PZ's Podcast

By MockingbirdSociety & Culture Religion & Spirituality Arts

PZ's Podcast episodes

January 30, 2011 Episode 29 - The Circle
The Circle was a movie theater in downtown Washington where two boys discovered foreign film.
Boris Karloff and James Whale became superseded by Sergei Eisenstein and Francois Truffaut.
Or mostly. (We were only 13 years old, for crying out loud.)
This podcast tells our Tales from the Circle. Every word is true.
It is Part III of The Moviegoer and is dedicated to Lloyd Fonvielle.
31 min
January 26, 2011 Episode 28 - Premature Burial
Part II of The Moviegoer, in which our ten-year-old hero discovers
Edgar Allan Poe via Roger Corman in the downtown movie palaces of
Loew's Capital, Loew's Palace, and R.K.O. Keith's.
He comes face to face with a strange new Glynis Johns before encountering "The Vampire and the Ballerina" exactly one block from the White House.
30 min
January 23, 2011 Episode 27 - The Crawling Eye
This is the story of a conversion.
It happened in the Fall of 1959,
and I've never looked back.
It happened in connection with some mountaineering in the Swiss Alps.
Like the man in "The Crawling Eye",
I lost my head.
Still haven't found it.
31 min
January 19, 2011 Episode 26 - P.E. II
We're not finished yet.
Cozzens cuts to the core of Anglo-Catholicism
yet without throwing stones.
He wants to understand.
And his account of a hijacked P.E. funeral in "Eyes to See"
is so close to home, well,
that it makes you want to scream.
30 min
January 15, 2011 Episode 25 - P.E.
"P.E." is for Protestant Episcopal.
35 years I've been ordained and it took Cozzens to teach me some sore lessons.
For me they came late.
But, "For you the living/This Mash was meant, too."
"When you get to my house,
Tell them 'Jimmy' sent you."
28 min
January 02, 2011 Episode 22 - Journey
What's the greatest rock 'n roll band of all time?
Could a group sum up everything that has gone before
and thus WRAP the genre?
Yes, it could. They did.
Their name was "Journey".
But Wait! Hear me out.
32 min
November 13, 2010 Episode 21 - Plymouth Adventure
Dan Curtis went straight from Gothic Horror soap operas to the greatest epic ever made for television. His heart was always in his work, from "Dark Shadows" to "The Night Stalker" to... "The Winds of War". When it comes to his 29-hour genius production "War and Remembrance, Can't Touch This!
Here is the story of an undepressed man.
33 min
October 26, 2010 Episode 20 - I Learned to Yodel
Did you know meditation can make you a better Protestant?
Here's why.
34 min
October 20, 2010 Episode 19: The Gothic
New thoughts on 'the Gothic' in movies and literature -- from Irvin S. Cobb, whose Gothic story "Fishhead" was termed a "banefully effective tale" by H. P. Lovecraft; to Ray Russell, of "Sardonicus" fame; to Roger Corman, who brought the House down around Roderick Usher.
Turns out it's all about bodily disintegration in an enclosed space, and the dead hand of the past upon the hopes of the present.
The Gothic becomes a fascinating study in the quest for bookings on the Last Metro.
35 min
September 29, 2010 Episode 17: The Hammer and the Cross
Hammer Horror is a beautiful thing -- everything movies should be, or almost everything.
There is also this delightful religious dimension, in which the High Priest of Karnak prays in the language of the Book of Common Prayer and Peter Cushing is 'fighting evil every bit as much' as a Church of England etymologist/bishop in "Hound of the Baskervilles".
Here is my little 'National Geographic Society lecture', on one of the nicest acres of filmdom and fandom. It was recorded at Constitution Hall in our Nation's Capital.
37 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…