Here are two good history podcasts: The History of Rome and 12 Byzantine Rulers.
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Archives for September 2009
Science Fiction Society of Northern New Jersey presents Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated
I’ll be appearing at: The Science Fiction Society of Northern New Jersey presents Face the Fiction: Zombie Encounter & Film Festival, featuring the premiere of Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated, a re-creation of George Romero’s 1968 classic, now with each scene rendered by a different animator in their own unique visual style. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with me, Kim Paffenroth, Jonathan Maberry, Peter Gutierrez, and John Joseph Adams.
Tim Powers Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides
Locus is reporting the thrilling news that the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean flick will officially be an adaptation of the Tim Powers novel On Stranger Tides.
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David Farley and Tony Perrottet Know Dick
Last night I headed out to The Diamond bar in Brooklyn for an evening of penis-themed entertainment featuring David Farley, author of An Irreverent Curiosity, and Tony Perrottet, author of Napoleon’s Privates.
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I haven’t read the other book, Napoleon’s Privates, but the author talked about it a bit. Apparently Napoleon was extremely obnoxious to his surgeon, so when Napoleon died the surgeon got back at him by cutting off his private parts during the autopsy. Napoleon’s penis bounced around to different countries before finally ending up with a collector in New Jersey, where Tony Perrottet found it and surreptitiously made a replica, which he displayed last night. Another interesting fact he mentioned was that Napoleon was not in fact short. Napoleon’s height (5’6”) was pretty much average for his day. The idea that Napoleon was a shrimp seems to have been an invention of British propagandists.
New York City Skeptics Paul Grosswald Cults Scientology
A few weeks ago the New York City Skeptics sponsored a lecture by Paul Grosswald on cults & coercion. The lecture is now available online, and holy crap you have to listen to this. The first half or so is interesting but nothing special, as he lays out some of the general principles by which cults operate, but in the second half he talks about his personal experiences in Scientology, and everyone in the audience was just transfixed. This is one of the craziest stories I’ve ever heard. Here’s a sample:
So they sat me down in a room. They had these two people dressed in their military Sea Org uniforms, and they had a man and a woman, and the man was somebody I had previously met in Scientology, so I kind of had a buddy-buddy relationship with him, and then the woman was, you know, an extraordinarily beautiful woman, and she was flirting with me and telling me how great it would be if we could be in the Sea Org together, and she was like from Louisiana, she had this really charming Southern accent, and they’re working me. There would be times when she would get up and leave and I’d be alone with the guy, and I’d be bonding with him, and then he’d leave and she’d come back. This went on for five hours, and I now know that the woman had been at the Long Island center where I’d worked previously, and so certainly would have had access to my auditing files. Because when I was talking to them I was amazed at how much these people seemed to know about me, it was like they could see right into my soul, you know? They say the files are confidential, but obviously they’re not. So they’re like pushing my buttons and getting me to be upset, and I’d be crying, and then they would calm me down, and then get me to cry again, calm me down. This is torture, this is psychological torture, for five hours they’re doing this, and now I’m like an emotional wreck, my head is spinning, and then they say, because, you know, I didn’t want to drop out of school, so they say, “Look, suppose you stay in school, and you have a good education, and you get a good job, in fifty years you’re going to be dead, what’s the point? But if you join us, you’ll live forever.”
Yale Professor Donald Kagan on Sparta
Here’s a fascinating lecture by Yale professor Donald Kagan on the organization of Spartan society. This is a culture that really upends a lot of our notions about human nature and propriety.
Here’s the capsule summary: Sparta maintained a massive slave population to do the farming, leaving the citizens free to spend all their time training for war. Spartan authorities examined every newborn and put to death any who showed signs of congenital weakness. At age seven Spartan boys were taken from their families and enrolled in military school, where they would remain until the age of thirty. Students were not given enough to eat, and were expected to supplement their diets by thieving, in the process learning initiative, guile, and self-reliance. Students trained nude, within sight of the Spartan girls, who also participated in athletics and who also trained nude. Teenage males were expected to take a male lover from among their instructors, aged twenty to thirty, and these pairs would remain good friends throughout their lives. At the age of twenty, Spartan males were permitted to marry, but were not allowed to leave the school to visit their wives. They were expected to do so secretly — as with stealing food — and the penalties for getting caught were severe. For the wedding, the bride’s head would be shaved and she would be dressed up like a man. At the age of thirty, men could leave the school and move in with their wives, but they still ate dinner every night in a cafeteria with their squadmates.
Corey Olsen The Tolkien Professor Podcast
Here’s an interesting and enjoyable podcast I came across recently: The Tolkien Professor.
The host Corey Olsen is a professor at Washington College, where he teaches courses on Chaucer, courtly love, Arthurian literature, the Bible, Greco-Roman mythology, and a full-semester course on the works of Tolkien. He’s obviously a huge Tolkien fan, and his tone while discussing Tolkien’s work is never less than ebullient, and there’s none of the self-indulgent twaddle you might fear from a lit prof. Instead he adheres to Tolkien’s own critical approach, as laid down in Tolkien’s seminal essay “On Fairy-Stories,” and takes the story seriously as a story, focusing on analyzing the characters and pointing out details and connections you might never have noticed before. He’s started out discussing The Hobbit, and is currently about halfway through the book. Check it out.
ETA: I interviewed Corey for Episode 12 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast.
Alpha, The Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Workshop for Young Writers
July 14-25, 2010
University of Pittsburgh, Greensburg Campus
Featuring Special Guests:
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John Joseph Adams is Genre Fiction’s Willy Wonka
The Candy Man Can: Or Why John Joseph Adams is Genre Fiction’s Willy Wonka. Barnes & Noble.com’s Paul Goat Allen calls John Joseph Adams “the reigning king of the anthology world.” He adds, “Every anthology this guy is associated with seems to turn to gold: and by gold I mean jaw-droppingly brilliant anthologies with no weak links that I’ll not only read again and again but treasure until the day I die.” Wastelands is “arguably my favorite anthology of all time,” The Living Dead is “the best collection of zombie fiction stories ever collected,” and By Blood We Live is “another masterful – dare I say perfect – anthology.”
