Friends,
When I was on my book tour for Hawk Mountain, I did an event with Andrea Lawlor where we spoke, at length, about horror. In the Q&A, someone raised a hand and asked:

WHAT IS HORROR?

Andrea and I both laughed. We found ourselves at a loss.

Horror :
Once you consider it, it’s not clear.
There’s the assumption that horror is scary. Sometimes that’s true. But obviously what’s scary for you might not be scary for me, and vice versa, so that can’t define the genre. We say horror has certain elements, but there are different kinds of horror to define its contours, whether it's body horror, slasher horror, cosmic horror...
We might turn to the familiar face of horror - the monster - to see what they reveal to us. But while vampires, werewolves, zombies express, through their differing powers and weakness, different theories about horror, they can't give us a picture of what it is really. They're contained by it.

Horror: Always on, always available, always around us. So… what is it?

I asked my friends PHIL FORD and J.F. MARTEL - the cohosts of the WEIRD STUDIES PODCAST - onto the show to walk into the dark - or is it the blinding, malevolent light? - with me, and with you, to see what we would find there.

Weird Studies is, in my experience of it, anyway, a horror podcast. In fact, my last conversation with Phil and J.F. was on Weird Studies and about horror: on Weird Studies 144, we looked into Clive Barker's Hellraiser and the book it's based on, The Hellbound Heart.

But it's not a horror podcast because it’s always focused on horror; many episodes are about topics and artworks that seem less than horrific (their series on each card in the major arcana of the tarot, for instance, or their episode on Herman Hesse’s novel about enlightenment, Siddhartha).

But there is a quality on each episode - a quality which we discuss in this conversation - of the threat of art, philosophy, image and sound. The way they invade our lives. Rearrange our organs Destroy the world we knew.

In other words, we might think of horror as a position in time, something approaching or orbiting. Or as something creates shadows by blocking the light, or by creating a void where an object once was.

You can hear me going in many directions again. Conversation with Phil and J.F. inspires that in me - being pulled in many directions at once. That's another way of thinking of horror: horror as blob; as spreading epidemic, as destroying giant, vaster than the safety of our shelters.

This is what I love about talking with Phil and JF and about Weird Studies, and also why I often think of their podcast as the only true sibling to mine. In conversation with them, everything a springboard for everything. A web of connections. Or maybe better said, a transforming activity, everything metamorphosing into everything else through membranous, visceral, and expansive moves.

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You can also find an almost complete list of the books, movies, etc we mention on this episode there.

Friends,
Is there any ghost lore in your town or where you grew up?
Have you ever seen a ghost?
What are ghosts, anyway?

Three questions, three different ways to approach (or be approached by ghosts).
Ghosts are at the heart of our folktales, our fears, and our fiction. And belief in them is almost universal. Unlike aliens, UFOs, cryptids, and other strange entities, belief in ghosts cuts across all demographics and borders. We're afraid of ghosts and fascinated by them.

As you probably know from listening to this show, or if you’ve read my novel Hawk Mountain, horror is deeply important to me: in forming my imagination, my way of thinking, and even my lens on spirituality. To that end, this is one of two podcasts on the topic.

This time, I just wanted to be personal, to have fun, to explore the pleasure of horror and the many springboards it gives us for conversation. To that end, I invited the hosts of my favorite movie podcast (maybe favorite podcast ever) THE IMPORTANT CINEMA CLUB onto the show, JUSTIN DECLOUX and WILL SLOAN.

This marks the second crossover between our shows, as I appeared on episode 422 of The Important Cinema Club to talk about working with director Joe Gage.

We ask the three questions up top, and explore three completely different representations of ghosts in movies:

• A Chinese Ghost Story (1987 dir. Tony Ching Siu-Tung)

• The Eclipse (2009, dir. Conor McPherson)

• I Am A Ghost (2012, dir. H.P. Mendoza)

We summarize each movie, and then go in... tons of directions. I loved recording this episode, and I hope you do too. Next time, onto the more theoretical-serious kind of fun.

Aside from The Important Cinema Club, Justin and Will have many projects.
Justin is the author Radioactive Dreams: The Cinema of Albert Pyun, and has a Blu-Ray distribution company, Gold Ninja Video. He's also the director of films including Impossible Horror , which Will is in, and Teddy Bomb. Will's new book is Ed Wood: Made in Hollywood USA, and he has a great substack here.

An episode that ties into this one, and that has more of my ghost stories in it than this one is AEWCH 138 with Edward Parnell, talking about ghosts embedded in the landscape.

And I mention a great book towards the end, Paranormal America: Ghost Encounters, UFO Sightings, Bigfoot Hunts, and Other Curiosities in Religion and Culture.

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On the second of two back to back episodes on christianity in the world today, I talk with my sister, LAURA SCAPPATICCI, host of the podcast THAT GOOD MAY BECOME.

We ask each other three questions about how christianity came into our lives, even though we were raised with no religion... and how that christianity is sometimes at odds with our communities and even, absurdly enough, at odds with the way christianity is itself of perceived today.

This is a very personal episode, and I'm so happy to share it with you.

Laura was last on the show on AEWCH 225 when she interviewed me about Rudolf Steiner as part of my series on esoteric christianity.

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On the first of two back to back episodes on christianity in the world today, I talk with writer LAMORNA ASH whose latest book, Don't Forget We're Here Forever: A New Generation's Search for Religion chronicles her conversations with christian converts and the newly faithful in the still-secular UK.

In the process of writing the book, Lamorna has her own reevaluations of christianity and her own beliefs as a queer person. Of these conversations, Lamorna writes, “They taught me how to believe the belief of others.” It’s a beautiful sentiment and means that Lamorna is untangling the many ways to believe and understand.

But it raises questions, too.

How to believe others’s beliefs if they are threatening? If they are aimed against you? And what about when those beliefs are aligned with powerful political forces… can they be said to even be beliefs then, and not just coerced behavior?

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I'm so excited to welcome philosopher and author Federico Campagna back to the show! Together, we find the magic in defeat and the strength that it offers, using his new book, Otherworlds: Mediterranean Lessons on Escaping History as a springboard for our wide-ranging and empowering discussion.

Federico gives many potent examples of the hidden strength in defeat. Whether it’s through Egyptian gods or the writer Joseph Roth, esotericists or people who felt the mythic effects of being defeated by Alexander the Great. We witness again and again options that become available for seeing and creating new worlds only when - as Federico writes of the people in the book:

“Instead of clinging to the values of a vanishing world, or embracing the new rising power, they dared to migrate to the grand zero of the imagination where ideas and values can be extracted anew from the infinite virtuality of the possible.”

May this episode bring you strength and magic, even in the most unexpected of places and conditions!

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Friends: We need ideas which are not just radical or "revolutionary." We need ideas, feelings, and actions that work on many levels; that are systemic; that have multiple potentials for realization, and have enough points of articulation that they can touch on their own fabric and maneuver to witness themselves.

And what better place to start then the ground beneath your feet: where you live?

After all, you see the place you live every day. It's entered you as a daily language of patterns. It's become a set of expectations for your feet as you move through the morning. It lives in your lungs and gives your eyes nourishment. And I'm sure it also frustrates you sometimes, makes you feel blocked and angry. You might feel threatened there or bored. But I hope you also find joy, surprise, and feel held by where you live, greeted by each of its days.

When my friend and collaborator - the artist, organizer, and journalist UNA MULLALLY - released her new 10-part podcast series SAVING THE CITY , I found in it a perfect representation of that transformative ideal we need.

I also knew that Una and I had different ideas of what we wanted from cities. I like cars, I have trouble with a lot of bigger cities that Una loves. I even like an area of Dublin that Una has... let's say, different feelings about. But this is exactly right for transformation of a place- discussing with your neighbors what you want, what your concerns are, but most importantly what would bring you joy, piece of mind, excitement, potential, opportunity in the city

This is a long episode, and like a city, it encourages a sort of wandering. Stop along the way any time you want, think about how it will apply to where you live whether it's a city or somewhere else. I'm so excited to share this episode with you.

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Friends, When I started Against Everyone With Conner Habib, there were a few guests I wanted to have on more than just about anyone.

Happy to say, now, on episode 300, one of those central figures to my imagination has arrived for the conversation.

GRANT MORRISON doesn't need much introduction. He's* a rebel artist, spiritual visionary, comic book writer, magician, novelist, and nonfiction writer.

The first time I ever heard of Grant Morrison was here, over twenty years ago. in a talk he gave. And then I met him shortly after (I tell you the story in the intro to the episode). His work, and just his being, has been a guidepost for me since I encountered his work.

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GRANT'S WEBSITE

***

A note on Grant's pronouns: I talked with him after the episode about his preferred pronouns, and he said that the "they/them" pronouns were often used by other people when identifying him, but that he found himself using he/him just as much because both gender expressions seemed to limit what he felt his identity was.

Friends,

After writing my previous episode, AEWCH 298, where I laid out my thoughts on how to reflect on A.I. to get to beyond the basic, boring conversation, I read ADAM BECKER's excellent book, More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity .

I immediately invited him on the show, and I wish I would've read it before. Even though there is plenty of overlap, Adam's vantage point offer a full vision of tech culture, and reveals just how deeply anti-science is is.

That impact comes from the fact that Adam is great writer but also an astrophysicist, and author of the excellent popular book on quantum physics, What Is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics.

We talk about how we got here in science and technology, why technology has been conflated with science, how conspiracy and science intersect, and what physics has to do with all of this.

Of course the conclusion is that A.I. is not super smart, not supported by smart people, that the fantasies of tech billionaires are bonkers, and that the singularity is not near because it's not even a thing.

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