Psychedelic experiences can be weird – sometimes extremely weird. Yet, the notion of weirdness is often not the primary focus in the psychedelic renaissance or psychedelic culture. Instead, the focus is often around the therapeutic or spiritual aspects of psychedelic experiences – themes like healing, mental health, personal growth, mystical experiences, etc. This isn’t to…
View Post
Aniara (2018) is a Swedish sci-fi film written and directed by Hugo Lilja and Pella Kågerman. It is an adaptation of the 1956 Swedish epic poem of the same name by Harry Martinson. It depicts a dystopian, distant future in which extreme climate change, war, famine, disease, social collapse, pollution, and lawlessness force humans to…
View Post
Part of the appeal of horror films – which is underappreciated, I think – is their capacity to evoke the sublime. This is a curious and complex emotion. It’s a mixture of fear and fascination. It involves feeling simultaneously nervous or threatened by some perceptual phenomenon – because of its vastness or power – and…
View Post
On 10th June, French metal band Mirar released a six-track EP titled Mare. This EP, and the band in general, falls into the metal genre ‘thall’, which combines elements of progressive metal, death metal, and mathcore. Thall is an offshoot of djent and originated with Vildhjarta, who started using the term in 2011; the genre…
View Post
It may seem intuitive, in evolutionary terms, why we would find natural settings attractive and appealing. The biologist Edward O. Wilson argued that humans possess a trait called biophilia (fondness for nature, or an innate tendency to seek connections and affiliations with nature and other forms of life), which he argued makes sense evolutionarily. It…
View Post