Episode 203 – Distant Early Warnings: A Return to Marshall McLuhan's 'Book of Probes'

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2025

⏱️ 87 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Back in episode 112, Phil and JF devised a gimmick for a show: randomly select one of the many aphorisms in The Book of Probes, a compendium of Marshall McLuhan’s prophetic quips designed by David Carson, and see what happens. It proved lively enough that they’re trying it again nearly a hundred episodes later. The resulting conversation touches the weird across a range of themes: tourism, the two kinds of truth, advertising, Kubrick’s marketing savvy, technology, orality versus literacy, and much more. A fitting feast for the mind as the year draws to a close. From all of us at Weird Studies, happy holidays. • Sign up for JF Martel and Erik Davis's upcoming course on Moby-Dick. • Join Phil, JF, and composer Pierre-Yves Martel for Weirdosphere's Solstice Story Hour on December 21. • For dates, venues, and the full slate of Weird Academia events in Bloomington this January, visit the Centre for Possible Minds website. • To participate in the Weird Academia Colloquium, email organizers Emma Stamm and Michael Garfield at [email protected] Header Image: NASA. REFERENCES Marshall McLuhan, Distant Early Warning Deck Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain Plato, The Seventh Letter Marshall McLuhan, The Book of Probes Toronto School of Communication Theory Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy Paul Kingsnorth, Against the Machine Charles Taylor, A Secular Age Plato, The Republic Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media Jonathan Crary, 24/7 H. P. Lovecraft, The Color out of Space Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Spectre Vision Radio
0:02.0	Harlan Guthrie presents in association with Spectrevision Radio,
0:12.0	featuring original artwork by Roth Donaldson, with original music composed by Harlan Guthrie, a new anthology horror series.
0:24.6	Set in the world of malevolent.
0:29.6	Tales from the Dark World.
0:34.6	Monthly episodes. Only on Spectrevision Radio. How delightful.
0:48.4	Welcome to Weird Studies, an arts and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martell.
1:00.6	For more episodes or to support the podcast, go to weirdstudies.com.
1:32.6	Thank you. Hi, welcome to Weird Studies. This is Phil.
1:39.7	This is the last flagship show of 2025, and we have a ton of announcements to make.
1:49.0	J.F. and Eric Davis are launching a new class on Moby Dick. We've got an update on the Weird Academia events happening in the last week of January, 2026, and we're doing a one-off solstice event.
1:53.0	Herewith, the particulars.
1:56.0	J.F. and Eric Davis are teaming up to teach Hunting the White Whale, a course on Moby Dick.
2:03.3	Herman Melville's Moby Dick is, like the eponymous whale, enormous, imposing, elusive, and utterly strange.
2:13.7	Starting on January 20, 2026, J.F. and Eric will host six weeks of lectures and discussion sections
2:20.7	for which the expression, do a deep dive, is for once fully justified. More than any modern book,
2:29.2	Moby Dick invites interpretation to the exact extent that it resists explanation.
2:35.0	Prophetic, mystical, and unhinged, it is a book of riddles and mysteries.
2:41.0	Bringing the novel into conversation with religion, philosophy, esotericism, science, and art,
2:47.0	Eric and J.F will show how Moby Dick continues to speak to our time. Go to
2:52.7	Weardosphere.org for more details and to sign up. For the last couple of months, we've been telling
2:59.2	you about Weird Academia, a multi-day event in Bloomington, Indiana that we're organizing
	...

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