There is a complex and fascinating relationship between humans and the ocean. How do people and cultures across the world know and understand the sea, whether through myths and legends, trade or fishing, exploration or entertainment? This episode explores one particular aspect of all this: our relationship with the undersea, read more…
20th Century Literature
Ep 48: Fictions of Antarctica
The continent of Antarctica was only discovered two centuries ago, even if it had long been theorized. It’s a place shrouded in mystery with no human history and no permanent residents. It’s a land of superlatives: the coldest, the windiest, the driest continent. It is a grand scientific experiment, a read more…
Ep 47: Alternate History
In one sense the alternate history tale is a very specific kind of story: a type of speculative fiction in which a certain, often key, moment of history has been changed. In another sense, though, alternate history has a much broader appeal. We are all curious, we all think about read more…
Ep 46: Weird Westerns
In a way it’s maybe strange that the western is such a prominent genre. Given it’s connected to such a specific time and place – the mid-to-late 19th century, American west – why are we all so familiar with the many tropes of the western? Cowboys and Indians, shootouts and read more…
Ep 43: Lost Books
There are countless great works of literature we have tantalising glimpses of, works we know exist but, as far as anyone can tell, have been lost to history. Huge swathes of ancient Greek literature, a vast Chinese encyclopedia, a lost Shakespeare play based on the story of Don Quixote. And read more…
Ep 40: Time Travel Tales
Time travel fiction is a small subgenre of science fiction. Science fiction is a small subset of all the many genres and types of literature. Time machines and time travellers are a niche interest. And yet, in another way, all fiction is time travel fiction. All stories rely on time read more…
Ep 39: Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Rice Burroughs is no longer a familiar name. Like many other authors, the fame of his greatest creation, in his case Tarzan, has long eclipsed his own. But Burroughs was far more than the creator of Tarzan. He was an early pioneer of science fiction, a master of the read more…
Ep 34: The Art of the Short Story
There are the celebrated authors: Checkov, Joyce, Mansfield, Munro. There are the big questions: “what makes a truly great short story?”. “Where does the form originate?” “What can short stories do that other forms of literature can’t?” But before any of this, there’s a question that’s not that easy to read more…
Ep 33: The Noun of Nouns (The Rise of Modern Fantasy Literature)
What is Fantasy Literature? What do you think of, when you think of the genre of fantasy? Whether it’s fiction, TV, cinema, games, are there certain elements you need to have for something to be considered fantasy? Well, you might say fantasy is medieval, or at least set in a read more…
Ep32: Golden Age Detective Fiction
An English country estate. A detective pacing the room, explaining how they have solved the crime, revealing the solution to a puzzle and the clues which were there all along. It’s so easy to parody this scene because it’s so familiar. It’s Reverend Green in the drawing room with the read more…
Ep28: Pulp Fiction (Amazing Stories of the Sisters of Tomorrow)
If you want to understand how we ended up with anything from Star Wars to Star Trek, Superman to Batman, intergalactic travel to microscopic worlds, profound meditations on the nature of being human to thrilling tales about Martian princesses, you have to look at pulp fiction magazines. Argosy, Blue Book, read more…
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…
Episode 17: The 10% Brain Myth, from Self-Help to Pulp Fiction to Hollywood
Do we use only 10% of our brain capacity? (Hint: No) “It is estimated that most human beings only use 10% of the brain’s capacity. Imagine if we could access more of our cerebral capacity?” This is the central question of the 2014 Scarlett Johannson film, Lucy. And it is read more…
Episode 16: Transhumanism, Fiction, and Immortality
Technology, the future, and transhumanism This is an episode about who we are as humans. And, more importantly, where we are going. About a future in which technology and biology have merged in ways that are in equal part fascinating and terrifying. A future of unparalleled technological ingenuity, but one read more…
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…