Seen & Heard

The CPX team debrief on their latest reads, TV binges, and podcast discoveries.

It may not surprise you to know that the nerds at CPX spend a lot of time inhaling the books, movies, podcasts, and binge-worthy TV series that shape and reflect our particular cultural moment – and debriefing on them around the proverbial office water cooler.

This week on Life & Faith, Simon, Natasha, and Justine hit record on that conversation.

Covered in this episode:

Priestdaddy: the 2017 memoir by Patricia Lockwood, “poet laureate of Twitter”, whose father – a Catholic priest, via a loophole in the usual rules about celibacy – is a larger-than-life figure … like everyone else in her family, it seems. Hilarious and also disturbing, on growing up religious and continuing to love complicated people whose faith you no longer share.

The Stand: a new 9-episode miniseries based on the 1978 Stephen King novel, available to watch on Amazon Prime, this dark fantasy/post-apocalyptic tale rejects the greys in favour of good ol’ black-and-white moral absolutes. Mother Abagail vs The Dark Man represents a traditional battle of good and evil, but sits oddly in the current atmosphere.

Renegades: Born in the USA: the new podcast on Spotify brings together two American icons, Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama, to talk about life parallels, race, and the ongoing promise and peril of the “American dream”.