Behind the Bastards - Part One: Focus on the Family: James Dobson

Episode Date: September 29, 2020

Garrison Davis is joined by Robert Evans to discuss James Dobson and Focus on the Family.FOOTNOTES: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1990/08/08/the-empire-built-on-family-faith/a2b300eb-25f8-4925-af24-ce076c620f51/ https://web.archive.org/web/20040130060421/http://www.salon.com/news/1998/07/09news2.html https://www.focusonthefamily.com/about/historical-timeline/ https://www.britannica.com/topic/Focus-on-the-Family https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1990-02-23-9001160138-story.html https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/ngisc/members/dobson.html#:~:text=He%20served%20on%20the%20task,Delinquency%20Prevention%2C%201982%2D1984. https://www.frc.org/historymission https://www.amazon.com/New-Dare-Discipline-James-Dobson/dp/0842305068 https://www.amazon.com/Republican-Gomorrah-Max-Blumenthal/dp/1568584172 https://www.amazon.com/Stations-Cross-Adorno-Christian-Right/dp/0822325411#:~:text=In%20Stations%20of%20the%20Cross,the%20current%20U.S.%20political%20economy.&text=Adorno%E2%80%94can%20illuminate%20the%20political,aspect%20of%20contemporary%20American%20culture. https://www.amazon.com/James-Dobsons-War-America-Alexander-Moegerle/dp/157392122X Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Evans, host of this podcast where normally I tell the very detailed story about a terrible person or a terrible group of people or a terrible thing that was done by terrible people. But this week we're doing things a little bit different. Garrison, my friend, local youth about town, Portland photojournalist, Garrison, you want to explain what's going on today? Does Garrison have a last name?

Oh yeah, hi. This is Garrison Davis, local youth in Portland and reporter. My young ward. Yeah, Robert's young ward. And because of Robert's injury, I have now successfully cued this podcast. Yeah, you did. And I am now going to be running the show for today until there is a coup to this coup. A counter coup. A counter coup in the coming days. I've been studying the school of the Americas. I think I can pull one off.

Is it really a coup if you go, hey, can I host your podcast? And then Robert and I both go, yeah? I don't know. Either way, Sophie, I've got some death squads in El Salvador, but that may wind up just being just a separate thing I do. Anyway, Garrison is going to be presenting the episode this week, an episode that he wrote. And I will be the guest on my own show. And I will supervise all of it while drinking a... Sophie's going to, yeah. Yeah, while I drink a Perseco out of a glass straw. And we've scheduled this for Garrison's 18th birthday so that I'm no longer violating child labor law by having you on the podcast.

Yay, hello, yes. Yeah, it is my birthday today. So Garrison, you want to tell the people, America, England, Australia, numerous other countries? Canada? Maybe. You want to tell them what the episode for today is? We are going to be talking about an organization called Focus on the Family. If you've heard of that, you've probably heard of it from John Oliver's show. Or you grew up with this organization in your life if you grew up as a Christian. We're going to be learning all about some weird stuff they did, some surprising stuff they did.

Yeah, and it was actually a surprise for... Even though I'm familiar with this organization personally, I learned some new things when I was doing research for this. So even I was surprised with what I found. Yeah, and for our listeners who haven't been stalking you on the internet, you grew up in what you've called to me repeatedly a cult. Yeah, me and my family were in a cult in Canada for about 11 years. We moved to Portland to get out of the cult and have been here... I've been here ever since. Some of my family is back in Canada, but not in a cult.

When you're in a Canadian cult, is it the Mounties that burn your compound by incinerating tear gas? Or is there another agency? I've seen the Mounties do stuff like that. Also, the Canadian Revenue Service was the big enemy of our cult. Okay, that makes sense. That was the one that they had fights with. I'm going to guess a lot of people didn't think they ought to pay taxes to the government. Illegally trying to get tax cuts for their fake school that they were running that I went to for the first six years of my schooling. Anyway, we'll talk about this stuff. We'll come back later.

So let's talk about Focus on the Family. Focus on the Family. Yeah. You got this. Oh, thank you, Sophie. I'm proud. To really understand what Focus on the Family is both in the past and what it kind of is now, we're first going to have to kind of learn about its founder, James Dobson.

Or technically, it should be Dr. James Dobson, but we'll talk more about why I don't want to say that later. Focus on the Family is really just an extension of who Dobson is as a person. Dobson was born in 1936 and he is still alive. He was born in 1936. He shouldn't be. He's still alive. He was born in Louisiana. His father was a traveling evangelist.

Religion was a prevailing part of Dobson's life since he was essentially a baby, quoting a book about Focus on the Family and Christian right-wing radio and the influence they had on American culture and like across the whole 20th century. It's a book called Stations of the Cross, actually a pretty good book, but this is a quote. Dobson claims to have been able to pray before he could talk and to have felt God's calling from as early as age three when he toddled up to the altar in response to his father's Sunday morning altar call that the unsaved offered their life to Jesus. And this isn't that all uncommon for people as young as three to have their parents pressure them into doing stuff like this. Even now, this isn't that uncommon.

If listeners want another look at what it's like to be pushed into stuff like this when you're three, check out the documentary Marjo, which is about the youngest pastor in American history who was performing marriage ceremonies when he was like four years old. Oh, that's good. Yeah, his name was Mary and Joseph. Have you seen the photo and video that's been going around the interwebs this week of the baby that was jet skiing that's six months old? Well, that's just rad as hell, though. That sounds good, actually.

I don't see a problem with that. No, I actually think babies should be jet skiing at even younger ages. They should be jet skiing before they should be able to pray. That is my opinion. I would agree with you. Yeah. All right. There's an article from 1990 in The Washington Post by a journalist named Laura Strep.

And it detailed a lot of stuff about focusing the family in the 70s and 80s. And it details some of Dobson's early life and family. This is a quote from that article. His father and mother, James and Myrtle Dobson, were married for 43 years. His father never went to college and became a traveling evangelist in the Church of Nazarene, which is like a fundamentalist Protestant type of church. As an only child, he received all the attention and love his parents had to give. His mother deferred to her husband on all major matters, but she often found herself alone.

From her, Dobson says, he got his idea that firm discipline is the cornerstone of the parent-child relationship. And this is very important. Here's a quote from Dobson's first book when he talks about his mother. She knew that backtalk and lip are the child's most potent weapons of defiance and must be discouraged. On one occasion, she cracked... Famous weapon, backtalk. Backtalk, violent weapon. And on one occasion, she cracked me with a shoe.

At other times, she used a handy belt. This is in response to the weapon of backtalk. Yeah. Well, you got to use the weapon of a shoe against the weapon of backtalk. That's just fine. The day I learned the importance of staying out of reach shines like a neon light in my mind. I made the costly mistake of sassing her when I was about four feet away. Her hand landed on a girdle.

It weighed about 16 pounds and was lined with lead and steel. Jesus Christ. She drew back and swung that abominable garment in my direction. The intended blow caught me across the chest, followed by a multitude of straps and buckles, wrapping themselves around my midsection. She gave me an entire thrashing with one massive blow. From that day forward, I cautiously retreated a few steps back before popping off. Good lesson for kids to learn.

Stay out of reach of adults because they want to harm you. But remember, this is the stuff that influenced his ministry. Yeah. Because this is the stuff that he thinks is the cornerstone of a parent child relationship. His earliest lesson is you always want to stay away from adults. This is out of reach of adults because you never know when they will want to physically damage you. But this is a key ten of his ministry is teaching stuff like this, though. This is like the cornerstone of a strong parent child relationship.

Does this guy tie in to train up a child in that book and stuff? Yeah. Oh, awesome. Cool. Wait until we talk about his first book and some fun legal issues that happened around this. Oh, boy. It's a child abuse episode, everybody. Very excited.

This whole two-part is a child abuse episode. Sophie, send Sophia a letter of apology that we don't have her on to talk about children. Are there dead babies, Garrison? Um, there's dead teenagers. Hell yeah. All right. Um, but I mean, and well, yeah. No, wait, wait, wait.

Well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well. Yeah, dead teenagers, Robert. You're damn right. Well, we'll figure this out later. Um, the, uh, the Washington Post article continues as Dobson was about to start his junior year in high school. His father decided to take a job as a pastor and settled down in San Bonito, Texas. A very hot flat out post near the Mexican border. Because of his religious beliefs, Dobson couldn't dance or go to the movies like the rest of his friends,

but he earned their respect by becoming a top tennis player. Okay. Which, okay. So in terms of cult stuff. First time anyone earned respect through tennis, but yeah. Tennis. Is tennis involved in the cult? No, what is involved in the cult is like being able, like in these kind of very firm Christian kind of, um,

churches and also, you know, some more of the worst cult stuff, not being able to dance or go to the movies is, is pretty standard. Like I couldn't go to the movies for most of my, most of my life so far. I've not been able to go to the movies. Well, yeah. Cause that's like Hollywood's just straight, the devil. Yeah. Like at my parents, at my parents' wedding, they weren't allowed to dance.

There was no dance allowed at all. There was no dancing. Well, that, you know, it'll let the devil right into the wedding. Yeah. You would have grown up with your brother, the devil, if that had happened. But wait, I don't understand how does, what does tennis have to do with this? Tennis is how he, is how he gained his friend's respect because he couldn't go to the movies or dance. So the thing Dobson did to get like friends is play tennis very well.

So it's not like, it's not like how Keith Ranieri made all his people play volleyball at like three in the morning. Right. I don't know what that means. I'm too young. Oh, that was another guy we did an episode on. Oh, another cult where he forced them to play volleyball at like three in the morning. No, no, it sounds like it was just a kid.

No, this is a kid trying to find anything to gain friends cause he can't cause he lives in a bad situation. All right. Yeah. So those were the best years America ever had said one of Dobson's high school friends retired Colonel Harland Baker, Jr. That's his high school friend. Okay.

Colonel Baker Baker, Jr. Baker Baker. Okay. We had the hamburgers, the milkshakes. We didn't drink or smoke. Our parents gave us room to spread our wings, but also set limits. Again, this is the kind of stuff he's going to talk about in his ministry. We'll find, we'll find.

I'm seeing what's building here. This is kind of obvious what's kind of being built here. And after graduating high school, Dobson went to Pasadena College, a small liberal arts college, well, a small liberal arts Christian college in Southern California with an interest in human behavioral studies. The Washington Post, the hope. Yeah. Yeah.

You can see where this is going to go in like the fifties and sixties. I think it's going a good place. Washington Post article writes, but after he had taken a couple of psychology courses, Dobson was convinced that God was calling him to go all the way into the field. It was not an easy time for a Christian to go into psychology. Some psychologists thought Christians were deluded know nothings and some Christians thought psychologists were devil worshipers or worse. Okay.

I'm not sure what worse. I don't know that I believe either side of that. I don't, I don't really believe that there was ever a situation in which like a bunch of psychologists were like, oh, hey, members of the largest and most culturally dominant religion in the country. Y'all are silly. You can't be psychologists. Yeah.

I don't think that ever happened. No. Not in the sixties. But he's in the psychology because I know a lot of cults are like against. Yes. Like psychology is anti psychology, et cetera. Yes. He's into psychology.

And this is going to be his most potent weapon in trying to take over the country. I think this is going in a good direction. I'm so excited. Continue. Yeah. Soon Dobson went on to the University of Southern California to get his PhD in child development. This is when Dobson became Dr. James Dobson. This was in 1967.

His doctor status was very important to him as he became popular in the eighties and nineties with his employees only being able to refer to him as Dr. Dobson. Like this, this was very important to give him credibility to speak in like wide settings both politically and, and, and like to Christian people. He was very happy about being, being able to be called a doctor. Yeah. I mean, I'm pretty proud of being a Reverend doctor according to the state of New Jersey. So Dobson, according to the post, Dobson took the precise number of credits needed to get

his doctorate to not one more. He was anxious to get his family life going and to speak out on the values he believed were eroding at breakneck speed. All right. Well, okay. It's a little weird to critique him for not taking more credits than he needed to get his doctorate. I understand that. That's a lot of credits.

That's a lot of credits, but he was very anxious to get his work started. Yeah. And the values that he thinks are eroding, he, he writes about in one of, one of his books. This was, this was, when he was getting his doctorate, he was in LA during the mid sixties. Great time to be in LA. Nothing bad happened. Yeah. In one of Dobson's books from the nineties called, the book is titled The Strong-Willed Child,

by the way. Just, you know, you can get a sense of what his books are titled. I'm going to guess Strong-Willed means talking. Yes. This is what Dobson writes about the summer of 1965 in LA. Our cities began to burn during the hot summer of racial strife. That signaled the start of the chaos to come. The class of 1965 entered college at a time where drug abuse was not only prevalent, but

became almost universal for students and teachers alike. Intellectual deterioration was inevitable. Accompanying this social upheaval was a sudden disintegration of moral and ethical principles such as which has never occurred in the history of all of mankind. All at once, there was no definite values, no standards, no absolutes, no rules, no traditional beliefs on which to lean. Now, when Dobson's referring to this talk of chaos in a long, hot summer of racial strife, quote unquote, he's referring to the once uprising of 1965 when he was in LA. And that was, if you're unfamiliar, this started when the police assaulted multiple people

during an arrest for reckless driving. The LA Times writes, after rumors spread of the police had rough people up and kicked a pregnant woman, angry mobs formed, turning a 46 square mile swath of the city into a combat zone. And this isn't, like, exaggerating. So people get angry when you kick pregnant women. Yeah, please kick the pregnant women. I'll have to report that in the future. It's estimated that 35,000 people took part in the mass rioting and looting over the course of those six days.

14,000 members of the California National Guard were deployed to put an end to this civil unrest. Again, this is for, like, six days. In all, 16,000 law enforcement officers were mobilized as a self-described attacking force. 31 people were killed by law enforcement during these protests and riots. There were over 1,000 reported injuries, 3,500 arrests over the course of these six days. The police chief that handled this uprising was the same chief that, if not coined, at least popularized the term thin blue line. Same guy.

And Dobson was here for all of this. He watched this unfold and he was very upset. In referring to this, referring to the WhatsApp Rising, he said, what's happening to this country and what will happen to my children as a result? So he was there for this. He was not a fan. I mean, yeah, he's... Not a fan of all of these people getting angry that a cop kicked a pregnant woman. Yeah, and he's not that pro-racial civil rights that much. Oh, no, really?

That's not going to be a big part of what we're talking about, but he was known to be a racist, which we know as a guy born in... You know someone's a real character when you can say like, he was super racist, but we're not even going to get to that. We're not even going to talk about that. The child abuse is going to take up all of our time. Child abuse and gay conversion therapy, which is much worse. Yeah.

Really, the racism was the best part of it. It did at least a bit of damage. Yeah, yeah, unfailing obedience to authority and old fashioned Christian morality became Dobson's signature talking points when he spoke about raising children. Despite him having like an actual job at the University... He got a job at the University of Southern California School of Medicine for a quote, researching childhood disorders that led to mental retardation. Because again, this is the 60s, so that's how we phrase things.

Even though Dobson had a job, Dobson just eventually began showing up at local PTA meetings to like talk about child development, like not for his own kids, just going to local ones in the area. Showing up at PTA. Yeah, I've done the same thing before. Sometimes I'll get a little bit drunk. It's a good way to spend a Wednesday. And then eventually he got invited to teach Sunday school classes

and then got invited to speak on like radio talk shows. He actually got invited to speak on Barbara Walters' TV talk show. Just about random stuff because I mean, again, he's a doctor in child development, but this was just like a thinly veiled thing to spread his religious kind of parenting advice. Cool. That sounds fine. His biographer, Rolf Zettersten, I believe that's how you say it, whatever. We don't pronounce things right on this podcast, it's fine. Cool, great.

He wrote about why Dobson had such immediate popularity with parents. This is what Rolf says about Dobson in one of Dobson's biographies. He condemned the so-called new morality. He demanded more discipline in the schools. He taught parents how to research their authority at home. And he unflinchingly called sin by its biblical name, sin. That's all in all caps. The only difference is it's all in all caps at the end.

That's really it. By 1970, Dobson was able to publish his first book by Christian publisher Tyne Dale House. The book was called Dare to Discipline, and I'm sure we can all guess what that book was about. Yeah. Because what is this discipline? Tennis.

It means picking up a girdle. A bit of tennis racket was used. And slashing your children like what happened to him, and probably tennis racket. Yeah, I mean, the key to beating children, and I've always said this, is that you want to use improvised weaponry, because that shows that there wasn't intent if you wind up in a court case later.

You want to be able to claim that it was just an accident, and the kid ran into your girdle, which you can't claim if you're like using a telescope and baton on a child. Yeah, yeah. Five years later, he released another book. This book is the best title. This is the title to his second book, released five years later. Oh my God.

What wives wish their husbands knew about women? Oh. Which is... Oh, but this is full of a lot of good information, yeah. I really love that, again, him as a man born in the 30s, wrote a book called, What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women? And that's his second book.

What wives wish their husbands knew about women? Okay, wrong answers only. Robert? Oh boy. You know what? I don't want to get canceled, so I'm not even going to try to make a joke about that. Moving on!

I think I might be in hot water after the batoning children remark, so let's just, let's just sail on. Yeah, because we're like, you know, all right. We're like 20 minutes in. Oh! I think... You know what won't baton your children? Oh yeah!

Unless you need them batoned. You know what will only baton your children if Jesus says it's okay? Wait, Robert, you're not the host. Garrison, Garrison, Garrison, you're the host. You get to do an ad. What will not get your children hit by a girdle, giving them a thrashing in one single below? Any guesses?

Oh, oh, oh, Robert! Sophie, what is it? Robert? No? I won't do that. Is it the products? Services that support... Products and services!

That is indeed. Products! During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson,

and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes, you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. But the center of this story is a raspy-voiced,

cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And not in the good badass way. He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then, for sure, he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart radio app,

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About a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space. 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole.

My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus, it's all made up? Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. That was a great ad pivot, Garrison. Really good for a first try. I tend to advise more death threats against billionaire social media. Which will then get edited out in the podcast. Which will then get edited out in the podcast. Yeah, that's key to the process.

All of the incitements to violence that we have to have Chris edit from the podcast. Which is like 30% of the run time generally. That's why he takes so long to record. In 1977 is when Dobson really started the thing that makes him famous. That'll eventually be what he's known for. He started his own weekly radio show. Initially got picked up by 40 stations. The Washington Post article reads by 1978.

Oh wait, sorry. Yeah, this is separate. So he had his radio show. What he was also doing at the time was filming seminars and selling them. And then also churches would invite him to teach seminars across the country. And then here's the Washington Post article. By 1978, Dobson's seminars on the family, like on family issues, were making so much money drawing up to 3,000 people per weekend

at $12 a ticket that he finally quit his job at University of Southern California and formed his own nonprofit company Focus on the Family. Which was then what he retitled his radio show as well. So he's making so much money from these seminars he would do every once in a while. It's unclear how often he did these. You can't really find that kind of information because this is in the 60s or 70s. But it's enough that he was able to quit his job. People like hearing this guy talk about kid beating, yeah.

And what women want. Yes, about what wives wish their husbands knew about women. But despite Dobson formally making this a nonprofit company, what he was really starting was a Christian media empire. As the name suggests, Focus on the Family was primarily about Christian family life and how to properly raise our kids. A short quote from the post says, Dobson's adult journey into family psychology and family politics is one man's attempt

to retrieve the era that he grew up in. Which is really fair. All of his kind of stuff is about going back to this era in the 30s and 40s about what family life was like back then. Yeah, it's the essence of conservatism. Looking back at a past that's half remembered and half imagined. Yeah, that's very accurate. This sentiment is shared by Joyce Johnson of the Child Welfare League

saying of Dobson about how Dobson clings to his philosophy from quote, 20 to 30 years ago that said children were property of their parents. Which I mean, yeah, kind of fair. Yeah, they're like cats or dogs, but they yell more creatively when you hit them. Good, yeah. Dobson would say. But even in the 80s, people thought his philosophy was like 30 years old.

Why are you hitting cats and dogs? It was. We're not. Because they're property. You can hit your property. According to Dobson, you can just hit your property. Would you get angry at somebody who like, I don't know, pounded on their desk because they were frustrated?

No. Then it's okay for people to hit kids because kids are like a desk. But they're not like a dog. A dog is like a desk. It's property. It's all property. We have property. Oh my God.

I'm just saying this is. Speaking of child abuse. Speaking of canceled. The next paragraph is going to be a good one. Oh, good. Oh, geez. So, yeah. Here's what the post says about some controversy that like,

of course, is going to develop eventually along Dobson's parenting advice. Quote, but it is Dobson's view on childhood punishment. They got him into the most hot water several years ago. This is in 1990. Several years ago, for example, this couple was charged with child abuse because they beat their children and they say it's because their pastor said it was all right based on Dobson's writings.

No, that's good. I'm going to bet that's the only time that happens. Now, Dobson said his books have never advocated beating children. But again, his first book was called Dare to Discipline and it was about physically punishing your children. Yeah. I think he might argue that it's not beating them as long as you're angry. But yeah, this was an ongoing problem back in the 20th century for most of the

20th, and still now. Seems like it's still an ongoing problem. It's still an ongoing problem. Yeah. Seems like it might have something to do with all those guys who keep assaulting people based on their political opinions. Yeah. A lot of beating is still to come.

Cool. Yeah. Mainstream family psychologists say that while setting limits to help build secure parent-child relationships are good, there are better methods than the back of the hand or a strap, such as giving stuff that was recommended back in the 90s was giving a people timeouts. That was kind of a new concept in the 90s. Sure.

And the article writes, spanking can quote, stimulate rebelliousness rather than respect and wisdom for the parents. A psychologist trying to say, Dobson, you're not going to do good. No. Your kids are not going to respect you if they're always thinking about whether or not they're far enough away that you can't get them. Yeah. Part of the cult I was spanked by people that aren't even my parents, and I have grown

up with heavy respect for authority, which is why I'm now a journalist. That's what everyone says about you. Covering the uprising. You respect authority. Love the feds. I love all authority. Yeah, so I don't think his really philosophy even that work. He doesn't even work that much.

Even though these psychologists criticize a lot of Dobson's work because they thought it was bad, they were quick to admit that he is better known as a psychologist and probably a lot richer than they'll ever be. I doubt there's any American psychologist selling more books than Dobson. This is a quote from a psychologist. I doubt there's any other psychologist selling more books to the American public right now than any other psychologist. This was a psychologist named Paul Clempt, who's also a professor of psychology.

Yeah, he was really the man for psychology in the 80s and 90s and in the late 70s. Dobson was just really starting to kick off. Eventually, Dobson wanted to be more than someone who gives bad parenting advice. At the start of Focus on the Family, it was relatively non-partisan, still very conservative, but it wasn't really about partisan politics. He wasn't advocating for candidates or endorsing parties. In fact, when he filed nonprofit status, he answered no to the question if Focus on the Family would engage in activities intending to influence legislation.

Now, this very quickly turned out to be not true. So again, he started his radio show in 77. He got his nonprofit status in 78. By late 79, Dobson started to get more formally involved with politics. President Carter was forming what becomes known as the White House conferences on the family, and Dobson wanted in. Focus on the family's vice president and co-founder named Gil Alexander Mogherell described Dobson's entry into politics like this.

Quote, Jim got tired of telling people what to do when a six-year-old was the bad. Yes, you might as well start making policy on nukes and shit. So he may as well start making a lot of policy. This is a really interesting time in the history of American evangelism, because that period of time, so Carter came, got elected off the strength of the evangelical Christian vote, and he was the last Democrat that that was ever true of, because Reagan was elected immediately afterwards based on a lot of friends of Mr. Dobson's. Including Dobson.

Including Dobson. We're going to find out about this in a sec. Uniting them all, mainly to deal with abortion and gay rights and women doing stuff that isn't getting hit by their husbands. Yeah, this is that whole very cool period of time in politics. Yeah, it's not great. The way Dobson describes his move into politics, and the way he marketed the change in topic to his audience,

you have to switch his audience to being used to him talking about family issues, to talking about political stuff. Now, the way he gets past this is talking about how schools and governments are taking authority of parenting away from the parents. The schools and governments are becoming too influential in deciding what kids are and aren't allowed to do, essentially. Dobson says this in an interview, until 15 years ago, a girl couldn't pierce your ears without getting her parents' permission.

Now a parent can send a 13-year-old to school. The school can transplant that child to have an abortion, and the parent won't even know about it. She may come home and begin to bleed, and the parents won't know why. The parents have been eliminated from the entire process. How did that happen? It was discussed somewhere, even debated, but Christians didn't participate. Which I don't think is true in the 70s or 80s.

Nor even now can a 13-year-old get sent to a hospital to have an abortion by a school and the parents not know. Yeah, I don't think that's ever happened, ever. I don't know. At least not in the 70s. Yeah, I don't think that's a thing, but I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong on this. We could be, but I think not in the 70s.

No, because it's a minor and it's a major medical procedure. You usually don't get rights over your body medically until you see it. You don't have any right to privacy as a 13-year-old because of your property. Like a desk. That's what Dobson would say. Dobson's co-founder, folks in the family, who later came out against Dobson because he was scared of what he was doing. Gil Alexander Mogherell wrote a whole book about Dobson called

James Dobson's War on America. Awesome. Good title. I hope somebody writes a book like that about me one day. Robert Evans' War on America? Well, on the FDA maybe. It's a good title. Yeah.

Noted. Here's a quote from the very good book, James Dobson's War on America. Two years after we started focusing the family, Jim got his first taste of the surreal sense of power and control that working in Washington offers. The flavor was sweet to this only child and ever since, folks in the family's component about political activism has been a central feature in the life and work of James Dobson and one that he personally relishes more than any other aspect of it. And this absolutely is true.

Great. As soon as he got some political influence, he got addicted to this. Yeah, it's almost like power is a literal drug that ruins people. And if you were already kind of shitty beforehand, it makes you into something more frightening than anything Lovecraft ever dreamed up. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

How did we end up at Lovecraft? I don't know. Well, like Cosmic Horror when I think about James Dobson, I think about Cosmic Horror. I think about the death of stars. Yeah, and the death of many teenagers. Yeah, a lot of teenagers. Which we'll find out about. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. The first taste of warming his way, like the first taste of power was him warming his way onto the Carter family advisory council, like the thing that President Carter established. Yeah. By now, focus on the family's radio program was expanded to a daily 15 minute program instead of a weekly one. It was on hundreds of stations now.

A year later in 1981, the program got turned into a 30 minute show. It became racking up thousands of stations around then. Now, the way Dobson got on this council is that one day on air, he persuaded his listeners that he needed to be on this whole like family conference thing. Telling them that such conferences are usually dominated by, quote, Eastern establishment liberal secular humanists. He's got all the buzzwords in there. Yeah.

Dobson was trying to scare his audience and saying that maybe Dobson can get invited on if his listeners write in to the conference director urging to invite Dr. Dobson. And wrote in they did. 80,000 people either called in or wrote in to the White House requesting Dobson join the committee slash conference. The invitation to join was sent out to this relatively unknown Christian radio psychologist from LA. Oh, yeah. Also take notes listeners because I would like to be on a commission.

I don't really care. 80,000 people call in. Yeah. Just whatever commission. Whatever commission doesn't matter. Whatever commission Robert wants. We're going to get him on. Yeah.

Everyone get your phones ready. Pick a random something like something to do with like like potatoes or some shit. Something something in the egg. Conference would be good. Yeah. I could I know a lot about potatoes. Potatoes. Like the ones that were running in your house a few weeks ago.

I did. I did have some potatoes that were left in my cabinet for far too long. Yeah. Yeah. Got really potato-y. So after this invitation was sent out, the post article writes, that's when he realized the power of his electronic forum, the power he's not hesitated to use on other issues, including the Civil Rights Restoration Act.

And now here this is. I'm scared. Dobson got dobson got hundreds of thousands of people to call in and oppose the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1984. The bill then failed to pass on the on the first few votes that they tried to do. It only passed four years later in 1988 after a quote abortion neutral language was added. So, you know, utilizing your public power to quash the Civil Rights Restoration Act. Yeah.

As one does. As one does. Yeah. Great. Loving the story. Wait. So here's the good part. After the bill was passed with, you know, the with the abortion neutral language, Reagan

then vetoed the bill. Great. Great. I love politics. Sensational. The Senate then had to override his veto. It's unclear how much influence Dobson had on this whole, like, vetoing process with Reagan and stuff.

But as we'll soon see, Dobson and Reagan became very close friends. And Dobson did not hesitate to use his power to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people to call the government to complain about Civil Rights. I just happened to agree with him about hitting little kids. That was my Reagan. There's some really good pictures of Dobson and Reagan together. Just sitting together, pretending the AIDS crisis isn't happening as they both were wanting to do.

No. Dobson was happy about the AIDS crisis. Yeah. Dobson hated gay people so much. Yeah. I'll bet that was the best thing that ever happened to him. Yeah. That's why he wasn't talking about gay people in the 80s because he was happy where things

were going. He only started talking with them in the 90s and 2000s when they started to get a little bit better. Yeah. When they weren't all dying. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure that was hard for him.

Yeah. Shortly after Ronald Reagan's election, he put Dobson on the National Advisory Commission to the officer of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Program, which is way too long of a title. Yep. That's way too long of a title for anything. But Dobson got put on this because Reagan liked him. Dobson also served as co-chairman on the Citizens Advisory Panel for Tax Reform in consultation

with Reagan. I don't know what Dobson's qualifications were for tax reform because that's not really part of any of his education or training there. He was running a nonprofit tax-exempt business that was just a media empire at this point. So I really don't think he should be the one on this tax advisory. See, this has just convinced me that I do have what it takes to run the American Coast Guard. I'm going to start putting out feelers to the Biden couple.

Put me in charge of the Coast Guard listeners. Then let's email the Biden team. Let's get Robert in charge of the Coast Guard. I don't know what I'll do and neither will the Coast Guard. That'll keep them on their toes. Dobson also served as a member, speaking of the Coast Guard, Dobson served as a member and the chairman of the United States Army's Family Initiative, which was about Army families and stuff.

He was appointed to Attorney General Edwin Mises, Commission on Pornography in the mid-80s, and he got put on a teen pregnancy prevention panel, which I think is not a good call as someone who hates abortion. It seems like he might not have a lot of helpful things to share there. He also got put on Attorney General's advisory board on missing and exploited children. He was up to so much stuff. Seems like he actually might know why some kids are missing. He's responsible for a lot of missing children.

His kind of work is the reason why a lot of kids ran away, especially in the 90s and 2000s. Good decision for those kids to make. Despite him being up to a lot of stuff during the Reagan years, Dobson wanted more and he wanted more direct lobbying power. This next bit is taken from the Washington Post article again. In 1988, Dobson was convinced that the conservative cause needed more help than he alone could give. He persuaded the Focus on the Family Board to buy the Family Research Council.

Since that purchase, the Family Research Council has become one of the largest evangelical Christian lobbying organizations in Washington. This is slightly inaccurate. It was the biggest Christian lobbying group ever in the history of this country. The former vice president and co-founder, who since came out against Dobson now, says of Dobson, he is a tremendous threat to the separation of church and state. James Dobson lobbies Washington more powerfully than any individual or organization within the religious right.

I'm glad he figured it out after a while, but it would have been nice if he hadn't helped him. If he didn't help him start the business? Start the thing that is essentially a giant weapon aimed at shooting all of our freedom in the dick. Or whatever. He should have realized that. Do you know who won't shoot your freedom in the dick, Robert?

Or whatever. Oh my God. Or whatever. You try to be inclusive here. The fine products and services that support your very show. Thank you, Garrison. Yeah. Products!

During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations, and you know what, they were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI, sometimes you get to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse.

And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And not in the good-bad-ass way. He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to heaven. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart.

And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful

lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. The wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all

bogus. It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. And hello, we are back. This is Garrison talking about Focus on the Family here. And this is Robert listening and planning a violent counter coup. Yes.

We'll figure things out after the recording session. Why does it have to be violent? Just because of the mercenaries I hired. Oh, sorry, Garrison. I should have been more prepared. I should have brought more than one. You should have brought mercenaries. It's a coup.

Yeah, I should have planned this a little bit better. You want to get yourself some former Navy SEALs who have just been doing nothing but mainlining cocaine ever since they got out of the service. And building pipe bombs. And building pipe bombs. Those are the best guys to help you do a coup. They never, for example, wind up arrested on the streets of Venezuela soaking in their own urine.

Good times. Coups. Better times than this. Because in the mid, better times than the mid 90s in America, because in the mid 90s, Dobson was receiving $125 million in lobbying power. Jesus. Between Focus and Family Research Council in the 90s. Family, the FRC, that's kind of referred to, or they continue to be an active Christian

lobbying group today. It's not as influential now, but it still is active. It also is affiliated with a conservative PAC called Family Research Council Action. In 2010, the Southern Power, we're skipping ahead a little bit, but we'll go back in time later. 2010, the Southern Poverty Law Center declared the group as an anti-gay hit group. Yep. Seems like that's fair.

This is the Family Research Council lobbying group here. Focus and the Family never got declared an anti-gay hit group because they were too religious about it. That Southern Poverty Law Center didn't feel comfortable calling it that. I feel very comfortable calling it an anti-gay hit group because they ran a conversion therapy program. We're going to talk more about what Focus and the Family was doing for anti-gay stuff in part two, because they didn't really get really active that until the 90s.

But the post article sums up quite well what made Dobson's entry into politics unique at the time. Bush ushered in a whole new type of political Christian conservative activism. Dobson says he has no intention of ever running for office, a pledge even his critics believe. But he also says Focus and the Family should not endorse candidates, although letters to the GOP and Democratic presidential nominees in 1988, competence sent out to constituents, leaves little room for doubt that he believed Bush to be the better candidate. But what made it more unique is how Dobson entered into politics quietly, without the

press conferences and pomp that surrounded the predecessors like Reverend Jerry Falwell. This represents a maturing of a certain segment of evangelicalism within mainstream politics, particularly in the Republican Party, according to a Brookings Institution Fellow, an expert on religious life, gone are the days of TV preachers and bombast. What lay in their place are laymen like Dobson who are emerging and talking more about with a palatable language that's less about religion and more about civil rights. It's like trying like, you know, their right to run their right to raise their kids their way and their right for, you know, unborn babies.

That's that kind of it's like it's the real change from from like religious, conservative activism to being like to be mainly about religion, to being more about civil rights was was Dobson was the first one to do that, which is now we see a lot of that nowadays in the Senate and Congress in the White House. Awesome, yeah, yeah. So yeah, there's a 1995 ABC primetime profile on Dobson opens up opens up like this. He was one of the most powerful men in the country, and yet few people even know his name.

On Capitol Hill, he's treated like some big powerful lobbyist because he was and yeah. And you've probably never you never you probably never heard of him. But James Dobson is one of the most influential leaders in the entire religious right. Dobson's vision to transform America is known to every member of the House and Senate. And he's been delivering his messages to the White House in person for years. Thanks ABC for really cracking the case on that one in the 90s. Yeah. Dobson's often described as like a stealth campaigner or a stealth lobbyist for his ability

to remain kind of under the radar, despite its massive influence. Because yeah, if you even if you're kind of into politics, there's a good chance that now you've never even heard of folks in the family or family research council or Dobson, because he was very good at staying under the radar, despite his massive power. Yeah. They're just one of those groups that you like you see them referenced constantly. You see their logo on things, but it's usually just with a bunch of other fucking different like non-governmental organizations like it doesn't is not the kind of yeah.

No, that's that's really how you exercise terrifying power. That's good. Yeah. Because it's more dangerous because we because we knew so little about it at the time while everybody's angry about, I don't know. There was other stuff happening. There was other stuff happening. A couple of wars, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, as Dobson's political aspirations were growing, so was Focus on the Family's so-called non-profit publishing empire, citing the book Stations of the Cross, Christianity Today, which is the biggest evangelical slash Christian magazine, Dobs Focus on the Family's president and founder, James Dobson, the undisputed king of Christian radio. In 1995, Focus on the Family was the third most listened to radio show in the entire

country after the Rush Limbaugh and Paul Harvey programs. An estimated 20.6 million people listened to his evangelical radio program at least once a week. So in the 90s, he was the third, he had the third most popular radio show in the entire country. That's terrible. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm not happy with the way this is going. Really thinking electricity might have been a mistake. And it's good that Rush Limbaugh is the most, and then it's Paul Harvey, and then it's James Dobson. Although, actually, according to other sources, James Dobson beats out Paul Harvey in some years. They're kind of neck and neck, but Rush Limbaugh is the first one, and then you have James Dobson.

Rush Limbaugh is the first one. The good old one-two combo, Rush Limbaugh and James Dobson. Yeah. Dobson wasn't a big part of my childhood, but Limbaugh was, and that's why I had the opposite. I had fun lessons from my mom, like why it's okay to carpet bomb the Middle East. And I had the opposite. I didn't have Rush Limbaugh, but I had James Dobson.

Oh, well, yeah. So, yeah. That explains the differences between us. That's the only differences we have, is that one event. And the Canada thing. You like, you call hats the wrong word. What do you call hats? Tuk.

Tuk. It's a Canadian. It's a little tuk. Degenerate term. Yeah. I know. Cancel me on Twitter, Sophie. Do it.

All right. Listeners can't see it, but my face went, oh. Yeah. It went like, oh, what's that? I know. Sophie's expressed the proper reaction to Canadian verbiage. Yes. By 1990, they had seven separate magazines in print, Focus on the Family, here.

Right. For this non- I'm sure they had good content for all of them. This non-profit magazine had seven of them, which they sold, again, non-profitly. Focus on the Family successfully had books being published themselves at this point. Many seminars and sermons were taped and then sold nationally and internationally. They got a deal with the U.S. Army. Oh, that's good.

The U.S. Army like, bought tons of their feats and sent them out to teach Army parents how to hit their kids. Yes. Yeah. Not a big sense. Yeah. Because you're in the Army, you know how to hit, but you might not know it's okay to hit your kids.

You don't know how to hit your own children. You don't just have to hit Iraqis. You can hit your kids. It'll help you get better at hitting Iraqis. Yeah. It's a good practice to make progress. If you get good at doing it to your children without remorse, it can hit any other child in Iraq.

If you can harm your own children without a thought, then you can really commit violence on behalf of the state. Yeah. Yeah. Focus on the Family made a 13-episode live-action, like half-live-action, half-animated TV show called McGee and Me. They started a whole film department, most popular for their last trans-detectives series in the mid-90s, which cost about $1 million per film to make.

And it's all just propaganda, right? There's not all of it, which is why it's actually really interesting and dangerous. That's why you hear about Focus on the Family. You'll see their name at the end of a bunch of different public TV shows and stuff. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So the thing about all of their entertainment media is that more often than not, it's frustratingly

competent. Because, again, they had hundreds of millions of dollars at their disposal. A review of McGee and Me, which I've watched all of as a kid. I watched all these things. The last trans-detectives, this is the goal that kind of helped me get on my detective path, which I'm now using. You are a detective. Other side.

Yeah. But yeah. Those of you who don't know. You are a detective. Garrison tracked down the identity of Kyle Rittenhouse, the Kenosha shooter, like six hours before the police figured out who it was. There's a Forbes article about it. Yeah.

Yeah. Thanks Focus on the Family. A review of McGee and Me from the Chicago Tribune says that the show is exceptional. I'm saying it has the production quality is top notch. The show offers an entertaining mixture of live action, animation, as well as well-written stories with positive, more messages. And although the stories are definitely based on principles from the Bible, the series isn't excessively preachy or pushy, which is why I can get on the air.

And apparently the animation from the show was done by the award-winning team from Fraggle Rock, My Little Pony, and Muppet Babies. Oh, Fraggle Rock. Yeah. I know. I'm sorry, Robert. No. I know.

I'm sorry, Robert. The Fraggle Rock people have gotten drawn into this. And Muppet Babies. That's the one that hits me. I didn't want to hear the Fraggle Rock dudes helped make dominionist Christian propaganda. Let us talk about Muppet Babies and Fraggle Rock, Sophie. Come on. My Little Pony.

Step back. No. Unacceptable. I'm not happy with any of this. But by far, the most successful and popular media program that folks in the family has ever made and run is an audio drama series called Adventures in Odyssey. Now we're going to go on a bit of an aside here, because again, this is radio, we're on radio.

What is radio, Garrison? It sounds with your voices. Sounds with your voices. What a concept. Electronic forms and wavelengths. Yeah. I'm not sure it's going to catch on, but continue. I listen to shitloads of the show as a kid.

It's been running nonstop since 1987. And by 1995, it was the second most listened to Christian radio program. Can you guess what it was? It was only beaten out by the other folks in the family program. Yeah. Yeah. Great. That's okay.

So the premise of the show is that you're in this small Midwestern town and the main character is this old Christian man named Mr. Whitaker, who is an ex secret agent and a genius inventor who runs like an ice cream shop slash learning center called Whitsend. Here's a picture, Robert. It sounds like you're describing the kind of dreams that you get after, I don't know, like taking a shitload of acid and then being to your guest. Wait. This show is so weird.

Yeah. So here's Mr. Whitaker. Can you describe how that looks to the audience? It looks like Wilfred Brimley. Oh. Yeah. He looks like Wilfred Brimley. Oh, okay.

Yeah. So even though I said the main character is this old ex agent man who's an inventor and runs an ice cream shop, their prospective characters are these like different families that cycle out of the show every 10 years or so. The deal was like family issues and small town political issues. And this old guy is like a mentor figure to this whole town. I'm going to show you, I'm sure Robert, I'm going to show Robert a picture of one of these families.

I don't like his outfit. You don't like his outfit? No. Okay. Well, I'm going to show Robert a picture of one of these families and note, these are the only black characters they've ever had in the entire show. Oh, great. When they were them.

So over the course of the 30 years, for five years out of the 30 years, their main family was the black family. But besides that, they've had no black characters here is actually better than oh, no. It's really. Oh, no. Oh, no. So they just drew O.J. Simpson on the right. Yeah.

They just drew O.J. Simpson for the dad. Okay. It's really bad. That's. Oh, boy. So bad. Oh, boy. And they all have like really accentuated teeth and giant teeth and really big white

teeth. Yeah. Giant foreheads, tiny eyeballs. It's really bad. That is O.J. Simpson, though, correct? That is absolutely O.J. Simpson. That's James Orenthal Simpson, the most innocent man in history on the map. That's juice right there.

Yeah. Yeah. The juice was loose for five years on Christian television. Now, this episode that I listened to as the episode that this that is our workers from gave me nightmares as a child, by the way, before I saw the artwork was because of some it was like, it was their closest to get ever getting to like a horror episode. I see that they're in an old West town. They're, they're, they're in the West town.

Wait, wait, why is the kid hold, I just realized the kid's holding. He's holding an axe. Why is he? He does have an axe. He's holding a big axe. Okay. It's because they were like, they were like, I forget, but I know there's episode, I know this episode, this specific episode gave me nightmares because they went to this old Western

town and had to like take up a treasure or something. Yeah. I'm sure there were ghosts or something. Listeners all post these photos on socials. Ghosts aren't allowed because of Christian stuff. Oh, right. Cause that would imply an afterlife outside of the, I've told you this before, but the one of them was popular episodes is called castles and cauldrons.

And they had a D&D episode. They had an episode about how D&D is bad and satanic. Oh, that's good. Yeah. That's good. This seems like a fun show that you watched as a kid. So much of this. Yeah.

So like it was a radio show. They also made a television show based off of it. Okay. Animated. So the original gimmick of the show is that Mr. Whitaker, the inventor, ex-agent guy made this invention called the imagination station, which is like a mix of the hollow deck and a time machine, kind of unclear. Now the purpose of this service in the show is a way to travel to the quote unquote past

to teach the audience and audience surrogates quote unquote history of an incredibly whitewashed pro-colonial Christian revisionist history. I mean, that's a little terrible, but I'm already coming up with an alternate canon in my head in which Mr. Whitaker is a former CIA agent and all he's doing is dosing these kids. The NSA. Yeah. Now, I've got my own head canon and he's given them LSD.

This is all he's continuing MK Ultra on his own one American that would make way more sense. Yeah. But like, again, the frustrating thing is that the show is very well produced, often hiring LA voice actors. Like it has people from the Animaniacs who are still on the show now, which I don't know how. Yeah.

Because people need paychecks. The main character from Steven Universe, like the guy who voices Steven used to when he was a very small child, voiced a character on this show before he broke out into animation for Steven Universe and stuff, you know, a very gay show. Yeah. Yes. And focus in the family is a very not gay friendly company. I mean, if he was a kid, yeah, he was a very young child and now he's an adult.

Yeah. We all need paychecks. Yeah. We don't have good health insurance in this country, Garrison. I don't know if they taught you that in Canada. Yeah. I know. I live here.

I know. Yeah. Yeah. Not a great call, by the way. I know. Mm-hmm. Anyway, yeah. There was spin-off movies, tons of books.

For some reason, Mr. Whitaker's son is also a secret agent. Okay. But the goal, oh, you see, wait, Sophie, stop, Sophie, stop. I admit it isn't a comment to you. Wait, guys. All right. So the goal of the show writers was to make them like an anti-James Bond or like a Christian version of James Bond.

Yeah, Robert, picture that man in your head. What people in the 90s, Christian people in the 90s thought the Christian version of James Bond would look like. Picture that man in your head. Okay. Do you have him? Yeah. All right.

Now we'll scroll down. Here he is. Wait, all, he's all of them? All these, all three. Zinni and a Jones, clearly, in one of those pictures. So, there's three pictures here. One of them in like a very tight shirt. The first one is in NSYNC.

Yeah. Yeah. He look, he does look like a member of NSYNC in the first one. He has bad street boys, NSYNC just for the record. He has like, he has like a goatee. He has like a little like, sole patch and goatee. It's not attractive. It's not good.

He has giant feet. Yeah. Feet are abnormal and elf like at the toe. And then in one of these pictures, they've done a terrible thing and put him in Indiana Jones outfit, which I am offended by. Yeah. Yeah. It's very upsetting.

Who was he in the middle? Because Indiana Jones very famously was not a Christian because he knew for certain about the existence of other deities and magical powers and stuff. These are all three of the same character. These look like a different... This is the same. This is the same guy. Mm-hmm.

This is the same guy. Yeah. Well, I guess Indiana Jones' religious status is unknown, but he both engages with like mystical powers on behalf of Hinduism, Judaism and Christianity. So, you have to assume he's got some nuanced understanding of the matter. Yeah. I just don't like that. This person, they tried to make a cool Christian version of James Bond.

Who looks terrible? Yeah. The first guy is definitely the most ablicious of the three. Yeah. Really? He looks like Lance Bass. No, he doesn't. He looks like the JC, oh no, I'm so sorry, 90s.

We'll have to agree to disagree. All right. So anyway. He looks like JC Shazae. I don't know who that is. I don't know who that is. He's the... He definitely knows the bye, bye, bye dance.

That's all I'll say. Sorry. Back to Dobson specifically. One of his more weird griffs was doing Ted Bundy's final interview. What? How does that happen? You're going to find out. Okay.

Please tell us. On the day before Bundy was executed in 1989, Bundy received hundreds of interview requests from media outlets. He denied all of these and specifically requested to be interviewed by James Dobson. Okay. The entire interview was about how it was actually pornography that caused Bundy to murder and rape all of those people. What a weird last flash.

Which Bundy specifically argued against in court. He said it wasn't pornography. And then as a final troll, he got Dobson in to record this whole interview about how it was actually porn that made him murder and rape all those people. What a piece of shit. So not only does he kill all those people, but like the last thing he gets a choice over, he uses that choice to fuck up porn for everybody. Yes.

So it's clear that Dobson... I'm changing my mind about this Ted Bundy character. Oh, this has really pushed you over the edge. Yeah. I'm no longer neutral on the Bundy issue. Well, it's a good development. I'm kind of concerned for your previous Bundy views, but... Okay.

Like, I have one tattoo of the guy. That doesn't mean... That tattoo? Yeah. Yeah. It's like Roger Stone's... Roger Stone's... Yeah.

So it's clear that Bundy was essentially trolling Dobson and the entire world here, but Dobson found a way to capitalize on this exclusive. The tapes were technically free to use, but with the stipulation that the interview be aired in its entirety without editing or interruption, which is over like an hour long. So it gave Dobson a lot of time to talk, which of course news media is not going to do that. So it's technically free to use because, again, he runs a non-proper company, but he would sell... If you cut down the interview at all, he would charge you for the tapes.

This proved to be extremely profitable for Dobson. So he fucking agreed. Yeah. Okay. Capitalized on Ted Bundy. Yeah. Awesome. What a good guy.

So he either gets a straight hour of media exposure on national news programs or he gets money. So here, Dobson raked in over a million dollars in profit from the tapes. Awesome. He initially pocketed all of the money for himself. Oh, yeah. Good. Why would you give it to the families of his victims?

But amid public outcry, he donated $600,000 to it, a $600,000 of it, to anti-porn groups and anti-abortion groups. You know you're a good person when your backstory repeatedly includes the line, amid public outcry. So he kept $400,000 for himself. But part of the $600,000 donated to anti-porn and anti-abortion groups, focused on the family is included as those groups. So he just gave the money to himself. What a piece of shit.

That's beautiful. He kept $400,000 in his own bank account and then gave the rest to the business he owns. I gotta hand it to him. That's a good grift. That's a good grift. Not many people would look at a man who repeatedly raped and molested the corpses of his victims and go, I bet I can make a million dollars off this guy. So every media empire needs its own castle, focused on the family is no exception.

In 1990, Focus on the Family claims they accepted a $4 million grant from the Colorado-based L. Palmer Foundation. The Foundation's website says they accept applications from 501c3 organizations to serve Colorado in the areas of arts and culture and community and health and blah, blah, blah, whatever. So at the time, Focus on the Family was based out of California, so they applied for this grant and then they got this money so that they had to move to Colorado to get the grant accepted.

For $4 million, they transferred 350 employees from California to Colorado and hired 400 more in state. A 46-acre lot was purchased to build their grand headquarters in Colorado Springs. They have their own entire zip code for their headquarters. During a tour of the Focus on the Family offices in 1993, a couple from Michigan asked if handling all of the sightseers in the main building was a distraction from the regular working staff. The working staff said yes.

The couple then donated $4 million to build a new visitor center on the land. So Focus on the Family soon had built 526,000 square feet of stuff on their Colorado property, including an entire replica of Whitsend, the ice cream shop slash learning center from their radio program. Amazing. Which I have been to. Oh. How's the ice cream?

Ice cream's not bad. All right. Rest of it, I may have some notes. Did you get drugged by a former spook? No, but my brother did cut his head open in here. He fell and cut his head open. That's good. He's still a scar.

You should have sued. Well, we were very happy at the time because we were at their cult. I remember. Yeah. So I've been there. And Focus on the Family is like welcome center kind of film. He has like always, you know, people have like an always have like a film playing on a television.

Yeah. Dobson compares his decision to build the headquarters in Colorado Springs to the founding of the temple at Jerusalem. Okay. Okay. Makes a lot of interesting calls this guy. So when I went to the Focus on the Family headquarters, when I was like 10, I was not there in a journalistic capacity because I was 10 years old and in a cult.

So I'm going to refer to a salon article about touring the facility in the late 90s. The tour guide takes me upstairs to where the real work happens. We stop first at a viewing room for an area full of cubicles, 120 people work here. The tour guide explains all they do is answer Focus on the Family correspondence. The room is empty today because it's a Saturday, but he says during the week it brims with activity. He tells me how Focus listeners pour out their problems asking for prayers on their behalf and seek advice on things like marital problems, depression, and their sons and daughters who

are gay. We receive about 10,000 letters a day, he says. Sometimes they send money, the guide admits, but Focus on the Family doesn't require them to. Every letter gets an answer regardless of who sends it. He points out that the correspondence staff takes the initiative to send out free literature, books, and tapes of Focus on the Family broadcasts, even to those who don't donate. Focus on the Family also keeps a database with a description of everyone's problem to refer

back to them if the person ever writes again. This database has over four million names. That's really creepy. No. That's so weird. It gets worse. This database is very interesting and terrifying. A big part of The Daily Radio Show is asking listeners to write in with questions or for

people to send donations. Sometimes they'll advise, like, if you donate X amount, we'll ship you this book as a thank you. Stuff like that gets kind of common. The Focus on the Family co-founder describes the radio business model like this. Most Focus on the Family broadcasts give the appearance of half-hour talk shows but are actually 30-minute infomercials for our Focus on the Family product. It's as ingenious as it is perfectly legitimate.

The goal here is obviously for people to send money because they're primarily a donation-based non-profit, quote-unquote, they also sell stuff or you buy stuff but it's technically a donation and they send you a book as a thank you, which is, you know, yeah. The goal is to send money, but just sending them any correspondence is a win because whether they send in money or just a question, their names and addresses get added to this master database. A special complimentary magazine is sent out monthly to everyone in this database. Just like the radio show is a product catalog thinly veiled as a parenting guide.

So is this magazine that they send out. It's mainly, you know, it advertises products and stuff, but it's thinly veiled as a parenting advice for a free magazine from Focus on the Family. People on this mailing list are also strongly encouraged to set up a monthly donation with different thank you gift tiers, kind of like Patreon. Not only does Dobson and Focus on the Family use this database as like a grifting machine, it's also another way for Dobson to deploy his army of supporters. He will routinely personally write letters for a call to action, including a way for

someone to contact Capitol Hill, then he can just like mail out to everyone in this database, you know, for people to respond so they can easily, you know, get changes in legislation done. So this database combines his ability to simply disparagingly mention a piece of legislation on air can get resulting in hundreds of thousands of people to write in or call in. He also, he also has the power to mobilize people to meet his political goals through this like database, like letter system. And everyone in Washington knows this, which is why so many conservative politicians have

gotten so cozy with Dobson is because he has this database that he can just use on a whim to like mail something out to like millions of people and then also just address stuff on his radio show. What an impressive grift, though. And part of why this works is because he develops a per-social relationship with his listeners. It's like, hey, I, James, as your friend, need your help with this thing, I will send you out a letter, you know, call in to us if you have a family issue, you know, he'll get people to respond and just get more and more names added to this database.

Yep. A massive thing. A huge amount of the right wing, like the whole right wing is all about getting mailing lists, which you then monetize and use to drive donations and stuff. So in the next episode, we're going to hear about the best thing that ever happened with this database, but also all the gay conversion therapy program in the 2000s. So we have those two things to look forward to. But that is the end of this section about focusing the family and James Dobson.

How do you feel, Robert? I feel good. I love... This has so far been pretty standard kind of. Yeah, I love that he managed to make hundreds of millions of dollars for himself and his organization, although those two things are essentially the same because nobody ever goes after these people for breaking the law flagrantly. I loved that he monetized a mass murderer.

And then when he got in trouble for monetizing it, he still gave the money to himself. I love... What I love about the right is the complete lack of ethical consistency and the total and all-consuming lust for power. And I think James Dobson embodies that in a number of ways, but most clearly in his desire to have people do violence to children because that's really the core of that right wing obsession with power is like, if a child disrespects an adult, they deserve to be harmed. This was an idea that I grew up with a lot too, like my mom would tell me, if I ever

hear you talk back to an adult, I'll beat the shit out of you and variations of that. And the things that I got the most physical punishment for as a kid were times in which I disrespected an adult. This idea that the worst thing you can do as a child is not respect the power of adults. It all speaks to the kind of man he is. And as soon as he realizes when he's got no power before he gets into politics, then he's obsessed with this idea of disciplining children. But as soon as he has some chance to force his views on everyone else, he takes it because

that's the kind of person he is. He doesn't want people to be able to do things he doesn't personally want them doing. That's the essence of him and of conservatism. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. So what's that? As we'll learn more about gay conversion therapy, which involves a lot of child abuse in the

next episode. Awesome. Great. Do you have any plugables you want to plug? I really enjoyed that. Yeah. You know, I have a podcast. It's this one.

Oh, really? Yeah. You can listen to it on the internet. I heard your producer is awesome. Yeah. She's great. The internet's also great. One of many things that has no consequences.

So find me on the internet alongside a bunch of racists plotting the downfall of civilization. But Robert's on Twitter and I write okay. I'm on Twitter at Matt Hungry Bowtie. There's a tea public store behind the bastards. You can get the FDA approved to prevent all diseases thing. I'll see you guys in the next episode. Yeah, Robert. You should be shook right now.

Look how well he did. I always knew he was coming from behind. Yeah. Dude, phrasing. All right. Goodbye. All right. Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations.

In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science, and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.