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The first wetland Laura Dedelow ever knew was a slough on her family’s property — pronounced “slew,” as she learned it — and understood mainly as the place just beyond the mushroom-hunting grounds. That memory introduces the theme of our 122nd episode: wetlands in all their variety, from bogs, swamps, floodplains, and mangroves to the creatures who call them home.

Lonalih of Hamburg opens the music with the title track from Wetlands, setting an atmospheric, introspective tone. Beneath Laura’s opening remarks, The Barles Bingus Bog Band of Sydney offers a gently comedic counterpoint with “For the Love of Peat,” from their self-titled debut. Their concept is a charming one: What would music sound like if bog creatures could play it? The answer, apparently, is jazz.

The episode’s ecological register deepens with Bosques Fragmentados of New Orleans, whose track “Dragonflies,” from Vanishing Animal, brings a nature-punk urgency to the subject of disappearing wetland species. Beneath Laura’s next segment, Leonardo Gabriel Garcia of Victoria, Entre Ríos, Argentina, provides an ambient bed of field recordings titled “Aire de Humedales” — drawn from original recordings made in the wetlands and islands of his home province, a sonic document of a landscape that may itself be disappearing.

The episode’s middle passage belongs to the red-winged blackbird — prompted, Laura explains, by news reports of Chicago’s red-winged blackbirds dive-bombing pedestrians during nesting season, and by her own memory of watching them vanish from Indiana during a summer drought, fearing the worst, and then rejoicing when the rains — and the birds — returned. A field recording by Lara Lynn Weaver of Bloomington, Indiana, captures a great wheeling flock of the birds overhead, brief and exhilarating. AGUN of Menifee, California, offers a sixteen-second spoken-word declaration of love for the species that is somehow entirely sufficient. Amelia Hogan of San Francisco gives the bird its most lyrical treatment with “Red-winged Blackbird,” from her album Taking Flight, in a Celtic idiom that suits the creature’s ancient, reedy habitat.

The Prophets of Zarquon of England deliver the title track from their album Floodplain, widening the lens from the personal to the geological. Mikey The Rad Scientist of Seattle contributes “Mangrove,” from Rockin’ Rockfish Noon Year’s Eve 22’, bringing the episode’s survey of wetland types to its coastal edge. And beneath Laura’s commentary, Pink Teddy Bear of New Orleans grooves along with “Motu: King of the Bayou,” a tribute to the resident alligator of the Tiki Farm in Pearlington, Mississippi — a place where food is grown for a New Orleans restaurant, and where Motu apparently holds court in the local pond with full sovereign authority.

Then the episode turns toward shadow and legend, as Laura insists that no survey of bogs and swamps would be complete without their folklore. Camellia Moon of Chicago conjures “Will o’ the Wisp,” those mysterious lights said to have led travelers astray across countless centuries of wetland mythology. Bog Bodies of Rotterdam perform the extraordinary spoken-word piece “bog body,” meditating on the ritual dead preserved in peat — apparently willing participants in sacrifice who now speak only through their remains. Charlotte of Los Angeles sings “Le loup-garou” in French, summoning the swamp werewolf of Louisiana Creole tradition. And Erutan of Charleston, South Carolina, returns us to the will o’ the wisp with a more ethereal, singer-songwriter treatment from her album Raindancer.

The episode closes with Medicine Horse of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and their track “Letiche” — a piece of Spiritual Doom Metal devoted to one of the strangest creatures in Louisiana legend: souls of unbaptized infants, or feral children raised by alligators, haunting the swamp with glowing eyes and overturning boats in the dark. Laura’s parting advice: don’t take your boat where your ma-mahn says not to.