PZ's Podcast
Episode Archive
Episode Archive
365 episodes of PZ's Podcast since the first episode, which aired on August 4th, 2010.
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Episode 79 - Would you speak up, please?
December 16th, 2011 | 35 mins 26 secs
Why am I "afraid to say that 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.
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Episode 78 - Under Satan's Sun
December 11th, 2011 | 29 mins 56 secs
This is PZ's Christmas Podcast.
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Episode 77 - Canned Heat
December 3rd, 2011 | 29 mins 26 secs
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."
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Episode 76 - Lounge Crooner Classics
November 26th, 2011 | 30 mins 10 secs
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.
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Episode 74 - "Please Come to Boston"
November 22nd, 2011 | 30 mins 40 secs
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.
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Episode 73 - When I'm 64
November 3rd, 2011 | 28 mins 8 secs
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 of the first half and another for the second? Ultimately, no. There is one message. Alack! It comes through suffering. Pump up the volume.
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Episode 72 - Making Plans for Nigel
October 31st, 2011 | 31 mins 52 secs
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.
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Episode 71 - Removals Men II
October 21st, 2011 | 30 mins 54 secs
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.
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Episode 70 - Removals Men
October 21st, 2011 | 28 mins 30 secs
This is about the use of language to cover an unpleasant reality. It's not just about the "removal" of an al awlaki or a "new chapter in the history of Libya" accomplished by means of the murder of a POW who was captured alive. It's about resigning yourself to something you cannot change.
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Episode 69 - Pipes of Pan
October 15th, 2011 | 24 mins 8 secs
Arthur Machen meets St. Matthew's Gospel, Chapter 11, Verses 16-19. You can try to make your voice heard with an engaging, danceable tune, and ti will pass like a show over the water. (Think "Men Without Hats.") Or you can try it in a shrill, scratchy key, and it will still be forgotten, fast. (Think P.J. Proby.)
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Episode 68 - The Inward Voice, Pt. 2
October 9th, 2011 | 34 mins 50 secs
There is nothing quite like the Inward Voice of "Mark Rutherford," the novelist whose real name was William Hale White. He wore a mask over a mask, and his six novels constitute a kind of ultimate Inward Voice within Victorian fiction. Today we look at his "Revolution in Tanner's Lane (1890), which reveals the worst and also the best of the Romans 7 understanding of human nature.
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Episode 67 - The Inward Voice, Pt. 1
October 9th, 2011 | 34 mins 50 secs
Here is a two-parter concerning your inward voice: What is it, and how do you find it? From a Romans 7 point of view, the inward voice (and voices) is almost all that matters. Now get it down! Write it down! Put it on paper, or else it'll probably just "Fade Away" (Rolling Stones). This is personal archaeology, yours and mine, and it involved digging, and lifting.
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Episode 66 - Altars by the Roadside
October 5th, 2011 | 21 mins 12 secs
Now here's a find: a passage in the novel "Revolution in Tanner's Lane" (1890) by "Mark Rutherford" (aka William Hale White), in which the author answers the question I set in the previous cast. If there is a word from religion to the middle-aged and "mature"—i.e., a word of humbled acquiescence to the disillusioned and shaken—what is religion's word to the young?
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Episode 65 - One Message or Two?
October 1st, 2011 | 34 mins 14 secs
Does life-wisdom offer the same message to the non-disillusioned, who are often on the younger side, as it does to the disillusioned, who are often over-50? It's a live issue for me, since a gospel of hope to the shattered can sound depressing to people who are working on wresting something like success from life.
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Episode 64 - My New Law Firm
September 27th, 2011 | 32 mins 10 secs
My new law firm is called "Scrambling, Rattled, and Bracing, P.A." It is a firm devoted to the project of complete control. It helps me "scramble" to contain unexpected problems; prevents me from getting "rattled" by unexpected threats; and gets me "braced" in anticipation of feared outcomes. In other words—you guessed it—my new law firm helps me get control of my life.
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Episode 63 - One Step Beyond
September 18th, 2011 | 36 mins 36 secs
This ancient show, much of which is now richly available on YouTube, let alone DVD, understood something important. It understood about the "collective unconscious" and the nature of the Love that exists underneath human loves. The several great episodes in this terse ancient treasure, from 1959 to 1961, depict reality so unflinchingly that you can barely look—and, the underlying reality of God.