A number of seriously good Irish musicians were kind enough to allow me to use their music on Season 1 of Words To That Effect, including: Come On Live Long Robert John Ardiff The Jimmy Cake Overhead The Albatross 3epkano Nouveaunoise Philip Coleman (whose music is not on Spotify but read more…
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…
Episode 12: The Horrifically Complicated History of Zombies
The History of Zombies from Haiti to Hollywood Whether we like it or not, the zombies are coming for us all. Films, books, computer games, comics and TV shows. From historical and mythical zombies to claims to have proven the scientific truth behind zombification. From the gruesome, cannibalistic monsters of read more…
Words To That Effect now part of the Headstuff Podcast Network
Exciting news! Words To That Effect has joined the Headstuff Podcast Network. Here’s what they do, in their own words: HeadStuff.org is a collaborative hub for the creative and the curious. We all spend so much of our time clicking through reams of content and sometimes not reading anything of read more…
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…
Episode 10: From Robinson Crusoe to Survivor: The Robinsonade
Daniel Defoe’s classic novel, The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, is without doubt one of the most recognizable stories in our culture. It is a book which has had hundreds, if not thousands, of editions. It has been translated into over 100 languages, adapted for stage and read more…
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…
Episode 8: A Lawyer, an Author, and a Murderer – The Trial of William Edward Hickman
“The most horrible crime of the 1920s” The case of William Edward Hickman went to trial in Los Angeles in 1928. The accused was charged with the gruesome murder of a 12-year-old girl, and he faced the death penalty. The trial was reported all across the U.S. because it was read more…
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…
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…
Neurasthenia Advertisements [Article]
Hurrying and worrying in the struggle for success “Neurasthenia” was the term used in the 19th and early 20th century to classify a broad swathe of illnesses, from anxiety to depression, fatigue to trauma. It was widely used across the world, but particularly in the U.S. For more on how neurasthenia read more…
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…
Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom Novels [Article]
Barsoom and Mars Life on Mars Percival Lowell’s theory of Martian life and the famous canals of Mars influenced a huge number of science fiction writers. Whether one believed that the canals really were proof of life on the red planet, the theory certainly offered plenty of scope for fiction. read more…
Episode 5: Canals on Mars
Percival Lowell, Science Fiction, and the Canals on Mars (c) ESO / M. Kornmesser Artist’s impression of Mars about four billion years ago. For as long as humans have been looking at the night sky, the planet Mars has fascinated us. But while astronomers had charted the movements of read more…
Genrefication & Popular Literature [Article]
“Genrefication”? Did you just make that up? Episode 4 of Words To That Effect (listen here) explores the world of popular and literary fiction. One of the ideas that comes up is that of “genrefication”, the concept that the traditional boundaries between “literary” and “genre” (or popular) fiction are read more…