Podcasts – Storycatcher

Each month, Storycatcher brings you two podcasts:

short stories about
ordinary southern africans

longer stories about those
who go deeper and further

SIMPLE STORIES, SIMPLY TOLD

These are stories of ordinary people in Southern Africa – housewives and husbands, sons and daughters. The mavericks and musicians, sailors and scientists, cooks and conservationists. There are two podcasts each month: Potpourri, a collection of short stories. And Insplorations which are longer and feature those who are living big and asking the big questions.

I travel the subcontinent in my truck, my Kalahari dogs on the passenger seat, catching the strange, funny or sad stories suggested by my listeners. So my routes are not determined by game parks and scenic views but by Southern Africa’s creative, eccentric deep-thinking people of the heart.

Please help me find them.

Episode 7 – April 2025

Tales from the Waterberg

I set off in Lady Alexandra, my well-equipped truck, with my dogs Tina and Tarka, heading for the Waterberg, stories, and adventure.

Anyone vaguely familiar with the Waterberg will tell you there are two people of huge consequence associated with that beautiful place. Eugene Marais – poet, pioneering ethologist, morphine addict, polymath and tragic suicide. And Clive Walker – wildlife warrior, conservationist, artist, photographer game ranger and visionary.

Insplorations

Clive Walker

It was a hard choice to make- but I settled on Clive Walker. Take a look at this edition of Insplorations that probes Clive’s colourful past, the future of wildlife conservation, and the captivating mystique of the 1.8 billion year old Waterberg.

Potpourri

The Majestic Waterberg

Warwick Tarboton

[17:10]

Warwick Tardonton has known the Waterberg since boyhood. He now shares that lifretime of knowledge and captures beauty on camera.

Bronwyn Maree

[15:22]

Bronwyn Marre, ichthyologist and ornitholgist. Bronwyn has made over seventy trips to establish the impact of fishing on seabirds.

Riaan van Zyl

[11:55]

Riaan van Zyl dumped city life and the rat race for life in the Waterberg. He now runs small-mammal safaris

Tom Nevin

[12:19]

Tom Nevin, wanderer and vagabond, chasing the unknown on his iron horse.

Episode 6 – March 2025

Tales from Closer to Home

Truck trouble determined that I collect stories close to home this month. Well, no deprivation there, our most populous province, Gauteng, is simply bursting with amazing stories, like Rynhardt Erasmus, who takes the description ‘Horse Whisperer’ to another level. Vincent Carruthers brings us a story about Boer leader, Paul Kruger. And I bet it’s something about the old man you didn’t know! Then, not before time, I have a love story for you: that of Jane Fox and her famous writer husband, Lionel Abrahams. Their love affair was as unexpected as it was profound. And lastly, a story about our local Indian storekeeper, Aziz Varachia whose grandfather journeyed here in the mid 1850s from far, far away. The family has been an important contributor to life and business in the valley ever since.

Insplorations

Sipho Mabuse

Sipho Hotstix Mabuse is known as the Gentle Giant of Jazz. He started playing drums at 8 years old and was a professional musician at 15. Patricia takes him through memorable times in his life – both on and off the stage.

Potpourri

Closer to Home

Rynhardt Erasmus

Rynhardt combines brain science, intuition and many years of learning in the saddle to build relationships with his horses. The result is extraordinary closeness. So much so that he could be called a horse whisperer.

Aziz Varachia

Aziz runs a trading store in the Magaliesberg, as did his father and grandfather before him. He tells us the story of his family’s courageous journey to the valley 175 years ago and their contribution to farming and business here ever since.

Vincent Carruthers

This is the story of a little known – and very dark – aspect of Paul Kruger’s life. It’s brought to us by the brilliant teller of stories from our past, Vincent Carruthers.

Jane Fox

Brings us the poignant and moving story of her love affair with Lionel Erasmus, one of South Africa’s eminent men of letters. Their relationship was as unexpected as it was profound.

Episode 5 – February 2025

Tales from the Southern Kalahari

This month I journey to an old stamping ground of mine: the southern Kalahari. I haven’t been there for seven years and had forgotten how extremely hot the place is, how starkly beautiful and how resilient the people are who live there.

Insplorations

Nanette Flemming

Nanette Flemming has spent 25 years with the Khomani San in the southern Kalahari. She was there in the early days of their successful land claim and has seen the hope and cultural knowledge of that time in great danger of disappearing. She talks to us about the kind of precious experiences she had with the elders of the community who are all but dead. old and was a professional musician at 15. Patricia takes him through memorable times in his life – both on and off the stage.

Potpourri

Stories from the Kalahari

Willie Rossouw

At 75, Willie Rossouw has seen more floods and droughts than most in this hard, hard land. He’s been on the land for 50 years and tells me about the trials he’s faced and the decisions he’s made to keep his farm going for his children.

Johannes Tities

Johannes is renowned in the Andriesvale area for his ability to track and eliminate the predators which are the bane of the local sheep farmers’ lives. But this drought is so dire that he’s seen an alarming change in behaviour of a local mammal. You will simply not credit which one.

Paulina Kruiper

Paulina is diminutive even by San standards but she has giant ambitions and is well on her way to realising them. Born and raised in a grass hut on a sand dune she dreamt of being a chef in an upmarket hotel. She tells me about that unlikely ambition and how far she is in realising it.

Hans Knoetse

Hans Knoetse has a camel dairy. It’s a noisy, jostling and very amusing place. And it’s producing milk that is increasingly sought after by the health conscious and by people with autism.

Eleanor Knoetse

Started making camel milk soap in her kitchen. Many litres of her disastrous attempts to do so lie buried in the garden, but now she has a range of beautiful products that are flying off the shelves.

Episode 4 – January 2025

Stories from the Storycatcher’s Adventures

Insplorations

Carrie Hickman and Kyle-Mark Middleton

Carrie and Kyle-Mark are discovering fascinating – truly fascinating – things about ground hornbills.

Potpourri

This month features two stories from the Southern Kalahari: Dog of Dogs and Death in the Dunes.

Episode 3 – December 2024

Stories of Hoedspruit

This month’s Potpourri takes us to Hoedspruit, boom-town safari capital of South Africa.

Insplorations

Conraad de Rosner

The wildlife warrior, fighting rampant poaching in the game reserves of Limpopo with his tracker dog Landa.

Potpourri

Stories from Hoedspruit

Llewell Viljoen

Llewell Viljoen’s childhood was deeply unhappy – but in ways that are most unusual. Hers is a story of great forbearance and triumph.

Gerry Macdonald

Chopper pilot, game capture expert, legendary anti-poaching hero and rhino saviour.

Collet Ngobeni

A sergeant in the crack all-female anti-poaching unit the Black Mambas, who patrol 20 000 wild hectares of the Greater Kruger Park.

Brent Abrahamse

A photographer who sees beauty in all women, coaxes it into being, and translates it into sensuous images.

Episode 2 – November 2024

Stories of the Magaliesberg

Insplorations

Vincent Carruthers

Vincent Carruthers has spent decades researching the Magaliesberg so he knows many of its secrets and stories. He brings us some from the renowned caves of the region and their even more renowned paleoanthropological treasures.

Dr Keneiloe Molopyane

Dr Keneiloe Molopyane was chosen as a team member for the homo naledi excavation, a dangerous and thrilling enterprise to bring thousands of intriguing fossils out of the dark chamber where they’d lain for 300 000 years.

Potpourri

Stories of the Magaliesberg

Louis Steyn

The Haunted House at Windy Pines.

Jenny Gillies

Jenny Gillies was on a Sunday walk with her friends when she heard a strange squeak under a bush. It was a squeak that changed her life.

Johnson Masinga

Johnson Masinga is the best-read pump attendant you’ll meet. Probably the most cheerful too!

Rob Milne

Rob Milne, collector of the Magaliesburg’s stories, big or small.

Vicky Brooker

Vicky Brooker works with elephants and loves big cats, like Mica the cheetah, and she’s done so for over four decades.

Episode 1 – October 2024

This month we feature stories from the sea. There are two encounters with sharks (of a very different nature); a conversation with an old fisherman; and two tales of remarkable coincidence.

Stories of the Deep Blue Sea

Insplorations

Craig Foster

Son of the sea and director of the Oscar Winning documentary “My Octopus Teacher”.

We spoke about everything but octopuses and he gave more examples of his curious interactions with the creatures of the deep.

Potpourri

Stories of the Deep Blue Sea

Bernie Shelly

Bernie Shelly is 77 years old and has been surfing for over sixty years, so it was only a question of time before she encountered one of the ocean’s apex predators.

Rob Caskie 1

Rob is an accomplished speaker who specializes in the great days of Arctic and Antarctic exploration. This is a tale from those long-gone days that is as inexplicable as it is remarkable.