The Colorado River is vanishing in plain sight, and the most dangerous part might be how easy it is to feel detached from it. I’m joined by filmmaker Mara Tasker, whose new award-winning documentary The River follows the people living inside the Colorado River Basin, from farmers and ranchers to suburban families, tribal communities, and the seven state negotiators trying to rewrite the rules of a river that no longer matches the paperwork. What starts as a personal admission of “I didn’t really know the river I depended on” becomes a map for charting how we might be able to breathe life back into the Colorado, and for that matter, rivers everywhere.  

Mara’s story, too, is worth the telling – with no straight lines, from rabble rousing school girl, to gutsy cold calling young creative, with a passion for engaging with all kinds of people, and a river running through it all. Plenty of uncanny laughs run through this conversation too.

I was introduced to Mara by Melissa Grumhaus, who was an Executive Producer on the incredible documentary film Bring Them Home, about the Blackfeet Nation's effort to restore wild buffalo herds. You might remember her from episode 278 in Denver last year. And this time, she’s part of the production team alongside Aussie company Songbird Studios. I noted recent popular podcast guest, Pete McBride, was also in the credits. So it was clear how good and meaningful this film was going to be. 

We talk about why the conflict around the river turns so quickly into finger-pointing and why that’s a sign to zoom out and look at systems: growth incentives, water rights that ignore hydrology, and a culture that treats water like an infinite utility. Mara explains her creative choice to put opposing users side by side on camera and to give the river itself a felt presence, not as a backdrop but as a living system with needs. Along the way we unpack the tension between agriculture and cities, the reality of Indigenous water rights, and the blunt truth behind reservoir “bathtub rings”: you can’t claim rights to something that is disappearing.

Then we shift from awareness to action. Mara shares how community screenings and short post-film panels can turn a hard topic into a real conversation, plus why quietly reading the news and despairing helps nobody. If you care about the Colorado River and every other river crisis, along with drought and climate change, and practical water conservation choices that actually move the needle, this is your invitation to get involved. Subscribe, head to the film’s website, and share this podcast with a review so more people find the conversation.

Featuring music from the film’s soundtrack: The Story of a River, and Eric’s Grasses, by Mark Crawford.

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 26 June 2026.

Host a community screening of The River.

And a community screening of Bring Them Home.

You can hear the podcasts with Liz Carlisle for ep309 (with her beautiful music), Pete McBride for ep305 (with his live mandolin), Jeff Goebel for, most recently on-location in New Mexico, ep211, and Judith Schwartz for ep175, all among my very favourites. 

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Pre-roll music: Heartland Rebel, by Steven Beddall (sourced from Artlist).

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