Shows
Weird StudiesAnimal Songs, with Meredith MichaelIn 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 about songs about animals, or songs by animals? Both, as it turns out. Beginning with three very different human compositions—The Beatles’ “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey,” Hovhaness’s And God Created the Great Whales, and Björk’s “Human Behavior”—the hosts discuss the roles animals play in human music, mythology, and mind. Along the way, they touch on Pink Floyd, the Beatles' trip...2025-07-231h 22
Weird StudiesPioneers of the Untimely: On the Hermit Card in the TarotIn this continuation of their non-linear journey through the tarot, Phil and JF discuss the ninth Arcanum: the Hermit. Walking through darkness with his lantern and staff, the Hermit invites us to break from the collective and seek a direct relationship with the Real. This is the card of the seeker, the misfit, the sage, and the wanderer. As tends to happen in these tarot episodes, the hosts take the opportunity to range across many topics, connecting the Hermit to Jung’s Red Book, the Desert Fathers, angels and demons, the I Ching, contemporary politics, and more.2025-04-091h 22
Weird StudiesThe Affirmation of Imagination: On John Crowley's 'Little, Big,' with Erik Davis
John Crowley’s Little, Big is, at once, a family saga, a fairy tale, an occult thriller, an idyll, a dystopia, as well as a meditation on myth and history, the real and the fantasy, memory and imagination. Little, Big is also a book that JF and Phil have been planning to discuss for as long as Weird Studies has existed. In this episode, they are joined by writer and scholar Erik Davis to explore the enduring charms and mysteries of one of the greatest—and most underrated—American novels of the late twentieth century.
Order Christian Bunyan...2025-03-261h 33
Weird StudiesMeeting at the Center: The Wedge, Part Two
In this episode, JF and Phil continue their conversation on the wedge, their figure for the epistemological divide between approaching reality from the heart and exploring it with the mind. As the discussion unfolds, the wedge begins to reveal itself not as a rigid binary but as a spectrum—one that stretches from ultimate thickness to ultimate thinness. Could thinking, then, may be the art of navigating this epistemic gradient, seeking the sweet spot where the self meets the world, each on the other's terms?
Visit Weirdosphere for more details on Erik Davis's upcoming course, The Three St...2025-03-121h 28
Weird StudiesIntuition and Reality: The Wedge, Part One
"The Wedge" is a key concept for Phil and JF. When exploring weird phenomena—from artworks to ghosts, and everything in between—one tends to emphasize one or the other "end" of the event. At the thin end of the Wedge, the focus is on subjective experience: how it felt, what it was like, and its personal significance. At the thick end, the emphasis shifts to what actually happened, independent of how it was experienced. Though their roles sometimes switch, Phil generally thinks from the thin end, while JF approaches things from the thick. In this episode, they begin unpa...2025-02-261h 16
Weird StudiesOn Hermann Hesse's 'Siddhartha'
Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha is one of the great novels of the twentieth century and a prime example of literature that transforms the deeply personal into something universal. For Phil and JF in this episode, the novel serves as the foundation for a discussion on spiritual journeying, the ideal of enlightenment, and the challenge of living in an ensouled universe.
Sign up for JF's new Weirdosphere course on the supernatural, starting on February 6th, 2025.
Purchase tickets to the Weirdosphere screening of Aaron Poole's Dada on February 1st, 2025.
Support us on Patreon.
Buy the...2025-01-221h 21
Weird StudiesProvidence of Evil: On Robert Eggers' 'Nosferatu'
In this episode, JF and Phil examine the myth of the vampire through the lens of Robert Eggers' latest film, Nosferatu, a reimagining of F. W. Murnau's German Expressionist masterpiece. Topics covered include the nature of vampires, the symbolism of evil, the implicit theology of Eggers' film (compared with that of Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula), the need for shadow work, as well as the power of real introspection and self-sacrifice.
Support us on Patreon.
Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 and 2, on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page.
Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.2025-01-081h 20
Weird StudiesOn 'The X Files,' with Meredith Michael
Chris Carter's The X-Files is weird on its face: a dramatic series that, from the start, presented itself as more than drama, an exploration of the reality of the paranormal using the tools of fiction, a fantasy posing as reality (or is it the other way around?). Strangely prescient, undeniably zany, and truly "hyperstitious," the series is likely to strike contemporary viewers as equal parts naive and prophetic. In this episode, music scholar and Weird Studies assistant Meredith Michael joins Phil and JF for a deep dive into the archival sublime of the filing cabinet marked "X."
...2024-12-041h 17
Weird StudiesThe Player: On the Magician Card in the Tarot
The Magician card likely graces more front covers of books on the tarot than any of the other major arcana. In many ways, it symbolizes the tarot itself, or the individual who has mastered the art of manipulating the cards to divine their meanings. Yet, the Magician is a profoundly ambiguous figure. From one perspective, he is the Magus, piercing through the illusions of ceaseless becoming to glimpse the hidden depths of reality. From another, he is all surface without depth, a carnival huckster ready to empty your coin purse while you’re transfixed by his crystal ball. In th...2024-11-201h 21
Weird StudiesEdge of Reality: On John Carpenter's 'In the Mouth of Madness'
Earlier this month, Phil and JF recorded a live episode at Indiana University Cinema in Bloomington following a screening of John Carpenter's film In the Mouth of Madness. Carpenter’s cult classic obliterates the boundary between reality and fiction, madness and revelation—an ideal subject for a Weird Studies conversation. In this episode, recorded before a live audience, the hosts explore the film’s Lovecraftian themes, the porous nature of storytelling, and how art can function as a conduit to unsettling truths.
Special thanks to Dr. Alicia Kozma and the IU Cinema team for hosting and recording the ev...2024-10-231h 12
CosmophoniaLes Baxter's "Music Out of the Moon"How does one with a penchant for cutting-edge electronic music, West-coast jazz, and lunar fantasies find relaxation in 1947? Why, with Les Baxter's Music Out of the Moon: Music Unusual Featuring the Theremin, of course! We take on this landmark album, which set the stage for exotica and lounge music in subsequent decades while ensuring visions of outer space remained an integral component of these fascinating genres. But it's more than that: Baxter's imaginings engage with a vast array of space music tropes, all at prior to the launch of Sputnik! This puts his music at the intersection of old...2024-10-2039 minCosmophoniaLes Baxter's "Music Out of the Moon"How does one with a penchant for cutting-edge electronic music, West-coast jazz, and lunar fantasies find relaxation in 1947? Why, with Les Baxter's Music Out of the Moon: Music Unusual Featuring the Theremin, of course! We take on this landmark album, which set the stage for exotica and lounge music in subsequent decades while ensuring visions of outer space remained an integral component of these fascinating genres. But it's more than that: Baxter's imaginings engage with a vast array of space music tropes, all at prior to the launch of Sputnik! This puts his music at the intersection of old...2024-10-2039 min
Weird StudiesRiddles in the Dark: On Fairy Tales, Interpretation, and 'Rapunzel'
Fairy tales are among the most familiar cultural objects, so familiar that we let our kids play with them unsupervised. At the same time, they are also the most mysterious of artifacts, their heimlich giving way to unheimlich as soon as we give them a closer look and ask ourselves what they are really about. Indeed, these imaginal nomads, which seem to evade all cultural and historical capture, existing in various forms in every time and place, can become so strange as to make us wonder if they are cultural at all, and not some unexplained force of nature — th...2024-10-091h 27
Weird StudiesOn Charles Burns' 'Black Hole' and the Medium of Comics
Comics, like cinema, is an eminently modern medium. And as with cinema, looking closely at it can swiftly acquaint us with the profound weirdness of modernity. Do that in the context of a discussion on Charles Burns' comic masterpiece Black Hole, and you're guaranteed a memorable Weird Studies episode. Black Hole was serialized over ten years beginning in 1995, and first released as a single volume by Pantheon Books in 2005. Like all masterpieces, it shines both inside and out: it tells a captivating story, a "weirding" of the teenage romance genre, while also revealing something of the inner workings of...2024-09-251h 21CosmophoniaSpace WhalesFrom the alien dolphins in "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (so long and thanks for all the fish) to the whale on the cover of the They Might be Giants album "Apollo 18," there are numerous examples of cosmic-dwelling cetaceans in science fiction and other space imaginings. Even more interestingly, these space whales' cosmic nature is often tied to their musical nature. In this episode, we ponder why this may be, and touch on some of our favorite space-whale-music examples. While we leave the details of several whale-themed musical works for other episodes (see references below), we consider instead the...2024-08-1939 minCosmophoniaSpace WhalesFrom the alien dolphins in "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (so long and thanks for all the fish) to the whale on the cover of the They Might be Giants album "Apollo 18," there are numerous examples of cosmic-dwelling cetaceans in science fiction and other space imaginings. Even more interestingly, these space whales' cosmic nature is often tied to their musical nature. In this episode, we ponder why this may be, and touch on some of our favorite space-whale-music examples. While we leave the details of several whale-themed musical works for other episodes (see references below), we consider instead the...2024-08-1939 min
Weird StudiesDon't Look Now: Live at Lily Dale
Daphne du Maurier was a prolific English writer of novels, plays, and short stories resonant with what she termed "a sense of unreality." In this episode, JF and Phil discuss her great short story "Don't Look Now," which Nicholas Roeg famously adapted to the screen in 1973 in a film starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. Recorded live at Shannon Taggart's Lily Dale Symposium on July 25th, 2024, the discussion takes a number of turns, exploring the ghost as an "image of itself," the phenomenon of "deathishness," the experience of derealization, the human capacity to break time, and grief as a...2024-08-071h 58
Weird StudiesMagick and Enlightenment, with Alan Chapman and Duncan Barford
Phil and JF are joined by Alan Chapman and Duncan Barford – practicing magicians, podcasters, and co-authors of the newly released Baptist's Head Compendium: Magick as a Path to Enlightenment, a collection of essays and reports from their famous occult blog, The Baptist's Head. Duncan and Alan are accomplished practitioners with deep insights into the nature of magic(k). The conversation touches on a number of subjects, including the parallels between magic, mysticism, and religion; form and formlessness; the nature of truth; the primacy of devotion; and the quest to converse with one's Holy Guardian Angel.
To purchase The...2024-07-241h 29
Weird StudiesBy Heart: On Memory, Poetry, and Form
In this computerized age, we tend to see memory as a purely cerebral faculty. To memorize is to store information away in the brain in such a way as to make it retrievable at a later time. But the old expression "knowing by heart" calls us to a stranger, more embodied and mysterious take on memory. In this episode, Phil and JF endeavour to recite two poems they've learned by heart, as a preamble to a discussion on poetry, form, and the magic of memory.
Details on Shannon Taggart's Symposium @ Lily Dale (July 25-28).
Support...2024-07-101h 18
Weird StudiesHead Over Heels: On the Hanged Man of the Tarot
The Hanged Man is arguably the most enigmatic card in the traditional tarot deck. Divested of any archetypal apparel – he is neither emperor nor fool, but just a man, who happens to be hanging – he gazes back at us with the look of one who harbors a secret. But what sort of secret? In this episode, JF and Phil discuss the card that no less august a personage than A.E. Waite, co-creator of the classic Rider-Waite deck, claimed was beyond all understanding.
The musical interludes in this episode are from Pierre-Yves Martel's recent album, "Bach." Visit his...2024-06-261h 19
Weird StudiesArt is Another Word for Truth: On Orson Welles's 'F for Fake'
Orson Welles made F for Fake in the early seventies, while still bobbing in the wake of a Pauline Kael essay accusing him of being cinema's greatest fraud. Ostensibly a documentary on the famous art forger Elmyr de Hory and his biographer Clifford Irving (a talented faker in his own right), the film blurs the line between fact and fiction in an effort to explore art's weird entanglement with illusion, magic, and ultimately, the search for truth. This is a film unlike any other, and it is arguably Welles's most important contribution to the evolution and theory of film...2024-05-291h 25
Weird StudiesOn Free Expression
The ongoing crackdown on protests at many American universities prompts a discussion on the politics, ethics, and metaphysics of free expression.
Support us on Patreon.
Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 and 2, on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page.
Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.
Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop
Find us on Discord
Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
REFERENCES
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Federico Campagna, Technic and Magic
George Orwell, The Prevention of Literature
George Orwell, Inside th...2024-05-151h 37
Weird StudiesVisions of the Wasteland: On George Miller's 'Mad Max' Films
There are artists who express the vision of a place, person, or thing so vividly and originally that it sets the bar for all future imaginings. With his four Mad Max films, this is what George Miller did with the image of the Wasteland. No one has been able to capture the stark, raw energy and chaotic beauty of a post-apocalyptic desert quite like Miller. His portrayal not only defines the aesthetic of a cinematic world but also prompts us to think about the meaning of civilization, technology, humanity, and how they intertwine. In this episode, Phil and JF...2024-05-011h 20CosmophoniaTotal Solar Eclipse Special: "The Narrow Path"On Monday, April 8, a total solar eclipse will sweep across much of North America, within view of millions of people. Most excitingly, the path of totality is coming by Bloomington, Indiana, current home of Cosmophonia! Your hosts have been involved in several music-space events in town, including our very own recital, where we have programmed a number of excellent on-topic pieces. The piece we discuss on this episode is the proverbial one that got away - Stuart Saunders Smith's "The Narrow Path" for two vibraphone players and one orchestral bells (or glockenspiel) player. While our conversation occasionally strays off...2024-04-0735 minCosmophoniaTotal Solar Eclipse Special: "The Narrow Path"On Monday, April 8, a total solar eclipse will sweep across much of North America, within view of millions of people. Most excitingly, the path of totality is coming by Bloomington, Indiana, current home of Cosmophonia! Your hosts have been involved in several music-space events in town, including our very own recital, where we have programmed a number of excellent on-topic pieces. The piece we discuss on this episode is the proverbial one that got away - Stuart Saunders Smith's "The Narrow Path" for two vibraphone players and one orchestral bells (or glockenspiel) player. While our conversation occasionally strays off...2024-04-0735 min
Weird StudiesMake Believe: On the Power of Pretentiousness
In culture and the arts, labeling something you don't like (or don't understand) "pretentious" is the easy way out. It's a conversation killer, implying that any dialogue is pointless, and those who disagree are merely duped by what you've cleverly discerned as a charade. It's akin to cynically revealing that a magic show is all smoke and mirrors—as if creative vision doesn't necessitate a leap of faith. In this episode, Phil and JF explore the nuances of pretentiousness, distinguishing between its fruitful and hollow forms. They argue that the real gamble, and inherent value, of daring to pretend li...2024-04-031h 13
Weird StudiesTatters of the King: On Robert Chambers' 'The King in Yellow'
"Let the red dawn surmise / What we shall do, / When the blue starlight dies / And all is through." This short poem, an epigraph to "The Yellow Sign," arguably the most memorable tale in Robert W. Chambers' 1895 collection The King in Yellow, encapsulates in four brief lines the affect that drives cosmic horror: the fearful sense of imminent annihilation. In the four stories JF and Phil discuss in this episode, this affect, which would inspire a thousand works of fiction in the twentieth century, emerges fully formed, dripping with the xanthous milk of Decadence. What’s more, it is here gi...2024-03-201h 26
Weird StudiesTowards a Weird Materialism: On Expressionism in Cinema
What is expressionism? A school? A movement? A philosophy? At the end of this episode, Phil and JF agree that it is, above all, a sensibility, one that surfaces periodically in history, punctuating it with occasional bursts of frenetic colour and eruptions of light and shadow. Whenever it appears, expressionism challenges our tendency to divide the world up into neat quadrants: mind and matter, subject and object lose their legitimacy as they start to bleed into one another. Prior to recording, your hosts agreed to focus on two pieces of writing: Victoria Nelson's The Secret Life of Puppets and...2024-03-061h 29Cosmophonia"Neptune" from Holst's The PlanetsProbably the most well-known piece of space themed classical music is Gustav Holst's The Planets. In this episode, we focus on the last movement of the suite, "Neptune," discussing how the timbre and harmony create its signature icy, watery, mysterious soundscape. The suite was completed in 1918, but while selected movements were performed several times in the following years, it did not receive its full premiere with the "Neptune" movement until 1920. Despite the movement being an unusual choice for a finale, it was and still is extremely effective. We also discuss how the astrological inspiration for the suite led Holst to...2024-02-2533 minCosmophonia"Neptune" from Holst's The PlanetsProbably the most well-known piece of space themed classical music is Gustav Holst's The Planets. In this episode, we focus on the last movement of the suite, "Neptune," discussing how the timbre and harmony create its signature icy, watery, mysterious soundscape. The suite was completed in 1918, but while selected movements were performed several times in the following years, it did not receive its full premiere with the "Neptune" movement until 1920. Despite the movement being an unusual choice for a finale, it was and still is extremely effective. We also discuss how the astrological inspiration for the suite led Holst to...2024-02-2533 min
Weird StudiesThe Source of All Abysses: On the Devil Card in the Tarot
"The Devil's finest ruse," Baudelaire wrote, "is to persuade you that he doesn't exist." In this episode, JF and Phil peer through a buzzing haze of lies, illusions, and mirages, in hopes of catching a glimpse, however brief, of the figure standing at its center. With a focus on the fifteenth major arcanum of the tarot, they try to make sense of this archetype which feels, at once, remotely distant and uncomfortably close to us, all while heeding the warning from the anonymous author of Meditations on the Tarot that one ought not look too deeply into the nature...2024-02-211h 10Cosmophonia"Stardrive" (Uncharted Cosmophony No. 1)In this new series, Uncharted Cosmophony, we choose a random, previously unknown to us album that seems to have some spacey elements, listen to it, and then talk about it. This time we chose the 1973 record "Intergalactic Trot" by Stardrive with Robert Mason. The album prominently shows off the capabilities of an early multi-voiced synthesizer, backed by a full band, but unlike ambient "space" music is energetic and driven. Our conversation moves in interesting directions, including how the blending of technology and pastoral musical topics can be used to depict an alien landscape.
References
...2024-02-1035 minCosmophonia"Stardrive" (Uncharted Cosmophony No. 1)In this new series, Uncharted Cosmophony, we choose a random, previously unknown to us album that seems to have some spacey elements, listen to it, and then talk about it. This time we chose the 1973 record "Intergalactic Trot" by Stardrive with Robert Mason. The album prominently shows off the capabilities of an early multi-voiced synthesizer, backed by a full band, but unlike ambient "space" music is energetic and driven. Our conversation moves in interesting directions, including how the blending of technology and pastoral musical topics can be used to depict an alien landscape.
References
...2024-02-1035 min
Weird StudiesThe Incarnation of Meaning: Greenwich Village After the War
In this second of two episodes on "scenes," Phil and JF set their sights on Greenwich Village in the wake of the Second World War. Focusing on two works on the era – Anatole Broyard's Kafka Was the Rage and John Cassavetes' Shadows – the conversation further develops the mystique of urban scenes and explores the weirdness of cities. The city, long considered the human artifact par excellence, comes to seem like something that comes from outside the ambit of humanity.
Support us on Patreon.
Buy the Weird Studies sountrack, volumes 1 and 2, on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page.
List...2024-02-071h 18
Weird StudiesScene of the Crime: On Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's 'From Hell'
Listener discretion advised: This episode delves into the disturbing details of the Whitechapel murders of 1888, and may not be suitable for all audiences.
Serialized from 1989 to 1996, Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's graphic novel From Hell was first released in a single volume in 1999, just as the world was groaning into the present century. This is an important detail, because according to the creators of this astounding work, the age then passing away could not be understood without reference to the gruesome murders, never solved, of five women in London's Whitechapel district, in the fall of 1888. In Alan...2024-01-241h 30
Weird StudiesThe Way of All Flesh: On John Carpenter's 'The Thing'
As a horror movie, John Carpenter's The Thing seems to have it all: amazing practical effects, body horror, psychological drama, Kurt Russell ... Indeed, there is only one element this movie lacks, and that is anything at all corresponding to the titular villain. There is no thing in The Thing! What we have instead is a process, a pattern, a way for which the term "thing" is as good as any other. (What is a thing anyway?) In this episode, Phil and JF, having decided that Carpenter's film qualifies as a Christmas movie because there is snow (and a dog...2023-12-201h 15CosmophoniaSonificationSonification is when scientific data is "visualized" or communicated through non-verbal sound. In this episode we discuss the affordances (and some cautions) of sonification in science and science communication as well as in musical compositions. The practice of sonification, especially of astronomical data, brings together aesthetic and objective representations of the universe in a way that can be seen as hearkening back to the tradition of the Quadrivium.
References
Alvin Lucier, "Sferics"
Chandra sonifications
LIGO chirps *
Gerard Grisey, "Le Noir de L'Etoile"
...2023-12-0937 minCosmophoniaSonificationSonification is when scientific data is "visualized" or communicated through non-verbal sound. In this episode we discuss the affordances (and some cautions) of sonification in science and science communication as well as in musical compositions. The practice of sonification, especially of astronomical data, brings together aesthetic and objective representations of the universe in a way that can be seen as hearkening back to the tradition of the Quadrivium.
References
Alvin Lucier, "Sferics"
Chandra sonifications
LIGO chirps *
Gerard Grisey, "Le Noir de L'Etoile"
...2023-12-0937 min
Weird StudiesThree Songs, with Meredith Michael
Every once in a while, JF and Phil like to do a “song swap.” Each picks a song, and the ensuing conversation locates linkages and correspondences where none was previously thought to exist. In this episode, they are joined by the music scholar Meredith Michael – Weird Studies assistant, and co-host of Cosmophonia, a podcast about music and outer space – to discuss songs by Lili Boulanger, Vienna Teng, and Iron & Wine. Before long, this disparate assortment personal favourites occasions a weirdly focused dialogue on time, impermanence, control, (mis)recognition, and the affinity of art and synchronicity.
Support us on Patre...2023-12-061h 30
Weird StudiesAs Above, So Below: On Plato's 'Timaeus'
In this episode of Weird Studies, we delve into the mysterious depths of Plato's Timaeus, one of the foundational texts of our civilization. In his characteristic brilliance, Plato blends cosmology and metaphysics, anatomy and politics to tell a creation story that rivals the most fantastical mythologies, yet he does it while remaining grounded in a philosophical rigor that announces a radically new way of thinking the world. Here, Phil and JF try unravel the layers of the dialogue, revealing how Plato's vision of a divinely ordered cosmos echoes through the corridors of esoteric thought from antiquity to modern times.2023-11-221h 36
Weird StudiesLong Live the New Flesh: On David Cronenberg's 'Videodrome'
"Death to Videodrome! Long live the New Flesh!"
It was perhaps inevitable that the modern Weird, driven as it is to swallow all things, would sooner or later veer into the realm of political sloganeering without losing any of its unknowable essence. David Cronenberg's 1983 film Videodrome is more than a masterwork of body horror: it is a study in technopolitics, a meditation on the complex weave of imagination and perception, and a prophecy of the now on-going coalescence of flesh and technology into a strange new alloy. In this episode, recorded live after a screening of the...2023-11-081h 14Cosmophonia”Alien” (1979)On this Halloween special, we discuss the music and sound design in Ridley Scott's movie "Alien." Blending science fiction and horror aesthetics, the film relies quite a bit on musical cues and jarring juxtapositions of sound environments to create a tense and unsettling atmosphere.
References
Jerry Goldsmith, Soundtrack for "Alien"
Toru Takemitsu, Flock Descends on a Pentagonal Garden
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik "Romanze"
Howard Hanson, Symphony No. 2: "Romantic"
2023-11-0138 minCosmophonia”Alien” (1979)On this Halloween special, we discuss the music and sound design in Ridley Scott's movie "Alien." Blending science fiction and horror aesthetics, the film relies quite a bit on musical cues and jarring juxtapositions of sound environments to create a tense and unsettling atmosphere.
References
Jerry Goldsmith, Soundtrack for "Alien"
Toru Takemitsu, Flock Descends on a Pentagonal Garden
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik "Romanze"
Howard Hanson, Symphony No. 2: "Romantic"
2023-11-0138 min
Weird StudiesThe Only Possible End: On Donna Tartt's 'The Secret History'
There are works of weird fiction that dispense their strangeness so subtly that many readers never pick up on it, books that allow themselves to be pass for mundane, the better to haunt us after we put them down. Donna Tartt's debut novel The Secret History, published in 1992, is such a work. On the surface, it is a brilliant, yet completely naturalistic, telling of the lead-up and aftermath of a murder. But The Secret History is also a work of the depths, and readers who go in seeking the Weird will find it lurking on every page. More than...2023-10-251h 32
Weird StudiesDispatches From the Inside: On Planet Weird's 'The Unbinding'
One of the most surprising aspects of paranormal experience is how often it takes on a storylike form, unfolding exactly as you would expect it to in, say, a Hollywood horror film. Viewers of Karl Pfeiffer's film The Unbinding will get a sense of this in the early sequences of Greg and Dana Newkirk's latest occult adventure. The haunting comes on strong and takes rather familiar forms. But the almost too-good-to-be-true frights -- effective as they are in an almost fairy-tale way -- soon give way to a procedural that invites us to ponder the ethics and methodologies of...2023-10-111h 30CosmophoniaAlan Hovhaness’s ”Star Dawn”What connects Dante's 14th century Paradiso, an early 20th century science fiction novel, and a 13-minute "symphony" for concert band written in the 1980s? It may be surprising but the answer is that they all involve a story where a human travels to Mars and finds it not harsh and warlike but beautiful and awe-inspiring. Like Dante and C. S. Lewis, composer Alan Hovhaness found an incredible source of spiritual inspiration from outer space. He made it his mission to reawaken humanity's connection to spirituality and nature by inspiring a sense of wonder, and his piece "Star Dawn" is p...2023-09-2943 minCosmophoniaAlan Hovhaness’s ”Star Dawn”What connects Dante's 14th century Paradiso, an early 20th century science fiction novel, and a 13-minute "symphony" for concert band written in the 1980s? It may be surprising but the answer is that they all involve a story where a human travels to Mars and finds it not harsh and warlike but beautiful and awe-inspiring. Like Dante and C. S. Lewis, composer Alan Hovhaness found an incredible source of spiritual inspiration from outer space. He made it his mission to reawaken humanity's connection to spirituality and nature by inspiring a sense of wonder, and his piece "Star Dawn" is p...2023-09-2943 min
Weird StudiesInto the Night Land, with Erik Davis
William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land is without a doubt one of the weirdest entries in the annals of weird fiction. Set in the earth's distant future, after the sun has gone out and the planet has been cleaved in two by an unspecified disaster, a telepathic scientist dons his armour and weapons to brave the monster-haunted yet strangely monotonous wastes that engirdle the massive pyramid in which the last humans took refuge, hundreds of thousands of years earlier. If Samuel Beckett tripped hard on ayahuasca, he might have come up with something like Hodgson's genre-defying novel, which reads...2023-09-271h 23
Weird StudiesCelestial Machine: On the Temperance Card in the Tarot
Even learned commentators on the tarot are likely to point out at the fourteenth major arcana, Temperance, is a bit of a boring card. At least, it comes off as dull until you look at it closely, as JF and Phil do in this episode. What they find is that the Temperance card is actually a diagram, a kind of blueprint for a celestial machine that underlies human technology, beckoning us to restore even the most mechanical contraption to the raw weirdness at the source of everything.
Header image by Rolf Dietrich Brecher via Wikimedia Commons
2023-09-131h 19CosmophoniaBlue MoonOn this Super Blue Moon, we discuss the superstar tune "Blue Moon." We begin our conversation assessing the contested definition of an astronomical "blue moon," finding surprising parallels with the human-centered vision of the moon that the song exhibits. We then delve into the muddy and fraught history of how the song emerged into the public consciousness and marvel at is ability to remain universally appealing, appearing fresh and new with each new performance, arrangement, and recording through the decades.
Special thanks to Liz Roman Gallese, who kindly answered our inquiries about particular details. She infers that d...2023-08-3139 minCosmophoniaBlue MoonOn this Super Blue Moon, we discuss the superstar tune "Blue Moon." We begin our conversation assessing the contested definition of an astronomical "blue moon," finding surprising parallels with the human-centered vision of the moon that the song exhibits. We then delve into the muddy and fraught history of how the song emerged into the public consciousness and marvel at is ability to remain universally appealing, appearing fresh and new with each new performance, arrangement, and recording through the decades.
Special thanks to Liz Roman Gallese, who kindly answered our inquiries about particular details. She infers that d...2023-08-3139 minCosmophoniaPaul McCartney’s ”The Kiss of Venus”For proof that the ideas of the Quadrivium continue to resonate in modern culture, we need not look further than Sir Paul McCartney. By pure coincidence, we happened to fall in love with the song "The Kiss of Venus" from his 2020 self-titled album, and decide to do an episode based partly on the book "A Little Book of Coincidence" around the same time, not realizing that said song was inspired by said book! After making the connection we decided we had to do the song on the show. It turns out that the song has several subtle but exciting...2023-08-0137 minCosmophoniaPaul McCartney’s ”The Kiss of Venus”For proof that the ideas of the Quadrivium continue to resonate in modern culture, we need not look further than Sir Paul McCartney. By pure coincidence, we happened to fall in love with the song "The Kiss of Venus" from his 2020 self-titled album, and decide to do an episode based partly on the book "A Little Book of Coincidence" around the same time, not realizing that said song was inspired by said book! After making the connection we decided we had to do the song on the show. It turns out that the song has several subtle but exciting...2023-08-0137 min
Weird StudiesThe Science of Things Spiritual: Live in Lily Dale
On the last week of July, 2023, Phil and JF were delighted to speak at Shannon Taggart's Science of Things Spiritual Symposium in Lily Dale, the nerve centre of the Spiritualist movement. As speakers, your hosts were part of an inspiring lineup of scholars, artists, and researchers committed to exploring the borderlands of art, science, religion, and the paranormal. They also had the honour of launching the symposium with a live recording held on the evening of the July 27th. The topic was Frederic W. H. Myers' autobiographical essay, "Fragments of Inner Life," first published in full in 1961, some sixty...2023-08-011h 48
Weird StudiesThe Real and the Possible: Live at the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, with Jacob G. Foster
In The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light, the cultural historian William Irwin Thompson predicted the rise of a new form of knowledge building, a direly needed alternative to the Wissenshaft of standard science and scholarship. He called it Wissenskunst, "the play of knowledge in a world of serious data processors." Wissenskunst is pretty much what JF and Phil have been aspiring to do on Weird Studies since 2018, but in this episode they are joined by a master of the craft, the computational sociologist and physicist Jacob G. Foster of UCLA. Jacob is the co-founder of the Diverse Intelligence...2023-07-191h 15
Weird StudiesSacramental Reality: On Arthur Machen's "A Fragment of Life"
"A Fragement of Life" opens with Mr. Darnell waking up from a dream and going down to breakfast, where it is described that "before he sat down to his fried bacon he kissed his wife seriously and dutifully." He then proceeds to take the tram to visit a friend, with whom he has a long and tedious conversation about plants, clothes, kids, and how best to spend ten pounds. The story continues on in this mundane manner for quite some time, which is probably not what we would expect from Arthur Machen, virtuoso of the weird. But, as Phil...2023-07-051h 25CosmophoniaThe QuadriviumThe idea that music and the cosmos are intrinsically connected has very deep roots in many human cultures. In Western cultures, one of the most long-lasting ways that this relationship manifest was in the Quadrivium. These four "number arts" were the ancestors of modern sciences and consisted of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Learning how number and numerical relationships worked across these disciplines allowed educated individuals to see the inherent order, or "harmony," of nature. It is no wonder that many great astronomers from antiquity to the 18th century, from Ptolemy to Kepler and beyond, wrote treatises on both...2023-07-0433 minCosmophoniaThe QuadriviumThe idea that music and the cosmos are intrinsically connected has very deep roots in many human cultures. In Western cultures, one of the most long-lasting ways that this relationship manifest was in the Quadrivium. These four "number arts" were the ancestors of modern sciences and consisted of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Learning how number and numerical relationships worked across these disciplines allowed educated individuals to see the inherent order, or "harmony," of nature. It is no wonder that many great astronomers from antiquity to the 18th century, from Ptolemy to Kepler and beyond, wrote treatises on both...2023-07-0433 min
Weird StudiesSong Swap: On Judee Sill's 'The Kiss' and Wilco's 'Jesus, Etc.'
Occasionally, JF and Phil do a song swap. Each host chooses a song he loves and shares it with the other, and then they record an episode on it. This time, JF chose to discuss "Jesus, Etc." from Wilco's 2001 album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and Phil picked Judee Sill's ethereal "The Kiss," from Heart Food (1973). It was in the zone of Time, in all its strangeness, that the two songs began to resonate with one another. Sill's song is a fated grasping at the eternal that is present even when it eludes us, and "Jesus, Etc." is a leap across...2023-06-211h 19
Weird StudiesMythos of the Moment: On 'Twin Peaks,' Season 3
David Lynch and Mark Frost's Twin Peaks has been a touchstone of Weird Studies since the podcast's inception. Back in 2018, Phil and JF recorded Episode 1: Garmonbozia while still reeling from the series' third season, which aired on Showtime the year before. Now, in preparation for their upcoming course on Twin Peaks, they watched the third season again and recorded this episode. Their conversation touched on the virtues of late style in the arts, the divergence of knowing and understanding, the fate of Agent Dale Cooper, and the dream logic of the _Twin Peaks _universe.
Last change to...2023-06-071h 17CosmophoniaJanelle Monáe’s ”Metropolis: The Chase Suite”Musician and film star Janelle Monáe began her catapult to fame with her five suite and three album "Metropolis" series, which builds a wonderfully rich futuristic universe, chock full of references that situate it within the traditions of science fiction, Afrofuturism, and music of all genres. In this episode, we focus on the first iteration of this series, the 2007 E.P. "Metropolis: The Chase Suite." This E.P. introduces the main character and conflict of the story: Android Cindi Mayweather has transgressed the laws of her society by falling in love with a human, and now must face l...2023-06-0435 minCosmophoniaJanelle Monáe’s ”Metropolis: The Chase Suite”Musician and film star Janelle Monáe began her catapult to fame with her five suite and three album "Metropolis" series, which builds a wonderfully rich futuristic universe, chock full of references that situate it within the traditions of science fiction, Afrofuturism, and music of all genres. In this episode, we focus on the first iteration of this series, the 2007 E.P. "Metropolis: The Chase Suite." This E.P. introduces the main character and conflict of the story: Android Cindi Mayweather has transgressed the laws of her society by falling in love with a human, and now must face l...2023-06-0435 min
Weird StudiesYou Must Change Your Life
Rainer Maria Rilke's poem "Archaic Torso of Apollo" ends on a note that has puzzled and inspired readers for more than a century: "For there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life." In this episode, JF and Phil search for the meaning of this ethico-aesthetic imperative that Rilke heard resounding from a fragment of Greek statuary. This episode is special because the hosts were able to record it in person while on a writing retreat in Western Quebec.
Enroll in THE TWIN PEAKS MYTHOS, a 4-week Weird Studies view-along starting June 8...2023-05-241h 33
Weird StudiesAn Air of Great Power: On the Chariot in the Tarot
Of the twenty-two figures that make up the major arcana of the tarot, the Chariot is probably the most commonplace. While the tenth arcanum is a wheel, it's The Wheel of Fortune, not just any old wagon wheel. But arcanum VII is neither the Chariot of Fire or the Chariot of the Gods – just the plain old chariot. Usually, it is interpreted as a symbol of the will in its lower and higher aspects. In this episode, Phil notes that the Chariot can also symbolize something as ordinary as new car. Of course, here on Weird Studies, no car is...2023-05-101h 17CosmophoniaMoonlight SonataThe gorgeous and strange first movement of Beethoven's piano sonata Op. 27 No. 2 is one of the most popular piano pieces of all time, but there are many secrets that lie below its placid surface. We discuss some of the ways that the piece evokes moonlight and nocturnal landscapes.
References
The recording we used was played by Malcolm Bilson from "The Complete Piano Sonatas Played on Historical Instruments"
Sarah Waltz, "In Defense of Moonlight"
Tom Beghin, "Beethoven's Mondschein Sonata"
2023-05-0537 minCosmophoniaMoonlight SonataThe gorgeous and strange first movement of Beethoven's piano sonata Op. 27 No. 2 is one of the most popular piano pieces of all time, but there are many secrets that lie below its placid surface. We discuss some of the ways that the piece evokes moonlight and nocturnal landscapes.
References
The recording we used was played by Malcolm Bilson from "The Complete Piano Sonatas Played on Historical Instruments"
Sarah Waltz, "In Defense of Moonlight"
Tom Beghin, "Beethoven's Mondschein Sonata"
2023-05-0537 minCosmophoniaStar Trek Themes Part 2The anticipated second half of our Star Trek themes discussion! We get very excited about The Next Generation, and then get very opinionated about Enterprise and Discovery, while ultimately finding some redemptive qualities about them.
2023-04-0637 minCosmophoniaStar Trek Themes Part 2The anticipated second half of our Star Trek themes discussion! We get very excited about The Next Generation, and then get very opinionated about Enterprise and Discovery, while ultimately finding some redemptive qualities about them.
2023-04-0637 min
CosmophoniaStar Trek Themes Part 1What is a more iconic space art than Star Trek? As both Meredith and Gabe are Star Trek nerds, we thought it a fitting beginning to our frontier into this podcast series. While of course music is omnipresent in the franchise in underscoring and even musical-themed episodes, we focus for now on the theme songs, discussing how they are put together and what they reflect about the themes and ideas of The Original Series, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager.
2023-03-0837 minCosmophoniaStar Trek Themes Part 1What is a more iconic space art than Star Trek? As both Meredith and Gabe are Star Trek nerds, we thought it a fitting beginning to our frontier into this podcast series. While of course music is omnipresent in the franchise in underscoring and even musical-themed episodes, we focus for now on the theme songs, discussing how they are put together and what they reflect about the themes and ideas of The Original Series, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager.
2023-03-0837 min