Persistence of Vision

What's the next step after inspiration? How do you bridge the gap between a concept and its execution? Writer, filmmaker, musician and creative dynamo Carl King takes Lance and L.B. to school.

Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life is a deep investigation into a cultural movement that swept the U.S. in the 80s and 90s and had influence far beyond its most immediate listenership: Hardcore punk rock. It tells the story of this movement through profiles of its leading artists, from Black Flag and Minor Threat to the Bad Brains, Fugazi, Mudhoney and many others. Richard Guerrero is a veteran punk fan and musician who loves the book and the world that inspired it. 

What is space? It isn't a question that most of us normally ask. Space is the venue of physics; it's where things exist, where they move and take shape. Yet over the past few decades, physicists have discovered a phenomenon that operates outside the confines of space and time: nonlocality-the ability of two particles to act in harmony no matter how far apart they may be. It appears to be almost magical. Einstein grappled with this oddity and couldn't come to terms with it, describing it as "spooky action at a distance."

Author George Musser comes on to talk about his book with Lance and L.B.

David Moses Fruchter is a poet and expert commentator on that masterpiece of conspiracy fiction, the Illuminatus! Trilogy. The book is immensely complex and challenging, and Fruchter walks us through its mysteries, depths, and absurdities with characteristic charm. 

Mike Saenz is a filmmaker whose work has appeared in the Sundance Festival. He was an assistant editor on Boyhood, which was nominated for a best picture Oscar. Very obviously, Lance and L.B. wanted to hear everything he had to say about the world's most notorious leviathan, the white whale Moby-Dick. 

Bill Lord came back from the Vietnam war and put it out of his mind for 50 years. Now in his new book he tells his firsthand account of life as a soldier in the notorious Mekong Delta. 

Iraq War veteran, Episcopalian Priest and moral injury therapist David Peters talks about the book he co-authored with Anna Fitch Courie, Christ Walk Crushed. What are the personal consequences of guilt? What can we do to overcome shame? Peters brings vast personal experience and knowledge to the problems of war and peace. 

Author, media sensation and Jeopardy! champion Neal Pollack joins the Persistence of Vision podcast to discuss The Night of the Gun and other addiction memoirs, including his own forthcoming book. 

Composer, bandleader and superstar Graham Reynolds talks about the book Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei. The book offers 19 different translations of an classic Chinese poem with comments on each version by Eliot Weinberger and an afterword by Octavio Paz. The conversation touches on poetry, translation, the limits of language and the philosophy of mind.

What was Charles Darwin doing in the years before he published On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection? As Rebecca Stott explains in her book Darwin and the Barnacle, he was studying those tiny sea creatures almost no one had ever paid attention to before. On this episode, Lance and L.B. host Lewis Weil, biologist, Money Positive entrepreneur and former Nerd Nite boss, as he tells them all about Darwin, Barnacles, and Darwin and the Barnacle. Look for Lewis on Twitter and Instagram @lewisweil and learn about his unscary approach to financial planning at http://www.money-positive.com