Modern skeptics pride themselves on being immune to unreason. They present themselves as defenders of rationality, civilization, and good sense against what Freud famously called the "black mud-tide of occultism." But what if skepticism was more implicated in the phenomena it aims to banish than it might appear to be? What if no one could debunk anything without getting some of that black mud on their hands? In this episode, Phil and JF discuss the weird complicity of the skeptic and the believer in the light of George P. Hansen's masterpiece of meta-parapsychology, The Trickster and the Paranormal. REFERENCES James P. Hansen, The Trickster and the Paranormal (https://bookshop.org/books/the-trickster-and-the-paranormal/9781401000820) James Randi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Randi), stage magician and paranormal debunker Michael Shermer, (https://michaelshermer.com/) American science writer CSICOP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_for_Skeptical_Inquiry), Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, Publisher of the Skeptical Inquirer Rune Soup, Interview with George P. Hansen (https://runesoup.com/2017/06/talking-the-trickster-and-the-paranormal-with-george-p-hansen/) Weird Studies, Episode 24 with Lionel Snell (https://www.weirdstudies.com/24) Weird Studies, Episode 89 on Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo (https://www.weirdstudies.com/89) Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (https://bookshop.org/books/the-ritual-process-structure-and-anti-structure/9780202011905) Wouter Hanegraaff (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wouter_Hanegraaff), Dutch professor of esoteric philosophy Shannon Taggart, Seance (https://www.shannontaggart.com/) Society for Psychical Research (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Psychical_Research) Weird Studies, Episode 44 on William James’s Psychical Research (https://www.weirdstudies.com/44) G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (https://bookshop.org/books/orthodoxy-9780802456571/9781952410482) Robert Anton Wilson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Anton_Wilson), American author Aleister Crowley, [Magic Without Tears](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MagickWithoutTears)

Weird Studies

Episode 108: On Skepticism and the Paranormal

Joy Williams' third novel, Breaking and Entering, is the story of lovers who break into strangers' homes and live their lives for a time before moving on. First published in 1988, it is a book impossible to describe, a work of singular vision and sensibilty that is as infectious in its weird effect as it is unforgettable for the quality of its prose. In this episode, the novelist, spiritual thinker, and acclaimed podcaster Conner Habib joins JF and Phil to explore how the novel's enchantments rest on the uniqueness of Williams' style, which is to say, her bold embrace of ways of seeing that are hers alone. Williams is an artist who refuses to work from within some predetermined philosophical or political idiom. As Habib tells your hosts, she goes her own way, and even the gods must follow. Discover Against Everyone with Conner Habib on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/ConnerHabib) Support Weird Studies on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies): Buy the soundtrack (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get your Weird Studies merchandise (https://www.redbubble.com/people/Weird-Studies/shop?asc=u) (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.) Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Photo by Wolfgang Moroder via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Florida_Pelican_fliing_on_Bradenton_Beach.jpg) REFERENCES Conner Habib, "Joy Williams: The Best Fiction Writer Alive" (https://connerhabib.com/2015/12/31/on-joy-williams-or-the-best-fiction-writer-alive/) Joy Williams, [Breaking and Entering](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/834582.BreakingandEntering) Joy Williams, The Quick and the Dead (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780375727641) The Paris Review, Interview with Joy Williams (https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6303/the-art-of-fiction-no-223-joy-williams) Heraclitus, Fragments (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780142437650) Joy Williams, “Breakfast” in Taking Care (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780394729121) Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780679735779) The Phantom Stranger (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_Stranger), DC Comics character James Joyce, Ulysses (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780679722762) Eugene Ionesco, Rhinoceros (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780573614743) Deleuze and Guatarri, What is Philosophy? (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780231079891) Quentin Meillassoux (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Meillassoux), French philosopher David Mamet, On Directing Film (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780140127225) David Mamet, True and False (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780679772644) Nicholas Winding Refn (dir.), The Neon Demon (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1974419/) Joy Williams, “Congress” (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781400095520) Joy Williams, “Hawk” (https://granta.com/hawk/) Stephen Sexton, If All the World and Love Were Young (https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/41081318-if-all-the-world-and-love-were-young) Scott Burnham, Mozart’s Grace (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780691168067) Special Guest: Conner Habib.

Episode 107: On Joy Williams' 'Breaking and Entering,' with Conner Habib

In this episode, Weird Studies turns meta, reflecting on the peculiar medium that is podcasting, and how it has shaped the Weird Studies project itself. JF and Phil provide a glimpse into what it feels like to create the show from the inside, where each recording session is like a journey into an unknown Zone. The conversation also occasions sojourns into the flow state, or experience of pure durée, its implications for our conception of free will, and surprising parallels between modern materialists’ adherence to nihilism and ancient religious ascetic practices. Ultimately, JF and Phil explore the archetypal image of the wanderer as representative of Weird Studies’s existence so far, and of the kind of impact and legacy this project can have. N.B. Weird Studies will be on a haitus for the month of September, and will return on September 29. In the meantime: Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies): Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get your Weird Studies merchandise (https://www.redbubble.com/people/Weird-Studies/shop?asc=u) (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.) Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) References Robert Sapolsky, Interview with Pau Guinart (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihhVe8dKNSA) Bruno Latour, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Latour) French philosopher Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780198788607) Peter Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780745649221) Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780061339202) Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780060937133) Nina Simone, “Feeling Good” Robert Anton Wilson, Illuminatus (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780440539810) Richard Wagner, Siegfried Lewis Carol, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781954839199) John David Ebert, American cultural critic Patrick Harpur Daimonic Reality (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780937663097) Marshall McLuhan, The Global Village (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780195079104) Phil Ford, “What was Blogging?” (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01411896.2019.1601982) Weird Studies, Episode 71 on Marshall McLuhan (https://www.weirdstudies.com/71)

Episode 106: The Wanderer: On Weird Studies

The Twin Peaks mythos has been with Weird Studies from the very beginning, and it is only fitting that it should have a return. In this episode, Phil and JF are joined by Tamler Sommers, co-host of the podcast Very Bad Wizards (https://www.verybadwizards.com/) to discuss Fire Walk with Me, the prequel film to the original Twin Peaks series. Paradoxically, David Lynch’s work both necessitates and resists interpretation, and the pull of detailed interpretation is unusually strong in this episode. The three discuss how Fire Walk with Me, and the series as a whole, depicts two separate worlds that sometimes begin to intermingle, disrupting the perceived stability of time and space. Often this happens in moments of extreme fear or love. Through their love for Laura Palmer and for the film under consideration, JF, Phil, and Tamler enact their own interpretation, entering a rift where the world of Twin Peaks and the “real” world seem to merge, demonstrating how Twin Peaks just won’t leave this world alone, and can become a way for disenchanted moderns once again to live inside of myth. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies): Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get your Weird Studies merchandise (https://www.redbubble.com/people/Weird-Studies/shop?asc=u) (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.) Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) References David Lynch, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105665/) The Sons of Sam: A Descent into Darkness (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13156316/), Netflix documentary David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780486432502) Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780802150301) Mark Frost, The Secret History of Twin Peaks (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781250075581) Mark Frost, Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier (https://www.amazon.com/Twin-Peaks-Dossier-Mark-Frost/dp/1250163307) Jason Louv, (http://jasonlouv.com/) occultist Duncan Barford, Occult Experiments in the Home (https://oeith.co.uk/) podcast Weird Studies, Episode 67 on “Hellier” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/67) Weird Studies, Episode 78 on “The Mothman Prophesies” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/78) Sound mass (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_mass), musical technique Michael Hanake (dir.), Caché (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387898/) Courtenay Stallings, Laura’s Ghost (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781949024081) Special Guest: Tamler Sommers.

Episode 105: Fire Walk with Tamler Sommers

It is said that for several days after the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in the spring of 1967, you could have driven from one U.S. coast to the other without ever going out of range of a local radio broadcast of the album. Sgt. Pepper was, in a sense, the first global musical event -- comparable to other sixties game-changers such as the Kennedy assassination and the moon landing. What's more, this event is as every bit as strange as the latter two; it is only custom and habit that blind us to the profound weirdness of Sgt. Pepper. In this episode, Phil and JF reimagine the Beatles' masterpiece as an egregore, a magical operation that changes future and past alike, and a spiritual machine for "turning us on" to the invisible background against which we strut and fret our hours on the stage. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies): Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get your Weird Studies merchandise (https://www.redbubble.com/people/Weird-Studies/shop?asc=u) (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.) Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) REFERENCES Weird Studies, Episode 31 on Glenn Gould’s ‘Prospects of Recording’ (https://www.weirdstudies.com/31) Nelson Goodman, [Languages of Art](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LanguagesofArt) Brian Eno, Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) Weird Studies, Episode 33 On Duchamp’s Fountain (https://www.weirdstudies.com/33) Emmanuel Carrère, La Moustache (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0428856/) Rob Reiner, This is Spinal Tap (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088258/) Richard Lester, A Hard Day's Night (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058182/) Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2 (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780816616770) James Carse, Finite and Infinite Games (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781476731711) Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze, What is Philosophy? (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780231079891) Arthur Machen, “A Fragment of Life” (http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks07/0700361h.html) David Lynch, Lost Highway (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116922/) Zhuangzi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuangzi) (Butterfly dream) Ian MacDonald, Revolution in the Head (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781556527333)

Episode 104: We'd Love to Turn You On: 'Sgt. Pepper' and the Beatles

Continuing their series on the tarot, Phil and JF discuss the card nobody wants to see in a reading – The Tower. Featuring lightning bolts, plumes of ominous smoke, and figures plummeting from the windows, the Tower’s meaning at first glance seems clear: “pride comes before a fall,” as the old adage goes. But as JF and Phil delve into the details, they note not only the card’s connection to the Biblical tower of Babel and the fall of man, but also its relevance to the present era’s systems of control and communication breakdown. This discussion leads them to search for an antidote to the Tower's message of destruction. References Anonymous, Meditations on the Tarot (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781585421619) Alejandro Jodorowsky, The Way of the Tarot (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781594772634) Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780226458120) Arnold Schoenberg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Schoenberg), Austrian composer Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on the Societies of Control” (https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/gilles-deleuze-postscript-on-the-societies-of-control) Wilco, “Radio Cure” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm-MpLGfogA) Richard Dyer, Heavenly Bodies (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780415310277) George Cukor (dir.), A Star is Born (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047522/) Performativity, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performativity) sociological concept Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9785841295051) Jaques Ellul, The Technological Society (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780394703909)

Episode 103: On the Tower, the Sixteenth Card of the Tarot

"What was he doing, the great god Pan, down in the reeds by the river?" With this question, the Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning opens her famous poem "A Musical Instrument," which explores nature's troubling embrace of savagery and beauty. It seems that Pan always raises questions: What is he doing? What does he want? Where will he appear next? Linked to instinct, compulsion, and the spontaneous event, Pan is without a doubt the least predictable of the Greek Gods. Small wonder that he alone in the Greek pantheon sports human and animal parts. In this episode, Phil and JF are joined by Gyrus, author of the marvellous North: The Rise and Fall of the Polar Cosmos, to capture a deity who, though he has made more than one appearance on Weird Studies, remains decidedly elusive. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies): Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get your Weird Studies merchandise (https://www.redbubble.com/people/Weird-Studies/shop?asc=u) (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.) Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) REFERENCES Gyrus, "Sketches of the Goat God in Albion" (https://dreamflesh.com/essay/goat-god-albion/) Gyrus, North (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781907222276) James Hillman, Pan and the Nightmare (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780882142258) Pharmakon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmakon_(philosophy)), philosophical term Stanley Diamond, In Search of the Primitive (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780878555826) Philippe Borgeaud, The Cult of Pan in Ancient Greece (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3646890-the-cult-of-pan-in-ancient-greece) Hellier (https://www.hellier.tv/), television docuseries Weird Studies, Episode 98 on exotica (https://www.weirdstudies.com/98) Pink Floyd, [Piper at the Gates of Dawn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThePiperattheGatesofDawn) Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781514664599) Clayton Eshelman, [Juniper Fuse](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/947785.JuniperFuse)_ Plutarch “On the Silence of the Oracles” (https://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/plu/pte/pte05.htm) Peter Levine, Waking the Tiger (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781556432330) D.H. Lawrence, “Pan in America” (http://www.thegreatgodpanisdead.com/2021/02/pan-in-america.html) Jim Brandon, [The Rebirth of Pan](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1372769.TheRebirthofPan)_

Episode 102: On Pan, with Gyrus

In modern physics as in Western theology, darkness and shadows have a purely negative existence. They are merely the absence of light. In mythology and art, however, light and darkness are enjoy a kind of Manichaean equality. Each exists in its own right and lays claim to one half of the Real. In this episode, JF and Phil delve into the luxuriant gloom of the Japanese novelist Jun'ichirō Tanazaki's classic meditation on the half-forgotten virtues of the dark. Get your Weird Studies MERCH! https://www.redbubble.com/people/Weird-Studies/shop?asc=u Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies Find us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies REFERENCES Junichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780918172020) Chiaroscuro (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiaroscuro), Renaissance art style John Carpenter (dir.), Escape from L.A. (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116225/) Weird Studies, Episode 13 on Heraclitus (https://www.weirdstudies.com/13) Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in Age of Mechanical Reproduction (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781667156071) Yasujiro Ozu (dir.), Late Spring (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781667156071) Wabi Sabi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi), Japanese idea John Carpenter (dir.), Escape from NY (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082340) Jonathan Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the End of Sleep (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781781683101) Eric Voegelin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Voegelin), German-American philosopher

Episode 101: Our Fear of the Dark: On Tanizaki's 'In Praise of Shadows'

Central to the tradition of cosmic horror is the suggestion that the ultimate truth about our universe is at once knowable and unthinkable, such that one learns it only at the cost of one's sanity and soul. John Carpenter is one of a handful of horror directors to have successfully ported this idea from literature to cinema. This episode is an attempt to unearth some of the eldritch symbols buried in a selection of Carpenter's apocalyptic works, including Escape from New York, The Thing, They Live,_ In the Mouth of Madness, and the little known _Cigarette Burns. Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies Find us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies REFERENCES John Carpenter films discussed: The Thing (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084787/) Cigarette Burns (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0643109/) In the Mouth of Madness (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113409/) Prince of Darkness (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093777/) Halloween (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077651/) They Live (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096256/) Escape from New York (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082340/) Escape from L.A. (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116225/) Big Trouble in Little China (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090728/) Other References: Pascal Laugier (dir.), Martyrs (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1029234/) Srdjan Spasojevic (dir.), A Serbian Film (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1273235/) Weird Studies, Episode 90 on The Owl in Daylight (https://www.weirdstudies.com/90) Roger Corman, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Corman) American director Northrup Frye, Words with Power (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780156983655) J. R. R. Tolkien, forward to The Fellowship of the Ring Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatarri, “Percept, Affect, and Concept” in What is Philosophy (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780231079891) Weird Studies, Episode 72 on the Castrati (https://www.weirdstudies.com/72) Weird Studies, Episode 46, Thomas Ligotti’s Angel (https://www.weirdstudies.com/46) Gabriel Garcia Marquez, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” (https://www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~cinichol/CreativeWriting/323/MarquezManwithWings.htm) China Mieville, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Mi%C3%A9ville) British author Karlheinz Stockhausen, comments on 9/11 (https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/30/arts/music-the-devil-made-him-do-it.html) H. P. Lovecraft, Nyarlothotep (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9798200625857) H. P. Lovecraft, “The Haunter of the Dark” (https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/hd.aspx) Nick Land, Fanged Noumena (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780955308789) Zack Snyder, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zack_Snyder) American director Haeccaity and Quiddity (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haecceity), philosophical concepts Samuel Delaney, Dahlgren (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780375706684) Weird Studies, Episode 98 on Exotica (https://www.weirdstudies.com/98) Quentin Meillasoux, After Finitude (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780826496744) Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies (https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/Rilke.php)

Episode 100: The Price of Beauty is Horror: On the Films of John Carpenter

In this never-before-released episode recorded in 2019, Phil and JF travel to rural Oregon through the Netflix docu-series, Wild Wild Country. The series, which details the establishment of a spiritual community founded by Bhagwan Rajneesh (later called Osho) and its religious and political conflicts with its Christian neighbors, provides a starting point for a wide-ranging conversation on the nature of spirituality and religion. What emerges are surprising ties between the “spiritual, not religious” attitude and class, cultural commodification, and the culture of control that pervades modern society. But they also uncover the true “wild” card at the heart of existence that spiritual movements like that of Rajneesh can never fully control, no matter how hard they try. REFERENCES Chapman and Maclain Way (dirs), Wild Wild Country (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7768848/) Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780618918249) Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780674212770) Carl Wilson, Celine Dion’s Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780826427885) Peter Sloterdijk, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sloterdijk) German cultural theorist Weird Studies, Episode 47, Machines of Loving Grace (https://www.weirdstudies.com/47) Slavoj Žižek, On Western appropriation of Eastern religions (https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/2/zizek.php) William Burroughs, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Burroughs) American writer Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on the Societies of Control” (https://www.jstor.org/stable/778828?seq=1) Bhagwan Rajneesh/Osho, Speech on friendship (https://www.oshotimes.com/insights/lifestyle/spirituality/can-you-accept-the-master-as-your-friend/) Daniel Ingram, Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781911597100) Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780060937133) James Carse, The Finite and Infinite Games (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781476731711)

Episode 99: Curing the Human Condition: On 'Wild Wild Country'

Exotica is a kind of music that was popular in the 1950s, when it was simply known as "mood music." Though somewhat obscure today, the sound of exotica remains immediately recognizable to contemporary ears. Its use of "tribal" beats, ethereal voices, flutes and gongs evoke a world that is no more at home in the modern West than it is anywhere else on earth. With its shameless stereotyping of non-Western cultures and its aestheticization of the other, exotica rightly deserves the criticism it has drawn over the years. But as we shall see in this episode, if you stop there, you just might miss the thing that makes exotica so difficult to expunge from Western culture, and also what makes it a prime example of how the "trash stratum" sometimes becomes the site of strange visions that transcend culture altogether. REFERENCES Phil Ford, “Taboo: Time and Belief in Exotica” (https://online.ucpress.edu/representations/article/103/1/107/81624/Taboo-Time-and-Belief-in-Exotica) Future Fossils, Episode 157 (https://shows.acast.com/futurefossils/episodes/157) Weird Studies, Episode 21: The Trash Stratum (https://www.weirdstudies.com/21) Weird Studies, Episode 79: Love, Death and the Dream Life (https://www.weirdstudies.com/79) Jack Smith, “The Perfect Filmic Appositeness Maria Montez” Yma Sumac, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yma_Sumac) Peruvian singer Les Baxter, "The Oasis of Dakhla" Steely Dan, "I Heard the News" Stravinsky, Rite of Spring Les Baxter, “Hong Kong Cable Car” Jacques Riviere, review of The Rite of Spring (http://sarma.be/docs/621) Nenao Sakaki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanao_Sakaki), Japanese poet Lew Welch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lew_Welch), American Beat poet JF Martel, “Stay with Mystery: Hiroshima Mon Amour, Melancholia, and the truth of extinction” (http://notesandqueries.ca/number-106/) Jeffrey Kripal, Mutants and Mystics (https://bookshop.org/books/mutants-and-mystics-science-fiction-superhero-comics-and-the-paranormal/9780226271484) Captain Beefheart, “Orange Claw Hammer” Martin Buber, I and Thou (https://bookshop.org/books/i-and-thou/9780684717258)

Episode 98: Taboo: Time and Belief in Exotica

The question of art has been of central concern for JF and Phil since Weird Studies began in 2018. What is art? What can it do that other things can't do? How is it connected to religion, psyche, and our current historical moment? Is the endless torrent of advertisements, entertainment, memes, and porn in which seem hopelessly immersed a manifestation of art or of something else entirely? In this exploration of the main ideas in JF's book Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice, your hosts focus on these burning questions in hopes that the answers might shed light on our collective predicament and the paths that lead out of it. Photo by Petar Milošević via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wooden_spiral_stairs_(Nebotičnik,_Ljubljana).jpg) REFERENCES JF's upcoming course on the nature and power of art (https://www.nuralearning.com/art-and-contemplation.html), starting May 10th, 2021 JF Martel, [Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice](https://www.amazon.ca/Reclaiming-Art-Age-Artifice-Treatise/dp/1583945784/ref=sr11?dchild=1&keywords=reclaiming+art&qid=1619535152&sr=8-1) Weird Studies, Episode 84 on the Empress card (https://www.weirdstudies.com/84) Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (https://bookshop.org/books/the-work-of-art-in-the-age-of-mechanical-reproduction/9781453722480) Werner Herzog, Cave of Forgotten Dreams (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1664894/) Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/) Adam Savage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Savage), Special effects designer Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780816614028) Kabbalistic emanationist cosmology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_life_(Kabbalah)) Henry Corbin’s concept of the “imaginal” (https://www.amiscorbin.com/bibliographie/mundus-imaginalis-or-the-imaginary-and-the-imaginal/) Henry Shakespeare, The Tempest (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780743482837) [Tibetan book of the Dead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BardoThodol)_ James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781853260063) James Hillman, The Thought of the Heart and The Soul of the World (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780882143538) Phil Ford, “Battlefield medicine” (https://dialmformusicology.wordpress.com/2015/07/05/battlefield-medicine/) Jaques Ellul, idea of “technique” (https://ellul.org/themes/ellul-and-technique/) Alain de Botton, Religion for Atheists (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780307476821) Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith (https://bookshop.org/books/dynamics-of-faith/9780060937133)

Episode 97: Art in the Age of Artifice

Jean Cocteau's visionary rendition of Madame de Beaumont's fairy tale "Beauty and the Beast," itself the retelling of a story that may be several millennia old, is the topic of this Weird Studies episode, which proposes a journey down lunar paths to the crossroads where love and death intersect. Drawing on Surrealism, myth, and the occult, Cocteau's 1946 film transcends the limitations of media to become a living poem, a thing that is also a place, a place that is also a mind. This conversation touches on the genius of the child, the mysteries of Eros, the monstrosity of consciousness, and the sorcery of cinema. Photo by Ivan Jevtic on Unsplash Click here (https://www.nuralearning.com/art-and-contemplation.html) to register for JF's upcoming course on art. REFERENCES Jean Cocteau (dir.), La Belle et la Bête (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038348/) Jaques Maritain, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781944418762) Sergei Diaghilev (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Diaghilev), Russian impresario Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise (dir.), Beauty and the Beast (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101414/) David Thomson, Have You Seen? (https://bookshop.org/books/have-you-seen-a-personal-introduction-to-1-000-films/9780375711343) Bram Stoker, Dracula (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780141439846) Johannes Vermeer (http://www.essentialvermeer.com/), Dutch painter Philip Glass, [La Belle et la Bête](https://philipglass.com/compositions/belleetlabete/)_ (opera) Game of Thrones (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0944947/), Television series Weird Studies, Episode 84 on the Empress Card (https://www.weirdstudies.com/84) Weird Studies, Episode 94 on the Moon Card (https://www.weirdstudies.com/94)

Episode 96: Beautiful Beast: On Jean Cocteau's 'La Belle et la Bête'

Doris Lessing's uncategorizable oeuvre reached strange new heights in 1988 with the publication of her short novel The Fifth Child. The story couldn't be simpler. In the England of the 1970s, a couple determined to live out a dream that many of their generation have rejected -- the big family in the old house with the pretty garden -- conceive a child that may or may not be human. From that moment on, the boy, their fifth, becomes the alien force that will tear their dream to pieces. Profoundly ambiguous and unsettling, The Fifth Child is a weird novel that raises questions about parenthood, family, and the impenetrable depths of nature. Header Image: The Changeling by Henry Fuseli (1780) Additional music: "Fast Bossa Nova: Falling Stars" (https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Dee_Yan-Key/latin_summer/Fast_Bossa_Nova_Falling_Stars) by Dee Yan-Key REFERENCES Doris Lessing, The Fifth Child (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780679721826) Doris Lessing, Shikasta (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780394749778) M. R. James (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._R._James), weird fiction author Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780345337665) Weird Studies, Episode 67 on “Hellier” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/67) Victoria Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780674012448) David Icke, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Icke) conspiracy theorist Deros, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sharpe_Shaver) underground beings from the fiction of Richard Sharpe Shaver Hieronymus Bosch (https://www.hieronymus-bosch.org/), Dutch Renaissance painter Weird Studies, Episode 86 on “The Sandman” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/86) Slavoj Žižek, The Puppet and the Dwarf (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780262740258) Louis Sass, “The Land of Unreality: On the Phenomenology of the Schizophrenic Break” (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0732118X88900116) Louis Sass, Madness and Modernism (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780198779292) Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780804732185) Richard Thorpe (dir.), The Wizard of Oz (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032138/) Frank L. Baum, The Wizard of Oz (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780142427507) Weird Studies, bonus episode on Adventure Time (https://www.weirdstudies.com/88b) James Hillman, The Soul’s Code (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780399180149) Doris Lessing, Ben in the World (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780060934651) Roman Pulanski (dir.), Rosemary’s Baby (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063522/) Richard Donner (dir.), The Omen (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075005/) Donald Cammell (dir.), Demon Seed (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075931/)

Episode 95: Demon Seed: On Doris Lessing's 'The Fifth Child'

"Here is a weird, deceptive life." Thus does Aleister Crowley describe the meaning of one of the most sinister and spectral cards in the tarot. In this episode, Phil and JF continue their ongoing series on the twenty-two major trumps with a deep dive into the hopelessly enigmatic world of Arcanum XVIII: The Moon. After a brief chat about Voltron and professional wrestling, your hosts start on the lunar path beset by traps and illusions, in hopes that their half-blind perambulation will lead to startling insights. Image by Damien Deltenre via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20th_March_2015_total_solar_eclipse.JPG). References Roland Barthes, Mythologies (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780809071944) Anonymous, Meditations on the Tarot (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781585421619) Colin Wilson, The Occult (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781780288468) Eliphas Levi, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89liphas_L%C3%A9vi)_ French esotericist Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780684824772) Weird Studies, Episode 86 on The Sandman (weirdstudies.com/86) Plato, Republic (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781546630821) Antoine Faivre, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Faivre) scholar of esoteric studies Wouter Hanegraaff, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wouter_Hanegraaff) historian of philosophy Alastair Crowley, Book of Thoth (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780877282686) Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781420940435) Carl Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/93950.Mysterium_Coniunctionis) Peter Kingsley, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kingsley) historian of philosophy St. John of the Cross, The Dark Night of the Soul (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781640322189) J.R.R Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780618640157) Weird Studies, Episode 93 on Charles Taylor (https://www.weirdstudies.com/93) Algis Uždavinys, Philosophy as a Rite of Rebirth (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7221031-philosophy-as-a-rite-of-rebirth)

Episode 94: All is Mysterious: On the Moon Card in the Tarot

Professor Phil Ford and writer/filmmaker J. F. Martel host a series of conversations on art and philosophy, dwelling on ideas that are hard to think and art that opens up rifts in what we are pleased to call "reality."

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Weird Studies

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