In this episode, we take a refreshing break from our usual education-focused conversations to talk health, wellness, and community impact with Anna Studer, owner of The Lovely Lemon in Casper, Wyoming. Anna shares how her personal journey with juicing, motherhood, and health led her from school counseling into entrepreneurship, and how Casper helped turn her passion into a thriving local business.

We talk about the benefits of cold-pressed juice, the difference between juice and smoothies, the realities of building a small business, and how Anna is creating community through her Lunch and Learn events. Along the way, the conversation also explores career transitions out of education, the value of transferable skills, and what it means to keep educating others in a new way.

Plus, Derek shares details about his upcoming Love and Logic parenting class, designed to help parents bring more calm, connection, and confidence into family life.

Show Notes

In this episode:

• Anna Studer shares the story behind The Lovely Lemon

• Why cold-pressed juice is different

• Health, nutrition, and community in Casper

• Leaving education and building something new

• The Lovely Lemon’s Lunch and Learn events

• Derek’s upcoming Love and Logic parenting class

Love and Logic Parenting Class Registration:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf5CiVftB5c6TfGMo0tqmStuKMsuUNEbz-ljordfFxKTn8-aQ/viewform

With school closures stirring anxiety for parents across Natrona County, the conversation turns to one big question: what other options are there? In this episode, the hosts sit down with Joe Feiler—a 35-year education veteran, former CTE teacher, and current member of the Wyoming Charter School Authorization Board—to break down what charter schools actually are in Wyoming (and what they’re not).

Joe walks through Wyoming’s charter-school history, the two pathways to launch a charter (district-authorized vs. state-authorized), and how funding, enrollment, special education services, and statewide accountability work. The group also tackles common misconceptions—like “charters are private schools”—and discusses why families are increasingly drawn to theme-based models like classical education.

The conversation then expands into what could come next: CTE and trades-focused charter schools, stronger partnerships with industry, and how Wyoming might better connect academic learning to real-world skills—without abandoning core standards. If you’re a parent, educator, or community member wondering what school choice could look like after closures, this episode is a practical starting point.

Cody Sullivan returns and the conversation goes from light jokes to big questions fast. The crew debates whether AI is “smarter” than humans, why our brains run on about 12 watts while AI gulps city-sized power, and what happens when automation doesn’t just replace jobs—but replaces purpose. From robot caregivers (Jetsons) and sci-fi warnings (Westworld, Ex Machina, Subservience) to real-world concerns like farming, education adapting to AI, and AI-powered cyberattacks, the discussion keeps circling back to one core tension: we’re building powerful tools faster than we can agree on the morals guiding them.

They close by unpacking the “positive reinforcement” issue—when AI mirrors your assumptions so well that truth, wisdom, and virtue matter more than ever, especially for raising kids in a world where the tool is everywhere.

The hosts shift into the wellness space with special guest Dr. Isaac Castellanos, a chiropractor and former Fleet Marine Force Corpsman whose path into healthcare began in high school volunteering in the ER and running emergency calls with a California fire department. Isaac shares how years in emergency medicine, deployments, and repeated exposure to seriously ill and injured children shaped his focus on pediatric and perinatal care and, ultimately, pushed him to look beyond “protocol-only” treatment.

A pivotal part of his story involves his sister’s long struggle with chronic illness, misdiagnosis, and dismissal inside the conventional medical system—until she was finally tested and treated for Lyme disease. That experience, along with watching providers get penalized for practicing outside narrow guidelines, led Isaac toward chiropractic and a more investigative, whole-person approach.

The conversation explores the difference between emergency care and long-term healing using Isaac’s “firefighter vs. carpenter” analogy: medicine is critical for putting out the fire, but real recovery requires rebuilding the house. From nervous system regulation and individualized adjustments to advanced lab work (hormones, stool testing, inflammation, toxins), the group discusses why supplement quality matters, why many health plans fail due to incomplete testing, and how lifestyle, stress, and environment drive outcomes in areas like energy, digestion, and fertility. Isaac also shares how people can find him locally through The Wellness Way Casper and why he believes a doctor’s job is to teach—not just prescribe.

In this episode, the hosts sit down with Cross True—homeschooled K–12 and now planning to homeschool his own children—to unpack why more families are considering homeschooling and what it actually looks like day to day. The conversation avoids “anti-public school” framing and instead focuses on the real questions parents are asking: safety and peer environments, moral formation, family connection, and flexibility.

Cross shares what homeschooling looked like across a large family, from early play-and-learn rhythms to a more demanding high-school season built around Casper College dual-enrollment (BOCES), athletics, and higher-level coursework. The group digs into common misconceptions (academic rigor and “socialization”), argues that education always forms a worldview, and explores how incentives in large systems can drift away from student outcomes. They close by emphasizing responsibility and intentionality—whatever education model a family chooses—and the importance of staying connected to kids in a rapidly changing world.

In this episode of Unmuted, we’re joined by Rob Hill and Andy Elston for a candid conversation about Career & Technical Education (CTE) and the urgent workforce gap facing Wyoming.

Rob shares his path from the trades into teaching and workforce policy, and Andy explains how early hands-on experience turned into a career in engineering and building systems across the state. Together, we break down why Wyoming is facing an aging skilled workforce, why students often get blocked out of CTE pathways (capacity, scheduling, “level one bottlenecks”), and why “industry-ready” can’t just mean a couple of classes and a credential.

We also challenge some long-held assumptions in education: what “21st century jobs” really require, why competency-based learning matters, and why communities need stronger partnerships between schools, employers, colleges, and mentors. If Wyoming wants to stop exporting talent—and start building opportunity at home—this conversation is a blueprint.

Julie Jarvis returns with a boots-on-the-ground legislative update as Wyoming heads into session—and the stakes for public education are high. In this episode, the crew breaks down the Wyoming school funding “recalibration” bill and why Julie believes the current proposal could reshape classrooms across the state.

Julie explains recalibration in plain terms, then highlights key concerns educators should track: proposed class size changes, a potential reduction of hundreds of classroom teachers, and a major shift away from a block-grant model toward categorical funding—which could reduce local flexibility in how districts staff schools, support students, and use Title I resources. The conversation also digs into the bill’s language around teacher pay (base vs. average salary), the loss of longer-term funding stability, and how these changes could affect everything from staffing to services like counselors, nurses, and intervention supports.

From there, the discussion widens to the bigger budget picture: property tax, the use of the term “backfill,” and how Wyoming’s reserve and investment accounts tie into school funding and statewide services. Julie lays out why she believes the public narrative doesn’t match Wyoming’s education outcomes—and why she’s urging citizens to pay attention and get involved as decisions move quickly.

If you’re a teacher, parent, or taxpayer trying to understand what’s coming and why it matters, this episode is your roadmap to the debate—and what to watch next.

In this stripped-down, two-host check-in, Seth and Coebie pull listeners behind the scenes of their ongoing public records fight with Natrona County School District. They break down two key requests: who authored the Barnon and Woods school closure recommendation documents (and the broader facilities recommendation), and policies tied to class waitlists and student absences—and why the lack of clear authorship and delayed responses have become a major community trust issue.

Along the way, they connect the district’s “stall-and-stress” tactics to a familiar everyday experience: the exhausting runaround of dealing with a massive corporation that keeps billing you even after you’ve done everything right. The takeaway is simple: this process is designed to wear people down—but they’re not backing off. The episode closes with next steps (including the public records ombudsman route), an update for listeners, and a reminder to stay steady, document everything, and keep pushing for transparency.