What's Your Why?

“When I was young, I always had a mountain range over my shoulder,” he says. “I still come back looking for lost dignity.”  We were very fortunate to have Gregory Hinton on for our latest episode of “What’s Your Why!” He is an novelist, filmmaker, lecturer, curator, and playwright. As A Buffalo Bill Center of the West Resident Fellow, Hinton is the proud creator and producer of “Out West”, a natio...

“It’s the simple things” – is what I thought about when I interviewed Willow Belden for our latest What’s Your Why? episode.  Her award-winning podcast “Out There” is not only about people who love nature but also about how people discover the outdoors even when they live in a cement jungle in the city. I think it’s why the West has become so popular. People want to escape the hectic grind of the...

Mark Pedri is an expedition-based documentary filmmaker and writer from Southwestern Wyoming where he tells stories from off the beaten path. His character-driven style of storytelling is reminiscent of his equally unique upbringing in Wyoming. Mark founded Burning Torch Productions in 2011 as a nimble production company to focus on character-driven stories from the backcountry and backroads of th...

This latest podcast is with Wyoming historian and professional rock climber Sam Lightner Jr . What an interesting path and journey his life choices have taken him on. His life choices took him on adventures to discover history in other parts of the world, learning about people, culture and their mountains. Sam is our historian for our new podcast from Wyoming Humanities – (shhhhhh….I can’t tell yo...

"'I know how to research. I know how to tell stories. I don't know what to do with a microphone or audio editing, but I want to learn,' and they hired me, and that's how my journalism career started in 2005. And it was incredible to start and learn there, because I was in a shop where I was surrounded by really talented editors and reporters who taught me a lot about not just how to find stories a...

Robert Martinez was born in Wyoming on the Wind River Reservation in the small city of Riverton. His lineage is Spanish, Mexican, Scotts Irish, French Canadian, and Northern Arapaho. He graduated Riverton High School at 17 at age 19, he became the Youngest Native American to graduate from Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design at that time. Living among the hard working people of the West and...

At 9 years old, Robbie heard about the prospect of closing or limiting access to our national parks, and wanted to be sure his and other kids' concerns were heard. He started speaking out, and subsequently founded the organization Kids Speak for Parks , which has been a fantastic vehicle for his message since 2017.    Robbie Bond's work to speak out on behalf of national parks caught the eye of Ro...

Darla Worden is editor in chief of Mountain Living  magazine and founder/director of the Left Bank Writers Retreat in Paris. A Wyoming native and life-long Ernest Hemingway fan, Worden discovered that the author spent summers from 1928 to 1939 in her home state. Her book, Cockeyed Crazy: Hemingway's Wyoming Summers With Pauline,  shows Wyoming as an influential place in Hemingway’s life just as Pa...

 “I am a product and lifelong resident of Alabama. I was born in Fairfield, Alabama to a father who worked for U.S. Steel and a stay-at-home mom. One of my grandfathers was a steelworker and the other a coal miner. I, too, spent some time working a union job in the steel mill. My parents and grandparents forged my respect for those who work to feed a family while trying to make their childrens’ li...

Jerry Enzler might just be the best living expert on the famous mountain man, Jim Bridger, and his exploits as a trapper and explorer. Today, we become experts of the expert, as Jerry takes us through his early life and onward to the eventual obsession with the famed adventurer. Thank you for your time, Jerry! Jerry also served as founding director of the National Mississippi River Museum & Aq...

Tom Rea lives in Casper, Wyo., where he is editor and co-founder, with the Wyoming State Historical Society, of  WyoHistory.org , a state-history website that is a project of the Wyoming State Historical Society. He worked for many years in the newspaper business. A new edition of his book Bone Wars: The Excavation and Celebrity of Andrew Carnegie’s Dinosaur (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001)...

Water-law scholar Anne MacKinnon has paid Whats Your Why a little visit in-between a series of discussions about public waters. Living in Casper, She is a former editor-in-chief of the Casper Star-Tribune and served from 2003 through 2010 on the Wyoming Water Development Commission. Anne also takes great pride in her abilities as a scholar, author, editor, and consultant.  Thank you, Anne! Follow...

Ashleigh and Kristen recently joined us to outline their stories and research with the Sheridan Press and their most recent project spotlighting humanity in our own communities. Their natural repartee is perfect for a podcast environment highlighting the Center for Vital Community (CVC), and its position as the "nonprofit for nonprofits." As we all know the pandemic is coming to an end, but politi...

"Some Cheyenne residents of color say they don't feel heard by largely white leadership in local government and schools. This lack of representation makes it easier for leaders to, even unintentionally, overlook the issues that affect them, they say. In part two of this series, residents express why this kind of representation matters and how they're working to achieve equity." Find the relative a...

Dustin Bleizeffer has worked as a coal miner, an oilfield mechanic, and for 20 years as a statewide reporter and editor primarily covering the energy industry in Wyoming. Most recently he was Communications Director at the Wyoming Outdoor Council, a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford, and WyoFile editor-in-chief. He currently lives in Casper, Wy. Thank you for your time, Dustin!

Podcasters! Hannah Black and  Niki Kottmann , both journalists with the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, joined us for an in depth discussion about their recent research on how government participation, voting, and elected leadership positions represent the minority voice. And if not, why? In short, the overwhelming answer is no. Listen to the episode to hear their thoughts and findings. We appreciate you N...

The tragic events of 9/11 set Baktash on a path of examining why people do what they do. Upon graduation from college, he decided to serve in the Peace Corps as an educator in a rural village in Mozambique. His father learned English from a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kandahar in the 1960s and that experience was the inspiration for his family to come to the United States.   After completing his serv...

Matthew Spangler is a playwright, director, and professor of performance studies at San José State University in the San Francisco Bay Area.   His adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s novel  The Kite Runner  received five San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics’ Circle Awards: Best Original Script, Best Overall Production, as well as awards for Lighting Design, Scenic Design, and Sound Design (produced...

Also known as the Interfaith Amigos – The interfaith Amigos do an inspiring presentation that offers a message of inclusion, empathy and hope. In their life work and in their interfaith presentations their message creates a bridge and opens the door to have to create conversation on religion and the interfaith experience. Pastor Don Mackenzie, PhD, now living in Minneapolis, is devoting himself to...

Welcome the Assistant Director of IMPACT 307 , Fred Schmechel! Trained as a sculptor and graphic designer, Fred joined IMPACT 307 in the fall of 2010. He directly counsels client companies on all aspects of their business needs. His work also includes oversight of the Fisher Innovation Launchpad, and the Southeast Wyoming Innovation Launchpad, and he is working on creating similar programs across...

Ryan Stolp, the creative force behind “Lift Lines” is our latest wonderful guest. His "Lift Lines" cartoon appears in the Jackson Hole Daily and on the news app, Hole Scroll. Stolp, who is the chief creative officer at Orijin Media (an independent subsidiary of Teton Media Works, the parent company of the News&Guide), has lived many creative lives. He has worked as a product design consultant,...

Greg Kearney is known for putting pen to paper and touching on recent issues affecting Americans. He has been drawing cartoons for newspapers, many of them political in nature, since his days as a high school student. He continued drawing cartoons through his college days and landed a job as the cartoonist for the Casper Star Tribune in Wyoming, where he spent the bulk of his career until he becam...

"I was picked on because I wasn't Lakota. I wasn't Sioux. I was different tribes. So, it wasn't that I was non-native, it was that I was native, but I was of a different tribe." 

Geoffrey O’Gara is an author, script writer, public affairs host, and documentary producer based in Lander, Wyoming. He is the author of  What You See in Clear Water: Indians, Whites, and a Battle Over Water in the American West  (Knopf) and  A Long Road Home, Journeys Through America’s Present in Search of America’s Past  (Norton). Geoff is the former editor of High Country News and spent many ye...

"I grew up in tribal Jordan, ever since I was a child I loved reading. I think maybe science will one day discover there's a gene and I have a huge mutation of it or something because having access to other ideas, different worlds, really fueled my sense of curiosity and made me want to live a full life, a way more full life than what I had access to as a woman in a Muslim community, a girl whose...