Real Fantastic Beasts

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Alexa Sand & Ian MacInnes

49 episodes

2 months ago

Alexa Sand and Ian MacInnes explore the world of medieval and Renaissance animals, real, fantastic, and fantastically real.

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All content for Real Fantastic Beasts is the property of Alexa Sand & Ian MacInnes and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.

Alexa Sand and Ian MacInnes explore the world of medieval and Renaissance animals, real, fantastic, and fantastically real.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episodes (20/49)

Real Fantastic Beasts

The Egotistical Eagle

The quintessential imperial attention whore.

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2 months ago

45 minutes 41 seconds

Real Fantastic Beasts

Leave it to the beaver

We journey from the clever self-castrating beaver of the Middle Ages to the near extinction of the North American beaver for the sake of European hats.

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3 months ago

49 minutes 20 seconds

Real Fantastic Beasts

So. Many. Snakes.

We explore the many versions of the Hydra.

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4 months ago

44 minutes 26 seconds

Real Fantastic Beasts

Carp e diem: Fish of the Day

For 400 years, the carp was the most popular fish in Europe. What made it so fantastic?

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5 months ago

48 minutes 31 seconds

Real Fantastic Beasts

The real dog man

Are dog-headed creatures people or beasts? Find out in this live podcast done at the Kalamazoo Medieval Congress. Our guest, Karl Steel, regales us with tales of the Cynocephalus.

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5 months ago

47 minutes 34 seconds

Real Fantastic Beasts

Wolf! Wolf!

From Beowulf to the guerrilla rewilding of Britain, guest Elizabeth (Lizzie) Marshall regales us with wolfish lore.

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6 months ago

43 minutes 9 seconds

Real Fantastic Beasts

And your little dog too!

Small, cute dogs that serve no practical purpose other than to make us go “awwww” turn out to have a long and fantastic history.

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6 months ago

34 minutes

Real Fantastic Beasts

There are no baby griffins

The griffin was both a ferocious beast and a maternal figure. Nobody took it seriously, but its image is everywhere in the pre-modern world from the Near East to Europe.

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7 months ago

39 minutes 56 seconds

Real Fantastic Beasts

Advice from Jackals: Arab Beast Fables

Guest expert Mustafa Banister Introduces us to the world of Arabic Beast Fables in the Kalila Wa Dimna and elsewhere.

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7 months ago

59 minutes 41 seconds

Real Fantastic Beasts

The Natural History of the Beasts of Revelation

Animals are everywhere in the end times. We explore early responses to the fantastic, terrifying, yet beautiful beasts of the Book of Revelation.

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8 months ago

45 minutes 13 seconds

Real Fantastic Beasts

Beasts of the Bayeux

Guest Elizabeth Pastan explores the animals in the Bayeux Embroidery (aka the Bayeux Tapestry). If you want to see the images we're discussing, you can go to the Youtube version of the episode here: https://youtu.be/pOaibXA5XrI .

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9 months ago

48 minutes 33 seconds

Real Fantastic Beasts

The Animals of the Twelve Days of Christmas

From partridges to "colly" birds, we explore the early history of the animals (and especially birds) of the beloved Christmas counting song. Special thanks to Evelyn Wohlbier for recording the song for us.

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10 months ago

43 minutes 26 seconds

Real Fantastic Beasts

Putting the Why in the Wyvern

Guest Edana Kleinhans takes us through the subtle differences between wyverns and dragons.

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10 months ago

41 minutes 23 seconds

Real Fantastic Beasts

Thoroughly Thoroughbred

Guest expert Richard Nash takes us through the history of the thoroughbred horse, from its hybrid origins to the cult of purity that made it the background to racial narratives of the modern world.

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11 months ago

48 minutes 10 seconds

Real Fantastic Beasts

When do demons get their bat wings?

Just in time for Halloween, we explore the humble bat, whose wings suddenly became the standard for all demonic flying creatures.

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1 year ago

32 minutes 9 seconds

Real Fantastic Beasts

Is this the Loch Ness monster?

We explore the lore of the hippocampus, from its classical roots to its Celtic legends.

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1 year ago

31 minutes 15 seconds

Real Fantastic Beasts

The golden age of the bestiary

Beth Morrison, senior curator of manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum, talks about medieval bestiaries, her favorite imaginary animal, and a new exhibition at the Getty Museum.

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1 year ago

45 minutes 56 seconds

Real Fantastic Beasts

Medieval Ivory

Guest Sarah M. Guérin explains Medieval Europe's fascination with ivory and the differences between the early ivory trade and the savagery of modern Elephant poaching.

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1 year ago

50 minutes 16 seconds

Real Fantastic Beasts

The most prophetic bird

We explore the Albatross, unknown until just before the modern era... or was it?

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1 year ago

32 minutes 6 seconds

Real Fantastic Beasts

Flying Barnacles

Guest Alixe Bovey regales us with the perplexing history of the goose barnacle and the barnacle goose.

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1 year ago

47 minutes 27 seconds