Beantown Podcast - Live From The Orb (12012023 Beantown Podcast)

Episode Date: December 1, 2023

Quinn comes to you LIVE from atop Mt. Baldhead to discuss the history of the Orb, Jim Jones, and the original stairway to heaven (heaven = orb)

Hey what's going on it's Quinn Edford and it's welcome to my show Quinn David Fernis presents the bean town podcast for Friday December 1st 2023. What's going on what's happening how are you my name is Quinn I am the host of this show and we got a special treat for you today. We are live at the base of the orb and I'm gonna be Taken you up on the journey with me here in Sagittuck, Michigan And we're gonna learn a little bit about the orb a little bit about South America a little bit about If you have Jones this show's gonna have all. A couple of show notes here quickly, this is very DIY on the fly.

I am literally recording off of my iPhone using the microphone built into my AirPods. So when someone walks past me, hopefully I won't look like a loony take and I'm just, looks like I'm, talking to someone on the phone here. But it's also, you know, I've recorded shows on my phone before, handful of times. Obviously, the audio quality is not as great as if we had our fine friend of the show, Samson Q2U series with us. But we're going to try to make it work regardless, irregardless, one of our winning or stames in years past. As we wrap up season 6 here, I'm also, you know, I'm very anxious, is way too strong of a word, but just, you know, you got like the phone in your pocket, you hit lock, and you just hope that the audio recording keeps going and doesn't cut out because then it would be a really crappy show.

So that's the plan. Listen to discretion and advice when you listen to the Bean Tom podcast. We're on the little kitchen, some language number two. This podcast is objectively terrible, although it's outside, it's nature. When I was singing about doing a podcast outside, I had a flashback. I think it was, it was right at the end of year one of the Bean Tom podcast. I was living in Maryland and I had gone away New Year's Eve like the day before and the day after. I got an Airbnb out in your

Harrisonburg, Virginia. And I was just doing some hiking out around like the Shenandoah region. And I did a podcast once out there from the outdoors, like a small hike near a creek. That was the trip where I went away and I was staying in like a basement Airbnb and then the power went out because I plugged in the space heater and I tried to make the frozen pizza on the Handcake griddle. It was a whole adventure and

That's where I edited the first and last the first and only ever like Your yearly recap compilation if you'll recall it's like a four-hour video, our year one recap show, which is just spliced together clips. I haven't listened to that in years. I would be interested in going back and checking that out, not just like sitting down for four hours and listening to it, but knowing the amount of work that went into that, sitting in a called dark basement, and just by myself with like half of the outlets, we're working half of them, we're eating a frozen pizza from all the, on a cooked on a pancake griddle,

it just does not work well if you're curious, but a lot of work and darkness and coldness went into that. But I'm kinda reminded of it because that day was very cold. The thing that that day had going for it when I recorded that show out there at Virginia, West Virginia, I can't remember. No rain. It is raining right now. It's not like a steady downpour. It's a trickle, though, completely gray overcast skies. And it's been like this all day. We couldn't even walk to our coffee shop uncommon coffee this morning which we usually do you know five, six minute walks something like that. We had to drive, take the car. It felt like such a such a yuppie kill in the environment like

that. But we still got our coffee and we're going to circle back to the coffee second year. Once we get up there, once we get going up the stairs right the base of the of the orb if you've never been here the orb is a top mountain bald head here it's sogatuck it's between so basically of sogatuck then you have the Kalamazoo river which runs along downtown right before it empties into Lake Michigan, but then there's like a small strip of land a very narrow strip That's probably only if I had to guess. Oh there. I'm looking at a deer right now. Two deer. I saw them I almost hit one with my car when I was driving in another back over here. That's pretty cool How many podcasts are alive looking at deer? They're watching me as I podcast. They think I'm crazy.

You know, we do interview with a dog on this show. What about interview with a deer? Looks like, I don't know, I'm assuming a mom and a baby or maybe it's just two moms, Lincoln Park, like a Lincoln Park hot walk. Do male deer lose their antlers in the off season? Because then I guess maybe it could be a male deer in a, you know, just a couple or maybe it lesbians. I don't really know what we're dealing with here. But, uh, yeah, looking at,

this is interesting. We've got these stairs going all the way to the mountain. This one is just a straight-up staircase. Look, they're looking like they're trying to cross. I don't know if they're going to be able to though. We'll keep an eye on that and Circle back, but yeah, basically there's this thin strip of land that's got to only be I don't know probably 300 400 meters across. It's very small less than a quarter of a mile I would guess and a top between and a quarter of a mile I would guess. And a top between Sagittat and Lake Michigan is, oh, they passed under the stairs,

that's pretty cool. It's called Mount Baldhead, B-A-L-D-H-E-A-D, like me, and six to eight years here. It's really just a gigantic dune, but it's kind of the tallest thing that Southwestern Michigan's got going for it. And a top-mounted bald head is what is affectionately known as the orb in my reality in my world. It's an actually, I call it an orb, because it's a big white ball.

It looks like, you know, full moon or something like that when you're looking from afar. But it's actually a radar tower with very interesting history. So we're gonna, we're gonna be walking up the stairs here talking about the orb, talking about some other things that I was learning about and I'll share with you that are not even related to the orb at all, but I thought we're very interesting. I mentioned Jim Jones at the top of the show. Yeah, that's coming back, not in real life but for the show. So I was actually doing some some solid reading. The deer have passed on. I don't know where they're going, but doing some reading the other night on Wikipedia

about the orb, but I actually have a sign here from the Friends of the Mount Baldhead Radar station here at the bottom of the mountain that I will quickly read to you. So a brief history lesson for you, this is just the ultra condensed version. If you are curious you can go look at it, read the full thing at Wikipedia. It's a pretty interesting article. It's been a lot of preservation and stuff. And it didn't, you know, they built this thing. It didn't, wasn't like in use for a very long period of time. So here you go directly from the sign. This is like three paragraphs here, and then we'll make our way up the stairs. In 1949, the US Air Force team built with IBM and MIT to create the semi-automatic ground environment or sage system, a sophisticated computerized air defense network to watch over

our northern border. This system collected data from hundreds of radar stations across the country, feeding it into one of the first true computer networks to keep an eye out for Soviet invaders. Construction on the unmanned station began in 1956 once completed featured a Bendix AM-flash FPS-14 radar supported by a diesel powered generator to motor generator rotary regulators a site monitor and a coordinate data transmitter. The original radar began sending data to the 781 aircraft control and warning squadron at Fort Custer AFS in your battle Creek, Michigan in 1958. In 1963, the radar was added to the tower

when that's the orb. By the way, it was added to the tower when the ANF-14 was upgraded to the ANF-18 radar, which is still present in the building. When the Mount Ballpad radar station was permanently deactivated in 1968, so it was going for they constructed it in 1956 and it was done by 1968. The Air Force terminated its lease, selling the building tower and radar equipment to the city of Sog to offer $250.1969. Efforts are currently under way to add the mountain bulb had radar stations to the National Register of Historic Places.

And I believe the sign, it's in the US, so that's the end of the sign. The US has varying levels of national historic monuments, places, parks, whatever, and this belongs on some level, or this is currently part of some level of that. This sign said that's trying to get to the historic places, nationalized sure. I think from what I read on Wikipedia that it has achieved that. So that's my understanding. There's a little bit of a history of the orb. There's a lot more to it, but basically, yeah, it was a radar and like early cold war days. Looking for Soviet invaders from the north, essentially, is what we're dealing with here. And the radar is still intact. The orb is still intact, but it's deactivated, but like the building that houses the generator, that's still up there. So speaking of up there, let's make our way up.

I don't remember how many steps there are. It's probably a couple hundred, something like that. We timed it out last time. We walked up here. It took us five minutes Rachel and I, which by the way, Rachel unfortunately is working right now. Mac at the Airbnb, so I'm flying solo for this podcast. So this is going to be a little bit of a workout and a podcast all at the same time.

But basically, you just have this very long staircase with some landings every 15 steps or so. And some of the landings have benches, some of them don't. Mel Garryls on either side and like a wire frame protecting it. And it just goes up the side of this gigantic sand dune, aka Mount Baldhead. And the first thing you got to love about Mount Baldhead and the orb broadly speaking, by the way, side note, broadly speaking would be a great, like, if there was a real housewife or someone that wanted to spin off podcasts, because everyone these days has a podcast even Raquel from Vanderpump's rules.

She just sent a she's starting a podcast called Raquel going rogue. And yes, it is much tougher to run a podcast for the friend of the show. Actually, beanheads when you are climbing flights of stairs. Don't really want to stop. I want to keep going. We're just going to take it slow. Lost our train of thought. Broadly speaking, I don't remember what I was trying to say there. I will also mention thank you to our friends in Southwestern Michigan. Thank you to our friends in the great Islamic State of Pakistan for supporting this program and making us the 112th ranked comedy podcast in the great nation of Pakistan. I remember what I was saying.

So you driving in either you know 194 and you take it up to the north side of town and get off there or into the south side of town and either way you're driving north approaching the city. I got to stop to actually stretch my hamstring. And it's still a bit like hamstrings a little bit, like if I started a full off sprint right now, it would pull. I'm not sprinting obviously, but it's like not a comfortable sensation. You're driving in, you see it. And this is what you got to love about the orb. The orb itself doesn't have like a light inside of it, which is too bad, because that would be really cool if it was like, you know, this bright shining thing for all of mankind

to see, but they put a star, a gigantic Christmas star on the side of it. That's so when you're driving in at night like we were last night, you just see it for miles around guiding you home. And that's actually one of the things they they talk about online is the orb in some past life was helpful excuse me to boat some like Michigan because this thing is just basically got this gigantic sand dude on this tiny strip of land and you come you can come up from the east side small parking lot And you can come up from the east side, small parking lot, just where the car is right now. You can go up or you can go up the west side from the beach. I'm like Michigan Oldville Beach.

And I've never actually gone down that way. I don't think that there are stairs there. I think it's just like The sand basically Which would be awfully treacherous in this rain A little bit of wind have been up too bad Checking on their broadcast It looks like things are still going well From a recording perspective.

Yeah, we're 15 minutes in here. We're about, I don't know, 50 stairs left here. But I did want to mention, okay, so, this is our fourth time coming to Michigan. Together, there's a couple, third time to Sawgutuck. we've kind of got our spots now. So our first place we go, our first morning, on common coffee, downtown Sawagatuck,

recommendation from my sister-in-law, who you still live around these parts and they always have some good specials to lattes. You got one flight of stairs left. Then listening to this podcast will be so laborious. L-A-B-O-R-I-O-U-F. And so you know you got to I'm not much for like spending six and a half bucks on a latte typically. I made it. There's some more signage we'll read in a second. I gotta catch my breath first. Great to use it here by the way. She's so you're gonna appear yeah there's the the path down to the beach is just sand sounds really miserable right now so you can kind of see west out across like Michigan but shrouded in trees a little bit but when you look south and you look east, back out onto Saga Tuck in the foreground,

which is where we stay, and then Douglas, a little bit further down across the river, which is a kind of a sister thing. They share the same school district and stuff. Actually Douglas is bigger in population, of a sister thing, they share the same school district and stuff. Actually Doug was the bigger in population, but SagaTug is more notable. We go to the coffee place, get a lot of tea. I don't remember what I got, some sort of white chocolate, something that was

very delicious though. Rachel decided she was going to have the, I think it was called the Guiana, is what it was called. G-U-I-A-N-A. And so I had to ask her, hey, you know what Guiana is, you know what's going on with that. She said, no, don't go to Guiana. And so we talked a little bit about, you know, French Guiana and the nation of Guiana. But then we sat down to sip our coffee and share our chocolate chips cone. And I got into a deep Wikipedia whole first about Guiana and then inevitably about, well, French Guiana, then Guiana, then inevitably, inevitably about Jim Jones. And I read, I mean, I read like the entire Jim Jones Wikipedia article, which is pretty wild, pretty long, to be honest.

But you know, you're sitting there with Desinamon and Ton. And I should have been taking notes right from the beginning because there was a ton of good stuff in there. But I did, I did jot down a couple of just wild fascinating things I learned I mean the first thing I'll say is if you if all you know about Jim Jones is just like the Jones town incident massacre however if you want to label it and you like weren't alive in the 60s and 70s when he was a thing. You gotta go check out his story, not to glorify it or anything like that,

but it's just like a wild thing. It's such like a 1960s, red scares what I was going to say. That's not the proper terminology, but you just just think of that era of McCarthyism and the Soviet Union. It's perfect because of here we are at the orb and we know exactly why it was adult now. You can see the giant star. It's not lit up during the day. Although it would be nice to have a lit up right now because it's awfully gray, stormy and dark. I'm hopeful, I know the audio quality of this is not going to be amazing since the air pods, but I'm hopeful that like the natural

World around me isn't missing it up too much. The rain isn't terrible. I know it's super windy. So Fingers crossed for that, but I started reading the you know the Jim Jones with the pdf page and just came across some wild things We're gonna have trivia in a second here about South America. I also wanna, we mentioned our friends at the Samson Q2U series taking the week off this week. Of course, good friends at Cuts by Q. Did a nice little neck shave by Q before we came out here

so it could be fresh. We got a big Christmas parade tomorrow. We got a big ugly sweater bar crawl tomorrow and all our buddies up here in Saga Tuck. So you gotta look fresh for that. When you need a fresh juice, and all our buddies up here in Saugatok. So you got to look fresh for that when you need to fresh do something to stand here and you call the experts at cuts by Q. And of course, our good friends at Home Pride Oregon, when you need your home aspect in Central Oregon, you got to call someone who's safe, someone who's certified,

someone you can trust. That could be my dad's team. Give him a call 5-4-14-0-0316, tell him Quint's sent you or go to HomePireRorgan.com or email HomePireRorgan to addgmail.com or you can email beantownpodcast at yahu.com or cut to by QitYahu.com and CC HomePireRorgan at gmail.com and it's going to all get to me in box. You need it to get into. One way or another here, it can kind not really see our Airbnb from up here. You get a good view of downtown Sagittuck but then the rest kind of gets lost in the trees a little

bit. I know where I'm looking but the house is in that general area. You can see the high school up here. Sagittuck High School. Home Pride Organic inspection, perfection. high school, home-pride organ, inspection, perfection. So before we jump into our Jim Jones stuff, you all just lay out the scene for it. We talked a little bit, but we made it to the top of the world. Obviously, that's a hopefully much more pleasant program to listen to now that I'm not painting my way through sentences, painting, P-A-N-T-I-G.

Basically, you get to the top. It's a wooden kind of a long, skinny wooden observational platform. You can go south, and there's a tiny little like observation deck sort of thing going on there, and that's where I was just standing, looking out over town. But when you get to the stairs, you take a right. There's another kind of deck or platform here, which is what you, it's kind of you, viewing for the orb. Now, the orb itself, the complex is basically a house with two rooms in it that houses the generator. And then the actual tower itself with the radar

and the orb on top of it. There are stairs leading up to it. However, you can't get into the space legally because it is blocked off with chain link fence and barbed wire. So not a good idea to go for it. It's locked up. It's one of those things where like I'm not a vandal. I'm not trying to fuck around or anything. I would just love to go up there once just to say I made it in there but I will also admit that I'm well aware that like you get to the top of the stairs, your inside of the orb, it's just a radar and a dirty white ball. Although you get to see the inside of it, maybe it's not as dirty I don't know but it is what it is,

you know. I got to make make sure I almost did a farmer blow with my nose here and not a good idea because I get bloody noses this time of year when I get to aggressive with this stuff. Already happened on a run the other day, all day I was running by Lake Michigan. Right before I worked presentation to it, I was like, and I had a busy day

one of those days for like barely have a full hour to get a lunch break in, and I was down South of the Navy pier, they're north of the Navy pier there. Getting towards Chicago after you turn around and it's too quick blow. And yeah, here comes the blood baby. So that was pretty unpleasant, because then it's like your two miles from home,

you gotta work call a presentation over zoom in like 35 minutes and you're like and I supposed to like just stop and hold my nose I don't you know you don't have any tissues or anything until this is done or am I supposed to like walk it off or am I supposed to keep running because I literally need to be back in my office and like put on a tie for this thing So I ended up doing a little bit of everything My first reaction was to stop because I was like got blood everywhere Running is not the best thing. Then I was like oh, I should walk

Try to save some time here and then I realized like I don't have the time to just casually walk two miles home So that was fun So now I'm just hyper conscious of this stuff. By the way, here, and then we're going to talk Jim Jones, some things I learned this morning. For my view of peer, I can see what is estimated. You think they could figure this out for sure. But what is estimated to be the last remaining chain link

fairy left in North America. So there are different types of fairies. Chain link fairy is essentially, it's not like this boat that has an engine or something where it's moving across the river. It literally is a chain that connects either side. I don't know if it's underwater or if they string it above the water. I don't actually have never been here in the summer,. I don't know if it's underwater or if they string it above the water. I don't actually, I've never been here in the summer. So I don't know how it works. But it's like $2. It takes two people to operate.

I think like one person on the side you're going to and then one person on the boat. And I think it's just like a wheel you crank, I imagine. And that it just pulls the, by cranking the wheel or turning the wheel, whatever you do, it pulls your ship or your boat, your ferry along the chain and it gets you to the other side of the river and it goes both way. The funny thing about this, so the reason there's a ferry is because it connects downtown so I can tuck across the Kalamazoo River to basically where I am now, not full of head, or at least the base of it.

And it's got to be, I don't know, I'm eyeballing it right now. This thing's probably has to be like 100 yards, 100 meters across something like that. It's a very narrow river where it is right here, downtown Sagittad. So I think that it takes like two minutes to get across and it costs like $3. The alternative is driving or biking across. The bridge on the South Side of town has been making a big loop back up north to Mount Ballpet, which downtown Sagittown is probably a conservative four-minute

drive. But if you're walking, it's like three miles. So I could save you a bit of time.. So, I could see you a little bit of time. But I'm reading about Guiana a little bit. And here are some notes I took. We'll talk trivia and then we'll, there's a little bit more history for it here about the radar.

So, what I learned about Guiana is that the whole region is actually known as the Guiana's. So, Serranam, French Guiana, right to the Guiana, and then even parts of Eastern, and his way-laugged northern Brazil. If you're curious, Guiana translates from its local language to land of many rivers, which is not a joke or anything like that, that's actually what I learned this morning, because I didn't know, it's like, what does Guiana mean? And another interesting tidbit, if you, you know, if you're a

geography head, you'll know this or map head. Of course, you know this, but I'm gonna venture down this dude a little bit. The other side is never really gone here before. It's all just sand, it's wet and damp. But you know, French Guiana is spelled G-U-I-A-N-A. Whereas the country of Guiana, at least in English, it's spelled G-U-Y-A-N-A. So I guess it's just an I versus a Y. Not one of my better ideas

to start venturing down this dune. This would be a pain in the ass to go all the way down to the beach from here. It's just wet sand. It's hard to get a grip. But I'm adventurous. I'm learning new things. So I mentioned it's known as the Giana. As you're thinking, okay, well there's French Giana, there's regular Giana, which was British Giana. What happened is Serranam. Well Serranam is actually the the local name, okay, well, there's French Kiana, there's regular Kiana, which was British Kiana. What happened is Cernam. Well, Cernam is actually the local name, if you will, and it used to be known as Dutch Cernam Cernam,

however you want to say. And anytime I think of Cernam, I'm reminded of a great victory I had playing trivia. Charms City trivia, mother's grill on Thursday nights. By the way, when you get to like 30 feet going down the dune here, Mount Baldhead, there are different trails that branch in different ways.

And one of these trails, if you take the southern branch, takes you back down the d in a way from the orb. And that's what they use for the not-bulled head challenge, which takes place every year in September, I think. And it's like a 10k course or half marathon course, and it's multi-terrain. You know, you'd be running on like this sand that I'm on, you have to run off the stairs too. It's a pretty cool. Something I would probably want to do at some point in the future, it's just a three-hour drive, so it's not super casual, but you kind of go all around Sawgutuck and up the stairs to the orb and

down the sand and stuff, down this path, so that would be pretty cool. I would want to do the 10K not the half marathon. Half marathon multi-terrain with stairs in the middle. I mean, you heard how I was painting just trying to record a podcast. Imagine running that in the middle of the half marathon multi-terrain with stairs in the middle. I mean you heard how I was painting just trying to record a podcast. Imagine running that in the middle of a half marathon. Tough enough already with the 10k. But this trail's kind of spooky. I went down I'm going down this like south branch right now a little bit away from the orb. I guess it's not that spooky. It's just you know it's raining, it's foggy. I'm up here by myself talking to the bean heads. And there's vicious deer around. You know, everyone they're going to pop out. I mean, I almost smacked one with my car earlier. All the weeds from the trees are gone. Very just dark and gray up here. But the final question always was weighed extremely

heavily the Charms City trivia games, which is the name of the company that ran, the trivia and Baltimore that we always played. The answer is, I think it's pretty, or the question is pretty straightforward. It was just like, what is the only country in South America where it touches the official language? And this one of those questions where it's like, if you know your South American history or geography, you could probably figure that out pretty well, but if you really only think you know about South America is like Brazil and Copacabana in the Andy's mountains,

then you're probably going to be S-O-L because you probably never even heard of Surname. So I got it. I won first prize, it was awesome. But yeah, so I learned that surname used to be Dush Giana and to even hammer the point home because the Giana, as I mentioned, include part of Northern Brazil and Eastern Venezuela, the largest city in the entire Giana's region, if you will, is Ciudad Giana, I think it's called,

which is in Eastern Venezuela, near the borderad Giana, I think it's called, which is in Eastern, then it's Waila near the border with Giana. So, and if you're curious from west to east, left to right on a map, it goes Giana, then Cernam, then French Giana. I really have what's the mnemonic for helping you remember that? I guess it would go G, S, F. I don't know, like Gordon food services, except it's not that, so that's not helpful. So just remember that it's like Gordon food services, except it's not, it's, you know,

it's backwards. I'm looking straight down, so I came back to the main branch and I'm looking straight down toward the beach Kind of a cool spooky image. I'm gonna try to take a picture of this whole play. It doesn't mess up the recording I'm doing I don't know one of those pictures that is like You see me post it later and it'll be like this wasn't that good of a picture. They're just kind of cool. It's like straight downhill towards the lake, covered in sand and leaves. So there's also the North Woods Trail,

a 2,112 foot long trail through a shady wooded area. Okay, nothing that interesting there. All you need to know is there's some different paths up here. Great for trail running. Good for cardio. You heard how I was up those stairs. I don't get a lot of elevation in the Chicago. I'm going back to our notes, the other things I learned. The next thing I wrote in my notes, this was just three hours ago. Jim Jones was a wild man. He started off as like a He started off as a mega church preacher, kind of deal, pentacostalism, and the 50s, basically, was his thing.

But it just very quickly devolved into, well, I think what started happened first was, like, many of these guys, there was a lot of abuse and illegal things he was doing in the church that we're not getting out. And basically I think to summarize, as the cracks started to appear in his image, in his church and his story, he started to get super paranoid about being watched, censorship, the US government, and this is what eventually led him to leaving the United States and going to South America. But he was also really wild because he was, or not wild, not the right word, he was wild. But he was really big on,

if I think about like, I don't know, even like some of the Black Panther party ideals, he was really big on racial integration, a large percentage of his church was African-American. He was bisexual. He, not like publicly, but he became pretty clear over time that he was banging guys and gals and dolls. I think he like one of his things that he covered up that he never actually got punished for was raping a guy in his church. That's kind of neat, not good. Neats, not the word I wanted to use, obviously.

So eventually, you know, we're not doing the whole timeline here of Jim Jones. I would encourage you to go read about it though. But he really wanted, he was so big on communist ideals like Marxism and London stuff. He really wanted to move his congregation to either like the Soviet Union or North Korea or China. It was really what he wanted to do. And it was just too tough because he wasn't just like a solitary guy as this big like congregation obviously with a lot of moving parts and

people and stuff kind of militant. And so he ended up buying a bunch of land not from what I read. He didn't do a very good job like vetting the situation He buys a bunch of land in northwestern, Deanna which is it's not like rich soil or anything like that. It's just like Swamp not swamps not right. Well jungle right just like the Amazon basically and you read about the compound Jones town It's not good for farming pound, Jones Town. It's not good for farming. So like, I guess they just got a killer deal on this and that's why he chose to set up shop there but basically he buys this huge plot of land, he brings people down there, start working on it. And he eventually moves, you know, like a thousand people down there to be part of this commune compound insulated world. Not even on the beach, you'd think if you're going down there, you'd at least want to have some good beach access.

I guess Jim Jones with his turtle neck sweaters and his suits and his aviator sunglasses wasn't really big on the beach. I don't know. I didn't say anything about that in the Wikipedia article, but Basically, he gets his people down there and his whole thing is like he's He's like the only one that can save you. I was reading about some wild things He would do where he basically would like Obviously know what happens at the end of this story already probably but He would drug people and then Like put there I read about this one story. He drugged a lady in the church, put her arm in a cast. When she woke up, he told her that she fainted, fell, and broke her arm. And then he's able to magically heal her. He removes the cast and does perform some magic tricks. And now she's healed. And basically that was his sort of thing. So he basically created this image of himself

as the second coming, the third coming of Christ, I guess at that point. So that's kind of what he was all about. So he gets all these people relying on him. And it's that type of control is sort of what he's able to accomplish and instill. But basically, he turns the signal to like a labor camp. I don't really, you know, I'm sure this has been written about when I don't understand,

you know, to the state, it's still like, what was exactly Jim Jones motivation? Like, what was he trying to accomplish? I know he was big on like getting away from the U.S. and capitalism. But he has like this compound where he's just like having sex with a bunch of people. I mean, I guess this isn't like, it's not like he was the only person that ever did this, but he's got this compound basically where people like worship and adore him, like a thousand people, but living conditions seem kind of shitty to be honest. They're like really shitty for everyone else. They're better for him

But it's still been seen that glimers like I don't know he seems hypocritical enough in a high-tech that he could have still just like done this from Southern California or something and like whibbed in a really bougie situation without having to like live in a jungle in Guiana. I don't really know Maybe that wasn't as important to him as the, you know, the sexual relations and stuff, but I'm reading a little bit, reading a little bit about, oh, he made everyone when they get got to Jonestown claim, like sign a paper saying that they were homosexual and that he was the only header of sexual. At Jonestown, I didn't really learn anything more about like why exactly that was, but that's what he wanted, even though he was the bisexual one.

The eating was not very good at Jones Town. Apparently people would have rice for breakfast, rice water for lunch, and then I think it was like a pig for dinner or something like that. So you get all these people who are like starving. Not to mention it's mostly, and I couldn't figure out why this was either. I guess it's just vulnerable populations, but it was mostly children and the elderly who were there. That's the majority of his camp where people under 18 and people above 60.

It's just like wild to me. I never really realized that until I read about this morning. He was, I mentioned before, he's very paranoid guy and he was always worried that the British Army, the US Army, the Guy and E's Army was going to circle his compound and wipe everyone out and so he did a lot of fear mongering. To the point that he conducted drills with everyone in Jones Town, 800 people or whatever, and basically told them that they were under siege under attack and they had to assume their defense positions and whatever else they had to do as part of that. But he wouldn't tell them,

you know, when you have a fire drill, now your office emails you the day before saying we're having a fire drill tomorrow. He wouldn't tell them until after it had happened. And the crazy thing about this is the longest they had one drill at one point in an invasion drill that actually lasted six whole days. And he would like hire people to go into the jungle outside of the compound and fire their weapons.

And obviously, if you're being told about your under attack and no one told you to drill, yeah, you're gonna think it's serious. That's crazy. And he also simulated now, as we get towards the end of the story here, He simulated a poison. He told people that it was poison, you know, pasted the flavor rate around.

I know I know everyone says drinking the cool aid, but it's actually flavor rate is what it was. So cool aids get dragged through the mud here. But he told people, hey, you know, you're, we're all poisoning ourselves now because the enemy's closing in on us and they all drink it and so Then he tells them afterwards. No, it actually wasn't waste with cyanide which I learned this about cyanide today So that's what he used to poison the people I knew that but the reason he could get so much cyanide We see apparently what you use cyanide for is cleaning gold

And so he could get like 50 pounds shipped from a month or something like that. And that's how he was able to, you know, get to where we're about to get to here at the end of the story. By the end of the compound, he had installed loudspeakers across the higher compounds that he could play his sermon on a 24-set or his sermons on a 24-7 loop. There was no break from it. And again, I mentioned, uh, oh, he, well, I mentioned he really wanted to do this like Soviet Union or Communist China or something. He did get one of the like Soviet Union leaders to actually come to his compound, um, and to like try to convince him that they should be able to relocate to, to Soviet Union.

And apparently it was a good visit, but I don't think the guy had the power to bring these people over. So essentially what happens is, you know, the US is aware of this situation, but it's kind of demanding to do anything about it. It's all these US citizens, but you're down in South America. And they've received like one or two people,

I think it got a word out or transmission or something basically like asking for help, because they kind of leave or escape or anything like that, because they're deep in the jungle. So, US and congressmen, Leo Ryan and some like reporters and photographers down there to assess the situation. And the visit goes fine from like the outside, but Leo Ryan gets approached by a couple of people who are sharing their concern and trying to help me get out. And so he's along with these reporters and photographers is going to take what he saw, what he experienced back to the US. So it gets back to the tarmac

Jim Jones and his goons after them and they shoot it off and they kill like five people including congressman Jim Ryan at that point. I think that's when Jim Jones really breaks snaps. He had he's still at the compound I guess he calls everyone to the center of the compound. It has a specific name. It's where he did the sermons I can't remember what it was called. And you know, there's this story. This time he actually poisons the the flavor aid. They really shitty thing about this whole situation among many shitty things is that now he had conditioned all these people of the compound to think that this was just another drill.

So everyone is just like casually drinking it. another drill. Everyone is just like casually drinking it. They're like, yeah, even if he says this poisonous, we've been through this before, we've been under invasion before, it's always just a practice, it's always just a drill. So all these people, 800 or so, drink the flavory, mostly children and the elderly, and a lot of the dead bodies, a couple minutes later. Jim Jones was found with a gunshot in his head. It's unclear if he did it or someone else. He told someone else to do it. But that's sort of what happened there. The last note I have on this, and I'm going to be trivia and then read a little bit about

the orbit and then walk down in that dark show. 85 people survived. Some of them just one person hit in a ditch, one person hit, kind of they were sleeping in their bed. A couple people escaped into the jungle, but the craziest group of people, I think this 13 people who survived, I learned this this morning, I couldn't believe this. The Jones Town basketball team went to Georgetown, the capital of Guiana, to play against the Guineas national basketball team in 19, whatever this was, 78, including on the basketball team, Jim Jones, three sons. Jim Jones, Jr., Steven, and one other one, Ringo, I think.

So these sons survive, I don't know if any of them are still alive to this day, probably, but absolutely crazy. Obviously the fact that his three sons were on this basketball team, they weren't there, and this happened, that's crazy. But the actual crazy thing, there was a Jane, a Jones town basketball team. That would be like Charles Manson having squeaky

from at point guard. Like I couldn't believe it when I read that. I was like this has to be like someone edited the Wikipedia article to say something funny, but who knew? So yeah, the Jones-Sundead basketball team survived the incident. And those poor three sons never got to talk to their daddy Crazy as he was so that's what I learned about Jones town this morning and with that in mind we've been talking about

The Guiana region broadly so there's a three three countries whose names are directly tied to this we mentioned French Guiana British Guiana, which is not just Guiana We mentioned French Guiana, British Guiana, which is not just Guiana, and then Dutch Guiana, which is not Serenam. So my task for you, my trivia question for you this week, email beantownpodcastat.ru.com with your answers, or tweet us at beantowncast, put these three countries in order of population, from smallest to largest.

So again, three, they're not all three countries actually, we never even said this French-Guyonnes is a territory of France. It's not its own country. So people always say, oh, what's the most populist country or biggest country that France borders? So it's always a trick question because it's actually Brazil. It's just kind of stupid, but that's the actual answer. But these three, let's just call them areas, states, if you will, whatever. Not important for the purpose of this trivia question. Sir and I'm French-Guy-Anna and Guyana.

I've put those three in order of population. If you want any more time, go ahead and pause this fine broadcast. The answer, and I'll give you the numbers around you to the closest thousand number of people. Starting off small French Guiana, 301,000 people. Next up, Sir and Am is at 613,000 people and then your big winner, Guiana, 805,000 people, although about a thousand later than it could have been. Thanks to Jim It's just nuttiness.

So there you go. That's being done podcast. Should be a question of the week. No pounder on the week. This week I developed a lot of this stuff sitting in the car getting ready to start recording. Last thing at the top of the orb here. This has been a special treat you and a broadcast live from the orb in the rain in the cold. This is so there's another sign at the top here. This one's a little bit more technical, but here you go. To give you a visual,

I gotta remember to take a picture. Actually, let's do that right now before I forget a nice picture of the orb. It's beautiful. You gotta get a selfie too. My thumb always looks extra wrinkly, like it just got out of the pool or something, the bathtub, I don't know what. Okay, so got our pictures. Here is the sign at the top of the orb. In 1960, 131 Gap filler radar stations scanned the skies across the United States for enemy attack. Today, no more than three of these installations remain and you are looking at one of them. In 1956, SIGT took the top of Mount Baldhead to the US Air Force for a building in radar tower

of the Annex. In exchange for new stairs to replace the aging stairs both in 1931. The Air Force built a semi-automatic ground-in get filler radar to detect any aircraft flying down like Michigan's target risk areas at the end of Chicago. Okay, what I'm looking at now. The Annex is a concrete block building with a three-legged radar antenna tower and dome. The installation was designed to be controlled remotely and to run unattended. Before the fiberglass radar make the orb was added in 1963, the antenna could be seen rotating at a stately 5.33 revolutions per minute. It's pretty slow, so in one minute it would go around a little more than five times. The building has two separate rooms

with no connecting doorway, the smaller room on the east side of the building housed a diesel-powered generator that was removed in 1969. So the generators gone, the radar is still at the top. The larger room on the west side contains two ANFPS 18 receiver transmitter pairs substantially intact but deteriorating due to a leaking roof and vandalism. So that's the computer. The white radar dome is an iconic landmarking man visible for miles on all directions and use here we go I was mentioning this earlier used as a navigational aid for mariners. Don't see that word often outside of the AL West. Seeking side of the talk where other nearby ports, it currently houses various contemporary communications antenna and a local TV station's camera. So

if you live here in Southwestern Michigan, you turn on the morning news, you can see the view from the top of the orb. And I can see the camera actually, I'm looking right at it. It looks pretty much straight south, and to a little bit to the east. It looks out over just like the view I was talking about earlier, basically pointing towards Douglas, downtown Sagittok, down into the left of the view a little bit, which is what I'm seeing right now. And we'll now make our descent from the orb. down into the left of the view a little bit, which is what I'm seeing right now and

we'll now make our descent from the orb. What a treat this has been getting to broadcast live from the top of the orb. That's a dream come true. I also got lucky because I was gonna be that weirdo Who was doing a broadcast with someone walked up here and wanted to see the orb as well? There is one person going down the, but I haven't seen anyone. So that's trying to say who was doing a broadcast with someone walked up here and wanted to see the orb as well. There is one person going down the, when I haven't seen anyone, it's what I was trying to say. There is one person going down the stairs, almost at the bottom now as I start my descent.

But I didn't hear him when he came up. So maybe he, I don't know, maybe he bought a ticket to the live being top podcast show and I didn't wanna say hi and do a meet and greet after the show, not short, but we now descend less out of breath going down and going up the stairs obviously, but it got to be a little bit careful here, kind of slippery here in the rain. But there we go, that's that saw theaga Tuck, that's the orb to become an annual tradition for racial and I we've come up to mission again. And started off we came here for our one year anniversary, which is our anniversary is in February will eventually be in April when we shift over shortly after it'll be our five-year anniversary when we get married. I think that's a pretty good chunk of time. We came up to Stoyer, which is closer to Indiana down the coast

here. It was late February, it was snowy. We got snowed in basically the whole time. So we kind of do a ton of fun things, but it was really kind of just like getting away, you know, exploring. And then I don't remember how we picked it, but we decided at the end of that year that we're going to try Saga Tuck. And it's stuck ever since. This is our third time doing it now. Yeah, we'll go to Saga Tberg Brewing later this afternoon. Excuse me, which has one of my favorite beers, the peanut butter porter.

In fact, I was so excited for it. I was at the grocery store earlier this morning, picking up some snacks. And about a wine and I was just like, the peanut butter porter is right here before I forget. Let me just grab a six pack. So I got it secured. That's one of my fair beers and then there's a smaller company a smaller brewery out of Grand Rapids that has a satellite tap room here in downtown Sargentang, a mitten-roon company. You can't really find any their stuff outside of their breweries at least I haven't. But they have a peanuts and cracker jack Porter, which is just absolutely delicious. I like dream of that thing. It's so good. So we'll probably go there tomorrow at some point. But yeah, we'll go to we'll go to supper tonight. And tomorrow we've got the parade. And we've got the

bar crawl, the ugly sweater water bar crawl raffle tickets We're gonna try to win this year Last year we were really wasted because we went to pumper Nichols a nice uh kind of nicer restaurant in bar in downtown Saga Tuck and watch the world cup remember world cup last year and Cutter I think was it? One of those hot countries with a lot of sand. And so they had to play it in December and the US, or November December, and so the US had their,

their round of 16 game after the knockout stage, or the group stage rather, first game in the knockout stage, they were playing another one, I think, and they lost, whatever it was, like three to one or something. But we, we, we, um, imbibed, I-N-B-I-B-E-D, quite a bit because they do bottomless mimosa, but the way it works is you buy it per, you know, each person has to buy it, so you can't just like share it, which I get. But then they just bring you an entire bottle of champagne and Some orange juice and you make it yourself So when you finish your first bottle

Which is like yeah, that's a lot, but you're watching a soccer game. It's like two hours two and a half hours You get through the first bottle and you're like well, even if we don't have the entire second bottle each of us Might as well get it. It's very paid for it And you're like, well, even if we don't have the entire second bottle, each of us might forget it, because we already paid for it. And so you do it, and the next thing you know, your team gets knocked out of the world of the cup, and so you're feeling sorry for yourself. And so before too long, you can each have two bottles of champagne, which is wild. And then we didn't even have anything planned the rest of the day, but all the sun, we walk

outside. And the bright sunshite, sunshite, what is that? Sunshine. And the South of Christmas parade is happening. So we've got that all planned this year we're ready for it. But we got the parade tomorrow, probably not the two bottles of champagne beforehand, but who knows. And then Christmas bar crawl after that. One flight of stairs left here as we descend from the orb I want to thank everyone for listening to our program. Hopefully the audio worked out This is a big leap. This is one of those things where like if this doesn't come through or something

it's like one of the most disappointing things in my life. So fingers crossed on that front but thanks everyone for listening and Thanks everyone for putting up with my panting But thanks everyone for listening and thanks everyone for putting up with my panting, my huffing, my puffing and everything else that went along with it. I hope you learned something today about Mount Baldhead, about the orb, about Guyana, about Jim Jones and all of things. Soghtuck. Thanks everyone for listening.

Thank you for supporting our show. We will come at you live next week with another installment here on Quiddit First. It presents the Bean Town Podcast. No outro music. This is the end of the show. Everyone stay safe. Stay sane. I'll check in on you next time. Bye.