Meg Carney from Outdoor Minimalist, Off Script

A candid conversation about racial identity, climate, veganism, hunting culture, and why the outdoors is not nonpartisan.

Every once in a while, I pick up the phone, call someone, and hit record. No video, no studio setup, and no agenda —just an off script conversation with friends in the outdoor space.

For this episode, I called my friend Meg Carney, host of Outdoor Minimalist. Meg usually likes to begin a podcast with an agenda in hand, so recording without one became something of a running joke between us. It also gave us room to have a more personal conversation than she typically shares publicly.

We talk about the experiences that shaped our relationships with the outdoors, including Meg’s Filipino heritage and rural Minnesota upbringing, my experience growing up Korean American in the Midwest, and the complicated ways racial identity can affect where we feel at home.

Our conversation moves through veganism, hunting culture, wildlife, public lands, and the tendency to approach the outdoors through control, extraction, and recreation. We also examine why the outdoor industry continues to separate climate from nearly every other conversation it has—and why an industry shaped by political interests cannot credibly claim to be nonpartisan.

More than anything, this is a conversation between two friends who share many of the same concerns about climate and sustainability, but arrived at them from different lanes. We don’t resolve the contradictions within outdoor culture. We talk candidly about what it feels like to live and work inside them.

Be sure to subscribe to Outdoor Minimalist on YouTube to keep up on the latest outdoor news and public lands developments. And of course I'd love for you to also subscribe to Land and Line for more talks that get us reflecting on systems within our culture.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit landandline.substack.com