Best Bodhi Commons Podcasts (2025)

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Episode 196 – Lost and Never Found: On 'The Blair Witch Project' 1:31:43

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19d ago1:31:43

1:31:43

Of all the flavors of horror, few are as dreadful as that of being lost in the wilderness. In this episode, JF and Phil revisit The Blair Witch Project, the classic 1999 found-footage film that inspired a thousand imitators. What makes this film so gripping, they argue, is the way it lingers over the subtle stages of disorientation in a hostile pla…

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Episode 195 – On John Keel: Live at the Lily Dale Symposium, with Erik Davis 1:50:51

27d ago1:50:51

1:50:51

This marks the third year that Weird Studies is honoured to open the Lily Dale Symposium, organized each summer by photographer Shannon Taggart in the upstate New York community famed for its roots in Spiritualism. While J.F. wasn’t able to attend this year, Erik Davis joined Phil on stage for a conversation about the life and work of John Keel, th…

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Episode 194: Animal Songs, with Meredith Michael 1:22:32

1M ago1:22:32

1:22:32

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 about songs about animals, or songs by animals? Both, as it turns out. Beginning with three very different human compositions—The Beat…

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Episode 193: On Conversion, or Arousing the Bodhi-Mind 1:28:24

2M ago1:28:24

1:28:24

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…

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Episode 192 - A Dream of Landscape: On Walking 1:13:13

2M ago1:13:13

1:13:13

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 they prepare to lead a six-week course on the art of walking and its affinity with the Weird. This conversation touches on meditati…

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

2M 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

3M 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

3M 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

4M 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

4M 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

5M 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

5M 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

6M 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

6M 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

6M 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

7M ago1:41:51

1:41:51

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

7M 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 196 – Lost and Never Found: On 'The Blair Witch Project' 1:31:43

1
Episode 195 – On John Keel: Live at the Lily Dale Symposium, with Erik Davis 1:50:51

1
Episode 194: Animal Songs, with Meredith Michael 1:22:32

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Episode 193: On Conversion, or Arousing the Bodhi-Mind 1:28:24

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Episode 192 - A Dream of Landscape: On Walking 1:13:13

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

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

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

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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

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Episode 184: On David Lynch 1:41:51

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