Episodios

  • Episode 193: On Conversion, or Arousing the Bodhi-Mind

    Episode 193: On Conversion, or Arousing the Bodhi-Mind
    Jul 9 2025
    How do you become religious? What is a conversion experience? Does it happen all at once or gradually? What's the point of religion, anyway? These are questions that JF (a Catholic) and Phil (a Zennist) have often been asked since starting Weird Studies, and in this episode they attempt some answers. Image: "Small Candle Flame" by Le Priyavrat, via Wikimedia Commons Sign up to attend Shannon Taggart's Lily Dale symposium, July 24-26 REFERENCES Ross Douthat, Believe Dogen, Shobogenzo New Atheism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Atheism Weird Studies, Episode 99 on “Wild, Wild Country” William James, Varieties of Religious Experience George Steiner, Real Presences Patrick Curry, Art and Enchantment Max Picard, The Flight from God Charles Taylor, A Secular Age James Carse, Finite and Infinite Games Richard Wagner, Ring Cycle Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense Weird Studies, Episode 183 on “Siddhartha” Charles Sanders Peirce, American philosopher Leonard Cohen, “Hallelujah” Our Known Friend, Meditations on the Tarot Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Más Menos
    1 h y 28 m
  • Episode 192 - A Dream of Landscape: On Walking

    Episode 192 - A Dream of Landscape: On Walking
    Jun 25 2025
    Phil and JF first explored the mysteries of walking back in episode 59. That episode felt like a mere introduction—a tentative first step on a long and winding path. Now, 133 episodes later, they return to the theme as they prepare to lead a six-week course on the art of walking and its affinity with the Weird. This conversation touches on meditative walking, walking as dventure, psychogeography, wilderness mysticism, and more. References Weird Studies, Episode 59 on Walking Frédéric Gros, A Philosophy of Walking Kinhin, walking meditation Henry David Thoreau, “Walking” Randonautica, walking app Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Más Menos
    1 h y 13 m
  • Special Episode: Theory, Philosophy, and Uranus

    Special Episode: Theory, Philosophy, and Uranus
    Jun 18 2025
    This conversation was originally recorded in August 2024 and released for our Patreon supporters. Weird Studies will be back with a new episode on June 25, 2025. What is cultural theory? How is philosophy "a preparation for death?" What sort of planet is Phil Ford from? These burning questions and more find answers in this free-wheeling conversation, originally exclusive to members of the Weird Studies Patreon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Más Menos
    1 h y 2 m
  • Special Episode: Myth, History, and Form

    Special Episode: Myth, History, and Form
    Jun 4 2025
    This special release is a Patreon extra we’re making available to all listeners, in lieu of the official episode originally scheduled for today. As explained in the introduction, we will be back with a full episode later in the month. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this conversation about how art transforms experience, making the mundane mythic, calling images out of the flux of life, and shaping what is in us to think, feel, and live. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Más Menos
    46 m
  • Episode 191 — The Acid Queen, with Susannah Cahalan

    Episode 191 — The Acid Queen, with Susannah Cahalan
    May 21 2025
    Best known as the wife and partner of Timothy Leary, Rosemary Woodruff was in fact a central figure in the psychedelic movement in her own right—a political radical, underground fugitive, and neglected architect of the counterculture. In this episode, Phil and JF speak with journalist and author Susannah Cahalan about Woodruff Leary’s life and legacy. Cahalan’s new book, The Acid Queen: The Psychedelic Life and Counterculture Rebellion of Rosemary Woodruff Leary, brings its subject into focus as a complex and courageous individual whose story has been overshadowed for too long. The conversation follows the threads of the biography while branching into the weirdness of biographical writing, the ongoing relevance of the 1960s counterculture, the troubling figure of Timothy Leary, and the enduring promise—and peril—of psychedelics. Susannah Cahalan is the New York Times bestselling author of Brain on Fire, a memoir about her experience with autoimmune encephalitis. Her second book, The Great Pretender, which investigated a seminal study in the history of mental health care and diagnosis, was shortlisted for the the Royal Society's 2020 Science Book Prize. She lives in New Jersey with her family. Photo from the Los Angeles Times Photographic Collection at UCLA, via Wikimedia Commons. REFERENCES Susannah Cahalan, The Acid Queen Weird Studies, Episode 189 with Jacob Foster Marion Woodman, Canadian feminist author Peter Braunstein and Michael William Doyle, Imagine Nation: The American Counterculture of the 1960s & '70s Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture Eric Davis, TechGnosis Lutz Dammbeck, The Net: The Unabomber, LSD, and the Internet Robert Greenfield, Timothy Leary: A Biography Anthony Storr, Feet of Clay Blanche Hoschedé Monet, French painter Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Más Menos
    1 h y 28 m
  • Episode 190 – Here Be Shrubs: On Algernon Blackwood's 'The Willows'

    Episode 190 – Here Be Shrubs: On Algernon Blackwood's 'The Willows'
    May 7 2025
    In this episode, JF and Phil paddle into the marshlands of Algernon Blackwood’s 1907 masterpiece The Willows, a tale Lovecraft once called the finest weird story of all time. They explore how a narrative in which almost nothing happens can conjure a cosmic dread more potent than a legion of monsters, and how Blackwood’s genius lies in revealing the spiritual horror latent in landscape itself. Topics include zones, the limits of human reason, and the terror of brushing up against an otherworld that lies just beyond the riverbank—near at hand, yet somehow separated from us by an unbridgeable gulf. Photo by Derek Dye, via Wikimedia Commons. REFERENCES Algernon Blackwood, “The Willows” Weird Studies, Episode 55 on “The Wendigo” SCTV Algernon Blackwood, “The Psychology of Places” in The Lure of the Unknown Weird Studies, Episodes 14 and 15 on Stalker Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols Sue Clifford and Angela King, England in Particular Michael Dames, Pagans Progress J. G. Ballard, English fiction author Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Más Menos
    1 h y 15 m
  • Episode 189: Care of the Dead, with Jacob G. Foster

    Episode 189: Care of the Dead, with Jacob G. Foster
    Apr 23 2025
    In this episode, JF and Phil are joined by Jacob G. Foster—sociologist, physicist, and researcher at Indiana University Bloomington and the Santa Fe Institute—for a conversation about their recent collaboration in Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Their co-authored essay, “Care of the Dead,” explores how the dead continue to shape our cultures, languages, and ways of being. Together, they discuss the process of writing the piece and what it means to say that the dead are not gone—that they persist, and that they make claims on the living. The article is available here: https://direct.mit.edu/daed/article/154/1/166/127931/Care-of-the-Dead-Ancestors-Traditions-amp-the-Life **References** [Peter Kingsley,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kingsley) English writer Weird Studies, [Episode 98 on “Taboo”]) https://www.weirdstudies.com/98) John Berger, “12 Theses on the Economy of the Dead” in _[Hold Everything Dear](12 Theses on the Economy of the Dead)_ Bernard Koch, Daniele Silvestro, and Jacob Foster, ["The Evolutionary Dynamics of Cultural Change”](https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/659bt_v1) Gilbert Simondon, _[Imagination and Invention](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781517914455)_ William Gibson, _[Neuromancer](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780441007462)_ [Phlogiston theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston_theory) George Orwell, _[1984](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780451524935)_ HP Lovecraft, [“The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”](https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cdw.aspx) Weird Studies, [Episode 187 on “Little, Big”](https://www.weirdstudies.com/187) [John Dee,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dee) English occultist Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, _[The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780195320992)_ Robert Harrison, _[The Dominion of the Dead](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780226317939)_ Gilles Deleuze, _[Bergsonism](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780942299076)_ Elizabeth LeGuin, _[Boccherini’s Body](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780520240179)_ Elizabeth LeGuin, [“Cello and Bow thinking”](http://www.echo.ucla.edu/cello-and-bow-thinking-baccherinis-cello-sonata-in-eb-minor-faouri-catalogo/) Johannes Brahms, _Handel Variations_ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Más Menos
    1 h y 35 m
  • Episode 188: Pioneers of the Untimely: On the Hermit Card in the Tarot

    Episode 188: Pioneers of the Untimely: On the Hermit Card in the Tarot
    Apr 9 2025
    In this continuation of their non-linear journey through the tarot, Phil and JF discuss the ninth Arcanum: the Hermit. Walking through darkness with his lantern and staff, the Hermit invites us to break from the collective and seek a direct relationship with the Real. This is the card of the seeker, the misfit, the sage, and the wanderer. As tends to happen in these tarot episodes, the hosts take the opportunity to range across many topics, connecting the Hermit to Jung’s Red Book, the Desert Fathers, angels and demons, the I Ching, contemporary politics, and more. Support us on Patreon Order Christian Bunyan's Weird Studies poster here. Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 and 2, on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast,Cosmophonia. Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop Find us on Discord Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau REFERENCES Carl Jung, The Red Book Stanley Kubrick, American filmmaker Samuel Beckett, Irish writer Emily Dickinson, American poet Temptation of Saint Anthony Our Known Friend, Meditations on the Tarot Weird Studies, Episode 103 on the Tower card The Gnostic Tarot Nigel Richmond, Language of the Lines Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back John Minford, The I Ching: The Essential Translation of the Ancient Chinese Oracle and Book of Wisdom William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming" Alejandro Jodorowsky, The Way of the Tarot Wolfgang Petersen (dir.), The Neverending Story Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Más Menos
    1 h y 22 m