Podcasts about victorians

Ghosts and Things: The Material Culture of Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism (Cornell University Press, 2025) by Dr. Aviva Briefel argues that Victorians turned to the dead to understand the material culture of their present. With the rise of spiritualism in Britain in the early 1850s, séances invited participants to contact ghosts using material things, from ordinary household furniture to specialized technologies invented to register the presence of spirits. In its supernatural object lessons, Victorian spiritualism was not just a mystical movement centered on the dead but also a practical resource for learning how to negotiate the uncanniness of life under capitalism. Dr. Briefel explores how spiritualism compelled séance participants to speculate on the manufacture of spectral clothing; ponder the hidden histories and energies of parlor furniture; confront the humiliations of consumerism as summoned spirits pelted them with exotic fruits; and comprehend modes of mechanical reproduction, like photography and electrotyping, that had the power to shape identities. Dr. Briefel argues that spiritualist practices and the objects they employed offered both believers and skeptics unexpected frameworks for grappling with the often-invisible forces of labor, consumption, exploitation, and exchange that haunted their everyday lives. Ghosts and Things reveals how spiritualism's explorations of the borderland between life and death, matter and spirit, produced a strange and seductive combination of wonder and discomfort that allowed participants to experience the possibilities and precarities of industrial modernity in novel ways. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Ghosts and Things: The Material Culture of Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism (Cornell University Press, 2025) by Dr. Aviva Briefel argues that Victorians turned to the dead to understand the material culture of their present. With the rise of spiritualism in Britain in the early 1850s, séances invited participants to contact ghosts using material things, from ordinary household furniture to specialized technologies invented to register the presence of spirits. In its supernatural object lessons, Victorian spiritualism was not just a mystical movement centered on the dead but also a practical resource for learning how to negotiate the uncanniness of life under capitalism. Dr. Briefel explores how spiritualism compelled séance participants to speculate on the manufacture of spectral clothing; ponder the hidden histories and energies of parlor furniture; confront the humiliations of consumerism as summoned spirits pelted them with exotic fruits; and comprehend modes of mechanical reproduction, like photography and electrotyping, that had the power to shape identities. Dr. Briefel argues that spiritualist practices and the objects they employed offered both believers and skeptics unexpected frameworks for grappling with the often-invisible forces of labor, consumption, exploitation, and exchange that haunted their everyday lives. Ghosts and Things reveals how spiritualism's explorations of the borderland between life and death, matter and spirit, produced a strange and seductive combination of wonder and discomfort that allowed participants to experience the possibilities and precarities of industrial modernity in novel ways. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Jacqui Felgate speaks about the new Emergency Services Levy. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There has been a decline in the amount of young people driving trucks, in this edition of The Conversation Hour we look at what needs to happen to attract and retain young people to the industry. We also look at why there has already been a spike in flu rates this year and the importance of keeping clothes manufacturing local. loring the issues that affect all Victorians.

Happy 200th EpisodeThis week we are looking into the biggest disaster in the history of Glasgow shipbuilding, when a relatively small ship designed to ferry people and cargo to Northern Ireland instead became a sunken tomb for over 100 people. Even worse it was a disaster that occurred in front of a large audience, and only a biscuit throw from shore.A tale of cutting corners and entirely predictable consequences the story of the Daphne goes to show that the Victorians were experts at putting profits before people. With a bonus discussion of over 500 years of ship building on the west coast of Scotland that features a cameo from at least two separate King James'Guest Host: Ollie Green Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Would you live with a ghost if it meant getting a mansion at half the price? From cursed Victorians to infamous crime scenes, these haunted houses come with history, mystery… and maybe a few unexpected roommates.Download The FREE PDF For This Episode's WORD SEARCH Puzzle: https://weirddarkness.com/HomeSweetHauntedHomeGet the Darkness Syndicate version of #WeirdDarkness: https://weirddarkness.com/syndicateDISCLAIMER: Ads heard during the podcast that are not in my voice are placed by third party agencies outside of my control and should not imply an endorsement by Weird Darkness or myself. *** Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised.IN THIS EPISODE: Are you brave enough to live in a haunted house? If so, and you're ready to make a move, you might find a good deal in one of the homes I'm about to tell you about. (They Sold Their Haunted Houses) *** The Nazca Lines of Peru span for miles and are visible only from the sky. These mysterious designs have sparked theories ranging from astronomical markers to extraterrestrial landing strips, challenging our understanding of ancient civilizations. We'll look at the mystery behind them – and consider a few theories for their existence. (Mystery of the Nazca Lines) *** Armin Meiwes placed a personal ad for a volunteer. He was looking for someone to give themselves over to him… to eat. It's one of the most infamous cases of modern cannibalism. (The Cannibal Who Placed a Personal Ad) *** On May 28, 1903, Dr. Francis J. Tumblety, a man with a deep-seated hatred for women and surgical skills, died in St. Louis. Intriguingly, Tumblety was in London during the gruesome Jack the Ripper murders in 1888, sparking speculation that he might be the infamous slasher. (Was Jack The Ripper From St. Louis?) *** Imagine a duel between two women. One a princess, the other a countess. Now picture them dueling topless. It really happened… and the reason for the duel? A disagreement over flower arrangements. (The Topless Duel Between Two Ladies)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate and Only Accurate For the Commercial Version)…00:00:00.000 = Lead-In00:01:28.929 = Show Open00:3:48.289 = They Sold Their Haunted Houses00:24:27.614 = The Mystery of the Nazca Lines00:33:55.877 = Was Jack The Ripper From St. Louis?00:47:46.731 = The Topless Duel Between Ladies01:00:59.421 = The Cannibal Who Placed a Personal Ad01:05:53.928 = Show CloseSOURCES AND RESOURCES FROM THE EPISODE…“They Sold Their Haunted Houses” source: Sonja Ska, Graveyard Shift: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2ezeefr9“The Mystery of the Nazca Lines” source: Marcus Lowth, UFO Insight: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p9dumsu“The Cannibal Who Placed a Personal Ad” source: The Scare Chamber, https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3vy977m8“Was Jack The Ripper From St. Louis?” by Troy Taylor (used with permission): https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yyj892ws“The Topless Duel Between Ladies” source: Genevieve Carlton, Weird History: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/bdcs6zuk=====(Over time links seen above may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)= = = = ="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46= = = = =WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2025, Weird Darkness.=====Originally aired: June 12, 2024EPISODE PAGE at WeirdDarkness.com (includes list of sources): https://weirddarkness.com/HomeSweetHauntedHomeTAGS: haunted houses, haunted homes for sale, real haunted houses, haunted real estate, ghost stories, famous haunted houses, haunted mansions, buy a haunted house, Enslin House, Sowden House, Ackley House, Amityville Horror, Pillars Estate, Conjuring House, Dunsmuir Victorian, Ann Starrett Mansion, Priestley House, Charming Forge Mansion, living with ghosts, paranormal real estate, haunted house history

Clare Carlisle's biography of George Eliot, The Marriage Question, is one of my favourite modern biographies, so I was really pleased to interview Clare. We talked about George Eliot as a feminist, the imperfections of her “marriage” to George Henry Lewes, what she learned from Spinoza, having sympathy for Casaubon, contradictions in Eliot's narrative method, her use of negatives, psychoanalysis, Middlemarch, and more. We also talked about biographies of philosophers, Kierkegaard, and Somerset Maugham. I was especially pleased by Clare's answer about the reported decline in student attention spans. Overall I thought this was a great discussion. Many thanks to Clare! Full transcript below. Here is an extract from our discussion about Eliot's narrative ideas.Clare: Yes, that's right. The didactic thing, George Eliot is sometimes criticized for this didacticism because what's most effective in the novel is not the narrator coming and telling us we should actually feel sorry for Casaubon and we should sympathize with him. We'd be better people if we sympathize with Casaubon. There's a moralizing lecture about, you should feel sympathy for this unlikable person. What is more effective is the subtle way she portrays this character and, as I say, lets us into his vulnerabilities in some obvious ways, as you say, by pointing things out, but also in some more subtle ways of drawing his character and hinting at, as I say, his vulnerabilities.Henry: Doesn't she know, though, that a lot of readers won't actually be very moved by the subtle things and that she does need to put in a lecture to say, "I should tell you that I am very personally sympathetic to Mr. Casaubon and that if you leave this novel hating him, that's not--"? Isn't that why she does it? Because she knows that a lot of readers will say, "I don't care. He's a baddie."Clare: Yes I don't know, that's a good question.Henry: I'm interested because, in The Natural History of German Life, she goes to all these efforts to say abstract arguments and philosophy and statistics and such, these things don't change the world. Stories change the world. A picture of life from a great artist. Then when she's doing her picture of life from a great artist she constantly butts in with her philosophical abstractions because it's, she can't quite trust that the reader will get it right as it were.Clare: Yes, I suppose that's one way of looking at it. You could say that or maybe does she have enough confidence in her ability to make us feel with these characters. That would be another way of looking at it. Whether her lack of confidence and lack of trust is in the reader or in her own power as an artist is probably an open question.TranscriptHenry: Today I am talking to Clare Carlisle, a philosopher at King's College London and a biographer. I am a big fan of George Eliot's Double Life: The Marriage Question. I've said the title backwards, but I'm sure you'll find the book either way. Clare, welcome.Clare Carlisle: Hi, Henry. Nice to be here.Henry: Is George Eliot a disappointing feminist?Clare: Obviously disappointment is relative to expectations, isn't it? It depends on what we expect of feminism, and in particular, a 19th-century woman. I personally don't find her a disappointing feminist. Other readers have done, and I can understand why that's the case for all sorts of reasons. She took on a male identity in order to be an artist, be a philosopher in a way that she thought was to her advantage, and she's sometimes been criticized for creating heroines who have quite a conventional sort of fulfillment. Not all of them, but Dorothea in Middlemarch, for example, at the end of the novel, we look back on her life as a wife and a mother with some sort of poignancy.Yes, she's been criticized for, in a way, giving her heroines and therefore offering other women a more conventional feminine ideal than the life she managed to create and carve out for herself as obviously a very remarkable thinker and artist. I also think you can read in the novels a really bracing critique of patriarchy, actually, and a very nuanced exploration of power dynamics between men and women, which isn't simplistic. Eliot is aware that women can oppress men, just as men can oppress women. Particularly in Middlemarch, actually, there's an exploration of marital violence that overcomes the more gendered portrayal of it, perhaps in Eliot's own earlier works where, in a couple of her earlier stories, she portrayed abused wives who were victims of their husband's betrayal, violence, and so on.Whereas in Middlemarch, it's interestingly, the women are as controlling, not necessarily in a nasty way, but just that that's the way human beings navigate their relations with each other. It seems to be part of what she's exploring in Middlemarch. No, I don't find her a disappointing feminist. We should be careful about the kind of expectations we, in the 21st century project onto Eliot.Henry: Was George Henry Lewes too controlling?Clare: I think one of the claims of this book is that there was more darkness in that relationship than has been acknowledged by other biographers, let's put it that way. When I set out to write the book, I'd read two or three other biographies of Eliot by this point. One thing that's really striking is this very wonderfully supportive husbands that, in the form of Lewes, George Eliot has, and a very cheerful account of that relationship and how marvelous he was. A real celebration of this relationship where the husband is, in many ways, putting his wife's career before his own, supporting her.Lewes acted as her agent, as her editor informally. He opened her mail for her. He really put himself at the service of her work in ways that are undoubtedly admirable. Actually, when I embarked on writing this book, I just accepted that narrative myself and was interested in this very positive portrayal of the relationship, found it attractive, as other writers have obviously done. Then, as I wrote the book, I was obviously reading more of the primary sources, the letters Eliot was writing and diary entries. I started to just have a bit of a feeling about this relationship, that it was light and dark, it wasn't just light.The ambiguity there was what really interested me, of, how do you draw the line between a husband or a wife who's protective, even sheltering the spouse from things that might upset them and supportive of their career and helpful in practical ways. How do you draw the line between that and someone who's being controlling? I think there were points where Lewes crossed that line. In a way, what's more interesting is, how do you draw that line. How do partners draw that line together? Not only how would we draw the line as spectators on that relationship, obviously only seeing glimpses of the inner life between the two people, but how do the partners themselves both draw those lines and then navigate them?Yes, I do suggest in the book that Lewes could be controlling and in ways that I think Eliot herself felt ambivalent about. I think she partly enjoyed that feeling of being protected. Actually, there was something about the conventional gendered roles of that, that made her feel more feminine and wifely and submissive, In a way, to some extent, I think she bought into that ideal, but also she felt its difficulties and its tensions. I also think for Lewes, this is a man who is himself conditioned by patriarchal norms with the expectation that the husband should be the successful one, the husband should be the provider, the one who's earning the money.He had to navigate a situation. That was the situation when they first got together. When they first got together, he was more successful writer. He was the man of the world who was supporting Eliot, who was more at the beginning of her career to some extent and helping her make connections. He had that role at the beginning. Then, within a few years, it had shifted and suddenly he had this celebrated best-selling novelist on his hands, which was, even though he supported her success, partly for his own financial interests, it wasn't necessarily what he'd bargained for when he got into the relationship.I think we can also see Lewes navigating the difficulties of that role, of being, to some extent, maybe even disempowered in that relationship and possibly reacting to that vulnerability with some controlling behavior. It's maybe something we also see in the Dorothea-Casaubon relationship where they get together. Not that I think that at all Casaubon was modeled on Lewes, not at all, but something of the dynamic there where they get together and the young woman is in awe of this learned man and she's quite subservient to him and looking up to him and wanting him to help her make her way in the world and teach her things.Then it turns out that his insecurity about his own work starts to come through. He reacts, and the marriage brings out his own insecurity about his work. Then he becomes quite controlling of Dorothea, perhaps again as a reaction to his own sense of vulnerability and insecurity. The point of my interpretation is not to portray Lewes as some villain, but rather to see these dynamics and as I say, ambivalences, ambiguities that play themselves out in couples, between couples.Henry: I came away from the book feeling like it was a great study of talent management in a way, and that the both of them were very lucky to find someone who was so well-matched to their particular sorts of talents. There are very few literary marriages where that is the case, or where that is successfully the case. The other one, the closest parallel I came up with was the Woolfs. Leonard is often said he's too controlling, which I find a very unsympathetic reading of a man who looked after a woman who nearly died. I think he was doing what he felt she required. In a way, I agree, Lewes clearly steps over the line several times. In a way, he was doing what she required to become George Eliot, as it were.Clare: Yes, absolutely.Henry: Which is quite remarkable in a way.Clare: Yes. I don't think Mary Ann Evans would have become George Eliot without that partnership with Lewes. I think that's quite clear. That's not because he did the work, but just that there was something about that, the partnership between them, that enabled that creativity…Henry: He knew all the people and he knew the literary society and all the editors, and therefore he knew how to take her into that world without it overwhelming her, giving her crippling headaches, sending her into a depression.Clare: Yes.Henry: In a way, I came away more impressed with them from the traditional, isn't it angelic and blah, blah, blah.Clare: Oh, that's good.Henry: What did George Eliot learn from Spinoza?Clare: I think she learned an awful lot from Spinoza. She translated Spinoza in the 1850s. She translated Spinoza's Ethics, which is Spinoza's philosophical masterpiece. That's really the last major project that Eliot did before she started to write fiction. It has, I think, quite an important place in her career. It's there at that pivotal point, just before she becomes an artist, as she puts it, as a fiction writer. Because she didn't just read The Ethics, but she translated it, she read it very, very closely, and I think was really quite deeply formed by a particular Spinozist ethical vision.Spinoza thinks that human beings are not self-sufficient. He puts that in very metaphysical terms. A more traditional philosophical view is to say that individual things are substances. I'm a substance, you're a substance. What it means to be a substance is to be self-sufficient, independent. For example, I would be a substance, but my feeling of happiness on this sunny morning would be a more accidental feature of my being.Henry: Sure.Clare: Something that depends on my substance, and then these other features come and go. They're passing, they're just modes of substance, like a passing mood or whatever, or some kind of characteristic I might have. That's the more traditional view, whereas Spinoza said that there's only one substance, and that's God or nature, which is just this infinite totality. We're all modes of that one substance. That means that we don't have ontological independence, self-sufficiency. We're more like a wave on the ocean that's passing through. One ethical consequence of that way of thinking is that we are interconnected.We're all interconnected. We're not substances that then become connected and related to other substances, rather we emerge as beings through this, our place in this wider whole. That interconnectedness of all things and the idea that individuals are really constituted by their relations is, I think, a Spinoza's insight that George Eliot drew on very deeply and dramatized in her fiction. I think it's there all through her fiction, but it becomes quite explicit in Middlemarch where she talks about, she has this master metaphor of the web.Henry: The web. Right.Clare: In Middlemarch, where everything is part of a web. You put pressure on a bit of it and something changes in another part of the web. That interconnectedness can be understood on multiple levels. Biologically, the idea that tissues are formed in this organic holistic way, rather than we're not composed of parts, like machines, but we're these organic holes. There's a biological idea of the web, which she explores. Also, the economic system of exchange that holds a community together. Then I suppose, perhaps most interestingly, the more emotional and moral features of the web, the way one person's life is bound up with and shaped by their encounters with all the other lives that it comes into contact with.In a way, it's a way of thinking that really, it questions any idea of self-sufficiency, but it also questions traditional ideas of what it is to be an individual. You could see a counterpart to this way of thinking in a prominent 19th-century view of history, which sees history as made by heroic men, basically. There's this book by Carlyle, Thomas Carlyle, called The Heroic in History, or something like that.Henry: Sure. On heroes and the heroic, yes.Clare: Yes. That's a really great example of this way of thinking about history as made by heroes. Emerson wrote this book called Representative Men. These books were published, I think, in the early 1850s. Representative Men. Again, he identifies these certain men, these heroic figures, which represent history in a way. Then a final example of this is Auguste Comte's Positivist Calendar, which, he's a humanist, secularist thinker who wants to basically recreate culture and replace our calendar with this lunar calendar, which, anyway, it's a different calendar, has 13 months.Each month is named after a great man. There's Shakespeare, and there's Dante, and there's-- I don't know, I can't remember. Anyway, there's this parade of heroic men. Napoleon. Anyway, that's the view of history that Eliot grew up with. She was reading, she was really influenced by Carlisle and Emerson and Comte. In that landscape, she is creating this alternative Spinozist vision of what an exemplar can be like and who gets to be an exemplar. Dorothea was a really interesting exemplar because she's unhistoric. At the very end of Middlemarch, she describes Dorothea's unhistoric life that comes to rest in an unvisited tomb.She's obscure. She's not visible on the world stage. She's forgotten once she dies. She's obscure. She's ordinary. She's a provincial woman, upper middle-class provincial woman, who makes some bad choices. She has high ideals but ends up living a life that from the outside is not really an extraordinary life at all. Also, she is constituted by her relations with others in both directions. Her own life is really shaped by her milieu, by her relationships with the people. Also, at the end of the novel, Eliot leaves us with a vision of the way Dorothea's life has touched other lives and in ways that can't be calculated, can't really be recognized. Yet, she has these effects that are diffused.She uses this word, diffusion or diffuseness. The diffuseness of the effects of Dorothea's life, which seep into the world. Of course, she's a woman. She's not a great hero in this Carlyle or Emerson sense. In all these ways, I think this is a very different way of thinking about individuality, but also history and the way the world is made, that history and the world is made by, in this more Spinozist kind of way, rather than by these heroic representative men who stand on the world stage. That's not Spinoza's, that's Eliot's original thinking. She's taking a Spinozist ontology, a Spinozist metaphysics, but really she's creating her own vision with that, that's, of course, located in that 19th-century context.Henry: How sympathetic should we be to Mr. Casaubon?Clare: I feel very sympathetic to Mr. Casaubon because he is so vulnerable. He's a really very vulnerable person. Of course, in the novel, we are encouraged to look at it from Dorothea's point of view, and so when we look at it from Dorothea's point of view, Casaubon is a bad thing. The best way to think about it is the view of Dorothea's sister Celia, her younger sister, who is a very clear-eyed observer, who knows that Dorothea is making a terrible mistake in marrying this man. She's quite disdainful of Casaubon's, well, his unattractive looks.He's only about 40, but he's portrayed as this dried-up, pale-faced scholar, academic, who is incapable of genuine emotional connection with another person, which is quite tragic, really. The hints are that he's not able to have a sexual relationship. He's so buttoned up and repressed, in a way. When we look at it from Dorothea's perspective, we say, "No, he's terrible, he's bad for you, he's not going to be good for you," which of course is right. I think Eliot herself had a lot of sympathy for Casaubon. There's an anecdote which said that when someone asked who Casaubon was based on, she pointed to herself.I think she saw something of herself in him. On an emotional level, I think he's just a fascinating character, isn't he, in a way, from an aesthetic point of view? The point is not do we like Casaubon or do we not like him? I think we are encouraged to feel sympathy with him, even as, on the one, it's so clever because we're taken along, we're encouraged to feel as Celia feels, where we dislike him, we don't sympathize with him. Then Eliot is also showing us how that view is quite limited, I think, because we do occasionally see the world from Casaubon's point of view and see how fearful Casaubon is.Henry: She's also explicit and didactic about the need to sympathize with him, right? It's often in asides, but at one point, she gives over most of a chapter to saying, "Poor Mr. Casaubon. He didn't think he'd end up like this." Things have actually gone very badly for him as well.Clare: Yes, that's right. The didactic thing, George Eliot is sometimes criticized for this didacticism because what's most effective in the novel is not the narrator coming and telling us we should actually feel sorry for Casaubon and we should sympathize with him. We'd be better people if we sympathize with Casaubon. There's a moralizing lecture about, you should feel sympathy for this unlikable person. What is more effective is the subtle way she portrays this character and, as I say, lets us into his vulnerabilities in some obvious ways, as you say, by pointing things out, but also in some more subtle ways of drawing his character and hinting at, as I say, his vulnerabilities.Henry: Doesn't she know, though, that a lot of readers won't actually be very moved by the subtle things and that she does need to put in a lecture to say, "I should tell you that I am very personally sympathetic to Mr. Casaubon and that if you leave this novel hating him, that's not--"? Isn't that why she does it? Because she knows that a lot of readers will say, "I don't care. He's a baddie."Clare: Yes I don't know, that's a good question.Henry: I'm interested because, in The Natural History of German Life, she goes to all these efforts to say abstract arguments and philosophy and statistics and such, these things don't change the world. Stories change the world. A picture of life from a great artist. Then when she's doing her picture of life from a great artist she constantly butts in with her philosophical abstractions because it's, she can't quite trust that the reader will get it right as it were.Clare: Yes, I suppose that's one way of looking at it. You could say that or maybe does she have enough confidence in her ability to make us feel with these characters. That would be another way of looking at it. Whether her lack of confidence and lack of trust is in the reader or in her own power as an artist is probably an open question.Henry: There's a good book by Debra Gettelman about the way that novelists like Eliot knew what readers expected because they were all reading so many cheap romance novels and circulating library novels. There are a lot of negations and arguments with the reader to say, "I know what you want this story to do and I know how you want this character to turn out, but I'm not going to do that. You must go with me with what I'm doing.Clare: Yes. You mean this new book that's come out called Imagining Otherwise?Henry: That's right, yes.Clare: I've actually not read it yet, I've ordered it, but funnily enough, as you said at the beginning, I'm a philosopher so I'm not trained at all as a reader of literary texts or as a literary scholar by any means, and so I perhaps foolishly embarked on this book on George Eliot thinking, "Oh, next I'm going to write a book about George Eliot." Anyway, I ended up going to a couple of conferences on George Eliot, which was interestingly like stepping into a different world. The academic world of literary studies is really different from the world of academic philosophy, interestingly.It's run by women for a start. You go to a conference and it's very female-dominated. There's all these very eminent senior women or at least at this conference I went to there was these distinguished women who were running the show. Then there were a few men in that mix, which is the inverse of often what it can be like in a philosophy conference, which is still quite a male-dominated discipline. The etiquette is different. Philosophers like to criticize each other's arguments. That's the way we show love is to criticize and take down another philosopher's argument.Whereas the academics at this George Eliot conference were much more into acknowledging what they'd learned from other people's work and referencing. Anyway, it's really interestingly different. Debra Gettelman was at this conference.Henry: Oh, great.Clare: She had a book on Middlemarch. I think it was 2019 because it was the bicentenary of Eliot's birth, that's why there was this big conference. Debra, who I'd never met before or heard of, as I just didn't really know this world, gave this amazing talk on Middlemarch and on these negations in Middlemarch. It really influenced me, it really inspired me. The way she did these close readings of the sentences, this is what literary scholars are trained to do, but I haven't had that training and the close reading of the sentences, which didn't just yield interesting insights into the way George Eliot uses language but yielded this really interesting philosophical work where Eliot is using forms of the sentence to explore ontological questions about negation and possibility and modality.This was just so fascinating and really, it was a small paper in one of those parallel sessions. It wasn't one of the big presentations at the conference, but it was that talk that most inspired me at the conference. It's a lot of the insights that I got from Debra Gettelman I ended up drawing on in my own chapter on Middlemarch. I situated it a bit more in the history of philosophy and thinking about negation as a theme.Henry: This is where you link it to Hegel.Clare: Yes, to Hegel, exactly. I was so pleased to see that the book is out because I think I must have gone up to her after the talk and said, "Oh, it's really amazing." Was like, "Oh, thank you." I was like, "Is it published? Can I cite it?" She said, "No. I'm working on this project." It seemed like she felt like it was going to be a long time in the making. Then a few weeks ago, I saw a review of the book in the TLS. I thought, "Oh, amazing, the book is out. It just sounds brilliant." I can't wait to read that book. Yes, she talks about Eliot alongside, I think, Dickens and another.Henry: And Jane Austen.Clare: Jane Austen, amazing. Yes. I think it's to do with, as you say, writing in response to readerly expectation and forming readerly expectations. Partly thanks to Debra Gettelman, I can see how Eliot does that. It'd be really interesting to learn how she sees Jane Austen and Dickens also doing that.Henry: It's a brilliant book. You're in for a treat.Clare: Yes, I'm sure it is. That doesn't surprise me at all.Henry: Now, you say more than once in your book, that Eliot anticipates some of the insights of psychotherapy.Clare: Psychoanalysis.Henry: Yes. What do you think she would have made of Freud or of our general therapy culture? I think you're right, but she has very different aims and understandings of these things. What would she make of it now?Clare: It seems that Freud was probably influenced by Eliot. That's a historical question. He certainly read and admired Eliot. I suspect, yes, was influenced by some of her insights, which in turn, she's drawing on other stuff. What do you have in mind? Your question suggests that you think she might have disapproved of therapy culture.Henry: I think novelists in general are quite ambivalent about psychoanalysis and therapy. Yes.Clare: For what reason?Henry: If you read someone like Iris Murdoch, who's quite Eliotic in many ways, she would say, "Do these therapists ever actually help anyone?"Clare: Ah.Henry: A lot of her characters are sent on these slightly dizzying journeys. They're often given advice from therapists or priests or philosophers, and obviously, Murdoch Is a philosopher. The advice from the therapists and the philosophers always ends these characters up in appalling situations. It's art and literature. As you were saying before, a more diffusive understanding and a way of integrating yourself with other things rather than looking back into your head and dwelling on it.Clare: Of course. Yes.Henry: I see more continuity between Eliot and that kind of thinking. I wonder if you felt that the talking cure that you identified at the end of Middlemarch is quite sound common sense and no-nonsense. It's not lie on the couch and tell me how you feel, is it?Clare: I don't know. That's one way to look at it, I suppose. Another way to look at it would be to see Eliot and Freud is located in this broadly Socratic tradition of one, the idea that if you understand yourself better, then that is a route to a certain qualified kind of happiness or fulfillment or liberation. The best kind of human life there could be is one where we gain insight into our own natures. We bring to light what is hidden from us, whether those are desires that are hidden away in the shadows and they're actually motivating our behavior, but we don't realize it, and so we are therefore enslaved to them.That's a very old idea that you find in ancient philosophy. Then the question is, by what methods do we bring these things to light? Is it through Socratic questioning? Is it through art? Eliot's art is an art that I think encourages us to see ourselves in the characters. As we come to understand the characters, and in particular to go back to what I said before about Spinozism, to see their embeddedness and their interconnectedness in these wider webs, but also in a sense of that embeddedness in psychic forces that they're not fully aware of. Part of what you could argue is being exposed there, and this would be a Spinozist insight, is the delusion of free will.The idea that we act freely with these autonomous agents who have access to and control over our desires, and we pick the thing that's in our interest and we act on that. That's a view that I think Spinoza is very critical. He famously denies free will. He says we're determined, we just don't understand how we're determined. When we understand better how we're determined, then perhaps paradoxically we actually do become relatively empowered through our understanding. I think there's something of that in Eliot too, and arguably there's something of that in Freud as well. I know you weren't actually so much asking about Freud's theory and practice, and more about a therapy culture.Henry: All of it.Clare: You're also asking about that. As I say, the difference would be the method for accomplishing this process of a kind of enlightenment. Of course, Freud's techniques medicalizes that project basically. It's the patient and the doctor in dialogue, and depends a lot on the skills of the doctor, doesn't it? How successful, and who is also a human being, who is also another human being, who isn't of course outside of the web, but is themselves in it, and ideally has themselves already undergone this process of making themselves more transparent to their own understanding, but of course, is going to be liable to their own blind spots, and so on.Henry: Which of her novels do you love the most? Just on a personal level, it doesn't have to be which one you think is the most impressive or whatever.Clare: I'm trying to think how to answer that question. I was thinking if I had to reread one of them next week, which one would I choose? If I was going on holiday and I wanted a beach read for pure enjoyment, which of the novels would I pick up? Probably Middlemarch. I think it's probably the most enjoyable, the most fun to read of her novels, basically.Henry: Sure.Clare: There'd be other reasons for picking other books. I really think Daniel Deronda is amazing because of what she's trying to do in that book. Its ambition, it doesn't always succeed in giving us the reading experience that is the most enjoyable. In terms of just the staggering philosophical and artistic achievement, what she's attempting to do, and what she does to a large extent achieve in that book, I think is just incredible. As a friend of Eliot, I have a real love for Daniel Deronda because I just think that what an amazing thing she did in writing that book. Then I've got a soft spot for Silas Marner, which is short and sweet.Henry: I think I'd take The Mill on the Floss. That's my favorite.Clare: Oh, would you?Henry: I love that book.Clare: That also did pop into my mind as another contender. Yes, because it's so personal in a way, The Mill on the Floss. It's personal to her, it's also personal to me in that, it's the first book by Eliot I read because I studied it for A-Level. I remember thinking when we were at the beginning of that two-year period when I'd chosen my English literature A-Level and we got the list of texts we were going to read, I remember seeing The Mill on the Floss and thinking, "Oh God, that sounds so boring." The title, something about the title, it just sounded awful. I remember being a bit disappointed that it wasn't a Jane Austen or something more fun.I thought, "Oh, The Mill on the Floss." Then I don't have a very strong memory of the book, but I remember thinking, actually, it was better than I expected. I did think, actually, it wasn't as awful and boring as I thought it would be. It's a personal book to Eliot. I think that exploring the life of a mind of a young woman who has no access to proper education, very limited access to art and culture, she's stuck in this little village near a provincial town full of narrow-minded conservative people. That's Eliot's experience herself. It was a bit my experience, too, as, again, not that I even would have seen it this way at the time, but a girl with intellectual appetites and not finding those appetites very easily satisfied in, again, a provincial, ordinary family and the world and so on.Henry: What sort of reader were you at school?Clare: What sort of reader?Henry: Were you reading lots of Plato, lots of novels?Clare: No. I'm always really surprised when I meet people who say things like they were reading Kierkegaard and Plato when they were 15 or 16. No, not at all. No, I loved reading, so I just read lots and lots of novels. I loved Jane Eyre. That was probably one of the first proper novels, as with many people, that I remember reading that when I was about 12 and partly feeling quite proud of myself for having read this grown-up book, but also really loving the book. I reread that probably several times before I was 25. Jane Austen and just reading.Then also I used to go to the library, just completely gripped by some boredom and restlessness and finding something to read. I read a lot and scanning the shelves and picking things out. That way I read more contemporary fiction. Just things like, I don't know, Julian Barnes or, Armistead Maupin, or just finding stuff on the shelves of the library that looked interesting, or Anita Brookner or Somerset Maugham. I really love Somerset Maugham.Henry: Which ones do you like?Clare: I remember reading, I think I read The Razor's Edge first.Henry: That's a great book.Clare: Yes, and just knowing nothing about it, just picking it off the shelf and thinking, "Oh, this looks interesting." I've always liked a nice short, small paperback. That would always appeal. Then once I found a book I liked, I'd then obviously read other stuff by that writer. I then read, so The Razor's Edge and-- Oh, I can't remember.Henry: The Moon and Sixpence, maybe?Clare: Yes, The Moon and Sixpence, and-Henry: Painted Veils?Clare: -Human Bondage.Henry: Of Human Bondage, right.Clare: Human Bondage, which is, actually, he took the title from Spinoza's Ethics. That's the title. Cluelessly, as a teenager, I was like, "Ooh, this book is interesting." Actually, when I look back, I can see that those writers, like Maugham, for example, he was really interested in philosophy. He was really interested in art and philosophy, and travel, and culture, and religion, all the things I am actually interested in. I wouldn't have known that that was why I loved the book. I just liked the book and found it gripping. It spoke to me, and I wanted to just read more other stuff like that.I was the first person in my family to go to university, so we didn't have a lot of books in the house. We had one bookcase. There were a few decent things in there along with the Jeffrey Archers in there. I read everything on that bookshelf. I read the Jeffrey Archers, I read the True Crime, I read the In Cold Blood, just this somewhat random-- I think there was probably a couple of George Eliots on there. A few classics, I would, again, grip by boredom on a Sunday afternoon, just stare at this shelf and think, "Oh, is there anything?" Maybe I'll end up with a Thomas Hardy or something. It was quite limited. I didn't really know anything about philosophy. I didn't think of doing philosophy at university, for example. I actually decided to do history.I went to Cambridge to do history. Then, after a couple of weeks, just happened to meet someone who was doing philosophy. I was like, "Oh, that's what I want to do." I only recognized it when I saw it. I hadn't really seen it because I went to the local state school, it wasn't full of teachers who knew about philosophy and stuff like that.Henry: You graduated in theology and philosophy, is that right?Clare: Yes. Cambridge, the degrees are in two parts. I did Part 1, theology, and then I did Part 2, philosophy. I graduated in philosophy, but I studied theology in my first year at Cambridge.Henry: What are your favorite Victorian biographies?Clare: You mean biographies of Victorians?Henry: Of Victorians, by Victorians, whatever.Clare: I don't really read many biographies.Henry: Oh, really?Clare: [laughs] The first biography I wrote was a biography of Kierkegaard. I remember thinking, when I started to write the book, "I'd better read some biographies." I always tend to read fiction. I'm not a big reader of history, which is so ironic. I don't know what possessed me to go and study history at university. These are not books I read for pleasure. I suppose I am quite hedonistic in my choice of reading, I like to read for pleasure.Henry: Sure. Of course.Clare: I don't tend to read nonfiction. Obviously, I do sometimes read nonfiction for pleasure, but it's not the thing I'm most drawn to. Anyway. I remember asking my editor, I probably didn't mention that I didn't know very much about biography, but I did ask him to recommend some. I'd already got the book contract. I said, "What do you think is a really good biography that I should read?" He recommended, I think, who is it who wrote The Life of Gibbon? Really famous biography of Gibbon.Henry: I don't know.Clare: That one. I read it. It is really good. My mind is going blank. I read many biographies of George Eliot before I wrote mine.Henry: They're not all wonderful, are they?Clare: I really liked Catherine Hughes's book because it brought her down from her pedestal.Henry: Exactly. Yes.Clare: Talking about hedonism, I would read anything that Catherine Hughes writes just for enjoyment because she's such a good writer. She's a very intellectual woman, but she's also very entertaining. She writes to entertain, which I like and appreciate as a reader. There's a couple of big archival biographies of George Eliot by Gordon Haight and by Rosemary Ashton, for example, which are both just invaluable. One of the great things about that kind of book is that it frees you to write a different kind of biography that can be more interpretive and more selective. Once those kinds of books have been published, there's no point doing another one. You can do something more creative, potentially, or more partial.I really like Catherine Hughes's. She was good at seeing through Eliot sometimes, and making fun of her, even though it's still a very respectful book. There's also this brilliant book about Eliot by Rosemary Bodenheimer called The Real Life of Mary Ann Evans. It's a biographical book, but it's written through the letters. She sees Eliot's life through her letters. Again, it's really good at seeing through Eliot. What Eliot says is not always what she means. She can be quite defensive and boastful. These are things that really come out in her letters. Anyway, that's a brilliant book, which again, really helped me to read Eliot critically. Not unsympathetically, but critically, because I tend to fall in love with thinkers that I'm reading. I'm not instinctively critical. I want to just show how amazing they are, but of course, you also need to be critical. Those books were--Henry: Or realistic.Clare: Yes, realistic and just like, "This is a human being," and having a sense of humor about it as well. That's what's great about Catherine Hughes's book, is that she's got a really good sense of humor. That makes for a fun reading experience.Henry: Why do you think more philosophers don't write biographies? It's an unphilosophical activity, isn't it?Clare: That's a very interesting question. Just a week or so ago, I was talking to Clare Mac Cumhaill I'm not quite sure how you pronounce her name, but anyway, so there's--Henry: Oh, who did the four women in Oxford?Clare: Yes. Exactly.Henry: That was a great book.Clare: Yes. Clare MacCumhaill co-wrote this book with Rachael Wiseman. They're both philosophers. They wrote this group biography of Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, and Mary Midgley. I happened to be having dinner with a group of philosophers and sitting opposite her. Had never met her before. It was just a delight to talk to another philosopher who'd written biography. We both felt that there was a real philosophical potential in biography, that thinking about a shape of a human life, what it is to know another person, the connection between a person's life and their philosophy. Even to put it that way implies that philosophy is something that isn't part of life, that you've got philosophy over here and you've got life over there. Then you think about the connection between them.That, when you think about it, is quite a questionable way of looking at philosophy as if it's somehow separate from life or detachment life. We had a really interesting conversation about this. There's Ray Monk's brilliant biography of Wittgenstein, The Duty of Genius. He's another philosopher who's written biography, and then went on to reflect, interestingly, on the relationship between philosophy and biography.I think on the one hand, I'd want to question the idea that biography and philosophy are two different things or that a person's life and their thought are two separate questions. On the other hand, we've got these two different literary forms. One of them is a narrative form of writing, and one of them- I don't know what the technical term for it would be- but a more systematic writing where with systematic writing, it's not pinned to a location or a time, and the structure of the text is conceptual rather than narrative. It's not ordered according to events and chronology, and things happening, you've just got a more analytic style of writing.Those two styles of writing are very, very different ways of writing. They're two different literary forms. Contemporary academic philosophers tend to write, almost always-- probably are pretty much forced to write in the systematic analytic style because as soon as you would write a narrative, the critique will be, "Well, that's not philosophy. That's history," or "That's biography," or, "That's anecdote." You might get little bits of narrative in some thought experiment, but by definition, the thought experiment is never pinned to a particular time, place, or context. "Let's imagine a man standing on a bridge. There's a fat man tied to the railway line [crosstalk]." Those are like little narratives, but they're not pinned. There is a sequencing, so I suppose they are narratives. Anyway, as you can tell, they're quite abstracted little narratives.That interests me. Why is it that narrative is seen as unphilosophical? Particularly when you think about the history of philosophy, and we think about Plato's dialogues, which tend to have a narrative form, and the philosophical conversation is often situated within a narrative. The Phaedo, for example, at the beginning of the book, Socrates is sitting in prison, and he's about to drink his poisoned hemlock. He's awaiting execution. His friends, students, and disciples are gathered around him. They're talking about death and how Socrates feels about dying. Then, at the end of the book, he dies, and his friends are upset about it.Think about, I know, Descartes' Meditations, where we begin in the philosopher's study, and he's describing--Henry: With the fire.Clare: He's by the fire, but he's also saying, "I've reached a point in my life where I thought, actually, it's time to question some assumptions." He's sitting by the fire, but he's also locating the scene in his own life trajectory. He's reached a certain point in life. Of course, that may be a rhetorical device. Some readers might want to say, "Well, that's mere ornamentation. We extract the arguments from that. That's where the philosophy is." I think it's interesting to think about why philosophers might choose narrative as a form.Spinoza, certainly not in the Ethics, which is about as un-narrative as you can get, but in some of his other, he experimented with an earlier version of the Ethics, which is actually like Descartes' meditation. He begins by saying, "After experience had taught me to question all the values I'd been taught to pursue, I started to wonder whether there was some other genuine good that was eternal," and so on. He then goes on to narrate his experiments with a different kind of life, giving up certain things and pursuing other things.Then you come to George Eliot. I think these are philosophical books.Henry: Yes.Clare: The challenge lies in saying, "Well, how are they philosophical?" Are they philosophical because there are certain ideas in the books that you could pick out and say, "Oh, here, she's critiquing utilitarianism. These are her claims." You can do that with Eliot's books. There are arguments embedded in the books. I wouldn't want to say that that's where their philosophical interest is exhausted by the fact that you can extract non-narrative arguments from them, but rather there's also something philosophical in her exploration of what a human life is like and how choices get made and how those choices, whether they're free or unfree, shape a life, shape other lives. What human happiness can we realistically hope for? What does a good life look like? What does a bad life look like? Why is the virtue of humility important?These are also, I think, philosophical themes that can perhaps only be treated in a long-form, i.e., in a narrative that doesn't just set a particular scene from a person's life, but that follows the trajectory of a life. That was a very long answer to your question.Henry: No, it was a good answer. I like it.Clare: Just to come back to what you said about biography. When I wrote my first biography on Kierkegaard, I really enjoyed working in this medium of narrative for the first time. I like writing. I'd enjoyed writing my earlier books which were in that more analytic conceptual style where the structure was determined by themes and by concepts rather than by any chronology. I happily worked in that way. I had to learn how to do it. I had to learn how to write. How do you write a narrative?To come back to the Metaphysical Animals, the group biography, writing a narrative about one person's life is complicated enough, but writing a narrative of four lives, it's a real-- from a technical point of view-- Even if you only have one life, lives are not linear. If you think about a particular period in your subject's life, people have lots of different things going on at once that have different timeframes. You're going through a certain period in your relationship, you're working on a book, someone close to you dies, you're reading Hegel. All that stuff is going on. The narrative is not going to be, "Well, on Tuesday this happened, and then on Wednesday--" You can't use pure chronology to structure a narrative. It's not just one thing following another.It's not like, "Well, first I'll talk about the relationship," which is an issue that was maybe stretching over a three-month period. Then in this one week, she was reading Hegel and making these notes that were really important. Then, in the background to this is Carlisle's view of history. You've got these different temporal periods that are all bearing on a single narrative. The challenge to create a narrative from all that, that's difficult, as any biographer knows. To do that with four subjects at once is-- Anyway, they did an amazing job in that book.Henry: It never gets boring, that book.Clare: No. I guess the problem with a biography is often you're stuck with this one person through the whole--Henry: I think the problem with a biography of philosophers is that it can get very boring. They kept the interest for four thinkers. I thought that was very impressive, really.Clare: Yes, absolutely. Yes. There's a really nice balance between the philosophy and the-- I like to hear about Philippa Foot's taste in cushions. Maybe some readers would say, "Oh, no, that's frivolous." It's not the view I would take. For me, it's those apparently frivolous details that really help you to connect with a person. They will deliver a sense of the person that nothing else will. There's no substitute for that.In my book about Kierkegaard, it was reviewed by Terry Eagleton in the London Review of Books. It was generally quite a positive review. He was a bit sneering about the fact that it had what he calls "domestic flourishes" in the book. I'd mentioned that Kierkegaard's favorite flower was the lily of the valley. He's like, "Huh." He saw these as frivolities, whereas for me, the fact that Kierkegaard had a favorite flower tells us something about the kind of man he was.Henry: Absolutely.Clare: Actually, his favorite flower had all sorts of symbolism attached to it, Kierkegaard, it had 10 different layers of meaning. It's never straightforward. There's interesting value judgments that get made. There's partly the view that anything biographical is not philosophical. It is in some way frivolous or incidental. That would be perhaps a very austere, purest philosophical on a certain conception of philosophy view.Then you might also have views about what is and isn't interesting, what is and isn't significant. Actually, that's a really interesting question. What is significant about a person's life, and what isn't? Actually, to come back to Eliot, that's a question she is, I think, absolutely preoccupied with, most of all in Middlemarch and in Daniel Deronda. This question about what is trivial and what is significant. Dorothea is frustrated because she feels that her life is trivial. She thinks that Casaubon is preoccupied with really significant questions, the key to all mythologies, and so on.Henry: [chuckles]Clare: There's really a deep irony there because that view of what's significant is really challenged in the novel. Casaubon's project comes to seem really futile, petty, and insignificant. In Daniel Deronda, you've got this amazing question where she shows her heroine, Gwendolyn, who's this selfish 20-year-old girl who's pursuing her own self-interest in a pretty narrow way, about flirting and thinking about her own romantic prospects.Henry: Her income.Clare: She's got this inner world, which is the average preoccupation of a silly 20-year-old girl.Henry: Yes. [laughs]Clare: Then Eliot's narrator asks, "Is there a slenderer, more insignificant thread in human history than this consciousness of a girl who's preoccupied with how to make her own life pleasant?" The question she's asking is-- Well, I think she wants to tell us that slender thread of the girl's consciousness is part of the universe, basically. It's integral. It belongs to a great drama of the struggle between good and evil, which is this mythical, cosmic, religious, archetypal drama that gets played out on the scale of the universe, but also, in this silly girl's consciousness.I think she's got to a point where she was very explicitly thematizing that distinction between the significant and the insignificant and playing with that distinction. It comes back to Dorothea's unhistoric life. It's unhistoric, it's insignificant. Yet, by the end of Middlemarch, by the time we get to that description of Dorothea's unhistoric life, this life has become important to us. We care about Dorothea and how her life turned out. It has this grandeur to it that I think Eliot exposes. It's not the grandeur of historic importance, it's some other human grandeur that I think she wants to find in the silly girls as much as in the great men.Henry: I always find remarks like that quite extraordinary. One of the things I want a biography to tell me is, "How did they come to believe these things?" and, "How did they get the work done?" The flowers that he likes, that's part of that, right? It's like Bertrand Russell going off on his bicycle all the time. That's part of how it all happened. I remember Elizabeth Anscombe in the book about the four philosophers, this question of, "How does she do it all when she's got these six children?" There's this wonderful image of her standing in the doorway to her house smoking. The six children are tumbling around everywhere. The whole place is filthy. I think they don't own a Hoover or she doesn't use it. You just get this wonderful sense of, "This is how she gets it done."Clare: That's how you do it.Henry: Yes. The idea that this is some minor domestic trivial; no, this is very important to understanding Elizabeth Anscombe, right?Clare: Yes, of course.Henry: I want all of this.Clare: Yes. One of the things I really like about her is that she unashamedly brings that domesticity into her philosophical work. She'll use examples like, "I go to buy some potatoes from the grocer's." She'll use that example, whereas that's not the thing that-- Oxford dons don't need to buy any potatoes because they have these quasi-monastic lives where they get cooked for and cleaned for. I like the way she chooses those. Of course, she's not a housewife, but she chooses these housewifely examples to illustrate her philosophy.I don't know enough about Anscombe, but I can imagine that that's a deliberate choice. That's a choice she's making. There's so many different examples she could have thought of. She's choosing that example, which is an example, it shows a woman doing philosophy, basically. Of course, men can buy potatoes too, but in that culture, the buying of the potatoes would be the woman's work.Henry: Yes. She wasn't going to run into AJ Ayre at the grocer's.Clare: Probably not, no.Henry: No. Are you religious in any sense?Clare: I think I am in some sense. Yes, "religious," I think it's a really problematic concept. I've written a bit about this concept of religion and what it might mean. I wrote a book on Spinoza called Spinoza's Religion. Part of what I learned through writing the book was that in order to decide whether or not Spinoza was religious, we have to rethink the very concept of religion, or we have to see that that's what Spinoza was doing.I don't know. Some people are straightforwardly religious and I guess could answer that question, say, "Oh yes, I've always been a Christian," or whatever. My answer is a yes and no answer, where I didn't have a religious upbringing, and I don't have a strong religious affiliation. Sorry, I'm being very evasive.Henry: What do you think of the idea that we're about to live through or we are living through a religious revival? More people going to church, more young people interested in it. Do you see that, or do you think that's a blip?Clare: That's probably a question for the social scientists, isn't it? It just totally depends where you are and what community you're--Henry: Your students, you are not seeing students who are suddenly more religious?Clare: Well, no, but my students are students who've chosen to do philosophy. Some of them are religious and some of them are not. It will be too small a sample to be able to diagnose. I can say that my students are much more likely to be questioning. Many of them are questioning their gender, thinking about how to inhabit gender roles differently.That's something I perceive as a change from 20 years ago, just in the way that my students will dress and present themselves. That's a discernible difference. I can remark on that, but I can't remark on whether they're more religious.Just actually just been teaching a course on philosophy of religion at King's. Some students in the course of having discussions would mention that they were Muslim, Christian, or really into contemplative practices and meditation. Some of the students shared those interests. Others would say, "Oh, well, I'm an atheist, so this is--" There's just a range-Henry: A full range.Clare: -of different religious backgrounds and different interests. There's always been that range. I don't know whether there's an increased interest in religion among those students in particular, but I guess, yes, maybe on a national or global level, statistically-- I don't know. You tell me.Henry: What do you think about all these reports that undergraduates today-- "They have no attention span, they can't read a book, everything is TikTok," do you see this or are you just seeing like, "No, my students are fine actually. This is obviously happening somewhere else"?Clare: Again, it's difficult to say because I see them when they're in their classes, I see them in their seminars, I see them in the lectures. I don't know what their attention spans are like in their--Henry: Some of the other people I've interviewed will say things like, "I'll set reading, and they won't do it, even though it's just not very much reading,"-Clare: Oh, I see. Oh, yes.Henry: -or, "They're on the phone in the--" You know what I mean?Clare: Yes.Henry: The whole experience from 10, 20 years ago, these are just different.Clare: I'm also more distracted by my phone than I was 20 years ago. I didn't have a phone 20 years ago.Henry: Sure.Clare: Having a phone and being on the internet is constantly disrupting my reading and my writing. That's something that I think many of us battle with a bit. I'm sure most of us are addicted to our phones. I wouldn't draw a distinction between myself and my students in that respect. I've been really impressed by my students, pleasantly surprised by the fact they've done their reading because it can be difficult to do reading, I think.Henry: You're not one of these people who says, "Oh students today, it's really very different than it was 20 years ago. You can't get them to do anything. The whole thing is--" Some people are apocalyptic about-- Actually, you're saying no, your students are good?Clare: I like my students. Whether they do the reading or not, I'm not going to sit here and complain about them.Henry: No, sure, sure. I think that's good. What are you working on next?Clare: I've just written a book. It came out of a series of lectures I gave on life writing and philosophy, actually. Connected to what we were talking about earlier. Having written the biographies, I started to reflect a bit more on biography and how it may or may not be a philosophical enterprise, and questions about the shape of a life and what one life can transmit to another life. Something about the devotional labor of the biographer when you're living with this person and you're-- It's devotional, but it's also potentially exploitative because often you're using your subjects, of course, without their consent because they're dead. You're presenting their life to public view and you're selling books, so it's devotional and exploitative. I think that's an interesting pairing.Anyway, so I gave these lectures last year in St Andrews and they're going to be published in September.Henry: Great.Clare: I've finished those really.Henry: That's what's coming.Clare: That's what's coming. Then I've just been writing again about Kierkegaard, actually. I haven't really worked on Kierkegaard for quite a few years. As often happens with these things, I got invited to speak on Kierkegaard and death at a conference in New York in November. My initial thought was like, "Oh, I wish it was Spinoza, I don't want to--" I think I got to the point where I'd worked a lot on Kierkegaard and wanted to do other things. I was a bit like, "Oh, if only I was doing Spinoza, that would be more up my street." I wanted to go to the conference, so I said yes to this invitation. I was really glad I did because I went back and read what Kierkegaard has written about death, which is very interesting because Kierkegaard's this quintessentially death-fixated philosopher, that's his reputation. It's his reputation, he's really about death. His name means churchyard. He's doomy and gloomy. There's the caricature.Then, to actually look at what he says about death and how he approaches the subject, which I'd forgotten or hadn't even read closely in the first place, those particular texts. That turned out to be really interesting, so I'm writing-- It's not a book or anything, it's just an article.Henry: You're not going to do a George Eliot and produce a novel?Clare: No. I'm not a novelist or a writer of fiction. I don't think I have enough imagination to create characters. What I love about biography is that you get given the characters and you get given the plots. Then, of course, it is a creative task to then turn that into a narrative, as I said before. The kinds of biography I like to write are quite creative, they're not just purely about facts. I think facts can be quite boring. Well, they become interesting in the context of questions about meaning interpretations by themselves. Again, probably why I was right to give up on the history degree. For me, facts are not where my heart is.That amount of creativity I think suits me well, but to create a world as you do when you're a novelist and create characters and plots, and so, that doesn't come naturally to me. I guess I like thinking about philosophical questions through real-life stories. It's one way for philosophy to be connected to real life. Philosophy can also be connected to life through fiction, of course, but it's not my own thing. I like to read other people's fiction. I'm not so bothered about reading other biographies.Henry: No. No, no.[laughter]Clare: I'll write the biographies, and I'll read the fiction.Henry: That's probably the best way. Clare Carlisle, author of The Marriage Question, thank you very much.Clare: Oh, thanks, Henry. It's been very fun to talk to you.Henry: Yes. It was a real pleasure. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk/subscribe

Chris is thrilled to have completed his first ever 10,000 kilometer race only to have the legs cut out from underneath him. Sunil can hold his breath for ages and James thinks he's great for cycling all the time. Also, can we please stop having a go at the Victorians? Want to see the lads live? Rural Concerns is coming to the London Podcast Show on 20th May. We're also playing Manchester's Fairfield Social Club on 22nd November.  You can watch Chris' Edinburgh Comedy Award nominated show! He's heading to Chorley, Machynlleth, Wells and Newcastle! Check it out on his international website.  Do you have a Rural Concern? Drop us an email at christopher@alovelytime.co.uk. The best way to support this educational podcast is through Patreon. For less than a fiver you can get bonus episodes and access to our Discord community, The Creamery. Our artwork is by Poppy Hillstead, our music is by Sam O'Leary and our legal due diligence is by Cal Derrick, Entertainment Lawyer. Rural Concerns is edited by Joseph Burrows and produced by Egg Mountain for A Lovely Time Productions.

*Content Warning: This episode of Doin' Time contains audio images of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have died, and discussion of Deaths in Custody. Marisa speaks with  with Travis Lovett, a proud Kerrupmara/Gunditjmara man,Traditional Owner, and Deputy Chair and Commissioner of the Yoorrook Justice Commission, who has spent his life advocating for truth and justice for First Peoples. They discuss The Walk for Truth, Travis will be walking from Portland to Parliament from May 25 to June 18 to bring Victorians together as part of the state's truth-telling process. Travis is passionate about practicing his Culture, working with Community and preserving Aboriginal languages. They also reflect on the fact that the four year Commission will end on 30 June 2025.We also hear speeches by Rathy Barthlote from Refugee Women Action for Visa Equality, and Jasmine Fischer, a member of the Refugee Action Collective (Vic), introduced by Nasser Mashni, President of APAN, from yesterday's Palm Sunday Refugee Rally which was combined with the Palestine rally outside the State Library Victoria in Naarm.  

What happened to the fairies?In this episode of Angela's Symposium, we uncover the history of fairy beings—from terrifying, liminal spirits associated with death, illness, and esoteric knowledge to the benign, whimsical figures of children's books and garden ornaments. Drawing on peer-reviewed scholarship and folkloric sources, I trace how fairies were feared as soul-stealing entities, morally ambiguous tricksters, and powerful beings of the Otherworld in Celtic and Germanic traditions. These entities weren't cute—they were cautionary, chthonic, and occasionally divine.But during the Victorian era, spiritualism, Theosophy, and literary romanticism reshaped fairy imagery into something innocent and controllable. This domestication served ideological purposes: reinforcing ideals of childhood, whiteness, femininity, and empire.With insights from Robert Kirk, W.Y. Evans-Wentz, Katharine Briggs, and contemporary scholars such as Sabina Magliocco, Morgan Daimler, and Richard Sugg, this video explores how fairies reflect changing cultural values—and why reclaiming their wilder past matters.CONNECT & SUPPORT

Welcome Spooky Lovelies! The fireplaces are lit, the Hospitality Tray is set, and everything that would make you run in panic is waiting beyond the cordoned-off areas, mostly. We thought it was time to visit our long-dead friends, The Victorians, and to learn to admire their strict and strange mourning customs, some of which are still with us today. From how long your black veil should be, to how to keep mice from burrowing into a corpse, we have all the dirt on their fascinating habits! So, strap on your best black bonnet and join us in The Reading Room! Special Thanks to Sounds Like an Earful Music Supply for the amazing music AND sound design.

Faith and Una Meredith, Mary Vance, Sara Stanley, Felicity and Cecily King – all of these girls have different relationships with housekeeping and cooking, and PhD candidate Ariel Little is here to tell us all about it! We speculate about how the characters might show up on social media, the way that housekeeping reflects power and authority in Montgomery's work, and why cleanliness was so important to the Victorians.  If you want to read some of Ariel Little's writing, she's published this article, Under the Moon's Healing Influence: George MacDonald's Literary Re-envisioning of Women's Health  and also has a chapter in this new book, Beyond Little Women, edited by Lauren Hehmeyer.   Inspired by: Ragon is inspired by: Fourteen Talks By Age Fourteen by Michelle Icard and Finding The Magic In Middle School by Chris Balme. Kelly is inspired by: Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson. Ariel is inspired by:  The Sanitary Arts:  Aesthetic Culture and the Victorian Cleanliness Campaign by Eileen Cleere and Architecture in the Family Way by Annmarie Adams, as well as The House Of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones. If you want to get a free logo sticker from us, either leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or share your love for the pod on social media!  Send us a photo of your share or review at either our email: kindredspirits.bookclub@gmail.com or on our KindredSpirits.BookClub Instagram. 

Welcome to episode 98 and part two of The History of Divination! After leaving the Ancient Romans in part one, we fast forward to the Tudors and the Elizabethan Era. We'll meet Dr. John Dee, who was Queen Elizabeth I's trusted seer and learn about the attitudes around magic and divination before Elizabeth's successor begins his witch hunts. We'll also uncover the secrets of the tarot, and step into the shadowy parlors of the Victorians with their flickering candlelit séances and spirit (Ouija) boards.After all the history, we spend time with our guest, Saundra, a psychic medium and intuitive tarot reader. She answers our burning questions about being a psychic medium and does a collective reading for the Smoke Circle which...whoo! gave us a whole lotta feels. ~~~~~~~*Check Out What Our Guest, Saundra, is Doing!⁠www.saundrainsagittarius.com⁠TikTok: ⁠@saundra.in.sagittarius⁠Instagram: ⁠@saundra.in.sag⁠YouTube: ⁠@saundra.in.sagittarius⁠~~~~~~~*The Socials and Patreon!Patreon-- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Best Buds Club!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠ - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@HighTalesofHistory⁠⁠  TikTok⁠- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@HighTalesofHistoryPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  YouTube-- ⁠⁠@High Tales of History⁠⁠Facebook⁠ -⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠High Tales of History or ⁠⁠@HighTalesofHistory ⁠Email—hightailingthroughhistory@gmail.com⁠ ~~~~~~~*Mentioned in the Episode:Episode 91: A History of WitchesEpisode 90: Werewolf Trials of EuropeEpisode 45: The Satanic PanicJohn Dee's Private Diary (free online)John Dee's Spiritual Diaries (PDF) John Dee's Five Books of Mystery~~~~*Source Materials--https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1037&context=history_honorshttps://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/magic-mirror-used-by-queen-elizabeth-is-court-astrologer-has-aztec-origins-180978830/#:~:text=An%20obsidian%20%E2%80%9Cspirit%20mirror%E2%80%9D%20used,tells%20Ashley%20Strickland%20of%20CNNhttps://www.history.co.uk/articles/the-magical-life-of-dr-dee-queen-elizabeth-i-s-royal-astrologerhttps://www.britannica.com/story/nostradamus-and-his-prophecies#:~:text=Nostradamus%20was%20born%20in%20France,book%20entitled%20Centuries%20(1555)https://www.metmuseum.org/perspectives/tarot-2https://www.history.co.uk/articles/strange-history-tarot-cardshttps://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/tarot-cards-history-fortune-telling?loggedin=true&rnd=1742065790733https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasseographyhttps://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/oujia-board-historyhttps://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/oct/30/ouija-board-mystery-history#:~:text=The%20name%20Ouija%20comes%20from%20a%20rooming%20house%20in%20Baltimore&text=But%20the%20name%20was%20coined,her%20meant%20%E2%80%9Cgood%20luck%E2%80%9Dhttps://www.britannica.com/topic/New-Age-movement⁠~~~~*Intro/outro music: "Loopster" by Kevin MacLeod (⁠incompetech.com⁠) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License ⁠⁠⁠⁠http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Welcome to episode 98 and part two of The History of Divination! After leaving the Ancient Romans in part one, we fast forward to the Tudors and the Elizabethan Era. We'll meet Dr. John Dee, who was Queen Elizabeth I's trusted seer and learn about the attitudes around magic and divination before Elizabeth's successor begins his witch hunts. We'll also uncover the secrets of the tarot, and step into the shadowy parlors of the Victorians with their flickering candlelit séances and spirit (Ouija) boards.After all the history, we spend time with our guest, Saundra, a psychic medium and intuitive tarot reader. She answers our burning questions about being a psychic medium and does a collective reading for the Smoke Circle which...whoo! gave us a whole lotta feels. ~~~~~~~*Check Out What Our Guest, Saundra, is Doing!⁠www.saundrainsagittarius.com⁠TikTok: ⁠@saundra.in.sagittarius⁠Instagram: ⁠@saundra.in.sag⁠YouTube: ⁠@saundra.in.sagittarius⁠~~~~~~~*The Socials and Patreon!Patreon-- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Best Buds Club!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠ - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@HighTalesofHistory⁠⁠  TikTok⁠- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@HighTalesofHistoryPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  YouTube-- ⁠⁠@High Tales of History⁠⁠Facebook⁠ -⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠High Tales of History or ⁠⁠@HighTalesofHistory ⁠Email—hightailingthroughhistory@gmail.com⁠ ~~~~~~~*Mentioned in the Episode:Episode 91: A History of WitchesEpisode 90: Werewolf Trials of EuropeEpisode 45: The Satanic PanicJohn Dee's Private Diary (free online)John Dee's Spiritual Diaries (PDF) John Dee's Five Books of Mystery~~~~*Source Materials--https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1037&context=history_honorshttps://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/magic-mirror-used-by-queen-elizabeth-is-court-astrologer-has-aztec-origins-180978830/#:~:text=An%20obsidian%20%E2%80%9Cspirit%20mirror%E2%80%9D%20used,tells%20Ashley%20Strickland%20of%20CNNhttps://www.history.co.uk/articles/the-magical-life-of-dr-dee-queen-elizabeth-i-s-royal-astrologerhttps://www.britannica.com/story/nostradamus-and-his-prophecies#:~:text=Nostradamus%20was%20born%20in%20France,book%20entitled%20Centuries%20(1555)https://www.metmuseum.org/perspectives/tarot-2https://www.history.co.uk/articles/strange-history-tarot-cardshttps://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/tarot-cards-history-fortune-telling?loggedin=true&rnd=1742065790733https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasseographyhttps://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/oujia-board-historyhttps://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/oct/30/ouija-board-mystery-history#:~:text=The%20name%20Ouija%20comes%20from%20a%20rooming%20house%20in%20Baltimore&text=But%20the%20name%20was%20coined,her%20meant%20%E2%80%9Cgood%20luck%E2%80%9Dhttps://www.britannica.com/topic/New-Age-movement⁠~~~~*Intro/outro music: "Loopster" by Kevin MacLeod (⁠incompetech.com⁠) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License ⁠⁠⁠⁠http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

A rollicking adventure starring three free-spirited Victorians on a twenty-year quest to decipher cuneiform, the oldest writing in the world—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu.It was one of history's great vanishing acts.Around 3,400 BCE—as humans were gathering in complex urban settlements—a scribe in the mud-walled city-state of Uruk picked up a reed stylus to press tiny symbols into clay. For three millennia, wedge shape cuneiform script would record the military conquests, scientific discoveries, and epic literature of the great Mesopotamian kingdoms of Sumer, Assyria, and Babylon and of Persia's mighty Achaemenid Empire, along with precious minutiae about everyday life in the cradle of civilization. And then…the meaning of the characters was lost.London, 1857. In an era obsessed with human progress, mysterious palaces emerging from the desert sands had captured the Victorian public's imagination. Yet Europe's best philologists struggled to decipher the bizarre inscriptions excavators were digging up.Enter a swashbuckling archaeologist, a suave British military officer turned diplomat, and a cloistered Irish rector, all vying for glory in a race to decipher this script that would enable them to peek farther back into human history than ever before.From the ruins of Persepolis to lawless outposts of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, The Mesopotamian Riddle whisks you on a wild adventure through the golden age of archaeology in an epic quest to understand our past.Joshua Hammer is a veteran foreign and war correspondent for Newsweek who has covered conflicts on four continents. He is the author of two previous books, A Season in Bethlehem and Chosen by God: A Brother's Journey. He has contributed articles to The New Yorker, Smithsonian, and many other publications. He lives in Cape Town, South Africa, with his wife and two sons.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/earth-ancients--2790919/support.

Hold onto your corsets and brace yourself for some historical spice, because today we're talking about Victorian nipple rings. Yes, you read that right. The prim and proper era of high collars, afternoon tea, and… pierced nipples? Turns out, the Victorians (and their French counterparts in the Belle Époque) were way freakier than we give them credit for. What's Inside This Episode?

Welcome to episode 97 (season 5, episode 3) of High Tales of History! We knew you'd be here because we saw it happen in our scrying mirror. We have our friend Saundra in the Smoke Circle with us for a two part episode on divination through history. Saundra is a psychic medium and intuitive tarot card reader and we have a blast all hanging out and taking a long trip back to the many divination practices of ancient civilizations.In this two part series, we will travel the Silk Road from east to west, stopping at various civilizations along the way and finishing in Ancient Rome. In part two, we will be picking up again in the Elizabethan Age, visiting those wild Victorians in their Spiritualism Era, and bringing it up through to the New Age Movement and today. Along the way, we will be meeting famous divinators, learning about tarot's evolution from card game to fortune telling, and get a reading from our guest, Saundra!~~~~~~~*Check Out What Our Guest, Saundra, is Doing!www.saundrainsagittarius.comTikTok: @saundra.in.sagittariusInstagram: @saundra.in.sagYouTube: @saundra.in.sagittarius~~~~~~*The Socials and Patreon!Patreon-- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Best Buds Club!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠ - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@HighTalesofHistory⁠⁠  TikTok⁠- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@HighTalesofHistoryPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  YouTube-- ⁠⁠@High Tales of History⁠⁠Facebook⁠ -⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠High Tales of History or ⁠⁠@HighTalesofHistory ⁠Email—hightailingthroughhistory@gmail.com⁠ ~~~~*~Source Materials--https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780195393361/obo-9780195393361-0287.xml#:~:text=Divination%20is%20a%20universal%20phenomenon,unpublished%20even%20in%20the%202020shttps://www.jstor.org/stable/2347094?read-now=1&seq=1https://daily.jstor.org/how-to-read-bones-like-a-scapulimancer/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_astrologyhttps://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2005/2005.06.29/#:~:text=The%20liver%20diviners%20and%20celestial%20diviners%20appear,as%20to%20confirm%20or%20refute%20medical%20advice.&text=The%20latest%20known%20Babylonian%20horoscope%2C%20BH%2027,the%20Greek%20tradition%20by%20just%20seven%20yearshttps://www.academia.edu/44688407/Geomancy_in_the_Islamic_Worldhttps://oxfordre.com/planetaryscience/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190647926.001.0001/acrefore-9780190647926-e-46#:~:text=The%20relationship%20between%20planets%20and,more%20often%20than%20direct%20observationhttps://www.worldhistory.org/Pythia/#:~:text=There%2C%20at%20the%20temple%20center,sacrifice%20of%20a%20black%20ram.&text=It%20is%20a%20Hellenic%20tradition,accordance%20with%20our%20editorial%20policy⁠~~~~*Intro/outro music: "Loopster" by Kevin MacLeod (⁠incompetech.com⁠) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License ⁠⁠⁠⁠http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Welcome to episode 97 (season 5, episode 3) of High Tales of History! We knew you'd be here because we saw it happen in our scrying mirror. We have our friend Saundra in the Smoke Circle with us for a two part episode on divination through history. Saundra is a psychic medium and intuitive tarot card reader and we have a blast all hanging out and taking a long trip back to the many divination practices of ancient civilizations.In this two part series, we will travel the Silk Road from east to west, stopping at various civilizations along the way and finishing in Ancient Rome. In part two, we will be picking up again in the Elizabethan Age, visiting those wild Victorians in their Spiritualism Era, and bringing it up through to the New Age Movement and today. Along the way, we will be meeting famous divinators, learning about tarot's evolution from card game to fortune telling, and get a reading from our guest, Saundra!~~~~~~~*Check Out What Our Guest, Saundra, is Doing!www.saundrainsagittarius.comTikTok: @saundra.in.sagittariusInstagram: @saundra.in.sagYouTube: @saundra.in.sagittarius~~~~~~*The Socials and Patreon!Patreon-- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Best Buds Club!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠ - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@HighTalesofHistory⁠⁠  TikTok⁠- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@HighTalesofHistoryPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  YouTube-- ⁠⁠@High Tales of History⁠⁠Facebook⁠ -⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠High Tales of History or ⁠⁠@HighTalesofHistory ⁠Email—hightailingthroughhistory@gmail.com⁠ ~~~~*~Source Materials--https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780195393361/obo-9780195393361-0287.xml#:~:text=Divination%20is%20a%20universal%20phenomenon,unpublished%20even%20in%20the%202020shttps://www.jstor.org/stable/2347094?read-now=1&seq=1https://daily.jstor.org/how-to-read-bones-like-a-scapulimancer/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_astrologyhttps://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2005/2005.06.29/#:~:text=The%20liver%20diviners%20and%20celestial%20diviners%20appear,as%20to%20confirm%20or%20refute%20medical%20advice.&text=The%20latest%20known%20Babylonian%20horoscope%2C%20BH%2027,the%20Greek%20tradition%20by%20just%20seven%20yearshttps://www.academia.edu/44688407/Geomancy_in_the_Islamic_Worldhttps://oxfordre.com/planetaryscience/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190647926.001.0001/acrefore-9780190647926-e-46#:~:text=The%20relationship%20between%20planets%20and,more%20often%20than%20direct%20observationhttps://www.worldhistory.org/Pythia/#:~:text=There%2C%20at%20the%20temple%20center,sacrifice%20of%20a%20black%20ram.&text=It%20is%20a%20Hellenic%20tradition,accordance%20with%20our%20editorial%20policy⁠~~~~*Intro/outro music: "Loopster" by Kevin MacLeod (⁠incompetech.com⁠) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License ⁠⁠⁠⁠http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Brad Battin joined Jacqui Felgate to discuss the state's bail laws and the chat around his holiday last week. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On Book Club this month: Anna Sulan Masing's Chinese and Any Other Asian, an eye-opening and moving book about East and South East Asian identity in Britain. You can find a transcript for this episode at leckerpodcast.com. Chinese and Any Other Asian is out now. Find all of the Lecker Book Club reads on my Bookshop.org list. [aff link] Support Lecker by becoming a paid subscriber on Patreon, Apple Podcasts and now on Substack. Music is by Blue Dot Sessions.

Strange But True: Ancient Egyptians were so into oral sex, they put it in their religion — and religious art, Salon, Matthew Rosza, January 29, 2023 Sex and morality have been tightly controlled by religion throughout history, shaping societal attitudes toward sexuality. The discussion begins with ancient Egypt, where gods were depicted engaging in acts like autofellatio as part of creation myths. While some assume ancient societies were more sexually open, the reality is that Egypt had conservative sexual norms comparable to their neighbors in Israel. The control of sex, particularly by religious institutions, has historically been a tool of power, reinforcing shame and guilt around natural human behavior. Victorian England is often blamed for sexual repression, but it's argued that this is more a product of later interpretations than the reality of Victorian life. The Victorians were far from prudish in private, as demonstrated by explicit personal writings, including Queen Victoria's enthusiastic comments about Prince Albert. More broadly, history shows fluctuating attitudes toward sex, from the uninhibited Greeks and Romans to later societies that sought to regulate and repress it. Religion, particularly Christianity, often attempts to define acceptable sexual behavior, controlling it in ways that reinforce their broader authority. A notable aspect of ancient Egyptian sexuality is their exclusion of homosexuality from their records, raising questions about whether labeling and recognizing sexual identities make societies more tolerant or simply more aware of division. Regardless of historical shifts, the pattern remains: sex is a fundamental human drive, and societies continuously shape and reshape its role based on cultural and religious influences. Ultimately, the gods people create reflect their own desires and societal norms, further proving that human behavior, rather than divine decree, dictates morality. The Non-Prophets, Episode 24.10.2 featuring Jason Sherwood, Aaron Jensen, Richard Firth-Godbehere and Scott Dickie.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-non-prophets--3254964/support.

Did Elizabeth I really poison herself with lead makeup? It's a Tudor myth! While Venetian ceruse—white lead makeup—did exist, there's no real evidence the Queen actually used it. So where did this ghostly image of Elizabeth come from? The Victorians!   But Tudor beauty wasn't exactly safe… From toxic rouges made of mercury to fake blue veins and even urine hair dye (yes, really!), Tudor cosmetics were both fascinating and horrifying.   In this video, we debunk myths about Elizabeth I's makeup, explore real Tudor beauty trends, and ask: 500 years from now, will people look back at our beauty routines the same way?   #TudorHistory #ElizabethI #HistoricalBeauty #TudorMyths #HistoryDebunked #WeirdHistory #RoyalBeauty #MakeupHistory #16thCentury #FunHistory 

The Royal Albert Hall: Building the Arts and Sciences (Brepols, 2024) by Dr. Simona Valeriani takes one of London's most iconic buildings and deconstructs it to offer new insights into the society that produced it. As part of the new cultural quarter built in South Kensington on the proceeds from The Great Exhibition of 1851, the Royal Albert Hall was originally intended to be a ‘Central Hall of Arts and Sciences'. Prince Albert's overarching vision was to promote technological and industrial progress to a wider audience, and in so doing increase its cultural and economic reach. Lighting, ventilation, fireproofing, ‘ascending rooms', cements, acoustics, the organ, the record-breaking iron dome, and the organisation of internal spaces were all attempts to attain progress - and subject to intense public scrutiny. From iron structures to terracotta, from the education of women to the abolition of slavery, in the making of the Royal Albert Hall scientific knowledge and socio-cultural reform were intertwined. This book shows, for the first time, how the Royal Albert Hall's building was itself a crucible for innovation. Illustrious techniques from antiquity were reimagined for the new mechanical age, placing the building at the heart of a process of collecting, describing, and systematising arts and practices. At the same time, the Royal Albert Hall was conceived as a ‘manifesto' of what the Victorians thought Britain ought to be, at a crucial moment of its socio-economic history: a symbolic cultural hub for the Empire's metropole. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

The Royal Albert Hall: Building the Arts and Sciences (Brepols, 2024) by Dr. Simona Valeriani takes one of London's most iconic buildings and deconstructs it to offer new insights into the society that produced it. As part of the new cultural quarter built in South Kensington on the proceeds from The Great Exhibition of 1851, the Royal Albert Hall was originally intended to be a ‘Central Hall of Arts and Sciences'. Prince Albert's overarching vision was to promote technological and industrial progress to a wider audience, and in so doing increase its cultural and economic reach. Lighting, ventilation, fireproofing, ‘ascending rooms', cements, acoustics, the organ, the record-breaking iron dome, and the organisation of internal spaces were all attempts to attain progress - and subject to intense public scrutiny. From iron structures to terracotta, from the education of women to the abolition of slavery, in the making of the Royal Albert Hall scientific knowledge and socio-cultural reform were intertwined. This book shows, for the first time, how the Royal Albert Hall's building was itself a crucible for innovation. Illustrious techniques from antiquity were reimagined for the new mechanical age, placing the building at the heart of a process of collecting, describing, and systematising arts and practices. At the same time, the Royal Albert Hall was conceived as a ‘manifesto' of what the Victorians thought Britain ought to be, at a crucial moment of its socio-economic history: a symbolic cultural hub for the Empire's metropole. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

The Royal Albert Hall: Building the Arts and Sciences (Brepols, 2024) by Dr. Simona Valeriani takes one of London's most iconic buildings and deconstructs it to offer new insights into the society that produced it. As part of the new cultural quarter built in South Kensington on the proceeds from The Great Exhibition of 1851, the Royal Albert Hall was originally intended to be a ‘Central Hall of Arts and Sciences'. Prince Albert's overarching vision was to promote technological and industrial progress to a wider audience, and in so doing increase its cultural and economic reach. Lighting, ventilation, fireproofing, ‘ascending rooms', cements, acoustics, the organ, the record-breaking iron dome, and the organisation of internal spaces were all attempts to attain progress - and subject to intense public scrutiny. From iron structures to terracotta, from the education of women to the abolition of slavery, in the making of the Royal Albert Hall scientific knowledge and socio-cultural reform were intertwined. This book shows, for the first time, how the Royal Albert Hall's building was itself a crucible for innovation. Illustrious techniques from antiquity were reimagined for the new mechanical age, placing the building at the heart of a process of collecting, describing, and systematising arts and practices. At the same time, the Royal Albert Hall was conceived as a ‘manifesto' of what the Victorians thought Britain ought to be, at a crucial moment of its socio-economic history: a symbolic cultural hub for the Empire's metropole. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture

The Royal Albert Hall: Building the Arts and Sciences (Brepols, 2024) by Dr. Simona Valeriani takes one of London's most iconic buildings and deconstructs it to offer new insights into the society that produced it. As part of the new cultural quarter built in South Kensington on the proceeds from The Great Exhibition of 1851, the Royal Albert Hall was originally intended to be a ‘Central Hall of Arts and Sciences'. Prince Albert's overarching vision was to promote technological and industrial progress to a wider audience, and in so doing increase its cultural and economic reach. Lighting, ventilation, fireproofing, ‘ascending rooms', cements, acoustics, the organ, the record-breaking iron dome, and the organisation of internal spaces were all attempts to attain progress - and subject to intense public scrutiny. From iron structures to terracotta, from the education of women to the abolition of slavery, in the making of the Royal Albert Hall scientific knowledge and socio-cultural reform were intertwined. This book shows, for the first time, how the Royal Albert Hall's building was itself a crucible for innovation. Illustrious techniques from antiquity were reimagined for the new mechanical age, placing the building at the heart of a process of collecting, describing, and systematising arts and practices. At the same time, the Royal Albert Hall was conceived as a ‘manifesto' of what the Victorians thought Britain ought to be, at a crucial moment of its socio-economic history: a symbolic cultural hub for the Empire's metropole. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

The Royal Albert Hall: Building the Arts and Sciences (Brepols, 2024) by Dr. Simona Valeriani takes one of London's most iconic buildings and deconstructs it to offer new insights into the society that produced it. As part of the new cultural quarter built in South Kensington on the proceeds from The Great Exhibition of 1851, the Royal Albert Hall was originally intended to be a ‘Central Hall of Arts and Sciences'. Prince Albert's overarching vision was to promote technological and industrial progress to a wider audience, and in so doing increase its cultural and economic reach. Lighting, ventilation, fireproofing, ‘ascending rooms', cements, acoustics, the organ, the record-breaking iron dome, and the organisation of internal spaces were all attempts to attain progress - and subject to intense public scrutiny. From iron structures to terracotta, from the education of women to the abolition of slavery, in the making of the Royal Albert Hall scientific knowledge and socio-cultural reform were intertwined. This book shows, for the first time, how the Royal Albert Hall's building was itself a crucible for innovation. Illustrious techniques from antiquity were reimagined for the new mechanical age, placing the building at the heart of a process of collecting, describing, and systematising arts and practices. At the same time, the Royal Albert Hall was conceived as a ‘manifesto' of what the Victorians thought Britain ought to be, at a crucial moment of its socio-economic history: a symbolic cultural hub for the Empire's metropole. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

The Royal Albert Hall: Building the Arts and Sciences (Brepols, 2024) by Dr. Simona Valeriani takes one of London's most iconic buildings and deconstructs it to offer new insights into the society that produced it. As part of the new cultural quarter built in South Kensington on the proceeds from The Great Exhibition of 1851, the Royal Albert Hall was originally intended to be a ‘Central Hall of Arts and Sciences'. Prince Albert's overarching vision was to promote technological and industrial progress to a wider audience, and in so doing increase its cultural and economic reach. Lighting, ventilation, fireproofing, ‘ascending rooms', cements, acoustics, the organ, the record-breaking iron dome, and the organisation of internal spaces were all attempts to attain progress - and subject to intense public scrutiny. From iron structures to terracotta, from the education of women to the abolition of slavery, in the making of the Royal Albert Hall scientific knowledge and socio-cultural reform were intertwined. This book shows, for the first time, how the Royal Albert Hall's building was itself a crucible for innovation. Illustrious techniques from antiquity were reimagined for the new mechanical age, placing the building at the heart of a process of collecting, describing, and systematising arts and practices. At the same time, the Royal Albert Hall was conceived as a ‘manifesto' of what the Victorians thought Britain ought to be, at a crucial moment of its socio-economic history: a symbolic cultural hub for the Empire's metropole. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

  Dr. Olivia Cacchione, a musicologist, sat with Patrick in the parlor to discuss her current work and study of music and sound in Victorian seances. Olivia also shared about years of uncomfortable out-of-body experiences and hearing voices that led to her being diagnosed with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. Plus skepticism, haunted listening, enchantment, possibility vs. disbelief, Victorians and the accordion, the channeled music of Rosemary Brown, and asking the question, “How does music haunt us?” Visit BigSeance.com/257 for more info. Other Listening Options Direct Download Link   In this episode: Intro :00 Dr. Olivia Cacchione studies the sounds of ghosts and hauntings throughout history. She's a musicologist who earned her PhD at Northwestern University and received a Mellon Fellowship to conduct her extensive archival research across England and America. She is currently working on a book that highlights the role of music and sound in Victorian seances. Olivia's dissertation examined the cultural history of hearing, questioning how music haunts us, with an emphasis on the lived experience of the Victorian-era spiritualist séance. She covered Daniel Dunglas Home's accordion, the Davenport Brothers' musical cabinet, and lesser known mediums like Jennie Lord, who practically invented the musical seance. And Olivia wants you to know that she has a cat who is proudly named Madame Blavatsky. You can learn more about Olivia Cacchione and her work by visiting welcometotheseance.com. :45 What is a musicologist? 2:02 From harp performance to a PhD in musicology. 3:44 Patrick once again nerds out about the theremin. 6:12 More on where this interest in Victorian Spiritualism came from, and the pushback from her colleagues regarding her chosen area of study. 7:32 Hearing Voices. “When I was 15, I began ‘hearing things.' It took me ten years to receive a diagnosis of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy.” 10:51 Olivia's voices and out-of-body experiences. Are they paranormal? Or are they just symptoms of her diagnosis? 15:24 Enchantment. 16:45 “[The episodes were] very dark and quite scary, actually.” 18:05 Possibility vs Disbelief. 19:03 Victorian Spiritualists and Seances. For Victorians, it was really dark at night! 21:49 Haunted Listening. 27:56 Patrick reminisces about experiences years ago with his “rapper” from doing EVP research and experiments. 29:28 “How does music haunt us? What does it mean to be haunted, mesmerized, enchanted, or spellbound by a work?” 32:24 Check out Jerry Goldsmith's score for the 1985 film, The Explorers. 35:40 “[Victorians] simply had a different relationship with music.” 39:09 Music as a trigger. 41:11 Victorians and the accordion. 42:47 Residual music from the Bird Cage Theatre. 43:57 A Musical Seance featuring Rosemary Brown, who claimed to channel music from the great composers. 46:01 Alfred Russel Wallace. 48:28 “Before I was diagnosed, I absolutely thought, 'Maybe I'm psychic.' I wanted to lean in that direction with it.” 50:07 “People hear what I'm studying and they immediately want to tell me their own ghost stories. And you realize just how many people have ghost stories, and I love hearing them.” 51:12 Olivia's final thoughts. 54:40 Outro 56:27   Resources welcometotheseance.com     The Big Seance Podcast can be found right here, on Apple Podcasts, Pandora, Spotify, TuneIn Radio, Amazon Music, Audible, iHeart Radio, and YouTube. Please subscribe and share with a fellow paranerd! Do you have any comments or feedback? Please contact me at Patrick@BigSeance.com. Consider recording your voice feedback directly from your device on my SpeakPipe page! I would love to include your voice feedback in a future show. The candles are already lit, so come on in and join the seance!  

Emotional attachment is thousands of years old, but it actually started off with apes! For humans, Valentine’s Day started off as a blood-soaked pagan fertility festival loaded with alcohol, nudity, and blood! On the flip side, the romance element is a pretty recent invention. You can thank the Victorians for that. Plus, find out who sent the first Valentine!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the Victorian era, mourning wasn't just an emotion—it was a lifestyle. Strict rules dictated everything from what you wore to how long you could grieve, and death itself became a booming industry. From black-bordered stationery to post-mortem photography, the Victorians found ways to keep the dead close, even weaving their hair into intricate jewelry. But mourning wasn't just about remembrance—it was a reflection of deep-seated fears, societal expectations, and, in some cases, pure superstition.In this episode, I'm joined by Al, a US-based collector who specializes in Victorian mourning artifacts. Together, we explore the eerie beauty of these relics, the paranoia of being buried alive, and the fascinating ways people tried to reach beyond the grave.A HUGE thanks to Al for taking the time to have a chat. Follow her here:INSTAGRAM: @al_curioTIKTOK: @al_curioIf you'd like to hear more about collecting the strange and the unusual you should check out my chat with Nick Bowman, the episode is called Collector of the Macabre. You can listen here.Got an Idea for the Podcast?I'd love to hear from you! If there's a topic you'd like me to explore or someone you think would make a great guest, flick me a message.INSTAGRAM: @thestickybeakpodcastTIKTOK: @thestickybeakpodcastFACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/listen.with.mon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You certainly won't want to miss today’s episode of Mythmakers where Julia Golding is meeting with Professor John Holmes from Birmingham University.   John has made a name for himself by giving performances of Tolkien's 1938 lecture on dragons, complete with the magic lantern slides discovered in the archives of Oxford's Natural History Museum. Today, John and Julia will go on to discuss the fantasy writers of the Victorian period, Pre-Raphaelites, William Morris and Ruskin—all important influences on today’s modern fantasy, often mediated via Tolkien. In this discussion’s final lap, John talks about his work taking people into a very special forest—Ruskin Land—and researching their response to fantasy forests read in situ.   To learn more about Birmingham Institute for Forest Research (BIFoR), and to take a virtual tour of Ruskin Land, visit the links below: https://canvas.bham.ac.uk/courses/52405/pages/cross-curricular-climate-change-education https://www.thinglink.com/card/1803482248435991014   For more information on the Oxford Centre for Fantasy, our writing courses, and to check out our awesome social media content visit: Website: https://centre4fantasy.com/website Instagram: https://centre4fantasy.com/Instagram Facebook: https://centre4fantasy.com/Facebook TikTok: https://centre4fantasy.com/tiktok   (00:05) Exploring Tolkien's Dragons Lecture(11:29) Exploring Tolkien's Creative Influence(18:13) Exploring Influences on Tolkien's Fantasy(30:57) Fantasy Authors' Shared Social Critique(35:37) Enchanting Forests in Fantasy Literature

Everything old is new again. If you think that ghost hunting is something that came along several years ago,  think again. In the Victorian Era,  back in the 1840sSpiritualism and Ghost Hunting went hand in hand. There were no fancy tools  to work with back then but Richard said  the Victorians were able to do wonders and he would trust a good medium over a spirit box or word generator. Tune into this very interesting Master Class.

How did plants power imperialism? Gardening may be a quintessentially British hobby, but many of the familiar plants in our lives have a global – and colonial – history. From “fern-mania” leading wealthy Victorians to decimate environments around the world collecting ferns for their drawing rooms, to mahogany harvested by enslaved workers in the Caribbean, plants played an important role in the British Empire. Even official scientific names for plants included blatantly racist language up until the 1990s.  Over-harvesting of popular imperial products created monocultures and environmental destruction on a huge scale, and the movement of native plants across continents allowed invasive species to run riot. Yet the same imperialists who caused these problems also led the way in the early environmentalist movement, creating National Parks and protection schemes for animals on the risk of extinction.  Listen as William and Anita are once again joined by Sathnam Sanghera, author of Empireworld, to explore the ways in which imperialists both destroyed and protected the natural world. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: empirepoduk@gmail.com Goalhangerpodcasts.com Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Anouska Lewis Senior Producer: Callum Hill Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode, we explore the transformative role of color in Victorian fashion, uncovering how it not only shaped trends but also challenged societal norms. We'll dive into the fascinating story of mauveine, the synthetic dye that revolutionized the fashion industry. But it's not just about the technical side—join us as we break down common misconceptions about color in the Victorian era, explore how color influenced everything from class identity to social status, and examine how it became a key marker of emotion and morality. Discover how the rise of vibrant hues in fashion was intertwined with cultural shifts and technological advances, and how color grew in popularity to become an essential element of self-expression. Tune in to learn why the Victorians' obsession with color still resonates in modern fashion today. Join the Behind The Seams family to support the podcast and access bonus content: ⁠⁠www.patreon.com/silhouettespodcast⁠⁠ Thanks for listening, and stay fab everyone. Follow the podcast on ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠ @Silhouettespodcast for more updates

If you think of the phrase "to be in mourning", you'll probably imagine a Victorian scene. Perhaps a black-clad widow ushers similarly black-clad children to a desolate graveyard in the depths of autumn. Or maybe you picture a grand house, shuttered up against the world that continues outside, while life is paused for those inside as they grieve their loss. Clearly, humans have had mourning rituals and customs throughout history. Yet it is the 19th century that captures attention, perhaps through the industrialisation of mourning spearheaded by the Victorians. Such a high degree of buy-in by the public of all classes makes such customs worthy of study by a folklorist. Why did people adopt these beliefs and practices en masse? And, crucially, what happened to them? Let's take a look in this week's episode of Fabulous Folklore! Find the images and references on the blog post: https://www.icysedgwick.com/mourning-folkore/ Get your free guide to home protection the folklore way here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/fab-folklore/ Become a member of the Fabulous Folklore Family for bonus episodes and articles at https://patreon.com/bePatron?u=2380595 Buy Icy a coffee or sign up for bonus episodes at: https://ko-fi.com/icysedgwick Fabulous Folklore Bookshop: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/fabulous_folklore Pre-recorded illustrated talks: https://ko-fi.com/icysedgwick/shop Request an episode: https://forms.gle/gqG7xQNLfbMg1mDv7 Get extra snippets of folklore on Instagram at https://instagram.com/icysedgwick Find Icy on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/icysedgwick.bsky.social 'Like' Fabulous Folklore on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fabulousfolklore/

What is Cheryl's roman empire? What deadly disease did the Victorians try to catch to get the Ozempic effect? And WHO could be hiding in your walls?! Find out this week on The Spooky Sleepover.Got a theory? Been lost in a rabbit hole? We want to hear from YOU! Email queens@global.com to get in touch, or DM us @killerscultsqueens on Instagram. And follow Cheryl Hole @cherylholequeen and Nikki Druce @nikkimacabrelondon.And if you're looking for a place to support Kerry, their Patreon is here: www.patreon.com/searchandrescuewoodsListen on Global Player for free. Download Global Player from the app store or go to globalplayer.com.

Join us on a captivating journey through Peterborough's rich history in this special History Rage episode, created in partnership with the Katherine of Aragon Festival. Reverend Canon Tim Alban Jones, Vice Dean of Peterborough Cathedral, shares the incredible legacy of this historic city and its iconic cathedral.Ancient BeginningsDiscover Peterborough's roots, from Bronze Age Flag Fen to its Saxon founding as Meadhamstead Abbey in 654.Uncover the Norman impact and the architectural marvel of Peterborough Cathedral, a symbol of resilience through centuries.Katherine of Aragon's LegacyExplore the enduring influence of Katherine of Aragon, buried in Peterborough Cathedral.Learn how her story shapes the city's identity and inspires the annual festival celebrating her remarkable life.Reformation and ResilienceWitness the dramatic Reformation as Peterborough Abbey became a cathedral under figures like John Chambers.Hear tales of resilience as the city adapted to monumental change.Victorian RestorationAppreciate the Victorians' efforts to save Peterborough Cathedral, including its marble mosaic pavement and uninterrupted views.Discover how restoration preserved its place as a historical and architectural gem.Celebrate Peterborough's vibrant past, from its ancient origins to its Reformation-era transformation and beyond. If you're attending the Katherine of Aragon Festival, don't miss nearby treasures like the Peterborough Museum and Burghley House.Get InvolvedLearn more about Reverend Canon Tim Alban Jones's work and book tickets for the festival at peterboroughcathedral.org.uk.Support our historical deep dives on patreon.com/historyrage or via Apple for exclusive content, early episodes, and the coveted History Rage mug.Stay ConnectedCatch up on all the rage at www.historyrage.com or email us at historyragepod@gmail.com.Follow us on:Facebook: History RageTwitter: @HistoryRageInstagram: @HistoryRageBluesky: historyrage.bsky.socialStay informed, stay passionate, and let the rage for historical truth continue to burn! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We play some improv games, Bailey drools over Victorians, and more!

We play some improv games, Bailey drools over Victorians, and more!

If you're struggling, consider therapy with our sponsor. Visit  https://betterhelp.com/almanac for a discount on your first month of therapy..  If you have questions about the brand relating to how the therapists are credentialed, their privacy policy, or therapist compensation, here is an overview written by the YouTube creators behind the channel Cinema Therapy that goes into these topics:  https://www.reddit.com/r/cinema_therapy/comments/1dpriql/addressing_the_betterhelp_concerns_headon_deep/  Hello poison friends! I have wanted to discuss an illness so old and vile, it has made its mark on all of society and culture throughout centuries of its gruesome existence. Tuberculosis was also called the wasting disease, consumption, and the "white death," among other things and has plagued humanity for thousands of years. Lets look at its history and effects on societies and cultures throughout the world and how it finally became recognized as a bacterial infection (a vicious one at that). It eats away at the lungs and beyond as it can affect every organ system of the body and kills gradually. We'll discuss some of the more superstition reasoning for the disease given by earlier societies and the gruesome methods they tried to cure it. We also cannot talk about tuberculosis without mentioning its impact on fashion and beauty standards (yes you read that right) especially among the Victorians. This is too big a topic and too old a disease to not make into two parts! So lets get into it! Thank you to all of our listeners and supporters! Please feel free to leave a comment or send us a DM for any questions, suggestions, or just to say, "hi." Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/thepoisonersalmanac Follow us on socials: The Poisoner's Almanac on IG- ⁠https://www.instagram.com/poisoners_almanac?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==⁠ Adam- ⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@studiesshow?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc⁠ Becca- ⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@yobec0?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc⁠ Merch is finally live, with more to follow in the future! https://www.poisonersalmanac.com

We begin this episode by thinking about the work of people's hands.  We wonder about the connections between knitting and history, trade, the industrial revolution, social connection, activism, and new interpretations.Along the way, we'll:visit Tudor England, when the wool trade was at its economic core and resulted in some pretty intense legislation for common citizens,check in on technology like framework knitting and the surprising etymology of the term Luddite,observe the long term effects on handicrafts by the Industrial Revolution, and uncover some excesses of the Victorians while we're at it,take knitting forward through wars, the Great Depression, changing technologies such as synthetic fabrics, and rapidly changing relationships between people and the clothes they wear, honor knitwear designers who brought the craft forward,marvel at the confluence of the Riot grrl, the growth of DIY culture, and the internet that allowed learning, inspiration, and community to flourish, connect the dots with examples of craftivism around the world, pay tribute to the good done by Brixton's Craft Forward organization,leave breadcrumbs for self study on topics like contemporary fashion, share resources for getting involved,and … you didn't think we'd do an episode on knitting and not mention Tom Daley, did you?This is a very visible episode. See our SHOW NOTES for photos, articles, and much more. Episode photo by Steve Forrest from Workers' Photos Archive. 

Poisoned sweets. Criminal misdeeds. And a sex scandal involving… the prime-minister. Listen to HistoryExtra's new podcast History's Greatest Scandals, delving into the murky underworld of The Victorians. Ellie Cawthorne and historian Professor Rosalind Crone take a journey through the backstreets of 19th-century Britain to explore the darker side of Victorian life. Sneaking into private parlours, descending into candlelit mines, frequenting grim workhouses and paying a visit to an unscrupulous confectioner, uncovering some of the biggest scandals of the day – and explore what they can reveal about Victorian age. Series 1 launches today, 7 Jan 2025. Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/40kQYTz Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/33plhOIkO9rtli5btfziHE Listen everywhere else by searching: History's Greatest Conspiracy Theories You can listen ad-free, access episodes early and more by subscribing to HistoryExtra Plus here: https://apple.co/4fgRA1d. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How do you like your tea? Deadly?In this instalment of Expert Witness, Sinead speaks to the wonderful TK from For the Love of History podcast about the popular poisons from days gone by in Japan. Expect ninja, curious teapots and early versions of pepper spray. For the Love of History is available on all podcast platforms, give them a follow!https://www.fortheloveofhistorypod.com/https://www.instagram.com/fortheloveof_historypodcast/?hl=enhttps://www.youtube.com/@ForTheLoveofHistorypodExpert Witness are bonus episodes where we interview different experts from various backgrounds about cases on our show and about the world of true crime, Victorians, poison and books!Get cocktails, poisoning stories and historical true crime tales every week by following and subscribing to The Poisoners' Cabinet wherever you get your podcasts. Find us and our cocktails at www.thepoisonerscabinet.com Join us Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thepoisonerscabinet Find us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thepoisonerscabinet Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepoisonerscabinet/ Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ThePoisonersCabinet Listen on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ThePoisonersCabinet Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Folktales around the fire, gooding & mumping and the terrifying Hooden Horse are just some of England's winter folk traditions from history. In this episode, Dan explores the unlikely and often dark origins of some of our Christmas traditions that can be traced back thousands of years. He's joined by folklore historian Vikki Bramshaw, to discover what midwinter legends were brought over with the Anglo-Saxon invasion, the origins of the Yule log and some of the unusual ways people passed the long nights in rural England (fortune-telling chestnuts).He also explores the New Forest, Hampshire, with local historian Richard Reeves to find out more about how medieval people survived the cold winters in the woods.You can discover more in Vikki's book 'New Forest Folklore, Traditions and Charms'.This is episode 4 of our 'Origins of Christmas' series. This December, Dan explores the history behind our Christmas traditions—from extravagant Tudor feasts and carolling to midwinter Solstice celebrations, the bawdy entertainment of the Georgians, and the family-focused customs of the Victorians.Produced by Mariana Des Forges.Sign 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.  

From the time of the Victorians to the time of the Kardashians, there's always been a body type that's been "in." The only problem? It's always changing.In this episode, we talk to Dr. Katharina Vester of American University about the origins of body ideals and how they have impacted society and culture over time. Having a six pack used to mean you were broke? Only men were allowed to watch their weight? The surprising history of dieting and our bodies.For weekly episodes, come join the Foodie Fam!https://www.patreon.com/FWNTTCheck out our book:https://read.macmillan.com/lp/food-we-need-to-talk/Chat with us on IG!https://www.instagram.com/foodweneedtotalk/?hl=enBe friends with Juna on IG and Tiktok!https://www.instagram.com/theofficialjuna/https://www.tiktok.com/@junagjata

Get ready for a holly-jolly dive into Christmas history! In this special episode, I unwrap how the Victorians shaped the modern holiday, turning it into a celebration of family, charity, and festive cheer. From Prince Albert's Christmas trees to the rise of Santa Claus, discover the origins of the traditions we know and love today. […] The post CHRISTMAS SPECIAL 2024 SANTA CLAUS IS COMING appeared first on AGE OF VICTORIA PODCAST.

Wir springen in dieser Folge nach Borneo. Im 19. Jahrhundert begründet dort ein britischer Abenteurer eine Dynastie, die über mehr als hundert Jahre Bestand haben sollte. Wir sprechen darüber, wie es dazu kam, was das für das kleine Königreich Sarawak bedeutete und wie die Dynastie schließlich, unter Rajah Vyner und Ranee Sylvia ihr Ende fand. // Erwähnte Folgen - GAG349: Konstantin Phaulkon im Königreich Ayutthaya – https://gadg.fm/349 - GAG352: Wallace und das Rennen um die Evolutionstheorie – https://gadg.fm/352 - GAG445: Alexandra David-Néel – https://gadg.fm/445 - GAG290: Der Angriff der Leichten Brigade – https://gadg.fm/290 // Literatur - Kaur, Amarjit. “The Babbling Brookes: Economic Change in Sarawak 1841-1941.” Modern Asian Studies 29, no. 1 (1995): 65–109. - Middleton, Alex. “Rajah Brooke and the Victorians.” The Historical Journal 53, no. 2 (2010): 381–400. - Philip Eade. Sylvia, Queen of the Headhunters: An Outrageous Englishwoman and Her Lost Kingdom. Hachette UK, 2018. - Tarling, Nicholas. Britain, the Brookes, and Brunei. Kuala Lumpur, New York, Oxford University Press, 1971. http://archive.org/details/britainbrookesbr0000tarl Das Episodenbild zeigt James Brooke auf einem Gemälde aus dem Jahr 1846. //Aus unserer Werbung Du möchtest mehr über unsere Werbepartner erfahren? Hier findest du alle Infos & Rabatte: https://linktr.ee/GeschichtenausderGeschichte //Wir haben auch ein Buch geschrieben: Wer es erwerben will, es ist überall im Handel, aber auch direkt über den Verlag zu erwerben: https://www.piper.de/buecher/geschichten-aus-der-geschichte-isbn-978-3-492-06363-0 Wer Becher, T-Shirts oder Hoodies erwerben will: Die gibt's unter https://geschichte.shop Wer unsere Folgen lieber ohne Werbung anhören will, kann das über eine kleine Unterstützung auf Steady oder ein Abo des GeschichteFM-Plus Kanals auf Apple Podcasts tun. Wir freuen uns, wenn ihr den Podcast bei Apple Podcasts oder wo auch immer dies möglich ist rezensiert oder bewertet. Wir freuen uns auch immer, wenn ihr euren Freundinnen und Freunden, Kolleginnen und Kollegen oder sogar Nachbarinnen und Nachbarn von uns erzählt! Du möchtest Werbung in diesem Podcast schalten? Dann erfahre hier mehr über die Werbemöglichkeiten bei Seven.One Audio: https://www.seven.one/portfolio/sevenone-audio

Tudor Christmas was a time for revelry and fun. Henry VIII and his court celebrated the full 12 days of Christmas in excess, with tables ladened with roast swan, suckling pig and venison pasties, among other delights. It's believed one Christmas, the King spent the equivalent of £13 million on the celebrations. He loved to dress up and tease his wives as well as take part in festive games.Dan travels to what was once the heart of Henry's court, Hampton Court Palace, to meet with Historic Royal Palaces chief curator Tracy Borman and Richard Fitch, of the Historic Kitchens Team, to discover how the Tudors celebrated and what of their traditions we still have today.This is episode 2 of our 'Origins of Christmas' series. Every Wednesday in December, Dan explores the history behind our Christmas traditions—from extravagant Tudor feasts and carolling to midwinter Solstice celebrations, the bawdy entertainment of the Georgians, and the family-focused customs of the Victorians.Produced and edited by Mariana Des ForgesMusic by Epidemic Sounds & All3Media Music LibraryDan Snow's History Hit is a History Hit podcast.Sign 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.  

The Roman winter festival celebrating the harvest god, Saturn, laid the foundations for many of our Christmas traditions today- feasting, gift-giving and revelry. During Saturnalia, Emperors held elaborate games at the Colosseum while others gave gag gifts. Meanwhile, in the home, the societal hierarchy was flipped - slaves were served by their masters at the dinner table and out in the streets it was a carnival of music, dancing and debauchery.Dan is joined by Dr Frances Macintosh, The English Heritage Collections Curator for Hadrian's Wall in the North East and she takes Dan through a typical Saturnalia.This is episode 1 in our 'Origins of Christmas' series. Every Wednesday in December, Dan explores the history behind our Christmas traditions—from extravagant Tudor feasts and carolling to midwinter Solstice celebrations, the bawdy entertainment of the Georgians, and the family-focused customs of the Victorians.Produced by Mariana Des Forges and James Hickmann and edited by Max Carrey and Dougal Patmore.Sign 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.