Who really owns America's public lands, and who is trying to take them away?

Episode three, "The Plunderers," follows the money. It opens with four hunters from Missouri who crossed from one corner of public land to another without ever touching a wealthy landowner's ranch — and were sued for eight million dollars for it. That case is the small version of a much larger story: how enormous private wealth is converting what belongs to all of us into what belongs to them.

Hosts Bill Hedden and John Leshy trace the pattern across the country. In Minnesota, a Chilean mining magnate who was once landlord to the president's daughter is pressing to dig at the doorstep of the Boundary Waters — the most visited wilderness in America. In Alaska, the federal government has taken an ownership stake in a mining company while approving a 211-mile industrial road through wilderness and a national park to reach it, making itself regulator and investor at once. And in Washington, fossil fuel interests that gave hundreds of millions of dollars in the 2024 election received, in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, almost precisely the leasing, royalty cuts, and permitting they had asked for.

Underneath these deals lies the decay that made them possible: decades of spending to reshape the federal courts, the Citizens United ruling that opened the floodgates to corporate money, and the donor network behind Project 2025, whose blueprint the OBBBA follows closely.

You will hear from Land Tawney on the "Missouri Four"; from lifelong Republicans Ty Cobb and David Jenkins, who describe a level of corruption they say they have never seen from their own party's leadership; from former Alaska Lieutenant Governor Fran Ulmer on a state treated as an "opportunity zone"; from journalist Nick Mott on who is buying up the West; and from Zuni farmer Jim Enote on "the resource curse."

On Common Ground: An American Inheritance tells the story of the lands that belong to all of us, and of the fight to protect them.

All six episodes available in August.

Follow now so the next episode lands in your feed automatically.

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On Common Ground: An American Inheritance is hosted by Bill Hedden and John Leshy. Produced by Sarah Hedden, Dagny Scott, and Del Feltz. Sound engineering by Joe Flood. This series is a production of Eleven Dollar Bill, and a project of the Getches-Wilkinson Center at the University of Colorado Law School.

Episode two, "The Land," is the origin story: how the United States came to hold 640 million acres in trust for the public, how concentrated wealth plundered and privatized much of it in the 1800s, and how the nation pulled back from the brink to build a system of parks, forests, and monuments that became the model for the rest of the world. But it's happening again: the richest Americans now command a share of the nation's wealth outstripping even the Gilded Age barons who plundered these lands the first time.

For most of the 1800s, the playbook was simple: barter with other countries, or take the land from Native nations who had lived on it for millennia, and then give it away — to settlers, to railroads, to mining companies, to states — to build a nation. But after the Civil War, the wealthy came to dominate the system, privatizing and pillaging more and more of the public estate. Rivers were poisoned, hillsides stripped bare, whole towns buried in the mudslides that followed. This country lost much of its public land before we understood what it was worth.

Hosts Bill Hedden and John Leshy trace the constitutional bargain that created public lands in the first place, schemes like the 1872 Mining Law that let fortunes be dug out of common ground for pennies an acre, and the turn, around 1890, when Americans decided to stop giving the land away and start protecting it — above all, for the water and the other natural values it provided.

Along the way: Sarah Krakoff on what the Constitution says about public lands; Walt Dabney on the myth that the states were promised the land; Land Tawney and Ryan Callaghan on what it means that these places belong to everyone; and Zuni farmer Jim Enote on the Indigenous idea that land asks us not to be romantic, but responsible.

At the center of the conversation, and of the current news cycle, is Bears Ears: the first national monument in the country's history where Indigenous nations were a primary force behind its protection, and, as of July 2026, a monument the administration has cut by ninety percent. The fight over these lands is not new—it runs the length of American history—but nothing before has done this much damage this quickly.

On Common Ground: An American Inheritance tells the story of the lands that belong to all of us, and of the fight to protect them.

All six episodes available in August.

Follow now so the next episode lands in your feed automatically.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/on_common_ground_

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@on.common.ground

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@OnCommon_Ground

On Common Ground: An American Inheritance is hosted by Bill Hedden and John Leshy. Produced by Sarah Hedden, Dagny Scott, and Del Feltz. Sound engineering by Joe Flood. This series is a production of Eleven Dollar Bill, and a project of the Getches-Wilkinson Center at the University of Colorado Law School.

Last summer, millions of Americans rose up to defeat Senator Mike Lee's plan to sell off 3.5 million acres of public land. Hunters and anglers, climbers, veterans, and tribal nations all joined the fight.

It felt like a victory. It turned out to be a diversion.

While the country celebrated, Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, forcing open more than 200 million acres of America's public lands to industrial development: 60 times what the Lee amendment proposed selling. There were no hearings, and no debate. The law now mandates oil and gas lease sales every quarter, in some of America's wildest places. It slashes royalties, strips the managing agencies of their discretion, and narrows the public's ability to challenge any of it in court. The cleanup costs, which could reach hundreds of billions of dollars, are left to the taxpayers. Because it is now written into law, no future administration can simply reverse it.

In this first episode, host Bill Hedden traces how the fight we were allowed to win concealed the one we lost. Bill has spent half a century defending the public lands in southeastern Utah. He is joined by co-host John Leshy, former Solicitor of the Department of the Interior and our foremost scholar of public-lands law and history, along with voices from across the political spectrum. Together, "The Theft" lays out what was taken, how it happened, and why you weren't supposed to notice until it was too late.

On Common Ground: An American Inheritance tells the story of the lands that belong to all of us, and of the fight to protect them. That fight isn't over yet.

All six episodes arrive in August.

Follow now, and the first one lands in your feed the moment it drops.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/on_common_ground_

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@on.common.ground

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@OnCommon_Ground

On Common Ground: An American Inheritance is hosted by Bill Hedden and John Leshy. Produced by Sarah Hedden, Dagny Scott, and Del Feltz. Sound engineering by Joe Flood. This series is a production of Eleven Dollar Bill, and a project of the Getches-Wilkinson Center at the University of Colorado Law School.