Words To That Effect artwork

Words To That Effect

120 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 1 year ago - ★★★★★ - 30 ratings

Words To That Effect: Stories of the Fiction that Shapes Popular Culture. WTTE is a narrative storytelling show, hosted and produced by Conor Reid, that explores the intriguing places where fiction, history, science, and popular culture intersect and inspire. From the Victorian past to utopian futures, dinosaurs to detectives, zombies to mummies, how does literature shape our understanding of popular culture? Find out more at https://wttepodcast.com. WTTE is a part of the HeadStuff Podcast Network. Support the show and get bonus episodes and more by joining HeadStuff+ (https://headstuffpodcasts.com/show/words-to-that-effect) .

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Episodes

WTTE Season 6 Update

July 01, 2022 15:32 - 4 minutes

Unfortunately there aren't going to be any new episodes for a little while but have a listen to this short update letting you know what's going on at WTTE and where things are heading next.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

60: Dungeons & Dragons

May 19, 2022 05:00 - 29 minutes

Dungeons & Dragons plays a huge part in fiction and popular culture more generally, but it is often overlooked or misunderstood. In this episode I gather together an experienced Dungeon Master and some complete novices (including myself) to play D&D for the first time. Joining me to explore this new world is academic, and life-time D&D fan, Professor Curt Carbonell, who has recently published a book on the subject.  WTTE is part of the HeadStuff Podcast Network. You can support the show and ...

59: Robin Hood

April 30, 2022 20:52 - 32 minutes

From medieval ballads to the poetry of John Keats, stage productions to children’s songs, novels to comic books, silent movies to glorious technicolour, Disney classics to Kevin Costner blockbusters to Mel Brooks parodies to gritty reimaginings and lots, lots more, Robin Hood is certainly one of the most recognisable characters in all of western popular culture. Joining me to explore the legendary outlaw is Prof Valerie Johnson, from the University of Montevallo, Alabama. WTTE is part of th...

58: The Origins of the Gothic

March 31, 2022 09:40 - 27 minutes

What does the word "Gothic" mean to you? Gothic cathedrals and castles? Gothic fiction? Teenage goths dressed in black? Horror and the supernatural? This episode explores the origins of the gothic and one man's lasting influence on this most important of genres. Joining me as my gothic guide is Prof Dale Townshend, Professor of Gothic Literature at Manchester Metropolitan University. WTTE is part of the HeadStuff Podcast Network. You can support the show and get bonus content and more by ...

A Word To That Effect: Serendipity (Bonus Ep)

March 22, 2022 16:23 - 8 minutes

 A Word To That Effect is a new series of bonus mini-episodes about a single word or phrase with a distinctly literary origin. This week: serendipity. WTTE is part of the HeadStuff Podcast Network. You can support the show and get bonus content and more by becoming a member of HeadStuff+. Go to HeadStuffPodcasts.com For full transcripts, links, references, and more the home of the podcast is wttepodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A Word To That Effect: Cliffhanger (Bonus Ep)

March 08, 2022 21:38 - 9 minutes

A Word To That Effect is a new series of bonus mini-episodes about a single word or phrase with a distinctly literary origin. This week: cliffhanger! WTTE is part of the HeadStuff Podcast Network. You can support the show and get bonus content and more by becoming a member of HeadStuff+. Go to HeadStuffPodcasts.com For full transcripts, links, references, and more the home of the podcast is wttepodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

57: The Sensation Novel

February 22, 2022 20:46 - 33 minutes

Sensation fiction was a hugely popular genre in the 1860s. The novels were sensationally popular, but they also caused a sensation, with their plots of bigamy and murder, forgery and blackmail. In so many ways the influence of sensation fiction can still be felt today. WTTE is part of the HeadStuff Podcast Network. You can support the show and get bonus content and more by becoming a member of HeadStuff+. Go to HeadStuffPodcasts.com For full transcripts, links, references, and more the home...

56: Arthurian Romance

February 08, 2022 06:00 - 28 minutes

Knights in shining armour, damsels in distress, castles, chivalry and courtly love, heroic quests, dragons. King Arthur, Camelot, Merlin, the Knights of the Round Table, the Holy Grail. Think of King Arthur and the medieval romance and a huge number of images and tropes and cliches spring to mind. Where does all this come from? WTTE is part of the HeadStuff Podcast Network. You can support the show and get bonus content and more by becoming a member of HeadStuff+. Go to HeadStuffPodcasts...

55: A History of Dragons

January 25, 2022 06:00 - 31 minutes

Dragons have been around for a very long time.  They are one of the very few mythological creatures that have become absolutely central to popular culture; everyone knows what a dragon is. There are other important and well-known mythological creatures, but none are as ubiquitous as dragons, which can be found in Europe and the Americas, in classical and Biblical traditions, in ancient Indian tales and across Asian mythology.  So where do dragons come from? Why are they so common across cul...

Season 6 Preview

January 18, 2022 20:55 - 3 minutes

Words To That Effect is back! Find out what's coming up on Season 6, launching on Jan 25th Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

54: Underwater Worlds

July 21, 2021 02:00 - 30 minutes

There is a complex and fascinating relationship between humans and the ocean, how people and cultures across the world know and understand the sea, whether through myths and legends, through trade or fishing, exploration or entertainment.  This episode explores one particular aspect of all this - our relationship with the undersea, what lies beneath the surface of the oceans.  It is the 4th place in a loose miniseries of literary locations: Antarctica, the desert, the forest, and now the und...

53: Fiction & Food

June 11, 2021 14:01 - 1 hour

How do we use fiction in food? What does a character's choice of food reveal about them? Do you simply have to go and make a dish when it's described beautifully in a book? On this very special episode, a collaboration with the wonderful Spice Bags podcast, we discuss everything from 17th century Spanish literature to contemporary American horror, Italian detective novels to Japanese magical realism. Grab yourself a glass of Amarone and have a listen! Support the show and get lots of bonus...

52: Gothic Forests

April 30, 2021 05:00 - 24 minutes

The forest is a place we have very mixed feelings about. Forests can be calm and peaceful, full of ancient and natural beauty.   Until they’re not.  The forest, in so many ways, is a place we fear. They are dark and dense and overgrown, all too easy to get lost in. They hold secrets and mysteries, and creatures we’d rather not meet alone, far from home.  And if the monsters of the forest don’t get us, then the forest itself will. The strange, malevolent powers of the trees themselves.  Th...

51: Desert Fictions

March 31, 2021 02:00 - 30 minutes

How do we imagine and portray the desert? And what does it say about us and our relationship to each other and, crucially, to the planet we live on? In this, the second in a loosely connected series on places in fiction and popular culture, I chat to Dr Aidan Tynan about deserts in fiction and philosophy, from Mad Max to Burning Man, Nietzsche to Baudrillard,  Cormac McCarthy to China Miéville. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

50: Arsene Lupin

March 09, 2021 03:00 - 24 minutes

 In 1905 in Paris, the publisher Pierre Laffite had an idea. His new journal Je Sais Tout had just launched and he was looking for an author who could do for his magazine, what Arthur Conan Doyle’s phenomenally popular Sherlock Holmes had done for The Strand magazine, in London. He turned to the writer Maurice Leblanc and one of the most memorable and successful characters in French popular fiction was born: the gentleman thief Arsène Lupin. Lupin is cunning, sophisticated, quick-witted, a ...

49: Robots

January 28, 2021 22:17 - 35 minutes

Robots as high-tech labour-saving devices, and as usurpers of human jobs. Robots as distinctly Other and as dangerously indistinguishable from humans. Robots as a means of questioning what it is to be human, and highlighting the ethics behind the creation of artificial life.  To help me explore all of this I chatted to a roboticist who also writes about literature, and a literature professor who has worked and published extensively on robotics. Support WTTE by becoming a member of HeadStuff...

Announcement: WTTE & HeadStuff+

January 20, 2021 14:47 - 4 minutes

A quick update episode on the new HeadStuff membership platform, HeadStuff+ Have a listen to find out more about what's on it and how you can join (although the joining bit is very straightforward - just click here).  I'm really excited to be a part of this and I hope if you are a regular listener and would like to support the show, and the network it is a part of, you'll consider becoming a member. Plus you get a load of extra stuff so it's win-win really!  Learn more about your ad choices...

48: Fictions of Antarctica

December 22, 2020 03:00 - 28 minutes

 The continent of Antarctica was only discovered two centuries ago, even if it had long been theorized. It's a place shrouded in mystery with no human history and no permanent residents. It’s a land of superlatives: the coldest, the windiest, the driest continent.  It is a grand scientific experiment, a habitat for animals, with spectacular icescapes luring tourists and scientists alike. And it’s somewhere that exists in the popular imagination in a multitude of ways, often contradictory and...

47: Alternate History

December 08, 2020 03:00 - 27 minutes

In one sense alternate history is a very specific kind of story - sometimes seen as a subgenre of science fiction, more often as a genre onto itself. But in a broader sense alternate history is something we are all interested in. We all think about what might have happened differently in our live and in the wider world, we all feel relief and regret.  What if? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

46: Weird Westerns

November 24, 2020 03:00 - 24 minutes

In a way it’s maybe strange that the western is such a prominent genre. It's seemingly connected to a very specific time and place: the mid-to-late 19th century American west. And yet we are all so familiar with the many tropes of the western: cowboys and Indians, shootouts and saloons, cattle rustlers and sheriffs, tumbleweed and canyons?  The western has a particular hold on the popular imagination, partly for reasons of historical and cultural influence, but ultimately because of its supr...

45: Mashups, Remixes, and Frankenfiction

November 10, 2020 03:00 - 25 minutes

Remix, mashup, sample, adaptation, parody, homage, knock-off. The lines between these, and so many other similar terms, are not always very clear. In one sense, all culture is a remix, nothing exists in a vacuum. On the other hand, some people may take a dim view of lifting almost the entire text of Pride & Prejudice and republishing it with additional zombie action. Which is where Seth Grahame-Smith’s best-selling 2009 classic, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, comes in. For lots more detai...

Season 5 Trailer

November 04, 2020 06:00 - 1 minute - 1.18 MB

WTTE is back! Season 5 launches on Tuesday 10th November. Find out what's coming up this season.

Season 5 Preview

November 04, 2020 06:00 - 2 minutes

WTTE is back! Season 5 launches on Tuesday 10th November. Find out what's coming up this season. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

44: Words Dunnit (WTTE + Shedunnit Live)

April 03, 2020 05:00 - 1 hour

Last year Caroline Crampton (of Shedunnit) and I teamed up to create a joint live show, called Words Dunnit: a 200-year history of detective fiction in an hour. We performed the show live at the Dublin Podcast Festival in November 2019, and then again at Pod UK, in Birmingham, in Feb of this year. We had a lot of fun making and performing it, so here it is in full. For notes, links, pictures and more head to the WTTE website Support the show on Patreon! Learn more about your ad choices. Vi...

43: Lost Books

March 11, 2020 00:46 - 22 minutes

There are countless great works of literature we have tantalizing glimpses of, works we know existed but are, as far as anyone can tell, lost to history. Huge swathes of ancient Greek literature, for example, or a lost Shakespeare play based on the story of Don Quixote.  And then there are the works we rescue. Kate Macdonald, at Handheld Press, specialises in finding and reprinting lost classics, works that have fallen out of print but deserve another chance and a new audience. In this episo...

42: The Missing Link

February 26, 2020 00:19 - 23 minutes

Sasquatch. Bigfoot. The Abominable Snowman. Yeti. The Yowie, the Yeren, the Almas  Ape-men, cave men, wild men.  The Missing Link. The idea of the missing link came about in the mid-19th century, with the rise of Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. In 1859 Darwin published his book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, and it was radical, revolutionary, and highly contentious.  The problem, though, was that the mechanism by which it all worked wasn’t really understood ...

41: Romance Novels

February 11, 2020 07:55 - 27 minutes

Mills and Boon to bodice rippers , Johanna Lindsey to Nora Robers (and a little bit of Fabio) Why read romance novels?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

40: Time Travel Tales

January 29, 2020 23:20 - 23 minutes

Time travel fiction is a small subgenre of science fiction. Science fiction is a small subset of all the many genres and types of literature. Time machines and time travellers are a niche interest. And yet, in many ways, all fiction is time travel fiction. On this week's episode I chart the history and development of time travel, with Prof David Wittenberg, from utopia to hot tubs. Support the show on patreon and get bonus episodes and more For full show notes, links, transcripts and mo...

39: Edgar Rice Burroughs

December 10, 2019 06:00 - 20 minutes

Edgar Rice Burroughs is no longer a familiar name. Like many other authors, the fame of his greatest creation, in his case Tarzan, has long eclipsed his own.  But Burroughs was far more than the creator of Tarzan.  He was an early pioneer of science fiction, a master of the pulp fiction magazines of the early 20th century, an author whose books, across his lifetime and beyond, sold tens of millions of copies. He was also, among a bewildering array of other things, a journalist, a soldier an...

38: WTTE 038 - Children's Picture Books

November 26, 2019 06:00 - 25 minutes - 22.2 MB

Unlike modernist poetry or Shakespearean drama, when it comes to children's literature, everyone has an opinion. Most of us are exposed to kids' books in some shape or form and, crucially, 100% of us have been children.  For an academic working with children's literature, this can have its rewards and its frustrations. "Yes! I love that classic childhood book too!". But also: "Sorry, I don't know why your child doesn't like this one particular book" This week I'm joined by Dr Jane Carroll to ...

38: Children's Picture Books

November 26, 2019 06:00 - 25 minutes

Unlike modernist poetry or Shakespearean drama, when it comes to children's literature, everyone has an opinion. Most of us are exposed to kids' books in some shape or form and, crucially, 100% of us have been children.  For an academic working with children's literature, this can have its rewards and its frustrations. "Yes! I love that classic childhood book too!". But also: "Sorry, I don't know why your child doesn't like this one particular book" This week I'm joined by Dr Jane Carroll t...

37: WTTE 037 - The Golden Age of Piracy

November 12, 2019 02:11 - 25 minutes - 18.9 MB

Pirates have been around for a very long time. In fact, as far as the historical record seems to show, they have been around for as long as there have been property and boats. What is it that attracts us to pirates and why have we got such a well-developed set of pirate tropes? We all have the same picture when we think of pirates: peg legs and eyepatches, parrots and pirate accents, walking the plank, buried treasure, the jolly roger. Prof Manushag Powell joins me to discuss the Golden Age o...

37: The Golden Age of Piracy

November 12, 2019 02:11 - 24 minutes

Pirates have been around for a very long time. In fact, as far as the historical record seems to show, they have been around for as long as there have been property and boats. What is it that attracts us to pirates and why have we got such a well-developed set of pirate tropes? We all have the same picture when we think of pirates: peg legs and eyepatches, parrots and pirate accents, walking the plank, buried treasure, the jolly roger. Prof Manushag Powell joins me to discuss the Golden Age...

36: WTTE 036 - Blood, Death, and Varney the Vampire

October 29, 2019 23:18 - 29 minutes - 25.7 MB

There is no pop culture monster more written about, more critiqued and analysed, more portrayed and adapted and reimagined, than the vampire.  So this episode is not about most vampires. There are no discussions of Dracula or Nosferatu, no True Blood or Twilight or Buffy, no Anne Rice or Stephen King, no Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee.   Instead, there is a single vampire, one you may well never have heard of. A vampire that, in Victorian times, was far more popular than even Charles Dickens ...

36: Blood, Death, and Varney the Vampire

October 29, 2019 23:18 - 28 minutes

There is no pop culture monster more written about, more critiqued and analysed, more portrayed and adapted and reimagined, than the vampire.  So this episode is not about most vampires. There are no discussions of Dracula or Nosferatu, no True Blood or Twilight or Buffy, no Anne Rice or Stephen King, no Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee.   Instead, there is a single vampire, one you may well never have heard of. A vampire that, in Victorian times, was far more popular than even Charles Dicken...

35: Jekyll & Hyde

October 15, 2019 05:00 - 24 minutes

For most people today, the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde has been reduced to a fairly straightforward allegory of the potential dark side within us all.  But if you read Robert Louis Stevenson’s original tale, a short 80-odd page novella, you immediately realise there is so much to this masterpiece of 19th century fiction. There are so many reasons the story has become embedded in popular culture. It has everything: dreams and reality, psychology and medicine, good and evil, degeneracy and ...

35: WTTE 035 - Jekyll & Hyde

October 15, 2019 05:00 - 24 minutes - 21.2 MB

For most people today, the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde has been reduced to a fairly straightforward allegory of the potential dark side within us all.  But if you read Robert Louis Stevenson’s original tale, a short 80-odd page novella, you immediately realise there is so much to this masterpiece of 19th century fiction. There are so many reasons the story has become embedded in popular culture. It has everything: dreams and reality, psychology and medicine, good and evil, degeneracy and c...

Season 4 Preview

October 08, 2019 05:00 - 2 minutes

Season 4 returns on Tuesday 15th October. Have a listen to what's in store! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Season 4 Trailer

October 08, 2019 05:00 - 2 minutes - 1.15 MB

Season 4 returns on Tuesday 15th October. Have a listen to what's in store!

34: WTTE 034 - The Art of the Short Story

June 04, 2019 16:32 - 34 minutes - 30.4 MB

There are the celebrated authors: Checkov, Joyce, Mansfield, Munro. There are the big questions: “What makes a truly great short story?” “Where does the form originate?” “What can short stories do that other forms of literature can’t?” But before any of this, there’s a question that’s not that easy to answer at all: What is a short story? This week I’m joined by Dr Paul March-Russell, Lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of Kent, and author of The Short Story: An Introduction ...

34: The Art of the Short Story

June 04, 2019 16:32 - 34 minutes

There are the celebrated authors: Checkov, Joyce, Mansfield, Munro. There are the big questions: “What makes a truly great short story?” “Where does the form originate?” “What can short stories do that other forms of literature can’t?” But before any of this, there’s a question that’s not that easy to answer at all: What is a short story? This week I’m joined by Dr Paul March-Russell, Lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of Kent, and author of The Short Story: An Introducti...

33: WTTE - 033 - The Noun of Nouns (The Rise of Modern Fantasy)

May 21, 2019 10:45 - 23 minutes - 20 MB

What do you think of, when you think of the genre of fantasy? Whether it’s fiction, TV, cinema, or games, are there certain elements you need to have for something to be considered fantasy? Well, you might say fantasy is medieval, or at least set in a time of swords and sorcery. Or that fantasy has to be epic in scale; there are always grand and noble characters.  Or maybe fantasy has to be set in an imaginary world. Or, at the very least, there should be some magic. B...

33: The Noun of Nouns (The Rise of Modern Fantasy)

May 21, 2019 10:45 - 22 minutes

What do you think of, when you think of the genre of fantasy? Whether it’s fiction, TV, cinema, or games, are there certain elements you need to have for something to be considered fantasy? Well, you might say fantasy is medieval, or at least set in a time of swords and sorcery. Or that fantasy has to be epic in scale; there are always grand and noble characters.  Or maybe fantasy has to be set in an imaginary world. Or, at the very least, there should be some magic. But, as I exp...

32: Golden Age Detective Fiction

May 07, 2019 10:07 - 35 minutes

An English country estate. A detective pacing the room, explaining how they have solved the crime, revealing the solution to a puzzle and the clues which were there all along. It’s so easy to parody this scene because it’s so familiar. It’s Reverend Green in the billiard room with the candlestick. It’s a shocking murder in a cosy English village or the country estate of a well-off family…where everyone is as suspect. It’s the locked room mystery, where the puzzle is always the centre of t...

WTTE - 032 - Golden Age Detective Fiction

May 07, 2019 10:07 - 35 minutes - 31.3 MB

An English country estate. A detective pacing the room, explaining how they have solved the crime, revealing the solution to a puzzle and the clues which were there all along. It’s so easy to parody this scene because it’s so familiar. It’s Reverend Green in the billiard room with the candlestick. It’s a shocking murder in a cosy English village or the country estate of a well-off family…where everyone is as suspect. It’s the locked room mystery, where the puzzle is always the cen...

31: Steampunk, Pt 2 (Even Greater London)

April 23, 2019 10:21 - 33 minutes

One way of thinking about steampunk is to divide it into two parts – the steam and the punk. The steam is the Victorian element: the fascination and engagement with the 19th century – whether satirizing or poking fun at Victorian conventions and ideas, dealing with problematic aspects of empire and colonialism, celebrating the people and places, or utterly rethinking the science and technology of the era. The punk, on the other hand, is very much about building collaborative communities i...

WTTE - 031 - Steampunk, Pt 2 (Even Greater London)

April 23, 2019 10:21 - 34 minutes - 30.3 MB

One way of thinking about steampunk is to divide it into two parts – the steam and the punk. The steam is the Victorian element: the fascination and engagement with the 19th century – whether satirizing or poking fun at Victorian conventions and ideas, dealing with problematic aspects of empire and colonialism, celebrating the people and places, or utterly rethinking the science and technology of the era. The punk, on the other hand, is very much about building collaborative communities i...

30: Steampunk, Pt1 (Fetch Me My Fighting Trousers)

April 08, 2019 23:55 - 31 minutes

Note: This episode is Part 1 of a double episode on steampunk. There are cultures, and subcultures, and sub, sub, sub cultures. There’s science fiction, there’s alternative history, there’s steampunk. There’s hip hop and there’s chaphop. There’s an anachronistic Victorian gentleman wearing a pith helmet with an orangutan butler, dissing a fellow chaphop artist for parodying, rather than engaging with, the genre. What, you may quite reasonably ask, is going on? Well, over this episod...

WTTE 030 - Steampunk, Pt1 (Fetch Me My Fighting Trousers)

April 08, 2019 23:55 - 31 minutes - 28.1 MB

Note: This episode is Part 1 of a double episode on steampunk. There are cultures, and subcultures, and sub, sub, sub cultures. There’s science fiction, there’s alternative history, there’s steampunk. There’s hip hop and there’s chaphop. There’s an anachronistic Victorian gentleman wearing a pith helmet with an orangutan butler, dissing a fellow chaphop artist for parodying, rather than engaging with, the genre. What, you may quite reasonably ask, is going on? Well, over this episode, and the...

WTTE 030 - Steampunk I (Fetch Me My Fighting Trousers)

April 08, 2019 23:55 - 31 minutes - 27.8 MB

Note: This episode is Part 1 of a double episode on steampunk. There are cultures, and subcultures, and sub, sub, sub cultures. There’s science fiction, there’s alternative history, there’s steampunk. There’s hip hop and there’s chaphop. There’s an anachronistic Victorian gentleman wearing a pith helmet with an orangutan butler, dissing a fellow chaphop artist for parodying, rather than engaging with, the genre. What, you may quite reasonably ask, is going on? Well, over this epis...

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