Episode 202 – The Human is Two: On 'The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde'

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 26 November 2025

⏱️ 83 minutes

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Summary

In this episode, JF and Phil discuss Robert Louis Stevenson’s Gothic classic, the tale that conjured the fog-shrouded London hellscape that has haunted the modern imagination ever since. Though written as a quick “Christmas crawler” to earn a bit of money, the novella has exerted an incalculable influence on art and literature. It also proved strangely prophetic, anticipating Freud and others who would soon make the fragmentation of the human psyche a defining concern of the new century. "The human is two" is a recurring refrain in the work of the scholar of religious thought, Jeffrey J. Kripal. References Dan Ericson, Severance Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde David Lynch (dir.), Mullholland Drive John Frankenheimer (dir.), The Manchurian Candidate Galen Strawson, British philosopher Juan Eduardo Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols Jeff Kripal, How to Think Philosophically Rouben Mamoullian (dir.), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Weird Studies, Episode 161 on “From Hell” Sigmund Freud, “The Ego and the Id” Arthur Machen, Hieroglyphics Arthur Machen, “The White People” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	It can happen to any one of us at any time.
0:10.0	A crack appears in the world around us, small at first, but it's enough for us to get
0:17.2	a glimpse, enough for us to see that beyond all this is something else.
0:23.6	But what?
0:25.6	Against our better judgment, the lure of the unknown draws us to peek through.
0:31.6	And once we do, there's no turning back.
0:35.6	Because that crack inevitably begins to expand
0:39.3	until you're no longer looking through it,
0:41.3	or even at it.
0:43.3	You are in it.
0:45.3	And the place you started, the world you knew,
0:49.3	it's so small that the idea you'd ever be able to get back to it,
0:53.3	well, I don't need to say anymore.
0:57.0	So what is this place? It depends who you are. But one thing is the same for everyone.
1:04.5	Peaking behind the curtain of forbidden knowledge in this way, it shatters your sense of yourself,
1:15.4	of reality. And that is a very dark place to be. I invite you to be a tourist and step into the minds of those people lost to the unknown,
1:23.1	and the scarce few who found a way out to hear their terrifying stories.
1:28.3	But I must warn you, once you climb inside, I can't promise that you won't end up counting
1:35.8	yourself among them. What they have to say will change you, bring near what should be kept
1:43.3	far, far away. Because there are things we're not meant
1:49.4	to know. We're not meant to know an anthology of horror, now transmitting from Spectrevision
1:59.2	Radio. Welcome to Weird Studies, an arts and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martel. For more episodes or to support the podcast, go to weirdstud I'm J.F. Martel. The opening story of Quentin S. Crisp's morbid tales,
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