Episode 209 – At Home in the Labyrinth, with Murakami and Borges

Episode 209 – At Home in the Labyrinth, with Murakami and Borges

Author: SpectreVision Radio March 25, 2026 Duration: 1:33:25
In this episode, Phil and JF discuss Haruki Murakami’s “Cream,” from First Person Singular, alongside Jorge Luis Borges’s classic tale, “The Garden of Forking Paths.” Together, these two stories occasion a meditation on time, perplexity, and the strange possibility that meaning isn't found at the end of the maze, but discovered only in the course of wandering it. Photo by DMzlC via Wikimedia Commons. Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page, home of Weird Studies Vol. 3 (to be released May 22, 2026). Joel Plaskett's website and Substack References Geoffrey Cornelius, “Chicane: Double-Thinking and Divination among the Witch-Doctors,” in Divination: Perspectives for a New Millennium, ed. Patrick Curry (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 119– 42.  Joe Leduc's Blood Oath  Jorge Luis Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths”   Haruki Murakami, “Cream”  Marc Augé, Non-Places  Federico Campagna, Technic and Magic  Phil Ford, “The View from the Cheap Seats at the UFO Show”  Nicholas of Cusa, “On the Quadrature of the Circle”   Ethan Weed, “A Labyrinth of Symbols” Kids in the Hall, “Premise Beach”  David Lynch, Twin Peaks: The Return   David Lynch, Lost Highway  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Don Giovanni  Weird Studies, Episode 66 on “Diviner’s Time”   Gottfried Leibniz, Theodicy  Quentin Meillasoux, After Finitude  Alejandro Jodorowsky, The Way of 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 46: Thomas Ligotti's Angel [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:29:37
In his short story "Mrs. Rinaldi's Angel," contemporary horror author Thomas Ligotti contrasts the chaotic monstrosity of dreams with the cold, indifferent, and no less monstrous purity of angels. It is the story of a bo…
Episode 45: Jeffrey J. Kripal on 'Flipping' Out of Materialism [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:10:27
"May the present 'you' not survive this little book," Jeffrey Kripal writes in the prologue to The Flip. "May you be flipped in dramatic or quiet ways." Indeed, Kripal's latest is a kind of manifesto, a call to embrace t…
Episode 43: On Shirley Jackson [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:16:32
Shirley Jackson's stories and novels rank among the greatest weird works produced in America during the 20th century. However, unlike authors such as Philip K. Dick and H.P. Lovecraft, Jackson didn't cut her teeth in the…
Episode 42: On Pauline Oliveros, with Kerry O'Brien [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:04:12
In the mid-1960s, Pauline Oliveros was a composer of experimental electronic music. But at the end of the 1960s, shocked by the political violence around her, she turned away from electronic technology and towards to a d…
Episode 41: On Speculative Fiction, with Matt Cardin [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:22
Neil Gaiman wrote, "If literature is the world, then fantasy and horror are twin cities, divided by a river of black water." Flame Tree Publishing underwrites this claim with their recent publication, The Astounding Illu…
Episode 40: On Jonathan Glazer's 'Under the Skin' [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:18:29
In Jonathan Glazer's loose screen adaptation of Michel Faber's novel Under the Skin, a creature of mysterious origin drives around Scotland in a white van, collecting lonely men and spiriting them away to an otherworld w…
Episode 39: The Challenge of the Paranormal, with Jeffrey J. Kripal [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:02:45
"The world is not simply composed of physical causes strung together in strictly materialistic and mechanical fashion," writes Prof. Jeffrey J. Kripal in his seminal book, Authors of the Impossible. "The world is also a…
Episode 38: Style as Analysis [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:10:45
Music writing has always been something of an occult practice, trying by some weird alchemy to use concepts to describe stuff that defies the basic categories of intellect. So long as we stick to classical music, we can…
Episode 37: Entities, with Stuart Davis [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:15:17
Several years ago, on New Year’s Eve, a tall, purple-robed praying mantis appeared to multidisciplinary artist Stuart Evan Davis as he meditated while running a fever. “Remember who you work for,” the entity said after b…