Episode 2: Garmonbozia

Episode 2: Garmonbozia

Author: SpectreVision Radio February 1, 2018 Duration: 1:26:32
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 world. We use the fictional world of Twin Peaks as a map to the (so-called) real world and take Philip K. Dick, Krzysztof Penderecki, Norman Mailer, William S. Burroughs, Theodor Adorno, and H.P. Lovecraft as our landmarks. Warning: some spoilers of Twin Peaks season 3. Works Cited or Discussed: Phil Ford, "The Cold War Never Ended", Dial M for Musicology (1) (2) (3) (4) Twin Peaks: The Return — Official Site Philip K. Dick, “The Empire Never Ended,” treated in R. Crumb’s “The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick” and the “Tractate” from Dick’s Exegesis: http://www.tekgnostics.com/PDK.HTM Norman Mailer, “The White Negro” Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion Arthur Machen, The White People Robert Oppenheimer, “I am become death” C.G. Jung, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch Howard Phillips Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu William B. Yeats, "The Second Coming" Krzysztof Penderecki, Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima The Book of Ecclesiastes Jon H. Else, The Day After Trinity (documentary) Francisco Goya, "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters" Stanley Kubrick, Doctor Strangelove, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment Jean Beaudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle William James, A Pluralistic Universe Norman Mailer, Advertisements for Myself 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 28: Weird Music, Part Two [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:04:59
"Music is worth living for," Andrew W.K. sings in his latest rock anthem. In this second episode on the weirdness of music, JF and Phil focus on two works steeped in ambiguity and paradox: Bob Dylan's "Jokerman," from th…
Episode 27: Weird Music, Part One [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:18:32
In this first of two episodes devoted to the music of the weird, Phil and JF discuss two works that have bowled them over: the second movement of Ligeti's Musica Ricercata, used to powerful effect in Stanley Kubrick's Ey…
Episode 26: Living in a Glass Age, with Michael Garfield [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:19:17
Stone, bronze, iron... glass? In his recent thought and writing, transdisciplinary artist and thinker Michael Garfield defines modernity as an age of glass, arguing that the entire ethos of our era inheres in the transfo…
Episode 25: David Cronenberg's 'Naked Lunch' [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:20:36
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' infamous 1959 novel. A treatise on addiction, a diagnosis of modern ills…
Episode 24: The Charlatan and the Magus, with Lionel Snell [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 58:53
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 tarot deck doesn't begin with the noble Emperor or august Hierophant, b…
Episode 23: On Presence [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:43:49
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 of books, the mystery of the event, modernity's knack for making myth…
Episode 22: Divining the World with Joshua Ramey [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:09:37
American philosopher Joshua Ramey, author of The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and the Spiritual Ordeal, and Politics of Divination: Neoliberal Endgame and the Religion of Contingency, joins Phil and JF to discuss a philo…
Episode 21: The Trash Stratum - Part 2 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:06:11
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, they will uncover such moldy jewels as the 1944 film Cobra Woman, the ex…
Episode 20: The Trash Stratum - Part 1 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:15:42
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 initially show up at the trash stratum." Gnosticism, Aleister Crowley's Thoth…
Episode 19: Intermezzo [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:09:28
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 far and what's on the horizon (more guests!). Before long, they're digg…