Podcasts about victorians

On the Matt Heath and Tyler Adams Afternoons Full Show Podcast for the 8th of August 2025 - From next year, Victorians will have the legal right to work from home for two days every week - Matt and Tyler didn't have much time for the idea but some callers put up a good fight for it. Then some great chat around getting a degree versus working in a trade when it comes to financial stability. And a lighter finish to the day and week as listeners tell us their best live experiences, music, comedy, sport and all sorts. Get the Matt Heath and Tyler Adams Afternoons Podcast every weekday afternoon on iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Cooo-eee Adventurers! Roles were reversed this week with TOC heading west to the South and Mel in the West and then staying west. The office is looking cleaner, the Big Apple is ripe for the picking but a cancellation closer to home brings discussion. There are roving reports from Downsview in Canada, Billericay in the UK plus a magical report and celebration from Trentham Gardens. Reginald champions Ireland and with that, the office door is locked up as the Victorians head North.

Forensic taphonomy is the study of what happens to a body between death and discovery. It's one of the oldest forensic disciplines and one of the most controversial. Why? Because to properly study forensic taphonomy you need bodies. The Victorians took them from graveyards, these days we have Body Farms.  Body Farms have proved to be a vital resource for forensic scientists to learn more about how and why bodies decompose in certain conditions. It's a hugely complex subject which brings in factors like climate, soil, insects, scavengers, diet among other things.  This week Lynda and Cass meet Dr Daniel J. Wescott, Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State University. The Texas Body Farm where Danny works is largest in the world and has helped to further the knowledge of scientists and law enforcement around the world.  This is the first in a two-part mini series on Body Farms. Next week we're looking at the picture in the UK.  To learn more about the Texas Forensic Anthropology Center visit: https://www.txst.edu/anthropology/facts.html  IG: @factxstate  FB: @forensicanthcenterTXST  ------------ Lynda La Plante's new book The Scene of the Crime, featuring a team of forensic scientists, is out on the 31st July 2025 in all formats. To find out more about upcoming episodes of Listening to the Dead and Lynda's other books, visit www.lyndalaplante.com     Credits: This podcast was made by Bonnier Books UK Hosts: Lynda La Plante, Cass Sutherland and Jon Watt Director: Jon Watt Producer: Laura Makela Theme Music: Game Over by Magic in the Other 

Communities across regional and rural Victoria are set to lose access to piped gas, and it has Tom Elliott warning it will eventually happen to all Victorians.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Victorian Government wants to make work-from-home legal in Victoria. Their plan is to allow all Victorians to work from home for at least two days a week. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mistrust, fear and systematic barriers, these are the reasons why Victorians experiencing racism are hesitant to report the incidents, according to a new study by Victoria University. It also found that almost eight in ten people didn't know where or how to report racism, while nine in ten people believe that reporting would result in no change. What could be done to encourage people to speak up against racism? Wing Kuang spoke to Associate Professor Mario Peucker from the research team.

Amazing as it may seem, our panel of experts came back for a second episode, like they might even be regulars now! Join Talon King, Mrs. Horace "Thingy" Thimbleberger, Dr. Janet Peters, and Shecky Spielberg as they explore Christmas pudding in July. How many Victorians named "John H. Something" with six wives were there? Who does Sherlock Holmes seem more frightened of than Professor Moriarty? And how is this podcast still on the air? You can answer some of those questions right here.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 26, 2025 is: embellish • im-BELL-ish • verb To embellish something is to make it more appealing or attractive with fanciful or decorative details. // The gift shop had cowboy shirts and hats embellished with beads and stitching. // As they grew older, the children realized their grandfather had embellished the stories of his travels abroad. See the entry > Examples: "Shell art isn't a new genre; it's been with us for centuries. The Victorians often framed their family photos with shells. ... The medium also came to the fore in the 1970s when everything was embellished with shells, from photo frames and mirrors to trinket boxes and even furniture." — Stephen Crafti, The Sydney Morning Herald, 4 June 2025 Did you know? Embellish came to English, by way of Anglo-French, from the Latin word bellus, meaning "beautiful." It's in good company: modern language is adorned with bellus descendants. Examples include such classics as beauty, belle, and beau. And the beauty of bellus reaches beyond English: its influence is seen in the French bel, a word meaning "beautiful" that is directly related to the English embellish. And in Spanish, bellus is evidenced in the word bello, also meaning "beautiful."

One quarter of employers classify people over the age of 50 as old, that's according to a study into employer attitudes from the Australian Human Rights Age Commissioner and the Human Resources Institute. In this edition of The Conversation Hour we look at what role AI recruitment systems play in age discrimination and speak with a careers coach on the measures some are taking to circumvent the system.Also in this edition, infidelity in the age of social media and how far will additional mental health clinics go in supporting the mental health of Victorians

So who killed privacy? It's the central question of Tiffany Jenkins' provocative new history of private life, Strangers and Intimates. The answer, according to Jenkins, is that we are all complicit—having gradually and often accidentally contributed to privacy's demise from the 16th century onwards. Luther started it by challenging Papal religious authority and the public sacraments, thereby creating the necessity of private conscience. Then came Enlightenment philosophers like Locke and Hobbes who carved out bounded private political and economic spheres establishing the foundations for modern capitalism and democracy. Counter-enlightenment romantics like Rousseau reacted against this by fetishizing individual innocence and authenticity, while the Victorians elevated the domestic realm as sacred. Last but not least, there's Mark Zuckerberg's socially networked age, in which we voluntarily broadcast our private lives to a worldwide audience. But why, I ask Jenkins, should we care about the death of private life in our current hyper-individualistic age? Can it be saved by more or less obsession with the self? Or might it require us to return to the world before Martin Luther, a place Thomas More half satiricizes Utopia, where “private life” was a dangerously foreign idea. 1. Privacy is a Historical Accident, Not a Natural Human Condition"There was a sense in which you shouldn't do anything privately that they wouldn't do publicly... This wasn't a kind of property-based private life." Jenkins argues that before the 17th century, the very concept of leading a separate private life didn't exist—privacy as we understand it is a relatively recent invention.2. Martin Luther Accidentally Created Modern Privacy Through Religious Rebellion"Luther inadvertently... authorized the self as against, in his case, the Catholic Church... if you follow the debates over the kind of beginnings of a private sphere and its expansion, whether you're reading Locke or Hobbes, there's a discussion about... the limits of authority." Luther's challenge to religious authority unintentionally created the need for private conscience, sparking centuries of development toward individual privacy.3. The Digital Age Represents a Return to Pre-Privacy Transparency"I think we do live in a period where there is little distinction between public and private, where the idea that you might keep something to yourself is seen as strange, as inauthentic." Jenkins suggests our current era of social media oversharing resembles pre-modern times more than the Victorian peak of privacy.4. Modern Loneliness Stems From Social Fragmentation, Not Individual Psychology"I sometimes wonder if we're pathologizing, actually, what is a social problem, which is a society where people are fragmented, not quite sure how to go beyond themselves... I would see that as a social problem." Rather than treating loneliness as a personal issue, Jenkins argues it reflects the breakdown of intermediate institutions between family and state.5. Technology Doesn't Determine Our Privacy—We Do"Can't blame the tech, tech isn't the problem... It comes down really to what sort of society we want to live in and how we want to be treated. That's not a technical thing. That has not to do with technology. That's to do humans." Jenkins rejects technological determinism, arguing that privacy's fate depends on human choices about social organization, not inevitable technological forces.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Writing Embodiment in Victorian Microscopy: Beautiful Mechanism (Oxford UP, 2025) by Dr. Meegan Kennedy examines a revolutionary period in microscopical technology and practice. At first considered a mere toy, by 1900 the microscope rivaled the railway and telegraph as an emblem of modernity and enjoyed an astonishing diversity of applications. This technology could drive scientific debates on subjects like cell theory, vitalism, and bacteriology; guide workers in classrooms, laboratories, and businesses; and inspire a personal hobby or a mass entertainment. Victorian microscopy productively cuts across the ostensibly separate domains of science, religion, commerce, art, education, entertainment, and domestic life.Writing Embodiment in Victorian Microscopy reads nineteenth-century microscopy across scientific, literary, religious, and popular texts. It argues that Victorian microscopists saw their vision and cognition as fully embodied experiences, the images emerging through a material entanglement of bodies (observer, instrument, apparatus, object) in a dynamic, unstable system. These ideas echo the work of physiological psychologists, who proposed mind as a system of embodied, distributed, and dynamic processes shaped by automatic or unconscious reflex action, attention, mental training, and fatigue. Striving to regulate this complex system, microscopists circulated tropes of embodiment through the varied forms of nineteenth-century print culture. They adapted existing concepts (such as beauty, the sublime, natural theology, and fairylands), or coined new phrases (such as many-sided comprehension), to promote favored forms of embodiment and enculturate microscopy as a difficult but valuable pursuit. Writing Embodiment draws on important work in book history and periodical studies by emphasizing the circulation of these tropes in intermedial conversations across diverse print forms.Victorians understood wonder and skepticism not as incommensurate approaches to scientific observation but rather as complementary forms of embodiment. Romantic tropes of wonder solicit affective flows from observer to wriggling animalcule and back; while skeptical, realist tropes offer to train the reader's eye, hand, body, and judgment and to formalize microscopical practice. Microscopical narratives may manipulate wonder and skepticism in productive tension or create virtual storyspaces that enlist the reader in virtual witnessing. These tropes shape every level of microscopical interest and proficiency. By analyzing their use and circulation, Writing Embodiment illuminates wider patterns of Victorian thought on embodiment, scientific practice, and community. 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

Writing Embodiment in Victorian Microscopy: Beautiful Mechanism (Oxford UP, 2025) by Dr. Meegan Kennedy examines a revolutionary period in microscopical technology and practice. At first considered a mere toy, by 1900 the microscope rivaled the railway and telegraph as an emblem of modernity and enjoyed an astonishing diversity of applications. This technology could drive scientific debates on subjects like cell theory, vitalism, and bacteriology; guide workers in classrooms, laboratories, and businesses; and inspire a personal hobby or a mass entertainment. Victorian microscopy productively cuts across the ostensibly separate domains of science, religion, commerce, art, education, entertainment, and domestic life.Writing Embodiment in Victorian Microscopy reads nineteenth-century microscopy across scientific, literary, religious, and popular texts. It argues that Victorian microscopists saw their vision and cognition as fully embodied experiences, the images emerging through a material entanglement of bodies (observer, instrument, apparatus, object) in a dynamic, unstable system. These ideas echo the work of physiological psychologists, who proposed mind as a system of embodied, distributed, and dynamic processes shaped by automatic or unconscious reflex action, attention, mental training, and fatigue. Striving to regulate this complex system, microscopists circulated tropes of embodiment through the varied forms of nineteenth-century print culture. They adapted existing concepts (such as beauty, the sublime, natural theology, and fairylands), or coined new phrases (such as many-sided comprehension), to promote favored forms of embodiment and enculturate microscopy as a difficult but valuable pursuit. Writing Embodiment draws on important work in book history and periodical studies by emphasizing the circulation of these tropes in intermedial conversations across diverse print forms.Victorians understood wonder and skepticism not as incommensurate approaches to scientific observation but rather as complementary forms of embodiment. Romantic tropes of wonder solicit affective flows from observer to wriggling animalcule and back; while skeptical, realist tropes offer to train the reader's eye, hand, body, and judgment and to formalize microscopical practice. Microscopical narratives may manipulate wonder and skepticism in productive tension or create virtual storyspaces that enlist the reader in virtual witnessing. These tropes shape every level of microscopical interest and proficiency. By analyzing their use and circulation, Writing Embodiment illuminates wider patterns of Victorian thought on embodiment, scientific practice, and community. 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

Writing Embodiment in Victorian Microscopy: Beautiful Mechanism (Oxford UP, 2025) by Dr. Meegan Kennedy examines a revolutionary period in microscopical technology and practice. At first considered a mere toy, by 1900 the microscope rivaled the railway and telegraph as an emblem of modernity and enjoyed an astonishing diversity of applications. This technology could drive scientific debates on subjects like cell theory, vitalism, and bacteriology; guide workers in classrooms, laboratories, and businesses; and inspire a personal hobby or a mass entertainment. Victorian microscopy productively cuts across the ostensibly separate domains of science, religion, commerce, art, education, entertainment, and domestic life.Writing Embodiment in Victorian Microscopy reads nineteenth-century microscopy across scientific, literary, religious, and popular texts. It argues that Victorian microscopists saw their vision and cognition as fully embodied experiences, the images emerging through a material entanglement of bodies (observer, instrument, apparatus, object) in a dynamic, unstable system. These ideas echo the work of physiological psychologists, who proposed mind as a system of embodied, distributed, and dynamic processes shaped by automatic or unconscious reflex action, attention, mental training, and fatigue. Striving to regulate this complex system, microscopists circulated tropes of embodiment through the varied forms of nineteenth-century print culture. They adapted existing concepts (such as beauty, the sublime, natural theology, and fairylands), or coined new phrases (such as many-sided comprehension), to promote favored forms of embodiment and enculturate microscopy as a difficult but valuable pursuit. Writing Embodiment draws on important work in book history and periodical studies by emphasizing the circulation of these tropes in intermedial conversations across diverse print forms.Victorians understood wonder and skepticism not as incommensurate approaches to scientific observation but rather as complementary forms of embodiment. Romantic tropes of wonder solicit affective flows from observer to wriggling animalcule and back; while skeptical, realist tropes offer to train the reader's eye, hand, body, and judgment and to formalize microscopical practice. Microscopical narratives may manipulate wonder and skepticism in productive tension or create virtual storyspaces that enlist the reader in virtual witnessing. These tropes shape every level of microscopical interest and proficiency. By analyzing their use and circulation, Writing Embodiment illuminates wider patterns of Victorian thought on embodiment, scientific practice, and community. 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/european-studies

Writing Embodiment in Victorian Microscopy: Beautiful Mechanism (Oxford UP, 2025) by Dr. Meegan Kennedy examines a revolutionary period in microscopical technology and practice. At first considered a mere toy, by 1900 the microscope rivaled the railway and telegraph as an emblem of modernity and enjoyed an astonishing diversity of applications. This technology could drive scientific debates on subjects like cell theory, vitalism, and bacteriology; guide workers in classrooms, laboratories, and businesses; and inspire a personal hobby or a mass entertainment. Victorian microscopy productively cuts across the ostensibly separate domains of science, religion, commerce, art, education, entertainment, and domestic life.Writing Embodiment in Victorian Microscopy reads nineteenth-century microscopy across scientific, literary, religious, and popular texts. It argues that Victorian microscopists saw their vision and cognition as fully embodied experiences, the images emerging through a material entanglement of bodies (observer, instrument, apparatus, object) in a dynamic, unstable system. These ideas echo the work of physiological psychologists, who proposed mind as a system of embodied, distributed, and dynamic processes shaped by automatic or unconscious reflex action, attention, mental training, and fatigue. Striving to regulate this complex system, microscopists circulated tropes of embodiment through the varied forms of nineteenth-century print culture. They adapted existing concepts (such as beauty, the sublime, natural theology, and fairylands), or coined new phrases (such as many-sided comprehension), to promote favored forms of embodiment and enculturate microscopy as a difficult but valuable pursuit. Writing Embodiment draws on important work in book history and periodical studies by emphasizing the circulation of these tropes in intermedial conversations across diverse print forms.Victorians understood wonder and skepticism not as incommensurate approaches to scientific observation but rather as complementary forms of embodiment. Romantic tropes of wonder solicit affective flows from observer to wriggling animalcule and back; while skeptical, realist tropes offer to train the reader's eye, hand, body, and judgment and to formalize microscopical practice. Microscopical narratives may manipulate wonder and skepticism in productive tension or create virtual storyspaces that enlist the reader in virtual witnessing. These tropes shape every level of microscopical interest and proficiency. By analyzing their use and circulation, Writing Embodiment illuminates wider patterns of Victorian thought on embodiment, scientific practice, and community. 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

Writing Embodiment in Victorian Microscopy: Beautiful Mechanism (Oxford UP, 2025) by Dr. Meegan Kennedy examines a revolutionary period in microscopical technology and practice. At first considered a mere toy, by 1900 the microscope rivaled the railway and telegraph as an emblem of modernity and enjoyed an astonishing diversity of applications. This technology could drive scientific debates on subjects like cell theory, vitalism, and bacteriology; guide workers in classrooms, laboratories, and businesses; and inspire a personal hobby or a mass entertainment. Victorian microscopy productively cuts across the ostensibly separate domains of science, religion, commerce, art, education, entertainment, and domestic life.Writing Embodiment in Victorian Microscopy reads nineteenth-century microscopy across scientific, literary, religious, and popular texts. It argues that Victorian microscopists saw their vision and cognition as fully embodied experiences, the images emerging through a material entanglement of bodies (observer, instrument, apparatus, object) in a dynamic, unstable system. These ideas echo the work of physiological psychologists, who proposed mind as a system of embodied, distributed, and dynamic processes shaped by automatic or unconscious reflex action, attention, mental training, and fatigue. Striving to regulate this complex system, microscopists circulated tropes of embodiment through the varied forms of nineteenth-century print culture. They adapted existing concepts (such as beauty, the sublime, natural theology, and fairylands), or coined new phrases (such as many-sided comprehension), to promote favored forms of embodiment and enculturate microscopy as a difficult but valuable pursuit. Writing Embodiment draws on important work in book history and periodical studies by emphasizing the circulation of these tropes in intermedial conversations across diverse print forms.Victorians understood wonder and skepticism not as incommensurate approaches to scientific observation but rather as complementary forms of embodiment. Romantic tropes of wonder solicit affective flows from observer to wriggling animalcule and back; while skeptical, realist tropes offer to train the reader's eye, hand, body, and judgment and to formalize microscopical practice. Microscopical narratives may manipulate wonder and skepticism in productive tension or create virtual storyspaces that enlist the reader in virtual witnessing. These tropes shape every level of microscopical interest and proficiency. By analyzing their use and circulation, Writing Embodiment illuminates wider patterns of Victorian thought on embodiment, scientific practice, and community. 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/science-technology-and-society

Writing Embodiment in Victorian Microscopy: Beautiful Mechanism (Oxford UP, 2025) by Dr. Meegan Kennedy examines a revolutionary period in microscopical technology and practice. At first considered a mere toy, by 1900 the microscope rivaled the railway and telegraph as an emblem of modernity and enjoyed an astonishing diversity of applications. This technology could drive scientific debates on subjects like cell theory, vitalism, and bacteriology; guide workers in classrooms, laboratories, and businesses; and inspire a personal hobby or a mass entertainment. Victorian microscopy productively cuts across the ostensibly separate domains of science, religion, commerce, art, education, entertainment, and domestic life.Writing Embodiment in Victorian Microscopy reads nineteenth-century microscopy across scientific, literary, religious, and popular texts. It argues that Victorian microscopists saw their vision and cognition as fully embodied experiences, the images emerging through a material entanglement of bodies (observer, instrument, apparatus, object) in a dynamic, unstable system. These ideas echo the work of physiological psychologists, who proposed mind as a system of embodied, distributed, and dynamic processes shaped by automatic or unconscious reflex action, attention, mental training, and fatigue. Striving to regulate this complex system, microscopists circulated tropes of embodiment through the varied forms of nineteenth-century print culture. They adapted existing concepts (such as beauty, the sublime, natural theology, and fairylands), or coined new phrases (such as many-sided comprehension), to promote favored forms of embodiment and enculturate microscopy as a difficult but valuable pursuit. Writing Embodiment draws on important work in book history and periodical studies by emphasizing the circulation of these tropes in intermedial conversations across diverse print forms.Victorians understood wonder and skepticism not as incommensurate approaches to scientific observation but rather as complementary forms of embodiment. Romantic tropes of wonder solicit affective flows from observer to wriggling animalcule and back; while skeptical, realist tropes offer to train the reader's eye, hand, body, and judgment and to formalize microscopical practice. Microscopical narratives may manipulate wonder and skepticism in productive tension or create virtual storyspaces that enlist the reader in virtual witnessing. These tropes shape every level of microscopical interest and proficiency. By analyzing their use and circulation, Writing Embodiment illuminates wider patterns of Victorian thought on embodiment, scientific practice, and community. 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/technology

Writing Embodiment in Victorian Microscopy: Beautiful Mechanism (Oxford UP, 2025) by Dr. Meegan Kennedy examines a revolutionary period in microscopical technology and practice. At first considered a mere toy, by 1900 the microscope rivaled the railway and telegraph as an emblem of modernity and enjoyed an astonishing diversity of applications. This technology could drive scientific debates on subjects like cell theory, vitalism, and bacteriology; guide workers in classrooms, laboratories, and businesses; and inspire a personal hobby or a mass entertainment. Victorian microscopy productively cuts across the ostensibly separate domains of science, religion, commerce, art, education, entertainment, and domestic life.Writing Embodiment in Victorian Microscopy reads nineteenth-century microscopy across scientific, literary, religious, and popular texts. It argues that Victorian microscopists saw their vision and cognition as fully embodied experiences, the images emerging through a material entanglement of bodies (observer, instrument, apparatus, object) in a dynamic, unstable system. These ideas echo the work of physiological psychologists, who proposed mind as a system of embodied, distributed, and dynamic processes shaped by automatic or unconscious reflex action, attention, mental training, and fatigue. Striving to regulate this complex system, microscopists circulated tropes of embodiment through the varied forms of nineteenth-century print culture. They adapted existing concepts (such as beauty, the sublime, natural theology, and fairylands), or coined new phrases (such as many-sided comprehension), to promote favored forms of embodiment and enculturate microscopy as a difficult but valuable pursuit. Writing Embodiment draws on important work in book history and periodical studies by emphasizing the circulation of these tropes in intermedial conversations across diverse print forms.Victorians understood wonder and skepticism not as incommensurate approaches to scientific observation but rather as complementary forms of embodiment. Romantic tropes of wonder solicit affective flows from observer to wriggling animalcule and back; while skeptical, realist tropes offer to train the reader's eye, hand, body, and judgment and to formalize microscopical practice. Microscopical narratives may manipulate wonder and skepticism in productive tension or create virtual storyspaces that enlist the reader in virtual witnessing. These tropes shape every level of microscopical interest and proficiency. By analyzing their use and circulation, Writing Embodiment illuminates wider patterns of Victorian thought on embodiment, scientific practice, and community. 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/british-studies

Writing Embodiment in Victorian Microscopy: Beautiful Mechanism (Oxford UP, 2025) by Dr. Meegan Kennedy examines a revolutionary period in microscopical technology and practice. At first considered a mere toy, by 1900 the microscope rivaled the railway and telegraph as an emblem of modernity and enjoyed an astonishing diversity of applications. This technology could drive scientific debates on subjects like cell theory, vitalism, and bacteriology; guide workers in classrooms, laboratories, and businesses; and inspire a personal hobby or a mass entertainment. Victorian microscopy productively cuts across the ostensibly separate domains of science, religion, commerce, art, education, entertainment, and domestic life.Writing Embodiment in Victorian Microscopy reads nineteenth-century microscopy across scientific, literary, religious, and popular texts. It argues that Victorian microscopists saw their vision and cognition as fully embodied experiences, the images emerging through a material entanglement of bodies (observer, instrument, apparatus, object) in a dynamic, unstable system. These ideas echo the work of physiological psychologists, who proposed mind as a system of embodied, distributed, and dynamic processes shaped by automatic or unconscious reflex action, attention, mental training, and fatigue. Striving to regulate this complex system, microscopists circulated tropes of embodiment through the varied forms of nineteenth-century print culture. They adapted existing concepts (such as beauty, the sublime, natural theology, and fairylands), or coined new phrases (such as many-sided comprehension), to promote favored forms of embodiment and enculturate microscopy as a difficult but valuable pursuit. Writing Embodiment draws on important work in book history and periodical studies by emphasizing the circulation of these tropes in intermedial conversations across diverse print forms.Victorians understood wonder and skepticism not as incommensurate approaches to scientific observation but rather as complementary forms of embodiment. Romantic tropes of wonder solicit affective flows from observer to wriggling animalcule and back; while skeptical, realist tropes offer to train the reader's eye, hand, body, and judgment and to formalize microscopical practice. Microscopical narratives may manipulate wonder and skepticism in productive tension or create virtual storyspaces that enlist the reader in virtual witnessing. These tropes shape every level of microscopical interest and proficiency. By analyzing their use and circulation, Writing Embodiment illuminates wider patterns of Victorian thought on embodiment, scientific practice, and community. 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.

RACV is calling on Victorians to share their insight into the state's most dangerous intersections as they launch the My Melbourne Road survey. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode 135 - Allan Chapman - The Victorians and the Holy LandIn this episode of Still Unbelievable! Matthew chats with Allan Chapman, who teaches history of science at Oxford University, and has written extensively on history and science, including the relationship between the two. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and a founder member of the Society for the History of Astronomy. He is the author of several books, including the one we will be discussing this episode. If you have any interest in the history of Christianity, then we recommend this book as an enjoyable read. As always, see the show notes to for links to the book and topics that are referenced in the book. There are items in the links that we do not specifically cover in this conversation, so please to check them out for a taste of what the book covers.1) The Victorians and the Holy Land: Adventurers, Tourists, and Archaeologists in the Lands of the Biblehttps://amzn.eu/d/j7QAYC52) Ozymandias By Percy Bysshe Shelley - referenced in Chapter 2https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias3) A description of the East, and some other countries ... / By Richard Pococke - referenced in Chapter 2https://wellcomecollection.org/works/me6h66jf/items4) Petra by John William Burgon - referenced in chapter 2http://www.poetryatlas.com/poetry/poem/3771/petra.html5) Johann Ludwig Burckhardt - explorer(includes links to his published works)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Ludwig_Burckhardt6) Lady Amytis, wife of Nebuchadnezzarhttps://www.historyofroyalwomen.com/amytis-of-babylon/amytis-of-babylon-the-queens-hanging-gardens-of-babylon/7) Remarkably preserved shrines recovered at Assyrian temple of Ninurta in Nimrud, Iraqhttps://archaeologymag.com/2024/12/remarkably-preserved-shrines-recovered-in-nimrud/8) Biblical Researches - by Edward Robinson & Eli Smith - referenced in chapter 7https://archive.org/details/biblicalresearc01smitgoog9) Sinai & Palestine - by AP Stanley - referenced in chapter 7https://archive.org/details/sinaipalestinei00stan/page/n9/mode/2up10) A thousand miles up the Nile by Amelia B. Edwards - referenced in chapter 13https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/70565To contact us, email: reasonpress@gmail.comour YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@reasonpress2901Our Theme Music was written for us by Holly, to support her and to purchase her music use the links below:https://hollykirstensongs.com/https://hollykirsten.bandcamp.com/

Enjoy this look back on our Season 6 3-part miniseries about the Victorians which was produced during the run of our temporary exhibition Victorian Tweets.

What does feel like to live helplessly in a world that is coming undone? If you're alive in 2025, you are probably very familiar with this feeling - and if you'd been alive in the age of Victorian literature, you might have felt that way too. In this episode, Jacke talks to author Nathan K. Hensley about his book Action without Hope: Victorian Literature after Climate Collapse, which studies how authors like George Eliot, Emily Brontë, H.G. Wells, Lewis Carroll, and Christina Rossetti used aesthetic strategies to deal with the anxiety and despair of ongoing climate disaster. What did they face? How did they cope? And can we learn from their examples? PLUS Jacke dives into some news from Italian museums, where people have been "losing their brains." What's going on with them? AND two Dickens experts, Stephen Browning and Simon Thomas, co-authors of The Real Charles Dickens, stop by to discuss their choice for the last book will they ever read. Will they choose something by Dickens? Note: The "My Last Book" conversation in this episode was recorded before the untimely passing of Stephen Browning. He was a wonderful guest, and we at the History of Literature Podcast are very grateful to have had the chance to speak with him. Our deepest sympathies are with his friends, family, and loved ones. May he rest in peace. Special Announcement: The History of Literature Podcast Tour is happening in May 2026! Act now to join Jacke and fellow literature fans on an eight-day journey through literary England in partnership with ⁠John Shors Travel⁠. Find out more by emailing jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com or masahiko@johnshorstravel.com, or by contacting us through our website ⁠historyofliterature.com⁠. Or visit the ⁠History of Literature Podcast Tour itinerary⁠ at ⁠John Shors Travel⁠. The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at ⁠gabrielruizbernal.com ⁠. Help support the show at ⁠patreon.com/literature ⁠or ⁠historyofliterature.com/donate ⁠. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at ⁠thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature ⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is an Annette on the Road post at Non-Boring History, in which your host, historian Annette Laing, plays tourist around the US and UK.Voiceover podcasts of NBH posts are normally only available to paid subscribers, but this time, it's a free sample. Join us today to get every one Annette records!Note from AnnetteJames Garfield belongs to that select group of American presidents whom people remember—if at all— for being assassinated. Look, I'm not an exception to “people”. I'm a historian, sure. Dr. Laing, that's me! But historians don't know everything about history. Not even in our own subjects. Not even close. Or close to close.Hoosen and I did not mean to stop at President James Garfield's home. But while Hoosen was peering at our tires in this land-that-time-forgot-yet-cool gas station parking lot in Mentor, Ohio, I peered at Google Maps. I noticed we were a half mile from the James A. Garfield House, and that it's owned by the National Parks Service.Sorry, libertarians, but even non-historian Hoosen has noticed that a federal government museum is a guarantee of high quality, and as is sometimes the case, as here, it means free admission. Think of the taxpayer value as I spread the word and you read it! Trust me, there's no commercial value in a Garfield museum, but there is value.This museum isn't about Garfield's extremely short presidency (100 days) much less his political career. It's about James Garfield's home, and what happened to that home after his untimely death. Home, Sweet Home!Middle class Victorians—American and British— put the family home on a pedestal. Until now, the home for most Americans had been a workplace, a farm or a shop or a workshop, where the whole family worked together, ate, and slept. But big changes in the economy in the 19th century meant that many men of the new middle class now left the home to work, kind of the reverse of going remote. Such men now thought of home sentimentally, as a cosy refuge from a cruel and complicated world. Their wives (typically more educated than their predecessors) continued to stay home, but now had servants to do much of the drudgery. Middle-class women were encouraged to consider the home their domain. The Garfields were no exception. This estate, Lawnfield, is their home, and it appears largely as it did when Mrs. Garfield died. The lawn of its name would become more important than the field. When the Garfields bought Lawnfield, however, it was a working farm. Garfield bought this place because he wanted his kids to grow up on a farm, just like he had, only with more money. James Garfield thought that farms were an essential part of a great, healthy childhood. Which is striking, because James Garfield was an unlikely champion of the “good old days”: He helped usher in the modern age.Garfield fought in the Civil War, tried to improve civil rights and education for newly freed slaves, and even participated in the great money grab as the American “gilded age” began. He also added eleven rooms to his farmhouse to accommodate the family in comfort, so his commitment to the simple farm life had its limits. Yet James Garfield wasn't entirely comfortable with modern life. Garfield had grown up in what historians call a “face to face” society, in which people mostly dealt with people they knew, or at least recognized. Even the “front porch” political campaign technique James Garfield invented harked back to an earlier time: On Lawnfield's front porch, he met voters. But he also met there with newspaper reporters who communicated his words around the nation and the world- very modern. Lawnfield, as a farm, was mostly cosplay for the Garfields. Most of the farmwork at Lawnfield was done by hired men. But James and the children also dabbled at farm chores, pitching hay to build character. James Garfield was a self-made and possibly a teensy bit corrupt politician (see Credit Mobilier scandal).I've written at Non-Boring History about an over-the-top monument to two of the most scandalous men involved in Credit Mobilier :So James Garfield was very much a man of the mid-19th century. He was torn between the modern world of cities and business, and the agricultural world of his youth that was fast disappearing.What I most enjoyed about visiting Lawnfield was that about 80% of the house furnishings really had belonged to the Garfields, which is very unusual for a house museum. Let me rush to add that I'm not one of those people who's super-interested in old furniture. No, what I liked about the Garfield house is that I felt (rightly or wrongly) that I could sense the family personality. No, no ghosts, please. I'm a historian, for heavens' sake. I have some standards. No, okay, I don't, I love ghost stories, but not today.Home Shadowy Home: American Victorians I love a gloomy, gaslit Victorian house. Yes, ok, the Garfield home is all-electric now for health and safety, but work with me here. The house is dark, cluttered, and makes me think of arsenic poisoning, and other morbid mid-Victorian subjects. Look, the problem isn't me, at least I don't think it is. Victorians were weird, and especially the people I think of as mid-Victorians, a period I am going to date from 1851 to 1875, based on British historian Geoffrey Best's definition of mid-Victorian Britain. In this case, those dates marking off the era work fairly well for America too. Oh, what the hey. If Geoffrey Best could decide when a historical period ends, so can Annette Laing! I say 1881 for the end of the mid-Victorian era. Oh, that's the year James Garfield died? You don't say. Perfect! 1881 it is! ANNOUNCEMENT from the NBH QUALITY CONTROL GNOME : Dr. Laing is correct that historians can argue for changes in commonly-accepted dates for the beginning and end of historical periods. Most historians, however, would consider changing the ending date of the British mid-Victorian era simply because a United States president, in Annette's words, “snuffed it” that year is, however, unconvincing. Thank you.Mid- Victorians like James Garfield lived in an increasingly modern age, and yet death stalked the land like, as the old BBC historical sitcom Blackadder would put it, a giant stalking thing. Americans and Brits, especially those living in cities, were defenseless against disease. Antibiotics were almost a century in the future. Anesthetics and antiseptics were in their infancy. Germs were a new concept. Sewer systems and clean water were a novelty. Victorians were only just learning that illness wasn't a product of “bad air” (note those high ceilings and lots of windows in Victorian institutions). Result? Children, especially, died in horrifying numbers. James and Lucretia Garfield lost two kids in infancy, and James himself was named for a brother, James, who had died young. Get a little shudder at the idea of naming a child after a deceased sibling? Welcome to history!How gloomy is this hallway in the Garfield House? In fact, my wonderful phone camera automatically brightened up the room: It was actually darker than you see. Here's Claire, our NPS tour guide (but without the intimidating Smokey the Bear uniform) who was full of energy, knowledge, and good cheer, which while appreciated, seemed at first to be all wrong for this setting. I was thinking we should have been led by some guy dressed as Lurch the Butler from the Addams family.This hall wasn't a welcoming space to strangers when the Garfields lived here. Most callers had to run through a selection process. When a servant greeted you at the door, she looked you up and down to see if you were suitable for admission. If you passed her first test, she invited you into this hall, and you deposited your visiting card on a waiting plate. A visiting card was basically like a business card, except that only your name was on it. If you graduated high school in the US, you may recall the company that expensively printed your graduation invitation also hit you up for visiting cards. A rip off, wasn't it?Right. Anyway. So the servant now shows you into the reception area (entryway is in the photo above, next to the dude on the left who's staring at the ceiling). Here you wait awkwardly, standing or sitting on a bench or upright chair, while the maid takes the card upstairs to the mistress of the house. She will decide whether to come down and receive you in the parlor, or whether she will instruct the maid to tell you she's unavailable (at least to you) and show you the door. Until then, you are not admitted into the family home. Indeed, there were sliding wooden “pocket” doors in this reception room which were closed so you can't see into the family room or the dining room that leads off it. The pocket doors are now gone, but they were once there, as I pointed out to a surprised Claire the guide, who examined the doorways and confirmed my hunch, while everyone else wondered how that funny little British woman knew such a thing, or thought me some ghastly showing-off Karen.This reception area, created for the purposes of the odd little ritual I just described, wasn't here when the Garfields moved in, or even when James died. It was originally the kitchen. The reception area was devised by Mrs. Garfield after her husband's death. That's because, in her very public widowhood, Mrs. Garfield had further converted the home from workplace to middle-class family sanctuary.On Garfield (man, not cartoon cat)James Abram Garfield may have been the poorest man ever to have ended up as President, and he was definitely the last United States President to be born in a log cabin, a type of tiny dwelling that definitely wasn't a lifestyle choice in 1831.Not only was James Garfield's family poor, but they got poorer: His dad, Abram, died when he was a baby, and he and his four siblings were raised in poverty by his single mother, Eliza. Like many Americans, and especially in new Midwestern states like Ohio, the Garfields were repeat migrants. Eliza's family started out in Wales, something of which she was very proud, while Abram's came from Warwickshire, Shakespeare's county, two centuries before James' birth. The first American Garfields came over as part of the Great Migration of Puritans in 1630 who started Massachusetts. But, like many poor New Englanders, some Garfields eventually moved on to New York State, where land was cheaper.Garfield's dad, Abram, traveled to Ohio all the way from rural New York to propose to the girl of his dreams. He arrived to discover she had already married someone else, and so, not wanting to waste the journey, he married her sister instead. When James was a baby, Abram and his wife Eliza were caught up in the Second Great Awakening of the early 1830s, a massive evangelical Christian movement that swept America. As an early Americanist, I'm more familiar with the first Great Awakening (about a century earlier) but the second was just as profound. The Garfields got religion, but Abram died not long after. James, as the youngest, became very close to his mum, Eliza.So, in short, young James Garfield was poor, fatherless, and after his mother remarried and then divorced, a member of a scandalous family. He was ostracized by his peers. But he had the kind of rags-to-riches success story that Victorian Americans loved, and that were broadcast in the books of Horatio Alger. Indeed, Alger wrote a biography of Garfield called From Canal Boy to President. Alger's implied message was that if you're not rich, you're just not trying hard enough, a message that has caused Americans great anxiety from that day to this, and kind of ignores the roles of inherited wealth, connections, corruption, and plain old luck in gaining worldly success.James Garfield didn't have boyhood friends. So, instead, he read books, and learned. He left home at 16, and tried working on the new canals of the 1840s. But illness forced him home. His mother encouraged him to try school, which he did, and the education bug bit him. After two years of schooling, he was determined to go to college. Working as a part-time teacher, carpenter, and janitor, James Garfield paid his own way through Williams College in Massachusetts. And before anyone says “He couldn't afford to do that now,” he would certainly have qualified for full financial aid today.When I read Garfield described as a “radical Republican” and an abolitionist, I figured I had a handle on his politics. But I quickly realized that no, I don't, and I don't have time to learn enough to write confidently on his career. I really don't get 19th century politics —good luck getting that kind of honesty from pretendy “historians” of the blowhard fake variety! Sure, Garfield was radical: He supported abolition, and education for former slaves. But he opposed the eight hour day, labor unions, and federal government relief during economic downturns. So I'm not going to write about his politics until I read a book or two.Back to Garfield's house and family!Garfield's Doting MumI started to get a feeling of looming tragedy when the tour got to this room. This was where Garfield's mum Eliza lived when she moved in with the family. Check out the impractical but gorgeous Victorian stained glass firescreen emblazoned with Garfield's face in the top right corner. A firescreen is supposed to prevent burning embers entering the room from a fireplace. In summer, when the fireplace wasn't used, the fire screen served as a decorative thingy. This firescreen, featuring Garfield's head in stained glass, is just one of several images of Garfield in his mother's bedroom, as you can see above. Eliza outlived her favorite child, the boy who, unbelievably, had become president, by several years. It was, it seemed to me, a tragic room, a fragile room. I was already thinking of the gloomy Garfield home as a very sad place.Yet this was also a home filled with people, judging from the number of bedrooms. This one caught my eye because of the delicately patterned carpet.Let's take a closer look, shall we?WHAT HELL IS THIS? Was President Garfield a Nazi before Nazis were a thing?? No worries. The swastika was a symbol of good luck before the Nazis ruined it. Please try to look at this carpet from the perspective of people who had never heard of Hitler, and would be horrified if they had. Real, Flesh and Blood Americans: A President and His FamilyRoom by room, the Victorian Garfield family came to life. The dining room, where they gathered, was a typically formal middle-class Victorian room, sure. But the dining room was warmed by a fireplace surrounded by individually painted tiles that every child had a hand in creating. Suddenly, I was intrigued. Painting personalized tiles was a project that suggested a happy home. There were at least two pianos, so this wasn't the quiet house that greets us today: I imagine a kid or two was always bashing away on the ivories. No, wait, they were Victorians . . . Playing the piano properly, with straight backs. Or was I stereotyping?Garfield's children remained a muddled lot in my head, but I did enjoy the teenage girl room, with its “Turkish corner”, bright fabric wall hangings over a daybed, kind of like having a batik hanging over a beanbag for a later generation, and its cluttered dressing table (think loads of make-up today).Garfield's library was a very masculine space, just what you would imagine a Victorian father would have. A sort of ship feel to the design. Pictures of Civil War Union General William T. Sherman, French dictator Napoleon Bonaparte, and founder of Germany Otto Von Bismarck, an odd collection of powerful men, lined up on the walls. And, of course, a huge, eclectic book collection, including the delightfully titled Brain Hygiene, a Victorian manual of psychology from the people who brought you measuring heads to check for mental illness (Oh, and Americans, gotta love your often slightly odd applications of the word “hygiene” over the years, just saying. Love you. Mwah.)The highlight of the house in my view, though, was this chair in Garfield's study. His kids had it made for him in light of Dad's habit of sitting in a desk chair sideways while reading, draping his legs over the side. Can't you just see him lounging in this? Much less formal and stuffy than his portraits and the library suggest!A Real Victorian Woman: Mrs. Garfield Takes ChargeFor me, Lucretia Garfield did not come at all into the picture until Garfield's assassination, and then, boy, did she. A Victorian GoFundMe raised the equivalent of millions for the family, and Lucretia sprang into action with the money. She had all the farm buildings (except the house) moved back on the lot, away from the road, and the house expanded to be more befitting of a martyred president. She completed Lawnfield's emphasis as a respectable middle-class family home that received frequent visitors, more than a working farm. And Lawnfield was an increasingly modern home. A widowed Lucretia did not shrink away from technical stuff. She learned that there was a source of natural gas on the property, and had the power source converted to gas from coal. The gas house is still on the grounds, next to the visitor center. Garfield 's library now became the focus of Lawnfield's third role as a semi-public shrine to a martyred President. Lucretia expanded the library in the years after her husband's death, adding a walk-in safe for official documents that even included a desk for researchers who hopefully didn't have claustrophobia. Lucretia basically created the first US Presidential Library, although the official holder of that title is the purpose-built Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library in Hyde Park, New York.There's even a touch of Lucretia in the remodeled library: A photo of Queen Victoria, who had written Lucretia a letter after James's death. Queen Victoria, who became a professional widow after Prince Albert's early death at age 41, twenty years before Garfield's assassination, wrote Mrs. Garfield a very sweet letter of consolation, which you can also see on site. I was pleasantly surprised by her words. I thought Victoria would, as usual, turn the letter's subject immediately to Albert (Never mind your husband, what about mine?) but she only did that a little bit in her note to Lucretia Garfield. When Death and Life Came to LawnfieldA deranged assassin named Charles Guiteau shot James Garfield at a train station in Washington DC in September 1881, just three months after he was inaugurated. Garfield took two months to die, and might even have survived if his doctors had paid more attention to British surgeon Joseph Lister's work, and not messed around in Garfield's wound with unwashed hands and instruments.Garfield was popular, and especially so after his death, only 100 days into his presidency, because it came as such a shock to the nation. In the museum in the visitor center, you will find all the creepy Victorian cult of death stuff on display: The preserved mattress used as an improvised stretcher to get him from the train station to a bed. The black-bordered stationery. The death mask. The souvenirs. The works. But our tour guide, Claire, insisted that the Garfield children later remembered Lawnfield as a happy, lively place. Wikipedia uses the word “cheerful” to describe the family who came to the White House in 1881. James Garfield, the fatherless boy from poverty (but whose family roots in New England suggested he had inherited educational wealth), and Lucretia Garfield, the intelligent and educated woman of her time whom Garfield met in college in Massachusetts, had done well by their five surviving children. Alone, Lucretia took charge, caring for kids, mother-in-law, home, and new role as Presidential widow. These people aren't remote and fascinating relics. They're real. Lucretia Garfield long outlived her husband, and spent at least part of the year at this house until her own death in 1918.Before leaving, I had a chat with Mary the National Parks Service ranger at the reception desk. Yes, Mary was one of those unlikely-looking museum staff in a quasi-military uniform with broad hat, Brits, don't worry, I don't get it either. But Mary was very pleasant. She asked me where Hoosen and I were headed next, and I told her. She said, “Oh, but you'll know about Guiteau, of course?”No. I didn't know about Guiteau and his connection to my next destination. But I was about to find out. Nothing is newThis post first appeared in earlier form (not much different) at Non-Boring History in 2022. Our next stop, long planned (unlike our stop in Mentor, Ohio), was in New York State, about 350 miles away. By astonishing coincidence, it really did have a direct connection with James Garfield, and also a very different interpretation of domestic bliss from the Garfield home in Mentor.Did you know? Become a paid subscriber and you get access to all my work. That includes EVERY weekly Tuesday post and my Sometimes Saturday posts for supporting subscribers only. It's a deal, I tell you! Going paid also gives you access to more than five hundred other still-fresh posts, including these, about our fascinating visit to a unique place in New York State that followed our stop in Mentor:Part 2 includes my chat with Dr. Tom Guiler, the resident historian at this truly astonishing site in New York:I'm Annette Laing, a Brit in America, and I am beyond grateful to every “Nonnie”, aka paying subscriber, in the US, UK, Canada, and around the world, who supports Non-Boring History. No exaggeration: I cannot do this without you and more people like you. In going paid, you can take pride in knowing that you're making it possible for me to continue to write for you as the world churns around us. Not yet a Nonnie? Please join us. Details: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit annettelaing.substack.com/subscribe

Tess Hills is an amazing performer - both street performance/immersive theatre and puppeteer. I had the sheer honor of working with Tess on Brainland as puppeteers.  She is the kind of person that elevates the whole quality of the project. Tess is fun to be on set with (we kept trying to hide stage clips on each other when the other one wasn't paying attention) and she also brings professional guidance to the project. I learned SO MUCH just by being around her. It was incredible. Tess owns and runs a company called Curious Cargo which has some fun shows for festivals and live events. They have a sketh/show called The Temperance Society described as, "Then never fear, the Victorians are here to help you mend your ways. They're frightfully proper, sombre and stern, with a terribly stiff upper lip." Truly an incredible performer. And one of those incredibly talented people who is also so so so humble. Her backbone is in play and always connecting. I loved doing this interview.  Hope you enjoy it!

Jacqui Felgate called out the decision, questioning how Victorians are lumped with tax whilst politicians are being financially rewarded. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ancient tombs. Angry mummies. Sudden deaths? In this episode, we drink and break down the legendary Curse of the Pharaohs—aka the reason everyone thought opening King Tut's tomb was a death sentence. And it was. Or was it?!

During the 1800s, the Victorians had the natural world pretty much figured out, or so they thought. Then a 12-year-old discovered the first dinosaur tracks.

Send us a textI'm speaking today with M. A. McLaughlin, author of The Lost Dresses of Italy listed in the Textile Arts category on Art In Fiction.View the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/rDe_rXrLC2kOverview of the story of The Lost Dresses of Italy as a dual time novel taking place in 1947 and 1864 and inspired by a three-week trip to Italy taken by Victorian poet Christina RossettiPoetry of Christina Rossetti and why it has enduredChristina's sonnet sequence Monna Innominata as inspiration for the plotCombining a costume history and design with the story of Christina's time in ItalyReasons for setting the modern story in post-war VeronaResearching costume design and preservationThe role of pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the novelSome of the challenges of fictionalizing real peopleWhat is it about the Romantics and Victorians that Marty is attracted to?Reading from The Lost Dresses of ItalyThings that Marty learned from writing her novel - the complicated nature of Italy's participation in World War II and its aftermath.Read more about M. A. McLaughlin on her website: https://martyambrose.com/Are you enjoying The Art In Fiction Podcast? Consider giving us a small donation so we can continue bringing you interviews with your favorite arts-inspired novelists. Click this link to donate: https://ko-fi.com/artinfiction.Also, check out Art In Fiction at https://www.artinfiction.com and explore 2300+ novels inspired by the arts in 11 categories: Architecture, Dance, Decorative Arts, Film, Literature, Music, Textile Arts, Theater, Visual Arts, & Other.Want to learn more about Carol Cram, the host of The Art In Fiction Podcast? She's the author of several award-winning novels, including The Towers of Tuscany and Love Among the Recipes. Find out more on her website.

For thousands of years, ancient cuneiform - the script of the ancient Mesopotamians was lost to time, until being dramatically rediscovered in the 19th century by an adventurous group of unlikely Victorians. A dashing archaeologist, an officer turned diplomat and a reclusive clergyman raced to decipher it and unlock the secrets of long-lost empires. Joining us is Joshua Hammer, a former war correspondent and author of 'The Mesopotamian Riddle'. Produced by Mariana Des Forges and James Hickmann, and edited by Tim Arstall.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.We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on.You can also email the podcast directly at ds.hh@historyhit.com.

In our latest episode, Natalie Bekis, Assistant Secretary Health Workforce Planning and Strategies Branch, Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care, Fiona Notley, Chief Operating Officer, and Vice President, RMIT delve into the pressing issue of the technology skills shortage in Victoria, unpacking the challenges and opportunities that come with building a resilient, future-ready workforce. It explores how partnerships between the tertiary education sector and the public sector can strengthen the talent pipeline, ensuring that Victoria has the right skills to meet its digital demands. Our listeners will also gain insights into how the Victorian Government can build a strong Employee Value Proposition (EVP) that attracts and retains top talent—from crafting compelling job ads to investing in meaningful employee development. Finally, the episode examines how the public sector can strike the right balance between technology and human resources to optimise workflows and deliver better outcomes for Victorians. Natalie Bekis, Assistant Secretary Health Workforce Planning and Strategies Branch, Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care, Fiona Notley, Chief Operating Officer, and Vice President, RMIT For more great insights head to www.PublicSectorNetwork.co  

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

Why did Victorians value pale skin so highly? And how were black bodies viewed by Victorian society?In this episode Kate is joined by author and historian Dr Rochelle Rowe of the University of Edinburgh.This episode was edited by Tom Delargy. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.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.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast.

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

Fresh warning over controversial $3m super tax laws, new analysis reveals Victorians face a massive $46bn Labor tax grab in the state budget. Plus, most people in the UK now say they self-identify as neurodivergent.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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/european-studies

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/religion

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.

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

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.

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/

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?

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.

  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!