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Speaker 1: Also media, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the podcast

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Speaker 1: that you're listening to right now, And this is part

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Speaker 1: two of our episode on David Berg. So you know

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Speaker 1: this is a show about the worst people in all

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Speaker 1: of history. If this is the first episode you're listening to,

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Speaker 1: don't go listen to part one. Don't be weird, be cool.

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Speaker 1: Like our guest for this week, Ed Helms, Ed, welcome

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Speaker 1: back for part two.

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Speaker 2: Thank you. If it's anything like part one, Wow, Yeah,

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Speaker 2: it's gonna be a lot more wrap in.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's gonna be so much worse than part one. Ed,

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Speaker 1: But your podcast Snafu gets better every single season, and

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Speaker 1: you're in season three right now talking about when the

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Speaker 1: government poisoned a bunch of people during prohibition, which is

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Speaker 1: also a lot darker actually target than your season two

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Speaker 1: what we.

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Speaker 2: Make it funny, We make it fun, we make it cheeky,

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Speaker 2: but also it is it's disturbing on a lot of levels,

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Speaker 2: highly informative, incredibly fun to listen to. It a deeply immersive,

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Speaker 2: highly produced audio experience about really important history. It's not

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Speaker 2: just people chatting. Yeah no, it's not just one of

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Speaker 2: those dumb shows people chatting about stuff.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, not a chatting, it's a you know, we're all

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Speaker 1: in the same business of like, wow, there's a lot

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Speaker 1: of really dark history people should know. I guess we

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Speaker 1: have to make some jokes so they'll listen to it. Yeah, Otherwise,

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Speaker 1: no one's going to know who Curtis Yarvin is. They're

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Speaker 1: not going to read all of his weird writing.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't want to do like a horror podcast. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: even though that's probably the most accurate treatment of some

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Speaker 2: of these stories. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Oh, especially like, yeah, government mass poisoning people. I mean

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Speaker 1: in season two when you covered like the citizen break

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Speaker 1: in of the FBI, at least that's like super inspiring,

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Speaker 1: Like it's one of the coolest things Americans ever did.

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Speaker 2: That's true.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we're not talking about one of the coolest things

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Speaker 1: Americans ever did. We're talking about one of the worst

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Speaker 1: people this country ever, David Berg, who at this point

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Speaker 1: is now the leader of a cult called the Children

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Speaker 1: of God. He has started. It is full on a cult. Now.

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Speaker 1: He is sexually harassing his followers and forcing them to

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Speaker 1: dress certain ways. He's sleeping with and or assaulting ones

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Speaker 1: and assaulting straight up assaulting. Yeah. Now we had talked

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Speaker 1: about he began an affair, first with this nineteen year

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Speaker 1: old follower and then with whoever and Mother Eve. His wife, Jane,

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Speaker 1: does not like the fact that he's suddenly like, you

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Speaker 1: know what God said, you're the old wine and we

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Speaker 1: need to get new wine. Right, So she splits she

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Speaker 1: had been a major leading figure, you know, in the

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Speaker 1: starting when they were teens for Christ and including during

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Speaker 1: the transition to being children of God. But she leaves

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Speaker 1: very suddenly after this at the start of the seventies.

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Speaker 1: And this takes him explaining, you know, when you're calling

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Speaker 1: your wife Mother Eve and you're Moses and suddenly she's gone,

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Speaker 1: you have to, like, you got to address that, right,

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Speaker 1: You can't just like pretend it did happen, Like where's

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Speaker 1: Mother Eve?

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Speaker 2: Well, where's the mother to the children of God?

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Speaker 1: Right? Right? She seemed pretty important. And he explains to

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Speaker 1: his followers that she had left because or he had

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Speaker 1: made her leave because she was trying to sabotage him

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Speaker 1: by convincing him he wasn't a prophet and that he

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Speaker 1: didn't pray enough. Obviously we know the real reason, but

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Speaker 1: that's the reason he gives his followers. We had like

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Speaker 1: a devil infiltrator inside our organization. Now, what started as

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Speaker 1: a defense of his own polygamy had quickly evolved into

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Speaker 1: this cult wide practice of free love, or at least

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Speaker 1: as we talked about. It's not in any of the

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Speaker 1: ways that the hippies meant it free love, but that's

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Speaker 1: what Berg calls it. And while there is and this

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Speaker 1: is something that draws people in, there's a lot less

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Speaker 1: restriction in the Children of God of what cult members

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Speaker 1: can do sexually. Right, It's not like the branch Davidians,

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Speaker 1: where it's just the one guy.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: Berg also largely seems to have used the fact that

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Speaker 1: his followers are increasingly sleeping around with each other as

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Speaker 1: a safety valve to clamp down on unrest, right, while

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Speaker 1: he continues to exercise dictatorial control over the rest of

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Speaker 1: their lives and over the now a number of women

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Speaker 1: that he is now sleeping with. Right, it's often referred

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Speaker 1: to as a harem right that he's got. And so

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Speaker 1: this is kind of like, this is your one little

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Speaker 1: bit of it's not even really freedom, but it's kind

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Speaker 1: of the one benefit you get to keep people in

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Speaker 1: line with the stuff that's a lot harder to swallow.

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Speaker 1: And he is again, this is not free like Zerbi.

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Speaker 1: The young woman who he starts having an affair with

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Speaker 1: is Karen Zerby. That's like the nineteen year old follower who,

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Speaker 1: three months after he joins he starts sleeping with. He

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Speaker 1: orders Zerbi to radically change her diet in order to

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Speaker 1: lose weight. He dictates her hairstyle and what clothing she

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Speaker 1: wears on a day to day basis. He's exercising like

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Speaker 1: pretty total control over her life. And as he travels

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Speaker 1: around the country to new Children of God communal houses

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Speaker 1: and farms, he's sleeping with whatever young follower he desires.

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Speaker 1: One of these young women later told Rolling Stone that

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Speaker 1: the act of admitting to Burg in this way was

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Speaker 1: described as a revolutionary action in the cults literature. Right,

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Speaker 1: you were helping to overthrow the corrupt and evil government,

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Speaker 1: warmongering government by sleeping with David Burke. And she said, quote,

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Speaker 1: I was so indoctrinated at the time. I accepted what

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Speaker 1: Berg did sexually without question. Right, that this is what

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Speaker 1: we're doing by submitting to him in this way is

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Speaker 1: actually in some way damaging the military industrial complex, right,

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Speaker 1: which is it's hard to get yourself into that mind state.

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Speaker 1: But it's important to understand that this is what a

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Speaker 1: lot why a lot of people justify submitting to him, right, Sure.

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Speaker 1: And one thing that makes this shift kind of less

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Speaker 1: of a massive sea change for members of the Children

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Speaker 1: of God than you might imagine was another practice that

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Speaker 1: had been part of their doctrine since the teens for

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Speaker 1: christ Days, and it's have you ever heard of the

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Speaker 1: term love bombing? Kind of as applied course, this is

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Speaker 1: where it starts, or one of the two places where

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Speaker 1: it starts. We're talking about like the very origin of

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Speaker 1: that as a concerted tactic, right, and the basic idea

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Speaker 1: behind love bombing was described this is the guy.

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Speaker 2: Different. Did the term come up first in this context? Sorry?

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Speaker 1: Or just the tactic as I'll talk about. There's some

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Speaker 1: debate as to where the term came from. The first

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Speaker 1: professional psychiatrist type figure to describe this was a Margaret

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Speaker 1: Singer in a book called Colts in Our Mist and

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Speaker 1: she describes love bombing this way. As soon as any

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Speaker 1: interest is shown by the recruits, they may be love

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Speaker 1: bombed by the recruiter or other cult members. This process

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Speaker 1: of feigning friendship and interest in the recruit was originally

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Speaker 1: associated with one of the early youth cults, but soon

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Speaker 1: it was taken up by a number of groups as

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Speaker 1: part of their program for luring people in. Love Bombing

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Speaker 1: is a coordinated effort, usually under the direction of leadership,

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Speaker 1: that involves long term members flooding recruits and newer members

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Speaker 1: with flattery, verbal seduction, affectionate but usually non sexual touching,

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Speaker 1: and lots of attention for their every remark. And this

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Speaker 1: is a common tactic for cults of all kinds today,

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Speaker 1: and it may have started with the Children of God. Right,

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Speaker 1: there's debate about this. David Berg's daughter Deborah, and another

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Speaker 1: early member of the church both write memoirs about their

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Speaker 1: early days in the church, and they use the term

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Speaker 1: love bombing in those memoirs. Right, It's kind of unclear

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Speaker 1: to me, does that mean that this was the first

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Speaker 1: because that would have been kind of on the timeline

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Speaker 1: the first time this was practiced. But it's also right

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Speaker 1: around the time the Unification Church is using a similar tactic,

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Speaker 1: and the Unification Church is like Singer is the one

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Speaker 1: who coins the term love bombing to describe what the

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Speaker 1: Unification Church is doing. So Burg and the Children of

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Speaker 1: God and the Unification of Church are kind of pioneering

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Speaker 1: this tactic. And there's some people who will argue that

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Speaker 1: the term love bombing was first used to describe the

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Speaker 1: tactic the Children of God were using. Right, there's debate

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Speaker 1: about this. It's kind of unclear to me. I don't

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Speaker 1: have enough here to say one way or the other

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Speaker 1: who's right, but they're both. It's fair to say Berg

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Speaker 1: is a pioneer of the tactic. He's one of the

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Speaker 1: very first cult leaders who's using this in a really

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Speaker 1: concertative way way. And I found there's a website of

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Speaker 1: former members of the cult called X Family like X

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Speaker 1: like the letter X family, but it means like you know,

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Speaker 1: you left the family, which is another name for the cult.

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Speaker 1: And they note that Singer would go on to theorize

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Speaker 1: about like why love bombing works with an evolutionary psychologist

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Speaker 1: named Keith Henson, and their theory was that this was

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Speaker 1: so effective because there's of this kind of Stone Age

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Speaker 1: human programming people have. Basically, very early hunter gatherer groups

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Speaker 1: survived because people who did stuff that helped the whole community,

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Speaker 1: even if it was hard or dangerous, got praised like

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Speaker 1: everyoneould be like, hey man, it's amazing that you like

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Speaker 1: did this.

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Speaker 2: You walked in with a with like a fresh kill

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Speaker 2: a giant antelope on your shoulder, Like you're gonna get

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Speaker 2: love bombed.

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Speaker 1: Right, people are gonna be like, oh my god, you're

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Speaker 1: the best. Right.

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Speaker 2: But when they're not doing it cynically, they're doing it

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Speaker 2: grateful because you.

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Speaker 1: Saved their lives, right, Yeah, And so like you get

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Speaker 1: this this flood of dopamine when a whole community praises

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Speaker 1: you at once, and that makes it kind of addictive.

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Speaker 1: And that's a really effective evolutionary thing. Right, If like

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Speaker 1: everyone gets addictive to helping the group survive, the group

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Speaker 1: has better odds of surviving.

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Speaker 2: Right. I'm sure this goes back as a tactic wave

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Speaker 2: of like.

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Speaker 1: Century pre human probably even to some extent, right, Like yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 2: I mean not just evolutionarily, I mean but but but yeah,

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Speaker 2: I mean as a tactic, right, and even not even

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Speaker 2: as a as a I would I would think that

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Speaker 2: a lot of people, whether or not they're in a cult,

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Speaker 2: if they're just in a sort of like uh, some

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Speaker 2: some kind of social cohesive group, that love bombing can

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Speaker 2: sort of happen organically and it's not done. No one

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Speaker 2: no one is, no one is cynically thinking like we're

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Speaker 2: gonna love bomb this person. It just is a sort

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Speaker 2: of like thing that happens. Yeah, like like fraternity initiation

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Speaker 2: or all these things, fringe groups, families, you know, political affiliations,

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Speaker 2: like all these kinds of things. I think that's such

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Speaker 2: an important point because with all of every cult dynamic,

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Speaker 2: there is a non toxic version of it. That's a

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Speaker 2: reason why the Colt dynamic works. And like, yeah, like.

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Speaker 1: Your your friend group, you know when you notice like

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Speaker 1: one of your buddies is having a bad time they've

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Speaker 1: had trouble and work like, hey, let's all get together

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Speaker 1: and like really make like, you know, Jim feel better, right,

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Speaker 1: like make mi like how much we give a shit

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Speaker 1: about him and stuff?

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Speaker 2: Hold on, is Jim in trouble again?

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Speaker 1: With jeh?

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Speaker 2: God, damn, Jim's a mass. Honestly, I'm done with Jim.

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Speaker 1: I was also kind of thinking, as you brought this up,

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Speaker 1: in terms of like earlier places and ancient Rome. You know,

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Speaker 1: when you had a general who was really successful, they

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Speaker 1: do this thing called a triumph where the whole city

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Speaker 1: turns out and you're like basically king for a day

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Speaker 1: and everybody has to praise you.

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Speaker 2: That's like so serious love bombing.

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Speaker 1: Right, that would get you addicted to like the making

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Speaker 1: the empire bigger? Right? Yeah, so you're right, like people,

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Speaker 1: you know, this is neither the Unification Church nor Berg

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Speaker 1: invented this thing, but they they were the first people

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Speaker 1: to kind of develop it as a tactic in a

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Speaker 1: way that got noticed and kind of codified by the

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Speaker 1: scientific community as like, oh, here's what's going on here, right,

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Speaker 1: But you're absolutely correct that, like this has been a

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Speaker 1: thing for a spell, right, And you know what you're

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Speaker 1: doing here is you're getting people addicted to the group,

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Speaker 1: and that's a really useful thing. If the next thing

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Speaker 1: you're going to ask them is, hey, you kind of

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Speaker 1: got to cut off all your family and friends who

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Speaker 1: don't join and also sign over your bank accounts, right, Like,

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Speaker 1: if this is if this is your heroine, it's a

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Speaker 1: lot easier to get you to do that, right. And

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Speaker 1: that's that's where the Children of God are in the

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Speaker 1: early seventies, and that's part of why once more of

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Speaker 1: this free love rhetoric starts entering and Berg is kind

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Speaker 1: of he's not giving it away all at once, but

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Speaker 1: it's starting to drip out. It doesn't seem as much

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Speaker 1: of a shift because love bombing's non sexual, but it

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Speaker 1: kind of gells well with like and now we're all

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Speaker 1: having sex too, right, Like, yeah, you can kind of

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Speaker 1: get that. And also, you know, sex is habit forming,

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Speaker 1: so it makes the cult more addictive too, right Like,

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Speaker 1: all of these things are kind of coming together. And

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Speaker 1: Karen zerbe is Berg's first test subject for this new tactic.

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Speaker 1: But as time goes on, he initially you know, she's nineteen,

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Speaker 1: he's in his fifties. This is he is very much

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Speaker 1: he has a lot of power over here. This is

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Speaker 1: very much an abusive dynamic. As time goes on, Zerbi

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Speaker 1: is very smart, and she takes more and more power

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Speaker 1: and agency for herself. She's going to wind up leading

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Speaker 1: the cult in a couple of decades, so that is

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Speaker 1: a continual process for her. And very quickly she goes

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Speaker 1: from being this person he is controlling to this person

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Speaker 1: he is discussing new tactics with and helping to plot

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Speaker 1: out and implement these new tactics, right and she's accepting

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Speaker 1: everything he does to her as long as she gets

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Speaker 1: to hold a position of power in the group. One

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Speaker 1: former member later described her as having bought into Berg's

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Speaker 1: new doctrine, heart, mind, body, and soul. Quote, her naivete

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Speaker 1: was replaced by a recalcitrant fierce loyalty to him, right,

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Speaker 1: and he's going to be very loyal to her too.

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Speaker 1: He's she's almost the only person he's ever loyal to

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Speaker 1: in his life, like in a messed up way, because

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Speaker 1: neither of them are good people, but they might be soulmates,

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Speaker 1: like in a really evil way.

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Speaker 3: Right, what about his old tolmte? What about that wife?

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Speaker 1: What about she is gone, She is out of the picture.

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Speaker 1: She did not like this cult, so she is she

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Speaker 1: is away at this point. So once Mother Eve is

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Speaker 1: gone and Zerbe is kind of the number two at

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Speaker 1: the cult, she ascends and she takes a new name, Maria.

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Speaker 1: All traces of Mother Eve are erased from the growing

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Speaker 1: body of cult literature, and cultists begin calling Zerbi Mama Maria. Right,

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Speaker 1: so you've got mo or Moses, David and Mama Maria

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Speaker 1: leading the children again.

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Speaker 2: How old is she?

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Speaker 1: She's like twenty twenty one at this point. Oh wow, yep,

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Speaker 1: yep she is again. There's a lot complicated here. She

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Speaker 1: starts as a victim, but she's also like there's a

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Speaker 1: degree to what she's like a prodigy at cult stuff,

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Speaker 1: Like she gets very good at this very quickly.

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Speaker 2: And uh, and where is this? Like are they still

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Speaker 2: bouncing between West Texas and La?

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Speaker 1: Yes, they are traveling around and all around. They've got

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Speaker 1: a bunch of different states now by this point, by

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Speaker 1: seventy one seventy two, there's hundreds of members, right, and

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Speaker 1: so they've got like a dozen or more places that

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Speaker 1: they're traveling between, and they've started drawing attention from national

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Speaker 1: news that's not entirely positive at this point. Right now,

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Speaker 1: a lot of the physically coercive stuff, like what we

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Speaker 1: talked about with the bras, is not widely known yet,

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Speaker 1: but some of the free love stuff is starting to be.

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Speaker 1: And this looks like a synthesis of hippie culture and Christianity, right,

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Speaker 1: which is not fully accurate because it's a lot of

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Speaker 1: the stuff from hippie culture has been twisted to be

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Speaker 1: more abusive. But it seems cool, right, And it seems

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Speaker 1: cooler than maybe a lot of these other kind of

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Speaker 1: evangelical strains that are picking up stragglers from the hippie movement.

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Speaker 1: You know, sure, David Berg will control your daily life,

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Speaker 1: and he'll take your money, but you could be naked

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Speaker 1: whenever you want, and you can make love freely, right,

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Speaker 1: which is a lot better deal for some of these

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Speaker 1: people than they've gotten prior in their lives.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: The sex aspect of things separates the children from most

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Speaker 1: of these other groups, and prominent people start joining. Foremost

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Speaker 1: among them Jeremy Spencer, the original slide guitarist from Fleetwood Mac.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy one, he shaves his head, joins the

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Speaker 1: cult and starts going by Jonathan Wow.

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Speaker 2: Yeah wait wait what was his name before then? Jeremy Spencer,

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Speaker 2: Jeremy Spencer, Yeah, go switches to Jonathan. Yes, yes, Jeremy Jonathan.

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Speaker 1: Very creative name, no lateral move. Look, he's a slide guitarist.

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Speaker 1: He's not writing the songs. You know, we had never

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Speaker 1: gotten Silver Springs from Jeremy. So by the time your

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Speaker 1: colt starts poaching members of Fleetwood Mac, it's hard to

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Speaker 1: stay under the radar, right, And I should know. I

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Speaker 1: look this up. Jeremy Spencer left the band in nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy one, which is six years before Rumors was released.

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Speaker 1: Now does this mean David Berg started Does this mean

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Speaker 1: we might not have gotten rumors, or it would have

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Speaker 1: got a different version of rumors. You know, these are

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Speaker 1: the kind of historic questions that'll drive you mad if

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Speaker 1: you dwell on them too.

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Speaker 3: Literally, what I was looking up, I was like, that

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Speaker 3: was my exact question.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, No, he was well ahead of rumors. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: Fleetwood Mac moved around. They had their list of musicians

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Speaker 1: changed a crazy amount before they got as famous as

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Speaker 1: they eventually got.

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Speaker 2: Anyway, I wonder if they stayed friends with Jeremy Jonathan.

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Speaker 1: Jeremy's into some weird stuff now, man. Yeah, he's not

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Speaker 1: doing as much slide guitar. So by nineteen seventy two,

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Speaker 1: you got hundreds and hundreds of young people, and they're

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Speaker 1: mostly very young, living in dozens of communal homes around

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Speaker 1: the country and in a couple of other countries. At

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Speaker 1: this point, people are changing their names, they're cutting off

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Speaker 1: ties to their families under Berg's orders, and this spawns

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Speaker 1: a movement, an anti Children of God movement that's mainly

340
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Speaker 1: like parents, along with some spouses and other relatives of

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Speaker 1: cult members who are like, hey, like law enforcement, something

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Speaker 1: might be going on here, like this, this seems bad,

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Speaker 1: Like it seems like maybe something that you should look into.

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Speaker 1: You have to remember though, at this time, number one,

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Speaker 1: colts is a concept aren't as well understood as they're

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Speaker 1: going to become. This is kind of the early days

347
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Speaker 1: for a lot of popular knowledge and even academic understanding

348
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Speaker 1: of cults. And I think what the police would have

349
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Speaker 1: said generally is like, well, what, like they're just preaching.

350
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Speaker 1: It's like a Christian church. What crime are they committing? Right,

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Speaker 1: They're not communists or anything, you know, Like, so there's

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Speaker 1: there's a degree to which you know they're kind of

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Speaker 1: there's this movement of people who have been hurt by

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Speaker 1: the cult trying to get the warning out, and it's

355
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Speaker 1: not yet taking off, right, it's going to start in

356
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Speaker 1: the mid seventies, but Berg kind of anticipates it, right.

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Speaker 1: He realizes that, like, eventually, the more and more people

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Speaker 1: I get, the more I will have law enforcement kind

359
00:17:48,280 --> 00:17:50,960
Speaker 1: of come down on me, and it's probably time to

360
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Speaker 1: go underground. So in the early seventies, he publishes a

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Speaker 1: mo letter titled I Got a Split, and he tells

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Speaker 1: his followers that he's taking his inner circle and are

363
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Speaker 1: going to live underground. They're going to travel secretly from

364
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Speaker 1: cult location to cult location, but they're hiding from the

365
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Speaker 1: government now, right, he's kind of preempting, like, I know

366
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Speaker 1: there's going to be criminal investigations at some point into

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Speaker 1: the shit I'm doing.

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Speaker 3: I just want to say, I really don't like the

369
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Speaker 3: phrase Moe letter.

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Speaker 1: I don't like the mo letters. That's what they call him.

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Speaker 3: Not into it.

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Speaker 2: It's kinda it's kind of spunky. So he's sort of

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Speaker 2: it's like, we.

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Speaker 1: Got another mo letter, we got another MO letter letter.

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Speaker 1: He's hiding from the FBI. Now, inn't that cool?

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Speaker 3: It doesn't do it for me.

377
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Speaker 2: Surely there was some like the way you're sort of

378
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Speaker 2: describing it, it sounds like he just sort of sensed that, yes,

379
00:18:40,000 --> 00:18:42,439
Speaker 2: maybe he would get investigated. But but if you're going

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Speaker 2: to go under ground, I mean he must have caught

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Speaker 2: wind of some like serious implications starting to there's some

382
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Speaker 2: walls closing in.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I think some of it is that

384
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Speaker 1: he is genuinely he's got a kind of cunning and

385
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Speaker 1: he just knows this is where it's going to go.

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Speaker 1: I do wonder you're looking at like l Ron Hubbard

387
00:18:59,320 --> 00:19:02,240
Speaker 1: kind of around this period also flees the US, right,

388
00:19:02,320 --> 00:19:05,359
Speaker 1: because he's getting investigated for some stuff and goes to London,

389
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Speaker 1: and I wonder how much of it is like him

390
00:19:07,160 --> 00:19:09,639
Speaker 1: being like, Oh, at some point that'll happen to me.

391
00:19:09,880 --> 00:19:13,120
Speaker 1: I should probably bounce, because he also flees to London, right,

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Speaker 1: that's yeah, he leaves the US, he goes to the UK,

393
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Speaker 1: and he's never going to re enter the United States.

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Speaker 2: And you know they ain't paying taxes. Oh god, no,

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Speaker 2: you know, you know, at the very least there's going

396
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Speaker 2: to be some irs hell to pay.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's one of those like, yeah, they're a church,

398
00:19:30,359 --> 00:19:32,880
Speaker 1: but you're still supposed to file something to at least

399
00:19:32,920 --> 00:19:35,919
Speaker 1: let him know what you're not paying on. And I

400
00:19:35,920 --> 00:19:39,400
Speaker 1: don't think there's much of that going on. So they

401
00:19:39,400 --> 00:19:42,399
Speaker 1: go to the UK with the plan of like, you know,

402
00:19:43,119 --> 00:19:44,960
Speaker 1: we're just going to kind of hang out here until

403
00:19:45,000 --> 00:19:47,120
Speaker 1: we commit enough crimes here that we have to leave

404
00:19:47,160 --> 00:19:51,000
Speaker 1: the UK. Their decision of where to flee was largely

405
00:19:51,000 --> 00:19:52,920
Speaker 1: made by the fact that one of their first really

406
00:19:53,000 --> 00:19:56,920
Speaker 1: wealthy followers, who's this British multi millionaire. I haven't found

407
00:19:56,920 --> 00:19:59,280
Speaker 1: his name in any of the literature, but this very

408
00:19:59,320 --> 00:20:03,960
Speaker 1: wealthy British man joins the cult, and because he's powerful,

409
00:20:04,200 --> 00:20:07,080
Speaker 1: he doesn't sign over all of his assets, right, and

410
00:20:07,119 --> 00:20:10,760
Speaker 1: Berg doesn't it doesn't like force the matter, right, But

411
00:20:10,840 --> 00:20:13,600
Speaker 1: he does give the cult an empty factory which they

412
00:20:13,680 --> 00:20:16,280
Speaker 1: turn in using some of his money into their London headquarters.

413
00:20:16,359 --> 00:20:16,479
Speaker 2: Right.

414
00:20:16,520 --> 00:20:20,040
Speaker 1: They build it out in the housing. And it's likely

415
00:20:20,320 --> 00:20:22,479
Speaker 1: and there's a little bit of speculation for me on this,

416
00:20:22,720 --> 00:20:24,640
Speaker 1: but it's this is based on stuff that they do

417
00:20:24,760 --> 00:20:27,240
Speaker 1: later and caudify later. Is a tactic that this rich

418
00:20:27,280 --> 00:20:30,840
Speaker 1: guy who gives them this London headquarters is rewarded for

419
00:20:30,920 --> 00:20:33,600
Speaker 1: what he does by being given access to a lot

420
00:20:33,640 --> 00:20:38,280
Speaker 1: of young female cult members, right, And that this kind

421
00:20:38,280 --> 00:20:40,080
Speaker 1: of the fact that this works that like, oh, this

422
00:20:40,119 --> 00:20:43,240
Speaker 1: really makes this guy into us, I think is going

423
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Speaker 1: to it's going to influence something they do later that

424
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Speaker 1: we're building towards.

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Speaker 2: This is getting very epsteiny.

426
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Speaker 1: Oh my, you have you have predicted where this is going? Okay, Yeah,

427
00:20:55,640 --> 00:20:59,680
Speaker 1: although Epstein never on this scale at least as far

428
00:20:59,680 --> 00:21:02,719
Speaker 1: as we know, although I will say most of these

429
00:21:02,720 --> 00:21:05,960
Speaker 1: people are adults at this point. By nineteen seventy three,

430
00:21:06,080 --> 00:21:09,560
Speaker 1: Berg's growing free love ideas had spread out across the

431
00:21:09,600 --> 00:21:12,040
Speaker 1: network of communal living spaces in the US and now

432
00:21:12,040 --> 00:21:15,520
Speaker 1: the UK. Again. This started in like a decentralized fashion,

433
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Speaker 1: But in seventy three he makes the policy official, publishing

434
00:21:18,320 --> 00:21:20,840
Speaker 1: his first MO letter to officially link the children of

435
00:21:20,880 --> 00:21:24,080
Speaker 1: God to free love quote, thank God for the sexual

436
00:21:24,119 --> 00:21:26,600
Speaker 1: liberation movement. It is beginning to relieve us from some

437
00:21:26,680 --> 00:21:30,560
Speaker 1: of our former taboos and frustrations of the past. And

438
00:21:30,640 --> 00:21:34,560
Speaker 1: his preaching had taken a more apocalyptic tone by this point.

439
00:21:35,000 --> 00:21:36,760
Speaker 1: By the end of his time in the US, Berg

440
00:21:36,840 --> 00:21:39,399
Speaker 1: had become convinced that California was going to suffer an

441
00:21:39,400 --> 00:21:42,320
Speaker 1: apocalyptic earthquake which would send the whole state sliding into

442
00:21:42,359 --> 00:21:45,840
Speaker 1: the ocean, like in that War and Zevon song. But

443
00:21:46,200 --> 00:21:48,520
Speaker 1: you know, he's also believes that, like, yeah, the world's ending.

444
00:21:48,520 --> 00:21:51,080
Speaker 1: The Antichrist is coming, and that's what he's preaching about, right,

445
00:21:51,119 --> 00:21:53,399
Speaker 1: And part of his justification for why we need to

446
00:21:53,440 --> 00:21:56,160
Speaker 1: adopt sexual liberation is like, hey, the world's about to end.

447
00:21:56,160 --> 00:21:56,480
Speaker 1: Why not?

448
00:21:56,880 --> 00:21:57,119
Speaker 2: You know?

449
00:21:57,800 --> 00:22:01,920
Speaker 1: Like the the fact that this works causes him to

450
00:22:01,920 --> 00:22:04,880
Speaker 1: get bolder, and he merges this kind of liberatory rhetoric

451
00:22:04,920 --> 00:22:08,440
Speaker 1: with his preaching. Subsequent MO letters have titles like Revolutionary

452
00:22:08,520 --> 00:22:12,960
Speaker 1: Sex and Revolutionary love Making and Revolutionary Sex. He devotes

453
00:22:13,000 --> 00:22:15,119
Speaker 1: a lot of time to arguing that the Bible is

454
00:22:15,240 --> 00:22:18,440
Speaker 1: fine with incest, and that marriages of brothers and sisters,

455
00:22:18,760 --> 00:22:22,680
Speaker 1: mothers and sons, and even fathers and daughters are okay. Right,

456
00:22:23,240 --> 00:22:26,120
Speaker 1: he is not openly preaching pedophilia at this point, but

457
00:22:26,160 --> 00:22:27,560
Speaker 1: that's not that far from it.

458
00:22:27,680 --> 00:22:30,840
Speaker 2: Right, Wow, oh yeah, openly preaching incests?

459
00:22:31,200 --> 00:22:33,080
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, dark.

460
00:22:33,480 --> 00:22:37,120
Speaker 2: I mean, if you're openly preaching incest, you're probably openly

461
00:22:37,160 --> 00:22:41,600
Speaker 2: preaching pedophilia, because there's very you're not also saying incest

462
00:22:41,720 --> 00:22:45,520
Speaker 2: is fine if you wait till they're of legal age.

463
00:22:45,400 --> 00:22:49,680
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah. And I think that is like there's a

464
00:22:49,680 --> 00:22:52,320
Speaker 1: little bit of debate about when he starts because like

465
00:22:52,359 --> 00:22:55,040
Speaker 1: we don't have perfect contexts because he's he's got his

466
00:22:55,160 --> 00:22:58,320
Speaker 1: inner circle that he tests stuff out on before it

467
00:22:58,320 --> 00:23:01,119
Speaker 1: gets out to the whier cult. So there is probably

468
00:23:01,160 --> 00:23:02,840
Speaker 1: an extent to which he's starting to talk about the

469
00:23:02,880 --> 00:23:05,600
Speaker 1: pedophilia to his inner circle at this point. You know,

470
00:23:05,760 --> 00:23:10,879
Speaker 1: that's not perfectly clear, but you see this kind of

471
00:23:11,200 --> 00:23:13,600
Speaker 1: thing over and over again, where like he'll start kind

472
00:23:13,640 --> 00:23:16,439
Speaker 1: of testing the waters, right, And I think this incest

473
00:23:16,440 --> 00:23:19,240
Speaker 1: thing ishim testing the waters with the broader international cult

474
00:23:19,280 --> 00:23:21,680
Speaker 1: about like I'm going to start preaching about pedophilia. Right,

475
00:23:21,960 --> 00:23:23,920
Speaker 1: But I want to like prep the ground here.

476
00:23:24,640 --> 00:23:26,960
Speaker 2: God, how big is how many people are we talking

477
00:23:26,960 --> 00:23:27,480
Speaker 2: at this point?

478
00:23:27,760 --> 00:23:31,040
Speaker 1: We are talking by nineteen seventy three, twenty four hundred

479
00:23:31,040 --> 00:23:33,720
Speaker 1: full time members, right, So these are people who live

480
00:23:33,880 --> 00:23:36,159
Speaker 1: in cult housing. They've got one hundred and forty housing

481
00:23:36,200 --> 00:23:39,840
Speaker 1: projects in forty countries around the world by nineteen seventy three.

482
00:23:40,080 --> 00:23:43,760
Speaker 1: Now that's full time members. There's thousands more who haven't joined.

483
00:23:43,880 --> 00:23:46,560
Speaker 1: They're not living, they don't follow, but they'll just pract

484
00:23:46,600 --> 00:23:50,000
Speaker 1: by the literature, right, they'll listen to him, right, because

485
00:23:50,000 --> 00:23:52,399
Speaker 1: he's putting out like radio stuff, he's putting out tapes,

486
00:23:52,400 --> 00:23:55,280
Speaker 1: he's putting out comic books, and so they're like fans,

487
00:23:55,680 --> 00:23:57,639
Speaker 1: and a lot of the money comes from them. And

488
00:23:57,640 --> 00:23:59,760
Speaker 1: then there's this twenty four hundred person harder core of

489
00:23:59,760 --> 00:24:04,479
Speaker 1: four full time members, right. And again, the inner circle

490
00:24:04,520 --> 00:24:07,280
Speaker 1: he's got gets the most and earliest versions of all

491
00:24:07,359 --> 00:24:10,199
Speaker 1: of the like really radical stuff he's preaching, and then

492
00:24:10,240 --> 00:24:12,760
Speaker 1: the full time members get stuff a little bit later,

493
00:24:13,200 --> 00:24:15,440
Speaker 1: and it takes a lot longer for stuff to percolate

494
00:24:15,520 --> 00:24:18,359
Speaker 1: out to the people who are just kind of contributing money,

495
00:24:18,400 --> 00:24:22,199
Speaker 1: but they're not members of the church. Right he is.

496
00:24:22,400 --> 00:24:24,760
Speaker 1: You know. He puts out a mo letter around this

497
00:24:24,840 --> 00:24:27,840
Speaker 1: time called One Wife, which argues that the nuclear family

498
00:24:28,000 --> 00:24:31,159
Speaker 1: is ungodly, and he orders any such families within the

499
00:24:31,240 --> 00:24:34,600
Speaker 1: church to be broken up. Husbands and wives are separated

500
00:24:34,600 --> 00:24:37,439
Speaker 1: from their children. They are forced to Husbands wives are

501
00:24:37,440 --> 00:24:39,879
Speaker 1: also separated from each other. So if you like have

502
00:24:39,920 --> 00:24:42,080
Speaker 1: a family and you're all living in a communal house together,

503
00:24:42,440 --> 00:24:44,600
Speaker 1: husband will be sent to one house and David will

504
00:24:44,600 --> 00:24:47,199
Speaker 1: pair him with other women there. A wife will be

505
00:24:47,240 --> 00:24:49,480
Speaker 1: sent to a different house, David will pair her with

506
00:24:49,640 --> 00:24:51,920
Speaker 1: other men there, and then the kids will be sent

507
00:24:51,960 --> 00:24:55,800
Speaker 1: to be raised communally, away from their parents. Right, this

508
00:24:56,000 --> 00:25:00,600
Speaker 1: is Eus deeply abusive. It's also as the cult leader,

509
00:25:00,760 --> 00:25:03,240
Speaker 1: what's the biggest danger to you? It's that people are

510
00:25:03,240 --> 00:25:06,000
Speaker 1: more loyal to their family than you, Right, so you

511
00:25:06,040 --> 00:25:07,679
Speaker 1: break up families, you know.

512
00:25:08,040 --> 00:25:15,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting, like the manipulative payoff of so much

513
00:25:15,800 --> 00:25:21,520
Speaker 2: cult activity is clear, Like from the outside, it's just

514
00:25:21,520 --> 00:25:25,040
Speaker 2: like what you just said, it makes perfect sense that

515
00:25:25,080 --> 00:25:30,280
Speaker 2: you would want to keep cult members from gaining intimacy

516
00:25:30,480 --> 00:25:34,119
Speaker 2: and loyalty to their families because it would undermine their

517
00:25:34,119 --> 00:25:38,159
Speaker 2: commitment to him. How clear do you think, Like just

518
00:25:38,280 --> 00:25:42,359
Speaker 2: generally speaking, when a cult leader mandates something like that,

519
00:25:43,080 --> 00:25:45,840
Speaker 2: do you think they're aware of the reason they're doing

520
00:25:45,880 --> 00:25:48,879
Speaker 2: that or they just sort of they're they're so steeped

521
00:25:49,000 --> 00:25:52,960
Speaker 2: in their own benevolence or belief in their own benevolence

522
00:25:53,000 --> 00:25:56,360
Speaker 2: that they're just kind of like doing these irrational things

523
00:25:56,800 --> 00:26:01,679
Speaker 2: and justifying it with insane ways. And it's not the

524
00:26:01,760 --> 00:26:04,520
Speaker 2: sort of cynical tactic that we see it to be

525
00:26:04,600 --> 00:26:06,080
Speaker 2: from the outside, you know.

526
00:26:06,200 --> 00:26:07,800
Speaker 1: And I think that is like, in a lot of ways,

527
00:26:07,800 --> 00:26:10,440
Speaker 1: the million dollar question with this stuff, and like I

528
00:26:10,480 --> 00:26:12,400
Speaker 1: would be lying on I said, like, this is definitely

529
00:26:12,400 --> 00:26:14,919
Speaker 1: the answer. I'll give you what I think is happening here. Sure,

530
00:26:15,040 --> 00:26:17,920
Speaker 1: I think that today because there's a lot of documentation

531
00:26:17,960 --> 00:26:19,960
Speaker 1: about different cults in the past, there's a lot of

532
00:26:20,000 --> 00:26:22,760
Speaker 1: academic literature on how they work and like why cult

533
00:26:22,840 --> 00:26:25,680
Speaker 1: dynamics work. I think a lot of modern cult leaders

534
00:26:26,000 --> 00:26:29,040
Speaker 1: are aware of what they're doing and understand technically what

535
00:26:29,080 --> 00:26:31,600
Speaker 1: works and what doesn't, and are going about things methodically.

536
00:26:31,680 --> 00:26:33,640
Speaker 1: Maybe not not all of them, but a lot of them.

537
00:26:34,080 --> 00:26:36,600
Speaker 1: Berg because there's less of that written, I think this

538
00:26:36,760 --> 00:26:40,160
Speaker 1: is instinctual to him to some extent. He's got cult

539
00:26:40,240 --> 00:26:44,960
Speaker 1: leader instincts, right, and I think he may just this

540
00:26:44,960 --> 00:26:47,240
Speaker 1: this all kind of really like, I think a lot

541
00:26:47,280 --> 00:26:48,919
Speaker 1: of this is there's a degree to which like he

542
00:26:49,000 --> 00:26:51,600
Speaker 1: and Zurbi are strategizing some of this, so they are

543
00:26:51,640 --> 00:26:53,440
Speaker 1: consciously building some tactics.

544
00:26:53,640 --> 00:26:57,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, but narcissism is a very powerful kind of like

545
00:26:57,480 --> 00:27:02,800
Speaker 2: just a powerful mechan for toxic behavior that is sort

546
00:27:02,840 --> 00:27:05,840
Speaker 2: of not understood by the narcissist themselves.

547
00:27:06,040 --> 00:27:08,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think there is a lot of that going. Like,

548
00:27:08,520 --> 00:27:12,280
Speaker 1: I don't he's certainly not conscious of the psychological underpinnings

549
00:27:12,320 --> 00:27:15,320
Speaker 1: of everything that he's doing. Sure, right, there is planning,

550
00:27:15,359 --> 00:27:16,760
Speaker 1: but yeah, I think he is. I think he's kind

551
00:27:16,760 --> 00:27:19,439
Speaker 1: of got really good instincts for running a cult, you know,

552
00:27:20,320 --> 00:27:22,720
Speaker 1: just like some people have good instincts for I don't know,

553
00:27:22,720 --> 00:27:25,520
Speaker 1: different sports or whatever. He's like one of those case

554
00:27:25,560 --> 00:27:27,760
Speaker 1: that gets drafted at fourteen for the NBA. It's like,

555
00:27:27,800 --> 00:27:29,720
Speaker 1: oh my god, David Berg, you're gonna be a cult

556
00:27:29,760 --> 00:27:30,560
Speaker 1: leading All Star.

557
00:27:31,480 --> 00:27:33,639
Speaker 3: You can't get drafted at fourteen in the NBA.

558
00:27:34,119 --> 00:27:36,119
Speaker 1: Okay, Sophie's the one who knows about sports.

559
00:27:36,119 --> 00:27:36,320
Speaker 4: Here.

560
00:27:36,680 --> 00:27:37,760
Speaker 1: I shouldn't have even tried.

561
00:27:38,040 --> 00:27:39,200
Speaker 3: That was embarrassing.

562
00:27:39,920 --> 00:27:41,440
Speaker 1: Yep. And that's why I'm going to throw to ads

563
00:27:41,520 --> 00:27:49,800
Speaker 1: right now, Sophie, to distract everyone. There we go, so

564
00:27:49,840 --> 00:27:53,200
Speaker 1: we're back. So by seventy three, again they're in forty

565
00:27:53,200 --> 00:27:55,679
Speaker 1: different countries around the world, which means Berg and his

566
00:27:55,760 --> 00:27:59,520
Speaker 1: inner circle have the freedom to travel underground indefinitely and

567
00:27:59,560 --> 00:28:02,320
Speaker 1: move to new established living quarters with his inner circle

568
00:28:02,359 --> 00:28:04,520
Speaker 1: in different countries once the law starts to catch on

569
00:28:04,560 --> 00:28:06,760
Speaker 1: in one place, so they start to get a hint

570
00:28:06,800 --> 00:28:09,840
Speaker 1: that like maybe the UK is about to investigate us.

571
00:28:11,040 --> 00:28:13,080
Speaker 1: Let's go to hey. For the last year, we've had

572
00:28:13,080 --> 00:28:16,080
Speaker 1: them prepping a house for us in somewhere in the

573
00:28:16,080 --> 00:28:20,200
Speaker 1: Balkans right or in the Canary Islands. Let's head over

574
00:28:20,240 --> 00:28:23,520
Speaker 1: there now. And he's actually got basically like advanced teams

575
00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:26,000
Speaker 1: moving out ahead of him making sure places are set

576
00:28:26,080 --> 00:28:29,760
Speaker 1: up for him. So a lot of this is very methodical.

577
00:28:30,320 --> 00:28:33,639
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy four, Bulley'd buy the success they'd experienced

578
00:28:33,680 --> 00:28:36,720
Speaker 1: so far. Berg and Zerbe cook up a new tactic

579
00:28:36,800 --> 00:28:39,360
Speaker 1: to raise money and increase the numbers of their cult,

580
00:28:39,640 --> 00:28:42,960
Speaker 1: and they call it flirty fishing. Per an article on

581
00:28:43,000 --> 00:28:45,760
Speaker 1: the ex Family website, I want to quote like what

582
00:28:45,800 --> 00:28:49,000
Speaker 1: this is. Flirty fishing was a subset of the family's

583
00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:51,840
Speaker 1: love bombing activities and involved the use of sexual attraction

584
00:28:52,000 --> 00:28:55,640
Speaker 1: and intercourse to win converts and favors. Female members were

585
00:28:55,640 --> 00:28:58,960
Speaker 1: told to be God's whores and hookers for Jesus, and

586
00:28:59,080 --> 00:29:01,560
Speaker 1: soon after its launch, a method of witnessing sex was

587
00:29:01,560 --> 00:29:04,400
Speaker 1: given to complete strangers in combination with the request of

588
00:29:04,440 --> 00:29:07,600
Speaker 1: a donation or for a required fee in line with

589
00:29:07,760 --> 00:29:08,480
Speaker 1: escort service.

590
00:29:08,480 --> 00:29:08,800
Speaker 4: Single.

591
00:29:10,200 --> 00:29:15,240
Speaker 1: So this is he has started prostituting the female members

592
00:29:15,240 --> 00:29:18,680
Speaker 1: of his cult to raise money. Right, there's both a

593
00:29:19,320 --> 00:29:22,120
Speaker 1: degree of this is how if we can find rich people, right,

594
00:29:22,160 --> 00:29:23,880
Speaker 1: we can get them to give us a lot of money.

595
00:29:24,000 --> 00:29:25,680
Speaker 1: If we can make them fall in love with one

596
00:29:25,680 --> 00:29:28,520
Speaker 1: of our members, we can also just he's basically an

597
00:29:28,520 --> 00:29:32,080
Speaker 1: innercontinental pimp, right, making money for the church that way.

598
00:29:32,520 --> 00:29:37,000
Speaker 1: And also obviously this leads to pregnancies, and the goal

599
00:29:37,080 --> 00:29:40,160
Speaker 1: is that the kids that come out of these liaisons

600
00:29:40,400 --> 00:29:42,560
Speaker 1: will be the second generation of the cult. He calls

601
00:29:42,600 --> 00:29:44,520
Speaker 1: them Jesus babies, right wow.

602
00:29:44,800 --> 00:29:51,800
Speaker 2: Wow, Yeah, the sex trafficking sounds a lot more fun

603
00:29:51,840 --> 00:29:53,320
Speaker 2: if you call it flirty fishing.

604
00:29:53,880 --> 00:29:57,680
Speaker 1: Yes, it does. And to give you an idea of

605
00:29:57,760 --> 00:30:01,000
Speaker 1: like how big a business this is by the fall

606
00:30:01,040 --> 00:30:04,320
Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety eight. Records show that the Colt kept

607
00:30:04,360 --> 00:30:07,400
Speaker 1: records that showed that members, like female members of the

608
00:30:07,440 --> 00:30:11,160
Speaker 1: cult had quote unquote loved two hundred and twenty three thousand,

609
00:30:11,200 --> 00:30:12,680
Speaker 1: three hundred and eleven fish.

610
00:30:13,160 --> 00:30:18,800
Speaker 2: What Yeah, well, how many people had done that much loving? Uh?

611
00:30:19,080 --> 00:30:21,920
Speaker 1: Several hundred? We have in one case, like we know

612
00:30:21,960 --> 00:30:24,600
Speaker 1: that Zerbi around this period, just when they're in tiner Reef,

613
00:30:24,600 --> 00:30:26,760
Speaker 1: which is kind of when they start building this tactic,

614
00:30:27,560 --> 00:30:30,400
Speaker 1: has sex one hundred and thirty seven times with eighteen

615
00:30:30,560 --> 00:30:33,240
Speaker 1: different like men on the island as she's sort of

616
00:30:33,280 --> 00:30:35,440
Speaker 1: like experimenting with how this is going to work.

617
00:30:36,000 --> 00:30:38,960
Speaker 2: Wow, yeah, wait where's tener Reef.

618
00:30:39,360 --> 00:30:41,000
Speaker 1: Tiner Reef is in the Canary Islands.

619
00:30:41,280 --> 00:30:44,120
Speaker 2: Okay, wow wow Yeah.

620
00:30:44,320 --> 00:30:46,320
Speaker 1: It's it's like the scale of it when you like

621
00:30:46,360 --> 00:30:48,360
Speaker 1: put that out is like it's nuts. Like this is

622
00:30:49,000 --> 00:30:51,040
Speaker 1: like it I think there's there's a chance here that

623
00:30:51,160 --> 00:30:55,640
Speaker 1: like this guy is the most prolific pimp in all

624
00:30:55,680 --> 00:30:57,840
Speaker 1: of history, Like there's not there couldn't be that many

625
00:30:57,880 --> 00:31:01,680
Speaker 1: people who could compete with that kind of right, He's

626
00:31:01,680 --> 00:31:03,400
Speaker 1: at least got to be in the running for it.

627
00:31:03,760 --> 00:31:07,520
Speaker 1: At this point. It's just like a startlingly large scale

628
00:31:07,520 --> 00:31:09,680
Speaker 1: that they're working on, and this is where a lot

629
00:31:09,680 --> 00:31:12,680
Speaker 1: of their money comes from, and it becomes such a

630
00:31:12,720 --> 00:31:16,360
Speaker 1: defining practice of the cult that even it's modern day

631
00:31:16,360 --> 00:31:18,440
Speaker 1: because that the children have got is still around and

632
00:31:18,480 --> 00:31:21,360
Speaker 1: he's dead. Now they have to address that this happened

633
00:31:21,440 --> 00:31:24,440
Speaker 1: on their website and they describe the tactic not as

634
00:31:24,440 --> 00:31:27,959
Speaker 1: an active attempt to seduce and manipulate people, but as

635
00:31:28,000 --> 00:31:31,360
Speaker 1: a response to quote the sexual liberality of the time period,

636
00:31:31,440 --> 00:31:34,240
Speaker 1: which quote presented the possibility of trying out a more

637
00:31:34,280 --> 00:31:38,560
Speaker 1: personal and intimate form of witnessing. And you know, you

638
00:31:38,560 --> 00:31:42,520
Speaker 1: could take that however you want. I think that what's

639
00:31:42,560 --> 00:31:45,280
Speaker 1: happening here is this is not about liberation. This is

640
00:31:45,320 --> 00:31:49,120
Speaker 1: about number one Berg exercising more control, and it's also

641
00:31:49,160 --> 00:31:52,120
Speaker 1: about him making money in order to fund his lifestyle.

642
00:31:52,280 --> 00:31:55,320
Speaker 1: Right like this is it's a natural evolution of everything

643
00:31:55,360 --> 00:31:57,600
Speaker 1: that they've been doing and of his need for control.

644
00:31:57,840 --> 00:32:01,120
Speaker 2: Do we have the mo letters that, oh, yes, that

645
00:32:01,240 --> 00:32:04,760
Speaker 2: sort of kicked this into gears, Yes, that would sort

646
00:32:04,760 --> 00:32:08,680
Speaker 2: of that would help clear up any of the spin

647
00:32:08,840 --> 00:32:10,920
Speaker 2: on the on the present day website.

648
00:32:11,120 --> 00:32:15,440
Speaker 1: Yes, so Berg himself in a mo letter scripturally justified

649
00:32:15,600 --> 00:32:19,200
Speaker 1: flirty fishing. He quoted one John four to eight, which

650
00:32:19,240 --> 00:32:21,960
Speaker 1: stated God is Love, and then I want to quote

651
00:32:21,960 --> 00:32:24,280
Speaker 1: from David Berg dot com to kind of describe how

652
00:32:24,320 --> 00:32:27,880
Speaker 1: he goes in to justify this. Logically, since God is

653
00:32:27,960 --> 00:32:30,920
Speaker 1: love and his son Jesus is the physical manifestation and

654
00:32:31,040 --> 00:32:34,240
Speaker 1: embodiment of God's love for humanity, then we, as Christian

655
00:32:34,280 --> 00:32:36,800
Speaker 1: recipients of that love, are in turn responsible to be

656
00:32:36,880 --> 00:32:40,160
Speaker 1: living samples to others of God's great, all encompassing love.

657
00:32:40,640 --> 00:32:44,160
Speaker 1: Taking the Apostle Paul's writings literally that save Christians are

658
00:32:44,240 --> 00:32:46,680
Speaker 1: dead to the law of Moses. Through faith in Jesus,

659
00:32:46,920 --> 00:32:49,680
Speaker 1: Berg arrived at the rather shocking conclusion that Christians were

660
00:32:49,680 --> 00:32:52,600
Speaker 1: therefore free, through God's grace to go to great lengths

661
00:32:52,640 --> 00:32:54,800
Speaker 1: to show the love of God to others, even as

662
00:32:54,880 --> 00:32:59,360
Speaker 1: far as meeting their sexual needs. And that's how they're

663
00:32:59,400 --> 00:33:03,120
Speaker 1: describing it. Again, they're charging money for this. But his

664
00:33:03,160 --> 00:33:06,000
Speaker 1: attitude is that, like, well, sex is a need like

665
00:33:06,120 --> 00:33:10,160
Speaker 1: food or water, and so it's actually unethical if you

666
00:33:10,280 --> 00:33:13,560
Speaker 1: refuse to give your body to someone for the church,

667
00:33:13,920 --> 00:33:16,360
Speaker 1: right because they need the sex and the church needs

668
00:33:16,360 --> 00:33:17,120
Speaker 1: the money.

669
00:33:17,000 --> 00:33:20,479
Speaker 2: I mean, the the exchange of money kind of just

670
00:33:20,560 --> 00:33:23,360
Speaker 2: like yeah, like negates all of this, Like this is

671
00:33:23,640 --> 00:33:27,320
Speaker 2: just like you would like even if even if you

672
00:33:27,360 --> 00:33:30,920
Speaker 2: were to say, like, actually, there are some theological basis

673
00:33:31,000 --> 00:33:33,720
Speaker 2: for this. Yeah, like once the money is exchanged, doesn't

674
00:33:33,720 --> 00:33:35,440
Speaker 2: that just undermine all of it?

675
00:33:35,880 --> 00:33:37,440
Speaker 1: You would think so, And I think you and I

676
00:33:37,480 --> 00:33:40,120
Speaker 1: can say logically it should. But I think here's what's

677
00:33:40,160 --> 00:33:44,400
Speaker 1: going on, right, It's normal in this subculture, this evangelical subculture,

678
00:33:44,760 --> 00:33:47,880
Speaker 1: for you to go preach the word and take donations

679
00:33:48,160 --> 00:33:51,360
Speaker 1: and live off of that. And they're arguing sex like

680
00:33:51,440 --> 00:33:54,360
Speaker 1: this is a form of preaching. Why shouldn't they take donations?

681
00:33:54,360 --> 00:33:57,160
Speaker 2: You know, he missed his true calling. He's a great

682
00:33:57,200 --> 00:34:01,000
Speaker 2: cult leader, like among the best, but I will say,

683
00:34:01,040 --> 00:34:03,480
Speaker 2: like he might make an even better lawyer.

684
00:34:04,440 --> 00:34:05,560
Speaker 1: Is awesome lawyer.

685
00:34:06,120 --> 00:34:10,800
Speaker 2: This is this is the interpretation and manipulation of text

686
00:34:10,880 --> 00:34:15,400
Speaker 2: and pros to serve a very specific outcome. And it

687
00:34:15,520 --> 00:34:21,480
Speaker 2: is a deeply cynical practice that lawyers are so like

688
00:34:21,640 --> 00:34:26,520
Speaker 2: the most brilliant lawyers have an uncanny knack for And

689
00:34:27,120 --> 00:34:31,440
Speaker 2: I would posit he might have been a better lawyer

690
00:34:31,440 --> 00:34:32,719
Speaker 2: than a goat leader. Yeah.

691
00:34:32,719 --> 00:34:35,440
Speaker 1: I also think maybe marketing, like I could almost imagine

692
00:34:35,440 --> 00:34:37,239
Speaker 1: this is like a don draper scene where he's like,

693
00:34:38,040 --> 00:34:41,120
Speaker 1: let he puts it out to you institution but preaching,

694
00:34:41,239 --> 00:34:45,360
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, so obviously yeah he is

695
00:34:45,480 --> 00:34:48,480
Speaker 1: he's this is you know, pimping, right, like, that's what

696
00:34:48,600 --> 00:34:52,280
Speaker 1: he's doing here. And there's a lot that's that's abusive

697
00:34:52,400 --> 00:34:54,600
Speaker 1: about this, but it's all justified kind of in the

698
00:34:54,600 --> 00:34:57,080
Speaker 1: way that we discussed. And what is shocking to me

699
00:34:57,200 --> 00:35:00,400
Speaker 1: is while they do have these scriptural justification for the

700
00:35:00,400 --> 00:35:03,760
Speaker 1: fact that they are now like doing prostitution to fund

701
00:35:03,760 --> 00:35:07,000
Speaker 1: the cult, they have these scriptural justifications, but they're also

702
00:35:07,080 --> 00:35:09,239
Speaker 1: straight up about what they're doing. The cult has a

703
00:35:09,280 --> 00:35:13,560
Speaker 1: newspaper and they publish comic books, including ones that explicitly

704
00:35:13,600 --> 00:35:16,440
Speaker 1: advise female members to become hookers for Jesus, and Sophie's

705
00:35:16,440 --> 00:35:18,320
Speaker 1: going to show you an image from one of these comics.

706
00:35:18,520 --> 00:35:22,320
Speaker 1: It's literally just like because it's it's illustrating flirty fishing.

707
00:35:22,360 --> 00:35:24,440
Speaker 1: There's like a woman who's a mermaid. She's got like

708
00:35:24,480 --> 00:35:27,120
Speaker 1: a hook through her and she's like holding a man

709
00:35:27,280 --> 00:35:29,560
Speaker 1: who's naked by the shoulders and it just says hooker

710
00:35:29,600 --> 00:35:30,600
Speaker 1: for Jesus above her.

711
00:35:31,840 --> 00:35:34,760
Speaker 2: Wow, like just hooker, hooker.

712
00:35:34,800 --> 00:35:37,040
Speaker 1: Hooker literally is just hooker.

713
00:35:37,200 --> 00:35:40,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's literally a hook through her body.

714
00:35:40,440 --> 00:35:44,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, I am that's not us editorializing. That's how they

715
00:35:44,120 --> 00:35:48,040
Speaker 1: describe it. Wow, it's wild.

716
00:35:47,880 --> 00:35:51,640
Speaker 2: And then and a very erotic presentation. I mean that

717
00:35:51,640 --> 00:35:54,120
Speaker 2: that's just explicitly pornographic.

718
00:35:54,480 --> 00:35:56,960
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, wow, and there's a lot of that.

719
00:35:57,480 --> 00:35:59,000
Speaker 2: By the way, I just want to say, I do

720
00:35:59,160 --> 00:36:03,080
Speaker 2: not I did not mean to impugne the the profession of.

721
00:36:02,920 --> 00:36:03,920
Speaker 1: The leader profession.

722
00:36:04,040 --> 00:36:07,000
Speaker 2: I think I know and love a lot of lawyers,

723
00:36:07,840 --> 00:36:11,440
Speaker 2: but it is, uh, there there is a special talent

724
00:36:11,560 --> 00:36:13,839
Speaker 2: in that regard that I was just calling out.

725
00:36:14,080 --> 00:36:16,000
Speaker 1: You can use that skill for good or for evil,

726
00:36:16,120 --> 00:36:16,880
Speaker 1: right exactly?

727
00:36:17,040 --> 00:36:17,400
Speaker 2: Thank you.

728
00:36:17,680 --> 00:36:20,319
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, it's like you can you could become a

729
00:36:20,360 --> 00:36:22,640
Speaker 1: cult leader, or you could become like a really good

730
00:36:22,640 --> 00:36:24,960
Speaker 1: actor or a musician, right, and it make stuff that

731
00:36:25,000 --> 00:36:27,760
Speaker 1: people love. Right, Like, the same skills kind of apply.

732
00:36:28,239 --> 00:36:29,719
Speaker 2: I don't think I could be a cult if you're

733
00:36:29,760 --> 00:36:35,799
Speaker 2: applying like, no, I think there's a there's a well,

734
00:36:35,960 --> 00:36:38,200
Speaker 2: I don't know, ye, I'll give it a try.

735
00:36:38,120 --> 00:36:41,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, give it a shot. Like there's types of like

736
00:36:41,680 --> 00:36:44,399
Speaker 1: you know, Mick Jagger, if he'd wanted to create a cult,

737
00:36:44,440 --> 00:36:46,480
Speaker 1: obviously he never did. I'm not saying he was a

738
00:36:46,480 --> 00:36:48,839
Speaker 1: bad person but he could have, right, Like he's got

739
00:36:48,840 --> 00:36:52,719
Speaker 1: that kind of like people loved watch like following him, right,

740
00:36:53,280 --> 00:36:55,880
Speaker 1: Like there's that piece of it, right, And most people

741
00:36:56,040 --> 00:36:58,200
Speaker 1: who aren't bad are just like, oh, you know it,

742
00:36:58,239 --> 00:37:00,600
Speaker 1: being a rock star is great, I'll just do that, right.

743
00:37:01,840 --> 00:37:04,160
Speaker 1: Some people are like, I need a little more. I

744
00:37:04,239 --> 00:37:07,920
Speaker 1: need to absolutely destroy thousands of people's lives, right, yeah,

745
00:37:07,960 --> 00:37:10,279
Speaker 1: but there's like, yeah, pieces of it. One of the

746
00:37:10,320 --> 00:37:12,480
Speaker 1: things I found when researching this for an idea of

747
00:37:12,520 --> 00:37:14,799
Speaker 1: like how direct this is. There's a comic book called

748
00:37:14,880 --> 00:37:19,480
Speaker 1: Heaven's Girl, which is like it's half illustrated tract and

749
00:37:19,520 --> 00:37:22,399
Speaker 1: it's half text. Have you ever heard of the Left

750
00:37:22,400 --> 00:37:23,719
Speaker 1: Behind books? Oh?

751
00:37:23,800 --> 00:37:25,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, yeah, I mean it became a TV series.

752
00:37:26,040 --> 00:37:28,160
Speaker 1: It became a TV series. There's a movie with Nicholas

753
00:37:28,200 --> 00:37:31,239
Speaker 1: Cage that they made that it didn't do well enough

754
00:37:31,239 --> 00:37:33,960
Speaker 1: to make sequels of, but like, yeah, these are pretty prominent.

755
00:37:34,560 --> 00:37:38,200
Speaker 1: It's this is telling the same story right where it's

756
00:37:38,200 --> 00:37:41,120
Speaker 1: the apocalypse, right, the Christians get raptured or a lot

757
00:37:41,120 --> 00:37:45,600
Speaker 1: of people get raptured. The un style anti christ leader

758
00:37:45,640 --> 00:37:49,480
Speaker 1: comes and takes over, and it's following this like female

759
00:37:49,719 --> 00:37:53,600
Speaker 1: lead character who is like basically a prophet and trying

760
00:37:53,600 --> 00:37:56,080
Speaker 1: to like preach the word of God in this increasingly

761
00:37:56,120 --> 00:37:58,920
Speaker 1: this world that's falling apart. There's some kind of racist

762
00:37:58,920 --> 00:38:01,560
Speaker 1: panels where like we see see militants in the street

763
00:38:01,560 --> 00:38:04,240
Speaker 1: who look like black panthers who are like but anyway,

764
00:38:04,400 --> 00:38:05,840
Speaker 1: there's a lot of that kind of stuff at it.

765
00:38:05,920 --> 00:38:09,000
Speaker 1: But there's this it's a very normal like left behind

766
00:38:09,080 --> 00:38:11,040
Speaker 1: kind of thing where it's like, Okay, so you've got

767
00:38:11,080 --> 00:38:13,880
Speaker 1: the Antichrist coming to power and he's cracking down and

768
00:38:13,880 --> 00:38:16,080
Speaker 1: punishing all of the Christians, and you've got this lady

769
00:38:16,120 --> 00:38:18,560
Speaker 1: who's preaching. And there's a segment in the middle of

770
00:38:18,600 --> 00:38:20,920
Speaker 1: it where she gets like arrested by a bunch of

771
00:38:20,960 --> 00:38:25,839
Speaker 1: the Antichrist's troops and they're ordered to execute her and

772
00:38:25,880 --> 00:38:31,120
Speaker 1: then decide let's rape her instead, and then she decides, no, no, no,

773
00:38:31,360 --> 00:38:33,680
Speaker 1: I'm totally down with this. I'll do this to try

774
00:38:33,719 --> 00:38:35,759
Speaker 1: to I'll have sex with all of these soldiers to

775
00:38:35,760 --> 00:38:39,120
Speaker 1: try to convince them to go to Christ. And so

776
00:38:39,200 --> 00:38:42,359
Speaker 1: there's like a descriptive pornographic scene of her having sex

777
00:38:42,400 --> 00:38:45,839
Speaker 1: with all these guys and preaching to them, and then

778
00:38:46,080 --> 00:38:49,960
Speaker 1: it like structurally means nothing, none of them come to Jesus.

779
00:38:50,040 --> 00:38:50,760
Speaker 2: She like escaped.

780
00:38:50,760 --> 00:38:53,080
Speaker 1: They throw her to a lion, and she escapes because

781
00:38:53,080 --> 00:38:55,879
Speaker 1: of God. So it's both like really pornographic, but also

782
00:38:55,960 --> 00:39:00,040
Speaker 1: just like unnecessary, like there's there's nothing that happens as.

783
00:39:00,400 --> 00:39:00,840
Speaker 2: You're doing this.

784
00:39:00,920 --> 00:39:03,839
Speaker 1: She doesn't win any souls or save herself. So it's

785
00:39:03,840 --> 00:39:07,719
Speaker 1: both this like weirdly gratuitous thing of like, actually, it's

786
00:39:07,760 --> 00:39:10,720
Speaker 1: awesome to be a woman in this position. That's very gross,

787
00:39:11,640 --> 00:39:15,360
Speaker 1: and it's also just like narratively unnecessary. But this is

788
00:39:15,360 --> 00:39:17,200
Speaker 1: the kind of way they're talking about it, right, where

789
00:39:17,200 --> 00:39:19,120
Speaker 1: like if you were in this position, the right thing

790
00:39:19,160 --> 00:39:21,520
Speaker 1: to do is give your body up to be a

791
00:39:21,560 --> 00:39:25,839
Speaker 1: witness for God, right, And that's they're very explicit about it, right.

792
00:39:25,880 --> 00:39:28,000
Speaker 1: There's not any kind of like hiding it within the

793
00:39:28,040 --> 00:39:30,560
Speaker 1: cult materials. They made a comic book of it, which

794
00:39:30,600 --> 00:39:32,799
Speaker 1: I am not showing you pages from because it is

795
00:39:32,880 --> 00:39:36,319
Speaker 1: just straight up pornography in a lot of segments here.

796
00:39:37,239 --> 00:39:40,200
Speaker 1: And by the way, porn is not forbidden within the

797
00:39:40,280 --> 00:39:43,160
Speaker 1: children of God. They are putting it on in a

798
00:39:43,200 --> 00:39:46,440
Speaker 1: lot of their communal households. They're showing it to kids,

799
00:39:46,640 --> 00:39:49,920
Speaker 1: especially in some of like the internal like closer to

800
00:39:49,960 --> 00:39:54,160
Speaker 1: Berg places, so like things are starting to escalate in

801
00:39:54,200 --> 00:39:59,200
Speaker 1: this regard right. In nineteen seventy three, Berg publishes a

802
00:39:59,239 --> 00:40:02,520
Speaker 1: tract called mon Ma burn your Bra And this is

803
00:40:02,520 --> 00:40:04,960
Speaker 1: in response they've been doing the bra burning thing for

804
00:40:04,960 --> 00:40:07,799
Speaker 1: a while to a casual follower, so not one of

805
00:40:07,800 --> 00:40:10,160
Speaker 1: his full time members, who had like written him a

806
00:40:10,239 --> 00:40:11,680
Speaker 1: letter being like, I like a lot of what you

807
00:40:11,719 --> 00:40:14,040
Speaker 1: have to say, but I'm kind of uncomfortable with some

808
00:40:14,080 --> 00:40:17,480
Speaker 1: of the revolutionary sex stuff. And his response to her

809
00:40:17,520 --> 00:40:21,040
Speaker 1: in this tract is wild. First off, in all caps,

810
00:40:21,080 --> 00:40:23,960
Speaker 1: he says, we have a sexy god and a sexy

811
00:40:24,000 --> 00:40:27,200
Speaker 1: religion and a very sexy leader with an extremely sexy

812
00:40:27,239 --> 00:40:32,399
Speaker 1: young following exclamation point, and then continues in lower case letters. Now,

813
00:40:32,600 --> 00:40:34,520
Speaker 1: so if you don't like sex, you'd better get out

814
00:40:34,560 --> 00:40:37,040
Speaker 1: while you can still save your bra. Salvation sets us

815
00:40:37,080 --> 00:40:39,520
Speaker 1: free from the curse of clothing and the shame of nakedness,

816
00:40:39,680 --> 00:40:41,880
Speaker 1: whereas free of as Adam and Eve in the garden

817
00:40:41,920 --> 00:40:45,360
Speaker 1: before they ever send. If you're not, you're not fully saved.

818
00:40:46,040 --> 00:40:49,440
Speaker 1: And yeah, this is like the rhetoric he's sending out

819
00:40:49,440 --> 00:40:52,000
Speaker 1: to people not in the cult that like, actually without

820
00:40:52,040 --> 00:40:55,480
Speaker 1: the sex stuff, God won't recognize you as one of

821
00:40:55,480 --> 00:40:59,359
Speaker 1: his own, like this is a requirement now. So things

822
00:40:59,400 --> 00:41:02,440
Speaker 1: have escalated pretty quickly from seventy to seventy four, he

823
00:41:02,480 --> 00:41:07,160
Speaker 1: could say now Berg's live in underground at this point.

824
00:41:07,200 --> 00:41:09,520
Speaker 1: As we've talked about, he's got this inner circle that's

825
00:41:09,560 --> 00:41:11,520
Speaker 1: mostly a harem of young women, which at this point

826
00:41:11,600 --> 00:41:15,560
Speaker 1: includes a teenager named Rachel who he had previously conducted

827
00:41:15,560 --> 00:41:17,920
Speaker 1: her wedding to a male member of the cult two

828
00:41:18,000 --> 00:41:20,319
Speaker 1: years earlier and then took her away from him to

829
00:41:20,400 --> 00:41:23,239
Speaker 1: marry himself. He does this a bunch of times, right,

830
00:41:24,040 --> 00:41:26,880
Speaker 1: And he's also just picking followers to have sex with

831
00:41:26,920 --> 00:41:29,480
Speaker 1: that he doesn't marry, and they're urged to write letters

832
00:41:29,600 --> 00:41:33,080
Speaker 1: to the Family News, the Cults magazine, praising Berg, who

833
00:41:33,080 --> 00:41:37,600
Speaker 1: they call dearest precious Dad, for his love making skills gratuitously.

834
00:41:38,120 --> 00:41:40,520
Speaker 1: Like again, I don't feel the need to quote it.

835
00:41:40,560 --> 00:41:42,840
Speaker 1: I can just tell you it's like very pornographic the

836
00:41:42,880 --> 00:41:45,840
Speaker 1: way these followers will write about him as dearest dad,

837
00:41:46,200 --> 00:41:47,520
Speaker 1: and this is just in their newsletter.

838
00:41:47,920 --> 00:41:48,360
Speaker 2: Wow.

839
00:41:48,920 --> 00:41:51,759
Speaker 1: And you know, as time has gone on, by the

840
00:41:51,800 --> 00:41:55,960
Speaker 1: mid seventies, Zerbi has gone from definitely a victim to

841
00:41:56,280 --> 00:41:59,719
Speaker 1: definitely a co leader she had started as one of

842
00:41:59,719 --> 00:42:03,640
Speaker 1: the most prolific fishers right. Berg had bragged that when

843
00:42:03,640 --> 00:42:06,560
Speaker 1: they were in Tenerief, she'd again had sex with eighteen

844
00:42:06,600 --> 00:42:09,120
Speaker 1: workers at their hotel and quote started a love making

845
00:42:09,160 --> 00:42:12,560
Speaker 1: revolution amongst the help. It was a totally new ministry

846
00:42:12,600 --> 00:42:15,680
Speaker 1: for us. But Zurbi by this point was also a

847
00:42:15,719 --> 00:42:18,799
Speaker 1: major driving force and culte doctrine, and she kind of

848
00:42:18,800 --> 00:42:21,480
Speaker 1: seems to have helped Berg decide that he needs an

849
00:42:21,520 --> 00:42:25,239
Speaker 1: air right, he's getting old and needs to he needs

850
00:42:25,280 --> 00:42:27,839
Speaker 1: to appoint an heir to lead the cult in its

851
00:42:27,880 --> 00:42:31,319
Speaker 1: battle against the Antichrist in case he isn't around for that, right,

852
00:42:32,000 --> 00:42:36,480
Speaker 1: And he's got kids, but none of them they're all disappointments.

853
00:42:36,600 --> 00:42:39,480
Speaker 1: His son has committed suicide by this point, probably as

854
00:42:39,520 --> 00:42:41,840
Speaker 1: a result of the abuse that he endured in the cult,

855
00:42:42,520 --> 00:42:44,520
Speaker 1: and none of his you know, he's not going to

856
00:42:44,560 --> 00:42:46,279
Speaker 1: give it to his daughters, right like, they're not going

857
00:42:46,360 --> 00:42:50,200
Speaker 1: to be leading the cult from him. So he needs

858
00:42:50,760 --> 00:42:54,240
Speaker 1: a kid to appoint as messiah. And for whatever reason,

859
00:42:54,280 --> 00:42:55,799
Speaker 1: I think just because of how his own kids had

860
00:42:55,800 --> 00:42:59,560
Speaker 1: worked out, he decides I shouldn't be the biological father

861
00:42:59,719 --> 00:43:03,680
Speaker 1: of this kid, but Zerbi will be the biological mother, right,

862
00:43:04,160 --> 00:43:06,680
Speaker 1: and I'll raise this kid as a work of art

863
00:43:06,840 --> 00:43:10,960
Speaker 1: to be the Messiah of mankind. So in nineteen seventy five,

864
00:43:11,200 --> 00:43:14,240
Speaker 1: zerbi mother and Maria gets pregnant from a hotel waiter

865
00:43:14,400 --> 00:43:18,600
Speaker 1: named Carlos. Her son is declared the messiah by Berg

866
00:43:19,080 --> 00:43:23,239
Speaker 1: and born on January twenty fifth, nineteen seventy five. His

867
00:43:23,320 --> 00:43:26,759
Speaker 1: name is Richard Peter Rodriguez or Ricky, but he's also

868
00:43:26,880 --> 00:43:32,040
Speaker 1: called David eto like little David, Right, and he's immediately

869
00:43:32,120 --> 00:43:34,440
Speaker 1: made into an object of worship for the cult. Right,

870
00:43:34,840 --> 00:43:38,319
Speaker 1: They've got this whole media apparatus at the time, and

871
00:43:38,360 --> 00:43:41,319
Speaker 1: they spin it up to turn him into a like

872
00:43:41,440 --> 00:43:44,959
Speaker 1: every aspect of his childhood into this like drama of

873
00:43:45,120 --> 00:43:48,560
Speaker 1: like a what a heroic baby our messiah is, And

874
00:43:48,600 --> 00:43:50,759
Speaker 1: he's going to save us from the Antichrist when he

875
00:43:50,760 --> 00:43:51,319
Speaker 1: grows up?

876
00:43:52,120 --> 00:43:55,880
Speaker 2: In what form will this saving take? Will he be

877
00:43:56,960 --> 00:44:02,239
Speaker 2: sacrificed to God? Will he be a warrior that vanquishes

878
00:44:02,600 --> 00:44:04,000
Speaker 2: the bad people?

879
00:44:04,320 --> 00:44:08,239
Speaker 1: Like I think, like a spiritual warrior, Like he's just

880
00:44:08,280 --> 00:44:10,680
Speaker 1: a leader. Yeah, he's got of like he's going to

881
00:44:10,880 --> 00:44:15,600
Speaker 1: turn the Antichrist's flock against him and basically pray him away, Right, like,

882
00:44:15,680 --> 00:44:18,120
Speaker 1: I think that's kind of the vibe of what's supposed

883
00:44:18,120 --> 00:44:23,200
Speaker 1: to happen here. Per that article in Rolling Stone, Ricky

884
00:44:23,320 --> 00:44:25,560
Speaker 1: was the prince, and this is them like talking to

885
00:44:25,600 --> 00:44:27,600
Speaker 1: a member of the cult. Ricky was the Prince. We

886
00:44:27,640 --> 00:44:30,640
Speaker 1: all grew up reading comic books about his life. Comics

887
00:44:30,719 --> 00:44:33,759
Speaker 1: hundred strong slavishly depicted every detail of Ricky's life as

888
00:44:33,800 --> 00:44:36,319
Speaker 1: a toddler. And we're eagerly devoured by the growing ranks

889
00:44:36,320 --> 00:44:38,520
Speaker 1: of the Children of God Faithful around the globe, by

890
00:44:38,560 --> 00:44:41,160
Speaker 1: now numbering more than three thousand members living in two

891
00:44:41,239 --> 00:44:45,080
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty eight communal homes. So they've got this

892
00:44:45,200 --> 00:44:48,759
Speaker 1: kind of media empire built around this kid, and they're

893
00:44:48,800 --> 00:44:51,480
Speaker 1: really building him up as he's going to be the future.

894
00:44:51,520 --> 00:44:54,640
Speaker 1: He's going to be leading once David dies. But they're

895
00:44:54,640 --> 00:44:59,439
Speaker 1: also not actually raising him, right Zurbi. His biological mom

896
00:44:59,680 --> 00:45:02,799
Speaker 1: is so so busy running the cult. She's traveling around constantly.

897
00:45:03,080 --> 00:45:05,439
Speaker 1: She has no desire to spend time around this kid

898
00:45:05,560 --> 00:45:07,960
Speaker 1: or raise him. And Berg, who talked about like, I'm

899
00:45:07,960 --> 00:45:09,400
Speaker 1: going to raise this kid. He's going to be my

900
00:45:09,440 --> 00:45:12,640
Speaker 1: work of art is mostly having sex, right, So he

901
00:45:12,680 --> 00:45:15,080
Speaker 1: doesn't want to spend any time actually teaching this kid

902
00:45:15,200 --> 00:45:17,959
Speaker 1: how to like read or whatever. Right, that's not something

903
00:45:18,040 --> 00:45:20,719
Speaker 1: David Berg's going to do. So he has the other

904
00:45:20,800 --> 00:45:24,080
Speaker 1: young women in his harem raised David eto right. And

905
00:45:24,160 --> 00:45:27,360
Speaker 1: so this kid, this Messiah, grows up in luxury and comfort,

906
00:45:27,640 --> 00:45:31,880
Speaker 1: but he's deeply confused and he's increasingly abused. And this

907
00:45:32,000 --> 00:45:34,560
Speaker 1: is not known to anyone outside of the Colt inner

908
00:45:34,640 --> 00:45:38,280
Speaker 1: circle at the time. But as I'd stated, like, Berg

909
00:45:38,400 --> 00:45:41,760
Speaker 1: had sexually abused his daughter Faithy and attempted to abuse

910
00:45:41,800 --> 00:45:45,800
Speaker 1: his daughter Deborah like earlier in his life, and there's

911
00:45:45,880 --> 00:45:48,040
Speaker 1: some evidence that like maybe he had done that at

912
00:45:48,080 --> 00:45:51,399
Speaker 1: other points, we don't really know. But now that he's

913
00:45:51,400 --> 00:45:55,959
Speaker 1: got Ricky, he becomes increasingly comfortable acting without any guardrails

914
00:45:56,000 --> 00:45:59,879
Speaker 1: and pushing his belief that children are sexual beings, right,

915
00:46:00,040 --> 00:46:02,799
Speaker 1: that is what he is preaching increasingly to the cult.

916
00:46:04,040 --> 00:46:06,680
Speaker 1: In the mo letter One Wife, which I mentioned earlier,

917
00:46:06,719 --> 00:46:08,719
Speaker 1: he had noted that it was immoral to love your

918
00:46:08,719 --> 00:46:11,160
Speaker 1: flesh and blood kids more than you loved God's children,

919
00:46:11,239 --> 00:46:14,839
Speaker 1: of God's family. And you could see how, like initially

920
00:46:15,160 --> 00:46:17,680
Speaker 1: you might not pick up on what he's saying. You

921
00:46:17,760 --> 00:46:20,000
Speaker 1: might just be him being like, oh well, yeah, I

922
00:46:20,000 --> 00:46:21,840
Speaker 1: shouldn't like it's immoral for me to think that my

923
00:46:21,960 --> 00:46:24,120
Speaker 1: kids are more important than any other kids, because God

924
00:46:24,160 --> 00:46:27,160
Speaker 1: doesn't feel that way. But also what he's saying is that,

925
00:46:27,280 --> 00:46:29,960
Speaker 1: like it's a moral to see a child is different

926
00:46:30,000 --> 00:46:34,000
Speaker 1: from an adult, right, which is going to lead in

927
00:46:34,120 --> 00:46:38,960
Speaker 1: some very bad directions. Right. But again you see this

928
00:46:39,000 --> 00:46:41,239
Speaker 1: way he kind of like drips out. I don't think

929
00:46:41,280 --> 00:46:42,280
Speaker 1: what he's going to drop.

930
00:46:42,480 --> 00:46:48,319
Speaker 2: What's the explain that taking that from what he said

931
00:46:48,640 --> 00:46:50,000
Speaker 2: or from what you just explained.

932
00:46:50,120 --> 00:46:52,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, so what he's saying is like it's immral basically

933
00:46:52,560 --> 00:46:56,879
Speaker 1: to treat your flesh and blood children differently from anyone else, right, just.

934
00:46:56,800 --> 00:46:59,759
Speaker 2: Because from anyone else, not from other children. Yeah.

935
00:47:00,040 --> 00:47:02,640
Speaker 1: When he says children of God, he's talking about everyone, right, We're.

936
00:47:04,200 --> 00:47:04,759
Speaker 2: Right, yeah.

937
00:47:05,440 --> 00:47:07,399
Speaker 1: But and so one way you can read that, it's like, oh, yeah,

938
00:47:07,440 --> 00:47:10,680
Speaker 1: well God doesn't think my family is more important than

939
00:47:10,680 --> 00:47:13,600
Speaker 1: any other family. But also what David's saying is like, no, no, no, literally,

940
00:47:14,080 --> 00:47:17,320
Speaker 1: kids are not different from adults, right, And this is

941
00:47:17,400 --> 00:47:20,320
Speaker 1: kind of how he's dripping that out to the broader

942
00:47:20,360 --> 00:47:22,880
Speaker 1: cult before he kind of comes all the way down

943
00:47:22,920 --> 00:47:23,319
Speaker 1: on it.

944
00:47:23,440 --> 00:47:23,680
Speaker 2: Right.

945
00:47:24,400 --> 00:47:27,200
Speaker 1: So through the seventies, his cult grows to three and

946
00:47:27,200 --> 00:47:30,040
Speaker 1: then four thousand full time members and beyond that, and

947
00:47:30,080 --> 00:47:32,480
Speaker 1: he continues to push the line that sex is a

948
00:47:32,560 --> 00:47:36,440
Speaker 1: need like food or water. In the nineteen eighties, with

949
00:47:36,480 --> 00:47:39,360
Speaker 1: this groundwork laid, he begins to push the idea that

950
00:47:39,480 --> 00:47:42,320
Speaker 1: children born into the cult, which he had begun calling

951
00:47:42,400 --> 00:47:46,600
Speaker 1: the family, are not exempt from this right, like everyone

952
00:47:46,680 --> 00:47:50,360
Speaker 1: has a responsibility to fulfill people's sexual needs, including kids.

953
00:47:51,200 --> 00:47:53,680
Speaker 1: One of the followers in his inner circle, Sarah Kelly,

954
00:47:53,840 --> 00:47:56,719
Speaker 1: is among the first members of the cult to understand

955
00:47:56,800 --> 00:47:59,640
Speaker 1: what this means. She was in his kind of harem thing,

956
00:48:00,239 --> 00:48:03,120
Speaker 1: very successful flirty Fisher, and she was helping to raise

957
00:48:03,200 --> 00:48:05,440
Speaker 1: David do But she also has a seven year old

958
00:48:05,520 --> 00:48:07,840
Speaker 1: daughter who she gives to David Berg to be a

959
00:48:07,840 --> 00:48:11,000
Speaker 1: member of his harem right. And this is kind of

960
00:48:11,080 --> 00:48:15,080
Speaker 1: kept secret. He's not telling the broader cult about this yet, right,

961
00:48:15,680 --> 00:48:18,920
Speaker 1: And the way he's going to finally reveal how everyone

962
00:48:18,920 --> 00:48:22,360
Speaker 1: should be acting is by putting out this book about

963
00:48:22,360 --> 00:48:26,359
Speaker 1: his son, the Messiah. He publishes a book, He goes

964
00:48:26,400 --> 00:48:28,280
Speaker 1: to this printing house in Spain, and he has thousands

965
00:48:28,280 --> 00:48:30,880
Speaker 1: of copies made for all of the different cult installations

966
00:48:30,920 --> 00:48:34,080
Speaker 1: around the world of the story of David Do, which

967
00:48:34,120 --> 00:48:37,080
Speaker 1: is a seven hundred and sixty two page biography of

968
00:48:37,120 --> 00:48:40,759
Speaker 1: his kid, the Messiah, who's not even a teenager yet, right,

969
00:48:41,360 --> 00:48:43,839
Speaker 1: and it's meant to act as a manual for how

970
00:48:43,880 --> 00:48:48,120
Speaker 1: to raise kids. And this book extensively documents how they

971
00:48:48,120 --> 00:48:52,319
Speaker 1: have been sexually abusing little Ricky David Do for the

972
00:48:52,400 --> 00:48:55,440
Speaker 1: early stages of his childhood. Like is it is like

973
00:48:55,480 --> 00:48:58,600
Speaker 1: there're straight up child pornography in here, right, there's photos

974
00:48:58,719 --> 00:49:01,320
Speaker 1: of Ricky aged seven teen months to three years of

975
00:49:01,400 --> 00:49:04,600
Speaker 1: age in bed with young women who are naked, and

976
00:49:04,640 --> 00:49:08,600
Speaker 1: he has showed being physically coerced into sexual contact with them, right,

977
00:49:08,960 --> 00:49:12,879
Speaker 1: Like this is straight up child pornography that they are.

978
00:49:12,920 --> 00:49:15,600
Speaker 1: It is now like required reading for everyone in the cult.

979
00:49:15,960 --> 00:49:18,560
Speaker 1: And the understanding is you're supposed to do to your

980
00:49:18,680 --> 00:49:20,800
Speaker 1: kids what's being done to the Messiah.

981
00:49:21,280 --> 00:49:21,480
Speaker 2: Right.

982
00:49:22,360 --> 00:49:26,839
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty five, when Ricky is ten, lists of

983
00:49:26,880 --> 00:49:30,239
Speaker 1: his sexual availability are published in group hooems on what

984
00:49:30,280 --> 00:49:35,400
Speaker 1: are called sharing schedules, So they are like literally ordering

985
00:49:35,480 --> 00:49:39,480
Speaker 1: basically people to molest the Messiah, right and as a

986
00:49:39,480 --> 00:49:42,520
Speaker 1: result each other because they're now free.

987
00:49:42,719 --> 00:49:45,799
Speaker 2: His availability, meaning people can sort of like make appointments

988
00:49:45,840 --> 00:49:48,400
Speaker 2: to have sex with David. Yep, they have David.

989
00:49:48,239 --> 00:49:51,680
Speaker 1: Et do yes as he's toured around, Right, you can

990
00:49:51,800 --> 00:49:54,840
Speaker 1: like book that and this is they're doing this with

991
00:49:55,480 --> 00:49:58,360
Speaker 1: Like these sharing schedules are for everyone, right, the free

992
00:49:58,360 --> 00:50:01,520
Speaker 1: love thing has turned into you are being scheduled and

993
00:50:01,680 --> 00:50:04,359
Speaker 1: ordered to have sex with this person at this time, right,

994
00:50:04,719 --> 00:50:07,120
Speaker 1: Like that's what they're doing. But they're not. They're including

995
00:50:07,680 --> 00:50:10,479
Speaker 1: you know, Ricky and then other kids in the cult

996
00:50:10,560 --> 00:50:13,920
Speaker 1: in this, right, So this is we've gotten to like

997
00:50:14,000 --> 00:50:16,319
Speaker 1: this is as bad as it can get pretty much, right,

998
00:50:17,920 --> 00:50:20,280
Speaker 1: Like that's it. I mean, this is just like nightmare

999
00:50:20,400 --> 00:50:24,680
Speaker 1: fuel stuff. Ricky is born into this, and he'll talk

1000
00:50:24,800 --> 00:50:27,360
Speaker 1: as a young adult once he leaves the cult that like,

1001
00:50:27,760 --> 00:50:30,359
Speaker 1: I didn't understand that this was bad at first, right,

1002
00:50:30,600 --> 00:50:32,839
Speaker 1: because how could he? You know, this is the only

1003
00:50:32,920 --> 00:50:35,480
Speaker 1: world he's born into. Sure, doesn't go to school, he

1004
00:50:35,520 --> 00:50:38,040
Speaker 1: has no contact with people outside of this, but he

1005
00:50:38,080 --> 00:50:40,399
Speaker 1: does recognize from a young age that some of these

1006
00:50:40,400 --> 00:50:43,640
Speaker 1: adults who are ordered to molest him seem uncomfortable. So

1007
00:50:43,680 --> 00:50:46,240
Speaker 1: he starts to realize, like this seems like there's something

1008
00:50:46,320 --> 00:50:47,200
Speaker 1: that's not right here.

1009
00:50:47,280 --> 00:50:50,759
Speaker 2: Yeah. Sure, he's picking up on the humanity of yes

1010
00:50:51,080 --> 00:50:56,080
Speaker 2: of these people, and probably better than they are themselves, right.

1011
00:50:56,200 --> 00:50:59,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, because they've been they've let themselves become so lost

1012
00:50:59,560 --> 00:51:04,600
Speaker 1: in this and yeah, it's it's it's really tragic. This

1013
00:51:04,719 --> 00:51:07,080
Speaker 1: is a bad time to throw to ads. But there's

1014
00:51:07,120 --> 00:51:08,520
Speaker 1: not going to be a good time in the rest

1015
00:51:08,520 --> 00:51:18,080
Speaker 1: of this episode and we're back, so you know, I

1016
00:51:18,080 --> 00:51:19,959
Speaker 1: think it's clear at this point. By nineteen eighty five,

1017
00:51:20,120 --> 00:51:23,719
Speaker 1: David Berg, there's no guard rails, there's no governor or

1018
00:51:23,760 --> 00:51:26,600
Speaker 1: break on this guy. He is doing whatever, and he

1019
00:51:26,640 --> 00:51:31,279
Speaker 1: has completely broken with any reality outside his own desires. Right,

1020
00:51:32,280 --> 00:51:36,279
Speaker 1: He's enshrined in nineteen eighty five child sex abuse as

1021
00:51:36,719 --> 00:51:38,840
Speaker 1: official doctrine among the children of God.

1022
00:51:38,920 --> 00:51:41,839
Speaker 2: And has this made its way to law enforcement? I mean, like,

1023
00:51:41,880 --> 00:51:46,160
Speaker 2: are the like this book and the surely people have

1024
00:51:46,280 --> 00:51:48,160
Speaker 2: defected from the cult at this.

1025
00:51:48,239 --> 00:51:51,200
Speaker 3: Point, there's so much physical evidence.

1026
00:51:50,800 --> 00:51:54,279
Speaker 1: It's beginning to it's starting to and they're going to

1027
00:51:54,280 --> 00:51:58,000
Speaker 1: have to officially. The first time they officially deny distributing

1028
00:51:58,040 --> 00:52:00,759
Speaker 1: child pornography will be or having sex with kids will

1029
00:52:00,760 --> 00:52:03,160
Speaker 1: be in nineteen eighty eight, right, so three years after this,

1030
00:52:03,719 --> 00:52:06,399
Speaker 1: so you imagine it is beginning to filter out. This

1031
00:52:06,440 --> 00:52:09,680
Speaker 1: is a distributed movement it's not clear where everything's happening.

1032
00:52:10,120 --> 00:52:12,640
Speaker 1: So there's like in law enforcement is very sluggish to

1033
00:52:12,719 --> 00:52:16,200
Speaker 1: get involved. But yes, stuff is starting to get out,

1034
00:52:16,320 --> 00:52:19,600
Speaker 1: but it's gonna as a spoiler, they're never really going

1035
00:52:19,640 --> 00:52:21,799
Speaker 1: to get the hammer dropped on them the way you'd

1036
00:52:21,840 --> 00:52:24,640
Speaker 1: expect given what's going on here. This is and some

1037
00:52:24,680 --> 00:52:25,920
Speaker 1: of this just has to do with the fact that

1038
00:52:25,960 --> 00:52:29,319
Speaker 1: like child molestation and child pornography were not punished as

1039
00:52:29,360 --> 00:52:33,279
Speaker 1: much in this period as you would expect, right, And

1040
00:52:33,320 --> 00:52:35,399
Speaker 1: that's just a reality, I mean, even outside of this.

1041
00:52:36,800 --> 00:52:39,640
Speaker 1: So to quote from a doctor Stephen Kent's study here

1042
00:52:39,719 --> 00:52:42,120
Speaker 1: about like how he kind of rolls this out to

1043
00:52:42,160 --> 00:52:44,960
Speaker 1: the whier cult. In nineteen eighty five, an example of

1044
00:52:44,960 --> 00:52:48,200
Speaker 1: sex between adults and youth occurred in a suggestive illustration

1045
00:52:48,320 --> 00:52:51,160
Speaker 1: and accompanying text showing Berg in bed with two women,

1046
00:52:51,360 --> 00:52:53,960
Speaker 1: one of whom was apparently in her mid teens. More

1047
00:52:54,000 --> 00:52:57,560
Speaker 1: explicit and controversial was the widely circulated publication entitled My

1048
00:52:57,680 --> 00:53:01,120
Speaker 1: Little Fish, which contained photographs of an adult woman orally

1049
00:53:01,160 --> 00:53:04,160
Speaker 1: copulating and manually manipulating a boy who was just over

1050
00:53:04,239 --> 00:53:09,640
Speaker 1: three years old. So again, there's no argument that people

1051
00:53:09,640 --> 00:53:12,959
Speaker 1: don't know what's going on. Right, like this is child pornography.

1052
00:53:14,440 --> 00:53:17,239
Speaker 1: And at the same time they're not again, they're not

1053
00:53:17,239 --> 00:53:20,359
Speaker 1: getting cracked down on yet they're traveling freely around cult

1054
00:53:20,400 --> 00:53:24,520
Speaker 1: properties across the world, from Europe to Asia to South Africa.

1055
00:53:25,120 --> 00:53:28,720
Speaker 1: The cult has gotten very wealthy, largely under Zerbe's guidance,

1056
00:53:29,000 --> 00:53:31,920
Speaker 1: and they've become a media empire, and even outside of

1057
00:53:32,120 --> 00:53:34,640
Speaker 1: members of the cult or even the religious sect. Right,

1058
00:53:34,960 --> 00:53:38,920
Speaker 1: they start producing children's television for a general audience in

1059
00:53:38,960 --> 00:53:43,239
Speaker 1: the mid eighties, the same year that Berg circulated that

1060
00:53:43,360 --> 00:53:47,200
Speaker 1: child pornography book about his Messiah kid, he starts producing

1061
00:53:47,239 --> 00:53:50,520
Speaker 1: a TV show called Life with Grandpa, which ran in

1062
00:53:50,560 --> 00:53:54,000
Speaker 1: different local TV networks. It's like a puppet based show,

1063
00:53:54,600 --> 00:53:57,480
Speaker 1: almost like a knockoff muppet type deal or whatever, like

1064
00:53:57,560 --> 00:54:01,520
Speaker 1: much lower production values. Obviously, it picks a sanitized version

1065
00:54:01,560 --> 00:54:05,720
Speaker 1: of David Berg or Grandpa teaching lessons to children each week.

1066
00:54:06,120 --> 00:54:09,200
Speaker 1: And it's innocuous at the time, right, it passes for

1067
00:54:09,239 --> 00:54:11,680
Speaker 1: innocuous at the time, but when you know what we know,

1068
00:54:12,120 --> 00:54:14,080
Speaker 1: it's much more upsetting. And so he's going to show

1069
00:54:14,080 --> 00:54:16,680
Speaker 1: you a little clip from this TV show produced by

1070
00:54:16,680 --> 00:54:19,279
Speaker 1: this cult with like David Berg doing a voice called

1071
00:54:19,320 --> 00:54:21,480
Speaker 1: Life with Grandpa.

1072
00:54:21,920 --> 00:54:23,320
Speaker 2: Live with Grandpa?

1073
00:54:23,719 --> 00:54:24,879
Speaker 4: What can be more fun?

1074
00:54:25,640 --> 00:54:28,440
Speaker 3: Living where there's love for everyone?

1075
00:54:29,239 --> 00:54:33,760
Speaker 1: Learning lessons each and every day, learning from.

1076
00:54:33,600 --> 00:54:35,799
Speaker 3: The Word of God in life to guide our way.

1077
00:54:36,480 --> 00:54:37,960
Speaker 1: Live with Grandpa?

1078
00:54:38,280 --> 00:54:41,560
Speaker 2: What can be more fun? That is why we are happy.

1079
00:54:41,680 --> 00:54:43,440
Speaker 1: That is why that we sing.

1080
00:54:44,000 --> 00:54:46,960
Speaker 3: It's because of Jesus sees everything.

1081
00:54:47,760 --> 00:54:52,279
Speaker 1: We have a purpose in each new day, learning how

1082
00:54:52,360 --> 00:54:57,640
Speaker 1: to share and give God's love away? Live with Grandpa?

1083
00:54:57,960 --> 00:55:00,480
Speaker 1: What to be more fun?

1084
00:55:00,680 --> 00:55:02,600
Speaker 2: Where their love for everyone?

1085
00:55:03,480 --> 00:55:06,320
Speaker 1: Learning lessons each and every.

1086
00:55:06,120 --> 00:55:09,799
Speaker 3: Day, learn the Word of God, like to guide our

1087
00:55:09,800 --> 00:55:11,520
Speaker 3: way with all?

1088
00:55:11,600 --> 00:55:15,719
Speaker 1: Right, I think we're probably that's enough, yes, yeah, yeah,

1089
00:55:16,719 --> 00:55:19,759
Speaker 1: it's up like the stuff about like sharing love all

1090
00:55:19,800 --> 00:55:22,040
Speaker 1: the physical contacts like you might you wouldn't have caught

1091
00:55:22,120 --> 00:55:24,080
Speaker 1: it on TV in eighty five, but when you know

1092
00:55:24,120 --> 00:55:27,399
Speaker 1: what's going on, it's like oh no yeah yeah.

1093
00:55:27,520 --> 00:55:32,560
Speaker 2: Also very interesting choice to cut away to a puppet

1094
00:55:32,800 --> 00:55:33,520
Speaker 2: camera man.

1095
00:55:33,800 --> 00:55:37,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, fascinating close to break the fourth.

1096
00:55:37,000 --> 00:55:40,440
Speaker 2: Wall, yeah, but stay within the puppet universe.

1097
00:55:40,560 --> 00:55:41,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so wild.

1098
00:55:42,520 --> 00:55:45,759
Speaker 2: That was That was because it was almost like by

1099
00:55:45,840 --> 00:55:51,000
Speaker 2: the way, like filming you is is fine too, yeah,

1100
00:55:51,040 --> 00:55:51,839
Speaker 2: like like.

1101
00:55:51,880 --> 00:55:53,760
Speaker 1: Don't like, don't think that's weird.

1102
00:55:53,840 --> 00:55:57,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, like don't think people pointing cameras at you while

1103
00:55:57,680 --> 00:56:00,680
Speaker 2: you're being intimate with Grandpa is on. Is weird.

1104
00:56:01,080 --> 00:56:03,440
Speaker 1: That's a really good point. I didn't even thought of that,

1105
00:56:03,520 --> 00:56:04,799
Speaker 1: but you're absolutely like.

1106
00:56:04,800 --> 00:56:07,840
Speaker 2: It's just sort of like normalizing the presence of a

1107
00:56:07,920 --> 00:56:11,920
Speaker 2: camera operator. Yeah, because it's within the it's within the

1108
00:56:11,960 --> 00:56:14,920
Speaker 2: puppet show. Yes, yeah, it is so weird.

1109
00:56:15,160 --> 00:56:17,319
Speaker 1: And you're right they are as I'll talk about later.

1110
00:56:17,360 --> 00:56:20,879
Speaker 1: They do film like sexus between adults and kids, right, yeah,

1111
00:56:20,960 --> 00:56:23,520
Speaker 1: like that's gotta be part of what's going on there. God,

1112
00:56:23,600 --> 00:56:26,200
Speaker 1: and I had other clips of this and other shows.

1113
00:56:26,239 --> 00:56:28,040
Speaker 1: I don't think we really need to see them all.

1114
00:56:28,840 --> 00:56:31,960
Speaker 1: They're all upsetting in context, but like kind of innocuous

1115
00:56:32,000 --> 00:56:35,080
Speaker 1: if you don't know what's going on. And there's multiple

1116
00:56:35,120 --> 00:56:37,640
Speaker 1: TV shows that they make during this period of time.

1117
00:56:37,680 --> 00:56:42,040
Speaker 2: I will say that the jingle, the song for a

1118
00:56:42,160 --> 00:56:45,600
Speaker 2: kid's show jingle and speaking as a kid who was

1119
00:56:46,320 --> 00:56:49,560
Speaker 2: you know a kid at that time, like that's like

1120
00:56:49,600 --> 00:56:52,600
Speaker 2: a perfect Jingle's a perfect that's like a perfect kids

1121
00:56:52,640 --> 00:56:54,080
Speaker 2: show song, theme song?

1122
00:56:54,600 --> 00:56:55,720
Speaker 1: Yeah. The production.

1123
00:56:58,400 --> 00:56:59,080
Speaker 3: World yeah.

1124
00:57:02,280 --> 00:57:04,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's like all of their shows are like that,

1125
00:57:04,560 --> 00:57:06,319
Speaker 1: where it's like, yeah, this could have just been a

1126
00:57:06,360 --> 00:57:08,680
Speaker 1: normal TV studio making this right.

1127
00:57:08,600 --> 00:57:11,440
Speaker 2: All the more sinister because it's so good and cheerful.

1128
00:57:11,760 --> 00:57:14,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they produce multiple shows. There's one called The

1129
00:57:15,000 --> 00:57:18,919
Speaker 1: Lovetts l uvve e t t S made in the Philippines.

1130
00:57:19,560 --> 00:57:23,680
Speaker 1: That's another puppet like show, an ultimately Treasure Attic, which

1131
00:57:23,680 --> 00:57:25,600
Speaker 1: I think either starts or at least runs until the

1132
00:57:25,640 --> 00:57:27,880
Speaker 1: early nineties. And it's kind of like a cross between

1133
00:57:27,920 --> 00:57:31,000
Speaker 1: Blues Clues and Lamb Chop. There's like there's like human

1134
00:57:31,040 --> 00:57:34,960
Speaker 1: beings and puppets together and it's like, yeah, it's fairly

1135
00:57:35,000 --> 00:57:39,160
Speaker 1: good production values for the time. So they're you know,

1136
00:57:39,600 --> 00:57:44,160
Speaker 1: making actual TV here while they're also running this massive

1137
00:57:44,360 --> 00:57:49,320
Speaker 1: pimping and child molestation ring. Meanwhile, Berg has made it

1138
00:57:49,360 --> 00:57:52,160
Speaker 1: explicitly clear to his followers that not only is incest

1139
00:57:52,280 --> 00:57:56,560
Speaker 1: okay with God, it's actually required right. Peter Wilkinson's Rolling

1140
00:57:56,600 --> 00:57:59,080
Speaker 1: Stone article quotes Berg writing in a mo letter that

1141
00:57:59,160 --> 00:58:00,920
Speaker 1: I don't know what the hell age has to do

1142
00:58:01,000 --> 00:58:02,960
Speaker 1: with it when God made him able to enjoy it

1143
00:58:03,000 --> 00:58:06,960
Speaker 1: practically from the time they're born. And yeah, he starts

1144
00:58:07,040 --> 00:58:11,120
Speaker 1: encouraging members to have sex with their children, right, both

1145
00:58:11,160 --> 00:58:18,240
Speaker 1: like group sex and they're to bless their own kids. Yes, yeah,

1146
00:58:18,440 --> 00:58:20,120
Speaker 1: it's all I think a lot of this is like

1147
00:58:20,440 --> 00:58:24,880
Speaker 1: we've got to break every natural boundary right in order

1148
00:58:24,920 --> 00:58:28,160
Speaker 1: to keep this unnatural thing, this cult going, And in

1149
00:58:28,200 --> 00:58:29,840
Speaker 1: part because now everyone's complicit.

1150
00:58:29,960 --> 00:58:33,480
Speaker 2: Right, that's yeah, a great, great point. It's a little bit.

1151
00:58:33,640 --> 00:58:36,960
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, it's like it's kind of mob like in

1152
00:58:37,000 --> 00:58:40,560
Speaker 2: that way, right, like once you're once you're complicit, you

1153
00:58:40,680 --> 00:58:44,200
Speaker 2: have to be loyal, yeah, or else you're you're going down.

1154
00:58:44,520 --> 00:58:46,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, the real world will never take you now, you

1155
00:58:46,640 --> 00:58:50,400
Speaker 1: know what you did to your kids. Right, So, when

1156
00:58:50,480 --> 00:58:53,760
Speaker 1: Ricky the Messiah is twelve, Berga points an adult woman

1157
00:58:53,840 --> 00:58:57,400
Speaker 1: named Bonnie to be his girlfriend. Uh, most of what

1158
00:58:57,600 --> 00:59:01,000
Speaker 1: he called raising Ricky seems to just been making Ricky

1159
00:59:01,080 --> 00:59:05,240
Speaker 1: watch and participate in group sex acts with Berg.

1160
00:59:05,520 --> 00:59:05,680
Speaker 2: Right.

1161
00:59:06,160 --> 00:59:09,120
Speaker 1: There are videos of girls aged nine on up stripping

1162
00:59:09,120 --> 00:59:13,840
Speaker 1: and dancing for Berg and Ricky. One of these girls, Armindria,

1163
00:59:13,920 --> 00:59:16,560
Speaker 1: was molested by Berg at age thirteen, and she and

1164
00:59:16,640 --> 00:59:20,720
Speaker 1: Ricky become friends right, in part because they're enduring a

1165
00:59:20,800 --> 00:59:24,520
Speaker 1: lot of this together. In nineteen eighty seven, with Berg's insistence,

1166
00:59:24,600 --> 00:59:27,720
Speaker 1: Ricky is made to participate with his like his mother

1167
00:59:28,200 --> 00:59:34,240
Speaker 1: molests him right at Berg's orders and Zerby yeah, Zerby, Yes,

1168
00:59:35,480 --> 00:59:37,880
Speaker 1: this is apparently there's debates whether or not this is

1169
00:59:37,920 --> 00:59:41,800
Speaker 1: the first time Zerbi like molests a child, But you know,

1170
00:59:42,360 --> 00:59:43,680
Speaker 1: I don't know that it matters all that much for

1171
00:59:43,720 --> 00:59:48,240
Speaker 1: our purposes, Like she does this right and again. Ricky

1172
00:59:48,320 --> 00:59:51,840
Speaker 1: is kind of gradually realizing how bad all this is,

1173
00:59:52,000 --> 00:59:54,400
Speaker 1: but because of the bubble he lives in, it's not

1174
00:59:54,480 --> 00:59:58,160
Speaker 1: immediately clear. And that Rolling Stone article, Wilkinson writes, as

1175
00:59:58,160 --> 01:00:00,280
Speaker 1: he moved through his teen years, Ricky began to feel

1176
01:00:00,320 --> 01:00:03,240
Speaker 1: weighed down, not just by the unwelcome scrutiny brought upon

1177
01:00:03,320 --> 01:00:05,840
Speaker 1: him by the distribution of the David Do book, but

1178
01:00:05,880 --> 01:00:09,160
Speaker 1: also by his doubts over Berg's increasingly erratic behavior. He

1179
01:00:09,280 --> 01:00:12,959
Speaker 1: was particularly upset with how Berg treated his granddaughter Mary Berg,

1180
01:00:13,160 --> 01:00:17,400
Speaker 1: known in the family as Mine and Berg had started

1181
01:00:17,440 --> 01:00:21,240
Speaker 1: molesting Manee, his granddaughter when she was like an early

1182
01:00:21,320 --> 01:00:24,360
Speaker 1: adolescent at a cult facility in the Philippines where they're

1183
01:00:24,400 --> 01:00:26,960
Speaker 1: producing one of their first children's TV shows.

1184
01:00:27,400 --> 01:00:30,760
Speaker 2: Is this Would this be Faithe's child or do we know?

1185
01:00:31,120 --> 01:00:35,680
Speaker 1: I think it actually might be Deborah's kid. Okay, you're right,

1186
01:00:35,680 --> 01:00:37,240
Speaker 1: I should have checked on I don't actually know one

1187
01:00:37,280 --> 01:00:40,720
Speaker 1: hundred percent. He makes her live in a walk in

1188
01:00:40,760 --> 01:00:43,920
Speaker 1: closet next to his bedroom, and when Ricky turns twelve,

1189
01:00:44,000 --> 01:00:47,640
Speaker 1: Berg tries to make them have a kid together so

1190
01:00:47,680 --> 01:00:51,880
Speaker 1: that he can continue the family line with the Messiah

1191
01:00:51,920 --> 01:00:55,920
Speaker 1: and like merge their bloodlines. Zerbi doesn't like this, right.

1192
01:00:56,160 --> 01:00:59,680
Speaker 1: She feels very like like this is like she's trying

1193
01:00:59,680 --> 01:01:02,440
Speaker 1: to pret like her own importance in the cult and

1194
01:01:02,560 --> 01:01:05,560
Speaker 1: is like very jealous of this kid, his granddaughter who's

1195
01:01:05,600 --> 01:01:06,280
Speaker 1: being abused.

1196
01:01:06,480 --> 01:01:09,360
Speaker 3: Oh so it's about her. It's not like, yes, like

1197
01:01:09,480 --> 01:01:10,840
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, that's your line.

1198
01:01:10,920 --> 01:01:11,840
Speaker 2: No, it's she.

1199
01:01:11,800 --> 01:01:14,720
Speaker 1: Feels threatened by the fact that this girl might become

1200
01:01:14,920 --> 01:01:20,439
Speaker 1: her son's wife. Right Don Irwin, Many's brother later told

1201
01:01:20,520 --> 01:01:23,800
Speaker 1: Wilkinson she was worried that Many would become Mohe's next wife,

1202
01:01:24,400 --> 01:01:27,760
Speaker 1: and so in a family practice called teen training, Many

1203
01:01:27,880 --> 01:01:31,760
Speaker 1: suffered vicious physical abuse at Zerbe's direction, and macal Many

1204
01:01:31,880 --> 01:01:33,640
Speaker 1: was locked in a room for six months. She was

1205
01:01:33,680 --> 01:01:35,960
Speaker 1: tied to a bed and beaten, thrown against walls, and

1206
01:01:36,000 --> 01:01:41,120
Speaker 1: even forced to undergo multiple exorcisms. Sarah Davidito often supervised

1207
01:01:41,120 --> 01:01:45,760
Speaker 1: the abuse, sometimes assaulting Mane herself. Wait, Sarah david Mito

1208
01:01:45,840 --> 01:01:48,880
Speaker 1: is like one of Moe's like the women he's got

1209
01:01:48,880 --> 01:01:51,520
Speaker 1: in his harem who's raising David Eto, Right, so she

1210
01:01:51,640 --> 01:01:53,320
Speaker 1: takes on his name as her last name.

1211
01:01:53,440 --> 01:01:57,480
Speaker 2: But this is all Zerby's under Serbi's direction.

1212
01:01:57,400 --> 01:02:02,320
Speaker 1: Yes, and with the consent of Berg obviously, but yes,

1213
01:02:02,400 --> 01:02:05,360
Speaker 1: she is directing all of this psychological and physical abuse

1214
01:02:05,400 --> 01:02:09,080
Speaker 1: of this girl because she's threatened by her. And it's

1215
01:02:09,120 --> 01:02:12,120
Speaker 1: like it's it's pretty profoundly hideous. There's a great deal

1216
01:02:12,160 --> 01:02:14,320
Speaker 1: and this is this seems to be like what makes

1217
01:02:14,440 --> 01:02:17,600
Speaker 1: Ricky really start to realize how bad things are is

1218
01:02:17,640 --> 01:02:20,360
Speaker 1: like he genuinely this kid he sees as like this

1219
01:02:20,840 --> 01:02:23,960
Speaker 1: other kid is his family, right, That's how he sees it.

1220
01:02:24,520 --> 01:02:27,320
Speaker 1: And he sees that they're abusing her, and he has

1221
01:02:27,480 --> 01:02:30,320
Speaker 1: nightmares of seeing her screaming in the basement of different

1222
01:02:30,360 --> 01:02:33,760
Speaker 1: facilities after being tortured. And that's kind of what's going

1223
01:02:33,840 --> 01:02:36,760
Speaker 1: to pull him out of it. Is what happens to MiNet.

1224
01:02:37,480 --> 01:02:40,680
Speaker 1: She is eventually institutionalized as a result of the abuse

1225
01:02:40,720 --> 01:02:44,720
Speaker 1: she endures, right, Like, she does not do well psychologically,

1226
01:02:45,040 --> 01:02:46,240
Speaker 1: How the fuck could you?

1227
01:02:46,640 --> 01:02:46,800
Speaker 4: Right?

1228
01:02:48,680 --> 01:02:52,800
Speaker 1: And through the by the late eighties, you know, this

1229
01:02:52,840 --> 01:02:55,480
Speaker 1: is kind of the period where both Ricky is starting

1230
01:02:55,480 --> 01:02:58,800
Speaker 1: to realize how bad things are, and the period at

1231
01:02:58,800 --> 01:03:01,960
Speaker 1: which the extent of the Families crimes and David Berg's

1232
01:03:01,960 --> 01:03:04,360
Speaker 1: crimes has started to hit the news and get interest

1233
01:03:04,400 --> 01:03:06,600
Speaker 1: from law enforcement. Right, this is when there start to

1234
01:03:06,640 --> 01:03:09,400
Speaker 1: be prosecutions or attempts at prosecutions.

1235
01:03:09,600 --> 01:03:11,360
Speaker 3: This is not till the late eighties.

1236
01:03:11,800 --> 01:03:15,720
Speaker 1: Not till the late eighties. Jesus Chris nineteen eighty eight

1237
01:03:15,800 --> 01:03:18,320
Speaker 1: is when Berg first publicly denies that any kids had

1238
01:03:18,320 --> 01:03:20,760
Speaker 1: been molested by the church, and he orders a purge

1239
01:03:20,800 --> 01:03:24,800
Speaker 1: of materials in libraries at cult compounds worldwide. Right, not

1240
01:03:24,920 --> 01:03:27,200
Speaker 1: all of them, but like a lot of the worst

1241
01:03:27,240 --> 01:03:29,960
Speaker 1: stuff and kind of the other thing that's happening this

1242
01:03:30,040 --> 01:03:32,360
Speaker 1: period is this is when the AIDS crisis starts, right,

1243
01:03:32,400 --> 01:03:35,200
Speaker 1: which is why the cult ends the flirty fishing practice

1244
01:03:35,240 --> 01:03:37,040
Speaker 1: because people start getting sick.

1245
01:03:37,240 --> 01:03:37,439
Speaker 2: Right.

1246
01:03:38,240 --> 01:03:42,200
Speaker 1: This is also when they start to ban officially ban

1247
01:03:42,320 --> 01:03:45,840
Speaker 1: sex with miners. It's still occurring in parts of the cult,

1248
01:03:46,240 --> 01:03:48,680
Speaker 1: but they make an official like notice that people should

1249
01:03:48,720 --> 01:03:52,280
Speaker 1: stop doing this. And in nineteen ninety one, increasingly worried

1250
01:03:52,280 --> 01:03:55,440
Speaker 1: about the law coming after him, Berg orders all copies

1251
01:03:55,440 --> 01:03:58,360
Speaker 1: of the books of David Eto destroyed. This is not

1252
01:03:58,560 --> 01:04:00,880
Speaker 1: enough to stop the criminal investigate which are going on

1253
01:04:00,920 --> 01:04:04,520
Speaker 1: in multiple countries, including the Philippines, Italy, Australia and Spain.

1254
01:04:05,320 --> 01:04:08,600
Speaker 1: So kids get removed from these family homes, hundreds of them,

1255
01:04:09,080 --> 01:04:12,160
Speaker 1: but none of the charges stick because they've done a

1256
01:04:12,280 --> 01:04:15,000
Speaker 1: fairly good job of destroying the evidence at this point.

1257
01:04:15,040 --> 01:04:18,120
Speaker 1: They're using like a lot of encrypted online communication in

1258
01:04:18,160 --> 01:04:21,520
Speaker 1: the early nineties, which law enforcement is not super up on,

1259
01:04:22,240 --> 01:04:25,200
Speaker 1: and none of the charges against Berg stick, none of

1260
01:04:25,200 --> 01:04:27,160
Speaker 1: the charges against any of the adults who are a

1261
01:04:27,160 --> 01:04:30,360
Speaker 1: part of this stick. Right, some kids do get out,

1262
01:04:30,440 --> 01:04:33,360
Speaker 1: but nothing all that big happens as a result of

1263
01:04:33,400 --> 01:04:38,640
Speaker 1: the investigations. So by the early nineties, kind of the

1264
01:04:38,640 --> 01:04:42,200
Speaker 1: biggest of these investigations is one in England which ends

1265
01:04:42,240 --> 01:04:45,320
Speaker 1: with a lot of information about the torture of kids,

1266
01:04:45,480 --> 01:04:48,760
Speaker 1: including many comes out in this case, and the judge

1267
01:04:48,760 --> 01:04:52,320
Speaker 1: who's judicating this, the Lord Justice, declares that like the

1268
01:04:52,680 --> 01:04:55,280
Speaker 1: culte tortured children and it led to a quote barbaric

1269
01:04:55,360 --> 01:04:58,440
Speaker 1: and cruel situation, which is like you're starting to think, Okay,

1270
01:04:58,640 --> 01:05:02,800
Speaker 1: maybe good ruling coming here, but then this justice is like,

1271
01:05:03,080 --> 01:05:06,560
Speaker 1: but all the evidence shows the cult has been reformed sufficiently,

1272
01:05:06,600 --> 01:05:08,320
Speaker 1: so we don't need to do any further legal action

1273
01:05:08,880 --> 01:05:13,160
Speaker 1: they learned from their mistakes. Dude, it's fine, Like it's wild,

1274
01:05:13,280 --> 01:05:15,960
Speaker 1: it's wild, like she shocks, yeah.

1275
01:05:15,800 --> 01:05:19,720
Speaker 3: Christ, these our kids.

1276
01:05:20,120 --> 01:05:22,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like they're reading out the stuff I just

1277
01:05:22,480 --> 01:05:25,040
Speaker 1: read you about, like the abuse this girl endures, and

1278
01:05:25,040 --> 01:05:26,960
Speaker 1: this judge is like, it's bad. But they seem to

1279
01:05:27,000 --> 01:05:33,280
Speaker 1: have changed, So I think we're good. By nineteen ninety three, Yeah, Uh,

1280
01:05:34,120 --> 01:05:37,320
Speaker 1: there's not. Unfortunately, like nobody really gets what's coming to

1281
01:05:37,360 --> 01:05:40,960
Speaker 1: them here, with maybe one exception, although that's pretty bleak too,

1282
01:05:41,080 --> 01:05:43,320
Speaker 1: is we're gonna get to so. By nineteen ninety three,

1283
01:05:43,360 --> 01:05:46,160
Speaker 1: the Family International aka the Children of God has more

1284
01:05:46,160 --> 01:05:50,040
Speaker 1: than twelve thousand members in seventy countries. Berg, however, is

1285
01:05:50,080 --> 01:05:52,360
Speaker 1: too ill by this point both to engage in the

1286
01:05:52,440 --> 01:05:54,920
Speaker 1: kind of sexual abuse that he earlier reveled in or

1287
01:05:54,960 --> 01:05:58,640
Speaker 1: even to write any additional mo letters. Zurbi takes over.

1288
01:05:58,800 --> 01:06:03,320
Speaker 1: She's authoring for him as him and is leading the

1289
01:06:03,360 --> 01:06:06,280
Speaker 1: cult right, She's running everything by ninety three because he's

1290
01:06:06,280 --> 01:06:09,880
Speaker 1: so sick. In nineteen ninety four, Moses David Berg dies

1291
01:06:09,920 --> 01:06:13,280
Speaker 1: aged seventy five. The cause of death is unknown. He

1292
01:06:13,400 --> 01:06:18,080
Speaker 1: is buried in Portugal. Zerbi aka Mamma Maria replaces him

1293
01:06:18,120 --> 01:06:20,680
Speaker 1: and promotes her new lover, a guy named Peter Amsterdam,

1294
01:06:20,720 --> 01:06:24,120
Speaker 1: to co leader, calling him King Peter. In nineteen ninety five,

1295
01:06:24,200 --> 01:06:27,240
Speaker 1: she issues a new directive to the cult. Jesus has

1296
01:06:27,280 --> 01:06:30,280
Speaker 1: informed her that he wants to literally have sex with

1297
01:06:30,600 --> 01:06:34,520
Speaker 1: his followers, and they're ordered to visualize this when masturbating.

1298
01:06:34,880 --> 01:06:38,360
Speaker 1: Male followers are told to imagine themselves as women, which

1299
01:06:38,400 --> 01:06:42,600
Speaker 1: is an interesting twist to it. So you know this

1300
01:06:42,720 --> 01:06:45,600
Speaker 1: is both like still messed up, but also you can

1301
01:06:45,640 --> 01:06:50,560
Speaker 1: see the level of weirdly homophobic, and Zerbey is also

1302
01:06:50,640 --> 01:06:53,280
Speaker 1: not She doesn't have the like the cult's not going

1303
01:06:53,320 --> 01:06:55,800
Speaker 1: to go for the same kind of abuse they used

1304
01:06:55,800 --> 01:06:59,360
Speaker 1: to openly because they're scared, right, there's an understanding that

1305
01:06:59,480 --> 01:07:01,960
Speaker 1: like they've now got too much attention on them, and

1306
01:07:02,000 --> 01:07:04,120
Speaker 1: she's just kind of trying to ride things out. I

1307
01:07:04,160 --> 01:07:09,760
Speaker 1: think now Ricky the Messiah has grown increasingly furious at

1308
01:07:09,800 --> 01:07:12,440
Speaker 1: the church. By this point, there has been a rash

1309
01:07:12,440 --> 01:07:15,440
Speaker 1: of suicides through the nineties of about at least probably

1310
01:07:15,480 --> 01:07:18,920
Speaker 1: around thirty people, many of whom Ricky had grown up

1311
01:07:19,200 --> 01:07:22,680
Speaker 1: with and seen abused alongside him, and he eventually finds

1312
01:07:22,720 --> 01:07:26,560
Speaker 1: the courage to leave the cult. For understandable reasons. He's

1313
01:07:26,600 --> 01:07:28,520
Speaker 1: never able to get over what was done to him

1314
01:07:28,600 --> 01:07:30,760
Speaker 1: and what was still being done. He believed to a

1315
01:07:30,800 --> 01:07:33,440
Speaker 1: lot of vulnerable people in the Children of God, and

1316
01:07:33,480 --> 01:07:36,440
Speaker 1: he gets out in the early two thousands, like he

1317
01:07:36,440 --> 01:07:39,040
Speaker 1: lives up in the Northwest for a while. He's got

1318
01:07:39,040 --> 01:07:42,080
Speaker 1: a partner, he's trying to move on, he's trying to

1319
01:07:42,160 --> 01:07:45,240
Speaker 1: live a life, but he also gets he can't let

1320
01:07:45,320 --> 01:07:48,160
Speaker 1: go of this like just I mean nightmarish abuse, and

1321
01:07:48,200 --> 01:07:52,320
Speaker 1: he becomes obsessed with getting vengeance against the cult leadership. Specifically,

1322
01:07:52,400 --> 01:07:55,920
Speaker 1: he wants to kill his mother, Karen zerby Right, but

1323
01:07:56,080 --> 01:07:59,080
Speaker 1: she's underground and he can't find out where she is,

1324
01:07:59,160 --> 01:08:03,080
Speaker 1: and he tries a few tactics. He eventually lures her secretary,

1325
01:08:03,200 --> 01:08:05,440
Speaker 1: Angela Smith, who had been part of the abuse against

1326
01:08:05,480 --> 01:08:07,400
Speaker 1: him when he was a kid, to his home in

1327
01:08:07,440 --> 01:08:09,880
Speaker 1: New Mexico, and he tries to get the info about

1328
01:08:09,880 --> 01:08:12,520
Speaker 1: where Karen Zerbe is out of her and when she

1329
01:08:12,560 --> 01:08:14,640
Speaker 1: doesn't give it to him, he stabs her to death,

1330
01:08:15,040 --> 01:08:17,479
Speaker 1: and he records a video talking about his plans to

1331
01:08:17,479 --> 01:08:21,400
Speaker 1: get vengeance. He drives to California, presumably headed to another

1332
01:08:21,439 --> 01:08:25,840
Speaker 1: cult compound, but ultimately he commits suicide within hours of

1333
01:08:25,840 --> 01:08:31,280
Speaker 1: committing California in his car. And that's unfortunately, our very

1334
01:08:31,280 --> 01:08:35,439
Speaker 1: bleak ending for today, right, is like, yeah, it's about

1335
01:08:35,479 --> 01:08:37,599
Speaker 1: as bad as it could be. I mean, and your

1336
01:08:37,600 --> 01:08:39,040
Speaker 1: heart just goes out to Ricky.

1337
01:08:39,439 --> 01:08:40,559
Speaker 3: What happened to Zerby?

1338
01:08:41,400 --> 01:08:44,160
Speaker 1: Oh she lives a long life?

1339
01:08:44,560 --> 01:08:46,680
Speaker 2: Is she still with us?

1340
01:08:48,439 --> 01:08:50,360
Speaker 1: I don't believe so. I think she passed on. I

1341
01:08:50,360 --> 01:08:52,360
Speaker 1: don't remember exactly. Oh no, yeah, yeah, yeah, she is

1342
01:08:52,360 --> 01:08:55,400
Speaker 1: still officially alive. That's a little hard to say, right

1343
01:08:55,479 --> 01:08:59,520
Speaker 1: because we don't know where she is. She's been underground

1344
01:08:59,560 --> 01:09:01,760
Speaker 1: for a long time time, but at least her death

1345
01:09:01,760 --> 01:09:05,960
Speaker 1: has not been like officially listed. Now again, we don't know,

1346
01:09:06,040 --> 01:09:08,439
Speaker 1: like these people have been like living underground and hiding.

1347
01:09:08,960 --> 01:09:13,200
Speaker 1: Cult membership has declined to about fourteen hundred individuals worldwide,

1348
01:09:13,320 --> 01:09:17,880
Speaker 1: it's estimated, So they're kind of running on fumes and

1349
01:09:17,920 --> 01:09:21,920
Speaker 1: what money they had in savings and investments. But there's

1350
01:09:21,960 --> 01:09:26,200
Speaker 1: not really any evidence that punishment is going to happen. Like,

1351
01:09:27,280 --> 01:09:28,840
Speaker 1: I guess first you'd have to know, like where this

1352
01:09:28,880 --> 01:09:33,360
Speaker 1: person is located, right, Like it'd be nice.

1353
01:09:33,640 --> 01:09:36,080
Speaker 2: Like why well, why wouldn't ZURBI be like on the

1354
01:09:36,160 --> 01:09:37,920
Speaker 2: FBI most wanted list.

1355
01:09:38,240 --> 01:09:41,599
Speaker 1: I mean in part because there's not like a lot

1356
01:09:41,600 --> 01:09:44,639
Speaker 1: of direct criminal charges. There's a lot of allegations from

1357
01:09:44,640 --> 01:09:47,519
Speaker 1: all these people. There's extensive reporting from people who have

1358
01:09:47,840 --> 01:09:50,800
Speaker 1: like done it. But like Karen Zerbe's not in the US,

1359
01:09:51,360 --> 01:09:53,800
Speaker 1: you know, like where is she? Like you can find

1360
01:09:53,840 --> 01:09:55,880
Speaker 1: people trying to figure out, like where she is.

1361
01:09:56,040 --> 01:09:59,320
Speaker 2: Crimes were perpetrated over over too, yeah.

1362
01:09:59,120 --> 01:10:02,280
Speaker 1: Right, Like yeah, like the FBI Tenerife, Like what are

1363
01:10:02,280 --> 01:10:04,759
Speaker 1: they going to do about like sexual abuse there or whatever,

1364
01:10:04,760 --> 01:10:06,920
Speaker 1: which not to like let any law enforcement off the

1365
01:10:06,920 --> 01:10:08,920
Speaker 1: hook for not prosecuting this, but like you don't know

1366
01:10:08,960 --> 01:10:11,599
Speaker 1: where this person is, and a lot of these crimes

1367
01:10:11,640 --> 01:10:12,920
Speaker 1: are committed all over the place.

1368
01:10:13,160 --> 01:10:15,679
Speaker 3: Just got an up to date website as of twenty twenty.

1369
01:10:15,720 --> 01:10:18,240
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, no, they maintain their websites.

1370
01:10:18,520 --> 01:10:21,400
Speaker 2: Yeah wait wait wait wait what Yeah.

1371
01:10:20,720 --> 01:10:23,840
Speaker 1: The Family International, the Children of God, they maintain all

1372
01:10:23,880 --> 01:10:26,439
Speaker 1: of their websites. Yeah, Like you can find a lot

1373
01:10:26,439 --> 01:10:29,040
Speaker 1: of my sources when I'm saying I'm quoting from his biography,

1374
01:10:29,439 --> 01:10:32,720
Speaker 1: that's from the Children of God and the Family International's websites.

1375
01:10:33,840 --> 01:10:38,000
Speaker 1: They're just claiming to be like a normal humanitarian church organization. Now,

1376
01:10:38,640 --> 01:10:41,760
Speaker 1: but like you've got what people like Ricky say, You've

1377
01:10:41,760 --> 01:10:43,880
Speaker 1: got like what all of these victims say, You've got

1378
01:10:43,880 --> 01:10:46,960
Speaker 1: what Berg's own kids say, and you've got like the

1379
01:10:47,240 --> 01:10:49,800
Speaker 1: Book of David Edo. There's copies of it, right, it's

1380
01:10:49,800 --> 01:10:53,000
Speaker 1: been verified, like the child pornography was in there. You

1381
01:10:53,040 --> 01:10:55,519
Speaker 1: can find clips of it that don't include that, but

1382
01:10:55,600 --> 01:10:58,600
Speaker 1: do talk about molesting Ricky when he's a kid, like

1383
01:10:58,960 --> 01:11:02,320
Speaker 1: they're online and stuff. So it's one of those things

1384
01:11:02,360 --> 01:11:06,280
Speaker 1: where there's so much information out but also this person

1385
01:11:07,040 --> 01:11:11,640
Speaker 1: like it does it is like infuriating that she's just

1386
01:11:11,680 --> 01:11:14,360
Speaker 1: alive and free, but also I don't like.

1387
01:11:14,320 --> 01:11:16,040
Speaker 3: How do an up to date website?

1388
01:11:16,120 --> 01:11:18,639
Speaker 1: How do you yeah, with headshots on it? But like, yeah,

1389
01:11:18,800 --> 01:11:21,479
Speaker 1: it'd be great if somebody did something like I don't

1390
01:11:21,520 --> 01:11:29,040
Speaker 1: know how to make them, but yeah, okay, yeah, welcome

1391
01:11:29,080 --> 01:11:30,400
Speaker 1: to you a family.

1392
01:11:30,760 --> 01:11:32,880
Speaker 2: You know what we're not good at as a as

1393
01:11:32,920 --> 01:11:38,479
Speaker 2: a species, accountability. Accountability. That's also one of the sad

1394
01:11:38,560 --> 01:11:42,840
Speaker 2: lessons of SNAPOO. Like this is obviously uh you know,

1395
01:11:43,479 --> 01:11:49,720
Speaker 2: like this massive child sex trafficking operation is is so

1396
01:11:50,280 --> 01:11:55,360
Speaker 2: intensely horrifying and tragic and heartbreaking, but you just you

1397
01:11:55,400 --> 01:11:58,920
Speaker 2: see it all across especially like yeah, when it's when

1398
01:11:58,920 --> 01:12:02,760
Speaker 2: it's in in an institutional context, like occult is a

1399
01:12:02,760 --> 01:12:06,400
Speaker 2: form of an institution, right, but even in like you know,

1400
01:12:06,520 --> 01:12:10,559
Speaker 2: in the in season three of Snaffoo, we talk about

1401
01:12:10,880 --> 01:12:15,640
Speaker 2: how the government poisoned thousands of people during Prohibition, right,

1402
01:12:15,920 --> 01:12:20,120
Speaker 2: and uh, that was all exposed at the time. No

1403
01:12:20,200 --> 01:12:23,759
Speaker 2: one accountable, right, no one?

1404
01:12:24,320 --> 01:12:26,479
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we and we could talk about stuff like,

1405
01:12:26,520 --> 01:12:28,600
Speaker 1: you know, the murder of Fred Hampton and shit, like

1406
01:12:28,640 --> 01:12:30,559
Speaker 1: there's all of these things where it's like, yeah, we

1407
01:12:30,680 --> 01:12:33,280
Speaker 1: know what went down and we know it was bad,

1408
01:12:33,320 --> 01:12:36,320
Speaker 1: and no one's ever been brought to justice because it's

1409
01:12:36,360 --> 01:12:38,759
Speaker 1: too hard or they have too much money, or it's

1410
01:12:39,240 --> 01:12:41,720
Speaker 1: it's too much time has passed before we realize what

1411
01:12:41,760 --> 01:12:44,760
Speaker 1: was happening was wrong, and like, yeah, it's it gets

1412
01:12:44,760 --> 01:12:47,160
Speaker 1: real tiring just hearing that over and over again with

1413
01:12:47,240 --> 01:12:50,080
Speaker 1: all of these these monsters, with people like Zurbi, you know,

1414
01:12:50,120 --> 01:12:53,679
Speaker 1: seeing a guy like Berg die elderly, kind of rich,

1415
01:12:53,840 --> 01:13:01,200
Speaker 1: surrounded by his power natural causes presumably natural causes. Yeah, yep, wow, anyway, ed,

1416
01:13:01,840 --> 01:13:03,559
Speaker 1: sorry for this bummer of a story.

1417
01:13:03,880 --> 01:13:07,960
Speaker 2: You know what, the more we know, the more you know. Yeah,

1418
01:13:08,000 --> 01:13:10,200
Speaker 2: but the better we off we are. This is a

1419
01:13:10,720 --> 01:13:13,799
Speaker 2: This was a this was a deep dive into a

1420
01:13:13,840 --> 01:13:15,920
Speaker 2: hell hole. Yeah, I'm just gonna be honest with you.

1421
01:13:16,080 --> 01:13:19,519
Speaker 2: The night was a nightmare. It just yeah, it started

1422
01:13:19,560 --> 01:13:22,320
Speaker 2: out kind of like you know, you can these cult stories.

1423
01:13:22,320 --> 01:13:23,840
Speaker 2: You can kind of sit from a distance and be

1424
01:13:23,920 --> 01:13:27,439
Speaker 2: like idiots, yeah, and just kind of be snarky. But

1425
01:13:27,479 --> 01:13:30,799
Speaker 2: then it starts when it just starts to get like, yeah,

1426
01:13:30,840 --> 01:13:33,559
Speaker 2: the reality kicks in. It just it's so upsetting.

1427
01:13:33,800 --> 01:13:35,559
Speaker 1: It's yeah, super bleak.

1428
01:13:37,760 --> 01:13:42,639
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a fascinating subject. Cults are so mystifying, right,

1429
01:13:42,720 --> 01:13:48,160
Speaker 2: They're just such a wild like what's the evolutionary cause

1430
01:13:48,400 --> 01:13:54,559
Speaker 2: of cults? It's such a compelling and disturbing facet to humanity.

1431
01:13:54,600 --> 01:13:58,240
Speaker 2: They've always existed and they always will and what the hell?

1432
01:13:58,680 --> 01:14:01,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I yeah, I think some of

1433
01:14:01,640 --> 01:14:04,519
Speaker 1: it's just like some of these dynamics we have that

1434
01:14:04,600 --> 01:14:08,240
Speaker 1: make us effective as communities also make us very vulnerable

1435
01:14:08,280 --> 01:14:11,840
Speaker 1: to people who know how to manipulate those aspects of psychology. Right.

1436
01:14:12,000 --> 01:14:16,800
Speaker 2: Also, the this is such a sad reminder of the

1437
01:14:16,960 --> 01:14:22,719
Speaker 2: legacy of abuse, like what what abuse? How much abuse

1438
01:14:23,560 --> 01:14:27,600
Speaker 2: carries through generations, and and that the pain and toxicity

1439
01:14:27,640 --> 01:14:33,440
Speaker 2: of the damage, the damage goes on and on and

1440
01:14:34,040 --> 01:14:35,320
Speaker 2: it's very heartbreaking.

1441
01:14:35,960 --> 01:14:40,280
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, it's this Yeah, the man handing on misery demand,

1442
01:14:40,320 --> 01:14:43,160
Speaker 1: it's this, like and that doesn't like the fact that

1443
01:14:43,160 --> 01:14:45,519
Speaker 1: Berg was abuse doesn't excuse what he does. But you do.

1444
01:14:45,960 --> 01:14:48,720
Speaker 1: You can't not notice the pattern? Repeat? Sure you know

1445
01:14:48,840 --> 01:14:49,360
Speaker 1: for sure?

1446
01:14:51,360 --> 01:14:52,840
Speaker 2: All right, thanks so much.

1447
01:14:52,840 --> 01:14:56,400
Speaker 1: Thank you. Everyone listened to SNAPO Season three out now

1448
01:14:56,560 --> 01:15:00,880
Speaker 1: season four you're working on. We're all excited for it. Yeah,

1449
01:15:00,920 --> 01:15:02,479
Speaker 1: anything else you want to plug here at the end.

1450
01:15:02,600 --> 01:15:05,519
Speaker 2: I don't know, just like, let's all be good people.

1451
01:15:05,800 --> 01:15:09,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, try to be better. Yeah, at least don't be

1452
01:15:09,280 --> 01:15:09,840
Speaker 1: like this guy.

1453
01:15:10,160 --> 01:15:12,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, don't be like this guy. Don't fall in, don't

1454
01:15:12,760 --> 01:15:15,160
Speaker 2: get taken in by this guy in all the different

1455
01:15:15,160 --> 01:15:19,479
Speaker 2: forms he takes around the world. And thanks for having me.

1456
01:15:19,520 --> 01:15:20,400
Speaker 2: It's all your pleasure.

1457
01:15:20,960 --> 01:15:27,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, everybody. That's the episode. Bye.

1458
01:15:28,479 --> 01:15:31,440
Speaker 4: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

1459
01:15:31,560 --> 01:15:34,160
Speaker 4: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool

1460
01:15:34,240 --> 01:15:38,200
Speaker 4: Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1461
01:15:38,280 --> 01:15:40,720
Speaker 4: Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1462
01:15:41,040 --> 01:15:43,400
Speaker 3: Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube.

1463
01:15:43,640 --> 01:15:45,280
Speaker 1: New episodes every.

1464
01:15:45,000 --> 01:15:48,839
Speaker 3: Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com.

1465
01:15:48,840 --> 01:15:50,960
Speaker 3: Slash at behind the Bastards