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The Pit and the Pyramid, or, How to Beat the Philosopher's Blues
Episode 80
Your hosts' exploration of mysticism and vision in pop music continues with two powerful pieces of popular music: Radiohead's "Pyramid Song"…
5 years, 4 months ago
Love, Death, and the Dream Life
Episode 79
In this episode of Weird Studies, an improvised analysis of two pop songs -- Nina Simone's version of James Shelton's "Lilac Wine" and Ghost…
5 years, 5 months ago
On John Keel's 'The Mothman Prophecies'
Episode 78
At the time The Mothman Prophecies' was released in 1975, and again when he penned an afterword for the 2001 edition, John Keel appeared to …
5 years, 5 months ago
What a Fool Believes: On the Unnumbered Card in the Tarot
Episode 77
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man can reason away." This line from a Doobie Brothers song is probably one of the most profound in t…
5 years, 6 months ago
Below the Abyss: On Bergson's Metaphysics
Episode 76
According to the French philosopher Henri Bergson, there are two ways of knowing the world: through analysis or through intuition. Analysis …
5 years, 6 months ago
Bonus: The Duke of Ellington
When the quarantine began, professors around the world raced to put their classes online, and for the Jacobs School's big undergraduate musi…
5 years, 6 months ago
Our Old Friend the Monolith: On Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey'
Episode 75
"You don't find reality only in your own backyard, you know," Stanley Kubrick once told an interviewer. "In fact, sometimes that's the last …
5 years, 7 months ago
A Luminous Parasite: Jung on Art, Part Two
Episode 74
In this second part of their exploration of C. G. Jung's essay "On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry," JF and Phil try to disc…
5 years, 7 months ago
Carl Jung and the Power of Art, Part One
Episode 73
This is the first of two conversations that Phil and JF are devoting to C. G. Jung's seminal essay, "On the Relation of Analytical Psycholog…
5 years, 8 months ago
Morning of the Mutants: On the Castrati
Episode 72
For over two centuries in early modern Italy, boys were selected for their singing talent castrated before the onset of puberty. The goal wa…
5 years, 8 months ago