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 303 - Jimmy Loves Mary Anne

    July 1st, 2020  |  18 mins 42 secs

    This is a further thought on "narratives", tho' with a Biblical example (from Jeremiah) and a recent public incident that has me both "stunned and amazed" (Pretenders, 'My City Was Gone', 1984).

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    Episode 302 - Narrative Schmarrative

    June 29th, 2020  |  18 mins 41 secs

    "Narratives", which used to be called "paradigms", and before that, "preconceptions", are like shackles on human necks. They force one to look down from what is before you, rather than at it.

  • Episode 301 - Emotional Rescue

    June 7th, 2020  |  24 mins 20 secs

    Feelings cover both the personal and the general. They cover both the individual and the collective. So you feel deeply when you are loved and loved back, and you feel deeply when a cause -- political, social, or cultural -- captures your heart's allegiance. We are seeing this dramatically within the current mood and its fiery passions.

  • Episode 300 - (You're) Having My Baby

    March 30th, 2020  |  21 mins 41 secs

    This new cast, which is the 300th, talks about the supernatural Power of God in relation to the scourge that is whipping us all.

  • Episode 299 - Kolchak and Corona

    March 16th, 2020  |  23 mins 31 secs

    In the middle of what may be the worst week, or close to it, this cast offers hope of a real breakthrough -- and not just in mental attitude or "approach", but in the substance of the pandemic.

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    Episode 298 - Outer Ashen Limits

    February 29th, 2020  |  23 mins 59 secs

    Our parish's Ash Wednesday service this year made me think of an old "Outer Limits" episode entitled 'Cry of Silence'. That episode concerned alien tumbleweeds -- no kidding -- and a scientist's attempts to communicate with them.

  • Episode 297 - Bright Road

    February 12th, 2020  |  19 mins 51 secs

    This episode focusses on Bright Road, a modest but transcendent movie about imputation, the setting of which is so counter-intuitive -- because it transcends conventional narratives concerning identity and race -- that it is hard to believe it was ever made at all.

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    Episode 296 - Pre-Code

    January 23rd, 2020  |  23 mins 56 secs

    Some startling new material has come down the pipeline this week, and I'm utterly bound to share it with you: three remarkable movies that if you've ever heard of even one of them I'll give you the Dean's Prize from days long ago at Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham.

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    Episode 295 - Lobo in Taiwan

    January 20th, 2020  |  20 mins 42 secs

    Each of the popular artists featured in this cast tapped into something bigger than Florida, bigger than Britain, bigger than California, and bigger than Nantes. What did they tap into?

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    Episode 294 - World Contact Day

    January 13th, 2020  |  17 mins 53 secs

    One of the great things about UFOs and alien contact is that it unnerves and demoralizes the kind of thinking that qualifies everyone in terms of "identities" or predicates.

  • Episode 293 - Disco Inferno

    January 13th, 2020  |  21 mins 59 secs

    This cast contrasts the passing nature of social and political anger and social/political circumstances with the things that endure.

  • Episode 292 - Down Down

    January 7th, 2020  |  24 mins 57 secs

    Sometimes I feel like I've been looking in almost all the wrong places for confirmations and traces of my Ur-existential Christian faith.

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    Episode 291 - Indiana Wants Me

    December 20th, 2019  |  25 mins 41 secs

    The secret that explains life -- I say "secret" because it's an open but denied truth, known most directly in popular music but suppressed in most "narratives" and conceptual systems -- is the aspiration for a connection of love with another human being.

  • Episode 290 - Christmas Day

    December 16th, 2019  |  22 mins

    A few words about faith, and the future -- and your future, in particular, in individual terms.

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    Episode 289 - Saskatoon

    December 2nd, 2019  |  18 mins 36 secs

    The last third of life is characterized, or should be, by increasing dis-engagement, increasing observation of the past, and hopefully by increasing peace of mind.

  • Episode 288 - GPF

    November 25th, 2019  |  20 mins 30 secs

    This concerns the arrival of gratitude and peace at the end of life -- or, better, way before the end of life -- and the birth of faith for one's safe "arrival" after death.