Podcasts about dickensian

Two very different and almost identical travelers, David Abel and I. We both explore and breathe curiosity. David is demonstrably ambitious, I more demonstrably gestalt. His childhood Dickensian, mine bourgeois, yet each gave birth to a hunger for experience and a reasonably ambiguous approach to normal.Signposts in our conversation turned us toward learning we couldn't hold back our own tides, being told we were 'very average,' and the insight we each felt when we realized we couldn't remember the 'last time I had heard my footsteps.'Competition, grace, breathing, and the wonderful insight that the point of maximum fear is the point of minimum danger. Travel with us for a bit and put up your feet (then listen to your steps!)Never know what's going to show up when you click 'record'!

Did you know that before the tinsel and the Coca-Cola truck, Christmas in Britain was a time for... terror? In the penultimate episode of the year (wink wink), Meg and Clelia gathered around the fire to discuss the great British tradition of Ghost Stories for Christmas.Long before the Victorian era, the winter solstice was seen as a thin place—where the veil between the living and the dead was at its most fragile. But it was Charles Dickens who truly cemented the 'Christmas Ghost' into our DNA with his 1843 masterpiece, A Christmas Carol.From the chilling 1951 Alastair Sim version to the high-budget Hollywood spectacles, we've seen Scrooge redeemed a thousand times. But... there is one version that stands above them all. A version that captures the heart, the thrills, and the humour of the original text perfectly.Talking, of course, about the 1992 cinematic force majeure: The Muppet Christmas Carol! We're diving deep into why Michael Caine's straight-faced performance and a cast of felt characters created, in our very biased minds, the most authentic Dickensian adaptation.Join us as we explore the folklore behind the ghost stories tradition, discuss our favourite tales from the beyond, the fear… and the fuzzy felt!

We take a detour into the Dickensian in evaluating the state of the economy. First, the recent inflation print, which showed a significant decline in the level of price increases, was a fiction worthy of Dickens, with the majority of the data simply made up as a result of the government shutdown. Setting that aside, since 2021, wage growth has not kept pace with inflation for food, shelter, and services, though we can count our blessings that at least alcohol prices have not increased as much… Challenges face the Fed chair (both current and yet to come), and managing a deteriorating labor market and persistently higher prices presents a conundrum. The Fed is simply not getting what it wants at present in terms of rate cuts translating to a lower yield on the 10-year Treasury, and with deficits soaring in spite of a growing economy, some tough choices will have to be made. However, stocks have proven remarkably resilient, and predictions from most Wall Street firms argue for a continued move higher supported by AI, solid growth, fiscal stimulus from tax policy, and further rate cuts. However, the math is a little challenging; to cite one example: The S&P reaches over 7,700 by this time next year (around 13% above where we are now) Earnings grow around 9% (this seems achievable, and maybe even a little conservative) Multiples expand to 26x earnings (this would be at peak dot com levels) We think you might get this level of earnings growth (or better), but that multiple seems a little rambunctious. Even if we do get there, expect some market shenanigans on the way, as history shows mid-term election years tend to see large drawdowns; think back no further than 2022. The average midterm drawdown is around 18%, though the range is very wide. Will brings it home with a reading from a speech given by Scrooge's nephew Fred so we end on a positive note celebrating the season.  

Dominic takes three more Dickensian Christmas Readings from the archives:The Battle of Life, The Haunted Man And The Ghost's Bargain & The Holly-TreeRead by Rebecca Tanwen, Tom Andrews and Chris NayakHAPPY CHRISTMAS !!!These readings were first published separately in December 2023 Support the showIf you'd like to make a donation to support the costs of producing this series you can buy 'coffees' right here https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dominicgerrardThank you so much!Host: Dominic GerrardSeries Artwork: Léna GibertOriginal Music: Dominic GerrardThank you for listening!

Today we get to meet and know an author who is synonymous with Christmas - Charles Dickens - brought to life in this episode by his great-great grandson, Gerald Dickens. Yes, that's right - you're going to hear an interview with one of our greatest ever writers, who has been dead for over 150 years. Only on Rosebud.In this fascinating conversation, Dickens tells Gyles about his childhood, growing up in the towns and villages of the Thames estuary in Kent, and how his father's debts led him to be imprisoned in the Marshalsea. The young Charles suddenly found himself put to work, a formative experience which influenced much of his later writing. We hear about his marriage to Catherine Hogarth, and about his mistress, Ellen Ternan. We hear about the terrible Staplehurst train crash, about Charles Dickens's travels in the USA, and about his latter-day success as a performer. This is a fabulous way to immerse yourself in the story of our greatest novelist, at this most Dickensian time of the year.With thanks to Gerald Dickens. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dominic dips into the Christmas archives to bring you three Dickensian Christmas Readings from The Pickwick Papers, The Chimes & The Cricket on the Hearth ...Published here in one episode for the first time. Our cast of readers include Gina Beck, Carlyss Peer and Tom Bennett …HAPPY CHRISTMAS !!!These readings were originally published separately during the Christmas of 2023 Support the showIf you'd like to make a donation to support the costs of producing this series you can buy 'coffees' right here https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dominicgerrardThank you so much!Host: Dominic GerrardSeries Artwork: Léna GibertOriginal Music: Dominic GerrardThank you for listening!

Ho-Ho-Ho, wait till you hear about the gifts I'm giving to some of America's power elites for Christmas.To each of our Congress critters, I give my fondest wish that from now on they receive the exact same income, health care, and pensions that we average citizens get. If they receive only the American average, it might make them a bit more humble – and less cavalier about ignoring the needs of regular folks.To the stockings of GOP leaders who've so eagerly debased themselves to serve the madness of Donald Trump, I'm adding individual spritzer bottles of fragrances like “Essence of Integrity” and “Eau de Self-respect” to help cover up their stench. And in the stockings of Democratic congressional leaders, I'm giving “Spice of Viagra” and “Bouquet du Grassroots” to stiffen their spines and remind them of who they represent.For America's CEO's, my gift is a beautifully boxed, brand-new set of corporate ethics. It's called the golden rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Going to pollute someone's neighborhood? Then, you have to live there, too. Going to slash wages and benefits? Then, slash yours as well. Going to move your manufacturing to sweatshops in China? Then, put your office right inside the worst sweatshop. Executive life won't be as luxurious, but CEO's would glow with a new purity of spirit.To the Wall Street hedge-fund hucksters who've conglomerated, plundered, and degraded hundreds of America's newspapers, I'm sending copies of “Journalism for Dummies” and offered jobs for each of them in their stripped-down, Dickensian newsrooms. Good luck.And what better gift to the Trump family – Donald, Ivanka and Jared, Eric, Donnie Jr., and the whole nest of them – than to wish that they live with each other constantly and permanently. No, really, each of you deserve it.Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe

Miracle On Route 34: Part 3 Being naughty can be a very good thing, if he needs help getting jolly. Based on a post by BiscuitHammer, in 3 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories. "Just when I thought it couldn't get better;" Ginny sighed, lost in bliss. "You certainly know what a woman wants." "I aim to please." Santa said cheerfully, putting one arm around her waist and holding her close while he guided the sleigh. "Think we might've sated you for a while?" "Hmm, maybe for a bit, right?" she purred, stretching like a cat before sitting forward and looking down over the earth, lit by clusters of lights that punctuated the darkness of Christmas Eve. It wasn't long before she began to giggle. "Schilling for your thoughts." Santa said, giving her tit a squeeze. "Well, you probably don't remember, but we've met before," she mentioned lightly, turning her head to wink at him. "I sure remember it." "Oh? Do tell." "Well," she said casually, her thoughts drifting back. "I was sixteen and my girlfriends and I were at the mall. We saw you and decided to sit on your lap. So Cari and I were sitting on you at the same time, squirming our asses on you and kept whispering naughty things in your ears, things we wanted to do to you, you know?" Santa didn't respond for several moments. "See?" Ginny said, smirking. "Told you that you didn't remember." "What; was the date of that, Virginia?" he asked warily. "December fifteenth, eight years ago, about seven-thirty pm," she said. "I still have a photo. Why?" "Because I wasn't in your city on December fifteenth eight years ago," he said with reluctance. "I was in Lahina on Maui, judging a naked limbo contest at a luau." She was silent for some time. "You're; you're sure?" Santa nodded. "Oh, God;" Ginny whispered, her eyes distant. "That means that Cari and I were grinding on some creepy mall Santa; oh, shit, I could feel him getting hard and everything!" Ginny scrunched her face up in revulsion and was flapping her arms in horror. "Oh, God. Blah! Blah! Blah!" Santa's roaring laughter echoed through the darkness as his date for the evening struggled to not puke off the side of the sleigh and onto the unsuspecting town below. Silent Runnings. She always kind of assumed that the sleigh made little or no noise when it touched down on a roof. After all, what kept some survivalist gun nut from trying to blow Santa away with his collection of automatic rifles when he heard some noise he couldn't account for? The sleigh glided silently onto the roof, the blades letting out little more than a hiss and the patter of the reindeer's hooves barely audible. Santa leapt out lightly and assisted her in exiting the sleigh before grinning at her. "Now, I won't be long, just hang tight and stay near the sleigh, if you're within the Gellar Field, you'll keep warm, alright?" Ginny raised an eyebrow in his direction, nonplussed. "Um, 'excuse me? I'm here with Santa Fucking Claus on Christmas Motherfucking Eve. How many times can a girl say that? If you think for one second I'm not delivering presents with you, then you're even more stupid that Krampus. I'm coming." Santa seemed hesitant. "Virginia, I've been at this since Proto-Hittite times, one way or another. I'm kind of an expert and I don't want you to hurt;" "Oh, get real," she snorted, pushing past him toward the chimney. She was glad to note that the 'Gellar Field', whatever the hell that was, seemed to be keeping her warm at this distance. "If your fat ass can fit down a chimney with that huge bag, so can mine." She clambered over the lip of the chimney and eased herself down inside it. Santa watched silently as she wriggled out of sight. There was no noise for several seconds. Finally Ginny spoke, her voice coming up the flue. "Okay, kinda stuck here, with my nose pressed into my own asshole. Little help?" Santa chuckled lightly and reached for a can of grease. Piloting a Ginny. "You're getting better at this, I must say," Santa remarked as he rummaged through his bag of presents while Ginny guided the sleigh. "Last person who drove the sleigh for me, the reindeer resisted a lot. They like you." "Oh?" Ginny replied, twisting the reins slightly and veering the sleigh team southwest. "Who was she?" Santa cleared his throat. "Actually, it was Krampus. Well, he was Pete back then, and it was over six hundred years ago." It took Ginny a moment to recover from her shock and concentrate on guiding the sleigh. Fortunately, the reindeer seemed to know where they were going. "Six hundred;" "Yup," Santa confirmed. "The Belgian monks were still getting the recipe for Stella Artois right the last time one of my kids helped me out." "But what about all your wives you were telling me about?" she asked. "They must've been in the sleigh before." Santa shrugged. "Yeah, people have been in it, I've taken them places, but you and Pete are the only two who have ever helped me on Christmas Eve." She felt herself grow warm, and for once it wasn't because she was wet and horny. "I'm really helping you?" He nodded. "It may be that I'm late because of the donnybrook back at your place, Virginia, but that wasn't your fault, it's just what was meant to be. I was meant to be put behind and now you're meant to be driving this sleigh while I get organized. No matter how many me's there are out there, it won't make a difference unless you're here tonight. It's fated to be that way." Ginny didn't know what to say. She just calmly guided the sleigh, feeling a contentment she'd never quite known before. She was dimly aware of some other shadowy iteration of Santa's sleigh streaking by some miles to the north and waved absently. She couldn't explain why any of this made sense, but it did. She really was different after all. A house below them shone with a golden light in the dark and she turned the reigns easily to guide the reindeer in its direction. There were over a dense residential area, the streets lined with endless numbers of small homes and semis. They glided onto a roof and clambered out. She followed Santa and his present sack down the chimney. In spite of his bulk, he slid down the tight shaft in a way that made her cunt inexplicably wet. "Now that I think of it," she whispered as she wriggled down with him. "How do we get into houses where there's no chimney?" "It was a lot easier before central heating," he answered, almost upside down as he worked his way toward the ground. "For lack of a better term, it's just B & E, I guess. I've got the keys and security codes for every residence on earth." "Wow," she grunted as she twisted and wiggled, her tits squashed to her mouth. If they'd had more time she would have sucked on them for a bit as a reward to herself. "Even Kim Jong-Un?" "Yeah, but he's not getting anything you want to know about for Christmas," Santa muttered. "He's a very bad boy." "So, what, like a leaky bag of flaming panda shit?" she mused, occupying herself as she strained to keep up. "Because that's what he kinda deserves." "Christmas is the one night of the year we don't discuss politics, Virginia." Santa mentioned as he finally freed himself of the confines of the flue and dusted himself off. He helped Ginny out as well, smiling and kissing her nose as she held her off the ground. She blushed and let him put her down, moving to a corner of the living room and watching intently. The house they were in was not big, a modest home for a small family. Santa was rummaging around in his bag, absently noshing on the cookies left on a table near the tree. The tree itself was rather sparse on gifts, something Santa seemed to be rectifying. Ginny didn't notice the other person in the room until it was too late. "So there you are, big man;" Ginny started at the voice but Santa merely stood and turned around, smiling warmly. At the entrance to the room was a woman in a robe. She was older than Ginny, but not more than in her late twenties or early thirties. She had the look of a tired mom. "Been waiting a long, long time to prove to myself that you were real and the presents I couldn't account for just came out thin air," she sighed, nodding. She had sandy-brown hair, done in a long bob. Her face was pretty enough, but you could see in her eyes that sleep was more of an afterthought than anything. "But here you are." "It's good to see you, Linda." Santa said warmly, moving toward her and hugging her. She sighed as he embraced her and Ginny smiled, knowing exactly how content and relieved Linda felt at the moment, whoever the hell she was. "Whoa, did I just get jealous of some girl hugging Santa?" "I can't believe you're here in all your chubby glory," Linda remarked, smiling up at him. "It's a dream come true." Santa nodded. "Little Karen's been very good this year, Linda. She's a real blessing. I brought her the puppy she wanted." Ginny frowned and looked down at a small object that was obviously a puppy, wrapped prettily in Christmas paper and sporting a golden bow on its snout. The puppy panted happily, curled up and went to sleep beneath the tree. "She'll love it," Linda said quietly, her eyes shining. "She'll be so thrilled." "I know she will." Santa said, smiling and placing a hand on Linda's cheek. "Sorry things didn't work out with Bob. He doesn't know what he's missing." "Thanks, I keep telling myself that too," Linda said, dabbing at her eye. "Have you got an STD for his stocking, maybe?" "No," Santa chuckled. "But you need to know that everything's going to be fine, Linda. You've made it this far, you're raising an amazing girl and you own this place now. If I could give you Mother of the Year, I would. But I can't, not my department, so that leaves me to ask; what do you want for Christmas, Linda?" Linda looked into his eyes before her hands reached down and began fumbling with his wide, black belt. Ginny shook her head and sighed, knowing exactly why Linda's reaction was so instinctual. The mother turned her head and seemed to notice the girl in the abbreviated elf costume for the first time. "Oh," she said, her hands still undoing the belt. "Is she your chaperone, to make sure we behave?" "No, she's not my chaperone," Santa said, smiling and shaking his head. "She's my indispensable helper, without whom Christmas wouldn't come this year." Ginny blushed at his description of her. "Oh, okay," Linda said, kneeling and shimmying his red pants down and freeing his monstrous cock. "As long as she doesn't interrupt me enjoying my present." Ginny blushed again, but this time the hair on the back of her neck went up and her eyes narrowed. She folded her arms across her chest, leaned against the wall and watched silently. Very silently. "Wow," Linda mused, taking his cock in both hands and staring at it. "Just when I thought nothing could get longer than that white beard of yours." Ginny blinked and frowned for a moment. White beard? It suddenly occurred to her that Linda was seeing the Santa she had always expected to see, a fat, jolly old man with a long white beard, rosy cheeks and the rest of the Dickensian nonsense. To Ginny, he still looked like the towering, red-bearded lumbersexual she knew him to actually be. Whatever sort of glamour he radiated, it worked even in sexual situations. Without a pause, Linda took Santa's thick cock into her mouth with a sigh and began bobbing back and forth along its length. Her wet lips formed a tight seal around the shaft, her hands holding on to Santa's thighs for balance. "She's doing that all wrong," Ginny sniffed to herself. "He likes it when one hand is pumping along the shaft behind your mouth and the other one is teasing his balls. I should know." Santa turned his head, smiled at her and nodded. Ginny blushed and shut up. He took Linda's head gently in his hands, caressing her hair while she sucked his cock, letting her take all the time she liked. She undid her robe with one hand, letting it fall to a puddle at her knees, now naked. She had a mom bod, Ginny noted, not bad, she was trying to keep herself fit, probably with Tae Bo and jogging or spinning, if she could find the time. Her tits were somewhat pointy, but she wasn't repulsive by any means. Ginny felt herself getting warm as she watched, one of her hands coming up to caress her tits while the other snaked down inside the short green skirt she was wearing and beneath her thong, teasing her understandably gooey cunt. She watched intently as Linda pushed farther and farther down Santa's seemingly endless shaft, breathing through her nose as she tried to reach the root. The hand she kept on his thigh for balance squeeze his pale flesh while the other was massaging her tits, pinching the nipples. She moaned around his cock as he grew harder in her mouth. Ginny leaned her head against the wall, trying to not make noise as she pleasured herself, fingers teasing through her slippery folds or circling her throbbing clit. The hand she had on her tits mimicked Linda's squeezing and pinching her nipples, causing little needles of stinging delight to shoot through her. Linda's hand moved down between her legs and her fingers began churning inside her cunt. She moaned loudly as she pleasured herself. Normally Ginny would have thought she'd wake her kid, but Santa probably had some weird sound-dampening field just to keep things like this from happening. Typical. Ginny bit her lip as she watched, her skin blushing pink as she worked herself into a silent frenzy, her wet core beginning to blossom as Linda sucked and bobbed on Santa's cock faster and faster; Both women let out a loud moan as they came, pleasure bubbling up through Ginny's body while her fingers worked madly inside her clenching, slippery tunnel. Her knees buckled and she went to the floor, still fucking herself. Linda grunted and began swallowing as Santa came, finally pulling her mouth off and panting heavily, jerking his throbbing cock frantically and splattering his pearly cum across her tits with great eagerness. Ginny slowly lifted her head, gazing at Santa and Linda through heavily-lidded eyes. She'd cum so hard just from fingering herself. Was it her proximity to Santa that caused all her sensations to be so heightened? Santa knelt as well, hugging Linda to himself and whispering in her ear. She slowly pulled her arms up and embraced him, smiling against his shoulder and nodding gently, her eyes still closed. After holding her for some time, her took her by the chin and lifted her gaze to meet his. "Okay, back to bed with you," he said gently. "You'll sleep very well tonight and Karen will come to wake you." Linda smiled dreamily and rubbed her nose against Santa's before giving it a kiss. She stood, slipped her robe back on, winked at him and left without another word. Santa watched her leave and nodded in satisfaction. "Just what she needed," he said to himself. "Okay, Virginia, I'm going to finish these last few presents and then we're; Virginia?" But Ginny was still kneeling, slumped to one side against the wall and snoring. Santa chuckled and finished the presents before picking her up and holding her limp body under one arm and his giant sack over the other shoulder before disappearing up the flue in the blink of an eye. Carnal Knowledge. "Taip! Taip! Mano Dievas!" Kuni moaned loudly as she sat on her sister's face, grinding her cunt eagerly down onto Minna's mouth. Her blonde twin clamped her arms around her sister's thighs tightly as she lapped hungrily at the slick lips above. Santa was kneeling between Minna's legs, holding them wide and thrusting back and forth, his cock plunging in and out of her. Ginny was leaning against the wall once again, trying to not look exasperated. The Lithuanian girls were writhing and grinding in a frenzy, clearly enjoying their early Christmas present. It wasn't like they'd crept down and surprised Ginny and Santa, as Linda had, they had actually written to Santa, saying that their parents were away for the holiday and they wanted him to come and fuck them for Christmas. They'd been waiting patiently in the living room when Santa and Ginny appeared out of the chimney, the twins wearing nothing but their little cheerleader uniforms. Minna groaned shamelessly while she lashed her Kuni's twat with her tongue, shuddering as Santa's iron-hard rod nearly split her in half. Ginny had to admit, the blonde twins had rocking bodies, trim and tight from whatever activities they were involved in. She'd have to get into P90-X or Crossfit if she was ever going to compete with these two. "Senelis!" Minna gasped, sliding a finger up inside her sister, which Kuni ground on shamelessly. She gyrated her hips, fucking back against Santa, her fingernails digging into her sister's ass cheeks as she endured the battering waves of pleasure. "Ah, Duok man sunku!" "Pasakykite pra¨ome;" Santa replied, smiling slyly. "Pra¨om!" Minna wailed, her body almost thrashing. "Pra¨om pra¨om pra¨om! Nekankink manęs!" Santa nodded and leaned forward, pressing Minna's legs almost back against her body, his weight over her now as he sank his cock down inside her. The blonde girl almost screamed in pleasure. Kuni grappled onto Santa's neck and kissed him greedily, churning her cunt down onto Minna's glistening face. "Unreal," Ginny muttered. "And I thought I was a relentless horny machine. But you, sir, take the cake." "I would expect you of all people to understand by now," Santa said cheerfully. "Minna and Kuni have been very good this year. They're both at the top of their class, they've been socially active regarding building homeless shelters, they're both” "Over the age of eighteen?" Ginny bit out. "It's Lithuania, that wouldn't matter," Santa pointed out. "They've been very good girls and I'm duty-bound to give them what they want for Christmas." "So no point deductions for incest?" Ginny asked somewhat testily. "There weren't for you and your brother, were there?" he replied while Kuni nipped at his skin. Ginny blushed again and stopped talking. She watched while Kuni pulled herself off her sister's mouth and hastily clambered around to lie on top of her, kissing her sister while squirming her wet cunt down on Minna's. She groaned loudly when Santa pulled out of the girl below and pushed deep inside her. "Dear diary," Ginny muttered. "Having a great time in Vilnius, watching Santa skewer Lithuanian sisters;" Santa grunted and pushed in hard, his hips trembling as he started to cum. Kuni and Minna screamed into one another's mouths, hips bucking furiously. He pulled out of Kuni and slammed back into Minna, filling her with cum as well before both sisters scrambled to their knees while he stood. They swallowed his cock greedily, taking turns pumping the shaft while the other sucked on it. They kissed around the throbbing cock, licking the pearly cum off one another's faces. "Esate labai geros mergaitės," Santa breathed, holding them both gently by the back of their heads while they sucked hungrily. "Keep up the good work and Santa will see you again next year;" "If we're not still here with these two whores next Christmas;" Ginny thought darkly. Santa’s copilot. Ginny was guiding the sleigh, but she kept looking back at Santa, trying not to smirk. He was sitting beside her, a rather blank stare on his face, his eyes a little red around the edges. "I'm still sorta hungry;" he said somewhat absently. "So you actually thought 'Colorado Gold' was a brand of flour used to make baked goods?" "Note to self," he murmured. "Do not eat the brownies left out for you in Denver;" Basement Bound. Ginny followed Santa as they crept down the stairs toward the basement apartment, a prismatic glow on the wall ahead of them indicating a tree was nearby. They rounded a corner and paused. A young man dressed in X-Men boxers and a white t-shirt almost walked into them as he rubbed his eyes. He stared at them for a moment, saying absolutely nothing. After a long, awkward pause, Santa reached back into his sack and pulled out a wrapped gift which he slowly handed to the kid. The kid took it equally slowly and unwrapped it, his eyes widening as several deluxe editions of the newest PC games were revealed. The kid smiled sheepishly and sighed. "Thanks, now that I know you're real." "You don't seem happy, Kevin," Santa said, obviously concerned. "You've been great all year and these are what you wanted, right?" "I; yeah, they are," sighed the kid. "At least, that's what I told everyone I wanted. My friends and I, we're all gamers, and this is amazing, but;" "But;" Santa pressed. "Well, Christmas is also my birthday," Kevin said. "Here I am, eighteen finally, and I still haven't had sex with a girl yet." Santa smiled. "Well, I normally deal exclusively in Christmas wishes rather than birthdays, but perhaps this year I can help you out there, Kevin." Kevin raised an eyebrow. "Virginia," Santa stated, looking at her. "I give you Kevin the Boy. Return unto me Kevin the Man." Ginny couldn't believe what she said next. "Thought you'd never ask, Big Red;" She walked forward and took the games out of Kevin's hands, tossing them over her shoulder. Santa grabbed them hastily out of the air as Ginny poked a finger into Kevin's chest and pressed him up against the wall. His eyes were wide, not at all sure what was happening. "Santa's already given you your Christmas presents," Ginny said as she knelt in front of him and tugged at his boxers. "Which means it's up to me to give you a happy birthday;" She pulled the boxers down and tossed them aside. His cock was limp but she could already tell it was swelling with excitement. Rather than teasing the poor virgin, Ginny stroked his shaft and slid her mouth all the way down, deep-throating him. Kevin shuddered and groaned loudly. "Make all the noise you want, you won't wake your parents upstairs," Ginny mentioned, pulling her mouth off his cock for a moment and pumping the shaft with her hand while she looked up at him. "The big man here has some sort of sound-dampening field or some shit so that he doesn't get caught busting into people's houses." Kevin's hands flattened against the wall and his fingers flexed as she slid her mouth down his length again before bobbing back and forth in a slow rhythm. She felt his fingers take her by the hair and begin kneading, lost in this clearly new delight. She hummed gently, vibrating her mouth around his sensitive skin. "Well, look at you," she remarked, smiling as she pulled back and gazed at his now hard and throbbing cock, glistening with the wetness of her mouth. "That's a nice dick you've got there, Kevin. You're a grower, I'm impressed." Kevin took a deep breath. "Maybe, but it doesn't look like much when it's limp. The one time I let a girl at school see it, I was nervous and it shrunk, so she was laughing at me." "Then I'll give you a tip before I fuck you, Kevin," Ginny said, stroking the shaft and spitting on it, to keep it moist while she instructed him. "Girls can be hideous cunts about that sort of thing sometimes, but they have their own insecurities. So never bring your insecurity to the ballgame. You need to be turned on and your Johnson here on the rise by the time you get naked for her." "Uh-huh?" he said somewhat uncertainly, shivering as she bent her thumb so that the pad pressed against the top of his mushroom head every time she stroked down. He couldn't believe this was happening. Some hot Elf-chick who looked like a Warcraft mod was blowing him! "So from now on, you dominate, you got it?" Ginny said. "Make her get naked or make her turn you on so that she can see how big your cock is before you ever get out of your boxers. No girl is gonna say no to this thing when it's fully inflated, I promise." "R-really?" Kevin asked. Ginny kept her eyes locked with his but reached down under her panties for several moment before bringing her fingers up for display. They glistened wetly in the dim light. "It's made me horny, champ. And because of that cock, I need to fuck you. You with me?" Kevin just thunked his head back against the wall, closed his eyes and nodded. "Oh, and don't worry about trying to last," Ginny added. "Being around the Red Machine makes you want to fuck and cum all night. You'll be fine." She swallowed his cock with a will, determined to give this kid the best first time anyone had ever had. Her hand followed her mouth along the shaft and she hummed, swirling her tongue along its length. The kid wasn't Santa, but this would be a perfectly good ride for any girl worth fucking once he had his confidence. Her free hand worked its way back inside her panties and began fingering, teasing her wet folds and slipping inside, getting her ready for the main event. "Umm, do you want to fuck me, Kevin?" she asked, smiling up at him. "Do you want to fuck my cunt good and hard?" "Uh; yes;" he whimpered. "Say it like you mean it, Thor," she insisted, pressing her thumb along the throbbing vein on the bottom of his thick shaft. "The girl wants confidence. This cock is worth your best effort." He took several deep breaths before looking down at her and nodding. "I want to fuck you." "You do?" she asked before sliding him back down her throat. "No," he said finally, taking her under the arms and pulling her up. Ginny exhaled suddenly as his cock popped out of her mouth unexpectedly and he spun her around to press up against the wall. "I don't want to fuck you; I will fuck you." "That's my boy," Ginny breathed, her eyes flashing with sudden lust and delight. She spread her legs and tilted her hips forward, eager to feel him inside her. "Fuck me good and hard, Kevin!" "K-zon," the boy almost growled, pressing his throbbing cockhead against her entrance. "My gaming tag is K-zon and that's what the girls will call me when I fuck them!" Ginny nodded eagerly. "Good. Give it to me, K-zon;" She moaned loudly as he pushed inside her, heedless of any sense of timing or technique, but eager to be deep in a woman. He squeezed her sides as he trembled, overcome by the wet, tight sensation of her cunt gripping him. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders and one leg slung over his hip as she looked into his eyes. Ginny began a pumping motion with her hips, sliding back and forth on his cock while K-zon was paralyzed by the flood of pleasure. "Alright, slugger," she whispered in a husky voice as she fucked herself on him. "Let's bust this first nut of yours quick, so you know what to expect. Don't hold back, just pound my cunt until you blow, got it?" He nodded as he buried his face in her shoulder and started pumping awkwardly with his hips, his whole body trembling. Ginny felt an unreal flush of heat coursing through her already, an intense orgasm building up inside. Holy shit, was she turned on and about to get off because she was mentoring a virgin? She pulled Kevin tight against herself and shivered, letting out a gasp while he moaned and jammed his hips up tight against hers, she could feel his cock twitching inside her as he spunked, Her own orgasm flooded over her, molten bubbles of ecstasy popping by the millions throughout her sweating, slick frame. He almost buckled at the knees, collapsing against her, panting like he'd run a marathon. Ginny smiled and caressed his hair, feeling his still-hard cock throbbing inside her. She ran her fingers over his cheek and looked into his eyes. "Ready to keep going?" she asked. "Second one's usually even better." He nodded and she pulled him down to his knees while she got on all fours, wiggling her invitingly. She winked back at him. "You know what to do, K-zon," she purred. "Show me what you're gonna do to the girls this coming year;" Without another thought, he took Ginny by the hips and slid his cock deep inside her again. Ginny moaned loudly, lowering her head to the floor and pushed back against him. She felt him begin to push back and forth and matched his rhythm by squeezing her cunt muscles around him as he slid in. His fingers dug into her hips and ass cheeks delightfully. She could tell he might last a little longer this time, but not by much. Then again, she wasn't here to teach him to be a sex god, she was here to pop his cherry and give him a birthday to remember. "Umm, right there, big man;" she panted, surprised that she meant what she was saying. She wasn't just stroking his fragile ego, she was quite serious, because he was hitting a spot in her cunt that she really liked. He had a long enough cock that it touched her pleasure spot and he was just wide enough to pleasantly stretch her so that she knew she was being fucked properly. With confidence, this kid would be a good lay. Kevin slapped his thighs against her ass cheeks and she squeaked and yelped in response. Her gooey cunt clenched him tightly, utilizing those vaginal contractions she seemed to be so damned expert at tonight. "Fuck;" Kevin grunted as he pumped his hips, his chest now glistening with sweat. "This is so much better than my hand or a fleshlight!" "Uh, and you feel a lot fucking better than a vibe," Ginny panted, still face-down and ass-up. "You're gonna make them scream, K-zon;" He seemed encouraged by her words and pumped harder, determined to make Ginny and himself cum again. He seemed to have found his rhythm and fucked her steadily, his eyes closed as he lost himself in the unreal sensation of sex with a live girl. Ginny bit at the knuckle of her middle finger, aware of how flushed and warm her body was. She could feel her wetness trickling down over her stomach from her cunt, since her ass was perched in the air. The slick, sucking noises of her sex were unmistakable. "Oh, you're doing really good, K-zon," she said breathily. "You're gonna have me cumming again before long!" Kevin seemed to be beyond words as he merely nodded hastily and kept fucking her, eyes closed and back arched. The slapping noise of his thighs against her ass was a wet one now, since they were both sweating profusely. She could feel the damp perspiration in her hairline, her mouth open and she wiped at it when she realized she was almost drooling. "Yes, K-zon!" she gasped, using the name he wanted again, pushing back against him but still letting him control the action. "Fucking make me cum! Don't hold back! Uh, fuck!" Kevin jammed his hips against her suddenly and cried out, a sound that Ginny echoed half a second later. Rapture splintered through her as she came, feeling him slamming against her as he climaxed, his pearly offering now deep inside her. Through glassy eyes, she looked around for Santa, to see if he was watching, but he was nowhere in sight. Kevin seemed ready to fall over, exhausted, but she gently pushed backward until he sat on his behind with her in his lap, facing away. Slowly she turned around and laid him on the floor, his cock still deep inside her. She put her hands on his shoulders and smiled down at him, her nipples tracing little patterns over his chest as she did so. "That was amazing, K-zon," she said quietly. "A really great addition to my night." He was still breathing heavily but nodded at her. "Thanks. It was more than I could have hoped for. I;I guess it's been a busy evening for you this way?" "Well, you're my only virgin to this point, if that's what you're asking," Ginny sighed. "The big red machine has fucked me more times tonight that I care to remember and I was nearly raped to death by Krampus, so this was exactly the sort of change of pace I needed, you know?" She sat up, still straddling him and impaled on his cock, a thought occurring to her. "Hey, Big Red," she called out. "I just let him bust in me twice, do you have any fixes dated from yesterday?" A tiny white pill flew out of the other room. She caught it deftly in her hand and popped it in her mouth. "I'm getting good at this 'time-is-fluid' shit," she giggled to herself. "Maybe I'll teach quantum physics." "You don't need a glass of water or anything?" Kevin asked, looking up at her. "Trust me, Kevin, if there's one thing I'm good at, it's swallowing." Ginny replied, smiling down at him somewhat haughtily before carefully pulling herself off his cock, causing them both to shudder and moan quietly. She knelt over his waist and sucked on his cock, cleaning their mingled cum off him and then helping him to his feet. She slipped her thong back on while Kevin retrieved his boxers. They were just straightening themselves out when Santa appeared from the other room. "Did you enjoy your birthday present, Kevin?" he asked cheerfully. "Yessir," the newly-minted young man said. "Best birthday present anyone ever received." "Glad to hear it," Santa said, nodding. "And I know it doesn't compare to what Virginia just gave you, but I think you'll be pleased with your new rig I just set up. Five terrabytes of hard drive space, thirty-two gigs of DDR4 RAM, an overclocked quad-core CPU that'll put the i7 to shame, eight fans, a nickle and copper piping coolant system and L E D to make sure everyone knows you're in the house. Oh, and I've upgraded your server to be multi-line, WAN and load-balancing. You and your guild will never lag again as long as you host." Kevin's eyes went wide. "I've got fat pipes?" Santa nodded while Ginny shook her head, understanding none of this geek talk. It only figured that Santa was a giant nerd. Kevin looked like he might faint. "Well, I've just done what you deserved," Santa mentioned. "It's Virginia who should get the credit for your night being so spectacular." "Yeah," Kevin said, blushing and smiling at her. "Thanks." "My pleasure, trust me," she said easily. "Somebody have a pen I can use?" Santa handed her one and she looked at Kevin. "Your number, dude." Kevin managed to stutter out his number, which she wrote down on her wrist before nodding in satisfaction and giving the pen back to Santa. "Alright, if I ever happen to be in Ohio for some godforsaken reason, I can look you up and give you a booty call. Sound good?" Kevin nodded dumbly. "Just remember this," she said, poking him in the chest, her voice serious. "You've got a lot to learn still. You've got a nice cock between your legs, don't treat it like a Louisville Slugger and just beat the hell out of her with it, you're better than that." He nodded. "And if a girl wants you to fuck her, she'll give you signals, so watch." Ginny added, poking his chest with her nail. "Don't assume you can just force yourself on anyone or next year it's dead spiders in your stocking, you got it?" Kevin nodded again. "Excellent," she said sweetly. "Now go to sleep, champ. Merry Christmas and happy birthday. C'mon, Santa, we have a holiday to save!" "Yes, my lady!" Santa laughed, following her out of the basement. They were back on the roof when Santa smirked at her as they climbed into the sleigh. "Dead spiders in the stocking?" She shrugged. "Isn't that what you'd give a guy if he forced himself on a girl?" "Well, no," he replied as he snapped the reins and they took off into the cold night air. "That's more of a legal issue. If he was considering it, I wouldn't have mentioned dead spiders, I'd' have been more inclined to point out that he'd spend the next few years in a cell as some fat, greasy tattooed bastard's buttery cornhole." The sleigh lurched to one side as Ginny burst out laughing. A Pretty Man. Santa stared awkwardly, making a wry face while Ginny stood off to the side, smirking. Standing in front of Santa was a very pretty young man in pale pink pajamas, his hands behind his back, one knee turned in, twisting his toe into the rug and blushing expectantly. Ginny wiped a tear away from her eye, she was trying so hard not to laugh. "Yeah, that ain't happening." Santa said finally. "But I've been so good;" the young man cooed, smiling coyly and winking. "C'mon, Santa," Ginny urged, clearly enjoying his discomfiture. "He's been so good, and you always reward your good children, don't you?" "Nice try, lady," Santa said, pressing behind his ear, apparently activating a communicator. "Get Agent 641 to me, I need a pinch hitter, stat." Santa threw a small disk on the floor while Ginny and the young boy in pink watched curiously. The device oscillated and expanded, becoming a larger disk. Seconds later it began to glow and hum. A column of rainbow light radiated up from it and a kneeling shape appeared. Seconds later, the rainbow light faded away and a lithe, comely figure stood. He had the same slender, beautiful features as the warrior-elves who had fought earlier that night, his eyes a piercing violet color, his impossibly long raven hair held in gold rings. His pale body was naked except for a tiny thong. "Holy shit snacks;" Ginny breathed as she gazed stupidly at the new arrival, feeling her thong get wet. "Ylmarin, young Trevor here has been an extra-good boy, perhaps you'd care to reward him?" Santa suggested as the inhumanly graceful being stepped off the platform. The tall being looked down at the young man named Trevor, assessing him and then nodded. "Yes, sire, I can absolutely do this." Trevor blushed furiously and giggled, covering his face. Ylmarin reached over and took the boy's hand before leading him back to the bedroom. Santa nodded and began rummaging around in his toy sack, putting items under the tree. "Okay, we got that out of the way," he said, squatting and putting items under the decidedly pink-lit tree. "Virginia, if you could hand me the, Virginia? Ginny?" He frowned and turned to look for his helper, finally sighting her. She was standing in the doorway to the bedroom and looking in. One of her hands squeezing her tits while the other had snaked down inside her panties. "Alright, go on, you little voyeur." Santa chuckled, shaking his head. "Yum yum!" she squeaked and skipped into the room, from which moans were now emanating. Seeking to be naughty. "You weren't worried about being on the Naughty List if you waited up for me?" Santa asked the dark-haired girl as she sat on her floor, watching him intently. She pushed her glasses up her nose and shook her head, pretty curly locks spilling over her shoulders as she did so. "Not worried, hmm?" he mused, observing her. "So you think you're already on the Naughty List?" The girl nodded. Ginny blinked and pursed her lips. "Why isn't she talking? Is she mute or doesn't she speak English?" Santa shook his head. "No, Ellie's just shy. She doesn't speak much at first, but once she gets going;" He knelt down in front of the girl and smiled. "Well, here I am. What is it you wanted to ask me, Ellie?" The tan girl turned her head and looked down at the floor sheepishly for several seconds before working up the nerve to speak. "I; I want my daddy, Santa." Ginny blinked. "She what, wants him back from deployment for Christmas, she wants her father to move back home;" "No, Virginia," Santa said cheerfully. "She doesn't want her father, she wants her daddy." "Oh," Ginny said, suddenly understanding. "So, now what?" "That's all she wanted for Christmas, so we give her, her daddy." Santa said simply. The girl's eyes lit up in delight and she sat up straight, looking very excited. Santa pointed behind Ellie and she turned to look behind herself; Her daddy stood in the doorway, his green-hazel eyes mirroring her excitement and a big grin on her face. His long, sandy-blond hair fell down to his shoulder blades. "Daddy!" Ginny squealed as she scrambled to her feet and threw herself against her daddy, kissing him feverishly. He held her tight, returning the kiss while she began pulling his clothes off him. "I missed you so much!" "Missed you too, baby;" he murmured through the kiss as he pulled her top off, exposing her lush tits. "I never had a daddy." Ginny sighed as she watched the couple get increasingly naked and feeling the now-familiar tingle building. "I should take care of that at some point." "I've got some other deliveries in the immediate area," Santa mentioned. "How about I go take care of them while you have a little fun with these two?" "Well, I'm not attracted to girls." Ginny said in a non-committal tone. "You just didn't know you were until tonight." Santa replied, smiling. "Just trust me on this, Virginia." "Well, like you said earlier, I've had you inside all my orifices, so what's the harm in trusting you now, right?" she admitted, shrugging. Would being bisexual be such a bad thing? It certainly widened her options for dating. Santa nodded and walked out of the room. Ginny turned to look at the couple she was left with, who were already splayed out on the rug, naked and pleasuring one another. Ellie was lying on top of her daddy, facing down his body and sucking on his cock hungrily while he was pulling her slippery cunt lips apart and sliding his tongue up and down her twat, making her shiver and moan. "Fuck it," Ginny said finally, stripping out of her skimpy outfit and walking up to the two of them. She laid down beside Ellie's daddy and smiled at her, both their heads over hips. "Feel like tag-teaming, babe?" Ellie looked up for a moment and nodded readily. Ginny smiled and leaned in, flicking her tongue against the tip of his cock. The curly-haired girl giggled and joined Ginny in teasing the throbbing cock, taking turns sliding their tongue up and down the shaft while the other swirled her tongue around the head and took it into her mouth, starting to bob up and down. Ginny felt herself getting really wet and pressed her lips to Ellie's around the head of her daddy's cock, kissing her. They both moaned as their tongues tangled around the glistening head. Ginny's hand slipped into the girl's hair, wrapping in it to hold her in place. Ellie smelled like strawberries and Ginny felt herself getting wetter as she took in the scent. "Daddy," whimpered the girl. "Fuck me;" Ginny knelt up while the other girl straddled her daddy's hips, facing down his body. Her sticky cunt was positioned over his throbbing cock and Ginny took hold of it and guided it home. Ellie sighed almost in relief as she sank down, his cock filling her. Smiling wickedly, Ginny made Ellie lie back along her daddy's body and the girl gasped as her put his hands on her tits and held her. As Ellie and her daddy began to squirm and writhe, her glistening cunt swallowing his cock greedily, Ginny bent down and tongued at the shaft as it slid back and forth through her lips. She pressed her thumb gently on Ellie's clit, causing her to shudder and moan loudly. Then her tongue traced a slow route around the engorged cunt lips, teasing her new girl lover. Ellie whimpered and panted, begging her daddy to fuck her harder. Ginny sucked Ellie's clit into her mouth and was rewarded with a strangled cry from above. She fondled the sac in front of her gently and pressed on the throbbing vein. Her cunt was getting wetter with each passing moment and she needed to know if Ellie would share; Without another word, she crawled over Ellie and settled down on top of her, her tits squashing into the succulent set below. She moved around until she felt her cunt pressed to Ellie's and the magical, rhythmic motion of the cock still pumping in and out of her. She shuddered as their lips and clits met and they wrapped their arms around one another, kissing shamelessly. Tongues snaked and writhed as they moaned into one another's mouths. "Daddy," panted the younger girl. "Fuck Santa's elf-girl; fuck her please;" Ginny felt her own ferocious desire rising as the cock slurped out of Ellie and pressed against her. She groaned gutturally as she felt the head penetrate and then she pressed down eagerly, taking it deep inside her. Still sandwiched between them, Ellie took one of Ginny's tits and sucked the nipple into her mouth, swirling her tongue around it. Ginny arched her back and hissed through clenched teeth, squeezing hard on the invading cock. She ground down on Ellie's daddy, gyrating her hips and her fingers digging into the other girl's skin. Ellie sucked and bit her nipples, the delicious sting heightening her ecstasy. She body was streaming with sweat while he fucked her, Ellie's soft flesh undulating against hers. She could hear him panting and feel him stiffening and knew what happened next. With great haste and even greater reluctance, she pulled herself off the cock and knelt, pulling Ellie up into a kneeling position. She helped her daddy stand quickly while Ellie took his cock and pumped it eagerly with her hand. Once he was standing, they both attacked his cock with their mouths and hands, pleasuring him beyond endurance. He put his hand on the back of their heads and groaned loudly, his hips shuddering as he came. Both girls pressed their faces in, letting him spurt on their mouths and cheeks, hands still working the shaft quickly. The warm, sticky cum brought with it a warm flush of memories, how it always felt on her skin, the tingling, scintillating pleasure she always felt in the ardor of others. Ellie's soft tits pressed to hers, their cheeks meeting as they accepted the pearly offering, on their chins and now glazing their tits; she loved it all. She was never happier than when she was in the throes of passion with others. Was this what she was truly meant to do? Was this a Christmas epiphany? Ellie and Ginny began kissing hungrily, licking the cum off one another's faces with a fervor, then off each other's neck and tits. They returned their attention to the still twitching cock, kissing and sucking it dry. Once Ellie's daddy was spent, she laid him down and Ginny helped her snuggle into his warm, loving embrace. The girl smiled at her and giggled before blowing a kiss. Ginny gathered up her outfit and exited the apartment quietly. Not surprisingly at this point, the sleigh was just pulling back onto the roof as she arrived. Santa smiled at her. "So did you know I was bi all these years?" she asked as she clambered into the seat and beside him and snuggled into his side as they took off. He nodded. "Not my place to rob you of your journey of self-discovery, though." "Maybe," she sighed. "But think about all the fun I've missed out on, not playing with girls too. Doubling the size of my dating pool might have made a difference." "You've always been who you're meant to be, Virginia," he said cheerfully. "And your little epiphany tonight is going to have big implications in the year to come. Trust me." Her eyes widened. "For real?" "Would I lie?" Santa laughed. Ginny in the sleigh. Ginny was lying back in the plush red seat of the sleigh, her chest heaving as she stared at the pre-dawn sky. Her little elf-outfit was almost in shreds and she was missing one of her shoes. Even Santa looked a little worn. "So that's what sex with an entire sorority house feels like;" she said distantly. "Kinda gives me a new respect for those college quarterbacks. Those girls are animals." Santa nodded. "I have to admit, that wore me out a little too, which is saying something. And before you ask, yes, they have all been good this past year and they sent me one letter asking for Santa to fuck them as a sorority, so that really was their Christmas present." Ginny nodded. "That and the four metric tons of vibrators, dildos, eggs, anal beads, ben-wa balls and lingerie I saw you drop off; and about thirty Sybians." "They're a really good sorority house." Santa admitted. Ginny just stared at the sky. "Hard to believe that you're brought up a certain way, being told that good kids act a certain way, only to find out that being a total mega-slut is not grounds for being added to the Naughty List but sneaking cookies when mom told you not to is." "I didn't make the rules," Santa said, shrugging, but then he paused. "Oh, wait; ya know, I probably did, a long, long time ago." Ginny giggled tiredly. "This has been the longest and most oversexed night of my life, and that's saying something for me. Where are we headed, Big Man?" "Well, it's almost dawn." Santa said, looking east. "I'm going to have to drop you off before long now that my rounds are done." "Yeah," Ginny said somewhat reluctantly. "Since I don't have a house, I guess you should drop me off at my parents' place. I can't exactly tell 'em that my house was destroyed in a massive battle between Santa's elves and Krampus, but maybe they'll believe a gas main exploded." "You can't lie, Virginia, we've been over this." Santa said firmly. "Well I can't really tell them the truth either, can I?" Ginny pointed out, hoping she didn't sound too quarrelsome. "I know;" he said quietly, still guiding the sleigh. The soared through the dark sky for some time, saying nothing. Eventually, Ginny began to make out shapes in the night, sleek silhouettes that looked almost like slender, jet-powered Skidoos, being ridden by beings in strange armor with glowing runes and wild mans of hair. "Just my guardians," Santa said in an assuring tone. "Making sure there are no last-minute attempts to thwart us." The earth far below them took on a white cast and Ginny knew that they were above a region covered in snow. She couldn't feel it, but she could sense the cold air around them as the sleigh angled down, heading to the ground. The landing was predictably smooth and they finally came to a stop, flanked by the jet bikes and their unsettling warriors. Santa jumped out and helped Ginny down, smiling at her and wrapping her in a warm, furry red blanket from head to toe. When he pulled it off her, she was no dressed in a stylish red velvet dress, trimmed in white and ending on her upper thighs to show lots of leg. Her calf-high boots were red and edged with white, with adorable little poms dangling from the side. She even had a white poof to keep her hands warm and the Santa hat she now wore kept her ears toasty. "You look beautiful," he said as he waved in front of himself to conjure an ice mirror that reflected her image perfectly. "And without you, Virginia, there wouldn't have been a Christmas this year. You need to understand that." Ginny blushed prettily and walked alongside him, petting the reindeers as she walked by. She even gave Donner a kiss on the nose and the beast snorted and blushed, pawing the ground. They walked casually through the snow, holding hands until they were approached by several people. Ginny's eyes went wide, these were all women, clad in black armor with baroque chest plates reminiscent of bustiers. They all wore their hair bobbed, universally black or platinum in color and they carried savage-looking rifles or flamethrowers. They all knelt reverently as Santa approached. "Do I want to know?" Ginny breathed. "My personal guard," Santa said, nodding to the women as he passed through them. "Orphan girls I've saved from a cruel world. They're fanatically devoted to me, even beyond my elves." Her mouth was somewhat dry when she asked the next question. "Do you; you know;" "Yes, Virginia," he said, saving her the difficulty of asking. "They're also my lovers. When they're not fighting for me or standing guard, they live in the bliss I seem uniquely capable of giving women." "That doesn't sound like such a bad life," Ginny said, a hopeful tone in her voice. "I mean, I'm no orphan, but I'd say we pretty compatible sexually. Aren't we?" He turned and took her gently by the arms, smiling warmly down into her eyes in that way that made her knees go weak. Other people may have seen the fat old jolly man, but she could see only the copper-haired and bearded giant with eyes deeper than a galaxy and a boyish smile that she knew she'd always love. "You're right, Virginia, you're not an orphan," he said quietly. "These girls had no future. I have no right to rob you of yours. And believe me, you don't want to miss it." He took her hand and kept walking, snow gently falling as they walked through the stands of tall trees. When they emerged on the far side, he grinned and gestured grandly in front of them. Ginny's eyes went wide. Across the clearing was her lovely home, looking as good as new. Squads of warrior-elves stood guard menacingly around the perimeter while other, smaller beings she more associated with the Christmas story elves scampered around, making final adjustments to the domicile. "Like the whole thing never happened," Santa declared. "And there are even some improvements, I might add." "Ya don't say," Ginny said somewhat absently, still staring in disbelief. All sign of the titan battle fought on her property less than twelve hours ago were gone. "Uh; improvements?" Santa nodded. "We added solar panels and some subtle wind turbines, so you can officially live off the grid. Water's hooked up to a local artesian well. Improved your internet connection, you get about two hundred megabits per second, not to mention the fact that we connected you to our servers, so the Tor Network and the Deep Web have nothing on you for security and anonymity." "Wow;" was all she seemed to be able to say. "Let's see, we reinforced the frame and the roof, you could probably get hit by a meteor and barely notice," Santa continued. "Windows are made of transparent aluminum, they're durable, to say the least." "No bugs crashing through my bay windows?" she asked. "Actually got a nifty physics trick for you

Miracle On Route 34: Part 3 Being naughty can be a very good thing, if he needs help getting jolly. Based on a post by BiscuitHammer, in 3 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories. "Just when I thought it couldn't get better;" Ginny sighed, lost in bliss. "You certainly know what a woman wants." "I aim to please." Santa said cheerfully, putting one arm around her waist and holding her close while he guided the sleigh. "Think we might've sated you for a while?" "Hmm, maybe for a bit, right?" she purred, stretching like a cat before sitting forward and looking down over the earth, lit by clusters of lights that punctuated the darkness of Christmas Eve. It wasn't long before she began to giggle. "Schilling for your thoughts." Santa said, giving her tit a squeeze. "Well, you probably don't remember, but we've met before," she mentioned lightly, turning her head to wink at him. "I sure remember it." "Oh? Do tell." "Well," she said casually, her thoughts drifting back. "I was sixteen and my girlfriends and I were at the mall. We saw you and decided to sit on your lap. So Cari and I were sitting on you at the same time, squirming our asses on you and kept whispering naughty things in your ears, things we wanted to do to you, you know?" Santa didn't respond for several moments. "See?" Ginny said, smirking. "Told you that you didn't remember." "What; was the date of that, Virginia?" he asked warily. "December fifteenth, eight years ago, about seven-thirty pm," she said. "I still have a photo. Why?" "Because I wasn't in your city on December fifteenth eight years ago," he said with reluctance. "I was in Lahina on Maui, judging a naked limbo contest at a luau." She was silent for some time. "You're; you're sure?" Santa nodded. "Oh, God;" Ginny whispered, her eyes distant. "That means that Cari and I were grinding on some creepy mall Santa; oh, shit, I could feel him getting hard and everything!" Ginny scrunched her face up in revulsion and was flapping her arms in horror. "Oh, God. Blah! Blah! Blah!" Santa's roaring laughter echoed through the darkness as his date for the evening struggled to not puke off the side of the sleigh and onto the unsuspecting town below. Silent Runnings. She always kind of assumed that the sleigh made little or no noise when it touched down on a roof. After all, what kept some survivalist gun nut from trying to blow Santa away with his collection of automatic rifles when he heard some noise he couldn't account for? The sleigh glided silently onto the roof, the blades letting out little more than a hiss and the patter of the reindeer's hooves barely audible. Santa leapt out lightly and assisted her in exiting the sleigh before grinning at her. "Now, I won't be long, just hang tight and stay near the sleigh, if you're within the Gellar Field, you'll keep warm, alright?" Ginny raised an eyebrow in his direction, nonplussed. "Um, 'excuse me? I'm here with Santa Fucking Claus on Christmas Motherfucking Eve. How many times can a girl say that? If you think for one second I'm not delivering presents with you, then you're even more stupid that Krampus. I'm coming." Santa seemed hesitant. "Virginia, I've been at this since Proto-Hittite times, one way or another. I'm kind of an expert and I don't want you to hurt;" "Oh, get real," she snorted, pushing past him toward the chimney. She was glad to note that the 'Gellar Field', whatever the hell that was, seemed to be keeping her warm at this distance. "If your fat ass can fit down a chimney with that huge bag, so can mine." She clambered over the lip of the chimney and eased herself down inside it. Santa watched silently as she wriggled out of sight. There was no noise for several seconds. Finally Ginny spoke, her voice coming up the flue. "Okay, kinda stuck here, with my nose pressed into my own asshole. Little help?" Santa chuckled lightly and reached for a can of grease. Piloting a Ginny. "You're getting better at this, I must say," Santa remarked as he rummaged through his bag of presents while Ginny guided the sleigh. "Last person who drove the sleigh for me, the reindeer resisted a lot. They like you." "Oh?" Ginny replied, twisting the reins slightly and veering the sleigh team southwest. "Who was she?" Santa cleared his throat. "Actually, it was Krampus. Well, he was Pete back then, and it was over six hundred years ago." It took Ginny a moment to recover from her shock and concentrate on guiding the sleigh. Fortunately, the reindeer seemed to know where they were going. "Six hundred;" "Yup," Santa confirmed. "The Belgian monks were still getting the recipe for Stella Artois right the last time one of my kids helped me out." "But what about all your wives you were telling me about?" she asked. "They must've been in the sleigh before." Santa shrugged. "Yeah, people have been in it, I've taken them places, but you and Pete are the only two who have ever helped me on Christmas Eve." She felt herself grow warm, and for once it wasn't because she was wet and horny. "I'm really helping you?" He nodded. "It may be that I'm late because of the donnybrook back at your place, Virginia, but that wasn't your fault, it's just what was meant to be. I was meant to be put behind and now you're meant to be driving this sleigh while I get organized. No matter how many me's there are out there, it won't make a difference unless you're here tonight. It's fated to be that way." Ginny didn't know what to say. She just calmly guided the sleigh, feeling a contentment she'd never quite known before. She was dimly aware of some other shadowy iteration of Santa's sleigh streaking by some miles to the north and waved absently. She couldn't explain why any of this made sense, but it did. She really was different after all. A house below them shone with a golden light in the dark and she turned the reigns easily to guide the reindeer in its direction. There were over a dense residential area, the streets lined with endless numbers of small homes and semis. They glided onto a roof and clambered out. She followed Santa and his present sack down the chimney. In spite of his bulk, he slid down the tight shaft in a way that made her cunt inexplicably wet. "Now that I think of it," she whispered as she wriggled down with him. "How do we get into houses where there's no chimney?" "It was a lot easier before central heating," he answered, almost upside down as he worked his way toward the ground. "For lack of a better term, it's just B & E, I guess. I've got the keys and security codes for every residence on earth." "Wow," she grunted as she twisted and wiggled, her tits squashed to her mouth. If they'd had more time she would have sucked on them for a bit as a reward to herself. "Even Kim Jong-Un?" "Yeah, but he's not getting anything you want to know about for Christmas," Santa muttered. "He's a very bad boy." "So, what, like a leaky bag of flaming panda shit?" she mused, occupying herself as she strained to keep up. "Because that's what he kinda deserves." "Christmas is the one night of the year we don't discuss politics, Virginia." Santa mentioned as he finally freed himself of the confines of the flue and dusted himself off. He helped Ginny out as well, smiling and kissing her nose as she held her off the ground. She blushed and let him put her down, moving to a corner of the living room and watching intently. The house they were in was not big, a modest home for a small family. Santa was rummaging around in his bag, absently noshing on the cookies left on a table near the tree. The tree itself was rather sparse on gifts, something Santa seemed to be rectifying. Ginny didn't notice the other person in the room until it was too late. "So there you are, big man;" Ginny started at the voice but Santa merely stood and turned around, smiling warmly. At the entrance to the room was a woman in a robe. She was older than Ginny, but not more than in her late twenties or early thirties. She had the look of a tired mom. "Been waiting a long, long time to prove to myself that you were real and the presents I couldn't account for just came out thin air," she sighed, nodding. She had sandy-brown hair, done in a long bob. Her face was pretty enough, but you could see in her eyes that sleep was more of an afterthought than anything. "But here you are." "It's good to see you, Linda." Santa said warmly, moving toward her and hugging her. She sighed as he embraced her and Ginny smiled, knowing exactly how content and relieved Linda felt at the moment, whoever the hell she was. "Whoa, did I just get jealous of some girl hugging Santa?" "I can't believe you're here in all your chubby glory," Linda remarked, smiling up at him. "It's a dream come true." Santa nodded. "Little Karen's been very good this year, Linda. She's a real blessing. I brought her the puppy she wanted." Ginny frowned and looked down at a small object that was obviously a puppy, wrapped prettily in Christmas paper and sporting a golden bow on its snout. The puppy panted happily, curled up and went to sleep beneath the tree. "She'll love it," Linda said quietly, her eyes shining. "She'll be so thrilled." "I know she will." Santa said, smiling and placing a hand on Linda's cheek. "Sorry things didn't work out with Bob. He doesn't know what he's missing." "Thanks, I keep telling myself that too," Linda said, dabbing at her eye. "Have you got an STD for his stocking, maybe?" "No," Santa chuckled. "But you need to know that everything's going to be fine, Linda. You've made it this far, you're raising an amazing girl and you own this place now. If I could give you Mother of the Year, I would. But I can't, not my department, so that leaves me to ask; what do you want for Christmas, Linda?" Linda looked into his eyes before her hands reached down and began fumbling with his wide, black belt. Ginny shook her head and sighed, knowing exactly why Linda's reaction was so instinctual. The mother turned her head and seemed to notice the girl in the abbreviated elf costume for the first time. "Oh," she said, her hands still undoing the belt. "Is she your chaperone, to make sure we behave?" "No, she's not my chaperone," Santa said, smiling and shaking his head. "She's my indispensable helper, without whom Christmas wouldn't come this year." Ginny blushed at his description of her. "Oh, okay," Linda said, kneeling and shimmying his red pants down and freeing his monstrous cock. "As long as she doesn't interrupt me enjoying my present." Ginny blushed again, but this time the hair on the back of her neck went up and her eyes narrowed. She folded her arms across her chest, leaned against the wall and watched silently. Very silently. "Wow," Linda mused, taking his cock in both hands and staring at it. "Just when I thought nothing could get longer than that white beard of yours." Ginny blinked and frowned for a moment. White beard? It suddenly occurred to her that Linda was seeing the Santa she had always expected to see, a fat, jolly old man with a long white beard, rosy cheeks and the rest of the Dickensian nonsense. To Ginny, he still looked like the towering, red-bearded lumbersexual she knew him to actually be. Whatever sort of glamour he radiated, it worked even in sexual situations. Without a pause, Linda took Santa's thick cock into her mouth with a sigh and began bobbing back and forth along its length. Her wet lips formed a tight seal around the shaft, her hands holding on to Santa's thighs for balance. "She's doing that all wrong," Ginny sniffed to herself. "He likes it when one hand is pumping along the shaft behind your mouth and the other one is teasing his balls. I should know." Santa turned his head, smiled at her and nodded. Ginny blushed and shut up. He took Linda's head gently in his hands, caressing her hair while she sucked his cock, letting her take all the time she liked. She undid her robe with one hand, letting it fall to a puddle at her knees, now naked. She had a mom bod, Ginny noted, not bad, she was trying to keep herself fit, probably with Tae Bo and jogging or spinning, if she could find the time. Her tits were somewhat pointy, but she wasn't repulsive by any means. Ginny felt herself getting warm as she watched, one of her hands coming up to caress her tits while the other snaked down inside the short green skirt she was wearing and beneath her thong, teasing her understandably gooey cunt. She watched intently as Linda pushed farther and farther down Santa's seemingly endless shaft, breathing through her nose as she tried to reach the root. The hand she kept on his thigh for balance squeeze his pale flesh while the other was massaging her tits, pinching the nipples. She moaned around his cock as he grew harder in her mouth. Ginny leaned her head against the wall, trying to not make noise as she pleasured herself, fingers teasing through her slippery folds or circling her throbbing clit. The hand she had on her tits mimicked Linda's squeezing and pinching her nipples, causing little needles of stinging delight to shoot through her. Linda's hand moved down between her legs and her fingers began churning inside her cunt. She moaned loudly as she pleasured herself. Normally Ginny would have thought she'd wake her kid, but Santa probably had some weird sound-dampening field just to keep things like this from happening. Typical. Ginny bit her lip as she watched, her skin blushing pink as she worked herself into a silent frenzy, her wet core beginning to blossom as Linda sucked and bobbed on Santa's cock faster and faster; Both women let out a loud moan as they came, pleasure bubbling up through Ginny's body while her fingers worked madly inside her clenching, slippery tunnel. Her knees buckled and she went to the floor, still fucking herself. Linda grunted and began swallowing as Santa came, finally pulling her mouth off and panting heavily, jerking his throbbing cock frantically and splattering his pearly cum across her tits with great eagerness. Ginny slowly lifted her head, gazing at Santa and Linda through heavily-lidded eyes. She'd cum so hard just from fingering herself. Was it her proximity to Santa that caused all her sensations to be so heightened? Santa knelt as well, hugging Linda to himself and whispering in her ear. She slowly pulled her arms up and embraced him, smiling against his shoulder and nodding gently, her eyes still closed. After holding her for some time, her took her by the chin and lifted her gaze to meet his. "Okay, back to bed with you," he said gently. "You'll sleep very well tonight and Karen will come to wake you." Linda smiled dreamily and rubbed her nose against Santa's before giving it a kiss. She stood, slipped her robe back on, winked at him and left without another word. Santa watched her leave and nodded in satisfaction. "Just what she needed," he said to himself. "Okay, Virginia, I'm going to finish these last few presents and then we're; Virginia?" But Ginny was still kneeling, slumped to one side against the wall and snoring. Santa chuckled and finished the presents before picking her up and holding her limp body under one arm and his giant sack over the other shoulder before disappearing up the flue in the blink of an eye. Carnal Knowledge. "Taip! Taip! Mano Dievas!" Kuni moaned loudly as she sat on her sister's face, grinding her cunt eagerly down onto Minna's mouth. Her blonde twin clamped her arms around her sister's thighs tightly as she lapped hungrily at the slick lips above. Santa was kneeling between Minna's legs, holding them wide and thrusting back and forth, his cock plunging in and out of her. Ginny was leaning against the wall once again, trying to not look exasperated. The Lithuanian girls were writhing and grinding in a frenzy, clearly enjoying their early Christmas present. It wasn't like they'd crept down and surprised Ginny and Santa, as Linda had, they had actually written to Santa, saying that their parents were away for the holiday and they wanted him to come and fuck them for Christmas. They'd been waiting patiently in the living room when Santa and Ginny appeared out of the chimney, the twins wearing nothing but their little cheerleader uniforms. Minna groaned shamelessly while she lashed her Kuni's twat with her tongue, shuddering as Santa's iron-hard rod nearly split her in half. Ginny had to admit, the blonde twins had rocking bodies, trim and tight from whatever activities they were involved in. She'd have to get into P90-X or Crossfit if she was ever going to compete with these two. "Senelis!" Minna gasped, sliding a finger up inside her sister, which Kuni ground on shamelessly. She gyrated her hips, fucking back against Santa, her fingernails digging into her sister's ass cheeks as she endured the battering waves of pleasure. "Ah, Duok man sunku!" "Pasakykite pra¨ome;" Santa replied, smiling slyly. "Pra¨om!" Minna wailed, her body almost thrashing. "Pra¨om pra¨om pra¨om! Nekankink manęs!" Santa nodded and leaned forward, pressing Minna's legs almost back against her body, his weight over her now as he sank his cock down inside her. The blonde girl almost screamed in pleasure. Kuni grappled onto Santa's neck and kissed him greedily, churning her cunt down onto Minna's glistening face. "Unreal," Ginny muttered. "And I thought I was a relentless horny machine. But you, sir, take the cake." "I would expect you of all people to understand by now," Santa said cheerfully. "Minna and Kuni have been very good this year. They're both at the top of their class, they've been socially active regarding building homeless shelters, they're both” "Over the age of eighteen?" Ginny bit out. "It's Lithuania, that wouldn't matter," Santa pointed out. "They've been very good girls and I'm duty-bound to give them what they want for Christmas." "So no point deductions for incest?" Ginny asked somewhat testily. "There weren't for you and your brother, were there?" he replied while Kuni nipped at his skin. Ginny blushed again and stopped talking. She watched while Kuni pulled herself off her sister's mouth and hastily clambered around to lie on top of her, kissing her sister while squirming her wet cunt down on Minna's. She groaned loudly when Santa pulled out of the girl below and pushed deep inside her. "Dear diary," Ginny muttered. "Having a great time in Vilnius, watching Santa skewer Lithuanian sisters;" Santa grunted and pushed in hard, his hips trembling as he started to cum. Kuni and Minna screamed into one another's mouths, hips bucking furiously. He pulled out of Kuni and slammed back into Minna, filling her with cum as well before both sisters scrambled to their knees while he stood. They swallowed his cock greedily, taking turns pumping the shaft while the other sucked on it. They kissed around the throbbing cock, licking the pearly cum off one another's faces. "Esate labai geros mergaitės," Santa breathed, holding them both gently by the back of their heads while they sucked hungrily. "Keep up the good work and Santa will see you again next year;" "If we're not still here with these two whores next Christmas;" Ginny thought darkly. Santa’s copilot. Ginny was guiding the sleigh, but she kept looking back at Santa, trying not to smirk. He was sitting beside her, a rather blank stare on his face, his eyes a little red around the edges. "I'm still sorta hungry;" he said somewhat absently. "So you actually thought 'Colorado Gold' was a brand of flour used to make baked goods?" "Note to self," he murmured. "Do not eat the brownies left out for you in Denver;" Basement Bound. Ginny followed Santa as they crept down the stairs toward the basement apartment, a prismatic glow on the wall ahead of them indicating a tree was nearby. They rounded a corner and paused. A young man dressed in X-Men boxers and a white t-shirt almost walked into them as he rubbed his eyes. He stared at them for a moment, saying absolutely nothing. After a long, awkward pause, Santa reached back into his sack and pulled out a wrapped gift which he slowly handed to the kid. The kid took it equally slowly and unwrapped it, his eyes widening as several deluxe editions of the newest PC games were revealed. The kid smiled sheepishly and sighed. "Thanks, now that I know you're real." "You don't seem happy, Kevin," Santa said, obviously concerned. "You've been great all year and these are what you wanted, right?" "I; yeah, they are," sighed the kid. "At least, that's what I told everyone I wanted. My friends and I, we're all gamers, and this is amazing, but;" "But;" Santa pressed. "Well, Christmas is also my birthday," Kevin said. "Here I am, eighteen finally, and I still haven't had sex with a girl yet." Santa smiled. "Well, I normally deal exclusively in Christmas wishes rather than birthdays, but perhaps this year I can help you out there, Kevin." Kevin raised an eyebrow. "Virginia," Santa stated, looking at her. "I give you Kevin the Boy. Return unto me Kevin the Man." Ginny couldn't believe what she said next. "Thought you'd never ask, Big Red;" She walked forward and took the games out of Kevin's hands, tossing them over her shoulder. Santa grabbed them hastily out of the air as Ginny poked a finger into Kevin's chest and pressed him up against the wall. His eyes were wide, not at all sure what was happening. "Santa's already given you your Christmas presents," Ginny said as she knelt in front of him and tugged at his boxers. "Which means it's up to me to give you a happy birthday;" She pulled the boxers down and tossed them aside. His cock was limp but she could already tell it was swelling with excitement. Rather than teasing the poor virgin, Ginny stroked his shaft and slid her mouth all the way down, deep-throating him. Kevin shuddered and groaned loudly. "Make all the noise you want, you won't wake your parents upstairs," Ginny mentioned, pulling her mouth off his cock for a moment and pumping the shaft with her hand while she looked up at him. "The big man here has some sort of sound-dampening field or some shit so that he doesn't get caught busting into people's houses." Kevin's hands flattened against the wall and his fingers flexed as she slid her mouth down his length again before bobbing back and forth in a slow rhythm. She felt his fingers take her by the hair and begin kneading, lost in this clearly new delight. She hummed gently, vibrating her mouth around his sensitive skin. "Well, look at you," she remarked, smiling as she pulled back and gazed at his now hard and throbbing cock, glistening with the wetness of her mouth. "That's a nice dick you've got there, Kevin. You're a grower, I'm impressed." Kevin took a deep breath. "Maybe, but it doesn't look like much when it's limp. The one time I let a girl at school see it, I was nervous and it shrunk, so she was laughing at me." "Then I'll give you a tip before I fuck you, Kevin," Ginny said, stroking the shaft and spitting on it, to keep it moist while she instructed him. "Girls can be hideous cunts about that sort of thing sometimes, but they have their own insecurities. So never bring your insecurity to the ballgame. You need to be turned on and your Johnson here on the rise by the time you get naked for her." "Uh-huh?" he said somewhat uncertainly, shivering as she bent her thumb so that the pad pressed against the top of his mushroom head every time she stroked down. He couldn't believe this was happening. Some hot Elf-chick who looked like a Warcraft mod was blowing him! "So from now on, you dominate, you got it?" Ginny said. "Make her get naked or make her turn you on so that she can see how big your cock is before you ever get out of your boxers. No girl is gonna say no to this thing when it's fully inflated, I promise." "R-really?" Kevin asked. Ginny kept her eyes locked with his but reached down under her panties for several moment before bringing her fingers up for display. They glistened wetly in the dim light. "It's made me horny, champ. And because of that cock, I need to fuck you. You with me?" Kevin just thunked his head back against the wall, closed his eyes and nodded. "Oh, and don't worry about trying to last," Ginny added. "Being around the Red Machine makes you want to fuck and cum all night. You'll be fine." She swallowed his cock with a will, determined to give this kid the best first time anyone had ever had. Her hand followed her mouth along the shaft and she hummed, swirling her tongue along its length. The kid wasn't Santa, but this would be a perfectly good ride for any girl worth fucking once he had his confidence. Her free hand worked its way back inside her panties and began fingering, teasing her wet folds and slipping inside, getting her ready for the main event. "Umm, do you want to fuck me, Kevin?" she asked, smiling up at him. "Do you want to fuck my cunt good and hard?" "Uh; yes;" he whimpered. "Say it like you mean it, Thor," she insisted, pressing her thumb along the throbbing vein on the bottom of his thick shaft. "The girl wants confidence. This cock is worth your best effort." He took several deep breaths before looking down at her and nodding. "I want to fuck you." "You do?" she asked before sliding him back down her throat. "No," he said finally, taking her under the arms and pulling her up. Ginny exhaled suddenly as his cock popped out of her mouth unexpectedly and he spun her around to press up against the wall. "I don't want to fuck you; I will fuck you." "That's my boy," Ginny breathed, her eyes flashing with sudden lust and delight. She spread her legs and tilted her hips forward, eager to feel him inside her. "Fuck me good and hard, Kevin!" "K-zon," the boy almost growled, pressing his throbbing cockhead against her entrance. "My gaming tag is K-zon and that's what the girls will call me when I fuck them!" Ginny nodded eagerly. "Good. Give it to me, K-zon;" She moaned loudly as he pushed inside her, heedless of any sense of timing or technique, but eager to be deep in a woman. He squeezed her sides as he trembled, overcome by the wet, tight sensation of her cunt gripping him. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders and one leg slung over his hip as she looked into his eyes. Ginny began a pumping motion with her hips, sliding back and forth on his cock while K-zon was paralyzed by the flood of pleasure. "Alright, slugger," she whispered in a husky voice as she fucked herself on him. "Let's bust this first nut of yours quick, so you know what to expect. Don't hold back, just pound my cunt until you blow, got it?" He nodded as he buried his face in her shoulder and started pumping awkwardly with his hips, his whole body trembling. Ginny felt an unreal flush of heat coursing through her already, an intense orgasm building up inside. Holy shit, was she turned on and about to get off because she was mentoring a virgin? She pulled Kevin tight against herself and shivered, letting out a gasp while he moaned and jammed his hips up tight against hers, she could feel his cock twitching inside her as he spunked, Her own orgasm flooded over her, molten bubbles of ecstasy popping by the millions throughout her sweating, slick frame. He almost buckled at the knees, collapsing against her, panting like he'd run a marathon. Ginny smiled and caressed his hair, feeling his still-hard cock throbbing inside her. She ran her fingers over his cheek and looked into his eyes. "Ready to keep going?" she asked. "Second one's usually even better." He nodded and she pulled him down to his knees while she got on all fours, wiggling her invitingly. She winked back at him. "You know what to do, K-zon," she purred. "Show me what you're gonna do to the girls this coming year;" Without another thought, he took Ginny by the hips and slid his cock deep inside her again. Ginny moaned loudly, lowering her head to the floor and pushed back against him. She felt him begin to push back and forth and matched his rhythm by squeezing her cunt muscles around him as he slid in. His fingers dug into her hips and ass cheeks delightfully. She could tell he might last a little longer this time, but not by much. Then again, she wasn't here to teach him to be a sex god, she was here to pop his cherry and give him a birthday to remember. "Umm, right there, big man;" she panted, surprised that she meant what she was saying. She wasn't just stroking his fragile ego, she was quite serious, because he was hitting a spot in her cunt that she really liked. He had a long enough cock that it touched her pleasure spot and he was just wide enough to pleasantly stretch her so that she knew she was being fucked properly. With confidence, this kid would be a good lay. Kevin slapped his thighs against her ass cheeks and she squeaked and yelped in response. Her gooey cunt clenched him tightly, utilizing those vaginal contractions she seemed to be so damned expert at tonight. "Fuck;" Kevin grunted as he pumped his hips, his chest now glistening with sweat. "This is so much better than my hand or a fleshlight!" "Uh, and you feel a lot fucking better than a vibe," Ginny panted, still face-down and ass-up. "You're gonna make them scream, K-zon;" He seemed encouraged by her words and pumped harder, determined to make Ginny and himself cum again. He seemed to have found his rhythm and fucked her steadily, his eyes closed as he lost himself in the unreal sensation of sex with a live girl. Ginny bit at the knuckle of her middle finger, aware of how flushed and warm her body was. She could feel her wetness trickling down over her stomach from her cunt, since her ass was perched in the air. The slick, sucking noises of her sex were unmistakable. "Oh, you're doing really good, K-zon," she said breathily. "You're gonna have me cumming again before long!" Kevin seemed to be beyond words as he merely nodded hastily and kept fucking her, eyes closed and back arched. The slapping noise of his thighs against her ass was a wet one now, since they were both sweating profusely. She could feel the damp perspiration in her hairline, her mouth open and she wiped at it when she realized she was almost drooling. "Yes, K-zon!" she gasped, using the name he wanted again, pushing back against him but still letting him control the action. "Fucking make me cum! Don't hold back! Uh, fuck!" Kevin jammed his hips against her suddenly and cried out, a sound that Ginny echoed half a second later. Rapture splintered through her as she came, feeling him slamming against her as he climaxed, his pearly offering now deep inside her. Through glassy eyes, she looked around for Santa, to see if he was watching, but he was nowhere in sight. Kevin seemed ready to fall over, exhausted, but she gently pushed backward until he sat on his behind with her in his lap, facing away. Slowly she turned around and laid him on the floor, his cock still deep inside her. She put her hands on his shoulders and smiled down at him, her nipples tracing little patterns over his chest as she did so. "That was amazing, K-zon," she said quietly. "A really great addition to my night." He was still breathing heavily but nodded at her. "Thanks. It was more than I could have hoped for. I;I guess it's been a busy evening for you this way?" "Well, you're my only virgin to this point, if that's what you're asking," Ginny sighed. "The big red machine has fucked me more times tonight that I care to remember and I was nearly raped to death by Krampus, so this was exactly the sort of change of pace I needed, you know?" She sat up, still straddling him and impaled on his cock, a thought occurring to her. "Hey, Big Red," she called out. "I just let him bust in me twice, do you have any fixes dated from yesterday?" A tiny white pill flew out of the other room. She caught it deftly in her hand and popped it in her mouth. "I'm getting good at this 'time-is-fluid' shit," she giggled to herself. "Maybe I'll teach quantum physics." "You don't need a glass of water or anything?" Kevin asked, looking up at her. "Trust me, Kevin, if there's one thing I'm good at, it's swallowing." Ginny replied, smiling down at him somewhat haughtily before carefully pulling herself off his cock, causing them both to shudder and moan quietly. She knelt over his waist and sucked on his cock, cleaning their mingled cum off him and then helping him to his feet. She slipped her thong back on while Kevin retrieved his boxers. They were just straightening themselves out when Santa appeared from the other room. "Did you enjoy your birthday present, Kevin?" he asked cheerfully. "Yessir," the newly-minted young man said. "Best birthday present anyone ever received." "Glad to hear it," Santa said, nodding. "And I know it doesn't compare to what Virginia just gave you, but I think you'll be pleased with your new rig I just set up. Five terrabytes of hard drive space, thirty-two gigs of DDR4 RAM, an overclocked quad-core CPU that'll put the i7 to shame, eight fans, a nickle and copper piping coolant system and L E D to make sure everyone knows you're in the house. Oh, and I've upgraded your server to be multi-line, WAN and load-balancing. You and your guild will never lag again as long as you host." Kevin's eyes went wide. "I've got fat pipes?" Santa nodded while Ginny shook her head, understanding none of this geek talk. It only figured that Santa was a giant nerd. Kevin looked like he might faint. "Well, I've just done what you deserved," Santa mentioned. "It's Virginia who should get the credit for your night being so spectacular." "Yeah," Kevin said, blushing and smiling at her. "Thanks." "My pleasure, trust me," she said easily. "Somebody have a pen I can use?" Santa handed her one and she looked at Kevin. "Your number, dude." Kevin managed to stutter out his number, which she wrote down on her wrist before nodding in satisfaction and giving the pen back to Santa. "Alright, if I ever happen to be in Ohio for some godforsaken reason, I can look you up and give you a booty call. Sound good?" Kevin nodded dumbly. "Just remember this," she said, poking him in the chest, her voice serious. "You've got a lot to learn still. You've got a nice cock between your legs, don't treat it like a Louisville Slugger and just beat the hell out of her with it, you're better than that." He nodded. "And if a girl wants you to fuck her, she'll give you signals, so watch." Ginny added, poking his chest with her nail. "Don't assume you can just force yourself on anyone or next year it's dead spiders in your stocking, you got it?" Kevin nodded again. "Excellent," she said sweetly. "Now go to sleep, champ. Merry Christmas and happy birthday. C'mon, Santa, we have a holiday to save!" "Yes, my lady!" Santa laughed, following her out of the basement. They were back on the roof when Santa smirked at her as they climbed into the sleigh. "Dead spiders in the stocking?" She shrugged. "Isn't that what you'd give a guy if he forced himself on a girl?" "Well, no," he replied as he snapped the reins and they took off into the cold night air. "That's more of a legal issue. If he was considering it, I wouldn't have mentioned dead spiders, I'd' have been more inclined to point out that he'd spend the next few years in a cell as some fat, greasy tattooed bastard's buttery cornhole." The sleigh lurched to one side as Ginny burst out laughing. A Pretty Man. Santa stared awkwardly, making a wry face while Ginny stood off to the side, smirking. Standing in front of Santa was a very pretty young man in pale pink pajamas, his hands behind his back, one knee turned in, twisting his toe into the rug and blushing expectantly. Ginny wiped a tear away from her eye, she was trying so hard not to laugh. "Yeah, that ain't happening." Santa said finally. "But I've been so good;" the young man cooed, smiling coyly and winking. "C'mon, Santa," Ginny urged, clearly enjoying his discomfiture. "He's been so good, and you always reward your good children, don't you?" "Nice try, lady," Santa said, pressing behind his ear, apparently activating a communicator. "Get Agent 641 to me, I need a pinch hitter, stat." Santa threw a small disk on the floor while Ginny and the young boy in pink watched curiously. The device oscillated and expanded, becoming a larger disk. Seconds later it began to glow and hum. A column of rainbow light radiated up from it and a kneeling shape appeared. Seconds later, the rainbow light faded away and a lithe, comely figure stood. He had the same slender, beautiful features as the warrior-elves who had fought earlier that night, his eyes a piercing violet color, his impossibly long raven hair held in gold rings. His pale body was naked except for a tiny thong. "Holy shit snacks;" Ginny breathed as she gazed stupidly at the new arrival, feeling her thong get wet. "Ylmarin, young Trevor here has been an extra-good boy, perhaps you'd care to reward him?" Santa suggested as the inhumanly graceful being stepped off the platform. The tall being looked down at the young man named Trevor, assessing him and then nodded. "Yes, sire, I can absolutely do this." Trevor blushed furiously and giggled, covering his face. Ylmarin reached over and took the boy's hand before leading him back to the bedroom. Santa nodded and began rummaging around in his toy sack, putting items under the tree. "Okay, we got that out of the way," he said, squatting and putting items under the decidedly pink-lit tree. "Virginia, if you could hand me the, Virginia? Ginny?" He frowned and turned to look for his helper, finally sighting her. She was standing in the doorway to the bedroom and looking in. One of her hands squeezing her tits while the other had snaked down inside her panties. "Alright, go on, you little voyeur." Santa chuckled, shaking his head. "Yum yum!" she squeaked and skipped into the room, from which moans were now emanating. Seeking to be naughty. "You weren't worried about being on the Naughty List if you waited up for me?" Santa asked the dark-haired girl as she sat on her floor, watching him intently. She pushed her glasses up her nose and shook her head, pretty curly locks spilling over her shoulders as she did so. "Not worried, hmm?" he mused, observing her. "So you think you're already on the Naughty List?" The girl nodded. Ginny blinked and pursed her lips. "Why isn't she talking? Is she mute or doesn't she speak English?" Santa shook his head. "No, Ellie's just shy. She doesn't speak much at first, but once she gets going;" He knelt down in front of the girl and smiled. "Well, here I am. What is it you wanted to ask me, Ellie?" The tan girl turned her head and looked down at the floor sheepishly for several seconds before working up the nerve to speak. "I; I want my daddy, Santa." Ginny blinked. "She what, wants him back from deployment for Christmas, she wants her father to move back home;" "No, Virginia," Santa said cheerfully. "She doesn't want her father, she wants her daddy." "Oh," Ginny said, suddenly understanding. "So, now what?" "That's all she wanted for Christmas, so we give her, her daddy." Santa said simply. The girl's eyes lit up in delight and she sat up straight, looking very excited. Santa pointed behind Ellie and she turned to look behind herself; Her daddy stood in the doorway, his green-hazel eyes mirroring her excitement and a big grin on her face. His long, sandy-blond hair fell down to his shoulder blades. "Daddy!" Ginny squealed as she scrambled to her feet and threw herself against her daddy, kissing him feverishly. He held her tight, returning the kiss while she began pulling his clothes off him. "I missed you so much!" "Missed you too, baby;" he murmured through the kiss as he pulled her top off, exposing her lush tits. "I never had a daddy." Ginny sighed as she watched the couple get increasingly naked and feeling the now-familiar tingle building. "I should take care of that at some point." "I've got some other deliveries in the immediate area," Santa mentioned. "How about I go take care of them while you have a little fun with these two?" "Well, I'm not attracted to girls." Ginny said in a non-committal tone. "You just didn't know you were until tonight." Santa replied, smiling. "Just trust me on this, Virginia." "Well, like you said earlier, I've had you inside all my orifices, so what's the harm in trusting you now, right?" she admitted, shrugging. Would being bisexual be such a bad thing? It certainly widened her options for dating. Santa nodded and walked out of the room. Ginny turned to look at the couple she was left with, who were already splayed out on the rug, naked and pleasuring one another. Ellie was lying on top of her daddy, facing down his body and sucking on his cock hungrily while he was pulling her slippery cunt lips apart and sliding his tongue up and down her twat, making her shiver and moan. "Fuck it," Ginny said finally, stripping out of her skimpy outfit and walking up to the two of them. She laid down beside Ellie's daddy and smiled at her, both their heads over hips. "Feel like tag-teaming, babe?" Ellie looked up for a moment and nodded readily. Ginny smiled and leaned in, flicking her tongue against the tip of his cock. The curly-haired girl giggled and joined Ginny in teasing the throbbing cock, taking turns sliding their tongue up and down the shaft while the other swirled her tongue around the head and took it into her mouth, starting to bob up and down. Ginny felt herself getting really wet and pressed her lips to Ellie's around the head of her daddy's cock, kissing her. They both moaned as their tongues tangled around the glistening head. Ginny's hand slipped into the girl's hair, wrapping in it to hold her in place. Ellie smelled like strawberries and Ginny felt herself getting wetter as she took in the scent. "Daddy," whimpered the girl. "Fuck me;" Ginny knelt up while the other girl straddled her daddy's hips, facing down his body. Her sticky cunt was positioned over his throbbing cock and Ginny took hold of it and guided it home. Ellie sighed almost in relief as she sank down, his cock filling her. Smiling wickedly, Ginny made Ellie lie back along her daddy's body and the girl gasped as her put his hands on her tits and held her. As Ellie and her daddy began to squirm and writhe, her glistening cunt swallowing his cock greedily, Ginny bent down and tongued at the shaft as it slid back and forth through her lips. She pressed her thumb gently on Ellie's clit, causing her to shudder and moan loudly. Then her tongue traced a slow route around the engorged cunt lips, teasing her new girl lover. Ellie whimpered and panted, begging her daddy to fuck her harder. Ginny sucked Ellie's clit into her mouth and was rewarded with a strangled cry from above. She fondled the sac in front of her gently and pressed on the throbbing vein. Her cunt was getting wetter with each passing moment and she needed to know if Ellie would share; Without another word, she crawled over Ellie and settled down on top of her, her tits squashing into the succulent set below. She moved around until she felt her cunt pressed to Ellie's and the magical, rhythmic motion of the cock still pumping in and out of her. She shuddered as their lips and clits met and they wrapped their arms around one another, kissing shamelessly. Tongues snaked and writhed as they moaned into one another's mouths. "Daddy," panted the younger girl. "Fuck Santa's elf-girl; fuck her please;" Ginny felt her own ferocious desire rising as the cock slurped out of Ellie and pressed against her. She groaned gutturally as she felt the head penetrate and then she pressed down eagerly, taking it deep inside her. Still sandwiched between them, Ellie took one of Ginny's tits and sucked the nipple into her mouth, swirling her tongue around it. Ginny arched her back and hissed through clenched teeth, squeezing hard on the invading cock. She ground down on Ellie's daddy, gyrating her hips and her fingers digging into the other girl's skin. Ellie sucked and bit her nipples, the delicious sting heightening her ecstasy. She body was streaming with sweat while he fucked her, Ellie's soft flesh undulating against hers. She could hear him panting and feel him stiffening and knew what happened next. With great haste and even greater reluctance, she pulled herself off the cock and knelt, pulling Ellie up into a kneeling position. She helped her daddy stand quickly while Ellie took his cock and pumped it eagerly with her hand. Once he was standing, they both attacked his cock with their mouths and hands, pleasuring him beyond endurance. He put his hand on the back of their heads and groaned loudly, his hips shuddering as he came. Both girls pressed their faces in, letting him spurt on their mouths and cheeks, hands still working the shaft quickly. The warm, sticky cum brought with it a warm flush of memories, how it always felt on her skin, the tingling, scintillating pleasure she always felt in the ardor of others. Ellie's soft tits pressed to hers, their cheeks meeting as they accepted the pearly offering, on their chins and now glazing their tits; she loved it all. She was never happier than when she was in the throes of passion with others. Was this what she was truly meant to do? Was this a Christmas epiphany? Ellie and Ginny began kissing hungrily, licking the cum off one another's faces with a fervor, then off each other's neck and tits. They returned their attention to the still twitching cock, kissing and sucking it dry. Once Ellie's daddy was spent, she laid him down and Ginny helped her snuggle into his warm, loving embrace. The girl smiled at her and giggled before blowing a kiss. Ginny gathered up her outfit and exited the apartment quietly. Not surprisingly at this point, the sleigh was just pulling back onto the roof as she arrived. Santa smiled at her. "So did you know I was bi all these years?" she asked as she clambered into the seat and beside him and snuggled into his side as they took off. He nodded. "Not my place to rob you of your journey of self-discovery, though." "Maybe," she sighed. "But think about all the fun I've missed out on, not playing with girls too. Doubling the size of my dating pool might have made a difference." "You've always been who you're meant to be, Virginia," he said cheerfully. "And your little epiphany tonight is going to have big implications in the year to come. Trust me." Her eyes widened. "For real?" "Would I lie?" Santa laughed. Ginny in the sleigh. Ginny was lying back in the plush red seat of the sleigh, her chest heaving as she stared at the pre-dawn sky. Her little elf-outfit was almost in shreds and she was missing one of her shoes. Even Santa looked a little worn. "So that's what sex with an entire sorority house feels like;" she said distantly. "Kinda gives me a new respect for those college quarterbacks. Those girls are animals." Santa nodded. "I have to admit, that wore me out a little too, which is saying something. And before you ask, yes, they have all been good this past year and they sent me one letter asking for Santa to fuck them as a sorority, so that really was their Christmas present." Ginny nodded. "That and the four metric tons of vibrators, dildos, eggs, anal beads, ben-wa balls and lingerie I saw you drop off; and about thirty Sybians." "They're a really good sorority house." Santa admitted. Ginny just stared at the sky. "Hard to believe that you're brought up a certain way, being told that good kids act a certain way, only to find out that being a total mega-slut is not grounds for being added to the Naughty List but sneaking cookies when mom told you not to is." "I didn't make the rules," Santa said, shrugging, but then he paused. "Oh, wait; ya know, I probably did, a long, long time ago." Ginny giggled tiredly. "This has been the longest and most oversexed night of my life, and that's saying something for me. Where are we headed, Big Man?" "Well, it's almost dawn." Santa said, looking east. "I'm going to have to drop you off before long now that my rounds are done." "Yeah," Ginny said somewhat reluctantly. "Since I don't have a house, I guess you should drop me off at my parents' place. I can't exactly tell 'em that my house was destroyed in a massive battle between Santa's elves and Krampus, but maybe they'll believe a gas main exploded." "You can't lie, Virginia, we've been over this." Santa said firmly. "Well I can't really tell them the truth either, can I?" Ginny pointed out, hoping she didn't sound too quarrelsome. "I know;" he said quietly, still guiding the sleigh. The soared through the dark sky for some time, saying nothing. Eventually, Ginny began to make out shapes in the night, sleek silhouettes that looked almost like slender, jet-powered Skidoos, being ridden by beings in strange armor with glowing runes and wild mans of hair. "Just my guardians," Santa said in an assuring tone. "Making sure there are no last-minute attempts to thwart us." The earth far below them took on a white cast and Ginny knew that they were above a region covered in snow. She couldn't feel it, but she could sense the cold air around them as the sleigh angled down, heading to the ground. The landing was predictably smooth and they finally came to a stop, flanked by the jet bikes and their unsettling warriors. Santa jumped out and helped Ginny down, smiling at her and wrapping her in a warm, furry red blanket from head to toe. When he pulled it off her, she was no dressed in a stylish red velvet dress, trimmed in white and ending on her upper thighs to show lots of leg. Her calf-high boots were red and edged with white, with adorable little poms dangling from the side. She even had a white poof to keep her hands warm and the Santa hat she now wore kept her ears toasty. "You look beautiful," he said as he waved in front of himself to conjure an ice mirror that reflected her image perfectly. "And without you, Virginia, there wouldn't have been a Christmas this year. You need to understand that." Ginny blushed prettily and walked alongside him, petting the reindeers as she walked by. She even gave Donner a kiss on the nose and the beast snorted and blushed, pawing the ground. They walked casually through the snow, holding hands until they were approached by several people. Ginny's eyes went wide, these were all women, clad in black armor with baroque chest plates reminiscent of bustiers. They all wore their hair bobbed, universally black or platinum in color and they carried savage-looking rifles or flamethrowers. They all knelt reverently as Santa approached. "Do I want to know?" Ginny breathed. "My personal guard," Santa said, nodding to the women as he passed through them. "Orphan girls I've saved from a cruel world. They're fanatically devoted to me, even beyond my elves." Her mouth was somewhat dry when she asked the next question. "Do you; you know;" "Yes, Virginia," he said, saving her the difficulty of asking. "They're also my lovers. When they're not fighting for me or standing guard, they live in the bliss I seem uniquely capable of giving women." "That doesn't sound like such a bad life," Ginny said, a hopeful tone in her voice. "I mean, I'm no orphan, but I'd say we pretty compatible sexually. Aren't we?" He turned and took her gently by the arms, smiling warmly down into her eyes in that way that made her knees go weak. Other people may have seen the fat old jolly man, but she could see only the copper-haired and bearded giant with eyes deeper than a galaxy and a boyish smile that she knew she'd always love. "You're right, Virginia, you're not an orphan," he said quietly. "These girls had no future. I have no right to rob you of yours. And believe me, you don't want to miss it." He took her hand and kept walking, snow gently falling as they walked through the stands of tall trees. When they emerged on the far side, he grinned and gestured grandly in front of them. Ginny's eyes went wide. Across the clearing was her lovely home, looking as good as new. Squads of warrior-elves stood guard menacingly around the perimeter while other, smaller beings she more associated with the Christmas story elves scampered around, making final adjustments to the domicile. "Like the whole thing never happened," Santa declared. "And there are even some improvements, I might add." "Ya don't say," Ginny said somewhat absently, still staring in disbelief. All sign of the titan battle fought on her property less than twelve hours ago were gone. "Uh; improvements?" Santa nodded. "We added solar panels and some subtle wind turbines, so you can officially live off the grid. Water's hooked up to a local artesian well. Improved your internet connection, you get about two hundred megabits per second, not to mention the fact that we connected you to our servers, so the Tor Network and the Deep Web have nothing on you for security and anonymity." "Wow;" was all she seemed to be able to say. "Let's see, we reinforced the frame and the roof, you could probably get hit by a meteor and barely notice," Santa continued. "Windows are made of transparent aluminum, they're durable, to say the least." "No bugs crashing through my bay windows?" she asked. "Actually got a nifty physics trick for you

Tuesday is the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth, so today I spoke to John Mullan, professor of English Literature at UCL, author of What Matters in Jane Austen. John and I talked about how Austen's fiction would have developed if she had not died young, the innovations of Persuasion, wealth inequality in Austen, slavery and theatricals in Mansfield Park, as well as Iris Murdoch, A.S. Byatt, Patricia Beer, the Dunciad, and the Booker Prize. This was an excellent episode. My thanks to John!TranscriptHenry Oliver (00:00)Today, I am talking to John Mullen. John is a professor of English literature at University College London, and he is the author of many splendid books, including How Novels Work and the Artful Dickens. I recommend the Artful Dickens to you all. But today we are talking about Jane Austen because it's going to be her birthday in a couple of days. And John wrote What Matters in Jane Austen, which is another book I recommend to you all. John, welcome.John Mullan (00:51)It's great to be here.Henry Oliver (00:53)What do you think would have happened to Austin's fiction if she had not died young?John Mullan (00:58)Ha ha! I've been waiting all this year to be asked that question from somebody truly perspicacious. ⁓ Because it's a question I often answer even though I'm not asked it, because it's a very interesting one, I think. And also, I think it's a bit, it's answerable a little bit because there was a certain trajectory to her career. I think it's very difficult to imagine what she would have written.John Mullan (01:28)But I think there are two things which are almost certain. The first is that she would have gone on writing and that she would have written a deal more novels. And then even the possibility that there has been in the past of her being overlooked or neglected would have been closed. ⁓ And secondly, and perhaps more significantly for her, I think she would have become well known.in her own lifetime. you know, partly that's because she was already being outed, as it were, you know, of course, as ⁓ you'll know, Henry, you know, she published all the novels that were published in her lifetime were published anonymously. So even people who were who were following her career and who bought a novel like Mansfield Park, which said on the title page by the author of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, they knew they knew.John Mullan (02:26)were getting something by the same author, they wouldn't necessarily have known the author's name and I think that would have become, as it did with other authors who began anonymously, that would have disappeared and she would have become something of a literary celebrity I would suggest and then she would have met other authors and she'd have been invited to some London literary parties in effect and I think that would have been very interesting how that might have changed her writing.John Mullan (02:54)if it would have changed her writing as well as her life. She, like everybody else, would have met Coleridge. ⁓ I think that would have happened. She would have become a name in her own lifetime and that would have meant that her partial disappearance, I think, from sort of public consciousness in the 19th century wouldn't have happened.Henry Oliver (03:17)It's interesting to think, you know, if she had been, depending on how old she would have been, could she have read the Pickwick papers? How would she have reacted to that? Yes. Yeah. Nope.John Mullan (03:24)Ha ha ha ha ha!Yes, she would have been in her 60s, but that's not so old, speaking of somebody in their 60s. ⁓ Yes, it's a very interesting notion, isn't it? I mean, there would have been other things which happened after her premature demise, which she might have responded to. I think particularly there was a terrific fashion for before Dickens came along in the 1830s, there was a terrific fashion in the 1820s for what were called silver fork novels, which were novels of sort of high life of kind of the kind of people who knew Byron, but I mean as fictional characters. And we don't read them anymore, but they were they were quite sort of high quality, glossy products and people loved them. And I'm I like to think she might have reacted to that with her sort of with her disdain, think, her witty disdain for all aristocrats. know, nobody with a title is really any good in her novels, are they? And, you know, the nearest you get is Mr. Darcy, who is an Earl's nephew. And that's more of a problem for him than almost anything else. ⁓ She would surely have responded satirically to that fashion.Henry Oliver (04:28)Hahaha.Yes, and then we might have had a Hazlitt essay about her as well, which would have been all these lost gems. Yes. Are there ways in which persuasion was innovative that Emma was not?John Mullan (04:58)Yes, yes, yes, yes. I know, I know.⁓ gosh, all right, you're homing in on the real tricky ones. Okay, okay. ⁓ That Emma was not. Yes, I think so. I think it took, in its method, it took further what she had done in Emma.Henry Oliver (05:14)Ha ha.This is your exam today,John Mullan (05:36)which is that method of kind of we inhabit the consciousness of a character. And I I think of Jane Austen as a writer who is always reacting to her own last novel, as it were. And I think, you know, probably the Beatles were like that or Mozart was like that. think, you know, great artists often are like that, that at a certain stage, if what they're doing is so different from what everybody else has done before,they stop being influenced by anybody else. They just influence themselves. And so I think after Emma, Jane Austen had this extraordinary ⁓ method she perfected in that novel, this free indirect style of a third-person narration, which is filtered through the consciousness of a character who in Emma's case is self-deludedly wrong about almost everything. And it's...brilliantly tricksy and mischievous and elaborate use of that device which tricks even the reader quite often, certainly the first time reader. And then she got to persuasion and I think she is at least doing something new and different with that method which is there's Anne Elliot. Anne Elliot's a good person. Anne Elliot's judgment is very good. She's the most cultured and cultivated of Jane Austen's heroines. She is, as Jane Austen herself said about Anne Elliot, almost too good for me. And so what she does is she gives her a whole new vein of self-deception, which is the self-deception in the way of a good person who always wants to think things are worse than they are and who always, who, because suspicious of their own desires and motives sort of tamps them down and suppresses them. And we live in this extraordinary mind of this character who's often ignored, she's always overhearing conversations. Almost every dialogue in the novel seems to be something Anne overhears rather than takes part in. And the consciousness of a character whodoesn't want to acknowledge things in themselves which you and I might think were quite natural and reasonable and indeed in our psychotherapeutic age to be expressed from the rooftops. You still fancy this guy? Fine! Admit it to yourself. ⁓ No. So it's not repression actually, exactly. It's a sort of virtuous self-control somehow which I think lots of readers find rather masochistic about her. Henry Oliver (08:38)I find that book interesting because in Sense and Sensibility she's sort of opposed self-command with self-expression, but she doesn't do that in Persuasion. She says, no, no, I'm just going to be the courage of, no, self-command. know, Eleanor becomes the heroine.John Mullan (08:48)Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. But with the odd with the odd burst of Mariannes, I was watching the I thought execrable Netflix ⁓ persuasion done about two or three years ago ⁓ with the luminous Dakota Johnson as as you know, as Anne Elliot. You could not believe her bloom had faded one little bit, I think.John Mullan (09:23)And ⁓ I don't know if you saw it, but the modus operandi rather following the lead set by that film, The Favourite, which was set in Queen Anne's reign, but adopted the Demotic English of the 21st century. similarly, this adaptation, much influenced by Fleabag, decided to deal with the challenge of Jane Austen's dialogue by simply not using it, you know, and having her speak in a completely contemporary idiom. But there were just one or two lines, very, very few from the novel, that appeared. And when they appeared, they sort of cried through the screen at you. And one of them, slightly to qualify what you've just said, was a line I'd hardly noticed before. as it was one of the few Austin lines in the programme, in the film, I really noticed it. And it was much more Marianne than Eleanor. And that's when, I don't know if you remember, and Captain Wentworth, they're in Bath. So now they are sort of used to talking to each other. And Louisa Musgrove's done her recovering from injury and gone off and got engaged to Captain Benwick, Captain Benwick. So Wentworth's a free man. And Anne is aware, becoming aware that he may be still interested in her. And there's a card party, an evening party arranged by Sir Walter Elliot. And Captain Wentworth is given an invitation, even though they used to disapprove of him because he's now a naval hero and a rich man. And Captain Wentworth and Anna making slightly awkward conversation. And Captain Wentworth says, you did not used to like cards.I mean, he realizes what he said, because what he said is, remember you eight years ago. I remember we didn't have to do cards. We did snogging and music. That's what we did. But anyway, he did not used to like cards. And he suddenly realizes what a giveaway that is. And he says something like, but then time brings many changes. And she says, she cries out, I am not so much changed.Henry Oliver (11:23)Mm. Mm, yes, yes. Yep.Yes.Cries out, yeah.John Mullan (11:50)It's absolutely electric line and that's not Eleanor is it? That's not an Eleanor-ish line. ⁓ Eleanor would say indeed time evinces such dispositions in most extraordinary ways. She would say some Johnsonian thing wouldn't she? so I don't think it's quite a return to the same territory or the same kind of psychology.Henry Oliver (12:05)That's right. Yes, yes, yeah.No, that's interesting, yeah. One of the things that happens in Persuasion is that you get this impressionistic writing. So a bit like Mrs. Elliot talking while she picks strawberries. When Lady Russell comes into Bath, you get that wonderful scene of the noises and the sounds. Is this a sort of step forward in a way? And you can think of Austen as not an evolutionary missing link as such, but she's sort of halfway between Humphrey Clinker and Mr. Jangle.Is that something that she would have sort of developed?John Mullan (12:49)I think that's quite possible. haven't really thought about it before, but you're right. think there are these, ⁓ there are especially, they're impressionistic ⁓ passages which are tied up with Anne's emotions. And there's an absolutely, I think, short, simple, but extraordinarily original one when she meets him again after eight years. And it says something like, the room was full, full of people. Mary said something and you're in the blur of it. He said all that was right, you know, and she can't hear the words, she can't hear the words and you can't hear the words and you're inside and she's even, you're even sort of looking at the floor because she's looking at the floor and in Anne's sort of consciousness, often slightly fevered despite itself, you do exactly get this sort of, ⁓ for want of a better word, blur of impressions, which is entirely unlike, isn't it, Emma's sort of ⁓ drama of inner thought, which is always assertive, argumentative, perhaps self-correcting sometimes, but nothing if not confidently articulate.John Mullan (14:17)And with Anne, it's a blur of stuff. there is a sort of perhaps a kind of inklings of a stream of consciousness method there.Henry Oliver (14:27)I think so, yeah. Why is it that Flaubert and other writers get all the credit for what Jane Austen invented?John Mullan (14:35)Join my campaign, Henry. It is so vexing. It is vexing. sometimes thought, I sometimes have thought, but perhaps this is a little xenophobic of me, that the reason that Jane Austen is too little appreciated and read in France is because then they would have to admit that Flaubertdidn't do it first, you know. ⁓Henry Oliver (14:40)It's vexing, isn't it?John Mullan (15:04)I mean, I suppose there's an answer from literary history, which is simply for various reasons, ⁓ some of them to do with what became fashionable in literary fiction, as we would now call it. Jane Austen was not very widely read or known in the 19th century. So it wasn't as if, as it were, Tolstoy was reading Jane Austen and saying, this is not up to much. He wasn't. He was reading Elizabeth Gaskell.Jane Eyre ⁓ and tons of Dickens, tons, every single word Dickens published, of course. ⁓ So Jane Austen, know, to cite an example I've just referred to, I Charlotte Bronte knew nothing of Jane Austen until George Henry Lewis, George Eliot's partner, who is carrying the torch for Jane Austen, said, you really should read some. And that's why we have her famous letter saying, it's, you know, it's commonplace and foolish things she said. But so I think the first thing to establish is she was really not very widely read. So it wasn't that people were reading it and not getting it. It was which, you know, I think there's a little bit of that with Dickens. He was very widely read and people because of that almost didn't see how innovative he was, how extraordinarily experimental. It was too weird. But they still loved it as comic or melodramatic fiction. But I think Jane Austen simply wasn't very widely read until the late 19th century. So I don't know if Flaubert read her. I would say almost certainly not. Dickens owned a set of Jane Austen, but that was amongst 350 selecting volumes of the select British novelists. Probably he never read Jane Austen. Tolstoy and you know never did, you know I bet Dostoevsky didn't, any number of great writers didn't.Henry Oliver (17:09)I find it hard to believe that Dickens didn't read her.John Mullan (17:12)Well, I don't actually, I'm afraid, because I mean the one occasion that I know of in his surviving correspondence when she's mentioned is after the publication of Little Dorrit when ⁓ his great bosom friend Forster writes to him and says, Flora Finching, that must be Miss Bates. Yes. You must have been thinking of Miss Bates.John Mullan (17:41)And he didn't write it in a sort of, you plagiarist type way, I he was saying you've varied, it's a variation upon that character and Dickens we wrote back and we have his reply absolutely denying this. Unfortunately his denial doesn't make it clear whether he knew who Miss Bates was but hadn't it been influenced or whether he simply didn't know but what he doesn't… It's the one opportunity where he could have said, well, of course I've read Emma, but that's not my sort of thing. ⁓ of course I delight in Miss Bates, but I had no idea of thinking of her when I... He has every opportunity to say something about Jane Austen and he doesn't say anything about her. He just says, no.Henry Oliver (18:29)But doesn't he elsewhere deny having read Jane Eyre? And that's just like, no one believes you, Charles.John Mullan (18:32)Yes.Well, he may deny it, but he also elsewhere admits to it. Yeah.Henry Oliver (18:39)Okay, but you know, just because he doesn't come out with it.John Mullan (18:43)No, no, it's true, but he wouldn't have been singular and not reading Jane Austen. That's what I'm saying. Yes. So it's possible to ignore her innovativeness simply by not having read her. But I do think, I mean, briefly, that there is another thing as well, which is that really until the late 20th century almost, even though she'd become a wide, hugely famous, hugely widely read and staple of sort of A levels and undergraduate courses author, her real, ⁓ her sort of experiments with form were still very rarely acknowledged. And I mean, it was only really, I think in the sort of almost 1980s, really a lot in my working lifetime that people have started saying the kind of thing you were asking about now but hang on free and direct style no forget flow bear forget Henry James I mean they're terrific but actually this woman who never met an accomplished author in her life who had no literary exchanges with fellow writersShe did it at a little table in a house in Hampshire. Just did it.Henry Oliver (20:14)Was she a Tory or an Enlightenment Liberal or something else?John Mullan (20:19)⁓ well I think the likeliest, if I had to pin my colours to a mast, I think she would be a combination of the two things you said. I think she would have been an enlightenment Tory, as it were. So I think there is some evidence that ⁓ perhaps because also I think she was probably quite reasonably devout Anglican. So there is some evidence that… She might have been conservative with a small C, but I think she was also an enlightenment person. I think she and her, especially her father and at least a couple of her brothers, you know, would have sat around reading 18th century texts and having enlightened discussions and clearly they were, you know, and they had, it's perfect, you know, absolutely hard and fast evidence, for instance, that they would have been that they were sympathetic to the abolition of slavery, that they were ⁓ sceptics about the virtues of monarchical power and clear-eyed about its corruption, that they had no, Jane Austen, as I said at the beginning of this exchange, had no great respect or admiration for the aristocratic ruling class at all. ⁓ So there's aspects of her politics which aren't conservative with a big C anyway, but I think enlightened, think, I mean I, you know, I got into all this because I loved her novels, I've almost found out about her family inadvertently because you meet scary J-Night experts at Jane Austen Society of North America conferences and if you don't know about it, they look at scants. But it is all interesting and I think her family were rather terrific actually, her immediate family. I think they were enlightened, bookish, optimistic, optimistic people who didn't sit around moaning about the state of the country or their own, you know, not having been left enough money in exes will. And...I think that they were in the broadest sense enlightened people by the standard of their times and perhaps by any standards.Henry Oliver (22:42)Is Mansfield Park about slavery?John Mullan (22:45)Not at all, no. I don't think so. I don't think so. And I think, you know, the famous little passage, for it is only a passage in which Edmund and Fanny talk about the fact it's not a direct dialogue. They are having a dialogue about the fact that they had, but Fanny had this conversation or attempt at conversation ⁓ a day or two before. And until relatively recently, nobody much commented on that passage. It doesn't mean they didn't read it or understand it, but now I have not had an interview, a conversation, a dialogue involving Mansfield Park in the last, in living memory, which hasn't mentioned it, because it's so apparently responsive to our priorities, our needs and our interests. And there's nothing wrong with that. But I think it's a it's a parenthetic part of the novel. ⁓ And of course, there was this Edward Said article some decades ago, which became very widely known and widely read. And although I think Edward Said, you know, was a was a wonderful writer in many ways. ⁓I think he just completely misunderstands it ⁓ in a way that's rather strange for a literary critic because he says it sort of represents, you know, author's and a whole society's silence about this issue, the source of wealth for these people in provincial England being the enslavement of people the other side of the Atlantic. But of course, Jane Auster didn't have to put that bit in her novel, if she'd wanted really to remain silent, she wouldn't have put it in, would she? And the conversation is one where Edmund says, know, ⁓ you know, my father would have liked you to continue when you were asking about, yeah, and she says, but there was such terrible silence. And she's referring to the other Bertram siblings who indeed are, of course, heedless, selfish ⁓ young people who certainly will not want to know that their affluence is underwritten by, you know, the employment of slaves on a sugar plantation. But the implication, I think, of that passage is very clearly that Fanny would have, the reader of the time would have been expected to infer that Fanny shares the sympathies that Jane Austen, with her admiration, her love, she says, of Thomas Clarkson. The countries leading abolitionists would have had and that Edmund would also share them. And I think Edmund is saying something rather surprising, which I've always sort of wondered about, which is he's saying, my father would have liked to talk about it more. And what does that mean? Does that mean, my father's actually, he's one of these enlightened ones who's kind of, you know, freeing the slaves or does it mean, my father actually knows how to defend his corner? He would have beenYou know, he doesn't he doesn't feel threatened or worried about discussing it. It's not at all clear where Sir Thomas is in this, but I think it's pretty clear where Edmund and Fanny are.Henry Oliver (26:08)How seriously do you take the idea that we are supposed to disapprove of the family theatricals and that young ladies putting on plays at home is immoral?John Mullan (26:31)Well, I would, mean, perhaps I could quote what two students who were discussing exactly this issue said quite some time ago in a class where a seminar was running on Mansfield Park. And one of the students can't remember their names, I'm afraid. I can't remember their identities, so I'm safe to quote them. ⁓ They're now probably running PR companies or commercial solicitors. And one of them I would say a less perceptive student said, why the big deal about the amateur dramatics? I mean, what's Jane Austen's problem? And there was a pause and another student in the room who I would suggest was a bit more of an alpha student said, really, I'm surprised you asked that. I don't think I've ever read a novel in which I've seen characters behaving so badly as this.And I think that's the answer. The answer isn't that the amateur dramatics themselves are sort of wrong, because of course Jane Austen and her family did them. They indulged in them. ⁓ It's that it gives the opportunity, the license for appalling, mean truly appalling behaviour. I mean, Henry Crawford, you know, to cut to the chase on this, Henry Crawford is seducing a woman in front of her fiance and he enjoys it not just because he enjoys seducing women, that's what he does, but because it's in front of him and he gets an extra kick out of it. You know, he has himself after all already said earlier in the novel, oh, I much prefer an engaged woman, he has said to his sister and Mrs. Grant. Yes, of course he does. So he's doing that. Mariah and Julia are fighting over him. Mr. Rushworth, he's not behaving badly, he's just behaving like a silly arse. Mary Crawford, my goodness, what is she up to? She's up to using the amateur dramatics for her own kind of seductions whilst pretending to be sort of doing it almost unwillingly. I mean, it seems to me an elaborate, beautifully choreographed elaboration of the selfishness, sensuality and hypocrisy of almost everybody involved. And it's not because it's amateur dramatics, but amateur dramatics gives them the chance to behave so badly.Henry Oliver (29:26)Someone told me that Thomas Piketty says that Jane Austen depicts a society in which inequality of wealth is natural and morally justified. Is that true?John Mullan (29:29)Ha⁓Well, again, Thomas Piketty, I wish we had him here for a good old mud wrestle. ⁓ I would say that the problem with his analysis is the coupling of the two adjectives, natural and morally right. I think there is a strong argument that inequality is depicted as natural or at least inevitable, inescapable in Jane Austen's novels.but not morally right, as it were. In fact, not at all morally right. There is a certain, I think you could be exaggerated little and call it almost fatalism about that such inequalities. Do you remember Mr. Knightley says to Emma, in Emma, when he's admonishing her for her, you know, again, a different way, terribly bad behavior.Henry Oliver (30:38)At the picnic.John Mullan (30:39)At the picnic when she's humiliatedMiss Bates really and Mr Knightley says something like if she'd been your equal you know then it wouldn't have been so bad because she could have retaliated she could have come back but she's not and she says and he says something like I won't get the words exactly right but I can get quite close he says sinceher youth, she has sunk. And if she lives much longer, will sink further. And he doesn't say, ⁓ well, we must have a collection to do something about it, or we must have a revolution to do something about it, or if only the government would bring in better pensions, you know, he doesn't, he doesn't sort of rail against it as we feel obliged to. ⁓ He just accepts it as an inevitable part of what happens because of the bad luck of her birth, of the career that her father followed, of the fact that he died too early probably, of the fact that she herself never married and so on. That's the way it is. And Mr Knightley is, I think, a remarkably kind character, he's one of the kindest people in Jane Austen and he's always doing surreptitious kindnesses to people and you know he gives the Bates's stuff, things to eat and so on. He arranges for his carriage to carry them places but he accepts that that is the order of things. ⁓ But I, you know Henry, I don't know what you think, I think reading novels or literature perhaps more generally, but especially novels from the past, is when you're responding to your question to Mr. Piketty's quote, is quite a sort of, can be quite an interesting corrective to our own vanities, I think, because we, I mean, I'm not saying, you know, the poor are always with us, as it were, like Jesus, but... ⁓ You know, we are so ⁓ used to speaking and arguing as if any degree of poverty is in principle politically remediable, you know, and should be. And characters in Jane Austen don't think that way. And I don't think Jane Austen thought that way.Henry Oliver (33:16)Yes, yes. Yeah.The other thing I would say is that ⁓ the people who discuss Jane Austen publicly and write about her are usually middle class or on middle class incomes. And there's a kind of collective blindness to the fact that what we call Miss Bates poverty simply means that she's slipping out of the upper middle class and she will no longer have her maid.⁓ It doesn't actually mean, she'll still be living on a lot more than a factory worker, who at that time would have been living on a lot more than an agricultural worker, and who would have been living on a lot more than someone in what we would think of as destitution, or someone who was necessitous or whatever. So there's a certain extent to which I actually think what Austin is very good at showing is the... ⁓ the dynamics of a newly commercial society. So at the same time that Miss Bates is sinking, ⁓ I forget his name, but the farmer, the nice farmer, Robert Martin, he's rising. And they all, all classes meet at the drapier and class distinctions are slightly blurred by the presence of nice fabric.John Mullan (34:24)Mr. Robert Martin. Henry Oliver (34:37)And if your income comes from turnips, that's fine. You can have the same material that Emma has. And Jane Austen knows that she lives in this world of buttons and bonnets and muslins and all these new ⁓ imports and innovations. And, you know, I think Persuasion is a very good novel. ⁓ to say to Piketty, well, there's nothing natural about wealth inequality and persuasion. And it's not Miss Bates who's sinking, it's the baronet. And all these admirals are coming up and he has that very funny line, doesn't he? You're at terrible risk in the Navy that you'd be cut by a man who your father would have cut his father. And so I think actually she's not a Piketty person, but she's very clear-eyed about... quote unquote, what capitalism is doing to wealth inequality. Yeah, yeah.John Mullan (35:26)Yes, she is indeed. Indeed.Clear-eyed, I think, is just the adjective. I mean, I suppose the nearest she gets to a description. Yeah, she writes about the classes that she knows from the inside, as it were. So one could complain, people have complained. She doesn't represent what it's like to be an agricultural worker, even though agricultural labour is going on all around the communities in which her novels are set.And I mean, I think that that's a sort of rather banal objection, but there's no denying it in a way. If you think a novelist has a duty, as it were, to cover the classes and to cover the occupations, then it's not a duty that Jane Austen at all perceived. However, there is quite, there is something like, not a representation of destitution as you get in Dickens.but a representation of something inching towards poverty in Mansfield Park, which is the famous, as if Jane Austen was showing you she could do this sort of thing, which is the whole Portsmouth episode, which describes with a degree of domestic detail she never uses anywhere else in her fiction. When she's with the more affluent people, the living conditions, the food, the sheer disgustingness and tawdryness of life in the lodgings in Portsmouth where the Price family live. And of course, in a way, it's not natural because ⁓ in their particular circumstances, Lieutenant Price is an alcoholic.They've got far too many children. ⁓ He's a useless, sweary-mouthed boozer ⁓ and also had the misfortune to be wounded. ⁓ And she, his wife, Fanny's mother, is a slattern. We get told she's a slattern. And it's not quite clear if that's a word in Fanny's head or if that's Jane Austen's word. And Jane Austen...Fanny even goes so far as to think if Mrs. Norris were in charge here, and Mrs. Norris is as it were, she's the biggest sadist in all Jane Austen's fiction. She's like sort Gestapo guard monquet. If Mrs. Norris were in charge, it wouldn't be so bad here, but it's terrible. And Jane Austen even, know, she describes the color of the milk, doesn't she? The blue moats floating in the milk.She dis- and it's all through Fanny's perception. And Fanny's lived in this rather loveless grand place. And now it's a great sort of, ⁓ it's a coup d'etat. She now makes Fanny yearn for the loveless grand place, you know, because of what you were saying really, Henry, because as I would say, she's such an unsentimental writer, you know, andyou sort of think, you know, there's going to be no temptation for her to say, to show Fanny back in the loving bosom of her family, realising what hollow hearted people those Bertrams are. You know, she even describes the mark, doesn't she, that Mr Price's head, his greasy hair is left on the wall. It's terrific. And it's not destitution, but it's something like a life which must be led by a great sort of rank of British people at the time and Jane Austen can give you that, she can.Henry Oliver (39:26)Yeah, yeah. That's another very Dickensian moment. I'm not going to push this little thesis of mine too far, but the grease on the chair. It's like Mr. Jaggers in his horse hair. Yes. That's right, that's right. ⁓ Virginia Woolf said that Jane Austen is the most difficult novelist to catch in the act of greatness. Is that true?John Mullan (39:34)Yes, yes, yes, it is these details that Dickens would have noticed of course. Yes.Yes.⁓ I think it is so true. think that Virginia Woolf, she was such a true, well, I think she was a wonderful critic, actually, generally. Yeah, I think she was a wonderful critic. you know, when I've had a couple of glasses of Rioja, I've been known to say, to shocked students, ⁓ because you don't drink Rioja with students very often nowadays, but it can happen. ⁓ But she was a greater critic than novelist, you know.Henry Oliver (39:54)Yeah.Best critic of the 20th century. Yes, yes. Yeah. And also greater than Emson and all these people who get the airtime. Yes, yes.John Mullan (40:20)You know.I know, I know, but that's perhaps because she didn't have a theory or an argument, you know, and the Seven Types, I know that's to her credit, but you know, the Seven Types of Ambiguity thing is a very strong sort of argument, even if...Henry Oliver (40:31)Much to her credit.But look, if the last library was on fire and I could only save one of them, I'd let all the other critics in the 20th century burn and I'd take the common reader, wouldn't you?John Mullan (40:47)Okay. Yes, I, well, I think I agree. think she's a wonderful critic and both stringent and open. I mean, it's an extraordinary way, you know, doesn't let anybody get away with anything, but on the other hand is genuinely ready to, to find something new to, to anyway. ⁓ the thing she said about Austin, she said lots of good things about Austin and most of them are good because they're true. And the thing about… Yes, so what I would, I think what she meant was something like this, that amongst the very greatest writers, so I don't know, Shakespeare or Milton or, you know, something like that, you could take almost a line, yes? You can take a line and it's already glowing with sort of radioactive brilliance, know, and ⁓ Jane Austen, the line itself, there are wonderful sentences.)Mr. Bennett was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humor, reserve and caprice that the experience of three and 20 years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. I mean, that's as good as anything in Hamlet, isn't it? So odd a mixture and there he is, the oddest mixture there's ever been. And you think he must exist, he must exist. But anyway, most lines in Jane Austen probably aren't like that and it's as if in order to ⁓ explain how brilliant she is and this is something you can do when you teach Jane Austen, makes her terrific to teach I think, you can look at any bit and if everybody's read the novel and remembers it you can look at any paragraph or almost any line of dialogue and see how wonderful it is because it will connect to so many other things. But out of context, if you see what I mean, it doesn't always have that glow of significance. And sometimes, you know, the sort of almost most innocuous phrases and lines actually have extraordinary dramatic complexity. but you've got to know what's gone on before, probably what goes on after, who's in the room listening, and so on. And so you can't just catch it, you have to explain it. ⁓ You can't just, as it were, it, as you might quote, you know, a sort of a great line of Wordsworth or something.Henry Oliver (43:49)Even the quotable bits, you know, the bit that gets used to explain free and direct style in Pride and Prejudice where she says ⁓ living in sight of their own warehouses. Even a line like that is just so much better when you've been reading the book and you know who is being ventriloquized.John Mullan (43:59)Well, my favourite one is from Pride and Prejudice is after she's read the letter Mr Darcy gives her explaining what Wickham is really like, really, for truth of their relationship and their history. And she interrogates herself. And then at the end, there's ⁓ a passage which is in a passage of narration, but which is certainly in going through Elizabeth's thoughts. And it ends, she had been blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd. And I just think it's, if you've got to know Elizabeth, you just know that that payoff adjective, absurd, that's the coup de grace. Because of course, finding other people absurd is her occupation. It's what makes her so delightful. And it's what makes us complicit with her.Henry Oliver (44:48)Yeah.That's right.John Mullan (45:05)She sees how ridiculous Sir William Lucas and her sister Mary, all these people, and now she has absurded herself, as it were. So blind partial prejudice, these are all repetitions of the same thought. But only Elizabeth would end the list absurd. I think it's just terrific. But you have to have read the book just to get that. That's a whole sentence.You have to have read the book to get the sentence, don't you?Henry Oliver (45:34)Yep, indeed. ⁓ Do we love Jane Austen too much so that her contemporaries are overshadowed and they're actually these other great writers knocking around at the same time and we don't give them their due? Or is she in fact, you know, the Shakespeare to their Christopher Marlowe or however you want to.John Mullan (45:55)I think she's the Shakespeare to their Thomas Kidd or no even that's the... Yes, okay, I'm afraid that you know there are two contradictory answers to that. Yes, it does lead us to be unfair to her contemporaries certainly because they're so much less good than her. So because they're so much less good than her in a way we're not being unfair. know, I mean... because I have the profession I have, I have read a lot of novels by her immediate predecessors. I mean, people like Fanny Burnie, for instance, and her contemporaries, people like Mariah Edgeworth. And ⁓ if Jane Austen hadn't existed, they would get more airtime, I think, yes? And some of them are both Burnie and Edgeworth, for instance. ⁓ highly intelligent women who had a much more sophisticated sort of intellectual and social life than Jane Austen ⁓ and conversed with men and women of ideas and put some of those ideas in their fiction and they both wrote quite sophisticated novels and they were both more popular than Jane Austen and they both, having them for the sort of carpers and complainers, they've got all sorts of things like Mariah Regworth has some working-class people and they have political stuff in their novels and they have feminist or anti-feminist stuff in their novels and they're much more satisfying to the person who's got an essay to write in a way because they've got the social issues of the day in there a bit, certainly Mariah Regworth a lot. ⁓ So if Jane Austen hadn't come along we would show them I think more, give them more time. However, you know, I don't want to say this in a destructive way, but in a certain way, all that they wrote isn't worth one paragraph of Jane Austen, you know, in a way. So we're not wrong. I suppose the interesting case is the case of a man actually, which is Walter Scott, who sort of does overlap with Jane Austen a bit, you know, and who has published what I can't remember, two, three, even four novels by the time she dies, and I think three, and she's aware of him as a poet and I think beginning to be aware of him as a novelist. And he's the prime example of somebody who was in his own day, but for a long time afterwards, regarded as a great novelist of his day. And he's just gone. He's really, you know, you can get his books in know, Penguin and Oxford classics in the shops. I mean, it's at least in good big book shops. And it's not that he's not available, but it's a very rare person who's read more than one or even read one. I don't know if you read lots of Scott, Henry.Henry Oliver (49:07)Well, I've read some Scott and I quite like it, but I was a reactionary in my youth and I have a little flame for the Jacobite cause deep in my heart. This cannot be said of almost anyone who is alive today. 1745 means nothing to most people. The problem is that he was writing about something that has just been sort of forgotten. And so the novels, know, when Waverly takes the knee in front of the old young old pretender, whichever it is, who cares anymore? you know?John Mullan (49:40)Well, yes, but it can't just be that because he also wrote novels about Elizabeth I and Robin Hood and, you know... ⁓Henry Oliver (49:46)I do think Ivanhoe could be more popular, yeah.John Mullan (49:49)Yeah, so it's not just that this and when he wrote, for instance, when he published Old Mortality, which I think is one of his finest novels, I mean, I've read probably 10 Scott novels at nine or 10, you know, so that's only half or something of his of his output. And I haven't read one for a long time, actually. Sorry, probably seven or eight years. He wrote about some things, which even when he wrote about and published about, readers of the time couldn't have much known or cared about. mean, old mortalities about the Covenant as wars in the borderlands of Scotland in the 17th century. I mean, all those people in London who were buying it, they couldn't give a damn about that. Really, really, they couldn't. I mean, they might have recognized the postures of religious fanaticism that he describes rather well.But even then only rather distantly, I think. So I think it's not quite that. I think it's not so much ignorance now of the particular bits of history he was drawn to. I think it's that in the 19th century, historical fiction had a huge status. And it was widely believed that history was the most dignified topic for fiction and so dignified, it's what made fiction serious. So all 19th century authors had a go at it. Dickens had a go at it a couple of times, didn't he? I think it's no, yes, yes, think even Barnaby Rudge is actually, it's not just a tale of two cities. Yes, a terrific book. But generally speaking, ⁓ most Victorian novelists who did it, ⁓ they are amongst, you know, nobodyHenry Oliver (51:22)Very successfully. ⁓ a great book, great book.John Mullan (51:43)I think reads Trollope's La Vendée, you know, people who love Hardy as I do, do not rush to the trumpet major. it was a genre everybody thought was the big thing, know, war and peace after all. And then it's prestige faded. I mean, it's...returned a little bit in some ways in a sort of Hillary man, Tellish sort of way, but it had a hugely inflated status, I think, in the 19th century and that helped Scott. And Scott did, know, Scott is good at history, he's good at battles, he's terrific at landscapes, you know, the big bow wow strain as he himself described it.Henry Oliver (52:32)Are you up for a sort of quick fire round about other things than Jane Austen?John Mullan (52:43)Yes, sure, try me.Henry Oliver (52:44)Have you used any LLMs and are they good at talking about literature?John Mullan (52:49)I don't even know what an LLM is. What is it? Henry Oliver (52:51)Chat GPT. ⁓ John Mullan (53:17)⁓ God, goodness gracious, it's the work of Satan.Absolutely, I've never used one in my life. And indeed, have colleagues who've used them just to sort of see what it's like so that might help us recognise it if students are using them. And I can't even bring myself to do that, I'm afraid. But we do as a...As a department in my university, we have made some use of them purely in order to give us an idea of what they're like, so to help us sort of...Henry Oliver (53:28)You personally don't feel professionally obliged to see what it can tell you. Okay, no, that's fine. John Mullan (53:32)No, sorry.Henry Oliver (53:33)What was it like being a Booker Prize judge?heady. It was actually rather heady. Everybody talks about how it's such a slog, all those books, which is true. But when you're the Booker Prize judge, at least when I did it, you were treated as if you were somebody who was rather important. And then as you know, and that lasts for about six months. And you're sort of sent around in taxes and give nice meals and that sort of thing. And sort of have to give press conferences when you choose the shortlist. and I'm afraid my vanity was tickled by all that. And then at the moment after you've made the decision, you disappear. And the person who wins becomes important. It's a natural thing, it's good. And you realize you're not important at all.Henry Oliver (54:24)You've been teaching in universities, I think, since the 1990s.John Mullan (54:29)Yes, no earlier I fear, even earlier.Henry Oliver (54:32)What are the big changes? Is the sort of media narrative correct or is it more complicated than that?John Mullan (54:38)Well, it is more complicated, but sometimes things are true even though the Daily Telegraph says they're true, to quote George Orwell. ⁓ you know, I mean, I think in Britain, are you asking about Britain or are you asking more generally? Because I have a much more depressing view of what's happened in America in humanities departments.Henry Oliver (54:45)Well, tell us about Britain, because I think one problem is that the American story becomes the British story in a way. So what's the British story?John Mullan (55:07)Yes, yes, think that's true.Well, I think the British story is that we were in danger of falling in with the American story. The main thing that has happened, that has had a clear effect, was the introduction in a serious way, however long ago it was, 13 years or something, of tuition fees. And that's really, in my department, in my subject, that's had a major change.and it wasn't clear at first, but it's become very clear now. So ⁓ it means that the, as it were, the stance of the teachers to the taught and the taught to the teachers, both of those have changed considerably. Not just in bad ways, that's the thing. It is complicated. So for instance, I mean, you could concentrate on the good side of things, which is, think, I don't know, were you a student of English literature once?Henry Oliver (55:49)Mm-hmm.I was, I was. 2005, long time ago.John Mullan (56:07)Yes. OK.Well, I think that's not that long ago. mean, probably the change is less extreme since your day than it is since my day. But compared to when I was a student, which was the end of the 70s, beginning of the 80s, I was an undergraduate. The degree of sort of professionalism and sobriety, responsibility and diligence amongst English literature academics has improved so much.You know, you generally speaking, literature academics, they are not a load of ⁓ drunken wastrels or sort of predatory seducers or lazy, work shy, ⁓ even if they love their own research, negligent teachers or a lot of the sort of the things which even at the time I recognise as the sort of bad behaviour aspects of some academics. Most of that's just gone. It's just gone. You cannot be like that because you've got everybody's your institution is totally geared up to sort of consumer feedback and and the students, especially if you're not in Oxford or Cambridge, the students are essentially paying your salaries in a very direct way. So there have been improvements actually. ⁓ those improvements were sort of by the advocates of tuition fees, I think, and they weren't completely wrong. However, there have also been some real downsides as well. ⁓ One is simply that the students complain all the time, you know, and in our day we had lots to complain about and we never complained. Now they have much less to complain about and they complain all the time. ⁓ So, and that seems to me to have sort of weakened the relationship of trust that there should be between academics and students. But also I would say more if not optimistically, at least stoically. I've been in this game for a long time and the waves of student fashion and indignation break on the shore and then another one comes along a few years later. And as a sort of manager in my department, because I'm head of my department, I've learned to sort of play the long game.And what everybody's hysterical about one moment, one year, they will have forgotten about two or three years later. So there has been a certain, you know, there was a, you know, what, what, you know, some conservative journalists would call kind of wokery. There has been some of that. But in a way, there's always been waves of that. And the job of academics is sort of to stand up to it. and in a of calm way. Tuition fees have made it more difficult to do that I think.Henry Oliver (59:40)Yeah. Did you know A.S. Byatt? What was she like?John Mullan (59:43)I did.⁓ Well...When you got to know her, you recognized that the rather sort of haughty almost and sometimes condescending apparently, ⁓ intellectual auteur was of course a bit of a front. Well, it wasn't a front, but actually she was quite a vulnerable person, quite a sensitive and easily upset person.I mean that as a sort of compliment, not easily upset in the sense that sort of her vanity, but actually she was quite a humanly sensitive person and quite woundable. And when I sort of got to know that aspect of her, know, unsurprisingly, I found myself liking her very much more and actually not worrying so much about the apparent sort of put downs of some other writers and things and also, you know, one could never have said this while she was alive even though she often talked about it. I think she was absolutely permanently scarred by the death of her son and I think that was a, you know, who was run over when he was what 11 years old or something. He may have been 10, he may have been 12, I've forgotten, but that sort of age. I just think she was I just think she was permanently lacerated by that. And whenever I met her, she always mentioned it somehow, if we were together for any length of time.Henry Oliver (1:01:27)What's your favourite Iris Murdoch novel?John Mullan (1:01:33)I was hoping you were going to say which is the most absurd Aris Murdoch novel. ⁓ No, you're an Aris Murdoch fan, are you? Henry Oliver (1:01:38)Very much so. You don't like her work?John Mullan (1:01:59)Okay. ⁓ no, it's, as you would say, Henry, more complicated than that. I sort of like it and find it absurd. It's true. I've only read, re-read in both cases, two in the last 10 years. And that'sThat's not to my credit. And both times I thought, this is so silly. I reread the C to C and I reread a severed head. And I just found them both so silly. ⁓ I was almost, you know, I almost lost my patience with them. But I should try another. What did I used to like? Did I rather like an accidental man? I fear I did.Did I rather like the bell, which is surely ridiculous. I fear I did. Which one should I like the most?Henry Oliver (1:02:38)I like The Sea, the Sea very much. ⁓ I think The Good Apprentice is a great book. There are these, so after The Sea, the Sea, she moves into her quote unquote late phase and people don't like it, but I do like it. So The Good Apprentice and The Philosopher's Pupil I think are good books, very good books.John Mullan (1:02:40)I've not read that one, I'm afraid. Yes, I stopped at the sea to sea. I, you know, once upon a time, I'm a bit wary of it and my experience of rereading A Severed Head rather confirmed me in my wariness because rereading, if I were to reread Myris Murdoch, I'm essentially returning to my 18 year old self because I read lots of Myris Murdoch when I was 17, 18, 19 and I thought she was deep as anything. and to me she was the deep living British novelist. And I think I wasn't alone ⁓ and I feel a little bit chastened by your advocacy of her because I've also gone along with the ⁓ general readership who've slightly decided to ditch Irish Murdoch. her stock market price has sunk hugely ⁓ since her death. But perhaps that's unfair to her, I don't know. I've gone a bit, I'll try again, because I recently have reread two or three early Margaret Drabble novels and found them excellent, really excellent. And thought, ⁓ actually, I wasn't wrong to like these when I was a teenager. ⁓Henry Oliver (1:04:11)The Millstone is a great book.John Mullan (1:04:22)⁓ yes and actually yes I reread that, I reread the Garrick year, the Millstone's terrific I agree, the the Garrick year is also excellent and Jerusalem the Golden, I reread all three of them and and and thought they were very good. So so you're recommending the Philosopher's Apprentice. I'm yeah I'm conflating yes okay.Henry Oliver (1:04:31)first rate. The Good Apprentice and the Philosopher's Pupil. Yeah, yeah. I do agree with you about A Severed Head. I think that book's crazy. What do you like about Patricia Beer's poetry?John Mullan (1:04:56)⁓ I'm not sure I am a great fan of Patricia Beer's poetry really. I got the job of right, what? Yes, yes, because I was asked to and I said, I've read some of her poetry, but you know, why me? And the editor said, because we can't find anybody else to do it. So that's why I did it. And it's true that I came.Henry Oliver (1:05:02)Well, you wrote her... You wrote her dictionary of national... Yes.John Mullan (1:05:23)I came to quite like it and admire some of it because in order to write the article I read everything she'd ever published. But that was a while ago now, Henry, and I'm not sure it puts me in a position to recommend her.Henry Oliver (1:05:35)Fair enough.Why is the Dunciad the greatest unread poem in English?John Mullan (1:05:41)Is it the greatest unread one? Yes, probably, yes, yes, I think it is. Okay, it's great because, first of all, great, then unread. It's great because, well, Alexander Poet is one of the handful of poetic geniuses ever, in my opinion, in the writing in English. Absolutely genius, top shelf. ⁓Henry Oliver (1:05:46)Well, you said that once, yes.Mm-hmm. Yes, yes, yes. Top shelf, yeah.John Mullan (1:06:09)And even his most accessible poetry, however, is relatively inaccessible to today's readers, sort of needs to be taught, or at least you have to introduce people to. Even the Rape of the Lock, which is a pure delight and the nearest thing to an ABBA song he ever wrote, is pretty scary with its just densely packed elusiveness and...Henry Oliver (1:06:27)YouJohn Mullan (1:06:38)You know, and as an A level examiner once said to me, we don't set Pope for A level because it's full of irony and irony is unfair to candidates. ⁓ Which is true enough. ⁓ So Pope's already difficult. ⁓ Poetry of another age, poetry which all depends on ideas of word choice and as I said, literary allusion and The Dunciad is his most compacted, elusive, dense, complicated and bookish poems of a writer who's already dense and compact and bookish and elusive. And the Dunceyad delights in parodying, as I'm sure you know, all the sort of habits of scholarly emendation and encrustation, which turn what should be easy to approach works of literature into sort of, you know, heaps of pedantic commentary. And he parodies all that with delight. But I mean, that's quite a hard ask, isn't it? And ⁓ yeah, and I just and I think everything about the poem means that it's something you can only ever imagine coming to it through an English literature course, actually. I think it is possible to do that. I came to it through being taught it very well and, you know, through because I was committed for three years to study English literature, but it's almost inconceivable that somebody could just sort of pick it up in a bookshop and think, ⁓ this is rather good fun. I'll buy this.Henry Oliver (1:08:26)Can we end with one quick question about Jane Austen since it's her birthday? A lot of people come to her books later. A lot of people love it when they're young, but a lot of people start to love it in their 20s or 30s. And yet these novels are about being young. What's going on there?John Mullan (1:08:29)Sure, sure.Yes.I fear, no not I fear, I think that what you describe is true of many things, not just Jane Austen. You know, that there's a wonderful passage in J.M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace where the reprehensible protagonist is teaching Wordsworth's Prelude.to a group of 19 and 20 year olds. And he adores it. He's in his mid fifties. And he, whilst he's talking, is thinking different things. And what he's thinking is something that I often think actually about certain works I teach, particularly Jane Austen, which is this book is all about being young, but the young find it tedious. Only the aging.You know, youth is wasted on the young, as it were. Only the aging really get its brilliance about the experience of being young. And I think that's a sort of pattern in quite a lot of literature. So, you know, take Northanger Abbey. That seems to me to be a sort of disly teenage book in a way.It's everything and everybody's in a hurry. Everybody's in a whirl. Catherine's in a whirl all the time. She's 17 years old. And it seems to me a delightfully teenage-like book. And if you've read lots of earlier novels, mostly by women, about girls in their, you know, nice girls in their teens trying to find a husband, you know, you realize that sort ofextraordinary magical gift of sort Jane Austen's speed and sprightliness. You know, somebody said to me recently, ⁓ when Elizabeth Bennet sort of walks, but she doesn't walk, she sort of half runs across the fields. You know, not only is it socially speaking, no heroine before her would have done it, but the sort of the sprightliness with which it's described putsthe sort of ploddingness of all fiction before her to shame. And there's something like that in Northanger Abbey. It's about youthfulness and it takes on some of the qualities of the youthfulness of its heroine. know, her wonderful oscillations between folly and real insight. You know, how much she says this thing. I think to marry for money is wicked. Whoa. And you think,Well, Jane Austen doesn't exactly think that. She doesn't think Charlotte Lucas is wicked, surely. But when Catherine says that, there's something wonderful about it. There is something wonderful. You know, only a 17 year old could say it, but she does. And but I appreciate that now in my 60s. I don't think I appreciated it when I was in my teens.Henry Oliver (1:11:55)That's a lovely place to end. John Mullen, thank you very much.John Mullan (1:11:58)Thanks, it's been a delight, a delight. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk/subscribe

Episode Summary:In this episode of Explaining History, Nick delves into the harrowing yet complex world of child labour during the British Industrial Revolution. Moving beyond the Dickensian caricatures of helpless victims, we explore Emma Griffin's groundbreaking book, Liberty's Dawn: A People's History of the Industrial Revolution.Through the voices of those who lived it—captured in hundreds of working-class autobiographies—we uncover the brutal reality of 13-hour shifts in cotton mills and lonely vigils in sheep pastures. But we also find stories of agency, survival, and the nuanced family decisions that sent children as young as six into the workforce. Why did some destitute families hold their children back from work until age 10? And how did access to apprenticeships divide the working class into the "skilled" and the "unskilled"?Plus: Stay tuned for an announcement about an upcoming live masterclass on Russian History for students!Key Topics:The "White Slaves of England": How reformers and novelists shaped our view of child labour.The Age of Work: Analyzing data from 350 autobiographies to find the average starting age of a child worker.Agency vs. Victimhood: Why we must view historical subjects as complex human beings, not just statistics.The Skilled Divide: How apprenticeships offered a lifeline out of poverty.Books Mentioned:Liberty's Dawn: A People's History of the Industrial Revolution by Emma GriffinOliver Twist & David Copperfield by Charles DickensThe Water-Babies by Charles KingsleyExplaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join the Community & Continue the ConversationFacebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcastSubstack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com▸ Read Articles & Go DeeperWebsite: explaininghistory.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to the 263rd episode of The Cup which is our a weekly (give or take, TBD, these are unprecedented times) performing arts talk show presented by Cup of Hemlock Theatre. With the theatres on a come back we offer a mix of both reviews of live shows we've seen and continued reviews of prophet productions! For our 263rd episode we bring you a Duet Review of Invasion: Christmas Carol, a Dickensian holiday improv extravaganza presented by Knifefight Theatre in association with One Four One Collective and the Assembly Theatre. Join Jillian Robinson and Ryan Borochovitz, as they discuss Victorian japes, demonic babies, and the sex life of Ebenezer Scrooge.Invasion: Christmas Carol is playing at the Assembly Theatre (1479 Queen St W, Toronto, ON) until December 14th, 2025. Tickets can be purchased from the following link: https://www.theassemblytheatre.com/invasionchristmascarol Follow Knifefight Theatre to read about all of the other invaders you may have missed: @knifefighttheatre Follow our panelists: Jillian Robinson – Instagram: @jillian.robinson96 Ryan Borochovitz – [Just send all that love to CoH instead; he won't mind!]; if you enjoy his theatre thoughts, more can be found at https://nextmag.ca/search/borochovitz Follow Cup of Hemlock Theatre on Instagram/Facebook/Twitter: @cohtheatreIf you'd like us to review your upcoming show in Toronto, please send press invites/inquiries to coh.theatre.MM@gmail.com

We've officially entered the weird zone. In Episode 5 of The Chair Company, “I Won. Zoom In.,” Ron and Mike take a road trip into the sketch-comedy Twilight Zone, and it might be the best (and most chaotic) episode yet. A Scrooge-obsessed cokehead, a method actor turned CFO impersonator, and a basement that might as well be a portal to another dimension? Yes, please.Brandon & Chanel break down all the madness:The best I Think You Should Leave–adjacent scene yet: Oliver Probblo's “Scrooge all year” monologueRon and Mike's descent into Ohio's weirdest town — and why every door opens into a new nightmareA Christmas Carol-themed porn parody (seriously), a photo-hunt callback, and a coke-fueled brawlBasement chases, door slams, light pole climbing, and two concussions for RonMike's emotional reveal: his estranged daughter, his past in the town, and his vulnerabilityDouglas survives a fridge (and drops a monologue worthy of Jim Downey's Hall of Fame)Jamie clutches a crucifix while watching her boss lose his grip (again)That ending: Dickensian chaos, emotional catharsis, and one hell of a Scrooge punchlineThe Chair Company continues to merge paranoid 1970s thrillers with Adult Swim absurdism — and Brandon & Chanel are here for every glorious sketch-within-a-story beat.

Do you dream of living a life of romance, success, and not being a social disgrace as you awkwardly tap at your keyboard like a Dickensian ghost? With 3 easy payments of $99.99, you can be the proud owner of the year's hottest CD-ROM from Katya Zamo's Shift Happens Typing School. You'll go from 7 pathetic words per minute to a blistering 80+ WPM because if you don't, you will perish loveless and alone, clutching your dial-up modem like a tragic relic. Watch in awe as our pixelated virtual tutor, “Key-Stroke Katya,” screams shockingly-cruel motivational threats while you master home-row Qwerty glory. Don't be a romantic and professional failure because you're a hunt and pecker! You can either type like a demon or slowly fade into the forgotten dust of the unremarkable, where your lonely keystrokes echo into an uncaring infinity until silence finally swallows your name whole. Your home might be worth more than you think! Find out how much at https://Airbnb.com/HOST This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Get on your way to being your best self and give online therapy a try at https://Betterhelp.com/BALD Get your gut going and support a balanced gut microbiome with Ritual's Synbiotic+. Get early access to their Black Friday sale for 40% off your first month at https://Ritual.com/BALD Give your cat the food they deserve! For a limited time, get 60% off your first order, plus free shipping, when you head to https://Smalls.com/BALD Follow Trixie: @TrixieMattel Follow Katya: @Katya_Zamo To watch the podcast on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://bit.ly/TrixieKatyaYT To check out our official YouTube Clips Channel: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/TrixieAndKatyaClipYT Don't forget to follow the podcast for free wherever you're listening or by using this link: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/thebaldandthebeautifulpodcast If you want to support the show, and get all the episodes ad-free go to: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://thebaldandthebeautiful.supercast.com If you like the show, telling a friend about it would be amazing! You can text, email, Tweet, or send this link to a friend: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/thebaldandthebeautifulpodcast To check out future Live Podcast Shows, go to: https://trixieandkatya.com/#tour To order your copy of our book, "Working Girls", go to: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://workinggirlsbook.com To check out the Trixie Motel in Palm Springs, CA: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.trixiemotel.com Listen Anywhere! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://bit.ly/thebaldandthebeautifulpodcast Follow Trixie: Official Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.trixiemattel.com/ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@trixie⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/trixiemattel Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/trixiemattel Twitter (X): ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/trixiemattel   Follow Katya: Official Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.welovekatya.com/ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@katya_zamo Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/welovekatya/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/katya_zamo⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter (X): ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/katya_zamo   #TrixieMattel #KatyaZamo #BaldBeautiful Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We're diving into Mansfield Park in this first episode of season five of Pod and Prejudice. In today's chapters, we're taking it back to the generation before our heroine. We meet the Ward sisters who all marry into different social strata and learn how Fanny Price came to Mansfield Park. Topics discussed include the something borrowed, something blue tradition, Mrs. Norris as a charity case, cousins marrying, Sir Wobbles the Pug, the bashing down of Fanny Price, naming girls after their mothers, and wealth as access.Patron Study Questions this week come from Kaitlyn, Linnea, Avi, Ghenet, Melissa, Katie, and Liz. Topics discussed include our first poor MC, the three Ward sisters and their marriages, our impressions of the Bertrams, our predictions for the futures of the kids, Mrs. Norris's influence over Sir Thomas, and why the writing of MP may be so different from the other books we've read.Becca's Study Questions:Topics discussed include Austen's Dickensian turn, why the Bertrams keep Fanny separate, whether Fanny is better off at Mansfield, and why Edmund is so special.Funniest Quote(s):“But there are certainly not so many men of large fortune in the world, as there are pretty women to deserve them.”“Lady Bertram, who was a woman of very tranquil feelings and a temper remarkably easy and indolent, would have contented herself with merely giving up her sister, and thinking no more of the matter: but Mrs. Norris had a spirit of activity, which could not be satisfied till she had written a long and angry letter to Fanny”“I should wish to see them very good friends, and would on no account authorize in my girls the smallest degree of arrogance towards their relation; but still they cannot be equals.”“It is not very wonderful that with all their promising talents and early information, they should be entirely deficient in the less common acquirements of self-knowledge, generosity, and humility.”Questions Moving Forward: Will the cousins marry?Who wins the chapters? Edmund BertramGlossary of Terms and Phrases:Disoblige (v): offend (someone) by not acting in accordance with their wishes.Deportment (n): a person's behavior or manners.Emulation (n): effort to match or surpass a person or achievement, typically by imitation.Frank (v): to mark (a piece of mail) with an official signature or sign indicating the right of the sender to free mailing.Indolence (n): avoidance of activity or exertion; laziness.Injudicious (adj): showing very poor judgment; unwise.Prognostication (n): the action of foretelling or prophesying future events.Solicitude (n): care or concern for someone or something.Tractable (adj): easy to control or influence.Glossary of People, Places, and Things: Yours, Mine, and Ours, Jane Eyre, A Cinderella Story, Gilmore Girls, The Last of Us, Mean GirlsToday's episode is brought to you by You Pod It, Dude! Listen wherever you get your podcasts, and watch the video on Spotify and Youtube! Follow them on Instagram and TikTok at @youpodit!Molly's edition of Mansfield Park can be found here.Next Episode: Mansfield Park Chapters 3-5Our show art was created by Torrence Browne, and our audio is produced by Graham Cook. For bios and transcripts, check out our website at podandprejudice.com. Pod and Prejudice is transcribed by speechdocs.com. To support the show, check out our Patreon! Check out our merch at https://podandprejudice.dashery.com.Instagram: @podandprejudiceTwitter: @podandprejudiceFacebook: Pod and PrejudiceYoutube: Pod and PrejudiceMerch store: https://podandprejudice.dashery.com/

Dolly Parton BioSnap a weekly updated Biography.Dolly Parton has been making major moves in the business world this week with the launch of her second Joleans denim collection with Good American on October 16th. The 24-piece collaboration blends her signature rhinestone style with modern denim featuring crystal studs, unique stitching, and bold belt accessories. According to her official website, prices range from 79 to 228 dollars with inclusive sizing from double zero to 30. The collection is available at goodamerican.com and retail partners including Macys and Selfridges in the UK. Parton shared that clothes can tell a story and this collection is another chapter in hers, combining the rhinestones and denim she has loved for years with a fresh twist.On the theatrical front, Broadway World announced the complete cast and band for Dolly Partons Smoky Mountain Christmas Carol national tour kicking off November 15th in Owensboro Kentucky. The toe tapping holiday musical features songs by the eleven time Grammy winner and will travel to more than 20 cities through December 28th with stops including Lexington Kentucky, Clearwater Florida, and multiple Tennessee venues. The show reimagines classic Dickensian characters through Partons signature warmth and songwriting genius.Looking ahead to 2026, Parade magazine reported earlier this month that Parton revealed details about her SongTeller Hotel opening in Nashville in Spring 2026. The country icon shared on Instagram that she loves songs and telling stories, declaring I am a SongTeller. This announcement came just weeks after she postponed her Las Vegas residency due to ongoing health issues, though she assured fans that God hasnt said anything about stopping yet and she just needs to slow down to be ready for more big adventures.Additionally, Wikipedia notes that her autobiographical musical titled Dolly A True Original Musical opened at Belmont Universitys Fisher Center in Nashville this past July 2025, with Broadway aspirations for 2026 under the direction of Bartlett Sher.Get the best deals https://amzn.to/3ODvOtaThis content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI

Shyam Madiraju is the writer & Director of "55," a modern Dickensian story set in Mumbai, India. It tells the story of a young pickpocket who faces hard decisions about survival, morality, and what power we have over our own lives. Look for the film streaming on Video On Demand, and follow Shyam's work on Instagram @mad_n_shy The highlighted nonprofit this month is Akshaya Patra, an NGO based in India that provides hot midday meals for children attending school. Go to www.akshayapatra.org to learn more, support, and share this charity. 

Small Town News--whose headline is it, anyway? @SmallTownNewsImprov

We've got mail! Jonathan and Honey answer your questions about cinema, films, family and everything in between. This week, the two discuss an unassuming dad bod Superman, non-gruesome TV suggestions for teenagers (Zombie Samurai meets Midsomer Murders) and movies made only for money.It's also time to put on a family screening of 'the pee pee poo poo man', Honey relives being subjected to The X Files at the tender age of six and Jonathan reminisces about his Dickensian milk round.Let us know what you think! You can get involved by emailing us at reeltalk@global.com and follow us on Instagram on @reeltalkrossThanks for listening. Listen and subscribe to Reel Talk on Global Player or wherever you get your podcasts.

Today's Lake and Shed framed conversation is once again about the fifth Cormoran Strike novel, Troubled Blood. Nick discusses Rowling's history with the Clerkenwell neighborhood. John talks about Troubled Blood as a double re-telling of The Faerie Queene, Book One, with Strike and Margot as the Redcrosse Knight and Oonaugh and Robin as Una.New to the Lake and Shed Kanreki Birthday series? Here's what we're doing:On 31 July 2025, Joanne Murray, aka J. K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith, will be celebrating her 60th birthday. This celebration is considered a ‘second birth' in Japan or Kanreki because it is the completion of the oriental astrological cycle. To mark JKR's Kanreki, Dr John Granger and Nick Jeffery, both Nipponophiles, are reading through Rowling's twenty-one published works and reviewing them in light of the author's writing process, her ‘Lake and Shed' metaphor. The ‘Lake' is the biographical source of her inspiration; the ‘Shed' is the alocal place of her intentional artistry, in which garage she transforms the biographical stuff provided by her subconscious mind into the archetypal stories that have made her the most important author of her age. You can hear Nick and John discuss this process and their birthday project at the first entry in this series of posts: Happy Birthday, JKR! A Lake and Shed Celebration of her Life and Work.Tomorrow? Our first look at Christmas Pig with both Nick and John talking about the Blue Bunny. Stay tuned!Links to posts mentioned in today's Lake and Shed conversation for further reading:* The Clerkenwell/Islington Gate of St John (Twitter Header)Faerie Queene!John Granger:* How Spenser Uses Cupid in Faerie Queen and Its Relevance for Understanding Troubled Blood* Reading Troubled Blood as a Medieval Morality PlayElizabeth Baird-Hardy* Day One, Part One: The Spenserian Epigraphs of the Pre-Released Troubled Blood Chapters* Day Two, Part Two: The Spenserian Epigraphs of Troubled Blood Chapters Eight to Fourteen* Day Three, Part Three: The Spenserian Epigraphs of Troubled Blood Chapters Fifteen to Thirty* Day Four, Part Four: The Spenserian Epigraphs of Troubled Blood Chapters Thirty One to Forty Eight* Day Five, Part Five: The Spenserian Epigraphs of Troubled Blood Chapters Forty Nine to Fifty Nine* Part Six: The Spenserian Epigraphs of Troubled Blood Chapters Sixty to Seventy One* Spenser and Strike Part Seven: Changes for the BetterBeatrice Groves* Trouble in Faerie Land (Part 1): Spenserian Clues in Troubled Blood Epigraphs* Trouble in Faerie Land (Part 2): Shipping Robin and Strike in the Epigraphs of Troubled Blood* Trouble in Faerie Land (Part 3): Searching for Duessa in Troubled BloodThis is a tentative listing by category of the posts at HogwartsProfessor about Troubled Blood. There's much more work to do on this wonderful work!1. Chiastic StructureRowling's fixation on planning in general and with structural patterns specifically in all of her work continues in Troubled Blood. From the first reading, it became apparent that in Strike5 Rowling-Galbraith had taken her game to a new level of sophistication. She continued, as she had in her four previous Strike mysteries, to write a story in parallel with the Harry Potter septology; there are many echoes of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth and equivalent number in the Hogwarts Saga, in Troubled Blood. Just as Phoenix was in important ways a re-telling of Philosopher's Stone, so Troubled Blood also echoes Cuckoo's Calling — with a few Stone notes thrown in as well. The new heights of Rowling's structural artistry, though, extend beyond her patented intratextuality; they are in each of Strike5's first six parts being ring compositions themselves, the astrological chart embedded in the story chapters, and the six part and two chapters correspondence in structure between Troubled Blood and Spenser's Faerie Queen.* Structure Part One* Structure Part Two, Notes Two to Six* Structure Part Three, Notes One to Three* Structure Part Four, Notes One to Three, Eight, and Ten* Structure Part Five, Notes One to Four, Nine* Structure Part Six, Notes One to Four* Structure Part Seven, Ring Latch, Story Axis* Astrological Clock Structure of Troubled Blood* Career of Evil Echoes* Order of the Phoenix Echoes* Cuckoo's Calling Echoes* Philosopher's Stone Echoes2. Literary AlchemyPer Nabokov, literary artistry and accomplishment are known and experienced through a work's “structure and style.” Rowling's signature structures are evident in Troubled Blood (see above) and her characteristic hermetic artistry, literary alchemy, is as well. Strike5 is the series nigredo and Strike and Robin experience great losses and their reduction to their respective and shared prima materia in the dissolving rain and flood waters of the story.* Strike's Transformation* Robin Ellacott and the Reverse Alchemy of the First Three Strike Novels* Lethal White as the Alchemical Pivot of the Strike Series* The Wet Nigredo: Troubled Blood's Black Names, Holiday Three Step, and Losses3. Psychology/MythologyRowling told Val McDermid that if she had not succeeded as a writer than she would have studied to become a psychologist:V: If it hadn't worked out the way it has. If you'd sat there and written the book in the café and nobody ever published it, what would you have done with your life, what would you have liked to have been?JK: There are two answers. If I could have done anything, I would have been really interested in doing, I would have been a psychologist. Because that's the only thing that's ever really pulled me in any way from all this. But at the time I was teaching, and I was very broke, and I had a daughter and I think I would have kept teaching until we were stable enough that we were stable enough that I could change.Because of her lifelong study and pre-occupation with mythology, it is fitting that in Strike5 readers are confronted with a host of references to psychologist Carl Jung and to a specific Greek myth which Jungian psychologists consider essential in understanding feminine psychology. All of which leads in the end to the Strike series' equivalent of the Hogwarts Saga's soul triptych exteriorization in Harry, Hermione and Ron as Body, Mind, and Spirit, with Robin and Strike as Handless Maiden and Fisher King, the mythological images of anima and animus neglected and working towards integration.* Carl Jung and Troubled Blood* A Mythological Key to Cormoran Strike? The Myth of Eros, Psyche, and Venus* The Anima and Animus: The Psychological Heart and Exteriorization of the Cormoran Strike Novels4. Valentine's DayThe story turn of Troubled Blood takes place on Valentine's Day and the actions, events, and repercussions of this holiday of Cupid and Heart-shaped candies, not to mention chocolates, shape the Robin and Strike relationship drama irrevocably. Chocolates play an outsized portion of that work symbolically, believe it or not; the word ‘chocolate' occurs 34 times in the first four Strike novels combined but 82 times in Troubled Blood. I explore the importance of this confection in two posts before beginning to explain the importance and appropriateness of Valentine's Day being the heart of the story, one that is in large part a re-telling of the Cupid and Psyche myth.* Troubled Blood: Interpreting the Poetry of Cormoran's Five Gifts To Robin* Troubled Blood: Poisoned Chocolates* Troubled Blood: The Secret of Rowntree* A Mythological Key to Cormoran Strike? The Myth of Eros, Psyche, and Venus5. Edmund Spenser's Faerie QueenTroubled Blood features several embedded texts, the most important of which is never mentioned in the book: Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queen. Serious Strikers enjoyed the luxury of not one but two scholars of Edmund Spenser who checked in on the relevance and meaning of Rowling's choice of the greatest English epic poem for her epigraphs, not to mention the host of correspondences between Strike 5 and Queen. Elizabeth Baird-Hardy did a part by part exegesis of the Troubled Blood-Faerie Queen conjunctions and Beatrice Groves shared her first thoughts on the connections as well. Just as Lethal White's meaning and artistry is relatively unappreciated without a close reading of Ibsen's Rosmersholm, so with Strike 5 and Faerie Queen.* Spenser's Faerie Queen (Above)6. The GhostsRowling's core belief is in the immortality of the soul and her favorite writer of the 20th Century is Vladimir Nabokov, whose work is subtly permeated by the otherworldly. No surprise, then, that Troubled Blood is haunted by a host of ghosts, most importantly the shade of Margot Bamborough but to include the women murdered by Dennis Creed and Nicolo Ricci. Their influence is so obvious and so important that it has spurred discussion of the spectres that haunt the first four Strike novels whose presence had not been discussed prior to the revelations of Strike 5.* Troubled Blood: The Dead Among Us* The Ghosts Haunting Troubled Blood* The Ghosts Haunting Cuckoo's Calling, Silkworm, Career of Evil, and Lethal White7. The NamesThe Cryptonyms or Cratylic Names of Troubled Blood are as rich and meaningful, even funny, as those found in Lethal White. From Paul Satchwell's “little package” to Roy Phipps as the Spanish King Phillip, from the nigredo black elements of Bill Talbot and Saul Morris to the Spenserian echoes of Oonaugh Kennedy and Janice Beattie, and the Rokeby-Oakden coincidences, Strike5 is full of name play. Did I mention that the detectives solve the mystery largely through their exploration of names? Douthwaite and Oakden only pop-up after Strike has revelations consequent to serious reflection on their names and pseudonyms. Rowling-Galbraith really wants her real-world readers to be reflecting on the Dickensian names of all her characters.* The Cratylic Names of Troubled Blood: A Top Twenty Round Up8. The Flints and GaffesRowling commented in one of her interview tableaus for Troubled Blood that she had worked extra hard to get the dates right in this most complicated of novels and that her proof reader and continuity editor found a big mistake. Serious Strikers, though, were left crying “Alas!” and laughing aloud at the number of bone-headed gaffes in The Presence's longest work to date. It remains her best as well as her longest book to date, but, really, get the woman the help she needs to comb the book for errors pre-publication. Can you say, “Isla”?* Troubled Blood: Flints, Errors, and Head Scratchers* Troubled Blood Gaffes: A Second Look at Ages and Dates9. The AstrologyThe principal embedded text in Troubled Blood, the one Robin and Cormoran read repeatedly, create keys for, and discuss throughout the book, is Bill Talbot's ‘True Book.' It features an astrological chart for the exact time and place of Margot Bamborough's disappearance in 1974, which map Talbot used to try and solve the case. Strike is profoundly disgusted by this approach but spends, as does Robin, much of his time trying to figure out the chart or at least what Talbot made of it. Troubled Blood, consequently, turns into something of an exploration of astrology and its relevance to understanding ourselves and the world. Unpacking what Rowling means by it, not to mention what the natal charts of Robin and Cormoran tell us about these charactes, their relationship, and Rowling-Galbraith's intentionally hermetic artistry, is a large part of the exegetical work to be done on Troubled Blood.* Nick Jeffery: Troubled Blood — The Acknowledgements* Part Three, Note Five* Troubled Blood: Strike's Natal Chart* Astrological Clock Structure of Troubled Blood* Astrological Allegorical: The Sun Signs of Characters in Troubled Blood* A Second Look at Talbot's Chart: What Does it Reveal to the Unbiased Eye?10. The Tarot Card SpreadsWe know that Rowling has significant skills when it comes to astrology. What is less well appreciated is that almost from childhood she has played with tarot card reading which knowledge has informed her work. This is comic in Trelawney, say, but comes to the fore in Troubled Blood‘s card spreads: the Celtic Cross in Talbot's ‘True Book,' his embedded three card spreads in the illustrations of that tome, and Robin's two readings, one in Laemington Spa and the other in her flat at story's end.* Part Three, Note Six* Part Four, Note Five* Part Five, Note Five* Part Six, Notes Five, Six, Eight* Bill Talbot's Tarot: The Embedded Occult Heart of Troubled Blood* Robin Ellacott's Tarot: The Missed Meanings of Her Twin Three Card Spreads in Troubled Blood11. Who Killed Leda Strike?To Rowling-Galbraith's credit, credible arguments in dedicated posts have been made that every person in the list below was the one who murdered Leda Strike. Who do you think did it?* Jonny Rokeby and the Harringay Crime Syndicate (Heroin Dark Lord 2.0),* Ted Nancarrow (Uncle Ted Did It),* Dave Polworth,* Leda Strike (!),* Lucy Fantoni (Lucy and Joan Did It and here),* Sir Randolph Whittaker,* Nick Herbert,* Peter Gillespie, and* Charlotte Campbell-Ross12. Embedded TextsAll of Rowling's novels feature books and texts, written work as well as metanarratives, with which her characters struggle to figure out in reflective parallel to what her readers are trying to do with the novel in hand. Troubled Blood is exceptionally laden with these embedded texts. Beyond Talbot's True Book and Spenser's Faerie Queen noted above, we are treated to selections from The Demon of Paradise Park, Whatever Happened to Margot Bamborough?, Astrology 14, and The Magus.13. The Murderers: Creed and BeattieA demon-possessed psychopath and the brain-damaged lonely woman… Each is described as “a genius of misdirection” and being without remorse or empathy. The actual murderers in Troubled Blood are distinct, certainly, but paired as well, as one of the many mirrored pairs in this story.14. FeminismTroubled Blood, Rowling has said, is a commentary of sorts on changes in the history of feminism. It is an unvarnished, even brutal exploration of the heroic age of the feminist movement, its front and back, largely through the personalities, circumstances, choices, and experiences of two pairs of women, Margot Bamborough and her plucky Irish side-kick Oonaugh Kennedy and the paired through time couple of Irene Bull-Hickson and Janice Beattie.15. Rokeby 3.0Jonny Rokeby makes his first appearance, albeit only by phone call, in Troubled Blood and yet it has reset thinking about Strike and his biological father considerably. Kurt Schreyer thinks the head Deadbeat is more Snape than Voldemort — and, if this is the case, we need to re-read the series to see how much Strike's emotional injuries from childhood neglect have misshaped his understanding of his dad so he lives in upside-down land.* Guest Post: Rokeby Redux – Is Strike's Father More Snape than Lord Voldemort? Get full access to Hogwarts Professor at hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/subscribe

Today's Lake and Shed framed conversation is about the fifth Cormoran Strike novel, Troubled Blood. Nick discusses Rowling's history with the divinatory art of astrology and the occult resources and reference works she brought into play in writing a novel whose primary embedded text is a murder scene's astrological chart. John talks about the astrological clock structure of twelve houses in which Galbraith tells this remarkable story.New to the Lake and Shed Kanreki Birthday series? Here's what we're doing:On 31 July 2025, Joanne Murray, aka J. K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith, will be celebrating her 60th birthday. This celebration is considered a ‘second birth' in Japan or Kanreki because it is the completion of the oriental astrological cycle. To mark JKR's Kanreki, Dr John Granger and Nick Jeffery, both Nipponophiles, are reading through Rowling's twenty-one published works and reviewing them in light of the author's writing process, her ‘Lake and Shed' metaphor. The ‘Lake' is the biographical source of her inspiration; the ‘Shed' is the alocal place of her intentional artistry, in which garage she transforms the biographical stuff provided by her subconscious mind into the archetypal stories that have made her the most important author of her age. You can hear Nick and John discuss this process and their birthday project at the first entry in this series of posts: Happy Birthday, JKR! A Lake and Shed Celebration of her Life and Work.Tomorrow? Another look at Troubled Blood, this time with an introduction to Rowling's ties to Clerkenwell from Nick and with John making a case for reading Troubled Blood as a re-telling of Spenser's Faerie Queene, Book One, with Strike and Margot as the Redcrosse Knight and Robin and Oonaugh as Una. Stay tuned!Links to posts mentioned in today's Lake and Shed conversation for further reading:* Nick Jeffery: Troubled Blood — The Astrologers in the Acknowledgements* J. K. Rowling, Author-Astrologer, Pt 1: How Did We Not Know About This?* Troubled Blood: Strike's Natal Chart* Astrological Clock Structure of Troubled BloodThis is a tentative listing by category of the posts at HogwartsProfessor about Troubled Blood. There's much more work to do on this wonderful work!1. Chiastic StructureRowling's fixation on planning in general and with structural patterns specifically in all of her work continues in Troubled Blood. From the first reading, it became apparent that in Strike5 Rowling-Galbraith had taken her game to a new level of sophistication. She continued, as she had in her four previous Strike mysteries, to write a story in parallel with the Harry Potter septology; there are many echoes of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth and equivalent number in the Hogwarts Saga, in Troubled Blood. Just as Phoenix was in important ways a re-telling of Philosopher's Stone, so Troubled Blood also echoes Cuckoo's Calling — with a few Stone notes thrown in as well. The new heights of Rowling's structural artistry, though, extend beyond her patented intratextuality; they are in each of Strike5's first six parts being ring compositions themselves, the astrological chart embedded in the story chapters, and the six part and two chapters correspondence in structure between Troubled Blood and Spenser's Faerie Queen.* Structure Part One* Structure Part Two, Notes Two to Six* Structure Part Three, Notes One to Three* Structure Part Four, Notes One to Three, Eight, and Ten* Structure Part Five, Notes One to Four, Nine* Structure Part Six, Notes One to Four* Structure Part Seven, Ring Latch, Story Axis* Astrological Clock Structure of Troubled Blood* Career of Evil Echoes* Order of the Phoenix Echoes* Cuckoo's Calling Echoes* Philosopher's Stone Echoes2. Literary AlchemyPer Nabokov, literary artistry and accomplishment are known and experienced through a work's “structure and style.” Rowling's signature structures are evident in Troubled Blood (see above) and her characteristic hermetic artistry, literary alchemy, is as well. Strike5 is the series nigredo and Strike and Robin experience great losses and their reduction to their respective and shared prima materia in the dissolving rain and flood waters of the story.* Strike's Transformation* Robin Ellacott and the Reverse Alchemy of the First Three Strike Novels* Lethal White as the Alchemical Pivot of the Strike Series* The Wet Nigredo: Troubled Blood's Black Names, Holiday Three Step, and Losses3. Psychology/MythologyRowling told Val McDermid that if she had not succeeded as a writer than she would have studied to become a psychologist:V: If it hadn't worked out the way it has. If you'd sat there and written the book in the café and nobody ever published it, what would you have done with your life, what would you have liked to have been?JK: There are two answers. If I could have done anything, I would have been really interested in doing, I would have been a psychologist. Because that's the only thing that's ever really pulled me in any way from all this. But at the time I was teaching, and I was very broke, and I had a daughter and I think I would have kept teaching until we were stable enough that we were stable enough that I could change.Because of her lifelong study and pre-occupation with mythology, it is fitting that in Strike5 readers are confronted with a host of references to psychologist Carl Jung and to a specific Greek myth which Jungian psychologists consider essential in understanding feminine psychology. All of which leads in the end to the Strike series' equivalent of the Hogwarts Saga's soul triptych exteriorization in Harry, Hermione and Ron as Body, Mind, and Spirit, with Robin and Strike as Handless Maiden and Fisher King, the mythological images of anima and animus neglected and working towards integration.* Carl Jung and Troubled Blood* A Mythological Key to Cormoran Strike? The Myth of Eros, Psyche, and Venus* The Anima and Animus: The Psychological Heart and Exteriorization of the Cormoran Strike Novels4. Valentine's DayThe story turn of Troubled Blood takes place on Valentine's Day and the actions, events, and repercussions of this holiday of Cupid and Heart-shaped candies, not to mention chocolates, shape the Robin and Strike relationship drama irrevocably. Chocolates play an outsized portion of that work symbolically, believe it or not; the word ‘chocolate' occurs 34 times in the first four Strike novels combined but 82 times in Troubled Blood. I explore the importance of this confection in two posts before beginning to explain the importance and appropriateness of Valentine's Day being the heart of the story, one that is in large part a re-telling of the Cupid and Psyche myth.* Troubled Blood: Interpreting the Poetry of Cormoran's Five Gifts To Robin* Troubled Blood: Poisoned Chocolates* Troubled Blood: The Secret of Rowntree* A Mythological Key to Cormoran Strike? The Myth of Eros, Psyche, and Venus5. Edmund Spenser's Faerie QueenTroubled Blood features several embedded texts, the most important of which is never mentioned in the book: Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queen. Serious Strikers enjoyed the luxury of not one but two scholars of Edmund Spenser who checked in on the relevance and meaning of Rowling's choice of the greatest English epic poem for her epigraphs, not to mention the host of correspondences between Strike 5 and Queen. Elizabeth Baird-Hardy did a part by part exegesis of the Troubled Blood-Faerie Queen conjunctions and Beatrice Groves shared her first thoughts on the connections as well. Just as Lethal White's meaning and artistry is relatively unappreciated without a close reading of Ibsen's Rosmersholm, so with Strike 5 and Faerie Queen.Elizabeth Baird-Hardy* Day One, Part One: The Spenserian Epigraphs of the Pre-Released Troubled Blood Chapters* Day Two, Part Two: The Spenserian Epigraphs of Troubled Blood Chapters Eight to Fourteen* Day Three, Part Three: The Spenserian Epigraphs of Troubled Blood Chapters Fifteen to Thirty* Day Four, Part Four: The Spenserian Epigraphs of Troubled Blood Chapters Thirty One to Forty Eight* Day Five, Part Five: The Spenserian Epigraphs of Troubled Blood Chapters Forty Nine to Fifty Nine* Part Six: The Spenserian Epigraphs of Troubled Blood Chapters Sixty to Seventy One* Spenser and Strike Part Seven: Changes for the BetterBeatrice Groves* Trouble in Faerie Land (Part 1): Spenserian Clues in Troubled Blood Epigraphs* Trouble in Faerie Land (Part 2): Shipping Robin and Strike in the Epigraphs of Troubled Blood* Trouble in Faerie Land (Part 3): Searching for Duessa in Troubled BloodJohn Granger:* How Spenser Uses Cupid in Faerie Queen and Its Relevance for Understanding Troubled Blood* Reading Troubled Blood as a Medieval Morality Play6. The GhostsRowling's core belief is in the immortality of the soul and her favorite writer of the 20th Century is Vladimir Nabokov, whose work is subtly permeated by the otherworldly. No surprise, then, that Troubled Blood is haunted by a host of ghosts, most importantly the shade of Margot Bamborough but to include the women murdered by Dennis Creed and Nicolo Ricci. Their influence is so obvious and so important that it has spurred discussion of the spectres that haunt the first four Strike novels whose presence had not been discussed prior to the revelations of Strike 5.* Troubled Blood: The Dead Among Us* The Ghosts Haunting Troubled Blood* The Ghosts Haunting Cuckoo's Calling, Silkworm, Career of Evil, and Lethal White7. The NamesThe Cryptonyms or Cratylic Names of Troubled Blood are as rich and meaningful, even funny, as those found in Lethal White. From Paul Satchwell's “little package” to Roy Phipps as the Spanish King Phillip, from the nigredo black elements of Bill Talbot and Saul Morris to the Spenserian echoes of Oonaugh Kennedy and Janice Beattie, and the Rokeby-Oakden coincidences, Strike5 is full of name play. Did I mention that the detectives solve the mystery largely through their exploration of names? Douthwaite and Oakden only pop-up after Strike has revelations consequent to serious reflection on their names and pseudonyms. Rowling-Galbraith really wants her real-world readers to be reflecting on the Dickensian names of all her characters.* The Cratylic Names of Troubled Blood: A Top Twenty Round Up8. The Flints and GaffesRowling commented in one of her interview tableaus for Troubled Blood that she had worked extra hard to get the dates right in this most complicated of novels and that her proof reader and continuity editor found a big mistake. Serious Strikers, though, were left crying “Alas!” and laughing aloud at the number of bone-headed gaffes in The Presence's longest work to date. It remains her best as well as her longest book to date, but, really, get the woman the help she needs to comb the book for errors pre-publication. Can you say, “Isla”?* Troubled Blood: Flints, Errors, and Head Scratchers* Troubled Blood Gaffes: A Second Look at Ages and Dates9. The AstrologyThe principal embedded text in Troubled Blood, the one Robin and Cormoran read repeatedly, create keys for, and discuss throughout the book, is Bill Talbot's ‘True Book.' It features an astrological chart for the exact time and place of Margot Bamborough's disappearance in 1974, which map Talbot used to try and solve the case. Strike is profoundly disgusted by this approach but spends, as does Robin, much of his time trying to figure out the chart or at least what Talbot made of it. Troubled Blood, consequently, turns into something of an exploration of astrology and its relevance to understanding ourselves and the world. Unpacking what Rowling means by it, not to mention what the natal charts of Robin and Cormoran tell us about these charactes, their relationship, and Rowling-Galbraith's intentionally hermetic artistry, is a large part of the exegetical work to be done on Troubled Blood.* Nick Jeffery: Troubled Blood — The Acknowledgements* Part Three, Note Five* Troubled Blood: Strike's Natal Chart* Astrological Clock Structure of Troubled Blood* Astrological Allegorical: The Sun Signs of Characters in Troubled Blood* A Second Look at Talbot's Chart: What Does it Reveal to the Unbiased Eye?10. The Tarot Card SpreadsWe know that Rowling has significant skills when it comes to astrology. What is less well appreciated is that almost from childhood she has played with tarot card reading which knowledge has informed her work. This is comic in Trelawney, say, but comes to the fore in Troubled Blood‘s card spreads: the Celtic Cross in Talbot's ‘True Book,' his embedded three card spreads in the illustrations of that tome, and Robin's two readings, one in Laemington Spa and the other in her flat at story's end.* Part Three, Note Six* Part Four, Note Five* Part Five, Note Five* Part Six, Notes Five, Six, Eight* Bill Talbot's Tarot: The Embedded Occult Heart of Troubled Blood* Robin Ellacott's Tarot: The Missed Meanings of Her Twin Three Card Spreads in Troubled Blood11. Who Killed Leda Strike?To Rowling-Galbraith's credit, credible arguments in dedicated posts have been made that every person in the list below was the one who murdered Leda Strike. Who do you think did it?* Jonny Rokeby and the Harringay Crime Syndicate (Heroin Dark Lord 2.0),* Ted Nancarrow (Uncle Ted Did It),* Dave Polworth,* Leda Strike (!),* Lucy Fantoni (Lucy and Joan Did It and here),* Sir Randolph Whittaker,* Nick Herbert,* Peter Gillespie, and* Charlotte Campbell-Ross12. Embedded TextsAll of Rowling's novels feature books and texts, written work as well as metanarratives, with which her characters struggle to figure out in reflective parallel to what her readers are trying to do with the novel in hand. Troubled Blood is exceptionally laden with these embedded texts. Beyond Talbot's True Book and Spenser's Faerie Queen noted above, we are treated to selections from The Demon of Paradise Park, Whatever Happened to Margot Bamborough?, Astrology 14, and The Magus.13. The Murderers: Creed and BeattieA demon-possessed psychopath and the brain-damaged lonely woman… Each is described as “a genius of misdirection” and being without remorse or empathy. The actual murderers in Troubled Blood are distinct, certainly, but paired as well, as one of the many mirrored pairs in this story.14. FeminismTroubled Blood, Rowling has said, is a commentary of sorts on changes in the history of feminism. It is an unvarnished, even brutal exploration of the heroic age of the feminist movement, its front and back, largely through the personalities, circumstances, choices, and experiences of two pairs of women, Margot Bamborough and her plucky Irish side-kick Oonaugh Kennedy and the paired through time couple of Irene Bull-Hickson and Janice Beattie.15. Rokeby 3.0Jonny Rokeby makes his first appearance, albeit only by phone call, in Troubled Blood and yet it has reset thinking about Strike and his biological father considerably. Kurt Schreyer thinks the head Deadbeat is more Snape than Voldemort — and, if this is the case, we need to re-read the series to see how much Strike's emotional injuries from childhood neglect have misshaped his understanding of his dad so he lives in upside-down land.* Guest Post: Rokeby Redux – Is Strike's Father More Snape than Lord Voldemort? Get full access to Hogwarts Professor at hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/subscribe

Morse code transcription: vvv vvv Obituary Norman Tebbit Norman Tebbit Former cabinet minister and Thatcher ally dies aged 94 Man shot and seriously injured by police in Hollingbourne Hamas used sexual violence as part of genocidal strategy, Israeli experts say UK emergency alert to be tested for second time in September Children living in Dickensian poverty, says commissioner Families demand answers as Southport inquiry opens Resident doctors vote to strike in long running pay dispute Yorkshire Water to introduce hosepipe ban across county Chefs food decoration at Chinese pre school poisons 233 children

Morse code transcription: vvv vvv Families demand answers as Southport inquiry opens Obituary Norman Tebbit Chefs food decoration at Chinese pre school poisons 233 children UK emergency alert to be tested for second time in September Children living in Dickensian poverty, says commissioner Hamas used sexual violence as part of genocidal strategy, Israeli experts say Man shot and seriously injured by police in Hollingbourne Norman Tebbit Former cabinet minister and Thatcher ally dies aged 94 Yorkshire Water to introduce hosepipe ban across county Resident doctors vote to strike in long running pay dispute

Morse code transcription: vvv vvv Families demand answers as Southport inquiry opens Chefs food decoration at Chinese pre school poisons 233 children Children living in Dickensian poverty, says commissioner Obituary Norman Tebbit Norman Tebbit Former cabinet minister and Thatcher ally dies aged 94 Yorkshire Water to introduce hosepipe ban across county Hamas used sexual violence as part of genocidal strategy, Israeli experts say Resident doctors vote to strike in long running pay dispute Man shot and seriously injured by police in Hollingbourne UK emergency alert to be tested for second time in September

Morse code transcription: vvv vvv Obituary Norman Tebbit Children living in Dickensian poverty, says commissioner UK emergency alert to be tested for second time in September Norman Tebbit Former cabinet minister and Thatcher ally dies aged 94 Families demand answers as Southport inquiry opens Resident doctors vote to strike in long running pay dispute Yorkshire Water to introduce hosepipe ban across county Chefs food decoration at Chinese pre school poisons 233 children Hamas used sexual violence as part of genocidal strategy, Israeli experts say Man shot and seriously injured by police in Hollingbourne

Reposted from Still Slaying: A Buffy-verse podcast which you can find at https://podcastica.com/podcast/still-slaying-a-buffy-verse-podcast“Over bickering and confusion, I'll take pie.” The Slay Squad returns from hiatus with a double episode - Sam, Kara and Penny dig into this pair of episodes that each address the cultural clashes in very different contexts.  The trio digress for some tangents as usual, like parental advice not to take drugs from a stranger, boring dates, general appreciation for the men of Angel, Rachel Dolezal, vampire eyesight, Aragorn, symbolic cannibalism, patriarchy (as always), Dickensian orphanhood, vampire senses, the criminal justice system, voir dire, The Village People, and JRR Tolkien. Next time, we'll be covering Angel, Season 1, Episode 8, “I Will Remember You.”Keep Slaying!News Links/Referenced LinksOriginal Trailers/WB Promos: “The Bachelor Party” and “Pangs”Female Body | farideh | stream wherever you like to listen to music #womenshealth #comedy - YouTubeMissing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) - Native HopeNational Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women May 5th Actions Calling for Justice! | NIWRC5 Films and TV Series Associated with MMIWG2S+Wind River (film) - Wikipedia—----------------------------------------Viewing OrderBuffy 4x01 - The Freshman Angel 1x01 - City of...Buffy 4x02 - Living ConditionsAngel 1x02 - Lonely HeartsBuffy 4x03 - The Harsh Light Of DayAngel 1x03 - In the DarkAngel 1x04 - I Fall to PiecesBuffy 4x04 - Fear ItselfBuffy 4x05 - Beer BadAngel 1x05 - Rm w/a VuAngel 1x06 - Sense and SensitivityBuffy 4x06 - Wild at HeartBuffy 4x07 - The InitiativeAngel 1x07 - The Bachelor PartyBuffy 4x08 - PangsAngel 1x08 - I Will Remember YouAngel 1x09 - HeroAngel 1x10 - Parting GiftsBuffy 4x09 - Something BlueBuffy 4x10 - HushBuffy 4x11 - DoomedAngel 1x11 - SomnambulistAngel 1x12 - ExpectingAngel 1x13 - SheBuffy 4x12 - A New ManBuffy 4x13 - The I In TeamBuffy 4x14 - Goodbye IowaAngel 1x14 - I've Got You Under My SkinAngel 1x15 - The ProdigalBuffy 4x15 - This Year's Girl (1/2)Buffy 4x16 - Who Are You? (2/2)Buffy 4x17 - SuperstarAngel 1x16 - The RingAngel 1x17 - EternityBuffy 4x18 - Where the Wild Things AreBuffy 4x19 - New Moon RisingAngel 1x18 - Five by Five (1/2)Angel 1x19 - Sanctuary (2/2)Buffy 4x20 - The Yoko Factor (1/2)Buffy 4x21 - Primeval (2/2)Buffy 4x22 - RestlessAngel 1x20 - War ZoneAngel 1x21 - Blind DateAngel 1x22 - To Shanshu in LAJoin the conversation! You can email or send a voice message to stillslayingfeedback@gmail.com, or join us at facebook.com/groups/podcastica and Still Slaying A Buffy-verse Podcast where we put up comment posts for each episode we cover. Follow us on Instagram Still Slaying: a Buffyverse Podcast from Podcastica Network (@stillslayingcast) • Instagram photos and videosJoin the Zedhead community - https://www.patreon.com/jasoncabassiTheme Music:℗ CC-BY 2020 Quesbe | Lucie G. MorillonGoopsy | Drum and Bass | Free CC-BY Music By Quesbe is licensed under a Creative Commons License.Tags#buffythevampireslayer #btvs #buffy #buffyverse #buffyfans #vampires #tv #nostalgia #the90s #nerds #nerdy #spuffy #thebronze #stillslaying #stillslayingpodcast #stillslayingcast #podcast #podcastica #angel #angelus #recap #newepisode #favorite #slayer #vampireslayer #buffyseason4 #sunnydale #hellmouth #TheWB  #tvpromo #smashthepatriarchy #femisim #patriarchy #sarahmichellegellar #anthonystewarthead   #alysonhannigan #nicolasbrendanAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Deck the halls with chaos, cutaways, and cranberry sauce! This week, Thom and Anthony dive deep into five more uproarious Family Guy Christmas episodes, from Dickensian parodies to Meg's mall-Santa trauma and Lois's Grinch-worthy meltdowns. With Julia taking a festive hiatus, the guys hold down the fort with unfiltered banter, personal holiday horror stories (bee infestations! Disney World mishaps!), and their signature spicy takes. Inside this episode:

Our sense of smell is vital to appreciating food and drink, it can warn us of danger, and enhance enjoyment of our environment, and yet it is one of our least explored sensory systems. In The Forgotten Sense, olfaction specialist Dr Jonas Olofsson explains the science behind our sense of smell.Dr Ally Louks caused a stink on social media when she mentioned the subject of her PhD thesis, Olfactory Ethics: The Politics of Smell in Modern and Contemporary Prose. But she shows just how much readers can learn from paying attention to the aroma of a writer's work.While imagining the stench of a Dickensian city street can enhance a reader's experience, what about actually smelling burning rubber as you play a video racing game? Professor Alan Chalmers explains the groundbreaking research currently ongoing to make gaming a more immersive experience, with smell at its centre.Producer: Katy Hickman

I forgot what we talked about between recording and editing this sorry

At the rural orphanage where I volunteered, the place resembled a Dickensian workhouse. The staff's main tools were antipsychotics and violence. The experience gave me a window into Putin's Russia By Howard Amos. Read by Harry Lloyd. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod

How to Stop Time by Matt Haig, chosen by Julia Bradbury A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, chosen by Ramita Navai An Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim, chosen by presenter Harriett GilbertTV presenter, author and walking enthusiast Julia Bradbury recommends a fiction book by Matt Haig, How to Stop Time, which brings to life the idea of living forever.Award-winning British-Iranian investigative journalist, documentary maker and author Ramita Navai shares the epic novel A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, his Dickensian masterpiece of modern India.And Harriett's choice is An Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim, capturing four ladies' unforgettable holiday on the Italian Riviera.Produced by Beth O'Dea for BBC Audio Bristol Follow us on instagram: agoodreadbbc

The crew finally get their act together and begins investigating where they are going to perform their Dickensian scheme.  Please support Dugongs & Sea Dragons on Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/DugongsAndSeadragons  

Dickensian upbringings, featuring work by Margo Davis, Eaton Jackson and Richard Moore.Support the show

This week's podcast... The editors of the Washington Post (owned by Jeff Bezos) refused to run this cartoon by Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes. She resigned. See her work now at www.anntelnaes.com For Donald Trump, this really is a Dickensian week: these are the best of times and the worst of times. Even as his second-chance administration falls into place, Trump officially became a convicted felon, and the case of his insurrection-related crimes is now a part of the public record (despite the best efforts of his "crack" legal team). President Biden echoed the warnings of Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell address, but will it have an impact on the oligarchs who are running the Trump-Musk administration?  Trump's clown cabinet nominees have begun the sham hearing process in the Senate with the prospect that Fox News will be seeing a lot of former staffers moving into the most powerful jobs in America. We are recording on Thursday. Mark is in Detroit for today's Democratic National Committee forum featuring would-be leaders of the DNC. We'll do a little time shifting and get his thoughts when the forum wraps up. The Biden speech isn't the only politically significant speech on our radar. Governor Whitmer gave the keynote address at the Detroit Auto Show, a speech which may be a preview of the Whitmer for President campaign in 2028. And Republicans are heaping tragedy on top of catastrophe by politicizing the L.A. fires even as tens of thousands are homeless and the southern California economy is literally reduced to ashes. Some of the other stories that caught our eye this week: Trump Said He'd Solve Ukraine on Day One. Republicans Say He Didn't Mean ‘Day One.' - NOTUS (Allbritton Journalism Institute) Trump tax cuts, if made permanent, stand to benefit highest income earners, Treasury analysis shows - AP News Aaron Rupar on X: "SLOTKIN: Do you agree that there are some orders that could be given by the commander in chief that could violate the US Constitution? HEGSETH: I reject the premise that President Trump is gonna be giving illegal orders" / X Trump's Defense Pick Proudly Admits the Rules Won't Apply to Him - The New Republic Opinion | Republicans in North Carolina Are Treading a Terrifying Path - Frank Bruni/The New York Times $$ Why Costco Isn't Joining the Backlash Against DEI - Wall Street Journal The critical question Pete Hegseth dodged in his confirmation hearing - MSNBC Slotkin, Peters hammer Trump's pick to lead Pentagon at Senate hearing - Detroit News Pam Bondi doesn't rule out probes of Trump foes as attorney general - AP News Suddenly Donald Trump doesn't want to talk so much about the economy - MSNBC Pay for Play: You won't believe all the powerful people I met as a special guest of President-elect Trump - Kevin O'Leary via Daily Mail Online =========================== This episode is sponsored in part by EPIC ▪ MRA, a full service survey research firm with expertise in • Public Opinion Surveys • Market Research Studies • Live Telephone Surveys • On-Line and Automated Surveys • Focus Group Research • Bond Proposals - Millage Campaigns • Political Campaigns & Consulting • Ballot Proposals - Issue Advocacy Research • Community - Media Relations • Issue - Image Management • Database Development & List Management Clay Bennett - Chattanooga Times Free Press

Steff, Milo, and Ram go into the fatigue zone breaking apart two more games (Wolves home and Forest away) in our Dickensian crawl through deep Midwinter, with injuries enveloping our valiant players like unwanted shitty polyester blankets, and the only truth being can we - as a football club - physically put one foot in front of the other. No weirdo diet or kitchen metaphors, just honest conversation about the state of the Spurs union.Website: https://thegameisaboutglory.co.uk/Bluesky: @thegameisaboutglory.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jennifer Sutherland is an award winning poet, author and attorney. Perhaps most importantly, she's a multi time guest in the Garden. Christmas is filled with joys and iconic movies and specials that we've cherished for generations. And a lot of them are creepy, concerning and a little terrifying. We visit some of those in this show. Like the Ghosts of Dickensian fame, we take you to your various stages and wrestle with these properties and our relationships with them. From Wooden Soldiers to Santa Claus, no one is completely spared.

We decided to break format this week, and we might do it again at that (it was wonderful).  To ring in the holiday week, we had to spend a little time talking about A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.  And we must admit we had never read it until now.  We sit down with Dean Natalie McKnight at Boston University, and Professor Joel Brattin at Worcester Polytechnic. Both top Dickensian scholars in their field, we ask them why this book still universally resonates….hundreds of years later. Books mentioned in this week's episode: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens Great Expectations by Charles Dickens Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens The Chimes by Charles Dickens Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens The Cricket on the Hearth by Charles Dickens The Battle of Life: A Love Story by Charles Dickens The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain by Charles Dickens Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens David Copperfield by Charles Dickens Bleak House by Charles Dickens Hard Times by Charles Dickens Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens  A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

[This is an encore of Episode 100, originally released November 9, 2022]. Paul's award-winning achievements in the music industry are beyond compare. His work has woven itself into the fabric of 20th and 21st century popular culture. His memorable songs have touched multiple generations around the world. But, as with many alcoholics, Paul's genius grew out of a Dickensian childhood, full of family upheavals and physical challenges that left him with little solace, save his song-writing. By the time alcohol and drugs entered the picture in his early 20's, his musical talents had been honed into a career in which he enjoyed unbridled creativity and massive success during the 1970's. But Paul's burgeoning alcoholism cunningly resided off-stage, in the shadows of his own denial and the enabling of those around him. By 1989, after a decade lost to the disease, Paul faced the bleak reality of his alcoholism and its devastating effects on his life and those he loved. As the gates of hell loomed ever-larger with each passing day, a series of “God-moments” occurred that brought Paul to his knees at the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous. Willing to embrace AA's Program of action, he embarked on a spiritual journey that ultimately saved him. Over the years, he has offered his experience and hope to countless alcoholics, both inside and outside the rooms. Infusing his own fame and fortune with the humility of one who has thoroughly worked a spiritually-guided Program, Paul enjoys his broad role as a trusted servent to those who need AA now or may need it in the future. His gentle, yet powerful, words of encouragement and hope are every bit as inspiring and heart-felt as the songs he created over the years. The challenges of producing an anonymous interview with someone so well-known were considerable. But both Paul and I turned the final outcome over to a power greater than ourselves. I believe you will be pleased by the results. Unfortunately, the sound quality is less than stellar as Zoom was somewhat glitchy the day of the interview. But give it a few minutes. Paul's story will whisk you away to a clear and wonderful awareness of his words. So please enjoy the next hour and ten minutes of AA Recovery Interviews, my one hundredth podcast, as you listen to the insightful and exhilarating words of my friend and AA brother, Paul W. If you've enjoyed my AA Recovery Interviews series, have a listen to Lost Stories of the Big Book, 30 Original Stories Missing from the 3rd and 4th Editions of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's an engaging audiobook I narrated to bring these stories to life for AA members who've never seen them. These timeless testimonials were originally cut to make room for newer stories in the 3rd and 4th Editions. But their vitally important messages of hope are as meaningful today as when they were first published. Many listeners will hear these stories for the first time. Lost Stories of the Big Book is available on Audible, Amazon, and iTunes. It's also available as a Kindle book and in Paperback from Amazon if you'd like to read along with the audio. I also invite you to check out my latest audio book, “Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered From Alcoholism”. This is the word-for-word, cover-to-cover reading of the First Edition of the Big Book, published in 1939. It's a comfortable, meaningful, and engaging way to listen to the Big Book anytime, anyplace. Have a free listen at Audible, i-Tunes, or Amazon. [Disclaimer: AA Recovery Interviews podcast strictly adheres to AA's 12 Traditions and all General Service Office guidelines for safe-guarding anonymity on-line. I pay all podcast production costs. AA Recovery Interviews and my guests do not speak for or represent AA at-large. This podcast is simply my way of giving back to AA that which has been so freely given to me. – Howard L.]

Merry Christmas … ‘tis the season to be jolly and joyous…. fa la la! So for our special we discuss the much loved festive favourite ‘The Muppet Christmas Carol' from 1992. Michael Caine joins Kermit, Miss. Piggy and all the Muppets as he plays Scrooge in this interpretation of the Dickensian novella. Tune in and remember that ‘Wherever you find love it feels like Christmas'

Clare Keegan's slim 2021 novella about one Irishman's crisis of conscience during the Christmas season, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, has also been adapted into a film starring Cillian Murphy. In this week's episode, MJ Franklin discusses the book with his colleagues Joumana Khatib, Lauren Christensen, and Elizabeth Egan.  Keegan's book was also one of The New York Times Book Review's 100 best books of the 21st century. As we wrote, "Not a word is wasted in Keegan's small, burnished gem of a novel, a sort of Dickensian miniature centered on the son of an unwed mother who has grown up to become a respectable coal and timber merchant with a family of his own in 1985 Ireland. Moralistically, though, it might as well be the Middle Ages as he reckons with the ongoing sins of the Catholic Church and the everyday tragedies wrought by repression, fear and rank hypocrisy."  Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Don't be fooled by the lack of Dickensian drama: melancholy, materialism, regret, a graveyard–today's poem is A Christmas Carol for the modern man. Get full access to The Daily Poem Podcast at dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

Today I welcome Sharon Lynn Fisher to the show to discuss two of her books I read this year. SALT AND BROOM is a witch retelling of Jane Eyre, and her new book, GRIMM CURIOUSITIES, is a perfect Yuletide ghost story that explores Krampus while using the Dickensian atmosphere of a Victorian curiosity shop. Both books manage to honor their Gothic inspiration while offering a cozy atmosphere, and we discuss that genre bending work on the show. All links and show notes are on my website at sheworeblackpodcast.com

Happy Holidays!Scott Interrante of This is the Greatest Song I've Ever Heard in My Entire Life and Tara Giancaspro of xoxo Gossip Giancaspro join Nicole and Ryan to talk about The Muppet Christmas Carol, which begs the question, "Do we even like the general story of A Christmas Carol?" Our answers to that question will shock you as well our answers to "who is in your muppet big 3?" We also discuss which human should accompany the Muppets if they ever take another shot at adapting this Dickensian classic.Chapters:0:00:00 - 0:08:45 Intros and Guests' Connections to The Muppet Christmas Carol0:08:46 - 0:23:04 Paul Williams and the songs of A Muppet Christmas Carol0:23:05 - 0:39:55 Discussing the Film0:39:56 - 0:45:03 The score of the film and The Muppets straddling the line between adult and kid-friendly0:45:04 - 0:53:59 Who would work as Scrooge in a reboot / More thoughts on the songs0:54:00 - 1:00:27 Actors/Actresses we'd like to see work with The Muppets1:00:31 - 1:13:53 Our Muppet Big 3s 1:13:54 - 1:18:01 Bespoke Muppets at Coldplay 1:18:02 - END     Saying Farewell to Our GuestsThank you for listening! We would love it if you would join our Patreon membership, where you will get quarterly bonus episodes, early access to our regular episodes and more!

We ran our patent heat-sensing Scrutiniser®️ over the week's news and here's what set the bells off … … are buskers now more expensive live entertainment than Taylor Swift? … a Dickensian oik in Chapel Market and other riddles of modern etiquette. … ‘Holiness and horniness': how Hallelujah rebooted Leonard Cohen and became a one-song industry. … the teenage self-promotional flair of Robert Plant and Marc Bolan. … are singles a social experience and albums a solitary one? … “Would you like a fruit gum?”: the 1950s in a single phrase. … highly recommended: Wendy Waldman, Brian Blade & The Fellowship Band and ‘The Room' by Fabiano do Nascimento. … rock snobs' alarm about the revelations of their Spotify Wrapped. … why the Sherman Brothers are as enduring as Lennon-McCartney. … Hallelujah cover versions - from kd lang and Rufus Wainwright to Johnny Mathis and the Osmonds. ... how King David removed ‘love rival' Uriah the Hittite. … reconnecting with records you haven't heard for 40 years.   … whatever happened to She Sherriff?! … Loudon Wainwright's early inference about the YMCA. … plus Lindsey Buckingham, Hugh Lloyd, Tony Hancock and fond memories of “stolen cheese guy”.Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Charles Dickens is arguably the most celebrated author of the Victorian period, but is his reputation deserved? How about Ebenezer Scrooge—should we grant forgiveness to greedy CEOs if they show enough generosity? In episode 330, join Luke Elliott & James Bailey as they chat about Luke's experience at Dragonsteel Nexus 2024, what people mean by “Dickensian,” and how effective Dickens was at showing the living conditions of the lower classes. Join them next week when they discuss “Scrooged” (1988) directed by Richard Donner! Dragonsteel Nexus recap: 58:38 Full Video version available on YouTube https://bit.ly/3Xdjc1n Purchase Bookish Merch from The Marauder's Market: https://maraudersmarket.com/ Support the show on Patreon for bonus content, merch, and the ability to vote on upcoming projects! https://www.patreon.com/inktofilm Get A Christmas Carol or any of the source novels at the Ink to Film Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/inktofilm Ink to Film's Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky (@inktofilm) Home Base: inktofilm.com Luke Elliott Recent publications: “Your Black Apron Meal Kit Has Arrived” in the Even Cozier Cosmic anthology https://bookshop.org/a/23566/9781630230975 “Beyond Heaven” in the Beyond the Vanishing Point anthology: https://a.co/d/cTwnwz7 Website: www.lukeelliottauthor.com Social Media Accounts: www.lukeelliottauthor.com/social James Bailey BlueSky https://bsky.app/profile/jamebail.bsky.social IG: https://www.instagram.com/jamebail/ Music:  Intro music, One lone night for Christmas with a Snow Wonders by myuu (Royalty Free Music) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMVQN78qHgY

We revisit our episode with Gregory Maguire.******"That's really all we are obliged to do for those we call our enemies. We are obliged to see them as humans, and then we behave the way we will. We are obliged not to consider them as less than human because that way, all hell breaks loose. - Gregory MaguireGregory Maguire expresses himself with extreme precision. While many of us may grasp for words to communicate a specific emotion or to describe a series of events, Gregory seemingly has words and turns of phrase on command. What a delight it is to listen to Gregory talk about his journey, his writing, and his thoughts on a wide variety of topics. Close to Gregory's heart is the belief that everyone has a backstory, a context—even our enemies. And no matter how difficult the task may seem, he believes it is our duty to understand that story and find it within ourselves to empathize with them—not to excuse them but to simply see them as humans.Gregory has built his career around telling the stories of antiheroes, most notably through the reimaginings of classic fairytales in novels such as "Wicked," "Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister," and "Mirror Mirror." That ability to find empathy and a curiosity to understand even the most seemingly undeserving characters emerges in his other children's and young adult books and is deeply rooted in experiences from Gregory's early life.In this episode, Gregory shares those early life experiences (which can honestly be described as “Dickensian”) and how his relationships with his father and siblings have impacted his writing and life choices. He tells us about his love of the “arresting strangeness” of literary worlds and how this sensation inspired him to become a writer. He also shares why he believes in the children's stories he writes, not always getting a “happily ever after.”***Connect with Jordan and The Reading Culture @thereadingculturepod and subscribe to our newsletter at thereadingculturepod.com/newsletter. ***In his reading challenge, Arresting Strangeness (a term coined by J.R.R. Tolkien), Gregory has compiled a list of his favorite books that envelop you completely and force you to look at the world around you anew. You can find his list and all past reading challenges at thereadingculturepod.com/gregory-maguire***This episode's Beanstack Featured Librarian is Lauren Mobley, a middle school librarian in Atlanta, Georgia. She tells us about a fun reading program she set up in her school inspired by a hit reality TV show.ContentsChapter 1 - Travel of the MindChapter 2 - Home, the Orphanage, and back againChapter 3 - The Children of Green KnoweChapter 4 - Harriet the RecorderChapter 5 - Origins of EmpathyChapter 6 - The Absence of a Happily Ever AfterChapter 7 - Arresting StrangenessChapter 8 - Beanstack Featured LibrarianLinksThe Reading CultureThe Reading Culture Newsletter SignupGregory MaguireGregory (@gregorymaguire) • Instagram photos and videosWICKED Official Trailer (2024)by JRR Tolkien - On Fairy-StoriesThe Children of Green Knowe (Green Knowe, #1) by Lucy M. Boston | GoodreadsThe Reading Culture on Instagram (for giveaways and bonus content)Beanstack resources to build your community's reading cultureHost: Jordan Lloyd BookeyProducer: Jackie Lamport and Lower Street MediaScript Editors: Josia Lamberto-Egan, Jackie Lamport, Jordan Lloyd Bookey

Babe, wake up, the new Bandsplain season just dropped. And what dark alleyways is Yasi leading us down next? This season we're gazing across the pond toward the underground scenes of the 80s and 90s in the UK following the peak of punk music – namely, Madchester, Brit Pop, and shoegaze. For our first episode, music industry savants and known Scots John Niven and Chlöe Walsh look back on “Baggy” and how the Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses revitalized indie music and helped cement the rise of rave culture in the industrial, Dickensian landscape that also birthed The Smiths, Joy Division, and The Buzzcocks, as well as Oasis a decade later. Whether you're a longtime fan or new to the scene, this season is sure to turn you into a 24-hour-podcast person. SKIP AHEAD: 20:43 - Formation of Happy Mondays 1:00:40 - Formation of The Stone Roses 3:12:05 - Squirrel And G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out) (1987) 3:31:21 - Sally Cinnamon EP (1987) 3:48:06 - Arrival of Ecstasy EPISODE PLAYLIST: Listen to songs we detail in the episode HERE CREDITS: Host: Yasi Salek Guests: John Niven, Chlöe Walsh Producer: Liz Sánchez Audio Editor: Adrian Bridges Additional Production Supervision: Justin Sayles Theme Song: Bethany Cosentino Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week's podcast is presented by Stephen and Michelle. We hear from:Anna from Berkshire, who has enjoyed hearing about all the businesses in Ambridge and who has a plot prediction about one of them;Katherine, who wonders what is the point of Kenton and Jolene;Claire from Clapham, who was cheering Lilian on on Thursday;Witherspoon, who has Dickensian thoughts about Justin;Katherine, who thinks that Justin is more like Joey from Friends;And finally Ditsy of Darrington who returns to the charge on Americanisms;We also have an email from Gillian.Plus: we have the Week in Ambridge from Suey, a roundup of the Dumteedum Facebook group from Vicky, and the Tweets of the Week from Theo.Please call into the show using this link:www.speakpipe.com/dumteedum Or send us a voicenote via WhatsApp on: +44 7810 012 881 (07810012 881 if in the UK) – Open the WhatsApp app, key in the number and click on the microphone icon.Or email us at dumteedum@mail.comHow to leave a review on Apple podcasts: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/podcasts/pod5facd9d70/mac***Also Sprach Zarathustra licenceCreative Commons ► Attribution 3.0 Unported ► CC BY 3.0https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..."You are free to use, remix, transform, and build upon the materialfor any purpose, even commercially. You must give appropriate credit."Conducted byPhilip Milman ► https://pmmusic.pro/Funded ByLudwig ► / ludwigahgren Schlatt ► / jschlattlive COMPOSED BY / @officialphilman Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rep. Ritchie Torres joins Tim Miller to discuss how to win working-class voters, his Dickensian upbringing, and Israel under the microscope of 24-hour news. Plus, mental health, Pride, and Trump as the GOP's new lord and savior. Then, Ben Smith talks about Americans fragmenting the media universe, and the Epoch Times grift. show notes: Torres talking about being a Zionist after being heckled New Yorker piece on Guo Wengui that Ben mentioned