Light On Light Through

Welcome to Episode 21 of Li g h t O n L i g h t T h r o u g h - How To Research Ancient History for Science Fiction ... I gave a talk on this topic to the Science Fiction Society of Northern New Jersey at the Garden State Plaza Borders Bookstore this evening ... but for all the people in the world who couldn't attend, my two secret ingredients are old Encyclopedia Britannica s (1955 or earlier) an...

Welcome to Episode 20 of Li ght Lig ht Thr ough - Blockbuster, Netflix, the Web: The Future of Watching Movies out of Theaters .  It all began with Edison's kinetoscope, which gave movie-viewers a one-on-one experience.  Now, after a century of theater going, more and more people are watching movies on their own devices.  But not all of them are equal.  Blockbuster, which has dominated this market...

Welcome to Episode 19 of Light On Light Through in which we consider How Goes the Ship of Free Speech? The ancient Greeks called it parrhesia , and loved it so much they named ships after it.  How is the ship of free expression faring in our world today?  Well, here in the U.S.A., as we near the anniversary of Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" during Superbowl halftime several years ago, the...

Welcome to Episode 18 of Li ght On Li ght Thr ough - Keith Olbermann, Jack Bauer, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge ... What do these three have in common? Well, last Tuesday evening, Olbermann delivered a diatribe about 24 and Jack Bauer, as perhaps deliberate tools of the Bush administration to frighten the American people about terrorism, and thereby shore up support for its policies.  I say Olberman...

Hello Solar System - What on Earth Are They Doing to Poor Pluto? - and welcome to Episode 17 of Li ght O n Lig ht Thr ough , where we consider the semantic fate of Pluto, standing vigil at the edge of our solar system, recently demoted to dwarf-planet status by the International Astronomical Union... Who should decide the status of Pluto: scientists in disagreement among themselves, or humanity? M...

Welcome to Episode 16 of Li ght On Lig ht Thr ough : diGGin' Round: Further Adventures in Gate-Opening , in which I take a look at Digg, the fabulously popular online news system, in which readers not editors choose what is on the front page.  Like Wikipedia, Digg (for the most part) is run by its users.  Like Wiki, Digg suffers from vandals on the one hand and zealots who bury stories too quickly...

Happy New Year!  And welcome to Episode 15 of Lig ht On Lig ht Thro ugh :  The Stuff of the Cosmos ... Carl Sagan, who died ten years ago at the end of December, said that, because we come from the cosmos, when we look out at the cosmos with our telescopes, we are but the stuff of the cosmos looking back at itself ... in this New Year's podcast we explore the meaning and impact of Carl Sagan's tho...

Happy holidays! Episode 14 of Light On Light Through is mostly about food ... in particular the revolution in convenience and delicious eating being brought about by places like Trader Joe's ... I talk not only about the great food you can get there, but about hearing Wolfman Jack on the radio while I was shopping at Trader Joe's ... Also in this episode ... the Mo' or more is about YouTube again...

I'm talking about the Golden Globe Awards, of course, and I call them "The Gold Plated Globes" in this Episode - lucky #13 - of Light On Light Through because of what they missed on television in their nominations for 2006, announced a few days ago.  These would be, most outrageously, Kidnapped, Battlestar Galactica, and The Wire .  They did get a few things right - that's why I call them goldplat...

Just in time for the Season 4 finale of The Wire , Episode 12 of Light On Light Through has Idris Elba aka Stringer Bell speaking on Stringer, in his new rap record - Driis Speaks on Stringer - in which he tells us what he thinks of Stringer's role in The Wire , and what Idris sees as his future in acting and  music.  I give my analysis of this season of The Wire , and respond to Idris.  We got so...

Oh yeah ... almost walkin' on sunshine, in my Crocs ... and talkin' all about it in Episode 11 of Light On Light Through ... from Thom McCan to Clark's Wallabees to Rockport to Crocs ... a manifesto for shoe liberation and maybe comfort and energy over style... Also in Almost Walkin - Email from Larry Ketchersid, author of Dusk Before Dawn , about the inevitable development of devices that seek ou...

Welcome to the 10th Episode of Light On Light Through ... Every Eye's A Camera, Every Ear's A Mike ... or, How the Cell Phone On YouTube Has Made Movie Stars of Us All, For Better or Worse... It's good for outing racist cops and comedians, but that same cellphone-YouTube hookup, now in almost everyone's hands, means that any and all of us can wind up on YouTube at the drop of a hat, or the flip of...

Whoa ... a special Sunday bonus Episode of Light On Light Through... a brief review of the new James Bond movie, Casino Royale... or, as I like to call it, The Man Without the Golden Pun... The gist is, I loved the movie, but... Enjoy... Paul Added December 1, 2008 :  See also: It's Not HBO - It's A Quantum of Solace web: www.sff.net/people/paullevinson blog: www.myspace.com/twiceuponarhyme videoc...

Time for something a bit different ...Episode 8 of Light On Light Through -- Time Travel in Fiction and Fact ...  a jam-packed 30-minute show ... with a special clip from my Edgar-nominated radioplay, The Chronology Protection Case a special give-away to the first 25 people who send e-mail or voice-mail  - I'll reply with an MP3 of the full 38-minute radioplay of The Chronology Protection Case , p...

a jumbo episode of = Light On Light Through=     --thumbail discussions of Battlestar Galactica, Dexter, Heroes, Kidnapped, Lost, The Nine, Six Degrees, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, The Wire ... the winners and losers and hangers-on ...  all of that packed into 23 minutes... (no spoilers from this year) ... also including e-mail from Idris Elba (aka Stringer Bell), science fiction critic Gary Wo...

A special Election-Day Episode of Light On Light Through - Episode 6 - Elective Media , in which I discuss the shift in the way we get our news and election coverage - from network news which attracted 50 million Americans in the 1980s and is lucky to reach 25 million now, to cable news which is growing but still attracts only 5 million Americans, to ... well, you're no doubt part of this revoluti...

I say it's the best show about the real world on television - but is The Wire as good as it was without Stringer Bell?  In Episode 5 of Light On Light Through I probe the powerful appeal of bad guys with redeeming qualities, and look at the contribution of Idris Elba aka Stringer Bell to The Wire .  "The Wire Without Stringer" is a little longer than most episodes of this podcast, because it has a...

A special bonus episode of Light On Light Through - which I guess would make this Episode 4 - in which I lament the loss of sunlight at the end of the day under the cruel Standard Time regime that has just befallen us.... Hey, when you're driving home in the dark tomorrow, maybe listening to this will put a little smile on your face... Enjoy.... Paul my books ... my blog ... my videos The Plot to...

For centuries, the public has relied upon encyclopedias - written by carefully chosen experts, vetted by a few venerable editors.... For the past few years, Wikipedia has tried something a little different - an encyclopedia written by ... everyone ... the human species ... in principle, everyone on this planet who can read and write... I'm betting it will take its place among the Encyclopedia Brit...

... well, certainly not in the ratings - at least as far as Kidnapped goes - but these two shows have brought the intelligence and intensity and courage of dramas on television to new heights... in Kidnapped & Battlestar Galactica - Leading the TV pack at quartertime , I explain ... and why these and other shows may be ushering in the first platinum age of television.... this is the second episode...

on the road to teleportation ... once upon a time, to talk to a person - to communicate - meant you had to be in that person's physical presence ... writing and subsequent media changed all of that... Prius and the Reunion of Talking and Walking explores how new cars with Bluetooth technology are enabling us to move fast again and communicate anyplace at the same time... this is the premier episod...