PZ's Podcast

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PZ's Podcast episodes

February 11, 2012 Episode 96 - Strack-Billerbeck
"Disputed Passage" (Lloyd C. Douglas) is what this podcast is not.
There are any number of issues to talk about,
yet so many are so particular,
and rally around themselves all kinds of differing opinions.
I'd rather do -- that is, try to do in a small way -- something of what Claude Berri actually did in "Jean de Florette/Manon of the Spring" (1986), which was, in his own words,
to scrape down to the universal:
our human nature and suffering, in common -- the tie that binds.
After this cast, I am taking a short break.
But it's really just "pre-production" time, for the next season of,
"Fireball XL 5".
25 min
February 03, 2012 Mini Podcast 94 - My New Program
Language changes, changes, changes.
"Elle coule, coule, coule."
Like a simple but undeviating "conversation" at the drive -through window of the bank.
Or like the use of the word "program".
"Program" doesn't mean a Lenten series anymore.
It doesn't mean what it used to mean.
It means something else now.
So I need your help,
to devise a more robust program than just another pot luck.
16 min
February 03, 2012 Episode 93 - Falsification
"Falsification" is another word for compartmentalization.
When we falsify reality -- as in "being untrue", either to a person or to convictions that we (otherwise) hold sincerely -- we get, well,
what we deserve.
The New Testament gets falsified all the time; and
the obloquy which falsification, when found out, gets us,
clouds everything -- not to mention the very goods we actually could give.
Those goods are Reality and Mercy.
This podcast goes from Cozzens (don't worry) to Christians to lawyers to "Perfidia" to "Band of Gold". But mainly, it goes out to ... me and you.
31 min
February 01, 2012 Episode 92 - G-d
"Kuh-hay-tchuh-pek".
It means 'God', or rather G-d, in Martian.
You can find out all about "Kuh-hay-tchuh-pek" in the now Criterioned
1964 movie "Robinson Crusoe on Mars".
"Kuh-hay-tchuh-pek" is God, and a very right and proper God, too.
He is Divine Order, but He is also a Nice Guy.
This podcast is about G-d.
I hope you'll like Him.
21 min
January 27, 2012 Episode 91 - Sequels
Sequels are strange:
sometimes they're better than the original,
most of the time they're worse.
What makes a good sequel?
"The Empire Strikes Back", for example;
or "The Invisible Man Returns"; or
"The Ghost of Frankenstein".
Well, preaching -- I mean preaching in the formal sense, i.e., preaching in churches -- is a study in sequels.
When you preach a sermon, you're in a long succession.
It goes all the way back to the Sermon on the Mount.
That was a good one.
Most of its sequels, however, don't seem to have the same power.
They tend to be soon forgotten.
I want to learn from "The Invisible Man's Revenge", and "Ghost", and "Hand" (you know what I mean) in order to know what makes a good sequel.
This is a podcast on the art and science of preaching.
32 min
January 20, 2012 Episode 88 - Tana and Tahrir
I don't believe in "reality",
or rather, I believe what looks like reality is seldom reality.
This can be easily proved by a quick viewing of ...
"The Mummy Ghost" (1944).
One look at that wonderful movie
is able to confer
an accurate understanding of reality.
This is because "The Mummy's Ghost" 's reality IS reality.
Podcast 88 concerns Kharis, Tana Leaves, and
the Arab Spring.
P.S. From Kerouac:
" 'Facts' are sophistries."
34 min
January 19, 2012 Episode 87 - Bette Davis Eyes
They are all, like Ray Milland, "The Man with the X-Ray Eyes" --
these Huguenot heroes:
Marot, Duplessis-Mornay, de Beze, de Coligny, de Rohan,
d'Aubigne.
That includes their English co-religionists, such as
Whitgift and Abbott and Grindal.
These are eyes of defeat, eyes that convey an end to
self-reference, eyes of a markedly ego-less state.
You simply have to undergo defeat, have to, in order to, well,
become a little child.
Old ancient wisdom.
32 min
January 11, 2012 Episode 86 - Supermarionation II
This podcast tries to go a little deeper with Supermarionation.
It is really about social class, and the kind of alliance that inevitably imperils a religion whose goal is emancipating the human race.
We start with "It Happened One Night", then chart our way north, to an old surprising hymn.
28 min
January 10, 2012 Episode 85 - Protestant Episcopalians in Supermarionation
Can the mind of man and woman conceive that the subject of Episcopal haberdashery
in the movies might be interesting and meaningful?
Well, yes, it might be, at least to me.
This podcast surveys Protestant Episcopal clothing in the movies and television.
We travel in our sound machine from "The Bishop's Wife" to "Family Plot" to "Night of the Iguana" to "The Sandpiper"; and we end up on British tv -- in Supermarionation.
Maybe this is completely unimportant.
Then again...
I dedicate the cast to Fred Rogers, fellow pilgrim and dialogue partner.
38 min
January 09, 2012 Episode 84 - Yvette Vickers (f. 4.27.11)
Yvette Vickers played supporting roles in two unforgettable 1950's science-fiction movies:
"Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" and "Attack of the Giant Leeches".
As far as I'm concerned, she stole the show both times.
But, Yvette Vickers is now dead.
Or rather, she was found dead,
on the 27th of April last year (2011).
The conditions under which she was found, and the conditions under which she apparently lived her life near the end of it,
evoke floods of compassion. They simply have to.
How could this have happened?
How could Yvette Vickers, our once-and-future (saucy) flame,
have ended that way?
This podcast -- I wouldn't mind calling it pastoral -- is an attempt to understand.
34 min

About PZ's Podcast

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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…