We're Cooking up Something GOOD with Christina Ward (just in time for the holidays)
Featured : CHRISTINA WARD, Holy Food: How Cults, Communes, and Religious Movements Influenced What We Eat — An American HistoryDoes God have a recipe? I know who to ask! Independent food historian Christina Ward’s highly anticipated Holy Food explores the influence of mainstream (and fringe) religious beliefs on modern American food culture. It's the story of true believers and charlatans, of idealists and visionaries, and of the everyday people who followed them—often at their peril. Of course, religious beliefs have been the source of food "rules" since Pythagoras told his followers not to eat beans (because they contain souls, apparently), the Kosher and Halal rules that forbade he shrimp cocktail, or the long-ago Pope who forbade Catholics from eating meat on Fridays (fasting to atone for committed sins—or just needed to boost the fish market value?). Only in the United States—where the freedom to worship the God of your choice and sometimes of your own making—could people embrace such new ideas about religion...and what you’re allowed to put in your mouth (I am going to have to revisit my comedy sketch God costume, aren’t I…) By the way, if you aren’t already enticed, Holy Food features over 75 recipes from religious and communal groups tested and updated for modern cooks. Maybe instead of a cocktail we should have a bake off? Episode was recorded live November 13, 2025.Website: https://peculiarbookclub.com/Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ixJJ2YVIP Membership: https://payhip.com/PeculiarBookClubYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeculiarBookClub/streamsBluesky: @peculiarbookclub.bsky.socialFacebook: facebook.com/groups/peculiarbooksclubInstagram: @thepeculiarbookclub
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We're feeling free to express ourselves with Andy Kirshner and SEX RADICAL
New laws limit access to abortion and threaten doctors with prison. Religious zealots and opportunistic politicians team up to ban books about sex and to “protect” children from their “corrupting” influence. Sound familiar? Welcome to America in the late 19th-century under the Comstock Act, a federal law that prohibited the distribution of information about sex, contraception, or abortion through the U.S. Mail. SEX RADICAL, the latest film from award-winning writer/director Andy Kirshner, tells the story of one woman who dared to challenge that law, and its namesake, the puritanical “vice-hunter” and U.S. postal inspector, Anthony Comstock. Ida Craddock was a late-Victorian feminist, scholar, and sexual mystic who defied Comstock, face-to-face. Defending the right of a woman to “control her own person,” Craddock risked everything by publishing frank instructional pamphlets about sex. Though arrested multiple times, sentenced to prison, committed to an asylum, and forced to turn over her books for burning, Craddock was undeterred in her fight for women’s sexual equality and her own First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and religion. The feminist icon, Emma Goldman, called her “one of the bravest champions of Women’s Emancipation,” and Craddock’s was the very first case to be taken up by the Free Speech League, a forerunner to modern civil liberties groups like the ACLU and PEN America.SEX RADICAL Press ReleaseSEX RADICAL Live Stream LinkWebsite: https://peculiarbookclub.com/Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ixJJ2YVIP Membership: https://payhip.com/PeculiarBookClubYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeculiarBookClub/streamsBluesky: @peculiarbookclub.bsky.socialFacebook: facebook.com/groups/peculiarbooksclubInstagram: @thepeculiarbookclub
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We're howling about a An American Werewolf in London...Happy Halloween!!! (Peculiar Movie Club)
Welcome to the Peculiar Movie Club, a bonus podcast linked to our main show the Peculiar Book Club through common themes in media. This week, in honor of having some Halloween fun, we are reviewing the horror comedy An American Werewolf in London.Join Davey Berris and Darren Cross as they take a deep dive into the themes of transformation, anger and rage, and what's the best song with moon in the title.Website: https://peculiarbookclub.com/Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ixJJ2YVIP Membership: https://payhip.com/PeculiarBookClubYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeculiarBookClub/streamsBluesky: @peculiarbookclub.bsky.socialFacebook: facebook.com/groups/peculiarbooksclubInstagram: @thepeculiarbookclub
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We are fighting back with A Vigilante (Peculiar Movie Club)
Welcome to the Peculiar Movie Club, a bonus podcast linked to our main show the Peculiar Book Club through common themes in media. This week, in honor of the book The League of Lady Poisoners, we are reviewing the revenge drama A Vigilante.Join Davey Berris and Darren Cross as they take a deep dive into the themes of Domestic Violence being bad, men's obsession with gender roles, and circumstances and skill sets.Website: https://peculiarbookclub.com/Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ixJJ2YVIP Membership: https://payhip.com/PeculiarBookClubYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeculiarBookClub/streamsBluesky: @peculiarbookclub.bsky.socialFacebook: facebook.com/groups/peculiarbooksclubInstagram: @thepeculiarbookclub
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Solve a New Mystery with Brandy Schillace and THE DEAD COME TO STAY
Featured : BRANDY SCHILLACE, The Dead Come to StayBrandy’s back with a sequel! Jo Jones can't catch a break. She'd hoped that trading her city life for the cozy, peaceful hills of North Yorkshire to inherit a crumbling family estate would finally be her chance for a "fresh start" and a new future. Instead, she's been thrust further into the past than she ever imagined possible. The estate property is littered with traces of ancestors that Jo never knew existed, including the mysterious woman depicted in a half-destroyed painting -- and also including Jo's late uncle, who may hold the key to her cryptic family history. Add to this the gossipy town politics of Abington that Jo's forced to navigate as a neurodivergent transplanted American. And that's not even getting to the murder yet. When the prickly town detective James MacAdams discovers a body in the moors with coincidental ties to Jo Jones, they're forced to team up on the case. The clues will lead them into the wealthiest locales of Yorkshire, from sparkling glass hotels to luxury property sites to elite country clubs. But below the glittering surfaces, Jo and MacAdams discover darker schemes brewing. Local teens and international refugees are disappearing left and right, each case somehow linked to a shady architectural firm -- which happened to employ the dead man from the moors.What began as an unusual murder case plunges Jo and MacAdams into the underground world of rare artefacts and antique trading... and the murderer may not be finished yet…Episode was recorded live October 24, 2025.Website: https://peculiarbookclub.com/Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ixJJ2YVIP Membership: https://payhip.com/PeculiarBookClubYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeculiarBookClub/streamsBluesky: @peculiarbookclub.bsky.socialFacebook: facebook.com/groups/peculiarbooksclubInstagram: @thepeculiarbookclub
Weird Science, Bizarre History, & Strange Medicine: we host authors of PECULIAR nonfiction! Want to know why animals evolved to suck blood? Or the secrets of sword-swallowers? Curious about Vagina Obscura? Or the astrophysics of a dying universe? We've 3 shows to tempt you: the PBC podcast (from Mary Roach to Ed Yong), Peculiar at the Movies with Davey Berris (where factoids meet celluloid); and Peculiar in Mystery (thrillers + true crime!) Join host Brandy Schillace, as seen on THE UNBELIEVABLE with Dan Aykroyd, for oddities, oddballs, and the unexpected! If you're weird, you're family!
New Zealand