Ancient FM

11/22/2025

Dear listeners,

Could you DONATE a small amount to alleviate the expense of running Ancient FM? We assure you that it would be put to good use. To make a donation, visit: https://www.gofundme.com/f/ancient-fm-2025
You can also donate via PayPal to [email protected]

Thanks for your kind support!

11/19/2025

Photo: 15th century St Agnes in Cawston by Paul Harley

11/01/2025

“This is an incredibly early witness to our modern use of musical notations at its very dawn”

A newly identified 9th-century manuscript leaf may contain some of the earliest known examples of written music in Western Europe — what experts are calling a rare witness to the very dawn of musical notation. The manuscript leaf is being offered on the public market for $80,000 US.

10/22/2025

Fantasy books contain a variety of real and made up swear words and phrases. I’ve created some for my Aure series. Which have you heard?
Here’s a list of medieval swear words: https://www.medievalists.net/2023/05/medieval-swear-words/

10/15/2025

Ancient FM thanks Ensemble Les Sonadori for donating songs from their Renaissance album, Les Violons et les Valois. Songs from this wonderful album have now been added to the playlist.
Check out the ensemble here: https://sonadori.org/

10/08/2025

Ancient FM thanks Ensemble Benedictus for donating songs from their fabulous new album, Music for the Canterbury Tales. Songs from this album have now been added to the playlist.
Sample them here! https://ensemblebenedictus.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-the-canterbury-tales

10/06/2025

From our curator…

Available now for preorder—the next Aure book. Links are in the comments.

Synopsis: There’s a secret in Abernay Forest, one that allows Doctor Taur to create miraculous cures. When his talents reach the king’s ears, he is called to the castle where he meets Prince Oswin and is asked to perform an impossible procedure. As he struggles to decide what to do, the castle is attacked and the king slaughtered. The prince, now in danger, sneaks Taur out and they flee.

Meanwhile, an orphaned girl named Luna spies interlopers in Abernay Forest excavating an ancient entombed creature—the source for Taur’s cures. Aware that the creature harbors a dangerous otherworlder, Luna tries to halt the excavation. But it’s too late. The wraithlike otherworlder goes free…and enters Luna, taking over her body.

Fugitives Taur and Oswin must find her before she releases a deadly plague from another world.

10/02/2025

09/24/2025

A six-week course exploring medieval music and the intertwined powers of politics and religion.

09/15/2025

Dear listeners,
Could you DONATE a small amount to alleviate the expense of running Ancient FM? We assure you that it would be put to good use. To make a donation, visit: https://www.gofundme.com/f/ancient-fm-2025
You can also donate via PayPal to [email protected]
Thanks for your kind support!

09/06/2025

Free codes from our curator!

Happy National Read a Book Day!
Having trouble with paper? Try audiobooks! I have US and UK Audible codes (free) available for my science fiction novel, Canis Alpha. Request one in the comments.

Synopsis for Canis Alpha: It’s 2075, and criminals known as “scavs” raid disaster-damaged cities. Their most important rule: don’t help the survivors.

Bear, a twenty-nine-year-old engineer, breaks that rule when he takes Salix, a Native American college student, back to his scav team’s flying ship for medical treatment. Captain Baxter allows her to board but will not let her leave.

Salix hopes to escape, but Baxter’s growing obsession with her makes that impossible. As the situation grows tense, a tsunami in Portugal prompts a scav raid. During that raid, Bear discovers blueprints for a device that could change the world. When it becomes clear that Salix’s life is in danger, Bear flees with her, along with the blueprints, but Baxter follows, and he is more dangerous than either of them realize.

08/29/2025

Middle Earth

“If you asked a medieval English-speaker what ‘middle earth’ meant, they likely would have just said ‘the world’, the place where we live. Many of the medieval uses of the term are surprisingly ordinary. A 14th-century romance about Alexander the Great observes, matter-of-factly, that learned people ‘have divided this middle earth into three regions: Europe, Africa and Asia’. What did they think ‘middle earth’ was in the middle of? The sense is that our world is located between other, invisible realms.” —Eleanor Parker, a Lecturer in Medieval English Literature at Brasenose College, Oxford. Read on: https://www.historytoday.com/archive/out-margins/real-middle-earth