Weird Studies

By Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

What's Weird Studies about?

Professor Phil Ford and writer J. F. Martel host a series of conversations on art and philosophy, dwelling on ideas that are hard to think and art that opens up rifts in what we are pleased to call "reality."

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Weird Studies episodes:

05.01.2024
Episode 168: Visions 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...
04.17.2024
Episode 167: The Hand of Ithell, with Amy Hale
Ithell Colquhoun (1906-1988) was a British painter, poet, and occultist, long identified as a pioneer of the Surrealist movement in the UK. While her work is increasingly recognized for its mystical themes and innovative use of automatic techniques, deeply influenced...
04.03.2024
Episode 166: Make 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...
03.20.2024
Episode 165: Tatters 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...
03.06.2024
Episode 164: Towards 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...
02.21.2024
Episode 163: The 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...
02.07.2024
Episode 162: The 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...
01.24.2024
Episode 161: Scene 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...
01.10.2024
Mid-Hiatus Bonus: On Horror and the Retail Experience
Every off-week, listeners who have chosen to support Weird Studies by joining our Patreon at the Listener's Tier get to enjoy a bonus episode. These episodes are different from the flagship show. Less formal and entirely improvised, they offer Phil...
12.20.2023
Episode 160: The 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...
12.06.2023
Episode 159: Three 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...
11.22.2023
Episode 158: As 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...
11.08.2023
Episode 157: Long 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...
10.25.2023
Episode 156: The 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...
10.11.2023
Episode 155: Dispatches 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...
09.27.2023
Episode 154: Into 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...
09.13.2023
Episode 153: Celestial 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...
09.08.2023
Summer Bonus #2: Art and AI
In this bonus episode, originally released on July 26th on the Weird Studies Patreon, Phil and JF explore a few ways in which artificial intelligence will impact the arts. The podcast returns with a new official episode on September 13th....
08.15.2023
Summer Bonus: On Affectation, with a Special Announcement
A bonus offering to break up the summer hiatus, this episode contains a conversation on the virtues of affectation originally available only to third- and fourth-tier members of the Weird Studies Patreon ("Putting on the Bow-Tie," Apr 5, 2023). The...
08.01.2023
Episode 152: The 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...
07.19.2023
Episode 151: The 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...
07.05.2023
Episode 150: Sacramental 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...
06.21.2023
Episode 149: Song 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...
06.07.2023
Episode 148: Mythos 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...
05.24.2023
Episode 147: You 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...
05.10.2023
Episode 146: An 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...
04.26.2023
Episode 145: Waiting for the Miracle: On Vanessa Onwuemezi's "Dark Neighbourhood"
In this episode, Phil and JF discuss Vanessa Onwuemezi's, "Dark Neighbourhood," a tale of scintillant darkness from her debut collection of the same name. This strangest of strange stories is set in a vast encampment of destitute yet hopeful people...
04.12.2023
Episode 144: On Clive Barker's 'Hellraiser' and 'The Hellbound Heart,' with Conner Habib
In the 1980s, Clive Barker burst onto the cultural scene with The Books of Blood, collections of unforgettable tales of horror, depravity, and decadence the likes of which had been seldom seen since the days of Lautréamont's Les Chants de...
03.29.2023
Episode 143: On UFOs
In the 1950s, Carl Jung expressed frustration at the impenetrability of the UFO mystery, the "strange, unknown, and indeed contradictory nature" of this "ostensibly physical phenomenon" with "an extremely important psychic component." Throughout his writings on the topic, he marvels...
03.15.2023
Episode 142: The Music of the Spheres: On Jóhann Jóhannsson's "Last and First Men"
Jóhann Jóhannsson was one of contemporary cinema's greatest score composers when he passed away in 2018 at the young age of 48. Last and First Men, his enigmatic directorial debut, was released shortly after in 2020. Based on a novel...
02.28.2023
Episode 141: Actual Magic: On Ramsey Dukes' SSOTBME
Ramsey Dukes, also known by his real name of Lionel Snell, may be one of the most important thinkers on magic since Aleister Crowley. In the impishly-titled Sex Secrets of the Black Magicians Exposed (or SSOTBME for short), Dukes accomplishes...
02.15.2023
Episode 140: That Ain't Plot: On Hayao Miyazaki's 'Spirited Away'
Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away is one of those rare films that is both super popular and super weird. Rife with cinematic non sequiturs, unforgettable imagery, and moments of horror, it is an outstanding example of a story form that goes...
02.01.2023
Episode 139: Sex, Money, and Power are YOURS with our SECRET Art-Power Formula!
"YOU MUST CHANGE YOUR LIFE!" Tired of failure and self-loathing? Want to be rich and famous while having a good time all the time? Wondering how to turn your banal opinions into Transcendent Truths? Look no further than this special, exclusive...
01.18.2023
Episode 138: Yours and Yours Alone: On the Death Card in the Tarot
What better way to ring in the New Year than with a freeranging discussion of the dreaded thirteenth arcanum of the tarot? Of all topics, surely death needs the least introduction. Or does it? To those of us who inhabit...
12.25.2022
The Weird Studies Christmas Special
We recorded this episode in early December for our Patreon subscribers, but as it's the closest thing to a Christmas special we're ever likely to make, we thought we'd slip it into everyone's stocking this year. In it, we discuss...
12.14.2022
Episode 137: Brute Force: on Sunn O)))'s 'Life Metal'
What Evil Dead 2 is to the Baroque, Sunn O))) is to Brutalism. Or more like: if the likening of Evil Dead 2 to the Baroque felt like a stretch in episode 136, the brutalist bona fides of Sunn O)))'s...
11.30.2022
Episode 136: The Things That Were And Shall Be Again: On 'Evil Dead II'
"We are the things that were and shall be again." So a demonic flesh puppet tells Ash and his allies in a memorable scene from the classic splatstick flick Evil Dead II. In addition to being a rollicking piece of...
11.16.2022
Episode 135: On 'The Secret Life of Puppets,' with Victoria Nelson
Victoria Nelson saw it first: Popular culture teems with occult ideas, vestiges of bygone belief, fragments of ancient magic disguised as common entertainment. Her 2001 work The Secret Life of Puppets is in many ways the ur-text of weird studies,...
11.02.2022
Episode 134: On Federico Campagna's 'Technic and Magic'
In Technic and Magic: The Reconstruction of Reality, the philosopher Federico Campagna argues that we moderns have exhausted the reality system we devised at the dawn of our age, a system he calls Technic. Technic has one goal: to reduce...
10.19.2022
Episode 133: On Weirding, and the Virtues of Unknowing Everything
With the term "weird studies" gaining currency inside and outside academia, Phil and JF thought it was time to discuss the philosophical method they've been developing on the podcast since 2018. Borrowing a term from Erik Davis, they call it...
10.05.2022
Episode 132: Art Is an Alien Technology: Live at the Supernormal Festival
With his 2010 film Cave of Forgotten Dreams, the German filmmaker Werner Herzog peeled away the veneer of familiarity on the Chauvet cave paintings, restoring them to their original eldritch sparkle. In this conversation, Phil and JF discuss a cinematic...
09.27.2022
Off-Week Bonus: On Worlds and Stories, with a Special Announcement
In this bonus episode, originally released for Listener's Tier Patreon supporters, a discussion of the books Phil and JF are reading leads to a debate about the place of plot, story, and worldbuilding in narrative art. The episode contains information...
09.21.2022
Episode 131: Knocking on the Abyssal Door: Live at the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute
The historian of religion Jeffrey J. Kripal writes, "The world is one, and the human is two." The line captures the riddle of reality. What is it with our species? Equipped with an intellect able to grok the basic laws...
09.07.2022
Episode 130: Holiday Memories
In August, 2022, JF and Phil flew to the UK to attend the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) at the University of St. Andrews and the Supernormal Festival in Oxfordshire. In addition to recording two live shows (to be released...
08.03.2022
Episode 129: Luminous Miasma: On Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher"
Edgar Allan Poe can be lauded as a major inspiration for many innovative artists, genres, and movements, from horror fiction to the music of Maurice Ravel. He has also been a major inspiration for Weird Studies, particularly his short story...
07.19.2022
Episode 128: Demon Workshop: On Victoria Nelson's 'Neighbor George'
The American writer and thinker Victoria Nelson is justly revered by afficionados of the Weird for The Secret Life of Puppets and its follow-up Gothicka. Both are masterful explorations the supernatural as it subsists in the "sub-Zeitgeist" of the modern...
07.06.2022
Episode 127: Leaving the Mechanical Dollhouse: On Abeba Birhane's "The Impossibility of Automating Ambiguity"
Like Caligula declaring war on Neptune and ordering his troops to charge into the Mediterranean Sea, our technological masters are designing neural networks meant to capture the human soul in all its oceanic complexity. According to the cognitive scientist Abeba...
06.22.2022
Episode 126: The Daemon Speaks, with Matt Cardin
Returning guest Matt Cardin is a writer of fiction and nonfiction whose focus on numinous horror places him in the literary lineage as Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood. His new book, What the Daemon Said, collects two decades' worth of...
06.08.2022
Episode 125: Strange Brews: Weird Studies Live at Illuminated Brew Works
On May 23, 2022, Meredith Michael joined JF and Phil for a live recording at Illuminated Brew Works, a craft brewery in Chicago, Illinois.The occasion was the launch of Weird Studies Black IPA, the fruit of a collaboration with IBW...
05.25.2022
Episode 124: Dark Night Radio of the Soul, with Duncan Barford
For several episodes now, Phil and JF have been circling what St. John of the Cross called the Dark Night of the Soul, that moment in the spiritual journey where all falls a way and an abyss seems to crack...

What's Weird Studies about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Weird Studies episodes:

Episode 168: Visions of the Wasteland: On George Miller's 'Mad Max' Films

Episode 167: The Hand of Ithell, with Amy Hale

Episode 166: Make Believe: On the Power of Pretentiousness

Episode 165: Tatters of the King: On Robert Chambers' 'The King in Yellow'

Episode 164: Towards a Weird Materialism: On Expressionism in Cinema

Episode 163: The Source of All Abysses: On the Devil Card in the Tarot

Episode 162: The Incarnation of Meaning: Greenwich Village After the War

Episode 161: Scene of the Crime: On Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's 'From Hell'

Mid-Hiatus Bonus: On Horror and the Retail Experience

Episode 160: The Way of All Flesh: On John Carpenter's 'The Thing'

Episode 159: Three Songs, with Meredith Michael

Episode 158: As Above, So Below: On Plato's 'Timaeus'

Episode 157: Long Live the New Flesh: On David Cronenberg's 'Videodrome'

Episode 156: The Only Possible End: On Donna Tartt's 'The Secret History'

Episode 155: Dispatches From the Inside: On Planet Weird's 'The Unbinding'

Episode 154: Into the Night Land, with Erik Davis

Episode 153: Celestial Machine: On the Temperance Card in the Tarot

Summer Bonus #2: Art and AI

Summer Bonus: On Affectation, with a Special Announcement

Episode 152: The Science of Things Spiritual: Live in Lily Dale

Episode 151: The Real and the Possible: Live at the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, with Jacob G. Foster

Episode 150: Sacramental Reality: On Arthur Machen's "A Fragment of Life"

Episode 149: Song Swap: On Judee Sill's 'The Kiss' and Wilco's 'Jesus, Etc.'

Episode 148: Mythos of the Moment: On 'Twin Peaks,' Season 3

Episode 147: You Must Change Your Life

Episode 146: An Air of Great Power: On the Chariot in the Tarot

Episode 145: Waiting for the Miracle: On Vanessa Onwuemezi's "Dark Neighbourhood"

Episode 144: On Clive Barker's 'Hellraiser' and 'The Hellbound Heart,' with Conner Habib

Episode 143: On UFOs

Episode 142: The Music of the Spheres: On Jóhann Jóhannsson's "Last and First Men"

Episode 141: Actual Magic: On Ramsey Dukes' SSOTBME

Episode 140: That Ain't Plot: On Hayao Miyazaki's 'Spirited Away'

Episode 139: Sex, Money, and Power are YOURS with our SECRET Art-Power Formula!

Episode 138: Yours and Yours Alone: On the Death Card in the Tarot

The Weird Studies Christmas Special

Episode 137: Brute Force: on Sunn O)))'s 'Life Metal'

Episode 136: The Things That Were And Shall Be Again: On 'Evil Dead II'

Episode 135: On 'The Secret Life of Puppets,' with Victoria Nelson

Episode 134: On Federico Campagna's 'Technic and Magic'

Episode 133: On Weirding, and the Virtues of Unknowing Everything

Episode 132: Art Is an Alien Technology: Live at the Supernormal Festival

Off-Week Bonus: On Worlds and Stories, with a Special Announcement

Episode 131: Knocking on the Abyssal Door: Live at the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute

Episode 130: Holiday Memories

Episode 129: Luminous Miasma: On Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher"

Episode 128: Demon Workshop: On Victoria Nelson's 'Neighbor George'

Episode 127: Leaving the Mechanical Dollhouse: On Abeba Birhane's "The Impossibility of Automating Ambiguity"

Episode 126: The Daemon Speaks, with Matt Cardin

Episode 125: Strange Brews: Weird Studies Live at Illuminated Brew Works

Episode 124: Dark Night Radio of the Soul, with Duncan Barford