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 39 - The Phoenix Club

    March 13th, 2011  |  48 mins 20 secs

    Life in a Final Club! "The Social Network" has made it high profile all of the sudden. What is was, was fun, delightful, blessedly un-serious in a way serious world, with a taste of Evelyn Waugh. We loved it. Why was the story never told? That's a story.

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    Episode 37- The Yardbirds

    February 27th, 2011  |  33 mins 20 secs

    This is an impression of The Yardbirds, the first avant-garde band we ever knew. With Eric Clapton to start, then Jeff Beck, then Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, then Jimmy page only, their music, especially the guitar breaks, lived on the edge of INSANITY.

  • Episode 33 - "Mr." Priest

    February 13th, 2011  |  31 mins 54 secs

    This podcast is about professional titles: the more reduced in circumstances an institution, the more high-flown its titles. Did you know that until about 1970, Episcopal clergy were always called "Mr."?

  • Episode 32 - Protestant Interiors II

    February 8th, 2011  |  33 mins 16 secs

    Here's a little gazetteer of Episcopal Protestant interiors. They're nice. Delaware's is in the middle of nowhere, and Boston's finest is Unitarian. George Washington sat beneath a central pulpit in Alexandria and "Low Country" farmers did the same. And don't forget the Motor City: I mean, Duanesburg, New York. But always remember this—even if you are actually able to visit these places, no one will ever believe you when you get back home. They simply CAN'T exist!

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    Episode 31 - Protestant Interiors

    February 6th, 2011  |  36 mins 36 secs

    This one is about Protestant aesthetics as expressed in architecture and design. It is "a tale told by an idiot," however, for no one ever believes you. Only Henny Penny says the Episcopal Church was once Protestant and "Low" — right up to the Disco Era. Memory being what it is, this is the tale of a forgotten 200 years.

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    Episode 30 - Shock Theater

    February 2nd, 2011  |  30 mins 52 secs

    Late Saturday nights was a time for little boys to howl. "Shock Theater" came on around one! We learned every line of the 'original' "Dracula" (1931), memorized every release date of every Mummy movie from 1932 to 1945, and, most important, got married for life to: "The Bride of Frankenstein." This is the story of those late Saturday nights, which gave our mothers such trouble, since it was they who would have to...wake us up for church.

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    Episode 29 - The Circle

    January 30th, 2011  |  30 mins 20 secs

    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.

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    Episode 28 - Premature Burial

    January 26th, 2011  |  29 mins 38 secs

    Part II of The Moviegoer, in which our ten-year-old hero discovers Edgar Allan Pie via Roger Corman in the downtown movie palaces of Loew's Capital, Loew's Palace, and the 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.

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    Episode 27 - The Crawling Eye

    January 23rd, 2011  |  30 mins 32 secs

    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.

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    Episode 26 - P.E. II

    January 19th, 2011  |  29 mins 14 secs

    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.

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    Episode 25 - P.E.

    January 15th, 2011  |  28 mins

    P.E. is for "Protestant Episcopal". 35 years ordained and I never learned these things. James Gould Cozzens could have taught me. He knew. Are we too late?

  • Episode 22 - Journey

    January 2nd, 2011  |  31 mins 28 secs

    What's the greatest rock 'n roll group of all time? What band sums it all up, such that nothing more can be said?: Journey. The band's name is Journey. But wait, hear me out!

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    Episode 21 - Plymouth Adventure

    November 13th, 2010  |  32 mins 28 secs

    Dan Curtis went straight from Gothic Horror soap operas to the greatest epic in television history. He was a pure popular artist, who simply loved what he was doing. This is the story of an undepressed man.

  • Episode 20 - I Learned to Yodel

    October 26th, 2010  |  33 mins 6 secs

    Did you know meditation can make you a better Protestant? Here's why.

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    Episode 19: The Gothic

    October 20th, 2010  |  34 mins 28 secs

    The boys in the basement turn out to be... a dream.

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    Episode 17: The Hammer and the Cross

    September 29th, 2010  |  36 mins 48 secs

    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 "House 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.