Latest / Why We Do What We Do / Jonestown pt. 2

Transcript

Jonestown pt. 2 · Why We Do What We Do

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: You're listening to Why we do what we do. Welcome
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: to Why we do what we do. I am your
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: reporting on the terrible news after the fact, Host Abraham.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: And I'm your hoping we can prevent this from ever happening.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: And again, Host Shane.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: We are a psychology podcast. We talk about all the
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: things that humans and non human animals do. And this
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: is the second part, the conclusion to our two part
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: little series. Here we are conducting where we discuss what
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: happened during what is known as the Jonestown massacre. And
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: so if you did not hear the first part, we
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: essentially set up everything that led up to this part,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: so they are pretty interconnected. We'll do a brief synopsis
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: in case you don't remember, or you do decide to
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: just listen to this part and not listen to the
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: last part, although I recommend I do recommend listening to
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: the first part. But yeah, we'll do a brief synopsis
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: and we'll give you a quick overview of what we
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: talked about last time, and then we will pick up
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: the story where we left off. But first I have
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: some things to say, which is that if you are
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: joining us for the first time, welcome again. I do
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: recommend you listen to the first part of this, but
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: I'll hope that you enjoy what you hear today no
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: matter what. And if you're returning listener, then welcome back.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: I hope that you heard the last one and that
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: you were joining us for the second part. Yeah, to
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: hear this. Part two also called the bad part because
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: this is where the worst things happen, although we already
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: talked about some bad things happening.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: Yes, this is worse than the first part. For sure.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: The first part's bad, but this is definitely worse than
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: the first part.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, this one's gonna be rough. We actually initial
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: in a PSA during the first discussion in which we
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: warned that there are some discussions violence, death, suicide, and
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: that includes murder of children, including infants. So that is
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: more relevant to this episode even than last episode. So
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: if that's something you struggle to hear, we'll try and
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: give some warnings when we're getting to the more graphic
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: descriptions of those We're not really planning to go particularly graphic.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: That's not the point of this discussion, but if just
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: hearing that mentioned at all is tough for you, you
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: might want to set this one out or try and
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: to skip as soon as we're getting to those parts.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: And again I'll try and warn you when we get there,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: but wanted to let you know it can be tough
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: to hear those things. I understand it was tough to
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: read about them, Yeah, to assemble notes for this, so
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: it's not for everyone.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and we're also not a true crime podcast, so
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: like we don't make the grizzly details where a psychology podcast,
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: So we're going to talk a little bit about like
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: where where well, you know, how people end up in
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: the space. But yeah, this is this is not a
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: true crime prodcast, So if you're looking for that type
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: of thing, go listen to one of the other podcasts
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: that are kind of talking about all the grizzly details.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: We're not going to do that today.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And just as you just said, for everyone
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: to know is that, like we are planning to talk
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: about understanding how this came to pass and what we
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: can do about it to prevent it from happening again
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: in the few dran the likelihood that it would happen
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: again in the future, So we'll get to all of
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: that as part of this discussion. But I also wanted
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: to say that, whether you are returning or a new listener,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: if you would like to support us after you hear
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: this discussion, you can join us on Patreon, leave us
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: a rating and a review, pick up some merchant or
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: merch store like, subscribe, and I'll talk more about the
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: ways that you can support us at the end of
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: this discussion. But I also want to acknowledge that this
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: is coming out on January or not January. That was
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: a long time ago, July twenty third, And of course
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: that means that you should all. We just want to
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: acknowledge the fact that you're all probably celebrating this already.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: But it is gorgeous Grandma Day.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: Yes it is. It is also hot enough for you day.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: It is hot enough. That is hot enough. It can be, yeah,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: it can. It can turn down a little bit. It
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: is Mosquito Day. I hope they mean as in the
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: elimination of.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, bats are stoked that mosquitoes exist, I guess,
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: but like humans are like a tasty treat for them,
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: and we uh, I don't like mosquitos, especially here. The
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: mosquitos are huge here. I don't like it. Yeah, yeah,
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: it's National Vanilla ice Cream Day, which is nice and wholesome.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Sure, it is on the theme of flavors. I guess
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: peanut butter and chocolate Day.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: Maybe the best combination, Like better than sunny and chare
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: better than holl of oats. I mean this is a
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: pretty uh, pretty good, pretty good combination.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Wow, better than Simon and Garfunkle.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying. It's sprinkle Day. So if you
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: get peanut butter and chocolate ice cream, put sprinkles on it.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: If you like vanilla ice cream with peanut butter and
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: chocolate and sprinkles, it is like it is ice cream
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: Sunday Day, is what I'm getting from this.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: That's all I'm getting too.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: It is World Organs Day, I think is how you
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: might say that?
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, Rits Shore grins, Shore grins.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: It's also YadA YadA YadA day.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Well that helps make sense of the first thing that
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: we just said. It is Hemingway Book Alike Days. Cool.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: Yes, it is. So if you have a beard and
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: you're drinking a lot of rum and key West, you
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: are celebrating pretty hard. It's a National Independent Retailer's Day shopping.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: It is National Moth Week.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: It is It's National Parenting Gifted Children Week. We should
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: probably do an episode on the term gifted and what
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: that meant and how it got there and why we
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: don't really use that anymore.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that would be an interesting one, but it's
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: moving on speaking of gifted children. Maybe it is National
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: Triathlon Week.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: Oh no, thanks, the one week year, just one week
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: of year that we're doing triathlons. It's National Zoo Keeper Week.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: It should be you know, for the folks that care
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: and are taking care of taking care of those animals
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: and doing a good job of taking care of those animals.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: You know, we want to celebrate them. Yeah, the mean ones,
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: they can go away indeed.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: And finally, it is Restless leg Syndrome Education and Awareness Week.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Do we ever talk about restless leg syndrome? I thought
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: that we meant to, but I'm not sure if we did.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: I feel like we did. It's definitely come up on
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: the show before. As a child of the nineties, I
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: remember so many commercials about this.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, interesting, Well, yeah, I don't know. Maybe something they
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: talk about that is all the holidays to mention for
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: today as we get into a nice soft landing before
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: we segue to our topic du jour, which, as we said,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: is a part two following up on what we talked about.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: We're concluding the story of what happened at Jonestown in
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, and so as a quick recap and
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: sort of overview of what we discussed, I'll start with
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: saying that, like this event that happened is very tragic.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: It is that where we get the term drink the
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: kool aid, as it refers to sort of being sucked
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: into something fully and completely. And it starts with a
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: man named Jim Jones and the fact that in the
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, actually the nineteen fifties, he started his own
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: Christian church called the People's Temple in Indianapolis, although once
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: he started defrauding people and taking their money and their
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: property and getting in trouble with the government, he fled
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: across the country to San Francisco, saying instead that they
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: would be more they would be safer there from a
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: nuclear holocaust should one take place. Oh and I forgot
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: to mention he was also selling monkeys as pets while
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: he was starting his church for twenty nine dollars each.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, door to door. Yeah, you know, at this
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: point in time he started his church. Over time, he
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: is becoming more and more paranoid. He is getting addicted
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: to stimulants. He moves out of Illinois to California and
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: starts growing his congregation, if you will, And then something
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: happens where he starts getting more and more paranoid, and
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: he decides that they're going to Guyana and they're going
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: to start their own space there where they can practice
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: free of government intervention. And so he sends some folks
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: down to start the Jonestown Camp down in Guyana. Now,
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: as a reminder to every this space that they go
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: to is a completely undeveloped area of rainforest yep in
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: South America. So it requires a lot of manual labor
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: to start building the camp, building the town, if you will,
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: and starting to build the infrastructures, which also includes clearing
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: out lots and lots and lots of jungle.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think they had to even build like
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: their own sort of road like structures for them to
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: get to it because it was so out in the
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: middle of nowhere. Yes, and just to go back really quick.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: The thing that had him leave California, there was a
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: lot of accusations against more fraud against abuse and sexual
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: abuse exploitation. He was blackmailing people. One thing that was
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: a little bit unique about him as he had a
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: pretty large number of black congregation members. He seemed to
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: be sort of praying on that population as part of this.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: But yeah, once they may moved down to Jonestown, Well
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: Jones sound named after him, Jim Jones and the Guyana government.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: They're sort of clearing theists that are growing their own crops.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: And he sets up this this speaker system, this PA
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: system where he's basically either conducting sermons NonStop or like
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: otherwise spreading his message if you will, or he's playing
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: recorded messages that he did. But either way, he's got
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: people listening to his voice most of the day, all
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: day every day.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: It feels like, yes, and the People's Temple has acquired
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: so much property and materials from their congregation. And they've
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: done this through you know, so maybe we'll say coercive ways. Yeah,
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: they've had folks that have confessed. They're also signed false confessions,
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: so either like confessing to things they've done or false confessions,
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: having them sign it, having them record it. There's lots
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: and lots of tape of stuff. Yeah, and basically just
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: kind of like kind of blackmailing people into staying in
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: the congregation and giving up their properties. So over time
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: this became a real significant problem, but also kind of
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: gave that's where a lot of the People's Temple the
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: money came from, was having these properties, having these real estate,
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: having all this money come in from there. From there
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: the people that are celebrating. But at this point in time,
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: you know, we've got them coming into South America into Gayana, Guyana,
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: You've got Jonestown started, and you've got people that for
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: a little while, we're kind of celebrating the advocacy or
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: the self advocacy or the outspokenness of the of the
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: People's Temple and all that until a Democratic congressman named
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: Leo Ryan decides to show up. And he was kind
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: of already sympathetic to what you could describe as cults,
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: and he had a member of a we'll say a
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: church of you know, maybe a particular church that Tom
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: Cruise belongs to, and you know, we'll we'll kind of
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: leave it that and he was open to having conversations
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: with Jones, and so he had kind of started considering
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: visiting Jonestown and kind of moving in that space. And
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: that's kind of want to releave off is we've got
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: this Lea Ryan, who's gonna now go visit Jonestown and
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: uh and see what's going on.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: Yes, And that's that I think is the really important part,
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: is to understanding that like this is going to be
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: This is kind of the catalyst that segues to the
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: next big part that happens. But that gets U up
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: to speed. We're now at Jonestown. It is nineteen seventy
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: eight and Leo Ryan has just arrived, and with that
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: amount of recap and holidays and everything, we are good
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: to take a quick ad break and then have the
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: rest of our discussion.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: Yes we will.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Okay, so we're back. We just did our full recap,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: so it is time now for actual content piece, which
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: that was more recap than I was planning to do.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: But there's just so much context that's really I think
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: important in understanding how we got here, yes, and knowing
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: sort of the series of unfortunate events that led to
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: the most unfortunate of events. So yeah, okay, So in
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven, Jonestown essentially starts. There's more than a
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: thousand people here now or around one thousand people. And
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: just after a year starting Jonestown, Leo Ryan, the Congressman,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: and a small crew of people including some aids and
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: some news reporters, they flew down to Guyana and they
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: landed in Georgetown, which is the capital of Guyana. They
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: landed there on November fourteenth, okay, and from there Ryan
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: traveled to Jonestown. He arrived there three days later on
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: November seventeenth, nineteen seventy eight, and he wanted to have
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: an audience with Jim Jones. He wanted to talk to
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: some of the people who lived and work there, and
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: so he did talk with other people, and he everything
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: seemed kind of on the up and up. But it
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: was curious that a lot of the people were responding
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: to him using the exact same language that Jones himself
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: had been using in his propaganda proadcasts, implying that the
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: people when they were talking to Ryan, to Leo Ryan,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: that they were sort of just reciting from a wrote script,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: they weren't actually giving him real information, they were instead
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: espousing talking points. And also, it is one thing we
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: hadn't really mentioned, is is Jones had really set up
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: a culture and system of informing on one another. So
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: there was probably a good chance that people that were
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: talking to him were reciting this script believing that they
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: could not really communicate effectively with Ryan or anyone. And
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: another thing we hadn't mentioned is that a lot of
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: the correspondence they had was being censored, if it was
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: being senter all right outside, So like these people just
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: were not really able to recruit any help in any way.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: So anyway Ryan is trying to interview these people, they're
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: essentially just giving him Jones's propaganda spiel. Ryan did actually
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: end up having a chance to meet with Jones, and
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: I think Ryan was expecting this to be kind of amicable.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: But Jones, again, he's paranoid, he's hopped up on all
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: kinds of drugs, and he was not particularly friendly. Although
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: he wasn't really he also wasn't threatening or worrying. I mean,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: this is a guy who's basically spent many years at
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: this point point just trying to manipulate people. He's kind
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: of just an an ongoing salesman, if you will, to
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: sell his ideas as promises whatever. Anyway, so he is
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: he's still at least somewhat charismatic, if not friendly. But
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: after this conversation Leo, Ryan is leaving and some of
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: the people who live there actually they approach him and
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: they say, we want to leave too, We want to
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: come with you, we want to go, and this obviously
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: Ryan wants. He's almost sympathetic to this, believing that people
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: should not be held here against their will and that
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: they should be able to leave if they want to,
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: and that would imply that this is a functioning worketing
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: system there. Anyway, they approach him with this, and that's
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: where we're at right now.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so Ryan accepts their requests, but he does note
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: that his plane is too small, can't hold very many people.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: But when he is attempting to leave with the people
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: who are requesting or like what could be described as escapees,
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: he was stopped by armed guards and while talking with them,
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: he was attacked by someone with a knife. The attack
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: cut the hands of one of his aides, but Ryan
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: was uninjured. Although now very scared, obviously you're a you're
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: in a place where you're very isolated. Now you're being
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: attacked with a knife. I think being attacked with a
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: knife anywhere, no matter where you're at is already scary,
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: but in a place where there's very little help. Yeah, yeah,
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: when you're in a place where there's very little help,
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: it's it's a little bit scary too. Now, the attacker
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: was some dude, and Ryan and his team were allowed
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: quote unquote allowed to leave.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Yes, so they're now leaving. They do have the people
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: with them still who requested to go. They're actually given
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: some sort of an escort to go with them, some
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: armed escort or whatever. But they leave and they're able
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: to make it to the airstrip at Port Kaituma, where
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: a plane waited for them. But as their truck approached
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: the plane, another truck with an open top flatbed but
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: high wooden walls so you couldn't see anything into the flatbed.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: You could just see that had a large sort of
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: open top flatbed that also drives onto the tarmac sort
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: of nearby.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: Yes, so the group, Ryan's group again boarding the plane,
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: but as they were boarding, men with a variety of
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: non automatic guns stood up from the bed of the
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: truck with the trailer that we just talked about and
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: they started firing on Ryan and his group. So pretty
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: violent conflict right now.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, this kind of came up pretty suddenly, a
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: little bit out of nowhere. Being fired at with a
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: gun in any situation is going to be absolutely terrifying,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: particularly in this one where they this is almost like
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: a diplomatic mission and now they're being shot at. Yeah,
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: And so there they panic and they decide that they're
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: at least somebody decides, I think it's everyone. They decide
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: they're not going to be able to escape by plane,
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: like it just takes too long to get off the ground.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: They already have too many people. So instead they start
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: running toward the jungle. However, of course, this they are
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: in the midst of a hail of gunfire. And that
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: is even when you have bad aim, which there's no
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: evidence to suggest that they did, you're in a rough
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: situation if you're being shot at in this way. And
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: so that that was able to those gun shots were
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: able to fell almost everyone, including Ryan, who of course
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: was the primary target. So Leo Ryan has now been
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: hit at least once by gunshot and his line on
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: the ground possibly dead at least significantly injured.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: This is where there's gonna be a little bit of
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: a graphic description here. So thank you for you are Yeah,
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: if you don't like this, go ahead and skip over
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: just just a few seconds. So the attackers fired on
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: Ryan's body repeatedly. So they found his body, they started
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: firing into his body, apparently just mutilating it with gunfire.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: They were similarly brutal with the attempt to escape bees.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: One of Ryan's aids, Jackie Spear sp Spear Spear spae
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: It's Spear Spear, was shot six times but managed to
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: survive and went on to serve as a congress person
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: from two thousand and eight to twenty twenty three. One
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: report suggested that two other people in the group survived
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: by playing dead and sneaking off to tall grass nearby
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: to care for one of the others. In the aftermath
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: of the attack.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so you've got some survivors. Some people did escape
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: successfully on into the jungle. Some people hid in the grass,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: some people played dead, and a few of them were
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: able to come together after the attackers left and sort
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: of help each other. But yeah, a lot of people
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: did die, and then at least some people, even if
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: they were shot, they did end up surviving. Jackie being
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: one of them. Yeah, pretty incredible that she was able
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: to not only survive this, but went on to continue
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: to serve in a public role, I guess for a while.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is such a significant escalation compared to
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: where we were at up until this point. We had
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: people that were trapped there with some coercion, but we
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: were not talking about armed militias firing on civilians at
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: this point.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And like there was like accusations of abuse
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: and sexual abuse, and probably all of that was relatively substantive,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: but like, we never had anything quite like this. You know,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: they attack and murder a congress person who's there as
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: like a diplomatic ambassador. Yeah, and this is wild. So
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: with this major, major event that happened, obviously the US
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: government is not going to just ignore the fact that
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: a member of Congress has been murdered, because remember this
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: is not twenty twenty four or twenty five, when something
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: like that would go unnoticed. This was back in the
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventies when something like that would be noticed. But anyway,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: Jones knows at least does seem to recognize the significance
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: of what's happened. He announced to the people of Jonestown
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: that he had murdered the congress person Ryan Leo Ryan,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: and what he essentially told them now was they would
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: soon be under full scale attack by authorities, like they
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: are coming for us. We kill the congress person, They're
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: coming for us, right, And he rationalized that the only
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: way that they could escape was through a mass suicide.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: So we talked about in the last episode I forgot.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: I don't know if we mentioned this, but they had
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: been practicing these like what he called white Knights, which
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: is where he would have them either practice. They basically
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: did rehearsals for like a mass suicide by ingesting cyanide,
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: usually with like a flavor drink of some sort. It
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: was unclear during those practices if he had told them
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: that they were actually laced with poison, or if they
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: told them it was just practice. Maybe it was a
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: mix of the those two things. Either way, they'd done
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: those practices, and so on November eighteenth, nineteen seventy eight,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: he gathered everyone from Jonestown at the main pavilion and
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: had his followers administer flavor drinks laced with lethal doses
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: of cyanide.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: Yes, So we mentioned earlier how drink the kool aid
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: is as a common phrase that has come out of
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: the scenario. They actually didn't use kool Aid. They used
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: something called flavor Aid, which was like kind of an
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: off brand cool aid at the time. So that's just
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: something that like I think is not an important detail,
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: but like kind of a unique detail about the situation,
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: because we are talking about like something that's entered the
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: kind of the common lexicon of today's society, but as
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: actually kind of like you know, a distorted view of
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: like what actually happened.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Real quick, we're about to get into some much more
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: graphic violent I guess you'd call it violence, graphic deaths. Yeah,
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: probably for at least the next thirty seconds or so,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about this, so you might
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: want to skip ahead until you hear us not talking
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: about that part.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely so. As this mass suicide event takes place,
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: one family for some reason decided to murder each other
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: by slitting each other's throats before drinking the cyanide laced.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: Beverages instead of drinking them actually.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: Instead of drinking yeah sorry, instead of instead of drinking it.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: So first the family decided to do this to the
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: kids and then to one another. So it's an unfortunate situation,
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: but that happened before they were before they decided to
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: do that instead of the drinks.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, continuing on with the awfulness. If you skipped
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: ahead and you find yourself here, skip ahead again. Yep,
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: this is again some more graphic aspects of what happened. Okay,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: So there are a wide range of ages of people
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: who are at Jonestown, as young as babies, as old
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: as elderly people, and they start by administering the cyanide
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: poison to the youngest ones first. To give this to babies,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: they administered this by using a syringe in the mouth,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: and then after all the kids had gotten that, the
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: adults consumed they're poisoned beverages as well. Either they drank
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: it or it was injected with a syringe, or they
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: were forced to take it at gunpoint by drinking it
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: or with a syringe. One way or another, they were
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: getting it in there. Apparently there's the story that one
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: of the survivors was a senior resident who had I
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: think probably had limited hearing, but they slept through the
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: whole thing. No one actually corroborated this, but I kind
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: of think they they maybe found like they thought this
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: person had like already consumed their drink, yeah, and that
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: they were like past. But anyway, they were sleep and
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: so they basically they fall asleep and then wake up
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: to every like this eerie quiet. Everybody's gone or not gone.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: I mean they're all lying on the ground. But anyway,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: that was kind of a thing that happened. So one
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: person slept through it. There were some people who escaped
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: to the woods. They were like, we really don't want
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: to be part of this. We're getting out of here,
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: and they ran, you know, they obviously a lot of
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: people tried to round up as many as they could,
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: but some people did run away. But the vast, vast
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: majority of habitants end up participating in or being subjected
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: to this event.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: Right, and so this is where the phrase drink the
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: kool aid came from, right from this idea of this
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: quote unquote willingness to take one's own life after being
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: so bought into rhetoric of some cause. Like you're just
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: kind of like buying into some language, some rhetoric, some idea.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: You're bought in so much so that you would be
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: willing to take your own life as a result. But
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: I think that it's offensive. It's like kind of like saying,
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: like some would argue that it's offensive, it's kind of
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: like saying, like flying a plane into a building, as
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: it might relate to suicide in the tragedy of nine
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: to eleven in the United States. But I do think
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: it's important to point out there's an important detail here
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: that I think it often goes overlooked when people talk
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: about this as a mass suicide. At the time this
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: is happening, Jim Jones is on the speakers, He's giving
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: a sermon the entire time that people are standing in
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: line getting their drinks, and you can hear audio of this,
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: and there's gunfire in the background, and there's lots of
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: bad things that are happening at the same time. It's
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: very unlikely that people were doing this willingly. Yeah, most
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: people were trained to do this because they were effectively
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: brainwashed into doing this as part of like be like
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: a coerced I should say, yeah. And if they were
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: doing it, they were being done at gunpoint. So it's
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: really better, like it's a better term or a more
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: accurate term I should say, to call this a mass
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: murder than to call it a mass suicide, just because
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: the amount of coercion that's involved.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I want to talk more about like understanding
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: the sort of psychological variables and aspects of what happened
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: here in just a moment. But we had promised some ads,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: and we shall deliver on those ads. Yes, And if
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: you have fast forwarded, we've mostly gotten through all the
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: most graphic parts of the discussion. So yeah, we'll be
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: back with some ads with some less graphicness. I guess, yes,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: we're back. One thing, as you sort of mentioned alluding
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: to this, is that they had been recording like every
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: the whole time they were there. They had tons and
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: tons and tons of audio footage from Jonestown. They would
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: recorded his sermons, they recorded his propaganda, they recorded people's
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: confessions or false confessions, they recorded everything. And that meant
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: that they were even recording up to and through the
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: time that this mass murder event took place. The FBI
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: was able to assemble a fairly comprehensive and detailed narrative
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: of what played out at Jonestown up to the last
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: forty five minutes that everyone was still alive, and I
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: could not stomach listening to it for the purposes of this.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: To me, it feels like that would be a haunting
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: experience that I would never be able to get out
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: of my mind. Yeah, it's probably worth it for people
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: who want to like really be in the know and
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: like the empathy for the victims of this, But I
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: just could not bring myself to do it. I apologize.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, it's it's harrowing. It's it's bad. It's
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: one of those things if you are somebody who is
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: interested in the history and want and really want to
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: know the details, it exists. But if you can live
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: without it, I would recommend living without it. It's not
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: an easy listen.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I just I feel like it's not worth dwelling
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: on the horrible ways that humans have, not like really
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: experiencing the visceral, disgusting reality of people treating each other
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: the worst they've ever treated each other. Yeah, So, like
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: I just I didn't. But it is available, so for
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: people who, yeah, for that is important part of history
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: for them to understand in that way. I had no
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: judgment from me. I just couldn't do it myself, right,
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: So when.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: The Guyanese authorities arrived next day, they were prepared to
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: defend themselves, but they found instead an eerily quiet compound
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: and then hundreds and hundreds of bodies. Jones was found
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: dead with a gunshot wounded a head, which is believed
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: to be have been self inflicted, but scholars say they
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: cannot rule out homicide either, so it's kind of unknown
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: how he met his end.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think you could take that a lot
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: of different ways. It's probably unfortunate he never had to
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: stand trial or face any kind of public scrutiny for
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: his crimes. And at the same time, it would have
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: been horrifying if he had gone on to continue, like
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: in some way later recruiting more people to his causes
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: because he was he was a charismatic guy who was
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: like good at doing that sort of thing, right, and
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: he knew how to prey on people. So okay. The
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: final death toll is most consistently numbered at nine hundred
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: and nine people almost one thousand people. Some people put
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: it at nine hundred and eighteen. It's possible that they're
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: counting as part of that Leo Ryan and his delegation.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: Of the people who died, about a third of them
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: were children. About two thirds of all the people there
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: were black. Of the people who died, there were about
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: one hundred survivors. As I said, there were a little
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: over one thousand people at this encampment, if you will.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: So this was actually the largest single intentional death of
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: civilians and American history until the terrorist attacks on World
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: Trade Center in two thousand and one. Afterward, there were
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: further investigations that alluded to the fact that Jones may
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: have also been involved in some other murders, in particular,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: that he may have ordered some hits or murders during
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: his assent to power and influence when he had people
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: who were they going to run him out or who
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: are investigating him. There was at least a couple that
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: I saw, but it's possible he had more deaths than
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: even that nine hundred and potentially eighteen. But even still,
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: in my mind, one death attributed to something that you
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: have caused is too many.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: Yes, So nine.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: Hundred and eighteen plus, however many else is way, way, way,
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: way too many right now.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: It took a long time to repatriate all the bodies
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: from of the Jonestown victims and to bring some sense
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: of closure to their families, and it was a grizzly effort.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: Some survivors of Jonestown were arrested and tried for murder
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: to at least one more successfully than the other, although
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: both received some amount of time in prison. So, you know,
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: you've got folks that were part of it that ended
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: up being tried in the trials, like you just mentioned.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: But really the biggest thing was you had nine hundred
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: and nine folks that had to get back to the
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: United States, that their bodies had to get back to
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: the United States, and that was in itself a major undertaking.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean they're out in the middle of
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: a tropical rainforest, and granted it is November, but I
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: mean also November in the southern hemisphere is hot. Yes,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: So yes, all that is to say, without trying to
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: be very grisly about it, like they were not in
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: the best state by the time they got them back, right,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: by the time they left, they weren't always in the
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: best state.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: It was a huge undertaking to move that many bodies.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: So okay, let's try then to dig in and understand
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: how this happened and use that ideally to try and
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: have it not happen again. So many social psychologists have
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: attempted to weigh in on this in an attempt to
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: understand how to how it was possible to influence behavior
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: to such a degree that people would take their own
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: lives and the lives of others, which I think is
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: an understandable inquiry in question to raise, Yeah, this was
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: a situation that feels like it should not have been
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: able to happen, but clearly it did, and that meant
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: that there were things about psychology that we just did
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: not really fully understand, or that we could try and
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: use this as a learning opportunity to understand them better.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: Right, So, I think it's very easy to want to
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: blame on some level or at least put some responsibility
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: on the victims to degree that they got themselves involved
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: in this cult they bought in they didn't. You know,
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: there's lots of kind of like justifications for people going like, well,
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: you know, how did those people let themselves get caught
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: in that situation to argue how could they do that
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: to one another and then lean on the idea that
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: they were brainwashed? Right, But most of the social psychologists
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: point out that Jones used a lot of rhetorical strategies
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: that cowerce cooperation. He used passion, showmanship, performances, use a
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: lot of different things to dazzle and entertain people. He
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: was charismatic. He used faith, and he played on people's insecurities, vulnerabilities,
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: willingness to follow his command out of fear of punishment
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: in the afterlife, to use tricks and promises to make
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: them believe that he had supernatural powers. And we see
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: this time and time again, and cults like this. You
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: see this come up very often. He did not allow questions,
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: He didn't allow for skepticism or critical thinking. He punished
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: any versions of descent or anything that had the potential
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: to undermine his authority. He threatened more than punishment in
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: the afterlife. He delivered real punishment in the real world
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: and told people that it was their own fault, which
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: is a very common religious tactic. You see that quite often.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: He quelled descent by incentivizing that people monitor each other
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: and turn one another in if descent was at or observed.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: So he created a context of fear. He used fear,
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: specifically the fear of others and the terrible things that
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: will happen someday soon to manipulate people into listening to him.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: He lied, he obviouscated, he misled, He told half truth
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: or outright falsehoods, behaved as if he were speaking the
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: truth quote unquote truth that anyone who didn't believe him
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: was the enemy and out to get them. He spoken hyperbole,
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: superlatives and quote told it how it is end quote,
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: and we've heard that phrase a few times, which appealed
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: to a lot of people at the time. He also
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: worked people so severely that they lacked the energy or
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: the will to oppose him. He oppressed this group of
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: people to such a degree they felt like they had
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: no other options.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I feel like we see a lot of
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: those same characteristics. Those characteristics are part of the problem
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: of Jim Jones, and we see those in other people
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: directly today. You can guess who I'm talking about, or
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: you can or I can tell you at rhymes with dump.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: But all this is to say that people here were
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: really not given a choice. This was not them choosing
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: some path, even if it looked like choosing, because again,
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: they had been manipulated, they had been coerced, they had
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: been lied to, they had been swindled. You don't blame
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: someone who was swindled for having been swindled by the swindler.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: You blame the swindler, Like they're the ones who went
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: after some population that they thought they could get away with,
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: taking things from them that they didn't earn. Those are swindlers.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: We don't blame the victims of the swindler. We blame
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: the person who's doing the bad deed here. And so
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: I think that's the way a lot of people they
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: want to point out, like it's not appropriate to call
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: this a choice. They didn't choose this. This is the
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: thing that happens to them. They were in the wrong
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: place and the wrong time, and someone came along knowing
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: how to manipulate and exploit those people, right, and he
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: just was a very good salesman at that sort of thing,
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: and it worked. So I think it is best conceptualizing
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: the people who died at Jonestown, maybe aside from Jim
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: Jones himself, as victims of Jim Jones.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: Yes, I think that's the best way to look at it.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: I think it's important to reflect on who we blame
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: in these situations, because I think it's very easy to
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: blame certain people and not blame the people in power.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: But it is almost entirely the people in power in
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: this situation. I mean, it really is truly it was
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: Jim Jones and Jim Jones and his contingent of people
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: that were in power that took advantage of those folks.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: And I think it's important to reflect on that. I
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: think it's important to kind of like think about why
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: we want to blame the victims sometimes in those situations.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think you know, we could acknowledge that
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: like circumstances got Jim Jones to that point. Yeah, Like,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: in a sense, it's not his fault if we consider
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: that we understand that there were contextual environmental variables that
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: led him to having the opportunity to do this in
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: the first place and gave him the skills to execute
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: on it, which is all true. We trace that history
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: so that we could understand that. And yet when it
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: came to this event, Jim Jones is the person who
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: then holds all the cards, He has all the contingencies,
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: he is doing all them in ulating despite how we
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: got there. He is the one who did this, you know.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: And it's like assigning blame is not particularly useful. But
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: I do think that like understanding that when we have
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: power dynamics such as this one, ultimately, if that person
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: had not been in that position, this would not have happened, right.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: He manipulated his way into that position. He did a
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: lot of shady things, and there are a lot of
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: reasons that that all sort of came to pass. But ultimately,
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: when we think about like who has the power here,
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: who can pull the strings and make things happen, it
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: was Jim Jones. And so understanding that, like if we
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: are to understand things like this, understanding who is the
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: person who is pulling the strings, who has the power, Like,
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: that's where we need to be looking to make the change,
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: because that's where the change is coming from.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: Like that's the source, right, So I think probably there,
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: it's probably good time to take a quick gay break
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: just to kind of like again, just take a breath, reflect,
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: see where we're at, and then we're going to keep
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: diving into this.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: I was going to say, the same thing.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: Okay, so we're talking about Jim Jones and how he
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: led these people to do this thing and kind of
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: like the how people end up in these spaces. Now,
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: some psychologists and some other folks will point out that
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: Jim jones tireless model of preaching day and night and
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: calling people out for praise or punishment actually reshaped how
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: they thought of and experienced the world. That is to say,
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: what can be accepted as true and untrue, what kinds
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: of actions align with values of good and bad, et cetera, etc. Right,
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: they came to see their own identity as belonging to
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: the group. This kind of framing uses language to rationalize
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: actions that then seem in line with the group's values
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: and goals. If their only escape is through suicide, then
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: they might take that escape. If the group collectively agrees
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: to participate, then participating is who you are because you
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: are a member of the group. That is a group, movement,
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: group behavior, group values in group thought. Right, And this
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: hypothesis also I fits neatly as part of the explanation
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: as to why most people seem quietly accepting of their fate.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: Why people just kind of went, well, that's what the
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: group is doing, so of course I will go along
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: with this, Like, if it's what's best for the group,
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: it's what's best for me.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I am I participate in this. I have
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: solidarity with these people. Yeah, we've been promised this boondoggle
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: in the afterlife. And furthermore, there's probably some sense of
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: guilt for existing in the first place, because they're all
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: treated as sinners and people who have inherent sin baked
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: into their being, and so death is ultimately what they deserve.
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: So they're just kind of speeding up the process a
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: little bit. So you can see how he sort of
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: rationalized his way to that and had people buy into
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: then believe that, right if that was sort of the
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: message they were getting. And there are a few more
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: circumstances that are worth pointing out. For the people who
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: lived in Jonestown here who were under Jim Jones's rule,
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: under his thumb, one is that they were so far
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: away from home in a foreign country and with no
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: money that even if they could escape, they might not
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: be able to. Like where would you go? Like if
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: you try it, Let's assume you could even leave the
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: compound without being chased down by other people of this
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: town and make it all the way to Georgetown. Like
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: you don't have any resources, what are you gonna do?
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: Like you can't buy anything, you can't get out of here.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: You are so far from home, there is no way
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: for you to escape. So like, there that is one circumstance.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: A lot of people there were facing. Another is they
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: were probably just chronically hungry, exhausted, and afraid because they
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: knew that like there was this culture of snitching on people,
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: they were constantly made to either admit to things they
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: had done or admit to things they hadn't done in
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: false confessions. And they worked all day every day without
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: any breaks. So like they were beaten down people, they
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: were worn out. A third reason here is that there
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: was some reason for them to believe that this them
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: following through with this group directive would grant them safe
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: passage to a blissful and better afterlife. Very common rhetoric
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: that's used in a lot of places to control people
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: is to have them believe that they make sacrifices for you,
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: or for the group, or for the church or for
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: the whatever, and that that means that good things happen
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: to them when they're dead, and that our language allows
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: for that sort of rationalization to make sense to us,
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: to some of us at least.
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: But fourth one here is for those who had children
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: who had died first, it may have been easier to
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: take their own lives at that point, having done that
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: to their children, sure like, maybe it didn't even feel
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: like I don't know how to say this exactly, like
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: it didn't feel necessarily it was totally real or it
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: was totally happening or whatever. But then like the thing
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: actually happens and they're looking at what they've done and
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: they're like, oh, I am going to Yeah, you know,
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: I think that they at that point they had sunk
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: in so much and sacrifice so much so that there's
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: not way they're not going to get out of this
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: in any way that they could even live with. So
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: at that point, like, may as well follow the path
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: that had been set before them. I have three more
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: Do you want to take those? Or should I keep going?
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: Nook, You're gone? You gone?
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: Okay, okay, all right? The fifth one here again, Like
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: what I'm what I'm reiterating here in case people weren't falling,
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: is like these are some of the other factors and
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: variables to consider for the inhabitants of Jonestown and why
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: they may have been in a position where they did
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: follow the group sort of leadership and behavior here. So
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: reason number five, or contextual variable number five, I should say,
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: is should they make it to home, Like let's say
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: they did escape, Let's say they somehow found their way out,
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: they found their way home, they have reason to believe
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: that they would be social pariahs at best, possibly they
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: would be imprisoned or attacked by others at worst for
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: what they did or for their part in it. And
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: it's again being treated as perpetrators, not as victims. And
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: again also thinking about like there were a lot of
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: black people in this congregation already, people who have been
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies, like they had still I mean,
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: look at where we are today. You know, there's still
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: a very marginalized group. They were still treated very horribly
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: by many people in the country. This wasn't all of them,
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: but that was a circumstance that they faced that like,
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: now they're going to leave this compound where a whole
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: bunch of people have died and they somehow survived and
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: go back to a place they already weren't welcome, Yeah, necessarily,
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: And they.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: Were told over and over and over again that they
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: were an enemy of other people, so that they were
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: going to be attacked. That's the other side. Actually, like
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: they believed it because they were it was beaten into
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: them effectively that they were going to be imprisoned, attacked,
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: or killed as an enemy of whatever state or government.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: Great point. Yeah, that was actually that is a very
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: important that could be its own additional variabolt to like
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: include here, right, yeah, all right, contextual variable number six
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: as I have decided to outline these, This was not
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: a like a list that was listed out. I synthesized
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: this list so you could separate this. The more variables,
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: I think I collapsed some things together. I did get
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: some of these from other scholars and whether they wrote
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: about this and other places, but like a lot of
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: this was me taking the understanding and trying to distill
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: it down into I think critical points that people had
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: made enlisting them. So anyway, number six is a lot
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: of the people in Jonestown had sunk so much of
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: their resources, all of their resources in some cases into
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: this Jonestown community, and to Jim Jones specifically, that they
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: didn't have they had nothing left. They had nothing left.
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: If again, if they were to escape, they would escape
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: to nothing. That is a scary place to be, right.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: There is not a lot of recourse for people who
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: walk back into the country with nothing at all for themselves.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: So and then finally number seven here there was some
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: amount of correspondence between what they said they believed and
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: what their actions represented about their actual beliefs. And what
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: I mean by that is that they seemed to do
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: things that indicated that they did believe the things that
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: were being told, right, which makes a lot of sense.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: We generally believe the things are being told because we're
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: generally being told information that we can act on that
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: is generally useful unless you watch ault right news, but
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: like generally speaking, like we receive news or information or
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: speech to us, and we treat that as if it's
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: something that we can we can behave with respect to
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: that as being useful information in some capacity, And so
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: it makes a lot of sense that like if they've
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: been hearing NonStop for years now, at least a year,
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: let's just say generously, they like joined right when Jonestown
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: just was established, and they were there for the full year,
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: but like that's still twelve months, which is a very
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: long time to just be hearing NonStop rhetoric. And then
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: their actions corresponded to the things that they had been
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: coached to believe. And so I think there is an
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: understanding there of how what they were told and how
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: they be with respect to that they corresponded to each other,
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: and that makes sense.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, I mean, and I think that you pointed
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: out this is this is such an excellent thing to
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: point out, right, is that there are a lot of
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: different reasons for a lot of people there. But as
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: many scholars have pointed out about the situation, their circumstances
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: were such that they had effectively been forced to carry
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: out these atrocities like they were in any situation where
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: it was they had nothing left to lose, and they
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: were really like except for their lives, and they were
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: willing to give that up because it was better than
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: the alternatives that they were facing. Right. They also argue
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: that Jim Jones tricked, manipulated, swindled, blackmailed, and otherwise coerce
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: people into an inescapable corner. Whether or not they felt
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: that way about their own situation was different. They were
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: fully in it. They were no more making autonomous decisions
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: than if they had a gun to their head the
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: entire time, effectively, they couldn't make a decision that was
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: going to benefit them except for the one that they
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: Ultima Milion made.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that's a really good way to
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: think about it, is to think like, imagine someone doing
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: something horrible and they have some one with a gun
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: to their head, and you know, you realize at that moment,
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: if someone had a gun to your head, you might
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: also do horrible things. They have metaphorically had a gun
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: to their head the whole time, and it just stayed
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: there for a very long time, the threat ever present,
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: and so it was a long coercive scheme to manipulate people.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: But social psychologists and other psychologists who have weighed in
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: on this argued that even the most rigid and callous
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: should be able to accept that at the very least,
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: the children could not have been considered to have consented,
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: and they should definitely be considered murder victims here. I mean,
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: really like children cannot consent it to things like this.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: That's the reason that we have parents who signed consent
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: forms for children in places is because we cannot accept
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: that a child has not been coerced in such a
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: way that they are giving their freest consent, if you will, right,
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: And so, no matter how callous you are the children,
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: I think you can at least agree that the or
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: callous you are, I think that's that's quite judgmental. Matter
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: how hard a time you have buying that the people
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: here were also victims. You can at least, I think,
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: appreciate that the children were definitely victims. They were murdered, right, Okay,
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: right now. I think that again, psychologists and social psychologists
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: scholars who talk about this, they also suggest that we
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: should not talk of the rest of the people here
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: as having died by suicide, but having been murdered effectively
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: by Jim Jones, suggesting that they had those those inhabitants,
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: those residents of Jonestown, they had too little agency to
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: be making deliberate self directed choices.
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's I think that's a fair way
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: to look at it. And I think that's I think
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: that's where I land is, Like, I don't think that
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: anybody could have made a decision fully free of coercion.
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: I think that at this point in time, everybody was
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: a victim there.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean, yes, you did have people who
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: ran away and escaped, and like, great on them, Great
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: that that was whatever circumstances prevailed for them, that they
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: did feel that they had that kind of agency. But
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: that's just not going to be the case for all people, right,
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: And so I think it's still worth understanding like where
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: they were coming from. But yes, that's how I feel
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: about this is I think that we consider essentially a
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: perpetrator in Jim Jones and nine hundred and eighteen victims
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: that were there. And as I said, we can all
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: agree at least that the children were definitely victims.
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: Right, So I think with that we'll probably take a
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: quick gad break because we need to also ask the
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: question about let's about Jim jones psychology and how he
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: ended up in that space and what that looks like.
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: So let's take a quick gad break and then we'll
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: come back and talk about that. So we have I
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: think explained at this point in time, like we can't
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: really blame the folks that were at Jonestown for what happened,
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: which means that we kind of turn our focus on
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: Jim Jones himself. And we've already kind of talked about
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: his history and growing up. But let's talk about like
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: what it means when you have somebody who is in
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: this type of position of power. It seems to be
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: what happens in general when you have someone who wants
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: power just for power, or money for the sake of money,
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: or who uses religion as a vehicle to control people,
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: or for whom the end always justifies the mean. It
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: doesn't matter how we got there, It just matters that
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: we got there right. And Jim Jones stumbled across the
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: persuasive nature of religion and then got a taste of
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: real power and success when he started his own church,
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: and it just kind of snowball from there.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean this, We have seen this play out
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: this way for other people, Like they they just want
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: power for the sake of power. They just want money
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: for the sake of money. And they find a vehicle
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: that will manipulate people, and they exploit it, and they
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: manipulate a lot of people. Like there are some things
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: that kind of work to that end. If he had
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: never found religion, or maybe if he had started his
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: church but never really got it off the ground, maybe
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: he would have just gone back to medic school, become
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: a doctor, lived out the rest of his uneventful life
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: as a normal person just doing their thing. Perhaps not
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: we don't know, but like what we do, we do
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: know what did happen? And it's possible that because he
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: was so interested in and enamored with the power of religion,
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: to control large groups of people for whatever reason that
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: spoke to him. If he had just not had that exposure,
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: might he have had a different path in life. Probably,
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: I don't know what it would have been. Maybe he
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: still would have gone on to be a mass murderer,
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: but like where he ended up would have probably looked
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: somewhat different.
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: Right now, it is possible that Jones had some amount
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: of brain damage from contact with lead. Actually this was
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: pretty common around this time. Yeah, and actually one of
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: the things that people point to when it comes to
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: just the kind of like the general rise of serial
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: killers at the time.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: Though it's kind of like one of those things where
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: it's it's more of a theory than it is like
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: actually definitive proof.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: It's correlation. We can't prove causation, but the correlation is
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: a little bit astonishing how closely they map onto each other.
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Now he was in that golden area of
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: extreme lead exposure, so it makes sense. It's also possible
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: that is poor, unstable a stare upbringing made him desperate
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: for the ability to provide security for himself at any cost,
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: So he would have done anything in everything he could
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: to be safe and secure for himself. It didn't matter
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: who he walked on.
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: And I think that, you know, we can look at
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: these and consider it's probably to some extent and combination
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: of all of those things and probably some things we
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: didn't even consider.
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: Here.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: We know that his circumstances got him there and then
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: he started pulling the strings for others and that led
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: to tragic outcomes. But I think that like the things
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: that we know that can affect behaviors like this involve
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: your upbringing and involves your access and exposure to certain things,
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: and it involves your contact with the success or failure
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: in those systems, and all of those things aligned to
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: eventually result in this, And yeah, I do think it's
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: worth considered. I think you said Golden Area. It's Golden era.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know if there was a particular location, but
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: like there was a this was a time in US
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: history in particular where there was a lot of exposure
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: and again it maps on pretty remarkably with the rise
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: in violent crimes that was also taking place. So anyway,
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: well that is to say that, like I think there
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: are biological, neurological, and contextual factors that were all at
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: play that likely had some contributing effect on the extent
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: to which he turned out the way he did and
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: ended up doing the things that he did. And I
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: think the ones that we've outlined make a lot of
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: sense in understanding what probably was the case. But you know,
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: he is gone, so it's not like we can do
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: a whole lot more studying of him.
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: Now, right exactly, So I think a big question that
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: we're kind of left with at the end of this
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: is like, could this happen again? Now, there were multiple
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: examples of cults forming and mass suicides, mass murders. There
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: there are examples of this happening, not to the extent
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: of Jonestown, but there are exams those.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: Only one, yeah, but one, this one was this one
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: was real bad.
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, significant for sure. But there's also, you know, examples
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: of milder is not the right term, but like less
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: intense situations, but people still being harmed because they get
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: sucked into the rhetoric of a cult. They get sucked
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: into the rhetoric of a group of people. And there
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: are harms that occur that don't have to be suicide
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: and murder. It can be sexual harms, it could be
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: financial harms, it could be emotional, psychological harms like there
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: are lots of ways that can show up. So the
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: question of could this happen again is effectively yes, but
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: let's talk about kind of what that looks like to
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: the degree that Jonestown, because we're basically saying, could another
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: situation like Jonestown happen again?
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: Right? Yeah, that is the question. And many people, including
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: survivors of Jonestown, people who were there on the ground
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: experiencing those when it took place, they point out that
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: the rhetoric of the MAGA movement that Make America Great
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: Again movement feels eerily similar to James Jones rhetoric in
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: a lot of ways. It's the use of superlatives, of hyperbole,
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: the utter lack of concern with truth or facts, specifically,
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: criticisizing anyone who disagrees with them, silencing and threatening critics,
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: underhanded manipulation and exploitation of his followers, the abuse of power,
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: the addiction of prescription medication, the ends justify the means,
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: the use of fear to scare people into compliance, the
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: value of loyalty above all else. These are so close
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: between both Donald Trump and Jim Jones you probably didn't
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: even know which one I was describing during that little comparison.
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: And you know that if Donald Trump commanded his followers
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: to drink cyanide, at least some of them would do it.
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: They started drinking bleach.
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he got people to do equally dangerous things
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: during his first term. So, like I was describing all
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: of that, and as I said, like you heard that,
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: and you think some of you were thinking, Oh, he's
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: just talking about Jim Jones. Some of you were thinking, oh,
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: he's talking about Donald Trump. And the fact that I
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: could confuse you proves my point. Well, it doesn't prove it. It
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: supports my point, I think in the fact that there
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: is an alarming amount of overlap here, and that leads
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: us to the conclusion that not only could this happen again,
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: we're not so far away from it happening again as
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: we might want to believe.
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: If there are conditions where you're being compared in the
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: same sentence to somebody like Jim Jones, there should be
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: a concern. Yeah, Like there shouldn't be confusion, Like somebody
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: shouldn't read your biography and confuse you with Jim Jones.
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think at that point, like get done
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: picked up. Yeah, stop evaluate your life and make better decisions.
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: It's sort of like I was thinking about the other day.
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, there are real life Nazis in
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: the United States that were born after World War Two, Yeah,
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: that identify with Hitler and Hitler's movement and anti Semitism,
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: And I could pretty much get I would bet like
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: one hundred dollars that one hundred percent of the Nazis
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: in this country who voted voted for Donald Trump or
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: well yeah, yeah, they voted for Donald Trump, or they
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: can't vote. Oh they can't they say if they voted,
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: they voted for Donald Trump, or if they didn't vote
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: for Donald Trump, they did on accident vote for someone else. Right, Like,
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying that all Trump supports their Nazis, but
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: that's the team you're on, you know. And the same
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: is true for KKK, Like one hundred percent of them
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: voted for Donald Trump. That's the team that you are
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: sharing a side with, right, even if you don't necessarily
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: identify with them. So like, that's it again, that's just
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: for people who found themselves on that side of things. Yeah, So,
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: as you said, like, when you're being compared to the
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: likes of Hitler to David Duke to Jim Jones, the
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: worst people who have ever lived. Like you're doing something wrong.
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you missed the turn somewhere, Like you're supposed to
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: go to Albuquerque and you ended up in a clan rally.
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: Like it's that's not what's supposed to happen. I think
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: at the end of the day, people are quick to
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: forget that the past is really not the all too
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: distant past. I mean, we're talking about like this happened
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: during our parents' lifetime. Yeah, Like this isn't something that
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: happened like during our great grandparents or like you know,
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: Civil War. This happened during our parents' lifetime. This was
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: on the news, like on cable television, Okay, And we
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: often fail to connect events that are separated in time,
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: even when they have pretty direct cause effect relationships. There's
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: no reason to believe we couldn't end up with another
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: type of Jonestown massacre at some point in the future,
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: especially the near future, given the way the world is
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: going right now now.
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: Of course, I would like to try and end optimistically
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: by saying, hopefully we can learn from the mistakes of
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: the past. I say that as we're reliving one of
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: our worst mistakes as a country currently, but hopefully we
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: can learn from the mistakes of the past. If we
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: can figure out how to hold people accountable for their lives,
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: for their false propaganda, for the spreading of misinformation, if
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: we can abandon magical thinking of particularly using religion as
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: a vehicle here that enables the mental gymnastics to facilitate
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: brutality toward one another. If we can value one another
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: as belonging to the same species and there for deserving
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: of love and respect, no matter what walk of life,
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: from what you hail, then hopefully we can prevent things
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: like this from happening again in the future. Hopefully.
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: Yep, I one hundred percent agree with that sentiment. I
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: could not have said it better myself.
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: I think that if we're going to agree to live
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: with one another in like a communal format where we
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: sort of share our resources, we share our land, we
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: work together to ensure that our species does the best
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: that it possibly can, then we just have we have
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: to be able to hold there are going to be
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: bad actors out there who want to exploit, manipulate people,
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: and take too much for themselves, and we have to
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: hold them accountable. We don't have to kill them, we
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: don't have to take like all their things away. We
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: just have to hold them accountable for it, make it
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: known that this is a thing that they have done,
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: prevent them from doing it again in the future, and
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: giving them an opportunity to learn and be better.
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: Like, that's I think where we need to be is
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: like it just just does not have to always result
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: in violence. But we also can't just let each other
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: get away with doing terrible things to one another, right,
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: So there's got to be a balance in there. It
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: seems like other countries have figured it out. I assume
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: the United States is capable of it at some point.
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I thin, I'm sure we're smart enough.
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like we did have smart people here. There's still
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: a few, I think so. Anyway, that was a big
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: political rant.
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's okay, it's worth it. It's worth it,
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: all right.
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: Well, if you stuck with us through all of that,
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: well thank you. I hope that you got something out
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: of that and enjoyed what you heard here today. And
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: if you would like to support us, you can head
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: over to Patreon where you can get ad free episodes.
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: Early episodes, some bonus content. I sometimes get it up
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: on time. I sometimes get a little behind. I'm currently
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: a little behind, but I'll get caught up. I always do. Also,
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: there's a really cool group of people over there. We
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: have a discord server. You can talk to them, and
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: I always at the end of our full length discussions
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: shout out the wonderful people who have made such a
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: generous gift in helping support us and do the show
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: and just be good people. So I'd like to thank
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: Mike m Megan, Mike T, Justin, Kim Brad, Stephanie, Brian, Ashley, Kiara,
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: and Charlie for all of your ongoing and continued support.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: We so appreciate you.
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: Yes, we love you so much.
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: Also, thank you so much for my team, to my
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: team of people writing and fact checking from Shane and myself.
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: Thank you for recording with me today. Shane Hey, thanks
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: for having me. Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson,
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: and our audio engineer producer sound good guy is Justin Greenhouse.
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: Thank you Justin, and he's the best.
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: He is.
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: All right. You can head over to our merch store.
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: Currently the links are broken. I'm still working on repairing
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: those I'll get a rounds to fixing that for the
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: shopping cart things, but i will date. I'll actually I'll
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: stop shouting out the merch store until I've got that fixed.
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: I'll update people when that is repaired. If you leave
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: a rating and a review, that really helps, particularly if
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: you like our podcast and would like to say something nice.
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: That helps us the most find people. So if you
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: have something not so nice to say, then you should
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: email us directly. You can tell us your thoughts on
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: jonestown or the things we're about to recommend by emailing
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: us at info at wwdwwdpodcast dot com, and we look
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: forward to hearing from people when they have things to say.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: We actually got a nice message from somebody who apparently
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: was using this for a class, which I'm now very
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: curious about. Yeah, anyway, those are ways you can support us.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: Tell a friends go grab their stuff and subscribe it
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: to our podcast on their platform as well. Whatever. Those
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: are all things you can do. You can also reach
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: us if you want to talk to us on social media.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: We're at Blue Sky. We're also on the meta sphere
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: if you will, Facebook, Instagram, that sort of thing. Am
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: I missing anything? I feel like I'm missing something.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: No, I think that covers it. We just got recommendations,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: that's right.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So if you are joining us for the first
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: time and you made it all the way here, then
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: I hope that you enjoyed what you heard. At the
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: end of each of our discussions, we do something really fun.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: At least I think it's fun where we recommend the thing,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: and so we're gonna just recommend some fun stuff. This
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: is not related to Jonestown in any way, but just
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: some fun stuff. So stick around after this brief sponsor
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: break and we'll recommend some things. Okay, we are back recommendations.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: I am recommending a brand new movie that just came out.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: It is Superman, the brand new James gun movie that
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: just came out twenty twenty five. And I love this movie.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: It was so much fun and I just I was
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: telling Shane before we recorded, James gunn just understands how
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: to make a comic book movie. Yes, it's like the
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: plot lines make sense. You kind of got a lot
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: of like beats that happen where you get some funds
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: action sequences, but they're actually all part of the main
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: plot building up to sort of a big final showdown,
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: et cetera, and it just it works super well. I
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: very very much enjoyed it. I would definitely put this
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: among my favorite of all the Superman films. And I
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: think the new actor David Corn corniswead maybe corn siewetet
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: Korn's corn sweat. Yeah, I thought he was great. And
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: all the actors, a lot of actors were pulled from
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: Guardians of the Galaxy cast as well as a suicide
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: squad when James Gunn directed that, So I thought it
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: was really fun, a really good time. You know, a
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: lot of these superhero movies, I feel like I have
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: to apologize in some way. I'm like, yeah, it's kind
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: of silly and dumb, but like it's still an entertaining time.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: This one, actually, I think works really well. I think
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: it's very silly, but I don't think it's dumb, and
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: I do think that it is quite enjoyable and very
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: well written and just a super good time. So that's
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: my recommendation is the new twenty twenty five Superman movie
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: by James Gunn.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: I am so excited to see this. I think it
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: looks so good, So I'm so excited that it's like
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: getting good reviews.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, at least I loved it. I don't know,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: probably other people won't, but I did.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fine, all right. So my recommendation is an
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: experience experience that's good. It certainly is as child and
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: nineties grew up in the early aughts, like in really
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: finding formative music during those times. Jimmy World is one
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: of the names that came up often. Blead American came
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: out in two thousand and one, and it is an
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: incredible record. Like it's like one of the It's a
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: seminal record for folks that like grew up in the
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: ats and like are kind of learning pop punk MySpace era,
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: you know that type of stuff.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: Great album.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: Not my favorite of theirs, but a great album. Not
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: my favorite of theirs either, but incredible. I think I
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: like Futures more. I think Futures.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: Gonna say Futures that's my favorite one.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's oh so good. Anyway, though, I think
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: that it's one of those things where Jimmy World has
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: been around for some time. They're still playing, they're still
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: touring currently, they're touring opening for the Offspring, which is
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: like a wild tour. I just saw I just saw
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: them last night. It's Newfound Glory, Jimmy World and Offspring
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: playing together and that's all it's on the shows. It's
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: so excice. It's three bands and it's done early so
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: you can go and rest your back and you know,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: take your nighttime meds and go to sleep, Grandpa. So
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: I gotta say though, I've never seen Jimmy World live,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: and they are an incredible live band, like just dialed in.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: They sound perfect, They do not miss a beat and
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: it's really no frills. Yeah, it's like they're there, they're playing,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: they're thankful that you're there, and then they're off the
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: stage and it is really really they're just really good.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: They are.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: So I recommend if you ever get a chance to
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: se Jimmy World, please take the time to do it
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: because they you don't want to miss it. Like they're
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: like a sleeper hit band where it's like they got
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: their flowers.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: They're still putting out records which are really good. Yeah,
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: they are really good, but they're live. Their live show
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: is incredible, so you gotta go see it. Yeah.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: I think for those of you who don't think you've
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: heard them, you've probably heard the really big song they
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: put out called sweetness or.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: The middle or the Middle?
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, how that one starts like are you listenin whoa Yep, Yeah,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: that's a terrible delivery on my part. I butchered it. Sorry,
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: but anyway, Yeah, I agree with you. I second that completely.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: That when I saw them live, I was like, I
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: was blown way how good they are. And honestly, I
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: think the way I would describe it is that it's
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: like their live songs are like the best version of
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: their already great songs. Yes, yeah, because as you said,
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: it's like it's not that they're putting on like a huge,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: flashy show, it's just that their songs, like their live
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: performance delivery of them is so flawlessly good and energetic
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: and just beautifully played. Yeah, and like, yeah, this is
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: we tend to recommend a lot of punk and metal.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: This is not. I would not put them in that category.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: It's very melodic, but it's great rock music and they
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: have some sort of slower melodic parts as well or songs. Yeah,
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: but yeah, their live performance is just it's one of
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: the best live performance I've ever seen. They're not even
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: like my favorite band ever. I think they're great. I
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: have a huge amount of respect for them, and I
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: love a lot of their songs and albums, but their
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: live performance is among the best I've ever seen.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, same, same one. I like, I like. I would
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: not put them up in my top ten favorite bands,
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: but I have always enjoyed them and they are one
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: of the top ten live bands I've ever seen.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely so, all right, great recommendations, Superman the New Movie,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: and Jimmy Eat World live. If you can see them
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: that way, And if you don't know who we're talking about,
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: just look them up. Look up the Sweetness middle praise chorus, Yeah,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: praise chorus. One of my favorites is the Kill Yeah.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: And yeah, they're just a I think, just a really
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: wonderful band. So yeah, there's that agreed. Okay. I think
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: that's what we have to say about comic book movies
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: and Jimmy World as well as that closes out our
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: discussion about the Jonestown massacre that took place in nineteen
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: seventy eight. And again, you can reach out to us
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: to tell us your thoughts on those things. Are sure
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: your recommendations as well. We're happy to hear those things.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: All right. Is there anything else that I miss or
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: that you'd like to add before we wrap this one
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: up today.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: Nope, nothing else on my end. Oh.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: I actually just remembered one thing. If you remember when
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: we did our episode a few weeks back on chronic
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: traumatic and cephalopathy CTE. Yes, there's actually two comments to
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: address here. Is we made an ad segue where we
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: sort of had referred to someone who had been brutally murdered,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: and we had an insensitive ad segue. Wanted to apologize
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: for that. Yeah, we were trying to in the moment
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: have an AD segue and I think we were not
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: being We're a little tone definite delivery of that segue.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: So sorry.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely missed opportunity and huge apology. We are course
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: correcting as we speak.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: Yes, Okay. Aside from that, the other comment was we
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: had talked about how when CTE was first discussed, they
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: called it it was like cutting paper dolls or something
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: like that. I actually heard from our audio engineer, Justin,
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: who decided he weighed in and he got to me
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: and he said that he told me what this meant
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: because I didn't really recommend it, and he had heard
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: of this and he said, it is an old expression
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: suggesting someone is insane or has lost their grip on reality.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: It was used to invoke the image of someone in
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: a mental asylum who was spending their time meticulously cutting
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: out paper dolls, implying their inability to focus on any
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: real world matter. And I was like, where did you
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: find that? And he said he actually said that there
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: was like a video game that he had played that
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: had our Sumble game. I think it was a video game.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: And he also found some from AI, even though I
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: also asked AI and they did not give me anything
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: because they were dumb sometimes. But yeah, those are the
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: two comments I had that I wanted to share about
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: CTE just to follow up.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, all.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: Right, that is it. Then, thank you so much for
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: joining us. We will go ahead and let you get
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: about your day. This is Abraham, Missus Shane. Why We
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: Do What We Do is out.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: So yeah, you've been listening to Why We Do What
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: We Do. You can learn more about this and other
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: episodes by going to WWD WWD podcast dot com. Thanks
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: On going