Episode 95: Demon Seed: On Doris Lessing's 'The Fifth Child'

Episode 95: Demon Seed: On Doris Lessing's 'The Fifth Child'

Author: SpectreVision Radio March 31, 2021 Duration: 1:26:18
Doris Lessing's uncategorizable oeuvre reached strange new heights in 1988 with the publication of her short novel The Fifth Child. The story couldn't be simpler. In the England of the 1970s, a couple determined to live out a dream that many of their generation have rejected -- the big family in the old house with the pretty garden -- conceive a child that may or may not be human. From that moment on, the boy, their fifth, becomes the alien force that will tear their dream to pieces. Profoundly ambiguous and unsettling, The Fifth Child is a weird novel that raises questions about parenthood, family, and the impenetrable depths of nature. Header Image: The Changeling by Henry Fuseli (1780) Additional music: "Fast Bossa Nova: Falling Stars" by Dee Yan-Key REFERENCES Doris Lessing, The Fifth Child Doris Lessing, Shikasta M. R. James, weird fiction author Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire Weird Studies, Episode 67 on “Hellier” Victoria Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets David Icke, conspiracy theorist Deros, underground beings from the fiction of Richard Sharpe Shaver Hieronymus Bosch, Dutch Renaissance painter Weird Studies, Episode 86 on “The Sandman” Slavoj Žižek, The Puppet and the Dwarf Louis Sass, “The Land of Unreality: On the Phenomenology of the Schizophrenic Break” Louis Sass, Madness and Modernism Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life Richard Thorpe (dir.), The Wizard of Oz Frank L. Baum, The Wizard of Oz Weird Studies, bonus episode on Adventure Time James Hillman, The Soul’s Code Doris Lessing, Ben in the World Roman Polanski (dir.), Rosemary’s Baby Richard Donner (dir.), The Omen Donald Cammell (dir.), Demon Seed 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 194: Animal Songs, with Meredith Michael [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:23:02
In this episode, Phil and JF are joined by Meredith Michael—musicologist, podcaster, and Weird Studies production assistant—for a conversation about animal songs. The phrase is intentionally slippery. Are we talking abou…
Episode 193: On Conversion, or Arousing the Bodhi-Mind [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:28:54
How do you become religious? What is a conversion experience? Does it happen all at once or gradually? What's the point of religion, anyway? These are questions that JF (a Catholic) and Phil (a Zennist) have often been a…
Episode 192 - A Dream of Landscape: On Walking [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:13:43
Phil and JF first explored the mysteries of walking back in episode 59. That episode felt like a mere introduction—a tentative first step on a long and winding path. Now, 133 episodes later, they return to the theme as t…
Special Episode: Theory, Philosophy, and Uranus [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:02:29
This conversation was originally recorded in August 2024 and released for our Patreon supporters. Weird Studies will be back with a new episode on June 25, 2025. What is cultural theory? How is philosophy "a preparation…
Special Episode: Myth, History, and Form [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 46:55
This special release is a Patreon extra we’re making available to all listeners, in lieu of the official episode originally scheduled for today. As explained in the introduction, we will be back with a full episode later…
Episode 191 — The Acid Queen, with Susannah Cahalan [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:28:01
Best known as the wife and partner of Timothy Leary, Rosemary Woodruff was in fact a central figure in the psychedelic movement in her own right—a political radical, underground fugitive, and neglected architect of the c…
Episode 190 – Here Be Shrubs: On Algernon Blackwood's 'The Willows' [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:15:04
In this episode, JF and Phil paddle into the marshlands of Algernon Blackwood’s 1907 masterpiece The Willows, a tale Lovecraft once called the finest weird story of all time. They explore how a narrative in which almost…
Episode 189: Care of the Dead, with Jacob G. Foster [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

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 Daedal…