The Tall Tales Broadcast System: Recent Episodes
Robert Hudson
The archive is temporarily unavailable while we work out how to make new seasons viable. Sorry for any inconvenience and do please give us your thoughts via talltalesnight at gmail
Thank you everyone, for being with us this season. Find all details of the next live Tall Tales by going to the website.
Music from Susannah Pearse and the Mighty Fin Chorus, story from Mike Westcott, be good, be well, be good to each other and see you soon.
Hello! Does anyone read these? I bet they don't.
Today we feature a tragic berk, sex kittens and a tremendous new feature from Marie Phillips, as well as music from Susannah Pearse, with Jane Whittaker, Simon Kane and The Mighty Fin Symphonietta, Harry Sever and Sally Stares. (We don't mention our musicians enough, villains that we are, but we love them.)
If you can support us with a 'coffee' then that's thrilling and here is the place. If you can't, we don't love you less.
Tall Tales Live is on Tuesday 2nd Feb. If you want the link, please email talltalesnight@gmail.com
If you would like to help sustain the Ongoing Tall Tales Project you can buy us coffees here and we are very grateful to those who can.
This Demonstration of the System was brought to you by Will Barnett, Matthew Parker and The Mighty Fin Chorus.
Tall Tales Live is on Tuesday 2nd Feb. If you want the link, please email talltalesnight@gmail.com
If you would like to help sustain the Ongoing Tall Tales Project you can buy us coffees here and we are very grateful to those who can.
This Demonstration of the System was brought to you by Cassandra Harwood, Simon Kane, Carrie Quinlan, Anna Savory, Ed Tolputt and The Mighty Fin Chorus.
Tall Tales Live is on 6th Feb. If you want the link, please email talltalesnight@gmail.com
If you would like to help sustain the Ongoing Tall Tales Project you can buy us coffees here and we are very grateful to those who can.
This Demonstration of the System was brought to you by Gareth Edwards, Tom Lyall, Ellis Sareen and The Mighty Fin Chorus.
This Demonstration of the System was brought to you by Susannah Pearse, Anna Savory, Tim Sutton and The Mighty Fin Chorus.
Buy us coffees here if you would like, and we are very grateful to those who can.
It's a Xmas Special! We have NEWS of upcoming projects and emergency broadcasts.
Mainly, we hope you are well.
If you want to come to the LIVE ZOOM TALL TALES please email talltalesnight@gmail.com
If you would like to chip away at the technical costs for the podcast/live events, we demand nothing but are grateful for anything and this is the link.
If you would like to see the current state of play, before tomorrow's live vote, in Name of the Decade, then click here to see (and we will try to put the picture the right way up this time).
Name of the Decade primer and brackets are here. If you're on twitter, you can vote here in the thrilling Semi Finals, and that poll will last until Monday, after which the final will take place at TALL TALES LIVE on TUESDAY.
TALL TALES LIVE: please tell us you are coming at talltalesnight@gmail.com, where you can also get Zoom details if you haven't already got them.
You can pay for Tall Tales - if you want to only - via this link.
(You can also email us your choices at talltalesnight@gmail.com. You can email us anyway, of course, if you aren't twitter. Not being on twitter is a very healthy position, as any fule kno.)
Name of the Decade primer and brackets are here. If you're on twitter, you can vote here in the thrilling Quarter Finals, and that poll will last a week, after which you can email us your choices at talltalesnight@gmail.com. You can email us anyway, of course, if you aren't twitter. Not being on twitter is a very healthy position, as any fule kno.
We'll be back on July 23rd with the semi-final line-up. Final voting might as well take place at our July live show.
WARNING: We will be taking a fortnight break after Monday's podcast. But be not afraid, we will be back on July 23rd.
All the Name of the Decade names are here. You can vote on twitter here or by emailing talltalesnight@gmail.com
All the Name of the Decade names are here. You can vote on twitter here or by emailing talltalesnight@gmail.com
All the Name of the Decade names are here. You can vote on twitter here or by emailing talltalesnight@gmail.com
Ongoing old news of Emma and the three wise babies; more Name of the Decade results - see the AFRICA bracket for voting here, and vote either via @namedecade on twitter or by emailing talltalesnight@gmail.com
The easiest way to vote in the Macadandang Region of Name of the Decade is via @namedecade on twitter. The next easiest is to look at this list of names and email talltalesnight via gmail.
One person has employed the method of looking at the names and yelling down their choices from upstairs. This will not work for most of you.
Voting until Thursday for Name of the Decade, Frankenstein Region, round one:
See the bracket via this link and then either vote on twitter via this link or email your votes to talltalesnight@gmail.com
Vote now in Name of the Decade! Do this on twitter by looking for the tweets from @namedecade
Find the bracket here, email us with legibility complaints and news from Orlando via talltalesnight@gmail.com
Music from Susannah Pearse, arranged by Harry Sever, sung by Mari Izzard, all for the On Hope Digital Song cycle produced by Matt Powell and Victoria Saxton (rules are made to be broken).
We very nearly announce the contestants for Name of the Decade, but instead, due to a last minute change of plan, announce the announcement of the contestants.
Why a bonus episode?
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We said we would do an episode today and we aren't quite ready for Season Two.
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We haven't done all the things the podcast platform lets us do effortlessly (we won't do the ones that take effort or we would not be able to proceed, as previously stated)
End of the of the middle of the beginning of the end of the middle of the beginning, marked with all the clarity that deserves.
A huge episode. James Pond, featuring Kate Ferguson, Aaron Neil, Carrie Quinlan and Jane Whittaker, with music and sound design from Damian Coldwell.
Plus an Important Announcement!
The song we discuss is this, from Axis of Awesome.
The link we screwed up on our email is ko-fi.com/talltales - the thing we couldn't spell was 'talltales'. It is almost a surprise we can find our own shoes in the morning.
We're live tonight at eight - get your link via talltalesnight at gmail
Music from @sjpearse as per usual
This demonstration features Marie Phillips - see magico newsletter here - and Feet First, by Abigail Burdess.
To repeat, please tell us if you're coming to the live event next Tuesday (and get link) via talltalesnight at gmail
Can history be funny? That's in the ears of the beholder, obviously, but at least we are going to give your ears the chance to behold.
Featuring Somerset and the Ile de No Return. Also cute animals and Agatha Maud.
Music by Susannah Pearse, be still your beating hearts.
Today's demonstration features Mike Westcott. The song we think you should listen to is here. The lyrics to that song are here.
We hope you are having a nice day. Our website is here.
This demonstration features us doing great true stories years before This American Life caught up, and a longer version of Will Barnett's marvellous Dreams.
Yes, yes, yes, to those of you who pointed out that we can't spell 'Tall Tales'. The ko-fi site has now been re-named.
Last one for the week, with huge thanks to Benet Brandreth, Kosha Engler, John Finnemore and Susannah Pearse.
Details for the live show are here.
News of this month's Tall Tales Live, along with news of neglected Kilburnians and brief meta-analysis of the Pearse songbook.
Today's demonstration reveals more important secrets of the bureaucracy we all depend on and a song during which the writers of the song were harmed every time they heard it being sung like this.
We announce Name of the Decade. You may submit your favourites from any NOTY bracket or anywhere else. We are catholic in that sense. We are not catholic in the sense that Pope Thrower will not make our list, nor even Pope McCorkle III, though he is closer. Maybe it makes us more catholic not to be including these names. We don't know. We are not catholic.
Today's demonstrations sees - 'sees'?, let's say 'features' - features one of the highlights of Tall Tales' last couple of years from Matthew Parker and Ellis Sareen's tremendous villainous plutocrat from Diary of a Nobody by Finnemore and Pearse.
Oh - Warhorses of Letters is available via this link.
Today's demonstration sees the end of Kilburn's Glorious 2012 and Simon Kane, via John Finnemore and Susannah Pearse, takes it out in suitably magnificent style.
A tiny piece of Benet Brandreth which is the equivalent of ten complete normal persons. Have a smashing weekend. (Americans will be baffled at all our holidays but a) we have tons more than you anyway and b) May is the holidayest month.)
Bonus feature: NOTY 2017.
Ideally, today's music would accompany the legendary fifty-second Kilburn story, which features many of the same characters and is about interpretive dance, but we won't get there for a couple of lockdowns.
John Finnemore's friend's YouTube channel is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mstjN5fLpNY
Today's demonstration features the continuing adventures of Mike Westcott and an important message from Abigail Burdess.
Name fans, here are Key and Peele doing joke College football names. I would watch all three, obviously. In case you're not a fan of American football and think this is an unreal fantasy world, part of what is so magic about these is the detail and realistitude of the graphics, the presentation, and half the names: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDp-ABzpRX8
At last, we reach Kilburn's most-repeated joke.
Also, music from The Devil Gets All the Best Tunes by Ferguson and Pearse (with a big hat tip to Will Barnett) and Names of Other Eras (with a big thank you to Paddy Duffy).
Another Tall Tales highlight as - for the second time in a week! - we venture into the dangerous waters of competent sound design. Does the normal technical team feel fearful? No, but that is only because they've never heard of that brain science thing where dumbos and incompetents don't realise that's what they are.
Featuring Anna Savory! Simon Kane! Tom Lyall! Hugh Trimble! Shamira Turner! Susannah Pearse!
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We are about to embark on the Golden Summer of 2012, we have a song about snow, and it's raining.
Vote Mathdaniel Squirrel.
The Brandreth Papers take a turn for monstrous. Fairies do what fairies do.
A few more thoughts on Name of the Year.
Some people don't love funny names. That is not our fault.
Mike Westcott is a Champion.
This demonstration features high society high jinks, some horrific godparenting and a thrilling new version of a Pearse classic from Annie Gill and Nick Mulroy, who Annie would like me to say she is married to.
Be not afraid.
It turns out that if you concentrate you can produce audio that sounds great, and Benet and Kosha Brandreth have done so to tremendous effect. We are sorry that most of Tall Tales is not like that but if it were, we couldn't do it, if that makes any sense.
Have a lovely weekend.
Today's demonstration features lovely new recording of two Pearse classics from Harry Sever, featuring Clare Auger and more news of Igor.
If you haven't stopped listening to Skiing Safari from yesterday, you're not the only one.
Can mere words describe the majesty of this demonstration of the System? No.
It features the awesomest band in the history of Northern Ostrobothnia! It features one of the two equal best choirs currently re-working the Mighty Fin back catalogue! It features the song which first showed that Susannah Pearse was not afraid to rhyme safari and Campari!
Today's demonstration features Anna Savory from her usual field of wheat, and Tom Lyall leading the Mighty Fin chorus in a sort of diabolic fairy rock opera.
If you still aren't listening to Simon Kane's narration of Journal of the Plague Year or reading Marie Phillips's newsletter, then that's your loss and not our fault.
Today's demonstration of the system features an uncertain amount of truth and a song about talking animals that took about a month and four thousand drafts to write. You will notice (you probably won't notice) that we have changed our title algorithm and are using digits rather than spelling out the number. We only spelled it out in the first place because Apple said you shouldn't put numbers in there and we were being careful. If this suddenly gets us blacklisted we will go back to how we were. If you have read something more boring than this today, we're sorry.
If you learn the truth about the Blackwater accounting scandal before we find it, please email talltalesnight @ gmail.
In the last demonstration of this week we reveal* that Nature is never absent, even in the city. And if hens aren't enough, and friendly dogs, we also have horses and pigeons in the song. A decade later, I still say 'I'd give pigeons to hear from you,' as if it's a real English expression.
*We use this term in the specialised sense that Garth Crooks once used it when he 'revealed' to Sven-Goran Eriksson that England had qualified for the next round of a major championship when probably S-G Eriksson probably was aware of that, because it's the sort of thing that even a moderately successful England manager would keep himself abreast of.
This demonstration features one of the all-time Mighty Fin highlights, according to seasoned viewers, along with a song to shame the devil.
The nineteenth demonstration features Marie Phillips vs Unimpressive Men (she is in the wrong county to find the computer where she has a great story about her and Impressive Men) and also THE MOST CONTROVERSIAL GREAT MIGHTY FIN SONG OF ALL TIME!!!
Marie's newsletter is at https://tinyletter.com/mariephillips
The long weekend is at an end. In one sense, anyway.
In other news, we have a thrilling story about people fighting for the love of a good engineer and a song about being a cool boss.
In other news, where are you, Finland? We're going to do our part, you do yours.
The long weekend is coming and we suggest you cook your seed cakes, beetroot salad or whatever else may happen to be traditional in your culture to the soothing sounds of a story about a frisky wee doggie and a Susannah Pearse number about someone in denial.
For alternate fifteen minuteses, Annika Stranded by Nick Walker is here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b049fg98/episodes/player
And Warhorses of Letters, born at Tall Tales, is here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p6dcx
If, after Warhorses of Letters, you need more Marie Phillips, then her newsletter is terrific: https://tinyletter.com/mariephillips/
We're at www.listenandoften.com/talltales and talltalesnight@gmail.com
In today's demonstration, terrifying comedy from Anna Savory, and terrifying piano from John Finnemore.
This might not be the best link to Finnemore on YouTube, but it is a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YUJmHuHfKQ
This demonstration is indecisively decisive about the future of technology and features the first appearance of a much repeated trope amid what are, now these stories are sitting up against each other without months and years between them, some continuity errors that the Central Committee are totally ok with.
Also, Ellis as our favourite Puck, even more than Puck in the lovely period crime drama series Crimes of Passion.
We hope you had a lovely weekend, and spent it in a wise fashion. We did, because we are so wise. It is our defining trait. Also, some of us, and I'm not going to reveal who, had long-needed haircuts, but in a wise way.
Today's stars, and it's not a word we use lightly, are Mike Westcott and Susannah Pearse's songwriting, and the voices of Matty Hughes, Annie Gill and Hugh Trimble.
Today's demonstration features what is literally my wife's favourite Kilburn story and what is literally one of my four favourites. It has a song and also, song fans, Tim Sutton, who featured a few episodes back and will again, I bet, is making his first appearance on the Now Show tonight. You probably missed it, but you can listen again and you should.
It's going to be sunny this weekend, if you're in much of the UK. And 84% of you are in the UK. A surprisingly small percentage of you are in Ireland. What's going on, Ireland? Italy is kicking your ass. America, to my surprise, is doing well. I suppose there are lots of Americans. Canada is no surprise. I worry that this might be a boring programme note. There will be those among you who are thinking I am not as worried as I should be.
The twelfth demonstration features - huge news - Mike Westcott. There's not much other news, I promise.
Seriously, there's much less news than you'd think if you glued yourself to the news all day. It's the news' job to make you think important new things are happening every five seconds, but they're not and you really don't have to follow every bounce of the ball and we're here to help you not do that. We're like medicine, like cod liver oil.
The eleventh demonstration footnotes last night's live broadcast, focusing obviously on the cat.
Matthew Parker describes a time when we ventured into a conversation with hilarious consequences (that's a great elevator pitch, Matthew, for if you're ever in an elevator with Spielberg or Iannucci) and we speculate on the System's possible musical future and your role in that.
Today's demonstration of the EBS is not shorter because we broke a pen or something, it's because the Greater TT Community is gearing up for March's live event on Zoom later. That's also why it's early. Short and early, like a prompt child.
And short it might be (is) but it's a cracker.
We had forgotten this one entirely, and in it something that seems to be a dead-end turns out to be chock-full of origin stories.
We hope you are gearing up for the broadcast, if you fancy the broadcast, and that you aren't, if that sort of thing doesn't interest you. Details are on www.listenandoften.com/talltales
Today's demonstration of the EBS discusses the perils of public oversharing and songs from Susannah Pearse which ask and answer one of the main three questions in philosophy.
John Finnemore's friend's webcast: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_DH8YUvliET0C_hZr_0Jeg
Have a good weekend.
(The answer to one of the other three main questions in philosophy is no we don't know how long Benet's bit is going to be when it arrives and we are as scared as you are.)
The seventh demonstration of the system features a wonderful recording of an important classic by the Sutton Family Orchestra and Choir, as well as more Anna Savory than you could shake a stick at for eleven minutes. (Twelve minutes of Anna Savory.)
Links referred to in the podcast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxVVoolAPMo
https://soundcloud.com/slepkane/je-suis-mermaid
This demonstration of the broadcast system features a story that should have been two stories, but we leave it as is because we are committed to a rigorous policy of historical accuracy, admitting our errors and narrative profligacy. Also a song from Xmas Carol 2: Boxing Day that is just one of the reasons that show is an enduring favourite with professional economists*.
- True fact
Today's demonstration of the Emergency Broadcast System features Matthew Parker on faith and the Mighty Fin Chorus on huge unnatural fruit.
In this fourth demonstration of the Tall Tales Emergency Broadcast System: Simon Kane and an inaccurate accent (two separate features).
(Also, a question, my ferociously complex analytics package says a few have listened to us on Pocket Casts. How? Maybe you are the person running Pocket Casts and therefore in charge of okaying this one, in which case I hope you are liking it and please okay it, but otherwise I can't work it out because I can't find it yet.)
This is the third demonstration of the Emergency Broadcast System and, be still your gallant hearts, the wider Tall Tales family have stepped in a cowpat. No, sorry, just free associating. Have stepped in to help.
This is the second demonstration of The Tall Tales Emergency Broadcast System. We maintain our ruthless focus on staying imperfect, like the people who weave errors into Persian rugs.
This is the first demonstration of The Tall Tales Emergency Broadcast System. We are not perfect.