An episode from 3/22/22: One of my goals for The Great Myths has been to show how strange, even off-putting, the stories that we know and revere really are. I don’t know of a better example of this than the largest literary text surviving from twelfth-century Ireland, The Tales of the Elders of Ireland (⁠Acallam na Senórach⁠).

Using the wanderings of Saint Patrick throughout Ireland as the frame story, Patrick meets with the surviving warriors from older times, and between them more than two hundred small stories are strung together. The lore of place-names, stories of battle and the Otherworld, as well as the mournful pathos surrounding the passing of the pagan world, are related in exciting, heart-wrenching, dry, scholarly, or just bizarre ways, in poetry and prose. The translation I read from is that of ⁠Ann Dooley and Harry Roe⁠.

Other episodes on Celtic mythology ⁠are here⁠⁠.

You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I’ve also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series.

Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.


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#235 - London in 2011, London in the 1660s - Human Voices Wake Us

An episode from 7/27/26: Tonight, we visit London at two different times in history. First, I read passages from Craig Taylor’s 2011 book Londoners: The days and nights of London now—as told by those who love it, hate it, live it, left it, and long for it. Then we go back a few centuries in Liza Picard’s Restoration London: Everyday Life in London 1660-1670, and focus especially on the lives of women, children, and the poor.I also talk about the value of accounts like these, which don’t pretend to be definitive or objective. But what else do we really hold onto, in the end, other than vivid and subjective stories told by the people we’re closest to, or gleaned from books that we love? Taylor and Picard’s books have both become those for me.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts.Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
  1. #235 - London in 2011, London in the 1660s
  2. #234: The Intensity of Private Moments
  3. #233: Talking Baseball with Tom Hart
  4. #232: Ted Hughes in Alaska
  5. #231: The mythology of the moon
  6. #230 - The mythology of the bear, and Byron gets apocalyptic
  7. #229 : Mother Earth and myths of mining and agriculture
  8. #228 - What Ted Bundy did on July 14, 1974
  9. #227 - The Great Fire of London and the destruction of Jerusalem
  10. #226: The Vitality and terror of cities

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Discover more from Tim Miller

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