I chat with Caroline all about the move to digital for the Hay Festival and how much reading means to her and all those visiting the Hay festivals around the world

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Show Notes

I have a wonderful chat with Chair of the Hay Literary Festival Caroline Michel all about the festival in all its forms across the globe. We discuss the move to digital online festivals, the succes of the festival in multiple countries, the difficulty in discoverability of events in an online setting, and how wonderful authors and speakers are.
We also chat about the therapeutic effects of reading and books, and how wide ranging the Hay Festival talks and authors are across multiple languages.

Hay Literary Festival

Works and authors mentioned in the podcast:
Agenda magazine
The Rattle Bag edited by Seamus Heany and Ted Hughes
Donal Óg poem
Ted Hughes
Seamus Heaney
W.B. Yeats
T.S. Eliot
John Keats
Robert Frost
Sylvia Plath
Toni Morrison
Tom Wolfe
Rough Magic by Lra Prior-Palmer
Lemn Sissay
Mario Vargas Llosa
Laura Bates
Stephen Fry
Simon Schama
Elif Shafak

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Show Notes

I chat with the wonderful Audioverse Award winner and multiple Hugo and BFA finalist pop culture journalist and podcaster Alasdair Stuart all about the therapeutic effects of reading, consuming media, and writing about your favourite things. This is a fun lively chat that goes from magicians Penn and Teller all the way to The Abyss, stopping via Nick Cage and a Dalek Escape Room. All in all a wonderful insight into the perspective of a pop culture journalist writing on very popular IP with steadfast and vocal fans.
Photo credit to ©Edge Portraits 2019

Link to Alasdair’s website
Link to Alasdair’s Twitter
Link to The Full Lid
Link to the Escape Artists podcast website where you’ll find PseudoPod and the Escape Pod
Link to Alasdair’s Twitch

List of things mentioned in the podcast:
Books
Six Stories by Matt Wesolowski
More than Meets the Eye  (Transformers comic)
Lost Light  (Transformers comic)
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

Film, TV, nd Theatre
Red Dwarf
Twilight Zone Theatrical Production
JiuJitsu
The Abyss
Doctor Who
Parks and Recreation
New Girl
Leverage

Awards
IGNYTE awards
Aurealis awards
Sir Julius Vogel Award (The Vogel’s)

I chat with the father of UK fantasy Ian Livingstone all about his co-creation of a new genre of books with the Fighting Fantasy series, the importance this had on getting children to read, and why videogames are so brilliant at getting gamers to use creative and critical thinking.

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Show Notes

I chat with the delightful Ian Livingstone, games legend. Co-founder of Games Workshop, co-creater of the Fighting Fantasy genre of books, videogames star who brought us the brilliant Lara Croft. We chat all about the therapeutic effects of reading, how he and Steve Jackson created an entirely new genre of books that encouraged children to read and increased literacy rates. He shares some amusing stories about the launch of the first book and how they are still in print today. We also discuss co-writing, how important games are for critical thinking, and why having a sense of agency is so important when engaging in media.

Ian’s Twitter
Ian and Steve’s new book from Unbound

Things mentioned in this episode:
On the Road by Jack Kerouac 

Fighting Fantasy books mentioned
The Warlock of Firetop Mountain
Citadel of Chaos
Forest of Doom
City of Thieves
Deathtrap Dungeon
Assassins of Alansia

Games Mentioned
Skyrim
Dark Souls
Minecraft
Rollercoaster Tycoon

An insightful discussion about Creative Health and UCL’s new Master of Arts and Sciences in Creative Health with two fabulous guests heavily invested in a more holistic approach to health and with a great love of the arts.

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Show Notes
This episode introduces UCL’s new MASc (Master of Arts and Science) in Creative Health.  I chat with The Rt Hon. Lord Alan Howarth of Newport CBE and Professor Helen Chatterjee MBE who have spent many years working and researching in the area of Creative Health. We discuss what Creative Health is, how it can help people, and what the new Masters degree will cover.

Links to everything mentioned in this episode
UCL MASc in Creative Health
National Centre for Creative Health
All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing – Creative Health:The Arts for Health and Wellbeing
Artlift
National Academy for Social Prescribing
Creative Families
Staying Well Project

I chat with Kiernan all about Shakespeare’s ongoing draw, why tragedy is therapeutic, and how skillfully the Bard creates empathy with both characters and the audience

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Show Notes
This week I have the delightful job of chatting to my old Shakespeare professor, Emeritus Professor Kiernan Ryan, all about the therapeutic effects of his sonnets, speeches, and plays. How Shakespeare has remained relevant four centuries after first being performed, and what there is to be gained and lost in watching, listening, and reading his work.
We discuss rhetoric, the draw of tragedies, how Shakespeare mirrors both the audience and the characters themselves, the importance of empathy, and how gender fluid many of the comedies are.

Do check out Kiernan’s books available from Bloomsbury here
Kiernan’s new book, coming out in August 2021

The  Shakespeare works most mentioned and quoted from are:
Sonnet 29
The Tempest
The Merchant of Venice
Hamlet
King Lear
Much Ado About Nothing
Twelfth Night

I chat with Nick Coveney all about reading It at a young age, finding yourself represented in stories, LGBTQ+ in literature & publishing, problematic authors, & how digital is changing how we consume books.

There is a content warning on this one as Nick says a rude word. He quickly follows it up with rainbows and unicorns though.

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Show Notes
I chat with the wonderful Nick Coveney of Rakuten Kobo. We chat about Nick’s early experience of reading It and what kinds of books he finds therapeutic. We also chat about problematic authors and their effects on being able to gain comfort from their books, how well represented LGBTQ+ is in literature and publishing and problems arising from perceived rulebooks. We discuss the role of the ebook and audiobook on reading habits and how publishers like Rakuten Kobo can decide which books are available on their platform.

Authors and works mentioned in the podcast:
Peter F Hamilton
It by Stephen King
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
Ender’s Quartet by Orson Scott Card
It’s A Sin by Russel T Davis (TV)
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Dragonriders of PERN by Anne McCaffrey
The Universe Versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence