The Fairy Tellers

Katrina and Geoff celebrate Saint Patrick's Day! In this episode, we discuss the man himself and the various legends that surround him. Including the time he got into a fight with a druid priest over an Easter bonfire, and why everyone thinks he drove all the snakes from Ireland.

Katrina and Geoff tell tales within tales within tales! In this episode we dive deep into a listener question about scholars who argue that The Thousand and One Nights was complied by a single author for a specific narrative purpose.  Then we get into the The Tale of the Three Sheiks, which encompasses the first three nights of tales, and what happens as Scheherazade carries out her plan to surviv...

Katrina and Geoff talk tea and sugar and rum! Piling on to the current sea shanty craze, we discuss the surprisingly specific form of folk song called sea shanties, and other songs of the sea. A highlight is the retelling of the true story of Timothy Connor, an American privateer who became an accidental archivist when he wrote down a collection of songs collected by fellow sailors while spending...

Katrina and Geoff get dishonorable! In this Fifth Friday Fable Fest, Katrina and Geoff retell a number of Aesop's famous fables around the theme of "honor among thieves" or the lack thereof. This topic was inspired by a conversation Katrina had with one of our listeners about our first Aesop's Fables episode. 

Content Warning: Sex, Coercive Sex, Rape, and Domestic Violence Katrina and Geoff are back! This episode launches an ongoing project for this year to cover ALL one thousand and one nights worth of tales.... Just kidding. But we will be talking about them a lot! In this episode, Katrina instructs us on the complicated nature of this collection and how it is paradoxically both much older and much ne...

Katrina and Geoff get frozen! In this Queen-sized Yuletide Special, Katrina and Geoff tag-team retell a much requested audience favorite, The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen. Though this literary fairy tale served as the inspiration for the 2013 mega-hit film Frozen, the two could not be more different. But fans of Frozen and The Snow Queen alike are bound to learn something new. 

Katrina and Geoff talk parenting! We decide to get into the holiday spirit by recounting the various ways cultures across the world scare their children into behaving. Forget Elf on the Shelf. We've got a whole slew of new ways to terrify your children into acting right this holiday season, from Europe to South America to the African Diaspora.

Katrina and Geoff return to Nepal! In a follow up to our partnership with the Nepal Youth Foundation in the spring, we find out what projects they've been working on to assist during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the suggestion of a Nepali listener, Katrina retells the story of Don Cholecha (meaning Nanny Goat), another Cinderella adjacent tale from Nepal. Visit https://www.nepalyouthfoundation....

We are launching a Patreon! Learn more here: https://www.patreon.com/thefairytellers Enjoy this free preview of our exclusive bonus content for Patreon supporters including a retelling of Abu Hassan and his Epic Fart (AKA "Abu Hassan Breaks Wind" from A Thousand and One Nights) and a blooper reel.

Katrina and Geoff talk Tall Tales! In this week's episode, Katrina regales us with the story of The Skeleton Hand. In this tall tale, legendary (and probably fictional) frontiersman Jacob Schutz goes on a quest to hunt down four of the "New" World's most fearsome cryptids: The Great Fanged Death, the Loup-Éclair, the Gormagunt, and the big boss daddy of them all, The Great White Hart. We discuss T...

Katrina and Geoff discuss urban legends! In this episode we relied on feedback from our audience to discuss some of your favorite urban legends. Katrina's "I Dove You Mug" was overflowing with great suggestions leading to a discussion about The Ring, Korean fan death, Wrinkles the Clown, 'Orang Minyak, Tsunami Ghosts, UFOs and other amazing tales.

CW: Infanticide   Katrina and Geoff keep getting spookier! Katrina uses her confusion at a scene in the heartwarming 2017 Disney/Pixar hit film Coco as an entry into the hauntingly sad and creepy story of La Llorona. From there we take a detour through Ireland to learn about banshees and for whom they keen before jetting to Brazil for Geoff to retell the story of the Yara, a dangerous creature of...

CW: Desecration of corpses, supernatural feline abuse, implied necrophilia.  Katrina and Geoff get spooky! Katrina rings in October with this spooky tale from the Brother's Grimm about a youth who is seemingly incapable of feeling fear. In his quest to learn to shudder, our hero encounters numerous horrors from demonic cats from hell to dismembered and reanimated corpses, none of which are creepy...

Katrina and Geoff discuss the moon! In this episode Geoff retells the story Chang'e and her expert archer husband Ho Yi. Afterwards Katrina expands this tale into what we've lovingly dubbed the Mythological Chinese Universe (or MCU for short). Hear stories of a heroic monster slayer shooting extraneous suns out of the sky, elixirs of immortality, why there is a rabbit on the moon, and why earthwor...

Katrina and Geoff celebrate a year of podcasting! On this one year anniversary special we go back and revisit even more Cinderella tales. Most importantly we discuss what it really takes to be considered part of this tale type. Spoiler alert: It's not the shoe! Geoff retells the story of Ye Xian, a Chinese tale that dates back a couple thousand years, in which our heroine is granted wishes by the...

Katrina and Geoff right a wrong! Waaaaay back in Episode 19, Katrina told the first half of "Hassan of Basra" from One Thousand and One Nights. But in that episode she only told the first half, simplifying the EPIC conclusion to a few sentences. It's time to make things right! In this episode, Katrina retells "Hassan of Basra" in its entirety. Strap in and enjoy a tale of jinn, magi, fierce Amazon...

Katrina and Geoff discuss grief! Hilarious. Katrina retells her favorite fairy tale of all time, Death in a Nut. Equal parts poignant and comical, this Scottish folktale really gets to the heart of the important fact of life that is death and how we need to come to terms with it. Along the way we'll learn the difference between flotsam and jetsam in maritime law, witness a young man literally conq...

Katrina and Geoff discuss fables! On this edition of our Fifth Friday Fable Fest we parse through a series of fables related to marriage. In the process, we talk about all the hit topics: male pattern baldness, insecurity, polygamy vs. polyamory, and why men look best with a little bit of gray in their hair. And that's only the first fable.   CW: Brief discussion of lynching, castration and racial...

The episode you've all been waiting for... BEAUTY AND THE BEAST! Strap in folks. Katrina and Geoff finally retell the tale that they've been building up to since Valentine's Day. First Katrina takes the tale back to the 1st-6th century with The Woman Who Married a Snake, a tale from the Indian Panchatantra, to complete the necessary background information. We discuss how a translation of this tale...

Katrina and Geoff discuss mermaids! Geoff retells a Jamaican Anansi story where the mischievous trickster god ends up at the bottom of the ocean and encounters a mermaid-like being called Sea-Mahmmy. Then Katrina retells an Afro-Brazilian story of a poor farmer who marries a "mother-of-the-water" who brings him great prosperity. Katrina refutes the idea that this must have come from a European inf...

Katrina and Geoff are surprised to find a folklore connection to current events! What does a petition to rebrand Splash Mountain have to do with folklore? Katrina takes us back through the history of this controversial theme park ride, Disney's Song of the South, Joel Chandler Harris's collection of Uncle Remus stories and the problems that arise when outsiders are the ones that record folklore an...

Katrina and Geoff discuss murderous grooms! In this episode we continue toward our eventual Beauty and the Beast episode with two more tales involving monstrous grooms (animal or otherwise). Geoff retells the story of serial wife killer, Bluebeard, and how Charles Perrault apparently thinks these murdered brides got what they deserved. Afterwards, Katrina tells us two versions of The Fitcher's Bir...

Katrina and Geoff discuss fables! Again. On our second ever Fifth Friday Fable Fest we retell a number of Aesop's famous fables that feature gods of the Greek pantheon. In the process we discuss how the peacock got all those sick eyes on the end of its feathers, why Greek gods in a collection of stories by a Greek author go by their Roman names, and how Katrina's husband spending two months in the...

Katrina and Geoff talk textiles! Following up on a listener suggestion, we delve a little deeper into seidr, a magic practice of shaping and influencing fate that is closely related to Norse mythology. First, Geoff retells the story of Nora-Gest whose amazing life and untimely death (in a good way, the dude lived over 300 years) was foretold from the time of his birth by three Norns (mythological...

Support the Nepal Youth Foundation by visiting www.nepalyouthfoundation.org/donate/ Katrina and Geoff discover the REAL Tiger King! Katrina retells the story of The King Who Rides a Tiger, an epic Nepali fairy tale about a humble farmer who saves a talking cobra from a mongoose, finds himself living in a golden palace, and has to face a series of challenges from the king to keep his wife. If you t...