All The Weird – Page 6 – FULL CONTACT NERD

Rod Serling and his work – “Rod Serling” (University Press of Mississippi, 2018) – Nicholas Parisi interview

Nicholas Parisi is a musician and vocalist and serves on the board of the Rod Serling Memorial Foundation. He’s recently written a book analyzing almost all of Rod Serling’s work and we discuss the book and Rod Serling’s works.

1:39 – Nicholas talks about how he got into Rod Serling. He discusses many of the projects that Rod had been involved with. The book is part biography, part reference guide and part a critique of the themes that Rod explored in his work. It covers his entire writing life.

4:13 – Nicholas covers Rod’s radio work more extensively than other writers on Rod have.

5:58 – Nicholas talks about how Rod ended up in front of a screen in addition to being a writer.

6:45 – Nicholas talks about Orson Welles connection to the Twilight Zone and a myth surrounding it.

12:20 – Nicholas wants to emphasize that Rod was more than the Twilight Zone. He also mentions Rod’s attempts to put out scripts based on the Emmitt Till case.

17:16 – Rod’s daughter Anne Serling provided some support for this book.

24:43 – Nicholas’s book addresses a 1952 tv show episode that addressed racism most likely for the first time ever on television. Rod tried to push an episode addressing racism and no other researcher has talked about this episode before.

28:19 – Nicholas talks about Rod’s WWII experiences in the Philippines.

38:05 – Nicholas has a facebook for the book at facebook.com/RodSerlingDimensions

For more of “The Art and Design of Sci-Fi and Fantasy, Mystery and Horror” please follow me on Facebook at crisalvarezwlc, on youtube at Cris Alvarez and on Instagram @crisalvarezscifi

Guests: Nicholas Parisi

Host: Cris Alvarez

Tags: science fiction, sci-fi, rod serling, twilight zone, television, gold age, mystery, orson welles, Emmett Till, McCarthyism, racism, World War II, Philippines, US Army

Classical “monster” art – “Portraits of Human Monsters in the Renaissance” (Medieval Institute Publications, 2018) – Touba Ghadessi interview

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Touba Ghadessi is an Associate Professor of Art History at the Wheaton College Massachusetts. We spoke about her book on how the “monstrous” form was portrayed in 16^th and 17^th century art found among noble courts.

3:45 – Touba talks about the book and what it means to be a monster in the 16^th century.

8:00 – Touba thought she might find definite categories of “monsters” but the meaning was more porous. Courts loved having dwarves at court.

12:00 – Touba talks about a dwarf that was taught to fight, to speak other languages and taught many different skills by his court patrons. Some dwarves were mentally incapacitated and used as jesters sometimes.

21:24 – There’s a long history of dwarfism in other cultures being a perfect miniature representation of a human being.

25:45 – In the 16^th century, anatomists started looking at dwarves as biological entities rather than omens of something.

27:30 – Touba could look at purchase inventories for courts to see what was being bought for dwarves by their patrons.

29:30 – She mostly got records from Northern Italian courts and some French courts.

38:00 – It was difficult for Touba to read about the vivisection work that some 16^th century scientists did.

For more of “The Art and Design of Sci-Fi and Fantasy, Mystery and Horror” please follow me on Facebook at crisalvarezwlc, on youtube at Cris Alvarez and on Instagram @crisalvarezscifi

Guests: Touba Ghadessi

Host: Cris Alvarez

Tags: art, dwarf, hirsute, paintings, 16^th century, 17^th century, italy, france, nobility, castrati, royal courts