Crecganford

Jon Norman-Mason is in his final year of his PhD at Brighton University studying Landscape and Mythology, he is also a researcher on the BBC's "You're Dead to Me", and is a professional storyteller and his works include "The Promised Land" which featured at Brighton's Fringe Festival. This interview talks about myth, and the challenges of how it keeps up with the ever changing and modern landscape...

Have you ever wondered how dragons went from water-based serpents to fire-breathing monsters? We'll let me tell you a story or two...

This is a look into the motif we see in stories such as Jonah and the Whale or Pinocchio. Where heroes are being swallowed by aquatic monsters.

A discussion about issues with what Jordan Peterson and Graham Hancock say about myth, and how their position can be improved by have a better understanding of what myths really are and understanding their origins and dispersals.

The earliest dragon myths had these monsters looking after water, but at some point, they started breathing fire, burning knights, and resucing princesses. But why was this?

A journey back through time, through religions and cultures, to find out why we started to believe in something, and what it was.

Eating dinner with friends has throw backs to the rituals around human sacrifice, and in this episode we will explore how we know this.

A couple of thousand years ago you could have had dinner with friends, or friends for dinner. Here I examine and recreate sacrificial ritual, and how it applied to human sacrifice.

Sacrifice was reasonably common amongst our ancestors. In this episode of the Crecganford podcast I talk about some of the best known examples of sacrifice.

In this episode we look at the myths that talk about Journeying to the Underworld, from Egypt to Scandinavia, and see if they are linked, or if they have differences, then we will examine those.

There is much talk of conflict between gods, cultures, and even brothers, within mythology of the Indo-Europeans and the Near East. This episode takes a look into this conflict to see if it all originated from a clash between the Proto Indo-European speaking peoples and the Early European Farmers.

Whilst the amount of DNA influence on the original Indo-Europeans from the Near East was minimal, their myths certainly influenced there stories. This is a talk through some of them.

A look at the mythology behind Genesis, and so not a theological or biblical scholarly look.  And this allows us to see which stories the bible "borrowed" from other cultures and why.

In this episode I tell many versions of the Near Eastern Creation myths which I trace into Indo-European cultures, and show how it evolved and changed.

There was a myth told amongst the North African's of a painting that would come alive, or a painting that would be replaced by a living person. This myth is seen elsewhere, and so does it have a common origin, is it modern, or can we trace it back thousands of years to a belief of our paleolithic ancestors and so perhaps a form of belief from cave paintings? If that sounds interesting then grab yo...

Here I trace back the origin of Venus, and show that she is thousands of years older than most realise.

I did title this original, "When cats were gods", but I have been told by many cat owners since, that cats are still gods...

Giants aren't all big you know, some are small, some are human sized, and some are kind. So where do they come from? Today we will find out, so grab yourself a cup of tea, and listen to Crecganford.

Today we look for the origin of the "Flood Myth", and it is not the Younger Dryas period as many think, it is older than that. So grab yourself a cup of tea, and listen to this wonderful podcast.

Today we define a myth, a task more complex than most imagine, and then show why myths can be traced back against a section of academia that says they can't, and there is no value in doing so.

Today we dive into one of the best known myths in Greek Mythology, that off Odysseus and the cyclops, Polyphemus. We will uncover the origin of the myth, its age, and a link to Lord of the Rings.

By piecing together some of our oldest motifs on creation we can can look to re-create one of earliest creation myths, and find its origin, as well as understand why it then used in Flood Mythology.

Our ancestors thought they were immortal until something happened, and so here we look at the mythology around death.

Some say this is the oldest story in the world, and so here I investigate the Greek and Australian myths, and the physical evidence that supports them, to reach a conclusion about this story, its age, and its origin.

What happened when the Storm God met the dragon in mythology? Today we will find out this and a whole lot more. So grab yourself a cup of tea. And welcome to Crecganford