Best J F Martel Podcasts (2025)

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Special Episode: Theory, Philosphy, and Uranus 1:01:59

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3d ago1:01:59

1:01:59

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 conversatio…

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Special Episode: Myth, History, and Form 46:25

17d ago46:25

46:25

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…

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Episode 191 — The Acid Queen, with Susannah Cahalan 1:27:31

1M ago1:27:31

1:27:31

Best known as the wife and partner of Timothy Leary, RosemaryWoodruff 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 legac…

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Episode 190 – Here Be Shrubs: On Algernon Blackwood's 'The Willows' 1:14:34

1M ago1:14:34

1:14:34

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…

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Episode 189: Care of the Dead, with Jacob G. Foster 1:35:17

2M ago1:35:17

1:35:17

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 c…

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Episode 188: Pioneers of the Untimely: On the Hermit Card in the Tarot 1:22:29

2M ago1:22:29

1:22:29

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 …

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Episode 187: The Affirmation of Imagination: On John Crowley's 'Little, Big,' with Erik Davis 1:33:43

3M ago1:33:43

1:33:43

John 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

3M ago1:28:49

1:28:49

In 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

4M ago1:16:38

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

4M ago33:11

33:11

Due 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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Episode 184: On David Lynch 1:41:51

5M ago1:41:51

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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

5M ago1:21:17

1:21:17

Hermann 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

5M ago1:20:20

1:20:20

In 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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Holiday Bonus: Waiting for the Next Sentence 44:43

6M ago44:43

44:43

With 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

7M ago1:17:33

1:17:33

Chris 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

7M ago1:21:57

1:21:57

The 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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Episode 179: The Final Frontier, with Lionel Snell 1:17:44

8M ago1:17:44

1:17:44

One of the great rewards of "weirding" the world is learning that boredom may be a kind of ethical transgression—the world is simply too strange to allow for it, and if you're bored, you're at least partly to blame. Few have put this notion to the test as rigorously as Lionel Snell, whose work as a magician celebrates the wonders of everyday events…

J F Martel Podcasts

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Weird Studies

SpectreVision Radio

1
Special Episode: Theory, Philosphy, and Uranus 1:01:59

1
Special Episode: Myth, History, and Form 46:25

1
Episode 191 — The Acid Queen, with Susannah Cahalan 1:27:31

1
Episode 190 – Here Be Shrubs: On Algernon Blackwood's 'The Willows' 1:14:34

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Episode 189: Care of the Dead, with Jacob G. Foster 1:35:17

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Episode 188: Pioneers of the Untimely: On the Hermit Card in the Tarot 1:22:29

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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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Episode 186: Meeting at the Center: The Wedge, Part Two 1:28:49

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Episode 185: Intuition and Reality: The Wedge, Part One 1:16:38

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Special Release: Poltergeists, Fairies, Skeptics, and the Managerial Class 33:11

1
Episode 184: On David Lynch 1:41:51

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Episode 183: On Hermann Hesse's 'Siddhartha' 1:21:17

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Episode 182: Providence of Evil: On Robert Eggers' 'Nosferatu' 1:20:20

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Holiday Bonus: Waiting for the Next Sentence 44:43

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Episode 181: On 'The X Files,' with Meredith Michael 1:17:33

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Episode 180: The Player: On the Magician Card in the Tarot 1:21:57

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Episode 179: The Final Frontier, with Lionel Snell 1:17:44