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.

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)

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/)

The Book of Changes, or I Ching, is more than an ancient text. It's a metaphysical guide, a fun game, and -- to your hosts at least -- a lifelong, steadfast friend. The I Ching has come up more than once on the show, and now is the time for JF and Phil to face it head on, discussing the role it has played in their lives while delving into some of its mysteries. REFERENCES I Ching, (https://www.amazon.com/I-Ching-Book-Changes/dp/B000J4GE6Q) Wilhelm-Baynes translation I Ching, (https://www.amazon.com/Total-I-Ching-Stephen-Karcher/dp/074993980X) Stephen Karcher translation Game of Thrones, (https://www.hbo.com/game-of-thrones) HBO series George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire (https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire) George R. R. Martin, “Sandkings” in: Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories (https://www.amazon.com/Weird-Compendium-Strange-Dark-Stories/dp/0765333627) H. P. Lovecraft, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft) American writer Graham Harman, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy (https://www.amazon.com/Weird-Realism-Philosophy-Graham-Harman/dp/1780992521) Aleister Crowley, “777” (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123658.777_and_Other_Qabalistic_Writings_of_Aleister_Crowley) Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Cannibal Metaphysics (https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/cannibal-metaphysics) Joel Biroco, Calling Crane in the Shade (https://www.biroco.com) (website) Philip K. Dick, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick) American novelist Lionel Snell, a.k.a. Ramsey Dukes (http://ramseydukes.co.uk/), British occultist Richard Rutt, _Zhouyi: A New Translation with Commentary _ (https://www.amazon.com/Zhouyi-Translation-Commentary-Changes-Durham/dp/070071491X) Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gormenghast_(series)) Redmond and Hon, Teaching the I Ching (https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Ching-Changes-Religious-Studies/dp/0199766819) Weird Studies, episode 72 (https://www.weirdstudies.com/72), On the castrati Weird Studies, episode 77 (https://www.weirdstudies.com/77), On the fool tarot card Anonymous, Meditations on the Tarot (https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/408555.Meditations_on_the_Tarot) The Usual Suspects (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114814/) (movie) Colin Wilson, The Occult (https://www.amazon.com/Occult-History-Colin-Wilson/dp/0394465555)

The British writer M. John Harrison is responsible for some of the most significant incursions of the Weird into the literary imagination of the last several decades. His 1992 novel The Course of the Heart is a masterful exercise in erasing whatever boundary you care to mention, from the one between reality and mind to the one between love and horror. Recounting the lives of three friends as they play out the fateful aftermath of a magical operation that went horribly wrong, Harrison's novel gives Phil and JF the chance to talk contemporary literature, metaphysics, Gnosticism, zones (see episodes 13 & 14), myth, transcendence, history, and arachnology. Together, they weave a fragile web of ideas centered on that imperceptible something that forever trembles at the edge of our perception, beckoning us to step into its world, and out of ours. REFERENCES M. John Harrison, [The Course of the Heart](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17742.TheCourseoftheHeart ) M. John Harrison, "The Great God Pan" Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/389) Philip K. Dick, Ubik (https://www.amazon.com/Ubik-Philip-K-Dick/dp/0547572298) Philip K. Dick, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (https://www.amazon.com/Three-Stigmata-Palmer-Eldritch/dp/0547572557) Weird Studies, Episode 14 on Stalker (https://www.weirdstudies.com/14) Jonathan Carrol (https://jonathancarroll.com/), American novelist Robert Aickman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Aickman), British writer Magic Realism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_realism), literary genre Phil Ford, “An Essay on Fortuna, parts 1 and 2,” Weird Studies Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies) John Crowley, Ægypt (http://johncrowleyauthor.com/magic-and-history/) Jorge Borges," The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Approach_to_Al-Mu'tasim)" Strange Horizons, Interview with M. John Harrison (http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/articles/interview-m-john-harrison/) M. John Harrison on worldbuilding (http://web.archive.org/web/20080410181840/http://uzwi.wordpress.com/2007/01/27/very-afraid/) Thomas Ligotti, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Ligotti) American horror writer [Weird Studies subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/WeirdStudies/comments/i8h0yk/weirdstudiessynchronicityengine/)_ Albert Camus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Camus), French philosopher David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/319/the-spell-of-the-sensuous-by-david-abram/) Spiders’ nervous systems (https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-thoughts-of-a-spiderweb-20170523/) Valentinus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentinus_(Gnostic)), gnostic theologian Simon Magus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Magus), religious figure Wiccan goddess and god (https://wiccaliving.com/wiccan-goddess-god/) Bruno Schulz, The Street of Crocodiles (https://www.amazon.com/Street-Crocodiles-Classic-20th-Century-Penguin/dp/0140186255) Weird Studies, Episode 37 with Stuart Davis (https://www.weirdstudies.com/37)

Your hosts' exploration of mysticism and vision in pop music continues with two powerful pieces of popular music: Radiohead's "Pyramid Song" from the 2001 album Amnesiac, and Fran Landesman and Tommy Wolf's "Ballad of the Sad Young Men," from the 1959 Broadway musical The Nervous Set. Synchronicity rears its head as the dialogue reveals how these two gems, selected by JF and Phil with no expectation that they might form a set, begin to glow when placed side by side, amplifying and focussing each other's eldritch light. This episode touches on Neoplatonic myths of spiritual ascent, African-American spirituals, Plato's realm of Forms, Gnosticism, dream visitations by the dearly departed, the travails of the Beat generation, the objectivity of hope, the implosion of America, and that particularly modern condition of the soul which Phil calls the "Philosopher's Blues." REFERENCES Radiohead, "Pyramid Song" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_Song) Fran Landesman and Tommy Wolf, "The Ballad of the Sad Young Men" (http://greatamericansongbook.net/pages/songs/b/ballad_of_the_sad_young_men.html) Edgar Allan Poe, "The Pit and the Pendulum" (https://poestories.com/read/pit) Charles Mingus, [Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MingusMingusMingusMingusMingus) Plato, Phaedrus (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1636/1636-h/1636-h.htm) Plato, Republic (http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html) Plato's Unwritten Doctrines (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_unwritten_doctrines) The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast, episode 69: "Plutarch's Myths of Cosmic Ascent" (https://shwep.net/podcast/plutarchs-myths-of-cosmic-ascent/) William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/621/621-h/621-h.html) Pierre Hadot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Hadot), French philosopher Algis Uzdavynis, Philosophy as a Rite of Rebirth: From Ancient Egypt to Neoplatonism (https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Rite-Rebirth-Neoplatonism-7-Dec-2008/dp/B011T6X636) Charles Taylor (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Taylor), Canadian philosopher Phil Ford, "The Philosopher’s Blues" (Weird Studies Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies) exclusive) Peter Sloterdijk (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sloterdijk), German philosopher Ferdinand de Saussure (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_de_Saussure), French linguist JF Martel, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice (https://www.amazon.com/Reclaiming-Art-Age-Artifice-Manifesto/dp/1583945784) JF Martel, "Stay With Mystery: Hiroshima Mon Amour, Melancholia, and the Truth of Extinction" in Canadian Notes & Queries, issue 106: Winter 2020 (http://notesandqueries.ca/product/cnq-106-winter-2020/), edited by Sharon English and Patricia Robertson Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction (https://www.amazon.com/Nihil-Unbound-Enlightenment-Extinction-Brassier/dp/023052205X) Jay Landesman and Theodore J. Flicker, [The Nervous Set](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheNervousSet), musical Phil Ford, [Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture](https://www.amazon.com/Phil-Ford/dp/0199939918/ref=tmmhrdswatch0?encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=) Jay Landesman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Landesman), American publisher and writer Marshall McLuhan, "The Psychopathology of 'Time & Life'" (https://ionandbob.blogspot.com/2018/02/marshall-mcluhan-psychopathology-of.html) Marshall McLuhan, [The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheMechanicalBride) William Butler Yeats, "Sailing to Byzantium" (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43291/sailing-to-byzantium) Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country For Old Men (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477348/) Mike Duncan (Twitter) Jeff Chang, [Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54754.CantStopWontStop)_ Karl Marx, Capital: Volume I (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-I.pdf)

In this episode of Weird Studies, an improvised analysis of two pop songs -- Nina Simone's version of James Shelton's "Lilac Wine" and Ghostface Killah's visionary "Underwater" -- becomes the occasion for a deep dive to the weird wellspring of artistic creation. In trying to understand these songs and why they love them so much, your hosts touch on themes such as necromancy, decadence, liebestod, visionary experience, the Muslim image of paradise, the necessity of rifts, Norman Mailer's concept of "dream life," and the magical operation that is sampling. Header image: Boris Kasimov, Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Underwater_sculptures_at_Molinere_Underwater_Sculpture_Park.jpg) REFERENCES James Shelton, "Lilac Wine" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilac_Wine) Nina Simone, "Lilac Wine" from the album WIld is the Wind (https://www.discogs.com/Nina-Simone-Wild-Is-The-Wind/master/122235) (1966) Ghostface Killah, "Underwater, from the album Fishscale (https://www.discogs.com/Ghostface-Killah-Fishscale/release/666352) (2006) MF Doom, "Orange Blossoms," from the album Special Herbs, Volume 4, 5 & 6 (https://www.discogs.com/Metal-Fingers-Special-Herbs-456/release/221258) Richard Strauss, [Salome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salome(opera))_ Weird Studies, episode 25 (https://www.weirdstudies.com/25): David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch C. G. Jung's practice of active imagination (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_imagination) JF Martel, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice (https://www.northatlanticbooks.com/shop/reclaiming-art-in-the-age-of-artifice/) Thomas Mann, [Death in Venice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeathinVenice) Paul Horn, Visions (https://www.discogs.com/Paul-Horn-Visions/release/1825281) Alexander Mackendrick (dir.), [The Sweet Smell of Success](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SweetSmellofSuccess)_ Les Baxter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Baxter), American composer Les Baxter, "Papagayo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU35vSL5oCQ)" Debussy, [Nocturnes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocturnes(Debussy))_ Rebecca Leydon (https://www.oberlin.edu/rebecca-leydon), music scholar Weird Studies episodes 73 (https://www.weirdstudies.com/73) and 74 (https://www.weirdstudies.com/74), on C. G. Jung's aesthetic vision Alexander Courage, Theme from Star Trek (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_from_Star_Trek) ("Where No Man Has Gone Before") Richard Dawkins, [The Selfish Gene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheSelfishGene) Norman Mailer, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket" (https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a3858/superman-supermarket/) James Joyce, Ulysses (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4300/4300-h/4300-h.htm) and [Finnegans Wake](https://archive.org/stream/finneganswake00joycuoft/finneganswake00joycuoftdjvu.txt)_

At the time The Mothman Prophecies' was released in 1975, and again when he penned an afterword for the 2001 edition, John Keel appeared to have made up his mind about the "ultraterrestrials" that he had tracked and hunted for most of his adult life. They were unconcerned about the welfare of the people whose lives they threw into disarray, he said. They were liars, cheats, and frauds who refused to play fair. They saw good and evil as synonymous and they were dangerous. Like many other explorers of reality's uncharted waters, John Keel returned to port knowing less than he did (or thought he did) when he set out. And this led him to ponder the possibility that only thing to know about such matters is that there is nothing to know -- that the universal mind, as Charles Fort had suggested before him, was insane. In this episode of Weird Studies, JF and Phil share their thoughts on The Mothman Prophecies, focusing less on the creatures and events that haunted Point Pleasant in 1966-67 than on how these things affected the brilliant writer who was chosen to be their baffled chronicler. REFERENCES John A. Keel, [The Mothman Prophecies: A True Story](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheMothmanProphecies) William S. Burroughs, [Naked Lunch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NakedLunch)_ Stephanie Quick (https://stephaniequick.home.blog)'s blog Weird Studies talks to Jeffrey J. Kripal: episode 39 (https://www.weirdstudies.com/39)and episode 45 (https://www.weirdstudies.com/45) H. P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu" (https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cc.aspx) Neil Gaiman, [American Gods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmericanGods)_ Jeffrey J. Kripal, Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal (https://www.amazon.com/Mutants-Mystics-Science-Superhero-Paranormal/dp/022627148X) David Lynch's [Twin Peaks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TwinPeaks)_ David Lynch, [Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TwinPeaks:FireWalkwithMe)_ Bob Lazar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Lazar), American engineer (?) William James (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James), American philosopher

"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man can reason away." This line from a Doobie Brothers song is probably one of the most profound in the history of rock-'n'-roll. It is profound for all the reasons (or unreasons) explored in this discussion, which lasers in on just one of the major trumps of the traditional tarot deck, that of the Fool. The Fool is integral to the world, yet stands outside it. The Fool is an idiot but also a sage. The Fool does not know; s/he intuits, improvises a path through the brambles of existence. We intend this episode on the Fool to be the first in an occasional series covering all twenty-two of the major trumps of the Tarot of Marseilles. REFERENCES The Fool (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Jean_Dodal_Tarot_trump_Fool.jpg) in the tarot St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Epistle_to_the_Corinthians) Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey Into Christian Hermeticism (https://www.amazon.com/Meditations-Tarot-Journey-Christian-Hermeticism-ebook/dp/B00B1FG9PI) Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth (http://www.thule-italia.net/esoterismo/Aleister%20Crowley/Aleister%20Crowley%20-%20The%20book%20of%20Thoth.pdf) Plato, Phaedrus (http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.html) Weird Studies episode 60 (https://www.weirdstudies.com/60) - Space is the Place: On Sun Ra, Gnosticism, and the Tarot Till Eulenspiegel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Till_Eulenspiegel), folk figure Aleister Crowley, [Magick Without Tears](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MagickWithoutTears) Weird Studies episode 75 (https://www.weirdstudies.com/75) - Our Old Friend the Monolith: On Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey Weird Studies episode 76 (https://www.weirdstudies.com/76) - Below the Abyss: On Bergson's Metaphysics Rider-Waite Tarot Deck (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rider-Waite_tarot_deck) Richard Wagner, Parsifal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsifal) G. W. F. Hegel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel), German philosopher Ramsey Dukes, Words Made Flesh: Information in Formation (https://www.amazon.com/Words-Made-Flesh-Information-Formation/dp/0904311112) George Spencer Brown, [Laws of Form](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LawsofForm) Alain Badiou, Deleuze: The Clamor of Being (https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/deleuze) [Punch and Judy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PunchandJudy), British puppet show George P. Hansen, The Trickster and the Paranormal (http://www.tricksterbook.com) Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living (https://www.amazon.com/Importance-Living-Lin-Yutang/dp/0688163521) Thomas Mann, [Death in Venice](https://www.amazon.com/Death-Venice-Thomas-Mann/dp/1420958178/ref=sr11?dchild=1&keywords=Death+in+Venice&qid=1594182534&s=books&sr=1-1) Phil Ford's lecture on Death in Venice (Patreon exclusive (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies)!) Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2638/2638-h/2638-h.htm) Hal Ashby (dir.), [Being There](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeingThere)_ Alejandro Jodorowsky and Marianne Costa, The Way of the Tarot (https://www.amazon.com/Way-Tarot-Spiritual-Teacher-Cards/dp/1594772630) Frank Pavich (dir.), [Jodorowsky’s Dune](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodorowsky%27sDune)_ Tarot of Marseilles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarot_of_Marseilles) André Breton (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/André_Breton), French surrealist artist

According to the French philosopher Henri Bergson, there are two ways of knowing the world: through analysis or through intuition. Analysis is our normal mode of apprehension. It involves knowing what's out there through the accumulation and comparison of concepts. Intuition is a direct engagement with the absolute, with the world as it exists before we starting tinkering with it conceptually. Bergson believed that Western metaphysics erred from the get-go when it gave in to the all-too-human urge to take the concepts by which we know things for the things themselves. His entire oeuvre was an attempt to snap us out of that spell and plug us directly into the flow of pure duration, that primordial time that is the real Real. In this episode, JF and Phil discuss the genius -- and possible limitations -- of his metaphysics. REFERENCES Henri Bergson, "Introduction to Metaphysics" (http://www.reasoned.org/dir/lit/int-meta.pdf) Weird Studies episode 13 (https://www.weirdstudies.com/13) -- The Obscure: On the Philosophy of Heraclitus Weird Studies episode 16 (https://www.weirdstudies.com/16): On Dogen Zenji's 'Genjokoan' Bertrand Russel's critique of Bergson's philosophy (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Philosophy_of_Bergson_(Russell)) Dōgen Zenji, Shōbōgenzō (https://www.amazon.com/Shobogenzo-Zen-Essays-Dogen-Eihei/dp/0824814010) Wiliam James, Principles of Psychology (https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/Principles/) Plato, Theaetetus (http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/theatu.html) Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency (https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/after-finitude-9781441173836/) Aleister Crowley (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley), British occultist Graham Harman, "The Third Table" (https://www.amazon.com/Graham-Harman-Thoughts-Documenta-Gedanken/dp/3775729348) Weird Studies episode 8 (https://www.weirdstudies.com/8) - On Graham Harman's "The Third Table" Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4352) Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5740/5740-pdf.pdf)

When the quarantine began, professors around the world raced to put their classes online, and for the Jacobs School's big undergraduate music history course (M402 represent!) Phil created a series of solo podcasts, many of which have been appearing on the Weird Studies Patreon site. Our patrons seem to be enjoying them, so we thought we'd publish the first one ("The Duke of Ellington") as an off-week bonus for all our listeners, partly as a teaser for the subscriber-only stuff on Patreon and partly because Duke Ellington is cool. There's a bit of technical music talk in this, but you can ignore it and still get the main point: Ellington's early short film Symphony in Black and his subsequent orchestral suite Black Brown and Beige represent his lifelong project of using his "beyond category" music to articulate a vision of African American past and future. Please note: this was Phil's first attempt at doing a solo podcast in far-from-ideal circumstances, and the sound is pretty unpolished in places. He got his act together for the later ones; go check them out at https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies. REFERENCES Fred Waller (dir.), Symphony In Black - A Rhapsody of Negro Life (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPD-8-l68L4) Duke Ellington, Black, Brown, and Beige (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxqZNeMGUxg) Dudley Murphy (dir.), Black and Tan Fantasy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWge47vuatY) John Howland, [Ellington Uptown: Duke Ellington, James P. Johnson, and the Birth of Concert Jazz](https://www.press.umich.edu/349615/ellingtonuptown)_

"You don't find reality only in your own backyard, you know," Stanley Kubrick once told an interviewer. "In fact, sometimes that's the last place you'll find it." Oddly, this episode of Weird Studies begins with Phil Ford hatching the idea of putting a replica of the monolith from 2001 in his backyard. As the ensuing discussion suggests, this would amount to putting reality -- or the Real, as we like to call it -- in the place where it may be least apparent. Perhaps that is what Kubrick did when he planted his monolithic film in thousands of movie theatres back in 1968. Moviegoers went in expecting a Kubrickian twist on Buck Rogers; they came out changed by the experience, much like the hominids of great veld in the "Dawn of Man" sequence that opens the film. This is what all great art does, and if you look closely, maybe 2001 can tell you something about how it does it. Because in the end, the film is the monolith, and the monolith is all art. REFERENCES Stanley Kubrick (dir.), 2001: A Space Odyssey (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/) Arthur C. Clarke, "The Sentinel" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sentinel_(short_story)) Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey (https://www.foliosociety.com/ca/2001-a-space-odyssey.html) (novel) Clement Greenberg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Greenberg), American art critic Stanley Kubrick (dir.), The Shining (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081505/) Sergei Eisenstein, [Film Form: Essays in Film Theory](https://www.amazon.com/Film-Form-Essays-Theory/dp/0156309203/ref=pdlpo14t0/147-0144282-1131014?encoding=UTF8&pdrdi=0156309203&pdrdr=37cf94c0-adb2-4fc2-bbfa-91b00773da7f&pdrdw=CdtxC&pdrdwg=jkLXJ&pfrdp=7b36d496-f366-4631-94d3-61b87b52511b&pfrdr=9KCP3Y7C1RPE4XDH7N9D&psc=1&refRID=9KCP3Y7C1RPE4XDH7N9D)_ Weird Studies episode 62: It's Like "The Shining," But With Nuns: On "Black Narcissus" Ligeti, Atmosphères Gerard Loughlin, [Alien Sex: The Body and Desire in Cinema and Theology](https://books.google.ca/books?id=5WZwCtrqJ8kC&pg=PA73&rediresc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false)_ Jay Weidner, Kubrick's Odyssey: Secrets Hidden in the Films of Stanley Kubrick (https://www.amazon.ca/Kubricks-Odyssey-Secrets-Hidden-Films/dp/B004PF0FJM) Rob Ager's analysis (https://www.collativelearning.com/2001%20analysis%20new.html) of 2001 (Ager was criticized for not citing Loughlin above) Eric Norton's Playboy interview (https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/2016/10/02/playboy-interview-stanley-kubrick/) with Stanley Kubrick J. F. Martel, "The Kubrick Gaze" (https://www.amazon.com/Toward-2012-Perspectives-Next-Age/dp/B002PJ4L72) in Daniel Pinchbeck & Ken Jordan (eds.), Toward 2012: Perspectives on the Next Age J. F. Martel, "The Future is Immanent: Speculations on a Possible World" (https://realitysandwich.com/149962/the-future-is-immanent-speculations-on-a-possible-world/) Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bergson/) Sid Meier's Civilization V (https://civilization.com/civilization-5/) Stanley Kubrick (dir.), Dr Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/) Stanley Kubrick (dir.), A Clockwork Orange (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066921/) Dziga Vertov, Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov (https://www.amazon.com/Kino-Eye-Writings-Dziga-Vertov/dp/0520056302) Marshall McLuhan, [Understanding Media](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnderstandingMedia)_ Martin Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Question_Concerning_Technology) Gilbert Ryle, "Improvisation" (https://academic.oup.com/mind/article-abstract/LXXXV/337/69/974404?redirectedFrom=PDF)

In this second part of their exploration of C. G. Jung's essay "On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry," JF and Phil try to discern the psychological and metaphysical implications of the great Swiss psychologist's theory of art. For one, this involves discussing what Jung meant by archetypes, and how these relate to the artists who bring them forth in artistic works. This in turn leads to a discussion of the emergent artwork as an "autonomous complex," that is, as a self-moving spirit that requires the artist merely as a conduit for its manifestation in human -- and cosmic -- history. REFERENCES Carl Gustav Jung, "On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry" (http://www.studiocleo.com/librarie/jung/essay.html) Arthur Machen, "Hieroglyphics: A Note Upon Ecstasy" (https://archive.org/details/hieroglyphicsnot00mach) Rick Riordan, [Percy Jackson & the Olympians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PercyJackson%26theOlympians) series of novels Robert Altman (director), Nashville (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073440/) Homer, The Odyssey (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odyssey) Jacques Offenbach, [The Tales of Hoffmann](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheTalesofHoffmann)_ E. T. A. Hoffmann, "The Sandman" (http://art3idea.psu.edu/metalepsis/texts/sandman.pdf) David Lynch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lynch), American filmmaker (the Dionysian!) Stanley Kubrick (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Kubrick), American filmmaker (the Apollonian!) Richard Wagner's idea of Gesamtkunstwerk (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesamtkunstwerk) William S. Burroughs, [Naked Lunch ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NakedLunch)_ Johannes Vermeer, Woman Holding a Balance (https://www.nga.gov/collection/highlights/vermeer-woman-holding-a-balance.html), and JF's analysis (https://www.metapsychosis.com/consciousness-in-the-aesthetic-imagination/) thereof Lisa Ruddick, "When Nothing is Cool" (https://thepointmag.com/criticism/when-nothing-is-cool/) Weird Studies episode 5 (https://www.weirdstudies.com/5): Reading Lisa Ruddick's "When Nothing is Cool"

"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 is the first of two conversations that Phil and JF are devoting to C. G. Jung's seminal essay, "On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry," first delivered in a 1922 lecture. It was in this text that Jung most clearly distilled his thoughts on the power and function of art. In this first part, your hosts focus their energies on Jung's puralistic style, opposing it not just to Freud's monism (which Jung critiques in the paper) but also to the monism of those other two "masters of suspicion," Marx and Nietzsche. For Jung, art is not a branch of psychology, economics, philosophy, or science. It constitutes its own sphere, and non-artists who would investigate the nature of art would do well to respect the line that art has drawn in the sand. Weird Studies listenters will know this line as the boundary between the general and the specific, the common and the singular, the mundane and the mystical... REFERENCES C. G. Jung, "On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry" (http://www.studiocleo.com/librarie/jung/essay.html) Joshua Gunn, Modern Occult Rhetoric: Mass Media and the Drama of Secrecy in the Twentieth Century (http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Modern-Occult-Rhetoric,5019.aspx) Peter Kingsley, Catafalque: Carl Jung and the End of Humanity (https://peterkingsley.org/product/catafalque/) Sigmund Freud (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud), Austrian psychologist Kinka Usher (director), Mystery Men (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0132347/) Theodor Adorno, “Bach Defended Against his Devotees” Aleister Crowley (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley), English magician C. G. Jung, The Red Book: Liber Novus (https://philemonfoundation.org/published-works/red-book/) Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell, [The Power of Myth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThePowerofMyth)_ C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (https://www.amazon.com/Memories-Dreams-Reflections-Carl-Gustav-ebook/dp/B004FYZK52) C. G. Jung, [The Portable Jung](https://www.amazon.com/Portable-Jung-Library/dp/0140150706/ref=sr11?dchild=1&keywords=Viking+Portable+Jung&qid=1589374313&s=digital-text&sr=1-1-catcorr) Friedrich Nietzsche, "On the Use and Abuse of History for Life" in: [Untimely Meditations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UntimelyMeditations)_ Weird Studies, episode 49 (https://www.weirdstudies.com/49): Nietzsche on History Weird Studies, episode 70 (https://www.weirdstudies.com/70): Masks All the Way Down, with James Curcio Christian Kerslake, Deleuze and the Unconscious (https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/deleuze-and-the-unconscious-9781441154996/) Joshua Ramey, The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and Spiritual Ordeal (https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-hermetic-deleuze) Paul Ricoeur (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ricoeur/), French philosopher Rudolph Steiner (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Steiner), Austrian esotericist

For over two centuries in early modern Italy, boys were selected for their singing talent castrated before the onset of puberty. The goal was to preserve the qualities of their voice even as they grew into manhood. The procedure resulted in other physiological changes which, combined with an unnaturally high voice, made the castrati the most prodigious singers on the continent. As Martha Feldman shows in her book The Castrato, a masterpiece of cultural history, the castrated singer was such a singular figure that he invited comparisons with angels, animals, and kings, attracting adoration and ridicule in equal measures. The castrato was a true liminal being, and as JF and Phil discover in this episode of Weird Studies, an unlikely herald of the present age. REFERENCES Martha Feldman, The Castrato: Reflections on Natures and Kinds (https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520292444/the-castrato) Stanley Kubrick (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Kubrick), American filmmaker Alessandro Moreschi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandro_Moreschi), the last castrato, singing "Ave Maria (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLjvfqnD0ws)" Baruch Spinoza, Ethics (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3800/3800-h/3800-h.htm) X-Men (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Men) Gabriel Garcia Marquez, "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Very_Old_Man_with_Enormous_Wings)" Thomas Ligotti, "Mrs Ligotti's Angel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm1iH6EIMAA)", read by horror writer Jon Padgett (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7189686.Jon_Padgett) Weird Studies, Episode 48: Thomas Ligotti's Angel (https://www.weirdstudies.com/46) Thomas Aquinas, [Summa Theologica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SummaTheologica)_ Genesis P-Orridge (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_P-Orridge), American musician and occultist

On the surface, the phrase "the medium is the message," prophetic as it may have been when Marshall McLuhan coined it, points a now-obvious fact of our wired world, namely that the content of any medium is less important than its form. The advent of email, for instance, has brought about changes in society and culture that are more far-reaching than the content of any particular email. On the other hand, this aphorism of McLuhan's has the ring of an utterance of the Delphic Oracle. As Phil proposes in this episode of Weird Studies, it is an example of what Zen practitioners call a koan, a statement that occludes and illumines in equal measures, a jewel whose shining surface is an invitation to descend into dark depths. Join JF and Phil as they discuss the mystical and cosmic implications of McLuhan's oracular vision. REFERENCES McLuhan, [Understanding Media](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnderstandingMedia)_ The Playboy interview (https://nextnature.net/2009/12/the-playboy-interview-marshall-mcluhan) McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, [The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheMediumIstheMassage) Graham Harman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Harman), American philosopher Clement Greenberg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Greenberg), American critic Dale Pendell, [Pharmako/Poeia: Plant Powers, Poisons, and Herbcraft](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1556438052/ref=dbsadefrwtbiblvppii2) Brian Eno (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Eno), British composer Marshall and Eric McLuhan, The Laws of Media: The New Science (https://utorontopress.com/ca/laws-of-media-1) _ Jonathan Sterne, _The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-audible-past) Eric McLuhan and Frank Zingrone (editors), The Essential McLuhan (https://www.amazon.com/Essential-McLuhan-Eric/dp/0465019951) Charles A. Reich, [The Greening of America](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheGreeningofAmerica)_ David Fincher (director), The Social Network (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/) _ Gilles Deleuze, _Cinema I (https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/cinema-1) _and _Cinema II (https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/cinema-2) Jean Gebser, The Ever-Present Origin (https://www.amazon.com/Ever-Present-Origin-Part-Aperspectival-Manifestations/dp/0821407694) Eric Havelock,_ Preface to Plato (https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674699069)_ Walter J. Ong (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_J._Ong), American theorist Plato, [Republic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic(Plato))_

James Curcio is an American multidisciplinary artist and nonfiction writer whose works include the novels Join My Cult, The Party at the World's End, and the upcoming Tales from When I Had a Face. Recently, Curcio edited Masks: Bowie and Artists of Artifice, an anthology of essays by various thinkers and artists on the complex interplay of fact and fiction, self and other, in the life of the modern creator of artistic works. David Bowie's career, from the early experimentations to the great working that was his final album Blackstar, provides the book's gravitational field. In his effort to better plumb the mysteries of the aesthetic universe, Curcio penned the anthology's opening essay, "Masks All the Way Down," and it is on that piece that this conversation focuses. Join James, Phil and JF as they discuss the terrifying and liberating idea of an aesthetic cosmos as seen from the vantage point of the artist who learns that with new each work comes a new face, an amalgam of symbols and forces drawn from a depth of surfaces, a paper-thin dream that goes ever so deep... REFERENCES James Curcio (editor), Masks: Bowie and Artists of Artifice (www.intellectbooks/masks) James Curcio's website: https://www.jamescurcio.com James Curcio's new novel, Tales from When I Had a Face (www.TalesFromWhenIHadAFace.com) David Bowie, Blackstar (https://www.imablackstar.com) Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (https://archive.org/details/bodiesthatmatter00butl) Poppy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poppy_(entertainer)), American singer Anatta (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatta), the Buddhist concept of no-self Nagarjuna (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagarjuna), Indian philosopher Yukio Mishima (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukio_Mishima), Japanese writer Hunter S. Thompson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_S._Thompson), American writer Lewis A. Sass, [Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature, and Thought](https://books.google.ca/books/about/MadnessandModernism.html?id=fCddtAEACAAJ&rediresc=y)_ Friedrich Nietzsche, "On the Use and Abuse of History for Life" in Untimely Meditations (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/nietzsche-untimely-meditations/4AF50CD140CAB4EA8D249422BF60D5E5) Ornette Coleman, [Change of the Century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChangeoftheCentury)_ Thomas Merton, [The Way of Chuang Tzu](https://books.google.ca/books/about/TheWayofChuangTzu.html?id=Odh47AxzR4C&rediresc=y) Vladimir Nabokov (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Nabokov), Russian novelist Nicholas Roeg (director), The Man Who Fell to Earth (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074851/) Raphael Bob-Waksberg (creator), [BoJack Horseman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BoJackHorseman)_ Richard Dyer, [Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society](https://books.google.ca/books/about/HeavenlyBodies.html?id=oUJ0Qbse7lYC&rediresc=y) Euripides, [The Bacchae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheBacchae)_ Special Guest: James Curcio.

What is there to say about the COVID-19 virus that hasn't already been said, over and over again, all around the world, in quaratined houses and on TV and social media and countless Zoom chats ... what can we say that you haven't heard? Well, probably nothing. But we are now at the point where we realize that the real importance of the things we say is not their content, but the mere fact of saying them. As Marshall McLuhan said, the medium is the message, and at a time when we have been driven into separate solitudes, we are discovering that the real meaning of our utterances might be something like "hello, are you there?" and "I am here, talking to you." In that spirit, Phil and JF have a conversation about William James's essay "On Some Mental Effects of the Earthquake," partly to discuss the ways that it's relevant to our present circumstances and the ways it's not, but mostly to make human connections, both with each other and with Weird Studies listeners. As JF says, stay close, but keep your distance. REFERENCES William James, "On Some Mental Effects of the Earthquake" (http://fullreads.com/essay/on-some-mental-effects-of-the-earthquake/) William James, Writings 1902-1910 (https://www.loa.org/books/66-writings-1902-1910) Noel Black (director), "To See the Invisible Man" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_See_the_Invisible_Man), 2nd segment of episode 16 of The Twilight Zone (1985-86) Weird Studies no. 29, “On Lovecraft” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/29) Weird Studies no. 64, “Dreams and Shadows: On Ursula Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/64) Weird Studies no. 67, “Goblins, Goat-Gods and Gates: On Hellier” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/67) Martin Heidegger, “‘Only a God Can Save Us’: The Spiegel Interview" (http://www.ditext.com/heidegger/interview.html) Bruno Latour, "An Inquiry Into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns" (http://modesofexistence.org/) H.P. Lovecraft, “Nyarlathotep” (http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/n.aspx)

In preparation for an upcoming special episode on living in the early days of the Covid-19 Pandemic, here's Phil Ford reading an essay William James wrote on his experience of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. REFERENCES William James, "On Some Mental Effects of the Earthquake" (http://fullreads.com/essay/on-some-mental-effects-of-the-earthquake/)

In 1979, the American psychologist James Hillman published The Dream and the Underworld, a polemical meditation on the nature of dreams. Rejecting the orthodoxies of both Freud and Jung, Hillman argued that the the "nightworld" of dream should not play second fiddle to the "dayworld" of waking life, because in the soul as on earth, day and night are equally essential, and equally real. To reduce a dream to a message or interpretation is to fail the dream. In order for dreams to do their work on us, says Hillman, we must cease to regard them as hallucinations, mere metaphors, epiphenomena, or illusions, and instead see them as the imaginal other life we all must live. Every night, for Hillman, each of us descends into the underworld to encounter those forces that shape us and our surroundings. The way down is the way up. REFERENCES James Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld (https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Underworld-James-Hillman/dp/0060906820) T. S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men" (https://msu.edu/~jungahre/transmedia/the-hollow-men.html) Walter Pater, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2398) George Steiner, Real Presences (https://www.amazon.com/Real-Presences-George-Steiner/dp/0226772349) Hakim Bey, Orgies of the Hemp Eaters: Cuisine, Slang, Literature and Ritual of Cannabis Culture (https://www.amazon.com/Orgies-Hemp-Eaters-Literature-Cannabis/dp/1570271437) Erik Davis, High Strangeness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies (https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/high-weirdness) Brad Warner on drugs and Buddhism (http://hardcorezen.info/sex-and-drugs-and-buddhism/5962) Aldous Huxley, [The Doors of Perception](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheDoorsofPerception)_ Jonathan Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep (https://www.versobooks.com/books/1570-24-7) Christopher Nolan (dir.), Inception (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/) Jorge Luis Borges, "Nightmares" in Seven Nights (https://www.amazon.com/Jorge-Luis-Borges-1984-10-16-Paperback/dp/B00H86QLHK) Henri Bergson, Dreams (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20842)

On the night before this episode of Weird Studies was released, a bunch of folks on the Internet performed a collective magickal working. Prompted by the paranormal investigator Greg Newkirk, they watched the final episode of the documentary series Hellier at the same time -- 10:48 PM EST -- in order to see what would happen. Listeners who are familiar with this series, of which Newkirk is both a protagonist and a producer, will recall that the last episode features an elaborate attempt at gate opening involving no less than Pan, the Ancient Greek god of nature. If we weren't so cautious (and humble) in our imaginings, we at Weird Studies might consider the possibility that this episode is a retrocausal effect of that operation. In it, we discuss the show that took the weirdosphere by storm last year, touching on topics such as subterranean humanoids, the existence of "Ascended Masters," Aleister Crowley's secret cipher, the Great God Pan, and the potential dangers of opening gates to other worlds ... or of leaving them closed. REFERENCES Karl Pfeiffer (director), Hellier (https://www.hellier.tv) Philip K. Dick, Valis (https://www.amazon.com/VALIS-Valis-Trilogy-Philip-Dick/dp/0547572417) Weird Studies episode 12 - The Dark Eye: On the Films of Rodney Ascher (https://www.weirdstudies.com/12) John Benson Brooks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Benson_Brooks), American musician Phil Ford, Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture (https://www.amazon.com/Dig-Sound-Music-Hip-Culture/dp/0199939918) Thelema (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelema) Allen H. Greenfield, [The Complete Secret Cipher of the Ufonauts](https://www.amazon.com/Complete-SECRET-CIPHER-UfOnauts/dp/171864535X/ref=pdsbs14t0/133-7739091-0346850?encoding=UTF8&pdrdi=171864535X&pdrdr=353611af-e47e-4e30-8a57-660b52cf9fcc&pdrdw=4jKmT&pdrdwg=zk2TP&pfrdp=5cfcfe89-300f-47d2-b1ad-a4e27203a02a&pfrdr=6316BW6KREEPKCF1G4T8&psc=1&refRID=6316BW6KREEPKCF1G4T8)_ Secret cipher online tool (https://www.naeq.io/about/) Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law (https://www.sacred-texts.com/oto/engccxx.htm) Gematria (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gematria) John Keel, [The Mothman Prophecies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheMothmanProphecies) Eric Wargo, [Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious](https://www.amazon.com/Time-Loops-Precognition-Retrocausation-Unconscious/dp/1938398920/ref=cmcrarpdproducttop?ie=UTF8)_ Grant Morrison, [The Invisibles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheInvisibles)_ Genesis P. Orridge (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_P-Orridge), American artist Alex Reed, [Assimilate: A Critical History of Industrial Music](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assimilate:ACriticalHistoryofIndustrialMusic) Helena Blavatsky (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helena_Blavatsky), Russian theosophist Annie Besant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Besant), British theosophist Peter J. Carroll (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_J._Carroll), British occultist Kenneth Grant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Grant), British occultist C. G. Jung, The Red Book (https://www.brainpickings.org/2010/01/20/carl-jung-the-red-book/) Alan Chapman and Duncan Barford, "Chinese Whispers: The Origin of LAM" in The Blood of the Saints (https://archive.org/details/01TheBloodOfTheSaints) Richard Sharpe Shaver (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sharpe_Shaver), American writer and contactee James Hillman, [Pan and the Nightmare](https://books.google.ca/books/about/PanandtheNightmare.html?id=OokQAQAAIAAJ&rediresc=y) Occultist Paul Weston's blog post (http://www.paulwestonglastonbury.com/hellier-interview-featuring-allen-greenfield-paul-weston/) on Hellier John Keel, [The Mothman Prophecies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheMothmanProphecies) Peter Kingsley, Catafalque (https://peterkingsley.org/product/catafalque/) Eric Voegeln, [The New Science of Politics: An Introduction](https://books.google.ca/books/about/TheNewScienceofPolitics.html?id=kNfBCKFB8WMC&rediresc=y)_ and [Science, Politics, and Gnosticism](https://www.amazon.com/Science-Politics-Gnosticism-Eric-Voegelin/dp/1932236481/ref=sr11?keywords=science+politics+and+gnosticism&qid=1583333002&s=books&sr=1-1) Auguste Comte (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Comte), French philosopher Colin Wilson, [The Occult: A History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheOccult:AHistory)_

In the paper discussed in this episode, Phil Ford coins the term "diviner's time" to denote a particular feeling that will be familiar to anyone who has engaged in divinatory or magical practice, namely the feeling that it all means something, that the universe, with all its chaos and randomness, nevertheless contains -- or is itself -- a kind of music. This episode goes deep down the rabbit hole as Phil and JF try to wrap their heads around conceptions of time, causality, and meaning that are very different from our usual understanding of those terms. REFERENCES Phil Ford, "Diviner’s Time" (https://www.patreon.com/posts/33549091) (Patreon exclusive) Karl Pfeifer (director), Hellier (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1FwIuicx88) Joshua Ramey, "Contingency Without Unreason: Speculation After Meillassoux" (https://philpapers.org/rec/RAMCWU-2) E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Witchcraft-Oracles-and-Magic-Among-the-Azande) Jung, "On Synchronicity" Jung, [Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle](https://archive.org/stream/223463118SYNCHRONICITYAnAcausalConnectingPrincipleJung/223463118-SYNCHRONICITY-An-Acausal-Connecting-Principle-Jungdjvu.txt)_ Bruno Latour, An Inquiry Into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns (http://modesofexistence.org) Grant Morrison (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTMFBYXmvMk) on chaos magic, the occult, and sigil creation Austin Osman Spare's sigil theory (https://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/chaos/spare/aosig.html) Eric Wargo, [Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious](https://www.amazon.com/Time-Loops-Precognition-Retrocausation-Unconscious/dp/1938398920/ref=sr11?keywords=time+loops+wargo&qid=1582046494&s=books&sr=1-1) Alan Chapman, [Advanced Magick for Beginners](https://archive.org/stream/advanced-magick-for-beginners-alan-chapman/advanced-magick-for-beginners-alan-chapmandjvu.txt)_ William James's essays in psychical research: bibliography (https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674267084&content=toc) Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency (https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=After+Finitude:+An+Essay+on+the+Necessity+of+Contingency&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8) Toronto World Youth Day 2002 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Youth_Day_2002) Crowley, [Magick Without Tears](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MagickWithoutTears) Leibniz's concept of pre-established harmony (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-established_harmony) Matthew Segall on the Greek concepts of time, "Minding Time: Chronos, Kairos and Aion in an Archetypal Cosmos" (https://footnotes2plato.com/2015/05/15/minding-time-chronos-kairos-and-aion-in-an-archetypal-cosmos/) Richard Lester (director), Hard Day's Night (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058182/) Freud, "The Uncanny" (https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/freud1.pdf) Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rudolf-Otto/The-Idea-of-the-Holy) Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics: An Introduction (https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/N/bo3622811.html) Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, or, Cosmos and History (https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Eternal-Return-Cosmos-History/dp/0691097984) Charles Taylor, [A Secular Age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASecularAge)

B. W. Powe is a Canadian poet, novelist, essayist and professor at York University, in Toronto. His work, though it covers an immense range of topics from politics and poetics to magic and technology, proceeds from a mystical apprehension of the universe as the locus of magical operations, the site of experiments in cosmic becoming. In his various books and essays, Powe continues a uniquely Canadian form of the visionary tradition whose luminaries include his former teachers Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye. In this episode, he joins JF and Phil for an exploration of the meaning, potency, and danger of the visionary in art and literature. Header image: Detail of "Green Color" by Gausanchennai (Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Green_color.jpg)). REFERENCES B. W. Powe's website (https://bwpowe.net) B. W. Powe, [The Charge in the Global Membrane](https://www.amazon.com/Charge-Global-Membrane-B-Powe/dp/0997502185/ref=cmcrarpdproducttop?ie=UTF8)_ B. W. Powe, [Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye: Apocalypse and Alchemy](https://www.amazon.com/Marshall-McLuhan-Northrop-Frye-Apocalypse/dp/1442616164/ref=tmmpapswatch0?encoding=UTF8&qid=1580849056&sr=1-1) Frank Lentricchia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Lentricchia), "Last Will and Testament of an Ex-Literary Critic" Lorca's concept of duende Hildegard of Bingen's concept of viriditas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viriditas) Gilles Deleuze, [Cinema II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema2:TheTime-Image)_ Ernest Hemingway, [The Old Man and the Sea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheOldManandtheSea)_ Marshall McLuhan, [Understanding Media](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnderstandingMedia)_ Marshall McLuhan, [The Gutenberg Galaxy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheGutenbergGalaxy) Marshall McLuhan, "Notes on William Burroughs" Phil Ford, Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture (https://www.amazon.com/Dig-Sound-Music-Hip-Culture-ebook/dp/B00DPJ6RE6) John Clellon Holmes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Clellon_Holmes), beatnik Northrop Frye (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Frye), Canadian literary critic Hildegard von Bingen, Ordo Virtutum (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUMlhtoGTzY) Joni Mitchell, "Woodstock" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRjQCvfcXn0) Genesis 32, Jacob and the Angel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_wrestling_with_the_angel) R. D. Laing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._D._Laing), Scottish psychologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, [The Phenomenon of Man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThePhenomenonofMan)_ William James, [The Varieties of Religious Experience](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheVarietiesofReligiousExperience) Sylvia Plath, "Lady Lazarus" (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49000/lady-lazarus) Sylvia Plath, "Daddy" (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48999/daddy-56d22aafa45b2) Jack Kerouac (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kerouac), American writer Allen Ginsberg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Ginsberg), American poet Lionel Snell (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Snell), British philosopher and magician Special Guest: B. W. Powe.

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)

In her National Book Award acceptance speech in 2014, Ursula K. Le Guin intimated that, far from being superseded by digital technology, fantastic fiction has never been more important than it is about to become. Soon, she prophesied, "we will need writers who can remember freedom -- poets, visionaries, realists of a larger reality." In this episode, Phil and JF plumb the prophetic depths of one of her most famous books, A Wizard of Earthsea. A discussion of the novel's style and lore leads us into the politics and metaphysics of fantasy as developed by Le Guin and her predecessor, J. R. R. Tolkien. In the end, we realize that fantasy is not the literary ghetto it's been made out to be, but the sine qua non of all fiction. SHOW NOTES John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44477/ode-on-a-grecian-urn) Heidegger, "On the Origin of the Work of Art" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_the_Work_of_Art) Beowulf (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16328/16328-h/16328-h.htm), An Anglo-Saxon epic poem Weird Studies, episode 41 (https://www.weirdstudies.com/41) -- On Speculative Fiction, with Matt Cardin Weird Studies, episode 61 (https://www.weirdstudies.com/61) -- Evil and Ecstasy: On 'The Silence of the Lambs' Weird Studies, episode 62 (https://www.weirdstudies.com/62): Like 'The Shining,' But With Nuns: On 'Black Narcissus' The Complete Romances of Chretien de Troyes (https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Romances-Chretien-Troyes/dp/0253207878) (translated by J.F.'s mentor, David Staines) Sir Thomas Malory, [La Morte d'Arthur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LeMorted%27Arthur) Lewis Carroll (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Carroll), British fantasist Ursula K. Le Guin's acceptance speech (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2v7RDyo7os) at the National Book Awards, 2014 David Hume, [An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AnEnquiryConcerningHumanUnderstanding) and [A Treatise of Human Nature](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATreatiseofHumanNature)

At its simplest, what Colin Wilson calls Faculty X is "simply that latent power in human beings possess to reach beyond the present." Yet its existence is evinced in all those phenomena that modernity files under "supernatural" or "occult." As difficult to explain as it is impossible to omit from any honest survey of human existence, the occult haunts the modern, not just as a vestige of the past but also, perhaps, as a promise from a time to come. For Wilson, magic isn't the living fossil the arch-rationalists would like it to be, but a "science of the future." Faculty X is an evolutionary power, innately positive, inseparable from the will to live and the unshakeable conviction that, somehow, this world has some real, ineffable meaning. In this episode, JF and Phil discuss Wilson's concept of Faculty X as elaborated in his monumental 1971 work, The Occult. REFERENCES Colin Wilson, [The Occult: A History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheOccult:AHistory)_ [Rick and Morty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RickandMorty), American sitcom Colin, Wilson, [Dreaming to Some Purpose](https://www.amazon.com/Dreaming-Some-Purpose-Colin-Wilson/dp/0099471477/ref=tmmpapswatch0?encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=) Colin Wilson, [The Outsider](https://www.amazon.com/Outsider-Colin-Wilson/dp/0874772060/ref=sr11?keywords=the+outsider+wilson&qid=1578474099&s=books&sr=1-1) Gary Lachman, [Beyond the Robot](https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Robot-Life-Colin-Wilson/dp/0399173080/ref=sr11?keywords=Beyond+the+Robot&qid=1578474127&s=books&sr=1-1) Camus, [The Myth of Sisyphus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheMythofSisyphus)_ David Benatar, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence Making Sense, episode 107 (https://samharris.org/podcasts/107-life-actually-worth-living/): Is Life Actually Worth Living? Peter Wessel Zapffe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Wessel_Zapffe), Norwegian philosopher Thomas Ligotti, [The Conspiracy Against the Human Race](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheConspiracyAgainsttheHumanRace)_ Francisco Goya, [The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheSleepofReasonProducesMonsters)_ Emil Cioran (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Cioran), Franco-Romanian essayist Arthur Schopenhauer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer), German philosopher At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing (https://www.loa.org/books/342-at-the-fights-american-writers-on-boxing-hardcover), Library of America collection Joe Frazier (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Frazier), American pugilist Henri Bergson, [Matter and Memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MatterandMemory) Edouard Schuré, [The Great Initiates: A Study of the Secret History of Religions](Edouard Schuré, _The Great Initiates: A Study of the Secret History of Religion (https://www.amazon.com/Great-Initiates-Secret-History-Religions/dp/0893452289) Weird Studies, episode 8 (https://www.weirdstudies.com/8): On Graham Harman's "The Third Table" Thomas Merton (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Merton), American monk Gary Snyder (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Snyder), American poet

The 1947 British film Black Narcissus is many things: an allegory of the end of empire, a chilling ghost story with nary a spook in sight, a psychological romance, and a meditation on the nature of the divine. Its weirdness is as undeniable as it is difficult to locate. On the surface, the story is straightforward: five nuns are tasked with opening a convent in the former seraglio of a dead potentate in the Himalayas. But on a deeper level, there is a lot more going on, as Phil and JF discover in this conversation touching on the presence of the past, the monstrosity of God, the mystery of the singular, and the eroticism of prayer, among other strangenesses. REFERENCES Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburged (dirs.), Black Narcissus (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039192/) Rumer Godden (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumer_Godden), author of the original novel Stanley Kubrick, The Shining (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081505/) Gilles Deleuze, [Difference and Repetition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DifferenceandRepetition) Tim Ingold (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Ingold), British anthropologist -- lecture: "One World Anthropology" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEWS89dd9nM) Jonathan Demme (dir.), The Silence of the Lambs (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102926/) Pierre Bourdieu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Bourdieu), French sociologist Bruno Latour, On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods (https://www.dukeupress.edu/on-the-modern-cult-of-the-factish-gods) Don Barhelme (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Barthelme), American short story writer Paul Ricoeur (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ricoeur/), French philosopher Weird Studies episode 16 (https://www.weirdstudies.com/16): On Dogen Zenji's Genjokoan The King and the Beggar Maid (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_and_the_Beggar-maid) Gillo Pontecorvo, [The Battle of Algiers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheBattleofAlgiers)_ “Painting with Light,” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuwU_f42dUk) featurette on the Criterion Collection DVD of Black Narcissus

The Welsh writer Arthur Machen defined good and evil as "ecstasies." Each one is a "withdrawal from the common life." On this view, any artistic investigation into the nature of good and evil can't remain safely ensconced our modern, common-life construal of thinigs. It must become fantastic and incorporate aspects of "nature" that feel "supernatural" from a modern standpoint. Jonathan Demme's screen adaptation of The Silence of the Lambs is a powerful example. The film oscillates undecidably between a straightforward crime story and a work of supernatural horror. In this episode, JF and Phil cast Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling as figures in a myth that pits the individual against the institution, the singular against the type, and the forces of light against the forces of darkness. REFERENCES Jonathan Demme (dir.), The Silence of the Lambs (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102926/) Thomas Harris, [The Silence of the Lambs](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23807.TheSilenceoftheLambs) (original novel) Carl Jung (https://carljungdepthpsychologysite.blog/2019/08/02/carl-jung-on-the-doctrine-of-privatio-boni/#.XefQEy8ZO_I) on the doctrine of Privatio Boni Johann Sebastian Bach, [The Goldberg Variations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoldbergVariations)_ William Gibson, Pattern Recognition (https://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Recognition-Blue-Ant-Book-ebook/dp/B000OCXGVY) Rolling Stones, "Sympathy for the Devil" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgnClrx8N2k) Howard Shore (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Shore), Canadian composer Arthur Machen, The White People Weird Studies, episode 3 (https://www.weirdstudies.com/3): Ecstasy, Sin, and "The White People" Machen, [The White People](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheWhitePeople) Machen, Hieroglyphics: A Note Upon Ecstasy in Literature (https://archive.org/details/hieroglyphicsnot00mach/page/n4)

Somebody once said, "No prophet is welcome in his own country." Whether this was true in the case of jazz musician and composer Sun Ra depends on whom you ask. With most, the dictum probably bears out. But there are those who can make out certain patterns in Ra's life and work, patterns that place him among the true mystics and prophets. Of course, these people already believe in mysticism and prophecy, but Sun Ra's total devotion to his myth does not leave much wiggle room on this front. He is asking us to choose: believe or disbelieve. And if you go with disbelief, you'll need to explain the sustained coherence and lucidity of his message, and the transformative power of his music. In this episode, Phil and JF take a look at Sun Ra's unforgettable film Space is the Place, interpreting it as a document in the history of esotericism, using gnostic thought and the tarotology as instruments to bring some of his secrets to light. REFERENCES Sun Ra, Space is the Place Sun Ra: Brother from Another Planet (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeiN1Wu0bM0)_ Deleuze and Guattari, [A Thousand Plateaus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AThousandPlateaus) and [Kafka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority(philosophy))_ (for the concept of minority) Antoine Faivre (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Faivre), French historian of esotericism Michel Foucault, [The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheOrderofThings)_ Eliphas Lévi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Éliphas_Lévi), French occultist Edward O. Bland (director) [The Cry of Jazz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheCryofJazz)_ Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, or, Cosmos and History (https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691182971/the-myth-of-the-eternal-return) Ingmar Bergman, [The Seventh Seal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheSeventhSeal) Stanley Kubrick, Dr Strangelove, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/) Aleister Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice (https://www.amazon.com/Magick-Theory-Practice-Aleister-Crowley/dp/1555217664) Jackson Lears, Something for Nothing: Luck in America (https://www.amazon.com/Something-Nothing-America-Jackson-Lears/dp/0670031739)

"Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around a lake." This line from Wallace Stevens' "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction" captures something of the mysteries of walking. It points to the undeniable yet baffling relationship between walking and thinking, between putting one foot in front of the other and uncovering the secret of the soul and world. In this episode, JF and Phil exchange ideas about the weirdness of this thing most humans did on most days for most of world history. The conversation ranges over a vast territory, with zen monks, novelists, Jesuits and more joining your hosts on what turns out to be a journey to wondrous places. Header image by Beatrice, Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lucca_labirinto.jpg) REFERENCES Dogen, The Mountains and Waters Sutra (https://tricycle.org/magazine/mountains-and-waters-sutra/) Weird Studies listener Stephanie Quick (https://stephaniequick.home.blog) on the Conspirinormal podcast (http://conspirinormal.com/blog-1/2019/9/23/conspirinormal-episode-281-ste[phanie-quick-sex-magick-101) Weird Studies episode 51, Blind Seers: On Flannery O'Connor's 'Wise Blood' (https://www.weirdstudies.com/51) Lionel Snell, SSOTBME (https://www.amazon.com/SSOTBME-Revised-essay-Ramsey-Dukes/dp/0904311082) Henry David Thoreau, "Walking" (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1862/06/walking/304674/) Arthur Machen, "The White People" (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_White_People_(Machen)) Herman Melville, Moby Dick (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby-Dick) Vladimir Horowitz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Horowitz), Russian panist Gregory Bateson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Bateson), cybernetic theorist The myth of the Giant Antaeus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antaeus) Wallce Stevens, "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction" (https://genius.com/Wallace-stevens-notes-toward-a-supreme-fiction-annotated) Deleuze, [Difference and Repetition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DifferenceandRepetition) Michel de Certeau, [The Practice of Everyday Life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThePracticeofEverydayLife) John Cowper Powys, English novelist Will Self (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Self), English writer Guy Debord, [The Society of the Spectacle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheSocietyoftheSpectacle) Arcade Fire, “We Used to Wait” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nTjn1yJp0w) Paul Thomas Anderson (director), Punch Drunk Love (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0272338/) Viktor Shklovsky (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Viktor-Shklovsky), Russian formalist Patreon blog post on Phil’s dream (https://www.patreon.com/posts/virus-30409580) David Lynch (director), [Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TwinPeaks:FireWalkwithMe)_

What is the role of the critic in the world of art? For some, including lots of critics, the figure exudes an aura of authority: her task is to tell us what this or that work of art means, why it matters, and what we are supposed to think and feel in its presence. Cast in in this mold, the critic is an arbiter, not just of taste, but also of sense and meaning. The American art critic Dave Hickey categorically rejects this interpretation, which he says gives off a mild stench of fascism. For Hickey, the critic plays a weak role, and it's this weakness that makes it essential. In his essay "Air Guitar," published in 1997, Hickey argues that criticism can never really penetrate the mystery of any artwork. Criticism is rather a way to capture the "enigmatic whoosh" of art as one instance of the more pervasive "whoosh" of ordinary experience. So, no act of criticism can ever exhaust an artwork. The critic interprets a singular experience of art into words so that others might be encouraged to have their own, equally singular experiences. In this episode, Phil and JF discuss what criticism has to do with art, life, politics, and ordinary experience. Header image: Caravaggio, The Calling of Saint Matthew (1599-1600) REFERENCES Dave Hickey, Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy (https://www.amazon.com/Air-Guitar-Essays-Art-Democracy/dp/0963726455) Plato, Republic (https://www.iep.utm.edu/republic/) Oscar Wilde, "The Decay of Lying (https://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/comm/steen/cogweb/Abstracts/Wilde_1889.html)" Phil Ford, Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture (https://www.amazon.com/Dig-Sound-Music-Hip-Culture/dp/0199939918) Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature (https://www.amazon.com/Kafka-Toward-Literature-Theory-History/dp/0816615152) Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy? (https://www.amazon.com/What-Philosophy-Gilles-Deleuze/dp/0231079893) Dave Hickey, "Buying the World" (https://www.jstor.org/stable/20027807?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents) Clinton e-mails exhibition (https://news.artnet.com/art-world/hillary-clinton-reads-emails-venice-art-show-1648867) at the Venice Biennale Oscar Wilde, [The Portrait of Dorian Gray](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThePictureofDorianGray)

Raiders of the Lost Ark is more than a Hollywood movie made in the summer blockbuster mold. As Phil says in his intro to this popping Weird Studies episode, the film is "a Trojan horse of the Weird, easy to let in but once inside, apt to take over." This conversation sees him and JF discuss a movie we dismiss at our own risk, a cinematic masterpiece replete with enigmas that reach back to the foundations of Western civilization. What does the Ark of the Covenant signify? What does it contain? What happens if you open that box of god(s)? And whose god is this, anyway? These are questions that have puzzled theologians and mystics for centuries, and Steven Spielberg's great work asks them anew for an age gone nuclear. Image by arsheffield (https://www.flickr.com/photos/arsheffield/4720479991) REFERENCES Steven Spielberg, [Raiders of the Lost Ark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RaidersoftheLostArk) Steven Soderbergh’s version of Raiders (http://extension765.com/soderblogh/18-raiders) with sound and color removed Weird Studies Patreon extra, “Weird Genius” (https://www.patreon.com/posts/weird-genius-29698043) Weird Studies episode 28, “Weird Music Part 2” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/28) Camille Saint-Saëns, Danse Macabre (https://www.classicfm.com/composers/saint-saens/guides/danse-macabre-visualisation/) M. Night Shyamalan, Signs (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286106/) [Buck Rogers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuckRogers), [Flash Gordon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlashGordon) Neil Jordan (dir.), The End of the Affair (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0172396/) Weird Studies episode 29, “On Lovecraft” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/29) Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism (https://archive.org/stream/TheOccultRootsOfNazism201602/The%20Occult%20Roots%20of%20Nazismdjvu.txt) Howard Carter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Carter), British archaeologist Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Babel” (https://maskofreason.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/the-library-of-babel-by-jorge-luis-borges.pdf) Claude Levi Strauss (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Lévi-Strauss), French anthropologist Clement Greenberg's concept of medium specificity (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediumspecificity) D. W. Griffith, Birth of a Nation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gni3Es9ACg) David Mamet, On Directing Film (https://www.amazon.com/Directing-Film-David-Mamet/dp/0140127224) Dumbo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumbo) (1941 film) H. P. Lovecraft, “The Strange High House in the Mist” (http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/shh.aspx) Jan Fries, Helrunar: A Manual of Rune Magick (https://www.amazon.com/Helrunar-Manual-Magick-Jan-Fries/dp/1869928903) Neil Gaiman, American Gods (https://www.amazon.com/American-Turtleback-School-Library-Binding/dp/0606396594/) GIF (https://files.fireside.fm/file/fireside-uploads/images/e/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/72Th5Q8y.gif) of the soldier moving funny at the end of Raiders Weird Studies episode 2, “Garmonbozia” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/2) Aaron Leitch (http://kheph777.tripod.com/indexaol.html), occultist Austin Osman Spare, The Book of Pleasure Gene Wolfe, [Soldier of the Mist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoldieroftheMist)_

The German poet and philosopher Jean Gebser's major work, The Ever-Present Origin, is a monumental study of the evolution of consciousness from prehistory to posthistory. For Gebser, consciousness adopts different "structures" at different times and in different contexts, and each structure reveals certain facets of reality while potentially occluding others. An integral human being is one who can utilize all of the structures according to the moment or situation. As Gebserian scholar Jeremy Johnson explains in this episode, modern humans are currently experiencing the transition from the "perspectival" structure which formed in the late Middle Ages to the "aperspectival," a new way of seeing and being that first revealed itself in the art of the Modernists. Grokking what the aperspectival means, and what it might look like, is just one of the tasks Jeremy, Phil and JF set themselves in this engaging trialogue. Jeremy D. Johnson is the author of the recently released Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness (https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Through-World-Consciousness-Nuralogicals/dp/1947544152). REFERENCES Jeremy Johnson, Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and the Integral Consciousness (https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Through-World-Consciousness-Nuralogicals/dp/1947544152) Jean Gebser, The Ever-Present Origin (https://www.amazon.com/Ever-Present-Origin-Part-Aperspectival-Manifestations/dp/0821407694) William Irwin Thompson, Coming Into Being: Artifacts and Texts in the Evolution of Consciousness (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780312176921) Ken Wilber (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Wilber), integral theorist Lionel Snell, “Spare Parts” (https://fulgur.co.uk/austin-osman-spare/spare-parts/?v=7516fd43adaa) Nagarjuna, “Verses of the Middle Way” (https://www.stephenbatchelor.org/index.php/en/verses-from-the-center) (Mulamadhyamakakarika) Peter Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life (https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/philosophy-of-the-acrobat-on-peter-sloterdijk/) Thomas Aquinas, [Summa Theologica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SummaTheologica)_ Object-oriented ontology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_ontology) (OOO) Dogen, [Uji](https://www.thezensite.com/ZenTeachings/DogenTeachings/UjiWelch.htm) (“The Time-Being”), from the Shobogenzo (Treasury of the True Dharma Eye) Special Guest: Jeremy D. Johnson.

No survey of weird literature would be complete without mentioning Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951). As with all masters of the genre, Blackwood's take on the weird is singular: here, it isn't the cold reaches of outer space that elicit in us a nihilistic frisson, but the vast expanses of our own planet's wild places -- especially the northern woods. In his story "The Wendigo," Blackwood combines the beliefs of the Indigenous peoples of the Eastern Woodlands with the folktales of his native Britain to weave an ensorcelling story that perfectly captures the mood of the Canadian wilderness. In this conversation, JF and Phil discuss their own experience of that wilderness growing up in Ontario. The deeper they go, the spookier things get. An episode best enjoyed in solitude, by a campfire. Header Image: "Highway 60 Passing Through the Boreal Forest in Algonquin Park" by Dimana Koralova, Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Highway_60_passing_through_the_boreal_forest_in_Algonquin_Park_(September_2008).png) SHOW NOTES Glenn Gould, The Idea of North (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szgnGV4hOKU) Algernon Blackwood, "The Wendigo" (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10897/10897-h/10897-h.htm) Game of Thrones (https://www.hbo.com/game-of-thrones) (HBO series) Weird Studies, Episode 29: On Lovecraft (https://www.weirdstudies.com/29) H. P. Lovecraft, "Supernatural Horror in Literature" (http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/shil.aspx) Edgar Allan Poe, "The Philosophy of Composition" (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69390/the-philosophy-of-composition) Fritz Leiber, [The Adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FafhrdandtheGrayMouser) Richard Wagner, Parsifal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsifal) David Lynch, Twin Peaks: The Return (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4093826/) Peter Heller, The River: A Novel (https://www.amazon.com/River-novel-Peter-Heller/dp/0525521879) The Killing of Tim McLean (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Tim_McLean) (July 30, 2008) Weird Studies, Episode 3: Ecstasy, Sin, and "The White People" (https://www.weirdstudies.com/3) Mysterious Universe: Strange and Terrifying Encounters with Skinwalkers (https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/11/strange-and-terrifying-encounters-with-skinwalkers/) Jacques Vallée, Passport to Magonia: On UFOs, Folklore, and Parallel Worlds (https://www.amazon.com/Passport-Magonia-Folklore-Parallel-Worlds/dp/0809237962) Graham Harman, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy (https://www.amazon.com/Weird-Realism-Philosophy-Graham-Harman-ebook/dp/B009ODXIH6) Arthur Machen, Hieroglyphics: A Note Upon Ecstasy (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40241)

"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)

"All things feel," Pythagoas said. Panpsychism, the belief that consciousnes is a property of all things and not limited to the human brain, is back in vogue -- with good reason. The problem of how inert matter could give rise to subjectivity and feeling has proved insoluble under the dominant assumptions of a hard materialism. Recently, the American filmmaker Errol Morris presented his own brand of panpsychism in a long-form essay entitled, "The Pianist and the Lobster," published in the New York Times. The essay opens with an episode from the life of Sviatoslav Richter, namely a time where the famous Russian pianist couldn't perform without a plastic lobster waiting for him in the wings. In Morris's piece, the curious anecdote sounds the first note of what turns out to be a polyphony of thoughts and ideas on consciousness, agency, Nerval's image of the the "Hidden God," and the deep weirdness of music. Phil and JF use Morris's essay to create a polyphony of their own. REFERENCES Errol Morris, "The Pianist and the Lobster" (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/21/opinion/editorials/errol-morris-lobster-sviatoslav-richter.html) Sviatoslav Richter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sviatoslav_Richter), Russian pianist Nick Cave., Red Hand Files #53 (https://www.theredhandfiles.com/who-are-your-favourite-guitarists/) Thomas Kuhn, [The Structure of Scientific Revolutions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheStructureofScientificRevolutions) Bruno Monsaingeon (dir.), Richter: The Enigma (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfJVpjI3wJM) Bon Jovi, "Livin’ on a Prayer" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDK9QqIzhwk) Brad Warner, "The Eyes of Dogen" (http://hardcorezen.info/the-eyes-of-dogen/6368) Gilles Deleuze, [Difference and Repetition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DifferenceandRepetition) Edgard Varèse (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgard_Varèse), composer Benjamin Libet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet#Implications_of_Libet%27s_experiments), neuroscientist Robin Hardy (dir), [The Wicker Man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheWickerMan) Frans De Waal, Mama’s Last Hug (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/08/mamas-last-hug-frans-de-waal-review) Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, [A Thousand Plateaus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AThousandPlateaus) Sartre, [The Transcendence of the Ego](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheTranscendenceoftheEgo) Tarot de Marseille - XVIII: The Moon (https://files.fireside.fm/file/fireside-uploads/images/e/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/W4v2yByR.jpg) Marsilio Ficino, [Three Books on Life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devitalibritres)_ Carl Jung, "On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry" (http://www.studiocleo.com/librarie/jung/essay.html), The Red Book (https://www.npr.org/2009/11/11/120129676/the-red-book-a-window-into-jungs-dreams) Terence McKenna, Food of the Gods (https://www.amazon.com/Food-Gods-Original-Knowledge-Evolution/dp/0553371304)

William Gibson's Pattern Recognition was published in 2003, in the wake of 9/11. You would think that a novel about the early Internet's effects on the collective psyche would feel dated today. But Gibson's insight into the deeper implications of digital culture and soul-rending consumerism are such that we are still catching up with Cayce Pollard, the novel's protagonist, as she journeys into the hypermodern underworld, searching for the secrets of art, time, and death. In this episode, JF and Phil read Pattern Recognition as an exploration of the attention economy, an ascent of the all-seeing pyramid, a subtle rewilding of postmodern culture, and a handbook for the magicians of the future. REFERENCES William Gibson, Pattern Recognition (https://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Recognition-Blue-William-Gibson/dp/0425198685) Malcolm Gladwell, "The Coolhunt" (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1997/03/17/the-coolhunt) Douglas Rushkoff, [Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PresentShock:WhenEverythingHappensNow)_ Alvin and Heidi Toffler, [Future Shock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FutureShock)_ Weird Studies Episode 30 -- On Stanley _Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (https://www.weirdstudies.com/30)_ Weird Studies Episode 50 -- Demogorgon: On _Stranger Things (https://www.weirdstudies.com/50)_ Austin Osman Spare, [The Focus of Life: The Mutterings of AOS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheFocusofLife)_ Douglas Rushkoff, Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age (https://www.wired.com/2011/07/douglas-rushkoff/)

The idea that beauty might denote an actual quality of the world, something outside the human frame, is one of the great taboos of modern intellectual thought. Beauty, we are almost universally told, is a cultural contrivance rooted in politics and history, an illusion that exists only in human heads, for human reasons. On this view, a world without us would be a world without beauty. But in this episode Phil and JF explore two texts, by James Hillman and Peter Schjeldahl, that dare to challenge the modern orthodoxy. For Hillman and Schjeldahl, to experience the beautiful is precisely the break out of human bondage and touch the Outside. Beauty may even be one of the few truly objective experiences anyone could hope for. Peter Schjeldahl, “Notes on Beauty,“ in Uncontrollable Beauty: Toward a New Aesthetics (https://www.amazon.com/Uncontrollable-Beauty-Toward-New-Aesthetics/dp/1581151969) James Hillman, “The Practice of Beauty,” in Uncontrollable Beauty: Toward a New Aesthetics (https://www.amazon.com/Uncontrollable-Beauty-Toward-New-Aesthetics/dp/1581151969) C.G. Jung's retreat, Bollingen Tower (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bollingen_Tower) Ugly public art (https://padailypost.com/2017/12/01/time-to-democratize-public-art/) in Palo Alto Dave Hickey, Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy (https://www.amazon.com/Air-Guitar-Essays-Art-Democracy/dp/0963726455) Deleuze and Guattari, “Of the Refrain,” from [A Thousand Plateaus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AThousandPlateaus) Roger Scruton, Beauty (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/019955952X?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwrogerscrut-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=019955952X%22%3EBeauty%3C/a%3E%3Cimg%20src=%22%3Ca%20href=) Weird Studies, Episode 36 -- On Hyperstition (https://www.weirdstudies.com/36) Weird Studies, Episode 33 -- The Fine Art of Changing the Subject: On Duchamp's "Fountain" (https://www.weirdstudies.com/33) Lionel Snell, My Years of Magical Thinking (https://www.amazon.com/Years-Magical-Thinking-Lionel-Snell/dp/0904311244) George Santayana, The Sense of Beauty (https://www.iupui.edu/~santedit/sant/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/George-Santayana-The-Sense-of-Beauty.pdf) Ingri D'Aulaires, D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths (https://www.amazon.com/DAulaires-Greek-Myths-Ingri-dAulaire/dp/0440406943) Messiaen, [Quartet for the End of Time](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYpBHc8pxU)_ Christian Wiman, He Held Radical Light (https://www.amazon.com/He-Held-Radical-Light-Faith/dp/0374168466) God, [Book of Job](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BookofJob)

Through her fiction, Flannery O'Connor reenvisioned life as a supernatural war wherein each soul becomes the site of a clash of mysterious, almost incomprehensible forces. Her first novel, Wise Blood, tells the story of Hazel Motes, a young preacher with a new religion to sell: the Church Without Christ. In this episode, JF and Phil read Motes's misadventures in the "Jesus-haunted" city of Taulkinham, Tennessee, as a prophetic vision of the modern condition that is at once supremely tragic and funny as hell. As O'Connor herself wrote in her prefac to the book: "(Wise Blood) is a comic novel about a Christian malgré lui, and as such, very serious, for all comic novels that are any good must be about matters of life and death. REFERENCES Flannery O'Connor, [Wise Blood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiseBlood)_ James Marshall, [George and Martha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeorgeandMartha) (here's a great NYT piece (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/29/books/george-and-martha-james-marshall.html) on the books) Graham Hancock, [Fingerprints of the Gods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerprintsoftheGods)_ Paul Elie, The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage (https://www.amazon.com/Life-You-Save-May-Your/dp/0374529213) Jonathan Haidt, [The Righteous Mind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheRighteousMind) G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/130) Daniel Ingram, Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha (https://www.mctb.org) George Santayana, [The Sense of Beauty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheSenseofBeauty)_ Amy Hungerford's lecture (https://oyc.yale.edu/english/engl-291/lecture-3) on Wise Blood (Yale University)

The Duffer Brothers' hit series Stranger Things is many things: an exemplary piece of entertainment in the summer blockbuster mold, a fresh take on the "kids on bikes" subgenre of science fiction, a loving pastiche of 1980s Hollywood cinema. And as Phil and JF attempt to show in this episode, Stranger Things is also a deep investigation into the metaphysical assumptions of our times, and a bold statement on the ontology of the analog real. This, at least, was the thesis of JF's three-part essay "Reality is Analog: Philosophizing with Stranger Things," which appeared on Metapsychosis (https://www.metapsychosis.com/reality-is-analog-philosophizing-with-stranger-things-part-one/) after the first season dropped in 2016. Here, Phil and JF revisit that essay in order to expand on its arguments and discuss how it hoilds up in light of the series continued unfolding. The conversation touches on Apple's famous 1984 ad for the first Macintosh, the 2016 election of Donald Trump, the otherworldliness of airports, the ensorcelments of consumerism, and much more. REFERENCES [Stranger Things](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StrangerThings)_ "Reality is Analog: Philosophizing with Stranger Things" available at Metapsychosis (https://www.metapsychosis.com/reality-is-analog-philosophizing-with-stranger-things-part-one/) or in ebook format (https://www.amazon.com/Reality-Analog-Philosophizing-Stranger-Things-ebook/dp/B01LXO775I) Samuel Delaney, Dhalgren (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhalgren) 1984 Apple commercial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axSnW-ygU5g) for Macintosh [Wild Wild Country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WildWildCountry), Netflix documentary series Tom Frank, “Why Johnny Can’t Dissent” (https://www.jstor.org/stable/43555671) Phil Ford, Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture (https://www.amazon.com/Dig-Sound-Culture-Hardcover-August/dp/B010EW5LNY) Arcade Fire, “We Used to Wait” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ7osdJ4H_8) William S. Burroughs, [Naked Lunch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NakedLunch)_ Jack Kerouac, [Visions of Cody](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisionsofCody) William James, A Pluralistic Universe (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11984) Marc Augé, [Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity](https://books.google.ca/books/about/Nonplaces.html?id=5YsOAQAAMAAJ&rediresc=y) Weird Studies, episode 2: Garmonbozia (https://www.weirdstudies.com/2) Homer, Odyssey (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odyssey) Matt Cardin, Dark Awakenings (http://www.mattcardin.com/fiction/dark-awakenings/) The Wachowskis, [The Matrix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheMatrix)_ Jonathan Haight and Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind (https://www.thecoddling.com)

In his essay "On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life," Nietzsche attacks the notion that humans are totally determined by the historical forces that shape their physical and mental environment. Where other philosophers like Plato saw virtue in remembering eternal truths that earthly existence had wiped from our memories, Nietzsche extolled the virtues of forgetting, of becoming "untimely" and creating a zone where something new could arise. For Nietzsche, history was useful only if it served Life. Because we live in an age which constantly reifies history (through movies, news, social media, etc.) while also tricking us into thinking we somehow exist outside of history, the essay remains as relevant today as it was when Nietzsche wrote it a century and a half ago. REFERENCES Nietzsche, "On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life" in [Untimely Meditations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UntimelyMeditations)_ Epic Rap Battles of History: Eastern Philosophers vs Western Philosophers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N_RO-jL-90) Ernest Newman, Life of Wagner (https://www.amazon.com/Life-Wagner-Volumes-Ernest-Newman/dp/0521291496) Alexander Nehamas, [Nietzsche: Life as Literature](https://www.amazon.com/Nietzsche-Life-Literature-Alexander-Nehamas/dp/0674624262/ref=sr11?keywords=Nietzsche%3A+Life+as+Literature&qid=1560911442&s=books&sr=1-1) Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25457/25457-pdf.pdf) Michael Foucault, "What is Englightenment?" (https://leap.colostate.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2017/01/Foucault-What-is-enlightenment.pdf) Antinatalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism) Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1998/1998-h/1998-h.htm) James Carse, [Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FiniteandInfiniteGames)_ P. J. O’Rourke (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._J._O%27Rourke), American writer Richard Pryor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pryor), American comedian

Journalist and historian of religion Erik Davis joins Phil and JF to talk about his latest magnum opus, High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies. In this masterwork of weird scholarship, Davis explores the simultaneously luminous and obscure worlds of three giants of Seventies counterculture: Terence McKenna, Robert Anton Wilson, and Philip K. Dick. Their psychonautical legacy serve as fuel for a deep-delving conversation on Davis' own ontological leanings, yearnings, and hesitations. We touch on his philosophical development since the release of Techgnosis in 1998, the meaning of "weird naturalism," the primacy of the aesthetic, the uses and abuses of anthropotechnics, the challenges of tightrope-walking across bottomless chasms, and lots more. REFERENCES Erik Davis, High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Expreience in the Seventies (http://strangeattractor.co.uk/shoppe/high-weirdness/) Erik Davis, Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information (https://www.amazon.com/TechGnosis-Myth-Magic-Mysticism-Information/dp/1583949305) Philip K. Dick (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick), American science fiction writer Robert Anton Wilson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Anton_Wilson), American writer Terence McKenna (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_McKenna), Half-elf bard Graham Harman, American philosopher (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Harman) Timothy Morton, British philosopher (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Morton) Jeffrey J. Kripal, The Serpent’s Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion (https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo4126089.html) William James (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James), American philosopher and psychologist Hee-jin Kim, Eihei Dogen: Mystical Realist (https://www.amazon.com/Eihei-Dogen-Mystical-Hee-Jin-Kim/dp/0861713761) Dogen, "Instructions for the Cook" (http://www.thezensite.com/ZenTeachings/Dogen_Teachings/Instructions_for_the_cook.html) Steve Reich, "Music as a Gradual Process" (http://www.bussigel.com/systemsforplay/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Reich_Gradual-Process.pdf) Peter Sloterdijk, [You Must Change Your Life](https://books.google.ca/books/about/YouMustChangeYourLife.html?id=aDcBAAAQBAJ&rediresc=y) Albert Hofman’s famous bicycle ride (https://allthatsinteresting.com/bicycle-day-albert-hofmann) Erowid LSD vault (https://erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd.shtml) George Lackoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (https://www.amazon.ca/Metaphors-We-Live-George-Lakoff/dp/0226468011) Alexander Bard and Jan Söderqvist, [Syntheism: Creating God in the Internet Age](https://www.amazon.com/Syntheism-Creating-God-Internet-Age/dp/9175471833/ref=sr11?qid=1559663582&refinements=p27%3AAlexander+Bard&s=books&sr=1-1&text=Alexander+Bard)_ Special Guest: Erik Davis.

Made in 2003, Lutz Dammbeck's documentary The Net: The Unabomber, LSD, and the Internet is a film about many things, but the gist of it is something like what William Burroughs called the doctrine of control. We live in a world governed by technologies designed with a particular idea of society in mind, one that has its roots in the trauma of global war and the utopian dreams of modern thinkers. The viability of this ideal is, of course, an important question, and it was made all the more urgent by recent developments at the intersection of technology and politics. In this episode, JF and Phil discuss the doctrine of control as imagined by one of its fiercest -- and most insane -- critics: Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber. Kaczynski's thoughts on technological society form the through-line of Dammbeck's film, which in turn serves as a through-line for this jam on everything from one-world government and cybernetics to the archetype of the magus and the Whole Earth Catalog. REFERENCES Lutz Dammbeck (director), The Net: The Unabomber, LSD and the Internet (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0434231/) (2003) Chuck Klosterman, "FAIL" in [Eating the Dinosaur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EatingtheDinosaur) Jacques Ellul (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Ellul), French theorist Suzanne Treister, HEXEN Tarot Deck (http://www.suzannetreister.net/HEXEN2/HEXEN_2_Temp.html) -- Seven of Swords (http://www.suzannetreister.net/HEXEN2/TAROT_COL/Sword7_CybSeance.html) -- Justice (http://www.suzannetreister.net/HEXEN2/TAROT_COL/TAROT_JUSTICE_OWG-BR.html) -- The Sun (http://www.suzannetreister.net/HEXEN2/TAROT_COL/TAROT_SUN_AnarchoP.html) Norbert Wiener, [Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and Machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics:OrControlandCommunicationintheAnimalandtheMachine) and [The Human Use of Human Beings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheHumanUseofHumanBeings)_ Bertrand Russell, The Scientific Outlook (https://archive.org/details/scientificoutloo030217mbp) Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20160545) Kevin Kelly, [What Technology Wants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatTechnologyWants) Weird Studies Episode 2: Garmonbozia (https://www.weirdstudies.com/2) Stewart Brand (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Brand), writer and editor of the [Whole Earth Catalog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WholeEarthCatalog) Ursula Le Guin, [Always Coming Home](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlwaysComingHome) Gary Snyder's idea that "we are primitives of an unknown culture" is explored in Phil Ford, Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture (https://global.oup.com/academic/product/dig-9780199939916?cc=ca&lang=en&) Richard Brautigan, "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace) (poem) [San Francisco Oracle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SanFranciscoOracle) Heidegger, [The Question Concerning Technology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheQuestionConcerningTechnology)_

In his short story "Mrs. Rinaldi's Angel," contemporary horror author Thomas Ligotti contrasts the chaotic monstrosity of dreams with the cold, indifferent, and no less monstrous purity of angels. It is the story of a boy whose vivid dream life is sapping his vital force, and who resorts to esoteric measures to rectify the situation. In this episode, Phil and JF discuss the beauty and horror of dreams, the metaphysical signifiance of angels and demons, and the potential dangers of seeking the peace of absolute "purity" in the wondrous flux of lived experience. REFERENCES Thomas Ligotti, "Mrs. Rinaldi's Angel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm1iH6EIMAA)" (read by Jon Padgett) Roger Scruton, The Face of God (https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-face-of-god-9781847065247/) Thomas Ligotti, [Songs of a Dead Dreamer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SongsofaDeadDreamer) Thomas Ligotti, "The Last Feast of Harlequin" in [Grimscribe: His Lives and Works](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimscribe:HisLivesandWorks) Robert Aickman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Aickman), English author H. P. Lovecraft (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft), American author H. R. Giger (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._R._Giger), Swiss artist Jean Giraud a.k.a. Moebius (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Giraud), French comic book artist Donald Barthelme (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Barthelme), American author Pierre Soulages (https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/Pierre-Soulages), French artist Bruno Schulz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Schulz), Polish author Thomas Bernhard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bernhard), Austrian author Edgar Allan Poe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe), American author J. F. Martel, "The Beautiful Madness: Primacy of Wonder in the Works of Thomas Ligotti" (Forthcoming in James Curcio (ed.), Masks: Bowie and the Artists of Artifice (https://www.intellectbooks.com/masks) from Intellect Books) Algernon Blackwood, "The Wendigo" (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10897/10897-h/10897-h.htm) Thomas Ligotti, "The Dark Beauty of Unheard of Horrors" in The Thomas Ligotti Reader: Essays and Explorations (https://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Ligotti-Reader-Darrell-Schweitzer/dp/1592241301) Dogen Zenji (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dōgen), Zen master Manichaeism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism) Spencer Brown, [The Laws of Form](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LawsofForm) Ramsey Dukes, Words Made Flesh: Information In Formation (https://www.amazon.com/Words-Made-Flesh-Information-Formation/dp/0904311112) Deleuze, Essays Critical and Clinical (https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/essays-critical-and-clinical) Thomas Ligotti, "Purity," in Teatro Grottesco (https://www.amazon.com/Teatro-Grottesco-Thomas-Ligotti/dp/0753513749) James Joyce, Ulysses (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4300/4300-h/4300-h.htm) Advaita Vedanta (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta) Joshua Ramey, The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and Spiritual Ordeal (https://www.amazon.com/Hermetic-Deleuze-Philosophy-Spiritual-Religion/dp/082235229X) Lewis Carroll, [Alice's Adventures in Wonderland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice%27sAdventuresinWonderland)_ and [Through the Looking Glass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThroughtheLooking-Glass) James Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld (https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Underworld-James-Hillman/dp/0060906820) P. J. O’Rourke (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._J._O%27Rourke), political satirist

"May the present 'you' not survive this little book," Jeffrey Kripal writes in the prologue to The Flip. "May you be flipped in dramatic or quiet ways." Indeed, Kripal's latest is a kind of manifesto, a call to embrace the metaphysical expanses that reveal themselves to many who dare dip a toe outside the materialist lifeboat we've been rowing away in for a couple of centuries now. In this conversation, Phil and JF talk to the eminent scholar of religion about the life-changing epiphanies that have convinced many a hardboiled materialist that bouncing billiard balls is probably not the best metaphor for what is actually going on in the universe. In essence, this is a conversation about stories, about the fictions we tell ourselves to make sense -- or nonsense -- of our world. REFERENCES Jeffrey J. Kripal, The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge (https://blpress.org/books/the-flip/) Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (https://archive.org/details/twosourcesofmora033499mbp/page/n1) Sigmund Freud, [Civilization and its Discontents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CivilizationandItsDiscontents)_ Weird Studies, Episode 37: Entities, with Stuart Davis (https://www.weirdstudies.com/37) Special Guest: Jeffrey J. Kripal.

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)

The great American thinker William James knew well that no intellectual pursuit is purely intellectual. His interest in the "supernormal," whether it take the form of spiritual apparition or extrasensory perception, was rooted in a personal desire to uncover the miraculous in the mundane. Indeed, the early members of the British Society for Psychical Research and its American counterpart (which James co-founded in 1884) were united in this conviction that certain phenomena which most scientists of their day considered unworthy of their attention were in fact the frontier of a new world, an avenue for humanity's deepest aspirations. In this episode, JF and Phil discuss two papers that James wrote about the first phase in the history of these research societies. James lays bare his conclusions about the reality of psychical phenomena and its scientific significance. The bizarre fact that psychical research has made little progress since its inception lays the ground for an engaging discussion on the limits of the knowable. REFERENCES Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment Frederic W. H. Myers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_W._H._Myers), theorist of the "subliminal self" Weird Studies, Episode 37: Entities (https://www.weirdstudies.com/37) Thomas Henry Huxley (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Henry_Huxley), aka "Darwin's Bulldog" Patrick Harpur, Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld (https://www.amazon.com/Daimonic-Reality-Field-Guide-Otherworld/dp/0937663093) Mervyn Peake, The Gormenghast Trilogy (https://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Gormenghast-Trilogy-Mervyn-Peake-ebook/dp/B0056GJI5Q/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=The+_Gormenghast_+Trilogy&qid=1554906043&s=books&sr=1-1) Thomas Kuhn, [The Structure of Scientific Revolutions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheStructureofScientificRevolutions) James Randi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Randi), professional skeptic Dean Radin, Real Magic (https://www.amazon.com/Real-Magic-Ancient-Science-Universe/dp/1524758825) Eric Wargo, Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious (https://www.amazon.com/Time-Loops-Precognition-Retrocausation-Unconscious/dp/1938398920) Lionel Snell a.k.a. Ramsey Dukes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Snell), British magician [Changeling: The Lost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changeling:TheLost) tabletop roleplaying game Rupert Sheldrake's morphic resonance (https://www.sheldrake.org/research/morphic-resonance) Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingenc (https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/after-finitude-9781441173836/)y Joshua Ramey, "Contingency Without Unreason: Speculation After Meillassoux ("Contingency Without Unreason: Speculation After Meillassoux")" C.G. Jung, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle (https://www.amazon.com/Synchronicity-Connecting-Principle-Collected-Extracts/dp/0691150508)

Shirley Jackson's stories and novels rank among the greatest weird works produced in America during the 20th century. However, unlike authors such as Philip K. Dick and H.P. Lovecraft, Jackson didn't cut her teeth in the pulps but among the slick pages of such illustrious publications as The New Yorker. On the other hand, whether because her most famous novel uses the traditional ghost story form or because she was a woman, Jackson only rarely appears in the litanies of weird literature, where she most definitely belongs. In this episode, Phil and JF discuss two of Jackson's short works, "The Lottery" and "The Summer People." The conversation touches on such cheerful topics as human sacrifice, the use of tradition to license evil, and the alienness that can infect even the most familiar things ... when the stars are right. Header image by Hussein Twabi (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Storm_clouds_gathering.jpg), Wikimedia Commons REFERENCES The Weird Studies Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies) Shirley Jackson (http://shirleyjackson.org/) Zoë Heller, “The Haunted Mind of Shirley Jackson (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/17/the-haunted-mind-of-shirley-jackson),” review of Ruth Franklin, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (https://www.amazon.com/Shirley-Jackson-Rather-Haunted-Life-ebook/dp/B01BX7S014) American writer Mitch Horowitz (https://mitchhorowitz.com/) Rhonda Byrne, The Secret (https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Rhonda-Byrne/dp/1582701709) Stuart Wilde, [The Trick to Money is Having Some](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/67752.TheTricktoMoneyIsHavingSome) Seymour Ginsburg, [Gurdjieff Unveiled](https://www.theosophical.org/files/resources/books/Gurdjieff/GUNVEILEDFINALWHOLEBOOK1305d.pdf) Randall Collins, Violence: A Microsociological Theory (https://press.princeton.edu/titles/8547.html) James Hillman, A Terrible Love of War (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078ZZYR56/) Homer, The Iliad Phil & JF at Octopus Books (https://www.patreon.com/posts/jf-martel-with-25148548) in Ottawa, 2015 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (http://seinfeld.co/library/meditations.pdf) “Whatever happens to you has been waiting to happen since the beginning of time. The twining strands of fate wove both of them together: your own existence and the things that happen to you.” David Lynch, Blue Velvet (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090756/)

In the mid-1960s, Pauline Oliveros was a composer of experimental electronic music. But at the end of the 1960s, shocked by the political violence around her, she turned away from electronic technology and towards to a different kind of experimentation, which Dr. Kerry O'Brien calls "experimentalisms of the self." The immediate result of this turn was Oliveros's Sonic Meditations, a series of instructions for group bodymind practice. This work became the seed of Deep Listening, a sort of musical yoga Oliveros developed throughout the rest of her long career. Dr. O'Brien joins JF and Phil for a conversation on practice, "gaining mind," the ritual value of art, the wisdom of the body, and whether Deep Listening is really best understood as art at all. REFERENCES Kerry O'Brien, "Listening as Activism: The 'Sonic Meditations' of Pauline Oliveros" (https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/listening-as-activism-the-sonic-meditations-of-pauline-oliveros) Pauline Oliveros (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Oliveros), American composer John Cage, 4'33" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3) Dead Territory performing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGEG4JiOqew) Cage's 4'33" Alvin Lucier, "Music for a Solo Performer" (http://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2017/05/alvin-lucier-music-for-solo-performer) Peter Sloterdijk, [You Must Change Your Life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouMustChangeYourLife) Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/benjamin.pdf) Lawrence Weschler, Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees (https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520256095/seeing-is-forgetting-the-name-of-the-thing-one-sees) Special Guest: Kerry O'Brien.