Episode 160: Lance Richardson - True Nature: The Lives of Peter Matthiessen

Nature Revisited

Lance Richardson is an award-winning journalist, essayist, educator, and the author of House of Nutter (2018) and recently, True Nature: the Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen (2025). On this episode of Nature Revisited, contributing interviewer Scott Chaskey sits down with Lance to discuss his 8-year process and deep research involved in writing the first biography of Peter Matthiessen, the novelist, naturalist, and Zen roshi, whose trailblazing work championed Native American rights and helped usher in the modern environmental movement. Drawing upon a multitude of sources, interviews, and even re-enacting Matthiessen's 250-mile trek across the Himalayas, Richardson describes the multi-faceted writer's uncanny ability to sense connections between ecological decline, racism, and labor exploitation—to express, eloquently and presciently, that “in a damaged human habitat, all problems merge.”​ https://www.lancenrichardson.com/ True Nature book: https://www.lancenrichardson.com/truenature Listen to Nature Revisited on your favorite podcast apps, on YouTube, or at https://noordenproductions.com Subscribe on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/bdz4s9d7 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/5n7yx28t Subscribe on Youtube Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/bddd55v9 Podlink: https://pod.link/1456657951 Support Nature Revisited https://noordenproductions.com/support Nature Revisited is produced by Stefan van Norden and Charles Geoghegan. We welcome your comments, questions and suggestions - contact us at https://noordenproductions.com/contact