Uncertain Places with Mitch Horowitz | Nite Drift Archive

Mitch Horowitz is a historian of alternative spirituality and one of today's most literate voices of esoterica, mysticism, and the occult.

He is among the few occult writers whose work touches the basis of academic scholarship, national journalism, and subculture cred.

Mitch is a writer in residence at the New York Public Library and a pin award-winning historian whose books include Occult America, The Miracle Club, daydream believer, and uncertain places.

The Washington Post says, Mitch treats esoteric ideas and movements with an even-handed intellectual studiousness that is too often lost in today's raised voice discussions.

Mitch, welcome to Night Drift.

Thank you, man.

Good to be here.

So the intro of this very program, I labeled this series as being at the intersection of society and strange.

All right.

You mentioned in your new book on certain places.

Yeah, right.

The intersection you like to be is where the occult and mainstream history intervene.

I'm just curious, what does that look like to you in your mind's eye?

Well, there is an occult history.

It's a neglected history.

It's an overlooked history.

And I try to use the tools of a historian to uncover it.

I try to use the tools of sound and critical thinking in everything that I do.

I believe that excellence comes not so much from your area of inquiry, but the nature of the effort that you bring to it.

So that's constantly where I'm trying to live.

Yeah.

And listen, you know, being that this show, we talk about the occult.

We talk about new thought.

We talk about the paranormal.

And I'm really fascinated by the first chapter of this book.