Born Free Method: The Podcast

Normalizing and Working Through Intimacy and Relationship Issues After Birth: a Conversation with Ashley Mariani, MSW, RSW

Nathan Riley, MD, Father of 2 — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 13:57:57 GMT

Ashley Mariani is a trauma-informed couples therapist specializing in intimacy and relationship issues that arise during pregnancy and in the postpartum. She is one of those people in the trenches helping couples reorient themselves to sex and relating with the addition of a baby into the mix. This is not niche, this is not unique: every relationship experiences some degree of hardship after birth.

Connect with Ashley on Instagram. Want to work with Ashley? Email her at: contact@mindonline.ca

[00:02:55] - When we get into arguments with our intimate partners (or anybody, really), the unmet needs of our inner child surfaces. This is especially relevant for men, who are often lacking guidance on managing and exploring the underpinnings of their emotional landscape.

“Love”, sculpture by Alexander Milov featured at Burning Man, 2015

[00:06:30] - We are storymaking machines, but are all of the stories that we write about our partners true?

[00:11:15] - Trauma in and out of the obstetrics model. Trauma can be inflicted in the obvious ways but also through dismissive behavior or language by your partner or practitioner. Moderating disagreements between partners around interventions in childbirth.

[00:17:13] - Nonviolent communication and seeking to fill the unmet need underlying every instance of emotional conflict.

[00:25:00] - How does birth trauma impact a couple’s connection/communication? When a partner doesn’t provide an anchor of safety during an act of obstetric violence, for example, this lack of felt safety may roll over into their relationship in the postpartum. Ashley has a very great exercise for couples struggling with shared decision-making as their birth approaches.

[00:35:00] - How can a couple begin to re-engage in penetrative intercourse and other forms of intimacy? (Pay attention men!)

[00:43:00] - Communicating needs to your spouse and prioritizing one-on-one time with a baby in the mix

[00:48:54] - Navigating struggles with the lack of intimacy and feeling of obligation to your partner sexually after giving birth. Men often struggle with feeling “third wheel” energy and appropriately grieving the changes can be an opportunity to flex your masculinity.

[00:52:26] - Intimacy troubles alongside co-sleeping. ALERT: It’s healthy and normal for you not to get right back to your pre-pregnancy sex life immediately postpartum. It could take years!

[00:59:00] - How do you manage being “triggered”, withdrawing, and shutting down in response to your partner?

Connect with Ashley on Instagram. Want to work with Ashley? Email her at: contact@mindonline.ca

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References from the episode:

Nonviolent Communication: The Basics As I Know and Use Them, by Wayland Myers
Fair Play Cards
Hear Ashley and others (like Dr. Stu!) speak at the 2026 Reclaiming Birth Gathering

Related episodes:

This episode was sponsored by Born Free Method.

More ways to work with Nathan:

Support for Midwives | Private Consultation | Clear & Free

Medical Disclaimer: Born Free Method: The Podcast is an educational program. No information conveyed through this podcast should be construed as medical advice. These conversations are available to the public for educational and entertainment purposes only.

Music provided by RealMovieScores / Pond5

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Finding Psanctuary: Equal Parts Flower and Water with Eric Osborne

Nathan Riley, MD, Father of 2 — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 15:03:38 GMT

Eric Osborne is the founder of the first legal psychedelic mushroom church in the United States. He has been working with psilocybin mushrooms (and culinary mushrooms) for decades, feeling a pull from without him to continue on this journey despite legal troubles, jail time, and putting his family at risk of losing it all. And yet he persists, because he believes that psychedelic mushroom journeys could be the answer to many of the world’s woes. This passion led Eric to found Psanctuary, where people across the world can find community and engage in ceremonies led remotely by Eric and his team.

[00:20:00] - Why are psychedelics important to the world?

[00:21:05] - Like snakes, mushrooms can be both poisonous and beautiful. What is consciousness? How do psychedelics support reflection on the “big” questions?

[00:40:46] - Could psychedelics deepen your relationship to “God”?

[00:44:00] - Universal laws and codes of the universe exposed through DMT and lasers

[00:47:24] - What role do mushrooms play in the ecosystem and how might this also be beneficial for humans?

[00:49:50] - How have experiences with mushrooms and MDMA helped Eric become a better father?

[00:54:00] - Psychedelics can be confronting to societal mechanisms of control, which is probably why they’re illegal. Sitting in a jail cell with substance abusers who could be saved through psychedelics. The foundations of Psanctuary, the first legal mushroom church in the United States. What if the original eucharist was a mushroom?

[01:13:40] - How to get started using psychedelic mushrooms

https://www.psanctuary.org

References from the show:

Danny Goler’s experiments with lasers and people on DMT
The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name
by Brian C. Muraresku

Related episodes:

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This episode was sponsored by Born Free Method.

More ways to work with Nathan:
Support for Midwives | Private Consultation | Clear & Free

Medical Disclaimer: Born Free Method: The Podcast is an educational program. No information conveyed through this podcast should be construed as medical advice. These conversations are available to the public for educational and entertainment purposes only.

Music provided by RealMovieScores / Pond5

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Trailer to Born Free Method: the Podcast

Nathan Riley, MD, Father of 2 — Wed, 20 May 2026 20:06:39 GMT

I am so glad that you are here!

There are a lot of birth- and pregnancy-related podcasts, and many do a great job of breaking down the clinical information pertaining to fertility, birth, pregnancy, and postpartum.

This is all fine and good…but I have still have questions despite being dual board-certified as an OBGYN and hospice and palliative care physician.

What is life?
Where do babies come from?
Does it matter how babies come in to the world?
What is consciousness?
What is intelligence?
What happens to us when we die?

These are the types of questions that keep my heart strumming! And every episode of Born Free Method: the Podcast aims to provide a small piece to the puzzle.

Enjoy!

www.bornfreemethod.com

Ancient Wisdom, Modern Minds: An Exploration of Death, Conception, Consciousness, AI, and the Song of the Jungle with Maestro Hamilton Souther

Nathan Riley, MD, Father of 2 — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 19:54:10 GMT

Hamilton Souther has lived in the Peruvian Amazon for two decades, and it took him 14 years of intensive training to get to a place where he felt he could fully accept his role as a facilitator of plant medicine visionary experiences.

I have learning through Hamilton’s online courses and private Telegram community how to conduct ceremonies for myself and others. He teaches from the perspective of a true master with the humility to admit that there is still so much to learn despite having gone through thousands of visionary plant medicine experiences himself.

As such, Maestro Hamilton makes for a wonderful teacher and mentor for those interested in deepening their connection to the plants, holding space for healing, facilitating ceremony, and appreciating the complexity of “God”, the universe, the micro, the macro, consciousness, and life itself.

And these are a few of the topics that we discuss in this very exciting conversation!

Visit BlueMorpho.org for Hamilton’s retreats and online course. You’ll find community, education, support, compassion, and new ways of looking at the world. Tell them Nathan Riley sent you.

[00:13:00] - Who is Maestro Hamilton Souther? What is Blue Morpho?

[00:15:30] - We’ve done so much damage to the Earth. Why would plants/fungi want to support us? Perhaps there’s a symbiotic relationship…

[00:22:40] - Did the plants perhaps have some role in the compulsion of shamans to make these medicines accessible to those who needed this symbiotic relationship (i.e. outsiders)? What is the cost to the “natural” world if Homo Sapiens is unable to acknowledge their relationship with the natural world? What would it be like to be a plant in the rainforest?

[00:31:08] - How do we bridge the gap between Western ideals and the interconnectedness that can be learned through shamanic technologies? The former are exclusive; the latter are inclusive.

[00:37:55] - What is “God”?

[00:47:06] - What happens when our physical bodies die?

[00:53:02] - Where babies come from? The passive creation process of nature is ongoing. Insights about conscious conception. And challenging the linear notion of ancestry.

[01:01:30] - What about this sense that many families feel regarding babies “trying to come through”? The myriad of feelings that emerge after miscarriage, not all of which are entirely negative. Value of dreams.

[01:09:10] - The beauty of acknowledging how little we actually know about life, the planet, and consciousness and the joy of exploring the nature of love. The medicine song of the jungle.

[01:21:16] - What role does technology play in the advance of society and community? Perhaps AI might liberate us from the need to always access our computational intelligence so that we might further develop other innate intelligences like our emotional intelligence. The Earth does not misplace its intelligence.

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References from the conversation:

Masters of the Living Energy: The Mystical World of the Q’ero of Peru, Joan Parisi Wilcox
Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn
Vocal Transformation
Neural correlates of the psychedelic state as determined by fMRI studies with psilocybin, by Robin Carhartt-Harris et al
Saunaspace infrared bulbs and sauna (no financial affiliation)

Related episodes:

This episode was sponsored by Born Free Method.

More ways to work with Nathan:
Support for Midwives | Private Consultation | Clear & Free

Medical Disclaimer: Born Free Method: The Podcast is an educational program. No information conveyed through this podcast should be construed as medical advice. These conversations are available to the public for educational and entertainment purposes only.

Icaro heart in intro and outro performed by Hamilton Souther

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The Voice as Sacred Instrument: Icaros, Plant Spirits, and Vocal Transformation

Nathan Riley, MD, Father of 2 — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 18:15:43 GMT

I met Maryn Azoff and Patrick Surdam through their Vocal Transformation program. Well…to be clear…my wife found them on Instagram and went to Costa Rica on a whim to workshop with them for a week, and it changed her life and mine as a result.

Maryn is a professional singer, and Patrick is a professional musician. Their goal? Help you reclaim what was rightfully yours at birth: your voice.

But their retreats aren’t necessarily a means of getting through to Hollywood on America’s Got Talent, although perhaps that could be the case for some. Their workshopping is a means of getting you out of your head and into your body.

When you are embodied, you have no problem using your voice, standing your ground, and moving your hips.

What does this have to do with birth?

Giving birth isn’t something we do in our heads. It’s a fully embodied experience. And yet…most women giving birth in our country are trying to think their way through this sacred archetypal transformation. When they reach out for support from birthworkers, the latter are also often stuck up in their heads.

What would it mean for the world if the women birthing babies and the birthworkers supporting this process weren’t totally caught up in their heads but rather embodied in the moment?

You can’t think your way into conception. Data can’t love you like your partner. And babies can’t feel safe because of some protocol devised in an Ivory tower. But our culture seems to think so.

None of this is your fault. So don’t do that thing that we all tend to do, where we whip ourselves for “not doing it right.”

When you were born, you didn’t apologize for how loud you cried. You didn’t apologize for coloring outside the lines as a toddler. But as you matured, Mother Culture - the parents, priests, and “leaders” who were there to guide you - compelled you to be small and “think before you speak”.

I have a vision for maternity care, and I suspect that it’s going to very hard to realize this vision if we remain stuck in the “mental” game of statistics, protocols, and procedures. We need to dis-member ourselves and re-member what a gift it is to be alive, to have a voice, to have legs and hips, and to use these tools of expression as boldly as possible.

This conversation is the beginning of something huge…

Please share this episode if anything resonates with you! And go check out all of Vocal Transformation’s offerings if you were inspired by this conversation!

[00:19:20] - Introduction to the professional musicians behind Vocal Transformation; sound is produced by and can harmonize the body (and world); music can help you transcend the material notion of “I”; the voice is your supreme instrument

[00:28:41] - The spirits of plants (visionary or otherwise) can help us remember our connectedness to everything and everyone; if we are honest with ourselves, we don’t really know anything with 100% certainty - life is a mystery; plants can reinforce some uncomfortable truths that we’ve been taught about ourselves; dis-membering so that you can re-member; babies aren’t born with a sense of limitations (we edit and manipulate them to be quiet)

[00:43:51] - The value of a connection to the Earth (Pachamama) for orienting our questions around the mysteries of life; the value of ancestry and lineage; the United States does, indeed, have a rich cultral heritage through the music that we’ve been producing for 100 years

[00:57:14] - Icaros are songs taught to us by plants and that can be then used to call in the spirits of plants in ceremony; these songs can come to us at any time if we are listening

[01:08:16] - The goal of Maryn and Patrick for those who attend a Vocal Transformation Expressions Retreat is to find your authentic “song” and to reawaken the body (drop from your head into your heart); Expressions is about “soul” and finding the beat

Go check out all of Vocal Transformation’s offerings if you were inspired by this conversation!

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Additional resources related to the conversation:

Masters of the Living Energy: The Mystical World of the Q’ero of Peru
by Joan Parisi Wilcox
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
Tribe of Love (Maryn is a vocalist is some their music is played in their ceremonies)
One of my favorite songs by Cura Cura, “Dead Man”

Related episodes:

This episode was sponsored by Born Free Method.

More ways to work with Nathan:
Support for Midwives | Private Consultation | Clear & Free

Medical Disclaimer: Born Free Method: The Podcast is an educational program. No information conveyed through this podcast should be construed as medical advice. These conversations are available to the public for educational and entertainment purposes only.

Music provided by Cura Cura Music

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Your Birth, Your Call: Freedom, Accountability, and the Weight of Parenting Decisions

Nathan Riley, MD, Father of 2 — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 18:14:35 GMT

Sara Rosser, CPM, and I (Nathan Riley, MD), reunited in Florida for an organizing meeting ahead of the 2026 Born Free Twins-Breech Gathering, which takes place in Austin, TX, November 12-15, 2026.

While we were awaiting the rest of our amazing team, we sat down to discuss Sara’s recent home birth to which I was an attendant. There were a number of things that arose that could have resulted in a hospital transfer and probably c-section, but she knew herself and trusted her team. At the heart of her birth was workshopping between Sara, me, and Sara’s midwife, leading to this episode’s conversation around consent, disagreement, parenting, and more, such as vaccines. This conversation also gave us the opportunity to reflect on the value that we bring to our Born Free Method Community members on a daily basis.

Follow Sara and Bornfreemethod on Instagram!

If you’re currently pregnant, planning to have kids in the future, already parents, or if you’re a birthworker, come try out the Born Free Method for FREE.

[00:04:15] - Nathan attended Sara’s surprise breech birth; building a birth team that you trust; workshopping before hospital transfer

[00:20:15] - we must not let our fear of hospitals delay transfer, especially when a birthing woman senses something is off

[00:27:05] - exercising freedom requires that you also own the outcomes of your decisions (vaccines as a case study); a reminder on what it means for a family to provide consent; when parents disagree about interventions, who gets veto power?; struggling with pediatric decisions

[00:38:00] - you can’t undo decisions related to your child, so you must start working on your parenting styles as soon as you consider trying to conceive; the power of saying “not now” to interventions

[00:48:00] - advice for families risking social ostracization as the cost of exercising their autonomy; don’t presume that you know the position of your friends and family on various

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This episode was sponsored by Born Free Method.

The Born Free Method digital playground includes over 60 hrs of pre-recorded lessons (w/ slides) spread out over 180+ lessons when you enroll. You will also be invited to a Zoom call (recorded) every other week hosted by me, Sara, and both. We also often have guest speakers, and you will have access to recordings for all 100+ of our past calls/interviews. Enroll for your 7-day free trial!

More ways to work with Nathan:

Support for Midwives | Private Consultation | Clear & Free

Medical Disclaimer: Born Free Method: The Podcast is an educational program. No information conveyed through this podcast should be construed as medical advice. These conversations are available to the public for educational and entertainment purposes only.

Music provided by RealMovieScores / Pond5

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Ann-Emelie Augustinus: Danish Midwifery, a Rich Tradition, is Becoming a Thing of the Past

Nathan Riley, MD, Father of 2 — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 13:52:50 GMT

Ann-Emilie Augustinus is a Danish midwife or, in her native language, jordemoder, which literally translates to “earth mother”. Ann-Emilie and I connected as a consequence of ongoing limitations to midwifery practice in Denmark. At present, midwives are virtually inaccessible to families in Denmark.

Often European models of maternity care are hailed in contrast to the U.S. models, but from her story, you’ll be able to appreciate that midwifery is collapsing worldwide. In fact, another recent guest - Hadhee Jah, the Last Birthkeeper of the Maldives - shares a shockingly similar story.

How did a people found through Viking conquest and settlement based in freedom allow this to pass in Denmark? This is what we discuss in this episode. We also dive in to traditional practices pertaining to birth, many of which could still be practiced today, but these oral traditions are fading with the midwives.

00:06:30 - The collapse of midwifery in Denmark. What is a person to do if they aren’t permitted (legally) to attend childbirth. Why have the people of Denmark stopped trusting in their bodies to have babies? The modern day witch hunts.

00:24:20 - How did the Danes go from autonomous combatants of authority historically to following every rule passed down by authority figures? Thor, Völva, and more. What were midwives of older times like in Denmark?

00:32:50 - Origins of ljósmóðir (Light Mother), jordemoder (Earth Mother); traditional practices around birth in Denmark; how might the moon affect pregnancy and birth

00:53:56 - Birth and death was a normal part of Danish tradition and why is free birth on the rise? Corruption of midwifery through the legal system.

Follow Ann-Emelie on Instagram.

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This episode was sponsored by Born Free Method.

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Rudi Verspoor: Lost in Dilution - Reclaiming Hahnemann's True Vision of Homeopathy

Nathan Riley, MD, Father of 2 — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 11:44:56 GMT

If you feel like homeopathy is baloney, you’re not alone. This was my general position on this centuries-old “science” until I met Rudi Verspoor, one of the world’s leading scholars on the work of Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy. In collaboration with Steven Decker, Rudi undertook a decades-long re-examination of Hahnemann’s complete medical system — not merely homeopathy, but the broader framework Hahnemann himself called Heilkunst, meaning “the art of making whole.”

As a result of the general failure of existing homeopaths and homeopathic schools to incorporate these insights, Rudi helped found the Hahnemann College for Heilkunst, which provides a four-year program internationally to train practitioners in Heilkunst.

Rudi has written and co-written numerous books, including Homeopathy Renewed: A Sequential Approach to the Treatment of Chronic Illness, Homeopathy Re-examined: Beyond the Classical Paradigm, The Dynamic Legacy: Hahnemann from Homeopathy to Heilkunst, Autism: The Journey Back — Recovering the Self Through Heilkunst, and Scandal in Köthen: The Real Homeopathic Love Story, among others.

At the heart of Verspoor’s work is the conviction that classical homeopathy, as widely practiced today, represents only a fragment of what Hahnemann truly envisioned — and that the complete system of Heilkunst, with its emphasis on causal prescribing, inherited disease, and the dynamic energy underlying health, offers a far more profound path to healing.

Reach out to Rudi’s team if you want to work with one of the best: reception@homeopathy.com

00:13:00 - How Samuel Hahnemann’s work has been distorted over the centuries; sustantive power versus generative power (duality of life force); vitalism has been largely ignored in western medicine; palingenesis versus homeostasis; heilkhunst; physician versus medician; bio-logic

00:34:15 - Law of similars; case study of china bark and arsenic; wesen = essence (everything living thing and thought and diseases has a wesen); Hahnemann’s dilutional experiments that crossed over from material to dynamics

00:49:00 - In the world of dynamics, we can start to treat emotional and traumatic wesens; how did homeopathy become a practice of merely palliating symptoms? Why hasn’t homeopathy performed well in randomized control trials? Remedies for chronic miasms; remedies for “being pissed off”

01:17:30 - Vaccination versus immunization drawing from Steiner and the history of small pox inoculation; vaccinations ultimately weaken the immune system; original antigenic sin; homeoprophylaxis

Reach out to Rudi’s team if you want to work with one of the best: reception@homeopathy.com

References from this conversation:

Rudi’s paper on chronic miasms (free after you create an account)
1796 white paper on homeopathy by Hahnemann
THE DYNAMIC LEGACY: Hahnemann From Homeopathy to Heilkunst - An On-going Study of the Meaning in the Writings of Samuel Hahnemann within the Context of the Dynamic System of Thought Leading Thereby to a More Powerful System of Cure for Disease

Related episodes:

Of Yarrow and Men: the Seasonal Alchemy of Huma Decay

This episode was sponsored by Born Free Method.

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Hadhee Jah: Traditional midwifery is losing ground, a conversation with The Last Birthkeeper

Nathan Riley, MD, Father of 2 — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 14:22:34 GMT

Hadhee Jah is an Ayurvedic postpartum doula and birth sovereignty advocate originally from the Maldives, whose work bridges ancestral wisdom with the modern experience of pregnancy, birth, and postpartum recovery. Rooted deeply in her Maldivian heritage, she has dedicated her life to reclaiming traditional approaches to motherhood and postnatal care.

Hadhee’s path into birth work was profoundly shaped by her own birth story. During her labor, she experienced a deep spiritual connection with her grandmother — a transformative moment that awakened her commitment to honoring the wisdom carried across generations. That personal experience, along with the challenges she navigated in her own postpartum journey, became the foundation for her calling.

Drawing on Ayurvedic principles and Maldivian communal birth traditions, Hadhee champions practices such as warm oil massage, belly binding, and nurturing postpartum rituals that prioritize the full recovery and emotional wellbeing of new mothers. Central to her philosophy is the belief that the postpartum period is not merely a brief recovery phase, but a sacred, lifelong journey — a perspective she describes as “birth sovereignty,” guiding women to birth and mother with fierce self-trust.

Hadhee has spoken extensively on the importance of community-based, grassroots maternal care, advocating for mothers to reclaim their autonomy within healthcare systems. She advises women on choosing the right midwife and navigating hospital environments to create empowering, personalized birth experiences.

She is the author of the book, Postpartum Is Forever, in which she draws on her Maldivian heritage to present a vision of postnatal care rooted in ancestral wisdom and Ayurvedic tradition. The book argues for viewing postpartum not as a medical milestone to complete, but as an ongoing dimension of a woman’s identity and health.

Connect with Hadhee through her website, Instagram, and Youtube. Purchase her book HERE.

00:06:45 - Birth is completely medicalized in the Maldives, but there used to be a rich history of traditional midwifery. Traditionally, it was typical to “warm” the women postpartum for 40 days. This wisdom is still being passed on secondarily, “the wisdom wants to find somebody to carry it forward”.

00:12:36 - What did traditional midwifery used to look like in the Maldives? The way in which babies come into the world holds great import for the future of the world. You are gifted with the experience of giving birth!

00:23:28 - What was the impulse that provoked policy change around midwifery in the Maldives and what lessons might be learn for the future of midwifery care in the United States?

00:27:55 - Hadhee’s free birth, and why she ended up in the hospital despite her baby being born happy and healthy

00:43:00 - What are the detriments to childbirth of a woman feeling watched or observed?

00:47:02 - Ayurveda, belly binding, and yoni steaming

Connect with Hadhee through her website, Instagram, and Youtube. Purchase her book HERE.

References from the conversation:

The Last Birthkeeper (Hadhee’s 10-minute documentary)
Train with Hadhee’s teacher to become an Ayurvedic postpartum doula

Related episodes:

This episode was sponsored by Born Free Method.

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Carol Gautschi: Confronting Fear (and the Law) in Midwifery

Nathan Riley, MD, Father of 2 — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 13:01:47 GMT

Carol Gautschi is a midwife with over 50 years in practice, and she has walked a very unorthodox path.

Like many, Carol herself was plagued by fear of birth from an early age. She was sexually and physically molested separately by two different doctors in her first two births – and also given grossly inaccurate information postpartum that caused breastfeeding delay and hindered bonding.

These experiences strongly planted seeds for the need of global reform, moving her to sense the sacredness and vulnerability of the moments during, before and after birth. Those moments had been stolen from her.

She decided to hire a midwife for her third birth. The time spent with this midwife transformed her, helping her see that labor is wondrously spiritual, powerful, and a profoundly healthy force.

She believes that women are being robbed by a society that does not see to care about the uniqueness of this time, this right of passage, and that not treating it with tender, sensitive respect, women are doing themselves harm– more harm then we can imagine. From that moment on she believed that birth was the highest place a woman can go in her body on this planet.

For Carol, becoming a midwife was a metamorphosis. She has served families as an empirical midwife and doula or Monitrice since 1978, a deeply humbling honor.

In this conversation, we dive in to the many fears prohibiting quality midwifery care and birth support, from the law to our own traumas.

Connect with Carol through her website or by email: classicalmidwife@gmail.com .

00:01:43 - Carol’s midwifery beginnings (and what makes her so special). How does it feel to be called an “elder midwife”? Carol shares that she originally didn’t even like women at the time that she was being called to midwifery. Carol was drawn to this work through abuse she experienced at the hands of an OBGYN in her own births.

00:13:30 - Birth story of a baby born into a toilet after an exam revealed the baby wasn’t even engaged to the cervix.

00:1710 - Developing a healthy relationship with fear. A story of a large baby, episiotomy, and divine intervention. We can holding space for birth, we are acting on behalf of the Holy Spirit. At some point, every midwife has to make the decision not to allow the spirit of fear to drive their behaviors.

00:40:40 - Many “believers” misrepresent Christianity and Jesus (Yeshua), and this inauthenticity of Yeshua’s teachings is a great source of fear that has no place in childbirth.

00:44:35 - How is fear shaping modern midwifery care? Jacob’s contension with God in the Bible as a source of direction when faced with a dead baby. Ethical versus lawful care. Fear versus discernment.

00:58:10 - We have a moral obligation to disobey unjust laws. To whom do we owe our obligation? What happens when the legal system hits back? Honesty and integrity always win. As a midwife, you have the right to refuse care to people who aren’t doing their best to take care of themselves.

This episode was sponsored by Born Free Method.

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Maestro Hamilton Souther: Plant Medicine, Sorcery, Shamanigans, and Liberation from Trauma

Nathan Riley, MD, Father of 2 — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 16:44:22 GMT

For me, the word “maestro” brings to mind a conductor of a symphony orchestra. In the plant medicine setting, a maestro does something similar: orchestrate the journey, paying attention to everything that is happening in the space, including working with spirits, singing to the spirits of the plants (icaros), and creating sanctuary, within with everything you might experience is self-harmonizing, self-grounding, self-orienting, self-healing, and self- . This is not exclusive of the “bad” stuff that might arise in a ceremony. Those “bad spirits” can be brought into sanctuary for healing, too.

Hamilton Southern has lived in the Peruvian Amazon for two decades, and it took him 14 years of intensive training to get to a place where he felt he could fully accept his role as a facilitator of plant medicine visionary experiences.

While listening to this conversation, it’s important to remember that the medicine - whether it be ayahuasca, Hauchuma/San Pedro, cannabis, or psilocybin mushrooms - is not providing the cure. These medicines simply invoke an invitation for you to become liberated from whatever is holding you back. All of the “good” and “bad” stuff that comes up in these visionary experiences are a part of you.

Are you willing to lean in to accept the possibility of healing?

Read Hamilton’s books. Visit BlueMorpho.org for his retreats and online course. You’ll find community, education, support, compassion, and new ways of looking at the world. Tell them Nathan Riley sent you.

00:12:20 - Assuaging the fears and apprehensions of those who have heard horror stories about ayahuasca and unethical practices in this space.

00:20:29 - When things get scary in sanctuary, you can invoke “sanctuary”. The primary tenets: 1) time is infinite, space is eternal; 2) source is in through and all around us; and 3) everything within sanctuary is self-healing, self-harmonizing, self-orienting, self-grounding, and self-balancing. Bring the darkness into sanctuary and heal that as well.

00:28:29 - When scary things emerge in a medicine journey, lean in with curiosity rather than making assumptions about the intentions of the figures that may arise in your visions.

00:32:23 - Hamilton’s first ayahuasca ceremonies were no walk in the park. They were more like a hard drive disc defragmentation.

00:40:50 - Perhaps we should seek healing from trauma. Perhaps should be seeking liberation from trauma.

00:43:07 - 250 years of Western medicine shouldn’t wipe out 50,000 years of ancestral medicine application. Rather, “modern medicine” should seek to clarify the prior 50,000 years of medicine that preceded it. This is a huge value to Hamilton’s work in opening the world to these medicines. Dosing with plant medicines has less to do with body mass and more with individual temperament, and knowing how much to give to a person for the desired goal requires practice and patience as a facilitator.

00:53:00 - How does one reach a point where they are ready to offer medicine themselves?

00:57:18 - What is the role of the facilitator/Shaman/maestro in a ceremony?

01:02:18 - The importance of being able to distinguish reality from illusion in a visionary plant medicine experience.

01:09:51 - Integration after a medicine journey is as important if not more important than the medicine experience itself.

01:21:55 - A proper “dieta” prior to ayahuasca and why these restrictions are valuable to the experience. Pros and cons of mixing visionary medicines.

01:35:00 - Medicine versus sorcery

01:41:07 - Birth trauma and visionary plant medicines

References from the conversation:

Buddha in Red Face, by Eduardo Duran

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Andy Schoonover: Reengaging the Consumer with the Cost of Healthcare with the founder of CrowdHealth

Nathan Riley, MD, Father of 2 — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 20:18:52 GMT

Andy Schoonover is the founder of CrowdHealth, a very unique alternative to conventional health insurance. They have a great track record for reimbursing on claims, and Andy compares his 20-odd refusals over the past 5 years to the 20% of denials that Americans with conventional insurance experience on the whole. How do they remain solvent if they are reimbursing for every claim? For starters, they don’t cover preventative care. They are truly filling the void that insurance is supposed to fill. With the savings that you can make by switching, you will have (a lot) more expendable income for changing your diet, lifestyle, and environment. This is an experiment in which I am participating with my family, as we just cancelled our health insurance policy in favor of a lower rate with CrowdHealth. And we still haven’t had to use it…

Visit CrowdHealth and see for yourself. If you decide to join, you get a discount with my code RILEY

00:06:20 - Health insurance companies are massively wealthy, and yet 3 million Americans are carrying $10,000 or more in medical debt. Health insurance companies look for every reason to short you on reimbursements. They deny around 20% of claims. You pay a premium every month (either directly or your employer takes it from your paycheck) and you owe co-payments and service fees and you owe a deductible before your insurance policy even kicks in. This why health insurance companies remain so wealthy and you find healthcare unaffordable. CrowdHealth on the other hand denies <0.1% of claims.

00:18:30 - What is the role of insurance to begin with? The government has been subsidizing health insurance premiums for the past decade and those subsidies are going away, thus your premiums are going up.

00:23:00 - How is CrowdHealth solving the issues being faced by the consumer? The money you save by transitioning to this less expensive model gives you more cash in hand to pay for those means of keeping yourself healthy without compromising tail risk for the rare catastrophe. By the way…it’s also cheaper to offer cash for your healthcare rather than using your insurance card.

00:29:45 - Physicians are often willing to charge you less if you pay in cash rather than relying on your health insurance policy because they get paid more.

00:36:20 - CrowdHealth covers childbirth, and won’t pay more than $3000 (which pales in comparison to the deductibles of conventional insurance). And they love home birth…They have had to tinker with maternity care coverage given that their average member age is 33 years, so LOTS of babies (and NICU admissions) have been covered.

00:43:00 - CrowdHealth offers two options: Bronze level or Black Swan. The former has a “deductible” of $500. That’s all. The latter is truly catastrophic coverage, but it the cheapest option on the planet for the rare, financial disasters that come as a consequence of health events.

Visit CrowdHealth to check out the future of health insurance! If you decide to join, you get a discount with my code RILEY

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Edmund Knighton, PhD (Part 4) - Sacred Polarities: The Ra Material, Steiner, and a Man’s Work in Conception, Childbirth and Beyond

Nathan Riley, MD, Father of 2 — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 20:09:48 GMT

Edmund Knighton, Ph.D., is a seasoned educator, clinical psychologist, and somatic movement practitioner whose multidisciplinary career spans more than three decades. He has engaged through various capacities with Waldorf education for over 35 years, once even serving as the president of Rudolf Steiner College. Drawing on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, the channeled material of “Ra” from the The Law of One, and somatic/transpersonal psychology, Edmund offers consulting for individuals, organizations, and families (including my own) committed to holistic growth.

You won’t find Edmund on social media, but you can reach out to him by email: Fifthwanderer@gmail.com if you ‘d like to have his support in your home.

In Part 1 of this series with Edmund, we discussed some of the basics around Steiner’s philosophy, the Waldorf pedagogy, a 3- and 4-fold approach to human wellbeing, and we started our venture into autism.

In Part 2, we dove deeper into “autism” but also offered an invitation to consider the extrasensory gifts displayed by many “autistic” children. We also covered vaccines.

In Part 3, we discussed the significance of the Holy Nights, a time of spiritual reflection and preparation leading up to Christmas as well as the days that follow.

In Part 4, we focus on men. What is men’s work? What does it mean to embrace your feminine? What is meant by femininity and masculinity? What does this have to do with sex, childbirth, and love-making?

00:11:15 - A rebirth experience in a men’s circle for a man to feel welcomed into the world (by other men) as his full, integral self can be a very expansive yet confronting experience. Men’s work can reveal challenging parts within us, and the work of a men’s circle is also to help integrate and synthesize these experiences rather than suppress them.

00:21:00 - Each of us carries a multitude of masculine and feminine energetics. How does your masculinity invite the feminine to dance? (within yourself, with your partner, etc.) To create a clear binary between the masculine and feminine is to dismiss the beautiful complexities of how they dance with one another.

00:34:45 - The role of a woman’s body is “containing” the blood and body of her baby is a masculine activity. Perhaps children pull their mother into motherhood, not the other way around. Men has a co-creative role from being to end in bringing a baby Earthside.

00:46:25 - By getting in touch with our feminine, us men can logarithmically augment our power. How powerful are you really if you can’t hold a man’s hand and make eye contact for 60 seconds without losing connection to your self? Hug-by as a replacement for rubgy among children (and men).

00:59:55 - A true, embodied warrior knows that their sword without a dagger is sharp and dangerous. This is a metaphor for what is called “toxic masculinity”. This is also an apt metaphor for how a man wields his penis within his expression of the lover archetype. This metaphor comes through the story of Sir Lancelot and Lady Guinevere along with Mary Magdelene and Christ.

01:04:17 - If a man can’t enjoying giving himself pleasure, how can he possibly expect to provide pleasure to others? Men spend very little time touching themselves apart from masturbation. Edmund describes simple self-care exercises that can help us nourish our own pleasure centers, starting with self-touch.

Edmund’s email: fifthwanderer@gmail.com

References from the conversation:

A Return to Eros: The Radical Experience of Being Fully Alive, by Marc Gafni
The Ra Material
Letters to a Young Poet, by Rainer Maria Rilke
Iron John: A Book about Men, by Robert Bly

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Medical Disclaimer: Born Free Method: The Podcast is an educational program. No information conveyed through this podcast should be construed as medical advice. These conversations are available to the public for educational and entertainment purposes only.

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Dr. Larry Palevsky: the Pediatrician You Didn't Know You Needed

Nathan Riley, MD, Father of 2 — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 14:52:13 GMT

Dr. Lawrence “Larry” Palevsky is a New York-based, board-certified pediatrician known for his holistic and integrative approach to children’s health. With over 30 years of clinical experience, he combines conventional medical training with alternative wellness philosophies. His counseling generally focuses on the mother-baby dyad (or triad with inclusion of the father), and he is very critical of vaccines and the childhood vaccine schedule (but also a number of other elements that have become a routine part of pediatric care).

Find more of the good doctor at his website and Instagram.

00:14:15 - Dr. Palevsky’s nickname as a kid was Fat Mama Brown; he didn’t pursue holistic medicine, holistic medicine pursued him; value of critical thinking in medicine; the art of creating differential diagnoses

00:22:05 - What is the psychology behind pediatricians rejecting families from their practice for questioning vaccines? When you tell a lie often enough, it starts to become accepted as truth; the problems with “germ theory” using the hepatitis B vaccine as an example (more on Hep B later)

00:40:20 - Dr. Palevsky’s counseling to families is exactly what you would hope to receive from your pediatrician, but most pediatricians are merely offering vaccines at those early visits.

00:53:40 - What are some signs of a “sick baby” that might prompt urgent assessment by a pediatrician? Fevers below the age of 3 months, refusal to eat, constant crying, coughing, low activity, etc.

00:58:50 - Why it’s important to recognize the inherent trauma of childbirth; a newborn’s nervous system develops outside the womb more than inside; stop waking up your baby for feedings

01:03:10 - Hyperbilirubinemia and neonatal jaundice; nowadays, Dr. Pavelsky doesn’t often see jaundice in babies who don’t receive the Vitamin K shot or hepatitis B vaccine; AB blood type incompatibility is also a common association; bili thresholds and clinical signs that might be supported by a visit to your pediatrician

01:09:22 - More on Vitamin K and delayed cord clamping

01:11:25 - Hepatitis B vaccine

01:15:50 - Circumcision

01:20:25 - Vaginal birth versus cesarean and the role of chiropractics postnatally

01:26:15 - Tongue/lip ties: Are we overdoing laster therapies?

01:28:25 - Pros and cons of newborn screening

01:31:00 - Cradle cap

01:33:00 - Should you always treat a fever? It doesn’t always reflect infection.

Learn more about Dr. Larry Palevsky at his website and Instagram.

References from the conversation:

Dr. Palevsky’s recent appearance on Alec Zeck’s podcast (deeper dive on Dr. Pavelsky’s vaccine views)
House of God, by Samuel Shem
Bio-K-Mulsion oral Vitamin K drops for newborns

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Edmund Knighton, PhD (Part 3) - The Holy Nights, Advent, and the Pursuit of Spiritual Freedom

Nathan Riley, MD, Father of 2 — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 21:44:04 GMT

You won’t find Edmund on social media, but you can reach out to him by email: Fifthwanderer@gmail.com if you ‘d like to have his support in your home.

In Part 2, we dove deeper into “autism” but also offered an invitation to consider the extrasensory gifts displayed by many “autistic” children. We also covered vaccines.

In this 3rd part, we will discuss the significance of the Holy Nights, a time of spiritual reflection and preparation leading up to Christmas as well as the days that follow. Edmund explains the Advent spiral and how such practices foster a deeper connection with nature and a sense of freedom. Edmund emphasizes that love can be experienced in both contentment and suffering, and that freedom is a practice developed through challenging experiences.

00:11:30 - How to connect to your heart, darkness retreats, the value of stillness and silence

00:24:00 - The 4 weeks leading up to the advent are dedicated to the mineral, plant, animal, and human realms, in that order. Christmas Eve (the first holy night) is the beginning of the Waldorf advent, an invitation to open and conduct a personal and interpersonal inventory of where you can refine your life. There is also an important connection to the Zodiak during these Holy Nights. The magical number 12.

December 24th - Adam and Eve day, celebration of Adama, the first human, neither male or female, opportunity to reflect on just being

December 25th - Birth Of Jesus, Christmas day, Angels take a step back as the guide to give human beings more freedom

December 26th and beyond (the Holy Nights) - move through the hierarchies, starting with the angels, then to the archangels, and so forth.

January 5th - The final Holy Night

January 6th - The Epiphany (which coincides with orthodox Christmas, but they aren’t the same)

00:46:10 - Studying the spiritual sciences requires us to ask: is this insight leading me closer to or further away from freedom? A lot of criticisms of Steiner’s way of speaking are due to the ways that German people in authority spoke back then along with customs of Victorian times. Is perfection possible?

00:59:55 - What is the purpose of the procession through the Holy Nights ritualistically and how do many Holy Nights practices fall short? It’s the path to freedom (e.g. becoming an ethical individual) through moral imagination, moral intuition, and moral inspiration beyond the 12 senses. This is actually the summation of child development in Steiner’s view.

01:10:00 - Celebrating Christmas with reverence

01:17:00 - Why are the Holidays so stressful? (beyond the obligations, familial stuff, etc.) It’s a part of the spiritual restlessness of this time of year. This is related to bloodlines: you have chosen your family and those with whom you are close as a means of stimulating spiritual growth.

01:26:10 - How do we expand our experience and skillset around the application of love? Love has far greater applications than many of us have been told. Even hatred is an effort to communicate love, albeit an intense and unskillful effort.

Join Edmund alongside Jared Pickard at their upcoming “Being Human” online event, a 12-week cooperative practice rooted in the work of Rudolf Steiner. You’ll be learning directly from Edmund, Asha Nayaswami, Gabby Reece, Eben Britton, Joel Salatin, and more! This cohort begins February 5th. Go HERE for more information!

References from the conversation:

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Of Yarrow and Men: the Seasonal Alchemy of Human Decay

Nathan Riley, MD, Father of 2 — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 22:28:00 GMT

Disclaimer: Most of what I speak to in the world of human health isn’t universally accepted by many if any Western medicine or “holistic” practitioners. The former tend to be too steeped in reductive materialism. The latter more often than not struggle to define let alone practice “holism”. What follows in this essay is a different perspective on what is known as “flu season”, and I don’t even feel that it goes as deep as necessary to understand what we call “the flu”. I actually think my views in this very essay are in and of themselves still too materialistic, albeit a far cry from the allopathic, “Western” view of illness. In the age of social media and short attention spans, very few are able or willing to question dogma, and nearly everything that I read about in the conventional or alternative health spaces is self-masturbatory at best. This essay will please very few in its entirety, and I’m ok with that, because my true gnosis on this topic would hardly be valued by just about anybody, and I prefer not to shout into the void. I recommend you sit with any discomfort that arises upon read or listening to this essay. Maybe something new will emerge from our dialogue around these topics in the future if we can become more comfortable with the unknown.

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Every autumn in the Northern Hemisphere, flu season arrives anew. Your local pharmacies and your doctors will begin offering a series of vaccines to “protect you” from some pathogen that isn’t even visible with an electron microscope. Generally speaking, these interventions are aimed to protect you from viruses.

Source: CDC, 2025

The symptoms of the flu include fever, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, body aches, headaches, and fatigue. These are symptoms of this so-called “illness” that afflicts many every autumn.

Meanwhile, as I’m looking out my window, my lettuces, herbs, wildflowers, wisteria, and maple trees have all discarded their leaves, stems, and flowers, sacrificial lambs to Mother Earth. She is rich in activity during the winter months, alchemizing this organic matter to support the abundance of new life that will arise come spring. We get to witness this beautiful circle of life every year.

Humans, who have long held that they are separate from nature, fortunately do not have to offer up our limbs and organs every year to Mother Earth. Thank goodness…because nature is metal. Those poor flowers gave their lives in order for life to spring anew when Mother Earth goes back into dormancy in the warmer months.

But why wouldn’t humans be included in this sacrifice to the great Mother every year? Could the symptoms of influenza “infection” reflect our participation in this annual offering?

Of apple trees, gravity, and levity

Anybody walking upright understands gravity. The apple tree grows, matures, and produces fruit. When the fruit ripens, it falls to the Earth.

In fact, everything in the cosmos gravitates towards massive objects, the Earth notwithstanding. This is what keeps our moon and satellites in orbit around our planet and what keeps our planet in orbit around the sun.

Source: freepik.com

All biological organisms feel the pull of gravity, and yet what distinguishes life from non-life is that being alive seems to defy gravity. Rudolf Steiner referred to this gravity-defying force as “levity”.

But in the fall, the force of levity can no longer compete with gravity, and the sunflowers bow down to the Earth. They disintegrate, turn brown, and their constituent parts combine again with Mother Earth under the pull of gravity. When levity is sufficient, plants, animals, and humans remain upright and alive.

Levity might therefore be considered synonymous in many ways with life force energy. The Chinese called it qi. The Vedic traditions referred to it as prana or kundalini. Esoteric science calls it “etheric force”. Original homeopathy refers to this as “generative power”. But perhaps it’s all roughly the same thing…

When humans reach the end of their lives here on Earth, gravity takes over and when the embers of levity are extinguished, we die. We, too, are a part of this circle of life.

What if “the flu” is not an illness?

As a preamble to what’s to come, I am not going to argue that people don’t “get sick”. I’m simply going to reframe what is perceived as an “illness” instead as a normal part of our experience here on Earth.

I’ve already outlined what happens during the autumn season, which coincides with the advent of the flu season. The natural world experiences some degree of decay, but not totally.

My yarrow no longer has tall stems with leaves and flowers. But the roots remain along with some hearty leaves. There is still some activity in the plant that keeps it alive over the cold, winter months. In the spring, however, my yarrow will emerge anew. But this reemergence requires this plant to have been cared for during the warmer months so that it can sustain itself over the harsh winter. In other words, yarrow that has plentiful levity or life force energy will survive despite its offering of a great deal of its biomass back to Mother Earth. This is an act of love. This is also why herbal medicines are most often used to make us feel stronger throughout nearly any illness (e.g. Echinacea, slippery elm, licorice root, marshmallow root, wild cherry bark, and nearly every remedy included in the Wildcraft board game which is great for kids!).

Recall the symptoms of influenza “infection”. You are heating up (fever). And you are expelling a bunch of dead matter (skin, tissue, cells) back into the environment (coughing, sneezing, runny nose). This sounds a lot like what my yarrow experienced, just not in a form that we recognize as decomposition.

This dead biomass that we are expelling consists of cell debris, fluid, electrolytes and the rest of it. When you cough up phlegm, this mucus contains the debris of cells lining your oral and nasal cavities and your deeper airways. When cells die, they break open, releasing all of their contents, which includes the genetic material inside the nuclei of these cells. Take note of this for later…

Influenza deaths

Not all of my perennials will return in the spring. Some of them sacrificed so much in the fall that they left themselves bereft of life force energy (levity). When spring arrives, they simply can’t overcome gravity’s pull down to Earth.

I propose that the same happens in humans. After all, which of us are most susceptible to hospitalization and death from influenza? Older humans.

Source: Statista®, 2026

Older humans are already feeling the effects of diminishing levity. They are beginning to walk with a hunch. Their skin is thinning. Their blood vessels are weakening, and blood is pooling in their lower extremities. This is called aging. There never will be a cure for this any more than there will be a cure for “autumn”.

When healthy people enter flu season, many get these symptoms, which is an expression of our offering to Mother Earth, and then they recover, often feeling stronger than they had felt prior to their “illness”.

When many of our older humans get “sick” during flu season, they end up dying. The same goes for unhealthy people. Gravity, which must be quite strong in the colder months, wins in its tension with levity. This is life process in action: when levity is overwhelmed by gravity, you die.

This is why I harp so much on eating real foods, drinking living water, getting quality sleep, having good sex, connecting deeply with loved ones, and not putting poisons into your body otherwise: these acts of love for one’s self nourish your life force energy.

“I tested positive for COVID/the flu/etc.”

This is where things get uncomfortable.

You had flu-like symptoms. You went to urgent care. They swabbed your nose. The result was positive for [fill in the blank].

We have been conditioned to believe that an outside contagion made us sick, which is why the vaccines your doctor have offered you all of these years make sense. They are meant to protect you from these outside invaders which will kill you.

It’s hard to argue that point because they swabbed you and detected the bad guy, in this case influenza.

It’s possible that this is the case but unlikely.

Remember that the cells that die and then are coughed up and expectorated break open and release their genetic nuclear contents. I asked you to remember that. Keep it in mind going forward.

Our genetic material is arranged across 46 chromosomes, which are thought to be coiled chains of chemical base pairs called nucleotides. This is known as your “genome”. Across this genome, there are an estimated 3 billion nucleotides, and these 3 billion nucleotides come in four forms: adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine. The sequence of these nucleotides is going to be slightly different for every man, woman, and child. Plants, fungi, animals, and bacteria also have a genome, and it’s different from humans but not by much.

The story goes that groups of these nucleotides (genes) are transcribed into RNA which is translated into proteins. The nucleotides of RNA also come in four forms: adenylate, uridylate, guanylate, and cytidylate. Influenza A and B both have an estimated 14,000 nucleotides of the RNA variety.

Source: genome.gov

Everybody knows that the human genome was fully sequenced 20 years ago, right?

Well…no. It hasn’t. Efforts for this massive undertaking began in 1990 through the Human Genome Project. Multiple drafts of the human genome have been published but at least 8% of the sequence was still unaccounted for for decades. There are still multiple errors, and the genetic material used to complete the sequence was from multiple genetic donors. Over the past few years, it is now thought that we might have the technology to sequence the entire human genome, but this is the same story that has been rehashed for decades. Indeed, as of 2026, the Telomere-to-Telomere (T2T) Consortium claims to have closed the 8% gap through long-read sequencing, but there are still unquestionably and admittedly a number of errors. Every time that we have heard a researcher claim to have sequenced the entire human genome (2001, 2003, 2022, etc.) it has been followed up with “…well, not quite”.

If humans are nearly identical and even chimpanzees and humans are 99% identical genetically, how can we ever assume that any fragment of DNA (or RNA) is from a plant, animal, human, or even a virus? Given that each of us has a distinct genetic makeup, we are far from completing this mission.

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Swabs for viruses are likely useless

Given that there are thought to be around 3 billion nucleotides in the human genome and that we admittedly didn’t (and probably still don’t) know about 8% of the sequence, that’s 240 million spots in the code that we simply aren’t aware of. The influenza A genome is only ~14,000 nucleotides, so it’s a big leap to say that the swab they stuck up your nose is detecting something foreign because without a copy of any human genome sequence let alone your own personal genome, we don’t have anything to compare the swab to.

These viral swabs work in one of two ways: rapid antigen test or polymerase chain reaction (PCR).

Rapid antigen test: Goo is taken from your nose or airways and dipped into a buffer that breaks open a virus to release its proteins (“antigens”). The liquid is then added to a test strip coated with antibodies specific to these antigens. If proteins “stick” to the antibodies, then you have a match and the test is reported positive. The issue with this test is that it doesn’t work if there isn’t enough virus in the sample (“viral load”) and thus has a high false negative rate, so the PCR test is considered more accurate.

PCR: Same collection process only this time the lab uses polymerase to photocopy any genetic material present in the sample (rather than searching for antigens). If X number of cycles of this photocopying get you a sequence that is thought to be unique to influenza A, then your result will be reported as positive for influenza infection.

Source: microbenotes.com

There are other molecular techniques that are used, but this process of swabbing and diagnosing isn’t new, and understanding its shortcomings really matters.

Distinguishing self from other is impossible if I don’t know your genomic sequence

I have heard the following analogy from Tom Cowan, MD, to illustrate why we need to know the human genomic sequence for this viral screening process to make sense.

If I placed a hand grenade inside a metal garbage can with a copy of War and Peace, the book would explode into a billion tiny pieces. If I then asked my wife to arrange those tiny pieces into War and Peace, it wouldn’t be possible unless she had a copy for comparison’s sake. Otherwise, she would probably be able to form a bunch of coherent sentences and maybe even create a story from those sentences but there would probably be a lot of pieces left over, and we certainly wouldn’t have a complete copy of War and Peace.

This analogy is fitting because genetic material from the dead cells that are sloughing off in your airways is also floating around in those same passageways as this supposed viral RNA that is being caught by the swab and then run through PCR multiple times.

If the viral RNA sequence is A-U-G-C, how can we be sure that that sequence isn’t simply a fragment of our own genome?

With the human genome still a mystery to “science”, assigning causation to an external virus for your flu-like symptoms is ridiculous. It may be useful in the future, as the idea is compelling, but we don’t yet have a reliable copy of the human genome to accurately distinguish human genetic material from viral.

By the way, the same rationalization can be made against the COVID-19 swabs that people continue to stockpile or the HPV swabs that women receive at their well-woman visits. Is this innate genetic material or a genetic sequence from an outside invader (e.g. COVID, human papilloma virus)?

Can you catch a cold?

There is one additional element of this conversation that muddies the waters of my argument.

If you went home for the holidays, there was likely a small child who had a runny nose and a cough. You are getting coughed on, spit on, and booger-ed on for the entire visit. To nobody’s surprise you developed flu-like symptoms in the days after your Christmas dinner.

Source: USA Today

How did this happen? Did the child spread the virus to you? After all, viruses like influenza are well-known to jump from person-to-person or sippy cup to person. That’s how it works, right? Fortunately, this has been studied.

Nowadays, “human challenge trials” are used to “prove” that viruses are spread in this way. These trials are conducted in healthy, young volunteers in an inpatient environment with HEPA-filtered air in negative-pressure rooms. A virus from a sick person is “isolated and purified” (this is presumably done through a series of laughable steps, but more on that another time) and administered through intranasal drops/sprays to the healthy volunteers.

The result? Unvaccinated individuals have a roughly 25% chance of developing flu-like symptoms when receiving this so-called “viral” nasal spray.

Why not 100% you ask? Well, authors hypothesized that either the air was too humid, not enough viral particles were administered, or that people must not be as contagious once they develop symptoms.

Before these modern trials, there were studies that took the mucus, throat washings, respiratory secretions, and even blood from people with the flu and administered them directly to healthy volunteers.

The first and most cited are the Rosenau Experiments (1918-1919). Secretions and blood of people dying from the flu were rubbed into healthy volunteers’ eyes. None of the healthy volunteers got sick. Critics argued that the healthy volunteers must already have developed immunity as a consequence of prior exposure.

Rosenau Experiments

The second was a study conducted by Alphonse Dochez (1930). Nasal washings of patients with active colds were passed through a Berkefeld filter, which was thought to capture all particles large than viruses. This filtrate was then administered into the noses of healthy people and chimpanzees. The result: some of the humans and chimps developed symptoms.

The third commonly cited studies are known as the Common Cold Units (CCU) Studies (1940s-1980s). Nasal washings from sick patients were administered to healthy volunteers. 30-50% of the healthy volunteers developed symptoms. The researchers had expected more illness but chalked up their findings to “raw” secretions being too variable in viral load.

The point of these studies is not to prove my point but to help you appreciate how the notion that sick people contaminate healthy people is unimpressive at best. Not everybody exposed to a sick person gets “sick”. In my household, my kids get sick all the time. Sometimes my wife develops symptoms; sometimes I develop symptoms. It’s not as simple as avoiding their grubby fingers. So it’s not exactly a causative relationship.

It’s far more likely in my view that something triggers living organisms to fall apart a little bit in the colder months. A stressor might be the catalyst (the holidays are stressful), excessive drinking might be the culprit (most people drink a lot of alcohol during the holidays to cope with the stress), and the myriad of activities and obligations during the holidays leads to a lack of quality sleep (how’s your back doing after that air mattress experience at your in-laws?).

I think it’s just as likely that “catching a cold” happens when non-sick people hang around sick people as a form a co-resonance. Being in proximity with a sick person reminds a not-sick person’s energetic body that it’s time to make an offering, triggering the onset of symptoms that leads to decomposition of some of our tissues, and then this now sick person enters in resonance with a new not-sick person, and they receive the energetic signal to do the same. This type of chain reaction is hard to measure but it’s no better or worse than our conventional model of the flu given the myriad of questions around this elusive mysterious virus thing.

There doesn’t need to be an answer here, but I think it’s naive to think that we can become immune to the forces of nature if we avoid social interaction, cover our faces with masks, and inject a bunch of stuff through a needle into our arms. These could delay the onset of our annual falling part or even blunt the symptoms, but the process of falling to pieces (again: gravity overwhelming levity) could also just be seen as a part of being human.

You don’t have the flu. You are human.

You have symptoms of the flu, meaning the effects of gravity are having a greater influence on you now than they did at the 4th of July party. Plants don’t have a choice in the matter. Gravity has an obvious effect on the natural world. Humans are also a part of - and rely on - the natural world for their survival, so they, too, experience some of this tension between levity and gravity.

If we chalk this experience up to an outside viral contagion, then vaccines, nasal swabs, masks, and social isolation do, indeed, make sense.

But if the holes in the story that I’ve shown you are even a little bit interesting, then consider every autumn as an invitation to do an inventory on your life.

Have you been sleeping well?
Have you been eating nutritious foods?
Have you been drinking clean water? Breathing clean air?
Have you been talking about hard things or suppressing your feelings?
Have you been having sex that transcends beyond mere physical attraction?
Have you been taking time for solitude and rest?
Have you been grateful for being alive?
Have you been drinking, smoking, or snorting too many drugs?
Have you been nurturing healthy relationships and community?
Have you been exercising too little? Too much?

Your answers to these questions will directly affect your life force energy. They can help your kundalini rise or fall. They can nourish or diminish your generative power.

I also can’t recommend enough against pharmaceuticals. Some medications may take away your symptoms short term but they interfere with your ability to get back to center. Allopathic means of keeping us healthy certainly can help with symptoms, but surgeries and pharmaceuticals weaken our generative power, meaning they make you feel as if they have fixed something but they’ve damaged your ability to sustain the influences of gravity over the long-haul.

The process of expelling old matter and decomposing a little bit (and not dying as a result) is a virtue. The symptoms are uncomfortable but they are happening for a reason. The yarrow in my backyard was born with the condition that it would lie dormant for 6 months of the year. This makes it possible to have healthy yarrow during the summer months. And as with my yarrow, the cold, winter months are a time to consider slowing down, resting, digesting, and becoming more dormant.

My wife asked me a month or so ago: Why do people all seem to get sick late in the fall if it’s not from viruses? It was this question that ultimately prompted this essay. I used to resist taking my foot off the accelerator of life, and often it would take a 3-4 day period of “the flu” to park me prostrate. It was an invitation to heal.

Call it what you will: getting sick or making an offering to Mother Earth. But the “illness” that you are experiencing is a part of being a whole human. Supporting your health through the lens of holism is the only way to survive as it generates levity, or life force energy. Salvation will likely never be found through vaccines and fever-reducers because perhaps there is nothing to be saved from.

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This episode was sponsored by Born Free Method.

12-month access is $750
Lifetime access is $3997 (This option comes with some other perks as well, including direct support from me and Sara for life by phone/text/email)
Fertility Deep Dive ($499) if you just want to focus on pre-conception planning and fertility, but this content is included in both of our other offerings above.

Work with Nathan:

Support for Midwives | Private Consultation | Born Free Method | Clear & Free

Medical Disclaimer: Born Free Method: The Podcast is an educational program. No information conveyed through this podcast should be construed as medical advice. These conversations are available to the public for educational and entertainment purposes only.

Music provided by RealMovieScores / Pond5

What Is a Hysterectomy?

Nathan Riley, MD, Father of 2 — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 11:03:04 GMT

I get this question a lot: What is a hysterectomy?

Worse yet, most women who are facing this procedure don’t understand what parts are being removed and if this surgery is even necessary.

This is a big topic, but this short solo cast will provide the basics for you to decode the language of an operative note and the layman’s speak for what a surgeon might be offering and why.

The first hysterectomy was successfully performed in the 19th century using vaginal or abdominal incisions. The first laparoscopic hysterectomy in 1989.

Nowadays, the hysterectomy (removal of the uterus) is the 2nd most common surgery performed in women in the United States. There are ~500,000 hysterectomies performed annually in the United States and 1.3 million c-sections. Compare these number two the two next most common surgeries - for men or women - total knee replacement (719,000 performed annually) and reduction of fracture (671,000 performed annually).

In this solo cast, I will cover common indications for hysterectomy and touch on some alternatives. I’ll also cover the basic anatomy of the female reproductive system.

This episode was sponsored by Born Free Method.

12-month access is $750
Lifetime access is $3997 (This option comes with some other perks as well, including direct support from me and Sara for life by phone/text/email)
Fertility Deep Dive ($499) if you just want to focus on pre-conception planning and fertility, but this content is included in both of our other offerings above.

Work with Nathan:

Support for Midwives | Private Consultation | Born Free Method | Clear & Free

Music provided by RealMovieScores / Pond5

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Who Holds the Wisdom? Learning to Transgress Hegemony in Midwifery and Maternity Care

Nathan Riley, MD, Father of 2 — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 23:07:49 GMT

The organizing team for the 2026 Born Free Twins-Breech Gathering convened in Austin, TX, to set foot at Lucky Arrow Retreat and elsewhere in Austin to begin the long and arduous process of exploring what we hope to achieve at the 3rd twins-breech gathering. This is more than a conference…it’s an invitation to lean into the discomfort required to change maternity care.

I’m joined in this dialogue in this episode by two of my soul family. Sevonna Brown is a reproductive justice worker whose global retreats and sacred care restore wholeness across birth, medicine, and the ceremony of becoming. Haize Hawke is a traditional midwife, master doula, and spiritual mentor. She cares for young women and families, guiding them on the ways of womb wisdom. Sevonna and Haize are two critical members of our organizing team alongside myself, Sara Rosser, CPM, and Sarah Tuck, CPM.

This is the first of several conversations that we will be sharing as we begin to weave this gathering together, which requires us to be led as much by our hearts as by our heads.

FYI: The event has already sold out, but what you’ll learn from this conversation is that we aren’t focused solely on putting together a beautiful experience in 2026. We are planning for what is to come in the wake of the 2026 gathering, with many more events in the future. This conversation is for everybody engaged in this work, not exclusively for those who will be attending in 2026.

Connect with Sevonna @sanctuarymedicine
Connect with Mama Haize @iamhaizehawke

00:07:42 - What one person sees as a necessary action another person might see as misconduct. Bridging the gap (racially, within birthwork, and otherwise) requires nonviolent communication and present listening, pedagogy, and praxis. Decolonizing birth requires that we decolonize ousrselves. What are the emotional acupuncture points relevant to improving on this work?

00:17:00 - Bridging division and racism in birthwork. How must we find a means to coexist alongside patriarchy in obstetrics? What are our barometers of power and privilege? Sometimes what is viewed as segregation actually reflects a choice among those who find safety through affinity. The pedagogy of the 2026 gathering is based in ceremony and grounding. Bell Hooks saw multi-cultural education as a path to freedom empowering students to transgress oppressive norms to achieve self-actualization. We feel that this is the means by which we can we move from mere tolerance to genuine change.

00:27:00 - Acts of righteousness by one person could be experienced as an act of violence by others. Desegregation is not the purpose of the 2026 gathering. We must excercise desegregation in our everyday lives before a physical convening.

00:33:35 - Calls to action in preparation for this convening to transgress racism, not least of which is to read about granny midwives.

00:41:30 - We all must get clear on what we can offer as individuals and our own personal limitations. This gathering is not for passive passengers. We need engagement.

00:46:30 - Who is holding the wisdom in this space? We must begin to prune away the decentralization of midwifery and even certain voices in place of other important voices. This convening is an invitation to reflect on what we do to change maternity care. There is tremendous value in approaching this work with a beginner’s mind…

00:55:00 - Discomfort is inevitable and necessary for growth. You are responsible for your own growth and comfort. What we are organizing for the 2026 event is risky. The biggest risk is a willingness to fail and to fall. All of oyur self-judgment and judgment of others will be brought to the surface. This work is only possible through fierce love.

01:10:00 - A call for the collective to remember that at some point all of our lineages we were made possible through the work of a midwife, likely a granny a midwife, though nowadays this wisdom has been appropriated by the obstetrics model.

01:17:55 - is it possible to honor traditional midwifery through an event that is inclusive of obstetricians? Yes. What we witnessed in 2024 was birthworkers of all types Falling to their knees in recognition of how the modern maternity care system has failed families.

References from the conversation:

Alok Vaid-Menon
Biddy Mason Museum in Los Angeles
All About Love, by Bell Hooks
Teaching to Transgress, by Bell Hooks
Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, by Adrienne Maree Brown
Listen to Me Good: The Story of an Alabama Midwife, by Margaret Charles Smith and Linda Janet Holmes
Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought, edited by Beverly Guy-Sheftall
Reproductive Justice: An Introduction, by Loretta Ross

This episode was sponsored by Born Free Method.

12-month access is $750
Lifetime access is $3997 (This option comes with some other perks as well, including direct support from me and Sara for life by phone/text/email)
Fertility Deep Dive ($499) if you just want to focus on pre-conception planning and fertility, but this content is included in both of our other offerings above.

Work with Nathan:

Support for Midwives | Private Consultation | Born Free Method | Clear & Free

Music provided by RealMovieScores / Pond5

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Edmund Knighton, PhD (Part 2) - Transcending Contemporary Views on Autism: Parenting, Perception, and the Future of Human Development

Nathan Riley, MD, Father of 2 — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 18:58:35 GMT

Disclaimer: Edmund is the father of a 14-year old, Liam, who was born with “autism” and trisomy 21 (Down syndrome).

You won’t find Edmund on social media, but you can reach out to him by email: Fifthwanderer@gmail.com if you ‘d like to have his support in your home.

In Part 2, we dive deeper into the challenges of “autism” but also offer an invitation to broaden our understanding and appreciation of neurodivergence. If there is a path to perfection, do the extrasensory gifts of some “autistic” children suggest that this poorly understood condition may reflect that they are closer to perfection than neurotypical people? Naturally, we also cover vaccines and there is some health push back on the notion that our physical body is “merely a meatsuit”.

00:09:00 - There’s no such thing as autism…there are only human beings with infinite possibilities and unique destinies. “Austism” is a label, and labeling children often limits our capacities to support them. If we think we know who our child is, then we shut down the doors of perception. Salutogenesis.

00:16:45 - We are in the consciousness-soul epoch (“age of auto-ism”) in which a main attribute is antipathy between individuals. We must become able to live with uncertainty. Steiner teaches that there are twelve senses not five. Edmund’s son is telepathic. Do nonverbal kids have the advantage of being able to listen with their hearts? Autism forces us to consider how we might operate at a thought mantra level

00:30:30 - The gift of free will and conscious direction of our consciousness. Are neurodivergent human beings more “evolved” than neurotypical individuals? What does “perfection” mean from the standpoint of esoteric science? Perhaps autistic children are closer to perfection than their neurotypical peers…

00:41:50 - A more nuanced, spiritual take on vaccines and the human being (a complex conversation distilled to a thimble). Every thought, every relationship that we have with every material used to produce and action imparted to inject a vaccine has a powerful effect on a vaccine. The same line of thinking can be applied to assisted reproductive technology, which is a focus of perinatal psychology.

00:52:50 - If vaccines alone cause this condition we call “autism”, and if autism is indeed a “disability”, then why shouldn’t we be seeking to make everybody autistic through vaccines?

01:02:20 - Our physical body is the most spiritual gift that we have, which is why it’s critical to be discerning of what enters your body. Division within the MAHA movement. The illusory condition of time permits the capacity for mastery. 7 is a sacred number (7 chakras, 7 life processes…but 7 days in a week?) Because the heart has a rhythm (not a beat), it helps you perceive the quality of time rather than the quantity of time. Dewey Larson’s qualitative physics of time-space. Advice for sustaining humanity through cohesion versus separation (every moment contains love).

References from the conversation:

Feeling into music versus listening to the words. Practice with these two songs (unless you speak Hebrew):
- Ana Bekoach, performed by Yossi Azulay
- Hashkiveinu, performed by Magda Fishman
The Calendar of the Soul (Pusch translation), by Rudolf Steiner
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Martin Seligman’s work related to positive psychology
Our Twelve Senses: How Healthy Senses Refresh the Soul, by Albert Soesman
Faust, a 2-part tragic play, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Physics of Dewey Larson
Klaus Käppeli
The Rosenthal Effect (aka the Pygmalion Effect)
Telepathy Tapes

Related episodes:

This episode was sponsored by Born Free Method.

12-month access is $750
Lifetime access is $3997 (This option comes with some other perks as well, including direct support from me and Sara for life by phone/text/email)
Fertility Deep Dive ($499) if you just want to focus on pre-conception planning and fertility, but this content is included in both of our other offerings above.

Work with Nathan:

Support for Midwives | Private Consultation | Born Free Method | Clear & Free | Twins-Breech

Medical Disclaimer: Born Free Method: The Podcast is an educational program. No information conveyed through this podcast should be construed as medical advice. These conversations are available to the public for educational and entertainment purposes only.

Music provided by RealMovieScores / Pond5

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Humanizing Hospital Birth: Insights from an OBGYN with Dr. Nicole Rankins

Nathan Riley, MD, Father of 2 — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 16:19:20 GMT

The 2026 Born Free Twins-Breech Conference is coming to Austin, TX, November 12-15, 2026, and tickets go on sale Black Friday, November 28th, 2025 at midnight! There are a limited number of tickets for sale at the early bird pricing! To take advantage you’ll have to be quick, and you’ll need the code JUICYWORM26 at checkout!

Nicole Calloway Rankins, MD, MPH is a board-certified OB/GYN and hospital-based hospitalist who focuses on providing evidence-based support for families to have empowered hospital births. She is the host of the Birth With Power podcast—formerly All About Pregnancy & Birth. Dr. Rankins also teaches an online Birth Preparation Course. She shares her story of her own c-section with inadequate anesthesia and the challenges of supporting her own child in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

Find Dr. Rankins’ free guides and other resources at her website. She can also be found on Instagram @drnicolerankins .

00:16:45 - The pros and cons of hospitalist medicine. You get reeeeally good at building trust and making decisions quickly. Feeling safe is different from people doing things to you to “keep” you safe. Naming fears can be powerful as the patient. Having hard conversations around birth preferences ideally happens long before your labor begins.

00:26:44 - Dr. Rankins shares how the experience of a mother dying in her care and how the memory will forever stay with her as a reminder that this work isn’t always joyful. And occasionally “bad outcomes” take place without any way to prevent them. How can we optimize the experience for a mother who experiences a stillbirth or similar outcome?

00:35:40 - Dr. Rankins shares her experience with a child in the NICU for duodenal atresia and experiencing a c-section with a malfunctioning epidural. Fathers are often left out of the conversations through difficult hospital experiences.

00:42:15 - Physicians aren’t necessarily taught to humanize birth. Sometimes humanizing childbirth starts with remembering that we ourselves, as practitioners, are human, and this can be as easy as taking a breath! Nathan shares a story of a baby born without a trachea who is made comfortable to die shortly after birth and the challenge of being present with death.

00:50:00 - Advice for families that transfer from home to the hospital and don’t prefer any interventions whatsoever. Dr. Rankins visits local birth centers so that birthworkers in the community are familiar with her and her practice. You have the right to decline any intervention as long as you’re informed about the risks, benefits, and implications of all options on the table. Dr. Nicole weighs in on Vitamin K, Rhogam, and other common interventions offered throughout prenatal care and childbirth. We must avoid imposing our value system on that of others.

00:58:10 - We can’t advocate for autonomy in reproductive rights but not for a woman to give birth on her own terms. You either believe in autonomy or you don’t. How do you respond if a woman says “I’d rather die than have a c-section”? What is coercive language. In counseling around repeat c-sections, OBGYNs often neglect to describe the challenges of emergency c-section after multiple abdominal surgeries due to scar tissue

01:06:45 - Dr. Rankins’ thoughts on continuous fetal monitoring versus intermittent auscultation and lack of validation of this technology

01:11:00 - Dr. Rankins weighs in on the Hepatitis b vaccine, pediatricians, veering from the vaccine schedule, polio vs ddt neurotoxicity, package inserts, removing the word “allow” from our counseling.

Find Dr. Rankins’ free guides and other resources at her website. She can also be found on Instagram @drnicolerankins .

References from the conversation:

Hepatitis B vaccine package insert from FDA website
Great episode from Nicole’s podcast about the NICU experience in conversation with neonatologist Terri Major-Kincade, MD
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman
Cesarean Section: An American History of Risk, Technology, and Consequence, by Jacqueline Wolf, PhD

Related episodes:

#80 - Jacqueline Wolf, PhD: On the Sordid History of C-Section in the U.S.
One Womb, Two Stories: The Echo of What Was and the Cry of What Is (Trigger warning: this is a story of homebirth and then a subsequent rainbow baby!)
Babies Need to Feel Safe with Nathan Riley, MD, FACOG

This episode was sponsored by Born Free Method.

When we aren’t hosting gatherings to re-skill the birth workforce in twins/breech, we are supporting families and birthworkers through this massive online platform/community!

12-month access is $750
Lifetime access is $3997 (This option comes with some other perks as well, including direct support from me and Sara for life by phone/text/email)
Fertility Deep Dive ($499) if you just want to focus on pre-conception planning and fertility, but this content is included in both of our other offerings above.

Work with Nathan:

Support for Midwives | Private Consultation | Born Free Method | Clear & Free | Twins-Breech

Music provided by RealMovieScores / Pond5

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