Ben Katzman Wants to Make Us the Masters of Our Imagination

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Nicolas Cage is the type of actor who commits. He plays a young, Cher-obsessed romantic in Moonstruck, a pair of aspiring twin screenwriters in Adaptation, and an ex-convict on the run in Wild at Heart. No role is outside of his orbit. Any type of film and any type of character is within the realm of possibility. As author (and Paste contributor) Zach Schonfeld writes in his 2023 book How Coppola Became Cage, “Cage was willing to ruin himself (or his reputation, or his trailer, or the life of an innocent cockroach) for the sake of a great performance.” Full-throated commitment to his variegated interests is his drive. Maybe that’s why Ben Katzman finds him so magnetic.

Katzman, a DIY rock musician, Survivor 46 finalist, and, now, podcaster, has a wide array of obsessions and, thus, a wide array of creative endeavors. Be it his songwriting, playing in friends’ bands, going on reality television, or starting a podcast, the Miami native simply does whatever the hell he wants. After all, Cage partly inspired Katzman to go on Survivor in the first place. As he explains on the pilot episode of his new podcast, Masters of Reality, Katzman attended a Q&A event that Cage appeared at, and he asked the movie star himself whether he should go on the show. In classic Cage fashion, he encouraged him to sign on.

There’s a similar impetus behind Masters of Reality: creative people and pop-culture figures talking about their approaches to art and their engagement with other artists’ works. The guests run the gamut. As of now, there are episodes with fellow Survivor contestant and recent memoirist Parvati Shallow and Mannequin Pussy ringleader Marisa “Missy” Dabice. Some upcoming guests include musicians like Shannon Shaw, actors like Danny Tamberelli, and Survivor peers such as Benjamin “Coach” Wade and Carolyn Wiger. “Reddit will tell you [Survivor] is all about the strategy and the people who win, but I think for a lot of us, it’s the characters and the weirdos and the misfits,” Katzman tells me from his Brooklyn hotel room. “I remember thinking my season was so bonkers. You get into the reality TV world, and there’s a lot of people who think they made it, and they live off this one season they’ve done.” But what if we were able to continue following the characters, weirdos, and misfits beyond the one thing we know them for? As Katzman himself puts it, “Would it be interesting as a fan to know what makes Carolyn a ‘weirdo’? Why is Coach such an epic Steven Seagal-type?”

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That’s the thesis of Katzman’s new podcast: asking people about their day-to-day creative lives while making the show idiosyncratic enough to stand out from the oversaturated pod landscape. For example, he has some unconventional ideas for live events once the show is more established. “You see this with Survivor and Big Brother all the time; they do these watch parties where you come to bars and watch the episodes with your favorite players,” he explains. “But imagine if it wasn’t 300 people in a bar and it wasn’t super loud. Imagine if you showed up and me and Carolyn are your dodgeball captains, or me and Shannon from Shannon & the Clams are doing an art class in a park.” This is what he ultimately envisions for Masters of Reality: something beyond a podcast, something that he describes as “an occasional live event where you get to mingle and get one-on-one time and be creative together and exert our energy. I just want to be off the wall with it.” As Mannequin Pussy’s Missy explains in a text, “Ben is a true friend and lover and supporter of music and all things freaky and creative.”

There’s no doubt that Katzman is already ridiculously busy. Such is the life of a touring musician who recently opened for Def Leppard. So why start a podcast, especially one that requires every guest to be interviewed in person and on camera? How do you balance the dual demands of a touring artist and podcast host? “As people know, it’s a frugal life,” he says. “But I’ve always been all over the place, like I ran a record label in college and wanted to play music, and then I started taking my art more seriously. The way I deal with it internally is I tell myself, ‘Just do shit.’ I like so many things, so I like to do so many things. I’m exhausted, but I have so much fun, and I think I’m living to have fun more than anything else.” Masters of Reality is, admittedly, “a Ben Katzman special interests pod.”

But he doesn’t want this podcast to be solely for his own enjoyment. He hopes that others are able to tap into their inner artists through listening to these conversations. He hopes that fans eventually come to a realization that he staunchly believes in: “Everybody is a creative weirdo! The misconception people have is ‘Oh, I can never do that.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, you totally can! Have you ever made somebody laugh? Dude, you created a joke. Have you ever thought about how you want your life to go, even committing to a 9-to-5 and having a normie route? That is making a choice, and that is writing your life. So boom! There, you’re a writer.’ We all just happen to do that in weird ways.”

There are some banked episodes for fans to look forward to, but Katzman also has a slate of dream guests that he would love to make happen: Lars Ulrich (“He was so right about Napster”); Kim Gordon (“She wasn’t nice to me one time, but we could rectify that!”); and, obviously, Nic Cage. “He never phones it in,” he says. “He goes so hard, and every character is explosive. It’s his own genre. It’s a real commitment.” It makes complete sense that, as a self-proclaimed pop culture junkie, Katzman has an extensive list of hopeful guests known from various cultural ephemera. He also has a theory as to why people gravitate toward pop culture in general: “I think we turn to music and movies and TV shows because we want to see ourselves in those stories, so we can relate to our own lives a little better.” With Masters of Reality, maybe people will be able to understand themselves a little better, too. For that alone, Ben Katzman’s new podcast rocks.

Grant Sharples is a writer, journalist and critic. His work has also appeared in Interview, Uproxx, Pitchfork, Stereogum, The Ringer, Los Angeles Review of Books, and other publications. He lives in Kansas City.

With Masters of Reality, Ben Katzman Wants to Make Us the Masters of Our Imagination

The DIY rocker and Survivor finalist talks about the importance of creativity, Nicolas Cage, and his off-the-wall new podcast.