Today would have been David Lynch's 80th birthday, and. I would like to share a conversation I had with John Higgs about his new book, LYNCHIAN: The Spell of David Lynch.

January 16, 2026 marks one year since David Lynch passed away, and as far as I’m aware, John’s book is the first to be written on Lynch and his work in the aftermath of his passing.

John Higgs is one of my favorite writers and cultural theorists whose past work includes

The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds

Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century

Love and Let Die: Bond, the Beatles and the British Psyche

Exterminate/Regenerate: The Story of Doctor Who

(The last of which I discussed with him on TARDIS Rubbish, a Doctor Who podcast.)

Suffice to say, when he announced he would be writing a volume on David Lynch, I was incredibly excited. One of my favorite writers writing about one of my biggest inspirations was a recipe too delicious to miss.

I heartily recommend any of his books, but you want to dip in, check out his Substack (which he recently revamped with a paid tier of longer form essays called the New Moon Letters . [And yes, I am a card-carrying paid subscriber.])

Feedback? josh@highlyirregular.net

Josh welcomes MICHAEL SICINSKI, film scholar, professor, and critic for a conversation about the passing of the renowned giant of avant garde cinema, Ken Jacobs, on October 5, 2025. In their wide ranging conversation, they discuss Jacobs's contributions to the art of cinema, his contributions to the radical cinema department at Binghamton University in the 1970s, and the role of the avant-garde in the age of AI slop.

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MICHAEL SICINSKI creating small-batch film criticism on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/msicism/posts

In Review Online: https://inreviewonline.com/the-writers/michael-sicinski/

Michael Sicinski on LETTERBOXD: https://letterboxd.com/msicism/