Siddhartha is one of the great philosophical novels. Profoundly insightful, it is also a beautifully written story that begins as Siddhartha, son of an Indian Brahman, leaves his family and begins a lifelong journey towards Enlightenment. On the way he faces the entire range of human experience and emotion: he lives with ascetics, meets Gotama the Buddha, learns the art of love from Kamala the courtesan, and is transformed by the simple philosophy of the ferryman Vasudeva whose wisdom comes ...
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Professor Phil Ford and writer J. F. Martel host a series of conversations on art and philosophy, dwelling on ideas that are hard to think and art that opens up rifts in what we are pleased to call "reality." SpectreVision Radio is a bespoke podcast network at the intersection between the arts and the uncanny, featuring a tapestry of shows exploring creativity, the esoteric, and the unknown. We’re a community for creators and fans vibrating around common curiosities, shared interests and per ...
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This is podcast were I offer my unsolicited advice and opinions on life, business, and whatever else I want to talk about.
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Once regarded as a cult book in the 1960s by the Flower Power generation, Siddhartha by Herman Hesse remains even today a simple and fresh tale of a man's spiritual quest. Penned by a deeply spiritual German author, Siddhartha explores multiple themes of enlightenment, thinking beyond set rules, love and humanity. Siddhartha is a young contemporary of the spiritual master Gautam Buddha who lived in India at some time during the 4th century BC. The story has striking parallels to Buddha's own ...
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Literature is defined as "imaginative or creative writing, especially of recognized artistic value." Spirituality is defined as "the quality or state of being concerned with religion or religious matters." The purpose of this podcast is to examine how these two subjects intersect with one another and how they relate to our lives.
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The Pursuing Holiness Wholeheartedly Podcast is more than your average podcast. We dig deeply into historical thoughts on holiness, explore doctrinal interpretations of holiness, and offer practical insights for living a life of functional holiness today. Produced by Late Harvest Wesleyan Ministries, every Tuesday Rev. Dr. J. Patrick Bowman shares inspirational music and transformational holiness teaching from his new book, Pursuing Holiness Wholeheartedly, and other quality sources. Find ou ...
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Episode 190 – Here Be Shrubs: On Algernon Blackwood's 'The Willows'
1:14:34
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1:14:34In 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…
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Episode 189: Care of the Dead, with Jacob G. Foster
1:35:17
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1:35:17In 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 c…
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Episode 188: Pioneers of the Untimely: On the Hermit Card in the Tarot
1:22:29
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1:22:29In 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 …
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Episode 187: The Affirmation of Imagination: On John Crowley's 'Little, Big,' with Erik Davis
1:33:43
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1:33:43John Crowley’s Little, Big is, at once, a family saga, a fairy tale, an occult thriller, an idyll, a dystopia, as well as a meditation on myth and history, the real and the fantasy, memory and imagination. Little, Big is also a book that JF and Phil have been planning to discuss for as long as Weird Studies has existed. In this episode, they are jo…
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Episode 186: Meeting at the Center: The Wedge, Part Two
1:28:49
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1:28:49In this episode, JF and Phil continue their conversation on the wedge, their figure for the epistemological divide between approaching reality from the heart and exploring it with the mind. As the discussion unfolds, the wedge begins to reveal itself not as a rigid binary but as a spectrum—one that stretches from ultimate thickness to ultimate thin…
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Episode 185: Intuition and Reality: The Wedge, Part One
1:16:38
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1:16:38"The Wedge" is a key concept for Phil and JF. When exploring weird phenomena—from artworks to ghosts, and everything in between—one tends to emphasize one or the other "end" of the event. At the thin end of the Wedge, the focus is on subjective experience: how it felt, what it was like, and its personal significance. At the thick end, the emphasis …
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Special Release: Poltergeists, Fairies, Skeptics, and the Managerial Class
33:11
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33:11Due to scheduling conflicts and a series of unforeseen events, JF and Phil have had to push the release of the next official episode of Weird Studies back by one week. To tide you over, we're unlocking a bonus episode previously available only to our Patreon supporters. It serves as the perfect preface to Episode 184, which will be released on Febr…
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David Lynch passed away on January 15th, 2025, leaving behind a body of work that reshaped the landscape of cinema and television. Few artists have delved as deeply into the strange, the beautiful, and the terrifying as Lynch, and few have had as profound an influence on Weird Studies. His films have long been a touchstone for JF and Phil's discuss…
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Episode 183: On Hermann Hesse's 'Siddhartha'
1:21:17
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1:21:17Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha is one of the great novels of the twentieth century and a prime example of literature that transforms the deeply personal into something universal. For Phil and JF in this episode, the novel serves as the foundation for a discussion on spiritual journeying, the ideal of enlightenment, and the challenge of living in an ens…
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Episode 182: Providence of Evil: On Robert Eggers' 'Nosferatu'
1:20:20
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1:20:20In this episode, JF and Phil examine the myth of the vampire through the lens of Robert Eggers' latest film, Nosferatu, a reimagining of F. W. Murnau's German Expressionist masterpiece. Topics covered include the nature of vampires, the symbolism of evil, the implicit theology of Eggers' film (compared with that of Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula),…
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More great books at LoyalBooks.comBy Hermann Hesse
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More great books at LoyalBooks.comBy Hermann Hesse
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More great books at LoyalBooks.comBy Hermann Hesse
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More great books at LoyalBooks.comBy Hermann Hesse
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More great books at LoyalBooks.comBy Hermann Hesse
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More great books at LoyalBooks.comBy Hermann Hesse
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More great books at LoyalBooks.comBy Hermann Hesse
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More great books at LoyalBooks.comBy Hermann Hesse
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More great books at LoyalBooks.comBy Hermann Hesse
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More great books at LoyalBooks.comBy Hermann Hesse
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More great books at LoyalBooks.comBy Hermann Hesse
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More great books at LoyalBooks.comBy Hermann Hesse
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Holiday Bonus: Waiting for the Next Sentence
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44:43With the next flagship show set to drop on January 8, 2025, we thought we'd tide you over with this conversation on the art and craft and writing, originally recorded for Listener's Tier patrons on the Weird Studies Patreon. To join our Patreon community, please visit www.patreon.com/weirdstudies. To purchase tickets to Phil and JF's winter solstic…
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Episode 181: On 'The X Files,' with Meredith Michael
1:17:33
1:17:33
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1:17:33Chris Carter's The X-Files is weird on its face: a dramatic series that, from the start, presented itself as more than drama, an exploration of the reality of the paranormal using the tools of fiction, a fantasy posing as reality (or is it the other way around?). Strangely prescient, undeniably zany, and truly "hyperstitious," the series is likely …
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Episode 180: The Player: On the Magician Card in the Tarot
1:21:57
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1:21:57The Magician card likely graces more front covers of books on the tarot than any of the other major arcana. In many ways, it symbolizes the tarot itself, or the individual who has mastered the art of manipulating the cards to divine their meanings. Yet, the Magician is a profoundly ambiguous figure. From one perspective, he is the Magus, piercing t…
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