Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 300: Jonestown Part I - Everyone in the World Is My Friend

Episode Date: January 12, 2018

On this, our 300th episode, we begin our full-treatment journey into the life and mind of Jim Jones, the cult leader who, in 1978, was responsible for the deaths of over 900 people. So how did they get to that point? Tune in to our series to find out!​ Samba Isobel Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ I Can Feel it Coming Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribut

There's no place to escape to. This is the last talk. On the left. That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? I'm gonna say, if you ever see a news report that says Henry Zabrowski dies in fiery car crash, it's because Free Bird came on at the wrong time. Because in Atlanta, I bring the fucking heat to the driving. Absolutely. I drive 10 miles faster than everybody else. I'm fucking gunning it. I've driven with you before.

But here I got my Kia C-Mist. As soon as it hits 62, the car starts shaking. So I'm driving an old rickety, like Model T. But I'm going 75 miles an hour. Free Bird kicks in. All of a sudden, I'm driving through police barricades in my mind. And today, I did the same thing. I missed the off-ramp to exit. So I was just got the fucking solo because I was kicking in there. I fucking went across four lanes of traffic just like screaming Free Bird.

And I was like, what am I doing? I was out of control. Right, yeah. You're like the ugliest member of the Firefly family. That's the end of Devil's Rejects. I believe you just described that. Alright, this is the last podcast on the list. It's Firefly family, right? Firefly, yeah. Alright, this is the last podcast on the left. I am Ben Kissel. We have Marcus Parks. And then soon to be in a ball of flames, Henry Zabrowski.

I can't wait to be gone. Oh, yes. We all are on the same boat on that one. Guys, what is the number 300 represent for everyone? For me, Ed Larson's weight. Ooh, that's actually my weight, too. Is it your weight? I'm losing weight, but it currently is sitting at a healthy 300. I would say a downtrending 300.

But yeah, 300's big. Yeah, this is the 300th episode. 300th episode! Good to have done it without all of you. Hail yourselves. Thank you all so much. And now I'm thinking about those muscular people in that movie. 300. Ooh, the tall one.

I am Sparta. I think that's from that where I am. I am? W.A.N.M.C. Sparta. Oh, my. Well, speaking of crazy cults, somehow I found the way to get there. 300 episodes in, we are finally fully covering Marcus Parks, your brain must be in a strange place right now. Jim Jones! Oh, we're covering Jim Jones.

We're covering Jonestown. This is an episode that I've been wanting to do for years and years and years. We covered Jonestown very briefly in episode four, back before we had any idea what we were doing. Yeah, I think we focused on more of the death tapes and things like that. Yeah, we absolutely focused more on those aspects of it, but I'm extremely excited to fully tackle Jonestown in a four-episode series. All right.

Remember this, first of all, people's temple, no apostrophe. Yeah. And I want to start this now. What do you mean? Before we're corrected on the internet, people's temple, no apostrophe. Why isn't, it's not the people's temple? No, because people's temple with the apostrophe implies ownership. Right, no.

And this was a socialist temple. Oh, don't get me going. Where is McCarthy when we need him? He could have stopped all this from happening. So Jim Jones, known as Jimba to his mother, was a murderous cult leader who led 913 people to their death and ordered the execution of a further five, all on the same day in 1978,

either in or around his cult compound, Jonestown, located in Guyana in South America. All right. Now Jimba, normally you'd imagine you'd find somebody named Jimba at the Animal Actor Show. Right. Universal. He does seem a little bit Lion King character-esque.

Jimba. His cult, known as people's temple, was somewhat unique in that it was more rooted in a political ideology than in any sort of far out religious theology. The members of people's temple, as I said, were ardent socialists. So these are the kind of people that are for bike lanes, for example. Yes. Political ideology.

I'm like bike lane or anti-bike lane. What are you? There are only two options. It is a very interesting group, but we know mostly about Jonestown as the end result. But this cult, this group, started in the 1950s, and it's kind of interesting to see the long-form cults, because this is sort of similar to me to a children of God

or a Scientology, where this was a long-time comment. Right. So what's kind of fun to take Kissel's phrase about these episodes is that you already know the tip of the iceberg, and it's kind of fun to go down to the stanky balls of the iceberg. Is that what they have down there? Is that what the Titanic hit? We hit its balls.

Now, were they ever registered as a religion? I'm sorry to... They were actually... They were at one point a part of a larger religious group, so they were absolutely... So the government recognized it. They had tax exempt status. They absolutely did.

But like all cults, the ideology that those people shared centered around a single figure, Jim Jones. This is the 40-year saga of crawling into one dude's mind. Yeah. Because that's really what it is, is that what do we learn about cults from the cults we've already covered, is that basically it's getting a group of people into one normally dude's brain.

And so you're just living Jim Jones' life. Well, I mean, dudes, unless you're looking at Charles Manson, the most important thing I ever learned from a cult, you can lift yourself up with your butt. Everybody did that? Remember that in Ums and Rickey when you lived with Justice Butt? What a guy. Now, the thing to keep in mind this entire series

is that what happened at Jonestown was not mass suicide. It was mass murder. And it was not a sudden event. Jones spent years preparing these people for that moment, manipulating them the entire time. Well, kind of like this. Imagine the cult is all inside the brain of one man. It's like when the one man chooses to commit suicide.

He then murders everybody else. It's like a deleted scene from that movie. What was it? Inside out or something? What was the name of the movie? The animated film? The movie with all the child's emotions. Exactly. It's just like that. Is it like that? What was the name of that movie?

Inside out. It's a great movie. Jim Jones didn't know exactly when he was going to initiate the suicide. He was always ready for the inevitability, though. Kind of like a guy who carries around a wedding ring in his pocket all the time to wait for the right moment to pop the question. That's the next case, commercial. Absolutely.

For those of you who don't know, on the final day of People's Temple, Jim Jones either directed or forced 908 people to drink grape flavorade, not Kool-Aid, mixed with cyanide, putting them all through a slow agonizing death. So now you can effectively, obnoxiously correct anybody who says, oh, I guess he drank the Kool-Aid. Loudly, and in front of many people in front of your friends. Yeah, actually, back in Jonestown, it was actually flavorade.

You know this. You know it, it was flavorade. The many people dutifully did what they were told, but those that didn't drink voluntarily were held down and stuck with syringes full of poison, or they were just shot in the head by armed guards that surrounded the pavilion where the flavorade was served. It is estimated that up to a third, 300 people involuntarily met their end in one of these two ways.

And that's the absolute highest estimate. That means that at least 600 did this of their own volition. Wow. Now the question is, how did Jim Jones manage to make this happen? I gotta ask, how did Jim Jones manage to make this or allow this to happen? Right. The question... I'm gonna tell you.

Oh, wow. Well, first though, let's look at mass suicide throughout history because mass suicide is not singular to Jonestown. Most mass suicides throughout history were committed to avoid the wrath or rule of advancing armies, like in 1803 when 50 women and children threw themselves over a cliff to escape enslavement at the hands of Ottoman invaders. Others were done out of despair, like the mass suicides in 1945

in Germany after the Nazis lost World War II. Rather than face defeat, 7,000 people in Berlin alone took their lives. Like a bunch of cucks. Oh, my goodness. And these people were mostly civilians. They were not high rank in Nazis that were looking to avoid punishment. These were people who just could not handle their way of life ending. They couldn't handle being wrong.

Again, we have covered this in cults again and again. We've talked about this as soon as you realize your entire life has been wrong. You've allowed a certain thing to exist for so long. You never spoke up. You were just a part of it. You kind of just kept going. Once you admit at some point, oh, wow, this is crazy. I'm not gonna commit suicide.

That means you've negated years of your life. And so there are people... It's so much easier... It's fucked up by that point to commit suicide than to change. And then there's the religiously motivated mass suicides. The most famous of which being Heaven's Gate. Oh, yeah. For those of you who don't know, in 1997, 39 people followed a self-made castrato

named Marshall Applewhite. You wore his shirt on New Year's Eve and we have a great Instagram video on Ben Kizil one. That was a Christmas gift from Carolina. Oh, very nice. It was a wonderful Christmas gift. So that man led 39 people into death after he promised them that killing themselves was the only way they could ride in a spaceship that was for sure riding the tailwind of a comet named Halebop.

Can I ask this question? Do you think it's easier to get a bunch of people to commit suicide if they don't have penises? I guess. I think he thought that. Because my penis is like a reason to stay around. Like, I'm fine with... My penis gives me enough enjoyment to myself, even if it's tiny.

If you want to know exactly what it looked like the last days of the Applewhite gang, Desperate Living. Remember that when she gets the penis and then she doesn't get it and then she gets it cut off because she cuts it off. But the other thing with that Heaven's Gate, they used the Green Bay Packers G. They did. Which was very confusing for me as a child. Still using it to this day.

It is very difficult to create your own font. Jonestown is unique in that it's somewhat of a combination of all three of these. But the only thing of those three that were actually real and not a manipulation of Jim Jones was the despair that things just didn't work out. See, People's Temple was not made up of people looking for a reward and the afterlife like Heaven's Gate. The best Jones promised them was reincarnation

and even then it was more of an afterthought than anything. And they were not supervillains like Om Shinrikyo. They did not want to rule the world or force others to live life like they lived life. The only thing a lot of the members of People's Temple wanted was to be an example to the rest of us. These were people who were honest to God trying to make life better for themselves and for other people. They truly believed in the goodness of their way of life

because at its core, the message of People's Temple was positive. Alright. Well, it definitely started positive. That was the whole point. The whole point of it is that he, again, that's how you find yourself in the middle of a mass suicide. So long you were doing the right thing. You were genuinely a part of a community that was helping other communities. And I also think there's an inherent difference between something like Om Shinrikyo,

which was cool as fuck and metal and trying to take over the world. And then this is kind of closer again to a children of God slash Scientology. Where Scientology, what kept that thing together, what kept Elron Hubbard together was the fact that in the end it was about money. He was trying to make money and it's weird having that other side goal is what keeps it alive and keeps it going today. Where Jim Jones, again, what happened was that he, I think the central question of all these episodes are going to be

how does someone go from somebody who is like genuinely trying to help society into maniacal, power-hungry cult leader that now, which is Kissel, you're going to have to watch out for with your fucking future in politics. Oh, yeah. Because Israel is shit always goes. Oh, yeah. And there's no way it's not going to go great. Not hundreds and hundreds of episodes of my voice being recorded on this show alone

that could sink any political career despite any amount of charm. Well, these people, a lot of them did believe in Jim Jones. Yes, but a lot of the others only believed in his message and they let Jim Jones get away with a lot of shit because of that. They believed in racial equality and they believed in social justice even though that term has become loaded in recent years. But either way, People's Temple did great things. In the 25 years they were in existence and made the lives of many of their members

and many of the members in those people's communities better. All right. But at the center of it all was a man who could have walked the path of the righteous but eventually chose evil. As an example of where People's Temple and Jim Jones started and where they ended, let's compare excerpts from two of Jim's speeches. Here's an earlier sermon made in a People's Temple church in San Francisco to hundreds of smiling people.

You look out at the crowd, everyone's smiling, they're hugging each other. There's like, you actually feel like a love in the room when you watch this. Do you think it's drug related? No. This is not. This is a sober bunch. This is an absolute, except for Jim Jones himself. Yes, a staunchly sober bunch. All right.

Like it was a huge role. It's like the difference between looking at footage from the studio audience from when the Cosby show was filmed then. And then now if you do a get a group together and show episodes of the Cosby show to them now. Different reaction, hindsight 2020, sure. Let's hear this first one. Now, now will each of you give a very fond embrace,

a salutary kiss of greeting to your neighbor. Let's fill this atmosphere with warmth. All right, that's the first one. All right, very nice. Yeah, it's very nice. It's very positive. Everyone in the crowd is hugging each other. Kind of a Bing Crosby Christmas special.

He is. He is. And this is before the sunglasses. Yeah. And that's also how you know when things go wrong in a friend's life. If they start wearing tinted sunglasses inside, that is always a very bad sign. Absolutely.

Now, here is Jim Jones and his very last speech made about a decade later after the mass suicide, the mass murder in Jonestown had already begun. Well, you will regret it this very day if you don't die. You'll regret it if you don't die. You'll regret it. Too many people. I saved them. I saved them.

But I made my example. I made my expression. I made my manifestation. And the world was ready, not ready for me. Paul said I was a man born out of due season. I've been born out of due season just like all we are. And the best testimony we can make is to leave this goddamn world. It's like the spiritual version of one of those pre-meth, post-meth billboards.

But the drug for Jim Jones was power. And he just like slowly rotted out his teeth. No, the drug for Jim Jones was also amphetamine. Oh, okay. Yes, yes. That was him high as fuck. Because at that point he had, this is, you know, because in the beginning he was really clean, almost too clean. He was sober to a point where I thought, I think it's disarming.

Obnoxious and sober, yeah. By this point, it's the opposite where he saw his teeth, they're all fucked up, he's there screaming. I also will say Jim Jones is very similar to L. Ron Hubbard. And I wonder if there is a thing to it where they have a sort of feminine aspect to them. Where Jim Jones, once he started dressing up all the time and he started doing his hair and doing all these things. And then the kind of the weird affected speech that started happening later on in his life, very similar to L. Ron Hubbard. I wonder if there's something about the baphometic duality that these guys have that attracts people to them as well. Where they have kind of feminine aspects and masculine aspects and that makes them very attractive to people.

Yeah, that's a good point. Well, I think the affect- Get you a guy who can do both. That's what I always say. Get you a leader who can do both. Well, I think the affected way of speech, the more feminine affective way of speech that Jim Jones took on. I mean, we're going to see exactly why later on, but he started to make an affectation where he tried to speak like an old black woman. Yes, that's how he did the Oracle.

I am 1,000% serious when I say like that, that is one of the affectations that he made. And we're going to see exactly why he did that later on in the series. And I would get in trouble for this. You don't get in trouble for that. You've done that. I would get in trouble. Are you putting yourself in free speech jail because no one's put you in free speech jail? I'm already upset.

The victim in all of this is Henry Zabrowski. As it is, as it is, as it is, as always. It all comes down, it all trickles down to me. As we said, I think the biggest mistake about Jonestown that people make, and we've been guilty of this ourselves in our past episodes, is to only examine the end. You look at the end and you wonder how people got there, but most of us don't take the time to understand it. And just like all cults, to understand it, we've got to understand the person behind it. Absolutely.

But before we get to the life of Jim Jones, I've got to name my main sources for this episode. The first main source is The Road to Jonestown by Jeff Gwynn, released just last year with the benefit of 40 years hindsight. It's a fascinating and highly recommended book. That is, it's a little more sober and even with the storytelling than the other one that we chose. The other main source is Raven by John Jacobs and Tim Ryderman. This one was published in 1982, only four years after the Jonestown massacre. And although it's widely considered the definitive Jonestown account,

it doesn't really benefit from the passage of time as The Road to Jonestown does. Which is great, I like having these two perspectives. We've both learned a lot. The Road to Jonestown is a wonderful book. And also the documentary Deceived is pretty wonderful too, because that's from a Christian perspective of the people's temple. And it's literally just passers going, What the fuck happened?

But also a part of it's like them, I could see the jealousy being like, This guy, this is the guy you like. It's like the fans of Dane Cook. It's the fans of Pat Nozwell looking at the fans of Dane Cook being like, This guy! They're all the same to me. So please, if you want to know more about this story, go buy these books and support the authors.

That's The Road to Jonestown and Raven. So without further ado, let's get into the life of Jim Jones and try to figure out how and why Jonestown ended the way it did. Hmm, James Warren Jones was born in Crete, Indiana on May 13th, 1931. His father like wasn't a Flavorade magnet, was he? That would be incredible. That would be amazing if he was birthed into the Flavorade, into that entire hierarchy, that theocracy that is the Flavorade Company.

Their only god is Flavorade. Oh no, he was the son of a wildly bizarre couple named Lynetta and James Thurman Jones. Although Lynetta was not his mother's birth name. He was born Lunnet Putnam in 1902. I think it's Lunnet. I think it's Lunnet. But Lunnet is Putnam.

Well, I mean, spelling wise, there's no E at the end of it, it's just L-U-N-N-E-T-T. You give her some barbells, she squats, she squats, she knows how to do squats. Where do you want me to put the cake? It was probably Lunnet, yes. Beautiful. She was what could be described as a lifelong pain in the ass.

Okay. Her marriage to Big Jim was actually her fourth, having already exhausted three men by the time she was a hair over 25. Well, if they can't keep up, get out of here. I like her. She was 25, she was also described as an old maid, which is a fun thing about the time period. Page Rearkey talking.

Jim Jones' father, James, was a World War I veteran who'd had his lungs ruined in a German gas attack, essentially weakening him physically and mentally for the rest of his life. That was something I wanted to get more into at some point about the gas victims of World War I, because those guys, it was a whole ruined generation of people. Like, all those people, because they were deeply debilitated. Yeah, we talked about it a little bit in our Edgewood series

about the effects of these gases on men and what it actually does to them. But, you know, a lot of people that came back from that war, a lot of people who had these sort of respiratory problems, you know, they go past it and they live full lives. But, James Jones was not that type of man. He was a bit of a pussy. Uh-oh.

Well, he was just a non-figure. I want to say pussies are very strong. Thank you. So we'll say he's a bit of a dick, Henry. Thank you. Yeah, he was a non-figure. He was unimpressive and unambitious from cradle to grave. But, he was a member of a prominent and rich family.

To be fair, it's not, you can't be ambitious in the cradle. You're a baby. You can be ambitious in the cradle. What can you do? I was a baby sitting there just, like, just, uh-uh-uh-uh, doing pull-ups on the crib. Oh, I don't know about that. Trying to make my penis longer,

wrapping it around the bars of the crib, just leaning back, leaning back, just trying to be like, I will be a man about town, saying it to myself. But, the thing is about James Jones is that he was a member of a prominent and rich family, which is exactly why Lynette glommed on to him, despite him being damn near old enough to be her father.

Now, the townsfolk called him Big Jim to distinguish him from our little Jimmy. But, by the time this guy reached his fifties, he was so beaten down and defeated that they'd taken to calling him Old Jim instead. Not clever with the nicknames. Pretty much on the nose. Well, he looked like a thinner Steve Bannon.

By the time he, no, because he was just haggard, like, just, like, sitting on a stool just wasting away at the card house because it was a dry county that they lived in, so he couldn't even booze it up. Like, these are people during the prohibition. They kept the prohibition going after the prohibition had already been rescinded.

So, he just sat there fucking sober, playing cards till he died. Well, cards in pool. Well, that's fine to do. What's wrong with that? That's a great way to end it all. Just sitting there, no, for 20, the last 20 years of his life, it was just drinking coffee and soda at the pool hall,

and a lot of times he wouldn't even play. He'd just sit there. I don't know if you guys understand what living your best life looks like because I think that that might be it. Technically, that is self-care. That would be a self-care Saturday nowadays. Yes, but he was not happy, you don't think?

No, he was, well, he was just whatever. He was whatever. Like, he just, he just coasted through life, not really doing much of anything. Okay. So, Lynetta claimed that when she was about to be pregnant with Jim, she saw a vision of, quote, the Egyptian River of Death.

That's not a good omen. No, that's horrifying. Then she saw herself dying on the cross as Lynetta had a penchant for the dramatic. Okay. She was a character. Yeah, I like her. Yeah, she said that she was then visited

by the spirit of her mother, who told her that it was not her time yet but she still had to fulfill her destiny of giving birth to a great man. Ooh. Now, knowing what we do about Lynetta, this is probably horse shit. This woman was constantly telling lies

to make herself more impressive than she really was and can be best described as a woman who never quite grew out of her snotty, rebellious teenage years. I like her. Well, because you know what it is, it's true, right? Because you're right here. Part of it's like she did defy the convention over time. She wore pants.

She liked to square a lot. She smoked in public. She was like kind of like in-your-face kind of person. She just, the problem is she was just difficult for the sake of being difficult. Yeah, I guess so. But at the same time, but you can also see her bumping against the society

that didn't understand that she wanted more from life. But the problem is that she didn't put the work in. No. To make some changes. She was like my grandmother. Very difficult. The times were difficult. Everyone had to be difficult.

Everything was hard. Your grandmother was a part of the problem. No, I said my grandmother, who grew up in Minnesota, not my Oma, who was part of the solution to a problem. They were very activist against, they were against the Nazi party. Ben, I think you need to be real careful about how you use the word solution.

Solution. I think solution is my grandfather once again started labor unions all across this world in Africa. He was a globalist. He considered himself a man of the world. Yeah, like he was constantly apologizing. He was constantly being Matt Damon. Well, he could have committed suicide.

And then I wouldn't be here. Interesting. Well, let's just get an example of the difficultness of Lynetta Jones. First of all, her constantly changing names. She was born lunette. But then she changed that to Lynette. And then she changed that to Lynetta.

Only thing is, she didn't tell anybody she wanted to be called Lynetta. So she got super fucking offended when people didn't call her goddamn Lynetta. Yeah, she took it as a personal effect. Because when she first met Big Jim's family, she was going as Lynette. But then she wanted to be started calling Lynetta.

But they didn't know that. So they just started calling her Lynette. So she took personal offense to that. You got to find the game within the game. They didn't have serious XM. There was nothing else to do. The only thing they had to do was find ways to become upset, to feel emotion.

So this was her approach. But it's like showing up saying that my name's Death Daddy now. But I was just calling your Sean two weeks ago. Yeah. She also had apparently a filthy mouth. But this was Indiana in the 30s. So it sounds like their standard for a filthy mouth

for a woman was just saying damn a lot. She spit a lot too. She liked to spit. Yeah. And she wore pants. Disgusting. I feel like we're being a little harsh on this woman who was just trying to survive in the 1930s in Indiana. She wasn't trying to survive. This was a person who, like she would so much rather,

say that she was a great person rather than actually being a great person. You have to say it first? You have to. Michael Jordan said it. I will be the best. And then he became the best. And you know what?

Jim Carrey wrote himself a check for a million dollars. We know this. We all know the God aim story. Now he's deeply troubled. Now he's fucking, he's gone. He's an ego maniac. The documentary was terrible. But you know what it is?

I get it. You're from Indiana. A part of this whole, they keep talking about in the road to Jonestown is that in Indiana, the whole thing about is conformity. At this time. It was about to get along.

Go along to get along. Yeah, go along to get along is what they say. Yeah. Keeping up with the Joneses. You're in there. You're a part of a machine. You're a part of a neighborhood. You're part of a community.

So part of it's like, yes, I think it would have been interesting if she, I mean, we're making judgment calls now, fucking 70 years later, 100 years later, or whatever fucking whatever the time period is. But it's like, we're making these judgment calls now. But at the time it's like, if you wanted to be different,

you should have moved to goddamn New York. Not everyone just pick up and moved to New York. Not in the 1930s. That was still the Pony Express era. Am I wrong? Hey man, back in the 30s, there were thousands of strong independent women who took life by the fucking horns

and made it for themselves. Lynette just wanted to sound big. You know, she just wanted to be different. That's all she wanted. She didn't want to be great. She just wanted to be different. She was like, for example, she was a big believer in like destiny

and reincarnation. She said that in a past life, she'd been a successful writer, a great woman. But in this life, her destiny had been ruined by pettiness and jealousy. She already did it in a past life. I like this approach to be like, been there, done that.

Now I'm onto my Cheeto phase and I think I'm going to get some flavor aid. We're looking at the seeds that it again planted into Jimba Jones. Yes. These are the little, the Jimba. All of these lessons from his mother and a part of it is the constant blaming of other people.

And waking up with this idea of being, she said, I was chosen by God to give birth to a great son, which is a part of what she had retrofitted for herself to make her feel normal about herself having a child, was that she put it all into Jim. And now he's got to live up to his mother's expectations, which are going to haunt him for the rest of his life. As far as mother issues go among sociopaths,

she's not the worst mom that we've ever covered in these series here. She absolutely is not. In the podcast. Well, I mean, if you want to compare to a serial killer's mom, you can kind of compare it to Jeffrey Dahmer's parents because even though she was saying that Jim Jones was a great man, was going to be a great man,

her son was going to be a great man, she was constantly telling her son that he was going to be a great man, she didn't actually want to put in the work of actually raising her kid. So she pretty much ignored him for most of his upbringing. And in fact, when he was born, she just, she dismissed him by saying he resembled,

quote, an ugly Eskimo. And I am not going to say that she is wrong. She definitely had a bit of a Heidi Klue moment with that by calling him an ugly Eskimo, but she is correct. I just picture her buying him sunglasses, huge aviators when he's like six months old and we just slowly watch him grow into him. But that's not what happened,

but that's what I fantasized. If it was a Pixar movie. Yeah, and Tim's dad wasn't any help either. Like we said, he spent all his time over at the pool hall drinking coffee and soda. And in other words, Jim Jones was left to his own devices to do whatever he wanted. And what little Jimmy wanted to do

was almost exclusively abnormal shit. Yeah, he got right into the weird shit very fast. So for some reason, Lynetta would never let Jimmy into the house if she wasn't there. As a lot of the time, she was on the assembly line over at the old Winchester glass factory.

So it was a part of the arrangement with the Jones family was that the, because James couldn't get his shit together enough to have a job, he couldn't keep a job, he couldn't stay on his feet. A part of it he had the lack of spirit, right? Where they say a brittle spirit. Is that he had it again and again.

It's a thing that he suffered from. So the family took them in saying, well, we'll buy you a house and we'll take care of you. But a part of this is that once we have you set up, you're going to, Lynetta's going to have to get a job to cover all of this shit. She's going to have to cover

at least some of the house expenses and we'll take care of everything else. If she doesn't want to, she felt deep resentment about it. Well, yeah, she should though, because her husband's playing cards. He's not even drinking. I honestly think if he was getting the saw stop,

I'd be like, well, okay, he's got a card and an alcoholic problem. She's out there working in the factory. I kind of understand why she's constantly pissed. Yeah. It's a 50-50 problem. It's a 50-50 problem. She also thought she was better than having a job.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She thought that, and she also refused to talk to anybody in town. They try speaking to her and she'd turn her nose up at them because they didn't talk about the great things that she wanted to talk about.

She's a Roosevelt. Yeah, and I kind of get that, but she also never made any real effort. It was always her being better than everybody else and her building herself up. Like, for example, the Winchester Glass Factory. She was just an assembly line worker, but years later,

she told everyone that she was a labor union leader, that she had led everyone in an uprising to have the workers treated well. Well, it was not true. She enjoyed it. She didn't do jack shit. All right. She did nothing.

She made glass. That's good. She did. So while she was working, Jimmy wandered the neighborhood and was eventually taken in by a sweet old Nazarene preacher's wife named Myrtle Kennedy,

which is, by the way, the perfect name for a woman who talks about church all the time. Absolutely Myrtle. You want some thin cookies? Yeah. Love them. I made them specifically so you wouldn't like them. All right.

She was a part of the Nazarene community, and a part of the Nazarene community is that if you join the church, you can't go to other churches. A part, like I say, it's very devout. They're very sweet, but they were the only group in this small Indiana town that evangelized.

Everybody else didn't. The other groups were like, the other churches people would just come and go, as they pleased. Right. I know the Nazarenes. Oh, yeah. They were God-bothers, as people call them.

They believed that if you did not go to the Nazarene church, you were going to hell. All right. Bar none. So in Jim Jones, because the Jones family didn't go to church at all. Which fucked up the whole town. Yeah.

Because that's what people did. Oh, of course. Because the town knows everybody's fucking business. Everybody's on top of each other's bullshit. So a part of it is that everybody does the same shit. On Wednesday, they all go see the movie in the town square, which is what they actually did. They all go shopping on Saturday,

and on Sunday, everybody goes to church. And when you don't go to church, you stick out. But little Jimmy Jones started doing it, and he was weird about it immediately. But this is good. So he's understanding religion is a social construct used for economic means, for jobs, for relationships. Nothing to do with God.

Yeah. And guess what he does? He twists it to he kills 900 people. Well, he only killed 300, and then the 600 did self-kill. No, he killed them. No. He killed them.

He murdered all of them. That's a good point. Once again, Jones Town was not a mass suicide. It was a mass murder. Immediately. Immediately. Rolling back every time.

Oh, no. That is a good point. Oh, yeah. That is scale it back. So Myrtle Kennedy saw in Jim Jones a soul to save. So she started taking Jimmy to church every single Sunday, and Jim loved every single second of it. He immediately took to church.

And in fact, he was starting to quote scripture back to her. Even as a young child, long passages of scripture, he immediately had a knack for this. And pretty soon, though, he started to get curious about other churches. So every Sunday, Jim Jones would bounce from church to church to church, taking notes the entire time. Sometimes he'd go to one church for about an hour,

and then head to another church to catch the end of that one. Wow. Now, it's very interesting, because before the church thing happened, when he was rolling around town, when he was just, he'd just walk with dogs following him everywhere, because he used to feed him,

and dogs used to just follow him where he'd go back and forth, and he met some other little kid whose father was a pilot. And the first thing that Jim Jones said when he met this kid and the dad, he's like, I always wanted to be a pilot. And they're like, okay, so he went and he became obsessed with planes for like six weeks, and then dropped out and started doing the church shit.

But this guy, what he started realizing immediately was, oh, obsessions and things like this, this is how you fit into society with people. He never once felt the genuine pull towards church, or towards airplanes. It was about seeing how everybody responded to the people,

like the guy is a pilot, watching the guy as a pilot going to the airport, watching all these people respond to this pilot with respect, and giving him power. When he goes to the church seeing this priest, lead all of these people again and again and again, so immediately, he's like doing math,

he's Martha Stewarding it, watching the holes where he needs to go, like he sees the matrix, he doesn't feel emotions. It's like when a friend starts becoming like a craft beer person. Oh, he said they're just like, now they're all about craft beer, and all they ever talk about is hops.

The worst is when they start brewing it themselves, and you have to taste it and be like, that's good. That's good. So do we know, now do we know what he was feeding the dogs? Why were they following him? Any ideas on that?

You'll see. You'll see, okay. So he's going around church to church, almost like someone at a comic con. Yeah. You know, just going to find out all the different exhibits, and really trying to learn. Yeah.

I mean, he was learning the entire time, and like Henry said, he was absolutely obsessed, and that obsession had a huge effect on his behavior, and how he thought about things. And since it was obvious he had weirdness in his blood, he started doing weird shit that freaked all the other kids out.

Even as a child, Jim Jones was obsessed with death. One night, he took a bunch of other kids on a field trip to the local casket factory. Cool job, awesome job. And the local casket factory, like everyone else in town, let their doors unlock, so the kids were able to just walk right in. Different time.

And once they got inside, Jim directed all the kids to lie down in the coffins so they could all feel like what it was like to be dead. Cool. And he didn't do it just once. He did this multiple times, and every time he did it, fewer and fewer kids came along with him.

They didn't want to meditate. It could be very relaxing. It is very relaxing to just mime the sweet release of death. But he also just going, and it was true that he said they would eventually watch him go by himself. What are we talking here? 12, 13, 14 years old?

No, he's pretty young. He's not quite 10. This is like 9, 10. Oh, okay. So he's a savant of the leadership. Of the disgusting morbidity. Of dictator. And then there were the animal funerals.

Jim would trawl the town looking for the corpses of small animals. And once he found them, he'd invite other kids along and he'd hold elaborate funeral services. Sometimes in the middle of recess. This guy, I mean, he could have just been a very successful,

wealthy televangelist. He's got a Joel Olstein vibe, a Benny Hinn type thing happening. He was. Yes, I don't, well, I don't know, obviously we'll get into the dark turn here. But at this point,

there's some good things that you could carve into a good person. He could have been a lot of things. He was trying to be like the heavy metal version of a preacher for a while, being like, I walk the walk, I don't go, and I will get into this.

But he didn't like the idea of personal flashiness. And so when those funeral services started freaking out the older kids, and they stopped coming, just like they stopped coming along with them to the casket factory, Jim got the bright idea to make the younger kids attend.

And those younger kids were just happy for the attention of an older boy at first, but when they tried to leave, Jim would bully them into staying. And then after that, Jim Jones was introduced to who seems to be his very first hero, Adolf Hitler.

Oh, wrong choice. Jim, you made the wrong choice. Wrong choice there. Was all the other kids, because it's like a time showing these news rules in World War II. Yeah. And all the other kids are having,

they love playing like Americans and running around being like, being like, oh, I'm here to save all the concentration camps. What are concentration camps, little Billy? I don't know, but we're going to find out soon, I bet. Liberate him.

But he didn't ever believe in the ideology that Hitler was spewing. He just liked the presence. It was the style. It was the style. Yes, it was. He never, he didn't go Nazi or anything. Absolutely not.

No, he had, in fact, Nazi beliefs were kind of the opposite of his beliefs. He just loved the pageantry. He loved the style. He watched Adolf Hitler. He watched how the man commanded a crowd and the way he commanded the crowd,

the way he'd go real low and he'd talk real low and then get louder and whip the crowd up and then bring him back down again. He took notes the entire time and he saw in Adolf Hitler someone emulate.

And he loved Hitler so much that he formed his own little squad of Nazis. And he pretended to be the Fuhrer instead of a member of the Allies like all of the reasonable kids did. And when kids his own age, again, wouldn't participate, Jim Jones drafted the younger ones.

It is really, really difficult to get those bigger, older kids into the bunker. It does seem like a very strange peanut strip. You know, like, I can see Snoopy just really get into Hitler and just like leadin' a whole tribe.

Peanotsies with fuckin' Charlie Brown's kind conscription. Jim would take these kids out to a secluded area and direct them to Goose Step while Jim pretended to be Hitler like they were at a Nuremberg rally. And when the kids screwed up,

Jimmy would hit him in the calves with a branch. He was about 14 when he was doin' this. He would have been an incredible record producer. Honestly, if he wanted to be... He was! Eventually they... Jonestown,

eventually the People's Temple recorded some pretty good albums. They always do. They always do. And they're always fine. The only one who's got the source family which we'll do at some point, that was the best fuckin' cult albums I've ever heard.

It's all jammy. It's got that African... It's great. I think my favorite cult musicians of all time, the Partridge family, they don't get enough credit for what a crazy cult they were. I wanna real quick dive into this concept

of his interest in the stylistics and the approach of Hitler. And that I think that a part of this has got to do with a weird form of either sociopathy or what would turn into some sort of behavior he is always off. There's, to me,

there's something even more nefarious about separating the style from the substance of Hitler than just being a Nazi. I think a part of it's a guest you can hate and buy the idolatry, like the ideas behind Nazism, right? And fill with his hate

and then eventually either release it or be proven wrong or live your whole life as a person filled with hate. But there's somebody else... There's something else about somebody that cherry picks something, like a thing,

like the idea of his speech style or the pageantry. He cherry picks that off the top of one of the worst ideologies that existed, the Nazi idol. And he used it to his own advantage. And in some weird way, it's almost like fucked up

in a worse way, where it's just like he uses the quote-unquote the good stuff from the Nazis to... and then he'll use it later on, too. Yeah, he completely... I mean, of course, he's also a child when he's watching this,

so he doesn't have a very developed mind, but he's not looking at what Hitler's doing. He's just looking at how he's doing it. He sees how Hitler is getting these people all riled up, but he doesn't look at what that sort of style does to people. He's not paying attention to that at all.

The shallowness of his style, right? Should they talk about how, like, that's the thing with Ted Bundy we see all the time and that weird thing about serial killers, like, even the ones that they said had emotions. It's that shallowness that I think is... it's weird.

It's the banality of evil, kind of. It's like a kind of thing where people are just... you kind of view it from a detached point of view. But isn't that normal, though? That's how you learn. You emulate, and then you're just a shadow. You're a shell of who you're emulating,

and then you fill it with your own personality and your own ideas, your own ideology, right? Yeah. I mean, it's smart. It's smart in a way. It tells humans learn. Actually, I think in a way,

like, Jim Jones, he, as we're going to kind of see, like, I think it's actually... if he hadn't done evil, like, it's actually a pretty good example of how to be successful. Yes. No, it's true.

How to live your life. Like, it very much is. Like, Jim Jones, if he's anything else, he was a successful person. Yep. But he just chose to use that success for evil.

Unfortunately. Rather than good. It was never enough for him, and that was about... Yep. And with these young kids that he made play Nazi, since an older kid

was paying attention to him, the younger kids mostly put up with it. They put up with him hitting him with a switch. And this was one of the most important lessons Jim Jones learned, and he learned it as a teenager.

If the kids, your own age, don't want to play with you, then you find the ones no one else is paying attention to, and you play with them. Yeah. Or you go way old

and hang out with 75-year-olds. And he did that too. Boom. He did that too. Yeah. He's on fire with finding friends. He learned that all you have to do is just give them

a little bit of attention, and they'll follow you anywhere. Yep. See, unlike most of the serial killers we cover, cult leaders tend to be legally clever. Mm-hmm.

These people are brilliant. Well, they're politicians made... Politicians and serial killers combined into one. Yeah. Yeah, it's politicians and serial killers, and then business people. Right, yeah.

Because then you're... Essentially, you're forming, like, a company. Like, what it ended up being, especially this, he has to, like, bring people in. It becomes a money thing, because then he becomes obsessed with money, too.

I love the idea of Jim Jones, like, I need to LLC. He did do that. Yeah, he did do that. So what's your product exactly? Like a death cult? Well, the most impressive skill, cult leaders,

is always that of manipulation. Jim Jones learned it very early on in life. But like serial killers, Jim was also into a bit of animal mutilation. Uh-oh. According to the book Raven, Jim once tried to sew a chicken leg onto a duck with a string

just to see what would happen. It's against God, Jim. You don't want to do that. It doesn't like it, but if I saw it on Food Network, Oh, yeah. I'd be, like, sliding over. That's out of bounds.

Flavor overload. But true to the duality of Jim Jones, he tried to take care of animals as well. He just wasn't very good at it. He kept carrier pigeons, and would send them on secret missions, but they all inevitably died, and each one got a funeral.

Suicide bombers, huh? Kamikaze pigeons. But then again, he would also arbitrarily shoot his friend Don Foreman with a BB gun. That is fun. My brother used to do that to me. My brother used to do that to me,

and I used to shoot him right back. And we had great BB gun wars all in the basement, all across the home. All across the neighborhood. And they looked like real guns. Nowadays, I would just be shot by the police. But back in the 90s, we had freedom. Well, he wouldn't just shoot him with a BB gun.

He'd take actual guns, like, 22s, and he'd just pull it him at his friend and just smile and smile. And one time, he actually shot at his friend Don, and this is very telling of Jim Jones. Don was hanging out at Jim Jones' house, and he's like, alright, well, you know, I gotta go.

I gotta go do my chores. And Jim Jones was pissed off that he would leave, that he would even think about leaving before Jim Jones let him go. So as Don was walking away, Jim pointed a 22 at him and shot him in his general direction and hit a tree right next to the guy, and hit close enough where bark flew off

and hit his friend. Not good. But it's definitely a part of his own weird, his ego was so fragile that he could not do an activity that other people weren't into. Is that if other people were doing things, if he was doing something he was really into it and somebody rejected it, it's like they rejected him.

And they would reject the thing. Because you didn't like what I was doing, I'm taking personal offense because that means like you're rejecting me. We're just being like, no, we just didn't want to play with the fucking chicken leg attached to the duck. Well, it seems like a fun thing to do. This is something throughout his entire life.

If someone didn't want to go along with what Jim Jones did, he would consider it a personal betrayal. And that would happen every time someone tried to leave his church, because people were coming in and out a lot. And every time someone tried to leave, he took it as a personal betrayal. Did he sew a chicken leg to a turkey every time he was upset?

And then eventually Guy Fieri picked it up. That's what happened. It turns into that's the first lazy version of the Durducken. Guy Fieri, but yes. And by the way, RIP American Grill, I went there the final day December 31st and you could tell the way it staff was happy to be done. It was sad, it was sad.

But then again, from a young age, Jim Jones seemed to have a genuine interest in equality and social justice. As a teenager, he'd go over to the side of town where all the black people lived. He'd stand on a street corner and preach about everyone being equal in God's eyes. And people listened, because remember,

this is Indiana in the mid-40s. There weren't a whole lot of white people coming over to the black side of town for any reason. It was and I believe still is the clan capital of the country. It's pretty fucking awful. It wasn't just people, a white person coming over to their side of town.

It was also a white person coming over to preach racial equality. And although I do think Jim Jones truly believed in racial equality, as many of his followers did, as all of his followers did, I think Jim Jones may have also seen in this a path to power. He saw injustice, yes, but he also saw people that nobody else was paying attention to.

It was very smart. He realized both. It was like his own personal politics mixed with this. And then what is a stronger game than a thing that you both, you do believe in yourself? It's not horseshit. So at the very bottom of it, it's not horseshit. You don't have to spin horseshit.

You do believe in what you're doing, but at the same time, it's going to help your bottom line. You find a market, yep. An underexploited market. And that's one of the biggest complications in the story of Jim Jones. I do think he had good in him. I do think he did.

He only cared about others and helped them in astonishing ways, especially when it came to race relations. But considering how things eventually played out, you got to ask yourself, did Jim Jones truly try to follow his good intentions but still lost to evil? Or was he always a sociopath

who just saw a situation to manipulate? That's it. And I think that's the question we'll wrestle with with this entire series. But I think it's very interesting. I hate... I don't think people that are good all the way through ever really end up here.

I think in the end, it's got something to do with the shallowness of his choices to begin with. And we'll get into this. Well, I'm interested to see when the turn came because at this point, yeah, it seems like we have potential for an actual good leader.

So much great, but it's so much potential in him. He is a very disappointing figure. So let's get back to Jim's childhood weirdness. He somehow had an extensive knowledge of sex, which joined religion as pretty much the only two things he talked about, although no one really knows how he got the sexual information or if any of it was correct.

Now, I feel like you may have come from his mom because his mom was super into sex and talking about uncomfortable subjects. So I think maybe it came from her, which has got to be... got to really fuck you up later on down the line when your mom's making you all horny. You know what I mean?

It's the David Berg shit. I don't think you're supposed to get aroused when you have the conversation with your parents about sex. I don't think you're supposed to, but as Henry just said with David Berg, he did like it a little bit more than the rest do. Maybe they were talking about it in church also.

Sometimes church broaches the subject. God, no. I mean, what they say about that... In my church, we had sex and it was very weird. Very weird. Well, what they said about, what Jeff Gwynn said about Indiana in the road to Jonestown was that, you know, this was a farming community.

Sex was everywhere. I mean, you saw animals having sex with each other all the time. Chicken's fucking dogs. Dogs fucking cats. Cats fucking people. Crows fucking crows, because they are racist. I love crows. Yeah, and these are also like these are houses

with very thin walls. Sometimes houses with, you know, mom and dad in the same room as the kids. So sex was definitely heard. It was definitely seen, but it was not talked about. Well, yeah, and it really wasn't like a red shoe diaries level. No.

It was definitely like a guy named like Father Ted being like, all right, Mary, roll over. All right, TT. Red shoe diaries. That's a wild tool. Credit. And that's the credit. And that's an entire red shoe diary.

And then if you go back, David DeCovney was in it. I forget the name. Was it Shannon Tweed? Yeah, Shannon Tweed. She was a regular on the red shoe diaries. I feel like on the farm, it's called red hoof diaries. It could be. You're on fire.

Well, Jim Jones also, according to childhood friends, quoted in Raven, had a real big honker going. I can see it. What do you mean? Hold on a second. What? Big honker. He had a real pigs hog.

Yeah, he had a pig's leg down there. And Jim would also convince the other kids to have literal pissing contests. But Jim always won, and it was said he could pinch his peen in such a way as to get the stream up over a rooftop. Now, Lynette. Is it Lynette?

Lynette? Lunette? Your child. I've never seen a child urinate the way that your child urinates. He's going to be a leader. I told you, my son's a great man. You know that when the doctor first showed me to him,

I said, let's check this out. And I could fit a whole dime in his urethra. His weirdness continued on in the high school, where he took his mother's example in bad social habits and wouldn't speak to anyone unless he spoke to them first. OK. He was also one of those weird kids who wore his Sunday best to school every single day.

He was a school character. Yeah, yeah. Like the same thing where it's very similar to Jeffrey Dahmer, where he got his attention any way that he could. So he would dress up every single day like he was going to church. He would hold funerals during recess. And he would talk about Jesus all the time.

Honestly, I would have. Another situation where I would have been friends with him at this point. Yeah. Without a doubt, I would have just been like, what could I do, Jim? Like, stand there, look fat. I'm like, I can do that, Jim. That's my best.

Jim, I can do that. That's what I do best. Now, did he wear one outfit or multiple Sunday outfits? Because that makes a big difference. It was flax in a white shirt. I'm sure he had more than one. OK. Because he was always clean.

He wasn't like, you know, a dirty kid who, you know, just wore the same shit over and over again. Also dressing like a target employee. Did Target look at that and be like, that's going to be how we dress all of our employees? And sports wise, Jim, was terrible, but he'd always be down for coaching a team. And he did have a knack for organizing.

At 14, he put together a basketball league involving all the surrounding towns. He took stats. Everybody loved being a part of it. And it was successful for a while until Jimmy led a puppy to a trap door and let it fall to its death during a league meeting. Well, what the heck?

No one really knows why. They just, they were all hanging out. They were having a league meeting. And Jim was like, check this out, guys. Hey, guys, look. You ever seen an episode of Mr. Bean? I don't. You know, Mr. Bean can live through anything.

He can do absolutely anything. And you ever ask yourself, can a puppy live through anything? I don't, I never, I just don't. I named him Mr. Bean. Now let's see if he survives this episode. Mr. Bean falls down the stairs. I'm just here to learn pivots and how to shoot a basket. But he also, he's kind of like Rushmore.

Yeah. They are just kind of trying to do whatever, you know? All right. But after he pushed a puppy down a trap door, no one wanted to play for Jimmy anymore. What's the point of these trap doors? You always hear about trap doors. Why?

Is it goof? Trickery. What's the point of a trap door? Trickery and if you got to get rid of a bunch of pumpkins, and then go like the pumpkin, the pumpkin sale didn't go well, we can take it back out the door, and put it into the trap door. I don't know where the trap door goes.

We've heard about trap doors our whole life. I have no idea what's the point of a trap door. Trickery. For what? Trickery. Why? Why build it in? Bandits.

Bandits come in, you've got to have a place to go. All right. But this whole time, Jim was still focused on church, if not the Lord. Although he was fascinated by all the different services, he was most attracted to the apostolics. Now, apostolics are one of the crazier sex, known for laying hands and speaking at tongues.

Apostolics sounds like an adult perfume. It sounds like a triple X film set to Bethlehem, and the wise men are involved. It's the apostolics. Apostolics. Yeah, apostolics is a totally different story. This is very strange. Well, I've never heard the goddamn word said,

I just regret it, all right? No, I think you're right, yeah. I like where you took it. Well, they were extremely... That's a wretch who diaries I would watch. The apostolics. Well, apostolics put on extremely theatrical services, and in these, I think Jimmy found the kind of service

that combined the messages he enjoyed from the churches with all the excitement and crowd participation of a Nazi rally. But the biggest contradiction was, Jim was never really all that interested in the concept of God itself. Like I said, he was not concerned with the why of preachers and churches.

He was more interested in the how. Well, it's because his mom was an atheist, and she was a very rare atheist at the time, too. And because his father said nothing, she just pumped this kind of stuff into him. So he came out, and I love this concept of he hates, he hates the sky god. Yeah, that's what he would say,

he didn't care about this sky god. He was extremely condescending with all of this shit. You know exactly who this guy is. He would have done great in college in 1997. Absolutely, Christopher Hitchens and he could get along and talk a lot. He'd spent a lot of time on Reddit these days. A bit of a war hawk, Christopher Hitchens.

Other than that, I really appreciate it. Jim Jones, I mean, he was more interested in the actual teachings of Jesus, helping the poor sharing and living equally. In other words, the inherently socialist nature of Christianity. In fact, Jim Jones, he was an atheist as well, which is one of the reasons why he took a little detour

before becoming a man of God. And while on that detour, he would meet his wife, Marceline. Marceline seemed nice. Marceline seemed very nice. That's a great name, I like Marceline. I don't think I've ever heard that as a name before. I haven't either, it's a very nice name,

and she was a nice woman. So in 1947, Jim's father died of respiratory failure. By this time, Jim and his mother had already moved on to Richmond, Indiana, leaving old Jim behind, as if he never meant a thing to him, and he probably hadn't. And the saddest thing is, his father died

the same day he finally got four aces. Four aces in one hand, and he passed away that day. And Kenny Rogers was actually playing the game with him. Oh! He started scribbling down with the coil. What's you writing, Kenny?

The best song in the world about doing dumb shit. How do you think, how suicidal is Kenny Rogers having to sing that song? Or do you think he's come full circle now where he appreciates the millions and millions of dollars it's brought in? He loves that song. He loves that song.

Unironically, he knows. It paid for his entire puffy face. Everybody's just filled with stem cells. It's good though, you gotta know when to fold them. Neither Jim nor Lynetta attended old Jim's funeral, and in the last years of old Jim's life, Lynetta took multiple lovers.

But even so, old Jim still got a big tombstone with his wife's name etched next to his in the vain hope that although she left him in life, she'd join him in death. Okay. She did not. She did not. They literally just acted like he didn't exist.

As soon as they both left town, they were just like, fuck it. And then he just died alone at the pool hall. Yeah. His epitaph is, I mean it's for some reason, one of the saddest I've ever read. It just says, You gotta know when to hold them.

Know when to fold them. I didn't know when to hold them. It just says, everyone in the world is my friend. Sad. That's so sad. It's so sad. But it's also sweet if everyone was his friend, that it would be really nice.

It's very sweet. But if it was like Bob Barker's tombstone. Yeah, because he had many friends. Did Bob Barker die? Yeah, he did. He died, right? I think. I think he committed suicide by cop.

I'm not really sure. I don't know about that. Over the Plinko? Yeah. But he did, he just sat at the bar alone. He had no real friends. And that kind of reminds me of, do you remember the movie Barfly?

Of course. That's based off the life of Charles Bukowski. Yes. I forget what Mickey Warwick plays him. And he goes, this was from my friends. This was from my friends. Like just like pointing out to the whole bar and everyone's just trying to avoid eye contact with him.

Yeah, there's always one of those sad guys at the old bar. Yeah. One thing they did do though, they did not bring, they did not bring Lynetta back to, back to Indiana. Because she did die in Jonestown

before the mass murder. But she did die in Jonestown. But still for some reason, they still etched her year of death and date of death on that tombstone that was right next to, that she shared with old Jack. An analogy for how shallow

the entire Jones family was. Yeah. It's the only thing that makes a grave digger sad is an empty, unwritten on tombstone. He has to do something. I handle bones and corpses all day long. I will not see a tombstone with writer's block. So when Jim and Lynetta arrived in Richmond,

they were no longer getting financial help from old Jim's family as they once were. So Jim had to get a job alongside Lynetta and he got a job as an orderly at Reed Memorial Hospital. And he turned out to be surprisingly fantastic at this job and seemed to relish in taking care of the most disgusting aspects,

like cleaning up vomit, moving around dead bodies, and disposing of amputated lens. Someone's got to do it. Yeah, someone's got to do it. And he saw the gap of being like, if I go do this with a smile on my face, I'm going to work my way up really high

at Reed Memorial Hospital. Sure. And Jeff Gwynn, he wrote that Jim would even make things like changing adult diapers and giving sponge baths. He'd make them fun. Well, how could you? He'd just have fun with it.

I'm going to say this. Honestly, in any other context, I don't ever really want an orderly who makes sponge baths fun. It's like having a funny dentist. I don't need a funny dentist. I hate a funny dentist. I hate a funny dentist.

It can be fun. The experience, you should have a laugh. Once I'm so fully debased that I'm in a warm bath and my family is no longer involved with me and they are cleaning shit from my hoe, I don't want any fucking yucks. I want this to be a business-like procedure that is done as fast as fucking possible.

I don't want you running your light at your late night tight five on me. Well, I can't feel my goddamn feet anymore and no one's here to take care of me. I know you and I know for a fact you are going to love it. You are going to like how red it is because I've been eating a lot of beets.

Yeah, I like to change the color of it and I can do it by anything I eat. I'm making this fun. I'm the one who makes baths fun. A nightmare. And speaking of just having fun with it, Jim also managed to get a job for his childhood friend, Don Foreman.

Although this was not fun for Don. Jim picked right back up where he left off in torture in his old friend. He knew Don was deathly afraid of the dark so Jim made sure to assign him shifts in the darkest depths of the hospital. Conquer your fears. I don't know, man.

At this point I have learned only, well, other than the small animal mutilation, but at this point he's not the worst guy on earth. I guess Molly isn't that bad. I feel worse for his father. I'm worried he's taking care of the elderly. Jim, I just gotta say, been a long time. Been friends a long time.

I'm just feeling great just being around here. Thank you so much for the job. I feel like maybe we could deal with a little bit less of the pumpkin, a little bit less of the pranking and maybe we could just be like normal friends, you know? Shut the fuck up, Donnie. See that light switch over there. Why don't you go turn that light switch?

Just turn it off. I kind of said something here, Jim. I said, hey, I don't realize you're something. I mean, because sometimes it makes good hippie-jippies about being in the dark, you know? Just turn it off. I don't really understand what I'm supposed to mean. Letting me in, Jim.

I don't really understand. Gotta go. In another time, Jim made Don go into the room of an old man who had elephantitis of the scrotum. Just to make him squirt. They were so big, they drug the ground.

Now listen, Jim, I want to say just straight up top again, thank you for the job. It's been a really long time, friends. It's fun to be around here. You really know how to yuck it up. You dress nice, but I'm not really comfortable in front of an old man with regular balls.

I don't really want to be in front of a man with big, grotesque, deformed balls. Is that just me? Maybe I'm being difficult, maybe I'm being judgmental. You see that light switch? It's tough. Anything could happen to me now. As soon as it's dark.

Elephantitis, oh my god. There's that, do you have that BBC show? I think it's just called Strange Bodies. I saw an elephantitis of the balls. Oh my god, that looks painful. It looks extremely painful. But even though Jim spent a lot of time fucking with his friend, he was

fantastic with old people. Jones was excellent at bedside manner and can make even the most occultation smile. Years later, he would use these skills to attract elderly people to his congregation, as elderly people actually made up a large part of people's

temple. See, Jim Jones took every single experience in his life, paid particular attention to his strengths, and used every single one of them. He was constantly learning what worked and what didn't. Almost like a sociopath, which is the reason

why they talk about CEOs of companies showing signs of psychopathy and psychopathology is because you have to be able to so good at commercial. So you can't be wrapped up in emotions and shit in order to do stuff like this all the time. He was so capable that it's scary. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, this guy, he turned out to be evil. He absolutely did. And that's one of the tragedies of Jim Jones, is like using these skills, he could have very easily been a great man. Yeah, it seems like he's doing some good service at this point. He really is. So it's while working

at the hospital that Jim met his first and only wife. And although she would be far from his last lover, he would be her first and last as far as we know. That's all she needed. Marceline Baldwin came

from a stable Christian family that was often involved in local politics and civic matters, which Marceline would use to great advantage later on. She did have a bit of a wild streak in her, but again in Indiana, all that meant was she once, as Gwen writes, shocked

her family by saying she was going to vote a straight Democratic ticket. Oh, my heart. Oh, my heart. She also seemed to not show much interest in boys. That is, until she met Jim Jones. He's a man.

See, Marceline was a nursing student and one night she was tasked with preparing the body of a woman for the undertaker. Which orderly should help her, but Jim Jones. Perhaps somewhat prophetically, Jim

and Marceline Jones, who would together lead 909 people to their death, met over a corpse. And he just made it fun. He'd go up to the corpse and he'd be like, oh, look, it's like she's alive and then he'd pick her up and dance her around.

He's like, oh, this is like that Tom and he's like, Jim, you are the living end. I partnered with Kevin Hart because you just made this fun. And then the undertaker came in

and pile-drived her and tombstoneed her. But Marceline, she's an extremely complicated woman as well, as we'll see. Unlike Jones, Marceline did not want all this to end in death. And in fact, she tried to stop him in the end. She believed

in the message. And she believed in Jim Jones. What impressed her most that first night was how kind and gentle Jim was with the family of the dead girl. And I think when Marceline saw how Jim acted that night left such an impression on her

that she figured anybody who had that sort of compassion had to be good. It's almost like Jim Jones instinctively knew that about everybody and he knew that people would therefore believe anything that he said as long as he did some of the most very intense and personal care

at the hospital. And he would learn that later on too. So by leading by example, he can then also get everybody to trust and do whatever the fuck it is that he wanted. So because of that moment, Marceline essentially became the first follower of Jim Jones.

And despite his many glaring flaws, Marceline always followed him even when she didn't agree because she believed in the message. Now, is it like Fight Club where you had the big booby Bob did the guy with elephantitis for balls did he go with elephantitis balls?

Did he follow second? He died. He did die. Yeah, he died. He died. But I also, yeah, it's on me like Marceline, I can't help it see you're dating old Jim there. You know, I'm going to say there's a lot to be said with the man who's got

basketballs for testicles because you know what they say by the size of a man testicles if he got big testicles he's going to need bigger pants. I just I'm looking for an in here Marceline just please

just kind of just ate me just ate me shit's going to go bad no, it's going to go bad. So Jim manipulated Marceline just like everyone else and she was extra susceptible because she had no experience with men at all. He told stories and lies

to build himself up into something great just like his mother did. Jim told Marceline that he quit the high school basketball team because the coach was racist even though Jones was never a part of the basketball team. He also said that he walked out of a barbershop with half his hair cut

for the exact same reason. Alright, is a hero. Well, no, that's what he did. Again, it's when your relationships formed on a lie and then this shit wouldn't come out for until years into their relationship that she started seeing that all of those stories were horseshit. Yeah, Marceline's family however was not as impressed

with Jim Jones as Marceline was. He'd get into screaming arguments with her family at the slightest provocation. He had the mouth of a sailor and he just generally gave off a weird vibe like almost everyone in Marceline's life from her family to her friends looked at Jim and said

why him? I listen to your family when it comes to your partner and I really do believe, I believe this wholeheartedly, if everybody around you is saying this person's a problem because we last podcast left, we've always been on

the idea that serial killers and these people are never the quiet ones, you never not see it coming. You always see it coming. They're always weird. If they're gonna do fucked up shit they've been fucked up forever they just got finally the weird green light

to do the fucked up shit. It wasn't healthy arguing though, it wasn't like a healthy debate. He would just get angry. He'd just fly off the handle at the slightest provocation. Like Henry said if your family says he's bad

if your friends say he's bad or he or she if they say that this person is bad listen to them. 99.9% of the time. Back then what Marceline's family and friends thought was that if she saw something in him

because she was such a good person she was so sweet. If she saw something in him then there must be something there. They're wrong! Tell the court they're wrong! Tell the jury they're wrong! While the two of them were dating Jim decided he wanted to be a hospital administrator

because he was very good at being an orderly and he saw and he didn't really want to go to med school but he figured that one day he could work his way up into running a hospital. He couldn't be a doctor so he'd be the guy that told the doctors what to do. And then when he's like 75 and he's in one of those rooms being taken

care of by another nurse he'd be like I finally made it to the top of the food chain. I am the one being taken care of. So in order to get there Jim Jones started taking classes at Indiana University in Bloomington. Hoosiers! Hoosiers! Uh oh! And while there his roommate said

he woke up one night from a spot in the top bunk with a sharp pain in his back. Jim Jones was on the bottom bunk and at first the guy on the top bunk thought it was just a loose wire in his mattress but then he heard this weird hissing sound coming from the bottom

bunk and when he looked down there he saw Jim Jones working a hat pin in and out of the mattress going go to sleep go to fuck back to sleep. Oh my God it is very PCU. Jim

honestly I just I got a big test tomorrow and again it is it is not cool it is not fun for me it's a little fun I see that you're smiling So he's using his roommate like a pin cushion

we don't know why. No idea why. He's having fun. He's just having fun. Now all this shit did not deter Marceline and the two were married on June 12th, 1949 in one of those weird double weddings that people used to do. Double wedding. Double wedding. Who else got married?

Marceline's sister. I think her name was Edith. Really? Okay. Double wedding. Now after the two got married Marceline found that Jim was not quite the Christian that she thought that he was. Now as we said earlier Jim Jones was an atheist and a dickhead wanted that

but Marceline who was a devout Methodist didn't know that it wasn't until after they were married that Jones told her that he could not believe in a loving God who allowed so much suffering in the world. Well why didn't this conversation be broached you think they would have gotten to this

first or second date? He lied to her. Straight up lied to her. Yeah. And he was such a dick about it and you know what kind of guy I'm talking about here. Nothing worse than an evangelical atheist. He was such a Bill Maher about it I'd say. Oh my God. That Marceline started considering divorce

pretty soon into the marriage but as this was the 50s another talked her out of it. The terrible thing is had Marceline left Jim Jones if she would not have been by his side every step of the way especially in these early years it's almost certain

that Jim Jones would not have gotten anywhere near as far as he did. She had the power right she's the political fam. She helped him out. The lessons that she gave we'll get into it the civic lessons that she gave him helped him endlessly. The woman behind the man. Okay. So if Jim Jones was an atheist

why did he become a preacher? The answer. It's almost like preachers are liars. No. No. No way. The answer is socialism. Oh. Jim Jones was a socialist in that he believed all things

should be shared by all people but wasn't so much of a socialist in that he thought the decisions shouldn't be made by anyone but him. Right. That's a common theme. Yes. As a socialist everyone should be sharing everything but I'm going to be the one that

tells you how to share. Exactly. And this is what kind of and this met but the Methodist Church change is very interesting. Yeah. Yeah. What eventually turned Jim back to the pulpit was a new stance by the Methodist Church. Okay. And in 1952 the Methodist Church reformed to a more progressive creed. They wanted

quote the alleviation of poverty the right of collective bargaining free speech prison reform full employment and racial integration which is a lot of great things. Great attitude. A lot of great things. Back when I had the faith I was a Methodist. That's what my family was. Okay.

But this is what he realized because he said he saw the whole like he sees it everywhere where he figured out where to go. Right. Which is the people's problem his problem with church and a lot of people's problem with church is that you go you got to you got a bunch of talk about God but you get nothing out of it. You don't actually

receive any pragmatic anything from church. Yeah. A place that we call a church that really what it is is a place where you come to me with problems and we figure out together how to fix the problem. What if we call it like the young men's club of America

the YMCA. Yeah. See Jim he saw in the Methodist Church in this new creed he saw a path to the socialistic society he'd always wanted and it didn't matter that he had to use God to get there. Right. Which again showed these the shallowness of the choice

of just being like oh I'll just be a preacher which is in the industry you are supposed to believe inherently that the preacher believes in this shit the most. Yeah. So so just taking that what I'm going to say is that that central lie which is in the lie of the hearts of many of these

fucking piece of shit priests and preachers is that it's that a gradual separation between the person you're pretending to be and the person who you are is what's going to cause massive fucking problems for you no matter what and it's going to make you inherently a corruptible and bad person. Sure. Yeah. So in

trying to find his voice as a preacher Jim started visiting black churches and he liked what he saw he'd love the energy the singing the fact that there was no time limit the welcoming atmosphere everything about it. Right. It's what he had always wanted in a church and again he saw something he could

take advantage of but the time wasn't quite right just yet he still had more to learn and where should he learn it but the revival circuit. All right. Now even though they don't really exist in America in the form or size that they once did revivals were

an important part of American Christianity for decades. Oh yes. Yeah this is where the whole like evangelical mega churches come from. This is where they push you over. Yeah. The spirit did it but I know I had to do that. Yeah. I had to fall over and then he pushed me over. God

that must have been so hard where he pushed you once and you like 300 pounds just stare at him and be like why are you pushing me like and he's like fall over. Yeah. Fall over Benjy when you just got to pretend it's like wrestling it's like wrestling Ben. I did that's exactly how I thought of it and then my parents

were very pleased. But back in the day revivals usually consisted of traveling preachers either setting up outdoor tents or written out large halls to preach the Lord and they tended to be a hell of a lot more exciting than your regular Sunday services. This was entertainment but also

entertainment in the name of the Lord. Right. One of the main features of a revival was faith healing. Preacher would find a person with an ailment, call him up to the front, yell at him a lot. Right. The person would be cured. If I could if that could happen no one in our

in my home would ever suffer a sickness. If we could just yell it out. It would be terrible for the pharmaceutical and hospital industries. Yeah. And Jones picked up on all this right away. Now of course these healings aren't real. Sometimes a person might be quote-unquote cured but

in all cases it's psychosomatic and most often it's temporary. You get an adrenaline rush because you're on stage in your idol and a lot of times they get more hurt because you're not supposed to be freaking walking. Of course not and jumping up and down. Good Lord. And when it's a big healing

like a person standing up from a wheelchair and zooming around the room that person's a plant. Oh yes. Yeah. That's all nonsense. But in the beginning of Jim's career he had no accomplices so he had to find another way. Yes dude. And he realized this shit early on. He did it like a leap

of faith. Yeah. The Steve Martin movie. Yeah. He would use his talent memorization. Before the revival Jim would mill around in the crowd. He'd listen for names and complaints and when he heard someone talking about their ailment he'd pay close attention. Then when he went on stage he'd wait until just

the right moment then call out the person's name along with whatever it was bothering him and he wouldn't be able to quote unquote heal at first but pretty soon wherever he went he left behind stories of the amazing mind reading preacher. And all of this shit when he was reading

when he was listening to people and was calling them out from the audience with their ailments and all that. This is a skill he eventually perfected. This is him doing the same trick in one of his sermons about a decade later. Alright. Sister Ingram

you're concerned about the losing the losing of your sight you've told me nothing about your condition. No I haven't you're not able to see me clearly things just

blur to you. You have to stumble around lately through crowds and they're not able to see even people's faces close up to you clearly. You know what I think is interesting too about the book kind of made me realize because I never really thought about

the relationship between the revival churches and like the legit churches is that when he went to go work for the Methodist because he wanted to be a Methodist pastor he didn't have the juice to get it going like kind of like basically they say you have to kind of go build your own congregation right and then bring

it to the church and then we kind of like we essentially buy it like a Burger King like you do like one of those installment companies and it's like revivalist church is kind of like the open mic circuit for stand-ups it's like you go and learn your bit doing the revivalist

churches and then you take it to legit church that's what you're supposed to do. Right like what we did with the podcast. Yeah yeah absolutely but the Methodist church like I mean the establishment did not want Jim Jones. They didn't like him. Yeah well because it was on his it was always on his terms everything was always

on Jim Jones's terms. All right. Yeah because that's the thing is that all this spectacle it did not sit well with the Methodist church now we don't know exactly why he was kicked out. The Joneses said it was because they were trying to integrate and the Methodists were yeah they just weren't receptive to it

the Methodists say that it was because Jim Jones was stealing from the collection plate but I mean really. Oh yeah because that feels like yeah because that shit could kind of like you see these little whispers at the very beginning that Jim Jones kind of is like taking money to do some shit that he says it's

for the church. Right. And there's a lot of rumors coming this way but he covers it with saying well they just don't want to integrate well was he using the money for good. Did he have a Robin Hood type climb? He may have been because he did do that for a while. Well Jeff actually makes a pretty good point in that

like it's neither one of these are probably true. Yeah it was probably just like kind of an amicable ending but of course everybody because 25 wasn't a maid. Well the thing was that like Jim Jones like and Marceline Jones they said that at first of course like save face and then it wasn't

until like decades later when the FBI really started looking into Jonestown that the Methodist church are like oh yeah he was stealing he's a bad person. I see. Yeah it wasn't. Unlike the church they don't steal. No he just didn't have

the juice. Yeah he didn't have the juice. He showed up and he just wasn't well enough he you have it's politics. Every institution has politics. So you have to be around. Your face has to be in the mix for a while until you're pulled into being ahead of a church. But either way Jim Jones parted ways with the Methodist church and struck out

on his own to the impoverished inner cities of Indianapolis, opened up a storefront church and named it Community Unity. Oh right it's got it. Is that a rhyme? That's a rhyme. Community Unity. Yeah. Community Unity. And because Community Unity was in the inner city, Jones's congregation

was almost entirely black. Now Indianapolis in the 50s was not a violent place racially speaking but it definitely wasn't progressive either. Separate but equal was the law of the land in Indianapolis and while white people didn't actively harass black people like they

didn't say Alabama, they didn't particularly want them around nor do they give a shit about their well-being either. The white leaders of the city would at least meet with black community leaders, mostly pastors and the white community leaders would give lip service and they'll

tell them we'll see what we can do but nothing ever changed. I think the term was is that access does not equal accountability. Yes. That was like the kind of thing that they basically would just give them access and be like you see we listen to you and they not do anything. Right. Which is almost the worst. And so essentially they needed someone to come from

the inside the system out. Yeah. To fix their shit. Yeah. And Jim Jones in this respect, I gotta give him credit you know whether it was for truly altruistic reasons or not, Jim Jones did a hell of a lot on behalf of the black community in Indianapolis during his time there, even though

it did start off small at first. This is how he built his congregation. He'd start off the sermon by asking people what was bothering him. The example Jeff Gwen gives in the road to Jonestown was of an old woman who was having trouble getting service from the electric company. Now even though she was still paying all of her bills

on time, she could never get anyone to come out to fix the black out she was having. Right. So Jim Jones sat down with her in the rest of the congregation and they outlined all of her grievances in a letter. And you might not think that this would be much that you know just just writing a letter

might not do a lot. But sure enough when the woman came back the next week her lights were on. Boom. And then he did this with another person. And another. And another. And another. And another. And this was his whole thing is that you come to church and you come away with something. And then you realize that like you

give something. But because he's an atheist he's not selling him a false bill of goods. He's actually. He is. This woman is a tangible gift. She has she has lights. Yeah. But he's still saying that he's a man of God. He's not telling them he's an atheist.

But the people who were like claimed to be like all up into God that's that's the only thing they give you. Yeah. But I mean this guy is giving tangible rewards and tangible gifts which as you just said I mean it's something we have to that's an accomplished man of God. He's still doing it with a lie. Right. So right now it's great.

Yeah. But it's like as things grow we're going to see how that lie makes things really complicated. Yeah. Yeah. And you know pretty soon in the community words started to spread about this guy. And as Jim Jones himself said you know heaven was all well and good. But there was really no reason to wait until you died to get your reward

to get justice. In other words is having a place on earth. Baby you know what it's worth. Tiffany must have been a member of the original movie she was. Yeah. What Jim Jones said was community unity was a church where you get something now. I like that. Yeah.

And to a community that was used to never getting anything. Right. That was extremely appealing. But since it was just a small church at first Jim Jones had to do something to make ends meet. Uh oh. Jim Jones. Where is this going. This is completely true.

If this has anything to do with dancing erotically at night I'm not going to be happy. Better than that. He sold spider monkeys door to door for twenty nine bucks. Honestly whatever he did later in his life is kind of this is a this is a door. Two things here. Number one

twenty nine dollars is quite a bit for the 1950s. It was a spider monkey how many were there. No I checked out the inflation calculator it was like two hundred and sixty bucks that's cheaper spider. That's worth it. I think it's a lot to spend on any sort of spider monkey even just it's choosing to spend

it for the spider monkey. Oh it's cute. Second of all how does the spider monkey supply get to you. Well who are the who are the way you get your product from. How do you go and like how do they transport it. How difficult is it to keep it

in your house. Where do you keep these spider monkeys. The world's itchiest underground dealer is just lied with spider monkeys like come into this alley I got something to show you. Just sell these fucking spider monkeys and get them off my hands. I feel like that's the sales

picture. Hey hello thank you for having me in your home there is fifty spider monkeys in my Volvo. I need you to get them the fuck out of this Volvo. Scratches and scabs sir. They are everywhere they thought my balls were a pile of grapes. I need to get

these out of my hands. I'll take them all. Well even the spider monkeys ended up gaining Jim Jones new followers. Of course this is a testimony from a woman from the PPS documentary about Jonestown.

The first time I met Jim Jones was Easter 1953 my mother-in-law Edith Cardell had a monkey and it hung itself and she wanted to replace the monkey so she looked in an Indianapolis star and in that Indianapolis

star was Jim Jones's ad that he had some monkeys to sell. So it was through that that she met Jim Jones and came back saying that he'd invited her to church this next Sunday.

Never do anything your monkey salesman tells you to do. Also I gotta say if you're Jim Jones and you're selling monkeys you gotta ask so what happened to your other monkey? Oh it hung itself? What are the conditions of your home that aren't good enough for a monkey to want to live? We're just handling

monkeys out to anybody. You drove a monkey to suicide and now you're just gonna get another one? This is like my mother with a dog. Did the spider make a noose out of its web? How did the monkey hang itself? That's so difficult. So difficult. Number one for it to learn eternal

despair. Right. Then for it to Robin Williams itself to get out of the house. Just had to go. So sad. Besides just the monkeys supplement his income Jim Jones continued on the revival circuit where he

was becoming a fairly well known name as a healer as he'd improved his act quite a bit from the simple mind reading days. So he's a healer and a monkey salesman. I'm so on right now I am about to go to Seatown and get flavoring. This sounds good. There was a such a buzz

that in Cincinnati Jim Jones drew a crowd one thousand strong and still two hundred people had to be turned away. Wow. Eventually Jim Jones started picking up true believer followers among the first were Joe and Clara Phillips who were convinced that Jim had cured

their son's heart defect although it was most likely just an early misdiagnosis. Okay. They were joined by Edith Cordell the monkey woman who believed Jones also had cured her arthritis. All right. Also I needed the direct line to those sweet

sweet monkeys. But it wasn't just people who were healed who were drawn to Jim Jones. A lot of them were attracted by his message of racial equality. Jack Beam and his wife Ria Viana

joined Jim Jones in 1954 after their church rejected integration. Oh my. And to give you an idea of how dedicated these people were both Jack and Ria Viana died by Jim Jones his side in Jonestown

24 years later by their own volition Oh. Very much by their own volition. Absolutely. Because they believed that he was doing good. And that's how you get him. In the end like that's what it it all thing got twisted. Yeah. I mean in the sixties at this point it seems

like he is doing some good. These bigoted churches he's the only one reaching out. He's selling monkeys once again. There is a lot of positive things happening. He's doing a lot of good and even his best work is still ahead of him at this point. See I mean these people you know Jack Beam is the strangest cult leader though

because I don't recall having like legitimately a person trying to do good. Yes. Like everyone else was more fraudulent in some ways. More fraudulent. I mean they were just and they were a lot of them were just interested in sex they were just interested in power. So the person was very altruistic. He's doing means justify the end stuff though

since the very beginning. Right. He was. Yeah. He was. And so it just it did technically start that way. Yeah. And these people were good people. They believed in him because they believed that he was doing good and even when he was lying and cheating they told themselves this is all for the greater good. And this started

in the earliest days. They started making the allowances immediately. They're giving a little every every week. Immediately. Yeah because you forget all the healing shit is bullshit. Yeah. All the oil is not real. Yeah. And that's the thing is that people like you know Jack Beam and Rhea Viana the cancer removals

you know they saw that they knew all of the healing and all that shit. They knew everything that he did at the revivals was total bullshit. Right. But now that he had dedicated followers that followed him for a totally different reason he's had plants. But is even if it's psychosomatic though

and if you do feel better you know there is something to that. I mean it's a lie. It is a lie. It's still a lie. Well I mean it never really works. The mind is a the mind is an interesting thing. No people will they will they're paying away sometimes like psychosomatic like placebos you know placebos

will work sometimes even though it is a placebo you know like the the power of the mind is an amazing thing. It's true but when it comes down to a straight up lie you get that check in the end. That's what I believe. You're just kicking the can dude. Kick the can. So Jim

had plants but the thing is about plants is you just can't give a hobo 20 bucks and hope he can act. No you need a performer. Yeah and not just that but in order for people to actually believe it you can't have someone that just shows up gets healed and leaves. Right. You have to have someone that the congregation

knows and that the congregation trusts. This is tough to do. Yeah now first Jim would take two people into his confidence and let him know the plan ahead of time but he never asked the godly folk. It was always those that thought the god stuff was just a means to an end

who were in on the plan. Well you know sometimes in order to entice people into a restaurant you got to have fake food on the outside and the food inside is very real. I want real food. I want to see the real food. I don't go to restaurants that have fake food on the outside. But the outside is fake. That's Olive Garden.

That's what brings you in. No you're talking. Olive Garden sounds good. Olive Garden's great. Yeah unlimited breadsticks. Although how many breadsticks and soup can you have. I like. And they do cut you off by the way. I learned that. Carabas is technically the higher quality chain and then if you want to really

go for bacon to break the bank. Magianos. So during the sermon after Jim had already gone over this plan with two people he'd call up one of their names say you got cancer and have the second plant escort them to the bathroom. Jones would

then tell them to essentially take a dump. And he would work his magic from on stage. So I could not. I would not be able to to help actually taking a shit. Yeah. And after a plausible amount

of time the duo would come back with a bloody smelly mass wrapped up in a napkin and were told that the congregate had passed the cancer. That's not how it works. You don't crap cancer. Well if Jim Jones is in charge of your congregation

you do. And they said that that bloody mass was the evidence. I would have stood up and I would have said that's dukey Jim. Actually Jim would have been like you want a spider monkey I will sit down and I will shut up and I will take my spider monkey. Let me help the organization please. Well what

the mess was it was chicken guts. Oh yeah and they did a lot of the chicken guts just rot a little so it smelled terrible. But the way they took care of people not looking at it too close was saying that the past cancer was highly infectious and nobody should get close to it. And as far as the person

who was carrying it around went it was taking Jim Jones taking every bit of his power to make sure that that person was not infected. But nobody else I cannot protect all of you. I can only protect my man Jack. Oh I like this guy. You could have taken one of my dumps from this morning and had a bunch of foie gras

last night. And I tell you what it's nice going in but going out. It is what it is. It's not even nice going in. Yeah it is. So nice as meat butter. So the combination of working these supposed miracles on the road while actually helping people

out with their problems back in Indianapolis meant that Jim's congregation was rapidly growing. Naturally. And eventually he needed a bigger space and so in 1956 Jim Jones bought a former Jewish

place of worship. The word temple was carved on the wall outside and since the church was to be a socialist endeavor Jim Jones gave his church a new name People's Temple and that's where we'll pick back up next week

with Jonestown part two. Oh right laying an interesting groundwork here. No idea about this guy. How do they get to be as big as they are. It's fascinating to learn the origin story here. I will say a lot of crooked hard work. Yeah that's where we're going to see is that

it's weird how like in the end the same thing weirdly with Scientology these guys kind of go into it kind of with the idea of getting a quick buck or like a way to like kind of scam the world and get things going for themselves but in the end a life of trickery is like so much more work. Well it is but at some point I do have to

imagine that he looked at his wife and said honey we're going to need some more chicken guts. Moving on up. Well Jim Jones was an extremely hard worker. I mean when he was in college he never slept. He just never and that eventually caught up to him

but for many years like Jim Jones from you know Don the Dusk and beyond like he was always always working. Bill Clinton was like that. Yeah they were all like that. Yeah but that's why the amphetamines came in but we're going to get to that. All right. Yeah in all of

these episodes yeah thank you for listening all these episodes are going to be about this long all right but yeah we've got to be a very exhaustive. This is very intense we're really going in there because I feel like we've never done something to this level. We love Colts. Yeah I personally in the end it's strange study time yeah I just love to study

Colts even more than serial killers. Me too Colts are my favorite. These are my favorite. Colt episodes are always my favorite episodes and you know and we're going to in the future you know we fucking biffed Heaven's Gate we're going to take a serious run at Heaven's Gate here very soon. I wouldn't say it was a biff.

It was a biff. It was not a biff. Our first 60 or so episodes were just there was a lot of biffs. Happy 300 Happy 300. We did it. I am Sparta. What about Bart? What about Barb? Did that ever come out? What about Barb?

No! They shelved it, huh? I can actually maybe tell that story sometime because I don't think we've been saying that for forever nobody has any clue about it. I think we talked about it on the live screen. Yeah maybe. I think legally I'm not allowed to talk about it. I think that show is so dead and gone. Yeah. You can talk about what about Barb. I think what about

Barb was put on the shelf a while ago. The remake of what about Bob that they were trying to create for television because they're out of ideas. They're idiots. Yes they are. They're out of ideas. They're definitely out of ideas. What about Barb? What about Barb? We make it a lead! Which I think is actually

very progressive, but it's stupid. Really fine. It's fine. Yes, it's done. All right. Well, thanks everyone for listening. What do we want to say here? We want to thank you everyone who has donated to the Patreon. Of course. There was just somebody on Twitter who reached out regarding the Patreon. Thank you so much.

Yeah, thank you so much to all the people who give. Patreon.com slash last podcast on the left is where you can go. We appreciate each and every one of you, no matter how much you give. Thank you so much and we're going to keep going, man.

We got a lot going on this year. We got a lot coming up in 2018. We got a lot of shit coming up. Absolutely. It was Philly Philly. Philip Birth, I believe, is his name. Thank you, Phil for reaching out on Twitter. You can always find me on Twitter at Ben Kissel and I'll respond to you there. I know some people say they want more

shoutouts and stuff when we try to give it, but you can just find us and I will respond to you. You can always find us. Kissel loves to respond and he always responds. I try to. I respond to the funny ones. I respond to the nice ones and the funny ones. No snarky comments because that doesn't fly on my

Twitter. You don't understand, guys. One thing I will say is we're part of a weird phenomenon that's called being a tiny internet celebrity. When you are a part of this, we're three people that do not really know how to navigate this. We're doing our best. So follow us on Twitter at Henry Loves You at Marcus Parks at Ben Kissel.

Follow us on Instagram at Dr. Fantasi at Marcus Parks at Ben Kissel, the number one. Follow us for whatever the fuck it is that you get your breaking news on at L.P. on the left. Yes. I made my first Instagram video, a little scene from Friday the 13th

part three yesterday. So I think I'm going to do it. It's scary the first time. I'm proud of you, man. You're super trill of you. Crazy trill that you join Instastories. I think it's trill. I think it's of the moment. You're on trend.

Thank you. We'll go listen to all of our other shows over at lastpodcastnetwork.com. We got a ton of stuff to listen to over there. And also check out my new music show, Milken Peppers. I do it

every, you can listen live every Tuesday at mxcloud.fm I do it out of K-Piss FM out there in Bushwick. Check it out. It's one to three p.m. every single Tuesday. But if you can't make it, you can always go and listen to all the episodes

at mixcloud.com slash Marcus Parks. I'm going to be posting every single episode there every single week. There it is. We only got one so far, but you can go listen to that and all the other lucky bone shows that I've done. There's a lot of content out there and thank you to everyone who has listened.

I want to thank everyone. I go on these television news networks and I get a lot of hate from a lot of people, but thank you all so much for the kind ones because it's great because they defend me and they're very sweet and you really make everything worth it and I'll keep on trying to stand up for you the best I can and let me know how I'm

doing. Like, Ed Koch, how am I doing? How am I doing? People were like, you're doing terrible and he's like, well done, but how am I doing? All right, hey, I'll say, hail yourselves. Hail me. And honestly, guys, happy 300th episode. We've done it and it's all because of our audience and it's because

of us three. That's it. All right. Yeah, because our refusal to quit. There it is. It's almost like we have no other discernible talents. Megustalations, everyone. Megustalations. Thank you.