Hopeful By Nature

Scott Shepherd
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There are people all over the world connecting kids and communities to the natural world in ways that build hope and a genuine desire to protect the places where we play. Most of them will never make the news. Hopeful by Nature goes to find them. Hosted by Scott Shepherd, dad, educator, and founder of Wildward Institute, each episode is a conversation with someone who saw a gap and built a bridge. From ocean educators and activists across the globe to conservationists in your backyard — these are the stories that remind us what's still possible. New episodes every week.

  1. 5d ago

    Teaching Climate Change Without Easy Answers | Matt Baker-White, Executive Director | Wild Rockies Field Institute

    Climate change is not an oil change. Matt Baker-White, executive director of the Wild Rockies Field Institute, joins Scott Shepherd to talk about teaching college students to grapple with problems that adapt to whatever you do to them. A student starts a 630-mile bike course across Montana sure she knows the answer to climate change. She finishes it with better questions. Matt shares the wind farm town hall that got her there, and why he thinks that is exactly what a good course should do. In this episode: • The difference between technical and adaptive problems • Why Matt kind of hates the phrase "experiential education" • Place-based learning with a dying whitebark pine grove and the Clark's nutcracker • Building belonging in outdoor programs through scholarships, cohorts, and multiple narratives • Two pieces of advice for aspiring outdoor educators: go live in a truck in Utah, and go learn to read a balance sheet • Why advocating for public lands starts with knowing their histories Chapters: 00:00 Welcome and wildfire smoke 03:11 Matt's origin story 07:34 What is the Wild Rockies Field Institute? 19:41 Technical vs. adaptive problems 22:54 What alumni do next 28:49 Why Matt kind of hates "experiential education" 36:02 Access and belonging 43:15 Two pieces of advice 51:00 Why land history comes first Guest: Matt Baker-White, Executive Director, Wild Rockies Field Institute, https://www.wrfi.net Episode page and links: https://www.wildwardinstitute.net/hopefulbynature Hopeful by Nature: Stories of Kids, Community & the Natural World.

  2. Oct 19

    Do I Have to Leave?: Brandon Moffitt on Wilderness Therapy, Neurodivergence, and Building the Right Team

    Three of Brandon Moffitt's former wilderness therapy students still reach out to him, fifteen years later. He remembers all of their faces, and the same question each of them asked near the end of their time in his program: do I have to leave? Brandon is a clinical mental health counselor at Black Mountain Academy and Intrepid Young Adults in North Carolina, and the founder of the Autism Symposium, an annual gathering for professionals who work with autistic youth. He grew up with undiagnosed ADHD and dyslexia himself, and has spent over twenty years building teams around neurodivergent young people. In this conversation, Brandon talks candidly about real criticism of the wilderness therapy field, what it actually takes to build a support team around one young person, and why he still believes hope and joy belong in even the hardest parts of this work. In this episode: The formative question — “do I have to leave?” — behind his approach to care An honest look at criticism of wilderness therapy, then and now Growing up with undiagnosed ADHD and dyslexia The false dichotomy of parental credit and blame What a weekly “core team” meeting looks like in practice Why he founded the Autism Symposium to train other professionals One small, concrete way to reconnect with nature today ABOUT BRANDON MOFFITT Clinical mental health counselor, Black Mountain Academy & Intrepid Young Adults; founder, Autism Symposium. 🌲 The Black Mountain Academy & Intrepid Young Adults ABOUT YOUR HOST Scott Shepherd is the founder of Wildward Institute, based in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. 🌿 wildwardinstitute.net New episodes every week. Subscribe wherever you listen.

  3. Oct 12

    Closing the Urban Wild Gap: Conservation Education for Kids in Zimbabwe | Vimbai Chitauro, WildEd Zim

    A four-year-old in Zimbabwe watches a VHS tape of David Attenborough narrating a wildlife documentary shot in Kenya. She watches it again. She starts rescuing millipedes off the ant trail in her yard. Years later, she's running an organization trying to give that same jolt of recognition to kids growing up minutes from elephants they've never seen. Vimbainashe “Nicky” Chitauro is the Founder & Executive Director of WildEd Zim, a conservation education organization in Zimbabwe working with children, teens, and young adults to close what she calls the “urban wild gap” — the disconnect between kids who live alongside biodiversity and kids in cities who only encounter it on a screen. For years her programs followed a familiar pattern: build a curriculum, hand it to a teacher, run it for a funding cycle, move on. It worked in the sense that clubs got started. It didn't hold. So she rebuilt the model as a system — one that reaches district officials, school administrators, teachers, students, and whole communities before a single club session runs. In this episode: • Why proximity to nature isn't the same as connection to it • How one VHS tape shaped a career in conservation • What it takes to build trust as a first-time founder • The district-to-community system behind every WildEd Zim eco-club • What kids actually say when asked how to fix pollution — and why it matters • An international video exchange connecting students in Zimbabwe and Florida • Why WildEd Zim hands ownership of its clubs back to the schools • Her pitch to corporate funders who treat conservation as an afterthought ABOUT VIMBAI CHITAURO Founder & Executive Director, WildEd Zim. 🌍 https://www.linkedin.com/company/wilded-zim/posts/?feedView=all ABOUT YOUR HOST Scott Shepherd is the founder of Wildward Institute, based in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. 🌿 wildwardinstitute.net New episodes every week. Subscribe wherever you listen.

  4. Oct 5

    Less Screen Time, More Green Time Subtitle: A proposed settlement of up to $17 billion that raises questions about outdoor learning — and a real answer to whether hope actually works.

    Most people haven't connected the proposed Meta settlement of up to $17 billion to outdoor learning yet. In Part 2 of this conversation, Karen Cowe and Craig Strang of Ten Strands make the case for what "responsible optimism" actually means when the stakes are this high — and answer a harder question: does hope actually work as a motivator, or do we need fear instead? This is Part 2 of a two-part conversation. Part 1 covers AB 2158, now in Senate Appropriations with a hearing scheduled for September 28 — listen to that one first if you haven't. In this episode: What the proposed multistate Meta settlement of up to $17 billion would fund if approved What it could mean for outdoor learning, and what it doesn't guarantee Karen's line for the whole conversation: "less screen time, more green time" The global movement toward outdoor learning — the UK, Maine, and beyond A real answer to whether hope or fear better motivates climate-era kids How to plug into this work, wherever you live ABOUT KAREN COWE Founding CEO of Ten Strands. 🌐 tenstrands.org ABOUT CRAIG STRANG Consultant; Associate Director Emeritus, Lawrence Hall of Science, UC Berkeley. 🌐 tenstrands.org ABOUT YOUR HOST Scott Shepherd is the founder of Wildward Institute, based in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. 🌿 wildwardinstitute.net New episodes every week. Subscribe wherever you listen.

  5. Sep 28

    Joyful Persistence – How a coalition of 700 Californians got an outdoor learning bill further than anyone thought possible – and what they're doing next (Part I)

    Craig Strang almost didn't take the class that set his entire career in motion — he thought "five units for a beach field trip" had to be a scam. Fifty years later, he and Karen Cowe are behind a California bill that passed every committee unanimously and still didn't make it through. Karen Cowe is the founding CEO of Ten Strands, the California nonprofit that's spent thirteen years connecting nearly every environmental literacy effort in the state. Craig Strang spent 32 years at UC Berkeley's Lawrence Hall of Science before going independent, and now co-leads the California Campaign for Outdoor Learning alongside Karen. This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation about what it takes to build a coalition of 700+ people across party lines — and what happens when the bill they built together gets held in the Senate Appropriations "suspense file" at the last possible step. In this episode: How Ten Strands became the connective tissue for California's environmental education field Karen's path from math textbook publishing to founding a nonprofit Craig's origin story: a freshman-year course at Año Nuevo that set a 50-year career in motion What AB 2158 actually would have required of California schools The moment the bill got held in the suspense file — and why What Karen and Craig are already planning for 2027 ABOUT KAREN COWE Founding CEO of Ten Strands. 🌐 tenstrands.org ABOUT CRAIG STRANG Consultant; Associate Director Emeritus, Lawrence Hall of Science, UC Berkeley. 🌐 tenstrands.org ABOUT YOUR HOST Scott Shepherd is the founder of Wildward Institute, based in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. 🌿 wildwardinstitute.net New episodes every week. Subscribe wherever you listen.

  6. Sep 21

    Closing the Nature Gap: How Policy Gets Kids Outdoors | Jackie Ostfeld, Sierra Club Outdoors for All

    What if the thing standing between your kid and a national park pass isn't belief — it's a budget line? Jackie Ostfeld has spent 20 years finding out, first as a naturalist teaching thousands of kids directly, then as the policy leader who helped build — and twice had to save — the program that gets every American fourth grader into their public lands for free. Jackie directs Sierra Club's Outdoors for All campaign and co-founded the Outdoors Alliance for Kids, a coalition of 100+ organizations working to close the nature gap in access to the outdoors. In this conversation, she and Scott trace her path from a segregated South Carolina classroom to the halls of Congress, and unpack why getting kids outside turns out to be one of the few genuinely bipartisan issues left — and why that still isn't enough to guarantee it gets funded. In this episode: Why "the nature gap" is measured in zip codes, not attitudes The real story behind the Every Kid Outdoors pass and the fight to save it from being cut How a 100+ organization coalition got built out of a single 2010 meeting UC Berkeley's research on awe: a 29% drop in PTSD symptoms after a wilderness rafting trip Why almost nobody actually disagrees kids need to be outside — and where the real fight is The new One Million Kids Outdoors campaign and how to get involved Simple ways to bring more awe into a 20-minute walk with your own kids ABOUT JACKIE OSTFELD Director, Sierra Club Outdoors for All campaign; co-founder, Outdoors Alliance for Kids. 🌲 sierraclub.org/outdoors-for-all ABOUT YOUR HOST Scott Shepherd is the founder of Wildward Institute, based in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. 🌿 wildwardinstitute.net New episodes weekly. Subscribe wherever you listen.

  7. Sep 14

    Teaching STEM in Spanish: Reclaiming Language as a Superpower | Ciencia Para Todos

    For years, Odalis Avalos believed that speaking Spanish as her first language was a disadvantage. Then she helped teach a lesson about bees to a room of bilingual elementary kids, and everything about how she saw her own language changed. Odalis, Christian Trujillo, and Diana are the co-founders of Ciencia Para Todos — Science for Everyone — a volunteer-run organization that trains future STEM educators and teaches science to Spanish-speaking families across California. What started as an angry flyer at Cal Poly Humboldt in 2019, born out of feeling unwelcome in their own environmental science classrooms, has grown into a statewide movement built on one idea: bilingualism isn't a gap to close. It's a superpower. In this episode: How a single 2019 flyer became a statewide bilingual STEM organization Why Spanish went from feeling like a disadvantage to a superpower Building science vocabulary in Spanish from scratch, with no formal training Partnerships with US Fish and Wildlife, NASA, and Redwood Parks Conservancy Why belonging to a culture doesn't require fluency in its language What Ciencia Para Todos needs most right now — and how to help A mid-episode note on Latino Conservation Week, September 12–20 ABOUT CIENCIA PARA TODOS A volunteer-run nonprofit training future STEM educators and teaching science to Spanish-speaking families and students across California. 🌱 https://hsucienciapt.wixsite.com/original ABOUT YOUR HOST Scott Shepherd is the founder of Wildward Institute, based in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. 🌿 wildwardinstitute.net New episodes weekly. Subscribe wherever you listen.

  8. Sep 7

    Hummingbird Parenting: Jamie Lynn Langley on Risk, Nature Prescriptions, and Play Therapy

    Jamie Lynn Langley had just finished teaching a room of therapists how to help kids safely assess the risk of climbing a tree — when to stop, how to guide instead of forbid — when they stepped outside and passed a dad doing exactly that with his son. She didn't plan it. This week, Jamie joins Scott to talk about what thirty-seven years of play therapy have taught her about risk, attention, and why she now writes some clients literal prescriptions to go outside. Jamie is a licensed clinical social worker and instructor at Middle Tennessee State University, and past president of the Tennessee Association for Play Therapy. The first fifteen years of her career were traditional, indoor play therapy; the rest has been built around what she calls nature play therapy, after discovering Richard Louv's work on nature deficit disorder two decades ago. The conversation moves through her concept of "hummingbird parenting" — flitting in and out instead of hovering — her research-backed "Big Three" case for getting kids outside, and the simple tools, a magnifying glass, a pair of binoculars, that can turn a child afraid of bugs into a discoverer. IN THIS EPISODE What play therapy and nature-based therapy actually look like Why kids increasingly don't know how to play without instructions Hummingbird parenting vs. helicopter parenting The research case for risk: as safe as needed, not as safe as possible The "Big Three": focus and mood, cortisol, and long-term wellbeing Nature prescriptions, nature play kits, and trading screen time for green time Making nature accessible when time, transportation, or safety are real barriers ABOUT JAMIE LYNN LANGLEY LCSW and instructor at Middle Tennessee State University, specializing in play, expressive arts, and nature-based therapy. Past president, Tennessee Association for Play Therapy. ABOUT YOUR HOST Scott Shepherd is the founder of Wildward Institute, based in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. 🌿 wildwardinstitute.net New episodes weekly. Subscribe wherever you listen.

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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
4 Ratings

About

There are people all over the world connecting kids and communities to the natural world in ways that build hope and a genuine desire to protect the places where we play. Most of them will never make the news. Hopeful by Nature goes to find them. Hosted by Scott Shepherd, dad, educator, and founder of Wildward Institute, each episode is a conversation with someone who saw a gap and built a bridge. From ocean educators and activists across the globe to conservationists in your backyard — these are the stories that remind us what's still possible. New episodes every week.

Information

  • Creator
    Scott Shepherd
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    21
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Scott Shepherd
  • Show Website
    Hopeful By Nature

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