MiniCast: When the Wild Speaks: The Night a Fox and a Crow Changed Everything

On a quiet sunset drive, I stumbled into a raw moment between a fox and a crow—two wild creatures locked in instinct and mystery. What began as an ordinary evening turned into a reflection on survival, intuition, and the strange ways nature mirrors our own chronic-illness battles.

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This podcast is narrated using an AI voice. The words, reflections, and lived experience are my own.

To respond to this episode, use the text link in the episode notes, or send longer messages through the contact form at tatebasildon.com. I’m not able to respond to solicitations, outside projects, or interview requests.

To support sarcoidosis research or learn more, please visit The Foundation For Sarcoidosis Research 

Getting an AICD: What the Surgery Felt Like From the Hospital Bed

Getting an AICD implanted is not just a procedure. It is the moment heart failure stops sounding like a diagnosis on paper and starts feeling real in your body. In this episode, I share what it was actually like to hear I needed an implantable defibrillator, wait in fear, go under the operating lights, feel the strange sensations no brochure mentions, and wake up with emergency hardware in my chest. This is not the polished hospital version. It is the patient version, the human version, for anyone facing an AICD implant and wanting the truth in plain language from someone who has lived it.

Send A Text To Tate

Support the show

This podcast is narrated using an AI voice. The words, reflections, and lived experience are my own.

To respond to this episode, use the text link in the episode notes, or send longer messages through the contact form at tatebasildon.com. I’m not able to respond to solicitations, outside projects, or interview requests.

To support sarcoidosis research or learn more, please visit The Foundation For Sarcoidosis Research 

The Day the Hospital Treated Me Like a Human Being

Hospital visits can start to feel like rehearsed disappointment when you live with sarcoidosis, heart failure, and the long, exhausting reality of chronic illness. I know that feeling well. So when I went to Westchester Medical Center for a right heart catheterization and was met with kindness, answers, eye contact, and actual respect, it caught me completely off guard. In this episode, I talk about why simple human decency can change the emotional weight of a procedure, why bad attitudes linger in the body, and why compassion in healthcare is not some deluxe extra. Sometimes good care is not only about what gets done. Sometimes it is about how you are treated while it happens.


Send A Text To Tate

Support the show

This podcast is narrated using an AI voice. The words, reflections, and lived experience are my own.

To respond to this episode, use the text link in the episode notes, or send longer messages through the contact form at tatebasildon.com. I’m not able to respond to solicitations, outside projects, or interview requests.

To support sarcoidosis research or learn more, please visit The Foundation For Sarcoidosis Research 

MiniCast: Stop Saying You’re Allergic to Bees (When You’re Really Just Terrified of Nature)

Ever wonder why everyone suddenly claims they’re “allergic to bees”? In this cheeky yet heartfelt take from a chef living with chronic illness, I explore what our bee phobia really says about fear, faith, and city folks who panic at pollen. Spoiler: the bees aren’t the problem.

Send A Text To Tate

Support the show

This podcast is narrated using an AI voice. The words, reflections, and lived experience are my own.

To respond to this episode, use the text link in the episode notes, or send longer messages through the contact form at tatebasildon.com. I’m not able to respond to solicitations, outside projects, or interview requests.

To support sarcoidosis research or learn more, please visit The Foundation For Sarcoidosis Research 

Why I Don’t Say I Suffer From Sarcoidosis

The words we use for chronic illness matter more than most people realize. In this episode, I reflect on a question my wife asked back in 2011, a question that changed the way I talk about sarcoidosis, heart failure, and illness itself. I share why I’ve never been comfortable saying I “suffer from” my diagnoses, and why that distinction became about more than language. It became about dignity, identity, and survival. Chronic illness is exhausting, frightening, and sometimes brutal, but the words we repeat to ourselves can shape how we carry it, and whether we let it become the whole story.

Send A Text To Tate

Support the show

This podcast is narrated using an AI voice. The words, reflections, and lived experience are my own.

To respond to this episode, use the text link in the episode notes, or send longer messages through the contact form at tatebasildon.com. I’m not able to respond to solicitations, outside projects, or interview requests.

To support sarcoidosis research or learn more, please visit The Foundation For Sarcoidosis Research