Episode 207 – Magic Mirror: On J.R.R. Tolkien's 'The Fellowship of the Ring'

Special Episode: M.C. Richards's "Wrestling with the Daimonic," read by Phil Ford

We regret that we were unable to release a new episode this week. Episode 211 will drop on Wednesday, April 29, and will be devoted to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, a film we have long wanted to revisit in depth. In the meantime, we are pleased to offer Phil’s spirited reading of M. C. Richards’ essay “Wrestling with the Daimonic,” discussed in our previous episode and available only to Patreon members until now. This recording is shared with kind permission from Wesleyan University Press. Visit their website [https://www.weslpress.org/author/mary-caroline-richards/] for details on The Crossing Point and other works by M.C. Richards. To support Weird Studies and get access to exclusive essays and bonus episodes, visit our Patreon page [www.patreon.com/weirdstudies]. And go to Weirdosphere [http://www.weirdosphere.org] to learn more about JF's upcoming course on Deleuzian philosophy, which starts on May 7th, 2026. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Episode 210 – Angels & Daimons, with Cristina Campo and M.C. Richards

In this episode, JF and Phil bring together two visionary essays on the daimonic and the imaginal: Cristina Campo’s “On Fairy Tales” and M.C. Richards’s “Wrestling with the Daimonic.” What emerges is a conversation about imagination, personhood, and a world shot through with meaning. Notably, this episode opens with a discussion of what your hosts mean by "imaginal." Phil’s reading of Richards’s essay [https://www.patreon.com/posts/audio-extra-with-154512720?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link] can be found on our Patreon page. Thanks to Wesleyan University Press [https://www.weslpress.org/author/mary-caroline-richards/] for permission to share this with our listeners. Go to Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp [https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-vol-3] page to preorder his marvellous new album, Weird Studies Volume 3. Click here [https://jeremydjohnson.substack.com/p/henri-bergson-mysticism-technology] to sign up for JF's seminar on Henri Bergson, happening on the Mutations learning platform on Saturday, April 11, 2026. Click here [https://weirdosphere.org/course/jm104-what-is-philosophy/] for details on JF's upcoming Weirdosphere course, "What is Philosophy?". Music in this Episode "Scavenger," from ⁠Weird Studies Vol. 3⁠ [https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-vol-3] "Domes and Spires," from ⁠Weird Studies Vol. 2⁠ [https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-vol-2] References M. C. Richards [https://www.weslpress.org/author/mary-caroline-richards/], American artist and philosopher Cristina Campo [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristina_Campo], Italian poet and essayist M. C. Richards, “Wrestling with the Daimonic”  Cristina Campo, “On Fairy Tales” [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781681378022] Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780486434155%E2%81%A0] William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence” [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43650/auguries-of-innocence] Weird Studies, Episode 8 on Graham Harmon [https://www.weirdstudies.com/8%E2%81%A0] Susan Chang, The Tarot Podcast [https://www.youtube.com/@thetarotpodcast%E2%81%A0] Ramsey Dukes, The Little Book of Demons [https://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Demons-Advantages-Personification-ebook/dp/B005ML0CDC%E2%81%A0] “The Boy Who Knew No Fear,” fairy tale  Una Voce [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Una_Voce%E2%81%A0], Catholic movement  Franz Liszt [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Liszt%E2%81%A0], Hungarian Pianist Walter Benjamin, The Storyteller [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781681370583%E2%81%A0] William Shakespeare, Othello  [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781501146299] M. C. Richards, Centering [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780819562005%E2%81%A0] Robert Duncan [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Duncan_(poet%E2%81%A0)], American poet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

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

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 [https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:DMzlC&action=edit&redlink=1] via Wikimedia Commons [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Laberinto_PaqueAventura_Tentegorra_en_Cartagena.jpg]. Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page [https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-vol-3], home of Weird Studies Vol. 3 (to be released May 22, 2026). Joel Plaskett's websit [https://joelplaskett.com/]e and Substack [https://thewindowinn.substack.com/] 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  [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRnAUHdKGWA] Jorge Luis Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths” [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780802130303]   Haruki Murakami, “Cream”  [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780593311189] Marc Augé, Non-Places [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781804292600%E2%81%A0]  Federico Campagna, Technic and Magic [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781350044012]  Phil Ford, “The View from the Cheap Seats at the UFO Show” [https://www.patreon.com/posts/122201522]  Nicholas of Cusa, “On the Quadrature of the Circle” [https://archive.schillerinstitute.com/fid_91-96/941_quad_circle.html]   Ethan Weed, “A Labyrinth of Symbols” [https://www.borges.pitt.edu/sites/default/files/1808.pdf] Kids in the Hall, “Premise Beach” [https://youtu.be/itbUSS-gZPc?si=k0kUNWT8adgF0dxL]  David Lynch, Twin Peaks: The Return [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4093826/%E2%81%A0]   David Lynch, Lost Highway  [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116922/] Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Don Giovanni [https://app.idagio.com/recordings/30142230%E2%81%A0%C2%A0]  Weird Studies, Episode 66 on “Diviner’s Time” [https://www.weirdstudies.com/66]   Gottfried Leibniz, Theodicy  [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780875484372] Quentin Meillasoux, After Finitude [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781441173836]  Alejandro Jodorowsky, The Way of Tarot  [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781594772634%E2%81%A0] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Episode 208 – Unbridled Creation: On Kenneth Batcheldor's Theory of the Paranormal

Kenneth Batcheldor was a British clinical psychologist who, during the final two decades of his life, investigated the paranormal through direct experiments in table-turning. The final fruit of that work was an essay, compiled from Batcheldor’s notebooks by Patric Giesler, entitled “Notes on the Elusiveness Problem in Relation to a Radical View of Paranormality.” Published in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research in 1994, it remained unknown to JF and Phil until Shannon Taggart called their attention to it quite recently. Since the theory Batcheldor presents here with admirable lucidity is deeply attuned to ideas they have been discussing on Weird Studies for nearly a decade, they decided to devote an episode to it. The core idea is by far the weirdest of all—in a sense, it is the weird itself. Read Batcheldor's essay on the Weird Studies Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies]. Visit Weirdosphere [https://weirdosphere.org/] to enroll in Phil's upcoming 5-week course, "A Musical Tarot." [https://weirdosphere.org/course/a-musical-tarot/] Pierre-Yves Martel's Weird Studies: Volume 3 will be available for preorder on March 13. Visit his Bandcamp page for details [https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/]. REFERENCES K. M. Wehrstein, “Kenneth Batcheldor” [https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/kenneth-batcheldor/] in Psi Encyclopedia   Kenneth Batcheldor, “Notes on the Elusiveness Problem in Relation to a Radical View of Paranormality,” ed. Patric Giesler, The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 88, no. 2 (1994): 90-116.  [https://www.patreon.com/posts/kenneth-radical-152772363] Kenneth Batcheldor, “Contributions to the Theory of PK Induction from Sitter-Group Work,” Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 78 (1984): 105-122.  George P. Hansen, The Trickster and the Paranormal [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781401000820]  Quintin Meillassoux, After Finitude  [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781441173836] Joshua Ramey, “Contingency Without Reason: Speculation after Meillassoux”  [https://philpapers.org/rec/RAMCWU-2] Kenneth Batcheldor, Videos of Table Tipping  [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jlsRCNi_o0%E2%81%A0] Weird Studies, Episode 24 with Lionel Snell  [https://www.weirdstudies.com/24] David Lynch, Wild at Heart  [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100935/%E2%81%A0] William James, The Principles of Psychology [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781420973396%E2%81%A0] Tom Cheetham, Imaginal Love  [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780882140865%E2%81%A0] A. Irving Hallowell, Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior, and World View [https://www.scribd.com/document/649847075/Irving-Hallowell-Ojibwa-Ontology-Behavior-and-World-View]  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Episode 207 – Magic Mirror: On J.R.R. Tolkien's 'The Fellowship of the Ring'

This is the first of three episodes on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings to be released in the course of the next several months. Focusing here on The Fellowship of the Ring, our hosts discuss the first leg of Frodo's journey into darkness, paying special attention to Tolkien's prose style, his modernism, his commitment to a truly magical realism, and his penchant for the weird and the tragic. Image: "Lothlorien" by Tessa Bronsky, via Wikimedia Commons [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lothlorien_by_Tessa_Boronski.jpg]. References J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780547928210%E2%81%A0]   Algernon Blackwood [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algernon_Blackwood%E2%81%A0], English writer   Weird Studies, Episode 204 on “On Fairy Stories”  Peter Jackson (dir.), The Lord of the Rings [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120737/?ref_=ls_t_4%E2%81%A0]  Ursula K. LeGuin, A Wizard of Earthsea  [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780547722023] Friedrich Nietzsche, History in the Service and Disservice of Life [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781478255888%E2%81%A0]   Milan Kundera, The Art of the Novel [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780060093747%E2%81%A0] Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives  [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780520015449] Carl Jung, The Red Book   [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780393065671] Lord Dunsaney, The King of Elfland’s Daughter [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780345431912]   Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto  [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9789176372227]  David Foster Wallace, “E Unibus Pluram” [%E2%81%A0https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780316925280%E2%81%A0]   Steven Chow (dir.), Kung Fu Hustle [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0373074/%E2%81%A0]  Donna Tartt, The Secret History   [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781400031702] Lost Lakes [https://www.youtube.com/@LostLakes%E2%81%A0], YouTube Channel  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]