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

  • Episode 343 - Billion Dollar Brain

    December 15th, 2022  |  24 mins 6 secs

    People conceal so much about themselves. They don't always mean to, but in one area or another they are afraid to say what's really going on -- especially inside themselves. Then, over time, they -- we! -- become habituated to not ever saying what they/we are really thinking.

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    Episode 342 - Strange Conflict

    December 13th, 2022  |  25 mins 33 secs

    One was struck recently when someone announced, "Your problem's been solved". "Come again?", I said. He added, "Your problem's been solved on the astral plane." Well, normally, that would not have computed. 

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    Episode 341 - The Chinese Prime Minister

    December 4th, 2022  |  22 mins 38 secs

    Three recent sudden deaths of old friends have called forth this Christmas podcast.

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    Episode 340 - Tales of Hoffmann

    August 29th, 2022  |  23 mins 14 secs

    What do our favorite songs, movies, and shows -- and even places -- say about us? Why do we like the media we do? What draws us to one form of art rather than another -- to one sort of setting rather than another? Whatever the draw is, I think it has more to do with us than with the thing.

  • Episode 339 - Anglican/'Anglican'

    August 2nd, 2022  |  21 mins 1 sec

    The Gospel of God's One-Way Love can find an appealing, commodious platform within the Anglican tradition. But when the tradition becomes a "thing" rather than a fountain, it can desiccate the very soil on which it was first planted. In this cast PZ tells something of his own Anglican story, which goes back to 1960.

  • Episode 338 - Privilege (1967)

    June 15th, 2022  |  24 mins 14 secs

    The vehement secularism all around us is no secret. But you can learn something about yourself by studying what others dislike about you.

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    Episode 337 - Our M'bird Guest 2022

    May 3rd, 2022  |  23 mins 28 secs

    Mockingbird's 14th annual New York City conference, entitled "Hope for a Weary World", was a kind of summit for this utterly needed Word. I'll bet almost everyone there felt the same way.

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    Episode 336 - Death Star Portal

    March 11th, 2022  |  17 mins 38 secs

    It seems as if almost everybody is a little like the "Death Star" in Star Wars. There's a way in to our inner reality, but it's very small -- tiny, in fact -- and it takes a sure shot to get inside.

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    Episode 335 - The Big Street

    March 11th, 2022  |  20 mins 27 secs

    Can you ever "over"-impute? Can you treat a person as they actually are not to such an extent that you lose yourself and are ultimately taken advantage of?

  • Episode 334 - Animotion II

    February 15th, 2022  |  22 mins 35 secs

    The inborn primordial framework of our personhood does not prevent God from working for our good. He is always doing something, even if it looks at first like the "back story".

  • Episode 333 - Animotion I

    February 15th, 2022  |  23 mins 54 secs

    In this podcast, I read a seminal passage from the Karl Jung's Collected Works that concerns the embedded archetypes of anima and animus. What he wrote is clarifying and surgical. "Read, Mark, Learn and Inwardly Digest".

  • Episode 332 - What Church Means to Me

    January 27th, 2022  |  22 mins 33 secs

    This is one's ecclesiology, one's doctrine of the Church, after a lifetime's involvement with it and 47 years' ordained ministry within it. For what it's worth, I think I've "got it now" ("One Monkey Don't Stop No Show", The Animals, 1966).

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    Episode 331 - Robert Nathan (So There!)

    January 24th, 2022  |  21 mins 33 secs

    You remember Robert Nathan. He wrote The Bishop's Wife and Portrait of Jennie, to name just two of his roughly 40 or so fantasy novels. But the thing is, Robert Nathan's novels are all short -- more like novellas -- and they read like pudding, because he was an excellent and simple narrator. This cast updates you on this charming "Mid-Century" author.

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    Episode 330 - Tulsa Turnaround

    January 24th, 2022  |  21 mins 7 secs

    Most "celebrations of life" that I attend seem to almost capitalize on false encomium. You come away feeling that the person you knew wouldn't recognize himself if he had been there. I'm not arguing for negativity, but I am pleading for accuracy, with humor and compassion -- Christ's compassion.

  • Episode 329 - Rice Is Nice

    December 15th, 2021  |  20 mins 3 secs

    This cast concerns long-term marriage and its possibility and also its enabling word. What makes it possible? How can you keep loving the same person you first met 30 years ago, or 40 or 50? I mean, people change, right?! [To respond to the opening appeal and support the work of Mockingbird, please visit mbird.com/support. All gifts are tax-deductible.]

  • Episode 328 - The Face Behind the Mask

    December 10th, 2021  |  23 mins 27 secs

    As Joseph von Sternberg, the director of at least ten great movies, observed: "The average human being lives behind an impenetrable veil and will disclose his deep emotions only in a crisis which robs him of control." That is a supremely important sentence from the great man.