14 episodes

Welcome to Drawing Blood, the podcast about art, science, and the macabre, hosted by Emma Merkling and Christy Slobogin.

Drawing Blood Drawing Blood

    • Arts
    • 5.0 • 9 Ratings

Welcome to Drawing Blood, the podcast about art, science, and the macabre, hosted by Emma Merkling and Christy Slobogin.

    Atheist Relics, Couples’ Cremation, and Victorian 'Infidels'

    Atheist Relics, Couples’ Cremation, and Victorian 'Infidels'

    Emma and Christy look at Alfred Gilbert's sculpture Mors Janua Vitae (c. 1905–1907) at the Royal College of Surgeons, London — a life-sized bronze which houses the remains of the couple Edward and Eliza Macgloghlin. We talk relics and transi tombs; Victorian atheism and the history of unbelief; cremation, miasma, and lead-lined coffins; books bound in human skin; Victorian sex (and free love!); affairs between artists and patrons; Welsh druids; paganism; birth control and the throuple; infidel feminism; and abolishing the family.

    • 55 min
    Morphine Addiction, Decadence & Degeneration, and Fin-de-Siècle Paris

    Morphine Addiction, Decadence & Degeneration, and Fin-de-Siècle Paris

    Emma and Christy use Eugène Grasset's lithograph Morphinomaniac (1897) as a starting point to talk about artistic depictions of morphine and historical opioid addiction, as well as decadence and degeneration in fin-de-siècle Parisian society. In this episode, we cover vampires, hypodermic syringes, Orientalism and Japonisme, 'dangerous' women, masturbation, pleasure, and sex work, true crime waxworks, and gendered consumption — of women, goods, and drugs.

    • 1 hr 3 min
    Vegetal Agents, Plant-Human Entanglements, and Julia Margaret Cameron’s Photography

    Vegetal Agents, Plant-Human Entanglements, and Julia Margaret Cameron’s Photography

    Emma and Christy look at Julia Margaret Cameron’s photograph 'Maud' (c. 1874) and discuss plant consciousness, agency, and erotics. In this episode, we cover tendrils and tentacles, Victorian queerness, plant horror, early ecologies, Darwin and plant sex, interspecies entanglements, photography and desire, colonial botany, tipitiwitchets, sadomasochism, and whether your houseplant can kill you.

    • 1 hr 4 min
    Taking a Short Break

    Taking a Short Break

    We will be back soon with the second half of season two!

    • 28 sec
    Disability, Bad Horror, and M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘Old’

    Disability, Bad Horror, and M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘Old’

    Emma and Christy discuss M. Night Shyamalan’s 2021 film Old. We talk about what makes good (and bad) horror; harmful representations of disability in movies, art, and society; aging and chronic illness; the history of medical experimentation; critical disability studies; and “crip time”. We may not recommend actually watching this film, but we definitely recommend thinking through some of what’s going on in it!

    • 1 hr 6 min
    Dollhouses of Death, Forensic Science, and Close Looking

    Dollhouses of Death, Forensic Science, and Close Looking

    Emma and Christy look at Frances Glessner Lee’s Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death (c. 1940s) AKA dollhouses of death. We talk Victorian children and dollplay; the origins of legal medicine; CSI as visual analysis; Barbies and buzzcuts; girlbossing on the police force; busybodies, gender, and the history of policing; class voyeurism; contemporary art and crime scene photography; Sherlock Holmes; and the afterlives of evidence.

    • 1 hr 12 min

Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5
9 Ratings

9 Ratings

Alix KJ ,

Super interesting

So fun and educational! As a nurse, I love hearing the medical side of things and learning more about art in a comedic way 🙌🏼

Highly recommend!!

jklempay ,

Can’t wait for the next episode!

This sounds amazing

Top Podcasts In Arts

NPR
The Moth
iHeartPodcasts and Pushkin Industries
Roman Mars
Avery Trufelman
Fantasy Fangirls