RedHanded - Episode 345 - David Berg & The Children of God - Part 1

Episode Date: April 25, 2024

Communes, propaganda and child abuse are not uncommon in the world of cults. But what made David Berg and his “Children of God” so unique was the effectiveness of their implementation.In this first of two episodes on one of the biggest and darkest cases we’ve ever covered, we talk about the rise of arguably the world's most “successful” cult, and what made the man who made the monster.Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramXVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti. Welcome to Red Handed. This is going to be really horrible. Let's just tell everybody that now. So horrible that we recently guested on Help, I Sexted My Boss,

and they asked us about it, and we said, don't want to know. And they said, no, we do. And we said, no, you don't. And then they said, no, we do. And then I told them. And then everyone was like, ugh. And then it didn't make the edit they took it out do you remember and this is a way way way way way way way back throwback do you remember that Michelin web look sketch about the woman she's like it's an estate agent he's showing this couple

around he's like oh so what do you do for a living and she's like oh I'm a therapist for torture survivors and he's like what's the worst thing you've ever heard and she's like, oh, I'm a therapist for torture survivors. And he's like, what's the worst thing you've ever heard? And she's like, I really don't think it's appropriate. You don't want to know. I've seen some really bad things. And he's like, no, go on, tell me. Tell me what's the worst thing. And then it's like cuts to them going into a room and just walking out.

And he's just like, this is cut from the edit and i feel like that is what happens when we talk to people about children of god so i was recently on the tube with sam we had like gone out for a few drinks and we were out so maybe piccadilly i don't know somewhere and there was a person playing a guitar and she turned around prime hara krishna territory around there oh oh my god where yeah i was in chinatown the other day fucking hara krishnas up to my eyeballs handing out leaflets didn't give me one though did they oh because you're too brown they were like not not you not you um but yes this woman she turned around she was wearing a denim jacket and it said children of god emblazoned on the back and i was

like oh my god and he was like what i was like you don't want to know and he's like you're right i don't and i was like no let me tell you and so we were sat on a packed tube while i did think i whispered to him all of these horrible things we're about to scream at you lovely people for two weeks i know it's a two-parter. This is actually quite a difficult story to tell because for the first time on Red Handed, there are tens of thousands of victims of one man. And we can't tell all of their stories as much as we might want to. It has been, I won't lie, this has been one of the hardest scripts I've ever done.

Oh, really? Because I made the mistake of reading about seven books from Survivors. And what we usually do when we do like a nebulous topic like residential schools for First Nations children or something like that, we have one through line story that we follow and then we sort of hang all the hooks on.

It's impossible to do that with this. So I've done my best best and this is part one you could spend years decades even learning all there is to know about this stomach churning cult and if you dear listener know anything about the children of god you probably know that rose mcgowan river phoenix and joaquin phoenix were all born into it i really recommend going to see going to see going to listen to rose mcgowan on louis through his probably know that Rose McGowan, River Phoenix and Joaquin Phoenix were all born into it. I really recommend going to see, going to see, going to listen to Rose McGowan on Louis Theroux's Lockdown Podcast. Because, I mean, Rose McGowan, I admire her so much, but she's not okay. No, I was going to say Rose McGowan, River and Joaquin Phoenix, all famously fine, right?

Do you remember that mental Oscar speech that Joaquin Phoenix gave about cows? Famously fine, right? God. Do you remember that mental Oscar speech that Joaquin Phoenix gave about cows? No. Oh, it's so, it's so funny. I don't watch the Oscars, I find it very boring. No, nor do I, nor do I. I just couldn't give a fuck. But this was insane. Look, he's a victim in this, but he alleges not to be.

So maybe I can take the piss out of his oscar speech i don't know but basically he was just like stop drinking milk you're murdering cows and goes on about it for quite a while i don't know the children of god stance on cows i'm afraid but i do know that it's an organization famous for free love hookers for christ and putting garlic cloves up bumholes why oh you'll. I mean, if they put up the other part of a lady, apparently can cure BV. If you're fresh out of boric

acid suppositories, apparently a clove of garlic will clear it right up. When I was working at Flatiron years and years ago, there was a guy who really nice guy, I can't remember his name, got a wart on his nose. That's unfortunate. Oh, yeah. And we're all just like paint your face green call her day so he read that if you put gut if you sellotape garlic to it at night it makes it better and he was like doing all of that then he came back in like a few days later and it was still

there but there was like a cavern around it and And we were like, what have you done? He was like, turns out the difference between my little garlic and my mum's waitrose garlic is quite significant. Oh, my God. So he chemically burned his face with garlic. Oh, my God. I know. I know. I'm upset. I forgot about that until just now.

Anyway, the Children of God are still technically going to this day. Yeah, that woman was playing her guitar loud and proud. And it's still going because, unlike Jonestown, Omshumricchio and the Branch Davidians, there was no great end to the Children of God story. There was no raid, no terrorist plot, no Kool-Aid. I put that in because it rhymes. I know it was Flavor Raid before you all come and tweet at me. After dodging multiple child abuse suits,

FBI investigations and press pressure, the Children of God just downsized and changed their name. And that's why I'm surprised that that lady was wearing a jacket that said the Children of God because they're the Family International now. Maybe it was like a vintage. Maybe she picked it up in a vintage shop and she doesn't know what it is maybe she thrifted it and she just thought because if you take away the cult context children of god just sounds like quite a fun little hippie because you know that's kind of what they started out pretending to be

it just sounds like a bit of a fun hippie thing and maybe she just you know picked up her yale vintage sweatshirt and picked up a children of god flower child yeah oh i'm a child of god i love it i will wear it when i busk in piccadilly circus and one true crime podcaster will be horrified and ruin her boyfriend's night i feel like maybe that's what it is now. Maybe because we will never ever catch them all or even a few of them honestly. Officially speaking the Children of God was not founded until 1968 and it ran for over four decades in its original form. It reached millions of people and converted hundreds of thousands looking for purpose into sex maniacs. The founder of the Children of God was David Brandt Berg.

And he didn't really get going cult-wise until he was in his late 40s. So maybe it's never too late to start again. It's like one of those things you add to the list, like how Vera Wang didn't become a dress designer until she was like 50 or some shit, and Oprah Winfrey got sacked from her first journalism job. David Berg didn't even become a cult leader until he was 40. 49. 49. Though once

he started the cult, David wouldn't keep his name for long, because it wasn't sparkly enough, or Bernie Bushy enough. Lots of name changes happen, so that makes it quite difficult to follow. So if you know the story particularly well and you're like, you've left out the name of this person, it's on purpose. Got it, got it. But David Berg did not just drop from the sky or float up the Nile. He was the end of a long line of evangelists. Because nothing bad

ever happens. In the beginning beginning there were the bergs the youngest david was born in oakland california on the 18th of february 1919 and he spent most of his life on the road because all of his family wouldn't shut the hell up about jesus and they just had to tell absolutely everyone about it and everyone meant everyone yeah up and down the country constantly that sounds exhausting and also Berg's dad whose name is Halmer wow which if I've said that wrong I don't care sounds a bit Scandi Icelandic yeah I think it's in that general region. In that area. So Halmer did minstrel shows alongside his mum's evangelical Protestants don't have masses, what do they have? Services. And also, interestingly, Halmer, apparently he was a bit of a party guy when he first met Virginia, which is David Berg's mum's name.

And Virginia's dad was very rich, so Halmer was like, I'll convert and I'll clean up my act so I can marry your daughter. Sure, sure. And then Virginia was like, who the fuck are you? I didn't marry this boring-ass bitch. Like, it's so... And Berg points to it throughout his adult, he's like, well, you know, it's just not what my mother wanted. She didn't want this straight-laced, church-going sober guy, but that's what she got.

Interesting. All of this travelling meant that David Berg spent most of his childhood in tents and in caravans. Up and down the country, the merry band of Bergs did go in true revivalist style. Berg's mum, Virginia, as I said, was a particularly special one of God's children.

She claimed to have been healed by God as a young woman after she was paralysed from being thrown from a horse-drawn carriage. And Virginia was so good at telling this story that she landed a full-time preaching gig in Miami, and also a radio show, I believe. So the Burgs could hang up their travelling boots for a little while. And in Miami, David worked as his mum's assistant, never stepping into the limelight himself, at least not for now. he just drove his mum around doing whatever she said. In 1941, Burr claimed he was conscripted into the army at 22 years old. And whether he

actually served or not, though, is a bit of a mystery. But he was struck down with double pneumonia. I don't know what double pneumonia is. No, not why. Both lungs? I don't know. Both lungs? I'll look it up. Double pneumonia. It's hard. It is hard. You are correct, both lungs. Oh, there you go. Oh, my little joke turned out to be a horrible fact.

So yeah, he struck down with double pneumonia before he could actually even be deployed anywhere and was told by doctors that it was all over. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. even be deployed anywhere and was told by doctors that it was all over. can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite.

Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder, on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down.

Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom. But I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is the rise and fall of Diddy. Listen to the rise and fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. So Berg pledged to the almighty father

that if he pulled through, he would dedicate his life to holy servitude. It's not like he wasn't doing that already, by the way. It's very easy to say. Oh, if I don't die of double lung pneumonia, then I will start drinking coffee every single morning. God. Now, other people who are not Berg

say that he never went into basic training and actually signed up for divinity school after he was drafted in order to get out of going to war. Yeah. And I think we know which one we believe. Yeah. Draft dodging is uh a favorite of the american president um one might add but yeah i don't believe for a second that he actually

signed up like but they say this is the tricky thing is that like some of the books that are listed in the show notes some of the books that are written by survivors some of it they still believe so like one of the, I think it's, there's one called Sex Cult None. And it's in Sex Cult None, I think, that I read that,

you know, and he was so desperate. He was such a patriot that even though he could have got out of it, he signed up. But then you read something that's not by a survivor and they're like,

no, he fucking didn't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. Well, the one thing we know about David Berg and all cult leaders is they're very good storytellers, very good spin artists. So who the fuck knows what is true and what isn't. But perhaps this kind of lying ran in the Berg family.

If you believe Berg's children, Virginia's horse and cart accident never actually even happened. Actually, in the five years that Virginia claimed to have been bed-bound, she was actually attending Christian University to cover up the birth of a child that she shouldn't have been having at all because she wasn't married. Oh no, she was married. It just wasn't her. Oh, I see. So Virginia's story of miraculous godly recovery was probably a total pile of shit. But the key point to notice here before we move on is that even in this early stage of Berg's life, lying, when connected to ministry for Christ, was totally fine. Fraudulent stories about a horse accident or double pneumonia are completely and utterly fine to spin, as long as they end up bringing people to Jesus. The means to an end theme is going to come up a lot over the next couple of weeks,

so I hope you are ready. But whether Berg actually joined up or not is pretty irrelevant, because in no time at all he was back being his roving reverend's mum's little bitch boy. He wanted to preach, but he also knew, he wrote later in life, that Virginia needed a few more years in God's holy light. In 1944, Berg met and married his wife, Jane Miller, and managed to wiggle away from his mum a little bit. He and his wife, Jane, managed to push out a couple of kids. The girl, Deborah, would go on to write an expose on the children of God

and what her father, David Berg, would go on to become. I'm afraid it's not very good the book it's kind of the worst one for unsubstantiated stories that cast berg in a very positive and then very negative light at the same time so i actually think the most like the article i read the most that i trust the most that i think is the most um the most neutral because it's an academic paper it's lustful prophet a psychosexual history of the study of the children's god leader David Berg that is like well Deborah says this I can't find it anywhere else so I don't know you know not to shit on Deborah she went through a lot but it's not it's not the best of the books sure the best of the books is Jesus Freaks okay yes I I've heard of Jesus Freaks. Cool.

So living his new married life, Berg finally got round to actually being ordained, and he was sent off to spread the word in Arizona. This placement did not go particularly well, however. Berg and his followers claimed that he was relocated away from this parish because he asked the white people to share their wealth with the Native Americans and the Mexicans. And apparently the whites didn't like that. No, we don't like that. So they ran him out of town. No, Sherry. Which again is not quite true. The details are actually a bit unclear, but it seems as if the real reason that Berg got run out of Arizona was a lot more to do with some kind of sexual scandal

than it was to do with, well, literally anything else. Deborah Berg claims that this scandal was actually an affair, including Berg's own niece. Yeah, one of the things she writes in her book is that her father told her that he wanted to stay married to Jane, but he also wanted to have his niece as like a concubine. So yeah, raised eyebrows. Raised eyebrows for everyone. Mine have disappeared.

But for now, let's focus on the sharing aspect of this for a second. He's asking the white people to share with the Native Americans and the Mexicans. Because David Burke was Saruti Bala's favourite political persuasion. It's a big fat commie it's very Jonestown-y at least the way Jim Jones presented himself David Berg kind of presents himself in a similar way would you say at the start yes I I think that the children of God is what happens when Jim Jones and Joseph Smith have a baby okay got it got it because yeah Jim Jones very much was like oh this is this is going to be a communist utopia.

Look at my rainbow family. We're all going to share everything. It's about racial equality. It's like, yeah, yeah, okay. So tell me how this didn't work, Hannah. Because actually being communist is quite a Christian thing to be, no matter what American politicians want you to think and we've spoken about tithing before in our mormonism episodes lots of not cults lots of

quote-unquote legitimate religions expect tithes from their parishioners usually around the 20 mark as in 20 of household income goes to your church and most catholics first major sin is stealing from the collection plates everyone's done it And it's also the only crime that Adnan Syed has ever admitted to. Definitely not the only one he committed, though. So whether we like it or not, money and religion are intertwined because you need money to live and a lot of people need religion to live as well. They always have been.

Almost one in the same. And one thing Berg was really good at was finding passages in the Bible to justify anything and everything he decided to say. Having said that, he is far from the only person to claim that Jesus was a communist. But here is the bit from the Bible that Berg used to justify the idea that everyone should share stuff with everyone else. It's Acts 2.44, and it is all the believers were together and had everything in common.

You can't argue with it. It does say that. It's what it says. And unlike us uptight Brits, Berg came from a tradition of Christianity that was not afraid to rock the boat. We're far too scared after the whole Anne Boleyn debacle. We'll do whatever we're told now. I'm actually re-watching the Tudors.

Do you know what's happened to me? Is after we did... I think after I did the Lady Jane Grey episode for shorthand, somehow I've got onto the side of TikTok where they only talk about Tudors. Interesting. Yeah. And so I know, did you know that Catherine Howard was only 19? Yes.

When they killed her. And there's this really tragic bit where she's like locked up in the palace and she runs down the corridor to try and get Henry to save her and then she gets dragged back yeah and how she asked them the night before she was going to have her head chopped off for the executioner's block so she could practice putting her head on it again and again and again and also all the horrible stuff that happened to katherine howard when she was like a teenager she was definitely like all sorts of sexual abuse oh yeah by her piano teacher yeah so uh no i'm very familiar with the Tudors

because I have spent far too long watching so many videos about them. Why am I doing that? I don't know. But it did like ping in my brain even when you were like, he just looked in the Bible to find a verse that fitted what he wanted,

which is exactly what Henry does in order to be like, I need to get a divorce. Yeah, let's dissolute the monasteries. Dissolve the Morrisies. Dissolve the monasteries. The dissolutionute the monasteries. Dissolve the Morrisies. Dissolve the monasteries. The dissolution of the monasteries. Dissolve the monasteries.

I'm having a stroke. Please go on. But anyway, this episode is not about Tudors. We are staying in America. Because there, in particular, the attitude of the pilgrims fleeing Britain to be more hardline was alive and well in David Berg's heart.

And there was a significant air of not wanting to be ruled by the church, but to actually take the Bible word for word, and not all the made-up Catholic stuff, like indulgences, etc. Which is all made up by the church, it's not in the book. And that is the tradition that Berg was born into, the Pentecostal model. The Bible is it. All additional religious rules instilled by men in dresses are not part of the vision.

Which Americans are just a lot more game for. Which may sound noble, especially if you love Jesus or whatever, but it also lays the foundations for cults. Because the Bible is so long and so old that you can make it say whatever you want. And that is exactly what David Berg did.

He just mixed it up with the naivety of the hippie movement. Unfortunately, to great success. Did you know that Christianity was in Africa before it was in Europe? No. The Ethiopian Bible is much, much older than any Bible that we have. Wow. So, like, the type of Christianity in Ethiopia is very unique.

Oh. It's interesting, isn't it? Interesting. You may have already picked up on the fact that David Berg's relationship with his mum, Virginia, was not totally okay. And obviously, sex is a big part of the Children of God story. And surprise, surprise, those two things are connected. Nobody who ends up like David Berg has a normal relationship with their mum but this one is really something david berg like more children than you would think was a compulsive masturbator

as a child it's actually the only thing he claims to remember from his childhood oh my god he like writes it later and he's like i liked liked it then, I like it now. When his mum caught him playing the devil's trombone, she brought the whole family in and told her four-year-old son that if he didn't stop, she would cut off his penis in front of all of them. Oh, don't do that. Don't do that. Maybe we can write, actually, a parenting book, Hannah.

Not... Don't. Just don't do that and it can just be all of the fucking horrible things that people did to turn their kids into little fucking serial killers or cult leaders or horrible shit don't do that do not tell your four-year-old son you're going to cut his penis off in front of your entire family don't do that no she even brought a little bowl in with her and she's like it's gonna go in here but it didn't stop him he also tells a story about a lady who he only calls the mexican babysitter i don't know what her name was and apparently she used to suck him off to sleep when he was a child oh my god yeah rough and if he and i love love that Hannah is just like, little breadcrumbing you now to ease in all of the truly, truly horrible shit

that is coming up over the next two weeks. You ain't seen nothing yet. You're just like, oh yeah, she used to suck him up before he went to bed. Let's move on. You all prepped. Just tenderizing them like a big fat slab of meat. I've been living in this for weeks.

Let's get it out of your head. Let's get on with it. And I'm afraid it immediately gets worse. There is more, I'm afraid, to this particular part in David Berg's life. And we're telling you because it's important. Virginia caught Berg wanking as a teenager and instead of threatening him with GBH, instead she brought his dad into the room and made her son finish in front of him. That's porn star material though.

If you can finish wanking off in front of your dad jesus christ i actually i forgot to put this in the notes but this is another story that happened to him he claims that he had penetrative sex with his cousin when they were both seven because she had seen her parents doing it and then he realized that i think three of the house staff and his uncle were watching. Oh, fucking hell. And look, David Berg goes on to be a horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, gross, disgusting person who damages a lot of people, as we said at the very start. But his teenage, his childhood and his teenage years, they really did a number on him. Hmm.

So I think we can all agree that the Westermark Effect does not live in the Berg house. And that is a very clear foundation of what was to come. After the Arizona disaster, when he was run out of town, Berg moved on to work for a faith healer called Orville Jaggers. And I only put that in because it's such a ridiculous name.

Oh my god. One day I would like to own a pig and I will call him Orville jackers not sorrenti not they'll they'll be two they don't want him to get lonely they'll need a friend sorrenti and orville jackers i don't know when i hear that name i just think of a little pig boink but uh we don't really know what happened with orville the pig jaggers but berg didn't last long with him he moved on to somewhere else, chillingly called the American Soul Clinic in 1954. And the American Soul Clinic happened to

be owned by a bloke called Fred Jordan. And Berg and Fred must have got on pretty well, at least in the beginning, because Berg worked for Fred at the American Soul Clinic, training missionaries for 13 years. Which, bearing in mind, he was born in 1919, he's already old as shit. Fred Jordan was one of the first ever televangelists, and Berg trained under him, sending missionaries all over the world. This is where he learned that there are plenty of people willing to leave it all behind and go to developing countries exclusively to talk about jesus he also learned aggressive sales tactics because that's all it is is that um angels on your body is that a televangelist thing yes

i what is that it's from a louis theroux it's a weird weekend a weird weekend and that woman i think whenever she picks up the phone or she puts the phone, angels on your body, give me your money. It was her Children of God jacket that that bastard picked up. Full circle. So in 1967, for reasons we can't quite put our finger on, Fred Jordan fired Burke. So David Burke, with four children, a disgruntled wife,

and almost broke at the age of 49, hit the road once more. This time in a 28-foot motorhome that Berg called The Ark. Isn't that... What? Oh, we talk about her all the time.

Killed her babies. Andrea Yates. Didn't Andrea Yates' husband call their motorhome The Ark? I don't know if he called called it the ark but they definitely lived on a greyhound i'm currently proofing the book for an upcoming paperback version stay tuned it'll make a great christmas present if he did we didn't put it in the book i feel like we would have put it in if it was true but he definitely made her live on a greyhound bus that definitely did not help her psychosis one tiny little bit.

And yeah, Berg forced his entire family to also live on this bus while he drove it around and he also made them sing for their supper. Now, I don't know when as a society we lost our appetite for traveling theater troops of children, but I for one, I'm glad that it happened.

Yeah. Let's just stop doing that. Let the children go to school, that's what I say. Yes, I would agree. Maybe this is why we all got over it as a society. The Berg family singers, as they called themselves ingeniously, was a complete and utter flop. And that meant that David Berg, now in his 50s with loads of kids

and no money, had to come up with another plan. And being a creature of habit, that plan involved his mum, Virginia. Virginia was in her twilight years living in Huntington Beach, California, home to the National Surfing Museum. And perhaps in an effort to impress his mum, Berg changed the name of his Von Trapp extravaganza to Teens for Christ. Oh, I remember that. And joined Virginia on the beach. That is another classic vintage tea, if I ever saw one. The Teens for Christ in like a jazzy font.

And there in Huntington Beach, Berg started forcing his spawn to sing in somewhere called the Light Cafe to the hippies, who probably hadn't had a glass of water for a week. There were also free peanut butter sandwiches involved. That's how they lured them in. I'm there. By 1968, the hippie movement had died a bit of a death, and there were a lot of lost souls kicking around Huntington Beach,

which of course made it the perfect hunting ground for David Berg and his band of married children to tell washed up hippies and freaks that they could get off the drugs and get high on Jesus instead. Last podcast made this point that I think if they have a series on this, it's like four or five parts long, it's really good going into it. They made the point that like this is right at the end of the hippie

movement and it's like, you know that episode of Peep Show where Jez is like turns out watching someone you love having sex with someone else is really really horrible yes yes yes yes so they talk about this like particular moment in time of like it's all over like yeah and it wasn't fun last days of saigon yes exactly no it's true I think a lot of the times you see this sort of cult formation happen in times where a particular society is going through some sort of flux like if you look at for example Aum Shinrikyo the religion pre-Aum Shinrikyo in Japan had been very

much Shintoism like state Shintoism and the emperor was this divine being like a literal god on earth then the bombs fell on nagasaki and hiroshima and it was a bit harder to be like i'm a god when that's happened to your country so then obviously when religion fell out of favor people in japan were like oh my god what do i do now boom blind yoga man it's kind of obviously i'm not saying that he was a good person but it is kind of genius like most like quote-unquote successful cults they just happen at exactly the right moment in time absolutely you know one of the things that we talked about ad nauseum on sinister societies our short-lived um series that we did while back, which actually was really good.

We just like couldn't keep doing it because of other things. But yeah, like one of the things that I felt really became a running theme during that show was the idea that cult leaders are entrepreneurs and the ones that are successful are just the good entrepreneurs. They identify a niche in the market and then they fucking go for it with everything. And then they get greedy and they fuck themselves over which is why i do think it's interesting that the children of god slash family international has managed to survive and it's exactly because of he circumvents that issue yeah evolve or die so getting back to berg by this point he was 50 years old and had 15 years of missionary training.

He already had the techers. Then, at last, Virginia died, and Berg took things up a notch. The Light Café was started by Pentecostals, but soon became the temple of the rage against what Berg called the system. The night he gave this speech against the system was actually the first time he had spoken publicly. With Virginia, his mum, dead, he was free to declare war on the religious system and also on the way that he had been raised.

I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health.

This is season two of Finding and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudine Gay is now gone.

We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts. For David Berg, fear and condemnation died that day in 1968, as he railed against the church, the war in Vietnam, politicians, and parents who had all made us miserable. This is a huge turning point for him when his mum dies, because when he was attempting to be a minister himself

but she was still alive, she was like, you're just a knock-off, Fred Jordan, who do you think you are? And his wife wasn't particularly happy about it as well and so he had all of this judgment and shame and then all of the sex stuff that happened when he was a kid. But then Virginia dies and then it's like, oh, she was so horrible to me that everything she said, everything she made me feel, I should be feeling the opposite. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Again, very well timed. This was a genius move from him. He included things in this speech that hippies liked, like protests and sit-ins. And I'm not crazy. It's like when Lisa's like, the whole damn system is wrong. Like, it's like that. It's not my fault that things haven't worked out because of the system. And eventually, Berg would blend his own sexual perversions with fundamentalist Christian doctrines, godly missions, and the counterculture movement. So far, none of the sex stuff has happened. So this isn't particularly bad. If people want to live off the land and off the grid, then fine. Not everybody is built for the rat race. And we're told all the time that hardship is just the way it is. And when someone tells you that it doesn't have to be this way,

that existence doesn't have to be rigid and painful and full of rules, I do think there is an innate human response to believe them because we want it to be true. We all want to be happy and not many of us are. But this wouldn't be an episode of Red Handed if it had a happy ending. The people that Berg was recruiting from the Light Cafe had already turned their back on the system, and Berg just took advantage of it.

They needed to fill that hole. They needed a mission. And after closely observing what the great unwashed responded to the most positively, David Berg grew a big long beard, bought a beret, and asked everyone to start calling him Dad. Market research. He also took advantage

of the anti-Vietnam War sentiment by preaching not only that the system was bad, but that America was particularly bad and a great punishment was coming. And then he says to them, and you have to tell everyone. Yeah, sure. This is now. The drugs are gone. The free love is gone.

You don't worry about your material possessions because I'll take them off your hands. Yes, give them to me. I'll hold on to them. Go forth and spread the word of Jesus. And by fuck did it work. As soon as David Berg upgraded Teens for Christ to the children of God, David Berg's followers were in the hundreds almost overnight.

They'd go to university campuses and stuff and car parks and flyer people. And it was actually a journalist that called them the Children of God first. And he read it and he was like, I like that. And they would get moved on from all of these places. And that obviously he just used as like, well, they're persecuting us because we're right. One particular recruit in the hundreds was young, virginal Catherine Zerbe. And she caught David Berg's eye in 1969. She quickly became his secretary, and her virginity didn't last very long.

If you even tangentially know this case, the name Karen Zerbe is going to send, like it just did for me, a little chill up and down your spine. Lusting after Catherine Zerbe presented a bit of a problem for David Berg, because he absolutely wanted to bang Karen Zerbe, but he didn't want to stop banging his wife Jane. Up until this point, Berg had been taking the traditional Christian route that sex is only allowed inside a marriage. This is feeling again very Henry VIII. In these very early days, Berg even insisted that the leaders of his pamphlet teams, his witnessing teams, could only be married couples. So Berg, being Henry VIII, came up with a

way around it. The way he got around everything. Justifying his actions with passages from the Bible. And let's face it, it is in there. Loads of people in the Bible have multiple wives. So Berg changed Karen's name to Maria and moved her into the Ark with his first wife, Jane. True of everything. Jane couldn't argue with Berg, and she didn't make her discomfort known in the group around her, but she did cry quite a lot and made a point of not being in the caravan when karen's ervie was there and jane probably didn't love that her husband started to refer to her as the old wine and the old church and to karen he changed her name to maria he now called her mama maria the new wine or the new church. Mama Maria is a lot more sexy than the old church.

And he would use them as parables, almost. He would refer to Jane as the old church, being stuck in her ways and not following new revelations. And then along comes Catherine Zerbe, who's like, it doesn't have to be this way. She's the sexy new church, willing to do anything that David Berg asked of her. Mama Maria was the answer to David Berg's prayers, or so he wrote.

He publicly took Maria as a second wife, and Jane got a younger second husband. Good for Jane. You know what? Yeah. For now. For now. Berg also came up with a new name for his followers. And I hope you are all ready to vomit.

Because he called them, the women especially, babes in Christ. Just, why not? Why not? Which again he justified with biblical texts. In Psalms, God ordains strength out of the mouths of babes and sucklings which is referred to also in the gospel of matthew yeah and also out the mouths of babes is what we say that as i'm saying you know i know and it's just so uncomfortable because obviously when people say out of the mouths of babes they mean out of the mouths of children i. And here he's like babes in Christ. But also, he does love children. Spoilers.

And I hate myself for saying this, but Jane getting a new, younger second husband, I'm like, it's a lot. I'm just prepping the people, Hannah. Just prepping the people. I know. So with Virginia, David Bergg's mother now out of the picture and no one left to ridicule him david berg began to make prophecies he would predict the

end of the world three times and spoilers it never happened he's very specific too it's just that's your downfall that that is a mistake but he he survives every time. They always come back. That is good going. That is good going. Going back to Jonestown, Jim Jones moved his lot up to Ukiah because he was convinced it was the only place that would not be destroyed by the nuclear weapons that the entire world was extremely worried about.

David Berg, however, took a different route. He predicted that an enormous earthquake was going to swallow up all of California, so he decided that he was going to have to leave Huntington Beach. But, unlike Jim Jones, crucially, David Berg said that not everybody could come with him. He left some followers behind in 1969 in Huntington beach just in case and this is why he survives so long decentralized government and eventually after some time on the road witnessing and singing and doing all sorts the children of god decided that it was commune time and they all

moved to a ranch in thurber texas owned by none other than fred jordan and he basically says yeah you can live that but can you like do it up a bit? So they've made friends apparently. And the members were asked to give up all of their worldly possessions and categorized into groups based on the 12 tribes of Israel. Every tribe had a different job. It's like in brownies when you're like an imp or a pixie or like it's like that. As the 12 tribes of Israel with different jobs, they wandered through the wilderness in God's grace. The jobs ranged from scavenging for food in bins to just basic admin. Someone's got to keep track

of all the wealth he's accumulating and how to hide it from the tax man. But the foragers were not allowed to eat anything that they found. They had to deliver it straight back to the top of the cult food chain. So at this stage, let's recap. Polyamory, fine.

Sex outside of marriage, still a no-go. But that's not going to be around forever. And we have got oh so lots of time for the horrible sex stuff that is to come. Berg was convinced that he was leading his disciples across the United States and eventually away from it entirely as Moses had led the Jews from Egypt. Berg's obsession with Moses is one of the reasons this never blew up in his face.

He never said that he was God, only that he was a conduit of God. And I think that is an important point to make. A lot of cult leaders get very carried away. They may start off just using pre-existing religious mumbo-jumbo to like get people through the door. Pretty soon they escalate to saying that they are the one and only god on earth. Berg doesn't do that. No and again that's another reason that he gets away with it. It is an astonishing amount of restraint for a man who shows so little in every other aspect of his life. So Berg identified with the Prince of Egypt so much

that he actually changed his name to Moses. But we're not going to call him that because fuck him. I didn't call Sean Coombs P. Diddy. I'm not going to call David Berg Moses. No, we won't be doing that. So yeah, just know he legally did change his name to Moses, but we are going to continue to call him David Berg. So this takes just know he legally did change his name to Moses, but we are going to continue to call him David Berg. So this takes us up to January 1970, where Berg, the new and the old wine, and hundreds of babes in Christ were at the ranch in Texas. In cultology, communal living is a big turning point. And this is what happened on the ranch. Those living there not only had to change their names to biblical ones, they also had to cut off all ties with their family and friends.

Yet again, Berg had biblical backup for this. Luke 14 26 reads, If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and yes, even their own life, Such a person cannot be my disciple. Bummer. Because you must love only me. Wow. So you can't argue, as I keep saying, that it's not in there and that Berg didn't know it.

He knew his stuff. He knew the Bible back to front. And he wanted his followers to know it too. Every member of the Children of God was expected to memorize 300 biblical verses within the first three months of living on the ranch. And actually, on the ranch, the only thing that the Children of God were allowed to possess as their own was their Bible. Everyone had their own Bible and that was yours, but it was the only thing that was yours. Everything else was shared. Clothes, shoes, hairbrushes, everything.

Ew. Toothbrushes? Didn't ask. Oh, well. Let's have a look at a normal day out on the ranch. Mornings were dedicated to Bible study, and then the Israelites would be given their orders for the day. Orders would be fulfilled with one's assigned buddy. Like the Mormons on mission, a person could never be apart from their buddy, even when they went to the loo. Oh, and when they did go to the loo,

they were only allowed to use two sheets of toilet paper per bathroom visit. But still, Berg, being a man of the road, sent out teams to recruit yet more babes in Christ. He sent out teams across the whole of the North American continent whilst maintaining the base at the ranch. And then one day, Berg got a call from God, who told him that America was so last week, and the East was the new frontier. And so Berg sent four six-person teams overseas, and the true legacy of the children of God began. Remember, up until now, sex was only permitted

between married couples, but Berg had grown tired of his own law. So he gathered up his inner circle, including his four children and their spouses, and they all went to a motel in Dallas. And in that motel room, with his actual own biological children, Berg changed that rule. He told his closest acolytes that the rules in the Old Testament, no adultery, for example, are conveniently superseded by the golden rule from Matthew 22, 36. Someone asked Jesus, teacher, which commandment is the greatest in the law? And Jesus declared, love the Lord your God with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.

The next one is the famous one love thy neighbor as thyself so berg told his top brass that as long as everything they did was in love they could do whatever they wanted so basically as long as you can quote some bible verses you can fuck whoever you want and then david berg watched all of his children fuck their partners in front of him in that motel room in Dallas. Shortly after, presumably after growing tired of just watching, Berg came up with the concept of sharing, where married couples could swap partners with each other, which also meant that separated couples,

who were sent on missions to different places, could basically fuck whoever they wanted. This is how revelations from Berg were passed down to the eventual thousands of followers. First he tested his new plans out with his nearest disciples, so basically his actual children, and then the practice would trickle down through the elected officials. And yes, I say elected, as more of the children of God spread across the world, a very effective system of governance was actually put in place. Each, for want of a better word, colony had a leader called a shepherd. They were elected by the groups in which they lived, and then they reported to an area shepherd. These group homes

and colonies quickly spread all over the world, particularly outside of Europe, because Berg taught that the East was far less corrupt than the West and therefore much easier to save souls in. So, yes, that is so very convenient and so very, very telling. He's like, it's very Jim Jonesy again, who's like, let's just move to Guyana where like people aren't going to ask as many questions about what the fuck I'm doing with all this fucking cyanide and flavor aid again it's just like like replace every word in there that David Berg uses the east is less corrupt than the west and therefore easier to save souls I think what he means is the east is more corrupt than the west and therefore it's easier to rape people yes yes that is that's what he means and life in the group homes as i'm sure you can imagine

was not easy berg himself spent most of his time bopping around europe with the old church and the new and he gave instructions to the shepherds by writing letters every month and he called these the mo letters pause for effect the mo letter are you thinking about Mo Lester? Yes, I am. I am thinking about Mo Lester and his letters that he would have eventually written me. So in case you need it spelling out for you, Mo as in Moses. And they even had little pictures as well. In 1972, David Berg was living right here in London, and he entitled one of his famous letters to his followers i gotta split very odd thing about david berg very 70s though so 70s but he's also 50 in the 70s like he's not cool he's not young and hip and with it but he'll do he'll say

things like split kid i gotta split kid and he's, Ma, burn your bra. Like, he'll just, like, say, he speaks in rhyming couplets quite a lot and uses a lot of, like, New Age. Oh, my God. Funky talk. Oh, my God. So these letters, of which there are thousands, were entitled the Mo Letters. And it was the way in which David Berg communicated with the children of God all the way out to every far-flung corner of the world that his flock had spread.

He wrote that the storm of God's judgments begins to break upon the wickedness of the lowlands of America. He, like Jesus, was being persecuted by the unholy, and therefore he had to disappear. From now on, the Moe letters would be the only form of communications with his shepherds, who would pass it on to the others berg himself would of course be with them in spirit just like jesus was with his disciples after his ascension to heaven and this separation from his followers was also a major reason that

the children of god is arguably the most successful cult of all time i mean look you could write a whole cult business book on this and it's basically like look founder-led businesses are very hard because the founders can be quite intense about things if they take a little step back and let the business run itself things can sometimes be more successful aka the david berg model the david berg model is uh you're much more difficult to catch if not even your closest followers know where you are. This is true. And I mean, hands off in the loosest possible sense, because as we will find out, he's a

very hands on kind of man. Just tenderizing them again. In actual fact, very few of the children of God knew what David Berg even looked like. No photographs of him were circulated. And even when he was featured in the Moe letters, in the little cartoons, he was either depicted as like a classic cartoon God man, like long beard, white robe, etc. Or he was drawn as a human man with the head of a lion. Because no one can dob you in if they don't know what you look like.

It's very interesting. Do you think that was his reason behind not being so visibly present throughout his cult? I think there are so many decisions made by him and or Karen Zerbe that are so clever. If it was just a one-off, I'd be like, oh, it's a coincidence. But there's so many of them and he evades justice forever. I think he did know what he was doing. It's fascinating because yeah if it was purposeful and deliberate it is genius even the idea of if david berg dies

then no one knows who he is so they can just keep the whole shebang running by substituting him with a different person i'm sorry you didn't hear that go back to suspending your disbelief immediately. So this sudden shift from spiritual being rather than colony visitor might have had something to do with New York's Charity Fraud Bureau investigation on Berg and his associates for fiscal chicanery and perversion of the course of justice, because it did happen at a similar time.

Berg encouraged his followers to leave the States too. So in 1973, there was a mass exodus of the Children of God for over 130 colonies all over the globe. Some of the original 300 on the Texas ranch did stay, but not many. And Berg continued to send his mo letters, telling all the children of God how to live every second of their lives. Now, if you want to go and look at the mo letters for yourself, then you can give them a quick Google and they are there for your viewing displeasure. But we really wouldn't recommend it. They are incredibly graphic and quite a lot of them involve

no surprises child molestation gang rape and really awful cartoon images i have seen these before and uh i would just say don't don't do it you just don't need it like nobody needs to watch the serbian film nobody needs to read the mobian film. Nobody needs to read the Moe letters. They are either incredibly boring, of like how many times you should take a shit a day, or they are just... Child rape. Yeah. Now what we have attempted to do instead

is collect examples of some of the most batshit things that Berg wrote down in his Moe letters without making us all so depressed that we want to end it all. Yeah, we've read them, you don't have to. One of the first Moe letters that he ever sent out confirmed that sharing spouses sexually was fine because Jesus loved sex. It's actually the devil that hates it.

What? Plot twist. And he went on to explain that sharing was also fine because the wife of one man was the wife of God and therefore everyone else's wife as well. And it was also unfair for single people to be lonely and left out. In addition to that, he wrote that having sex in front of children was totally fine because there is no shame in sex. So he's like a sexual communist as well.

Oh, yeah. Everyone gets sex. No. No. Ugh. that everyone sleeping in the same bed was fine and that nobody should be wearing underwear in bed and adults were encouraged to check this before bedtime. Children were told that when the end times came, they would be able to shoot lasers out of their eyes and fire from their mouths in order to defeat the Antichrist. They were physically trained from young ages, literally preparing for war.

And because the only other books they were allowed to read were The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, the children wholeheartedly believed it. I always find it very strange that children in cults... I'm sure it's not the first time I've seen this where they're allowed The Count of Monte Cristo as one of their... Why? Is this a story about, like, Norse? It's a jailbreak.

Yeah. Yeah. No. Why? Why? And it's fucking massive. What child is reading the Count of Monte Cristo? Anyway, the Moe letters were filled with women wearing floaty see-through scarves,

most of the time having sex with lion-headed Berg. The women of the colonies dressed up like these women and sent videos of themselves dancing to Berg, and these videos included the children of the cult as well. Berg made it very clear in his letters that, quote, boys get semen and girls get their periods. If God didn't intend them to start having sex then, they wouldn't be able to procreate at that age.

So nothing wrong with sex ever at all as long as it was practiced in love. Even if that sex was with a child, even your own. And once more Berg pointed to the Bible to back himself up. In a letter from St Paul to the Corinthians, Paul wrote, all things are lawful to me, but all things are not helpful. So basically do whatever you like, but don't let the system see you do it. Now, of course, by far the most concerning element of the children of God is the abuse of the children that were either born into the cult or brought in by their parents. We have a lot more on that next week, but here is a brief overview. As we said, children and

adults all slept communally and underwear was forbidden. And because even before the children are brought into it, because there are years where that doesn't happen, even before that, because sex is so encouraged, and the thing you will always hear in interviews with people who've left the children of God is that God is love and love is sex,

and that's what you're told. So adults are fucking each other in front of children all the time. And that's the thing. It's the idea of the cult leader, if you want more information by our book paperback coming out in September. But definitely this idea of when you join a cult, right, the cult leader's vision, the cult leader's view of the way in which world should be the kind of deviant life that they want to live. They don't want to be a deviant on the outskirts of a society. They want to create their own society within which their deviance is normalized. And that's exactly what you see David Berg doing here. He creates this group with hundreds of thousands of followers

all over the world. And then he uses the Mo Letters as a vessel to normalize and warp the view and vision and the framework of reference for all of his cult members to go along with his own levels of deviance that he wants to live in. So once you've normalized it, you're not a freak anymore. You're not a criminal anymore. You're just doing what everybody's doing. But you made them do it. So the attitude to child rearing in the cult was very much, it takes a village.

Women did not spend any more time with their own children than anyone else's. Everyone was a mama or an auntie. In one of the books it said, so the lady who leaves, her mum is still in I think, she was like, I was one of ten children and, or maybe it's a YouTube video actually, she was like, I was one of ten children and I saw my own biological mother for an hour a week. And it was spread across everyone. You didn't spend any more time with your actual mother than you did with anyone else. Again, very, very communist, though, if you believe in that.

Like he's preaching what he's saying. It's this idea of like, it's not about individual nuclear families. It's about the state or i.e. the village raising your child. Again, so that the family cannot have too much of an attachment to their own child. It's a group communal living. Everyone is as important as everyone else. Your child is not or should not be more important to you than anyone else's child, which obviously goes against biology.

Now, fathers taking their sons to sex workers in the cult very young was also incredibly common. And boys were asked which of their aunties they wanted to have sex with. This sort of teaching of how to have sex never goes away. In 1982, Berg and Karen Zerbe released a child raising handbook. And they declared that children were no longer allowed to attend any kind of school outside of the cult. This book was 700 pages long

and included everything the children needed to know, according to Berg, which is evolution is a lie, simple arithmetic, and boys got to do geometry because they had to do carpentry. The children were also treated to another comic called Heaven's Girl, who's a 15-year-old superhero who knocked around in a see-through toga and a shepherd's crook and she was an end times prophet with supernatural powers her escapades came to the cults monthly with the mo letters and there

are lots of stories about heaven's girl there are hundreds and hundreds of editions again you can find them if you want i wouldn't recommend it There's one story which I haven't been able to get off my head where Heaven's Girl is captured by a gang of soldiers and she's raped by them. And then they throw her to the lions. But instead of fighting the sexual assault off, Heaven's Girl, whose name is Mary Claire, she submits to the rape and whispers about Jesus to the soldiers

as they rape her. And that makes them feel so guilty and filled with the word of christ that they come back and rescue her from the lions and she is completely unharmed except having been gang raped sure sure but minor details well that's one of his catchphrases is you don't have to worry about rape in the children of god it doesn't happen yep because women are just told that they have to submit yeah and that And that happens to Heaven's Girl a lot. She uses sex and submission to escape the Antichrist forces. She also performs the miracles of Moses and she can make people go blind as well.

Lovely. It's interesting that they do this Heaven's Girl one because they also rape the boys just as much, right? It's a free-for-all, isn't it? Well, kind of, yes. But male homosexuality, absolutely no. So the women were allowed to fuck the little boys, but David Berg was very much like, he called them sodomites.

So he, that wasn't fine. Lesbianism, totally fine, obviously. Sure, sure, sure. So all of the boys were raped predominantly by the older women. Yep. And again, with cult formation, this is one of the most interesting things, right? It's that move from you just doing perverse things and trying to get away with it to the power and the gratification

it would give someone like david berg to take quote unquote normal people because there's hundreds of thousands of people in the cut they can't all be pedophiles they can't all be child sex offenders when they join because that wasn't even you said, a part of the deal at the very start. So his power and control and that glory for him comes from taking relatively normal people that he finds to join this cult and then not just normalising his fucked up deviant worldview onto them, but then also getting them to commit the most heinous crimes imaginable, like raping their own children. It is mind boggling. So what we've never been able to

get our head around is how all of this came from the mind of one man. There are thousands of Mo letters, and I mean thousands. And I think it was something like, I read it was like three million pages were distributed by the children of god every month in their like height it's unbelievable but then maybe yeah it's not like he's doing anything else he's got and then and george rr martin not comparing him to david berg but like people can come up with entire worlds just because my brain can't do it like no but i think the bigger question here is also how could a mind like david David Berg's become so completely depraved when it came to sex? Well, we've got a little story for you that might explain some of the origins.

When Berg was 19 and driving his mother around, he wrote in one of his mo letters that he was sharing a bed with his mother on the road. It was cold, so she wrapped him up in a warm embrace. Apparently, Berg's first reaction was one of shock, but he also admitted, I think for the first time in my life I had sexual feelings about my own mother. He describes how attractive she was

in her thin nightgown, and then how he got a massive boner. He wrote in a Mo letter, Had I been less of a square, I may have been more responsive. It could have been a beautiful sexual relationship. Okay, look, he's 19 years old here, and he has also been under the thumb and under the control of his mother,

who is, I think think safe to say an incredibly domineering woman his entire life so whatever was going on here she we can say is absolutely the instigator because david berg was terrified of her so she is the one with all the power she is the one with the control and for everything david berg goes on to become the roots of it lie in his own sexual abuse at the hands of his mother, I think that's probably safe to say. But before we let you scuttle off to mentally prepare yourself for what we have in store next week, we're going to throw in a bit of Children of God trivia for you that's not widely reported on. Berg was big mates with none other than Colonel Gaddafi.

Why not? Berg was actually invited to Libya by old plastic backface, and he saw this as an opportunity to spread even more of the word. So he took plenty of his women with him to fuck all of the Libyan leaders. Berg and his harem actually stayed in Libya for two whole months. But as soon as it became clear that Gaddafi had literally no intention of converting, Berg went back into hiding and back to his old tricks. I think the point was that Gaddafi was hoping that the children of God,

because they're American, would use their reach to publish positive things about his regime. But they didn't do that, obviously. So everyone lost in the situation. Yeah, I mean, Gaddafi must have just been told, oh, this guy, he writes like three million newsletters a year and it has an incredible reach all around the world. And he's American. But I can imagine that even Colonel Gaddafi was quite glad

when David Berg left Libya. And that takes us up to 1974, when Berg and his nearest and dearest were living right here in London. And Karen Zerbe started to fuck a lot of people who weren't David Berg. And Berg wrote this into the Mo Letter scripture, called it flirty fishing, which we're going to tell you all about next week. Come back then if you're brave enough. Yep, I don't know if I am. And I promise to explain the garlic and bomb holes as well.

Great, great. You don't want to leave that particular plot hole a gaping hill. Let's leave. Okay, that's it, guys. We'll be back next week for part two. We will see you then. Goodbye. Bye. Bye.

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