PZ's Podcast

By MockingbirdSociety & Culture Religion & Spirituality Arts

PZ's Podcast episodes

April 24, 2012 Episode 102 - Flowers for Algernon I
Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) knew a lot.
In reaction to his Sandemanian childhood, he still remained a religious person, all his life.
In his "weird tales" Blackwood tried to map a religious way
forward -- through an inspired imagination.
I used to put Arthur Machen at the top of the list
of writers of supernatural horror.
Because of a change in me, Blackwood is now number one.
This podcast, together with Episode 103, which comes next,
follows directly from "Eternity".
39 min
April 14, 2012 Episode 100 - Eternity
What dies when we die, and what continues to live?
What should we fear in relation to physical death,
and what can we affirm?
Philip Larkin gives a little assist here,
but so does St. Francis.
This is Episode 100.
36 min
April 12, 2012 Episode 101 - I feel like I win when I lose
Between "Waterloo" and "Lay all your love on me",
I don't see how you could achieve a purer pop moment.
Or just a purer moment period!
The insight within these two 45s is communicated to perfection.
What is that insight?
Well, two things:
first, "all I've learned has overturned" (note the 'Euro' English).
I thought I knew myself. Then LUV came knocking,
and "everything is new and everything is you."
That's the way people really are.
Second, "now it seems my only chance is giving up the fight...
I feel like I win when I lose."
This is good religion's word to the ego.
I feel like I win when I lose.
This is also the 101st (Airborne) Podcast.
36 min
April 10, 2012 Previously Unreleased: Heinz
Heinz Burt, known as "Heinz", the Wild Boy of Pop, was, you could say,
Joe Meek's muse.
Meek did everything possible to make his "Heinz" into a star.
Although Meek failed to do that,
he produced a large body of fabulous music around his Golden Child.
This podcast, previously unreleased, deals with the alchemy of imputation; the theme of unrequited love and consequent melancholy in much of the gold that Meek created out of Heinz; and with the proximity, to almost all of us, of mental illness.
There are two factual mistakes in the cast:
The town of Eastleigh is in Hampshire, not "New Hampshire";
and the song connected to the movie "Circus of Horrors" was sung by Garry Mills. It is entitled "Look for a Star".
31 min
March 23, 2012 Previously Unreleased: Joe Meek
"The Nazareth Principle" (Simeon Zahl) and Joe Meek:
they're synonymous.
Joe Meek was an improbable genius, who Hear(d) a New World.
His wondrous work, achieved under conditions so unusual as to make the mind boggle, is a pure example of Christ's being labelled
by the question, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"
This podcast lay languishing in the vaults,
mainly because there are two mistakes in it:
the speaker confuses the guitarist Jimmy Page with the guitarist
Ritchie Blackmore; and,
'Screaming Lord Sutch', with 'Lord Buckethead'.
Other than that, he's satisfied with it.
Moreover, he believes in what he said.
49 min
March 17, 2012 Episode 99 9/10 - Twisterella
When reality comes crashing in to call,
you've got to be prepared for a re-think.
It's what happens to 'Billy Liar', in another dazzling English rose,
the movie "Billy Liar" from 1963.
It's based on a novel then a play,
but the visuals bring it home.
A man of 19, who flees from his life, for his life, into a fantasy world,
begins to falter, then crumble, in the face of reality.
(O Lucky Man! -- at age 19, to begin to see.)
Like the English city in which he lives,
in which every building seems to be being bulldozed
in service of urban renewal,
'Billy Fisher' -- Billy Liar -- is watching "everything go".
"Not one stone" (of his plummeting life) "will be left on stone".
There's help, however, in the form of a girl,
a precious girl,
who is able to care and not care.
She's the hope!
She knows something Billy doesn't, and few do.
Can she save our phantastic hero?
Could she save you?
Listen to "Twisterella".
Or rather, see "Billy Liar", and SEE.
33 min
March 13, 2012 Episode 99 5/8 - A Kind of Loving
This podcast is about categorization -- the pitfalls of categorization.
With people, with friends (and prospective friends), with husbands and wives (and prospective husbands and wives), with everybody.
It's also about possession -- the pitfalls of possession.
Especially with people you love.
My surface subject is a 1962 movie entitled "A Kind of Loving": an English rose. But the real subject is putting life into categories,
and love into objects.
Note the new intro, too.
It's got 45 RPM crackling noises.
28 min
March 10, 2012 Episode 99 - A Night at the Bardo
Harpo's Night at the Bardo --
but not Harpo's, actually.
It was mine:.
It was PZ's Night at the Bardo.
From dusk till dawn.
This is something that actually happened.
I saw my own death,
or rather, myself dying, on a reclining chair in an airplane,
on March 1, 2012.
It was an unpleasant, elucidating experience.
It rattled me!
Let me tell you all about it.
29 min
March 10, 2012 Episode 98 - Reflections in a Golden Eye
If you want to find out what true north is in your life -- in other words,
where you are really going -- notice what books you are drawn to.
Or what movies you really like. Or what music you're putting on your iPod these days. Or what television show you can't miss this week.
Those things function as a truth north for your life's actual direction.
This podcast looks at two revealing sentences, within two modern masterpieces, of this phenomenon of true north's revelation.
Operationally, I am wondering where you ("the living" -- B. 'Boris' Pickett)
will come down.
33 min
February 13, 2012 Episode 97 - Surprise (Symphony)
"Oops! I did it again!":
it just came over me.
Despite a break, a real break, very soon to come,
Lola compelled one to speak.
I mean, "Lola", the 1961 movie by Jacques Demy.
This podcast is a memo on ego-less communication.
It can really happen, and almost never does.
But you can't beat it -- you can't beat it -- when it does.
In just about any aspect of life you can name.
25 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…