meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
The BrainFood Show

The Sledgehammer for the Poor Man’s Child

The BrainFood Show

Cloud10

History, Education

4.91.6K Ratings

🗓️ 28 November 2018

⏱️ 79 minutes

🧾️ 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. Next we discuss today’s sponsor. If you’re interested, go to https://wix.com/go/brainfood to get started on your Wix website today! And check out our new website for the Brainfood Podcast at https://www.brainfood.fm/. 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! (You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.) Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show The post The Sledgehammer for the Poor Man’s Child appeared first on Today I Found Out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Alright,

0:02.0

welcome to you another episode of the brain food show.

0:05.0

Is this a Christmas episode?

0:07.0

It's like, it's Christmasy.

0:09.0

I always think of Charles Dickens and Winter,

0:11.0

and I know we're talking about, Tim and a Christmas Carol, which I very

0:16.0

much like that there's a typo in the notes of The Christ Man's Carol, which I imagined

0:21.6

was a retelling from the perspective of Jesus or a typo.

0:25.0

Is this a Christmas episode?

0:27.5

Is this a Christmas episode?

0:29.0

Kinda.

0:30.0

I mean, but it's not holy Christmas.

0:32.3

I mean, it's about a lot of other things actually but sort of leading up to the

0:36.4

impetus for a Christmas carol which had you know actually kind of not a lot to do with Christmas

0:41.6

it was something something else but use Christmas for, you know, the vehicle.

0:46.6

Yeah, okay.

0:48.0

Well, as always, I feel like if this was released in July it would definitely not be a Christmas episode

0:54.1

but the fact that we're releasing this in December is definitely kind of going to have that because

0:58.0

there's like Christmas decorations in the stores. When's Thanksgiving Thanksgiving we're recording this just before

1:03.8

Thanksgiving I want to say. So you don't have Christmas decorations right now they

1:08.1

like restrictions so you can't yeah they they still put in stores and some people put them up but a lot of people wait till the day after Christmas or day after Thanksgiving.

1:17.0

Which I always liked.

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Cloud10, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Cloud10 and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.