Speaker 1: Hm, I am the fairy man.
Speaker 2: The human spirit is my business. Their madness, their passion,
Speaker 2: the wonderful and monstrous ways they burn out their brief candle.
Speaker 3: I regret to tell you that very many American lives
Speaker 3: in love.
Speaker 1: Was heard to shouts from the car.
Speaker 3: He's dead. Whether he rebird to president or four hours,
Speaker 3: people must get up and go.
Speaker 4: If I am here in the in between to collect
Speaker 4: their spirits and carry them to what comes next.
Speaker 2: This road is not on any map.
Speaker 5: It spanned the thresholds between their most forbidden desires and
Speaker 5: their greatest fear.
Speaker 1: All I ask for.
Speaker 5: In payment is a tale and accounting of their lives
Speaker 5: and the great temporary that is the land of the living.
Speaker 2: These are their stories.
Speaker 6: This is the passage.
Speaker 5: Jonestown, Guyana, November eighteenth, nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 2: Death has a scent.
Speaker 5: It's not the spoil of decomposing flesh that comes later.
Speaker 5: First death smells like scorched earth and the salt air
Speaker 5: and the steam rising off the tarmac at the Port
Speaker 5: Katuma airstrip after a tropical storm. You can smell it here,
Speaker 5: mingling with the swede and musky scent of orchids. Hmmm, yeah,
Speaker 5: you can hear death too under the buzz of busy pollinators.
Speaker 5: I have been very busy here, tendant to the lost
Speaker 5: souls after their massacre, hundreds of lost souls, all crying
Speaker 5: out together. The people's temple was here after being chased
Speaker 5: from its country of origin, a grand experiment gone horribly awry.
Speaker 5: Such is the case with cults of men. The temple
Speaker 5: buildings still stand, the people do not. What made them
Speaker 5: human was their need to belong, to be a part
Speaker 5: of something that transcended themselves across human history. This is
Speaker 5: a requirement for survival. Rights of passage prepare the human
Speaker 5: spirit for their place in the universe. These are painful, humiliating,
Speaker 5: and violent, as the old persona is literally destroyed to
Speaker 5: make way for the new. In these waning days of
Speaker 5: the twentieth century, there's no such rights of passage. Ceremonies
Speaker 5: no longer hold transformative power. So in this time, Americans
Speaker 5: have begun to ask themselves to what do I belong?
Speaker 5: It is a question born of separation. It is a
Speaker 5: question that incites madness. America, after all, is a nation
Speaker 5: of immigrants, people displaced from their past and continually searching
Speaker 5: for their renewed sense of belonging. Yeah, a country, a
Speaker 5: political party, a circus, or in this case a church.
Speaker 2: To What do I belong?
Speaker 6: They ask?
Speaker 5: Their religions are failing them, their rituals replaced only by
Speaker 5: a great drive to consume. But consumption cannot say the soul,
Speaker 5: and so they continue the search evermore frantic, many falling
Speaker 5: for the schemes of the likes of the man we
Speaker 5: meet today, Jim Jones, another American opportunist who saw the
Speaker 5: great question being asked, who sends the great hunger for
Speaker 5: meaning at the hollow core of American life? And who
Speaker 5: sought to fill it.
Speaker 6: With himself.
Speaker 5: Thousands of followers flocked to him, as mirised by his
Speaker 5: displays of mind reading and faith healing, and finding great
Speaker 5: meaning in his words, a new something to belong to.
Speaker 5: They followed that something to hear, to the salt air
Speaker 5: and the orchids of Guyana, to Jonestown. Despite his humanitarian preachings,
Speaker 5: he controlled his followers by humiliation and beatings, and blackmailing
Speaker 5: and brainwashing. Here he had total autonomy, and moments ago,
Speaker 5: in a violent fit of peak, Jim destroyed what he built,
Speaker 5: as well as all those who helped him build it,
Speaker 5: including the innocent children who arrived here through no choice
Speaker 5: of their own.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Here he sits at the front gate, his grady intinted
Speaker 5: sunglasses bent and broken from his own bullet, somehow oblivious
Speaker 5: to the stench of death and the wailing of almost
Speaker 5: one thousand lost souls.
Speaker 3: I'll be damned. Never thought my old ass would grace
Speaker 3: the seed of a Cadillac again. I can't thank you
Speaker 3: enough for the ride out of this damned place. You
Speaker 3: wouldn't believe the last few days. Can't leave well enough alone,
Speaker 3: those greedy American bastards. Everything we stood for, our whole
Speaker 3: Rainbow family, the whole damn thing went right out the window,
Speaker 3: quick as you please, And all it took was a note.
Speaker 3: Ever seen a city burn because of a scrap of paper?
Speaker 3: Sounds biblical, don't it.
Speaker 6: It's time to go.
Speaker 3: Hmm, that's killing me. Marty might be onto something about
Speaker 3: laying off the pills. She called for the car. I'm
Speaker 3: sure it's a good woman, despite her flaws.
Speaker 5: She did not call you.
Speaker 6: You did?
Speaker 3: Oh? Hell I did? I did? Didn't I?
Speaker 6: Ye?
Speaker 3: Well? Of course, I mean, no one else would would
Speaker 3: think to call the car. The girls had too much
Speaker 3: on their plates. None only think about it. Of course,
Speaker 3: I called loyal. My family's so damn loyal, But dumbest
Speaker 3: posts half of them. No mind. The Good Book says
Speaker 3: to love them all the same. Everyone has their uses
Speaker 3: in the end, you know. And what we've all accomplished,
Speaker 3: all of us, our commitment, our ambition, our truth, it
Speaker 3: is gonna change everything. The whole world will see soon
Speaker 3: enough what we had to do. That we wouldn't just
Speaker 3: lay down and let the enemy steal our lives from us,
Speaker 3: break us down. They thought they had us, but we
Speaker 3: showed them. This day is gonna be legendary. I am
Speaker 3: gonna be a legendary. They didn't think we had the courage.
Speaker 3: I tell you, brother, a revolution don't come cheap. But
Speaker 3: when you are dealing with the very salvation of everything
Speaker 3: you hold in your heart, money's no object at all,
Speaker 3: no object at all. We built a town out of nothing,
Speaker 3: you know, in the middle of a jungle. That's damn
Speaker 3: hard work, real brutal stuff. Took a lot of hands
Speaker 3: and a lot of capital. There ain't no way around it.
Speaker 3: This day and age. You got to buy your freedom
Speaker 3: from the chains of the system. And we did it. Twice.
Speaker 3: There's preachers all over America thinking about being shepherd, telling
Speaker 3: the children to love God and put their faith in
Speaker 3: something intangible and a million miles away. But I put
Speaker 3: in the work. I gave them truth and glory across
Speaker 3: that whole ugly nation, from sea to shining sea, spreading
Speaker 3: my good word worth more than a goddamn Bible. I'll
Speaker 3: tell you you think you could turn on the air conditioning. Friend,
Speaker 3: the jungle seems to have joined us in the cab.
Speaker 3: I'll be honest with you, my brother. A lot of
Speaker 3: folks didn't like what I had to say. But the
Speaker 3: good ones, the clever ones, they saw I had the
Speaker 3: right idea, and they spread the word like dandelions on
Speaker 3: the wind. I called, and they followed. Together. We built
Speaker 3: from this soil a paradise on earth. It was better
Speaker 3: than Eden. A father loves his family and sees the
Speaker 3: value in them, even if they stray from time to time.
Speaker 3: They just got to know enough to be led to
Speaker 3: the promised land. They find their station in life and
Speaker 3: do as they're told, and then it's all golden. They're
Speaker 3: worth something, and then you have them for life, good
Speaker 3: little soldiers, primed up and ready to march as soon
Speaker 3: as you give them the word, I'm here. And you
Speaker 3: should have seen them, how they all stood there that
Speaker 3: first night seems like forever ago. We were all there
Speaker 3: in the church, sipping wine from our first harvest drapes,
Speaker 3: a real treat them, thinking they did such a good
Speaker 3: job for their father. We talked a lot about confrontation
Speaker 3: in those days, about Russia, about Cuba, all the places
Speaker 3: we could go to to be free, about war, America
Speaker 3: always chomping at the bit for war. But I assure
Speaker 3: them all we were safe. Dad would keep them safe,
Speaker 3: and we would stay united against every enemy, united in
Speaker 3: love and revolution. All smiles and nods and amens. Then
Speaker 3: I told him they were drinking cyanide in their warm
Speaker 3: That's how you know. That's how you separate the wheat
Speaker 3: from the chaff. You can't have a real revolution without conviction.
Speaker 3: You can't know you've got real soldiers on the front lines,
Speaker 3: or cowards afraid to die for what they believe in,
Speaker 3: until you put them to the test. They can sing
Speaker 3: praises all day long, but I had to know. I
Speaker 3: had to know who I could trust, who really was
Speaker 3: a good soldier, ready for the revolution, ready to lay
Speaker 3: down their life for the cause. We did it over
Speaker 3: and over. White Night Communions, that's what we started calling them.
Speaker 3: That first night there was all this screaming and yelling
Speaker 3: and running, but not from everyone, wheat from the chaff. Indeed,
Speaker 3: some of my flock they strong armed the others and
Speaker 3: sitting down and shutting the hell up, anything for the cause.
Speaker 3: And when the panic died down and the faithful were
Speaker 3: waiting for me, I told them it was just fine.
Speaker 3: It's fine, no poison at all. It's just a test
Speaker 3: of faith, a show of devotion. And I'll have you know,
Speaker 3: some of those little scavengers, we're goddamn embarrassed about the drama. Ugh, drama,
Speaker 3: Why yes, drama, No need for all that fussing. We
Speaker 3: are revolutionaries. We are brave, better than the blind, frightened
Speaker 3: dogs out there in that seth pit, believing the lie
Speaker 3: that is the American dream. We take a drink and
Speaker 3: maybe we're martyrs, or maybe we're just tasting a little
Speaker 3: of the good stuff. God's reward for hard work and
Speaker 3: tending good soil, a reward either way for real faith,
Speaker 3: christ level faith, Say, brother, was that silver ice bucket
Speaker 3: there a minute ago in this bottle smells off artificial
Speaker 3: grape bitter omens.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'll go ahead, Jim, drink M.
Speaker 3: I don't need a sip of that, my friend. I'm
Speaker 3: here now. I played my part. I guided my flock
Speaker 3: home like I promised. No, No, you don't need to
Speaker 3: say it. I can tell guided them to slaughter. That's
Speaker 3: what you're thinking. It's stifling back here, brother, have mercy
Speaker 3: and hit the AC. I never would have had to
Speaker 3: do what I had to do if it weren't for
Speaker 3: that damn senator. If Leo Ryan would have stayed in
Speaker 3: californ if he'd kept those goddamn wolves from coming back
Speaker 3: to break apart our family, we'd be singing around campfires
Speaker 3: and feeding hungry people. We'd be playing with their babies,
Speaker 3: harvesting vegetables, and healing our elders. I didn't know we
Speaker 3: had so many traders in our midst turncoats, sneaky little rats,
Speaker 3: not content with everything I've given a whole new world,
Speaker 3: and they still had to write their lives down and
Speaker 3: beg and bleat at that damn government goon and their
Speaker 3: slack jaw family members. Journalists with their cameras and their recorders,
Speaker 3: finding all the worst and building a narrative. They wanted
Speaker 3: a spectacle. They wanted it. They wanted to end it all.
Speaker 3: Don't you see. I couldn't let them take everything from us.
Speaker 3: I couldn't let them destroy our family, rip up the
Speaker 3: people's temple in every thing we stood for. The family
Speaker 3: knew it. My soldiers knew it. Lord. I didn't force some,
Speaker 3: didn't tell them what to do, but they knew. They
Speaker 3: followed those little liars back to the airstrip and they
Speaker 3: gunned them down like the pigs. They were just ready
Speaker 3: for them. What did you say, slaughter? No I wasn't there.
Speaker 3: Oh no, I wasn't there. I didn't need to be.
Speaker 3: It had to be done to save us, but it wasn't.
Speaker 3: It wasn't enough to save us. If you want, you
Speaker 3: want me to be honest, I always knew it would
Speaker 3: come to pass, And god damn it, I've just been
Speaker 3: so tired of this life, of this responsibility. Hm he
Speaker 3: kin too hot, ah, the too damn hot in here
Speaker 3: for all this, my goddamn head. I'm in agony back here, friend,
Speaker 3: this ain't the Middle Ages? You know? Are we going
Speaker 3: the right way? You need to understand something I knew
Speaker 3: the minute Leo Ryan's brains blew out of his skull,
Speaker 3: we'd all be dead one way or the other. Look
Speaker 3: dead at the hands of the United States of America,
Speaker 3: you see, they'd bomb us. Have you heard of fred Hampton,
Speaker 3: Martin Luther, King Tulsa, the trail of tears. America hasn't
Speaker 3: ever given a second thought to killing, just like Rome
Speaker 3: of old feeble old men in Washington want nothing more
Speaker 3: than to murder the poor, to take our sons, feed
Speaker 3: them to the war machines. They were going to steal
Speaker 3: the babies, blast us into oblivion. Label us terrorists, but
Speaker 3: we aren't terrorists. We're the ones being terrorized, broken down
Speaker 3: by the evils of capitalism. We alone stood up against Goliath,
Speaker 3: and at the end of the day, damn it, it
Speaker 3: wasn't enough. It had to be done. People play games, friend,
Speaker 3: What can I do about liars? I beg them to
Speaker 3: just please leave us, But no, there was no other
Speaker 3: way out from my brothers and sisters. No, no, they
Speaker 3: made damn sure that we did not let our lives
Speaker 3: be taken, laid them down gladly and protest to every
Speaker 3: damn thing we fought against in this world. One last
Speaker 3: white night, the final test of the love and loyalty,
Speaker 3: of our ability to do great things together. It was
Speaker 3: just too damn late for Russia, Do late for Cuba,
Speaker 3: do late for anything but our defiance. Dou late for
Speaker 3: anything except revolutionary suicide, to keep our babies out of
Speaker 3: the monster's jaws, to die free and with our hearts full,
Speaker 3: not shot down by the state like common criminals. God,
Speaker 3: where are you taking me? I should be rewarded for
Speaker 3: my love, for my commitment, my conviction. I am not
Speaker 3: a coward. I am a father stronger than those bureaucrats
Speaker 3: and those ugh I who loves so so deeply. My
Speaker 3: God understands what I have done. My God will welcome me.
Speaker 3: Those people came to me for love, for acceptance, and
Speaker 3: I alone took them in. I provided them with love.
Speaker 3: I accepted them when this evil, horrible world showed them
Speaker 3: only hatred and judgment. I loved them. And now my
Speaker 3: God will take me in because my God loves me.
Speaker 3: Are you lost? This is it right? What road are
Speaker 3: we on? No? It's too much, it would not smell.
Speaker 3: The sweetness is sickening. We did have to get a
Speaker 3: little more forcible with some of our brethren than I
Speaker 3: would have wanted. Didn't have to be like that. Brother,
Speaker 3: Please understand, I wanted us all to go easy, peaceful,
Speaker 3: to accept the future, our revolution together painless. Only it
Speaker 3: was it was not the first time that first night,
Speaker 3: and some some people tried to run.
Speaker 7: I couldn't have that.
Speaker 3: I have them making everything a damn mess, babies crying,
Speaker 3: women screaming. No, no, he was all wrong, not my
Speaker 3: playing at all. But I couldn't keep on with it anymore. No, no,
Speaker 3: to Leah Ryan, I couldn't take any more of that chaos,
Speaker 3: knowing all hell would be loose soon enough. So yes, yes,
Speaker 3: some of them we had to. We had to remove.
Speaker 3: They were running from the truth and it was too
Speaker 3: late for them. For all of us. We go together.
Speaker 3: They've always known that, and I just got no step
Speaker 3: of the left for the runners.
Speaker 7: None.
Speaker 3: After all I had to do to fix every damn
Speaker 3: thing for them. Brother, I feel like on the suffocate.
Speaker 3: My head is pounding, gomas are burning, my mouth is enohing.
Speaker 6: Drink.
Speaker 3: I told you I had quite.
Speaker 1: Enough to drink.
Speaker 2: You haven't had a drop.
Speaker 3: Oh no, yeah, you're gonna try and slip away.
Speaker 2: Oh well, the rest.
Speaker 1: Rot for your lie.
Speaker 5: No, you always saw what you wanted to see. You
Speaker 5: weren't walking away from here. What good is revolution without
Speaker 5: it's martyr?
Speaker 3: Hell, I was gonna go my own way. I'm a
Speaker 3: good father. God damn it. I didn't need no damn
Speaker 3: gun in my face.
Speaker 7: Oh not me.
Speaker 3: Everything we are we are because of me, and you think. Ah,
Speaker 3: I was gonna drink. I was gonna join my beautiful
Speaker 3: rainbow family. It seemed to me that death was a
Speaker 3: million times more preferable than another day in that life.
Speaker 3: I told him too. Oh, I laid my life down,
Speaker 3: So we haven't. I laid my life down.
Speaker 5: Who try to convince a liar at the very end?
Speaker 3: You'll be quiet, if you'll just be quiet. I was
Speaker 3: going to lay my life down.
Speaker 5: You're holding the bottle o drink from it.
Speaker 3: I would have run if I could have. I was
Speaker 3: so damn tired of it all. Oh, all the z canery,
Speaker 3: all the pageantry, days without sleep, none of it ever
Speaker 3: mattered at all. I was so tired. Ah, let's just
Speaker 3: tell one of the burden of their lives on me anymore.
Speaker 3: God damned, that's it, isn't it?
Speaker 6: Drink Jim, So.
Speaker 3: What you're all waiting for. Is that what you're all
Speaker 3: waiting for? Oh ah ha ha oh oh oh yeah,
Speaker 3: I see.
Speaker 2: It seems uh this is your stuff.
Speaker 3: Well hm oh God, damn y'all drink to that. Mhm
Speaker 3: h m hm.
Speaker 7: Oh oh look.
Speaker 8: Yeah ooh yeah yeah.
Speaker 5: It gets me right here every time. And all it
Speaker 5: took for Jim Jones to see what he really was
Speaker 5: was the great mirror of his own death. A coward's death, yeah,
Speaker 5: not the one he hadn't meet it out so bravely
Speaker 5: while still in control of the final thrashings of the
Speaker 5: People's Temple. A silver tongue, sharp and meticulous, gone on
Speaker 5: the hell his portal, a bottle that he would not
Speaker 5: drink from in life, a little grape flavored aid, a
Speaker 5: little cyanide, and one last prayer to send them on
Speaker 5: his passage.
Speaker 9: The Passage stars Dan Fogler as the Ferryman. This episode
Speaker 9: features Scott Poythras as Jim Jones.
Speaker 6: Written by E. M.
Speaker 9: Westover with additional writing by Dan Bush and Nicholas Dakowski.
Speaker 9: Our executive producers are Nicholas Dakoski, Matthew Frederick, and Alexander Williams.
Speaker 9: First Assistant director, Script supervisor and production coordinator Sarah Klein.
Speaker 9: Music by Ben love It, additional music by Alexander Rodriguez.
Speaker 9: Casting by Sunday Bowling, Kennedy and Meg Mormon. Editing and
Speaker 9: sound designed by Dan Bush, Dialogue editing and sound mixing
Speaker 9: by Jan Campos. Additional sound editing by Racket Sound. Our
Speaker 9: supervising producer is Josh Thane. Created by Dan Bush and
Speaker 9: Nicholas Dakowski. Produced by Dan Bush. The Passage is a
Speaker 9: production of iHeartRadio and Cycopia Pictures.
Speaker 8: Passsssssssssssssssssssssss