Hi, Mandy!
I have a great idea for your podcast! Maybe you will find it not too bad...

Maybe you know this poem about English pronunciation and spelling:

Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.
... and so on.

If someone does not know it, it is The Chaos by Dr Gerard Nolst Trenité. It shows all the discrepancies of English spelling huddled together in almost 300 lines of funny rhymes. I believe that someone who is able to tell the whole poem correctly, is The Master of Pronunciation. I suspect that not so many Americans themselves can do it, because there are some old and rare words in the poem, like "studding-sail" (old naval term), which have very weird pronunciations.

Everybody can find it with some introductory notes here:
http://www.spellingsociety.org/journals/j17/caos.php
Here I found trascription of first 60 lines in IPA symbols (both the British and American versions):
http://www.madore.org/~david/misc/english-pronunciation.html

So my idea is for you to read this aloud! Although it is evidently not for novices, it is a lot of fun. And it shows the diversity of English spelling. There are some video clips with The Chaos on the Youtube.com, but as for me -- I trust you more. (And your voice is really lovely!) Maybe a video podcast will be handy -- you can show the verses while you read them.

I don't know what is about copyright though. The author died in 1946...

I am familiar with the poem. I've used it in classes, but I never thought of doing a podcast with it. That is a great idea!

You're right that I'll need to look into the copyright issues involved; hopefully some solution can be found.

Thanks for the idea, and the links. I appreciate it greatly.

Cheers,
Mandy