What if getting outside weren’t treated as an optional activity, but as something essential to our health, development and daily lives?

Jessica Turner, president of the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable, joins Ashley to talk about the outdoor freedom of her childhood, what those experiences gave her and how she is trying to create that same connection for her own children.

They also explore the vision behind America’s Outdoor Era, ORR’s effort to position outdoor recreation as critical public health infrastructure. Jessica explains why outdoor access cannot rest entirely on individual families—and what could change if schools, healthcare systems, workplaces and policymakers began treating time outside as something people fundamentally need.

In this episode:

•  How Jessica’s outdoor childhood shaped her resilience and leadership 
•  Why children and adults often become better versions of themselves outside 
•  How outdoor experiences help create memory, attention and connection 
•  What it means to treat outdoor recreation as health infrastructure 
•  The role of recess, greener schoolyards and accessible public lands 
•  Why the outdoors can create common ground across political differences 
•  How Jessica navigates screens, work and presence with two young children 
•  What parents can do to create change in their own communities 

Learn more and find links on our website. 

Raising Wild is a podcast about raising kids—and ourselves—a little more feral. On purpose. Follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts.

In the first episode of Raising Wild, Ashley Arnold talks with Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods and Noticing: Intimate Encounters with the Natural World, about what children lose when they lose regular, direct contact with the natural world, and why the answer isn't as simple as blaming screens.

Richard traces the roots of nature-deficit disorder through technology, parental fear, urban design, over-structured childhood and the ways modern life has made outdoor freedom harder to come by. They talk about why kids don't need parents to know every plant name or turn every outing into a lesson; what children remember is discovering something in nature alongside an adult who feels the same sense of wonder they do. The conversation also moves into environmental grief, climate anxiety and the comfort of paying closer attention to the world we're afraid of losing, from frogs in a pond to mountain lions outside Richard's window.

As Richard puts it, "Nothing was ever protected that wasn't loved. And nothing is loved if it's not noticed."

Full show notes and links on our website.

Welcome to Raising Wild!

This is a podcast about raising kids—and ourselves—a little more feral. On purpose.
In this short trailer, host Ashley Arnold introduces Raising Wild, a new podcast from Wild Idea Media about childhood, nature, freedom, risk and the wild parts of ourselves we don’t want to lose.

Through conversations with writers, scientists, educators, adventurers, leaders, athletes and parents, Raising Wild explores how we give kids a wilder, more connected childhood in the world we actually live in—and how we reclaim it for ourselves—so we can take risks, think independently, and love, value and protect the wild places that shape us.

The first full episode launches on July 8th with Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods and the forthcoming NOTICING: Intimate Encounters with the Natural World. In that conversation, Ashley and Richard talk about childhood, technology, awe, attention, nature connection and why learning to notice the living world around us may be one of the most important things we can practice.

Subscribe to Raising Wild today and follow along as the first season begins.