“We can feed the stomach with concentrates. We can supply microfilm for reading, recreation, even movies of a sort. We can pump oxygen in, and waste material out. But there’s one thing we can’t simulate, that’s a very basic need: man’s hunger for companionship. The barrier of loneliness. That’s one thing we haven’t licked yet.”

If those words from the first TWILIGHT ZONE episode sound uncomfortably close to the pandemic quarantining we're all experiencing now, it’s because creator ROD SERLING (1924-75) was a true visionary, a prescient prophet of the small screen, whose many ZONE episodes dealt with the universal, timeless themes of isolation, loneliness, and solitude.

In advance of his webinar next Tuesday night via New York Adventure Club—

THE TWILIGHT ZONE AHEAD OF ITS TIME webinar Tuesday, November 10 @ 8:00pm EST; tix: nyadventureclub.com

—join Pop Culture Man Arlen Schumer tonight as he discusses how the greatest television series of the 20th Century sheds a prescient light on the global pandemic of the 21st Century.

Arlen’s call-in guests on tonight’s show:

PAUL D. GALLAGHER, creator of the blog “Shadow & Substance: Exploring the Works of Rod Serling”: thenightgallery.wordpress.com

STEVEN JAY RUBIN, author of “The Twilight Zone Encyclopedia,” available at amazon.com

arlenschumer.com