Caroline Seitz - aka Cobra Caroline - is a Northern Virginia wildlife educator specializing in reptiles & amphibians. While her vocation is to teach kids to love nature, this fun & educational & infectiously joyous episode is for all ages. We begin by covering the timely news on "herpetological spring": salamander migrations, spring peepers, vernal pools, gorging snakes, regional salamander biodiversity & population threats, gelatinous egg masses, and how-to locate some amphibian action near you in the remaining weeks.  Having owned & cared for dozens of rescue animals, Caroline shares her personal, ethical journey evolving beyond live shows to a more creative new venture. One of the most interesting parts of this episode is hearing how different ages respond to snakes, from kids, to teenagers, and finally adults. Then we get into her brief stint as a snake removal technician & joining her brother's conservation work with Hawaii's hawksbill sea turtles. In closing, Caroline shares a heart-warming story about her parents: how their nurturing of her childhood passion for reptiles & amphibians led to a lifetime of animal shows from age 9 to present day.

Check out Caroline's Kid's Nature Shows to book an in-person or virtual event for your kiddos. And follow along via Instagram & Facebook for fun facts about reptiles & amphibians.


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Greg McCoy is a Virginia caver specializing in vertical caving [similar to rock-climbing rappelling but into a black hole...]. In this educational episode we get an introduction to all things caving: the difference between a spelunker & a caver; horizontal & vertical caving; white nose syndrome  [a fungus devastating to bats]; pouring dye into cave streams to test ground water; what sorts of cave critters one might see; and the extreme nature of cave rescue. We hear exciting anecdotes about regional discoveries ranging from ancient bones to burial sites and artifacts. Greg describes two of his caving trips, one about descending a 586-ft pit in Ellison's Cave in Georgia  [click to see epic pictures!]. Nearing the end we hear a bit about cave diving and wrap it up with some McCoy family history. Having descended from coal miners, Greg went to college to escape a miner's life, and yet he's spent a lifetime underground for work & for recreation!

Find your regional caving club [called a grotto] to reach out & join a caving excursion near you.


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Frank Escalona is a Chilean-born avid outdoorsman - backpacker, fisherman, hunter, adventurer - whose outdoor life has stretched from Patagonia, to Washington's Cascade Range, and now Virginia's Blue Ridge. The themes of this episode are adventure, mentorship, and facing dangerous megafauna. Pre-interview I read a lesson from a 19th-century mentor to his mentee: a shikari's [an Indian hunter] story about ignoring bad omens that led to a violent run in with a tiger.  Our interview begins with Frank's "sumptuous" childhood in Valparaíso [a port city on Chile’s coast] and his emigration to Seattle [at the time a lumber town] where he met a woodsman mentor who took him on his first big game hunt, for black bear, at age 14 in the blueberry fields of the Cascade Range. While discussing human wildness & the motivation for pursuing potentially dangerous animals beyond the inherent value of their meat, Frank recounts a harrowing story about his Patagonian fisherman friends & their conflict with a man-eater. As hunter's mature, they often seek difficulty & depth, and for Frank that means learning the Zen of archery. We hear what he's learned from his recent traditional bow practice. Coming full circle, the episode ends with how working with master craftspeople from tailors to gunmakers adds to the aesthetic ritual of the hunt and connects back to Frank's childhood in the Valparaíso markets.


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Susan Leopold, PhD of Linden, Virginia is an ethnobotanist, plant advocate, and the executive director of United Plant Savers [a non-profit focused on the conservation of medicinal plants]. The theme of this episode is history: a post-civil war connection to Susan's property, her Patawomeck ancestry [including the Pocahontas controversy], and the centuries-old ginseng trade which is currently linked to a shadowy herbal black market. She teaches us about plant conservation, the at-risk tool, sandalwood, osha, and related botanical issues. When it comes to story time, Susan shares her personal experience living in the Amazon jungle where she received a potent ayahuasca message and gathered folklore from the indigenous group she lived with during her ethnobotanical study. Upon returning home she was startled to find similar themes in the folktales of Virginia's Bull Run Mountains. In closing, Susan explains her specially crafted spagyric hemp products grown right here on her property and I recount our synchronistic trip to Carl Jung's lakeside castle, Bollingen Tower, in Switzerland.

Check out United Plant Savers on Instagram and become a member to receive the annual Journal of Medicinal Plant Conservation. For a behind-the-scenes look follow the United Plant Savers botanical sanctuary in Ohio. For Susan's CBD hemp products, visit her Paris Apothecary online store. And for more information regarding Virginia's Patawomeck tribe click the link.



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Having no guest for this episode, we spend a rainy, snowy early winter morning reading stories by the fire. First we start locally, with two short folk tales from my mountains about spirit dogs and 'jack-ma-lanterns' read from  Virginia Folk Legends edited by Thomas E. Barden.  Next, I find the answer to my question about otter edibility in Norse mythology through a misadventure of Odin  & Loki who must fill a magician's otter pelt with gold, read from The Norse Myths retold by Kevin Crossley-Holland.  Then we visit the words of a great oracle, Clarissa Pinkola Estés to hear about the powerful feminine archetype of The Bone Collector read from Women Who Run with the Wolves. We wrap up this winter episode with a heartwarming bowl of turtle medicine soup from Wildwoods Wisdom: Encounters with the Natural World by the legendary Appalachian naturalist & folklorist Doug Elliott.  Check out these wonderful reads through the links above.


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Donna La Pré of Washington, Virginia is a Biodynamic gardener, artist, herbalist, small-batch skin care producer, natural dyer, and perfumer - all under the umbrella of her home business, Tender Flower. Seated outside the charming potting shed in her autumnal garden, we begin by hearing about Donna's ancestry followed by how the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner [anthroposophy] clicked on a deep level, inspiring her spiritual path & Biodynamic gardening in which she grows 85% of the herbs and flowers used in her products. Skimming over her many vocations, we settle into a thought-provoking discussion on aromatherapy, perfumery, and incense. As the interview deepens, Donna is gracious enough to let us peek into her world: one inhabited by nature spirits, elementals, gnomes, fays, and other beings unseen by most. This engrossing episode ends on a trilogy of synchronistic short stories about the loss of both her father & her cat named Sassafras, as well as the rescue of a bleating fawn on a stormy night.

Check out Donna's Tender Flower store & classes as well as her Instagram.


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Katie McMillan Crutchfield is the chef & owner of The Dancing Bear Cafe: a renovated chicken hatchery nestled in the corn fields of Corder, Missouri amongst her old farm house, 2 AirBnB rentals, 13 peacocks, 5 horses, 5 cats, 7 dogs, a multitude of chickens & ducks, one pig & a pony. And then there’s the wildlife…orphaned raccoons, killer foxes, and leaderless coyotes. In this fun and kooky episode we hear what life is like at Katie’s plant & animal oasis; a peaceable kingdom surrounded by never-ending ag fields where crop dusting planes roar overhead & cancer is commonplace. When it comes to story time it might as well be the beginning of a whimsical children’s book: two tales from the time when Katie - at a life crossroads & very much alone - moved into an abandoned farm house with no doors where she lived with her animal friends both domestic & wild.  And as her reputation in the community grew, she became the unofficial, local wildlife rehabilitator working with the likes of barred owls, pileated woodpeckers & possum joeys.  Today, all the farm's outbuildings have a new life: the dilapidated chicken hatchery is now a destination fine-dining restaurant, and a railroad shanty from the ol’ coal mine behind the property is a charming AirBnB cottage. This episode is further proof that you can build your own version of a happy & unique life.

Check out Katie's restaurant Dancing Bear Cafe on Facebook & Instagram. And next time you're passing through Missouri, book one of the AirBnBs at her farm:  Artist Cottage or The Pond House.


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Chuck Bonner is a family-taught paleontologist & artist hailing from the chalk beds of Western Kansas: once an ancient ocean teaming with large swimming & flying reptiles, fish, sharks, and turtles. He and his wife live off-the-grid in an old chalk church they've renovated into a fossil gallery a few miles down the road from Little Jerusalem Badlands State Park. We begin by learning why this landscape makes for such good Cretaceous fossil hunting & get a glimpse of what a hunt in the chalk beds is like. Chuck shares two memorable "fossil fishing" stories: the first about a pteranodon skull found when he was only 15; the second about how his family name [Bonner] has been forever immortalized by science.  After story time, Chuck gives us a tour of his workshop. Did you know Indiana Jones was based on a real life, legendary paleontologist [not an anthropologist]? And if you're like me, I found it extremely helpful to reference the illustrations & fossil photos on Chuck's website for a clear mental picture of what these ancient animals looked like.

Check out Chuck & his wife's gift shop, fossil & art gallery: Keystone Gallery. And watch the Bonners at work in their fossil beds in NOVA's Making North America: Life.



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Tyler Chadwell-English - a charismatic librarian & folklorist with a masters in folklore & museum studies from George Mason University - lights our imagination with all-things Appalachian witchlore! We begin with me sharing my own personal story of Brooklyn witches & a possession experience that left me white as a ghost. Once the interview commences, Tyler teaches us about the three types of Appalachian witchcraft: white witchery, black witchery, and witch doctoring; followed by the various sub-genres of witches: the water witch, shapeshifter, bloodstopper, and granny woman.  We hear four local folktales about: troublesome cats in a mill, a widower’s haunted lilac bush, a mysterious hitchhiker, and a lock of hair in a shoe.  Then it's time to dust off our old brooms & Bibles as we learn a handful of regional ways to protect our homes from witches & evil spirits. The conversation creeps through Grimms, the connection between the queer & occult communities, and if folktales should be believed as truth. Make sure to stick around till the very end as Tyler shares two of his personal spooky stories: one about the death of an old cat lady, the other about a mysterious occurrence with a rose during a harrowing car wreck. This is the bewitching Halloween special I had prayed for!

Check out the West Virginia Folklife Center and the books mentioned by Tyler throughout the episode: Witches, Ghosts, and Signs: Folklore of the Southern Appalachians;  Signs, Cures, and Witchery: German Appalachian Folklore, and The Telltale Lilac Bush and Other West Virginia Ghost Tales.

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Joanne Bauman of Topeka, Kansas is a yarb woman and the host of Mother Earth News' "Heirlooms & Herbals" podcast. Coming from a long line of plant people - Appalachians, an Oglala Lakota medicine woman & a pharmacist father - Joanne encourages us to foster a relationship with the land. She instructs us on how we might give an offering of herbs or our hair to the plants and animals we aim to forage and hunt. We hear about mullein torches, elderberry folklore, herbs specific to the prairie, and 'the doctrine of signatures': an ancient tool for determining a plant's medicinal properties. Joanne then shares a powerful story about both healing the land and intergenerational trauma surrounding Lt. Colonel George Custer, the Lakota & Cheyenne of the Black Hills, and The Battle of the Greasy Grass [aka The Battle of the Little Bighorn]. Perhaps one of the highlights of this entire podcast series comes after her story, we have the great honor of hearing Joanne sing a Lakota horse song. Wow!!! We finish up our backyard garden conversation listening to Joanne's experiences studying psychology & working with folks' dis-eases of the psyche. In closing, Joanne gives us a fun, yet precise tip about the real meaning of the word "guru."

Check out Joanne's Prairie Magic Herbals & her Heirlooms & Herbals Podcast


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