A Gather of Gatherings

What do you call a group of hawks? A kettle. Rattlesnakes? A rhumba. Orangutans? A buffoonery.

Welcome to A Gather of Gatherings, a story-rich, curiosity-fueled podcast exploring the wild and whimsical world of collective nouns. Each episode begins with a single phrase—like a murder of crows—and unfolds into something much bigger: interviews with experts and artists, imagined conversations with historical voices and animals, immersive soundscapes, folklore, poetry, and plenty of animal facts along the way.

From language and literature to nature, culture, and the mysteries of meaning, this podcast is your invitation to wander where words take flight.

Hosted by Kellie Raines—a writer, artist, and lover of linguistic oddities—this show celebrates the poetic strangeness of how we gather, name, and know the world and each other.

Host

Kellie Raines

I’m Kellie Raines—a trained theatre actor, writer, director, and self-taught visual artist. I’ve built a career in public media, but at my core? I’m a storyteller.

Theatrical performance and storytelling are my first loves, and I bring that passion into every episode of A Gather of Gatherings—a nerdy, poetic, sound-rich podcast that uses collective nouns as a gateway into language, nature, history, and human curiosity and connection.

What’s your favorite collective noun? It’s hard to choose just one… but if you ask me? It’s a charm of hummingbirds.