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 via Wikimedia Commons. Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page, home of Weird Studies Vol. 3 (to be released May 22, 2026). Joel Plaskett's website and Substack 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  Jorge Luis Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths”   Haruki Murakami, “Cream”  Marc Augé, Non-Places  Federico Campagna, Technic and Magic  Phil Ford, “The View from the Cheap Seats at the UFO Show”  Nicholas of Cusa, “On the Quadrature of the Circle”   Ethan Weed, “A Labyrinth of Symbols” Kids in the Hall, “Premise Beach”  David Lynch, Twin Peaks: The Return   David Lynch, Lost Highway  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Don Giovanni  Weird Studies, Episode 66 on “Diviner’s Time”   Gottfried Leibniz, Theodicy  Quentin Meillasoux, After Finitude  Alejandro Jodorowsky, The Way of Tarot  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices