Very handsome novelist Jordan Castro joins to discuss his fascinating new book MUSCLE MAN (2025年), a fascinating work of fiction about an English professor who hates being an English professor and loves lifting weights. We discuss novels of the mind, Mishima Yukio and the mimetic flattening of reactionary authors, the puzzling reception to his work, the godless twenty-first century and more.

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Find Jordan Castro and his fabulous books on his website: http://www.jordancastro.com/

Discussing the iconic Japanese horror mainstay franchise of RING リング: its original trilogy of late nineties films + its source material novels + the occult world of spirituality and tangible emotion + video tape and horror of memory + Nakatani Miki and her iconic haircuts.

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Discussing the Ryan Murphy produced MONSTER: THE ED GEIN STORY (2025年) + Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO (1960年) + Polio Addison Rae + "gynephilism" + true crime + horror and phalluses.

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Inaugurating the Halloween season, we're talking about Bloober Team's 2024 remake of horror masterpiece SILENT HILL 2 + otherworlds and American rot + latent sexual impulses + grief and violence + video games as art.

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erotica THE GREAT MIRROR OF MALE LOVE 男色大鏡 (1687年) + the ethereal world of desire and pleasure + sexual roles across the great scope of history + gently falling cherry blossoms and the melancholic impermanence of all things.

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Maggie and Chi Chi discuss the perverse gender inverted world of Japanese samurai history by way of Yaoi excess: Yoshinaga Fumi’s OOKU 大奥.

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We discuss Utada Hikaru’s tremendous and heartbreaking comeback record FANTÔME (2016年) + the career of her late mother, classic Japanese Enka singer FUJI KEIKO.

We discuss the diabolical filmography of JANE SCHOENBRUN: I SAW THE TV GLOW (2024年) + WE'RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD'S FAIR (2021年) + A SELF-INDUCED HALLUCINATION (2018年).

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We’re joined by Maggie’s very own ex-girlfriend to discuss the state of open relationships, polyamory, artificial insemination and the future of sexuality with a review of the most shocking Japanese novel this century: Murata Sayaka’s VANISHING WORLD 消滅世界 (2015年).

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Discussing the seminal David Lynch film BLUE VELVET (1986年),

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