Erika

Roam School Family

Kids EN ↓ 4 episodes

We're learning our way through America's wild spaces with our two kids, and this podcast is where we tell you the stories that didn't make it onto the visitor center signs. Why that lake is so blue it looks fake? Whose village got destroyed to make this a park? ...and why that matters. The woman who lived in a tree for two years to save it. The bacteria that thrive in boiling water. The 17-year fight to protect one forest. Every episode digs into one park's weird geology, real history, and the people who refused to give up when everyone said these places weren't worth saving. We explain things...

Author

Erika

Episodes

[Detour] The Wave | We won the permit lottery. Now what? 30.06.2026 16:13

There are 64 permits available per day to get to The Wave. During peak season, 300 people compete for them. We won! …and then we realized we had an 8-year-old who had never hiked 6.5 miles in his life, a 90º & sunny weather forecast, no trail and no shade. This episode explains the geology of The Wave: Jurassic sand dunes, 200 million years old, turned to stone but caught mid-motion. We're gui...

Redwood National and State Parks | How do the world’s tallest trees hold each other up? 12.06.2026 17:21

Redwood trees have roots only ten feet deep. For a tree that grows as tall as the statue of liberty, that should be a problem…This episode is about why it isn't. We explain how redwoods manufacture the fog that feeds them, what a banana slug actually does for a forest, and what the Yurok people understood about these trees long before anyone else was paying attention. And we tell the story of four...

[Detour] LIGO | If two black holes collide in the universe, do they make a sound? 27.04.2026 17:47

This episode explains how scientists built a machine so sensitive that your heartbeat standing next to it would ruin the experiment...and why they put it in the middle of the Washington desert. We walk through the control room where gravitational wave detections happen, with a working LIGO scientist as our guide. We explain what it means that space itself can stretch and squeeze, and why the signa...

Joshua Tree National Park | How does anything survive in a desert this dry? 02.01.2026 15:22

Joshua Tree isn't just about weird trees and cool rocks. This episode tells you why those "trees" are not actually trees and what a rain shadow actually does to a landscape. We explain why the Oasis of Mara—the place where Serrano and Chemehuevi people had lived peacefully for generations—got claimed by the state of California in 1875 and sold to the Southern Pacific Railroad without their consent...