Season One (Preview)
Welcome to Words To That Effect. A preview and and introduction.
Ep1: Invasion Fiction, William Le Queux, and Fake News
Who was the mysterious William LeQueux? Can a group of authors save the world?
Ep2: Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes, and Spiritualism
Why did the creator of Sherlock Holmes fervently believe in ghosts and fairies?
Ep3: Irish Science Fiction
Ireland is not necessarily the first country that springs to mind when you think “science fiction”. Think again.
Ep4: Popular Literature
Is there really such a thing as “Literature” (with a capital “L”)?
Ep5: Canals on Mars
For as long as humans have been looking at the night sky, the planet Mars has fascinated us. But in 1877 everything changed.
Ep6: Neurasthenia, Cowboys, and Feminism
Neurasthenia: "The National Disease of America"
Ep7: Overpopulation from Malthus to Manila
On 30th October 2011, in the Philippines, A baby girl was born. She was the seven billionth person on earth.
Ep8: A Lawyer, an Author, and a Murderer
The "most horrible crime of the 1920s" brings together a troubled murderer, an inquisitive lawyer, and a world famous author of popular fiction.
Ep9: Imaginary Countries and the Ruritanian Romance
Livonia, Wallaria, Tazbekistan… Writers make up countries all the time. But Ruritania is different.
Ep10: From Robinson Crusoe to Survivor: The Robinsonade
Daniel Defoe’s novel has left a lasting, powerful, complicated, and often dangerous myth in the popular imagination.
Ep11: Cesare Lombroso and The Born Criminal
Cesare Lombroso: the Father of Criminology. His ideas were groundbreaking, controversial, and spectacularly wrong.
Ep12: The Horrifically Complicated History of Zombies
Films, books, games, comics, flash mobs, cocktails, and corporations. Whether we like it or not, the zombies are coming for us all.
Ep13: The Ghost Stories of M.R. James
MR James' tales are, in so many ways, what we think of when we think of the Victorian ghost story: dusty manuscripts, creaking old houses or libraries, menacing ghostly apparitions.
Season Two (Preview)
A preview of what's to come on Season Two
Ep14: Weird Fiction and H.P. Lovecraft
H.P. Lovecraft’s writing is a unsettling world, a weird mythos, in which cosmic entities are terrifyingly revealed. And he has never been more influential.
Ep15: The Scarlet Pimpernel & Baroness Orczy
A Hungarian baroness who created the first masked superhero and became a pioneer of detective fiction.
Ep16: Transhumanism, Immortality, and Fiction
Can humans live forever? The transhumanist future is one in which technology and biology have merged in ways that are in equal part fascinating and terrifying.
Ep17: The 10% Brain Myth
The idea that we use only 10% of our brain capacity is surprisingly widespread. Where does it come from and what does it say about us?
Ep18: What is Utopia?
(Part 1 of 2) The story of three journeys, by three people, in three very different times, each ending in the west of Ireland. Three journeys founded on a search for utopia.
Ep19: Climate Change Fiction
(Part 2 of 2). From the history of utopia to the future of the planet. How can fiction save the world?
Ep20: Domestic Noir
Is our culture perversely preoccupied with the deaths and disappearances of young, pretty, white girls? And why are there so many novels with "girl" in the title?
Ep21: The Invention of Time
Time, as we understand it today, was only really invented in the Victorian era.
Ep22: Book Clubs
Politics, culture, education, commerce. There’s much more to the book club than wine and cheese.
Ep23: Adaptation
The book is always better than the film. Or so they say. But how exactly does a book become a film anyway?
Ep24: WTTE Live at Liberty Hall
WTTE live, as part of the Dublin Podcast Festival!
Season 3 (Preview)
What's to come on Season 3
Ep25:Dinosaurs
How do we get from Victorian gentlemen looking at strange fossils, to dinosaur pyjamas for kids?
Ep26: Unwrapping the Egyptian Mummy
In Victorian times you could go to a mummy unwrapping party. Our fascination with mummies has never waned since. But do we need to rethink our problematic engagement with the dead?
Ep27: Post-Apocalyptic Fiction
What happens after the end of the world? How do we write about it?
Ep28: Pulp Fiction
All pulp magazine science fiction was written by men and aimed at 12-year-old boys...right?
Ep29: Travels in Four-Dimensional Space
What would we find if we could access the 4th dimension?
Ep30: Steampunk I
A genre? A movement? A fashion? A lifestyle? Steampunk is many things to many people.
Ep31: Steampunk II
There's the steam. And the punk. The strange Victorian history and the unique fringe communities.
Ep32: Golden Age Detective Fiction
There's a murder, there are clues, there are rules. Or are there?
Ep33: Fantasy Literature
Understanding the pop culture behemoth that is modern fantasy.
Ep34: The Art of the Short Story
What can a short story do, that no other form of literature can?
Season 4 (Preview)
October 2019. Season 4.
Ep35: Jeykll & Hyde
There are many sides to the story of Jekyll & Hyde.
Ep36: Varney the Vampire
Public executions, penny bloods, and the most popular vampire of them all.
Ep37: The Golden Age of Piracy
Peg legs and eyepatches, pirate accents and the jolly roger. True stories and romanticized myths.
Ep38: Children's Picture Books
Unlike other forms of literature, EVERYONE has an opinion about children's books.
Ep39: Edgar Rice Burroughs
The man who created Tarzan....and so much more.
Ep40: Time Travel Tales
In a way, all fiction is time travel fiction.
Ep41: Romance Novels
Romance fiction gets a pretty bad rap.
Ep42: The Missing Link
The missing link and the origin of our species. And some great fiction.
Ep43: Lost Books
How do you bring a book back from the dead?
Ep44: Words Dunnit
A complete history of detective fiction....sort of. (Live show)
Season 5 Preview
What's to come on season 5...
Ep45: Mashups and Frankenfiction
Does Pride and Prejudice need more zombies? Is everything a remix?
Ep46: Weird Westerns
In a way, westerns have always been weird.
Ep47: Alternate History
What if....?
Ep48: Fictions of Antarctica
Gothic and horror to ecothrillers and more
Ep49: Robots
The robot uprising is coming. Or is it?
Ep50: Arsène Lupin
The literary origins of the gentleman thief
Ep51: Desert Fictions
Deserts in culture from the Bible to Nietzsche to Mad Max to Salvagepunk
Ep52: Gothic Forests
If the monsters lurking in the forest don't get you, the forest itself will...
Ep53: Food in Fiction
Some fava beans and a nice Chianti...
Ep54: Underwater Civilizations
Homo Aquaticus and life beneath the waves
Season 6 Preview
What's to come on Season 6...
Ep 55: A History of Dragons
From Beowulf to Tolkien and quite a lot in between.
Ep 56: Arthurian Romance
Camelot, Merlin, Excalibur, The Knights of the Round Table. A story that's a thousand years old.
Ep 57: The Sensation Novel
Scandal, blackmail, bigamy, fraud, murder. The literary sensation of the 1860s.
A Word To That Effect: Cliffhanger (Bonus Ep)
Victorian gentlemen hanging by a thread!
A Word To That Effect: Serendipity (Bonus Ep)
Gothic castles, lost camels, and a happy coincidence
Ep 58: The Origins of the Gothic
What does the word "gothic" mean to you?
Ep 59: Robin Hood
The most famous outlaw of them all...
Ep 60: Dungeons & Dragons
Roll a D20...