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
PZ's Podcast on social media
Episodes
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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.
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Episode 62 - What part of you isn't angry?
September 10th, 2011 | 33 mins
Anger—it's everywhere. The question is, at whom or at what are you NOT angry? Well, you can't be angry at anyone or anything you love. Or rather, you can't be angry at that part of anyone or anything that you love. This podcast is about seismic anger—into which the internet is just a current window. Every age has its window. This podcast hunts for an answer.
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Episode 58 - The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
August 14th, 2011 | 45 mins 34 secs
This gorgeous 1964 film is everything people say it is, and makes you wonder sometimes whether its director and writer, Jacques Demy, was too good for this world. Let's also hear it for Michel Legrand, who wrote the score. What I wish to eyeball, and what this podcast is about, is its vision of romance, for "Umbrellas of Cherbourg" is about first love, lost love, best love, et enfin, true love.
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Episode 57 - Beyond the Time Barrier
August 5th, 2011 | 20 mins 16 secs
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 expression of Christian ideas, but expressed in the terms of an offbeat and wacky nightclub personality. I don't know of anything like them.
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Episode 56 - Lord Buckley
July 31st, 2011 | 28 mins 12 secs
Lord Buckley (aka Richard Myrle Buckley, 1906-1960) 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.
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Episode 54 - My Sharona
July 9th, 2011 | 32 mins
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.
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Episode 53 - How to Tell the Future
July 2nd, 2011 | 38 mins 6 secs
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.
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Area 51 - William Inge
June 18th, 2011 | 34 mins 58 secs
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.
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Episode 50- Human Nature
June 11th, 2011 | 33 mins 6 secs
It just may be the worst thing about America today: our view of human nature. If you listen to almost any—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.
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Episode 49 - "Unknown and yet well known"
June 8th, 2011 | 43 mins 22 secs
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 one one of those Navy Seal Helicopters which flew into Pakistan recently.
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Episode 48 - The Disappearance
May 29th, 2011 | 54 mins 12 secs
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 form 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 is becomes required reading for everyone who is a man everyone who is a woman.
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Episode 45 - Duncan Burne-Wilke
May 7th, 2011 | 26 mins 32 secs
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.
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Episode 44- The Razor's Edge
April 30th, 2011 | 31 mins 8 secs
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?" -
Episode 43 - "The Green Pastures"
April 17th, 2011 | 34 mins 8 secs
"The Green Pastures" is a 1930 American play, and 1936 Hollywood movie, that was once as famous as "Our Town." Now, for reasons of political correctness, it is rarely seen and seldom taught. Even the DVD has to carry a "Warning" label. (Good grief!) How dearly we have robbed ourselves of a pearl of truly great price.