Show Notes
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
More from Weird Studies
In this episode, long overdue, Phil and JF discuss one of the great American horror films: WIlliam Friedkin's 1973 adaptation of Willam Peter's Blatty's _The Exorcist_.
On September 26, JF and Phil took part in the Dream Mapping Symposium, a three-day event organized by the Dream Mapping Project and the Dream Library Foundation, and held at the Brooklyn Public Library. Their mission was twofold. First, Phil was to read Dostoevsky's short story "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man," and then, he and JF were to have one of their conversations about it. Despite inclement weather, exploding lighting equipment and the labyrinthine NYC subway system, it went off like a dream. In this episode, we offer you the full recording of the event.
In this episode, JF and Phil are joined by their beloved assistant and invaluable collaborator Meredith Rigby (formerly Meredith Michael) to discuss her recently completed doctoral dissertation, Composing the Cosmos: 20th Century Musical Mythologies of Outer Space. Meredith explains how classical music, in the last century, became a privileged zone for exploring the meaning, threat, and promise of the starry void after the collapse of the old cosmologies.
Having taken up the first part of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings in episode 207, Phil and JF turn to part two, The Two Towers. Together, they peel back the husk of familiarity to reveal the strange object underneath: a story about stories, about life and destiny in a storied world.
Episode 218 will drop at the end of our summer break on September 9, 2026. Today, enjoy this recent audio extra, originally released for members of the Weird Studies Patreon. In the intro, JF announces two important Weirdosphere events: a talk on language in the age of AI by Emma Stamm, and a new six-week course on the idea of truth in horror cinema and literature. To learn more and enroll, visit Weirdosphere.