Episodios

  • Episode 196 – Lost and Never Found: On 'The Blair Witch Project'

    Episode 196 – Lost and Never Found: On 'The Blair Witch Project'
    Aug 13 2025
    Of all the flavors of horror, few are as dreadful as that of being lost in the wilderness. In this episode, JF and Phil revisit The Blair Witch Project, the classic 1999 found-footage film that inspired a thousand imitators. What makes this film so gripping, they argue, is the way it lingers over the subtle stages of disorientation in a hostile place, from blithe denial to devastating gnosis. The Blair Witch Project isn't a ghost story so much as a work of cosmic horror. Ultimately, the woods themselves—vast, indifferent, inescapable—are the monster. Support Weird Studies on Patreon. Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 and 2, on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page. Visit the Weird Studies ⁠Bookshop⁠ Find us on ⁠Discord⁠ Get the T-shirt design from ⁠Cotton Bureau⁠. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia. References Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez (dirs.), The Blair Witch Project Gus Van Sant (dir.), Gerry Martin Heidegger, Being and Time Weird Studies, Episode 195 on John Keel Gilbert Simondon, Imagination and Invention Georgio De Chirico, Italian artist Arthur Machen, The White People Jack Zipes, literary scholar Weird Studies, Episode 150 on Arthur Machen's “A Fragment of Life” “Schizophonia” Stanislav Lem, Solaris Andrei Tarkovsky (dir.), Solaris Beyond Yacht Rock Podcast Shirley Clarke (dir.), The Connection Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 h y 32 m
  • Episode 195 – On John Keel: Live at the Lily Dale Symposium, with Erik Davis

    Episode 195 – On John Keel: Live at the Lily Dale Symposium, with Erik Davis
    Aug 6 2025
    This marks the third year that Weird Studies is honoured to open the Lily Dale Symposium, organized each summer by photographer Shannon Taggart in the upstate New York community famed for its roots in Spiritualism. While J.F. wasn’t able to attend this year, Erik Davis joined Phil on stage for a conversation about the life and work of John Keel, the iconoclastic writer and investigator best known for The Mothman Prophecies. They were later joined by Keel’s friend, the writer and musician Doug Skinner, for a candid discussion of Keel’s legacy and style. If you enjoy Weird Studies, please consider supporting us on Patreon. Upper-tier goodies include exclusive writings, regular bonus episodes, and monthly hangouts with JF and Phil. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 h y 51 m
  • Episode 194: Animal Songs, with Meredith Michael

    Episode 194: Animal Songs, with Meredith Michael
    Jul 23 2025
    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 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 to India, heroin addiction, the indeterminacy of singing and screaming, the messiness of inter-species communication, the discovery of whale song, the problem of (not) projecting humanness onto animals, the Book of Genesis, and the porous boundary between the human and non-human worlds. All that (and more) for two of the songs! Phil’s pick will be explored in a forthcoming episode. Meredith Michael is a PhD candidate in Musicology at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. She is working on a dissertation about musical mythologies of outer space in the twentieth century. In her spare time she loves making art of all kinds, going for long walks, making friends with cats, and watching cartoons. Meredith hosts the Cosmophonia podcast with Gabriel Lubell. References Victor Shklovsky, “Art as Technique” Pink Floyd, Animals Neko Case, "People Got a Lotta Nerve" The Beatles, "Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and my Monkey" Gavin Steingo, Interspecies Communication: Sound and Music beyond Humanity Little Richard, "Long Tall Sally" Alan Hovhaness, And God Created Great Whales Roger Payne, Songs of the Humpback Whale Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus Olivier Messiaen, Quartet for the End of Time Weird Studies, Episode 181 on “The X Files” Kate Altizer, Piano Dogs and Whale Theaters: Paranoid Relations and Affect with Nowhere to Go in the Study of Nonhuman Animals and Music David Rothenberg, Thousand Mile Songs Frans de Waal, Mama’s Last Hug King James Bible Herman Melville, Moby Dick Leonard Nimoy (dir.), Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home RILM Abstracts of Music Literature George Crumb, Vox Balaenae Terrence Malick (dir.), The Tree of Life Image by Navin75, via Wikimedia Commons Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 h y 23 m
  • Episode 193: On Conversion, or Arousing the Bodhi-Mind

    Episode 193: On Conversion, or Arousing the Bodhi-Mind
    Jul 9 2025
    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 asked since starting Weird Studies, and in this episode they attempt some answers. Image: "Small Candle Flame" by Le Priyavrat, via Wikimedia Commons Sign up to attend Shannon Taggart's Lily Dale symposium, July 24-26 REFERENCES Ross Douthat, Believe Dogen, Shobogenzo New Atheism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Atheism Weird Studies, Episode 99 on “Wild, Wild Country” William James, Varieties of Religious Experience George Steiner, Real Presences Patrick Curry, Art and Enchantment Max Picard, The Flight from God Charles Taylor, A Secular Age James Carse, Finite and Infinite Games Richard Wagner, Ring Cycle Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense Weird Studies, Episode 183 on “Siddhartha” Charles Sanders Peirce, American philosopher Leonard Cohen, “Hallelujah” Our Known Friend, Meditations on the Tarot Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 h y 28 m
  • Episode 192 - A Dream of Landscape: On Walking

    Episode 192 - A Dream of Landscape: On Walking
    Jun 25 2025
    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 they prepare to lead a six-week course on the art of walking and its affinity with the Weird. This conversation touches on meditative walking, walking as dventure, psychogeography, wilderness mysticism, and more. References Weird Studies, Episode 59 on Walking Frédéric Gros, A Philosophy of Walking Kinhin, walking meditation Henry David Thoreau, “Walking” Randonautica, walking app Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 h y 13 m
  • Special Episode: Theory, Philosophy, and Uranus

    Special Episode: Theory, Philosophy, and Uranus
    Jun 18 2025
    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 for death?" What sort of planet is Phil Ford from? These burning questions and more find answers in this free-wheeling conversation, originally exclusive to members of the Weird Studies Patreon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 h y 2 m
  • Special Episode: Myth, History, and Form

    Special Episode: Myth, History, and Form
    Jun 4 2025
    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 in the month. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this conversation about how art transforms experience, making the mundane mythic, calling images out of the flux of life, and shaping what is in us to think, feel, and live. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    46 m
  • Episode 191 — The Acid Queen, with Susannah Cahalan

    Episode 191 — The Acid Queen, with Susannah Cahalan
    May 21 2025
    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 counterculture. In this episode, Phil and JF speak with journalist and author Susannah Cahalan about Woodruff Leary’s life and legacy. Cahalan’s new book, The Acid Queen: The Psychedelic Life and Counterculture Rebellion of Rosemary Woodruff Leary, brings its subject into focus as a complex and courageous individual whose story has been overshadowed for too long. The conversation follows the threads of the biography while branching into the weirdness of biographical writing, the ongoing relevance of the 1960s counterculture, the troubling figure of Timothy Leary, and the enduring promise—and peril—of psychedelics. Susannah Cahalan is the New York Times bestselling author of Brain on Fire, a memoir about her experience with autoimmune encephalitis. Her second book, The Great Pretender, which investigated a seminal study in the history of mental health care and diagnosis, was shortlisted for the the Royal Society's 2020 Science Book Prize. She lives in New Jersey with her family. Photo from the Los Angeles Times Photographic Collection at UCLA, via Wikimedia Commons. REFERENCES Susannah Cahalan, The Acid Queen Weird Studies, Episode 189 with Jacob Foster Marion Woodman, Canadian feminist author Peter Braunstein and Michael William Doyle, Imagine Nation: The American Counterculture of the 1960s & '70s Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture Eric Davis, TechGnosis Lutz Dammbeck, The Net: The Unabomber, LSD, and the Internet Robert Greenfield, Timothy Leary: A Biography Anthony Storr, Feet of Clay Blanche Hoschedé Monet, French painter Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 h y 28 m