Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Rattlesnake Bite - The Dangerous Games Cults Play

Episode Date: April 28, 2025

In 1977, attorney and journalist Paul Morantz investigated a drug rehabilitation institution and found himself on the receiving end of the wrath of a cult. ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Register today at Richfield, Utah.com. everyone welcome to tooth and claw podcast we have our wildlife biologist bear expert west larsson hello he's just sitting there just sitting here in my studio and then we got mike smith co-host co-host extraordinaire thank you co-host thanks for having me he's just sitting there and then i'm jeff larsson west's little brother i'm just sitting here and we are tooth and cloud podcast just sitting here that should be our tagline just sitting here yeah talk to sometimes. Less a tagline than like a goal for me. Something funny that happened to me this morning.

This happened more times than I think happens to most people. I was just like sitting, putting some final touches on this episode. And I hear Jesse kind of scream. And I was like, what's up? And she says, oh, a flea just fell out of my head. That's not uncommon at my house. And it's not that we live in like destitution or whatever the word is. but it's just animals get fleas.

So it's not uncommon that a flea will fall off of Jesse's head. Yeah, is she just like all of a sudden one just like fell onto her notebook. Not just Jesse. I've had my fair share of fleas too. Oh, okay. Yeah. But it always is kind of discouraging. It's like, oh shit, now I got to go comb through my hair and look for fleas again.

What's so bad about fleas? Is it just like the gross part of it? They bite and it's really itchy. They drink a little bit of your blood, and they're just not. And they suck for animals, too. They're really hard to get rid of once you've got them. So we got fleas. You should gather them all up and sell them in a little flea market.

I think that's what those are, right? Or do a fleas. Yeah, can't they, like, do chase? A flea trapeze. Yeah, just talk to Dr. Hammond or Richard Hammond. It doesn't sound. No, Richard Attenborough. What was his first name?

Doctor. Yeah, his were fake. It doesn't sound that hard to get. get them out if they just fell out. Yeah, that's true. That one's got butter fingers. Yeah, they just lay lots of little eggs and stuff. They're annoying.

That's farm life, I guess. Ooh, you could use those eggs too, just like you use your chicken eggs. Yeah, cook up flea eggs in the morning. Sell them. How do you like your flea eggs? Over easy. I like big ones. Well, shut up, you guys.

All right. Will you guys shut up for once? Thought you'd never ask. We've got a long story today. So would you just shut up, Jeff, you especially. All right. Today's story is one that's been on my list for a long time. It's one that I've been thinking about since I first heard about it.

And it's very different from our typical stories in that the animal plays a very small part in it, but it's a very important role. And the rest of the story is really crazy. Anyways, since I first heard about this story, I've been thinking about it. It's got a real true crime angle too. it. It's about a cult, which I think people are very interested in cults. And there is a wildlife angle to it too. So we're going to get into it. You guys ready? Let's go. My main sources were an article in LA Magazine that was written by Hillel Aaron, an oxygen article by Ted

Quartermin, Oxygen True Crime. And the HBO series, The Synanon Fix, did the cure become the cult? There was also a lot of other articles and YouTube videos that I watched, but those three were my main sources for this story. What's synon? I'm not familiar with that. We're going to get into it. Oh, okay. Sounds a little like Qanon. Now I'm excited.

It's similar. Yeah. All right. Paul Morantz was stressed out to say the least. Every shadow in his house was hiding an assassin. Every footstep outside might be the last noise he would ever hear. There was a good reason for his paranoia. Morantz was a lawyer that had made himself an enemy to one of the most successful and

one of the most dangerous cults in American history. Oh, wow. He knew that they wanted him dead, and recently he had bought a shotgun. He had been making a habit out of checking his car for car bombs before starting it up, and he had told all his neighbors in Pacific Palisades, California, to be on the lookout for anyone suspicious. That's not a bad habit to be in. I should start incorporating that into...

Just checking for car bombs. Just in case. You can't ever be sure. But on the evening of October 11th, 1977... Morantz had decided to give himself a night off from worrying. The Dodgers were in game one of the World Series. All he wanted to do was relax and watch the game at home. Yeah, I don't like him.

The Colt probably knows, too. He's like, during the Dodgers game, that's what they did. What he didn't know is that Colt members had visited his house earlier that day, and their plot to end his life was already in motion. A living, breathing, slithering assassin had been left at Morantz's house. one that had perfected its lethality over millions of years and was waiting for him silently in his mailbox. Oh, man.

All right. A leopard. Slithering in his mailbox. You don't think they could slither? Yeah, sure. There's only really one, well, I guess, do worms slither? Because it's got to be a snake, right? It would be very surprising to open your mailbox and have a leopard jump out.

That would be, all right. Like, what's it doing slithering? That's not how they move. That would be surprising. We're going to hop in our time machine. We're going to head back to March 22nd, 1913 in Toledo, Ohio. We're in the hospital where baby Charles Diedrich is just starting to crown out of his mom's vagina as she screams through the pain of the contractions.

You don't have to put it that way. All right. Maybe we went back a little too far. Let's skip ahead four years. Yeah. That's when they should have got him. Yeah, true. Yeah, instead of baby Hitler.

Yeah, that's a good point. We could have done it, but we're skipping ahead four years. Do you have to just choose one baby? You got time of one baby. You get access to a time machine and they're like, okay, you get to kill one baby. Do you think baby Hitler's parents let him get into like, because you know, when you're little, your parents get you doing finger painting? Do you think his finger painting sucked, too? Yeah.

And they were parents. No, he saw that. It's not in your future. Yeah, but it was boring. It was just like realism and not that good. Anyway. Okay. Everyone's a critic.

Yeah. Let's leave our baby Hitler talk. And we're skipping ahead four years. So in 1917, Chuck Diedrich is now four years old, and his alcoholic father has just died in a car accident. Which, you know, in 1917, you really have to try to die in a car accident, I feel like cars probably only went 15 miles per hour back then. His mom turns to religion to try and help raise her young son,

and he's brought up a devout Roman Catholic. But at age 14, he reads H.G. Wells' history of the world, and it immediately turns him into an atheist. And he also starts drinking. Alcoholism would prove to be a lifelong battle for him. He was a college dropout. He couldn't hold a job. At age 29, meningitis would claim part of the bone on the left side of it.

his face. And by age 40, he'd be on his way to his second divorce, both of them being caused by his alcoholism. Wow. But it was that year when he was turning 40 that he would attend his first AA meeting and he was an instant celebrity at these meetings. And that was because he had a knack for storytelling and his ability to go on these long, interesting monologues at the podium. So he'd go to these meetings, he would start talking, everyone would be enthralled. And he would even go from like one AA chapter meeting to like another. He would skip a. round, kind of like the guy in Fight Club. Yeah, fight club, yeah.

His love for being the center of attention kept him going back to these meetings, even though he didn't believe in the higher power message of AA. In 1957, he had been sober for one year, and he enrolled in a study at UCLA that was looking at LSD as a cure for alcoholism. So that always goes really well, right? We've learned that in history that these guys that they tested LSD on always ended up being super normal afterward. Yeah.

The old MK. K. Ultrasinski, MK. Ultra, yeah. Taking LSD in the study changed his life. It turned him into a new person, one that was full of confidence, so much so that he viewed himself as a type of God. He credits it with being the most important single experience of his life. Now, not long after this LSD experience, he stopped going to AA meetings, but he'd become so popular at these meetings that some of the other members of AA would show up at his house to catch up and talk with him. And Diedrich was also really into philosophy and psychology. and these meetings would turn into kind of sermons from him where he would preach to these AA participants about the philosophy that had been reading about his experiences, and they would have these really intense group therapy sessions together. Over time, drug addicts started coming to these therapy sessions as well, mostly heroin addicts,

and Deidrick really liked the sessions with these addicts because it could be a lot harder on them. He basically viewed them as if they were children, And he would talk to them as if he were their dad. And it was during that time that one of the participants in these sermons mixed up the word symposium, anonymous, and maybe something else. And this term synonon was born. So this organization, this kind of nascent group was starting to be called synon. It's just kind of a weird amalgamation of a few different words.

What time are we around again? This is in the late 50s. Late 50s. Okay. Yeah. Interesting. So word of these meetings starts growing and more and more people start showing up. And Chuck Diedrich moves the group to San Diego.

He gets a storefront and quickly they become too big for the storefront and people kind of get word of what's going on and they push him out. So he ends up renting an abandoned military building on the beach at Santa Monica. And during those early years, he established Sinanon as a nonprofit but still got complaints about him treating people without a license or a permit, even spend some time in jail because. keeps kind of treating these addicts saying that he has a treatment for them, even though he's not licensed at all to do that. What was he doing that was illegal? Do you know? You have to be, like, registered as a treatment center to do that sort of thing.

Okay. To talk to him? Yeah. But he was like, we'll get into that. But he essentially was running this like a business. He's marketing himself as like, you come to me. Yeah. I'm God.

Yeah. Exactly. And it gets pretty crazy, so we'll get into it. It keeps growing, and it's actually kind of revolutionary at the beginning, especially. Because up until that time, drug addicts were typically just thrown in prison or a mental institution, and they never really got better. But Synanon was actually one of the first rehab centers that focused on treating the psychology of drug addiction, and it was actually working pretty well. And the core tactic that they used was something called the game. So the Synanon game is their main task.

I saw that movie. Yeah. It's not the movie, but that is a great movie. This is created by Diedrich, and the game was essentially getting a bunch of addicts together in a circle, and then they would vocally call each other out on their dishonesties, their hypocrisies, and their secrets. Basically, they could air out any bad feelings for each other in the most upfront and heavy-handed ways possible, and it would devolve into these huge shouting matches full

of verbal abuse that were often followed by a lot of. a large emotional release. So it's just like brutal honesty and verbal abuse. They could like say anything they wanted. And I, Jeff, I feel like you'd like playing the game. Put it all on the tape. Yeah. And Jeff, you're a very honest person.

I think, I don't know. I think they take it at way too far. But the crazy thing. Yeah. No, I have that where I just, I don't know. You say what's on your chest. Yeah. Well, I mean, should we just do it?

now. Start yelling. Nope. I would not like the game. You've really lately. You've been talking way too much about bears on the podcast. Shut up. I'll stop talking about bears.

That's my promise. I would just immediately fold. I'd be like, you're right. I'm sorry. Yep. Okay. The crazy thing about this is it actually kind of worked. There were a lot of people.

You'd be like, no, you do that. There are a lot of people. from the early days of Synanon that credit the organization with curing their addiction and saving their lives. One of those people was Betty Coleman. Betty was a black woman who had been both a heroin addict and a sex worker, but found herself drawn to Synanon. At the meeting, she was impressed by the feeling of racial equality, and the game sessions helped her to feel activated and ready to kick her habits. She spent more and more time at the centers,

and a romantic relationship developed between her and Chuck Diedrich, and they ended up getting married. I will just say, like, a quick aside, synon was really good with, like, diversity and racial equality. Everyone was welcomed equally. There wasn't any kind of preconceptions about race or background or anything. So I will. Yeah, I like Sinna.

Sinnaut. Sinna. Yeah. So far, yeah, so far it sounds great. This is a Bose moment. Your 10 boring blocks from home until the beat drops in. Bose clarity. And the baseline transforms boring into maybe the best part of your day.

Your life deserves music. Your music deserves Bose. Find your perfect product at Bose.com. So Chuck and Betty had just gotten married. Sinanon starts getting kind of famous around this time. Actors, authors, politicians, musicians, all sorts of famous people were openly touting the organization and their success in helping people kick addiction and creating a really fun community. That's the other thing that I can't really overstate is that the thing that was

really making people stick in synodon was that they were surrounded by like-minded people. They would have really fun parties. It just seemed like a really interesting community. And if you know anything about the early 60s, especially pretty much all the 60s, community was something that had started to become really important to people that kind of saw themselves as counterculture. So that's kind of what's going on here. In the last, late 60s. Well, it's really important for kicking like a drug addiction too. Totally.

Especially something like as hard as heroin. You need an alternative that is enjoyable. You know, you need something else to do that can like take up time. Yeah. Yeah. And they, I mean, screaming at your friends.

They would pretty much. You don't like about them. That sounds like a great way to kick a habit. They would live at these centers. Yeah. It's not like they were just like going to it for a few hours a day. live at the houses. They were like fully integrated into Synanon Society.

Jeff, you're fully integrated into Sinabon Society. I can't kick it. You can't kick it. Whatever, dude. I bought Sinabon in, where were we? Ecuador, you wouldn't even eat any. You got so mad at me for eating your food. I'm never going to ask to eat your food again.

All right. In the late 60s, there were well over a thousand members in Sinan. They were receiving millions of dollars in donations each year. They owned over $7 million in real estate, and Chuck Diedrick had created a whole marketing arm of the organization. They would sell synodon branded merch to different businesses. They ran some gas stations. They were starting to make a lot of money,

and Dedric was feeling more and more powerful. They ran gas stations? Yeah, they had like gas stations. I guess you have like the employees. You might as well start looking at things they can do. Yeah, he was a bit of an entrepreneur. and he was always kind of thinking of new ways to make money, which is a common thing for cult leaders.

It was around this time that newcomers, both male and female, were starting to shave their heads when they entered the organization. It was kind of like a punishment and a right of passage all rolled into one. And there was also a lot of people who would wear overalls almost every day. And that's because that's what Deidric wore. And he was kind of both a father figure and a religious leader to these people by this point. So when you see photos of Sinanon from this time, almost everyone has a shaped head and it's it's pretty interesting they're starting to look much

more culty by now by this point most people still agreed that synonon was pretty great overall seemed to be making a real difference for the addicts that were becoming involved most people would be in the program for two years often living full time in a synon house and they wouldn't be allowed to leave the program for those two years and then they would graduate and go back out into the world but in the late 60s, things started to change a little bit. First of all, Diedrich now saw the organization as more of a religion than anything else, and he decided that you don't graduate from a religion, so why are people graduating from Synanon? So people were no longer allowed to graduate. Once you were in Sinan, you were in for life. He also started accepting a lot of people that weren't addicts but wanted

to be part of this community, and he called those people lifestylers. They were a lot different than like the normal attic people, they got to have a lot more freedoms, and they were usually the ones that were kind of running things and punishing the addicts and yelling at them and whatnot. There were a lot of different synodon centers by this point, and Diedrich installed speakers around the centers that would broadcast his speeches pretty much 24-7, and sometimes he would speak to people live through a private radio frequency. It's not very fun anymore.

It's starting to become less fun, but people are saying. I don't like this speaker 24-7 anything at all. Yeah. He also started training some of the members in martial arts and basic military training. Oh, I'm back. Yeah. You hear martial arts near in. He created a synon fighting force called the Imperial Marines.

They were tasked with protecting synon from outsiders, but at least in the beginning it kind of seemed like they didn't have much to do. He did spend like $300,000 on guns. Jeff, you're a gun guy. You would love to see that. I mean, if I know martial arts, I probably wouldn't need the gun, to be honest with you. Yeah. Your hands are weapons then.

If they have guns, I'll just take the gun from them. Yeah. I think they called their specific type of martial arts, like, Cindo or something. It's pretty silly. That's so cool. Did they have a boat? Why were they Marines? Do you know?

I don't know. Yeah. I mean, our Marines, like, our Marines, are they associated? with the water. They're a naval, yeah. It's like, yeah. The name Marine was. I know, but I thought Marine was like, I thought the Marines were a whole different thing than the Navy.

I mean, there are a different branch in the Navy, but they're like part, I don't know exactly how it works, but they're associated closely with the Navy. They'll like snorkel into the zone if they have to. They do. They love snorkeling, don't they? I think they'll snorkel into like war zones. Yeah. Yeah, dude. I don't know.

Isn't that what they call? I thought that was French people. No, dude, they love being called Frogman when they're snorkeling around in their little black jump suits. They're so cute. All right. In the 70s, even though Synanon didn't have the correct licenses or permits for group care, judges and probation officers started to assign at-risk youth to Synanon centers against their will. Yeah.

This is kind of, Synanon is often seen as the start of the troubled teen industry. Like what Brent went to, our cousin Brent and all these different people get sent to. This is kind of the pattern for all of those places. Wow. Because kids would get sent there and there was no oversight over anything. They would be put through boot camp like training and they would be almost consistently physically abused by synon leaders. They had to dig holes as deep as their shovels like long wise and widthwise. And there's venomous lizards.

everywhere. No, but they would like get the shit kicked out of them all the time. Like really intense physical abuse. It wasn't this like happy go lucky place for them. It was really intense. And there was even like kind of an underground railroad to get people out of these synon center's kids. And when they would escape.

Elon Musk is trying to build. No, it's not like hyperloop or whatever. Imagine how fast you could get them out with the hyperloop. Probably not that fast. You know, high-speed rail exists, people. We don't need to take people in Teslas one at a time. No, Hyperloop sounds cooler. So these kids would escape and they'd report this abuse to adults,

but it often fell on deaf ears because they were already these kids that people saw as, like, delinquent. So anyway, Diedrich started charging members a lot of money each month to be part of the group. And when the IRS started looking into synon in 1974, he was able to officially change the designation of the group to a religion, which meant he could escape paying taxes to the government. That's sick. We got to do that with tooth. Yeah, should we become a religion? Tooth and cult, dude. Tooth and cult.

The organization was now making roughly $8 million a year, and they owned over $20 million in real estate, including some sprawling compounds. that Diedrich kind of saw as the future of the organization. So it was during this time in the 70s that Sinanon really started swinging from a quirky community of addicts that found peace and brutal honesty to a paranoid and hostile cult that saw Diedrich as their savior. And some big changes started happening. One of those changes was that members were no longer allowed to have children because Diedrich thought the world was overpopulated.

My guess is that he was probably just like annoyed by some of their kids and was like, Too many kids. You guys can't have them anymore. I don't know. He's kind of right. The world was overpopulated back then. This wasn't a hard rule, meaning you wouldn't necessarily get kicked out of synon for having a kid.

But there were definitely more than a few women in the organization that were coerced into having abortions. But surprisingly, the onus for making sure this reproductive control happened ultimately fell on the men. And that's surprising because usually when you're talking about reproductive control. control in any kind of situation. It's usually it's placed on women's shoulders, but Synanon really put that on the men. By 1977, all men over the age of 18 that had been in Sinan for over five years were required to have a vasectomy, and vasectomies were often performed collectively in what Sinanon called clipping parties.

Should we do one of those after this? Should we have a little clipping party, the three of us now? No, I want to just in case. case things change. I want to reserve the right to sire a child. I guess I'll have a solo clipping party then. For some of the men in the group,

this was a step too far. One of those men was Phil Ritter. He did not want to be forced to get a vasectomy. This was like not the cult that he had signed up for. And he went and talked to the police about what was happening at Synanon. Somehow, a Synan lawyer got word

of him snitching and they wouldn't let him back into Synan housing where his wife and his daughter were living. Around the same time, Diedrich's wife, Betty, passed away from lung cancer at the age of 55. And the cult really went off the rails when she died. One of the first things that happened was that Chuck pretty much held a tryout for his new wife. He picked a 31-year-old out of the six finalists, and he was 64 years old at the time. Not long after, he said that marriage...

That's not that. I mean, Leo would have gone younger. Younger. I think it was wrong, especially because he had, there's a total, like, power imbalance. A power, yeah, a power imbalance. Dynamic. I don't know that. I'd want to, like, see how she won the spot before I, like, make any judgment.

Like, if she just blew them away in the sack race competition, it's like, how do you choose someone else? Interesting work. She ran, like, a 4-3-40 or something. Yeah. Yeah, and a 30-year-old is an adult. So yeah, there's worse examples, but it does feel a little icky that that's who he decided on. Anyway, they did. I do think they stayed together for the rest of his life.

There you go, dude. Expedia, you're here. But are you here here? You go to Hawaii in your head all the time. During meetings, in the car, Hawaii is on the mind. But when you're ready to go, there's Expedia. The one place you go to go places. flights, hotels, vacation homes, cars,

you can save when you bundle or book as you go and still save. So what are you waiting for? Expedia, the one place you go to go places. Members only savings vary. This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking, maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them.

But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing. It's built to help. you find and own a home. With agents who close twice as many deals, when you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get started at redfin.com. Own the dream. But a crazy thing was not long after he got married, he said that marriage should no longer be permanent and that married couples should all be divorced and start forming three-year love contracts with people within synon rather than lifetime marriages. The next day, hundreds of couples filed for divorce.

One of those people was Phil Ritter's wife. So Phil Ritter was the one that was kicked out of cinema. Oh shit. He wasn't allowed to see her or his daughter. He is getting owned by this cold. Ultimately, he filed a legal motion to be able to see her. Should have gotten that vasectomy. It's not that.

They already had a daughter. Seriously. He's like, wait, three year love contracts? I want back in. So he filed a legal motion to be able to see her. And it turns out that legal action was really the thing that Chuck Diedrich hated the most and was afraid of. So not long after filing this motion, Phil Ritter was walking home one day when two men was shaved heads and wooden mallets approached him in the street. They beat him without saying a single word and left him bleeding in the street with a fractured skull.

This would be just one of 18 attacks that would be linked to Synanon and the Imperial Marines. Damn. Synanon's now making a lot of money through members themselves who would pay monthly dues, sometimes up to $1,000 a month in the 70s, which was a lot of money. So they were really focused on recruiting or receiving new members by whatever means necessary. Ed Wynn was in over his head. His wife Francis had been having psychotic episodes, and he was simply not qualified to handle them as they'd been getting progressively worse. In June of 1977, he could tell she was on the verge of another break. down, and he had made plans to take her to a treatment center after he got home from work.

In the meantime, he told her to go to a clinic in Venice Beach for a tranquilizer to tie her over until they went to the treatment center that afternoon. But when Ed got home from work, Frances was gone. She'd gone to the clinic, and while she was there, a nurse had recommended she tried synonon for treatment, and had pointed her in the direction of a nearby synon center. When she arrived at the center, in a nearly psychotic state, the synonon people took her in immediately shaved her head and started breaking her down through repeated sessions of the game. They locked her in a synon apartment and she had no control over when she was allowed to leave.

Whoa. Ed figured out what had happened. He went to the center and demanded her release and he was told that he was not allowed to see his wife and that she did not want to see him. The next day she was put on a bus and transferred to another synonon facility north of San Francisco. So they pretty much like just kidnapped this woman. Yeah. Yeah, so she had no link to this organization at all before showing up that day.

She just showed up for treatment and they like shaved her head and threw her in prison. Doly. And broke her down verbally. Yeah, that's probably illegal, right? Yes, this is illegal. That's one of those things where, well, okay. Kind of. We're going to get into that.

Wow. I'm really interested to hear how that might not be illegal. It's right. It's right now, actually. So Ed figured out what had happened. He went to the center. he demanded a release, this new center, and they again said no. So he talked to the police and he was told there was nothing they could do because she was

an adult that had willingly checked herself into the shelter. So even though she's psychotic, the police are just like not, you know, she's an adult woman. She can do whatever she wants, which I, you know, I wonder how that would hold up in court these days. Yeah, it's interesting. I feel like you need to talk to her to be like, do you want to be there type of thing, you Right. And like at this point she probably doesn't want to be there.

Right. But they had told her that her husband had shown up and said that he wanted nothing to do with her anymore and that she should start paperwork for a divorce. Oh. And Ed had traveled there. And he's again told that he can't see her and that she wants nothing to do with him. So he's desperate. He starts reaching out to anyone that might be able to help him, including politicians and lawyers. And one of those lawyers happened to be Paul Morantz.

and he was exactly the right person for Ed to find. Morantz had built a career helping people that had been coerced and controlled against their will, and when he heard Ed and Francis's story, he immediately knew that he had found a new purpose, and that purpose was taking down Synanon. He calmly told Ed on the phone, I'll get her back, I promise I'll get her back. Moran's did a tiny bit of research into Synan

and quickly realized that they didn't have any of the licenses, permits, or oversight required of a treatment care center, and he knew that he had to act fast to get Francis out. What he didn't know was that Francis had already entered into full-blown psychosis at this point, and Sinanon was actually pretty ready to get rid of her as well. So they arranged for her release conditional on Ed and Francis signing a waiver of liability for Sinan. So essentially they said, we'll let her out. She can go back to Ed, but you guys have to say this wasn't our fault.

And Morantz was a really sneaky lawyer, as they tend to be their sneaks. But in a good way this time. He managed to write up a contract that left a loophole for the wins to be able to prosecute Sinanon. So when Francis was released, they almost immediately launched their suit and they won. Sinanon had to pay this couple $300,000 in damages. This is 1977. That's big money. For Diedrich, Chuck Diedrich, the public embarrassment was much worse than the payout.

and Paul Morantz immediately became enemy number one for Synanon. Those guys with the sticks are going to get him, maybe. Yeah, those skinheads with mallets. Diedrich would rant and rave to his Imperial Marines about how Morance was going to end Sinan and he needed to go. A lot of those rants would actually be recorded and would serve as valuable evidence in future court cases against Sinan. In one of them, he was recorded saying,

and you guys are going to love this. This is what he said. It's scary. Don't mess with us. you can get killed dead physically dead whoa pretty intense that is yeah yeah at least it's not like a spiritual death because that's like the ultimate kind of it's worse kill your spirit yeah he's not to that point yet but maybe maybe someday emotionally dead that's probably the best option yeah we're all there already you know and when it seemed like palmerans might be

contacting other disgruntled members of Sinanon to represent them in legal battles, Diedrich launched into action. He had two Imperial Marines that he trusted with this task of eliminating Morance. One was 20-year-old Lance Kenton, son of a famous jazz musician that had pretty much been raised in Sinan. The other was Joseph Musico, a former addict and Vietnam vet that would boast about wearing a necklace of human ears while he was in the war. So not a great guy, probably. So first, Deidric told them to look into hiring an assassin to kill Morantz, but this high price tag of getting an assassin, which was like 10 grand, I think, is what they found, was too much for Diedrich.

He didn't want to pay that much. So he assigned the assassination to these two men, Lance Kenton and Joseph Musco. I don't know if... Go ahead. We're on the same way like that thing. I want you to do it then. If you're making that much money, you got 10,000 is not even a lot for an assassin. No.

That's something you want a good person for you. You want to overpay. There's like things you can skimp out on a bit. Assassins I would recommend getting a pretty quality. Yeah. Spending out the money. You see in the Star Wars prequels what a bad assassin, like it just doesn't work. They do a bad job and they end up killing the emperor.

They probably would like talk about it afterwards and brag about it. The bad assassin would. good assassin, you never hear from them again. Chucking some worms into their room. Exactly. Never trust worms to do an assassin's job. That's what I was always told. That's rule number one as an assassin.

Yeah. Anyway, I think he just kind of saw them as free labor and probably didn't value their lives very much. So he just said, why don't you two handle this? They had some time to discuss ways that they might be able to kill Morantz without implicating themselves in ways that would also send a strong message to sin in on enemies.

And during that discussion, Lance told Joseph that he was good with snakes. Crack a Cayman Jack Margarita and taste your escape. It's America's number one for a reason. Cayman Jack is a premium malt beverage with flavors. Please drink responsibly. Camden Jack beverage company, Chicago, Illinois. All right. Back to Paul Morantz.

You can't just like not use snakes then. Yeah. He's like, okay, so you want to use snakes? snakes? Is that what you're saying? He's like, no, no, no. It's not what I'm saying, but... I mean, we could use a gun. But if we wanted to. I am good with snakes. It is like the Star Wars assassin then.

Yeah. It is. It's very similar. All right. Back to Paul Morantz. He's in his house settling in to watch Game 1 of the World Series. Yankees versus Dodgers. The Dodgers. Oh my gosh. He knew how dangerous Chuck Diedrich was. He knew that there was probably was. He knew that there was probably people planning to kill him, but he also needed to maintain his sanity, and for once he was just going to relax, watch some baseball, not think about synon. As he walked into his living room to turn on his TV, Paul could see something in the mailbox, this slit. It was kind of a,

like a mailbox slit on his living room wall, kind of interesting mailbox. His glasses weren't on, but through the grade of the mailbox, he could see what looked like a large package that he thought might be a scarf or something long in his mailbox. So he reaches his hand in to open it up. Wait, so like it was the length of a scarf? It just looked like something in there that was long and a package. So he thought like... Possibly scarf.

Like not to fold them up at all. Not wrapped in anything. What it was was a four and a half foot long Southern Pacific rattlesnake that had been stuffed into this mailbox. It was very stressed out and also injured. The men that had caught it, left it here in the dark, had also removed its rattles with a knife. It was in pure defense mode, its tail was vibrating silently as Paul Morantz opened the mailbox and light fell on the snake's face.

Paula just started to reach into the mailbox when the rattlesnake shot forward and sank its fangs into his hand just below his left thumb. The pain was instant, and he felt as though his hand had been caught in a powerful vice. Pulled his hand back with the snake still attached, and it fell from the mailbox and plopped onto the floor. Paul immediately realized what had happened, and his first thought was, oh no, this isn't how they're going to get me. And then he ran out his back door and started screaming for help. In those screams, he added, it's synon.

Sinanon got me. It'd be crazy if he didn't realize what had happened immediately. If he is still just like, where's the scarf? He's like, I'll just push past this rattlesnake to get my new scarf. His neighbors would call an ambulance. One neighbor would enter his house and cut the head off the snake, which was still coiled up on his living room floor. Another neighbor would put a tourniquet on Morant's arm and wait with them while the paramedics arrived.

Which you're not supposed to do with rattlesnakes, but, you know, They actually credit this guy was saving them. I don't know if that's true or not. All right, we're going to do some quick biology. It's a longer story today, so we're not going to do a ton. And a lot of this is similar to our other rattlesnake species we've covered. But there are some really cool, unique things about this particular species of rattlesnake. Southern Pacific rattlesnakes look a lot like a traditional rattlesnake.

Like the rattlesnake you'd picture in your head when someone says rattlesnake. They have a diamond-like pattern down their back, tan or brownish-gray color, They can also sometimes look a little bit green and they don't have the black and white stripes on their tails like Western Diamondbacks do. If you ever see those black and white stripes, you're looking at a Diamondback species of rattlesnake. I think. Actually, I shouldn't say that. There might be others that have that. Southern Pacific rattlesnakes are one of the more common species of snake in Southern California, and they're really the only rattlesnake that you'll find right in Los Angeles. There's only one photo of the snake that bit Morantz, and I had read some of the snake that bit Morantz. And I had read some,

somewhere that it was a Western Diamondback. I was excited to talk about them because I know how dangerous they can be. But I sent the photo to a snake expert friend of mine, Ian, shout out Ian. And he told me that it was a Southern Pacific rattlesnake, which secretly I had suspected it was because I knew it was in Los Angeles. And I was a little bit disappointed. But then Ian told me that they have a crazy venom cocktail and that it might be the number one snake in the U.S. that he wouldn't want to get bit by, which I thought was interesting.

So I had to look into their venom, and it is really interesting. One of the most interesting things about this snake is the way that their venom varies across habitats and elevations that they're found in. So you can take the exact same snake, and if you're in the desert, say Joshua Tree. It's likely that the snake that Clara Jessup was bit by, who we interviewed, it's likely that it was a Southern Pacific rattlesnake. You can find them in Joshua Tree. if you drive a couple hours to idle wild California, which is much higher, you're in like six or seven thousand feet elevation, their venom can be very, very different. So these lower elevation ones often have hemotoxic and myotoxic venom, which is very typical of rattlesnakes.

That's the venom that's going to break down red blood cells, attack tissue. It's typical rattlesnake venom. You see the necrosis and stuff, but it's not attacking your nervous system the same way. but then the ones in the higher elevation have neurotoxic venom, which actually disrupts nerve signals to muscles, and it tends to be much more dangerous. It might not hurt as much, but it's like very dangerous venom. Yeah, you want your muscles talking to each other, you know.

You do. Yeah, you need those nerves talking to muscles. And that's interesting because this is the exact same species of rattlesnake, but depending on the elevation that they live on, their venom can vary greatly. And that's really fascinating to me. That's not typical in snakes. Probably like the prey that they hunt or something.

That's exactly what it is. Good job, Jeff. They think that these higher elevation ones have to kill their prey a little bit quicker because there's often more like escape terrain for them. So moose or high elevation animals. The macula and moose. Yeah. But they do think it's probably an evolution based on the type of prey that they're killing.

Some of the potential symptoms of a bite from a southern Pacific rattlesnake include the following. Burning pain at the bite site. Skin discoloration. The skin can change blue to black. Blistering of the skin. Swelling at the bite that slowly grows. Bleeding from the wound. Sensation of a metallic taste in the mouth.

Salivation. Twitching of the eye in the mouth. Tingling sensation. Salvation? That sounds good. Salvation. You get saved. You also get to go to heaven.

I'd take a bite. I would too. Free ticket. Chills and sweating. anxiety, breathing difficulties, nausea and vomiting, abdominal pain, blurred vision, death of tissue or necrosis, low blood pressure, tactical cardiac cardiac artery. Physical death, not emotional death, or spiritual death. That's bad.

Feeling faint or dizzy, weakness in malaise, bleeding disorder, blood and urine, bleeding from recent wounds, mucosal bleeding, anemia, acute kidney injury or kidney failure, and intense neurological symptoms. So pretty bad. There's like pretty much everything that can happen to you can happen with this rattlesnake bite. Having a cute little kidney injury doesn't sound too bad, just like a nice little cute one. Acute to calm. Tiny bit more biology here.

Southern Pacific rattlesnakes don't have a huge range, or they're only found. in Southern California, northern Baja, Mexico, but it's really impressive how much variation there is in that small range. Aside from the venom variation that we just talked about, there's some really interesting behavioral variations. For example, the Southern Pacific rattlesnakes on Catalina Island attempted to bite people five times more than their mainland counterparts in a study, and they delivered more than two times the venom on those bites. So just these ones on the island for whatever reason are much more aggressive and deliver a lot more venom. And it's really interesting to see that kind of variation among individuals of a species of rattlesnake.

And it makes sense to me now why it would be a really scary one to get bitten by because you really don't know what kind of symptoms you're going to have, how much venom was injected, and that makes treatment really difficult too. Some of the anti-venoms on the market that are used for the hematoxic variety won't work very well on the nerve. neurotoxic ones. So it's kind of a Russian roulette kind of snake. You need to know like what type of Southern Pacific rattlesnake you were bidden by it, which is kind of crazy.

That is interesting. A quick aside here too. In the past, I've really vacillated between saying like anti-venom, anti-venin. I've recently learned that there's multiple accepted ways to say that. I like anti-venom the most. So we're just going to stick to that from here on out. Great.

Okay. At least I am. I don't care what you guys do. Dude, you sounded like such a dork when you're doing the anti-venim. I know, I hated saying it that way. Vene. I wish you guys would have used the game on me at that point and told me how stupid I was being. All right.

So a neighbor had- I tried, dude. You were like, no, you say it that way. I'm such a dick. Man, this is working. Classic OS. Yeah. I feel an emotional release.

I should join Senate on. Uh-huh. Morantz would spend six days in the hospital. in an intensive care unit. During that time, there was a media firestorm about the attempted assassination and the dangerous synon cult. This is when the messaging around Sinanon really started to change.

It was the biggest error that Deidric would ever make and it would ultimately lead to the downfall of Sinan. A neighbor had seen the van stop at Moranza's house and had gotten a plate number. It didn't take the police very long to connect the plate to Sinan and to Lance Kenton and Joseph Musico. Both men were arrested and placed into custody, and about a month later, Diedrich was also arrested. When police arrived at his residence, he was so drunk that he couldn't talk, which is kind of ironic.

Based on, like, this whole thing was based around him, getting rid of his alcoholism. Yeah. In the ensuing court cases, Morantz ended up taking pity on all three of these men. Both Canton and Musico pled no contest to attempted murder and received one-year jail sentences with three years probation. Morance knew the amount of brainwashing they'd both endured, and he felt as though a lifetime in prison wouldn't be fair. Diedrich was in really poor health, and Morantz again didn't feel like prison was the best option for Diedrich,

so they offered him a deal. He pled no contest to conspiracy to go to his own camp. Yeah, that's like a attendee. Just get the game nonstop. No, he pled no contest to conspiracy to commit murder. He got five years probation and a $5,000 fine. But the biggest part of this deal was that Diedrich was no longer allowed to associate with Sinan for the rest of his life. So he got pretty easy.

What did the snake get? The snake got death, unfortunately. Oh, that's right. A real victim. Had the snake lived, how many years do you think that snake would get? I think the snake would have been let off. But the snake probably would have died without its rattle. I don't know.

Saying if the guy was like, yeah, go easy on those three, but that snake. The snake. He's got a pin. Put him away for life. Yeah. In the 70s, that might have happened. Or the 80s, I guess, is when this was all happening now. Tough for whoever has to be the cellmate, though, of that snake.

To that snake. I wouldn't mind that. You'd get bit. You're terrified of rattlesnakes. Oh, yeah. I'm terrified of a cellmate. Yeah. You'd rather just have a regular cellmate than a snake?

Just put in a corner. I'd rather have a snake than a regular cellmate. Oh, no way, dude. Are you kidding me? Mike, you'd have to talk to your cellmate all the time. You'd hate it. I would get bit by the snake and die. Well, maybe that is a better alternative.

Let me think about it. I don't know. Sometimes jail seems kind of nice. You can just sit and read and watch TV. Yeah. Work out. I've been really thinking about committing some crimes over in Sweden. They sound their prison system.

Oh, yeah. That's pretty sick. Oh, yeah. That's my, like, backup plan to do you. Yeah. Yeah. I like it. The Colt quickly fell apart without Diedrich at the helm.

They lost their tax exempt status in 1982 and required to pay $17 million in back taxes, which meant financial ruin for Synanon. Today, all of the chapters in the U.S. have been long closed, but there apparently still is a functioning Synodon Center in Germany. Those Germans, they just can't. They can't give up anything, can they? There are a few things they've left, by the way, aside. Nope.

There is not, Mike. I think we should. I like the shaving heads part. Yeah. I think we ought to reboot Sinanon over here in the U.S. It sounded like it started off pretty well. Yeah. Bring it back, you know?

We're always rebooting old properties. I will say it's, I think you can really judge these things by what they, what they birthed. And it seems like Sinanon did help start rehab centers. Like it was like one of the first rehab centers and some good came out of it from that, but also this terrible troubled teen industry also was like birthed from Sinanon, which has just been so destructive to so many people. So I don't know. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed sponsored jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people

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So, Diedrich died in 1997, a few years short of his 84th birthday. Morantz would continue to focus on cults and coercive organizations for the rest of his career. He wrote several books. He did have health problems for the rest of his life, including a blood disease that doctors believed was an artifact from the snake in venomation. Wow. In his later years, he would say that he would eventually set the record for dying from the longest murder ever.

In October 2022, he proved himself right when he passed away at the age of 77 from existing health conditions that the rattlesnake bite may have played a part in. That's crazy. I mean, by that logic, the only way you don't prove, quote, unquote, is if you never die. Mike, let's let them have this. Okay, well, you got it. He got him, rights. No, but not necessarily.

Like, if he died in a car crash or something. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Or does it? Yeah. If he was, like, shot in the face, you couldn't say. You know, I think the rattlesnake finally got him.

Played a part. Could have, maybe. Could have survived had he not been bit that once. That's the end of the story. But for me, this one was really interesting because I had never really heard of Synanon. But meanwhile, there had been, like, movies made about it. There's this whole HBO documentary series. It's like one of the more influential cults that ever existed in the U.S.

It really changed a lot. And there were a lot of people that were heavily affected by this cult. So it's really interesting to me. Yeah. It was fascinating. Yeah. No, I didn't really know any of that. But it sounds like it was a pretty big deal.

That's crazy how bad those assassins were. Yeah, kind of good. away, but also like... Like it worked, but it's also like, you gotta know that a rattlesnake isn't necessarily gonna kill someone. Right. It's a very, like, low probability tactic, but it almost, it almost worked. But then like to do it when like the neighbors can see your van and like...

Yeah, bad work. Real bad work by them. They were sloppy. It was kind of surprising to me, and maybe it shouldn't have been. Do you think it's... impressive that the snake even bit him at all? Yeah. Because that was like, there's no good way to know that the snake's even going to go for it,

you know? I think when you aggravate a rattlesnake to that level, like you stuff it in a mailbox, you cut its tail off. They probably like shook it around in a bag before they put it in. It's much more likely to bite. It's in a very, like, defensive mindset. But I think more impressive than anything is like thinking that it would actually make contact.

Yeah. Because you would assume, like, maybe he would open. the mailbox and be like, oh shit, you know, and knock a bit by the snake. But the fact that it worked as well as it did, I actually thought was kind of impressive. Really? There's a little bit of blame on him for just opening the package when he feels like his life is threatened, you know? Yeah, for sure. I just feel like, you know, a gun.

They have guns at the compound. Yeah, $300,000 worth of guns. Blood and the balance. It's a rattlesnake. I do. I think the two, the thing two, that they probably. we didn't understand is how low probability it is that it actually kills him. We talked about this before. I think just in California every year, there's hundreds of people that get bitten by rattlesnakes

and they usually don't have any deaths. Like not that many people die from rattlesnakes. I think it's between three and five people a year and the entire United States die from rattlesnake and venomation. So it's really not a lot. It's a pretty low percentage. And even in the 70s, it was pretty low because they had already developed some of these anti-venoms that worked pretty well. So, yeah, if you're going to kill someone, don't use a rattlesnake. How many people in California die from guns every year? A lot more than rattlesnakes. A lot.

So, yeah, guns definitely higher probability. Even like a snake gun, just like a gun that shoots the rattlesnake would be better. Now we're talking. That's what that guy says, like, hey, I'm good with snakes. Yeah. The other guy's like, I'm good with guns. It's like, oh, I got an idea. Perfect.

All right. Well, do you guys have any other questions about synon, southern Pacific rattlesnakes, Paul Morantz, anything before we go to our categories? How are they doing? Are they doing all right, these snakes? Yeah, we're going to get to that in conservation, but I can just do it now. They're least concern. Their main threats are from habitat loss and just human intervention.

People don't like snakes, and they'll often kill snakes. So all rattlesnake populations in the U.S. are declining, but this is one that has a pretty healthy population. One thing that's kind of a silver lining for them is that they often do pretty well on the fringes of human society because we tend to attract rodents. People, we're not good at disposing our waste, which brings rodents in, and that's what they like to eat. So sometimes we can benefit them in that way, but we're ultimately hurting them by killing them directly and destroying their habitat. Is losing a rattle a pretty big deal for them? Is it like a death sentence almost? It's not a death sentence in that their rattle is purely defensive.

Like they use their rattle to discourage predators. And for rattlesnakes, their main predators are coyotes, birds of prey, roadrunners will kill them. But they don't have like a ton of natural predators, especially once they're older. So it's not a death sentence. It doesn't affect their ability to get prey. or anything. There's like species or there's groups of rattlesnakes that have evolved to like lose their rattle

or have smaller rattles. And I kind of feel like they're going to move that way with like evolution just because now that when humans hear the rattle, they like kill rattlesnakes a lot of the time. So I feel like the snakes that rattle less are going to be the ones that produce the most offspring. You're like Chuck Darwin, dude. Yeah.

That's an interesting concept. It's human-induced evolution, and that does happen. We talked about it a little bit, like, pheasants that fly are being selected against because they're the ones that get shot. So pheasants are starting to run a lot more than they used to. And that could happen with rattlesnakes. You're right, Jeff. It's an interesting thing to think about.

By that logic, you think penguins are going to start flying? Because the ones that don't are the ones that are getting eaten. I don't think they could change to do that. They probably wish they could. It sucked to be born a bird, and then realize you can't fly. Yeah, that'd be tough. It's like Elsa, Elsa and Frozen, her parents are like,

don't use those sweet magic powers. Yeah. Just dream powers. Just stay in your room, your entire life. I think that's a good idea. Yeah, she makes like one snowball and they lose their minds. All right, let's get onto our categories. They're very cult-focused today.

I asked you guys, your best or favorite, favorite cult in pop culture history or real life. You can pick a real cult or a fake cult. I like in the office just this line that Creed has where he's like, he's talking about cults and he says, you make a lot more money as a leader, but it's a lot more fun as a follower. I just always think of that line when I think of cults. All right. So your answer is Creed's line from the office.

Okay. I'm going with Los Aluminados from Resident Evil 4. It's a pretty cool cult. They're just like zombie parasite people controlled by Sadler. And they play bingo. You know, there's the bingo. Where's everyone going? Bingo.

That's the funny line everyone thinks about. That's my, that's definitely my favorite of the Resident Evil games. That's the only one I play and start to finish. It's a good one. It's great. I picked a real life one. I picked Heaven's Gate.

Do you guys remember Heaven's Gate? Yeah. The Nikes, dude. Sweet. Yeah. They pretty much believed that there was like extraterrestrial life. Are they the Kool-Aid ones? No.

We're going to talk about them too. But Heaven's Gate, when the Hail Bop comet arrived in the 90s, they all killed themselves thinking that there was a UFO behind the comet and that when they died, they would be taken up into that UFO. And they dressed in like the same outfit with the same Nikes. And they all had $5.3 quarters in their pocket. And it was like kind of a joke. It was just a really wonky.

interesting weird cult. And it was like 30 something people that committed suicide when the comet passed. It was a strange one. It's crazy. Really crazy. Is that how you pronounce that comet's name? I've always been confused because I always called it Haley Bop. I thought it was Hale Bop, but I'm not sure.

Al Bhop. Okay. Let's say you guys start a cult. What are three rules you're going to have and what's your outfit going to be? So I thought about this a lot. And I've been eating a lot of Mike and Ike's, the mega mix box. But the stupid thing is that I only like one of the flavors out of the 10. The watermelon, it's so good.

And they don't sell it. It doesn't come in any other box. And don't come at me with the sour watermelon box. It's not the same. So the cult is there's only 10 of us. And each of us are devoting ourselves to one of the flavors. Only people named either Mike or Ike can join or any variation of the name. A lot of mics.

Like Miguel or Michaela, like anything close enough. I don't want to be too exclusionary. Ike. Dwight D. Eisenhower could have joined. So the rules are you have to be either named Mike or Ike. Everyone has to buy one box a day. And then we divvy up all the flavors and trade because we're only allowed to eat the one flavor that we like. So I get all the watermelons.

Everyone gives the watermelons to me, et cetera, et cetera. And then we use the empty cardboard boxes because you can give them back to resolutely. cycling companies and they'll give you money for them. I think it's like $60 per ton of cardboard. And we're going to be going through a lot of cardboard. So we're going to make a lot of money. And we're going to use that money to lobby government officials and legislators to, I don't know, various Mike and Ike related causes.

And then the bonus rule is if you chew with your mouth open, you immediately are sentenced to death. I like that. That's a good rule. I'll join your cult. Great. You can't. I get watermelon.

No, please. Your name is Wes. Oh, that's right. I forgot about that. Change my name to Ike. Jeff, what's your cult? Yeah, so I kind of took some inspiration from the Davidians, Davidians, the Waco one. Yeah, Branch Davidians.

Gun guy, you're a gun guy. To me, too, like, cult's, a lot of being in a cult is about sex, especially as, like, the cult leader. So if I'm the cult leader, there's a lot of sex motivation. But I liked how he did it, whereas, like, he has to have sex. every woman in his court, but he can't enjoy it. If he starts enjoying it, he has to stop. So it's simply just like, you know, I have to do this. It's like, it's like an obligation.

Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah, we can't enjoy it. You're going to need that hymns subscription. We'll have our whole like motto is save the sharks. So then like it's a good, it's a good thing to. care about and also when people start getting mad at us for having a cold we can be like well we're trying to save sharks and they'll be like oh that is good you know that's like a public image type of thing

like people can't get go too hard on us good PR yeah yeah and then we'll watch the lord of the rings extended once a week wow um once a week yeah it's a lot and uh i mean there's nothing else to you And I think we'll dress kind of as furries, but like not the full costume. Like I want to see people still. But then whatever animal you choose to dress as, and you can change it, you have to like have sex as if in the way that animal would have sex. Okay. When you do have sex. So lots of doggy style sex in this cult.

I mean, there's sharks. You could, the Mike did the eagle ray where you bite the side. If you dress as an eagle ray, you bite. that I'm on the side, you know? Can you change animals that you dress up as, or you lock in? Praying mantis, like women can choose a praying mantis. Right.

And just lop the head off afterwards. I'd like to see them try. Or eat the head? Yeah. Yeah. They'd get like one bite into my head, and I would put a stop to it. All right.

My cult, my rules are everyone has to be completely quiet for five hours in the middle of the day. That just sounds nice to me. Sign me up. I don't care what the rest of the rules are. We all stockpile Easter candy to eat it year round because it's the best candy

and I just love to be in a cult where that's what you do. And then to be a member, you have to see 10 new animals each year, which is pretty easy, to be honest. Like birds, you can see 10 new birds pretty easily. Our outfit is going to be robes. I think I'm always the most comfortable just in a robe. Every once in a while you get flashed by someone. So wait, what's the, what's the ups?

side of this. Like what's the goal of the cult for you? Just see you new birds? Just having some peace and quiet for five hours every day. Yeah. There's not a big upside. There's not a whole lot of sinister angles going on there. I might be the only person in this cult. I'm

pretty much doing all these things already aside from the quiet time. All right. Our next one is which real life cult would you be most likely to join? Oh, this is real life cult. I didn't. You can do it. You can do a one if you want, that's fine. Well, my fake one was, there's always a bad team in the Pokemon games that's like trying

to steal Pikachu or whatever. In one of them, I forget which one it was, but their whole idea was to take people's Pokemon and set them back into the wild and like free them, which I think is pretty good thing instead of just making them fight each other all the time. I think that's probably, they were in the right. Much more ethical. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. You go with. Yeah. I said I was going to mention this one, but Jonestown, the People's Temple. Jim Jones, he incorporated, like, Christianity, socialism and communism into the People's Temple, which was kind of, that's kind of been my track as I've gone through life. And I, I, like, they were really big on racial equality. They moved to Guyana, which Guyana is a beautiful country.

He really loses me when they get to the drinking. the purple drink and all committing suicide. But, you know, if I'm feeling it, if I'm feeling the vibes of racial equality and love and everything, maybe I'll drink it. There's a giving a take, you know? That one's crazy when you think about it. 900 people like drank the purple drink and died.

That's insane. And not just so many people. Like children and stuff. Yeah. It's unreal. I mean, you like killed a congressman and stuff. Yeah. That one's wild.

You must have been saying. some true stuff to get every like all of them to do it you know right yeah i'm sure a lot of some truth it was against their will but you think yeah i would imagine yeah 900 yeah to make like a good quote you got to make it really hard to leave too that's why i'm like guy on it's hard to leave yeah yeah i i just made up my own that was i i was very sexually motivated in all this sure so I just had a cult of all women where I'm like the one guy that joins. Yeah. It kind of sounds bad, actually.

I'm pretty sure Jared Leto started one of those cults. How'd you come up with that? That's really inventive. Yeah, that's a bad one. You know what? An alien cult would be the most fun, I think. Leaving whole hog in aliens? Or like the start of Scientology.

That's like, it's just like the start of some of these religious cults where it's just like every day. Like if you're really committed to it and you're just like, wait, we all watched a movie in a volcano. Learning that would be crazy. Learning that and still deciding that like, no, this is good still. I still want to be a part of this. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Should we do some listener questions? or I think we're doing some nice advice would suffice. Is that right, Jeff? Yeah, I got a few. Okay. I'm never giving up on that title. Should never give up. We should rebrand and spin it off into its own show.

Okay. And if you guys have listener stories, are we ever going to do that again? Yeah. Tooth and tails. We're going to do that for our Mother's Day episode this year, too. All right. Yeah, write it in, write in for advice, general advice, or if you have a good wildlife encounter story to tooth and claw mailbag at gmail.com.

Yeah. Okay, so this is from Jennifer, and it's actually the second part of which she wrote in, but I don't know, I liked it a lot, the thought of it. So, P.S., I just listened to the episode with a snake falling from a hawk and landing on an innocent bystander below. I instantly remember my friend who had an Osprey drop a live fish onto their deck one afternoon. is quite large and the sound of it landing on the deck drew them outside to find the fish alive and I assume very confused. They ended up eating the fish.

I wish I had pictures to send you all. This occurred on the Chesapeake Eastern Shore in Maryland. So I guess my question, or I guess what it is, it's just like, what would you do if there's just a huge live fish on your deck all of a sudden? It's definitely not advice. Well, we're giving advice right now. I don't know where you want out of this. I would put it in a bathtub full of water. Would you?

I think I would, yeah. Until, like, that's at least step one, because we're going to be thinking about where we go from there. I actually think eating it's not that bad, because that's, like, what are you always, you're always talking about, like, sustainably catching seafood, right, Wes? Yeah, I think that's about as sustainable as it gets. Is that locally caught?

Yeah, locally sourced, caught sustainably. So no issues eating it from there. Yeah, I'm impressed that they ate it. Like, I think that's admirable because I don't think, I think for me that would feel like a tainted fish at that point. I don't think I would want to eat a fish that an osprey dropped on my deck. But it's impressive that they ate it. So no advice for me. I think 10 out of 10.

What do you mean? No advice. I think they did a great job in what they did. Okay. Well, what would you do if one dropped a fish on your deck? I would probably just hope that it would come down and take its fish again. Oh, you'd just leave it out for the osprey to. Yeah.

You'd just let the fish drown? Yeah. I guess. It wouldn't take long. And I just feel like that Osprey deserves its meal that it caught. So I'd probably just let nature take its course. I don't know if it deserves it. It dropped it at the goal line, you know?

Yeah. You're so close. You got to keep your, your talons on that eye on the prize. We should give advice to the Osprey, I think, is what this question's about, right? Be better at catching fish. Right. Yeah.

Hold on to Butterfingers. You got to get some wide receiver gloves or something up here that Osprey. Yeah. All right. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think I would have ate it. But now that I've heard that story, I might. But like, if it happened without hearing that.

Yeah, I'd probably kill the fish and then just leave it out there. All right. Next one is from Lauren, an undergrad student studying wildlife ecology at Michigan Technical University. And this one's just kind of advice for West to give the state of Michigan. Okay. Wildlife. So recently there have been two Cougar Cubs spotted in Untogun County and western part of the Upper Peninsula for the first time in over a hundred years.

There have been Cougar sightings before the Cubs have been reported, but the DNR reported that they've all been transient males. So, like, there's never been Cubs found in that section over this past hundred years, right? The mother of the Cubs has not been found, and it doesn't sound like the Cubs have been found since they were spotted under March either. I assume that the mother was probably killed, and the Cubs believed to be around seven to nine months old. And without their mother, it's not likely that they will survive either. I just want to get your thoughts on this. What do you think it means for cougars in Michigan?

Do you think that there should be protections or repopulation efforts for cougars now that there's been confirmed breeding female? Do you think there could possibly be more breeding females in the area? Right. So I'm supposed to give advice to Michigan. If you're hell-bent on it being good advice, I'm sorry. I mean, that is the category. I know, but it's like, I'm just, okay, just really quick for people out there. I thought it'd be interesting to hear your input on what this listener wrote in.

I agree. This feels like a listener question to me. And I do think when you people write into. But like the questions are too small on the Instagram, you know. When people write into the mailbag, though, or advice, it can be something that they need advice from us about. But I'm happy to answer this question for now. I think, I personally think you have to often rally a lot of resources, time, energy, and money to provide new protections for a species that's been extirpated before.

And you want to do that when you know that that animal has like established in that area. To me, just seeing two cubs, probably, I think it would maybe be a little preemptive to put all that effort behind it at that point. But I think it's when you start having those discussions, when you start really thinking about whether or not you need to start a mountain lion program or a cougar program. But the other thing I don't totally agree with is that it's very likely that that mom was still around when they saw these cubs and she just wasn't in view. Sometimes mountlines will stash their cubs somewhere when they go to hunt and they'll leave them alone for hours at a time. So I don't think it's like a given that she's dead. She might be raising those cubs. and if they do continue to see female mountain lions in that area,

then yeah, I think it's a great idea to start a program to protect them. Thanks for that advice. You're welcome. Now Michigan knows what to do. James asks, this one, their leg is probably healed by now, but we can still give them some advice. I have a broken leg and I was wondering if there's any good anime or just general TV shows to binge until I get better.

I'll turn it over to you guys first. Yeah. You know what show I think, a show that I think is really good is you on Netflix. Really? Yeah. I think it's like a fun rewatch and a fun big. I think the first two seasons were fun and then it got really bad. I didn't say got good.

I was just saying, I think it's a good show. I thought, I feel like they've done well every season. The third one went a little crazy, but I was like, You can't keep doing just, I don't know. All right. Yeah. For me, when I'm recovering from something, I want kind of like a low stakes episodic or something I'm really,

really familiar with. So I don't have to be like totally locked in if I'm drifting in and out of sleep or whatever. So like the Twilight Zone, just small little vignettes of, you don't really have to be super locked into it. They're always just like fun concepts, but you don't have to like follow a storyline from episode to episode season to season. So I would recommend something either. you're really, really familiar with and know that you like.

Yeah, I just, I think the Twilight Zones are really just kind of a fun, almost borderline campy sometimes. Just a nice thing to recover too. I got two recommendations quickly. I've really enjoyed the recent series Common Side Effects. It was created by Mike Judge and the animators behind Scavenger's Rain, which was one of my all-time favorite series. And then I really love Andor. I think Andor might be my favorite Star Wars story ever. So I know season two just started.

I haven't started it yet. But I recommend both of those very emphatically. That's common side effects. Sounds interesting. I've been telling Mike and Jeff to watch that for months. But they're never, I've overdone it. They're not going to do it at this point. Yeah.

We'll never like it as much as you want us to. You won't. It's true. I need to just, I'm never going to bring it up again to you too. But everyone else I will. I think you must have like drunk texted me the other. night when you were like, so. Maybe time to watch side effects.

Common side effects? No, it was funny. It's good. All right. Here's one from Elizabeth. Looking for your advice on a family heirloom. My great-grandfather was a furrier. What's that?

What's the difference of that in a furry? A furrier? Hold up. It's someone that's even more furry than just a regular furry. Well, I can just tell you. The family still has a real leopard fur coat from his shop that's hanging on my uncle's closet. So it's someone who deals with animal furs. None of us are interested in wearing it, and none of us would ever want to kill a leopard for any reason,

especially to make it into a dumb coat. So the question is, what would you do with this item? What would be respectful and ethical? It's a great question. I think personally, the leopard's already dead. a family heirloom. If you want to keep it, I don't think you have to feel bad about keeping it. I don't think our ideals and ethics and everything have changed over time. And I think if that's something that is important to you or reminds you of your family, that's okay. I don't know if I'd

like wear it out on the town, but like to keep it as a family heirloom, I don't think you need to feel any ethical hangups over that. But if you do feel weird about keeping it, you could give it to a museum or I'm sure there's like a natural history museum somewhere that would take it or like a think yeah I do like a like coat the bean museum in Utah they take any kind of old taxidermy that people want to surrender and they then like license it out to different museums and stuff and if if it doesn't get licensed it just sits in a warehouse but um someone might want to display it somewhere you know even like a fashion museum or something. Yeah.

Maybe you could repurpose it as something else, like take apart the coat aspect and just have like a, I don't know what you would do with it from there. But I imagine a museum could do something like that as well. But I don't think there's anything wrong with keeping it though. I really don't. Sure. I think as long as you're not like wearing it and telling people look how much I love my leopards can coat. You know, I think it's okay.

I feel like it's a hard one though because it is like, I don't know. I don't think I'd want to display it. or wear it because like if someone goes into your house and just sees like a leper skin up on your wall it'd be like every time I would feel obligated be like yeah I didn't kill that and make it into a code just so you know you know I don't really know what I would do with it and I feel like a museum it's not like that rare to have leopard skin and people use leopard skin in a lot cooler ways so I feel like the museum unless it's like here feel what a a leopard would feel like maybe a zoo could do that.

I don't know. So what? Are you saying like dispose of it? I'm saying it's a hard one. Yeah, just give it to goodwill. I think, I think like, I wouldn't do that. I think like the main thing that my advice would be is that I don't think they have to feel bad about it regardless of what they do with it unless they're like using it in a way

that would encourage other people to like have fur. But I think if they want to just keep it or if they want to put it in a closet or whatever, it doesn't really matter. But I'm just trying to hash out. Like, what would you do with it? I would keep it. I would just, like, have it in a storage closet. And I think it would be an interesting knick-knack that I had from my grandpa. I think I'd do that, too.

Just have it. I'd keep it, but probably not display it. And then just like, hey, you want to see this leopard coat my grandpa had? Right. Maybe like if we started a colt, you could like make someone wear it and then shoot them with like a BB gun while they're wearing the leopard coat and they have to like act like a leopard, you know. We did that with you once, Jeff. The bison, right? The bison hat.

Yeah, the bison hat. Okay. We did conservation already. Least concern. They're doing okay. But all rattlesnake populations are on the decline. Just for people out there, a quick refresher on some safety and how you should treat. these animals. These are very important animals to the ecosystems they're found in. They do a lot of

rodent control for us. They're amazing animals that are beautiful, that have evolved, a defense mechanism that's literally a warning for us. I mean, they tell you to back off before they bite you generally. So they deserve our respect. They deserve our admiration. And if you do encounter rattlesnake, obviously, like, give it plenty of space. If you happen to get bit, what are the two things that you need. The first two things you should look for. Cell phone and keys. Yes. Call the emergency center closest to you. Tell them you've been bit by a rattlesnake and then get yourself there as quickly as possible. Anything else you do is window dressing. Like, pick up the snake and bring it to the people so they can identify. You should not do that. But if you do

have time to take a photo of it, that's also smart so they can identify the species. But really what you want to do is just get to help as soon as possible. You want to get as much anti-eval. You want to get as much anti-venom as you need. Make sure that you advocate for yourself because sometimes doctors really just don't have a lot of experience with these animals and you need to make sure that you're telling them what you know

about them. So that's basically it. Anything else you hear about how to treat a snake bite is just kind of not that important. What about how to take down a cult? A cult? Yeah. Just be a really intrepid, hardworking lawyer, I guess. Don't open

packages without shaking them first. If you see like, if a package shows up that's like a 12 foot long poster, like it looks kind of like a wrapping paper tube, don't open it. It might have a snake in it. Can the rattlesnake like make a noise without its rattle?

Yeah, even just their tail shaking can make a little noise and they can hiss. They can hiss. Yeah, they definitely can make. Sometimes they like really hiss when they get into their coil position. It's pretty intimidating. I was going to say one more thing. Oh, yeah. So the other thing, too, just if you get bit, is to be as calm as possible.

So, okay. Last thing, our claw rating for the Southern Pacific rattlesnake, I'll go first. I'll go quickly. Nine out of ten for me. I love rattlesnakes. Every time I see a rattlesnake, I get really excited. I think they're incredible animals, and I just never get tired of seeing them in the wild. So nine out of ten.

Yeah, I'll probably give it a ten out of ten. Wow. I just rattlesnakes are a top five snake. know exactly what species I'd put in the 10 spot, but like to me, rattlesnakes are pretty similar. I like them all around the same level, you know. And yeah, I just think they're awesome. I think they're cool.

Nice. I think they're cool, too. 100, or no, probably like 58 overall. Hmm. Okay. Yeah, I'll give them an eight. I just, I didn't really know this specific species of rattlesnake existed till today. I love all snakes.

I think they're all cool. Rattlesnakes especially. But maybe that'll grow as I grow more familiar with them. Yeah. If you see a rattlesnake in Los Angeles or San Diego, it's very likely it's this species. Cool. I saw one in Malibu once. So it was probably, yeah.

It was a Southern Pacific. There you go, dude. Nice. Was it cool? It is big. 10 out of 10. All right. Thanks everyone for listening.

We appreciate all your questions, all your kind words. Everything you guys do to support us. Thanks especially to our subscribers. You truly keep us going and we love you so much. Thank you. It's funny. The one that we saw it is on like a walk with it girl and we both saw it and we both knew there's rattlesnake.

She like lived there and would see him sometimes. And then we saw it and we like thought like that's probably a rattlesnake and we had space to go around it and we were walking around it and then it like coiled up and rattled and I jumped so high. And I like already knew what it was. And like, that it's just sitting. Like it wasn't like a huge threat.

But once it rattled, it's still like scared me so bad. When they rattle, you know they mean business. Yeah, it's business time. All right. All right. See you guys. Love you guys.

Bye.