PZ's Podcast

By MockingbirdSociety & Culture Religion & Spirituality Arts

PZ's Podcast episodes

December 28, 2011 Episode 82 - Speaking in Tongues
This is a theme with me --
the pros and cons (there aren't many cons) of learning foreign languages.
Also, how does it actually work?
Why is one language easier for a given person to learn than another?
Also, what's the relatiion between learning a language to read,
and learning a language to speak?
And why is psychology so important, personal psychology,
in the acquisition of a foreign 'tongue'?
Here is 50 years' experience of pain and suffering (and altered states)
rolled up into a single half hour.
34 min
December 27, 2011 Episode 81 - Violette amoureuse
From our house to your house,
at the Turning of the Year:
a portrait of the dignity that is able to inhere within romantic love --
sometimes.
The subject is a short scene, a musical number really,
in a late Jacques Demy, "Une Chambre en Ville" (1982).
You can YouTube it by typing in "Violette amoureuse".
I have faith you will be richly repaid.
Try to marry a 'Violette' if you possibly can -- or, if it's too late,
tell your children about her.
26 min
December 16, 2011 Episode 79 - Would you speak up, please?
Why am I "afraid to say what I really want to say" (Jack Kerouac)?
That's a line from "Visions of Gerard", and many could echo it.
This podcast is about changing mores,
specifically the contrast between a sensational murder case of the 1930s and a sensational case of recent times.
Then there's Ken Russell's "The Devils" (1971),
a charming little movie -- and the shifting sands of killing
inquisition.
Maybe I should quit while I'm ahead.
36 min
December 11, 2011 Episode 78 - Under Satan's Sun
This is PZ's Christmas Podcast.
30 min
December 03, 2011 Episode 77 - Canned Heat
What constitutes you, as a human being?
What are the parts which make you the whole you are?
A single sentence from Huxley's "After many a summer dies the swan"
can help,
together with Fritz Lang's "Woman in the Moon".
It's not about the ego.
I am so sorry that human education pumps up
that flat tire.
Is there another way to educate ... ourselves?
30 min
November 26, 2011 Episode 76 - Lounge Crooner Classics
I'm shooting for quality today.
In the spirit of earlier podcasts concerning Giant Crab Movies and Journey,this podcast concerns what might today be called "Lounge Crooner Classics".
In their day, they were pop songs commissioned to be played over the credits of movies and then sold as singles.
We're talking about "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" by Frankie Avalon;
"Journey to the 7th Planet" by Otto Brandenburg;
"The Lost Continent" by The Peddlers; and
"The Vengeance of She" by Robert Field.
These are absurd performances of human art and commerce pitched
to the highest possible degree. At least in my opinion.
Moreover, they can help you with your anger!
Few things do more to diminish anger than a feel for the absurd.
This podcast is intended to help the speaker, and the listener,
with his or her anger.
"Come with me,
And take a Voyage,
To the Bottom,
Of the Sea."
31 min
November 22, 2011 Episode 74 - "Please Come to Boston"
I tried to follow the invitation of that song recently.
Saw a lot of things, found out a lot of things,
remembered a lot of things,
heard a couple of new things.
It was a definite pilgrimage.
I would like to tell you about it.
31 min
November 03, 2011 Episode 73 - When I'm 64
Can the "young" be instructed by the "old"?
Can Nigel Kneale's "Planet People" be even saved
by the over 70s?
To put this another way, are there two messages to life:
one for the first half and another for the second?
Ultimately, no.
There is one message.
Alack! : It comes through suffering.
Pump up the volume.
29 min
October 31, 2011 Episode 72 - Making Plans for Nigel
Nigel Kneale (1922-2006) was absolute murder,
in the Reggae sense.
No writer of English science fiction
thought more originally
than Nigel Kneale, who mostly wrote teleplays for the BBC.
His "Quatermass (pro. 'Kway-ter-mass') and the Pit" from 1959
attempted to explain the whole history of religion
via Martians. It strangely works.
Kneale's "Quatermass" (1979) showed how the "young" are unable to save themselves from generational self-slaughter. Only "seniors" can save 'em!
There's a lot to Kneale, He's one other of those unusual humanists
who understood about Original Sin.
These rare birds -- they're all "murder" -- have much to tell us.
32 min
October 21, 2011 Episode 71 - Removals Men II
Rejoicing at someone's execution, in "disturbing images",
is hard enough to absorb.
To add the unaccountable silence of Christians in relation to such joy
is almost impossible to absorb.
What's to love in this world, in this planetary race of not so human beings?
We're hoping to get a little help today from Harnack and Huxley.
(Wonder what would have happened if they'd ever met?
I feel almost certain that Holl, Harnack's A student, would have liked Huxley.)
31 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…