Weird Studies

A podcast about art and philosophy at the limits of the thinkable. Hosted by writer @JF_Martel and professor Phil Ford. Most tweets are Phil's.

[Michael Garfield 💫 @michaelgarfield]

✊🏼 Art is the only sane response to peak doom

“I can sum up my advice in the age of AI with two words: MAKE ART.”
– Phil Ford, @weirdstudies

I’ve been on another tear with painting. This used to be my full-time job; now I justify it as dedicated time to absorb documentaries and podcasts as research for upcoming essays. It’s also flow-state cultivation and — unless I die under an avalanche of unsold work — perfectly aligned with my thesis that the most important work we can do right now is the kind that’s hard to measure.

As I recently explained in a talk at @getdweb on how we can interpret looming mass unemployment and reality collapse as early indicators for a new economy of play, living systems adapt to new threats before they happen by creating the conditions for “cryptic variation,” where mutants thrive under the radar of natural selection.

Bacterial colonies host a teeming pool of divergent genetic experiments that could eventually come in useful. Syntactic language supports huge volumes of weird specific niche words that might suddenly help people in other cultures describe new circumstances. Invisible weirdness becomes vital innovation. It’s like the trope of the conspiracy theorist in the sci-fi monster movie who nobody believes until suddenly they’re the most useful person in the room.

1/n

[Michael Garfield 💫 @michaelgarfield]

In January 2026, a portal opened between the ivory tower and the numinous unspeakable. For three days at IU Bloomington, scholars from around North America convened for a rare and precious opportunity to explore topics normally forbidden in a university setting: spirits, precognition, magick, and other affairs of the occult and transpersonal were all fair game. Organized by the hosts of @weirdstudies, Phil Ford and @JF_Martel, and IU's Center for Possible Minds (directed by Jacob Foster and Erica Cartmill of @DivIntelligence), with special guests Jeffrey Kripal, Shannon Taggart, and Cat Hobaiter, and daytime colloquia organized by myself and Emma Stamm, these glorious sessions felt like a watershed moment in the long arc of a decades-long struggle to ask some of the most important and difficult questions available to us in a unusually hospitable setting—and, perhaps, an opportunity to sow the seeds for a new research network of academics and para-academics committed to probing them with rigor and new institutional support.

The first night of the week featured an opening for Shannon Taggart's gallery show Séance at IU's McCalla School, where she displayed an extensive collection of her photographic experiments in cataloguing the practice and culture of spirit mediumship. I was honored with the invitation to perform a kind of séance of my own that evening, improvising over an hour of electroacoustic music on electric guitar, synthesizer, and hardware electronics.

But the weekend before, the Eastern United States were hit with an historic winter storm that delayed flights and buried Bloomington in several feet of snow. For a moment it looked like the whole thing was off—with my locally-sourced amplification suddenly no longer available, I was encouraged to not make the effort in order to spare myself the trouble of lugging crates of equipment across the country given the likelihood my flights would be delayed and I would miss the opening entirely. But I asked the Tarot what to do and got what felt like a clear signal to pare my kit down to the bare minimum in order to carry my own amp on the plane...so I did. And what followed was an appropriately raw, strange, and heady site-specific "channeling"—a lengthy invention informed by Shannon's gorgeous and haunting photography and the charged atmosphere of the event.

Played mostly on the unbranded custom Stratocaster kit build that has accompanied me to highlight gigs at Burning Man, Arcosanti, and the MAPS Psychedelic Science Conference, and edited slightly for time and electronic noise reduction, this set miraculously survived a week that—as is so often the case when people try to make recordings of their rites of high strangeness—mysteriously erased the recording of Weird Academia's keynote panel discussion. Maybe it is because I left the unspeakable as such, and carried with me only the traces of the music it left in the room. But who can say?

Listening suggestions: candlelight, essential oils, and headphones or a speaker system with analog tubes (which may constitute a wider window for the ingress of otherworldly beings). Photos of dead loved ones. At least one other person to verify that whatever happened actually happened. Divinatory tools only at your own risk...

https://t.co/VFZR7yMZO5

[Joel Gunz @JoelGunz]

Find out why I flew out to Indiana University to attend the Weird Academia festival, hosted by @weirdstudies and the Center for Possible Minds, to discuss ghosts, UFOs, the paranormal, Bigfoot and more. Read Part 1 of my report. https://t.co/TOqD58Uhxy

Like my poster art? The image is from ALTERED STATES (1980).

[Joel Gunz @JoelGunz]

The IQ represented in this photo should be measured in megatons: just a few of my colleagues who attended the Weird Academia colloquium, presented by @weirdstudies and the Center for Possible Minds at Indiana University. Full report coming soon!

[Weird Studies @weirdstudies]

If you're in Brooklyn or thereabouts, Phil Ford is doing a 11-2 meetup at Archestratus. I hope to see you there! https://t.co/D6vJWjZPbI

[Erik Davis @erik_davis]

@poorerthandead @BasicBooks @JF_Martel Here's my Expanding Mind podcast interview with JF Martel in 2015 shortly after Reclaiming Art first came out. Pre @weirdstudies! A great conversation. https://t.co/EvF65H0eZd

[Midwest Modern @JoshLipnik]

Art Moderne Apartments
South Bend, IN

[Midwest Modern @JoshLipnik]

Osborn Apartments
South Bend, IN

[Midwest Modern @JoshLipnik]

The Tower Building (1929)
South Bend, IN

[Midwest Modern @JoshLipnik]

1946 Bendix 526MC Radio manufactured by Bendix Corporation of South Bend, IN

[Midwest Modern @JoshLipnik]

Midcentury modern pawn shop in South Bend, IN

[Midwest Modern @JoshLipnik]

South Bend Motel
South Bend, IN

[Midwest Modern @JoshLipnik]

Vintage postcard for Howard Johnson Motor Lodge in South Bend, IN

[Midwest Modern @JoshLipnik]

Midcentury modern gas station in South Bend, IN

[Weird Studies @weirdstudies]

If you don't buy the new edition of Reclaiming Art (now with an intro from the divine Donna Tartt) I don't even want to know you

[Weird Studies @weirdstudies]

Lookit what I found at @morgsbooks

[Michael Garfield 💫 @michaelgarfield]

Calling all tpot weirdos and other bold souls!

My good friends at @weirdstudies have granted permission to open the first lecture from my upcoming course, How To Live In The Future, to the public.

We'll be digging up familiar concepts like "life and death", "self and other", "nature and technology" and replanting them in new contexts suitable for our psychedelic century — "rewilding the future" with help from notable scholars in developmental psychology, information theory, evolutionary biology, nondual philosophy, media theory, and science fiction studies.

RSVP here to join us on Tuesday night (5 pm PDT):
https://t.co/JuUV5BooxU

[JF Martel @JF_Martel]

This week on @weirdstudies, we're joined by Jacob Foster to discuss the lingering presence of the dead. https://t.co/Wb5i5W63sy