Phil is an associate professor of musicology at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. He is the author of the book Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture (a cultural history of hipness from the 1930s through the 1960s), the long-running blog Dial 'M' for Musicology, and various essays that have appeared in Representations, Journal of Musicology, Musical Quarterly, and elsewhere. With co-host J. F. Martel he is working on a book titled Weirding, to be published by Strange Attractor Press.
Phil is a pianist, rabid Wagnerite, crap Buddhist, degenerate fight fan, and avid consulter of the I Ching. He wishes that just for once he had an enthusiasm that he didn't have to apologize for or explain to his academic peers.
Phil Ford has hosted 178 Episodes.
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Episode 124: Dark Night Radio of the Soul, with Duncan Barford
Episode | May 25th, 2022 | 1 hr 27 mins
meditation, occult, psychology
Spiritual practitioner Duncan Barford joins JF and Phil to talk about the Dark Night of the Soul.
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Episode 123: Off-Week Patreon Bonus: On Modern Miracles
Episode | May 18th, 2022 | 39 mins 53 secs
metaphysics, miracles, science, spirals, technology
A free Patreon episode exploring more of the affordances of a spiral universe.
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Episode 122: Spirals and Crooked Lines: On the Star Card in the Tarot
Episode | May 11th, 2022 | 1 hr 20 mins
fate, metaphysics, occult, tarot
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Episode 121: Dream Theater: On 'Mandy' and 'The Band Wagon'
Episode | April 27th, 2022 | 1 hr 3 mins
cinema, dance, dreams, horror, metaphysics
Phil and JF discuss the film musical comedy "The Band Wagon" and the psychedelic horror film "Mandy" and discover that these films actually have a lot in common.
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Episode 120: On Radical Mystery
Episode | April 13th, 2022 | 1 hr 17 mins
death, existentialism, initiation, meditation, mystery
JF and Phil cope with the unexpungable fact of mystery.
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Episode 119: Behind the Cosmic Curtain: On Stanislaw Lem's 'The New Cosmogony,' with Meredith Michael
Episode | March 30th, 2022 | 1 hr 7 mins
gnosticism, literature, metaphysics, science, science fiction
Meredith, Phil, and JF dig into Stanislaw Lem's short story, "The New Cosmogony."
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Episode 118: The Unseen and the Unnamed, with Meredith Michael
Episode | March 16th, 2022 | 1 hr 16 mins
fantasy, literature, metaphysics, short stories
Meredith Michael joins JF and Phil to discuss short fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin and J.G. Ballard.
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Episode 117: Time is a Child at Play: On the Mystery of Games
Episode | March 2nd, 2022 | 1 hr 8 mins
ethics, games, metaphysics, play
Phil and JF discuss the mystery of games and the play function in culture and cosmos.
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Episode 116: On 'Blade Runner'
Episode | February 16th, 2022 | 1 hr 28 mins
cinema, philosophy, science fiction, technology
JF and Phil discuss philosophical ideas in Ridley Scott's 1982 film.
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Episode 115: Transience & Immersion: On Brian Eno's 'Music for Airports'
Episode | February 2nd, 2022 | 1 hr 15 mins
aesthetics, buddhism, consciousness, music, politics
Phil and JF discuss the 1978 album that established the ambient music genre.
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Episode 114: On the Wheel of Fortune, the Tenth Card of the Tarot
Episode | January 19th, 2022 | 1 hr 34 mins
divination, esotericism, religion, tarot
JF and Phil continue their occasional series on the major trumps of the Tarot with a discussion on the tenth major arcanum, the Wheel of Fortune.
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Episode 113: Framing the Invisible, with Shannon Taggart
Episode | December 22nd, 2021 | 1 hr 21 mins
art, paranormal, photography, spiritualism, technology
Phil and JF talk spiritualism and photography to American artist and paranormal researcher Shannon Taggart.
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Episode 112: Readings from the 'Book of Probes': The Mysticism of Marshall McLuhan
Episode | December 8th, 2021 | 1 hr 29 mins
art, media studies, philosophy
JF and Phil discuss Marshall McLuhan and David Carson's enigmatic 'Book of Probes.'
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Episode 111: What Is Best in Life: On "Conan the Barbarian"
Episode | November 24th, 2021 | 1 hr 21 mins
cinema, fantasy, paganism, trash stratum
Phil and JF explore the ethics and metaphysics of sword and sorcery through the lends of John Milius' 1982 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Earl Jones.
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Episode 110: Monks of the Cultural Apocalypse: 'The Glass Bead Game,' Part Two
Episode | November 10th, 2021 | 1 hr 13 mins
academia, culture, literature, music
JF and Phil resume their discussion on Hermann Hesse's "The Glass Bead Game," this time with a focus on what the novel reveals about the value of culture in our times.
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Episode 109: Infinite Play: On 'The Glass Bead Game,' by Hermann Hesse
Episode | October 27th, 2021 | 1 hr 20 mins
academia, game studies, literature, philosophy
Phil and JF discuss Hesse's final novel, a quiet masterwork of science fiction about a game that encompasses all of reality.