The Fairy Tellers

Geoff and Katrina take a request, from a long time listener of the podcast who inspired the 2022 fan lead project, and retell the Thai story Phikul Thong. A familiar tale type (ATU 480) to our podcast but with a twist we haven't discussed before that is more famous in a Charles Perrault tale, The Fairies. Geoff and Katrina take it a step further and retell another ATU 480 tale that stretches the boundaries of the tale type, with a Japanese tale of The Old Man Who Made Flowers Bloom.

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Katrina and Geoff wander into the Russian woods to talk about the most famous Slavic witch, Baba Yaga. After a fan request to discuss this cannibalistic character after her appearance in Netflix's The Witcher, Katrina knew exactly the tale that would lead our discussion. We also look at the Russian collector of tales, Aleksandr Afanasyev who's efforts to preserve folklore might be one of the reasons that we know as much about Baba Yaga as we do today.

Inspired by a listener request, and the debut of season two of The Witcher on Netflix, Katrina and Geoff get into The Law of Surprise. If you're anything like Geoff, the origins of this tradition may surprise you, as will its relationship to the story of "Hans the Hedgehog" as collected by the Grimm brothers. Come for the fun facts you can use to impress your friends, and stay for a delightfully strange story about the worlds second most famous hedgehog.

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Katrina and Geoff get sent questions about fairy tales and folklore fairly frequently and this year we want to focus on answering those questions. We're starting off the year by answering the question, "Are fairy tales for children? And what are the most important fairy tales to tell my children?" It isn't a quick answer, but using Katrina's background in Early Childhood Development and Geoff's unsuspecting son, we examine two stories from the Grimm Brothers' collection to examine this question.

Note: In this episode, Geoff says that Tuesday, February 2nd, 2022 has been declared as "Twosday." However, February 2nd is, in fact, a Wednesday. The good news is he misunderstood. Twosday is on February 22nd which IS a Tuesday. So not only does the pun stand but it is 25% more two to celebrate!

Katrina and Geoff finally get to the end of the 1001 Nights! Well, sort of. It's kind of a long story. Literally. But we finally finish out our year of tales from this incredible ever changing collection of stories. It all culminates with the tale of Ma'rouf the Cobbler (whose story might share common details with a tale we never discussed by most people know). Katrina and Geoff finish off the project by getting extremely meta about the framed narrative and discuss why these tales are still relevant today.

Katrina and Geoff talk Tomte!  In a personal quest to reconnect with her cultural roots, Katrina started to explore Scandinavian folklore and was delighted to find Tomte eating her family's rice porridge. But what are Tomte and where do they come from? And what are they willing to do for a bowl of rice porridge with butter on top? Enjoy this winter time episode while Katrina and Geoff tell and retell you some things!

Katrina and Geoff talk about dreams! This week we learn a new word, oneiromancy, the use of dreams to fortell the future, and use it as a vehicle to explore the difference between folk belief and religious mythology (and the very specific definition of myth used in the study of folklore). We cover a bunch of quick stories in this episode all related to dreams. First Katrina walks us through the Biblical story of Joseph who used the ability to interpret dreams to win the favor of the pharaoh. Then Geoff retells the (surprisingly kind of historical?) love story of "al-Mutawakkil and Mahbuba," from The Thousand and One Nights. And finally Katrina ends the episode with another tale from The Nights, "The Rich Man Who Lost and then Regained His Money." 

Geoff and Katrina have been podcasting for two years! In this, slightly delayed, two year anniversary episode, Katrina and Geoff retell some more Cinderella tales. This time from the Middle East! In the process, we get a chance to look back on familiar themes and story elements from other tale types besides ATU 510A (the common grouping of "Cinderella" tales from cultures around the world). 

And here is a link to our interview with Folkwise's Dom and Daisy!

Katrina and Geoff go sailing... seven times! That's right, we're getting into the Sindbad the Sailor cycles of stories from The Thousand and One Nights. Sindbad is one of those characters with massive name recognition throughout the western world but you'd be hard pressed to find someone who could actually tell you anything about his travels. Well after today YOU can be that someone. Also hear the surprisingly convoluted way that this ancient set of tales was added to The Thousand and One Nights surprisingly recently. Spoiler alert: It involves Fairy Tellers Frenemy #1, Antoine Galland. Because of course it does...