Phil Ford
Co-Host of Weird Studies
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, Daedalus, North American Review, and elsewhere. With co-host J. F. Martel he is writing a book titled Weirding, to be published by Strange Attractor Press.
Phil is also a classical pianist, meditator, assistant teacher at Open Mind Zen Indiana, lapsed magician, and avid consulter of the I Ching.
Phil Ford has hosted 201 Episodes.
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Episode 84: Mona Lisa Smile: On the Empress, the Third Card in the Tarot
Episode | October 14th, 2020 | 1 hr 19 mins
archetypes, divination, tarot
Phil and JF discuss the third major arcana of the traditional tarot deck.
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Episode 83: On David Lynch's 'Lost Highway'
Episode | September 30th, 2020 | 1 hr 18 mins
david lynch, film
JF and Phil take a joy ride into the dark heart David Lynch's surreal 1997 film.
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Episode 82: On The I Ching
Episode | September 16th, 2020 | 1 hr 29 mins
divination, i ching
Phil and JF discuss the great Chinese oracle.
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Episode 81: Gnostic Lit: On M. John Harrison's 'The Course of the Heart'
Episode | September 2nd, 2020 | 1 hr 17 mins
fiction, gnosticism
JF and Phil discuss M. John Harrison's masterpiece of weird fiction.
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Episode 80: The Pit and the Pyramid, or, How to Beat the Philosopher's Blues
Episode | August 19th, 2020 | 1 hr 17 mins
Phil and JF discuss the Neoplatonism of Radiohead and the dark side of Beat culture, as revealed on Broadway.
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Episode 79: Love, Death, and the Dream Life
Episode | August 5th, 2020 | 1 hr 4 mins
art, decadence, music, prophecy
JF and Phil discuss decadence and vision in Nina Simone's rendition of "Lilac Wine" and Ghostface Killah's "Underwater."
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Episode 78: On John Keel's 'The Mothman Prophecies'
Episode | July 22nd, 2020 | 1 hr 13 mins
entities, nonfiction, paranormal
Phil and JF discuss John Keel's classic work of weird nonfiction.
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Episode 77: What a Fool Believes: On the Unnumbered Card in the Tarot
Episode | July 8th, 2020 | 1 hr 8 mins
archetypes, literature, occult, tarot
JF and Phil discuss the figure of the Fool in the tarot, society, and literature.
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Episode 76: Below the Abyss: On Bergson's Metaphysics
Episode | June 24th, 2020 | 1 hr 18 mins
epistemology, henri bergson, metaphysics
Phil and JF discuss Henri Bergson's 1903 essay, "Introduction to Metaphysics."
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Bonus: The Duke of Ellington
Episode | June 18th, 2020 | 1 hr 4 mins
duke ellington, jazz, music history
Weird Studies presents the first of Phil's solo music history podcasts as an off-week bonus.
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Episode 75: Our Old Friend the Monolith: On Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey'
Episode | June 10th, 2020 | 1 hr 26 mins
art, film, kubrick, metaphysics
JF and Phil discuss a film they've been bringing up since the beginning of the podcast: Kubrick's masterful 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
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Episode 74: A Luminous Parasite: Jung on Art, Part Two
Episode | May 27th, 2020 | 1 hr 11 mins
art, creativity, jung, politics, psychology
The second part of Phil and JF's discussion C. G. Jung's conception of art.
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Episode 73: Carl Jung and the Power of Art, Part One
Episode | May 13th, 2020 | 1 hr 4 mins
art, jung, pluralism, psychology
The first of two conversations in which JF and Phil investigate C. G. Jung's thoughts on the psychology of artistic creation.
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Episode 72: Morning of the Mutants: On the Castrati
Episode | April 29th, 2020 | 1 hr 13 mins
biology, history, music, tricksters
Phil and JF discuss the curious phenomena of castrati, the famous singing eunuchs of early modern Europe.
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Episode 71: The Medium is the Message
Episode | April 15th, 2020 | 1 hr 24 mins
magic, media theory, metaphysics, religion
JF and Phil discuss the meanings of Marshall McLuhan's famous utterance.
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Episode 70: Masks All the Way Down, with James Curcio
Episode | April 1st, 2020 | 1 hr 16 mins
archetypal psychology, art, guest episodes
James Curcio joins Phil and JF for a discussion on the concept of the mask as elaborated in his anthology, "Masks: Bowie and Artists of Artifice".