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

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

Author: SpectreVision Radio July 9, 2025 Duration: 1:28:54
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

At the heart of Weird Studies, a podcast from SpectreVision Radio, you’ll find long-form conversations between Professor Phil Ford and writer J. F. Martel. Their discussions aren’t simple reviews or straightforward analyses; instead, they wander through the tangled undergrowth where art and philosophy meet, giving generous time to concepts that resist easy understanding and to creative works that fracture our ordinary sense of the world. This podcast deliberately lingers in that ambiguous space, treating the “weird” not as a genre but as a particular mode of experience-one that reveals the cracks in what we comfortably assume is real. Each episode feels like joining a deep, meandering dialogue between two friends who are both deeply knowledgeable and endlessly curious, covering a vast terrain that includes literature, film, music, and esoteric thought. It’s a show for anyone who suspects that the most profound truths are often found in the shadows, the anomalies, and the strangely beautiful. As part of the SpectreVision Radio network, which specializes in content that explores the uncanny edges of creativity, Weird Studies builds a unique community of listeners who are eager to think differently. You won’t find pat answers here, but you will encounter compelling questions and a shared sense of exploration that makes each installment a distinctive journey.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 230

Weird Studies
Podcast Episodes
Episode 8: On Graham Harman's "The Third Table" [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:12:42
JF and Phil discuss Graham Harman's "The Third Table," a short and accessible introduction to "object-oriented ontology." Phil takes us on a tour of his closet, we discover that JF's kids are better at this weird studies…
Episode 7: The Unspeakable Mystery at the Heart of Boxing [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:06:17
For as long as they've been pounding the crap out of each other for good reasons, humans have also been pounding the crap out of each other for fun. Everywhere, in ever age, elaborate systems, rituals, and traditions hav…
Episode 6: Dungeons & Dragons, or the Reality of Illusions [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:19:02
The Dutch historian Johan Huizinga was one of the first thinkers to define games as exercises in world-making. Every game, he wrote, occurs within a magic circle where the rules of ordinary life are suspended and new law…
Episode 5: Reading Lisa Ruddick's "When Nothing is Cool" [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:09:21
Phil and JF discuss Lisa Ruddick's "When Nothing is Cool," an essay on the postmodern humanities and its allergy to essences -- especially that personal essence we call soul. Maybe the soul is a heap of miscellaneous not…
Episode 4: Exploring the Weird with Erik Davis [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:21:38
Scholar, journalist and author Erik Davis joins Phil and JF for a freewheeling conversation on the permutations of the weird, Burning Man, speculative realism, the uncanny, the H. P. Lovecraft/Philip K. Dick syzygy, and…
Episode 3: Ecstasy, Sin, and "The White People" [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:20:25
JF and Phil delve deep into Arthur Machen's fin-de-siècle masterpiece, "The White People," for insight into the nature of ecstasy, the psychology of fairies, the meaning of sin, and the challenge of living without a mora…
Weird Stories: Arthur Machen's "The White People" [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:37:03
Weird Stories is a series of readings for Weird Studies listeners who want to dig deeper into the themes and ideas discussed on the Weird Studies podcast. In his seminal essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature," H. P. L…
Episode 2: Garmonbozia [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:26:32
Phil and JF use a word from the Twin Peaks mythos, "garmonbozia," to try to understand what it was that the detonation of atomic bomb brought into the world. We use the fictional world of Twin Peaks as a map to the (so-c…
Episode 1: Introduction to Weird Studies [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 32:48
Phil and J.F. share stories of sleep paralysis and talk about Charles Fort's sympathy for the damned, Jeff Kripal's phenomenological approach to Fortean weirdness, Dave Hickey's notion of beauty as democracy, and Timothy…