Animal Magic

My car and my phone get along so well that I feel like a third wheel, and I often feel like they'd be happier without me.  Am I an obstacle that the tools have to work around?  I recently found this live recording of "Hardware" from 2021.  Some things I said about hardware and software in 2021 now sound outdated, but the main message still comes through, and this is one of my favorites of all of these I've written.  Special thanks to the one person who kept laughing while I was saying this.

In this Very Special Holiday Episode, we'll Share Something Happily Forgotten, a Christmas Mystery long buried in the snow of the past.  We'll also wonder why Pigs are the baddest animals in the Bible.  

On December 3rd, 1976, a 30-foot pig flew over England, disrupting air traffic and scaring the manure out of a rancher's cattle.  In this special anniversary episode, we'll share the timeless tale of the photo-shoot for the Pink Floyd Animals album cover.  And we'll consider what it may have to do with Orwell's novel Animal Farm, and whether that book still has anything to teach us in America today.

The absolutely true story of a journey to witness Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds in concert, with some silly and supernatural surprises.  This doesn't contain any music samples, but refers to "Jubilee Street" (I recommend the Copenhagen live version), "Tupelo," "Wild God," "Conversion" and "Into My Arms."

In this "Season of the Witch" we'll be looking at the ancient myth of Circe, the Sorceress in The Odyssey.  This Enchantress is dangerous (especially to chauvinist pigs) but also a savior who instructs Odysseus and his men about how to face the perils ahead.  Times of terror can be times of transformation, sometimes for the better.

A Heart concert got me thinking about Odysseus and the Sirens.  And I wondered - what might the Sirens be saying if they were singing today?  

In this Controversial Episode, we'll explore Biblical Bugs, and Creepy-Crawlies of Egyptian, Chinese and Greek Mythology.  Plus some personal recollections of that time I got stranded in the middle of the great Cincinnati Cicada Awakening of 1987.

How is a Raven like a Role-Model?  In stories Jesus told, rich men come to bad ends, and apparently the fox and the raven know something we don't know about the divine plan.  Regardless of heaven and hell, what might these parables tell us about life on earth?