Words To That Effect
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Words To That Effect
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 futur...
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The Greatest Matter: A Victorian Gothic Crime Tale
This is it, my brand new audiodrama, The Greatest Matter. There's murder and mystery, crime and conspiracy, gothic and ghosts - if you are a fan of Wo...
WTTE 2024 Update & Announcing: The Greatest Matter
So it's been a while! Here's a quick update of what's been going on over at WTTE HQ, including an announcement of my brand new audiodrama: The Greates...
WTTE Season 6 Update
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...
60: Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons plays a huge part in fiction and popular culture more generally, but it is often overlooked or misunderstood. In this episode I gat...
59: Robin Hood
From medieval ballads to the poetry of John Keats, stage productions to children’s songs, novels to comic books, silent movies to glorious technicolou...
58: The Origins of the Gothic
What does the word "Gothic" mean to you? Gothic cathedrals and castles? Gothic fiction? Teenage goths dressed in black? Horror and the supernatural? T...
A Word To That Effect: Serendipity (Bonus Ep)
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.<...
A Word To That Effect: Cliffhanger (Bonus Ep)
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!<...
57: The Sensation Novel
Sensation fiction was a hugely popular genre in the 1860s. The novels were sensationally popular, but they also caused a sensation, with their plots o...
56: Arthurian Romance
Knights in shining armour, damsels in distress, castles, chivalry and courtly love, heroic quests, dragons.
King Arthur, Camelot, Merlin...
55: A History of Dragons
Dragons have been around for a very long time.
They are one of the very few mythological creatures that have become absolutely central...
Season 6 Preview
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/...
54: Underwater Worlds
There is a complex and fascinating relationship between humans and the ocean, how people and cultures across the world know and understand the sea, wh...
53: Fiction & Food
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...
52: Gothic Forests
The forest is a place we have very mixed feelings about. Forests can be calm and peaceful, full of ancient and natural beauty.
Until th...
51: Desert Fictions
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?
50: Arsene Lupin
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...
49: Robots
Robots as high-tech labour-saving devices, and as usurpers of human jobs. Robots as distinctly Other and as dangerously indistinguishable from humans....
Announcement: WTTE & HeadStuff+
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...
48: Fictions of Antarctica
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...
47: Alternate History
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....
46: Weird Westerns
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 19...
45: Mashups, Remixes, and Frankenfiction
Remix, mashup, sample, adaptation, parody, homage, knock-off. The lines between these, and so many other similar terms, are not always very clear.
Season 5 Preview
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 megapho...
44: Words Dunnit (WTTE + Shedunnit Live)
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 i...
43: Lost Books
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 histo...
42: The Missing Link
Sasquatch. Bigfoot. The Abominable Snowman. Yeti. The Yowie, the Yeren, the Almas
Ape-men, cave men, wild men.
The Missi...
41: Romance Novels
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...
40: Time Travel Tales
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 mac...
39: Edgar Rice Burroughs
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 h...
38: Children's Picture Books
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...
37: The Golden Age of Piracy
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...
36: Blood, Death, and Varney the Vampire
There is no pop culture monster more written about, more critiqued and analysed, more portrayed and adapted and reimagined, than the vampire.
<...
35: Jekyll & Hyde
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 a...
Season 4 Preview
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
34: The Art of the Short Story
There are the celebrated authors: Checkov, Joyce, Mansfield, Munro. There are the big questions: “What makes a truly great short story?” “Where does t...
33: The Noun of Nouns (The Rise of Modern Fantasy)
What do you think of, when you think of the genre of fantasy?
Whether it’s fiction, TV, cinema, or games, are there cer...
32: Golden Age Detective Fiction
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 wh...
31: Steampunk, Pt 2 (Even Greater London)
One way of thinking about steampunk is to divide it into two parts – the steam and the punk.
The steam is the Victorian...
30: Steampunk, Pt1 (Fetch Me My Fighting Trousers)
Note: This episode is Part 1 of a double episode on steampunk.
There are cultures, and subcultures, and sub, sub, sub