This episode of West Obsessed delves into the forces that shape our energy system — from corporate profit motives, to the individuals with solar panels on their roofs. A surprising win by solar customers in Nevada portends a shift.

In this episode of West Obsessed, High Country News examines the lessons learned on Washington’s Elwha River, whose dams came down six years ago, and Utah’s Bear River, where a diversion is still being planned.

High Country News Editor-in-Chief Brian Calvert delves into the choices we must make as we begin to face the consequences of the Anthropocene. Reckoning with the grinding anxiety of climate change and the grief of losing our most precious species, how we cope with these fears will define us.

In this episode of West Obsessed, High Country News Correspondent Krista Langlois talks about her recent feature story on a burgeoning recreation industry in the West's northern-most terrain. Alaska looks to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline as a boon for an unlikely economy in the Frontier State: Thru-hiking through rugged wilderness.

Why did the rural Colorado town of Walsenburg swing from voting blue to red in the 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump? High Country News editors Brian Calvert and Kate Schimel talk to writer Leah Todd about her recent feature story on the politics behind the shift that helped elect Trump to the White House.

In this episode of West Obsessed, the editors and writers of High Country News talk about a strange spate of animal killings across the West, the people who investigate those crimes and the implications those acts have on public-lands management.

In this episode of West Obsessed, the editors and writers of High Country News reflect on the story of Adelanto, California, a prison town that reflects Western truths of reinvention and subjugation. We take you inside a detention facility designed for the innocent. Why does such a place exist at all? And why was it built in the American West?

In this episode of West Obsessed, the staff of High Country News looks at Science Marches and how it hits home in the West.

In this episode of West Obsessed, High Country News editors and writers discuss the work of wildfire researchers. New studies are uncovering how intense wildfires create their own weather and move across the land — knowledge that could save lives.

In this episode of West Obsessed, High Country News Editor-in-chief Brian Calvert and Publisher Paul Larmer bring HCN correspondent Ben Goldfarb into the studio to talk about his recent feature story an illegal timber poaching gang in Washington. How did an anonymous tip, DNA evidence and a century-old conservation law help the Forest Service take down a gang of maple poachers? Listen to find out.