Explore every episode of the podcast The Crane Bag Podcast
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Episode #123: The Birth of Oisin | 31 Oct 2024 | 00:25:33 | |
Once again Finn MacCool stumbles into relationship with the Otherworld, in this story from the Irish Finn cycle brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming. www.JayLeeming.com | |||
| Episode #121: The Mermaid in the Mirror | 30 Oct 2024 | 01:06:48 | |
Do we live in a world of infinite possibilities, or of barriers and limits? A wizard, a blue snake, and a mermaid help us to explore this question in this story from deep within the mythic cosmos known as Stories from One Thousand and One Nights.
www.JayLeeming.com | |||
| Episode #120: Finn MacCool and the Spell of a Hundred Years | 14 Oct 2024 | 00:38:04 | |
Though these stories seem to focus on the exploits of Finn and his band of poetical warriors, the Goddess is always present in all her forms and liable to show up in the most unlikely of circumstances. In this episode Finn sets out into the wild but soon finds himself in a territory of weakness and forgetting unlike any he has stumbled into before.
www.JayLeeming.com | |||
| Episode #119: Finn MacCool and the Fomorians | 19 Sep 2024 | 01:03:00 | |
Here's a rowdy dream-vision involving a house thatched with feathers, pigs that never die and a sea-god for whom story is the fire that warms his house; it's the journey of King Cormac into the Otherworld as brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming. www.JayLeeming.com | |||
| Episode #118: Talking About the Mahabharata With Geetha Reddy | 20 Aug 2024 | 00:52:04 | |
Storyteller Jay Leeming and playwright Geetha Reddy discuss her recent adaptation of the Mahabharata. | |||
| Episode #117: The Boyhood of Finn MacCool, Part Two | 07 Aug 2024 | 00:43:28 | |
The Irish epic of Finn MacCool, brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.
www.JayLeeming.com | |||
| Episode #116: The Boyhood of Finn MacCool, Part One | 07 Aug 2024 | 00:59:57 | |
The Irish epic of Finn MacCool brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.
www.JayLeeming.com | |||
| Episode #115: Girl Meets Wolf: Exploring "Red Riding Hood" | 02 May 2024 | 00:32:13 | |
There's trouble out there, big nasty toothy trouble and this life isn't just sitting with bread and honey by a warm fire. That's the truth expressed in this age-old narrative of innocence becoming wisdom, a primal building-block of story explored by storyteller Jay Leeming and who knows if on the way we might also meet the Buddha on the road? www.JayLeeming.com | |||
| The Odyssey Part One: Feasting the Sea-God | 02 May 2024 | 00:55:42 | |
The epic of the Odyssey brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming. www.JayLeeming.com | |||
| Songbox #1: Odysseus, Guslar and the Belly of the world | 18 Apr 2024 | 00:44:24 | |
A live and unscripted riff on hunger, myth, and the origins of poetry by performance storyteller Jay Leeming, unedited and rowdy as an apple on a branch. www.JayLeeming.com
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| The Odyssey Part Eleven: The Rooted Bed | 01 Mar 2024 | 01:00:23 | |
The Odyssey brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.
www.JayLeeming.com | |||
| The Odyssey Part Ten: Once I Went Hunting | 01 Mar 2024 | 01:01:54 | |
The Odyssey brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.
www.JayLeeming.com | |||
| The Odyssey Part Nine: Now You Must Be Someone Else | 01 Mar 2024 | 00:58:10 | |
The Odyssey brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.
www.JayLeeming.com | |||
| Odyssey Part Seven: Blood for Ghosts | 01 Mar 2024 | 00:55:28 | |
The Odyssey brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.
www.JayLeeming.com | |||
| The Odyssey Part Five: My Name is Nobody | 16 Feb 2024 | 01:00:20 | |
The epic of the Odyssey brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.
www.JayLeeming.com | |||
| The Odyssey Part Four: Welcome, Stranger | 16 Feb 2024 | 00:35:13 | |
The epic of the Odyssey brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.
www.JayLeeming.com | |||
| The Odyssey Part Three: Some Say He is My Father | 16 Feb 2024 | 00:45:38 | |
The epic of the Odyssey brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.
www.JayLeeming.com | |||
| The Odyssey Part Two: The Kingdom of Rust and Honey | 16 Feb 2024 | 00:41:45 | |
The epic of the Odyssey brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.
www.JayLeeming.com | |||
| Odyssey Part Eight: A Song You Must Not Hear | 15 Feb 2024 | 01:01:09 | |
The Odyssey as brought to life by performance storyteller and poet Jay Leeming. | |||
| The Odyssey Part Six: With a Hawk Feather in Her Hair | 15 Feb 2024 | 01:11:30 | |
Jay Leeming tells Part Six of the Odyssey. | |||
| The Seven Sisters | 15 Dec 2023 | 00:22:21 | |
Could some stories really be 100,000 years old? A meditation on oral memory, story, and the constellation of the Pleiades, complete with music (played on the dilruba of India) for our winter darkness. www.JayLeeming.com | |||
| Storyteller Daniel Morden interviewed by Jay Leeming | 27 Sep 2023 | 01:22:02 | |
Jay Leeming interviews the Welsh storyteller Daniel Morden about the Odyssey, his path to storytelling, and much more. | |||
| The Mahabharata Part Sixteen: The Journey to the Otherworld | 29 Aug 2023 | 01:13:52 | |
The age of Kali begins, kingdoms are destroyed and Yudishtira and his brothers set out for the otherworld, all in this final episode of the Mahabharata as told by performance storyteller Jay Leeming. | |||
| The Mahabharata Part Fifteen: Tranquility | 22 Aug 2023 | 01:03:15 | |
In the aftermath the river Ganges returns as the luminous, magical thread joining every part of this story, healing the survivors and joining the three worlds. Meanwhile Yudishtira wrestles with his doubts and seeks the wisdom of Bhisma, still clinging to life on the battlefield beneath the circling stars. | |||
| The Mahabharata Part Fourteen: War's End | 15 Aug 2023 | 00:59:44 | |
| Mahabharata Part Thirteen: The Death of Drona | 13 Jul 2023 | 00:51:12 | |
Truth and lies, elephants and chariots collide on the battlefied of Kurukshetra, where the vows and desires of every character create a pattern no one could have foreseen and the battle in the world is revealed to be also a battle within.
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| Mahabharata Part Twelve: The Death of Bhisma | 30 Jun 2023 | 00:41:12 | |
The epic which began with the theft of a cow continues as all the fruits of action grow ripe on the branches of what's possible, leading to a battle in which even a god can lose his way and the razor-sharp choices of one woman in her past life lead to the death of the Grandfather of us all. | |||
| The Mahabharata Part Eleven: Krishna's Last Efforts | 22 Mar 2023 | 01:12:48 | |
The Kurus and the Pandavas hurtle towards a war which it seems cannot be stopped, though Krishna does everything in his power to prevent it in this episode of the Mahabharata as brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming. | |||
| The Mahabharata Part Ten: In the Court of King Virata | 17 Mar 2023 | 01:10:36 | |
The epic of the Mahabharata brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming through the power of music and the spoken word. | |||
| Episode 87: Persephone, Queen of the Underworld | 14 Mar 2023 | 00:59:59 | |
Down we go, down the roots of this bright flower-loud world into the depths of the winter kingdom ruled by Hades himself. "The glacier knocks in the cupboard / the desert sighs in the bed / and the crack in the teacup opens / a lane to the land of the dead." So wrote the poet W.H. Auden, and by cracks and brokenness we learn who we are-- though the journey might also involve cattle-rustling, a mouthy youngster and the invention of the lyre. Let us go! | |||
| The Mahabharata Part Nine: Draupadi and the Jambul Tree | 13 Mar 2023 | 01:00:44 | |
Princess Draupadi and the five sons of Pandu confront the limits of their powers in a wilderness alive with magical beings, rakshasas, and speaking trees in this episode of "The Mahabharata" as brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming. www.Patreon.com/StoryJL | |||
| The Mahabharata Part Eight: The Search for Weapons | 05 Mar 2023 | 01:07:48 | |
Performance storyteller Jay Leeming brings to life the Indian epic of the Mahabharata through music and the power of the spoken word. In this part of our story the Pandavas encounter powers greater than any they have encountered before; non-human powers who school them in humility and weakness. Along the way they meet the monkey god Hanuman, the sage Parashurama and the ageless seer Markandeya who gives them a glimpse of the end of the world. www.Patreon.com/StoryJL | |||
| Episode 84: The Mahabharata Part Seven: Into the Forest | 25 Nov 2022 | 01:07:52 | |
Princess Draupadi and the five sons of Pandu leave their kingdom behind and begin their thirteen-year exile in the forest; the vast epic of the Mahabharata, brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming. | |||
| Episode 82: Mahabharata Part Five: Draupadi's Laughter | 14 Nov 2022 | 00:51:37 | |
| Orpheus and Eurydice | 10 Nov 2022 | 00:30:36 | |
The story of Orpheus and Eurydice, brought into the here and now by storyteller, poet and musician Jay Leeming. | |||
| Episode 81: The Mahabharata Part Four: The Birth of Draupadi | 17 Oct 2022 | 00:42:17 | |
Who's that stepping out of the bonfire? It's Draupadi, the princess who will change the world permanently and forever; who will witness the end of the third age of time and will even get to laugh hysterically for a few brief and beautiful moments. | |||
| Episode 57: The Norse Creation Myth | 12 Oct 2022 | 01:04:55 | |
Darkness and fire and the tree at the center of all things: storyteller Jay Leeming brings the Norse creation myth to life through music, story, and the power of the spoken word.
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| Episode 83: Mahabharata Part Six: A Game of Dice | 04 Oct 2022 | 01:01:53 | |
| Episode 80: The Mahabharata Part Three: Drona | 01 Oct 2022 | 00:56:16 | |
Deeper into the forest we go, tracking the story of the wizard-like teacher Drona to its source in water and in fire. | |||
| Exploring the Odyssey #2 with Bethany Dixon | 29 Sep 2022 | 00:47:25 | |
Why do the gods do what they do? What's up with all the weeping and washing in the Odyssey, and can baking five cakes in one day get us some answers? Poet Bethany Dixon and I sat down on a summer's day to explore the feminine characters of the Odyssey, and the result is a wide-ranging exploration of gender, the divine, and the good trouble of being alive. | |||
| Episode 79: The Mahabharata Part Two: The Birth of the Pandavas | 14 Sep 2022 | 00:42:38 | |
A blind king, a visit to the king of the fishermen, and yet another hunting trip gone wrong: it's part two of the epic of the Mahabharata, as brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming. | |||
| Episode 78: The Mahabharata Part One: Origins | 10 Sep 2022 | 00:42:26 | |
A plunge into the mythic cosmos of the Mahabharata, an epic story in which the destinies of gods and humans intertwine and the roll of a die decides the fate of an entire kingdom. | |||
| Episode 77: The Birth of Bhisma | 19 Aug 2022 | 00:48:58 | |
A king without a queen marries a river goddess who then does a few monstrous things; that's the news straight from the start of the Mahabharata, a beautiful Hindu epic in which gods and humans mingle in both lovely and destructive ways. | |||
| Episode 76: Markandeya Walks the World | 21 Jul 2022 | 00:28:09 | |
It's tough being a sage who lives forever, especially when the world crashes and burns and you're left crawling through an apocalyptic wasteland; but in that darkness there are still surprises to be found. A cosmic legend of murk, hope and mangoes from the Hindu epic the Mahabharata, as told by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.
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| Exploring the Odyssey #1 with Sam Buggeln | 26 Apr 2022 | 00:35:49 | |
Theater director Sam Buggeln talks with performance storyteller Jay Leeming about myth, theater, the supernatural, and bringing the Odyssey to the stage. | |||
| Episode 75: Arawn, Lord of Annwvyn | 20 Apr 2022 | 00:42:10 | |
A story from the first branch of the Welsh Mabinogion, told and then explored by performance storyteller Jay Leeming. | |||
| Episode 74: Branwen, Daughter of Llyr (Part Two) | 06 Mar 2022 | 00:46:42 | |
Part two of the Welsh story of "Branwen, Daughter of Llyr," brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming. | |||
| Episode 74: Branwen, Daughter of Llyr (Part One) | 06 Mar 2022 | 00:40:16 | |
A raven king, a magical cauldron and a talking bird: the Welsh story of "Branwen, Daughter of Llyr" brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming. | |||
| Episode 73: Into the Underworld with the Luckiest Boy Alive | 29 Jan 2022 | 01:08:43 | |
The power of blind chance goes up against the king of death in this fairy tale brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming. | |||
| Episode 72: Exploring the Odyssey with Joel Christensen | 27 Jan 2022 | 00:48:54 | |
A journey into the fierce yet healing story of the Odyssey, first through storytelling by Jay Leeming and then through an extended interview with Joel Christensen of Brandeis University. | |||