Animal Magic

In this Very Special Holiday Episode, we'll Share Something Happily Forgotten, a Christmas Mystery long buried in the snow of the past.  We'll also wonder why Pigs are the baddest animals in the Bible.  

On December 3rd, 1976, a 30-foot pig flew over England, disrupting air traffic and scaring the manure out of a rancher's cattle.  In this special anniversary episode, we'll share the timeless tale of the photo-shoot for the Pink Floyd Animals album cover.  And we'll consider what it may have to do with Orwell's novel Animal Farm, and whether that book still has anything to teach us in America today.

The absolutely true story of a journey to witness Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds in concert, with some silly and supernatural surprises.  This doesn't contain any music samples, but refers to "Jubilee Street" (I recommend the Copenhagen live version), "Tupelo," "Wild God," "Conversion" and "Into My Arms."

In this "Season of the Witch" we'll be looking at the ancient myth of Circe, the Sorceress in The Odyssey.  This Enchantress is dangerous (especially to chauvinist pigs) but also a savior who instructs Odysseus and his men about how to face the perils ahead.  Times of terror can be times of transformation, sometimes for the better.

A Heart concert got me thinking about Odysseus and the Sirens.  And I wondered - what might the Sirens be saying if they were singing today?  

In this Controversial Episode, we'll explore Biblical Bugs, and Creepy-Crawlies of Egyptian, Chinese and Greek Mythology.  Plus some personal recollections of that time I got stranded in the middle of the great Cincinnati Cicada Awakening of 1987.

How is a Raven like a Role-Model?  In stories Jesus told, rich men come to bad ends, and apparently the fox and the raven know something we don't know about the divine plan.  Regardless of heaven and hell, what might these parables tell us about life on earth?

All life on Earth is linked by water – every human, plant, and animal in the past, present, and future. That's a lot to think about when someone pees in the pool.  Water is life, water can be death, and it shows up in the strangest places...

Bacteria, billionaires and blockbuster action stars of the 80s – all are forms of power. In this episode, we await the most powerful being of all, the electrician, whose 5-minute appointment can eat an entire day from 8 to 4. But it gives plenty of time to wonder: what is "power?"  

I wrote a little book, Welcome to Tragedy: A Beginner's Guide to Greek Drama, with brief introductions to all of the surviving scripts by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides (plus three comedies by Aristophanes).  I was fascinated by the variety of Greek drama, ranging beyond familiar definitions of "Tragedy."  One script that really sticks out is Euripides' Helen, a wacky swashbuckling adventure story.  So that chapter is here (starting at about the 8 minute mark), after a basic introduction to the Trojan War.