Outside/In

The National Park Service has changed immensely since its days of keeping poachers out of Yellowstone. So has its approach to telling the story of America.  Kirsten Talken-Spaulding of the NPS and Will Shafroth of the National Parks Foundation help us understand how this colossal system actually works and what it's doing to tell the true story of the United States. This episode was reported and pr...

The land had been cultivated and lived on for millennia when geologist Ferdinand Hayden came upon the astounding Yellowstone "wilderness." It wasn't long before the federal government declared it a national park, to be preserved in perpetuity for the enjoyment of all. Ostensibly. How did Yellowstone go from being an important home, hunting ground, thoroughfare and meeting place to being a park?  T...

Last summer, former Outside/In host Sam Evans-Brown quit journalism to become a lobbyist for clean energy. He’s not alone. Millions of people left their jobs or changed careers in the past couple years. But is the field of climate journalism going through its own “Great Resignation?” In a moment when the stakes are so high, are the people who cover the climate crisis leaving journalism to try to h...

Few bear witness to human decomposition. We embalm and seal bodies in caskets, and bury them six feet underground. Decomposition happens out of sight and out of mind, or in the case of cremation, is skipped over entirely. But at human decomposition facilities, sometimes known as "body farms," students and researchers see rotting corpses every day. They watch as scavengers and bacteria feast on the...

Anybody who supports the show RIGHT NOW, during our June 2020 Fund Drive, will be entered to win a $500 Airbnb gift card, and will receive an adorable limited-edition Outside/In axolotl sticker. Click here to donate to Outside/In right now.    A few weeks ago, we teamed up with the Civics 101 podcast to bring you the story of Happy, an Asian elephant living in the Bronx Zoo. Lawyers had petitioned...

Anybody who supports the show RIGHT NOW, during our June 2020 Fund Drive, will be entered to win a $500 Airbnb gift card, and will receive an adorable limited-edition Outside/In axolotl sticker. Click here to donate to Outside/In right now. When the smash-success Jurassic Park first hit theaters in 1993, it inspired a generation of dinophiliacs and helped to usher in a new “golden age of paleontol...

Anybody who supports the show RIGHT NOW, during our June 2020 Fund Drive, will be entered to win a $500 Airbnb gift card, AND will receive an adorable limited-edition Outside/In axolotl sticker. Click here to donate to Outside/In right now. Happy has lived in New York City’s Bronx Zoo for years. To visitors, she’s a lone Asian elephant. But to a team of animal rights lawyers, she’s a prisoner. The...

It’s that time again, when scientists everywhere hold their breath as we open our listener mailbag. It’s spring in the northern hemisphere, so the theme of the questions in this episode is “growth” — with the exception of the last question, which is… kind of the opposite. Question 1: Um, what are those frogs doing? (go to our website to see the picture) Question 2: What’s that white foam that form...

On a bluebird day in April of 2019, Snow Ranger Frank Carus set out to investigate a reported avalanche in the backcountry of Mt. Washington. He found a lone skier, buried several feet under the snow. The man was severely hypothermic, but alive. Wilderness EMTS can work for decades and never encounter this particular situation, and what happened next was an attempted rescue that people in Northern...

A few weeks ago our host, Nate Hegyi, was on the edge of a very high cliff in Utah’s Zion National Park when he heard a little voice inside his head whisper… “jump.”   He didn’t heed the call, thankfully, and when he got down safely he discovered that more than a third of all people might feel this urge, ominously known as “the call of the void.”  Most of us can wave off these impulses. But what i...

Three hundred years ago on Easter Sunday, 1722, European explorers landed on a South Pacific island that they called “Easter Island.” And they were shocked to see nearly one-thousand giant statues of stoic faces, called “moai”, placed all over the island. Who moved them? And how did they do it? The most popular theory was that this remote civilization destroyed itself – cutting down all the trees...

Like most modern publications, Low-tech Magazine has a website. But when you scroll through theirs, you’ll notice an icon in the corner: the weather forecast in Barcelona. That’s because Kris Decker, the creator of Low-tech Magazine, powers the site off a solar panel on his balcony. When the weather gets bad, the website just… goes offline. In a way, the solar-powered website is an experiment: an...

Lake trout are on life support in Lake Michigan. They rely on intense breeding and stocking by federal fisheries. There was a breakthrough last summer, though, that could help bolster the lake trout’s recovery. A geneticist successfully mapped the lake trout genome: an outline of the fish’s genetic makeup. The genome will help biologists understand why some “strains” of trout have a higher surviva...

In this episode, the final frontier of the outdoors: space! From rocket particles, to ominous theories about what might happen if we ever make contact with aliens, we’re launching into uncharted territory to answer your questions about outer space.  And speaking of uncharted territory, we’re kicking this episode off with a very important introduction: our new host Nate Hegyi is picking up the mic...

Antler tissue is the fastest growing animal tissue on the planet. It grows faster than a human embryo, faster even than a cluster of cancer cells. On a hot summer day, some antlers can grow as much as one inch per day! And buried inside them is a cocktail of nutrients that both animals and humans are itching to get their paws on. In summary: Antlers are freaking amazing. So in this episode of Outs...

Forget about beer, or even water; it was hard apple cider that was THE drink of choice in colonial America. Even kids drank it! And since it’s made from apples – the “all-American” fruit – what could be more American than cider? But apples aren’t native to America. They’re originally from Kazakhstan. In this episode we look at the immigration story of Malus domestica, the domesticated apple, from...

Move over, beef: there’s a new burger in town. Plant-based meats are sizzling hot right now; in 2020 alone, the alternative meat industry saw a record $3.1 billion in investment, with 112 new plant-based brands launching in supermarkets. These juicy, savory, chewy fake burgers are a far cry from the dry, weird-tasting veggie patties of the past.  In this episode, Gastropod co-hosts Nicole Twilley...

When Jocelyn Smith was growing up, she told her friends and family she didn’t want to go to college. Instead, her goal was to hike all 2,190 miles of the Appalachian Trail, a rugged journey spanning from northern Georgia to central Maine. Last year, she finally realized that dream in a seven-month long, life-changing adventure. But as soon as she started her descent from the last mountain summit,...

When writer Elizabeth Rush visited neighborhoods already transformed by rising seas, she noticed that many people did not use terms like “climate change.” They still talked about it – it’s just that they talked about it in terms of their own experiences: the dolphins, swimming in tidal creeks further inland than ever before… how the last big flood wasn’t gradual, but fast and sudden. In this episo...

Decades before the first international permaculture conference or certified organic tomato, a farmer on an island in southern Japan turned his back on industrial agriculture and devoted his life to finding a different way of farming. Masanobu Fukuoka was working as a plant pathologist when he experienced a revelation – and promptly quit his job and returned home to his family farm. Eventually, he...

Decades before the first international permaculture conference or certified organic tomato, a farmer on an island in southern Japan turned his back on industrial agriculture and devoted his life to finding a different way of farming. Masanobu Fukuoka was working as a plant pathologist when he experienced a revelation – and promptly quit his job and returned home to his family farm. Eventually, he...

On May 21, 2021, an influential environmental activist died of Covid-19 and you probably didn’t hear about it. Sunderlal Bahuguna’s passing didn’t make the major news outlets in the US, but it was a big deal in India, where he was the renowned leader of the Chipko movement against deforestation in the 1970s.  Chipko is a Hindi word for “hugging”, but according to Bahuguna, he was just the messenge...

We all know that a key part of addressing climate change involves getting off fossil fuels. But renewable energies, such as solar energy, are not without costs. One key cost? It uses a lot of land. The team at How to Save a Planet takes a look at one creative solution to this problem – mixing solar panels with agriculture. And they are not at all sheepish about the role of one very adorable four l...

Gasp! Once again, the Outside/In team find themselves plunged into (a very predictable) darkness as winter descends on the Northern Hemisphere. In this episode, our second annual friluftsliv special, we turn to Norwegian culture for inspiration on how best to approach the coldest quarter of the year.   The team offers our 2021/22 tips on how to enjoy the outdoors in inclement weather, and cozy (an...

We’ve got answers to your burning questions: a query about the impacts of wildlife smoke on bird migration; a long-smoldering family debate over whether or not bears can hoot; and, perhaps, stamping out the fire in the gas furnace heating your home. Question 1: What home heating system is best for the climate? Question 2: Is wildfire smoke impacting bird migration? Question 3: Do bears hoot? Quest...