Episode 60: Space is the Place: On Sun Ra, Gnosticism, and the Tarot
Somebody once said, "No prophet is welcome in his own country." Whether this was true in the case of jazz musician and composer Sun Ra depends on whom you ask. With most, the dictum probably bears out...
20 Nov 20191h 26min
Episode 59: Green Mountains Are Always Walking
"Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around a lake." This line from Wallace Stevens' "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction" captures something of the mysteries of walking. It points to the undeniable yet ba...
6 Nov 20191h 20min
Episode 58: What Do Critics Do?
What is the role of the critic in the world of art? For some, including lots of critics, the figure exudes an aura of authority: her task is to tell us what this or that work of art means, why it matt...
23 Okt 20191h
Episode 57: Box of God(s): On 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'
Raiders of the Lost Ark is more than a Hollywood movie made in the summer blockbuster mold. As Phil says in his intro to this popping Weird Studies episode, the film is "a Trojan horse of the Weird, e...
9 Okt 20191h 30min
Episode 56: On Jean Gebser, with Jeremy D. Johnson
The German poet and philosopher Jean Gebser's major work, The Ever-Present Origin, is a monumental study of the evolution of consciousness from prehistory to posthistory. For Gebser, consciousness ...
25 Sep 20191h 19min
Episode 55: The Great Weird North: On Algernon Blackwood's 'The Wendigo'
No survey of weird literature would be complete without mentioning Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951). As with all masters of the genre, Blackwood's take on the weird is singular: here, it isn't the cold...
11 Sep 20191h 23min
Episode 54: Lobsters, Pianos, and Hidden Gods
"All things feel," Pythagoas said. Panpsychism, the belief that consciousnes is a property of all things and not limited to the human brain, is back in vogue -- with good reason. The problem of how in...
28 Aug 20191h 17min
Episode 53: Astral Jet Lag: On William Gibson's 'Pattern Recognition'
William Gibson's Pattern Recognition was published in 2003, in the wake of 9/11. You would think that a novel about the early Internet's effects on the collective psyche would feel dated today. But Gi...
14 Aug 20191h 2min
