Kaatscast’s 100th Episode! A Look Back and a Peek Ahead 💯

Transcribed by Jerome Kazlauskas

Brett Barry  0:03  
Welcome to a special edition of Kaatscast: The Catskills Podcast. This is episode 100 and we've got lots in store including an interview with a 100-year-old Catskills native, an interview by Mollie Zoldan with the host of this podcast [me], a top 10 list of our most listened to stories, and more. Support for this podcast comes from the Central Catskills Chamber of Commerce. Providing services to businesses, community organizations, and local governments in the Central Catskills region. Follow the Central Catskills Chamber of Commerce on Facebook and sign up for a weekly email of local events at centralcatskills.org. Silver Hollow Audio is a proud member. Thanks also to the Mountain Eagle, covering Delaware, Greene, and Schoharie counties, including brands for local regions like the Windham Weekly, Schoharie News, and Catskills Chronicle. For more information, call 518-763-6854 or email: mountaineaglenews@gmail.com. For our 100th episode, we decided to track down a 100-year-old Catskiller who'd be willing to share some stories. Elna Hinkley, Maiden Name: Peck, spent her first few years in the Downsville area; and in grade school, she moved to Roxbury where she's lived ever since. In fact, the house where I met Elna sits on the very dairy farm where she and husband, James, raised a family. Son Tony joined us for that interview. Here are some excerpts. Oh, and if it sounds like I'm yelling, I am. Elna's hard of hearing.

What was school like? Was it a one-room schoolhouse?

Elna Hinkley  1:52  
Yep, that's where I started. A one-room schoolhouse.

Brett Barry  1:55  
Where was that? Downsville?

Elna Hinkley  1:56  
Downsville, Gregorytown. Gregorytown, down below Downsville.

Brett Barry  2:02  
What were the roads like in the Catskills when you were younger? Was it hard to get around?

Elna Hinkley  2:07  
Some of them were. Yeah, yeah. When I was growing up, we were up with ... way up on the mountain and it was a dirt ... dirt road and my father used to have to take and hook up the horses to take us all down to the foot of the hill to get to the bus because the bus didn't go to the door. So, in the winter, my dad would hook up the horses to the wagon and ... and take us down to the foot of the hill and wait for the bus, and then when we moved up here, we had a bunch of horses for the out ... the barn and everybody coming; ride horses and have a good old time out there.

Brett Barry  2:47  
What were those years like? Did you enjoy school?

Elna Hinkley  2:50  
Mm-hmm.

Brett Barry  2:50  
Did you enjoy school?

Elna Hinkley  2:51  
Enjoy it? Oh, sure. I was always at good marks at school. Yeah, I took two grades in one year. So, I kind of ... got to ... got ready to graduate when I was just 16. I was 16 in May and I graduated in June.

Brett Barry  3:10  
Graduating from high school a year early didn't mean leaving high school a year early. Elna voluntarily stayed an extra year, so she could be with her future husband [James], who was a year behind her. That's right. An extra year for her high school sweetheart.

Elna Hinkley  3:27  
I was one grade ahead of him. So, I went back to school another year because he was a year behind me. I stayed another ... took extra subjects. So, that's how I met him or somewhere in school.

Brett Barry  3:42  
So, you got married when you were probably 18-19?

Elna Hinkley  3:45  
Yeah.

Brett Barry  3:45  
Yeah.

Elna Hinkley  3:47  
Probably about 19.

Brett Barry  3:49  
Tell me about the farm. So, it's a dairy farm and how many cows?

Elna Hinkley  3:52  
Dairy farm, yes. Way up on the mountain, the cows would be ... you'd have to go and you would have to go up there to get them at night and bring them down to milk; bring them across the highway and later they put a thing underneath the road. So, you could go underneath the road, so we'd cross right over on the highway. So, we had to stop the traffic. I had to get up at five o'clock every morning to go to the barn to milk the cows and help with the outside every day ... weekends at all. I didn't learn to drive until after we moved up here and you had to come down the road [roadway] down here below. I started down and I said, "I can't. I can't go down this hill because I'm afraid of it." I said, "I don't know." Because I took him up to it. Leave it to bring the cows down. And so, I was coming down the hill and I kept going faster and faster and faster and everywhere I got to the bottom. I was out to the main highway down here and I took my foot off the clutch and I slowed right down and crossed over, but I was picking up speed all the way down and I have my father that never thought about taking that off.

Brett Barry  5:30  
What do you like about living in the Catskills?

Elna Hinkley  5:33  
I would love it. I'm just so happy here. There's some of the roads you go on and they look so beautiful and you just say this is peaceful. Yeah.

Brett Barry  5:43  
So, you never got tired of it.

Elna Hinkley  5:44  
No, I never want to move anyplace else.

Brett Barry  5:48  
Did you ever think you'd make it to 100?

Elna Hinkley  5:51  
No, I'd never did during that I was going to, and then I got where I was close enough that I thought. I want to stay till I'm 100 after I got so close.

Brett Barry  6:02  
How do you feel? Do you feel 100?

Elna Hinkley  6:05  
I feel pretty good for my, oh, for my age, I know I do, because other people my age are in nursing homes and stuff.

Brett Barry  6:14  
What's the secret to living a long healthy life like you did?

Elna Hinkley  6:18  
I don't have any idea. Maybe it's because everybody's been so good to me. I don't know. I couldn't have been here if it wasn't for them.

Brett Barry  6:33  
She's referring here to son [Tony] and his wife [Kathy], who come up from Westchester for visits. Tony couldn't take all the credit though. "Protein shakes," he told me, seem to be another key to Elna's longevity.

Tony Iacovelli  6:47  
She ... she eats, she drinks a lot of Ensure, a couple of bottles a day. That's what she says keeping her going. She loves her Ensure.

Brett Barry  6:59  
Ensure and community ... heading out and seeing friends.

Tony Iacovelli  7:02  
She enjoys going out. She loves to go out and eat, just loves it. We'll call her up and say, we'll come up tomorrow, she'll be there around 9:00-9:30. Okay, I won't have breakfast 'til you get there, and then we can go out, right? We pull in after a two and a half, three hour ride, and we're walking in the door and she's got her pocket book. Are you ready to go? No, give us a minute to, you know, unwind. Oh, no, we're going to go for breakfast. She loves to get out and talk to people and see people.

Brett Barry  7:38  
At the beginning of my visit, Tony teased that I might have to edit out Elna's dirty jokes, but as we were wrapping up and without a joke in sight, he couldn't help himself and prompted me to ask ... "when is Mother's Day?"

Elna Hinkley  7:53  
What?

Brett Barry  7:53  
When is Mother's Day?

Elna Hinkley  7:54  
Nine months after fathers' night [laughter]. Well, you asked for it [laughter].

Brett Barry  8:07  
That's a dirty joke.

Elna Hinkley  8:10  
That is a good one.

Brett Barry  8:19  
That was 100-year-old Elna Hinkley in Roxbury, New York.

As much as I enjoy interviewing guests for this show and there have been many, I don't particularly enjoy being the subject of an interview, but our production intern came up with that idea for this episode 100; and never one to hamper creativity. I said, "Sure. Mollie." Mollie Zoldan is a student at SUNY New Paltz where I teach classes in the department of digital media and journalism. We met in our campus podcasting studio and Mollie turned the table on your host.

Mollie Zoldan  9:27  
This is the interview for the 100th episode of Kaatscast; a little get to know your host, Brett Barry, my very own mentor and professor and ...

Brett Barry  9:37  
Internship coordinator.

Mollie Zoldan  9:38  
... internship coordinator; and of course, host of Kaatscast and owner/co-owner of Silver Hollow Audio.

Brett Barry  9:45  
Co-owner with my wife. It's a big operation.

Mollie Zoldan  9:47  
I'm Mollie Zoldan. I'm your intern.

Brett Barry  9:50  
Usually, I do the interviewing. So, this is different for me and I think I'm ready.

Mollie Zoldan  9:55  
So, let's get going. My first question for you is ... what inspired you to create a podcast centered around the Catskills?

Brett Barry  10:01  
Well, I had already been doing a lot of production work for the Catskills. I had done a few audio driving guides, so that the idea would be as you're driving up 28 or on Rte. 23 or any of these so-called scenic byways, you could pop at that time and it wasn't that long ago. You could pop a CD in or you could stream it on your phone. Those are still available there at drive28.com. If you're interested, some of the information is outdated, but it's interesting to listen as you drive because it gives you more of an appreciation for the history and culture of the ... of that exact spot. For those people who were trying to do this on their phone, it was pretty difficult because the cell service in the Catskills is marginal at best. And so, you can't rely on it to stream audio. So, someone had recommended at the time. I think it was Lissa Harris, who was at that time, the editor of Watershed Post that we make it available as a podcast because podcasts, as you know, can be downloaded at home, and then you don't need cell service to listen to them out in the field. So, that was the initial inspiration, I figured. I have a lot of material that I can repurpose into a podcast. Then [very quickly], I realized. I needed to produce a lot more because I wanted to keep this regular; and obviously, I didn't have so much that I wouldn't need to start producing new material, so then it kind of spun into its own thing.

Mollie Zoldan  11:27  
I think that's really interesting to check out those driving routes for those interested in what the seed of Kaatscast was as an idea.

Brett Barry  11:34  
And the ... the first few episodes are exactly those.

Mollie Zoldan  11:37  
Oh, interesting. So, you should go check those out. A follow-up question ... how long have you lived in the Catskills?

Brett Barry  11:42  
I've been coming up here since I was a kid. You know, my parents built a log cabin and we would come up weekends and summers. So, I spent a lot of time in the Catskills. I'm not a native, but at this point, I consider myself a local. There's a difference; and so, as a local, I've been here for about 18 years when our first daughter was born. We moved up from in and around the city. We were in Northern Jersey at the time.

Mollie Zoldan  12:07  
And you're in Catskill, right?

Brett Barry  12:09  
I am in the town of Shandaken near Phoenicia.

Mollie Zoldan  12:13  
What is been one of your favorite episodes of Kaatscast?

Brett Barry  12:15  
I had an inkling that you were going to ask that so I prepared a few. Honestly, the last one is always my favorite because I'm just coming off of producing it and so I'm really immersed in whatever that topic was and I'm excited to get it out into the world, but a few standout there was one that I really enjoyed it. It was called "Protecting What You Love with Author/Angler Stephen Sautner." Stephen has a cabin in the Southwest Catskills down near Hancock, I guess, and I visited his kind of vintage 1950s style fishing cabin on a little creek there and we just had a really nice conversation about what the Catskills means to him as someone who ... whose day job is in the city and he comes up to get away from that and to immerse himself in the outdoors and to be a steward of the land that he owns. And so, there was a lot of fun stuff that came out of that one from fishing to stewardship to just this really special environment that is created for ourselves.

Stephen Sautner  13:23  
I love immersing myself in the ecosystem. I love playing predator, I guess, and I love releasing the trout and someday maybe there'll be a time where I sit along a river and I just watch trout rise and I just go. That's good enough for me and I kind of do that on the stream here where I raise fish on my fly and I don't set the hook. I just let them take a swat at it and I have no ... I don't hook them and I just want to see the fish come up and miss the fly. That's cool enough. I don't do that all over the screen. There's one pool in particular ...

Brett Barry  13:56  
We did one called "Is This Recyclable?! 'Wishcycling' at UCRRA" or "UCRRA" as they call themselves. So, I live in Ulster County. The Catskills are comprised of four counties and ...

Mollie Zoldan  13:57  
Can you name those counties?

Brett Barry  14:12  
Ulster, Greene, Delaware, and Sullivan?

Mollie Zoldan  14:19  
Not Columbia?

Brett Barry  14:20  
No, that's too far north.

Mollie Zoldan  14:22  
Okay.

Brett Barry  14:23  
Schoharie, I think, dips in as well. So ...

Mollie Zoldan  14:26  
Pop quiz ... bet you weren't expecting one.

Brett Barry  14:30  
I think ... I think I nailed it, but you'll have to fact check me.

Mollie Zoldan  14:33  
Okay. I did fact check Brett on that; and unfortunately, he was right. I was hoping to pull one over on him.

Brett Barry  14:39  
So, we went to with our production intern at the time [Keith]. We went to UCCRA and had a tour of the facility where they do all of the recycling, sorting, and trash disposal for the county, so that was really eye-opening and kind of interesting to see where all our waste goes. Got a full tour, and then we did kind of a game show segment for that podcast where the director of sustainability [Angelina Brandt], we gave her a bell and a buzzer and we would ask very specific items. Is this recyclable? A peanut butter container and it would ...

Mollie Zoldan  15:17  
Oh, so you were quizzing her ...

Brett Barry  15:18  
Yes and ...

Mollie Zoldan  15:19  
... as the sustainability director?

Brett Barry  15:20  
Exactly.

Mollie Zoldan  15:21  
Wow!

Brett Barry  15:21  
And she would either give us a ding or a buzz to kind of hit home all these things that we so-call wishcycle, throw into our recycling bin that may never get recycled, so that was really interesting. A little eye-opening. 

You have in front of you a bell and a buzzer. Can you give us the appropriate response? What is recycling and what is wishcycling?

Angelina Brandt  15:51  
Oh, I'd love to.

Brett Barry  15:52  
Okay, ready?

Angelina Brandt  15:53  
Let's debunk some of these myths here about recycling.

Brett Barry  15:56  
Here we go. Peanut butter container.

Angelina Brandt  15:58  
So, a good clean rinse. It doesn't have to be totally empty. If you put some hot water in that jar and shake it up with soap that actually gets a lot of the innards out of containers and I heard a great trick about actually making a peanut sauce. 

Mollie Zoldan  16:14  
What do you think is special about Kaatscast?

Brett Barry  16:18  
This podcast in particular focuses on the unique history and culture of the area, which I don't think anyone else is really doing. I also spend a lot of time on the audio quality. So, that's really important to me as someone who went to school for that and does it professionally. I think that poor audio quality can take you out of a story pretty quickly, so I'm very, very careful about recording at a higher level and also getting out in the field and recording as much as possible. So, I try to stay away from phone and zoom interviews and be there with the person that we're profiling or the location that we're talking about and I think that makes a big difference, too. It brings the listener with us to that experience.

Mollie Zoldan  17:04  
What's one thing that you wish listeners knew about the production side of Kaatscast?

Brett Barry  17:09  
The show comes out once every two weeks, but there's a process that leads to that [obviously]. So, there's work that happens all the time. The pre-production is really important: who are you going to speak to where we meet, the questions that we have to come up with, what types of mics we want to bring out in the field with us depending on where we're going, then taking that recorded material and boiling it down to a show to give an approximation of that experience for someone who's listening, which is much different. So, you want to kind of boil it down to the essentials; and so, that's always a process and, you know, just getting it up into a ... into a format that people can enjoy including a transcript for every show. So, if listeners don't know about that, every show has a companion transcript. So, you can also read along and search. So, the Kaatscast.com site, you can search specifically for a word that may have appeared just once in a podcast and will come up.

Mollie Zoldan  18:04  
Well, editing is not for the faint of heart.

Brett Barry  18:06  
Yeah.

Mollie Zoldan  18:06  
And you have a very like ... open, welcoming, accessible podcast.

Brett Barry  18:12  
Thanks, Mollie.

Mollie Zoldan  18:13  
You're welcome.

Brett Barry  18:16  
And I think that people who have been profiled on Kaatscast do have some idea of what goes into it because I often get feedback right after the show comes out like ... WOW! That was a lot of work because they know what they said. And so, they know that there was a lot of editing that went into it to condense it into something that someone can listen to on one or two drives.

Mollie Zoldan  18:34  
How do you come up with ideas for episodes?

Brett Barry  18:36  
That's not a problem. I have an ongoing list. Sometimes I see something in the Mountain Eagle, which is a paper that we read religiously and has all kinds of great stuff centered in the Catskills. So, can I use the word 'steal'? We steal story ideas from other publications like the Mountain Eagle and ... word of mouth; people will give me ideas, suggestions ... and so, the list grows. I have an ongoing spreadsheet.

Mollie Zoldan  18:59  
I was going to say, "The listeners wish they could see the spreadsheet."

Brett Barry  19:02  
Yeah, it's a ... it's a big one.

Mollie Zoldan  19:03  
How have you grown by making Kaatscast, not only as a producer, engineer, but also as a storyteller?

Brett Barry  19:09  
I think I'm always learning and that's the beauty of this career is that audio production is a practice and you learn something new on every production.

Mollie Zoldan  19:19  
Yeah, I can imagine that doing different kinds of work not only on Kaatscast, but with Silver Hollow and being a professor and whatever else you do also adds to that.

Brett Barry  19:27  
That helps a lot, too. Because students have questions that I've never confronted because of the specific type of work that they're engaged in, so it forces me to learn even more.

Mollie Zoldan  19:37  
What's one way you see the Catskills differently after working on Kaatscast for a couple of years?

Brett Barry  19:41  
I think pinning down what the Catskills is ... is one part of it. The Catskills to me is where I live. I mean Shandaken calls itself "The Heart of the Catskills." There's whole regions I haven't even really touched yet. So, I have a map in the studio with pushpins and every time I do a production we put a pin in. And so, that gives me a sense of where I might need to go next just to kind of fill out that geography. So, that's something I'm ... I'm continually striving to make sure that we recovering everywhere.

Mollie Zoldan  20:14  
How did you come up with the idea for the name "Kaatscast"? Were you workshopping any other ideas?

Brett Barry  20:19  
I wish I could remember, but I did think it was neat to incorporate the old Dutch spelling: "KAATS" [K-A-A-T-S], which comes from the wildcats that roam the mountains and roamed them a lot more back in the day and "CAST" [podcast, not very original there]. Sometimes I wish I hadn't named it Kaatscast because nobody can remember what it's called, even people who listened to it. Say, "Oh, do you have a new Kaaterscast coming out or a new Kaatcast or it doesn't roll off the tongue and the spelling complicates things even more." So, not too long into this whole thing. I added the subtitle "The Catskills Podcast," so that people could at least ask their smart speaker to play it.

Mollie Zoldan  21:04  
I also think. Is it the third episode that's about the etymology of Kaatscast?

Brett Barry  21:08  
Yeah, I think it's ... let me take a look at my ... at my spreadsheet here. It's ... it's episode two. Episode two is called "The 'Kaat'skills," in quotation marks including the Dutch history and Kaaterskill Falls, which is also spelled that way and that's with Cyndi LaPierre, who is with the Mountain Top Historical Association in Haines Falls, actually.

Mollie Zoldan  21:32  
Is there anything you'd like to expand on or prove about Kaatscast?

Brett Barry  21:36  
Maybe someday, we'll do more of them. Right now, we're at a once every two week schedule, you know, maybe down the road. If we had more resources and staff, we could ... we could go to a once a week format. I think that there's plenty of ideas to support that and I think that nothing specific, but I'm always interested in playing around with the format. So, I'd be interested in trying new ideas [format-wise]. The show focuses a lot on history, culture, arts, sustainability. Looking at the body of work we've done I think that we could definitely get some more history in there. So, I'd like to do some more history episodes and also just connecting with natives [Catskill natives]. As I said before, there's natives and there's locals and natives are the people who were born and raised in the Catskills and I think that they have some really interesting stories.

Mollie Zoldan  22:29  
For sure. I think that segues really nicely into the next question I have for you which is ... have you made up any words while creating Kaatscast?

Brett Barry  22:37  
Yeah, Kaatscast.

Mollie Zoldan  22:39  
Yes.

Brett Barry  22:40  
And I don't know if I've made up these words, but sometimes I use the word "Catskiller."

Mollie Zoldan  22:45  
I'm gonna give you credit for that.

Brett Barry  22:46  
Yeah, thank you and Catskillian because what do you ... what do you call someone who is a Catskills native?

Mollie Zoldan  22:52  
What was it like to start your podcast just a few months before the pandemic hit? How did it change? How you produced episodes?

Brett Barry  22:57  
As I said before, the first few episodes were already in the can [things that I'd produced in the past] for the most part, some ... some of those knew, and then at the height of the pandemic, we were unfortunately doing phone or Zoom interviews. So, the audio quality is not as present as I would like, and then [eventually] we were able to get back in person and some of those interviews we did during the pandemic were in person just outdoors with really long boompole with a microphone at the end of it.

Mollie Zoldan  23:26  
Yeah, I can also imagine that those phone and video interviews are of the time like most podcasts in circa 2020, where you can hear the audio quality difference and like sometime around 2021-2022. Audio quality changes again. What are you looking ahead to? Are there any special episodes coming up with Kaatscast? Any other projects outside of Kaatscast that are coming up?

Brett Barry  23:49  
Well, let's take a look. Mollie. We have a great episode coming up probably closer to the holiday season with Cheyenne Mallo Pottery. They make amazing pottery [out of Olive, New York] that's incorporates topographic maps in the pottery ... did an interview at the D&H Canal, so that's going to be coming up relatively soon. I'm looking forward to another one that we are doing. You and I [Mollie] at the West Kill Brewery?

Mollie Zoldan  24:20  
Yeah.

Brett Barry  24:20  
One of my favorite places and favorite beers, so we'll be recording that soon. We have one coming out on the Borscht Belt, which is many people who think Catskills think Borscht Belt. There is another podcast that does nothing but Borscht Belt, so we're going to speak to that podcast host. My friend [Russ] is always threatening to take me on a hike to introduce me to the rattlesnakes of the Catskills. I haven't had the courage to do that yet, but we will. Going back to that long boompole. I'm happy to get some rattlesnake sounds ...

Mollie Zoldan  24:51  
Yeah.

Brett Barry  24:51  
... from a distance.

Mollie Zoldan  24:52  
Yeah. Well, this is a special interview because not only do you get to hear more of your voice, but you just got a bunch of sneak peeks about what's coming up.

Brett Barry  25:01  
Yeah, now you can hold us to it.

Mollie Zoldan  25:03  
Is there anything else you want to add anything I didn't ask you that you'd like to talk about ... tell your listeners?

Brett Barry  25:08  
Thanks for listening. Watching that listenership grow is really gratifying, it shows that people are enjoying it and that they're telling their friends about it. So, that's great. You know, I've always been someone who's enjoyed telling a story through a format like this; not as much in person. I like scripts and I like audio devices including music, which really, I think, helps kind of amplify the emotion of any ... anything we're going after in any of these episodes. And so, that process is something I really love and love sharing. And so, when I get feedback on the show, that's really nice because I don't often hear back from the audience and when they decide that they want to hit the "Reply" button on our newsletter. It's always nice to hear from them and see what's resonating.

Mollie Zoldan  25:57  
Yeah, to create a little community out of your listeners.

Brett Barry  26:00  
Yeah.

Mollie Zoldan  26:00  
It's really nice.

Brett Barry  26:01  
If you go to kaatscast.com, there are ways to get in touch. And so, I hope you will. There's a contact form. You can email anytime and there's also this little button that has a microphone on it and people don't use it, but I think that they should. You can click that little button and leave a voicemail from your computer [a couple of times people have done that] and they've made it onto the show.

Female Listener  26:22  
We love your commitment to the community and keep working forward.

Male Listener  26:27  
Thanks!

Brett Barry  26:28  
Listener feedback is always appreciated and might make it onto a future episode and always open to ideas, so if someone out there has an amazing idea that we haven't covered yet, let us know.

Mollie Zoldan  26:39  
That's great. Thanks so much for letting me chat with you today and letting your listeners get to know you a bit better.

Brett Barry  26:44  
Thanks, Mollie.

Mollie Zoldan  26:45  
Yeah.

Brett Barry  26:45  
Let's turn the table just for a moment.

Mollie Zoldan  26:47  
Sure.

Brett Barry  26:48  
What have you learned or are enjoying so far in this internship, which is just recently begun?

Mollie Zoldan  26:54  
Yeah, well, we're in the third week of classes. So, my third week of this internship, I'd like to listen to all the episodes before the semester is over, I think, and do it. I'm a gracious listener and I'm really honing my skills editing. You have me read the sponsorships from the last episode and that was some really good practice doing some voiceover work. I'm really looking to get my voice out there on radio and audio in general and really just bridging my understanding between a lot of different topics that I've learned in your classes and through other internships and my own work on WFNP [the radio station] here at New Paltz. Yeah, I'm having a good time.

Brett Barry  27:34  
Great!

Mollie Zoldan  27:35  
Yeah.

Brett Barry  27:35  
Yeah.

Mollie Zoldan  27:36  
You let me pitch a couple ideas and to go through that process of like thinking about how it might be feasible and working through it and ...

Brett Barry  27:43  
Yeah, I enjoy actually letting some of those fresh ideas flow in and you've had quite a few of them. So, that's great and if you want to listen to all of the episodes before this internship is over, I just did a quick calculation. That's 46.6 hours.

Mollie Zoldan  27:58  
That's lightwork.

Brett Barry  27:59  
Okay.

Mollie Zoldan  28:00  
I think I'm on like in the mid-eighties now. I'm going from recent ...

Brett Barry  28:04  
Wow, great. Okay, so you got 80 to go.

Mollie Zoldan  28:07  
Yeah.

Brett Barry  28:07  
Let's check back when you finished and tell me what your favorites are and why so we can replicate that ...

Mollie Zoldan  28:12  
Yeah, we can do an exit interview for the internship.

Brett Barry  28:17  
In preparing for this 100th episode, Mollie and I threw quite a few ideas back and forth like what about 100 interesting facts about Kaatscast and while I could probably come up with 100 facts about the show, we try our best not to bore the listening audience. So, here are Mollie ...

Mollie Zoldan  28:37  
10 fast facts about Kaatscast: 67.1% of you listen on Apple Podcasts.

Brett Barry  28:43  
17.3% listen on Spotify.

Mollie Zoldan  28:46  
6% of you listen from my hometown [Brooklyn, New York].

Brett Barry  28:49  
And we have at least one listener in the Netherlands. Could it be our Dutch spelling of 'cats'?

Mollie Zoldan  28:54  
Brett's favorite field mic is an Electro-Voice RE50.

Brett Barry  28:58  
But I also use a Sennheiser MKE 600, couple of Rode lavs ... oh, and an AKG hypercardioid ...

Mollie Zoldan  29:05  
Alrighty, enough of that.

Brett Barry  29:07  
Too technical?

Mollie Zoldan  29:07  
Yes.

Brett Barry  29:08  
We field record [32-bit float at a sample rate of 48kHz].

Mollie Zoldan  29:14  
Brett's production coffee of choice as featured in episode 29 ... Dean's Beans Ring of Fire [music starts].

Brett Barry  29:21  
Mollie ... we don't have the licensing budget for that. Every episode is carefully transcribed by Jerome "J.K." Kazlauskas. Thanks, J.K.

Mollie Zoldan  29:31  
Kaatscast gets support from listeners like you and who sponsors local to the Catskills.

Brett Barry  29:36  
And that's a great segue, Mollie. Here's a word from two of this week's sponsors, and then stay tuned for Kaatscast's top 10 most listened to episodes.

Mollie Zoldan  29:47  
Kaatscast is sponsored by Hanford Mills Museum. Explore the power of the past as you watch the waterwheel bring their working sawmill to life. Bring a picnic to enjoy by the millpond. For more information about scheduling a tour or their new exploration days, visit hanfordmills.org or call 607-278-5744. Support also comes from Briars & Brambles Books. The go to independent book and gift store in the Catskills, located in Windham, New York, right next to the pharmacy, just steps away from the Windham Path. Open daily. For more information, visit briarsandbramblesbooks.com or call 518-750-8599.

Brett Barry  30:29  
With 100 episodes under our belt, it's now time to reveal the top 10 most listened to shows starting with number 10: "CRISP on the Front Lines: Invasive Species Emerging in the Catskills."

Mollie Zoldan  30:45  
Number 9: "Billy's Make & Mend: Vintage Sewing Machines."

Brett Barry  30:49  
Number 8: "Leaving No Trace: Outdoor Ethics with Moe Lemire."

Mollie Zoldan  30:53  
Number 7: "Mountain Cloves Scenic Byway - Palenville to Hunter."

Brett Barry  30:57  
Number 6: "Cidiot: The (Other) Best Regional Podcast."

Mollie Zoldan  31:02  
Number 5: "The CAG Report: A Blueprint for Catskills Crowds."

Brett Barry  31:06  
Number 4: "Fall in the Catskills and Thoreau's 'Autumnal Tints.'"

Mollie Zoldan  31:11  
Number 3: "Black Bears Sharing Space."

Brett Barry  31:14  
Number 2: "The 'Kaat'skills, The Dutch, and Kaaterskill Falls," and drumroll please.

Mollie Zoldan  31:23  
Our number one most listened to story ... "Overlook's Spirit Stones: Investigating the Indigenous."

Brett Barry  31:30  
Listen to them all at kaatscast.com or wherever you get your podcasts. We'd love to hear about your favorite episodes and the types of stories you'd like to hear more of. In fact, there's a survey link in the show notes and we're hoping you'll take a few minutes to share your thoughts with us. Include a mailing address and we'll send a Kaatscast sticker as a token of our thanks. You'll find that link and others in today's show notes. Please subscribe, tell your friends about us, and sign up for our newsletter. We have at least another 100 stories on our list and we wouldn't want you to miss them. Oh, and find us on Instagram @kaatscast. Kaatscast: The Catskills Podcast is a production of Silver Hollow Audio. Special thanks to our production intern [Mollie Zoldan], transcriptionist [J.K. Kazlauskas], and long-time audience test listener and feedback giver [Rebecca Rego Barry]. I'm your host, Brett Barry. Thanks for listening and we hope you'll join us in two weeks for episode 101.