Episode 71: The Medium is the Message

Episode 71: The Medium is the Message

Author: SpectreVision Radio April 15, 2020 Duration: 1:25:35
On the surface, the phrase "the medium is the message," prophetic as it may have been when Marshall McLuhan coined it, points a now-obvious fact of our wired world, namely that the content of any medium is less important than its form. The advent of email, for instance, has brought about changes in society and culture that are more far-reaching than the content of any particular email. On the other hand, this aphorism of McLuhan's has the ring of an utterance of the Delphic Oracle. As Phil proposes in this episode of Weird Studies, it is an example of what Zen practitioners call a koan, a statement that occludes and illumines in equal measures, a jewel whose shining surface is an invitation to descend into dark depths. Join JF and Phil as they discuss the mystical and cosmic implications of McLuhan's oracular vision. REFERENCES McLuhan, Understanding Media The Playboy interview McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects Graham Harman, American philosopher Clement Greenberg, American critic Dale Pendell, Pharmako/Poeia: Plant Powers, Poisons, and Herbcraft Brian Eno, British composer Marshall and Eric McLuhan, The Laws of Media: The New Science _ Jonathan Sterne, _The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction Eric McLuhan and Frank Zingrone (editors), The Essential McLuhan Charles A. Reich, The Greening of America David Fincher (director), The Social Network _ Gilles Deleuze, _Cinema I _and _Cinema II Jean Gebser, The Ever-Present Origin Eric Havelock,_ Preface to Plato_ Walter J. Ong, American theorist Plato, [Republic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic(Plato))_ 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…