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Coming very soon, Season 3 of the podcast that Stephen Higgins and I have been busily working on. More tales of charlatans, rogues and frauds. More stories of curiosities, wonders and marvels. More presentations about scandals, fiascos and monumental blunders. Find it wherever you find your podcasts.

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This episode of ‘The World Below the War in the Heavens� podcast is all about Corin I, the Battle Queen and it’s full of magic and mayhem. You can’t afford to miss it. Find it wherever you find your podcasts or listen below.

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Season 4 of the World Below the War in the Heavens podcast is back with our first episode diving into the folklore, myths and legends of this imaginary land. More magic, more adventure, more extraordinary events. Find it wherever you find your podcasts, or catch up with every episode .

Or you can listen below!

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I’m rolling out Season 4 of my The World Below the War in the Heavens podcast very, very soon. In the meantime, here’s a teaser preview episode. Listen below or, even better, catch up with all 30 previous episodes via or wherever you find your finest podcasts. Don’t forget to subscribe and like!

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How good are you at telling fact from fiction? True from totally made up? Have a listen to the latest episode of � and put yourself to the test. This ep is all about the weird and wonderful land that is Australia and George Ivanoff and I roll out three purportedly genuine stories about the land, the people and its history � but two of them are bogus.

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For some time, George Ivanoff and I have been working on a new podcast, and Episode One has just been released.

is a fun podcast where George and I present three stories to each other, all of which are ostensibly true. However, one of them is totally bogus, entirely made up, and one hundred percent fake. The challenge is to make all three stories sound believable, because at the end of each episode we have to try to sort fact from fiction and declare which one we think is a fabrication.

Listen via the usual podcast sources, pop over to our or listen via the embedded player below.

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In a job lot of what I thought was interesting office ephemera I bought at an antiques auction, I found an archive of unpublished correspondence, obviously intended for magazine or journal publication that never came about. I present the second of these here without comment, except that in this one, the Professor gets snarky �

Dear Professor,

Why do I keep falling over when I get out of bed?

Larry.

Dear Larry,

Sometimes a letter comes across my desk that is so strange, so peculiar, that I wonder if our entire universe has suddenly sashayed at right angles into a new and completely different reality.

And then again, sometimes I get letters from losers like you.

Falling over, you say?  I suppose you’re looking for someone who takes the question seriously and pontificates about the possibility of local gravity anomalies in your bedroom, or small scale space/time curvatures in the carpet.

Well, you’re out of luck.  At a guess, oooh, I’d say it’s simply a case of being a complete klutz with feet the size of dinner plates, or perhaps it’s the heavy drinking the night before and an underperforming liver that’s responsible.

But, and this simply an indication of my inquiring mind, not an indication of giving you any credence at all, it could be an example of Vertical Bloodstream Imbalance, or VBI as we like to call it.

VBI occurs when sudden movement from a horizontal position displaces the large pool of blood that settles in your body while asleep, or “resting� as the experts might put it.  If you remain in a horizontal position for some time, the blood settles at the lowest point in your body.  When you rise suddenly, it sloshes like water in a bath tub, bouncing off various parts in your body, including the brain � and I use the term loosely in your case, of course.  The resultant shock can result in trembling, brief loss of consciousness and uncontrolled mambo dancing.  So, in theory, you could fall over.

My solution, my life challenged friend, is to tie yourself up every night.  Or simply not go to sleep at all.

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In a job lot of what I thought was interesting office ephemera I bought at an antiques auction, I found an archive of unpublished correspondence, obviously intended for magazine or journal publication that never came about. I present the second of these here without comment.

Dear Professor,

What is the scientific basis of rainbows?

Sunny

Dear Sunny,

They say that a little learning is a dangerous thing, and in your case it’s the equivalent of holding a backpack nuke in your hand and detonating it to see how tough you are.  Sometimes, I wonder why I bother. 

Still, the call of Science is strong.  She’s like a lover who won’t drive you crazy, a long, cool woman in a black dress, an itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini.  And I’m helpless to resist her.

Rainbows?  Simple.  No, more than simple, it’s very simple.  It’s no coincidence that rainbows occur after or during rain.  (There is actually a rare phenonomenon known as the Anticipatory Rainbow, which occurs just before rain.  And then there’s the phenomenon of the recurring rainbow, where the observer thinks he/she has seen the celestial arc before.  This is known as the Deja Bow.)  Rain generally consists of water falling from above in a downwards (vertically) fashion, something which is apparent to even the driest observer.  But what isn’t known is that the due to the velocity of the rain drops� descent the drops are actually distorted into a crescent shape.  The commingling of millions of crescent shapes results in the classic rainbow shape.

But I can already hear my acute � and picky � detractors saying “Aha!�, which only goes to prove what impoverished vocabularies they have.  “Aha!� they cry again, “but if that were the case, why don’t we have rings in the sky after and during rain, or veritable donuts floating in the heavens?�

Elementary.  The ends of the forming rainbows actually possess the same electrical charge, which keeps them well away from each other, like a a teenager and brussels sprouts.  Soon the classic curved shape results.

The colours?  An optical illusion.  Go figure.

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In a job lot of what I thought was interesting office ephemera I bought at an antiques auction, I found an archive of unpublished correspondence, obviously intended for magazine or journal publication that never came about. I present the first of these here without comment.

Dear Professor,

My friend says that scientists have found that birds are actually too heavy to fly.  Is this true?

Signed Flighty.

Dear Flighty,

First, let me put you straight on one thing.  You’re not fooling anyone with this “my friend says� business.  As soon as I hear that, I know that it’s someone trying to cover up their embarrassing lack of knowledge by palming it off on a mythical companion.  It’s the same for “I read somewhere�.  Pathetic.

Birds too heavy to fly?  For a start I’ll assume that you’re not dumb enough to be thinking about emus and kiwis and ground lovers like that.  I’ll take it that you’re referring to the usual, everyday birds.  Sparrows and seagulls and howler monkeys and stuff.

Well, I may have a surprise for you, my shy friend.  Recent research has actually shown that birds are too heavy to fly.  But what about, I can hear you ask, what about all those passerines and raptors I see flitting past my window every second of the day?

This, my unlearned friend, can be explained by two hitherto unknown phenomena.  Phenomenon 1 is Persistence of Learned Memory, or the After Image Effect.  Put simply, this means that because you’ve seen pictures of flying birds many times, when you look out your window you unconsciously superimpose the image of the flying birds onto the background of the sky.  Simple.  I’ll leave the rest to you.

Phenomenon 2 is the Enhanced Buoyancy Effect.  Have you ever noticed that whenever you accidentally ram your vacuum cleaner nozzle into a split in a feather pillow, then swap the hose around to blow instead of suck, the way the feathers immediately defy gravity?  Especially if you have the nozzle pointing upwards?  This is a demonstration of the Enhanced Buoyancy Effect in birds.  Put simply, feathers are actually repelled by air.  In other words, birds are actually squeezed upwards, thanks to the action of air on their feathers.  This, of course, explains why birds have claws � to grab hold of perches, the ground and pirates� shoulders in an effort not to shoot upwards like a cheap champagne cork.  And it also explains the customary nervous disposition of most birds.

Of course there are some nit-pickers who may claim that Phenomenon 1 (the Persistence of Learned Memory) and Phenomenon 2 (the Enhanced Buoyancy Effect) actually contradict each other.  This, of course, has been reconciled by the Avian Uncertainty Principle, which states that wherever birds are concerned, either Phenomenon 1 or Phenomenon 2 explains why they don’t fly.

All in all, it’s a relatively straightforward set of affairs, really.

The Professor.

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Episode 30 of The World Below the War in the Heavens podcast brings this season to an end and in it we look at the reign of King Dimon III of Anaqust. Peaceful he may have been, but his had some of the most remarkable events in the history of the World Below the War in the Heavens, including the extraordinary Tumbling Mania and the first formal magical duel ever recorded.

Listen or subscribe wherever you find your podcasts, or use the embedded player below.

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