PZ's Podcast

My new law firm is called "Scrambling, Rattled, and Bracing, P.A.". It is a firm devoted to the project of complete control. It helps me "scramble" to contain unexpected problems; prevents me from getting "rattled" by unexpected threats; and gets me "braced" in anticipation of feared outcomes. In other words -- you guessed it -- my new law firm helps me get control of my life. I pay it to get me r...

This ancient show, much of which is now richly available on YouTube, let alone DVD, understood something important. It understood about the "collective unconscious" and the nature of the Love that exists underneath human loves. The several great episodes in this terse ancient treasure, from 1959 to 1961, depict reality so unflinchingly that you can barely look — and, the underlying reality of God....

Anger -- it's everywhere. The question is, at whom or at what are you NOT angry? Well, you can't be angry at anyone or anything you love. Or rather, you can't be angry at that part of anyone or anything that you love. This podcast is about seismic anger -- into which the internet is just a current window. Every age has its window. This podcast hunts for an answer.

This gorgeous 1964 film is everything people say it is, and makes you wonder sometimes whether its director and writer, Jacques Demy, was too good for this world. Let's also hear it for Michel Legrand, who wrote the score. What I wish to eyeball, and what this podcast is about, is its vision of romance, for "Umbrellas of Cherbourg" is about first love, lost love, best love, et enfin, true love. Th...

Lord Buckley broke down a barrier that is exceptionally hard to break down. He broke down the barrier between the Sacred and the Profane. Several of his 'hipsemantic' monologues, once you begin to study them, are fascinating expressions of Christian ideas, but expressed in the terms of an offbeat and wacky nightclub personality. I don't know of anything like them. In this second and concluding pod...

Lord Buckley (aka Richard Myrle Buckley, l906-1960) was a "way out" nightclub comic and monologist, who created "hipsemantic" routines based on famous people -- very famous! -- and famous works of literature. Lord Buckley's most famous monologue was called "The Nazz" and is a "hipster" re-telling of three miracles of Our Savior, which was Lord Buckley's frequently invoked term for Christ. "The Naz...

This is My Sharona of faith, a series of four theses, briefly explained, that express an approach to everyday living, and understanding. I hope you like them.

It's possible to tell the future. It's actually pretty easy. You have to know about human nature, and you have to know about fashion. You have to know that human nature doesn't change, and you have to know that fashion changes all the time. It changes right to left, then left to right, then back again. Then the same, again. And again. "My Ever Changing Moods" (Style Council) You, too, can be a for...

William Inge (1913-1973) wrote plays of restrained optimism concerning broken families in small Kansas towns of the 1920's and '30's. He understood about the importance of sex in everyday life -- even in Protestant Middle-Western America during the Great Depression. He also understood about the Church and its disappointing failure to help people when the bottom fell out of their lives. Yet there a...

It just may be the worst thing about America today: our view of human nature. If you listen to almost any -- and I mean, any -- commentator, speechmaker, pundit, or spokesperson, of literally any and every organization, institution, medium, or government office, you are going to hear about taking charge, and imposing control -- of everything and everybody. (I hate that they'll now ticket you if yo...

Another one of those unknown authors. But he has so much to tell us, first about sex and then about Christianity. About the former, he puts first things first. About the latter, he puts Jesus on the "Enola Gay". Would that Philip Wylie were here today, to put Jesus on a predator drone, or on one of those Navy SEAL helicopters which flew into Pakistan recently.

Philip Wylie was a prophet in the war between the sexes. His 1951 novel "The Disappearance", in which, through an unexplained 'cosmic blink', all the women disappear from the world of the men and all the men disappear from the world of the women, is so noble and so disturbing, so wrenching and so uplifting, so wise and so uncommonly religious, that it becomes required reading for everyone who is a...

Herman Wouk's 1985 novel "War and Remembrance" has a most prophetic minor character buried within its 1300 pages. This character is a philosophical and definitely sweet English aristocrat named Duncan Burne-Wilke, whom we meet in the "CBI" or "China Burma India" theater of the Second World War. Burne-Wilke envisages the end of Western colonialism on account of a massive disillusionment caused by t...

This is my favorite book. It's also Bill Murray's. It is called "The Razor's Edge" and was written by Somerset Maugham. It was published in 1944. It tells the story of some well-to-do Americans from Lake Forest, who all find what they're looking for in life. One of them, 'Larry Darrell', loses his life only to save it. He is the hero, and I think he could be yours. P.S. Who's "Ruysbroek"?

"The Green Pastures" is a 1930 American play, and 1936 Hollywood movie, that was once as famous as "Our Town". Now, for reasons of political correctness, it is rarely seen and seldom taught. Even the DVD has to carry a 'Warning' label. (Good Grief!) How dearly we have robbed ourselves of a pearl of truly great price. Marc Connelly's "The Green Pastures" deals theatrically with the transition in th...

Bishop Bell appears as a main character in Rolf Hochhuth's 1967 play entitled "Soldiers". Bell confronts Churchill on the morality of murder from the air, especially when it involves the murder of civilians. Such a confrontation never actually took place, but the Bishop and the Prime Minister had the thoughts and stated them. The PM detested Bell. In Act Three of Hochhuth's play, Bell loses and Ch...

George K.A. Bell (1883-1958) was the Bishop of Chichester during World War II. He addressed the House of Lords on February 9, 1944, questioning the Government on the use of "carpet bombing" of German cities. Bishop Bell regarded this kind of bombing, which was intended to destroy German morale and bring the war to an end, as a war crime. At the time, Bell was the only person in Britain willing to...

Religious partisanship is normal, explicable, and terminal. It kills Christianity. It sure killed me. Or maybe it wised me up. This podcast concerns Charles Dickens' novel "Barnaby Rudge", which was published in 1841. Dickens' subject was the "No Popery" riots that took place in 1780 in London. They are also known as the "Gordon Riots". Dickens used this astonishing episode to observe the causes o...

Life in a Final Club! "The Social Network" has made it high profile all of a sudden. What it was, was fun, delightful, blessedly un-serious in a way serious world, with a taste of Evelyn Waugh. We loved it. Why was the story never told? That's a story. Podcast 39 is published in loving memory of Page Farnsworth Grubb, '71.

This is an impression of The Yardbirds, the first avant-garde band we ever knew. With Eric Clapton to start, then Jeff Beck, then Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, then Jimmy Page only, their music, especially the guitar breaks, lived on the edge of INSANITY. To this day, I still have Yardbirds days. They are wonderful. There was also a personal Close Encounter, with Friends. In this podcast I tell a stor...

This podcast is about professional titles: the more reduced in circumstances an institution, the more high-flown its titles. Did you know that until about 1970 Episcopal clergy were always called 'Mr." ? (They were never called 'Father', except in one parish, max two, per city.) The later Cardinal Newman was 'Mr. Newman', and Edward Bouverie Pusey was 'Mr. Pusey'. But don't take my word for it. Re...

Here's a little gazetteer of Episcopal Protestant interiors. They're nice. Delaware's is in the middle of nowhere, and Boston's finest is Unitarian. George Washington sat beneath a central pulpit in Alexandria and "Low Country" farmers did the same. And don't forget the Motor City: I mean, Duanesburg, New York. But always remember this -- even if you are actually able to visit these places, no one...

This one is about Protestant aesthetics as expressed in architecture and design. It is 'a tale told by an idiot', however, for no one ever believes you. Only Henny Penny says the Episcopal Church was once Protestant and 'Low' -- right up to the Disco Era. Memory being what it is, this is the tale of a forgotten 200 years. The Song Remains the Same in about 200 precious survivals in England, as wel...

Late Saturday nights was a time for little boys to howl. "Shock Theater" came on around one! We learned every line of the 'original' "Dracula" (1931), memorized every release date of every Mummy movie from 1932 to 1945, and, most important, got married for life to: "The Bride of Frankenstein". This is the story of those late Saturday nights, which gave our mothers such trouble, since it was they w...

The Circle was a movie theater in downtown Washington where two boys discovered foreign film. Boris Karloff and James Whale became superseded by Sergei Eisenstein and Francois Truffaut. Or mostly. (We were only 13 years old, for crying out loud.) This podcast tells our Tales from the Circle. Every word is true. It is Part III of The Moviegoer and is dedicated to Lloyd Fonvielle.