WAKE ISLAND
115 episodes - English - Latest episode: 10 days ago - ★★★★★ - 56 ratingsWAKE ISLAND IS A CONVERSATION SERIES ABOUT THE DARKENING UNDERCURRENTS OF CONTEMPORARY CULTURE WITH HOSTS PAUL K AND DAVID LEO RICE 🕳️ 🐇 Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/wake-island/support
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Episodes
The Sleep of Reason with Matt Lee
July 02, 2024 09:09 - 1 hour - 123 MBFear. Disgust. Pity. The cripple evokes our basest human emotions—as does the monster. Told in lyric fragments, The Backwards Hand traces Matt Lee’s experience living in the United States for more than thirty years with a rare congenital defect. Weaving in historical research and pop culture references, Lee dissects how the disabled body has been conflated with impurity, worthlessness, and evil. His voice swirls amid those of artists, criminals, activists, and philosophers. With a particula...
CHRIS ZEISCHEGG: ON ART AND UNBECOMING
March 20, 2024 08:05 - 1 hour - 86.5 MBChristopher Zeischegg is a writer and filmmaker who spent eight years working in the adult industry as performer, Danny Wylde. He is the author of The Magician, Body to Job, The Wolves that Live in Skin and Space, and Come to My Brother. His latest book CREATION spans a decade’s worth of writing on art, violence, sex work, and friendship. Acclaimed author, Christopher Zeischegg, confronts his past narratives, cruelty in auto-fiction, pornographic ambivalence, and transformative relationshi...
The World Below with David Peak
November 15, 2023 10:30 - 1 hour - 95.7 MBLast year, David Peak released "The World Below," a midwestern gothic tale intertwining two rival families whose animosity sparks amidst a ritualistic occult murder mystery, amplified by heroic doses of LSD. Published by Apocalypse Party, a rapidly acclaimed purveyor of top-tier horror, "The World Below" is a testament to their commitment to darkness. This book seamlessly blends atmosphere and narrative, achieving the rare feat of being both immersive and a page-turner. David Peak's work ...
Three Nights at the Skylark Motel with Logan Berry
October 25, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 103 MBEvery city has that motel. The motel on the edge of town, the mythical place you dare not go. Logan Berry goes there. In this episode, we calibrate a magical framework for understanding the world through a seance Logan conducted at the Skylark Motel. We get into cutting off spectral appendages, invoking chaos, exploring hoarder homes, practicing automatic writing, and Ultratheater. Additionally, we discuss if relentless exposure to depravity makes us evil, and why occult commerce lacks the...
Exaltations in the Dead of Night with Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh Part II
October 11, 2023 08:04 - 1 hour - 110 MB“The omnicidal will to constitute an infinite decision implies one of two things: either to kill the unfinished, or to let the unfinished kill.” In the second part of our conversation with Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh, we delve deep into the realm of unreality. We explore topics such as the labor associated with maintaining the criminal enterprise of the dream, the suffering and expenditure associated with visionary figures like Joyce Monsuer, the allure of totalitarian seduction during times mar...
Exaltations in the Dead of Night with Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh Part I
October 04, 2023 07:00 - 57 minutes - 79.8 MB"Every storyteller harbours a secret desire to be the one who tells the last story, just as every maniac wishes to inscribe the last fateful madness on earth." In this episode with Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh we walk with vertigo to summon the authors who play at the borders of insanity and intoxication. We get into the territories of the night and mania, both of which are the premise of Jason's most recent books: Night: A Philosophy of the After-Dark & Night: A Philosophy of the Last World and...
Aaron Brookner on Uncle Howard, Burroughs and the bunker - rebroadcast from 2/12/20
July 06, 2023 15:55 - 51 minutes - 71.4 MBToday on the show we have documentarian Aaron Brookner. His film Uncle Howard is an intertwining tale of past and present, the story of filmmaker Howard Brookner whose work captured the late ‘70s and early ‘80s cultural revolution in New York City. It is also about his nephew Aaron’s personal journey 25 years later to discover his uncle’s work and the legacy of a life cut short by AIDS. Howard Brookner directed the 1983 documentary Burroughs, as well as a feature film, Bloodhounds of Broadway...
B.R. Yeager - Negative Space - rebroadcast from 10/13/20
July 06, 2023 15:27 - 1 hour - 59.4 MBBR Yeager‘s debut novel, Amygdalatropolis, is about an incel dissolving into his online world of depravity. And if you want to read something that can push the isolation of quarantine into even darker spaces, where location and body merge into nightmare fuel, you’ll also enjoy BR’s latest novel, Negative Space which is like if the Children of the Corn were connected by message boards into the afterlife. Theme music by Joseph E. Martinez of Junius Follow us on social at: Twitter: @WakeIslandP...
Nina Renata Aron - Good Morning, Destroyer of Men’s Souls - rebroadcast from 6/6/20
July 06, 2023 15:26 - 1 hour - 62.4 MBNina Renata Aron is the author of GOOD MORNING, DESTROYER OF MEN'S SOULS: A Memoir of Women, Addiction & Love - a scorching memoir of a love affair with an addict, weaving personal reckoning with psychology and history to understand the nature of addiction, codependency, and our appetite for obsessive love. Nina is also the Editor of the new Playgirl magazine and specializes in writing about girls, books, art, and sex. Theme music by Joseph E. Martinez of Junius Follow us on social at: Tw...
Jack Riccobono - Amityville: An Origin Story
June 22, 2023 06:00 - 2 hours - 196 MBEnter the Amity-verse with Wake Island. In this episode we get into channeling dark energy from the media vortex surrounding America’s most infamous haunted house in Amityville, Long Island. In addition we also talk about: Hauntings as a manifestation of trauma, the mythology-making behind the nearly 50-year Amityville horror house phenomenon, demonic media spectacles, the allure and menace of the suburbs, and the reality and fantasy of demonic possession. Jack Riccobono’s new series, ...
Our Lives in the Marvel Universe with Bruce Wagner
July 21, 2022 12:09 - 1 hour - 89.8 MBWelcome to the final episode of Wake Island! Bruce Wagner is on the show. BRUCE WAGNER is a novelist and screenwriter known for his apocalyptic yet spiritual view of humanity as seen through the lens of Hollywood. His books include: Force Majeure, Dead Stars, I’m Losing You, Wild Palms (graphic novel), I'll Let You Go, Still Holding, The Chrysanthemum Palace, Memorial, The Empty Chair, I Met Someone, A Guide For Murdered Children (writing as Sarah Sparrow), and ROAR: American Master - The ...
Scorched Earth with Jonathan Crary
July 07, 2022 06:00 - 1 hour - 124 MBScorched Earth: Beyond the Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World In this uncompromising essay, Jonathan Crary presents the obvious but unsayable reality: our ‘digital age’ is synonymous with the disastrous terminal stage of global capitalism and its financialisation of social existence, mass impoverishment, ecocide, and military terror. Scorched Earth surveys the wrecking of a living world by the internet complex and its devastation of communities and their capacities for mutual support. ...
Dr Megen de Bruin-Molé on Monster Mashups and Frankenfictions
June 24, 2022 06:00 - 1 hour - 93.2 MBDr Megen de Bruin-Molé is a Lecturer in Digital Media Practice with the University of Southampton. She specialises in ‘monstrous’ historical fiction, adaptation, and contemporary remix culture, and she is currently interested in the digital afterlives and appropriations of historical archives and ephemera. Her book Gothic Remixed: Monster Mashups and Frankenfictions in 21st-Century Culture (Bloomsbury 2020) examines remix culture through the lens of monster studies, and her co-edited collect...
How to Find Zodiac with Jarett Kobek
June 09, 2022 06:08 - 2 hours - 211 MBJarett Kobek is a Turkish-American writer living in California. His novel I HATE THE INTERNET was an international bestseller, translated into nine languages, and published in twelve countries. His other books include: ATTA, Do Every Thing Wrong!: XXXTentacion Against the World, Only Americans Burn in Hell and The Future Won't Be Long. Motor Spirit: The Long Hunt for the Zodiac It’s 1969. Evil lurks in California. From a Napa County hippie child murder to Haight Street gang bangs to metha...
Illuminating the New American Right with James Pogue
May 26, 2022 06:00 - 1 hour - 117 MBJames Pogue is a journalist and essayist. His first book is called Chosen Country: A Rebellion in the West. James recently wrote an article for Vanity Fair called Inside the New Right and it’s not only a great piece of journalism but it struck a cultural nerve. Not only did it go viral but it even got a shout out on Twitter from the likes of Jeff Bezos and Glenn Greenwald. In this conversation we discuss everything from MMA’s connection to the right, to diagnosing what is happening at th...
Doomed Lovers on the Run with Bud Smith
May 12, 2022 06:00 - 1 hour - 124 MBWe talk about burning down the plantation and doomed lovers on the run. BUD SMITH works heavy construction and lives in Jersey City, NJ. He is the author of Teenager (Vintage, 2022), Double Bird (Maudlin House, 2018), Dust Bunny City (Disorder Press, 2017), among others. He is also a creative writing teacher and editor. In the intro, David and I talk about Gregg Araki's The Living End. The interview with Bud starts at 12:08. TEENAGER: Two teenagers, in love and insane, journey across th...
On the Cusp of Dissolution with Lindsay Lerman
April 28, 2022 07:00 - 1 hour - 111 MBLindsay Lerman is a writer and translator. Her new novel, WHAT ARE YOU (CLASH Books) is out now. Her first book I'm From Nowhere was published in 2019. Her essays, short stories, and poetry have been published in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Entropy, Hobart, Southwest Review, and elsewhere. She is currently adapting her short story Real Love—which first appeared in NY Tyrant Magazine—for the screen. She is represented by Abby Walters at CAA. In the intro David and I talk about Pascal La...
Counteragent Adam Lehrer on Addiction and Crypto-Transgression
April 14, 2022 06:00 - 1 hour - 124 MBAdam Lehrer is a writer and an artist living in New York. He is the founder and co-host of the System of Systems podcast, and the founder and curator of the Safety Propaganda collaborative media platform. Communions is Adam's debut book - out now from Hyperidean Press. Communions: Channeling hallucinated versions of dead artists and junkies, these fragments access the uncanny allure of shared experience. Elements of speculative fiction, criticism and encrypted auto-biography merge to form a...
Wander Through the Ruins of Coal Country with Meghan Lamb
March 31, 2022 07:00 - 1 hour - 71.5 MBIn the intro we talk about Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher and animating atmosphere of the desolate landscape of Pennsylvania's coal region with author Meghan Lamb. Failure to Thrive (Apocalypse Party, 2022) follows the interconnected stories of three families as they navigate issues of disability, illness, and substance abuse in a former coal town: a landscape that is itself sick. A married couple argues over how to raise their neuroatypical child. A former nurse cares for her aging father, pro...
Stephen Marche on The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future
March 18, 2022 07:00 - 1 hour - 89.9 MBWill American fantasies of purifying violence dissolve upon contact with reality or will the illusion break into civil war? Find out on this eps w/ Stephen Marche author of The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future We also get into: American wildness, bloodlust, foment, genius, and the apocalyptic longing for an endless frontier. The United States is coming to an end. The only question is how. No matter your political leaning, most of us can sense that America is bar...
Dylan Mulvin on Proxies: The Cultural Work of Standing In
March 03, 2022 07:00 - 1 hour - 116 MBWe speak to Dr Dylan Mulvin, Assistant Professor in LSE Department of Media and Communications, about his book Proxies: The Cultural Work of Standing In, which examines the ways in which proxies shape our lives, the histories of their production and how we delegate power to represent our world. You can download a free copy of Proxies: The Cultural Work of Standing In at https://dylanmulvin.com/ In the intro David and I talk about Strange Days (1995) The interview with Dylan starts at 2...
Journey to the Heart of Disco Elysium with Justin Keenan
February 17, 2022 07:00 - 1 hour - 109 MBJUSTIN KEENAN is a writer and narrative designer on Disco Elysium which is a groundbreaking open world role playing game. In it, you’re a detective with a unique skill system at your disposal and a whole city block to carve your path across. Interrogate unforgettable characters, crack murders or take bribes. Become a hero or an absolute disaster of a human being. In this episode we excavate the inner world at the heart of Disco Elysium and get into: Dark City (1998), RPGs, paranoia vs dr...
Jonathan Greenaway on the Gothic State of Necrotic Capitalism
February 03, 2022 07:00 - 1 hour - 102 MBIn this episode with Jonathan Greenaway (Theology, Horror and Fiction: A Reading of the Gothic Nineteenth Century & The Horror Vanguard podcast) we arrive at the New Flesh while peeling back the layers of a nightmarish society in stasis. We get into: necro-neoliberalism, depressive hedonia, unspent energy mutating into gothic maw, our struggle to be and remain human, nostalgia neutralizing hope/fear instead of bringing us closer to history, the internet as a profoundly haunted and hauntin...
Enter the Sanctum of the Sacred Pervert with Erik Davis
January 20, 2022 07:00 - 1 hour - 127 MBIn this episode we try to articulate the fog of our time, away from fear, toward the pervert’s embrace of absurdity, uncertainty, spiritual warfare, gallows humor, the distinction between happiness and joy, and the strange, redemptive sanctum of the heroic pervert... Erik Davis, PhD, is an author, award-winning journalist, sometimes podcaster, and popular speaker based in San Francisco. He is the author of five books: High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the 70s; Nom...
Enter the Sanctum of the Heroic Pervert with Erik Davis
January 20, 2022 07:00 - 1 hour - 127 MBIn this episode we try to articulate the fog of our time, away from fear, toward the pervert’s embrace of absurdity, uncertainty, spiritual warfare, gallows humor, the distinction between happiness and joy, and the strange, redemptive sanctum of the heroic pervert... Erik Davis, PhD, is an author, award-winning journalist, sometimes podcaster, and popular speaker based in San Francisco. He is the author of five books: High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the 70s; Nom...
James Grauerholz - Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs (REBROADCAST)
January 06, 2022 07:00 - 1 hour - 109 MBJames Grauerholz is a writer and editor. He is most famous as the bibliographer and literary executor of the estate of William S. Burroughs. He worked as Burroughs’ assistant, and became his friend, business manager and editor until the author's death in 1997. Grauerholz wrote biographical sketches to a Burroughs reader Word Virus, and edited a posthumous release of Burroughs diaries Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs. Theme music by Joseph E. Martinez of Junius Follow ...
Wake Island Holiday Special with Derek McCormack
December 23, 2021 06:00 - 1 hour - 165 MBDerek McCormack is a small town pervert and the author of The Well-Dressed Wound and Castle F*ggot, both published by Semiotext(e). His most recent book is Judy Blame's Obituary. This collection brings together for the first time McCormack's fashion journalism. He writes about and interviews fashion figures that fascinate him, tracing the ways they inspire and inhabit his novels. The result is a sort of memoir in essays: as he writes, "My tribute to [Judy] Blame is about him and about me—the...
Small Town Pervert Derek McCormack!
December 23, 2021 06:00 - 1 hour - 165 MBDerek McCormack is a small town pervert and the author of The Well-Dressed Wound and Castle F*ggot, both published by Semiotext(e). His most recent book is Judy Blame's Obituary. This collection brings together for the first time McCormack's fashion journalism. He writes about and interviews fashion figures that fascinate him, tracing the ways they inspire and inhabit his novels. The result is a sort of memoir in essays: as he writes, "My tribute to [Judy] Blame is about him and about me—ther...
Patrick Nathan - Image Control: Art, Fascism, and the Right to Resist
December 17, 2021 06:00 - 1 hour - 116 MBSusan Sontag meets Hanif Abdurraqib in this fascinating exploration of the unexpected connections between how we consume images and the insidious nature of Fascism. Images come at us quickly, often without context. A photograph of Syrian children suffering in the wake of a chemical attack segues into a stranger’s pristine Instagram selfie. Before we can react to either, a new meme induces a laugh and a share. While such constant give and take might seem innocent, even entertaining, this bar...
Blake Butler on Obsession and the Unholy Sacredness of Time
December 03, 2021 06:00 - 1 hour - 141 MBBlake Butler is the author of seven book-length works, including Alice Knott (Riverhead), 300,000,000 (Harper Perennial), Sky Saw (Tyrant Books), There is No Year (Harper Perennial), Scorch Atlas (Featherproof Books), and Ever (Calamari Press), as well as the nonfictional Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia (Harper Perennial). He is a founding editor of HTMLGIANT We talk about: The Consumer by Michael Gira, insomnia, Penny’s notebook from Inspector Gadget, horror, internet gods and demons, for...
Rosecrans Baldwin on the City-State of Los Angeles
November 19, 2021 07:00 - 1 hour - 126 MBRosecrans Baldwin is the bestselling author of Everything Now: Lessons From the City-State of Los Angeles. Other books include The Last Kid Left and Paris, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down. His debut novel, You Lost Me There, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. Everything Now: Lessons from the City-State of Los Angeles is a provocative, exhilaratingly new understanding of the United States’ most confounding metropolis—not just a great city, but a full-blown modern city-st...
Catherine Liu - Virtue Hoarders: The Case Against the Professional Managerial Class
November 05, 2021 07:00 - 1 hour - 130 MBCatherine Liu is the author of Virtue Hoarders: The Case Against the Professional Managerial Class. We get into the: dynamics of noir, the pseudo superiority and inchoate narcissism of neoliberalism, social dominance, corporate embodiment, the monetization of victimhood, our collective need for catharsis and the Met Gala. Professional Managerial Class (PMC) elite workers labor in a world of performative identity and virtue signaling, publicizing an ability to do ordinary things in fundam...
A New Gothic Age with Patrick McGrath & David Leo Rice
September 08, 2021 06:00 - 1 hour - 140 MBPatrick McGrath is the author of three collections of short fiction, including Ghost Town: Tales of Manhattan Then and Now, and ten novels, including Asylum, Dr. Haggards Disease, Port Mungo, and most recently Last Days in Cleaver Square. His work has been widely published in translation, and in Italy Asylum, titled Follia, has sold over half a million copies. His screenplay of his novel Spider was filmed by David Cronenberg and premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Patrick was born in Lond...
Inside the Castle roundtable with Megan Jeanne Gette, Germán Sierra and John Trefry
September 07, 2021 06:00 - 1 hour - 127 MBInside the Castle is a small press operated from Lawrence, Kansas by John Trefrey. Their books are unique from one another but share a vision, that literature is not representational but incantatory, that books are objects that exist much like other objects in your life and home, only they have additional dimensions, not dimensions separate or distant from the ones you occupy, but involuted dimensions that only become apparent when you reach out to them. Megan Jeanne Gette is an anthropolo...
BONUS EPISODE! Inside the Castle roundtable with Megan Jeanne Gette, Germán Sierra and John Trefry
September 07, 2021 06:00 - 1 hour - 127 MBInside the Castle is a small press operated from Lawrence, Kansas by John Trefrey. Their books are unique from one another but share a vision, that literature is not representational but incantatory, that books are objects that exist much like other objects in your life and home, only they have additional dimensions, not dimensions separate or distant from the ones you occupy, but involuted dimensions that only become apparent when you reach out to them. _ Megan Jeanne Gette is an anthropolog...
Matthew Specktor - Always Crashing in the Same Car On Art, Crisis, and Los Angeles, California w/ David Leo Rice
August 05, 2021 06:00 - 2 hours - 169 MBMatthew Specktor is the author of the novels American Dream Machine and That Summertime Sound; a nonfiction book, The Sting; and the forthcoming memoir The Golden Hour (Ecco/HarperCollins). He is a founding editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books. In the intro David and I discuss Michelangelo Antonioni's haunting film The Passenger starring Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider. In the interview with Matthew we get into the essence of noir, the dream beyond impact, and the vampiric Lost Highw...
Kate Durbin - Hoarders
July 29, 2021 06:05 - 1 hour - 92.7 MBKate Durbin is a visual artist, filmmaker, and writer from Los Angeles, California (USA), whose artworks are nervous, unnerving, and playful explorations of the human condition in a time of constant screens, globalism, and late capitalism. Her work draws on a wide-range of popular culture references: Disneyland, reality TV shows, fast food, horror movie characters, and Hello Kitty are just some of the recurring figures and references that populate her work. In Hoarders, her third book of poe...
Jamie Nares on motion, stillness, transition, escape, painting and art in the year of the pandemic
July 21, 2021 06:00 - 1 hour - 101 MBOver the course of a five-decade career, Nares has investigated, challenged, and expanded the boundaries of her multi-media practice that encompasses film, music, painting, photography, and performance. She continues to employ various media to explore physicality, motion, and the unfolding of time. Nares has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and a career-spanning retrospective at the Milwaukee Art Museum in 2019. Her work is...
Dr. Stephen C. Finley on African American embodiment, spirituality, esotericism and UFO traditions, featuring David Leo Rice
July 14, 2021 07:00 - 1 hour - 99.8 MBDr. Finley is a Religious Studies Professor at Louisiana State University and has been studying African American religious thought, and spirituality. His research expands upon these themes with an emphasis on esotericism, non-material consciousness, African American embodiment and the role of the UFO narrative in the Nation of Islam. In this conversation we get into rethinking and restructuring how we conceive of America and its relation to African American spirituality and notions of trans...
Mikita Brottman - Couple Found Slain
July 07, 2021 06:00 - 1 hour - 120 MBMikita Brottman is an author and psychoanalyst with particular interests in true crime, forensics, psychoanalysis, animals, abjection, and the unexplained. Her work blends memoir, history, psychoanalysis, and creative speculation. Currently, she is especially interested in reconsidering and interrogating the true crime genre. This interest is at the heart of her two most recent books, An Unexplained Death (Henry Holt, 2018), and Couple Found Slain (Henry Holt, 2021). COUPLE FOUND SLAIN: “I...
Brian Broome - Punch Me Up to the Gods: A Memoir
June 23, 2021 06:00 - 1 hour - 104 MBPunch Me Up to the Gods is a poetic and raw coming-of-age memoir about Blackness, masculinity, and addiction. In the conversation we talk about seedy bars and public sex as well as rehab, representation and towards the end I tell a story about the first and possibly only time in my life where I clutched my pearls. We also get into a literary pilgrimage Brian went on and much more! Punch Me Up to the Gods introduces a powerful new talent in Brian Broome, whose early years growing up in O...
Lilly Dancyger - Negative Space
June 09, 2021 06:00 - 47 minutes - 65.2 MBDespite her parents' struggles with addiction, Lilly Dancyger always thought of her childhood as a happy one. But what happens when a journalist interrogates her own rosy memories to reveal the instability around the edges? Dancyger's father, Joe Schactman, was part of the iconic 1980s East Village art scene. He created provocative sculptures out of found materials like animal bones, human hair, and broken glass, and brought his young daughter into his gritty, iconoclastic world. She idolize...
Dennis Cooper - I Wished
May 27, 2021 06:00 - 1 hour - 119 MBDennis Cooper is on Wake Island! We talk about: Hoarders, escorts & slaves, dark rides, haunted houses, his forthcoming book I Wished, creating a literary monument to George Myles through the medium of devotion, the home as a universe, emotional history, Russian twink porn, Bjork’s meltdown, John Wayne Gacy, disliking objectification, the dying breed of emo escorts, the enduring sadness of Epcot center… Dennis Cooper is best known for The George Miles Cycle, an interconnected sequence of fi...
Gina Frangello - Blow Your House Down: A Story or Family, Feminism, and Treason
May 20, 2021 06:00 - 1 hour - 99.1 MBGina Frangello is the author of BLOW YOUR HOUSE DOWN: A Story or Family, Feminism, and Treason, EVERY KIND OF WANTING, & A LIFE IN MEN. Nonfiction editor at LA Review of Books. A Life in Men: A Novel is currently under production with Charlize Theron's production company Denver & Delilah for Netflix which will star Kristen Stewart and Riley Keough. "Compelling, honest, and thought-provoking, Gina Frangello's memoir is an inspired addition to her astounding body of work." —Charlize Theron G...
Brian Evenson - The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell
May 12, 2021 06:00 - 1 hour - 104 MBLiterary horror icon Brian Evenson is on the show! We talk about: the uncanny psychogeography of Utah, religious text & parables, writing as a replacement for spirituality, Brian’s philosophical approach, the machinations of Dark Properties, Michael Gira’s The Consumer, the trancelike intensity of the Soundtrack for the Blind by the Swans, Sunn O))), and Pierre Guyotat's writing, Deleuze and Guattari, the Evensonesque aesthetic and trajectory, our loss of agency to technology, distortion/blu...
Peter Vronsky - American Serial Killers: The Epidemic Years 1950-2000 (featuring David Leo Rice)
May 05, 2021 06:00 - 2 hours - 177 MBDavid Leo RIce co-hosts this special episode of Wake Island in which we interview historian Peter Vronsky. We discuss serial murderer consciousness and the golden age of serial killers -- we range widely from werewolves to WWII, Bundy to Dahmer, and the latent urges that turned the America of our childhood into a carnival of serial murder. With books like Serial Killers, Female Serial Killers and Sons of Cain, Peter Vronsky has established himself as the foremost expert on the history of s...
Justine Bateman - FACE
April 28, 2021 07:00 - 1 hour - 101 MBBateman’s directorial feature film debut of her own script, VIOLET, stars Olivia Munn, Luke Bracey, and Justin Theroux, and had its World Premiere at the 2021 SXSW Film Festival. Her best-selling first book, FAME, a non-fiction about the life cycle of Fame and society’s strong need for it, was published in 2018 by Akashic Books. Her second book, FACE, is also a best seller. It’s about women’s faces getting older and why that makes people angry. It was released April 2021 by Akashic. Her wr...
Elissa Washuta - White Magic
April 21, 2021 07:00 - 1 hour - 99.2 MBThroughout her life, Elissa Washuta has been surrounded by cheap facsimiles of Native spiritual tools and occult trends, “starter witch kits” of sage, rose quartz, and tarot cards packaged together in paper and plastic. Following a decade of abuse, addiction, PTSD, and heavy-duty drug treatment for a misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder, she felt drawn to the real spirits and powers her dispossessed and discarded ancestors knew, while she undertook necessary work to find love and meaning. In th...
Sam Tallent - Running the Light
April 14, 2021 06:00 - 1 hour - 95.6 MBSam Tallent is a comedian and author. His debut novel is Running the Lights, and it’s about a road comic named Billy Ray Schafer who embodies the archetype of a tragic road comic – trapped in the wreckage of his wasted career. In this conversation we get into being in punk bands, dealing with hecklers, taking mushrooms in the Poconos, watching magic shows on acid, boat acts, Brody Stevens, Ron White, Carrot Top, Vegas residencies, and the beauty of nihilism. “Brilliant writing. Astounding...
Chris Kelso - Burroughs and Scotland: Dethroning the Ancients: The Commitment of Exile
April 07, 2021 06:00 - 1 hour - 126 MBIn Burroughs and Scotland, Chris Kelso explores the relationship between William S. Burroughs (author of Naked Lunch, Junkie, and The Soft Machine) and a country very much attuned to the Beat author’s provocative, transgressive sci-fi style of literature. Kelso investigates why Burroughs was drawn to Scotland, why Scotland was drawn to Burroughs, and what exactly the author got up to during his various visits to Edinburgh. Chris Kelso is a British Fantasy Award-nominated genre writer, illus...