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 194: Animal Songs, with Meredith Michael [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:23:02
In this episode, Phil and JF are joined by Meredith Michael—musicologist, podcaster, and Weird Studies production assistant—for a conversation about animal songs. The phrase is intentionally slippery. Are we talking abou…
Episode 192 - A Dream of Landscape: On Walking [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:13:43
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 t…
Special Episode: Theory, Philosophy, and Uranus [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:02:29
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…
Special Episode: Myth, History, and Form [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 46:55
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…
Episode 191 — The Acid Queen, with Susannah Cahalan [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:28:01
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 c…
Episode 190 – Here Be Shrubs: On Algernon Blackwood's 'The Willows' [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:15:04
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…
Episode 189: Care of the Dead, with Jacob G. Foster [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:35:47
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 Daedal…
Episode 186: Meeting at the Center: The Wedge, Part Two [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:29:19
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…