Episode 209 – At Home in the Labyrinth, with Murakami and Borges

2026-03-25

Download

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

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