Mike Foote is a race director, small-business owner and dad to two young boys—and a longtime friend Ashley first came to know through the trail-running world. Years ago, they raced and traveled together. Now, they find themselves in a very different season of life, navigating parenthood, work and changing relationships with adventure.

Mike shares how his own free-range childhood shaped the way he is raising his boys, why he tries to let them set the pace outside and how becoming a parent surprised him by making him want to stay closer to home.

He also talks candidly about living with anxiety and depression and spending 20 months unable to run or move normally after developing pericarditis following COVID. That experience forced him to reconsider an identity built around endurance and taught him to notice what he once moved too quickly to see.

Ashley and Mike talk about:

• The freedom and unstructured outdoor play Mike experienced as a child
• Letting kids take risks while still keeping them safe
• Why family adventure does not need to be big or impressive
• Giving children room to set the pace and find their own fun
• Turning fear about climate change into action
• How parenthood changed Mike’s relationship with travel and adventure
• Creating space to be physically and mentally present with our kids
• Anxiety, depression and the role of outdoor connection
• Losing access to movement while recovering from pericarditis
• Finding meaning outside beyond speed, distance and achievement
• Noticing the landscapes we once hurried through

Learn more and find links at thewildidea.com.

Raising Wild is a podcast about raising kids—and ourselves—a little more feral, with more freedom, courage, curiosity and connection to nature.

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.