Episode 106: The Wanderer: On Weird Studies

Episode 106: The Wanderer: On Weird Studies

Author: SpectreVision Radio September 1, 2021 Duration: 1:27:06
In this episode, Weird Studies turns meta, reflecting on the peculiar medium that is podcasting, and how it has shaped the Weird Studies project itself. JF and Phil provide a glimpse into what it feels like to create the show from the inside, where each recording session is like a journey into an unknown Zone. The conversation also occasions sojourns into the flow state, or experience of pure durée, its implications for our conception of free will, and surprising parallels between modern materialists’ adherence to nihilism and ancient religious ascetic practices. Ultimately, JF and Phil explore the archetypal image of the wanderer as representative of Weird Studies’s existence so far, and of the kind of impact and legacy this project can have. N.B. Weird Studies will be on a haitus for the month of September, and will return on September 29. In the meantime: Support us on Patreon: Find us on Discord Get your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.) Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack References Robert Sapolsky, Interview with Pau Guinart Bruno Latour, French philosopher Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene Peter Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith Nina Simone, “Feeling Good” Robert Anton Wilson, Illuminatus Richard Wagner, Siegfried Lewis Carol, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland John David Ebert, American cultural critic Patrick Harpur Daimonic Reality Marshall McLuhan, The Global Village Phil Ford, “What was Blogging?” Weird Studies, Episode 71 on Marshall McLuhan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the heart of Weird Studies, a podcast from SpectreVision Radio, you’ll find long-form conversations between Professor Phil Ford and writer J. F. Martel. Their discussions aren’t simple reviews or straightforward analyses; instead, they wander through the tangled undergrowth where art and philosophy meet, giving generous time to concepts that resist easy understanding and to creative works that fracture our ordinary sense of the world. This podcast deliberately lingers in that ambiguous space, treating the “weird” not as a genre but as a particular mode of experience-one that reveals the cracks in what we comfortably assume is real. Each episode feels like joining a deep, meandering dialogue between two friends who are both deeply knowledgeable and endlessly curious, covering a vast terrain that includes literature, film, music, and esoteric thought. It’s a show for anyone who suspects that the most profound truths are often found in the shadows, the anomalies, and the strangely beautiful. As part of the SpectreVision Radio network, which specializes in content that explores the uncanny edges of creativity, Weird Studies builds a unique community of listeners who are eager to think differently. You won’t find pat answers here, but you will encounter compelling questions and a shared sense of exploration that makes each installment a distinctive journey.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 230

Weird Studies
Podcast Episodes
Episode 56: On Jean Gebser, with Jeremy D. Johnson [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:19:22
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 "struc…
Episode 54: Lobsters, Pianos, and Hidden Gods [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:17:49
"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 giv…
Episode 53: Astral Jet Lag: On William Gibson's 'Pattern Recognition' [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:02:49
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…
Episode 52: On Beauty [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:15:32
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 contri…
Episode 51: Blind Seers: On Flannery O'Connor's 'Wise Blood' [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:36:26
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…
Episode 50: Demogorgon: On 'Stranger Things' [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:36:31
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 19…
Episode 49: Out of Time: Nietzsche on History [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:22:42
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 phi…
Episode 48: Walking the Tightrope with Erik Davis [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:25:09
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…
Episode 47: Machines of Loving Grace: Technology and the Unabomber [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:08:24
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…