Podcasts about weird studies

This conversation was originally recorded in August 2024 and released for our Patreon supporters. Weird Studies will be back with a new episode on June 25, 2025. What is cultural theory? How is philosophy "a preparation for death?" What sort of planet is Phil Ford from? These burning questions and more find answers in this free-wheeling conversation, originally exclusive to members of the Weird Studies Patreon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

VYS0050 | One And The Same - Vayse to Face with Peter C Hine - Show Notes By some miracle Hine and Buckley have made it to episode 50 and to make the occasion they welcome to Vayse close collaborator and friend of the show, Peter C Hine. Peter is a podcaster, writer and musician from Manchester UK. Together with Stephen James Buckley he co-founded Vayse, a podcast about weird stuff, now celebrating it's 50th episode. The conversation flows from how Vayse was formed, how Peter first became interested in all things weird, why his magical practice is on pause, how deep disillusionment with the current occult scene runs, what does the future hold for Vayse and just how many time can he mention Six Ways, Hellier and Penny Royal in a single interview? (Recorded 22 May 2025) Thanks to all our guests over the last 50 episodes and to everyone who has listened. Thanks as always to Keith for sorting out the show notes - you can find him on Bluesky here: @peakflow.bsky.social Buckley's/Hine's Intro Elon Musk's 14 Children: All About the Tesla CEO's Sons and Daughters and the 4 Women He Shares Them With - People.com (https://people.com/all-about-elon-musk-children-11678749) If Amazon is serious about climate change, why is it ignoring tropical forests? - Forest500 (https://forest500.org/blog/2020/05/01/if-amazon-serious-about-climate-change-why-it-ignoring-tropical-forests/) Digital Doppelgangers: Instagram Tests Creator-Made AI Clones - Forbes.com (https://www.forbes.com/sites/ianshepherd/2024/07/08/digital-doppelgangers-instagram-tests-creator-made-ai-clones/) Vayse to Vayse with Peter C. Hine The AP Strange Show: Exploring the Afterlife with Peter C. Hine (3xtC) (https://theapstrangeshow.transistor.fm/episodes/exploring-the-afterlife-with-peter-c-hine-3xtc) VYS0009 | If There's Something Weird - Halloween 2022: Ghostbusters (https://www.vayse.co.uk/vys0009) Ghostbusters (1984) - The Library Ghost Scene | Movieclips - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g01em4WGO7A) What Magic is This? Podcast (https://whatmagicisthis.com) Back from the dead: Usborne's World of the Unknown: All About Ghosts - Usborne.com (https://usborne.com/gb/blog/post/behind-the-scenes-at-usborne/back-from-the-dead-usbornes-world-of-the-unknown-ghosts) Is the Chinnery ‘Backseat Driver' Ghost Photo Real? - Spooky Isles (https://www.spookyisles.com/chinnery-backseat-driver-ghost/) Garstang - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garstang) Holy Ghostbuster: A Parson's Encounters With the Paranormal, by J. Aelwyn Roberts - Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2213867.Holy_Ghostbuster) Tulpa - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulpa) Great Corby - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Corby) The Lost Boys | Michael Joins the Vampires | Movie Scene (HD) | Warner Bros. Entertainment - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5y_WQRrmXs) VYS0007 | Too Much to Dream Last Night (incl. Hine's Dark Man and Pan encounters) (https://www.vayse.co.uk/vys0007) Spirit Box: The 'Man in Black' in Irish folklore (https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/spirit-box/episodes/The-Man-in-Black-in-Irish-folklore-e14ddnj) VYS0028 | Psychic Jizz - Vayse to Face with Stephanie Quick (https://www.vayse.co.uk/vys0028) Hellier (TV Series) - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellier_(TV_series)) Hellier Seasons 1 & 2 - Planet Weird (https://www.planetweird.tv/hellier-season-1) Pennyroyal podcast (https://www.pennyroyalpodcast.com/) Weird Studies podcast (https://www.weirdstudies.com/) The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, by Ann VanderMeer (Editor), and Jeff VanderMeer (Editor) - Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12344319-the-weird) H. P. Lovecraft - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft) Weird Studies Episode 72: Morning of the Mutants: On the Castrati (https://www.weirdstudies.com/72) Twin Peaks - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Peaks) Twin Peaks Moments #1: Little Nicky - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9NtujJro20) Eraserhead (1977) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WAzFWu2tVw) David Lynch - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lynch) Nine Inch Nails: Hurt - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbHz9p7Z4OU) John Keel - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Keel) Jacques Vallée - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Vall%C3%A9e) Pendle Hill - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendle_Hill) Sigil - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigil) Condensed Chaos: An Introduction to Chaos Magic, by Phil Hine - Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/371437.Condensed_Chaos) Six Ways: Approaches & Entries for Practical Magic, by Aidan Wachter - Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39028487-six-ways) VYS0042 | Grinding Out Some Low-End - Vayse to Face with Aidan Wachter (https://www.vayse.co.uk/vys0042) Writing about music is like dancing about architecture - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_about_music_is_like_dancing_about_architecture) VYS0003 | Welcome to Vayse, Population 2 (https://www.vayse.co.uk/vys0003) Weaving Fate: Hypersigils, Changing the Past, & Telling True Lies, by Aidan Wachter - Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54753333-weaving-fate) Goetia - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goetia) Crowley's definition of Magick in The Book of Thoth - Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/4166-magick-is-the-science-and-art-of-causing-change-to) Gordon White - Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15308329.Gordon_White) Jason Louv - Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/338353.Jason_Louv) Animism - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animism) Spirit Box S2 #18 / Peter Hine and Stephen Buckley: Dreams, Nightmares and Pan (https://www.podbean.com/media/share/dir-ewfdi-19ed1cde) Synchronicity - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity) 23 enigma - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_enigma) Neurodiversity - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurodiversity) Ted & Coach Beard Say Goodbye (Ted Lasso) - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ncyIpz5qyg) Folie à deux - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folie_%C3%A0_deux) Trauma Bonding - Psychology Today (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/trauma-bonding) VYS0047 | The Weird Review Of The Year 2024 (https://www.vayse.co.uk/vys0047) 2022 United States Congress hearings on UFOs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_Congress_hearings_on_UFOs) Jeremy Corbell - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Corbell) George Knapp (television journalist) - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Knapp_(television_journalist)) Compilation of all the Jellyfish UFOs 1999-2022 - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdCnyGqiBZ0) The Trickster and the Paranormal, by George P. Hansen - Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/669028.The_Trickster_and_the_Paranormal) Allen Greenfield's website (https://bishop171.wixsite.com/allen-greenfield) Joseph Matheny's website (https://josephmatheny.com/) Richard Doty - Wikipedia (https://en.ikwipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Doty) Mirage Men - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage_Men) Luis Elizondo - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Elizondo) Steven M. Greer - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_M._Greer) CE-5 Protocol website (https://ce5-protocol.com/) Yes, and… - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes,_and...) Live action role-playing game (LARP) - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_action_role-playing_game) UAP recovery video shows ‘egg-shaped' object |News Nation - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=009qMHiqsVs) VYS0010 | Amazing Stories - Vayse to Face with Dr Allen H Greenfield Pt.1 (https://www.vayse.co.uk/vys0010) VYS0011 | Weird Tales - Vayse to Face with Dr Allen H Greenfield Pt.2 (https://www.vayse.co.uk/vys0011) VYS0036 | Infinite Game - Vayse to Face with Joseph Matheny (https://www.vayse.co.uk/vys0036) VYS0025 | Truth with a Capital "T" - Vayse to Face with Sequoyah Kennedy (https://www.vayse.co.uk/vys0025) VYS0049 | Machines of Loving Vayse - Vayse to Face with Sequoyah Kennedy v2.0 (https://www.vayse.co.uk/vys0049) Google's Veo 3 AI video generator is a slop monger's dream - The Verge (https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/673719/google-veo-3-ai-video-audio-sound-effects) Large language model - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_language_model) VYS0017 | Occult Detective - Vayse to Face with Bob Freeman (https://www.vayse.co.uk/vys0017) VYS0037 | Elvis with a Flaming Sword - Vayse to Face with AP Strange (https://www.vayse.co.uk/vys0037) VYS0026 | It's a Wand-erful Life - Vayse to Face with Douglas Batchelor Pt. 1 (https://www.vayse.co.uk/vys0026) VYS0027 | Batchelor of Dark Arts - Vayse to Face with Douglas Batchelor Pt. 2 (https://www.vayse.co.uk/vys0027) VYS0021 | Song of the Dark Man - Vayse to Face with Darragh Mason (https://www.vayse.co.uk/vys0021) VYS0024 | Between Being Real and Not Real - Vayse to Face with Nathan Paul Isaac (https://www.vayse.co.uk/vys0024) What is ADHD? - ADHD Foundation (https://www.adhdfoundation.org.uk/resources/what-is-adhd) ‘I'd keep them distracted': Woman asks ChatGPT how it would ‘destroy young minds' if it was the devil—its response leaves her stunned - Daily Dot (https://www.dailydot.com/culture/chatgpt-if-you-were-the-devil/) Black Mirror - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror) Song of the Dark Man: Father of Witches, Lord of the Crossroads, by Darragh Mason - Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/199454362-song-of-the-dark-man) King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Gizzard_%26_the_Lizard_Wizard) Unmasking 101: Learning to Be Who You Are - Psychology Today (https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/wildly-neurodivergent/202503/unmasking-101-learning-to-be-who-you-are) Peter's recommendations (and music project) Ted Lasso Official Trailer | Apple TV+ - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u7EIiohs6U) Reservation Dogs Season 1 Trailer | Rotten Tomatoes TV - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWYVTyhFAOU) Dead Pioneers - Bandcamp (https://deadpioneers.bandcamp.com/) Warfare | Official Trailer HD | A24 - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JER0Fkyy3tw) Crash, by J.G. Ballard - Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/70241.Crash) Canvas Bodies | Cuckoo - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0s_4H2Gkt1Y) Buckley's closing question ???!!! Vayse online Website (https://www.vayse.co.uk/) Twitter (https://twitter.com/vayseesyav) Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/vayseesyav.bsky.social) Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/vayseesyav/) Bandcamp (Music From Vayse) (https://vayse.bandcamp.com/) Ko-Fi (https://ko-fi.com/vayse) Email: vayseinfo@gmail.com

In this episode, JF and Phil are joined by Jacob G. Foster—sociologist, physicist, and researcher at Indiana University Bloomington and the Santa Fe Institute—for a conversation about their recent collaboration in Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Their co-authored essay, “Care of the Dead,” explores how the dead continue to shape our cultures, languages, and ways of being. Together, they discuss the process of writing the piece and what it means to say that the dead are not gone—that they persist, and that they make claims on the living. The article is available here: https://direct.mit.edu/daed/article/154/1/166/127931/Care-of-the-Dead-Ancestors-Traditions-amp-the-Life **References** [Peter Kingsley,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kingsley) English writer  Weird Studies, [Episode 98 on “Taboo”]) https://www.weirdstudies.com/98)  John Berger, “12 Theses on the Economy of the Dead” in _[Hold Everything Dear](12 Theses on the Economy of the Dead)_  Bernard Koch, Daniele Silvestro, and Jacob Foster, ["The Evolutionary Dynamics of Cultural Change”](https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/659bt_v1)  Gilbert Simondon, _[Imagination and Invention](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781517914455)_  William Gibson, _[Neuromancer](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780441007462)_  [Phlogiston theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston_theory)  George Orwell, _[1984](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780451524935)_  HP Lovecraft, [“The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”](https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cdw.aspx)  Weird Studies, [Episode 187 on “Little, Big”](https://www.weirdstudies.com/187)  [John Dee,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dee) English occultist  Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, _[The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780195320992)_  Robert Harrison, _[The Dominion of the Dead](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780226317939)_  Gilles Deleuze, _[Bergsonism](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780942299076)_  Elizabeth LeGuin, _[Boccherini's Body](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780520240179)_  Elizabeth LeGuin, [“Cello and Bow thinking”](http://www.echo.ucla.edu/cello-and-bow-thinking-baccherinis-cello-sonata-in-eb-minor-faouri-catalogo/)  Johannes Brahms, _Handel Variations_  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this continuation of their non-linear journey through the tarot, Phil and JF discuss the ninth Arcanum: the Hermit. Walking through darkness with his lantern and staff, the Hermit invites us to break from the collective and seek a direct relationship with the Real. This is the card of the seeker, the misfit, the sage, and the wanderer. As tends to happen in these tarot episodes, the hosts take the opportunity to range across many topics, connecting the Hermit to Jung's Red Book, the Desert Fathers, angels and demons, the I Ching, contemporary politics, and more. Support us on Patreon Order Christian Bunyan's Weird Studies poster here. Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 and 2, on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast,Cosmophonia. Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop Find us on Discord Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau REFERENCES Carl Jung, The Red Book Stanley Kubrick, American filmmaker Samuel Beckett, Irish writer Emily Dickinson, American poet Temptation of Saint Anthony Our Known Friend, Meditations on the Tarot Weird Studies, Episode 103 on the Tower card The Gnostic Tarot Nigel Richmond, Language of the Lines Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back John Minford, The I Ching: The Essential Translation of the Ancient Chinese Oracle and Book of Wisdom William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming" Alejandro Jodorowsky, The Way of the Tarot Wolfgang Petersen (dir.), The Neverending Story Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

John Crowley's Little, Big is, at once, a family saga, a fairy tale, an occult thriller, an idyll, a dystopia, as well as a meditation on myth and history, the real and the fantasy, memory and imagination. Little, Big is also a book that JF and Phil have been planning to discuss for as long as Weird Studies has existed. In this episode, they are joined by writer and scholar Erik Davis to explore the enduring charms and mysteries of one of the greatest—and most underrated—American novels of the late twentieth century. Order Christian Bunyan's Weird Studies poster here (https://www.christianbunyan.com/Weird-Studies). Visit Weirdosphere (http://www.weirdosphere.org) for more details on Erik Davis's ongoing course, The Three Stigmata of Philip K. Dick. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES John Crowley, Little, Big (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780061120053) Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780142410318) Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781774640449) Eric Davis, interview with Neil Gaiman and Rachel Pollack (https://techgnosis.com/the-gods-of-the-funny-books/) David Lynch (dir.), Lost Highway (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116922/) America, “The Last Unicorn” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51Ez6ZVz68c&ab_channel=America-Topic) John Cooper Powys, [A Glastonbury Romance](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/959613.AGlastonburyRomance) J. R. R. Tolkein, The Lord of the Rings (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780547951942) Patrick Harpur, Daimonic Reality (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780937663615) Lord Dunsany, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Dunsany) Irish novelist Special Guest: Erik Davis.

In this episode, JF and Phil continue their conversation on the wedge, their figure for the epistemological divide between approaching reality from the heart and exploring it with the mind. As the discussion unfolds, the wedge begins to reveal itself not as a rigid binary but as a spectrum—one that stretches from ultimate thickness to ultimate thinness. Could thinking, then, may be the art of navigating this epistemic gradient, seeking the sweet spot where the self meets the world, each on the other's terms? Visit Weirdosphere (http://www.weirdosphere.org) for more details on Erik Davis's upcoming course, The Three Stigmata of Philip K. Dick. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES Weird Studies, Episode 155 on ‘The Unbinding' (https://www.weirdstudies.com/155) Alan Chapman, Advanced Magick for Beginners (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781904658412) Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780826496744) The Principle of Sufficient Reason (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_sufficient_reason) Baruch Spinoza, Ethics (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780140435719) Weird Studies, Episode 139 on the power of art (https://www.weirdstudies.com/139) Phil Ford, “The View from the Cheap Seats” Arnold Schoenberg, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Schoenberg) Austrian composer Jaques Vallee, Passport to Magonia (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780987422484)

"The Wedge" is a key concept for Phil and JF. When exploring weird phenomena—from artworks to ghosts, and everything in between—one tends to emphasize one or the other "end" of the event. At the thin end of the Wedge, the focus is on subjective experience: how it felt, what it was like, and its personal significance. At the thick end, the emphasis shifts to what actually happened, independent of how it was experienced. Though their roles sometimes switch, Phil generally thinks from the thin end, while JF approaches things from the thick. In this episode, they begin unpacking the implications of the Wedge for making sense of reality's stranger aspects. Header image by SavidgeMichael via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ForgottenMemoriesofExploringaLiminalSpace.jpg). _ Join the Weirdosphere (http://www.weirdosphere.org), our online learning platform Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, _Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES Weird Studies, Episode 184 on David Lynch (https://www.weirdstudies.com/184) Phil Ford, “The View from the Cheap Seats at the UFO Show” Scene by Scene, 1999 Interview with David Lynch (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0itTpuzzcQ&ab_channel=DidymusBibliophilus) Weird Studies, Episodes 76 on Henri Bergson's Metaphysics (https://www.weirdstudies.com/76) Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781420940435) Phil Ford, Dig (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780199939916) Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781774642238) Lewis Lockwood, Beethoven: The Music and the Life (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/97803933263830)

Due to scheduling conflicts and a series of unforeseen events, JF and Phil have had to push the release of the next official episode of Weird Studies back by one week. To tide you over, we're unlocking a bonus episode previously available only to our Patreon supporters. It serves as the perfect preface to Episode 184, which will be released on February 26, 2025. Apologies for the delay, and thanks for your patience.

David Lynch passed away on January 15th, 2025, leaving behind a body of work that reshaped the landscape of cinema and television. Few artists have delved as deeply into the strange, the beautiful, and the terrifying as Lynch, and few have had as profound an influence on Weird Studies. His films have long been a touchstone for JF and Phil's discussions on art, philosophy, and the nature of the weird. To honor his memory, they decided to devote an episode to Lynch's work as a whole, with special attention paid to Eraserhead—the nightmarish debut that announced his singular vision to the world. A study in dread, desire, and the uncanny, Eraserhead remains one of the most disturbing and mysterious works of American cinema. In this episode, we explore what makes it so powerful and how it connects to Lynch's larger artistic project. To enroll in JF's new Weirdosphere course, It's All Real: An Inquiry Into the Reality of the Supernatural, please visit www.weirdosphere.org. The course starts on Thursday, Feb 6, at 8 pm Eastern. A video for the piece For David Lynch is available on Pierre-Yves Martel's YouTube channel (https://youtu.be/3d73NWXWgyY?si=kHr9yZV2As9wLzSe). REFERENCES David Lynch, Eraserhead (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074486/) David Lynch: The Art Life (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1691152/) Victorian Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780674012448) Norman Mailer, An American Dream (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780812986136) Laura Adams, "Existential Aesthetics: An Interview with Norman Mailer” George P. Hansen, The Trickster and the Paranormal (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781401000820) Carl Jung, The Red Book (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780393065671) Jack Arnold (dir.), The Creature from the Black Lagoon (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046876/) Noel Caroll, The Philosophy of Horror (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780415902168) Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780231059831) Jack Smith, “The Perfect Filmic Appositeness of Maria Montez” (https://www.scribd.com/document/249415272/The-Perfect-Filmic-Appositeness-of-Maria-Montez) David Foster Wallace, “David Lynch Keeps his Head” in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never do Again (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780316925280) Arthur Machen, The White People (https://shortstoryproject.com/stories/the-white-people/) William Shakespeare, Macbeth (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781451694727)

A self-reflective Blind Shovel, this time the great JF Martel (of Weird Studies & Reclaiming Art.) interviews me on my latest book release, Saints & Sand. We discuss fatherhood, my process, the symbols found within the book, and much more.*PROMO CODE for $5 off: "SAINTS2025"Saints & Sand Order PageSaints & Sand PreviewHeader image: Michael Olivo, "Front Cover" 2024

Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha is one of the great novels of the twentieth century and a prime example of literature that transforms the deeply personal into something universal. For Phil and JF in this episode, the novel serves as the foundation for a discussion on spiritual journeying, the ideal of enlightenment, and the challenge of living in an ensouled universe. Sign up for JF's new Weirdosphere course on the supernatural (http://www.weirdosphere.org), starting on February 6th, 2025. Purchase tickets to the Weirdosphere screening of Aaron Poole's Dada (https://weirdosphere.mn.co/plans/1494861?bundle_token=efd897d98f0a13d7bac82f0a49af07fb&utm_source=manual) on February 1st, 2025. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES Herman Hesse, Siddhartha (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780553208849) Christopher Theofanidis and Melissa Studdard, Siddhartha Gustav Holst, [The Planets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThePlanets)_ Richard Wagner, Parsifal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsifal) G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781511903608) Colin Wilson, The Outsider (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780399173103) Adam Kirsch, “Herman Hesse's Arrested Development” (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/19/hermann-hesses-arrested-development) Dogen, Genjakoan (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780992112912) Chögyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781570629570)

In this episode, JF and Phil examine the myth of the vampire through the lens of Robert Eggers' latest film, Nosferatu, a reimagining of F. W. Murnau's German Expressionist masterpiece. Topics covered include the nature of vampires, the symbolism of evil, the implicit theology of Eggers' film (compared with that of Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula), the need for shadow work, as well as the power of real introspection and self-sacrifice. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES Robert Eggers (dir.), Nosferatu (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5040012/) F. W. Murnau (dir.), Nosferatu (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0013442/) Mel Brooks (dir.), Dracula: Dead and Loving It (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112896/) Francis Ford Coppola (dir.), Bram Stoker's Dracula (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103874/) Bram Stoker, Dracula (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780141439846) Richard Wagner, [Tristan und Isolde](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TristanundIsolde) David James Smith, “The Archaeologist Couple who Unearthed a Field Full of Vampires” (https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/vampires-poland-field-archaeology-secrets-svm5mt26v) Robert Eggers, The Witch (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4263482/) Richard Strauss, Salome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salome_(opera)) Weird Studies, Episode 156 on “The Secret History” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/156) Rudolf Steiner, “Lucifer and Ahriman” (https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/LucAhr_index.html) Richard Wagner, Ring Cycle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Ring_des_Nibelungen)

With the next flagship show set to drop on January 8, 2025, we thought we'd tide you over with this conversation on the art and craft and writing, originally recorded for Listener's Tier patrons on the Weird Studies Patreon. To join our Patreon community, please visit www.patreon.com/weirdstudies. To purchase tickets to Phil and JF's winter solstice celebration, happening on Weirdosphere on Thursday, December 19, at 8 pm Eastern, please visit www.weirdosphere.org. We wish you a happy and safe holiday season! The journey continues in 2025.

Chris Carter's The X-Files is weird on its face: a dramatic series that, from the start, presented itself as more than drama, an exploration of the reality of the paranormal using the tools of fiction, a fantasy posing as reality (or is it the other way around?). Strangely prescient, undeniably zany, and truly "hyperstitious," the series is likely to strike contemporary viewers as equal parts naive and prophetic. In this episode, music scholar and Weird Studies assistant Meredith Michael joins Phil and JF for a deep dive into the archival sublime of the filing cabinet marked "X." To purchase tickets to JF and Phil's December 19th solstice event on Weirdosphere, with live music by Pierre-Yves Martel, to to weirdosphere.org (http://www.weirdosphere.org). Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES Forthcoming. Special Guest: Meredith Michael.

Subscribe, Rate, & Review on YouTube • Spotify • Apple Podcasts✨ Support & Participate• Become a patron on Substack (my preference) or Patreon (15% off annual memberships until 12/21 with the code 15OFF12)• Make a tax-deductible donation to Humans On The Loop• Original paintings available as thank-you gifts for large donors• Hire me as an hourly consultant or advisor on retainer• Buy the books we discuss from Bookshop.org• Join the Future Fossils Facebook group• Join the Holistic Technology & Wise Innovation and Future Fossils Discord servers• Buy the show's music on Bandcamp — intro “Olympus Mons” from the Martian Arts EP and outro “Sonnet A” from the Double-Edged Sword EP, coda “You Don't Have To Move → 8:33” from The Age of Reunion✨ About This EpisodeIn this penultimate episode of Future Fossils before we transform into Humans On The Loop, I bring two of my favorite guests and comrades in the so-called “Weirdosphere” back for their first-ever conversation together — and it's a real banger! Probably the most inspired and provocative conversation I've ever had on the nature of time and human creativity.Joining me for this trialogue are Eric Wargo, author of From Nowhere: Artists, Writers, and the Precognitive Imagination (previously on FF episodes 117 and 171), and J.F. Martel, author of Reclaiming Art in The Age of Artifice and co-host (with Phil Ford) of Weird Studies podcast (previously on FF episodes 18, 71, 126, and 214). Our discussion centers on the concept of precognition — the ability to perceive future events — as the mechanism of all human creative activity. Both Eric and J.F. argue that art, like shamanistic practices, acts as a means of accessing and expressing precognitive experiences, often manifesting as seemingly coincidental events or uncanny correspondences between art and reality. We talk about the role of trauma and dissociation in stimulating creative breakthroughs — why there seems to be a direct biological and psychological link between suffering, displacement, and the discovery of radical new insights and modes of being. Can we create without destroying, or are rupture and connection one thing?We also examine how emerging media through the ages have shaped our experience of time. Starting with the earliest Paleolithic artifacts and the role of cave art in facilitating or encoding ecstatic experience, we trace the evolution of art through to how the development “the cut” in modern cinema led to new ideas of causality. Each new medium provides novel ways of thinking about leaps across space and time, and their study offers new points of entry into a unifying philosophy of rupture and discontinuity.Lastly, we explore some of my own most potent and disquieting precognitive experiences in light of Eric's argument that the UFO phenomenon may actually be the braided precognitive experiences of future human beings and symbiotic artificial intelligences — a thesis that sheds new light on everything from the lives and work of Philip K. Dick, Jacques Vallée, Carl Jung, Andrei Tarkovsky, to The Book of Ezekiel.Where we're going, we won't need roads…Speaking of art, UFOs, psychedelic experience, and time machines, here's the standalone music video for the song we discuss in this episode that was inspired by my UFO (or were they time machine) experiences in 2007. I threw it back in as a coda to the episode but in case you want to view it in its original resolution and in the context of the entire album, here you go. The “8:33” section starts around 3:58:✨ ChaptersChapter 1: Introduction (0:00:00)Chapter 2: Precognitive Imagination in the Arts (0:08:57)Chapter 3: The Personal is Precognitive (0:13:34)Chapter 4: The Cut and the Leap (0:22:15)Chapter 5: The Brain as a Fast-Forwarder (0:30:38)Chapter 6: Campfires, TVs, and Flickering Consciousness (0:38:57)Chapter 7: The Trauma of Truth (0:48:04)Chapter 8: Prophecy and The Trash Stratum (0:54:33)Chapter 9: UFOs as Time Machines, The Disappointment of Destiny (1:14:39)Chapter 10: Closing and News on Upcoming Releases (1:20:28)✨ Other MentionsAn inexhaustive list of people, places, and key works mentioned in this episode.* Morgan Robertson: Author of a novel that is believed to have predicted the sinking of the Titanic.* Hunter S. Thompson: Author and journalist.* William Shakespeare: Playwright who wrote Macbeth.* Comte de Lautréamont: A French poet who talked about "the cut" in his work.* Jean Epstein: Author of the book on the philosophy of cinema, The Intelligence of a Machine.* Carl Jung: Psychoanalyst who developed the concept of synchronicity.* Sergei Eisenstein: Filmmaker, and film theorist.* Gilles Deleuze: Philosopher who argued that “difference is more fundamental than identity.”* Cy Twombly: Artist whose work is discussed by Eric Wargo.* Andrei Tarkovsky: Filmmaker who wrote a diary entry quoted in From Nowhere.* Philip K. Dick: Science fiction author whose experiences with precognition and synchronicity are discussed in From Nowhere.* Jacques Vallée: Scientist and ufologist, author of a book about the UFO phenomena called Passport to Magonia.* Diana Pasulka: Academic who studies the UFO phenomenon.* Johnjoe McFadden: Scientist who works on quantum biology.* Henri Bergson: Philosopher known for his work on time and consciousness, is quoted as saying “the universe is a machine for the making of gods.”* Octavia E. Butler: Science fiction author.* Harlan Ellison: Science fiction author.* James Cameron: Filmmaker who directed The Terminator.* Max Simon Ehrlich: Screenwriter who wrote the Star Trek episode The Apple.* Megan Phipps: Guest on the Future Fossils podcast (episode 214).* Michelangelo: Guest on the Future Fossils podcast who discussed Paisley Ontology and precognition with Michael Garfield.* Björk: Musician, whose song "Modern Things" is mentioned.* Greg Bishop: UFO historian.* Terence McKenna: Ethnobotanist and writer who coined the term "immanentize the eschaton.".* Phil Ford: Co-host of the Weird Studies podcast.* Richard Wagner: Composer who was arrested in 1837.* Zozobra: a hundred-year-old effigy burn in Santa Fe, NM.* Esalen Institute: the center of the Human Potential movement, in Big Sur, CA.* The Fort-Da Game: A game observed by Sigmund Freud in which a child throws a toy away and then retrieves it, demonstrating an understanding of object permanence.* The Third Man Factor: A phenomenon experienced by explorers and mountain climbers in extreme survival situations, involving the feeling of a presence accompanying them. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

The Magician card likely graces more front covers of books on the tarot than any of the other major arcana. In many ways, it symbolizes the tarot itself, or the individual who has mastered the art of manipulating the cards to divine their meanings. Yet, the Magician is a profoundly ambiguous figure. From one perspective, he is the Magus, piercing through the illusions of ceaseless becoming to glimpse the hidden depths of reality. From another, he is all surface without depth, a carnival huckster ready to empty your coin purse while you're transfixed by his crystal ball. In this episode, JF and Phil continue their on-again, off-again journey through the major trumps with a discussion of the card that—deservedly or not—proudly calls itself Number One. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES Our Known Friend, Meditations on the Tarot (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781585421619) Weird Studies, Episode 24 on “The Charlatan and the Magus” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/24) Weird Studies, Episode 109 (https://www.weirdstudies.com/109) and Episode 110 (https://www.weirdstudies.com/110) on The Glass Bead Game Weird Studies, Episode 179 with Lionel Snell (https://www.weirdstudies.com/179) Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Geneology of Morals (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780141195377) Louis Sass, Modernism and Madness (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780198779292) Gilles Deleuze, Pure Immanence (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781890951252) Richard Wagner, Parsifal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsifal) William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780312160623) Participation mystique (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participation_mystique) Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780877282686) Leigh Mccloskey, Tarot Re-visioned (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780877282686)

One of the great rewards of "weirding" the world is learning that boredom may be a kind of ethical transgression—the world is simply too strange to allow for it, and if you're bored, you're at least partly to blame. Few have put this notion to the test as rigorously as Lionel Snell, whose work as a magician celebrates the wonders of everyday events, from a walk in the park to a moment of car trouble. Unlike the pursuit of the extraordinary that often defines occult practice, Snell's approach reminds us of the magic in the mundane. In this episode, Snell, also known as Ramsey Dukes, shares the insights he's gained over his decades-long career as one of the leading figures in contemporary magical theory and practice. For an exclusive Vimeo link to Aaron Poole's film Dada mentioned in the intro, go to Instagram and send @aaronsghost the direct message "movie link please". REFERENCES Ramsey Dukes, Thundersqueak (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780904311129) Weird Studies, Episode 141 on “SSOTBME (https://www.weirdstudies.com/141) Weird Studies, Episode 24 with Lionel Snell (https://www.weirdstudies.com/24) John Crowley, Little, Big (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780061120053) Arthur Machen, “A Fragment of Life” (https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks07/0700361h.html) David Foster Wallace, The Pale King (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780316074223) Max Picard, The Flight from God (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780316074223) Lionel Snell, My Years of Magical Thinking (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780904311242) Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780692710609) Henry Bergson, Matter and Memory (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781420937800) Russell's Paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_paradox) Special Guest: Lionel Snell [Ramsey Dukes].

Earlier this month, Phil and JF recorded a live episode at Indiana University Cinema in Bloomington following a screening of John Carpenter's film In the Mouth of Madness. Carpenter's cult classic obliterates the boundary between reality and fiction, madness and revelation—an ideal subject for a Weird Studies conversation. In this episode, recorded before a live audience, the hosts explore the film's Lovecraftian themes, the porous nature of storytelling, and how art can function as a conduit to unsettling truths. Special thanks to Dr. Alicia Kozma and the IU Cinema team for hosting and recording the event. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES John Carpenter, In the Mouth of Madness (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113409/) John Carpenter, Prince of Darkness* (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093777/) John Carpenter, The Thing (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084787/) Joshua Clover, BFI Film Classics: The Matrix (https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/matrix-9781839022678/) Philip K. Dick, Time Out of Joint (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780547572581) David Cronenberg, Videodrome (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086541/) Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)" (https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm) Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780804732185) Nick Land, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Land) English philosopher H. P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu" (https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cc.aspx) Jonathan Carroll, The Land of Laughs (https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cc.aspx)

Fairy tales are among the most familiar cultural objects, so familiar that we let our kids play with them unsupervised. At the same time, they are also the most mysterious of artifacts, their heimlich giving way to unheimlich as soon as we give them a closer look and ask ourselves what they are really about. Indeed, these imaginal nomads, which seem to evade all cultural and historical capture, existing in various forms in every time and place, can become so strange as to make us wonder if they are cultural at all, and not some unexplained force of nature — the dreaming of the world. In this episode, JF and Phil use "Rapunzel" as a case study to explore the weirdness of fairy tales, illustrating how they demand interpretation without ever allowing themselves to be explained. Sign up for the upcoming course "Writing at the Wellspring" (https://weirdosphere.mn.co/) October 22-December 1 with Dr. Matt Cardin on Weirdosphere.org Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! SHOW NOTES Walter Benjamin, "The Storyteller" in Illuminations (Hannah Arendt, ed.; Harryn Zohn, trans.). Novalis, Philosophical Writings. (Margaret Mahony Stoljar, trans.). Cristina Campo, The Unforgivable and Other Writings (Alex Andriesse, trans.) William Irwin Thompson, Imaginary Landscape (https://www.amazon.com/Imaginary-Landscape-Making-Worlds-Science/dp/0312048084) Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780307739636) Marie-Louise von Franz, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie-Louise_von_Franz), Swiss Jungian psychologist Sesame Street, “Rapunzel Rescue” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-fK8rYa45Q&ab_channel=SesameStreet) Disney's Tangled (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0398286/) The Annotated Brothers Grimm (https://www.amazon.com/Annotated-Brothers-Grimm-Books/dp/0393058484) Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarne%E2%80%93Thompson%E2%80%93Uther_Index) Marina Warner, Once Upon a Time (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780198779858) W. A. Mozart, [The Magic Flute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheMagicFlute) Dante Alighieri, Il Convito (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12867) Panspermia hypothesis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia) Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature (https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Nature-Necessary-Advances-Complexity/dp/1572734345) John Mitchell, Confessions of a Radical Traditionalist (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781620554159) Clint Eastwood (dir.) The Unforgiven (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105695/)

Comics, like cinema, is an eminently modern medium. And as with cinema, looking closely at it can swiftly acquaint us with the profound weirdness of modernity. Do that in the context of a discussion on Charles Burns' comic masterpiece Black Hole, and you're guaranteed a memorable Weird Studies episode. Black Hole was serialized over ten years beginning in 1995, and first released as a single volume by Pantheon Books in 2005. Like all masterpieces, it shines both inside and out: it tells a captivating story, a "weirding" of the teenage romance genre, while also revealing something of the inner workings of comics as such. In this episode, Phil and JF explore the singular wonders of a medium that, thanks to artists like Burns, has rightfully ascended from the trash stratum (https://www.weirdstudies.com/20) to the coveted empyrean of artistic respectability—without losing its edge. BIG NEWS: • If you're planning to be in Bloomington, Indiana on October 9th, 2024, click here (https://cinema.indiana.edu/upcoming-films/screening/2024-fall-wednesday-october-9-700pm) to purchase tickets to IU Cinema's screening of John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness, featuring a live Weird Studies recording with JF and Phil. • Go to Weirdosphere (http://www.weirdosphere.org) to sign up for Matt Cardin's upcoming course, MC101: Writing at the Wellspring, starting on 22 October 2024. • Visit https://www.shannontaggart.com/events and follow the links to learn more about Shannon's (online) Fall Symposium at the Last Tuesday Society. Featured speakers include Steven Intermill & Toni Rotonda, Shannon Taggart, JF Martel, Charles and Penelope Emmons, Doug Skinner, Michael W. Homer, Maria Molteni, and Emily Hauver. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES Charles Burns, Black Hole (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780375714726) Clement Greenberg's concept of “medium specificity” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_specificity#cite_note-2) Terry Gilliam (dir.), The Fisher King (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101889/) Seth (https://drawnandquarterly.com/author/seth/), comic artist Chris Ware, Building Stories (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780375424335) “Graphic Novel Forms Today” (https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/677339) in Critical Inquiry Raymond Knapp, The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780691141053) Vilhelm Hammershoi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilhelm_Hammersh%C3%B8i), Danish painter Ramsey Dukes, Words Made Flesh (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780904311112) G. Spencer-Brown, [Laws of Form](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LawsofForm) Dave Hickey, “Formalism” (https://approachestopainting.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/19135319-hickey-7-formalism-036.pdf) Nelson Goodman, [Languages of Art](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LanguagesofArt) Chrysippus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysippus), Stoic philosopher Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780060976255)

John and Ben are still luxuriating on their summer vacation, but a little while back they invited the illustrious Phil Ford of the Weird Studies podcast into the Library to discuss P.G. Wodehouse's "Right Ho, Jeeves". We discuss humor in literature, the idea of being "well-read", and the changing nature of genre fiction through history. We hope you enjoy the conversation! Works Referenced La Serva Padrone, by Giovanni Pergolesi SCTV George Orwell "Such, Such Were the Joys" The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling Casino Royale Carolyn Miller "Genre as Social Action" The Band Wagon Mulligan Stew by Gilbert Sorrentino

Every off-week, listeners who have chosen to support Weird Studies by joining our Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies) at the Listener's Tier get to enjoy a bonus episode. These episodes are different from the flagship show. Less formal and entirely improvised, they offer Phil and JF a different way of exploring the weird in art, philosophy and culture. To tide our listenership over until the next new episode drops on September 25th, 2024, here is a recent example of a Weird Studies audio extra, recorded as your hosts were finishing up their first Weirdosphere course, "The Beauty and the Horror." The conversation ended up centering on cultural works we experienced in childhood, and that are all the more magical for being only vaguely remembered. To enroll in JF's upcoming Weirdosphere course, "Whirl Without End: Fairy Tales and the Weird," please visit www.weirdosphere.org.

The dynamic duo behind Weird Studies, Phil Ford and J F Martel, join the show to explore the ways in which art is a form of evocation. We look at: Orson Welles as divine shamanic faker. Hollywood's vaudeville origins. What is a trick and what is a lie and can you even use those words if they show you the 'truth'? 'Western' and non-'Western' understandings of the imaginal and the artist. Where 'inspiration' and even 'thoughts' come from and what that might mean. An amazing chat. Enjoy! Show Notes Weird Studies episode about Orson Welles mentioned in the show: Art Is Another Word For Truth. Weirdosphere - Weird Studies Member Community.

Daphne du Maurier was a prolific English writer of novels, plays, and short stories resonant with what she termed "a sense of unreality." In this episode, JF and Phil discuss her great short story "Don't Look Now," which Nicholas Roeg famously adapted to the screen in 1973 in a film starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. Recorded live at Shannon Taggart's Lily Dale Symposium on July 25th, 2024, the discussion takes a number of turns, exploring the ghost as an "image of itself," the phenomenon of "deathishness," the experience of derealization, the human capacity to break time, and grief as a rift in time. Visit the Weirdosphere (http://www.weirdosphere.org) and sign up for JF's upcoming course of lectures and discussions, "Whirl Without End: Fairy Tales and the Weird," starting on September 5th, 2024. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES Daphne du Maurier, "Don't Look Now" (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780765333629) Nicholas Roeg (dir.), Don't Look Now (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069995/) Weird Studies, Episode 66 on “Diviner's Time” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/66) Chuck Klosterman, "Tomorrow Rarely Knows” (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781416544210) Thomas Mann, Death in Venice (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780141181738) Peter Medak (dir.), The Changeling (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080516/) Philip K. Dick, “Schizophrenia and the Book of Changes” (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780679747871)

Phil and JF are joined by Alan Chapman and Duncan Barford – practicing magicians, podcasters, and co-authors of the newly released Baptist's Head Compendium: Magick as a Path to Enlightenment, a collection of essays and reports from their famous occult blog, The Baptist's Head. Duncan and Alan are accomplished practitioners with deep insights into the nature of magic(k). The conversation touches on a number of subjects, including the parallels between magic, mysticism, and religion; form and formlessness; the nature of truth; the primacy of devotion; and the quest to converse with one's Holy Guardian Angel. To purchase The Baptist's Head Compendium at a 20% discount, go to http://www.spirit.aeonbooks.co.uk and enter the code given in the introduction to this episode. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES Occult Experiments in the Home (https://oeith.co.uk/about/), Duncan Baford's blog and podcasts. Barbarous Words, Alan Chapman's Substack. WORP FM, a ten-part podcast series with Alan and Duncan. The Abremelin working (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Abramelin) Illuminates of Thanatos (IOT) (https://iot-na.thanateros.org/) Aleister Crowley, [The Book of the Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheBookoftheLaw) Buddhist Geeks, “The Great Work of Western Magic with Alan Chapman” (https://podbay.fm/p/buddhist-geeks/e/1437514100) Aleister Crowly, John St. John (https://sacred-texts.com/oto/lib816.htm) Special Guests: Alan Chapman and Duncan Barford.

In this computerized age, we tend to see memory as a purely cerebral faculty. To memorize is to store information away in the brain in such a way as to make it retrievable at a later time. But the old expression "knowing by heart" calls us to a stranger, more embodied and mysterious take on memory. In this episode, Phil and JF endeavour to recite two poems they've learned by heart, as a preamble to a discussion on poetry, form, and the magic of memory. Details on Shannon Taggart's Symposium @ Lily Dale (https://www.shannontaggart.com/events/2024) (July 25-28). Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Kubla Khan” (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43991/kubla-khan) Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “A Musical Instrument” (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43729/a-musical-instrument) Dave Hickey, “Formalism” (https://approachestopainting.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/19135319-hickey-7-formalism-036.pdf) from Pirates and Farmers Weird Studies, Episode 109-110 on “The Glass Bead Game” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/109) Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/6081/6081-h/6081-h.htm) Weird Studies, Episode 42 with Kerry O Brien (https://www.weirdstudies.com/42) Francis Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780226950075)

Author and Weird Studies co-host JF Martel comes on the pod to talk Kubrick. Get the After Dark episode and more at patreon.com/artofdarkpod or substack.com/@artofdarkpod. x.com/jf_martel twitter.com/artofdarkpod twitter.com/bradkelly twitter.com/kautzmania […]

The Hanged Man is arguably the most enigmatic card in the traditional tarot deck. Divested of any archetypal apparel – he is neither emperor nor fool, but just a man, who happens to be hanging – he gazes back at us with the look of one who harbors a secret. But what sort of secret? In this episode, JF and Phil discuss the card that no less august a personage than A.E. Waite, co-creator of the classic Rider-Waite deck, claimed was beyond all understanding. The musical interludes in this episode are from Pierre-Yves Martel's recent album, "Bach." Visit his website (http://www.pymartel.com) for more. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REREFENCES Welkin/Gnostic Tarot (https://chrisleech.wixsite.com/mysite) Sally Nichols, Tarot and the Archetypal Journey (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781578636594) Rachel Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781578636655) Yoav Ben-Dov (https://cbdtarot.com/) Our Known Friend, Meditations on the Tarot (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781585421619) Richard Wagner, ”Sigmund” from [Die Walkure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DieWalk%C3%BCre)_ Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780877282686) Star Wars John Frankenheimer (dir.), The Manchurian Candidate (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056218/) Alejandro Jodorowsky, The Way of Tarot (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781594772634) MC Richards, “Preface” to Centering (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780819562005) Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780803298002) Alan Chapman, Magia (https://www.amazon.com/Magia-Alan-Chapman/dp/180049727X)

VYS0039 | Try Not To Be A Dick Shall Be The Whole Of The Law - Vayse to Face with Duncan Barford - Show Notes After a 3 month break, Vayse returns for an interview with a person who inspired the podcast before it was even a podcast - writer, podcaster and psychodynamic psychotherapeutic counsellor, Duncan Barford. Duncan's book Occult Experiments in the Home was a major influence on Hine and Buckley's views on magick and mysticism but for this interview they zero in on aspects of his career as a therapist, focusing on mental health and how this can affect and be affected by the occult and occult practices: Why do so many prominent figures in magick seem to have mental health issues or addictions? Where do you draw the line between mystical experience and mental health disorder? How do you maintain a magical practice when your mental health isn't good? Is it safe to have a magical practice at all? and most importantly... what kind of deep-seated psychological damage is preventing Hine from remembering the name of Duncan's new book? (Recorded 12 June 2024). Thanks to Duncan for his time and patience and thanks as always to Keith for the show notes, you can give him a follow at: @peakflow.bsky.social Duncan Barford Online Duncan Barford: Psychodynamic Psychotherapeutic Counsellor - website (https://www.duncanbarford.uk/) Occult Experiments in the Home (OEITH) website (https://oeith.co.uk/) OEITH on Twitter/X (https://twitter.com/_oeith) OEITH on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/oeith) (Some of) Duncan's Books and Podcasts Occult Experiments in the Home: Personal Explorations of Magick and the Paranormal by Duncan Barford - Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6855862-occult-experiments-in-the-home) The Magick of A Dark Song: The Abramelin Ritual in Fiction and Reality by Duncan Barford - Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57867413-the-magick-of-a-dark-song) The Baptist's Head Compendium: Magick as a Path to Enlightenment by Alan Chapman, Duncan Barford - Aeon Books (https://spirit.aeonbooks.co.uk/product/baptists-head-compendium/95249) Occult Experiments in the Home podcast - Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/occult-experiments-in-the-home/id1565224207) HIEROPHANY podcast - Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/hierophany/id1649186299) Worp FM podcast - Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/worp-fm/id1639854867) The Obscure Occult Book Report (TOOBR) podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-obscure-occult-book-report-toobr/id1742736484) Hine's Intro Queen - I'm Going Slightly Mad (Official Video) - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od6hY_50Dh0) Vayse to Face with Duncan Hellier (TV Series) - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellier_(TV_series)) Hellier Seasons 1 & 2 - Planet Weird (https://www.planetweird.tv/hellier-season-1) Pennyroyal podcast (https://www.pennyroyalpodcast.com/) VYS0007 | Too Much to Dream Last Night (includes Hine's Pan experience) (https://www.vayse.co.uk/vys0007) Some Other Sphere podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/some-other-sphere/id1459984683) What is psychodynamic therapy? - BACP (https://www.bacp.co.uk/about-therapy/types-of-therapy/psychodynamic-therapy/) Psychoanalysis and the Gothic - University of Pennsylvania (http://web-facstaff.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Masse%CC%81_Psychoanalysis_and_the_Gothic.pdf) The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud - Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/93981.The_Interpretation_of_Dreams) On James Hillman's 'The Dream and the Underworld' - Weird Studies podcast (https://www.weirdstudies.com/68) Chaos magic - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_magic) Illuminates of Thanateros (IOT) - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illuminates_of_Thanateros) IOT British Isles - website (https://iotbritishisles.com/) IOT North America - website (https://iot-na.thanateros.org/) Individuation - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individuation) Self-actualisation - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-actualization) Flow (psychology) - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)) Projective identification - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projective_identification) Transference - Psychology Today (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/transference) Six Ways: Approaches & Entries for Practical Magic by Aidan Wachter - Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39028487-six-ways) Weaving Fate: Hypersigils, Changing the Past, & Telling True Lies by Aidan Wachter - Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54854252-weaving-fate) Transpersonal therapy - Psychology Today (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapy-types/transpersonal-therapy) What Magic Is This? podcast - Mental Health and the Magician (https://whatmagicisthis.com/2020/06/15/mental-health-the-magician/) Diagnosis: are we medicalising human experience? - BHMA (https://bhma.org/diagnosis-are-we-medicalising-human-experience/) Finding God in a seizure: the link between temporal lobe epilepsy and mysticism - ABC (https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/encounter/the-link-between-temporal-lobe-epilepsy-and-mysticism/5956982) VYS0033 | Battle-Owl vs Sci-fi Centipede - Vayse to Face with Loren Fetterman (https://www.vayse.co.uk/vys0033) The Demon Shax - Occult World (https://occult-world.com/shax/) LBRP: The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram and Notes About Demons - Exemplore (https://exemplore.com/wicca-witchcraft/Lesser-Banishing-Ritual-of-the-Pentagram-Why-and-How-To) S N Goenka - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._N._Goenka) Kundalini yoga - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kundalini_yoga) Federico Campagna - website (https://www.federicocampagna.eu/) Technic and Magic: The Reconstruction of Reality by Federico Campagna - Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36302721-technic-and-magic) OEITH #101 Meditation and Trauma (https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/occult-experiments/oeith-101-meditation-and-SAJcUq3o_7d/) The Integrated Website of Daniel M. Ingram (https://www.integrateddaniel.info/) The Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium - website (https://theeprc.org/) Understanding The Dark Night Of The Soul (+ How To Get Through It) - MindBodyGreen (https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/dark-night-of-soul) Sigil - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigil) Set and setting - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_and_setting) Guardian angel: Thelema - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardian_angel#Thelema) Abyss (Thelema) - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abyss_(Thelema)) Normalizing the Holy Guardian Angel: Moving from Taboo to Dialogue - Praemonstro (https://www.praemonstro.com/post/the-state-of-thelema) Andrew Cohen (spiritual teacher) - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Cohen_(spiritual_teacher)) Andrew Cohen - website (https://www.andrewcohen.com/) Great White Brotherhood - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_White_Brotherhood) The Great White Brotherhood - website (https://thegreatwhitebrotherhood.org/) The Red Book: Liber Novus by C G Jung - Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6454477-the-red-book) Neoplatonism - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoplatonism) VALIS by Philip K. Dick - Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/216377.VALIS) Duncan's Recommendations Monument Maker by David Keenan - Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58724097-monument-maker) England's Hidden Reverse by David Keenan - Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/981522.England_s_Hidden_Reverse) Ultraculture Ep. 167: England's Hidden Reverse With David Keenan (https://www.listennotes.com/ms/podcasts/ultraculture-with/ep-167-englands-hidden-0QIoUVhtLae/) This is Memorial Device by David Keenan - Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32490609-this-is-memorial-device) Xstabeth by David Keenan - Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50834904-xstabeth) Buckley's Closing Question Carol Vorderman on Twitter/X (https://twitter.com/carolvorders) Vayse online Vayse website (https://www.vayse.co.uk/) Vayse on Twitter/X (https://twitter.com/vayseesyav) Vayse on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/vayseesyav/) Music From Vayse: Volume 1 by Polypores - Bandcamp (https://vayse.bandcamp.com/album/music-from-vayse-volume-1) Music From Vayse: Volume 2 by Polypores - Bandcamp (https://vayse.bandcamp.com/album/music-from-vayse-volume-2) Vayse on Ko-Fi (https://ko-fi.com/vayse) Vayse email: vayseinfo@gmail.com Mental Health Links (UK) (taken from the wonderful mental health charity Mind's website (https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/guides-to-support-and-services/crisis-services/helplines-listening-services/)) Samaritans - talk about anything that is upsetting you - 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. You can call 116 123 (free from any phone). You can also call the Samaritans Welsh Language Line on 0808 164 0123 (7pm–11pm every day). SANEline - If you're experiencing a mental health problem or supporting someone else, you can call SANEline on 0300 304 7000 (4.30pm–10.30pm every day). National Suicide Prevention Helpline UK. Offers a supportive listening service to anyone with thoughts of suicide - 0800 689 5652 (6pm–3:30am every day). Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM). You can call the CALM on 0800 58 58 58 (5pm–midnight every day) if you are struggling and need to talk. Shout. If you would prefer not to talk but want some mental health support, you could text SHOUT to 85258. Shout offers a confidential 24/7 text service providing support if you are in crisis and need immediate help. The Mix. If you're under 25, you can call The Mix on 0808 808 4994 (3pm–midnight every day), request support by email using this form on The Mix website or use their crisis text messenger service. Papyrus HOPELINEUK. If you're under 35 and struggling with suicidal feelings, or concerned about a young person who might be struggling, you can call Papyrus HOPELINEUK on 0800 068 4141 (weekdays 10am-10pm, weekends 2pm-10pm and bank holidays 2pm–10pm), email pat@papyrus-uk.org or text 07786 209 697. Nightline. If you're a student, you can look on the Nightline website to see if your university or college offers a night-time listening service. Nightline phone operators are all students too. Switchboard. If you identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, you can call Switchboard on 0300 330 0630 (10am–10pm every day), email chris@switchboard.lgbt or use their webchat service. Phone operators all identify as LGBT+. C.A.L.L. If you live in Wales, you can call the Community Advice and Listening Line (C.A.L.L.) on 0800 132 737 (open 24/7) or you can text 'help' followed by a question to 81066. Special Guest: Duncan Barford.

This week on Weird Studies, Phil and JF explore the intersections of the beautiful and the terrible in art and literature. There is a conventional beauty that calms and placates, and there is a radical beauty which, taking horror's pale-gloved hand, gives up all pretense to permanence and fixity and joins the danse macabre of our endless becoming. This episode is a preamble to a five-week course of lectures and discussions starting June 20th on Weirdosphere, JF and Phil's new online learning platform. For more information and to enroll in The Beauty and the Horror, visit www.weirdosphere.org. REFERENCES JF Martel, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice (https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/j-f-martel/reclaiming-art-in-the-age-of-artifice/9781668640289/?lens=basic-books), the audiobook, with a new introduction written and read by Donna Tartt. Denis Villeneuve, Dune: Part Two (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15239678/) William Blake, “The Tyger” (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43687/the-tyger) Junichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780918172020) Steven Spielberg, Raiders of the Lost Ark (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082971/) Walter Pater, The Renaissance (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781604597042) David Lynch, Twin Peaks: The Return (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4093826/) Anna Aikin, “On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror (https://biblioklept.org/2018/10/25/on-the-pleasure-derived-from-objects-of-terror-anna-letitia-aikin/) Donna Tartt, The Secret History (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781400031702) Keiji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780520049468) Charles Baudelaire, “Le Voyage” (https://fleursdumal.org/poem/231) Franz Schubert, “Death and the Maiden” Quartet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_Quartet_No._14_(Schubert)) Franz Schubert, Piano Sonata in C major, D. 840 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Sonata_in_C_major,_D_840_(Schubert)) J.R.R. Tolkein, The Hobbit (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780547928227)

This week on Weird Studies, Phil and JF explore the intersections of the beautiful and the terrible in art and literature. There is a conventional beauty that calms and placates, and there is a radical beauty which, taking horror's pale-gloved hand, gives up all pretense to permanence and fixity and joins the danse macabre of our endless becoming. This episode is a preamble to a five-week course of lectures and discussions starting June 20th on Weirdosphere, JF and Phil's new online learning platform. For more information and to enroll in The Beauty and the Horror, visit www.weirdosphere.org. REFERENCES JF Martel, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice (https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/j-f-martel/reclaiming-art-in-the-age-of-artifice/9781668640289/?lens=basic-books), the audiobook, with a new introduction written and read by Donna Tartt. Denis Villeneuve, Dune: Part Two (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15239678/) William Blake, “The Tyger” (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43687/the-tyger) Junichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780918172020) Steven Spielberg, Raiders of the Lost Ark (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082971/) Walter Pater, The Renaissance (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781604597042) David Lynch, Twin Peaks: The Return (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4093826/) Anna Aikin, “On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror (https://biblioklept.org/2018/10/25/on-the-pleasure-derived-from-objects-of-terror-anna-letitia-aikin/) Donna Tartt, The Secret History (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781400031702) Keiji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780520049468) Charles Baudelaire, “Le Voyage” (https://fleursdumal.org/poem/231) Franz Schubert, “Death and the Maiden” Quartet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_Quartet_No._14_(Schubert)) Franz Schubert, Piano Sonata in C major, D. 840 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Sonata_in_C_major,_D_840_(Schubert)) J.R.R. Tolkein, The Hobbit (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780547928227)

Orson Welles made F for Fake in the early seventies, while still bobbing in the wake of a Pauline Kael essay accusing him of being cinema's greatest fraud. Ostensibly a documentary on the famous art forger Elmyr de Hory and his biographer Clifford Irving (a talented faker in his own right), the film blurs the line between fact and fiction in an effort to explore art's weird entanglement with illusion, magic, and ultimately, the search for truth. This is a film unlike any other, and it is arguably Welles's most important contribution to the evolution and theory of film aesthetics. Join the Weirdosphere online learning community by enrolling in Phil and J.F.'s inaugural course, THE BEAUTY AND THE HORROR (www.weirdosphere.org), starting June 20th. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! RERERENCES Orson Welles, F for Fake (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072962/) Gilles Deleuze Cinema 2 (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780816616770) Elmyr de Hory, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmyr_de_Hory) art forger Clifford Irving, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Irving) American writer Howard Hughes, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Hughes) American aerospace engineer David Thomson, Biographical Dictionary of Film (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/178394/the-new-biographical-dictionary-of-film-by-david-thomson/) David Thomson, Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780679772835) Pauline Kael, [Raising Kane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RaisingKane)_ “War of the Worlds” radio drama (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(1938_radio_drama)) The Farm Podcast, “Horror Hosts, Films & Other Strange Realities w/ David Metcalfe, Conspirinormal & Recluse” (https://shows.acast.com/exclusive-subscribers-shows/episodes/horror-hosts-films-other-strange-realities-w-david-metcalfe-) Orson Welles - Interview with Michael Parkinson (BBC 1974) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dAGcorF1Vo&ab_channel=FilmKunst) Geoffrey Cornelius, Cornelius (https://mythcosmologysacred.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/G.-Cornelius-Chicane.pdf) Victoria Nelson, Secret Life of Puppets (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780674012448) Lionel Snell, My Years of Magical Thinking (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780904311242) Sokal affair (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair), hoax Werner Herzog, “Minnesota Declaration” (https://designmanifestos.org/werner-herzog-the-minnesota-declaration/)

The ongoing crackdown on protests at many American universities prompts a discussion on the politics, ethics, and metaphysics of free expression. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780156787338) Federico Campagna, Technic and Magic (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781350044029) George Orwell, The Prevention of Literature (https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-prevention-of-literature/) George Orwell, Inside the Whale (https://orwell.ru/library/essays/whale/english/e_itw) New York Times, “At Indiana University, Protests Only Add to a Full Year of Conflicts (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/02/us/indiana-university-protest-encampment.html) John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780521379175) Indiana Daily Student, “Provost Addresses Controversy” (https://www.idsnews.com/article/2024/01/provost-addresses-controversy-suspension-palestinian-artist-bfc) Official government page for the Proposed Bill to address Online (https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/online-harms.html) Harms in Canada. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781515436874) GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781511903608) Daryl Davis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis), American musician and activist DavidFoster Wallace, Just Asking (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/just-asking/306288/)

There are artists who express the vision of a place, person, or thing so vividly and originally that it sets the bar for all future imaginings. With his four Mad Max films, this is what George Miller did with the image of the Wasteland. No one has been able to capture the stark, raw energy and chaotic beauty of a post-apocalyptic desert quite like Miller. His portrayal not only defines the aesthetic of a cinematic world but also prompts us to think about the meaning of civilization, technology, humanity, and how they intertwine. In this episode, Phil and JF discuss how Mad Max challenges our perception of civilization, and our conception of the human. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES George Miller (dir.), Mad Max (https://imdb.com/title/tt0079501/) George Miller (dir.), Mad Max: The Road Warrior (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082694//) George Miller (dir.), Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdrome (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089530/) George Miller (dir.), Mad Max: Fury Road (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392190/) Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780062835444) Stanley Kubrick (dir.), A Clockwork Orange (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066921) Sam Raimi (dir), The Quick and the Dead (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114214/) Joe Bob Briggs (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/AnyoneCanDie/Film), movie critic Phil Ford, “The Wanderer” (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01411896.2023.2287422) Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze, Nomadology (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780936756097) Our Known Friend, Meditations on the Tarot (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781585421619)

In culture and the arts, labeling something you don't like (or don't understand) "pretentious" is the easy way out. It's a conversation killer, implying that any dialogue is pointless, and those who disagree are merely duped by what you've cleverly discerned as a charade. It's akin to cynically revealing that a magic show is all smoke and mirrors—as if creative vision doesn't necessitate a leap of faith. In this episode, Phil and JF explore the nuances of pretentiousness, distinguishing between its fruitful and hollow forms. They argue that the real gamble, and inherent value, of daring to pretend lies in recognizing that imagination is an active contributor to, rather than a detractor from, reality. Pierre-Yves Martel's EPHEMERA (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/ephemera) project It isn't too late to join JF's upcoming course (https://mutations.blog/kubrick)on the films of Stanley Kubrick, which goes until the end of April, 2024. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES Brian Eno, A Year with Swollen Appendices (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780571374625) Dan Fox, Pretentiousness: Why it Matters (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781566894289) Ramsay Dukes, How to See Fairies (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781904658375) Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781621389996) Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780231081597) Weird Studies, Episode 49 on Nietzsche's idea of “untimely” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/49) Sokal Affair (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair), scholarly hoax Weird Studies, Episode 75 on ‘2001: A Space Odyssey' (https://www.weirdstudies.com/75) Stanley Kubrick, “Notes on Film” (http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0076.html#:~:text=A%20truly%20original%20person%20with,plot%20is%20no%20apparent%20plot.) Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Uses and Abuses of History (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781596054660) Vladimir Nabokov, Think, Write, Speak (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781101873700) Mary Shelley, “Introduction to Frankenstein” (https://www.frankenbook.org/pub/ai6okwlz/release/1) Matt Cardin, A Course in Demonic Creativity (https://mattcardin.com/a-course-in-demonic-creativity/) Playboy interview with Stanley Kubrick (https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/movies/playboy-interview-stanley-kubrick/)

"Let the red dawn surmise / What we shall do, / When the blue starlight dies / And all is through." This short poem, an epigraph to "The Yellow Sign," arguably the most memorable tale in Robert W. Chambers' 1895 collection The King in Yellow, encapsulates in four brief lines the affect that drives cosmic horror: the fearful sense of imminent annihilation. In the four stories JF and Phil discuss in this episode, this affect, which would inspire a thousand works of fiction in the twentieth century, emerges fully formed, dripping with the xanthous milk of Decadence. What's more, it is here given a symbol, a face, and a home in the Yellow Sign, the Pallid Mask of the Yellow King, and the lost land of Carcosa. Come one, come all. Join JF's upcoming course (https://mutations.blog/kubrick)on the films of Stanley Kubrick, starting March 28, 2024. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES Robert W. Chambers, The King in Yellow (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781840226447) Weird Studies, Episode 100 on John Carpenter films (https://www.weirdstudies.com/100) Algernon Blackwood, “The Man Who Found Out” (https://algernonblackwood.org/Z-files/The%20Man%20Who%20Found%20Out.pdf) Susannah Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781635576726) Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/benjamin.pdf) Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, Thought Forms (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781909735996) Weird Studies, Episode 140 on “Spirited Away” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/140) Vladimir Nabokov, Think, Write, Speak (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781101873700) Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780674986916) David Bentley Hart, “Angelic Monster” (https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2017/10/angelic-monster) M. R. James, Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to you my Lad” (https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/jamesmr-ohwhistle/jamesmr-ohwhistle-00-h.html) William Carlos Williams, The Red Wheelbarrow (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45502/the-red-wheelbarrow)

This week's episode is an installment in the long-running World Without Sin series, examining how we respond to monolithic media and how not every outsider is a plucky freedom fighter. We also look at how and why it might be that all forms of expression are collapsing into a meme singularity and what this might have to do with the jester archetype. After that there is a life update and a travel magic story. And then -on the video version only- we have a Q&A where we speculate on the whereabouts of Kate Middleton, what's really going on with Boeing, healing from trauma patterns and G. K. Chesterton. Also, I promised I'd share some of the memes that were hard to convey in audio format, but instead, I am just sharing a link to the presentation from the livestream. It's all here if you're interested. The show notes are just some other things that are coming up or going on, because why not? Peter Grey's talk at Occulture Berlin 2023: Atomic Gods: Magick beyond the nuclear horizon. J. F. Martel of Weird Studies has a new course coming up this months on the films of Stanley Kubrick. This Missing Witches fundraiser that Rune Soup listeners contributed so generously is coming back around again. I probably mentioned this one a few weeks too early as I have no detail on prizes and such yet, lol. But the link is here! Hadean Press have just released the final Jake Stratton-Kent book we'll ever get, Cyprian's Offices of Spirits. My own fancy, pre-ordered copy is winging its way to the farm where it is useless to me for the Q2 member course will be Grimoires 2: Your Greek Inheritance (The Jake Edit) as I am currently back in South America. Lol. Anyway, more details on that closer to the date.

Phil Ford and J.F. Martel from the great "Weird Studies" podcast join us for a whirling discussion of Edgar Allan Poe's mesmerizing tale of decadence and disease “The Masque of the Red Death." We also talk about weird fiction more generally, why it's so suited to the short story genre, how it creates a mood that drips and bursts from the seam of the page. Plus David and Tamler in the opening segment talk about Aella's data-driven, chart and graph filled birthday orgy. Is she the sex symbol for our times? Links:  My Birthday Gangbang by Aella [substack.com] Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" [wikipedia.org] Weird Studies podcast with J.F. Martel and Phil Ford Sponsored by: BetterHelp: You deserve to be happy. BetterHelp online counseling is there for you. Connect with your professional counselor in a safe and private online environment. Our listeners get 10% off the first month by visiting BetterHelp.com/vbw. Promo Code: VBW Factor: Chef-prepared, dietitian-approved meals, ready to eat. Sign up today and get restaurant-quality meals made by real chefs delivered to your door. Visit factormeals.com/vbw50 and use code VBW50 to get 50% off your order. 

What is expressionism? A school? A movement? A philosophy? At the end of this episode, Phil and JF agree that it is, above all, a sensibility, one that surfaces periodically in history, punctuating it with occasional bursts of frenetic colour and eruptions of light and shadow. Whenever it appears, expressionism challenges our tendency to divide the world up into neat quadrants: mind and matter, subject and object lose their legitimacy as they start to bleed into one another. Prior to recording, your hosts agreed to focus on two pieces of writing: Victoria Nelson's The Secret Life of Puppets and a recent Internet post on eighties and nineties American films entitled "Neo-Expressionism: The Forgotten Studio Style." Though focused on a number of films, the conversation includes forays into the world of the visual arts, literature, and music. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES comradeyui, “neo-expressionism: the forgotten studio style” (https://letterboxd.com/comrade_yui/list/neo-expressionism-the-forgotten-studio-style/#:~:text=many%20neo%2Dexpressionist%20films%20are,visual%20grammar%20of%20those%20works.) Victoria Nelson, _The Secret Life of Puppets (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780674012448) Francis Ford Coppola, Bram Stoker's Dracula (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103874/) Weird Studies, Episode 161 on ‘From Hell' (https://www.weirdstudies.com/161) Bram Stoker, Dracula (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780141439846) E. H. Gombrich, The Story of Art (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780714832470) Jean-Francois Millet, “Gleaners” (https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/gleaners/GgHsT2RumWxbtw?hl=en) Kathe Kollwitz, “Need” (https://www.kollwitz.de/en/sheet-1-need) Robert Weine, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0010323/) Arnold Schoneberg, Pierrot Lunaire (https://imslp.org/wiki/Special:ImagefromIndex/315809/hfva) Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1 (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780816614004) Peter Yates (dir.), Krull (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085811/) Wilhelm Worringer, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Worringer) German art historian Weird Studies, Episode 136 on ‘The Evil Dead' (https://www.weirdstudies.com/136) In Camera The Naive Visual Effects of Dracula (https://www.weirdstudies.com/136) Kenneth Gross, Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780226005508) Weird Studies, Episode 121 ‘Mandwagon' (https://www.weirdstudies.com/121)

"The Devil's finest ruse," Baudelaire wrote, "is to persuade you that he doesn't exist." In this episode, JF and Phil peer through a buzzing haze of lies, illusions, and mirages, in hopes of catching a glimpse, however brief, of the figure standing at its center. With a focus on the fifteenth major arcanum of the tarot, they try to make sense of this archetype which feels, at once, remotely distant and uncomfortably close to us, all while heeding the warning from the anonymous author of Meditations on the Tarot that one ought not look too deeply into the nature of evil, which is "unknowable in its essence." Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES Our Known Friend, Meditations on the Tarot (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781585421619) The Gnostic Tarot (https://chrisleech.wixsite.com/mysite) Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Faust, Part 1 (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781017359060) Ramsey Dukes, SSOTBME (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780904311082) Edgar Allan Poe, The Imp of the Perverse (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781516834662) Aleister Crowley, Magic, Book 4 (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780877289197) Leigh McCloskey, Tarot Re-Visioned (https://www.leighmccloskey.com/TarotRev.html) Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780877282686) The Library of Esoterica, Tarot (https://www.taschen.com/en/books/esoterica/08003/tarot-the-library-of-esoterica) Federico Campagna, Technic and Magic (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781350044029)

In this second of two episodes on "scenes," Phil and JF set their sights on Greenwich Village in the wake of the Second World War. Focusing on two works on the era – Anatole Broyard's Kafka Was the Rage and John Cassavetes' Shadows – the conversation further develops the mystique of urban scenes and explores the weirdness of cities. The city, long considered the human artifact par excellence, comes to seem like something that comes from outside the ambit of humanity. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies sountrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES Anatole Broyard, Kafka Was the Rage (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780679781264) John Cassavetes, Shadows (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053270/) Kazuo Ishiguro, An Artist of the Floating World (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780679722663) Phil Ford, Dig (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780199939916) Weird Studies, Episode 90 on “Owl in Daylight” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/90) Kult (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kult_(role-playing_game)), role-playing game Tom Delong and Peter Lavenda, Secret Machines: Gods, Men, and War (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781943272402) Chandler Brossard, Who Walk in Darkness (https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/438121) Yukio Mishima (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukio_Mishima), Japanese artist Anatole Broyard, “Portrait of the Hipster” (https://karakorak.blogspot.com/2010/11/portrait-of-hipster-by-anatole-broyard.html)

Listener discretion advised: This episode delves into the disturbing details of the Whitechapel murders of 1888, and may not be suitable for all audiences. Serialized from 1989 to 1996, Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's graphic novel From Hell was first released in a single volume in 1999, just as the world was groaning into the present century. This is an important detail, because according to the creators of this astounding work, the age then passing away could not be understood without reference to the gruesome murders, never solved, of five women in London's Whitechapel district, in the fall of 1888. In Alan Moore's occult imagination, the Ripper murders were more than another instance of human depravity: they constituted a magical operation intended to alter the course of history. The nature of this operation, and whether or not it was successful, is the focus of this episode, in which JF and Phil also explore the imaginal actuality of Victorian London and the strange nature of history and time. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies sountrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES Daniel Silver, Terry Nichols Clark, and Clemente Jesus Navarro Yanez, “Scenes: Social Context in an Age of Contingency” (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254963890_Scenes_Social_Context_in_an_Age_of_Contingency) Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, From Hell (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780958578349) Floating World (https://www.thecollector.com/edo-japan-ukiyo-floating-world/), Edo Japanese concept Phil Ford, Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780199939916) John Clellon Holmes recordings (https://www.library.kent.edu/special-collections-and-archives/john-clellon-holmes-recordings) Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes Collection (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781802792546) Yacht Rock (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1047801/), web series Stephen Knight, [Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JacktheRipper:TheFinalSolution)_ Colin Wilson, Jack the Ripper: Summing Up and Verdict (https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1425635) Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780486471433) Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/67729.Hawksmoor) Weird Studies, Episode 89 on “Mumbo Jumbo” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/89) Charles Howard Hinton (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Howard_Hinton), mathematician J. G. Ballard, Preface to Crash (https://uglywords.wordpress.com/2012/03/07/on-j-g-ballards-1995-introduction-to-crash-6-2/) William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780440423621)

Every off-week, listeners who have chosen to support Weird Studies by joining our Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies) at the Listener's Tier get to enjoy a bonus episode. These episodes are different from the flagship show. Less formal and entirely improvised, they offer Phil and JF a different way of exploring the weird in art, philosophy and culture. To tide our listenership over until the next new episode drops on January 24th, here is a recent example of a Weird Studies audio extra, recorded as the holiday season was getting under way. Happy New Year.

As a horror movie, John Carpenter's The Thing seems to have it all: amazing practical effects, body horror, psychological drama, Kurt Russell ... Indeed, there is only one element this movie lacks, and that is anything at all corresponding to the titular villain. There is no thing in The Thing! What we have instead is a process, a pattern, a way for which the term "thing" is as good as any other. (What is a thing anyway?) In this episode, Phil and JF, having decided that Carpenter's film qualifies as a Christmas movie because there is snow (and a dog) in it, explore the metaphysical implications of a cult classic. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies sountrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES John Carpenter, The Thing (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084787/) Weird Studies, Episode 100 on Carpenter Films (https://www.weirdstudies.com/100) Weird Studies, Episode 157 on Videodrome (https://www.weirdstudies.com/157) Ridley Scott, Blade Runner (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083658/) Ridley Scott Alien (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083658/) Thomas Aquinas, On Being and Essence (https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/aquinas-esse.asp) Haecceity (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/medieval-haecceity/#HaecDunsScot) Ernest Fenollosa, The Chinese Written Characters as a Medium for Poetry (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781014296146) Weird Studies, Episode 89 on ‘Mumbo Jumbo' (https://www.weirdstudies.com/89) Weird Studies, Episode 127 on ‘The Impossibility of Automating Ambiguity' (https://www.weirdstudies.com/127) Wikipedia, “Quiddity” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiddity) Vilhelm Hammershøi, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilhelm_Hammersh%C3%B8i) Danish painter Jez Conolly, The Thing (https://www.amazon.com/Thing-Devils-Advocates-Jez-Conolly/dp/1906733775) Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780460875059) Dylan Trigg, The Thing a Phenomenology of Horror (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781782790778) Plato, The Timaeus (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781500405182) Lucretius, “On the Nature of Things” (https://classics.mit.edu/Carus/nature_things.1.i.html) Clive Barker, The Great and Secret Show (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780060933166)

Every once in a while, JF and Phil like to do a “song swap.” Each picks a song, and the ensuing conversation locates linkages and correspondences where none was previously thought to exist. In this episode, they are joined by the music scholar Meredith Michael – Weird Studies assistant, and co-host of Cosmophonia, a podcast about music and outer space – to discuss songs by Lili Boulanger, Vienna Teng, and Iron & Wine. Before long, this disparate assortment personal favourites occasions a weirdly focused dialogue on time, impermanence, control, (mis)recognition, and the affinity of art and synchronicity. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies sountrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES Iron and Wine, “Passing Afternoon” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0dP7iZv9K0&ab_channel=PsyPars) Vienna Teng, “The Hymn of Acxiom” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QF-7WiLykGM&ab_channel=ViennaTeng-Topic), (and here is the live version (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJyheSPtjoU&ab_channel=ViennaTeng)) Lili Boulanger, [Vieille Priére Bouddhique](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evn3bkK2W3o&abchannel=CHORWERKRUHR)_ Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106145/) Karol Berger, Bach's Cycle Mozart's Arrow (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780520257979) William Shakespeare, Hamlet (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780743477123) Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780451529060) Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780140447477) Vladimir Jankelevitch, Music and the Ineffable (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780691090474) Hector Berlioz, Fugue on “amen” from La Damnation du Faust (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChgJsOdNYSo&ab_channel=JulesBastin-Topic) Slavoj Zizek, A Pervert's Guide to Idiology (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2152198/) Federico Campagna, Technic and Magic (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781350044029) Shepard Tone (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzNzgsAE4F0&ab_channel=J_II) Rudolf Steiner, The Influces of Lucifer and Ahriman (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780880103756) Special Guest: Meredith Michael.

In this episode of Weird Studies, we delve into the mysterious depths of Plato's Timaeus, one of the foundational texts of our civilization. In his characteristic brilliance, Plato blends cosmology and metaphysics, anatomy and politics to tell a creation story that rivals the most fantastical mythologies, yet he does it while remaining grounded in a philosophical rigor that announces a radically new way of thinking the world. Here, Phil and JF try unravel the layers of the dialogue, revealing how Plato's vision of a divinely ordered cosmos echoes through the corridors of esoteric thought from antiquity to modern times. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies sountrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES Plato, [Timaeus](https://hackettpublishing.com/history/history-of-science/timaeus](Donald Zeyl Edition) Earl Fontenelle, The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast (https://shwep.net/podcast/platos-timaeus/) The Book of Thoth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Thoth) Graham Hancock, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Hancock) British journalist Hesiod, Theogony (https://www.theoi.com/Text/HesiodTheogony.html) Hermes Trismegistus, {Emerald Tablet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EmeraldTablet) Pierre Hadot, (https://iep.utm.edu/hadot/), scholar of classical philosophy Eugene Wigner, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences” (https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/wigner.pdf) Jean-Pierre Vernant, _The Origins of Greek Thought (https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-origins-of-greek-thought-jean-pierre-vernant/7729742?ean=9780801492938) Lionel Snell, SSOTBME (https://www.amazon.com/SSOTBME-Revised-essay-Ramsey-Dukes/dp/0904311082)

"Death to Videodrome! Long live the New Flesh!" It was perhaps inevitable that the modern Weird, driven as it is to swallow all things, would sooner or later veer into the realm of political sloganeering without losing any of its unknowable essence. David Cronenberg's 1983 film Videodrome is more than a masterwork of body horror: it is a study in technopolitics, a meditation on the complex weave of imagination and perception, and a prophecy of the now on-going coalescence of flesh and technology into a strange new alloy. In this episode, recorded live after a screening of the film at Indiana University Cinema (https://cinema.indiana.edu/index.html) in Bloomington, JF and Phil set out to interpret Cronenberg's vision... and come to dig the New Flesh. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies sountrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES David Cronenberg, Videodrome (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086541/) Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780810104570) Paul Virilio, The Information Bomb (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781844670598) Weird Studies, Episode 75 on “2001: A Space Odyssey” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/75) Richard Porton and David Cronenberg, "The Film Director as Philosopher: An Interview with David Cronenberg" (https://www.jstor.org/stable/41690094) George Hickenlooper and David Cronenberg, "The Primal Energies of the Horror Film: An Interview with David Cronenberg" (https://www.jstor.org/stable/41687643) Weird Studies, Episode 144 with Connor Habib (https://www.weirdstudies.com/144) William Friedkin (dir.), The Exorcist (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070047/) Plato, Timaeus (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780140455045) William Gibson, Idoru (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780425158647) CBC, Yorkville: Hippie Haven (https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1564883669) Linda Williams, “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess” (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1212758)

There are works of weird fiction that dispense their strangeness so subtly that many readers never pick up on it, books that allow themselves to be pass for mundane, the better to haunt us after we put them down. Donna Tartt's debut novel The Secret History, published in 1992, is such a work. On the surface, it is a brilliant, yet completely naturalistic, telling of the lead-up and aftermath of a murder. But The Secret History is also a work of the depths, and readers who go in seeking the Weird will find it lurking on every page. More than a masterpiece of psychological exploration, it is a story about the resurgence of the old god Dionysus, and a chronicle of fate; fate conceived, in the manner of the Ancient Greeks, as a cosmic force. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird sountrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES Donna Tartt, The Secret History (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781400031702) Robertson Davies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robertson_Davies), Canadian novelist Weird Studies, Episode 98 on Exotica (https://www.weirdstudies.com/98) M. R. James (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._R._James), English author Weird Studies, Episode 3 on “The White People” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/3) E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781773239187) Jean Cocteau, La Machine Infernale (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9782253009160) John Crowley, Little, Big (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780061120053) Star Trek: The Next Generation, “The Outrageous Okana” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708816/) Weird Studies, Episode 110 on “The Glass Bead Game” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/110) Gabriel Faure, Nocturne No. 11 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8vrmePFUdg) Pierre-André Boutang, L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyXMmx2Ofgs) Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780316055444)

One of the most surprising aspects of paranormal experience is how often it takes on a storylike form, unfolding exactly as you would expect it to in, say, a Hollywood horror film. Viewers of Karl Pfeiffer's film The Unbinding will get a sense of this in the early sequences of Greg and Dana Newkirk's latest occult adventure. The haunting comes on strong and takes rather familiar forms. But the almost too-good-to-be-true frights -- effective as they are in an almost fairy-tale way -- soon give way to a procedural that invites us to ponder the ethics and methodologies of paranormal investigation in the age of Global Weirding. What do we owe the Others we encounter? What do they owe us? In this episode, JF and Phil discuss some of the questions haunting this brilliant documentary from the creators of Hellier. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird sountrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES Planet Weird, The Unbinding (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27485427/) Weird Studies, Episode 67 on “Hellier” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/67) Alexander Wendt and Raymond Duvall, “Sovereignty and the UFO” (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0090591708317902) Duncan Barford, “Magick Versus Content” (https://oeith.co.uk/2023/09/19/magick-versus-content-comments-on-a-scene-from-the-unbinding/) Gilles Deleuze, [Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masochism:ColdnessandCruelty)_

William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land is without a doubt one of the weirdest entries in the annals of weird fiction. Set in the earth's distant future, after the sun has gone out and the planet has been cleaved in two by an unspecified disaster, a telepathic scientist dons his armour and weapons to brave the monster-haunted yet strangely monotonous wastes that engirdle the massive pyramid in which the last humans took refuge, hundreds of thousands of years earlier. If Samuel Beckett tripped hard on ayahuasca, he might have come up with something like Hodgson's genre-defying novel, which reads more like a report to committee of 17th-century heretics than a piece of speculative fiction from the early twentieth century. MIT Press recently released a (blessedly) abridged edition of The Night Land as part of their Radium Series. Journalist, scholar, and lecturer Erik Davis, who penned a brilliant foreword for the new edition, was kind enough to join Phil and JF to discuss this underrated masterpiece. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies) and gain access to Phil's podcast on Wagner's Ring Cycle. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Download Pierre-Yves Martel's new album, Mer Bleue (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/mer-bleue). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! SHOW NOTES William Hope Hodgeson, The Night Land (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780262546423) Weird Studies, Episode 37 with Stuart Davis (https://www.weirdstudies.com/37) Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780415538381) Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780674986916) William Hope Hodgeson, House on the Borderland (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781492699774) Samuel Beckett, Molloy (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780802144478) Sumptuary Laws (https://refashioningrenaissance.eu/archival-work/sumptuary-laws/) Arcosanti (https://www.arcosanti.org/), arcology Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781618950468) Pierre Schaeffer, “Traité des objets musicaux” Schitzophonia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophonia) H.G. Wells, The Time Machine (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780141439976)