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Episode 173: By Heart: On Memory, Poetry, and Form
In this computerized age, we tend to see memory as a purely cerebral faculty. To memorize is to store information away in the brain in such a way as to make it retrievable at a later time. But the old expression "knowing by heart" calls us
Episode 172: Head Over Heels: On the Hanged Man of the Tarot
The Hanged Man is arguably the most enigmatic card in the traditional tarot deck. Divested of any archetypal apparel – he is neither emperor nor fool, but just a man, who happens to be hanging – he gazes back at us with the look of one who
Episode 171: The Beauty and the Horror
This week on Weird Studies, Phil and JF explore the intersections of the beautiful and the terrible in art and literature. There is a conventional beauty that calms and placates, and there is a radical beauty which, taking horror’s pale-glo
Episode 170: Art is Another Word for Truth: On Orson Welles's 'F for Fake'
Orson Welles made F for Fake in the early seventies, while still bobbing in the wake of a Pauline Kael essay accusing him of being cinema's greatest fraud. Ostensibly a documentary on the famous art forger Elmyr de Hory and his biographer C
Episode 169: On Free Expression
The ongoing crackdown on protests at many American universities prompts a discussion on the politics, ethics, and metaphysics of free expression. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack
Episode 168: Visions of the Wasteland: On George Miller's 'Mad Max' Films
There are artists who express the vision of a place, person, or thing so vividly and originally that it sets the bar for all future imaginings. With his four Mad Max films, this is what George Miller did with the image of the Wasteland. No
Episode 167: The Hand of Ithell, with Amy Hale
Ithell Colquhoun (1906-1988) was a British painter, poet, and occultist, long identified as a pioneer of the Surrealist movement in the UK. While her work is increasingly recognized for its mystical themes and innovative use of automatic te
Episode 166: Make Believe: On the Power of Pretentiousness
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
Episode 165: Tatters of the King: On Robert Chambers' 'The King in Yellow'
"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 Yello
Episode 164: Towards a Weird Materialism: On Expressionism in Cinema
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 colo
Episode 163: The Source of All Abysses: On the Devil Card in the Tarot
"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
Episode 162: The Incarnation of Meaning: Greenwich Village After the War
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 co
Episode 161: Scene of the Crime: On Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's 'From Hell'
Listener discretion advised: This episode delves into the disturbing details of the Whitechapel murders of 1888, and may not be suitable for all audiences. Serialized from 1989 to 1996, Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's graphic novel From Hel
Mid-Hiatus Bonus: On Horror and the Retail Experience
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
Episode 160: The Way of All Flesh: On John Carpenter's 'The Thing'
As a horror movie, John Carpenter's The Thing seems to have it all: amazing practical effects, body horror, psychological drama, Kurt Russell ... Indeed, there is only one element this movie lacks, and that is anything at all corresponding
Episode 159: Three Songs, with Meredith Michael
Every once in a while, JF and Phil like to do a “song swap.” Each picks a song, and the ensuing conversation locates linkages and correspondences where none was previously thought to exist. In this episode, they are joined by the music scho
Episode 158: As Above, So Below: On Plato's 'Timaeus'
In this episode of Weird Studies, we delve into the mysterious depths of Plato's Timaeus, one of the foundational texts of our civilization. In his characteristic brilliance, Plato blends cosmology and metaphysics, anatomy and politics to t
Episode 157: Long Live the New Flesh: On David Cronenberg's 'Videodrome'
"Death to Videodrome! Long live the New Flesh!" It was perhaps inevitable that the modern Weird, driven as it is to swallow all things, would sooner or later veer into the realm of political sloganeering without losing any of its unknowable
Episode 156: The Only Possible End: On Donna Tartt's 'The Secret History'
There are works of weird fiction that dispense their strangeness so subtly that many readers never pick up on it, books that allow themselves to be pass for mundane, the better to haunt us after we put them down. Donna Tartt's debut novel T
Episode 155: Dispatches From the Inside: On Planet Weird's 'The Unbinding'
One of the most surprising aspects of paranormal experience is how often it takes on a storylike form, unfolding exactly as you would expect it to in, say, a Hollywood horror film. Viewers of Karl Pfeiffer's film The Unbinding will get a se
Episode 154: Into the Night Land, with Erik Davis
William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land is without a doubt one of the weirdest entries in the annals of weird fiction. Set in the earth's distant future, after the sun has gone out and the planet has been cleaved in two by an unspecified disa
Episode 153: Celestial Machine: On the Temperance Card in the Tarot
Even learned commentators on the tarot are likely to point out at the fourteenth major arcana, Temperance, is a bit of a boring card. At least, it comes off as dull until you look at it closely, as JF and Phil do in this episode. What they
Summer Bonus #2: Art and AI
In this bonus episode, originally released on July 26th on the Weird Studies Patreon, Phil and JF explore a few ways in which artificial intelligence will impact the arts. The podcast returns with a new official episode on September 13th. E
Summer Bonus: On Affectation, with a Special Announcement
A bonus offering to break up the summer hiatus, this episode contains a conversation on the virtues of affectation originally available only to third- and fourth-tier members of the Weird Studies Patreon ("Putting on the Bow-Tie," Apr 5, 20
Episode 152: The Science of Things Spiritual: Live in Lily Dale
On the last week of July, 2023, Phil and JF were delighted to speak at Shannon Taggart's Science of Things Spiritual Symposium in Lily Dale, the nerve centre of the Spiritualist movement. As speakers, your hosts were part of an inspiring li
Episode 151: The Real and the Possible: Live at the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, with Jacob G. Foster
In The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light, the cultural historian William Irwin Thompson predicted the rise of a new form of knowledge building, a direly needed alternative to the Wissenshaft of standard science and scholarship. He called it
Episode 150: Sacramental Reality: On Arthur Machen's "A Fragment of Life"
"A Fragement of Life" opens with Mr. Darnell waking up from a dream and going down to breakfast, where it is described that "before he sat down to his fried bacon he kissed his wife seriously and dutifully." He then proceeds to take the tra
Episode 149: Song Swap: On Judee Sill's 'The Kiss' and Wilco's 'Jesus, Etc.'
Occasionally, JF and Phil do a song swap. Each host chooses a song he loves and shares it with the other, and then they record an episode on it. This time, JF chose to discuss "Jesus, Etc." from Wilco's 2001 album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and
Episode 148: Mythos of the Moment: On 'Twin Peaks,' Season 3
David Lynch and Mark Frost's Twin Peaks has been a touchstone of Weird Studies since the podcast's inception. Back in 2018, Phil and JF recorded Episode 1: Garmonbozia while still reeling from the series' third season, which aired on Showti
Episode 147: You Must Change Your Life
Rainer Maria Rilke's poem "Archaic Torso of Apollo" ends on a note that has puzzled and inspired readers for more than a century: "For there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life." In this episode, JF and Phil search
