Spirituality and The Elephant 6 Collective With Robert Schneider

In episodes 21 and 22 of the Pop Apocalypse, host Matt Dillon welcomes musician and mathematician Robert Schneider. Schneider is the lead singer of the psychedelic pop band The Apples in Stereo, a producer for bands including Neutral Milk Hotel and Olivia Tremor Control, and currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Michigan Technological University.

In part one, we discuss Robert’s religious upbringing in the American South before exploring the mystical dimensions of The Elephant 6 Recording Co (8:58). We touch on the Church of the Subgenius, meditative practices, Krishna Consciousness, church camps, Surrealism, and Sun Ra’s Arkestra, then take a deep dive (1:13:11) into how the Beach Boys served as the spiritual and artistic north star for Elephant 6.

Robert Schneider bio

Robert Schneider is a musician, producer, and mathematician. He co-founded The Elephant 6 Recording Co. in the early 1990s, a collective of independent musicians and artists. Schneider is the lead singer and songwriter for The Apples in Stereo, a psychedelic pop band that has recorded seven studio albums. As a producer, Robert recorded and mixed some of the most celebrated albums of the 1990s, including Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea and Olivia Tremor Control’s Dusk at Cubist Castle. He completed his PhD in Mathematics at Emory University in 2018, specializing in number theory and combinatorics. Robert is now Assistant Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Michigan Technological University, where he helps run the Mathematics and Music Lab.

Subscribe to Pop Apocalypse on YouTube for new episodes after June!

https://www.youtube.com/@PopApocalypse

Robert Schneider links

• Faculty page
• "Encounter with the Infinite" article
• The Apples in stereo on bandcamp
• The Apples in Stereo biography

Elephant 6 links

• Homepage
• Elephant 6 documentary
• Endless Endless by Adam Claire
• Olivia Tremor Control on bandcamp
• Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

In Pop Apocalypse, Ep. 20, we welcome actress, writer, producer, and activist, Amy Brenneman. After earning her B.A. in Comparative Religions at Harvard, Amy went on to a successful acting career, with star turns in the film Heat, as well as the shows like "The Leftovers," "The Old Man," and "Judging Amy" (which she also wrote and produced). In this wide-ranging conversation (2:12), Amy and I explore how the craft of acting, study of religion, and practice of Jungian dreamwork have enriched one another throughout her career. We discuss the similarities between ritual and acting, and how a background in comparative religion helped Amy write, build, and inhabit characters. She also describes (20:00) how decades of practicing active imagination and Jungian dreamwork helped her bring a mythic and numinous dimension to roles like Laurie Garvey in The Leftovers. To close (1:03:09), we discuss Amy’s current experience as a Master’s student at Harvard Divinity School and her research into the politics and possibilities of the Trickster archtype.

BIO

Amy Brenneman earned a degree in Comparative Religion at Harvard, specializing in Indo-Tibetan Religion. She was a founding member of the Cornerstone Theater Company, which specializes in site-specific community-based theater on themes of social justice; her roles included Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, Natasha in Three Sisters and Clytemnestra in The Oresteia.
Other theater: CSC Rep, Lincoln Center Theater, Williamstown Theater Festival, Yale Rep and The American Repertory Theater. She starred in the world premiere of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Rapture Blister Burn (Playwrights Horizons, Geffen Theater) and Power of Sail opposite Bryan Cranston (Geffen Theater.) She played Miriam of Nazareth in the world premiere of Galilee 34 (South Coast Rep) and starred in The Sound Inside (Pasadena Playhouse), which was named one of the years’ best performances by the Los Angeles Times.She recently starred in the world premiere of Fake It Until You Make It by Larissa Fasthorse at Arena Stage.

Amy co-created, wrote, and starred in Mouth Wide Open (The Yard, American Repertory Theater) and Overcome (The Yard, En Garde Arts, Cotuit Center for The Arts.) She has performed original spoken word pieces at Spark, Tasty Words and Tangletuit.
Amy created, executive produced and starred in “Judging Amy” (multiple Golden Globe Emmy and SAG nominations) based on the work of her mother, the Honorable Judge Frederica Brenneman. Other television: “NYPD Blue” (SAG award, Emmy nomination) “Frasier,” (Emmy nomination), “Heartbeat” (exec producer), “Goliath,” “VEEP,” “Private Practice,” “The Leftovers,” “Tell Me Your Secrets,” “Shining Girls” and “The Old Man.”
Film credits include CASPER, FEAR, DAYLIGHT, HEAT, FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS, THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB, WORDS AND PICTURES, NINE LIVES, THINGS YOU CAN TELL JUST BY LOOKING AT HER and MOTHER AND CHILD.

For her activist work, Amy has been honored by Women in Film, The Brady Center, the League of Women Voters, the California State Assembly, the National Children’s Alliance, the Chime Institute, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, the Help Group, the Producer’s Guild of America, among others. Amy currently serves on the Creative Council for the Center for Reproductive Rights and received the Eleanor Roosevelt Award from The Feminist Majority for her ongoing commitment to reproductive rights.

Amy is married to writer/director Brad Silberling and has two children, Charlotte and Bodhi. Currently she attends Harvard Divinity School in the Master of Religion and Public Life program, researching the role of the Trickster archetype in ritual and activism.

In Pop Apocalypse, Ep. 19, we welcome author and musician, Gary Lachman, to the show. Lachman was the original bassist for the seminal new wave band, Blondie. He later became an intellectual historian; to date, Lachman has published twenty-six books, most recently a memoir, Touched by the Presence: From Blondie’s Bowery and Rock and Roll to Magic and the Occult (Inner Traditions, 2025). In this wide-ranging chat (3:01), we discuss how Lachman’s reading of comics and Lovecraft inspired a lifelong interest in the occult, his early days in Blondie, and how he came to Crowleyan magick. Then we turn to Lachman’s time practicing “The Work” of Gurdjieff, his relationship with the author Colin Wilson, and how keeping a dream journal can change our view of the nature of time.

Gary Lachman Bio

Gary Lachman is an author and lecturer on consciousness, counterculture, and the Western esoteric tradition. His works include Dark Star Rising (Tarcher, 2018), Beyond the Robot (TarcherPerigee, 2016), and The Secret Teachers of the Western World (Tarcher, 2015). A founding member of the rock band Blondie, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006. He lives in London.

Gary Lachman's webpage

Touched by the Presence: From Blondie's Bowery and Rock and Roll to Magic and the Occult

CSWR EVENTS

• Charles Stang and Sarah Schorr, "Thoreau's Solar and Lunar Philosophy."
• Jane Hirschfield: A Reading.