Once Upon a Sentence

Where we challenge our audience to name a classic book from a single sentence.

Episode 136 – The Heart of a True Believer

The Christmas season means Christmas movies, and one constant of Christmas movies is the need to believe. You must have faith in the Christmas spirit, or belief in Santa Claus, or even trust in the promises of God. Each of these are labelled belief or faith, and yet they can make for very different stories….

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Episode 135 – To Write, Perchance, a Dream

We’ve all woken from some strange, disorienting dream and wondered, “What was that all about?” In stories, we also sometimes encounter strange dream sequences, and sometimes we still ask, “What was that all about?” In this episode, hosts Timothy Deal and Nick Hayden examine these strange interludes to determine when a dream sequence is beneficial…

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Episode 134 – Playing With Death

Hosts Timothy Deal and Nick Hayden tackle light use of dark subjects in stories, Halloween puns, and fictional ghosts.

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Episode 133 – A Time and a Place for Every Story

Hosts Timothy Deal and Nick Hayden tackle the importance of a story’s historical and cultural context…and Internet quizzes about which story came first.

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Episode 132 – What’s Everyone Laughing At?

In Episode 132, Timothy Deal and Nick Hayden discuss the dark side of comedy and share their annual summer movie (and streaming) review.

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Episode 131 – What’s a Storyteller Worth?

Imagine you’re part of a hunter-gatherer tribe. Who do you value most? That awesome hunter dude who brings home the boar bacon? The guy with the big muscles who tore apart a lion with his bare hands? Or is it the storyteller who tells the myths of your people? This episode, hosts Timothy Deal and…

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Episode 130 – Beyond the Chess Board

Perhaps you’ve sat down for a seventeen-hour session of Monopoly. You roll dice, you take cards, you pay fake money, and you build houses. But you can also imagine yourself as a budding real estate tycoon, trying to avoid jail, consolidating your own personal Potterville in which to squeeze every last penny out of your…

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Episode 129 – Hurdles to “Higher” Art

Everyone has at least one–a piece of art that they keep meaning to experience someday. You know, things like War and Peace or The Rules of the Game or Der Ring des Nibelungen. But it’s long and maybe it’s boring and you don’t like weird foreign names and, I mean, you could just watch Friends…

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Episode 128 – I Ain’t No Hero

Not every hero is squeaky clean. Not every hero wants to save the world and then go back to living a decent, unassuming life. Some heroes cheat. Some heroes kill. Some heroes, in other circumstances, might be considered the bad guy. What do we do with these so-called anti-heroes? Do we celebrate them for being…

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Episode 127 – You, Like, Know What I Mean, Right?

This episode might be about stories that are too ambiguous and thereby confusing. On the other hand, this episode might be about stories that are just ambiguous enough and thereby powerful. Perhaps hosts Timothy Deal and Nick Hayden can find a definitive

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