Weird Studies
Episodes
Episode 26: Living in a Glass Age, with Michael Garfield
19 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Stone, bronze, iron... glass? In his recent thought and writing, transdisciplinary artist and thinker Michael Garfield defines modernity as an age of ...
Episode 25: David Cronenberg's 'Naked Lunch'
12 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
JF and Phil head for Interzone in an attempt to solve the enigma of Naked Lunch, David Cronenberg's 1991 screen adaptation of William S. Burroughs' in...
Episode 24: The Charlatan and the Magus, with Lionel Snell
28 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As Lionel Snell, also known as Ramsey Dukes, observes in his seminal esoteric essay, "The Charlatan and the Magus" (1984), the series of trumps in a t...
Episode 23: On Presence
15 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Phil stops by JF's Canadian homestead for a raucous IRL conversation on the idea of presence. The range of topics includes objects of power, the magic...
Episode 22: Divining the World with Joshua Ramey
01 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
American philosopher Joshua Ramey, author of The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and the Spiritual Ordeal, and Politics of Divination: Neoliberal Endgame...
Episode 21: The Trash Stratum - Part 2
13 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The writings of underground filmmaker Jack Smith serve as a starting point for Phil and JF's second tour of the trash stratum. In their wanderings, th...
Episode 20: The Trash Stratum - Part 1
04 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Is the Holy Grail a crushed beer can in the gutter? JF and Phil consider the implications of Philip K. Dick's line, "the symbols of the divine initial...
Episode 19: Intermezzo
20 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
After announcing that Weird Studies will be going to a bi-weekly release schedule for the summer, Phil and JF talk about how the podcast has gone so f...
Episode 18: Does 'Consciousness' Exist? - Part Two
13 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
JF and Phil finally get down to brass tacks with William James's essay "Does Consciousness Exist?" At the heart of this essay is the concept of what J...
Episode 17: Does 'Consciousness' Exist? - Part One
06 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In this first part of their discussion of William James' classic essay in radical empiricism, "Does 'Consciousness' Exist?", Phil and JF talk about th...
Episode 16: On Dogen Zenji's 'Genjokoan'
30 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
JF and Phil tackle Genjokoan, a profound and puzzling work of philosophy by Dogen Zenji. In it, the 13th-century Zen master ponders the question, "If ...
Episode 15: On Tarkovsky's 'Stalker' - Part Two
23 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In this second of a two-part conversation on Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 film Stalker, Phil and JF explore the film's prophetic dimension, relating it to ...
Episode 14: On Tarkovsky's 'Stalker' - Part One
16 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Journey into the Zone to uncover some of the strange artifacts buried in Tarkovsky's cinematic masterpiece, Stalker (1979). In this first of a two-par...
Episode 13: The Obscure: On the Philosophy of Heraclitus
09 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Heraclitus of Ephesus was one of the great pre-Socratic thinkers. Called the Obscure and the Weeping Philosopher, he left behind a collection of fragm...
Episode 12: The Dark Eye: On the Films of Rodney Ascher
02 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
American filmmaker Rodney Ascher is a master of the weird documentary. Whether he be exploring wild interpretations of a classic horror film in Room 2...
Episode 11: Art is a Haunting Spirit
25 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
M. R. James' "The Mezzotint" is one of the most fascinating, and most chilling, examples of the classic ghost story. In this episode, Phil and JF disc...
Weird Stories: M. R. James' "The Mezzotint"
23 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
M. R. James has been hailed as the unrivalled maser of the classic ghost tale, and his powers are at their zenith in "The Mezzotint," a story that fir...
Episode 10: Philip K. Dick: Adrift in the Multiverse
18 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1977, Philip K. Dick read an essay in France entitled, "If You Find this World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others." In it, he laid out one of t...
Episode 9: On Aleister Crowley and the Idea of Magick
11 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The plan was to discuss the introduction to Aleister Crowley's classic work, Magick in Theory and Practice (1924), a powerful text on the nature and p...
Episode 8: On Graham Harman's "The Third Table"
04 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
JF and Phil discuss Graham Harman's "The Third Table," a short and accessible introduction to "object-oriented ontology." Phil takes us on a tour of h...
Episode 7: The Unspeakable Mystery at the Heart of Boxing
28 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
For as long as they've been pounding the crap out of each other for good reasons, humans have also been pounding the crap out of each other for fun. E...
Episode 6: Dungeons & Dragons, or the Reality of Illusions
21 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Dutch historian Johan Huizinga was one of the first thinkers to define games as exercises in world-making. Every game, he wrote, occurs within a ...
Episode 5: Reading Lisa Ruddick's "When Nothing is Cool"
13 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Phil and JF discuss Lisa Ruddick's "When Nothing is Cool," an essay on the postmodern humanities and its allergy to essences -- especially that person...
Episode 4: Exploring the Weird with Erik Davis
07 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Scholar, journalist and author Erik Davis joins Phil and JF for a freewheeling conversation on the permutations of the weird, Burning Man, speculative...
Episode 3: Ecstasy, Sin, and "The White People"
21 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
JF and Phil delve deep into Arthur Machen's fin-de-siècle masterpiece, "The White People," for insight into the nature of ecstasy, the psychology of ...
Weird Stories: Arthur Machen's "The White People"
19 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Weird Stories is a series of readings for Weird Studies listeners who want to dig deeper into the themes and ideas discussed on the Weird Studies podc...
Episode 2: Garmonbozia
01 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Phil and JF use a word from the Twin Peaks mythos, "garmonbozia," to try to understand what it was that the detonation of atomic bomb brought into the...
Episode 1: Introduction to Weird Studies
31 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Phil and J.F. share stories of sleep paralysis and talk about Charles Fort's sympathy for the damned, Jeff Kripal's phenomenological approach to Forte...