The Tip of Atlantis [Patreon Preview]

captain newfoundland is the spirit of newfoundland he lives in the hearts of all of us his ancestors came from beyond the stars and settled on the great continent of atlantis he knows the oneness and teaches wisdom he has many friends such as the silver warrior and the golden dove he's the father of captain condolini join the captain now as he explores the outer inner spaces of life through the magic of television and remember every fan of captain newfoundland knows the captain's code this above all to thine own self be true welcome to the other world patreon i'm your host jack wagner this week something a little different and one that i had a lot of fun recording in this episode i am joined by comic book artist and director mike fian to talk about a man who was once called the weirdest canadian of all time that man is jeff sterling this is somebody i knew nothing about in fact i never even heard this name before until mike emailed me about it jeff sterling was a very eccentric tv mogul essentially he owned a tv station in newfoundland canada who got really into new age spirituality the paranormal meditation you name it he got very interested in all of these things and sort of forced these interests into tv networks and publications that he ran as a result part of this involved creating a character named captain newfoundland captain newfoundland is a surreal meditating superhero that uses his powers to defend the cosmic oneness of the universe and taught metaphysical lessons to the people watching him on tv and reading the comic books i have never seen or heard of anything quite like this uh when mike emailed me i was immediately hooked by this description the character itself is honestly very sick looking if you can just imagine a cloaked figure wearing like a black cape and a hood without a face instead of a face he has a glowing map of newfoundland uh as a face which is very interesting especially if you're like me and didn't even know what the outline of newfoundland looked like um he also has some sort of glowing static light energy i don't know he's very cool looking anyway captain newfoundland and the man who created him jeff sterling are a bit hard to summarize especially in the case of jeff who had many weird adventures ranging from introducing himself to john lennon interviewing ram das injecting liquid gold into his own veins believing that the lost city of atlantis is actually newfoundland there's a lot to cover in the life of this very eccentric man um who ended up doing a lot of work on this movie and doing a lot of strange things on tv that had a profound influence on the youth of newfoundland canada that grew up seeing this stuff on tv often by accident it seems like i said it's hard to summarize this guy but luckily i have mike here to tell me all about it he is co-directing a documentary about jeff sterling and join me for this special episode to tell me all about him if you want to hear the full conversation it's available now on the otherworld patreon along with all our other bonus episodes in fact last week we put out a great episode and the week before that i don't always post previews for the bonus episodes there are a lot of really good ones back there you can hear all of that including this week's episode at patreon.com otherworld this episode is called the tip of atlantis and you're listening to the otherworld patreon all right welcome to otherworld i am joined here today by comic book artist and director mike fien welcome to the show how are you i'm great thanks for having me the reason you are here today is that you are making a documentary about a very interesting guy that you sent me an email about and honestly it's very rare that a cold email about a project such as this ends up making it onto the show we get a lot of strange pr emails uh from people self-publishing books things like that a lot of very very very weird ones basically spam but i saw your email i saw who it was about and um what this person made and i became instantly interested so i know very little about this topic and i can't wait to learn more um why don't we start from the very beginning who is this film about and how did you first encounter the world of uh jeff sterling yeah so this film is about jeff sterling it's called uh right now the title is tentatively captain newfoundland which is a title moniker that has become associated with jeff sterling it is also a supernatural comic book character that he and his son developed and they've kind of become synonymous um so jeff sterling was a media mogul as we like to say uh from newfoundland canada uh newfoundland is the island portion of the province of newfoundland and labrador we are the most eastern province in canada so if you look at a map there's you know just south of greenland there's this little island hanging out off the coast and uh that's newfoundland so jeff was probably best known here for um starting the first television station in newfoundland back in 1955 uh which is ntv which is still running today and still independently owned by his family um and tv not mtv no ntv yeah not mtv um so he's best known for starting in tv and growing up ntv has always been like a staple here it is it is the local broadcaster it's got like the most watched um news hour program in the province um it's something that everyone's familiar with he also has a radio station called oz fm and a magazine that ran weekly for over 75 years called the newfoundland herald so he's like his influence on like the media landscape here was very big but these were all just kind of like um local staples that i think a lot of people take for granted um most people have their own local tv station that has local news or various local programming um but with ntv if you watched it for long enough you would start to see really bizarre things uh sometimes like the station ids would be really strange like i remember watching saturday morning cartoons as a kid and you would see these station ids that were clearly um filmed for some sort of movie or show in the 80s that never really came together but it's this character captain canada wearing this like red and gold suit he'd be standing on like edge of a cliff talking to a floating head in the sky um or you'd have these station ids that were like fractal patterns kaleidoscope images with like bizarre quotes from like uh jesus or gergif um and then in like the the magazine the newfoundland herald like often they would devote covers um to things like like ufos um oh my god that's a really cool cover it's a great cover um this is the early early days of like 3d graphic design is what i would describe this these visuals as yeah they have um like a lot of a lot of bizarre things like that a lot of experimentation with with graphic design with 3d animation um and they just embrace that and just would put that in their magazines put that um on on tv so like here's another example of just like i know the the listeners this is like but this article is when he was still alive so this article is when he was still alive 65 years of the newfoundland herald so uh behind the sterling universe so it's got him on the cover and then this folds out into like a poster that's got stonehenge it's got ufos it's got pyramids is incredible i really want i want some other world uh merch in the same exact aesthetic it's so this the thing that is like this stuff is is so cool and so bizarre um but it was just like part of the local media company and broadcaster so a lot of people growing up it just became like background noise um or you would think like okay this is the the kind of the norm for a local broadcaster and then um i would ask my parents sometimes as kids like what's captain canada's deal or what's captain newfoundland's deal or what's this weird stuff that i'm seeing on ntv and the response would be like oh well that's just jeff sterling and he's crazy um yeah so it just kind of like fell into to the background for me but For context, what is the normal programming on MTV besides this? Normally, it's like during the day, they would broadcast soap operas that they would license from other networks. In the evening, they would have the MTV Evening News Hour. Like local news, yeah. Local news. They would have some local programming, just like a sports show, I think like a hunting and fishing show. And then also in the evening, they would also license a lot of primetime shows from major American broadcasters. So like NCIS, Entertainment Tonight, Jeopardy, those kind of things would come on. So basically like the local Channel 5 or whatever. What channel was it? Do you remember? It was Channel 5, actually. Oh, okay. Channel 5. Yeah. So like basically very normal programming, but occasionally there are some very trippy visuals in the mix that you thought was a normal part of local TV. Like, oh, they have the news, they have the weather, they have sports, and then they also have, you know, the Stonehenge 3D graphics and the owner of the network pursuing his own weird little interests. Yeah. I mean, that's basically what it became. Yeah. And I think that's the thing, too, is that because he owned the network, he used it as a vehicle to pursue the things that he was interested in, and especially in the overnight hours. So NTV is apparently the first television station to start broadcasting 24 hours a day in North America. So they started this back in 1972. And just for some context, there's the Canadian Radio Television Telecommunications Commission, which has these broadcasting guidelines for television. So because Jeff really wanted people to watch his station, but he also understood that people were more interested in watching American shows than Canadian shows. So he would get these programs licensed from America, broadcast them. The CRTC would have these issues with you'd have to have so much Canadian content. So when he went 24 hours a day, they made up their own Canadian content by creating their own programming to fill the overnight hours. So it actually meant Canadian content. So that is where they they describe it as a experimental television. So they would do everything from allegedly film a fish tank for like several hours overnight to say, look, those are Canadian fish. This is our Canadian content to be fair. That is sort of how I imagine Canadian TV, if I'm going to be honest with you, is a fish. We've got some good stuff. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You do. But, you know, this was what year was this? This was 1972. So, yes, he he really was kind of like, especially when satellite television was coming in and he knew that people were going to have options to go to other networks. He would rather have people watch American shows on a Canadian network than have them tuned to an American network. But, yeah, for these overnight hours, he would do these experiments, television, film fish tanks, cut together documentaries about UFOs. He would do these long format interviews, kind of what we would be almost like accustomed to now of like the Joe Rogan experience kind of podcast of having someone on who's talking about like channeling aliens or diving into ancient aliens or Atlantis or any of this stuff. He would be doing this in the 1970s, these like sometimes interviews that would go like six hours and he'd just be broadcasting them live overnight or just like you're describing like YouTube. Yeah, it was essentially. Yeah, YouTube 40 years before YouTube. Yeah, that's pretty amazing. Yeah, so like I, I growing up didn't watch MTV in the overnight hours. So it was something that I was kind of unaware of. I was vaguely aware of the kind of superhero characters and some of the other weird stuff, but I had never really stayed up late. But my first job after I graduated from graphic design school, I was working at a newspaper and was working overnight shifts and just we had a little TV there. And one night this this program came on that was like Captain Newfoundland salutes Elvis, which was this character, which is Captain Newfoundland, which is apparently it was Jeff in this costume. He's kind of dressed like the Grim Reaper, but he has a map of Newfoundland as a face and this trippy sci fi disco music is playing and he's like flying through a wormhole that's like poorly chroma keyed. And this narrator is talking about how Captain Newfoundland is. From the ancient continent of Atlantis, but he's an he's an ancient alien who can transcend space and time and he can assume any form and speak telepathically. And also he lives in the hearts of all of us. And he's the spirit of creativity and imagination and adventure. And we must all remember the captain's code. This above all to thine own self be true. And then it just cuts to an Elvis concert for an hour and then cuts back to this intro again and then cuts back to the Elvis concert. And I was like, what? What the fuck is this? And so I called NTV. I called the station. I emailed the station. And I was just like really stoked on it. Like being an artist myself, being someone who is interested in breaking into comic books and superhero comics. I was vaguely aware that these characters existed and were part of NTV, but I'd never seen anything like this. And at this time, none of this stuff was up on YouTube. So I was just really concerned. Like, is this sitting on like a reel at the NTV studios? Is this just going to get lost in time? Someone needs to preserve this stuff because there's something actually really cool here.