Big Blend Radio

Travel writer Mary Farah joins Big Blend Radio's "Food, Wine & Travel" Podcast with IFWTWA to share her mom-and-daughters getaway to Carlsbad, California.  Mary traveled with her daughters, Mabel (5) and Mavis (8 months), over spring break. She shares what worked for a family trip: a kitchen-equipped suite, a beach-front stay in Carlsbad Village, and plenty of places to eat, from the Windmill...

On World Kindness Day, six-time Emmy Award-winning journalist Janet Zappala joins Big Blend Radio to talk about her children’s book series starring Guapo, a real rescue steer who weighs more than 3,000 pounds and has a heart to match. Her brand new third book, “Guapo and the Mystery of Goodness Grove,” follows Guapo and his friends as they discover how even the smallest act of kindness can ripple...

Getting to know travel writer and photographer Rose Palmer: quilts, chemistry, and a love of travel! In this "Getting to Know You" interview, Rose answers the Super Seven questions of the Big Blend Media House.  This episode of Big Blend Radio’s "Quiltripping Travel with Rose" Podcast covers: - Her spirit animal, a Black Lab named Chester, and why pets feel like family - A chemistry career that ra...

Can you be a feminist and still want to get married? Author and professor Suzanne Leonard says yes, and she makes the case in her brand new book, "A Feminist Guide to Marriage." This episode of Big Blend Radio’s “Books & Authors” series, presented with Books Forward, features Suzanne, a Professor of Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Simmons University in Boston. Part memoir, part manifest...

Apollo 13 astronaut Fred Haise joins Terri and her pilot husband Ron Guthrie on Big Blend Radio's "Travel with Terri Podcast" for a special Veterans Day conversation about a journey most of us will never take: out into space and safely back again. Fred, a native of Biloxi, Mississippi, was the lunar module pilot on Apollo 13 in 1970. When an oxygen tank exploded two days into the flight, a Moon la...

Hitch up the buggy and head to Indiana’s Amish Country for the holidays! This episode of Big Blend Radio’s "Food, Wine & Travel" Podcast with the International Food Wine & Travel Writers Association (IFWTWA) takes us to Shipshewana with Sonya Nash, CEO of the Shipshewana/LaGrange County Convention & Visitors Bureau. About two hours east of Chicago and two and a half hours north of Indi...

This episode of Big Blend Radio’s "Wanderers Compass" Podcast heads to Slovenia, a small Central European country with big mountains, fairy-tale castles and a story of independence that is still young.  Travel writers Joelle Machia and Ryan Slough have visited twice and take us from the lively riverfront of Ljubljana to Lake Bled, the quieter Lake Bohinj, and the hairpin turns of the Vršič Pass in...

This episode of Big Blend Radio's "Jo Goes Everywhere" Podcast takes you on a road trip through South Carolina's Old 96 District. Travel writer Jo Clark picks up where last month's Ninety Six National Historic Site episode left off, with stops in Spartanburg, Pelzer, Greenwood, Ninety Six, Abbeville and Edgefield. Along the way: historic inns (including a night in a caboose at Clevedale Historic I...

Ever wandered the produce aisle and asked, “Who wants to be in my soup?” Shelley Whizin, The Live & Die Happy Coach, joins producer Lisa D. Smith on Big Blend Radio's "Soul Diving Sunday" Podcast to share her Butternut Squash Ginger Carrot Instinct Soup, a cozy fall dish that would be right at home on your Thanksgiving table.  They talk about cooking with joy and intention, cooking for one, wh...

Skagit Valley is famous for its Tulip Festival, and this conversation touches on it, but it covers so much more. On this episode of Big Blend Radio's "Sip, Savor & Travel" Podcast, Linda Kissam, the "Food, Wine & Shopping Diva," sits down with Kristen Keltz of the Skagit Tourism Bureau for a warm tour of this Pacific Northwest escape.  They cover year-round whale watching and kayaking out...

This episode of Big Blend Radio’s "Toast to The Arts & Parks" Podcast, with the National Parks Arts Foundation, features landscape oil painter Dawn Waters Baker, a “Painter of Spiritual Landscapes,” fresh from her second NPAF artist residency at Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park. It’s her fourth NPAF residency overall, following Big Bend National Park and Gettysburg National Military Park. Dawn...

November is a big month at The Peanut Patch in Yuma, Arizona. It’s Thanksgiving and Gratitude Month, it’s Peanut Butter Lovers Month, and the store is celebrating 29 years. In this episode of Big Blend Radio’s "The Peanut Patch" Podcast, Donna George talks about the little thank-you gifts that mean the most, from fudge and peanut brittle for a hospital nurse to treat bags for delivery drivers and...

Snow is already falling in places in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, the lights are going up in Visalia, and Exeter is getting ready for Santa. On this episode of Big Blend Radio's "California’s Sequoia Country" Podcast with the Sequoia Tourism Council, producer Lisa D. Smith talks with Holly Streit of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, Suzanne Bianco of Visit Visalia, and Shannon S...

Heading into the holidays with a bottle on your list and no idea what to buy?  On this episode of Big Blend Radio's "Wine Time with Peggy" Podcast, Peggy Fiandaca, co-owner of LDV Winery in Arizona, shares easy, thoughtful ways to gift wine, even if you don't drink it, and what to bring to Thanksgiving dinner. Plus: new 2019 Grenache and 2019 Signature Petite Sirah releases, why bottle glass color...

Travel writer and photographer Sharon K. Kurtz, host of Big Blend Radio’s "Wander the World with Sharon" Podcast, turns the microphone around in this conversation with Lisa D. Smith. Sharon shares how a midlife pivot became a travel-writing career, why she’s been to about 70 countries and still walks out the door with no plan, and her advice for new writers: write from your heart, don’t mimic anyo...

Asheville’s music scene is so much more than fiddles and bluegrass. On this episode of Big Blend Radio’s “Adventures in Asheville” Podcast, producer Lisa D. Smith joins cohosts Steve and Karen Wilson (“Mr. and Mrs. Wild”), owners of The Lion & The Rose Bed & Breakfast in Asheville’s Montford Historic District, for a lively tour of where to hear live music in the Blue Ridge Mountains and wh...

Step inside one of the South's grand historic hotels with Big Blend Radio's "Travel with Terri" Podcast. On location in downtown Mobile, Alabama, travel journalist Terri Guthrie sits down in the lobby of the Battle House Renaissance Mobile Hotel & Spa with General Manager Margo Gilbert, who has led the hotel since 2004. Margo shares the hotel's remarkable story: built in 1852, lost to fire in...

Author Robin Rosenbluth joins Big Blend Radio’s “Table & Compass” Podcast hosts Joelle Machia and Ryan Slough of Wanderers Compass, and producer Lisa D. Smith, for a conversation about her new memoir, "Living with Strangers: Healing a Wounded Heart in a Distant Land" (She Writes Press). Robin was eight when her mother died. Her father placed her and her younger sister in foster care, even thou...

Join host Lisa D. Smith and co-host Johnny Schaefer, an award-winning singer-songwriter, who joins us every first Sunday of the month, for Songs for Positive Change on Big Blend Radio’s "American Jukebox," part of our America 250 celebration. Autumn is a season of change, and these songs remind us that change is inevitable, that ordinary people have real power, and that it all starts with love. We...

Have you ever scrolled past a gorgeous old stone house in Italy and thought, “I could live like that”? Our guest Debbie Levitt did more than dream. An American who now lives full-time on the island of Sardinia, Debbie is an Italian citizen who calls herself the Italian Inpat: an immigrant who came to Italy and found home, not an American who left. In this candid conversation on Big Blend Radio, De...

October is Blindness Awareness Month and Emotional Wellness Month, and this conversation fits both. Director and filmmaker Gina LeVay Goldstein joins Big Blend Radio to talk about "Blind AF," the award-winning documentary following blind Paralympian, Army veteran and world-record holder Shawn Cheshire on a 60-day, 3,600-mile solo bike ride across America. Shawn lost her sight to a brain injury in...

The Congo Basin absorbs more carbon than any other tropical forest on Earth, yet it receives just 11 percent of international tropical forest funding. Professor Lee White, Special Envoy to the Science Panel for the Congo Basin, joins Lisa D. Smith on Big Blend Radio's "Nature Connection" Podcast just after New York Climate Week, where he launched a new brief on funding tropical forests. Hear why t...

A demand letter lands on your desk, and your stomach drops. Now what? On this episode of Big Blend Radio’s "California Employment Law" Podcast, San Diego employment attorney Ward Heinrichs walks through a sample demand letter and what employers (and employees) should know. Ward breaks down the two very different kinds of demand letters: the records request, and the traditional demand letter that l...

Pittsburgh has long carried a reputation as a gritty steel-mill town with not much to see or do. Travel writer Debbie Stone grew up in Chicago hearing exactly that, but she kept hearing whispers that the city had changed, so she went to see for herself. On this episode of Big Blend Radio's "Global Adventures" Podcast, Debbie shares the museums, art and views that changed her mind. Debbie takes us...

In honor of Global Diversity Month, explorer and author James Michael Dorsey takes us to Papua New Guinea, the most linguistically diverse country on earth, with more than 800 indigenous languages and thousands of dialects.  On this episode of Big Blend Radio’s "Before They Vanish" Podcast, James talks with producer Lisa D. Smith about attending the Sing Sing festival, where as many as 150,000 peo...