How a Method Actor Fooled the Internet: 5CAST w/ Andrew Callaghan (#6) ft. William Banks

Summary

Podcast Summary: "How a Method Actor Fooled the Internet: 5CAST w/ Andrew Callaghan (#6) ft. William Banks"

Podcast Information:

• Title: 5CAST w/ Andrew Callaghan
• Host: Andrew Callaghan
• Guest: William Banks
• Episode Title: How a Method Actor Fooled the Internet
• Release Date: May 18, 2025

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1. Introduction to Method Acting

Andrew Callaghan opens the episode by delving into the concept of method acting, highlighting renowned actors like Heath Ledger, Daniel Day-Lewis, Christian Bale, and Natalie Portman. He discusses the intense dedication required for such roles and the potential mental and physical toll it can take on actors.

"[00:00] Andrew Callahan: ... It's a bold path that often takes a toll on the minds and bodies of those who undertake it."

2. The Story of William Banks

The spotlight shifts to William Banks, an artist who gained attention after allegedly stealing yard signs in Connecticut. This act supposedly led to his arrest, during which he filmed his transformative experience in jail, escape, and subsequent life as a fugitive. The narrative captivated online audiences, blurring the lines between reality and performance.

"[03:19] William Banks: Like Tay K, so this is my cell. I don't need any presence right now. I'm able to hold my own here in jail."

3. Religious Journey and Beliefs

William shares his complex relationship with religion, starting with a Lutheran upbringing marred by religious OCD. He recounts his journey through atheism, influenced by a friend, and his eventual conversion to Islam after a near-death experience.

"[11:20] William Banks: I think God wouldn't be telling me to touch something five times, because what's the reason for that."

4. The "Car World" Project

William introduces "Car World," a fictional planet from an alternate universe where he claims to have been abducted and ruled as king before being exiled. This elaborate mythology became a central part of his online persona, leading to the creation of a dedicated community.

"[25:22] William Banks: Car World refers to a planet in another universe where I was abducted to. And I lived there for 10 years where I was the king for half of the time there."

5. The Yard Sign Theft and Jail Saga

In December 2023, William admitted to stealing anti-Israel yard signs, driven by his opposition to the use of the Star of David in the Israeli flag. This act led to his arrest for five counts of larceny in the sixth degree. To comply with court expectations and fundraise for Palestinian causes, William orchestrated a "jail saga," pretending to be incarcerated and using cryptocurrency to raise over $50,000.

"[47:44] William Banks: They were pretty nice to me. They took my mugshot. That's the mugshot that I have that I have on some of my T shirts."

6. Reactions and Public Perception

The internet's reaction to William's jail saga was polarized. While some hailed him as a hero and innovative method actor, others criticized him as a scammer exploiting serious issues for personal gain. Despite the backlash, William maintained that his intentions were rooted in a desire to support Palestinian causes.

"[06:03] William Banks: Car World. Follow me and know what it is. Please let me know to you about Car World. It's a real location."

7. Personal Relationships and Emotional Impact

William discusses the emotional strain his actions placed on his personal life, particularly his engagement to Caroline Yos. Their relationship deteriorated amidst his escalating projects, leading to a traumatic experience where he continued acting out roles even after their breakup.

"[30:41] Andrew Callahan: And how do you think that emotionally impacted you? ...
[30:46] William Banks: Is it funny? ... No, no, no, no."

8. Future Projects and Goals

Post-jail saga, William expresses ambitions to expand his religious outreach, engage in interfaith dialogues, and combat male loneliness through his projects. He also mentions plans to participate in a boxing tournament in Argentina and dreams of establishing a communal living arrangement to foster genuine connections.

"[79:05] William Banks: I would like to do that too. Because ultimately I think there's more in similarity with different religions that believe in God than dissimilarities."

9. Final Thoughts and Conclusion

In the concluding segments, William reflects on his journey, acknowledging the mistakes that strained his relationships but emphasizing his unwavering faith. Andrew commends William for his audacious endeavors, despite the controversies, and the episode wraps with an energetic, albeit humorous, call to action for listeners to engage with William's projects.

"[105:03] Andrew Callahan: That may have been one of the best podcasts ever recorded."

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Notable Quotes:

• William Banks on Faith:

  "[18:01] William Banks: So you don't believe in an interventionist deity?"
  "[18:39] William Banks: Hmm. I think on a macro level, yes. But on the micro level, no."

• Discussion on Atheism and Religion:

  "[98:44] William Banks: If you're an atheist watching this broadcast? I'm not here to be your enemy, and I'm not here to be your bully."
  "[100:27] William Banks: I would have maybe tried to not have stolen those signs. It led to everything that I've done..."

• Reflection on the Jail Saga:

  "[76:59] Andrew Callahan: So from a production standpoint, you said that you rented a jail. Was this jail like open or closed?"
  "[77:05] William Banks: It was closed. It was an out of use prison facility in Vero Beach, Florida."

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Conclusion: This episode of 5CAST presents a deep dive into William Banks' intricate blend of method acting, personal belief systems, and audacious social experiments. Through his narrative, listeners are exposed to themes of identity, faith, societal critique, and the blurred lines between performance and reality. William's journey is a testament to the lengths individuals might go to convey messages or support causes they believe in, raising questions about authenticity, ethics, and the impact of digital personas.

Transcript

[Andrew Callahan]

Let's talk about method acting. We're talking about Heath Ledger's Joker Daniel Day Lewis, soulless oil baron in There Will Be Blood Christian Bale as a pale insomniac in the Machinist Natalie Portman as a tortured ballerina in Black Swan. In order to become these characters, these actors opted to shed their own identity and lose themselves in the pursuit of a perfect performance. It's a bold path that often takes a toll on the minds and bodies of those who undertake it. Some Some, like cult leader and NDA inventor Jared Leto, go full method and still don't kill the role. Sources say Leto sent packages containing anal beads and used condoms to Will Smith's house during the filming for Suicide Squad, and Leto's quoted as saying the Joker is somebody who doesn't really respect things like personal space or boundaries. Despite this, the film received a 26% rating on rotten Tomatoes. And without punching down too hard, Leto's Joker was widely considered to be the character's worst portrayal, ranked even below Miami based tattoo model Joker 305 RAW's Chico Alive. Love you my boy. I hope you're doing good. Aside from Jared Leto, many method actors continue to smack shit today, notably Leonardo DiCaprio, who camped in freezing temperatures, slept in animal carcasses and ate raw bison for his role in the Revenant and won his first Oscar ever for that stellar performance. Thankfully, Leo did not go full method in preparation for his role in Django Unchained. However, there hasn't been a really solid method actor in a while, which is no surprise because movies aren't what they used to be. The dominance of sequels, video game adaptations, franchises and PG rated superhero films built upon existing IP as well as the risk averse nature of corporate movie studios has made movies suck ass. And that's no secret. Not to mention, 20% of box office revenue now comes from Chinese markets who officially lifted their Marvel ban in 2023 while maintaining a ban on subversive Oscar winning films like Brokeback Mountain, Nomadland and the Departed. As Hollywood movies, mainstream media, newspapers, television and every other institutional medium have degraded rapidly over the course of the past 10 years, the Internet has risen as the hero and filled that void. The and today Internet content of all kinds has dwarfed the presence of these institutions. YouTube documentaries get more engagement than a box office hit does, and the sick song can drop right now on TikTok or SoundCloud and turn you into an overnight rap star without having to pay Suge Knight or Big U for protection and blessings. However with the over saturation of digital content currently online, the reduced attention span of the average viewer, and the intense parasocial relationship that's been developed between viewer and creator, especially with live streamers, there's been an overall drop in artistry and a big push for quantum over quality. Now, to be honest, it feels like it's more about working to grab people's attention than working to create a great piece of art, which I don't blame anybody for. We do it too sometimes. It's not the worst thing in the world. But what's truly missing from this new digital era is a solid method actor, somebody who can cut through this online hellscape and make you pay attention. By way of their extreme commitment to a character, or perhaps a character that evolves into becoming their true identity, wherein the fictional self is inseparable from the self in reality, is performance. This is especially true of the gentleman that we're going to be speaking to today, William Banks, an artist who's turned heads in recent months after being arrested for stealing yard signs in suburban Connecticut, which appeared to land him in jail, where he found access to a cell phone and documented his transformative experience behind bars, eventual escape and life as a fugitive, shocking the Internet as he did the race.

[William Banks]

Like Tay K, so this is my cell. I don't need any presence right now. I'm able to hold my own here in jail.

[Andrew Callahan]

Y' all better rob this white boy out of here.

[William Banks]

So I'll fuck him up sometimes to make deals with other inmates and trades what he calls soups. Well, catch the bull.

[Andrew Callahan]

Every drop.

[William Banks]

That's two soups. I'm trying to tell him one of my friends sent me a letter, so I'm gonna open that up and read it for you. Dear William Banks, I'm so sorry you're in jail. I miss you and I miss getting to hang out with you. I felt really concerned when I heard the news that you were going to jail. But when I started watching your posting online, it's nice to see how much fun you are having in jail. We definitely get on our ding.

[Andrew Callahan]

Like we try to be on our.

[William Banks]

Ding every single day in life. Like, at any given moment. I've recently converted to Islam.

[Andrew Callahan]

Moses, you leading the way?

[William Banks]

Go ahead, lead the white Moses. Go ahead.

[Andrew Callahan]

Say it again.

[William Banks]

The white Moses. I got the Moses.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yep, lead us out of here.

[William Banks]

The way. White Moses. All right, it's time to break out of jail. Come on.

[Andrew Callahan]

It wasn't long until news outlets and leftist activist Instagram pages picked up Will's Story. He was lauded as some kind of hero and created a crypto coin called White Moses while allegedly on the run, which skyrocketed in value after the news coverage, reaching a market cap of over $257,000. Before he abruptly orchestrated a Hoktua style rug pull. Deleted all social media posts promoting the coin and announced on the William Banks Instagram that he'd raised over $50,000 for Palestine after posting the receipts of money transfers to a variety of charities. He admitted that he wasn't ever actually in jail, but he did have a new girlfriend. As a viewer who was glued to the screen for months watching Will's jail saga, I couldn't believe it. Will got me a true method actor. In an age of oversaturation. The reaction was very mixed. Some people saw him as a hero, a genius, a Robin Hood type figure. Others saw him as a scammer, a con artist, and even worse, a white cisgender, able bodied heterosexual Christian male using his position of privilege to appropriate the experience of incarcerated individuals who, unlike him, cannot drop the bit. However, it's important to note that William Banks arrest was real. He did plead guilty to the yard sign theft and most importantly, is not concerned with with the haters. After all, social media method acting is something that William has been doing for years now with his first project, Car World, which I actually can't explain.

[William Banks]

Car World. Follow me and know what it is. Please let me know to you about Car World. It's a real location. The whole society there is built on a desire to have sex with me, William Bank.

[Andrew Callahan]

I am Car. And then later with the Make Believe Project, a traveling interview show where he would wage psychic warfare on atheists throughout the country.

[William Banks]

Why do you not believe in God?

[Andrew Callahan]

But after our conversation, which we filmed before this intro that I'm giving to you right now, I don't know if William Banks is acting. I'm gonna leave that for you guys to decide. Before we jump into it, I just want to remind you guys that this broadcast is also available on Spotify, Amazon, Apple Music and a number of other platforms. And that we normally share positive news and break down current events. But today's episode is merely a conversation and one that I will always remember. Here it is. All right, we're here right now with Mr. William Banks, a method actor of a generation. The first person to successfully convince millions, if not tens of millions of people on social media that he was in fact in jail. Using 240pmobile technology, he was able to raise over $50,000 for the Palestinian cause while simultaneously flying under the radar despite existing in the free world throughout the entire duration. Sir, thank you so much for making the time for us.

[William Banks]

Thank you for having me here. It's so nice to be back in Los Angeles. I love the city of Los Angeles, and thank you so much for having me here on the show.

[Andrew Callahan]

What do you like about L. A?

[William Banks]

It's so pretty. The palm trees are gorgeous. There's an attitude that's both laid back, but people also constantly want to meet each other and talk to each other. So I like the aspect of it that's the community. And the hills are really nice, too.

[Andrew Callahan]

You enjoy dense public thoroughfares?

[William Banks]

Yeah. I live in New York, so I do like being able to walk around everywhere. And I often am walking or taking the subway, and I like to run into people I know on the street. And that happens a lot in New York. But it can happen in Los Angeles, too. But right now, I don't have a car here, so it is easier to have a car.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. Some describe LA as car hell because.

[William Banks]

You'Re in your car all the time.

[Andrew Callahan]

Well, there's only a few pockets of LA where you can, like, walk around and exist as a pedestrian, but you can't really leave those areas. Like Venice, West Hollywood. Hollywood, arguably, and then downtown. But everywhere else, pretty much, you're forced to spend at least 30 minutes in the car.

[William Banks]

Yeah. And I lost my driver's license, so whenever I've been visiting here, I can't rent a car. So the first time I came here a few weeks ago, my friends came with me and they helped drive me around, but this time I came alone, so I took an Uber from the airport. And then now my friend's gonna come pick me up after this.

[Andrew Callahan]

Cool. So, for starters, who is William Banks?

[William Banks]

I'm William Banks, so.

[Andrew Callahan]

That's right.

[William Banks]

I am from Southern Illinois. My grandparents lived in Missouri, and I spent a lot of time in Missouri growing up, and then I moved to New York City, where I lived for 12 years. And I have a lot of friends there and a lot of community who I love there. And I like to feel a lot of emotions. I feel like. I really like to have emotions and to feel the world around me.

[Andrew Callahan]

When you say southern Illinois, are you talking, like, near Poplar Bluff, Missouri?

[William Banks]

Yeah. I grew up in Carbondale, Illinois. So Carbondale, Illinois has the college, Southern Illinois University, siu, where the mascot is the Saluki dog. And it had a college there that a lot of people I grew up with went, and I took summer Class, summer summer camps there, but I lived in. I moved to New York primarily.

[Andrew Callahan]

What was your religious upbringing like as a child?

[William Banks]

I grew up Lutheran, which is founded by Martin Luther, who was the first branch away from Catholicism in Europe. He left Catholicism and started Protestantism. Lutheran is the first Protestant religion. I really liked growing up Lutheran. But I had religious OCD as a child. And all of my intrusive thoughts that I had from the illness, I, at a young age, thought it was God telling me those things. For example, I felt like I had to touch things five times. And if I. My thought to do that meant that if I didn't do that, then I was directly choosing to disobey God. And making that choice would ultimately could lead me to go to hell. And as I matured, I realized, oh, God wouldn't be telling me to touch something five times, because what's the reason for that? But then all of my T's that I would write because they look like a cross, I would trace over them five times and make them bold on my paper. And I felt like that was God telling me to do it because I was showing that I was a Christian. I baptized my dog a lot because I felt like every time I thought that I had to baptize my dog, if I didn't do it, then I was directly damning my dog to hell.

[Andrew Callahan]

How many times did you baptize the dog?

[William Banks]

25.

[Andrew Callahan]

And what kind of dog was it?

[William Banks]

It was a beagle. I did 25 because that's five times five.

[Andrew Callahan]

And what age were you when the baptisms began?

[William Banks]

I think I was around, like, 11.

[Andrew Callahan]

And this continued until your late teens?

[William Banks]

Yeah, around puberty, I started to grow out of that ocd.

[Andrew Callahan]

It's only a couple years.

[William Banks]

Well, I was a little bit of a late bloomer.

[Andrew Callahan]

How was the experience of puberty?

[William Banks]

I ultimately think that my puberty came on a little bit early because I started. Well, part of my puberty started early, and then it stalled, and then it finished at the end. So my puberty started because I was taking steroids because I had a brain tumor.

[Andrew Callahan]

Gotcha.

[William Banks]

See the back here? I have a scar. So when I was getting radiation therapy for my brain tumor at 9, I was taking steroids, and that was making my pubic hair grow really fast, like.

[Andrew Callahan]

Across your entire pelvis.

[William Banks]

I was really young for having pubic hair.

[Andrew Callahan]

Right.

[William Banks]

And then I started to grow a little mustache, and I was getting angry, like I was angsty. But then after my brain surgery and the radiation therapy, they no longer had me on steroids. And then the puberty stopped. And then later on, maybe around 16, 17 is when my. I think my puberty finished.

[Andrew Callahan]

And around that time. What was your religious outlook at that age? 17 compared to when you were baptizing your dog?

[William Banks]

Yes. So my friend Nilam, who became my friend senior year, he moved to my high school senior year. His name was Nilam Gupta. He's still my really good friend, but he's the first person I smoked weed with because he had smoked weed and he introduced me to it and he didn't believe in God. And I remember one night, late, like senior year, of us just driving around, and he was really convincing me that Christianity, my home religion, was so corrupted by men in power. He's like, the Bible's not real. The Bible's written by men. Like, what are you saying? It's the word of God because it's been translated and translated and used and corrupted by kings to control people. And he was saying a lot of points that were accurately, I feel like, against the establishment of religion. And he convinced me. And I stopped believing in God for a solid year, I would say. Or at least I just stopped thinking that God was real. And I almost was like, okay, I am an atheist, I guess, because he's convinced me so well, then I stopped thinking about it. I didn't fixate on being an atheist. I'm like, I didn't fix it on the idea that there's no God. I just, like, kind of put it on a back shelf in my brain and didn't think about it so much until I had the third major near death experience of my life. And then that, I would say, really restarted my faith.

[Andrew Callahan]

What was that?

[William Banks]

So my first job that I had in New York, I worked at a popsicle stand. I sold popsicles and shaved ice. And I was putting the popsicles away in the freezer. And then the door jammed behind me and no one else was there. I couldn't get out. And I was normally able to get out, but the pole that would open the door, it jammed up. So I was gonna freeze to death. And I started panicking and I started jumping up and down and from, like, Bear Grylls. Man against wild man versus wild Terrifying. I was like, okay, I have to keep my body temperature high. I gotta move, move, move, move and scream and someone's gonna help me out. And I was screaming and no one was helping. And I was moving so much with these exercises I was doing that I started breathing heavy and I realized, oh, before I even freeze to death. At this rate, I'm gonna run out of oxygen. And then my cell. Cell phone had no cell service at all. I was calling 911 over and over again for them to come and get me, but it wasn't working because there was no service deep in the concrete of the freezer. And then I had this really intense experience where I suddenly felt so sure that the way I need to handle this is I need to hold God's hand rather than resist and dig my nails into life and scratch at the door and scream if I'm gonna die. Which I accepted that I was gonna die and my parents were gonna have to find out about it. I want to die with peace, riding the wave of life and death with God, rather than against God being like, no, I'm in charge. I want to live my choice. My choice. So that feeling of, like, calmness, accepting the bad things that happen to me and in the world as out of my control, not being angry at God for my early death, but being like, you've saved me from cancer. I lived a life, and now if this is my time, I want to flow into the next stage of afterlife rather than resist it and drown. But then I calmly kept calling 911, and even with no cell service, it called 911 just long enough for me to tell them, hello. It's so cold in here. My phone's about to die. Please help me. Please, sir, remain calm. Stay on the line with me. Where are you located? People's cops. And the call dropped. And then I just stayed in there, still in this headspace. And then maybe like 20 minutes later, the fire department came and opened up the door and got me out.

[Andrew Callahan]

Wow.

[William Banks]

So to me, that really feels like a miracle.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah.

[William Banks]

And that definitely has given me a sense of, like, pre freezer, post freezer. I don't think God saved me to do some specific purpose like, oh, William, you need to go do this. But if I am given this extra life, how can I use it to fulfill what feels like to me, my purpose? Or what? How can I use it to fulfill making the world a better place somehow?

[Andrew Callahan]

Do you remember the first thing that you said to the firefighter when he opened the door?

[William Banks]

I said, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, God. Thank you, God. I was thanking the firefighters, and I was thanking God.

[Andrew Callahan]

Do you believe that God had a hand in having that 911 call get picked up that day?

[William Banks]

That's a complicated question. And that's, I feel, like, a very theological question of if you pray and something good happens, or if you pray and it doesn't happen, did God make that choice of the good thing or the bad thing happening? And my instinct here would be no. I don't think that God is making decisions about what happens necessarily.

[Andrew Callahan]

So you don't believe in an interventionist deity?

[William Banks]

I think God is capable of intervention, and I'm sure it does happen. But I don't like if you want something good to happen. I think praying about it. Asking God for favors is not necessarily the right way to use prayer. Prayer is about acceptance, and prayer is asking God to help you accept and be comfortable with whatever happens. Because I think ultimately reality is kind of set into motion and it all plays out the way it plays out.

[Andrew Callahan]

But do you believe that God has a hand in fate itself?

[William Banks]

Hmm. I think on a macro level, yes. But on the micro level, no. I think if I were to die there in that freezer, that's not God rejecting me or saying that I'm useless and my life was ready to end. Life and death is so interchangeable, and it comes. It's so in the macro life and death is so small. If we can remove our egos from our own life and our own death, I think on the macro life in the universe is God's plan, is God's intervention to put life into the earth and have us be conscious.

[Andrew Callahan]

So you believe in a universal consciousness, a oneness?

[William Banks]

I do, yeah. I do think that there is a universal.

[Andrew Callahan]

And you don't believe death is the end?

[William Banks]

Death is the end of our life.

[Andrew Callahan]

But it's not the end of the Great Spirit that we're a part of.

[William Banks]

Yes. I think as long as anybody is alive, we are ultimately also alive in them, because I think our branch fell off the tree. But that's just our br. That, like, I think our souls are tethered to God.

[Andrew Callahan]

When you say branch, you mean Homo sapiens, human beings separating ourselves from the animal kingdom and developing existential thought.

[William Banks]

Hmm. Well, by branch, I meant singular person, each individual. That's what I meant by branch in that. But for animals, I mean, it is such a varying degree. I mean, you think of bugs are clearly not the same as humans in a conscious level, but it is life. So, you know, I think it can be all very. A little different.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. I don't want to get bogged down with, like, assessing what with the limbic nervous system is qualified to be a part of, like, the universal spirit.

[William Banks]

Yes. But I do think life itself is a breath that comes from a creator.

[Andrew Callahan]

So before the freezer incident, you were in an atheistic phase.

[William Banks]

I was in a not thinking about it much phase. I would say if someone hit me up on the street about it, if you came up doing one of your classic interviews, I would say I would probably be afraid to be on your camera and say that I'm a Christian. You know, that was what, 2015, 2016? I was in college. I would say that I would be afraid to publicly identify as a Christian. It's cool to say you're an atheist. It's cool to be detached and disconnected. But I think I would have probably said I was agnostic or I would have been think, oh, I should say I'm Christian. I'm supposed to testify and say that I'm Christian. But I would have been afraid, I think, to make that claim at that time.

[Andrew Callahan]

And you mentioned the freezer was your third near death experience. Can you take us back through the first two?

[William Banks]

Yes. My first near death experience is when I had cancer as a child. I was nine. And I had a brain tumor on my brain stem. And then my second near death experience was when I totaled my car in high school. I was trying to help my friend film a USC film school application. I was trying to drift my car for the shot and then I. I got it a few different times, but I was like, I can do it better. And like on the fourth take, I drifted my car and then it flipped and it landed and I didn't get hurt. But that I could have died. Yeah, my parents said I could have died. And then getting locked in the freezer was my third near death experience.

[Andrew Callahan]

And that third experience was a religious moment for you?

[William Banks]

Yes.

[Andrew Callahan]

How did your life change after the freezer?

[William Banks]

I started thinking a lot more about my purpose, what I'm here for. It felt like an extra chance at life I had been given. So I think I stopped taking my life for granted and I savored my reality and the people within it. I think more.

[Andrew Callahan]

Were there any like, you know, behaviors that you saw as non productive that you cut out after that?

[William Banks]

No. I think I've always struggled with bad habits and vices. Even though I had a renewed, I still did the things that were bad for me that felt good, like drinking alcohol or smoking weed or sort of just being selfish. Sometimes I think I still struggle with.

[Andrew Callahan]

Vices, but obviously you can manage them to the point of still being able to be capable of creativity, right?

[William Banks]

Yes. I would not say I'm not an alcoholic by any means, but I am actually right now trying to choose to be sober for fitness.

[Andrew Callahan]

That's exactly what I'm doing.

[William Banks]

Are you sober?

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, I've been sober for like 45 days because I'm on a fitness program. I'm trying to get really, like, cut up and look like Hugh Jackman.

[William Banks]

Oh, nice. I'm trying to do that too. I've got a big boxing tournament coming up.

[Andrew Callahan]

Oh, so you've already been training and preparing for that?

[William Banks]

I only did one training session so far and they told me you gotta not drink. And I've stopped drinking beer for like a few weeks.

[Andrew Callahan]

But it's hard.

[William Banks]

I live in New York and in a lot of social situations, people are drinking.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, I was talking to my trainer and he told me that back in the day they used to think there was three macros, carbs, fats and proteins. But now among the personal training community, they've added a fourth, which is alcohol, because it makes it so your muscles can't grow and it actually wears down the muscle tissue and makes it so you can't metabolize food. But they're kind of afraid to say that because, you know, it's like, it's kind of going to make people not want to sign up for their sessions because they're going to be like, what, I can't drink wine with friends on Friday night? Like, I don't want to sign up for your program. But it's real shit.

[William Banks]

Well, that is, It's. That is my plan.

[Andrew Callahan]

So you mentioned that you were helping a friend film something for USC film school application. So you've always been a filmer, been a creative. Do you remember your first creative project?

[William Banks]

Yes. One of my big first projects is I made a Harry Potter movie in high school. My freshman year of high school. There was a little castle park and I made a little. I remade Harry Potter. And I would always like to make videos with my friends during a sleepover. I would invite my friend to sleepover at my house and we make videos.

[Andrew Callahan]

What were some of the concepts behind the sleepover videos?

[William Banks]

We would make, like, music videos to songs. So we made one to Kung Fu Fighting, which was a big song back then in the early 2000s, we made some just sort of like murder mystery stuff. But my first videos I didn't know how to edit. So we would just shoot it chronologically so that we could watch it back on the camera in order because I couldn't edit it together.

[Andrew Callahan]

Then jumping forward four years after the freezer incident, I remember it was 2020 and I saw somebody. I was actually in New York. They're walking down the street with a shirt that said Car World. I thought to myself, what the hell is Car World? And I found this website, and it had a whole mythology to it. There was a whole storyline. I don't know if it was like a universe creation thing that you did, but you seem to be the prophet for an organization called Car World. Is that accurate?

[William Banks]

Yes.

[Andrew Callahan]

Can you tell us about Car World?

[William Banks]

Yes. Yes. So Car World refers to a planet in another universe where I was abducted to. And I lived there for 10 years where I was the king for half of the time there. And then I was exiled from North Caramerica by Carx. And I traveled around the rest of the world meeting other people. And then I was sent back to Earth. And then I started telling people my experience of being on that planet, and people believed me. And we started out teaching some classes, and it gained momentum because we were having a lot of fun doing it. And then I fell in love with a girl, and I asked her to play Carux, my wife, the worm queen, who I had sex with, who was my wife. And Car World, I asked her to play that character for me, and she did. And we were dating, and it was wonderful. And it grew and grew, and we developed communities in different cities. We had a large Car World Los Angeles branch that my current roommate, Will Duncan, was the leader of. He moved to New York to study with me in 2023. We had grown the organization to be about 565 members. And you became a member by donating money to me and then making this lifelong commitment that we would know each other forever. It was to establish permanence within the community. So many people only know each other briefly, or it's like, okay, we meet each other. If you're not a member of Car World, maybe we'll never see each other again or we'll never talk to each other again. But with Car World, you give me your phone number, and I'll always have it, and you'll always be a part of me.

[Andrew Callahan]

Even if you switch phones.

[William Banks]

Well, I guess you could switch phones or block me, and I can't do much about that. But it was something where people would, like, leave the group chat, and I'd put them back in, and then later they'd thank me for that because, oh, man, I was feeling like I needed to leave, but you didn't let me leave, and I really appreciate that. We had a big gala for a cinematic origin film we made called Intercar Worlds that was about my first encounter with Carx. We had suppers which celebrate sort of like a Jewish seder dinner where we read from a book called the car World Supper Book that was about the 10 different beasts that sucked me off 10 different ways in Car World. And then we had a medallion that represented each one and a story about each event. It was a really thriving, beautiful community. And a lot of people found friends through coming to car World gatherings. And then they'd make friends of people they didn't know and then they'd continue. Some people dated from that, some people met each other and they met the partner there. And it was really, I feel like such a beautiful community. But halfway through our last big gathering in 2023, Car X, the sex ride, which was sort of like a Disney World style or, excuse me, Disneyland style ride where people could pretend to be me. And it starts with them getting locked in a freezer. And then they are pushed out of the freezer with an audio track and they're blindfolded and they're led through this soundscape into a car that was parked in a garage. And we had people on the side of the cars spinning a tapestry to make it look like it was driving. And then they started shaking the car. We had a lot of a big 10 person crew for this. And then a projection onto the windshield to show that it's driving. And then the sounds get the. They would listen to. And then a big animatronic car X that we built would come and slam down into the car to start phasing into it, which is how I had sex with Carux on October 14, 2018. And then Caroline Yos, my ex fiance, came around the car dressed as Carox and then would engage with the driver, who was me through the windshield and have sex with them using words and moaning and making it a personal sort of improvise to the person's unique needs sexual experience. And I was in the backseat of the car in a black morph suit with a Hitachi wand vibrator in my hand that I would use to like rub their genitals while they were having sex with Caroline. And people could either pay $20 for the love ride, which I would not touch their erogenous zones, or they could pay $40 for the sex ride, which is them consenting to and tempting me to touch their genitals. And a lot of people chose the love ride because or the sex ride with the $40 genital experience because it was more interesting. But that was a six night run with 48 different guests, different periods and Halfway through that experience of that ride, three days in, unrelated to the ride, it was because our relationship had been deteriorating and I committed a crime in her parents hometown that ended up getting me banned from there. Caroline broke up with me, so I had to. But she didn't quit the show. So I had to continue having that sexual experience with people pretending to be me. And her having. She's moaning my name and I'm in the back seat rubbing their genitals, just crying in a black morph suit. And it was the most nightmare experience I've ever created for myself.

[Andrew Callahan]

And how do you think that emotionally impacted you? How do you think that emotionally.

[William Banks]

Is it funny?

[Andrew Callahan]

No, no, no, no. I just can't believe that this is. This is like. This is your life. You're one of the most interesting people I've met.

[William Banks]

Thank you. It was emotionally really traumatizing. If we had just ended it there and not done any more of the ride, it would have been something where I could have just disassociated and tried to forget it as much as I could. But the fact that we had to keep doing this fantasy that I had created where someone pretends to be me having sex with Car X, played by Caroline, and I'm in the backseat massaging their genitals. I just. It was just a visceral nightmare. And I get like closing my eyes. I can be. I can. Really. Because I was also wearing the Morph suit, so it was dark.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, so.

[William Banks]

So it really feels like hell on earth. But I do commend her for finishing the ride and the whole crew for continuing. The vibes got really dark in that studio. We didn't tell everyone that we broke up, but the tension was sucked out of the room. Something was wrong. Again, I'd just like to say on camera, we did not break up because of Carx the sex ride. Carrick's sex ride was, in fact, the only thing keeping us still together at that point.

[Andrew Callahan]

But how did that breakup affect the car world community and the scene?

[William Banks]

It essentially ended it. The breakup is largely referred to as council collapse because we had a really solid inner circle called the Council of Communications, which was me, the six apostles that we had, Caroline, Tej, and a few others who were also helping us produce it. And after she broke up with me, that was the heart of the organization. The director, Russell Katz, and I had been arguing for a couple years and just having 10. We were best friends, but we had tension building between us that she was largely involved in because he would sleep over on our Couch all the time as we were working on producing, he and I would argue and she would try to mediate it and ultimately all the progress she was trying, putting a lot of effort to fix our relationship wouldn't stick and he and I would keep fighting and it just was this futile thing of the three of us. So then the tension of the breakup with her made my relationship with Russell also boil over and without her, I broke up with him and she broke up with me. I broke up with him. Although he would probably say it was mutual, right? And then that was we were the core leaders. So without that, it went on an indefinite hiatus. I've still posted on the Car World page trying to sell T shirts. I have about 100 car world T shirts in my closet. If you would like to buy a Car World T shirt, please message me on Instagram, illiambanks or Eels Duncan where I can sell you a T shirt and I can mail it to you. But please don't buy it on the website www.carwell.love because all of those orders go to Russell and no shade on Russell. But I have to ship it and it cost me about $7 at USPS to ship the shirts. So if you buy it through the website, I do want to support Russell and I want Russell to make money too off of this. But I have to pay $7 for every shirt that could spot on the website and then I'm losing money.

[Andrew Callahan]

Did your ex girlfriend, if you don't mind me asking, give you an explicit reason for the breakup or was it just more like you fell out of love?

[William Banks]

We didn't fall out of love. We definitely did not fall out of love. We got engaged at Car World Retreat where we stayed up all night and took mushrooms with 50 of our friends at her brother's house in Connecticut in his yard. And everyone had tents and we had a big bonfire. We had activities planned. And at 6am I proposed to her in front of everyone. And it was a really beautiful. It felt like a wedding. We were both wearing white and all of our friends were there and it was incredibly. Really felt like my wedding day for sure. But then we went on a Disney cruise that her parents invited us to. And I loved the Disney cruise and she was enjoying the Disney cruise too. I was filming myself making vlogs on the Disney cruise, documenting our experience. And it almost felt like that was our honeymoon because it happened just a few weeks after this Disney cruise is already off to a great start and we're just getting beginning. Yes, we're on the Disney cruises. Mulan right behind us. And we're meeting princesses. We're meeting princesses. But I was starting to have serious doubts about if my girlfriend was scared to become my wife. We're gonna crack up at what the genie says at the Aladdin the Musical on the Disney cruise. We're on a Disney cruise. But then when I saw Aladdin the Musical, I remembered the magic, why we're here together. He didn't want the night to end. And the food was delicious. I was having so much fun filming my experiences because, just like you, I like to be a journalist. And her dad, unfortunately tripped playing basketball and broke his neck on the Disney cruise. And I went down into the med bay with them. My first thought was, this would be a great ending to the Disney cruise vlogs is to include this tragic event that happened because it contradicts Mickey Mouse. And when I sort of asked, can I film this? Or kind of got out my phone interested to film it, she was very offended by that, and rightfully so, because that was very inappropriate of me to want to do. And I think that just really was indicative of a problem that I had where I wanted to turn everything that happened in our personal life, whether it's good or bad, into some kind of show that I could make into an art project. And I didn't have the emotional discretion to be like, this is a family that is suffering because the dad. We don't know if he has brain. We don't know if his brain is bleeding. We did not know. He's fine now, thank God. But we, at the time, we didn't know what the damage would be. And for me to want to immediately think about how that could be, oh, it's real life. It's okay to include because it's real, it's journalism, it's authentic. I just really lacked the humanity, I think, to. Cause I asked for permission in my head. Oh, I'm just asking. If you say no, I won't do it. But I should have had the discretion to not even suggest that I record the med bay at the Disney cruise. And then, you know, we had been just me getting lost in the sauce car world really got to my head.

[Andrew Callahan]

On an ego level.

[William Banks]

Yeah, I really, like, everyone treated me as their king.

[Andrew Callahan]

I mean, you've got 500 plus members of this sub and they're looking to you as the prophet of the mythology.

[William Banks]

They treat me like I'm a prophet. And it really started to get to my head that I am a prophet and that I'm able to make egregious choices like that because I can just get away with it. I'll just find a way to get away with filming the Disney cruise in a bad way. If I could go back. I think that was a major moment in my relationship that I should have had more clarity.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. And before we proceed, you said that Car World is fictional, right?

[William Banks]

No.

[Andrew Callahan]

What do you mean? Well, I mean like the planet. Like, you said that you're from Southern Illinois.

[William Banks]

I was born in Southern Illinois. I was born in Carbondale, Illinois.

[Andrew Callahan]

Is that Car World Carbondale?

[William Banks]

No, no, no. Carbondale, I think was a carbon mining town in the early 50s.

[Andrew Callahan]

But how can you be both from Carbondale, Illinois and the Car Planet?

[William Banks]

Well, I'm not from Car World. I was taken there. I was abducted there on October 14, 2018, shortly after the freezer incident. It was the morning of the freezer incident. And then in the evening, I had sex with Carux. But I wasn't taken there that night. A year later, October 15, 2019, is when I came back from Car World. I was there for a little over a day because one moment In Earthworld is 3000 moments in Karworld.

[Andrew Callahan]

Do you have any documentation of this or anything?

[William Banks]

No, I didn't have a phone.

[Andrew Callahan]

Have you been in communication with the people from that planet since your return?

[William Banks]

They're sent mechanics who are offspring of Carx and humans. And the mechanics have come to get me. Some of them are old, some of them are young. I've had sex with some of them. But ultimately it's something that is largely in my past right now because it is too difficult for me to consistently engage with.

[Andrew Callahan]

Do they come to you in New York City or mostly when you're traveling?

[William Banks]

Mostly in New York City.

[Andrew Callahan]

Any particular borough?

[William Banks]

Brooklyn, because that's where I live. The Beacon mechanics are mechanics that have descended from Carux. And Chloe Trost, my friend, she's an apostle. And when she got the tattoo, the tap pass, it was manipulated by Mechanic, Inc. So it serves as a beacon to bring the mechanics closer to me.

[Andrew Callahan]

Do all Car World members have to get a tattoo?

[William Banks]

No, just the apostles. The people who will return to Kar World with me when I go. But I need 12 of them. And that's what I set out initially to. Why I started talking about Car World is I wanted to gather 12 people to get these tap passes over time because I needed 12 to cross the bridge to go back to Car World. But they've had like a stop to getting new ones after the 6th. Because the 6th Apostle, Ali Viti, she got one at Car World Retreat, which is where I got engaged. Gotcha. And then there's been no momentum, no. No fresh air in the Car World movement since council collapse. It is something I would like to eventually revisit in my life.

[Andrew Callahan]

But you, as an individual, since then, have kind of skyrocketed in popularity. And one thing that you mentioned about Caroline's hometown, Westport, Connecticut, is that you were involved in some kind of criminal incident that you're currently charged. Charged with. Can you tell us about what happened in Westport and why you ended up charged with a felony?

[William Banks]

Yeah, so? Well, I wasn't charged with a felony. Okay. It was a misdemeanor.

[Andrew Callahan]

That's good.

[William Banks]

Criminal misdemeanor. One morning, December 30, 2023, there were Israel lawn signs all over the neighborhood. I would say our relationship was struggling. Definitely. She had warned me that she was feeling unsure of marrying me because of my behavior and my lack of sort of listening to her in crucial moments such as the Disney cruise. So she had told me I shouldn't take the signs. She's anti Zionist, just like I am. But she had told me not to take it because ultimately, is it going to have that big of an impact on these homeowners if I take down their signs? Isn't that just going to make them mad and they'll replace the signs and put up more signs and they'll feel, like, justified in their stance, kind of. But I think that my OCD really kicked in, and I felt like I had to take down those signs. And I felt like if I didn't do it, no one else was going to do it, and I'm the only one who would do it. And I just really don't like seeing the Star of David used on the Israel flag, because the Star of David is the symbol of Judaism. And I think Judaism is a great community and a great religion. Jewish people believe in God. I don't think that the government of Israel is in line with Judaism. I don't think that the government of Israel is in line with God. So I revoke Israel's right to use the Star of David unequivocally and to see the signs, I felt like I needed to take them down and remove them. So I woke up one morning and just felt like I had to do it today because her parents were out of town. We were leaving the next day. And so this was the first time we were there without any parents. And I walked around the neighborhood And I took their trash can, their rolling trash can, and I gathered up all the signs and I threw them away. And then a neighbor came out and was like, hey, hey, I got you, bud. I caught you, man. And he was driving and filming me. And then I stopped doing it and just wouldn't look at him. And then went back to their house, got in her car, and I drove it to get the remaining signs that I had missed. And I saw that one of the signs I had taken had already been replaced with another sign. And I just wanted there to be no signs in the neighborhood like that, because I just don't believe in the Israel flag like that. And I took that sign. And then the police were at the doorstep of the neighborhood, filmed me because he had called the police, and they saw me take that last sign. And then they started chasing me. And I panicked and started speeding away. And then I got into a little car chase with the police, and I outmaneuvered them because I knew the streets pretty well. I guess they did, too. But thankfully, they didn't get caught with a car chase. But I took the car back to her place, went inside, told her what happened. I disposed of the signs in the car that we'd take back to Brooklyn and throw away. That was on December 30th. And then on December 31st, right before we all went out for New Year's Eve, I got an email from her parents disgusted at my behavior, because the big Westport blog, I think his name is Dan Woog, that got emailed to her parents. At first, they covered up my face. They blurred out my face because they thought I might be a minor because I was wearing a hat and the photo didn't show my hairline, and they thought I might be an underage minor. So they didn't expose my face, even though I was 27 at the time. It was just. We broke up about a little. Three weeks. No, we broke up. We broke up five weeks after that. So we continued to kind of limp along because we were engaged. And I was still completely in love with her and saying, sorry, I want to make this work. I feel like I hate myself for doing this. Please give me another chance. This was such a mistake that I disrespected your family like this. And then she moved out. And maybe we were gonna just have some distance and make it work. But then we started taking couples therapy again. We took the same couples therapists that my roommate, Will Duncan, had been taking. He recommended the therapist to us. And then almost immediately, two sessions in she's planning to break up with me after Caruk's the sex wreck just to keep the peace and finish the project that we had been working on. But it just came up in therapy that there's no path forward. And then we broke up. She couldn't lie or couldn't hide it if that was what's going to happen. That was the end of. That was February 2024.

[Andrew Callahan]

And how much time was there between taking the flags and actually getting arrested for it?

[William Banks]

There was about two weeks. A week. Her parents didn't initially call the police to turn me in, but the police did come to their. They identified me from facial recognition because my face. I post my face a lot on the Internet so I was pretty easy to identify. Then the police got my phone number from her parents and at first I was just kind of ignoring their calls. But then they started calling Caroline and because I used her car, she was implicit. So I had to call them and confess and say she had nothing to do with this. I take full responsibility. So I had to confess in order for them to leave her alone. I waited a little bit because I didn't want want to take the journey back to her hometown alone on the train to turn myself into the police. But eventually, about a month later, I got up the courage to make that trip. The trip did feel very cathartic. That was the first time I laughed about the whole thing. Is on the way to Connecticut on my own because it just felt so sad or it felt so like, wow, this is crazy.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, I know what it's like. I had to take a one way flight to Rapid City, South Dakota and then rent a car to take myself to Sturgis to turn myself in for like a petty vandalism charge. And I had to spend a week in jail. I remember just laughing my ass off. Just like on this rural flight to South Dakota. Like wow, I'm really like delivering myself to a county jail in the middle of fucking nowhere right now. This is crazy.

[William Banks]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

So you get there, you turn yourself in. How did the cops treat you?

[William Banks]

They were pretty nice to me. They took my mugshot. That's the mugshot that I have that I have on some of my T shirts.

[Andrew Callahan]

What was the charge? Like what's the crime of taking someone's yard sign?

[William Banks]

On paper it was five counts of larceny in the sixth degree.

[Andrew Callahan]

Larceny?

[William Banks]

Larceny for stealing.

[Andrew Callahan]

What does that mean? Maybe I'm just really stupid. I don't know.

[William Banks]

Larceny means stealing.

[Andrew Callahan]

Okay, so not theft. Yeah, well, not theft, not vandalism, but larceny.

[William Banks]

Theft. I think it's called, like grand larceny if you steal a car. I got larceny in the sixth degree, which is the lowest form of larceny. It's under $100. But I did five of them. So they gave me five counts of larceny in the sixth degree.

[Andrew Callahan]

And do you know what the maximum penalty is for that?

[William Banks]

It was, I think, three months in jail for one count. So it was 15 months in jail.

[Andrew Callahan]

And you told me before you got here that you actually haven't been sentenced yet.

[William Banks]

I did get sentenced for that crime. I haven't been sentenced for the other crime. Court dates kept getting pushed back and back and back all the way to the end of last year when the homeowners finally came to testify against me. The homeowners whose signs that I took, they came to testify against me and asked the judge for the maximum penalty to send me to jail for the 15 months. And the judge ended up not doing that. I got off with two years of probation, a mandatory psychiatric evaluation, and I'm required to do what it says. I had to take a. Well, I haven't done it yet, but I have to take a hate crime class because they said it was anti Semitic.

[Andrew Callahan]

You're going to be in there with like a ton of fucking neo Nazis. Yeah, like, imagine a hate crime course in Connecticut. Like, who are your peers?

[William Banks]

Yeah, it's. Well, I like to be around people like that so I can help fix them, maybe, or talk to them and make them be better, perhaps. So that's when I did the jail saga.

[Andrew Callahan]

Before we go into the jail saga, what was their motivation for wanting to punish you to so much jail time for what seems like a very small crime?

[William Banks]

Well, they felt like that I was crazy. They read stuff from my websites and my social medias saying that I'm unhinged and saying that I think that God is talking to me, which I never say online that God is talking to me. But they read stuff from Car World's page. They said I'm selling devotional candles with my face on it and that I am trying to unite all of the religions who believe in God. And they told the judge that they are unsafe in their homes because of me being free and that their child is afraid of me and thinks that I'm going to come back and snatch them up. They think I'm like the boogeyman.

[Andrew Callahan]

Well, that paranoia is probably created by them.

[William Banks]

Yes. They say William Banks. William Banks is Going to come get you. Be careful, do your chores. William Banks is going to come snatch you up. And they've created me as a boogeyman in their home, even though I've never been violent and I've never entered in anyone's home. The signs I took were right by their mailbox. I didn't even go inside their house to take it. They ultimately wanted me to be punished. But this is a reasonable punishment, I suppose, to be on probation if you go through the court.

[Andrew Callahan]

Did you care much about the Israel Palestine conflict? Like, prior to October 7th?

[William Banks]

I wasn't as informed about it. I knew that there was conflict with Israel and Palestine and I knew that, but I didn't know the extent of Israel's occupation and genocide that they were working up to. I mean, I know that war back and forth has been going on since Israel came to be after World War II. Israel started because after World War II, the Jews in Europe, they made America, made Israel in the Middle east as a home for the Jews that were displaced from World War II. But there's also the idea that America wanted its like, base in the Middle East. So it's like, oh, we're trying to help the people who suffer from the genocide of World War II, but actually we're just trying to use the situation of the world stage to benefit ourselves. They're being manipulative.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. From what I understand too, the plans for the construction of the nation of Israel were laid forth far before World War II by Zionists who were more or less non religious. It was more just about, like you said, establishing a homeland, reclaiming territory on like an empire level. And then a lot of the Jews, though, who came to Israel in the following decades were from other countries in the Middle where like, they exiled Jews. So I think that for some people it's been a beacon of like, safety for Jews who are in other Middle Eastern countries. I've listened to a bunch of different arguments. That's like the most compelling argument that I've ever heard for Israel is that like Jews getting expelled from other parts of the Middle east, having no place to really go, then if you think about it, they could also come to the United States. So it's kind of like a loose argument. But yeah, I just find it interesting that the Holocaust and the events of World War II were almost used as an opportunity to forward the Zionist project.

[William Banks]

Yes, it doesn't. I think Jews who suffered in the concentration camps Of World War II were Jewish people who Judaism was their religion. They believed in God, they were religiously Jewish. The Zionists, I think, are people who use Judaism as a mask and they're really the government similar to how Christianity can be used by. In the. In the Middle ages, Christianity was used by kings to create a class order. Well, they used it to put people in their place into control. And I think Zionists, the Israeli government, are using Judaism just as Christianity was used by corrupt kings in Europe.

[Andrew Callahan]

One thing I've been researching a lot as well is how Israel deliberately, and they're open about this, they planted anti Semitic propaganda and undercurrents in other countries far from Israel to get people to move there. Like in Argentina, they would like, finance and encourage anti Semitic leaders to come to power to give people a reason or an escape route to get to Israel as like a population project.

[William Banks]

Argentina is very Christian. Christianity is my home religion. So I my. The religion that I know the most about and that I most prescribe to is Christianity. I've been meeting people in Argentina and I'm going to Argentina soon.

[Andrew Callahan]

I first found your content during the make believe project where I saw you going to atheist conventions and questioning people about their faith. And that was the first time I saw your content. And I was like, I've never really seen something like this. You had already been doing content leading up to the Westport sign incident, correct?

[William Banks]

Yes, I mostly just car world. Would you like to learn more about Car World, Mr. Baldwin? It's a planet in an alternate dimension where I've lived, I've had sex with carx, and then car X is the leader of car world.

[Andrew Callahan]

Seriously?

[William Banks]

You look exhausted. Thank you. Then Internet skits with my friends.

[Andrew Callahan]

But the make believe project was like an interview show.

[William Banks]

The Make Believe project was my first foray into journalism.

[Andrew Callahan]

How'd that come about?

[William Banks]

It was a direct result from the fall of car world after council collapse. Because I had been doing car World and I had been asking everyone to devote themselves to me. And I had been sort of putting myself in a deity position, even though I did believe in God. And ultimately God is above me. But I wasn't really talking about God being above me. I was just talking about myself, Myself, myself. Devote to William Banks. Love me. Essentially asking people to worship me. And then I kind of really changed my mind on that. Inspired by the individual. Okay, this has fallen apart. Council collapsed. Carolina's left. Russell has left. If I'm to continue and make something new, what would I like to do different? And I wanted to continue to make videos and art because I love to express myself and make things. But I wanted it to be about God instead of myself.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yes. Saddam ran into you at the DNC talking to a street preacher.

[William Banks]

Yes. A street preacher who was telling me that I was going to go to hell for masturbating.

[Andrew Callahan]

He's definitely jacked off.

[William Banks]

Yes, yes, yes. And even having premarital sex. He was saying, you have premarital sex, you have premarital sex, don't you? And I was like, of course. And then he was like, you're gonna go to hell. And a great thing about being able to do the make believe project, where I go out and I talk to people, especially atheists, and try to help them. It's called the make believe project because I'm trying to make them believe in God and because make believe is often what atheists used to refer to as religion, sort of jokingly.

[Andrew Callahan]

So just double entendre. Make them believe.

[William Banks]

Make them believe in God and what.

[Andrew Callahan]

They believe is make believe.

[William Banks]

Yes. And they call religion make believe. So it's sort of using their own words against them. I was talking to that man about premarital sex, and he. He was telling me that he hasn't even been having sex with his wife, but it's like, that would be postmarital sex.

[Andrew Callahan]

So he doesn't even do marital sex. He's just.

[William Banks]

Because she doesn't want to have sex with them. Because he was mean. Yeah, because he was being mean. If you're gonna go out on the street and tell people you're going to hell, you're going to hell. You're going to hell. Bad, Bad. Here's the. Here's to the fear. Here's the hate. It's like, that is not the way to preach about God.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, ladies aren't going to feel that one.

[William Banks]

You have to preach about love and acceptance and the positivity, Not. Not the negativity, in my opinion.

[Andrew Callahan]

So around a year and a half after that, I'm on Instagram, and I had known you were charged with some kind of crime related to yard signs. And I see what looks like a real video of you in jail. I think it was, like, getting sort of lightweight bullied by inmates, by. By your cellmates. And, like, I follow a lot of people on Instagram who already are in jail making prison content, you know, like, cooking up different chow and shit. Like, what. What's the. This. Making different spreads. Like, I follow a bunch of prison pages, and everybody that I knew was obsessed with your page, and they thought that you were in prison or in jail, rather, for a long time. And you raised a bunch of money during that period for the Free William Banks Fund, which you say ultimately went to Palestinian causes. So you tricked the Internet for a long time that you were in jail. And I just want to commend you because it's so hard to create that level of, like, confusion on social media and to maintain that without any slips coming through the cracks. Obviously, you had friends with you on the outside. You were basically like a human fugitive, like, hiding in plain sight during that time. So can you tell me a bit about, like, what was that project? What made you want to do it? Like, tell me all about it.

[William Banks]

Well, I decided to send myself to jail because the people who came to testify against me in court asked the judge to put me in jail. So in a way, that was just wish fulfillment for them because it's like, oh, if you want to send me to jail so bad, I'll send myself to jail. And you can watch it and you can see me in jail. I felt like it was just a good opportunity to be able to explore a fantasy, especially because it was based on a crime that I did that ruined my personal life. And I felt like I needed to punish myself in a way and put myself into jail. But I also thought I could maybe turn something, turn it into a blossom of a thing that could help others. And I found a jail that would let me rent it. And then I had a friend who was a rapper in Detroit who stayed on my couch for a week, and we got along really well. And he's been to federal prison, so he was able to help make it very real looking with set decoration and the things that he would say. It was authentic from his end. And then we got a few more actors and told them, just, we're in jail together. Let's just be in jail together. So then we just spent. Spent five hours in this jail with some old 2010 androids that I got at a pawn shop in Chinatown. And my roommates, Will Duncan, Peter McIntu and Ryan Smith, we all made it together. I was pretty depressed at the time, right before it, because I was feeling a little bit lost. Like I didn't know what to do with myself because I was really mourning the end of that relationship still. And being able to do the jail saga, I think gave me something that I could think about a lot. Then when I escaped, I made a cryptocurrency for myself because a lot of people have been scamming me with cryptocurrency. For some reason, my story attracted a lot of crypto bros who were following who started following me because of it. Because I think a lot of people who follow me online see that. I think a lot of them are men who can't really win in life. They're men who feel a little bit lonely. My Instagram demographic is 88% men.

[Andrew Callahan]

Same here.

[William Banks]

So I think they're guys who see me as a hero for them, because if I can do it, then they can do it. And if I can escape from jail, then they can escape from jail. If I can get a girlfriend, then they can get a girlfriend. So then after I escaped from jail, I was hitchhiking, and then a beautiful girl came to pick me up. Hitchhiking. And then she trusted me and took me in. And then we fell in love. We made love in a motel. Who's calling that. Who's calling that shit? Who's calling that shit? Who's calling that shit? Who? Who? And then came back to New York and had this party together. And I think a lot of people who follow me, when they see me get a girlfriend, they feel really proud of me. And they think that, oh, they can get a girlfriend, too. And I would like to be able to inspire people who want a girlfriend not to be angry that they can't get a girlfriend or not to be mad and be like, oh, I don't like women, because none of them will be my girlfriend. Which is often. I feel like the incel. Epidemic.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. You feel like you're combating male loneliness to a certain extent.

[William Banks]

Yeah. Because I think, you know, I'm kind of a good, goofy looking man. I'm losing my hair. I'm a little tubby. I'm kind of just like, you wouldn't think I can win or anything like that. It's like, oh, it's like, oh, he's. He's just a weird guy. But then if you can see me get a girlfriend and you can see me escape from jail, and I made a movie recently called Yo Soy Sonic that got into the Tribeca Film Festival. If you can see me doing all of these marvelous things, then maybe they will feel empowered in their own life to reach for their dreams and achieve what they want, rather than believe the lie that they've told themselves that they're not good enough.

[Andrew Callahan]

Where do you think the source of male loneliness begins? Do you think it begins within the household, or do you think that it has to do with society and the way they program expectations? What do you think?

[William Banks]

Yes. Well, I think it's a momentum. I think if a guy Feels like he's cool, then he starts acting cool and he keeps going. It's like, oh, if you have a win, you feel happy and you're confident, and then you can start manifesting more success. But I think if you start out the race with a failure and if you get into your head that you're not good enough, then it's really hard to overcome that and start achieving positive things. So it's like if you win, you win, and if you lose, you lose. And it just keeps happening in those directions.

[Andrew Callahan]

So you think it's a matter of, like, you know, self talk that multiplies. So if you take a win and you can, like, channel that positive energy, more good things will come your way. Whereas if you get down on yourself after an L, you just perpetually continue losing and can't figure out why.

[William Banks]

I think that could be the case.

[Andrew Callahan]

And so do you feel like the success of the the Jail project was one of your biggest wins?

[William Banks]

Yeah, I mean, I've never been in that contact with that much money before. With the cryptocurrency scam I did, I made $50,000 that I've never made that much money from a project. Like everything I've done, I've self financed and I've lost a little bit of money on it, and I have to work odd jobs to try to finance it or beg people for money. And this was the first time that I was able to use my own project to generate $50,000.

[Andrew Callahan]

But you did donate the money to like.

[William Banks]

I did donate the money, yeah. Some people didn't believe me when they found out that I didn't actually escape from jail. They thought, oh, he's lying about everything. But I wasn't lying about that because even the news did research and proved that I did donate $50,000.

[Andrew Callahan]

Where did you donate the money to?

[William Banks]

I donated, I think, $30,000 to three different organizations that I think were called Somna. And then I donated $10,000 to an organization called Sunbirds.

[Andrew Callahan]

And these are Palestinian mutual aid organizations?

[William Banks]

Yes.

[Andrew Callahan]

What were some of the key plot points that you mapped out for that saga?

[William Banks]

Well, I wanted to be able people to be able to identify with me and be inspired in their own lives. So I started out meager and meek, like I was in jail. And people felt bad for me at first and sad for me because they didn't believe that I was going to be able to succeed. They thought I was going to get beat up, I was going to lose the light in my eyes, and I was going to ultimately come out of this worse for it. But then as I started to gain footing and just being my authentic self, making friends with the people in my surroundings, then I was able to kind of flourish rather than get scared. And then I got into a fight, which ultimately wasn't about hurting each other. It's just about, hey, don't mess with me. I am just like you guys, and we're all in this together.

[Andrew Callahan]

You stood up for yourself.

[William Banks]

I stood up for myself, which is, I think, a very masculine way to respect each other. That's my theory on bullying too. I got bullied in elementary school, and I had to switch schools because people were being mean to me. So I went to a school in the woods instead. And my theory that I developed was that someone who's being mean to you, don't view them as your bully. View them as your enemy. Because a bully has a victim, and a bully oppresses, and the bully's in charge, and you're getting stomped on by that bully, and you start to see yourself in that position of, like, I got a bully. Help me.

[Andrew Callahan]

Where the enemy has an adversary.

[William Banks]

Enemy. Yeah, your adversary. You are just as equal and powerful as your enemy.

[Andrew Callahan]

So reframing that language.

[William Banks]

Overcome your enemy.

[Andrew Callahan]

Reframing that language, like, puts you in a more. Puts you in a better position of control because it gives you the ability to fight back.

[William Banks]

Yeah. If someone's being mean to you, they're not in control of you. They're doing their thing. They're being mean to you.

[Andrew Callahan]

Right.

[William Banks]

They don't have the control over me that calls that. I call them a bully.

[Andrew Callahan]

But you can take it back by being like, this is my op.

[William Banks]

As someone said. Yeah. So my ops in the jail saga were atheists. Last night, one of the atheists took my food and threw it away before I could eat it. Because I wanted to ultimately be able to keep telling the story about believing in God and trying to promote faith. So the people who didn't believe in God, the atheists, they were being mean to me. Do you believe in God?

[Andrew Callahan]

Do I believe in God?

[William Banks]

Come here. I'll tell you if I believe in God. You think God's gonna give you? God gonna give you your phone?

[Andrew Callahan]

Look at this weirdo ass. Did God send him to help you? Did God sent him to help you? I believe in God.

[William Banks]

I'm a Christian. I'm Muslim, and I'm a Christian.

[Andrew Callahan]

And nobody touch my phone. You hear me? Don't let somebody touch. I don't give a about this, man.

[William Banks]

They at first they were my bullies, but then as I made friends with my cellmate, I became an enemy with them instead of a victim. Knock has been really cool to me, especially because he's been encouraging me to stand up for myself. A lot of the atheists have sort of been mean to me and calling me names, but I'm feeling a lot more courageous than when I first came here. And when people are mean to me, I feel stronger to tell them that they shouldn't talk to me like that. And I just want to be able to broadcast that message to you, to everybody watching, and sort of share some of what I've learned is that if anybody is ever trying to talk bad to you or put you down for your beliefs, that you absolutely have the right to defend yourself and stand up for what you believe in. It's always important to stand up for what you believe in, especially when it's religious based. Ant is Muslim, and I haven't explored Islam as much in my work because I come from Christianity, but my make believe medallion that I sometimes wear has a cross, star of David, and the crescent moon from Islam. So I wanted to be able to promote the Quran and say positive things about Islam in my work. So then I converted to Islam. So a lot of people here are Muslim, Aunt is a Muslim, Naq is a Muslim. And they have kind of taken me under their wing to help me get stronger my faith. Our command came to pass. We saved Saleh and those who shared his faith by our mercy from the disgrace of that day. Because there's nobody here who is a staunch Christian or Jew. So they are not able to teach me. But they are practicing of Islam, so I'm able to learn from them. I certainly do not want to learn from the atheists. In fact, I want to teach the atheists and become a teacher. Thank you. And then rather than fight and bully the atheists, we made peace with them. And it was a story of unity rather than like, it wasn't like, okay, let's get strong and kill our enemy. It's like they start as our bully, they become our enemy. But then we evolve enough where we could bully them if we wanted to. But we're not gonna repeat the cycle. We're gonna end the cycle right here and we're gonna take their hand and pull them up with us and then escape.

[Andrew Callahan]

And you filmed all this over the course of five hours?

[William Banks]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

And you just like, you know, had distribution plan for the content?

[William Banks]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

And what was the total duration of the content from start to Finish.

[William Banks]

It's an hour 13.

[Andrew Callahan]

No, but I mean like from like how much time was in between the first post being like the first post of you and jail and the escape post.

[William Banks]

Yeah. So I was setting up that I was going to jail for a while in November. And then mid December was my first post where I said, I got a phone.

[Andrew Callahan]

Got it.

[William Banks]

And then I escaped from jail mid February. So two months now during those two.

[Andrew Callahan]

Months were you just like laying really low in New York?

[William Banks]

It was the winter, so there was less going on. But I was kind of getting a little stir crazy because I was trying to do that, but I was getting lonely.

[Andrew Callahan]

You weren't going out?

[William Banks]

I was going. So I do a lot of improv shows and stuff. I started going to the theaters. And the disguise I made, which was glasses and this like turban that I bought on the street. And I said my name was Anthony, but I didn't act different, I acted like myself. And I just said, my name is Anthony Williams. That's a different guy. Just because I felt like it was disrespectful to my peers and community if I were to be like, hey, I'm William. Yeah, whatever. Like, it felt like I'm trying to respect everyone by being Anthony, allowing the.

[Andrew Callahan]

Storyline to continue as it's going without interrupting.

[William Banks]

Yeah. But then people I was hanging out with just thought that it was stupid. They thought my costume looked stupid. And I was dating someone at the time and she didn't want to be seen out with me as Anthony. She thought that it wasn't cute. Even though when I initially bought the Anthony costume, I went to Warby Parker and I decided to treat myself to some nice glasses even though I have 2020 vision and I don't even need contacts. I got a nice one hundred dollar pair of glasses because I was like, if this is gonna be my disguise, I want a good pair of clear glasses. And then I FaceTimed her at the store and she liked it. But then later on I think she was like, I don't know if I wanna go on a date with Anthony. And some of my other friends were like, you gotta stop doing Anthony. And then I kind of just. Christmas came and January and some people in Brooklyn got mad at me for lying about being in jail.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, what, like the prison abolition crowd?

[William Banks]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

They felt like you were appropriating the experience of an incarcerated individual using your white privilege or something.

[William Banks]

Maybe. Well, they, they said that I was not my place to be in jail.

[Andrew Callahan]

Well, they're trying to put you in jail.

[William Banks]

But. But they didn't unders. They didn't think that that was valid enough. Or they think that thought that I was lying about that too. Because once you lie about one thing for, like, the thing that you're doing about going to jail, they think, oh, well, if he's lying about going to jail, then everything in his life must be a lie. And that's one of my biggest pet peeves, is if people think that I don't actually believe in God because they think what I'm doing is ironic or satire of like talking to atheists wanting to make more people believe in God, they're like, oh, actually, this is. I get it, I get it. He's an atheist. Even though that's not the case at all. It's like that people who think that I'm an atheist are incorrect.

[Andrew Callahan]

So some people think you're like a hyper ironic atheist.

[William Banks]

Yeah, but that's just not true at all. Because even though it's entertaining, it's still what I actually think. And I only want to make something if it's how I actually think, because I wouldn't want to post something online if it's not how I think. My mom told me when I was a kid that I was an indigo child. Do you know what an indigo child is?

[Andrew Callahan]

A little bit. But could you refresh me?

[William Banks]

Well, an indigo child is sort of a person who thinks and acts a little bit differently than other people, but it's because they are sort of an evolution or a mutation on people. And they are here to bring about enlightenment and bring joy and positivity to the world and to change the world. It's like a micro evolution. So I think I'm an indigo adult, and what I'm trying to do is just make the world a better place by listening to myself.

[Andrew Callahan]

After the jail thing, when people were like criticizing you, like you were saying, was there a part of you that felt like a little bit like there was credence to the idea that, like, it's not cool to pretend that you're in jail when there actually is people in jail?

[William Banks]

No, because if I didn't go to jail and escape, then I wouldn't have been able to make the $50,000 for Palestine. And ultimately that's the choice that I made when I committed the crime. Is I for better or for worse, I was drawing a line in the sand and saying, I guess what happens to my personal life doesn't matter in comparison to this much larger thing, which is the genocide in Gaza. And My initial method of doing it, which is taking down the signs, wasn't that effective, but it was a choice that I made. And it sort of feels like following through with that choice ultimately, which is like, making some people not like me because I was lying, was the only way that I was able to generate $50,000.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. For me, I think I had, like, two phases of reaction. So my first reaction, like, when I saw that you had been failing, taking it, I was like, God damn it. I wish he had really been in jail, just from a technical aspect, because I'm like, I want to figure out how the hell he got this phone in jail and, like, how he really convinced all these people to join his side and stop becoming atheists. But then my second tier was like, no, actually, that's pretty insane that he successfully pulled this stunt off, because most people couldn't do it, you know? So I was like, I think that probably some of the initial clapback that you might have seen was just people who went, wish that you were in jail, and it might manifest itself in some righteous form of like, what the hell? Don't you know that people are actually incarcerated? But I think a lot of us were like, we wish that William was actually pulling this off inside of county jail, but either way, sick as hell.

[William Banks]

Yes. And I was able to. When I. When I got arrested for having a fake, I had a BB gun in my pants when I was back in New York, and I did actually get arrested then, and I had to go to jail for two days, and I slept on the floor and everything. And that was in the Manhattan Central booking, and that was really unpleasant. So that definitely was a good experience to have at the end of the jail saga, to sort of feel like, oh, I've been talking about jail for so much. I deserve to go to jail for two days and feel what it's like. So it was a very maturing experience. It felt like I deserved to be there, and I feel like I learned a lesson from it, which is the reality of what I'm talking about. And it was very interesting because I was like, I think I can scam people on Twitter for crypto scams. But I was like, oh, I want to do it again for prison Appalachian. I want to generate money that I can put towards this problem, too, if I have the ability to do that. But then I was like, I have no idea where money would go to help fix this problem, because it was a system of the cops and the correction officers and the law, public defenders. It was the bureaucracy of all these people not really working together in a way that just if you lose your paperwork down there, you're gonna die down there because they only feed you peanut butter jelly sandwiches and cereal. And you have to beg for water. Yeah, you have to beg for water. And you sleep with the lights on, on the floor with. With 15 other guys there. And it's a very intense experience that it's like if you lose your paperwork, you're fucked because no one's caring about you. So it was like, I would love to be able to figure out a way that I could use my platform to help that crisis. But with Palestine, I don't know how I would use money to end the genocide. But money can go towards medical supplies. You can send aid with this prison system, I don't know, I can use the money to help them. So I would like to be able to do that in the future.

[Andrew Callahan]

So from a production standpoint, you said that you rented a jail. Was this jail like open or closed?

[William Banks]

It was closed. It was an out of use prison facility in Vero Beach, Florida.

[Andrew Callahan]

Holy shit. That's where YNW Melly's from. You know he does the song Murder on My Mind. He killed his two best friends. He's from Vero Beach. That's all I know about that place.

[William Banks]

Yeah, we didn't do much in Vero Beach. We stayed in Miami. Miami was really fun.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. What do you like about Miami?

[William Banks]

I liked south beach and seafood.

[Andrew Callahan]

You could do some pretty good filming on south beach for make believe.

[William Banks]

Yeah. I would like to be able to travel around and talk to people about God more. But right now I don't have the resources to do that.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, because you donated all the money you raised.

[William Banks]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

Which is a noble thing, but now you gotta figure out it makes it more.

[William Banks]

Yeah. I'm trying to raise money right now for me boxing in Argentina. I need you pointing.

[Andrew Callahan]

I'm saying if you want to plug like away. If you have a Patreon.

[William Banks]

Yes. Hi. Hi. I am boxing in Parente de Manos in Argentina in December. Currently I have no sponsorships, but I am looking for any company to sponsor my workout routine. And I can wear shorts with your logo and I can put your logo on my gloves and I can represent your brand as marketing. If you would like to invest in my journey to go to Argentina and defeat my opponent in a boxing tournament. And I have no previous experience boxing, but I'm training and I'm planning to win in my weight class. I'm 180 pounds, I'm so excited to fight and I would love for anybody to want to invest in my journey.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, I'd like to see that. But also I want to see you go to more religious conventions across the board. I could see you going to like a Buddhism summit somewhere in Nepal or something, or Vietnam. You can go to Islamic gathering in Michigan. It'd be pretty good. I just think also different denominations of Christianity could be solid. I would like to see you crossing interfaith lines.

[William Banks]

I would like to do that too. Because ultimately I think. I think there's more in similarity with different religions that believe in God than dissimilarities. It's really that there's infighting between different branches of Christianity or there's fighting between Islam and Judaism. But ultimately I feel like the real person to focus energy on is atheists as the people that should be like, hey, let's all team up and look at the atheists and help them to believe in God and then we can all be together.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. Because the strange thing about atheists is they're obsessed with this idea of nobody knows what happens when we die. But it's also like, okay, can you explain why you're born?

[William Banks]

Yeah, atheists, they believe that they know that there is nothing, which is, I feel like a pretty big claim to make it.

[Andrew Callahan]

Also, atheism doesn't take into account that the human brain may not be the most adept cognitive machine in the galaxy or the universe. Like, just because we can't grasp what the creator spirit is. Like, my dog doesn't know how to take the bus. But, you know, I mean, there is more evolved beings and there is still cognitive development and evolution that will occur throughout mankind's trajectory. So maybe we'll never be able to reach the divine spirit. And so we've evolved from Homo sapiens to our next variant after the collapse of a civilization.

[William Banks]

I do think consciousness leads towards evolution, towards God. I think that atheism is, even with this lifespan of someone's life, it's not the final decision. Atheism is often like, I don't know. Or agnosticism is like, I don't know. I guess I haven't really thought about it much. As the answer to, do you believe in God? I don't know. I haven't really thought about it much. But I think. I think when you do apply that thought, you inevitably come to an outcome that there is a God. And as more and more society accepts that and believes in God in a way that is spiritual rather than controlling, like Christian Kings from the Middle Ages or the Israeli government, there will be a de emphasis on religion and a greater emphasis on spirituality.

[Andrew Callahan]

I think that's a great point too. When you mentioned like, obviously you're talking about the Crusades and then the Zionist project, both of those things are the reason that people establish religion with colonialism and projects that led to the death of millions, if not billions of people. Because the Christianization of the frontier and the New World is what gave the English and the Spanish the justification to do their colonial projects in north and South America.

[William Banks]

And it gives Christianity a bad rap.

[Andrew Callahan]

Right. An atheist mind. They think I oppose that thereby. I also oppose the system that gave them the religious justification to do that. But I think that the people who actually want to expand empire are just using religion as a false justification to get the masses on board with it.

[William Banks]

I think so too, because I think with Israel using the Star of David as their flag being like everything we do as a government, that's Judaism. So with anti Semitism, people thinking, oh, Jews are bad because Israel is being bad. So shame on Israel for associating themselves with Judaism like that.

[Andrew Callahan]

They're probably, I would say Israel is the greatest anti Semitic entity in the world.

[William Banks]

Yes.

[Andrew Callahan]

I think they're creating more negative feelings toward Jewish people because so many Jewish people are defending Israel. They're putting those two things together. And it's sad because I love Jewish people. I know a lot of cool Jewish people. You know, I've been around them my whole life and none of them really ever talked about Israel.

[William Banks]

Yeah. It's an interesting thing that's going to develop and change within our lives. Can I ask you a question?

[Andrew Callahan]

Yes. Yeah.

[William Banks]

Do you believe in God? Yeah. Do you? What religion did you grow up with?

[Andrew Callahan]

I was baptized. Just I think Presbyterian or actually I think Lutheran. My parents got married in a Lutheran church. My grandma worked at a Methodist church. Just various Protestant denominations of Christianity.

[William Banks]

Nice.

[Andrew Callahan]

But my parents were very much like anti Bush, Al Gore style vegetarians who were very impacted by the Iraq war and the Inconvenient Truth documentary. So they, they kind of split from their parents and they saw religion as part of the establishment because like the conservative family values crowd was also justifying the war in Iraq. And they're saying that Eminem is a satanic person who's going to turn the kids into like gay serial killers. So you see what I'm saying? There's this continuous association with God and establishment. So when you oppose establishment, atheism is the sort of next door neighbor of that.

[William Banks]

Yes. But I think all of that is going to change within our lifetime.

[Andrew Callahan]

And what's.

[William Banks]

I think that atheism will no longer be seen as the default counterculture faith or lack of faith. I think right now it has gotten popular since people have turned away from the establishment. They're like, oh, well then I'm not Christian. Oh well, I don't believe in God then if I'm. If I think that the government is bad, or if I think that there has been white supremacy and oppression within our life Christianity or within our history, Christianity must be bad. And I think as spirituality does good in the world, I think more people believe in God.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. I mean, I don't see any other way. I can't put my finger on exactly what that means. But there's no way that we're here and the universe was created at random. There has to be a larger force at play. I just don't think it's within our brain to understand. We can't even understand dimensions higher than our own. We know what two dimension is. It's a cartoon. We know that one dimension is simply a line drawing that doesn't connect to anything. But by extension, we know scientifically there is 4, 5, and 6. Our brains can't even comprehend what that looks like, but we know it exists.

[William Banks]

Fourth dimension is the inclusion of time, right?

[Andrew Callahan]

I don't know.

[William Banks]

I think three dimensions is X, Y and then Z.

[Andrew Callahan]

Because we're in 3D right now.

[William Banks]

Yeah, we're in 3D with X, Y and Z. But then the fourth dimension is time as it moves through existence.

[Andrew Callahan]

And time is something perceptible in the fourth dimension.

[William Banks]

Well, I think that comes from gravity, because within the plane, within a three dimensional plane, you put the sun on that plane and then it shifts, it bends. Because as you approach a black hole, they say that time slows down because that black hole is taking up so much mass that time, not just your experience of time, but time itself slows down because there can only be so much mass in any given point. And that's. Time contributes to that.

[Andrew Callahan]

So do you give any credence to the multiverse theory that every alternate situation exists on a different point in time?

[William Banks]

I think that that's possible. I certainly think that there's something to do with. I mean, a lot of this is. You're right, we can't fully comprehend it. But I think that's where faith comes into play, where you can still believe something and feel something without needing to see it crystal clear. I think to believe in God, we Will never. Our current humanity's consciousness cannot comprehend God. God is unknowable to us. What could God be that we can't define? That it's not a white man with a beard in the sky. That's what we do to personify it, to make it somewhat understandable. But actual God, we can't know what that is. But us not knowing what it is doesn't mean that it's not real. We have faith in it. So to have multiverses, that is not something that I think is understandable. Maybe it's detectable in the future by signals from other multiverses connecting. But I certainly have had the feeling that of lifetimes of feeling like. I don't know about reincarnation necessarily, but I certainly feel like something I experienced a lot during my breakup was Caroline telling me that it's okay for us to break up now because maybe we end up together in another lifetime. So it's like, you know, something I've thought about is maybe we'll end up together in the next life, or maybe we'll find each other again in the next life.

[Andrew Callahan]

It's possible.

[William Banks]

So I do hope that something like that exists. I don't know if it does, but it makes me feel something to imagine that it does.

[Andrew Callahan]

Well, almost every ancient culture theorized there was something like that after death. But you wonder if that's just shared existential dread that accompanies the human condition. Making people promise something peaches and cream to their descendants so they can alleviate the fear of death. Or if there was an ancestral global understanding of an afterthought.

[William Banks]

I think what happens after we die is just as unknowable of what happened before we were born. Definitely something happened to give us life and create us creator consciousness. Something our consciousness came to be out of a sperm and an egg. We don't know what that was before that happened. So I think we don't know what happens after we die.

[Andrew Callahan]

I mean, the only reason that we believe in things that happened before we were born is because other people are telling us we don't have those kind of people. I mean, some say they see ghosts and spirits. But, like, you know, I was realizing the other day, most of these zoomers, they weren't even alive during 9 11. But you don't see any of them being like, I don't think that shit happened because it's a collective shared experience. We don't have that kind of interaction with those who have passed. But if we did, there would be no existential fear.

[William Banks]

I Think, regardless of the truth, of if 911 was an inside job or not. I think the popularity of the conspiracy that it was an inside job comes from people not being alive when it happened.

[Andrew Callahan]

Totally. Or people just like. I mean, 911 was fucking crazy. You live in New York, so. You ever just think about it? Sometimes. Like, can you believe some dudes thought of that?

[William Banks]

Yeah. It took a lot of planning.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. But, I mean, it's the most, like, ingenious thing I've ever seen. It was the most effective terroristic attack in human history. There will never be anything like that ever again.

[William Banks]

The terrorists didn't document themselves doing it because they were trying to do it in secrecy. But it would be very compelling if they filmed themselves for the whole process of it, when they came up with the idea, executing it, doing it. And there was a movie, a documentary movie about from the terrorists being like, how I did 911 or how we did 9 11. They didn't think to do that. Or maybe they did do it, and the CIA and the FBI snatched up that footage.

[Andrew Callahan]

Probably. I mean, I know that the people who flew the first plane into the World Trade Center, I think it was Mohamed Atta and a friend of his. They were in Boston. They flew the plane from Boston, Logan Airport. They went to a bunch of strip clubs in Cambridge the night before. They were getting lap dances, like, spending all the money they had left. And they were telling the strippers, like, yo, tomorrow's gonna be crazy. Just trust me. I'm out of here. And that was their last night on Earth. So that could have made for a great piece of content. Unfortunately, there was no social media in 2001.

[William Banks]

Yeah, that. I don't think that's a. I would not want to go to a strip club if I knew I was gonna die tomorrow. That's not a good. I don't think that that would feel good, because the strippers wouldn't. They don't actually. They're dancing on you for money, but it's not a real, genuine connection. I would be out seeking genuine connection with anybody, male, female. I would. I would just want to feel human for a second before I committed my crime.

[Andrew Callahan]

Do you know what you would do if you had to do a terrorist attack the next morning?

[William Banks]

Mm. Well, I guess it actually maybe does make sense that they would want to do that, because if you think about it too hard, you might decide not to do it. They wanted to do it. They were like, I've committed to it. I want to do it. But then if they were to really connect with someone and meet someone at a bar that they really had a genuine humanity feeling with. They might think there's life is too precious to do this. This behavior's atrocious. But they did something that was a little bit depraved. No judgment on strippers or sex workers.

[Andrew Callahan]

I thought she meant the 911 pilot.

[William Banks]

Yeah, the 911 pilots.

[Andrew Callahan]

I would describe it as a little bit beyond somewhat depraved.

[William Banks]

Oh yes. There's no excuse for what the 911 pilots did.

[Andrew Callahan]

Right.

[William Banks]

But for sex workers and strippers, no judgment on them. But to choose to spend your final moments on earth paying them for physicality. For me, I'm like, I think I would want emotion.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah.

[William Banks]

But emotion is dangerous because emotion reminds you that you shouldn't kill people. It's dangerous for the killer. It's good. It's actually healing and good for everyone. Emotion. I love to feel emotion. I almost cried a couple times talking to you because I feel really emotional.

[Andrew Callahan]

How come?

[William Banks]

I just feel so much love in my heart for Caroline and talking about her is involved kind of in a lot of the work that I do because she's been such an important part of my life. That's where all of my heart, all of my emotion comes from.

[Andrew Callahan]

Well, just know that wherever you go from here and wherever your guys relationship goes from here, she'll always have been a big part of your life. You know, even if you guys aren't on speaking terms, that time spent together and the things that she brought to your life will always be a part of your story.

[William Banks]

We're friends now. We're becoming friends again. We're seeing Hamilton for my birthday.

[Andrew Callahan]

That's still going.

[William Banks]

Yeah, they restarted it. It was gone, but then it came back this year and she really thinks that. Well, I agree with her. But she has this thing that she's talked about a lot which is like how Hamilton is a parallel to our relationship where we're both kind of like Hamilton in the sense that Hamilton kind of did like an Icarus style story where he got flew too close to the sun and kind of got a little bit too full of himself and ended up up hurting his wife emotionally and bit off more than he could chew in terms of the Declaration. And he was writing all those essays. So that's kind of, I feel like a similar trajectory to what happened in our relationship with my obsession with Car world and hers playing Carx.

[Andrew Callahan]

Do you feel like the rapid success of the subculture gave you too much of an ego trip with Karwld?

[William Banks]

Not. Not necessarily the success. I think it was just the style of. It was telling me that I'm a prophet. If I had just done something, if I had made a movie that was not about me and it was successful, I'd maybe be a little confident, but I don't. It wouldn't change how I think about myself. But this was specifically where people were telling me that I'm like a godlike figure. And I think that made me lose myself.

[Andrew Callahan]

But you were telling them to tell you that.

[William Banks]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

But you didn't think they'd do it.

[William Banks]

Well, I got. I'm really susceptible to my own delusions. Like, if I. Like, for example, with my girlfriend from the jail saga, Maddie Van Buren. She's not my real girlfriend. She's just a friend and a good actress. But everybody online telling me that they're really proud of me for having a pretty girlfriend, and they were like, go, William, go. You did it. I'm so proud of you. If you can do it, I can do it. They were really happy for me to have a girlfriend, that I started to believe that I did have a girlfriend.

[Andrew Callahan]

Well, I think that you could, in theory, get a very attractive girlfriend with your skill sets, man.

[William Banks]

Yes. But I'm also like, I don't really want. I want love and companionship, but I don't really want a girlfriend. Yeah. I don't know. Part of me thinks it's okay to just be alone forever and succeed and make money and give it all to her and just. Even if I can't, you know, buy her a house, even if I can't live in the house, it's still nice knowing that I was able to give her that.

[Andrew Callahan]

Your ex girlfriend?

[William Banks]

Yeah, ex fiance.

[Andrew Callahan]

What about your mom?

[William Banks]

My mom has a house.

[Andrew Callahan]

Nice. Did you get it for her?

[William Banks]

No.

[Andrew Callahan]

What if you got her a doper house?

[William Banks]

Yeah. I mean, my mom lives in Missouri, and I can't visit her very often because I don't go to Missouri as often. And I mean, I could visit her more, but it would be nice to be able to live in a house with my mom and with my roommates, Will Duncan, Peter McIndoo and Ryan Smith, and with my ex fiance, Caroline Yost. And part of living in a house with Caroline would probably be reconciling with Russell Katz, so I would be able to live with him too. But that's not a house at that point with that many people. I've thought about living in a commune kind of thing where it's like. And having babies and people raise Helping to raise each other's babies. I don't want to be off grid. I like the Internet and I like posting on the Internet and electricity and everything and food. But it would be nice to have land that I can have a baby with someone I love.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, that's. I mean, the way you just described it, I kind of want to do that. I want to live in a commune and everyone. Other mothers, the kids. And you raise like a little commune of little kids.

[William Banks]

Yeah, so. So part of me wants to just wait to get married at this point. Like prem. That's in line too, with what a lot of traditional religious people say is premarital sex is bad. And it's like, I don't think it's actually bad. If it's passion and love and there's like, it's two people who love each other making love, I don't see how that could be a bad thing. But part of me just wants to wait for the person I love to get married to.

[Andrew Callahan]

I mean, premarital sex obviously is not bad, but I think that, like, hookups and all that is bad.

[William Banks]

Yeah, I mean, for your mind and soul. I. I think so too.

[Andrew Callahan]

Just like vapid transactional relationships are not a good substitute for genuine connection. And that goes for everything that. Just hookups with girls, even homies. Like, it's better to have three really solid friends than it is to have like 50 acquaintances that don't really know you.

[William Banks]

Yes, I agree. That's why a commune, you know your family, you live there, and you would want to not let people move in if they're bad vibes. Yeah, we'd have to have like, you'd all have to kind of vet someone together.

[Andrew Callahan]

Are you worried that your, like, natural leadership qualities would kind of make the commune, like, put you in an authority position and you kind of run into the same problems.

[William Banks]

I think that I like to have a leader. I don't think I'm an alpha. I think that I like to have an alpha. But then I'm also kind of like a bit of an outspoken, different version of a guy. But it's like, I don't necessarily want to be the leader or the president.

[Andrew Callahan]

You like having a head coach?

[William Banks]

I like to have a coach.

[Andrew Callahan]

What kind of coaching style do you think is most effective for a small group of people? Like real hands on or very soft spoken?

[William Banks]

I think a little bit hands on. Like my roommate, Will Duncan. He's my alpha.

[Andrew Callahan]

What does he do? He makes you do push ups.

[William Banks]

He yells at me, and he like Throws things at me sometimes. But what are you gonna be 29? Can't even change your own diaper. But he's the only one who I let do that to me because I trust he's got good intentions for why he's doing that.

[Andrew Callahan]

What does he throw at you?

[William Banks]

He's never thrown a knife or anything like that. Just like little bottle caps or something.

[Andrew Callahan]

It's not too bad.

[William Banks]

And he tells me to do the dishes and to clean up after myself.

[Andrew Callahan]

Does he yell like a drill sergeant?

[William Banks]

Yeah. Holy. He treats me. He's like a drill sergeant in our home. And without him, it'd be chaos. So I really appreciate his presence.

[Andrew Callahan]

Maybe Duncan does, you know, apply some order to your life.

[William Banks]

Yeah, Will Duncan does. But it's Will Duncan. It's balanced. Because he just recently let me acquire his Instagram account.

[Andrew Callahan]

Oh, nice.

[William Banks]

So it's like there is a level of he's my alpha and yells at me and tells me to do dishes and chores, but I run his Instagram.

[Andrew Callahan]

So it's a pretty good trade off. You're like a social media manager and you help out with that in that regard. What's something that you. If there's any atheists watching right now or people who are just agnostic and don't know what to think, what's the message you'd want to give to them.

[William Banks]

If you're an atheist watching this broadcast? I'm not here to be your enemy, and I'm not here to be your bully. I'm here to be your friend and talk to you about why don't you believe in God? And I know it's probably something that either you grew up not in a household or around a community that believed in God. So it's your default where you're just not thinking too much about God, or you grew up in a religious household and you've since become an atheist because you've rejected that style of community and even, I would say, oppression in some cases where you're like, I don't agree with that. So I'm going to be an atheist. That's okay if you're there right now, but you are going to within your lifetime. If you think about it and talk about it with your friends and family talking about God, you will eventually come to a spiritual enlightenment. I promise you that. Your atheism is temporary and you will grow and you will evolve with our help of believing of people who believe in God. And when I speak, I speak from the standpoint of Christianity. I speak from the standpoint of Judaism and I speak speak from the standpoint of Islam. So it's okay that you're an atheist for now, but you will not be an atheist forever. Don't be hard on yourself, but challenge yourself. You're a pro choice choices to the choice. Yes, I'm pro choice. For someone to make any choices with their body that they see fair. Their body is something that an individual owns and nobody should tell someone what they can or can't do with their own body.

[Andrew Callahan]

Going back, looking at the jail project and various creative pursuits that you've done post Car World, is there anything you would have done differently?

[William Banks]

I would have maybe tried to not have stolen those signs. It led to everything that I've done and I am happy with where I'm at right now and I'm happy that I'm in a different place than I was a year ago. But stealing those signs hurt the people who I loved the most. And regardless of me somehow turning that into a net positive for myself and Palestine, I'm proud of how I took that situation and made it what it was. But ultimately the whole beginning of this journey that I've been on was came from a place of hurt. And I feel very ashamed. Not just Caroline, her family, you know, they took me in, they took. My mom was there for Christmas. We were going to get married in a year. So we were like, okay, let's do Christmas together. My mom came out and spent 10 days with them and we were an integrated family. Her uncle was there and her gay fashion uncle. My mom really got along with him and he gave her purses and stuff. And that was like across familial relationships that was developing and it was working and it was all good. And then I made a choice, selfish choice that blew that up. But if I hadn't done that, I would still only be talking about Car World and God would not be in the conversation perhaps at all. All. And ultimately I see myself as a job type figure who is lost everything that I've loved. But that doesn't change my faith and I will continue to accept anything bad that happens to me and that will not waver my faith.

[Andrew Callahan]

It's important for you to have faith right now because Today is the 1st of May, or is it the last day of April? Something like that. But either way, you've got got your next court date coming up on May 1st. On May 1st Thursday on the prodigal May day of all days. And they're going to decide whether or not they want to put you in jail. Whether or not they want to give you a fine and move along. Right?

[William Banks]

Yes. I'm being charged with criminal possession of an imitation pistol.

[Andrew Callahan]

Oh, this is for the BB gun charge?

[William Banks]

Yeah, this is a new charge.

[Andrew Callahan]

Okay. You're all good with the sign?

[William Banks]

Well, I just broke probation. I had probation from Connecticut that I can't get in trouble again. And I've broken probation by getting arrested.

[Andrew Callahan]

So why did I have a BB gun, though?

[William Banks]

Well, because I was trying. I was a fugitive. I was on the run from escaping from jail, and I had a gun because it was cool. And I was doing a photo shoot in Manhattan with my fugitive pretend girlfriend Maddie. And John Filmanowitz, my photographer, took these pictures.

[Andrew Callahan]

Damn. So you got arrested on a video shoot?

[William Banks]

Yeah. Someone called 911 because there's no rapper.

[Andrew Callahan]

Shit.

[William Banks]

911 because they sell the gun and my pants. And I thought that I fit the bill for a shooter.

[Andrew Callahan]

I. I don't see it.

[William Banks]

Thank you. And then the cops came and swarmed me and they put me in handcuffs and took me into the cop car and.

[Andrew Callahan]

Did you eat the sandwiches at Central Bookings?

[William Banks]

I didn't like the sandwiches. I tried it. I didn't like it. But I did eat the Cheerios. And I was very dehydrated. I peed once there, and it was brown because you have to beg for the water. They don't. You got to be like, water, water, water. And then they said, don't drink the water from the sinks because there's lead poisoning. So I was like, oh, that sucked. But, yeah, I have court on Thursday for if I'm going to get in more trouble for the gun. And now I'm gonna have to do more court in Connecticut because I violated the probation.

[Andrew Callahan]

You need a lawyer.

[William Banks]

I have public defenders right now.

[Andrew Callahan]

If you're a lawyer and you'd like to help him, he has a public defender. You can email me at. Andrew at Channel 5 News if you're offering pro bono or discounted representation for Mr. Banks. He doesn't necessarily need it, but, you know, if he loses this court battle, the appeals process might get expensive and he needs some help.

[William Banks]

I would only like to do it for pro bono, please.

[Andrew Callahan]

No money.

[William Banks]

I would like to not spend any money.

[Andrew Callahan]

Okay. Pro bono only. Mr. Banks, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate you very much. Thank you for coming to our studio.

[William Banks]

Thank you for having me, and thank you all for watching this program. And thank you, everybody, for listening to us talk about God and listen us talk about Israel and Palestine and listening to Talk about some of my personal relationships.

[Andrew Callahan]

Appreciate that, bro. Great job, man. That was amazing, dude. That may have been one of the best podcasts ever recorded. I'm serious. That was easily the best one ever.

[William Banks]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

That was so good, dude. We're gonna blow minds with that one.

[William Banks]

Yeah, maybe.

[Andrew Callahan]

I hope so, dude. We're gonna blow minds with that one.

[William Banks]

That was fine, dude.

[Andrew Callahan]

Holy. That was the most interesting conversation I've had. Channel 5 Live Worldwide, Hollywood and Vine. The Authority, Channel 5 News, Channel 55. We don't with custers and 5 is the best number. Hey, what's up, guys? Oh, shit. Hey, man, thanks for that web link. It's really working. I don't know if you guys missed the memo, but we just dropped an entire feature film. That's right. A full blown movie. At www.DearKellyFilm.com Dear KellyFilm.com it's an action packed movie that revolves around the life and times of Kelly Johnson, AKA Kelly J. Patriot. Kobe Bryant was assassinated by the Quins. Come here, Nazi. You're going to Guantanamo.

[William Banks]

Oh my gosh. What did I do?

[Andrew Callahan]

Am I getting canceled? The Democrats don't like you. They're gonna cancel you. It documents his semi estranged family and their attempt to pull him out of the rabbit hole. Are you selling baby parts? Yes or no? Don't tread on me. Don't even think about it. I don't want to say too much, but it's a good movie. If you guys want to watch it, it would mean a lot. Www.DearKellyFilm.com it's available for rent and buy. You can rent it for $5.55 or you can buy it for $15.55. Www.DearKellyFilm.com www.DearKellyFilm.comwww.Deardelli.de.