170A-Norse Sagas: Good for Nothing (ad-free)
The Saga of Grettir the strong, a Viking who's his own worst enemy
Member episode 47-Pied Piper: Exposure
Two stories of the pied piper of Hamelin and the reason why you should pay your workers. The creauture is the sandhill perch. It's a sand perch, not a sandtrout. One is a sandy fish, the other is a sandy fish that takes the Kwizatz Haderach on the 3,500 year-long golden path.
169-1001 Nights: A Bottle of Djinn
Evil Genies, automatons, and magical rings abound when we revisit the stories from 1001 Nights!
168-Robin Hood: Team of Rivals (ad-free)
How to win friends and influence people and also get beat up a lot in the 12th century.
167-Nutcracker: Cracked (ad-free)
In a podcast full of problematic and wildly different original tellings of popular adaptations, this might be the most different and most problematic. It's the original tale of the nutcracker.
166-Grimm Brothers: The Dark Forest (ad-free)
Two (originally children's) tales that underscore the shocking brutality of the world in which these stories were told.
165-Greek Myths: A Tangled Web (ad-free)
Four stories from Greek mythology: Arachne and Athena, Pandora's box, the great flood of the ancient Greek world, and the love story of Idas and Marpessa.
164B-Lady White Snake: Enlighten Me (ad-free)
Xu Xian is dead. He discovered the truth about his wife and he died. I mean, yeah, he's dead...but he's also unwittingly married to a 1700 year old magical demon snake on a redemption arc, so...you know...something might happen. Seriously, though, this is a packed episode. There are magical (if not wholly unexpected) resurrections, crustacean armies, [...]
164A-Chinese Legends (White Snake): Here I Go Again (ad-free)
The legend of the White Snake is one of the four great folktales of China. Today, we start that with an act of kindness, demons lurking in the places we can’t look, and a (misguided?) monk hoping to bring justice. When the creature this week has time off, it prefers crashing funerals and projectile vomiting on [...]
163-Hansel and Gretel: Crumble (ad-free)
There's a surprising amount to the story of Hansel and Gretel. There's your average fairy tale weirdness, like load-bearing cake and aquatic duck Uber, but there's an unexpected humanity in the story that I think is overlooked. I hope you like it. The creature is punyaiama, from India, and she's the reason you can't get drunk [...]