"Never Gonna Be Bored" is by Adam and the Couch Potatoes. H. H. Monro (known as Saki) wrote "The Storyteller." The poet Horace wrote the Ars Poetica, which says (depending on your translation) that "poetry has two aims -- to instruct and to give delight." You can read a little bit about the history of children's literature at Random History. American Children's Literature and the C

"Some Strange Feelin'" is by Davis Coen, and is available at Mevio.com. "Our Pet Rat" is an essay published anonymously in Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Arts in 1878. I found it in Google Books. The publisher, William Chambers, was the Lord Provost of Edinburgh who was included as a character in the film Greyfriars Bobby. (He paid for Bobby's dog license so

"Space Cowboy" is by Matthew Long and is available on GarageBand.com. The short story, "Operation Earthworm," was written by Joe Archibald and published in Fantastic Universe in September 1955. I found it at Project Gutenberg. 1000 Ideas for Creative Reuse: Remake, Restyle, Recycle, Renew (1000 Series) is by Garth Johnson. Robot makers: * Mike Rivamonte * Scott Sauer * "Chrome-deli

The Prologue to Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, read for you on LibriVox (by Kara Shallenburg). The modern English translation is me glossing the text using the definitions on the Librarius.com page. "Garden of Roses" is by Spring Heeled Jacks Original Swinging Jass Band. Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote "Pied Beauty." "Grow a Garden" is by Kesang Marstrand. Thomas Carew wrote "The

"The Man Who Understood Women" is a short story by Leonard Merrick, published in 1911. The theory of knowledge-making, or epistemology, that I described is drawn from actor-network-theory but can also be found in other theories of knowledge-making, such as those of John Dewey or Brenda Dervin. SCBWI is the Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. These are my new glass

The segment from George Orwell's novel, 1984, is taken from Part 3, Chapter 2. All the music in this podcast is provided by Mevio.com. "Dear Mother" is by Jordan Doucette. "Things I Used to Know" is by James Casto.

Holiday music from the artists at Mevio.com.

Holiday music from the artists at Mevio.com.

A brief update and a description of the two following tracks.

Hans Christian Andersen wrote "The Old Bachelor's Nightcap." I mangled the words "Hysken Sträde" because they are a nonsense version of Hyskenstræde -- which I'm sure I would have mangled also. I should probably just say them in American instead of trying to figure out how to say them "right." Eisenach is a city just south of the halfway point of a straight-line journey between B