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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 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 Hugo Award winning author Mary Robinette Kowal all about books, puppetry, voice acting, and the space between author and audience.

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Show Notes
I had a blast chatting to Hugo Award Winning author Mary Robinette Kowal all about her thoughts on bibliotherapy, the therapeutic effects of writing, and the importance of the membership non profit Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America of which Mary Robinette is President. We chatted a lot about the role of the intermediary in storytelling, both through audio with her work as a voice artist and with the visual with her work as a puppeteer. We discuss that distance between author and audience and how it affects our wellbeing. A fabulous chat with a fabulous author, voice actor, and puppeteer!

Link to Mary Robinette Kowal’s website

As promised all the books and authors mentioned in this episode:
John Scalzi
Guy Gavriel Kay
Martha Wells
Jane Austen
The Sun, The Moon, & The Stars by Stephen Brust
Philip K Dick
Lady Astronaut series by Mary Robinette Kowal
The Glamorous Histories series by Mary Robinette Kowal
Jane Espensen
The Midnight Bargain by CL Polk

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Show Notes
I chat with the lovely Nadya Menuhin this week all about theatre, playwriting, and agenting. We discuss favourite books, mental health, the power of theatre and so much more in a fabulous interview. There’s even some fun squirrel facts at the very end.

Nadya’s twitter
Hive Mind project

Authors and works mentioned:
Authors
David Sedaris
Jeanette Winterson
A. M. Homes
Rachel Cusk
Max Frisch
André Breton
Simon Stevens
Christopher Hampton
Simon McBurney
Yuval Noah Harari
Joseph Conrad

Works
Graceling  by Kristin Cashore
Santaland Diaries  by David Sedaris
Written on the Body  by Jeanette Winterson
This Book Will Save Your Life  by A. M. Homes
Homo Faber  by Max Frisch
Nadja  by André Breton
Art  by Yasmina Reza
Sapiens  by Yuval Noah Harari
Homo Deus  by Yuval Noah Harari
Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov