The Wild Idea

The Wild Idea is an exploration of the intersection of wild nature and our own human nature. The hosts, Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds, through conversations with experts and thought leaders will dive into the ways that humans have both embraced and impact the function and vitality of our remaining wild places.

The Wild Idea is a science podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 145 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Unknown Host hosts The Wild Idea, a science show with 145 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #74

  Dan Puskar: DC's Own National Park

  Aug 18, 202650 min

  Dan Puskar, executive director of the Rock Creek Conservancy, introduces listeners to Rock Creek Park, the 1,754-acre national park running through the heart of Washington, DC, created by Congress the same week as Sequoia and Yosemite in 1890. Puskar explains what it takes to steward an urban national park that draws more than two million visits a year but has seen no real increase in its federal budget in two decades, from a 4,000-volunteer stewardship program to a new DC Water tunnel project aimed at cleaning up the creek itself. He also talks about where the park is investing first as it works to make Rock Creek feel open to every neighborhood it touches, and previews this week's reopening of the Carter Barron Amphitheater, a historic stage dark for a decade, for three nights of live music. Full show notes and links at our website, thewildidea.com .

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  Episode #73

  Ryan Johnston: Building Cast Hope Through the Sport of Fly Fishing

  Aug 11, 202649 min

  Ryan Johnston has spent 24 years as a fly fishing guide, working rivers in California and Idaho and now Montana's Flathead Valley. In this episode, he shares stories from his three books, including the now-legendary "Monster Brown Trout" tale from his first book, A Reel Job , and reflects on what two decades in a drift boat has taught him about people, patience, and the intimacy of sharing a day on the water with a stranger. Johnston also traces the origin of Cast Hope, the youth mentorship nonprofit he founded in 2009 after a church sermon on giving back to his community, which now takes roughly 1,200 kids fly fishing for free every year across five Western regions. The conversation turns to the outfitter permit systems that govern access to rivers like the South Fork of the Snake, the tension between protecting a fishery and guides making a living, and why moving fish between waters remains one of the biggest threats to Western fisheries today. Full show notes and links at our website, thewildidea.com .

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  Episode #72

  Andy Mergen & Justin Pidot: How Do We Make Public Lands More Public?

  Aug 4, 20261h 9m

  Please take our listener survey ! We'd love to hear from you. Are America's public lands getting more public, or less? Two of the sharpest legal minds in the field join Bill and Anders to dig in. Andrew Mergen, faculty director of Harvard Law School's Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, spent decades litigating public lands cases for the Department of Justice. Justin Pidot teaches environmental law at the University of Arizona and served as general counsel of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Together they cover the 1872 Mining Law, tribal co-management at national monuments, reacquiring land in the spirit of the century-old Weeks Act, and a proposal to charter a new Public Land Law Review Commission, the first since 1964. They close with a lightning round on the administration's rollback of Endangered Species Act habitat protections and a fresh round of cuts to Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, both breaking as the episode was recorded. Full show notes and links at our website, thewildidea.com .

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  The Wild Idea

  The Wild Line: DOGE Cuts Exacerbate Wildfire, Interior Cancels Endangered Species Protections, and Alaska Judge Dismisses Dalton Highway Suit

  Jul 31, 202610 min

  This week, a Senate committee drops most of its wilderness, national park, and wild and scenic river bills in favor of energy permitting measures, a federal judge in Anchorage clears the way for transferring more than 2 million acres along the Dalton Highway corridor to the State of Alaska, while the Interior Department cancels the Endangered Species Act's blanket 4(d) rule and NOAA rejects a bid to expand North Atlantic right whale critical habitat. We also cover new reporting linking paused DOGE wildfire-prevention funding to the fires burning across northern Minnesota, the removal of tribal signage at the newly shrunken Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante Monuments, and the closing comment period on proposed changes to the Forest Service Directives System. Plus: peak viewing at Katmai's Brooks Falls bear cam and a relaunched wilderness management certificate program at the University of Montana. Full show notes and links at our website, thewildidea.com . This is the last Wild Line episode in the Wild Ide a feed — subscribe to Wild Line 's own feed to keep listening.

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  Episode #71

  Lynn Scarlett & Matt Lee-Ashley: Can We Rewrite the Rules of Public Lands Policy?

  Jul 28, 202652 min

  What would it take to rewrite the rules of American conservation? Lynn Scarlett, former Deputy Secretary of the Interior, and Matt Lee-Ashley, Executive Director of Ground Shift, join Bill and Anders to talk about a new initiative asking that exact question, crowdsourcing ideas for what public lands and waters should look like in ten, twenty, and fifty years. The conversation covers essays on the Ground Shift platform that challenge conservation orthodoxy, from private land tools to a class and sovereignty critique of the movement itself, along with the case for and against a modern Public Land Law Review Commission. Scarlett and Lee-Ashley also dig into what makes place-based collaboration succeed or fail, why implementation, not just the law itself, often determines whether the Endangered Species Act and NEPA actually work, and how public pressure, not just a good white paper, is what moves policy. Full show notes and links at our website, thewildidea.com .

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