Pod Only Knows

In this rerelease episode, first published in April of 2021, John dares to take on something he seldom does on his own podcast - talking about something he believes to be true: that centuries of confusion (sometimes deliberate, sometimes not) have given history the wrong "William Shakespeare".

In this episode, Steven Sabel, an accomplished actor, director, host of the podcast Don't Quill the Messenger, and Podcast and Community Outreach Director at the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship (of which John is a member) discusses the Oxfordian case, why he's convinced, and how the work of the greatest author in the history of the English language can only truly be understood in the context of the life of their true author, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.

Check out Steven's excellent podcast, Don't Quill the Messenger

"Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them."

So muses Hamlet in the To Be or Not To Be speech as he contemplates whether or not to carry on his own existence.

A few years ago, events in Robert Boog's life led him to take an interest in the way the characters in Shakespeare’s work appear to suffer from a number of what today we would call mental health conditions, including and especially bipolar disorder.

Boog is, like John, and Oxfordian, who believes that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, is the best and most likely candidate for the authorship of the Shakespearian canon. And when he reevaluated the biography of de Vere through the lens of someone dealing with bipolar disorder, he came to realize that much of his notoriously erratic behavior as well as his inspired genius could well be connected to an undiagnosed mental health condition (undiagnosed because we didn’t have the language for such things several hundred years ago).

John invited Robert to talk to him about his book on the subject, Shakey’s Madness, and why he thinks we can help destigmatize bipolar disorder while also furthering our understanding of Shakespeare and his plays if we apply a more modern, scientific perspective to his character’s various struggles.

You can find all his work at RobertBoog.com

Ms. Marvel was reborn in the pages of Marvel comics almost a decade ago, when writers Sama Amanat, a Pakistani-American Muslim, and G. Willow Wilson, who converted to Islam in 2003, created Khamala Khan, a 16-year-old Pakastani-American from New Jersey who idolizes the previous Ms. Marvel, Carol Danvers,

Khan’s portrayal has drawn plenty of accolades and criticisms for its portrayal of an American Muslim youth. And, in recent years, criticism of representation of Islam in western popular culture has become far more focused, especially in the two decades since 9/11. In general, however, mass media continues to reduce Muslims to a good Muslim/bad Muslim binary, lacking any real depth or nuance.

With Kamala's Ms. Marvel now joining the MCU with the Disney+ television adaptation of her story having just wrapped, John decided to ask Dr. Safiyya Hosein, who has written extensively about Kamala Khan and whose academic work covers the intersection of Islam, comics, and gender, among other things, to join him to talk about it.

Dr. Hosein is on Twitter @safibelle30

As of July 6th, 2022, the Georgia Guidestones are, alas, for now, no more.

The weirdly aesthetically pleasing, mysterious, and ultimately just bizarre landmark that became northeast Georgia's biggest tourist attraction quickly became a flashpoint for conspiracy theorists and just run-of-the-mill Satanic Panickers since their creation in 1980.

But sometimes around 4 AM on July 6th, an explosion destroyed one of the stones, and the remaining stones were torn down over safety concerns.

Were they intended as advice for the human who survive the inevitable (by 1980s logic) nuclear holocaust and/or population bomb? Or maybe the 10 Commandments of the Anti-Christ? Were they - as Alex Jones believes - an act of hubris from the New World Order, funded by Ted Turner, openly announcing their plans for global depopulation? Or were they a prank?

John promised Jess Collins, who visited the Guidestones a year ago, he'd do a show about the Guidestones, and this seemed like the right time. They explore the clues that may reveal the true identity of their pseudonymous creator, "R. C. Christian", discuss the lasting appeal of this weird landmark, its strange religious elements, and ask whether the Guidestones will rise again.

What does the Bible say about abortion?

Well, if you're supposed to be living in a free, secular democracy, it shouldn't matter. And yet here we are, in the year 2022, in a supposed free, secular democracy, and somehow it does.

The short answer is this - the Bible does not teach life begins at conception (or rather it specifically teaches that it does not begin at conception) and has nothing to say about restricting abortions. The long answer is even more complicated and interesting, and so John explained it to frequent HTB guests, Jess Collins and Mike Manzi.

Resources for helping others in need of abortion care and learning more about your own options:

Rolling Stone senior writer Alex Morris returns to the show to talk to John about the impending decision to overturn Roe (which may well have been handed down by the time this episode releases).

Morris has written extensively about the American evangelical movement and the conservative movement, and her work as also looked at they way those two forces have combined to stage an assault on reproductive rights.

To her, the end of Roe comes as no surprise, but how and why, exactly, American evangelicals were able to play a successful long game to overturn Roe and begin chipping away at abortion, reproductive, and LGBTQ+ rights may not be as clear.

She and John discussed some of the misconceptions about the religious angle, the key players, the success of propaganda campaigns, and why in taking on a new fight it is essential to know what the real obstacles are.

Links to Alex's work can be found at her website: alexmorris.net

You can find her on Twitter at @AlexMorrisNY

In light of recent events, John wanted to turn his attention to one of the most troubling developments in right-wing politics in the last couple decades: deliberate perversion of the Second Amendment by an extremist right-wing movement that we all, for some reason, have allowed to dictate the terms of the discussion.

There’s a lot wrapped up in this, but none looms larger than the nonsensical, incoherent legal doctrine of originalism, which is closely tied to religious fundamentalism and shares both a similar DNA as well as a large overlapping of adherents.

So to talk about that, John invited his friend Joe Patrice, senior editor at the legal news website Above the Law, to explain why most people – on both sides – are either in part or in total wrong about what they belief the Second Amendment is, and what we can do to bring back a truly originalist interpretation of it.

Joe is on Twitter @JosephPatrice

This week, we present the most recent episode of John's other show, 1999: The Podcast, which features a conversation with American Hysteria's Chelsey Weber-Smith about The Blair Witch Project.

Starring Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard as themselves – or people who happen to have their exact names – and written and directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, 1999's 10th-highest grossing film, The Blair Witch Project was produced on a budget of less than a half million dollars and grossed $248.6 million at the box office.

One of the founding films in the "found footage" genre, the film was perhaps most famous for the unprecedented marketing campaign that led up to its release.

The movie made innovative use of a relatively novel outlet called "the World Wide Web" and deliberately blurred the lines between fact and fiction, giving the film an air of reality that actually fooled some its audience into believing they were watching real documentary footage.

Heralded by critics for its ingenuity as well as its genuine scares, Blair Witch may well have been the buzziest of buzzy movies ever. But its legacy is slightly more complicated. While it was a huge hit with the public at the time, it is less liked by audiences now, who often complain that the movie doesn't hold up on its own, having relied too much on the multimedia "project" of which the film is merely the final ingredient.

1999: The Podcast on Twitter: @1999thePodcast

Chelsey on Twitter: @AmerHysteria

John Follis is the director of the documentary film Leaving God, but he is probably not as well known as his most famous creation – the legendary Marble Collegiate Church ad campaign.

If you were ever on a subway in New York City in the first decade of the 2000s, there is almost no chance you are not familiar with his work.

But he created that campaign while in the midst of his own tumultuous spiritual journey, one that would ultimately lead him away from religion and God entirely and toward a new project – looking at the rise of the so-called Nones (those who identify as having no religious affiliation) and the hidden struggle of those, like him, who have awoken to atheism, including former pastors and ministers.

Leaving God addresses all of the above, and here Follis speaks to John about his life in and out of religion, that legendary ad campaign, and what compelled him to make a documentary.

You can watch John's film here: https://vimeo.com/208442766

Fredrick Brennan is the creator of the anonymous image board site 8chan, and a former free speech absolutist.

His well-documented early adult life changed that, specifically after he moved to the Philippines after an entrepreneur named Jim Watkins offered Brennan the opportunity to turn the fledgling 8chan into a major platform. Jim and his son Ron would eventually exert more and more control over 8chan, and 8chan itself soon became home to the Q account, which began on 4chan and is widely considered, at least in its 8chan incarnation, to have been controlled and written by Ron.

Brennan would eventually flee the Philippines after Jim Watkins coerced officials to put a warrant out for his arrest for what’s called cyberlibel – essentially, the crime of lying about a person on the internet.

Since his return to the US, Brennan has become an outspoken critic of 8chan, QAnon in particular, and conspiracy theories in general. He has also spent much of his time pursuing another passion for which he has great talent – developing open-source fonts.

In light of the news that Elon Musk is trying to buy Twitter, John spoke to Brennan about the complicated issue of free speech on the internet, the cult-like devotion of many political extremists, especially on the right, to a kind of extremist form of free speech...and what would happen if Elon Musk bought Twitter.