Weird Studies

The writings of underground filmmaker Jack Smith serve as a starting point for Phil and JF's second tour of the trash stratum. In their wanderings, they will uncover such moldy jewels as the 1944 film...

13 Juli 20181h 6min

Is the Holy Grail a crushed beer can in the gutter? JF and Phil consider the implications of Philip K. Dick's line, "the symbols of the divine initially show up at the trash stratum." Gnosticism, Alei...

4 Juli 20181h 15min

After announcing that Weird Studies will be going to a bi-weekly release schedule for the summer, Phil and JF talk about how the podcast has gone so far and what's on the horizon (more guests!). Befor...

20 Juni 20181h 9min

JF and Phil finally get down to brass tacks with William James's essay "Does Consciousness Exist?" At the heart of this essay is the concept of what James calls "pure experience," the basic stuff of e...

13 Juni 20181h 1min

In this first part of their discussion of William James' classic essay in radical empiricism, "Does 'Consciousness' Exist?", Phil and JF talk about the various ways we use the slippery C-word in conte...

6 Juni 201848min

JF and Phil tackle Genjokoan, a profound and puzzling work of philosophy by Dogen Zenji. In it, the 13th-century Zen master ponders the question, "If everything is already enlightened, why practice Ze...

30 Maj 20181h 11min

In this second of a two-part conversation on Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 film Stalker, Phil and JF explore the film's prophetic dimension, relating it to Samuel R. Delany's classic science-fiction novel D...

23 Maj 20181h 5min

Journey into the Zone to uncover some of the strange artifacts buried in Tarkovsky's cinematic masterpiece, Stalker (1979). In this first of a two-part conversation, Phil and JF discuss a poem by Tark...

16 Maj 201841min