Navigating Nature's Mysteries: Insights from 'Outside/In'"
2024-07-30 00:22:09
Explore our national parks — their history, their people, and their stories.
How do you tell stories in this day and age about the environment and the world around us without sounding like you're warning of a coming climate apocalypse every time you engage with your audience? How can journalists cover the natural world with a renewed sense of love, joy, and wonder in an age where so much environmental news is bad?
Today I talk with Nate Hedgie, host of the engaging and ever-entertaining Outside. In podcast. We talk about his life as a journalist on the outdoor beat. We chat about his journey from growing up dreading being dragged on a hike to adventuring throughout North America in a small camper van, and the ways in which journalists and podcasts can re-engage a slew of beleaguered listeners with stories about places we hold dear and poke, prod, and explore the mysteries of nature. I'm Jason Epperson, and this is the America's National Parks Podcast.
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My guest today is Nate Hedgie, who is the host and senior producer of the Outside In podcast, produced by New Hampshire Public Radio. Nate loves stories that entertain, probe, and leave you with more questions than answers in a good way. He's traveled all over the country, from reporting on the hidden history behind the world's first atomic bomb explosion in New Mexico to investigating a pair of shady, competitive dog sledders in Alaska. Nate's work has aired on NPR, BBC, CBC, and other outlets, but he's best known for the Outside In podcast, which is one of the best podcasts covering the outside in all its many shapes and forms, the environment, and it's a whole lot of fun. It's fun, it's serious, it's all sorts of different things.
Nate, welcome to the show.
Oh, great to be here.
So I would love to start by just getting an idea of your sort of outdoor origin story. Can you tell us a bit about, like, your upbringing and how it influenced your sort of connection with the outdoors?
Yeah, I was born in British Columbia, Canada, to a family that loved going hiking, camping.
My grandpa. would, you know, take me out on his canoe and we'd go fishing every weekend. My family moved to Wisconsin when I was still pretty young and we continued doing as much outdoor stuff as we could, considering it's very different in Wisconsin than in British Columbia. But I'd still go out in summers to see my grandparents in BC. And yeah, I just was a very, I definitely went through a period where I had to be dragged out on hikes and I was very exhausted.
I remember as a teenager, you know, with my dad having us march up these steep hills. But when I went to college, I continued loving to be outside. I learned a little bit more about how to camp, how to backpack, what kind of stuff to bring to not be a 19 year old, walking around with, you know, flat, smooth shoes out in the woods and slipping and sliding on ice and things like that. I think back to the way I dressed sometimes when I went on those early adventures. and I'm just like, you, idiot, so much cotton, very not smart ways of going outside.
And now, me and my wife, we have a 2009 E350 camper van with a massive fiberglass top. It's a very bright, offensive shade of orange. And we drive that around the country. We actually were just down in Tucson, Arizona, in the high heat. It was so hot that we had to get an Airbnb.
I was going to say, it's pretty hot there right now.
The trip down was wonderful. And we just went to British Columbia last week for another vacation and up to this little town of Hyder, Alaska, which, if you've never been to Hyder, Alaska, I strongly recommend you can drive. It's one of the only places in Southeast Alaska that you can drive to from the mainland, from the U.S. So all of which is to say that we try to get out all the time.
We spent about an hour in Hyder. We spent most of our time on the other side in Stewart.
And yeah, loved, absolutely loved it there. We were there a little before. you could really see the bears and the glacier that you can drive up to. in Hyder. There's all sorts of road construction, so we couldn't get up there.
It was foggy anyway. So we were like, well, we're going to see other glaciers. That was our first sort of stop on our way up to Alaska. But yeah, BC is incredible. Western Canada altogether is incredible.
Western Canada is absolutely incredible. I am constantly blown away by how you can drive 13 hours and the landscape still looks the same. Like the boreal forest is so massive. The boreal forest, of course, being this, this ecosystem, like this ring around the earth, right, that is all those black spruce and birch trees, very distinctive ecosystem. It is so massive that you can drive for days and still be in that same ecosystem.
And it looks like nothing has changed. It's just wild to me. And the amount of wildlife that you see, I don't know if you got to see a bunch of bears on the side of the road, but oh, yeah, we got, we got. so we saw so many black bears that by the end of the trip, you're just like, oh, black bear.
Yes. Get out of the road. I've tried to drive it out.
It's pretty, pretty amazing.
So what inspired you, though, then, to transition into journalism and and covering the?
outdoors? It was actually a fluke. I went to school for journalism at the University of Montana, and I did not have my eyes set on environmental journalism at all. I was actually a photojournalism major, did that. Then the recession happened.
I didn't pursue journalism. I just worked odd jobs for, you know, 10 years. And then I went back to grad school at the University of Montana. And the only grad program they had for journalism was environmental science, natural resource journalism. So I was like, well, better, do this and did that.
And because of that education just kind of fell into this beat, and I've worked as a public radio reporter in the West for for 10 years, you know, outside and is based in New Hampshire Public Radio. I'm actually based in Augusta, Montana, which is a small town along the Rocky Mountain Front. And if you live and work in the West, you cannot help but be surrounded by environmental stories, public land stories, everything else like that. So it was almost just kind of. the deal of living out here is that you've got to do outdoor stories and stories about about the environment.
So I kind of fell into it in a happy way.
Yeah, the fortuitous sort of all came together for you. So podcasting is is a form of journalism, but your, your podcast is, it is journalism, but it is, I would say it expands beyond that, into a show that is this entertaining and fun and and covers a lot of serious stories. But you and your team have have a good time as well. And, you know, you've got the. the typical podcast banter that is, is fun to get into things and you cover stuff.
that's like I just listened to your episode, that's covering potatoes. Yes. So, yeah, it is. what I think interesting to me about it is that Outside In is sort of like you can cover almost anything in related to the environment, right?
I mean, our, our tagline is curiosity in the natural world collide. And you think of that definition of the natural world, like what is that? I've always kind of thought that pretty much everything is is the natural world, you know, like whether it's the outside of the house that you're living in, the air we breathe, you know, your city sidewalks, potatoes, everything is like connected to the natural world. So it gives us the freedom to kind of chase stories that interest us, , including, as you said, potatoes, which I think actually was the episode because I think it it does showcase what we can do best, which is it's goofy in the first half. We've got a weird story about how the USDA was thinking about reclassifying potatoes as grains instead of vegetables and this big spud spat that was happening in Washington, D.C.
And then you've got this really poignant story from our producer, Felix Poon, about potato juice and his mom's battle with cancer that starts funny and it turns very poignant very quickly. And I think it's like a great example of, of I think some of the stuff that we can do pretty well.
So covering the environment in this time when climate change is. it's such. there's so much at the forefront of of everything environmental right now, of course, and has been for a long time. And but it's it's. it's so charged in the world, politically and otherwise.
In the time that you've been doing this, how do you think covering the environment has changed? Is the relationship between humans and nature, are people looking at it differently? Is it harder? Is it easier? What are you seeing in terms of our current day perspective of the environment?
The toughest one is climate change. Right. And not even because I mean, yes, there are still people out there that that deny the overwhelming science that that climate change is happening and it's caused in part by by fossil fuels. But I think the bigger struggle is to get people interested in stories about climate change. I mean, it's been 20 years of hearing doom and gloom, glaciers melting, sea levels rising, wildfires becoming bigger and more severe.
And there was actually data a while back from NPR. They have this app and the NPR one app where they did, at least where you could skip stories. And they found that climate change stories were the biggest ones that people skipped. because it's, like, I know, and it's just kind of depressing. So our big challenge is trying to approach climate change from a side angle, from a different angle, from a way that you might not think a story is about climate change, but it really is about climate change.
Or, in a joyful way, like we did, an episode of, like, what, what is the most sustainable diet that you can have, you know, when it comes to both climate change and then the environment more broadly? We did a story about a town in Alaska that the risk of landslides happening in their community has grown exponentially because of climate change. But when the city created these new maps showing that that risk had expanded, the overwhelming reaction by the people who live there was like, ah, we don't want those maps. We don't want to know. And like, why do we bury our heads in the sand when, when natural disasters are becoming more and more dangerous?
And so I think that is our big struggle is how do we make engaging stories about climate change? And it's still something we struggle to do.
Well, I mean, I think that's an element of podcasting, though, in particular, and sort of long form audio that that works so well, especially on your show, where you can, you know, when, when people boil down climate change to, oh, it's hotter outside, you know, and then people argue, well, it's always hot. You know, you get into these arguments over facts.
And when you can tell a story, you know, was that quote about? if you tell someone a fact, they'll know, you tell them a story and they'll hold in their hearts forever. Yeah, I think I think that's something that you all are very successful at in in engaging people and learning about all the intricacies of our natural world affects us and how we affect it. Is that is that fair to say?
I think so. I think there's. there's another struggle, though, is, like, you know, news media and podcasting, I guess, you know, whatever has become so fractured that the stories that we're telling to our audience, that audience is already primed for those stories. There's a reason they're going outside, and, you know, they know the kind of storytelling that we're telling them.
They're self-selecting. Yeah, yeah.
And sometimes it can be frustrating. I think you could say this if you're at a public radio station, you could say this if you're anywhere, that it's it's. it can be frustrating because sometimes the message you want to expand your audience bigger than just like the kind of narrow group that's like, oh, yeah, we care about environmental stories. You know, I want to grab people who are like, I don't really think about the environment every day, but I love a good story, you know, and that's like the constant struggle, I think for us is like trying to expand that audience, which we have been doing. But I like, I really want people who are like, you know, I don't think about climate change every day.
You know, in fact, I like, when I hear the word, the phrase climate change, I kind of just tune out. I want to grab them and tell them a good story. And so I think that's like. that's one of the big challenges that I find.
Sure. And to be clear, the show isn't just about climate change. It's about experiencing the world. And we all do that in lots of ways, even folks that don't believe in climate change. Yeah.
But if you had, you know, if you could wave a magic wand for environmental journalism,
what are some of your sort of hopes for the future, of sort of outdoor storytelling?
I think the biggest thing is surprise me and surprise the audience. Tell them a story that they don't expect. And that's increasingly hard. There's so many stories out there. But tell them a story that they don't expect or that challenges their beliefs.
My favorite stories are the ones that challenge the way you think. And I'm trying to think of, OK, so there was one that we did recently that I was happy with. It's about wild horses in the West.
Some people see them as a native species that have a rightful place in the West. There are others that see them as a huge nuisance introduced by the Spanish in the 1500s, by all accounts, an invasive species. And so the story has been told time and time again out West. And so the way I wanted to approach it was. I was like, well, how are some reservations dealing with this issue?
And what's the conversation there? So I went up to the Blackfeet Reservation, where they have thousands of. technically, they're not even wild horses. They're feral horses, but they roam freely, competing for grass with cattle owned by indigenous ranchers. And so one of the conversations that was happening there and in Navajo Nation was, well, what if we start hunting horses?
And that gets to a really sticky, weird area of like the animals that we eat. And like, why are we comfortable eating cows? But when it comes to horses, we're not comfortable eating them and we're not comfortable shooting them. And so the episode just kind of dives deep into this weird thing of like, why do we eat some animals, not other animals? And why are we cool with saving some animals and not other animals?
And I think that's the kind of stories I like to tell. The stories that surprise you, challenge maybe some of the ways you think and leave you, as you said earlier in the intro, with more questions than answers in a good way.
Yeah, that's a really complicated story. You know, we've covered wild horses a bit too. And it's, for me covering that, there was a lot of surprises for me. And I think, you know, when it surprises me that it's going to surprise other people. So if somebody is looking to get into sort of environmental journalism, if they want to cover the outdoors, you know, beyond like looking for surprising stories, what would your advice be to them?
I mean, it would be look for, yeah, I mean, like, read what's out there.
Pitch the story that isn't out there. There are stories in your backyard. Don't look for big travel stories. Look for what's happening in your community and then see, like, why would someone across the country on the other side of the country care about what's happening in my community? What's interesting about it?
And, and pitch that. That would be my one big suggestion. And the other is just like, go out and talk to people, you know, don't just look at stuff on the internet, actually go pick up a phone, have conversations with folks. That's where the stories are hiding, or are in the conversations you have, you have with people, not just from some small town newspaper on the internet.
What's coming up soon on the Outside In podcast?
We have a really interesting story coming up about human remains, specifically what museums should do with the skeletons that are in their possession, and how those skeletons and bones were gathered in the first place. Not so much of a spoiler. There's a very racist, terrible background of gathering, you know, bodies of black folk, essentially, without consent, and putting them into these museums in the 19th century. So what do we do with those bodies now? That I'm really excited about.
We have a piece coming out about GPS and our reliance on GPS, which I'm sure you're very familiar with, Jason, and ways it can lead us astray. And what it's doing to our brains to be so locked into GPS all the time. And, you know, for thousands of years, we were very good at wayfinding, of just figuring out based on stuff. we saw, how to navigate through the world. And GPS is changing that in a fundamental way.
And remember where we were, where we've been, and where we're going.
Exactly. I always get frustrated with my dad. He doesn't do this as much anymore. But, you know, even in town, his hometown, he would plug in, you know, the McDonald's that he was going to, or the Starbucks that he was going to go to. You know where it is.
You don't need a GPS to tell you where that is. You just, you can just go. Just remember. It's good. It's good to be on campus to remember how to get to places.
So those are a couple of the stories we're doing.
Well, very exciting. Nate Hadgie, thanks so much for joining us on the show.
Thanks for having me.
Outside In is a chart-topping science podcast produced by New Hampshire Public Radio. From explorations of nature and human nature to important conversations about climate change and sustainability, Outside In casts a wide net across the environmental spectrum and invites listeners to approach deep topics with curiosity and fun. The show appeals to far more than just thru-hikers and conservationists. Outside In is a podcast for anyone who's ever been outdoors. New episodes of Outside In are released every Thursday.
Listen wherever you get your podcasts. This episode of America's National Parks was hosted by me, Jason Epperson. My thanks again to Nate Hadgie for joining us. If you enjoyed the show, please consider leaving us a rating and a review. If you're new here, make sure to subscribe to the podcast to get new episodes delivered to your feed.
If you're looking for photos and tips about visiting national parks, check out our America's National Parks Facebook group. And if you're interested in RV travel, we hope you'll also check out our RV Miles podcast and YouTube channel. Today's show was sponsored by RV Share. Use the promo code PARKS30 for $30 off a $500 or more RV rental booking for your next national park adventure at rvshare.com.
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