Snoozecast

Tonight, we’ll read the opening to “The Final Problem”, written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The second half will air next week. It is one of 12 stories in the cycle collected as “The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes”. As with all of our Sherlock series, this story contains some darker elements and themes that may not be appropriate for all listeners.

The story, set in 1891, introduces the criminal mastermind Professor Moriarty. It was intended to be the final Holmes story. Conan Doyle felt the stories were distracting him from more serious literary efforts and that this was the only way of getting his career back on track.

"I must save my mind for better things," he wrote to his mother, "even if it means I must bury my pocketbook with him."

Conan Doyle later ranked "The Final Problem" fourth on his personal list of the twelve best Holmes stories.

— read by N —

Sign up for Snoozecast+ to get expanded, ad-free access by going to snoozecast.com/plus!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tonight, we’ll read the next part to “Winnie-the-Pooh” a children’s story written by A.A. Milne and published in 1926. This collection of short stories features an anthropomorphic teddy bear, Winnie-the-Pooh, along with his friends Christopher Robin, Piglet, Eeyore, Owl, Rabbit, Kanga, and Roo.

In the previous episode, we read the second half of chapter seven, in which Kanga and Roo came to the forest, and Piglet had a bath. Then we started chapter eight, in which Christopher Robin plans to lead an expotition to the north pole.

— read by V —

Sign up for Snoozecast+ to get expanded, ad-free access by going to snoozecast.com/plus!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tonight, we’ll read The Trees of Paradise, an excerpt from “Plant Lore, Legends and Lyrics” by Richard Folkard.

— read by V —

Sign up for Snoozecast+ to get expanded, ad-free access by going to snoozecast.com/plus!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tonight, we’ll read “The Palace Under the Waves” found in the book “Swiss Tales” published in 1920. We will also read a story called “The Fairy in the Cuckoo Clock.”

The first story features undines, a category of elemental beings associated with water, stemming from the alchemical writings of Paracelsus. Later writers developed the undine into a water nymph in its own right, and it continues to live in modern literature and art through such adaptations as Danish Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid".

Paracelsus believed that each of the four classical elements – earth, water, air and fire – is inhabited by different categories of elemental spirits, liminal creatures that share our world: gnomes, undines, sylphs and salamanders respectively. He describes these elementals as the "invisible, spiritual counterparts of visible Nature ... many resembling human beings in shape, and inhabiting worlds of their own, unknown to man because his undeveloped senses were incapable of functioning beyond the limitations of the grosser elements.

— read by N —

Sign up for Snoozecast+ to get expanded, ad-free access by going to snoozecast.com/plus!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tonight, we shall read the next part to “Pride and Prejudice”, written by Jane Austen.

In the last episode, Darcy suddenly appears while Elizabeth and the Gardiners continue to explore the grounds of his home Pemberley. He joins them in their walk, proving remarkably polite. Elizabeth is immediately embarrassed but Darcy tells her that he has just arrived to prepare his home for a group of guests that includes the Bingleys and his own sister, Georgiana. He asks Elizabeth if she would like to meet Georgiana, and Elizabeth replies that she would. After Darcy leaves them, the Gardiners comment on his good looks and manners, so different from the account of his character given by Elizabeth.

— read by V —

Sign up for Snoozecast+ to get expanded, ad-free access by going to snoozecast.com/plus!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tonight, we’ll read the opening to “Across Asia on a Bicycle,” published in 1894 and written by Thomas Allen and William Sachtleben. This episode first aired on January 13, 2021.

This book is made up of a series of sketches describing a bicycle journey around the world and specifically across Asia. Allen and Sachtleben set a record for the longest continuous land journey ever made around the world.

The day after they graduated college in St. Louis, Missouri, the two friends set out on their journey. Almost three years later, they rolled back into New York on their wheels, having, as they write, “put a girdle round the earth.”

— read by V —

Sign up for Snoozecast+ to get expanded, ad-free access by going to snoozecast.com/plus!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tonight, we’ll read the opening to “Dr. Vermont’s Fantasy”, written by Hannah Lynch and published in 1896.

Lynch was an Irish feminist, novelist, journalist and translator. She spent much of her working life in Paris, having also lived in both Spain and Greece. Lynch then returned to lecture in Ireland and was a part of the Paris salons of the Belle Epoque as well as the Irish Literary Revival in Dublin.

read by 'N'

Sign up for Snoozecast+ to get expanded, ad-free access by going to snoozecast.com/plus!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tonight, we’ll read the next part to “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” a classic science fiction adventure novel by French writer Jules Verne.

In the last episode, Aronnax receives an invitation to go hunting in Nemo's "forests of Crespo Island" the next morning. Conseil and Ned are invited too. At breakfast, Nemo explains to Aronnax that these forests are underwater and that he has designed special suits for them to walk around down there freely. We will pick up with them getting changed and prepared for their expedition.

read by 'N'

Sign up for Snoozecast+ to get expanded, ad-free access by going to snoozecast.com/plus!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We hope you enjoy this preview of an episode from our back catalog available to our premium subscribers. Tonight, we’ll read the opening to “Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803”, a travel memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth. This episode originally aired in 2020. To unlock full episodes, ad-free listening, and more, please go to snoozecast.com/plus.

Wordsworth’s six-week, 663-mile journey through the Scottish Highlands with her brother William Wordsworth and mutual friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge has been called a masterpiece and one of the best Scottish travel writings during a century which saw hundreds of such examples.

Dorothy wrote Recollections for family and friends and never saw it published in her lifetime. The three travelers were important authors in the burgeoning Romanticism movement and thus the trip itinerary was in part a literary pilgrimage to the places associated with Scottish figures significant to Romanticists.

Dorothy's descriptions and judgments of the countryside and landscapes were a mixture of her own personal aesthetics and the in-fashion aesthetics of the sublime, beautiful and picturesque—in fact, Recollections is considered today a classic of picturesque travel writing. Venturing to Scotland in 1803 was not an easy trip and the thirty-year-old Dorothy would experience much of the rougher nature of Scottish life: a depopulated rural land due to industrialization and emigration, along with rough roads, coarse lodgings and sometimes meager food.

— read by V —

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tonight, we’ll read “Pop Corn Recipes” by Mary Hamilton Talbott, published in 1916.

Corn was domesticated about 10,000 years ago, in what is now Mexico. Archaeologists discovered that people have known about popcorn for thousands of years. Fossil evidence from Peru suggests that corn was popped as early as 4,700 BC.

Through the 19th century, popping of the kernels was achieved by hand, on stove tops.

During the Great Depression, popcorn was fairly inexpensive at 5–10 cents a bag and became popular. Thus, while other businesses failed, the popcorn business thrived and became a source of income for many struggling farmers, including the Redenbacher family. The snack was popular at theaters, much to the initial displeasure of many of the theater owners, who thought it distracted from the films. Their minds eventually changed, however, and Popcorn became more profitable than theater tickets. 

— read by V —

Sign up for Snoozecast+ to get expanded, ad-free access by going to snoozecast.com/plus!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.