Ep. 130: Peter Bebergal Explains How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll/Jared Yates Sexton Previews Wrestlemania 33

Mar 31, 2017

Peter Bebergal is the guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. He is the author of the new book Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll. 

During this week's show, Peter and Chauncey discuss the appeal of magic and the occult for musicians and artists, the moral panics about Satanism and heavy metal music during the 1980s in America, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, as well as how African trickster figures and other cultural practices influenced black music in America and across the Black Atlantic. Peter and Chauncey also talk about digital versus analog culture and the history of pen and paper as well as tabletop role-playing games.

Friend of the podcast Jared Yates Sexton, contributing writer for publications such as The New Republic as well as The New York Times, also stops by to make his predictions (and share some concerns) about this weekend's WWE Wrestlemania 33 event.  

On this week's show, Chauncey also shares his thoughts about some new data from this year's General Social Survey which shows that Republicans still believe that black people are dumb, lazy, and stupid. During this week's podcast, Chauncey also reads the obituary of Bill Minor, a journalist and a great white brother in the Black Freedom Struggle who passed away several days ago.