Weird Studies

Phil and JF first explored the mysteries of walking back in episode 59. That episode felt like a mere introduction—a tentative first step on a long and winding path. Now, 133 episodes later, they return to the theme as they prepare to lead a six-week course on the art of walking and its affinity with the Weird. This conversation touches on meditative walking, walking as dventure, psychogeography, wilderness mysticism, and more. References Weird Studies, Episode 59 on Walking [https://www.weirdstudies.com/59%E2%81%A0%C2%A0] Frédéric Gros, A Philosophy of Walking [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781804290446%E2%81%A0%20%C2%A0] Kinhin [%20%E2%81%A0https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walking_meditation%E2%81%A0%C2%A0], walking meditation Henry David Thoreau, “Walking” [%20%E2%81%A0https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1022%E2%81%A0%20] Randonautica [https://www.randonautica.app], walking app Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781621389996%E2%81%A0%20%C2%A0] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

This conversation was originally recorded in August 2024 and released for our Patreon supporters. Weird Studies will be back with a new episode on June 25, 2025. What is cultural theory? How is philosophy "a preparation for death?" What sort of planet is Phil Ford from? These burning questions and more find answers in this free-wheeling conversation, originally exclusive to members of the Weird Studies Patreon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

This special release is a Patreon extra we’re making available to all listeners, in lieu of the official episode originally scheduled for today. As explained in the introduction, we will be back with a full episode later in the month. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this conversation about how art transforms experience, making the mundane mythic, calling images out of the flux of life, and shaping what is in us to think, feel, and live. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Best known as the wife and partner of Timothy Leary, Rosemary Woodruff was in fact a central figure in the psychedelic movement in her own right—a political radical, underground fugitive, and neglected architect of the counterculture. In this episode, Phil and JF speak with journalist and author Susannah Cahalan about Woodruff Leary’s life and legacy. Cahalan’s new book, The Acid Queen: The Psychedelic Life and Counterculture Rebellion of Rosemary Woodruff Leary, brings its subject into focus as a complex and courageous individual whose story has been overshadowed for too long. The conversation follows the threads of the biography while branching into the weirdness of biographical writing, the ongoing relevance of the 1960s counterculture, the troubling figure of Timothy Leary, and the enduring promise—and peril—of psychedelics. Susannah Cahalan is the New York Times bestselling author of Brain on Fire, a memoir about her experience with autoimmune encephalitis. Her second book, The Great Pretender, which investigated a seminal study in the history of mental health care and diagnosis, was shortlisted for the the Royal Society's 2020 Science Book Prize. She lives in New Jersey with her family. Photo from the Los Angeles Times Photographic Collection at UCLA, via Wikimedia Commons [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Timothy_Leary_and_Rosemary_Woodruff.jpg]. REFERENCES Susannah Cahalan, The Acid Queen [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780593490051%E2%81%A0%C2%A0] Weird Studies, Episode 189 with Jacob Foster [https://www.spectrevision.com/podcasts/weird-studies\%E2%81%A0%C2%A0] Marion Woodman [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Woodman%E2%81%A0%C2%A0%C2%A0], Canadian feminist author Peter Braunstein and Michael William Doyle, Imagine Nation: The American Counterculture of the 1960s & '70s [http://amazon.com/Imagine-Nation-American-Counterculture-1960s/dp/0415930405%E2%81%A0%C2%A0%C2%A0] Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780226817422%E2%81%A0%C2%A0] Eric Davis, TechGnosis [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781583949306%C2%A0] Lutz Dammbeck, The Net: The Unabomber, LSD, and the Internet [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0434231/%E2%81%A0%C2%A0%C2%A0] Robert Greenfield, Timothy Leary: A Biography [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780156032063%E2%81%A0%C2%A0] Anthony Storr, Feet of Clay [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780684834955%E2%81%A0%C2%A0%C2%A0] Blanche Hoschedé Monet [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanche_Hosched%C3%A9_Monet%E2%81%A0%C2%A0], French painter Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780816614028%C2%A0] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

In this episode, JF and Phil paddle into the marshlands of Algernon Blackwood’s 1907 masterpiece The Willows, a tale Lovecraft once called the finest weird story of all time. They explore how a narrative in which almost nothing happens can conjure a cosmic dread more potent than a legion of monsters, and how Blackwood’s genius lies in revealing the spiritual horror latent in landscape itself. Topics include zones, the limits of human reason, and the terror of brushing up against an otherworld that lies just beyond the riverbank—near at hand, yet somehow separated from us by an unbridgeable gulf. Photo by Derek Dye, via Wikimedia Commons. REFERENCES Algernon Blackwood, “The Willows”   [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11438] Weird Studies, Episode 55 on “The Wendigo” [https://www.weirdstudies.com/55]  SCTV [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_City_Television%E2%81%A0%C2%A0] Algernon Blackwood, “The Psychology of Places” in The Lure of the Unknown [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781783807666%C2%A0] Weird Studies, Episodes 14 and 15 on Stalker [https://www.weirdstudies.com/14%E2%81%A0%C2%A0] Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780593499993%E2%81%A0%20%C2%A0] Sue Clifford and Angela King, England in Particular [https://www.commonground.org.uk/shop/england-particular/%E2%81%A0%20%C2%A0] Michael Dames, Pagans Progress [https://strangeattractor.co.uk/shoppe/pagans-progress/%E2%81%A0%C2%A0] J. G. Ballard [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._G._Ballard%E2%81%A0%C2%A0], English fiction author Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]