Cultural Inspirations Episodes

The best place to be a professor of languages.

Best place to be Cinderella

Best place to be a parent

Listen to this past weekend's livestream hosted by Julia Golding and Tolkien experts Jacob Rennaker and Paula Kalamaras as they discuss the reaction to The Rings of Power series. We discussed various talking points and questi...

Best place to be a weaver

Best place to be a tailor

Best place to be a miner

Best place to be a miner

Best place to be a giant

Best place to be a giant

Best places for booksellers

Best place for a signature dish

Best place for a signature dish

Guest Butch Hartman -- Best Place To Be A Fairy Godmother

Guest Richard Blackford

Guest Ingrid Hanson

With special guest Nariel

With guest Lisa Coutras Terris

Ever wondered about the link between fantasy writers like Tolkien and the multitude of subcultures they inspired, from Dungeons and Dragons to LARPing, and video gaming. In this episode, we discuss these worlds with special g...

One of the biggest fantasy worlds of modern times is the Marvel universe. Julia is in conversation with Ed Saunders, tracing the origins of the MCU in comics and latterly in films. We find out what the Marvel method is and ho...

Today Julia Golding is joined by Matt Fox, creator of the Magic of Middle Earth exhibition currently showing at the Willis Museum, Basingstoke, Hampshire, open until 16 October. Matt's an avid collector of Tolkien-related art...

Why is Oxford, England, such a fantasy hotspot? From Lewis Carroll to Philip Pullman, Diana Wynne-Jones to Deborah Harkness, it has inspired writers and is even the location for many fantasy stories. It is famously home of th...