{"podcast":{"title":"Now Playing - The Movie Review Podcast","slug":"now-playing-the-movie-review-podcast-1005138","podcast_index_feed_id":1005138,"rss_url":"http://podcast.nowplayingpodcast.com/feed.xml","website_url":"http://nowplayingpodcast.com","image_url":"https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/image-logo/1425882/NP_Cover_2026.jpg","author":"Venganza Media, Inc.","episode_count":1023,"summary":"The hosts of Now Playing Podcast dive deep into every franchise from Bond, DC and Marvel to Mad Max, Andromeda Strain to Wolverine, breaking down each film with sharp insight, behind-the-scenes stories, and a lot of humor. If a movie has a sequel (or three), we’ve probably reviewed it with real research, real opinions, and zero patience for bad movies.","last_synced_at":"2026-06-06T04:17:28.835539+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/now-playing-the-movie-review-podcast-1005138"},"episode":{"title":"The Birds by Daphne du Maurier","slug":"the-birds-by-daphne-du-maurier","published_at":"2026-05-22T14:35:08+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/now-playing-the-movie-review-podcast-1005138/the-birds-by-daphne-du-maurier","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/now-playing-the-movie-review-podcast-1005138","url":"http://podcast.nowplayingpodcast.com/e/the-birds-by-daphne-du-maurier/","audio_url":"https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/tj9snn52v8p7pwem/NPBookReview-_The_Birds_Book_Reviewa1kho.mp3","summary":"Before Alfred Hitchcock turned birds into cinematic terror, The Birds was a bleak, intimate apocalypse story from author Daphne du Maurier. In this special Now Playing Podcast Book Review, Arnie looks at the 1952 short story that inspired Hitchcock’s classic film and finds something very different: a grim survival tale closer to War of the Worlds, I Am Legend, and Night of the Living Dead than the Hollywood thriller audiences know. From post-war paranoia to unexplained cosmic dread, hear why this short story still works over 70 years later, why its ending hits so hard, and why Hitchcock may have only borrowed the premise while leaving most of the original story behind. Plus, how gulls attacking a farmer became one of horror’s most influential setups.","meta_description":"Before Alfred Hitchcock turned birds into cinematic terror, The Birds was a bleak, intimate apocalypse story from author Daphne du Maurier. In this specia…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":1179,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/now-playing-the-movie-review-podcast-1005138/episodes/the-birds-by-daphne-du-maurier/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/now-playing-the-movie-review-podcast-1005138/the-birds-by-daphne-du-maurier.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}