High recommend for the Weird Studies interview with Shannon Taggart where she discusses her investigation into the liminality and spectral persistence of Michael Jackson. I generally love Weird Studies, and this episode is a standout. Here’s Taggart on the strangely shamanic quality of Jackson’s sleep:
Part of my major thesis is that his themes are transformation and change—and that the control of the dream state, I propose, was possibly the reason he died in such a strange way. So he died of acute propofol intoxication in 2009, and he had not had REM sleep in 60 days. A Harvard doctor testified that he is the only documented example of a human being having such an extreme sleep deprivation. Because propofol does not put you to sleep, it makes you enter a coma-like state. So I found this quote of Michael saying to Deepak Chopra, he asked, ‘Deepak, have you heard of this thing that takes you to the Valley of Death and then brings you back?’ He was obviously talking about this anesthetic. So I proposed that part of his death was to gain inspiration.
