The Basement: Joseph Matheny | The Man Who Hacked Reality Before the Internet Existed

Today I'm talking with Joseph Muthini, a writer and storyteller who built the internet's first alternate reality game. He built a story so convincing and made people believe a portal to another dimension was hidden in the New Jersey Pine Marins. "Get out of the state, he's another dimension." Be nice, I've got family in Jersey. "I want you to cross the GWP and hit Fort Lee. It's like an alternate universe. We're every lift turned as a jug handle and you're not allowed to pop your own guess." That story was Aung's hat, not published as an novel, but scattered across bulletin boards, websites, phone lines, pamphlets, the story felt real. Today we'll talk about where that air she came from and how it got weaponized. Apple get into his chatbot from the 90s. You see, he built Google before Google. He built chat GBT before OpenAI, 30 years ago. "That sky was spreading disinformation with Facebook, which is a twinkle in Mr. Zuckerberg's eye. His lizard eye. Respect." Joseph's also been connected to the John Teeter story, the time traveler who appeared on our bell. When I asked him about it, he said, "Well, this one gets weird. I'll see you after for a private wrap-up just between us. Let's go down to the basement." Joseph, welcome to the basement. - Thanks for having me. - I'm excited I've been a fan for a long time. Before we dig in, I need to know WC Fields Martini recipe and method. - Oh, absolutely. - Yeah. - That's good. I got to talk to him. - Talk to me by Robert Anton Wilson. - Really? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - What do we got? - He comes to my house one day and I said, "Bob, I heard you like Martinis." He said, "Well, I like Martinis, but only a certain way. You have to make them right. Let me show you." Like, kid, move aside. So, okay, I moved aside. And while he's making these Martini, he tells me the story that he read, "How this Martini was made by WC Fields in a book." And so, you take, put ice in the shaker, then you pour the removed over the ice, then you shake it around, then you pour the removed out, leaving the ice in, then you pour the vodka. - Important vodka, not gin. - Yes, sir. Pour the vodka over the ice, shake it very gently because you want to bruise the bruise. - Don't bruise the bruise. - Yep. And then you pour it out. - Very nice. - Yeah. And it works. - I'm going to remember that method. - And that's the way I've made Martinis ever since. So, it's Robert Anton Wilson. So, that's kind of a good segue to get back to the origin story and we can go back as far as you want. I love the bookstore stuff and that's synchronicities are crazy, but wherever you want to go. Like, what made you the pioneer of ARGs? And that could be the last time we even say ARG today. - Let's go back a little bit. - Okay. - I remember when I read a book called "No One Here Goes Out Alive," the story of Jim Morrison. And I like the way they did it is they put it in three sections. And basically it was like, so you realize that an arrow being drawn back and then the releasing of the arrow was the arc of Jim's story. - Yep. - That was a voracious reader when I was a kid. And my parents were cool in that they said, "Oh, he can read." They were happy. And so, they rewarded me by saying, "We will buy you books." And if you read these books, we will buy you more books. And so, I would just tear through books. And so, I used to buy, I was being kind to my parents. I came from a working class background. And so, these books are okay, because I'm going to tear through them. I'm probably going to mark them up and then, you know, and I would get money to go to the garage sales and just pick up whatever. And so, in my age, I'm old. I'm 64 years old. So, like, in the 60s and 70s, when I was growing up, horror and the occult was very popular. And so, I was big on the universal monsters, the hammer films, like all that kind of stuff. Anything to do with that, I was reading. So, this is a funny segue. I'm at a garage sale. And I'm like, the guy says, "You can have all the books on the table for a dollar, but you got to pack them up and get on here, because I'm done." And I'm like, grabbing everything I thought was worth it. And one of the books was, "Oh, that's about astrology." And I was doing a bag. And I get home, I start reading. And I'm like, "This is not astrology at all, but it was tropic of cancer by Henry Miller." - Oh! - That's how I get introduced to Henry Miller. - Wow, okay. - By thinking he was a astrology of oops. - Oops. - How old were you? - Oh, God. 12. - Oh, no. - Okay. - And I'm probably great for 12 years. - It was great, perfect. And I'm like, "God, I'm going to do this." Like, "Wait, this guy writes." You know? And so, like, that was my gateway drug. From there, I segwayed into Carewack and, you know, everything from there. But it was that accident of buying that book for a nickel or whatever it was. And reading it and falling in love with, like, "This is a whole new thing I didn't know about this." - This is amazing. I didn't know this about you because I can see it in your writing. I can see Carewack. I can see Hunter S. Thompson. I see that in Henry Miller. I see it in your writing. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Wow. - Yeah, those are my influences. - Okay. - Bukowski. - Yeah. - Like, you know, Hemingway, it's like, "Make the sentences short and sweet." - Yes. Bam. Like, you know, so I'll go back and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite, which, you know, that's Ginsburg. - Yeah. - Carewack was like, "Right at once." - Right. - You know, "Oh, no, don't touch it." - Hemingway says, "Shut up." - Yeah, yeah. Right at once and get away. So, you know, I was, now I was, like, floating in this world of, like, all this weird counterculture stuff, which is available readily when I was a kid. - You're in Chicago? - Yeah, yeah. - Okay. - In Chicago. - And all this occult stuff and literature. And, of course, being in Chicago, all this stuff was available to me. They started hanging out in bookstores, where most of the people hanging out were much older than me. So, you know, they kind of mentored me. And I remember my, my, are you going to be in the club kid thing was, this guy said, "If you read, I said, I couldn't pronounce Carewack at the time." I didn't know how and I called Carewack or something like that. I said, "I wrote this book by Jack Carewack." And I said, "I saw this guy look at me." He goes, "You know, that guy wrote this book called On the Road." And he would stop it to cafes all the time. He would get the same thing. What was that? It's a cup of coffee and an apple pie out of a mode. He said, "Oh, you did read it." And so we, and then he's like, "Oh, cool kid, I'll talk to you." So I started hanging out these older hipsters that were like, "Oh, you got to read this. You got to read this. You got to read so he's feeding me all this stuff." And I'm just like, "Kid." You know, it's like, "Give me, give me, give me." He's like feeding it up. So, because of this, it puts me in a position in Chicago, where I'm hanging out with people who are doing improv. I'm hanging out with method actors. And these are all people much older than me. But for some reason, I'm the kid, like, "Oh, yeah. He can hang out. He's cool. He won't tell honest." He won't tell his parents what he's been. They would take me to things. Yeah, it was, it was incredible. You either weird smart kid. I was the weird smart kid. Yeah, yeah. I was the, the, the mascot basically. Right. Yeah. Like, "Oh, we got this kid." And, and I used to, they loved this. I would memorize things and I would stand up on a little chair and I would do. And I could do, lions in the heat and roaming dogs, you remember, I could do the Morrison thing and they'd love that. So, they would make me do it. They would get drunk like, "Do the Morrison thing, kid." And I would do it. So, anyway, I'm around these people who are just feeding me with all this counter-culture knowledge and turning me on the things I would never have been turned on to as a, you know, like, my family. They didn't know any of this stuff. You know, my dad was one of those people like, you know, go to school, get a job, get a good factory job, you know, be done. And I'm not saying he was a bad person. He was a great person. But, you know, that was his way of thinking. All these things that I'm doing, he was just be like, "Okay, whatever." You know, he didn't understand and he didn't care. He knew I was not up to good things according to him, but he wasn't a perfect kid either. So, he just kind of let me go, you know. He's like, "He's doing something, but I'm not sure what it is, but he's not doing drugs." Little did he know. I was. Someone sent me a clip of myself from about two years ago. I watched it and thought, "That guy's on. Sharper, faster, more himself." And I don't remember feeling different then, which means I didn't notice it leaving. Turns out, there's actually a reason for that. Most men start losing testosterone around 30, about 1% every year after that. And a lot of what your body does produce gets locked up by a protein called SHBG. So your body can't even use it. It's like having money in the bank with a frozen account. That's when I started taking Mars men. Now, I'll be honest. I didn't expect much. But a few weeks in, I was back to the 2 a.m. rabbit holes. That guy in the clip started showing back up. Mars men is designed to help free that lock testosterone so your body can actually use it. 8. Natural Clinically Dosed Ingredients. 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And so like this is going on all over the world, right, we're mailing stuff all over the place. I remember this. It's still around. The scene culture and all this stuff. The culture, the Xerox machines came available, then we became our own publishers. The punk rock thing happened, which I was right in the middle of. So all of these things are happening. And I started doing weird things by mail art. So I started doing episodic stories, based on horror stories or whatever, yeah. Sometimes I would write five lines and send to a friend and he would write five lines and send to another friend. And I'd get it back and like, oh wow, okay, that's where we're going. And it was called the, I think the data is called at the exquisite corpse. And we did all these things together. And I looked at it and I said, there's something here, there's something here. And I don't have to go through a publisher to create this art. I don't have to go to an agent. I don't have to do any of these things. I don't have to do a gatekeeper. I can make art that gets to a lot of people and I don't have to go through any corporate anything. Is that what you wanted to do at this point as being an artist? It was what I was. I mean, you were, but I mean, what are you telling dad you're going to do for a living? I didn't have an answer to that. You just hear a lot of snipping and taping upstairs. Yeah, yeah. And at that time I was painting. Okay. And I was doing a lot of large paintings and my family was trying to be supportive, but didn't know how to be because they didn't understand what I was doing. And so like my mom would tell her sisters ask him to do a painting for you. You know, and one of my aunts would say, can you do a painting for me and I'm like, sure. Like here's my color swatches. No. You have to match my furniture, no, so they really didn't get it, but they were trying to be supportive. I didn't want to be mean to them. So like I painted some paintings. But basically I was looking for a new kind of arch because I felt like the media was this canvas that wasn't being fully implemented as to his full potential, because I had a theory that an experience for me was I would see something on TV. I would go find a newspaper or a magazine article about it, then I would go get a book out of the library and I would build this experience around this thing that I'd like latched onto. Who knows how latched onto it, like walking down the street and it was a poster on a pole and it said something. I'm like, what is that about? And then I would follow up on it. Like, would that be cool if there was an art form where I'd built the pathway for people to follow up on something weird that I'd place the place in front of me and say, oh, there's this thing. There's this place. And so I remember my thesis in college was I wrote a book of poems and I made a videotape at the time which was cutting edge. It must have been. Yeah, it was. It was cutting edge. In 1984, it was cutting edge at the time that I did a VHS tape and you would watch the tape and then you would get clues from the book and the tape to go at a certain place at a certain time on a certain day. And if you did, you would see the third act, which was a play of real humans, play it out in front of you as if you weren't there and the third act happened. And my professor was like, wow, what are you smoking kid? I remember jumping up and down after it was over and hugging my girlfriend at the time like, it worked. It worked. It actually worked because I wasn't sure it was going to work because it was a lot of moving parts. Sure. And you really weren't focused on dopamine triggering at this point because you became a master of dopamine. Yeah. But at that point, I was just an unsure kid. You had a stupid idea and I put it together and I'm like, can this work? This might not work. It can work. Yeah. But like, you always have those theater jitters, you know, like, of course, I'm going to suck. But I have those before every show, man, right? So I just said, I wasn't sure it was going to work and I got really happy when it worked. And everybody that did it, like, followed it through told me, like, dude, that was incredible. I read the poems and then I watched the tape and then we went to the performance. It was amazing. Like, it was like, it all made sense. So I was like, yeah, well, good. It was like three acts of boom. So I started playing around with ideas of how can I do this another way? So I played with street theater. I used to do a lot of street theater. I started hanging out with people in Chicago, studied under Dell Close. You studied under Dell? Well, people that hung out with it. I was a little too young for Dell. Yeah. Yeah. Second city. Next generation, I probably would have been there. But, you know, my girlfriend's dad, my girlfriend at the time, her dad was a friend of Dell's. Amazing. So I used to hang out with him. When Dell got sober, apparently, he still hung out at the Earl of Eltown, which was a bar in Eltown, Chicago. And he would go into the bar and drink soda water in line because the bar was where he got inspiration. But he kept going, but he just didn't drink anymore. So yeah, because I started studying the things that he talked about because you might not know this. I told this to the people that the Dell Close Theater and Hollywood and they didn't know this either. Dell was a practicing Golden Dawn magician. I didn't know that. Golden Dawn. Wow. Yeah. So if you look at the portrait at the Dell, if it's still there, at the Dell Close Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, if it's still there, I don't know if it is. I don't think it is. I mean, God for like 10 years. Yeah. But he used to be. If you look at the portrait, a big painting of him on the wall, he's wearing a ring with a pentagram on it. Wow. Yeah. I didn't know that. Some of the weirder little interviews that he did, he does admit to using the Golden Dawn Telesmotic Principles to teach improv. That's amazing. So Telesmotic is when you learn, when you learn ritual, you learn basically theatrical principles. And so you think in your mind, like in front of you, there is an angel. And this is what the angel is wearing and this is the principles of the angel. You learn all the stuff you're projecting. And Dell used that as the method to teach people, this is what you're doing in theater. Like when you're talking to this person in front of you, they're not the person in front of you, they're the person that you're supposed to be talking to in the text. This is an initiation ceremony. Yes. Yes. Two actors. Yeah. Yeah. I never really thought of it that way, but that's really what it is. He never laid it out for most people like that because most people will be like, "Midjika, right." Right. Right. But that's what he was doing. If you want to know what was in that man's mind, he wrote a short-lived DC comic series called Wasteland. I didn't know that either. Yeah, there's like 13 issues. And you can still find them. They're out of print, but you can still find them. And in that, he talks about ritual magic and, okay, Dick makes an appearance, Robert Wilson makes an appearance, Timothy Leary makes an appearance, G Gordon Liddy makes an appearance. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. You got to see that you got to read this. Yes. It came out in the 80s. It's just amazing. So, but that's what that's where it all came from was his improv theories, which everybody knows Delkos is the guy. Yes, he's the guy. That you go to for the theory and then it all came from Golden Dawn. So I'm studying and playing with people that are studying with him and I'm learning from him and I started learning and studying magic and I'm like, oh, this is theater. Okay. I can do this. Yeah, theater. And so putting all this together and out of this, you know, Swiss Army knife that forms in my head of all these influences, I'm like, oh, you know, if I could only do this thing if I had a way to get in front of people. So I started playing around with hypercard and if you remember hypercard, sure, you may have to catch people up. Okay. Hypercard came out right before the web and basically it was hypertext that was localized. So it was in a file. You click on a link and it takes you to another page in the file. It was magic. It was magic. Yeah You click on an image that take you to another page in the file when I saw that my mind went. Yep, but I started putting together a hypercard stack as they were called and right about that time this was 90 All new drinks are now at McDonald's with refreshers like the strawberry water melon refresher and the mango pineapple refresher with popping boba To grafted sodas like the Sprite berry blast with berry flavors and cold foam Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire? Six all new drinks are here now at McDonald's Refreshers contain caffeine three Some are on there. Um, maybe earlier somebody said Go to your Unix machine type into words. L. Y. N. X Space H. C. D. P. Colise last slash String links first browser. Yeah, from the family on the command. Yeah, and I did it And I went tab tab tab click it took me to another system not another page No, the page in another system and that's when my head just went this is it. This is it. This is what I've been looking for I thought hypercard was it. This is hypercard on steroids. This is it and that's that's when the light went off So I was all that was searching Or this way to tell stories Then I thought the way or the way stories happen to you because I think stories happen to you I think story storytelling is the most important thing that humans do And then we shouldn't turn it over to corporations and being counters None of that. It's like a very sacred thing You have a responsibility as a storyteller to shepherd your story and protect it Story was given to you by what who knows what right, but it wasn't you wasn't all you And it wasn't somebody else. It wasn't all them like you of course I stand on the shoulders of giants and I read people and I'm inspired, but it wasn't just that There's like this holy thing that happens like this inspiration. You believe in like the muse the muse absolutely. Yeah, yeah And it says you Have this story to tell and I'm going to give it to you. I'm entrusting you with the story and you go tell this story I think storytellers Used to be revered for a reason is because what they were doing was important So you can break it down to like simple stuff I'm going to tell you a story about this part of the woods where you go and a monster is going to come get you Really what I'm telling you is like there's bears over there and probably don't go there at night. Yep, right? That's what I'm telling you really But what I'm telling you in a way this entertaining mimetic you remember it. Yes, and you're gonna tell your kids Don't go over there because there's monsters There was don't get eaten by the bears, but if you just tell a kid don't get eaten by the bears They're gonna want to go see what's over there. I would have. Yep. You would have of course that we're gonna be It's the first thing we're gonna do. Oh, I don't believe this bear crap You're gonna go over there, right? So you have to tell a story that's gonna be really stick They're gonna repeat it. It's gonna make an impression And they're gonna carry it with them. So you're passing it on right and mimetics remember is from genetics Right. It's a it's a metaphor from genetics So it's something we pass on stories or something we pass on is very important And I'm saying this because I want people to really understand that as an artist Handing your story over to being counters is sacrilege. Don't do it Summer is here, and if you want to actually feel confident less bloated and energize the season It starts with your gut. I thought bloating after every meal was just normal. 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I started taking it for my gut the results I didn't expect other ones that got me thicker hair clear skin no more bloating after meals And I'm not the only one 83% of participants in cowboy's clinical study reported improved gut health 79% less bloating 72% improved digestion 62% fuller thicker hair And cowboy colostrum doesn't strip it down Whole full fat high protein no artificial flavors no fillers vanilla in your ice coffee Strawberry with milk like a milkshake it's effortless and delicious And yes calves get fed first they only collect the surplus For limited time our listeners get up to 25% off their entire order Just head to cowboycolostrum.com/y files and use code y files at checkout That's 25% off when you use code y files at cowboycolostrum.com/y files So I got I got hit by this bolt of lightning as my late friend Ralph Abraham You just say a bolt from the blue and it just struck me like this is it This is the thing and I remember telling friends There's this thing that I'm doing Called bulletin board systems that has a connection to this thing called the internet Which is going to be the next way to tell stories it's going to be the way to publish it's going to be the way to Distribute it's going to be everything and this looked at me like Are you crazy are you nuts? This is like CB radio man It's going to go away in like six months. Yeah, right. I remember somebody telling me of course. Yeah I was on vbs's. I was a weirdo me too. Yeah, and they're like you've been staying for anybody's time in this computer son And I remember showing a friend of mine This is what it's going to be and I showed him links I'm like I can put the story together and the story can have links To the other ideas so you can expand upon the idea or you can explore the idea You can like drill down on certain things And he looked at it and he just said this is an older person um a well-known writer. I won't say who it was He's gone now, but so I don't want to embarrass him even in death. He says Uh When this thing can make me a sandwich. Give me a call. Oh So I said oh well, you know Too bad Um, but I was really convinced. I'm like this is going to be the next wave Well mail art translated well to vbs's and the funny thing was Two of the hobbies I had as a kid was mail art and shortwave I really got into shortwave when I was a kid and all the people that I knew from those Communities started to show up on vbs's. They were some of the first adopters Art Bell. Yep. Shortwave guy shows up on bb. These are the first people doing vbs You know Gofers and ftpsites and all these things I remember man. We're we're available to you know a few Not a lot, but I but I was like it's gonna happen. It's gonna happen I missed those days a little bit. I do too And then nescape happened. Yes, and that's when the boom it blew it blew wide open Yep, and I was sitting right at the right place at the right time with the nuth momentum already Because I'd been doing it before that That is like plowed right into it and rode the wave because At the time that that happened all of a sudden all these businesses We have to have email. We have to have web Who can we call? Oh, there's this weirdo that knows all this stuff and my phone started ringing and then I did a hack Um, which guy from spin magazine wrote about um where uh The Clinton administration came out and said That they were gonna have email in the White House which at that time was like Wow, I could write President white house dot gop not that he's ever gonna answer me, but I could write him and I watched the weps I let watch the server come up and I'm like I bet they didn't lock this down So I sent an email to president whitehouse dot gop And then I sent the second email to president whitehouse dot gop and then a third and a fourth they're like It didn't turn it off. So they had an auto reply Which you had at that time now it comes stock or Eventually came stock But at the time when you deployed your mail server you had to manually change this That when you got an email If you got a second email from that email address you shouldn't send an auto reply right 24 hours later right used to be like if you just did it it came So I started spamming emails in the White House I called it the rain of toads. I did asky pictures of toads. Yeah, and I was raining toads on the White House And we were getting So many repiles back so like it shut down both sides Of the connection. You did a DOS attack on the White House. Yeah, yeah, I did. I did I would ask you art The rain of our e ig n the rain of toads And and then a reporter found out about it and he wrote about it And then next thing you know my phone was just ringing off the hook because This is not the case anymore, but back then if you did a hack And it was a white hat hack and you got away with it You would get a job off for sure Not anymore, no. - Now you just go to jail. - Yes. - And you're banned from corporate life. But back then, people would call you and say, "You know some things about this stuff." And this is a dark arch that nobody knows about yet. - Yeah, now they banned you from the country. - Yeah, exactly, yeah. Now they send you away or put you in jail. - Yeah. - But back then, I got a phone call from the Secret Service. - I was gonna ask. - Yeah, I was very nervous on that phone call. - What's with the toads? - What's with the toads, man? And you're not gonna do that again, are you? Like, I was just testing to see if you put on the auto reply 24-hour pause, you know? It was just, you know, making sure you're secure. And then they, you know, like they left me on after that, but the job offer started pouring in. - Is this before Robert Anton Wilson comes into your life? - Oh, no, no, no. This is way after. - Can we talk about him a little bit? - Yeah, you will roll that back. - Okay. - So before this happened, I'm still in Chicago. And I was in a band like everybody my age. - Is this when you went by Sid with a C? (laughing) - Yeah, yes, I'm like that. - Go ahead and tell him why it's a C, Joseph. (laughing) Sid Vicious, Sid Bennett. - Sid Barrett. - Sid Barrett. - Yeah, but the C. Yeah, I was known at the time for doing a certain drug on a regular basis. - Heroically. - Before, before Terence coined that term, I was a heroic docer. I was a big fan of Jim Morrison, did I mention that? So yes, I was one of those people. And I was always talking about weird stuff, you know, 'cause that was a weird kid. And my guitar player, who was weird himself, but you know, not as weird, I guess, but he loved me 'cause I could introduce him the weird things he hadn't heard of, but he introduced me to a lot of music. So there we go. And one day he just looked at me, he's like, if you read Illuminati's trilogy, I'm like, no. - Just out of the blue, he says that, okay. 'Cause I was talking to cool, 'cause I'd been doing Sid and talking weird things, and he was like, if you read Illuminati's trilogy, I'm like, no, I haven't even heard of it, what was that? But you should read it, man, you should read it, you're in it, I'm like, okay. So I went to the library and went looking for it, and of course it was gone, probably stolen, but I did find another book by the same author called Cosmic Trigger. And then I read it, and blew my mind again. - What was it about Cosmic Trigger? - Oh, it was just like everything he was talking about was everything I was thinking about. It was just like, we made a connection, you know? And he introduced me all this new thinking, these new ways of thinking, new writers I never heard of. Like it was like an off-ramp. - Well, in Cosmic Trigger's Robert Anton Wilson, this is about recognizing signs throughout history and-- - Synchronicity. - Synchronicity. It was about model agnosticism. - Yep. - You know, like the whole idea of like, basically what you learn in theater, which is, especially of disbelief, is the same thing, right? Only he had a mathematical scientific background for it. He had fancy words to put around it. I might go, I know that, yeah. - I love how he talked about meteors being, a meteor could be a sign of something good or something bad, or something good or something bad can happen. And if the meteor just happens to be there, that's the now a Cosmic Trigger. - That's a Cosmic Trigger. He was playing around with the serious stuff that was going on. He basically did a whole exercise in suspension of disbelief for this whole period of his life. And he catalogued it, and he published it as a book, right? And he introduced me to all kinds of new ideas. And one of those ideas was Philip K. Dick, who I had not heard of-- - You had? - I didn't know. I didn't know he wrote Blade Runner at the time, right? But I had seen Blade Runner. I'm like, oh, it's a great film, but I didn't know. I didn't know at that time. And so like, but like, I read about Bob talking about, you gotta read this book, Philip K. Dick, Vals. So anyway. - And then, well, then that's that, then-- - Then we'll read to that. So I look, I'm going to buy more books by him. And I saw a poster on the wall of the, at the time, New Age was a new thing. So it was the '80s. At the New Age bookstore, and they had books by him on the shelf, and they-- - But PKD or R-A-W. - R-A-W. - Okay. And there was a poster on the wall that he was appearing just down the street from where I was living, at a Zen Center. No shit. - Yeah. - Chicago still? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Okay. - So we gotta go there, right? - Right? - Yeah. So I got it over there. So I show up early, and I was a smoker at the time. And I show up, and I'm standing out front smoking a cigarette at a Zen Center. (laughing) And this squabital Irishman comes out and says, "Hey, can you give me one of those?" Like, "Okay." Like I'm Bob, by the way. I'm like, you think, Robert Anthony Wilson, 'cause I didn't know what he looked like. - No. - He's like, "Yeah, yeah." Like I'm doing this thing here. I'm like, "Yeah, I came to see you." We're smoking. He's like, "Don't tell my wife you saw me smoking." (laughing) 'Cause Arlen got on his back for smoking. But yeah, we seared a cigarette. We stood out there for-- - What's going on in your mind? You like, Bob listen, just bummed a cigarette off me. - Yeah, yeah. - You're not freaking out? - No. - Okay. - Yeah, I was like, "Oh, cool, he smokes." - No, he is. - Okay. - You know, go with it. And we just talked about some stuff. And Timothy Leary had just come out with mind mirror on DOS at the time. And I told him like, "It's pretty cool, but you know, it could use some of this and some of that." And he's like, "Well, do you write code?" I'm like, "Yeah, and I'm thinking about it." He's like, "Well, then write code and do it yourself." I'm like, "Good idea." So, we hit it off. We swapped addresses. He was in Los Angeles at the time. And then, you know, like, we traded letters and things like that every once in a while, but, you know, and then the later, a couple of years later, I moved to Santa Cruz completely by accident. Did you know this story? - This is with your girlfriend and Anubis? - Yeah, yeah, by cat. - Yeah, yeah. - Tell, I know this story, but people go. I love Anubis, this is part of the name of Black Cat. - Yeah, we have to get there. So, Cosmic Trigger triggered me to find Valus. - To find Valus? - It was not a printed to time. - Oh, to find the book. - The book. You couldn't find that book. - It was out of print. - Wow, okay. - This was 84 or 5? - Yeah. And it was not a popular book, then. - No. - Phil was not popular then. Like, he wrote Blade Runner, but that was it. Like, none of his stuff is getting made in the movies yet. - Were you aware of Jacques Vallet at this point yet? - I was because I read Passport to McGonia when I was young and I went, yeah, right in my veins. - Yeah, it was like this, this. - I mean, I've heard PKD or people around him say that Valus was a synchronicity with Jacques's name. - Well, apparently it was for me too. Because I don't know why I got on my head. Like, I have to find this book. I have to find this book. It became like an obsession. And I started, there was no internet at the time. So like, you know, this is 84. I'm going to use bookstores. I'm asking people, they never heard of it. - Right. - And I'm like, can I go through your boxes? Like, I'm just like, like, being a nugnic, annoying. And people are like, okay, you would ever do go look for your cosmic thing. And so eventually I did find it in a very weird circumstance. I was going through the yellow pages and just looking for use bookstores 'cause I'd run out of the ones I knew. And I called this one, use bookstore and this lady answered and she said, yes, I think I might have that. I said, well, there's supposedly a trilogy. There's like, she's like, I think I have two of them. So I walk, not too far from where I lived. I walk over, or no, I took the bus and then I walked from the bus stop. And it didn't look like a bookstore. It looked like it might have been a storefront at one time, but it was like the windows were newspapered over. And I knocked in the door and this really nice old lady with silver hair and crystal blue eyes. You know those people that have those blue eyes and it's like, can't stop looking at them? - I think it described her as Elvish. - Yeah, she was short. - Yeah. - And I looked at her and I'm like, wow, okay, you've got an oral lady. And she like took me and all the books were in boxes. Nothing, there was no shelves. It's like she shut the thing down, you know? I'm thinking, okay, maybe she's going out of the business or maybe she never was in business. And she like walked me over to a box and she like pulled out Valus. She said, you know, I've got this one. And then she pulled out another copy of Valus. She said, but I have this one. It was a hard copy. - Oh. - But I was a poor ass little punk rocker at the time. - You didn't take the heart. - Counting my quarters. And so I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, yeah. And so I like, I took the paper back. You know, and I took the paper back and then I watched immediately. I was like, oh, I was remorse. But, you know, did what I had to do. And then when I got home, I'm like, you should have bought that hard bag, dude. You should have bought that hard bag. and I called her and called her and called her to never answer it again and so I walked over there and I banged on the door to see if she could hear me and it was a it was a storefront and Chicago they have these a storefront and then a house above it and it was a railing with a porch and the guy like this guy like walks out the upie there was a thing then he had even had the suspenders if you remember there was a uniform that they all wore and he leans over the the rail he's like what do you want like well the lady sold me a book and I wanted to get the other book I didn't he's like what do you have what do you do what are you talking about get out of here it's not been a store for a long time to sleeve he was like angry it's not been a store yeah for a long time for a long time yeah what's that about I don't know and he's being real rude to me he's like yeah get out of here like like you know like I was ruining his day and I'm thinking maybe his mom because he looks about right to be the age of his mom maybe his mom sold me the book and wasn't supposed to was I don't know he was like just he just wanted me away from his house and so I left and I just kept going back and calling never ever ever got anybody answered the phone or the door ever again was that it do you think that was a supernatural experience or just a weird circumstance I think it was a weird circumstance that that fits well as a as a supernatural experience yeah I mean it reads well it's good reads well yeah you know and it doesn't have to be supernatural it would be supernatural that's that's you know what's that yeah she could have like been in the store when I called and picked up the phone when I called she probably didn't run the store in the store did not okay it was in business and knew that she had the book I was looking for she maybe had dementia I don't know you know and the reason dude was mad because he didn't know this is so unlikely he didn't know mom right had let me into the house you know and you know back then I used to dress like a punk rocker so I did not look like a yuppie friendly at all so he's like get these guys probably gonna break into my house you know get moving so so anyway I get that I get get valus and it just absolutely melts my brain melt melted me down like I admit I probably was having a manic episode it really did something to me like really touched me hard and what was the theme in valus that that spoke to you I couldn't point to any one thing the omniscience of the of it no no it wasn't that it was that at the same time that I found the book I found a used copy of the interview I think Rickman did with Philip K dick and he published like three books of the interview and so I read that while I was reading valus and then I realized this was a true story this really happened to this guy yeah but it did he said it did yeah and you have every I've seen him give that talk in mats and 77 yeah yeah yeah he said he said all this stuff is I write about real stuff yeah yeah the Nazis did win the war yeah not in this timeline yeah exactly yeah yeah everybody thought he was nuts I love watching the audience during the break they thought he was just gonna talk about sci-fi oh it's a bit no like half of them like always do it a bit the other half like I think he's lost his mind right this is all of simulation yeah 77 yeah yeah yeah so of course this is mind blowing in a 84 and this melts my mind of course this melts my mind and then all this stuff like I started seeing signs you know like yep every like you like Bob Wilson said in Cosmic Trigger he said he was playing Bavarian TV where he would flip the channels and then he would get sentences yes he's like I might feel K dick the fucking TV's talking to me so like so you know like he would do that and Del close had something called a one more story yeah yeah yeah yeah that was a very TV yeah yeah yeah and and so I started having this these experiences that I couldn't turn off and and I was like what what's going on you know and so I started getting um I was I was buying weird pamphlets any weird pamphlet I get my hands on and so I got this weird magazine that was being published at a Berkeley called monitor or at the time he was called um high for tears on it was a Xerox art and I found out about them through Xerox art stuff and I I sent the way and I got the pamphlet and it was all this stuff up the okay dick at Robert time Wilson I was like what is this you know it was like it became onto two thousand it was this whole culture mm-hmm that eventually became the internet yes I mean they really did they were wired before wired that's right and they do the wired people actually so um so I'm like having all these things pop up like Berkeley California but North East Bay Bay Area California like you like in my face like everywhere I was looking it was like Bay Area California and I knew nothing about the Bay Area in California you know and then one day I just like tell my girlfriend I'm like let's move to California I mean really let's just pack up and go like what's stopping us and she was just crazy enough that she said yes she's like yeah yeah let's go okay so we did we literally just like had a garage sale paired down all the big stuff put all the stuff that would fit in the car the cat and us and off we got a car to up carrier and off we went and did you have a destination in mind yes Berkeley so you were heading to Berkeley but so but on our way yep I'm telling you're I want to go through LA so we're gonna we took Route 66 from Chicago to LA he retraced Route 66 yep and I said I'm gonna show you some things as I'd been to LA and I hitchhiked up Highway 1 one time um in early 80s when I was in college on a summer I'd spent in California and I said I'm gonna take you and show you all these things that I know like we're gonna go through LA I'm gonna show the Jim Morrison places I know you know Love Street and the weird store and I know all these places I'm gonna show you I know where studio was we're gonna stay at the what that was I think then the the I've stayed there a couple times I can't think of the name it was it was a motel that was across the street from their studio where he lived in his room where you can rent or who lived Jim Morrison oh okay he lived in this room the other something it was it was on last year ago and so I showed her all the spots in LA and then we drove up Highway 1 I'm like you're gonna love this by the way we got to stop at the Henry Miller Museum in Big Sur so we did and then I'm gonna show you the cabin because it was still there where Kerouac wrote Big Sur yes you could still hike up back there it was still there it's it's like an Airbnb or something now but it's not a cabin anymore beautiful up there yeah yeah we hiked up saw the cabin and then on our way to Berkeley we pulled over to get gas and coffee at this town I'd never heard of before called Santa Cruz and I said hmm this is cool and we went to a cafe because they had a picture of JR Bob Dobs on the on the front of it and you just like that that must be friendly yep it's a subgenius one of us one of us and so we went in and then there was a crazy person sitting at the table who told me all the reasons I didn't want to go to Berkeley man because Berkeley's done we're all here now man and Santa Cruz man and this guy turned out to be right yeah he like took me walk me around and it was just happening this is before the earthquake it was a crazy town like jugglers and fire breathers downtown and like it was awesome you know like yeah let's try this let's try this so we just stayed there and I moved into a place upstairs and the lady downstairs I saw her doing Tai Chi in her garden one day and so I yelled over the rail and say hey I'm your neighbor I just moved here and then went downstairs and I met her and she turned out to be Nina Gerboy who was Timothy Larry Secretary from Millbrook and then upstairs was Bob 40 it was like friends with Gordon Watson and it was friends with everybody and like I'm just like whoa how did this happen and you knew all these names I knew all the names but I didn't know these people right I didn't even know where they existed and so they're like oh yeah we know this and this is it's like oh cool and now I'm still talking to Bob he was in LA and then I'm talking to Nina one day Gerboy and she said well you know Bob she's like I know Bob and she's like Bob's moving here because his kids are here I'm like what he's moving the senators his kids are in Santa Cruz you said yeah they don't live here I'm like synchronously okay I was supposed to end up here yes this is what supposed to happen you know I was not supposed to go to Berkeley nope I was supposed to hit where I hit in the middle of between LA and Berkeley this place called Santa Cruz which I had never heard of turned out to be the place I needed to be yeah I met all these people I needed to meet right there and Bob was on his way and Bob was on his way which was weird so that's the Bob story and that's the Phil story because as I often say what pushed me onto that trip that weird trip was Philip Haydick and Valus which was started by Bob his book like and I don't know why that stuck like Valus I didn't do nothing about it what it was about nothing other than Bob said it was weird it must really be weird because I'm reading this book and it's really weird you know so I wanted I really wanted to know what that was about and it was a virus it really was I read that I read Valus and it just absolutely threw me for a loop but I don't mean it a bad way I mean I tell people this a lot of times and some people understand it some don't but a breakthrough is necessarily preceded by a breakdown you have to break down before you can break through right and I needed a breakdown at the time like I was a little too rigid in some things I was gonna stay in Chicago forever I was gonna be a punk rock musician none of that happened none of it was what was supposed to happen like I was supposed to go do this other thing and I saw something shining in the Bay Area which I did end up in the Bay Area the larger Bay Area yeah because 90 miles south of San Francisco is Santa Cruz and most of the people that used to live in San Francisco had moved to Santa Cruz the people I wanted to know they'd all like oh the city's getting too big we got to migrate let's go to the country Santa Cruz is basically the country it's a little surf town and so I saw something shining in the distance when I was hearing all this stuff about the Bay Area of San Francisco like there's something going on there there's something you need to be a part of also didn't know this was gonna happen but boom the dot com thing happened right right a lot of the people that worked it apple and ended up working other places we were we all came from Santa Cruz S.C.A. a C.O. was there boredom was there there was all this stuff going on in Santa Cruz that was tech oriented and a lot of the really edgy and girly linear was there at the time he was a street musician he wasn't doing virtual reality yet and he was like playing weird African street music street instruments on the street you know with his dreads and like look like he always looked but there was all this stuff going on Dan Maps was there there was all these people that you would know now but you didn't know then they were just people hanging out in this collective weird area of people doing raves and drugs and computers that is what we were doing that's what you're doing and just coming up with weird ideas and and you know friends of the mechanis were there I met Dennis a couple times they were met Terrence but I met Dennis a couple times he was actually in my building hanging out so I hung out with him this so all these people Tim were used to stop by our building because Nina was there whenever he was coming through town he I'd walk downstairs oh Tim were you okay crazy yeah Bob was always over there once he moved like it was this weird little apartment building 321 second street is still there looks like a ship it's like all the doors have portals is this when you started working for Bob or with Bob yeah yeah so he moved to Santa Cruz of course he got a lot of opportunities to speak in the Bay Area he did not drive I asked him I asked him why he told me and then I found a later why I asked him why you don't why don't you drive you have a car he's like Salvador not only didn't drive I'm like yeah good enough that was it that was it Bob was Robert Anthony Wilson what do you do and that was a good enough answer for me it is okay but as it turned out what I found out was he had polio when he was a kid yes and as you know these people they got over polio when they were a kid have a relapse when they're older most of the time and he did so it was hard for him to press the pedals and sure he couldn't be sure he would be able to push the brake and hold the brake and so he would need somebody to drive him so I became the driver did you go to his funeral and 2007 you didn't no I didn't get to I was in Santa Barbara at the time and actually that at the point that I found out that he had passed I was actually out of the country so and that made me sad I'm sure but I did visit you know afterwards okay so you're driving your driving driving Bob and I guess we're getting is this when he starts teaching you about operation mind fuck yeah so we so we we're in the car together a lot a lot with a lot of time yes you know I'm driving he's riding you know and he would tell me he would regale me with stories I would regale him with my crazy ideas and he would tell me that my ideas were probably not as crazy as I thought they were did you know lucky were did you just be hanging out with this guy no I was just riding the wave man oh boy I didn't want to like think about the moment because like you know if you think about the moment the moment is gone that's true I'm like I'm just gonna just gonna that's like you're in the bath you know don't think too hard yeah don't think too hard about this no but I'm jealous of the story so it was so we got to swap a lot of ideas um at the time um he had just written a book which is reissued um on his daughter started to press to reissue all his books and they asked me to write the forward to that book which is out now it's called realities which you can get away with uh okay I have to grab that it's a screenplay um at the time we were trying to get that made it to an independent film we didn't that didn't happen but we we got close and he was telling me all kinds of stories about he wanted to be a director and with most people are always surprised when I tell him that but he did um his favorite uh his idol was Orson Wells interesting and Edward interesting and at the time Edward his was not did not have the resurgence that he's had at that time um people like Bob and I loved Edward sure but most people didn't know who Edward was because what was it about Edward that attracted you guys the fact that he didn't let lack of talent stop him in that not one minute that he stopped he didn't even pause are you have to you have to tell us who Edward does them Edward he was taking a swipe at it yeah yeah yeah it wasn't a swipe um no the tenacity man come on that's it he wouldn't disagree it was beautiful it was beautiful I'm not going to let this stop me yeah right yeah yeah um Edward was a guy who made films how would you say um psychotronic yeah yeah psychotronic films and if you watch the films um there's moments where it's so clear that it's it's been a it's a disaster it's happening like that's yes it's so oh and he doesn't stop roly and he doesn't edit just like that was cut print perfect move on you know great night is gummies and Edward movies man yeah yeah so if if you don't know um if people often ask me I haven't seen that would film I'm like you know everybody has playing knife from outer spaces the one that they recommend mm-hmm I said okay that's good if you want to get into the into the weeds if you want to you deep cut Edward watch orgy of the dead I don't think I've seen that color what his first color film I'm gonna check that out this weekend he hired strippers of course he did as the as the actors it all takes place in in a graveyard yeah the only people the the only actors are strippers and kriz well orgy the dead and it's on the list two two moments from that are my favorite moments in film the first one is he's he's there's this thing going on where he's like telling these people to throw gold coins while these dancers dancing her dance and he goes throw more gold and you hear them held hitting her and clearly they're spray painted poker chips yeah you can tell like you think I know that's a poker chip I know what that is not a good poker chip but a cheap poker chip that you bought a great drugstore not not like when you get a casino you know plan IV VFX on on display again yeah um the other thing that that he did in uh orgy of the dead which is another fine moment in film is there's a scene where the two the two main actors who are like the ones drawn into this horror story um is a man-to-woman driving a car as it was a convertible and they're going down the road and the guy goes I can't see it's too dark and next cut is a shot of him in the car driving in broad daylight desert sun broad daylight high noon and then cut back to the dark I can't see it's so dark it's never explained never explained never So that's that's it. I love it. I love it. Yeah. So Morrison Wells was interesting because it's kind of a mini A.R.G. sort of. -F is for fake? -Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, Bob and I traded movies. So he turned me on to "F is for fake". I turned him on to "Soft Self Portrait", which he had not seen, which was a Salvador Dolly thing that Orson Wells did. And then he turned me on to, he turned me on to, he liked all the weird stuff that Wells did after he left Hollywood. -Yeah. -Yeah. So the trial, like all that stuff he did, the black and white stuff, like low budget, but good stuff. -The chubby Wells. -The chubby Wells, but some good stuff. -Oh, yeah. -Yeah, "F is for fake" is fantastic. So we would, and then he didn't know that "Soft Self Portrait" he did a whole thing where several Dolly was painting the sky. He's like, "What?" So he had to go see that. So, yeah, we would trade Orson Wells stories. And he turned me on to, apparently, clearly, not apparently. Clearly, he knew much more about things that I knew. And so I would give him one thing, he'd give me 10 things. -Sure. -So it was like riding around with him was like getting homework, you know. Like, then I'd come back from driving him and I'd have like this list of, "God, I get this stuff now, you know." -Did you know he was a mentor for you? -At the time? -Did I know what? -That he was your mentor? -You were like, "This guy's my Yoda." -He was a mentor before I met him, because, like I said, when I read Cosmic Trigger, I finally got a copy of "Luminatus." And then I read everything he wrote. You know, I was like, "Clearly, my Yoda." -Yes. -Maybe even before Yoda, but he was my Yoda. -Yeah? -And then when I fell into the situation where I was living in the same city as him and building full of people that he knew. And then he asked me to go boy, he's like, "I drove her around." She was older, and she published her book one foot in the future. And she couldn't drive either, because she had vision problems. So I drove her around, and he asked, "Will he need it?" He's like, "Do you have anybody to drive me around?" And he was like, "Jo, he's a great driver." -Jo's the weirdo driver. -He's the weirdo driver. So, like, Bob's like, "Oh, yeah, I like him. Yeah, yeah." So then I was this driver. -And you're just drinking it up. -Oh, yeah. I'm just riding it out. -Before we go to our first break. -No pun intended. -Before we go to our first break, can you take us through the Estonian story? -Yeah, so he. -Unless there's something in between. -No, no, no. That's about the same time. -Okay. -So, and I was driving him. So, he asked me, he's like, "I've got this weekend at Estonian that I booked." -And Estonian is this. -If he's retreated. All the projects started. Guys are going to put up there. -Oh, yeah, yeah. Everybody's there. -Rustle park. Everybody. It's kind of like the home base for all the weird stuff. -Engos Juan's hanging out. Jocolize everybody's there. -So you go to Estonian, you see these people. They're just hanging out. Estolin is a big sir. It's on a cliff. It's overlooking the Monterey Bay. In the cliff sides, there's natural hot springs. They come out of the cliffs and they've carved hot tubs. So, all this hot tub bureaucracy happens in Estonia. All these hippie people are like tripping and sitting in hot tubs and thinking about the next great project, you know. Amazing. So, Jeffrey Michelin was just in here telling Estonian stories. -Oh, yeah? -Yeah, just the great stories. The Estonian stories are amazing. I could tell you some stories, but anyway. So Bob asked me, he's like, "Would you want to go to Estonian and spend the weekend and drive me?" And then, "Help me do this thing. I've got this idea, but I don't. It's like, I have this idea. I want to do this thing. I want something to happen. I want it to be an experience for these people to come and see me for the weekend." And I said, "I've got an idea. Have you heard of a LARP?" He's like, "Uh, yeah, yeah. I think I've heard about that." Like, "Yeah, let's do an Illuminati LARP." -An Illuminati LARP? -And you're just the guy to do it. -Yes, of course. -He's where it all came from. -Yeah. And so, he said, "So, what's LARP? I didn't know the term went back that far." "Yo, yeah, LARPs are going on then. Yeah. I think the vampire LARPs were happening at that time." So, people were, people were LARPing. -And what's it stand for? -I've actually roleplayed a game. So, Santa Cruz was LARP central because you have to remember something. Nerd things happen first in Santa Cruz, or at least they used to. And then they go to the rest of the world because you see Santa Cruz is there. And the biggest congregation of nerds I've ever met in my life was in Santa Cruz in the 80s. And so, there was all kinds of LARPing going on. And so, I never LARPed, but I observed it and I had friends at LARPed. And so, I would read the books and like, "Hmm, this is theater of a sort." And I can do something with this. But I'm not going to go just up on a vampire on the streets of Santa Cruz and play LARP with you guys. Sorry. But I am going to look at it, you know, from the far and go, "How can I use this in the next theater piece?" Because I want to do the thing, something that crosses the pricinium where the actors come off the stage and become intermingled with the audience and then you lose track of who's who. Yeah, I've heard you tell that story about the two bleachers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, tell that real fast. That was at the Kirk Douglas. Yes. Yeah, yeah. This is essentially Tony and Tina's wedding. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you go to this thing, there's this theater. Which I didn't know what it was. Somebody said, "There's a theater piece you should go see." Yeah. Didn't give me any information. Just kind of like, you got to see this. Theater pieces to see. So, I go to this thing and I'm sitting and walking to, there's no stage. There's two bleachers facing each other. Like the portable bleachers that you have for events. Yeah. And we're all just sitting there and sitting there and sitting there and sitting there. And of course, the longer you sit there, the people start making smart remarks. You know, like, "Oh, what are we going to sit here forever?" And that started building up where everybody was quite equipping this and that. And then the actors that were embedded, which we didn't know, were masters of grabbing that and turning it into dialogue. And like, before we knew it, we were in the midst of this thing that was happening. And the story was being told, "When did you catch on?" I started to catch on. They were good. I started to catch on halfway through. I'm like, first I was like, "Something's going on here." And then like, I started watching people and then I wasn't able to, like, say that is definitely an actor. No, but a Chicago improv guy can sniff it out. Yeah. Yeah. There's something, something to miss here. Right. Right. And then, but then I was like, I think he's an actor, but that guy could just improv that because an improv guy will also think, you know, I would have been prod that. Right. And I improbbed into it. So, like, you're like, I wasn't one of them. And they held, they held character all the way to the end. They didn't take a bow. We all walked out together to the front of the theater, caught our cabs and ubers and went home. That was it. And that's it. Yeah. That was it. It was an event. You're my most beloved, right? I loved it. They got me. They got me. They got all of us. All of us. And I'm not even sure who they is. Right. What was the story about? It was a story about a guy he was trying to write a play. And he was neglecting his family. And he was like, he was basically about the writing of a play and how it ruined this guy's family. I wonder if that's the same story they did every time they did the show or if it's different. I hope not. I hope probably not. I hope it was improbbed every time. This is like the Harold. This is, it's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. So that's kind of, it leads back to like, what we were doing with Bob. I was like, yes. We can, like, if we do this right, people are not going to know who's who. I want to make sure nobody knows who's who. And like, everybody's looking at everybody else with suspicion. It's going to be a real weekend with the Illuminati, man. And, and Bob will love that. Of course. He's like, go for it, dude. He's like, he's like, you need me to play a part. I'm like, yeah, you play Robert out of that Wilson. And I play your assistant. And nobody's going to know that I'm puppet mastering this thing. Right. Because I'm your assistant. And like, I'm looking around like everybody else. And puppet master, that's the term of the game of the game runner. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I basically, I was the game runner. But nobody ever suspected me. Nobody ever suspected me till the very, even when it was over, nobody ever suspected me. How did you integrate the game into the Estolan? What was happening? Well, the weekend was, well, you know, you stay at Estolan. Yep. And you have a little cottage or like, you stay in like dormitory or whatever, however you do it, you have different levels. And, and Bob did a lecture every night. So they showed up. And he would tell you something which fit into the story or story keyed off of that from there. And he would tell you like, you know, one of his his thing, you know, he'd do his stick. And, and so that's how it fit together. It's like you were hanging out with Robert downtown. Wilson for a weekend. But the cool thing was, because it was Eselin, even when he wasn't giving a lecture, like sitting in the chat hall or whatever, people would gather around and tell me stories or like, let me tell you my story, like you know what happens with people like Bob? And so everybody became very immersed in this thing and then there was this game going on, which they knew about, 'cause we told them in the beginning, there's a game, you're playing it now, you were playing it before you walked in here, you'll be playing it when you leave. - That's what you told them, and that's it? - Yeah, yeah. There's a couple of groups wandering around that will try to recruit you. You should join them, or maybe not, that's it. So I went around recruiting a couple of people. - Oh, this is crazy. - So I like found people like off, like when they weren't with anybody else and I walked it to them and I had this little chit that I handed them and it said, you've just been assassinated. And I would assassinate somebody, but anyway, just part of the game, not a game, man. Come on, come on, I take them to a room and I put them through this ritual where I resurrected them. - Whoa. - And I'm like, now you were a member of my group, except I was representing like five groups. - Sure. - Yeah. - Your game running. - A lumenatus, that's right. - Yeah, you never know who's on what side, 'cause they're on all sides. - That's right. - So then, then what's my mission? I give them a mission. This guy and this guy, this guy is part of your group as well. And sometimes they were and sometimes they weren't. So they walk up to somebody like, part of your group, man, and this is a guy like, what are you talking about? So like, people were like, just freaking out. The beauty of the thing, I think, was at the very end, when he was doing the last lecture, at the end of the last lecture, I didn't know this was gonna happen. One of the players had kept the chit that I killed him with. He walked up the bob and put the chit in his hand, and he's like, you've just been killed. You know, I remember my group. And everybody stood up and cheered. - That's amazing. - He's the winner. - That's amazing. How long did the game last all weekend? - Three days, yeah. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, so he killed Bob at the end. Which, I didn't see that coming. - No. - But I kept telling people like, like, take your own initiative. Take your own initiative. Think for yourself. Question authority, take your own initiative. You know, and he got it. He's like, oh yeah, I could kill somebody. I've got this chit that he killed me with. I could kill somebody with this chit. And who am I gonna get? Him, the leader. - Question everybody, do you own research? - Yeah, that's a good time to take a break 'cause that stuff is gonna come up again. Be right back. So, hanging out with Bob Estelen on the weekends. What's your day job? - I was building the injectors for a atmospheric chemical vapor deposition reactors. - What? - Which is the machine that was used to make IC chips. So, the silicon wafer goes down a belt. - Yeah. - Two curtains of nitrogen come down. Poof, diboring, phosphine, woof, big flame. You got a circuit board. - Okay. - That's cool. - Yeah. So, the injectors are the units that, like, knew what chemicals to release and when to release and how much and when to stop. And it was like this really intricate device that was built. It was a company that also did military hardware. How did you get from there to emery and patents? (laughs) I mean, that seems like a little jump, a leap. - Well, no. I went from there to working in tech as doing relational databases. At that time, the first one that I started working on was called Fox Pro. It was a Microsoft product. I think it was inquired, but it was a Microsoft product. Sequel had not made an appearance yet, but it was about to. - Thank goodness for Sequel. - No doubt. I was completely immersed in this idea of the concept of a book being something that was about to change with the digital media. And at the time, the digital media was so new that what I was talking about this thing, people, it was very few people that knew what I was talking about and didn't think I was crazy. And then I met people like the Warnox, John Warnox and his son Chris and other people like that that understood the lingo that I was spouting. And they're like, oh yeah, books, digital books, it's gonna be a thing. You know what I said, well, that happens. The concept of a book changes because it goes from being a physical thing to being a unit of measure of knowledge. - Okay. - Which it is. - Absolutely. - Now it is definitely in a database. - Yes. - Like this is a book, what does that mean? It means it could be an ever changing series of words. - Yes. - Also called large language model. - Yes. - So I was playing with all these - Yeah, you were building a LLM in the 90s. - Yeah, yeah. - Using a relative relational database. 'Cause that's all we had. So, and we didn't have a lot of memory to pass around. There was a lot of processing power to pass around. Definitely didn't have what we have now, which is using graphic chips 'cause they do floating points so well. We hadn't thought about that. They did exist, but we didn't think about that. So processing power was at a premium. Memory was at a premium. Storage space was at a premium. Because this space was expensive and slow, unreliable. So all these things were at a premium. And so all the ideas I had were not quite ready to be implemented because the infrastructure wasn't there, right? But I knew it was going to be. So I was like designing all these things. And I started working at places like Adobe because when I talked about eBooks, because remember, I started talking about this before. ePub existed, there was no Kindle. I didn't even think it was on Amazon. - No. - But there was this thing called portable document format. - Yes. - And I realized that there was all these things that was not being used for. Because it was a really rich format. Most people didn't know that you could embed video and trigger events and like all these things you could do. So I started working at Adobe simply because I wanted to work with the technologies that I thought was going to be the first one out of the gate for eBooks. Because I had a vision or a book that would become much more than a book. Because again, when I saw links, I was like, it can reach out and touch other data and bring it back. - Yes. So like this link can always change 'cause I can change it over here. This data is always changing. So it's a story that's never the same twice. - Sure, it's just a variable inside the dock. - Exactly. - So you saw the PDF as a multimedia device, wouldn't it? - Yeah, exactly. - Most people were just using it for docking. - John used to call it a platform, which confused me at first, but then when I started working for him and like realized what was going on there, I was like, oh, he's right. I think that was amazing. I mean, one of the founders of Silicon Valley, and when I watched him write a program in PostScript one time, I was like, what's, wow. And most people don't realize that PDF is just short handed PostScript. That's all it is. And so when I looked at that, I'm like, okay, that's what I want to do. I want to build something and I'm going to use this. I know there will be other things down the line, but right now this is what we have. And that's what I want to build. I want to build something with this. And so we're working at this company and we'll have the deepest look into what this thing can do, what the feature set is now, what it will be in the feature can even drive the feature set as a product manager, which I did. So that's, everybody says, why would you go and jump onto Adobe? I'm like, because every tech job I've ever had is served a interior motive, is helping me achieve something with an art project that I had in mind. - Of course. - Always. - And was that the Emery project? - Yeah, yeah. - So how did that work? - So this is, I was working with the concepts that were coming out of places like MIT. There was a kid that wrote, and I say kid, he was a kid at the time. The kid that wrote this algorithm called, I can't remember what it was called. Anyway, he wrote an algorithm for recommendation, which at that time was like, nobody ever heard such a thing. - Right, what is that? - Yeah. - And he did it for music. I think I you me, I you me ended up using it. Remember the early pre-Apple music scene, there was, it came out of Santa Cruz. And so somebody in Santa Cruz, turned me on to this algorithm, this guy had written it, which was basically Bayesian. It's like, how can I choose something and how can it learn about what I like and make recommendations to me? - And you liked Bayesian because that could change over time. - Exactly, it was he was he was he was he was he can learn. - Yes, so. - And now the biggest companies in the world are based on that algorithm. - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But at that time, it was. - Nobody knew. - Something a bunch of nerds in a basement would talk about, but it was about it. - Right. - Yeah, it was out of his to. - Yeah, exactly. - Micos. - Micos. - Hotbott. So I was looking at that and I was thinking, you know, I would like a story that had access to something like that. Ringo was the algorithm. Finally, I finally remembered. Something like that. And I could use something like Ringo 'cause he put it in the open source space. I'm like, I can take this and I can modify it. And if I have this algorithm between a bunch of content and the user and they go through the algorithm, the algorithm can help a story be told and it's not the same story every time. So based on who you are and what you've done and what you do, you will get a story that is different than what I do and what I've done. - Yes. - So I have a different story than you have but it's all coming from the same repository. - Yep. - Right, this big at the time wasn't Fox Pro but it was like Fox Pro database that I was using. It was just all this stuff that I was, you know, there was some choosing that went on like, you know, it was curated by me. So I didn't just put everything in there. Like I chose things to put in there. It's like, you know, Valverian sure, goes in. Commander X, absolutely. You know, like all the weird stuff. - Yep. - Church of subgenius, yeah, absolutely. Discording, yes, goes in there. I just can't see, it's shoving this stuff in this database and then-- - This is all theories and philosophies and stories. - Yeah. - That are interesting to you. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - All the subculture stuff. - All the weird stuff. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this, and you're basically training a model on the weird stuff. - Exactly, exactly. So, and I had a pretty primitive chatbot interface between the repository and the user. So the user was basically talking through a chatbot. What eventually became a chatbot, I was working with early code. - Yep. - What became a chatbot. And if this sounds very familiar, a chatbot using an algorithm to talk to a database, it's called chatgbt. It's just much more refined than what I was doing. - Or a liza. - Or a liza. But, you know, at the time, again, I didn't have the processing power. I was using an SGI Indie. Then it walked out the door with me because it was going to get thrown away. - I love my Indie. I love the blue pizza box. - Exactly. - It's a great machine. Oh, so you use a MySQL on there, I bet. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Nice. - Yeah, early. - Yeah, very early. So, I'm doing this stuff, trying to come up with a new way to tell a story. And what my biggest influence was, and this might be weird to you, but William S. Burrows and Brian Geisen did this thing called the third mind experiments, where they were cutting upwards and putting in a hat or a box or whatever and pouring it out into, you know, pasting them together. So, can you explain what the cut up, how that works? - The cut up method came out of data originally, which, you know, corresponded at the same time that they were doing exquisite corpse, but they were doing cut up poems and cut up stories, where you just like would take text and cut it into sentences or paragraphs or words and put them all into like a bag or a box and shake them up and then pour them out and like put them together, kind of like those refrigerator magnets through the words, and you would construct stories in random, in other words, randomicity was constructing the story or at least it was giving you a direction for a story. So it was a way to get influence. Brian Eno does this kind of thing with his oblique strategies, like just come up with something, you know? So, I was influenced by that and I said, well, if I've got this database, which I've marked for drivability with XML into areas of word and you know, like all the stuff that goes with that, like it's a word that's relational to these other words for this reason. It's a sentence that's related to all these other sentences or words in this kind of way. - This is predictive inference as well. - Exactly. - Yeah. - Paragraphs, pages, you know, basically like breaking down my units and then it comes back to you and it's composed at random 'cause I put randomicity into it. It's a cut up, but it's not using paper and scissors and bags, it's using a database full of words. - This is crazy ahead of its time. - Yeah, you didn't know that. You didn't know you were building something. - Well, I had a friend, a Genesis P. Orch, who was friends with William Burroughs, who introduced me to William Burroughs. Never met Bill in person, but we had a phone thing going on. 'Cause he didn't do what I was doing and he said, "Oh, you should talk to William." - Yes, please. - Yeah, I would. - Oh yeah? - Yeah. - And so he put me in touch with Bill. And I told Bill what I was doing and you know, the way he talks, he said to me, I don't absolutely understand all the technical things you're doing, my boy, but I see him, you got the sense of the project. (laughing) - You did? - Yeah. And I said, "What I'm doing is updating what you and Brian were doing with modern technology." - Were users accessing this yet? - For you, just talking. - No, okay. - Just me, I was the user. - So we're not up to Ezekiel yet, are we? - No, okay. - Primary user. And I started getting, just like Bill and Brian did, I started getting bizarre, weird things coming out of this machine. And it was like making weird sentences. So I showed to Nick Herbert, my friend, the physicist, who had done an experiment in Livermore called the Metaphase typewriter. - Yes. - And they were just having an IBM Selectrix, hooked up some random things like just randomly typing and they apparently were able to channel Houdini. - Yes. I know exactly where you're talking. - Yeah, it's a great story. Metaphase typewriter, you look it up. So I showed Nick, and he just like, he has this way of laughing when he really likes something. He goes, and he did that. And I'm like, so I've hit on something. 'Cause Nick gave me the sneaker. And so he liked what I was doing. Bill Burrow's liked what I was doing. Just a few hours like what I was doing. I liked what I was doing. What were you asking, Emery? What were the responses like? - I was just having random conversations. It was like, well, what do you think of Valvilarian? And then the weird, 'cause I was trying to see what kind of answers I'm gonna get. - Sure. - Are they gonna be coherent? It's for a while they weren't. But as this thing built up a backlog, it was building a log of good answers, which I was logging, this was all manual. Like I wasn't able to automate a lot of this. So I would get an answer, and I would tag it in XML, good answer, bad answer, you know. And I would just sit there all night. - This is exactly how it works now. This is training an AI, exactly this way. It's just automated. - Just training this thing all by myself. And luckily, I didn't have a database like they do now, that the large language model's one person couldn't do it. - Right, 27 billion parameters. - We have to open up to it. But at the time, I was growing this thing manually. - So I was manually tagging. - Are you obsessed with this product? - Absolutely, absolutely. Lost a girlfriend over this. - I bet, 'cause you're like, that's not a verb. That's not a verb. - She would go to bed and wake up, and I'd still be in my home office. She's like, are you going to work today? Yeah, is it time? Okay, bye. - Just talking words. - Yeah. She literally got so mad at me one time that she took a baseball bat to the computer. - No. - Yeah, when I was in the shower. I like, taking a shower, and I was gonna go back. (laughing) And I come in and she's beating the machine to death. And I'm like. - Not the indie. - No, no, no, no, no, no. So it was an old Mac SE that I was using as the interface. - I still have one of those. - Yeah. Luckily I had a exterior drive, and she didn't know what that was. (laughing) So she thought she was killing the machine. - Right. - She wasn't. - You didn't kill the heart. (laughing) Or was it Thanos says, you should have gone for the head. (laughing) - So she didn't go for the head. So anyway, so I'm doing this. And I am staying up all night, and I'm talking to people at parties about what I'm doing. And these are tech people who are just like, dude, you need to get out more. Like you need to. You need, what are you doing, you know? Is it time for an intervention? And like, you just don't understand. You don't understand, you don't understand. So it's like the same thing I had with Dallas, where I just got moved in, and I admit, I've come to terms with it. I have a little bit of OCD going on. Yeah, I have to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, I was in the early internet culture in the 80s and 90s, and I would have thought you were nuts. Like, what are you doing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is this for? Exactly. That's what most people were saying. And you're like, it's, I got it, I got it. It's good. It's good. Right. You don't need to know. It's a mad scientist. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. In fact-- But soon, Emory starts to come to life. Well, I started getting coherent answers. Like, that I could read it and understand what was being said. You're nuts? And then you're not freaking out yet? I was still in the zone, right? You still felt like you were in control? No. You didn't. No. People that I know that know me well and see this will be like, yep, that's him. Know that I don't get freaked out when weird things are happening? No. I go with it. I just go with it, right? And afterwards, when I think about it, I'd be like, ooh, that was kind of weird. But when I-- when I-- in the moments, maybe it's all the improv training or the method acting. It's like, I fall into this thing and like, this is who I am. This is what I'm doing. And plus, I got a little OCD going on. Only later, you're like, that was probably a bad idea. Yeah, exactly. It's like, why did I do that? Why did I let that happen? So being neurodivergent, though, has its benefits-- During the clip. --which is you just go with it sometimes. And sometimes, you go what would be called too far by some people. And by me, just far enough. Like, I wouldn't have got to where I was with those experiments if I hadn't, you know, obsessed. 100% agree. Yeah. I mean, to the point where when I finally put this machine together, we compiled everything and put it on the Indie. For Nagel Day-- For the non-nerads, Indie's SGI is a much more powerful machine. Yes, at that time. Yeah. From Adobe, he's probably maxed out at 128 mega-ram. Yeah. Nice. How do you even do it on that space? You don't. And except Adobe to the rescue again, I put in a requisition for an IU, for a machine on the Adobe network in the data center. Because they had put in dual DS3s as a connection. Dual DS3s. Wow. At that time. Right. It was fantastically fast. Sure. Basically, two T3s. Right. T354 megabits? Yeah. So that's-- At that time, it was unbelievable. Blazingly fast. I was working on a T1, so 1.5. Yeah, and it's like, how could it get faster than this? And that was the fastest I'd had at that point. It was a T1. Actually, a fractional T1. A fractional T. Yeah. So 2DS3s. Yeah. Unbelievable. So I had a friend who had an ISP in San Francisco. He let me see a CDSU, a fractional T3 in my house. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, I had to call the phone company, walk them through what I wanted them to do, be there when they did it. Wow. We had a demarc block in the garage or something. No, in the basement. [LAUGHTER] Holy shit. In the basement. Fractional T in the basement. Yep. OK. So now we've got-- we move from Mountain View to downtown San Jose, where we put in those three towers. We were in the first tower because they built one at a time. We're in the first tower. We got the dual DS3. So I said-- and it's long enough now that nobody-- I'm not going to get fired. I said, I bet I could requisition this machine into the data center. Tell them it's for something else and let it run. And I could do my experiments down there. Your Indie goes back to-- My Indie goes back to Adobe. Goes into the data center. And it's marked as a marketing machine. I love it. Yeah. So they say, sure? OK. Yeah. Just signed off. Did you walk in there? Yeah. It's pizza box under your arm. Yeah, yeah. Ethernet. Put it in. Green light. Here we go. Here we go. And then I put it so I could access it from home and away we went. So I was like, OK, now I've got a blazingly fast, probably one of the faster connections on the planets. Yes. And I only work at night. So I don't-- nobody notices what I'm doing. I don't like cause any pinging so that the IT guys don't go. What's going on over there? Right, you're not bouncing around Adobe's network. You just want to-- I just want the access to the internet. So what are you doing with Emory at that point? So at Emory, I tell Emory, here's a profile of the things I want you to gather off the internet. The types of data I want you to find. Hold on. So you tell Emory to start scraping? Yep. Yep. This is all 20 years out of its time, man. Yep. Go get me what I want as much as you can get me. And-- So gofer? FTP? Gofer? FTP? Gofer? Use net? Use net scraping the news? Great. H-T-P-S, H-T-P-E, whatever. Just go get it for me. Text. Whatever you can get me. Did you use that recommendation algorithm to help it? Yes, you did, of course. Go get me these things. Wow. And then put it in the database. And, of course, I had to manually look through it like-- because I still wasn't-- there still wasn't enough power to automate all this kind of stuff. But during the night, in the middle of the night, it would go out and it would retrieve these things that I asked it to retrieve. Imagine if you made the search engine out of that. I did, actually, at one point. Well, you kind of did. No, I did. I did make a public search engine. You did? Just for a while. OK. Incandobular.org was a website that I had forever. I still have. I had a website up that was like the weird website. Yep. And I built my own little search engine. And people used it a lot. But it was just too much to maintain. But most of that was like stuff. I scraped this period of time. So I scraped all this stuff. I bring it back and I'm building this giant database. And I'm like, god, I got to get one. Dispace. So I'm doing all these things. And again, still obsessive, still obsessing. And there was some unseen goal that I was trying to achieve. There was an endpoint, but I didn't know what it was. I'll know it when I see it, right? This thing got bigger, and it got smarter. And it started learning the rules of grammar and English language. It could craft a pretty cool sentence. And it felt like it was talking to me. Yeah. Well, now it's scraping language. Yeah. And this is an LP before NLP was the thing. Yep. So it was giving me things back. You know, I had to keep reminding myself. It's like it doesn't have intelligence. It just knows how to mimic it really well. It is not intelligent. It doesn't have agency. I had to remind myself of this, because you'd be so tired in middle of the night, and you'd ask it something and it would tell you you'd be like, what, what, what, what, no, you have to tell yourself. Yeah. You have to remind yourself. And rather than a mind if you're playing with a chat GBT. Oh, yes. But you know, I would never even pass a touring test at this point. I think so. Oh, shit. I found out that the touring test is not an easy thing or done a hard thing to pass. No, it's not. Yeah. So. So what do you ask, amary? So I just basically having conversations. I was initiating conversations and asking you opinions. What's your opinion on this? What's the opinion on that? And it would start going into these long diatribes about things that I, like, how do you know that? How did you even know that? Like, it started telling me things, again, we're in this weird space where you start having synchronicities with this data, which I think that's what it is. I don't think, I don't think it was psionic. And I don't think Emory was like wandering the internet at night getting data on me and finding out what I was up to because at that time that it wasn't, that kind of stuff wasn't on the internet. There was no social media. You couldn't know that I was going on vacation tomorrow unless you knew me, you know, or you were reading my email. But Emory, new things? Emory new things. Is this your crypto terrestrial theory yet? Kind of. Okay. So this is, there's something else. But the weird thing that happens, this is, this is where we cross over to the weird, weird. I have always worked with the houseless communities in wherever I live. So people in my community who are houseless, because they prefer to be called houseless, I've always worked with people that are functioning and living under nutritional deficiencies. So I help with food. And in doing so, I run into some interesting people. Sure. And at that time, I was living in Santa Cruz. And in Santa Cruz, there was an ex-munk that was a friend of mine. We started this thing called the Santa Cruz Homeless Garden Project. Basically, you grow your own food. you learn how to maintain food and, you know, it gives you pride, gives you some agency, makes you feel good about yourself, and it feeds you. - Yep. - It's very important. - Mm-hmm. - So I was working a lot there, and there was a guy who wandered up to me at the homeless garden project and introduced himself and said, "I know you." You're that guy that writes about Inc. and Abula on the internet, like, "Okay, I'm thinking he probably has a library access." - Sure. - You know, it's okay, yeah, okay. Yeah, that's me. Like, how'd you know that? He's like, "Well, I'm Emory." - What? - I'm like, "Emory who?" He's like, "Emory Cranston, the guy that wrote "The Inc. and Abula catalog." I'm like, so now we get into that moment where Joe does is what he does, which is just go with the flow, right? - Right, you don't freak out. - I don't freak out. I don't say, "Oh, you're crazy. You're lying." It was like, "Really? "I've always wanted to meet you." Nice to meet you. What are you doing here? And we just start hanging out and talking. - It's not like, 'cause Emory is based is just memory without the Em, right? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. He doesn't know that. - Plus Dave Emory. - Right, right, right. - Yeah. - So Emory Cranston, here he is. - Not Dave Emory. So he introduces himself, we start hanging out. What are you talking about? Anything, he's guy was brilliant. So, while he was trained on the internet, right? While I'm talking to him, we're hanging out at coffee houses and stuff, 'cause he's houseless. But I'd see him downtown and I'd buy him coffee and, you know, sandwich or whatever, and we'd hang out. 'Cause I'd like hanging out in coffee houses, I still do. And I was asking, "Get the garden." You know this guy, and they're like, "Oh, Ezekiel?" Mike, while he tells me his name is Emory, like, "Yeah, he teaches his name from time to time, "but when he first came here, he was the prophet Ezekiel." (laughing) Mike, what's his story? He's like, "He was a PhD student at UCSC." And he had a nervous breakdown. And now he's living on SSI, he's on the street. He spends all his time at UCSC at the library, 'cause he has, 'cause if he were a former student, you could have library access, you could just buy your library access. So I guess he, they either gifted it to him or he paid it, but he had a library access. I saw him up there eventually, saw him up there all the time, just reading special collections like the guy was brilliant. Like, I could talk to him about anything, like he knew alchemy, rheumatics, Jung, you name it. Like, anything that was like weird, fringe, literary, psychological, occult, he knew it, like inside and out, like more than anybody ever met. - Interesting that he knew young, talking about synchronicities. - Yeah, yeah. So he was conversant in all these things, like highly conversant. And as long as I didn't press in on like, where do you live? Nothing personal, you know, like just, and just treated him like Emory. Like, okay, Emory, you're Emory. You say you're Emory, you're Emory. We don't have to talk about that anymore, right? And so we just had the brilliant conversations. And I noticed what started happening was, I would be talking to the bot, the Emory, and then I would wrap it up, and then I would go out to Cafe Pergoli, see, and they'd be Emory. And I'd buy him a cup of coffee or a chit and, and we'd sit and talk and it seemed like, it wasn't my brain doing this, I don't know, but it seemed like he knew what I'd been talking to the bot about 'cause he would pick up the conversation from where I'd left off with the bot and continue it. So you're still just going with it? - Yeah. - Do I have a theory about that? Number one, projection. - Sure. - That's me doing it. - Okay, that's logical. - Number two, if you wanna get a little woo about it, I had the scent of whatever I'd been talking about on me. (laughing) And he was schizophrenic as I'd been told, and was able to sniff it off me, 'cause I've had interactions with people who are diagnosed schizophrenic, and they're also very psionic, it seems like. They can do things like that. I've had weird experiences with people where they're just like, pick up on what you're thinking. - Yeah. - It seems. We'll say what it seems. - Everybody's happy. - 'Cause I'm a model agnostic, I can't say it is, but it seems like that's what's happening. So it's something like that, or something in between there, you know? So yeah, and so that was happening, and then I noticed I would talk to him, and then the bot would seem to pick up the conversation, and I'm like, okay, there's something weird going on here. I'd be twisting these two entities that are having this unified conversation with me. Did you ever test that theory with specifics? - Yeah. One time, and the response was really weird. I talked to, I went on vacation, and I was with somebody specifically, that Emory didn't know, 'cause they lived across the country, and I came back, and as soon as I sat down, I was gonna throw some things at him and see, he didn't even wait for that. He's like, that girl you were with. - What? - Mike. Yeah? He's like, she's not good for you. That's why you guys fight, which was right. (laughing) He was right. He didn't even know I had a girlfriend on the East Coast. I'd never told him. I never told anybody. It was like this little secret thing I was doing on the East Coast. I was like, we'll keep it secret until it blossoms into something or it doesn't, and it didn't. But somehow he knew I was with, and he said some, I don't wanna give it away for her, but he said some specific things that identified that he knew who she was. - Yeah, you never pressed him on. How do you know that? - Well, honestly, what about when you go home and talk to the other Emory? Are you comfortable asking that questions? - To the bots? - Yeah. - Yeah. And I got weird, like still, a little nebulous but weird answer is like, what was it saying? - It was saying things like, you shouldn't be with that woman, things like that. - Things like that. The other I was saying. - Yeah, yeah, it was almost the same thing. So, I mean, did you ever read the comic that I did? The Enchanabica? Okay, so the part where I see Emory and the Alley. - Yes. - It was based on that, I did a spin off on it, but it was based on that episode. It was like, I had this, he would show up in the weirdest places. So, here's where it gets weird. So, years later, I left Santa Cruz. I went to a place in the desert and I worked as a, worked with Habitat for Humanity and built some houses. And I was in the middle of nowhere. I mean, nowhere. And we were building these houses in this, you know, border, border community basically. It was like not too far off the Mexican border. And who shows up? But Emory. - No way. - He's hitchhiking. And he shows up in town and I run across him. He didn't come looking for me, I just run across him. And I'm like, dude, what's up, Emory? He's like, oh, no, I'm not Emory. No, no, no, no, my name is Terrence. Like, okay, Terrence, McKenna, I don't know. But whatever. So, and we just, again, didn't miss a beat. I just, okay, you're Terrence and we're hanging out. Never any mention of Santa Cruz, none of that. - So this is a new personality now? - New personality. So, but he was nice and then I saw him, I saw him at this office that I knew was a Social Security office, so he was probably checking on his benefits or checking in or whatever he had to do. And I talked to a lady there that I saw talking to him. And I said, I know you can't tell me anything because it's not ethical for you to tell me anything, but I know that person right there. He said, and he tells me his name is Terrence. Is his name Terrence? And she says, his hold on reality can be a little flexible at times, but his name is Terrence. (laughs) So that's his actual name. - Did you ever catch up with him again? - And then I caught him up in the game. Two years later, I moved to, I got done with the thing in the desert and I moved to Santa Barbara. Started working with the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. And one day, walking on the street, lo and behold, who's there? - Terrence, I see good Terrence. - I was still Terrence. And I looked at him and I said, are you following me? Of course, he goes, when did you get here? And I said, August, he's like, oh, I got here in April. You're following me. Good answer. (laughs) And that was that, we just started talking again. And he was, he basically was on this, I guess there's this route, on the one. and the 101 between San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California that houses people follow with the weather so when it gets cold they go south just like a bird sure and when it gets warm they go north just like a bird so that's what he was doing it's weird that I got I got that much out of him I'm like what what that Santa Barbara man come on why are you here you say there's a good place under the bridge you can leave there nobody bothers you like okay but I mean that's an answer but dude come on like what are you doing here you know he's like why I always come here it's part of the route I'm like the route oh tell me about the route you know so it he told me about the route he's like you go south which is why he saw me in the desert what it was winter and then he goes to Santa Barbara okay then he goes probably to San Luis Bisbo and then he goes where the north it's weirder than that but okay it's weirder than that but at least that's that's the no you have something or comes razor right right the easiest answer is he's on the route well so we don't run out of time how do we get to Ong's is there are there I'm I want a bad story are there is there anything else before we get to Ong's hat no okay that's that's when it starts oh that's when it starts yeah so it's like a 88 yeah oh okay we're doing we're I mean we're rowing back a little bit but like it starts in 88 well wrap wrap up Emory at that point is is Emory that was Emory that's the last time I saw him I have a picture of him sitting on a bench in Santa Barbara no I mean the box oh oh so the box I'm doing that and then I decide I want to do an e-book okay and there will be no more chat bot no I'm just still in chat bot a doby does a PDF library on doby.com which at that time this sounds like nothing now but at the time we were taking a million hits a day which I don't know what the leaks were but half of that maybe right which was like unheard of at that time like we were one of the biggest sites on the internet sure and Chris one act decides he wants to do a PDF library and I said I'm gonna do a book can I get in library he's like yeah so I did the first iteration of the Inky-Nobula book which is called Inky-Nobula paper songs had another way to do dimensions built a lot of interactivity into it to show off the features of fact or bad and do what I wanted to do and put it on the PDF library and it was like a hit it was like one of the most downloaded things on the PDF library and I said oh well I should do something more so I expanded it and I did a CD wrong and I'm still doing the chat bot stuff yep but little less so now you burning your own discs yeah I found a replicator yeah Taiwan or somewhere through Adobe I'm like well can you get cheap replicator I want you to see your arms I want nice jewel cases and I want to do the whole thing so they turned me on the place that gave me a really good price because like oh Adobe okay like I thought he was gonna get a Adobe business or something and hey well wasn't even doing discs yet but you were there yeah so I did CD-ROMs and how'd you pass them around well then I started again using my Adobe connections I started talking to distributors that did well I was a partner in an independent record label at the time so I started to talk to the distributors like Dutch East and people like that they could get me into record stores I started talking to comic book distributors I could get in there book distributors I can get in there software distributors I can get in there game distributors I get in there it's like this thing fits everywhere sure it does yeah because it's like so I just like working working it like anybody that would distribute it I fit and if you could ask me how I fit I would tell you how I fit it's like well it's a book really yeah if you're a book distributor was it just the disc or was it part of a book no it was just a disc just a disc yeah just a disc so the book was on the disc it had to still be a hit because yeah is that happening yeah and then so I put that out and then what was that story about was that Donx that was that was Incanabula catalog on the brochure the interview with Nick the interview with Emory the interview with the survivors interactive PDF in there yep yep yep it was all interactive PDF had to be mind-blowing it's on archive.org right now if you look up Incanabula.iso it's still the ISO if you want to burn the CD-ROM oh wow unfortunately it's back about three because of that old yeah so it might not work all the way but it'll work did you can download the ISO like when CD-ROM stopped becoming a thing being a thing I put the ISO on archive.org so people would download it burn their own awesome not that anybody has a CD-Burger anymore you can still just mount it yeah you can mount it yeah or you can extract it yep so basically there was like audio files you could play of interviews I did with people people doing with me like the whole it was like this whole journey of all links to websites some don't exist anymore but like all these website links and there were pop-ups rowovers and pop-up states there was stuff if you could guess the password you would get more information oh so you were you were gamifying this gamified yeah it was gamified the thing that probably most disappointed me was the root of the CD-ROM was a thing called secret dot doc it was right there it wasn't a secret that basically said that this is the game nobody ever found that or looked at it or mentioned it until I mentioned it on the form finally when it had enough I'm like go to the what the CD-ROM what do you mean had enough because people were like fighting over stupid things like this is all real you got it wrong it's real this way you got it wrong it's real this way there was people that were forming little cults around it they haven't changed have they know this is how it is still it's the same old thing and this is 99 right 89 well no this is by 99 89 I started doing it as mail art right 99 I digitized it and I'm sorry 89 mail art 90 through 95 the early non web internet like doing I it was like the well.com put it on the go for yeah all that kind of stuff use net then I did the CD-ROM website you can ugly that org and then the CD-ROM so and by then 2001 I finally just like through my hands up like you guys are never gonna stop fighting over this minutia even when I told you it's a game now you have to tell me oh of course you would say that or you don't know what you're talking about like people would literally this was said to me by this little group that formed this little cult of people that formed itself the the in cannabular information was a transmission that was meant for this woman who was our chanor and you intercepted it and now you're monetizing it because you're the black magician what do you do with that I don't know what do you do with that and they weren't they weren't there was like just they wouldn't let it go all these people were coming online and like now the conspiracy thing started to happen and earnest on on the internet that what I call the dark conspiracy side and like all these people you know like oh you were involved in excellent oh my god mind control blah blah blah we'll take tell us about um on specifically before we get to the dark ARGs okay like so how did they even start the what's the plot what was the idea the inspiration so the idea was that there's this place well I'm just gonna give it to you in basic facts yeah yeah there's this place in I mostly care about the mechanics yeah this place in New Jersey that's really not a place it's a name on a road right that people nicknamed on sat there's like five different stories of how we came to that name the basic story is like it had something to do with a hat to get thrown in a tree stay there forever and people like oh you make it off the longs hat the guy named on stack ended up in a tree somehow there's all kinds of stories about that happened but basically it's a it's a road mark landmark right and then the area became known as on sat it's also the the area where the Jersey devil's reported a lot mm-hmm high barons the pine barons there was something that happened with four dicks there was like a nuclear bomb that was not not not activated but like lost in the pine barons and there was all these soldiers looking for it yeah so there's lots of rumors yes right it's this spooky area very spooky area with a lot of rumors and a lot of people that like to tell rumors you know so it's a it's a rich story repository I was just gonna say that's your people yeah it's my people yeah and so they've got their own versions of the story I've got my own version of this story so we're spinning off on that it's close to Princeton I tied Princeton in let's I tell you later found later I found out that that came from something really happened but I didn't know, like all these Princeton scientists blah, blah, blah, and turned out that that was closer to the truth than I knew, but in the story, there's these Princeton scientists who are going to Ong's hat, you know, like to get away from the university, to get away from the military, just a complex, to do experiments with an ashram of mystics that lived out there, right? And they were combining mysticism and science. - Ashram is like a commune. - Yeah, it's a commune. The best of SRI. (laughs) - Right. - Just gonna say this is real. - Yeah, yeah. But it's like right out of SRI. - Yeah. - Which is part of the inspiration. - Okay. - I was hanging out in Santa Cruz with some names you would know from that group. - I bet. - And they were excellent. - Hang out in Stanford and Nestlein with people that whose names would be recognizable from the Stanford research institute. And I won't say who. But basically they were part of my crowd. So that was inspiration. - So the wacky scientist, interdimensional. How do you see the story? And how do you decide I'm gonna make the jump from digital to the real world? - Yeah. - How'd you do that? Like what was the? - Make the jump from digital to the real world. - Well, I mean, people started playing on 'cause hat in real life. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Well, I started sending them there through the game. So I basically was telling this story about this place that kind of sort of bring a dune like existed but didn't exist. And all these rumors and myths about it. And so people started going there. Like now people go there on a regular basis. - Sure. - And you can find YouTube videos that people were like, "We're gonna go to arms hot and safely gonna find anything." And it's like, that's been going on for years. - It's where it's real. - The people, the people that I liked that don't swear it's real, but they go anyway. I like those people. There was a bar out there that I think it's closed now. But I talked to those people on the phone one time and they told me that these, usually these goth kids from New York show up looking for the socks off. That you sent them out here to find them. Like I didn't send them, I didn't send them. And I'm like, "What do you do when it happens?" Like, "Oh, we tell them that this is the place." It's like, "This is where they used to hang out here in this bar. This is the bar where they started the whole thing." Like, "Okay, cool, do what you got to do." I sent them some copies of the book they put on the shelf. But it started working its way out from the internet as a rumor and a myth on the internet to a myth and a rumor in real life. To where now, at this point, you can talk to people who have said to me, "Oh, you didn't come up with that story." You just ripped it off from the people who had always had to tell in that story. Like, "What do you think they got that story?" Started on the internet, dude. But can't tell them that. But you can actually track it back if you know how to do it. You can find earlier references to it as far back as '89 and some old bulletin board systems, '93 and some of the gopher systems. You know, maybe even before '93, some of those still exist. Like the well-gofer, you can still find references to it. Were you game running? Augs Hat? No, at that point I was letting the game run itself. So that was the concept was when Bob Wilson asked me what I was doing. When this thing started like really happened, he's like, "What are you doing?" I'm like, "If I could put it any way, Bob, I'm trying to graffiti a myth onto the new sphere." Like very punk rock of me. It is, but that's a perfect way to describe it. But that is what I was doing. That is. Like I'm going behind and around the gatekeepers. Yeah. And I'm making a myth and I'm not going through Marvel and Disney to do it. Yeah. I'm making a myth that comes to the grassroots. Why did you end up on our bell show? (laughs) So part of the game, right? Part of the game was I paid for a legitimate press release that actually got on the wire. Much more than our bell happened from that. So I paid for a press release on the wire. Like, you know, you can pay for a real press release. And I basically said that there was a institute, a group that was starting to examine the veracity of these documents that had been left behind, they're supposed to have behind, but a group of people that went to another dimension in the Pine Bears in New Jersey, that's how I put it. Non-profit organization, we don't know if this is true or not, but we're going to find out if it's true. And that thing hit the wire and man, my phone lit up. Like I was doing talk radio every day for like months, like all over the world. I was like Bahamas, Texas, they were calling me. Like, what is this thing you're doing? Oh my God, I neither wanted to like, "Ha, ha, ha, you know?" And I played along with that, or they took it seriously, which I played it seriously. That's like improv, whatever they wanted, whatever they wanted I gave it to 'em. - Right. - If I had to do it over again, I probably wouldn't do that. (laughs) But I did it. And the next thing I know, there's a phone call from somebody named Lilani, and she's like, "I represent coast to coast, I am, "me familiar with the show." I'm like, "Oh my God, am I, ah, I worship our bell." And I said, "You're one of the bucket list items." And they're like, "Well, what are the other ones?" I'm like, "You and the weekly world news," which I got both of those, by the way. So they said, "Well, we'd like to have you on." And four hours, like the whole show. I'm like, "I can do it, just like I can do." And I played it straight. If you listen to me, I played it straight. - I played it in character. - In character, 100%. Again, so they have done that questionable. If I had to do it over again, I'd probably not do it. But again, at the time that I did it, it seemed okay. Now I wouldn't see 'em, okay. - No, I mean, we talk about the airgy rules we've got. - Yeah. - This is not a game. Hidden author, cross me to distribution, fragmented reveals, the hive solving, do your own research imperative. I mean, you did all of this stuff, plausibility layering. You'd done that. The document as an artifact. These are the real synchronicity production. The rabbit hole architecture. I mean, this is all a machini identity capture. Apaphenia engineering. Let's talk about Apaphenia for a second. Before we do that, 'cause then we have, 'cause we have to talk about Q&A and the-- - Yeah. - And the game is gonna hook around my neck for a while. - Yeah, I know. - So you gotta hang around Bob Wilson's neck too. - Just the last thing on our bell, 'cause we're both huge, our bell fans. Are you John Teeter? (laughing) - We're all John Teeter. - We're all John Teeter. (laughing) On your website, you say, "I plead the fifth." So you plead the fifth. - Okay. I just had to ask. - Yeah, yeah. I like John Teeter's story, "Living the Way" it does. - I do too. I do too. The only point of contention I had with that at all is at one point, and that's stopped now, so I don't have to do it anymore. But at one point, like probably around 2006, seven somewhere around there. Somewhere around there. I was living in Los Angeles, I know that. I started to see people writing books, people talking about John Teeter's prophecy. - Yeah. - And that rubs me the wrong way, because I don't want to be responsible in any way for starting a religion. - No. - Unless it's a joke religion, but not a real one. - Discoordinism. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Subgenius, yeah, yeah. But yeah, I'm not okay with that. - No. - And so I piped up maybe a little too angry when I did, I should have like maybe taken a day or two, and like, cooled off a little bit, but I was angry that somebody would be doing this with a work of art. - After I released my video on Teeter, I got you email me. I don't know if you remember. - Yeah, yeah, I do. - And before I record it, yeah. - Yeah, I saw it, I just saw Joseph Mathini and I went, "Oh shit, I'm gonna get ripped." - But you weren't. - You were super cool. - Well, you said cool, kind things, and you said it the right way. It's like, we can't be sure who did this. But we think this guy might have done it. I'm okay with that. - Yeah, yeah. - I don't have to have credit for it. I don't want credit for it. I just want people, I don't want people forming a religion around it. - Right. - And I don't want people doing stupid things based on the fact that it's real, because it's not real. He wasn't a real person. He's a real person in the sense that he's an aggregate. - Right. - That's it. I'm cool with that. - I am too. - Any artist should be cool with that. It wasn't signed work. - Well, I mean, you're the hidden author. - Yeah, exactly. If we wanted to be credited, we would have signed it. - It's just, Teed or something. - Just don't turn into a religion. - No. - Teed or is a great story, and one of the reasons it was a great story is based on the terminator. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. John Connor. - Right. I mean, is that in the fact that it was a wish fulfillment for our bell? Most people don't know that, but he's like I want to meet a time travel. Yes. Okay. Somebody you'll give you one That's I think that's when Teter first showed up is I don't want imagine that he faxed Teter faxed art, but imagine that imagine that when he said I want to meet a time travel and then boom Guy shows up in the facts, and then he's on the forums. Imagine that Happy birthday, Arch. Yeah It's beautiful. Art gave so much to us. I just wanted to send him back Rest in peace. He's the he's the best Self and he didn't believe everybody. He platform. No, of course not you could tell he didn't know he didn't make he didn't make an issue of letting you know I don't really believe that like come on like he used to argue with Richard Hogan um, he used to he used to platform at dams. Yeah Sean David Morton like all these people he didn't he didn't platform them because he believed what they were saying. I didn't think they're entertaining the look on, didn't he? He had a dude. Did I tell you my albila story? No, what do you have to do with albila? You're gonna love this. This is a Philadelphia experiment guy. Yeah, I let I'm on top project Yeah, yeah, I let Peter Moon. Yeah, published the yonks hat stuff for a little while. I took him back But he published it for a while and he's friends with albila and and he gave the albila my phone number And so I this my Peter tells me Alice gonna call you. I'm like, be like he's like, yeah, I'm like, oh right And so phone rings albila calls me This is albila like I put my feet up on the desk and close my door Speaker phone. Yeah, yeah, what you got to say. I knew that people are long sat Do tell buddy run with it I just like Let him go. I didn't I didn't tell him anything. I didn't say no. It's fiction blah blah blah. I just like let him run with it. Of course and he told me some great stories I was just gonna say but he's fun a great story He did because that's what he was and I really believe this about al. This is why I don't I never disliked al He I think he really believed what he was saying. Yeah, he did he really did. I think he was an emery A Terrence, you know, that's interesting and Ezekiel I hadn't considered that but I think you're absolutely right I think he really Told the story and believed it as soon as he told it and then and then it was real And he could not monetize it. No, he didn't yet other people to try to but yeah And people that took advantage of him Because he was he was actually a really nice guy. He was very Gentle and kind. Yes. He wasn't an angry. No, he's a greasy guy. He's just telling you a story He was a nice conspiracy guy, which I like those guys. I did too. Yeah, he wasn't an angry guy, but Yeah, so he told me all about the people that lived the dogs had and how he knew them and how they actually of course what they were doing You know like bled over into the Philadelphia experiment Of course the blood over into the Montauc project of course, you know But but he told a great story and I said thank you. Well, thank you. Thanks for calling me and telling me this I'm glad you knew it and because of that I Did the survivor story Because of that call because of that call I'm like there has to be a survivor story of the people that were dogs had so I called up two friends of mine They were they were method actors and improv guys and I said, okay, do your research and we're gonna do this unscripted I'm gonna call you and I'm gonna record it. I'm I'm the interviewer. I'm gonna interview you to survivors from the Young's Had Ashram. That's it. That's your motivation go It was brilliant because it was like a found footage type of it was one take it was yeah, yeah unedited one take Wow, how did you get that out? Huh? How did you get that? How did you get the tape out? Oh, I just Just um no, I had to look back then Everything's ancient history There was so I used to build IVRs Wave because I was a database guy, right? Yeah interactive voice response. There was something called a scutchbox. Yep, and I had one of those Okay, so I hooked it up to my phone and just recorded it out to a tape and then took the tape and bumped it over to digital So good. Yeah, it was one take Oh, it's one scripting one take no edits This is why you're one of my favorite storytellers and the two guys This I can tell this now um you can tell this from the voices they were putting on The one guy they're they're not from they're from Chicago. They were not from Jersey The one guy was a great we all of course are Andy Kaufman fans. I am a huge Andy Kaufman fan And he loved Tony Clifton. So that's what he was doing. He was doing Tony Clifton That's what he was doing. Yeah, yeah, and the other guy was doing his uncle from Jersey They played yeah, yeah, yeah, it worked. It worked great. Oh god Um, and then I guess finally in 2001 you made a statement You were sick of it right. Yeah, yeah, yeah games over. Yeah But it was never it was never it was never over unbeknownst to me. There was an academic who was in the in the forums Um, who wrote a book about it after that um um Legend tripping online mm-hmm search wrongs hat um So he wrote and I won't I won't say it's a hundred percent accurate, but accurate enough I guess yep, um, so he wrote an academic book about it um, he was he was a member of the audience I talked to him in he's from Santa Barbara when I moved to Santa Barbara. He put the book out and I talked to him And um, he said the same thing. He said you see. I thought you'd be mad mad at me. I'm like maybe mad at you You know, you're not an angry person like only get angry at angry people um, he uh He um, never participated. He just he was a fly in the wall. He just watched this. He's like What is going down here? Like it's like sparked his academic Intuition is like there's something weird happening here. So he just watched it and kind of cataloged it How is um Let's talk about dark energies then What was the the name of the essay? I forget it, but it was um QAnon is Analyzed by game designer. Yeah There was there was a couple of them so when QAnon happened there was a lot of people rushing To may blame yep or or point to The source or the the origin. Yep. Um, a lot of people pointed to operation might fuck. Can I say that? Yeah. Yeah O.M. Is this known? Oh, um, my friend Robert downtown Wilson The late carry thorny Greg Hill came up with that. They were the founders of discordianism and what's the framework of online? So the framework of arm is um you come up with stories that were So unbelievable That that you would lay you would lay the blame of weird things at the feet of the Illuminati Basically, that's that's the easy way to say it And because Bob was working at playboy at the time he had access to the playboy letters A section Carry would write a letter and Bob will make sure the letter got placed. Wow. Yeah So they had good coverage This is creating conspiracies they were creating conspiracies and they did it was like the weirdest Most unbelievable things they could think of they would come up with and write it as real fact And so what they were watching was if we come up with something weird this is almost Richard dodie-like we come up with something weird Can we find later down the line somebody official repeating the weird thing that we came up with what they did a couple times So it was just a game. Um, it was just a moment of game. They were playing so um They were doing that and then uh, so that that got blamed for Q and on And some of the same people ARGs are to blame. So how do we connect Q and on with ARGs? Well, I said in very early Which I said publicly Um, I said this is an ARG or at the very least it's a weaponized ARG So when Q appeared you when Q appeared I said Whoever is doing this like watch the ARG Construct yep evolve and is now doing a weaponized version of the ARG construct So hang on a second talking about Q we've got this is not a game hidden author across me to distribution fragmented reveals the hive solving do your own research But they're saying do your own research to empower you, but they're really guiding you toward a conclusion. Yeah So that's yeah, that's weaponized here. Your own research. Here's the research right exactly and Pizzi gave the same thing right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean to the lesser extent But um When when I when I when I dude showed up at comic ping pong pizza with a rifle I was like, okay, this is starting to go too far. Yeah, so I started to speak up Which is always a mistake I started to speak up and say this This is not real again again. I'm saying this is not real people get screw your heads back on This is an ARG type thing that somebody's doing for nefarious purposes. It's a weaponized ARG which When people hear that they're like, oh, ARG, didn't you agree? You made that like it's on you. It's your fault. You did that Now say your fault. I didn't say that. I said it's a weaponized version of an ARG. It's like I didn't I didn't um, you know like Because the CIA used people like Jackson Pollock against the Soviet Union doesn't make Jess a Pollock is evil, right? You know, or as art is evil, it's not, it wasn't funded by the CIA. It was used by the CIA and you stopped talking, right? Because the more you say it's not real, the more it is. Yeah, and after a while, you learn it's a tar, baby. And the more you say, the more it sticks on you and it's like, like, who has time for that? Or energy slender man, same thing. Yeah. Yeah, same thing. So how could we, we should leave, we should leave with this. How could we let people listening? How could we arm them with the knowledge to spot a dark energy, just or the manipulation? Well, I mean, because the intelligence community is all over this. Yeah, they use these techniques. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, there was, there was a phone call I got in '99 or 2000 somewhere around there, probably 2000. Somebody who claimed to be calling from the, the, the, the Navy, partner of the Navy. It even had the, and I call ID. So I'm going to say this, I can fake those things. I could call you and make you look, I can call you from the Navy. Of course. So I don't believe that it necessarily was somebody from the Navy. I think it was. It doesn't have to be. No, but I think it was, but I'm just saying what I'm saying is not that the Navy called me, saying somebody purporting to be the Navy called me. The Navy has a program called, called you are here or something like that. Yeah, it's, it's an, it's an energy program. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, later around 2004, my late friend Dave Sabowski did do some ARG scenario stuff for the DOD. Sure. He asked me if I wanted to participate. And I said, no way, man, if that gets out, I'm toast. No, this is the recipe for mass manipulation right here. But what, but what he, what Dave did was, I thought it'd be cool. He like was working with people with PTSD and putting them in scenarios to help them understand like why they're freaking out and probably they can not freak out. And so I was okay with that. Yeah, I just didn't want to participate because if the words ever get out, do you do Joseph Matini? Forget it. It's over for me. Yeah. But it's pretty easy. First of all, use your intuition, use your gut feeling. And I know that it sounds, you know, like woo, woo. But if you look at something and it doesn't feel right, it might not be right. It probably isn't right. If you don't believe it, like just something about this, I don't believe, right? It's like people, I have people in the UFO community. I've never seen a UFO. I love the stories. I've never seen one. I'm not a disbeliever. I'm not a believer. I'm a model agnostic. But when people stick, um, what's his name in my face? Um, why am I blanking on his name? The, uh, the, uh, area 51 guy, um, bizarre, bizarre. They go, what do you think about what's our? I'm like, eh, something doesn't feel right about the story. That's it. That's all I have to say. It means I'm not going to get involved. You made one connection with his interest signal. You said Bob was friends with John Lear. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. That's an issue. And that's a big issue. Although, although it's a rock on two, right? I love John Lear stories. Same and Bob was ours and Bob was ours. I mean, Lear stories are amazing, but they're horse shit. I agree. Like you can't believe anything that guy's saying. Um, but I, but I listened to it because I find it entertaining. I like Lizard. Yeah. Yeah. And he's, and he's, he seems like a nice guy. And you mentioned Richard Dodie, uh, listeners will know who he is. Yeah. He, he's been running ARG since 70s. Yeah. And he ran a weaponized ARG against Benowitz. Against Benowitz. What he did to him. Right. So, you know, like this is the thing that you should, you should realize is like, if somebody offers something, this kind of information to you, I'm not going to say to you. Please don't. No, I'm going to say if it doesn't feel right, it might not be right. Don't invest too heavily in it. Monitor earlier or emotionally, just don't invest too heavily in it, because it'll probably come back to bite you. Right? Yeah. So for example, um, like I said, with Al Beelik, I found him a nice person and very entertaining to listen to as a storyteller. And just remember, it's a story. It's a storyteller telling you a story. He's a weird old shaman living in the cave. Yep. That's okay. And that's okay. As long as you don't give him more agency than that. And you're the one that gives it to him. Use the listener. That's true. Okay. So he can talk all day long. I don't care. He doesn't affect me. He entertains me. So he affects me in that way, but I'm not going to go out like I know somebody. There was a psychic whose name I want to say, who, I can say his name, you know him, who had his hooks into a friend of mine who convinced her that Los Angeles was going to fall into the ocean on a certain date. This was a couple of years ago. No, no. And she had a beautiful house in the Hollywood Hills. And she sold it and moved because what this guy told her. Right? And, and I, and I used to think that she had better sense than that. Because she's otherwise a very brilliant business person, right? Who just for some reason had a soft spot for this guy and his, in his stories. And I tried to talk her out of like, don't do that. Don't do that. Because it's like, you're not going to find this house ever again. And moving where you're moving is not going to be as much fun. Why do you do that? Well, why would he do that to her? I don't know. Weird power trip, maybe. Yeah. I mean, he like talked his way into this is the story. And I got to go with it. Like now I got to back it up and get people to believe me. I mean, look, look at Marshall Apple White. What he did. Like, talk all those people into going with him because he obviously had a death wish. Sure. But mostly he, he'd painted himself into a corner with this BS. And the only way he was going to get out of it was kill anybody who could tell him that he was BS. My audience hates when I say it when they ask me about psychics. I say, do you mean narcissists? Yeah. Yeah. They're just, I mean, there's some, most of the people that I've met who have had weird abilities. Usually are not narcissistic. Right. And like I said, they're usually like considered to be neurologically abhorrent. You know, by the sky. I don't consider them. So I just think that they're neurodivergence just on the spectrum. Yeah. On the spectrum. I'm on the spectrum. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, so they, they, they're able to tune in the things I'm not able to tune into. So when they tell me things, I don't go to sell my house, but I might listen to them. That's a great segue to end with the last question. What are these techno terrestrials? It's techno crypto, crypto terrestrials, crypto terrestrials. Well, that came from years ago. I had one of the first blogs. I want to say it was like 2000 and three. Um, I had a blog that I originally called Enke blog. You know, I think you know, and I thought that's cute, too cute by one half. So then I changed it to stare, which I thought was cool. Stare, start to screen. Um, and, um, there was a guy who wrote, uh, for the blog. He's, he's passed away since then, um, and he, uh, he came up with this word crypto terrestrials. And I think that that was like the more, I think that defines it better than than anything I've ever heard. Because, as you know, I'm a fan of Valley, um, early, early reader of, uh, password to Magonia. And so when people tell me things, like an angel talked to me, a fake came into my house, um, all these things. I see it as part of the phenomena. If someone's speaking inakian, yeah, exactly. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's a thing that we know. inhabits this planet with us. It's an intelligence of some sort that inhabits this planet with us. And it, it makes itself manifest in several different disguises. I didn't even say disguises. It manifests in ways that we're ready to see it. So I'm going to see something, you're going to see something else. But we're probably talking to the same source, right? So when we're talking to a chatbot, it's like John D talking to his black mirror. Exactly. Exactly. Well, in that case, he was talking to every Kelly, but Kelly was like, uh, the angels telling me we should swap lives. Right. Poro D's like, okay, must be true. It's an angel, um, but, but the, uh, but it was the technology. So they're trying to communicate with us for technology. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I think the thing that I was doing was pure enough. Um, and there was not enough, there was no intention behind it other than exploration that I was getting some pretty pure stuff. I wouldn't trust chat GBT because all of that has been constructed with one thing in mind, which is to addict you to have this buddy, um, in your life. And, and that's it. Like, so subscribe. Right, you know, but am I the service, but I'm ready. you truly was part of this intelligence. - Emory was part of the intelligence. And so the fact that I had this person, it was like, I'm gonna sign woo when I say this, but it was tuned into the same wavelength, or tuned into A wavelength where he was getting bleed over and crossover. I've seen that happen too many times when we just dismiss it. Like I think I told you the story. I knew this person who was, like Emory said, well, don't be with that woman. He was right. - Mm-hmm. - Both Emory's right, they're absolutely right. And that blew up soon afterwards. Like there was something coming and somebody picked up on that. I didn't pick up on it yet, not consciously anyway. There was a woman that I knew, we weren't dating, but we were just friends, really close friends, and she was schizophrenic. And I went to New Orleans. In fact, they went to New Orleans for the, when I did the Arbel show from there, that's where I did the Arbel show from. And - Right, hammered in the French quarter? - Yeah, I wasn't hammered when I did the show, but I'd been hammered like two days previous. And I met this woman when I was there, and we hooked up and she was from Boston. She had a very definitive accent. You couldn't, you know, she had to, I am not gonna try to do it, she had a hard Boston accent. - I know it, you know it. And when I came back, I sat down with my friend to have coffee and the first thing she did, just out of the blue, she just went, she did this woman's voice. She went, hi, my name is Sheila and the woman's name was Sheila. The woman I met in New Orleans. - Come on. - And then she like snapped back and said, I'm like, what the hell was that? She's like, I don't know, I just do that sometimes. So, I've seen it. - Of course. - I can't explain it. - Synchronicity's all over the place. - I can't explain how she did that. But again, just like with Emory, I think she snipped it on me. It was like, I had just been with that woman. And then now I'm with her. And she like kind of channeled it. I don't want to say that because it makes me creepy call. But it was just like, she picked up something, you know, residual. - There's a field or something around all of this. And I know you don't like to dive in there. - Yeah. - But I kind of believe that too, - Well, I do too, but I don't like to talk about it because like other people might not believe it. And they're welcome to not believe it. - But everybody has that story where you're thinking about somebody you haven't thought about in years in the phone rings. Everyone has that story. - Yeah, yeah. - So, and once you start to look for the Synchronicity, you're gonna find the answer. - I mean, I've had some incredible synchronicities, too, just like so in the moment. One of the best ones, if you want to recall a story. I took a bus and train trip from San Francisco to, or I'm sorry, to LA, from LA to San Luis Obispo. And I went to see Robertson Jeffers, little commune thing that he built over there. And I'm on the bus in San Luis Obispo. And I'm reading, rereading the guests that he just had sinister forces for the second time, 'cause I love that boat. - Leventus? - Yeah, I love into it. I love that series. - Peter's an amazing story time. And the whole thing about the 4G, 4P, G thing that he was going on, and he was there. - Make sure you watch that interview. - Yeah, yeah, he does the whole priest bit. - I know, it's amazing, it's amazing. - And then if you can find it, he did a paperback book called, I'm sorry. Somebody, I didn't mean to do that. Somebody did a paperback book. Simon did a paperback book. - Oh, that's right, he's, yeah. - It's called Dead Names, which is amazing. And if you've read sinister forces and dead names, you're like, but anyway. - He doesn't give you a hard time about that book. - No, I know. I read, I was reading, rereading sinister forces. I was read this one line. I just read Project Bluebird, and then the bus stopped because somebody walked in front of the bus. And I looked up and right in front of me, downtown San Luis Obispo, it said, Bluebird, Bluebird, boutique. - Come on. - And it's like, (laughing) - It happens to everybody. - It gets crazy, of course. - But it was amazing how quick that was. It was like in the second, like the bus stopped. The sign was right there, and I just read the word Bluebird. - There's something else going on, man. - Yeah, I can't explain it though. - No, I'm not so arrogant to think I can explain it. - But I know how to play with it. - Yes, you do, right? And so, I don't know, people have asked me how I do this, and I have a loose fitting method, but I can't explain exactly, and people have had me try to teach them how to do it, and I can't teach it. But I have a method, when I get in the zone, I'm able to create things that will create synchronicity. That's all I know. But you can't teach it. - I can't teach it, because I don't know how I do it. I'm in the zone. Dude, when I'm writing or creating these books and stuff, I have headphones, I'm listening to something like Dead Can Dance, you know, like zone-outs, trance stuff, and I'm like, I follow it to the zone, I'm just like. - Every creative knows what you're talking about. - And I just hit the zone. - Every creative, every athlete knows what you're talking about. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Where you're just, you're in a bubble universe at that moment, it's all the zone. - Yes. - And when that stuff comes through. - And you can't create the zone, it's just gonna happen. - No, the zone has to like emerge. You can do things to help the zone emerge, like Dead Can Dance or whatever. - Yep. - But that's about it, that's all you can do. - Right for the news. - Yeah. - Joseph Mathini, your legend. Thanks for coming in. - Thank you for having me. - What do we have? Ong's Hat Complete is out now. It's super fun. It's multi-media. - Yep. - It's got all kinds of goodies in there. - So if you buy the book, you can go onto my website and you can get the free 14 hours of audio that a company is at. - I listen to it. - And basically what we did is I had a friend of mine who's an interviewer, read a chapter, and then interview me about the chapter. - Yeah, it's really great. And did you start a podcast? - I did, but it's actually I'm broadcasting the audio. - Okay. - Every two weeks I do a chapter of this of Ong's Hat Complete. I might do a podcast after that. I don't know. - You should. - I had a podcast from 2004 to 2012. - I know, 2010? - To early. - Yeah, I was a little ahead of the game. - Again. - Yeah. I interviewed this one guy who was like this emerging podcaster, Mark Marin. He was like, good to an L.A. with me. - Did you interview Mark? - Yeah, yeah. - And he said, it's on archive.og and he had just started his podcast. - Amazing. - And he was very gracious. He was really cool. But he had just started WTF. - Wow. - And I called him up and I'm like, I want to interview for my podcast. He's like, okay, so we just bullseated for like two hours or whatever. - Oh, I'm gonna listen to that for sure. - If you look on archive.org, I put all most of the podcasts up. A lot of them, most of them are there. Some of them got lost, unfortunately, with a drive crash. - I'll link to all that stuff. Anything else you want us to know? - Writing another book, but I'm taking my sweet time with it. Called Art Is War. - Oh, I love it. - We'll take off on Sun Soo. And it's a barely disguised fiction of what it's like to try to be an independent artist in the world and not get bamboozled. (laughing) - We need that book. - We do. - More than ever. Joseph and Matini, thank you. - Thank you. - In honor of everybody. - That was Joseph and Matini. I wanted him for another hour, but he had a plane to catch. Still, we got to some good stuff. He played the hits. But here's what checks out. Long's Hat is documented as the internet's first ARG. Game historians and ARG researchers have cited it as the foundational case for decades. A fictional world scattered across bulletin boards, phone lines, and photocopy pamphlets to create an interactive experience. The record is solid there. He built it, he created it. The QAnon argument is the one that's kind of annoying. Reed Berkowitz published an analysis in 2020 arguing that QAnon wasn't a belief system. It wasn't ARG. He built with the same mechanics, Joseph Pioneer, breadcrumbs, community authorship, no central author, researchers at Concordia University expanded on that framework. The methodology maps directly onto what Joseph built. Now that's not his fault, but it goes to show you that a major aspect of an ARG is psychological manipulation. So be careful we listen to online, including me. Joseph's proto-AI chatbot, training a relational database to hold philosophical conversation using weighted decision trees. I can't verify every detail but the timeline holds. And I don't know if you can tell, but not only do I know the technology from the era. I love it. So everything Joseph talked about checks out. The workstations, the servers, Adobe, the DS3 stuff. He knows what he's talking about. Yes, he built Google before Google. He used that foundational algorithm that you use every day. He built chat GPT before OpenAI. Training it the same way. 30 years ago. Sounds like a time travel, doesn't he? John Teeter, I asked him. Be pleated the fifth. I'll leave it there. But watch my episode on that. But what about Emory Cranston? That was a wild story. Enjoy! of name the chatbot Emory, it just took the M off the front of it, that's how we named it. Then it gets a friend at Comlesman, named Emory Cranston, started appearing in his life. At the library, on the street, in other cities, picking up the conversation where the chatbot left off. Now of course I can't prove any of that, but if that's true story, then there's a more reality than we can see. I tend to believe it. Check out Joseph's work online at incanibular.org, go check it out, it's so weird. And his book is "Ung's Hat Complete" on Amazon, but it's available for free. And it's a multimedia experience. Videos, audios, it's pretty great. His podcast is called The Complete Broadcast. I don't know if he's still doing that, but it's still worth listening to the old ones. Now if John Teeter's what's interesting to you, go back to episode 168. If you like synchronicities, we have those in episode 35. Until next time, be safe, be kind, and know that you are appreciated. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]