The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan - Conrad Flynn, Part 3 | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Episode Date: August 12, 2026

Billy Corgan welcomes Conrad Flynn back for round three—and neither of them knows where the conversation is headed until it happens.Flynn traces the political forces surrounding Britpop and Oasis, while Billy recalls being approached by the Bush administration. They explore the mythology of ancient aliens, the rebranding of UFOs as UAPs, and why these stories continue to shape how we understand humanity.The conversation turns to authenticity in show business: Are stars revealing their true selves, or creating characters designed to connect with an audience? Billy reflects on his own Zero and Glass personas as they examine the backlash against carefully constructed celebrity identities.And finally, they ask whether AI is quietly becoming something people worship without even realizing it.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I think people bring things about and they work towards goals that they aren't always aware of. Are we past the point and we're hurtling towards singularity whether we want to or not because the machines are going to basically create it. So that sounds pretty intense. It is and it isn't. To sum up a lot of it, people love the line. So do you think, gosh, my brain sort of explodes at all these ideas? We all want this without realizing it. I dare throw this out there.

Recently, you were talking about shapeshifters. Like someone said about our conversations. These are the best non-stone people having to start our conversation. Thank you. Yeah, I like that. Conrad Flynn, welcome back. Not only the only second-time guest, you're now the only third-time guest. I've built up quite the lead.

As we say in wrestling, Conrad is good for business, so happy to talk to you again. Anything you want to dive into before I got my litany? No, I loved, at the time of this recording, the Courtney Love podcast just dropped, and that was a phenomenal interview. thank you. That was very, very good. Well, my contention is Gen X is about to have our moment finally. And I think what's interesting is because the media ignored us for so long and our generational story when they should have covered it, which would have been about 10 or so years ago, that all those stories are completely fresh. So as you saw with the Courtney episode, us just talking candidly about things that we actually experienced caused this weird ripple because

these stories have gone on told for 30 plus years with almost no critical. investigation because the protected class has enjoyed the protection for 30 years of no one actually poking those narratives. No, no, it was a phenomenal interview. And I saw it and I was like, look, Bill, you own a professional wrestling organization. What would it take for you to get you and Courtney Love in a tag team match against Kim Gordon and Stephen Malcolmis with Thurston Moore as the special guest referee? That's good booking. Because Thurston was always nice to me. So you wouldn't really be sure which that's the special guest rest you know thurston won't he won't do the count for him that's good booking and of course we have lee rinala doing the running

he hits me with uh who's he going to hit with the chair he hits me with an out of tune jaguar see this is where you're you're wrestling promo skills yeah um yeah um yeah let's just skip past all that uh anything else you want to get into um you know uh you've been on you've been on particular things lately. Since we last talked, we talked about, earlier, you and I talked about the potential CIA influence

in, in, oh yeah, yeah, which people had a big response to. Let's slow that down. Do you want to quantify what you saw as the big response? The response was, well, you had speculated, which people didn't necessarily appreciate, that you had said

there were multiple influences in any genre in terms of what happens, But people were like, well, how top down can the influence be on any in entertainment and culture, you know. Okay, let me jump into that real quick. If let's just say some governmental entity has access to all the information. Right. Or super government. Like a DARPA type.

Sure. Okay. With now with AI. Right. Okay. So they would know far in advance what has organic energy. What's actually bubbling under? Right.

So it doesn't take much to take something that already has organic energy. And as I pointed out, which of course got lost in the sauce on some of my comments was rap was due for an organic moment. It's not like they propped up nobody's. They propped up great stars who are still stars and still talked about. Right. But as it's been contended with the 60s artists in psychedelia and Hayd Ashbery, the CIA did have some involvement there and did step in and kind of sort of. shepherded along. So is it unreasonable to suggest that in a different era in the 1990s, somebody said, okay, this thing's about to happen. We want to control it or we want to take advantage of what's going to happen with this so that we get what we want out of it. I don't think

that seems improbable. It's not an improbable. It's what happened. It especially happened. The most amazing thing to come out of that was since you and I talked, more of the Epstein files came out. And a guy who said he was very close with Jeffrey Epstein, the financier, was the former British member of parliament, Peter Mandelson, whose allegations of his, you know, giving secrets to Jeffrey Epstein was in the middle of maybe bringing down the labor government in the UK. And Mandelson was the guy who put together the Oasis Tony Blair meeting of 97, the Cool Britannia. Can you go down that rabbit hole? Because you and I talk privately about this, but I didn't know a lot of this information. So what was interesting is there was a guard. an article a few years ago with Kevin Shields.

Of My Bloody Valentine. And Kevin Shields had said that Brit Pop had some sort of weird backdoor push from the government. And this is Kevin Shield speaking. This isn't you or me going down. I think this is Kevin Shields. And he said if you were to go through the MI5 Records, you would see that Brit Pop was pushed by the government or that some strange stuff was going on there. Now, the record label, the classic record label that Kevin Shields was on as creation records. Alan McGee, you know, one of the best independent record.

labels of all time. You could argue maybe the best independent record label of all time. Yes. Yes. And, and, you know, you put out loveless with that, all that stuff, you know. But in 97, Mandelson, Peter Mandelson, the guy that's currently with the allegations of, he admits to knowing Epstein, photos of him at parties came out. He was going to be the ambassador to America from the UK. But now I think he's been arrested. You know, he's bringing down the British government. He was the guy in 97 who met with Alan McGee, who put together the oasis. Tony Blair meeting, which was to your exact point, it was to take an emergent music scene,

which was Brit Pop, take the band of the mid-90s in the UK Oasis, and marry them to this nascent political movement, which was Tony Blair's cool labor on the upswing, and say, hey, no, you like Oasis? We'll check out Tony Blair. That was put together by one of Epstein's later friends. But, yeah, so to your point, Not only does that happen, but Damon Allborn of Blur, there's an interview I showed you where

Damon Allmartin was like, yeah, I was approached by Tony Blair and I found him terrifying in that same era to be like, hey, we'd like to do business with you. And Jarvis Cocker of Pope released the song Socialism in 97 that same year about these kind of closed-door meetings. I myself was approached by the Bush government around 2004. Right. And had multiple meetings with people in the Bush government. So in other words, what you said that people were like, this is so outlandish, governments would never want to meet with rock stars and pop stars and try to have any sort of synergy that was... How about this? How about just even influence? Right. Influence. That is, that did happen. It happened in 97, all over the UK. And you and I talked about this previously,

but Tom Dryberg, the another labor MP, approached Mick Jagger in 67. So this stuff, there's like tons of history. Let's pull the lens back out. We sit here in Tinsel Town. It's understood that the U.S. government had vast influence over the subject matter in movies in the 1930s and 40s going into the 50s. Propaganda efforts involving war, propaganda efforts involving how labor would perceive being working class. These are all known things. A lot of these files have been released. Right. Okay. And there's certainly a feeling amongst, let's call it, intelligent people in the world, that the U.S. government continues to have an influence over what comes out of Hollywood, much to the detriment of this business, which you grew up in.

Well, I'll mention my grandfather did a, he did one of those 1950s social message movies. It was an anti-communism. I think it's literally, you know, now considered like a Red Scare film. But he did it in 58, 59, and he campaigned on behalf of Nixon. It was Jack Warner, one of the Warner brothers, who said, hey, Bob, I want you to campaign for Nixon. You know, you seem pretty conservative. I want you to actually go out in the campaign and do this. But that was an orchestration between a campaign, Nixon, and they had it.

So, yeah, this stuff is not unusual. Yeah. So I don't understand why people have a hard time, like, believing that it's possible. Yeah. You know what I mean? So, so, so let me say it slightly differently. To speculate about it, I think is human to find enough anecdotal evidence to think, like, okay, that's kind of interesting.

Is there something there? Right. Now, let's talk about the flip side of it. And if you want to take it a different direction, please do. The flip side of it is to me is, I've had enough of these moments in my life where I'll say something or suggest something and there's a convulsive reaction. Sure. Which is, who are you, why are you saying this? Right. This, can this be true or this can't possibly be true? And then you wait about two weeks and it all kind of goes away. And why does it go away? Because people on some intuitive level know that what I've said is direction. true. Right. I'm not an investigative journalist. I just have enough experience to know. I think there's something over there. Right. And you've been in those rooms where you've actually been approached. You're not just some guy reading on the internet. Yes. And I even had no less than Norman Lear once approached me and pull me aside and say, I understand what you're saying, but you might need more context. Right. So how did I take that in that moment to mean, yes, what you're saying is directionally true, but there's probably more nuance to it. Right. So when John Wayne, was working against communists in Hollywood, he probably believed, I don't think John Wayne was a government agent. I believe he was, I believe he believed he was working to the best interests of the America that he believed. Right, right. And I've often find that people in governmental institutions,

even if I disagree with them politically, they believe in what they're after. Right. So they would have no problem leaning on people or ushering in something that they believe will not only be politically expedient but also sort of serve, let's call it the greater thing that they're after. Well, that's, I mean, I'm going to belabor the point, but that's what we do here. No, that, in 1970, I wrote about this on the substack. You have blood, sweat, and tears. They did a tour in Eastern Europe that the American government more or less pushed them into because their lead singer, David Clayton Thomas. Yeah, they were going to pull his green card. I think they did pull his green card. And then

they were like, well, coincidentally, we do need a rock. band to do a tour in Eastern Europe. And they had previously been involved in like 1968 politics, the Chicago 7, very left-wing politics, but having done now a tour for the state departments and some would say the CIA, when blood, sweat and tears came back from their European tour, Abby Hoffman and what's his name, Jerry Rubin, they were dumping manure outside of Madison Square Garden calling them the CIA band, which really hurt their credibility and really damaged the band's reputation. But there you go. That's an example of what they would later do.

You speculated with rap is taking something rock music in 1968, 1970, and saying rather than be oppositional to this, let's use the energy from this. Okay, so that's why I find it hard to believe that it's so controversial. It's literally been done numerous times in the UK and the U.S. Here's your trivia question today. What was David Clayton's first project after he left Blood Sweat and Tears called? Oh, my goodness. I don't know.

And it has a, I'm probably, maybe I'm wrong, but. My memory serves. It was a project called, yes, jelly roll. Project jelly roll. I have no idea. That was called jelly roll. Oh, it's called jelly roll. And not project jelly roll.

Yeah. So we'll have to look that up as soon as we get. Okay, so let's start here. I saw in a recent substack. Of course, you have your great substack. The Flynn effect. The Flynn effect, yes, yes. Some of it's free, some of it's paid.

We're all in the game. You were talking about chariots of the gods. Now, I used to go stay with my paternal grandmother, Lillian, and she was an avid reader, and she had chariots of the gods. So somewhere about age six, I'm reading or whatever eight, I'm reading chariots of the gods. That was my first connection. Sure, sure. To the idea that there'd been alien races here before and were they still having an influence over. So let's start there because I want to take us down a particular path. Yeah, I mean, you see this now with a lot of the, instead of calling them UFOs, what they call

them now, UAP, UAPs, which the rebranding. So, okay, right, right there, is that a red flag that UFOs have now been rebranded. Yes. I mean, in the way, if you're into UFO stuff, it benefits you because now you don't have as much of a stigma. But I'm saying just the fact that it's been rebranded is a red flag. Because why is it being rebranded? And who re-branded? Well, that's a good question.

It's some sort of flag. I think it works for UFO people. So I would consider almost like a yellow flag because I don't know if it's a green or a red flag, but it's something. Okay. Okay. You know, there was a book that when I did the Tucker episode and it came out, in October, there was a book I'm forgetting the name of it from the 19th century, but it's called Earth's earliest ages. And it was by a, it was by this theologian in Victorian England,

but it tied in essentially with like ancient aliens, where it's the idea that, you know, there are eras, you know, going back to the beginning of man that were there, with their demonic or supernatural things. You know, this is where you get into the Nephileum and stuff like that in the Bible. And I read the book. And I read the book. And I was, was amazed because it's from like 1883, but it reads like something from 1968. It reads like Charity of the Gods or Countless Christian in the 70s. So what's interesting with this alien stuff and all this stuff is realizing how far back the interest in this goes, whether it's spiritualism or supernat, you know. Right. So yeah, I think, you think of it as being a 20th century phenomenon,

but, you know. Okay. So the reason I threw this out here is a little bit of red meat is recently had the honor to visit for a private tour at the new George Lucas Museum, which is about to open in Los Angeles in September of 26. So depending on when you see this. And what George has done is, because I assumed as a fan, I just assumed it was going to be very heavy Star Wars. Star Wars is a part of the museum, but it's not the museum. Really what it is is the power of storytelling and the power of myth and our connection to myth. Right. So, um, Zacharize Sitchin who wrote the famous book, I think called the 12th Planet, which ushers in this idea that the ancient Sumerians and is all in plain evidence in the Sumerian scrolls,

only 25% of which have ever been translated is there's evidence in the Sumerian scrolls that ancient people 7,000 years ago not only live with alien races, but sort of they were, it was normal. They were like spaceship launches and all sorts of stuff. And Sitchin suggested that our, our obsession with gold and our obsession with certain types of narrative forms has to do with the fact that we were geoengineered to be human, the humans we are today from whatever we were before by alien races and that's how kind of how we got here. So on some level, and this is where the Star Wars myth

is so powerful, on some level, we know that there's this kind of, there's this deeper story. Of course, biblical people might have a problem with it, but there's this deeper story where we know somewhere deep in our DNA that the story we've been told isn't true. And so we're basically resonating with the real story without knowing what the real story is. With Star Wars, that's a funny thing to bring up because, and I wrote about this on the substack, it was, um, we need a bell every time we do it. Every, yeah, including for me to. Every time there's a plug. As I drink my Madam Sous's tea.

We just need like a bell. It'll be full Peeley's Playhouse. I should have my own bell, actually. Every time you plug, it's the word of the day. No, but I wrote a thing on substack about Howard George Lucas. took very uh he used for star wars for the macro story it's from the same book of the bible that he used for indiana jones which is the book of kings okay so indiana jones um you have the ark of the cup but did spielberg do he did he he directed it but lucas produced it oh i didn't know and the idea

yeah indiana jones is like it's named after george lucas's dog indiana indiana so uh yeah lucas produced indiana jones and indiana jones you have the ark of the covenant which it features He's very prominently, you know, the Levites, I think can touch it or can open it. But with Star Wars, he takes from the same book. He takes the story of David and the story of Saul, the story of a farm boy chosen to be the guy. But then... I didn't know this. Yeah, but the robed one, Samuel, who's kind of like the Obi-Wan figure, he initially

picks Saul or Darth Vader to be the anointed savior. And he realizes he's picked the wrong guy. Yeah. So he picks the second farm boy, David. or Luke Skywalker. Okay. And that's why really quick in both stories, like Saul Vader dies on Endor, there's Hebrew on Darth Vader's breastplate. So to your point about stories, the Bible has repeating stories, both in the Old Testament within itself and in the New Testament, where the Jesus story, Jesus in many ways is an amalgamation of all these Old Testament stories.

Sure. And Antichrist is similarly an amalgamation of all these, like, villainous views. Yes. Yes, I know that's oftentimes with the anti-Jesus people, people, go into like that basically there were Jesus stories before Jesus showed up. I'm a believer of Jesus. So I'm going to throw that out there. But there were, but that's the thing is they were, they were, they were, he was prophesied

and he figured. Sure. I'm not, we can talk about that some other thing. But what I'm after is is what's beautiful about Georgia's Museum and I got to see it in this, you know, this early stage is he's, he's used the different media. So whether it's physical objects like objects from the Star Wars movie, or his vast collection of Norman Rockwell paintings. He uses the different media to basically say there's a commonality here

in what we're after and what we're interested in. And obviously he's a master storyteller in that regard in that he's able to kind of identify what is the core mythological connection that binds us altogether. In many ways, it's probably the most unifying effect that we have is that we're all kind of after the same thing. Sure. There's only, I mean, there are many books written about.

There's only like seven stories. There's only, you know. Sure. Right. So pick a direction because here we are we're taping just after Easter, the resurrection. Yes, right. So pick a direction. I was going to go into this. I was going to bring the resurrection. I was going to go into the, at the time we're taping the Chapel Rhone scandal from a few weeks ago. Are you familiar with that? Okay. So let's let's do this. Let's play a game. So over here we have Chapel Rhone, who's allegedly been discovered as being, I guess, the grandchildren. of some rich people or something.

Sure. That's the controversy. Am I summing it up correctly? But she had also had allegedly, or her, a bodyguard that may or may not have been directly working for her, they're doing, you know, had bullied or had been mean to an 11-year-old girl in Brazil, which then led to this massive backlash against the singer because they were like, well, she's always picking on people who want autographs. But I wanted to know what your thoughts were when you see. Because last time we talked, we talked about pop stars and those that need direction or those that

in a bad place. Okay, so let's do this. Because I love this. This is the artist in me. So over here we have, let's call it, this new chaparone story. Right. But we're going to approach these as mythological concepts. Sure, sure.

And over here, we have the resurrection. How do these two things go together? Ready? I'm going to answer my own question first. Yeah, I want to know. Okay, so let's start here. I really like Chapel Roan. I don't know her personally.

I mean, I played a festival with her, very talented, but have never met her, never shaken her hand and said that I'm a fan. So what we see playing out right now is is an accusation for like a better way to put it, that she's foisted upon the world something untrue. Right. So you have a convulsive reaction from the audience, which is saying, wait, I bought into your story. And there's all sorts of layers of that. Right.

Whether she really was poor or not. There are interviews where she said she was impoverished or she. She showed her tax returns on the, no. I don't know. But then also there's also some hue and cry from the LGBT community that she's sort of wrapped herself in the colors of the LGBT community and whether or not she's truly representing and all this type of stuff. So over here we have the concept of identity and whether or not this identity. In a related but far different story, I'm friends with Laura Albert who wrote the famous J.T. Roy books and it was later outed. It is not that she wasn't a 16-year-old male prostitute who'd written these.

Right, right, right, right. She was actually, you know, a mother living in San Francisco. Right, right. So the idea is when, and I guess what I'm after, and I can talk more directly about Chapel if you want, but what I see is on some level of the audience is mad that they believed in somebody that they find out that what they believed in isn't true, but why was it necessary that what they believed in was true? Right.

And you're getting into this idea, we talked about the last time of the Avatar, They brought into the almost the three-dimensional... Does the artist... Here's the question. Does the artist have a responsibility to present a true avatar? I mean... When your dad...

Your grandfather was in these movies or a TV show, was he playing himself? No, no, no. I mean, you're especially with publicist in Hollywood, you're always dealing with after some point with a fictional creation or at the release of caricature. And that's how people become characters of themselves. So here's the question.

Is it fair that Chaparone... fans would be mad that she may, because I don't know, she may have presented something that's not her. In a way, the whole thing is ridiculous because people end up getting into idolatry. And then the fact that the idol doesn't meet the idle requirements. Like, well, you were, I experienced that in my own. Right. So that's why I want to ask you about it. I would meet, I would meet people and they would be disappointed that I wasn't whoever they created in their mind. Right. That's just said, it's a losing gambit. But that's, but in a way, what does the pop star do in cases is in their team is they create the idol or they want the idol as you know in wrestling you want

to get the person over right but let's put it this way is it is it is it is it better it and i'm used we're obviously using chapel as an example because even her name is right in invention is it better if if everything that she'd said was true or is it better that she'd found an effective way to communicate from the the the hollywood standpoint the latter but basically it would have been better if she'd been more straightforward. But that's not as good. What would she have gotten if she had been more straightforward? And by the way, if she'd never gained any ground in a very tough and competitive market and we didn't even know who she was, what would it matter? Does she win some honor prize for authenticity? She was true. Sorry. Because in this very setting, talking with Courtney, we got a certain amount

of guff for lampooning a certain, you know, alternative icon for being a gatekeeper. Right. And what was the gatekeeper on about? By the way, that particular gatekeeper is the daughter of a, like a professor. Right. Courtney, I didn't grow up with a professor as a dad. You know what I mean? Right. So people, elitists get to play these games with words and concepts.

But the real foot soldiers have to go and figure it out. But you're also getting to something which is fundamental to show business where people can have their schick can be anti-stick. Their stick can be, I don't have one. And that's, but that's also, as you know, that's also indie rock gatekeeping. Okay. is I'm the anti-rock star, but then they end up having schicks within schicks. Okay, so tell me if what I'm saying is untrue. Are there people that people commonly known famous rock stars that are total frauds?

Of course. And you hear the stories. Yes, in terms of their behavior, I mean, it's show business. Like, you know, it's all, I mean, Bruce Springsteen starts his Netflix special by saying, I'm not really Bruce Springsteen. No, of course not. I mean, I mean, that's Keith Richards famously doesn't like Bruce Springsteen. And he's like, the whole thing's too convoluted.

He also says, if you close your eyes, he goes, he sounds like Neil Diamond, but that's, this is the Keith Richards scandal that will have happened. But yeah, that's really quick about Springsteen. Please, please. About Springsteen. So I was on a thing. You've got to get back to that. No, no, I was just on a thing about comparing Springsteen with Taylor Swift. We're in a conversation with someone who's like, Taylor Swift is essentially the female Bruce Springsteen because the thing is primarily relatability.

and the fact that they both work in the kind of pre-60s American Americana sensibilities. Springsteen. I mean, you know, when Springsteen first came out, I'm not meaning to bash Bruce Springsteen. But Todd Rungren hated Springsteen so much that he signed Meatloaf because he thought Meatloaf's Paradise by the Dashboard Light was a whole big like Springsteen goof because he's like, oh, this is so corny. 50s driving your car with your girl and being really overwrought. I didn't know that. But the same thing was leveled to Taylor Swift where it's like, man, this is like, like Doris Day, this is so corny, but they both have a relatability to their image.

Okay, but again, it doesn't matter if they're really those people. From the showbiz perspective? And as long as, no, like, that's, it's wrestling. It's like, that's, whole coding is not as well- Okay, so let's go back to Miss Rhone. Right. What, so let's say, let's say this, uh, accusation or vibe or cloud over her sticks. Uh-huh. It becomes part of her story. Right. Okay. So now we're back to the resurrection. Right. What does she do next? You're, you're, you're, you're notably that, you're notably the grandson of a famous publicist.

And my other grandfather was the son of a publicist, too. Great Grandm on his own billboard is a publicist. Yes. That's, that, that's a good question. I mean, what I think she should do in some sense isn't good for her career, which is a really big about, essentially go kiss without makeup and just have an about face. but that that as a publicist mind that's that's not the move but that as a as a if I knew her something like that I'd have to think about it what would you have her do? Because you know her situation better from the inside in terms of the media hates this person

there's a backlash like if I was advising her privately which I'm now about to say what I would say publicly I would say there's it's the it's the famous Chinese finger trick there's no way out of this box right so the only way is to is to loot. Turn heel. Embrace it? No, not turn heel. Now, I'm speaking metaphorically, so before anybody goes crazy with this, okay?

You must accept a public death, a public symbolic death. Sure. I'm not talking about literal death. I'm not encouraging her in any way, shape, or form to not be here. Right. It's the opposite. Right.

You must resurrect your own self, and the only way you can have a resurrection is you have to go through a symbolic death. In my case, because it's easiest thing for me to explain, I created an avatar called Zero, which was most famously connected to the melancholy album. The character goes insane. The character evolves to a second character, which is called Glass. And yes, the metaphors are real. Glass is easily broken into a million pieces. And then I brought that character back in a third iteration around 2018 called Shiny. Right.

And now the pumpkins are about to go on a major tour. and we are going to witness the parcifal, like, funeral of the character. The character is going to finally die in public. So that sounds pretty intense. It is and it isn't. Right. Because, again, we're talking about something that's completely in the mind. Right.

See, let me go back to Ms. Rowan because I think it's a really interesting subject to explore. And, you know, as you and I can admit, we don't talk about what we're going to talk about. We literally just, we literally just rolled the dice and see what happens. Yeah, well, that's why I like talking to you. Yeah, we have a good conversation. report. So in the case of Ms. Rohn, it doesn't take a MIT scientist to figure out that she's going to be surrounded by a lot of people in fear. And they're going to try to game theory out how to pivot. Does she do the confessional Barbara Walter style interview? Heck, maybe she wants to come here

and talk to me about us. She would be more than welcome. She's a great artist. Very talented. and like a Bowie understands the power of the avatar. Right. Probably she's the most powerful artist who's working with avatars in the media right now outside of Gaga. Right. The Bowie thing is, I mean, Bowie also the son of a publicist. His dad was a public relations guy, which is probably why he was... Are you accusing David Bowie of being calculating?

You know, I'm going to... There's a... I don't know if anyone's ever said it, but he's like a chameleon, that guy, like the way he could change. Like, I'm going to be the first person. Speaking of David real quick, I recently started following his daughter Lexi, who's the daughter, I believe, of David and Amman. And she came out publicly and talked about some of her struggles as a teenager. I highly recommend people follow her on social media because she came out very openly and very soberly. And I don't mean, you know, not on drugs. I mean, she just in a very sober manner laid out the difficulty she had as a teenager when her parents decided to do kind of almost like an intervention and send her to kind of an outward bound.

type camp. And she went through a lot of issues that I'd never heard of. I knew they had a daughter, but I didn't know about these issues. I guess at this point, I don't know how old she's maybe 30. And she talked very openly in this post on her social media about what she went through as a teen, always sort of living in the shadow of this great artist. And of course, her mother's also famous. But then also, you know, the sense of betrayal that her parents sent her away when she was in this really vulnerable place in her life. She doesn't accuse anybody of anything. She's just kind of lazy. it all out very, and now she's really publicly using social media trying to find her feet as an artist. It's quite interesting because what is she playing with as the daughter of David Bowie?

She's playing with what mask am I wearing here, even if it's my own. Well, this is something I wanted to bring up to you. Blackie Jones is your-Lexie Jones? Her name, check out Lexie Jones. Tying together a bunch of the themes we're talking about is I was at a party about a month ago. And someone, Courtney, Courtney, Love had come up. And someone goes, you know, Courtney's really bold and brave for always keeping her Instagram comments open because half of her comments are just people accusing her of killing her husband. And I said, I realized at the time, once she said this, I'd never put this together. I thought to myself, I thought Courtney Love was the Erica Kirk before Erica Kirk. And I thought of the analogy.

And of course, I cannot think of two white guys who are more different in public persona than Kirk Cobain and Charlie Kirk. Yes. That's quite a stretch you're making. Yeah, no, this is, yeah. But they both, in both cases, you had these very formidable blonde widows who are just accused of this, you know, for the rest of their lives and are hated. And you have, in both cases, I mean, ironically enough, Kim Gordon, who I don't know, I like her, I loved her memoirs. I've quoted them on it on podcasts, but Kim Gordon, who once said in Uncut Magazine, she said, I don't know how, I don't know if Kurt killed himself.

Frankly, I think there's something to that. Kim Gordon's kind of the Candice Owens figure in this thing, someone that knew the guy that died and knew him before the wife and someone who kind of maliciously or whatever, maybe she thinks there's something too. It keeps this story alive and twist the knife on the widow. But both stories are very similar in terms of how this played out. Okay. I'm going to skip past that because I don't want to wait into that myself. But you bring up a very interesting point, which goes back to the idea of the avatar has run aground. So using Ms. Rohn again as an example here.

And then the concept of resurrection. Right, right. The reason the concept of resurrection is so powerful is, unless you're literally going to come back from the dead, the symbolic concept of resurrection is you can be reborn. Right. Now, if you want to skip past it as a religious concept, meaning you must accept Jesus as your Savior and be reborn in that particular manner,

as a public personality, you can be reborn in your avatar. Right. And that would be my suggestion to Ms. Rowan. You're skilled enough and you're talented enough to remake the avatar. Now, in my case, what I did is I imbued my loss, my tragedy and my trauma into the character. So I allowed myself to not sort of become some sort of superhuman ubermanch alla Nietzsche. Right. I became a more and more broken figure.

Sure. And what that did is Here's the best way I can explain I had a therapist in the early 2000s And We were talking intently After the pumpkins had broken up in 2000 And he said quite cryptically

And it took me a long time to process what he meant He said, it's good you did what you did Meaning it's good you broke up the band And I said how was that good? Because at that point I was still questioning the decision And obviously I put the band back together at some point he said because the public wanted a body and you gave them one. In essence, the public kind of whips itself up into a kind of a mob-like frenzy that it needs to see something.

Right, right. And in the parable or in the reality, depending how you want to take it, of Jesus' death, you know, it is the crowd that calls for Barabbas to be spared in Jesus to be sacrificed. Well, to your exact point there, with all the deaths of idols, and I have a relative who made this great analogy, which is syncs up very well with your own with Jesus is there's either they always either have to believe that the death was caused via conspiracy a betrayal they can't be a stupid death or it can't be for nothing okay there needs to be a deeper betrayer a judas like figure or if there is not a judas like figure in the case of someone like Elvis they believe that he never died that he was either resurrected or Jim Morrison yeah or he lives on or Tupac or Tupac no but but that's just it but so to your exact point about the idle arch type, either there is a Judas figure who betrayed him and, you know, it follows that to a T. Even in the case of... Well, the parallel here would be, in this case, Courtney, is set up in that particular construct as the Judas-like figure. Yeah. As the scapegoat. And yeah. But in the case of Charlie Kirk, too, his wife and then the people that say, no, Charlie Kirk's still alive. And to your thing, the idea that he never really died.

How about, how about, I literally somebody asked me last night, do you think Jeffrey Epstein's still alive? Right. People can accept on some level that there is, that people die, that God can show you the red card and take you off the pitch in any moment. What would you say to Ms. Rome? I would reconsider, I don't know, I'd have to give it some thought, but with a lot of her act, it's intentionally confrontational, and it's intentionally surly. You know, the whole thing about, you know, I don't want to say it, but be the C word, you know, that a lot of people will encourage pop stars to be now.

Yes. When you encourage women to be the C word and then they act like that, that was always playing with fire. So if her whole brand or her whole persona of like she's the ultra-a-diva who's going to be really surly or really this, that was always going to potentially want to foul if you're rude to it. Yeah, I have one comment and then I want to move on. No, that's great. I saw some of the stuff floating out about her past and people. TikToks or whatever.

Right. Sort of surprised by it. Right. And then I watched her being interviewed, you know, as a teen. And then, of course, I'd seen her comments along the way, almost like cast in a certain form of bitterness how she'd been around for 10 years until somebody figured out that she was valuable. Right.

So to me, the way I connect all these things is here you have a very talented young woman, obviously, with A-level skills. sort of standing there going, hey, what about me? Doesn't happen, doesn't happen, doesn't happen. She goes inward, find some resource that she didn't know she had. Let's call it as simple. She found an avatar by which she can project yourself and found the world. I did it sort of posthumously, so I wished I'd done it figured out in the beginning.

And go back to Kim Gordon, why was I attacked from Kim Gordon? Because I wasn't punk rock enough. Like, what the fuck does that mean? That's a billion dollar question. Okay. So what did Courtney say in the very chair you're sitting in? See, you were real. Right. And you got slung up on the cross because you were real where everybody else around you was faking it. So I was basically being attacked by an icon of the alternative movement for not faking it good enough. Right. Right. Right. So this is why I'm empathetic to Ms. Rhone because now she's being attacked for faking it too good. Right. Right. Right. It is amazing how these situations play them. I mean, When that happened, I'm sure you... Well, it's the public pathos, you see.

It's the public that sets these things in his motion. Right. The artist just figures out how to play the public, and then the public ultimately gets mad. How much of this, when you see an artist go through someone like that, do you want to just tell them this does and doesn't have anything to do with you? This has to do with... This is the difficulty. It does have to do with them because it could only work in their hands. You could give...

If you were able to kind of create a playbook, you're going to say this, you're going to do this, you're going to dress like this, you're going to do your hair like this, you're going to do this type of music. It only works for chapel. That's that it's true. It's a playbook of one. Right. Right. The best artists, in this case, pop stars, there's only one. Right. This episode of The Magnificent Others is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies. The process only takes minutes, and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save.

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Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash magnificent. Right. And to your point, it's like when certain quarterbacks goes, go down and the whole offense stinks. It's like, well, the whole offense was built around that guy's skills. Yes.

So she's built an entire world around her ability to muster up an avatar. Right. So my advice and back to the point I was trying to make is, is you have the power to reinvent the avatar. But in order to reinvent the avatar, you must let the other one die. I think you're right. Symbolically before anybody tries to click. You have metaphors here.

Okay. Let's carry on. There's so much. We could literally talk for now. hour and a half about that. Let's talk about your perception of what now seems to be a big obsession, which is the singularity. Sure. I mean, it's funny. A few weeks ago, the New Yorker wrote about Nick Land, the guy that I had, I had, you and Mr. Land seem to have a particular public dance going on. Well, what's funny is he really liked the Tucker episode, actually.

He probably likes the publicity. Wait, well, that too, you know, and he's also... In fact, in fact, sorry to interrupt you. But literally someone came up to me the other day, not having seen our previous episodes, and said, you need to interview Nick Land. I swear to God. We can make that happen. He lives in China, so we can fly him out here. Who's we?

I mean, the greater powers. The governmental entity. Yeah, whoever, it would probably go through a lot of hoops. Yeah, so the New Yorker did a whole thing on Nick Land Because he's become very, you know, how influential he was has been, has come out And six months ago it was more like, is he as big as he was? But Elon Musk now retweets him and is always talking about him and Elon Musk follows him and was supposed to be at this dinner. And yeah, so the New Yorker wrote an article about him and Nick Lan was on this podcast recently with these guys on the Dangerous Maybe,

this podcast that they do with Nick Land occasionally. There are these two guys, Mikey Downs and Nance, and they talk to him. And Nick Land actually said exactly what I said on Tucker, where the other guest, which is this occultist John Michael Greer, said, you know, the singularity is essentially a tech version of Christianity with it's Jesus Christ as a computer, where all computers eventually merge into one reality.

This enrages me, but keep going. But Nick Land said that, he goes, I think I do the same thing too. I take Christian eschatology and Christianity and I merge the oneness of all things, of the spiritual round tech, all people being turned into a network. I've turned Christianity on its head and created a kind of luciferic, you know, gnostic counter-react. At least he's calling it for what it is. Right. But God bless.

This is exactly what I said. I'm talking. People are like, is that really true? But that is. So he's, so the singularity, what I had said was slightly different. I didn't say it was Jesus's return. I said it was more like the day of penthouse. cost, it was the day when the Holy Spirit inhabited all believers, and there was a kind of spiritual

network turned on. And that is essentially how the singularity, from my understanding of it, because as many definitions works. If there's a they, do you think this is what they're after? On some level, the world brain, I mean, the internet in a sense is the world brain. Okay, but if we go into conspiracy theories, this seems to connect to ecological movements, depopulation movements, you know that whole nexus of ideas. And even Iron Rand talked about it in, I can't remember if it's the fountainhead,

but it's the idea that, you know, they're going to return the planet basically to nature. Right. There's only going to be about 500,000 people left on this planet and they're all going to be connected to the board. Right. And jerking off in their brains to each other. I mean, that's, yeah.

But I'm saying, do you think that's what they are after? I think, I mean, we are building towards the internet already exists, which is itself a kind of global brain. The idea of implanting computers in people and having us permanently online, permanently hooked up, you can shut some people off, she can shut some people on every level. We are moving towards that, whether it's intentional that, whether, but you ask me, do I think they want that? Yeah, of course. Do you think it's an elitist class that sort of wants to, basically, it's like there's, it's like a club, there's a red velvet rope. And those who are jumping after the singularity of the Kurtzweil's of the world, that they get

to be in the club and the rest are either going to perish or be just kind of a slave class. Yes, on the one hand, I do think that there are people that do that. But my attitude, this is important to know about a lot of what I say, I think a lot of conspiracies do also boil down to when Jesus is on the cross. And he says, forgive him, Father, for they know not what they do. I think people bring things about and they work towards goals that they aren't always aware of. But we're talking about the conscious end of that spectrum. I think some of them are, but I think some of them aren't.

I think some of them are just trying to get rich and they're building it anyway. That was the thing. In the reaction to my Tucker thing, a lot of people who work in this industry, very big people have been like, oh, yeah, the blockchain does look like the mark of the beast. That was their own separate, like, huh, I've been working on this for years. It says that in Revelation 13. So you have people that were working towards this without realizing it. So if there's an elite class, how many are there on the planet? A true elite class.

Is it a thousand? Is it a 10,000? Is it 100,000? My guess, just I put it at 10,000. Sounds about right. Yeah, 10,000. Do you think they're going to get there? And then I want to go back to talking about the, let's call it the digital Jesus.

I think, do I think they'll get there? Yeah. In some ways, I think they will. I think people are, the fact that it's now out there that they're building this and that more people are even aware of it from a biblical framework of like. It does complicate things, but in some ways you get into the idea that by even talking about it, does talking about stuff make it better? That's a big question. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't.

Okay. There's a side question. Can the AI be controlled? Are we past the point and we're hurtling towards singularity whether we want to or not, because the machines are going to basically create it? And I have an addendum to that, but please answer that. At this point, in terms of probably, probably not,

even if America shut it down, China would have their own version of it. So it's a foregone conclusion. It's a for, but the thing I, as I mentioned this on Tucker, is that like there's a horror movie way of thinking about these things where evil is in charge, Satan is in charge. And that's the next, that's the, that's the fact of horror movies. Yeah, we're back to avatars. Does it matter, does it matter if the, if the faith is real, if the singularity is real?

We're in, now we're in a system where people are beginning to believe it. Right. But my attitude is that God is, God allows all things to happen. Okay. According to his purposes. So even in the midst of real evil, even evil that Westerners don't understand, the real faith of knowing that God not only is allowed this, but has directed this. Okay.

Well, that's, that's beyond my biblical pay grade, but, but I do know that. as a sort of a foundational concept for certain believers. It would be funny if we just lead to it and we're like, no, I think this whole podcast is now about predestination, and this is now a Calvinist podcast. We'll go wherever we got to go. Back to Digital Jesus for a second. And in a meeting I had the other day,

the reason I said that enrages me is because it is ultimately the foundational concept of the devil, which is, I'm going to do. do God better than God can do God. It presupposes that through cunning guile and technological innovation that we're basically going to match and or surpass God's influence. Now, if you're a non-believer, which many people are, that seems like, well, I'm basically holding up a myth against a reality.

For people like us that do believe, well, then we're basically saying, if we're in their simulation, if we're just a dream in God's brain, well, God's brain's going to win over whatever you think you can cook up. Did I frame it properly? No, you framed it really well. There's a great book, easily one of the best books ever in the last few years, called God and Golem by Norbert Biner,

who was the father of cybernetics. And it's from 66, and it's about simulation theory, golems, and he talks about video games. And it's like 1966. I don't even know they had video games, but they did. But he makes the point that when God created evil, or if he created Satan, whatever he created,

God ultimately is the programmer who, in creating malignant forces within the game, within our world, he still created it. We don't understand it, but he is ultimately charged. When man creates AI, when man creates evil, we are not God. So by creating these things, in other words, when God created evil, it's ultimately a bit of a play where God can, you know, in the book of Job, Satan can petition, but God ultimately says yes or no. when we create autonomous beings, we are not God. We cannot say you can go here, but no further. So that is, in a nutshell, why this is very dangerous, because you are creating evil.

Okay, so back to the power of the new mythology. Is the new mythology that we're leaning to something that's ultimately satanic or ultimately looking for a different form of divinity? Oh, I mean, I'll tie it into everything with Nick Land and all this stuff. You get into Gnosticism, and specifically the early kind of Gnosticism, I think it's theophyte Gnosticism, which looked at the serpent as the Savior, and Jesus and Lucifer as either being the same or brothers. It is implicitly and explicitly satanic with Satan representing nosis, Satan representing knowledge. What Satan did was everyone a favor by giving us open.

So I think it's all moving towards a synch. So you disagree then with the Gnostic concept that, because the Gnosticism I identify with is the idea that you can have an interpersonal relationship with God. God. Do you think that's laced with a danger? It depends on where the relationship with God is coming from. If it's coming through faith in Jesus and faith in Christ and a repentance that walks with him, that is a kind of knowing. That is a kind of knowledge and light that comes through Christ. But if it comes through man or if it comes through what is the ultimate non-Christian, but it is almost every

other form of religion, which is raised consciousness coming from within ourselves, coming through our own enlightenment without Christ this whole thing. That is false to me. So do you see the sort of the Marxist end of this cultural spectrum is sort of working to sort of basically create a detachment from those concepts?

Well, really quick, to go to Marx's original idea, and I was talking with Nancy Mikey about this and Nick Land, Marx's initial thing was that capitalism eventually, he didn't have a problem with capitalism so far. He said it was beautiful what it had done so far, but he said

going forward needs to create this kind of communism super state. All Nick Land and Silicon Valley wants to do is do privatize communism done through tech and do done through SkyNet, essentially. But it's the same Marxist project of capitalism leading to this singularity, ultimate final state of man. So in the great battle that lies ahead whenever that shows up, it's basically going to be this technocratic satanic super state versus God's kingdom. Yes. It won't be Marxist. a withering state of communism, it'll be a privatized technocratic skynet. Okay. But

those things add up to the same thing. I dare throw this out there. Recently, you were talking about shapeshippers. Oh, yeah. If you want to tee that up. So, Robbie Williams of take that in a brilliant solo career

in the late 90s. Cover of World Parties, she's the one. A friend of mine, we have a long-standing in joke about that song. but, the opening piano. So he had recently gone on the talk show, Robert Williams, and he had almost verbatim. It could have been a cover story of your, of, you know, part of me thinks it was.

Part of me is just like, he's like, man, that co-organity where he talks about a shapeshift, or people still talk about that. He had said that he had seen a woman become, I think in the bedroom, shape shift briefly into a reptilian creature. And so I did a post on sub-sac, the Flynn effect. Your name dropped me, by the way.

Oh, yeah, yeah. And, oh, yeah, yeah, because I mentioned you, and there's been a couple other people that have claimed to have seen shapeshifters. Such as. Britney Spears has said it. A boyfriend of the folk singer Judy Sill said that while she was reading Rosicrucian transcripts, she briefly shape shifted into a reptile. And William S. Burroughs and Brian Geysen, people would say they would, you know, become invisible or shape shift. and a friend of mine Didn't you also write about somebody

disappearing on stage? Yes, that was Diomanda Ghalis, if that's he pronounced her name. I saw Diomanda once live. That sounds pretty intense. She's maybe the most intense performer, but a friend of mine who's Iranian, he's fundamentally Iranian Gnostic,

and he was like, I asked him, were you on drugs? He goes, no, because I was very close to the stage and I saw her disappear on stage. And I said, well, what's, I said, let's go back, let's go back to that. You saw her disappear on stage. Can we circle back to that? And I said, what did that look like? And he said, she just became more and more pixelated and you can kind of see through her a little bit.

So for what it's worth, that is a strange but real secret history of people claiming to have seen that. Anything you want to probe into there? I mean, I mean, I'm less interested in my part of it all, but I'm more interested in, and how you view it. I mean, there's a couple different ways to view these things. With all these things, you also have something people call

supernatural apathy, which you can get into weird stuff or be thinking about weird stuff. But as you know, after a certain point, you're like, I've got to pick up my kids. I can't be thinking about,

like I want to shut this all off and go be whatever. As, you know, part of me is just like, well, this is what people, you know, maybe they have heard. Can I, can I add one thing to that from a personal level? Having experienced intense supernatural

things to me many times, dozens of times. There is a moment where you're now imbued with a new awareness, and of course it does reorganize the way you see the world, but then at some point you've got to go get a sandwich from the refrigerator. Right. And you come into almost like a weird conflict. Right. That's what I'm talking about with the supernatural apathy,

where it's like, do you want to just be scared out of your mind or freaked out by this, or do you want to just go play Xbox? Yes, I was talking to some of the other day about, what we would now call people being woken up, you know, what Alex Jones would refer to kind of like this idea, like you need to wake up and what does that mean? And I've talked to other people who experienced the same thing that I experienced, which is I walked around for two years

and sort of a kind of a sense of fear, a sense that there was this whole other reality that I lived, you know, lived alongside with in parallel and was totally unaware of and then woke up one day and realized, oh my God, this is like, this is part of. not only is it part of some hidden world as part of everyday life. And in many cases, it's hiding in plain sight. Right.

And even Alex has talked many times on his podcast through the years about how, you know, the overt Satanist will basically virtue signal into the world, not for those that are asleep, but for those that are awake, almost doing kind of a nah-a-da. Sure. We're right here and there's nothing you can do about it. That, I mean, I could see that. But to your thing about the apathy, that's really interesting, because it's like you do have to,

you do want to move on with your life and you, the fear. So, you know, the opposite of fear is faith. And so with all this stuff, when people approach these things, but without any sense of faith or with any sort of biblical understanding, I would say, it just has the tendency to promote fear

and to spook you out. So what begins is someone maybe even getting into astrology and initially it's helpful and does this or that, but then when they're running to bad luck and they have no safety net for this, other than that something is playing with me, it just paralyzes them because they're only, you know,

in the words of Stevie Wonder, when you believe in things you don't understand and you suffer, you just freak yourself out. Is that a particular song or superstition? Oh. Yeah. Are you paraphrases?

No, no. No, no. I'm not sure how I can connect shapeshifters and, let's call it, supernatural apathy to what we're talking about. other than to say that as we sort of go in and out of different perceptional realities, I think you hit it where most people draw the line,

which is like even if I intuitively recognize there's things I don't know and there's things that I don't understand. And most people these days don't even classify themselves as religious. They like to use the word spiritual. Really quick, I know somebody who says, I'm religious, but not spiritual. which I always think is funny. Does mysticism have a future in rock? I think mysticism is the thing to buy stock in in general with a lot of this stuff. I think that's the way, I just think

that's going to be, there's going to be an explosion of that. There already is. What do you think about that? I don't know. I said somewhat infamously about 10 years ago in Rolling Stone that I thought the future rock and roll was God and it was the third rail that had never been truly embraced. And I really believed it at the time. And now I'm not so sure because of the rise of this digital Satanism kind of vibe. Well, we'll tie it. In essence, the numbers are rewarding the sociopaths. It's going to, what's going to happen is they'll converge with AI and oracles, where if you, this is already happening.

This ties into everything we've talked about. In the next few years, what is the difference between AI and an Oracle? Where it's like, we're a divination system. A hundred years ago, there was something called the Oracle, the Astral Force. But can I stop you right there? Of course. You can always stop me. Thank you. I get complaints about interrupting guests. No. Do you believe in psychics? I believe people can have, I think it's mostly fraud, but I think there's stuff that can bleed through where they can't reliably do it usually, but I think stuff like that can't happen. Have you had a positive experience with the psychic?

I've never seen a psychic. Okay. But, you know, have you had weird, like we're saying, synchronicities or what we'd have? I've had incredible experience. Right. So I think that stuff can't happen, but in terms of someone being able to sell. it. I think usually at some point, like a TV antenna that's usually wonky, but occasionally it's right there. People can tap into it, but can they turn it into a reliable business? Usually not. You have to see the psychics I see. I'm not trying to derail what you're saying. I'm saying is I just want to be transparent that what you see as a sort of a blip in the system I see as a feature. Well, I think this. I think with a lot of the AI stuff, when the computer, which, you know, we call it AI, but it's a very amorphous term, when it can, when it already knows everything about you. And instead of asking it a general question like what was on TV last night, which is a question from 1998, that is not TV works anymore, if you were to ask it, should I break up with my boyfriend? Yes. And what if the AI starts taking in astrological things about you?

It starts taking in divination things about you. Where does the line between the algorithm is just ones and zeros that's based on past information? Right. And where does it get into mysticism? We're right back to the same conversation again, fortuitously. Yeah. Yesterday, it was one of those YouTube things where I was watching something else and I think I fell asleep. So when I woke up, I was in the middle of a documentary about the amazing Randy.

Have you seen this document? No. The Amazing Randy was a, it was a high-level magician, but most notoriously, he's passed away now, was a skeptic. And he went around and was on television constantly sort of debunking. I think his most famous act was he went on Johnny Carson, of all things, had done his own private investigation of a charismatic preacher named Peter Popoff. What a name. and exposed Peter Poffoff's wife was feeding him information and Peter Poffop off seemed to be picking guests at random

saying there's a Mary England out here and she would stand up and he'd say, you live at this address and the amazing Randy had recorded the wife feeding him the information when on Johnny Carson exposed all this. I grew up with Peter Popoff on television. Peter Poff would get these guests in an animated state, put his hand on their forehead and say,

heal in the name of the Lord and amazing miracles seem to happen. Right. So as part of the exploration in the documentary, it gets into the concept of, can healing take place if somebody believes what's happening is real? We're right back to the Chaparone conversation. Right. And we're right back to the appearance of digital Jesus. Right.

If you get digital Jesus, because digital Jesus seems to be able to spit out a bunch of stuff at you, which seems to be mystically derived, what all it is is just data that it's collated through your 40 years of internet abuse. Right. You know, is the residual placebo effect powerful enough that it's worth the effort? Well, in terms of like belief causing stuff, I mean, in some cases, you know, I think that can drive stuff, you know, the power of positive thinking. As you know, you get into this weird thing.

Well, our current president is a big follower of Norman Vincent Peel. I'm going to do a substack post soon. It's going to ruin your substestown. No, no, no, no. It's going to be on esoteric Trumpism. It's going to be on like James Wall. Losserman saying Trump was the, he is Crowley's ideal because of his harnessing of willpower, Constance Cumbies belief that Trump eventual belief that he's like the Antichrist.

Like there's an entire, there have been books. You can write volumes on. Cottage industry. Yeah. But it's your thing. What is a miracle in a sense, but a glitch in the programming? It's glitching the... See, that's my argument about psychics and astrologers.

Is there a feature of the system? They're not a bug. I'm not trying to argue with them. No, no, no, I know. But I think they happen, but I think there are certain things that were commanded, to not dabble too much. I think it's in the book of Deuteronomy, but the secret things belong to God. And I think beyond a certain point, you're trying to peel into the secret things,

is what I think about that. Or we're just looking over the fence at Disneyland seeing how they... Well, that's just it. That's just it. Where the line is. It's like political incorrectness and humor. We all know there's a difference between what is a rude joke and what is funny. Sure. But we all had disagreements about where that line is. And that's what the whole debate's about. And the same thing here. We all agree there's certain things you shouldn't peer into, but there's just a disagreement about where that is. So is your, is your hope or aspiration that we become a trusting people and the world would animate itself more properly if we just trusted. I'm not being silly when I'm saying. Trust in faith. I can have actual faith. Well, not just faith, but repentance and, you know. The whole, the whole hog thing. I mean, back to the police stations. You know, we're just faith. We're just back to the police stations. You know,

We don't have a ton of police stations near us because people are not. Yeah. Have you seen, it seems to me to be a recent feature of the system that they're going way out of the they, whoever you, they are. They know who they are. Great. They seem to be going way out of the way to normalize what scares us. And, well, yeah. I can't remember what the instance was.

There was a recent thing that happened where one of my children got really genuinely scared about. something that in modern culture has been normalized. And I had to tell my child, your reaction was accurate. It's, it's, I, I'm the one who has the problem because I've been normalized to accept this fright in the world, where your reaction is actually the accurate, organic one, and you should maintain this. You know, I've already been sort of convinced not to be afraid. Sure. But we should be afraid. Well, you're restating one of my favorite writers, G.K. Chesterton, he said, when your old grandma

gets weirded out by something, it's like, oh, that's so important. He goes, your grandmother may actually be more of a living creature, and you're just dead inside. Right. And so, whether it's grandmothers or your small kid, you know, how often do you see now you walk by a house on Halloween, and it's

like decapitations and stuff that's like, this is actually like a crime scene. This isn't like Charlie Brown Halloween. Well, even I saw a post yesterday, because we just had Easter, where somebody was saying, how do we get from Christ on the cross or rising? Right. Sorry, Good Friday.

How do we get from Christ is risen to Easter bunnies and eggs? And then we can get back to fertility rights and the Ishtar cult. Yes. Well, that's always funny. And we were strange as a Christian is that people wish you happy Easter. But it's like, it's that famously was melted with the Ishtar cult Easter. I think where you and I, And again, it's not, it's just for the sake of conversation.

I think where you and I are on slightly different paths is I'm more of a Gnostic Christian page. Sure. Because I've worked my whole life in the shadows of things. So those shadows don't scare me. I'm not saying they scare you. No, no, no. That's the language I work here.

Well, we're both acknowledging it. But it is strange because it's like, you know, Christians are using it. And it's like, well, that's something Christians will call it Happy Resurrection Day. But then also has like a strange hallmarky happy. be resurrect, you know, so it can be very actually strange as a Christian sometimes around Easter, just because it's a strange branding mix that goes on, whether it's the bunnies or the... I do want to share with you something that happened to me, and it happened to me vis-a-vis-be-a- psychic, and you can take it for... Of course, I was thinking.

Or wherever you like. Almost everybody on my mother's side of the family died relatively young, and usually in tragic ways. And so the psychic was pointing out to me that I needed to resist the family urge on my mother's side of the family to be defeated and basically give up and die. Like basically go into kind of a, like it didn't turn out the way I wanted. I'm out. And that basically let the life force out of them. And that's the conditions by which they had early demises. And so in investigating that, I wanted to understand, let's call it the

the root in that side of my family or where it went wrong because I think on my mother's side of the family there's a gift for divination and other things that are important but anybody that would know my work understands so let's call it the shadow work that I've done it certainly people respond to that in different ways

and what the psychic told me and it was all part of the same conversation was And again, whenever I say these things and I say these things in private, I'd say this to your private, no problem, is when people push back in what I tell them I've been told, what I like to say is there's no means by which I can ascertain whether or not what you're telling me is true. It's just another mythological chip to put into the mainframe computer over here and decide whether or not has any value. Right. So it's a story. So I'm willing to, I'm willing to, I'm willing to. share it simply as a story and you can take from it what you like. And what the woman said was your family on the mother's side in Europe was really skilled at making dolls and people would come from all over to buy these dolls. And something about the psychic gifts in your family,

it's like your family knew how to make dolls that people would find some sort of healing in. Similar to Kachina dolls in Native American lore in the Southwest. that they represent something sort of mythological and or celestial. And that ultimately my family was persecuted for this gift. And so in essence, the family went underground. And so I was the byproduct of multiple generations who were afraid to be openly speaking about the things that you and I speak about so easily. And as an artist, I've lived in that realm and spoke in that. And so the woman said, you're the first person in your family in like 100,000.

200 years that's decided to out yourself and come out for what your family gift is. And she, but she didn't know this about you, but she was intuiting that you're saying when she told this to you. Yes. And she was correct about that stuff. It feels correct to me, but there's no way I can say this. But that's what's always dangerous about that stuff is there's a mixture of truth and falsehood or something.

But let me go back to Chabaron for a second. I don't care whether or not it's true. That's the difference. And I'm not saying that to you in a confrontational way. I'm saying I literally do not care. You're just using true. See, this is the way, and this is why even when we're talking about gender spectrums, I've oftentimes prayed in recent times what is happening.

Like, let's call it the general. Like, why does the world seem to be going haywire? And of course, you get people with the fourth churning, you know, whatever. Right. I'm asking on an intuitive level, God, if you can speak to me, can you tell me what is happening? And the response that I've gotten, at least the one that I understand the most, is if you live in a world that is a lie, the only way for the world to advance is for the lie to be exposed. Sure. So you're going, you being all of us, you're going through the horrible thing of the lie coming out.

Right. So we see the exposure of government, aliens, whatever. And whether they're controlled or not, there's a sense. in the general public that a certain type of truth, which has been held behind the scenes, and maybe it goes back hundreds, if not thousands of years, is finally coming to the four. Right. Where where my mind next goes is, are we mature enough to actually hear the truth? Alex, Jack Nicholson, you can't handle the truth.

In essence, if the government turned tomorrow and said, all right, here it is. Here's no CIA anything. Right. Here it is. We did this, this happened, this happened. Here's the truth. We found this aircraft here. Here's the pictures. Here's what we know. Go at it. Could the general public actually handle it?

The answer that I would say is no, because to sum up a lot of it, people love the lie. Okay, so let's go there and this is a good way to kind of start wrapping it up. Why do they want the lie? But I mean, you're getting into something that's this talk that we talked about this entire conversation, whether it be the power of positive thinking or narcissism. I mean, I think we talked about it off air once. The roots of the word glam or glam. It comes from the occult. It comes from the idea of it's casting a visual spell. And so much of what Hollywood is and so much of what show business is, but also politics and magic thinking is you start with the image and work back. And this is to the thing about avatars and Chaparron.

You start with what you want to be, regardless of the truth. There's actually a Lady Gaga quote about this exact process. You tell yourself a lie until it becomes truth. And she's like, that is the process of my whole thing. You tell yourself the lie. I am this. I am that I am being one of the names of God. You build up through your pure willpower,

what you want reality to be and you force it. Okay. So people love that. People love the false image. So is the false image of what I trade in and what your grandfather trade in? Is that ultimately harmful? Of course it is.

Of course it is. Of course it is. I don't know if we could follow that up. All right, I got one more question for you. Thank you again, always. There's always it, I mean, we should have our own show. Ready? Do you want to live forever? You know, through the biblical concept of, you know, you die and you're with, you're with the Lord, you're with God. It's better than the alternative of living forever in torment and hell, but can the human mind comprehend living forever and having no end post anything? That's a very deep

and scary. Okay, how do you want to live forever on this planet? If you were, if you were, you're still young man, if you were afforded life extension technology, say in 40 years, are you taking them? If it, if it would extend me from like dying at 72, the expected age or whatever for people from men to 150, I would, I would take, I would microdose Methuselah pills to get to somewhere, maybe not 900 to live longer, but I wouldn't want to live forever, all your, all your friends. A certain celebrity whose name I shall not divulge, once told me they were on a boat with some. heavy hitters whose names I also won't divulge. Sure. And on that boat was somebody who was, you know, heavy in the science end of the world. And so imagine like A-listers on a boat owned by another now deceased A-Lister, you can do your math there.

And this person told these A-Lister's, if you can live another 30 years, you'll live to 130. No problem. I mean. So, so, so, and that conversation. was 15 years ago. So in 15 years from now, if they offer you the chance to live at 130, are you taking it?

It's general health pills, yeah, I'll live to 130, you know, some like that. What about 200? What if it's like something out of David Lynch's Dune where you're, you know, you're floating in the weird puss suit? It depends,

it depends on how many of my family are still alive. At some point, you're getting, you might just be like, but can you envision a world where that's going to happen? I think things are already on track to spiral up much earlier than that. And I'll say this really quick.

After my Tucker episode came out, someone who was related to one of the founders of one of the big tech companies. And this isn't surprise anybody, but it's still interesting. She called me up and she was like, you know, again, you know her husband, her ex-husband. And she said, all these guys have life extension plans that involve like sacred geometry and, you know, these heavily occult concepts. But she said they all have them. So regardless of what people say, when they say, I'm Mr. Atheist, I'm Mr. Science, when push comes to shove, you know, everyone, if it means living a little bit longer,

they'll sit under the, they'll do pyramid power, they'll do the hypercube. And last thing I'll say, the hypercube that, you know, when Lennon died, you know, they tried to freeze him forever by putting him in his mausoleum, which isn't a pyramid. It's a hypercube. Lenin is buried in these cubes to try to keep them in the fourth dimension. The guy who modernized the hypercube was Charles Hinton. And all the occultists were like, oh, he's figured out the hypercube, the Tesseract cube. The great-grandson of Charles Hinton, the guy that found the Tessaract cube that Lenin's buried in,

is Jeffrey Hinton, the godfather of AI. We made it. three three three who knows what controversies will all of them will engender all of them all right we'll take them all on all right we'll take them all on