Herbs Are Not Pharmaceuticals | Featuring Dr. Christopher Hobbs
This podcast episode comes from Dr. Christopher Hobbs’ presentation for the Fall 2022 Free Herbalism Project. This was a virtual event that took place over Zoom on October 14, 2022. Dr. Hobbs discusses why herbs and herbal medicine is fundamentally different than drugs. Since the pandemic, the popularity of herbal medicine in households has continued to grow rapidly. Dr. Hobbs help us to look closely and practically at how herbal medicine can transform your health and wellness while helping to relieve symptoms and chronic ailments. His presentation also details why choosing herbal medicine as our first line of prevention and treatment in most ailments can not only benefit us—side benefits rather than side effects—while being completely sustainable and beneficial for our beautiful planet and all the inhabitants. Dr. Christopher Hobbs occasionally references slides throughout his presentation. You can find his slides by watching the presentation on our YouTube channel.
Plant Stories | Featuring Julia O. Bianco
For this week’s Plant Stories podcast, we interview multi-disciplinary artist Julia O. Bianco. Julia was a Deep Ecology Artist Fellow at the United Plant Savers (UpS) Sanctuary, one of our favorite non-profit organizations focused on protecting native medicinal plants, fungi, and their ecosystems. Hear how an online foraging class, the artist in residency program at the UpS Sanctuary, and the plants Julia encountered in the Appalachian foothills, all helped to shape the course of her life and her creative inspiration. Julia closes the show by reading three of her nature-inspired poems.
Body Into Balance, With Maria Noël Groves | Tea Talks With Jiling
Jiling and Maria discuss favorite easy-to-grow herbs for a medicinal herb garden, “remedy gardens,” favorite herbs for delicious teas, increasing access for herbal classes within a for-profit business model, and more. We hope this conversation inspires your spring planting, growing, learning, and harvesting projects!
Botany Everyday, With Marc Williams | Tea Talks With Jiling
Marc and Jiling discuss one of Marc’s previous keynote conference topics, “Weaving and Mending: Herbalism from the past, in the present, for the future.” Learn about empowerment through weeds, heart-songs, ancestral honoring practices, global healing traditions, and more.
Ashwagandha: Uses And Benefits + Tasty Recipes
Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera) a plant highly praised in the Ayurvedic tradition, is in the Solanaceae, or nightshade, family. It’s been said that the herb may give both energy and calmness to those plagued with physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion. The species name somnifera means sleep-inducing, whereas ashwagandha comes from the Sanskrit words “ashva” and “gandha,” meaning “horse smell” since some think the roots of this calming plant smell like a horse. To each their own in the smell department; however, being a trophorestorative herb, it can bring “horselike” strength and vitality when used consistently over time. Ashwagandha has also been known to have a positive effect on cortisol levels due to real and perceived stress triggers and their subsequent physical and emotional symptoms. With stress being a way of life for many, the release of stress may also result in increased vigor and energy.
Plant Stories | Featuring Doug Elliot
There may be no better person that embodies the vision of “Plant Stories” like herbal troubadour and Appalachian naturalist, Doug Elliot. A gifted storyteller, Doug recites both wisdom and whimsical through spoken word and song. We’ve compiled some of our favorite songs that Doug has recorded with us and are releasing them together, in this delightful and heart-warming episode. Our host, Thomas, gives a brief introduction in between Doug’s sets, offering context for each of the four botanical tales & tunes.
Interviews On Herbal Radio With Thomas Dick | Featuring Jiling Lin
Thomas sat down with our good friend and talented herbalist, Jiling Lin, over Zoom this past fall to get to know her a little better. We’ve had the great fortune of partnering with Jiling on numerous projects including filming instructional videos, writing poetic blogs and journal articles, emceeing Free Herbalism Projects, and of course hosting Tea Talks on Herbal Radio. We’re so grateful for the opportunity to get to know Jiling even more as Thomas and Jiling chat about her upbringing, the sharing of plants and stories, and the pivotal herbal plot points in her life. We hope you enjoy our conversation with Jiling as much as we did!
Mountain Rose Herbs Is Furthering Its Commitment to Sustainability In 2023
People often assume that sustainability is not compatible with the tenets of successful business management. However, Mountain Rose Herbs is an excellent example of how a company can be guided by the principle of putting people, plants, and planet before profit and how business decisions can successfully consider both the environmental and social impact of operational choices and costs. Keeping sustainability at the core of our business practices means we are aware of the full cost of doing business and we make decisions consciously to minimize any negative impact that our company might have on our community, ecosystems, and ultimately the planet. With a history rooted in environmental and social activism, we cannot imagine operating a business any other way.
What Are Alkaloids in Plants & How to Extract Them
In our quest to unravel the tangled strings of phytochemistry, it’s important to understand that it takes time and practice to grasp the ins and outs. Taking it slowly, leaning into one constituent group at a time, can help the herbalist fully embrace their actions and needs. While studying the constituents in plants and the menstrua that extract and preserve them seems a bit too “science-y” for some, remember that is what the alchemists of yesterday were all about. Perhaps they didn’t have names such as polysaccharides, antioxidants, terpenes, and the like. However, they laid the groundwork for herbalists today with their attempts to classify and catalog the reactions of herbs in the bodies of their patients. It was in the 17th century that alchemy became chemistry as the emphasis leaned more toward experimentation and critical thinking and relied less on spirituality and mysticism. We, as experienced or budding herbalists, can explore both critical thinking and the mystical side of plants.
Cultivating Goldenseal: The Quest to Protect an At-Risk Herb
Goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis) is one of the most at-risk plants in North America. It was used by First Nations peoples for hundreds of years before Europeans arrived and by the 1830s was also a favorite of herbalists and practitioners of Eclectic medicine. Today, due to relentless wildharvesting and habitat loss, this age-old herbal ally has been reduced to scattered remnant populations and is at risk in much of its native range.
