PZ's Podcast

Language changes, changes, changes. "Elle coule, coule, coule." Like a simple but undeviating "conversation" at the drive -through window of the bank. Or like the use of the word "program". "Program" doesn't mean a Lenten series anymore. It doesn't mean what it used to mean. It means something else now. So I need your help, to devise a more robust program than just another pot luck.

"Falsification" is another word for compartmentalization. When we falsify reality -- as in "being untrue", either to a person or to convictions that we (otherwise) hold sincerely -- we get, well, what we deserve. The New Testament gets falsified all the time; and the obloquy which falsification, when found out, gets us, clouds everything -- not to mention the very goods we actually could give. Tho...

"Kuh-hay-tchuh-pek". It means 'God', or rather G-d, in Martian. You can find out all about "Kuh-hay-tchuh-pek" in the now Criterioned 1964 movie "Robinson Crusoe on Mars". "Kuh-hay-tchuh-pek" is God, and a very right and proper God, too. He is Divine Order, but He is also a Nice Guy. This podcast is about G-d. I hope you'll like Him.

Sequels are strange: sometimes they're better than the original, most of the time they're worse. What makes a good sequel? "The Empire Strikes Back", for example; or "The Invisible Man Returns"; or "The Ghost of Frankenstein". Well, preaching -- I mean preaching in the formal sense, i.e., preaching in churches -- is a study in sequels. When you preach a sermon, you're in a long succession. It goes...

I don't believe in "reality", or rather, I believe what looks like reality is seldom reality. This can be easily proved by a quick viewing of ... "The Mummy Ghost" (1944). One look at that wonderful movie is able to confer an accurate understanding of reality. This is because "The Mummy's Ghost" 's reality IS reality. Podcast 88 concerns Kharis, Tana Leaves, and the Arab Spring. P.S. From Kerouac:...

They are all, like Ray Milland, "The Man with the X-Ray Eyes" -- these Huguenot heroes: Marot, Duplessis-Mornay, de Beze, de Coligny, de Rohan, d'Aubigne. That includes their English co-religionists, such as Whitgift and Abbott and Grindal. These are eyes of defeat, eyes that convey an end to self-reference, eyes of a markedly ego-less state. You simply have to undergo defeat, have to, in order to...

This podcast tries to go a little deeper with Supermarionation. It is really about social class, and the kind of alliance that inevitably imperils a religion whose goal is emancipating the human race. We start with "It Happened One Night", then chart our way north, to an old surprising hymn.

Can the mind of man and woman conceive that the subject of Episcopal haberdashery in the movies might be interesting and meaningful? Well, yes, it might be, at least to me. This podcast surveys Protestant Episcopal clothing in the movies and television. We travel in our sound machine from "The Bishop's Wife" to "Family Plot" to "Night of the Iguana" to "The Sandpiper"; and we end up on British tv...

Yvette Vickers played supporting roles in two unforgettable 1950's science-fiction movies: "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" and "Attack of the Giant Leeches". As far as I'm concerned, she stole the show both times. But, Yvette Vickers is now dead. Or rather, she was found dead, on the 27th of April last year (2011). The conditions under which she was found, and the conditions under which she apparent...

This is a theme with me -- the pros and cons (there aren't many cons) of learning foreign languages. Also, how does it actually work? Why is one language easier for a given person to learn than another? Also, what's the relatiion between learning a language to read, and learning a language to speak? And why is psychology so important, personal psychology, in the acquisition of a foreign 'tongue'?...

From our house to your house, at the Turning of the Year: a portrait of the dignity that is able to inhere within romantic love -- sometimes. The subject is a short scene, a musical number really, in a late Jacques Demy, "Une Chambre en Ville" (1982). You can YouTube it by typing in "Violette amoureuse". I have faith you will be richly repaid. Try to marry a 'Violette' if you possibly can -- or, i...

Why am I "afraid to say what I really want to say" (Jack Kerouac)? That's a line from "Visions of Gerard", and many could echo it. This podcast is about changing mores, specifically the contrast between a sensational murder case of the 1930s and a sensational case of recent times. Then there's Ken Russell's "The Devils" (1971), a charming little movie -- and the shifting sands of killing inquisiti...

This is PZ's Christmas Podcast.

What constitutes you, as a human being? What are the parts which make you the whole you are? A single sentence from Huxley's "After many a summer dies the swan" can help, together with Fritz Lang's "Woman in the Moon". It's not about the ego. I am so sorry that human education pumps up that flat tire. Is there another way to educate ... ourselves?

I'm shooting for quality today. In the spirit of earlier podcasts concerning Giant Crab Movies and Journey,this podcast concerns what might today be called "Lounge Crooner Classics". In their day, they were pop songs commissioned to be played over the credits of movies and then sold as singles. We're talking about "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" by Frankie Avalon; "Journey to the 7th Planet" by...

I tried to follow the invitation of that song recently. Saw a lot of things, found out a lot of things, remembered a lot of things, heard a couple of new things. It was a definite pilgrimage. I would like to tell you about it.

Can the "young" be instructed by the "old"? Can Nigel Kneale's "Planet People" be even saved by the over 70s? To put this another way, are there two messages to life: one for the first half and another for the second? Ultimately, no. There is one message. Alack! : It comes through suffering. Pump up the volume.

Nigel Kneale (1922-2006) was absolute murder, in the Reggae sense. No writer of English science fiction thought more originally than Nigel Kneale, who mostly wrote teleplays for the BBC. His "Quatermass (pro. 'Kway-ter-mass') and the Pit" from 1959 attempted to explain the whole history of religion via Martians. It strangely works. Kneale's "Quatermass" (1979) showed how the "young" are unable to...

Rejoicing at someone's execution, in "disturbing images", is hard enough to absorb. To add the unaccountable silence of Christians in relation to such joy is almost impossible to absorb. What's to love in this world, in this planetary race of not so human beings? We're hoping to get a little help today from Harnack and Huxley. (Wonder what would have happened if they'd ever met? I feel almost cert...

This is about the use of language to cover an unpleasant reality. It's not just about the "removal" of an al awlaki or a "new chapter in the history of Libya" accomplished by means of the murder of a POW who was captured alive. It's about resigning yourself to something you cannot change.

Arthur Machen meets St. Matthew's Gospel, Chapter 11, Verses 16-19. You can try to make your voice heard with an engaging, danceable tune, and it will pass like a shadow over the water. (Think "Men Without Hats".) Or you can try it in a shrill, scratchy key, and it will still be forgotten, fast. (Think P.J. Proby.) Whether it flops or not, however, that's not the point . Someone will probably even...

Here is a two-parter concerning your inward voice: What is it, and how do you find it? From a Romans 7 point of view, the inward voice (and voices) is almost all that matters. Now get it down! Write it down! Put it on paper, or else it'll probably just "Fade Away" (Rolling Stones). This is personal archaeology, yours and mine, and it involves digging, and lifting.

There is nothing quite like the Inward Voice of 'Mark Rutherford', the novelist whose real name was William Hale White. He wore a mask over a mask, and his six novels constitute a kind of ultimate Inward Voice within Victorian fiction. Today we look at his "Revolution in Tanner's Lane" (1890), which reveals the worst and also the best of the Romans 7 understanding of human nature. Cradled in this...

Now here's a find: a passage in the novel "Revolution in Tanner's Lane" (1890) by 'Mark Rutherford' (aka William Hale White), in which the author answers the question I set in the previous cast. If there is a word from religion to the middle-aged and "mature" -- i.e., a word of humbled acquiescence to the disillusioned and shaken -- what is religion's word to the young? Can the same message of exp...

Does life-wisdom offer the same message to the non-disillusioned, who are often on the younger side, as it does to the disillusioned, who are often over-50? It's a live issue for me, since a gospel of hope to the shattered can sound depressing to people who are working on wresting something like success from life. Interestingly, many religious pioneers, from Pachomius to Zwingli, from Clare to the...