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In this Fainting Couch special, Alice is off to the cinema with friend of the podcast Hugh Turpin to experience 2024’s saddest Christmas movie: Small Things Like These. We’re discussing national trauma, Ireland’s evolving relationship to the past, and why you should beware the Coal Hole.

Sound Engineer: Keith Nagle
Editor: Keith Nagle
Producer: Helen Hamilton

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This week Kim and Alice are (re)watching the ‘délicieux’ Agatha Christie classic: Hercule Poirot’s Christmas. We’re talking about locked-room mysteries, glove snobbery and the haunting wail of a dying pig toy.

Sound Engineer: Keith Nagle
Editor: Helen Hamilton / Keith Nagle
Producer: Helen Hamilton

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Get your special jingle bells ready because this week Kim and Alice are covering the Korean historical thriller, The Handmaiden. We’re discussing colonial dynamics, erotic furniture and how too much real estate inevitably leads to murder basements.

Sound Engineer: Keith Nagle
Editor: Helen Hamilton / Keith Nagle
Producer: Helen Hamilton

This week we’re setting sail on a kinda slutty immigrant adventure, with the beautifully understated Brooklyn. Kim and Alice enjoy all the messy drama whilst also uncovering the history of Irish immigration and why you should always go drinking with your priest.

Sound Engineer: Keith Nagle
Editor: Helen Hamilton / Keith Nagle
Producer: Helen Hamilton

Sources

• Article: National Parks Service 'Post-peak Immigration Years'
• Article: Irish Times, 'Making Brooklyn in Enniscorthy: 'Saoirse Ronan was lovely. She had a cup of tea in my kitchen'.
• Article: Irish America Magazine, 'Shades of Brooklyn'
• Article: Brownstoner, '5 Gone-but-Not-Forgotten Brooklyn Shopping Emporium's
• Article: Baxter St. 'Day in Ellis Island, 1951: Erika Stone Portfolio'

We’re getting spooky this week as Kim and Alice get increasingly frustrated by gothic horror ‘Crimson Peak’. Whilst the characters are ignoring both the red flags and red ghosts, our hosts discuss gothic literature and Guillermo del Toro’s hatred of faces.

Sound Engineer: Keith Nagle
Editor: Helen Hamilton / Keith Nagle
Producer: Helen Hamilton

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This week we’re joined by Em, host of Verbal Diorama, to discuss quite possibly the perfect movie: the 90s adventure, horror fun-time classic, The Mummy. Em explains how the film came to be (thank-you Babe: Pig in the City) whilst Kim and Alice find out that love makes you do some crazy things, like unhinge your jaw and cover Egyptians in boils.

For more fascinating film history, you can find Em at:
Verbal Diorama Podcast


Sound Engineer: Keith Nagle
Editor: Keith Nagle
Producer: Helen Hamilton

Sources

• Blog post: Egypt at the Manchester Museum, “Representation and Reality in ‘The Mummy’ (1999)” by Matt Szafran AND “The Cult of Imhotep”
• Screenrant article: “How much of The Mummy 1999 is actually real?”
• Egypt Exploration Society website
• Egypt Exploration Society 1926 Annual Report
• BBC podcast The Forum episode: “Imhotep, the man behind The Mummy”
• Blog post: Clare College, University of Cambridge, “Egyptomania” by Toby Wilkinson
• Article from Enterprise: The State of the Nation (Egypt): “A look back at Egypt’s roaring ‘20s”
• Sky History article: “The curse of Tutankhamun and the mummy’s tomb”

Come on law boys, grab your wigs and let’s hang as we enjoy the beautiful historical drama, Belle. Alice and Kim discuss what they want from a period drama, and how a glossy romantic story can be the starting point for learning about the worst parts of human history.

Sound Engineer: Keith Nagle
Editor: Helen Hamilton / Keith Nagle
Producer: Helen Hamilton

Sources

• Website: All Things Georgian
• Article: Kate Kellaway; 'Amma Asante: "I'm bi-cultural, I walk the division that Belle walked every day", The Observer, 18th May 2014
• Article: English Heritage; 'The Somerset v Stewart Case', Accessed 25th Sept 2024
• Podcast: The English Heritage Podcast; 'Episode 168 - Somerset v Stewart: the landmark trial that helped to end slavery', 16th June 2022
• Article: Wikipedia; 'Zong Massacre', Accessed 25th Sept 2024

We’re back! Season 2 of Fetch the Smelling Salts kicks off in style with historian Clara Chamberlain helping us make sense of dictator-funded epic dude-in-a-desert film, El Cid. We’re talking about the creation of national myths, fist-fights at a funeral and the most insane final 15 minutes of any film, ever.

Find more from Clara on:
Instagram: @clarabchamberlain
Substack: Once Upon a Time, Long Ago

Sound Engineer: Keith Nagle
Editor: Keith Nagle
Producer: Helen Hamilton