How Colubrid and Colubrid Radio came to be...
First came a pandemic, then came a lot of windshield time...
Colubrid and Colubroid Radio’s (CCR) origins spawned from Zac driving a lot, in 2021. Zac had quite a bit of field work planned for 2020, and the pandemic shut that down entirely. Field scientists often submit grants the year before for the following field season. In the fall of 2019 and early winter of 2020, Zac submitted grants, received them, and had no idea that the 2020 field season would shut down due to a global pandemic. When the world opened back up in 2021, Zac’s crayfish lab had not one, but two field seasons of work to complete. Because of this, Zac was on the road, a lot.
All the field sites he had to visit were at least 5 hours from Wheeling, WV, which meant lots of down time to listen to podcasts. At the time, Zac was a voracious listener of herp podcasts, had his favorites, but always felt like something was missing. It was a true oddity to find a podcast that focused on colubrids because at the time there were few colubrid specific podcasts.
The few that existed were short form pods, podcasts that are limited to right around an hour. Zac’s favorite podcast to listen to was Morelia Python Radio – Eric and Owen had amazing chemistry, the pod was long form, which allowed the hosts to nerd out on a subject, and most importantly, the podcast had structure.
The hosts were not aimlessly talking about their clique of friends, or what they had done that week – when the guest joined the conversation you could tell Eric had done his homework and had a series of well thought out questions prepared to engage the guest with. On more than one occasion Zac would think, "Why the hell is there not a Colubrid podcast that follows this format?"
Everything came to a tipping point while Zac was on a herping trip in Pennsylvania in May of 2021. The forecast all week indicated that weather would be perfect for finding Eastern Hognose Snakes, a snake Zac needed to find for an upcoming book project. Zac made the 6-hour drive to the Poconos from his home and listened to a couple of episodes of MPR along the way. Weather had shifted, and the perfect weather turned into a mini heat wave; conditions were HORRIBLE for hognose snakes. After herping for a few hours, Zac knew he had to pivot, called a friend in West Virginia, and set his sights on Mountain State hogs.
The drive from the Poconos to West Virginia was about 4 hours. Out of MPR episodes, Zac listened to a few other podcasts, one of which had a guest who Zac really wanted to hear talk about colubrids. The format of the show left Zac feeling deflated – all he could think was, "I feel like I can do this."
Everyone in Zac’s life told him he had too many things on his plate – there was no way he could add a flipping podcast to it! After a successful herping trip, Zac drove another three hours home, listened to yet another podcast, and when he pulled into his driveway, promptly called Eric Burke. At the time Eric was building the MPR Network, Zac said he wanted to join, and have a colubrid based podcast based off MPR’s format – the exact same thing as MPR just for colubrids. Within 15 minutes of the initiation of that phone call, CCR was born.
Given Zac’s background in science, and anal-retentive nature when it came to taxonomy, technically many of the species covered by the pod would be colubrid adjacent – scientifically known as colubroids – so Colubrid and Colubroid Radio would focus on all of these species.
Now that CCR was born, Zac needed to find a cohost. Earlier that year, Zac was a podcast guest on The Herpetoculture Podcast. Matt Most listened to that episode and reached out to discuss a few things with Zac that were discussed on the episode. Zac knew Matt was both knowledgeable and respected within the colubrid community. On a whim, Zac texted Matt, asking if he would be interested in cohosting a podcast about colubrids with him, to which Matt promptly responded yes. Now that CCR had two cohosts, episodes needed to be recorded. Matt knew way more people in herpetoculture than Zac at the time, and without hesitation said he had the perfect first guest – Clint Bartley of Bartley Reptiles.
Clint was indeed the perfect guest, and following the recording of the second episode, Zac’s vision of a colubrid podcast was born. Matt cohosted with Zac for CCR’s first 1.5 years. Given he is excellent at what he does, Matt was offered a significant promotion, which meant he would be travelling more, and would not be able to hold on to the biweekly recording schedule.
Given Matt needed to step back from CCR, Zac and Matt had one person in mind to take the reins from Matt, Clint Bartley. Clint was CCR’s first guest and had taken over the cohost role a couple times when Matt had work obligations. Clint had just moved on from his successful career in business and was the newfound owner of Metazotics, a reptile specialty store and breeding facility in Chandler, Indiana. Given Zac and Clint’s chemistry on air, and Matt and Clint’s friendship and shared interests, Clint was the perfect (and really only person) to take over Matt’s role on CCR. Furthermore, Clint had a solid pulse on the colubrid market given his role with Metazotics, industry experience, and business mind, which added a unique new flavor to CCR. Zac covered science; Clint covered the market – both had similar passions in herpetoculture with their feet planted firmly in different herpetocultural roles.
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Since that fateful day, Clint and Zac have taken CCR to places no one thought it would go. CCR episodes often debut ranking as high as #4 in the entire animal genre of podcasts in the US and has grown to become CCR Media LLC allowing the two hosts to venture farther out to meet listeners and discover more beneficial information to share with their audience. 2024 was a huge year for CCR as "CCR Conservation Corp", a non-profit conservation fund was created in which the hosts are able to directly impact conservation research and programs. In addition to this, Zack and Clint were the founding force behind Colubridfest, the only colubrid only educational event on the planet.
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The future looks bright for CCR – the only direction is up!