Pu Songling knew quirky and charming, but he also knew scary, too. Take a listen to Lee and Rob discuss what is arguably the most famous story in Strange Tales from Liao Studio: a macabre exploration of monsters, Daoist magic, and a wife so dedicated that she’ll do…well, pretty much anything to save her husband.
Hogwarts before there was Hogwarts. Heck, Dorian Gray before there was Dorian Gray! Pu Songling was there first. Take a listen as Lee and Rob discuss the story of two men, a priest, and a painting that gets a little too lifelike.
There aren’t a lot of things we agree on, but one of them is Pu Songling. The author of Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio 聊斋志异 (1740), which is exactly what it sounds like: a collection of strange tales. Very strange. Strange and wonderful. Today we start a three-part series where we dig into this […]
Man drinks with his buddies. Man upgrades and becomes drinking buddies with one of the grand poobahs of the underworld. Man dies. Man becomes high-ranking bureaucrat in the afterlife. Man becomes more present and caring father and husband from his place in the underworld. That kind of thing happens every day, right? It does in […]
50th Podcast Anniversary We Made it to 50! No one expected it, least of all us, but this is our 50th episode with the podcast. Today, Rob and Lee are going to celebrate just like the ancients used to….with a Top 5 Countdown! The pair will share what the top five works of Chinese literature […]
In today’s podcast, we return to the Historian of the Weird, that is the late, great Pu Songling. Previously, we did a podcast on his touching love story about a man and his rock. This time, we take a look at an equally ‘touching’ love story, though here, we are talking about bad touch. In the story […]