PZ's Podcast

By MockingbirdSociety & Culture Religion & Spirituality Arts

PZ's Podcast episodes

July 28, 2015 Episode 195: Shag (The Movie)
Shag The Movie (1989) is a great little entertainment! It captures perfectly, and with high humor and enormous love and heart, the Beach Music phenomenon of the 1960s. Today, however, it touches a current issue -- right from the opening credits. What do you do with distressing material -- images and associations that relate to things you'd rather forget? The general answer seems to be, well, you burn them! You do away with them. You haul them down -- and out.
21 min
July 24, 2015 Episode 194: Left Hand Path
I think I'm supposed to understand why right-wing people are intolerant. But it's harder for me to understand why left-wing people are intolerant. Guess I thought they were supposed to be about freedom and diversity. Come to find out, they're not. So I had to go back to a source that's almost been "blacklisted" itself. It's the movie My Son John (1952), starring Helen Hayes and Robert Wagner. Hey, but isn't that a reactionary movie from the Eisenhower movie? No, it's not. It's an excruciating journey into the cause of liberal intolerance. If I -- meaning PZ -- had a mother and a father like 'John' does in My Son John, I'd probably do what he did. I'm almost sure I'd want to.
20 min
July 21, 2015 Episode 193: Cross Dressing
The Gallant Hours (1959) is one heuristic movie. Not only does it teach the Church a thing or two about how to honor faithful service, but it depicts an entirely ideal instance of how to dress properly if you're a minister -- or, Heav'n forfend, a "priest". The last scene of The Gallant Hours is one amazing illustration of the triumph of substance over form in connection with haberdashery. If you're a member of the clergy, or are close to one, PLEASE, help them dress down. We need clergy who dress down! The future of the world depends on it.
23 min
July 20, 2015 Episode 192: How to Save the Church (But Our Lips Are Sealed)
The Church I have known all my life is in free fall numerically.
I'm talking about Sunday attendance in everyday parishes.
This is not conceptual: one parish Mary and I served for six and a half years has recently closed. (Yes, it's been there since 1832, and now is literally a shell, the congregation having gone formally out of existence!) Another church we served, also for six years but out on Long Island, has seen its attendance fall so drastically that its diocese wants to convert it into a different kind of ministry altogether.
But this podcast is not a list of what went wrong, but what could be done right. The lesson, dear reader, comes from a little movie called The Gallant Hours. This movie's got just about everything you need to know, about everything.
24 min
July 20, 2015 Episode 191: Shakin' All Over
This talk concerns the indelibility of certain memories, and why they, and not other memories, are indelible. It also concerns a worrying vision I had in January. But it's all one! Here is my little attempt at some wise counsel: how to integrate indelible aspects of your grown life with the fact that you'll see it all again, up close and personal, the day you die. But again, it's all One. And hey, didn't Charles Reade say, "It is never too late to mend."
23 min
July 06, 2015 Episode 190 - PZ's Fabulous New Dating Tips for Gals
This is a word to your future self. You probably can't hear it today.
But I predict you'll hear it loud and clear in five years, or maybe ten. This is a word to your future self. It's a new fabulous dating tip, and carries almost no exceptions, tho' I wish it did! It has to do with internet dating, with the aging process (especially in men), and with the poignant voice of experience.
If you can "Now Hear This", it could save you years of excruciating suffering. I mean years, maybe decades. Maybe the rest of your life.
19 min
June 28, 2015 Episode 189 - Why Weepest Thou?
"What makes you cry? When you have an irruption of strong feeling -- and I mean tears in this case -- what is going on? This cast tries to get underneath some emotions we all feel, and in terms of music. It is a subjective "take" on one's music and one's highs and lows. And it's in the service of a Way Maker that tends in the direction of peace of mind."
19 min
June 24, 2015 Episode 188 - Scuppernong
Tupper Saussy (1936-2007) was a musician behind The Neon Philharmonic, who produced two memorable albums in 1968-69. He was also a polymath who let himself get in the sights of the Internal Revenue Service,
and paid a heavy price for it. Moreover, he was a devout Christian, of old-fashioned Episcopalian provenance. This week he is on my mind because the fate of Tupper Saussy made me think of a friend who is in some trouble. "Handle Me With Care" is what Tupper Saussy needed. It is what my friend needs. And it's what the world never and the church rarely does
21 min
June 16, 2015 Episode 187 - Norwegian Wood
Nevil Shute, whose proper name was Nevil Shute Norway, was a British novelist whose work took an odd turn in mid-career. He was a kind of parasitologist of human nature, always asking the big questions:
Why do people act the way they do? How does the past affect the present?
Is there something more to it that is beyond the apparent? Shute thought there was, but he was a tentative explorer. (He was also a churchgoer.) Did he pierce "the veil"? My answer to that is maybe.
21 min
June 15, 2015 Episode 186 - Dead End (My Friend)
'No' is the worst word you can ever hear. (I realize the virtues of saying 'No', yourself, on certain occasions. But when 'No' is said to you, especially at an impressionable age, it's the worst.) This cast is about the
damage created by 'No', especially in romance.
20 min

About PZ's Podcast

From the publisher's feed

From "Telstar" to "Vault of Horror," from Rattigan to Kerouac, from the Village of Bray to the Village of Midwich, help PZ link old ancient news and pop culture. I think I can see him, "Crawling from…