Back in episode 112, Phil and JF devised a gimmick for a show: randomly select one of the many aphorisms in The Book of Probes, a compendium of Marshall McLuhan’s prophetic quips designed by David Carson, and see what happens. It proved lively enough that they’re trying it again nearly a hundred episodes later. The resulting conversation touches the weird across a range of themes: tourism, the two kinds of truth, advertising, Kubrick’s marketing savvy, technology, orality versus literacy, and much more. A fitting feast for the mind as the year draws to a close.

From all of us at Weird Studies, happy holidays.

• Sign up for JF Martel and Erik Davis's upcoming course on Moby-Dick.

• Join Phil, JF, and composer Pierre-Yves Martel for Weirdosphere's Solstice Story Hour on December 21.

• For dates, venues, and the full slate of Weird Academia events in Bloomington this January, visit the Centre for Possible Minds website.

• To participate in the Weird Academia Colloquium, email organizers Emma Stamm and Michael Garfield at [email protected]

Header Image: NASA.

REFERENCES

Marshall McLuhan, Distant Early Warning Deck

Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

Plato, The Seventh Letter

Marshall McLuhan, The Book of Probes

Toronto School of Communication Theory

Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy

Paul Kingsnorth, Against the Machine

Charles Taylor, A Secular Age

Plato, The Republic 

Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media

Jonathan Crary, 24/7

H. P. Lovecraft, The Color out of Space

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, JF and Phil discuss Robert Louis Stevenson’s Gothic classic, the tale that conjured the fog-shrouded London hellscape that has haunted the modern imagination ever since. Though written as a quick “Christmas crawler” to earn a bit of money, the novella has exerted an incalculable influence on art and literature. It also proved strangely prophetic, anticipating Freud and others who would soon make the fragmentation of the human psyche a defining concern of the new century.

"The human is two" is a recurring refrain in the work of the scholar of religious thought, Jeffrey J. Kripal.

References

Dan Ericson, Severance

Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

David Lynch (dir.), Mullholland Drive

John Frankenheimer (dir.), The Manchurian Candidate

Galen Strawson, British philosopher

Juan Eduardo Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols

Jeff Kripal, How to Think Philosophically

Rouben Mamoullian (dir.), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Weird Studies, Episode 161 on “From Hell”

Sigmund Freud, “The Ego and the Id”

Arthur Machen, Hieroglyphics

Arthur Machen, “The White People”

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Phil and JF are joined by independent scholar Peter Bebergal, author of Strange Frequencies, Season of the Witch, and other books on the intersections of culture, religion, and the occult. The topic is Frankenstein—not Guillermo del Toro's latest but James Whale's 1931 talkie along with its 1935 sequel, The Bride of Frankenstein, both starring Boris Karloff. The conversation touches on Gnosticism, alchemy, modern techno-hubris, the Gothic, and much more.

Peter's new online course, Hacking the Invisible: At the Intersection of Technology and Magic, begins on November 20th, 2025, and runs for three weeks on Weirdosphere. Visit the Weirdosphere website for details and to enroll.

References

James Whale (dir.), Frankenstein

Tobe Hooper (dir.), Texas Chainsaw Massacre

James Whale (dir.), The Bride of Frankenstein

Justin Sledge, Esoterica

Henry Bergson, Introduction to Metaphysics

David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

John the Apostle, The Apocryphon of John

Stuart Gordon (dir.), Stuck

Jennifer Kent (dir.), The Babadook

Stephen T. Asma, On Monsters

Thomas Paine, “The Age of Reason”

Jean Gimpel, Medieval Machine

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Originally released in 2018 but remixed for your listening pleasure, here's Phil reading Arthur Machen's classic weird tale, "The White People." Happy Halloween!

Machen's "The White People" was discussed all the way back in ⁠Weird Studies episode 3⁠.

Earlier this week, JF and Phil joined Conner Habib on his podcast to talk all about horror. It was a great conversation and we hope you'll give it a listen.

Image: Photo of doll from Auckland War Memorial Museum, via Wikimedia Commons.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For their 200th episode, JF and Phil turn their attention to H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu,” a story foundational not only to modern horror fiction but to the very idea of the Weird. In revisiting this tale of forbidden knowledge and cosmic ambiguity, the hosts reflect on Weird Studies itself as a “slow piecing together of dissociated knowledge” that mirrors the work of Lovecraft’s own bewildered protagonists.

Image by Antoni Espinosa via Wikimedia Commons.

Upcoming Events:

Peter Bebergal teaches on Weirdosphere starting November 20, 2025

JF Martel speaks at Back to Haunt Us in East London on November 8, 2025

Phil Ford speaks at the Durations Festival in NYC on November 7, 2025

Phil Ford hangs out at Archestratus Books and Food on November 8, 2025

References

H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu 

Weird Studies, Episode 2 on Garmonbozia 

Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy 

Phil Ford, “The Wanderer”

H. P. Lovecraft, "Nyarlathotep"

Weird Studies, Episode 74 on Jung

Phil Ford, Jacob Foster, and J. F. Martel, “Care of the Dead” 

Weird Studies, Episode 110 on The Glass Bead Game 

Weird Studies, Episode 101 on Tanizaki 

Graham Harman, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy 

Weird Studies, Episode 156 on Donna Tartt 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Photographer and paranormal researcher Shannon Taggart joins JF and Phil to explore the phenomenon that was Michael Jackson. One of the most brilliant and successful musicians of the modern era, Jackson was also a liminal figure sans pareil, a shapeshifter who defied the binary categories through which we order the human world. His art and persona together enacted a transformation that can only be called shamanic.

About Our Guest:

Shannon Taggart is a photographer and author based in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her photographs have appeared in Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal, and have been recognized by Magnum, Nikon, and the Alexia Foundation. Her monograph Séance was first published by Fulgur Press (2019) and reissued in a second edition by Atelier Éditions. Shannon is currently developing an illustrated history of SORRAT (the Society for Research on Rapport and Telekinesis) and hosts an annual symposium on the weird and the paranormal in Lily Dale, New York.

Image by Daniele Dalledonne, via Wikimedia Commons.

References

George Hanson, The Trickster and the Paranormal

Robert Chambers, The King in Yellow

Rogan Taylor, The Death and Resurrection Show

Pier Paolo Pasolini (dir.), Teorema  

Phil Ford, “The View from the Cheap Seats at the UFO Show” 

Michael Jackson, Moonwalker: A Memoir

J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

Miguel Connor, The Occult Elvis

Tim Powers, Last Call

Weird Studies, Episode 186 on The Wedge

Raymond Moody, Elvis After Life

Sub Rosa, Spectra Ex Machina: A Sound Anthology of Occult Phenomena 1920-2017 Vol.2

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since 2020, Phil and JF have been creating an on-again, off-again series on the major trumps, or "arcana," of the tarot. In this episode, they continue the series with a discussion of the second arcanum: the High Priestess, also known as la Papesse, the female pope. One of the most enigmatic and powerful cards in the deck, the High Priestess symbolizes duality, contemplation, and manifestation.

• 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

Our Known Friend, Meditations on the Tarot

Plancia Magna, Roman priestess

Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth

Leigh McCloskey, The Tarot Revisioned

Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory

Moina Mathers, French occultist

Sallie Nichols, Tarot and the Archetypal Journey

Rachel Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom

Yoav Ben-Dov, The Marseille Tarot Revealed

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a rare surfacing in the contemporary world, JF and Phil discuss a film that has just been released. Bryn Chainey’s Rabbit Trap is psychological horror in the tradition of Repulsion, Jacob’s Ladder, and Angel Heart. But it is more: a metaphysical film exploring the mystery of sound and the Otherworld of Faerie—an excursion into that weird country, so deftly explored by Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood, where wonder and terror perform their eldritch duets.

Sign up for JF's new Henri Bergson course, starting September 18, 2025.

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

Bryn Chainey, Rabbit Trap

Weird Studies, Episode 190 on “The Willows”

Alan Crosland (dir.), The Jazz Singer

Weird Studies, Episode 150 on “A Fragment of Life”

Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will

Vladimir Jankelevitch, Music and the Ineffable

Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Mysticism of Sound and Music

Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

J. R. R. Tolkein, The Silmarillion

Giles Deleuze, Cinema II  

Robert Kirk, The Secret Commonwealth

Weird Studies, Episode 120 on Radical Mystery (story of the anti-sound starts at 52 minute mark)

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're breaking up our late-summer pause with an audio extra originally recorded for our Patreon supporters. This episode also includes an essay JF wrote on the philosophy of Henri Bergson. A whole course on Bergson's philosophy begins on Weirdosphere later this month.

Weird Studies will be back with a brand-new episode on September 17th.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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