Melancholy Mentor Podcast
Welcome to Melancholy Mentor where classic literature meets the vibrant world of radio plays.
Melancholy Mentor Podcast
Moonlight, Mystery, and Wyndham
A hidden structure on the lunar surface. A chill that says you’re being watched. We dive into John Wyndham’s The Moon and use its eerie pull to explore how vintage radio drama survives—sometimes crystal clear in sound, sometimes blurred where the credits should be. We share why this story sits within Wyndham’s fix‑up novel The Outward Urge, how the original title Idiot’s Delight would have shaped expectations, and what gets lost and found when archives scatter across the internet.
From our side of the mic, we pull back the curtain on how we make these classics feel alive today. Fran films along the South Coast—woodland paths in Eastleigh, quiet coastal light in Hampshire—then we pair those images with clean archival audio to build a mood that honours the original production. We talk about the joy of discovery, the frustration of missing cast lists and dates, and the small victories when a listener says a long‑lost favourite finally found its way back to them. Along the way, we highlight Wyndham’s wider legacy, from The Day of the Triffids to The Midwich Cuckoos.
Send us an email to let us know your thoughts or if you have anything to add at ⏬⏬
info@melancholymentor.com
You can watch the radio drama episode we are discussing on our YouTube channel :
https://youtube.com/@melancholy_mentor
Hello everyone! Welcome to Melancholy Mentor, a classic literature. It's the vibrant world of radio plays. I'm Fran and I'm joined by Evan from Mystery Method. Together we're your guides on this creative journey. During each episode, we'll dive into stories featured on the Melancholy Mentor channel, allowing fresh ideas to flourish, inspiring you to dream big and unlock your creative potential. Get comfy, open your mind, and embrace curiosity. Let's get started.
SPEAKER_01:Hello, I'm Fran. And I'm Methan. And in this Melancholy Mentor podcast episode, we're highlighting an episode featured on our YouTube channel, and the episode is The Moon by John Wyndham.
SPEAKER_02:The Moon.
SPEAKER_01:So in the shadow of the looming moon, an astronaut stumbled across a hidden structure glistening in the lunar light. As he cautiously approached a sudden chill corrept down his spine. Something sinister lurked within, watching, waiting for him to uncover the forbidden knowledge hidden deep within the moon's cold embrace. Wow. I know. So a little bit about John Wyndham. John Wyndham Parks Lucas Beanon Harris, I haven't finished. Harris, he's got a very long name. Was an English science fiction writer and he was born in 1903. He passed away in 1969. He was renowned for his works published under his pen name John Wyndham. He also occasionally used other variants of his name, including John Beanon and Lucas Parks. Now we've featured other episodes of John Wyndham. And I can never say his full name correctly, I'm sure. So if anybody listening actually knows how to pronounce it. And anybody who's listened to previous podcast episodes that we've done, pronunciation is not necessarily my strong suit. I'm working on myself though every day. So you know we can all just keep improving, can't we? So the moon by John Wyndham comes from the science fiction fix-up novel, The Outward Urge. So the fix-up novel is a novel created from several short fiction stories.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So the moon itself isn't like an actual book. There is no kind of book of the moon story. It was kind of put to put together out of short stories. So The Outward Urge was originally published with four chapters in 1959. And a fifth chapter called The Emptiness of Space was originally published in 1961 as a separate short story. So the novelettes sounds like a group, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_02:It does, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:The novelettes featured in the outward urge are Space Station, the Moon, Mars, and Venus. I think we've got all of these radio dramas, haven't we? Yeah. Yeah. And then the added short story, The Emptiness of Space, which I'm not sure that we have the radio drama version of that.
SPEAKER_02:I don't think that one's on there. I think it's the four first stories on there.
SPEAKER_01:So John Wyndham authored many classic novels, including works such as The Day of the Triffids, The Midwitch Cuckoos, The Village of the Damned. And John Wyndham had a younger brother called now again, my pronunciation, but it's Vivian Beanon Harris. Vivian was born in 1906 and passed away in 1987. So a fun fact about the moon, it was originally titled, now you ready for this? It was originally titled Idiot's Delight. Oh which brings a whole different kind of vibe, doesn't it? Really? Yeah. Than the moon. I'd possibly conjure up like a comedy or something like that from that title. So completely different kind of vibe to it. Yeah, yeah. Wow. I usually take my tripod and phone out to film in around Dorset, usually in Hampshire, which is where I am at the moment. So at the time of this recording, I'm actually in Hampshire. So I like to record along videos along the coast and the woodlands. And then Evan, you take the uh radio drama audio. So there it's in archives, online archives, and then videos are put to it for our channel on Melancholy Mentor. Got a similar vibe going on on Evan's channel, which is Mystery Mythos, and that's AI-generated videos, but with radio dramas, predominantly science fiction and mysteries. So, Evan, what additional information do you have about the John Window Wyndham radio drama The Moon that we've got on the Melancholy Mental YouTube channel?
SPEAKER_02:I really struggled with this one. I couldn't find out. I was searching all over the internet, and I literally couldn't find any proper source for it. Even I mean the archives, it there's just nothing, there's just no information about it at all. So very little. The actual story itself is an hour and 45 minutes long. We've got 424 views on this one, so it's quite popular. Currently, so that's quite good for us for it was because we're little channels. Yeah, yeah. And the video itself that's set to it was filmed by you, and it's some lovely trees. I think it was when you were in Eastley in Hampshire, somewhere.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, in the woods. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's um in uh Eastleigh, which is near Southampton. So we're Evan and I are based on the South Coast in the UK, so we're in England, and in a little town called Eastleigh near Southampton, there is woods called I think it's called Stoke Woods. Yeah, and I often go in there rambling around. Yeah, yeah, nice woodland though, isn't it? And the audio that we've got to my recollection, it's quite a clear audio, the radio drama itself. Yeah. Um it's quite nice to listen to. And there are numerous John Wyndham stories on the channel to listen to as well.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, and yeah, sorry, go on. There's quite a few on there, isn't there? It's got his own playlist.
SPEAKER_01:So as Evans already kind of alluded to this, sometimes we don't have a lot of information about the radio dramas themselves. We can't find who the voice actors are, or possibly some of the dates of the recording. Sometimes we don't even know where the origin of it is. If we do know, then we share the information. So we're very upfront about the fact that we're not creating these radio dramas, we're bringing them to new audiences, we're creating the YouTube channel and the videos that you know go with it. And if there's anything about it, we either say in this podcast that's attached to the Melancholy Mentor channel, or it's within the description of the of the radio drama itself on the channel.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And if we've got no other information, then there's not a lot that we can do because we're kind of searching around and looking in books and looking in archives and looking at blog posts and all sorts of things, don't we? To try and find some information.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And just this is very little. Some of them we've got listed like the voice actors, and but even some of that information has been lost, hasn't it? Unfortunately.
SPEAKER_01:Over time, yeah. Because it's quite a number of the radio dramas that we actually feature on both of the channels are old.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So we just don't know you know where much about them or who who actually recorded them.
SPEAKER_02:No, no. So it's quite hard going. Wish there was more to find, really, but I suppose over time, like you say, it just gets lost, doesn't it? The information gets lost.
SPEAKER_01:So that's that's why I really believe in what we're doing and in the creativity of what we're doing to keep sharing this with new audiences. I believe that humanity as an existence is based on stories and store on storytelling. So whether those stories be fact or fiction, they're passed on, you know, originally they would have been passed on orally, and then maybe through drawings or paintings, you know, or etchings, and then some verbalizations put with it, and eventually actually went down on paper. And now we're in a digital age, so you know, goodness knows what's floating around on the interweb out there. There's there's lots of different things, isn't there? So I just I just think it's just such a wonderful thing, just all these words and these stories and this wonderful creativity. And if we can keep bringing a little portion of it to an audience, then that makes us feel really happy.
SPEAKER_02:Definitely, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So, that being said, we are passionate about sharing timeless stories with new audiences, and even more passionate about igniting your creativity along the way. So, thank you for joining us and be sure to explore the radio plays and dramas featured on our YouTube channel Melancholy Mentor. You can also look up melancholy tongue-tied over my words here, it's way too exciting. So, there's also melancholy coaching. So, I'm a neurolinguistic programming coach. We've also got Melancholy Coaching YouTube channel that has a podcast to it that's completely different. It's not based on radio dramas, it is based on motivation, inspiration, and creativity. So you may enjoy that as well. And Evan's channel is Mystery Mythos.
SPEAKER_02:Mystery mythos.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, mystery mythos on YouTube, which is mostly science fiction, and we have other plans for that channel as well. So follow along and see what else we get up to. If you want to kind of follow a little bit more about what we do, you can go to www.melancolymentor.com and check out what we've got on there as well. Until next time. Bye.
SPEAKER_00:Bye. Thank you for tuning in. Contact us at melancholymentor.com. Until next time, keep your minds open and stay curious.
