Counter Esperanto Podcast: Tangents About Twin Peaks: The Return Part 5

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 of course, this episode’s guest Adam Stewart. We hope to talk to each of them again, someday soon.

Our last guest in this series, Adam Stewart of Diane Podcast takes us into a broad view of Twin Peaks: the space of “post-theory” Twin Peaks. To get there, we need to talk about hauntings. We start with the classic author of ghost stories M.R. James, what made his work so special at the time, and why his work resonates now, and why it also resonates with our beloved show.

We talk about John Thorne’s new book, Ominous Whoosh and question whether Twin Peaks theory doesn’t get any better, or comprehensive, and if so, now what?

From there, things get “hauntological,” (a term coined by Jacques Derrida, and popularized in the modern era by media critics such as Mark Fisher, a podcast favorite for Diane as well as us), and we see how the past haunts the present in the real world, in the world of the show, in media at large, and how all of these realms interplay and comment on each other. 

For a deeper view, we discuss the concept of “late style” in art, and how David Lynch’s late style comes to bear as he revisited the world of Twin Peaks all these years later.

Counter Esperanto Podcast: Tangents About Twin Peaks: The Return Part 4

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 carries the bulk of the tragic and perplexing arc (or is it tragic?) of Audrey Horne, we thought it fitting to bring Lindsay on at this point, since she has written about Audrey several times on the 25 Years Later Site, and our hosts are excited to delve into that particular corner of strangeness.

In Part 16, we finally see the return of our Cooper! Or is he “our Cooper”? Who is it that wakes up in that hospital bed, and how much of him remains? We get into one of the central themes of The Return, which is essentially a deconstruction of the hero myth itself. For all his charm, competence, and heroism, Special Agent Dale Cooper is a complex figure, and true to much in David Lynch, there is a dark side squirming under the surface.

Counter Esperanto Podcast: Tangents About Twin Peaks: The Return Part 3

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 other vistas of strangeness. They discuss the troubling saga of the Hornes, their favorite new characters and bits, the secret hidden inside Diane and Sarah Palmer’s favorite beverages, and the strange, open-endedness of the whole story. 

Our guest John brings his extensive production knowledge to bear on these details, and elucidates his “Moebius Strip” diagram, which he says is the key to one of the major themes of the Return, exemplified by Dr. Jacoby/Amp’s golden shovel.

So fix your hearts, shovel your way out of the sh*t, and have a listen!

Counter Esperanto Podcast: Tangents About Twin Peaks: The Return Part 2

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 Peaks Unwrapped podcast and published in New American Notes Online and the West Texas Historical Review. 

Rob is also co-editor with Christine Self and Robert Weaver of a book of essays titled David Lynch and the American West: Essays on Regionalism and Indigeneity in Twin Peaks and the Films.

We begin our discussion with classic Weird writer (and creator of Conan the Barbarian) Robert E. Howard, discuss regionalism in that author’s writings, and bring it around to Twin Peaks, discussing the importance of the Las Vegas bits, Jerry’s Odyssey,  the role of electricity and telecommunication, and much more.

Ep. No. 38 A Return to Tangents About Twin Peaks and a Deep Dive Into the Final Dossier

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 as it stands. Twin Peaks is a dense knot of mystery and Weirdness, and we hope you will join us, perhaps over the holiday weekend, as we, to pull a phrase from H.P. Lovecraft, “correlate its contents.”