#1692 The Crisis of the Public Lands

Listening to America

Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2026

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Clay joins journalist Jonathan Thompson, publisher of The Land Desk on Substack and author of Sagebrush Empire: How a Remote Utah County Became the Battlefront of American Public Lands. Thompson, who is currently living in Greece, begins by providing a European perspective on what is happening in the United States — the assault on NATO, the flirtation with taking Greenland from Denmark, the overreach of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement service, and European bewilderment about America's intended place in the world community. Most of the conversation is about the crisis of public lands in America — the push to open more of the public domain to resource extraction, the calls for privatizing parcels of BLM land in the West, and the recent revocation of grazing permits for the American Prairie Reserve in eastern Montana. And oh yes, the future of the Colorado River. This episode was recorded on January 28, 2026.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everyone. This is Clay Jenkinson. This is my introduction to this week's podcast, Jonathan Thompson, from the Four Corners area in Utah, but living mostly in Greece now. I so envy them for a lot of reasons.
0:11.5	Greece is one of my favorite places in the whole world. I've been there many times. If I had any money, I would live there part-time. It's just an extraordinary place with an extraordinary people.
0:23.5	There's a more relaxed feel.
0:26.2	The Greek people are really a wonderful and hospitable people.
0:30.7	I was in Troy a long time ago with a tour group.
0:34.2	Never been back.
0:35.1	I'm going with my daughter.
0:36.8	We've been planning this now for 18 months.
0:39.7	We finally have settled in it for May of 2026, and we're going to go to Ephesus and Istanbul and
0:49.1	Crete, which is another of my favorite places, the southernmost island in Europe. And then we're going to
0:56.0	go to Homer's Troy. And I've been reading about it, getting ready. So it's always a pleasure
1:01.8	to have any connection to Greece. And Jonathan Thompson lives there now. In fact, he lives there
1:05.9	in Pileon, which is not so far from Athens. It's actually where Achilles, the great Homeric Achaean
1:17.3	hero Achilles is from, where the Mermodons are from. So he's living there, and we've talked
1:24.6	once before and now again, this time about the current crisis
1:28.0	of the public lands. As you know, the Trump administration has revoked leases for the American
1:32.8	Prairie Reserve in northern Montana. The Colorado River is in a huge crisis because we've over-allocated
1:39.8	it, and the prolonged drought is not refilling Lake Mead and Lake Powell,
1:45.5	and there is really widespread understanding that we probably can't keep both of those reservoirs.
1:51.2	We certainly can't keep them full, and that there are going to be sacrifices,
1:55.5	that there is not enough water in the basin to serve all the needs of the 40 million people who depend upon it,
2:01.6	including about 80% of that water, is used for the growing of crops, chiefly alfalfa.
	...

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