Shows
Deep Calls to Deep: Reading TogetherWhen Isn't Nostalgia Poison? BOC: InfernoNostalgia is poison. So why do I like BOC so much? BOC's nostalgia isn't saccharine but complicated. When remembering is blocked by a nostalgic concept, the past becomes a projection of the rememberer's wish-fulfillment fantasy. The general structure of this sort of fantasy projection is that of the fascist who imagines a past greatness, or a lost Eden, that never was to recover the past from a decadent present. It is a well worn and now all too obvious observation that "Make America Great Again," is a totalitarian dog whistle. But there is a sort of remembering that also e...
2026-06-0354 minDeep Calls to Deep: Reading TogetherRecovery from Eternal Conscious Torment 2: A Short History of the AfterlifeIn part two Kevin and I continue to work on Bart D. Ehrman's Book, Heaven and Hell: The History of the Afterlife. We recount some of our life experiences with various doctrines of Hell and the immense suffering that the idea of eternal separation and punishment has wrought in our lives and the lives of others. And then we get into Chapter One: Guided Tours of Heaven and Hell, Chapter Two: The Fear of Death, and Chapter Three: Life After Death Before There Was Life After Death.https://www.martinessig.comBaddass vibes mixed by...
2026-05-281h 02Deep Calls to Deep: Reading TogetherCan AI Care about Us?James and I discuss Under The Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami. We get into whether AI can have an intention other than the ones given to it by our Human intentions. And we wonder whether AI can have the conscious intention to save humanity from itself as a result of the purity of its love for humanity, a purity unlike the yin-yang(y) love-hate of humans that will ultimately be our undoing. Kawakami's AI claims to love human beings in the Positivistic sense of without any negativity; whereas, human love is always tinged with hate. Both...
2026-05-2843 min
Failure Is FreedomOut of Darkness: What Is Otherness?What is Otherness? Out of Darkness 2022 directed by Andrew Cumming fits into a number of horror categories, but we've decided to do it on our nature horror series. When we were kids back in the 80s, there were two bizarro movies about early hominids, "Quest for Fire" and the "Clan of the Cave Bear." Both have proved to be quite incompatible with more recent paleo-anthropological findings. Many of those fallacies have been cleared up to great effect in Out of Darkness. The two most glaring of these mistakes were that Neanderthals weren't capable of the advanced symbolic behaviors of...
2026-05-281h 16Failure Is FreedomWarehouse Parties: Three Decades LaterIn this episode we explore the sort of house music that I and other deejays played at the warehouse parties of the 90s in Chicago. I recently mixed again with my original equipment from way back when in the 90s at a warehouse party for old people hosted by my friend "Chicago Tommy" at his company's warehouse. We painted, thanks to Tommy's homemade easels and canvases, and danced, and ate, thanks to everyone who brought a dish to share, and it was all over around 9PM because while our spirits are still youthful and in my case more free...
2026-05-271h 18Deep Calls to Deep: Reading TogetherRobert Anton Wilson's "Mind F---!": High Weirdness Part 3https://youtu.be/JIMQBSi50YwDom and I are reading High Weirdness by Eric Davis together as a part of this reading in recovery project. "Recovery" can mean all sorts of things, but in this episode, it means recovery from the paranoid conspiracy theories that so many of us in the US are so deeply into. We discuss the "Mind F---ery" of Robert Anton Wilson and our own struggles to stay somewhere between naive belief and total skepticism, and the times when we went too far in one direction or the other. We discover, yet again, that...
2026-05-181h 04Deep Calls to Deep: Reading TogetherThe Heaven and Hell of NowKevin and I have been having conversations about our faith for almost two decades now. While we are both actively recovering from such harmful doctrines as "eternal conscious torment," neither of us reject entirely the Christianity that we were brought up in. We have continued to develop what it means for us to be followers of Christ, so that we thought that the model of "recovery" was a better way of thinking about our faith journey than the currently popular model of "deconstruction." Recovery has both the sense of uncovering or clearing away debris to return to some essential...
2026-05-181h 03Deep Calls to Deep: Reading TogetherJesus Is TestedI post this crossover episode as an example of the possibilities for hermeneutic circles as a religious practice. And as a reminder that our only freedom is the open and even playful interpretation of being. And I always love pointing out to people that if they want to follow Jesus, they would do well to adopt the curiosity about the meaning of being that led him out into the wilderness to have a conversation with Satan, and which led him to reinterpret scriptures according to his hermeneutic of love. It is often pointed out that Jesus would have be...
2026-05-141h 02Failure Is FreedomHermeneutic Circles: AnnihilationHere is another example of Hermeneutic circles in action. Annihilation, both the book and the movie, are like David Tracy's "Classics" to me because they provide an inexhaustible wealth of possible interpretations, especially because they both deal so strongly with the ambiguity of identity, including the ambiguity of the apparently determinate nature of our genetic inheritance. My partner Char and I have a horror podcast in which this episode first appeared that deals with ideas around the vertigo of irreducible ambiguity in the Horror genre. https://www.buzzsprout.com/2509184 My sister Andrea who works professionally as a scientist joins u...
2026-05-141h 31Failure Is FreedomHermeneutic Circles: Jesus is TestedI post this crossover episode as an example of the possibilities for hermeneutic circles as a religious practice. And as a reminder that our only freedom is the open and even playful interpretation of being. And I always love pointing out to people that if they want to follow Jesus, they would do well to adopt the curiosity about the meaning of being that led him out into the wilderness to have a conversation with Satan, and which led him to reinterpret scriptures according to his hermeneutic of love. It is often pointed out that Jesus would have be...
2026-05-141h 02Deep Calls to Deep: Reading TogetherAnnihilation: Book and Movie ComparisonWe get deep into the weird genetic refractions of Alex Garland's very loose take on Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation. Area X seems to be a place of infinite possibilities, except for the possibility of remaining untouched by the mysterious, churning flows of organic codes that produce mixed bodies of unknowable intention. What is the intention of this alien presence in what seems to be a swamp somewhere on the Florida coast of the Gulf of Mexico? Maybe, it doesn't have one. Join us as we think about the human proclivity for self-destruction, the ambiguity of identity, and how the intentions...
2026-05-081h 31Deep Calls to Deep: Reading TogetherByung-Chul Han's The Agony of ErosJames and I recorded this one in a parking garage for irreducibly ambiguous counter-reasons. All of the expected distractions of the parking garage environment were intended to illustrate the unintentional negativity necessary for a loving encounter with the Other. As two long term sober dudes, we're always looking for new Deleuzian "Lines of Flight" from the toxic positivity of the sort of self-optimization that our drinking used to protect us from. We would like to continue to actively ruin our lives and our time for the mechanisms of capitalistic capture by becoming "imperceptible," even to ourselves, and therefore as...
2026-05-0543 minFailure Is FreedomSeason 3: Making All Things NewThis season will be focussed on how we can reinterpret our inheritance to make it new through the practice of interpretation. Nothing that is given to us from the past can be received without interpretation. The practice of interpretation is called "Hermeneutics" after the Greek messenger god Hermes. Interpretation can close, but only retroactively since the present is always open to a reinterpretation of the past, which means to change one's relation to the past, and thus, change the relations of the past. Closing on a particular interpretation is to determine or objectify, but every determination or realization of...
2026-05-051h 09Deep Calls to Deep: Reading TogetherHerman Hesse's Siddhartha.Shawn and I discuss Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, and its relation to his recovery. Hesse has served as an introduction of Eastern thought to Westerners for over a century now. Hesse has been criticized by some of getting Buddhism wrong, or of "cultural appropriation" in general, or of being too individualistic and naive in his depiction of the spiritual journey as a solipsistic retreat into the balance and harmony of nature from the fallen, hectic world of family and work. While all those accusations may be valid to some degree or another, there is still much that recommends Hesse's...
2026-04-211h 23Deep Calls to Deep: Reading TogetherHorrorstor by Grady HendrixChar and I cross over from our normally audio-only Desire of Horror Podcast to produce this Youtube video. https://www.buzzsprout.com/2509184/episodes/19031864 https://youtu.be/XR8TvC5gfsoWe discuss the book Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix. The book provides a somewhat obvious but nonetheless useful capitalist critique around the concepts of the Professional Managerial Class or corporate speak; Consumer Culture, especially influencer advertisement techniques; and the toxic positivity of constant "self-maximization." An Ikea-like furniture store is built on the past site of a particularly ignominious prison, and the spirit of its warden an...
2026-04-1744 minDeep Calls to Deep: Reading TogetherNothing to GraspDoug and I discuss Nothing to Grasp by Joan Tollifson. Doug's spiritual journey has been one of continual exploration through his life and in his recovery itinerary. He has recently been getting deeply into nonduality in addition to his Christian practice. Our conversation about Tollifson's recovery sojourn and nondual practice allow us to discuss Doug's insights into being fully present now wherever we find ourself on the path.https://youtu.be/eP3FMtZq15Mhttps://www.martinessig.comBaddass vibes mixed by James Reeves of Midnight Radio https://www.jamesreevesco.com
2026-04-1628 minFailure Is FreedomSeason 2 FinalWe have been working through the idea that the unresolved contradiction of binary oppositions is a structural description of how the world appears to us and, perhaps, is also how it is in-itself. Every possible reduction of experience to knowable identities or definitions cannot completely account for or make intentional all of what is given by our experience, which is the "too-much givenness" of phenomenology, to objective or whole phenomena or concepts. The classical phenomenology of Edmund Husserl attempted to eliminate the mediating concepts of perception via the "Eidetic Reduction," so that what appears might appear from its own...
2026-04-1646 minFailure Is FreedomToo Much GivennessThe Hegelian dialectical, double negation does not resolve into a synthesis. There is always a remainder of irreducible ambiguity, so that all phenomena are saturated in Jean-Luc Marion's sense that too much has been given to intuition to reduce to the phenomenal and conceptual objects of the intention. Being is too excessive to be reduced to intentional phenomena and conceptualizations. No matter how many intentional percepts we may copulate with percepts, or percepts with concepts, or concepts with concepts, we will never reduce being to either the perceivable nor to the knowable because what being is becoming isn't determined...
2026-03-311h 00Deep Calls to Deep: Reading TogetherThe McKenna Brothers: High Weirdness Part 2There's a lot of hype right now about a "Psychedelic Renaissance." Dom and I get into the first two figures of the Book High Weirdness by Eric Davis, the McKenna Brothers, Terence and Denis. There is on the one hand, the scientific desire for certainty, which we associate with third-person, "objective" verifiability. This sort of inquiry and knowing is inline with what modern neurobiology imagines as the evolutionary design of the brain as a "prediction machine." If we are prediction machines, inquiry is for the reduction of uncertainty in order that we might be able to manipulate and control...
2026-03-281h 22Failure Is FreedomWhat Is Seen as UnseeableLacanian excessive enjoyment, or "jouissance," is enjoying what is unenjoyable. The excessive part of excessive enjoyment refers to the irreducibility of jouissace to mere enjoyment or pleasure. The ground of whatever there is, is contradiction. The contradiction of dialectical, binary opposition doesn't resolve into a third thing or object, but into a third non-object. Jean-Luc Marion wrote that the subject of "Counter-Experience" was the irresolvable ambiguity of the counter-object or of the non-object. The non-object is that which lacks objectification because of its excess, or because Saturated Phenomena produce too much intuition or affect to reduce to intentional objectification...
2026-03-2755 minFailure Is FreedomWhat Withdraws from Identity?An identity is a type of interpretation. An interpretation is a type of closer. Ludwig Wittgenstein's famous obsession with the duck / rabbit figure was how he demonstrated that there was no solid ground from which to render a final judgment about what something was because any possible ground for a judgement was itself incomplete, which Lacan put as "There is no metalanguage," and Leotard put as "There is no meta-narrative." For Deleuze, any interpretive closure, like a phenomenological objectification or an intentional conceptualization, contained the illusion of wholeness given by the appearance of a repetition, which was the illusion...
2026-03-2356 minDeep Calls to Deep: Reading TogetherHigh WeirdnessDom and I discuss High Weirdness by Eric Davis in relation to spiritual experience in general but also to Dom's personal experiences as a psychonaut before getting sober. We are interested in exploring the relation of psychedelic experience to the process of recovery. Of particular interest is the irreducible ambiguity, or weirdness, of psychedelic experience that can either be a nightmare or the ecstasy of release from habitual modes of thinking and being in the world. Infamously, Bill W., the founder of AA was a part of an early research project with LSD to "cure" alcoholics of their "obsession"...
2026-03-191h 07Deep Calls to Deep: Reading TogetherMy War Gone ByPatrick and I discuss My War Gone By, I Miss It So by Anthony Loyd in relation to our journey's into sobriety and our mutual ADHD diagnoses. War was a sort of fantasy projection as well as a proving ground for Anthony Loyd, but what he proved to himself and shows to the reader is that almost nothing that is imagined or said about it is true, especially what he was led to believe about war and glory as it was depicted in the stories of his own military family's history. Patrick chose this book because it reflects struggles...
2026-03-191h 12Deep Calls to Deep: Reading TogetherPart 3: Darkness VisibleWarning: This discussion contains reference to severe depression, suicidal ideation, self-harm, and addiction. Tom and I wrap up our three part discussion about William Styron's Darkness Visible. We really get into some of the complexities of having a dual diagnosis, specifically both addiction and depression, and how any underlying conditions of addiction come on stronger than ever after self-medicating with alcohol, and / or one's drug(s) of choice, stops.https://youtu.be/wqxZgj4b4mshttps://www.martinessig.comBaddass vibes mixed by James Reeves of Midnight Radio https://www.jamesreevesco.com
2026-03-191h 00Failure Is FreedomDo We have Essences?Graham Harmon has helpfully outlined the problems with both what AN Whitehead called "substance ontology" and the lack of substances in Whiteheadian Process Philosophy and Saussarean Structuralism. In most contemporary philosophy there are no essences or "natural kinds" as there once were in classical philosophy, but substances are hard to get rid of entirely, probably because the "natural stance" of our subjective experience categorizes the world, or divides it up into discreet objects, which seem to reflect "real" divisions of types of things. However, these "clear" borders between types are growing confused as the intrusions of the Lacanian "Real" c...
2026-03-1956 min