Pop Apocalypse Podcast

As part of the Transcendence and Transformation Initiative, the CSWR is proud to announce its first ever podcast. Pop Apocalypse explores the mystical and the mythic, the paranormal and the psychedelic in popular culture.

The show features interviews with musicians, artists, and writers about how their spiritual experiences and practices inform their work. We also explore the mythological universes in film and fiction with show-runners, writers, and directors. These candid, first-person reflections will be complemented by interviews with scholars who situate these artistic products in the study of mysticism and esotericism.

Together, the podcast offers descriptive, interpretive, and theoretical scholarship on religion and popular culture in real-time that will be of interest to scholars and laypersons alike.

Hosted by Matthew J. Dillon
Music by Secret Chiefs 3

Video: Episode 22: Exploring the Mysticism of Mathematics with Robert Schneider of The Apples in Stereo 

In the last episode of Pop Apocalypse for the CSWR, host Matt Dillon welcomes musician and mathematician, Robert Schneider, back to the show. Robert and Matt discuss the mysticism and mystery of mathematics through figures such as Pythagoras and the twentieth-century visionary and mathematician Ramanujan. Robert also reflects on his revelatory experiences with mathematics and how number theory speaks to a central concern in the history of philosophy: the one and the many. 

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.