Match My Mountains

Luke Nathan Phillips

In Match My Mountains, Luke Nathan Phillips follows current controversies in public lands politics, advocates for policy protecting and stewarding those lands, and explores the history of conservation and deeper political history beyond it.  Featuring journalists, activists, historians, former rangers, and colorful adventurers who know their stuff, the show will paint the American wilderness and American history in all their splendid colors, and show just why our forests and battlefields and mountains matter, and deserve to be protected—they literally forge our soul.

  1. Oct 9

    We Need a Magazine

    Want to know why some movements with serious policy power don't have much grassroots stability? Part of it is organizing; part of it is the kind of media their members consume; part of it is whether those members see themselves as part of a coherent and serious movement at all. The public lands movement could use a few new media projects to go along with its existing advocacy groups and publications, if the grassroots task is going to work out. And, Substack is the same as OnlyFans.

  2. Oct 2

    Industrialism in American Heritage, with Julius Krein

    The National Park Service makes sure to remind Americans of the role of industry and innovation in our country's development, in sites from Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park, Rosie the Riveter / WWII Homefront National Historical Park, Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park, and many more. That is a tradition that has literally built much of this country, and it continues up to this day.  Julius Krein, one of the most important thinkers and advocates of modern American industrialism (and the statebuilding that has made both industrialism and conservation possible) joins the show to discuss that past and bring it into the present, from Alexander Hamilton's and Henry Clay's old American Systems to the research labs and robotic manufacturing of the 21st Century. Follow Julius's work at American Affairs- https://americanaffairsjournal.org/.

  3. Sep 25

    Days of Infamy at Manzanar

    Over 80 years ago-- at the height of the Second World War, during those years we remember as the most united and resolved the American people have ever been for a common cause and a beautiful future, the United States government committed one of the three or four worst oppressions it has ever committed upon its own people. 120,000 Japanese-Americans, the majority of whom were native-born American citizens, were cooped up and sent to the internment camps across the American interior, presumed to be potential traitors to America on the basis of race alone. Their story is told at the sites of some of these camps-- Amache, Minidoka, Manzanar-- protected by the National Park Service. And the National Park Service's mission to protect, preserve, steward, and interpret American history for our generation of Americans and all those to follow is presently under attack by the existing administration, in one of the most unpatriotic possible abuses of the mantle of patriotism we have seen in our lifetimes.  At Manzanar, and at other NPS sites dedicated to protecting and preserving American history in all its beautiful and terrible and mundane and glorious stories and their meanings, the literal shrines of American history are under attack, strangely not by the left but by the right. I cannot begin to explain how shocked and enraged this has made me, not out of the standard liberal criticisms of everybody born before about 1945, but because the vigorous discourse over the meaning of American history and all its stories is THE American civil religion to me, and to assault it is to blaspheme the sacred. This is not an episode about Manzanar alone, but about the heretical attack on the American story more broadly. My fellow conservatives-- what the hell?

  4. Sep 18

    America's 250th Anniversary, with Yuval Levin

    The National Park Service makes sure to remind Americans of the places and people who were integral to its founding, from the memorials to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson in D.C. to the memorial to Alexander Hamilton in New York City to the hallowed complex of founding sites at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia. In celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we're joined by a great student of the American Founding, Yuval Levin, to discuss the legacies of the documents written at those sites, and especially the U.S. Constitution. Follow Yuval's work at National Affairs- https://nationalaffairs.com/

  5. Sep 6

    This is Bears Ears

    There's a little expanse of land in Southern Utah that's been the subject of an intensive game of political football for over ten years now-- it's called Bear's Ears National Monument. It's a beautiful, glorious spot, with grand sandstone rock formations and mysterious water-cut canyons as wonderful as any in the nearby national parks. And once upon a time we mined uranium there; and further back, the native peoples of Utah called it home. These and many other issues have dominated the politics of Bears Ears for a decade, and don't appear to be resolvable any time soon. But the administration's recent downsizing of the monument by something around 90% echoes far beyond these canyons in Utah, all the way to the legitimacy of American environmental law itself. And as such, this place is a little microcosm of all the great land crises in America as we speak. We didn't cover the issues of the necessity of resource extraction, especially critical minerals, on public lands; but expect another episode, with Bears Ears as an issue, on that sometime soon.

  6. Aug 28

    Chaco Canyon-- Don't Drill in the Donut!

    Chaco Culture National Historical Park is an underrated little gem out in the New Mexican plains, near the homelands of the Navajo and the Pueblo and many others. Their ancestors, the Chacoan civilization of the high middle ages, left behind splendid haunting ruins of their spiritual and economic centers, and the most magnificent are preserved here at Chaco Canyon. (Definitely take a look sometime, and parents, bring your kids-- one is allowed to clamber around inside the great-houses!) But this UNESCO World Heritage Site and spiritual center for contemporary Native American tribes is rapidly becoming a hotspot in the public land wars-- the Bureau of Land Management's buffer zone preventing oil and gas leasing and mining within ten miles of the park's boundaries, what I like to call the "donut" in public land management, is under review to be revoked, and should it be revoked, not only will the thousands of archaeological sites surrounding Chaco in the buffer zone be threatened. The very principle that sites of profound cultural and historical significance deserve special protection, including landscape-level reserves of space to protect their natural and aesthetic integrity, is now at stake. Take a listen if you're interested not just in the threats to Chaco, but the precedents and laws that protect wonderful places like it around America.

  7. Aug 24

    To Live As Though All the World Were Philmont

    This one's dedicated to all Philmont staff, past and present, the ones I've met and the ones I haven't. What would it be like, someone asked me once, to live as though all the world were Philmont? Well, aside from cheerfulness and helpfulness and adventure, I think there's one big thing this beautiful place teaches-- and that is the virtue of stewardship, the conviction that we have a duty to a thing so much higher than ourselves, and that thing is the ground right beneath us, the people all around us, the ideas deep inside us. At Philmont Scout Ranch we learn and teach that working with our hands on the land; and if there's any better way to learn and teach stewardship, I don't know what it is. It matters for the American public lands, and conservation in America more generally; it matters for our relationships with our fellow citizens, and our duties to our country more broadly; it is the right way for everyone to live. So thank you all for your service all these summers at the ranch. And if you're joining us in the movement to defend America's public lands (and maybe even convert the Oncelers to our side,) remember everything we learned on the ranch is the essential beginning to everything we're going to do, and we have to bring that light to everyone we'll walk with. P.S. try to guess when I get closest to crying on camera

  8. Aug 21

    There's No Big Bend Wall, It's Even Worse

    I was in the Southwest already and stopped by Big Bend National Park to take a look around at the site where they're bulldozing a service road for the border security stuff (not quite a wall). It's not that bad yet, but there's something a lot worse-- the fact that they waived about 30 environmental laws to pave the way to build this stuff is a terrifying precedent. Here's some stuff on Big Bend National Park, the wall-building odyssey of the past several months, the necessity of the environmental laws, and the bigger picture. See you on the trail...

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About

In Match My Mountains, Luke Nathan Phillips follows current controversies in public lands politics, advocates for policy protecting and stewarding those lands, and explores the history of conservation and deeper political history beyond it.  Featuring journalists, activists, historians, former rangers, and colorful adventurers who know their stuff, the show will paint the American wilderness and American history in all their splendid colors, and show just why our forests and battlefields and mountains matter, and deserve to be protected—they literally forge our soul.

Information

  • Creator
    Luke Nathan Phillips
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    17
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Match My Mountains
  • Show Website
    Match My Mountains