Episodes

Hi everyone! Episode 112 (and the last episode of Season Five) returns us to the back deck of my tambo in the Peruvian rainforest, where I had a nice chat with Sylvere Corre, wildlife guide extraordinaire. Sylvere travels the world all year, leading people to discover all kinds of animals, including herps and birds and mammals, and some really spectacular critters. Sylvere clearly has a passion for what he does and I really enjoyed getting to know him during our time in Peru. Sylvere guides for...

Hello everyone! Episode 111 is all about the Indigos, and a few other adjacent critters. Back in 2024 I met up in southern Georgia with Ben Stegenga of the Orianne Society, where we spent two days in the field doing surveys for Eastern Indigo snakes. Ben was assisted by three field techs, Tyler, Keira, and Jesus, and my buddies Matt, Pat, and John put their field experience to work. This show is much like the Massasauga episode I did last year, where I’m recording the ongoing survey and an inter...

Hello everyone! Episode 110 features another edition of Herp Science Sunday with Dr. Alex Krohn. Alex and I had a crazy cool conversation with Dr. Evan Grant, of the Northeastern Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative at the USGS Eastern Ecological Research Center, Dr. Grant is a co-author on a paper regarding range-wide salamander densities, focusing on the Redback Salamander (Plethodon cinereus), and he guides us through some mind-blowing discoveries about these mostly invisible creature...

Hello everyone! Episode 109 is a wide-ranging two-hour conversation with PhD student Tasman Ezra. We cover fossil turtles, anole radiation, his band Half Inch Hero, Taz’s Honduras herp conservation project, and much, much more. I met Taz in southeast Missouri last October, and within minutes I knew I wanted to get him in front of a microphone to talk about what’s he is up to, which as it turns out, is a LOT. I have some related links below for you all to check out: First up is HonduHerp – The G...

Hello everyone! Episode 108 comes from South Africa, recorded in two parts, starting on New Year’s Eve.. The episode starts over in the western edge of South Africa’s Free State, in what’s called the Great Karoo. It was incredibly hot and dry; one day we had a noon temperature of 107 degrees Fahrenheit. We worked the area pretty hard and did better than I expected, before moving about six hours east to the other side of the Free State where it was much cooler, wetter, and higher. And we recorded...

Hello everyone and welcome to the show! Mike Pingleton here, and I am your host for these proceedings. And here we go with Episode One Hundred and Seven, and our guest for this episode is Dr. Skylar Hopkins, Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Ecology at North Carolina State University. Some sad news to talk about first. This show is dedicated to the memory of Hans Breuer, who passed away just a few weeks ago. You may remember my conversation with Hans for Episode 91, last December...

Hello everyone and welcome to Episode One Hundred and Six! And I hope you all remain safe and healthy out there It’s Thanksgiving weekend and I want to take a moment to thank all of you out there listening to the show. I appreciate you. And thanks to all of the folks who have come on the show to talk with me, when the natural tendency for most of us is to run from anyone pointing a microphone at your face 🙂 And as always, I am grateful to all the show’s patrons who help to keep the show moving ...

Hello everyone and welcome to Episode One Hundred and Five! And I hope you all remain safe and healthy out there. SMP Patrons! I want to thank Rich Takmajian for his contribution to the So Much Pingle podcast, via Patreon. Much appreciated, Rich, thank you so much. And as always, I am grateful to all the show’s patrons who help to keep the show moving forward. And if you’re out there listening and you would like to kick in a few bucks, it’s easy to do, you simply go to the So Much Pingle Patreo...

Hello everyone and welcome to Episode One Hundred and Four! I hope you all remain safe and healthy out there, including all the folks who are recovering in the aftermath of hurricanes Helene and Milton. As always, I am grateful to all the show’s patrons who help to keep the show moving forward. And if you’re out there listening and you would like to kick in a few bucks, it’s easy to do, you simply go to the So Much Pingle Patreon page. You can support the show for as little as three bucks a mon...

Hello everyone and welcome to Episode One Hundred and Three! And while we’re at it, I hope you all remain safe and healthy out there, including all the folks who are recovering in the aftermath of hurricanes Helene and Milton. As always, I am grateful to all the show’s patrons who help to keep the show moving forward. And if you’re out there listening and you would like to kick in a few bucks, it’s easy to do, you simply go to the So Much Pingle Patreon page. You can support the show for as lit...

Hello everyone and welcome to Episode One Hundred and Two! And while we’re at it, I hope you all remain safe and healthy out there, including all the folks who are recovering in the aftermath of hurricanes Helene and Milton. Well my summer hiatus is over and it’s time to start cranking out the content once again. I really needed a break, not only to get the creative juices flowing again, but to also build a little backlog of recorded episodes and to solve some technical issues. Many technical i...

Hey folks, as always, I hope you all remain safe and healthy out there. This is just a little episode marking the beginning of a show hiatus. When I was a kid, the auto plant in my town would occasionally shut down for a few months, for “re-tooling” – something necessary when they switched from making sedans to making mini-vans, for example. That’s what is happening with So Much Pingle – some re-tooling. I have some new software to learn, a review of the entire production process needs to happe...

Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Ninety Nine! And while we’re at it, I hope you all remain safe and healthy out there. This show is dedicated to the memory of Gary Pinson. Gary lived over in the Missouri Ozarks and every October he and his family would come over to Snake Road in southern Illinois, which is where I first met him. It got to be a thing every year, meeting up with Gary and his crew, walking and talking on the road. He was a good man, a gentle man, with a twinkle in his eye and...

Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Ninety Eight! And while we’re at it, I hope you all remain safe and healthy out there. After traveling for the better part of a month, it’s good to be back home and back in the podcast studio. As always, I am grateful to all the show’s patrons who help to keep the show moving forward. And if you’re out there listening and you would like to kick in a few bucks, it’s easy to do, you simply go to the So Much Pingle Patreon page. You can support the show for as...

Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Ninety Seven! And while we’re at it, I hope you all remain safe and healthy out there. I just got back from a great herping trip to Suriname. You may remember my conversation with Dick and Lieke back in episode 79 and it was fun to go visit and see how they operate herp tours there, and the answer is they do very well. I was with a small group and we saw a lot of fabulous herps. At any rate I am back home for just a few days, allowing me to get this time se...