. At the time, he hated it. College was his ticket out. Today, Joey is president and CEO of Fleet Feet, the country’s largest network of locally owned and operated running stores. In this episode, Ashley and Joey explore how the childhood he wanted to escape may have prepared him to lead: teaching him to work...

Professional trail runner, race director and father Mike Foote has spent much of his adult life moving quickly through wild places. But after a post-viral heart condition kept him from running—and sometimes even walking—for nearly two years, his relationship with the outdoors began to change. In this episode, Mike joins Ashley to talk about growing up with the freedom to roam, the complicated task of giving today’s children that same independence and why unstructured time outside may be one of the greatest gifts parents can offer. They also explore climate anxiety, conservation and Mike’s...

For many of us who grew up in the ’80s and ’90s, being outside wasn’t an activity that had to be planned. We rode bikes, wandered through fields, endured bad weather and came home when the streetlights turned on. Only later did we begin to understand what all that freedom may have given us—and how much harder it can be for children to find today. Jessica Turner, president of the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable, grew up that way in upstate New York. The outdoors was simply part of family and community life. Now, as the mother of two young children and one of the country’s leading voices for...

What do children lose when they lose regular, direct connection with the natural world? And what might all of us recover when we begin to notice again? In the first episode of Raising Wild, Ashley talks with Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods and Noticing: Intimate Encounters with the Natural World, about what has happened as childhood has moved farther indoors—and why the answer is not as simple as blaming screens. Richard traces the roots of nature-deficit disorder through technology, parental fear, urban design, over-structured childhood and the way modern life has made...

Welcome to Raising Wild This is a podcast about raising kids—and ourselves—a little more feral. On purpose.  In this short trailer, host Ashley Arnold introduces Raising Wild, a new podcast from Wild Idea Media about childhood, nature, freedom, risk and the wild parts of ourselves we don’t want to lose. Through conversations with writers, scientists, educators, adventurers, leaders, athletes and parents, Raising Wild explores how we give kids a wilder, more connected childhood in the world we actually live in—and how we reclaim it for ourselves—so we can take risks, think independently,...