The Amazing Story Behind The Christmas Carol

The BrainFood Show

Cloud10

Education, History

4.9 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 8 December 2025

⏱️ 79 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

⁠In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we look at one of my favorite stories I’ve ever researched. But before that, we begin by looking at what could have been wrong with Tiny Tim that simply throwing money at the problem could have fixed given 19th century medicine. Moving on to the main content today we’re looking at what Charles Dickens’ called his “Sledgehammer for the poor man’s child” and the backstory that led up to a six week stint furiously writing of one of his most famous works, as well as some interesting references within it that modern readers may have missed, but those in his time would have implicitly understood. We follow that up with some interesting bonus facts related to the story at hand, including why it’s “Dead as a door nail” and not something like “dead as a coffin nail” as Dickens himself mused. On another note, if you could do us a huge favor and rate and review this show in whatever podcasting platform you’re using (including hopefully giving us some feedback related to the new format), we would be extremely grateful. Thanks! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You know when you're listening to a true crime story that has an unbelievable plot twist that makes you stopping your tracks?
0:06.8	That's what our podcast, People Are the Worst, brings you with each episode.
0:09.9	I'm Rachel.
0:10.7	And I'm Rebecca.
0:11.6	We're identical twins who love true crime cases that make you say, didn't see that coming, and we hate the people responsible for them.
0:17.8	Listen to People Are the Worse now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your
0:21.0	podcast.
0:27.0	Hi, I'm Jamie, host of Murderish, the podcast. On Murderish, I give you a 3D look at gripping
0:33.0	murder cases, just the facts, no banter. By the end of each episode, you'll know who was involved,
0:39.0	details of the crime, and what went down at trial. Also featured on murderish is my own
0:44.4	personal story about the time a man followed me home at night and I found him in my bedroom.
0:50.3	Listening to this podcast doesn't make you a murderer. It just means you're murder-ish.
0:54.8	Listen to murderish on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
1:03.4	All right, welcome to another episode of the Brain Food Show.
1:07.2	Is this a Christmas episode?
1:09.0	It's like, it's Christmassy.
1:10.7	I always think of Charles Dickens in winter, and I know we're talking about Tiny Tim and a Christmas carol,
1:16.9	which I very much like that there's a typo in the notes of the Christ Man's Carol,
1:21.0	which I imagined was a retelling from the perspective of Jesus.
1:25.4	Or a typo.
1:26.4	Is this a Christmas episode?
1:30.4	Kind of.
	...

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