Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noah.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
Speaker 3: are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
Speaker 3: they don't want you to know. Friends, neighbors, fellow conspiracy realists.
Speaker 3: It is no secret that modern society is diplomatically put complicated.
Speaker 3: You know, it wasn't too long ago that it seemed
Speaker 3: almost everyone was getting quote unquote canceled for all manner
Speaker 3: of things, these concerns, competing interest moving at a rapid pace.
Speaker 3: What can or cannot be said, what can or cannot
Speaker 3: be asked? And of course what's up with all those
Speaker 3: lizard people.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, we're also in a time where conspiracy theories
Speaker 2: are far more mainstream than they have ever been. And
Speaker 2: you put those things together and you just you got
Speaker 2: a wacky reality. We're all hanging out in right now.
Speaker 4: Right well, when the White House Press briefing room is
Speaker 4: full of quote unquote influencers who are often peddling the
Speaker 4: very conspiracy theories that we talk about on this show.
Speaker 4: It really does sort of put a very bizarre and
Speaker 4: Orwellian twist on quote unquote the.
Speaker 3: News bizarre Orwellian. Also, we still have not received a
Speaker 3: response from the White House in our addition to join
Speaker 3: their press room briefly, but hope springs a turtle and
Speaker 3: we have something very special for you today, fellow listeners.
Speaker 3: We are diving deep into these questions and more with
Speaker 3: none other than the award winning creator, the actor, the writer, director, producer,
Speaker 3: I'll say it, the philosopher create Yes, creator of the
Speaker 3: hit podcast Cancelation Island, please join us and welcoming none
Speaker 3: other than the legendary John Cameron Mitchell. John, thank you
Speaker 3: for joining us today.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you. I don't know if I can measure
Speaker 5: up to you.
Speaker 3: Must you must.
Speaker 5: Go on.
Speaker 2: Can I get something out of the way, guys that
Speaker 2: is not related to our interview, you must as well.
Speaker 2: John Cameron Mitchell, I just have to say, Uh, one
Speaker 2: of my favorite characters on screen in a long time
Speaker 2: is Gabe Parrish. I freaking love Shrill and Gabe Parish,
Speaker 2: thank you for making that happen.
Speaker 5: You're welcome. That's what happens when an old punk rocker
Speaker 5: kurdles into a book magazine editor.
Speaker 6: It's beautiful, right.
Speaker 2: I didn't know you directed several episodes of that show,
Speaker 2: so I did, you didn't. IMDb is just wrong.
Speaker 7: That's conspiracy.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I mean I have a feeling I might
Speaker 5: have if it had continued. I wish it well.
Speaker 4: Speaking of the Internet being wrong, you and I hung
Speaker 4: out not too long ago when you were coming through
Speaker 4: it in Atlanta doing some incredible talks on a kind
Speaker 4: of a lecture circuit here at Emory, and someone asked
Speaker 4: you about your pronouns because of what Wikipedia said, I
Speaker 4: believe it has couched you as being non binary. And
Speaker 4: you were like, no, that's not true, and I have
Speaker 4: no control over Wikipedia. I just thought that was a
Speaker 4: very interesting.
Speaker 5: It isn't untrue that I'm non binary. I just don't
Speaker 5: like the term.
Speaker 4: Of course, but to be categorized by that in that way,
Speaker 4: I just thought it was interesting, right, No, nothing to
Speaker 4: do with me.
Speaker 7: Well, it's interesting.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: Identity is being an actor, being a writer. Identity, which
Speaker 5: always had good intentions of calling awareness to systems that
Speaker 5: are unfair. But identity. You know, we Americans love to
Speaker 5: monetize things, We love to commercialize things, and identity just
Speaker 5: became felt like another kind of group to sell to,
Speaker 5: you know, in a way bar code. You know, we're
Speaker 5: almost selling our own identity to ourselves and all the
Speaker 5: accessories that go with it, you know, like philosophy and
Speaker 5: fashion and other things. And to me, it's the opposite
Speaker 5: of what an artist should be doing, which is just
Speaker 5: you know, trying on different identities. I you know, imagining
Speaker 5: yourself as someone you are not. That is the point
Speaker 5: of fiction, is putting your feet in the shoes of
Speaker 5: someone you're not and going, wow, I actually have something
Speaker 5: in common, which is the opposite of identities story, which
Speaker 5: is stay in your lane, don't tell a story that's
Speaker 5: not your own. And then you end up going, what
Speaker 5: is my story? Who am I? You know, are these
Speaker 5: artificial categories that were being rammed into Well.
Speaker 3: I think it's interest. I think that's the show.
Speaker 6: Oh no, for sure.
Speaker 4: Well, it's also interesting to see that that's almost an
Speaker 4: issue that you see on both sides of the whether
Speaker 4: it be politically speaking, left or right. You have people
Speaker 4: on the left maybe guilty of what you're describing. And
Speaker 4: then folks on the right this mega pushed towards identity
Speaker 4: politics and just like you know, ideology overall, but they
Speaker 4: somehow have a lot in common.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and deep censorship. You know, the farther you go
Speaker 5: to the so called right or left, you end up
Speaker 5: in the middle. And you know, my there was I
Speaker 5: had a line in my first podcast series, which was
Speaker 5: a musical called anthem Homunculus, which is out there now
Speaker 5: is someone says, you know, the the both the arch
Speaker 5: conservative and the arch liberal both got shut on by
Speaker 5: their dad. The only difference was the conservative thought they
Speaker 5: deserved it.
Speaker 3: I like that. I like that.
Speaker 6: Unpack.
Speaker 3: Wow, there's an our Boro set play for sure.
Speaker 5: Yea yeah.
Speaker 3: And with this, uh, with this, John, hopefully we're conveying
Speaker 3: that we are all tremendous fans of your work and
Speaker 3: we wanted to maybe open up our conversation. Now, speaking
Speaker 3: a little bit about your podcast, your newest podcast, Cancelation Island.
Speaker 3: You and your co writer Michael You leverage humor, empathy,
Speaker 3: and philosophy to take just a genuine, non lectury, non
Speaker 3: condescending approach to some pretty serious concerns that you've alluded
Speaker 3: to just a few moments ago. Could you describe Cancelation
Speaker 3: Island for our audience and maybe give us a bit
Speaker 3: of a detail about what inspired you to create this show.
Speaker 5: So, I had a lot of friends who had been
Speaker 5: canceled ten or or so years ago when this was
Speaker 5: coming up as a as a you know, worldwide issue
Speaker 5: of like you know, in purity being the possibility of
Speaker 5: shut down, you know, sutting down career lives, livelihood, ways
Speaker 5: of making money, social presence. And it affected a lot
Speaker 5: of my friends in a negative way. Of course, it
Speaker 5: was coming from good intentions, trying to call account to
Speaker 5: people who hadn't been the legal system failing in some ways,
Speaker 5: but then in other ways it was not able to
Speaker 5: see the full spectrum of a person, you know, seeing
Speaker 5: their face while they're saying it informs the words, you know,
Speaker 5: it sometimes oftens and mitigates the words. And when we
Speaker 5: see just the words on a tweet, it's like, you know,
Speaker 5: the CBD to the full spectrum cannabis. You know, it's
Speaker 5: just a part of it, and you can't react fully
Speaker 5: or you overreact because you're not seeing the whole image
Speaker 5: of a person in front of you. Digital culture has
Speaker 5: amplify paranoia, misunderstanding, conspiracy theories for sure, and there would
Speaker 5: be no Trump. Without digital culture, there would be no polarization.
Speaker 5: We would no longer be in the state of mind
Speaker 5: that I describe in cancellation as when all news is
Speaker 5: fake all stories are true.
Speaker 3: Wow, yes, you.
Speaker 5: Know, when facts are in fact suspect and degraded by
Speaker 5: the powers that be. You know, of course Trump is saying,
Speaker 5: you know, if there are no facts, science doesn't really
Speaker 5: mean anything. It's just what he wants things to believe
Speaker 5: that those are the facts. But in that situation where
Speaker 5: we fact a suspect, in effect, all news is fake
Speaker 5: and all stories are true, and that can mean conspiracy theories,
Speaker 5: but it can also mean beautifully nuanced fiction in which
Speaker 5: we can find ourselves in other people's shoes and characters'
Speaker 5: shoes and suddenly identifying with their emotions people we hadn't
Speaker 5: seem to have nothing in common with. So it's an opportunity.
Speaker 5: It's a strange situation when facts are disrespected, but maybe
Speaker 5: the only tool we have left our stories.
Speaker 3: That's brilliant, brilliantly put John. We also, you know, we
Speaker 3: see we see the weaponization, right of the concept of
Speaker 3: fake news, this cavalcade of always on culture, everybody being
Speaker 3: required to have a statement yeah, sometimes to their detriment. Right,
Speaker 3: would you do us the favor of defining the concept
Speaker 3: of cancelation and therefore cancel culture as it's understood in
Speaker 3: the modern West today.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, it's a funny term that just seemed
Speaker 5: to kind of come up maybe ten or you know,
Speaker 5: twelve years ago, as the you know me too was
Speaker 5: coming up, as you know, understandings about racism and police brutality. Obviously,
Speaker 5: I come from AIDS activism and queer rights where we
Speaker 5: cancelation wasn't really our goal, because it was more like survival.
Speaker 5: We would make fun of corporations trying to make money
Speaker 5: on our backs and on our deaths, but we didn't
Speaker 5: try to get rid of anybody. You know, we wouldn't
Speaker 5: have mind had getting rid of Bush and Reagan, who
Speaker 5: kind of left us to die. But it was more
Speaker 5: about who can we work with? Right during AIDS activism,
Speaker 5: we worked every angle, we negotiated with big pharma and saying,
Speaker 5: even if you don't care about us, you could make
Speaker 5: billions if you save our lives. As well as a
Speaker 5: two It was a two track thing going on. We
Speaker 5: were also in the streets making fun of homophobes and
Speaker 5: hateful capital It's like people put a giant condom on
Speaker 5: the house of anti gay Senator Jesse Helms, and it
Speaker 5: was a you know, don't mess with the gays because
Speaker 5: they will. You know, they know, they know how to
Speaker 5: take you down with flair and you know, with nuanced.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I think nuance there is the key, because
Speaker 4: it seems to me that the kind of black and
Speaker 4: white sort of I guess division that's created by cancelation
Speaker 4: isn't particularly helpful or useful towards a larger discourse or
Speaker 4: towards the idea of individuals being able to have redemption
Speaker 4: arcs or even I don't know. It makes everybody scared
Speaker 4: to speak their minds for fear they may be, you know,
Speaker 4: have that target focused on them, right.
Speaker 5: And it comes from again good intentions. We're going to
Speaker 5: take out the bad guy. But we as outsiders, as oddballs,
Speaker 5: understand that there is nuance in the world. We understand
Speaker 5: that when people judge you from how you look or
Speaker 5: say you have to hide a secret about yourself, like
Speaker 5: your sexuality, or inner gender. Then you understand there's a
Speaker 5: surface and then there's a deeper, nuanced truth underneath it.
Speaker 5: When everything goes your way, when you're part of the
Speaker 5: ruling class, you get very literal right. Things are what
Speaker 5: they look like. And when she hits the fan, as
Speaker 5: it does in life, who has the skills to deal
Speaker 5: with complexity? But the outsiders, you know, they're the ones
Speaker 5: who know. Being an outsider can kill you if you
Speaker 5: don't feel like you belong, but it can also make
Speaker 5: you an innovator and a hero and a freedom fighter.
Speaker 5: So cancelation almost goes against what we know as complexity,
Speaker 5: as nuance, as the possibility of change, of redemption. Like
Speaker 5: you're saying, I grew up very Catholic, so I still
Speaker 5: believe that people. Maybe you know, I'm misinformant, but I
Speaker 5: see people changing, you know, I see people wanting to
Speaker 5: xpiate their sins and move on, and I want to
Speaker 5: help that. So cancelation is like black or white, you're in,
Speaker 5: you're out, And it risks us imitating ro pressors. You know,
Speaker 5: who are who are more black and white. So cancelation
Speaker 5: became a weapon when the legal system failed, and it
Speaker 5: was an imperfect one. It was an blunt instrument and
Speaker 5: it would beat down people who were just slightly off,
Speaker 5: you know, message, and it couldn't handle nuance and complexity,
Speaker 5: and certainly the Internet has problems with that. Headwig, in fact,
Speaker 5: got canceled during COVID at the height of let's say,
Speaker 5: political correctness in the Western world or the let's say,
Speaker 5: the industrial world. And it happened because there was a production,
Speaker 5: a big production happening with a queer actor who was
Speaker 5: a big star, and some young people who identified as
Speaker 5: non binary trans said, well, as a trans role, only
Speaker 5: trans people can play it, and it destroyed the production.
Speaker 5: The actor got into DM fights, drunken DM fights with
Speaker 5: those people who are really just young actors who wanted
Speaker 5: the role. You know, They're not enough gender non conforming roles,
Speaker 5: that's for sure, and I always try to write them,
Speaker 5: but I don't limit who can play things. You know,
Speaker 5: like Headveig is about drag and rock and roll. It's
Speaker 5: not about trans. The character is forced into an operation
Speaker 5: that is not a trans story. That's a story of
Speaker 5: mutilation by the patriarchy telling us what is male and
Speaker 5: what is female, and a female is a man without
Speaker 5: a penis you know it's bullsh and all my trans
Speaker 5: friends understand that. But when you're nineteen in trans and
Speaker 5: you're weaned on political correctness, you're like, well, that's roles
Speaker 5: being stolen from me. And the actor they canceled ended
Speaker 5: up trying to kill himself twice, you know, and I
Speaker 5: think one of the accusers has apologized since. But it's like,
Speaker 5: is Headtig really the enemy here?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 4: It seems like a waste of time, a lot of
Speaker 4: let's focus on Yes, let's focus on bigger.
Speaker 5: Steve Bonnet's work for him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, We're We're that's a great point. We're also we're
Speaker 3: also looking at a situation where, you know, on this show, John,
Speaker 3: we often say that life is one non consensual game
Speaker 3: of long form improv and everybody has to everybody has
Speaker 3: to understand there are more commonalities, right, and differences are beautiful.
Speaker 3: They should be celebrated, not weaponized, not leveraged to other
Speaker 3: u This this is something a thread we could argue
Speaker 3: that runs through Cancelation Island, because they're is without spoiling
Speaker 3: too much, there is a fantastic dollop of the conspiratorial
Speaker 3: thought to which you earlier allude. We're gonna pause for
Speaker 3: a word from our sponsor and then we'll be back
Speaker 3: with more from John and we're back. Personally, really enjoy
Speaker 3: episode four, where things kick off and we get this, uh,
Speaker 3: we get this download of one of our show's favorite
Speaker 3: conspiracy theories of all time, which speaks in brilliant metaphor
Speaker 3: to these questions of identity, the idea that a secret
Speaker 3: faction of the world's most powerful people are in fact
Speaker 3: not people at all, but.
Speaker 6: Like extra dimensional yeah reptiz. Yeah, Oh sorry, I'm.
Speaker 4: Just gonna say, Ben, I was reading up on some
Speaker 4: of the metaphor of that that you mentioned, and I
Speaker 4: love I'm really excited to get into this because it
Speaker 4: becomes when you start to look at it like a metaphor,
Speaker 4: a way of describing just sort of unseen forces rather
Speaker 4: than a literal, you know, exterior, you know, interloper from
Speaker 4: another dimension, and it can often have that effect of
Speaker 4: what we call or we didn't make this up, but
Speaker 4: the thought terminating cliche where there's some truth to something
Speaker 4: or it represents a truth, but by going to all
Speaker 4: in with the weird thing, you kind of throw the
Speaker 4: baby out with the bath order for a lot of people,
Speaker 4: so Here's here's the.
Speaker 3: Question, John, When you and Michael are writing this and
Speaker 3: you chose this long running conspiratorial thought process, right, be
Speaker 3: it a cliche or not? What drew you to this?
Speaker 3: What fascinates you about the reptilian concept?
Speaker 5: Well, to me, conspiracy theories have always been somewhat interesting.
Speaker 5: Though part of me goes, where are the conspiracy theories
Speaker 5: of people secretly trying to help us? You know, we
Speaker 5: know they're not everyone is evil, and we also know
Speaker 5: that secret things happen in different ways, and some people
Speaker 5: actually are. You know, there's a term paranoid, which means
Speaker 5: the irrational beliefs some is trying to hurt you. But
Speaker 5: another term, which I've used in an anthem, which is pronoid,
Speaker 5: which is the irrational belief that someone's trying to help you.
Speaker 7: Why are aliens?
Speaker 5: I know, why are aliens and lizards always bent on
Speaker 5: doing evil? You know, who aren't some humans good or
Speaker 5: seeking good? And why wouldn't you know aliens and lizards
Speaker 5: follow suit with their complexity. Actually, that's what our second
Speaker 5: season is all about, is aliens canceling aliens.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, John, there is a really interesting movement
Speaker 2: happening in kind of that UFO UAP space where there
Speaker 2: is a there's a growing belief that whatever the extraterrestrials
Speaker 2: are that are being seen, you know in the skies,
Speaker 2: are here to help humanity at some point, like save
Speaker 2: ourselves essentially from ourselves. So there is there is some
Speaker 2: thread of that kind of rolling through right now, but
Speaker 2: it's certainly not as prominent as you know.
Speaker 5: As we know, conspiracy theories, like conceptions of God, exist
Speaker 5: to explain things we don't like, you know, about our lives,
Speaker 5: like death. That's why God was invented to explain death, conspiracy.
Speaker 5: And when God becomes less popular and religion becomes less popular,
Speaker 5: conspiracy theories and other belief systems come to the fore.
Speaker 5: And we as Americans are very innovative about all kinds
Speaker 5: of things, including our conspiracy theories and even our religions.
Speaker 5: You could say that Latter day Saints and you know,
Speaker 5: other homemade scientology, you know, homemade religious American religions do
Speaker 5: the same thing, but they have a you know, explaining
Speaker 5: why we're unhappy, but also creates very lovely capitalist goals.
Speaker 5: Mormonism and scientist might the American because they're making money
Speaker 5: is almost close, you know, you're closer to God when
Speaker 5: you make money.
Speaker 4: We always talk about just how money is a religion
Speaker 4: and of itself.
Speaker 6: Often that something that comes up here.
Speaker 5: Catholicism is very close to that prosperity Catholic Catholicism and
Speaker 5: very far from former Pope, you know, Francis is more
Speaker 5: let's say.
Speaker 6: Socialism benevolent, yes, yeah, yeah, because.
Speaker 5: You know, there's nothing more socialist than early Christianity. So
Speaker 5: in other words, I find all of this really fascinating,
Speaker 5: and you know, I might just jump back to a
Speaker 5: very early conspiracy theory in effect in the early Christian Church.
Speaker 5: You know, in Hedwig Headig in the Angry inch My musical,
Speaker 5: there's a character named Tommy nosis Gnosa.
Speaker 6: The Gnostic Gospels, right.
Speaker 5: And he is inspired by the Gnostic Christian Gospels, which
Speaker 5: were Christian texts that were considered heretical and not allowed
Speaker 5: to be in the Bible, that had a really interesting
Speaker 5: non authoritarian view of Christianity and more less sexist and
Speaker 5: more Buddhist in the way, you know, so we can
Speaker 5: all be God. And even Aleister Crowley and his spirituality
Speaker 5: sprang from Gnosticism. You know. I live in a house that.
Speaker 7: Used to be a chapter of Aleister Crowley's Church.
Speaker 5: What Oto What Oriental Templars, which was an ancient Freemason
Speaker 5: group that Alistair took over and remade in his image
Speaker 5: and used Thelma, you know, his philosophy, which the golden
Speaker 5: rule was do what thou wilt, which was.
Speaker 4: Then co opted by Satanism or the Church of States, right.
Speaker 3: And they got weaponized by outsiders, right, creating a moral
Speaker 3: panic rather than a curiosity toward how people were like,
Speaker 3: toward the motive of why someone would seek to understand
Speaker 3: the universe through this specific lens. And that's something you know,
Speaker 3: that's something that we returned to time and time again
Speaker 3: on the show. You Know you Can, and you returned
Speaker 3: to it. I would argue time and time again in
Speaker 3: your work it is devilishly convenient to lack nuance right
Speaker 3: to make that black and white binary decision. But your work,
Speaker 3: not just in Cancelation Island, but overall, I would posit
Speaker 3: your work challenges the audience to exercise empathy and curiosity.
Speaker 3: And that's why that's why we find it so fascinating
Speaker 3: that you included one of the one of the primary
Speaker 3: weaponized conspiracy theories used to other people, right, like, I
Speaker 3: don't like this guy. Therefore lizards.
Speaker 7: Well, to get back to the lizard people.
Speaker 5: Which you know, the most complex or let's say, uh,
Speaker 5: thorough investigation of is by Ike what's his name.
Speaker 6: David, You know him, We spoke to him on the show.
Speaker 5: He's legendary and he has an Alistair Crowley like aura
Speaker 5: about him.
Speaker 7: But he posits this.
Speaker 5: There's been versions of this kind of conspiracy theory throughout
Speaker 5: the ages, which is hidden people among us, right, hiding
Speaker 5: their true identities in positions of power, the most popular
Speaker 5: one of course, being the anti Semitic version of that. Right, right,
Speaker 5: the diaspora of people who don't at that time have
Speaker 5: their own land filtering through the world and taking over, Right,
Speaker 5: that's a big conspiracy thing. It's like they are trying
Speaker 5: to take over.
Speaker 4: Take our land, take our jobs, take our women, whatever
Speaker 4: it might be, convert our youth exactly.
Speaker 5: And that's you know, people have identified, you know, had
Speaker 5: pushed that to trans people in the recent years, you know,
Speaker 5: probably the least powerful group we could puzzibly think of.
Speaker 5: And you know, billionaires like JK. Rowling and Dave Chappelle
Speaker 5: spending all of their capital on punching down to this
Speaker 5: group of new group, group of lizard people among us
Speaker 5: called trans people. Originally it was whoever you didn't like, right,
Speaker 5: it was foreigners, it was Jews, it was black people,
Speaker 5: it was versions of queer people. Women, you know, were
Speaker 5: always considered subhuman and somewhat dangerous. Immigrants going to shadowy
Speaker 5: immigrant coming to take over, to infiltrate right our purity
Speaker 5: and the protocols of Zion of course, you know, pushing
Speaker 5: the alternate reality of invasion, secret invasion. And to me,
Speaker 5: the lizard people one is such a perfect uh, you know,
Speaker 5: it seems to also come a little bit from scientology, right,
Speaker 5: the sort of right, the uh, the perfect undetectable conspiracy
Speaker 5: theory where because you know, when I was a kid
Speaker 5: that you know, Donald Sutherland in what was that movie
Speaker 5: where body auditernactures was the perfect you know, early version
Speaker 5: of that, right, and sixties and seventies was really the
Speaker 5: heyday of conspiracy theory in our panic about authority. It
Speaker 5: tended to come a little bit more from the left
Speaker 5: at that time, right, because Nixon was ascendant in the
Speaker 5: Vietnam War, and now it's you know, from all sides politically,
Speaker 5: you know, conspiracy theories meet in the middle, like past
Speaker 5: l QAnon, you know, the wellness meeting, meeting, the anti
Speaker 5: vaxxers meeting, the you know Robert F. Kenady Junior who
Speaker 5: actually came to head Big weirdly and came backstage. Isn't
Speaker 5: that strange?
Speaker 6: What did he bring? Eryl?
Speaker 5: It was back in the you know, the late nineties. No,
Speaker 5: he was blank faced and lizard like.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 5: I didn't know, He's like, what are you doing here?
Speaker 5: Didn't crack is mind, didn't seem to like it. Maybe
Speaker 5: he was. He was probably dating some model back then.
Speaker 5: It's like, let's goy, come on this guy.
Speaker 6: That was that was that in his drugs period?
Speaker 5: Perhaps eight okay, maybe a little past.
Speaker 3: I also love how this model is Australia.
Speaker 5: For some reason, I just become Australian and I'm John.
Speaker 4: Can I do rail for a second and just point
Speaker 4: out that you were the voice of the dunker use Kangaroo.
Speaker 7: How do you do your old dog?
Speaker 2: I cannot believe that is true.
Speaker 3: It is true.
Speaker 6: It was an and you're acting your gig days.
Speaker 4: I mean like not you know you girl, always an actor,
Speaker 4: but incredible, incredible.
Speaker 6: Just had to I had to bring that up, and
Speaker 6: I'm mad that they've changed the design.
Speaker 3: They're just little d coins now.
Speaker 5: Now and it's the you know, it was the animated
Speaker 5: kangaroos among us.
Speaker 3: Amazing a lizard could never.
Speaker 7: This particular you know.
Speaker 5: In Cancelation Island. Just to set it up a bit more,
Speaker 5: we have a Holly Hunter creates or founds a kind
Speaker 5: of pilot project called Renewal, and it's about taking a
Speaker 5: curated group of canceled people, bringing them to a desert
Speaker 5: island which only has a decommissioned CIA Black site on it,
Speaker 5: which they have remodeled with the help of Michael Core's
Speaker 5: into a lovely resort. And they've curated a group of
Speaker 5: gen Z therapists because what they lack in life experience,
Speaker 5: they make up for uncertainty. And they are going to
Speaker 5: treat these curated group of canceled people that goes from
Speaker 5: a slightly windsteining character to someone who just slip of
Speaker 5: a tongue and really does not belong in limbo in
Speaker 5: the doghouse. And quickly after a couple episodes, all of
Speaker 5: our satire about cancel culture is stripped away when mortality,
Speaker 5: uh you know appears, which means, oh my God, there's
Speaker 5: a giant, life threatening hurricane, Hurricane Swift.
Speaker 7: What do they call it?
Speaker 5: Hurricane Taylor? Because it is Swift, they rename it hur
Speaker 5: Beyonce in the spirit of impending diversity. Then someone else says,
Speaker 5: Beyonce doesn't really write her own songs. This is for real,
Speaker 5: let's call it Hurricane Solange. They keep changing the name
Speaker 5: of But in that madness, people start disappearing from the
Speaker 5: rehab and we start to realize there is someone still
Speaker 5: there from the CIA Black Site living in the bunker beneath,
Speaker 5: and that is a rogue conspiracy adult CI, a linguist
Speaker 5: you know, who sees himself as a bit of a
Speaker 5: you know, born identity figure. Now, who is the jont
Speaker 5: Listen not Jones like the John the Baptist too, K
Speaker 5: of Kanon, which we've invented as our version of the
Speaker 5: secret Lizard people conspiracy among us? And K like Q
Speaker 5: is an unidentified figure who seems to have knowledge and
Speaker 5: power but is incognito. And Uh Casper All the characters'
Speaker 5: names begin with K, which makes him suspicious.
Speaker 7: Casper with the K.
Speaker 5: Is the ghost like rogues CIA agent living beneath monitoring
Speaker 5: this subsurd rehab above and starting to kidnap members of
Speaker 5: the rehab because he thinks they might be k and
Speaker 5: you know, he needs to reconnect their brain so they
Speaker 5: become Because it's a very complex, as all conspiracy theories
Speaker 5: are situation, and our case though the uh, the lizards
Speaker 5: seem to become real. Any woman is impregnated by one
Speaker 5: of the lizards and gives birth and then they arrive
Speaker 5: and they're really nice. Okay, you guys are also upset
Speaker 5: and canceling and this and that. It's like, how can
Speaker 5: we help?
Speaker 3: Right? Right, we come in peace.
Speaker 7: As opposed to pieces.
Speaker 2: We're gonna take a quick break here, here a word
Speaker 2: from our sponsor, will be right.
Speaker 6: Back, and we're back.
Speaker 3: This is something that again I hesitate to overuse the
Speaker 3: word residence, but this exploration of dare we say truth
Speaker 3: through fiction? I think it challenges our audience to explore
Speaker 3: not just metaphor, but to apply that metaphor to lived
Speaker 3: experience right on an individual level. So I'm with you, John,
Speaker 3: I'm hoping that there are lizard people. I would love
Speaker 3: it if one of the many alleged reptilians came out
Speaker 3: and finally had the press conference and said Hey, you
Speaker 3: know what, Yes, yeah, it's all true. We're worried about you.
Speaker 5: Guys.
Speaker 3: You should call your mom. You know what I mean.
Speaker 5: Some of our brethren, you know, really I don't want
Speaker 5: you around anymore. We can't be responsible for all of them.
Speaker 5: We're as complex as you, Donald Trump. One of our
Speaker 5: brethren has different plans.
Speaker 7: We're sorry about.
Speaker 2: Right, right, this guy.
Speaker 7: They come out, sorry.
Speaker 3: Peez, that's how it happens. There's a public apology. They're like, look,
Speaker 3: hashtag not all lizards.
Speaker 2: Yeah, guys, I want to go down the lizard path more.
Speaker 2: But I have to sidebar on something that came up
Speaker 2: a little while ago, just because I cannot stop thinking
Speaker 2: about it. John, Can you please tell us more about
Speaker 2: your house, Like, has anything weird happened in there? Any
Speaker 2: strange spots in the house that have different energy.
Speaker 5: Well, my house is one hundred and eighty years old
Speaker 5: in the middle of the Bywater part of New Orleans,
Speaker 5: and we bought it, as I said, from a chapter
Speaker 5: of the Oto the Oortist Templar Orientis, which Crowley did
Speaker 5: run for many years worldwide. He didn't live in this house,
Speaker 5: but he spent time in New Orleans and it was
Speaker 5: his favorite town in the US, and as it's mine.
Speaker 5: And I came upon it at the time when everyone
Speaker 5: was buying and it was the one house that was
Speaker 5: not selling, and I was like, what's wrong? As a curse,
Speaker 5: you know, what's going on? And I walked in and
Speaker 5: there's this fifty foot ballroom with a stage. The walls
Speaker 5: were decorated with kind of you know, planet signs, and
Speaker 5: there was elements of the Jupiter Square, which is it
Speaker 5: has to do with Jupiter's xenios aspect, which has to
Speaker 5: do with hospitality, where you see a square of numbers numerology,
Speaker 5: every line adds up to thirty four or something, and
Speaker 5: it had to do with hospitality. And so there's all
Speaker 5: this imagery here and a cool you know Moroccan arch
Speaker 5: in my kitchen. And I made friends with the original
Speaker 5: owner and she sent me some photographs.
Speaker 6: It was a.
Speaker 5: Funeral home for fifty years, you know. And the brand
Speaker 5: of arch Druidess of Louisiana will I mean a warden
Speaker 5: of course, alliteration. And I kept finding out more than
Speaker 5: it was five different churches after that, the Catholic meeting hall.
Speaker 5: There was a baptisma font in our floor. There was
Speaker 5: a pentagram up in our route and our attic.
Speaker 6: Thank god they didn't overhaul it, you know. I mean,
Speaker 6: that's incredible, you know.
Speaker 5: And we poured a lot of money into it at
Speaker 5: the time, and now I can't afford it.
Speaker 3: But well, this, John, if of me, this reminds me
Speaker 3: of uh, what I call a sleeper line. Like the
Speaker 3: language here in Cancelation Island is we're inherently humorous. We're
Speaker 3: not again talking down to people. Nobody ever, nobody ever
Speaker 3: really established rapport via condescension, right, And so one of
Speaker 3: the sleeper lines that I, uh, that I clung to
Speaker 3: and listen back in often is the line you can
Speaker 3: see the spirits in everything. And this sort of reminds
Speaker 3: me of of Matt's question earlier regarding the Oto house
Speaker 3: in which you now reside. And it also it reminds
Speaker 3: me of oh, what's that thing in Japanese folklore where
Speaker 3: if an inanimate object is or a place is well
Speaker 3: cared for for a century plus, it acquires its own
Speaker 3: sort of animism. I'm sorry, this is wait wait.
Speaker 2: Wait, was any have you experienced anything in the house?
Speaker 5: John, Well, I haven't.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: It's interesting because I I came in it felt good.
Speaker 5: It felt like a personality, you know. It wasn't like
Speaker 5: an abode it was it felt like a presence that
Speaker 5: was control and interested and curious. And a Hurricane Ida
Speaker 5: hit right after, and there was a lot of trouble
Speaker 5: and you know, trying to get the house together. We
Speaker 5: had a house sitter probably was on math and the
Speaker 5: energy was in the room in the house. And after
Speaker 5: we extracted him with I had to bribe him to
Speaker 5: get out and he stole.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 5: I didn't prosecute because usually those type of people, their
Speaker 5: life is their actual sentence. I think he was arrested later.
Speaker 5: But what I brought in a voodoo priestess, because you know, yes,
Speaker 5: and in New Orleans you work with bo's here and
Speaker 5: there's a lot of cultures and you're like, whatever works right.
Speaker 5: And the voodoo person wanted said I need the house
Speaker 5: for ninety minutes. I need a pail of water and
Speaker 5: a single egg.
Speaker 2: Whoa.
Speaker 3: And this is before eggs were financial flats.
Speaker 5: And it was actually a not you know, a my
Speaker 5: friend's chicken egg. Actually, this is so New Orleans. She's
Speaker 5: our witchy real estate agent who sold me the house.
Speaker 5: She has her own chickens, you know, this is how
Speaker 5: we're you. And so Sally, the priestess, came in. We
Speaker 5: don't know what happened to the egg. I'm sure no
Speaker 5: one ate it. But she said, you know, the house
Speaker 5: feels very good. You don't clear the house of spirits,
Speaker 5: you work with them, right, and I love you feel it.
Speaker 5: And she said the only negative energy I had was
Speaker 5: in this one room, which turned out to be the
Speaker 5: meth heads room. Wow, interestingly right, and there's a weird
Speaker 5: crawl space above that, which.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it was.
Speaker 5: Actually there was a lot of lighting instruments up there
Speaker 5: for the ballroom, which is interesting. But you know, I
Speaker 5: was a little scared, but she really cleared it. It
Speaker 5: felt good people who come in here, So I haven't
Speaker 5: had any negative I've known when the house is unhappy.
Speaker 3: I e.
Speaker 5: We haven't been taken care of it. You know, it
Speaker 5: loves people. It loves events, you know, artistic events. It's
Speaker 5: becoming a bit of an artist's residency. I'm trying to
Speaker 5: raise money to.
Speaker 7: Keep it local.
Speaker 5: People can use it for whatever it can charge.
Speaker 3: Yeah, John, if I if I could interject there, and Matt,
Speaker 3: sorry if I stepped on you when I was setting
Speaker 3: up the question I wanted to get to you, so John,
Speaker 3: at least we can confirm at least some people there
Speaker 3: have felt there is a you know, far be it
Speaker 3: to call it animism, but felt a presence.
Speaker 5: They feel, yes, they feel the presidence of the house.
Speaker 5: But also, here's my favorite thing that happened. I new
Speaker 5: Orleans is a place you talk to strangers, You talk
Speaker 5: to people in the street, you invite them over spontaneously.
Speaker 5: It's like, that's why I'm here. But I invited this
Speaker 5: guitarist over and his pregnant wife, and we sat in
Speaker 5: our ballroom and she's very calm, and.
Speaker 7: She said, was this a mortuary?
Speaker 5: And it hasn't been a mortuary since in nineteen thirty
Speaker 5: and there's no I just had found out like the
Speaker 5: week before that it had been a merched mort and
Speaker 5: I said, well, yes, how did you know? And she said,
Speaker 5: I grew up in a mortuary.
Speaker 7: And this feels about right.
Speaker 5: I'm like, okay, my other friends said people died in
Speaker 5: your house. I was like, nobody dies in a mortuary.
Speaker 6: We're at Disney World, that's true.
Speaker 2: Room they just hang out here for a while, y'all.
Speaker 6: Can I just say it's super creepy that.
Speaker 4: I was just looking something up on the Internet and
Speaker 4: I got served an ad for Orgone Energy Pyramids. I
Speaker 4: think that the computer is listening, and I think I
Speaker 4: will It's only fifty five.
Speaker 3: All right for this whole accounting sixty four?
Speaker 4: Maybe Okay, there's a company Orgone Pyramids Incorporated.
Speaker 2: Don't you have to create Orgon Energy unclear?
Speaker 6: Don't ask questions, don't.
Speaker 5: As we all know, I love the Orgon box for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I always said scary, but you know, fascinating, queer familiar
Speaker 5: for me. And I lived his house in Kansas as
Speaker 5: a kid, but I never part of your story there
Speaker 5: in Anthem, Yes so Anthem. My composer Brian Weller, and
Speaker 5: I actually drove around Kansas where it took place and
Speaker 5: where I lived, and I knocked on William Burrow's door, thinking,
Speaker 5: what the hell you know in Lawrence, Kansas, where he
Speaker 5: used to live, and the caretaker came out and said,
Speaker 5: what as if they'd experienced this before, And I said,
Speaker 5: I'm writing a musical that might actually take place on
Speaker 5: this porch. You know, I saw the characters living in
Speaker 5: William Burrow's old house. And he's like, all right, I
Speaker 5: haven't heard that one, come on in, you say, some
Speaker 5: Japanese hipster, you know, And I this tiny house with
Speaker 5: a huge garden, bullet holes in the ceiling that Bill
Speaker 5: had shot, and I ended up we ended up writing
Speaker 5: our first draft at Burrow's house house so cool. Anthemunculus,
Speaker 5: which has a character based on Bill played by Ben
Speaker 5: Foster who played them in the film Kill Your Darlings,
Speaker 5: And so Burrows, you know, Heroin inspired occultism, which was
Speaker 5: mixed with science, you know, in his particular inimitable way,
Speaker 5: and you know, perhaps junk sides of the Oregon box.
Speaker 5: But again whatever works right right, it inspired us as well.
Speaker 5: And if you think about it, we're all sort of
Speaker 5: in William Burrow's absurd world now. I mean Trump is
Speaker 5: a Burrows type character, oh for sure.
Speaker 3: Ooh ooh.
Speaker 2: Can we talk about the Lavender Scare, like way back
Speaker 2: in the day when when the you know, the executive
Speaker 2: branch decided, oh, we have to be afraid, just like
Speaker 2: with the quote red scare, we have to be afraid
Speaker 2: of anyone who is quote you're talking about now I'm
Speaker 2: talking about now. It feels like it feels like we're
Speaker 2: time traveling a bit or just re experiencing something.
Speaker 3: History is always closer than it looks in the rear
Speaker 3: view mirror.
Speaker 5: Oh yes, And as we know back then, gay people
Speaker 5: and now translated more to trans people are the lizard
Speaker 5: people among us for the maga type rights. You know
Speaker 5: that everyone needs a scapegoat, and they're very convenient because
Speaker 5: in their view they are trans people are alien and
Speaker 5: unnatural and subverting, you know, God's will or whatever God
Speaker 5: they feel they I don't know what kind.
Speaker 3: Of God that is, but the convenient God for the.
Speaker 7: Day exactly which we all do.
Speaker 5: As the subject of my new play, Claude Cahun said
Speaker 5: she was an anti Nazi artist.
Speaker 7: We get the God we deserve.
Speaker 4: Well, with that in mind, do you mind if we
Speaker 4: backtrack a little bit you brought up and I'm sorry
Speaker 4: I had to step away for just a second, so
Speaker 4: I hopefully I didn't miss this, But you were talking
Speaker 4: about the Gnostic Gospels and these kind of parts of
Speaker 4: the Bible that are inconvenient perhaps that were not included
Speaker 4: for folks that maybe have weaponized that religion, that particular religion,
Speaker 4: and many others, of course, but inconvenient for them. There's
Speaker 4: another aspect of that in the book of Enoch, and
Speaker 4: that is also a great kind of analog I suppose
Speaker 4: for this idea of lizard people and potentially even where
Speaker 4: they came from the idea. And I know, Ben, this
Speaker 4: is a big wheelhouse for you, the nephelum and the
Speaker 4: idea that these angels bred with humans and created you know,
Speaker 4: these this other race of you know, human angel hybrids
Speaker 4: that can be seen as a stand in for this
Speaker 4: idea of lizard people. But there's also some very interesting
Speaker 4: kind of queer culture wrapped up in that the idea
Speaker 4: that Sodom and Gomorrah was actually home to some of
Speaker 4: these you know, angel human hybrids, and that a lot
Speaker 4: of that is maybe potentially where some of the anti
Speaker 4: queer rhetoric comes from. Because the Bible doesn't actually refer to,
Speaker 4: you know, specifically by name the act of being engaged.
Speaker 4: I think it's the idea of seeking something about unusual
Speaker 4: flesh or there's a term that I'm maybe misconstruing, but
Speaker 4: there's this sense that or there's this theory that perhaps
Speaker 4: that is referencing these nephelem but it's not actually contained
Speaker 4: within the Bible because that book was cut out, so
Speaker 4: I don't know, maybe a bit broad and I'm bringing
Speaker 4: up maybe multiple points, but maybe something we could touch
Speaker 4: on real quick. Well.
Speaker 5: One of the things about the Gnostics that I mean,
Speaker 5: having grown up extremely Catholic beyond and you know, as
Speaker 5: a kid taught by Benedictine monks in Scotland and at
Speaker 5: that time a little queer boy, I actually considering, you know,
Speaker 5: monk hood. My mom later was like, you're gay.
Speaker 7: That's the that's the place for you.
Speaker 5: And I'm like, oh god, Mom, there's problems with that.
Speaker 7: She's like, that's just.
Speaker 5: Anti Catholic propaganda. There was no abuse. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 5: I've dodged it by the skin of my teeth and
Speaker 5: the schools. But what was what I did love about
Speaker 5: it is of course the Catholic the queerness of it,
Speaker 5: you know, not not the gayness, but the weird iconography,
Speaker 5: the cosmology, you know, the Lord of the ringsness of
Speaker 5: it that, you know, the Jesus on the Cross, which
Speaker 5: is so gay. And then Mary, who's you know, almost
Speaker 5: as important as Jesus in many cultures the only way
Speaker 5: into Christianity for women for centuries.
Speaker 3: The religious syncretism.
Speaker 5: Of taking gods and making them into saints and making
Speaker 5: them into Mary. It's a very smart thing to do
Speaker 5: when you're trying to missionize.
Speaker 4: Don't forget the costumes for sure. But also this back
Speaker 4: back to the nephil and thing. Ben, maybe you can
Speaker 4: speak on this the giants aspect of it, or I
Speaker 4: believe their offspring were giants, and this was this notion
Speaker 4: the giants were kind of gods among men, gods on earth.
Speaker 4: And that's also inconvenient for the Bible property.
Speaker 5: That's right, like how do you fit that? As well
Speaker 5: as slavery if forget that one. But you know, what
Speaker 5: the Gnostics talked about was the creator God as the villain,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the imperfect god of the lesser universe.
Speaker 5: Yes, that's right. And the mother of that god was
Speaker 5: named Sophia, was in effect a non binary entity, you know,
Speaker 5: like in the film like the Angels, right, there's really
Speaker 5: gender there. It was sort of all genders in a way.
Speaker 5: And Sophia, which means wisdom, came from the Pleroma, which
Speaker 5: was the higher heavens to give birth in our world,
Speaker 5: our universe, so to speak, almost illicitly, because you were
Speaker 5: supposed to give birth with a partner in a way.
Speaker 5: And she was like, I'm going to do it myself,
Speaker 5: parthenogenetic reproduction in effect, and in their some Gnostic stories,
Speaker 5: she was so horrified at what she produced that she
Speaker 5: wrapped God's face in a cloud and tiptoed away, leaving
Speaker 5: him to think he was the only thing in existence.
Speaker 5: So I talk about this in my show The Origin
Speaker 5: of Love, which talks about how Hedvig came about. And
Speaker 5: I say, well, kids, to the Gnostics, God was a
Speaker 5: dumpster baby and his flawedness and it was a male
Speaker 5: identified thing begat our flawedness. And Adam and Eve, let's say,
Speaker 5: Adam at first was lifeless, and it took the spark
Speaker 5: of Sophia, you know, the divine spark coming to give
Speaker 5: it life. And Eve was a manifestation of Sophia. So
Speaker 5: in Headgig, Tommy compares Headwig to Eve, the woman who
Speaker 5: wanted to know shit, the first saint, and even Jesus
Speaker 5: was a kind of manifestation of Eve to the Gnostics
Speaker 5: as someone who brought up love, which was not a
Speaker 5: word used in terms of divinity in the Old Testament.
Speaker 5: And so this was fascinating to me because even as
Speaker 5: a kid, I'm like, what is the problem with eating
Speaker 5: the apple? From the tree of knowledge. She just is
Speaker 5: a scientist. She wants to know things. The guy was
Speaker 5: incurious in his man cave watching football while he was
Speaker 5: trying to make things happen, And I'm like, what is
Speaker 5: wrong with that? Even as a child, I'm like, this
Speaker 5: story is being interpreted incorrectly. So when I read the
Speaker 5: gnost six, I'm like, bingo, this is another way to
Speaker 5: look at Christianity. Same stories of Christianity. And it talked
Speaker 5: about the inner spark within all of us, Sophia within
Speaker 5: all of us, which is where you get that idea
Speaker 5: of we have our own divinity, which was very threatening
Speaker 5: to an authoritarian church.
Speaker 3: Oh oh, no, kidding, Yeah, and hold the phone, folks,
Speaker 3: friends and neighbors. We're going deep in this conversation, so
Speaker 3: much so that we're going to make this interview segment
Speaker 3: a two parter. Now we're not sure where we're ending
Speaker 3: it just yet. Full disclosure, So we don't know what
Speaker 3: we've Singer. We left you right right, but we don't
Speaker 3: want to leave you again without a dope spell to
Speaker 3: spit too, So spit too, Spit two. So please joined
Speaker 3: us in a few days where we'll follow up with
Speaker 3: part two of our conversation with John Cameron Mitchell and
Speaker 3: Cancelation Island. In the meantime, you can find us online.
Speaker 3: You can call us on a telephone. You can always
Speaker 3: reach us at our good old fashioned email address.
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