Sonic Echo: 607 Sci Fi: Zero Hour- Sky Lab are you There?

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Hello and welcome back to Sonic Echo. I'm Jack Ward with my amigo friends, Lothar Tuppen. How are you, Lothar? Well, I'm having some Matus Rosé as it's an excellent wine, not only for here in California, Massachusetts, and Nova Scotia, but also in the elegant yet cold reaches of space. Matus Wine, the wine that goes with anything, anytime, anywhere. This is a commercial bonanza, this episode. Thank you so much. And Jeff Billard, how are you doing, Jeff? Well, I'm here with my... I've just...

I've just washed up with my dial soap, and I put in a wad of beech nut, and now I've got some matuse. Breathing for later after the show. And we'll go for a ride in our Gran Torinos later. My father had a 1974 Gran Torino. I love that car. Such good cars. Welcome to the 70s. Yeah. Tell me about it. You keep your face to your wind. You don't cheat on a friend. And Beach Nut is the tobacco you chew. That's the 70s.

Everybody listening to this, listen to those commercials, especially that Beech Nut one, and you're going to go... Oh, my God. I can't even believe this. It's like, you know, I'm going to buy the drinks. I'm going to show her who's boss or whatever he says. You know, he doesn't say that. But it's like, oh, my God. 1973, maybe.

40 years ago, 73 was, 73, 74. For those people who are listening, yes, we are talking about the voluminous amount of commercials there are there in this particular episode.

I'm fascinated with this series. This series is called Zero Hour. And Jack, just to make you feel old, that was 50 years ago. Thank you very much. 50 years ago. We are old as dirt. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right, because I'm almost 60. That's crazy. So, Zero Hour with... Rod Serling as the narrator, and it's a series that debuted September 3rd, 1973, on the Mutual Broadcasting System. Yay!

Another one that I wanted to pick up. And they picked it up actually in December until the final episode was broadcast July 26th, 1974. Despite that short time, they had 130 episodes all available. on archive.org. The one we're listening to tonight is only a single one. Many of the first season were five parts, so it'll be five days in a row to give you the full five-part series. I haven't heard any of those. I've only heard the singletons.

Oh, they're awesome. They are great. And one thing that's really cool bringing up the commercials is that a lot of the early ones, they didn't have sponsors yet. So they just had government PSAs. Nice. They're fascinating. Yeah, yeah, that's very cool to check out. And one of the things that I picked this one is it's one of the few science fiction ones because we are doing the science fiction series this season. So the show that we're looking at is called Skylab.

Are you there? First of all, before we go into that and we have a listen, were any of you, were either of you aware of this series? Jeff, were you aware of Zero Hour? I was not. Oh, it was new to me. I'd never listened to it, never heard of it. And I really enjoyed it. Yeah. Very cool. And Lothar, what about you? Yeah. Bill turned me on to it. God.

2010, I think, and went on the Internet Archive. And I think I listened to the whole first season way back then. Just fantastic. Really good stuff. And they had great actors and they were adapting a lot of really cool. Literary stuff and dramatic stuff. So it was really very seriously done. Even a little bit different than like CBS Mystery Radio Theater, that stuff. Which was the only other real...

big radio show at the time in the 70s, the two of them were the ones that kind of brought back a bit of a renaissance of old-time radio. And so a lot of people were listening to, they would replay a lot of the OTR stuff because... of Zero Hour and CBS Mr. Radio Theater. So some people who hadn't had a chance to hear it a generation later got a chance to hear some of the stuff that their parents had listened to at the time. And that's how I got turned on to radio drama.

My dad was listening to the stuff when he'd pick me up at my grandmother's house on Tuesdays. And I'd be like, wait, I'm not going to read my comics in the car anymore. I'm going to, you know. close it and listen to dragnet or inner sanctum or whatever was being played very cool what about you jeff is that how you got turned on to radio drama no i got turned on to radio drama by an audio book

My father had a couple of cassette tapes. I was listening to him. I was like, that is just so cool. Then I heard on the local NPR radio station, Star Wars, the NPR Star Wars. And I was just blown away. I mean, I just, oh, my God. And that really turned me on to the whole thing. And so that's when I got into audio drama, radio drama, and audiobooks, too.

That's fantastic. I actually got zero hour pretty early on. I had have a good friend. I have to email him. He just had a birthday and he never forgets mine. And I'm always late for everybody's. His name is Scott Leslie. Shout out to Scott, who's a writer. He actually won the Stephen Lee. for one of his books a couple of years ago. So he would be a part of an old-time radio group, and he would lend me, like, his cassettes of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, Orson Welles as The Shadow.

And then he burned for me all this. I think it must have been all the second seasons because that's why I said I only got the first episode or just the one standout episode of The Zero Hour. Shout out again to Scott. He was really good at turning me on to a wide variety of radio drama.

i had you know a certain amount of understanding of when i grew up but nothing to that level so that's awesome that's how i first heard about and being a rod serling fan i was like wait a minute that's rod serling is the host oh my god like did he write any of these the answer is no

But still, he was the host of the show. When you listen to the voice, if you're of a certain age, yes, that is Casey Kasem. Yes. And for me, he's fantastic, but it kind of takes me out of the show a little bit. because it's like long distance dedication you know it's great he's just fantastic

He plays a small part, but it's just great. Very small part. And for me, when he said I was suit up, all I could think of is him turning into Robin, but that's because he was Robin in the Super Friends. That's where I know him mostly for. I didn't listen to him as much. What did he do? Was like the countdown? American Top 40. He was all over the place. Oh, he was. Scooby-Doo. He did that American Top 40 show. He played Shaggy. Yeah, he played Shaggy. And it came on every Sunday, Sunday morning.

like at nine to 12 or whatever it was you know he would do the board or whatever it was top 40. yeah you know he was that voice you know and and it just was it was something it was something that when you were a kid like when i was a kid i mean we only got am radio on the little transistor radios that we had with the one earpiece if you had the expensive model you know and then fm came in but fm was kind of a kind of like the internet was is now you know

Kind of didn't have a lot of rules in the early days of FM radio and places like WBCN in Boston, up here where I'm from. I'm getting off on a tangent, but my point is that he was a huge radio star and everybody knew him of my age. Those of us born in the 1950s, just, he was something else. Yeah. If you know, you know. What an iconic voice. Yeah. And the only thing I want to do.

people a heads up for when they listen, is if those of you who remember our third episode of the season, Beyond Tomorrow episode, The Outer Limit, there's some very similar themes. And I'm really excited to get into this specific subgenre of science fiction.

get on the other side because there's a whole lot to unpack there that i only briefly touched on in our third episode fantastic oh yeah and one thing is i think that it for those of us who were alive in 1973 i was in high school and sky lab was a real thing if you don't know about sky lab yeah yeah it really was and so those of us

you know it's rooted in reality so those of us who know what skylab was go okay this is you know this is happening now it's not like you know planet z and all this stuff you know it's it's skylab and of course skylab was the first, I believe it was the first laboratory in outer space. If they did it today, it would be like international space station. Are you there? That's right. Yeah, exactly. And, and, you know, of course it,

It was known in 1979, right? It fell to earth, right? So that was the big thing, you know, where Skylab was going to fall. And it fell in the Indian Ocean, I think. And the Monks made a song from them. I love the Monks album. Do you remember the Monks?

No. Remember Bad Habits? No. Oh, no. Oh, yeah. I'll have to check them out. We'll check them out. They had, there's some really fun songs. Have you heard of the Monks, Lothar? Nope, have not. They're a British band. One of my favorite songs of theirs is Nice Legs, Shame About Your Face. Oh. which is, it's really funny. And I think they came early eighties, but they have a whole song, which is mostly instrumental. I think the only word it is.

Yeah, I'll look for it for you. Anyway, for those who know of the monks, send us an email at asonicsociety at gmail.com and let us know because we're always interested. interested in where you're from, what generation you're at, and if this is new for you or not. But right now, we're going to tune ourselves into Skylab. Are you there?

I'm Rod Serling. You're listening to The Zero Hour. Rest your eyes. Exercise your imagination. Today, Keith Waters double-tailed terror in space. Skylab. Starring William Shatner. In a mutual broadcasting system presentation of The Zero Hour. Brought to you by the Ford Motor Company, Shenley Industries, Matus Wine, Beech Nut Chewing Tobacco, and Dial Soap. This is the Zero Hour on Mutual Radio.

This is Hugh Downs with another car buyer's report from Ford. Comparing the total cost of ownership is the only way to be sure you get your money's worth when buying a new car. And Ford says there are three important considerations that make up the total cost of ownership. Purchase price, operating economy, and trade-in value. Don't overlook that last one. Trade-in value.

I'd like to give you some interesting facts about trade-in that are difficult for the average consumer to come by. Like the fact that based on the national average of NADA wholesale prices, both the 1973 Torino and the 1973 Gran Torino... returned more of their original purchase price than their closest sales competition. The facts speak for themselves. A solid, well-made car will generally return more at trade-in.

Ford says that's one of the reasons why Torino is the best-selling car in its class. The closer you look, the better we look.

Beyond the fragile envelope of air that protects this planet lurk many mysteries of the universe not yet revealed to us. But consider this. Perhaps they have been. But there is a decree from some higher authority that will not allow us to be told what they need. How are you coming, John? Solar panels are tricky. Level four still won't extend. Wait.

I thought I felt something move. Anything? No, for a minute. I'll keep working. This is Houston. Do you copy? Go ahead, Houston. What is your status on the panel? Panels 2 and 3 now fully extended and operational. The armhole 4 panel is still askew and it's in. The radio is coming up. That is probably recomputing in your program. Wait, did you get a key? John, what's wrong? John, can you hear me? John! That suit up, I'm going out. Right.

Houston, are you copying? Colonel Ev is not responding. Maybe injured. Dr. Kent and I are suiting up now. We will depressurize and I will attempt to bring Ev back in. Dick Conroy is on his way to the floor. He'll be taking over. Pat, switch on your suit transmitter. Dick Conroy, are you copying? Roger, Nick. We are now at the pressurizing ramp. That's going to be tonight. All right, moving at you. Jack, Ed's signs are weakening. Roger, Nick.

We will monitor. Skylab, we are showing attitude change on the station. Can you advise? Five by five, Jack. I am clipping toward the capital. Houston, I am confirmed. We're rotating rapidly and kicked off. Yes. Also, strike forward now to rotate for the rocket. Houston.

It's possible that when the panel pops, it will cause the station to spin. That must be corrected. Immediately, angle rotation will cause orbit decay. Can you give me time brackets on delay correction? Austin, set it up on the computer. Roger. Pat, that's good on the camera. We're following visually. Vital signs very erratic.

Put him in now. Roger. Pat, can you take decay corrections? I'm standing by surgery. Can you institute corrections from your station? Roger. Set up on the board computer through Orient Circuit. We will feed. Pat, come in. Give me a hand. We are inside. I'm going to take you. Transmitter, are you copying? We are copying. Jack, look at his chest. Let's get his suit off. Houston, Colonel Ed's on the table. Pat is examining him now. I am checking capsule.

Standing by, Skylar. Houston, Abb has a massive chest conduction. Possibly six ribs shot it. Two feet as if they may have shipped it into the heart wall. Skylar, you will have to abort the mission. Roger, Houston. I'm working on that now. Yeah, what a chance. We bring him down. Better than if he stays here. Hold it, Pat. Houston, we have a problem. We cannot abort. I repeat, we cannot abort.

Return capsule will not take pressurization and number two fuel tank punctured. Positive Houston. Fragments of the solar panel must have punctured capsule. We cannot return to Earth. Hey, hey, hey, Matus Rosé. Matus is an old-world rosé wine people enjoy everywhere. Like down in the Delta, they know the blues are what you make it, and that the light, easy-to-like taste of Matus Rosé makes them kneel.

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If you're going to wipe yourself out. Can the sympathy. I'm sorry. You're right. These show the Saturn on pad nine will be operational in 11 hours. How about Eckert? He's lucky. He just finished the simulation. He'll be ready when we are. Well, let's give the good news to Skylab. Potter! Activate the link. Thanks. Skylab, this is Houston. Is Jack monitoring? We can mount a Saturn for rescue. We go to countdown in 30 minutes.

Major Kenyon Eckert will be a command pilot. We are programmed for an 11-hour count, and if we get lucky, when it strikes that we are lucky, we can rendezvous at 20 hours, 30 minutes. Houston, we don't have much time. Colonel Ed is critical, barely holding his own, still unconscious. We're all praying. Jack, do you copy? I'm attempting to do a load of hardware. Skylab, your transmission has been interrupted. Say again. Skylab, do you copy?

This is Houston Skylab. Are you there? Dick, I'm getting telemetry on the lab, but... But what? You're not going to believe this. There is no telemetry on life signs. That can't be. See for yourself. That's crazy. According to this, there's no one on the station. Dick, they're locking down the hatch now. All right. Let me know when that cart comes up.

Keep the press out. Have PR tell them we'll do a conference once Eckert's on his way. Eckert. Right. Major Eckert Conroy, how do you feel? Go to you. We are T-minus 30 and counting. Roger. I'm willing to apply this, Mark. So are we. Anything new on the station? No, and we're not telling the press anything except we've got a communication problem. Remember that when you get on the command circuit. Got it. That's hard to figure.

Got to be a simple explanation. But we know they're there. I know it. Yeah. 30 seconds and counting. Second stage tanks now pressurized. 25 seconds. Power tanks are conceded. Twenty seconds and counting. All systems go. Guidance is now internal. Fifteen seconds. Green. All systems green. Ten. Nine. Ignition sequence starts. All systems go. Looking good. Five, four, three, two, one, zero.

Plus 10. Now it's 60,000, all reading green. Coming up on second stage. Pitch program engaged. All reading still go for second stage. Second stage firing, 10 seconds. All right. Way to go. All right, all right, all right, all right. Take your seats. Calm down. I've got a prepared station.

Ladies and gentlemen, you'll have to take this as it is. I've got no time for questions. Here's the status. Major Eckert is approximately one hour from docking the Skylab. He'll transfer Colonel Ebb to the capsule. and bring him back to Earth. Will you hold it, please? There's no reason to believe they're not up there. I know what's on your mind, but let me assure you in all probability there's been simply a communication failure. And that's all it is.

Eckert's job is simply to return Colonel Webb. That will give us a breather in time to figure out how to make the necessary repairs in the capsule. That's it. Roger, rescue. What's it look like? Like a tomb. No sign of life through the ports. I'm now depressurizing a capsule. I will walk across to the station. I'm now...

leaving capsule. I will secure a line to the station from the capsule. Roger. If you'll forgive the analogy, tying up like this makes me think of the horse and buggy. Modern ingenuity, Major. Approaching station action. Austin, any change in telemetry? Nothing, Dick. The suspense is killing me. Yeah. Houston? I'm inside the station. Houston. There's no one here.

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Programming for re-entry and we'll feed the data shortly. We have several assignments for you to accomplish before then. The cabin for video scan, we're going to fine-tooth comb on video for examination. Also have the infrared adapter ready, then pull all film from the analyzers and transfer to your vehicle. Roger. Video scan is now operating. Take it any time.

Switching now. Major Eckert, are you sure you switched the scan to inboard relay? Roger, Houston. I show up all the equipment. Okay, stand by one. Dick, can you come here? What do you got? A carrier wave, but no picture. It's almost as if there's some strong energy source blocking transmission. Slide over. I'll use your board. Eckert, check your gamma analyzer now. All right, doing it now.

That's high, Conor. About 5 over 12 interior. Okay, stand by. What do you think you've got? Mr. Hunt's crazy. Probably nothing. Eckert, I want you to set up the infrascanner for interior. Can do. Give me a minute. Right, and when you've got it set, patch it through the board and scan the circuits. Austin, switch the feed to the board scope. Working. Relay now.

What with that? Eckert, now listen carefully. I want you to pan the scanner left to right and freeze when I say... I've never seen anything like it. Free scan. Impossible. How? Houston, what have you got? Major, we are looking at our Skylab team. Plus, there is one... human form with them. You mean they'll appear with me? That's the way it looks. The infraimages are very hazy, but I'm sure it's Pat Kent, Jack Elton, and Colonel Ebb.

The other form is gesturing and pointing towards the scanner. We've lost the scan. Austin, are you all right? Yeah, yeah. Just lots of spots before my eyes.

Rescue, this is Houston. We're getting no visual on Infra. Switch back. Houston, this is Colonel Matt. John? John? Is that you? Very much so, Dick. I'm alive and well. How? Pat said your heart stopped. Dick. I must request that we discontinue conversation. Would you please go to Scrum on the priority circuit? Roger. Switching now. Roger, Houston. Nick, we've been requested to keep the following information secret.

At least for a time. Pat will fill you in on the beginning sequences. Houston, what has happened? It's truly without medical precedence. Colonel Ebb was brought back to life. Mr. Conroy, we have been watched. What? What do you mean? At the moment, the colonel's heart stopped. There was a blinding light shift in the lab. It was accompanied by a physical wrenching, almost as if our lives had shifted in time. Which, in fact, it did.

A man, no, better called a humanoid, was suddenly in the lab with us. He, she, told us it had been ordered to return Colonel Ebb to life. I'll take it, Pat. Houston, the alien's name was Hob. It left a message for us to play as explanation. Jack is integrating it into your circuits. Are you receiving visual? Yes. What is that thing? They call it a communi-cube. A paint recorder? In a way, as they explain it, the cube projects audio and visual into any receiver, electronic or the mind.

Stand by. Bob is my designator. I am a special monitor assigned to your planet. For the past 600 years, it has been my duty to observe and report your progress toward space exploration. I represent, in your reverence term, the Council of Worlds. A higher order civilization of 2,000 world planets. The Council is responsible for admitting new worlds into the Federation when they have attained a proper civilized level.

Your planet has not yet attained that status. As the observer, I am gifted with the ability to read alternate futures. When the death of Colonel F. occurred, it... change the future course of Earth's progress. This could not be allowed, and thus the Council gave permission for real life. To explain, Colonel Ebb is, will be... The dominating personality is responsible for your reaching a civilized status for membership. He is, will also be needed for future...

maximum penalty to hold this information in absolute secret. Under no circumstance is this to be broadcast to the people of Earth at this time. This is Hobbes. will be waiting. Yes. The cubers disappeared. Hart's words did not recall. The council's instructions were very specific. Only that Skylab had a problem with its solar panels and power. That is all. Under normalties. I hate to think what they might be. Repair for return to Earth. Roger Houston. We hear you.

Say what you think, you still pay for the drinks, and beach nuts, the tobacco you chew. Weird ideas taking hold, kids won't do what they're told, who knows what this old world's coming to. Keep your face to the wind. You don't quit on a friend. And Beech Nuts, the tobacco you chew. Seems like a man's world just isn't the same anymore, but some things you can still trust, like Beech Nut chewing tobacco. Beech Nut just keeps on getting better.

Peach nuts a lot moister these days, with more taste, less stems. Today's peach nuts, fresher, longer-lasting flavor. You ought to try it. Girls in bars, girls in pants, a man just don't stand a chance, but there's still ways to show them who's who. Reach your dogs with respect as you keep your traps oiled and checked, and reach us the tobacco to chew. I'm Rod Serling. Close your eyes. Exercise your imagination. And join us again on our next presentation of The Zero Hour.

Skylab, Are You There? is an original radio drama written by Keith Walker. William Shatner is heard as Richard Conwell. Featured in the cast were Jacques Denbaugh, Kathleen Cordell, Casey Kasem, Les Tremaine, and Jeff Luton. Zero Hour, raised by J.M. Poulos.

directed by Don Hills, is produced in Hollywood for the Mutual Broadcasting System by Radio Productions Incorporated. Music is composed and conducted by Stanley B. Hoffman, Michelle Sherman Associate Producer. This has been a presentation of the Mutual Broadcasting System.

And we're back. All right. Let's get into it. First of all, how awesome is it that William Shatner is in this show? He did a great job. Yeah, he was good. All right. all right, all right, ladies and gentlemen, take your seats and calm down. I'd listen to that line over and over and over again, just William Shatner saying it. It's awesome. What did you think of this show? Let's start off with you, Lothar. Just general thoughts.

I really liked it. You know, we can get into some of the production stuff and everything. It was really top notch. The only criticism I have, and I think this might have as much to do with, as Jeff was saying before, you know, about AM radio, this was broadcast on AM.

And while it's a very good recording, it's a very poor AM broadcast that they were recording. And the only place that I had a hard time listening was when they were coming through the speakers of the space CB radio. Basically, there was a lot of times where I. just couldn't make it out and had to stop and rewind again to listen to it. That's the only criticism I have for the production. And that might have to do with the broadcast more than the actual production.

Absolutely. I think you're right there for sure. Jeff, what about you? Oh, I loved it. I love the science fiction stuff. And I agree with Lothar. I didn't realize that was why it was like that. But I agree with Lothar. I thought they did a cool job overlapping it, but got a little muddy.

in places and i guess you're i think you're right lothards because of the recording of it i thought it was cool the way they overlapped everything and i said that's really neat production so i really enjoyed that and also i felt like the commercials took me out of the whole thing not because of the content which just brought me back to 1973-74 but in the actual recording to me anyway the commercials were louder than the show

and that's how it came to me it was like they seemed to be more in your face i was kind of like whoa but the show itself it was great i loved it and i didn't know where it was going to go you know when they did and it was just uh it was cool the way it ended and it was there was a nice little sci-fi uh warning at the end yeah it's it's interesting for me to sit there and we'll talk about previous show that we talked about because i think there are some themes here that

probably demonstrate but you can tell this is very much a 70s show on the radio because things are tighter and faster and more engaged and things are moving more quickly and even the commercials themselves they're not you know as

as relaxed as a jingle. There's jingles, of course, but they're not as relaxed. Everything's just like driving you forward. You feel like you're on a freight train when you're listening to a show in the 70s. You had the same, I don't want to say problem because it's just, it's the style of the time.

even the theme to begin with you get a little music and then you get a phrase from Rod Serling and then you get more music and then another phrase from Rod Serling and it's just rushing you forward into the story as we go along whereas they did do a lot more time they didn't need as many commercials in back in the 50s and late 40s for that same reason. And what a great theme song. I mean, just so simple, but just so wonderful with the bass notes of the bass.

you know, the standup bass and the low notes on the piano. Right. Yeah. We can talk more about the composers as we get, you know, later into it because they're pretty cool. Frente and T-shirt. Is that how you pronounce it? Teicher. Teicher. Okay. That's good. Yeah. That link you sent was great, by the way. I didn't get a chance to look at it.

I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say about it. So that's good. Generally, this was put together. If we look at the history of it, it generated a lot of interest. Like I told you, it spawned a mini resurgence of radio drama. Stations had played old time radio stuff.

Unfortunately, the show isn't long-lived. The first season discouraged some listeners with penalties for bad attendance because of the five parts. Each week, a story was divided into that five installations, and a different chapter was played Monday through Friday. If you missed Monday...

you miss the beginning. If you miss Friday, you miss the ending. So if you miss any of this show and you're bound to feel like you're cheated throughout the rest of the way. So that was the problem they had set up for the first season and why they broke it down to single episodes. But again, the problem with doing a single set of episodes, you take what... have been a 25-minute show and ends up being

17 minutes once you take all the commercials out of it i think for me if there's a there's a problem in it the story gets to a point where i'm like so what happens next but nothing happens next because that's the end of this story right it's sort of like it seals it all up that way

And we're done. But I'm really curious in this world where they could have gone with it. Well, that's part of also the subgenre of this, which is the benevolent ultimatum. Right. It's a specific subgenre of science fiction. And it always has to end on that sort of question, which we'll get more into when I can.

dive into the mythological background well cool why don't you that sounds like a great way to to go we can come back to actors in a little bit but tell me about it okay so let's start off with why i'm saying that it's mythological and everything so we've got this very specific form of aspiration

inspirational and cautionary tale we've got you know flash gordon and ones like that that are about personal aspiration stories and i robot are political cautionary tales here we have something that's a little bit of those but it's actually going into mythological and religious narrative because this goes

back almost 2,000 years to what's called apocalyptic literature. And by that, we're talking about in a religious and theological context, it's a specific genre. And by genre, those type of academics mean it's a specific style of writing and for specific purpose as opposed to like a you know what we would think of like mystery or horror genres things like that so the apocalyptic literature genre is a

Genre of prophetical texts that existed about from the beginning of the Common Era to the first few centuries after. Continued all the way through to the Middle Ages in some ways, but that's really when it flourished. And they were written in Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Coptic, and Latin, and probably some others that I'm... forgetting, but...

The reason why this comes up is that the word apocalypse, originally, even though we mean it now to be the ending of the world in some horrible way, the original Greek word apocalypsis just meant revelation. And this is where the most famous one is, of course, the biblical.

book of the apocalypse of john also called the book of the apocalypse or more accurately the book of revelation or what people say hey did you read revelations you know that sort of thing so it's about being revealed and that's

The reason why it became about at the end times is that a lot of the prophecies talked about how things would end. So where it becomes pertinent for science fiction, people saying, what's the point? Well, the common thread in these apocalyptic genres is a person usually who through special training and dedication.

originally religious and philosophical training and dedicated to intense prayer, meets with a celestial being, angels or hermetic emanations from, let's say, the monad originally, and they get instructions on how to achieve transcendence and warnings of how things will end if you don't achieve that.

transcendence so now in these sci-fi stories we get people who through special training and dedication astronaut training they get to meet with celestial beings in advanced alien civilization or confederacy of civilizations or federation or whatever and they get instructions on how to join them and warnings about

would happen if they fail and so this is kind of why it falls more into the realm of mythology and really three types of definitions of mythology that it deals with but without going too far into that it's just real interesting because we have this faith in morality that's there where it's like

okay, we're given this divine morality that we have to align with. There's no reason to think that other aliens would think that way, but we have that. And we've got a whole lot of subsets of stories like Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Dimension X Episode.

No Contact. 2001 is similar in a way. Arrival, even recently, with a linguistic challenge is kind of like that as well. No, that makes sense. It's interesting that the aliens sort of take on the role of the Archons from a more esoteric...

perspective as well in a way but they're they're good you know it's like the archons would be telling us uh you know or would cause you to crash into earth and never try and raise up but they are still giving you sort of like an angelic uh if you become a good person And if you align with the divine will of what is good, you can reach us. Otherwise, well, we might just wipe you out and you're going to be condemned to hell.

Absolutely. Right. So that's fascinating. That's really. Are there other sort of sub genres in science fiction that overlap with the mythological in the same way that you come across? I think a lot. I would say I'm of the opinion that the majority. of science fiction is actually mythological. We're dealing with the ones where they come in the most.

The definition of mythology that I like because it's actually concrete is from one folkloristic school where it deals with mythology as opposed to a legend or a saga or whatever would deal with one of... or all of these five areas. Cosmogony, the origin of the order of things. Cosmology, the understanding of the order of things. Anthropogeny, the...

Creation of humans, anthropology, the understanding of what it means to be human, and eschatology, how the human and the universe will end at the end. And we get here cosmology of the understanding of what is the nature of what is good in the universe in the sense of like a... a cosmic scale anthropology what we have to do in order to approach that and become part of it and eschatology what the consequences would be if we don't i think a lot of science fiction in different

genres and sub-genres are mythological in that they deal with those things, especially the ones that are a little bit more fantastic of us going out to other planets and the aspirational ones, less so about the cautionary political tales, which I think are more political stories.

But I see most science fiction being less about what actually could happen scientifically. And it's us dealing with the same stuff we used to deal with with mythology. But now we've put our modern framework of science fiction in the wonder of that because it's not about the gods anymore. it's about what's out there and we've projected our wonder and that same feel of awe out there so that's the skin that we've put around these stories very cool

What are your thoughts, Jeff? I'm still taking that all in. I think that that was amazing, Lohar. Thank you. I'm going to think about that for a while. And I learned so much in that last few minutes that you said that. And I always love that. But I feel like to me. You know, the good science fiction, or the science fiction I like, put it that way.

You know, they always have that. There's a meaning to it. There's a reason for it. There's a lesson in it. And so I was kind of wondering as I was going through and why this guy, was his name Hob? Is that his name, Hob? Yeah. You know why he was there? And then when he says that, you're not ready yet. And the thing that got me in that part is that this was made in 1973. It's 2025. We're even farther from being ready. And it's just that we never seem to learn. And I think that's the part of it.

with the science fiction is that we just never seem to learn thinking about wars or you're thinking about whatever greed and whatever's happening in our world today you know we just never learn and these stories are in some ways cockinary tales i suppose to say hey knock it

Well, you're absolutely right. And, you know, going back to the earliest apocalyptic fiction, apocalyptic literature that I mentioned, we haven't learned from them either. You know, it's always the rare individual that can do that. And that gets to, you know, the question of, are these actually universal?

concepts of morality or is it more like Lovecraft's idea that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos at large? You know, it brings up really interesting questions. Have either of you seen the

Pretty average, but still interesting movie with Simon Pegg and Kate Beckinsale. Absolutely anything. No, no, I have not. OK, it's a it's a story of basically these aliens and it was written and directed by Terry Jones of Monty Python. So you'd expect it to be.

a lot better than it is. It's fun, but it's got a lot of problems. I don't want to recommend it to people and people go, why the hell do you recommend that thing? But it is worth watching, especially if you're interested in the genre, because they come across, oh, here's this planet Earth, and they're getting close to joining this galactic empire.

all these big sort of like animatronic puppety type aliens and they're all voiced by the Monty Python people so John Cleese and everybody else is in it and they're arguing back and forth about whether or not they should allow humans into the galactic world or not and they need to prove themselves that

they're worthy. And so they give Simon Pegg for, I think a week, the ability to do absolutely anything. He just has to wave his hand and wish something and it happens. And therefore the hijinks ensue. I have to spoil it in order to make my point. So anybody who really wants to watch it, not.

got the spoiler skip ahead a few minutes we think you know for the for the first i'd say majority of the film that they're hoping that he's going to prove that he's actually you know egalitarian and he wants to do all the right thing and he's going to be you know this amazing person who's doing it for all of what we would consider to be the right

right reasons and then you find out that no their morality is that they want someone who's bloodthirsty and predatory and is out for survival and proving that they are able to survive out in the space in this particular harsh way and of course through some hijinks of wishes that happen at the end the galactic empire gets destroyed and earth gets put back to the way that it is and we just move on to blissfully ignorant of what was going out in the cosmos oh that's cool

I'll have to look for that one. That's really cool. Nice twist. This particular story was written by Keith Walker. I never heard of him before, but he has been a fairly well-known actor and has been known for writing a fairly well-known children. series. I don't know if you knew about that. No. He wrote Free Willy. Oh my god. No kidding.

Free Willy 2, Free Willy 3, and Free Willy Escape from Pirate's Cove, which I'm assuming is Free Willy 4, but who knows. He also wrote an episode of The Fall Guy. He wrote an episode of MASH. He wrote an episode of Emergency. Oh, cool. He wrote The Hardy... boys nancy drew mysteries the whole bit sadly he's no longer with us he passed away when he was 61 in 96 so a long time ago now that he's passed away he was married to an actress peggy walton walker oh cool who's been a bunch of

stuff like pumpkin head one of my favorite films creature salem a lot of horrors so there you go something i wanted to mention before i forgot because i did forget it is that another thing that we have in this story is we've got what is it uh Is it Colonel Ebb? Yes. Right? So what do we have? We have this guy who dies. Then the celestial beings resurrect him.

And he's the important one to lead us to the new age. It's Christ. We've got a Christ parable. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And it's so strange because like I said, we don't go one step further beyond that. It's sort of like this guy's going to lead you to the new age and we'll get back to you later. And there's not even. as much of a response from Houston at this point of like, so what's our next steps? You know what I mean? It's sort of like, okay.

Here we go. We've used this communo cube to listen to it, which is a cool little technical insert there, because it said it worked on all frequencies and brainwaves. So the question is, when they played it... Did it play everywhere? Did everyone hear it at all places? I don't think that wasn't implied.

No. I don't think so. Well, didn't they say specifically that they didn't want people to know about this? Yes. They didn't want anybody to know about it, but basically only those certain people could hear it is what the implication was. That's why hard didn't get recorded. Yeah. Yeah. So they couldn't record it and play it back for everybody else and all that. But that type of ending is very much a part of that subgenre, like the day the earth stood still. It's like, yeah, we got this.

you know, sort of Damocles resting over our head. The only thing that made it, I think, more 70s is that instead of having like a full paragraph of some denouement, you know, monologue speech by the main person, we've got to, yeah, Houston, we hear you. That's very 70s. Yeah.

For sure. And like you said, to go back modern day UFO things, that's basically the same message that the kids had in Africa from the aliens that landed in the playground. It's also the same message that happened in, I believe it was in South America.

America or Portugal or something like that, where people saw mass sighting of Mother Mary and the girls that were there that talked to her had sort of kept their tongue about it. But basically, it was this this warning that we're all going to destroy ourselves if we don't.

change so this seems to be a regular theme that goes on even in modern day sightings of one sort or another whether they're religious or whether they're ufo based which uh getting back to you know jeffrey kripal and you know people like that or jacques valet it's like okay, yeah, we're having the exact same phenomena happening with different cultural imagery.

that people have so they're still having the same religious visions they just don't wouldn't call it that but it's exactly the same as the the people having the visions they wrote down in that apocalyptic literature or paranormal experiences back to the beginning of people you know documenting touching the other world in some way

whether it be fairies or elves or whatever it is that their culture puts on it. Our culture has aliens. Yeah. It makes you wonder about the writing. And by the way, Keith Walker wrote a ton of these zero hour stories. I think he wrote 26 episodes. Wow.

them all in the second and final season. So he probably was their main writer for that whole second season. But I'm wondering if when you write something like this, are you consciously writing the story the way it is or are you unconsciously tapping in? to these archetypal things about humanity, whether it's wish fulfillment, that there's somebody up there that is watching us.

and wants us to do better? Or is this something that you've seen and that you want to replicate your own version of this, like in The Earth Stood Still? Well, I would be very surprised if Walker had not seen The Day the Earth Stood Still. Oh, yeah. But was he definitively... trying to replicate that same kind of experience? Or how much of this stuff trickles in from our subconscious, I guess, and how much of this is somewhat hard-coded into the natural aspect of being human?

I'm always curious about how much of these archetypal things are human-based and how much of them are learned. Well, and there's also the third, you know, maybe synthetic option, which is that, you know, when both interact, you get these patterns and then people just go.

like I want to do a blues tune well even if I don't really you know consciously do it in 12 bar blues I'm probably going to do it in that some sort of pattern that's pentatonic and same sort of thing with like I want to write a western there's going to be aspects of westerns that just make it happen that way and he wanted to write something that was obvious

a 70s cautionary tale of why can't we get out of war i mean vietnam had gone on for you know nine years at that point and you know was going to last another year so it's like clearly anti-war sort of things of like hey we've reached the stars can't we stop killing each other well if you want it to be a

a power to it you're not going to create a you know a power fantasy of you know having it end where yes we reach the stars and everything's good you're going to want it to be like well maybe we're in this position now maybe we maybe we need to think things better and have that little bit of uncertainty and i was just thinking this

Well, Therner, I'm glad you said it, but for those people who don't know, we're talking 1973, 1974, when this is coming out, right? So you're talking about Kent State in the early 70s, Vietnam War slowly coming to an end. You're in the throes of Watergate at this time. And so the general, I think there's a general malaise. We're on our way to the oil crisis coming up a couple of years later. I think there's this general malaise in the population. And I have to think that somehow.

plays into the narrative here. Yeah. And you mentioned 74. Yeah, I should correct myself. I was thinking, you know, Zero Hour started in 73. But yeah, this is 74. So this was 10 full years of Vietnam. And not only Kent State, but you've got the sunset riots that, you know, created the...

great buffalo springfield song you know what you know battle lines being drawn nobody's right if everybody's wrong yeah for what it's worth you know all these things where people are just like seeing the dark side of the promise of the age of aquarius the manson family had happened the zodiac killers had been going on the promise of

hippie promise had failed yes yeah and you see that in the the fact that everybody there is really like smart and professional and they all have handle on everything and then you get this message from the aliens and you're like we're just children

We're just children playing roles. We're so proud of our little technical things that we've set up and all the ways that we do things. And yet, in the end, we don't know what we're doing. And there's interesting, and I think that, you know, where we, two stories that are kind of in this genre, but they provide some interesting...

counter points. And it's interesting in the world that we live in now also where a childhood's end by Arthur C. Clark in 2001, that was also co-written by Arthur C. Clark. So have you guys read a childhood's end? I have years ago. Okay. I haven't read it since I was in high school, so I might be misread.

remembering some stuff but the major thoughts was that okay aliens come down they help basically get us to the point where we could join the galactic brotherhood of whatever but the major conflict is that in order to do so we have to basically become a collective mind

and give up individuality. Right. Now, so then that's part of the quest, you know, like, okay, is individual liberty more important than the collective good? That's, you know, an argument that's never going to be decided upon in an objective way. 2001 is very interesting. and that we've got...

Maybe it's Kubrick's influence on Clark as well. Yeah. So it does raise up the monolith comes, you know, they give the apes the ability to take a little leap in evolution. And then we go off and instead of it being like a collective hive mind, we've got all these different politics. Just our regular world, you know, everybody's fighting and it's the individualistic, capitalistic America that goes off and the individual astronaut Dave who goes through a personal evolution into the star child.

Instead of a collective evolution. So it's a very interesting ways of thinking because neither one of them really come out and say, this is exactly what you should do or this is what you should think. They just provide more questions for you to sort of wrestle with, which I think is always.

the better way to do it. And that's backed up when he goes to the space station before he gets to the moon. It's like the Hilton Hotel is there, right? And Howard Johnson's is there. And all these American corporations and companies are on that space station. I mean, everything's a deliberate move in a movie, especially for Kubrick, right? So you're looking at that.

and you're going okay so we're just like moving everything up to the stuff nothing's changed we're just moving it all up to new places and and so yeah and so you're right dave becomes the whatever he becomes you know that's open to interpretation and that's why it's that's my favorite movie but it's just it's a great point that you make there i totally agree yeah i was gonna say that that's the same thing that happens in

Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-5, right? The main character there is transformed by the aliens in such a way that he's able to live his entire life back and forth. His consciousness skips back and forth through time and is immortal.

In that way, he's died many times. He's been born many times. He's able to just skip his thoughts back and forth between things. And they've given him that kind of a gift. I didn't realize before until you started talking about this. If you call that a gift. Yeah, really. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Or a curse. It's more like Damnation. Yeah, it's not good. Alien, was it Alien Invasion canceled the short wave front? I did. It was great. I didn't realize, but that fits within that as well, too, where the aliens come and then they withdraw because of social... Yeah, it's like Monty Python, the Holy Grail. They don't want to go to Kamala. This is a silly place. Yes. But yeah, you bring up Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-Five. That name slaps you right in the face, doesn't it? For sure.

For sure. I haven't read it. But I guess the short story that the Twilight Zone episode to serve man. Yes. Allegedly. Damon Knight. Yeah. And allegedly, if this is accurate and it's not, you know, a false information that the Internet put out there in the story, it's implicated that it's actually a test. So if they could.

figure out that it is a cookbook before joining it, it'd be like, oh, you kind of passed the test. You, you know, decoded the danger that we put in here. And if not, then you're too stupid and you're just going to be food. I think that's an interesting sort of take on it. Yeah. Yeah. No, I remember reading it.

I actually have a bunch of books that are collected Twilight Zone stuff, and they put the original Demon Knight, a short story of it, in there as well for that reason. And that sort of thing gets back again to some religious and even occult texts where the person would purposely put...

put in errors in the instructions, in the rituals, in order to see like, if you're actually worthy, you're going to notice that this is a problem and you're going to fix it on your own. If not, you're not worthy enough to be my disciple in this philosophical, occult, religious, whatever school. So that's an interesting thing.

You know, I was just reading, and that's interesting, and that's a real-world thing because I was just reading that NFL teams, when they bring in quarterbacks before the draft, they give them a set of problems or plays or whatever, and they put a mistake in. And if the quarterback can't find them,

mistake, then that goes against him and his evaluation. So I just find that interesting. I was just reading about that. That makes sense. That's very cool. That's a real world application of that. You really have to engage when you're doing your interviews, for sure.

Just like they should have engaged better. The reason why this was shortened, you all remember Elliot Lewis, one of my favorite old time radio people. The director Elliot Lewis said they wanted as much name value as possible to help with sales. And they're talking about the people who are running Zero Hour.

They forgot that they had to sell it. Everyone sat in the office and waited for someone to call them up and buy the show. Right. And that's why it died, which sucks. Because there could have easily been four or five seasons of the show, but... That's, I mean, that's the nature of a lot of these things is the fireballs in the sky, you know, this falling meteorites that just burn really beautifully and then they're gone. Yep.

Didn't leave a lot there for that. Tell us about the music though. Oh, right. Yeah. Frontier and type chair. You know, one, I just really loved the, the whole zero hour, you know, theme from when I first started. So when I'm looking, you know, I saw the, you know, who did it and I started looking them up. They've done.

lot. They've got a whole lot of stuff on Spotify and they were pianists that worked together. So a lot of their recordings were them just doing their version of performing classical compositions. Then they've got a whole lot of sort of easy listening stuff that they wrote themselves. And then something that's a little bit more postmodern ironic, maybe attractive to some younger generations now is the resurgence of mid to late century modernist exotica.

music and they did a couple really cool things like that and so they're just a lot of fun if you like that kind of stuff and they've got a lot of stuff out there but i just thought the the simplicity and It was like, it's the perfect theme. You know, it's like, it's not too complex. It's very simple. It gets it across. And it really, every time I hear that, it just sets the stage for a really cool show. It's very catchy. And it's good because it also, it's not genres.

specific in the respect it could be easily seen for suspense or for mystery or for crime drama or for horror and it works here even well in this science fiction and it's kind of a bit of a science fiction mystery story that they have going on yep they're trying to figure out what happened yeah even sort of a little bit of a noir feel when before we uh we're gonna you know wrap up our our noir uh season if we're gonna go another round i was going to find a zero hour uh episode that hit the noir

sort of stuff because there is a lot of like really sort of dark and nasty crime stuff in there. And it worked really well. I'm looking forward to going to listen to them. I'll put the link for the archive.org on the website for folks who are interested when we get this show up, which would be just probably next week. So yeah, this is.

fantastic. K.M. Colas, did anyone look at any of the production stuff by him? I did not. No, I didn't. I couldn't find a whole lot from him either, but I did find that there was a lot of different big name cast people back in the day. You have to remember back in the 70s, television and film

Film didn't cross to the same degree. So he didn't have an awful lot of people who were doing both because it was sort of like if you did television, it was kind of considered to be low class. So you wanted to be a movie star. But here you had, like I said, William Shatner, you have.

John Astin you have Edgar Bergen you have Joseph Campanella and many other people that came up lots of those were television at the time in the 70s but some of them were also big stars of the silver screen so it's nice to see that they were able

to tap a wide community of actors that people had known and i'm sure that if they use that they could have gotten better sales for that for sure too if i'm remembering correctly there's a lot of big tv actors in the first season especially because a lot of them are these long

of like dramatic pieces so they got some really a-list and b-list people from tv at the time and it was like it was really cool to hear like oh my god they're actually like they're getting some big stars here very cool i'm looking forward to that we can wrap this one up because it's short what oh we talked a little bit about

the commercials did you want to uh talk any more about the commercials and the choice of commercials that they had in there you know it's funny the chewing tobacco one is just I said it in the intro, but it's just so cringy. And it's, you know, when you look at it, it's just the things this guy's saying, you know, it's and of course, chewing tobacco is.

Not my thing, but, you know, just funny. I don't think it's anybody's thing. Does anybody chew tobacco anymore? Like, it's one of those things. Oh, they do? Oh, okay. Yeah, it's big. Is it just baseball players? No, no. Well, I live in a, despite the fact that I'm half an hour south of San Francisco,

Francisco and about 30 minutes away from Silicon Valley. It's a fairly rural farming and fishing town and chewing tobacco is something that people just that are doing any sort of like outdoor work that they want to do for a while and they're just going to chew and spit and, you know, they don't have to use their hands and they don't have to smoke. It's big here. There's a lot of chewing tobacco. I do not use it myself. It's gross. I played a lot of baseball and I coached.

college baseball and all this and it got outlawed after a while but back in the old days in the 70s when this is going on i'm playing guys would put in a big chaw and i remember trying it once and i was like this is so disgusting i almost threw up and i can't imagine just gross but i mean people like it that's their choice but for me it just wasn't it wasn't the thing but you know the other funny thing was matuse wine now yes

Matuse wine. Matuse rosé. Yes. Matuse rosé. My parents were not, you know, sophisticated upper class people. They, you know, they drank wine out of a box, but I love them dearly. They've got to rest their souls. Matuse was like at least. Around my house, if you had Matus wine, that was pretty up there. It was produced in Portugal. Was it really? Yeah.

Yeah, it's been around for a long time. I think they were really trying to sort of, you know, in the 70s, there was a whole lot of like, let's just make it available to everybody. Let's really get people buying different wines. And you can sort of see that here of like, yes, it's the all purpose wine. Everybody will be able to drink it, you know, even if you're living in a sewer.

Just wine. It's great for you. The beach net thing I thought was really funny because a lot of those, I think nothing changes, right? The whole thing of like, oh, you're not getting the respect from your spouse. Your kids aren't listening to you, but you've still got this, you know, it's like.

Nothing changes. This could have been maybe it wouldn't be allowed to be broadcast today for politically correct reasons. But the sentiment, there's a lot of people that probably still feel that way. And I think every generation does to some degree. There's going to be the guys that are just like, yeah, everything's passed me by.

And I just don't feel like that, but Hey, I got my chewing tobacco and I'll go driving my, my grand Torino, which is a great car. Those Torinos are just off. There was such good muscle cars at bench seats, man. Yes. All I know about that is the Clint Eastwood movie. Oh, yeah. Check it out. I'm not a car guy. It was a cool car. You know, a quick story about that. My mother told me that one of the toughest days of my father's life was he had a 57 Chevy.

And it was pink. And he had to trade it in for a station wagon because we had so many kids. And so my poor father had to trade in his 57 Chevy for a station wagon. Oh, that is just that is obscenely. painful isn't that awful oh and it was it was a pale yellow country squire you know with the woods with the fake wood sides oh god you know and it was after that he bought a 1974 gran torino was light green And it was just, it was cool looking.

And I was like, yeah, dad. All right. You know, you went back to a cool car. That thing was cool looking. It was a boat, baby. You know, and I don't think the younger generations really realize how big those cars were. And then the Gran Torino wasn't even the big. You know, it was like an, you know, an Eldorado or something like that. You know, you, those things are Lincoln town car, that one year of a Cadillac that I can't remember the model, but it had a 500 cubic inch engine.

And it came with the Brody knob on the steering wheel. And for people who don't know what a Brody knob is, it's like back then the suspension of a car would be like, you didn't just turn your wheel a little bit and you turned around the corner. You had to like do full rotations with the steering wheels a couple of times to make it.

90 degree turn and so the brody knob was this thing so you're looking at steering wheel and out of the top of it is like a almost like a stick that's pointing at you and you can grab that with your fist and just twist it around like you're using it on like a

like a winch or something. And that's how you could like move really quickly and make turns very fast. Yeah. I've seen those on street cars and stuff like that. Yeah. Those were illegal at some point, but I remember those. Yeah. Remember people having them. They didn't call them that, but.

They had the knob on the steering wheel. You could just like... wintered around real fast because you're right the steering was completely it's not like now where you just go a little bit and you you went around baby with those if you if you wanted to uh do something a little bit more sporty you had to completely get a new suspension system uh you know drive shaft

all that sort of stuff. Completely, but you guys know I don't watch much TV. I highly recommend a fairly new show that's on Max, which is called Duster. And it's set in 1974. And it has a Plymouth Duster from 1970 as like the main car.

in it which meant something to me because the first car I ever drove was my mom's 1972 Plymouth Duster so I was like I gotta watch this and it's actually a high quality period crime piece with a getaway guy from the mob it's got uh keith david in it and um really the first female is it keith david or is it david keith i get those two mixed up it's the guy from the thing not the guy from officer and a gentleman right okay

you go and the two the two main characters is a getaway driver who was one of the guys who was in lost and the female lead is i can't remember the actress's name but she plays like the first black female fbi agent and she's trying to take down keith david and It's developed by JJ Abrams.

So it's actually really good. It's eight episodes and it holds together for the whole eight episodes. And it's a wonderful dive into the seventies. They've got everything right from the file cabinets to the telephones. Everything is picture perfect. Very cool. And that's cool. I'm glad you said that because I'm going to watch it because my first car was a 1970 Plymouth Duster. Oh, you're going to love it then. Yeah. So it was just so cool. And I will say in that car.

It did not have power steering. So you were lunking those wheels around with your muscles, man. Oh, yeah. Because in some of those big boats, if you didn't have that knob, which most people didn't, you could literally put your... the heel of your hand and just turn the wheel. Right. And it was like, but in that thing, but I will say this, if you don't know what a grand Torino is, just go on and check out starsky and Hutch.

Yeah, well, there's a Clint Eastwood movie, too. But that Starsky and Hutch, the red one with the white stripe there. Yep. You know, that's a Gran Torino, man. You know, just to put things in context and study history, and this is the teacher in me, I guess, talking. You know, when you think about the early 60s and you think about the Russians beating us into space, right, with Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin and all that, you know, and then the space race during the 60s.

and i you know i remember that i remember because you'd see it on tv and you'd see the astronauts in there matching corvettes right those gold corvettes they had and they were the coolest man those astronauts and you know i remember july 20th 1969 my mother let me stay up you know to watch the moon landing and we're watching it on our little little black and white screen we had in the big you know piece of furniture television like they used to be and right you know welcome to the old time

and you know watching it watching him land on the moon and it was just amazing i was just sitting there and watching it you know just what a moment and i couldn't i didn't really understand it because i was

like 10 years old. It's so good to have this chat with you about this interesting series. Please go out and listen. This is one of the few science fiction ones, let's be honest. They're really mostly not science fiction at all, the Zero Hour, but they are suspenseful.

a wide variety within that same kind of genre that operates. So go out, check them out at archive.org. What's up for us next? I guess it's back to Jeff Billett. Have you thought about things yet, Jeff? Oh, baby, we're all set. Oh, cool. are going back to flip k dick and we're gonna do the defenders yes because what just came out today yes it did today i'm so proud to say that the defenders are the reimagining that we all did

Premiered on Mutual Audio Network today. That's right. On the Sonic Summerstock Playhouse. First episode of season... 2025. There you go. To be the first episode is always a great honor. So thank you, Jack. I appreciate that. Oh, like I said, you always set the bar, brother. It's great. Thank you. And everybody's in it. Lothar's in it. Jack's in it. Jack plays a robot. It's great.

It's just, he does it well. And it's just a great story. Typecasting, according to my ex-wife. So there you go. No, I'm just joking. Sorry about that. I think what we'll do is we'll play the original and we'll play the reimagining too.

That's cool because that'll set up what I'm going to do when it comes back around to me. We're going to do something similar for that too. Oh, cool. Very cool. When it comes back to me, I'll do something very silly like Space Patrol or something. Oh, I love Space Patrol. Oh, that's one of my favorites.

So beautiful. There you go. I love Space Patrol. It's my favorite. Well, I'll save it for you. You can do it. There's so many of those out there. There's a million. Now, Lothar, I'm not going to say anything, but I hope it's what I think. It's going to be. Let's just say that a whole lot of people were in it that we know and love very dear. Very cool. We're looking forward to it. Well, thank you everyone for listening. Thank you so much, brother Jeff. Thank you. Thank you.

brother Lothar, and we look forward to our very next episode of Sonic Echo. Have a great day. Bye, everyone. Bye-bye. This has been an Electric Vicuna production.

Now here is our star, Vincent Price. Ladies and gentlemen, in a prejudice-filled America, no one would be secure in his job, his business, his church, or his home. Yet racial and religious antagonisms are exploited daily by quacks and adventurers whose followers make up the irresponsible, lunatic fringe of American life. refuse to listen to or spread rumors against any race or religion, help to stamp out prejudice in our country. Let's judge our neighbors by the character of their lives alone.

and not on the basis of their religion or origin. Thank you for listening to Sunday Showcase on the Mutual Audio Network. We invite you to continue the amazing audio tomorrow on Mutual with the Monday Matinee. our weekly series of dramatic, theatrical, classic, eclectic, and live radio dramas. You can subscribe to the full Mutual Audio Network feed every day for the world's largest curated collection of audio drama.

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