For Episode 16 of Pop Apocalypse, we welcome composer, artist, and media theorist Paul Miller. Miller is best known for his music as DJ Spooky, the avant-garde turntableist who has collaborated with artists ranging from Chuck D to Yoko Ono. He has also re-scored classic films, such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and his art has been showcased in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

In this wide-ranging conversation (6:12), we asked Paul to explore the eeriness of life in the digital age. We touch on the perils and possibilities of artificial intelligence, the role of the DJ, Japanese Butoh as a response to nuclear tragedy, re-scoring D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, and how Einstein, science fiction, and Sun Ra have shaped Miller’s work.

Paul Miller bio

Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky, is currently at work on two books: one about the impact of algorithms on how we think of storytelling, Digital Fiction for Duke University Press, and The Future of Food, about the impact of AI on how we think of the production of food in the twenty-first century. He was Artist in Residence at Yale University Center for Collaborative Arts and Media (2023-2024). He is a composer, multimedia artist, and writer whose work engages audiences in a blend of genres, global culture, and environmental and social issues. Miller has collaborated with an array of recording artists, including Ryuichi Sakamoto, Metallica, Chuck D from Public Enemy, Steve Reich, and Yoko Ono, among many others. His 2018 album, DJ Spooky Presents: Phantom Dancehall, debuted at No. 3 on Billboard Reggae.

Paul Miller links

• Homepage
• Songs of a Dead Dreamer
• Japanese Butoh
• Rebirth of a Nation
• Rhythm Science
• Sound Unbound

Pop Apocalypse links

• Linktree
• YouTube
• Instagram
• CSWR landing page
• Email us at popapocalypse@hds.harvard.edu

For episode 15 of Pop Apocalypse, we welcome assistant professor, Fryderyk Kwiatkowski, on to discuss the relationship between ancient Gnostic myth and modern cinema. Fryderyk takes us through the impact European intellectuals 20:29 Carl Jung, Hans Jonas, and Eric Voegelin on popular conceptions of Gnosticism. We then dive into analyses of the Gnostic elements in films 34:34 like the Matrix, Dark City, Truman Show, and more recent cinema like Free Guy, Chappie, and the television series Silo.

BIO
Fryderyk Kwiatkowski is an Assistant at AGH University of Krakow. He earned a joint doctoral degree from the University of Groningen and the Jagiellonian University in 2023 with a thesis entitled Gnosticism in Hollywood: From European Academia to American Popular Culture. His research interests encompass the cultural reception of late antique esoteric traditions, their intersections with discourses on utopias and dystopias, and the (not-so-obvious) intertwinement of popular media, philosophy, and religion. He is currently developing a project on the role of imagination in contemporary technoculture, with a focus on the feedback loops between transhumanism, science fiction, and esotericism. He has published his research in venues such as Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies, CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, Journal of Religion and Film.

NOTES
Fryderyk Kwiatkowski
Academia.edu
Gnosticism in Hollywood: From European Academia to American Popular Culture
"Eric Voegelin and Gnostic Hollywood"
"How to Attain Liberation from a False World? The Gnostic Myth of Sophia in Dark City."

For episode 14 of Pop Apocalypse, we welcome the linguist and philosopher Wouter Kusters. Kusters is the author of Pure Madness (2004) and A Philosophy of Madness (2014), both of which won the Dutch Socrates Award for best philosophy book of the year. We discuss (5:26) how the experience of psychotic thinking challenges and illuminates our notions of language, philosophy, and mysticism. Along the way, we touch on the similarities between mystical and mad experiences, apophatic and psychotic uses of language, the phenomenology of time, and the impact of Kusters’ books on mental health specialists.

Wouter Kusters, PhD, is a linguist and philosopher based in the Netherlands. Two of his books received the Dutch Socrates Award for the best and most inspiring philosophy book of the year: Pure Madness (2004) and A Philosophy of Madness (2014). The English version of this latter work was released in 2020 by MIT Press. In 2022, an Arabic version was released, and a Chinese translation is expected this year. Kusters writes on a range of themes in various outlets that explore perennial questions of meaning, madness, mysticism, and language.

LINKS
Wouter Kusters' homepage
A Philosophy of Madness