Words To That Effect: Episodes on 19th Century Literature

Words To That Effect Live at Liberty Hall - tw

December 31, 2018December 31, 2018 Conor19th Century Literature, American Literature, History, Literature and Science, Medicine

Ep 24: Words To That Effect Live at Liberty Hall

Words To That Effect is back! Episode 24 is a recording of September’s live show for the Dublin Podcast Festival. This episode is a story about a long-forgotten nervous disease. But it’s also a story of science and culture, psychology and mental health, feminism and creativity, war and masculinity. It’s read more…

Words To That Effect Ep 21 Invention of Victorian Time

June 18, 2018April 9, 2020 Conor19th Century Literature, British Literature, History, Victorian

Episode 21: The Invention of Time

Time in the Victorian Era Time, as we understand it today, was only really invented in the Victorian era. We take it for granted today that our phones and watches and other devices are accurate to the second. That time zones are clear and fixed – when it’s 3pm in read more…

May 7, 2018May 8, 2018 Conor19th Century Literature, 20th Century Literature, 21st Century Literature, Science Fiction, Utopia

Episode 18: What is utopia?

Utopian Literature & Utopian Journeys This is a story of three journeys, by three people, in three very different times. But each of the journeys ends in the same area in the west of Ireland. And each journey is founded on a search for a more perfect world, a search read more…

February 26, 2018February 26, 2018 Conor19th Century Literature, 20th Century Literature, British Literature, Detective Fiction, Victorian

Episode 15: The Scarlet Pimpernel & Baroness Orczy

The Scarlet Pimpernel The Scarlet Pimpernel is a character now long disconnected from his origins in a 1903 novel. The Pimpernel is a mysterious Englishman who uses elaborate disguises to heroically rescue French aristocrats from the guillotine during the French Revolution. Naming himself after a small red flower, the enigmatic read more…

January 5, 2018January 6, 2018 Conor19th Century Literature, 20th Century Literature, British Literature, Fantasy

Notes on a Selection of Fictional Countries [Article]

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to invent a new country. In the 18th and 19th centuries there were still places unknown to European society – “blank spaces on the earth”, as Marlow in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness once put it. New, unheard of countries were begging to be discovered, mapped, read more…

December 18, 2017January 25, 2018 Conor19th Century Literature, 20th Century Literature, Horror, Supernatural, Victorian

Episode 13: The Ghost Stories of MR James

Words To That Effect + Down Below The Reservoir This week’s episode, the end of Season 1, is a Christmas Special. It’s a collaboration with the disturbingly good horror podcast, Down Below The Reservoir. The result is an episode about the ghost stories of MR James, followed by an audio-drama read more…

November 13, 2017January 25, 2018 Conor19th Century Literature, Crime, Literature and Science, Medicine, Science, Victorian

Episode 11: Cesare Lombroso & The Born Criminal

Turin in the 19th Century The northern Italian city of Turin is quite distinctive as Italian cities go. It is still Italy, so of course it has its grand piazzas and ornate churches, and pasta and pizza and cappuccinos. But whereas in so many Italian cities it is read more…

October 16, 2017January 25, 2018 Conor19th Century Literature, British Literature, Popular Culture, Victorian

Episode 9: Imaginary Countries and the Ruritanian Romance

Imaginary Countries Writers make up imaginary countries all the time, and for a variety of reasons. It’s relatively straightforward to slip in a familiar-sounding name into a part of the world your reader or viewer may not be too familiar with. Livonia, Wallaria, Tazbekistan… They could be countries, right? But read more…

September 18, 2017January 25, 2018 Conor19th Century Literature, British Literature, History, Literature and Science, Science, Victorian

Episode 7: Overpopulation from Malthus to Manila

7 Billion People A baby girl was born in a hospital in the Philippines, on 30th October, 2011. However, unlike all the other children born that day, the arrival of Danica May Camacho was witnessed by a crowd of photographers and journalists. The world’s media were gathered in a read more…

September 17, 2017January 4, 2018 Conor19th Century Literature, 20th Century Literature, American Literature, History

Owen Wister and the Fictional American West [Article]

Travelling Out West Episode 6 of Words To That Effect (listen here) looked at some of the influences of neurasthenia, a nervous ailment that was ultimately as cultural as it was medical. For men living in large Eastern U.S. cities, one of the frequently advised cures for neurasthenia was a read more…

September 4, 2017January 25, 2018 Conor19th Century Literature, 20th Century Literature, American Literature, Medicine, Supernatural

Episode 6: Neurasthenia, Cowboys, and Feminists

Neurasthenia: The “National Disease of America” In 1881 an American neurologist named George Miller Beard published a hugely influential book: American Nervousness. In it, he laid out the symptoms, cures, and implications of what he called “neurasthenia”, essentially what one might call nervous exhaustion. Beard didn’t coin the term but read more…

July 20, 2017January 25, 2018 Conor19th Century Literature, 21st Century Literature, Irish Literature, Science Fiction

Episode 3: Irish Science Fiction

What is Irish Science Fiction? Ireland is not, it is fair to say, the first country that springs to mind when you think “science fiction”. When aliens land on Earth, we tend to assume they’ll land in New York, or London, or Tokyo. Definitely not Dublin or Cork. But then, read more…

July 17, 2017January 9, 2018 Conor19th Century Literature, 20th Century Literature, British Literature, Science Fiction

Lost World Literature [Article]

Filling in the Blank Spaces In Joseph Conrad’s famous 1899 novella Heart of Darkness the narrator, Marlow, notes that since his childhood the world has become increasingly mapped and explored : “At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly read more…

July 10, 2017January 25, 2018 Conor19th Century Literature, 20th Century Literature, British Literature, Science, Supernatural, Victorian

Episode 2: Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes, and Spiritualism

Sherlock Holmes is the most rational and scientific detective of them all. So why did his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, passionately believe in ghosts, fairies, and telepathy? Arthur Conan Doyle Arthur Conan Doyle is now best remembered as the creator of Sherlock Holmes. In fact, his creation has long taken read more…

July 6, 2017January 9, 2018 Conor19th Century Literature, Horror, Irish Literature, Supernatural, Victorian, World War I

Dracula and Invasion Fiction [Article]

Invasion Literature: Armies to Aliens to Vampires “This was the being I was helping to transfer to London, where, perhaps for centuries to come, he might, amongst its teeming millions, satiate his lust for blood, and create a new and ever widening circle of semi-demons to batten on the helpless” read more…