Latest Book of hours Podcast Episodes
Only In Silence The Word
Skeleton Songs - January 25, 2024 13:00 - 1 hour"The final victory of sci-fi is its final defeat," says AK, gnomically, before we sing the Beverly Hills Cop theme tune and talk about trombones. Join us for a discussion of 'the best fiction novel of the 20th century', A Wizard of Earthsea, and its masterful magic system: from Native American f...
The Wood Between the Worlds
Skeleton Songs - December 18, 2023 11:00 - 1 hourLord of the Rings + Narnia + Jane Austen = ? A smash-hit 800-page faux-Victorian novel of realist magic and alternate histories, of course! Welcome to the world of Susanna Clarke, whose rules-based, Mametian and very 'English' magic system is one of the best we've had the good fortune to meet....
The Kilns of Smorgasbord
Skeleton Songs - November 24, 2023 15:00 - 1 hourAuthor. Visionary. Dreamweaver. Plus bellhop. Meet Jack Vance, one of the most inventive fantasy authors we've ever heard of, and probably not a pirate king. What happens when fairies become too lumpen and earthy? Why are Lvl1 wizards in D&D so rubbish? Who is Larkin the Baby-Stealer, and why ar...
Magic That Hath Ravish'd Me
Skeleton Songs - November 06, 2023 14:00 - 47 minutes"If magic works, why isn't the President of the United States doing it?" After a 'brief' hiatus, we're back! We pick up where we left off and talk about the magic of Doctor Faustus, whether magic is 'liberation or damnation', and the distinction between ceremonial magic and what specialists ter...
This Thing of Darkness
Skeleton Songs - April 27, 2022 10:00 - 46 minutesWelcome to a new season, all about magic and literature! We talk William Shakespeare's Tempest, from women-wizards from Algiers to royal demonology. Caliban's Moth, Ariel's Lantern and AK nearly dies in a spiegel tent. Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:...
A City Is Not A Tree
Skeleton Songs - December 03, 2021 13:00 - 34 minutesWhat makes games 'savoury'? Why is Twitter such a bad place to get game design advice? And is it ever sensible to push a count off a cliff? This episode, Lottie and Alexis talk art, games and critique, through architect Christopher Alexander to Jack Cohen and Brian Aldiss' fight over speculativ...
The Glittering Lights of Wolfstack Docks
Skeleton Songs - November 19, 2021 14:00 - 42 minutesHiraeth? Sensucht? Saudade? Listen to Alexis and Lottie cry as we talk nostalgia, sequels and games, from 17th-century Swiss cowbells to sailing away from your loved ones into danger. We talk transmission of experience from one generation to the next, the future of games as gamers get old, and t...
Now Draw the Rest of the Owl, Part 2
Skeleton Songs - August 27, 2021 16:00 - 56 minutesThe conclusion of an epic two-parter. Who would win in a fight between TRPGs and CRPGs? What happens if a giant worm swallows a city? Is a dolphin the same as a cat? We attempt to answer these questions with appeals to Simon Baron-Cohen's empathising-systemising theory, work out why TRPGs rely s...
Now Draw the Rest of the Owl, Part 1
Skeleton Songs - July 08, 2021 13:00 - 53 minutes"I don't want to be Elfstar anymore! I want to be Debbie!" Join us for a romp through tabletop gaming's earliest origins and the effect its had on modern video games. Well, that was the intention. We actually stop around the 1980s with fundamental Christianity and a woman called Janine who is b...
An Early Symptom of Schizophrenia
Skeleton Songs - June 25, 2021 10:00 - 40 minutesReal talk: APOPHENIA. Alexis and Lottie discuss subliminal pattern-seeking from its coinage by a Nazi psychologist to its use by modern indie game developers to cover up the fact we don't have any budget. Wait! We meant to make clever, co-operative immersive experiences. All via werewives, apoph...
This Episode Is About Sex
Skeleton Songs - May 20, 2021 11:00 - 46 minutesThis episode is about sex and games and the libertine novels of eighteenth-century France. From Talleyrand, the Napoleonic clergyman and diplomat, through to Cindy Crawford, Peter Bradshaw and Amouranth, the Twitch streamer scandal du jour, we talk erotica, porn and those anime sex games you see...
500,000 Sociopaths
Skeleton Songs - March 25, 2021 13:00 - 47 minutesJoin Alexis and Lottie for a discussion of antagonists and villains! Via witches, Belgium, Simon Baron-Cohen, a charming Irish vagabond and, of course, Nazism. Alexis talks about how rubbish games are and destroys Lottie's argument; Lottie talks about five-hour Polish art films and producers sto...
Twisty Little Passages All Alike
Skeleton Songs - March 05, 2021 13:00 - 41 minutesWhat's the connection between the Labyrinths of Night and the Bright Ditches? This question and many more we don't really answer in this episode on mazes, labyrinths and game design. Meet labrys, the lesbianic double-headed axe. Leave kittens in mazes and form human chains in swampy MUDs. Learn...
Are Panthers Chairs?
Skeleton Songs - January 28, 2021 17:00 - 42 minutesSkeleton Songs season two, baby! This season's all about GAMES, but not as you know 'em. Join Alexis and Lottie as we discuss genre via Aristotle and Wittgenstein, cyberpunk and film noir, the Berlin Interpretation and, er, fish genitalia. Also there is an odd bit about tortoises in the rain but...
Endgame
Skeleton Songs - November 11, 2020 14:00 - 38 minutesRagnarok! Gotterdammerung! Armageddon outta here! In the final episode of season one, we talk eschatology, chocolate, fake news and the bloody gothness of Old Germanic literature. Sexy zombie apocalypses and millennial doomsday cults make an appearance too, because of course they do. And even th...
DIONYSIAN NO PICNIC
Skeleton Songs - October 28, 2020 17:00 - 33 minutesMaenads! Who are they, what do they want, and how do they wear their fox-skins? Kittens! How can they be so cute and so murderous at the same time? Join Alexis and Lottie as they discuss why frenzied Bassarids and Cutie McFloofcat are both the same Gothic trope of violent comeuppance. Via boring...
An Inheritance of Stones
Skeleton Songs - August 18, 2020 14:00 - 32 minutesJoin Alexis and Lottie on a deep-dive into WORLDBUILDING. Why it's menacing to be told to start with a timeline, how Twin Peaks' BOB came to be, why you must never call pulled pok 'flesh-spicing', and why the architect of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao probably didn't start with the toilets. Al...
Top Hat, Flight Guy & Tales
Skeleton Songs - July 03, 2020 14:00 - 32 minutesThis week we take a break from literature and talk about the weird stories in our own lives. Join Sheep-Stealer and Big Head as they introduce you to Great Uncle Gilbert, the teenage flying ace and real-life Great Escape artist, and David the contract officer for the Sultan of Oman who brought a...
(Un)reliable Narrators
Skeleton Songs - June 12, 2020 11:00 - 34 minutesCan you really trust anyone? Join Alexis and Lottie as they roundly conclude that you can't. We talk unreliable narrators via toilets, relevance theory, echoic mentions, the four levels of Star Wars canonicity and Lovecraft being surprisingly confident that his monsters were real. Games / books...
Women, Bloody Women
Skeleton Songs - May 01, 2020 11:00 - 33 minutesMadness, blood and ladies! We talk all things bloody, from Freud to Pliny to the Red Grail to Queen Elizabeth the First to murdering an entire hive of bees. The Madonna / whore complex? Check. Horrible Norse mythology about men being scared of ladies, and gods being made out of spit? Check. Etym...
Forbidden Knowledge
Skeleton Songs - March 18, 2020 14:00 - 33 minutesJoin Alexis and Lottie for a run-down of forbidden knowledge: the type that's ipso facto dangerous and the type that's dangerous because of what you can do with it. We discover Christopher Marlowe was definitely a spy, nuclear codes are modern occultism and everyone's neighbour Mrs Thrumb writes...
Doppelgängers, Fetches & Ka
Skeleton Songs - March 03, 2020 12:00 - 33 minutesFrom ancient Egypt to modern web comics, döppelgangers haunt us all. Join Alexis and Lottie as they discuss the ins and outs of these look-alikey ghouls, from Scottish fetches to Capgras syndrome via Dostoyevsky, Silent Hill 2, neuropsychology and scary mirrors. All with a sprinkling of gothic l...
The Terrible Tale of the Yale
Skeleton Songs - February 13, 2020 11:00 - 31 minutesPanthers, dragons, monoceri, yales, wendigos, hell-hounds and pigs! This isn't an occult incantation, this is a half-hour deep-dive into our favourite spooky beasts from medieval bestiaries, epic poems and early 20th century ghost stories. Whether you're into shapeless bear-cubs, dirty bonnacon...
Vampires, As You Don't Know Them
Skeleton Songs - January 21, 2020 16:00 - 30 minutesVampires, vampires and more vampires! From the Malay 'polong' and 'pelesit' to the soucouyants and empousai of Cultist Simulator, Alexis talks the history of the vampire myth before Lottie jumps in with a rendition of Carmilla. Then she embarrasses herself by wishing everyone a spooky day. Game...
Related Book of hours Topics