Episode 189: Care of the Dead, with Jacob G. Foster

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 23 April 2025

⏱️ 95 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, JF and Phil are joined by Jacob G. Foster—sociologist, physicist, and researcher at Indiana University Bloomington and the Santa Fe Institute—for a conversation about their recent collaboration in Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Their co-authored essay, “Care of the Dead,” explores how the dead continue to shape our cultures, languages, and ways of being. Together, they discuss the process of writing the piece and what it means to say that the dead are not gone—that they persist, and that they make claims on the living. The article is available here: https://direct.mit.edu/daed/article/154/1/166/127931/Care-of-the-Dead-Ancestors-Traditions-amp-the-Life **References** [Peter Kingsley,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kingsley) English writer Weird Studies, [Episode 98 on “Taboo”]) https://www.weirdstudies.com/98) John Berger, “12 Theses on the Economy of the Dead” in _[Hold Everything Dear](12 Theses on the Economy of the Dead)_ Bernard Koch, Daniele Silvestro, and Jacob Foster, ["The Evolutionary Dynamics of Cultural Change”](https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/659bt_v1) Gilbert Simondon, _[Imagination and Invention](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781517914455)_ William Gibson, _[Neuromancer](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780441007462)_ [Phlogiston theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston_theory) George Orwell, _[1984](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780451524935)_ HP Lovecraft, [“The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”](https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cdw.aspx) Weird Studies, [Episode 187 on “Little, Big”](https://www.weirdstudies.com/187) [John Dee,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dee) English occultist Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, _[The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780195320992)_ Robert Harrison, _[The Dominion of the Dead](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780226317939)_ Gilles Deleuze, _[Bergsonism](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780942299076)_ Elizabeth LeGuin, _[Boccherini’s Body](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780520240179)_ Elizabeth LeGuin, [“Cello and Bow thinking”](http://www.echo.ucla.edu/cello-and-bow-thinking-baccherinis-cello-sonata-in-eb-minor-faouri-catalogo/) Johannes Brahms, _Handel Variations_ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Spectrevision Radio
0:02.0	Welcome to Weird Studies, an arts and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martel.
0:20.0	For more episodes, or to support the podcast,
0:23.3	go to weirdst. This is Phil.
0:54.0	This week, J.F. and I are joined by our good friend,
0:57.3	Jacob Foster, who listeners might remember from episode 151, The Real and the Possible.
1:03.7	That was recorded at the 2023 D.23, D.F.I.I.'s Summer Institute, or D.C., an interdisciplinary summer workshop for researchers
1:13.0	working on problems related to cognition and mind. D.C. is the brainchild of Jacob and his wife,
1:20.6	primatologist Erica Cartmill, and every year at St. Andrews, scholars from a variety of disciplines
1:26.6	in and out of the sciences come together
1:29.2	to think about intelligence in all its many forms, the minds of humans, non-human animals,
1:35.6	machines, and even unbodied beings, such as daimons or aliens. You can probably guess where
1:42.7	JF and I land in this territory. Last year, around
1:46.8	when Jacob became my colleague at Indiana University, the three of us started collaborating
1:52.8	on an essay that would consider another kind of weird intelligence, the mind of the dead.
1:59.2	We wanted to understand how our words, our thoughts, our stories, our songs all originate in the dead.
2:06.0	More than that, we wanted to say that our care for the old songs and stories is also care for the dead that made them.
2:13.2	The dead live on through their creative progeny, and when we perform their music or read their
2:18.6	novels, we are entering into real, more than metaphorical conversations with them.
2:25.0	Some 500 years ago, Niccolo Machiavelli described what it's like to enter into conversations
2:31.2	with thinkers and artists long gone. Quote,
2:34.4	When evening comes, I return home and enter my study. On the threshold, I take off my workday
	...

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