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

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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:09Speaker 01

  I think people bring things about and they work towards goals that they aren't always aware of.

• 1:14Billy Corgan?

  Are we, are we, are we past the point and we're hurtling towards singularity, whether we want to or not, because the machines are going to basically create it?

• 1:22Speaker 01

  So that sounds pretty intense.

• 1:24Billy Corgan?

  It is and it isn't.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  To sum up a lot of it, people love the lie.

• 1:27Billy Corgan?

  So do you think, gosh, this is something, my brain sort of exploded, all these ideas?

• 1:31Speaker 01

  We all want this without realizing it.

• 1:33Billy Corgan?

  I dare throw this out there. Recently, you were talking about shapeshifters.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  Like someone said about our conversations, these are the best non-stone people having stoned our conversation.

• 1:44Billy Corgan?

  Thank you.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like that.

• 1:48Billy Corgan?

  Conrad Flynn, welcome back. Now, you're the only second-time guest, you're now the only third-time guest.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  I built up quite the lead.

• 1:54Billy Corgan?

  As we say in wrestling, Conrad is good for business, so happy to talk to you again. Anything you want to dive into before I go into my litany?

• 2:03Speaker 01

  No, I loved, at the time of this recording, the Courtney Love podcast just dropped, and that was a phenomenal interview.

• 2:09Billy Corgan?

  Oh, thank you.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  That was, that was very, very good.

• 2:10Billy Corgan?

  Well, my contention is Gen X is about to have our moment, finally. And I think what's interesting is because the media ignored us for so long and our generational story, when they should have covered it, which would have been about 10 or so years ago,

• 2:23Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:23Billy Corgan?

  that all those stories are completely fresh. So as you saw with the Courtney episode, us just talking candidly about things that we actually experienced caused this weird ripple because these stories have gone on told for 30-plus years with almost no critical investigation because the protected class has enjoyed the protection for 30 years of no one actually poking those narratives.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  No, no, it was a phenomenal interview and I saw it and I was like, look, Billy, you own a professional wrestling organization? What would it take for you to get you and Courtney Love in a tag team match against Kim Gordon and Stephen McAnus with Thurston Moore as the special guest referee?

• 3:05Billy Corgan?

  That's good booking because Thurston was always nice to me. So you wouldn't really be sure which way.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  That's the special guest, you know, Thurston won't, he won't do the count for Kim.

• 3:13Billy Corgan?

  That's good booking. And of course, we have Lee Rinaldo doing the running.

• 3:18Billy Corgan?

  He hits me with a.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  Who's he gonna hit with the chair?

• 3:20Billy Corgan?

  He hits me with an out-of-tune Jaguar.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  See, this is where your wrestling promo fails. Yeah.

• 3:28Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, let's just skip past all that.

• 3:32Billy Corgan?

  Anything else you want to get into?

• 3:35Speaker 01

  You know.

• 3:36Billy Corgan?

  You've been on, you've been on particular things lately, so.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  And we don't, since we, since we last talked, you talked about, earlier you and I talked about the potential CIA influence in.

• 3:47Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, which, which people had a big response to.

• 3:50Billy Corgan?

  Well, let's slow that down.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:53Billy Corgan?

  Do you want to quantify what you saw as the big response?

• 3:57Speaker 01

  The response was, well, you had speculated, which people didn't necessarily appreciate, that you had said there were multiple influences in any genre, in terms of what happens. But people were like, well, how top-down can the influence be on any, in entertainment and culture, you know?

• 4:14Billy Corgan?

  Okay, let me jump into that real quick.

• 4:19Billy Corgan?

  If, let's just say some governmental entity has access to all the information.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Right. Or super government.

• 4:26Billy Corgan?

  DARPA, like a DARPA-type.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 4:28Billy Corgan?

  Okay. With, now with AI.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:30Billy Corgan?

  Okay. So they would know far in advance what has organic energy, what's actually bubbling under.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:38Billy Corgan?

  So it doesn't take much to take something that already has organic energy. And as I pointed out, which of course got lost in the sauce on some of my comments, was rap was due for an organic moment. It's not like they propped up nobodies. They propped up great stars who are still stars and still talked about.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:57Billy Corgan?

  But as has been contended with the 60s artists and psychedelia and, and Haight-Ashbury, the CIA did have some involvement there and did step in and kind of, sort of shepherded along. So is it unreasonable to suggest that in a different era, in the 1990s, somebody said, okay, this thing's about to happen, we want to control it, or we want to take advantage of what's going to happen with this so that we get what we want out of it? I don't think that seems improbable.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  It's not an improbable, it's what happened. It especially happened. Well, the most amazing thing to come out of that was, since you and I talked, more of the Epstein files came out. And a guy who said he was very close with Jeffrey Epstein, the financier, was the former British Member of Parliament, Peter Mandelson, whose allegations of his, you know, giving secrets to Jeffrey Epstein was in the middle of maybe bringing down the Labour Government in the UK. And Mandelson was the guy who put together the Oasis-Tony Blair meeting of 97, the Cool Britannia.

• 5:57Billy Corgan?

  Can you go down that rabbit hole? Because you and I talked privately about this, but I, but I didn't know a lot of this information.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  So what was interesting is there was a Guardian article a few years ago with Kevin Shields.

• 6:07Billy Corgan?

  Of My Bloody Valentine.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and Kevin Shields had said that Britpop had some sort of weird backdoor push from the government. And this is Kevin Shields speaking. This isn't you or me going down. I think this is Kevin Shields. And, and he said, if you were to go through the MI5 records, you would see that Britpop was pushed by the government or that some strange stuff was going on there. Now, the record label, the classic record label that Kevin Shields was on is Croatian Records. Alan McGee, you know, one of the best independent record labels of all time.

• 6:35Billy Corgan?

  You could argue maybe the best independent record label of all time.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Yes. And, and, you know, he put out Loveless with that, all that stuff, you know? But in 97, Mandelson, Peter Mandelson, the guy that's currently with the allegations of, he admits to knowing Epstein, photos of him at parties came out. He's, he was going to be the ambassador to America from the UK. But now I think he's been arrested, you know, he's bringing down the British government. He was the guy in 97 who met with Alan McGee, who put together the Oasis-Tony Blair meeting, which was to your exact point. It was to take an emergent music scene, which was Britpop, take the band of the mid 90s in the UK, Oasis, and marry them to this nascent political movement, which was Tony Blair's Cool Labour on the upswing,

• 7:22Speaker 01

  and say, hey, no, you like Oasis? Well, check out Tony Blair. You know, that was put together by one of Epstein's, you know, later friends.

• 7:31Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  But, yeah, so to your point, not only does that, does that happen, but Damon Albarn of Blur, there's an interview I showed you where Damon Albarn was like, yeah, I was approached by Tony Blair and I found him terrifying in that same era. To be like, hey, we'd like to do business with you. And Jarvis Cocker of Pulp released the song Socialism in 97, that same year, about these kind of closed-door meetings.

• 7:54Billy Corgan?

  Yes, and I myself was approached by the Bush government around 2004.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:00Billy Corgan?

  And had multiple meetings with people in the Bush government.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  So in other words, what you said, that people were like, this is so outlandish. Governments would never want to meet with rock stars and pop stars and try to have any sort of synergy that.

• 8:10Billy Corgan?

  How about this? How about just even influence?

• 8:12Speaker 01

  Right, influence. That is, that did happen. It happened in 97, all over the UK. And you and I talked about this previously, but Tom Dreiberg, the Another Labour MP, approached Mick Jagger in 67. So this stuff, there's like tons of history.

• 8:25Billy Corgan?

  Let's pull the lens back out. We sit here in Tinsel Town. It's understood that the US government had vast influence over the subject matter in movies in the 1930s and 40s, going into the 50s. Propaganda efforts involving war, propaganda efforts involving how Labour would perceive being working class. These are all known things. A lot of these files have been released.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:50Billy Corgan?

  Okay. And there's certainly a feeling amongst, let's call it, intelligent people in the world that the US government continues to have an influence over what comes out of Hollywood, much to the detriment of this business, which you grew up in.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Well, I'll mention, my grandfather did a, he did one of those 1950s social message movies. It was an anti-communism, yeah, I think it's literally, you know, now considered like a Red Scare film. But he did it in 58, 59, and he campaigned on behalf of Nixon. It was Jack Warner, one of the Warner Brothers, who said, hey, Bob, I want you to campaign for Nixon. You know, you seem pretty conservative. I want you to actually go out and campaign, do this. But that was, or that was an orchestration between a campaign, Nixon, and they had. So, yeah, this stuff is not unusual.

• 9:39Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. So I don't, I don't understand why people have a hard time, like, believing that it's possible.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:46Billy Corgan?

  You know, so, so, so let me say it slightly differently. To speculate about it, I think, is human. To find enough anecdotal evidence to think like, okay, that's kind of interesting. Is there something there?

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:59Billy Corgan?

  Now, let's talk about the flip side of it. And if you want to take it in a different direction, please do. The flip side of it is, to me, is I've, I've had enough of these moments in my life where I'll say something or suggest something, and there's a convulsive reaction.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 10:12Billy Corgan?

  Which is, who are you? Why are you saying this?

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:16Billy Corgan?

  This, can this be true or this can't possibly be true? And then you wait about two weeks and it all kind of goes away. And why does it go away? Because people on some intuitive level know that what I've said is directionally true.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:31Billy Corgan?

  I'm not an investigative journalist. I just have enough experience to know I think there's something over there.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  Right. And you've been in those rooms where you've actually been approached. You're not just some guy reading on the internet. You've.

• 10:40Billy Corgan?

  Yes, and I even had no less than Norman Lear once approached me and pulled me aside and say, I understand what you're saying, but you, you might need more context.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:49Billy Corgan?

  So how did I take that in that moment? To mean, yes, what you're saying is directionally true, but there's probably more nuance to it.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:58Billy Corgan?

  So when John Wayne was working against communists in Hollywood, he probably believed, I don't, I don't think John Wayne was a government agent. I believed he, he was, I believe he believed he was working to the best interests of the America that he believed.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 11:12Billy Corgan?

  And I've often find that people in governmental institutions, even if I disagree with them politically, they believe in what they're after.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:20Billy Corgan?

  So they would have no problem leaning on people or ushering in something that they believe will not only be politically expedient, but also sort of serve, let's call it the greater thing that they're after.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  Well, that's, I mean, I'm going to belabor the point, but.

• 11:34Billy Corgan?

  That's what we do here.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  No, that, in 1970, I, I wrote about this on the, on the Substack. You have Blood, Sweat & Tears. They, they did a tour in Eastern Europe that the American government more or less pushed them into because their lead singer.

• 11:49Billy Corgan?

  David Clayton Thomas.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were going to pull his green card. I think they did pull his green card and then they were like, well, coincidentally, we do need a rock band to do a tour in Eastern Europe. And they had previously been involved in like 1968 politics, the Chicago Seven, very left wing politics. But having done now a tour for the State Department and some would say the CIA, when Blood, Sweat & Tears came back from their European tour, Abbie Hoffman and what's his name, Jerry Rubin, they were dumping manure outside of Madison Square Garden, calling them the CIA band, which really hurt their credibility and really damaged the band's reputation. But there you go. That's an example of what they would later do. You speculated with rap is taking something, rock music in 1968, 1970,

• 12:34Speaker 01

  and saying, rather than be oppositional to this, let's use the energy from this.

• 12:38Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so that's why, that's why I find it hard to believe that is so controversial.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  It's literally been done numerous times in the UK and the US.

• 12:45Billy Corgan?

  Here's your trivia question today. What was David Clayton's first project after he left Blood, Sweat & Tears called?

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness, I, I don't, I don't know.

• 12:53Billy Corgan?

  It has a, I, I now, I'm probably, maybe I'm wrong, but my memory serves. It's, it was a project called, yes, Jelly Roll.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  Project Jelly Roll? I, I have no idea.

• 13:04Billy Corgan?

  That, that was called Jelly Roll.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  Oh, it's called Jelly Roll.

• 13:06Billy Corgan?

  And not Project Jelly Roll.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:07Billy Corgan?

  So I will have to look that up as soon as we get. Okay, so let's start here. I saw in a recent Substack, of course, you have your great Substack, The Flynn Effect.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  Flynn Effect, yes, yes.

• 13:16Billy Corgan?

  Uh, some of it's free, some of it's paid. We're all in the game. You were talking about Chariots of the Gods. Now, I used to go stay with my paternal grandmother, Lillian, and she was an avid reader and she had Chariots of the Gods. So somewhere about age six, I'm reading, or whatever, eight, I'm reading Chariots of the Gods. That was my first connection.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Sure, sure.

• 13:36Billy Corgan?

  To the idea that there've been alien races here before and were they still having an influence over us? So let's, let's start there because I, I want to take us down a particular path.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you, you see this now with a lot of the, instead of calling them UFOs, what they call them now, UAPs. The rebranding.

• 13:53Billy Corgan?

  So, okay, right. Right there, is that a red flag that UFOs have now been re-branded?

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Um, yes, I mean, in the way, if you're into UFO stuff, it benefits you because now you don't have as much of a stigma. So it's.

• 14:05Billy Corgan?

  But I'm saying, just the fact that it's been rebranded is a red flag. Because why is it being rebranded? And who rebranded it?

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Well, that, that's a good, that's a good question. It is, it's some sort of flag. I think it works for UFO people. So I would consider almost like a yellow flag because I don't know, I don't know if it's a green or a red flag, but it's something.

• 14:20Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Okay. You know, there was a book that, when I did the Tucker episode and it came out in October, there was a book, I'm forgetting the name of it, from the 19th century, but it's called Earth's Earliest Ages. And it was by a, it was by this theologian in Victorian England, but it tied in essentially with like ancient aliens, where it's the idea that, uh, you know, there are eras, you know, going back to the beginning of man, that where they're demonic or supernatural things. You know, this is where you get into the, the Nephilim and stuff like that in the Bible. And I read the book and I was, I was amazed because it's from like 1883, but it reads like something from 1968. It reads like Chariot of the Gods or Countless Christians in the seventies.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  So what's interesting with this, this alien stuff and all this stuff is realizing how far back the interest in this goes, whether it's spiritualism or supernatural, you know.

• 15:14Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  So, yeah, it, I think, you think of it as being a 20th century phenomenon, but.

• 15:19Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so the reason I threw this out here is, is a little bit of red meat is, recently had the honor to visit for a private tour at the new George Lucas Museum, which is about to open in Los Angeles in September of 2026. So depending on when you see this. And what George has done is, because I, I assumed as a fan, I just assumed it was going to be very heavy Star Wars.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 15:44Billy Corgan?

  Star Wars is a part of the museum, but it's not the museum. Really what it is, is, is the power of storytelling and the power of myth and our, our connection to myth.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:53Billy Corgan?

  So, um, Zacharias Sitchin, who wrote the famous book, I think, called The 12th Planet, which ushers in this idea that the ancient Sumerians, and it's all in plain evidence in the Sumerian Scrolls, only 25% of which have ever been translated, is there's evidence in the Sumerian Scrolls that ancient people 7,000 years ago not only lived with, with alien races, but sort of, they were, it was normal. They were like.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:18Billy Corgan?

  Spaceship launches and all sorts of stuff. And Sitchin suggested that, that our, our, um, our obsession with gold and our obsession with certain types of narrative forms has to do with the fact that we were geo-engineered to be human, the humans we are today from whatever we were before by alien races. And that's how, kind of how we got here. So on some level, and this is where the Star Wars myth is so powerful, on some level, we know that there's this kind of, there's this deeper story. Of course, biblical people might have a problem with it, but there's this deeper story where we know somewhere deep in our DNA that our, the story we've been told isn't true. And so we're basically resonating with the real story without knowing what the real story is.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  Well, with Star Wars, it's a funny thing to bring up because, and I wrote about this on the Substack. It was.

• 17:09Billy Corgan?

  We need a bell every time we do a plug, including for me too.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  Every time there's a plug.

• 17:14Billy Corgan?

  As I drink my Madame Souza's tea, we just need like a bell.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  It'll be full Peewee's playhouse.

• 17:18Billy Corgan?

  I should have my own bell, actually.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  Every time you plug, it's the word of the day. No, but I wrote a thing on Substack about how George Lucas took very, he, he used for Star Wars for the macro story. It's from the same book of the Bible that he used for Indiana Jones, which is the Book of Kings. So Indiana Jones, you have the Ark of the Covenant.

• 17:35Billy Corgan?

  But did Spielberg do Indiana Jones?

• 17:37Speaker 01

  Um, he, he directed it, but Lucas produced it.

• 17:39Billy Corgan?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  And the idea, yeah, Indiana Jones is like, it, it's named after George Lucas's dog, Indiana, Indiana. So, uh, yeah, Lucas produced Indiana Jones. And in Indiana Jones, you have the Ark of the Covenant, which features very prominently, um, you know, the Levites, I think can, can touch it or can open it. But with Star Wars, he takes from the same book. He takes the story of David and the story of Saul, the story of a farm boy chosen to be the, the guy, but then.

• 18:09Billy Corgan?

  I didn't know this.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, but the, the robed one, Samuel, who's kind of like the Obi-Wan figure, he initially picks Saul or Darth Vader to be the anointed savior, and he realizes he's picked the wrong guy.

• 18:19Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  So he picks the second farm boy, David, uh, or Luke Skywalker.

• 18:23Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  And that's why, really quick in both stories, like Saul Vader dies on Endor, there's Hebrew on Darth Vader's breastplate. So to your point about stories, the Bible has repeating stories, both in the Old Testament within itself and in the New Testament, where the Jesus story, Jesus in many ways is an amalgamation of all these Old Testament stories.

• 18:43Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  And Antichrist is a similarly amalgamation of all these like villainous figures.

• 18:47Billy Corgan?

  Yes. Yes, I know that's oftentimes what the, with the anti-Jesus people go into, like that basically there were Jesus stories before Jesus showed up. I'm, I'm a believer of Jesus, so I'm going to throw that out there.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  But there, there were, but that, that's the thing is they were, there was, he was prophesied and he, he figures.

• 19:02Billy Corgan?

  Sure, sure. I'm not, we can talk about that some other thing. But what I'm after is, is, is what's beautiful about George's museum, and I got to see it in this, you know, this early stage, is he's, he's used the different media. So whether it's physical objects, like objects from the Star Wars movies or his vast collection of Norman, Norman Rockwell paintings, he uses the different media to basically say there's a commonality here in what we're after and what we're interested in. And obviously, he's a master storyteller in that regard in that he, he is able to kind of identify what is the core mythological connection that binds us all together. In many ways, it's probably the most unifying effect that we have is that we're all, all kind of after the same thing.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  Sure. There's only, I mean, there are many books written about, there's only like seven stories. There's only, you know.

• 19:51Billy Corgan?

  Sure. Right. So. Pick a direction, because here we are, we're taping just after Easter, the resurrection.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:01Billy Corgan?

  Right?

• 20:02Speaker 01

  We have to pick a direction. I was going into this, I was going to, during the resurrection, I was going to go into the, at the time we're taping, the Chapel Rohn scandal from a few weeks ago. Are you familiar with that?

• 20:12Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so let's, let's, let's do this. Let's play it, let's play a game. So over here, we have Chapel Rohn, who's allegedly been discovered as being, I guess, the grandchild of some rich people or something. Is that, that's the controversy?

• 20:24Speaker 01

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

• 20:52Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so let's do this, because I love this, this is the, this is the artist in me. So over here, we have, let's call it this new Chapel Rohn story.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:01Billy Corgan?

  But we're going to approach these as mythological concepts.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Sure, sure.

• 21:03Billy Corgan?

  And over here, we have the resurrection. How do these two things go together? Ready? I'm going to answer my own question first, then you jump.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  I want to know.

• 21:11Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so let's start here. I really like Chapel Rohn. I don't know her personally. I mean, I played a festival with her, very talented, but have never met her, never shaken her hand and said that I'm a fan.

• 21:23Billy Corgan?

  So what we see playing out right now is, is, is an accusation, for like a better way to put it, that she's foisted upon the world something untrue.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:35Billy Corgan?

  So you have a convulsive reaction from the audience, which is saying, wait, I bought into your story. And there's all sorts of layers of that.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:42Billy Corgan?

  Whether she really was poor or not, there are interviews where she said she was impoverished, or she-

• 21:48Speaker 01

  She showed her tax returns on the, no.

• 21:50Billy Corgan?

  I don't know, but, but then also, there's also some hue and cry from the LGBT community, that she sort of wrapped herself in the colors of the LGBT community, and whether or not she's truly representing, and all this type of stuff. So over here, we have the concept of identity, and whether or not this identity, in a related but far different story, I'm, I'm friends with Laura Albert, who wrote the famous J T Roy books, and it was later out, it is not that she wasn't a 16-year-old male prostitute who'd written these books. She was actually, you know, a mother living in San Francisco.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:26Billy Corgan?

  So the idea is, is, is when, and I guess what I'm after, and I can talk more directly about Chapel if you want, but what I, what I see is,

• 22:36Billy Corgan?

  on some level, the audience is mad that they believed in somebody, that they find out that what they believed in isn't true. But why was it necessary that what they believed in was true?

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Right, and you're getting into this idea, we talked about last time with the avatar, they, they bought into the, almost the three-dimensional-

• 22:53Billy Corgan?

  Does, does, does the art, here's the question, does the artist have a responsibility to present a true avatar?

• 22:59Speaker 01

  I mean-

• 23:00Billy Corgan?

  When your dad, sorry, your grandfather was in these movies, or a TV show, was, was he playing himself? No, he was playing a character?

• 23:07Speaker 01

  No, no, I mean, you're, especially with publicists in Hollywood, you're always yelling, it's after some point with a fictional creation, or, or at the very least a caricature, and that's, that's how people become characters of themselves.

• 23:17Billy Corgan?

  So here's the question, is it fair that, that Chapel Rohn fans would be mad that she may, because I don't know, she may have presented something that's not her?

• 23:27Speaker 01

  In a way, the whole thing is, is ridiculous, because people end up getting into idolatry, and then the fact that the idol doesn't meet the idol requirements, like, well, you were-

• 23:35Billy Corgan?

  Well, I experienced that in my own-

• 23:36Speaker 01

  Right, so, so I want to, that's why I wanted to ask you about-

• 23:39Billy Corgan?

  I would meet, I would meet people, and they would be disappointed that I wasn't whoever they created their, in their mind.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  Right, that's just it, it's a losing gambit, but that's, but in a way, what, what does the pop star do in many cases is, in their team, is they create the idol, or they want the idol. As you know, in wrestling, you want to get the person over, right?

• 23:55Billy Corgan?

  But let, let's put it this way, is it, is it, is it better, and I'm using, we're obviously using Chapel as, as an example, because even her name is an invention. Is it better if, if everything that she'd said was true? Or is it better that she'd found an effective way to communicate?

• 24:14Speaker 01

  From the Hollywood standpoint, the latter, but basically, it would have been better if she'd been more straightforward. But that's not as good.

• 24:21Billy Corgan?

  What, what, what would she have gotten if she was, had been more straightforward? And by the way, if she'd never gained any ground in a very tough and competitive market, and we didn't even know who she was, what would it matter? Does she, does she win some honor prize for authenticity?

• 24:35Speaker 01

  She, she's, she was-

• 24:35Billy Corgan?

  Because, sorry, because in this very setting, talking with Courtney, we got a certain amount of guff for, for lampooning a certain, you know, alternative icon for being a gatekeeper.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:47Billy Corgan?

  And what was the gatekeeper on about? By the way, that particular gatekeeper is the daughter of a, of a, like a professor.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:54Billy Corgan?

  Courtney, I didn't grow up with a professor as a dad. You know what I mean?

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:59Billy Corgan?

  So people, elitists get to play these games with words and concepts, but, but the real foot soldiers have to go and figure it out.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  But you're also getting something which is fundamental to show business, where people can, their shtick can be anti-shtick. Their shtick can be, I don't, I don't have one, and that, and that's, but that's also, as you know, that's also indie rock gatekeeping. Is, I, is, I'm the anti-rock star, but then they end up having shticks within shticks.

• 25:21Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so tell me if what I'm saying is untrue. Are there people, that people commonly know, famous rock stars, that are total frauds?

• 25:28Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 25:29Billy Corgan?

  And you hear the stories?

• 25:30Speaker 01

  Yes, I mean, in terms of their behavior, I mean, like, it's show business, like, you know, it's, it's, it's all, I mean-

• 25:36Billy Corgan?

  Bruce, Bruce Springsteen starts his, his Netflix special by saying, I'm not really Bruce Springsteen.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  No, of, of course not. I mean, I mean, that's, Keith Richards famously doesn't like Bruce Springsteen, he's like, the whole thing's too convoluted. He also says, if you close your eyes, he goes, he sounds like Neil Diamond, but that's, that, that, this is the Keith Richards scandal that will now happen, but yeah.

• 25:56Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  But that's, really quick, about, about-

• 25:58Billy Corgan?

  Please, please.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  About Springsteen, so I was on a thing-

• 26:01Billy Corgan?

  You got to get back to the other thing.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  No, no, I, I was just on a thing about comparing Springsteen with, with, with Taylor Swift. We were in a conversation with someone, and it's like, Taylor Swift is essentially the female Bruce Springsteen, because the, the thing is primarily relatability. And the fact that they both work in the kind of pre-sixties American, Americana sensibilities. Springsteen, I mean, you know, when Springsteen first came out, I'm not meaning to bash Bruce Springsteen, but Todd Rundgren hated Springsteen so much that he signed Meatloaf, because he thought Meatloaf's Paradise, Paradise by the Dashboard Light, was a whole big, like, Springsteen goof, because he's like, oh, this is so corny, 50s, driving your car with your girl, and it being really overwrought.

• 26:42Billy Corgan?

  I didn't know that.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  But the same thing was leveled at Taylor Swift, where it's like, man, this is like Doris Day, this is so corny. But they both have a relatability to their image.

• 26:51Billy Corgan?

  Okay, but again, does it matter if they're really those people?

• 26:54Speaker 01

  From the showbiz perspective, and as long as, no, like, that's, it's wrestling, it's like, that's, Hulk Hogan is not as-

• 26:59Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so let's go back to Miss Rohn.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:04Billy Corgan?

  What, so let's say, let's say this accusation, or vibe, or cloud over her sticks. It becomes part of her story.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:13Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so now we're back to the resurrection.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:16Billy Corgan?

  What, what does she do next?

• 27:21Billy Corgan?

  You, you, you're-

• 27:22Speaker 01

  I'm the publicist.

• 27:22Billy Corgan?

  You're notably that, you're notably the, the grandson of a famous publicist.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Publicist, and my other grandfather was the son of a publicist, too. Great-grandmother's on Billboard as a publicist.

• 27:32Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  That's, that, that's a good ques, I mean, what I think she, she should do in some sense isn't good for her career, which is a really big about, essentially go kiss without makeup, and just have an about face, but that, that, as a, in publicist's mind, that's, that's not the move. But that, as a, as a, if I knew her, something like that, I'd have to think about it. What, what would you have her do? Because you know her situation better from the inside, in terms of the media hates this person, there's a backlash, like-

• 28:01Billy Corgan?

  If I was advising her privately, which I'm now about to say what I would say publicly, I would say, there's, it's the, it's the famous Chinese finger trick, there's no way out of this box.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:13Billy Corgan?

  So the only way is to, is to lose.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  Turn heel, embrace it?

• 28:18Billy Corgan?

  No, not turn heel. Now, I'm speaking metaphorically, so before anybody goes crazy with this, okay? You, you must accept a public death.

• 28:31Billy Corgan?

  A public symbolic death.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 28:34Billy Corgan?

  I'm not talking about literal death. I'm not encouraging her in any way, shape or form to not be here.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:39Billy Corgan?

  It's the opposite.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:40Billy Corgan?

  You must resurrect your own self. And the only way you can have a resurrection is you have to go through a symbolic death.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  I can.

• 28:48Billy Corgan?

  In my, in my case.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:50Billy Corgan?

  Cause it's easiest thing for me to, to, to explain. I created an avatar called Zero, which was most famously connected to the, to the melancholy album. The character goes insane. The character evolves to a second character, which is called Glass. And yes, the metaphors are real. Glass is easily broken.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:07Billy Corgan?

  Into a million pieces. And then I brought that character back in a third iteration around 2018 called Shiny.

• 29:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:14Billy Corgan?

  And now the pumpkins are about to go on a, a major tour and we are going to witness the parsonful like funeral of the character. The character is going to finally die in public.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  So that sounds pretty intense.

• 29:27Billy Corgan?

  It is and it isn't.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:29Billy Corgan?

  Because again, we're talking about something that's completely in the mind.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:34Billy Corgan?

  But let me go back to Ms. Rone, because I think it's a really interesting subject to explore.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:38Billy Corgan?

  You know, as, as you and I can admit, we don't talk about what we're going to talk about. We literally just.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  No.

• 29:44Billy Corgan?

  We literally just rolled the dice and see what happens.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that's why I like, like talking.

• 29:46Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, we have a good conversational rapport. So, uh, in the case of Ms. Rone, it doesn't take a, a, a, uh, MIT scientist to figure out that she's going to be surrounded by a lot of people in fear.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:01Billy Corgan?

  And they're going to try to game theory out how to pivot.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:05Billy Corgan?

  Does she do the confessional Barbara Walters style interview? Heck, maybe she wants to come here and talk to me about it. She would be more than welcome. She's a great artist. Very talented.

• 30:16Billy Corgan?

  And like a Bowie, understands the power of the avatar.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:20Billy Corgan?

  Probably she's the most powerful, uh, artist who's working with avatars in the media right now outside of Gaga.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Right. The Bowie thing is, I mean, Bowie, also the son of a publicist. His dad was a public relations guy, which is probably why he was.

• 30:35Billy Corgan?

  Are you accusing David Bowie of being calculating?

• 30:37Speaker 01

  Uh, you know, I'm gonna, there's something, there's a, I don't know if anyone's ever said it, but he's like a chameleon, that guy. Like the way he could change. Like, I'm going to be the first person.

• 30:44Billy Corgan?

  Speaking of David real quick, I recently started following his daughter Lexi, who's the daughter, I believe of David and Aman. And she came out publicly and talked about some of her struggles as a teenager. I highly recommend people follow her on social media. Because she came out very openly and very, uh, soberly. And I don't mean, you know, not on drugs. I mean, she just in a very sober manner laid out the difficulty she had as a teenager when her parents decided to do kind of almost like an intervention and send her to kind of a outward bound type, type camp. And she went through a lot of issues that I, I'd never heard of. I, I knew they had a daughter, but I didn't know about these issues. I guess at this point, I don't know how old she is, maybe 30.

• 31:25Billy Corgan?

  And she talked very openly in this post on her social media about what she went through as a teen, always sort of living in the shadow of this, this great artist. And of course, her mother's also famous. But then also, you know, the, the sense of betrayal that her parents sent her away when she was in this really vulnerable place in her life. She doesn't accuse anybody of anything. She's just kind of lays it all out very, uh, and now she's really publicly using social media, trying to find her feet as an artist. It's quite, quite interesting because what is she playing with as the daughter of David Bowie? She's playing with what mask am I wearing here?

• 31:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:59Billy Corgan?

  Even if it's my own.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  Well, this is something I wanted to bring up to you.

• 32:03Billy Corgan?

  Lexi Jones is her.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  Lexi Jones?

• 32:05Billy Corgan?

  Her name.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  Check, check out Lexi Jones. Um, tying together a bunch of the, um, the themes we're talking about is, uh, I was at a party about a month ago. And, uh, someone, Courtney Love had come up and someone goes, you know, Courtney is really bold and brave for always keeping her Instagram comments so open. Because half of her comments are just people accusing her of killing her husband. And I said, I realized at the time, once she said this, I'd never put this together. I thought to myself, I thought Courtney Love it was the Erica Kirk before Erica Kirk. And I thought of the analogy, and of course I cannot think of two white guys who are more different in public persona than Kurt Cobain and Charlie Kirk.

• 32:42Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  I, I literally.

• 32:44Billy Corgan?

  That's quite a stretch you're making.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, this is, yeah. But, but they both, um, in both cases, you had these very formidable blonde widows who, uh, are just accused of this, you know, for the rest of their lives.

• 32:54Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  And are hated. And you have, uh, in both cases, I mean, um, ironically enough, Kim Gordon, who I don't know. I like her. I loved her memoirs. I've quoted them on, on podcasts. But Kim Gordon, who once said in Uncut Magazine, she said, I don't know how, I don't know if Kurt killed himself. Frankly, I think there's something to that. Kim Gordon's kind of the Candace Owens figure in this thing. Someone that knew the guy that died and knew him before the wife. And someone who kind of maliciously or whatever, maybe she thinks there's something to it, keeps this story alive and twists the knife on the widow. But both stories are very similar in terms of how this played out.

• 33:29Billy Corgan?

  Okay, yeah.

• 33:32Billy Corgan?

  I'm going to skip past that because I don't want to wade into that myself. But, but you bring up a very interesting point, which goes back to the idea of the avatar is run aground. So using Ms. Rone again as the example here. And then the concept of resurrection.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:48Billy Corgan?

  Right? The reason the concept of resurrection is so powerful is unless you're literally going to come back from the dead, the, the symbolic concept of resurrection is you can be reborn.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:59Billy Corgan?

  Now, if you want to skip past it as a religious concept, meaning you must accept Jesus as your savior and be reborn in, in that particular manner. As a public personality, you can be reborn in your, in your avatar.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:11Billy Corgan?

  And that's would be my suggestion to Ms. Rone.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:15Billy Corgan?

  You're skilled enough and you're talented enough to, to remake the avatar. Now, in my case, what I did is I imbued my loss, my tragedy and my trauma into the character. So I allowed myself to not sort of become some sort of superhuman, uber menshala Nietzsche.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:33Billy Corgan?

  I became a more and more broken figure.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 34:37Billy Corgan?

  And what that did is, um,

• 34:41Billy Corgan?

  here's the best way I can explain. I had a therapist in the, in the early 2000s and, uh, we were talking intently after the pumpkins had broken up in 2000. And he said quite cryptically, and it took me a long time to process what he meant. He said, it's good you did what you did, meaning it's good you broke up the band.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:00Billy Corgan?

  And I said, how was that good? Cause at that point I was still questioning the decision. And obviously I put the band back together at some point.

• 35:07Billy Corgan?

  He said, because the public wanted a body and you gave them one. In essence, the, the public kind of whips itself up into a kind of a mob like frenzy that it needs to see something.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 35:18Billy Corgan?

  Right? And in the parable or, or in the reality, depending how you want to take it, of Jesus's death, you know, it is the crowd that calls for Barabbas to be spared and Jesus to be sacrificed.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  Well, to your exact point there, with all, um, the deaths of idols, and I have a relative who made this great analogy, which is, syncs up very well with your own, with Jesus, is there's either, they always either have to believe that the death was caused via a conspiracy, a betrayal. Like it can't be a stupid death or it can't be for nothing.

• 35:47Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  There, there needs to be a deeper betrayer, a Judas like figure. Or if there is not a Judas like figure, in the case of someone like Elvis, they believe that he never died, that he was either resurrected.

• 35:58Billy Corgan?

  Jim Morrison.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, or he lives on.

• 36:00Billy Corgan?

  Or Tupac.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Or Tupac. No, but, but that's just it. But so to your exact point about the idol archetype, uh, either there is a Judas figure who betrayed him and, you know, it follows that to a T, even in the case of.

• 36:12Billy Corgan?

  Well, the parallel here would be in this case, Courtney is set up in that particular concept, construct as the, as the Judas like figure.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  As the scapegoat and, yeah, but, but in the case of, uh, Charlie Kirk too, his wife, and then the, the people that say, no, Charlie Kirk's still alive. And to your thing, the idea that he never really died.

• 36:30Billy Corgan?

  How about, how about, I literally, somebody asked me last night, do you think Jeffrey Epstein's still alive?

• 36:35Speaker 01

  Right. People can accept on some level that there is, that people die, that God can show you the red card and take you off the pitch at any moment.

• 36:42Billy Corgan?

  What would you say to Ms. Rone?

• 36:45Speaker 01

  Um, I would have, I would reconsider, uh, I don't know. I'd, I'd have to give it some thought, but with a lot of her act, it's intentionally confrontational and it's intentionally surly. You know, the, the whole thing about, you know, I don't want to say it, but be, be the C word, you know, that, that a lot of people will encourage pop stars to be now.

• 37:06Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  When you encourage women to be the C word and then they act like that, um, that was always playing with fire. So her whole brand or her whole persona of like, she's the ultra, ultra diva who's going to be really surly or really this. That was always going to potentially want to foul if you're, if you're rude to.

• 37:26Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I have one comment and then I, then I want to move on.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  No, that's great.

• 37:29Billy Corgan?

  I, I, I saw some of the stuff floating out about her past and people's TikToks or whatever.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:35Billy Corgan?

  Sort of surprised by it.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:37Billy Corgan?

  And then I watched her being interviewed, you know, as a teen.

• 37:42Billy Corgan?

  And then of course I'd seen her comments along the way, almost like cast in a certain form of bitterness, how she'd been around for 10 years until somebody figured out that she was valuable.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:52Billy Corgan?

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

• 38:25Billy Corgan?

  and, you know, go back to Kim Gordon. Why was I attacked from Kim Gordon? Cause I wasn't punk rock enough.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:29Billy Corgan?

  Like what the does that mean?

• 38:31Speaker 01

  That's, that's a billion dollar question.

• 38:32Billy Corgan?

  Okay. So what did Courtney say in the very chair you're sitting in? See, you were real.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:39Billy Corgan?

  And you got slung up on the cross because you were real, where everybody else around you was faking it. So I was basically being attacked by an icon of the alternative movement for not faking it good enough.

• 38:50Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 38:51Billy Corgan?

  So this is why I'm empathetic to Ms. Rone. Because now she's being attacked for faking it too good.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  Right, right, right. It is amazing how these situations play themselves. I mean, when that happened, I'm sure you-

• 39:04Billy Corgan?

  What's the public pathos, you see? It's the public that sets these things in motion.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 39:09Billy Corgan?

  The artist just figures out how to play the public. And then the public ultimately gets mad.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  How much of this, when you see an artist go through something like that, do you want to just tell them this does and doesn't have anything to do with you? This has to do with-

• 39:20Billy Corgan?

  This is the difficulty. It does have to do with them because it could only work in their hands.

• 39:28Billy Corgan?

  You could give, if you were able to kind of create a playbook, you're gonna say this, you're gonna do this, you're gonna dress like this, you're gonna do your hair like this, you're gonna do this type of music. It only works for chapel.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 39:39Billy Corgan?

  It's a playbook of one.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 39:41Billy Corgan?

  Right? The best artists, in this case, pop stars, there's only one.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 39:47Speaker 03

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• 41:58Speaker 01

  Right, and to your point, it's like when certain quarterbacks go down and the whole offense stinks. It's like, well, the whole offense was built around that guy's skill.

• 42:05Billy Corgan?

  Yes, so she's built an entire world around her ability to muster up an avatar.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:11Billy Corgan?

  So my advice, and back to the point I was trying to make, is is you have the power to reinvent the avatar. But in order to reinvent the avatar, you must let the other one die.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  I think you're right.

• 42:22Billy Corgan?

  Symbolically, before anybody tries to clickbait.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  You have metaphors here.

• 42:27Billy Corgan?

  Okay, let's carry on. There's so much, we could literally talk for an hour and a half about that.

• 42:34Billy Corgan?

  Let's talk about your perception of what now seems to be a big obsession, which is the singularity.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  I mean, it's funny. A few weeks ago, The New Yorker wrote about Nick Land, the guy that I had-

• 42:53Billy Corgan?

  You and Mr. Land seem to have a particular public dance going on.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  Well, what's funny is he really liked the Tucker episode, actually.

• 42:59Billy Corgan?

  He probably likes the publicity.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  Well, that too, you know, and he's also-

• 43:02Billy Corgan?

  In fact, in fact, sorry to interrupt you. But literally, someone came up to me the other day, not having seen our previous episodes, and said, "You need to interview Nick Land." I swear to God.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  We can make that happen. He lives in China, so we can fly him out here.

• 43:22Billy Corgan?

  Who's "we"?

• 43:23Speaker 01

  I mean, the greater powers.

• 43:25Billy Corgan?

  The governmental entity.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, whoever. It would probably go through a lot of hoops.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, so The New Yorker did a whole thing on Nick Land because he's become very, you know, how influential he was has come out. And six months ago, it was more like, is he as big as he was? But Elon Musk now retweets him and is always talking about him. And Elon Musk follows him and was supposed to be at this dinner. And yeah, so The New Yorker wrote an article about him. And Nick Land was on this podcast recently with these guys on the Dangerous Maybe, this podcast that they do with Nick Land occasionally. These two guys, Mikey Downs and Nance, and they talked to him. And Nick Land actually said exactly what I said on Tucker, where the other guest, which is this occultist, John Michael Greer, said, you know, "The singularity is essentially a tech version of Christianity

• 44:15Speaker 01

  with it's Jesus Christ as a computer, where all computers eventually merge into one reality."

• 44:21Billy Corgan?

  This enrages me, but keep going.

• 44:22Speaker 01

  But Nick Land said that's, he goes, "I think I do the same thing, too. I take Christian eschatology and Christianity, and I merge the oneness of all things, of the spiritual realm, tech, all people being turned into a network. I've turned Christianity on its head and created a kind of Luciferic, you know, Gnostic counter."

• 44:43Billy Corgan?

  Okay, at least he's calling it for what it is.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  Right. But this is exactly what I said on Tucker, and people were like, "Is that really true?" But that is, so the singularity, what I had said was slightly different. Well, I didn't say it was Jesus's return. I said it was more like the day of Pentecost. It was the day when the Holy Spirit inhabited all believers, and there was a kind of spiritual network turned on. And that is essentially how the singularity, from my understanding of it, because as many definitions works.

• 45:06Billy Corgan?

  If there's a "they," do you think this is what they're after?

• 45:11Speaker 01

  On some level, the world brain, I mean, the internet in a sense is the world brain.

• 45:16Billy Corgan?

  Okay, but if we go into conspiracy theories, this seems to connect to ecological movements, depopulation movements. You know, that whole nexus of ideas that they- And even Ayn Rand talked about it in, I can't remember if it's The Fountainhead, but it's the idea that, you know, they're gonna get, they're gonna return the planet, basically, to nature. There's only gonna be about 500,000 people left on this planet, and they're all gonna be connected to the Borg-

• 45:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 45:46Billy Corgan?

  -and jerking off in their brains to each other.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  I mean, that's, yeah.

• 45:51Billy Corgan?

  But I'm saying, do you think that's what they are after?

• 45:53Speaker 01

  I think, I mean, we are building towards, the internet already exists, which is itself a kind of global, global brain. The idea of implanting computers in people and having us permanently online, permanently hooked up, you can shut some people off, you can shut some people on. On every level, we are moving towards that, whether it's intentional or not, whether- But you asked me, do I think that they want that? Yeah, of course.

• 46:18Billy Corgan?

  Do you think it's an elitist class that sort of wants to, basically, it's like, there's like a club, there's a red velvet rope. And those who are jumping after the singularity, the Kurzweils of the world, that they get to be in the club, and the rest are either gonna perish or be just kind of a slave class?

• 46:35Speaker 01

  Yes, on the one hand, I do think that there are people that do that. But my attitude, this is important to know about a lot of what I say, I think a lot of conspiracies do also boil down to when Jesus is on the cross. He says, "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do." I think people bring things about and they work towards goals that they aren't always aware of.

• 46:54Billy Corgan?

  But we're talking about the conscious end of that spectrum.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  I think some of them are, but I think some of them aren't. I think some of them are just trying to get rich, and they're building it anyway. That was the thing, in the reaction to my Tucker thing, a lot of people who work in this industry, very big people, have been like, "Oh, yeah, the blockchain does look like the mark of the beast." That was their own separate, like, huh, I've been working on this for years. It says that in Revelation 13. So you have people that were working towards this without realizing it.

• 47:21Billy Corgan?

  So if there's an elite class, how many are there on the planet? A true elite class? Is it 1,000? Is it 10,000? Is it 100,000?

• 47:30Speaker 01

  My guess, just, I put it 10,000.

• 47:33Billy Corgan?

  Sounds about right.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, 10,000.

• 47:41Billy Corgan?

  Do you think they're gonna get there? And then I want to go back to talking about the, the, the, let's call it the digital Jesus.

• 47:48Speaker 01

  I think, do I think they'll get there?

• 47:52Speaker 01

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

• 48:14Billy Corgan?

  By, but. Okay, here's a side question. Can, can, can the AI be controlled? Are we, are we, are we past the point and we're hurtling towards singularity whether we want to or not? Because the machines are gonna basically create it.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  Um.

• 48:26Billy Corgan?

  And I have a, I have a, I didn't have to that, but please answer that.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  At this point, in terms of probably, probably not if we, if even if America shut it down, China would have their own version of it.

• 48:36Billy Corgan?

  So it's, so it's a foregone conclusion.

• 48:38Speaker 01

  It's a fore, but the thing I, as I mentioned this on Tucker is that like there's, there's a horror movie way of thinking about these things where uh, evil is in charge, Satan is in charge, and that's the next, that's the, that's the fact of horror movies.

• 48:48Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, we're back to avatars. Wouldn't, does it matter? Does it matter if, if the, if the faith is real, if, if the singularity is real? We're, we're in, now we're in a system where people are beginning to believe it.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  Right, but my attitude is that God is, God allows all things to happen.

• 49:01Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  According to his purposes. So even in the midst of real evil, even evil that Westerners don't understand, the real faith of knowing that God not only has allowed this, but has directed this.

• 49:10Billy Corgan?

  Okay, well, that's, that's, that's beyond my biblical pay grade, but, um, but I, I do know that as a sort of a foundational concept for certain believers.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  It would be funny if we just leaned into it and we're like, no, this, I think this whole podcast is now about predestination and this is now a Calvinist podcast.

• 49:27Billy Corgan?

  We'll go wherever we gotta go. Back to digital Jesus for a second.

• 49:33Billy Corgan?

  And, uh, in a, in a meeting I had the other day, uh, the reason I said that enrages me is because it is ultimately the foundational concept of, of the devil, which is I'm gonna do God better than God can do God.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:48Billy Corgan?

  It presupposes that through cunning guile and technological innovation that we're basically gonna match and/or surpass God's influence.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:57Billy Corgan?

  Now, if you're a non-believer, which many people are, that seems like, well, I'm basically holding up a myth against a reality.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:05Billy Corgan?

  For people like us that do believe, well, then we're basically saying if, if we're in their simulation, if we're just a dream in God's brain, well, God's brain's gonna win over whatever you think you can cook up. Well, did I frame it properly?

• 50:19Speaker 01

  You framed it really, really well. There's, there's a great book, easily one of the best books ever in the last few years, uh, called God and Golem by Norbert Beiner, who, he was the father of cybernetics. And it's from 66 and it's about simulation theory.

• 50:31Billy Corgan?

  Oh, okay.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  Golems, and he talks about video games. And it's like 1966. I didn't even know they had video games, but they did. But he makes the point that when God created evil, or if he created Satan, whatever he created, God ultimately is the programmer who, in creating malignant forces within the game, within our world, he still created it.

• 50:51Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  We don't understand it, but he is ultimately in charge. When man creates.

• 50:55Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 50:56Speaker 01

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

• 51:22Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so back to the power of the new mythology. Is the new mythology that we're leaning to something that's ultimately satanic? Or ultimately looking for a different form of divinity?

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, I'll tie it into everything with Nick Land and all this stuff. Uh, you get into, uh, Gnosticism and specifically the early kind of Gnosticism. Uh, I think it's Ophite Gnosticism, which looked at the serpent as the savior and Jesus and, and, uh, Lucifer as either being the same or brothers. Um, it is implicitly and explicitly satanic with Satan representing gnosis, Satan representing knowledge. What Satan did was everyone a favor by giving us open. Yeah, so I, I think it's all moving towards a.

• 51:59Billy Corgan?

  Do you disagree then with the Gnostic concept that, that?

• 52:04Billy Corgan?

  Cause the Gnosticism I

• 52:07Billy Corgan?

  identify with is the idea that you can have an interpersonal relationship with God. Do you think that's laced with a danger?

• 52:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, it depends on where the relationship with God is coming from. If it's coming through faith in Jesus and faith in Christ and a repentance that walks with him. Uh, that, those, that's, that is a kind of knowing, that is a kind of knowledge and light that comes through Christ. But if it comes through man, or if it comes through, what is the ultimate non-Christian? But it is almost every other form of religion, which is raised consciousness coming from within ourselves, coming through our own enlightenment without Christ, using this whole thing. That is false to me.

• 52:42Billy Corgan?

  So you, do you see the sort of the Marxist end of this cultural spectrum is sort of working to sort of basically to create a detachment from those concepts?

• 52:52Speaker 01

  Well, really quick to go, but to Marx's original idea, and I was talking with Nance and Mikey about this and, and Nick Land. Um, Marx's initial thing was that capitalism eventually, he didn't have a problem with capitalism so far. He said it was beautiful what it had done so far, but he said going forward, it needs to create this kind of communism superstate. All Nick Land and Silicon Valley wants to do is de-privatize communism done through tech and do, do done through Skynet essentially. But it's the same Marxist project of, of capitalism leading to this singularity, ultimate final state of, of.

• 53:26Billy Corgan?

  So in the, in the great battle that lies ahead, whenever that shows up, it's basically gonna be this technocratic, satanic superstate versus God's kingdom.

• 53:35Speaker 01

  Yes, and it'll, it won't be Marxist, uh, withering state of communism. It'll be a privatized technocratic Skynet.

• 53:42Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  But, but do those things add up to the same thing?

• 53:46Billy Corgan?

  I dare throw this out there. Um, recently you were talking about shapeshifters.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, but.

• 53:51Billy Corgan?

  If you wanna, if you wanna tee that up.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  So, um, uh, Robbie Williams of, uh, Take That and then a brilliant solo career in the late 90s, cover of World Parties, She's The One. A friend of mine, we have a longstanding in-joke about that song, but, um, uh, the opening piano. Uh, so he had recently gone on a talk show, Robbie Williams, and he had almost verbatim done a, it could have been a cover story of your, of, of, you know, part of me thinks it was, part of me is just like, he's like, man, that, that corgi narrative where he talks about a shapeshifter, people still talk about that. He had said that he had seen a woman become, I think in, in the bedroom, but shapeshift briefly into a reptilian creature. And so I did a post on Substack, The Flynn Effect.

• 54:34Billy Corgan?

  You name dropped me, by the way.

• 54:35Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah. And, and, uh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, was I mentioned you? And there, but there's been a couple of other people that have claimed to have seen shapeshifters.

• 54:44Billy Corgan?

  Such as?

• 54:45Speaker 01

  Britney Spears has said it. Um, a boyfriend of the folk singer Judy Sill said that while she was reading Rosicrucian transcripts, she briefly shapeshifted into a reptile. And, uh, William S. Barrows and Brian Geislin, people would say they would, you know, become invisible or shapeshift. And, um, a friend of mine.

• 55:04Billy Corgan?

  Wouldn't, didn't you also write about somebody disappearing on stage?

• 55:07Speaker 01

  Yes, that was, you know, Diamanda Galas.

• 55:09Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 55:10Speaker 01

  If that's how you pronounce her name.

• 55:10Billy Corgan?

  I saw Diamanda once live.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  That, that sounds pretty intense. She's, she's maybe the most intense performer, but, um, a friend of mine, uh, who's Iranian, he's, um, fundamentally Iranian Gnostic. And he was like, I asked him, were you on drugs? He goes, no, he goes, I was an early, I was very close to the stage and I saw her disappear on stage. And I said, well, what's, uh, I said, what, like, let's go back, let's go back to that. You saw her disappear on stage. Can we circle back to that? And I said, what did that look like? And he said, she just became more and more pixelated and you can kind of see through her a little bit. So for what it's worth, that is a strange but real secret history of people claiming to have seen that.

• 55:51Billy Corgan?

  Anything you wanna probe into there?

• 55:53Speaker 01

  I mean, uh.

• 55:56Billy Corgan?

  I mean, I'm, I'm less interested in, in my part of it all, but I'm more interested in, in how you, how you view it.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  What, what I'm, I mean, there's a couple of different ways to view these things. With all these things, you also have something, um, people call supernatural apathy, which you can get into weird stuff or be thinking about weird stuff. But as you know, at a certain point, you're like, I've gotta pick up my kids. I can't be thinking about, like, I, I wanna shut this all off and go be whatever. Uh, as, you know, part of me is just like, well, this is, this is what people, you know, maybe they have.

• 56:25Billy Corgan?

  Well, can I, can I, can I add one thing to that from a personal level? Having experienced intense supernatural things to me many times, dozens of times.

• 56:37Billy Corgan?

  There is a moment where you you're now imbued with a new awareness. And of course, it does reorganize the way you see the world. But then at some point, you've got to go get a sandwich from the refrigerator.

• 56:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 56:49Billy Corgan?

  And you come into almost like a weird conflict.

• 56:51Speaker 01

  Right. That's what I'm talking about with the supernatural apathy, where it's like, do you want to just be scared out of your mind or freaked out by this? Or do you want to just go?

• 56:58Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  Play Xbox?

• 56:59Billy Corgan?

  Yes, I was talking to somebody the other day about what we would now call people being woken up.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:04Billy Corgan?

  You know, what Alex Jones would refer to, kind of like this idea, like you need to wake up. And what does that mean? And I've talked to other people who've experienced the same thing that I experienced, which is I walked around for two years in sort of a kind of a a sense of fear.

• 57:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:18Billy Corgan?

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

• 57:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:37Billy Corgan?

  And even Alex has talked many times on his podcast through the years about how, you know, the overt Satanist will will basically virtue signal into the world, not for those that are asleep, but for those that are awake, almost doing kind of a na na na.

• 57:53Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 57:53Billy Corgan?

  We're right here and there's nothing you can do about it.

• 57:56Speaker 01

  That, I mean, I could see that, but to your thing about the apathy, that's really interesting, because it's like you do have to, you do want to move on with your life and you, the fear, so. You know, the opposite of fear is faith. And so with all this stuff, when people approach these things, but without any sense of faith or with any sort of

• 58:15Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  biblical understanding, I would say, it just has the tendency to promote fear and to spook you out. So what begins is someone maybe even getting into astrology. And initially, it's helpful and says this or that. But then when they run into bad luck and they have no safety net for this, other than that, something is playing with me. It just paralyzes them because they're only, you know, in the words of Stevie Wonder, when you believe in things you don't understand and you suffer, you just, you just freak yourself out.

• 58:42Billy Corgan?

  Is that a particular song or?

• 58:44Speaker 01

  Superstition.

• 58:44Billy Corgan?

  Oh.

• 58:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:47Billy Corgan?

  Oh, you're paraphrasing.

• 58:48Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 58:49Billy Corgan?

  Stevie. I'm not sure how I can connect shapeshifters and let's call it supernatural apathy to what we're talking about. Other than to say that as we sort of go in and out of different perceptual realities.

• 59:10Billy Corgan?

  I think you hit it where most people draw the line, which is like, even if I intuitively recognize there's things I don't know and there's things I don't understand.

• 59:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:19Billy Corgan?

  And most people these days don't even classify themselves as religious. They like to use the word spiritual.

• 59:23Speaker 01

  Right, right. Really quick, I know somebody who says, I'm religious, but not spiritual, which I always think is funny.

• 59:29Billy Corgan?

  Does mysticism have a future in rock?

• 59:32Speaker 01

  I think mysticism is the thing to buy stock in in general with a lot of this stuff. I think that that's, that's the way, the way, I just think that's going to be, there's going to be an explosion of that. There already is. What do you think about that?

• 59:44Billy Corgan?

  I don't know. I said somewhat infamously about 10 years ago in Rolling Stone that I thought the future of rock and roll was God. And it was the third rail that had never been truly embraced. And I really believed it at the time, and now I'm not so sure. Because of the rise of this digital Satanism kind of vibe.

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  Well, we'll tie it.

• 1:00:04Billy Corgan?

  In essence, the numbers are rewarding the sociopaths.

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  It's gonna, what's gonna happen is they'll converge with AI and oracles, where if you, this is already happening. This ties into everything we've talked about. In the next few years, what is the difference between AI and an oracle? Where it's like, or a divination system. There used to, 100 years ago, there was something called the oracle, the astral force.

• 1:00:24Billy Corgan?

  But can I stop you right there?

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  Of course. You can always stop me.

• 1:00:27Billy Corgan?

  Thank you. I get, I get complaints about interrupting guests.

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:00:33Billy Corgan?

  Do you believe in psychics?

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  I believe people can have, I think it's mostly fraud, but I think there's stuff that can bleed through where they, they can't reliably do it usually. But I think stuff like that can happen.

• 1:00:45Billy Corgan?

  Have you had a positive experience with the psychic?

• 1:00:47Speaker 01

  I've never seen a psychic.

• 1:00:49Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  But, you know, have you had weird, like we're saying synchronicities or what we have?

• 1:00:53Billy Corgan?

  I've had incredible experiences.

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  Right, so I think that stuff can happen, but in terms of someone being able to sell it, I think usually at some point, like a TV antenna that's usually wonky, but occasionally it's right there.

• 1:01:02Billy Corgan?

  Right, okay.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  People can tap into it, but can they turn it into a reliable business? Usually not.

• 1:01:07Billy Corgan?

  You have to see the psychics I see. I'm not trying to derail what you're saying. I'm saying is, I just want to be transparent that, that what you see as a sort of a blip in the system, I see as a feature.

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  Well, I think this, I think with, with a lot of the AI stuff, when the, when the computer, which, you know, we call it AI, but it's, you know, it's a very amorphous term. When it can, when it already knows everything about you. And instead of asking it a general question like, what was on TV last night? Which is a question from 1998 that is not TV works anymore. If you were to ask it, should I break up with my boyfriend?

• 1:01:47Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  You know, and what if the AI starts taking in astrological things about you? It starts taking into divination things about you. Where does the line between the algorithm is just ones and zeros that's based on past information?

• 1:01:59Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  And where does it get into mysticism?

• 1:02:03Billy Corgan?

  We're right back to the same conversation again, fortuitously.

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:07Billy Corgan?

  Yesterday, I, it was one of those YouTube things where I was watching something else and I, I think I fell asleep. So when I woke up, I was in the middle of a documentary about The Amazing Randy, have you seen this documentary?

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:02:19Billy Corgan?

  The Amazing Randy was a, it was a high level magician, but most notoriously, he's passed away now, was a skeptic. And he went around and was on television constantly sort of debunking. I think his most famous act was he, he went on, Johnny Carson, of all things, had done his own private investigation of a charismatic preacher named Peter Popov.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  What a name.

• 1:02:47Billy Corgan?

  And, and exposed Peter Popov's wife was feeding him information. And Peter Popov seemed to be picking guests at random, saying, there's a Mary England out here.

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:02:59Billy Corgan?

  And she would stand up and he'd say, you live at this address. And The Amazing Randy had recorded the wife feeding him the information when Johnny Carson exposed all this. I grew up with Peter Popov on television. Peter Popov would, would get these guests in an animated state, put his hand on their forehead and say, heal in the name of the Lord. And, and amazing miracles seem to happen.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:03:20Billy Corgan?

  So as part of the exploration in the documentary, it gets into the concept of can healing take place if somebody believes what's happening is real? We're right back to the Chaperone conversation.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:03:32Billy Corgan?

  And we're right back to the appearance of digital Jesus. If you get digital Jesus, because digital Jesus seems to be able to spit out a bunch of stuff at you, which seems to be mystically derived, what all it is is just data that it's collated through your 40 years of internet abuse.

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:03:47Billy Corgan?

  You know, this, is the residual placebo effect powerful enough that it's worth the effort?

• 1:03:54Speaker 01

  Well, in terms of like belief causing stuff, I mean, in some cases, you know, I think that can drive stuff, the power of positive thinking. You, as you know, you get into this weird thing.

• 1:04:04Billy Corgan?

  Well, our current president is a big follower of Norman Vincent Peale.

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  I'm going to do a Substack post soon, it's gonna be on.

• 1:04:09Billy Corgan?

  I don't want to ruin your Substack.

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  No, no, no, it's gonna be, it's gonna be on esoteric Trumpism. It's gonna be on like James Wasserman saying Trump was the, he is Crowley's ideal because of his harnessing of willpower. Constance Cumbee's belief that Trump, eventual belief that he's like the Antichrist. Like there's an entire, there have been books, you can write volumes on.

• 1:04:28Billy Corgan?

  Cottage industry.

• 1:04:28Speaker 01

  On, yeah, but, but to your thing, what is a miracle in a sense, but a glitch in the programming? It's glitching the.

• 1:04:36Billy Corgan?

  See, that's why, that's my argument about psychics and astrologers. Is there a feature of the system? They're not a bug. I'm not trying to argue with them.

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, I know. But I think they happen, but I think there, there are certain things that we're commanded to not dabble too much. I think it's in the, in the book of Deuteronomy, but the secret things belong to God. And I think beyond a certain point, you're, you're trying to peel into the secret things is the, what I think about that.

• 1:05:01Billy Corgan?

  Or we're just looking over the fence at Disneyland, seeing how they.

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  Well, that's just it, that's just it, where the line is, it's like political incorrectness and humor. We all know there's a difference between what is a rude joke and what is funny.

• 1:05:13Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 1:05:13Speaker 01

  But we all have disagreements about where that line is. And that that's what the whole debate's about. And the same thing here, we all agree, there's certain things you shouldn't peer into, but there's just a disagreement about where that is.

• 1:05:21Billy Corgan?

  So is your, is your, is your hope or aspiration that we become a trusting people and, and the world would animate itself more properly if we just trusted? I'm not being silly when I'm saying, trust in faith, like have actual faith.

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  Well, not just faith, but repentance and, you know.

• 1:05:38Billy Corgan?

  The hope, the hope.

• 1:05:39Speaker 01

  The whole, the whole hog thing, thing, I mean, it's back to the police stations, you know, we don't, we don't have a ton of police stations near us because people are not. Yeah.

• 1:05:50Billy Corgan?

  Have you seen, it seems to me to be a recent feature of the system that they're going way out of the, the, whoever you, they are.

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  They know who they are.

• 1:05:58Billy Corgan?

  Okay, great. They seem to be going way out of their way to normalize what scares us.

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  And well, yeah.

• 1:06:05Billy Corgan?

  I can't remember what the instance was. There was a recent thing that happened where my, one of my children got really genuinely scared about something. That in modern culture has been normalized. And I had to tell my child, your reaction was accurate. It's, it's, I, I'm the one who has the problem because I've been normalized to accept this fright in the world. Where your reaction is actually the accurate, organic one. And you should maintain this. You know, I've already been sort of convinced not to be afraid.

• 1:06:38Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:06:39Billy Corgan?

  But we should be afraid.

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  Well, you, you're restating a, one of my favorite writers, G K Chesterton. He said, when your, when your old grandma gets weirded out by something, it's like, oh, that's so improbable. He goes, your grandmother may actually be more of a living creature. And you're, you're just dead inside. We're talking, and so whether it's grandmothers or your small kid, you know, how often do you see now you walk by a house and you're on Halloween and it's like decapitations and stuff that's like, this is, this is actually like a crime scene. This isn't like Charlie Brown Halloween.

• 1:07:08Billy Corgan?

  Well, even I saw a post yesterday, because we just had Easter, where somebody was saying, how do we get from Christ on the cross or rising?

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:07:16Billy Corgan?

  Sorry, Good Friday. How do we get from Christ is risen to Easter bunnies and eggs? And then we can get back to fertility rights and.

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  The Ishtar cult.

• 1:07:28Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  Well, that's always, that's always funny in we're strangers, a Christian is that people wish you happy Easter, but it's like, it's that famously was melted with the Ishtar cult, Easter.

• 1:07:38Billy Corgan?

  I think where you and I, and again, it's not, it's, it's just for the sake of conversation. I think where you and I are on slightly different paths is, is I'm more of a Gnostic Christian patient.

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:07:48Billy Corgan?

  Because I've worked my whole life in the, in the shadows of things. So, so those, those shadows don't scare me. I'm not saying they scare you.

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  No, no, but you know.

• 1:07:57Billy Corgan?

  That's the language I work in.

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  We're both acknowledging it, but it is strange because it's like, you know, Christians are using it and it's like, well, that's, so then Christians will call it happy resurrection day, but, but then also has like a strange hallmarky happy resurrect, you know, so it's, it can be very actually strange as a Christian sometimes around Easter, just because it's, it's, it's a strange branding mix that goes on, whether it's the bunnies or the.

• 1:08:20Billy Corgan?

  I do want to share with you something that happened to me, and it happened to me vis a, via psychic. And you can take it for.

• 1:08:25Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:08:26Billy Corgan?

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

• 1:09:08Billy Corgan?

  in that side of my family or where, where, where it went wrong. Because I think on my mother's side of the family, there's a gift for divination and other, other things that are important. But, but anybody that would know my work understands, so let's call it the shadow work that I've done. It certainly, people respond to that in different ways. And what the psychic told me, and it was all part of the same conversation was, again, whenever I say these things and I say these things in private, I'd say this to you in private, no problem, is when people push back on what I tell them I've been told. What I like to say is there's no means by which I can ascertain whether or not what you're telling me is true.

• 1:09:51Billy Corgan?

  It's just another mythological chip.

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:09:54Billy Corgan?

  To put into the mainframe computer over here and decide whether or not it has any value.

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:09:59Billy Corgan?

  So it's a story. So I'm, I'm willing to, I'm willing to share it simply as a story and you can take from it what you like. And what the, what the woman said was, your family on the mother's side in Europe was really skilled at making dolls. And people would come from all over to buy these dolls. And something about the, the, the psychic gifts in your family, it's like your family knew how to make dolls that people would find some sort of healing in.

• 1:10:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:10:28Billy Corgan?

  Similar to Kachina dolls in, in Native American lore in the Southwest, that they represent something sort of mythological and or celestial. And then ultimately my family was persecuted for this, for this gift. And so in essence, the family went underground. And so I was the byproduct of multiple generations who were afraid to be openly speaking about the things that you and I speak about.

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:10:52Billy Corgan?

  So, so easily. And as an artist, I've lived in that realm and spoken that. And so the woman said, you're the first person in your family in like a hundred, 200 years that's decided to out yourself and come out for what your family gift is.

• 1:11:08Speaker 01

  And she, but she didn't know this about you, but she was intuiting that you're saying when she told her this to you.

• 1:11:13Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 1:11:13Speaker 01

  And she was correct about that stuff, sorry.

• 1:11:16Billy Corgan?

  It feels correct to me, but there's no way I can say this.

• 1:11:18Speaker 01

  But that, but that's what's always dangerous about that stuff is there's, there's a mixture of truth and falsehood or something.

• 1:11:24Billy Corgan?

  But let me go back to Chaperone for a second.

• 1:11:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:11:27Billy Corgan?

  I don't care whether or not it's true. That's the difference. And I'm not saying that to you in a confrontational way. I'm saying, I, I literally do not care if it's true. See, this is the way, and this is why even when we were talking about gender spectrums. I've oftentimes prayed in recent times, what is happening? Like, let's call it the general, like, why does the world seem to be going haywire? And of course you get people with the fourth churning, you know, whatever.

• 1:11:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:11:54Billy Corgan?

  I'm asking on an intuitive level, God, if you can speak to me, can you tell me what is happening? And the, the, the response that I've gotten, at least the, the one that I understand the most is, if you live in a world that is a lie, the only way for the world to advance is for the lie to be, to be exposed.

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:12:16Billy Corgan?

  So you're going, you being all of us, you're going through the horrible thing of the lie coming out.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:12:23Billy Corgan?

  So we see the exposure of government.

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:12:26Billy Corgan?

  Aliens, whatever. And all, whether they're controlled or not, there's a sense in the general public that a certain type of truth, which has been held behind the scenes, and maybe it goes back hundreds, if not thousands of years, is finally coming to the fore.

• 1:12:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:12:39Billy Corgan?

  Where my, my mind next goes is, are we mature enough to actually hear the truth? Alec, Jack Nicholson, you can't handle the truth. In essence, if the government turned tomorrow and said, all right.

• 1:12:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:12:50Billy Corgan?

  Here it is. Here's, here's, no, no CIA anything.

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:12:55Billy Corgan?

  Here it is. We did this, this happened, this happened. Here's the truth. We found this aircraft here. Here's the pictures. Here's what we know. Go at it.

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:13:03Billy Corgan?

  Could the general public actually handle it?

• 1:13:06Speaker 01

  The, the answer that I would say is no, because to sum up a lot.

• 1:13:09Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 1:13:10Speaker 01

  To sum up a lot of it, people love the lie. People love.

• 1:13:12Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so let's go there and this is a good way to kind of start wrapping it up. Why do they want the lie?

• 1:13:17Speaker 01

  But I mean, you're getting into something that's this talk, that we talked about this entire conversation, whether it be the power of positive thinking or Gnosticism. What a lot, I mean, I think we talked about off air once, the, the roots of the word glam or glamour comes from the occult. It comes from the idea of it's casting a visual spell. And so much of what Hollywood is, and so much of what show business is, but also politics and, and, and magic thinking is you start with the image and work back. And this is to the thing about avatars and Chaperone, you start with what you want to be, regardless of the truth. There's actually a Lady Gaga quote about this exact process. You tell yourself a lie until it becomes true. And she's like, that is the, that is the process of, of my whole thing is you tell yourself the lie. I am this, I am that.

• 1:14:02Speaker 01

  I am being one of the names of God. You, you build up through your pure willpower, what you want reality to be, and you force it.

• 1:14:09Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so, so that, so then.

• 1:14:11Speaker 01

  People, people love that. People love the false image.

• 1:14:13Billy Corgan?

  So is the false image of, of, of, of what I trade in and what your grandfather traded in, is that ultimately harmful?

• 1:14:23Speaker 01

  Of course it is. Of course it is. Of course it is.

• 1:14:30Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. I don't know if we could follow that up. All right, I got one more question for you. Thank you again, always. There's always, I mean, we should have our own show. Ready? Do you want to live forever?

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  You know, through the biblical concept of, of, you know, you die and you're, and you're with, you're with the Lord, you're with God. It's a bit of the alternative of living forever in torment and hell, but can the, can the human mind comprehend living forever and having no end post to anything? That's a very deep and scary.

• 1:15:00Billy Corgan?

  How do you want to live forever on this planet? If you were, if you were, you're still a young man. If you were afforded life extension technology, say in 40 years, are you taking it?

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  If, if it would extend me from like dying at 72, the expected age or whatever for people, for men, to 150, I would, I would take, I would microdose Methuselah pills to get to somewhere, maybe not 900, to live longer, but I wouldn't want to live forever. All your, all your friends.

• 1:15:27Billy Corgan?

  A certain celebrity, whose name I shall not divulge, once told me they were on a boat with some heavy hitters, whose names I also won't divulge.

• 1:15:35Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:15:35Billy Corgan?

  And on that boat was somebody who was, you know, heavy in the science end of the world. And so imagine like A-listers on a boat, owned by another now deceased A-lister, you can do your math there. And this person told these A-listers, if you can live another 30 years, you'll live to 130. No problem.

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  That, I mean.

• 1:16:02Billy Corgan?

  So, so, and that, that conversation was 15 years ago. So in 15 years from now, if they offer you the chance to live to 130, are you taking it?

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  It's general health pills. Yeah, I'll live to 130, you know, something like that.

• 1:16:14Billy Corgan?

  What about 200? What if, what if it's some, like something out of David Lynch's Dune where you're, you know, you're, you're floating in the weird puss suit?

• 1:16:25Speaker 01

  It depends, it depends on how many of my family are still alive. At some point, if you're getting, you might just be like.

• 1:16:31Billy Corgan?

  But can you envision a world where that's going to happen?

• 1:16:37Speaker 01

  I think things are already on track to spiral out much earlier than that.

• 1:16:42Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 1:16:43Speaker 01

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

• 1:17:28Speaker 01

  they tried to freeze him forever by putting him in his mausoleum, which isn't a pyramid, it's, it's a hypercube. Lenin is buried in these cubes to try to keep him in the fourth dimension. The guy who modernized the hypercube was Charles Hinton. And all the occultists were like, oh, he's figured out the, the hypercube, the, the tesseract cube. The great grandson of Charles Hinton, the guy that found the tesseract cube that Lenin's buried in, is Jeffrey Hinton, the godfather of AI.

• 1:18:03Billy Corgan?

  We made it through, through three. Who knows what controversies will.

• 1:18:08Speaker 01

  All of them.

• 1:18:09Billy Corgan?

  Will engender.

• 1:18:10Speaker 01

  All of them.

• 1:18:11Billy Corgan?

  All of them. All right, we'll take them all on.

• 1:18:18Speaker 04

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