PZ's Podcast

About the show

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 the Wreckage." Will he find his way? This show is brought to you by Mockingbird! www.mbird.com

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Episodes

  • Episode 189 - Why Weepest Thou?

    June 28th, 2015  |  18 mins 14 secs

    "What makes you cry? When you have an irruption of strong feeling -- and I mean tears in this case -- what is going on? This cast tries to get underneath some emotions we all feel, and in terms of music.

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    Episode 188 - Scuppernong

    June 23rd, 2015  |  20 mins 6 secs

    Tupper Saussy (1936-2007) was a musician behind The Neon Philharmonic, who produced two memorable albums in 1968-69. He was also a polymath who let himself get in the sights of the Internal Revenue Service, and paid a heavy price for it. Moreover, he was a devout Christian, of old-fashioned Episcopalian provenance.

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    Episode 187 - Norwegian Wood

    June 15th, 2015  |  20 mins 30 secs

    Nevil Shute, whose proper name was Nevil Shute Norway, was a British novelist whose work took an odd turn in mid-career. He was a kind of parasitologist of human nature, always asking the big questions:
    Why do people act the way they do? How does the past affect the present? Is there something more to it that is beyond the apparent? Shute thought there was, but he was a tentative explorer. (He was also a churchgoer.) Did he pierce "the veil"? My answer to that is maybe.

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    Episode 186 - Dead End (My Friend)

    June 14th, 2015  |  19 mins 1 sec

    'No' is the worst word you can ever hear. (I realize the virtues of saying 'No', yourself, on certain occasions. But when 'No' is said to you, especially at an impressionable age, it's the worst.) This cast is about the damage created by 'No', especially in romance.

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    Episode 185 - One Toke Over The Line (Sweet Mary)

    March 11th, 2015  |  24 mins 42 secs

    What think ye when I say that 95% of what you are doing is futile and meaningless?

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    Episode 184 - Hysteria

    March 8th, 2015  |  24 mins 17 secs

    In life you can be trapped by forces that are bigger than you are. Especially in professional life.

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    Episode 183 - Dr. Syn

    March 6th, 2015  |  22 mins 20 secs

    Oh, to encounter an integrated minister! We all want to be integrated -- to be ourselves in the pulpit and also out of it. But it's tricky to pull off.

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    Episode 181 - Dualism Clinic with James Bernard

    January 25th, 2015  |  22 mins 24 secs

    Come to find out, dualism has a limited but necessary role in resolving the human dilemma, i.e., in living. The percentage is maybe 20% most of the time, but it's possibly 90% some of the time. The English composer James Bernard is Exhibit A here, and a most brilliant exhibit his work has become.

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    Episode 180 - Metropolitan Life

    November 21st, 2014  |  22 mins 43 secs

    This is the tableau of a childhood memory, a memory that came literally to life recently. I entered a dream, but then the dream was real. A little like the The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe but in reverse. With help from Orpheus and, by way of backdraft, the Warrens.

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    Episode 179 - Ere the Winter Storms

    November 14th, 2014  |  24 mins 54 secs

    Why are so many unchanged, I mean fundamentally unchanged, by the red lights of life? What accounts for persons' resistance to the lessons of catastrophe? This week Robert W. Anderson, not 'Sister Mary Ignatius', explains it all to us.

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    Episode 178 - Without Which Not

    October 29th, 2014  |  27 mins 59 secs

    Things recently got so bad somewhere that it looks like all hope is gone. The thing "imploded", like 'Susan' in The Buckinghams' otherwise cheery pop single. Poor Susan! Is there still hope? PZ thinks there is. But it comes from over the border! And from the year 1917.

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    Episode 177 - Whipped Cream

    October 7th, 2014  |  28 mins 20 secs

    Big explosions in Church! Like at the beginning of "Cloverfield." What do they mean? Is there any hope in the aftermath?

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    Episode 176 - Everything Is Tuesday

    August 26th, 2014  |  20 mins 12 secs

    August Coda. Labor Day Coda. General Johnson Coda. Mergers Not Acquisitions Coda.

  • Episode 175 - Does the Name Grimsby Do Anything to You?

    August 26th, 2014  |  28 mins 41 secs

    A little August summation, from one explorer to hopefully others. Rod Serling writes about an under-appreciated instance of one. Then Armando Trovajoli delivers the secret of life. The secret of life.

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    Episode 174 - Federal Theology in the Letters of Samuel Rutherford

    August 22nd, 2014  |  29 mins 1 sec

    "So, here's the thing": You wanna know about faith? Listen to ABBA. Wanna arrest the decline of, oh, let's say, mainstream Protestantism? Listen to ABBA.

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    Episode 173 - And the Winner Is

    August 21st, 2014  |  26 mins 43 secs

    There is so much truth here. Emotional truth, I mean. It could have been somebody else. It could have been something else. But the truth was from ABBA.