Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Synanon, Part 1

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

Buy tickets to The Big Magical Cult Show in Vancouver, Canada on February 21, 2025! Father is back!!! No, not Father Algorithm, but *actual* Father. Indeed, Amanda's sweetie dad, Craig Montell, returns to the pod after his featurette on last year's cult of Military Wives episode, for an extra-special end-of-year, two-part deep dive into the cult that he survived and that inspired this entire show: Synanon. Craigo brings his dad charm and cult experience to break down exactly how this well-intentioned drug rehabilitation program spiraled into a full-on '70s compound complete with paranoia, hypocrisy, and some very strange hairstyling choices. This "classic cult" discussion may not be typical SLAC fodder, but the story is actually more relevant than ever. Craig is here not just to divulge his shocking past, but also to scrutinize how Synanon’s same rituals and methods of manipulation are alive and well in today's society, from our politics to our social media feeds. Cozy in for some culty parental wisdom, and stay tuned for Part 2 next week to hear the end of the tale! Subscribe to Sounds Like A Cult on YouTube! Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod @amanda_montell @reesaronii @chelseaxcharles Thank you to our sponsors!  Dipsea is offering an extended 30-day free trial when you go to DipseaStories.com/cult.  Shop the SKIMS Holiday Shop at skims.com/cult.  Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at MINTMOBILE.com/cult.  Visit BetterHelp.com/CULT today to get 10% off your first month. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode was recorded at the Spotify podcast studios in downtown Los Angeles. If you would like to watch this episode and beautiful high-quality video, check it out on our YouTube channel. Link and Show Notes. The views expressed on this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable fact. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. We are always facing the possibility of a cult leader, exerting much, much more power over people's lives and minds than they initially set out to do.

We look around the world today in 2024, and we see lots of strong men who didn't start out as strong men. And just as a result of their power, they started doing things that were really just in their own self-interest. They forgot about all the causes that got them into politics, starting an organization. I don't think we could ever get to. a time when we can't think about the dangers of the really bad cults. This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm your host Amanda Montel, author of the books cultish and The Age of Magical Overtinking. Every week on the show, we discuss a different fanatical fringe group from the cultural zeitgeist,

from Elon Musk stands to swifties to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult. it really? And if so, which of our three cult categories does it fall into? A live your life, a watcher back, or a get the fuck out. After all, this show exists to unpack the notion that cultishness can kind of mean anything in 2024, 2025. Cultish influence can be found in places that are not the classic Manson-esque compounds that might come to mind when you think of the word cult, they can show up in your corporate offices, in your fitness studios, in your online forums. On this show, we discuss a wide range of groups to determine whether something that might

look fanatical and fringy and ritualistic and weird on the outside really is that risky, or if it's relatively harmless. And we also discuss groups that might look totally innocent or mainstream, but are actually more sinister than that in a cultish way. The word cult is kind of tossed around, nilly, which doesn't mean that we shouldn't use it. It simply means that when we're discussing some of these more dangerous or threatening groups, we need to get more specific about the qualities of manipulation and exploitation. And today is a very, very special episode, totally unlike our typical sounds like a cult thotter. This is My Culties, the Synanon episode, part one.

Before we get into the rest of the episode, I just wanted to make this very exciting announcement that my cult-tastic live show that I do, the big magical cult show, is coming to the Just for Laughs festival in Vancouver on Friday, February 21st. If you are in the area and are a fan of sounds like a cult, you will have to join us. This show is a night of nerdy, culty, spicy, witchy deviance featuring drag and burlesque performances, special drinks, culty merch, special surprise guests, a PowerPoint presentation about the cult of parasocial relationships. It's almost like a sounds like a cult episode on the freaky as silliest steroids. Again, the show is on February 21st, 2025 at 7 p.m. at the Biltmore Cabaret in Vancouver, Canada for the Just for Laughs Festival. Tickets

are available now at the link in our show notes or at sounds like a cult.com. Come have the cultiest night of your life. I can't wait to see you there. This is the episode dedicated to the most classic cult that we'll ever discuss on the show, but it is the inspiration behind all of my work, all of this sort of lighthearted, jokey material that I create about cults does have a more serious root. and that is the fact that my dad grew up in Synanon, which is now a pretty well-known cult, thanks to a slew of documentaries that have been released.

It was a sort of 70s utopian commune experiment that started out as an alternative drug rehab and then morphed into a monstrous cult. You may have seen photos of the Synan members with shaved heads and matching coveralls. But at the time that I started this podcast and the time that I wrote cultish, Most people hadn't heard of synon the way that they had heard of Heaven's Gate or Jonestown or Scientology, allegedly, allegedly. My dad is the only sounds like a cult guest who is appearing on the show for the second time. We actually did do a collab episode together last year. We mixed up the format a little bit.

That was more of like a listener submitted stories episode where we collected a bunch of written in cult tales from our listeners. One was the cult of military wives, another the cult of Abercrombie and Fitch, the cult of the music industry. We just sort of discussed them and had some banter about them. We mostly dedicated that episode to discussing the cult of military wives, and we kind of like compared and contrasted that group to the Synanon experience to try to get a sense of how cult it really was. And the response to that episode from our Acolytes, or sounds like a cult Acolytes, was so positive. There were many people being like, bring on Chris. is a permanent co-host, which was so sweet. I was so nervous recording that episode that day because, I don't know, it's just

like personal to have your dad on the show. And yeah, I was just like very flustered during that recording. So having people receive our conversation so well was really encouraging. At the same time, there were some listeners who did not appreciate the experimental format. We just were like, this is not a typical sounds like a cold episode. it had so many listener written in stories instead of deep diving into just one topic. The title is the cult of military wives and some people felt like it was clickbait. They were like, why don't you in the future do just a whole episode dedicated to the cult of

military wives and then a whole separate episode dedicated to Synanon? Doesn't that make more sense? Amanda? And I was like, okay, fine, fine. So happily, obligingly, we are here today to do a true Sinanon Deep Dive episode and I am honored to be joined by the man who is not only known as my dad, not only known as a synonon survivor, but also perhaps best known as sounds like a cult's loyalist listener.

Well, thank you very much. So for those who either haven't listened to the episode in which you've already appeared, who are not familiar with you or your story, could you kind of like introduce yourself, who is Craig Montel today? And then what is your relationship to Synanon? I would be happy to do that.

First, I'd like to say I'm just thrilled to be here for a second time. It sounds like a cult. It's such an honor. And last time was so much fun. So let me tell you a little bit about myself now. I am a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. I moved there in 2013. Denise, my wife, is also a professor there.

And we used to be professors at Johns Hopping School of Medicine before we were enticed to come to paradise. The cult of Santa Barbara. It is kind of culty because it's like Pleasantville. It is. There are people who've grown up in Santa Barbara whose goal in life is to come back if they are forced to leave for jobs or schooling or whatever. And I am definitely part of the cult of Santa Barbara. It's a live your life. It is definitely a live your life and live it well.

It's like my former father, my father-in-law, who unfortunately passed away a few years ago, used to say you wouldn't want to die here. because heaven would be a disappointment. Oh, Papa. Sweet Papa loved Santa Barbara. Indeed. So that's me now. And the stories that I used to tell you, as you'll recall, were really based on my years in Synon during my high school years from the time I was in 10th, 11th, and 12th grade. And my dad was really gung-ho on moving into Sinan.

Do you want me to give you a little background for the audience? I'm desperate for background. I'll also just set up the context that when I was a little kid, I would always ask my parents, beg them really, tell me a story, tell me a story. And I didn't want them to be made up, you know, like sometimes you and mom would attempt to spin a fairy tale. And I was like, no, no, no, tell me a story from your life. And I still am constantly begging the people from my life to tell me their personal stories. It feels like I'm in the right line of work. But yeah, so I would beg you to tell me stories from your life. And then it just so happened that the stories from your life were like the most riveting stories you could imagine far stranger

than fiction stories of poverty and and rising from the ashes and like New York in the 50s and 60s and shaking Bobby Kennedy's hand and growing up with incredible hardship and we don't have time to go into your early childhood in New York City. But I really feel as though I kind of cut my journalistic teeth on like asking you these really invasive questions about your childhood and you so generously obliged and supplied answers to those questions. And I loved hearing those stories of synon. They were disturbing. They were inspiring. And as I grew up, I couldn't help but notice that the sort of methods of influence that you would describe as a part of synonon, whether you were talking about the language or the conformist uniforms or the idol worship of Synan's leader Chuck Diedrich,

to a degree those culty methods of influence could be found in so many other pockets of life, whether it was my high school theater program or when I got to college, the cult of academia, had so many things in common with Sinanon. I know you dispute that. And then certainly once I moved to L.A., wellness culture, fitness culture here, Hollywood is so culty. Everything kept reminding me of Synanon and that applied X-1000 to

clicks and ideological sex that would form on social media. Yes. So, Dad, obviously Sinanon is totally unlike most of the cults that we discuss on Sounds Like a Colt because it is no longer active. It existed decades and decades ago. It is regarded by

almost every living person with a brain as a classic cult. It's fascinating to discuss Sinanon because of your personal connection to it and your stories. But more broadly, why do you think it's important to discuss the synonon story in the context of cultishness today? I think we are always facing the possibility of a cult leader exerting much, much more power over people's lives and minds than they initially set out to do. I think that a lot of cult leaders, Chuck included, started out. out with really, really great intense. And we look around the world today in 2024, and we see

lots of strong men who didn't start out as strong men, who started out as good people. And just as a result of their power, they started doing things that were really just in their own self-interest. They forgot about all the causes that got them into, going into politics, starting an organization and so on and so forth. Getting into business. I don't think we could ever get to a time when we can't think about the dangers of the really bad cults. They'll never go away. You know, there's a cliche that those who don't know history are doomed to relive it. And so we have to be aware of what's happened in the past to educate ourselves about what could happen in the future. And to have the humility to know that, like, this is not just a story about a bunch of people we have nothing in common with who lived long ago.

This type of influence can affect us all in various ways. And even if you never end up in a cult like Synanon, it's still worth interrogating our affiliations, even if they're mostly good. But yes, some background is definitely necessary. And to help us with our interview today, I collected some questions. submitted by listeners because this interview has been anticipated by several listeners who've been tuning into Sounds Like a Colt for a while. So the first question is just, how did you join? Was it voluntary or involuntary? Well, I think to answer that question, I do need to give just a little backstory. A hundred percent. And not to go into details, but I did grow up for my first 12 years

in Manhattan on 141st Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue at the time. At the time, had the highest murder rate in the city of New York, and I lived in a very small apartment with my single unemployed mom and my sister, and things were pretty rough. But then, just before starting eighth grade, the three of us moved to San Francisco. Things were pretty rough there. And then at the time that I was due to start ninth grade, I moved in with my dad, who was living in Reno at the time. My mother and father had been separated and divorced for many, many years, separated since I was three. And when I moved to Reno with my dad, who was already immersed in Synanon. He didn't live in Sinan. But he was part of the non-resident Sinan club there. It was so important to him at the time, playing the Sinan game, which I'm

sure we're going to have to talk about in just a few minutes. And then a year into living with my dad, he found out that synon, which was a place where ex-drug addicts and alcoholics moved in, but became very popular with people who just wanted to move in for the lifestyle. They were called lifestylers. Anyhow, at the end of ninth grade, when I was living with my dad, who was informed, they were closing the Reno Synan Club. So my dad and stepmother Judy decided they would just move into Zinnonan. They'd sell their house.

My dad would quit his job at the First National Bank of Nevada. I had two sisters that were at the time, we're one and three years old. Half sisters. Half sisters, thank you. Whole humans, half sisters. Exactly. And we picked up and moved into Synod. To answer your question, as you know, it was not something I wanted to do.

I had already been exposed to Synon as an outsider in Reno. And I had a lot of trepidation. But for a variety of reasons, I really didn't have a choice. I was only not quite 15 yet. And so we moved in. My two half-sisters, one and three, went into the Synon School, which is a 24-7 school. And the parents, my dad and stepmother, would see them only very occasionally, maybe once a week, every couple of weeks. And then I moved in with a dorm with some other teenagers.

But to answer your question, no, I was not enthusiastic about that. Yeah, and this is one of the things that makes your story so unique, I think, in the cult space is that oftentimes when you tune in to a cult documentary like Wild Wild Country or The Vow, I mean, before I started commenting on cults myself, I voraciously consumed these types of series. You normally hear the story of why so-and-so ended up in a cult from the perspective of an adult who joined voluntarily, who's like really trying to make the argument that they were not coupons. that they did not, quote, unquote, drink the Kool-Aid to make reference to a sort of slightly in poor taste cliche based on the Jonestown tragedy. They, you know, try to tell the story that, like, they just really wanted their life to be meaningful and they were not satisfied with their, you know, day to day in different ways. And that does kind of describe your father.

So Conrad, my grandfather, was a former card-carrying communist. He was a sort of like self-proclaimed intellectual. He was a smart guy. He was a charismatic guy. He was a discerning person. But it was 1969. And there was this countercultural energy blooming in America among progressives, especially among young people.

He was in middle age by that point. But my understanding is that he was kind of just like working this bank job living in the suburbs with a wife and two little kids and was growing restless, experience. some on we. It wasn't like he was desperate or down on his luck. He just wanted his life to be more exciting and more meaningful and that's why he joined. And of course you were a minor, so you came along with him and you didn't show up thinking like, oh, this place is great. And then like slowly but surely the story turned sour, you knew already going in that even if the word cult wasn't at the forefront of your mind, that there was something off here. So would you say that that

categorization of Conrad's motivations is accurate. Yes. Let me just give a little bit more perspective. Yeah. What you said is absolutely accurate, but let me give a little perspective. And now a quick word from our cult-followed sponsors who keep the lights on at Sounds Like a Cult. From the creative team behind the Brutelist and starring Academy Award nominee Amanda Syphred in a career best performance, Searchlight Pictures presents the testament of Anne Lee, With rave reviews from the Venice Film Festival, this bold and magnetic musical epic tells the story inspired by a true legend, Anne Lee, founder of the radical religious movement, The Shakers, The Testament of Anne Lee.

Exclusive Toronto Engagement, January 16th, in theaters everywhere, January 23rd. Sinan started in 1958. Chuck Dieterick was a former alcoholic. That's the leader. That is, yes, the leader that you'll hear more about. and he was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and kind of broke off from AA and started in a little storefront in Santa Monica, California, started his own organization, which started with the name Tender Loving Care. They couldn't keep that name because it was already taken. And there were just a small number of people who were drug addicts.

Chuck liked to call them dope fiends would come in, and very soon thereafter within weeks it became a live-in situation. And over the next dozen or so years, it had grown to several facilities in Oakland, in Santa Monica, a small one in San Diego, and also in Tamales Bay in Marin County. And out of the 1,500 people living there, at the time, probably about 1,000 of them were still people chuck called dope fiends or drunks for the alcoholics. But then, over the few years prior to that, there were a lot of folks that didn't have those backgrounds, people like my dad, who wanted to move into Synon because it was a communal lifestyle. Chuck really devoured the readings from Ralph Waldo Emerson, Throw, Maslow, and even though

he didn't finish college himself, was a very well-educated person. And my dad was all in on the philosophy, the communal social living. And yes, his communist background. which started when he was about 18 years old, really, I think, was a major influence in wanting him to move into Synanon. Most kids, my age, were in the Synan school, non-accredited school. I didn't want to do that because I knew even back then that I ultimately wanted to go to college. So I managed to make sure that I didn't go to that school, and I was one of the very, very, very few. there was only you could put on one hand the number of people that managed to go to outside high school having moved in with so-called lifestylers, people like my dad who moved in for the lifestyle. Yeah, people who moved to escape the sort of turbulent reality of the era in pursuit of something hopefully better, if experimental.

I'm sure plenty of listening can relate to that desire on some level. I feel like you've told me this, but I don't remember exactly the answer. one person asked, how were you able to get away with going to that outside school? I know you've said it was something about like Conrad's loyalty to Chuck and you like caught a ride into San Francisco every day and you were able to lay low. But how are you able to pull that off? Well, as it turned out, the folks in Sindon viewed joining their school as a privilege. And so their attitude really for very different reasons align with mine. And they felt, well, if you don't want to go to this school to hell with you, it's your loss.

And to me, I thought that is really fantastic because I don't want to do it. So for very good reasons that were very different, we came to an agreement. I was living in Oakland. The school that I ended up going to was a school in San Francisco. And it just so happened. There was another lifestyler named Ed, who was a middle school teacher back then. We called them junior high school, who taught math, maybe in a school, five. minutes away. And so every day for the next three years, I would commute with them. There was a lot of

traffic. It took an hour each way. And I went to this outside high school. So I was sort of a, in a way, a foreigner in my high school because I just went to school and back. And I didn't really interact with kids socially outside of classes. And then in Sinan, I was kind of different than everyone else, too, except for a couple of other people, and that I was going to outside high school. So I was sort of in no man's line. I was like a man without a country. Mm-hmm. Well, it's interesting you put it that way. And this is probably charged language that deserves interrogation. But I went to a conference a couple of years ago. I called you right after I attended it because I had so much to say. But it was a conference in D.C. called the Rights

and Religions Forum, which was put on by an organization that aims to rehabilitate folks who grew up in cult-like religions, not groups like, you know, nexium where everyone can agree, that's a full-blown cult, but, you know, groups like Mormonism, the Amish, ultra-hacitic Judaism, these groups that are just like really insular but are protected by America's freedom of religion, but some of these groups like really just take that way too far and it can have a super damaging effect on its members and the way that they're raised to varying degrees growing up in a cultish environment or a full-bone cult in the United States can make you a serious misfit in a way that can follow you throughout the rest of your life. And we'll talk about,

like, you posts in and on and how you sort of like recuperated from that experience later. But I would love if you could talk about what people saw in Chuck. Like, what was his background? What were his ideologies? And why did people not notice that this was starting to get culty? So first of all, let me just describe him physically first. He was sort of a physically imposing person. He wasn't handsome, but he was imposing. So at the time that he started Sinan, he was in his mid-40s. He was born, I believe, in 1914.

So by the time that I joined, which was, he was already, you know, in his mid-50s. And everyone called him the old man, although, you know, he was at the older end of middle age, but he wasn't really old. But he had a very serious viral infection early on in his adulthood, part of his face through an operation that was necessary after that looked like it was paralyzed. One of his eyes was partially closed. And he had this voice that was very strong, commanding voice. And he would speak with this commanding voice of his readings that I already mentioned, readings not only of 19th century, CS and philosophers like Thro and Emerson, 20th century folks like Maslow and others, Buckminster Fuller. But he also became very self-educated in Eastern philosophy and many other areas.

And he would speak with tremendous authority and with great fluidity and with a booming voice. And people were in awe of him. It didn't matter what he said. They were just transfixed. He was mesmerizing to people. He could come up with some view for Synanon. Everyone was all in, and it could change the next week, and people were all in because what Chuck said was the only thing that was constant in Sinan was changed. It didn't matter.

He was like a deity in Sinan. So he didn't have movie star good looks. There are some male cult leaders who really lead with that sex symbol status. For him, it sounds like he had more of this paternal status. But from the way that you describe his looks and his voice and his background, he probably read to people like, I'm someone with a story. I'm someone who've been through it. And thus I have gained all this wisdom that has created this community.

Just look around. This didn't happen by accident. This is because of me and my transcendent knowledge of life. And yeah, that can be really compelling for people who are looking for a communal life. And it was the late 60s. Like, cult discourse didn't exist then like it does now. The word cult did not enter the mainstream American lexicon as something that everybody should know about and fear until the late 60s. But really, it wasn't until Jonestown in 1978 when cults really became something that were like a household phobia and priority.

And when I was in Sinanah and never heard the word cult. I should say that the way Chuck led the organization is through tough love. You're either with me or you can get the hell out. Yeah. And if you got the hell out, you were called a split tea. And talk about costs for leaving. You were cut off. You were considered dead.

And Chuck would say if you left, you would fall down a manhole. And so, you know, a lot of people did leave because it was tough. But other people stayed for, in the end, there were people there for more than 20 years. But he was a very, very charismatic leader. And most people would just go for whatever he wanted. He was almost like a deity. And I'll never forget once when I was in Synanon for a very short period of time, looking at a bulletin board. That was written probably from someone nine or ten years old in the Sinan school that referred to Chuck as a man god.

This was from a child. But obviously this came from what were called the demonstrators. They weren't trained teachers, the demonstrators at the Synod School. So you've mentioned it already a few times today. We talked about it a bit in our episode last year. But the centerpiece of life in Synanon was this mandatory ritual called The Game. Can you explain what that was? Yes.

So everyone, first of all, played the game. and it was required a couple three times a week and it would go on two three hours and a dozen or so people would sit around in a circle. What you actually experienced in the game was catharsis at a level that few people ever experienced. You could say anything you want in the game and people did and the only real rule was that you had to keep your seat, no physical violence. And the idea of the game is by just getting attacked from everyone else in the game that you would find insights that you might not have before. But it was also just for many people very cathartic. It could also be very, very intimidating. And during the game, it was expected that everyone

so-called back the play of the person accusing someone else of something. Yeah. So just to put an image in listeners' heads when you would show up to the game and you couldn't sit the game out. So you would gather in a circle. How are the circles determined at random? Semi-random. So I was in Sindon, Oakland. There were about 500 of us living there. And within that 500 group, we were divided into what are called tribes. And each tribe had 50, 60 people. And then there was a tribe leader. And on game night, he would do. divide up folks into a group of about 12. And it seemed to us it was random, but sometimes a tribe leader had some thought in mind in terms of how to organize. Like a reality TV producer.

Like, I want you to get into a fight with you. And at times it felt like you were a gladiator just verbally. Yeah, exactly. So you would be assigned a group. You would gather in a circle. and the idea was just to, you know, have people stand up, single out another person in the group, and malign them. And everyone else in the group had to have their back. What's the phrase again? Back the play. Back the play. Back the play.

And of course, many of us probably know that like catharsis doesn't do what we always hope it will do by like getting your sillies out or making you somehow less violent by providing a permission structure. just to say like every horrible thing to a person that you could think of. But that was the idea behind this exercise. And some people loved it. Like your dad. Yeah. They loved the game. They felt that it allowed them to explore things that they didn't explore before.

And they also enjoyed playing the game on other people when the game was on someone else. Oh, yeah. Like if you want to pick a fight with someone or if you have an issue, with someone in your life. I can see it. Like, how nice would it be to have an excuse to just, like, lay into them, you know? Or your boss. You could do that. And there was a concept of in the game and out of the game. It's sort of like anything that was said in the game was supposed to stay in the game. And then when you left, it was like everything's back to normal. Right, which of course it isn't because your body holds onto that stress. And by the way, REM,

of the synonon game still live on today and show up in modern day cultish environments that might not look like classic cults on the outside, like, for example, the troubled teen industry. And actually, sometimes Instagram comment sections remind me of the synon game or social media comment sections in general when people are calling out others seemingly in pursuit of correcting some injustice, but really it's just cathartic for them. And they're trying to build their own clout or get up on a high horse. Social media comment sections are the new synodon game, in my opinion. So truly this story is ever relevant. Right. And so there were folks who were extremely articulate and charismatic who would, by virtue of their own personality, could sort of control the game.

And a lot of those folks would just love it. It was really, they called it a game because for them was also fun. Yeah, played to their strengths. Exactly. And there were also skills that you would learn, like the Karam shot. So, for example, if there could be 12 people around the circle, it wasn't always 12, but around that number. And let's say that I wanted to accuse you of something. I would actually What? I couldn't possibly. You're perfect. But nevertheless, just imagine I wanted to accuse you of something. I could be talking to someone else, not you, and talk about you, but to someone. But to somebody else, and then you would try to defend yourself and say, no, no, no, no, no, the game is not on you.

I'm talking to that person. That was called a Karam shot. Oh, wow. And there were a lot of skills like that that people would learn. And imagine, I'm sitting in this circle. I'm not quite 15 when we started doing this. And some of them are what Chuck would call dope fiends. There might be out of the 12, might be eight or nine of them, a couple of lifestylers.

And then there was me, and I found it intimidating. Mm-hmm. Of course. And, you know, my MO was to as best as possible kind of go below the radar screen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I never really got into it. It was something I survived. Yeah.

Okay, this is going to sound really stupid. But your stories of laying really low in Sinanon and not really participating in a full throttle way in the game really got me through the one semester I spent in acting college. That one, okay, I spent my first semester of college in Tisch, in like the NYU Tisch School for the Arts Acting School, which is a way lower stakes cult then sitting on, obviously. But there were quite a few things in common, like the us versus them mentality and the super militaristic occupation of your time and all the busy work and the conformity, like literally wearing neutral colored clothes for acting class and the worship of your acting teachers just like unquestioned worship. and rituals and whatever. Like, it seemed culty, obviously not on a synon level, but on a watcher back level. And when we would have to engage in these, like, pretty cathartic interpersonal exercises where, you know, all the acting students would be in a circle coerced into, like,

confessing their vulnerabilities and breaking down in front of one another. I remember thinking, like, this reminds me of the fucking synonon game. Yeah. And I would lay really low. I, like, wouldn't fully participate because I felt so. so skeptical of that. And anyway, I got the fuck out of acting school. So, I mean, of course, the Synon game did help, along with many other aspects of Sinan turning a lot of what, again, the folks that Chuck called dope fiends around. There was an important thing that Sinan was doing.

People would be coming in who might have been on a heroin for a dozen years, who might have, in fact, died, would come into Sinan, get their life together. And so for a lot of these folks, Synan really did save their lives. Yeah. And the Synon game was very useful for them to get out some of the demons that were in them. And even just shouting and screaming at other people was also very cathartic. And so while it was a very different experience for me, for some of the folks who came in as what Chuck would call character disorders, a lot of these folks owed their lives. They felt like they owed their lives.

for the lifestylers who felt like they had meaningless lives on the outside. They would go to work, come home, make dinner, watch TV, go to sleep, go to work, come home, make dinner, watch. And all of a sudden, they're in a social movement. And the leader is this exciting, charismatic person that was meaning in their lives. And then there was me who, I was one of the people who didn't come in because I was trying to get off of a life-threatening drug habit, stealing hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise today to support it, or coming in because I was looking for meaning in my life as a lifestyler. I came in because basically I was a minor. As you said, I didn't have a choice. Yeah. So I want to put it in that perspective because at the time I was in Synanon,

it was doing a lot of good for a lot of people. Totally. But later in the years after I left, it really did turn into a full-blown negative cult in ways that even I couldn't foresee at the time. Ooh, foreshadowing. Before we get into the whole like rise and fall of Synanon, because it is such a fascinating, almost cautionary tale, I want to relay a few more questions from our listeners about your specific experience and your observations of Synanon in those earlier days. There was someone who wanted to know if you could describe the uniform look in synon. That's an interesting question. There really was one.

There were a couple aspects to it. First, in terms of what you wore, the typical thing, the most synon-esque kind of clothing that you could wear were overalls, like Levi blue denim overalls. It's honestly very Gen Z. It's very now. Well, back then, it was an unusual thing. Maybe farmers would wear these kind of overalls. But it was giving Ben Platt. Poor dad.

He doesn't understand references such as this. No, I don't. I've been learning a lot from you like, what was that? Something lore? Lour drop. Ler drop. But I learned that from Reese. So you're learning Gen Z terminology and trends secondhand from me through Reese.

Well, I'm thankful for that. So besides the clothing, people had very short-cropped hair. In fact, when I moved into Sinai, and on. My hair was unacceptably long. Well, it was the 60s. Yeah. And so I had to have it cut quite short. It wasn't

actually in a crew cut, but that's what everyone else pretty much had. It was a little bit longer than that. Still, it was about the shortest of anyone you would find in my high school. So that was the look. Is that the standard look, you didn't always wear overalls, but that was the most

classics in non-look. So I feel like if the average person has heard of synon, the image that comes to mind for them is like a bunch of people bald heads. Like that's what it's known for. The group head shaving parties. Can you explain what all that head shaving was about? Because that is one of those canonical cult images that I feel like gives some people license to think like, oh, those people were cuckoo, you know? Well, there were a few stages and rationales for head shaving. Early on, before it was done in math, at first, if a man broke one of the synon cardinal rules. And early on, the first two cardinal

rules were no physical violence and no psychic modifiers, meaning no alcohol or drinks. And later, just before we moved in, there was a third cardinal rule, no smoking. A lot of people split over no smoking. Whoa. That's like probably in my mind the best rule. And any cult could have. Yes, but about 300 people split over that. So early on, in terms of the shaved heads, if you broke one of the cardinal rules, if you're a man, you would get your head shaved. And that made it very obvious to everyone around that you did something really wrong. Oh my God. Shame. It was shame. And sometimes folks would even need to have a sign hanging from around their neck that might have explained what they did. If a woman broke a cardinal rule, we're talking

in the 60s and in the early days soon after I moved in, the woman would have a stocking cap. It's so medieval. It's like putting a petty thief in the medieval times in the stocks, you know? Like that's what it makes me think of. Well, right. And a person would go into the stocks to humiliate them. It was also uncomfortable, but mostly it was humiliation. Later on, there were massive numbers of people who would shave their heads as a show of support. for Sinanon. And this happened after I left Sinanon. There was some incidents that led up to some women shaving their heads. And this was an amazing show of support so these women thought. And then a whole

bunch of other women joined in. And then it became, even if you didn't want to do it, just the group pressure resulted in you shaving your heads. And what's really interesting, there were a number of movies that were made where they needed extras and they needed the extras to have shaved heads. And so there are a couple of movies out there where the extras were shaved heads synonyautites. I remember you telling me that when we recorded last year. And that is just like so one of those fun culty facts that you could not make up. That is stranger than fiction. Okay.

I love this question because one of the most vivid memories I have of the synononauty. stories you would tell me when I was growing up had to do with the peanut butter. Someone asks, what was the food situation in Sinan unlike? Okay. So, interesting story about the peanut butter. Before I even moved in with my dad when I was just getting ready to start ninth grade, when I was in eighth grade, I was living in San Francisco. And I knew my dad was already a member of the non-resident Sinan Club in Reno. I was a little curious about it. I knew a little bit about it. I heard about the game. I knew who was involved in it. But I was just curious. I was living in San Francisco with my mom and sister. And I knew there was a club in Oakland. And I ended up going down to that Oakland club. And I found that if you were a young teenager like I was, I had just turned 13, you could join and become what was called a notion, a synon notion. And there was peanut butter and jelly out that you could have at your heart's delight in the Oakland facility. which used to be a health facility. It was an 11-story form of health facility. There was a swimming pool.

There was a basketball court. There were other kids. And so I ended up joining. Now, once we moved into Synanon, you got three squares a day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and there was always peanut butter and jelly out in one place or another. And that was better than your whole childhood by far. Well, yes. So back in when I was in eighth grade, in San Francisco, and then just joined as a notion before I went to live my with, my dad in Reno. During that period of time, it was very rough. I basically ate only because I had free lunch at school and I had a few odd jobs that I did where I made enough money to pay for occasional dinners that I would get at Woolworth. When I would go down and get the peanut butter and jelly for free, that was appreciated. Yeah. You know, I do want to take this opportunity to dispel one of the many myths about why people join cults because I think the sort of convention.

wisdom or stereotype is that they do it because they're hopeless and desperate and once they're brainwashed, there's nothing to be done. Often that is not the case. Those who join groups that end up being cults are actually dreamers, optimists who have at least some resources to spare to the cult, right? Meanwhile, you were about as vulnerable as a person could get a kid who was severely down on his luck. And even so, you were able to resist Sinanon's influence. So that That just goes to show that even though we are all susceptible to some kind of cultish influence, it's still always possible to push back when you're in an environment like that and to think for yourself.

Yeah, but during that period, I didn't live there. Oh, right. That was the best of both worlds, you know? Yeah, I would go down for my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and have some activity. I did play the synodon game, but even back then with other kids from around Oakland, and these were mostly inner city kids from out Oakland. And I was also quiet, but I was just taking advantage of the other facilities and food that Synan had to offer.

Yeah. Put in a toe if you have to. Yes. Keep the rest out. Okay. So clearly Sinanon was not all bad, especially in the beginning. It had a lot to offer people. And there were valuable things to glean there.

It's just it went too far. And not every group like this goes too far. and you never really hear about those groups because they don't make the news and they don't have like this tragic denouement. No one goes to jail. You know, like it ends up being kind of okay. When you were in Synanon, it was not the worst of the worst. It really got bad after you left. Yes, yes. And you were able to find a safe space for yourself in Sinanon. Yes. Can you tell the listeners a little bit about that? Well, I did not only find a safe space, I found an opportunity in Synanon that, in a way, changed my life. And in fact, today, as a professor at UCSB, in a way, believe it or not, it had an inception, an opportunity that I had in Synod.

So let me start off by saying this. Everybody in Synod, including kids, including teenagers, had to have a job. And usually the jobs were assigned to you, and they weren't very appealing jobs, like literally cleaning, you know, maintenance and things like that. But early on, I remember there was a interesting thing going on in one of the large open rooms in the Oakland Club where I saw somebody peering through a microscope and holding up a dish up into the light. And I was curious and I went over. And it turned out that Synan had its own lab. It was really a medical lab where they did bacteriology, cultures, sperm counts, and blood chemistries, and so forth. And I actually managed to talk my way

into having a job in the Synanon Lab. At the age of 15, by the time I was 16, I was actually the Synon microbiologist in Oakland. I had learned enough that there were some doctors who lived in Sinanon. They had their own little infirmary, and they would send their throat cultures, stool cultures, sperm counts, and so forth. And I would do that work, and I loved it. This was an amazing opportunity for me. Yeah. It was very fortunate. That planted the seed for your love of laboratory science. It totally, yeah, it changed your life. And when I went off to college after I left Sinnott. I ended up majoring in bacteriology, ended up getting a PhD in microbiology. And ultimately, I've been a scientist ever since. So the original experiment, like there is something to be said for this kind of vision of an egalitarian

where it doesn't matter what your background is, you have the opportunity to access food, friends, professional experience. Like, in theory, that could be a lovely thing. You know, like, a cult like Sinana has a kind of like free-for-all attitude and, you know, ordinarily in a more on-the-books organization, a 15-year-old would not be allowed to be the official microbiologist. But, you know, it worked out for you. You mentioned the first. phrase stool culture. You have a hilarious story. This is a major lore drop. You have a really good poop story, okay? Could you please regale the listeners with it? Sure. There were three other people who worked in the lab, and they mostly did the blood chemistries. I was really doing the microbiology.

And there was this one woman named Francis, who was, she had a very odd personality. And one day, she said she had indigestion and she had intestinal problems. She asked if I would do a stool culture. And I said, well, you really need to see the physicians and have them examine you. And then they would request a stool culture if it was called for. But she said, please, please, Craig, would you just do a stool culture and find out if, for example, they were looking for things like salmonella and shigella and other types of pernicious bacteria. So I said, okay, Go ahead. Here's the cup. Go in the bathroom. You can give me the culture and I'll take care of it. So a few minutes later, she comes out, she gives me the culture and leaves. And I look at this. This is in a plastic container with a plastic lid. And I immediately see that the lid is convex. In other words, it's bulging out at the top. I'm looking at it. And I could see that there are a bunch of bubbles in it. And I'm very nervous about this.

Because although I had never happened to me before, I had some concerns that it might explode if I opened it. So I very carefully, well, I got out a petri dish so I could plate it out and had my loop to plate out the bacteria from the stuyl culture ready. And I very carefully opened up this container. And it exploded. It exploded so much that the shit literally hit the fan. Some of that brown stool hit a fan six feet above my head. A ceiling fan. A ceiling fan that's turning around.

I had a white lab coat on, which was all over me, all over my clothes that weren't protected by the lab coat. The first thing I did after this is I actually plated out the stool culture. Oh, get the job done. And then, you know, I took off all of my clothes. I took off the lab coat. I put on a clean lab coat. I'm cleaning up. And just after I finished up, there was a fellow named Joe Lazaroni who showed up. Joe Lazaroni was my hero. He did not live in Sinanon. He was a donor. And he ran and owned a lab in South San Francisco, named after him Lazarone Labs.

And he was the one who taught me and other people in the lab what we knew. And he taught me how to be a microbiology. So he came in and he saw me stand. And he saw me stand. there with bare feet with a lap coat on. He said, Craig, not in any kind of aggressive way, but what's going on here? And I explained to him, I hadn't actually cleaned up all of the poop off the fan yet. You could see something was a miss. And I explained to him, waiting for him to get upset. And the only thing he said to me is Craig, did you played out the culture. And I said, it was the first thing I did, Joe. He patted me on the back. And he patted me on the back and said, well done, son, you've got a great career inside this.

Amazing. And if anyone asks, that is where the phrase, the shit hit the fan came from. I'm starting that rumor right now. That's right. So, so good. See, like, these stories don't have to be entirely doom and gloom. And this is why I have such sort of mixed feelings about some of the ways that the folks who joined the People's Temple, aka Jones Town, or Heaven's Gate, or the Children of God, or any of those other, like, really notorious. And in, deed horrible and tragic cults, it's not entirely fair to paint them as these sort of like googly-eyed brainwashed suckers. Like they were people living a life. And like yours and non-stories were my first exposure to the idea that group think was really powerful and could be dangerous.

But also the idea that being a part of a community like that can be really fun. Like anyone who has ever participated in a group dance ritual or chant or anything like that can feel that like there is something very real and very transcendent and awe-inspiring about activities like that. Yes, and it's so important. We could get into some of the negative things in a few minutes, but before doing that, let me just mention some of the more positive things. Yeah.

So, for example, every Saturday night, we would have a Saturday night party where people from the outside, maybe future lifestylers could come in. Donors, there were people donating large amounts of money and resources to Synod could come. And these Saturday night parties, there was music, live music, and there were so many fantastic musicians who had drug habits, who joined Synanon, who were world-class musicians. There were people, there was a guy named Art Pepper, Stan Kenton, who, I think your listeners, probably, probably haven't heard of these names, but back in the 60s, they were very, very famous jazz musicians, and they would just be playing. And many other equally great musicians would be playing in front

of everyone at the Saturday Night Party. And then we would have this dance called the hoopla. And it was kind of a line dance where maybe about 50 people would get on the floor and you'd move back and forth and clap and turn all in unison. And yeah, it was a lot of fun. Which is not to defend Synanon or Chuck Diedrich or the horrors that occurred there. It's more to paint a nuanced portrait of the followers, right? Because like it's so easy to say like, oh, I'm nothing like those people. They made a giant mistake. They're gullible. They were desperate. This group seemed to have a lot to offer and it feels good to be a part of a community like that. And on the positive side, it was absolutely obvious that there were a lot of so-called dope fiends who

really became educated, self-educated people in Synod and learned to feel good about themselves. Even the lifestylers and also a lot of these so-called dope fiends were at times fascinating to talk to, not really in the game, but outside the game. And among the lifestylers, they were all. architects, physicians, musicians. There were so many interesting people. And they joined for the right reasons. You know, you talk about Jonestown and Jim Jones. Jim Jones started in San Francisco, and the political leaders in San Francisco

thought very highly of him for good reasons. He was doing a lot of anti-racist work. He was doing a lot of great things before he went off the deep end in a big way. What people know now about Jim Jones is the end that happened. But in fact, he was also charismatic, a great order. He was widely red. Extremely widely red. And he was ahead of his times.

Again, which is not to defend him. No. It's to illuminate how you did not have to be a brainwashed fool to trust him. That's the point. Yes. And I have to tell you that it's horrible, as absolutely horrible as it was, when those hundreds of people died in Guyana that I could understand how that happened. Now, not everyone who died in Jonestown by any means did it voluntarily.

Oh, my understanding is that most of them did not. Most of them did not. But a few of them did. And for the few who did, I could see how that could happen. Definitely. And that is chilling. Now, this is just the first half of my dad's synonon story to hear more of my dad's personal stories and analysis, please tune in to our part two next week. That's also when we'll reveal

our culty verdict. Hmm, I wonder which cult category to synodon fall into. Please do stick around for that. I swear the story only gets juicier from here. And another reminder that if you are in or around the Vancouver area on February 21st, I would love if you would come to the big magical cult show at 7 p.m. at the Biltmore Cabaret. which I swear is going to be the cultiest night of your life in the live your lifeiest way. So with that said, that is our show. Thank you so much for listening. Stick around for the Cult of Sinanon Part 2 next week.

And in the meantime, stay culty. But not too culty. Sounds like a cult is hosted and produced by Amanda Montel and edited by Jordan Moore of the Podcabin. Our theme music is by Casey Cole. This episode was made with production help from Breeze Oliver and Katie Epitale. Thank you as well to our partner All Things Comedy. And if you like the show, please feel free to check out my books, Wordslet, A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language,

cultish, the language of fanaticism, and the forthcoming The Age of Magical Oversinking, notes on modern irrationality. If you're a fan of sounds like a cult, I would really appreciate it if you'd leave a rating and review on Amazon or Apple Podcasts.