PZ's Podcast

By MockingbirdSociety & Culture Religion & Spirituality Arts

PZ's Podcast episodes

August 06, 2011 Episode 57 - Beyond the Time Barrier
Lord Buckley broke down a barrier that is exceptionally hard to break down.
He broke down the barrier between the Sacred and the Profane.
Several of his 'hipsemantic' monologues, once you begin to study them, are fascinating expressions of Christian ideas, but expressed in the terms of an offbeat and wacky nightclub personality. I don't know of anything like them.
In this second and concluding podcast on a genuine comic genius,
I read, sitting on my white azz, Lord Buckley's riff on "Quo Vadis", entitled "Nero".
Once again, My Lords and Ladies of the Court, I give you Richard Myrle Buckley , together with his affecting 'familiar', OO-Bop-A-Lap.
21 min
July 31, 2011 Episode 56 - Lord Buckley
Lord Buckley (aka Richard Myrle Buckley, l906-1960) was a "way out" nightclub comic and monologist, who created "hipsemantic" routines based on famous people -- very famous! -- and famous works of literature.
Lord Buckley's most famous monologue was called "The Nazz" and is a "hipster" re-telling of three miracles of Our Savior, which was Lord Buckley's frequently invoked term for Christ. "The Nazz" is a homage to Jesus that exists in a class by itself.
If anything you've ever heard or read breaks the barrier between the Sacred and the Profane, "The Nazz" does it.
In this podcast, PZ gives a public reading of Lord Buckley's "The Nazz".
The reading can't fail to be sort of an atrocity -- I almost entitled this cast "The Nazz and My White Azz" -- as the original was performed entirely in African-American iidiom.
Nevertheless, this readng could do the alternate thing of getting down to what Buckley actually wrote and actually said, for his substance is sublime.
PZ owes his appreciation of Lord Buckley to Bill Bowman.
29 min
July 09, 2011 Episode 54 - My Sharona
This is My Sharona of faith,
a series of four theses, briefly explained,
that express an approach to everyday living,
and understanding.
I hope you like them.
32 min
July 02, 2011 Episode 53 - How to Tell the Future
It's possible to tell the future.
It's actually pretty easy.
You have to know about human nature,
and you have to know about fashion.
You have to know that human nature doesn't change,
and you have to know that fashion changes all the time.
It changes right to left, then left to right, then back again. Then the same, again.
And again.
"My Ever Changing Moods" (Style Council)
You, too, can be a fortune teller.
Here's how.
39 min
June 18, 2011 Area 51 - William Inge
William Inge (1913-1973) wrote plays of restrained optimism concerning broken families in small Kansas towns of the 1920's and '30's. He understood about the importance of sex in everyday life -- even in Protestant Middle-Western America during the Great Depression. He also understood about the Church and its disappointing failure to help people when the bottom fell out of their lives.
Yet there a wistfulness to Inge. He seems to be saying, 'If only'. If only our religious tradition had not declined so from the teachings of Christ.
This podcast talks about William Inge's perspective on the Church Defeated -- by itself ! He writes of sufferers with tender sympathy, with grace in practice.
35 min
June 11, 2011 Episode 50- Human Nature
It just may be the worst thing about America today:
our view of human nature.
If you listen to almost any -- and I mean, any -- commentator, speechmaker, pundit, or spokesperson, of literally any and every organization, institution, medium, or government office, you are going to hear about taking charge, and imposing control -- of everything and everybody. (I hate that they'll now ticket you if you're caught smoking in New York City. That's insane! No more "Shake Shack" for us, I am dashed to say.)
The pitiful thing is, their idea of human nature is not true.
It is simply not true.
We are being fed an understanding of human nature that is inaccurate.
It is innacurate from stem to stern.
Therefore there is no HOPE being offered. Everything is rooted in a fallacy. "Shallow Hal"
This is Episode 50 of "PZ's Podcast". Philip Wylie's going to help us out again, but so is wonderful William Inge, and inspired Frenchman Jacques Demy. I'm going to let them take us there, to
Strawberry Fields ... Forever.
34 min
June 08, 2011 Episode 49 - "Unknown and yet well known"
Another one of those unknown authors.
But he has so much to tell us,
first about sex and then about Christianity.
About the former, he puts first things first.
About the latter, he puts Jesus on the "Enola Gay".
Would that Philip Wylie were here today, to put Jesus on a predator drone,
or on one of those Navy SEAL helicopters which flew into Pakistan recently.
44 min
May 29, 2011 Episode 48 - The Disappearance
Philip Wylie was a prophet in the war between the sexes.
His 1951 novel "The Disappearance", in which, through an unexplained 'cosmic blink', all the women disappear from the world of the men and all the men disappear from the world of the women, is so noble and so disturbing, so wrenching and so uplifting, so wise and so uncommonly religious, that it becomes required reading for everyone who is a man and everyone who is a woman.
55 min
May 08, 2011 Episode 45 - Duncan Burne-Wilke
Herman Wouk's 1985 novel "War and Remembrance" has a most prophetic minor character buried within its 1300 pages.
This character is a philosophical and definitely sweet English aristocrat named Duncan Burne-Wilke, whom we meet in the "CBI" or "China Burma India" theater of the Second World War.
Burne-Wilke envisages the end of Western colonialism on account of a massive disillusionment caused by the War. But he also thinks in religious terms concerning the future of America and England. He sees the future in terms of the "Bhagavad gita", and a "turning East" of which we are now aware and in relation to which the Christian churches are having to live, defensively.
My podcast speaks of one small voice within a large contemporary epic.
Burne-Wilke's disenchanted words are "crying to be heard" (Traffic), and also responded to. He haunts the bittersweet narrative of Wouk's marvelous book.
27 min
April 30, 2011 Episode 44- The Razor's Edge
This is my favorite book.
It's also Bill Murray's.
It is called "The Razor's Edge" and was written by Somerset Maugham.
It was published in 1944.
It tells the story of some well-to-do Americans from Lake Forest,
who all find what they're looking for in life.
One of them, 'Larry Darrell', loses his life only to save it.
He is the hero, and I think he could be yours.
P.S. Who's "Ruysbroek"?
32 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…