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Peculiar Book Club Podcast episodes
- We've got trouble, right here on the Peculiar Book Club, with The Music Man (Peculiar Movie Club)
Welcome to the Peculiar Movie Club, a bonus podcast linked to our main show the Peculiar Book Club through common themes in media. This week, in honor of the book A Gentleman and a Thief, we are discussing our own gentleman conman with The Music Man.
Join Davey Berris and Darren Cross as we take a deep dive into this classic Hollywood (and Broadway) musical to discuss our favorite songs, finding our someone, and seeing the good in someone else.
Website: https://brandyschillace.com/peculiar/
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ixJJ2Y
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PeculiarBookClub/membership
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeculiarBookClub/streams
Twitter: @peculiarBC
Facebook: facebook.com/groups/peculiarbooksclub
Instagram: @thepeculiarbookclub
56 min - We'll confess our crimes with Dean Jobb and A Gentleman Thief
Suave and movie-star handsome, Arthur Barry charmed New York celebrities as he planned and executed some of the most brazen and lucrative heists of the 1920s. Think Cary Grant’s character was clever and slick in the Hitchcock classic To Catch a Thief ? This gentleman thief was smarter, smoother. It sounds like fiction. But it isn’t. Barry was real-life con artist who donned a tuxedo to crash the parties of the rich and famous as he planned his burglaries. Known as a “second-story man,” he could even slip in and out of bedrooms undetected as his victims slept only inches away! “I know he’s terrible, but isn’t he charming?” – wrote Robbery victim Dorothea Livermore. Barry was, shall we say, the aristocrat of crime—and a modern day Robin Hood. Well, except for the giving it to the poor part. In a span of seven years he stole diamonds, pearls and other precious gems worth almost $60 million today—in a whirlwind of roaring 20s decadence. Don your dapper attire, raise a coup cocktail glass—and join us for the latest by the brilliant Dean Jobb: A Gentleman and a Thief!
Episode was recorded live August 22, 2024.
Website: https://brandyschillace.com/peculiar/
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ixJJ2Y
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PeculiarBookClub/membership
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeculiarBookClub/streams
Twitter: @peculiarBC
1 hr 1 min - The chase is on for Moby Dick (Peculiar Movie Club)
Welcome to the Peculiar Movie Club, a bonus podcast linked to our main show the Peculiar Book Club through common themes in media. This week, in honor of the book Whalefall, we are discussing the greatest tale of Whales ever told, the classic Moby Dick.
Join Davey Berris and Darren Cross as we take a deep dive into this classic tale of temptation, obsession, was Gregory Peck right for the role of Ahab (he didn't think so), and what are our white whales.
Website: https://brandyschillace.com/peculiar/
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ixJJ2Y
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PeculiarBookClub/membership
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeculiarBookClub/streams
Twitter: @peculiarBC
Facebook: facebook.com/groups/peculiarbooksclub
Instagram: @thepeculiarbookclub
1 hr 3 min - We're having a Whale of a Time with Daniel Kraus (and Mary Roach) and Whalefall
Just imagine for a moment—you are swimming in the cold dark of the Pacific Ocean, trying to find the lost remains of your father. But you aren’t alone. There are shapes moving in the gloom, great, dark shapes. Shapes with mouths. That’s what happens to Jay Gardiner in the latest novel by award winning author (and collaborator with Guillermo del Toro) Daniel Kraus. Caught first by a giant squid, then swallowed whole by a Sperm whale, Jay has one hour to get out alive. If he can get out of his own head, first.
The thing is, If you were swallowed by a whale… it would be a VERY big GULP. And you know who can tell us about gulps, right? Mary Roach. Because on tonight’s special VIP edition of Authors Hosting Authors, Mary will talk to Daniel about the ins and outs of being, well, in—and out. Because while the story might be fiction, the trial of our protagonist is based in scientific FACT. Join us for a wild night and learn the best possible escape routes out of an 80 ft, 60 ton whale. You never know when that will come in handy!Episode was recorded live July 25, 2024.
Website: https://brandyschillace.com/peculiar/
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ixJJ2Y
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PeculiarBookClub/membership
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeculiarBookClub/streams
Twitter: @peculiarBC
1 hr 4 min - This episode will be a real Beauty with Zara Stone and Killer Looks
How much do looks really matter? In society, whether we like it or not, how we look affects how we are treated—and even what opportunities we might have in life. A one-time New York prison commissioner, Henry Solomon, once stated that “physical defects…might conduce to crime” because a man with a poor physical appearance would have an easier time stealing a dollar than getting hired to earn one. That outlook wasn’t new then, and it hasn’t really gone away. In Zara Stone’s amazing book KILLER LOOKS, she writes that “people have instinctively understood the societal benefits of conventional beauty” as a kind of social currency. It’s literally like having money in the bank. “Beauty privilege is real,” she writes, “and it’s real uncomfortable.”
By the early 1980s, cosmetic surgery was firmly established as a path to economic success. Looks were so important that a new branch of therapy was created: cosmetic behavior therapy. If that sounds strange, just wait. Imagine a program that offers cosmetic changes to inmates as a means of lowering the crime rate—that instead of teaching us to lose out biases about looks, society is pretty willing to give in to it. Do looks really affect crime rates? More likely, appearance bias instead creates a situation where a person is both less likely to have opportunities AND more likely to be accused or arrested for a crime. What does appearance bias mean for us now, or for the future? Find out on July 11th, live with Zara Stone only on the Peculiar book club!Episode was recorded live July 11, 2024.
Website: https://brandyschillace.com/peculiar/
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ixJJ2Y
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PeculiarBookClub/membership
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeculiarBookClub/streams
Twitter: @peculiarBC
1 hr - Make sure to Scrub In for Anthony Chin-Quee and I Can't Save You
What happens when racism is not a bug in the system—but in fact IS the system? And the Health System, at that. Imagine being a high-achieving person of color, courted by prestigious medical institutions, but then denied the support you needed when you got there? Fighting through burnout and the grueling pace of residency, only to wind up a cog in a bureaucracy that sees patients as broken bits on an assembly line. “With] ninety-ninth percentile MCAT and Step and Board scores as entrance keys to the profession,” writes author Anthony Chin-Quee, “we too often neglect to screen for traits that truly matter: the self-awareness and strength of character necessary to weather the devastating emotional trials that are sure to come; the humility and grace required to be an effective, collaborative, and avid lifelong learner.”
Chin-Quee’s memoir, I CAN’T SAVE YOU, doesn’t just present the trauma of our medical education system, but the trauma of living and of caring in a narrative described by NPR as “messy” but provocative—an “assemblage of shifting narrative perspectives, poetry, anecdotes, and hallucinatory performance, represents the structural equivalent of a mixtape.” Guess what, y’all, it’s Medical Humanities. Yes, like that journal I happen to be the editor in chief of… and I cannot WAIT to chat live with Anthony about how we have lost—and how to regain—the human at the center of medicine. Don’t miss this livestream on Jun 27th, only on the Peculiar Book Club.Episode was recorded live June 27, 2024.
Website: https://brandyschillace.com/peculiar/
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ixJJ2Y
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PeculiarBookClub/membership
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeculiarBookClub/streams
Twitter: @peculiarBC
Facebook: facebook.com/groups/peculiarbooksclub
Instagram: @thepeculiarbookclub
1 hr 5 min - We are traveling the stars with 2001: A Space Odyssey (Peculiar Movie Club)
Welcome to the Peculiar Movie Club, a bonus podcast linked to our main show the Peculiar Book Club through common themes in media. This week, in honor of the book The Computer's Voice, we are discussing maybe the most iconic computer voice in cinema history with Hal 9000 and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Join Davey Berris and Darren Cross as we take a deep dive into this legendary Kubrick film and discuss man's evolution from apes, what the star child means, how this film was made, and why people in the 60's really started to dig this movie (wink, wink).
Website: https://brandyschillace.com/peculiar/
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ixJJ2Y
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PeculiarBookClub/membership
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeculiarBookClub/streams
Twitter: @peculiarBC
Facebook: facebook.com/groups/peculiarbooksclub
Instagram: @thepeculiarbookclub
1 hr 6 min - Hey Siri, put on the Peculiar Book Club with Liz Faber (and Rebecca Gibson) and The Computer Voice
“Siri, what does it mean to have gender?” We have become very used to the dis-embodied voices that surround us, from the voice answering to ‘Siri’ to the one giving us directions on our GPS apps. But have you ever stopped to wonder why some of these voices are coded “male” and others “female?” The tech isn’t gendered, but the voices are—and it’s true in fiction as well as fact. Consider “Vicki” from I, Robot, or HAL from Space Odyssey. Why does Star Trek have a female-coded central ship computer? Is it because, as Faber suggests, space is hostile and the ship womb-like and nurturing against the coldness of space? Food for thought, isn’t it? Modern science understands gender as a social construct rather than an actual difference between one sex and another (and another)—that’s why it has been so subject to change over the centuries. Consider the 18th century gent with his hair curlers and lace, tights and heels, penchant for poetry and fainting with feeling. So why bother “gender coding” our technology at all? What’s it doing for us—or against us? To find out, we’re reading THE COMPUTER’S VOICE by Liz Faber, a brilliant analytical romp through feminist psychoanalysis and trippy space operas. Join us live—and you also get to speak with our guest host Rebecca Gibson, author of THE BAD CORSET, A FEMINIST REIMAGINING (hint, the corset wasn’t as bad as you think). Join us for an AUTHORS HOSTING AUTHORS event! There will be feminist cocktails.
Episode was recorded live June 13, 2024.
Website: https://brandyschillace.com/peculiar/
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ixJJ2Y
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PeculiarBookClub/membership
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeculiarBookClub/streams
Twitter: @peculiarBC
Facebook: facebook.com/groups/peculiarbooksclub
Instagram: @thepeculiarbookclub
1 hr 3 min - We are making contact with Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Peculiar Movie Club)
Welcome to the Peculiar Movie Club, a bonus podcast linked to our main show the Peculiar Book Club through common themes in media. This week, in honor of the book We Are Not Alone, we are discussing the legendary alien encounter movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Join Davey Berris and Darren Cross as we take a deep dive into this classic Spielberg movie as we discuss parallels between alien encounters and mental health, how practical effects can be so effective and scary, and some really great trivia about this film.
Website: https://brandyschillace.com/peculiar/
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ixJJ2Y
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PeculiarBookClub/membership
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeculiarBookClub/streams
Twitter: @peculiarBC
Facebook: facebook.com/groups/peculiarbooksclub
Instagram: @thepeculiarbookclub
1 hr 1 min - We're following the Law with AJ Jacobs and The Year of Living Constitutionally
A.J. Jacobs learned the hard way that donning a tricorne hat and
marching around Manhattan with a 1700s musket will earn you a lot ofstrange looks. In the wake of several controversial rulings by theSupreme Court and the on-going debate about how the Constitution shouldbe interpreted, Jacobs set out to understand what it means to live bythe Constitution.In The Year of Living Constitutionally,
A.J. Jacobs tries to get inside the minds of the Founding Fathers byliving as closely as possible to the original meaning of theConstitution. He asserts his right to free speech by writing hisopinions on parchment with a quill and handing them out to strangers inTimes Square. He consents to quartering a soldier, as is his ThirdAmendment right. He turns his home into a traditional 1790s household bylighting candles instead of using electricity, boiling mutton,and—because women were not allowed to sign contracts— feebly attemptingto take over his wife’s day job, which involves a lot of contractnegotiations.33 min
About Peculiar Book Club Podcast
From the publisher's feed
Weird Science, Bizarre History, & Strange Medicine: we host authors of PECULIAR nonfiction! Want to know why animals evolved to suck blood? Or the secrets of sword-swallowers? Curious about Vagina…
Obscura? Or the astrophysics of a dying universe? We've 3 shows to tempt you: the PBC podcast (from Mary Roach to Ed Yong), Peculiar at the Movies with Davey Berris (where factoids meet celluloid); and Peculiar in Mystery (thrillers + true crime!) Join host Brandy Schillace, as seen on THE UNBELIEVABLE with Dan Aykroyd, for oddities, oddballs, and the unexpected! If you're weird, you're family!