Weird Studies - Episodes Tagged with “Style”

Episode 186: Meeting at the Center: The Wedge, Part Two

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 10:30:00 -0400

In this episode, JF and Phil continue their conversation on the wedge, their figure for the epistemological divide between approaching reality from the heart and exploring it with the mind. As the discussion unfolds, the wedge begins to reveal itself not as a rigid binary but as a spectrum—one that stretches from ultimate thickness to ultimate thinness. Could thinking, then, may be the art of navigating this epistemic gradient, seeking the sweet spot where the self meets the world, each on the other's terms?

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REFERENCES

Weird Studies, Episode 155 on ‘The Unbinding’
Alan Chapman, Advanced Magick for Beginners
Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude
The Principle of Sufficient Reason
Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
Weird Studies, Episode 139 on the power of art
Phil Ford, “The View from the Cheap Seats”
Arnold Schoenberg, Austrian composer
Jaques Vallee, Passport to Magonia

Episode 185: Intuition and Reality: The Wedge, Part One

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 26 Feb 2025 10:30:00 -0500

"The Wedge" is a key concept for Phil and JF. When exploring weird phenomena—from artworks to ghosts, and everything in between—one tends to emphasize one or the other "end" of the event. At the thin end of the Wedge, the focus is on subjective experience: how it felt, what it was like, and its personal significance. At the thick end, the emphasis shifts to what actually happened, independent of how it was experienced. Though their roles sometimes switch, Phil generally thinks from the thin end, while JF approaches things from the thick. In this episode, they begin unpacking the implications of the Wedge for making sense of reality’s stranger aspects.

Header image by SavidgeMichael via Wikimedia Commons.
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Join the Weirdosphere, our online learning platform
Support us on Patreon.
Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 and 2, on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page.
Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, _Cosmophonia.
Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop
Find us on Discord
Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!

REFERENCES

Weird Studies, Episode 184 on David Lynch
Phil Ford, “The View from the Cheap Seats at the UFO Show”
Scene by Scene, 1999 Interview with David Lynch
Weird Studies, Episodes 76 on Henri Bergson’s Metaphysics
Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution
Phil Ford, Dig
Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages
Lewis Lockwood, Beethoven: The Music and the Life

Episode 107: On Joy Williams' 'Breaking and Entering,' with Conner Habib

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 10:30:00 -0400

Joy Williams' third novel, Breaking and Entering, is the story of lovers who break into strangers' homes and live their lives for a time before moving on. First published in 1988, it is a book impossible to describe, a work of singular vision and sensibilty that is as infectious in its weird effect as it is unforgettable for the quality of its prose.

In this episode, the novelist, spiritual thinker, and acclaimed podcaster Conner Habib joins JF and Phil to explore how the novel's enchantments rest on the uniqueness of Williams' style, which is to say, her bold embrace of ways of seeing that are hers alone. Williams is an artist who refuses to work from within some predetermined philosophical or political idiom. As Habib tells your hosts, she goes her own way, and even the gods must follow.

Discover Against Everyone with Conner Habib on Patreon

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Photo by Wolfgang Moroder via Wikimedia Commons

REFERENCES

Conner Habib, "Joy Williams: The Best Fiction Writer Alive"

Joy Williams, Breaking and Entering
Joy Williams, The Quick and the Dead
The Paris Review, Interview with Joy Williams
Heraclitus, Fragments
Joy Williams, “Breakfast” in Taking Care
Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho
The Phantom Stranger, DC Comics character
James Joyce, Ulysses
Eugene Ionesco, Rhinoceros
Deleuze and Guatarri, What is Philosophy?
Quentin Meillassoux, French philosopher
David Mamet, On Directing Film
David Mamet, True and False
Nicholas Winding Refn (dir.), The Neon Demon
Joy Williams, “Congress”
Joy Williams, “Hawk”
Stephen Sexton, If All the World and Love Were Young
Scott Burnham, Mozart’s Grace

Special Guest: Conner Habib.