Ed Roberson
320 episodes listed below
Warm conversations from the working West.
Mountain & Prairie is a patient interview series about land, water, culture, and purpose across the American West. Its best episodes move from childhood and place into harder questions about stewardship, endurance, belonging, and how people keep doing meaningful work.
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Mountain & Prairie is a long-form interview series with a deep affection for the American West and the people working inside its contradictions. It is warm without being soft. The show spends time with conservation leaders, journalists, authors, photographers, adventurers, health practitioners, and storytellers whose work is tied to land, water, community, and endurance. Its conversations often start with origins. Childhood, family, first exposure to mountains or rivers, early jobs, books, and mentors all matter here because the show wants to know how a person became useful to a place. Meriwether Hardie’s episode follows horseback travel, agricultural inquiry, rural hospitality, and the strange vulnerability of receiving generosity on a long solo journey. Jazmine Ulloa’s conversation turns El Paso into a lens on immigration, race, migration, memory, and the reporter’s responsibility to keep returning to deeper border stories. Pete McBride brings the Colorado River into focus through water scarcity, over-allocation, visual storytelling, and the hard reality that conference-room decisions still land on the river itself. Sebastian Junger’s episode reaches toward mortality, belonging, small-group adversity, journalism, boxing, jujitsu, and meaning under pressure. Darcy Chenoweth’s conversation brings the same grounded style to trauma, burnout, coping, emergency medicine, and sustainable care for people in helping professions. The book episodes add another rhythm, using adventure writing as a way to think about discomfort, wild places, and the lessons people carry home. Conservation coverage is especially strong because it allows complexity to stay in the room. Nick Mott’s work on the Endangered Species Act opens space for grizzly bears, wolves, environmental history, conflict, and civility. Mauricia Baca’s episode broadens the map to Nevada, where the Colorado River, the Sagebrush Sea, renewable energy, biodiversity, rare earth metals, groundwater, and agriculture all press against one another. The show is not built for quick takes. It prefers context, lived experience, and questions that are generous enough to let an answer wander. That patience is its strength. Mountain & Prairie works best for listeners who want a thoughtful companion to Western conservation, regional culture, outdoor lives, hard work, and the moral texture of place.
Made for: For listeners who care about Western landscapes, conservation, outdoor lives, regional history, journalism, and thoughtful interviews. It especially suits people who prefer patient context over hot takes.
What sets it apart: The show connects public-land issues and Western culture through personal stories rather than abstract debate. It gives equal weight to rivers, books, family histories, fieldwork, grief, craft, and the practical work of stewardship.
Mountain & Prairie is a podcast about the people shaping the future of the American West—its land, communities, and culture. • Hosted by conservationist Ed Roberson, it features thoughtful, down-to-earth conversations with fascinating people doing meaningful work in the American West and beyond: conservationists tackling environmental challenges, authors and historians preserving the West's stories, artists and entrepreneurs building vibrant rural economies, athletes testing the limits of body and mind, and more. • Each episode explores their journeys, lessons learned, and the values that guide their work—offering listeners fresh insight, grounded optimism, and a deeper connection to this re…
Based on 4 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Patient conversations connect land, creative work, rural life, and personal experience across the American West.
Mountain & Prairie follows the American West through Ed Robertson's patient conversations with people whose lives are bound up with land and place.
A painter grinds New Mexico dirt into pigment, and your idea of a landscape gets less abstract.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A horseback journey story that turns travel into listening.
Meriwether Hardie’s story is grounded in long horseback travel: a year across South America in her early 20s, then a five-month solo ride through the American West with two horses and a dog.
El Paso becomes a border story about immigration, memory, and a reporter's path home.
El Paso is treated as a border city that shaped the Southwest long before Ellis Island did, and the episode keeps that history grounded in people: Mexican and Chinese laborers, Black cowboys, and white entrepreneurs. Jasmine Ulloa fits the material well.
A live Bozeman roundtable on land, work, and the next generation.
Mountain & Prairie centers a live Bozeman conversation about the American West as work, not postcard scenery. Ed Robertson brings Kate Havstad, Jillian Lukuski, Becca Skinner, and Juanita Vero into a discussion that stays close to land, local food systems, and the hard path…
A loose, thoughtful river conversation about curiosity, craft, and why these stories keep drawing people in.
This Mountain and Prairie and River Radius conversation keeps its focus on Ed Robertson and Sam Carter as they talk through how their podcasts took shape, what still keeps them curious after hundreds of episodes, and why rivers, water, landscapes, and long projects keep pulling…
A slow, grounded look at how place becomes paint.
Stella Maria Baer's conversation with Ed Robertson keeps returning to place before paint. She starts with journaling, then turns prayer into an image because it helps her step out of anxious loops.
Pacific Northwest history, still in motion.
Washington, told by the people inside it.
Mississippi stories, told face to face.
Japan, art, and ambition in raw form.
Ed Robertson and Sam Carter sit down for a joint Mountain and Prairie and River Radius conversation.
Ed Robertson sits down with Santa Fe painter Stella Maria Baer.
Ed Robertson sits down with Meriwether Hardy.
El Paso is presented as a city that makes the nation's immigration fights harder to ignore.
This episode features photographer and author Pete McBride discussing his new book 'Witness to Water' and his two-decade journey documenting the Colorado River's environmental challenges, water management issues, and personal connections to water in the American West.
This episode features an interview with journalist Sebastian Junger exploring how facing mortality and adversity in contexts like war zones reveals insights about meaning, community bonds, and human dignity in modern life.
This episode features Darcy Chenoweth, a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner who discusses her work helping high-stress helping professionals like first responders and healthcare workers address burnout, trauma, and stress through awareness and resilience-building strategies.
Host Ed Roberson and guest Mark Kenyon discuss their top 10 favorite adventure books, exploring how these stories inspire, educate, and reveal the human drive to embrace discomfort and the unknown.
This episode features an interview with journalist Nick Mott about his podcast The Wide Open, which explores the history, nuance, and controversies of the Endangered Species Act through human stories and balanced reporting.
This episode features an interview with Mauricia Baca, state director of the Nature Conservancy's Nevada chapter, discussing unique conservation challenges in Nevada, such as biodiversity, mining, and water issues, and exploring solutions applicable to the American West.
This episode features an interview with retired NFL Pro Bowler Joe Schobert about his transition from professional football to advocating for Western conservation efforts.
This episode features rancher Heidi Redd and conservationist Sue Bellagamba discussing their partnership in protecting the Dugout Ranch and addressing conservation challenges in southeastern Utah.
Mountain and Prairie offers a live recording from the Historic Ellen Theater in downtown Bozeman.