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."

"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 essence. David Cronenberg's 1983 film Videodrome is more than a masterwork of body horror: it is a study in technopolitics, a meditation on the complex weave of imagination and perception, and a prophecy of the now on-going coalescence of flesh and technology into a strange new alloy. In this episode, recorded live after a screening of the film at Indiana University Cinema (https://cinema.indiana.edu/index.html) in Bloomington, JF and Phil set out to interpret Cronenberg's vision... and come to dig the New Flesh.
Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies).
Buy the Weird Studies sountrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page.
Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/).
Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies)
Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp)
Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)!
REFERENCES
David Cronenberg, Videodrome (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086541/) 
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780810104570) 
Paul Virilio, The Information Bomb (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781844670598) 
Weird Studies, Episode 75 on “2001: A Space Odyssey” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/75) 
Richard Porton and David Cronenberg, "The Film Director as Philosopher: An Interview with David Cronenberg" (https://www.jstor.org/stable/41690094) 
George Hickenlooper and David Cronenberg, "The Primal Energies of the Horror Film: An Interview with David Cronenberg" (https://www.jstor.org/stable/41687643) 
Weird Studies, Episode 144 with Connor Habib (https://www.weirdstudies.com/144) 
William Friedkin (dir.), The Exorcist (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070047/) 
Plato, Timaeus (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780140455045) 
William Gibson, Idoru (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780425158647) 
CBC, Yorkville: Hippie Haven (https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1564883669) 
Linda Williams, “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess” (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1212758)

Weird Studies

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

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 Tartt's debut novel The Secret History, published in 1992, is such a work. On the surface, it is a brilliant, yet completely naturalistic, telling of the lead-up and aftermath of a murder. But The Secret History is also a work of the depths, and readers who go in seeking the Weird will find it lurking on every page. More than a masterpiece of psychological exploration, it is a story about the resurgence of the old god Dionysus, and a chronicle of fate; fate conceived, in the manner of the Ancient Greeks, as a cosmic force.
Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies).
Buy the Weird sountrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page.
Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/).
Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies)
Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp)
Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)!
REFERENCES
Donna Tartt, The Secret History (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781400031702) 
Robertson Davies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robertson_Davies), Canadian novelist 
Weird Studies, Episode 98 on Exotica (https://www.weirdstudies.com/98) 
M. R. James (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._R._James), English author 
Weird Studies, Episode 3 on “The White People” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/3) 
E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781773239187) 
Jean Cocteau, La Machine Infernale (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9782253009160) 
John Crowley, Little, Big (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780061120053) 
Star Trek: The Next Generation, “The Outrageous Okana” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708816/) 
Weird Studies, Episode 110 on “The Glass Bead Game” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/110) 
Gabriel Faure, Nocturne No. 11 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8vrmePFUdg) 
Pierre-André Boutang, L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyXMmx2Ofgs) 
Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780316055444)

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

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 get a sense of this in the early sequences of Greg and Dana Newkirk's latest occult adventure. The haunting comes on strong and takes rather familiar forms. But the almost too-good-to-be-true frights -- effective as they are in an almost fairy-tale way -- soon give way to a procedural that invites us to ponder the ethics and methodologies of paranormal investigation in the age of Global Weirding. What do we owe the Others we encounter? What do they owe us? In this episode, JF and Phil discuss some of the questions haunting this brilliant documentary from the creators of Hellier.
Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies).
Buy the Weird sountrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page.
Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/).
Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies)
Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp)
Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)!
REFERENCES
Planet Weird, The Unbinding (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27485427/) 
Weird Studies, Episode 67 on “Hellier” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/67) 
Alexander Wendt and Raymond Duvall, “Sovereignty and the UFO” (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0090591708317902) 
Duncan Barford, “Magick Versus Content” (https://oeith.co.uk/2023/09/19/magick-versus-content-comments-on-a-scene-from-the-unbinding/)
Gilles Deleuze, [Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masochism:ColdnessandCruelty)_

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

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 two by an unspecified disaster, a telepathic scientist dons his armour and weapons to brave the monster-haunted yet strangely monotonous wastes that engirdle the massive pyramid in which the last humans took refuge, hundreds of thousands of years earlier. If Samuel Beckett tripped hard on ayahuasca, he might have come up with something like Hodgson's genre-defying novel, which reads more like a report to committee of 17th-century heretics than a piece of speculative fiction from the early twentieth century. 
MIT Press recently released a (blessedly) abridged edition of The Night Land as part of their Radium Series. Journalist, scholar, and lecturer Erik Davis, who penned a brilliant foreword for the new edition, was kind enough to join Phil and JF to discuss this underrated masterpiece.
Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies) and gain access to Phil's podcast on Wagner's Ring Cycle.
Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/).
Download Pierre-Yves Martel's new album, Mer Bleue (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/mer-bleue).
Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies)
Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp)
Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)!
SHOW NOTES
William Hope Hodgeson, The Night Land (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780262546423) 
Weird Studies, Episode 37 with Stuart Davis (https://www.weirdstudies.com/37) 
Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780415538381) 
Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780674986916) 
William Hope Hodgeson, House on the Borderland (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781492699774) 
Samuel Beckett, Molloy (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780802144478) 
Sumptuary Laws (https://refashioningrenaissance.eu/archival-work/sumptuary-laws/) 
Arcosanti (https://www.arcosanti.org/), arcology
Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781618950468) 
Pierre Schaeffer, “Traité des objets musicaux” 
Schitzophonia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophonia) 
H.G. Wells, The Time Machine (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780141439976)

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Weird Studies by Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Episodes