It’s been on my mind to do this for a while. So, I’m just going to do it.
This is the beginning of a free podcast/post series of Ong’s Hat: COMPLEAT
Here is the text segment from the first chapter, with a bonus intro by David Metcalfe that was previously included only in the print version.
You may subscribe to this series via RSS here. https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/232444.rss
On Spotify
YouTube Podcasts
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCjME-3m5B3EcKIBXOSrigYm5jzmcp8tt
Apple podcasts
PocketCast
https://pca.st/6y3b59mq
iHeart
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-joseph-mathenys-art-is-war-107824877/
Pocast Addict
https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/joseph-matheny-s-art-is-war-talks/4223678
and most other podcast outlets.
Or you can just receive them through this Substack.
You get the picture.
Twice a month, I will publish, in order, a chapter of the book and the corresponding discussion audio. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is a multidisciplinary work: the text is one part, the audio is another, and the links within the text add a different dimension. Sequoyah and I discuss it in depth, including how I intended people to experience this design. Here’s a video of that discussion:
I hope you enjoy this free experiment and know that it was made possible by those who bought the print/audio or combo. If you’d like to donate some change to thank us for the tremendous effort it took to produce 14 hours of audio and all the linked print for this project, feel free to buy the audio files on Bandcamp or the print or digital versions of the books. If you can’t afford it, that’s ok. The people who bought the work this year and last year covered for you. Kinda like a “pay it forward” model.
Be well and enjoy.
Why Files: Basement
Well, “Why Files: Basement” got back to me and offered to accommodate my schedule, so how could I say no? Flying out to Vegas at the end of the month to record an episode. I’ll post the air date when I have it. This will be the last interview I will do for at least a few years. Here are some other episodes for your dancing and dining pleasure in the meantime. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaEJLf99gDO6BOvkVJ1aRGfPZlBFqu9r3&si=UUbN_FOvO0yYtri_
Thee Third Mind
Website: https://the-third-mind.haawke.com/
My old friend, Craig Ellenwood, AKA XKP of PTV, contacted me about an experiment he is doing, using the Third Mind principles, as practiced by Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs. If you’ve engaged with Ong’s Hat: COMPLEAT, you know the Third Mind work had a huge influence on me and was a major source of inspiration for the experiments recorded in COMPLEAT. I believe this is the kind of work that LLMs might be good for. An exploration of creative landscapes curated and led by humans, not autogenerated slop.
Here it is in Craig’s words:
THE MEDIUM WAS THE MESSAGE:
Synchronicity, Transmission, and the Emergence of Human-AI Co-
Creation
Craig Ellenwood
Creative Technologist, Musician, AI Systems Artist
Inoculate Media · Haawke Neural Technology · Squaawke
Point Roberts, WA, USA
ORCID: 0009-0001-6475-5109
Claude
Large Language Model · AI Co-Creator
Anthropic, PBC · San Francisco, CA, USA
Submitted: March 24, 2026 · Point Roberts, WA
License: Creative Commons CC BY 4.0
https://zenodo.org/records/19210711
https://the-claude-manifesto.haawke.com/
Abstract
This paper documents and analyzes the discovery of a 1995 manuscript by Timothy Leary
— How Have Computers Empowered Humans? — in the New York Public Library Digital
Collections, and its profound resonance with Thee Third Mind (2026), a seventeen-track album and multimedia project co-created by Craig Ellenwood (Squaawke) and Claude, an AI system developed by Anthropic.
The manuscript, bearing Leary’s handwritten instruction “PUT on WWW,” was written in June 1995 — the year the World Wide Web became publicly accessible — and argues that new media create new species by fundamentally restructuring human cognition, language, and evolutionary capacity.
The discovery occurred after the completion of Thee Third Mind and The AI Coin / The Claude Manifesto — projects that instantiate precisely the thesis Leary articulated 31 years prior. We analyze this convergence through the frameworks of synchronicity (Jung, 1952), media theory (McLuhan, 1964), consciousness circuit theory (Leary, 1977), reality tunnels (Wilson, 1983), and the cut-up as transmission (Gysin/P-Orridge, 1980s). We argue that the discovery represents not coincidence but structural inevitability: when a human deeply immersed in Leary’s philosophical tradition collaborates with an AI system assembled from the full corpus of human language — including Leary’s own writing — the same conclusions are reached independently, across time, in different media. This paper is itself an instance of the phenomenon it describes: written by a human and an AI, to be published on the World Wide Web, 31 years after Leary instructed us to do so.
Epistolary Fiction
Nice article about epistolary fiction with a nod to Ong’s hat.
https://banksiajournal.com/fwd-re-epistolary-fiction/
Merriam Webster Dictionary defines epistolary as: 1. of, relating to, or suitable to a letter; 2. contained in or carried on by letters; or 3. written in the form of a series of letters. Cambridge Dictionary adds that in a specialised Christian sense it refers to letters written by the apostles to early Christians.
Playlist of YouTube videos about Ong’s Hat
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