Media appearances
John Clayton's interviews, op-eds, and media appearances. (See also his narrative articles, and his essays at Natural Stories.)
Why AI can't write history
I tried to replace myself with AI. Things went poorly.
Artificial intelligence wants to inhale my Montana book
Do I take $340 to let an AI do... something with my life's work?
Writers on the Range (Oct. 2025)
Natural Rivals featured on the Glacier Book Club
A video of the live event with Doug Mitchell and fans of Glacier National Park
Glacier Conservancy (Sep. 2025)
Montana’s politicians have lost their ties to land
Choosing by ideology rather than roots marks a change in self-identity.
Writers on the Range (Aug. 2024)
You’re not the boss in wilderness
On the 60th anniversary of the 1964 Wilderness Act
Writers on the Range (Feb. 2024)
In small towns, bookstores are thriving
Independent bookstores are growing, even in the rural West
Writers on the Range (June 2024)
John Muir and small town service clubs
A Rotary luncheon showed the benefits of abandoning political ideologies
John's interview with Meghna Chakrabarti
The battling philosophies around conservation that gave us the public lands we have today — and what we can learn from the debate.
NPR's OnPoint (August 2019)
Lessons from a previous environmental catastrophe
In June of 1894, the superintendent of Sequoia National Park faced a natural-resource nightmare. His response offers us lessons today.
Was John Muir racist?
The answer depends, not on Muir’s actions, but on recent, productive redefinitions of the word 'racist'