The Wild Idea Podcast
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Southern Currents: Appalachia in Recovery
Nearly a year after Hurricane Helene tore through the Southern Appalachians, we catch up with four great friends and trusted conservation partners, Ben Prater, Sam Evans, Josh Kelly, and Jill Gottesman, to share stories of loss, resilience, and hope. From flooded towns and downed forests to endangered Hellbenders and shifting policies, this conversation captures both the challenges and the possibilities in a region forever changed by the storm.
What emerges is a portrait of community strength and a reminder that these mountains, like the people who call them home, are resilient. We talk about neighbors helping neighbors, the risks of rushed recovery efforts, and the importance of protecting public lands and biodiversity. Through it all, there are sparks of hope, and the shared commitment to care for Appalachia’s wild places and communities.
Kim Bednarek: Community-Led Wins in the Okefenokee
Bill and Anders head into the Okefenokee with Kim Bednarek, director of the Okefenokee Swamp Park. She shares how the community stopped mining on Trail Ridge, why that $60 million win mattered, and how the swamp’s future depends on conservation and local voices.
They dig into the swamp’s cultural history, from Indigenous roots and Swamper families to an all-Black CCC crew, and talk about new paths to prosperity through paddles, boardwalks, and tourism. There’s also gators on the trail, favorite movie debates, and a look at why the Okefenokee is now in the running for UNESCO World Heritage status.
Southern Currents: The Ozark Society and the Buffalo River
In this Southern Currents bonus episode of The Wild Idea, Bill chats with Stuart Nolan, Tommie Kelly, and Martha Morris from the Ozark Society, the group that came together in 1962 to keep the Buffalo River from being dammed and went on to make it America’s first National River in 1972. They swap stories from that fight, like riding the Jubilee Bus to Washington, D.C. and floating the river with Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, and talk about how the work to protect the Buffalo has come up again and again with new threats like landfills, dams, and hog farms. They also share how the Society keeps pushing forward, protecting rivers and wilderness, building trails, and getting the next generation out on the water.
Joe Whitson: Marketing the Wilderness
Environmental justice scholar Joe Whitson joins Bill and Anders to talk about how our stories about nature shape the land itself.
Joe explains his concept of “wildernessing,” the process of making a place look and feel “untouched” through policy decisions, land management, and marketing, even though these landscapes have deep human histories. The conversation moves from history to the present, exploring how our cultural definition of “wilderness” has shifted over time, why climate change is challenging the myth of pristine nature, and what it will take to create a more just and inclusive future for public lands.
Bob Marshall and Jack Rudloe: Land Loss and Citizen Science on The Gulf Coast
In this first installment of our special Southern Currents series, Bill travels the Gulf Coast (sadly, without Anders) to explore the crisis of coastal land loss and the role of citizen science in protecting the region’s future.
We begin in Louisiana with Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Bob Marshall, who has spent decades covering the collapse of his home state’s coastal wetlands, before shifting east to the Florida panhandle, where marine biologist, author, and lifelong mischief-maker Jack Rudloe tells the story of founding the Gulf Specimen Marine Lab in Panacea, Florida.
Blain and Monique Anderson: Sailing Alaska’s Wilderness Waters
Join us as we climb aboard the BOB, a 50-foot Catalina sailboat, with Blain and Monique Anderson—a husband-and-wife team navigating the remote waters of Southeast Alaska. As the founders of Sound Sailing, they’ve turned their love of sailing and wild places into a platform for sharing the raw beauty and singular experience found only in Alaska’s coastal wilderness. Today’s episode is part travelogue, part meditation on modern wilderness, and part love letter to the wild waters of Alaska.
Your Hosts Bill & Anders: You Ask – We Answer
In this special 20th episode of The Wild Idea, Bill and Anders are recording face-to-face for the first time, from the deck of a sailboat in Southeast Alaska. To mark the milestone, they’re answering twenty questions submitted by listeners.
The result is a wide-ranging, often hilarious, occasionally serious, and always thoughtful conversation that covers everything from their dream podcast guests and close calls in the backcountry to artificial intelligence, bipartisan conservation, screen addiction, and the secret behind those corny intro questions.
Josh Jackson: The Forgotten Lands Project
Josh Jackson didn’t set out to become a champion for the Bureau of Land Management. But after stumbling into BLM lands in the deserts of California, he found himself transformed, first by the landscape, and then by the history behind it. In this episode, Josh joins Bill and Anders to talk about The Enduring Wild, his new book exploring California’s public lands, and the path that took him from “drive-by desert” skeptic to devoted pilgrim.
Cristina Eisenberg: Humility as a Tool for Protection and Stewardship
In this wide-ranging conversation, Dr. Cristina Eisenberg shares her perspective on the growing crisis facing our forests and why meeting this moment will take more than science alone. Together with Bill and Anders, she unpacks why both extractive management and strict hands-off protection have fallen short, and how it’s time to rethink what “wilderness” really means.
Tony Bynum: Conservation Through a Photographer’s Lens
Conservation photographer Tony Bynum joins Bill and Anders for a wide-ranging conversation about photography, sovereignty, wild places, and what it means to tell the truth with an image. Whether he’s photographing the oil rigs encroaching on the Rocky Mountain Front or conducting wilderness character surveys in the remote prairies of eastern Montana, Tony brings a rare combination of artistic vision and firsthand experience in land management, tribal sovereignty, and public policy.
Anne Robinson: Good News from the Appalachian Trail
Anne Robinson joins us from Harpers Ferry, the symbolic halfway point of her 2,200-mile thru-hike, to talk about what she’s learning about land, history, community—and herself—along the way.
The Conservation Alliance: Outdoor Brands Make a Stand
What happens when the companies that outfit our adventures decide to stand up for the places that make those adventures possible? This week on The Wild Idea, we’re exploring the growing power of outdoor brands to influence public land policy.
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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.
