Podcasts about Victorian

This is a Grave Talks CLASSIC EPISODE! PART TWOTucked away in Northeast Tennessee, Historic Rugby Village was founded in 1880 as a bold experiment in ideal living. Created by author Thomas Hughes, the village was meant to be a utopia—orderly, enlightened, and harmonious. The dream didn't last.Disease, hardship, and disappointment took hold, with typhoid fever claiming many of Rugby's earliest residents. Though the village survived, something of its original hope seemed to fracture—and never fully leave.Today, Rugby remains remarkably preserved, its Victorian buildings standing quietly among the hills. With a population of just 75, some say the town is far more crowded than it appears. Visitors and investigators report activity in nearly every structure, from footsteps and voices to the unmistakable feeling of being watched.We explore the lingering spirits and unfinished stories of Rugby with Miranda Young, uncovering why this tiny town may be one of the most haunted places in America. For more information on Rugby, visit their website at historyhighwayshaunts.com or find them on Facebook at Historic Rugby After Dark. For more information on Miranda Young, you can search Ghost Biker Explorations on Facebook.#TheGraveTalks #HistoricRugbyVillage #HauntedTennessee #ParanormalPodcast #TrueGhostStories #VictorianGhosts #HauntedTowns #SouthernHauntings #Hauntings #HistoryandHauntings #ThinVeilLove real ghost stories? Want even more?Become a supporter and unlock exclusive extras, ad-free episodes, and advanced access:

From faking insanity to go undercover in an asylum, racing around the world in 72 days, and reporting from the front lines of deadly war zones, this fearless investigative reporter risked everything to expose the truth… and she did it all in a corset. The unstoppable Nellie Bly rewrote all the rules to smash her way into the boys' club of Victorian journalism, and blazed a trail for all the ladies who followed in her footsteps – including us.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / InstagramSources and more available on redhandedpodcast.com

Fad workouts have been with us for decades, but they go back much further than we realize. Long before CrossFit, Zumba, P90X, Tae Box, Jazzercise or Jack LaLanne, we had 19th century strongmen. These mustachioed showmen were the first global fitness influencers. They hauled trunks of weights onto steamships, toured the world, then sold exercise equipment through the mail. The most famous was Eugene Sandow, who broke chains, and created with his own body a "manned cavalry bridge" where he would lie down while men, horses, and a carriage were driven over his body. He even fought a lion in front of an auditorium and won, although the lion was almost definitely sedated. Today’s guest is Connor Heffernan, author of “When Fitness Went Global: The Rise of Physical Culture in the Nineteenth Century.” In this episode, we discuss: Ancient Egyptians were basically doing CrossFit thousands of years ago. They trained with swinging sandbags that look exactly like modern kettlebell flows. One of the first exercise practices to experience globalization was Indian club-swinging. Indian club-swinging, originating from the heavy training clubs used by Indian wrestlers and soldiers for centuries, was observed and adopted by British military officers stationed in India during the early 1800s. Early diet culture was a carnival of quack science. Victorian fitness magazines were filled with miracle tonics, starvation cures and pseudoscientific meal plans. Many of our “new” diet trends are rebranded versions of schemes first marketed with sepia portraits and dubious testimonials. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is a Grave Talks CLASSIC EPISODE!Tucked away in Northeast Tennessee, Historic Rugby Village was founded in 1880 as a bold experiment in ideal living. Created by author Thomas Hughes, the village was meant to be a utopia—orderly, enlightened, and harmonious. The dream didn't last.Disease, hardship, and disappointment took hold, with typhoid fever claiming many of Rugby's earliest residents. Though the village survived, something of its original hope seemed to fracture—and never fully leave.Today, Rugby remains remarkably preserved, its Victorian buildings standing quietly among the hills. With a population of just 75, some say the town is far more crowded than it appears. Visitors and investigators report activity in nearly every structure, from footsteps and voices to the unmistakable feeling of being watched.We explore the lingering spirits and unfinished stories of Rugby with Miranda Young, uncovering why this tiny town may be one of the most haunted places in America. For more information on Rugby, visit their website at historyhighwayshaunts.com or find them on Facebook at Historic Rugby After Dark. For more information on Miranda Young, you can search Ghost Biker Explorations on Facebook. #TheGraveTalks #HistoricRugbyVillage #HauntedTennessee #ParanormalPodcast #TrueGhostStories #VictorianGhosts #HauntedTowns #SouthernHauntings #Hauntings #HistoryandHauntings #ThinVeil Love real ghost stories? Want even more?Become a supporter and unlock exclusive extras, ad-free episodes, and advanced access:

This is a Grave Talks CLASSIC EPISODE! PART TWOIn the heart of Marion, South Carolina, Holliday House stands as more than a grand Victorian—it's a place where history never fully settled.Marked by generations of love, loss, and tragedy, the home's past includes mysterious deaths, unexplained illnesses, and stories that refuse to fade. Long before modern investigations, the house had already earned a reputation as one of South Carolina's most haunted locations.In 2023, new owners stepped inside not just to restore the property, but to coexist with whatever still remains. Whispers echo through hallways. Cold spots appear without warning. Visitors report shadowy figures—and the unsettling presence of children where none should be.We explore the layered history and ongoing activity of Holliday House with owner, property manager, and psychic medium Kenneth Holden, uncovering what it truly means to live inside a home that remembers everything.#TheGraveTalks #HollidayHouse #HauntedSouthCarolina #VictorianHauntings #TrueGhostStories #ParanormalPodcast #HauntedHomes #SouthernGhosts #ParanormalInvestigations #LivingWithSpirits For more information, search for them on Facebook, or go to their website at hollidayhouse1895.com.Love real ghost stories? Want even more?Become a supporter and unlock exclusive extras, ad-free episodes, and advanced access:

This is a Grave Talks CLASSIC EPISODE!In the heart of Marion, South Carolina, Holliday House stands as more than a grand Victorian—it's a place where history never fully settled.Marked by generations of love, loss, and tragedy, the home's past includes mysterious deaths, unexplained illnesses, and stories that refuse to fade. Long before modern investigations, the house had already earned a reputation as one of South Carolina's most haunted locations.In 2023, new owners stepped inside not just to restore the property, but to coexist with whatever still remains. Whispers echo through hallways. Cold spots appear without warning. Visitors report shadowy figures—and the unsettling presence of children where none should be.We explore the layered history and ongoing activity of Holliday House with owner, property manager, and psychic medium Kenneth Holden, uncovering what it truly means to live inside a home that remembers everything.#TheGraveTalks #HollidayHouse #HauntedSouthCarolina #VictorianHauntings #TrueGhostStories #ParanormalPodcast #HauntedHomes #SouthernGhosts #ParanormalInvestigations #LivingWithSpirits For more information, search for them on Facebook, or go to their website at hollidayhouse1895.com.Love real ghost stories? Want even more?Become a supporter and unlock exclusive extras, ad-free episodes, and advanced access:

This is the fourth and final episode of our series examining the 1860 Road Hill House murder, the case that gave birth to modern detective fiction. Previous episodes covered the murder of three-year-old Francis Saville Kent, Detective Inspector Jonathan Whicher's groundbreaking investigation, and the five years of cold case torment that preceded Constance Kent's confession.The gallery was packed to suffocation. July 21, 1865. Five years they'd waited for this moment. Five years since Francis Saville Kent was found with his throat cut in the family privy. Five years since Inspector Whicher accused Constance Kent of murdering her baby brother—and was destroyed for saying so. When the clerk asked how she pleaded, Constance spoke one word: "Guilty." No mitigation. No excuse. No insanity defense that might have saved her from prison.When Constance Kent stood in the prisoner's dock at Devizes Assizes on July 21, 1865, she refused the insanity defense her counsel had carefully prepared. Instead, she pleaded guilty to murdering her three-year-old half-brother Francis—a single word that silenced the packed courtroom and condemned her to death.But Queen Victoria's government commuted her sentence. At sixteen when she committed the murder, Constance had carried the secret for five years before confessing voluntarily. She served twenty years in Victorian prisons—first at Millbank, then Fulham Refuge—transforming from a troubled teenager into a model prisoner who educated herself and learned nursing skills.In 1886, a woman named Ruth Emilie Kaye boarded the ship Carisbrooke Castle bound for Sydney. Constance Kent ceased to exist. For fifty-eight years, she built a new life in Australia, rising to Matron at several institutions, nursing the sick and elderly, living in quiet anonymity until her death at one hundred years old in 1944. No one in Australia knew they were burying England's most notorious Victorian murderess.Key Case DetailsTrial and Sentencing (July 1865):Thirty-minute trial at Devizes AssizesJustice Willes presiding, John Duke Coleridge defendingGuilty plea rejected insanity defenseDeath sentence commuted to life imprisonmentPrison Years (1865-1885):Twenty years served at Millbank and Fulham prisonsModel prisoner with no disciplinary incidentsSelf-educated in nursing skillsRelease conditional on leaving EnglandAustralian Reinvention (1886-1944):Emigrated as Ruth Emilie Kaye aboard Carisbrooke CastleNursing career spanning four decadesMatron at Parramatta Industrial School for GirlsMatron at Pierce Memorial Nurses' Home for twenty-one yearsDied April 10, 1944, at age 100, identity unknownLiterary Legacy:Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone (1868) directly inspired by the caseSergeant Cuff character modeled on Inspector WhicherFoundation for Sherlock Holmes and entire detective fiction genreInspector Whicher died June 29, 1881—exactly twenty-one years after the murder nightFrancis Saville Kent was three years and ten months old when he died. He was not a plot device or a mystery to be solved. He was a child with dark hair and bright eyes who ate his porridge at a small table by the window, who played in the June sunshine of a Wiltshire garden, whose small voice fell silent on a night that would echo through a century and a half of English history. He was not the mystery. He was the cost.Historical Context & SourcesThis series draws extensively from Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (2008), the definitive modern account based on extensive primary research. Original trial transcripts from the National Archives and contemporary newspaper coverage from The Times and Morning Post (1860-1865) provided additional verification. Bernard Taylor's Cruelly Murdered (1979) contributed alternative perspectives on William Saville-Kent's potential involvement—a mystery that remains unresolved.Resources & Further ReadingKate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detectiveremains the essential text for understanding this case. Readers interested in the literary legacy should explore Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone (1868), widely considered the first modern English detective novel. The Victorian crime history section at the National Archives maintains original documents from the investigation and trial.Our Sponsors:* Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/foul-play-crime-series/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Popular historic dramas like Bridgerton, Little Dorrit and year of the Rabbit sometimes receive criticism that their diverse casts are historically inaccurate. But in fact there have been people of color in Britain since Roman times. In a previous video, I explored the lives of 7 fascinating black Aristocrats & Celebrities who were living in 18th century England and France. Today we'll travel forward in time and meet 7 more compelling people of African and mixed heritage who were making waves in Britain during the Victorian era. They include the Queen's own goddaughter and her royal ward, a renowned actor, a heroic nurse, a circus performer immortalized by the Beatles, one of the most visible models of the era and a best-selling composer. Here are their stories... Sara Forbes Bonetta Ira Aldridge Mary Seacole Pablo Fanque Fanny Eaton Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Prince Alemayehu of Ethiopia Join me every Tuesday when I'm Spilling the Tea on History! Check out my Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/lindsayholiday Follow me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100091781568503 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/historyteatimelindsayholiday/ Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@historyteatime Please consider supporting me at https://www.patreon.com/LindsayHoliday and help me make more fascinating episodes! Intro Music: Baroque Coffee House by Doug Maxwell Music: Brandenburg Concerto No4-1 BWV1049 - Classical Whimsical by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100303 Artist: http://incompetech.com/ #HistoryTeaTime #LindsayHoliday Please contact ⁠⁠⁠advertising@airwavemedia.com⁠⁠⁠ if you would like to advertise on this podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How can indie authors raise their game through academic-style rigour? How might AI tools fit into a thoughtful research process without replacing the joy of discovery? Melissa Addey explores the intersection of scholarly discipline, creative writing, and the practical realities of building an author career. In the intro, mystery and thriller tropes [Wish I'd Known Then]; The differences between trad and indie in 2026 [Productive Indie Fiction Writer]; Five phases of an author business [Becca Syme]; Bones of the Deep – J.F. Penn; Today's show is sponsored by Bookfunnel, the essential tool for your author business. Whether it's delivering your reader magnet, sending out advanced copies of your book, handing out ebooks at a conference, or fulfilling your digital sales to readers, BookFunnel does it all. Check it out at bookfunnel.com/thecreativepenn This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Melissa Addey is an award-winning historical fiction author with a PhD in creative writing from the University of Surrey. She was the Leverhulme Trust Writer in Residence at the British Library, and now works as campaigns lead for the Alliance of Independent Authors. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Making the leap from a corporate career to full-time writing with a young family Why Melissa pursued a PhD in creative writing and how it fuelled her author business What indie authors can learn from academic rigour when researching historical fiction The problems with academic publishing—pricing, accessibility, and creative restrictions Organising research notes, avoiding accidental plagiarism, and knowing when to stop researching Using AI tools effectively as part of the research process without losing your unique voice You can find Melissa at MelissaAddey.com. Transcript of the interview with Melissa Addey JOANNA: Melissa Addey is an award-winning historical fiction author with a PhD in creative writing from the University of Surrey. She was the Leverhulme Trust Writer in Residence at the British Library, and now works as campaigns lead for the Alliance of Independent Authors. Welcome back to the show, Melissa. MELISSA: Hello. Thank you for having me. JOANNA: It's great to have you back. You were on almost a decade ago, in December 2016, talking about merchandising for authors. That is really a long time ago. So tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and self-publishing. MELISSA: I had a regular job in business and I was writing on the side. I did a couple of writing courses, and then I started trying to get published, and that took seven years of jumping through hoops. There didn't seem to be much progress. At some point, I very nearly had a small publisher, but we clashed over the cover because there was a really quite hideous suggestion that was not going to work. I think by that point I was really tired of jumping through hoops, really trying to play the game traditional publishing-wise. I just went, you know what? I've had enough now. I've done everything that was asked of me and it's still not working. I'll just go my own way. I think at the time that would've been 2015-ish. Suddenly, self-publishing was around more. I could see people and hear people talking about it, and I thought, okay, let's read everything there is to know about this. I had a little baby at the time and I would literally print off stuff during the day to read—probably loads of your stuff—and read it at two o'clock in the morning breastfeeding babies. Then I'd go, okay, I think I understand that bit now, I'll understand the next bit, and so on. So I got into self-publishing and I really, really enjoyed it. I've been doing it ever since. I'm now up to 20 books in the last 10 or 11 years. As you say, I did the creative writing PhD along the way, working with ALLi and doing workshops for others—mixing and matching lots of different things. I really enjoy it. JOANNA: You mentioned you had a job before in business. Are you full-time in all these roles that you're doing now, or do you still have that job? MELISSA: No, I'm full-time now. I only do writing-related things. I left that in 2015, so I took a jump. I was on maternity leave and I started applying for jobs to go back to, and I suddenly felt like, oh, I really don't want to. I want to do the writing. I thought, I've got about one year's worth of savings. I could try and do the jump. I remember saying to my husband, “Do you think it would be possible if I tried to do the jump? Would that be okay?” There was this very long pause while he thought about it. But the longer the pause went on, the more I was thinking, ooh, he didn't say no, that is out of the question, financially we can't do that. I thought, ooh, it's going to work. So I did the jump. JOANNA: That's great. I did something similar and took a massive pay cut and downsized and everything back in the day. Having a supportive partner is so important. The other thing I did—and I wonder if you did too—I said to Jonathan, my husband, if within a year this is not going in a positive direction, then I'll get another job. How long did you think you would leave it before you just gave up? And how did that go? Because that beginning is so difficult, especially with a new baby. MELISSA: I thought, well, I'm at home anyway, so I do have more time than if I was in a full-time job. The baby sleeps sometimes—if you're lucky—so there are little gaps where you could really get into it. I had a year of savings/maternity pay going on, so I thought I've got a year. And the funny thing that happened was within a few months, I went back to my husband and I was like, I don't understand. I said, all these doors are opening—they weren't massive, but they were doors opening. I said, but I've wanted to be a writer for a long time and none of these doors have opened before. He said, “Well, it's because you really committed. It's because you jumped. And when you jump, sometimes the universe is on board and goes, yes, all right then, and opens some doors for you.” It really felt like that. Even little things—like Writing Magazine gave me a little slot to do an online writer-in-residence thing. Just little doors opened that felt like you were getting a nod, like, yes, come on then, try. Then the PhD was part of that. I applied to do that and it came with a studentship, which meant I had three years of funding coming in. That was one of the biggest creative gifts that's ever been given to me—three years of knowing you've got enough money coming in that you can just try and make it work. By the time that finished, the royalties had taken over from the studentship. That was such a gift. JOANNA: A couple of things there. I've got to ask about that funding. You're saying it was a gift, but that money didn't just magically appear. You worked really hard to get that funding, I presume. MELISSA: I did, yes. You do have to do the work for it, just to be clear. My sister had done a PhD in an entirely different subject. She said, “You should do a PhD in creative writing.” I said, “That'd be ridiculous. Nobody is going to fund that. Who's going to fund that?” She said, “Oh, they might. Try.” So I tried, and the deadline was something stupid like two weeks away. I tried and I got shortlisted, but I didn't get it. I thought, ah, but I got shortlisted with only two weeks to try. I'll try again next year then. So then I tried again the next year and that's when I got it. It does take work. You have to put in quite a lot of effort to make your case. But it's a very joyful thing if you get one. JOANNA: So let's go to the bigger question: why do a PhD in creative writing? Let's be clear to everyone—you don't need even a bachelor's degree to be a successful author. Stephen King is a great example of someone who isn't particularly educated in terms of degrees. He talks about writing his first book while working at a laundry. You can be very successful with no formal education. So why did you want to do a PhD? What drew you to academic research? MELISSA: Absolutely. I would briefly say, I often meet people who feel they must do a qualification before they're allowed to write. I say, do it if you'd like to, but you don't have to. You could just practise the writing. I fully agree with that. It was a combination of things. I do actually like studying. I do actually enjoy the research—that's why I do historical research. I like that kind of work. So that's one element. Another element was the funding. I thought, if I get that funding, I've got three years to build up a back catalogue of books, to build up the writing. It will give me more time. So that was a very practical financial issue. Also, children. My children were very little. I had a three-year-old and a baby, and everybody went, “Are you insane? Doing a PhD with a three-year-old and a baby?” But the thing about three-year-olds and babies is they're quite intellectually boring. Emotionally, very engaging—on a number of levels, good, bad, whatever—but they're not very intellectually stimulating. You're at home all day with two small children who think that hide and seek is the highlight of intellectual difficulty because they've hidden behind the curtains and they're shuffling and giggling. I felt I needed something else. I needed something for me that would be interesting. I've always enjoyed passing on knowledge. I've always enjoyed teaching people, workshops, in whatever field I was in. I thought, if I want to do that for writing at some point, it will sound more important if I've done a PhD. Not that you need that to explain how to do writing to someone if you do a lot of writing. But there were all these different elements that came together. JOANNA: So to summarise: you enjoy the research, it's an intellectual challenge, you've got the funding, and there is something around authority. In terms of a PhD—and just for listeners, I'm doing a master's at the moment in death, religion, and culture. MELISSA: Your topic sounds fascinating. JOANNA: It is interesting because, same as you, I enjoy research. Both of us love research as part of our fiction process and our nonfiction. I'm also enjoying the intellectual challenge, and I've also considered this idea of authority in an age of AI when it is increasingly easy to generate books—let's just say it, it's easy to generate books. So I was like, well, how do I look at this in a more authoritative way? I wanted to talk to you because even just a few months back into it—and I haven't done an academic qualification for like two decades—it struck me that the academic rigour is so different. What lessons can indie authors learn from this kind of academic rigour? What do you think of in terms of the rigour and what can we learn? MELISSA: I think there are a number of things. First of all, really making sure that you are going to the quality sources for things—the original sources, the high-quality versions of things. Not secondhand, but going back to those primary sources. Not “somebody said that somebody said something.” Well, let's go back to the original. Have a look at that, because you get a lot from that. I think you immerse yourself more deeply. Someone can tell you, “This is how they spoke in the 1800s.” If you go and read something that was written in the 1800s, you get a better sense of that than just reading a dictionary of slang that's been collated for you by somebody else. So I think that immerses you more deeply. Really sticking with that till you've found interesting things that spark creativity in you. I've seen people say, “I used to do all the historical research. Nowadays I just fact-check. I write what I want to write and I fact-check.” I think, well, that's okay, but you won't find the weird little things. I tend to call it “the footnotes of history.” You won't find the weird little things that really make something come alive, that really make a time and a place come alive. I've got a scene in one of my Regency romances—which actually I think are less full of historical emphasis than some of my other work—where a man gives a woman a gift. It's supposed to be a romantic gift and maybe slightly sensual. He could have given her a fan and I could have fact-checked and gone, “Are there fans? Yes, there are fans. Do they have pretty romantic poems on them? Yes, they do. Okay, that'll do.” Actually, if you go round and do more research than that, you discover they had things like ribbons that held up your stockings, on which they wrote quite smutty things in embroidery. That's a much more sexy and interesting gift to give in that scene. But you don't find that unless you go doing a bit of research. If I just fact-check, I'm not going to find that because it would never have occurred to me to fact-check it in the first place. JOANNA: I totally agree with you. One of the wonderful things about research—and I also like going to places—is you might be somewhere and see something that gives you an idea you never, ever would have found in a book or any other way. I used to call it “the serendipity of the stacks” in the physical library. You go looking for a particular book and then you're in that part of the shelf and you find several other books that you never would have looked for. I think it's encouraging people, as you're saying, but I also think you have to love it. MELISSA: Yes. I think some people find it a bit of a grind, or they're frightened by it and they think, “Have I done enough?” JOANNA: Mm-hmm. MELISSA: I get asked that a lot when I talk about writing historical fiction. People go, “But when do I stop? How do I know it's enough? How do I know there wasn't another book that would have been the book? Everyone will go, ‘Oh, how did you not read such-and-such?'” I always say there are two ways of finding out when you can stop. One is when you get to the bibliographies, you look through and you go, “Yep, read that, read that, read that. Nah, I know that one's not really what I wanted.” You're familiar with those bibliographies in a way that at the beginning you're not. At the beginning, every single bibliography, you haven't read any of it. So that's quite a good way of knowing when to stop. The other way is: can you write ordinary, everyday life? I don't start writing a book till I can write everyday life in that historical era without notes. I will obviously have notes if I'm doing a wedding or a funeral or a really specific battle or something. Everyday life, I need to be able to just write that out of my own head. You need to be confident enough to do that. JOANNA: One of the other problems I've heard from academics—people who've really come out of academia and want to write something more pop, even if it's pop nonfiction or fiction—they're also really struggling. It is a different game, isn't it? For people who might be immersed in academia, how can they release themselves into doing something like self-publishing? Because there's still a lot of stigma within academia. MELISSA: You're going to get me on the academic publishing rant now. I think academic publishing is horrendous. Academics are very badly treated. I know quite a lot of academics and they have to do all the work. Nobody's helping them with indexing or anything like that. The publisher will say things like, “Well, could you just cut 10,000 words out of that?” Just because of size. Out of somebody's argument that they're making over a whole work. No consideration for that. The royalties are basically zilch. I've seen people's royalty statements come in, and the way they price the books is insane. They'll price a book at 70 pounds. I actually want that book for my research and I'm hesitating because I can't be buying all of them at that price. That's ridiculous. I've got people who are friends or family who bring out a book, and I'm like, well, I would gladly buy your book and read it. It's priced crazy. It's priced only for institutions. I think actually, if academia was written a little more clearly and open to the lay person—which if you are good at your work, you should be able to do—and priced a bit more in line with other books, that would maybe open up people to reading more academia. You wouldn't have to make it “pop” as you say. I quite like pop nonfiction. But I don't think there would have to be such a gulf between those two. I think you could make academic work more readable generally. I read someone's thesis recently and they'd made a point at the beginning of saying—I can't remember who it was—that so-and-so academic's point of view was that it should be readable and they should be writing accordingly. I thought, wow, I really admired her for doing that. Next time I'm doing something like that, I should be putting that at the front as well. But the fact that she had to explain that at the beginning… It wasn't like words of one syllable throughout the whole thing. I thought it was a very quality piece of writing, but it was perfectly readable to someone who didn't know about the topic. JOANNA: I might have to get that name from you because I've got an essay on the Philosophy of Death. And as you can imagine, there's a heck of a lot of big words. MELISSA: I know. I've done a PhD, but I still used to tense up a little bit thinking they're going to pounce on me. They're going to say that I didn't talk academic enough, I didn't sound fancy enough. That's not what it should be about, really. In a way, you are locking people out of knowledge, and given that most academics are paid for by public funds, that knowledge really ought to be a little more publicly accessible. JOANNA: I agree on the book price. I'm also buying books for my course that aren't in the library. Some of them might be 70 pounds for the ebook, let alone the print book. What that means is that I end up looking for secondhand books, when of course the money doesn't go to the author or the publisher. The other thing that happens is it encourages piracy. There are people who openly talk about using pirate sites for academic works because it's just too expensive. If I'm buying 20 books for my home library, I can't be spending that kind of money. Why is it so bad? Why is it not being reinvented, especially as we have done with indie authors for the wider genres? Has this at all moved into academia? MELISSA: I think within academia there's a fear because there's the peer reviews and it must be proven to be absolutely correct and agreed upon by everybody. I get that. You don't want some complete rubbish in there. I do think there's space to come up with a different system where you could say, “So-and-so is professor of whatever at such-and-such a university. I imagine what they have to say might be interesting and well-researched.” You could have some sort of kite mark. You could have something that then allows for self-publishing to take over a bit. I do just think their system is really, really poor. They get really reined in on what they're allowed to write about. Alison Baverstock, who is a professor now at Kingston University and does stuff about publishing and master's programmes, started writing about self-publishing because she thought it was really interesting. This was way back. JOANNA: I remember. I did one of those surveys. MELISSA: She got told in no uncertain terms, “Do not write about this. You will ruin your career.” She stuck with it. She was right to stick with it. But she was told by senior academics, “Do not write about self-publishing. You're just embarrassing yourself. It's just vanity press.” They weren't even being allowed to write about really quite interesting phenomena that were happening. Just from a historical point of view, that was a really interesting rise of self-publishing, and she was being told not to write about it. JOANNA: It's funny, that delay as well. I'm looking to maybe do my thesis on how AI is impacting death and the death industry. And yet it's such a fast-moving thing. MELISSA: Yes. JOANNA: Sometimes it can take a year, two years or more to get a paper through the process. MELISSA: Oh, yes. It moves really, really fast. Like you say, by the time it comes out, people are going, “Huh? That's really old.” And you'll be going, “No, it's literally two years.” But yes, very, very slow. JOANNA: Let's come back to how we can help other people who might not want to be doing academic-level stuff. One of the things I've found is organising notes, sources, references. How do you manage that? Any tips for people? They might not need to do footnotes for their historical novel, but they might want to organise their research. What are your thoughts? MELISSA: I used to do great big enormous box files and print vast quantities of stuff. Each box file would be labelled according to servant life, or food, or seasons, or whatever. I've tried various different things. I'm moving more and more now towards a combination of books on the shelf, which I do like, and papers and other materials that are stored on my computer. They'll be classified according to different parts of daily life, essentially. Because when you write historical fiction, you have to basically build the whole world again for that era. You have to have everything that happens in daily life, everything that happens on special events, all of those things. So I'll have it organised by those sorts of topics. I'll read it and go through it until I'm comfortable with daily life. Then special things—I'll have special notes on that that can talk me through how you run a funeral or a wedding or whatever, because that's quite complicated to just remember in your head. MELISSA: I always do historical notes at the end. They really matter to me. When I read historical fiction, I really like to read that from the author. I'll say, “Right, these things are true”—especially things that I think people will go, “She made that up. That is not true.” I'll go, “No, no, these are true.” These other things I've fudged a little, or I've moved the timeline a bit to make the story work better. I try to be fairly clear about what I did to make it into a story, but also what is accurate, because I want people to get excited about that timeline. Occasionally if there's been a book that was really important, I'll mention it in there because I don't want to have a proper bibliography, but I do want to highlight certain books. If you got excited by this novel, you could go off and read that book and it would take you into the nonfiction side of it. JOANNA: I'm similar with my author's notes. I've just done the author's note for Bones of the Deep, which has some merfolk in it, and I've got a book on Merpeople. It's awesome. It's just a brilliant book. I'm like, this has to go in. You could question whether that is really nonfiction or something else. But I think that's really important. Just to be more practical: when you're actually writing, what tools do you use? I use Scrivener and I keep all my research there. I'm using EndNote for academic stuff. MELISSA: I've always just stuck to Word. I did get Scrivener and played with it for a while, but I felt like I've already got a way of doing it, so I'll just carry on with that. So I mostly just do Word. I have a lot of notes, so I'll have notepads that have got my notes on specific things, and they'll have page numbers that go back to specific books in case I need to go and double-check that again. You mentioned citations, and that's fascinating to me. Do you know the story about Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner? It won the Pulitzer. It's a novel, but he used 10% of that novel—and it's a fairly slim novel—10% of it is actually letters written by somebody else, written by a woman before his time. He includes those and works with them in the story. He mentioned her very briefly, like, “Oh, and thanks to the relatives of so-and-so.” Very brief. He got accused of plagiarism for using that much of it by another part of her family who hadn't agreed to it. I've always thought it's because he didn't give enough credence to her. He didn't give her enough importance. If he'd said, “This was the woman who wrote this stuff. It's fascinating. I loved it. I wanted to creatively respond and engage with it”—I think that wouldn't have happened at all. That's why I think it's quite important when there are really big, important elements that you're using to acknowledge those. JOANNA: That's part of the academic rigour too— You can barely have a few of your own thoughts without referring to somebody else's work and crediting them. What's so interesting to me in the research process is, okay, I think this, but in order to say it, I'm going to have to go find someone else who thought this first and wrote a paper on it. MELISSA: I think you would love a PhD. When you've done a master's, go and do a PhD as well. Because it was the first time in academia that I genuinely felt I was allowed my own thoughts and to invent stuff of my own. I could go, “Oh no, I've invented this theory and it's this.” I didn't have to constantly go, “As somebody else said, as somebody else said.” I was like, no, no. This is me. I said this thing. I wasn't allowed to in my master's, and I found it annoying. I remember thinking, but I'm trying to have original thoughts here. I'm trying to bring something new to it. In a PhD, you're allowed to do that because you're supposed to be contributing to knowledge. You're supposed to be bringing a new thing into the world. That was a glorious thing to finally be allowed to do. JOANNA: I must say I couldn't help myself with that. I've definitely put my own opinion. But a part of why I mention it is the academic rigour—it's actually quite good practice to see who else has had these thoughts before. Speed is one of the biggest issues in the indie author community. Some of the stuff you were talking about—finding original sources, going to primary sources, the top-quality stuff, finding the weird little things—all of that takes more time than, for example, just running a deep research report on Gemini or Claude or ChatGPT. You can do both. You can use that as a starting point, which I definitely do. But then the point is to go back and read the original stuff. On this timeframe— Why do you think research is worth doing? It's important for academic reasons, but personal growth as well. MELISSA: Yes, I think there's a joy to be had in the research. When I go and stand in a location, by that point I'm not measuring things and taking photos—I've done all of that online. I'm literally standing there feeling what it is to be there. What does it smell like? What does it feel like? Does it feel very enclosed or very open? Is it a peaceful place or a horrible place? That sensory research becomes very important. All of the book research before that should lead you into the sensory research, which is then also a joy to do. There's great pleasure in it. As you say, it slows things down. What I tend to say to people if they want to speed things up again is: write in a series. Because once you've done all of that research and you just write one book and then walk away, that's a lot. That really slows you down. If you then go, “Okay, well now I'm going to write four books, five books, six books, still in that place and time”—obviously each book will need a little more research, but it won't need that level of starting-from-scratch research. That can help in terms of speeding it back up again. Recently I wrote some Regency romances to see what that was like. I'd done all my basic research, and then I thought, right, now I want to write a historical novel which could have been Victorian or could have been Regency. It had an openness to it. I thought, well, I've just done all the research for Regency, so I'll stick with that era. Why go and do a whole other piece of research when I've only written three books in it so far? I'll just take that era and work with that. So there are places to make up the time again a bit. But I do think there's a joy in it as well. JOANNA: I just want to come back to the plagiarism thing. I discovered that you can plagiarise yourself in academia, which is quite interesting. For example, my books How to Write a Novel and How to Write Nonfiction—they're aimed at different audiences. They have lots of chapters that are different, but there's a chapter on dictation. I thought, why would I need to write the same chapter again? I'm just going to put the same chapter in. It's the same process. Then I only recently learned that you can plagiarise yourself. I did not credit myself for that original chapter. MELISSA: How dare you not credit yourself! JOANNA: But can you talk a bit about that? Where are the lines here? I'm never going to credit myself. I think that's frankly ridiculous. MELISSA: No, that's silly. I mean, it depends what you're doing. In your case, that completely makes sense. It would be really peculiar of you to sit down and write a whole new chapter desperately trying not to copy what you'd said in a chapter about exactly the same topic. That doesn't make any sense. JOANNA: I guess more in the wider sense. Earlier you mentioned you keep notes and you put page numbers by them. I think the point is with research, a lot of people worry about accidental plagiarism. You write a load of notes on a book and then it just goes into your brain. Perhaps you didn't quote people properly. It's definitely more of an issue in nonfiction. You have to keep really careful notes. Sometimes I'm copying out a quote and I'll just naturally maybe rewrite that quote because the way they've put it didn't make sense, or I use a contraction or something. It's just the care in note-taking and then citing people. MELISSA: Yes. When I talk to people about nonfiction, I always say, you're basically joining a conversation. I mean, you are in fiction as well, but not as obviously. I say, well, why don't you read the conversation first? Find out what the conversation is in your area at the moment, and then what is it that you're bringing that's different? The most likely reason for you to end up writing something similar to someone else is that you haven't understood what the conversation was, and you need to be bringing your own thing to it. Then even if you're talking about the same topic, you might talk about it in a different way, and that takes you away from plagiarism because you're bringing your own view to it and your own direction to it. JOANNA: It's an interesting one. I think it's just the care. Taking more care is what I would like people to do. So let's talk about AI because AI tools can be incredible. I do deep research reports with Gemini and Claude and ChatGPT as a sort of “give me an overview and tell me some good places to start.” The university I'm with has a very hard line, which is: AI can be used as part of a research process, but not for writing. What are your thoughts on AI usage and tools? How can people balance that? MELISSA: Well, I'm very much a newbie compared to you. I follow you—the only person that describes how to use it with any sense at all, step by step. I'm very new to it, but I'm going to go back to the olden days. Sometimes I say to people, when I'm talking about how I do historical research, I start with Wikipedia. They look horrified. I'm like, no. That's where you have to get the overview from. I want an overview of how you dress in ancient Rome. I need a quick snapshot of that. Then I can go off and figure out the details of that more accurately and with more detail. I think AI is probably extremely good for that—getting the big picture of something and going, okay, this is what the field's looking like at the moment. These are the areas I'm going to need to burrow down into. It's doing that work for you quickly so that you're then in a position to pick up from that point. It gets you off to a quicker start and perhaps points you in the direction of the right people to start with. I'm trying to write a PhD proposal at the moment because I'm an idiot and want to do a second one. With that, I really did think, actually, AI should write this. Because the original concept is mine. I know nothing about it—why would I know anything about it? I haven't started researching it. This is where AI should go, “Well, in this field, there are these people. They've done these things.” Then you could quickly check that nobody's covered your thing. It would actually speed up all of that bit, which I think would be perfectly reasonable because you don't know anything about it yet. You're not an expert. You have the original idea, and then after that, then you should go off and do your own research and the in-depth quality of it. I think for a lot of things that waste authors' time—if you're applying for a grant or a writer-in-residence or things like that—it's a lot of time wasting filling in long, boring forms. “Could you make an artist statement and a something and a blah?” You're like, yes, yes, I could spend all day at my desk doing that. There's a moment where you start thinking, could you not just allow the AI to do this or much of it? JOANNA: Yes. Or at least, in that case, I'd say one of the very useful things is doing deep searches. As you were mentioning earlier about getting the funding—if I was to consider a PhD, which the thought has crossed my mind—I would use AI tools to do searches for potential sources of funding and that kind of research. In fact, I found this course at Winchester because I asked ChatGPT. It knows a lot about me because I chat with it all the time. I was talking about hitting 50 and these are the things I'm really interested in and what courses might interest me. Then it found it for me. That was quite amazing in itself. I'd encourage people to consider using it for part of the research process. But then all the papers it cites or whatever—then you have to go download those, go read them, do that work yourself. MELISSA: Yes, because that's when you bring your viewpoint to something. You and I could read the exact same paper and choose very different parts of it to write about and think about, because we're coming at it from different points of view and different journeys that we're trying to explore. That's where you need the individual to come in. It wouldn't be good enough to just have a generic overview from AI that we both try and slot into our work, because we would want something different from it. JOANNA: I kind of laugh when people say, “Oh, I can tell when it's AI.” I'm like, you might be able to tell when it's AI writing if nobody has taken that personal spin, but that's not the way we use it. If you're using it that way, that's not how those of us who are independent thinkers are using it. We're strong enough in our thoughts that we're using it as a tool. You're a confident person—intellectually and creatively confident—but I feel like some people maybe don't have that. Some people are not strong enough to resist what an AI might suggest. Any thoughts on that? MELISSA: Yes. When I first tried using AI with very little guidance from anyone, it just felt easy but very wooden and not very related to me. Then I've done webinars with you, and that was really useful—to watch somebody actually live doing the batting back and forth. That became a lot more interesting because I really like bouncing ideas and messing around with things and brainstorming, essentially, but with somebody else involved that's batting stuff back to you. “What does that look like?” “No, I didn't mean that at all.” “How about what does this look like?” “Oh no, no, not like that.” “Oh yes, a bit like that, but a bit more like whatever.” I remember doing that and talking to someone about it, going, “Oh, that's really quite an interesting use of it.” And they said, “Why don't you use a person?” I said, “Well, because who am I going to call at 8:30 in the morning on a Thursday and go, ‘Look, I want to spend two hours batting back and forth ideas, but I don't want you to talk about your stuff at all. Just my stuff. And you have to only think about my stuff for two hours. And you have to be very well versed in my stuff as well. Could you just do that?'” Who's going to do that for you? JOANNA: I totally agree with you. Before Christmas, I was doing a paper. It was an art history thing. We had to pick a piece of art or writing and talk about Christian ideas of hell and how it emerged. I was writing this essay and going back and forth with Claude at the time. My husband came in and saw the fresco I was writing about. He said, “No one's going to talk to you about this. Nobody.” MELISSA: Yes, exactly. JOANNA: Nobody cares. MELISSA: Exactly. Nobody cares as much as you. And they're not prepared to do that at 8:30 on a Thursday morning. They've got other stuff to do. JOANNA: It's great to hear because I feel like we're now at the point where these tools are genuinely super useful for independent work. I hope that more people might try that. JOANNA: Okay, we're almost out of time. Where can people find you and your books online? Also, tell us a bit about the types of books you have. MELISSA: I mostly write historical fiction. As I say, I've wandered my way through history—I'm a travelling minstrel. I've done ancient Rome, medieval Morocco, 18th century China, and I'm into Regency England now. So that's a bit closer to home for once. I'm at MelissaAddey.com and you can go and have a bit of a browse and download a free novel if you want. Try me out. JOANNA: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Melissa. MELISSA: That was great. Thank you. It was fun. The post Research Like An Academic, Write Like an Indie With Melissa Addey first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Julia Pastrana was a Mexican woman exploited as a sideshow attraction in life and grotesquely exhibited even after her death because of her appearance. Her story is part of the dark history of the Victorian 'freak show'. Anthony tells Maddy the story.This episode was edited by Hannah Feodorov. Produced by Stuart Beckwith and researched by Phoebe Joyce.You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhitSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On today's show, we're chatting with Tacee Webb, the original founder of Red Light Vintage in Seattle – a store she first opened in her early 20s in 1996 and is now buying back from its current owners 30 years later! Full circle story! Red Light has been a Seattle institution since the grunge era, known for its eclectic mix of vintage finds from the 1930s through the 1990s, its vibrant community spirit, and oh yes – its legendary naked shopping sprees. In this episode, Tacee takes us on a journey that starts on a tiny island near the Canadian border, where she grew up surrounded by her family's belongings dating back to the 1860s – from her Native American grandmother's furniture to Victorian dresses in the old log cabin. She shares how selling rusty anchors and clay pinch pots on the beach as a kid planted the seeds for a career in retail, and how an encounter with a glamorous vintage dealer in her teens changed everything for her. We dive into the wild days of Red Light in the '90s – when MTV was filming there, Courtney Love was tearing through the store, and Tacee became one of the biggest sneaker resellers in the business – at the time she was featured in the Wall Street Journal, Vogue, NPR, People, CNN, and tons of magazines in Japan. "We would get 100 voice mails a day – people calling me to sell their sneakers from all over the country, it was WILD!" Tacee wrote me.  She shares stories about styling Alice in Chains for Rolling Stone, hosting bands like Modest Mouse in the store's cafe, and why she old Red Light in 1999, the bittersweet reality of watching Seattle boom and price out the creative class. Late last year, when she saw the Vanishing Seattle post announcing the original store's potential closure, she knew she wanted it back. Now, partnering with her daughter – who's been part of the Red Light story since she was a baby – Tacee is bringing back the beloved traditions while reimagining vintage retail for a new generation. It's a conversation spanning decades of vintage fashion history from someone who's lived it all. This episode is SUCH a fun one, so let's dive right in! DISCUSSED IN THE EPISODE: [7:09] Growing up on the San Juan islands in Washington, and her first "store" called The Rust Factory. [10:42] How Tacee's style evolved from small-town vintage fashion lover, influenced by Madonna, her Pan Am flight attendant mother's Pucci collection, and family heirlooms. [15:46] Her first encounter with vintage dealer Gloria and putting a 1890s wedding gown on layaway as a teenager. [18:59] Red Light became a vintage hub on the Avenue in Seattle after it opened in 1996. [22:12] Red Light was grunge rock headquarters including a cafe space where bands like Modest Mouse played, and MTV filming there constantly. [26:34] How Red Light approached vintage retail like traditional retail in the '90s. [28:15] The reworking and upcycling happening at Red Light in the '90s  [29:38] Stories from the grunge era: styling Layne Staley for Rolling Stone, having Kurt Cobain's clothing in the store, and Courtney Love's shopping sprees. [37:36] Why Tacee sold Red Light in Seattle back in 1999. [42:15] How seeing the Vanishing Seattle post about Red Light potentially closing made Tacee realize she wanted her store back. [44:06] Partnering with her daughter – who has been part of Red Light since she was a baby– to take over ownership. [48:27] Red Light will re-open under Tacee right in time for its 30th anniversary, with a celebration weekend including a fashion show, and the return of the naked shopping spree. [56:42] Reimagining Red Light for a new generation with a membership-based vintage wardrobe lending library. [1:05:08] People kept asking Tacee when vintage would "go out of style" in the '90s, and her philosophy on fashion cycles. [1:08:33] How Tacee created vintage denim and sneaker buying guides in the '90s (pre-internet!) to educate dealers and pickers. [1:09:58]  Tacee's massive sneaker buying operation and trips to Japan. [1:22:54] Her parents' incredible vintage collection on the San Juan island [1:25:12] Plans for an anti-fascist themed fashion show as a benefit for ACLU and other local organizations, including other vintage shops and dealers. EPISODE MENTIONS:  @redlightvintage Red Light Vintage Vanishing Seattle LET'S CONNECT: 

This episode of Alphas Make Sandwiches kicks off with Groundhog Day chaos, falling iguanas in Florida, and a deep dive into the strange tradition of “painting the town red,” tracing the phrase back to 19th-century British aristocrats and elite excess. The hosts share camera-roll challenges, night photography tips, and audience submissions before pivoting into U.S. history, including the founding of Rocky Mountain National Park, the Challenger and Columbia disasters, and a thought-provoking discussion on the constitutional consequences of the 13th Amendment's ratification. The conversation shifts to cultural commentary with reactions to awards-show spectacle, celebrity activism, and public expressions of faith, including Jelly Roll's acceptance speech. The panel also explores Victorian-era curse words, blasphemy laws, and creative alternatives to modern profanity, blending history with humor. Rounding out the show are hands-on segments featuring crystal-growing crafts, Super Bowl snack ideas, sourdough recipes, and Badlands community banter, making this episode equal parts cultural analysis, history lesson, and laid-back Monday hang.

In this episode of Straight White American Jesus, Brad is joined by Sarah Moslener, author of After Purity: Race, Sex, and Religion in White Christian America and creator of the Pure White podcast. Together, they explore purity culture not as a narrow fixation on teenage abstinence, but as a powerful religious and political system that has long shaped ideas of belonging in the United States. Moslener traces purity culture back to 19th-century slavery, Victorian gender norms, and Protestant theology, showing how it functions to define “good bodies” and “bad bodies,” determine moral worth, and police the boundaries of citizenship. White womanhood, in particular, emerges as a national symbol of innocence and virtue that has been central to sustaining racial hierarchy and social control. The conversation turns to how these myths are playing out in the present, from the aesthetics and behavior of women aligned with Trump-era politics to the legal and media treatment of women involved in January 6. Brad and Moslener examine how white innocence is protected when it reinforces authority and withdrawn when it challenges power, contrasting the treatment of compliant figures with white women who resist authoritarianism and women of color who face state violence. From ICE raids to the killing of Reneé Nicole Goode, the episode highlights how authoritarian systems rely on fear, spectacle, and constantly shifting lines between “good” and “bad” to enforce obedience. The discussion ultimately underscores the high cost—and the necessity—of defecting from whiteness in moments of moral and political crisis. Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus content most Mondays, bonus episodes every month, ad-free listening, access to the entire 1000+ episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC Order Brad's book: https://bookshop.org/a/95982/9781506482163 Subscribe to Teología Sin Vergüenza Subscribe to American Exceptionalism Donate to SWAJ: https://axismundi.supercast.com/donations/new Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

WARNING: This episode contains spoilers for Episode 4 of Miss Scarlet Season 6.Miss Scarlet writer and creator Rachael New likes to have fun with her Victorian-era mystery series. Whether it's having Eliza out of her element in a new relationship, or watching Moses and Clarence team up on a jewelry caper, Rachael delights in juxtaposing these moments of humor alongside serious crimes. In this episode, Rachael explores the twists and turns in this labyrinthine season of Miss Scarlet.

It's time for another new Festive Fridays episode with a 2025 Christmas mystery from OWN.ABOUT VERY MERRY MYSTERYA small-town hairstylist and Christmas enthusiast helps her detective boyfriend investigate when their host disappears during a Christmas murder mystery party, leaving behind only a ransom note.AIR DATE & NETWORK FOR VERY MERRY MYSTERYDecember 13, 2025 | OWNCAST & CREW OF VERY MERRY MYSTERYAshleigh Murray as Bea KingTristan Mack Wilds as Troy RhodesZahra Bentham as Desiree BarnesRobinne Fanfair as Deborah KingRomaine Waite as Calvin DeeKathy Maloney as Evelyn WhittakerRainbow Sun Francks as Dr. Maurice WhitakerKimberly Huie as Grace BurtonBRAN'S VERY MERRY MYSTERY SYNOPSISWelcome to Queen Bea Beauty—Bea is the owner, and everyone in town loves her. It's two days until Christmas, and she's chatting with her friends about the town Grinch, Mrs. Burton. Apparently, Mrs. Burton is throwing a Christmas party to make amends with all her enemies. Bea is invited, even though she never actually had a falling-out with her.First, Bea helps out with a Christmas scavenger hunt. She's surprised when her boyfriend, Detective Troy, shows up—but he's on duty. There's definitely some tension between the two of them.The next day, it's party time. The event is carol-themed, so everyone has to dress in Victorian-era costumes. Of course, it's also a murder mystery party. Each guest is given a character card with lines they're supposed to say. Suddenly, the fire goes out and the lights go dark. When everything comes back on, Mrs. Burton is nowhere to be found, and Des—who's playing the maid—is lying on the floor with the Christmas tree on top of her. Thankfully, she's fine. A guy named Calvin accidentally pushed her when he got scared.At first, everyone assumes Mrs. Burton's disappearance is just part of the game. But then they find a ransom note, and it becomes clear this might actually be real. Bea is known for being good at mysteries, so everyone looks to her to figure it out. Naturally, Detective Troy officially joins the case.They question everyone but don't get any closer to solving it. They discover there's a secret passageway, but Mrs. Burton is still nowhere to be found.Thanks to Bea's keen observation skills, she starts to suspect the doctor and his wife who are attending the party. Eventually, they find Mrs. Burton in a shed outside—completely unharmed. Weird, right?Bea believes the doctor has been having an affair with Mrs. Burton, so she accuses him, and Troy arrests him.But something doesn't quite add up. When Bea notices a photo in the newspaper showing what looks like bruising on the wife's wrist, everything clicks. It wasn't the doctor—it was his wife. She discovered the affair and “kidnapped” Mrs. Burton, hoping to force her husband to wire money so she could leave him. The plan didn't work, but she confesses and is arrested.Bea and Troy have a heartfelt moment and end up spending Christmas together. Watch the show on Youtube - www.deckthehallmark.com/youtubeInterested in advertising on the show? Email bran@deckthehallmark.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, we discuss winter weather, massages, saunas, Jason's hand-routed shop sign, flooring installation challenges and differing approaches to video production, how to overcomplicate projects and crap we bought on Instagram!Be sure to check out Bits & Bits at www.bitsbits.com and use coupon code MORSELS15 to save 15% on your order of router and/or CNC bits. Be sure to hit up Katz-Moses Tools at www.KMTools.com - cool tools at a fair price. If it's on their website, it's in Jonathan's apron. www.kmtools.com **And check out the new Katz Moses toolless adjustable countersink and new sharpening jig. Oh, and don't forget about his new aluminum channel French Cleat system with some bad azz 3D printed accessories that lock in place!! Be sure to check out WTB Woodworking at 390 Pike Road, Unit 2, Huntingdon Valley, PA for lumber, slabs, woodworking tools and MORE!! Or shop online and earn yourself some Burkell bucks for every dollar you spend! WTB's new giveaway ends on February 2nd and includes almost $1,000 in valuable prizes. Go to wtbwoodworking.com/giveaway to enter.Help us support Grit-Grip!! A revolutionary new breed of double-sided sanding sponges that we all LOVE! Check it out at https://grit-grip.com/ and use code "shopsounds" at checkout to get a free sanding block!The Bourbon Blade: https://www.bourbonmoth.com/shop/p/the-bourbon-blade-original-pocket-chiselIf you'd like to support us on Patreon and have access to our irreverent aftershow, you can sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/shopsoundspodcastYou can find us on Instagram, Youtube, Facebook and TikTok (maybe): Bourbon Moth Woodworking and Keith Johnson Woodworking and Kodamari Design

SHOW SCHEDULE1-29-20261942 LANCASTER PA, ARMISTICE DAY IN WARTIME Guest: Anatol Lieven. Lieven of the Quincy Institute discusses breaking news that Vladimir Putin has agreed to a one-week ceasefire on Ukrainian cities following a request from Donald Trump. Lieven views this as a significant positive signal of Putin's desire to maintain good standing with the incoming administration, though he notes that major territorial disagreements remain unresolved. Guest: Anatol Lieven. The conversation turns to the $300 billion in suspended Russian assets. Lieven outlines Russia's proposal to use these funds for reconstruction or a joint investment fund to avoid confiscation, suggesting that suspending rather than lifting sanctions could be a political compromise to secure U.S. Senate approval. Guest: Chris Riegel. Riegel, CEO of Stratology, analyzes Elon Musk's pivot to manufacturing "Optimus" androids, arguing that California's restrictive tax and labor costs are driving the need for automation. He suggests that major retailers like Walmart are poised to replace significant portions of their workforce with robotics to maintain profitability amid rising economic pressures. Guest: Mariam Wahba. Wahba from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies reports on the persecution of Christians in Nigeria by jihadists and Fulani militants. She details a newly established White House working group designed to help the Nigerian government fix security gaps and enforce laws against the perpetrators of this religiously motivated violence. Guest: Mary Anastasia O'Grady. O'Grady of the Wall Street Journal critiques the Trump administration's engagement with Venezuela's acting president, Delcy Rodriguez. O'Grady warns that while Rodriguez is cooperating on oil exports, she remains a "vice dictator" managing rival factions to ensure the regime's survival while stalling on the release of political prisoners. Guest: Veronique de Rugy. De Rugy of the Mercatus Center examines the failure of Georgia's film tax credits, noting that productions eventually moved to cheaper locations despite billions in subsidies. She compares this to federal industrial policies like tariffs and Intel subsidies, arguing that government attempts to "pick winners" rarely produce sustainable economic results. Guest: Michael Toth. Toth of the Civitas Institute warns against new "climate superfund" legislation in states like New York, which seeks to retroactively tax fossil fuel companies for global warming. He characterizes these funds as unconstitutional attempts to regulate global emissions at the state level, arguing they will function as slush funds that drive up energy costs. Guest: Michael Toth. The segment focuses on California's strategy to empower the Attorney General to sue fossil fuel companies for rising insurance premiums. Toth argues these lawsuits are politically motivated and legally weak, noting that even insurance companies refuse to sue because attributing specific damages or deaths to corporate emissions is factually difficult. Guest: Professor Evan Ellis. Ellis of the U.S. Army War College reports that Cuba is facing a catastrophic energy collapse, with only days of oil remaining after Mexico and Venezuela cut supplies. He predicts this crisis will likely trigger a massive wave of migration as the island's power grid and economy face a near-total shutdown. Guest: Professor Evan Ellis. Ellis discusses the Costa Rican election, where center-right candidate Laura Fernandez holds a commanding lead. He describes her as a technocrat focused on combating drug-fueled crime and continuing pro-business policies, noting she is on track to potentially win the presidency in the first round. Guest: Professor Evan Ellis. Ellis evaluates Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, praising her pragmatic management of relations with the U.S. despite her leftist ideology. He notes she has navigated threats of tariffs and military intervention by cooperating on border security and extradition, while maintaining political dominance through her predecessor's powerful movement. Guest: Professor Evan Ellis. Ellis describes the unstable power dynamics in Venezuela, where the Rodriguezfaction cooperates with the U.S. on oil to prevent economic collapse. He warns that rival criminal factions, including the ELN and military figures, may sabotage this arrangement if they fear being betrayed or marginalized by the current leadership. Guest: Padraic Scanlan. Scanlan, author of Rot, introduces the history of the Irish Famine by recounting a folk story about Queen Victoria visiting the devastated village of Skibbereen. He sets the context by explaining how the pre-famine Irish economy relied entirely on the high-yield potato, which allowed landlords to pay incredibly low wages to a capital-poor population. Guest: Padraic Scanlan. Scanlan discusses the structure of Irish land ownership, using Shirley Castle as an example of the disconnect between landlords and tenants. He explains that while the landscape looked ancient, landlords were actually modern, sophisticated merchants who extracted rent from a tenant class living on small, unimproved plots known as "conacres." Guest: Padraic Scanlan. Scanlan explains the Victorian view of the famine through the lens of economist Thomas Malthus, who believed the "generous" potato encouraged overpopulation. He notes that Britishpolicymakers viewed the famine as a natural, inevitable correction and feared that providing aid would discourage the Irish poor from developing a "civilized" work ethic. Guest: Padraic Scanlan. Scanlan details the biological cause of the famine: Phytophthora infestans, a water mold that originated in Mexico. He explains that because Irish potatoes were genetically identical clones grown from cuttings, they had zero resistance to the pathogen, which destroyed both growing crops and stored food, leaving the population with no buffer against starvation.

Guest: Padraic Scanlan. Scanlan explains the Victorian view of the famine through the lens of economist Thomas Malthus, who believed the "generous" potato encouraged overpopulation. He notes that British policymakers viewed the famine as a natural, inevitable correction and feared that providing aid would discourage the Irish poor from developing a "civilized" work ethic.

We've dug deep into the archives to find some of our favourite moments since 2010. We have found the original audio of when Billy invented a new band, and he got his face on a urinal in a regional Victorian pub. Then we want to know if getting married gave you a funny name. Ventriloquist extraordinaire David Strassman was in studio along with his buddy Chuck, then JB has a letter that he wrote to himself from 1989. Billy and Daisy get you across the weekend's sporting action, JB and Billy chat to the bloke from the Old Spice "I'm on a horse" commercial, then it's time for the Fat's On Fire Quiz. Can Billy and the team get through 20 questions? Campbell Brown invades the studio for a little surprise, we hear the very first Idiot Song, and a joke from Billy that he completely and utterly slaughtered.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daniel Dunglas Home was a 19th-century medium who reportedly levitated in front of scientists, floated out of third-story windows, handled fire with his bare hands, and was never publicly exposed as a fraud. In this episode, we explore the true paranormal history of D.D. Home, the rise of Victorian spiritualism, and why scientists, skeptics, and nobility alike witnessed his séances and could not explain what they saw. From documented levitation events to investigations by respected researchers, this is the strange and unsettling story of one of the most mysterious figures in paranormal history. Watch the full episode on YouTube:▶ https://bit.ly/TheoriesOfTheThirdKindYT Support the show + unlock bonus episodes:

The Nemacolin Castle is also known as the Bowman's Castle and is found in Brownsville, Pennsylvania. While the mansion itself dates back to the Victorian era, there are things on the property that go back even further than that with remnants from the former Fort Burd here and even before that from indigenous people. The Bowman family built the castle and three generations lived here before it became the museum it is today. There are claims that nearly a dozen ghosts haunt the property. Join us for the history and hauntings of Nemacolin Castle. The Moment in Oddity features Robert Liston, Fastest Knife in the West End. Check out the website: http://historygoesbump.com Show notes can be found here: https://historygoesbump.blogspot.com/2026/01/hgb-ep-622-nemacolin-castle.html      Become an Executive Producer: http://patreon.com/historygoesbump Music used in this episode: (Moment in Oddity) "Vanishing" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Music: Fragments Of Love Produced by Sascha Ende Link: https://ende.app/en/song/12238-fragments-of-love  Nemacolin Castle picture: By Acroterion - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33363905 Nemacolin collage and pictures courtesy of pabucketlist.com

We explore the Melbourne Metro Tunnel, which has recently opened in the Victorian capital. Plus: Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao joins Monocle’s Ed Stocker to discuss how she challenges norms to champion social housing. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Step into a world where mad scientists roam the foggy streets of Victorian London! In this engaging episode of Reading with Your Kids, host Jed Doherty welcomes acclaimed author and illustrator S.H. Cotugno to dive into the hit graphic novel series, The Glass Scientists. Cotugno takes listeners behind the scenes of her creative process, revealing how classic Gothic fiction, quirky 19th-century science, and a mother's passion for English literature inspired the tale of Dr. Jekyll and his band of eccentric inventors. Discover how The Glass Scientists explores themes of identity, weirdness, and self-acceptance—all while balancing thrilling adventures and laugh-out-loud moments. S.H. shares insights into the evolving art of storyboarding for animation and how crafting strong, relatable characters helps young readers connect to complex emotions. Later in the episode, Jake Wheeler joins the conversation to introduce his middle grade graphic novel, The Gull Father, the comedic story of a crime family of seagulls. Jake and Jed discuss the magic of fostering a lifelong love of reading, the evolution of comedy in children's books, and the importance of bonding over stories as a family. Whether you're a parent looking to inspire your child or a graphic novel fan eager for new adventures, this episode celebrates storytelling, creativity, and the wild worlds of comics. Discover new favorites, fresh perspectives, and the secrets behind the stories kids (and parents) love!

This novel is subtitled The Mellstock Quire, A Rural Painting of the Dutch School. The Quire is the group of musicians who accompany the hymns at the local church and we follow the fortunes of one member, Dick Dewy, who falls in love with the new school mistress, Fancy Day.Another element of the book is the battle between the traditional musicians of the Quire and the local vicar, Parson Maybold, who installs a church organ. This battle illustrates the developing technology being introduced in the Victorian era and its threat to traditional country ways.The novel was published anonymously in 1872 and is often seen as Thomas Hardy's most gentle and pastoral novel. In 2005 Under the Greenwood Tree was adapted for a television version by Ashley Pharoah. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This novel is subtitled The Mellstock Quire, A Rural Painting of the Dutch School. The Quire is the group of musicians who accompany the hymns at the local church and we follow the fortunes of one member, Dick Dewy, who falls in love with the new school mistress, Fancy Day.Another element of the book is the battle between the traditional musicians of the Quire and the local vicar, Parson Maybold, who installs a church organ. This battle illustrates the developing technology being introduced in the Victorian era and its threat to traditional country ways.The novel was published anonymously in 1872 and is often seen as Thomas Hardy's most gentle and pastoral novel. In 2005 Under the Greenwood Tree was adapted for a television version by Ashley Pharoah. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This novel is subtitled The Mellstock Quire, A Rural Painting of the Dutch School. The Quire is the group of musicians who accompany the hymns at the local church and we follow the fortunes of one member, Dick Dewy, who falls in love with the new school mistress, Fancy Day.Another element of the book is the battle between the traditional musicians of the Quire and the local vicar, Parson Maybold, who installs a church organ. This battle illustrates the developing technology being introduced in the Victorian era and its threat to traditional country ways.The novel was published anonymously in 1872 and is often seen as Thomas Hardy's most gentle and pastoral novel. In 2005 Under the Greenwood Tree was adapted for a television version by Ashley Pharoah. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This novel is subtitled The Mellstock Quire, A Rural Painting of the Dutch School. The Quire is the group of musicians who accompany the hymns at the local church and we follow the fortunes of one member, Dick Dewy, who falls in love with the new school mistress, Fancy Day.Another element of the book is the battle between the traditional musicians of the Quire and the local vicar, Parson Maybold, who installs a church organ. This battle illustrates the developing technology being introduced in the Victorian era and its threat to traditional country ways.The novel was published anonymously in 1872 and is often seen as Thomas Hardy's most gentle and pastoral novel. In 2005 Under the Greenwood Tree was adapted for a television version by Ashley Pharoah. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This novel is subtitled The Mellstock Quire, A Rural Painting of the Dutch School. The Quire is the group of musicians who accompany the hymns at the local church and we follow the fortunes of one member, Dick Dewy, who falls in love with the new school mistress, Fancy Day.Another element of the book is the battle between the traditional musicians of the Quire and the local vicar, Parson Maybold, who installs a church organ. This battle illustrates the developing technology being introduced in the Victorian era and its threat to traditional country ways.The novel was published anonymously in 1872 and is often seen as Thomas Hardy's most gentle and pastoral novel. In 2005 Under the Greenwood Tree was adapted for a television version by Ashley Pharoah. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Nationals MP Colin Boyce says his leadership challenge against David Littleproud aims to prevent the National Party from facing what he is calling 'political oblivion.' Authorities are warning that dry conditions could reignite a large bushfire in a Victorian national park over the coming weeks. Two cases of the deadly Nipah virus have been confirmed in India and at least 190 people have been quarantined. News from today's live program (1-2pm). - 連邦国民党のコリン・ボイス下院議員が、党の代表を選挙で選びなおすリーダーシップ・スピルで、現職のリトルプラウド代表に挑む準備を進めています。ビクトリア州では今後数週間、引き続き乾燥した気候が続くため、国立公園での山火事の発生リスクが再び高まる可能性があります。パースCBDで行われたInvasion Day の集会で、群衆に向かって爆発物が投げ込まれたとされる事件で、テロ行為の疑いがあるとして捜査が続けられています。2026年１月29日放送。

When you are designing a stadium for the World Cup, or any major sport, it's vital to have a fan's-eye view. For more than a century, the architects tasked with designing stadiums have used the C-value, developed by Victorian theatre designer John Russel. But this value just measures the view in one direction, towards the stage. Sporting events are viewed in the round, with fans all around the stadium bowl. In this episode, we hear from Mark Fenwick, whose practice has designed stadiums for the Qatar World Cup, and for leading European football teams. He explains how Fenwick Iribarren has built on the Victorian concept of C-values and sightlines in theatre design, with the FI-Factor, a new system for mapping the spectators' view from each seat in a stadium. Mark describes the sub-factors considered, explains how this was first used during bidding for a new world cup stadium at Education City in Qatar, its subsequent use in Valencia, and its scope for use on other stadiums. Guest Mark Fenwick, Partner, Fenwick Iribarren Architects Partner Egis is a leading global architectural, consulting, construction engineering, operations and mobility services firm. Egis creates and operates intelligent infrastructure and buildings that both respond to the climate emergency and contribute to balanced, sustainable and resilient development.Its 22,000 employees operate across over 100 countries, deploying their expertise to develop and deliver cutting-edge innovations and solutions for clients. Through the wide range of its activities, Egis plays a central role in the collective organisation of society and the living environment of citizens all over the world.The post #359e A Better View of Stadium Design first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Welcome, to your Debut Dark Minisode of this season.On your debut Dark Minisode for today, a retired police officer shares a chilling true account from his time working at a Victorian-era police station in the northwest of England—an active station with a long-standing reputation among staff for something they rarely discuss openly. What begins as harmless workplace folklore soon gives way to a series of unsettling encounters centred around a forbidden stairwell, a recurring apparition, and an atmosphere that defies rational explanation. Told with calm authority and quiet dread, this minisode explores skepticism, shared secrets, and the moment when professional logic fails in the face of the unexplained. A stark reminder that some buildings carry more than history—and that belief isn't always a choice.Stay safe,Kevin.We're giving a full weeks trial of our Patreon away! Just head over on the link below and away you go!If it's not for you? Simply cancel before your trial expires, meanwhile enjoy FULL access to our highest tier, and thank you for being the best listeners by miles!By making the choice of joining our Patreon team now, not only gives you early Ad-Free access to all our episodes, including video releases of Dark Realms, it can also give you access to the Patreon only podcast, Dark Bites. Dark Bites releases each and every week, even on the down time between seasons. There are already well over 180+ hours of unheard true paranormal experiences for you to binge at your leisure. Simply head over to:www.patreon.com/thedarkparanormalTo send us YOUR experience, please either click on the below link:The Dark Paranormal - We Need Your True Ghost StoryOr head to our website: www.thedarkparanormal.comYou can also follow us on the below Social Media links:www.twitter.com/darkparanormalxwww.facebook.com/thedarkparanormalwww.youtube.com/thedarkparanormalwww.instagram.com/thedarkparanormalOur Sponsors:* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/DARKPARANORMAL* Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com* Check out Progressive: https://www.progressive.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In this bonus episode, I spoke with Stone Age Herbalist about an essay he recently published on Victorian attitudes towards death. We discussed the cultural impact of Jack the Ripper, the terror of body snatching, the practice of postmortem photography, and the Spiritualist movement's preoccupation with electricity. Discussed in the episode:'How The Victorians Eroticised Death, From Ophelia To Salome'More on the anatomical venus More on body snatching and Georgia Medical College Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Surfers and swimmers are being asked to return to the water to commemorate schoolboy Nico Antic who died after being mauled by a shark; Homes in the Victorian town of Gellibrand have no access to clean water after the Carlisle River bushfire damaged the local treatment plant; US ICE personnel will help protect American delegations at next month's ​Winter Olympics in Italy; Action-packed dark comedy "One Battle After Another" has led the nominations for the BAFTA Film Awards, with vampire thriller and box office smash "Sinners" also widely recognised; The sequel to the movie that gave teenage girls of the 80s many feelings with Patrick Swayze in those tight black pants, Dirty Dancing will begin production later this year THE END BITS Support independent women's media Check out The Quicky Instagram here GET IN TOUCHShare your story, feedback, or dilemma! Send us a voice note or email us at thequicky@mamamia.com.au CREDITS Host/Audio Producer: Claire MurphyBecome a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Victorian communities nervously wait for news about their homes, as fires continue to burn throughout the state.

Victorian communities nervously wait for news about their homes, as fires continue to burn throughout the state.

A daily comedy podcast where snowplows get shot, mommy farts save mental health, and modern dating officially makes no sense. Some shows ease you into the morning. The Rizzuto Show does Relationship Advice and kicks the door in with a story about someone firing a gun at a snowplow in Missouri — because apparently road rage now includes winter infrastructure. From there, things only get more educational… and by educational we mean learning that Harvard researchers say mommy farts might actually help regulate postpartum depression. Yes, really. Science is wild.This daily comedy show then takes a hard left turn into the disaster zone known as modern dating. Scott attempts to convince the room — and the audience — that saying “you enchant me” is a sexy, timeless compliment and not something said by a haunted Victorian doll. Spoiler alert: it does not go well. The crew debates whether romance is dead, whether dating apps ruined everything, and why Gen Z is now “vibe dating,” which sounds suspiciously like how humans used to meet before algorithms ruined love.From concerts and sporting events to rodeos, demolition derbies, and even Lowe's, the gang breaks down where people actually meet in real life — complete with horrifying throwback stories involving horse poop and missed romantic opportunities that still haunt them decades later. They also dive into why phone calls are extinct, why rom-coms lied to us, and whether knowing too much about someone upfront kills the magic entirely.This daily comedy show somehow manages to mix weird news, relationship talk, science, and pure nonsense into one long, hilarious spiral that feels exactly like hanging out with friends who should absolutely not be giving dating advice — but you're glad they are.If you want laughs, chaos, and a reminder that dating has always been messy (just with fewer apps and more horse crap), this episode delivers.Follow The Rizzuto Show → https://linktr.ee/rizzshowMore from the show → https://1057thepoint.com/RizzShowHear it live: 105.7 The Point | Hubbard Radio | St. Louis, MOShots fired at Parkville snowplow in road rage attack New moms' farts may help with postpartum depression'Vibe Dating' Is Gen Z's New Compatibility Test. Does It work?6 Gen-X Dating Traditions Slowly Disappearing With Younger GenerationsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Her first experience came at seven years old, when she encountered a hooded figure in an old English churchyard. Years later, a modern family home erupted with unexplained pounding and footsteps that no one could account for. But it was her first flat with her partner—an old Edwardian building—that changed everything.There were footsteps when no one was home. The sensation of being watched. Objects disturbed by unseen movement. Even her cat reacted to something she couldn't see. When a spiritualist relative visited, he described a presence using the bathroom as a passageway—an explanation that seemed impossible until the truth about the building's past was revealed.Now living in a quiet Victorian flat, she's learned that not all presences come to frighten—some simply linger, content to coexist.#HauntedHouse #HauntedHomes #HauntedPlaces #GhostlyEncounters #SpiritsAmongUs #ParanormalActivity #Unexplained #ThingsThatGoBump #HauntedLivingLove real ghost stories? Don't just listen—join us on YouTube and be part of the largest community of real paranormal encounters anywhere. Subscribe now and never miss a chilling new story:

Road Hill House was no longer home. It was a crime scene that everyone recognised and no one could forget. The servants whispered in corners. New staff refused positions. And somewhere across England, a teenage girl carried a secret that would rattle the nation.Three-year-old Francis Saville Kent had been dead for five years, but his presence haunted everyone connected to Road Hill House. His wicker cot had been moved to the attic. His toys—the wooden rocking horse, the tin soldiers, the stuffed rabbit he couldn't sleep without—were packed away in trunks. The family attempted to erase all physical evidence of the child who had been murdered in his own home, but some things cannot be buried. This episode examines the devastating aftermath of the Road Hill House murder, tracing five years of silence, scandal, and psychological torment that led to one of the most unexpected confessions in criminal history.By early 1861, Samuel Kent had made an impossible decision: the family would abandon Road Hill House forever. The whispers, the stares, the neighbours who crossed the street to avoid them—it had become unbearable. Constance Kent, the sixteen-year-old half-sister whom Detective Inspector Whicher had accused of murder, was sent far from England. First to a French convent across the Channel, far from English newspapers. Then, in 1863, to St. Mary's Home for Religious Ladies in Brighton—a place of strict Anglo-Catholic ritual that would transform her utterly. Meanwhile, her brother William built a successful career as a marine scientist, seemingly untouched by scandal. But questions lingered. Had he been involved that June night? Was Constance protecting someone?At St. Mary's, Constance encountered Father Arthur Wagner—a charismatic Anglican priest whose theology emphasized confession and penance. Wagner's version of Christianity demanded that sins be spoken aloud, that guilt find voice, that secrets be exposed before God. For nearly two years, Constance resisted. Then, in early 1865, something broke. She requested a private meeting with Father Wagner. What she told him changed everything. On the morning of April 25, 1865, Father Wagner and Constance Kent boarded a train for London. At Bow Street police station, she dictated a written confession to the murder of Francis Saville Kent. She provided details that matched evidence Inspector Whicher had gathered five years earlier—details only the killer could have known. Headlines screamed across England: ROAD HILL HOUSE MURDERESS CONFESSES.The Road Hill House case became a watershed moment in British criminal justice and religious history. Constance Kent's confession raised profound questions about the intersection of faith and law. Had Father Wagner provided genuine spiritual guidance, or had he manipulated a vulnerable young woman? The Anglo-Catholic confession practices at St. Mary's drew intense scrutiny. Victorian society, which had destroyed Inspector Whicher's career for daring to accuse a "young lady of breeding," now had to confront its own prejudices. The detective had been right all along—class bias had protected a murderer for five years. Constance's case also highlighted emerging Victorian understanding of psychological trauma. Her childhood losses—mother's death, father's remarriage to the governess, blatant favouritism toward the second family—would today be recognized as severe emotional abuse.What remains unexplained is why Constance confessed after five years of freedom. The investigation was closed. The world had moved on. She could have stayed silent forever. Some historians argue the confession was genuine religious transformation—Wagner's theology finally breaking through her defences. Others suggest coercion—a priest manipulating a vulnerable woman consumed by guilt. A third theory persists: that Constance was protecting her brother William, who may have been involved that night in June 1860. Her confession mentioned resentment but offered no specific. Listeners fascinated by Victorian detective work should explore Episode 2 of this series, which details Inspector Whicher's revolutionary investigation methods. For more cases involving religious confession and criminal justice, Foul Play's archives include coverage of other nineteenth-century crimes where faith and law intersected in unexpected ways.Next episode: The trial lasted thirty minutes. The death sentence wasn't carried out. And England's most notorious murderess would live to be one hundred years old under a completely different name. Episode 4 reveals the extraordinary aftermath of Constance Kent's confession.Our Sponsors:* Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/foul-play-crime-series/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today have got a 'slutty Victorian' (Margot Robbie's words not mine) bachelorette party that's giving me major FOMO, a legendary dance sequel that is finally happening, and Graham Norton dropping some major Taylor and Travis breadcrumbs. ☕ Margot Robbie and her gals get rowdy ☕ Huge news for Dirty Dancing fans (aka everybody with a pulse) ☕ Kendall's hilarious Super Bowl ad ☕ Graham Norton discusses his Taylor wedding NDA ☕ Sydney Sweeney's marketing stunt has left authorities pointing the finger The Spill has a new podcast thats devoted to TV bingeing! Our latest ep contains all the fan theories, cast reveals and easter eggs about the new series of Bridgerton to get up to date before Season 4 comes out. Listen now on Apple or Spotify or the Mamamia app.THE END BITS Love binge-watching TV? The Spill has launched Watch Party — spoiler-filled episode deep dives into the shows everyone’s talking about. Find the feed on Apple or Spotify. Support independent women's media Follow us on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. And subscribe to our Youtube channel. Read all the latest entertainment news on Mamamia... here. Discover more Mamamia Podcasts here. Do you have feedback or a topic you want us to discuss on The Spill? Send us a voice message, or send us an email thespill@mamamia.com.au and we'll come back to you ASAP! CREDITS Hosts: Laura Brodnik and Ksenija Lukich Executive Producer: Monisha Iswaran Audio Producer: Scott StronachBecome a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Victorian fire crews brace for catastrophic conditions, as thousands evacuated ahead of record heat. The remains of the final Israeli hostage have been returned from Gaza, fulfilling a key condition of the first phase of a plan to end the war in the territory. Local wild card Madison Inglis is out of the Australian Open, ending a dream run... - ビクトリア州では記録的な猛暑となっており、各地では、山火事が住宅に被害を及ぼすおそれがあるとして、緊急当局が警戒を強めています。イスラエル軍は、ガザ地区に残っていた最後の人質の遺体を収容したと発表しました。これによりラファ検問所をは限定的に再開する見通しです。テニス全豪オープンにワイルドカードで出場した、ゴールドコースト出身のマディソン・イングリス選手が、世界ランキング2位のイガ・シフィオンテク選手に敗れ、敗退しました。

It wouldn't be a new season of TBC without a Victorian visit from the Antiques Freaks! Dig your Carnacki Bingo cards out of storage and enjoy a live reading of The Story of the Beetle Hunter by Arthur Conan Doyle, all set to the impeccable scoring and sound design talents of Oselka Sound. If you'd rather hear a properly acted, serious version of this story, please check out the Gothic Tales audio book narrated by Gary Furlong. In addition to our usual barnyard language, this episode includes irreverant and sexual humor and some bad Victorian ideas and opinions.

Listen to the latest top news from Australia in Nepali, including Victorian fire crews bracing for catastrophic conditions as thousands evacuated ahead of record heat. - भिक्टोरियाका विभिन्न क्षेत्रमा डढेलोको चेतावनी लगायत आजका प्रमुख अस्ट्रेलियन समाचार छोटकरीमा सुन्नुहोस्।

Join host Samuel Goldsmith for an inspiring conversation with broadcaster Mariella Frostrup and chef Belles Berry about their groundbreaking cookbook Menolicious and their mission to transform how we talk about menopause and midlife health. In this episode, you'll discover:• How Mariella and Belles met while campaigning for affordable HRT in Parliament Square and decided to create a cookbook that fills a massive gap in the market• The truth about menopause and perimenopause, including why the psychological symptoms like anxiety, brain fog, and insomnia are often more challenging than hot flushes• Why menopause has been shrouded in shame for centuries and how Victorian-era "treatments" were shockingly harmful• Practical nutrition strategies for midlife health, including nutrient-dense foods, phytoestrogens, and blood sugar balance all in recipes that take under 30 minutes• Their favourite dishes from the book, from fragrant salmon with miso broth to firecracker beef stir fry (that even sceptical husbands love!)• Cooking disasters, guilty pleasures, and why they've accidentally become the denim-clad Avengers of menopause advocacy Plus: Mariella and Belles share their best kitchen tips, health advice, and New Year's resolutions focused on joy, strength, and putting yourself first. Whether you're navigating perimenopause, supporting someone who is, or simply want to eat better in midlife and beyond, this episode is packed with wisdom, warmth, and delicious inspiration. Subscribers to the Good Food app via App Store get access to the show ad-free, and with regular bonus content such as interviews recorded at the good food show. To get started, download the Good Food app today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Her first experience came at seven years old, when she encountered a hooded figure in an old English churchyard. Years later, a modern family home erupted with unexplained pounding and footsteps that no one could account for. But it was her first flat with her partner—an old Edwardian building—that changed everything.There were footsteps when no one was home. The sensation of being watched. Objects disturbed by unseen movement. Even her cat reacted to something she couldn't see. When a spiritualist relative visited, he described a presence using the bathroom as a passageway—an explanation that seemed impossible until the truth about the building's past was revealed.Now living in a quiet Victorian flat, she's learned that not all presences come to frighten—some simply linger, content to coexist.#HauntedHouse #HauntedHomes #HauntedPlaces #GhostlyEncounters #SpiritsAmongUs #ParanormalActivity #Unexplained #ThingsThatGoBump #HauntedLivingLove real ghost stories? Don't just listen—join us on YouTube and be part of the largest community of real paranormal encounters anywhere. Subscribe now and never miss a chilling new story:

The latter part of the Victorian era bore witness to a series of unexplained female dismemberment cases that plagued London for a period of thirty years. All the cases remain unsolved and only two women were ever identified. Today, the circumstances surrounding these deaths have largely become a footnote in history, dwarfed in attention by their much larger cousin, Jack the Ripper.In this, Suzanne Huntington's groundbreaking exploration of the subject, we see the first in-depth analysis into all the cases, where 150 years of assumption and misinformation is stripped back and the evidence re-examined, allowing the reader to comprehend not only the complexity of the cases themselves but also the background and context of the investigations. THE THAMES TORSO MURDERS: Fact or Fiction—Suzanne Huntington

This is a Grave Talks CLASSIC EPISODE!The Gill House stands as a striking example of Victorian architecture and a reminder of Galion's prosperous past. Built by Bloomer Gill as a grand family residence, the home quickly became a social centerpiece—hosting lavish gatherings and welcoming notable visitors, including Andrew Firestone, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford.Today, the distinguished guests are gone—but many believe something else has taken their place. Visitors and investigators report hearing children's laughter drifting from the attic and seeing shadowy figures moving through the halls. The most unsettling activity is said to occur in the basement, where disembodied voices, screams, and encounters with a ghostly figure known as “Johnny Cake” have been reported. After the home passed to the Talbott family, some believe Old Mrs. Talbott never truly left, making her presence known through tapping sounds and swirling mists. In this episode of The Grave Talks, we explore the Gill House's history—and what may still linger within its walls.#TheGraveTalks #GillHouse #HauntedOhio #VictorianHauntings #HistoricHauntings #ParanormalPodcast #HauntedLocations #UnexplainedEncounters #GhostStories Love real ghost stories? Don't just listen—join us on YouTube and be part of the largest community of real paranormal encounters anywhere. Subscribe now and never miss a chilling new story:

This is a Grave Talks CLASSIC EPISODE! PART TWOThe Gill House stands as a striking example of Victorian architecture and a reminder of Galion's prosperous past. Built by Bloomer Gill as a grand family residence, the home quickly became a social centerpiece—hosting lavish gatherings and welcoming notable visitors, including Andrew Firestone, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford.Today, the distinguished guests are gone—but many believe something else has taken their place. Visitors and investigators report hearing children's laughter drifting from the attic and seeing shadowy figures moving through the halls. The most unsettling activity is said to occur in the basement, where disembodied voices, screams, and encounters with a ghostly figure known as “Johnny Cake” have been reported. After the home passed to the Talbott family, some believe Old Mrs. Talbott never truly left, making her presence known through tapping sounds and swirling mists. In this episode of The Grave Talks, we explore the Gill House's history—and what may still linger within its walls.#TheGraveTalks #GillHouse #HauntedOhio #VictorianHauntings #HistoricHauntings #ParanormalPodcast #HauntedLocations #UnexplainedEncounters #GhostStoriesLove real ghost stories? Don't just listen—join us on YouTube and be part of the largest community of real paranormal encounters anywhere. Subscribe now and never miss a chilling new story:

This is Episode 2 of 4 in Foul Play's Road Hill House Murder series, covering Victorian England's most notorious family crime. Episode 1 established the Kent family's toxic dynamics and the discovery of three-year-old Francis Saville Kent's body. This episode follows Detective Inspector Jonathan Whicher's revolutionary investigation and his tragic downfall at the hands of Victorian class prejudice.On July 16, 1860, a train departed Paddington Station carrying a middle-aged man with a smallpox-scarred face and blue eyes that catalogued every detail. Detective Inspector Jonathan Whicher—one of England's first professional detectives—was about to solve the Road Hill House murder in just five days. What he couldn't solve was Victorian society's refusal to believe...Episode SummaryWhen Scotland Yard's finest detective arrived in Wiltshire to investigate the murder of three-year-old Francis Saville Kent, he brought revolutionary investigative techniques that would shape criminal investigation for generations. Detective Inspector Jonathan Whicher interviewed witnesses separately, compared their stories for inconsistencies, and built psychological profiles—methods modern detectives would instantly recognize.Within five days, Whicher had identified his suspect: sixteen-year-old Constance Kent, the victim's half-sister. His evidence centered on a missing nightgown—one of three that Constance owned, now mysteriously absent from the household laundry. In an era before DNA analysis or forensic laboratories, Whicher understood that the absence of evidence could itself be evidence. A bloodstained nightgown couldn't be cleaned or hidden—it had to be destroyed.But Whicher faced an obstacle more formidable than any criminal: Victorian class prejudice. He was a gardener's son who had risen through merit. Constance was a "young lady of good breeding." When he arrested her, the public erupted in fury. Newspapers condemned him for persecuting an innocent girl. Her defense attorney, Peter Edlin, transformed the preliminary hearing into a trial of Whicher himself—questioning what kind of man interrogates a teenage girl alone in her bedroom.The magistrates released Constance due to insufficient evidence. Whicher returned to London in disgrace. His career was destroyed, his health broken. He was right about everything—and it cost him everything.Key Case DetailsDetective: Jonathan "Jack" Whicher, Detective Inspector, Scotland YardSuspect: Constance Emily Kent, age 16Victim: Francis Saville Kent, age 3 years 10 monthsLocation: Road Hill House, Road (now Rode), Wiltshire, EnglandTime Period: July 16-27, 1860Key Evidence: Missing nightgown from household laundry recordsOutcome: Constance released; Whicher's career destroyed by class prejudiceThe First Modern DetectiveJonathan Whicher represents a pivotal moment in criminal justice history. Before professional detectives, crime investigation relied on informants, rewards, and confessions obtained through pressure. Whicher pioneered systematic investigation: separate witness interviews, timeline reconstruction, psychological profiling, and the revolutionary concept that physical evidence—or its absence—could tell a story.His techniques at Road Hill House read like a modern investigation manual. He interviewed the household staff individually, noting inconsistencies in their stories. He reconstructed the timeline of the murder night hour by hour. He examined the crime scene for physical evidence. He built a profile of the likely killer based on access, motive, and opportunity.The tragedy is that his brilliance couldn't overcome the social barriers of his era. Victorian society wasn't ready to accept that respectable families could produce murderers—or that a working-class detective could be right about an upper-class suspect.Victorian True Crime ContextThe Road Hill House case exposed fundamental tensions in Victorian society. The emerging professional police force—Scotland Yard was barely thirty years old in 1860—represented a threat to traditional class hierarchies. When Whicher accused Constance Kent, he wasn't just accusing a girl of murder. He was claiming that a working-class detective could penetrate the secrets of respectable families and judge their daughters.The public backlash was immediate and fierce. Newspapers that had demanded answers now demanded Whicher's resignation. The same society that was horrified by Francis's murder was more horrified by the suggestion that his killer came from within his own family.Historical Context & SourcesWe highly recommend Kate Summerscale's acclaimed 2008 book "The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective," which provides the most comprehensive modern analysis of the case. Additional details come from contemporary newspaper accounts in The Times and Morning Post, trial transcripts from the National Archives, and Victorian police records documenting Whicher's investigative methods.Resources & Further ReadingKate Summerscale, "The Suspicions of Mr Whicher" (2008)The National Archives (UK) - Victorian Crime and Punishment RecordsBritish Newspaper Archive - Contemporary coverage 1860Related Media:"The Suspicions of Mr Whicher" (2011 TV film starring Paddy Considine)Our Sponsors:* Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/foul-play-crime-series/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy