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We hope you enjoy this preview of an episode from our back catalog available to our premium subscribers. Tonight, we’ll read from “The Complete Herbal” written by Nicholas Culpeper, published in 1653. Culpeper was an English botanist, herbalist, physician and astrologer. To unlock full episodes, ad-free listening, and more, please go to snoozecast.com/plus.

Culpeper catalogued hundreds of outdoor medicinal herbs. He attempted to make medical treatments more accessible to lay persons by educating them about maintaining their health. Ultimately his ambition was to reform the system of medicine by questioning traditional methods and knowledge and exploring new solutions for ill health. The systematisation of the use of herbals by Culpeper was a key development in the evolution of modern pharmaceuticals, most of which originally had herbal origins.

Culpeper's emphasis on reason rather than tradition is reflected in the introduction to his Complete Herbal. He was one of the best-known astrological botanists of his day, pairing the plants and diseases with planetary influences.

Culpeper believed medicine was a public asset, not a commercial secret, and the prices physicians charged were far too high compared with the cheap and universal availability of nature's medicine. For this, he was considered a radical, and even accused of witchcraft.

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We hope you enjoy this preview of an episode from our back catalog available to our premium subscribers. Tonight, we’ll read a story from a short story collection titled “Mrs. Spring Fragrance” written by Sui Sin Far, published in 1912. The story we will read, about two children who find themselves lost in a magical forest, was originally titled “The Banishment of Ming and Mai.” To unlock full episodes, ad-free listening, and more, please go to snoozecast.com/plus.

The author Sui Sin Far was the pen name of Chinese-British-Canadian-American writer Edith Maude Eaton. The work is notable for being the earliest book of fiction published in the United States by an author of Chinese descent.

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Tonight, we’ll read the next part of “Pride and Prejudice”, written by Jane Austen. If you’d like to listen from the beginning, please find and listen to all the previous episodes easily at snoozecast.com/series.

“Pride and Prejudice” follows Elizabeth Bennet, the dynamic protagonist, who learns about the repercussions of hasty judgments and eventually comes to appreciate the difference between superficial goodness and actual goodness.

In the previous episode, Elizabeth shares what she heard about Darcy from Wickham with her sister, Jane. Jane takes the more reasonable stance that there must be more to the story. Elizabeth is already sure Wickham is correct.

All the sisters attend a ball at Netherfield, and Wickham is not there. Elizabeth feels obliged to dance with Mr. Collins, and she has an awful time. The other sisters have a wonderful time, as dancing was a thrill for them.

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Tonight, we’ll read “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches” from “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, published in 1892.

In this story, a woman with long copper colored tresses named Violet is offered a strange job as a governess at a country estate called “The Copper Beeches.” She is offered a large sum of money if she will cut her hair short as well.

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We hope you enjoy this preview of an episode from our back catalog available to our premium subscribers. Tonight, we’ll read an excerpt from “A Girl of the Limberlost” by Gene Stratton-Porter, published in 1909. The story takes place in Indiana, in and around the Limberlost Swamp. Even at the time of its publication, this impressive wetland region was being reduced by heavy logging, natural oil extraction and drainage for agriculture. To unlock full episodes, ad-free listening, and more, please go to snoozecast.com/plus.

The author, Stratton-Porter, was considered one of the most popular woman novelists of the era.

Elnora Comstock, is an impoverished teenager who lives with her widowed mother, Katharine Comstock, on the edge of the Limberlost swamp. Elnora’s mother treats her neglectfully, and makes her to go to her first day of high school at a new school unprepared. She is wearing ugly, out-dated clothes, and doesn’t have proper books or tuition.

Luckily, Elnora is a plucky and good-hearted young woman. She also has loving neighbors who want to help her. And that is where we will start.

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We hope you enjoy this preview of an episode from our back catalog available to our premium subscribers. Tonight, we’ll read the next part to our “Magic Cloak” series, from the book “Queen Zixi of Ix, or The Story of the Magic Cloak”, a children's book written by L. Frank Baum and published in 1905. To unlock full episodes of this series, ad-free listening, and more, please go to snoozecast.com/plus.

“The Magic Cloak” episode one aired on Nov 11, 2019. If you’d like to listen to this continuing story easily in order, go to snoozecast.com/series.

The events of the book alternate between Noland and Ix, two neighboring regions to the Land of Oz. Baum, who also wrote “The Wizard of Oz”, commented this was the best book he had written.

In the last episode, Tillydib, the lord high purse-bearer, is wearing the cloak when he wishes the royal purse would never run out of coins. Then we are introduced to the beautiful witch Queen Zixi. Her one weakness is that her true face shows in mirrors, so she has them all hidden. When she learns about the magic cloak, she sets out to steal it, in order to never have to see how ugly she really looks.

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We hope you enjoy this preview of an episode from our back catalog available to our premium subscribers. Tonight, we’ll read excerpts from “Meteorology, The Science of the Atmosphere” by meteorologist Charles Fitzhugh Talman, published in 1922. To unlock full episodes, ad-free listening, and more, please go to snoozecast.com/plus.

The word meteorology, stemming from the Ancient Greek, means "the study of things high in the air." Though study of meteorology dates back millennia, significant progress did not occur until the 18th century. Prior attempts at prediction of weather depended on historical data. It was not until after the elucidation of the laws of physics and more particularly, the development of the computer, allowing for the automated solution of a great many equations that model the weather, in the latter half of the 20th century that significant breakthroughs in weather forecasting were achieved.

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We hope you enjoy this preview of an episode from our back catalog available to our premium subscribers. Tonight, we’ll read the complete story of “The Velveteen Rabbit”, a British children's book written by Margery Williams in 1922. It chronicles the story of a stuffed rabbit's desire to become real through the love of his owner. To unlock full episodes, ad-free listening, and more, please go to snoozecast.com/plus.

Many listeners have asked us to complete this story, as when it originally aired on June 10th, 2019, we didn’t include the ending. So here it is, rerecorded. Enjoy!

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We hope you enjoy this preview of an episode from our back catalog available to our premium subscribers. Tonight, we’ll read the next part to the classic children’s story “Heidi”, published in 1881 by Swiss author Johanna Spyri. To unlock full episodes of this series, ad-free listening, and more, please go to snoozecast.com/plus.

“Heidi” is a novel about the life of a young girl in her grandfather's care in the Swiss Alps. “Heidi” is one of the best-selling books ever written and is among the best-known works of Swiss literature.

In the previous episode, Heidi gets an idea to use the money she received from the Sessemann family to provide soft white bread rolls to the grandmother regularly. She also reads a story to her grandfather, also referred to as “the uncle”. The story was about repentance, forgiveness and humility and it brings the old man a change of heart.

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Tonight, we’ll read about baking cakes from the “Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Volume 4”

This was the same book we have read selections for the original Breadtime episode along with the Baking Cookiezzz episode.

The Woman’s Institute was founded by Mary Brooks Picken in Scranton, PA. Born in Kansas in 1886, Picken wrote the first dictionary to be published by a woman in the English language, beyond the over one hundred other books she wrote.

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