Last Podcast On The Left - Last Update on the Left - Episode 17 - The Road to Jonestown: An Interview with Jeff Guinn

Episode Date: September 8, 2026

Jeff Guinn returns to the show! This week on Last Update, the boys sit down with the acclaimed author of The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple to revisit the legend of cult leader Jim Jones, the rise & fall of the Peoples Temple, and the horrifying events that led to the Jonestown massacre. For Live Shows, Merch, and More Visit: www.LastPodcastOnTheLeft.comKevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of Last Podcast on the Left ad-free, plus get Friday episodes a whole week early. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

That's when the cannibalism started. Last Update on the left. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Last Update on the Left. My name's Marcus Parks. I'm here with Henry Zabrowski. And Ed Larson. And today. Ready to join.

Don't, hey, not automatically hear it out first. Yeah, hear the pitch. And our guest today is a returning guest. So far, the biggest response we've got from a guest on last update on the left. Welcome back, Jeff Gwynne. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks. It's good to be back on the show.

So last time we talked to you about Waco and your new book about Waco, but many years ago, over almost 300 episodes ago, we did a five-part series on Jonestown. And your book, Road to Jonestown, I think it had been released a year. year before was an invaluable resource to us and is still honestly one of my favorite nonfiction books is one of the best nonfiction books I've ever read. So thank you very much for that book. Thank you. Thank you. Incredible. You talking about, I'll always remember you describing the idea of him believing that laser beams would like come out of his eyes like Jesus energy was coming out of his face. And it was like, he does have a lot of face. Yeah. And that's why he had to wear

sunglasses. Yeah. Well, that was the excuse anyway. But of course it was to hide the red eyes from the uppers downers he was constantly taking. But let's start with the macro, big questions. So in looking at like mass suicides, it seems like there are kind of like three different reasons why mass suicides happen. And I know the Jones Town was much more of a mass murder than a mass suicide. But, you know, it seems to be some of them are to avoid wrath. It's to avoid approaching armies to avoid, you know, a fate worse than death. Some of them are suicides of despair, like how, you know, so many people in Nazi Germany committed suicide after, you know, the Nazis lost. And then, of course, there's religiously motivated suicide when it comes to, like, say, like, heaven's gate.

Like, which of these three do you think loomed largest over? Jonestown and the eventual, you know, end. We have a lot of trouble trying to figure that out. And I finally decided, and it took months, really, that to try to say there was one overriding reason just didn't work in this case. And that's what makes this whole thing so unique. There really hasn't been anything like it that we can say, what happened in Jonestown is especially like what happened at such and such a place.

The reason that isn't the case is that by the time over 900 people are in Jones Town in November 1978, they're no longer there for any one specific reason. They don't all have one reason in common. Jim Jones, a lot through basic instinct, more than anything else, understood that if he was going to have a big following, he was never going to sell everybody on any one aspect of what he was trying to do. So you've got people in Jonestown, a number of them, who were there because they believe Jim Jones is more than human,

that there's some godlike aspect to him, and that they are joining him in some great sort of moment, that there will be a wonderful life beyond. And in this case, they're doing exactly what a greater than human leader wants them to do. So there are some people like that. There are people who have been convinced by Jim Jones, as they're out here in the jungle, for a long time, no other communication, that the American government is coming to kill them all. We're dangerous to the government. They're coming to get us.

If we let them come and we fight them and they're going to kill us and they'll take our children off and they'll do terrible things to the children. So we're avoiding that. And then you had at least a couple hundred people who had been living out in the damn jungle for so long.

And I have been there. guys. I used a machete and I cut my way into the place this was. And it was in the monsoon season, triple-decker canopy so the sun hardly gets through in most places. Snakes

everywhere, biting insects, they've cleared a few hundred acres of land and they work at like slaves every day and the hours are 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. and they're physically exhausted and there's not enough food and they're half starved, and they just decide, screw it.

He says, we've all got to die. Let's just get this crap over with. So you're right, there are three different reasons for this kind of mass death. But to say only one was predominant misses the whole point. Jones was selling all kinds of things to different people, and that was part of his allure. He could convince anybody. Let's say you three. each one of you, Jones might have convinced you need to be part of people's temple for an entirely different reason.

You had something to ask, I'm sorry. That was actually a big question in my mind is, what was the X factor? Is it just because he gave a good enough answer to each unique person's predicament? And he was like multifaceted, like he was a mirror? I know that Charles Manson said that, right? famously that, you know, you looked down on me. I'm the devil. I mean, I'm God. But see, here's the difference.

Yeah. Charlie Manson, at his best, could only convince a couple dozen drug-addled kids. Yeah. They needed to do what he said. Jim Jones created people's temple out of a whole conglomerate of humanity. Yes. From elderly black ghetto dwellers to white Indiana farmers. to great intellectuals out in California who were lawyers, who were accountants, who were really brilliant people,

who were making hundreds of thousand dollars a year. And there are probably right now, if you guys are feeling brave, three or 400 hours of Jim Jones's recorded sermons at People's Temple. I've listened to many of them. Yeah, they're fascinating. Well, and you know. And I have listened, as part of my book, I felt obligate. I listened to everyone that's out there.

Thousands of hours is sitting up here in the same room I'm talking from now, listening to Jim Jones. And at first, you just think, my God, it's a mess. It's rambling. It makes no sense. But then you start to pick some things out. And this man had an inherent oratorical. brilliance. And what he would do in the course of these five-hour marathons is he would touch on all different kinds of approaches. He'd spend 20 minutes talking to the true Bible believers,

quoting scripture being dramatic as hell. Then he'd talk to the atheists, the ones who didn't believe in God at all. And he'd make fun of a sky god who says he's going to do. do all these wonderful things and never does. And he'd throw the Bible on the floor and stamp on it. And then he'd talk for 20 minutes about all the social injustice in America. And you guys are much younger than me. But I promise you, in the 1960s to mid-70s, when all the racial discrimination, the hatred, the holding down of women's rights, the whole, the whole. whole economic disparity. It's coming up, it's being discussed in public for the first times, and Jim Jones touches on that, and he has people following him who don't care about

religion at all. They're interested in socialism, everybody getting a fair chance. So that's why everybody who followed Jim Jones, every sermon he preached, they would hear something that seemed to speak directly to them. And it worked. I mean, you say you've heard a lot of these tapes, right? Yeah. Didn't you, after a while, start picking up that, wait a minute, we're getting something for everybody? Well, I mean, I think he himself even said, I can be all things to all people. I can be whoever you want me to be. He came out and said it. He said the quiet part out loud to people. There was no quiet part. Yeah, he was never quite. Quiet.

So in listening to this for all those hours, like, what did he say that you were like, oh, that makes sense. I'm with that. Like, what do you get you on? Okay. Here's the scary thing. I have written about a lot of controversial subjects. My books usually look at iconic events where things happen that have affected us ever since, right? And I never, ever, in spending things.

three years researching Charlie Manson thought, gee, I'd wish I'd been out at Spine Ranch. Man, doom buggies are awesome. I never, in three years of studying Waco and the Branch Divideons, thought for a moment there was anything to David Koresh that would interest me, that would make me willing to do anything. But Jim Jones was out in Greyhound buses, traveling around the country with his followers, going to different college towns, talking to different college audiences, and challenging the college kids. What? How many of you think racial discrimination is wrong? How many of you think misogyny is wrong that women aren't treated fairly in America? How many of you think there's too many poor people in America where they don't have to be? Well, why do you think you're going to change it sitting around on a college campus, listening to professors, give you lectures?

You come with us right now, and tomorrow we will have you out in that part of America where help is so desperately needed and you can actually do something. and I'm in college, University of Texas and Austin, these years he's going out there. And he gets into Texas, he gets to Houston a few times, never seems to get to Austin, and I'm glad he didn't. Because I was very socially conscious in college. I wanted to do something. I wanted to help make a difference. And I can just see myself 20 years old, hearing about this Jones guy, going to see him, hearing him say that and jumping on the Greyhound bus.

I wouldn't do it now. I wouldn't do it when I was old enough maybe to have a better sense of balance. But I could see myself at that point in my life going, yeah, I want to do this. I'll give up everything and I'll follow you. Well, that was one of our biggest questions when we were doing the Jonestown series is that, you know, Jim Jones accomplished some pretty impressive things. He desegregated Indianapolis. And that was one of our biggest questions is that like, did Jim Jones believe in these things? Or did he just see this as a path?

Did he just see it as these people? No one is paying attention to these people here. And I can manipulate these people and hold power over them. Again, the things you're saying are the things I thought I was probably going to find. Right. When I started looking. And when I say I spent three years, I really did. I went everywhere Jim Jones had been where he grew up, where he had his first church,

storefront church in Indianapolis, follow him all over the damn world, right, right to Guyana. And I heard something when I was in Indiana that just shocked me. I'm in Lynn, the little farm town where he grows up, right? He's the weird kid. I've been there. Yeah, well, see, he had funerals for animals. I mean, he was the weird guy in a community where everybody else wants to conform. And he was like a preacher fanboy, right?

Like he would go and kind of watch, yeah, church. Five churches in this little town. Jim, when he's a kid, goes to all five because he's picking up on what the different preachers are doing. But here's the thing. Every Saturday, Lynn, Indiana, he's a poor kid, right? And he's got maybe one nice shirt and pair of pants. Every Saturday he gets on the bus, and he goes about 30 miles to the town of Richmond, which is the big town in the area. And Richmond is so socially and racially segregated, there's just no believing it almost.

I mean, the white people tolerate black people in town because you need gardeners, you need maids. You know, they know we're not equals. and a lot of black hoboes would be in Richmond in any given time because they're coming in on the train. They're riding the rails, and they hop off in Richmond because the big towns are where you might be able to beg a few coins and get something to eat. Jim Jones, 15, 16, 17, every Saturday, takes that bus into Richmond,

and he goes to this place by the tracks where white people, do not go. And he preaches. He stands up and he talks about, we are all equal. Your life isn't fair. But we're going to change that. And the only thing he ever got from that was beaten up a few times. What would he possibly be getting out of that?

When he's in Indianapolis, almost single-handed, he desegregates a major city. Nobody else is trying it. Jim Jones does it. So that was the good part. I got in trouble with the Trump administration. Somebody from a magazine, I believe it was Rolling Stone, called me when the book came out, and said, hey, it sounds to us like you're saying Donald Trump is a lot like Jim Jones. And I said that absolutely is not true because a few times in his life,

Jim Jones things that were, did things that were good for people. Can I ask, like, maybe this is not a, this is not about just helping me. But the idea of where does the line, you think, obviously, we're all armchair psychiatrists of the line of the line. We all are. Yes. Of pathological confidence into, like, some form of, like, I would call what he has, like, some form of. Like, I would call what he has, like, some form of. souped up anti-social personality disorder, but he, it's like the opposite of it.

Like, he has a, he's like an ultimate people reader that had bad intentions. So, like, where does that cut? Did you think that it's, it's like a mental disorder? Like, something like that? I think there are always going to be people who have tendencies towards megalomania. I am great. I am special. I am going to do amazing things.

And we've all met people like that. Yeah. And most of them don't do Jack. Yeah. But then you get someone like him. He's got all these crazy dreams at a poor farm kid in rural Indiana. I mean, it's never going to happen. And then in this first ministry of his in Indianapolis,

he actually makes some things happen. And he gets followers, people who have seen him do this, who absolutely believe everything he does is perfect. Oh, tell us more, you can do nothing wrong. And you get isolated from the kinds of things the rest of us have to deal with every day that remind us we may think we're great. The rest of the world is not agreeing with that. So that starts to build.

He goes out to California because he wants to be even more important and damned if he doesn't pull it off again, but now he's using drugs. and he's using drugs all the time. And again, as a child of the 60s and early 70s, I saw people who were 24-7, usually taking uppers so they'd get all worked up, and then if they want to go to sleep, they've got to take a handful of downers to do that.

And you start losing more contact with the real world, with real balance. and by the time he's in Guyana, he's got 900 people in this remote jungle outpost. They have nowhere to go. If they wanted to leave, you've got to get through the jungle. And folks, there are big cats in that jungle that will eat you. There are poisonous stakes that will kill you with one strike.

They're stuck there with him. And they're doing whatever he says. and he goes completely out of it. So yes, he always had tendencies, like hopefully very few people completely succumb to, that I am better. There is something about me that is better.

Well, we don't know anything about that. We just live in Los Angeles. I've never met any of these, anybody that you described in this way. The rest of us just hope. When I was eight, I knew I was going to play for the San Francisco Giants with my hero Willie Mays,

and then somebody threw me a curveball. And I realized it ain't happening. I better learn how to write books because I can't hit decent pitching. But Jim Jones never has that. It's always, wait a minute, they said this couldn't be done. And I did it.

They said it in Indianapolis. They said it in California. and he did it. You mix that with drugs and with literally thousands of followers including attractive women who are going to do

whatever you ask and think it's an honor and like every other demagogue with any sort of even religious following. Yes, Jim Jones had sex with his followers. That's almost inevitably part of it. But was he crazy? from the get-go? Well, I don't know, but if he was,

then at least for a while that craziness resulted in some real social justice for people. Yeah, and concerning his followers, like I know that there were a few that followed him from Indianapolis and were there on that last day in Guyana. Like, do you think that some of those people were still on that last day waiting for the good?

good man who desegregated Indianapolis to come back? When I say what, when I answer that question, please understand, I'm not answering it through second or third-hand information. There are a few people who survived that day. Yeah. And one of them in particular, Tim Carter. Yeah. Shared everything with me.

And in all the years since that book, I've known Tim and some of these other folks, survivors. and I have come to truly respect them. So I can tell you, when I tell you that on this last day, there actually were people who thought that great young pioneer still stood before them. Maybe father had a little problem with too many drugs. Maybe father was screwing a few women besides his wife. And maybe Father sometimes said some pretty stupid things when he's up there. But he is also the man who said 30 years ago, help me and we will change Indianapolis.

And he did it. Come with me to California. And in some of the great cities in that state, San Francisco particularly, we are going to bring social justice to the down. He not only did that, these people who'd come from Indiana saw some of the most famous California show business folks and the top politicians coming to people's temple to testify how wonderful Jim Jones is. So you're damn straight. There were some people who still believed, okay, maybe he's gotten a little weird as the years have gone by, but still when he says we're going to do some great things. we do it. I find it so interesting that cult leaders all accidentally,

they follow like very similar roadmaps. Like now we're seeing the ironic cult leader like Keith Reneery, who is up, he seems to his cult, like nexium was an entire sort of amalgamation of he stole from L.R. H, he stole from this. He stole from various things. L.R.H is, by the way, he's, he is Elron Hubbard. He likes to call Elron Hubbard.

as he would appear as he would approve of you know it's interesting i i did get some uh some messages from some of your fans and and audience members after i was on the show and they each seemed to of each of you guys for different reasons yes very much so what of you in particular i'm not going to say who, they were going, that's the guy you better watch out for. I'm not doing anything bad. I've been nothing but good. I've been good. I've been good. I'm not naming names, fellas. But see, here, I agree with you completely that almost all these demagogues, you're going to find so many things in common, including Jones, who stole liberally from other people, particularly Father Divine. But here is the one difference,

the one damn difference that I cannot get past. I counted up, and so far I've spent 14 years of my adult life researching and writing about Colts. Yeah. Okay? Now, every other example I've seen, people end up following a demagogue, a false, leader because they believe they're getting something great for it. Manson said we're going to have helped your skeleton, you're going to help me rule the world. David Koresh promised we're going to lead the fight at the end of the world against Babylon, and we are going to be in the foremost of God's army, and then we're going to help rule this thousand kingdom of God. Only people's temple. Nobody ever joined people's temple because they were

promised you're going to get rich. God's going to love you. You've got a ticket to heaven if you follow me. Anyone who joined people's temple gave rather than God, all their possessions. But they didn't see their possessions turned into the leader having a mansion and fancy card. and $10,000 suits. They saw their possessions go to second-hand stores and get sold, and all that money be used for free meals, for starving people. Free clothing outlets. Come in, pick what you need.

No questions asked. And to me, the most amazing thing, People's Temple took teenagers in the ghetto, kids whose only future was crime in the streets, and they sent them to college. They paid everything, not just tuition in books. They bought houses they turned into dormitories. I met people while I'm writing this book who said, if it weren't for Jim Jones and People's Temple, I'd have been dead long ago. And instead, I've got this.

And they mean it. That doesn't mean they forgive. the horrible things that end up happening. That's inexcusable, and I'm not trying to say, Jim Jones is a misunderstood saint. No, no. But to understand him, to understand people's temple,

the crucial thing to get is that the people who are joining this, and it's unique, pretty much, are doing it because they want to help other people. It's incredible. Yeah, he's using their best quality. against them. Well, see, that's the thing. Jim Jones is attracting people because of good qualities.

We can all think not just of religious demagogues, but political leaders who get followings because they appeal to people's bad side. Be your worst. It's good. Yeah. And here you've got somebody who's going to do these awful things that culminate in one of the greatest mass murders. in history, and yet the core of it, the beginning of it, were things that, in retrospect,

seem impossible that they could have been achieved in that time and place, and yet people benefit it. That's why it's so troubling. That's why it's so multidimensional. Yeah, it's the question of, you know, was this a man who always had good intentions and he'd just, fell to his worst side, or if this is all just opportunism from the start? I mean,

that's an impossible question to answer, I know, but it's the one that always comes up in my mind when I think about Jim Jones. Of course it does. And that's another reason why all these years later

we're still talking about it. Yeah. I mean, do you think that he had the capacity to be a great man? Well, in some ways, he was a great man for a while. I mean, we have to accept that.

I wrote in the book that if, on those greyhound buses they were taken from Indiana to California, Jim Jones had died in a highway wreck. He would be remembered today as one of the first early pioneers of the Civil Rights movement. Yeah, there'd be like a statue of him in Indianapolis. Deservedly. I mean, I've talked. I've talked to the black people in Indianapolis who first joined his church, community unity, in a little storefront. And he started this church, him and his wife, Marcellin, in the worst of the ghettos.

And there were lots of people trying storefront churches. You'd rent a store, you'd put up some folding chairs, you'd hand out leaflets, you'd see if some black folks would come. come in, and maybe some of them would for a couple weeks because it was different. But then they'd wander off. Jim Jones did it differently. He gets a storefront church. He goes to a Quaker missionary in town named Ron Haldeman, and I met Ron and talked with him for a long time and told Haldeman, I want to do something for black people.

I'm going to go right into the heart of the ghetto, and I'm not only going to tell those, folks, there's hope, I'm going to do something for them. He promised, and these are his exact words, I am going to give those poor black people a church that gives them something now, not promises, well, you're suffering and nobody's fair, but someday you'll go to heaven and live in paradise. Haldeman described what would happen at one of these storefront gatherings. He goes there maybe a month after Jones's started the thing, and Joneses, said, well, you know, we've got a couple dozen people are coming back. Haldeman wanted to see for himself.

And so instead of a church service, Jones comes walking up to the front and said, who's got a problem? And Haldeman said, this little elderly black lady, very frail, kind of waves her hand. And she says, the electric company is hurting me. I pay all my bills, but they say they didn't get my payment. last time. And I got a family, I got baby grandchildren living with me in my little apartment, and they've turned off my power. And the little ones are cold because we got no heating. I can't cook them any food. I don't know what to do. And Joan says, we're going to fix that.

Let's write a letter right now. What should we put in the letter? What are the ideas? And he asks everybody to suggest some things. And they write the letter. Joan said, today's Sunday, tomorrow, I'm taking this letter to the power company. We're going to fix this. I'm back next Sunday, and everybody comes back, you know, to see how he'd screwed up. And he asked the little lady, tell them, and she said,

the power company people came out. They said they made a mistake. The power's back on. And she then starts crying and praising everybody there saying, all of you did this. You know, God led me here to all of you and you fixed it and Pastor Jones most of all. And Jones says, see, this proves something. We're a family. We're in it together.

And not only are we in it together. We change things. See, keep coming. You'll get things that you deserve. And he did. And he built on that. Now, tell me, guys, any one of you three, you're used to studying demagogues

who are defrauding people, faking them out and everything. Yeah. If you'd been in that storefront church and seen what Ron Holden and saw, would you start thinking that maybe this Jim Jones guy has some kind of special ability? Of course. Of course.

That's the idea is that you're looking for, especially if you're already in the spot. Right? You're there. You're looking for an answer. You are here to, you are obviously in trouble. We're now at this spot where you've already heard that other people went to this place and they got helped. And then you go and you see that he does this and whatever it was that he did because he probably just got the gift to gab like nobody's business.

He probably went in and bitched his supervisor until just to get rid of them to supervise. That's what my mom taught me. Well, and that's the other thing is when you're poor and you get so desperate. You feel so powerless. You know, you think that $100 is $20,000, you know, and it's just like you get so beat down and destitute, and you see this dude come in and get results. Of course you're going to follow.

Look at Mr. Beast. And also, remember, they've been going to other churches in Indianapolis, usually with black ministers, who are saying to them, this is God testing us, but someday you're going to be in paradise. Well, if you're a little old lady who's got hungry grandchildren who are shivering, and here's this white guy.

And so what the black people I talked to, the old-timers in Indianapolis would tell me, is he preached like a black man and he got stuff done like a white one. That was a combination. I mean, these are, I mean, we're talking a lot about, like, Jim Jones's, like, big qualities, the things that his followers saw. But one of the things that I loved about your book is that you really painted a picture of just how incredibly weird Jim Jones was.

Like personally, a very, very strange person. You mentioned the animal funerals earlier from when he was a child, just these strange things that he did. Like, did his followers see those as just like mere eccentricities? because at the same time that he's, you know, getting people's lights turn back on, he's selling spider monkeys door to door.

More than that. He's faking all kinds of miracles at revival meetings to get donations to keep the straight church going. What he was able to sell to his followers was not spider monkeys. But what he could sell was this philosophy. sometimes we have to do things that will keep the church financially viable, that will make people curious enough to come in. That's why I have to do certain things. I have to act a certain way. But it's to recruit people in just to get them interested, and once they hear our real messages, they're going to want to be with us, and they're going to want to do the right things. So say people who've been with him from Indiana all the way to Jones Town,

I mean, it's been three decades that they're accepting the idea. Yeah, Jim's weird. And he does some weird things. But a lot of it is just an act he's putting on to make people pay attention. When he was to go with by that point, I guess like I remember from the book, when they were looking at him like Jim Jones at that style. Because I know like he got more and more separate. from kind of the main body of the people.

But there were the old people. Weren't there people there. There were kind of there from the beginning that knew him as like not father, but like you knew him as Jim more so. Like what are those like those are the people in the end like to the very, very end from the survivor's perspective, like did they know what was coming was real bad or they knew that like you know

like how do you get locked in that hard, I guess? That's what I'm trying to say. where it's like you don't look at him like he's a god you know him as jim and you're like how the fuck i'm like how the fuck are they still there here's here's the best answer to that and i got this tim carter first said it to me but i i talked since to jones's surviving sons i talked to a guy who's my age now 70s who was part of jones's indiana honorage when he was just 15 16 years old And I would ask the question. I can see where when you first start with them and you see some of these great things happen and you think it's wonderful.

But then, come on, some of this is just too bizarre. And Tim Carter told me this first, but I tested it on the others. And they all said, yeah, that's exactly it. And Tim said, it's the analogy of the frog in a pot of water. you put the frog in a pot of lukewarm water with the flame a little low and he'll just sit there and you turn up the flame gradually and he'll sit there until he's getting boiled alive and didn't realize it and then he can't get out he said that's the way Jim Jones worked a little weird okay we accept that look at this great thing weirder okay here's a great thing weirder and it built up until finally what you've done You're sitting in the goddamn jungle, and guys, please understand, this ain't like those Tarzan movies where the trees are real separated and there's nice little monkeys and beautiful birds. They are in this jungle. They can't get away.

They've given away all their possessions. They've told their family and friends, I don't want anything to do with you ever again because you don't understand Jim. and pride is involved, there's no place left to go. What are you going to do? Are you going to stand there in Jonestown and admit to yourself, I was wrong the whole time, and look where it got me? That's not human nature. You just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Jim Jones, Jr., a wonderful, wonderful guy. I mean, I can't think of too many people I like more than Jimmy. He's a wonderful guy. And I asked him, you know, all these years later, we're just sitting at his house in California. On the day that Jones said, we're all going to do this together. They didn't drink Kool-Aid, of course. It was flavor aid with cyanide. But tell him they're going to do that.

Jimmy and some of the others are across the jungle in Georgetown, the capital of Guyana. And, of course, terrible things happened to them there. But they're not dying right then. And I said, Jimmy, if you had been there in Jonestown, with your young wife, you're just married, with your mom and siblings and nieces and nephews, and your dad and people you love, and you're being told, line up, drink this stuff, die. Would you have done it? And he thought about it while he said, you know,

I can't definitely say that I would have, but I can't say I wouldn't. I was feeling so worn out by that. I'd seen all the good stuff, but boy, I'd seen the crazy stuff. And I think it might have been that I just would have looked at him and said, I'm tired of this shit. Give me your damn poison. Yeah. I mean, at the end of it, you know, when, as we all know, you know, the catalysts for the

massacre came when Congressman Leo Ryan came to. And I don't know if you'd know this, but we just did a long series on Patty Hurst. And Leo Ryan was actually one of the main people that was trying to get, you knew about this, that he wrote the note, hang in there. Oh, Leo Ryan got into a lot of things. Yeah. He, of course, I couldn't interview him, but I interviewed Jim Wright, who was Speaker of the House at the time. And he said, well, you know, Leo, originally promised that he was going to go over there with a number of other members of Congress to show that the problem with people's temple was more than just his California district, but nobody would go with him. And I said, why? They said, well, Leo was a master of getting

the media to talk to him. Any other member of Congress who went would have been his supporting cast. And there he goes, we're going to accept that. Wow. Well, speaking of, like, now that we're kind of on the subject a little bit of Patty Hurst, like, we just did, we really got into the Symbianese Liberation Army. Right. And the thing that both the SLA and the People's Temple share is that they would use one word to get people to do shit that they didn't want to do, bourgeois. What do you think if people didn't want to ship with the door closed in SLA,

bourgeois? You know, if you didn't want to eat mung beans every day, bourgeois. And I know in Jones, or at least, I mean, going even back to you, Chaya, they would use that excuse. Like, what did you think the power of that word was with people's temple? We tend to look at past events from the perspective of the moment we're living in now.

It helped when I wrote this book that I was young and impressionable and hopeful about the time Jim Jones was doing this stuff. I wouldn't have joined the Simbc's Liberation Army because those guys would have scared the shit out of me. So that wasn't going to happen.

But there were so many of us from all different kinds of backgrounds. I've been a poor kid myself, so that made a difference. But I knew a lot of kids who felt guilty. And that was a ploy that could always work. You just don't want to give up all these things that you've got, all these comforts, when there are people who are suffering so greatly.

If you close that door when you're on the toilet, if you won't give one of your fellow SLA members a blowjob, That means that you think you're too good to do this. Fine, get the hell out of here. We need real people who care. And as you can see, I mean, with the SLA, it worked. Some people, pretty well off people who became famous sports agents and other things later, you know, in their lives. Got swept up in it.

You get Patty Hurst, the poor little rich girl. And of course, you know, People's Temple was involved in all that, too. You may remember. Oh, yeah, yeah, with the food programs. Jim Jones wanted to play it both ways. He told his members, well, we really sympathize with SLA. But if we offer Mr. Hirsch some money, just say, we're with you. We're going to try to help.

Then that would make us look good to the newspapers. He runs. So again, there's Jones saying, we're doing one thing to further the cause in another way and getting people to buy into that. Yeah, you'll suck up to Hearst and the Hearst family, but that's because that'll make the newspapers treat us more favorably and we can help needy people even more.

Sure. So during that time in San Francisco, I know that Jim Jones, he ran the flavor aid test twice. Right? Like where he told every... He ran it once, once in San Francisco. Yeah. He had a committee of church leaders and locked them away with him and had them all drink something and said, of poison you're going to die in 45 minutes.

And he had a couple players there, too. One of them pretended to try to run out of the room and was shot by a gun with blanks. Another, well, I can feel my limbs are starting to go. numb, which made a lot of the other ones go, oh my God, I feel it too. Then he told them, well, this was just a test and you passed it. Then in Guyana, he has what they call

white nights. And the reason they called it white night is it's a night of tragedy, but people always say black is bad and white is good. So he flips it around. So a terrible night is going to be a white night.

And he gathers everybody and said, you know, you need to drink this stuff. and then he tells them they've been poisoned. And he's testing. What this shows him is that for whatever reason, most, not all, but most of the people there would do this. And he thinks about it, and after that he tells the doctor, Dr. Larry Shaw, who himself is a great, interesting guy.

And Schott sends out for one pound of cyanide, powdered cyanide, enough for 1,800 lethal doses. It costs $8.85. Jesus Christ. And after that, Jim Jones, with him, it's not a matter of will he at some point really do it? It was a matter of when. And Leo Ryan gave him that moment. But if it hadn't been Leo Ryan, it would have been something.

Jones was sort of at the end there in Guyana. He thought maybe they could move to Russia. The Russians weren't going to take them. The Guyanese were getting kind of antsy about the whole thing. It was possible that U.S. legalities for some of the children that were in Jonestown were going to get those kids out of there. And that was Jones's big hold on so many of his followers. He just wants the time to make this one big final dramatic statement.

And he does. It definitely feels like sometimes with one of these organizations, the group is in the head of the leader. Like they're all like in his head. And then when he decides to die by suicide, it's almost like that's what the action is. I can see what you say about Jimmy Jones Jr. saying, I was just so tired.

Like when you hear his final speeches and he's been, And he's even saying it's being like, I'm tired. I'm tired. You know, he's doing that thing. And you're like, he was looking for a reason. Well, any demagogue sooner or later is going to lead his followers to disaster. It is inevitable. Whether it's religious, whether it's political, push, push, and then you're going to hit that point.

And it's going to turn to hell. That's what's happened with all of them. That's what happened to Jim Jones. But the horror of that day, when we hear it firsthand from the couple people who survived it, Jones announces the time has come. The congressman's dead. Any minute now, the United States Army, along with the Guyanese Army and mercenaries, are going to be parachuting in here. they're going to slaughter us, they're going to take our children off, we can't have that, we're going to do what they did at Masada.

We're going to, we're not in any way committing suicide. What we're doing is we're giving a dramatic statement. We're showing our defiance. And he has them bring out the barrels, the buckets, the trash cans of flavor aid with the cyanide mixed in. And first, they're going to take the little babies. And some of the mothers line up with their children, others are hanging back. And surrounding this group of people are Jones's bodyguard that day, and they've got guns. His real bodyguard, most of the basketball team with his sons that are in Georgetown,

and they might have said no. But now the ones that are there with the guns are. are the true believers. And so the nurses there get syringes, and they suck up this poison, and they squirt it into the baby's mouths. And as they do, Jim Jones is telling his followers, it's very peaceful. It's just like going to sleep. But you guys know what cyanide poisoning does. Yeah.

And these children start to suffocate horribly, these little babies. They're writhing and they want to scream, but they're gurgling, and it's horrible, and their eyes are bulging, and people are seeing how horrible it is. And Jones is saying the whole time, oh, no, no, it's just because it tastes bitter. Don't worry about it. And they're lining people up now, and he's saying, it's only fair that we let the parents die with their babies. So now you get the grownups. and now some of the people are trying to edge away. When I went to Guyana, I spent time in Jonestown,

and I talked to some people, and it was interesting, but I was allowed to get copies of the coroner's reports. And the coroner's reports said that of these 900 who died, maybe 650 of them are adults. At least a third and maybe as many as half of the adults did not die by drinking the poison. They were held down and forcibly injected, and they had the bruise marks on their necks or their legs or their backs where the needles had gone in. Marceline Jones, Jim Jones's wife, and again, this isn't secondhand. We know this happened.

She's standing away from the stage he's on. She's screaming, you can't do this. You can't do this. And he's saying it's on tape. Anybody here listen to that final tape? Mother, mother, mother, don't say this. Be with your children. Mother, he's talking to Marceline.

and the people who believe in him are going up there and they're almost in a religious fervor. This is it. This is the big thing. What an honor. And you're getting people who are dragged there, kicking and screaming and they're being murdered. It is murder. And you're getting others who are just so fed up. God damn it, it's come to this.

Screw you. Screw everything. Let's get it over with. Now, the next day, and I met with the leader of the Guyanese army that went in the next day, and he talked about what they discovered. And they go in the next morning, and it's monsoon season. It's very humid. And they're approaching Jonestown, these soldiers with their guns, carefully because ground fog is coming up, and they can't really see where they're going. But they're getting into Jonestown. they don't hear anything, but then they start stumbling and they think maybe they've put logs down for us to trip over.

And then the soldiers start screaming because they're tripping over bodies. Jesus Christ. And as the sun comes up and the fog burns off, they think there are probably 250 people laying in just this huge heap. and they bring in different crews, and the next day or two they're starting to try to pull everybody out. And they realize there's a second layer underneath the first one. All adults, where are the children? And under that layer, there's a third layer, and that's the babies and the children who died first. Think of it, a three-layer mountain of decaying bodies.

that's what there was. And that's what demagogues can do. And that even those demagogues who do accomplish some good things in the beginning and along the way. Because any demagogue ultimately is looking for power, is looking for self-glorification. Maybe not at first, but it grows and it grows till it takes hold. and finally there's disaster. Only two, two bodies out of all of them did not die by poison. One was Annie Moore Jim Jones's personal nurse who died by self-inflicted gunshot wound.

And Jim Jones, who died of a gunshot wound. And this is the thing I hate about that son of a bitch. He put all his followers through unimaginable agony. And then at the last minute the asshole couldn't even go ahead and drink the damn poison himself. He took the chicken shit way out and had his nurse shoot him so she could have the honor of shooting herself and dying the way he did. That was to me the ultimate betrayal. And every time I start thinking, well, Jim Jones never gets a fair shake because of the good things he did, which is true. then I think about that moment

when he was willing to let everybody else have the horrible death but oh no not for him I mean I was going to ask about Mr. Muggs but that sounds like a pretty good way to end this yeah I feel like we'll get back to Mr. Muggs yeah eventually we'll talk back that was very man it's so great to talk to you it's so good to get these

context from it this is something that endlessly obviously Marcus is very devoted to the subject but this is something I find endlessly interesting and illuminating Marcus, there is so much. Don't ever think that any one book, mine included, is the definitive be-all-end-all book. Of course. There's always so much more every time. And one of the things I always do with all my books, when I finish up, I've got boxes and boxes of documents and copies of interviews I've done and everything else.

And I always try to give them to some museum or some public group where the next. next person who wants to write on that subject can have complete access to everything I had, and then hopefully we'll think of things I didn't think of and find people I didn't think of. Why don't you write the next book? You could do it. You could do it better than I did it. Oh, thank you. That's nice.

That's nice. No, I mean, you know, I read Raven, and I was able to speak with Fielding McGee quite a bit. Yeah, Fielding McGee. Yeah, I spoke with him quite a. He was another person just in. incredible resource. And he's become a close friend of mine. I mean,

there are good people who are associated with all this. Yeah. But really, never ever think one person's written the perfect book because there isn't one. Yeah. We all think we're doing it when we do it. Yeah. But then we look at the book afterwards and think,

maybe I should have done more here. I should have looked more there. So maybe you'll be the one who takes it the next step. I hope you are. I mean, you know, Help, me and my wife actually went on, we went on a Jones Town vacation. For their anniversary.

They went to go look at all the highlights of Jones Town. And your wife stayed with you? It was my wife's idea. Oh, you married a special woman. I have. She didn't have a lot of fun as a girl. No, yeah, we went to Lynn. We visited his, we found the tiny cemetery where his father is buried.

Yeah. Which, yeah, it's a, I mean, it is an endlessly, for me, an endlessly fascinating subject. But thank you so much for coming in. We can't wait for, I mean, we hope to have a trifecta with you and bring you back to talk about Charles Manson. Yes, please. Well, you know, I'll be always glad to talk to you guys. Right now, I'm just starting a new three-year work on a new project, and I'll be in and out a lot. But I'll always be glad to hear from you.

Is it something light, or are you going to be, is it about like Tostino's like the source of pizza rolls? As much as I enjoy writing books that don't involve tragedy, and I've written some of those. I think of them as my vacations. You know, I'm 73. I don't know how many books I've got left considering the time it takes me in the footwork I put in to do these things. And so I've decided that for whatever time I've got left, left, I'm going to try to look at current America, and I'm going to look at issues that I think are critical and maybe haven't been addressed the way they should. And I'm going to try to focus on those. So I decided this time I'm going to pick something right now that really bothers me.

In issue, I think, continues that shouldn't, that it's horrific. We're letting it happen. And try to write a book about some incident related that maybe we'll get people looking at it. in a different way. So that's what I'm doing this time. That's really me. Yeah, we're all sad that Red Lobster is going. We're all sad that Red Lobster's going. I like to laugh, but what I'm working on now is I've decided school shootings.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. One of the most horrible afflictions, and nobody's doing Jack. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. What do you mean? The kids get to wear body armor and they get to have, like, they get to learn how to make the big body shields with their desks and stuff. Isn't that

fun for them? My buddy's a teacher. They gave him a hammer in case there's an attack, so that's good. My God. I mean, yeah, I mean, the three of us, we're, you know, we're part of the Columbine generation. You know, we were all in high school when Columbine happened. So we were there to see that that was the beginning of it. Can you, could you have imagined, and I'm going to use a figure that's going to stun you, could you imagine that since Columbine, there have been in the United States of America

over 1,100 shooting incidents and deaths in schools? in this country? Jesus Christ. My God. We hear about the occasional monster one. We don't hear about the one in a parking lot between two students who got in a fight or something like that. We talk about how horrible Columbine was,

but that was a fairly comfortable suburb. Yeah, right? You know, teenage white boys who were kind of alienated and video-gamed it and decided to get some guns and make a name for themselves, you get Sandy Hook. We talk about that one maybe. Yeah.

But I decided to pick one that would involve little poor kids and a community that was certain it had done everything it had to do to protect its children. And so I'm spending a lot of time

right now in Yuvaldi. Well, we would... Oh, wow. Yeah, we would love to know. Whenever you were ready to present anything like that, we would love to talk about it on the show. Well, I'll tell you what,

If you guys really want to, why don't you meet me and Yuvaldi for a couple days on one of my research trips? Join me. Talk to some of these people. See for yourselves the real tragedy. Not in arm's length, but right there. I would love to. I would absolutely love to do that. Yeah.

Think about it carefully. It's one thing to go on a Jonestown trip where it happened all those years ago. Yeah. It's another to look in the eyes of a mother whose child was slow. Oh, yeah. And wonders why nobody's done anything to stop it happening to other kids. So that's what we're right about particularly why in this country it's so easy to get guns when guns are used for such awful reasons. Yeah.

So the NRA is not going to be a fan. No. Anyway, that's the next project. Isn't it going to be cheerful? No, well, hey, it sounds like you could add a really good insight for something. How close were you to the shooting at University of Texas? Because you said you went there. It was the year before I got there.

Yeah. You know, I got there thinking about, wow, the tower, except it locked it off so you couldn't get up in there again. I have a friend I went to college with. His name was Kinky Friedman. Yeah. And RIP. The Kistr, who we called Richie Friedman.

Yeah. A longtime friend of mine, he wrote the ballot of Charles Whitman. Yeah. And later, when my. son went to the University of Texas. He stayed at the same apartment complex that Charlie Whitman lived in. And Kinky told me, your boy is the next one. Oh, hell yeah. Vote Kinky. So anyway, if you guys ever decide you ought to actually get your feet wet and see some of this.

That's very, I love to. I'm definitely in for this. You're going to have to be respectful to people, though. I've done these kind of things before. I've been down to the board. and I've seen, I've been into different, I've done shows and jails and stuff like that. Okay. It's very intense. Yeah. But think about it carefully, because once you get there, it emotionally grabs you by the throne.

Oh, I know. It's insane, yeah. I would imagine so. Well, on that high note, thank you for letting me be on your show. Hey, thank you so much, Mr. Gwen. We'll talk to you very soon. Take care, guys. One more question for you.

I'm also from Texas. Texas Tech, 06. Lubbock. Yeah, well, that's where I went to college. I grew up north of Abilene. Really? Where? Called Rochester. Okay, yeah. I'm in Fort Worth.

Yeah. But I've spent a lot of time in West Texas. Okay, we'll go eat some great Mexican food, guys. That's wonderful. Fantastic, yeah. Yeah, man. All right, we'll talk to you soon. We'll talk to you soon. Take care.

Bye. Bye. Oh, wow. He seems, he's a very wise man. He's an extraordinarily wise man. We learn things from wise men. Well, you gotta get dirty, you know? You really do.

You do. If you really want to learn, I mean, you know, people love listening to us, but we just, you know, we have researchers. Oh, yeah, buddy. We read, we read the books. And it's really, it really is people like Jeff Quinn, they're like, do the real, they do the real work out there. Oh, yeah. the real stuff, they really get in there and do what is necessary to bring these stories to light, which is just, I mean, Yvaldi, my God.

And I would, I'd love to do that. I'd absolutely love to do that. I'm more than a, you know, that's what got me in the, staying in the comedy, to be honest with you, is work like that. And I wouldn't mind doing some more with you fellas. That would be very, very interesting. Well, thank you guys for listening. We're updated, aren't we?

Yeah. And now it's time for you. go to patreon.com. You can give us money. Patreon.com slash last podcast on the left. TikTok, Instagram. We're on that. At L.B.

on the left. Social media. Are you of trouble breathing or can you not burp? Last podcast. At least.com. You want to come out. See us live. We're about to be in Australia.

It's going to be amazing. Check it all out. Yeah. And that was, it was very good. Yeah, that was very good. That was very intense as it always is. Mr. Gwen.

My God, what a storyteller. Can you imagine just be. being a little Philly while he's sadling up to you on the bar telling you these long stories. We talked about it last time how hard it was for him to work with all the sex. How many people lived in Jungstown? It was 930, some odd, you know, because the basketball team survived because they were, they were at an away game. Yes. And they were in the town, and his, Stephen, his son was involved.

was on the basketball team, and that's why he survived. And there was... Hey, guys, we could do these jokes on talk for the rest of our lives, boys. We can ask them questions all next week. Yeah. So, yeah, I think there was... I mean, everyone who was there, the only people who survived that I really wish I would have asked him about was Mark Lane. There's plenty of time we can do this again.

I know. I know. I know. But, like, the dude who, like, wrote the fucking... I love talking. just as much as the next person does. Well, I'm going to get some cool things.

Okay. That's brand misidentification. Flavorade.