Episodes

Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Forty One! It is the Memorial Day weekend here in the United States, and this weekend also marks the one year anniversary for the So Much Pingle podcast! And that makes this episode the last of Season One! Who knows where Season Two will take us? It’s a mystery to me too. Patrons! I want to take the time to thank all of the folks who help to support the show, either through Patreon or other means – I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your generosity. You...

Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Forty! I hope you all remain safe and healthy here in this fine month of May, the busiest of months for those of us in North America who enjoy getting out and seeing amphibians and reptiles. I just got back from a trip out west where John, Tim and I drove all over Nevada, California, Arizona and Utah, and we saw a bunch of cool herps, including a dozen or so species that were new to me. As per usual I bring my mobile recording studio along, in the hopes of r...

Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Thirty Nine! And I hope you all remain safe and healthy as we move towards May, a busy time for herps and herp lovers in many places across the planet. PATREONERS! Here’s a shout-out to new supporters Martin Habecker and Daniel Dye! Thank you so much for supporting the show, and thanks as always to all of the folks who help keep the show going. To others in the listening audience, if you like the show, please consider supporting it via the So Much Pingle Pa...

Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Thirty Eight of the SMP show! I hope you all remain safe and healthy, and it’s great to be back after a few weeks off. I was not idle during that time, I was out in the field for 21 days, and I recorded material for several shows during that time, including this one. PATREONERS! Here’s a shout-out to new supporters Jeremy Schumacher, Neill Jones, and Alec Gordon! Thank you so much for supporting the show, and thanks as always to all of the folks who help ke...

Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Thirty Seven! I hope you all remain safe and healthy and hopefully many of you are getting your vaccine doses. Spring is here where I live and I managed to get the intros and outros recorded for this episode despite a trio of chainsaws working on a tree in the neighbor’s yard. Tricky timing but done. PATREONERS! Here’s a shout-out to new supporter Tom Eles from Ontario! Tom took the PayPal option and thank you so much good sir. Hopefully we will meet again ...

Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Thirty Six! I hope everyone remains happy and healthy as we move into spring here in the northern hemisphere. It is a wild and wooly day out today here in central Illinois, with high winds and freezing rain, but spring will not be denied. PATREONERS! Here’s a shout-out to new Patreon contributors to the show since the last episode: Jeremiah Easter and Richard Legere! Thank you Jeremiah, and thank you Richard, and thanks so much to all of my Patreoners for s...

Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Thirty Five! Apologies for the delay, thanks for your patience, and much warmth and good wishes to everyone. PATREONERS! Here’s a shout-out to new Patreon contributors to the show since the last episode: William Bone! Thank you William! And thanks so much to all of my Patreoners for supporting the show! I really appreciate it. To others in the listening audience, if you like the show, please consider supporting it via the So Much Pingle Patreon page. And th...

Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Thirty Four! Here’s a shout-out to all of the people in Texas, I hope today finds you recovering from the terrible weather last week. Much warmth and good wishes to everyone. PATREONERS! Here’s a shout-out to new Patreon contributors to the show since the last episode: Bill Peterman, Cynthia Samake, and Paul-Erik Bakland!. Thank you Bill and Cynthia and Paul-Erik! And thanks so much to all of my Patreoners for supporting the show! I really appreciate it. To...

Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Thirty Three! The polar vortex continues here in east-central Illinois, the mercury is pooled at the bottom of the thermometer, so put on a sweatshirt, make yourself a cuppa, and pull up a piping hot episode about frogs! Our guest this week is Jodi Rowley, a conservation biologist with the Australian Museum in Sydney. Jodi has been involved with frog field research in Australia, Cambodia, Vietnam, and other places, and she is also involved with a very cool c...

Hello everyone, and welcome to Episode Thirty Two! Holy cow it’s cold here (thank you polar vortex!) and I’m just gonna stay inside today. I’ve got my coffee, I’m thinking of warm places and I’m whispering encouraging words to the furnace, so it’s all good. Before we get into this week’s episode, I hope you enjoyed Episode 31, the Jargon Episode, and if you liked the panel discussion format, I would love to hear from you about it. If you have suggestions for another discussion-type show, send t...

Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Thirty One, recorded on New Year’s Day! And I hope you all remain happy and healthy and that 2021 will be a good year for all of you. PATREONERS! Here’s a shout-out to new Patreon contributors to the show since the last episode: Anastasia Ware, and Tim Warfel!. Thank you Anastasia and Tim, and thanks so much to all of my Patreoners for supporting the show! I really appreciate it. To others in the listening audience, if you like the show, please consider sup...

Hello again everyone, and welcome to Episode Thirty! Today’s episode was recorded just before Christmas. And I hope you are all doing well – keeping your heads down and remaining healthy. PATREONERS! Here’s a shout-out to new Patreon contributors to the show since the last episode: Michael Cravens!. Thanks Mike, and thank you all so much for supporting the show! I really appreciate it. To others in the listening audience, if you like the show, please consider supporting it via the So Much Pingl...

Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Twenty Nine! I hope you all remain safe and healthy as we make our way into 2021. I took a few weeks off over the holidays to rest and recharge, but I also recorded some interviews, including this episode. PATREONERS! Here’s a shout-out to new Patreon contributors to the show since the last episode: Josh Emms, Matt Cage, Patrick Connally, Chris McMartin, and Justin Elden. Thank you all so much for supporting the show! I really appreciate it. To others in th...

Ryan Borgmann and his daughter Hello everyone! Welcome to Episode Twenty Eight! I had so much positive feedback from the Origin Stories episode, I knew I would have to do another. I started collecting interviews last May, and finished up the last one here in December. Five stories. Three hours. I may have gone a bit overboard, but you all have been very good this year, haven’t you? PATREONERS! I want to give a shout-out to our new patreon contributors since the last episode: Michael Moffat, And...

Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Twenty Seven! And we add yet another country to the list with this episode, a lengthy conversation with Belgian researcher / author/ herper Jeroen Speybroeck, recorded on Thanksgiving. We had a lot to talk about during this episode, including Jeroen’s fire salamander research, herping in various places around the globe, and also his very good field guide to the herps of Britain and Europe (see second photo). Jeroen and I are both life listers, and we talk ab...

Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Twenty Six! We’ve had shows coming from the United States, Mexico, and Canada, and now we get to add Australia to the list. Last month I talked with Scott Eipper, who hails from Brisbane, up in southeast Queensland. Scott and his wife Tie own and operate Nature 4 You, and though their company they are involved in wildlife demonstrations and education, surveys, consulting, and more Scott and I talked about his work, but it was also great to chat about herping...

Hello again everyone and welcome to Episode Twenty Five! The episode where I experiment with a different format – 13 segments featuring a baker’s dozen of folks sharing their best and worst (or worst and best) experiences in the realm of amphibians and reptiles. That’s twenty six anecdotes, if you think about it. I have been collecting these tales of woe and woah for a few months now – many thanks to Andy, Mack, Bryan, Phil, Matt, Marisa, Shaun, Brandon, John, Pat, Alex, and Justin for your part...

Hey there everyone! Welcome to Episode Twenty Four! Thanks for your patience, I had a lot of crazy stuff going on over the past couple of weeks! I think I’m back on track again and I plan on releasing another episode next week for the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. This week’s guest is my friend and co-author, Josh Holbrook, and this past October I got to sit around a campfire with Josh, down in the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois, and we had a nice fireside chat. The picture of Josh t...

Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Twenty Three! I like turtles, you like turtles, we all like turtles, so I’m very happy to have Carl Franklin on the show to talk about – turtles. There’s Carl in the photo with a double-handful of Alligator Snappers. Carl is a very busy person, with an impressive list of accomplishments to date, and along with talking about turtles, we also cover a number of other topics – including flying turtles, weaponized turtles, and worm lizards. And who doesn’t like w...

Hello everyone! We’re going to hang around south of the border for just a while longer. Episode Twenty Two was recorded in September in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, at the tail-end of a two week visit to Baja Sur. Tim, Bryan, Matt, Mack, Andy, John, Pat, Shaun, Brandon and Jeni agreed to hang around the hotel for an hour or so, with the notion of having a round table discussion about herping in Mexico. Cumulatively, this bunch has spent hundreds of days in Mexico, across many regions, and I thought i...

Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Twenty One! I recorded a bunch of material while in Mexico back in September, including this episode with Shaun, Jeni, and Brandon Vought. I recorded our interview at the Casa Juarez bed and breakfast in La Paz (an excellent place operated by a lovely Italian couple), where we stayed before visiting Isla Cerralvo just off the coast. Herping families are a fairly common thing now, which I think is pretty cool, and so I was happy to get the Voughts talking abo...

Howdy herpsters! And welcome to Episode Twenty! My guest is Steve Marks from Windsor, Ontario. And at left we see composite photos of Steve engaged in tracking fox snakes. Steve and I have been buddies for a long while now, and I am happy to get him on the show and talking about his projects and passions, which are often one and the same thing. One of the things we talked about is the Herb Gray Eco-Highway conservation project which Steve has been a part of for many years. The man has taken a de...

Hello everyone and welcome back to the show! After a few weeks off, here we go with Episode Nineteen, which features Dr. Alex Krohn. Alex and I have been friends for a decade, and we have visited some exotic places, and had many an interesting conversation, so I am happy to have one more conversation to share with you! Alex is the assistant director of the Kenneth S. Norris Center for Natural History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. I took the photo of Alex, his wife Allie, and thei...

Hi everyone and welcome! For Episode Eighteen, we travel to Arizona to talk with Michael Cravens. Mike and I go waaaay back, and we’ve spent time in the field together in a number of cool places, and had a number of interesting conversations around various campfires (hence the episode title). Mike and his wife Mary are from Missouri but have lived out in AZ for a number of years now, and it was good for me to chat with my old friend and catch up. Along with talking herps, I also heard about Mik...