The Inklings Variety Hour

Twelve Tide (Pipkin Book) (Rebroadcast)

O.G. Host Anika Smith rejoins the podcast to interview Chris and his beautiful and omnicompetent wife, Glencora, about their new Christmas resource book, Twelve Tide. 

Part of what we're trying to do with this book is make Christmas less a single-morning present binge preceded by anxiety and followed by anticlimax--and more a season of twelve days of giving, feasting, and learning to celebrate better.

Want an idea of what's in the book? Check out our website, 12tide.com. It is likely that if you order now, you will not receive the book before Christmas, but you can find all of the content on our website and order the book (if you like) in time for subsequent days of Christmas (the season lasts until January 6, after all). 

We are all Niatirbians now (and Lewis was dismayed by godless Christmas cards).  We want to reconcile sacred and "secular" aspects of Christmas and equip people with some old ways to celebrate this season. 

Music from this episode includes:

• George Winston's "The Holly and the Ivy"
• Bing Crosby's "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas"
• Loreena McKennitt's "The Holly and the Ivy"
• Choir of Christchurch's "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing"
• Loreena McKennitt's "Gloucestershire Wassail"
• The Chieftains' "Boar's Head Carol"
• Maddy Prior's "Coventry Carol"
• Medieval Baebes' "Adam Lay Ybounden"
• Maddy Prior's "Wassail!"

Also, if you're interested in the Twelve Tide Spotify list Anika suggested on the show, here it is.

Stay tuned...I'm done with grading and I'm turning my attention to an Inklings Christmas Carol.  Won't be easy to finish in time, but I'll do my level best.  If you are interested in reading a part for it, feel free to email me at inklingsvarietyhour@gmail.com

God bless and keep you this Advent Season. See you at Christmas!

An Inklings Christmas Carol (Rebroadcast)

All three parts of 2023's Christmas play are edited together. Enjoy, and Merry Christmas.

Previous description:

Enjoy a (Zoom) table reading of my "play" (loosely defined), "An Inklings Christmas Carol."  

Special thanks to Anika Smith, Sørina Higgins, Joe Hoffman, and Ed Powell for reading this episode.  Thanks in general to Sørina's Author's Circle, which you can find out more about (and even join) here. 

Hope you enjoy it--keep in mind this is a first draft, none of us are professional actors, and I'm not making a cent off this episode! As with any holiday movie or play, if you keep your expectations low, you'll have a pretty good time!

Feel free to send me feedback at inklingsvarietyhour@gmail.com.  And please rate the show if you like it!

By the way, if you want more Christmas resources from the Pipkins, you can find our Christmas site here: https://12tide.com/

Between Interpretation and Imagination: C.S. Lewis and the Bible

Dr. Leslie Baynes joins Chris to talk about her new book, Between Interpretation and Imagination: C.S. Lewis and the Bible. 

Among other things, we discuss:

• Lewis' familiarity with (and attitude toward) the Bible, before and after his conversion.
• Biblical scholars (like Gore) who influenced Lewis' views of Scripture.
• Lewis and the doctrine of inerrancy
• The trouble with the liar/lunatic/Lord trilemma.
• John and the Synoptics.
• Biblical allusions in Narnia (and Lewis' other imaginative work).

Also:

• Footnotes versus endnotes!
• Epigraphs!
• Bertie Wooster!
• Evangelion and Potatoes at Beaversdam!

A big thank-you to Dr. Baynes for a great conversation. Click here to purchase her book.

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Crumpets? Email me at inklingsvarietyhour@gmail.com

 

We'll have a few Christmas episodes (mostly rebroadcasts), but this marks the end of Season 5. We'll put a few more bonus episodes out in the next months, then pick back up in March with Season 6.

Shameless self-promotion: 

If, in the meantime, you feel starved for Pipkin-related content, you can feel free to buy the book Chris and his wife, Glencora, have written about celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas: Twelve Tide. If you want a free, blog-based version, just go to 12tide.com, and feel free to sign up for our email list while you're at it.

 

Also, there's always this, from Chris' (or Dr. Pipkin's) recent King Arthur class. 

Rebroadcast: The Gangurru of Lantern Waste

Cryptids in Narnia! Happy Halloween!

A parody of the excellent Camp Monsters podcast.

Apologies for posting this twice--people with Apple Podcasts didn't seem to be getting it, so I'm trying again with a new file!

inklingsvarietyhour@gmail.com

 

Rebroadcast: The Gangurru of Lantern Waste

Rebroadcast:

Cryptids in Narnia!

Parody of the excellent Camp Monsters podcast.

Happy Halloween!

Feel free to email us at

inklingsvarietyhour@gmail.com

if you have other ideas for Narnia fan fiction (such as that Caspian the Werewolf one).

C.S. Lewis Ruins the Renaissance (OHEL Intro)

Dr. Katherine Wyma joins me to discuss C.S. Lewis' longest and most ambitious undertaking: The Oxford History of English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama.

Or, as he called it, the OHEL. It lay, he said, "like a nightmare on my chest."

It's a brilliant work of scholarship, and we highly recommend it. But just in case you can't make it through 700 pages of paradigm-shattering, witty and insightful prose about the greatest (and worst) poets of the sixteenth century, we've got you covered. We'll be discussing the highlights from the Introduction here, and from subsequent chapters in subsequent podcasts.

So, put on your best pair of pantaloons and join us for this romp through what used to be called the Renaissance (but isn't usually anymore, thanks in part to Lewis).

Today, we'll cover just the introduction to his work, entitled: New Learning and New Ignorance. 

Questions? Concerns? Criticisms? Compliments? Complaints? Condolements? Candy?

Email us at inklingsvarietyhour@gmail.com.

 

First Animated Hobbit

Connor Salter joins me to talk about the first "animated" Hobbit, made by Rembrandt Films in 1966 to allow the studio to hold onto the rights for the film.

Feel free to watch it here before you listen! It is...something.

By the way, I am aware of the fact that the sound is not ideal in this, and I apologize for some of the problems in quality. I am taking steps (as soon as possible) to remedy this.

As always, feel more than free to email me at inklingsvarietyhour@gmail.com. Thank you for listening, and I'd love to hear from you.

By the way, I have no idea why my software cut off the music at the end, but it seems to have. Hopefully no one was too bothered by that.

Narnia for Grown-Ups: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe

Dr. Sørina Higgins joins me to talk about The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe and why adults should read it.

If you enjoyed this conversation and would like to take Sørina's course on the same, go here: https://wyrdhoard.com/2025/07/18/come-through-the-wardrobe-with-me/

We get into a lot of really interesting subjects related to Narnia here, and The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe in particular. I don't have time to detail them in the show notes this time.

See you in two weeks! There will be far less of a break between seasons this year, as I still have plenty of material to share (and quite a few upcoming conversations). It's just a matter of finding time to edit as the school year begins.

Stay tuned! 

The Abolition of Man: A Roundtable

Chris invites several guests to talk about the following question in a two-hour roundtable special:

To what extent is Lewis' The Abolition of Man prescient or prophetic? 

I really enjoyed this roundtable discussion between:

• Nathan Gilmour
• James LaPeyre
• Joseph Weigel

and

• Jonathan Geltner

I hope you will, too. 

We talk a lot about the following subjects:

• What Lewis means by "nature"
• Whether Lewis is, being coy, retreating into simplicity, playing a "forced card trick" or some other manner of knavish chicanery
• Whether Lewis eternalizes historically contingent ideas, such as the Romantic view of the sublime
• Wittgenstein
• McIntyre
• Barfield
• The importance of story
• Whether the difference between moderns and ancients is as great as Lewis assumes
• Whether we should have that appendix out or not

Feel free to shoot me an email if you'd like to add your two cents!

I know, this isn't exactly beach listening, but I sure enjoyed it. We'll be back again in two weeks with lighter fare.

Walking Tours

The Inklings are often characterized as mostly sedentary men who wrote about people going off on adventures. Yet for a few of them, the highlight of their year was the chance to go on walking tours throughout England.

It's unlikely, in fact, that they would have been able to describe the adventures of, say, Elwin Ransom, or the three friends in Night Operation if they didn't take these rambles (and write about them!) from time to time. 

With me to talk about the Inklings' walking tours are Inklings scholars Sørina Higgins, Don W. King, and (for the first time), Owen A. Barfield, grandson of Owen Barfield. 

We cover a lot of ground during this conversation. Topics include:

• What exactly a walking tour is/was
• The walking tours Jack and Warnie took versus those Jack took with the "Cretaceous Perambulators" (Barfield and others)
• Why these excursions tended to be documented a bit better than Inklings' meetings at Magdalen
• Humor and bawdy among the Inklings
• Connection between walking, talking, and working ideas out
• "The Inkling Impulse"
• What different Inklings looked for in a successful walking tour
• Influence of the walking tours in the Inklings' fiction

My thanks to all three of my illustrious guests for joining me. You can find more about them and their work here:

• Sørina Higgins
• Don W. King
• Owen A. Barfield

See you in two weeks' time! As always, please do rate the podcast, and if you have ideas or responses, please do email me at inklingsvarietyhour@gmail.com.