Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 397: Heaven's Gate Part I - A Cabo or a Wabo

Episode Date: January 18, 2020

On this, our very first redux of a subject, we begin the story of one of the most famous and misunderstood suicide cults of the nineties: Heaven's Gate. Join us on this first episode as we cover the early lives of founders Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles, as well as how the theology of the Hale-Bopp hitchhikers developed over the years.

Hey everyone, Ben Kitzel here. As we've been saying, we're going exclusive to Spotify starting February 14th. That's Valentine's Day. So it's time to get ready for the move. You can download the Spotify app for free. You don't have to put down a credit card or pay anything. Just download the app, search for Last Podcast on the left, and listen to our show like you normally would. Plus, the rest of the Last Podcast network is there too. And of course, all of your favorite music. If you want to get new episodes as soon as they come out, just follow the show on Spotify, and new episodes will pop into your library. It's super simple. We'll be talking more about this in the upcoming weeks, but get ready. Valentine's Day is the day. Listen free on Spotify.

Alright guys, so this is a big moment for us. Oh yeah? This is a big story. And so before this, before we even begin this whole saga, I just want to reach out to anybody that is in, I'm not going to even use the word cult, right? Because you're not in a cult. You're in a group. Oh that's reverse psychology. You're in a class. With quotation marks. Well, but the difference between a class and a cult is you can leave the class when the bell rings and then you're like, see you next Tuesday, professor. So we know that the people I'm talking to do not know that. Oh, we'll just keep that between us. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, you're having fun in class. You love the wafers. You're meeting new people. You love having, you love being in the yeast room.

You love being in the fiber hut. You love it. And I get it. Space Jesus sounds fucking rad. Yeah. I get it. But as soon as it gets to the point, and I mean this, where he says that you got to cut off your balls, and he's saying this to you, you're looking in his eyes, and you love your bowl-cutted teacher, and he's been nothing but good to you this entire time. And he's telling you got to lose the nuts in order to meet Space Jesus. I'm going to tell you right now, you can meet Space Jesus with edibles without any of this shit. Just leave, just take this as a sign. I am Space Jesus's uncle. Uncle Henry. Yep, he's actually a boy in this round. This is a sign for you to leave. Absolutely. Well, very good advice, Henry. Welcome to the last podcast on

the Left, everyone. I am Ben Kissel, looking at Marcus Barks. Hi. And we are fortunate this week to have Henry Zabrowski in studio. So we're all together forming a triangle of power. Aren't we blessed? Aren't we blessed. So why is Henry talking about balls? Why is he talking about potentially losing balls? Why is he talking about Space Jesus? All of those things come into play in this next series. We will be covering Heaven's Gate. And we are on to part one. We are taking off towards the next level above human. We covered Heaven's Gate nearly a millennia ago. I think you're looking, the word you're looking for is decade. When? Yep. Decades, yeah. Takes you zeroes off. But when was it? It was like episode, it was like almost

like episode three. No, it was like 34 or 35 somewhere around there. So this is our first attempt to redo a series because we know for a fact that we did not do it credence now. And now that we really are up to our fucking clavicles in this story, it's really bums you out. Well, it really does. But this is a great time to be doing Heaven's Gate because of course they have the Green Bay Packers logo, the Green Bay Packers are in the NFC championship game. Maybe this is an omen that they are going to win the game and go to heaven. I knew I could reach these kids. I knew one day my lessons would reach the dumbest kid in class. Well, out of all the cults that made headlines in the late 20th century, perhaps the most

misunderstood is the one that came to popularly be known as Heaven's Gate. The story goes that 1997, on March 19th and 20th, 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult committed mass ritual suicide dressed in identical uniforms and covered in purple shrouds, doing so under the direct orders of their castrated leader, Marshall Appelwight. Do you guys have to mention castrated every time you mention my name? That's just like literally the first fact. We can't talk about my beautiful blue eyes or my wonderful taste in Nike decades, which are actually kind of fresh. No, those are pretty cool shoes there, buddy, but you don't got a dick, right? I have a flappy, but I don't have the bingbongs. Okay, okay, just checking. No, they're misunderstood, but it's not their fault

that they're misunderstood, almost, because they really tried to explain themselves afterwards with a dump of information that came out after they had committed suicide. Yeah, and they were okay with messaging. Well, in fact, like, you know, speaking of being misunderstood, you've already put a misunderstanding out there by saying that Marshall Appelwight demanded that they castrate themselves when, in fact, he did not demand that they castrate themselves and only six of them actually castrated themselves. There's a lot of misinformation when it comes to Heaven's Gate. My hands are on my hips shaking my head, Mr. Zabrowski, and you know what I'm doing? I'm shaving the carrot. You're wrists deep into your love handles. But I will say, I'm not gonna say

he demanded, but he hinted. He hinted, no, he hinted, he said, you can do this. You could. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do this, you can if you want to, but Marshall Appelwight never demanded anything of anyone. Suggestions. It was said that the point of this mass suicide was to hitch a ride on a spacecraft flying in tandem with the hail-bop comet that was passing by Earth, but in order to do so, they had to leave behind their human vehicles. So you're like Subaru and your Toyota, your RAV4s. When I look at myself, I call myself more of like a Hyundai grunt. Now this is definitely a Subaru outback crowd, if you know what I mean. Of course, a little granola. Yeah. Well soon after the bodies were found, it was discovered that this cult had laid out their

entire belief structure on a website, heavensgate.com, and thus they were dubbed the first internet cult. Or that's the way the story has been portrayed. While that summation is close, the story of Heaven's Gate is far more complicated than what it was boiled down to be in CNN soundbites and snarky late night monologues. Hold on a second, are you telling me a castrated cult that wants to hail-bop in order to go to heaven on the orders of Mr. Whitehead, whatever, White Side, White Gate, White Apple? Absorbed a single fact. Apple, White, White Nipple, whatever his name is, is complicated. It's true, Jay Leno is not going to understand a lot of the complexities of the inner workings of

this group, as we're going to find, especially if you even attempt to watch any of what they call their exit materials. I'm in about three hours deep into the Beyond Human class right now, and I gotta say, number one, if you have a hard time falling asleep, it is great. I'm a little bit concerned about studying another cult, because as we know Marcus Henry is slowly slipping down the cult slide, and every cult seems to reaffirm your love for what you now call LRH. You literally said yesterday, you're like, L Run Hubbard was like a lot better than Apple White. It's just like you're ranking them now, and it's really scary. You already were, you're teeing me up, because my number two was, never have I been a more, almost an adherent to

the teaching styling of LRH, and the fact that if you listen to his tapes, and that is true, if you listen to the audio of him, he throws some jokes in there, he's super funny, he's kind of, he zips, happens often, there's some presentation, he's got a good uniform on. Hey, Apple White throws some jokes in there too, all right? He may not be as snappy, and he may not be as polished as your LRH, but Apple White has his points as well. He looks and acts like if Jeff Sessions worked at Michaels. Well, he knows what's in every aisle. He has a quilting group sense of humor. It's kind of funny. As far as the members went, they've mostly been portrayed as brainwashed

victims, just mindless drones with bad matching haircuts, who watched too much Star Trek and fell under the spell of a charismatic leader. Why are matching haircuts never cool haircuts? Why does it always have to look like the kid who is- Because you gotta pay for it in bulk. If you get like, if you get a bun, if you get 39 nice haircuts. Perms, I want a nice perm. That's like fucking layering takes hours, I guess at this point. Okay. But according to one of our sources, this brainwashing label only accomplishes two things. It helps the people left behind make sense of the tragedy because their loved ones are now victims instead of adherents, and it absolves the embarrassment surviving members feel about

being a part of the cult in the first place. I think of all the cults we've covered. More so than Jonestown or Om Shinrikyo, because they had a fairly substantial evangelical section. They were trying to pull people in at all times, right? No, no. People who are evangelical are not going to be susceptible to cult-like ideas. You are evangelized. You are ridiculous. You wouldn't even think that. But the ideas, but Heaven's Gate, or formerly known as H-I-M, right? This group, the class, this group was, they were very selective. Marshall Appalight was more so like, it was very

personal. This is a boutique cult. He really saw, and we'll see how Bonnie Nettles helped him. I think helped shape and guide him. Oh, Bonnie Nettles was the brains behind the whole operation. Oh, wait, hold on. So Marshall Appalight's the charisma? He's the guy? He's the showtunes guy? Yeah, we'll get into it. He's the non-sexual sex appeal. They really wanted people that wanted Anne, and so he made it incredibly difficult to stay. Which I think, yes, brainwashing was in there. There is some gaslighting. There is obviously manipulation. But on some level, you weren't

going to be there if you didn't want you there. He would specifically prune you if you weren't doing the group. If you weren't doing the work, he'd fucking kick you out. And he also specifically was looking for whoever was the skinniest, biggest-eyed doofus that was really loves it in a circle on a pillow. A lot of people do. I don't mean to use the word doofus, but there is some doofus vibes in there. I think doofus needs to come back. It's great. Well, Appalight actually would buy plane tickets and bus tickets home for people who wanted to leave. If they wanted to go, he'd say, like, yeah, okay, here's a bus ticket. Where do you

need to go? That's where your family lives? All right, see you later. That's what Michael Bloomberg tried to do with the homeless when he was mayor of New York. So I understand what he was going for. Well, for the most part, Heaven's Gate was made up of people who were disillusioned by the failure of 1960s idealism. And the majority of the people who took their lives in 1997 had been members of Appalight's cult since the 70s. They have a very high retention rate. Damn.

Well, somewhat, yes, somewhat, no. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. Well, for these people, peace and love had failed and the world had proved to be cruel and uncaring. Many were people who'd been steamrolled by modern culture, which was all the more painful because they believed so hard that that culture was going to change. These people joined Heaven's Gate because they were disappointed, not because they were overly gullible. What they got, though, was freedom in a cage. What psychologists call bounded choice. What that means is that a person involved in the

movement only has the illusion of choice. But since their lives were so inextricably linked to the life of the leader, when he decided to go, most of them followed. Because in their minds, if there was no Appalwhite, there was no salvation. I actually have a question here. So they committed suicide in 1997. The 90s, it was my heyday. I love the 90s. You had squeezable yogurt. You could just squeeze it right into your mouth. Go Gert is still active. It's still around. Yeah, I found a surge in Northampton, Massachusetts last weekend. I was so happy. Thank God, I went to a hot topic and seriously, Marilyn Manson shirts still live there. It's awesome. But do you think because it was such a

high tech cult, or at least a sci-fi cult, that if they lived to 2020, they actually would have been in the world they wanted? No. Okay, no matter what. Actually, they would actually hate this world more than the world of the 90s. Because then we got all the magic. We got all the sci-fi. It's all coming real. It's all about the interactions with people. It's all about how people treat them and how they interact with others. I mean, who knows? They were so insulated. It didn't really matter. The whole world began to stop existing almost on purpose. The idea was to X out anything that was an outer influence inside of the group. It was this idea that the future is in and not out. All of salvation is on the inside. But this is one of those, I think that's a very

specific example of like, we talked about it a little bit with Jonestown too, is that when the cult leader decides to commit suicide, there's an act of living inside of the cult leader's head, where they are all in there. And when the head dies, the rest of the snake goes with it. And so Marshall Applewhite was obviously nearing the end of his time and fucking generated a new exit plan when they found the supposed UFO trailing behind Hal-Bott. I think this, man, it's a good thing you didn't meet these people at just the right time when you were 14 years old. Again, this is not my crew. I fucking like fucking Scientology has Starfleet and all the uniforms and you got the big boat. Actually, this is more my crew. Okay, great. Yeah, great. If I were to, out of the two

between Scientology and Heaven's Gate, I'm going Heaven's Gate. Next thing you know, I'm hanging out with a Bundy clan in Oregon trying to claim sovereign citizenship and be like, this land is my land. Well, as far as the leader went, Marshall Applewhite was only half of the equation. Up until 1985, Marshall was joined by a woman named Bonnie Nettles, who ran things in tandem with Applewhite and pretty much created the cult's entire belief system. And speaking of that belief system, let's hear a clip from Applewhite himself describing the thrust of the cult's beliefs. This is from his most famous video, Last Chance to Evacuate Earth Before It is Recycled. Recorded. It's so catchy. You gotta go with it. There's a lot of prog vibes in many of these titles

and words. This is recorded just six months before the suicide. Let's take a lesson. To try to just put it as briefly as I can put it in as clearly as I can put it, this planet is about to be recycled, refurbished, started over. That doesn't mean it's going to be destroyed. It doesn't mean it's the end of the world. But it does mean that it's going to be recycled, refurbished. Now you can say, well, who are you to say that? And I'll tell you who I am as to whether or not you believe who I am or not is up to you. And whether or not you believe that it's going to be recycled or refurbished is up to you. Now the purpose of this tape is to warn you that that is about to happen and that it's going to happen very soon. If I would title this

tape, it would be last chance to evacuate planet Earth before it is recycled. He does sound a little bit like Warren Jeff's meets. Jonestown meets, you know, the main man there. But also, say a single specific thing, Marshall. Say one fact, because this is the end of the hours and hours and hours and hours of footage. And I know episode two of Beyond Human is him getting questions from his adherents, right? He says the first episode is him berating about how no one's asked him any questions. Second episode is they bring in a list of questions. He answers none of them, right? But he explains the whole time about how he doesn't want to compare himself to the alien that was Jesus Christ. But here's all the ways that I'm really very

close to the alien that used to be Jesus Christ. That's pretty cool. Now I'm sure a lot of our listeners have watched at least clips of the Heaven's Gate videos. And I'm sure a lot of you have had a hard time grasping just how this unblinking potato-headed motherfucker was able to convince 38 people to kill themselves. Is it even big enough of a head to be a potato-headed? Oh, like a red potato. Like a cheese. Like a kidney. He looks like a kidney bean. But the interesting thing about those videos is that they neither converted nor convinced a single person. They didn't work because Applewhite's touch was personal. While his eyes look absolutely insane on video, former followers reported that those same eyes seem to radiate love when they talk

to him face to face. This is why people, you're going to find your person out there. It's important to know that because look at us. We're three very specific men. And it takes a specific woman, in our cases, to love us. And so to them, our rants and the way we just scream alone, the way I scream alone in my house and to no one, the way I scream in my car, to Natalie is almost in a way cute. She's even said the words cute about it. And that's just because she's delusioned. She's been broken down over time. And my sheer charisma has managed to pull her into my web. Right. It's interesting. Applewhite is sort of like Moby, where if you listen to his music and you really want to like it, you can. But then for the most part, if you look at it through a normal

brain, it's not good. I think old glued here is actually the secret real member of Heaven's Gate. My penis is gone. Oh, wait, no, just talk on the end. There's a little rope. There it is. Oh, like my old football coach had to do because he was so fast. And even though I still see articles calling Heaven's Gate the first internet cult, I'm looking at you, VICE, their website attracted. Oh, you look at me. No, no. I don't know what in person of VICE. I don't know. They're just assholes. I don't know. Well, Heaven's Gate website attracted exactly one member. What? Yeah. I mean, their internet outreach program, mostly what they attracted was like, you remember back in 1997, the early days in the internet, when most trolls were like,

good natured and just kind of having fun? That's mostly what Heaven's Gate attracted. I just remember a picture of Jillian Anderson's head on the body of like some nude woman that I remember Angelina Jolie's head on the body of Psylocke. There was a lot of that. Oh, man, I forgot about that picture. Yeah. The old days. No fetishes have come from that. No, not at all. Not an entire industry based upon nerds taking over the creative development of all these massive studios and put their fantasies on the air. But Applewhite always owned the labels that people gave the group, openly calling his followers a religious UFO cult, quote, because that's what the world dubbed us. He said, yes, we are a religious UFO cult. That's who we are because

that is what you have called us. We are the cult of cults is what he said even specifically. That's very smart. And they liked it because that added to the charm. Right. It's an old satanist trick that Anton Levese understood implicitly that like we were started research on a series about satanism, which I really want to do one day. We're going to do it this year sometime. We will do it. But the that that idea of taking the mantle of the villain, you give everybody an identity. You give all these, again, these doofuses an identity. They're not doofuses. It's multiple doofuses, so it's a doofy. It's doofies. But you get all these people, then you give them a label and you tell them, don't worry, we're going to make you look like a

space baby. You're going to have so much vegetable broth, your nose is going to fall off. Don't worry. And that's the most attractive form. That's the way he keeps talking about the alien body is the most attractive form, but it's just a noseless baby with a pussy dick. Let's not give away too much of the story. You gave away the pussy dick part of the entire thing. Marcus worked really hard on this entire series and now, boom, let's just be done with it. But my memory of this cult was it wasn't like they were so nefarious or evil. It was more like the way the media covered him. It was more like, who are these? It was more like wacky, like sci-fi. It was the media collectively yelling. Nerds. Yeah. It was just all of them calling them nerds, like,

fuck these nerds. Who cares about these nerds? Well, calling them doofuses. I know, but doofus to me has a different ring than nerd because I understand why, because I think the nerd cook is why they got embroiled in all of this bullshit. Yeah. And they took the label and it kind of just, they got defensive then. And then all of a sudden, now you're in it. Now you're acting like you're a part of a cool gang, but it's like you're all 87 pounds. Right, right. Yeah. Maybe doofus is just a confident nerd. Yeah. Well, as far as the message went, Apple white said that the earth was a cruel place. And if you can't figure out how to live in modern society, then you have no choice but to leave it. But leaving didn't mean committing

suicide, even though your body would have to die. What you would actually be doing is ascending to the evolutionary level above human or for short, Taylor. I mean, if you want to leave society, just go to South Dakota. No, but then you just, you still got to pay taxes. Yeah, not many. And your neighbors are potatoes. It's fun. See, for these guys, heaven was an actual physical place that you could travel to. But the only way to get there was to leave behind your human vehicle. But this is not a story of brainwashing, nor is it a story of a descent into madness. Partly, this is a story of true believers who wanted so bad to prove themselves right. They killed themselves to make a point. The Marcus and I had a discussion too, but it's

a bunch of people that they really wanted to feel special. Yes. And Marshall Appalachit really wanted to feel special. And but a part of the mantra as we get more in the second episode, we get more into the actual like belief systems. I'm going to try not to get too deep in the weeds next episode. But this kept saying, you know, he's like, we're special. You're not special, though, because that's how special you are. You're so not special because you're going to be not special in order to lose your penis and lose all the things on your face. You lose your ears, lose your nose and use your lips. But you're still special because you're not special enough to not have a penis anymore. Well, speaking of special and speaking of no penis, this reminds

me of the hit movie Cats. They're gelical cats. And there was one specific cat who was special enough to die. And that's why that movie is just about a suicide pact with an occult. Honestly, save that point for next episode, because it's kind of true the transmute the transmutation. I'm going to say the transmutation of Jennifer Hudson at the end of Cats is very similar to the ascent to Tila. They killed her. Well, these people were inextricably linked to the mind of Marshall Appalach as we said. And as it is with a lot of suicide cults, this is also a story of people yes, ending themselves into the grave. While these people were dealing with massive amounts of pain, they were not mentally ill nor were they dying from

depression. They were never forced to stay in the cult nor were they forced to drink the poison like the people of Jonestown. In fact, like we said, Heaven's Gate was purposefully difficult to be a part of. This is not the story of a homicide. This is the story of a people who wanted so bad to be free from the modern world that they found an excuse to make it happen. When it comes to Heaven's Gate, maybe the question isn't how did one man convince 38 people to commit suicide, but rather, what was it about this world that made these people so goddamn eager to leave it? My question is, had any one of them ever thought of doing the do? Oh my god, that's a great idea. Was do the do a thing back? When did the do the do start?

Do the do is absolutely the thing back then. And they did have the opportunity to do the do because these people were gigantic Deep Space Nine fans. So when the commercials came on, they were getting told to do the do at all points. Because they had just done the do even once they could have skateboarded on a fountain of green lava. Is it lava? No, I think so, I think so. Through hoops and you'd meet I want to see Jason Priestley. Oh my god, he was such a hunk. I love Luke Perry's son is now a professional wrestler and AEW. He's Jungle Boy. And once you know that, you can't not see it in his face. Very answer. But my question is, I've been playing a lot of Sherlock Holmes crime and punishment on PS4. I highly recommend it. How weren't they mentally ill?

Like how are you able to be in a cult that you know is driving you to death? You know it's isolating you. You're not talking to your family anymore. There's a risk of losing your ding dong. How are they not mentally ill? You know, that's a really good question. I feel like this is the thing that's debated. Like, because it's somewhat your definition of mentally ill is joining the cult and losing your ding dong. Again, you motherfuckers. Six people chose chemical castration. I would say it's only six people. You're doing the odds. You're playing the odds. Only six is a lot more than zero. I guess it's we're fascinated with this concept because we love our balls. I literally play with my balls as a default when I'm sitting alone. But that's I don't need to get a

PS4 so you stop doing that on the bus. But I because it's a mental illness. Again, this is one of those like email us try to explain this kind of concept because a lot of these people that stayed forever, it's more that they were the people that were at the end had been around at that point for close to 30 years. And when you're when you're locked into this lifestyle, you're locked into a group of friends. And we're we're going to see as we as we cover these episodes. These were not spring chickens by the time that they got to the end. There was not a lot of young people that actually made the transmission. Yeah, interesting. I mean, if you were to ask me what you know, the difference is, is these people made a choice. People who were mentally ill

do not make the choice to have mental illness. Okay, these people at every point made the choice. I'm going to be here. I'm going to do this. It's a great point. Gotcha. And before we get into the full story of the cult and the leaders who created it, let's acknowledge our sources for today. The first is Heaven's Gate America's UFO religion by Benjamin Zeller. This is the more academic of the two. The other, which is a bit more sensationalistic is Cosmic Suicide by Rodney Perkins and Forrest Jackson. That is a hell of a band name. Now, out of the two, I'd say go with Zeller Cosmic Suicide. It's cool. It sounds really cool, but it was written. It was one of those that was written like right after the suicide happened,

right after the news event. It was cobbled together. Some of the information is erroneous. Some of it is solid. But actually, I'm kind of surprised that there's never been like a non-academic serious book on this subject. There's not like a road to Jonestown with Heaven's Gate. Because it seems what we're finding out that it is very difficult to patch together the early lives of Marshal Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles. The narrative is a little convoluted at times. So without further ado, let's get into the stories of Marshal Applewhite, Bonnie Nettles, and the rest of what came to be known as Heaven's Gate. All right. As we said, Marshal Applewhite was only one of the two founders of what came to be known as Heaven's Gate.

Although Heaven's Gate is a bit of a misnomer. Heaven's Gate was just the name of the website. The cult itself never really had an official name. They had names that other people bestowed upon them. Like Henry, when you said earlier that they were known, they were called H-I-M. They didn't call themselves H-I-M. H-I-M was what they were called in a New York Times article about them because H-I-M was one of their beliefs. That was one of their tactics. Human individual metamorphosis. Okay. For years, they called themselves the group. And by the end, they took to calling themselves just the class. But they wanted it because again, it was so personal. It was never really about the

frontward facing. You'll see, they'll do a couple of call to actions. But for the most part, that was the whole thing. It was a Marshal Applewhite especially wanted to feel like super casual. Like, take off your sneakers, cut off your nose. Let's do this, guys. Come on, have some vegetable soup. You hungry good. What was that? What was that second part? Go cut off your nose. Cut off your nose. It's going to fall off. You're going to want it to fall off. Oh, okay. Well, instead of giving the group a goofy name, they saved that designation for their leaders. Going by everything from guinea and pig to bow and peep to tea and dough. Applewhite and nettles originally called themselves the two. Oh, so they didn't just do Italian racial slurs.

Very, very good that they kind of moved away from that. Well, they wanted to call themselves flappy and whitey, but they couldn't decide who was who. But they also, there's a lot of symbolism in their names though. Yeah. If you read, there's a book that I will attempt to read the title of right now. There's a book written by a survivor of the survivor. He, they were trying to set it all up for the suicide and then he literally got so pent up and needed to masturbate so bad, I swear to God, he left the cult in order to jerk off. It saved a life. It saved a fucking life and that he wrote and then afterwards he wrote a book trying to explain it and I'm just going to, this is the entire title of this book. Written by a dude named Sawyer. Yes. Okay. It

is called this little book provides the backside evidence showing how all Jesus's prophecy revelations are fulfilled by those who were known as tea and dough, the father and Jesus. Heaven's gate UFO2 witnesses who were turned incarnate with their saints from 1972 to 1997, prophesied in the book of revelations, turned by Christians as the second coming from the physical evolutionary level above human, the kingdom of God and heaven whose membership where physical vehicles, bodies grown on a vine that human bodies are designed to resemble to work within planet-sized spacecrafts like Pluto and Ceres that serve as laboratories for their earth soul-growing garden experiments that incorporate the negative influence of the Luciferian space aliens, aka the fallen angels

so prospective new members directed by incarnate older members may overcome the human evolutionary kingdom to graduate into the next level kingdom into the literal heavens by Sawyer. I just understood every single thing he said. Can you imagine copywriting that book? Just the legal ease, the legal work that you have to put that in every single document in its entirety. Well Marshall, hearf apple white. Oh no, no, no. Hold on. Back it up. Hearf? Hearf. His middle name was hearf. What does hearf mean? That's what his friends called him when he was younger called him hearf. It is short for hearfendorf. It's hearf with two Fs. Well, hearf was actually a Texas boy. Born in Spur, Texas in 1931. Spur, that's my area, Texas.

That is just another drunk person looking at one thing and naming a town after it. What's the name of this boot? No, we already got boot down there. Look down further on the boot. Blanton oil. Actually, Spur's just 20 miles from where my parents grew up. So yeah, I've been to Spur a ton of times. Dixie dog, gray corn dogs. Very good. But from what I can tell, the Apple Whites cleared out pretty quickly. They didn't hang around Spur and Marshall Apple White graduated from high school in Corpus Christi. Marshall Apple White Sr. was a popular Presbyterian minister and Marshall Apple White Jr. followed in his footsteps ever so briefly when he attended the Union Theological Seminary of Virginia, although hearf

only lasted about five months. Hey, man, you don't need a teacher if you got all the lessons in your fucking brain, dude. Yeah, that's a really great message for everyone. Quit school. See, even though Apple White was undoubtedly a committed Christian, he was also a UFO nut going all the way back to the Roswell crash when the 20 year old Apple White called the Houston Police Department for more information about the incident. But that's what I'm saying. Now with like the rise of ancient alien theory, how it crosses with theologian roots and stuff, maybe he would just be on the travel channel or the history channel. Talk, I mean, I don't know, like society now is so much more open to these conversations. He might actually have just been on ancient aliens.

If he could figure out a permanent revelation, and he actually did become the level beyond human and just got full into body mods, that would be a whole, I mean, honestly, that would have been kind of fucking dope. Yeah. Now, of course, when Apple White called the Houston Police Department, they didn't really have any information on the Roswell crash to give. But the cops did place Marshall Apple White on a list of suspicious characters. Why? Because of his interest in the UFO phenomenon. Wait, so you're just on the top 10 list of weirdos of Houston? Well, I guess at the time, a lot of people didn't call the police station and ask them about UFOs. Well, as we know, there's a lot of UFO enthusiasts all over our country, somewhere in badges, some in prison,

some cleaning up trash. Now, overall, Marshall Apple White was your all American boy during high school and college known to his friends as hearth. Apple White was a member of the National Honor Society. He was highly involved in Bible studies. He was even a member of an acapella group. Was this, is this called the closeted man McDonald's triad? It really is. It really just slamming my dick in the Bible, slamming my dick in the Bible. Not surprisingly, Apple White was known to be an energetic extrovert with a magnetic personality. Really? Because, hey man, cult leaders aren't made, they're born. Yep. Thing was though, as we've already referred to a couple times, Marshall Apple White was gay, or at the very least bisexual. He used the term bisexual,

so I believe he is bisexual. That's how he said it, because he got it up enough to make a family. Yeah, I mean, he had to go at marriage. He married a woman named Ann Pierce, had two kids with her, and for about 10 years, family just moved around the country while Apple White worked various teaching jobs as a music instructor. But it all came to a head in Alabama in 1964. There, Apple White was suspended from his job as a choral director for having an affair with a male student. Damn, I didn't realize, I forgot that we were in the deep south. 1960s, yeah. Mid-60s, deep south. Poor bastard, that's not easy. He's also sort of being a university level Brian Singer, so it's like both that too, where he is

kind of, he is, he's fucking 17 year olds. I mean, no, no, no, these are college students. These are not high school students. Nice. You're incorrigible, incorrigible. Well, following that, he separated from his wife and moved to Houston. Now, when it came to being openly gay or bisexual in Texas back in the 60s, the place to go where you could at the very least be accepted was the Houston neighborhood of Montrose, and that's exactly where Apple White went. There, Apple White lived with what was back then called a quote-unquote male companion. I'd like you to meet my butler. That's with two T's. Oh man, that's, you know, honestly, my heart does go out to him because this is not easy.

You just have to imagine not being able to be open about who you are as a person and sexuality is so important, so this must have really messed with him. Now, pretty soon Apple White got a job at the University of Houston but was again fired for allegedly having an affair with a student. Oh my god. We don't know that for sure. That was just kind of a rumor, but he was, he was fired under suspicious circumstances. See, that's what I'm saying. Nowadays, if you're not having sex with men and females in college, you're out of there. That's what I'm saying. I think you would love if he was 17 in 2020 going off to Syracuse. But think about how sexy it is. You got the coral thing out there. You got a tight young man with the saxophone and you're trying to teach him how

to play the saxophone. Open your throat. No, you have to open your throat. Coming around him, doing the thing where you, you know, like some people I've seen how you teach him to play golf by doing the sexy way, by wrapping your arms around and taking his hands. Yeah, that's how I thought you would play golf. Absolutely. And I'll remember it for forever. When you grab his hands and you move it up and down the saxophone, you're putting it in his mouth and stuff like that. Like, you're begging for a kiss. He was teaching singing, not saxophone, where you get saxophone from. Did he show up? Stop the movie Ghost. He's not playing with pottery. It's rock and roll. And he's felt up by Patrick Swayze.

Well, Applewhite was fired from his next teaching job as well, except this time, Applewhite was dismissed as the conductor of the Junior Boys Choir at St. Mark's Episcopal because of his interest in the occult, which back then just meant UFOs mysticism. Isn't all of these religions occult interested? Like, doesn't it seem like all of the Catholic Church, Episcopalian Church, they're so into the occult? Well, what have we learned from our Mormonism series? But there's often, then it's again, occult just means hidden knowledge, right? So, all of this stuff is about how there is a whole constructed background of Byzantine structure to all of these religions that seem to all kind of come back to a weird narcissism. But I missed

the 1970s world of the occult because they have, like, books that are like crystals are for lovers and 1987, the year a rainbow was president. Yeah, I mean, he wasn't sacrificing cats or anything like that. He was interested in UFOs and he did yoga sometimes. And back then, that was the occult. Damn. He's not killing cats, but he can slay that pussy. Yeah, that's funny. I think it's a pun. So, by 1972, Marshall Appelwight had checked himself into the hospital, although we're not exactly sure why. Is it like it's called redneck disease when you're surrounded by them and you can't get away? His sister claims that he was there for a heart condition, but a friend of Appelwight's in Houston speculated that he was there for a drug

overdose, although the statement sort of sounds like the guy was just being the tiniest bit catty. Yeah, and they also said he might have had a nervous breakdown. No, that was easily debunked. Yeah. The narrative in 1997 was that Marshall Appelwight had spent time in a mental hospital in the 1970s. He didn't. This was just a regular hospital. Marshall Appelwight was not quote unquote crazy as much as everyone wants him to be. Crazy as a fox. He's just smart. He's smart, but again, no business sense. No. You charge for these classes. Right. You have adjudicators watching it. You build new technology that allows you, looks all sci-fi. You put in the cans in their hands. You're sitting in the fucking sea org and

the whole thing's going back and forth. You got somebody in a chrome suit swabbing the deck. He was a true believer. He was the real deal. LRH was just a con man. You see, this is the difference between you and I where you do. I do believe Marshall Appelwight is a story of a true, true, true believer. True believer. But actually, I think it's like being high on crack and being a drug dealer. You're high on supply, baby. The co-leader has to be clear of mind and have another pursuit involved. Like it's not about all of these beliefs and all the fucking classes about making that fucking cash, buddy, or getting a bunch of guns. I can't wait to see you as a janitor at the lowest rung of a Scientologist when you're 50 years old. Everything's falling apart and you

finally bite the bullet. I'm trying to reverse OT8. It's going to make me gay. Hey, what's up, everyone? How you doing? Ben Kissel here with Katie Turks. Let you know about kind of fun. It's the LPN wrestling podcast and dare I say, it's kind of fun bringing you all the news you need to know about wrestling to keep you up to date. Yeah, we cover all sorts of news from across the wrestling industry, keep you updated, all the hot goss, all the fun stuff. Everything you need to know. So check out kind of fun on the LPN network. It's kind of fun. Brother Reed from the story must be told here and without any context, whatsoever, here's a piece of an episode called Ghosts Are Hazy Life.

Gruder wrote in the passenger seat of Sylvie's Corolla like a sick dog. He slid on the seat at every stoplight and twice got so scared he kicked the dash scuffing the glove compartment with his dirty white orthopedics. He wouldn't tell her where they were going and she wondered if he actually knew. He blurted each direction the moment it was needed. Right and here and stop! Gruder squealed like he was ready to throw up. Sylvie skidded to a stop on the shoulder of a busy freeway. At once, Gruder opened the door, ripped off his seat belt and ran into traffic. Uncle Gruder! Sylvie cried, cars honked, each howling blurb. Yet, when she looked, Gruder was already across, waiting for her at the door of the Bethlehem Retirement Community.

This story must be told. But it was in this hospital that Marshall Appelwight met his other half, Bonnie Nettles. Now surprisingly, we really don't know much about Bonnie's early life in comparison to Appelwight's and we really don't know that much about Marshall Appelwight's early life. We know nothing about Bonnie Nettles' childhood other than that she was born in Houston in 1927 as Bonnie Lou Truesdale. What we do know is that she was a nurse by profession and was in the process of divorcing a man named Joseph Nettles when she met Appelwight. See, Bonnie and Marshall's meeting was sort of one of those moments a kids met. Appelwight was certainly into UFOs,

but his knowledge was intermediate at best. He'd read a few books. Nettles, on the other hand, her knowledge of the esoteric was so deep that it pulled Appelwight to the next level. This is one of those stories of cruel fate because again, it led to the deaths of 40 people. 39. You know, and does it include Appelwight? Yeah. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Marcus. Thank you for correcting me on the number. Yeah, you were one off there. The guy had to go jerk off, remember? Yes, but otherwise it would have been even 40. Other people, but it's this idea that she so happened to have this fucking, she just happened to have the right tools and met this other fucking sparkly eyed. This guy who could kick his heel up over his ear. You know what I

mean? The fun, sweet, beautiful voice. Just nothing. He's just a boy looking for a harbor to slide his boat into. And she's the big old boat hole. And he's sliding that boat deep into that hole. And she's got all this shit from Madame Blavatsky to load on the boat. Well, it's really interesting. We were happy to have Henry sort of conduct our wedding. But he told the story of how we met. And he used some analogies that were quite offensive to our friends and family. Her big gape and cavern was filled with Marcus's monkeys. They're all full of white and slick. And they're all getting up in them eggs. They'll fight in each other. You'll see who gets to the top of them fucking eggs. Mr. Zabrak, can we just get to the ids, please? Can we just...

Hey, you guys fucking... Can we just get to the... That's my question. You guys fucking... That's not the id part. The wedding's over. Well, Nettles was a member of the Houston branch of the Theosophical Society of America, which was founded in 1875 by who else but the secret puppet master of the 20th century, Madame Helena Blavatsky, who influenced everyone from David Bowie to Adolf Hitler. Don't fuck. I'm surprised you did that equation. The... No, I'm not equating them all. No, I know. But David Bowie, you know what I'm gonna say? He's better than Hitler.

Very good. Thank you. I'm saying that she influenced everyone from the very good to the very bad. She's very iconic. Madame Blavatsky was the J.J. Kale of the occult. Who was J.J. Kale? Eric Clapton's inspiration, man. You should fucking get into that shit, dog. Eric Clapton's inspiration. I thought his inspiration was his son who passed away. You all wrote... Kissel is already starting to do the Hawaiian goodbye and... I'm Jason Momoa. He's doing the you are not. He's starting to do that Hawaiian goodbye.

Hello. I think you're ready for J.J. Kale. Okay, I'll check it out. Yeah, you'd probably like to J.J. Kale quite a bit. Hey, man, I'm just going through my Jimmy Buffett phase now. What's that? It's a parrot on my head. Well, Pheosophy was a pastiche of a number of different religions like Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity, and it was all mixed in with a healthy dash of Western occult traditions like those practiced by the infamous magician Alistair Crowley.

What Pheosophy taught was that the human soul went through multiple incarnations and that those in the Osofical Society could learn from a series of spiritual masters, secret chiefs, if you will, who came from distant physical or spiritual planes of existence, but mostly they were from Venus. Oh, they had summer homes on Venus. I hope not a timeshare. But they could appear to be both physical and non-physical. Well, this concept was wildly influential on the later teachings

of Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles, who would take the idea of the ascended masters and transpose them to both Christian theology and themselves. Fun side note about the Osofical Society, they later became Mark Prophet's Lighthouse Summit, which eventually evolved into the decidedly more apocalyptic Church universal triumphant. I thought you were going to say the Allen Parsons project. So how many religions started with Christianity? Jim Jones, right? That was a Christian based cult.

It seems like this has roots in Christianity. How many cults began with organized traditional religion? Most cults have some sort of grounding in Western or Eastern religions. Like the major religions. Was Umschenricchio the only? Because they weren't religious at all. There were no ties to religion, right? Yeah, they did.

They had some. They all need frameworks to exist upon, because the whole point is like we saw with Mormonism, like we saw with Jones. And the idea is it starts at one point and then it has to kind of jump to somewhere of, and this is where things are a little bit different. Right, right. I think maybe the Ray Aliens, not the Rai Aliens, the Rai Aliens. Rod Yeld is doing good, he's getting fat, he's having a good time.

Very fat. I think the Ray Aliens are more of an alien focused group. I don't know a whole lot about them, but I don't think they have a whole lot of grounding in something else. But for the most part, most cults do have, because they have to have something for people to hold on to. You have to have that one thing that's familiar, so the cult leader can take you on the big ride. I see.

And that's what you see if you even attempt to read the book by Sawyer, I'm not going to say the title again, that is 912 pages. The first 100 pages are highly interesting to look from the inside, the inside of Heaven's Gate for 20 years, but the back half, the back half, the 800 pages are biblical proves that what T. and Doe said were real. So your see that what they did was definitely maneuver between, we take the Bible literally to Jesus was a phantom alien identity that worked its way into a human being. Again, next episode I'll do this.

Now that would have gotten me into it if they would have said that in church school or whatever the hell it was, what did you call that? Sunday school. Sunday school. Well besides just learning about ascended masters, discarnated spirits, telepathic abilities, UFOs and channeling spirits, Bonnie Nettles also learned enough to write the astrology column in her local newspaper. Oh cool.

Furthermore, Nettles also hosted regular seances at her home with her friends. And they channeled everyone from the theosophical venutions to that old seance stand by Marilyn Monroe. And that was just Becky showing everybody her underwear. Honestly, this is pretty great. I would be a house husband in this situation for this woman. I'd show up with little smoky sausages wrapped in wonderful crusties. Honestly, Kissell would make a great husband to the female cult leader.

Yeah, I'm just hanging out, man, because I just go down and zip zap and talk politics, all this nonsense in the human world. And then they come up and they're trying to, I don't know, scream it. Kissell. Freaking H.H. Holmes or something. That's what we need to do for you. We need to make you a witch husband. He's such a good witch husband because he can just sit in a lawn chair with his sunglasses

on, drink and be else. And if she says anything crazy and people go, Benjamin, do you believe in the prophecies of Philandria? And he can just go, yeah, what are you going to do about it? That's exactly how I react to most things you say. Sure. Well, Bonnie's husband did not react in this way. No.

In fact, she was so into studying the occult that those studies completely took over her life. And since he didn't approve of the theosophical lifestyle, he began divorce proceedings in 1972. Oh man. See, it's fun to have, I don't mind quirky people who come out of nowhere with their crazy stories. It's entertaining. It is, but not when it's so diametrical to anything that you have lived with before. I guess.

I kind of get it because I changed into a different person in my previous relationship and Natalie met a man way more devoted to UFOs and luckily she's into it. Yeah. Well, of course. Because two people in a relationship both have to be into UFOs. Yeah. Sure. For it to last.

Or at least willing to hear about it at nauseam. Mm-hmm. Well, it was while Bonnie was right in the middle of her divorce that she met Marshal Applewhite. And these two hit it off from the moment they met. Applewhite said, I felt like a loner my entire life. Oh. And pretty soon, Nettles was doing Applewhite's astrological chart and they quickly surmised that they had known each other in a previous life.

Always. What a coincidence. The difference was that in this incarnation, they had both been tasked with an important mission. Although they did not yet know what that mission was. But hey, let's make our first mission to get coffee ASAP. I love ASAP. I like Marshal. That sounds right to me.

That's her voice? That's why she never spoke. Oh, you're interested. Marshal, we are the gal, I'm the father, I'm the son. Sounds like if a tremor could talk. And this symbiotic relationship was exactly what both of them needed. Nettles had always been more interested in the spiritual over the physical. And all Applewhite's relationships with both men and women had all been empty failures.

Applewhite, he was actually ready to just give up on relationships completely. But he still wanted a partner. And that was the whole that Bonnie Nettles filled perfectly. Now, admittedly. It's like Mike Pence's wife. She's more of a hole in a basket. Now, admittedly, people did say that Applewhite came off as quote unquote crazy during this time period.

What? But as Benjamin Zeller points out in his book on Heaven's Gate, Bonnie Nettles was in complete control of her facilities. And it was her knowledge of mystical and ufological subjects that made up the lion's share of their more esoteric beliefs. The wackadoo stuff. She was the real engine. She actually thought I think it was almost in a Stella got her groove back kind of moment,

eat, pray, love, where she was like, instead of cops, how about we make a whole bunch of people from around the country? She was not evil. You're making her sound like an evil. I don't think that sounds evil. You know what? I think it's weird, though, is that it's not about evil. But I really think she was the manipulative one.

She was the real the the the actual problem here because she saw all of this is just a way to get out of Houston. Her shitty dumb life. She didn't want to be a mom. She didn't want to be a housewife. She felt that she was blessed that she wanted more from her existence. She said taking pottery classes or going back to college or some shit or just leave in town. She saw Marshall Applewhite as her first fucking victim.

Like that motherfucker filled right in because the first thing he said was what's your sign? And then she it was like she knew immediately. She's been like, I can tell you everything. That is also your impression of Jackie Zabrowski, your sister for page seven. So you are channeling some very interesting things today. So within months of this fateful meeting in the hospital, Nettles and Applewhite jointly opened the Christian Art Center inside the first Unitarian Church of Houston, marking their first attempt to gain followers.

Problem was nobody was responding to all the bland same old same old New Age bullshit they were selling all the astrology and yoga meditation and metaphysics no one gave a shit. And as a result, the center closed after only a few months. From there, Nettles and Applewhite left the city and traveled to an unspecified location just outside of Houston in the Texas countryside, which they called the No Place, spelled K-N-O-W. The No Place. Oh, these puns. Is it a fucking crystal shop if the name isn't a pun?

It has to be. It always has to be like the path to fortune or something like some bullshit. Rocks of Agents. Yes. Yes, I'm very excited when you get your occult bookstore. I can't wait to know the name. I already have my name in my bookstore, Henry's Occult. That is punny.

No, no, it's from Ray's Occult. It's from Ghostbusters 2. But you're just going to put your name in there. Yep. It's not really punny at all. It's not at all. No, it's not. I kind of misheard it.

I didn't realize it was so simple. No, it's like saying it's I already thought about it. I'm not going to do that. It's just going to be called Henry's Occult. Yep. Of all the creative things you've ever done. Keep it simple. You're the one who's flawed.

Well, in the no place, Appalachian and Nettles both taught and studied New Age beliefs. And eventually they met an occultist from the Philippines who offered them spiritual guidance. The occultist confirmed that they were indeed correct in their assumption that they had a special mission and he thus gave them new names. That's cool.

So these fucking cult leaders hanging out, giving each other nicknames like everybody's playing pool at the Wahlberg's house just fucking high-fiving each other being like. We're calling him fucking short because he's short. He's like, fuck yeah, Bonnie, it's hilarious. This was the time of the cult leader in America. Like they were all these tiny little cult leaders and we're going to meet a few of them

throughout the course of this episode. Cool. But this guy, he renamed Bonnie Shaktidevi, which means powerful goddess. Okay. Appalach though was dubbed Shri Pranavall, which roughly translates to dickless herf. Oh, dickless herf, come on.

What do we got? Wait a second. I still have my dick. That's an ID. That means auspicious mantra. Oh, that's a sad nickname. That's like being told you're a great listener. Yeah, that's not good.

No, it's successful mantra. Okay. You know, I mean, I mean, I gotta get into it, but I could see how it's a fine name. It's definitely not powerful goddess. No. But it's okay. All I know is this occultist was not from the Philippines.

He was from fucking Philadelphia. Yeah. Well, bolstered by the confidence bestowed upon them by the Filipino occultist, Bonnie Nettles and Marshall Appalach gave themselves a joint pseudonym, the first of many that they'd have over the next 10 years. They began to refer to themselves as the two.

Hmm. So after their time at the no place, the two hopped in a car and started a journey through the Western United States. But it all came to a halt when their car broke down in Portland. This. That is how everyone stays in Portland.

Everyone who lived there, the car broke down. I guess we're here. No, Portland's a very, people love Portland. In 1972, I would say that's how a lot of people ended up in Portland. Oh, well, now a lot of people are leaving because it got too expensive again. But this breakdown in Portland ended up

being a fortuitous setback. Appalach and Nettles spent the next few months camped on the banks of the Rogue River. And it was during this time that they received a joint revelation that told them exactly what their special purpose was. Yes. They believed that they were the two witnesses

from the book of Revelation, described as either two olive trees or two lampstands who were able to devour their enemies with fire that flows forth from their mouths. And some dangerous ass lamps. Yeah, definitely not safe. Well, that was like, because it's

all that weird esoteric imagery from the book of Revelations, where it is that two witnesses could be people. It could be these two trees that set people on fire. And I'm not really certain because we now know, from our episode in the book of Revelations, that all of this was political satire anyway. So it's all gobbledygook.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's fucking crazy. Keep it broad. Unfortunate thing about this revelation, though, is in the book of Revelations, the beast that ascended from out of the bottomless pit was destined to overcome and kill Applewhite and Nettles. And for three and a half days afterward,

the people of Earth would celebrate their deaths. It's like when Seth Rollins beat Brock Lesnar. People were very happy. Brock Lesnar is the beast of the WWE. He was universal champion. Now he's just WWE champion. Lost at us. Well, he was a wrestler who was undefeated

in this Minnesota. Lost in your friends and your business partners. Don't know what you're talking about, Brock Lesnar. It's like when you talk about Dune. OK, OK, I understand now. Well, after the Earth celebrated their death for three and a half days, God would resurrect Bonnie and Marshall and take them up to heaven in a cloud.

Following this realization, Nettles and Applewhite became millennialists who believed that they would be killed in the final days. At least that's what they believed for the time being. And this year is where Applewhite's influence comes in. See, Bonnie Nettles hadn't grown up in the church, but remember, Applewhite was the son of a Presbyterian minister and he had briefly attended seminary.

Interestingly though, the inclusion of revelation in their belief system was a rebellion all on its own on Applewhite's part because his father's faith ignored revelation. And Presbyterianism declares apocalyptic talk to be heresy. But revelation, all of this shit is super sexy. It is. Yeah.

It's cool as fuck. Yeah. It's very metal. It is. It gives this whole template for the end of the world, which is what you find as a cult leader. When you're again, how many times we've done this when we've talked about these cult leaders, you need a timeline. You need an endpoint.

You need a place to shoot towards. But obviously they will manipulate this. But it has to start from somewhere. It has to start from somewhere. Evangelicalism loves revelations. Pastor Matt, after he forced the congregation, which is extremely poor, to build his mansion for him, he did it full month on revelations

and it was one of the only church services, full month church services that a 11-year-old Ben really kind of enjoyed. Yeah, of course, it's fucking dope. It's crazy, but they think it's real. Then you're ready to hear where that shit comes from? Oh, yes. Oh, Kissel, you just shat.

That's how I know it's a yes. Well, this belief that the end was near was wildly fashionable in America in the early 70s. A couple of years before the two had their revelation, an evangelical named Hal Lindsey released an eventual bestseller named The Late Great Planet Earth, which predicted the end of the world.

And this might be surprising to some of you, but the idea of a fast approaching biblical apocalypse is a fairly new thing in America. This is only in the last 40, 50 years that we've really been talking about this. And it was Hal Lindsey who introduced the idea that revelations could be applied to contemporary culture. And he espoused that idea to the 15 million people

who read his book. Yeah, dude. We are not doing well. Have you watched? Have you million read this crazy man's book? Have you watched the series? I have not. I sat and watched as much as I could fold into my brain

The Late Great Planet Earth. It's on YouTube. And it's good for two things. The first 20 minutes are fucking killer. They talk about the end times. It's Orson Welles reading Revelation, right? It's fucking awesome. It's a lot of fun.

And then it goes off the rails immediately because number two, what you realize is that The Late Great Planet Earth says all of this shit is going to happen. And it's a fear-mongering thing talking about how with the birth of the state of Israel and the idea of reclaiming Jerusalem as the holy place for Christianity, all this kind of shit.

You realize that none of that happened. Yeah. None of all the stuff that they said it was going to happen hasn't. But you know what I mean? The end times have it happen. Yeah. But all that shit that evangelicals believe

about it's important for Israel to be a part of the end times and revelations. This comes from Hal Lindsey. This comes from the one fucking dude. And you had Hal Lindsey in 1970 releasing this book. You had the TV series in 1976. You got the Exorcist in 1973. Send which right in the middle.

And when you take all those three things together you'll start to get an idea of how the apocalyptic Christian devil gained the foothold in America that he still has to this day. There is something to the aging brain, right? Because the world does end when you die. It's all gone. I feel like the boomer generation

is almost willingness towards the apocalypse. And we seem to be forgetting the fact that we're going to need those oceans and all those trees and stuff. And I wonder if that plays into it this narrative where it's almost wanting the end of the world to prove themselves right. Of course. Absolutely.

All these seven-year-olds are going to be dead soon. And after that, because they don't care anymore because they assume the whole world will be over by the time you're dead anymore. Because it's true because they won't exist anymore. The world to them will not exist anymore. And they also believe that the goal in life is to hoard as much gold as possible

like a storybook dragon. Cool smoke. Now, this apocalyptic belief was quite the departure from what Bonnie Nettles and Marshall Appawight were preaching prior to Rogue River before they were still in New Age mode, pretty much talking exclusively about humanity reaching its full potential.

But still, they didn't fully abandon those ideas. Instead, they combined them with the book of Revelation, using what's now called progressive millennialism. In this, the world will end, but without all the plagues and earthquakes and wars. An example would be the concept of 2012. That they're supposed to be a shift. That there's a new chapter to society.

And what you're hoping is that with that chapter closing and a new one opening, that it's going to create a surge of psychic awareness and togetherness and all this shit. I mean, yeah, like 40 million people might have to die. But during that time period, yeah, it's going to be rough for some people. Everybody else is going to be able to talk to fish.

The band or the animal? I mean, they're both as difficult to get across to. I'm talking to you, Tray and Nostalgia. Oh my goodness. Well, in their scenario, yes, Bonnie and Marshall would be martyred. But instead of going up to heaven in a cloud, a UFO would descend and take the two

along with their followers to a heavenly utopia that actually existed far away in another corner of the universe. It's called Boca Raton. Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me. Thinking about that, man. Thinking about Russia a lot recently.

I know who you are. Big ups to Neil Pert, man. Big ups to Neil Pert, RIP. It does sound like a great fantasy. Yeah, I mean, yes, bad things were going to happen to those left behind, but who could say what those things were? And more importantly, who cares?

Who gives a shit? We did it, buddy. Interesting. All the two knew was that God was an extraterrestrial being and heaven was a physical place one could travel to without dying. And that last part, as we all know, would eventually change. But in the beginning, the two taught

that the bodies of their adherents would, through a biological and chemical process, be transformed into perfected extraterrestrial beings. And they would live eternally in the next evolutionary level above human or tailor for short. And how they do that is what we will come to know is eating beets.

Literally eating nothing but beets. Well, no, that was just one of the many diets that they tried. Honestly, though, beets are also back. I love beets. Everyone loves beets, though. I love beets. Next episode, we'll try to even more sum up their full-on extensive belief system,

which is not that extensive. They just can't fucking shut up about it. So it ends up being very long and complicated, even though it's really not. It sounds like a bee leaf system. They're just saying the same thing over and over and over again in different ways. Well, they wanted to do, in this form, the idea was

they would do what they would call the demonstration, which would be they would be crucified. They would be literally crucified. They would be crucified and then rose from the dead afterwards by the God creator alien being. That is not even God because there's the unknowing personality-less creator God with all of the weird gods underneath him.

Our God is just one of them. Like, I'm already there. I'm already doing it. It's a lot of stuff. But you know, that's what it's all about. Few things, but just kind of reinvented. That's Taco Bell's whole menu. If you ever get $50 worth of Taco Bell,

by the end of it, that chalupa tastes just like the Mexican pizza. The Mexican pizza just tastes just like the quesadilla. Or, oh, what do they call those things? The Crunchwrap Supreme. But it's all the same. Taco Rito? No, Crunchwrap Supreme. That's what it's called.

But it is the same ingredients over and over. It gets reinvented. You know, Ben, you accidentally hit on a good point here. I did it on purpose, dude. I never get any. Yes, I use food as an analogy, but that's too relate to the people. Today's at Nettles and Applewhite.

They always kept their theology firmly rooted in Bible verse. They sold all of this as an interpretation of Scripture, which, when you really think about it, is a very Protestant idea. Not necessarily evangelical, but Protestant. Because Baptists interpret the Bible differently from Methodists, who interpret it differently from Lutherans, who interpret it differently from the Church of Christ, and so on and so forth.

Well, the Church of Christ believes in cinnamon sticks as a good dessert. And that is disgust. And no music. No music. No music. Yeah, it's weird. Church of Christ is real weird. What do they do?

Isn't that music? They just sing. Because they believe all its pleasures are bad. Any sort of pleasure. Any earthly pleasure. Well, at the very least, within the Church. But yeah, they're not big on music. My grandparents weren't really big music people.

Your parents were in this church? Or your grandparents were in this church? Yeah, I mean, it's not a cult. No, no, I know. It's very famous. I just didn't realize, because music is so in most religions. Yeah. It's used in most.

Well, they still sing, but in the church. Evangelicals were like, check out my new guitar. Like, they were always rocking with drums and stuff. The thing is, if you start tapping your toes, sometimes if you're just the right amount of jiggle, those boobies start bouncing. And that's the first thing that make your bubby tingle. Don't do it.

Well, all Applewhite and Nettles really did. When it comes to a Protestant point of view, they made the Bible a sci-fi novel. Yeah. They just changed it up. They didn't change it up. They just said, this is our interpretation. And this idea that aliens and God were one and the same

was something they leaned into from the very beginning. They'd book conference rooms, they'd hold talks, and they do it all under the title UFO and the Kingdom. They're bringing it both together. This is how you hook the nerds. Right. You got to get them in the seats, because you know what nerds do?

Homework. They will be there. They will do the work that is created. I want to question, this is my question. So they're pulled over on the side of the road. Right? They're living in an encampment. What made them, what do you think?

It's like, how do they sit and talk about, like, do you think it's a cynical conversation? I mean, like, we a monster, we need a hook, baby. We need to get butt in seats. She's getting more sailor like every time you do her. Absolutely not. You're reading about Nettles. Yeah, I don't.

No, I'm not. I'm not. I'm asking you, I'm asking the question of, like, do you think that this is a cynical understanding of, like, these were, or they are just so desperate to feel like they are an important part of society, that they, they're looking for people. Like, because at some point, like,

because they're just looking through famous couples and Marshall Apple, I was like, are we Sonny and Cher? No. It's like, nah, nah. Are we Romeo and Juliet? But it's like, how do you find where you land as a cold leader? They're true believers. Yeah.

And it's one of the conversations that we had when, when, you know, we were going through the stories, that you have a very hard time with true belief. And under, like, with, like, true belief and, like, knowing what, like, the true belief when it comes to, like, Protestantism, like, where that comes from. Because these people were, they were not cynical.

I don't think that Bonnie Nettles was trying to manipulate anybody. Like, these people were, like, true believers in a very real sense. But on some point- That's why it took them months. They, their revelation was after months of conversing. But at some point, you do choose.

I don't have a, I don't have trouble understanding the true believers. I understand that people can look, can see this and you just have to have no base personality to pull this into. You have to be kind of like a fucking, you have to be a blank slate. Yeah.

To be able to infuse somebody else's philosophy into being like, and that's all you believe. And you, you were just like in a cone of belief where they are at, right? But which I, so I do understand that. But on some level, you do kind of have to consciously choose, this is our story. Yeah, they definitely choose this as our story,

but it's not a cynical choice. It is an evolution. Like, it is that one conversation builds on another conversation builds on another conversation until, and they're having these conversations for months. They're just sitting next to a fucking river in a campsite and doing nothing but talking. And eventually they just decide, like, this is it.

This is what feels right. And I think that's what it is. Is that they just talk until they say, this is what feels right. Now, let's go tell the people. You know what really would have helped here? One of those a thousand piece puzzles. Oh my God.

It takes a weekend. Oh, outside. That's a nightmare. The wind, whew. Guy, man. Then it adds sort of like a weird physical level to put together a puzzle. You got to find all the pieces when it blows away at night.

You got to do what my mom did and glue every piece together so that you can make it, put it on the coffee table for months and months. And then we have to say, that was really good work, mom. It's definitely a big, it's a carriage. But I guess it might not be cynical, but the business aspect of it. You think about, like, Joel Osteen, right?

Like, he's up there and he's doing all this stuff. He's cynical. He is cynical, right? Yeah. Yeah. But did they have the business acumen to go? They weren't even thinking about, like, any of that. Again, no RLRH, baby.

No, they're not thinking about the monetary value of this at all. No, no, no. They're not evil monsters like Joel Osteen. But these beats cost money. They do. These haircuts, while it is a cheap haircut, cost money. These beats don't grow underground, actually.

Well, in fact, what they would do is they would essentially let their, once they did start getting followers, they would let their coffers run out. And then when everything, when they had no money, they would tell their followers, like, OK, go out and work an odd job, like a janitor job, or something with no track, something that you're not really going to get into.

Go out, work an odd job for a little bit, make a little bit of money, and then come back. And it's just work. It's just getting day to day. It's you do the job, though. Old Tien Doe here. We sit. We think.

You, though, have to go work at TJ Maxx. I don't know what you got to do. That is an odd job. Being an extraterrestrial is a job. A full-time job. It does take a little bit of brain power, and if my brain is completely wiped after a whole day of being Jesus Christ alien, I'm not going to go out and sweep

a fucking floor for no chump. You better tell me I'm going to go do returns for eight hours. You know what you mean? I have to keep my pussy in clothes. Very good. And so with their message more or less worked out, Nettles and Applewhite returned to Houston in May of 1974

and got their first follower right off the bat, a woman named Sharon Walsh. She reminds me of the super fan dude from Tenacious D. Now, even though Bonnie Nettles was the creative force behind most of this, Bonnie didn't have no zazz. No. She didn't have zazz. No zazz.

Leave me not. Leave me. You got zazz. Look how big my wand is. I got one big one, I got one small one. That's zazz. Isn't that enough to get groups around me? Get some spiky use.

But you mentioned their first follower. We remember our first listener who was a fan. Izzy, remember her? Yeah, of course I remember Izzy. From British Columbia, I believe. If you're still listening. No, Izzy's from Mexico. Mexico.

Wow. If you're still completely opposite sides of the continent. We were in the ether here. We were in the, what is, what is land? What is space? What is location? Oh no, I just heard like your final defense attorney's argument. And whenever trial or anything.

But the zazz, I mean that's Applewhite, baby. That's where Applewhite comes in. Applewhite's the visionary. Yeah, he was in a cappella group. Yeah. But. Okay, I'm not, I didn't see him that way. But.

Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum. What? I'm sorry. Just destroyed the microphone. Got to sell it. Well, Applewhite was the one who could deliver the message in a vaguely coherent fashion. The message that Applewhite delivered was so strong

that Sharon Walsh, that first follower, she knew the two from the Christian Art Center. She knew them from the no place. But after she heard this new message six days after hearing it, abandoned her family completely and left with the two to spread the gospel across America. She, it seems like she wanted an excuse to abandon her family. She might have just gone along with a carnival somewhere.

Being a mom is hard. Yeah. But I saw a lot of these types. Because my mom was a member of an Elinon group, and we used to go to an interfaith church off of a story of Boulevard that, you know, but it was filled with a lot of kind of lost souls that were really looking for adherence. I saw a lot of Heaven's Gate haircuts in that environment.

Simple. Yes. Well, in Boise, the two and Sharon tried converting an anthropology professor by just walking into his office, telling him, you got to drop everything and leave with us immediately. You mean I got to drop all my books? Because you know what? We got a UFO to Heaven coming, buddy.

And he's like, yeah? I'm kind of sold. Come on, let's go. But you're three, you smell, first of all, you smell. And what's your name? You don't talk anymore. This guy, he said they were sincere, but they had weird eyes.

Yeah. He said that's what turned him off. He's like, I didn't like their eyes. I said no. And they also failed to convert a local psychic in Boise. Also said, nah, in fact, every single person they talked to on that trip gave him a polite no. I think you have to build it and they will come.

The build of dream style. It takes some time. Make some swings right there. You know what? You don't hit the home runs you don't swing for. That's right. That's absolutely correct. But you also don't strike out and then lose the game for your team.

Yeah, maybe four balls. Four balls, three bases, huh? No, it was four bases. You just got it. They were trying. They were trying. Well then Sharon's guilt about leaving her family started settling in. And after she had a long sit down with her husband and her daughters,

she was convinced to come back home after only four months of being on the road, talking to strangers about heavenly UFOs. Plenty of time to abandon your family. Just get back. Just get back there. Do you really want mom back after all this shit? She just she literally. I think so.

You met two boobs and you immediately left. Well, she'd known the boobs before. Exactly. She'd done a couple of classes with the boobs. I almost even understand if you just met the boobs and you just like and they had the van revving and they're like, there's a UFO down the highway. 95 we're going to go catch her right now. I understand the urgency wanting to leave,

but you've already had a cooling period with these two morons. But the boobs had a new thing to say. They had a new message. They had a nice nipple. Now the two losing their only follower was bad enough. But things got even worse when Sharon's husband, who was naturally holding a bit of a grudge, charged Applewhite and Nettles with credit card fraud.

Because they'd used his gas card when they were on the road. But eventually Sharon did convince her husband to drop the charges because she said, I let them use the gas card. Technically it's our gas card. So drop the charges. Sharon, you abandoned your family. Yeah, this might be grounds for divorce. And thing was the initial arrest brought up something else on Applewhite's record.

Turned out Applewhite had rented a car with an expired credit card, which meant he'd essentially stolen the car. No, but you understand. They wrote a letter. This is true. They wrote a letter to the rental company explaining that it will all be paid for. And we have the car. They did not dumb and dumber this.

They literally did the. That's as good as money. That's as good as money. Oh, this is for $270,000. You're going to want to keep that. Well, for that crime, Marshall Applewhite served six months in the county jail. But this incident points towards an interesting shift in the two's perceptions

about themselves. And we see this shift in most cult leaders. Although I didn't know there was a name for it. There's a real fun name for it. Anti-nomianism. That is a fun name, Marcus. He liked anti-nomianism. Marcus and I were excited to find the term.

Yeah, we were very excited. It is very cool. Yeah. Well, in stealing the car or at least defrauding the company, Applewhite Knowles believed themselves to be above the law because of their self-proclaimed exalted profit status. And this belief that the laws of man no longer apply to those who are on a mission from God is known as anti-nomianism.

Like the Blues Brothers. And everyone from Jim Jones to David Koresh utilized that belief throughout their reigns of terror. Because one time, actually, they were at this pizza restaurant, Tea and Dough and Tea. She picked up the pizza. Well, we haven't got to Tea and Dough yet. You're right. But I'll say, I'll refer to Bonnie.

I'll use their earth names. I'll use their government names. She took the pizza and she flipped it around because normally it's from the small side of pizza. Wait, wait, wait. And she turned and she's like, Hey, Mitchell, take a little mouth, huh, I'm supposed to be stuck right here. I'm gonna flip and scream. Yeah, yeah.

And she bit in and took cross first. Get the, get out of here. And there was a lonely pizza chef in the back who turned and he saw it and he was just like, My God, that's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. And he went on to go into, because he lived in this little shack. Oh, it was almost like a hut. Right. And he went back to his little hut and he bore.

They get, it's not just some irregular hut now. No, no, no, no. It became a pizza hut. All right. But again, Marshall Appawite turned this seeming setback into an opportunity to further solidify his and Nettles theology. It was while he was sitting in the county jail that he realized that he and Nettles, they weren't humans.

They were aliens. Yeah. We were inhabiting human bodies. So I could, can I go then? So can I go now? No. And they weren't the only aliens who had visited Earth from what they called the next level, T and L. Even though Jesus Christ was the Son of God, he was also an alien because God was actually an alien as well.

Very similar to Mormonism. And with this, Nettles and Appawite solidified the basic structure of the cult that would take them all the way to the end. And pretty soon after the solidification, they started gathering father, they started gathering followers for real. Damn. This was also around the time they decided on a name change. They bravely went by Guinea and Pig because they considered themselves to be a part of

the cosmic experience. When they thought it was cute. Yup. I'm with it. This is, I am Guinea. This is my friend Pig. Don't say anything about my weight. I'm actually feeling really kind of self-conscious about my vehicle.

Shut up, Pig. Yeah, you're the Piggy. Guinea Pig. Guinea and Pig. No, I know, but it's Guinea Pig. It's Guinea Pig. Yeah, because it's part of the cosmic experience. Of course.

Eventually though, they settled on bow and peep because they were the shepherds of humanity. These guys are nerds. That's what I'm saying, man. This is rough. You're a dork, Caesar. It's dork. That's good. Dork is a very, I think dork is better than doofus.

Doofus is for the followers. Dork is for the leaders. I agree, I hear that. On the hierarchy of nerd, I believe dork is above doofus. Right. But as far as gathering followers went, the turning point for nettles and apple-eyed came in April of 1975 when they were invited to speak at a metaphysical meetup hosted by a wannabe cult leader named Clarence Clug.

Now, Clarence Clug straight up in like a checkered suit covered in sweat. He owes money to like 50 people. Like he's essentially Adam Sandler from uncut gems a little bit where he is just, he is under a lot of heat. He's got a lot of, he's got a lot of fucking irons in the fire. He's got a lot of plates going and he's just like, he needs a bump. He needs to get his colt to the next level and he just really can't find the hook. Swiping his brow like he's a king of comedy.

See, Clug was trying for pretty much the same thing that apple-eyed nettles were going for, except he combined revelations with chakras and tantric energy. But Clug bucked up. He asked for too much too soon. He asked his followers for a whole shitload of cash because he said that his teachings were so important that they needed to be put into print. But since no publisher was willing to print the fucking truth, we're going to have to self publish this damn thing ourselves.

So, come on guys. Hey guys, come on. Hey, listen, aren't the writings on the wall here, right? You know what's going to get on? How much did it help you? How much did it help you, huh? You got 15 grand? Do you have 15 grand?

Listen, I know we're going to publish this book. It's going to be a big deal of room. It's going to just change everybody. Don't worry about anybody. But the first thing I have to do is I got to take that 15 grand. I got to triple it. KG is going to make it tonight. I got to go on.

I got to put it a triple double, triple single. Triple double. Yeah, on the Celtics. What do you think a triple double is? I honestly, I haven't had it at the Wendy's since I was a nice guy. Well, problem was, Clug was running a pretty shitty cult. Everything was in disarray. They were being torn apart by petty relationship problems.

And those relationship problems were only being made worse because the cult was full of vicious gossips. I've got to nip that in the bud. Got to nip that in the bud. And that's why a good cult, honestly, you need a little bit of corporal punishment. And I know you're going to push back on me. Everybody pushes back on me.

You didn't have any corporal punishment. This is what I'm saying. Again, LRH understood sometimes you have to put a guy in a trash can and dump a bunch of cold water on him so he understands who's boss. Well, that's not very nice to do, though. It's not nice to do, but how the hell are you going to walk through walls and talk to Xenu? But they don't actually ever get to walk through walls.

Yeah, they don't do any of that. All that's just lies. Yeah, David Miss Gabbage is just screaming, screaming, screaming like little people do. He's got his wife locked in a room somewhere. Life is full of funny little mysteries. Lessons. They're teaching lessons to the group.

Leto too understood. Well, in other words, when Nettleton Applewhite showed up, everyone was ready to say goodbye to Klug. Like the Hulk Kluns? I don't think you understand. I really got a lot of places to go. So maybe I can stay around and can be sort of like, you know, I'll be the treasurer.

So let me get all the money together so I can make sure we get enough beats for you guys. Well, from what those people who were at Klug's meeting said, Bo and Peep radiated charisma and gave off an aura of understanding and peace, which is exactly what they were looking for. And instead of the eyes being creepy, some of them said that Applewhite's eyes, quote, gave off this love thing. Full of shit.

I don't know. I mean, I could kind of see it, I guess. I mean, it was a connection thing, those big wide eyes that he had. Like for some people, they connected with that. Well, if from what I saw on Beyond Human, their approach didn't really change. And I honestly don't think it did. He cries a lot.

Marshall Applewhite's a crier. He's very emotional. He's like John Boehner. Yes, it's all. And I think that it sort of conveys this idea of I'm genuine, where it's just more like, I think you understand how much trouble you're in at all times and you're just about to seriously be like,

somebody just get me out of this thing. But it's now too late because you've already cut your balls off. Yeah, you can just look at Klug and be like, I cried and no one cared. He's crying and no one cares. I've been crying for three freaking years. Just because I'm an ugly crier. Honestly, that is one thing to remember.

It's okay to cry in relationships, but you do. I guess there's a death. Save it. Save it. Save the ugly cry. You don't want to have an ugly cry. Weeping is fine. Weeping in response to tragedy is fine.

No, I mean, but like a little bit of a weep where you know the tears come down, but like the full on like heaving ugly cries. Like, yeah, that's reserved for death in the end of the relationship. Yep, or a big fight to really get out of it. But during their talks about revelation and going up into the UFO to experience

the next evolutionary level above human, Bow and Peep smartly quoted Matthew 2513 in saying that no one knows the time of Christ's return, meaning there was no expiration date on the cult, at least not yet. Damn, yeah, they definitely changed that. No, it's smart, man. That's how you start.

You create a vague structure. Yeah. And then you slowly fill it in. And then they feel ownership because they're helping you fill in. As we'll see with, as it goes on, they're taking cues from the people and creating this kind of like loop

to make sure everybody's getting what they want out of the cult. Right. Well, Bow and Peep said that Earth was one of the countless heavenly gardens, and our garden was at this very moment being prepared for its first, and possibly its last harvest.

And there's some gross ass pumpkins in there. Oh, yeah. The only way to escape, they said, was to ascend to the next level where they would become immortal, androgynous, non-Memillions with no genitals who are nonetheless still very attractive. You're saying that, and Marshall Appoy said that.

I look at them. I don't know. And that's what I'm saying is that that's what they said that they were going to, like, you're going to lose your nose, you're going to lose your genitals, you're going to lose everything. You're going to be cute. But you're going to be very attractive.

It's like, no, you're not, man. The whole, it looks like, the only way it's attractive is if you get a boner from looking at Casper. Yeah, or like the South Park version of Michael Jackson. Can you imagine just spreading whatever material Casper is and just sticking your dick kind of randomly in it, trying to see what was sexy about it? You know Casper is a child.

Hmm. No. It's the friendly ghost. Can I say this? He's a boy ghost. But now that he's the boy, he's the ghost of a boy. So do you stop aging once you're dead because he's been around since the 30s?

Physically, he's still the ghost of a boy. Yes, but are you, hmm, do you have an age when you're a ghost? That's amazing. Is it still child molestation if you're having sex with the ghost of a child? If you were attracted to the body of a child, then I would say that you are a child molester. But Casper is just an entity.

It's a full ghost. He's not, he's not, does not have the body of a child. Yeah, it looks like a bunch of com with eyes. But he still has the voice in the face of a child. We could debate this all night like literally. We could debate this all night, but we should get up. Well, what Apple White Nettles are telling people is that you're gonna, you're all gonna become

a bunch of sexy grays. Okay. But of course, no cult works without an antagonist. And in the case of Bo and Peep, their enemy were the Luciferians. The Luciferians were descended from the angels who had rebelled against the kingdom of heaven. And they ruled over this earth through your standard secret societies like the Illuminati and the Freemasons

and so on and so forth. But this is my question when it comes to all of that. Obviously, Satan was kicked down from heaven. It must have some components of it that suck. Because if it really was perfect, why would anyone leave it? The whole, the classic story of Lucifer is what they do here. What they call the Lucis. Then they're cute little white.

Because they're not even that much of a nefarious villain. They're really not. Because it was still like, yeah, you can, you know, most, you can live with them. You can work with them. The Lucis? Most of them do. Like, yeah, they're, they're around.

They call them Lucis. That's what you'll find. He loves little pet names. So he called them Lucis. So in this, in this world, what would be known as Lucifer is one of the pantheon of gods underneath the all-knowing creator god. And they believe with lessons that they have received

from their various ascended masters, what they've learned in Tayla, is that they don't need the big massive creator god. They can go run their own kingdoms wherever they want. So Lucifer leaves to take over the planet earth. And what he does is, he does, he puts lies throughout all of these modern societies, especially here on the planet earth.

Stuff that like. Like dinosaur bones. Stuff like that. But it's like Jesus came and he sacrificed himself for our sins and opened up the gates for heaven. And what it means is that Jesus has already done the hard work. Y'all set now. You can go to heaven now without,

but what Marshall Appelwight will break down is, but actually we have to do the work of Jesus the same and sacrifice the same when these Lucis are trying to convince you that you can just fucking cruise. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, Jesus Christ is a man that had been inhabited

by an alien 2000 years ago. And then maybe other people have been inhabited by aliens since then. He doesn't really know like Marshall Appelwight doesn't say he's the second coming of Christ. He says he is the next coming of Christ. He doesn't not, not say it. But no, he does say that he is inhabited by the Christ alien. But he is not the second coming because there have been other,

there possibly been other incarnations of Christ throughout history. But it's the things that he, that's not even necessarily like gods. They don't see them as gods at all in the way that we see them as gods. They're just aliens. They are corporeal beings with, you know, you could shoot an alien in the head. Like you could shoot Jesus in the head and he'd die.

Do it, dude. I'm really upset that you guys ruined the New Men in Black for me because I wanted to see that movie. But he called this process Christing, which to me I think is also the term for coming on the feet of 12 guys. Those are the things that, like I said, you could work with the Luciferians. It was possible to live with them and live in their world.

But if you found it possible to do so, i.e. if you couldn't function in the modern world, then you were a candidate for the next evolutionary level above human. We're talking the 1970s modern world, right? Yeah, we're talking like fucking hellhole America. So we're doing like the modern world is like a microwave. Yeah, like that's a TV that still doesn't have color. Tupperware.

Tupperware. Now in those early days, Applewhite would do the vast majority of the talking while Nettles would sit next to him and act as his quote unquote spiritual anchor, interjecting only when she felt Applewhite statements needed clarification. And according to one early follower, the times in which Nettles interjected

seemed to correspond directly with questions that popped into this guy's head while Applewhite was speaking. Like he would, Applewhite would be talking, this guy would have a question, and then Nettles would come out and say, well, there may be some of you out there wondering about such and such. Why beats? I mean, like I was just about to say that.

Why beats? It looks like my asshole's bleeding. Yeah, absolutely. Well, this man later known as Tadadi said that he felt as if he were in a tunnel. He was at one end while Applewhite and Nettles were at the other, beckoning him to come forward. And he added that he felt as if the only people in the room

were him and the two, despite the fact that the talk was taking place in a crowded auditorium. We see this again and again with cult leaders. It's anchor and political figures, pretty much anyone who's charismatic. That is the magic of charisma. He's talking to 200 people and making everyone in there feel like they're talking directly to you.

It's kind of like meeting Sammy Hagar from whatever. I said, you get in there and the first thing he says to you is like, tell me, are you a Cabo or are you a Wabbo? I'm a Wabbo, Sammy. Oh, man, I bet I'm, I think I'm a Cabo. Really? Yeah. No, the Wabbo is so much more fun than the Cabo.

I know that, but I'm trying to be true to myself. Yep. Wow. Yep. And I'm just on the other side, just making readers, man. Making readers, just making sure his guitars are polished, his hair is freshly dyed. I am just there for Sammy.

I love it. So by the end of their two night run at Clarence Clug's Metaphysical Seminar, Bo and Peep had made a compelling enough argument for two dozen people to leave their lives behind and join the two. Damn, okay. Now, the people who were joining them were, as we said, mostly what you'd call hippie types, totally disillusioned by the complete and total failure of the 60s,

at least a failure from the point of view of peace and love. These people were what Robert J. Lifton called proteans, meaning their belief systems were ever changing and fluid. Didn't really matter if the experiences they had were shallow or profound. It was all treated the same. But, you know, you might believe in Hinduism one week. You might believe in Christianity the next. You might believe in Judaism the next month after that.

See, this is I can't deal with with a spouse. At least if they are a witch, you just got to stick with one. Yeah. Or at least you got, you got to stick with one every five years. I just get me changed that fast. I'm all about the experimentation and the idea of changing your thought lens. Yeah, absolutely.

The way you look at your life. I think it's it is really interesting, but I feel like you still kind of have a societal obligation to, like, raise your family. And so you could go to work. You can do all of the things that you need to do and stay with the perimeter, or if you don't want to fuck off and lead a monastic life,

then you are free to do so. That's like one of those where I kind of understand if you don't really have any ties, if you're just a fucking guy, we're going to a pizza parlor and you just want to go and join him and do whatever the hell you want. I can go do that shit. Yeah.

But it is annoying when they're super into it every week and then they're like, Hinduism is wrong. That was last week, but they were like telling you that it was the greatest thing of all time. That is annoying. It's like when our friend got super into soccer

and changed his entire personality and then it's like, what happened? But the thing is, but he's still in the soccer. He's stuck with it. Yeah, but that's how I could respect. That's not a spike. I honestly think that's true.

Yes. Well, these people, these were your former Scientologists, you know, yoga, fishing autos, psychonauts, astrologists, psychics, people that just kind of went from one thing to the next. Was yoga always so attached to an ideology? Because now it's more literally about your body.

Like DDP is not like also your third eye. It's like certain strains of yoga. There are, there are ones that are more exercise based. It's like, I go to various, the ones, the classes I've been to, it's kind of a grab bag. Some are a little bit more spiritual than others.

It's always kind of in attitude because it's about breath and all that kind of bullshit. Can you please just have someone film you doing yoga with a bunch of 40 year old women because I need to see it. It's never, honestly, it's always like kind of youngers, but it's me in there, a man who,

I just look like a guy who's just become sober, who's just looking for anything else to do. Well, the one thing that all of these people shared was a staunch belief in the existence of extraterrestrial life. If you didn't believe in UFOs, you weren't going to be a part of Bone Peep's cult. Okay.

In other words, these people weren't necessarily cynics. They just wanted to believe in something that would both absolve them of all responsibility and give them a ticket off the planet Earth. Bone Peep, that's what they were selling in spades. Sure. Now, while you did have a fair amount of single people joining,

some left behind entire families after attending just one meeting with one couple in particular, abandoning their kids to a friend because one of Bone Peep's main rules is no kids. One thing they definitely were correct about. No, that is technically good, but if you got kids, you got to...

Oh yeah, if you've started it, you got to finish it. You got to finish it. Yeah, kill them. No, you don't kill them. You drown the kids. Raise them. I'm just saying. I think that's a way to look at it,

but if you want to join Heaven's Gate, you drown the kids. Jesus, you're like Susan Smith, mother of the year. I'm not like her. That's why I drown my children inside of toilet paper. You're disgusting. But the interesting thing about it is that while people did join the cult fantastically fast, they also left just as easily.

For example, the couple who left their children, they said, you know what? We're going to give this a shot for three months. We'll see how it goes. And if we like it, see you later. If not, see you in three months. Sure enough, three months and one week later, they were back home.

If I'm those kids, I'm living like the Menendez brothers. I'm like, you left us for three months. I want this. I want an Atari. Whatever the hell was cool for kids in the 70s. Now, a lot of those who joined were comfortably middle class, predictably. But there were some who were actually wealthy.

One dude, John Mickey Craig, was a successful real estate developer who was almost elected to the Colorado House of Representatives as a Republican. According to John Craig's ex-wife, whom he left along with six kids, he told her in 1975, UFO's going to come like three or four months.

It's going to take me away to another planet. See you later. Oh, oh, yeah. Yeah, I thought you were just running for the House of Representatives. Yeah, I decided I'm going to represent myself and alien Jesus. And I'm just going to go. You take care of the kids.

Yeah, I guess I fucking have to. Yeah, you do. Bye. Bye. Well, she figured, well, if and when this doesn't happen, he'll come back. Like, he'll just be back. You know, I got six kids.

I fucking hope he comes back. Hopefully to a padlocked door. John Craig never came back. It seems like he may have just not wanted to be a father. I know. But then he joined this group. It's, you know, that's the thing. I don't, this is of all of them.

I just don't particularly understand the stickiness. But we'll get it. Well, pretty soon he was printing off flyers and renting halls for recruit. Meanings. And 22 years later, John Craig was one of the 38 people to commit suicide with the rest of Heaven's Gate in a mansion whose sale was negotiated by John Craig.

Yep. Use your talent. I guess he was committed to it. I don't think this guy just wanted to leave his family because if he just wanted to leave his family, he would have gone to Heaven's Gate for two months and then he would have fucking moved to Pennsylvania. Yeah, that's, it was, he could have used the 9-11 opportunity

and stage his death. But he, it's, he is a true believer. Obviously. And he decided to give it his all. And there's something about going and choosing to be in a little society in which you no longer have to choose anything ever again. You don't have to make a decision.

You had a, he had a high-powered job, high-risk job. It was very difficult to be a real estate agent. All of a sudden now you don't have to be fucking anything. You got this little dome-haired boy telling you what to do. Freedom in a cage. But there were others who left the cult in the 70s and came back much later. The aforementioned T. Doty said he left the cult in 1978

but returned in 1994 after a chance meeting with one of his original so-called classmates. So lame do you have to be that you didn't learn anything in 20 years? I, maybe they got dumber. It's not lame. No, it's not lame, it's not dumb. It's like, this guy said that like while he was away from the group, he found the world to be rude, mean, and aggressive.

That's true. He'd been beaten up, harassed, lied to, cheated, robbed, threatened. Me too. He'd had all of them. But he couldn't fucking hack it. Like he just did not. But when, you know, when you're with Bo and Pete, everything's fine.

You know, everything, everything's good when you're with Bo and Pete. This is the part where I say that's really great and I hope, I wish that they didn't all die. It's the same thing with like Jones, like all these cults, I'm like, I just wish that ironically human nature, I know that they think the world's a bad place and then ironically that's just, it's just human nature and then they end themselves.

Yeah. I mean, and that's the thing is that Bo and Pete like broke it down to the point where their followers and, and even themselves like were almost infantilized. Like it's where it takes everything to a very childlike, simple level. But they're trying to become space babies.

Yeah. Truly. And as they started to gain more followers, Bo and Pete started referring to themselves as T and Do. I don't know why space baby sounds racist. Well, like I feel like if aliens come down and like do not refer to me as space babies, we are space people.

The Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles would use T and Do and tell the end. Like that was their names and tell the end. And no, no, what, I tried to, Henry, I think you figured out why, like T and Do, it has to do with like their love of the sound of music or something, right? You should, yes, try to, again,

try to read the 912 page book by Sawyer. You see, he does have, as an example of, he did have what he believed to be his version of an explanation of what was told to him. Was that I guess that Bonnie Loonettles had a, one of her favorite movies in the world was Sound of Music. And so the song. Do, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee...

Is there a gun around? Because I could use that right now. But T and Do are at the end of this, right? So, T and Do are the end of it. or the end of it, it's about the shift of octave from T to DOE at the very end of the refrain that is about T and DOE being connected to each other as father to son, that the father allows the son to go up to an upper octave to the next level, this, I'm sounding like a fucking moron.

No, that's very interesting. They just try to read the book. Yeah. And what I didn't realize about this cult was that they'd actually been making national headlines since the 70s. In October of 1975, The New York Times printed an article about the group with the headline 20 missing in Oregon after talking of higher life. During this event in question, Nettles, now known as T, and Appalachite, now known as

DOE, held a conference at the Waldport Inn in Waldport, Oregon, attracted a crowd of about 250. I don't want to be all like fake news here, but it's a totally insane headline, 20 missing in Oregon. Yeah. They're in Oregon. Yeah. Well, 20 missing from Oregon.

You'll see. Yeah. By the end of it, between 20 and 30 people walked away from their lives to join the group. Now, another fascinating aspect of this cult is that while most cults steeped in the book of Revelation, they go for the fucking hard sell, T and DOE, low pressure. It's almost to the point of no pressure. Soup's cash. Well, they didn't...

I don't like it. They understand cult infrastructure yet. They love the ideas and they love the attention because these are two people that have had... They believe they suffered from a deep lack of attention. And so this, they loved having everybody show up. They love the idea of all these people coming and wanting to follow them. And then, I believe that this obviously is a little bit more of a sketch comedy idea, but at some point, you or T and DOE, looking at a group of 20 people, and all of a sudden

they're like, yes, tell us where to go. We'll follow you anywhere. And you're like, our car broke down like two weeks ago. We have nothing to bring you to. There's no home, there's no place to go, there's no church, there's nothing. They didn't know what to do with the followers. It was very difficult to be a part of Heaven's Gate in those early days. They were nomadic.

They didn't have a compound, at least not yet. They would meet at campgrounds, just all across America. It was like, all right, so next meeting's going to be in Fruita, Colorado, around somewhere in late March. So they would just... See you there. But it would be that vague. It would be that vague.

They would say like, a general date, a general area, and if you just so happened to caught them, if you just so happened to catch them, you'll be able to be a part of the next wave. And that's what they then said, well, it's all about the universe would allow you to meet us. If you were supposed to meet us. Yeah. And if you missed a meeting, you might never find them again. Really?

Like, they're just gone. Because you're... I mean, this is 19... This is 1972. Right. Well, even more frustrating was the fact that many of the meetings that were supposed to happen didn't happen. Sometimes people would start spreading word amongst the members that Tia and Do were planning

a meeting somewhere like Los Angeles or Colorado, but when everyone showed up, found out the whole thing was just a fucking rumor. And really, nobody had any fucking idea where Tia and Do were. It's like Wayne's stock. If he does it, they will come. And this is only a small part of what the cult asked of its members. I mean, they couldn't watch TV, they couldn't read newspapers, couldn't use drugs or alcohol, couldn't own jewelry or clothing that represented their old self.

They couldn't even have a fucking beer. So they did have... There was a litany of rules. Oh yeah, buddy. What you will find out as this cult progresses, it becomes so minutely controlling. They will control every aspect of their lives to the point where it says stuff like, 457, take a shower, 517, eat your soup, 525, wipe the soup off of your jackets. That applies to you mostly, Harold.

That got me. Yeah. But perhaps the biggest demand on the members was the social control. They couldn't call their parents, couldn't visit old friends, couldn't pick up hitchhikers. They couldn't socialize with anyone. And that included each other. And of course... Weird.

Yeah. They couldn't... Like they could interact somewhat, but they couldn't socialize. So this is... It gets a little nefarious at this point. Oh, no, we're not actually not... I mean, it's sad though. I don't even really...

There's some isolated... I don't consider any of it to really be nefarious. As soon as you tell someone you can't call your parents. Yeah. That's the threshold for me. But it's like, you can't call your parents if you want to be a part of this. You don't have to be a part of this. You can leave anytime you want.

But if you want to be a part of it, then yeah, that's what you got to do. It's about personal choice. But these people are personally choosing to not call their parents. They don't want to call their parents and the cult is giving them permission to not call their parents. Yes. I don't know. I do say it that way, but I do believe at some point, if you are a charismatic leader

and you are not trying to have a destructive cult, you would create rules within your own world where you could have contact with your family if you wanted to. Like this is the idea. If you wanted to have a positive cult, which I think is technically just a club, or like a meeting group, like one of those things where they do get very manipulative, but it's not really until the coalescing after this time period when they can finally get everybody together. Because it's when they get everybody together is when the really intense scheduling and

all that shit starts, which we'll cover next episode. Well, if you're listening right now and you are joining a club that says you can't talk to your friends or family, get out. Get out. Get out. Unless you don't want to talk to your friends and family. But still just get out because at some point you're going to be in legal trouble and your parents are going to be the only ones backing you up.

Well, I think what they saw with Clarence Clug's cult was what will happen if you don't have some sort of social control over your followers. Yeah, because then everybody will run around willy-nilly and everybody's fighting each other. Yeah. You know, everybody's fighting each other. There's going to be backstabbing. There's going to be gossip.

You know, that's just how humans are when they all get together in a group. You got to yank that leash and do some spanks. Well, you also have to give them freedom to perform so they can be as good as possible. Interesting. That's where you come in as HR of LPN. Yeah, absolutely. Well, of course, all these rules extended to the realm of sex. Everybody under any circumstance was allowed to have anything even closely resembling sex,

but this didn't play out. What does that mean? Like eating a banana? Yes. Closely resembling? You couldn't spray yourself in the face with a hose. You couldn't dip a pretzel into a bunch of melted chocolate. You had to piss your pants and then wash your pants afterwards because you could not touch

anything. Don't even bother. You're straight up not allowed to even be aroused. Yeah. I mean, honestly, I guess the inverse is like a children of God thing, so this isn't the worst that we've covered when it comes to cults. I don't know. I don't know.

I mean, but that's the thing is that this didn't play out like it usually does in cults. This was not a case of members abstaining from sexual relations while the people up top were going whole hog on the more attractive members. Nobody was fucking. Right. Applewhite wasn't fucking. Bonnie wasn't fucking. Nobody was fucking.

Nobody was even masturbating. They weren't allowed to. Nope. They were not allowed. And then, but the whole thing, I feel like that's one of those main like levers of this cult is that because Bonnie and Marshall Applewhite both said that their their main problems had to do with human relationships. So all of this, all of this was just a way to not worry about dating anymore.

Yeah. Right. I know that it's like very, very simplifying of all of this bullshit. But Bonnie was just like, I'm just so sick of just trying to find a man with a job. Marshall Applewhite's like, who's to say they're 17 years old, but to me, to my hands, they're a full grown man. He didn't have sex with 17 year old boys. He's good at nice.

17 year old. They were college students. They were college students. You know, they were used to all of this shit was about not nothing. Were they not nothing? Not nothing. Were they asexual? Did they attract asexual people?

No. Because what they did is that they actively tested their members. Like in the early days. I'm like weighing their nutsack and be like, you're an ounce low. Did you Hubert? No. Did you dribbled out? I saw two cantaloupes next to each other and just dribbled out.

Well, in the early days, T and Do would pair up people whom they knew were attracted to each other. And they would tell them like, you can't even touch each other. But hey, guess what? You two are now check partners. Now you two got to hang out all the time, but you can have sex with each other. Your job is to go out and spread the gospel around America. You got to go out and test the churches, which test the churches just means you're going

and begging food from pastors and seeing if they will give it to you or not. But I know this is the least sexy circumstances in the world. But how sexy is that? It's very sexy. You're supposed to not touch. You can't even touch. You can't whisper. You can't even, but then every single bump, your hips touch accidentally when your God

knows, harvest in roots, right, anything, anywhere. They're dumpster diving. It's not. Your roots are. You go where the roots are, right? That's what I've always said to farmers. Go where the roots are, right? So don't make your new roots.

Go find other roots, but you touch hips, electricity. You fucking share gum. They don't share gum. So sexy. Actually, I think they probably shared gum. One piece of gum. That is more disgusting than kissing. It's for the group.

It's about sharing. It's about knowing each other. Mm-hmm. Well, I mean, of course, I mean, this ended up backfiring. Yeah. Oh, did it? Not because the members eventually fucked. It backfired because a lot of these people who went out into the world, they lost touch

with the main group. They can't get back. And just fucking never, and just never came back. They just can't get back. They can't get back. They're like, okay, that's over now. We just don't know where that, like one pair, they actually like gave an interview to a local newspaper to try to throw up a flag, to say like, hey, we're here, like we don't

know where the next people are. And that's even sadder than being in the cult. Yeah. I can't get back to the cult. I don't know where the cult is. How do I get back to my cult? But they were very good. But again, they did believe this idea that like if we were all supposed to be together,

the Christ mind would put us all together. And those guys like in that interview, they explained that usually the cult communicated through post office boxes, but since all those post office boxes were all short term rentals and the rentals had all run out. And since this pair had missed the last group meeting, we don't know where the cult is. So if somebody could tell us where the cult is, we would be greatly appreciative. Infrastructure. Yeah.

Look at LRH. You put in together a series of people in charge of various things, delegating authority, creating different branches. A lot, a lot of abuse. A lot of abuse. All the people in line. But even the people who were actually able to follow the group from place to place, everyone was constantly racked with doubt as to whether they should stay or go.

Like they're like, I don't know if this is the right thing. I don't know if I should be here. But it was partly due to the fact that Tien Do were hardly ever around. Like they just kind of showed up, gave a couple of rules and said like, all right, you're going to figure it out for the next like three or four months. You guys talk amongst yourselves, figure it out, follow the rules, however you want to follow the rules. But that to me is the really interesting thing about it.

So in that time then, did people follow the rules? Absolutely. Yeah. People didn't, didn't. And they said, because it was just looser then, because they also didn't have their, they didn't have them breathing down their necks, watching them every minute. But again, it was an honor system. It was an honor system.

So weird. And there were a lot of people, like a lot of these people that were in this loosey-goosey atmosphere, like a lot of them ended up in the mansion in 97. Do you think that any other cult could have such, such, um, retainment, but like, I feel like if Jim Jones just stopped showing up, everyone would just be like, no, I guess we're kind of. Marcus correct me. Marcus correct me.

And it's true. This whole beginning of this, they don't have a lot of retention. They're going to almost die several times. Yeah. And remember, uh, the Jim Jones, like his followers did greatly drop when he went down to Brazil. Uh, and, uh, was it an Archie, uh, ended up taking, trying to take over the group for a little bit.

When they came back, that's when Jim Jones crack the whip. So they would have just gone. They would have just gone. Yeah. These people need deities and mommies and that's what they're signing up for. All right. They need to know penis daddy. So he can go in there and make sure he's spanked some enough so they can become Jesus

Christ. Come on, Kissel. I don't know. He's not spanking anyone. That's what I'm saying. That's the problem. So your only issue with Heaven's Gate is not enough spanking. I think that things would just be a little bit more caliente if some of these bums got

paged. Well, when Tien Doe did actually show up, I mean, there was, there was a sort of regimented order to things and public talks permitted only a short question and answer session and members would stand on stage with Tien Doe and act as what they called buffers because they had to absorb the negative energy from the audience. Yeah. You take your fattest members. Put them up front and it's just me and Kissel, like with our arms holding each other's hands.

They're gonna be like, yeah, we are. We're bad vibe diapers. That's our job. But they stood behind them like fucking Gaddafi. Yeah. That is crazy. All right. The only interaction members would have with the public one-on-one during these talks would

be taking the names and phone numbers of those who were interested in learning more. And those who were interested in learning more were told that if you want to know more, you got to come to the next camp ground meetup, which again was called a buffer meetup. So you would have people that would give their names and phone numbers. When the next meetup was decided upon, they would call up those people and say like, hey, if you want to come here and learn more about this, come to the camp, they would come to that camp and then they would give them a little bit deeper of a spiel and then the people there would decide if they wanted to go to the next level and the next level being

you leave your entire fucking life and you travel around with your Czech partner around America to spread the gospel of the alien Jesus UFO. But you had two meetings. That's it. That's all you got without giving it up all. You had two to choose. And I'm sure someone in their car right now is saying deeper, deeper because it just triggers it.

Yep. The weird thing was like these guys were secretive even when they finally got to the camp ground. If there was like a curious looky loo just wandering over and saying like, oh, why are you all folks up to this weekend? They tell them we're a Bible study group. That's all we are. That's all we are. That is a that's also a great defense for a peeping Tom.

I'm a looky loo. Okay. You say peeping Tom. I'm a looky loo. You guys are saying, all right, yeah, you do some kind of Bible study, you don't understand what you're saying. You can't study the Bible. You don't got to push it worse.

It's getting more disgusting. I have no idea what you're saying. I don't know. I don't know. Great radio. But since this whole thing was such a massive unorganized clusterfuck, Tee and Doe lost at least half of the followers that they'd had at their peak by around 1976. And the rest of them were ready to give up as well.

And it was in 1976, during a presentation in which hecklers were out in full force that Bonnie Nettles uncharacteristically stood up and announced that the doors to the next level were closed. Boom. Harvest is over. What? One hundred are going to be joining me and Doe on the spaceship to heaven. Fuck the rest of you guys.

What? We're done. Fuck you and I'm choosing the soundtrack. No. I'm getting dry when trying to do the radio. No way. And this is when the cult officially became boutique and shit was about to get serious for what came to be known as Heaven's Gate.

And that's where we'll pick back up for part two. Heaven's Gate part one, very interesting, a loosely knit cult, one of the loosely knit cults we've ever covered. I would say the loosely knit. It's just so nice to have a boutique cult because you can always get your leader on the phone. Yeah. You can always see that he answers your emails immediately and you don't have to worry about

him going to the James Corden of the cult first. Right. Like you're right there. You're a first priority for that leader. Sounds like you're talking about the agent business in Hollywood and how you they don't return phone calls or things like that. That's a fun little tidbit. If you want to get into the entertainment industry at some point, they just stop emailing

you back. They don't tell you. It's the deathly silence of the grave that lets you know that your heat is worn off and you can't have a job anymore. All right, everyone. Thank you all so much for listening to our Heaven's Gate part one episode. This series is going to be absolutely fascinating. What else should we talk about?

We have a lot of cool, last things happening here with the last podcast network. Y'all, we got Spotify going exclusive February 14th of Valentine's Day. Time network going exclusive for free on the app if you just have the app or if you if you do get premium Spotify, you can download it and listen to wherever you want. Also remind you last podcast and left and side stories. If you give to our patron, you can still get the ad free episodes where you can play wherever you want. But Spotify has given us a lot of fucking resources and we're going to be doing a lot

of bullshit. Absolutely in the show. Of course. Yeah. As always, the show is 100% free. You just got to get the Spotify app if you don't have it already. We are super excited for that partnership. And you're going to start seeing our faces on different sort of advertising and some

media stuff. We made a fun little video yesterday and I think you will laugh with us and it'll be really, really fun. I hope. I hope. Marcus and a commercial is fun, guys. Wait till you see this shit. But also we're live.

We're going live April. Last book tour on the left. Come and see our fucking bullshit. Again, love it. Get your shit together. Do not disappoint your chosen son. Please. Marcus Parks.

I'm starting to think I am not the chosen son. Well, Marcus, there's a reason they, you didn't leave you or shoot. You remember the way, like the way that like no one was like, oh, Marcus is gone. Like they were like, finally, someone who's not going to judge us when we say racist things is gone. That's really what that's what I was like. All I need is my shovel. I don't need any of y'all.

No, absolutely. And keep on supporting all the shows here on Last Podcast Network. And speaking of shows on the Last Podcast Network this Tuesday, it's coming. It's the premiere of No Dogs in Space. No Dogs in Space, Marcus's new music podcast. If you like the content from Last Podcast on the left, you are guaranteed to get just as much edutainment as you get from L-P-O-T-L with No Dogs in Space. You will learn a lot and love it.

I am outside of Marcus's mind and I'll let you know and listen to these episodes. They're super fucking thick. Thank you. I think that you will really like them. We're going to be dropping them into the last podcast feed this week so that you can hear it yourself. I don't think I really don't think you're going to be remotely disappointed this thing is fucking wall-to-wall full information and it's super funny.

Marcus and Caroline are knocking out of the park and I hope that you guys enjoy it. Thank you very much. Absolutely. It's just nice to see Marcus finally working. It's the whole thing. I'm so sick of how fucking lazy he is. I know. It's been a problem.

Especially since we just got the breakdown of the audiobook version of the book and Kissell and I are scheduled for I think three to four hours of work and I think I have 25 minutes of work. So I mean actually we're doing so much like what is it? You know, yes. Absolutely. Abel can stop at kind of fun. The New Wrestling Podcast.

Page 7 Wizard of the Bruiser. All the shows here on LPN. We are so excited to be bringing those to Spotify February 14th. It's a day to fall in love with a new reality and that reality is Spotify. It'll be absolutely wonderful. You just scared the shit out of me with that last one. All right. Marcus.

All right everyone. Thank you all so much for listening. Hail yourselves. Hail Satan. Hail again. My ghost elation. See you on there. All right.

Do not join a cult. Don't join a cult unless it's fun. Oh no. Unless you get wings out of it in an admiral's hat. Oh that's fun. See? That is fun. A big boat.

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