Counter Esperanto Podcast: Winds Of The Weird

Welcome to the fourth episode of our “Attempted Conversations about Robert Aickman” series. This time around, we were quite fortunate to be able to speak to author, songwriter, book collector and publisher, R.B. Russell. Ray has published several novels, novellas and collections of short stories, is the author of Robert Aickman: A Biography , and along with Rosalie Parker, runs the award winning T...

In this, the third episode of our Attempted Conversations About Robert Aickman, we welcome John Thorne back to the show. John is co-creator of the legendary Twin Peaks fanzine Wrapped in Plastic , the book Ominous Whoosh , and most recently, Devious Dreams: Reimagining David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive . First, we talk to John about his book, which guides the reader through the strange world of Mulho...

In this, our second Attempted Conversation about Robert Aickman, we have brought in a formidable duo as guests to grapple with two Robert Aickman stories: “Ringing the Changes,” and “No Stronger Than a Flower.” Hilary and Indigo of the Full Blossom of the Evening Podcast , who are newcomers to the Capital-S Strange world of Robert Aickman, bring their talents of intertextual analysis to bear on tw...

Greetings listeners! We are pleased to bring you the first episode in a series about one of our favorite writers, Robert Aickman. As longtime listeners of Counter Esperanto know, we are something of a hybrid podcast: we began as a Twin Peaks podcast which filtered that series, and other David Lynch projects through weird stories, folklore, and history. In that process, we have often featured autho...

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Merry Yule, everyone. Today, just in time for us to call it a Christmas gift to you, we present just a taste of our Super Secret Project that we’ve been cooking up for over a year now, one which we have given the provisional title, “Project Mercy Seat.” We don’t know if it will be a novel, a series of interconnected stories, or something...

The Last of Us series of games on Playstation did a great deal to promote serious consideration of the medium as a true narrative art form. The performances, the attention to detail in building its characters and world, and especially the writing and directing from Neil Druckmann and others gave a story that players are still discovering, and in indeed weeping over. It’s this emotional core, among...

2022 was something of an experiment for Karl and Jubel, and we believe it was a resounding success. We’ve always talked about wanting to incorporate more interviews into the mix, so we did five consecutive interview episodes exploring Twin Peaks: The Return. We want to extend our heartfelt thanks to John Thorne, Rob King, John Bernardy, Lindsay Stamhuis, and Adam Stewart for their generosity, pati...

This episode marks the last in a series of five episodes following our re-watch of Twin Peaks: The Return , which feature guests each of whom bring a unique and thorough perspective to the puzzling, beautiful, haunting, heartbreaking, harrowing and frustrating text that is Twin Peaks . Karl and I would love to offer our deepest thanks to John Thorne, Rob King, John Bernardy, Lindsay Stamhuis, and...

This is the next in our series of revisits of Twin Peaks: The Return . This time we are happy today to have with us author, teacher, and co-host of The Bicks Podcast (Formerly Bickering Peaks), Lindsay Stamhuis. We begin by covering Parts 13-16, but we branch out and talk about the series as a whole. Lindsay, Karl and Jubel cover a great deal of ground in this one. Since this sequence of Parts car...

We are happy to begin our next exploration into the Return with John Bernardy: journalist, Twin Peaks master-theorist, and host of Blue Rose Task Force podcast, which I believe is the first of its kind, being a holistic podcast that looks at the entirety of Twin Peaks including production details. John, Karl and Jubel start off discussing Twin Peaks: The Return Parts 9-12, but soon branch off into...

Greetings Listeners! We continue our series of guest-packed Twin Peaks: The Return  re-watch discussions with author, scholar, and all-around lovely gent Rob E. King! Rob E. King is an associate librarian at Texas Tech University’s Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library and a doctoral student in English at Texas Tech University. He has contributed to 25YL, Blue Rose Magazine, Twin...

Greetings listeners! This week we are excited to have on, as our first guest in a five-part retrospective of Twin Peaks: The Return, none other than John Thorne, author and co-creator of the Wrapped in Plastic magazine, and more recently Blue Rose magazine, and co-host of In Our House Now Podcast: An Inquiry Into Twin Peaks . John, Jubel and Karl have a free-wheeling discussion which was ostensibl...

When Karl and Jubel realized that they had passed the five year mark of the podcast, they thought it would be fitting to return to their “Tangents About Twin Peaks” roots, and use Mark Frost’s The Final Dossier as a springboard to dive into Twin Peaks as a whole. What resulted is our longest episode yet, which bounces between the text of the book, and our memories and reflections on the whole saga...

Here’s a short reading by your Humble Co-Host Jubel Brosseau, of “Yule Horror,” a short poem by H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft made a habit of writing Christmas poems every year that he sent to friends and family, but generally they were mild, festive affairs. This poem delves into a dark vision of the pagan origins of the Christmas mythology, and is consummate Lovecraft. Happy Holida...

“Dreams are messages from the Deep” In this episode, a review and impromptu analysis of Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s “Dune,” Karl and Jubel are surprised to find their views and thoughts on the film evolving as they break it down. They share a few laughs as they compare/contrast the film with David Lynch’s adaptation. Bear with us folks, this is a bit of a ride!

“It never got weird enough for us”  Here’s some audiovisual notes about today’s podcast: Guild Navigator – Dune Ben (Dean Stockwell) from Blue Velvet The “Bum” behind Winkies Mr. and Mrs. X (Mary X’s parents from Eraserhead Mrs. Tremond (and her grandson Pierre) Lil from Fire Walk With Me “The Baby” – Eraserhead “ Oh You’re Sick ” Cutting open the bandages Mr. G...

Jubel and Karl give in to the lure of nostalgia and return to movies that they haven’t seen in 25 years or so: The Keep and Phantasm .  These are weird movies, and also really Weird movies. We talk about them, how we enjoyed them in our salad days, and what they mean to us now. Other subjects include high school cabals, sci/fi fantasy video crash pads, and the good-old bad days of cocaine-fu...

….But Counter-Esperanto will return: Greetings Listeners, Jubel Brosseau here. We are doing something a little different with this episode. Late June saw the release of the long-awaited sequel to The Last of Us , a fan-favorite and critically heralded game exclusive to the Sony Playstation platform. The Last of Us Part 2 had a lot to live up to, and I was absolutely floored by the game. The...

Millennium is Coming    “ We apologise for the inconvenience .”

In this episode, your hosts delve into two jungles; one 8,000 miles removed from from familiar Twin Peaks psychogeography, and the other in the very center of America’s heartland.  One set in, arguably, the most hopeful American Decade, the 1960s.  The other marinates in the psychic despair of “The End of History.” Both, in their own ver different ways could be called Cold War mo...

“You are entering the vicinity of an area adjacent to a location. The kind of place where there might be a monster or some kind of weird mirror. These are just examples.  It could also be something much better. Prepare to enter, The Scary Door.” — Futurama, “A Head In The Polls” An episode about such vast and important subjects as “Apertures and Doorways”...

We grew up  In Search of…   the Mysteries of the Unknown .   For those shows–and indeed for most of the 20th Century–the arch unknown has been  Alien . So, your hosts will be talking about  Aliens .   We talk a lot about how very, very similar our modern abduction narratives are to 17th Century fairy stories, and a little about how Twin Peaks ‘ concept of lodge denizens as...

Today, Counter Esperanto is celebrating Women in Horror Month , which is February and therefore a bit in the rear-view mirror, but now it’s March, which is Women’s History Month , so it all works out in the end! Karl and Jubel begin by discussing Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and “ Don’t Look Now .” Daphne du Maurier brought the Gothic into the 20th century, and looked at the modern world, and human...

For this “minisode,” Karl and Jubel discuss “ The Yellow Wallpaper ” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, our most recent reading, which features all-new music and sound design, and a masterful performance by actress Suzanne Owens-Duval. We break down the story’s use of the “unreliable narrator” device, its nebulous supernaturalism, and its role as an influential work of feminist fiction. True to form, yo...

As with most pieces of great literature, “ The Yellow Wallpaper ,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is many things simultaneously. It is an exquisite ghost story, a prime example of the “unreliable narrator” in short fiction, a psychologically astute depiction of a descent into madness, and a legendary piece of 19th century feminist writing. For this reading, we have had the astonishing fortune of work...