As we were preparing for these episodes, there were two frameworks that I kept coming back to.

The first one, and we've actually referenced this on the show before, is a term called

High Weirdness.

I'm borrowing this from Eric Davis, who actually I think gives the best definition.

He writes,

High Weirdness is an infectious project.

It breaks down the distinction between subject and object.

It loops and stains.

High Weirdness is not simply an ironic category for feverish esoteric strands of the American

fringe.

But a creative and reflexive engagement with those very same religious and cultural materials.

A visionary skepticism or critical naussess.

Within this questioning current, the object of weird fascination is folded back into the

subject, constructing a strange loop of cultural play, recursive enigmas, and extraordinary encounters

that makes a raid on the real.

I want to keep this movement he describes in mind.

Reflexivity, looping, the collapse of subject and object, a recursion, and finally a raid.

Now the other one is a bit more heady, and that's the idea of the Ryzen.

A Ryzen as a thing, like an actually existing in the real world thing, is the stem of

a plant that runs horizontally underground.

Ryzen's sprout offshoots underground at all angles, sideways, up, down, diagonally,

sometimes we call them tubers.

...