PZ's Podcast

This is intended to be the opposite of a rant. Even if I wanted to, I could not come a thousand light years close to Antoine's great one, which once so delighed the French. What I can try to give you instead is a little reading list, plus a little movie, a profound one, even a study in scarlet.

This tight expressionist outing is a study in egos prepared to take any measures in order to prolong (ego-) life. It's a sure fail, but most instructive. Then there's the fog, and the blocking of the characters in the fog. It endures in the memory. There is also an outstanding note of psychotronic Episcopal haberdashery and service schedules. 'Mr. Russell' is a wonderful minister!

Another meditation on hope (i.e., the Wing Thing), via death; yet death concretely and in the now, death you can get your skull around today and not tomorrow. Akira Ifukube is here to help undress us, as is Diogenes the Cynic, and Ludger Tom Ring; and, wouldn't you know, Raymond Scott. Podcast 116 is dedicated to Hewes Hull.

"What makes the melon ball bounce?" What makes you bounce? This is an undressed talk about death, and death's funny aftermath.

Sequel to "Return to Form", with a push from Serling and a lift from Dylan.

This is podcast one in a new "story arc" -- a study in defeatedness, and a new hope I strangely feel. You could call it cross-notes of a theological psychologist.

Gerald Fried (b. 1928) and Gerald Heard (d. 1971): both were communicators of the non-rational, both were exponents of the subterranean echo. Fried did it through B-movie (and other) musical scores; Heard, through mystery novels and fantastic short stories. Jesus did it, too, through similes and parables. (If the second Gerald chose for his "nom-de-plume" 'H.F. Heard', I wonder what name Christ wo...

Kipling shed light! From "Recessional" to "Children's Song", this podcast sings his praise. Kipling was also a 'both-and' thinker, a rare eirenic gift, and a Gift for Today. Episode 112 is dedicated to Stuart Gerson.

John Betjeman listed five masters of the English ghost story, or supernatural tale. All five of them were the sons of Protestant ministers. What was going on with these sons, and their fathers. 'The Winstons' can tell us the answer, in their 1969 45 that we loved so, we sons of our fathers.

Bishop Ryle made at least three big mistakes during his long ministry. If he were able to speak now -- he died in 1900 -- I believe he would admit them. To me they are revealing mistakes, from which there is something to learn. J.C. Ryle also had a core strength: He had been saved in his youth, when his world fell apart. He was a Christian, in other words, for the right reason. Yet like many spiri...

John Charles Ryle, who lived from l816 to 1900, was "a giant of a man with the heart of a child". He was a Christian warrior in the Church of England, who contended against High Churchmen and Liberals for 60 years, concluding his ministry as the first Bishop of Liverpool. J.C. Ryle is a fascinating character, a hero-type with some interesting weaknesses. This podcast tells the story of his life. I...

Alternate Title: I Feel Like I Lose When I Win. Also, there's a correction: It was 'Fraulein Doktor', not the actress who played her (Suzy Kendall), who died young, at age 52, in 1940.

A meditation on defense: that's what this is. Someone wrote that the inner being of a human being is "covered by thirty or forty skins or hides, like an ox's or a bear's, so thick and hard". Too true! What's to get through? Is there an antipode, a blessed antipode, to such a coverage from hope? I honestly think there is. (Even if you've only got a toe on the Road.)

How does the ego actually die? Or rather, what does a person look like when their ego has died, or is dying? Can we see this -- the "seed falling into the ground"? Algernon Blackwood wrote about the dying. He wrote about it vividly and concretely, not just symbolically. This podcast quotes from two of Blackwood's "Eternity" stories: "The Centaur" (1911) and "A Descent into Egypt" (1914). The theme...

Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) knew a lot. In reaction to his Sandemanian childhood, he still remained a religious person, all his life. In his "weird tales" Blackwood tried to map a religious way forward -- through an inspired imagination. I used to put Arthur Machen at the top of the list of writers of supernatural horror. Because of a change in me, Blackwood is now number one. This podcast, tog...

What dies when we die, and what continues to live? What should we fear in relation to physical death, and what can we affirm? Philip Larkin gives a little assist here, but so does St. Francis. This is Episode 100.

Between "Waterloo" and "Lay all your love on me", I don't see how you could achieve a purer pop moment. Or just a purer moment period! The insight within these two 45s is communicated to perfection. What is that insight? Well, two things: first, "all I've learned has overturned" (note the 'Euro' English). I thought I knew myself. Then LUV came knocking, and "everything is new and everything is you...

Heinz Burt, known as "Heinz", the Wild Boy of Pop, was, you could say, Joe Meek's muse. Meek did everything possible to make his "Heinz" into a star. Although Meek failed to do that, he produced a large body of fabulous music around his Golden Child. This podcast, previously unreleased, deals with the alchemy of imputation; the theme of unrequited love and consequent melancholy in much of the gold...

"The Nazareth Principle" (Simeon Zahl) and Joe Meek: they're synonymous. Joe Meek was an improbable genius, who Hear(d) a New World. His wondrous work, achieved under conditions so unusual as to make the mind boggle, is a pure example of Christ's being labelled by the question, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" This podcast lay languishing in the vaults, mainly because there are two mistak...

When reality comes crashing in to call, you've got to be prepared for a re-think. It's what happens to 'Billy Liar', in another dazzling English rose, the movie "Billy Liar" from 1963. It's based on a novel then a play, but the visuals bring it home. A man of 19, who flees from his life, for his life, into a fantasy world, begins to falter, then crumble, in the face of reality. (O Lucky Man! -- at...

This podcast is about categorization -- the pitfalls of categorization. With people, with friends (and prospective friends), with husbands and wives (and prospective husbands and wives), with everybody. It's also about possession -- the pitfalls of possession. Especially with people you love. My surface subject is a 1962 movie entitled "A Kind of Loving": an English rose. But the real subject is p...

Harpo's Night at the Bardo -- but not Harpo's, actually. It was mine:. It was PZ's Night at the Bardo. From dusk till dawn. This is something that actually happened. I saw my own death, or rather, myself dying, on a reclining chair in an airplane, on March 1, 2012. It was an unpleasant, elucidating experience. It rattled me! Let me tell you all about it.

If you want to find out what true north is in your life -- in other words, where you are really going -- notice what books you are drawn to. Or what movies you really like. Or what music you're putting on your iPod these days. Or what television show you can't miss this week. Those things function as a truth north for your life's actual direction. This podcast looks at two revealing sentences, wit...

"Oops! I did it again!": it just came over me. Despite a break, a real break, very soon to come, Lola compelled one to speak. I mean, "Lola", the 1961 movie by Jacques Demy. This podcast is a memo on ego-less communication. It can really happen, and almost never does. But you can't beat it -- you can't beat it -- when it does. In just about any aspect of life you can name.

"Disputed Passage" (Lloyd C. Douglas) is what this podcast is not. There are any number of issues to talk about, yet so many are so particular, and rally around themselves all kinds of differing opinions. I'd rather do -- that is, try to do in a small way -- something of what Claude Berri actually did in "Jean de Florette/Manon of the Spring" (1986), which was, in his own words, to scrape down to...