Misha Euceph didn't have a relationship with the national parks until her 6-week road trip to capture new stories of the parks for her podcast, Hello, Nature.
In early 2021, Misha Euceph spent six weeks on the road visiting national parks and recording a new podcast series for REI Co-op Studios called Hello, Nature. As a Pakistani-American writer, podcast host and journalist, Misha set out to find the new, lesser known stories of America's national parks through the lens of Black, Indigenous, and people of color.
Misha’s interest in national parks is relatively new, but she’s no stranger to podcasting. Her production company, Dustlight Productions, produced The Michelle Obama podcast, and Barack Obama and Bruce Springstein’s podcast Renegades: Born in the USA. In this episode, Misha talks about making her latest project, Hello, Nature.
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Misha Euceph:
I decided to watch The National Parks: America's Best Idea and I have never felt more patriotic in my life. That inspired me then to take a group of friends to Zion just to start making this a part of my life. I was like, I think that there's something here. There's also something specifically here for immigrants, for people of color, for native people, for Black people, because we are here. We are in these spaces and we have been integral in building these spaces. You look at places like Yosemite. Wawona Road was built by Chinese immigrants. But those aren't the stories that we're hearing and I feel like it's a narrative that is too limited.
Shelby Stanger:
That's Misha Euceph. This year, Misha decided to go out and combine two of my all-time favorite things, the outdoors and podcasting. In January of 2021, Misha spent six weeks on the road, visiting national parks and recording a new podcast series called Hello, Nature. The show explores her experience in the national parks as a woman of color. You might not have heard of Misha's name before, but you might be familiar with some of her work. Misha produced The Michelle Obama Podcast and she also produced Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen's podcast, Renegades: Born in the USA. Misha's work is incredible. I highly recommend you go listen to some of her shows, but of course, only after you finish this episode. Come on, guys. I'm Shelby Stanger and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living.
Shelby Stanger:
Misha Euceph is a Pakistani American podcast producer and host. She's the CEO and founder of Dustlight Productions, a podcast company that makes sound-rich, impactful shows. Next month, Misha is releasing Hello, Nature. It's her new show from REI Co-op Studios and it delves into her newfound love of national parks. The show tells stories about parks through the voices of Black, Indigenous, and people of color. To make the show, Misha traveled to eight national parks, many of which she'd never seen before.
Shelby Stanger:
Six weeks of national parks is no joke. Did you ever spend any time in the parks growing up as a kid?
Misha Euceph:
I didn't even know there were national parks. Like, I had no idea they existed. I'd moved here from Pakistan to Los Angeles when I was 11 and a half. My family... we had grown up in the suburbs of Los Angeles... didn't really go out hiking or camping or doing any of that stuff. It's funny. My parents joke. They're like, "Our families came from villages way back when. Why would we go sleep on the ground and forage for food? Why are we trying to go back in time?" So, my parents did not... I mean, it's interesting because they have interactions with nature in so many other ways. My mom grew up in a family that was small-batch, organic, antibiotic-free, free-range way before that was a thing because they had their own little farm in their backyard. They were living very much in touch in that way. My dad grew up playing cricket in the streets with his friends.
Misha Euceph:
And so there's like... Being outdoors was a part of their lives. Carolyn Finney, one of our guests, say a beautiful thing about, like, "People always ask me what was your first experience with nature. My first experience with nature was coming out of the womb. We are part of nature." But I think that, in the traditional sense of camping, hiking, all of that, I would say my experience with the outdoors was getting bitten by mosquitoes and getting really annoyed. We didn't even really picnic in parks. I was so insecure, being an immigrant. I was like, I don't know the right clothes to wear. I don't know the right activities to do. I don't know how to interact with this.
Shelby Stanger:
Because you came when you were 12. That's like... Seventh grade ain't easy for anybody, especially when you're a new kid from another country. What was that like?
Misha Euceph:
Really hard. I don't know. It would've been one thing if I was a loser kid in Pakistan and came here and that was the narrative, but it's completely different to be like, oh, I'm the coolest kid and then move countries and realize, oh my gosh. Not only am I not cool, I don't even know how to become cool. The way in which they speak and live and what is cool is so foreign. How do I even understand the rules? I remember my sister and I were on a mission. We were like, "We will be popular. Whatever it takes. We're going to make it happen." And we did not. We definitely failed.
Shelby Stanger:
How did you get into storytelling? Especially how did you get into audio? That wasn't even an option for me in college, so it's so cool meeting someone who... It was out there when you were studying it.
Misha Euceph:
For me, audio was not my first choice. It was not what I thought I was going to do. I thought I was going to be a lawyer. It was my decision. Not my parents'. They had not imposed... They were like very chill. I'd always kind of thought about, like, maybe I'll go into politics or whatever. Long story short, I did terribly in school. I was not even showing up to class. In college, it really came to a head. I was pretty depressed. I was almost going to fail out of college and decided, instead of just screwing it all up, I was going to take a quarter off. During that quarter off, I realized I no longer wanted to go to law school. Took a quarter off and started working for my college radio station at UCI and made a show called Dates and Other Mistakes. It was about love and it was terrible, but it was so much fun. All the hard parts of it like operating the board and prepping the scripts and all of that was so exciting and I enjoyed the agony and the hard work. I think it started to click for me. I was like, this is something I really want to do. And this is pre-serial, pre-start up. The only viable path for audio was like NPR.
Misha Euceph:
And I told my parents. I was like, "I'm going to switch paths. I'm going to do this. I know I'm about to graduate. This is how... I'm changing my mind." And they were like, "Okay. Whatever you want to do. Get a master's." So, I was like, how am I going to get a master's? I have terrible grades. I started just cold emailing professors at journalism schools and different journalists. I was like, "Listen, I really want to do this thing." I started pitching articles left and right and ended up getting into Northwestern and a bunch of journalism schools. Went to Northwestern. There was no formal audio program, so I worked with one of my professors to help develop an advanced audio course. Around this time, serial and start-up had started coming out. I took a radio workshop that's since discontinued called Transom Radio Workshop. Then, I did a series of jobs at different places like public radio stations and Sirius XM and wasn't making anything. I was like, I need to make something. If I'm going to do this, I need to make something. And decided to start my own podcast independently called Beginner. That's kind of where... That came out in 2017 and that is when things really started to pick up and people started to notice my work and more opportunities came up.
Shelby Stanger:
Tell us about these opportunities. Because they're big opportunities. You said that very nonchalantly. Like, oh, some opportunities. But with the former president of the United States.
Misha Euceph:
Yeah. I mean, it was still a little bit longer before I met them, but I ended up working at the NPR station in LA, at KPCC, and made two podcasts. A show called The Big One: Your Survival Guide, which really blew up. It's about the earthquake anticipated for LA. We did an original score and people got really excited about it. It got a lot of people to prepare for the impending earthquake and FEMA invited us to speak. And then I made a show called Tell Them I Am that came out in Ramadan 2019. Season one. That basically featured all Muslim voices, but not talking about being Muslim. The premise of it was what's a small moment in your life that defined you? They were these beautiful, sound-rich vignettes in the lives of sometimes famous, sometimes unknown Muslim people. The goal of that was just for people to fall in love with Muslims and kind of combat Islamophobia in this really subtle sort of way. That show also got a lot of attention.
Misha Euceph:
And so, from there, I was like, wait. I'm young. I have nothing to lose. If I'm going to do something big, I've got to do it now. A lot of people were starting podcast production companies, so I decided to start my own production company and was approached by Higher Ground Audio, the Obama's production house. They were like, "Hey, do you want your first project to be our podcast?" Which is still kind of unbelievable if you think about it. It was really cool.
Shelby Stanger:
So, they didn't just call you out of the blue. You admit some connection because you hustled. You started putting yourself in situations where these possibilities could happen. What situation did you put yourself in that someone from Higher Ground would call you?
Misha Euceph:
There were a couple of things, actually. And I love that you ask this question because it's not... I hate the idea of overnight success or this just fell into my lap or I'm so lucky. The first thing was I got a scholarship through the White House Correspondents' Association when I was at Northwestern. I think, ultimately, that was because the professors knew me really well and I had started building relationships with them even before I came to the school. The school chose three scholars, and I was one of them, to go to the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in 2016, which was Barack Obama's last year as president. I went there and, as part of the scholarship, was presented an award and also met with the president and the First Lady. We had a brief conversation. There wasn't any kind of connection built at that point, but there was a sense of familiarity.
Misha Euceph:
And then I just really believe in building real relationships. I don't believe in networking. I don't think that it gets you very far to have transactional relationships with people. I think that, if you're in the room with awesome people, there are two things that you can do. One is be an equal. Don't revere them so much that you're kind of kissing their ass or making them feel like you're not actually worthy of being there. Because you are worthy of being there. You wouldn't be in the room if you weren't worthy, so you might as well believe it. And the other is don't build transactional relationships. Don't try to make it quid pro quo, I'll do this for you now, you do this for me at this point, but instead take a genuine interest in who people are and what they're doing with their work and what they're doing with their lives. I was lucky enough to have built a friendship with Mukta Mohan, who was formerly at Crooked Media. She ended up getting recruited by Higher Ground Audio, and she and I had wanted to work together for a while.
Misha Euceph:
So, when I started the production company, she reached out. She was a fan of The Big One and of Tell Them I Am and they were really excited about elevating a new voice and a new company rather than going with the big players that were already established in the industry. Because they do tend to do that. They like to highlight people who haven't gotten opportunities up to that point. So, that's kind of how they approached me. They brought us in for a meeting and we just connected. We had the same vision for what we were trying to do.
Shelby Stanger:
No matter how famous you are, even if you're the Obamas, we're all human. I love what Misha said about being in the same room as famous people. To just act like an equal because you are. We can all show up as our authentic selves and build meaningful relationships. The Obamas' podcasts have been a hit and Misha is on to her next projects. This year, she started working on Hello, Nature. To make the show, Misha and her producer, Jonathan Shifflett, road tripped around America for six weeks. They recorded her journey as she visited national parks and interviewed a variety of guests along the way.
Shelby Stanger:
So, what's the premise of Hello, Nature?
Misha Euceph:
The premise essentially is to answer one question, which is the parks are public. They're supposed to be our inheritance. So, are they actually for everyone? And what does it mean for them to be for everyone? Through that, we kind of explore these little, tiny histories that have either been told and have not gotten mainstream attention or have never been told before within a mainstream context. And there are stories of people present-day who are doing amazing things within the park and creating accessibility specifically for BIPOC people. So, there's the arc of tracing me and my journey going through this whole experience for the first time and learning what I'm learning, but also actually meeting these incredible people, past, present, and hopefully future, and learning about what they're doing in the parks and how they're creating room for everybody.
Shelby Stanger:
You talked earlier about how you didn't grow up as an outdoorsy person. What changed? Why did you all of a sudden decide to make a nature show?
Misha Euceph:
Never grew up doing it. Didn't come across it until my best friend in college and her husband, who was big on camping, were like, "Hey, you should join us for this trip." We ended up going to Big Sur and that was my first real outdoors experience. Really, really limited experiences, but that trip to Big Sur, I started to kind of feel like something was unlocking within me. And then when I was 21, I went to Joshua Tree for a meditation retreated called Vipassana. It was in Twentynine Palms, like right outside of the national park. It's a 12-day silent meditation retreat. My whole life had kind of gone to shit and I was like, okay, I need to figure out what's going wrong? How do I tap back into myself?
Misha Euceph:
I remember, Shelby, just being blown away. I did not... Joshua Tree is really subtle beauty, but it feels magical. I remember there was nothing to do because I was meditating for like 12 hours a day. I'd wake up at sunrise and we'd have a break from meditation around like 6:30 AM, when you'd see the sky... You could see the entire sky there. You'd see the sky turn colors. It was pinks and oranges and blues and yellows. It was those turns of the light in Joshua Tree that I think really started to make me feel like, wait. This is something I want to explore more. I need to be in these kinds of spaces.
Misha Euceph:
And I was like, oh, Joshua Tree is a national park and, actually, we have other national parks. This is fast-forward several years. I decided to watch The National Parks: America's Best Idea and I have never felt more patriotic in my life. I was just like, oh my god, this is brilliant. I was addicted. I was watching it every single night. Hours and hours and hours. That inspired me then to take a group of friends to Zion and just to start making this a part of my life. I was like, I think that there's something here. There's also something specifically here for immigrants, for people of color, for native people, for Black people, in America because we are here. We are in these spaces and we have been integral in building these spaces. You look at places like Yosemite. Wawona Road was built by Chinese immigrants.
Misha Euceph:
But those aren't the stories that we're hearing. What we're hearing about are people like Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir. At that time, to me, they were massive heroes still and there are really positive things that they have done, but those are stories that we keep hearing over and over and over again. I feel like it's a narrative that is too limited and that's not inclusive. That doesn't make us all feel like it's our inheritance, the national parks. So, I pitched this idea to REI and they were super into it. I was really surprised. We were going to do it in the summer of 2020. And then the pandemic happened. So, the show has been a long time coming. I was finally able to go out to the parks and start working on it in 2021. End of 2020, beginning of 2021. And yeah. Now, we're coming close to the release of the show.
Shelby Stanger:
How did you find the people to interview for this show? Did you just show up at the national park and start talking to people or did you do some planning?
Misha Euceph:
No, we did actually entirely planned interviews because we were worried about COVID and how that would impact things. We had a couple of impromptu, on-site interviews with visitors. Sometimes we ended up getting connected to people through someone we had already met in the park. Like a ranger or a scientist or someone working right outside of the park on different kinds of things. They'd be like, "Oh, actually, you know else you should meet is this person." And that person happened to be there, so we would interview them. There was spontaneity in that way, but a lot of credit goes to my team, Francesca Diaz, Elizabeth Nacano, Jonathan Shifflett, Arwen Nicks. They all worked really, really hard to help source amazing people throughout the parks.
Misha Euceph:
We tried a lot of different methods. There were rangers that we reached out to. There were superintendents that we reached. We looked up who were the native tribes within those regions and reached out to those tribes and wanted to know who the best people to speak to would be. We read a lot of books about the history and present-day stories of the different parks. We also... I got super into outdoors, Diversify Outdoors, BIPOC outdoors, Instagram and kind of just was like, okay, who are all the people we need to follow? Once you're following Latino Outdoors and Outdoors Afro and Refuge Outdoor Festival and Melanin Base Camp and whatever, one thing leads to another thing leads to another thing and then you start to see a lot of individuals. But a lot of also meeting people in the parks. Some of most amazing stories came from guests that we met through intros while we were on site.
Shelby Stanger:
Misha and her producer gathered hundreds of hours of sounds, interviews, and commentary from that trip. In researching and recording for their show, Misha connected with a larger community of Black, Indigenous, and people of color in the outdoors. When we come back, we hear about Misha's trips to the parks, the highs and lows of being on the road with her producer for six weeks straight, and what she learned from the process.
Shelby Stanger:
If you've been listening to the podcast this season, you'll know that I'm a big fan of my Sonos Roam. It's a smart speaker that's small enough to pack for any trip and strong enough to handle the occasional bumps and tumbles one might expect during an outdoor adventure. With the Sonos Roam, you get to bring your favorite sounds wherever you go. If you need inspiration, check out Never Stop Exploring on Sonos Radio. It's a new audio series featuring nine different soundscapes from some of The North Face's most epic excursions. You can tune in to go climbing with Alex Honnold in Antarctica or summit Japan's tallest waterfall with James Pearson. Whether you're looking for a speaker that you can take anywhere or you need new content to add to your workday playlist, you can discover sound made way at sonos.com.
Shelby Stanger:
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Shelby Stanger:
Hello, Nature is based on Misha's road trip to eight national parks. Visiting eight parks in six weeks is a lot of travel. Misha and her producer, Jonathan Shifflett, made that trip in January, so there were two obstacles that they had to consider. First, in January 2021, we were still in the depths of the pandemic. That meant meeting and interviewing people required a lot of extra planning. Second, it was winter.
Shelby Stanger:
Was there a moment where you were like, what am I doing?
Misha Euceph:
Yeah, no, there were... I mean, there were 5000 moments like that, but the one that sticks out the most by far is we were in Yellowstone National Park and we were supposed to camp. We get there and we find out that, actually, it's going to be snowing that night, so camping is not an option. And our sleeping bags were only like minus 20 degrees, so we were like, we're not going to be warm enough. We can't camp. So, we had to get a spot last minute. We get a spot. We have no wifi, so we can't figure out lodging and planning for the next day. The following morning, we were supposed to go at 5:00 AM and do some wolf-spotting with Jeremy SunderRaj, who is one of the Yellowstone Wolf Project scientists. We have no way of communicating with him because we can't get wifi anywhere and we have no service. And so we're like, okay... And we have no way of also checking the weather and really knowing whether it's going to stop snowing, what roads are going to be closed.
Misha Euceph:
We wake up super early and I was like, okay, we have no choice. We have to do this. I kept slapping myself awake. It's completely dark. We can't see anything. I'm just driving with my high beams on. We get to the little spot that we're meeting Jeremy in and we do the whole wolf-spotting thing. Just as we are about to finish, we literally have a massive snowstorm. They close down all the roads in Yellowstone. And so we're outside of Mammoth Springs. We haven't eaten. We've barely slept. We don't have a place to stay. We were on the west side of the park originally. We couldn't go back to the west side the same day. We literally had to get out of the park from the north side and a bunch of people... What they were doing is they would get out from the north side, go to Gardiner, Montana, and then drive up through Bozeman around back to the other side of the park to get to their original lodging. But since we didn't have a place booked, we were like, okay, screw it. We'll just drive down to Gardiner. When you're traveling for a long time together, you start bickering in these kinds of situations. My producer and I were like, no, you drive, I drive. We're like shoveling snow off the car with our bare hands and with our poop shovels for backpacking.
Misha Euceph:
We eventually get the snow off the car. We're able to successfully use the X mode in our Subaru and drive down this super precarious road. We get to Gardiner and we're like, we're going to get a hotel. We're going to be fine. And there are no spots. Everyone is like, "We only have one room." We walk into this one really cute hotel. This guy, right away, he's like, "So, you guys need a place to sleep?" And we're like, "Yeah, but we need two rooms." He's like, "Okay, I don't have any rooms, but I'm going to call around. I'll find you a place." He ends up calling a bunch of people and finding us a spot in this super sketchy Montana motel in Gardiner and we were able to get back to the other side of the park the next day and everything. But it was just... That day, I was like, oh my god. What am I doing? Why am I doing this? Why did we think doing them all back-to-back was such a good idea? You don't think about weather, really, as much. And the fact that weather is changing from park to park within the same season because you're traveling such great distances. Also, these are wild spaces. The weather is also wild. But that was early on and I was like, oh my gosh, I'm not cut out for this. I'm giving up. I want to give up.
Shelby Stanger:
Let's go back. What did you do in these eight national parks? What were you doing there? What was a typical... I realize no day was probably typical, but what did you try to do in each park?
Misha Euceph:
We wanted to try a variety of different hikes. I have not grown up hiking or camping. And so this was actually my first time car camping alone. I mean, I was with Jonathan, but I had only camped twice before and it had been in a big group setting, where we sharing tents. I never had to pitch my own tent. I never had to cook for myself in order to eat that night. I never had to make myself breakfast. Figure out to shower. Because a lot of these campsites are really, really nice, but they're not the super fancy Hipcamp type of vibe. This is not glamping. You're shitting in a hole. You're washing your armpits with whatever water you're using to wash your dishes. And so part of it was just getting used to pitching a tent and getting set up in different campsites and doing it quickly. By the end, Jonathan and I were racing to see who could do it faster. Part of it was also trying to do hikes that were harder and harder every park and trying to experience different types of hikes. Trying to spot some wildlife. The biggest part of the whole experience was just meeting the people who were there and who were doing important work that deserved to be highlighted.
Misha Euceph:
So, a typical day, I would say, was probably very chaotic. Waking up somewhere between 4:00 and 5:00 AM. The latest I think we probably got up was like 7:00 or 8:00 most mornings. There was a lot of driving in between parks. Anywhere from eight to 16 hours drives. Because we were driving throughout the whole country. It was very much a road trip, so lots of listening to great music. Great podcasts. Playing car games. And then, when we were in the parks, we would usually try to fit in one or two big hikes. In the Smokies, for example, I did Mount Le Conte. It was my first hike alone ever. That was a really, really big moment that we had been kind of leading up to. In Acadia, we did the Beehive.
Misha Euceph:
And then there were also little things that we did that I feel like were especially meaningful. Like, we went... In Acadia also, we went with Suzanne Greenlaw and she talks about and has worked on, with the national park, allowing native people in the region to harvest sweet grass on specific patches. That's a traditional native practice. And so we went and saw where they harvest sweet grass and got to learn more about the practice and why it's important to alter some of our scientific methods to make room for Indigenous and intuitive wisdom and also Indigenous methods. There was a lot of that. There was a lot of going and interviewing guests and getting to know them and doing activities with them. In Mammoth Cave, we did a historical tour with Jerry Bransford, who is the descendant of Mat and Nick Bransford, who were the original explorers of Mammoth Cave and were, at the time, enslaved. And learned about his family history and how he had come to be a part of the park. Really, really meaningful moments in that way, too.
Shelby Stanger:
I'm really curious. Did you have a favorite park?
Misha Euceph:
I get that question a lot and it's... Yes, I do have a favorite park. And I have a second favorite, too. And a third favorite. But I feel like it is really hard to pick a favorite based on the beauty because they're all so different. They're all kind of like little... They're like different versions of heaven. I feel like it just depends on what speaks to your heart because you can't actually be like, this is the most beautiful park I went to. I oddly felt the most at home in Glacier. It has striking views, but it's not the most striking thing at every turn. When you drive into Yosemite, immediately you're like whoa. Big granite slabs. El Cap, you can see right away. You have these mystical, almost fantastical waterfalls. It's really visually striking. I always think of it as it's the height of your imagination. And then you have places like Zion or Arches, where you go and you're like, I couldn't even have imagined this. This is like Mars. But again, striking. I think Glacier is the kind of beauty that creeps up on you. It's something that you can imagine, but... I don't know. It felt to me like a warm hug to be there. It felt really right. I can't really describe it.
Shelby Stanger:
Did you have one of these, oh, I get why I'm here right now, doing what I'm doing?
Misha Euceph:
Yeah. I definitely had that. I definitely was like, I'm exactly where I was supposed to be. There's something I felt that's so weird, but... I come from Pakistan and there is... It's part of the Himalayan mountain ranges and my parents are both from... way back when are from more mountainous regions. It felt so familiar. I was like, why does it feel so familiar? I didn't grow up in Montana. There was a lot of white people. Not a lot of people who look like me. But it was something about the landscape that felt like a version of home. I was like, oh my gosh, this makes me want to go to the rural areas of Pakistan, which I've never even visited, and experience them because... It felt like it was calling to me. I think that also felt like... It wasn't just, oh, I'm doing this, this makes sense, I'm supposed to be where I am, but also, this is foreshadowing what I'm supposed to do next.
Shelby Stanger:
How did you grow and what did you learn from this experience?
Misha Euceph:
On this trip, I feel like the thing that I kept coming back to was there are a lot of things that I don't know how to do. There are a lot of things that people who come from similar backgrounds as me don't know how to do. A lot of times, I think that we take it to mean that we can't do it or that there's only way to do those things and, because there's no access point for us, that we shouldn't try to create that access point for ourselves. I think that, for me, from park to park to park, I constantly was confronted by this idea that fear is always going to be there. It's not about trying to get rid of fear. If that's the goal, that's unrealistic and I'm never going to achieve it and I'm always going to fall short and feel shitty about myself. It's about getting comfortable with fear. I'm not going to overnight become a backpacker and start through-hiking 200 miles or whatever. But it's about doing a little more every single time you do the thing.
Misha Euceph:
And so I tried doing a hike alone in Big Bend, for example. At the beginning of the trail, I saw poop. Fresh, unfamiliar poop. I was like, oh no. There is an animal here. I know there are mountain lions in Big Bend. I shouldn't mess with this. I shouldn't do this alone. This was right by the , so there are mountains. It's not like it's one of the lower territories, where you might not encounter any mountain lions. So, I started walking and, a little bit further down the trail, I see another batch of fresh poop. I was like, I can't do it. I'm turning back. I'm not risking this. This doesn't look like squirrel poop. I turn back and, much later, we ended up Google Images-ing mountain lion poop and bear poop and I found out that it was bear poop.
Misha Euceph:
So, regardless, avoided encountering a bear up close, but after that, I was really scared. I was like, oh my god. Am I ever going to be able to do a hike alone? Ended up doing a much longer, much harder hike in the Smokies alone and I realized that doing a hike alone doesn't mean I can't make friends along the way or that I have to be completely solo the entire time. That made me realize that just building up to it and listening to my fear, getting comfortable with my fear, letting it tell me when I can or cannot do something, is okay. It's on the way to accomplishing the thing.
Shelby Stanger:
Fear is a really, really tricky one and it's something that, when we face it in nature, it becomes very visceral. Did you see any bears?
Misha Euceph:
I did. I did. On my first hike ever on the entire trip. In Yosemite. We did Upper Yosemite Falls and there was a bear really close. It was like coming towards us. It was a super heavily trafficked trail. Again, very popular hike. I just was like, oh my god. Because somebody had warned us as we were coming up there. They were coming down. They were like, "Hey, guys. There's a bear up there. Just be careful. It was a few switchbacks away, but just be careful." We get up a few switchbacks later and we see the bear. It's a brown bear. It was so cute, but also so scary. It was like rushing in our direction and I was just like, okay, we're turning around. We were so close to the top and I was like, I do not care. I am not about to get closer to that bear today. I told everyone on the trail. I was like, "You all should turn around. Don't keep going." That was a visceral moment for sure.
Shelby Stanger:
Yeah, sometimes you have to just trust your gut. I would've probably turned around to. It's healthy to see a bear and not want to get closer to it. Advice to people who want to start a podcast.
Misha Euceph:
You don't need anything to get started is my biggest piece of advice. Just start. You can use your iPhone and you can use whatever laptop you already have and whatever software, GarageBand or Reaper, that you can get for free and just make stuff. Don't try to get the biggest sponsor or hit up a bunch of people, asking how to make it super professional, before you even try to do it. Just make something and fail and mess up and try to get better at the craft. Don't create barriers in your own path by being like, oh, I can't do it unless I have this equipment or I can't do it unless I have that guest.
Shelby Stanger:
Advice to people who just want to get outdoors and they're a little intrepid.
Misha Euceph:
Just start by going on a hike in your neighborhood. There are so many trails. The AllTrails app totally changed my life. I discover new trails all the time right around me. You can filter it by easy, moderate, hard, and just start with a bunch of easy trails. Have a picnic in your local park. You don't need to go to a national park. Try out a state park. And then, when you're ready, maybe just drive through a national park that's nearby. You don't have to camp. You don't have to hike. You don't have to do anything super intense that you're not comfortable with. Build it up slowly. Just get out there. And take friends with you. It's so much easier when you take friends or family.
Shelby Stanger:
The mission of Dustlight, of your production company, is to evoke awe through storytelling. I love the word awe. Talk to me about how Hello, Nature evokes awe.
Misha Euceph:
Normally, when we watch a nature documentary or see nature on TV or in real life, we see grand views, panoramic, zoom out drone footage. Cinematic score. Cinematic visuals. Obviously, that evokes awe because you're really little in these big things. But something else that evokes awe is the tiny, little things and the intimacy and noticing something that has always been there but that has a completely different light shone upon it, both literally and figuratively. Because audio is a different medium than visuals, hearing nature is different than seeing nature, I think that the approach that we're taking is... Instead of zoom out and feel small in this massive thing, ti's zoom in and realize how big of an impact you have within this whole world. Both zoom in on the little things like a scorpion on a plank of wood in Big Bend, but also zoom in on what's happening inside of you and what you are capable of doing with the people around you. Because nature is just as much as the people who inhabit the landscapes that you are in as it is the actual environment and the plants and the birds and the animals and whatever. What is the impact that you have on all of that and what does that really mean for us present-day and in the future as a society? That's how we are working on evoking awe. Whether or not people feel something, we'll find out when they listen.
Shelby Stanger:
You'll be able to check out a trailer for Hello, Nature tomorrow, August 25th, and the first episode comes out on September 17th. You can find Hello, Nature wherever you listen to podcasts. I can't wait to tune in and hear Misha's stories and interviews as she tells the stories from our national parks that we don't usually get to hear. Misha, thank you so much for coming on the show. It was so cool to geek out with a fellow podcaster. I'm a big Misha Euceph fan. We all love your work. I loved chatting with you about podcasting and about our parks. If you want to learn how to make a podcast, I have a class, but Misha also has a free class. It's an eight-part course. You can find it at howtomakeapodcast.org. To learn more about Misha, go to her website, mishaeuceph.com. That's M-I-S-H-A-E-U-C-E-P-H dot com.
Shelby Stanger:
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI podcast network. It's hosted by me. I'm Shelby Stanger. It's written and edited by Annie Fassler and Sylvia Thomas. And it's produced by the amazing Chelsea Davis. Our executive producers are Paola Mottola and Joe Crosby. As always, we appreciate when you follow, rate, and review the show wherever you listen. And remember. Some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.