Born Free Method: The Podcast

The Skinny on Rhesus factor (Rh) and Anti-D therapy (Rhogam)

Hemolytic disease of the newborn (HDN) was first described in 1609 by a French midwife. It took centuries of case reports to find a potential cause. A 1939 study out of J

The Skinny on Group B strep (GBS)

In the United States, we universally recommend rectovaginal screening for Group B Strep (GBS) with rare exception. Unless you had a baby affected by early onset GBS disea

Living with Uncertainty: Fertility, Pregnancy, and Childbirth

[00:02:23] - Intro Your due date is March 14th. A single, confident, perfectly circled square on the calendar, handed over by a smiling professional with a plastic wheel

Elizabeth Catlin, CPM, returns: How do 95 felony charges weigh on the conversation around midwifery licensure and credentialing?

Elizabeth Catlin is a proud CPM and mother of 14 (!!) living in central New York. She was charged arrest twice back in 2018, and we met sometime 2020 when she was officia

Joni Edelman: “We shouldn’t be seeking permission and approval in childbirth”

Joni Edelman is a registered nurse who began attending births when she was 18, then lived out a career in hospital birth, transitioned to hospice care, and then eventuall

Meeting Archangel Michael: Courage, Will, and the Gifts of Autumn, with Robin Lanier

My guest on this episode of Born Free Method: The Podcast is Robin Lanier, pedagogical director at the Waldorf School of Louisville. Robin has been teaching children for

Conception, Heart, Spirals, and the Limits of the Mind: Rethinking How We Approach Birth

Egg meets sperm. This is what we are told happens for a baby to be born. On closer examination, you will notice that the egg, when rushed by not one but tens of thousan

Sena EHR - The new charting system made by and for home birth midwives

Most electronic health records (EHRs) were designed for a different era, with clunky interfaces, confusing navigation, and tools that were never quite right for the way y

Walking the WILD Path: A Healing Gathering

In this episode, I chat with Farah Tanis, founder of Restore Forward. For the 2026 edition of their WILD Healing Summit, the theme is “A Harvest of Medicine”. I can’t imp

Edmund Knighton, PhD (Part 5): Are you Afraid of the Dark? And other Love Stories.

Edmund Knighton, Ph.D., is a seasoned educator, clinical psychologist, and somatic movement practitioner whose multidisciplinary career spans more than three decades. He

28 Years of Nonviolent Communication: The Basics as I Know and Use Them w/ Wayland Myers, PhD

Wayland Myers, PhD, is a clinical psychologist who trained first as a mechanical engineer before pivoting into psychology, a background that seems to show up in how metho

What's the deal with birth certificates? with Veda Ray

This was a community call hosted within our Born Free Method program. We meet each week and the calls are recorded, and occasionally we are blessed with a guest like Veda

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

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 th

Finding Psanctuary: Equal Parts Flower and Water with Eric Osborne

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) fo

Trailer to Born Free Method: the Podcast

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

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

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 work

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

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,

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

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 consequenc

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

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 leadi

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

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