The forest is a place we have very mixed feelings about. Forests can be calm and peaceful, full of ancient and natural beauty. Until they’re not. The forest, in so many ways, is a place we fear. They are dark and dense and overgrown, all too easy to get lost read more…
Ep 51: Desert Fictions
How do we imagine and portray the desert? And what does it say about us and our relationship to each other and, crucially, to the planet we live on? In this, the second in a loosely connected series on places in fiction and popular culture, I chat to Dr Aidan read more…
Ep 50: Arsène Lupin
In 1905 in Paris, the publisher Pierre Laffite had an idea. His new journal Je Sais Tout (I Know Everything) had just launched and he was looking for an author who could do for his magazine, what Arthur Conan Doyle’s phenomenally popular Sherlock Holmes had done for The Strand magazine, read more…
Ep 49: Robots
You will work! You will build for us! You will serve us! Robots of the world, the power of man has fallen. A new world has arisen, the rule of the Robots, March! R.U.R., Karel Čapek These are lines from Karel Čapek’s 1920 play R.U.R: Rossum’s Universal Robots, the work read more…
A little announcement about supporting Words To That Effect
A quick update episode on the new HeadStuff+ membership platform, HeadStuff+ Have a listen to find out more about what’s on it and how you can join (although the joining bit is very straightforward – just click here) I’m really excited to be a part of this and I hope read more…
WTTE is now a part of HeadStuff+
Something exciting has been going on over at the HeadStuff Podcast Network! This week saw the launch of HeadStuff+, a new membership platform for all HeadStuff shows. Words To That Effect, as I’m sure you know, has been a proud member of the HPN since way back in 2017 and read more…
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 45: Mashups, Remixes, and Frankenfiction
Remix, mashup, sample, adaptation, parody, homage, knock-off. The lines between these, and so many other similar terms, are not always very clear. In one sense, all culture is a remix, nothing exists in a vacuum. On the other hand, some people may take a dim view of lifting almost the read more…
WTTE Season 5 Trailer
Words To That Effect is back! Season 5 officially launches next Tuesday, 10th November. The world may be a very different place since the end of season 4, but there’s plenty in store this season to distract, entertain, and enlighten you. In the meantime, here’s a trailer to give you read more…
Season 5: Coming Very Soon!
It’s been a while. It was not my intention to have such a long season gap, but then nor was it my intention, when I made an episode about apocalyptic fiction, that I would soon get the opportunity to experience my very own global pandemic. So there you have it. read more…
Ep 44: Words Dunnit (Live at the Dublin Podcast Festival)
Last year Caroline Crampton (of Shedunnit) and I teamed up to create a joint live show, called Words Dunnit: a 200-year history of detective fiction in an hour. We performed the show live at the Dublin Podcast Festival in November 2019, and then again at Pod UK, in Birmingham, in 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 42: The Missing Link
The Hunt for the Missing Link Sasquatch. Bigfoot. The Abominable Snowman. Yeti. The Yowie, the Yeren, the Almas Ape-men, cave men, wild men. The Missing Link. The idea of the missing link came about in the mid-19th century, with the rise of Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. In 1859 Darwin read more…