I chat with the wonderful Joanne Harris MBE, an author across an incredible number of media. We chat about the therapeutic effects of reading and writing, how personifying illness can be beneficial and the ups and downs of translations. We have a very interting chat about reading as a bilingual, the joy of graphic novels, and sneaking those books your mother doesn't want you to read at the library.

Works and authors mentioned:
Lee Child
Georgette Heyer
Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny
Gustave Flaubert
Andre Gide
Guy de Maupassant
Alexandre Dumas
Francoise Mauriac
Stephen King
George R.R. Martin
Mervyn Peake
Agatha Christie
Laura Grandi Italian translator and author
P.G. Wodehouse
John Mortimer
Sandman by Neil Gaiman
Brian Vaughan
Becoming Unbecoming by Una
Chi's Sweet Home by Kanata Konami
Inkblot by Emma Kubert and Rusty Glad
Wayfareres Series by Becky Chambers

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

 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 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

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

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 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


 

 

With me today are UCL's Dean of Arts and Humanities, Stella Bruzzi, and the Dean of Social and Historical Sciences, Sasha Roseneil.
We talk about the difficulties of balancing work and life, how research fits into the role of a Dean, the effects of the pandemic on academic life and research, and the joy of being allowed to go out swimming again. We also talk about Pebbles the Warwick campus cat, Indiana Bones UCL's Archaeology therapy dog and how all departments should have a pet. Sasha talks about her lovely dog, and Stella talks about her two lockdown kittens. We discuss plans for returning to physical university and how important having a holiday is, especially this year.
This is an enlightening and fun episode that hopes to give insight into the inner workings of being a university Dean in a time of great change.

I chat to the fabulous people behind the Tor family of twitter accounts Rachel Taylor and Amanda Melfi all about how they try to be fun and engaging on social media on behalf of the Tor family without putting pressure on their authors. We chat about favourite books, hilarious twitter moments, sending John Scalzi secret burritos, and why it's important to them to make the Tor spaces a safe space for authors and readers alike.
Check out the Shelf Healing Twitter account for debates on what counts as a dragon!

Twitter accounts:
Tor Books
Tor.com
Tor.com Publishing
Nightfire
Tor Teen
Rachel's account
Amanda's account

Books, authors, and twitter accounts mentioned in the episode:

The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune
Inkheart series by Cornelia Funke
John Scalzi
The Invisible Life of Addie by V.E. Schwab
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
Murderbot by Martha Wells

Twitter accounts
Effin birds
Spark Notes

A brilliant episode in which myself, Cat Mitchell, and Dan Holloway discuss the role of accessibility in the workplace, how those with disabilities should be included in decision making processes for accesibility, and how the pandemic has affected the accessibility of the workplace. We also chat about our worries of the disabled community being left behind as the country leaves lockdown, and how accessibility needs to be incorporated into many more things including job applications and workplace culture.

We encourage you to engage with us on Twitter about the ideas in insights discussed in the podcast and look forward to hearing from you!

Link to Cat Mitchell's Twitter
Link to Dan Holloway's Twitter
Link to Rebecca's Twitter
Link to Shelf Healing's Twitter