Episode 189: Care of the Dead, with Jacob G. Foster

Episode 189: Care of the Dead, with Jacob G. Foster

Author: SpectreVision Radio April 23, 2025 Duration: 1:35:47
In this episode, JF and Phil are joined by Jacob G. Foster—sociologist, physicist, and researcher at Indiana University Bloomington and the Santa Fe Institute—for a conversation about their recent collaboration in Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Their co-authored essay, “Care of the Dead,” explores how the dead continue to shape our cultures, languages, and ways of being. Together, they discuss the process of writing the piece and what it means to say that the dead are not gone—that they persist, and that they make claims on the living. The article is available here: https://direct.mit.edu/daed/article/154/1/166/127931/Care-of-the-Dead-Ancestors-Traditions-amp-the-Life **References** [Peter Kingsley,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kingsley) English writer  Weird Studies, [Episode 98 on “Taboo”]) https://www.weirdstudies.com/98)  John Berger, “12 Theses on the Economy of the Dead” in _[Hold Everything Dear](12 Theses on the Economy of the Dead)_  Bernard Koch, Daniele Silvestro, and Jacob Foster, ["The Evolutionary Dynamics of Cultural Change”](https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/659bt_v1)  Gilbert Simondon, _[Imagination and Invention](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781517914455)_  William Gibson, _[Neuromancer](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780441007462)_  [Phlogiston theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston_theory)  George Orwell, _[1984](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780451524935)_  HP Lovecraft, [“The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”](https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cdw.aspx)  Weird Studies, [Episode 187 on “Little, Big”](https://www.weirdstudies.com/187)  [John Dee,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dee) English occultist  Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, _[The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780195320992)_  Robert Harrison, _[The Dominion of the Dead](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780226317939)_  Gilles Deleuze, _[Bergsonism](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780942299076)_  Elizabeth LeGuin, _[Boccherini’s Body](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780520240179)_  Elizabeth LeGuin, [“Cello and Bow thinking”](http://www.echo.ucla.edu/cello-and-bow-thinking-baccherinis-cello-sonata-in-eb-minor-faouri-catalogo/)  Johannes Brahms, _Handel Variations_  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 46: Thomas Ligotti's Angel [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:29:37
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 bo…
Episode 45: Jeffrey J. Kripal on 'Flipping' Out of Materialism [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:10:27
"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 t…
Episode 43: On Shirley Jackson [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:16:32
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…
Episode 42: On Pauline Oliveros, with Kerry O'Brien [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:04:12
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 d…
Episode 41: On Speculative Fiction, with Matt Cardin [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:22
Neil Gaiman wrote, "If literature is the world, then fantasy and horror are twin cities, divided by a river of black water." Flame Tree Publishing underwrites this claim with their recent publication, The Astounding Illu…
Episode 40: On Jonathan Glazer's 'Under the Skin' [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:18:29
In Jonathan Glazer's loose screen adaptation of Michel Faber's novel Under the Skin, a creature of mysterious origin drives around Scotland in a white van, collecting lonely men and spiriting them away to an otherworld w…
Episode 39: The Challenge of the Paranormal, with Jeffrey J. Kripal [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:02:45
"The world is not simply composed of physical causes strung together in strictly materialistic and mechanical fashion," writes Prof. Jeffrey J. Kripal in his seminal book, Authors of the Impossible. "The world is also a…
Episode 38: Style as Analysis [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:10:45
Music writing has always been something of an occult practice, trying by some weird alchemy to use concepts to describe stuff that defies the basic categories of intellect. So long as we stick to classical music, we can…
Episode 37: Entities, with Stuart Davis [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:15:17
Several years ago, on New Year’s Eve, a tall, purple-robed praying mantis appeared to multidisciplinary artist Stuart Evan Davis as he meditated while running a fever. “Remember who you work for,” the entity said after b…