Getting Better Acquainted

This is the ninth episode of The Podgoblin's Hat, with Nina and Dave. You can find it on it's own feed wherever you get your podcasts.

It's summer in Moominvalley and this book truly hits the ground running. There's a volcano casually going off in the background, and another flood, and the Moomin family has to relocate to a strange floating house. Also, Snufkin is nowhere to be found and Moomintroll is pining away.

We've got a bunch of cool new characters, some magical midsummer traditions, and a lot of theatrical superstitions. Dave is taking a new occasional rubrik out for a spin: it's the Clothes Corner!... Nina's usual Botany Corner is also here, and it's all about mosses and lichens.

Our Spirits this week are Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio, The Spellcoats by Diana Wynne Jones, and So I Got To Thinking, a Sex and the City podcast by Juno Dawson and Dylan B Jones.

This is the eighth episode of The Podgoblin's Hat, with Nina and Dave. You can find it on it's own feed wherever you get your podcasts.

We're back with the second half of Moominpappa's memoirs, in which our brave hero becomes the subject of a country run by an Autocrat, starts a colony and meets his wife.

Moomintroll has some very sensible notes for his Pappa in this half of the book, Sniff has some very good questions, but alas, we will never know why Moominmamma was in the sea.

Our question for Snufkin this week comes from Helen Zaltzman.

Our Spirits of the Moomins are Edward Carey's The Swallowed Man and Alice Tarbuck's A Spell in the Wild. Nina's other podcast, Even the Trunchbull, is our Spirit of the Podgoblin's Hat.

This is the seventh episode of The Podgoblin's Hat, with Nina and Dave. You can find it on it's own feed wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome back to a new season of the Podgoblin's Hat! This week, Nina is reading the Exploits of Moominpappa and Dave is reading the Memoirs of Moominpappa. Our theme for these books is Memoir.

This episode is all about unreliable narrators, self mythologising and the fundamental mystery of our parents. Moominpappa has finally finished his memoirs and is reading them out to the children. Did he really build a Moomin house, or did he just draw it? How much of this story is true?

We have a question for Snufkin from upcoming guest Martin Zaltz Austwick, who you can find here.

Our Spirits of the Moomins are both memoirs: Fun Home by Alison Bechdel and When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr. Dave's spirit of the Podgoblin's Hat is Down to a Sunless Sea.

Our special guest for this episode is Medieval historian Dr Eleanor Janega. Eleanor joins us to shout about how much she loves Comet in Moominland, share her Moomin memes of choice and talk about how Tove Jansson draws on medieval storytelling tropes like weird little guys you find in the woods, comets, and really good food writing. There is a case made for Moominmamma as an agony aunt and a scathing burn for Ian Fleming.

You can find Eleanor's on twitter @GoingMedieval, buy her new book The Once and Future Sex here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-once-and-future-sex-going-medieval-on-women-s-roles-in-society-eleanor-janega/18507010?ean=9780393867817

and her comic The Middle Ages: A Graphic History here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Middle-Ages-Graphic-History-Introducing/dp/1785785915

She also has her own podcast We're Not So Different: https://podfollow.com/1551657923

This a bonus episode of The Podgoblin's Hat, with Nina and Dave. You can find it on it's own feed wherever you get your podcasts. It's also the last episode of the first series of the show.

The Podgoblin's Hat will return in August with season two, which kicks off with The Memoirs of Moominpappa / The Exploits of Moominpappa. We'll tell you about both versions of the story so you can pick which one to seek out and read!

This a bonus episode of The Podgoblin's Hat, with Nina and Dave. You can find it on it's own feed wherever you get your podcasts. It's also the last episode of the first series of the show.

In this first guest episode, we're talking to Heidi Gilhooly, a lifelong Moomin fan and translator. Heidi did a comparative study of three versions of the Trollkarlens Hatt: in Swedish, Finnish and English. She shares some juicy insider knowledge about what Elizabeth Portch left out when adapting it for an English audience, and what she changed.

We chat about the Thingumy and Bob, a gutsier Snorkmaiden and the origin of Moominmamma's proficiency with an axe.

Many thanks to Heidi for being our first ever guest! You can find out more about her here: https://kaantopiiri.fi/en/translators/heidi-gilhooly/profile/

This is the sixth episode of The Podgoblin's Hat, with Nina and Dave. You can find it on it's own feed wherever you get your podcasts. It's also the last episode of the first series of the show.

It's the end of Finn Family Moomintroll, and the end of series 1!

The Hattifatteners have their barometer back, Snufkin gets around to telling the others about the Hobgoblin and his hat, and we meet Thingumy and Bob, the lesbian-inspired non binary couple of your dreams.

This book has more bumps in the road for us as modern readers than those that went before. #JusticeForTheSnorkmaiden

It also contains some really positive representations of what we might call non-monogamy and queerness. Truly a mixed bag.

Our question for Snufkin comes from Jane Eyre, and concerns marriage and true love.

Our Spirits of the Moomins this week are: The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.

Our Spirit of the Podgoblin's Hat is: On Eyre from Hot and Bothered.

We'll be back after a break with Memoirs (or are they Exploits?) of Moominpappa.

This is the fifth episode of The Podgoblin's Hat, with Nina and Dave. You can find it on it's own feed wherever you get your podcasts.

This week we're reading the first half of Finn Family Moomintroll. Spring has sprung and the children have discovered a very interesting hat on top of a hill. The hat starts to transform everything that sits inside it, from eggshells, to outlandish words, to Moomintroll himself. Moominmamma is in the mood for a change of scene and leads an expedition to the Hattifatteners' lonely island. Snufkin catches sight of a terrific villain in the heart of a storm.

Our theme for this book is ALCHEMY, and we're looking at transformations and all things golden. Also, colonialist fantasies, various masculinities and the first edition of Nina's Botany Corner.

Our question this week pertains to Dave's nonmonogamous emotional life (!) so you'll definitely want to tune in for that.

Our Spirits of the Moomins are Bluey and Knock Three Times by Cressida Cowell.

Our Spirit of the Podgoblin's Hat is Black Men Can't Jump [In Hollywood].

This is the fourth episode of The Podgoblin's Hat, with Nina and Dave. You can find it on it's own feed wherever you get your podcasts.

This week we're reading the second half of Comet in Moominland by Tove Jansson, and what a rip roaring adventure it is! Moomintroll meets the fabled Snorkmaiden and falls in love on the spot, our brave adventurers attend not one but two end-of-the-world parties, and the philosopher gets stuck into something gooey.

We talk about war and climate catastrophes (again! why is Moominland always threatened by climate change?) and discuss the heteronormativity of the Snorkmaiden and Moomintroll's relationship, but also the ways in which they break that mould.

This week, our question for Snufkin was provided by the AITA community on Reddit and concerns landlords.

Our Spirit of the Moomins recommendations are as follows:

By Ash, Oak and Thorn by Melissa Harrison (special shout-out to the audiobook)

Toy Story 3

And our Spirit of the Podgoblin's Hat, as provided by Nina this week, is Dragon Babies, a YA fantasy nostalgia podcast.

This is the third episode of The Podgoblin's Hat, with Nina and Dave. You can find it on it's own feed wherever you get your podcasts.

This week we're reading Comet in Moominland, the first fully fledged chapter book. There's lots of to discuss! The Little Creature from last week has become Sniff, a full member of the Moomin family by adoption. A philosopher comes knocking at the door in the middle of the night. But most importantly, Snufkin joins the cast.

We talk about the way this book is structured, the ways in which it calls back to Flood, and we make another fruitless attempt to discover how big Moomins are.

Our #WhatWouldSnufkinDo question this week is: What would you do if your cat came home wearing a new collar?

Spirit of the Moomins recommendations: The Man Whose Mother was a Pirate by Margaret Mahy.

The films of Hayao Miyazaki, specifically Ponyo, Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle.

And our Spirit of The Podgoblin's Hat is: Avatar: Braving the Elements

Join us next week when we read the second half of Comet in Moominland!

This is the second episode of The Podgoblin's Hat, with Nina and Dave. You can find it on it's own feed wherever you get your podcasts.

It's our first read-along and we're reading The Moomins and the Great Flood.

We summarise this fairytale of Tove Jansson's, chat about her influences and make a first attempt at a taxonomy of the broader Moomin bestiary.

This week our question for Snufkin is: Things keep stealing my time, and I can't manage to do the things I want to do. What would Snufkin do?

If you've got a question for Snufkin, catch us on Twitter and Instagram @ThePodgoblin or email us at [email protected]

Our Spirit of the Moomins are:

Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke (recommended by Nina)

Journey and What Remains of Edith Finch? (recommended by Dave)

And our Spirit of the Podgoblin's Hat is: Tolkien Black Girls from Black Nerds Create.