Weird Studies
SpectreVision Radio
Professor Phil Ford and writer J. F. Martel host a series of conversations on art and philosophy, dwelling on ideas that are hard to think and art that opens up rifts in what we are pleased to call "reality."
SpectreVision Radio is a bespoke podcast network at the intersection between the arts and the uncanny, featuring a tapestry of shows exploring the anomalous, the luminous, and the numinous. We’re a community for creators and fans vibrating around common curiosities, shared interests and persistent passions.
spectrevisionradio.com
linktr.ee/spectrevision
SpectreVision Radio is a bespoke podcast network at the intersection between the arts and the uncanny, featuring a tapestry of shows exploring the anomalous, the luminous, and the numinous. We’re a community for creators and fans vibrating around common curiosities, shared interests and persistent passions.
spectrevisionradio.com
linktr.ee/spectrevision
Episodes
Mentioned books
May 13, 2026 • 1h 23min
Episode 212 – Beyond Music and Back Again: On Glenn Gould
A deep dive into Glenn Gould’s peculiar musical persona and cinematic portrait. They trace his atomized, contrapuntal approach to sound and his prediction of remix culture. The conversation links Gould to brutalist aesthetics, hermit imagery, and radio as communal technology. They explore Girard’s film choices and how art can transcend and then return to its medium.
27 snips
Apr 29, 2026 • 1h 27min
Episode 211 – You've Always Been the Caretaker: On Kubrick's 'The Shining'
A deep dive into Kubrick's The Shining and why the film is central to contemporary weirdness. They trace how the Overlook exerts agency and how cinema stages nonhuman forces. Conversation ranges from brutalist aesthetics and visual expressivity to sound as an immanent, unsettling presence. Personal rewatch reflections and the film's lasting cultural stickiness round out the discussion.
9 snips
Apr 22, 2026 • 58min
Special Episode: M.C. Richards's "Wrestling with the Daimonic," read by Phil Ford
A spirited reading of M. C. Richards’ essay explores the daimonic through vivid dreams, inner theater, and improvisatory song. The piece contrasts sexuality and aggression, maps polar forces like Lucifer and Ahriman, and offers exercises for dialoguing with inner figures. Stories, parables, and a transformative fire dream punctuate a call to wrestle with darkness for creative growth.
25 snips
Apr 8, 2026 • 1h 33min
Episode 210 – Angels & Daimons, with Cristina Campo and M.C. Richards
A lively dive into the imaginal: images as real, perspective as cosmic, and a plural world of intercommunicating images. They explore the daimonic as personified inner forces and practical rituals for talking to fear. Fairy tales are read as unions of beauty and horror, and practice is framed as ongoing wrestling that shapes personhood and possibility.
24 snips
Mar 25, 2026 • 1h 33min
Episode 209 – At Home in the Labyrinth, with Murakami and Borges
They read Murakami’s eerie “Cream” and Borges’s maze-like “The Garden of Forking Paths.” They wander through time as a labyrinth, retrocausation, and stories that loop back on themselves. They explore indeterminacy, double-thinking, and how meaning emerges in wandering rather than at an end.
24 snips
Mar 11, 2026 • 1h 20min
Episode 208 – Unbridled Creation: On Kenneth Batcheldor's Theory of the Paranormal
A deep dive into Kenneth Batcheldor's radical theory that paranormal events arise from an abstract creative principle. They explore pockets of indeterminacy, table‑tipping experiments, and whether these phenomena show intent or agency. Medieval categories, Meillassoux’s hyperchaos, and imaginal creation are woven into a debate about belief, skepticism, and how impossible effects might emerge.
22 snips
Feb 25, 2026 • 1h 32min
Episode 207 – Magic Mirror: On J.R.R. Tolkien's 'The Fellowship of the Ring'
A close read of The Fellowship of the Ring that highlights Tolkien's limpid prose and immersive imagery. They probe language as worldmaking and Tolkien’s blend of pre-modern myth with modern perspectivism. Conversations explore magic’s tragic ambivalence, the elves’ fading time-sense, and hobbits’ moral growth through loss and attachment.
32 snips
Feb 11, 2026 • 1h 21min
Episode 206 – On Ken Russell's 'Altered States': Live at Indiana University Bloomington
A live, raucous deep dive into Ken Russell’s cinematic fever dream and its mashup of mysticism, psychedelics, and institutional science. They riff on Lovecraftian dread, alchemy vs. experiment, and cinematic spectacle. Conversations pivot to love as a corrective force, initiation rituals, and how imaginal phenomena might materialize.
65 snips
Jan 28, 2026 • 1h 33min
Episode 205 – Discipline and Delight: On the Hierophant Card in the Tarot
They examine the Hierophant tarot card as a bridge between tradition and inner transformation. Music, especially Bach, and Tolkien illustrate disciplined practice yielding delight. They debate ritual, transmission, and how exoteric forms can open into inward gnosis. Zen, Deleuze, and Dogen appear to show practice as repetition that reveals novelty and spiritual depth.
73 snips
Jan 14, 2026 • 1h 16min
Episode 204 – The Perilous Realm: J.R.R. Tolkien's 'On Fairy Stories'
Dive into the realm of Faerie where fairy stories reveal deeper truths rather than mere escapism. Explore Tolkien's radical views on imagination and reality intertwined with myth. Discover the dynamics of language and story as fundamental to human experience. Unravel how history and myth blend in Tolkien's metaphors, and engage with the idea of sub-creation versus magic. The podcast also touches on how fantasy mirrors human desires and critiques modernity through the lens of mythic archetypes.
