SPLANCHNICS: The Society for the Preservation of Literature, the Arts, Numinosity, Culture, Humor, Nerdiness, Inspiration, Cr

Clare Walker & Hannah Kubiak
  • 4.0 (6)
  • SCIENCE FICTION

We are a mother-daughter team of creative artists irreverently discussing books, movies, TV shows, theater, art, bad grammar, or whatever else has captured our imaginations. This is a very serious podcast!! 

  1. JAN 21

    Book Club: "Ready Player One"

    Clare and Hannah read "Ready Player One," Ernest Cline's 2011 LitRPG novel in which every challenge can be solved by being chronically online. Contestants plug in to the OASIS, a virtual universe where anything is possible, if you have the credits and enough one-joystick two-button dexterity to totally kick butt in Black Tiger. Finally, knowing Monty Python and the Holy Grail word for word is useful for something. It's a masterpiece of 80s nostalgia for the Gen-Xers and nihilism for the Millenials.  We’d love to hear your thoughts! Click here to send us a text message! Support the show We provide links and other resources to help you find and enjoy the things we talked about on this episode! Note that some of these may include “affiliate” links to books and other products. When you click through and purchase, the price of the item is the same for you. In fact, most of the time you’ll get a discount! But the company gives us a little somethin’ somethin’ to say “thanks” for sending you their way! This helps you enjoy the website and the podcast EVEN MORE by eliminating intrusive advertisements. Thanks for clicking! Theme music: “Splanchnics Riff” composed and performed by Clare T. Walker Clare is an independent author who would love it if you checked out her books! If you like exciting thrillers featuring an “everyman” hero who rises to his or her full potential in the face of peril—-you might enjoy The Keys of Death. It’s a veterinary medical thriller about a small-town animal doctor who gets tangled up in a whistle-blowing scheme against a big biotech company. Or, if you prefer shorter fiction, try Startling Figures, a collection of three paranormal urban fantasy stories.

    31 min

  2. 12/06/2025

    Why We Love Stories (story structure breakdown)

    Story structure is what makes us love stories in the first place. We love a nice set of bookends. We root for characters who save cats. A hero's journey "there and back again" resonates with the human psyche. In this episode, Clare and Hannah talk about several kinds of story structures, including Three-Act, Five-Act, Chiastic, Save the Cat, and the Hero's Journey.  Some of the books we mention in this episode: The Heroine’s Journey by Gail Carriger Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder Screenplay by Syd Field The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell You can pick up these books and many more at our Bookshop.org affiliate link. You can support your favorite nerdy mother-daughter podcast, get a discount on your purchase, plus support independent bookstores everywhere! Thank you! We’d love to hear your thoughts! Click here to send us a text message! Support the show We provide links and other resources to help you find and enjoy the things we talked about on this episode! Note that some of these may include “affiliate” links to books and other products. When you click through and purchase, the price of the item is the same for you. In fact, most of the time you’ll get a discount! But the company gives us a little somethin’ somethin’ to say “thanks” for sending you their way! This helps you enjoy the website and the podcast EVEN MORE by eliminating intrusive advertisements. Thanks for clicking! Theme music: “Splanchnics Riff” composed and performed by Clare T. Walker Clare is an independent author who would love it if you checked out her books! If you like exciting thrillers featuring an “everyman” hero who rises to his or her full potential in the face of peril—-you might enjoy The Keys of Death. It’s a veterinary medical thriller about a small-town animal doctor who gets tangled up in a whistle-blowing scheme against a big biotech company. Or, if you prefer shorter fiction, try Startling Figures, a collection of three paranormal urban fantasy stories.

    27 min

  3. 11/22/2025

    Book Club: Wise Blood

    This episode, Clare and Hannah talk about Flannery O'Connor's first novel, Wise Blood, published in 1952. O'Connor's stories are rich with symbolism, from a beat-up jalopy of a car to a stolen gorilla suit, and from a preacher's blindness to a shrunken mummified body in a museum. It's a darkly comic and often grotesque ride. Flannery O’Connor has her own section at Clare’s Bookshop.org page. Click through if you’d like to get your own copy of Wise Blood or any other book by and about O’Connor.  We’d love to hear your thoughts! Click here to send us a text message! Support the show We provide links and other resources to help you find and enjoy the things we talked about on this episode! Note that some of these may include “affiliate” links to books and other products. When you click through and purchase, the price of the item is the same for you. In fact, most of the time you’ll get a discount! But the company gives us a little somethin’ somethin’ to say “thanks” for sending you their way! This helps you enjoy the website and the podcast EVEN MORE by eliminating intrusive advertisements. Thanks for clicking! Theme music: “Splanchnics Riff” composed and performed by Clare T. Walker Clare is an independent author who would love it if you checked out her books! If you like exciting thrillers featuring an “everyman” hero who rises to his or her full potential in the face of peril—-you might enjoy The Keys of Death. It’s a veterinary medical thriller about a small-town animal doctor who gets tangled up in a whistle-blowing scheme against a big biotech company. Or, if you prefer shorter fiction, try Startling Figures, a collection of three paranormal urban fantasy stories.

    38 min

  4. 11/01/2025

    What Happens to a Book Series Unfinished?

    Does it dry up like A Game of Thrones in the sun?  Or fester like A Wise Man's Fear, and then run?  Clare and Hannah talk about book series that authors have left unfinished, and the repercussions of that. Should authors be obligated to finish their stories? Should Patrick Rothfuss and George R.R. Martin be locked in a remote cabin together until they finish their series that have gone fifteen years without their concluding volumes? Would it be going too far to hire Kathy Bates to loom over the two authors while menacingly wielding a sledgehammer? We’d love to hear your thoughts! Click here to send us a text message! Support the show We provide links and other resources to help you find and enjoy the things we talked about on this episode! Note that some of these may include “affiliate” links to books and other products. When you click through and purchase, the price of the item is the same for you. In fact, most of the time you’ll get a discount! But the company gives us a little somethin’ somethin’ to say “thanks” for sending you their way! This helps you enjoy the website and the podcast EVEN MORE by eliminating intrusive advertisements. Thanks for clicking! Theme music: “Splanchnics Riff” composed and performed by Clare T. Walker Clare is an independent author who would love it if you checked out her books! If you like exciting thrillers featuring an “everyman” hero who rises to his or her full potential in the face of peril—-you might enjoy The Keys of Death. It’s a veterinary medical thriller about a small-town animal doctor who gets tangled up in a whistle-blowing scheme against a big biotech company. Or, if you prefer shorter fiction, try Startling Figures, a collection of three paranormal urban fantasy stories.

    34 min

  5. 10/04/2025

    Book Club: That Hideous Strength

    Clare and Hannah struggle to untangle the final book in C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy: That Hideous Strength. Clare declares this book did not require a wizard. Hannah finally discovers a romantic subplot she's invested in. Once again, we mention The Abolition of Man, but only because Lewis mentioned it first.  Get your own copy of That Hideous Strength at Clare’s Bookshop.org shop.  We’d love to hear your thoughts! Click here to send us a text message! Support the show We provide links and other resources to help you find and enjoy the things we talked about on this episode! Note that some of these may include “affiliate” links to books and other products. When you click through and purchase, the price of the item is the same for you. In fact, most of the time you’ll get a discount! But the company gives us a little somethin’ somethin’ to say “thanks” for sending you their way! This helps you enjoy the website and the podcast EVEN MORE by eliminating intrusive advertisements. Thanks for clicking! Theme music: “Splanchnics Riff” composed and performed by Clare T. Walker Clare is an independent author who would love it if you checked out her books! If you like exciting thrillers featuring an “everyman” hero who rises to his or her full potential in the face of peril—-you might enjoy The Keys of Death. It’s a veterinary medical thriller about a small-town animal doctor who gets tangled up in a whistle-blowing scheme against a big biotech company. Or, if you prefer shorter fiction, try Startling Figures, a collection of three paranormal urban fantasy stories.

    47 min

  6. 09/25/2025

    Creation Myths Across Cultures

    After reading Perelandra, Clare and Hannah have been thinking about creation myths. In this episode, Hannah shares the whacky ideas the Greeks, Norse, and Chinese cultures had about how the world came to be.  Listener discretion advised for the following reasons: We mention the raunchy aspects of Greek mythology.Both hosts devolve into wailing the saxophone riff from "Careless Whispers."Hannah was left unsupervized on-mic for aproximately 27 seconds.We’d love to hear your thoughts! Click here to send us a text message! Support the show We provide links and other resources to help you find and enjoy the things we talked about on this episode! Note that some of these may include “affiliate” links to books and other products. When you click through and purchase, the price of the item is the same for you. In fact, most of the time you’ll get a discount! But the company gives us a little somethin’ somethin’ to say “thanks” for sending you their way! This helps you enjoy the website and the podcast EVEN MORE by eliminating intrusive advertisements. Thanks for clicking! Theme music: “Splanchnics Riff” composed and performed by Clare T. Walker Clare is an independent author who would love it if you checked out her books! If you like exciting thrillers featuring an “everyman” hero who rises to his or her full potential in the face of peril—-you might enjoy The Keys of Death. It’s a veterinary medical thriller about a small-town animal doctor who gets tangled up in a whistle-blowing scheme against a big biotech company. Or, if you prefer shorter fiction, try Startling Figures, a collection of three paranormal urban fantasy stories.

    25 min

  7. 09/13/2025

    Book Club: Perelandra

    Clare and Hannah continue their journey through Deep Heaven with C.S. Lewis, to a pure and unfallen planet where everyone is naked without shame. Seriously. The only clothed person in this entire book is literally the Devil. The planet is Perelandra—what we call Venus—a newly created Paradise, complete with a “human” King and Queen to be its stewards. But the Ancient Enemy, Satan, inflamed with Envy and bent on destruction, high-tails it there on a mission of corruption and evil. This time, Elwin Ransom (our hero from Out of the Silent Planet) is there to confront him, and stop him if he can… For complete show notes, head to the episode page on Splanchnics.com. If you’d like to pick up your own copies of Perelandra, Paradise Lost, and any other books we mentioned, do check out Clare’s Bookshop.org page. Scroll down to the Splanchnics Book Club section, the C. S. Lewis section, or the Science Fiction & Fantasy section. We’d love to hear your thoughts! Click here to send us a text message! Support the show We provide links and other resources to help you find and enjoy the things we talked about on this episode! Note that some of these may include “affiliate” links to books and other products. When you click through and purchase, the price of the item is the same for you. In fact, most of the time you’ll get a discount! But the company gives us a little somethin’ somethin’ to say “thanks” for sending you their way! This helps you enjoy the website and the podcast EVEN MORE by eliminating intrusive advertisements. Thanks for clicking! Theme music: “Splanchnics Riff” composed and performed by Clare T. Walker Clare is an independent author who would love it if you checked out her books! If you like exciting thrillers featuring an “everyman” hero who rises to his or her full potential in the face of peril—-you might enjoy The Keys of Death. It’s a veterinary medical thriller about a small-town animal doctor who gets tangled up in a whistle-blowing scheme against a big biotech company. Or, if you prefer shorter fiction, try Startling Figures, a collection of three paranormal urban fantasy stories.

    36 min

  8. 08/30/2025

    The 5 Types of Science Fiction, According to C. S. Lewis

    Clare and Hannah have a close encounter! In this episode we go over C.S. Lewis' five kinds of science fiction, as detailed in his essay, "On Science Fiction.” For complete show notes, including a list of the books we discussed, click through to the episode page on the Splanchnics website.  CSL’s essay “On Science Fiction” appears in the collection entitled Of Other Worlds. If you’d like to get your own copy of this or any of the books we mentioned, check out Clare’s Bookshop.org page and scroll down to the Splanchnics Book Club section, the C. S. Lewis section, or the Science Fiction & Fantasy section. We’d love to hear your thoughts! Click here to send us a text message! Support the show We provide links and other resources to help you find and enjoy the things we talked about on this episode! Note that some of these may include “affiliate” links to books and other products. When you click through and purchase, the price of the item is the same for you. In fact, most of the time you’ll get a discount! But the company gives us a little somethin’ somethin’ to say “thanks” for sending you their way! This helps you enjoy the website and the podcast EVEN MORE by eliminating intrusive advertisements. Thanks for clicking! Theme music: “Splanchnics Riff” composed and performed by Clare T. Walker Clare is an independent author who would love it if you checked out her books! If you like exciting thrillers featuring an “everyman” hero who rises to his or her full potential in the face of peril—-you might enjoy The Keys of Death. It’s a veterinary medical thriller about a small-town animal doctor who gets tangled up in a whistle-blowing scheme against a big biotech company. Or, if you prefer shorter fiction, try Startling Figures, a collection of three paranormal urban fantasy stories.

    29 min
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We are a mother-daughter team of creative artists irreverently discussing books, movies, TV shows, theater, art, bad grammar, or whatever else has captured our imaginations. This is a very serious podcast!! 

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