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Speaker 1: Also media, Welcome back once again to Behind the Bastards,

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Speaker 1: the podcast about the very worst people in all of

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Speaker 1: history and folks this week. You know, I've said this

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Speaker 1: a couple of times, but I always mean it. This

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Speaker 1: is one of the worst guys we're ever going to

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Speaker 1: talk about, and in order to really get behind this

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Speaker 1: bastard in a way that makes them palatable, We've got

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Speaker 1: to bring on one of the best guests we've ever had,

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Speaker 1: a man who needs no introduction, perhaps the Eddiest of all, Helms.

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Speaker 1: Ed Helms, Welcome back to the show. Ed.

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Speaker 2: Thank you so much. I'm so glad to be here.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, I'm extremely edi ish Eddie.

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Speaker 2: Ed, I'm I don't know if I'm the eddiest, but.

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Speaker 1: You're definitely the Helmsest of Eds. I think we can

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Speaker 1: agree with that.

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Speaker 2: I'm the Helmsiest, yeah for sure.

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Speaker 4: And you and you're the host of Snaffo.

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Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, great podcast entering season three. It's a pod

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Speaker 1: cast about some of the most biggest screw ups or

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Speaker 1: fuck ups I guess, just based on the literal translation

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Speaker 1: of the title, in the history of the US government.

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Speaker 1: Last season, you talked about the massive, sweeping, unprecedented civilian

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Speaker 1: led infiltration and expose of FBI surveillance files. And this

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Speaker 1: season you're talking about how the US government tried to

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Speaker 1: poison a shitload of people during Prohibition.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a dodgy. It's a dodgy world out there, folks,

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Speaker 3: and we are living in it. But no, thank you

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Speaker 3: for that blog. I'm extremely proud of of SNAFU. It's

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Speaker 3: a labor of love. It's an unbelievable amount of work.

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Speaker 3: But we have an incredible team between Gilded Audio and

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Speaker 3: Film Nation and myself and yeah, we just do a

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Speaker 3: ton of reason.

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Speaker 2: It's legit.

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Speaker 3: It's like legit, really really good history. It's real history.

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Speaker 3: And then the book, of course, I have a book

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Speaker 3: that just came out. I don't even have one to

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Speaker 3: show you. Oh my gosh, I'm so unprepared.

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Speaker 4: And on the on the YouTube, will put the graphic

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Speaker 4: up first.

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Speaker 2: Okay, good books, we got.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a fantastic book, New York Times bestseller, also

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Speaker 3: called snapfo The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest screw Ups,

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Speaker 3: lots of chapters. Each chapter is a different screw up.

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Speaker 3: Unlike the podcast, where the entire season is one screw up,

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Speaker 3: you get a whole Kaboodle in the.

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Speaker 1: Book snaff Ooz. Well, we're talking about a great screw

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Speaker 1: up today, although it's it's not a screw up of

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Speaker 1: just the US government. It's more like every time a

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Speaker 1: cult leader gets way too big for their breches. It's

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Speaker 1: kind of like a collective human screw up. Like, oh man,

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Speaker 1: we really let that guy get too far. We shouldn't

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Speaker 1: have let that happen. Right, You're looking at like Jim

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Speaker 1: Jones and like, oh shit, man, we really we screw

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Speaker 1: it up? How did that happen?

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Speaker 2: Today?

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Speaker 1: We're talking about a guy. You may not recognize him

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Speaker 1: by name, but I think a lot of people will

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Speaker 1: recognize the cult. The dude was named David Berg and

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Speaker 1: his cult was called the Children of God or the

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Speaker 1: Family International. We're back. Have you ever heard of these guys?

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Speaker 4: Ed?

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Speaker 3: Just the most, the tiniest bit, Like I have the

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Speaker 3: broadest sense of this group.

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Speaker 2: I might recall more as you go.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, these guys are If you kind of want to

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Speaker 1: cut cult leaders into like three different groups, you've got

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Speaker 1: kind of on the lightest in the guys. You're like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's some psychological abuse. They're taking money from people, but

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Speaker 1: they're not committing any like serious violent crimes, right, they're

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Speaker 1: just kind of in it for the cash. And in

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Speaker 1: the middle you've got the guys where they're like physically

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Speaker 1: and mentally abusing people, but they're not like killing anyone.

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Speaker 1: David Berg is on kind of the far end of

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Speaker 1: the spectrum where like is he is just some of

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Speaker 1: the worst stuff I've heard of a cult leader do.

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Speaker 1: He's about as extreme as it gets. And he's interesting

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Speaker 1: because he's also he's not just like a weird religious

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Speaker 1: cult leader. He was like fusing a bunch of hippie

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Speaker 1: ideology in this kind of like evangelical Christianity, like pentecostal

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Speaker 1: preaching in the mid centuries. A very weird guy. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'll just get into it.

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Speaker 3: Like nothing you just said makes sense, that doesn't say,

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Speaker 3: But that's the beauty of cults, like you just kind

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Speaker 3: of make it up.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, they can make it up as they go along,

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Speaker 1: and they're very rooted in their time. Right, This quolte

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Speaker 1: couldn't have gotten started any other year but like nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixty eight, which is in fact when it gets started.

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Speaker 1: David Brandt Berg was born on February eighteenth, nineteen nineteen,

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Speaker 1: kind of at the height of the influenza pandemic. His

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Speaker 1: parents were Virginia Burg and Healmerberg. They were both evangelical

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Speaker 1: Christian preachers participating in what was called the Revival movement. Right,

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Speaker 1: So at this time, you've got a lot of these

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Speaker 1: like traveling itinerant preachers moving around throughout the US, mostly

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Speaker 1: but not entirely, in like the South and southeast. And

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Speaker 1: so you've got this network of churches, but also these

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Speaker 1: traveling preachers who make their money getting crowds and hyping

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Speaker 1: them up, and there's a lot of Sometimes they're doing

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Speaker 1: like fake psychic surgery. Sometimes they're doing like snake handling,

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Speaker 1: where they'll like milk a snake of its venom and

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Speaker 1: then pretend to get bit beforehand to be like, look,

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Speaker 1: God protected me, right, Like it's a show act in

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Speaker 1: addition to being preaching, right, and you know this, that's

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Speaker 1: the big movement at the time, and that's how David's

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Speaker 1: parents kind of make their living. David would later write

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Speaker 1: that his father, Helmer, who was a Swedish immigrant to

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Speaker 1: the US, had been converted by his maternal grandfather and

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Speaker 1: before finding Jesus, Helmer was a quote cigar smoking beer

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Speaker 1: drinking wild dancing party going, good looking and loose living

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Speaker 1: young man of the world.

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Speaker 3: I would think anyone named Hyalmer.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's that description.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems like a loose slipping man.

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Speaker 2: You know what origin is that name?

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Speaker 1: Swedish? Yeah, he's very sweetish.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Jalmer. I like it.

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Speaker 1: And it's we don't know if that's actually true. Like

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Speaker 1: it's kind of a thing in this world of evangelical

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Speaker 1: preachers to pretend that, you know, before you got saved,

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Speaker 1: you were a real bad guy. And the fact that

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Speaker 1: he can't think of anything but like while I drank

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Speaker 1: beer and danced, right, It's like, I don't know, man,

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Speaker 1: I've known worse guys. I don't know.

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Speaker 3: Depends on what kind of like how much beer and

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Speaker 3: what kind of dancing.

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Speaker 2: I suppose that.

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Speaker 1: Is a good point.

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Speaker 2: Dancing can get dirty.

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Speaker 1: Yes, yes, we know. What was it? Kevin Bacon? Let

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Speaker 1: us all know, Patrick Swayze, pastor Jesus Christ. I know

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Speaker 1: that's shameful. So one of the weird little facts about

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Speaker 1: his parents is that before she met Helmer, Virginia, his

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Speaker 1: mom was engaged to be married to Bruce Bogart, who

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Speaker 1: I think was Humphrey Bogart's cousin, which is just a

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Speaker 1: weird fact. Helmer was hired entertainment at the wedding and

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Speaker 1: she just kind of leaves her fiance to be with him. So,

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Speaker 1: you know, there's a story there that's interesting, but we

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Speaker 1: don't have it. Whatever the truth, from the time David

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Speaker 1: knew his father, he was a zealous minister. Berg would

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Speaker 1: later write that this was almost too much for his

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Speaker 1: mother because this is not the guy that she'd married.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if this is true either. David describes

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Speaker 1: his mother as very, very strict and religious and she's

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Speaker 1: going to be a super famous preacher. Later, he just

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Speaker 1: kind of doesn't like his mom, so he takes a

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Speaker 1: lot of potshots at her in the biography that he

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Speaker 1: wrote about himself. I think that's probably more what's happening here.

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Speaker 2: We call that an auto biography.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, sorry, Yes, Hylmer and Virginia go to religious universities.

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Speaker 1: His mom goes to Texas Christian University and gets a

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Speaker 1: degree there. They have their first son, David's older brother,

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Speaker 1: in nineteen eleven, his older sister in nineteen fifteen, and

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Speaker 1: David's the youngest of the family in nineteen nineteen. Virginia

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Speaker 1: would later claim that after having her daughter, she had

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Speaker 1: been completely disabled for five years and then miraculously healed.

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Speaker 1: And if this is the case, then she had David

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Speaker 1: before she was healed, and scholars who looked into the

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Speaker 1: family are like, there's no evidence that she was ever

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Speaker 1: really sick. This is again just kind of like part

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Speaker 1: of the myth making. And I bring this up because

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Speaker 1: as David grows into the family, he's going to be

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Speaker 1: used to the idea that both his parents are like

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Speaker 1: these traveling freelance preachers, and that they just make up

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Speaker 1: stuff about the family, right and about their history that like,

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Speaker 1: as their kid, he knows a lot of this isn't true,

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Speaker 1: and he just come, you just lie about your backstory

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Speaker 1: because it sells better.

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Speaker 2: Rights.

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Speaker 1: It's a show, right, right, exactly like Bob Dylan, but

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Speaker 1: like Boby right, like Bob Dylan, or a pro wrestler

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Speaker 1: like a.

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Speaker 2: Lot of entertainers.

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Speaker 1: True, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No one was ever born

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Speaker 1: named Nicholas Cage. It's simply too cool of a name, right,

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Speaker 1: Like his mother, David's going to go on to later

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Speaker 1: have claimed that he suffered from a variety of untreatable

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Speaker 1: illness illnesses that were cured via prayer. His bio on

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Speaker 1: the website established by the cult he later founds, says

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Speaker 1: that he was born with influenza and also an enlarged heart.

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Speaker 1: Neither of these is super unlikely, but this kind of

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Speaker 1: weaves into the bio he makes that he was spared

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Speaker 1: from all this by his prayers right, and then he

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Speaker 1: was like healed so that he could do his work.

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Speaker 1: His biography, the autobiography on his church's website, also goes

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Speaker 1: into a whole host of what I think are increased

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Speaker 1: the unlikely ailments for him to have suffered. At three

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Speaker 1: years of age, his foot was run over by an

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Speaker 1: automobile and the doctor said he would never walk again.

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Speaker 1: But again his parents believed in God and prayed, and

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Speaker 1: his foot was miraculously healed, although the doctor said that

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Speaker 1: many of the bones were crushed. When he was seven

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Speaker 1: years old, a water heater exploded in his face and

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Speaker 1: the doctor said he would be permanently blinded. But this

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Speaker 1: time God used an old friend, a real saint, who

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Speaker 1: prayed for his eyes and they were instantly healed. I

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Speaker 1: don't know, maybe I don't think a water heater exploded

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Speaker 1: in his face.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe. I mean that would do a lot more

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Speaker 2: than blind you.

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Speaker 1: It seems like right, And he's like, we have pictures

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Speaker 1: of his face because.

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Speaker 3: Those are those are made of iron. Those things are

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Speaker 3: like an exploding water heater.

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Speaker 1: It's like an ied going off.

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Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, fully like a lot of shrapnel for real.

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and his face is like fine, Like there's

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Speaker 1: not really much evidence of this. What we can confirm

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Speaker 1: is that he grows up, like I said, in this

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Speaker 1: family that it's almost like a wrestle ling family right

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Speaker 1: where it's like, yeah, we've got like we've got like

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Speaker 1: the k fape that we have to keep about our background,

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Speaker 1: you know. And so he's going to be very good

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Speaker 1: about this. His entire life is he.

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Speaker 3: Going on these church revivals, Like from the get go,

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Speaker 3: he's just they're like living on the.

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Speaker 1: Road sometimes he is for a part of his early life.

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Speaker 1: I think up until he's like ten or eleven or so,

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Speaker 1: he mostly stays at home and one of his parents

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Speaker 1: will be traveling at any given time occasionally. Both like

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Speaker 1: he will describe himself later as very lonesome as a

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Speaker 1: little kid, because he both he doesn't have a lot

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Speaker 1: of friends and he barely sees his mom, right, because

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Speaker 1: they're very busy and traveling constantly.

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Speaker 3: Right, I would wager that describes a lot of cult leaders, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 3: lonely kids, too much time thinking and sorry, sorry, remind

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Speaker 3: me where this is his childhood.

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Speaker 1: Uh, it's mostly in I think at this point they're

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Speaker 1: like in like Mississippi or something like that, but they're

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Speaker 1: like moving around his entire childhood. They wind up in

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Speaker 1: Florida and then californ are kind of the two places

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Speaker 1: he's primarily raised a little in his early life. They're

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Speaker 1: moving so much sometimes like every couple of months that

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Speaker 1: it's unclear to me, because like his dad or his

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Speaker 1: mom will get a job like pinch hitting at a

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Speaker 1: church for four months or something, right, so that the

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Speaker 1: normal pastor can go out on the road or whatever.

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Speaker 1: So he's raised a lot of the time by this

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Speaker 1: like combination of maids, governesses and like like uncles and

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Speaker 1: aunts occasionally, and he doesn't get a lot of attention.

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Speaker 1: And this is kind of highlighted by the fact that

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Speaker 1: the attention he does get as a young boy, and

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Speaker 1: probably the earliest direct adult attention that he strongly remembers

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Speaker 1: is sexual abuse, which is also going to like leave

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Speaker 1: a mark. This starts when he's three, and it's you know,

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Speaker 1: it's the maid of his house, who, like he claims,

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Speaker 1: is kind of molesting him to help him get to sleep.

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Speaker 1: So he'll talk about this positively as an adult, and

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Speaker 1: that's kind of relevant because he's going to come to

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Speaker 1: believe that this kind of stuff is positive for members

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Speaker 1: of his cult to do.

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Speaker 2: Right. That's so interesting.

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Speaker 3: Do I read that in Victorian England this was commonplace

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Speaker 3: that governesses would give little boys hand jobs essentially at

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Speaker 3: bedtime tot Yes, the theory being that they would help

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Speaker 3: them fall asleep.

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Speaker 1: Yes, And that's exactly what his maid says that she's doing,

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Speaker 1: and his mom does not like. His mom finds out

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Speaker 1: and assaults the maid, like is hitting her and fires her,

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Speaker 1: which I think we could all agree pretty normal responts

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Speaker 1: from a parent. But he and as you said, like,

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Speaker 1: this is not at the time, like it's a kind

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Speaker 1: of thing that happens a lot more often than he

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Speaker 1: would have thought, and he, as a kid, thinks it's

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Speaker 1: unjust and fair because he's like, I don't get why

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Speaker 1: my mom was so mean to the maid, right, like, oh, interesting,

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Speaker 1: and yeah, and this is going to like kind of

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Speaker 1: compound over the years, he's going to keep having experiences

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Speaker 1: like this and convince himself that sort of his reaction

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Speaker 1: to them is the normal and healthy one, and that's

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Speaker 1: going to lead him pushing this on a lot of

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Speaker 1: other kids.

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Speaker 3: It's so complex, it's it's a really complicated and not

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Speaker 3: the maternal figure battling with his caretaker. Yeah, like the

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Speaker 3: where is his loyalty right in all of that? And

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Speaker 3: the abuse, yeah, is is sort of justified in somewhere

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Speaker 3: attempt you know, he tries to sure yeah, or and

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Speaker 3: the and the the maid it's like his mate, Yeah,

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Speaker 3: nanny or whatever.

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Speaker 2: Wow, that's wild.

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Speaker 1: It's it's wild, and like you have to assume this

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Speaker 1: nanny is like more of a mother figure than his

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Speaker 1: mom at age three, because she's just not there, right

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Speaker 1: Like it's yeah, and after this, his mother is going

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Speaker 1: to be increasingly like David experiments a lot with himself,

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Speaker 1: and his mom will punish him violently whenever she catches him, right,

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Speaker 1: which kind of compounds his feelings of anger towards his mom.

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Speaker 1: This comes to a head when he's six years old

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Speaker 1: and she catches him yet again like experimenting and quote

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Speaker 1: she brought out a wash base, a little bowl in

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Speaker 1: a knife and told me she was going to cut

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Speaker 1: it off, right, She threatens to like circumcise him.

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Speaker 3: Basically when you say experimenting, he's just like mass masturbating.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, And like his mom is

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Speaker 1: basically threatens to like cut him as a result, which

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Speaker 1: is bad parenting. Right. So this this kid is stacking

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Speaker 1: a lot of trauma. We're at age seven at this point, right,

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Speaker 1: which is when he has a confused sexual encounter with

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Speaker 1: a cousin of the same age, right, who's also seven.

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Speaker 1: So these are two kids playing around. This is not

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Speaker 1: like an abuse scenario, right, They're both the same age.

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Speaker 1: But his uncle catches them and like watches and he's

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Speaker 1: horrified because he realizes that his uncle is like kind

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Speaker 1: of voyeuristically doing this, and his uncle never tells his mom.

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Speaker 1: He never tells his mom. So what we've got by

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Speaker 1: this point is this very confused kid who's had a

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Speaker 1: lot of sexual trauma before age ten and is learning

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Speaker 1: from an early age that like this is the most

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Speaker 1: positive attention he's gotten in his life, and it's also

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Speaker 1: the thing that he's most punished and frightened of. Right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: He's going to grow up, and his main takeaway from

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Speaker 1: the experience will be frustration at the fact that his

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Speaker 1: parents judged him for all of this, right, that they

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Speaker 1: punished him for this kind of stuff, And so you

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Speaker 1: have to kind of think of this energy within him

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Speaker 1: around this as this kind of building pressure inside of

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Speaker 1: him that's going to at a certain point be released

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Speaker 1: with pretty catastrophic consequences for a lot of people. He

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Speaker 1: also is really frustrated as a kid that his mom

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Speaker 1: is usually the one punishing him. He thinks his dad

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Speaker 1: should be doing that. He sees his dad as like

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Speaker 1: kind of weak and being dominated by his mom. He

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Speaker 1: would later write that the times he most respected his

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Speaker 1: father or when his dad quote picked up a board

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Speaker 1: and hit me so hard on the fanny he lifted

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Speaker 1: me right off the ground. So he's like, well, at

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Speaker 1: least my dad hit me sometimes, you know, and was

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Speaker 1: like a real father.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: We are talking about the twenties here, so not a

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Speaker 1: healthy upbringing.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: The irony is irony is that he's right that, yeah,

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Speaker 3: his parents shouldn't have punished him, but it doesn't. But

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Speaker 3: it seems like he thinks they should have like nurtured

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Speaker 3: this toxicity whereas they should have intervened in a in

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Speaker 3: like a healthy way.

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Speaker 1: They should have intervened been like, this isn't your fault, right,

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Speaker 1: exactly all of that, but this isn't okay.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's both not your fault and not okay. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: And and he seems to have walked away with all.

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Speaker 1: The wrong all the wrong things. And you know, it

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Speaker 1: is hard to imagine a couple of parents in the

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Speaker 1: twenties having gotten this kind of situation, right, you know, like, yeah.

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Speaker 2: Not a lot of tools. They didn't have a lot

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Speaker 2: a lot of tools.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. So once he gets a little older, he's

347
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Speaker 1: kind of moving into adolescence. The family starts to move

348
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Speaker 1: with regularity. And at this point they kind of are

349
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Speaker 1: on the road. And he's on the road with his

350
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Speaker 1: family pretty constantly. They go around the US. They live

351
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Speaker 1: in like a dozen states. They spend some time in Canada.

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Speaker 1: His mom is becoming increingly prominent. She has like a ministry,

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Speaker 1: which means she's a known preacher. She's getting invitations from

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Speaker 1: dozens of churches to come. And the way this works

355
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Speaker 1: is it's honestly, the evangelical preaching business works a lot

356
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Speaker 1: like stand up comedy does. Today where a venue invites

357
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Speaker 1: you or you get hooked up through an agent and

358
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Speaker 1: you take like half of the offering. So you give

359
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Speaker 1: a preach, people donate money, you split it with the venue. Right,

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Speaker 1: That's kind of how these people are making a living.

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Speaker 1: And she's like a high level stand up like person, right, Like,

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Speaker 1: if you want to think of it that way, they're

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Speaker 1: making pretty good money for a while, and in fact,

364
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Speaker 1: they're making good enough money that when he's like I

365
00:17:38,040 --> 00:17:40,960
Speaker 1: think twelve or so, the family settles down in Miami

366
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Speaker 1: because Virginia is able to actually start her own church

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Speaker 1: right where she is now operating a venue, And for

368
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Speaker 1: a time things are getting better for the Bergs, but

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Speaker 1: then the depression hits, right, and this is just as

370
00:17:52,880 --> 00:17:56,400
Speaker 1: David's entering his teen years, and Virginia's church goes out

371
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Speaker 1: of business, right, which is not usually a terrible use

372
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Speaker 1: for churches, but that's what these kind of ones are, right.

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Speaker 3: So interesting, Yeah, I wonder if they had tax exempt status.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, these people are paying taxes.

375
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Speaker 3: And I'm just I'm so curious what her presentation was, like,

376
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Speaker 3: what was her energy, what was her tone? What was

377
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Speaker 3: the message? I assume was fire and brimstone or was

378
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Speaker 3: it more Yeah, I don't like.

379
00:18:24,080 --> 00:18:26,800
Speaker 1: It's both this mix of like fire and brimstone. You

380
00:18:26,800 --> 00:18:29,000
Speaker 1: always start with a like, here's how bad I was

381
00:18:29,080 --> 00:18:31,119
Speaker 1: when I was younger. You know, there's a there's a

382
00:18:31,160 --> 00:18:33,959
Speaker 1: really good There's an Oscar wedding documentary from nineteen seventy

383
00:18:33,960 --> 00:18:37,520
Speaker 1: three called Marjo m A. R. Joe with this dude

384
00:18:37,560 --> 00:18:39,399
Speaker 1: who was a kid when he was like five. His

385
00:18:39,520 --> 00:18:42,840
Speaker 1: parents were traveling preachers like David's, and they had him

386
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Speaker 1: like they billed him as like the youngest preacher. They

387
00:18:44,760 --> 00:18:47,280
Speaker 1: like taught him, wrote how to do stuff like perform weddings,

388
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Speaker 1: and as an adult, he came back undercover with like

389
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Speaker 1: a film crew to like expose how this business worked.

390
00:18:53,040 --> 00:18:54,720
Speaker 1: And if you want to see like how this whole

391
00:18:55,240 --> 00:18:58,600
Speaker 1: like industry worked, Marjo's a really good depiction of it.

392
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Speaker 1: He also wound up as an actor on the A

393
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Speaker 1: team as an adult. It's weird. So after the business

394
00:19:07,000 --> 00:19:10,960
Speaker 1: goes under, the Helmer and Virginia start going on the road.

395
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Speaker 1: The marriage is not doing well because money's not good,

396
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Speaker 1: so they split up and they split the kids between them,

397
00:19:17,480 --> 00:19:19,919
Speaker 1: and David stays with his mom, and his mom kind

398
00:19:19,960 --> 00:19:23,400
Speaker 1: of uses him as in her words her quote chauffeur, secretary,

399
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Speaker 1: and singer. I don't know if they had he shouldn't

400
00:19:26,600 --> 00:19:32,280
Speaker 1: have been driving. He's like thirteen, but it was the thirties. Yeah, yeah,

401
00:19:32,359 --> 00:19:35,080
Speaker 1: fuck it. Why not not as much traffic. Yeah, not

402
00:19:35,119 --> 00:19:37,520
Speaker 1: as much traffic. No one's got seatbelts, So you're just

403
00:19:37,640 --> 00:19:42,280
Speaker 1: vibing in there. They wind up in California, southern California,

404
00:19:42,400 --> 00:19:45,720
Speaker 1: where David attends Monterey High School, and so this is

405
00:19:45,800 --> 00:19:47,480
Speaker 1: kind of the second time in his life that he's

406
00:19:47,520 --> 00:19:50,440
Speaker 1: really stable for any period of time. He would later

407
00:19:50,480 --> 00:19:53,040
Speaker 1: claim to have been bullied for being a preacher's kid

408
00:19:53,080 --> 00:19:55,480
Speaker 1: by the other students who quote threw his books around,

409
00:19:55,560 --> 00:19:59,160
Speaker 1: tore his papers, and even broke his left arm. He's

410
00:19:59,200 --> 00:20:01,280
Speaker 1: a sickly kid, and he claims to have figured that

411
00:20:01,320 --> 00:20:03,359
Speaker 1: the only way he could beat them back was quote

412
00:20:03,359 --> 00:20:05,760
Speaker 1: in the classroom with pen and paper, and that he

413
00:20:05,800 --> 00:20:08,840
Speaker 1: did this by graduating with quote the highest scholastic record

414
00:20:08,840 --> 00:20:11,360
Speaker 1: in the eighty year history of the school. Now there's

415
00:20:11,359 --> 00:20:14,760
Speaker 1: no evidence of this, Like, we know he graduated in

416
00:20:14,840 --> 00:20:17,359
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five, but I've never heard, like the school

417
00:20:17,359 --> 00:20:19,400
Speaker 1: doesn't claim that he did the best of anyone there.

418
00:20:19,440 --> 00:20:23,640
Speaker 1: So he's the massaging stuff a little bit. By this point,

419
00:20:23,720 --> 00:20:26,560
Speaker 1: he's seen what the life of a traveling preacher looks like,

420
00:20:26,680 --> 00:20:28,800
Speaker 1: and he's also seen how hard it is to live

421
00:20:28,880 --> 00:20:31,280
Speaker 1: that life. So he tries to make a living in

422
00:20:31,320 --> 00:20:34,920
Speaker 1: the secular world and applies to go to the Elliott

423
00:20:35,000 --> 00:20:39,720
Speaker 1: School of Business Administration. This I think is in Washington,

424
00:20:39,840 --> 00:20:41,240
Speaker 1: d C. But it may have been there, maybe been

425
00:20:41,240 --> 00:20:43,240
Speaker 1: another business school by the same name that since got

426
00:20:43,240 --> 00:20:45,080
Speaker 1: out of business. But he's only there for like a

427
00:20:45,080 --> 00:20:48,399
Speaker 1: couple of months before he drops out. So and I

428
00:20:48,400 --> 00:20:50,359
Speaker 1: think this is just part of he hasn't had a

429
00:20:50,359 --> 00:20:53,320
Speaker 1: normal education. He doesn't know how to do anything but

430
00:20:53,359 --> 00:20:56,720
Speaker 1: what his parents do, right, And so within a couple

431
00:20:56,760 --> 00:20:59,320
Speaker 1: of months he drops out of school and decides to

432
00:20:59,320 --> 00:21:01,880
Speaker 1: go into full time evangelical work, like doing the same

433
00:21:01,880 --> 00:21:04,440
Speaker 1: thing his parents has done, living as a traveling preacher.

434
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Speaker 1: And it's kind of a question mark what he does

435
00:21:08,400 --> 00:21:10,760
Speaker 1: in the first six years after his graduation, but this

436
00:21:10,920 --> 00:21:13,879
Speaker 1: is probably it. He's probably traveling around preaching and what

437
00:21:14,000 --> 00:21:19,000
Speaker 1: year are we talking, thirty five to forty one? Yeah,

438
00:21:19,160 --> 00:21:22,639
Speaker 1: So David doesn't make any additional direct claims about what

439
00:21:22,680 --> 00:21:26,159
Speaker 1: he's doing until December seventh, nineteen forty one, which I

440
00:21:26,160 --> 00:21:28,440
Speaker 1: think most people that is when Pearl Harbor happens, right,

441
00:21:28,880 --> 00:21:32,200
Speaker 1: And he claims to have joined the army, and he

442
00:21:32,320 --> 00:21:34,919
Speaker 1: says he failed the army's physical requirements, but they led

443
00:21:34,960 --> 00:21:36,800
Speaker 1: him in any way, and that he served as a

444
00:21:36,840 --> 00:21:40,680
Speaker 1: conscientious subjector because he didn't believe it would be ethical

445
00:21:40,760 --> 00:21:43,399
Speaker 1: to go and kill Japanese soldiers because they hadn't had

446
00:21:43,440 --> 00:21:46,679
Speaker 1: a chance to hear the gospel. Right, that's his claim,

447
00:21:47,080 --> 00:21:50,280
Speaker 1: And the Army did admit conscientious subjectors and non combat

448
00:21:50,359 --> 00:21:53,160
Speaker 1: roles in World War Two, but there's no evidence that

449
00:21:53,240 --> 00:21:55,320
Speaker 1: Berg was one of them, or that he served in

450
00:21:55,359 --> 00:21:58,679
Speaker 1: any way, shape or form. We have some records of

451
00:21:58,720 --> 00:22:02,240
Speaker 1: his background from like different and evangelical organizations he was

452
00:22:02,240 --> 00:22:03,920
Speaker 1: a part of that were keeping track of what he

453
00:22:03,960 --> 00:22:06,359
Speaker 1: was doing in the early forties, and there's just no

454
00:22:06,440 --> 00:22:08,720
Speaker 1: evidence that he ever served at all. If he did,

455
00:22:08,760 --> 00:22:11,000
Speaker 1: it was maybe for a month or two. He claims

456
00:22:11,000 --> 00:22:13,439
Speaker 1: that he caught double pneumonia and got so sick that

457
00:22:13,480 --> 00:22:16,040
Speaker 1: the army discharged him because they thought he was going

458
00:22:16,080 --> 00:22:19,080
Speaker 1: to die. And in his account of events, obviously he

459
00:22:19,119 --> 00:22:22,320
Speaker 1: gets miraculously saved by God and promises to spend the

460
00:22:22,320 --> 00:22:24,679
Speaker 1: rest of his life preaching as a result, right, and

461
00:22:24,720 --> 00:22:29,119
Speaker 1: he's instantly healed. So that's his claim. I think the

462
00:22:29,240 --> 00:22:31,199
Speaker 1: likelier claim is that, like he's just making it as

463
00:22:31,240 --> 00:22:33,960
Speaker 1: a preacher from the late thirties to the early forties, right,

464
00:22:34,840 --> 00:22:37,360
Speaker 1: doing the thing that he understands how to do, traveling

465
00:22:37,400 --> 00:22:39,800
Speaker 1: with one of his parents at a time and kind

466
00:22:39,880 --> 00:22:41,840
Speaker 1: of making his way around the circuit.

467
00:22:42,040 --> 00:22:46,080
Speaker 3: And he added this sort of military bullet point on

468
00:22:46,200 --> 00:22:51,320
Speaker 3: his resume just for some added credibility or yes, to

469
00:22:51,440 --> 00:22:53,240
Speaker 3: just kind of spin the story a little more.

470
00:22:53,880 --> 00:22:56,160
Speaker 1: You got to spend the story. You can't have said,

471
00:22:56,440 --> 00:22:59,280
Speaker 1: especially you know in the fifties sixties that like you

472
00:22:59,359 --> 00:23:01,960
Speaker 1: didn't do anything during World War Two, so you had

473
00:23:02,080 --> 00:23:04,280
Speaker 1: you got to have some explanation as to like how

474
00:23:04,320 --> 00:23:06,280
Speaker 1: you were patriotic. But he's also going to be a

475
00:23:06,280 --> 00:23:08,800
Speaker 1: big anti Vietnam War guy, so you want to he

476
00:23:08,800 --> 00:23:09,920
Speaker 1: wants to be able to be like, but I was

477
00:23:09,920 --> 00:23:12,520
Speaker 1: a consciences subjector right, I didn't want to fight. Also,

478
00:23:12,560 --> 00:23:14,560
Speaker 1: so that's kind of why I think he cooks that up.

479
00:23:15,040 --> 00:23:16,600
Speaker 1: There's not really evidence.

480
00:23:16,200 --> 00:23:20,080
Speaker 3: Of it, okay, So is that is that something easily

481
00:23:20,160 --> 00:23:23,920
Speaker 3: disproven by military records or is it still kind of

482
00:23:23,920 --> 00:23:26,440
Speaker 3: an open question because the way you're talking about it, it

483
00:23:26,520 --> 00:23:29,760
Speaker 3: sounds like you you sound convinced he made it up.

484
00:23:30,400 --> 00:23:34,600
Speaker 1: I found a good study on him by a like

485
00:23:34,760 --> 00:23:39,080
Speaker 1: PhD psychotherapist who like goes through his backstory and found

486
00:23:39,080 --> 00:23:41,640
Speaker 1: his records with these different a couple of different evangelical

487
00:23:41,720 --> 00:23:44,840
Speaker 1: like the British American Ministerial Federation and the Christian and

488
00:23:44,840 --> 00:23:47,400
Speaker 1: Missionary Alliance, which are two different groups that he works with,

489
00:23:48,000 --> 00:23:51,000
Speaker 1: and they have like records of his background up through

490
00:23:51,240 --> 00:23:54,040
Speaker 1: the early forties that don't list any time in the military.

491
00:23:54,600 --> 00:23:57,640
Speaker 1: It's possible, like I have not seen no one's ever

492
00:23:57,720 --> 00:24:00,560
Speaker 1: like filed and gotten a DD two one four, which

493
00:24:00,600 --> 00:24:02,840
Speaker 1: is like the discharge paperwork you get from the army

494
00:24:02,960 --> 00:24:06,080
Speaker 1: for him. But also this in this point in time,

495
00:24:06,440 --> 00:24:08,200
Speaker 1: if he had just been in for a few months

496
00:24:08,200 --> 00:24:10,680
Speaker 1: like he claims, they might not have given him one,

497
00:24:11,000 --> 00:24:13,080
Speaker 1: right because this is kind of a chaotic period. The

498
00:24:13,240 --> 00:24:15,320
Speaker 1: army didn't work then like it does now.

499
00:24:15,560 --> 00:24:19,359
Speaker 2: Right, So I mean without the d D one two four,

500
00:24:20,600 --> 00:24:21,560
Speaker 2: we don't know anything.

501
00:24:21,840 --> 00:24:23,760
Speaker 1: No, Like we can't prove one way or the other.

502
00:24:23,800 --> 00:24:25,880
Speaker 2: We got to get the d D one two four. Yeah,

503
00:24:25,960 --> 00:24:27,280
Speaker 2: the paperwork.

504
00:24:27,040 --> 00:24:28,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, we know, and we just don't have it, so

505
00:24:29,000 --> 00:24:31,760
Speaker 1: we don't really know what he was doing. But it's

506
00:24:31,800 --> 00:24:34,240
Speaker 1: not it's not impossible either way. But I think this

507
00:24:34,400 --> 00:24:36,480
Speaker 1: just kind of fits into the other stories he tells

508
00:24:36,480 --> 00:24:38,639
Speaker 1: about himself, like it's it's really convenient.

509
00:24:39,000 --> 00:24:39,720
Speaker 2: Yeah.

510
00:24:39,800 --> 00:24:42,000
Speaker 1: The other thing that's convenient, Ed is the products and

511
00:24:42,040 --> 00:24:50,880
Speaker 1: services that support this podcast. And we're back, all right,

512
00:24:51,359 --> 00:24:54,919
Speaker 1: So at this point and Ed's or sorry. At this

513
00:24:54,960 --> 00:25:00,280
Speaker 1: point in David's story, he's been miraculously healed from DOUBLENEMONI. Yeah,

514
00:25:00,359 --> 00:25:03,560
Speaker 1: the army has let him go, and he's decided to

515
00:25:03,600 --> 00:25:05,919
Speaker 1: get back into the business of preaching, and he spends

516
00:25:05,920 --> 00:25:08,840
Speaker 1: the rest of World War Two, you know, traveling around

517
00:25:09,119 --> 00:25:12,280
Speaker 1: doing preaching with his parents. In nineteen forty four, he

518
00:25:12,320 --> 00:25:14,640
Speaker 1: meets a young woman named Jane Miller and the two

519
00:25:14,640 --> 00:25:18,000
Speaker 1: get married. They start touring because he brings her in

520
00:25:18,040 --> 00:25:20,000
Speaker 1: and is like, now you're a preacher, right, which is

521
00:25:20,080 --> 00:25:21,800
Speaker 1: kind of what his mom had done to his dad,

522
00:25:22,320 --> 00:25:25,240
Speaker 1: and the couple starts having kids in quick succession. They

523
00:25:25,280 --> 00:25:28,840
Speaker 1: have Debora in nineteen forty five, Aaron a couple of

524
00:25:28,920 --> 00:25:33,000
Speaker 1: years later, Jonathan a year after that, and then their

525
00:25:33,080 --> 00:25:35,680
Speaker 1: fourth kid, who has my favorite name of their children,

526
00:25:35,880 --> 00:25:38,800
Speaker 1: Faith ye in fifty one, just Faith with a y.

527
00:25:39,160 --> 00:25:39,400
Speaker 2: Huh.

528
00:25:40,000 --> 00:25:42,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, I haven't heard that one. I haven't heard that name.

529
00:25:42,920 --> 00:25:46,680
Speaker 3: That's one you gotta spell every time. Yeah, Faith, Ye Faithee,

530
00:25:46,720 --> 00:25:47,760
Speaker 3: it's like faithee.

531
00:25:47,840 --> 00:25:48,159
Speaker 2: Yeah.

532
00:25:48,680 --> 00:25:52,600
Speaker 1: Yeah. Berg and his wife settle down in the Los Angeles.

533
00:25:52,640 --> 00:25:54,440
Speaker 1: It's usually said as the Los Angeles area. They're in

534
00:25:54,480 --> 00:25:57,119
Speaker 1: Huntington Beach, right, which is like the kind of center

535
00:25:57,160 --> 00:26:00,760
Speaker 1: of the evangelical movement in southern California at this period

536
00:26:00,800 --> 00:26:04,720
Speaker 1: of time. And he starts going to California's Southern Bible

537
00:26:04,760 --> 00:26:08,480
Speaker 1: College in nineteen forty eight to continue his education. In

538
00:26:08,600 --> 00:26:11,560
Speaker 1: between classes, he's on the move a lot. He'll sleep

539
00:26:11,560 --> 00:26:13,920
Speaker 1: in his car or a tent, you know, in order

540
00:26:13,960 --> 00:26:16,119
Speaker 1: to save money so that he can keep his family

541
00:26:16,160 --> 00:26:20,240
Speaker 1: going because money is tight. It's not until nineteen forty

542
00:26:20,280 --> 00:26:22,560
Speaker 1: nine that he gets his first stable job, preaching at

543
00:26:22,560 --> 00:26:25,399
Speaker 1: a church for the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Arizona.

544
00:26:25,960 --> 00:26:28,359
Speaker 1: And by this point he'd started calling his wife Jane

545
00:26:28,560 --> 00:26:30,800
Speaker 1: mother Eve, and in an early show of kind of

546
00:26:30,800 --> 00:26:33,240
Speaker 1: how his charisma worked, people around them just sort of

547
00:26:33,240 --> 00:26:35,600
Speaker 1: went along with it, even though I think it's kind

548
00:26:35,600 --> 00:26:38,439
Speaker 1: of sacrilegious to call your wife Eve, Like, I don't know,

549
00:26:38,600 --> 00:26:39,639
Speaker 1: that's just a little weird.

550
00:26:40,520 --> 00:26:42,160
Speaker 2: Maybe it was kind of just like a nickname.

551
00:26:42,480 --> 00:26:45,080
Speaker 1: It's like a nickname, and it's sort of a he's

552
00:26:45,080 --> 00:26:47,359
Speaker 1: got that charisma where like if he gives someone a nickname,

553
00:26:47,440 --> 00:26:50,320
Speaker 1: everyone picks it up, right. Yeah, Like people just kind

554
00:26:50,359 --> 00:26:52,280
Speaker 1: of listen to what he says about stuff like this.

555
00:26:53,720 --> 00:26:56,840
Speaker 1: Now here's what his church bio, which is he probably

556
00:26:56,880 --> 00:27:00,399
Speaker 1: writes paints of this period of time and has life.

557
00:27:00,840 --> 00:27:03,679
Speaker 1: His congregation was a mixture of Southern Whites, Indians, and

558
00:27:03,720 --> 00:27:06,439
Speaker 1: Mexicans who didn't like each other, and eventually the wealthy

559
00:27:06,440 --> 00:27:09,320
Speaker 1: family which controlled the church board urged the denomination to

560
00:27:09,359 --> 00:27:11,720
Speaker 1: send him elsewhere. They didn't like David because of his

561
00:27:11,760 --> 00:27:14,680
Speaker 1: integration policies and his preaching that they should share more

562
00:27:14,720 --> 00:27:16,800
Speaker 1: of their wealth with the poor, beginning with him and

563
00:27:16,840 --> 00:27:20,879
Speaker 1: his little family. So I do love that even in

564
00:27:20,920 --> 00:27:23,680
Speaker 1: that there's a little bit of griftiness right right.

565
00:27:24,480 --> 00:27:28,600
Speaker 3: It's so funny, it's so magnanimous, it's such a such

566
00:27:28,640 --> 00:27:33,440
Speaker 3: an intrinsically a wholesome thing to advocate and preach integration.

567
00:27:33,560 --> 00:27:35,640
Speaker 2: Share great, But then it has a little bit of Yeah,

568
00:27:35,840 --> 00:27:38,639
Speaker 2: a little bit of money. Some of that sheddars falls

569
00:27:38,680 --> 00:27:40,480
Speaker 2: on me. What's what's wrong with that?

570
00:27:40,960 --> 00:27:41,800
Speaker 1: What about old David?

571
00:27:41,880 --> 00:27:42,280
Speaker 2: Huh?

572
00:27:42,560 --> 00:27:43,440
Speaker 1: Then David get a cut.

573
00:27:43,480 --> 00:27:45,080
Speaker 2: You gotta cut mother, reeve out of this.

574
00:27:46,200 --> 00:27:50,080
Speaker 1: Come on, now, I know this does not seem to

575
00:27:50,080 --> 00:27:52,760
Speaker 1: be the whole. They just didn't like that. I wasn't racist.

576
00:27:52,880 --> 00:27:55,960
Speaker 1: Doesn't seem to be the true story, his eldest daughter, Deborah,

577
00:27:56,000 --> 00:27:59,960
Speaker 1: would later tell journalists. Now he got accused of sexual misconduct.

578
00:28:00,280 --> 00:28:02,679
Speaker 1: He started an affair with a married woman in his

579
00:28:02,800 --> 00:28:05,760
Speaker 1: church while he was married, and when it got found

580
00:28:05,760 --> 00:28:08,159
Speaker 1: out like that, they were like, well, you're fired. This

581
00:28:08,240 --> 00:28:09,800
Speaker 1: is the thing that this is like the one thing

582
00:28:09,840 --> 00:28:10,840
Speaker 1: you can't do, right.

583
00:28:12,000 --> 00:28:12,840
Speaker 2: A lot of them do it.

584
00:28:13,240 --> 00:28:15,680
Speaker 1: A lot of them do it. But yeah, he gets

585
00:28:15,720 --> 00:28:18,359
Speaker 1: in trouble for this. His family would also claim that

586
00:28:18,440 --> 00:28:20,320
Speaker 1: during this period of time when he was on the road,

587
00:28:20,480 --> 00:28:24,160
Speaker 1: he would regularly pay sex workers while he was preaching.

588
00:28:25,080 --> 00:28:27,520
Speaker 1: His children also accused him later of having slept with

589
00:28:27,680 --> 00:28:31,520
Speaker 1: all of their housekeepers. So this is a guy who's

590
00:28:31,560 --> 00:28:33,600
Speaker 1: got a lot of his personal life is messy, and

591
00:28:33,600 --> 00:28:37,199
Speaker 1: I think that's probably why he gets fired, right, and

592
00:28:37,280 --> 00:28:39,760
Speaker 1: maybe just the adultery was kind of the last straw.

593
00:28:40,600 --> 00:28:42,400
Speaker 2: Is mother Eve still in the picture.

594
00:28:42,640 --> 00:28:46,040
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, she's never happy with him. They do

595
00:28:46,120 --> 00:28:48,720
Speaker 1: not have a great marriage, although a lot of that

596
00:28:48,760 --> 00:28:52,959
Speaker 1: seems down to be he just cheating like constantly on her.

597
00:28:53,240 --> 00:28:53,440
Speaker 2: Yeah.

598
00:28:54,680 --> 00:28:58,840
Speaker 1: Now he gets really angry when this missionary alliance lets

599
00:28:58,880 --> 00:29:02,600
Speaker 1: him go. Berg declares for the first time that organized

600
00:29:02,640 --> 00:29:05,560
Speaker 1: religion is corrupt and that the powers that be within

601
00:29:05,600 --> 00:29:09,560
Speaker 1: the evangelical movement were holding him back. He starts referring

602
00:29:09,560 --> 00:29:12,760
Speaker 1: to the leaders of these major churches as the system

603
00:29:13,280 --> 00:29:17,360
Speaker 1: and accuse them of fostering Churchianity rather than Christianity. Right,

604
00:29:17,520 --> 00:29:21,240
Speaker 1: so they're serving their churches rather than serving the faith,

605
00:29:21,400 --> 00:29:23,600
Speaker 1: which is in a large extent for a lot of

606
00:29:23,640 --> 00:29:28,200
Speaker 1: these guys a fair criticism. It's also like he's not

607
00:29:28,640 --> 00:29:31,200
Speaker 1: any better, right, Like yeah.

608
00:29:31,080 --> 00:29:34,480
Speaker 2: Also, but I do love the word churchianity.

609
00:29:33,880 --> 00:29:35,680
Speaker 1: Churchianity, churchianity.

610
00:29:35,880 --> 00:29:39,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems like something that the that that someone

611
00:29:39,680 --> 00:29:43,240
Speaker 3: would advocate at the annual ch like fourth of July. Pot, look, guys,

612
00:29:43,280 --> 00:29:47,560
Speaker 3: we need more Churchianity, more Churchianity, Churchianity.

613
00:29:47,600 --> 00:29:50,800
Speaker 1: He's got a gift for like words, right, And it's

614
00:29:50,840 --> 00:29:54,480
Speaker 1: also it's very modern, almost cut, like deciding to frame

615
00:29:54,520 --> 00:29:57,080
Speaker 1: your enemies as the system like that. People do that

616
00:29:57,160 --> 00:29:59,360
Speaker 1: all the time today, right, like whether they're on the

617
00:29:59,400 --> 00:30:00,800
Speaker 1: left of the right. Ear, everyone wants to be like

618
00:30:00,800 --> 00:30:03,360
Speaker 1: there's a system that I'm against, right, and like you

619
00:30:03,400 --> 00:30:04,360
Speaker 1: can be a rebel too.

620
00:30:04,600 --> 00:30:05,640
Speaker 2: What's the great movie?

621
00:30:06,600 --> 00:30:07,120
Speaker 1: What's is it?

622
00:30:07,200 --> 00:30:09,800
Speaker 2: Paccino or somebody. It's like, I'm gonna put the system

623
00:30:09,920 --> 00:30:10,560
Speaker 2: on trial.

624
00:30:11,000 --> 00:30:15,760
Speaker 1: Oh yes, Cerproicoproo, Yeah exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah exactly yeah.

625
00:30:15,800 --> 00:30:19,560
Speaker 3: And then it's kind of reminiscent of our our last

626
00:30:19,600 --> 00:30:22,120
Speaker 3: discussion about old Kurdi Jarvin.

627
00:30:22,560 --> 00:30:26,440
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, the cathedral, right, yes, yes, exactly everything.

628
00:30:26,480 --> 00:30:28,560
Speaker 2: You gotta have a cool name for the for the

629
00:30:28,760 --> 00:30:29,680
Speaker 2: for the enemy.

630
00:30:29,920 --> 00:30:32,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, or how Andrew Tatl call it the matrix, right,

631
00:30:33,000 --> 00:30:35,200
Speaker 1: like it's it's all of these. Yeah, you got to

632
00:30:35,280 --> 00:30:37,480
Speaker 1: you gotta have this big system that like you're the

633
00:30:37,600 --> 00:30:40,640
Speaker 1: you're the lone Luke Skywalker character trying to blow up

634
00:30:40,920 --> 00:30:43,600
Speaker 1: this death star of in this case churches that you

635
00:30:43,680 --> 00:30:47,040
Speaker 1: used to work at until you got kicked out for adultery.

636
00:30:49,280 --> 00:30:51,920
Speaker 1: So whatever the truth behind why he was fired, the

637
00:30:52,000 --> 00:30:55,920
Speaker 1: experience inspired him to attempt another move into secular life,

638
00:30:56,000 --> 00:30:59,200
Speaker 1: so he goes to Arizona State University in nineteen fifty one,

639
00:30:59,240 --> 00:31:01,200
Speaker 1: I think it's not a party school at this point,

640
00:31:02,360 --> 00:31:05,240
Speaker 1: but don't quote me on that, where he claims to

641
00:31:05,240 --> 00:31:08,000
Speaker 1: have studied communism and walked away with the belief that

642
00:31:08,040 --> 00:31:10,240
Speaker 1: it was a good idea, but it could only work

643
00:31:10,400 --> 00:31:13,360
Speaker 1: if everyone was also Christian. Right, So he starts to

644
00:31:13,880 --> 00:31:16,360
Speaker 1: see the early Christian Church, and when I say early,

645
00:31:16,400 --> 00:31:20,080
Speaker 1: i'm talking about like before the Roman Empire was Christian. Right,

646
00:31:20,160 --> 00:31:23,080
Speaker 1: So when it's still kind of this underground organization as

647
00:31:23,200 --> 00:31:28,160
Speaker 1: essentially the ideal communist community, and modern evangelism is corrupt

648
00:31:28,160 --> 00:31:31,200
Speaker 1: because it's obsessed with money. So he's starting to pull

649
00:31:31,200 --> 00:31:33,880
Speaker 1: in and write like, this is the fifty early fifties

650
00:31:34,560 --> 00:31:37,360
Speaker 1: when this is happening. So the hippie movement's not coming

651
00:31:37,400 --> 00:31:40,200
Speaker 1: together yet, but you can see how when it does,

652
00:31:40,360 --> 00:31:42,480
Speaker 1: he's going to be drawn towards some of the things

653
00:31:42,480 --> 00:31:43,240
Speaker 1: they're talking about.

654
00:31:43,480 --> 00:31:43,760
Speaker 2: Right.

655
00:31:45,560 --> 00:31:47,760
Speaker 1: That said, the same year he goes to ASU, he's

656
00:31:47,760 --> 00:31:50,120
Speaker 1: just there for a couple of terms, and then he

657
00:31:50,160 --> 00:31:53,320
Speaker 1: goes back to southern California to go to Bible School again.

658
00:31:53,720 --> 00:31:55,640
Speaker 1: So his mind may not have been quite as made

659
00:31:55,720 --> 00:31:58,640
Speaker 1: up at this point as he'd later claim. For much

660
00:31:58,680 --> 00:32:01,480
Speaker 1: of the early fifties, he's working odd jobs. He has

661
00:32:01,520 --> 00:32:04,360
Speaker 1: a gig at the DA's office. He works in construction.

662
00:32:04,560 --> 00:32:07,320
Speaker 1: He's teaching junior high school at a private Christian school,

663
00:32:07,680 --> 00:32:09,800
Speaker 1: trying to do anything but what his parents did, right,

664
00:32:09,840 --> 00:32:10,640
Speaker 1: because it sucks.

665
00:32:11,080 --> 00:32:13,320
Speaker 2: There's something interesting here, which is that.

666
00:32:14,840 --> 00:32:19,040
Speaker 3: If you are struggling to kind of like maintain stability

667
00:32:19,040 --> 00:32:24,240
Speaker 3: in your life and make ends meet, in general, communism

668
00:32:24,320 --> 00:32:25,520
Speaker 3: sounds pretty damn good.

669
00:32:26,480 --> 00:32:29,600
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, especially if you're like working with all these

670
00:32:29,640 --> 00:32:31,800
Speaker 1: corrupt guys who are like, oh, it's all about the

671
00:32:31,840 --> 00:32:35,680
Speaker 1: money for you, right, and like, yeah, I get it,

672
00:32:37,000 --> 00:32:40,960
Speaker 1: But he's not gonna stick with these beliefs in like

673
00:32:41,200 --> 00:32:44,080
Speaker 1: egalitarianism right when he starts. When he starts getting money

674
00:32:44,080 --> 00:32:47,360
Speaker 1: in his cult, the money goes to him, right, Like.

675
00:32:49,880 --> 00:32:52,600
Speaker 1: So in nineteen fifty four, he gets hired to work

676
00:32:52,840 --> 00:32:55,280
Speaker 1: in Texas for a guy named Fred Jordan, who was

677
00:32:55,320 --> 00:32:57,680
Speaker 1: one of the first wave of TV ministers. So he's

678
00:32:57,720 --> 00:32:59,720
Speaker 1: like one of the first big ministers to have like

679
00:32:59,760 --> 00:33:04,920
Speaker 1: a love TV like church program. He's also training missionaries

680
00:33:04,960 --> 00:33:09,040
Speaker 1: for foreign work, and Berg starts working in television effectively

681
00:33:09,200 --> 00:33:12,600
Speaker 1: right and for thirteen years he's Jordan's right hand man.

682
00:33:13,200 --> 00:33:15,960
Speaker 1: He's marketing for the show. He's helping to produce it

683
00:33:16,000 --> 00:33:18,720
Speaker 1: on a technical level, and this is the most stable

684
00:33:18,880 --> 00:33:21,080
Speaker 1: job he's ever had, right, He's doing this for more

685
00:33:21,080 --> 00:33:23,840
Speaker 1: than a decade. Most of his kids are raised to

686
00:33:23,920 --> 00:33:28,520
Speaker 1: adulthood during this period of time, and Fred is his mentor.

687
00:33:28,600 --> 00:33:30,080
Speaker 1: And this is kind of one thing that's sort of

688
00:33:30,080 --> 00:33:32,920
Speaker 1: noteworthy about this is that Fred had had a church

689
00:33:33,120 --> 00:33:35,240
Speaker 1: before the one that he starts and gets a TV

690
00:33:35,320 --> 00:33:38,440
Speaker 1: program on that he'd basically gotten fired from because he

691
00:33:38,640 --> 00:33:41,719
Speaker 1: started cheating with one of the members of his congregation

692
00:33:42,560 --> 00:33:45,240
Speaker 1: on his wife, and that had caused his church to

693
00:33:45,320 --> 00:33:49,600
Speaker 1: leave him. Right, So that's sort of like David knows

694
00:33:49,640 --> 00:33:51,840
Speaker 1: that and kind of sees a kindred spirit in this

695
00:33:51,960 --> 00:33:54,520
Speaker 1: guy because the same thing sort of happened to him.

696
00:33:55,280 --> 00:33:57,800
Speaker 1: He would later refer to Fred as King Saul and

697
00:33:57,840 --> 00:34:01,080
Speaker 1: credit him as a mentor. But he was also unhappy

698
00:34:01,240 --> 00:34:04,400
Speaker 1: with his kind of humble position in this other guy's organization.

699
00:34:04,920 --> 00:34:08,120
Speaker 1: He's middle aged now, and as he later wrote, I

700
00:34:08,160 --> 00:34:10,799
Speaker 1: felt I was passing my prime but had not yet

701
00:34:10,800 --> 00:34:13,759
Speaker 1: found God's perfect will for my life. He admits he

702
00:34:13,880 --> 00:34:17,120
Speaker 1: was desperate for greater power, which is an unsettling thing

703
00:34:17,160 --> 00:34:18,400
Speaker 1: to say, right.

704
00:34:18,719 --> 00:34:20,879
Speaker 2: Yeah, remarkably self aware.

705
00:34:21,120 --> 00:34:25,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was just about the power. Yeah. Now this

706
00:34:25,680 --> 00:34:28,000
Speaker 1: doesn't come out until a long time later, but his

707
00:34:28,080 --> 00:34:30,840
Speaker 1: daughters would later claim that he was also sexually harassing

708
00:34:30,920 --> 00:34:31,600
Speaker 1: them during this.

709
00:34:31,520 --> 00:34:32,879
Speaker 2: Period or.

710
00:34:34,960 --> 00:34:39,040
Speaker 1: Both. So he tries first with his daughter Deborah when

711
00:34:39,080 --> 00:34:41,680
Speaker 1: she's a young adult, and this doesn't go beyond harassment.

712
00:34:41,760 --> 00:34:44,480
Speaker 1: Like she refuses and he seems to have stopped. She's

713
00:34:44,520 --> 00:34:47,360
Speaker 1: an adult at this period of time, so like she's

714
00:34:47,400 --> 00:34:51,279
Speaker 1: like it, he tried and I refused him. He does

715
00:34:51,320 --> 00:34:54,759
Speaker 1: start molesting his daughter, his youngest daughter, Faithy, when she's

716
00:34:54,800 --> 00:34:58,960
Speaker 1: about ten years old in nineteen sixty one, and one

717
00:34:59,000 --> 00:35:03,719
Speaker 1: of the writer for Rolling Stone, who Wilkinson, who wrote

718
00:35:03,760 --> 00:35:06,720
Speaker 1: a really good bio on this guy, also describes Faithy

719
00:35:06,719 --> 00:35:10,200
Speaker 1: as the daughter who resembled him the most, which is like,

720
00:35:10,440 --> 00:35:13,799
Speaker 1: it's so this is a guy who at this point

721
00:35:13,880 --> 00:35:17,960
Speaker 1: he's kind of fully turned, right, He's now passing on

722
00:35:18,000 --> 00:35:20,040
Speaker 1: the same kind of abuse that he had experienced as

723
00:35:20,080 --> 00:35:25,240
Speaker 1: a kid. He's also channeling his ambition at Fred's program

724
00:35:25,280 --> 00:35:27,520
Speaker 1: into trying to kind of take it into the modern era.

725
00:35:28,480 --> 00:35:32,240
Speaker 1: He becomes convinced early on that color television is the future,

726
00:35:32,320 --> 00:35:34,560
Speaker 1: and so he tries to convince Fred, you got to

727
00:35:34,760 --> 00:35:36,680
Speaker 1: move on from black and white and like the mid

728
00:35:36,760 --> 00:35:40,600
Speaker 1: sixties and make this a color program, right, And this

729
00:35:40,719 --> 00:35:43,680
Speaker 1: is expensive, It's not cheap to go color in this

730
00:35:43,760 --> 00:35:46,719
Speaker 1: period of time. And Fred really fights him on it

731
00:35:46,760 --> 00:35:49,799
Speaker 1: and eventually agrees, and despite David's best efforts, they can't

732
00:35:49,840 --> 00:35:52,719
Speaker 1: sell the show to any stations. So Fred fires him

733
00:35:52,760 --> 00:35:56,160
Speaker 1: in sixty seven. So it's this kind of you know,

734
00:35:56,239 --> 00:35:58,760
Speaker 1: his life seems like it's falling apart at this point,

735
00:35:58,800 --> 00:36:02,959
Speaker 1: he's abusing his kids, he's lost his job. He would

736
00:36:03,040 --> 00:36:06,399
Speaker 1: later tell like his version of events is that once

737
00:36:06,480 --> 00:36:09,120
Speaker 1: the show fails, he thinks Fred's going to fire him,

738
00:36:09,600 --> 00:36:13,160
Speaker 1: but then he has a dream where everything's fine and

739
00:36:13,200 --> 00:36:14,920
Speaker 1: God tells him to have faith, and he says the

740
00:36:15,000 --> 00:36:17,200
Speaker 1: dream was signed by Fred himself. So he has a

741
00:36:17,320 --> 00:36:20,080
Speaker 1: dream that his boss is cool with him, but the

742
00:36:20,120 --> 00:36:22,800
Speaker 1: real boss doesn't get the memo about the dream boss.

743
00:36:23,600 --> 00:36:27,600
Speaker 1: And this is what David writes next. He wasn't completely

744
00:36:27,680 --> 00:36:29,600
Speaker 1: sure if they should stay there or not, so as

745
00:36:29,600 --> 00:36:31,200
Speaker 1: a test of the will of the Lord, he wrote

746
00:36:31,200 --> 00:36:33,960
Speaker 1: and asked Fred for total control of their property and

747
00:36:34,000 --> 00:36:36,080
Speaker 1: to even have it put in his name. Fred only

748
00:36:36,120 --> 00:36:38,640
Speaker 1: said no, but fired David again, this time for the

749
00:36:38,719 --> 00:36:41,480
Speaker 1: last time. So his like his move is, well, I

750
00:36:41,520 --> 00:36:43,080
Speaker 1: had a dream that things were fine. I'm just going

751
00:36:43,160 --> 00:36:45,040
Speaker 1: to ask you to sign over all your property to me.

752
00:36:45,280 --> 00:36:47,160
Speaker 1: Is that cool? Can you do that?

753
00:36:48,200 --> 00:36:48,399
Speaker 2: No?

754
00:36:48,520 --> 00:36:49,120
Speaker 4: Your move?

755
00:36:49,239 --> 00:36:54,040
Speaker 3: You're refired. Yeah, you're double fired. I don't even know

756
00:36:54,080 --> 00:36:55,840
Speaker 3: what that means. You can't fire someone twice.

757
00:36:55,920 --> 00:36:56,400
Speaker 2: It doesn't.

758
00:36:57,320 --> 00:36:59,560
Speaker 3: It's like I guess, I guess you just say he

759
00:36:59,600 --> 00:37:02,359
Speaker 3: just had to like say the words twice, Yeah, because

760
00:37:02,360 --> 00:37:02,759
Speaker 3: it's just.

761
00:37:02,640 --> 00:37:06,879
Speaker 1: War really fired, seriously, get out of here.

762
00:37:07,480 --> 00:37:10,160
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, this is actually this is starting to

763
00:37:10,239 --> 00:37:14,040
Speaker 3: sound I mean it was sounding up until this point

764
00:37:14,040 --> 00:37:19,040
Speaker 3: like he was a very troubled and troubling person, but

765
00:37:19,080 --> 00:37:24,399
Speaker 3: mostly coherent and exploitive and kind of dastardly. But this

766
00:37:24,480 --> 00:37:27,960
Speaker 3: is starting to sound untethered to reality.

767
00:37:28,600 --> 00:37:32,799
Speaker 1: He's increasingly like losing his connection to reality, right, Like

768
00:37:32,840 --> 00:37:34,640
Speaker 1: the fact that you would have this dream after your

769
00:37:34,640 --> 00:37:36,160
Speaker 1: boss is like, man, I think I'm gonna have to

770
00:37:36,200 --> 00:37:38,120
Speaker 1: let you go. You fucked up so bad. And then

771
00:37:38,120 --> 00:37:40,000
Speaker 1: you're like, actually, I had a dream that it was fine.

772
00:37:40,239 --> 00:37:42,040
Speaker 1: You want to sign over all your property to me?

773
00:37:42,160 --> 00:37:42,720
Speaker 1: Is that cool?

774
00:37:43,680 --> 00:37:43,759
Speaker 4: Like?

775
00:37:43,920 --> 00:37:49,759
Speaker 1: No, absolutely not. So yeah, this is a bold move

776
00:37:49,880 --> 00:37:52,520
Speaker 1: and it fails. So David has to take his family

777
00:37:52,680 --> 00:37:55,840
Speaker 1: back to southern California where his mom, Virginia, has a

778
00:37:56,000 --> 00:37:58,760
Speaker 1: very big church in Huntington Beach, and she is super

779
00:37:58,800 --> 00:38:01,480
Speaker 1: successful at this point, and she like, you should come

780
00:38:01,520 --> 00:38:04,879
Speaker 1: here and start preaching. There's all these hippie kids, right

781
00:38:05,000 --> 00:38:08,320
Speaker 1: who had gotten involved in the anti war movement, started

782
00:38:08,360 --> 00:38:11,560
Speaker 1: experimenting with drugs. And this is a major thing happening

783
00:38:11,560 --> 00:38:13,600
Speaker 1: in the US at the time, where you've got at

784
00:38:13,680 --> 00:38:17,280
Speaker 1: sixty seven, sixty eight, sixty nine, the hippie movement reaching

785
00:38:17,440 --> 00:38:20,680
Speaker 1: like kind of critical mass. But also people keep falling

786
00:38:20,719 --> 00:38:23,160
Speaker 1: out of it, right, They'll have really bad trips, they'll

787
00:38:23,239 --> 00:38:26,200
Speaker 1: run out of money, like something battle happened to them.

788
00:38:26,600 --> 00:38:30,400
Speaker 1: And there's also all these kind of new evangelical offshoot

789
00:38:30,400 --> 00:38:33,640
Speaker 1: programs they're called the Jesus Freaks kind of colloquially, who

790
00:38:33,680 --> 00:38:36,080
Speaker 1: start taking in these former hippies. And a lot of

791
00:38:36,200 --> 00:38:38,440
Speaker 1: churches start as a result of this, and there's also

792
00:38:38,520 --> 00:38:41,120
Speaker 1: a couple of different cults that start as a result

793
00:38:41,120 --> 00:38:44,080
Speaker 1: of this. Right, it's like people gathering up the shrapnel

794
00:38:44,080 --> 00:38:46,600
Speaker 1: of the hippie movement as a sort of yeah, man'son

795
00:38:46,680 --> 00:38:48,040
Speaker 1: exactly a great example of it.

796
00:38:48,120 --> 00:38:52,200
Speaker 3: So right, and sorry did you say that that his

797
00:38:53,040 --> 00:38:56,280
Speaker 3: mom was now running a church in Hunting Beach.

798
00:38:56,280 --> 00:38:59,280
Speaker 1: Yes, a big one. She is successful at this point.

799
00:38:59,200 --> 00:39:02,240
Speaker 3: She's like super successful, and he's just sort of dinking

800
00:39:02,320 --> 00:39:05,759
Speaker 3: around trying to figure it out. But she invites him back. Yeah,

801
00:39:05,800 --> 00:39:07,440
Speaker 3: and how old are his kids at this point?

802
00:39:07,440 --> 00:39:10,200
Speaker 1: By the way, three of them are adults, I think,

803
00:39:10,239 --> 00:39:12,040
Speaker 1: and one of them is like late teens, like Faith

804
00:39:12,200 --> 00:39:14,760
Speaker 1: is like nearly adult, and so his kids are mostly

805
00:39:14,800 --> 00:39:16,360
Speaker 1: grown at this point, right.

806
00:39:16,239 --> 00:39:20,160
Speaker 2: And as Faith he weighed in, like as as an

807
00:39:20,160 --> 00:39:20,879
Speaker 2: adult as she.

808
00:39:21,560 --> 00:39:24,200
Speaker 1: You know, obviously, like that's you don't have to say

809
00:39:24,200 --> 00:39:27,320
Speaker 1: anything just because your dad's a famous monster right after

810
00:39:27,360 --> 00:39:29,080
Speaker 1: he abuses you. But like, we don't have a lot

811
00:39:29,080 --> 00:39:30,799
Speaker 1: from her. Deborah is the one who talks a lot,

812
00:39:30,880 --> 00:39:35,239
Speaker 1: okay about what he did. So US involvement obviously in

813
00:39:35,320 --> 00:39:38,120
Speaker 1: Vietnam's in full swing at this point, and David decided

814
00:39:38,160 --> 00:39:40,520
Speaker 1: he's he finds himself on the anti war side of things.

815
00:39:40,800 --> 00:39:43,239
Speaker 1: Maybe he is legitimately anti war, right, like you can

816
00:39:43,280 --> 00:39:45,160
Speaker 1: be a bad person and have like one or two

817
00:39:45,239 --> 00:39:49,360
Speaker 1: good opinions, But maybe he also just sees it as like, oh,

818
00:39:49,480 --> 00:39:51,600
Speaker 1: I want to like my mom said, I want to

819
00:39:51,640 --> 00:39:53,799
Speaker 1: get kids from this hippie movement, right, and so you

820
00:39:53,880 --> 00:39:56,359
Speaker 1: kind of have to be on that side of things, right.

821
00:39:56,840 --> 00:40:00,000
Speaker 1: It also may just have been natural because like mainstream Americans,

822
00:40:00,040 --> 00:40:03,960
Speaker 1: society is this like the pro war side of things,

823
00:40:04,000 --> 00:40:07,759
Speaker 1: and he has always found himself kind of on the outskirts, right,

824
00:40:09,000 --> 00:40:11,719
Speaker 1: And he also really finds himself drawn to a lot

825
00:40:11,719 --> 00:40:14,319
Speaker 1: of the values of the hippie movement, radical acceptance and

826
00:40:14,400 --> 00:40:18,040
Speaker 1: peace and love, the anti war stuff. So he starts

827
00:40:18,080 --> 00:40:21,600
Speaker 1: a new organization with his children, his oldest kids, called

828
00:40:21,640 --> 00:40:25,040
Speaker 1: Teens for Christ. Now, he is fifty at the time,

829
00:40:25,200 --> 00:40:28,040
Speaker 1: so that's your first problem, right, Probably shouldn't be running

830
00:40:28,040 --> 00:40:32,319
Speaker 1: a teen's organization when you're fifty. But his goal is

831
00:40:32,360 --> 00:40:34,560
Speaker 1: to reach all of these newly awoken hippie kids in

832
00:40:34,640 --> 00:40:36,920
Speaker 1: Huntington Beach, at the apex of the hippie movement in

833
00:40:36,960 --> 00:40:40,239
Speaker 1: southern California, and convince them that the real path to

834
00:40:40,360 --> 00:40:43,439
Speaker 1: radical change is a Christian revolution that can sweep away

835
00:40:43,480 --> 00:40:46,880
Speaker 1: the corruption of like the warmongering administration and usher in

836
00:40:46,920 --> 00:40:50,200
Speaker 1: a better future. He's got no church at first, and

837
00:40:50,200 --> 00:40:51,759
Speaker 1: in fact he doesn't have much in the way of

838
00:40:51,760 --> 00:40:54,080
Speaker 1: resources at all, so he preaches out of a coffee

839
00:40:54,080 --> 00:40:56,560
Speaker 1: house called the Light Club. And I'm going to quote

840
00:40:56,560 --> 00:40:58,680
Speaker 1: from a two thousand and five Rolling Stone article by

841
00:40:58,680 --> 00:41:02,360
Speaker 1: Peter Wilkinson. Here rejects society. He implored them. With his

842
00:41:02,440 --> 00:41:05,360
Speaker 1: long white beard and prominent Adam zapple Berg evoked a

843
00:41:05,440 --> 00:41:08,600
Speaker 1: crazed Santa to his followers. He was mesmerizing, who are

844
00:41:08,640 --> 00:41:10,920
Speaker 1: the real rebels of today? He asked, We are the

845
00:41:10,920 --> 00:41:13,040
Speaker 1: true lovers of peace and love and truth and beauty

846
00:41:13,080 --> 00:41:15,360
Speaker 1: and God and freedom, whereas you are parents, are on

847
00:41:15,400 --> 00:41:17,719
Speaker 1: the brink of destroying and polluting all of us in

848
00:41:17,719 --> 00:41:19,719
Speaker 1: our world if we do not rise up against you

849
00:41:19,800 --> 00:41:21,440
Speaker 1: in the name of God and try to stop you.

850
00:41:22,160 --> 00:41:24,200
Speaker 1: He came to be known to his children as Moses,

851
00:41:24,320 --> 00:41:29,960
Speaker 1: David or simply Moe. So it's all coming together.

852
00:41:30,040 --> 00:41:35,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the only thing I'm confused by is that

853
00:41:35,040 --> 00:41:36,600
Speaker 3: his mom invited him back.

854
00:41:36,920 --> 00:41:37,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he doesn't.

855
00:41:37,960 --> 00:41:41,080
Speaker 3: He doesn't have a platform, Like he's not in the church,

856
00:41:41,160 --> 00:41:43,440
Speaker 3: she's not here. He's doing this all this on the

857
00:41:43,560 --> 00:41:44,799
Speaker 3: side or what's the.

858
00:41:45,360 --> 00:41:47,600
Speaker 1: From my understanding, and a little bit of this is unclear,

859
00:41:47,800 --> 00:41:50,120
Speaker 1: but he he is initially working with her in a

860
00:41:50,120 --> 00:41:53,680
Speaker 1: couple other churches, but they don't like how radical he is. Okay,

861
00:41:53,719 --> 00:41:57,120
Speaker 1: because he's like really anti war. He's like anti military,

862
00:41:57,200 --> 00:41:59,600
Speaker 1: and that's not super popular among like these otherwise kind

863
00:41:59,600 --> 00:42:02,560
Speaker 1: of concerns of it of Christian groups, Right, and that's

864
00:42:02,600 --> 00:42:04,680
Speaker 1: kind of why he gets exiled to this coffee house.

865
00:42:04,840 --> 00:42:07,160
Speaker 1: So his mom is one who brings him back. But

866
00:42:07,280 --> 00:42:09,759
Speaker 1: you even see in that rhetoric part of what he's

867
00:42:09,840 --> 00:42:12,240
Speaker 1: drawn to the hippie movement by and why he's appealing

868
00:42:12,280 --> 00:42:14,719
Speaker 1: to them is he is also very angry at like

869
00:42:14,800 --> 00:42:17,480
Speaker 1: his parents at the older generation. That's a big part

870
00:42:17,520 --> 00:42:20,240
Speaker 1: of the hip hippie movement. So they're kind of natural

871
00:42:20,280 --> 00:42:21,640
Speaker 1: partners in a way.

872
00:42:21,960 --> 00:42:22,520
Speaker 2: Yeah.

873
00:42:22,320 --> 00:42:25,520
Speaker 3: The other thing that really kind of weirded me out

874
00:42:25,680 --> 00:42:29,480
Speaker 3: about that description was he as a long white beard.

875
00:42:30,040 --> 00:42:33,640
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and a prominent Adam's apple. Now those are

876
00:42:33,800 --> 00:42:39,520
Speaker 3: those two things are hard to coexist because the implication

877
00:42:39,680 --> 00:42:42,160
Speaker 3: is that his Adam's apple is so prominent that it

878
00:42:42,239 --> 00:42:44,319
Speaker 3: protrudes through his beard.

879
00:42:44,239 --> 00:42:46,320
Speaker 1: Through his I love that you pick up on that.

880
00:42:46,239 --> 00:42:50,719
Speaker 3: Because would otherwise obscure anyone's Adam's apple. Yeah, so I'm

881
00:42:50,760 --> 00:42:53,960
Speaker 3: picturing an Adam's apple that is so long and weird

882
00:42:54,000 --> 00:42:57,319
Speaker 3: and pointy that it is disturbingly protruding.

883
00:42:57,880 --> 00:42:59,400
Speaker 1: It's like a greater.

884
00:43:01,120 --> 00:43:01,920
Speaker 2: Adams goiter.

885
00:43:02,320 --> 00:43:04,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's got an Adams goiter at.

886
00:43:04,400 --> 00:43:09,560
Speaker 3: His goiter had another Adam's apple. Maybe this was this

887
00:43:09,760 --> 00:43:14,120
Speaker 3: father Adams apple was. And by the way, where's mother Eve?

888
00:43:14,200 --> 00:43:16,280
Speaker 3: Adam is Mother Eve still in the picture?

889
00:43:16,640 --> 00:43:19,600
Speaker 1: She is still around, she's helping to lead Teens for Christ.

890
00:43:20,200 --> 00:43:23,880
Speaker 1: But they are together. He says that she's constantly telling him, like,

891
00:43:24,280 --> 00:43:26,480
Speaker 1: you're not as holy as you pretend to be, which

892
00:43:26,520 --> 00:43:29,080
Speaker 1: seems likely given that she knows what he's been up

893
00:43:29,080 --> 00:43:31,960
Speaker 1: to his whole life. So they don't have a good marriage,

894
00:43:32,000 --> 00:43:33,840
Speaker 1: which is going to become relevant later because it's not

895
00:43:33,840 --> 00:43:34,879
Speaker 1: going to last much longer.

896
00:43:35,239 --> 00:43:40,880
Speaker 2: She's kind of undermining him or his psychotic agenda.

897
00:43:41,280 --> 00:43:45,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, you could, you could see, he would say, undermine mining,

898
00:43:45,400 --> 00:43:47,160
Speaker 1: And maybe that's some of it. It also might be

899
00:43:47,239 --> 00:43:48,879
Speaker 1: that just she was trying to be like, look, man,

900
00:43:48,960 --> 00:43:51,879
Speaker 1: you need to like, I know you're not this guy,

901
00:43:52,160 --> 00:43:54,120
Speaker 1: I know the real you. You know, I don't know

902
00:43:54,520 --> 00:43:57,400
Speaker 1: entire I can't claim to have the entire you know understanding.

903
00:43:57,400 --> 00:44:01,400
Speaker 1: But it's not going well the marriage. So one of

904
00:44:01,400 --> 00:44:03,480
Speaker 1: his early members, one of the first people to join

905
00:44:03,560 --> 00:44:05,960
Speaker 1: Teens for Christ in nineteen sixty nine, is a former

906
00:44:06,040 --> 00:44:08,799
Speaker 1: beauty queen named Vashti, or at least that's the last

907
00:44:08,880 --> 00:44:12,480
Speaker 1: name that she gives to Peter Wilkinson. And she explained

908
00:44:12,600 --> 00:44:14,520
Speaker 1: kind of of her and a lot of the early

909
00:44:14,640 --> 00:44:18,040
Speaker 1: people to join the organization. Most of us were middle

910
00:44:18,080 --> 00:44:20,919
Speaker 1: and upper middle class kids who found that chasing materialism

911
00:44:20,960 --> 00:44:22,720
Speaker 1: didn't work and felt that there had to be something

912
00:44:22,760 --> 00:44:25,359
Speaker 1: bigger and more satisfying because we had it all. We

913
00:44:25,360 --> 00:44:27,360
Speaker 1: were looking for the vacuum to be filled by God.

914
00:44:27,520 --> 00:44:28,920
Speaker 1: We wanted to change the world.

915
00:44:29,360 --> 00:44:29,520
Speaker 2: Right.

916
00:44:30,040 --> 00:44:33,719
Speaker 1: And that's kind of her psychoanalysis of herself and a

917
00:44:33,719 --> 00:44:34,920
Speaker 1: lot of the early members.

918
00:44:35,000 --> 00:44:35,160
Speaker 2: Right.

919
00:44:35,239 --> 00:44:38,200
Speaker 1: And you know this point teens, for christ this is

920
00:44:38,280 --> 00:44:40,839
Speaker 1: turning into a cult. But it's not fully a cult yet. Right.

921
00:44:40,920 --> 00:44:43,920
Speaker 1: This is like your meeting at a coffeehouse, you're handing

922
00:44:43,920 --> 00:44:46,080
Speaker 1: out he's got you in the street. It's a youth group.

923
00:44:46,239 --> 00:44:48,680
Speaker 1: He does have you like handing out pamphlets and raising money.

924
00:44:48,719 --> 00:44:52,279
Speaker 1: But the cult stuff kind of gets in comes in gradually,

925
00:44:52,320 --> 00:44:55,239
Speaker 1: piece by piece. Right. You're not all living together immediately,

926
00:44:56,800 --> 00:44:58,600
Speaker 1: and you're feeling like if you'd come out of the

927
00:44:58,640 --> 00:45:01,640
Speaker 1: hippie movement, that you haven't really left the counter culture, right.

928
00:45:02,719 --> 00:45:05,600
Speaker 1: The hippie movement, you know, by the kind of sixty

929
00:45:05,719 --> 00:45:08,600
Speaker 1: nine to seventy, especially by like seventy, it's started to

930
00:45:08,640 --> 00:45:10,520
Speaker 1: become clear that it has failed in a lot of

931
00:45:10,520 --> 00:45:13,120
Speaker 1: its goals and a lot of people who are kind

932
00:45:13,160 --> 00:45:17,200
Speaker 1: of traumatized or left in the wake. What separates David

933
00:45:17,200 --> 00:45:20,600
Speaker 1: Berg from all the other groups, like you mentioned Manson,

934
00:45:20,680 --> 00:45:23,400
Speaker 1: but also like Tony Alamo Alamo who we've talked about,

935
00:45:23,440 --> 00:45:25,080
Speaker 1: he has a ministry that's kind of part of this

936
00:45:25,160 --> 00:45:28,720
Speaker 1: Jesus Freak movement. What separates Berg from these other groups

937
00:45:28,840 --> 00:45:31,480
Speaker 1: picking up these people is that he well, I guess

938
00:45:31,520 --> 00:45:34,160
Speaker 1: with the exception of Manson, he and Manson actually have

939
00:45:34,160 --> 00:45:36,560
Speaker 1: a lot in common because they they are the ones

940
00:45:36,560 --> 00:45:38,359
Speaker 1: who are like, we're going to pull in a lot

941
00:45:38,360 --> 00:45:42,320
Speaker 1: of this evangelical rhetoric, but we're also we're going to

942
00:45:42,360 --> 00:45:44,520
Speaker 1: bring in a lot of central tenets of the hippie movement,

943
00:45:44,640 --> 00:45:48,040
Speaker 1: and with Berg, that's going to eventually include free love. Right,

944
00:45:48,200 --> 00:45:51,680
Speaker 1: not immediately, but he's already as early as like sixty

945
00:45:51,719 --> 00:45:53,920
Speaker 1: eight sixty nine, he's starting to think maybe the hippies

946
00:45:53,920 --> 00:45:57,040
Speaker 1: have a point about this. People shouldn't be getting married

947
00:45:57,120 --> 00:45:59,640
Speaker 1: and just having sex with one person. Thing, right like

948
00:45:59,680 --> 00:46:04,040
Speaker 1: this be like, maybe that's like part of the system, right, right.

949
00:46:04,360 --> 00:46:08,160
Speaker 3: Right, Maybe maybe there's a maybe there's a belief system

950
00:46:08,239 --> 00:46:10,560
Speaker 3: or a way of thinking, a way of believing that

951
00:46:10,560 --> 00:46:15,760
Speaker 3: that validates all of my insane behavior and anti social

952
00:46:15,800 --> 00:46:22,200
Speaker 3: psychotic sexual exploitation. Maybe there's a construct I can subscribe

953
00:46:22,200 --> 00:46:25,319
Speaker 3: to and get others to subscribe to that that makes

954
00:46:25,360 --> 00:46:26,960
Speaker 3: all that just just fine.

955
00:46:27,520 --> 00:46:29,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've been doing a lot of fucked up sex

956
00:46:29,040 --> 00:46:31,919
Speaker 1: stuff in my life. Maybe that's because that's what God wants. Yeah, right, Yeah,

957
00:46:32,000 --> 00:46:33,120
Speaker 1: that's kind of where he goes.

958
00:46:33,160 --> 00:46:35,480
Speaker 3: And that, by the way, which is which is even

959
00:46:36,040 --> 00:46:38,399
Speaker 3: I would say I would call what he's doing even

960
00:46:38,440 --> 00:46:42,000
Speaker 3: a different lane than free love sixties free love.

961
00:46:42,120 --> 00:46:44,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, I should be clear that, like, and we'll talk

962
00:46:45,000 --> 00:46:47,560
Speaker 1: more about this. Free love is the branding he's going

963
00:46:47,600 --> 00:46:49,640
Speaker 1: to eat. Yes, it's not that right right right? That

964
00:46:50,120 --> 00:46:53,319
Speaker 1: tracks yes, Yes. He also does preach a lot. At

965
00:46:53,360 --> 00:46:56,040
Speaker 1: this point at the coffeehouse, he starts preaching about the system.

966
00:46:56,200 --> 00:46:59,879
Speaker 1: He refers to people in mainstream society as systemites right

967
00:47:00,320 --> 00:47:03,400
Speaker 1: and seeks. He's cloaking himself in the language of rebellion

968
00:47:03,480 --> 00:47:07,080
Speaker 1: to gain followers, and it works. Wilkinson's article describes how

969
00:47:07,120 --> 00:47:11,200
Speaker 1: Berg used his early followers to recruit more ashes smudged

970
00:47:11,239 --> 00:47:14,040
Speaker 1: on their foreheads, clad in red sackcloth robes and carrying

971
00:47:14,080 --> 00:47:16,840
Speaker 1: shepherd's staffs, members of Teens for Christ hit the streets

972
00:47:16,840 --> 00:47:19,799
Speaker 1: and cities across America, from New York to Washington, d C.

973
00:47:19,960 --> 00:47:22,800
Speaker 1: To Chicago what they referred to as the mission Field.

974
00:47:23,040 --> 00:47:25,920
Speaker 1: Strumming guitars, they handed out stacks of literature to passers

975
00:47:25,920 --> 00:47:28,839
Speaker 1: by in exchange for donations. In those early days, money

976
00:47:28,920 --> 00:47:31,560
Speaker 1: raised on the mission Field went primarily to charities. Our

977
00:47:31,640 --> 00:47:33,879
Speaker 1: duty is to the lost souls in honed Burg who

978
00:47:33,880 --> 00:47:36,200
Speaker 1: traveled in a Dodge motor home with his wife, Jane

979
00:47:36,200 --> 00:47:40,960
Speaker 1: and their four children. So again you're seeing some cultier

980
00:47:40,960 --> 00:47:43,440
Speaker 1: elements here, but they're given away most of the money,

981
00:47:43,600 --> 00:47:46,200
Speaker 1: and they're getting when they get media coverage, it's kind

982
00:47:46,200 --> 00:47:47,879
Speaker 1: of a lot of it's positive, as like, oh, these

983
00:47:47,920 --> 00:47:50,240
Speaker 1: kids are this is part of the anti war movement.

984
00:47:50,280 --> 00:47:52,600
Speaker 1: They're trying to make the world. They're raising money for charity.

985
00:47:53,880 --> 00:47:57,520
Speaker 1: His mom, however, is horrified. She accuses him of being

986
00:47:57,560 --> 00:48:00,399
Speaker 1: a carbon copy of Fred Jordan, the guy who'd fire him,

987
00:48:00,600 --> 00:48:03,279
Speaker 1: and mocks his obsession with the system. Because she's done

988
00:48:03,320 --> 00:48:04,480
Speaker 1: really well in the system.

989
00:48:04,800 --> 00:48:07,920
Speaker 2: She's like Churchianity, not so Badianity.

990
00:48:07,960 --> 00:48:08,480
Speaker 1: It's great.

991
00:48:08,680 --> 00:48:10,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, for more Churchianity.

992
00:48:10,600 --> 00:48:13,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is what she's saying. Until the spring of

993
00:48:13,239 --> 00:48:17,640
Speaker 1: sixty eight when Virginia dies and David, you get the feeling,

994
00:48:17,680 --> 00:48:19,359
Speaker 1: and you get the feeling because he writes about this

995
00:48:19,480 --> 00:48:22,160
Speaker 1: that this is he considers his mom's death the first

996
00:48:22,160 --> 00:48:24,959
Speaker 1: moment in his life that he's really free. And there's

997
00:48:25,200 --> 00:48:27,920
Speaker 1: a good breakdown of this in an article for Cultic

998
00:48:28,000 --> 00:48:31,920
Speaker 1: Studies Journal by doctor Stephen Kent, who writes Berg's lifelong

999
00:48:31,920 --> 00:48:35,040
Speaker 1: resentfulness and anger burst forth shortly after his mother's death

1000
00:48:35,480 --> 00:48:37,640
Speaker 1: at a public meeting that he called, to which he

1001
00:48:37,680 --> 00:48:40,520
Speaker 1: invited many of his mother's friends plus the press. His

1002
00:48:40,600 --> 00:48:43,439
Speaker 1: daughter Deborah recalls this August gathering in which he came

1003
00:48:43,480 --> 00:48:46,680
Speaker 1: out with his big proclamation against the system, and so

1004
00:48:47,239 --> 00:48:50,120
Speaker 1: his mom is famous. After she dies, he gets a

1005
00:48:50,120 --> 00:48:53,400
Speaker 1: lot of her friends, members of the evangelical community, together

1006
00:48:53,440 --> 00:48:57,320
Speaker 1: with reporters to like eulogize his mom, and instead of

1007
00:48:57,360 --> 00:49:00,360
Speaker 1: eulogizing her, he goes on the attack. And this is

1008
00:49:00,400 --> 00:49:04,000
Speaker 1: how his daughter Deborah describes this meeting. The press was

1009
00:49:04,040 --> 00:49:06,239
Speaker 1: there and all my grandmother's old friends, and there he

1010
00:49:06,320 --> 00:49:08,960
Speaker 1: just blows them all away. He just damns the system

1011
00:49:09,160 --> 00:49:12,000
Speaker 1: and damns the church system, damns the war in Vietnam,

1012
00:49:12,120 --> 00:49:15,160
Speaker 1: damns the political system, damns parents for raising their kids wrong.

1013
00:49:15,239 --> 00:49:17,840
Speaker 1: I mean o everything. So it was kind of like

1014
00:49:17,920 --> 00:49:20,719
Speaker 1: all this vehemence against everything that he was disgusted with

1015
00:49:20,840 --> 00:49:23,120
Speaker 1: or mad about, he just came out against it. After

1016
00:49:23,160 --> 00:49:25,600
Speaker 1: she died, he just began to practice what and how

1017
00:49:25,640 --> 00:49:31,040
Speaker 1: he really wanted to be. And first off, this alienates

1018
00:49:31,080 --> 00:49:34,759
Speaker 1: him from mainstream evangelical society forever. It gets a lot

1019
00:49:34,760 --> 00:49:38,520
Speaker 1: of press, and he will write later that he felt

1020
00:49:38,600 --> 00:49:41,280
Speaker 1: like his mom and dad both needed to go away

1021
00:49:41,600 --> 00:49:43,759
Speaker 1: so that he could become the man he would he

1022
00:49:43,880 --> 00:49:45,880
Speaker 1: was meant to be. And it becomes clear to him

1023
00:49:45,920 --> 00:49:48,520
Speaker 1: after this the man he's meant to be is the

1024
00:49:48,600 --> 00:49:51,719
Speaker 1: leader of a new religious sect, one that merges the

1025
00:49:51,800 --> 00:49:58,520
Speaker 1: values of Pentecostal evangelism with radical sexual liberation. Yeah, it's

1026
00:49:58,520 --> 00:49:58,880
Speaker 1: gonna go.

1027
00:49:58,920 --> 00:50:00,480
Speaker 2: Well, it's kind of a branch Davidian.

1028
00:50:00,560 --> 00:50:03,640
Speaker 3: It's like it's a whole pattern of just like, let's

1029
00:50:03,640 --> 00:50:07,719
Speaker 3: have like a staunch, disciplined belief structure, but we get

1030
00:50:07,800 --> 00:50:09,240
Speaker 3: to fuck all we want.

1031
00:50:09,280 --> 00:50:10,759
Speaker 1: But we get or at least one of us does

1032
00:50:11,080 --> 00:50:14,600
Speaker 1: particularly guy, this guy, this guy, does I get to

1033
00:50:14,680 --> 00:50:18,960
Speaker 1: do all the fucking Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly, And.

1034
00:50:19,560 --> 00:50:24,040
Speaker 2: Why do people think, like, why do people follow that guy? Well,

1035
00:50:24,280 --> 00:50:25,920
Speaker 2: you know, I mean I get it. He's charismatic.

1036
00:50:26,560 --> 00:50:28,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's charismatic. And it's it's interesting, ed because when

1037
00:50:28,920 --> 00:50:30,359
Speaker 1: it comes to guys like Koresh, I have that same

1038
00:50:30,440 --> 00:50:31,799
Speaker 1: question where it's like, but he's the only one who

1039
00:50:31,840 --> 00:50:33,800
Speaker 1: gets to do this stuff? Why do people go along

1040
00:50:33,800 --> 00:50:36,839
Speaker 1: with this? Berg starts that way, but as we'll talk

1041
00:50:36,840 --> 00:50:39,279
Speaker 1: about it eventually, he's like, actually, everyone gets to have

1042
00:50:39,360 --> 00:50:42,480
Speaker 1: sex as long as I get to like direct the sex.

1043
00:50:42,640 --> 00:50:43,080
Speaker 2: Whoa.

1044
00:50:43,160 --> 00:50:46,080
Speaker 1: So it's it's weirder than that with him, but you

1045
00:50:46,080 --> 00:50:47,960
Speaker 1: do see, like I get why some people would be

1046
00:50:48,000 --> 00:50:50,640
Speaker 1: like into this, right, Uh, we have to go to

1047
00:50:50,719 --> 00:50:53,120
Speaker 1: ads in a sect. But as a spoiler, Fleetwood Mac

1048
00:50:53,200 --> 00:50:56,319
Speaker 1: is about to come into the picture briefly race for

1049
00:50:56,440 --> 00:51:06,759
Speaker 1: that we're back. So at this point, his mom is dead.

1050
00:51:07,080 --> 00:51:09,600
Speaker 1: It's like sixty nine or so sixty eight sixty nine

1051
00:51:09,920 --> 00:51:12,640
Speaker 1: is dead, and he's thrilled, he is and he is

1052
00:51:12,680 --> 00:51:17,200
Speaker 1: he is off the chain, Dad saying on her grave, right,

1053
00:51:17,800 --> 00:51:20,360
Speaker 1: this is she had been like the last thing tethering

1054
00:51:20,440 --> 00:51:21,719
Speaker 1: him to some kind.

1055
00:51:21,480 --> 00:51:24,680
Speaker 4: Of reality finally free.

1056
00:51:25,120 --> 00:51:27,200
Speaker 1: So he's got kind of by late sixty eight, maybe

1057
00:51:27,239 --> 00:51:29,879
Speaker 1: a few dozen, maybe one hundred or so followers at

1058
00:51:29,880 --> 00:51:33,560
Speaker 1: this point, and they've started living together. They're splitting their

1059
00:51:33,600 --> 00:51:35,960
Speaker 1: lives between. They've got a five story building in Los

1060
00:51:36,000 --> 00:51:39,359
Speaker 1: Angeles and a small ranch in West Texas. He's been

1061
00:51:39,400 --> 00:51:41,239
Speaker 1: some of this is because he's been gathering money from

1062
00:51:41,239 --> 00:51:44,360
Speaker 1: his followers. I'm sure he inherits something from his mom

1063
00:51:44,640 --> 00:51:47,560
Speaker 1: that helps to real estates a lot cheaper. Back then,

1064
00:51:49,120 --> 00:51:51,719
Speaker 1: a journalist who'd started following them in the early days,

1065
00:51:51,719 --> 00:51:55,279
Speaker 1: when they'd crisscrossed the country raising money, had reported in

1066
00:51:55,360 --> 00:51:58,320
Speaker 1: an article on them he had like cited a passage

1067
00:51:58,320 --> 00:52:01,640
Speaker 1: from the Bible, Matthew five nine, Blessed are the peacemakers,

1068
00:52:01,640 --> 00:52:03,520
Speaker 1: for they shall be called the children of God. So

1069
00:52:03,600 --> 00:52:06,360
Speaker 1: this journalist, when he sees them doing their anti war stuff,

1070
00:52:06,400 --> 00:52:09,200
Speaker 1: had cited this passage from the Bible, and that really

1071
00:52:09,239 --> 00:52:12,239
Speaker 1: sticks in Berg's head, and he likes it a lot,

1072
00:52:12,280 --> 00:52:15,160
Speaker 1: and he starts to call the transition from calling themselves

1073
00:52:15,160 --> 00:52:17,640
Speaker 1: teens for Christ to he starts calling his group, which

1074
00:52:17,680 --> 00:52:20,319
Speaker 1: is now a cult, the children of God. Right, that's

1075
00:52:20,320 --> 00:52:23,719
Speaker 1: where the name comes from. So as a note, reporters

1076
00:52:23,800 --> 00:52:26,520
Speaker 1: don't suggest stuff like that when you're covering groups like this,

1077
00:52:27,120 --> 00:52:32,239
Speaker 1: it could go badly for everybody. So it's still at

1078
00:52:32,280 --> 00:52:34,840
Speaker 1: this point they're living together. He's directing a lot of

1079
00:52:34,880 --> 00:52:38,160
Speaker 1: control for his members' lives, but it's maybe not totally

1080
00:52:38,200 --> 00:52:40,920
Speaker 1: clear to people outside that what's happened. The teens for

1081
00:52:41,000 --> 00:52:43,480
Speaker 1: Christ has become a full on cult, right, And.

1082
00:52:43,920 --> 00:52:45,280
Speaker 2: How many people are we talking.

1083
00:52:45,960 --> 00:52:48,440
Speaker 1: We're talking between sixty and sixty nine, between like one

1084
00:52:48,520 --> 00:52:50,759
Speaker 1: hundred and a couple one hundred people over the course

1085
00:52:50,800 --> 00:52:52,960
Speaker 1: of that year, right, It's gonna get much larger, But

1086
00:52:53,000 --> 00:52:55,880
Speaker 1: this is just the start, right, And so it's small

1087
00:52:56,000 --> 00:52:59,000
Speaker 1: enough that he's kind of able to keep everyone together.

1088
00:52:59,239 --> 00:53:01,759
Speaker 1: They're moving between between La and West Texas, you know,

1089
00:53:01,840 --> 00:53:04,239
Speaker 1: depending on the time of year. Probably some people are

1090
00:53:04,280 --> 00:53:07,040
Speaker 1: permanently one place, some people are in the other. But

1091
00:53:07,080 --> 00:53:09,800
Speaker 1: he's able to maintain a lot of direct personal control

1092
00:53:10,000 --> 00:53:13,440
Speaker 1: right over the children of God. And while they're clad

1093
00:53:13,440 --> 00:53:16,320
Speaker 1: in the aesthetics of hippietom, they're like dressing and looking

1094
00:53:16,400 --> 00:53:18,960
Speaker 1: like hippies. He hasn't yet had the courage to tell

1095
00:53:19,000 --> 00:53:22,000
Speaker 1: everyone to break free of the conservative sexual moras of

1096
00:53:22,040 --> 00:53:24,839
Speaker 1: the system of churches that he'd been raised in. Up

1097
00:53:24,840 --> 00:53:27,720
Speaker 1: to the start of the seventies, within the Children of God,

1098
00:53:28,080 --> 00:53:31,239
Speaker 1: there was no dating or premarital sex allowed, right, And

1099
00:53:31,280 --> 00:53:33,600
Speaker 1: when new members joined, because Berg was like, well, you

1100
00:53:33,640 --> 00:53:35,520
Speaker 1: just came out of the hippie movement, I can't trust

1101
00:53:35,680 --> 00:53:38,400
Speaker 1: entirely that you're ready for our rules. He would assign

1102
00:53:38,480 --> 00:53:40,840
Speaker 1: them a buddy who was to watch them at all times,

1103
00:53:40,920 --> 00:53:43,399
Speaker 1: even follow them into the bathroom to make sure they're

1104
00:53:43,400 --> 00:53:47,200
Speaker 1: not backsliding into their heathen ways. So there's already a

1105
00:53:47,200 --> 00:53:50,520
Speaker 1: lot of control and they are at the start very

1106
00:53:50,560 --> 00:53:52,680
Speaker 1: conservative in terms of like sexual stuff.

1107
00:53:52,760 --> 00:53:52,920
Speaker 2: Right.

1108
00:53:52,960 --> 00:53:57,160
Speaker 3: Can I ask you a question about the guy, like,

1109
00:53:57,280 --> 00:53:58,920
Speaker 3: do we have a sense of what it's like to

1110
00:53:59,120 --> 00:54:00,879
Speaker 3: just be in the same room with this guy?

1111
00:54:01,040 --> 00:54:01,840
Speaker 2: Is he funny?

1112
00:54:02,120 --> 00:54:05,400
Speaker 3: Is he like is Does he kind of have a

1113
00:54:06,120 --> 00:54:08,279
Speaker 3: weird a warmth to him?

1114
00:54:08,400 --> 00:54:10,839
Speaker 2: Is he chatty accessible?

1115
00:54:11,000 --> 00:54:13,839
Speaker 3: Or is he kind of like a stern you know,

1116
00:54:14,080 --> 00:54:18,640
Speaker 3: like patrician type. Do we have a sense of of

1117
00:54:18,680 --> 00:54:19,240
Speaker 3: his energy?

1118
00:54:19,440 --> 00:54:21,880
Speaker 1: And yes, I'll read some quotes in a bit, but

1119
00:54:21,960 --> 00:54:24,560
Speaker 1: to briefly answer your question, he is mercurial in a

1120
00:54:24,560 --> 00:54:26,040
Speaker 1: way that the lot of these guys are. So he

1121
00:54:26,080 --> 00:54:29,200
Speaker 1: can go from being your best friend and very charming

1122
00:54:29,680 --> 00:54:32,400
Speaker 1: to screaming at you and punishing you in the space

1123
00:54:32,440 --> 00:54:35,319
Speaker 1: of a second, right, which you get. And that's there's

1124
00:54:35,320 --> 00:54:38,120
Speaker 1: a degree to which the kind of psychological whiplash of

1125
00:54:38,120 --> 00:54:40,840
Speaker 1: that kind of person is almost addictive to some people.

1126
00:54:41,040 --> 00:54:41,200
Speaker 2: Right.

1127
00:54:41,480 --> 00:54:43,480
Speaker 1: It's the same kind of you get these dynamics and

1128
00:54:43,560 --> 00:54:48,200
Speaker 1: like abusive romantic relationships too, right, where once they flip

1129
00:54:48,280 --> 00:54:49,759
Speaker 1: to the bad side, you really want to get him

1130
00:54:49,760 --> 00:54:51,279
Speaker 1: back to the good side, and that's part of what

1131
00:54:51,400 --> 00:54:53,759
Speaker 1: keeps people, you know, coming back, and Berg is a

1132
00:54:53,760 --> 00:54:56,960
Speaker 1: lot like that. But when he's good, it is very charismatic,

1133
00:54:57,000 --> 00:54:59,080
Speaker 1: and he's able to make you feel like not only

1134
00:54:59,080 --> 00:55:01,640
Speaker 1: do your matter, but you're helping to save the world.

1135
00:55:01,960 --> 00:55:02,120
Speaker 2: Right.

1136
00:55:02,360 --> 00:55:06,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, as I said, he's still holding his cult

1137
00:55:06,680 --> 00:55:09,680
Speaker 1: to these kind of strict sexual norms, but his heart's

1138
00:55:09,719 --> 00:55:12,000
Speaker 1: not in this. After his mom dies, right, he doesn't

1139
00:55:12,000 --> 00:55:14,600
Speaker 1: really believe this. It's kind of running on impulse for

1140
00:55:14,640 --> 00:55:17,480
Speaker 1: a little while. And he's also he's having trouble like

1141
00:55:18,200 --> 00:55:21,400
Speaker 1: keeping himself to the same standards that he's holding his

1142
00:55:21,480 --> 00:55:27,440
Speaker 1: people to. Rights, He's never been good at this. One

1143
00:55:27,480 --> 00:55:30,880
Speaker 1: of his early recruits, Sam Ajemian, claims that Berg acted

1144
00:55:30,880 --> 00:55:33,360
Speaker 1: as a dictator in this period, making every choice for

1145
00:55:33,400 --> 00:55:36,160
Speaker 1: the children of God, saying quote, Berg convinced himself and

1146
00:55:36,280 --> 00:55:38,480
Speaker 1: us that he was the greatest man who ever lived,

1147
00:55:38,600 --> 00:55:41,480
Speaker 1: second to Jesus. Now this gives you a lot of leeway.

1148
00:55:41,680 --> 00:55:44,200
Speaker 1: Like Berg starts drinking in this period, and he would

1149
00:55:44,200 --> 00:55:47,600
Speaker 1: often address his congregation while hammered. He is like a

1150
00:55:47,640 --> 00:55:51,960
Speaker 1: full on alcoholic in this point. And he also he's

1151
00:55:52,000 --> 00:55:54,800
Speaker 1: able to exercise a lot of control over daily life

1152
00:55:54,920 --> 00:55:58,160
Speaker 1: right like he has choor lists for everybody. Everybody's day

1153
00:55:58,320 --> 00:56:00,759
Speaker 1: is like scripted out to the minute by Berg. So

1154
00:56:01,000 --> 00:56:03,759
Speaker 1: is he's holding them in a lot of control. And

1155
00:56:03,800 --> 00:56:07,040
Speaker 1: he starts to covet control over the bodies of his followers,

1156
00:56:07,360 --> 00:56:10,160
Speaker 1: particularly a young woman in her mid twenties who had

1157
00:56:10,239 --> 00:56:14,080
Speaker 1: joined his church in nineteen sixty nine. Berg breaks like

1158
00:56:14,360 --> 00:56:17,200
Speaker 1: he's still married to Mother Eve at this point. But

1159
00:56:17,280 --> 00:56:19,040
Speaker 1: this is kind of when the damn breaks and he's

1160
00:56:19,040 --> 00:56:21,239
Speaker 1: no longer able to abide by these things. He doesn't

1161
00:56:21,239 --> 00:56:24,200
Speaker 1: believe anymore, and he starts sleeping with this new member

1162
00:56:24,200 --> 00:56:27,640
Speaker 1: of his cult three months after she joins. Now this

1163
00:56:27,719 --> 00:56:30,920
Speaker 1: is an issue both because he's preaching against such things

1164
00:56:30,960 --> 00:56:33,480
Speaker 1: and because his wife is helping him run the church

1165
00:56:33,560 --> 00:56:36,640
Speaker 1: and she's not gonna be happy about this, and he

1166
00:56:36,760 --> 00:56:39,440
Speaker 1: decides the way to get around this is to change

1167
00:56:39,480 --> 00:56:42,399
Speaker 1: the gospel. Right. So he comes out and says, hey, guys,

1168
00:56:42,400 --> 00:56:45,160
Speaker 1: I just did some intensive research into the Bible, and

1169
00:56:45,200 --> 00:56:47,360
Speaker 1: I found out some stuff. You're not gonna believe it.

1170
00:56:47,760 --> 00:56:52,359
Speaker 1: God is fine with polygamy. Right. So he sends out

1171
00:56:52,440 --> 00:56:54,759
Speaker 1: the first of what are called his mo letters, right

1172
00:56:54,880 --> 00:56:57,880
Speaker 1: because his followers have shortened Moses to Moe, and he

1173
00:56:57,920 --> 00:57:01,000
Speaker 1: announces that he's replacing the old church with the new church,

1174
00:57:01,080 --> 00:57:03,480
Speaker 1: and the old wine with the new wine. And the

1175
00:57:03,520 --> 00:57:05,799
Speaker 1: wine in this is like the old wine is his

1176
00:57:05,880 --> 00:57:08,600
Speaker 1: wife and the new wine is this nineteen year old

1177
00:57:08,680 --> 00:57:11,640
Speaker 1: girl that he has started sleeping with. Right, And he

1178
00:57:11,680 --> 00:57:14,560
Speaker 1: tells them that it's God's orders he does this, right,

1179
00:57:14,680 --> 00:57:17,360
Speaker 1: He writes, if you'll even take a look at Bible history,

1180
00:57:17,400 --> 00:57:19,840
Speaker 1: you'll make the shocking discovery that most of God's greats

1181
00:57:19,840 --> 00:57:23,440
Speaker 1: had oodles of wives, women's mistresses, harlots and what have you,

1182
00:57:24,200 --> 00:57:28,160
Speaker 1: which is like not wrong, like not incorrect, like that

1183
00:57:28,240 --> 00:57:30,960
Speaker 1: there's a lot of like mistresses and stuff from like

1184
00:57:31,080 --> 00:57:36,919
Speaker 1: different you know, kings and whatnot. In the Bible combines concubines, right,

1185
00:57:37,120 --> 00:57:38,840
Speaker 1: and you know, you could even find some like early

1186
00:57:38,920 --> 00:57:42,959
Speaker 1: Catholic figures who are like, actually, you know, maybe there's

1187
00:57:42,960 --> 00:57:45,080
Speaker 1: not a problem. Maybe the church doesn't have a problem

1188
00:57:45,120 --> 00:57:47,800
Speaker 1: with sex work. There's some actually interesting stuff from like

1189
00:57:47,880 --> 00:57:50,840
Speaker 1: kind of like the middle of the last century on that.

1190
00:57:52,160 --> 00:57:55,960
Speaker 1: And Berg is embracing this for a very selfish reason, right,

1191
00:57:56,000 --> 00:57:58,200
Speaker 1: because he wants to have a bunch of different wives.

1192
00:57:59,000 --> 00:58:02,200
Speaker 1: And this is kind of the early seventies, is when

1193
00:58:02,200 --> 00:58:04,840
Speaker 1: he starts putting the stuff out, when he starts saying like, actually,

1194
00:58:04,880 --> 00:58:07,480
Speaker 1: it's cool for me to marry whoever I want. And

1195
00:58:07,520 --> 00:58:10,000
Speaker 1: by this point kind of seventy one or so, there's

1196
00:58:10,040 --> 00:58:12,360
Speaker 1: a couple one hundred members of the cult, and they've

1197
00:58:12,360 --> 00:58:16,040
Speaker 1: got communal houses and farms and a bunch of different states.

1198
00:58:16,440 --> 00:58:19,800
Speaker 1: And Berg is traveling around these different properties. He's not

1199
00:58:20,040 --> 00:58:22,960
Speaker 1: just sleeping with this nineteen year old member who joined.

1200
00:58:23,240 --> 00:58:25,960
Speaker 1: He starts going to different every time he spends a

1201
00:58:26,000 --> 00:58:29,760
Speaker 1: couple of days at a new church house, he'll pick

1202
00:58:29,840 --> 00:58:31,880
Speaker 1: up a woman or two there and he'll start sleeping

1203
00:58:31,920 --> 00:58:32,240
Speaker 1: with them.

1204
00:58:32,320 --> 00:58:32,520
Speaker 2: Right.

1205
00:58:33,360 --> 00:58:35,640
Speaker 1: One of the things that starts to happen, and he's

1206
00:58:35,680 --> 00:58:38,560
Speaker 1: not yet saying, hey, we can all do free love stuff.

1207
00:58:38,600 --> 00:58:41,640
Speaker 1: But once he leaves after doing this a different location,

1208
00:58:42,040 --> 00:58:43,960
Speaker 1: the house leader will be like, well, maybe it's fine

1209
00:58:43,960 --> 00:58:46,480
Speaker 1: if I start sleeping with people, and right, so the

1210
00:58:46,600 --> 00:58:49,520
Speaker 1: kind of free love stuff is almost people start mirroring

1211
00:58:49,560 --> 00:58:52,640
Speaker 1: him before he makes that official policy where they're like, well,

1212
00:58:52,680 --> 00:58:55,880
Speaker 1: he's he's sleeping around with everybody. Maybe it's fine if

1213
00:58:55,920 --> 00:58:56,480
Speaker 1: we all do it.

1214
00:58:56,600 --> 00:59:01,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course. Yeah. So question about the letters.

1215
00:59:01,400 --> 00:59:04,720
Speaker 3: Is he in these letters is he citing like sort

1216
00:59:04,720 --> 00:59:09,080
Speaker 3: of a divine message that he heard directly from God,

1217
00:59:09,240 --> 00:59:12,320
Speaker 3: or is he citing just sort of like his hot

1218
00:59:12,440 --> 00:59:17,320
Speaker 3: take on biblical passages or just sort of like some

1219
00:59:18,280 --> 00:59:21,520
Speaker 3: new philosophy out of whole cloth, Like what's the nature

1220
00:59:21,560 --> 00:59:23,000
Speaker 3: of these Moe letters.

1221
00:59:23,600 --> 00:59:25,760
Speaker 1: It's a little of both. So he's he's he is

1222
00:59:25,840 --> 00:59:29,080
Speaker 1: citing passages from the Bible to justify things that he's doing.

1223
00:59:29,120 --> 00:59:31,640
Speaker 1: But he's also he's a prophet, right, he has a

1224
00:59:31,720 --> 00:59:34,800
Speaker 1: direct line to God. So there's stuff he'll cite a

1225
00:59:34,840 --> 00:59:36,840
Speaker 1: passage that, like a lot of things in the Bible,

1226
00:59:36,840 --> 00:59:39,000
Speaker 1: you could interpret that a bunch of different ways, and

1227
00:59:39,040 --> 00:59:42,600
Speaker 1: he'll say, but God told me this is what it means, right,

1228
00:59:42,680 --> 00:59:44,240
Speaker 1: So this is the rule now?

1229
00:59:44,440 --> 00:59:44,640
Speaker 3: Right?

1230
00:59:44,920 --> 00:59:45,080
Speaker 1: Right?

1231
00:59:45,160 --> 00:59:45,280
Speaker 2: Right?

1232
00:59:45,320 --> 00:59:49,200
Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, so he is claiming that he has a

1233
00:59:49,240 --> 00:59:51,000
Speaker 3: divine voice from God.

1234
00:59:51,240 --> 00:59:53,600
Speaker 1: Yes, how old is he at this point, He's in

1235
00:59:53,680 --> 00:59:56,840
Speaker 1: his fifties. He's claiming he's going to help usher in

1236
00:59:56,920 --> 00:59:59,960
Speaker 1: the apocalypse, right, that like when the end of Days comes,

1237
01:00:00,040 --> 01:00:02,040
Speaker 1: he's going to be a key part of that, and

1238
01:00:02,080 --> 01:00:03,680
Speaker 1: that this church is going to be a key part

1239
01:00:03,720 --> 01:00:06,280
Speaker 1: of like Jesus coming back and find anti Christ. Right.

1240
01:00:06,320 --> 01:00:09,160
Speaker 4: Did this picture I'm sharing be an accurate representation of

1241
01:00:09,200 --> 01:00:10,479
Speaker 4: what he's looking like at the time.

1242
01:00:10,720 --> 01:00:13,120
Speaker 1: That's what he looks like at the tide well, right, for.

1243
01:00:13,440 --> 01:00:19,360
Speaker 4: The audio only audience, he's got a scraggly white beard.

1244
01:00:19,800 --> 01:00:21,120
Speaker 1: Can't see the Adams Apple though.

1245
01:00:21,040 --> 01:00:26,640
Speaker 4: Fancy the Adams Apple curly hair. Looks like he's wearing

1246
01:00:26,640 --> 01:00:27,760
Speaker 4: some kind of a robe.

1247
01:00:28,240 --> 01:00:30,720
Speaker 1: He's almost got like a Mennonite beard right where it's

1248
01:00:30,720 --> 01:00:31,840
Speaker 1: like shaved on the sides.

1249
01:00:32,080 --> 01:00:32,360
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1250
01:00:32,520 --> 01:00:37,320
Speaker 3: Well, and it was kind of a Monkish like hairline

1251
01:00:36,760 --> 01:00:39,880
Speaker 3: that it's like his hairline has receded to the top

1252
01:00:39,920 --> 01:00:42,600
Speaker 3: of his head. But he has sort of like a

1253
01:00:42,640 --> 01:00:48,840
Speaker 3: silver silver halo almost of hair and a nice, a

1254
01:00:48,920 --> 01:00:53,920
Speaker 3: nice silver beard, I will say, an incredibly warm and

1255
01:00:54,080 --> 01:00:57,240
Speaker 3: gentle smile in this photo at least.

1256
01:00:58,120 --> 01:01:00,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, you could see how people it'd seemed like, well,

1257
01:01:00,720 --> 01:01:06,080
Speaker 1: this must be a good man, right. Yeah. So this

1258
01:01:06,200 --> 01:01:08,360
Speaker 1: kind of the fact that he is sleeping around and

1259
01:01:08,400 --> 01:01:12,800
Speaker 1: increasingly so are the different sort of like local cult chapters,

1260
01:01:13,680 --> 01:01:16,320
Speaker 1: proves to be a valuable recruiting tool, right. It kind

1261
01:01:16,320 --> 01:01:18,600
Speaker 1: of differentiates them from a lot of these other groups

1262
01:01:18,600 --> 01:01:21,440
Speaker 1: pulling in shrapnel from the hippie movement. It makes it

1263
01:01:21,560 --> 01:01:25,840
Speaker 1: more accessible to these countercultural people. And he realizes this

1264
01:01:25,880 --> 01:01:29,000
Speaker 1: and he starts adopting new counter culture shibbaleths to kind

1265
01:01:29,000 --> 01:01:31,840
Speaker 1: of extend this practice and keep pulling in this kind

1266
01:01:31,880 --> 01:01:34,280
Speaker 1: of this group of people. I'm going to quote from

1267
01:01:34,280 --> 01:01:37,640
Speaker 1: doctor Stephen Ken's article again. After the group departed from

1268
01:01:37,680 --> 01:01:40,600
Speaker 1: California and traveled across the continent, ending up at Camp

1269
01:01:40,640 --> 01:01:44,600
Speaker 1: Laurentide and Quebec, Burke increasingly justified forms of nudity among

1270
01:01:44,640 --> 01:01:47,600
Speaker 1: his followers in the Texas Soul Clinic camp from February

1271
01:01:47,640 --> 01:01:51,120
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy to September nineteen seventy one, Berg required women

1272
01:01:51,160 --> 01:01:54,400
Speaker 1: to go brawlless, undoubtedly borrowing the idea from a trend

1273
01:01:54,440 --> 01:01:57,720
Speaker 1: within the women's movement. His December twenty seventh, nineteen seventy

1274
01:01:57,760 --> 01:02:02,160
Speaker 1: poem Mountain made note the sexualllusion gives no indication that

1275
01:02:02,200 --> 01:02:05,360
Speaker 1: Berg's brawless policy was designed as a political statement against

1276
01:02:05,360 --> 01:02:08,600
Speaker 1: the baldy politic, as was the Woman's movement action. And

1277
01:02:08,640 --> 01:02:11,000
Speaker 1: this is really important because this is the key to

1278
01:02:11,120 --> 01:02:15,080
Speaker 1: understanding Berg. He's talking about burning your bra. He's telling

1279
01:02:15,120 --> 01:02:18,640
Speaker 1: us followers they should stop wearing bras. But the actual,

1280
01:02:18,760 --> 01:02:22,200
Speaker 1: like the secular version of this is really about liberation.

1281
01:02:22,360 --> 01:02:23,960
Speaker 1: You can't tell us what to do with our bodies

1282
01:02:24,040 --> 01:02:27,320
Speaker 1: or what to wear. Berg is telling his followers. It

1283
01:02:27,440 --> 01:02:30,440
Speaker 1: is an order burn your bra, right, it is an

1284
01:02:30,640 --> 01:02:33,800
Speaker 1: order don't wear a bra. And when he's traveling around

1285
01:02:33,800 --> 01:02:36,880
Speaker 1: to different communal homes and he sees a female follower,

1286
01:02:36,960 --> 01:02:40,520
Speaker 1: he will grab her chest forcably to make sure she's

1287
01:02:40,520 --> 01:02:45,800
Speaker 1: not wearing one. So you see there's this language. Yeah,

1288
01:02:45,840 --> 01:02:49,680
Speaker 1: but it's the opposite, right, It's all about control. It's

1289
01:02:49,720 --> 01:02:52,160
Speaker 1: so evil, but it's so interesting that he has figured out, like,

1290
01:02:52,640 --> 01:02:56,480
Speaker 1: I can use this language of freedom in order to

1291
01:02:56,720 --> 01:03:01,960
Speaker 1: take control away from my followers for myself. No, yeah, uh,

1292
01:03:02,400 --> 01:03:05,760
Speaker 1: And I think we're fully in cult territory here. Uh,

1293
01:03:06,040 --> 01:03:08,480
Speaker 1: not hard to not hard to justify at that point.

1294
01:03:09,960 --> 01:03:13,320
Speaker 1: And this is like he's these are like orders, right,

1295
01:03:13,440 --> 01:03:15,000
Speaker 1: like the fact that you're not you know, you have

1296
01:03:15,040 --> 01:03:16,960
Speaker 1: to dress this way, you can't do this, like I'm

1297
01:03:16,960 --> 01:03:19,680
Speaker 1: going to touch you at whatever point, like these are

1298
01:03:19,720 --> 01:03:21,960
Speaker 1: like these are his orders. And not only that, but

1299
01:03:22,000 --> 01:03:25,280
Speaker 1: his followers have to read this like the erotic poetry

1300
01:03:25,320 --> 01:03:27,960
Speaker 1: he's putting out about stuff like this. And I just

1301
01:03:28,040 --> 01:03:30,800
Speaker 1: cited the poem Mountain made, which I am not going

1302
01:03:30,880 --> 01:03:35,120
Speaker 1: to read entirely for you, but I will quote two

1303
01:03:35,520 --> 01:03:37,760
Speaker 1: like or a single stanza to give you an idea

1304
01:03:37,960 --> 01:03:38,760
Speaker 1: of the of.

1305
01:03:38,760 --> 01:03:41,120
Speaker 2: The moment and how long is the whole thing?

1306
01:03:41,720 --> 01:03:45,120
Speaker 1: I'm saving that for the end. Don't worry, there's a

1307
01:03:45,160 --> 01:03:47,640
Speaker 1: reveal coming, okay, But here's a single stands it to

1308
01:03:47,640 --> 01:03:49,240
Speaker 1: give you an idea. And this is like a less

1309
01:03:49,280 --> 01:03:53,320
Speaker 1: explicit stanza. Let those mountains be more visible and they're

1310
01:03:53,440 --> 01:03:59,520
Speaker 1: clothing more divisible, right, And again this is like it

1311
01:03:59,560 --> 01:04:00,680
Speaker 1: gets it's a lot worse.

1312
01:04:01,080 --> 01:04:06,240
Speaker 3: What's cool is that visible rhinds with divisible visible bad poem?

1313
01:04:06,400 --> 01:04:10,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, you'd think a prophet would do better than that. Now,

1314
01:04:11,000 --> 01:04:13,440
Speaker 1: I picked those lines because they're in the least explicit

1315
01:04:13,480 --> 01:04:16,000
Speaker 1: portion of the poem, but I do need to read

1316
01:04:16,040 --> 01:04:19,160
Speaker 1: this note from doctor Berg's piece, because Berg quotes ten

1317
01:04:19,240 --> 01:04:22,160
Speaker 1: lines from the poem and then writes the poem continues

1318
01:04:22,200 --> 01:04:24,240
Speaker 1: in this vein for a total of three hundred and

1319
01:04:24,280 --> 01:04:26,480
Speaker 1: one lines. My god.

1320
01:04:27,080 --> 01:04:27,400
Speaker 3: Wow.

1321
01:04:27,960 --> 01:04:32,800
Speaker 1: All right, well oh man, so ed, that's most of

1322
01:04:32,800 --> 01:04:34,600
Speaker 1: what we got for part one. As I as I

1323
01:04:34,640 --> 01:04:37,440
Speaker 1: told you, Fleetwood Mac comes into One member of Fleetwood

1324
01:04:37,440 --> 01:04:40,440
Speaker 1: Mac comes into the story. Right, Uh, that's gonna be

1325
01:04:40,560 --> 01:04:42,680
Speaker 1: kind of like our fun, our fun little thing. In

1326
01:04:42,720 --> 01:04:45,760
Speaker 1: part two, there's a couple of like weird celebrity connections here.

1327
01:04:46,200 --> 01:04:49,080
Speaker 1: One guy drops out of Fleetwood Mac to join this church.

1328
01:04:50,160 --> 01:04:52,840
Speaker 1: There's also a couple of celebrities who are born into

1329
01:04:52,880 --> 01:04:57,000
Speaker 1: it but don't don't seem to have Like Joaquin Phoenix

1330
01:04:57,040 --> 01:05:00,400
Speaker 1: is born into it but leaves when he's three. So

1331
01:05:00,640 --> 01:05:02,320
Speaker 1: you know, there's not a lot to actually say about that,

1332
01:05:02,320 --> 01:05:04,280
Speaker 1: but it's something you'll come across in all the articles

1333
01:05:04,280 --> 01:05:06,959
Speaker 1: on it. Like I tend to not like try to

1334
01:05:07,120 --> 01:05:09,880
Speaker 1: go into detail or speculate about stuff like that, just because,

1335
01:05:09,960 --> 01:05:12,840
Speaker 1: like you know, people have a right not to. But

1336
01:05:12,920 --> 01:05:15,520
Speaker 1: it's if you run into articles about this, it's going

1337
01:05:15,560 --> 01:05:17,439
Speaker 1: to be in every single one of them, right because

1338
01:05:17,440 --> 01:05:19,400
Speaker 1: it's just like a lead line for a lot of people,

1339
01:05:19,920 --> 01:05:22,240
Speaker 1: which will show you that, like, this is going to

1340
01:05:22,320 --> 01:05:25,400
Speaker 1: be for a while, like a very kind of almost

1341
01:05:25,520 --> 01:05:28,760
Speaker 1: hip countercultural movement, right Like. That's what he's sort of

1342
01:05:28,800 --> 01:05:32,560
Speaker 1: started to build here and in the early seventies, even

1343
01:05:32,560 --> 01:05:34,960
Speaker 1: while he's being very abusive, there's almost this degree to

1344
01:05:35,000 --> 01:05:38,320
Speaker 1: which the Children of God are cool, right like, And

1345
01:05:38,360 --> 01:05:41,000
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of a unique thing for a cult

1346
01:05:41,040 --> 01:05:44,200
Speaker 1: like this to be, not totally unique, but for it

1347
01:05:44,240 --> 01:05:46,320
Speaker 1: to be to have so much appeal to people who

1348
01:05:46,360 --> 01:05:49,120
Speaker 1: are like prominent, right Like. That's kind of an interesting

1349
01:05:49,160 --> 01:05:51,600
Speaker 1: aspect of this that we'll be getting into a lot

1350
01:05:51,640 --> 01:05:54,479
Speaker 1: more in Part two. But ed Part one is done.

1351
01:05:54,600 --> 01:05:56,920
Speaker 1: You want to plug your show at the end here

1352
01:05:56,960 --> 01:05:58,640
Speaker 1: before we roll out for the day.

1353
01:05:59,040 --> 01:06:03,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's talk a little more about Snaffo, the fabulous

1354
01:06:04,000 --> 01:06:08,480
Speaker 3: podcast that I do that I'm insanely proud of, and

1355
01:06:09,480 --> 01:06:11,560
Speaker 3: Season you Should Be Season three.

1356
01:06:11,360 --> 01:06:12,080
Speaker 2: Is out now.

1357
01:06:12,480 --> 01:06:15,360
Speaker 3: I'm in production on season four, and I'm extremely excited

1358
01:06:15,360 --> 01:06:18,240
Speaker 3: about season four because we're breaking the format. We're doing

1359
01:06:18,240 --> 01:06:23,200
Speaker 3: something new and different and very exciting, which I'll get

1360
01:06:23,240 --> 01:06:27,280
Speaker 3: into more at another time. But Season three is cranking along.

1361
01:06:27,880 --> 01:06:31,560
Speaker 3: It's fully out you can binge it. Eight episodes and

1362
01:06:31,560 --> 01:06:35,160
Speaker 3: then of course my book, get my book also snafo.

1363
01:06:34,920 --> 01:06:38,840
Speaker 1: Yeah s n afu. All right, ed, well, thank you

1364
01:06:38,880 --> 01:06:41,040
Speaker 1: so much again for being on the show. We will

1365
01:06:41,040 --> 01:06:43,520
Speaker 1: be back in just a few minutes, but to you

1366
01:06:43,560 --> 01:06:45,200
Speaker 1: the listener, we'll be back on Thursday.

1367
01:06:48,480 --> 01:06:51,200
Speaker 4: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

1368
01:06:51,560 --> 01:06:54,840
Speaker 4: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia

1369
01:06:55,000 --> 01:06:58,200
Speaker 4: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1370
01:06:58,280 --> 01:07:01,440
Speaker 4: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the

1371
01:07:01,480 --> 01:07:05,520
Speaker 4: Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday

1372
01:07:05,600 --> 01:07:09,280
Speaker 4: and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash

1373
01:07:09,480 --> 01:07:10,960
Speaker 4: at Behind the Bastards