Real Fantastic Beasts

Are dog-headed creatures people or beasts? Find out in this live podcast done at the Kalamazoo Medieval Congress. Our guest, Karl Steel, regales us with tales of the Cynocephalus.

From Beowulf to the guerrilla rewilding of Britain, guest Elizabeth (Lizzie) Marshall regales us with wolfish lore.

Small, cute dogs that serve no practical purpose other than to make us go “awwww” turn out to have a long and fantastic history.

The griffin was both a ferocious beast and a maternal figure. Nobody took it seriously, but its image is everywhere in the pre-modern world from the Near East to Europe.

Guest expert Mustafa Banister Introduces us to the world of Arabic Beast Fables in the Kalila Wa Dimna and elsewhere.

Animals are everywhere in the end times. We explore early responses to the fantastic, terrifying, yet beautiful beasts of the Book of Revelation.

Guest Elizabeth Pastan explores the animals in the Bayeux Embroidery (aka the Bayeux Tapestry). If you want to see the images we're discussing, you can go to the Youtube version of the episode here: https://youtu.be/pOaibXA5XrI .

From partridges to "colly" birds, we explore the early history of the animals (and especially birds) of the beloved Christmas counting song. Special thanks to Evelyn Wohlbier for recording the song for us.

Guest Edana Kleinhans takes us through the subtle differences between wyverns and dragons.