Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Forty Five!  I hope you all remain safe and healthy out there.  I myself have been a little bit under the weather and the show is about a week behind schedule, so thanks for your patience with regard to new episodes.

SMP Patrons!  I want to thank our latest Patreon member, Myles Masterson!  Thank you so much for supporting the show, Myles!  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 Patreon page. You can also support the show via one-time contributions via PayPal or Venmo (please contact me via email to somuchpingle@gmail.com).

For this week's episode, we return to the Origin Stories format, for which I've gotten a lot of positive feedback.  There are four segments featuring Maximiliano Monroy Sánchez, Brandon Curtis, Jeff Dragon, and Kyran Leeker.  I interviewed Max at the tail-end of a recent trip to Mexico, and I talked with Brandon and Jeff together at about the mid-point of that trip, in a small hotel precariously perched on the side of a mountain.  Kyran's segment is a more formal interview, which was done more recently.  I hope you enjoy these four segments as much as I did!  And of course, we talk about much, much more than the central question of how everyone came to be interested in amphibians and reptiles....

Thank you Max, Brandon, Jeff, and Kyran, it was great to hang out and chat with you all, and to get your origin stories!  And thanks for listening everyone!  And as always, please keep the comments and suggestions coming, and please take time to rate the show on your podcast platform! The show email is somuchpingle@gmail.com, and there’s also a So Much Pingle group on Facebook, for discussion, comments, feedback, suggestions, herp confessions, the best gloves for wrangling caterpillars, tips for herping better, etc.

Cheers!  Mike