Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 442 - Ganas: Intentional Community? Or Cult?

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

Ganas is an intentional community founded in 1979 in Tompkinsville, Staten Island that is still active. Is it also a cult? What is an "intentional community" And why was one of the founding members, Jeff Gross, shot and nearly killed (allegedly) by a disgruntled, former member, in 2006?  Visit CrimeWaveatSea.com/SCARED  to claim your fan code in order to register and join us November 3rd-7th, 2025!!! Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch-related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast.Sign up through Patreon, and for $5 a month, you get access to the entire Secret Suck catalog (295 episodes) PLUS the entire catalog of Timesuck, AD FREE. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch.

Couldn't we all use a little self-improvement? I know I could and I always will. I'm not perfect. I never will be. What about you? Where could you make some improvements? Could you improve when it comes to being more patient or more understanding of others? Could you improve when it comes to your follow-through regarding various goals you've set out for yourself over the years? Are you ever gonna learn that second language? When are you gonna take up running like you've been talking about forever? We could all improve in various ways. So how do you try and make improvements? On your own? Or do you have help? Would you like some help? What if you could join a group of people all dedicated to the same form of self-improvement? How helpful would that be? Wouldn't it be nice to

feel like you're not alone when it comes to working on improvement? To have others who can help hold you accountable? What if you found out that in order to become your best self, you needed to sit in a circle of people who could say anything to you, point out all of your flaws and insecurities all before you've even had the first meal of the day? Would that be helpful? Or would that be maybe a living hell? The Ghana's community thinks continual feedback is the best way to live a life of continual

improvement. Located in the neighborhood of Tompkinsville, Staten Island, and New York City, this group some have called a cult, this intentional community. They live together in several houses like they've been doing since 1979 and they dedicate their lives to community and self-improvement. Founded by a woman named Mildred Gordon, now deceased, and several other core group members over 40 years ago. They've been practicing Mildred's questionable therapeutic technique of feedback learning, receiving feedback from others in an effort to become your best self the whole time. Ghanas encourages openness, open relationships, open communication, and it receiving feedback from others in an effort to become your best self the whole time.

Ghanas encourages openness, open relationships, open communication, and it seems, open wallets. Ghanas started off as a small intentional community in 1979. By the early 2000s, they had expanded to more than 70 members, some of whom were getting pretty sick of the Ghanas lifestyle. People who didn't feel like they were improving. They felt like they were being abused and exploited. And then in May of 2006, a former member allegedly, but almost certainly, attempted to murder co-founder Jeff Gross, bringing the cult or intentional community, national attention,

and another round of negative press. The truth about life at Ghanis was exposed again again or at least one version of the truth. And it wasn't the happy-go-lucky free love community they had advertised themselves as being. What really is the Ganas community? What do they believe and practice? And how did it all lead to one chaotic night on May 29th, 2006? Also what the hell is an intentional community? Another term for cult? Or something else? All of this and more in this What the Hell is Really Going On in the Weird House Across

the Street Is It a Cult, Cult, Cult or Something Else edition of Time Suck. This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to Time Suck. Well happy Monday and welcome to the Cult of the Curious. I'm Dan Cummins, the Suck Master. Never surrender! Nothing is over! Nothing is over! Nothing!

You just don't turn it off! You just don't turn it off. Very lazy cult leader who still hasn't gotten around to building the compound right in a manifesto or fucking any of his followers And you are listening to Time Suck. Hail Nimrod. Hail, Lucifina. Praise be to good boy Bojangles and glory be to Triple M. Bojangles is excited about my one announcement before I get into the story today. I have been terrible about charity announcements for quite some time now. But we have continued to donate 20% of all subscription money each and every month to monthly charities and our annual scholarship now. This month we are donating to help in the aftermath of the fires in LA and Altadena.

Or I guess, yeah, the Los Angeles area, so many fires. We spoke with our friends in the area to find out what they were seeing, where the greatest needs were. After a lot of discussion, we ended up picking Pasadena Humane. In the wake of the fires, they shared this message. Even though the fire has been contained, we are still feeling the effects of this devastating disaster. Over a thousand animals have poured through our doors in the past few weeks, many in need

of immediate life-saving care. Some of these animals are suffering from smoke inhalation, singed paws, burns, dehydration and more. We've been treating each animal based on their needs, providing fluids, oxygen, pain meds, and wound care as quickly as we can. We're in need of monetary donations to help us purchase medical supplies and other resources

as we continue to see burned and injured animals coming to our shelter. We hope that in supporting Pasadena Humane we're able to provide care for these animals whose owners simply may not be able to care for their fur babies at this challenging time. We have donated $11,000 to Pasadena Humane and put another $1250 into the scholarship fund. If you would like to donate or learn more, please visit pasadenahumane.org Again, Bojangles very pleased with that donation as are Penny and Dee Dee, Penny Pooper, and Ginger Bell. And that's it. You ready to dig into the details of

intentional communities now? I was fascinated by this. I had no idea these things were that common. Some sources suggest there are around 220,000 different intentional community members living in the US alone right now in these communities. I will start off today's episode by exploring what that term means and that will lead us into an exploration of what different kinds of living arrangements we humans have had over the years. A little look at some history. How our current notion of living in a house with just one romantic partner, maybe also

our kids or by ourselves. That's a very recent human development. Then we will examine a few different types of intentional communities to help us understand how Ghanas fits into the intentional community spectrum. How it is but one of thousands of these communities currently active in just the United States. Next, in order to further illustrate how in some ways Ghanas really isn't that weird, I'll go over various types of co-housing arrangements and share how some types of intentional communities have been

around for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years such as monasteries. Finally, I will summarize some of the beliefs and structure of Ghanas before we finish up with a timeline of how Ghanas came to be in a little recap. That sound good? Okay okay good sweet. Let us begin. Ghanas classifies itself as I I mentioned, as an intentional community. What the hell does that mean? I believe I've glanced over this term maybe in a few cult episodes over the years. Never really dove in deeply.

An intentional community can be vaguely defined as, according to its basic Wikipedia definition, a voluntary residential community designed from the start to have a high degree of social cohesion and teamwork. Members of these communities typically have the same social, political, spiritual, or religious beliefs but not always. There are many many different kinds of intentional communities including but not limited to co-housing communities, co-living eco-villages, monasteries, kibbutzim, hutterite communities, ashrams, and housing cooperatives. I will talk about each of these types of intentional communities after I share a brief overview of communal living.

Communal living, co-living, whatever you call it. It sounds to me, or at least it did initially, like a renaming of the type of living situations counterculture hippies engaged in back in the 1960s and 70s, right? Compounds. Compounds full of free-loving flower power. Hail, Osafina! Sexy hippie women with long flowing locks,

lots of group sex, recreational drugs, and great fucking music. But, the reality is that humans have participated in different communal living situations since long before Woodstock or the Summer of Love. We've been doing it for our entire history. The way we've been living for the most part for the past few generations has only been the norm for a very short amount of time. So many people seem to continually forget that's what that what is considered to be quote unquote

normal is a subjective and be always changing That's why I tend to smile when people start talking about or or clean to you know, quote unquote traditional values Because I just think well whose values and what traditions how long have they been around? Our traditions are constantly changing. The 2010 US census found that less than three people lived in the average American home, less than three people. And at 28% of households over a full quarter

had just a single occupant, a number up 15% since 1960. According again to the US Census Bureau, an average of 2.6 people lived in the same household from 2016 to 2020. So currently, at least in the US, it is very normal to live alone or to live with just one other or maybe two other people. And living alone certainly has its benefits, right? Privacy, sweet, sweet privacy. You can walk into your home sweet home, lock the door behind you, start saying all kinds of crazy shit that no one's ever going to judge you or condemn you for, because they're never going to hear it.

Right? You get to design your own space exactly how you want it. Put a couch in the kitchen. Fuck it. Right? You're living by your rules. Have the living room furnished with nothing but sex swings, arcade games, and medieval torture devices. Sure, that's fucking super creepy and scary and confusing. But also, maybe pretty funny if done right. And who's gonna stop you? Two casa is two casa. There are no annoying roommates or parents or partners around telling you what to do. No one's gonna be mad about you leaving out the dishes until whenever the hell you feel

like getting around to cleaning them or just throwing them away. You can throw away as many dishes as you want Or just never do anything with them. Just leave them out for years Let them begin to grow some new kind of mold that maybe no one's ever seen before as part of an accidental science experiment No one's gonna care how loud you watch a TV what you watch on it unless you share thin walls with your neighbors No one's gonna care how loud you are when you're beating off or slapping that puss around showing it who's boss Unless of course again share thin walls with your neighbors but maybe maybe they like it maybe they like to hear you going ham on

your ham but seriously living alone certainly does have a lot of benefits it also has downsides you and you alone are responsible for chores maintenance living expenses and you have no one to share your day-to-day life with you know no one to hug you when you walk in the door ask you how work was no one to share your day-to-day life with. No one to hug you when you walk in the door, ask you how work was, no one to binge watch your favorite shows, and maybe cuddle afterwards and bed at night. Also living alone, not being judged for it by most of the people around you, or for being some weird hermit or witch or something,

is a relatively new phenomenon. Journalist Alana Strauss wrote for the Atlantic in 2016, it wasn't always like this. Living arrangements have been changing for thousands of years and the concept of the nuclear family originated relatively recently. Even as the economy has moved away from the sort of agricultural labor that would encourage large households, people still have just as much of a need for the support of friends, family, and neighbors.

Perhaps that is why so many people today, from young coders to lonely septuagenarians to families, are experimenting with communal living as a way of life that, whether they know it or not, echoes how things worked for most of human history. We started off as hunter-gatherers, living, working, raising children in groups. The bigger and more cohesive the group, the greater the odds of the group's survival in general, as long as the majority of the group's members were strong, healthy, and contributing. Then the agricultural revolution that began around 10,000 BCE

allowed us humans to stay in one place for long periods of time. This led to the rise of more group living, group living on a much bigger scale. It led to civilizations and true staying in one place and building memories and traditions tied to the same geographical location communities. People lived to work together in their farming villages. Living together for long periods of time led

to new conflicts over food, resources and partners. But it also led to much deeper bonds between individuals and families like. Overall, the benefits of a farming society outweighed the benefits of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. For one thing, it was now easier, since you weren't moving around all the time and living out in the open and more vulnerable to the attacks of predators, including fellow humans, to take care of Nana once she couldn't get around as well. You know, see too good anymore. You keep her in the back bedroom, give her a place to enjoy her final years instead of just, I don't know,

pushing her out in a fucking iceberg. You know, to drown or die of hypothermia once you become a drain on your tribe's resources. In the Middle Ages, homes became the standard gathering place for small groups rather than large private sanctuaries. Villagers shared common spaces like the church, outdoor spaces, gardens, et cetera.

And the idea of a single-family household was still rare though for the majority of the world. Around the 12th century in Western Europe, single-family households became more and more common. These homes weren't as private as their homes are now. Most families often hosted townspeople, other couples, other children, widows, orphans, elders, servants, boarders, visitors, friends, and relatives in their homes. People still moved often due to constant warfare, famine, disease, etc. So homes didn't often get passed down from one generation to the next, to the next, to the next. Not for the peasants, at least. There also still wasn't yet a real tradition of your parents continuing to live in your childhood home. A place you could come and visit during and even

after college or whatever. Go through old shit for sentimental purposes. Unless your family was nobility, had a castle or massive, you know, built to last for centuries, a state of some kind, few had any real emotional attachment to a house. Lots of children lived away from home for work starting at a very young age. They went away to school if they were lucky enough to get an education or they were sent away to be married at a very young age. They went away to school if they were lucky enough to get an education or they were sent away to be married at a very young age. Author and historian John Gillis wrote about these revolving door households in his 1997 book, A World of Their Own Making.

He wrote, people entered without knocking, even without acknowledgement. It was often difficult to tell which family belonged where. In big as well as little houses, the constant traffic of people precluded the cozy home life we imagine to have existed in the past. I like that last sentence, I think that's important. The constant traffic of people precluded the cozy home life we imagine to have existed in the past. Most of the images we have of medieval life and really just the past in general I would argue come from film. Right?. In movies storytellers take a lot of liberties. Sometimes I think

we forget that. Even in period pieces, they're not historians. They're striving more for a compelling narrative than historical accuracy. They take how we are living now and they frequently project that into the past, presenting a historically inaccurate vision of how life used to be, probably because it's comforting for us to see that. We like things that are somewhat familiar. We want to see ourselves in old stories. That's harder to do if the landscape seems alien and unfamiliar to us. We want the medieval parents in the story to love their children like our parents have loved us or or at least love them how we wished for our parents to have loved us.

We want these ancient characters to share our basic values and familial norms. But that's largely a fantasy. It wasn't until the 1500s that the concept of a single-family household was a common one and what was a very new European middle class. The whole concept of a middle class is a new invention. For the overwhelming majority of the existence of human civilization, there was no middle class. There was royalty. It was the very rare occasional non-royal merchant or banker who hit it big. And then there were a fuckload of peons. The overwhelming majority of humanity was impoverished, basic laborers or farmers. And then there was a handful of wealthy nobles and merchants. And then there was almost no one else. There was no big group of tradesmen supporting families of four comfortably with one full-time job,

living in a four-bedroom, three-bath, split-level rancher in the suburbs. There was no fucking suburbs. A true middle-class life, like we think of it now, didn't really emerge in Europe until the 17th century. Didn't happen in Japan until the 18th century. Didn't happen in China until the early 20th century. The new concept of a single-family household in Europe was mainly the result of the Protestant Reformation, which made the father of the center of the household in daily affairs, rather than the Catholic Church and its army of bishops and priests.

However, poor people still lived in groups and relied on their communities. True self-sufficiency was only possible for a very select group of people. This was mostly because peasants lived in large agricultural communities. Work was very close to home. The community depended on each other to run their farm. You couldn't just call some equipment repairmen from a two hour drive away to come over and help you out. Now you had to rely on your neighbors for that,

for everything basically, which made a degree of communal living a necessity. Now make close bonds with your neighbors, very important. But then the industrial revolution came along and it changed the world in so many ways including housing and community. In the late 1800s, the idea of the nuclear or godly family suddenly became more common for all classes in the Western world. For many people, work was now separated from the home by a factory or an office instead of a farm you lived on or directly next to. Most people now no longer live with friends or extended family full time.

The norms they were a changing as they always do. Thousands of people moved to cities for work and they needed housing. Most of them were poor. Those experiencing poverty moved into big crowded tenement buildings. Meanwhile, the factory owners and upper executives, they could afford something more and they didn't want to live around those who had less. So socioeconomic classes separated and lived in different designated parts of the city. But soon, some people found that they missed the old ways.

They missed that old sense of community, and they started implementing co-housing practices. In 1858, iron stove manufacturer Jean-Andre Baptiste Gaudin constructed a co-housing community in northern France with a factory, connected family houses, and communal spaces. And in the early 1900s in Denmark, the idea of saving money, time, and resources with a communal kitchen became very popular. Builders proposed that in these new communities, a family would have their own house, but that house would not have a kitchen. Instead a big central kitchen would be located within the community. Everyone

would eat together, save money, and foster a much stronger sense of community. Based on this concept, a place called Fick's Collective was constructed in Copenhagen in 1903. But here, instead of the community making meals together, maids cooked for and served the residents. Still they all ate together, fostering friendship. Boarding houses and other type of co-housing were common in the early 1900s in the western world, including here in the U.S. Families owned the houses, but they frequently rented out rooms to boarders. It was common in the days before motels and hotels were everywhere for children to leave their families and live in these boarding houses when they worked far from home.

In the 1960s, the idea of the hippie commune rather than a single family household became popular with a lot of young people in the U.S. and Europe. Oh, fuck yeah it did. Orgy! Orgy! Drug-fueled orgy! But for real, sex was a big selling point for a lot if not most of those communes. Young, often single people began living together and rejecting the traditional ideals of their parents, of the nuclear family living together. They didn't want two kids, a dog in a yard with a picket fence in the suburbs to share with the same partner. They wanted sex, drugs, and rock and roll. They wanted freedom from the trappings of what at the time was considered a conventional life.

Modern cohousing, as we know it today for the most part, began in the 1970s in Denmark. Families wanted more social interaction and a stronger sense of community. Danish architect Jan Gumann Høya is the primary founder of their co-housing movement, loosely defined as when a large community lives together and shares household duties. Gumann Høya passed away in 2017 at the age of 81.

He got his inspiration for co-housing from his time studying architecture at Harvard over in Massachusetts and interacting with some experimental communities on the East Coast of the U.S. And then in the winter of 1964, he gathered a group of fellow Danes to discuss a new, but really a very old type of housing. He wanted them to envision a community that would meet the needs of multiple generations. Over the next few months, he and his group planned this all out. By the end of 1964, the group purchased a site outside of Copenhagen and had plans for

twelve terraced houses set around a central common house with a swimming pool. But other future neighbors freaked out. No, thank you hippies, keep your pool orgies away from us. They weren't supportive, and the group sold the land without ever starting to build. But Jan didn't give up on his co-housing community dream. In 1968 he wrote an article titled the missing link between Utopia and the dated single family house that was published in a national newspaper and over a hundred families quickly responded with interest in his ideas. Around the same time another dame, a woman named Bodil Groh, Around the same time, another Dane, a woman named Bodil Groh, was also interested in co-housing. Her 1967 article, Children Should Have 100 Parents, led to a group of 50 families creating

a housing collective. Both groups, Bodils and Jans, joined up in 1968 and founded two construction sites, one in the outskirts of Copenhagen and another in Hillard town in Denmark. By the end of 1973 both communities had completed construction and these two communities inspired others. By 1982 22 different co-housing communities had been built in Denmark and the movement has continued to grow over there still very popular. According to a 2019 study more Danes wanted to live in co-housing projects

than they currently had homes for. And why is that? Well, here's what the author of a blog post on the London-based Academy of Urbanism's website speculated. There needs to be a different approach to the housing market. We know from research that smoking shortens your life and that abuse of alcohol is also bad. But what most people die of is loneliness. It is a

greater hazard because it leads to people dying from cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's and other ailments. It also leads to people feeling overlooked and abandoned. Contrast that with what happens in Greece, Sardinia, Japan, where older people gather in parks or squares, sitting on benches every day to chat about the world or the news or today's catch of fish at the harbor. These are places where people care about each other and about those missing, where nobody is left out

and where there is always a need for everyone. In such a place, it is worth getting old. It's an interesting perspective, right? I've never even considered living with a group of strangers in a communal setting. I think in many ways I'm very traditionally American. I haven't thought much over the course of my life about the benefits of being dependent on others. I've only thought for the most part about the negatives and depending in a living sense. Obviously I'm depending on people listening to what I do for a living. But yeah, I think about just the negatives as far as living around people

like being let down by others. Lindsay's changed that feeling me somewhat but you know I still have a lone wolf mentality in many ways and maybe I shouldn't. Or at least maybe I should take more time to understand the benefits of not having that mentality. The New York Times provided an interesting perspective on the communal living movement in the US in the 1990s. At the time the Communities Directory listed more than 500 intentional communities. This was in 1998. Back in 1991, they'd only listed 300.

So pretty big jump there. And the communities directory, by the way, is an online list and map of intentional communities located all around the world. It's ic.org. So pretty simple. Just the letter I, the letter C, dot org. And you can easily pull up the directory from the home page. You should check it out if you have time. It is fucking fascinating. You could easily lose hours looking into one group after another to find out what makes you know each group unique, what kind of people have decided to participate in one of these hundreds

and hundreds and hundreds of these communal living experiments. The Center for Communal Studies, based at the University of Southern Indiana, estimated that more than 200,000 Americans were living in communal arrangements back in 1998. Ken Norwood of Shared Living Resource in Berkeley, California, spoke with the New York Times and said, "'People really want to return to the kind of companionship

and comradeship that prevailed in another generation before the car, the strip mall and the corporation destroyed our culture of cooperation. Hippie communes of the 60s were high on idealism with little sense of self-discipline or direction. That's what made him so fun. And then he said intentional communities last. Today, the idea of home ownership and the nuclear family is something that keeps changing, especially as the economy keeps changing as well.

It might change a lot in the coming years. It sure feels like we are entering an era where society may undergo a big shift. And that could lead to an explosion in communal living. More people are living with friends or larger groups of relatives today than they were a few years back. This is especially true for young adults who are now much more likely to live with their parents than the previous several generations were. According to a 2023 survey from Harris Poll for Bloomberg,

roughly 45% of people ages 18 to 29 were living at home with their families. And that is the highest total since the 1940s. Sadly, over 80% of these people are living with family, not because they want a greater sense of community, not because they're feeling lonely, but because they simply cannot fucking afford to live on their own. Still, this is a type of co- housing, just not really an intentional one, more of a co-housing situation by default. In most intentional co-housing scenarios, families or friends have

their own houses, apartments or at least their own bedrooms but they share kitchens and community spaces they work together to complete chores the fellowship for an intentional community currently estimates that there are over 3,500 intentional living communities in the United States right now so number shock you shocked me and the FIC says that over half a million people comb through their online directory of international communities communities every year and the FIC Said that the person who has been looking at their directories the most Is your mom?

Does that shock you shock you that your mom is tired of her conventional life wants to shake shit up? maybe live in a big group home with a bunch of other moms, where they can crochet and play bridge. Or maybe live in a big gymnasium type situation with a padded floor full of almost nothing but snacks, baby oil, young hard dick and tight young puss. You have no fucking idea what your mom secretly craves, because you don't give her the space to allow her to be fully sexualized in your presence. Now you put her a little box shame on you. No, but seriously The FIC says that over half a million people come to their online directory of international communities every year And many of these people are assumed to be strongly considering joining an intentional community Ghanis is still a member of the FIC and this directory man. Holy shit

of the FIC. And this directory man, holy shit, had no fucking idea that there were so many compounds and communes full of all sorts of beliefs all over the world, including just all around me. I started dicking around in this directory. I mean, how could I not? And I began by searching only in Idaho, Pacific Northwest. I thought I'd find some weird shit. Oh, bingo! Ding ding ding! Sure did. Here's what I found in like 30 seconds. The Mars or lunar colony, and I will preface this by saying most of these communities are not like very strange. Most of them are like, you know, we want to leave a lighter footprint on the environment and share chores, you know, kind of vibe. From my observance. But some, oh boy, the Mars or lunar colony preparation community

is near Ashton, Idaho. Ashton is a little town of about 1,100 people, an agricultural community sitting between Idaho Falls and Yellowstone in southeastern Idaho. And this Mars or lunar colony preparation community well, they have a mission statement all these on the directory do and their mission statement reads We prepare for the seed pod of Mother Earth to propel us as seeds to green and beautify other extraterrestrial locations To expand understanding and deepen experience amongst the stars. This is our birthright and destiny. Oh fuck yeah it's our destiny!

Nothing is over! Yes! Nothing! You just don't turn off exploration! You just keep fucking pushing! But I mean who wouldn't want to board a seed pod right? It's our birthright. They have a community description as well. I think I'm gonna need some dramatic background music to really kind of make this more entertaining, something that fits it. Oh yeah, oh yeah, that's nice. That's real nice. We will be colonists. Our descendants will live among the stars. To prepare for this, we will research how best to survive physically and emotionally, at optimal group sizes while optimizing mission and experiment goals. After initial research is complete, short location experiments will be done at cold and dry earth locations to prepare. We will also research community best practices, post-national sovereignty, and how to best cooperate with giant

multi-planetary corporations. What is the hold-up? We are only waiting on adequate energy generation and thrust engine technologies. Our community will be ready when these technologies become a reality. If these technologies are capital intensive, we will need to negotiate with government or corporate entities. If the technological capital requirements are low to medium in cost, strap in, ladies and gentlemen, we will go it alone. Community organization will be experimentally controlled by optimization algorithms using cutting-edge artificial intelligence. No politics, only productivity. Community values will be balanced between individual autonomy and group loyalties grounded

in a post-industrial theology that acknowledges the intrinsic worth of every seed of the earth's seed part, and stands in awe of the immensity and complexity of the universe which is ours to explore. Community finances will be fully shared, subject to experiment or colony rules. If we contract with government and corporations, each member will be able to accept or reject the community offer for off-world mission inclusion. Holy shit! Wow! They're fucking ready to go it alone if no one else will step up and shoot them out into the cosmos to do their fucking seeding and stuff. Pretty ambitious.

Mars or Lunar Colony Preparation Community currently owns five acres of land. They were founded in 2020 and they're struggling. They're struggling to recruit members. I'm not gonna lie to you. They desperately need members. They started with two members in 2020, the founders, They started with two members in 2020, the founders, and roughly five years later, they are up to two members. They still have, they're still the same two members. But they're open to new members. If you want to apply, just look them up on the directory. But only if you're fucking serious, don't mess around with them.

They clearly get a lot of bullshit applicants thinking this is a joke. Because they also wrote yes this group is for real and we are actively seeking future minded individuals for both earth and off earth missions only the brave need apply for membership brave meat sack brave enough to spend the next few years living in southern Idaho preparing to colonize Mars, preparing to somehow get to Mars even though no one, and I mean fucking no one ever, I would bet my family's lives on

this, will ever fucking fund your trip to Mars. You are never going. Anyway, sorry, sorry, so negative there. Before I share another intentional community, this feels like a good spot to take this week's first of two mid-show sponsor breaks. If you don't want to hear these ads, if you want to help us with donations each month, sign up on Patreon and get the entire catalog ad free and more. Okay, now let's talk about the star community. If you're looking for something a little less ambitious, a little less lonely, something with a few more people, maybe if you want to get your fuck on, talk a lot about your feelings, what's going on in the news,

definitely do some chores with strangers who hopefully like to watch same kind of TV shows you do, and don't fart in the living room, you know, unless you like that. Their mission statement is, we are an urban residential community that focuses on personal growth, responsibility, creativity, sustainability, and creating a life with meaning and purpose. growth, responsibility, creativity, sustainability, and creating a life with meaning and purpose. Alright. And their community description is, quote, wow, we struggle to describe ourselves. Alright, not a strong opening sentence. We are currently 18 adults and two children who share two large group houses in South

Seattle. But we are also a broader community of far-flung individuals who have relationships with and renaissance, resonance with the ideas of this residential group. We have separate jobs and yet we spend ridiculous amounts of time together. We do cultural research and deep personal growth work. Hmm. I don't know how fun these guys sound. We are striving for ways to have a more positive impact on the planet and to live more sustainably

in our urban environment. We are sex-positive and a more positive impact on the planet and to live more sustainably in our urban environment. We are sex positive and largely a polyamorous community. Okay? And we study how to heal the centuries-long conflicts that arise between men and women. Well, maybe they are kind of fun. We believe in trust and peace and yet that trust and peace cannot arise without creative navigation of conflict. Conflict is a necessary part of growth and evolution. And we try to work with it rather than suppress it. We believe in transparency as a central value. We practice a form of community transparency modeled on ZEG forum, a practice developed

in the communities of ZEG in Tamera. ZEG is an intentional living community in Germany that was founded on free love. Oh, hello, Sofina. And Tamera is an intentional living community founded in Portugal on environmentalism and also free love. They continue, we also practice a form of personal and community growth work based on possibility management with the work of Clinton Callahan. Oh, Clinton Callahan. We did not come together around one central mission or vision and we have spent seven years trying to define exactly what we are about.

And yet we know we are about something. We can all feel that. I don't know what we are, but it's something. I mean, ask anyone. We're feeling it. We're feeling some shit. They continue with, we would like to call ourselves a spiritual community, but we are still struggling actively to define our philosophy. You've

had seven fucking years. And find coherence in our spiritual path. We are hard to categorize. We don't look like many other communities but I hope this gives some sort of picture. No, kind of. So they talk for a while about life and you know how to make the planet better and then fuck got it. It only costs $900 a month to live there and they are looking for new members if you'd like to apply. Maybe you can help them figure out what they're doing. Now if you really want to get your fuck on like for sure and you're willing to travel, I guess you know I assume you might be listening from Switzerland.

You might want to apply to Camaja located in the gorgeous town of Gershaw, Switzerland, which rests on the shore of picturesque Lake Luzerne. It actually is fucking gorgeous. They posted a bunch of photos on the directory page, and I can tell that these people are mostly about fucking strong sex energy coming from Kamaja. These guys, mostly old guys and young women. They fuck. Their mission statement is self-realization, radiant love, i.e. so much coming. And their community description is Komaja means radiant love. It describes a spiritual philosophical system as well as an international spiritual community,

founded in 1978 by the well-known Tantric master Abha Aziz Makaja. Komaja offers a deep and non-dogmatic access to spirituality with a complete system of spiritual schooling. Komaja is a specific form of of tantric Kundalini Yoga, developed by Makaja, who as spiritual master is at the core of Kumaja's life and its development. Knowledge is Kumaja's connecting spiritual thread, radiant love, its principal virtue. The seven main activities of the community are fucking, fucking, more fucking,

snacks, fucking, Gatorade, more fucking. No, the seven main activities are meditation, theoretical studies, development of community consciousness,

karma yoga, spiritualization of sexuality via asceticism or by being sexually active. Original methods of realization are given for both paths. Spiritual singing and spiritual sport. So much spirit. Today, Kamaja has more than 300 members and many friends who draw inspiration from its model of living. They live all over Europe, Australia and in North America. Makaja and his community are socially involved in many countries, with humanitarian and ecological activities, scientific and educational slash

therapeutical activities etc. Komaja is a member of the World Association for Sexology. Komaja's love erotic therapy for overcoming different kinds of addictions is privately in state financed. Kumaja is an example of how new forms of intimate relationships can be lived successfully. Many people practice the Zad-Nedjna. Oh, could you play a little? Theodore, could you play a few more chords on the harp? Thank you. Kumaj is an example of how new forms of intimate relationships can be lived successfully for many

people to practice the zazedna, an original form of polyamory. Thank you Theodore, that's quite enough. Sexology. Love erotic therapy. I told you they were mostly about fucking. They live on 25 very beautiful acres. They have 200 members. And it looks like based on pictures, they're led by a guy of about, I don't know, 75 to 80 years old. He's got a long fucking white wizard beard.

It looks like he lives partially on yoga and mostly on sex with young people. They are open to new members. You don't have to pay anything to join. Not a dime. But if you're ugly, if you're prude, or you're a dude, especially a handsome dude, just fuck off. This is not for you. Don't even waste your time applying. There's no fucking way you're getting in. Finally, it's because this guy kept popping up no matter what I searched for in the community directory. There's some guy named Quinton in Tampa, Florida. He just wants to get his dick sucked on a cult compound. He doesn't own any land. He's not renting any land. He doesn't have any money.

Under a section on how economics work for his community, he literally wrote, money is a delusion. He doesn't really have much of a plan. He doesn't look like he takes a lot of showers or that he has a plan to take a lot of showers in the future. But he does want community and sex. Under keywords for searching for him, he wrote atheism, anarchism, polyamory, sex positivity, rationality, nihilism, altruism, egalitarianism. His mission statement? Pretty brief. To be truly free and to live life to the fullest and in the moment with our loved ones.

His community description? Not as brief. Hello everyone, my name is Quinton. I'm just a guy who's interested in meeting like-minded people, excuse me, who are interested in close-knit relationships. I've been traveling on and off since late 2014, visiting and living at different intentional communities across the United States." And then he lists a whole bunch of intentional communities he was living in.

And then he writes, I'm interested in starting an intentional community of my own, a small tribe of people who are loving, kind, and respectful towards one another, having the values of altruism and egalitarianism. I want this community to be based around anarcho-primitivism slash green anarchism and atheism slash nihilism because this planet is overpopulated which is contributing to biodiversity loss and climate change. Capitalism and consumerism- Oh boy, Quentin, you're fucking- everyone's losing their boners. Everyone's getting dry right now Capitalism and consumerism don't work and they never did because it is only making things worse by turning everything and everyone into a commodity

Humans do best in small groups of tribes like hunter-gatherer societies and humans are ultimately social animals This culture in the United States is very hyper capitalistic and embraces toxic individualism Which only causes a lot of people to suffer and they violently lash out because of it. It's ultimately a cycle of abuse and it's only going to lead into human extinction, which is inevitable anyway. Okay, he's kind of pessimistic but but not dumb, right? Maybe not even wrong. He continues with, what I would like to see is myself having a tribe that I can call my family, my friends, my loved ones that I genuinely care about.

There needs to be passion to live. And happiness is only real when shared. I want people to be polyamorous. Here we go. I want people to be polyamorous. And sex positive. To be free in their desires. And struggles.

In order for everyone to be happy and loved. For everyone to be physically, emotionally, and mentally supported. People need to have trust and compassion. Simple as that. I understand how life works. Okay. And I... That's funny they had to write that. Listen. Hey! Listen! I understand how life works, okay? He wrote, I understand how life worked and I believe that if I can find the right people in my life, then I can see great things happening.

Guess we'll see. No one's joined his community yet. Maybe he's not after sex. Maybe he wants to create something really special and loving but also get fucked a lot. Best of luck Quinton. Get it buddy. Before moving forward I should add that there are a whole bunch of communities not based in sex. Most of them not based in sex, at least not on the surface. Based in religion, based in abstaining from sex, places based in New Age spiritual beliefs, based in environmentalism, based in living like people did a few hundred years ago, just living more simply. Places based on, you know, no drugs, a simple straight-edge lifestyle, and just on and on and on. Almost anything you can think of. People have all sorts of different reasons for founding or

choosing to co-housing, you know, finances, loneliness, just a need or desire to live with others with similar values. Or because they want to belong to a cult. Cult! Cult! Cult! There's also that. According to a co-living.com article on the history of Coaliving, the Coaliving movement today is interspersed with the surging sharing economy. We're seeing a societal deviation away from consumerism and towards a peer-to-peer basis or bias, excuse me, and the advent of the internet has made it easier than ever for people to find the assets they need directly from one another. All right, okay. That sounds legit.

Co-housing and co-living is truly a huge spectrum. Some living situations, very normal, very traditional with individual households, you know, sharing a few community spaces while others, you know, similar to isolated hippie compounds in the fucking woods, uh, featured in previous episodes. Before we check out where GANAS lies on this spectrum, let's discuss a few different categories of co-living or intentional living situations. Cohousing, starting there. Cohousing is simply and broadly defined as an intentional community of private homes clustered around a shared space. As mentioned earlier, this idea first came out of Denmark in the late 60s and 70s. Groups of families were dissatisfied with current housing communities.

Bodilgro and Jan Guman Hoyas supporters came together for their ideas and then split into two groups. These groups formed the co-housing communities of Setadema and Scroll Planet, the oldest modern co-housing communities in the world they claim. Setadema, founded in 1972, is the first official intentional cohousing community in the modern world with 60 adults and 20 children across 35 families. The Danish word for living community was renamed co-housing by American architects Catherine McCamment and Charles Durat who have written a few books about co-housing. Several communities in the US embraced co-housing in the start of the practice.

In co-housing communities, private homes have their own amenities. There are shared spaces like a common house with a large kitchen and dining area, communal laundry and communal recreation spaces. Communities have outdoor spaces like walkways, gardens, green spaces and playgrounds. Each homeowner has their own property but neighbors work together to manage the community in the shared spaces. Legally these communities have an HOA, you know, a housing cooperative. A housing cooperative is defined as a legal entity, usually a cooperative or a corporation, which owns real estate consisting of one or more residential buildings.

The co-op is membership based to be a member. You got to purchase a share in the cooperative. Each shareholder has the right to one housing unit. Housing cooperatives are meant to pool resources to lower cost per member, and thus make housing more affordable for all members. Members have representatives that they elect who can choose who is allowed to live in the Co-op, which makes it different from other forms of home ownership.

There are non-ownership, non-equity, or continuing co-ops, and also ownership, equity, or strata housing cooperatives. In non-equity, occupancy rights are established based on an occupancy agreement similar to a lease. In equity, occupancy rights are granted by purchasing legal agreements and legal instruments registered on the title. Articles of incorporation and bylaws specify the rules of the co-op So basically, you know, there's a lot of legal contracts in place So that if you want out at some point you can get your money back if you've bought in if you have ownership Or you can you know break or end your lease if you're doing the equivalent of just you know renting

These communities eat meals together have meetings work together occasionally neighbors host parties game nights movie nights other social events for other members Orgy sound like a pretty fucking optional. Maybe non-existence. I don't know doesn't sound culty Next up co-living co-living is defined as a residential community living model that accommodates three or more biologically unrelated People living in the same dwelling unit greater odds for an orgy, but no guarantee! And again, not too culty, but maybe a cult could form from this arrangement. Co-living is another type of intentional community that provides shared housing for people who have similar values.

People in co-living situations work together, share meals together, have group meetings, etc. Some people co-live as part of their sustainability efforts and a lot of people are turning to co-living for financial reasons. Co-living officially started in the 19th and 20th centuries with tenement buildings and boarding houses but this concept really goes back you know centuries and centuries and centuries. For example long houses are a form of co-living that's thousands of years old. Next up something much more modern the the eco-village. An eco-village is defined as a traditional or intentional community with the goal of becoming more socially, culturally, economically, and or

ecologically sustainable. And I would say most of the places I looked at in that directory I was joking about earlier seemed to be eco-villages. Eco-villages developed from environmental movements that came out of the counterculture revolution of the 1960s and 70s. Some have definitely been culty, and some have for sure had orgies break out. Nice eco-friendly orgies where the condoms are made out of recycled grocery bags, probably. Where the Gatorades never drank from single-use containers. The goal of an ecovillage is to reduce environmental impact as much as possible through architecture and human behavior

Georgia Tech professor George Ramsey coined the term ecovillage in his 1978 address titled passive energy applications for the built environment To the first world energy conference of the Association of energy engineers, and he said in his address The great energy waste in the United States is not in his technology, it is in its lifestyle and concept of living. That's an interesting thought. You know if we all lived in more sustainable ways, yeah we'd be much better stewards of the planet. Ramsey proposed a self-sufficient solar village in his address. The first ecovillage to call itself an ecovillage was Earth Haven Ecovillage in Black Mountain, North Carolina, founded in 1993. Currently, Earth Haven has more than 70 families living on 368 acres

of land. Man. The monastery is up next. Very low orgy odds here. And orgies that do break out, well, maybe not the best ones. Probably not drug-fueled. Did you know that a monastery fits within the definition of an intentional community? Right, just an example of one that's been around for centuries, and what is a monastery? Monastery is the building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks, or nuns,

whether living in communities or alone. Most monasteries have a place for prayer, a dorm, cloister, aka covered walkway, a refectory, library, balanary, aka bathing room. That's probably where the orgies would happen if they did. Infirmary, granges. Many larger monasteries have buildings that promote self-sufficiency or community service such as a hospice, school, or agricultural buildings. And now kind of for, I guess a little bit related because it comes out of a religious tradition. Next intentional living community is the kibbutz. A kibbutz is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. Orgy odds are going to vary from kibbutz to kibbutz. Very hard for Gentiles to get in on the orgy action, also I'm afraid.

If you're not circumcised, ho, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, started off as utopian communities combining ideas of socialism and zionism. A member of a kibbutz is called a kibbutznik. And early kibbutzim were founded by the members of the bilou movement who immigrated to palestine. The first kibbutz established in 1909 and named digania. In modern kibbutzim, the kibbutznik practiced farming with industrial technology. A lot of these are just agricultural communities now and kind of like almost like little towns. Or yeah, definitely like little towns. By 2010, there were 270 kibbutzim with membership totaling 126,000 people. So some of these obviously pretty sizable. There are factories and farms accounted for 9% of Israel's industrial output,

about 8 billion US dollars worth, and 40% of the country's agricultural output totaling 1.7 billion. 40% of the country's agriculture, getting close to half. There are two main types of kibbutzim, those that are a part of a secular kibbutz movement and those that are part of a religious kibbutz movement and some have, you know, political ties. So most of you are big close-knit Jewish agricultural and or industrial socialist collectives. Next up, the Hutterites. I think we've talked about them in some episodes in the past, especially when talking about the Amish.

Hutterites are a branch of Anabaptists whose roots can be traced all the way back to the Protestant Reformation of the early 16th century. Jacob Hutter, the founder, established Hutterite colonies based on the Schlaytheim Confession, then a Baptist statement of faith of 1527. The first communes formed the next year, 1528. Hutterites came to the U.S. between 1874 and 1879, largely in response to a new Russian military service law. They are pacifists. About 800 identified as owners and were able to get individual farms with America's Homestead Act. Another 400 identified as community people. Started three different large communities. Most Hutterites today are descended from these community people. They settled in the Dakota territories and established traditional Hutterite communities there for the most part.

Hutterites live in rural colonies or communities, depend on farming and ranching. They try to be as self-sufficient as possible and try not to rely on the outside world for much of anything. And a big difference between say the Amish and the Hutterites, why I'm not talking about the Amish here, is that Amish families can own their own land. Hutterites do not practice private ownership. They are much more communal in that sense. A colony's land is owned collectively by the colony. They're essentially little communist enclaves operated in the US if communism was also based in religion. And now one more. The ashram.

An ashram is a spiritual hermitage or a monastery in Indian religions. That's how it's defined. We learned a bit about ashrams in the Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh episode. Traditional ashrams are located in forests or mountains far from regular society. They focus on spiritual instruction and meditation or yoga. And some ashrams service residential schools for children. So basically think of a monastery, but for Hindus instead of Christians.

Okay, with all this context established, let us now talk about Ghanas. What is the Ghanas community? You know, Ghanas was founded in 1979 in Tompkinsville, this neighborhood in Staten Island, New York City. According to the Ghanas website, which is still active, as is this intentional community, the six original founders came together to form a self-selected extended family based on an intention to care for each other while sharing the work, having fun, and addressing whatever problems arise together.

Since then our population has grown to about 65. Our purpose is to bring reason and emotion together in daily problem solving in order to create our world with love the way we want it to be. Open minds make it possible to talk together and understand each other better. We ongoingly learn how to better cooperate, care for each other, and share resources. We welcome those who want to join us in learning together. That doesn't sound too bad, right? Sounds so nice. A place where everyone has a say, but that's not true. For most of their history, as you'll see,

one woman ruled this community, and the others for the most part pretty much did what she said. And she was, as you will see in the timeline, a blatant con artist. So where does the name ganas come from? They explain. The Spanish word ganas means motivation sufficient to act. We chose it as the name for our community because it represented an important central value better than any word in English

Community living is full of interpersonal challenges and opportunities with ganas We use our energy to focus on working out problems together. This allows us to embrace diversity which make community living sustainable which makes embrace diversity which make community living sustainable. Which makes. Ghanas has membership levels based on financial or labor contributions. They're a member of not just the FIC, the Fellowship for Intentional Community, but also the competing FEC, I don't know if they're competing or not, the Federation of Egalitarian Communities. And egalitarian means relating to or believing in the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities.

Again, very sweet thought. But has Ghanis really been egalitarian? I don't think so. It's just like communism, right? In theory, there's no leader, right? So everyone's equal. It's all about equality. All for one and one for all. No one is above anyone else, in theory. But in practice, literally never works like that. Not fucking a single example ever. Society has always needed leadership, and I think it always will. The FEC defines itself as a group of egalitarian communities which have joined together with the common purpose of creating a lifestyle based on equality, cooperation, and harmony with the earth. Within the

FEC there is a full membership option, an allied membership, or community and dialogue membership for those who share values but don't want to commit to a full membership. Full members are committed to egalitarianism, non-violent, and most importantly I would guess income sharing. FEC lists its member requirements on its website, holds its land, labor, income, and other resources in common, assumes responsibility for the needs of its members, receiving the products of their labor and distributing these and all other goods equally or according to need, practices nonviolence, uses a form of decision-making in which members have an equal opportunity to participate, either through consensus, direct vote, or right of appeal or overrule.

Actively works to establish the equality of all people and does not permit discrimination on the basis of race, class, creed, ethnic origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Acts to conserve natural resources for present and future generations while striving to continually improve ecological awareness and practice, creates processes for group communication and participation and provides an environment which supports people's development. And again that all that sounds very noble and benevolent than it is theoretically. Maybe not as much in practice though. Ghanas has been

a quote allied community since February 22nd 2005 according to the FEC allied community share many of the Federation's values but are not likely to consider full membership. Ghanas members also participate in a controversial practice called feedback learning that was developed by co-founder Mildred Gordon and I'll explain it in much more detail further in the episode. Alright I guess I'm not really explaining it all right now. GANAS is originally founded by six people, according to its website, who called themselves the Core Group. The group eventually expanded to about 12 members, plus 60 to 70 part-time and full-time

members. But really, as you will see, founded, led, for most of its history, by one member. GANAS owns three businesses. I think two, but they say three. They say the three are a bookstore slash cafe, a furniture and clothing store, and an event space. I think the event space is part of the cafe. Uh, the group mainly known for the negative press they received in 2006

when a former member allegedly shot founder Jeff Gross outside his Ganas home in Staten Island. Again, most of the following information comes straight from the Ghanas website. Last updated in May of 2021. Here's what they say regarding membership and rules. Ghanas welcomes all races, sexual orientations, and genders. They require that people be willing to recognize the privilege of being white, heterosexual, and cisgender. Be aware of racism, sexism, and gender discrimination, and be anti-racist. Ghanis has four rules. Non-violence to people or things. No free rides. Everybody is required to work productively or pay their expenses. No illegality, including illegal drugs. I'm fucking out Ghanis. What's the point living in your weird fucking hippie compound if I can't trip from time to time?

And then also no non-negotiable negativity. This rule requires that people bring their complaints about the community or people in it to the group where the problems can be discussed and resolved with the people involved. The reason for rule four is that the community suffers from is that the community suffers when negativity is presented as non-negotiable fact in private or public venues. If you break the rules you will be asked to leave. Yeah negative Nancy get out of here go on get! Anyone can bring up any issue they want whenever they want as long as it's in a group setting. Major decisions are made by the core group with input from community members. Some issues are

decided by vote. Each area of Ganas has a manager with authority to make work decisions after receiving input." To quote from their website again, the idea is that most current issues are better resolved by treating each conflict as a new event that requires its own unique attention and that old considerations are not necessarily relevant to new problems. Ganas currently, their current members, share seven large homes all next to each other, I believe, definitely on the same street on the north side of Staten Island in a, quote, racially mixed working class neighborhood close to the ferry. No one is required to live there, though. They stress that. Most people just visit for short periods of time. Others stay for a few

years. Many members of the core group, however, have been there for decades. Some members work outside the community while others work at one of the two everything goes stores or at the Ghana's community residences. Members share bathrooms with their floor mates, also share public spaces like gardens, fruit trees, porches, hammocks, and a clothesline. Ghana serves dinner in the main dining room from Tuesday to Saturday with leftovers available 24-7. Oh fuck. Yeah get that sketchy Everyone has access to the kitchens. There are no formal discussions at dinner, but there are a lot of community building conversations Living rooms are used for quote meetings gatherings discussions of various types dancing exercise computer use listening to or making music

TV or movie watching eating or just hanging out. No orgy. Members can organize activities as long as they set up and clean up. They host dances, talent shows, potlucks and parties. For birthdays, they can usually have brunch. Wow, how nice. You can have birthday brunch and the birthday person can pick a group activity. How cool.

Ghanas has different quote populations based on lifestyle options. At the center of Ghanas is the core group currently consisting of five men and four women. They are the management team who quote pool all their time, talent and material things and are committed to working through problems that arise between them. Ghanas writes that this group is open to new members but because of the demands made on core group people's time and resources, few opt to join. Yeah, don't even ask about joining the core group unless you're willing to dedicate everything you have to Ghanas. Members are free to leave the core group whenever they want. There's a formula for how much compensation they

will get based on, you know, money earned and spent. The second level consists of about 25 people interested in the Ghanas philosophy, they do not share resources, and are not necessarily committed to join any particular activity or to exchange feedback, expose their own emotional reality, or accept anyone else's. Most second tier members do engage in these activities though.

They often live in the group for many years, and they can work in or out of the community. About 35 people participate in the third level. Most of them live in Ghanas but some just visit for shorter periods of time. Some work at Ghanas, others work outside or are students. They form subgroups with quote very different but surprisingly compatible philosophies. According to the website, they may or may not be involved with Ghanis' goals and activities, but almost all of them enjoy the Ghanis' experience. I'm not going to say almost. Some of them hate it, but they keep hanging around and we don't know why.

It says, many report on its values to them years after leaving. The few who are here short term provide an opportunity for members to experience a revolving population of diverse people. Visiting is currently on hold, but you can visit when they allow it again next, for 50 bucks a night. That includes room, food, and toiletries. Oh shit, cheaper than a hotel room. Definitely a way more interesting place to stay. On the first Friday of each month, Ganas has a virtual visitor session from 7 to 8 p.m. Visitors can participate in feedback discussions, see what it's all about. Those who want to live at Ganas have to pay either $970 a month,

pretty cheap actually, not bad, which covers room, food, toiletries, laundry supplies, utilities, and Wi-Fi. If you want to work at Ganas, well, email them. Staffing at ganas.org. See what jobs are available. Please report back if you end up living in fucking gonas because of this. And expenses not covered by the non-profit or the store are paid by the core group who pool their money for the community. How benevolent. But gonas member Brian spoke to the Brooklyn Rail in 2006 said that some people end up feeling

like they're being exploited within this system. Some members complained for example about their $300 stipend for the amount that they worked. But Susan, an OG member of the core group and the group's current leader, even if she won't call herself that, responded by saying, you're not my tenant and I'm not your landlord. Okay, I don't know if that really answers it, but alright Susan. If you're elected to join GANAS, you first undergo a one-month trial. Not elected, selected. That was weird. You have to bring in deposit of one month's expenses, whether you work in Ghanas or not.

All members are asked to help out a few hours a week, even if they work outside the community. There are typically a few children at the commune at any given time now. However, most Ghanasians, yes, they call themselves Ghanasians, want to focus on self-improvement rather than raising kids. Historically not been an organization for families. I will get into that more in the timeline. Now let's talk about self-improvement. This focus at Ghanaias.

According to their own website, they say, what Ghanaias offers and does not offer is not always clear. I love how vague some of these places are. That's awesome. Look, if you're coming here for self-improvement, which is what we advertise, good fucking luck. We actually don't really know how to do that, but we just we would like to. If you can come here and teach us, that'd be great. To quote their website, they continue with, we are not a therapeutic community and we don't give feedback to everyone.

I feel like they say that for legal reasons because of the press they've gotten. People have to be willing and thought to be able to make good use of direct feedback before we do. Personal issues do come up spontaneously and sometimes quite publicly, but they are only discussed in depth with clear consent and effective cooperation. We feel that our group discussions are simply ongoing, truth-seeking, planning or problem-solving dialogues. People who want to learn how to think, love and bring expressions of reason and emotion together in dialogue will probably enjoy GONNESS very much. People who want to understand and contribute to others may find a treasure house of value for themselves here. Oh, fuck yeah! Almost all the self-improvement that does go on at GONNES

is based on their feedback learning. And before I share what they mean by that, I'm going to take today's second of two mid-show sponsor breaks. Thank you for listening to these sponsors, those sponsors, these sponsors. And now let's hear about this feedback learning. They write on their website, good interactive communication is our central value. Co-founder but really sole founder, Mildred Gordon, a woman many think was more of a co-leader than a co-founder, called this feedback learning what she came up with, indispensable day-to-day

guiding experience. It's indispensable. During feedback learning sessions, members of the community give each other quote feedback and this feedback is criticism that's meant to be helpful. They have daily discussions where they talk about their behaviors and problems. They learn their motivations, benefit from hearing harsh truths supposedly, supposedly benefit, and accept negative information with the excitement of discovery. Okay. Journalist Jonah Owen Lamb from the New York Times wrote on this feedback learning saying, And I think it's pretty obvious that this could be very helpful or very harmful, depending on who is giving you the feedback.

I need some fucking wackadoodle moron giving me life feedback and advice like I need a new hole in my head. According to Ghanis, quote, critical feedback is clearly the most important and seems to be the hardest kind of information to give or to accept. We've opted to increase our receptivity to intake rather than try to control the content or style of people's output. The idea is to disclose what's happening and then work out what's wanted instead of hiding unpopular thoughts and feelings and living in a haze of unknowns and deceptions. That means making approval or disapproval far less important than we do now. Feedback starts each day at breakfast. Awesome. Nothing like waking up to a heaping of criticism. Nothing like starting your day off with toast, eggs,

and getting shit on. Someone across the table saying something like, you know what I really don't like about you today? Back in 1998, feedback learning started at 730 a.m. Mildred Gordon would sit in recliner, monitor the session. She would tell the group members stuff like, the idea is to speak the truth, to learn to listen and hear. Okay, that's what it said in an article, but I bet she said a lot more pointed things than that. The New York Times observed a feedback learning session in 98. It did not only include criticism directed towards individuals. On this day, the conversation included a review of contractor bids to install some vinyl siding on one of their new houses

Group members request for dental work Another group member suggesting that the group not watch violent films in the living room anymore. Oh shut the fuck up Karen Just go to go to your room if you can't handle die-hard One woman spoke about a conflict with her boyfriend group discussed a different member who recently One woman spoke about a conflict with her boyfriend. The group discussed a different member who recently left, who had a drug problem, and who may have sold copies of his house key after leaving. Uh-oh. Then they started criticizing member Jeff Gross, who had recently turned 44.

Mildred told Jeff at one point, quote, "'The main thing that's wrong is that you're never wrong. You've gone from a warm, loving, shy, very spacey fellow to a nothing-is-my-fault, out-and-out, paranoid fellow.'" Yeah, Jeff, you spacey fellow to a nothing is my fault out and out paranoid fellow. Yeah, Jeff, you fucking piece of shit. You think you're better than us, you diva? We'll talk a lot about Jeff in the timeline. He and Mildred were getting pretty sick of each other by this point. They had previously been very close. He was her very first follower when it came to the Ghanas chapter of her life as a grifter. Currently, Ghanis says they rely on what they call direct discussion as their main method of communication. Every day,

Tuesday through Saturday from 8 a.m. to 9 15 a.m., they engage in their discussions about business and personal problems, hidden agendas, defenses, like defense mechanisms, and think about how they communicate. Only one person speaks at a time and then in addition to these direct discussions the 20 to 25 most devoted members engage in weekly feedback learning. Unlike many cults covered on Time Suck, and I'm not saying Ghanas even is a cult, they offer zero promise of salvation or enlightenment with feedback learning sessions. They are not religious in any way. Let's talk about money now. Ghanas currently owns seven homes in Staten Island plus commercial buildings

for their two retail stores and apparently according to one source, again they own some sort of event space but I don't think that's a separate space. I think that's part of the cafe. They also own an estimated 10 million dollars worth of real estate in upstate New York, Brooklyn, Virginia, California, and Spain. At any given time, 60 to 100 people live in Ganas and they cover their living expenses by paying monthly rent or working full-time in the stores. Ganas also owns the Foundation for Feedback Learning or working full-time in the stores or working like in like cleaning up the house like housekeeping stuff. Ganas also owns the Foundations for Feedback Learning, a 501c3 non-profit established back in 1974. Ganas went by the name Foundation for Feedback Learning until

they officially changed their name to Ganas in the early 90s. According to several sources, the FFL made around $475,000 annually for many years. The FFL's services included feedback learning skills development and interpersonal skills development. Mildred Gordon reported an annual salary of $40,000 as executive director of FFL which might not sound like much but she had no expenses because the group, her group, provided her a place to live, all of her meals, utilities, medical expenses, just everything. 2007, Ganas changed the FFL's address from Staten Island to Brooklyn. That same year, the FFL only declared $15,500 in revenue and $75 in public support, which I interpret as donations. It seems weird they suddenly dropped from nearly half a million to less than $16,000

regarding the stream of annual revenue. Not sure what the deal is there. 2008, FFL made only $2,295 with $0 public support. They're hiding something. Everything Goes Thrift and Vintage is a retail store that sells secondhand furniture, clothing, and then there's their second Everything Goes used bookstore slash cafe with a performance space.

Everything Goes is not a non-profit. Everything Goes Furniture and Clothing is a 10,000 square foot facility. Selling antique and modern secondhand furniture and clothing open Tuesday through Saturday 11 a.m. To 6 30 p.m. Store conveniently located a few blocks from the Gannis houses 15 to 20 people are involved with the businesses 12 to 15 work with food gardening housekeeping administration Maintaining property and vehicles Full-time work at Gannanas is around 30 hours a week. 25 to 30 people work outside the community, pay

their own expenses. Okay, and now before jumping into the timeline, what do some actual Ganasians have to say about Ganas? The New York Times wrote in their 1998 article that most of the members of Ganas are white but reflect the diversity of the city in other ways. Their ages range from 20 to 76. That is quite a range. I think 76 is mildred in that one. And they came from all over the world. Places like Brazil, Namibia, France, Iran, Madagascar. Also worked in all sorts of different industries. Had a violinist, a doctor, computer programmer, social worker, even a reporter.

Dave Greeson spoke to the Times. Dave came to Ganas from a law firm in San Francisco. He said, here there is a kind of intimacy that only comes from living and working together day in and day out. Peggy Wonder, that's a fun name, who moved to the commune in 1989, her job not listed in that 1998 article said, sometimes the separation between me and other people was too much to bear. Here I've got myself a giant extended family, people who really care for me. Okay, sense of theme, right? These people were lonely. Maybe not the best at making close friends. On April 2006, Annalee Newitz wrote an article titled, Big Love on Staten Island for New York Magazine.

She spoke with several members who used fake names about their experiences at Gannis. They were transparent about their open relationships and also about problems within the community. These members told Newitz that quote partnered within the group meant you were in a long-term but not monogamous sexual relationship. Ian, a Gannis member called their lives one big experiment saying in this place were our own guinea pigs and it's our whole life our work our play our family our sexual relationships. Newitz described Gannis as a cross between a 60s style commune and a contemporary urban kibbutz. She wrote at any given time nearly a hundred people

live here as one family unit sharing meals, cars, toothpaste, some even share lovers. Gannis is possibly New York City's only experiment in affordable communal living that doesn't require you to join a cult. New York Magazine noted that with more people in the group than in years past came more drama, some small issues, some big. Member Ian told Newitz, Our relationships have become too sticky and incestuous. Most people would find it hard to live with their exes. I just want to move into the outside world. Yeah, God.

How would would that be? To live in shared chores and give feedback to if you lived in the in a compound or whatever commune long enough multiple exes. How would you handle that? Do any of you want to live with any of your exes? Maybe some of you do. I don't. Not because they're bad people, but because, you know, there was a reason we broke up. Because of baggage. And because of all the jealousy and insecurity that would likely trigger in a current partner. No thanks. No, I don't think I could handle that.

No fucking way. This article covered a morning meeting about Ian. Everyone wanted to ask him if he was leaving. In 1981, Ian had used a large portion of his inheritance to buy real estate for Ghanas. Cult, cult, cult! Now if he chose to leave, one of their houses would need to be sold to pay him back, which would hurt them financially. Newitz also spoke to Jessica, a member in her 60s. When she arrived in 2002, she said that Mildred sat her down in a meeting with five men and told her,

quote, all of these men are available for you, although most of them are already in primary relationships. Why don't you date them all? Well, Jessica did date them all, i.e. she fucked all of them. And then she settled on continuing to fuck two of them. Newitz also interviewed Ashley, who performed with the political theater group Circus Amuck, and was living in Ghana's for the summer because quote it's a starving artist kind of thing I can't afford anywhere else in the city. I wonder if she was pressured to contribute i.e. pay for her stay at the commune by having relationships secondary relationships with other members. Newin spoke with Tom

who helped run the food supply by purchasing food from wholesalers. Excuse me, his job was to find food that cost each person less than 20 bucks a week. And he said, when I first started living at communes, my parents were seriously considering doing a cult deprogramming thing. You know, kidnapping me the whole bit. But my brother persuaded my parents not to do it until he had visited the place and checked it out. Anyway, he came and he liked it. He told me the problem was that everybody was so nice. He couldn't find any problems. Well that's how they get you! George, a Ghana's founder, a member of the core group, spoke with New York Magazine and said, I wanted to create my own pirate island. Okay, George. But we live in a country where there is no model other than private property.

So we had to buy the island. All right, pirate island. Does sound fun to have your own island, but I don't think any nation offers you that chance anymore. To have a country inside of a country. It sounds like George settled on Ghanas after not being able to find a time machine. They sent him back a few hundred years when dudes did have pirate islands. George had some complaints about the group. He said, our cars are a perfect example of socialism. Nobody owns them, so we treat them like shit. I'd like to make it, uh, Ghanis, smaller by getting rid of

some people. That's what makes me the radical of the group. That's interesting take about the ownership thing. Yeah, since the compound owned the cars and you know shared them with members, you know, nobody has probably kept them as clean or properly maintained as they would have if they owned the cars themselves. I can see that. Newwood's also learned that just because there's no ill- there is a no-elite- oh my gosh illegality. Like no illegal shit rule. That doesn't mean that Ghanas members actually follow that rule. Newwood spoke to Adam and Matt who showed her

the so-called tree house. The tree house, not sure if it's still around, was just off Ghanas property. It was a dark space between two buildings and Ghanaians would go to the tree house to let loose, drink, do some drugs. A lot of the younger members who lived in Ghanas by day would gather in the tree house at night to party. Nuits described the tree house as a proto commune that started up next to Ghanas in response to the rules. The tree house allowed law breaking and drinking. No schedules, no meetings. Cult, cult, cult. That's where the good shit happens. May of 2006, co-founder Jeff Gross was shot outside his home in Ghanis. He survived the shooting which led to Ghanis getting a new wave of media attention. I'll discuss that shooting in

the timeline. We're almost there. Former Ghanis members spoke to New York Post after the 2006 shooting, made allegations of sexual misconduct, forced marriages, drug use, and wacky sex sessions with a shrink. Supposedly people who refused to engage in these activities were put into the worst housing situations and pressured to leave. Quote, quote, quote. Walter Enquist, who left Ghan years before the shooting in 2000, said, They say they're all about peace and living in harmony, but they're really evildoers. I never felt comfortable there. It wasn't your typical hippie way of life. Enquist said he was shunned and pressured to leave after rejecting various requests to have sex with members who were much older than him. He talked about a safe sex club at the commune.

He said members never had sex out in the open. Instead, they would knock on someone's door and say, I'll talk to you later, which was code for sex. Enquist said he also saw members passing out prescription drugs like Zoloft and Paxil often. He reported that someone would knock on the back doors of the group's houses and pass out these drugs.

He said that members were falsely diagnosed with various ailments and told they needed to take this medication every day. He said quote, it's a cult. It's a hippie commune that owns 10 million dollars in real estate and it went mad with power. The power is playing chess with people's lives. They control minds with drugs that are used by psychotherapists. Once some guy came down the staircase with a wicker basket with punch cards for Zoloft. According to Enquist, a number of international members wanted to marry American members just

to get citizenship. They would solicit members for marriages and then reimburse them. Quote, they acted like a dating service handing out marriage contracts. Enquist reportedly refused repeated requests for sex from founder Mildred Gordon. I don't doubt that for a second. He also refused to have sex with several new commune members. And he said, a lot of the women were on psychotropic drugs and they would have these therapy sessions

with Mildred and others. Basically it was legal sex for money. After he refused sex, he said there were 50 to 60 people who now wanted him to leave. And he felt shunned by the group. A former member known as Kenba would verify his claim. She said she was asked to marry a Brazilian seeking citizenship. She left in October of 2000 after staying just a little over a year.

A group member identifying by the name of Melissa responded to these accusations saying, There were a few people who left here disgruntled. Walter and Kenba are a few crackpots. We're a bunch of normal people. We are living in a way that is much more environmentally sustainable. Okay, now I feel ready to jump into the timeline. How did Ghana start? Who were the founders? Who was the real founder? What events led to the shooting in 2006? Let's find out.

Shrap on those boots, soldier. We're marching down a time-suck timeline. We're marching down a time-sucked timeline. Gunfire Ghana's co-founder, but really only founder, Mildred Gordon, born in Manhattan in 1922 and raised on the Lower East Side. Her parents were both Russian immigrants, maybe. Details about her past are, as is almost always the case with cult leaders or gurus, obscure and hard to trust. The New York Times wrote about her saying, Ms. Gordon is largely responsible for the commune's New York brashness,

something that the large contingent of West Coast members said they found jolting at first. Okay. According to the no longer in existence website called ActivistSolutions.org, whose About us page, which you can only access thanks to the Internet Archive way back machine, says a new kind of political activism can bring people together both on and offline to produce new solutions to problems that concern them, collectively choose the best of the ideas created, and act together to try to get them implemented. This group said Mildred studied public opinion research until the early 1950s. And then in 1956 she began studying quote communication and problem-solving skills. She experimented with different approaches to conflict resolution.

Pretty vague right? There's a whole page about her on this website speaking about her background and credentials, and it never mentions any school she may have studied at or any degree she ever attained. Getting very strong self-taught slash do-your-own-research crowd vibes from Mildred. That's about all we know about her life prior to the 1960s. And a good chunk of what we know about her in the 60s and 70s also comes from the bio on this now defunct website. And the bio paints a picture to me of a total fraud, a grifter. And I fear with America's current growing predilection for dismissively devaluing accredited educational institutions, just a growing disdain for education, educators and generals I see it,

there will be no shortage of new grifters like Mildred to talk about in the coming years You know why take your kid to a therapist who went to an accredited higher education institution college? You know some place of university When you can just have them visit a lightworker whose online degree is the educational equivalent of the free prize You used to get in the bottom of a box of crackerjacks fuck accreditation, right? Just go to a diploma mill get a cool piece of a box of crackerjacks. Fuck accreditation, right? Just go to a diploma mill, get a cool piece of paper, make sure you look like an expert. Have fun! Take an online quiz that gives you a quote unquote doctorate when you passed after working

very hard for almost an entire weekend. But anyway, 1962, Mildred co-founded a group communication and problem-solving program called Group Counting Services that served its uh as and served as its administrative director. Not a licensed therapist but running an organization called Group Counting Services. So cool cool cool. 1966 Mildred co-founded GROW, Group Relations Ongoing Workshops with her husband Ed Smith. GROW was an unaccredited school in New York City, of course it was, that focused on group therapy and was accused by many of quote turning out unlicensed group psychotherapists because that is exactly what they did which is pretty scary.

Groh claimed to be an institute for training group facilitators and community leaders. And they did train people but who the hell knows if what they trained them to do was effective because they were not training anyone in anything that had ever been studied for its effectiveness. In July of 1972, Grow was investigated by the state of New York for fraud and fraudulent use of PhDs from unaccredited universities. Of course they were. July 14th, 1972, the New York Times published an article titled, Six at School Lack Accredited PhDs. And in it they wrote, one of the largest group therapy training schools in the city is operating with a number of faculty school lack accredited PhDs. And in it they wrote, one of the largest group therapy training schools in the city is operating with a number of faculty and advisory council members who are listed as having advanced degrees from non-accredited and in at least one case,

non-existent universities. Oh, fuck yeah. I'll see your non-accredited doctorate and raise you a doctorate. I literally printed out myself after a few hours with some scissors, some paste, and a copier. Gro listed five faculty members with PhDs from Philathea College, a former Bible school in London, Ontario, Canada that is not accredited. Not around anymore, I don't think. It seems like this place closes doors shortly after the Times and other publications went after them for just handing out doctorates all willy-nilly. They definitely based on some articles changed their name from Philatia College to Philatia Seminary. Did that in 1972. H.

Edwin Smith, Groh's founder and executive director, claimed he had a doctorate from an unaccredited and unnamed college in Florida. A few faculty members did have degrees from some accredited universities, but what degrees Groh did not say. Bachelor's degrees maybe. And these faculty members taught students how to build behavioral sciences programs to deal with emotional and social problems. Awesome.

Groh also claimed that they were approved by five unnamed academies and associations whose members and founders were connected with Groh. Ed Smith agreed in an interview with the Times that several of his faculty members degrees were from unaccredited institutions but insisted that did not diminish the value of the school. Mildred Smith, Mildred's last name at the time, the administrative director said that many of the school's roughly 350 teachers had no degrees at all. She was quoted as saying, we hire people to teach her on the basis of their ability. Oh, fuck yeah!

We start doing that with medical doctors, too. And if the right things are going, I wouldn't be surprised if that were to happen the next five, ten years. Fuck medical school. Fuck residency. What a waste of time. Just hire doctors by some subjective kind of eyeball test of their ability Alright, bud. How steady is your hand? Oh That's nice. That's real steady

Look at that blood over there. Hi. Ha look at that blood you feel squeamish No Alright cowboy You're killing this shit Do you know how to use a phone though? Can you call a pharmacy? Can you tell them to give somebody a Z-Pak? Can you pronounce penicillin? How about cholesterol?

What about, can you say correctly a little bit of a diabetes? Diabetes. Oh shit! You nailed it! Not gonna lie my friend, you just fucking crushed it. How quickly can you walk away from your current job at Jiffy Lube and become doctor? You are doctor now. Oh, fucking tight.

The New York Times found that Grow was registered as a privately owned trade school with a license for occupational training and that graduates of Grow earned certificates in five categories with different costs assigned to each. A group worker certificate, for example, cost 1800 bucks and a training supervisor certificate cost 5000, which is good money. In the early 70s, 5000, 1972, that's equivalent to almost 40,000 today.

Grow reported that in the summer of 1972, they had 363 students attending group sessions to learn how to conduct their own therapy clinics, oh boy, classes or workshops. But the certificates their students paid for, not recognized by literally any New York state agency, or most any agency in the world. Right? These students got conned. How pissed would you be if you attended classes, classes you paid for, got a degree? And then later you get in trouble, you know, with the state for doing something like practicing therapy without a degree, without the proper training. Groh tried to defend themselves by reporting that the American Academy of Behavioral Science approved their training methods and this academy, this esteemed academy, was located near Thomas A. Edison College in Palm Beach, Florida, where Ed Smith claimed he earned a PhD in 1970. But then

a Miami reporter who investigated this quote unquote academy, you know like this, described it as quote, an answering service with a letter drop. It was a fucking diploma mill. Just a just a random address. Some fucking strip mall. They didn't they literally didn't even offer classes. You just paid them a set fee and they sent you a cool piece of paper that looked like a degree. Gro also claimed to be approved by the American Association of Clinic Physicians and Surgeons. That sounds very prestigious. But it was discovered that the address for this association was just a fucking address for one of the members from the Gro Advisory Council.

Like their home address. Total lie. There is no such association. The American Institute for Group Counseling, another approver of Groh's methods, also had an address that was just the home address of an advisory council member. Another lie. Another made-up institution. Mildred, of course, like grifters who get caught grifting, always seem to do, played the victim. She claimed that there was a, quote, very dirty smear campaign going on against psychotherapy groups like GROW.

How dare people report the truth? How dare people go after fake therapy groups? Oh yeah there should have been a smear campaign. This fucking group deserved to be smeared. July 14th 1972 the Department of Consumer Affairs now called the Bureau of Consumer Protection decided to investigate GROW to see if the school was fraudulently using PhDs from unaccredited universities. New York State Attorney General was searching for violations of the education law and fraud. The New York Times reported that Grow was trying to set up a network of group therapy clinics run by Grow graduates called Neighborhood Centers for Human Development. The CHDs offered programs

ranging from $25 to $225 for various retreats and activities. Ed Smith was working on getting the CHD incorporated. July 23rd the New York Times now reported on a grow partner. I love this. Indiana Northern University in Gaston, Indiana. You've never heard of it. It was a self-accredited university. So another fake institution that literally held their classes in a few rooms in a cheap motel. Oh, that's fucking delicious. Just an FYI, if your school's campus is a Motel 6, You're not really in school. It's so sad and hilarious to me. Oh, so you you live in the dorms this year? Yeah. Oh, which one? You know that super 8 by the truck stop on the edge of town? Yeah. Yeah. So is it near there? No, it no it is there.

My dorm room is a single with a queen bed and a second floor and I take most of my classes in either the breakfast Room by the lobby or near the shallow end of the indoor pool Holy shit, Indiana Northern University founder and president So fucking ridiculous to me Indiana Northern University founder and president Gordon da Costa Oh Professor da Costa I see As he fucking checks in somebody at the motel. Had set up the accrediting commission for specialized colleges in 1969.

Philathea fake college was accredited by this fake accrediting commission of specialized colleges. Just a network of bullshitters all working together. Oh, in fall of 1973, Jeff Gross meets Mildred Gordon, and the two will form the bond that will lead to the foundation of GONNESS. Jeff will meet with Esquire writer David Gauvy. David Gauvy Herbert in November of 2021 for an interview. We got a lot of his quotes from this interview. In the fall of 1973, Jeff was a 19 year old student in Arizona State. Described as quote, tall and lanky with a melon scoop of kinky hair almost handsome but hopelessly sheltered. It was a party school and Jeff did not know how to party. Jeff grew up in Denver in a

middle-class Jewish home said his brother was a smart one he was a social one. His parents wanted him to get married take over his dad's auto parts company. David Gross told Esquire he may have gotten a message that you're going to be part of the family business. You're not smart enough to be your own person. Jeff decided he would go to Arizona State for college. 1973 was a sophomore year. He was a year younger than most of his classmates. He had moved on to or into an apartment complex full of other students. He decided to go to the apartment complex's pool one day to hang out with some other people his own age. He spotted a pretty teenage girl named Patty. She was 16, three years his junior.

She told him that her mom and stepdad had sent her out west and were on their way over. They would be in Arizona in a few weeks and Patty liked Jeff, was flirting hard, and they will sleep together shortly after this meeting and now Jeff is no longer a virgin. But also, Patty will be the gateway to the woman who will pretty much ruin his life. So mixed bag, sleeping with Patty. Patty told Jeff all about her home life. She said that her mom, Mildred Gordon, was the leader of the so-called Human Potential

Movement. How lofty. She said that Mildred and her stepdad, Ed Smith, ran Group Relations Ongoing Workshop, aka GROW grow in the upper west side of Manhattan Jeff didn't know that the year before the New York Attorney General's office had investigated grow for misrepresentation those PhDs we went over that Mildred and Ed had been accused of running a diploma mill and charging students up to $5,000 for certificates not recognized

by the state not recognized by fucking anyone outside of a couple of motel rooms in Indiana. When Mildred arrived in Arizona, she invited Jeff over for dinner and soon the two were having quote art therapy sessions together, whatever that means. And one day when Mildred saw Jeff thrown a frisbee without a shirt, she called him a Greek god. She's 51 and he's 19 here. And that's not creepy at all, right? Not even a little bit concerning. Totally healthy and normal. And on the up and up for a 51 year old woman to flirt with her 16 year old daughter's 19 year old boyfriend.

I mean if this was inappropriate, Mildred would be the first to know and the first to tell you. She is the leader of the human potential movement for fuck's sake. Jeff said that Mildred also described their chance meeting as a miracle. Shortly after Jeff meets Mildred, Mildred's daughter Patty's girlfriend moved into Jeff's apartment to get the fuck away from her stepdad mom and she warned him that her mom was nuts and a bad person. She warned him saying stay away from my mother but Jeff didn't listen. He couldn't resist Mildred's charms. He wrote in his diary, I suddenly had my own personal life expert slash mentor slash sex counselor to help me. Ugh, how weird is it to have your girlfriend's mom as

your sex counselor? That is so gross. What the fuck were they saying in their sessions? And how did it feel Jeff when you were eating my teenage daughter's pussy? Did you like it? Did you enjoy it when my teen daughter sucked your dick? Is my daughter serving your sexual needs Jeff? Is she a generous lover Jeffrey? Yeah, Mildred's fucked up By the end of 1973 Mildred was working as some sort of management consultant in Arizona And in addition to her daughter running away from home to avoid her her husband Ed has left her Guessing he didn't love how she was you know doing shit and like hitting on her daughter's boyfriend and giving her daughter's

boyfriend sex guidance. Mildred was now going through a divorce smoking four packs of cigarettes a day following year 1974 when she is now 52. She is maybe diagnosed, I don't know if I trust her, with a malignant lung tumor you know which would likely be due to a lifetime of chain smoking. She said she then tried something called biofeedback therapy, which uses the brain to heal the body. And within a few short weeks, this tumor fucking gone! And a case of colitis she had. Get out of here, colitis! You just got biofeedbacked! I don't trust her. We have no documentation regarding her ever having this tumor, just her word. And she will use this claim to sell her biofeedback training to others.

I think it's just part of her next grift. A grift that will become goddess. Biofeedback therapy is defined as a technique that uses sensors to monitor bodily functions like heart rate, muscle tension, skin temperature. Providing real-time feedback to help individuals learn to consciously control these involuntary bodily processes, often with the goal of managing stress, pain, or other health conditions. Essentially, it teaches you to influence your body's automatic responses through conscious effort. The Cleveland Clinic and others esteemed accredited scientific institutions describe it as an alternative therapy, which is their nice way of saying, some of this might just be a bunch of quackery. And I'm not saying by the way that only accredited treatments are worthwhile

or that only accredited education is worthwhile. What I am saying is that when you don't have proper oversight, when there is a lack of proper study, you do run a much greater risk of being taken advantage of than you do if you study at a place that is accredited for example, or try a therapeutic or medical technique that you know has been properly studied to find out how effective it actually is. And I realize that sometimes you know study the accredited techniques also end up being harmful or later discredited but not as often as rogue wackadoodle unstudied shit. And I should note that both the Cleveland Clinic and the Mayo

Clinic arguably America's two top medical agencies they do report that certain biofeedback machines administered by professionals have been proven to be beneficial to lower stress, you know, to lower blood pressure by putting people more in touch with their body's responses to certain stimuli, for example. So I'm not even saying that biofeedback is bad because it's not. It's just something that Mildred used to manipulate people with. The Mayo Clinic says be aware that some items might be falsely sold as biofeedback machines. Also, some people who teach biofeedback may not be certified or have enough training to help you. Yet seems as if regulation regarding biofeedback varies wildly from state to state today,

which means that back in the 1970s, I bet it was completely unregulated when Mildred was touting its supposed virtues, which was, you know, great for her. Anecdotally poking around the web, a lot of people firmly believe in his benefits. I bet it does have benefits when done correctly, but also again sounds like a great area for grift since anyone can claim to be a biofeedback expert with little or no formal training. Now let's leave 1974. return to 1973 for a bit. I was getting a bit ahead of myself there. That year, Mildred Gordon headed to San Francisco to study biofeedback,

which became the basis for her feedback learning method. So she starts studying biofeedback in 1973, then magically gets a tumor and colitis in 1974. That biofeedback magically heals quickly, feels pretty convenient. She claimed to work with the California Biofeedback Society, another non-accredited institution. Oh, who's surprised? To develop biofeedback applications for education.

She said she developed a way to apply biofeedback to learning the English language. Biofeedback was used to help students lower their nervous system arousal if they made a mistake. So she said. Through her biofeedback training, she will meet the other four people who will become the founders of GONNESS. But again, really, she's the founder.

She's the brain, she's the grifter, the woman behind the curtain running the shit show. 1974, Mildred created the Foundation for Feedback Learning, GONNESS' 501c3 nonprofit. Also in 1974, Jeff graduates college in Arizona a year early after he'd already started college early when he was just 17, so now he's only 20. And he and Mildred's daughter, Patty, break up. And he follows his fucking now ex-girlfriend's mom up to San Francisco, which is weird.

There, Jeff, Mildred, and some other unspecified individuals live together in an apartment on Haight Street. Jeff will claim one of the things he helped Mildred with right after he showed up was getting her laid. Uh-huh. Now helping his ex-girlfriend's mom, his guru, get laid. He said he, quote, escorted Mildred to meet men for sex. Not weird at all to have the young man

who just broke up with your daughter, quote, escort you to meet men for sex. I'm sure when Patti heard about this, she was thrilled. I mean, how could you not be? I mean, really, who wouldn't want their ex to escort their mom around to meet up with some fuckboys? I'm gonna say this right now. If my mom and stepdad ever break up, I really hope my ex wife will do the right thing and get my mom some fresh hard dick. In return for helping her get laid Mildred played wingwoman for Jeff in some local bars and then I'm sure he shared details about his sexual escapades with her later. Through all this

dick and puss-huttin Mildred and Jeff the dynamic duo well they start to make some new friends around town. One of these friends was 22 year old Bruno Crochtailer. He was a guy who had deserted from the Swiss military described in sources as handsome and troubled with a case of agoraphobia and an abusive father. And agoraphobia is defined as extreme or irrational fear of entering open or crowded places, of leaving one's own home, or of being in places with which escape is difficult. Another friend was Jorge, or he went by George usually, Canada. Age not listed, but I believe he was also in his early 20s. He described as a Spaniard with dwarfism who according to Jeff

quote, as a boy had perfected the art of playing people off of each other in an effort to deflect from his disability. So possibly manipulative and conniving. Got it. George apparently liked Mildred because she was blunt and honest. She always said what she felt and if she had an issue with someone she confronted them. The third new member was a woman named Susan Grossman, described as a leftist medical student who was still finding herself. Mildred encouraged Jeff and Susan to get together and they did. I mean how could they not? When the leader of the human potential movement tells you to fuck, well you fuck them.

Meanwhile Mildred and Ed's divorce was finalized, now she became obsessed with Bruno. I bet she did. She's 52, horny as shit, he's 22 and handsome, with I'm guessing no shortage of boners and some emotional problems. Bruno and Mildred often sit up late into the night to talk about his life. Bruno called the attention intoxicating, I'd call it manipulative. And the two quickly started to sleep together. Meanwhile, Jeff was working on getting his master's degree in social work. The article in Esquire doesn't say where from. His thesis was a study of the apartment

he lived on, lived in on Haight Street. He wrote about a proposed network of cooperative businesses that utilized feedback learning, Mildred's new therapy technique. Jeff spent eight pages trying to define feedback learning in his thesis but had to add the disclaimer neither the learner, the teacher, or anyone else at this point in time really understand how it happens. Yeah, no one really understood what she was teaching because it was nonsense. Five years later, 1979, this group travels to New York City and moves into an apartment on 6th Street on the Lower East Side. Miller had decided she wasn't a fan of San Francisco in the end.

She called the city, quote, too mellow and passive. She'd been promised a management consulting project back in New York at a company called BEA, a brokerage and investment firm, and she took it. That was one reason for the move. According to New York Magazine, another reason was that the core group all got really drunk one night and quote, Realized that what they had together was like a family or a marriage and they decided they needed more space to grow their community. However, the group didn't have much money they needed to expand. For example, according to Jeff, they were so broke around the time they moved that all five of them would sometimes share a single

ice cream cone for dessert. Mildred's life not going super well at this point. To start off 1979, she's 56 years old. She's broke. She's shown in an apartment with her 26 year old boyfriend. Her daughter's ex-boyfriend Jeff, who's now 24. Jeff's girlfriend Susan, age not listed, but she described one source as being in her 20s in 1980, as is Bruno. So she's a 56 year old woman living with four 20-somethings, sleeping with one of them and providing sexual guidance to at least an additional one of them.

She's a fraud who built up a therapeutic business based on fake credentials, and she's estranged from her only child, Jeff's ex-girlfriend, Patty. Mildred is a fucking creepy middle-aged loser. But she catches her stride here. When she and her crew arrive back in New York City, they tour some houses in Manhattan, find them to be too expensive, they start looking around Staten Island. The core group decides on finding a place in the Tompkinsville neighborhood of northeast Staten Island because they felt like that neighborhood, affordable, working class, ethnically diverse, would be accepting of a group of diverse adults living together. In 1979, the Corps group purchased a house at 129 Corison Avenue, moved to Tompkinsville,

Staten Island. Not sure how they bought it if they were so broke. If I had to guess, Mildred talked one of her four roomies into borrowing money from some family member or something. Also, homes were relatively cheap in Tompkinsville in the 1970s. In 1979, the average house, average family home, cost around forty thousand dollars, and they only paid forty three thousand dollars. And so they would have just needed to have put twenty percent down, so they might have gotten this home for less than five grand out of pocket, which is fucking wild. Jeff, Bruno, Susan, George, Mildred all now began to live what they thought were their dream lives. Esquire wrote, Jeff, Bruno, Susan, and George were all in their 20s drinking and exploring dream work, yoga, hypnosis, and sex.

Cult, cult, cult, but also sounds pretty fun. The article continues with, initially Mildred was just part of the crew, albeit three decades older and eager to play therapist to her young roommates. So weird. But within a few years she moved to establish order. These four now formed what became known as the core group. They now would pool all their money together, hold group votes for spending decisions, they opened a secondhand store called Everything Goes, provide jobs to their new members. They will eventually own two stores called Everything Goes. Everything Goes Furniture and Clothing at 17 Brook Street. Talked about that earlier. And Everything Goes Book Cafe

at 208 Bay Street. And again that one is the place that has the performance space. They got upcoming concerts right now. By concerts I mean an acoustic, you know, someone playing an acoustic guitar in front of like three or four people drinking coffee. These businesses are also in Tompkinsville, just a few blocks away from their residences. Soon after getting settled in, the group quickly has almost a dozen residents. Each morning they'll meet for breakfast in a feedback learning session. And during one of these early sessions, which which was taped Mildred told her boyfriend Bruno Ultimately, my purpose is to brainwash you to change your thinking to my thinking

little moment of honesty for Mildred there Neighbors soon thought they were religious cult a little bit freaked out, but then they came to be pretty well liked this group President of the Tompkinsville Improvement Association John McCauley told the York Times, At first I thought they were a bunch of leftover hippies. The ones that didn't settle on Laguna Beach. In fact, they're an incredible asset to the neighborhood. They're the kind of people who lead by example. Alright. In 1992, mostly because of Mildred's encouragement, Jeff and Susan get married.

Jeff's father was elated because Sarah was a Jewish and a doctor. He purchased a $133,000 house for them on Corston Avenue which will become a new group house. Must have been a lot nicer house than the first one they bought because it cost three times as much three years later. The group will just keep purchasing more houses on the streets whenever they came on the market adding around ten members with each new house. Jeff will say he eventually spent more than $400,000 on real estate and other group expenses. And by him, I mean his dad and him. Gannas, they won't start calling themselves Gannas until

the early 90s, quickly amasses a waiting list of people eager to join this new community. Bruno, who's in charge of construction, is building bedrooms as fast as he can get people moved in. Jeff wrote in his diary, there was a magical feeling between us, the weird chemistry of the emerging forested enclave on a Staten Island hillside with Manhattan off in the distance and us, a group coming together to construct its own world. In 1986, the core group met 23 year old Rebecca Johnson from Virginia. Mildred Bruno, Susan and Jeff had

taken Mildred's car to Ontario for an intentional community conference and Becky, as she went by, was also at this conference. Becky was a shy girl, but the group liked her. Mildred invited her back to Gones. Jeff had a feeling that Becky might be too sensitive for feedback learning, but Mildred believed she would fit right in. Becky literally hopped in their car, rode with them back to Staten Island and just moved on in. She had no job, no money, but she was given a job at the thrift store. And we'll hear more about Becky a lot more actually later in the timeline. Back in Ghana, the feedback learning sessions were becoming more structured. The Canadians started carrying around their quote problem books to record their days and how they reacted.

These books also came with a 23 page instruction manual that listed out a bunch of different codes. Some of the codes were DE for being defensive, CL for clitoris, and MSDP for dire predictions of doom. How much are they talking about clits when they couldn't just write out clitoris? They're like, nah, just put CL. Gotta shorten it, man.

You can't, you're gonna be writing about clits, you know, two They're like, nah, just put CL. Gotta shorten it, man. I can't... You're gonna be writing about clits, you know, two, three hundred times a day, these problem books. A lot of fucking problems around clits. We gotta shorten it. We gotta abbreviate it. I wish I could get a hold of one of their problem books and see what they were writing. Becky's Problem Book Entry, March 7th, 1986. Problem! Book entry, March 7th, 1986. Problem. Mr. Mr.'s broken wings video popped up on MTV after lunch today. Richard Page is too hot.

So hot, he hurts my CL with lustful throbbing. Problem. After dinner, I went for a walk and passed by the movie theater. Saw a poster for the new Sylvester Stallone flick, Cobra. Holy shit, a sly looking better than ever. Looks better than he did in Rocky. My CL almost exploded.

Problem. Before I came to my room to write in this book and go to bed, Mildred demanded I rub her feet again. She's always hitting on me. She smells like my grandma. My CL shrunk and got so dry, I genuinely worried it would crumble into dust. Dust, I tell you, MSDP.

Core member Bruno said he sometimes went through as many as 10 of these journals a month. I'm just writing about his girlfriend Mildred's clit. Mildred, who is now in her mid 60s, is teaching a lot of sex therapy and directing a lot of sex education sessions for members who are mostly in their 20s. So that's cool. She taught group members about foreplay, how to maintain erections for longer. Doesn't say exactly how she taught this, but use your imagination. She allegedly was giving one-on-one sex lessons as well, uh-huh, and you know, fucking a whole bunch of members. Cult, cult, cult! Or just, you know, she's a smooth talker and a manipulator. She reportedly frequently encouraged people to have sex with each other, even if they didn't want to.

Saying that having sex with someone you found unattractive was a quote, learning experience. Yeah, yeah, sure is. I've done that and you quickly learn it's not fun to sleep with someone you're not sexually attracted to. Monogamy was heavily discouraged for Ganesans. Well, for everyone except for Mildred's boyfriend, Bruno. Seriously. Mildred forbade him to sleep with anyone else. She can fuck other people though, but not Bruno.

Seems fair. Ganas wasn't marketed as a group sex community, but it was marketed as a free love community. So same thing. Free love for everyone except for Bruno. People were open about their crushes, sexual issues, jealousy, and their feedback learning sessions. Mildred allegedly pressured a man named Alfonso, no last name given, into sleeping with Becky because she thought Becky was quote young and inexperienced, needed to be taught. Alfonso later told Esquire it was very difficult to say no, let's put it that way. Mildred had a lot of control over the whole situation. After that incident,

Becky turned against the community and she wasn't the only one. Others were not always happy at Gannis. Despite being a cooperative community, talking was discouraged at work, except for speaking to customers over some intercom system. Sex was encouraged, but having kids, absolutely forbidden. Susan, Jeff's wife, wanted was encouraged, but having kids? Absolutely forbidden. Susan, Jeff's wife, wanted a baby, but Mildred told her she should not have children. Jeff would tell Esquire, quote, Mildred's point was our baby is this and this as in Ghanas. Jeff was still all in with Ghanas though. He still admired Mildred, wanted to be as close to her as possible. He followed her around, took notes on his shortcomings. This fucking idiot, poor bastard. He claimed he was

waiting for a personal breakthrough. He's waiting years now. On his birthdays Jeff received a full day of feedback learning and loved it! Oh, criticize me more! Everyone met up for brunch. As I mentioned earlier, it recorded a feedback learning session where they told Jeff everything they thought was wrong with him. What a fun birthday present to give someone criticism Happy birthday to you. Holy shit your breath stinks go see a dentist use fucking slob piece of shit Happy birthday to Jeff. I find you kind of dumb. Please don't give me advice again I hope you throw yourself off a bridge

Hey Jeff, happy birthday, I'd rather kill myself than fuck you Not sure what you do with that feedback, but I meant it or I mean it, you know, whatever According to that Esquire article group found Jeff beyond repair The birthday boy he's lost cause but then towards the end of a session, Mildred would find a glimmer of hope for Jeff. And then Jeff would keep these VHS tapes of him being verbally abused and rewatch them later. He's just a masochist. In 1989, Becky quits working in the thrift store and stops contributing to finances.

She has had it. She's become negative. And she spread her negativity around. So the group chooses to evict her out of Gones. They take a vote. Becky is gone. According to Jeff Gross, she was just causing trouble everywhere. The commune asked her to leave. We thought that was the end of the story. Nope. Some Gones members will later say that Rebecca Johnson was troubled from the very beginning. That she may have had romantic feelings, unrequited feelings for Jeff Gross, who was still married to Susan. That same year group member Jorge Calvo, another Spaniard recruited by George, who had been

there for almost ten years now, tells everyone he's leaving. And the announcement not received well. He told Esquire, I was the Antichrist in just one dinner. Group member Alfonso also wanted to leave. He said he felt like, quote less and less of a person, less and less capable to think and soon he would leave. Alfonso will move in with Jorge in Manhattan. He didn't have much to show for his time in Ghana's only 25 grand for over eight years of work. These two guys then returned home to Spain after spending a couple months in Manhattan. 1994 Rebecca Johnson shows back up. Becky's back bitches! Becky asked the group for a second chance. Jeff and the other core group members objected but Mildred overruled them all.

Because it's not a community when it comes to decision-making, it's Mildred. And she allowed her back in. And that decision created a lot of tension between Mildred and the OG members of the group. In the summer of 1995 Mildred arranges a group wedding. Oh fun! It's between Jeff, Susan, and an unnamed second couple. Mildred helped Jeff write his vows, part of which read, marriage is a sexual contract unto or into the foreseeable future. Jeff was now 40 years old, and he actually didn't want his wife and him to marry his other couple. But you know, Mildred told him to. He was starting to resent the life he once loved. Feedback sessions were no longer helpful if they ever were. They made him upset. Mildred was starting

to bully him, calling him things like a wannabe alpha male during feedback sessions. Jeff wrote a note to Mildred telling her that he didn't feel like he's making progress anymore and she responded with a 14 page letter. Jesus! And she wrote in it, at one point, I don't really know how to reassure you. Anyway, maybe you're right. Maybe I'm doing damage to you. Jeff was starting to think about life, excuse me, after Gannis now. He'd been running the yearly street festival near the ferry terminal on Staten Island for several years. It was getting popular. People loved it, but he couldn't ever really separate himself from Gannis and just totally enjoy it. For example, when a business group on Staten Island wanted to award him for his civic efforts to appreciate him, Mildred instructed him to give a speech on behalf of Ghanis denouncing capitalism.

And then the core group eventually talked Jeff into stopping his successful festival because it was taking his focus too much away from their group. Jeff's family is getting sick of Ghanis, real sick. They've been sick of it for years but now especially so. They wanted to maintain a relationship with Jeff as much as possible but the core group made that more and more difficult. In September of 1996 Jeff's brother David asked him to go on a road trip with him from Boston to Shreveport Louisiana. He decided to do it and on the drive over to pick Jeff up David told his brother he should consider having children and Jeff said he would love to. He wanted to have kids. But Susan, because of Mildred's comments

about Jeff being a wannabe alpha male, didn't think he'd be a good dad anymore. My god. The group also told Jeff he shouldn't listen to advice from his brother. David later told Esquire it was so clear, he was so brainwashed and mesmerized by Mildred and others who were running the show there. It was like talking to a brick wall. When David showed up at Gannis to take him on the trip, a bunch of the group members criticized him for bullying Jeff decades earlier when they were children. Okay, weirdos. Jeff starts to become more and more sullen, withdrawn now, which leads to Mildred criticizing him even more. Bruno also getting sick of the group. Meanwhile, more and more people are still coming to GONNESS though. Coming for the promise of self-improvement

and community not realizing that some of its founders are fucking sick of it and want to leave. 1996, Becky gets kicked the fuck out of GONNESS again. Get out of here, Becky! Once again, she was not working or contributing to the group's finances in any way. She moved into a housing project on Bay Street where her neighbors will report that she kept to herself and spent most of her time with her cat or working on her computer. So she's uh so she's doing great. Uh neighbor Darren Burton later told the New York Times she never had one friend visit her and all the time she was here. She totally kept to herself. She barely had any furniture. So like I said she's doing great. Life's going very well for her. Nothing to worry about with Becky.

She is totally fine and probably won't come back up in the timeline. Meanwhile, Mildred, who is now 74 years old, has become especially domineering. Mildred's problem book entry, July 14th, 1996. Problem, my C.L. turned 74 today. Bruno doesn't want to flick it anymore. He says the quote, gray forest that surrounds it makes him both sad and limp. Try not to feel DE, or this breaks my CL's heart. Problem!

I'm sick of sleeping with people 30 years younger than me. These people are in their 40s now. It's gross! So old! My CL fears this is all she'll ever have to access now. Trying to get her to see that this is nothing more than an MSDP. Problem! I walked past the movie theater down the street, saw a poster for Sleepers.

Stars Brad Pitt, Kevin Bacon, and Jason Patrick. My CL almost exploded with lust and sadness that she'll likely never taste their flesh. That kinda hurt my throat throat talking like that. But for real She's become especially domineering. She forbids her lover Bruno now from reading just like like in general She's not you're not supposed to read anything not kidding and then when Bruno later defies her no reading edict and Purchases an introduction to macroeconomics textbook OG group member Susan Jeff's wife one who doesn't want to have kids with him because he's not an alpha male

Start screaming to Bruno until he leaves the house and returns a book. So things are going very very well now the goddess Nothing is breaking down in the group. Not at all Bruno now starts photo. This is so sad. Sorry. He starts photocopying books at the library and then he'll hide the pages he's copied in his toolbox. Jesus. Let Bruno read Mildred! Many years later, Bruno will say, One thing education does is it lets you see options. And I didn't see options, I was literally trapped in this view of the world.

By the late 90s, Bruno wants to separate from Mildred. He is so sick, I imagine, with only being allowed to service her old cranky puss at this point. She's in her late 70s, he's in his mid-40s, he's tired of living in a house where so many young people are doing some sex swinging, and he's only allowed to sleep with somebody older than his mom. Problem! I'm not having fun here anymore! Bruno will later claim that Mildred tried to hit him one night in the late 90s. This is maybe the funniest little quick little thing I read about these guys. He said he, so she swings on him and he dodges her swing and then she starts crying and complaining that the strain of her swinging and missing at her age could have killed her. Like she's literally

mad at him for dodging out of the way of her blow, because it could have hurt her. That is a new one. How dare you! How dare you dodge my slap! Are you trying to kill me? I should call the police. I could have fallen and died after not being able to hit you, you son of a bitch.

Get on your knees. Stop reading and start taking care of my CL. Another night, Bruno refused to have sex with her until she agreed to watch the VHS tapes of their feedback sessions and admit she's been a little controlling. How was this his life? Bruno wanted to leave, but he was afraid for financial reasons. He had put all of his money into the group for about 25 years now. He was technically owed hundreds of thousands of dollars based on their equation, how they

decided to pay people who left. But he was was worried that you know they would find some way to fuck him out of that money Bruno and Mildred would eventually separate but well in her late 70s she forbids anyone else in Ghana's from sleeping with him until she finds herself a new sex partner oh boy few months later she starts pressuring David Greenson, a young graduate of Brown University, to be her sex partner. A New Yorker article in 2006 will list Dave's age as 38. So in the late 90s he is in his late 20s and early 30s while she is almost 80. Almost 80 but she's still got it! Oh that Hank and Frodo dick has not faded!

Her CL's biological age, no more than 25! Get it, girl! Uh, no, JK. Don't get it, girl. Uh, she's technically leading these people in a form of therapy sessions. It is so gross and wildly inappropriate that she's also pressuring some of them to fuck her. Uh, by 1998, the group owned six houses on the same street, five commercial buildings nearby. Then in 1998, they purchased a seventh house on the same street. Not sure how those other commercial buildings by the way. Maybe

they had to sell them when some members left. Now they're just paying cash for all this shit. How it's rumored that they have talked a number of members over the years into donating large chunks of money to them. Inheritances, savings account, homes, etc. Doubt they're making a ton from that secondhand bookstore and secondhand clothing and furniture store. Probably more of a tax write-off, those two places, than they are money makers. Around this time, they'll also purchase a dude ranch

in the Catskills that they'll turn into a small resort and conference center. Mildred told the Times, my relationship with these people is so strong, nothing can change that. It might sound Pollyanna-ish, Pollyanna-ish. But if we had to abandon our houses and our business tomorrow, I think we'd all stick together. I doubt it, Mildred. In 1999, Becky's back. Becky's back in town. Becky's back in town. Rebecca Johnson has now filed a $3 million lawsuit against

Ghanis. She accused Jeff Gross of participating in rape and group leaders of forcing members to marry undocumented immigrants. She also claimed she was kicked out for complaining about sexual promiscuity and the risk of STDs. Johnson alleged in her lawsuit that she was ordered to sleep with people with dwarfism and to engage in lesbian sex. I wonder what George Kaneda thought about that. He's the only dwarf for the group as far as I know. He must be like, hey, she's talking about me. Becky also wrote that Mildred's feedback learning was, quote, an unrecognized unorthodox method of behavior modification that employs deceptive, coercive, and dangerous manipulative techniques similar to brainwashing. Yeah, bingo. Becky alleged in her suit that Jeff once stood outside her door while some Bulgarian man raped her. Jeff will deny that allegation.

Mildred and Julia Grieve, George's wife, were the main targets of her lawsuit. Apparently Julia was the woman she was pressured to have sex with. She didn't want her CL anywhere near her mouth. Mildred was being sued basically for posing as a therapist without proper licensing and education, which is fair. The police will investigate Becky's claims of rape and not find evidence. However, what evidence would they have found? It was a he said, she said situation. So who knows what actually happened?

Uh, her suit was eventually dropped. We will hear from Becky again later. 2000, uh, 2001, uh, Mildred and her husband, Dave. Oh, she got that young buck to marry her. They retired to Brighton beach, Brooklyn in 2000. Yeah. In 2001. And where I imagine he does a lot of CL work. The core group purchased her apartment there for her. David was Mildred's fifth husband. I don't have

names for all of them. Several were before her time in Gones. Mildred took out a $40,000 annual salary for herself. Continued returning to the community each week to conduct more feedback learning sessions. She also worked on writing her book, The Theory and Practice of Feedback Learning. I don't know that she ever got it published. What a great loss for humanity. Things changed in Ghanas once Mildred retired. The rose-colored glasses, for many, were lifted off. Corps member Bruno finally left. Problem! Finally realized this is all fucking stupid. Solution! I'm leaving! He withdrew his six-figure payout, toured Europe, and then moved to upstate New York.

Susan, no longer with Jeff, adopted a child from Kazakhstan. Thank God that fucking kid won't have to grow up with a beta male for a dad. George set up a so-called shadow group in another house, borrowed $175,000, used it to purchase a home in Spain. The group also gave a large loan to George's sister to buy more property in Spain. Jeff Gross started up a new street festival, started dating a woman from outside the group. He really began to consider starting a family,

but after 30 years of communal living, he felt like he was terrible with money management and was not sure how to proceed. In 2004, Becky's back again. Oh shit. Rebecca Johnson begins stalking Jeff. The stalking began when Jeff was announcing a musical act on stage at his festival. He heard a female voice in the crowd call out his name. Oh, it was Becky. She took his picture. Then she disappears. Then on Thanksgiving Day, 2004, he finds the words,

Jeff Gross equals rapist and pimp, spray painted across a retaining wall on Corson Avenue near the group's homes. A few weeks later he's jogging notices a car has fallen him. It's fucking Becky. Problem! It's Becky back. It's Becky again. Becky sped ahead of him now slammed on the brakes jumped out of the car took his photo again because of his surprise and angry expression Jeff looked quote oddly menacing according to one article. Becky then started passing out flyers around Tompkinsville with this photo and with a caption he is a career rapist and looked quote oddly menacing according to one article. Becky then started passing out flyers around Tompkinsville with this photo and with a caption, he is a career rapist and a pimp. Do you want this creep in your neighborhood? Becky also made a website dedicated to Jeff being a

piece of shit. He ends up filing an order of protection and soon afterwards Becky is arrested and the Staten Island DA begins to prosecute her on harassment charges. But then the case against her is dropped for unspecified reasons. Next, Jeff gets a restraining order against Becky. It does go through. He had come to believe that she was reading the GONNAS online newsletter, which would provide details about his personal schedule. So he asked the group to start removing that info. So Becky can't follow him, but strangely they won't do that. Jeff then asked for better security and better lighting around the houses. They also won't do that. Jeff then asked for better security and better lighting around the houses.

They also refused to do that. Jeff sent his response, George, excuse me, sent his response to Jeff in an email in August of 2005. Excuse me, George was in Spain at the time. He said there was a landline by his pool if anyone needed to get ahold of him for emergencies. And other Ghanaians told Jeff that he was too worried about other people's opinions.

Okay. Jeff told a journalist for Esquire that he wanted out, but he was afraid to leave, because he was worried that he wouldn't be able to pay all the... or he wouldn't get, you know, like all the money he was owed. He also wanted the group to approve his leaving. He was still addicted to feedback learning despite also resenting it problem. I'm very confused all the time solution How the fuck should I know I'm very confused all the time? Yeah, he's a mess one of the last times Jeff gross saw Becky was at his festival in October of 2005 She was being escorted away by the police for breaking a restraining order Following this the flyers she had been distributing against Ghanis and Jeff suddenly stopped showing up and he thinks it's all over. Oh, it is not

Following spring on May 29 2006 Jeff Gross gets shot and he is convinced that Becky is the shooter Jeff had spent the evening watching the documentary an inconvenient truth in Manhattan. He then drove home to Ganas It was well after dark by this point. He's walking up the steps to the house He was living in when suddenly a shadowy figure pops out of the bushes literally and is pointing a gun at him. Jeff asks the figure, what do you want? No, no, don't do it. The assailant says nothing. He recognizes it is Becky and she fires at him multiple times hitting Jeff in the hip, stomach, arm, and neck. He falls to the ground immediately. The attacker then steps over his body, flees the scene. Mona Herbert, a woman who lived near this Ghana's house, said that she saw a woman standing outside either on the day of

the shooting or the day before wearing a winter coat and scarf despite the weather being warm. Herbert is the one who called the police when she heard Jeff get shot. Despite being shot three times, Jeff was conscious inside the ambulance on the ride to the hospital. He immediately identifies Becky as his shooter. The police tell him to stay away from the community for a while because Becky is still on the run. He had been shot three times with a.380 handgun. Other Ganas members were now shocked and scared.

The shooting also brought a bunch of unwanted negative media attention to the group. Articles are published talking about the group as being a weird sex cult. Jeff flew home to Denver to stay with his family after decades away from home to recover. He said he was ashamed and embarrassed. They had warned him about gonas for years and years and they were right. He goes through months of intense physical therapy, suffers from a bout of transient global amnesia, defined as a sudden temporary episode of memory loss that cannot be attributed to a more common neurological condition such as epilepsy or stroke. He had an old high school classmate teach him how to shoot after he purchased his two handguns for self-defense.

Becky Johnson still on the run, ends up appearing on the TV show America's Most Wanted. Jeff publishes a letter to Becky at the New York Daily News asking her to put an end to this nightmare and he hires a private investigator to assist the NYPD in finding her. A few months later, sometime in the summer of 2006, Ghanis group member Julie Grieve is at home when she receives a call from Becky. Becky read out Julie's bank account number to her and demanded a million dollars in cash. Julie hung up. She didn't call again demanding the money. Julie still did not entertain giving it to her. Days later, June 18, 2007, Becky is arrested while getting off a train in Philadelphia. She had registered a car in her own name and that alerted police to her location.

Then when police searched her apartment, they found an AK-47, about a thousand rounds of ammo, hair dye, 11 different license plates, a bunch of human-shaped targets with a bunch of bullet holes in them. So she's looking pretty innocent, right? Problem! I fucking hate Jeff Gross. Solution, AK-47! July 2007, Becky pled not guilty to attempted murder, assault, and two counts of weapon possession, of illegal weapons possession.

October, she was charged with two counts of grand larceny as well. Jeff wanted to hire a lawyer to pressure the DA to take Rebecca to trial rather than making a plea deal. But when he asked the core group for help, they didn't want to spend the money on a lawyer Mildred wrote to Jeff I guess if anyone could be to blame it would be me both for taking her in and then for kicking her out but I don't feel guilty I tried to help her and I failed thanks Mildred that was great that was very helpful you're the best Jeff saw that his name was still on a gunnest credit card so he said fuck it he just took out a cash advance and

hired an attorney Becky and hired an attorney Becky also hired an attorney who claimed that she was not the shooter But if she was quote Jeff and his parasitic cult of ex hippies and sex weirdos deserved it Again, she was looking very innocent. I doubt she had anything to do with the shooting By October 2007 Jeff core member is kicked out of GNES over disagreements stemming from this shooting. Rebecca's attempted murder trial starts July 25th, 2008. She's facing up to 25 years in prison. The prosecution reveals that Rebecca called group member Julia Grieve, September 20th and October 25th, in 2006, demanded a million dollars from the bank account. In this first extortion call, Rebecca demanded the money. In the second call, she demanded the money, gave him a week to give it to her,

but she didn't make a threat, I guess, like she did in the first call. I don't have a transcript of the phone conversations. And because there was no threat, one of Becky's extortion charges gets dropped. August 1st, 2008. Becky's defense attorney was Stanford Bandeli. His strategy was to cast doubt on Jeff's testimony. He found another witness to the shooting, or alleged witness, who described hearing gunshots and seeing a man flee from the scene. Defense also noted that it may not have been bright enough on the stairs for Jeff to see

the shooter clearly, so he couldn't know it was Becky. Jeff will testify that he did see her clearly. She was standing a few feet away from him. She was 100% the person who shot him. On August 4, 2008, Rebecca Johnson is found not guilty. She is acquitted of second degree attempted murder, assault, and attempted grand larceny. A larceny, larceny, there we go.

And the jury had deliberated for less than five hours. Problem, Jeff's would be murdered, just got the opportunity to shoot him again. Solution, run Jeff, run! Rebecca was acquitted because the gun Jeff was shot with was never found there was no forensic evidence linking her to the shooting Jeff Gross was also the only eyewitness who saw the shooter up close prosecutors were not allowed to present the AK-47 in a thousand rounds of ammo

evidence or the human-shaped targets found in her apartment evidence because of a technicality something about the search warrant they use being defective in some way so that. Rebecca Johnson's mother Margaret told the AP that her daughter now planned to leave the state and get into therapy. DA Daniel M. Donovan issued a statement saying, while we respect the verdict of the jury, it is my belief that we presented a clear and compelling case which satisfied each element of the crimes for which Rebecca Johnson was indicted. Jeff Groh said he was quote stunned, disbelief, shock. The evidence is

overwhelming. I was the eyewitness. She was 10 feet from me. I said to the court, I said to the jury, I immediately recognized it was Rebecca Johnson. She had a gun pointed at me. I said, please don't shoot. I knew exactly who it was and I knew who it was as she climbed over me. And that is fucking crazy and scary that you could literally watch somebody who's been stalking you, shoot you from 10 feet away and then see them get acquitted at the trial. Edward W.

Hayes, a Ghanis member, said he was surprised by the verdict. He said, quote, she lay in wait for this guy. The Ghanis community will continue to lead the peaceful and productive lives that they always have and will not criticize a verdict reached by their fellow citizens." Well how meaningless. On October 2008 Jeff now filed a 20 million dollar lawsuit against Rebecca Johnson for shooting at him. Well not shooting at him, shooting him. The following month Jeff sued Ghanis and more than 12 members for his money. He claimed he was owed more than a million dollars. Jeff's lawyer Mark Gimpleple, told the website Staten Island Live, the people who ran Ganas were callously

indifferent to Mr. Gross's safety because they were involved in a financial dispute with him. That indifference facilitated the attack that nearly took his life. Next year, in 2009, Jeff filed another suit against Ganas, alleging the group had failed to implement the security measures he requested before the shooting. His lawyer friend told him it wasn't worth it, but he was determined because he wanted to hold Ganas accountable. Jeff originally sued Ganas. He ended up suing Ganas not just for a million, but for $20 million. In his suit, he alleged that the core group refused to install security lighting and cameras around 127 Corson Avenue.

And they continued to make his...oh, this was like... was like sorry the second suit I confused myself for a second this suit is 20 million the first suit was for a million and money he was owed this is 20 million for not making the place safe not putting security lighting not putting up cameras continuing to make his schedule public in the weekly newsletter after he requested they do not do that and then Jeff in the group will settle later for an undisclosed sum his ex-wife Susan in the current core group for goodness now stopped do that and then Jeff and the group will settle later for an undisclosed sum. His ex-wife Susan and the current core group Forgonis now stopped talking to him completely. Five years later, June 9th 2014 a jury finds Becky responsible for

shooting Jeff, defamation and harassment and they award him 1.3 million dollars. Time around or this time around in the civil trial jurors were allowed to hear about the gun the AK-47, and the ammo, and the targets found in Johnson's home. The civil trial judge allowed the evidence because, quote, Jeff Gross shouldn't be penalized for the government's error. Bingo! However, Jeff still has not received any money from this verdict that we know of.

Becky denied shooting Jeff. She said she was in Philadelphia, but did not present a good alibi to verify that. She also testified about her time in Ghana's and green card marriages during this lawsuit against her. She said that when she was asked to marry a Bulgarian she refused. She said, I made it clear to him I was not going to marry him for a green card. They were pressuring me and calling me names and turning the commune against me. Jeff was arranging for me to be raped. Then she also said she was promised a sexual relationship with a different dude. But that never happened and then she became disgruntled.

So that's weird. She's calling Jeff a rapist because he supposedly is pressuring her to shack up with a Bulgarian dude now. But also, she's angry and leaves the group because they won't pressure or they can't pressure some other guy hard enough into fucking her. Jeff Gross testified that Becky was kicked out because she was behind on her rent. Rebecca admitted to posting the flyers calling Jeff a rapist and a pimp. She said, I believe Staten

Islanders have the right to know who they are and what they are up to. I didn't know what to do, but warn people about an outrageous and dangerous condition that needs to be changed. And my experience, it was my experience. And I didn't think there was anything wrong with telling people about it. Jeff told the New York Daily News after the verdict, finally some justice and some closure. She tried to assassinate my career and reputation and with six bullets she tried to take my life. Not sure why he says six bullets there because at another source he had said that she fired four times but who knows whatever. January 4th 2015 Mildred Gordon passes away at the age 92. She died from an overdose. Overdosed on too much young hard cock.

Boom! Went out like a legend. Girl! No. No, she moved back into the main Ghana's house towards the end of her life. In her final year, she suffered from dementia. Over 200 Ganasians and friends from Grow show up to her memorial service. Jeff wanted to go, but Dave told Jeff he shouldn't because of bad blood.

Bruno did attend, as well as Mildred's daughter, Patty. And apparently Patty was the only one at her service who spoke negatively about her mom. What she said was not listed in sources. Problem! My mom was a maniac who added so much unnecessary harm to so many people's lives. Solution! You're looking at it. She's dead. As mentioned previously previously Jeff Gross spoke to Esquire in November of 2021 after almost 30 years in Ghana's he said he all he had to show from it were scars from some bullet wounds PTSD and a 1.3

million dollar settlement that he may never see but he actually also did get an undisclosed summer from them to this day Jeff Denies being in a cult he says that what he went through happens to plenty of people he believes it it's, you know, he is like millions of other people who get stuck in various life situations that they don't know how to get out of. Jeff didn't really break away from the group when he left. He still wrote letters to Mildred in her final year, still visited her for dinner from time to time. He wanted her to tell him how he could get his life back on track. He said, I still think maybe I was trying to make some sense of things, holding on to the belief still that she would shed light on things that I was struggling with.

Oh, Jeff, you lost soul. Susan, George, many other Ghanaians, however, refused to speak to Jeff and still don't. Jeff regrets never having kids of his own, but he enjoys spending time with his nieces and nephews now. He still talks to Bruno, says that he has forgiven Mildred and Becky, is working on forgiving himself. He told Esquire, there had to be some kind of virus going around that space that infected all of us, including Mildred. Maybe she was the spreader of it, but she got infected somehow, right? I don't know.

Yeah, he still sounds very confused. She was a grifter, Jeff. Mildred was grifting people for years before she ever met you. And she took you for a ride. She was never a real therapist. She should have never been in charge of anyone's mental well-being. Jorge Calvo now works in a film post-production role, apparently is crushing it. He's married, has two kids. Alfonso retired from a career as an executive with a Spanish oil company a while back. He's married with three kids. Bruno was working on his bachelor's degree as of 2021. He's married with three kids. Bruno was working on his bachelor's degree as of 2021.

Also selling paintings through Sachi, an online art gallery. He was married. Dave Greenson runs an anti-racism consulting firm. He did not speak to Esquire. George Caneda also refused to speak to Esquire. He lives in Spain. Apparently, he tweets a lot about cryptocurrency and vaccine skepticism.

And who knows what the fuck he's up to, other than that. Susan Grossman, the current leader of GANAS, she still hosts information sessions for prospective members. Still running, it seems, that bullshit biofeedback Mildred taught her. And I'm guessing it's still not really helping anyone. The group, as I mentioned, still owns, operates those two everything goes shops on Staten Island. The Book Cafe, as I record this now, is having a sale. Oh, buy two books, get one free right fucking now Also coming up fast this February 25th from 7 to 8 30 p.m. They will teach you how to play banisher

Banisher is made by hypothesis a local New York game maker probably owned by a goddess member It is quote a psycho spiritual board game for liberating humanity from sinister forces Doesn't even sound a little bit culty. Play for free or pay the suggested $5 donation. No one will be turned away except for Becky. Now Becky's probably not welcome. And probably not Jeff either. And I'm guessing after this episode not myself. But anyone listening? Oh give it a try. Unless Becky or Jeff you're listening then you know I already said that you can't stuff. Good job, soldier. You've made it back. Barely.

Okay. So as God as a Cult, I don't think so, actually. I think it's an intentional community. I also think it's a good place to go, you know, fuck your life up. I think the idea of their feedback learning system created by a blatant grifter where you are criticized almost daily by people with no proper therapeutic training is irresponsible at best and dangerous at worst. But it's a free country.

I don't think it's a cult because they don't pressure you to cut off ties with your family. They don't have a charismatic leader who claims to be all knowing, not even Mildred when she was alive, claim to be all knowing. They don't engage in apocalyptic thinking. They don't try to make you fear the outside world. They do not isolate you. They don't even really shun those who leave, not generally. They've accepted members gifts of money or property, but that doesn't

make them a cult. They do pay people out when they leave. They took Becky back at one point. Jeff kept in touch with various members after he was kicked out. So not a cult. They're just, I don't know, they're just weird. A handful of people in the 70s bought the bullshit that Mildred was selling and decided that, you know, they all wanted to share that bullshit with some others, others that they live with, others they often slept with, others who wanted to live a, you know, non-conventional life.

I actually overall like the concept of intentional living. It's pretty fascinating. I mean, I personally don't want to go live in any of these intentional living, you know, communes or co-housing situations, whatever, but I wouldn't think that you were crazy if you wanted to. And if I wasn't married, didn't have kids, I don't know, who knows? If you want to leave a smaller ecological footprint than your current living situation allows, if you want to see what it's like to abandon monogamy,

and a certain level of property ownership, if you want to live out in the woods or wherever with like-minded folks, raise some fucking goats, tend to a big vegetable garden, dance under the moonlight, and revere Gaia, do yoga, fuck old dudes with wizard beards, or whatever. As long as you're enjoying yourself, not taking advantage of anyone, well what's the real harm? As long as it's all consensual, transparent, and they're not pressuring you to do things you don't want to do, to cut off ties with your family and friends in the outside world, you know, if you can safely leave at any point, no one's pretending to know the mind of God in a way you simply can't and therefore you need them and only them for your salvation, then fucking go get it! Hail, Hail Lucifina! Problem! You're bored with the trappings of a

conventional life and yearn for a big adventure. Solution! Look into intentional communities so you can find one that's right for you. Try it out. If you don't like it, well maybe now you'll have more appreciation for the conventional life you left behind and you can live that life again and be happier this time around. Time for today's takeaways. Time shock, top five takeaways. Number one, the Ghana's community was founded by Mildred Gordon, Jeff Gross and a crew of San Francisco residents that met in the early 1970s, but really just founded by Mildred. They all wanted to create a place where they could live together and practice

Mildred's innovative nonsensical therapy technique, feedback learning. Feedback learning is the process of receiving feedback in a group setting and using that information for self-improvement. During feedback learning sessions, group members are allowed to say anything they want, no matter how negative to any other group member. At GANAS, negative emotions or conflicts are only supposed to be expressed in this group setting. Number two, GANAS was officially founded in 1979 on Staten Island in New York City.

The group purchased a few houses on Corson Avenue, began their communal living experiment. When word spread of this innovative new community, dozens flocked to Staten Island to join them. The group expanded to seven houses and two commercial buildings for their two thrift stores everything goes. Number three, the Gunnus community encourages free love amongst members. Monogamy is not the norm, except for the man that Mildred chose to be her partner, poor Bruno. Mildred encouraged other members to have sex and date multiple people and even once arranged

a four-way marriage. Having children was discouraged in order to focus on self-improvement and only on Ghanis. Number four, former Ghanis member Rebecca Johnson allegedly attempted to murder co-founder Jeff Gross on May 29th, 2006. Feeling angered at being kicked out of the group, she turned her attention towards him and accused him of being a rapist and a pimp. She stalked him for two years before she shot him. Shockingly, Rebecca was acquitted at trial but found guilty in a civil suit. And number five, new info on July 25th, 2015, Rebecca Johnson was arrested by

the University of Missouri police at 2 in the morning at a campground at the Mark Twain National Forest Pine Ridge recreation area in Boone County. She was charged with stalking a former schoolmate from the University of Missouri in harassment. She was released on September 3rd on $75,000 bond. Rebecca Johnson not currently listed in the Missouri Department of Corrections database, meaning she is not in prison. We don't know where she is. Who knows where Becky is today?

Probably living on some other cult or not cult intentional living compound. Time. So top five takeaways. Gunnus intentional community or cult has been sucked. Top 5 Takeaways! GANIS! Intentional Community or Cult has been sucked. I enjoyed learning about intentional communities. I hope you did too. Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team for all the help in making Time Suck. Thanks to Queen of Bad Magic, Lindsay Cummins. Thanks to Logan Keith helping to publish this episode and designing merch for the store at badmagicproductions.com.

Thank you to Olivia Lee again for her research. Also thank you to the all-seeing eyes moderating the cult of the curious private Facebook page. I hope it's getting better there. I hope things are calming down. And now let's head on over to this week's Time Sucker updates. First up, a concerned, but not taking any dumb shit from anyone, anonymous sucker, sending a message to Bojangles at TimeSuckPodcast.com with the subject of, don't use my name, willful ignorance, and here's what they wrote. As I listened to your story of the woman at the gym, telling you the government controlled the weather, I had to send this message in.

My husband has held out until this year to get Facebook. I finally convinced him because he was wanting to sell items on Facebook Marketplace and I was tired of doing all the work. So I set him up with a fake name. He doesn't want to have people trying to reach out to him on Facebook. Told him about some of the ignorance to look out for and then set him free. He comes home one day talking about some serious conspiracy shit, flat earth for fuck's sake. And we were never on the moon.

I told him it's just conspiracy theories. He proceeds to argue with me, says it's all over his feed. So it must be true. I tell him how the more he looks at it, the more it will show up in his feed. He starts trying to convince me it's real though. I abruptly tell him, I will not discuss it any further. And if it continues down that path, I will delete his Facebook account and he will start losing my respect I will not tolerate willful ignorance He stopped talking about it now. FYI, we're in our late 40s. He should know better Longtime listener love your content anonymous. Well anonymous good on you for standing up

To him challenging a loved one You know which is hard for a lot of people. And that is what more of us should do. Me included, right? When we're confronted with this kind of nonsense. I've actually had more gym interactions since that first one. I won't share them in detail here, but I've just, I've changed my tactic. Instead of just, you know, standing there and just staring at them blankly, not saying anything. I just ask them when they say dumb shit questions,

just stuff like, how, how do you know that? Or do you really think that's true? Or why would they do that? No one ever has a good answer. Right? These things collapse with just a couple of these questions in my experience. And I can tell when I don't just play along and I start asking these questions, they feel real fucking dumb. Trying to explain themselves. Both Lindsay and I have decided to stop just letting these dumb comments slide There's just too much of it right now. We don't we don't have to be aggressive not to be confrontational Just put it back on them ask them questions We know they don't have a good answer for and then to hope they feel stupid enough to start actually rethinking their position

So keep up the good work anonymous and hail Nimrod Now for some serious shit. This is crazy Shit Shit shoveling sack, Shay. Sending a message with the subject line of, I want to hear some shit. They write, hey Dan and the rest of you beautiful bastards. The rest of you beautiful bastards with the Bad Magic crew. Long time listener, relatively frequent writer, long ass message warning ahead of time. I just got done with your history of stinky shitty shit episode late, I know, but wanted to share an experience with handling a massive pile of sloppy, smelly human waste. For a handful of years,

I worked as a facility manager for a storage unit complex. The stories I could tell about this time could fill a library. You never truly get a grasp on what people actually are until you see them during a very stressful move and even more so during the evictions that happened during COVID before evictions were put on hold by the state of Colorado where I live. I've had several individuals rent our storage units with the attempt to live in them. Obviously something that is not allowed by either the company or the state standards. One man that's called him stinky Steve was an especially problematic customer. him Stinky Steve was an especially problematic customer. He rented a single car-sized unit where he or like car garage size unit where he almost

immediately put up a barricade of wooden pallets and other pieces of junk wood to form a wall so looking inside of the unit would not be possible. He would constantly sneak in there after hours harass other tenants even spray paint over the camera that faced his unit. He was obviously living out of the storage unit but somehow Stinky Steve managed to always pay his dues. All this went on for months, and still corporate did not allow for myself and my assistant managers to evict him.

Gotta love red tape. The second floor of the leasing office had an apartment building, something that some storage companies do to allow managers to live on location which helps with security, emergencies, and general care about the property as a whole. Stinky Steve climbed up a pillar that was connected to the balcony of this apartment one night and started banging on the door of the apartment which was one of my assistant managers, which was where one of my assistant managers were living. Not only was she freaked out beyond repair, but he was making some seriously suggestive comments about her while he was up there. She ended up calling the police.

But slippery Stinky Steve bailed before they arrived and the cops never returned for him when we called while he was on property afterwards. They did however let us get the authorization needed to kick him off the grounds. This is the part where Stinky Steve gets his name. After kicking him off he left tons of shit, no pun intended, left in his unit which was up to the managers to clean. He was for lack of a better term a filthy animal. We found the most shocking and stomach-turning shit in the back of his unit. Four tires, four fucking vehicle tires all stacked on top of one another. That was his personal toilet bowl.

Oh my god, three of these four tires were completely full of shit. Ben, I shit you not. Pun intended this time. They were packed to the brim. Stinky Steve filled three whole tires of shit before we could kick his smelly ass out. It had leaked and caked over from the small gaps between tires and even onto the concrete floor from the bottom one. He was obviously a man of class, didn't feel like helping the tree industry justify cutting down more forest, so he used whatever articles of clothing he could get to wipe his filthy ass. A pile of clothing too big for a single giant black trash bag were completely covered in shit at the opposite end of the unit. Guess who had to deal with that shit?

You guessed it, me. I did not and may never get paid enough to handle something like that ever again. Fuck you, Stinky Steve. I hope your titanic mudslides gave you ass cancer. I do not apologize for the length of this email. Fuck you, but with love and respect, of course. If it makes it onto the show, feel free to paraphrase. Thanks for everything the whole team does each and every week to bring us lowly meat

sacks, a little spark of entertainment and knowledge. Your loyal cultist, Shay. Man, Shay, what the fuck is wrong with so many people? Stinky Steve clearly needs help. Like, a lot of help. Literally a filthy animal. I mean, he's got to be mentally ill, right? No sane person would do that.

If I had the money for that storage, I mean, or excuse me, if he had the money for that storage unit, he probably had the money to live, you know, with roommates. Wouldn't that be so much better? He could have a bathroom, but I don't know, I guess I doubt Stinky Steve would probably get along well with roomies.

Maybe he needs to go find an intentional community, one where they live off the land and shit in holes to leave a lower eco footprint, you know? Just shit in the ground. Maybe he needs some feedback learning. I don't know. One more. Helpful human Theodore Johnson sends in a truly important message with the subject line of asking for help canned dummins and he writes, Hey Dan, I've been a loyal time sucker for about two years now. Your random outbursts have killed so much time in my job and in school. I wasn't a fan of true crime until I heard your podcast, The Dark Humor Makes It More

Entertaining. But I'm writing in to tell you about the Live for Thomas Foundation. This is a smaller foundation that I'm a board member for. We are based in Cecil County, Maryland. We are a suicide prevention and awareness foundation focusing on teens and young adults. This foundation was started when my friend Thomas committed suicide at 16 years old. He was always so happy, the top athlete in every sport he played. He was a ladies man too. He was always talking to someone. He was the last person you would ever expect to be struggling with depression.

His mother and sister started the foundation to help those struggling and raise awareness that is not always obvious when someone's struggling with mental illness. Another thing we focused on is erasing stigma around getting help for mental illness. Last July we released a documentary about Thomas called I Never Thought It Would Be Him, discussing how he was not your stereotypical person who was struggling and how we are working towards helping others like him. The documentary can be found on YouTube. We've created a safe space for teens to come hang out and talk to someone if they feel comfortable called den 22. We have mental health talk with local high school athletes. We participate in community events and his mom is a youth mental health first aid instructor. I'll leave the website at the end of the email. It'll be amazing and so helpful if you could get our name out there.

We want to help everyone we possibly can. If you read this on the show, I just want everyone to know it's okay to not be okay and to check on your friends. Sorry not sorry for the length of the email, but I love what you guys do here on Time Suck and on Scared to Death. Thanks for what you do, Teddy Johnson. And livefortthomas.org. Thank you for sending in that message Teddy. Yes, livefortomice.org. Great website for a great young man who left way too soon. L-I-V-E-F-O-R-T-H-O-M-A-S.ORG. Thanks for sharing Thomas' story Teddy. And yeah, the doc is very easy to find. Just search for, I never thought it would be him. I did that. It came up right away, no problem. Again, the website, livefortomice.org. Also. It came up right away. No problem. Again, the website

livefortthomas.org. Also, check on your friends and family meat sacks. The worst people on earth never fucking seem to take themselves out. Let's do what we can to help the best people stay around and make the world a better place for everybody. Hail Nimrod. Next time, suckers, I needed that. We all did. Well thanks for listening to another Bad Magic Productions podcast. Scared to death Time Suck each week. Short Sucks a Nightmare Fuel on the Time Suck and Scared to Death podcast feeds twice a month.

Before you join an intentional community this week, make sure that they have wifi. Or that they allow you to at least keep your cellular data plan. So that way you can keep on sucking. All right, I want to share one more intentional living community with you. So many around the world. This one feels like a cult in the making. I found this on that directory again. The Life Chan Wen International Family Society, the Thailand branch, is located in Thailand's Chiang Mai province.

And here is their not cult at all mission statement. We have a bold vision. The earth will enter into a new age where human beings will grow up to a higher level of consciousness and create a brand new social system. Based on universal values, the earth will become a harmonious planet with diverse cultures blossoming everywhere. diverse cultures blossoming everywhere. A, new social system. Create an international big family. B, eco-village life. Possess nothing but own everything. The eco-village people will travel freely

without border limitations and prefer living the eco-village life as opposed to traditional lifestyles. There is only one global government, which is managed by saints and sages who no longer think of private profits and possessions. Meanwhile, people's consciousnesses will grow up. The best qualities of mankind, like sincerity, beauty, kindness, love, faith, diligence, and honesty, will be stimulated through collective life. And the weeds in people's soul gardens, oh, soul gardens, such as selfishness, greed, jealousy, complaining, and laziness will fade away.

Everyone will have and enjoy a harmonious, civilized, happy and free life. Now here's our community description. A transformative new life program for sustainable living. Revitalize your soul, mind and body beyond traditional marriage and family structures. The second home of Life Chan Wen. From the experience of our Thai community, you will get below information. One, introduction to Life Chan Wen philosophy. Two, a belief in the true God, the greatest creator that transcends any religion.

Three, offers a unique spiritual perspective beyond traditional faiths. Four, experience a noble and natural life. Oh, nice. Five, life free from marriage, family ties, romantic or sexual desires. Ah! Six, emphasis on elegance, purity and grace

akin to heavenly people. Seven, witnessing a new era of transformation. 8. Observing the pioneering stage of significant societal changes. 9. A shift towards a new way of life and consciousness. 10. Real miracles and healing experiences. 11. Case of cancer recovery and mental illness disappearance. 11. Case of cancer recovery and mental illness disappearance. Wow! 12. Rejuvenation and realization of youth.

What? 13. Understanding the true Kingdom of God, the greatest creator. 14. A deeper comprehension of the Kingdom of God. What? I thought that was what he said. 15. Visualizing and grasping the essence of a divine realm. 16. Experiencing God, the greatest creator's love and grace. 17, experiencing God, what? Experiencing God through compassion, through life, Chen Wen.

18, embracing this love within the Second Home International Community. And then they say, our branch is located in a peaceful and beautiful eco-village supported by the local temple. It is approximately 180 kilometers away from Chiang Mai City And then they say, our branch is located in a peaceful and beautiful eco-village supported by the local temple. It is approximately 180 kilometers away from Chiang Mai City and 80 kilometers away from Chiang Rai City.

The eco-village was started in September of 2020. Currently has seven members living together. Okay, so not that many people. Our aim is to create and build a new life mode for people who are kind, diligent, simple. Simple? That reads kind of like dumb. We want people who are kind, diligent, simple. Simple? That reads kind of like dumb. We want kind, diligent, stupid, honest, trustworthy,

and who would love to contribute themselves to human peace and sustainable development of the world. Our farm has a beautiful natural environment with faraway mountains surrounded by fairland clouds and mists. You can hear melodious bird song from the rain trees throughout the day. We have beautiful flowers blooming under the sunshine. All kinds of organic vegetables are lush, neatly planted in the fields. Ducks are chasing and playing in the river happily.

Buffaloes and horses graze leisurely in the open grassland. People living here joke and laugh a lot every day in this paradise on Earth. The Thailand branch has a total area of 80 acres including residential areas, a public kitchen, activity halls, pavilions, grassland, woodlands, vegetable and flower gardens, orchards, banana forests, rivers, small lakes. That's a lot for seven people. In addition to members of our community, the cook and some drivers of the temple also live in the courtyard. We help and get along with each other harmoniously. We welcome people from all over the world, regardless of your backgrounds, races, religions,

cultures and nations. As long as you are interested in this new life mode, please come to visit us, experience this happy and simple life together, help create, improve and perfect this new life mode for all kind and lovely people on earth. We wish you a happy and unforgettable stay. Oh shit! Sounds nice. But if you go on YouTube, you watch their videos, you read their

website. They also talk a lot about how marriages don't matter, property on our ship is silly, and the world's ending. So if you want to spend some time in a Thai doomsday fuck cult, or maybe Thai doomsday absence cult if you believe some of their teachings in a beautiful setting while eating a lot of fresh organic food and watching happy ducks check them out or check out one of the thousands of other intentional living communities at www.daisy.org