Persistence of Vision

You know you should read James Joyce's Ulysses. But do you want to read it? Yes, yes you do. Or you will, after you hear Lance and L.B. interview journalist and master of English literature Jody Seaborn about the Irish masterpiece. 

Theater and film impresario Jason Neulander discusses his favorite book, Dostoevsky's masterpiece Demons. What has a novel of violent revolution set in 19th Century Russia to teach us about the United States in the 21st Century?

Writer Olive Balla returns to talk to Lance and L.B. about her latest crime thriller, Code Murder, as well as her previous works. 

Lance and L.B. welcome Austin Chronicle arts editor and Texas legend Robert Faires to discuss a book he's loved since he was a kid: Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes. 

Arts and entertainment editor and book critic Jody Seaborn comes on board to discuss the Lawrence Stern masterpiece The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. It’s a pre-modern postmodern novel of wit, style, humor and feeling. 

The astonishing woman of the theater Beth Burns leads Lance and L.B. through the history and meaning of Arden of Faversham, an Elizabethan true-crime tragicomedy likely penned, at least in part, by none other than William Shakespeare. 

Author, comic, filmmaker, showman and genius Owen Egerton comes on board for a live interview about Kurt Vonnegut's novel Breakfast of Champions. 

Guest hosts David Moses Fruchter and W. Joe Hoppe interview L.B. Deyo about his novel, The God-Damn Fool.

Austin stage star Web Jerome shares her obsession with George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, the books that inspired the HBO show Game of Thrones. 

Kaci Beeler isn't one to limit herself to a genre, a medium, or a subject. Lance and L.B. had her on to discuss her plays, including Killer Girls and Subject to Control, but inevitably the interview touched on her painting, her design, her acting, improvisation, direction, and much more. 

The Silmarillion is the Bible of Middle Earth, and Daniel Mennega is our guide through the rarified heights and terrifying depths of Tolkien's mythology. L.B. is joined by special guest host Union Brooks. 

Philosophy, love, history, love, betrayal, tyranny, art, weight, and lightness. These and other themes, torn from the pages of Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, animate Lance and L.B.'s discussion with theater star Kelli Bland.

Can a person evolve? Does true love ever stop a man from pursuing his destiny? Is there gold in them thar hills? Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist raises these and other questions. But for the answers, Lance and L.B. turn to none other than Wild Bill, Austin's preeminent rock 'n roll impresario, composer and performer. 

Sometimes the hippest novel of the year is actually an innovative, devastating memoir. Philosopher, shoot fighter and rock hero Mocha Washburn talks about Dave Eggers' legendary debut, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.

President Bill Clinton called John Rawls "perhaps the greatest political philosopher of the twentieth century" because of the ideas contained in Rawls' book A Theory of Justice. Author, Legislative Director and master showman Mike O'Connor shares his expertise on the book and pulls back L.B. and Lance's veil of ignorance. 

Recorded live at the North Door Bar Lounge. Halldór Laxness' Nobel-prize winning novel Independent People is the subject of the Persistence of Vision Interview with actor, director and playwright Elizabeth Doss. How much fun can you have with a book about impoverished shepherds in the frozen wastes of Iceland? Plenty. 

The Austin Chronicle's legendary arts editor Brenner joins Lance, L.B. and Union to discuss Charlie Huston's neo-noir showstopper, The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death. 

It's 1953, and the United States has just executed an American couple convicted of spying for the Soviet Union. Everyone is on edge as the Cold War standoff between communism and democracy leads to the rise of Senator Joe McCarthy and his zealous hunt for people he calls subversives or communist sympathizers. Suspicion, loyalty oaths, blacklists, political profiling, hostility to foreigners, and the assumption of guilt by association divide the nation. Lance and L.B. welcome L.M. Elliott to discuss the parallels with today's America.

"Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas ... with the music at top volume and at least a pint of ether." Texas Punk musician and journalist Tim Stegall describes the epochal sensation that is Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and also touches on his own personal journey into the heart of the American dream. 

Jillie is a tale of horror-tinged high adventure, brought to life by Dickensian characters and high-velocity pacing. It's the story of an 11-year-old girl on the run from her brutal step-family in the New Mexico desert. Novelist Olive Balla discusses her Jillie, and also the process of finding a publisher and releasing the book. 

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 

Actor, improviser, and writer Shannon McCormick talks to Lance and L.B. about the greatest of the postmodern novels, David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest.

Writer and writing professor Timothy Braun has been a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fan since he was five years old. In this episode, Lance and L.B. grill Timothy on Douglas Adams' comic-sci-fi masterpiece, touching on related works by Kurt Vonnegut, Woody Allen, and others.

A Land of Permanent Goodbyes takes the reader on an odyssey from ISIS-controlled Syria through Turkey and across the Aegean sea. Atia Abawi, the daughter of refugees and a Middle East correspondent for CNN and NBC, leads us through the story of her novel and the reporting, research and imagination that produced it. 

The Iliad is one of the foundational works of Western literature, a mythical story of the Trojan War whose poetic force and genius has never since been excelled. Hosts L.B. Deyo and Lance Fever Myers welcomed poet and college instructor W. Joe Hoppe to talk about the Iliad's plot, poetical technique, history, and much more.