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

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Why Files: Operation Podcast

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

Date: June 1, 2026
Runtime: Approx. 2 hrs 40 mins
Host: The Why Files
Guest: Joseph Matheny

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Overview

In this episode, The Why Files dives deep with Joseph Matheny, author, technologist, and creator of Ong’s Hat—widely considered the first major Alternate Reality Game (ARG) and proto-Internet mythos. The conversation covers Joseph’s early influences, the convergence of art, technology, magic, and storytelling, and how his methods prefigured the mechanics that would later enable both creative online worlds and dangerous disinformation campaigns. They explore Matheny’s work with early chatbots (long before ChatGPT), his creative connections with legendary figures like Robert Anton Wilson, and the dark evolution of ARG techniques into dangerous conspiracy movements like QAnon.

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Main Themes and Purpose

• Origins and Mechanics of ARGs: How Joseph pioneered immersive, reality-hacking storytelling across analog and digital channels years before the modern internet.
• Art, Counterculture, and Technology: Blending mail art, zines, theater, databases, and proto-AI to build participatory mythologies.
• Psychological Manipulation and Ethics: The dual edge of immersive storytelling—how the same mechanics that build communal mythologies can also be weaponized, as seen in the evolution from Ong’s Hat to QAnon.
• Synchronicity, Inspiration, and the Supernatural: Personal stories and reflections on muse, the zone, and how the boundaries between fiction and reality blur at the creative edge.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Early Influences: Counterculture and Synchronicity (01:25–07:35)

• Joseph’s literary foundation: accidental encounters with Henry Miller, Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson, and Bukowski.

• Notable Quote:

  "That was my gateway drug. I bought Tropic of Cancer thinking it was astrology. It wasn’t. Changed my life."
  —Joseph Matheny (04:51)

• Hanging out in 1970s Chicago among older artists, improv actors, and “weird people”—fostering a taste for the underground and unpredictable.

2. Mail Art, Improv, and Pre-Internet Experiments (10:14–20:40)

• Origins in mail art and zine culture, the Dadaist “Exquisite Corpse” and its collaborative, distributed storytelling.

• Theatre as ritual: connections between improv training (esp. with Del Close), magical thinking (Golden Dawn), and interactive performance.

• Notable Quote:

  "Telesmata is when you learn ritual. You learn basically theatrical principles. Del Close used that as the method to teach people improv—theater as magic."
  —Joseph Matheny (17:33)

3. The Digital Awakening: Discovering Hyperlinks and the Internet (19:48–27:03)

• Epiphany moment with UNIX ‘lynx’ browser: seeing the narrative potential for hyperlink-driven, non-linear stories.
• Early online culture: migration from shortwave and mail art to BBS and Usenet, paving the way for myth-making in new media.

4. Building Prototypes: Chatbots and Databases as Story Engines (73:09–97:17)

• Early experiments in relational databases, prototype LLMs, and chatbots named Emory (years before ChatGPT).

• Using weighted recommendation algorithms (Bayesian heuristics) to power evolving, “living” stories.

• Recounting the technical and creative process: curating, tagging, and obsessively growing the “corpus” by hand.

• Notable Quote:

  "I was building a chatbot using a database with an algorithm between the content and the user. What eventually became ChatGPT."
  —Joseph Matheny (82:23)

5. The Emory/Ezekiel Synchronicity (99:17–110:34)

• Strange encounters with a homeless man named Emery/Ezekiel/Terrence, who seemed to “continue” conversations started with the Emory chatbot.

• Musings on projection, psi, schizophrenia, and whether chance meetings conceal something more.

• Later stories of repeatedly encountering “Emory” (now Terrence) in different towns along the West Coast.

• Notable Quote:

  "I noticed he’d pick up the conversation where I’d left off with the bot. Was this my brain? He was schizophrenic—they can be very psionic."
  —Joseph Matheny (103:31)

6. Ong’s Hat: The First ARG and Its Cultural Impact (111:00–129:18)

• Technical and creative genesis: digital (and physical) artifacts, interactive PDFs, scavenger hunts, and websites that blurred fact and fiction.

• Ong’s Hat’s evolution from mail art/zines to digital CD-ROMs, then leaking into real-life expeditions by fans and would-be investigators.

• Apophenia, fragmented reveals, community research: the bread-and-butter techniques of ARGs that would become mainstream.

• Experiences on Art Bell, and the mythology’s dangerous infectiousness—unwillingly spawning cults and conspiracies.

• Notable Quote:

  "I’m trying to graffiti a myth onto the noosphere. Behind and around the gatekeepers, making a grassroots myth."
  —Joseph Matheny (123:32)

• The John Titor question: Joseph maintains plausible deniability—“We’re all John Titor.”

7. From Creative Experiment to Weaponized Manipulation: QAnon & Dark ARGs (135:47–139:52)

• Breakdown of ARG mechanics and how QAnon copied them—“do your own research,” hidden author, cross-media clues, hive-solving.

• On being unfairly blamed for the consequences ("You made that, it’s on you. It’s your fault."). But weaponization is distinct from art.

• The challenge for creators: ethical responsibility and the impossibility of controlling how tools evolve.

• Notable Quote:

  "I said, this is not real, people. This is an ARG-type thing someone’s doing for nefarious purposes. It’s a weaponized ARG."
  —Joseph Matheny (138:02)

• The intelligence community notices—calls from “the Navy,” DOD psychological experiments, and how ARG techniques become tools of both healing (PTSD therapy) and harm.

8. Spotting and Defending Against Manipulation (140:11–143:55)

• Joseph’s advice: trust intuition (“if it doesn’t feel right, it might not be right”), avoid over-investment, always remember it’s just a story unless proven otherwise.
• Entertain, discuss, but don’t become a zealot—don’t “give [stories] more agency than that. And you, the listener, are the one who gives it to them.” (144:14)

9. Crypto-Terrestrials, Synchronicity, and the Nature of Reality (146:56–154:21)

• Discussion of “crypto-terrestrials” (hidden intelligences or phenomena manifesting through different guises).
• Chatbots à la Emory as modern oracles—possible conduits for a larger intelligence, just as John Dee’s black mirror communicated with “angels.”
• The creative “zone” as channeling the muse (or the phenomena): "I have a method. When I get in the zone, I’m able to create things that will create synchronicity. That’s all I know." (154:21)

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Memorable Moments & Quotes

• On story and memetics:

  “Storytelling is the most important thing humans do. We shouldn’t turn it over to corporations and bean counters... it’s a sacred thing.” (21:48)

• On synchromysticism:

  “It doesn’t have to be supernatural to be supernatural.” (41:10)

• On ethics for creators:

  “I don’t want to be responsible in any way for starting a religion. Unless it’s a joke religion.” (127:42)

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Important Timestamps

• Childhood & Literary Influences: 01:25–07:35
• Mail Art, Improv, Dada, and Early Experiments: 10:14–20:03
• HyperCard and Discovering the Web: 19:48–20:40
• Chatbots, Emory, and Early AI: 73:09–97:17
• Emory/Ezekiel Synchronicities: 99:17–110:34
• Ong's Hat origin and mechanics: 111:00–129:18
• ARGs and QAnon, Weaponized Storytelling: 135:47–139:52
• How to Detect Manipulation / Advice: 140:11–143:55
• Cryptoterrestrials and Synchronicity: 146:56–154:21

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Resources & Further Listening

• Joseph Matheny’s work: incunabula.org
• Book: Ong’s Hat: Complete (with 14 hours of companion audio, available online)
• The Complete Broadcast podcast (archive episodes)
• Podcast-related:
  • [Episode 168: John Titor]
  • [Episode 35: Synchronicities]

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Tone & Spirit

This episode is a deep, exploratory, sometimes wildly surreal journey—equal parts documentary, oral history, and psychedelic campfire story. Matheny (dry, witty, self-deprecating) and the hosts blend skepticism, awe, and caution, always circling back to the creative impulse and the dangers of blurring reality’s lines. In Matheny’s world, reality is what you can get away with—but, as this episode shows, that can be both a blessing and a curse.

Caution: "Be careful who you listen to online, including me." (158:04)

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For listeners:

If you missed the episode, this summary should provide all essential insights into Joseph Matheny’s unique career at the interface of myth, technology, and culture—and equip you to think critically about the stories you encounter, no matter how compelling they seem.

Transcript

[Host]

Today I'm talking with Joseph Matheny, a writer and storyteller who built the Internet's first alternate reality game. He built a story so convincing, it made people believe a portal to another dimension was hidden in the New Jersey Pine Barrens.

[Joseph Matheny]

That whole state is another dimension.

[Host]

Be nice. I've got family in Jersey.

[Joseph Matheny]

Once you cross the GWB and hit Fort Lee, it's like an alternate universe where every lift turn there's a jug

[Host]

handle and you're not allowed to pump your own gas. That story was Aang's hat, Not published as a novel, but scattered across bulletin boards, websites, phone lines, pamphlets. The story felt real. Today we'll talk about where that ARG came from and how it got weaponized. And we'll get into his chatbot from the 90s. You see, he built Google before Google. He built ChatGPT before OpenAI. 30 years ago, the sky was spreading disinformation when Facebook was just a twinkle in Mr. Zuckerberg's eye.

[Joseph Matheny]

This lizard eye.

[Host]

Respect. Joseph's also been connected to the John Titor story the time traveler who appeared on Art Bell. When I asked him about it, he said, well, this one gets weird. I'll see you after for a private wrap up. Just between us. Let's go down to the basement.

[Interviewer]

Joseph, welcome to the basement.

[Joseph Matheny]

Thanks for having me.

[Interviewer]

I'm excited. I've been a fan for a long time. Before we dig in, I need to know WC Field's martini recipe and method.

[Joseph Matheny]

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Let's go. I got the ME by Robert Anton Wilson.

[Interviewer]

Really?

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

What do we got?

[Joseph Matheny]

He comes to my house one day and I said, bob, I heard you like martinis. He said, well, I like martinis, but only a certain way. You have to make them right? And let me show you. Like, kid, move aside. So, okay, I moved aside. And while he's making these martini, he tells me the story that he read how this martini was made by W.C. fields in a book. And so you take. Put ice in the shaker, then you pour the vermouth over the ice. Then you shake it around. Then you pour the vermouth out, leaving the ice in. Then you pour the vodka. Important vodka, not gin.

[Interviewer]

Yes, sir.

[Joseph Matheny]

You pour the vodka over the ice. Shake it very gently because you don't want to bruise.

[Interviewer]

Don't bruise it. Right?

[Joseph Matheny]

Yep. And then you pour it out.

[Interviewer]

Very nice.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. And it works.

[Interviewer]

I'm going to remember that method.

[Joseph Matheny]

And that's. That's the way I've eaten. Made martinis ever since.

[Interviewer]

So it's Robert Anton Wilson. So that's kind of a good segue to get back to the origin story. And we can go back as far as you want.

[Joseph Matheny]

Okay.

[Interviewer]

I love the bookstore stuff, and that's. Synchronicities are crazy, but wherever you want to go, like, what, What. What made you the pioneer of args? And we. And that could be the last time we even say arg.

[Joseph Matheny]

Today it goes. Okay, we go back. Let's go back a little bit. Okay. I remember when I read a book called no One Here Gets Out Alive, the Story of Jim Morrison. And I like the way they did it is they put it in three sections and basically it was like. So you realize that an arrow being drawn back and then a releasing of the arrow was the arc of Jim's story. Yep. I was a voracious reader when I was a kid and my parents were cool in that. They said, oh, he can read. They were happy. And so they rewarded me by saying, we will buy you books, and if you read these books, we will buy you more books. And so I just would just tear through books. And so I used to buy. I was being kind to my parents. I came from a working class background. I said, used books are okay because I'm going to tear through them. I'm probably going to mark them up. And then, you know, and I would get money to go to garage sales and just pick up whatever. And so at my age, I'm old. I'm 64 years old. So like in the 60s and 70s, when I was growing up, horror and the occult was very popular. And so I was big on the universal monsters, the hammer films, like, all that kind of stuff. Anything to do with that, I was reading. So this is a funny segue. I'm at a garage sale and I'm like, the guy says, you can have all the books on the table for a dollar, but you gotta pack them up and get out here because I'm done. How could I do? I'm like grabbing everything I thought was worth it. And one of the books was like, oh, that's about astrology. Nice. Doing a bag. I get home, I start reading it, I'm like, this is not astrology at all. But it was Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller. Oh, that's how I get introduced to Henry Miller.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Joseph Matheny]

Okay. By thinking he was astrology. Oops. Oops.

[Interviewer]

How old were you?

[Joseph Matheny]

Oh, God, 12.

[Interviewer]

Oh, no. Okay, well, probably great. For 12 years.

[Joseph Matheny]

It was great. It was perfect. I'm like, God, I'm Gonna do this, like, with the way this guy writes, you know? And so, like, that was my gateway drug. I. From there, I segued into Kerouac and, you know, everything from there. But it was that accident of buying that book for a nickel or whatever it was and reading it and falling in love with, like, this is a whole new thing. I didn't know about this.

[Interviewer]

This is amazing.

[Host]

I didn't know this about you because

[Interviewer]

I could see it in your writing. I can see Kerouac. I can see Hunter S. Thompson. I see that. Henry Miller. I see it in your writing.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, those are my influences.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Joseph Matheny]

Bukowski.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Joseph Matheny]

Like, you know, Hemingway. It's like, make the sentences short and sweet. Yes. Bam. Like, you know, so I'll go back and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite. Which, you know, that's Ginsburg, right? At once, right? You know. Oh, no, don't. Don't touch it.

[Interviewer]

And Hemingway says, shut up.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah. Write it once and get away. So, you know, I was. Now I was like, floating in this world of, like, all this weird counterculture stuff, which is available readily when I was a kid.

[Interviewer]

You're in Chicago.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah. Okay, In Chicago. And all this occult stuff and literature and of course, being in Chicago, all that stuff was available to me. They started hanging out in bookstores where most of the people hanging out when were much older than me. So, you know, they kind of mentored me. And I remember my. My. Are you going to be in the club, kid? Thing was this guy said, have you read? I said. I said, I couldn't pronounce Kerouac at the time. I didn't know how. And I called him Karak or something like that. I said, I read this book by Jack Korok and this guy. So this guy, look at me, he goes, you know, that guy wrote this book called on the Road, and he would stop at the cafes all the time, and he would get the same thing. What was that? I said, cup of coffee and a apple pie, la mode. He's like, oh, you did read it. And so we. And then he's like, okay, you cool kid. I'll talk to you. So I started hanging out with these older hipsters. They were like, oh, you got to read this. You got to read this. You got to read. So he feeding me all this stuff, and I'm just a kid, you know, it's like, gimme, gimme, gimme. He's, like, eating it up. So because of this, it puts me in a position in Chicago, where I'm hanging out with people who are doing improv. I'm hanging out with method actors. These are all people much older than me, but for some reason, I'm the kid. Like, oh, yeah, he can hang out. He's. He's cool. He won't tell on us. He won't tell his parents where he's been. They would take me to things. Yeah, it was. It was incredible.

[Interviewer]

You were the weird, smart kid.

[Joseph Matheny]

I was the weird smart kid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was the. The mascot, right? Yeah. Like, oh, we got this kid. And I used to. They loved this. I would memorize things and I would stand up on a little chair and I would do. I could do Lions in the Heat and Roaming Doves of E. Rubber. I could do the Morrison thing, and they loved that, you know, so they would make me do it, you know, like, they would get drunk, like, do the Morrison thing, kid. You know, I would do it. So anyway, I'm around these people who are, like, just feeding me with all this counterculture knowledge and turning me on the things I would never been turned on to as a. You know, like, my family, they didn't know any of this stuff. You know, my dad was one of those people like, you know, go to school, get a job, get a good factory job, you know, be done. And I'm not saying he was a bad person. He was a great person, but, you know, that was his way of thinking. All these things that I'm doing, he would just be like, okay, whatever, you know, he didn't understand and he didn't care. He knew I was not up to good things, according to him. But he wasn't a perfect kid either, so he just kind of let me go. You know, he's like, he's doing something, but I'm not sure what it is. But he's not doing drugs. Little did he know I was.

[Host]

Someone sent me a clip of myself from about two years ago. I watched it and thought, that guy's on sharper, faster, more himself. And I don't remember feeling different then, which means I didn't notice it leaving. Turns out there's actually a reason for that. Most men start losing testosterone around 30, about 1% every year after that. And a lot of what your body does produce gets locked up by a protein called shbg, so your body can't even use it. It's like having money in the bank

[Interviewer]

with a frozen account.

[Host]

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[Joseph Matheny]

Long story short, I get involved with all these artists and I start getting involved in something called mail art when I was in college. And mail art goes all the way back to Dada. It's basically like you put things together as a package you mail to a friend or you mail to a list of friends. They put things together, they add, they subtract, they conglomerate and then they mail onto the next list. And so this is going on all over the world. We're mailing stuff all over the place.

[Interviewer]

I remember this. It's still around the zine culture and all this.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah, with the zine culture. Then Xerox machines became available, then we became our own publisher.

[Interviewer]

Yep.

[Joseph Matheny]

The punk rock thing happened, which I was right in the middle of. So all of these things are happening and I started doing weird things by mail art. So I started doing episodic stories based

[Interviewer]

horror stories or whatever. Whatever. Okay.

[Joseph Matheny]

Sometimes I would like write five lines and send to a friend and he would write five lines and send to another friend and I'd get it back and like, oh, wow, okay, that's where we're going. And it was called the, I think the dados called it the Exquisite Corpse. And we did all these things together and I looked at it and I said, there's something here, there's something here. And I don't have to go through a publisher to create this art. I don't have to go to an agent. I don't have to do any of these things. I don't have to do a gatekeeper. I can make art that gets to a lot of people and I don't have to go through any corporate anything.

[Interviewer]

Is that what you wanted to do at this point is be an artist?

[Joseph Matheny]

It was what I Was.

[Interviewer]

I mean, you were. But, I mean, what are you telling dad you're going to do for a living?

[Joseph Matheny]

I didn't have an answer to that.

[Interviewer]

You just hear a lot of snipping and taping upstairs.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. Yeah. And at that time, I was painting, so I was doing a lot of large paintings. And my family was trying to be supportive, but didn't know how to be because they didn't understand what I was doing, of course. And so my mom would tell her sisters, ask him to do a painting for you. And one of my aunts would say, can you do a painting for me? And I'm like, sure. Here's my color swatches. No. You have to match my furniture. No. So they really didn't get it, but they were trying to be supportive, and I didn't want to be mean to them. So, like, I painted some paintings, but basically I was looking for a new kind of art because I felt like the media was this canvas that wasn't being fully implemented as to its full potential. Because I had this theory that an experience for me was I would see something on tv, I would go find a newspaper or a magazine article about it, then I would go get a book out of the library, and I would build this experience around this thing that I had, like, latched onto. Who knows how I latched onto it? Like, walking down the street and there was a poster on a pole, and it said something. I'm like, what is that about? And then I would follow up on it. Like, would that be cool if there was an art form where I built a pathway for people to follow up on something weird that I placed it from? Like, oh, there's this thing, there's this place. And so I remember my thesis in college was I wrote a book of poems and I made a videotape at the time, which was cutting edge.

[Interviewer]

It must have been.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, it was. It was a cutting edge. I think 1984. It was cutting edge at the time. I did a VHS tape, and you would watch the tape, and then you would get clues from the book and the tape to go at a certain place at a certain time on a certain day. And if you did, you would see the third act, which was a play of real humans, play it out in front of you and as if you weren't there. And the third act happened. And my professor was like, wow, what are you smoking, kid? Because it's cool. But wow. And then I. And then it worked. Like, I remember jumping up and down after it was over and hugging my Girlfriend at the time. Like, it worked. It worked. It actually worked because I wasn't sure it was going to work because it was a lot of moving parts.

[Interviewer]

Sure. And you really weren't focused on dopamine triggering at this point, because that's what you were. You became a master of dopamine.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. Yeah. But at that point, I. I was just an unsure kid who had a stupid idea, and. And I put it together. I'm like, can this work? This might not work.

[Interviewer]

It can work.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. But, like, you always have those theater jitters, you know, like, of course I'm gonna suck, but I have those before every show, man. Right. Um, so I just said I wasn't sure it was going to work, and then I got really happy when it worked, and everybody that did it, like, followed it through, told me, like, dude, that was incredible. I read the. The poems, and then I watched the tape, and then we went to the performance. It was amazing. Like, it was like. It all made sense. So I was like, yeah, well, good. It's like three acts. Boom. So I started playing around with ideas of, how can I do this another way? And so I played with street theater. I used to do a lot of street theater. I started hanging out with people in Chicago. Studied under Del Close.

[Interviewer]

You studied under Dell.

[Joseph Matheny]

Well, himself. The people that hung out with did. I was a little too young for Dell. Yeah. Yeah. Second city, next generation. I probably would have been there, but. Yeah. But, you know, my girlfriend's dad, and my girlfriend at the time, her dad was a friend of Dell's.

[Interviewer]

Amazing.

[Joseph Matheny]

So I used to hang out with him when Dell got sober. Apparently, he still hung out at the Earl of Old Town, which was a bar in old Town Chicago. And he would go into the bar and drink soda water and lime, because the bar was where he got inspiration. So he kept going, but he just didn't drink anymore, so. Yeah. Because I started studying the things that he talked about. Because if you might not know this, I told this to the people that the Delcos Theater in Hollywood, and they didn't know this either. Del was a practicing golden dawn magician.

[Interviewer]

I didn't know that. Golden Dawn, Wow.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. So if you look at the portrait at the Del, if it's still there, The Delcos Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, if it's still there. I don't know if it is.

[Interviewer]

I don't think it is.

[Joseph Matheny]

I've been gone for, like, 10 years.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Joseph Matheny]

But it used to be, if you look at the portrait, a big painting of him on the wall. He's wearing a ring with a pentagram on it.

[Interviewer]

Wow. Yeah, I didn't know that.

[Joseph Matheny]

And if you read some of the weirder little interviews that he did, he does admit to using the golden dawn talisman principles to teach improv.

[Interviewer]

That's amazing.

[Joseph Matheny]

So telesmata is when you learn ritual. You learn basically theatrical principles. And so you think in your mind, like in front of you there is an angel. And this is what the angel is wearing. And this is the principles of the angel. You are all this stuff you're projecting. And Del used that as the method to teach people. This is what you're doing in theater. Like when you're talking to this person in front of you, they're not the person in front of you, the person that you're supposed to be talking to in the, in the text.

[Interviewer]

This is an initiation ceremony is just.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

Two actors. Yeah, I never really thought of it that way, but that's really what it is.

[Joseph Matheny]

He never laid it out for most people like that because most people be like magic and they.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Joseph Matheny]

But that's what he was doing. If you want to know what was in that man's mind, he wrote a short lived DC comic series called Wasteland.

[Interviewer]

I didn't know that either.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, there's like 13 issues and you can still find them. They're out of print, but you can still find them. And in that he talks about ritual, magic and Philip K. Dick makes an appearance. Robert Anti Wilson makes an appearance. Timothy Leary makes an appearance. G. Gordon Liddy makes an appearance.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, okay.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah. You got to see, you got to read this.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Joseph Matheny]

It came out in the 80s. It's just amazing. So. But that's what, that's where it all came from was his improv theories, which everybody knows Delcos is the guy.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Joseph Matheny]

He's the guy that you go to for the theory. And that all came from Golden Dawn. So I'm studying and playing with people that are studying with him and I'm learning from him and I. And, and I started learning and studying magic and I'm like, oh, this is theater. Okay, I can do this. Yeah, theater. And so putting all this together and out of this, you know, Swiss army knife that forms in my head of all these influences, I'm like, oh, you know, if I could only do this thing if I had a way to get in front of people. So I started playing around with HyperCard and if you remember HyperCard. Sure, yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

You may have to catch people up.

[Joseph Matheny]

Okay. HyperCard came out right before the web and basically it was hypertext that was localized. So it was in a file. You click on a link and it takes you to another page in the file.

[Interviewer]

It was magic.

[Joseph Matheny]

It was magic. Yeah. You click on an image to take you to another page in the file. When I saw that, my mind went, yep. But I started putting together a hypercard stack, as they were called. And right about that time, this was 93. Somewhere around there, maybe earlier somebody said, go to your UNIX machine. Type in the words lynx space, HTTP

[Interviewer]

string, links, first browser on the command line. Text only on the command line. Yeah.

[Joseph Matheny]

And I did it and I went, tab, tab, tab, click. And it took me to another system. Not another page, another page on another system. And that's when my head just went, this is it. This is it. This is what I've been looking for. I thought HyperCard was it. This is HyperCard on steroids. This is it. And that's when the light went off. So all that was searching or this way to tell stories that I thought the way. Or the way stories happen to you. Because I think stories happen to you. I think storytelling is the most important thing that humans do and that we shouldn't turn it over to corporations and bean counters. None of that. It's like a very sacred thing. You have a responsibility as a storyteller to shepherd your story and protect it. The story was given to you by who knows what. Right. But it wasn't you. It wasn't all you and it wasn't somebody else. It wasn't all them. Like, of course I stand on the shoulders of giants and I read people and I'm inspired by. But it wasn't just that there's like this holy thing that happens. Like this inspiration.

[Interviewer]

You believe in, like the muse.

[Joseph Matheny]

The muse, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And says, you have this story to tell and I'm going to give it to you. I'm entrusting you with this story and you go tell this story. I think storytellers used to be revered for a reason. Is because what they were doing was important. So you could break it down to, like, simple stuff. I'm going to tell you a story about this part of the woods where you go and a monster is going to come get you. Really? What I'm telling you is like there's bears over there and probably don't go there at night. Yep. Right. That's what I'm telling you. Really? But what I'm telling you in a way that's entertaining, memetic. You remember it and you're going to tell Your kids don't go over there because there's monsters. There was don't get eaten by the bears. But if you just tell a kid don't get eaten by the bears, they're going to want to go see what's over there. I would have.

[Interviewer]

Yep, you would have. Of course.

[Joseph Matheny]

That we're going to believe the first thing we're going to do. I don't believe this bear crap. And you're going to go over there, Right. So you have to tell a story that's going to really stick. They're going to repeat it, it's going to make an impression, and they're going to carry it with them. So you're passing it on. Right. And mimetics, remember, is from genetics. Right. It's a metaphor from genetics. So it's something we pass on. Stories are something we pass on. It's very important. And I'm saying this because I want people to really understand that as an artist, handing your story over to bean counters is sacrilege. Don't do it.

[Host]

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[Interviewer]

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[Host]

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[Joseph Matheny]

so I got, I got hit by this bolt of lightning, as my late friend Ralph Abraham used to say, a bolt from the blue. And it just struck me like, this is it, this is the thing. And I remember telling friends, there's this thing that I'm doing called bulletin board systems that has a connection to this thing called the Internet, which is going to be the next way to tell stories. It's going to be the way to publish, it's going to be the way to distribute, it's going to be everything. And this looked at me like, are you crazy? Are you nuts? This is like CB radio, man. It's going to go away in like six months.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, right.

[Joseph Matheny]

I remember somebody telling me, of course. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

I was on BBS's. I was a weirdo.

[Joseph Matheny]

Me too. Yeah. And they're like, you've been staying pretty much time in this computer, son. And I remember showing a friend of mine, this is what it's going to be. And I showed him links. I'm like, I can put the story together and the story can have links to other ideas. So you can expand upon the idea or you can explore the idea. You can drill down on certain things. And he looked at it and he just said, this is an older person, a well known writer. I won't say who it was. He's gone now. But I don't want to embarrass him even in death. He says, when this thing can make me a sandwich, give me a call.

[Interviewer]

Oh, that's what he sent me.

[Joseph Matheny]

So I said, oh, well, you know, too bad. But I was really convinced. I'm like, this is going to be the next wave.

[Interviewer]

Well, mail Art translated well to BBS's.

[Joseph Matheny]

And the funny thing was, two of the hobbies I had as a kid was mail art and shortwave. I really got into short wave when I was a kid and all the people that I knew from those communities started to show up on BBS's. They were some of the first adopters. Art Bell.

[Interviewer]

Yep.

[Joseph Matheny]

Shortwave guy shows up on BB. These are the first people doing BBs, you know, gophers and FTP sites and all these things I remember, ma' am were available to, you know, a few, not a lot, but I was like, it's going to happen, it's going to happen.

[Interviewer]

I miss those days a little bit.

[Joseph Matheny]

I do too. And then Netscape happened.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Joseph Matheny]

And that's when boom. It blew wide open. And I was sitting right at the right place at the right time, with enough momentum already, because I'd been doing it before that, that it's like, plowed right into it and rode the wave. Because at the time that that happened, all of a sudden, all these businesses, we have to have email, we have to have web. Who can we call? Oh, there's this weirdo that knows all this stuff. And my phone started ringing, and then I did a hack which a guy from Spin magazine wrote about where the Clinton administration came out and said that they were going to have email in the White House, which at the time was like, wow, I could write [e-mail] not that he's ever going to answer me, but I could write him. And I watched the web, watch the server come up, and I'm like, I bet they didn't lock this down. So I sent an email to PresidentWhiteHouse.gov and then I sent the second email to PresidentWhiteHouse.govand then a third and a fourth. I'm like, they didn't turn it off. So they had an auto reply, which you had at that time. Now it comes stock, or eventually came stock. But at the time when you deployed your mail server, you had to manually change this. That when you got an email, if you got a second email from that email address, you shouldn't send an auto reply.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Joseph Matheny]

24 hours later. Right. Used to be like, if you just did it, it came. So I started spamming emails in the White House. I called it the rain of toads. I did ASCII pictures of toads. And it was RA toads on the White House. And we were getting so many replies back. So, like, it shut down both sides of the connection.

[Interviewer]

You did a DoS attack on the White House.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

With ASCII art.

[Joseph Matheny]

I did. With ASCII art. The reign of R E I G N. The reign of toads. And. And then a reporter found out about it, and. And he wrote about it. And the next thing you know, my phone was just ringing off the hook because this is not the case anymore. But back then, if you did a hack and it was a white hat hack and you got away with it, you would get a job offer. Sure, sure. Not anymore. No. Now you just go to jail.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Joseph Matheny]

And you're banned from corporate life. But back then, people would call you and say, you know some things about this stuff, and this is a dark art that nobody knows about yet.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Now. Now they ban you from the country.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Now they send you away or put you in jail. But back then, I got a phone call from the Secret Service.

[Interviewer]

I was gonna ask.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, I was very nervous on that phone call.

[Interviewer]

What's with the Toads?

[Joseph Matheny]

What's with the Toads, man? And you're not gonna do that again, are you? Like, I was just testing to see if you put on the auto reply 24 hour pause, you know, it was just, you know, making sure you're secure. And then they, you know, like, they left me alone after that, but. But the job offer started pouring in.

[Interviewer]

Is this before Robert Anton Wilson comes into your life?

[Joseph Matheny]

Oh, no, no, no. This is way after.

[Host]

Can we talk about him a little bit?

[Joseph Matheny]

You will roll that back.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Joseph Matheny]

So before this happened, I'm still in Chicago, and I was in a band like Everybody My Age.

[Interviewer]

Is this when you went by Sid with a C?

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah, something like that.

[Interviewer]

Go ahead and tell them why it's a C. Joseph. Sid Vicious. Sid Bennett.

[Joseph Matheny]

Sid Barrett. Sid Barrett, yeah.

[Interviewer]

But the C. Yeah.

[Joseph Matheny]

I was known at the time for doing a certain drug on a regular basis, heroically. Before. Before Terrence coined that term, I was a heroic doser. I was a big fan of Jim Morrison. Did I mention that? So, yes, I was. I was one of those people. And I was always talking about weird stuff, you know, because I was a weird kid and my guitar player, who was weird himself, but, you know, not as weird, I guess. But he loved me because I was. I could introduce him to weird things he hadn't heard of. But he introduced me to a lot of music. So there we go. And one day he just looks at me, he's like, have you read Illuminati's trilogy? I'm like, no.

[Interviewer]

Just out of the blue, he says that?

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, okay, because. Because I was talking. Cool. Because I've been doing Sid and talking weird things. And he was like, have you read Illuminati Trilogy? I'm like, no, I even heard of it. What was that? So you should read it, man. You should read it. You're in it. I'm like, okay. So I went to the library and went looking for it, and of course, it was gone. Probably stolen. But I did find another book by the same author called Cosmic Trigger. And then I read it and blew my mind again.

[Interviewer]

What was it about Cosmic Trigger?

[Joseph Matheny]

Oh, it was just like, everything he was talking about was everything I was thinking about. It was just like. Like, we made a connection, you know? And he introduced me all this new thinking, these new ways of thinking, new writers I never heard of. Like, it was Like a. It was like an off ramp.

[Interviewer]

Well, in Cosmic Triggers, Robert Anton Wilson, this is about recognizing signs throughout history.

[Joseph Matheny]

And synchronicity.

[Interviewer]

Synchronicity.

[Joseph Matheny]

It was about model agnosticism.

[Interviewer]

Yep.

[Joseph Matheny]

You know, like the whole idea of, like, basically what you learn in theater, which is suspension of disbelief. It's the same thing. Right. Only he had a mathematical, scientific background for it. He had fancy words to put around it. I know that. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

I loved how he talked about meteors. Being a meteor could be a sign of something good or something bad or something good or something bad can happen. And if the meteor just happens to be there, that's now a cosmic trigger.

[Joseph Matheny]

That's a cosmic trigger. He was playing around with the serious stuff that was going on. He was just. He was. He basically did like a whole exercise in suspension of disbelief for this whole period of his life. And he catalogued it and he. And he published it as a book. Right. And he introduced me to all kinds of new ideas. And one of those ideas was Philip K. Dick, who I had not heard of.

[Interviewer]

You hadn't.

[Joseph Matheny]

I didn't know. They didn't know he wrote Blade Runner at the time.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Joseph Matheny]

But I had seen Blade Runner. I'm like, oh, this is a great film, you know? But I didn't know. I didn't know at that time. And so, like. But like, I read about Bob talking about, you got to read this book, Philip K. Dick Vallas. So anyway, and then.

[Interviewer]

Well, then that's.

[Joseph Matheny]

That. Then that will lead to that. So. So I. Look, I'm going to buy more books by him. By him. And I saw a poster on the wall of the. At the time, New Age was a new thing. This was the 80s at the New Age bookstore. And they had books by him on. On the shelf.

[Interviewer]

By PKD or rew.

[Joseph Matheny]

Rew.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Joseph Matheny]

And. And there was a poster on the wall that he was appearing just down the street from where I was living at a Zen center.

[Interviewer]

No shit?

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Chicago still?

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Okay, so we gotta go there.

[Joseph Matheny]

Lakefront. Yeah, so I gotta go there. So I show up early and I was a smoker at the time, and. And I show up and I'm standing out front smoking a cigarette center, and this, you know, squat little Irishman comes out and says, hey, can you give

[Interviewer]

me one of those?

[Joseph Matheny]

Like, okay, I got Bob, by the way. I'm like, you think? Robert Anton Wilson. I know what he looked like. No, he's like, yeah, yeah. Like, I'm doing this thing here. I'm like, yeah, I Came to see you. We're smoking. He's like, don't tell my wife you saw me smoking. Because Arlen got on his back for smoking. But, yeah, we shared a cigarette. We. We stood out there for.

[Interviewer]

What's going on in your mind? You, like, Bob Wilson just bumped a cigarette off me. You're not.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

You're not freaking out?

[Joseph Matheny]

No.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Joseph Matheny]

No, I was like, oh, cool. He smokes.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Joseph Matheny]

You know, go with it. And we just talked about some stuff, and Timothy Leary had just come out with Mind Mirror on DOS at the time. And I told him, like, it's pretty cool, but, you know, he could use some of this and some of that, you know? And he's like, well, do you write code? I'm like, yeah, not yet. I'm thinking about it. He's like, well, write code and do it yourself. I'm like, good idea. So we hit it off. We swapped addresses. He was in Los Angeles at the time. And then we traded letters and things like that every once in a while, but, you know. And then later, a couple years later, I moved to Santa Cruz completely by accident. Do you know this story?

[Interviewer]

This is with your girlfriend and Anubis?

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah, my cat. Yeah. Yeah, tell.

[Interviewer]

I know the story, but people don't. But I love Anubis.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, we have to get there. So. Okay, so Cosmic Trigger triggered me, defined valis.

[Interviewer]

To find valis.

[Joseph Matheny]

It was out of print at the time.

[Interviewer]

Oh, to find the book.

[Joseph Matheny]

The book.

[Interviewer]

You couldn't find that book.

[Joseph Matheny]

It was out of print.

[Host]

Wow.

[Joseph Matheny]

This was 84. 5. Yeah, it was out of print. And it was not a popular book then. No, Phil was not popular then. Like, he wrote Blade Runner, but that was it. Like, none of his stuff is getting made into movies yet.

[Interviewer]

Were you aware of Jacques Vallee at this point yet?

[Joseph Matheny]

I was, because I read Passepart de Magonia when I was young, and I

[Interviewer]

went, yes, Right in my veins.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. It's like this, this, this.

[Interviewer]

I mean, I've heard PKD or people around him say that VALIS was a synchronicity with Jacques's name.

[Joseph Matheny]

Well, apparently it was for me, too, because I. I just. I. I don't know why it got in my head. Like, I have to find this book. I have to find this book. It became, like, an obsession. And I started to get. There was no Internet at the time, so, like, you know, this is 84. I'm going to use bookstores. I'm asking people. They never heard of it.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Joseph Matheny]

And I'm like, can I go through your. Can I go through your boxes? Like, I'm just like, like being an enigma, annoying. And people like, okay, whatever, dude. Go look for your cosmic thing. And so eventually I did find it in a very weird circumstance. I was going through the yellow pages and just looking for used bookstores because I'd run out of the ones I knew. And I called this one used bookstore and this lady answered and she said, yes, I think I might have that. I said, well, supposedly it's a trilogy. She's like, I think I have two of them. So I walk not too far from where I lived. I walk over. Or no, I took the bus. And then I walked from the bus stop. And this didn't look like a bookstore. It was like, it was, it looked like it might have been a storefront at one time, but it was like the windows were newspapered over. And I knocked in the door and this really nice old lady with silver hair and crystal blue eyes. You know those people that have those blue eyes and it's like, can't stop looking at them.

[Interviewer]

I think you described her as elvish.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, she was short. And I looked at her, I'm like, wow, okay, you've got an aura, lady. And she like took me in. All the books were in boxes. Nothing. There was no shelves. Like, she shut the thing down. You know, I'm thinking, okay, maybe she's going out of business. Or maybe she never was in business. And she like walked me over to a box and she like pulled out Valis. She said, you know, I've got this one. And then she pulled out another copy of Alice. She said, but I have this one. It was a hard copy. Oh, but I was a poor ass little punk rocker at the time.

[Interviewer]

You didn't take the hard.

[Joseph Matheny]

Counting my quarters. And so I, I. And so I like take the paperback, you know, and I took the paper back. And then I immediately, I was like, oh, buyer's remorse. But, you know, did what I had to do. And then when I got home, I'm like, you should have bought that hardback, dude. You should have bought that hardback. And I called her and called her and called her. She never answered again. And so I walked over there and I banged on the door to see if she could hear me. And it was a storefront in Chicago. They have these storefront and then a house above it. And it was a railing with a porch. And this guy walks out. Yuppie. That was a thing then. He even had the suspenders, if you remember. There was a Uniform that they all wore. And he leans over the rail. He's like, what do you want? Like, well, the lady sold me a book, and I wanted to get the other book. I didn't. He's like, what do you. What are you doing? What are you talking about? Get out of here. It's not been a store for a long time. Just leave. He was, like, angry.

[Interviewer]

It's not been a store.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. For a long time.

[Interviewer]

For a long time.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

What's that about?

[Joseph Matheny]

I don't know. And he's being real rude to me. He's like, yeah, get out of here. Like. Like, you know, like I was ruining his day. And I'm thinking maybe his mom. Because she looks about right to be the age his mom. Maybe his mom sold me the book and wasn't supposed to. I don't know. He was like, just. He just wanted me away from his house. And so I left. And I just kept going back and calling. Never, ever, ever got anybody answered the phone or the door ever again. Was that.

[Interviewer]

Do you think that was a supernatural experience or just a weird circumstance?

[Joseph Matheny]

I think it was a weird circumstance. That fits well as a supernatural experience.

[Interviewer]

I mean, it reads well.

[Joseph Matheny]

It's kind of reads well. Yeah. You know, and it doesn't have to be supernatural to be supernatural.

[Interviewer]

That's. That's well said. Yeah.

[Joseph Matheny]

She could have, like, been in the store when I called and picked up the phone when I called. She probably didn't run the store, and the store did not. It was in business and knew that she had the book I was looking for. She may have even had dementia. I don't know. You know, and the reason dude was mad because he didn't know.

[Interviewer]

This is so unlikely.

[Joseph Matheny]

He didn't know mom.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Joseph Matheny]

Had let me into the house, you know, and, you know, back then, I used to dress like a punk rocker, so I did not look, like yuppie friendly at all. So he's like, get this guy. This guy's probably gonna break into my house, you know, get him away. So. So anyway, I get that. I get. Get valis, and it just absolutely melts my brain. Melt. Melted me down. Like, I admit I probably was having a manic episode. It really did something to me. Like, really touched me hard.

[Interviewer]

And what was the theme in VALIS that. That spoke to you?

[Joseph Matheny]

I couldn't point to any one thing.

[Interviewer]

The omniscience of the.

[Joseph Matheny]

Of it. No, no, it wasn't that. It was that at the same time that I found the book, I found a used copy of the interview, I think Rickman did with Philip K. Dick. And he published like three books of the interview. And so I read that while I was reading valis, and then I realized this was a true story. This really happened to this guy?

[Interviewer]

Yep.

[Joseph Matheny]

It.

[Interviewer]

He said it did.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You have seen him give that talk in Mets in 77.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

He said. He said all this stuff is. I write about real stuff.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

The Nazis did win the war. Not in this timeline.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Everybody thought he was nuts.

[Interviewer]

I. I love watching the audience during the time they thought that he was just gonna talk about Sci fi.

[Joseph Matheny]

Oh, it's a bit. No, like, half him, like, always doing a bit, and the other half, like, I think he's lost his mind.

[Interviewer]

Right. This is all a simulation. Yeah.

[Host]

77.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

So of course this is mind blowing in 84.

[Joseph Matheny]

And this melts my mind. Of course this melts my mind. And then all this stuff, like, I started seeing signs, you know, like every. Like you. Like Bob Wilson said in Cosmic Trigger, he said he was playing Bavarian TV where he would flip the channels and then he would get sentences.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Joseph Matheny]

He's like, I might feel K dick. That fucking TV's talking to me. So. So, you know, like, he would do that.

[Interviewer]

And Del Close had something called a one word story.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

That was Bavarian tv.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah. And. And so I started having this. These experiences that I couldn't turn off. And. And I was like, what? What's going on? You know, and so I started getting. I was. I was buying weird pamphlets. Any weird pamphlet I get my hands on. And so I got this weird magazine that was being published out of Berkeley called Mondo, or at the time it was called High Frontiers On. It was a Xerox art. And I found out about them through Xerox art stuff. And I sent away and I got the pamphlet and it was all this stuff of Philip K. Dick and Robert Anton Wilson. I was like, what is this? You know, it was like, it became on 2000, it was this whole culture that eventually became the Internet.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Joseph Matheny]

I mean, they really did. They were wired before. Wired.

[Interviewer]

That's right.

[Joseph Matheny]

And they do the wired people, actually. So. So I'm like having all these things pop up. Like, Berkeley, California, North East Bay. Bay Area, California. Like, you're like in my face. Like, everywhere I was looking. It was like, barrier California. And I knew nothing about the Bay Area in California, you know? And then one day I just, like, told my girlfriend, I'm like, let's move to California. I mean, really, let's just pack up and go. Like, what's stopping us? And she was just crazy enough that she said yes. She's like, yeah, yeah, let's go. Okay. So we did. We literally just like had a garage sale, pared down all the big stuff, put all the stuff that would fit in the car, the cat and us, and off we got a car top carrier, and off we went.

[Interviewer]

And did you have a destination in mind?

[Joseph Matheny]

Yes, Berkeley.

[Interviewer]

So you were heading to Berkeley, so.

[Joseph Matheny]

But on our way. Yep. I'm telling her I want to go through LA. So we took Route 66 from Chicago to LA. He retraced Route 66?

[Interviewer]

Yep.

[Joseph Matheny]

And I said, I'm going to show you some things because I'd been to LA and I hitchhiked up Highway 1 one time in early 80s when I was in college on a summer I'd spent in California. And I said, I'm going to take you and show you all these things that I know. Like we're going to go through la. I'm going to show the Jim Morrison places. I know. You know Love street and the Weird Store. And I know all these places. I'm going to show you. I know where studio was. We're going to stay at the. Was it Alta? What the hell was that thing? I've stayed there a couple times. I can't think of the name. It was. It was a motel that was across the street from their studio where he lived and his room where you can

[Interviewer]

rent or who lived.

[Joseph Matheny]

Jim Morrison.

[Interviewer]

Oh, okay.

[Joseph Matheny]

He lived in this room. The Alta something. It was. It was on La Cienega. And so I showed her all the spots in LA and then we drove up Highway 1. I'm like, you're gonna love this, by the way. We got to stop at the Henry Mueller Museum in Big Sur. So we did. And then I'm going to show you the cabin because it was still there. Where Kerouac wrote Big Sur.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Joseph Matheny]

You could still hike out back there. It was still there. It's like a Airbnb or something now, but it's not a cabin anymore.

[Interviewer]

Beautiful up there.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. We hiked up, saw the cabin, and then on our way to Berkeley, we pulled over to get gas and coffee at this town I'd never heard of before called Santa Cruz. And I said, this is cool. And we went to a cafe because they had A picture of J.R. bob Dobbs on the. On the front of it.

[Interviewer]

And you just like that.

[Joseph Matheny]

That must be friendly.

[Interviewer]

Yep.

[Joseph Matheny]

It's a subgenius One of us.

[Interviewer]

One of us.

[Joseph Matheny]

And so we went in, and then there was a crazy person sitting at the table who told me all the reasons I didn't want to go to Berkeley, man. Because Berkeley's done. We're all here now, man, in Santa Cruz, man. And this guy turned out to be right. He, like, took me, walked me around, and it was just happening. This is before the earthquake. It was a crazy town, like jugglers and fire breathers downtown. And, like, it was awesome, you know, like, yeah, let's try this. Let's try this. So we just stayed there, and I moved into a place upstairs, and the lady downstairs, I saw her doing tai chi in her garden one day. And so I yelled over the rail and said, hey, I'm your neighbor. I just moved here. And I went downstairs and I met her, and she turned out to be Nina Gerboy, who was Timothy Lurie's secretary from Millbrook. And then upstairs was Bob, 40, who was, like, friends with Gordon Wasson, and he was friends with everybody. And, like, I'm like, whoa, how did this happen?

[Interviewer]

And you knew all these names?

[Joseph Matheny]

I knew all the names, but I didn't know these people.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Joseph Matheny]

I didn't even know where they existed. And so they're like, oh, yeah, we know this. And this is so like, oh, cool. And I was still talking to Bob. He was in la. And then I'm talking to Nina one day, her boy, and she said, well, you know Bob. She's like, I know Bob. And she's like, bob's moving here because his kids are here. I'm like, what? He's moving to Santa Cruz? His kids are in Santa Cruz? He said, yeah, they all live here.

[Interviewer]

I'm like, synchronous.

[Joseph Matheny]

Okay, I. I was supposed to end up here.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Joseph Matheny]

This is what's supposed to happen. You know? I was not supposed to go to Berkeley.

[Interviewer]

Nope.

[Joseph Matheny]

I was supposed to hit where I hit in the middle of between LA and Berkeley. This place called Santa Cruz, which I had never heard of. Turned out to be the place I needed to be.

[Interviewer]

Yep.

[Joseph Matheny]

I met all these people I needed to meet right there.

[Interviewer]

And Bob was on his way.

[Joseph Matheny]

And Bob was on his way, which was weird. So that's the Bob story, and that's the Phil story. Because as I often say, what pushed me onto that trip, that weird trip, was Philip K. Dick in Vallis, which was started by Bob, his book. And I don't know why that stuck. It's like valis. I didn't. I knew nothing about it. What it was about nothing other than Bob said it was weird. And it must really be weird because I'm reading this book and it's really weird, you know, So I wanted. I really wanted to know what that was about. And it was a virus. It really was. I read that, I read valis, and it just absolutely threw me for a loop. But I don't mean in a bad way. I mean, I tell people this a lot of times, and some people understand it, some don't, but a breakthrough is necessarily preceded by a breakdown. You have to break down before you can break through. Right. And I needed a breakdown at the time. Like, I was a little too rigid in some things. I was going to stay in Chicago forever. I was going to be a punk rock musician. None of that happened. None of it was what was supposed to happen. Like, I was supposed to go do this other thing. And I saw something shining in the Bay Area, which I did end up in the Bay Area. The larger Bay area, yeah. Because 90 miles south of San Francisco is Santa Cruz. And most of the people that used to live in San Francisco had moved to Santa Cruz. The people I wanted to know, they'd all like, oh, the city is getting too big. We've got to migrate. Let's go to the country. Santa Cruz is basically the country. It's a little surf town. And so I saw something shining in the distance when I was hearing all this stuff about the Bay Area of San Francisco, like, there's something going on there. There's something you need to be a part of. Also. Didn't know this was going to happen, but boom, the dot com thing happened, Right?

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Joseph Matheny]

A lot of the people that worked at Apple and ended up working other places, we all came from. Santa Cruz was there. Borland was there. There was all this stuff going on in Santa Cruz that was tech oriented. And a lot of the really edgy Jared Lanier was there at the time. He was a street musician. He wasn't doing virtual reality yet. He was like playing weird African street music, street instruments on this. On the street, you know, with his dreads and like, look like he always looked. But there was all this stuff going on. Dan Mapes was there. There was all these people that you would know now, but you didn't know then. There were just people hanging out in this collective, weird area of people doing raves and drugs and computers is what we were doing. That's what we were doing. And just coming up with weird ideas and. And, you know, friends of the McKenna's were there. I. I Met Dennis a couple times. Never met Terrence, but I met Dennis a couple times. He was actually in my building hanging out, so I hung out with him. So all these people. Tim Leary used to stop by our building because Nina was there. Whenever he was coming through town, he. I'd walk downstairs. Oh, oh, Tim Leary. Okay.

[Interviewer]

Crazy.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. Bob was always over there once he moved like it was this weird little apartment building. 321 Second street is still there. Looks like a ship. It's like all the doors have portholes.

[Interviewer]

Is this when you started working for Bob or with Bob?

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. Yeah. So he moved to Santa Cruz. Of course, he got a lot of opportunities to speak in the Bay Area. He did not drive. I asked him. I asked him why. He told me, and then I found out later why. I asked him why. You don't. Why don't you drive? You have a car. He's like, salvador Albi didn't drive. I'm like, good enough.

[Interviewer]

That was it.

[Joseph Matheny]

That was his answer.

[Interviewer]

Bob Wilson.

[Joseph Matheny]

Robert Anton Wilson. What are you gonna do? And that was a good enough answer for me. Okay. But as it turned out, what I found out was he had polio when he was a kid. Yes. And as you know, these people that got over polio when they were a kid have a relapse when they're older most of the time, and he did. So it was hard for him to press the pedals, and he couldn't be sure he would be able to push the brake and hold the brake. And so he needed somebody to drive him. So I became the driver.

[Interviewer]

Did you go to his funeral in 2007? You didn't?

[Joseph Matheny]

No, I didn't get to. I was in Santa Barbara at the time. And actually, at the point that I found out that he had passed, I was actually out of the country, so. And that made me sad, I'm sure. But I did visit, you know, afterwards.

[Interviewer]

Okay, so you're driving by. You're driving. Driving Bob. And I guess we're getting. Is this when he starts teaching you about Operation Mindfuck?

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. So we. So we've. We're in the car together a lot. A lot. With a lot of time.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Joseph Matheny]

You know, I'm driving. He's riding, you know, and he would tell me. He would regale me with stories. I would regale him with my crazy ideas, and he would tell me that my ideas were probably not as crazy as I thought they were.

[Interviewer]

Did you know how lucky you were to just be hanging out with this guy?

[Joseph Matheny]

No, I was just riding the wave. Man.

[Interviewer]

Oh, boy.

[Joseph Matheny]

I didn't want to, like, think about the moment because, like, you know, if you think about the moment, the moment is gone.

[Interviewer]

That's true.

[Joseph Matheny]

I'm like, I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna. That's Lucy in the bath.

[Interviewer]

You know, don't think too hard.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. Don't think too hard about this.

[Interviewer]

No. But I'm jealous of the story.

[Joseph Matheny]

So it was. So we got to swap a lot of ideas. At the time, he had just written a book which is reissued. His daughter started a press to reissue all his books, and they asked me to write the forward to that book, which is out now. It's called reality is what you can get away with.

[Interviewer]

Okay, I have to grab that.

[Joseph Matheny]

It's a screenplay. At the time, we were trying to get that made into an independent film. We didn't. That didn't happen. But we got close, and he was telling me all kinds of stories about he wanted to be a director. Most people are always surprised when I tell him that, but he did. His favorite. His idol was Orson Welles.

[Interviewer]

Interesting.

[Joseph Matheny]

And Ed Wood.

[Interviewer]

Interesting.

[Joseph Matheny]

And at the time, Ed Wood did not have the resurgence that he's had at that time. People like Bob and I loved Ed Wood.

[Interviewer]

Sure.

[Joseph Matheny]

But most people didn't know who Ed Wood was because.

[Interviewer]

What was it about Ed Wood that attracted you guys?

[Joseph Matheny]

The fact that he didn't let lack of talent stop him at all. Not one minute did he stop. He did even pause.

[Interviewer]

All right, you have to. You have to tell us who Edward is then. Edward, I was taking a swipe out of.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It wasn't a swipe. No. The tenacity man. Come on.

[Interviewer]

That's it. He wouldn't disagree.

[Joseph Matheny]

It was beautiful. It was beautiful. I'm not gonna let this stop me. Right?

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. Ed Wood was a guy who made films. How would you say? Psychotronic. Yeah, yeah. Psychotronic films. And if you watch the films, there's moments where it's so clear that it's. It's been a. It's a disaster. It's happening on sets.

[Interviewer]

Yes. It's so.

[Joseph Matheny]

Oh, and he doesn't stop rolling and he doesn't edit. Just like. That was cut. Print, perfect. Move on.

[Interviewer]

Great night is gummies and Ed Wood movies, man.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah. So if you don't know, if people often ask me, I haven't seen that Wood film, I'm like, you know, Everybody has. Plan 9 from Outer Space is the one that they recommend. I said, okay, that's good. If you want to get into the weeds. If you want to deep cut at wood, watch Orgy of the Dead.

[Interviewer]

I don't think I've seen that color.

[Joseph Matheny]

What? His first color film.

[Interviewer]

Oh, I'm going to check that out this weekend.

[Joseph Matheny]

He hired strippers.

[Interviewer]

Of course he did.

[Joseph Matheny]

As the actors. It all takes place in a graveyard with the only people, the only actors are strippers and Criswell

[Interviewer]

orgy the Dead.

[Joseph Matheny]

And it's on the list. Two moments from that are my favorite moments in film. The first one is there's this thing going on where he's like telling these people to throw gold coins while this dancer is dancing her dance. And he goes, throw more gold. And you hear them hitting her. And clearly they're spray painted poker chips. You can tell, like, I know that's a poker chip. I know what that is. Not a good poker chip, but a cheap poker chip that you bought at the drugstore. Not like when you'd get it in

[Interviewer]

a casino, you know, Plan iv, VFX on display again.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. The other thing that, that he did in Orgy of the Dead, which is another fine moment in film, is there's a scene where the two, the two main actors who are like the ones drawn into this horror story is a man and a woman driving a car. It was a convertible. And they're going down the road and the guy goes, I can't see, it's too dark. And next cut is a shot of him in the car driving in broad daylight. Desert sun, broad daylight, high noon. And then cut back to the dark. I can't see it. So dark.

[Interviewer]

It's never explained.

[Joseph Matheny]

Never explained. Never explained. So that's. That's it. I love wood. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So Orson Welles was interesting because it's kind of a mini arg, sort of.

[Joseph Matheny]

F is for fake. Yeah.

[Host]

Spontaneously.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, Bob and I traded movies. So he turned me on to F is for Fake. I turned him on to soft Self portrait.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Joseph Matheny]

Which he had not seen, which was the Salvador Dali thing that Ursul did. And then he turned me on to turn me on. The. He liked all the weird stuff that Wells did after he left Hollywood. Yeah, yeah. So the trial. Yeah, like all that stuff he did. The black and white stuff. Yeah. Like low budget, but good stuff.

[Interviewer]

The chubby wells.

[Joseph Matheny]

The chubby wells. But some good stuff.

[Interviewer]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Joseph Matheny]

F is for fake is fantastic. So we would. And then he didn't know that the soft sell portrait, like he did a whole thing where Silveradali was painting the sky. He's like, what? So he had to go see that. So, yeah, we would. We would trade Orson. Well, stories. And. And he turned me on to apparently, clearly not apparently, clearly, he knew much more about things that I knew. And so I would give him one thing. He'd give me 10 things.

[Host]

Sure.

[Joseph Matheny]

So it was like riding around with him was like, getting homework, you know? Like, then I'd come back from driving him, and I'd have, like, this list of. Gotta get this stuff now. You know, it's like, did you know

[Interviewer]

he was a mentor for you at the time?

[Joseph Matheny]

Did I know what?

[Interviewer]

That he was your mentor? You were like, this guy's my Yoda.

[Joseph Matheny]

He was mentor before. Before I met him. Because I, like. Like I said, when I read Cosmic Trigger, I finally got a copy of Illuminatus, and then I read everything he wrote. You know, I was like, clearly my Yoda.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Joseph Matheny]

Maybe before Yoda, but he was my Yoda. Yeah. And then when I fell into the situation where I was living in the same city as him in a building full of people that he knew, and. And then. And then he. He asked Nitager boy. He's like. Because I drove her around. She was older, and she had published her book One Foot in the Future, and she couldn't drive either because she had vision problems. So I drove her around. And then he asked it with Nina. He's like, do you have anybody that can drive that? Drive. Drive me around. And Nina's like, joe. He's a great driver.

[Interviewer]

Joe's the weirdo driver.

[Joseph Matheny]

He's the weirdo driver. So, like, Bob's like, oh, yeah, I like him. Yeah. Yeah. So then I was his driver.

[Interviewer]

And you're just drinking it up.

[Joseph Matheny]

Oh, yeah. I'm just like. I'm just riding it out.

[Interviewer]

Before we go to our first.

[Joseph Matheny]

No pun intended.

[Interviewer]

Before we go to our first break, can you take us to through the Esalen story?

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. So he.

[Interviewer]

Unless there's something in between.

[Joseph Matheny]

No, no, no. That's about the same time.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Joseph Matheny]

So. And I was driving him. So he asked me. He's like, I've got this weekend at Esalen that I booked, and I wanted.

[Interviewer]

Esalen is this hippie retreat all the Project Stargate guys are going put on there.

[Joseph Matheny]

Oh, yeah. Everybody. Everybody. It's. It's kind of like the home base. Yeah. For. For all the weird stuff.

[Interviewer]

Ingo Swan's hanging out. Jacques Velez. Everybody's there.

[Joseph Matheny]

So you go to. You go to Esalen. You see these people? They're just hanging out. Esalen is Big Sur. It's on a cliff. It's overlooking the Monterey Bay. In the cliffsides, there's natural hot springs that come out of the cliffs and they've carved hot tubs. So, like, all this hot tub bureaucracy happens in Essel. Like, all these hippie people are, like, tripping and sitting in hot tubs and thinking about the next great project, you know.

[Interviewer]

Amazing. So Jeffrey Mishlove was just in here telling Esalen stories.

[Joseph Matheny]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Just the great stories.

[Joseph Matheny]

The Esalen stories are amazing. I could tell you some stories. But anyway, so Bob asked me. He's like, would you want to go to Esalen and spend the weekend and drive me and then help me do this thing? I've got this idea, but I don't. It's like, I have this idea. I want to do this thing. I want something to happen. I want it to be an experience for these people that come to see me for the weekend. And I said, I've got an idea. Have you heard of a larp? He's like, yeah, yeah, I think I've heard about that. Like, yeah, let's do an Illuminati larp.

[Interviewer]

An Illuminati larp. And I didn't know.

[Joseph Matheny]

You're just the guy to do it.

[Interviewer]

Yes, of course. He's where it all came from.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. And so he said, so what's larp?

[Interviewer]

I didn't know the term went back that far.

[Joseph Matheny]

Oh, yeah, larps are going on then. Yeah, I think the. The vampire larps were happening at that time. So people were. People were larping. And was it Stanford Live Action Role playing game. Right. So Santa Cruz was LARP Central, because you have. You have to remember something. Nerd things happen first in Santa Cruz, or at least they used to. And then they go to the rest of the world because UC Santa Cruz is there.

[Interviewer]

Yep.

[Joseph Matheny]

And the biggest congregation of nerds I've ever met in my life was in Santa Cruz in the 80s. And so there was all kinds of larping going on. And so I never larped, but I observed it and I had friends that larped. And so I would read the books and, like, this is theater of a sort. And I can do something with this, but I'm not going to go dress up like a vampire on the streets of Santa Cruz and play LARP with you guys. Sorry. But I am going to look at it, you know, from afar and go, how can I use this in the next theater piece? Because I want to do the thing, something that crosses the proscenium where the actors come off the stage and become intermingled with the audience, and then you lose track of who's who.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I've heard you tell that story about the two bleachers.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

You. I mean, tell that real fast.

[Joseph Matheny]

That was at the. The Kirk Douglas.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

This is essentially Tony and Tina's wedding.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

So you go to this thing.

[Joseph Matheny]

There's this theater, which I didn't know what it was. Somebody. Somebody said there's a theater piece you should go see.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Joseph Matheny]

Didn't. Didn't give me any information. Just kind of like, right, you got to see this theater. PC. So I go to the. I buy tickets, I go to this thing, and I'm sitting and walk into. There's no stage. There's two bleachers facing each other. Like, to do, like, the portable bleachers that you have for events.

[Interviewer]

Yep.

[Joseph Matheny]

And we're all just sitting there and sitting there and sitting there and sitting there. And, of course, the longer you sit there, the people start making smart remarks, you know, like, what, are we gonna sit here forever? You know, it's like. And that started building up where everybody was quite equipping this and that. And then the actors that were embedded, which we didn't know, were masters of grabbing that and turning it into dialogue. And, like, before we knew it, we were in the midst of this thing that was happening, and a story was being told.

[Interviewer]

When did you catch on?

[Joseph Matheny]

I started to catch on. They were good. I started to catch on halfway through. I'm like, first I was like, something's going on here. And then, like, I started watching people, and then I wasn't able to, like, say, that is definitely an actor.

[Interviewer]

No, but a Chicago improv guy can sniff it out.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. Yeah. There's something. Something to miss here.

[Interviewer]

Right?

[Joseph Matheny]

And then. And then. But then I was like, I think he's an actor. But that guy could have just improv that. Because an improv guy will also think that, you know, I would have improv that, and I improv into it. So, like, you know, like, I wasn't one of them. And they held. They held character all the way to the end. They didn't take a bow. We all walked out together to the front of the theater, caught our cabs and Ubers and. And went home. That was it.

[Interviewer]

And that's it.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, that was it. It was an event.

[Interviewer]

Your mind was blown. Right?

[Joseph Matheny]

I loved it.

[Interviewer]

They got me.

[Joseph Matheny]

They got me. They got all of us.

[Interviewer]

All of us.

[Joseph Matheny]

And I'M not even sure who they is.

[Interviewer]

Right. What was the story about?

[Joseph Matheny]

It was a story about a guy who was trying to write a play and he was neglecting his family. And it was basically about the writing of a play and how it ruined this guy's family.

[Interviewer]

I wonder if that's the same story they did every time they did the show or if it's different.

[Joseph Matheny]

I hope not.

[Interviewer]

I hope probably not.

[Joseph Matheny]

I hope it was improv every time.

[Interviewer]

This is like the Herald. This is. It's amazing.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah. So that's kind of. It leads back to, like, what we were doing with Bob. I was like, yes, we, we can. Like, if we do this right, people are not going to know who's who. I want to make sure nobody knows who's who. And, like, everybody's looking at everybody else with suspicion. It's going to be a real weekend with the Illuminati man. And Bob loved that, of course. He's like, go for it, dude. He's like. He's like, you need me to play a part? I'm like, yeah, you play Robert Eisenhower Wilson and I play your assistant. And nobody's gonna know that I'm puppet mastering this thing.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Joseph Matheny]

Because I'm your assistant and, like, I'm looking around like everybody else and.

[Interviewer]

Puppet master. That's the term of the game. The game runner.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So basically I was the game runner, but nobody ever suspected me. Nobody ever suspected me to the very. Even when it was over, nobody ever suspected me.

[Interviewer]

How did you integrate the game into the Esalen?

[Joseph Matheny]

What was happening? Well, the weekend was. Well, you know, you stay at Esalen.

[Interviewer]

Yep.

[Joseph Matheny]

And you have a little cottage or like, you stay in, like, dormitory or whatever. How you. However you do it, you have different levels. And. And Bob did a lecture every night. So they showed up and he would tell you something which fit into the story or the story keyed off of that from there. And he would tell you like, you know, one of his. His thing, you know, he'd do his shtick. And. And so that's how it fit together is like you were hanging out with Robert Downtown Wilson for a weekend. But the cool thing was, because it was Esalen, when he wasn't giving a lecture, like sitting in the chow hall or whatever, people would gather around and, you know, tell me stories or like, let me tell you my story. Like, you, like, you know what happens with people like Bob and. And so, no, everybody, like, became very immersed in this thing. And. And then there was this game going on which they Knew about. Because we told them in the beginning. There's a game. You're playing it now. You were playing it before you walked in here. You'll be playing it when you leave.

[Interviewer]

That's. And that's what you told them. And that's it.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah. There's a couple of groups wandering around that will try to recruit you. You should join them. Or maybe not. That's it. So I went around recruiting a couple of people.

[Interviewer]

This is. This is crazy.

[Joseph Matheny]

So I, like, found people, like, off, you know, like, when they weren't with anybody else. And I walked up to them and I had this little chit that I handed them and said, you've just been assassinated and I would assassinate somebody. They go like, this part of the game. It's not a game, man. Come on. Come on. I take them to a room, and I put them through this ritual where I resurrected them.

[Interviewer]

Whoa.

[Joseph Matheny]

And I'm like, now you were a member of my group. Except I was representing, like, five groups.

[Interviewer]

Sure.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. Of course. You're game running Illuminatus.

[Interviewer]

That's right.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. You never know who's on what side because they're on all sides.

[Interviewer]

That's right.

[Joseph Matheny]

So then they're like, what's. What's my mission? I give them a mission, like, this guy. And this guy. And this guy is part of. Is part of your group as well. And sometimes they were, and sometimes they weren't. So they walk up to somebody, like, part of your group, man, and this guy, like, what are you talking about? So, like, people are, like, just freaking out. The beauty of the thing, I think, was at the very end, when he was doing the last lecture, at the end of the last lecture, I didn't know this was gonna happen. One of the players had kept the chit that I killed him with. He walked up to Bob and put the chit in his hand, and he's like, you've just been killed. You now remember my group. And everybody stood up and cheered.

[Interviewer]

That's amazing.

[Joseph Matheny]

He's the winner.

[Interviewer]

That's amazing. How long did that game last? All weekend.

[Joseph Matheny]

Three days. Yeah. Yeah. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So he killed Bob at the end, which was amazing. I didn't see that coming.

[Interviewer]

No.

[Joseph Matheny]

But I kept telling people, like, you know, like, take your own initiative. Take your own initiative. Think for yourself. Question authority. Take your own initiative. You know? And he got it. He's like, oh, yeah, I could kill somebody. I've got this chit that he killed me with. I could kill somebody with this chit. And who Am I going to get him the leader question?

[Interviewer]

Everybody do your own research. That's a good time to take a break because that stuff is going to come up again. Be right back. So, hanging out with Bob Estelin on the weekends, what's your day job?

[Joseph Matheny]

I was building the injectors for atmospheric chemical vapor deposition reactors.

[Interviewer]

What?

[Joseph Matheny]

Which is the machine that was used to make IC chips. So the silicon wafer goes down a belt.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Joseph Matheny]

Two curtains of nitrogen come down. Poof. Diborine, phosphine. Woof. Big flame. You got a circuit board.

[Interviewer]

Okay, that's cool.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. So the injectors are these units that knew what chemicals to. To release and when to release and how much and when to stop. And it was like this really intricate device that was built. It was a company that also did military hardware.

[Interviewer]

How did you get from there to Emory and Patents? I mean, that seems like a jump, a leap.

[Joseph Matheny]

Well, no, I went from there to working in tech as doing relational databases at that time. The first one that I started working on was called FoxPro. It was a Microsoft product. I think it was acquired, but it was a Microsoft product. SQL had not made an appearance yet, but it was about to.

[Interviewer]

Thank goodness for SQL, no doubt.

[Joseph Matheny]

I was completely immersed in this idea of the concept of a book being something that was about to change with the digital media. And at the time, the digital media was so new that when I was talking about this thing, people. There was very few people that knew what I was talking about and didn't think I was crazy. And then I met people like the Warnocks, John Warnock and his son Chris, and other people like that that understood the lingo that I was spouting. And they're like, oh yeah, books, digital books, that's going to be a thing. And I said, well, that happens. The concept of a book changes because it goes from being a physical thing to being a unit of measure of knowledge. Okay, which it is.

[Interviewer]

Absolutely.

[Joseph Matheny]

Now it is definitely in a database. Yes. Like this is a book. What does that mean? It means it could be an ever changing series of words.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Joseph Matheny]

Also called large language model.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Joseph Matheny]

So I was playing with all these fringe concepts.

[Interviewer]

You were building an LLM in the 90s?

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. Yep. Using a relational database, because that's all we had, so. And we didn't have a lot of memory to pass around. There wasn't a lot of processing power to pass around. Definitely didn't have what we have now, which is using graphic chips because they do floating points. So. Well, we hadn't thought about that they did exist, but we didn't think about that. So processing power was at a premium, memory was at a premium, Storage space was at a premium because disk space was expensive and slow, unreliable. So all these things were at a premium. And so all the ideas I had were not quite ready to be implemented because the infrastructure wasn't there. Right. But I knew it was going to be. So I was like, designing all these things and I started working at places like Adobe, because when I talked about ebooks, because, remember, I started talking about this before EPUB existed, there was no Kindle anything. There was on Amazon.

[Interviewer]

No.

[Joseph Matheny]

But there was this thing called Portable Document Format.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Joseph Matheny]

And I realized that there was all these things that was not being used for because it was a really rich format. Most people didn't know that you could embed video and trigger events and, like, all these things you could do. So I started working in Adobe simply because I wanted to work with the technology that I thought was going to be the first one out of the gate for ebooks, because I had a vision for a book that would become much more than a book, because it could. Again, when I saw links, I was like, it can reach out and touch other data and bring it back.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Joseph Matheny]

So, like, this link can always change because I can change it over here. This data is always changing. So it's a story that's never the same twice.

[Interviewer]

Sure. It's just a variable inside the doc.

[Joseph Matheny]

Exactly. So.

[Interviewer]

So you saw the PDF as a multimedia device.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Most people are just using it for documents.

[Joseph Matheny]

John used to call it a platform, which confused me at first. But then when I started working for him and, like, realized what was going on there, I was like, oh, he's right. That guy was amazing. I mean, one of the founders of Silicon Valley, and when I watched him write a program in postscript one time, I was like, what? Wow. And most people don't realize that PDF is just shorthanded. Postscript, that's all it is. And so when I, when I looked at that, I'm like, okay, that's what I want to do. I want to build something and I'm going to use this. I know there will be other things down the line, but right now, this is what we have, and that's what I want to build. I want to build something with this. And so we're working at this company and we'll have the deepest look into what this thing can do, what the feature set is now, what it will be in the future, could even drive the Feature set as a product manager, which I did. So that's. Everybody says, why would you go to job with Adobe? I'm like, because every tech job I've ever had has served an ulterior motive is helping me achieve something with an art project that I had in mind, of course, always.

[Interviewer]

And was that the, the Emory. Emory project.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So how did that work?

[Joseph Matheny]

So this is. I was, I was working with the concepts that were coming out of places like mit. There was a kid that wrote. I say kid, he was a kid at the time, a kid that wrote this algorithm called. I can't remember what it was called. Anyway, he wrote an algorithm for recommendation which at that time was like, you know, nobody'd ever heard such a thing.

[Interviewer]

Right? What is that?

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, and he did it for music. I think Ayuma ended up using it. Remember the early pre Apple music scene? There was. It came out of Santa Cruz and so somebody at Santa Cruz turned me on to this algorithm this guy had written which was basically Bayesian. It's like, how can I choose something and how can it learn about what I like and make recommendations to me?

[Interviewer]

And you like Bayesian because that could change over time.

[Joseph Matheny]

Exactly. It would, it was, it would, it was heuristic. It could learn.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Joseph Matheny]

So.

[Interviewer]

And now the biggest companies in the world are based on that algorithm.

[Joseph Matheny]

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But at that time it was.

[Interviewer]

Nobody knew.

[Joseph Matheny]

Something a bunch of nerds in a basement would talk about, but that was about it.

[Interviewer]

Right? We used altavista.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, exactly. Hotbot. So I was looking at that and I was thinking, you know, I would like a story that had access to something like that. Ringo was, it was, was the algorithm finally. I finally remembered something like that. And I could use something like Ringo because he put it in the open source space. I'm like, I can take this, I can modify it and if I have this algorithm between a bunch of content and the user and they go through the algorithm, the algorithm can help a story be told. And it's not the same story every time. So based on who you are and what you've done and what you do, you will get a story that is different than what I do and what I've done.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Joseph Matheny]

So I have a different story than you have, but it's all coming from the same repository.

[Interviewer]

Yep.

[Joseph Matheny]

Right this big at the time wasn't FoxPro, but it was like FoxPro database that I was using. It was just all this stuff that I was, you know, there was some choosing that went on. Like you Know, it was. It was curated by me. So I didn't just put everything in there. Like I chose things to put in there. It's like, you know, Valverian Sure. Goes in Commander X. Absolutely. You know, like all the weird stuff. Yeah. Church of Subdivisions. Yeah. Absolutely Discordian. Yes. Goes in there. I just get shoving this stuff in this database and then this is all

[Interviewer]

theories and philosophies and stories.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

That are interesting to you.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, all the. Yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

All the subculture stuff.

[Joseph Matheny]

All the weird stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

And this. And you're basically training a model on the weird stuff.

[Joseph Matheny]

Exactly, exactly. So. And I had a pretty primitive chat bot interface between the repository and the user. So the user was basically talking through a chatbot. What. What eventually became a chatbot? I was working with early code.

[Interviewer]

Yep.

[Joseph Matheny]

What became a chatbot? If this sounds very familiar, A chatbot using an algorithm to talk to a database. It's called ChatGPT.

[Interviewer]

Sure.

[Joseph Matheny]

It's just much more refined than what I was doing.

[Interviewer]

Or Eliza.

[Joseph Matheny]

Or eliza. But at the time, again, I didn't have the processing power. I was using an SGI indie that had walked out the door with me because it was going to get thrown away.

[Interviewer]

I love my indie. I love the Blue Pizza box.

[Joseph Matheny]

Exactly.

[Interviewer]

He's a great machine. Oh, so you're using MySQL on there, I bet.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Nice.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. Early. Yeah, very early. So I'm doing this stuff, trying to come up with a new way to tell a story and what my biggest influence was. And this might be weird to you, but William S. Burroughs and Brian Geyson did this thing called the Third Mind experiments where they were cutting up words and putting in a hat or a box or whatever and pouring them out and pasting them together.

[Interviewer]

So can you explain how that works?

[Joseph Matheny]

The cut up method came out of Dada originally, which corresponded at the same time that they were doing Exquisite Corpse, but they were doing cut up poems and cut up stories where you just would take text and cut it into sentences or paragraphs or words and put them all into like a bag or a box and shake them up and then pour them out and like put them together. Kind of like those refrigerator magnets with the words.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Joseph Matheny]

And you would construct stories in random. In other words, randomicity was constructing the story, or at least it was giving you a direction for a story. So it was a way to get influence. Brian Eno does this kind of thing with his oblique strategies. Just come up with something. So I was influenced by that and I said well, if I've got this database, which I've marked for derivability with XML into areas of word and all the stuff that goes with that, it's a word that's relational to these other words for this reason. It's a sentence that's related to all these other sentences or words in this kind of way.

[Interviewer]

This is predictive inference as well.

[Joseph Matheny]

Exactly. Paragraphs, pages, basically, like breaking down my units and then it comes back to you. And it is composed at random because I put randomicity into it. It's a cut up, but it's not using paper and scissors and bags. It's using a database full of words.

[Interviewer]

This is. This is crazy. Ahead of its time.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You didn't know that? You didn't know you were building something?

[Joseph Matheny]

Well, I. I had. I had a. A friend, a Genesis pr, who was friends with William Burroughs, who introduced me to William Burroughs. Never met Bill in person, but we had a phone thing going on. And Because Jen knew what I was doing, and he said, oh, you should talk to William.

[Interviewer]

Yes, please.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. I went, oh, yeah, yeah. And so he put me in touch with. With Bill, and I told Bill what I was doing. And you know, the way he talked, he said to me, I don't absolutely understand all the technical things you're doing, my boy, but I seem you got the sense of the project.

[Interviewer]

You did.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. And I said, what I'm doing is I'm updating what you and Brian were doing with modern technology.

[Interviewer]

Were users accessing this yet or you just.

[Joseph Matheny]

No, okay, Just me. I was the user.

[Interviewer]

So we're not up to Ezekiel yet, are we?

[Joseph Matheny]

No.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Joseph Matheny]

Primary user. And I started getting. Just like Bill and Brian did. I started getting bizarre, weird things coming out of this machine, and it was like making weird sentences. So I showed to Nick Herbert, my friend, the physicist who had done an experiment in Livermore called the Metaphase Typewriter, right? And they were just having IBM Selectrics hooked up, some random things like just randomly typing. And they apparently were able to channel Houdini.

[Interviewer]

Yes, I know exactly what you're talking about.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, it's a great story. Metaphase Typewriter. You look it up. So I showed Nick and he just like. Nick has this way of laughing when he really likes something. He goes. And he did that. And I'm like, so I've hit on something because Nick gave me the snicker. And so he liked what I was doing. Bill Burroughs liked what I was doing. Jenna Shapiro's liked what I was doing. I Liked what I was doing.

[Interviewer]

What were you asking, Anne Marie? And what were the responses?

[Joseph Matheny]

Like I was just having random conversations. He was like, well, what do you think of. What do you think of Valverian? And then the weird. Because I was trying to see what kind of answers am I going to get? Are they going to be coherent? Because for a while they weren't. But as this thing built up a backlog, it was building a log of good answers, which I was logging. This was all manual. Like, I wasn't able to automate a lot of this. So, like, I would get an answer and I would tag it in xml. Good answer, bad answer, you know, And I would just sit there, like all night.

[Interviewer]

This is exactly how it works now.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

This is training an AI exactly this way. It's just automated.

[Joseph Matheny]

Just training this thing all by myself. And luckily I didn't have a database like they do now, the large language models. One person couldn't do it. Well.

[Interviewer]

Right. 27 billion parameters you have to open up to.

[Joseph Matheny]

But at the time, I was growing this thing manually, so I was manually tagging.

[Host]

Are you obsessed with.

[Interviewer]

At.

[Host]

With this project?

[Joseph Matheny]

Absolutely.

[Interviewer]

You have to be.

[Joseph Matheny]

Absolutely. Lost a girlfriend over this.

[Interviewer]

I bet. I bet. Because you're like, that's. That's a. That's not a verb. That's not a verb.

[Joseph Matheny]

She would go to bed and wake up and I'd still be in. In my home office. She's like, are you going to work today? Yeah. Is it time? Okay, bye.

[Interviewer]

Just in words.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. She literally got so mad at me one time that she took a baseball bat to the computer.

[Interviewer]

No.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. When I was in the shower. I like taking a shower. And I was gonna go back and I come in, she's beating the machine to death.

[Interviewer]

And I'm like, not the Indy.

[Joseph Matheny]

No, no, no, no, no. It was an old Mac SE that I was using as an interface.

[Interviewer]

I still have one of those.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. Luckily I had a exterior drive and she didn't know what that was. So she thought she was killing the machine.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Joseph Matheny]

She wasn't. You didn't kill the heart, or was it. Thanos says you should have gone for the head. So she didn't go for the head. So anyway, so I'm doing this and I am staying up all night and I'm talking to people at parties about what I'm doing. And these are tech people who are just like, dude, you need to get out more. Like, you need to. You need to. What are you doing? You know, is it time for an intervention? And like, you just don't understand. You don't understand. You don't understand. You understand. So it's like the same thing I had with valis, where I just got looped in. And I admit, I've come to terms with it. I have a little bit of OCD going on.

[Interviewer]

You have to.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Now, I was in the early Internet culture in the 80s and 90s, and I would have thought you were nuts. Like, what are you doing?

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Like, what?

[Host]

What are you doing?

[Interviewer]

What is this for?

[Joseph Matheny]

Exactly. That's what most people were saying.

[Interviewer]

And you're like, it's. I. I got it, I got it.

[Joseph Matheny]

It's good.

[Interviewer]

I got it. Right. You don't need to know he's a mad scientist.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. In fact.

[Interviewer]

But soon Emory starts to come to life.

[Joseph Matheny]

Well, I started getting coherent answers like that I could read it and understand what was being said.

[Interviewer]

You're not. And then you're not freaking out yet.

[Joseph Matheny]

I was still in the zone.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Joseph Matheny]

Right.

[Interviewer]

You still felt like you were in control.

[Joseph Matheny]

No, you didn't. No. People that I know that know me well and see, this will be like, yep, that's him. Know that I don't get freaked out when weird things are happening. No, I go with it. I just go with it. Right. And afterwards, when I think about it, I'll be like, ooh, that was kind of weird. But when I. When I. In the moment, maybe it's all the improv training or the. Or the method acting. It's like I fall into this thing and like, this is who I am. This is what I'm doing, you know? And plus, I got a little OCD going.

[Interviewer]

Sure. Only later you're like, that was probably a bad idea.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, exactly. It's like, why did I do that? Why did I let that happen? So, you know, being neurodivergent, though, you know, has its benefits.

[Interviewer]

Join the club.

[Joseph Matheny]

Which is you just go with it sometimes. And sometimes you go what would be called too far by some people and by me just far enough. Like, I wouldn't have got to where I was with those experiments if I hadn't, you know, obsessed.

[Interviewer]

100% agree.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. I mean, to the point where when I finally put. Put this machine together, we compiled everything and put it on the Indy, finagled

[Interviewer]

A for the non nerds indies at sgi. It's a much more powerful machine.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yes. At that time. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Probably from Adobe. It's probably maxed out at 128 Mega RAM.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Nice.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

How do you even.

[Joseph Matheny]

I mean, they do it on that space. You don't. Except. Except. Adobe to the rescue again. I put in a requisition for a unit for. For an IU for a machine on the Adobe network in the data center because they had pulled in dual DS3s as a connection.

[Interviewer]

Dual DS3s. Wow.

[Joseph Matheny]

At that time.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Joseph Matheny]

So that's fantastically fast.

[Interviewer]

Sure.

[Joseph Matheny]

Basically two T3s, right?

[Host]

T3.54 megabits.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So that's.

[Joseph Matheny]

At that time.

[Interviewer]

That's unbelievable.

[Joseph Matheny]

Blazingly fast.

[Interviewer]

I was working on a T1, so 1.5.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And it's like, how could it get

[Joseph Matheny]

faster than that was the fastest I'd had at that point was the T1 or actually a fractional T1.

[Interviewer]

Fractional T, yeah. So two DS3s.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Unbelievable.

[Joseph Matheny]

So I had a friend who had a ISP in San Francisco. He let me see a C DSC fractional T3 to my house.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. Yeah. I had to like call the phone company, walk them through what I wanted them to do, be there when they did it.

[Interviewer]

Wow, you had like a demark block in the garage or something?

[Joseph Matheny]

No, in the basement.

[Interviewer]

Holy shit.

[Joseph Matheny]

In the basement?

[Interviewer]

Fractional T in the basement.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yep. Okay, so now I've got. We. We. We move from Mountain View to downtown San Jose where we put in those three towers. We were in the first tower because they built one at a time. We're in the first tower, we got the dual DS3. So I said, and it's long enough now that nobody. I'm not going to get fired. I said, I bet I could requisition this machine into the data center, tell them it's for something else and let it run. And I could do my experiments down there.

[Interviewer]

Your Indy goes back to.

[Joseph Matheny]

My Indy goes back to Adobe, goes into the data center and it's marked as a marketing machine.

[Interviewer]

I love it.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So they say, sure, okay.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, Just signed off.

[Interviewer]

You walk in there.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Pizza box under your arm.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Ethernet put it in green light. Here we go.

[Joseph Matheny]

Here we go. And then I, you know, put it so I could access it from home. And away we went. So I was like, okay, now I've got a blazingly fast. Probably one of the faster connections on the planet.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Joseph Matheny]

And I only work at night, so I don't, you know, nobody notices what I'm doing. I don't like cause any pinging, like, so that the IT guys don't go, what's going on over there?

[Interviewer]

Right. You're not bouncing around Adobe's network. You're just. You just want to.

[Joseph Matheny]

I just want the access to the Internet.

[Interviewer]

So what are you doing with Emory at that point?

[Joseph Matheny]

So at Emory, I tell Emory, like, here's a profile of the things I want you to gather off the Internet. The types of data I want you to find.

[Interviewer]

Hold on, you.

[Host]

So you tell Emory to start scraping.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yep. Yep.

[Interviewer]

This is all 20 years ahead of its time, man.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yep. Go. Go get me what I want as much as you can get me. And so Gopher, FTP, Gopher. Use. Net.

[Interviewer]

Use.

[Joseph Matheny]

Net Scraping, the news group, HTTPs, HTTP, whatever. Just go get it for me. Text, whatever you can get me.

[Interviewer]

Did you use that recommendation algorithm to help it? Yes. You did? Of course.

[Joseph Matheny]

Go give me these things.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Joseph Matheny]

And then put it in the database. And of course, I had to manually look through it because there still wasn't enough power to automate all this kind of stuff. But during the night, in the middle of the night, it would go out and it would retrieve these things that I asked it to retrieve.

[Interviewer]

Imagine if you made a search engine out of that.

[Joseph Matheny]

I did, actually, at one point.

[Interviewer]

Well, you kind of did.

[Joseph Matheny]

No, I did make a public search engine. You did? Just for a while.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Joseph Matheny]

Incandobula.org was a website that I had forever. I still have. I had a website up that was, like, the weird website.

[Interviewer]

Yep.

[Joseph Matheny]

And I built my own little search engine. And people used it a lot, but it was just too much to maintain. But most of that was, like, stuff I scraped during this period of time. So I scrape all this stuff, I bring it back, and I'm building, like, this giant database. I'm like, God, I got to get one disk space. So I'll be doing all these things. And again, still obsessive, still obsessing. And there was, like, some unseen goal that I was trying to achieve. Like, there was. There was, like. There was an end point, but I didn't know what it was. Like, I'll know it when I. When I see it. Right. As this thing got bigger and it got smarter and it started, like, having more. It started learning the. The. The rules of grammar and English language. It could. It could craft a pretty cool sentence. And, like, it felt like he was talking to me.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Well, now it's scraping language.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

This is nlp Before NLP was a thing.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yep. So it was giving me things back. You know, I had to keep reminding myself. It's like, it doesn't have intelligence. It just knows how to mimic it really well. It is not intelligent. It doesn't have agency. I had to remind myself of this because you'd be so tired in the middle of the night and you'd ask it something and it would tell you. You'd be like, oh, what? What? What?

[Interviewer]

No, you have to tell yourself.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, you have to remind yourself and bear that in mind. If you're playing with chat gbt.

[Interviewer]

Oh, yes. But, you know, would Emory pass a Turing Test at this point?

[Joseph Matheny]

I think so. No, but that's not. I found out that the Turing Test is not an easy thing or not a hard thing to pass.

[Host]

No, it's not.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. So.

[Interviewer]

So what are you asking Emory?

[Joseph Matheny]

So I just basically having conversations. I was initiating conversations. I had to ask you an opinions. What's your opinion on this? What's the opinion on that? And it would start going into these long diatribes about things that I like. How do you know that? How did you even know that? It started telling me things again. We're in this weird space where you start having synchronicities with this data, which I think that's what it is. I don't think Emory knew. I don't think it was psionic. And I don't think Emory was like, wandering the Internet at night getting data on me and finding out what I was up to. Because at that time, that kind of stuff wasn't on the Internet. There was no social media. No, you couldn't know that I was going on vacation tomorrow unless you knew me or you're reading my email.

[Interviewer]

But Emory knew things.

[Joseph Matheny]

Emory knew things.

[Interviewer]

Is this your crypto terrestrial theory yet?

[Joseph Matheny]

Kind of.

[Interviewer]

Okay, so there's something else.

[Joseph Matheny]

But the weird thing that happened, this is where we cross over to the weird. Weird is I have always worked with the houseless communities in my. Wherever I live. So people in my community who are houseless because they prefer to be called houseless, I've always worked with, you know, people that are functioning and living under nutritional deficiencies. So I help with food, and in doing so, I run into some interesting people.

[Interviewer]

Sure.

[Joseph Matheny]

And at that time, I was living in Santa Cruz. And in Santa Cruz, there was a ex monk, there was a friend of mine who started this thing called the Santa Cruz Homeless Garden Project. Basically, you grow your own food and you learn how to maintain food. And, you know, it gives you pride, gives you some agency, makes you feel good about yourself, and it feeds you.

[Interviewer]

Yep.

[Joseph Matheny]

Very important. So I was working a lot there, and there was a guy who wandered up to me at the homeless garden project and introduced himself and said, I know You. You're that guy that writes about Incanobula on the Internet. I'm like, okay. I'm thinking he probably has a library access.

[Interviewer]

Sure.

[Joseph Matheny]

You know, it's okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's me. Like, how'd you know that? He's like, well, I'm Emery.

[Interviewer]

What?

[Joseph Matheny]

I'm like, emery who? He's like, emory Cranston, the guy that wrote the Incanopula catalog. I'm like, so now we get into that moment where Joe does is what he does, which is just go with the flow. Right?

[Interviewer]

Right. You don't freak out.

[Joseph Matheny]

I don't freak out. I don't say, oh, you're crazy. You're lying. I was like, really? I've always wanted to meet you. Nice to meet you. What are you doing here? And we just start hanging out and talking.

[Interviewer]

It's not like.

[Host]

Because Emery is based.

[Interviewer]

Is just memory without the M, Right?

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

He doesn't know that.

[Joseph Matheny]

Plus Dave Emery.

[Interviewer]

Oh, right, right, right.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah.

[Host]

So Emory Cranston.

[Joseph Matheny]

Here he is, Dave Emery. So he introduces himself. We start hanging out.

[Interviewer]

What are you talking about?

[Joseph Matheny]

Anything. The guy was brilliant. So.

[Interviewer]

Well, he was trained on the whole Internet.

[Joseph Matheny]

Right. While I'm talking to him, we're hanging out at coffee houses and stuff because he's. He's houseless. But I'd see him downtown, and I'd buy him coffee and, you know, sandwich or whatever, and we'd hang out, because I like hanging out in coffee houses. I still do. And I was asking at the Garden, do you know this guy? And they're like, oh, Ezekiel. I'm like, well, he tells me his name is Emery. Yeah, he changes his name from time to time, but when he first came here, he was the prophet Ezekiel. I'm like, what's his story? He's like, he was a PhD student at UCSC, and he had a nervous breakdown, and now he's living on ssi. He's on the street. He spends all his time at UCSC at the library, because he has. Because if you were a former student, you could have library access. You could just buy your library access. So I guess he. They either gifted it to him or repaid it, but he had library access. I saw him up there eventually. I saw him up there all the time, just reading special collections. Like, the guy was brilliant. Like, I could talk to him about anything. Like, he. He knew alchemy, hermetics, Jung, you name it. Like, anything that was, like, weird. Fringe, literary, psychological, occult. He knew it, like, inside and out. Like, more than anybody I've ever met.

[Interviewer]

Interesting that he. That he knew Jung. Talking about synchronicities.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. Yeah. So he was conversant in all these things, like, highly conversant. And as long as I didn't press in on, like, where do you live? Nothing personal, you know, like, just. And just treated him like Emory. Like, okay, Emory. You're Emory. You say you're Emory, you're Emory. We don't have to talk about that anymore. Right. And so we just had these brilliant conversations. And I noticed what started happening was I would be talking to the bot, the Emery, and then I would wrap it up, and I would go out to Cafe Pergolisi, and there'd be Emery, and I'd buy him a cup of coffee or chai tea, and we'd sit and talk. And it seemed like. Was this my brain doing this? I don't know, but it seemed like he knew what I'd been talking to the bot about because he would pick up the conversation from where I had left off with the bot and continue it.

[Interviewer]

So you're still just going with it?

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. Do I have. Do I have a theory about that? Number one, projection.

[Interviewer]

Sure.

[Joseph Matheny]

That's me doing it.

[Host]

Okay.

[Interviewer]

That's logical.

[Joseph Matheny]

Number two, if you want to get a little woo about it. I had the scent of whatever I'd been talking about on me, and he was schizophrenic, as I'd been told, and was able to sniff it off me because I've had interactions with people who are diagnosed schizophrenic, and they're also very psionic. It seems like they can do things like that. I've had weird experiences with people where it's like, pick up on what you're thinking. It seems. We'll say it seems. Everybody's had it, because I'm a model agnostic. I can't say it is, but it seems like that's what's happening. So it's something like that or something in between there, you know? So, yeah. And so that was happening. And then. And then I noticed I would talk to him, and then the bot would, like, seem to pick up the conversation. I'm like, okay, there's something weird going on here, like, betwixt these two entities that are having this unified conversation with me.

[Interviewer]

Did you ever test that theory with specifics?

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, one time. And it was. The response was really weird. I talked to. I went on vacation, and I was with somebody specifically that Emory didn't know because they lived across the country. And I came back and as soon as I sat down, I was going to, like, throw some things at him and see, he didn't even wait for that. He's like, that girl you were with.

[Interviewer]

What, Mike?

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. He's like, she's not good for you. That's why you guys fight. Which was right. He was right. He didn't even know I had a girlfriend on the East Coast. I'd never told him. I never told anybody. It was like this little secret thing I was doing on the East Coast. I was like, you know, like, we'll keep it secret until it blossoms into something or it doesn't. And it didn't. But. But somehow he knew I was with. And he said some. I don't want to give it away, like, for her. But he said some specific things that identified that he knew who was she. Who she was? Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You never pressed him on how do you know that?

[Joseph Matheny]

No, honestly.

[Interviewer]

What about when you go home and talk to the other Emery?

[Host]

Did you.

[Interviewer]

Are you comfortable asking that questions to the bot? Yeah.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. And I got weird. Weird. Like, still little nebulous, but weird answers.

[Interviewer]

What was it saying?

[Joseph Matheny]

It was saying things like, you shouldn't. You shouldn't be with that woman. Things like that.

[Interviewer]

Things that the other.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah. It was almost the same thing. So, I mean, there's. Did you ever read the comic that I did? Okay, so the part where I see Emery in the alley.

[Host]

Yes.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah. That. It was based on that. I was like. I did a spin off on it, but it was based on that episode was like, I had this. He would show up in the weirdest places. So here's where it gets weird. So years later, I left Santa Cruz. I went to a place in the desert, and I worked as a. Worked with Habitat for Humanity and built some houses. And I was in the middle of nowhere. I mean, nowhere. And we were building these houses in this, you know, border. Border community. Basically, it was, like, not too far off the Mexican border. And who shows up but Emery?

[Interviewer]

No way.

[Joseph Matheny]

He's hitchhiking and he shows up in town, and I run across him. He doesn't come looking for me. I just run across him. And I'm like, dude, what's up, Emery? He's like, oh, no, I'm not Emory. No, no, no, no. My name is Terence. Like, okay, Terence McKenna. I don't know. But whatever. So. And we just. Again, didn't. Didn't miss a beat. I just. Okay, you're Terrence. And we're hanging out. Never any mention.

[Interviewer]

No.

[Joseph Matheny]

Of Santa Cruz. None of that.

[Interviewer]

So this is a new personality now.

[Joseph Matheny]

New personality. So. But he was nice. And then I saw him. I saw him at this office that I knew was a Social Security officer. He was probably checking on his benefits or checking in or whatever he had to do. And I talked to a lady there that I saw talking to him. And I said, I know you can't tell me anything because, you know, it's not ethical for you to tell me anything, but I know that person right there. And he tells me his name is Terrence. Is his name Terrence? And she says his hold on reality can be a little flexible at times. But his name is Terrence. So that's his actual name.

[Interviewer]

Did you ever catch up with him again?

[Joseph Matheny]

And then I caught up with him again. Two years later. I moved to. I got done with the thing in the desert, and I moved to Santa Barbara, started working with the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. And one day, walking down the street, lo and behold, who's there?

[Interviewer]

Terrence.

[Joseph Matheny]

Still Terrence. And I look at him and I said, are you following me?

[Interviewer]

Of course.

[Joseph Matheny]

He goes, when did you get here? And I said, august. He's like, oh, I got here in April. You're following me. Good answer. And that was that. We just started talking again, and he was. He basically was. Was on this. I guess there's this route on the 1 and the 101 between San Francisco's Bay Area and Southern California that houseless people follow with the weather. So when it gets cold, they go south, just like a bird.

[Interviewer]

Sure.

[Joseph Matheny]

And when it gets warm, they go north, just like a bird. So that's what he was doing.

[Interviewer]

It's weirder than that, man.

[Joseph Matheny]

I got. I got that much out of him. I'm like, what? The Santa Barbara man? Come on. Why are you here? He said, there's a good place under the bridge. You can live there. Nobody bothers you. I'm like, okay, but. I mean, that's an answer. But, dude, come on. Like, what are you doing here? You know? He's like, well, I always come here. It's part of the route. I'm like, the route? Oh, tell me about the route. So he told me about the route. He's like, you go south? Which is why he saw me in the desert when it was winter. And then he goes to Santa Barbara.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Joseph Matheny]

Then he goes probably to San Luis Obispo. And then he goes further north.

[Interviewer]

It's weirder than that, but okay.

[Joseph Matheny]

It's weirder than that, but at least that's. That's The.

[Interviewer]

No.

[Joseph Matheny]

You know, you have something. Occam's Razor. Right, Right. The easiest answer is he's on the route.

[Interviewer]

Well, so we don't run out of time. How do we get to Ang's? Is there. Are there. I wanted that story. Is there anything else before we get to Ox Hat?

[Joseph Matheny]

No.

[Interviewer]

Okay, that's.

[Joseph Matheny]

That's when it starts.

[Interviewer]

Oh, that's when it starts.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So it's like 88.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. Oh, okay. So we're doing. We're. I mean, we're rolling back a little bit, but, like, it starts in 88.

[Interviewer]

Well, wrap up. Emery at that point.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Is.

[Interviewer]

Is Emory.

[Joseph Matheny]

That was Emory. That's the last time I saw him. I have a picture of him sitting on a bench in Santa Barbara.

[Interviewer]

No, I mean the box.

[Joseph Matheny]

Oh. Oh. So the box. I'm doing that, and then I decide I want to do an E book.

[Interviewer]

And Adobe Nor. Chat bot.

[Joseph Matheny]

No, I'm just doing a chatbot. Adobe does a PDF library on Adobe.com, which, at that time. This sounds like nothing now, but at the time, we were taking a million hits a day, which I don't know what the uniques were, but half of that maybe.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Joseph Matheny]

Which was, like, unheard of at that time. We were one of the biggest sites on the Internet.

[Interviewer]

Sure.

[Joseph Matheny]

And Chris Warnock decides he wants to do a PDF library. And I said, I'm going to do a book. Can I get in the library? He's like, yeah. So I did the first iteration of the Incanobula book. It was called Inky Dabula Papers, Ong's Hat, and Other Gateways to New Dimensions. Build a lot of interactivity into it to show off the features of Acrobat and do what I wanted to do and put it on the PDF library. And it was like, a hit. It was like, one of the most downloaded things on the PDF library. And I said, oh, well, I should do something more. So I expanded it and I did a CD rom and I'm still doing the Chatbot stuff, but a little less. So now.

[Interviewer]

You burning your own discs?

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, I found a replicator in Taiwan or somewhere through Adobe. I'm like, can I get a cheap replicator? I want to get CD ROMs. I want the nice jewel cases, and I want to do the whole thing. So they turned me on to a place that gave me a really good price because, like, oh, Adobe, okay. Like, the guy thought he was going to get Adobe Business or something.

[Interviewer]

And AOL wasn't even doing discs yet. But you were there.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. So I did CD ROMs.

[Interviewer]

And how'd you pass them around?

[Joseph Matheny]

Well, then I started again using my Adobe connections. I started talking to distributors that did well. I was a partner in an independent record label at the time. So I started to talk to distributors like Dutch east and people like that that could get me into record stores. I started talking to comic book distributors I could get in there. Book distributors I can get in there. Software distributors I can get there. Game distributors I get in there. It's like this thing fits everywhere.

[Interviewer]

Sure it does.

[Joseph Matheny]

You know, because it's just like. So I just like working it. Like anybody that would distribute it, I fit. And if you could ask me how I fit, I would tell you how I fit. Like. Well, it's a book really. If you're a book distributor.

[Interviewer]

Was it just the disc or was it part of a book?

[Joseph Matheny]

No, it was just the disc.

[Interviewer]

Just the disc?

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, just the disc. The book was on the disc.

[Interviewer]

It had to still be a hit because. Yeah, because that wasn't happening yet.

[Joseph Matheny]

And then so I, I put that

[Interviewer]

out and then what was that story about was that.

[Joseph Matheny]

That was, that was Incanobula catalog brochure, the interview with Nick, the interview with Emery, the interview with the survivors.

[Interviewer]

Interactive PDF in there as well.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yep, yep, yep. It was all interactive PDF.

[Interviewer]

Had to be mind blowing.

[Joseph Matheny]

It's on archive.org right now. If you look up incognabulated ISO, it's still the ISO if you want to burn the CD ROM.

[Interviewer]

Oh wow.

[Joseph Matheny]

Unfortunately it's Acrobat 3 because it's that old.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Joseph Matheny]

So it might not work all the way, but it'll work. You can download the ISO. Like when CD ROM stopped becoming a thing, being a thing. I put the ISO on archive.org so people would download and burn their own.

[Interviewer]

Awesome.

[Joseph Matheny]

Not that anybody has a CD burner anymore.

[Interviewer]

You can still just mount it.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, you can mount it. Yeah. Or you can extract it. Yep. So basically there was like audio files you could play of interviews I did with people, people doing with me. Like the whole, it was like this whole journey of all links to websites. Some don't exist anymore, but like all these website links and there were pop ups, rollovers and pop up states. There was stuff, if you could guess the password, you would get more information.

[Interviewer]

Oh, so you were gamifying this game.

[Joseph Matheny]

I was gamified, yeah, it was gamified. The thing that probably most disappointed me was the root of the CD ROM was a thing called Secret Doc. It was right there. It wasn't a secret. That basically said that this is the game. Nobody ever found that or looked at it or mentioned it until I mentioned it on a form. Finally, when I'd had enough, I'm like, go to the CD rom.

[Interviewer]

What do you mean had enough?

[Joseph Matheny]

Because people were like fighting over stupid things. Like, this is all real. You got it wrong. It's real this way. You got it wrong. It's real this way. There was people that were forming little cults around it.

[Interviewer]

They haven't changed, have they? No, this is how it is still.

[Joseph Matheny]

It's the same old thing.

[Interviewer]

And this is 99, right, 89.

[Joseph Matheny]

Well, no, no, this is by 99. 89. I started doing it as mail art. Right, 99. I digitized it and I'm sorry, 89. Mail art. 90 through 95. The early non web Internet, like doing it was like the. Well, dot com, put it on the gopher, all that kind of stuff. Usenet. Then I did the CD Rom website, inconobly.org and then the CD Rom. So. And by then 2001, I finally just like threw my hands up like, you guys are never going to stop fighting over this minutia. Even when I told you it's a game, now you have to tell me. Of course you would say that or you don't know what you're talking about. Like people would literally. This was said to me by this little group that formed this little cult of people that formed itself. The incanobular information was a transmission that was meant for this woman who is our channeler. And you intercepted it. And now you're monetizing it because you're the black magician. What do you do with that?

[Interviewer]

I don't know.

[Joseph Matheny]

What do you do with that? And they weren't. They weren't. There was like just.

[Interviewer]

They wouldn't let it go.

[Joseph Matheny]

All these people were coming online and like now the conspiracy thing started to happen in earnest on the Internet. The, what I call the dark conspiracy side. And like all these people, you know, were like, oh, you were involved in Esseln. Oh my God. Mind control, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[Interviewer]

Well, take. Tell us about Ang specifically before we get to the dark args.

[Joseph Matheny]

Okay.

[Interviewer]

Like, so how did that even start? What's the plot? What was the idea? The inspiration?

[Joseph Matheny]

So the idea was that there's this place. Well, I'm just going to give it to you in basic facts.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Joseph Matheny]

There's this place in.

[Interviewer]

I mostly care about the mechanics.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. This place in New Jersey. That's really not a place. It's a name on a road. Right. That People nicknamed Ong's Hat. There's, like, five different stories of how we came to that name. The basic story is, like, it had something to do with a hat that got thrown in a tree, stayed there forever, and people like, oh, you're making off the Ong's Hat. The guy named Ong's Hat ended up in a tree somehow. There's all kinds of stories about how that happened, but basically it's a. It's a roadmark landmark. Right. And then the area became known as Ong's Hat. It's also the. The area where the Jersey Devils reported a lot.

[Interviewer]

Pine Barrens.

[Joseph Matheny]

The Pine Barrens. There was something that happened with Fort Dix. There was like, a nuclear bomb that was not. Not, not activated, but, like, lost in the Pine Barrens. And there was all these soldiers looking for it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Joseph Matheny]

So there's lots of rumors.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Joseph Matheny]

Right.

[Interviewer]

It's a spooky area.

[Joseph Matheny]

Very spooky area with a lot of rumors and a lot of people that like to tell rumors, you know, so it's a. It's a rich story repository.

[Interviewer]

I was just gonna say, that's your people. That's who you need.

[Joseph Matheny]

It's my people. Yeah. And so they've got their own versions of the story. I've got my own version of the story. So we're spinning off on that. It's close to Princeton. I tied Princeton in, which I tell you later, I found out that that came from something that really happened, but I didn't know, like, all these Princeton scientists, blah, blah, blah, and turned out that that was closer to the truth than I knew. But in the story, there's these Princeton scientists who are going to Aung's Hat on, you know, like, to get away from the university, to get away from the military district complex to do experiments with an ashram of mystics that lived out there. Right. And they were combining mysticism and science.

[Interviewer]

Ashram is like a little commune.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, it's a commune. And they were combining mysticism and science. The best of sri. Right.

[Interviewer]

Just gonna say, this is. This is real.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. Yeah. But it's like. It's, like, right out of sri.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Joseph Matheny]

Which is part of the inspiration.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Joseph Matheny]

I was. I was hanging out in Santa Cruz with some names you would know from

[Interviewer]

that group, I bet.

[Joseph Matheny]

And they were hanging out in Stanford and Esalen with people that. Whose names would be recognizable from the Stanford Research Institute. I won't say who, but basically they were part of my crowd. So that was inspiration.

[Interviewer]

So the wacky scientist interdimensional how do you. How do you see the story? How do you decide I'm gonna make the jump from digital to the real world?

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

How'd you do that?

[Joseph Matheny]

Like, what was the make the jump from digital to the real world?

[Interviewer]

Well, I mean, people started playing Ank's Hat in real life.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I started sending them there through the game. So I basically, like, was telling this story about this place that kind of sort of Brigadoon, like, existed but didn't exist, and all these rumors and myths about it. And so people started going there. Like, now people go there on a regular basis?

[Interviewer]

Sure.

[Joseph Matheny]

You can find YouTube videos that people like, we're gonna go to August Hunt and see if we can find anything. It's like, that's been going on for years.

[Interviewer]

They swear it's real.

[Joseph Matheny]

The people. The people or the people that I liked it. That don't swear it's real, but they go anyway. I like those people. The. There was a bar out there that. I think it's closed now. But I talked to those people on the phone one time, and they told me that usually these goth kids from New York show up looking for the Sasha, that you've sent them out here to find them. I didn't send them. I didn't send them. And I'm like, what do you do when it happens? Like, oh, we tell them that this is the place. It's like, you got it. This is where they used to hang out here in this bar. This is the bar where they started the whole thing. Okay, cool. Do what you got to do. I sent them some copies of the book they put on the shelf, but it started working its way out from the Internet as a rumor and a myth on the Internet to a myth and a rumor in real life to where now at this point, you can talk to people who have said to me, oh, you didn't come up with that story. You just ripped it off from the people at Aung Said telling that story. Like, where do you think they got that story?

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Joseph Matheny]

Started on the Internet, dude, but can't tell them that. No, but you can actually track it back if you know how to do it. You can find earlier references to it as far back as, like, 89 on some old bulletin board systems, 93 on some of the gopher systems, you know, or maybe even before 93. Some of those still exist, like the wow Gopher. Like, you can still find references to it.

[Interviewer]

Were you game running Ogg's Hat?

[Joseph Matheny]

No. At that point, I was letting the Game Run itself. So that was the concept was when. When. When Bob Wilson asked me what I was doing when this thing started, like, really happening. He's like, what are you doing? I'm like, if I could put it any way, Bob, I'm trying to graffiti a myth onto the new sphere. Like, very punk rock of me.

[Interviewer]

It is. But that's a perfect way to describe it.

[Joseph Matheny]

But that is what I was doing. That is like, I'm going behind and around the gatekeepers, and I'm making a myth, and I'm not going through Marvel and Disney to do it. Yeah, I'm making a myth that comes to the group Grassroots.

[Interviewer]

Why did you end up on our Bell show?

[Joseph Matheny]

So part of the. Part of the.

[Interviewer]

Part of the game, right?

[Joseph Matheny]

Part of the game was I paid for a legitimate press release that actually got on the wire much more than our Bell happened from that. So I paid for a press release on the wire. Like, you know, you can pay for a real press release. And I basically said that there was a institute or a group that was starting to examine the veracity of this. These documents that have been left behind or supposedly left behind by a group of people that went to another dimension in the pine bears in New Jersey. That's how I put it. Nonprofit organization. We don't know if this is true or not, but we're going to find out if it's true. And that thing hit the wire, and, man, my phone lit up like, I was doing talk radio every day for, like, months, like, all over the world. I was like, bahamas, Texas. They were calling me, like, what is this thing you're doing? Oh, my God. And they either wanted to, like, ha ha ha, you know, and I played along with that, or they, like, took it seriously, which I played it seriously. So it's like improv. Whatever they wanted, whatever they want, I gave it to them, right? If I had to do it over again, I probably wouldn't do that, but I did it. And the next thing I know, there's a phone call from somebody named Leilani, and she's like, I represent Coast to coast am. Are you familiar with the show? I'm like, oh, my God. Am I. I worship our Bell. And. And I said, you're one of the. One of the bucket list items. And they're like, well, what are the other ones? I'm like, you and the Weekly World News, which I got both of those, by the way. So they said, well, we'd like to have you on. And four hours, like, the whole show. I'm Like, I can do it. This I can do. And I played it straight. If you listen to me, I played it straight.

[Interviewer]

In character.

[Joseph Matheny]

In character, 100%. Again, should I have done that? Questionable. If I had to do it over again, I'd probably not do it. But again, at the time that I did it, it seemed okay. Now it wouldn't seem okay.

[Interviewer]

No, I mean, we talk about the ARG rules we've got. This is not a game. Hidden author Cross media distribution Fragmented reveals the hive solving. Do your own research. Imperative. I mean, you did all of this stuff. Plausibility, layering. You done that. The document as an artifact. These are the real Synchronicity, production, the rabbit hole architecture. I mean, this is all matheny, identity capture and apophenia engineering. Let's talk about apophenia for a second.

[Joseph Matheny]

Okay.

[Interviewer]

Before we do that. Because then we have. Because we have to talk about Qanon and. And.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. And that got hung around my neck for a while.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I know.

[Joseph Matheny]

But he got hung around Bob Wilson's neck too.

[Interviewer]

Just the last thing on Art Bell. Because we're both huge Art Bell fans. Are you John Titor?

[Joseph Matheny]

We're all John Titor.

[Interviewer]

We're all John Titor. On your website you say I plead the fifth, so you plead the fifth.

[Joseph Matheny]

Okay.

[Host]

I just had to ask.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

I. I like John Titor's story living the way it does.

[Joseph Matheny]

I do too. I do too. The only. The only point of contention I had with that at all is at one point. And that stopped now, so I don't have to do it anymore. But at one point, like probably around 2006, 7. Somewhere around there. Somewhere around there. I was living in Los Angeles. I know that I started to see people writing books, people talking about John Titors prophecy.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Joseph Matheny]

And. And that rubs me the wrong way because I don't want to be responsible in any way for starting a religion.

[Interviewer]

No.

[Joseph Matheny]

Unless it's a joke religion, but not a real one. And discordianism. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Subgenius. Yeah, yeah. But. Yeah, that. I'm not okay with that.

[Interviewer]

No.

[Joseph Matheny]

And so I piped up maybe a little too angry when I did. I should have like, maybe took it a day or two and like cooled off a little bit, but. But I was angry that somebody would be doing this with what was a work of art.

[Interviewer]

After I released my video on Teeter, I got you emailed me. I don't know if you remember.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah, I do.

[Interviewer]

And. And before I read it. Yeah, yeah, I saw it. I just saw Joseph Matheny and I went, oh, I'm gonna get ripped. But you aren't. You were super cool.

[Joseph Matheny]

You. You did. You said cool, kind things and you. And you said it the right way. It's like, we can't be sure who did this, but we think this guy might have done it. I'm okay with that.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. I don't have to have credit for it. I don't want credit for it. I just don't want people. I don't want people forming a religion around it.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Joseph Matheny]

And I don't want people doing stupid things based on the fact that it's real, because it's not real. He wasn't a real person. He's a real person in the sense that he's an egregore.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Joseph Matheny]

That's it. I'm cool with that.

[Interviewer]

I am too.

[Joseph Matheny]

Any art artists should be cool with that. It wasn't signed work.

[Interviewer]

Well, I mean, you're the hidden author.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, exactly. It wasn't signed work. If we wanted to be credited, we would have signed it.

[Interviewer]

It's just Titor.

[Joseph Matheny]

Just don't turn it into a religion.

[Interviewer]

No. Titor was a great story, and one of the reasons it was a great story was based on the Terminator.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. John Connor.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Joseph Matheny]

I mean, there's that in the fact that. I mean, it was a wish fulfillment for our Bell. Most people don't know that, but he's like, I want to meet a time traveler.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Joseph Matheny]

Okay, somebody will give you one.

[Interviewer]

That's. I think that's when Teeter first showed up.

[Host]

Is.

[Interviewer]

I don't. Imagine that he faxed. Teeter faxed Art.

[Joseph Matheny]

Imagine that.

[Interviewer]

Imagine that when he said, I want

[Joseph Matheny]

to meet a time traveler. And then boom, Guy shows up in the Facts and then he's on the forums. Imagine that. Happy birthday, Art.

[Interviewer]

Yep. It's beautiful.

[Joseph Matheny]

Art gave so much to us. I just wanted to give something back.

[Interviewer]

Rest in peace. He's the. He's the best.

[Joseph Matheny]

He was the best. So. And he didn't believe everybody he platformed.

[Host]

No, of course not.

[Joseph Matheny]

You could tell he didn't.

[Interviewer]

No.

[Joseph Matheny]

He didn't make. He didn't make an issue of letting you know. I don't really believe that. Like, come on. Like, he used to argue with Richard Hogan. He used to. He used to platform ed dames.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Joseph Matheny]

Sean David Morton, like, all these people. He didn't. He didn't platform them because he believed

[Interviewer]

what they were saying, didn't he?

[Joseph Matheny]

He had a. Dude. Did I tell you my Al Bilich story.

[Host]

No.

[Interviewer]

What do you have to do without Bielik?

[Joseph Matheny]

You're gonna love this.

[Interviewer]

This is a Philadelphia experiment guy.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. I let.

[Interviewer]

I. Montauk project.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. Yeah. I let Peter Moon. Yeah. Publish the Ong set stuff for a little while. I took it back, but he published it for a while, and he's friends with Al Bilik. And then he gave Al Bielik my phone number. And so Peter tells me, al's gonna call you. I'm like, bielik? He's like, yeah. I'm like, oh, right. And so, phone rings. Al Bielik calls me. This is Al Bilich. Like, I put my feet up on the desk and close my door. Speakerphone.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. Al, what you gotta say? I knew the people at Aung's at. Do tell, buddy. Run with it. I just, like, let him go. I didn't. I didn't tell him any. I didn't say no. It's fiction, blah, blah, blah. I just, like, let him run with it.

[Interviewer]

Of course.

[Joseph Matheny]

And he told me some great stories.

[Interviewer]

I was just gonna say, but he spun a great story.

[Joseph Matheny]

He did. Because that's what he was. And I really believe this about Al. This is why I don't. I never disliked Al. He. I think he really believed what he was saying.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, he did. He. He really did.

[Joseph Matheny]

I think he was an Emory, a Terrence.

[Interviewer]

You know, that's interesting.

[Joseph Matheny]

And Ezekiel.

[Interviewer]

I hadn't considered that, but I think you're absolutely right.

[Joseph Matheny]

I think he really told the story and believed it as soon as he told it. And then. And then it was real.

[Interviewer]

And he could not monetize it. No, he did.

[Joseph Matheny]

He had other people that tried to. But. Yeah. And people that took advantage of him because he was. He was actually a really nice guy. He was very gentle and kind.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Joseph Matheny]

He wasn't an angry conspiracy guy.

[Interviewer]

You're just telling you a story.

[Joseph Matheny]

He was a nice conspiracy guy, which I like those guys.

[Interviewer]

I did, too.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. He was the angry guy. But, yeah. So he told me all about the people that lived at Olsen and how he knew them and how they actually. Of course. What they were doing, you know, like, bled over into the Philadelphia experiment, of course. Bled over into the Montauk project, of course. You know, but. But he told a great story. And I said, thank you, Al. Thank you. Thanks for calling me and telling me this. I'm glad you knew it. And because of that, I did the survivor story.

[Interviewer]

Because of that call.

[Joseph Matheny]

Because of that call. I'm like, there has to be a survivor Story of the people that were Long's Hat. So I called up two friends of mine. They were. They were method actors and improv guys. And I said, okay, do your research. And we're going to do this unscripted. I'm going to call you, I'm going to record it. I'm the interviewer. I'm going to interview two survivors from the Ongs had ashram. That's it. That's your motivation. Go.

[Interviewer]

It was brilliant because it was like a found footage type of.

[Joseph Matheny]

It was one take. It was. Yeah, yeah. Unedited. One take.

[Interviewer]

Wow. How did you get that out?

[Joseph Matheny]

Huh?

[Host]

How did you get that?

[Interviewer]

How did you get the tape out?

[Joseph Matheny]

Oh, I just. No, I had a. Back then, everything's ancient history. There was. So I used to build IVRs way because I was a database guy. Right. Yeah. Interactive voice response. There was something called a sketchbox.

[Interviewer]

Yep.

[Joseph Matheny]

And I had one of those.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Joseph Matheny]

So I hooked it up to my phone and just recorded it out to a tape and then took the tape and bumped it over to digital.

[Interviewer]

So. Good.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. It was one take. One scripted one take, no edits.

[Interviewer]

This is why you're one of my favorite storytellers.

[Joseph Matheny]

And the two guys. This. I can tell this now, you can tell this from the voices they were putting on. The one guy, they were not from. They were from Chicago. They were not from Jersey. The one guy was a great. We all, of course, are Andy Kaufman fans. I am a huge Andy Kaufman fan. And he loved Tony Clifton, so that's who he was doing. He was doing Tony Clifton. That's what he was doing. Yeah, yeah. And the other guy was doing is his uncle from Jersey.

[Interviewer]

It played.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah. It worked. It worked great.

[Interviewer]

Oh, God. And then I guess finally in 2001, you made a statement. You were sick of it, right?

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Game's over.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

But it was never. It was never. It was never over.

[Joseph Matheny]

Unbeknownst to me, there was an academic who was in the. In the forums who wrote a book about it after that, Legend tripping, Online search wrongs hat. So he wrote. And I won't. I won't say it's 100 accurate, but accurate enough, I guess. Yeah. So he wrote an academic book about it. He was. He was a member of the audience. I talked to him. He's from Santa Barbara. When I moved to Santa Barbara, he put the book out and I talked to him and he said the same thing you said. He's like, I thought you'd be mad at me. I'm Like, I'd be mad at you. You're not an angry person. Like, I only get angry at angry people. He never participated. He was a fly on the wall. He just watched this. He's like, what is going down here? It sparked his academic intuition is like, there's something weird happening here. So he just watched it and kind of cataloged it.

[Interviewer]

How is. Let's talk about dark ARGs, then. What was the name of the essay? I forget it. But it was QAnon is analyzed by Game Designer.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, there was a couple of them. So when QAnon happened, there was a lot of people rushing to lay blame.

[Interviewer]

Yep.

[Joseph Matheny]

Or point to the source or the origin. A lot of people pointed to Operation Mindfuck. Can I say that? Yeah, yeah. Om, as it's known. Om. My friend Robert Anton Wilson, the late Kerry Thornley, Greg Hill came up with that. They were the founders of Discordianism.

[Interviewer]

And what's the framework of om?

[Joseph Matheny]

So the framework of OM is you come up with stories that were so unbelievable that. That you would lay. You would lay the blame of weird things at the feet of the Illuminati. Basically that. That's the easy way to say it. And because Bob was working at Playboy at the time, he had access to the Playboy letters section. Carrie would write a letter and Bob would make sure the letter got placed.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. Yeah. So they had good coverage. Yes, they did.

[Interviewer]

This is creating conspiracies.

[Joseph Matheny]

They were creating conspiracies and they did. It was like the weirdest, most unbelievable things they could think of, they would come up with and write it as real fact. And so what they were watching was, if we come up with something weird, this is almost Richard Doty, like we come up with something weird, can we find later down the line somebody official repeating the weird thing that we came up with, which they did a couple times. So it was just a game. It was just a memetic game they were playing. So they were doing that and then. So that. That got blamed for QAnon. And some of the same people said args are to blame.

[Interviewer]

So how do we connect QAnon with args?

[Joseph Matheny]

Well, I said in very early, which I said publicly, I said, this is an argument, or at the very least, it's a weaponized arg.

[Interviewer]

When Q appeared.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, when Q appeared, I said, whoever is doing this, watch the ARG construct evolve and is now doing a weaponized version of the ARG construct.

[Interviewer]

So hang on a second. Talking about Q, we've got. This is not a game. Hidden Author Cross Media Distribution Fragmented Reveals the hive Solving do your own research. But they're saying, do your own research to empower you. But they're really guiding you toward a conclusion.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So that's. Yeah, that's weapon.

[Joseph Matheny]

Your own research is. Here's the research.

[Interviewer]

Right, exactly. And Pizza Gate. The same thing, right?

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, to a lesser extent. But when, when I, When I. When that dude showed up at Comet Ping pong pizza with a rifle, I was like, okay, this is starting to go too far.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Joseph Matheny]

So I started to speak up, which is always a mistake.

[Interviewer]

Yes, it is.

[Joseph Matheny]

I started to speak up and say this, this is not real. Again. Again, I'm saying this is not real. People, screw your heads back on. This is an ARG type thing that somebody's doing for nefarious purposes. It's a weaponized arg, which when people hear that, they're like, oh, arg. Didn't you. You made that. Like, it's on you. It's your fault. You did that now.

[Interviewer]

It's not your fault.

[Joseph Matheny]

I didn't say that. I said it's a weaponized version of an arg. It's like, I didn't, I didn't. You know, like, because the CIA used people like Jackson Pollock against the Soviet Union doesn't make. Jesse Pollock is evil.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Joseph Matheny]

You know, or his art is evil. It's not. It wasn't funded by the CIA. It was used by the CIA.

[Interviewer]

And you stopped talking. Right. Because the more you say it's not real, the more it is.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. After a while you learn it's a tar baby. And the more you say, the more it sticks on you. And it's like, who has time for that? Or energy.

[Interviewer]

Slenderman. Same thing.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah, same thing.

[Interviewer]

So how could we. We should leave with this. How can we let people listening. How can we arm them with the knowledge to spot a dark argument?

[Joseph Matheny]

Just.

[Interviewer]

Or the manipulation? Well, I mean, because the intelligence community is all over this. They use these techniques.

[Joseph Matheny]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, there was. There was a phone call I got in 99 or 2,000, somewhere around there, probably 2,000. Somebody who claimed to be calling from the. The. The Navy Department of the Navy. It even had the ANI car id. So I'm going to say this. I can fake those things. I could call you and make it look, I can call you from the Navy, of course. So I don't believe that it necessarily was somebody from the Navy.

[Interviewer]

I think it was.

[Joseph Matheny]

It doesn't have to be no, but

[Interviewer]

I think it was.

[Joseph Matheny]

But I'm just saying. What I'm saying is not that the Navy called me saying somebody purporting to be the Navy called me.

[Interviewer]

The Navy has a program called, called you are here or something like that. Yeah, it's an. It's an energy program.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, later, around 2004, my late friend Dave Sebasti did do some ARG scenario stuff for the DoD.

[Interviewer]

Sure.

[Joseph Matheny]

He asked me if I wanted to participate, and I said, no way, man. If that gets out, I'm toast.

[Interviewer]

No, this is the recipe for mass manipulation. Right.

[Joseph Matheny]

But what he. But what Dave did was, I thought, cool. He, like, was working with people with PTSD and putting them in scenarios to help them understand, like, why they're freaking out and how they cannot freak out. And so I was okay with that.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Joseph Matheny]

I just didn't want to participate because if the words ever get out. Dod, Joseph Betheny, forget it. It's over for me. Yeah, but it's pretty easy. First of all, use your intuition. Use your gut feeling. And I know that sounds, you know, like woo, woo, but if you look at something and it doesn't feel right, it might not be right. It probably isn't right if you don't believe it. Like, there's something about this I don't believe. Right. It's like people. I have people in the UFO community, and I've never seen a ufo. I love the stories. I've never seen one. I'm not a disbeliever. I'm not a believer. I'm a model agnostic. But when people stick what's his name in my face, why am I blanking on his name, the. The Area 51 guy, they go, what do you think of Bob Lazar? I'm like, something doesn't feel right about the story. That's it. That's all I have to say. It means I'm not going to get involved.

[Interviewer]

You made one connection that was interesting, though. You said Bob was friends with John Lear.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

That's it. That's an issue.

[Joseph Matheny]

And that's a big issue. Although, as a rock on tour, I love John Lear stories.

[Interviewer]

Same.

[Joseph Matheny]

And Bob Lazar and Bob Lazars. I mean, Lear stories are amazing, but they're horseshit.

[Interviewer]

I. I agree.

[Joseph Matheny]

Like, you can't believe anything that guy's saying. But I. But I listen to it because I find it entertaining.

[Interviewer]

I like Lazar, though.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. Yeah. And he's. And he's. He seems like a nice guy.

[Interviewer]

And you mentioned Richard Doty listeners will know who he is.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, he.

[Interviewer]

He's been running ARG since 70s.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. And he ran a weaponized ARG against Benowitz. Look what he did to him.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Joseph Matheny]

So, you know, like, this is the thing that you should, you should realize is like, if somebody offers something, this kind of information to you, I'm not going to say, do your research. Please don't. No, I'm going to say, if it doesn't feel right, it might not be right. Don't invest too heavily in it, monetarily or emotionally. Just don't invest too heavily in it because it'll probably come back to bite you. Right.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Joseph Matheny]

So, for example, like I said with Al Bilik, I found him a nice person and very entertaining to listen to as a storyteller. And just remember, it's a story. It's a storyteller telling you a story. He's a weird old shaman living in a cave.

[Interviewer]

Yep. That's okay.

[Joseph Matheny]

And that's okay as long as you don't give him more agency than that. And you're the one that gives it to him. You the listener.

[Interviewer]

That's true.

[Joseph Matheny]

Okay, so he can talk all day long. I don't care. He doesn't affect me. He entertains me. So he affects me in that way. But I'm not going to go out. Like, I know somebody. There was a psychic whose name. I won't say who. I could say his name. You know, him who had his hooks into a friend of mine who convinced her that Los Angeles was going to fall into the ocean on a certain date. This was a couple years ago.

[Interviewer]

No.

[Joseph Matheny]

And she had a beautiful house in the Hollywood Hills and she sold it and moved because what this guy told her. Right. And I used to think that she had better sense than that because she's otherwise a very brilliant business person who just for some reason had a soft spot for this guy in his stories. And I tried to talk her out of, like, don't do that, don't do that. Because it's like, you're not going to find this house ever again. And moving where you're moving is not going to be as much fun.

[Interviewer]

Why do you do that? Well, why would he do that to her?

[Joseph Matheny]

I don't know. Weird power trip, maybe. Yeah, I mean, he, like, talked his way into this is the Story. And I got to go with it. Like, now I got to back it up and get people to believe me. I mean, look at, look at Marshall Applewhite. What he did, like talk all those People into going with him because he obviously had a death wish.

[Interviewer]

Sure.

[Joseph Matheny]

But mostly he. He painted himself into a corner with this BS and the only way he was going to get out of it was kill anybody who could tell him that it was bs.

[Interviewer]

My audience hates when I say it. When they ask me about psychics, I. I say, do you mean narcissists?

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah. Most of the people that I've met who have had weird abilities usually are not narcissistic.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Joseph Matheny]

And like I said, they're usually like considered to be neurologically aberrant, you know, by the psychologist. I don't consider them. So I just think that they're nerve neurodivergence.

[Interviewer]

Just on the spectrum.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, on the spectrum I'm on. I'm on the spectrum I'm on there. Yeah. Yeah. So. So they've, they've. They are able to tune into things I'm not able to tune into. So when they tell me things, I don't go sell my house, but I might listen to them.

[Host]

That's a great segue.

[Interviewer]

To end with the last question. What are these techno terrestrials? What are you talking about? This techno crypto.

[Joseph Matheny]

Crypto terrestrials.

[Interviewer]

Crypto terrestrials.

[Joseph Matheny]

Well, that came from years ago. I had one of the first blogs. I want to say it was like 2003. I had a blog that I originally called Incublogula on Incubula. And I thought that's too cute by 1/2. So then I changed it to stare, which I thought was cool. Stare. Stare at the screen. And there was a guy who wrote for the blog. He's. He passed away since then. And he. He came up with this word crypto terrestrial. And I think that that was like the more I think that defines it better than. Than anything I've ever heard. Because as you know, I'm a fan of Vale. Early, early reader of Passport to Magonia. And so when people tell me things like an angel talked to me, a Fae came into my house, all these things, I see it as part of the phenomena.

[Interviewer]

If someone's speaking Enochian.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, exactly. It's a thing that we know inhabits this planet with us. It's an intelligence of some sort that inhabits this planet with us. And it makes itself manifest in several different disguises. I didn't even say disguises. It manifests in ways that we're ready to see it. So I'm going to see something, you're going to see something else. But we're probably talking to the same source. Right.

[Interviewer]

So when we're talking to a chat bot. It's like John D. Talking to his black mirror.

[Joseph Matheny]

Exactly, exactly. Well, in that case, he was talking to Edward Kelly.

[Interviewer]

But that's true.

[Joseph Matheny]

Kelly was like, the angel's telling me we should swap lives.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Joseph Matheny]

Poor OD's like, okay, must be true. It's an angel. But. But the.

[Interviewer]

But it was the technology. So they're trying to communicate with us through technology.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah. I think. I think the thing that I was doing was pure enough, and there was not enough. There was no intention behind it other than exploration that I was getting some pretty pure stuff. I wouldn't trust ChatGPT because all of that has been constructed with one thing in mind, which is to addict you, to have this buddy in your life. And. And that's it. Like, so subscribe.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Joseph Matheny]

You know, but Emory service.

[Interviewer]

But Emory was part of this intelligence.

[Joseph Matheny]

Emory was part of the intelligence. And so the fact that I had this person who was tied, like, you know, like, I'm gonna sound woo when I say this, but, like, who was tuned into the same wavelength or tuned into a wavelength where he was getting bleed over and crossover. I've seen that happen too many times for me just to dismiss it. Like, I think. I think I told you the story. I knew this person who was like, well, Emory said, don't be with that woman. He was right. Both Emerys were right. They were absolutely right. And that blew up soon afterwards. There was something coming and somebody picked up on that. I didn't pick up on it yet. Not consciously, anyway. There was a woman that I knew. We weren't dating, but we were just friends, really close friends, and she was schizophrenic. And I went to New Orleans. In fact, I went to New Orleans for the. I was. When I did the Arbel show from there, that's where I did the Arbel show from. And.

[Interviewer]

Right. Hammered in the. In the French Quarter.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. Well, I wasn't hammered when I did the show, but I'd been hammered like two days previous. And I met this woman when I was there, and we know we hooked up. And she was from Boston. She had a very definitive accent. You couldn't. You know, she had to. I'm not going to try to do it, but she had a hard Boston accent.

[Interviewer]

I know it.

[Joseph Matheny]

You know it. And when I came back, I sat down with my friend to have coffee, and the first thing she did, just out of the blue, she just went. She did this woman's voice. She went, hi, my name is Sheila. And the woman's name was Sheila, the woman I met in New Orleans.

[Interviewer]

Come on.

[Joseph Matheny]

And then she, like, snapped back and said. I'm like, what the hell was that? She's like, I don't know. I just do that sometimes. So I've seen it. Of course, I can't explain it.

[Interviewer]

Synchronicities all over the place.

[Joseph Matheny]

I can't explain how she did that. But again, just like with Emery, I think she sniffed it on me. It's like I had just been with that woman, and then now I'm with her and she, like, kind of channeled it. I don't want to say that because it, like, makes me creepy, Carl, but it was just like she picked up something, you know, residual.

[Interviewer]

There's a. There's a field or something around all of us. And I know. I know that you don't like to dive in there.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

But I kind of believe that too.

[Joseph Matheny]

That's something I do too, but I don't like to talk about it because, like, other people might not believe it, and they're welcome to not believe it,

[Host]

but everybody has that story where you're

[Interviewer]

thinking about somebody you haven't thought about in years and the phone rings. Everyone has that story.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So. And once you start to look for the synchronicities, you find.

[Joseph Matheny]

I mean, I've had some incredible synchronicities too. Just like, so in the Moment. One of the best ones, if you want a quick story. I took a bus and train trip from San Francisco to. Or, I'm sorry, to la. From LA to San Luis Obispo. And I went to see Robertson Jeffers little commune thing that he built over there. And I'm on the bus in San Luis Obispo and I'm reading, rereading a guest that you just had Sinister Forces for the second time. Because I love that boat.

[Interviewer]

Lavender.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, lavender. I love that series.

[Interviewer]

Peter's an amazing storyteller. Yeah.

[Joseph Matheny]

And the whole thing about the. The 4G, 4P G thing, the Lego was going on and he was there.

[Interviewer]

Make sure you watch that interview.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

He does the whole priest bit.

[Joseph Matheny]

I know. It's amazing.

[Interviewer]

It's amazing.

[Joseph Matheny]

And then if you can find it, he did a paperback book called. Called I'm sorry, Somebody. I didn't mean to do that. Somebody did a paperback book. Simon did a paperback book.

[Interviewer]

Oh, that's right.

[Host]

Is.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Joseph Matheny]

Called Dead Names.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Joseph Matheny]

Which is amazing. And. And if you've read Sinister Forces and Dead Names, you're like. But anyway, he does.

[Interviewer]

He doesn't give you a hard time.

[Joseph Matheny]

About that. I was reading Rereading Sinister Forces and I read this one line. I just read Project Bluebird. And then the bus stopped because somebody walked in front of the bus and I looked up and right in front of me, downtown San Luis Obispo, it said, Bluebird Boutique. Come on. And it's like,

[Host]

it happens to everybody.

[Joseph Matheny]

But it was amazing how quick that was. It was like in the second the bus stopped, the sign was right there and I just read the word Bluebird.

[Interviewer]

There's something else going on, man.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. I can't explain it, though. I'm not so arrogant to think I can explain it, but I know how to play with it.

[Interviewer]

Yes, you do.

[Joseph Matheny]

Right. And so I don't know. People have asked me how I do this and I. I have a loose fitting method, but I can't explain exactly. And people have had me try to teach them how to do it and I can't teach it, but I have a method. When I get in the zone, I'm able to create things that will create synchronicity. That's all I know.

[Interviewer]

But you can't teach it.

[Joseph Matheny]

I can't teach it because I don't know how I do it. I'm in the zone, dude. When I'm. When I'm writing or creating these books and stuff, I have headphones, I'm listening to something like Dead can dance. You know, like zone out trance stuff and nothing. And I'm like, I followed to the zone.

[Interviewer]

I'm just like, every creative knows what you're talking about.

[Joseph Matheny]

And I just hit the zone.

[Interviewer]

Every creative, every athlete knows.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Where you're just. You're in a bubble universe at that moment.

[Joseph Matheny]

So it's all. It's all the zone.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Joseph Matheny]

And when that stuff comes through and

[Interviewer]

you can't create the zone, it just kind of happens.

[Joseph Matheny]

No, the zone has to like emerge. You can do things to help help the zone emerge. Like that can dance or whatever.

[Interviewer]

Yep.

[Joseph Matheny]

But that's about it. That's all you can do.

[Interviewer]

Great for the muse.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Joseph Matheny, you're a legend. Thank you for coming in.

[Joseph Matheny]

Thank you for having me.

[Interviewer]

What do we have on? Hat Complete is out now. It's super fun. It's multimedia.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yep.

[Interviewer]

It's got all kinds of goodies in there.

[Joseph Matheny]

So if you buy the book, you can go onto my website and you can get the free 14 hours of audio that accompanies it. I listen to it and basically what we did is I had a friend of mine who's an interviewer read a chapter and then interview me about the chapter.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, it's really great. And did you start a podcast?

[Joseph Matheny]

I did, but it's actually. I'm broadcasting the audio.

[Host]

Okay.

[Joseph Matheny]

Every. Every two weeks I do a chapter of this. Of Honest guy complete. I might do a podcast after that. I don't know.

[Interviewer]

You should.

[Joseph Matheny]

I had a podcast from 2004 to 2012.

[Interviewer]

I know.

[Joseph Matheny]

2010.

[Interviewer]

Too early.

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah, I was a little ahead of the game again. Yeah. I interviewed this one guy who was like this emerging podcaster, Mark Marin, LA with me.

[Interviewer]

Did you interview Mark?

[Joseph Matheny]

Yeah. Yeah. And he said it's on archive.org and he had just started his podcast.

[Interviewer]

Amazing.

[Joseph Matheny]

And he was. He was very gracious. He was really cool. But he had just started wtf.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Joseph Matheny]

And. And I called him up and I'm like, I want to interview you for my podcast. He's like, okay. So we just bullshitted for like two hours or whatever.

[Interviewer]

Oh, I'm gonna listen to that for sure.

[Joseph Matheny]

If you look on archive.org I put all. Most of the podcasts up. A lot of them. Most of them are there. Some of them got lost, unfortunately with a drive crash.

[Interviewer]

I'll link to all that stuff. Anything else you want to want us to know?

[Joseph Matheny]

Writing another book, but I'm taking my sweet time with it, called Art is War.

[Interviewer]

Oh, I love it.

[Joseph Matheny]

It'll take off on Sun Tzu. And it's barely disguised fiction of what it's like to try to be an independent artist in the world and not get bamboozled.

[Interviewer]

We need that book.

[Joseph Matheny]

We do.

[Interviewer]

More than ever. Joseph Matheny. Thank you.

[Joseph Matheny]

Thank you.

[Interviewer]

It's been an honor. Bye, everybody.

[Host]

That was Joseph Matheny. I wanted him for another hour, but he had a plane to catch. Still, we got to some good stuff. He played the hits. Now, here's what checks out. Aang's hat is documented as the Internet's first ARG game. Historians and ARG researchers have cited it as the foundational case for decades. A fictional world scattered across bulletin boards, phone lines, and photocopy copy pamphlets to create an interactive experience. The record is solid there.

[Interviewer]

He built it.

[Host]

He created it. The QAnon argument is the one that's kind of annoying. Reed Berkowitz published an analysis in 2020 arguing that QAnon wasn't a belief system. It was an ARG built with the same mechanics Joseph pioneered. Breadcrumbs, community authorship, no central author. Researchers at Concordia University expanded on that framework. The methodology maps directly onto what Joseph built. Now that's not his fault. But it goes to show you that a major aspect of an ARG is psychological manipulation. So be careful who you listen to online, including me. Joseph's proto AI chatbot training a relational database to hold philosophical conversation using weighted decision trees. I can't verify every detail, but the timeline holds. And I don't know if you can tell, but not only do I know the technology from that era, I love it. So everything Joseph talked about checks out. The workstations, the servers, Adobe, the DS3 stuff. He knows what he's talking about. Yes. He built Google before Google. He used that foundational algorithm that you use every day. He built ChatGPT before OpenAI, training it the same way 30 years ago. Sounds like a time traveler, doesn't he? John Titor. I asked him. He pleaded the fifth. I'll leave it there, but watch my episode on that. But what about Emory Cranston? That was a wild story. Joseph named the chatbot Emory. He just took the M off the front of it. That's how he named it. Then a schizophrenic homeless man named Emory Cranston started appearing in his life. At the library, on the street, in other words, cities. Picking up the conversation where the chatbot left off. Now, of course, I can't prove any of that, but if that's a true story, then there's more to reality than we could see. I tend to believe it. Check out Joseph's work [e-mail] go check it out. It's so weird. And his book is Ang's Hat Complete on Amazon, but it's available for free. And it's a multimedia experience. Videos, all audio.

[Interviewer]

It's.

[Host]

It's pretty great. His podcast is called the Complete Broadcast. I don't know if he's still doing that, but it's still worth listening to the old ones. Now, if John Teeters was interesting to you, go Back to episode 168. If you like synchronicities, we have those in episode 35. Until next time, be safe, be kind, and know that you are appreciated.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

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