Jonestown pt. 1

One of the largest mass murders of American citizens in history took place in 1978 in Guyana at the hands of cult leader, Jim Jones. This discussion delves into the circumstances that gave rise to Jones' power and influence of hundreds of people that lead to a tragic mass death of hundreds of people young and old. This first episode chronicles Jones' life as he rose to prominence and eventually moved his congregation to South America. The next episode will unravel the tragedy that took place in 1978, as well as an discussion about how this cult was so influential, whether this could happen again, and what we can do about it. 

Recommendations

• Abraham: Saosin by Saosin (https://open.spotify.com/album/2osTPStH5H7i4fMHS7eauR) 
• Shane: The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57693406-the-kaiju-preservation-society)

Holidays (7/16/2025):

• Guinea Pig Appreciation Day
• Hot Dog Night
• National Corn Fritters Day
• National Fresh Spinach Day
• National Personal Chef’s Day
• Take Your Poet to Work Day
• World Snake Day
• Captive Nations Week
• Coral Reef Awareness Week
• Every Body Deserves a Massage Week
• National Baby Food Week
• National Ventriloquism Week
• Operation Safe Driver Week
• Rabbit Week
• Sports Cliche Week

Links and References: 

1. https://adst.org/2012/11/the-jonestown-massacre/
2. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/november-18/mass-suicide-at-jonestown
3. https://www.annemergmed.com/article/S0196-0644(11)01340-0/fulltext
4. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/17/an-apocalyptic-cult-900-dead-remembering-the-jonestown-massacre-40-years-on
5. https://www.britannica.com/event/Jonestown
6. https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/yorklr2&div=6&id=&page=
7. https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/bjso.12772
8. https://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-events/jonestown.htm?s1sid=a48k3z9p1i7wvnlvcw1lrfbq&srch_tag=ben5nf7at4ksnp6j5hq3de3buxzfctat 

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/why-we-do-what-we-do--3419521/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Why We Do what we Do. Welcome
to Why We Do what We Do. I am your
charismatic host Abraham.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
And I'm your sunglasses enthusiast host Shane.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
We are a psychology podcast. We talk about the things
that humans and non human animals do, and sometimes we
talk about the some terrible tragedies that happen in the
history of people and trying to understand those tragedies, and
that is where we find ourselves today.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yes, and so today we are talking about the Jonestown massacre.
Topic that has been done quite a few times in
the true crime world, but we are going to take
a little bit of a different approach. We're going to
look at the psychology of this and how people end
up in these spaces unfortunately, and how people can be
taking advantage of quite quickly.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Yes, we'll try and unpack all of that. So we
will issue some warnings as we get into this about
things to be on the lookout for for an episode
with topics such as these. But first I would like
to say that if you are joining us for the
first time, then welcome. We're happy to have you here.
We hope that you more or less enjoy what you
hear today, understanding that it is a tough topic to
listen to. Yes, if you are a returning person or

(01:19):
you are a new listener and you find value in
what we do, you can support us by leaving a
rating and review, liking, subscribing, telling a friend and then
making them like and subscribe, and.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
Leaving us a rating and review.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
You can also join us on Patreon, pick up some
merch from our merch store, and I'll talk about all
the ways that you can support us at the end
of this discussion, men, just thank you very much for
being here. We definitely appreciate you. But today is July sixteenth,
which means, of course, it is Guinea Pig Appreciation Day.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Oh, I love that. It's hot dog night.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
Okay, it is National corn Fritters Day, so hot dogs
and corn fritters today.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yeah. And because you need some leafy greens, it is
National Fresh Spinach Day.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Remember your vegetables and all of that can be assembled
with your personal chef because National Personal Chef's Day.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
I would love one of those.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
I would love one of those.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
That'd be great.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Yeah, that'd be so nice. I would love to be
able to have enough money to afford a personal chef,
right like that would be That is the clincher there, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It is Take your Poet to Work Day.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
Okay, I don't have one of those either, but okay, nope.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
It is World.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Snake Day, support our little guys.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
It's a Captive Nations Week.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
It is Coral Reef Awareness Week. There are coral reefs
out there, everybody, now you're aware.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yes, yes, there are. It is Everybody Deserves a Massage.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
Week with an episode about that kind of we did. Yes.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Is National baby Food Week. Go eat baby food?

Speaker 2 (02:48):
Yum yum, you gross. It is a National Ventriloquism Week.

Speaker 3 (02:53):
Creepy mmm.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
I'm a I'm doing ventriloquism right now, but you can't
tell because you can't see me.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Agreed.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yeah, this is just a character's woe. It is Operations
Safe Driver a week. Oh, that'll be on par with
one of our minis that's coming out this week or
next week.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Yeah. It is Rabbit Week.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
And it is Sports cliche Week. I'm not sure what
that entirely means, but probably using idioms that reference sports
that feels right, like touchdown, yeah, run, things like that.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Maybe I don't know, Yeah, I think that's that's in
line with what I think I read about it, But
I also didn't read much about it.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
Cool. Yeah, all right.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
But we, as I said, we are more than just
a podcast that reads the dates of things or things
that happen on dates. We talk about psychology things, and
sometimes that means taking some historical event and unpacking it
to try and glean some insight as to how that
event unfolded, what we can do about it, and how

(03:54):
we might prevent such a thing from ever happening again,
or trying to predict whether or not it could ever
happen again, as is sort of the case here. But
because we are unpacking an event that took place several
decades ago, at this point, this is kind of a
history episode or you know, historically situated episode with some

(04:15):
social implications for the current zeitgeist in which we find ourselves.
In case you are unfamiliar with the Jonestown massacre, this
is the story of a cult with a massive death toll,
and it's also the origin from which the phrase drink
the kool aid comes. Yeah, and so you'll get to

(04:36):
learn about that if you were already unfamiliar, Even if
you knew about this. There's a lot of details in
this that I did not know until putting all of
this together. So there's a lot to learn still, I
think unless you're like an expert, and maybe you'll just
fact check us the whole time, which is also okay.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
Right, absolutely so fair warning on this. This discussion contains
descriptions of violence, murder, suicide, child to be, and murder
child murder as well, including murder of infants. So this
is a dark story. There's really no way to get
around those details. I mean, we'll spare the details details,
but there's there's really no way to get around those
bullet points and kind of the things that have happened

(05:15):
without telling we have to tell the whole story here,
is essentially what we're saying.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
Yeah, I think that we can't let them off the
hook for the things that happened, and so making sure
that we remember how terrible it was means at least
sharing what happened. Yeah, Now, what we can do, we
can plan to do is so we're gonna be unpacking
a lot of the history of things that happened before
they even get to Jonestown. And so if you want

(05:41):
to listen up to that point. We can give some
warnings as we're about to go into the gruesome aspects
of what took place. Otherwise, be warned that that's in there.
If that's something you're uncomfortable listening to, you might want
to just set this one out and kat just next
time when we tuckle something not so sad.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely so. Well, today we're going to
ask the Quirer. We're going to kind of answer some questions,
which is what happened at Jonestown and Jonestown Masker, why happened,
and whether or not it could happen again.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yes, we want to understand what was going on and
what we might anticipate should future circumstances arise that seem
like we're on the verge of something like that. But
we'll get into all of that first. We need to
get into some history about our topic. Is there anything
I'm missing or that we need to do before we
get into our discussion here, Shane that you can think of?

Speaker 2 (06:29):
No, I think that I think that covers it.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
Okay, great, all right, So let's get into the background here,
and we need to understand how the events unfolded that
eventually led to this tragic event. So we'll start with
the person who set it all in motion and understanding
their life.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
This is going to start with Jim Jones. Jim Jones
was born in May of nineteen thirty one in a
small town called Crete, which was near Lynn and also
a very small town with a single stoplight. Jones was
born to a World War One veteran who struggled to
maintain steady employment and a mother who worked in factories
and as a waitress to make ends meet.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
That's in Indiana, by the way, I forgot to include
that in the details. That's where he was born, Indiana,
in the United States. Now Jim Jones here. He was
described as an intelligent but kind of strange child. He
obviously had a somewhat shaky childhood in that there's like
very few resources around. They didn't have a lot of money,

(07:25):
father was not consistently employed to lack some stability, but
his parents wanted him to have a better life and
they encouraged him to attend college. They wanted him to
become a doctor, and Jones did start on that path. However,
he had some exposure to a figure named Father Divine,
who is a flamboyantly dressed and very like sharply dressed

(07:47):
depression era preacher who had engineered an obedient group of followers.
So this is like a church thing, right, Like they're
their own little church. He's got this really devout group
of followers who kind of do does whatever he tells
them to do. And they opened several businesses, like it said,
scores of businesses, So we're talking probably over one hundred
businesses that with things like hotels, restaurants, gas stations, and

(08:11):
several other things where that was a way that they
could sort of make money and also potentially push their
their message and their agenda.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
Right. And so jones Ha started medical school, but while
in school, he was attending this fundamentalist church, and he
eventually abandoned his training to become a minister. He reportedly
admired the ability of religion to organize the behavior and
loyalty of large groups of people, and saw religion as
a means to advance causes he believed in that he
specifically believed in and acquire money and power. You're going

(08:40):
to start seeing some parallels as we go around through
this as well, So like just be on the lookout
for that if that's triggering some things where you you're
not wrong, like your radar is going off correctly.

Speaker 3 (08:49):
Yes, yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
So he went to medical school. He dropped out to
become a minister at this fundamentalist church and then he
and this I believe was like a segregated church specifically,
but he wanted the money in power for himself. So
in nineteen fifty six he opened his own non denominational
Christian church called the People's Temple. And again this was

(09:11):
now in Indianapolis, So he's still in Indiana, but he's
now in the big city and interestingly, unique to his church,
he preached against racism a lot he allowed for and
encouraged a fully racially integrated church. He included enthusiastic celebratory sermons.
He also started doing faith healing performances. He claimed to

(09:31):
be able to predict and prophesize the future, all of
which attracted a lot of people, and particularly he was
able to with his anti racism message. He attracted a
lot of Black Americans to his church, specifically now as
he was getting going though, there was kind of this
fun fact. During the early days of his new church,

(09:53):
he was still pretty broke, and so to make some
money he went door to door as a salesman selling
monkeys as pets for twenty nine dollars each. That was like, wow,
a thing he did Like that was one of those
details where I heard and I was like.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
What is that? Is that real?

Speaker 3 (10:10):
Is that really a thing?

Speaker 2 (10:12):
You know? And that makes me think of like, you know,
I think of like systems a lot, and I think
of like, Okay, so now there's a system where he's
going door to door, which means he has to travel,
which means it's possible that he has a monkey either
traveling with him or a brochure full of monkeys, which
also means that he had to go to a place
that prince brochures or magazines or order forms for the monkeys,
which also means that he's got a monkey supplier.

Speaker 3 (10:36):
That's that's true.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
He might say things like I got to get in
touch with my monkey guy.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah, he's got a monkey guy.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
Yeah yeah, and then he might have to print ads
for his monkeys. Okay, we're back from the monkey ad break.
So yeah, weird thing anyway, that he was going around
door to door selling monkeys.

Speaker 3 (11:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
I couldn't imagine what I would do if somebody knocked
on my door and said that do you want to
buy a monkey? I'd be like, no, leave, get go go.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
They're like dogs are fine and all, but like, you know,
the real pet that everybody wants these days is a monkey.

Speaker 3 (11:14):
Let me show you what I got.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
Do you think that that was like a big thing
back then, Like do you think that like monkeys as
pets was like a in vogue enough for there to
be a door to door salesman for it.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
No?

Speaker 3 (11:25):
I don't.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
That's That's the thing that's like weird about is I'm like,
of all the things that you would land on, why
that Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
Okay, So at this stage we're talking about Jim Jones.
He's got a church, the Peoples Temple. He is selling
monkeys as a side gig. That's like his gig economy
business deal he's doing. Yeah, But eventually what ends up
happening is Jones does not have to sell monkeys anymore
because he's acquired hundreds of congrets and started opening soup
kitchens and eventually served as the city's Human relations commissioner. However,

(11:52):
he started being scrutinized by the city when a corporation
he and his family had ran started acquiring real estate
transfers that seemed to come from people in his congregation,
and it was believed that he was essentially swindling people
into giving him their property, which is actually pretty common
cult leader behavior. What will happen is like, oh, you
come in and you give up all of your possessions.

(12:13):
We're not a material so you sign it over to
the church, and the church acquires power. We've seen that
in the Scientology group as well, like if you go
back to our Scientology episode.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
Allegedly allegedly so, but yes, this is very part for
the course cult leader behavior. So he's got the heat
coming down on him from him doing some really shady
stuff and starting to catch the eye of public officials,
and he's he's getting really paranoid about being investigated, and
so he started preaching about the end of days, and

(12:44):
specifically we're like into the ninth like late nineteen sixties here,
so we're kind of in Cold War era anyway, and
so he preaches this idea that there is going to
be a new Clear Holocaust or a new Clear War
in the next few years, is what he says. And
so with his preaching, the end of days coming to pass,
because again he fancied himself a prophet. He was able

(13:07):
to convince seventy families to relocate with him in nineteen
sixty five to a quote unquote safer location according to him,
And so he brought all of these families with him
and moved across the country to a place called Yukaya,
which is a rural town in Mendocino County in northern California.

(13:28):
So it's very particularly back then too, like very small,
very off the beaten path, And that's where he took
all of his congrets because he claimed it was much
safer if there were to be a nuclear war. That's
where they'd want to be.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
Right, right, right, that's what he claims. So in nineteen
seventy one or by nineteen seventy one, he decided that
he needed to be preaching to low income black families
in San Francisco, where he eventually spent most of his
time conducting a sermons. Later he opened another location in
Los Angeles. So he's basically setting up people's temple franchises,
like in different places and different different locations to really
in more people.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
Yeah, yeah, So he has his main sort of central
hub becomes the Bay Area in San Francisco, but he
does have another couple of places where he has his
church set up, so while he's in California, he expanded
on his practice of acquiring real estate from his followers.
So did not learn any lessons from Indiana other than

(14:21):
maybe how to get away with it better, right, but
he expanded on this idea a lot. He actually further
had a lot of things that you would see from
cult leaders at the time. He asked people to sever
ties with family and friends. He got people to transfer
their wealth and their savings to him, and he forged
obedience through such actions as making families commit their children

(14:44):
to the cause, like they would bring them in and
then like they couldn't leave, you know, they had to
sort of do all their activities within the church. He'd
have them work for him for free. Nonetheless, he did
this thing where he would write fake confessions that said
that these people had engaged in like child sexual abuse,

(15:05):
and then he would make those people sign those confessions
even though they didn't do it, so that he could
use those signed confessions as blackmail if he needed to.
And that was part of them demonstrating loyalty to him
and to the church. Is saying like he probably tells
them like, I'm not going to use this, but this
way you're showing me how loyal you are to me

(15:27):
is by taking on this liability of potentially being taken
to or being accused of this with credibly being accused
because we have a signed confession. He would also make
people again, people are working for him a lot, and
they're unpaid completely, it's like all volunteer stuff, and they're
working long hours. And he also installed the system of

(15:47):
reporting on other members, particularly if there were people who
expressed doubt or disobedience or descent of any kind, and
he would have people inform on one another if that
they saw any of that happening, and then he would
humiliate and there was allegations of like abuse, being threatened
or beaten if they were found to be critical of

(16:10):
him or any of the things that he was doing,
or saying that they were going to go tell other
people things like that. So that was kind of the
atmosphere he was building inside of his church while in California.

Speaker 2 (16:23):
Right, So he went from preaching about non and anti
racism stuff and doing things that seemed seemed on the
surface to help the community and then he was doing
all this stuff in the background and really creating a
coercive environment to keep people in and to continue to
accrue power. Like that's essentially what's happening.

Speaker 3 (16:39):
Right, Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
And so while he's doing this, he's also still preaching
about communism and racial equality and socialism, and he's kind
of hitting on the hot topics of the day and
really kind of like not only tapping into people's fears
but also their hopes by making them feel like, you know,
we were working towards a greater society, a better societ.
Here's how we do this. And as some scholars will

(17:02):
put it, he was using the politics of that time
to effectively gain compliance and obedience. He didn't care about
it or really even try to create a communist agenda
or a community at large, but he used the rhetoric
to entice a specific demographic that he would then manipulate
into doing his bidding.

Speaker 3 (17:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:21):
So it's just kind of interesting to think about, Like
it was just a means to an end. You know,
he could have done anything, but like it seemed like,
for whatever reason, he was trying to get vulnerable communities
who were likely to be manipulable to him and his agenda,
and that he landed on sort of Marxism as the

(17:44):
way to recruit the kinds of people he wanted to
his cause.

Speaker 3 (17:49):
Right.

Speaker 1 (17:50):
However, a lot of this stuff came out later while
he's building his church. His public facing image initially was
very good for a lot of people, and it made
him a lot of powerful political allies who agreed with
his messaging and stood up for him. He had a
lot of sway because he had so many people under
his influence. He could command like several buses full of

(18:14):
people to show up at various events like political rallies, protests, boycotts, demonstrations,
which again, like that made him a very valuable asset
to many powerful people who then had like a constituency
of people they could sort of ask Jones to move
around for them and have them show up at these
different events and sort of be vocal, loudspeaking people. And

(18:36):
at his peak he reportedly had as many as twenty
thousand followers in his church, which is obviously quite a
few people. That was sort of the political climate he
was in is he was saying the message that caught
the attention of some politicians who generally agreed with that message,
and other public figures too. It wasn't just politicians, so
they sort of leaned on him, and he leaned on them,

(18:57):
and they had these sort of quid pro quo ems.
But yeah, Jones could command such larger groups of people
that made him very powerful in political sort of arenas
if you.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
Will, right, And then over time there were as this
was going on, so he's creating these political allies, he
is gaining followers, and there starts to become an increasing
number of allegations of sexual abuse, physical and mental abuse,
emotional abuse, swindling people out of their money and land,
which he was actively doing. He was so like they
were allegations, but like the allegations are coming out to

(19:28):
the public, but like in hindsight, we know this is
what was happening, including blackmail, fraud, bribery, and other coros
of practices. And Jones was allegedly bisexual according to at
least one report, and that he got caught attempting to
solicit sex from an undercover male police officer posing as
a male prostitute. So the reason we bring that up
is because at this time we're starting to see this
public figure. You're starting to see these kind of cracks

(19:50):
form in his public figure, right, Like, he's got a
persona that's public, that's supposed to be righteous, that's supposed
to be leading the church, and now all these things
are happening to start damaging his public image. And he's
also on top of that preaching the end times, and
so you could see kind of how there's like a
pot about to boil over.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
Yeah, exactly, Like, obviously we don't feel like this, We
don't judge anyone for being bisexual or trying to have
a same sex partner in any condition, but at the
time that was a really big deal, like that was
definitely something that could turn people away from his church,
could lose him power, could potentially get him in trouble
with the law, that sort of thing. And so now
at this point he is, again we know, in hindsight,

(20:30):
although I don't think this was very well known at
the time, he was addicted to pharmaceuticals. He was becoming
increasingly paranoid. Now he's under scrutiny for his probably multiple felonies,
and he starts telling his congregation that black Americans will
soon be rounded up and put into concentration camps, and
so he's essentially making the case that they need to

(20:52):
flee the United States and that he's going to take
them to some place where they can be safe and
free and have their own little community of people who
will will hold each other up and live in their beautiful,
worshiping society, and he will lead them.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
Yes, So at this point in time, he's paranoid, he's
freaking out, he's got motive to leave. He's got all
these things going on, and that's going to bring us
to the time where he essentially gets set up in Guyana.
So we're gonna take a quick ad break and then
we're gonna come back to this and we're gonna talk
about kind of where this goes next. All right, folks,

(21:33):
and we are back at this point in time. Jim Jones,
leader of the People's Temple, is he's got some troubles
going on, and so now he is planning on fleeing
the country and he's going to try to convince some
families to do that, which is part of his past.
He has done this already.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:48):
Now, for context, three years before all the crack started
the forum, in his public persona, he had sent a
contingent loyal followers to the nation of Guyana, a small
country with dense jungles located on the northern coast of
South America. His group of people started clearing out trees
and establishing a place for them to build a compound
and use the land for agriculture. Now, I want to

(22:10):
point out, I don't know, do you do you talk
about how dangerous the conditions were at the time.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
Not so much. Yeah, No, go ahead and feel free. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:17):
So what came out later was that when his group
went there, they went to completely undeveloped jungle, yeah, to
start building this compound. And when I say completely undeveloped,
I mean nothing. There are no roads in, There were
no roads out. There were it was very difficult to
get supplies. It was lush rainforest type jungle like. It

(22:39):
was very very dense, and the conditions are are excruciating.
I mean it is tropical weather. And so as followers
were there with little resources, chopping like basically chopping away
they had to they had to actually like chop away
enough foliage to even make a trail to get to
the place where they were building the compound. And it
took so long. It was really horrid. Conditions and these

(23:02):
folks were working for hours, I mean like all day,
for multiple hours a day and exhausting themselves with no pay.
They were doing it for free. They were doing it
for the you know, the loyalty to the church. Yeah,
and they did this for years, for years.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
Yeah, and you had said before the crack started to form,
I don't know how public any of that was becoming.
But like he I think was aware that he was
in trouble and that's why he sent people down there.

Speaker 2 (23:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
But anyway, Yeah, three years before sort of everything came
to a boiling point, if you will, he had sent
people down there. So they've they've been down there for years,
clearing away forest, building roads into the area where they
have cleared away forest, creating a space for them essentially
to build and to grow food, which was again a

(23:47):
huge amount of labor. And finally, in nineteen seventy seven,
Jones brought hundreds of his followers with him to their
new safe haven in Guyana, which they dubbed Jonestown. Not
the country of Guyana, but the space they created for
themselves they called Jones Sound. This is not an existing city,
like it was not a municipal area, right, So they

(24:07):
just gave it that name. Now, some people might be wondering, like,
what is going on with the government of Guyana that
this could happen. Well, the Guyanese government, that's how I
saw that written down. They didn't seem to mind very
much for a few reasons. One, this government was extremely
small and they were spending virtually all of their money

(24:30):
and their budget to try and support their citizens, like
they were just trying to stay afloat, right, So they
really didn't have a lot of bandwidth to do more
than what they were already doing for their country. Two,
the group that's moving into their country with all these people,
because this is a small country, right, like it's the
third smallest country in South America. The group moving in,
they were like asking nothing of the government, and they

(24:53):
were not interfering with the government's activities in any way.
They sort of like, we're just going to use this
land over here that you're not using, and bonus, we're
clearing it for thing activities that maybe you could also
use it for. At some point, I don't know if
they even made that deal, but essentially they were like,
we don't bother you, you don't bother us. When win situation, right,
And so that was another reason. And third is the

(25:15):
government there was at the time pretty sympathetic to the
pretend communist ideals of the group, which is to say,
they were open to like socialism and communism as a
possible way that their government could run. And this is
a group coming in saying like, we're going to be
this totally self sufficient, non US affiliated entity over here

(25:37):
out in your jungle where we're not bothering you, you're
not bothering us, but we're going to be doing communist stuff,
which you guys already like and want anyway. Sure, And
so the government was kind of like, okay, I guess
And so that was why there was really no interference
for their activities when they just moved to this random
foretant country and started building a city there.

Speaker 2 (25:56):
Yeah. Something that is like an interesting fact too, and
know if we get into this, but like it's a
thing where not only did the Guyanese government not really
care once the compound was established, there were US political
ambassadors that would come visit the compound. Yeah, like because
of his political allies, the US government also kind of
approved this. They were like, oh, yeah, they're fine. Look

(26:18):
they've got this compound. They're like, they're doing their thing here,
it's fine, they're safe, and they would come back and
report and they're like, we don't gotta worry about anything
about Jonestown. Then they're fine down there. And that was
also part of it too, was like the American government
was like, oh, they're out of our hair. We don't
have to deal with them. Even though there's thousands of
you know, like hundreds of American citizens would have got
worry about him, the Guyanese government doesn't worry. Well, we're

(26:39):
gonna let them do their own devices, which you know
is clearly a bad situation here.

Speaker 1 (26:42):
Yeah, they did have a lot of strong supporters in
the United States that were really defending the things they're doing.
They had a lot of critics. Yeah, there were definitely
some people who were concerned about things that they were doing,
and in particular people who had friends and family who
ended up being at Jonestown that were concerned about them.
But yeah, they did have a lot of very firm
defenders and various circles in the United States.

Speaker 2 (27:05):
Yeah, so, okay, let's talk about the compound itself. So
the compound is built, or at least being built it's
continued to be expanded. They're still clearing jungle, they're still
clearing forests. The resources are low, like as the farming
isn't really working the way they think it is. Like
there's lots of things that are happening that are making
it very difficult living conditions. On top of this, Jones
establishes a network of loudspeakers that are all over the compound,

(27:26):
so we could broadcast as sermons for hours hours, either
live or pre recorded. And when we say hours, we're
talking for six eight hour, ten hour sermons.

Speaker 1 (27:36):
Yeah, possibly all day, all day.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
And some of these are live where he's just kind
of talking and rambling and you can go listen. These
recordings exist. You can hear him kind of doing these sermons.
I mean, I don't know if you want to. I
don't recommend it because it's a little bit harrowing, but
it it is a thing that exists that you could hear.

Speaker 1 (27:53):
Yes, Yeah, so they recorded like almost everything in audio
that took place there, particularly as are related to his
preaching and sermons, but you did get a lot. You
also got to hear other things going on, yeah, in
the background sometimes and there were some major events that
were also recorded. So they're out in the middle of
the jungle here. They're not going to be getting their
food from the nearest whole foods or Trader Joe's or

(28:15):
publics or anything. So they set up a system for
growing their own food. They grew their own animals, they
grew their own agricultural products. Like I actually didn't see
what specific foods they were growing, but I'm sure they're
going probably things like corn and wheat and stuff of
that nature to grow enough to reliably feed the inhabitants.
Farms are a lot of work, by the way, particularly

(28:37):
when like your equipment is your hands and some tools,
and so people were forced to work all day, every
day without breaks, essentially as slaves. Like that was functionally
what was going on. As people worked just constantly. That
was all they did was work. It actually seemed part
of his plans that he would work people to the
point where they were too exhausted to complain or to dissent.

(29:01):
They were just like after working for fifteen hours or
sixteen or hours or eighteen hours or something, and then
they've got to go listen to some sermon from him,
and then they pass out and they just have to
go back to work at the crack of dawn the
next day. Like they're just so burned out and exhausted
that they're all they're doing is working and that's all
that they can even think about.

Speaker 2 (29:22):
Yeah, and just to be clear too, like they're working,
they're exhausted, they're not getting their basic needs met, so
they're not in a position to be able to revolt
against whatever's going on, right. Yeah, And also too many
of them didn't want to. They believed in the cause,
they believed in what he was saying. They believed in
what they were doing too, so like there was also
not a lot of motivation to rebel because they were

(29:43):
kind of like like, no, we buy into what this
guy is saying.

Speaker 3 (29:47):
Right.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
But he also took a book right out of you know,
the Third Reich, which was how they set up a
tattletale system.

Speaker 3 (29:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
So his policy, he set up a policy of informing
on dissenters and it was in full force, which I
meant that if you said a bad word about the
person in charge, you were going to be in trouble. Right.
So he established a contingent of bodyguards, armed men who
were fiercely loyal to him, in him alone, not to
the church, not to the compound, to him alone. He
also continued tactics of beating, berating, humiliating, forcing hard labor

(30:18):
on people who dared to question his authority. Basically, anything
that was out of line was going to get you
in trouble, going to get you a very significant high
level of punishment, and likely aimed to make not only
you stop dissenting, but make you an example to other
people who may think about dissenting. So like in those
republic these are all public facing too, like you would

(30:39):
beat people, but like he would have his guards beat people,
He would have his guards to humiliate people. And there
was a lot of that too, where people were made
examples for dissenting.

Speaker 1 (30:47):
Yeah, and his guards, his little bodyguard contingent that he
had was called the Red Guard. I mean he would
sometimes send his Red Guard out into the forest at
night and fire guns were people could hear them, obviously,
and he would tell the inhabitants of Jonestown that they
were under attack from outsiders who wanted to kill them,

(31:07):
wanted to stop them from practicing their faith, wanted to
tear them apart and turn them against each other. And
so this was kind of a tactic he used to
try and breed solidarity and unity in the people that
they saw him as their protector and that they were
all sort of of one mind about their need to
stay together, work together, and serve the purposes of the commune,
if you will. He would also sometimes awaken people in

(31:30):
the middle of the night two or three am in
some instances, and he would have them drink flavored drinks.
I saw different reports here. I saw a report that
said that he would tell them that the drinks were
poison and so he'd wake up up in the middle
of the night and say, we are going to take
our own lives. Here are poison laced drinks. Or I
saw other reports that instead said that they knew that

(31:53):
they weren't poisoned, but they were like doing it as
like a rehearsal. So it was like, this is what
it's going to look like when it does happen. Let's
practice them. And so they'd go through all the steps
of preparing it as if they were going to consume
a bunch of poison. Either way, it was rehearsal for
the potential of one day executing on a real life
mass suicide plan and he called these white Knights, these

(32:14):
little practice things of his, and eventually there would be
like the White Knight was sort of what they were
building up to. But that's why when he would sort
of randomly wake people up in the middle of the night,
they'd rehearse this thing, and that was he called them
white Knights. N Ights like the nighttime, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:31):
Like day and night. I think it's important to note
here that like, this is happening under reversive conditions. This
is happening in a space where in a lot of
times at two or three in the morning, folks are
getting woken up by the Red Guard. They're getting woken
up at gunpoint to go drink these drinks.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
Yah.

Speaker 2 (32:45):
I bring that up for a reason because this is
going to be something that comes up later too. Is
that we're talking about a real life like kind of
like community suicide plan. But you can make the argument
and we'll have probably a larger discussion later on. This
is like we can make the argument that it's not
actually suicide if it's being co worced and it's being
held in their gunpoint, right, people are being forced to
do this. It's a really complicated kind of situation that

(33:08):
we're talking about here and very unfortunate, especially for the
folks that are there.

Speaker 1 (33:11):
Yeah, so we have to segue to another AD break.
We're kind of we have the like one joke that
helps segue with AD breaks, but this just feels hard
to make jokes about in here. So yeah, I'm just
giving you a lot of fair warning. Essentially, you just
know that an ad is about to happen. It gets
worse and then we'll come Yeah, the story gets much
worse and then we'll come back. So here's Here's that.
That was a nice long segue for you. So here

(33:33):
we go into an AD break. All right, So we're
back moving on with the story. Where we left off
was that they were doing these white night rehearsal things
to practice for a one day suicide plan. Yeah, that's

(33:53):
where we're at in the story of Jonestown so far.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
Yes, So at this point it's important to understand kind
of where Jim Jones was at. Right. So at this
point he's abusing prescription pharmaceuticals so heavily that the actual
autopsy report, by the way he dies eventually spoiler, he dies.
The autopsy reported that he was near levels of toxicity
like he was basically he should have died sooner as

(34:17):
a result of the overuse of these medications. He would
sometimes conduct six hour sermons people were forced to attend.
I mean, I never liked sitting in church when I
was a kid. I couldn't imagine sitting in church for
six hours. I couldn't imagine sitting in church for six
hours in tropical climbs like that. That feels like after
working on the farms all day and stuff like that.

(34:37):
Like it's just, that's just it just gets worse as
you compound it. It gets worse and worse and worse.

Speaker 3 (34:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:42):
So he also held what were called catharsis sessions, in
which participants were forced to disclose personal secrets or else
would be beaten with a paddle. He would also set
up boxing matches in which he would sometimes deliberately pit
someone weaker against somebody stronger, and would watch these just
for entertainment. The catharsis sessions is something that other larger

(35:03):
quote unquote religious groups like are rumored to do. Maybe
a group that we have done an episode on allegedly
has been reported to do these types of things to
keep people in their congregation.

Speaker 3 (35:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
Yeah, And of course, like, again, these are potential blackmail
things that they can use, So they're a little bit
of humiliating shaming and then potential blackmail that they had
under their belts here.

Speaker 2 (35:28):
Right.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
So in addition, another thing going on in Jonestown, So
Jones either limited Jonestown residents from communicating with outside friends
and family, or else he would allow them to, but
he would censor their correspondence that they either sent out
or received. And all the while he's broadcasting his sermons
such that they could be picked up by ham radio
enthusiasts and others. Actually, like these were actually not that

(35:51):
hard to get a hold of. And he continued to
attempt to recruit new people to his utopian quote unquote
utopian Jonestown that he had built. And he had these
very specific talking points he would use in his advertisements
that he would do, which sounds like a segue to
an ad break, but it's not. Yeah, and you talk
about how they'd cleared all this forest and how the

(36:12):
land has been converted to agriculture, and their chickens and
cows and other livestock, and I promise that they'd even
been cultivating new types of crops that were superior and great.

Speaker 3 (36:23):
For you and all this.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
So he's really pushing this idea that they've created this
absolutely utopian society where they're doing all these wonderful things,
kind of living off the grid on the merit of
their own hard work and succeeding tremendously. Is sort of
what he would be putting out into the world that
other people could hear.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now, friends and family back in the
United States were very concerned about their loved ones in Jonestown.
For good reason. They're not hearing from them, they're not
getting updates, they're living in another country, and there's no
way to communicate with them effectively or efficiently. They also
had lack of communication. Communications have felt odd, they fell
out of care incoherent and that makes sense, right, because
everything is being heavily scripted, it's being edited. It's not authentic, right, right.

(37:08):
And finally, there was a case in which a parent
one custody of a child who was being held at Jonestown,
which really put them in the crossairs of the law
and the US government. Now you start to see kind
of a shift that this happens in every and the
US government goes, oh, we should probably look at this
more clearly.

Speaker 1 (37:24):
Yeah, And to be clear, it was like a parent
who was in mainland, United States who had a child
whose other parent had taken them to Jonestown. That child
won a custody battle saying that they should be able
to take that child out of Jonestown. But Jim Jones
is not one to let people leave his community once
they got there. So there is now some problems legally

(37:44):
going on for Jonestown and for Jim Jones and rather
than you know, it's kind of ironic to think about
if he'd just like let that one person go, it's
very possible he would have been able to fly into
the radar for a bit longer, right, but he was
still into it. He not one soul leaves their space there.
So now we get to enter a new character named

(38:07):
Leo Ryan. He is a Democratic congressman from California. He
kind of knew some people who were in the Jones
Sound cult or they were like friends of friends that
were in Jonestown in South America. But he also was
apparently allegedly somewhat sympathetic to cults, having a family member
in the Church of Scientology. That's what the reports that

(38:27):
I found said, yeah, kind of take that as you will.
He was also somewhat open to the messaging of Jones
and his crew, meaning that like they were preaching this
communist thing. He had some sympathies toward that, so he
kind of seemed like a good person to be able
to have an amicable conversation with Jim Jones and set
things right and figure out what's going on. And he

(38:49):
also was a good person to investigate claims that people
were making about the residents of Jonestown, such that they
were being held against their will, that they were being
abused of that nature. So he's sort of like, all right, lit,
I feel like Jones is probably a good guy. It's
probably a misunderstanding, but I'm gonna go check this out
and see what's going on and just investigate what are

(39:12):
the happenings of Jones sounds so I can then you know,
report back and say everything, you know, tell everyone is
out with my own two eyes. Things are good nowhere.

Speaker 3 (39:19):
He's there.

Speaker 1 (39:20):
It's just hard to get messages out because they're in
the middle of the jungle. Maybe is what he was
going to say. I don't know, but that was kind
of why he elected to be a person to go
there and do this messaging on behalf of the United States.

Speaker 2 (39:32):
I guess yeah, And you know, it's one of those things.
I think it's it's really important to go back and
kind of like I think, I think what happens is
people will look at this in hindsight and go like,
I couldn't imagine getting caught up in this. I couldn't
imagine this. I think it's important to remember that, like
this guy le O Ryan really bought into Jim Jones's
nonsense because Jim Jones was a charismatic person, like he

(39:53):
was like somebody that what people would want to listen
to talk to, and like he talked a good game
like and so he was he easily convinced people because
ultimately people kind of default to wanting to believe people.
People are not generally suspicious of other people. They want
to believe that somebody's a good person. They couldn't believe
this person's doing something horrible as even though all the
rumors were going on, so like that is something that's

(40:14):
going on with Jim Jones, and so Lea Ryan's going
out there going like, oh, he seems like a good guy.
I've had a conversation with him, so he must be
he must be fine, right, Yeah, yeah, I guess so, yeah,
I mean, that's it happens, right, Like, that's kind of
like you can see how somebody could like easily be
sucked into the orbit of a cult leader like this.

Speaker 1 (40:31):
It's possible that he was like legitimately.

Speaker 3 (40:35):
Also concerned that there were things to dig up. I
don't know, it wasn't clear. It did seem like though,
that like he had those sympathies.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
So we have not actually even gotten to the events
of Jonestown yet. We've led up to them, and Leo
Ryan entering the picture is one of the catalysts that
will set things in motion the way that they go.
But we have a lot more story to tell, and
instead of this being an extraordinarily long episode, we're going

(41:04):
to go ahead and split this into two pieces. We
will leave this discussion with Leo Ryan having planning to
I guess, go to to Guyana to see the Jonestown people,
and then we'll come back next week with an episode
where we'll go into what happens when he gets there
and all of the fallout from that, And then we'll

(41:25):
also spend a lot of next episode unpacking like how
did this happen? You know, people want to blame somebody
and they want to have a reason, they want to understand.
I want to do our best to sort of talk
through what could have been going on that allowed this
to happen, and then also thinking about where are we
as a as a species since then, right, like, has

(41:46):
have we changed much or not at all? What could
we possibly expect moving forward? But I think a lot
of it's just we got to tell the rest of
the story and also start to understand why things are
happening the way that they're happening.

Speaker 2 (41:58):
And you know, this is a big story, like this
is a big, complex story that includes political maneuvering and
cult behavior. And in this story in particular is I
want to say it's unique, but it's not as unique
as maybe like you think of it. When you think
of cults, like, you know, the general the general guidelines
are that you get somebody who's you know, charismatic, they

(42:19):
start some group, they bring a bunch of people in
and take advantage of them, and it all goes wrong, right,
And that's kind of the history of cults in a nutshell,
But this one is particularly bad. Because it's one of
the first ones that was so publicly televised and like
really in the cultural zeitgeist, and it just was is
it's one of those things. We we want to spend
enough time on it to make sure that we can

(42:40):
unpack the things that are going on and what went
wrong and and give you like kind of like the
main bullet points. Because there's plenty of books written by
about this, right, there's lots of podcasts on it, there's
lots of true there's lots of stuff on it, But
we want to approach it from like our perspective too
and talk about how people get here, and it's it's
just a lot to unpack.

Speaker 1 (42:57):
It's also one of the most extreme and severe cases
of anything like this that ever happened, so like it
stands out even among the annals of history of crazy
like cult things that happen, this one stands out, yeah,
as being the most over the top and extreme in

(43:18):
terms of what the what they ended up the consequences
end up being. So but we will get into all
of that next time. But I think that's a good
time for us to maybe transition to some never mind,
we have to do a lot of things we have.
We have recommendations that we're gonna do, but before we
do that, we have to do our credits, and before
we do that, we're gonna run some ads. We like

(43:44):
to at the end of our discussions recommend some things,
even when we're halfway through a discussion. Well, if we
are gonna pause and do a part two, then at
the end of part one, we'll also recommend some things,
and then we'll recommend more things next time. And it's
just a fun thing that we like to do, try
and lighten the heaviness of the loads sometimes, although most
of our episodes I think are not as dark as

(44:04):
this one is. Nope, but all right, yeah, So before
we get to our recommendations, though, I would like to
tell you about how you can support us. If you've
made it this far, thank you so much. We appreciate
having you here. And if you haven't already supported us,
you can do that by picking up some merchant our
merch store, leaving us a rating and review. Really, if
you do like us and you just click five stars,

(44:25):
that actually helps a lot. Like that by itself, if
you want to add that review, that also helps, that's
really great. You can tell a friend You can also
head over to Patreon, and if you do that, you'll
get a bunch of ad free content, bonus content, early episodes,
all that sort of thing. And we really appreciate the
people who have already done that thing. And so at
the end of each of our discussions, we go through
and we read the names of the people who have

(44:46):
decided to help us, which is really lovely and we
appreciate it, and so thank you so much to Mike,
m Megan, Mike t, Justin, Kim Brad, Stephanie, Brian, Ashley,
Kiara and Charlie.

Speaker 3 (44:56):
Thank you patrons.

Speaker 1 (44:59):
All the cases for you, indeed, which are you know,
are not physical, so you don't have to take them
if you don't want to, yeah, which is very important.

Speaker 3 (45:06):
We would never forced kisses.

Speaker 1 (45:07):
On anybody, but exactly anyway, if you would like to
join that list of people, you may do so, and
we'd be happy to have you, or else, you know,
whatever other way of supporting us that you like, or
nothing at all, if that you don't want to do anything,
and that's okay too. If you would like to tell
us about your thoughts about the Jonestown massacre, particularly so far,
or anything else, we've talked about in this episode. Then

(45:28):
you may reach us directly by emailing us at info
with wwdwwdpodcast dot com, or reaching out to us on
the social media platforms. Trying to talk just way too
fast right now, I need to slow it down.

Speaker 2 (45:41):
You are a okay, my friend, You are a okay.

Speaker 1 (45:44):
Also, I cannot make this podcast without my team of
people helping me writing and fact checking from Shane and myself.
Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson, and our audio
engineer who writes our music and makes our voices sound
good and cuts our episodes up so that they're listenable.
Chunks of speech is justin thank you so much for
all of the work that you all do.

Speaker 2 (46:05):
Yes, we love you so much.

Speaker 1 (46:06):
All right, I think that is what I have until
we get to our recommendations. Is there anything that I
am missing before we recommend some things?

Speaker 2 (46:13):
I don't think so. I think we got it covered
so far.

Speaker 1 (46:15):
All right, Let's do the cue the music for recommendations.

Speaker 2 (46:19):
Recommend recommendations.

Speaker 1 (46:29):
I will once again just preface this, even though I
think I said this before, that these recommendations have nothing
to do with our topic at hand. It's just because
it is a new week, and so where we've thought
of some new things that we'd like to send out
into the world for good vibes reasons. Yes, I'll go
first if that's okay.

Speaker 2 (46:46):
Yeah, sounds good.

Speaker 1 (46:47):
I am recommending an album. It is kind of old.
I think this album probably came out in two thousand
and six eight six. Yeah, like it's like a twenty
year old album, but recently came back into my orbit
and I was listening through it and just thinking, this
is like a perfect album. Every song is good, every

(47:08):
note is good, everything is good. I just I love
it so much. This is by the band say A
Sin Sao s I N and their self titled album,
which means it's just called say A Sin is so
so good. It's like a white cover with a black
beatle on it, and that's pretty much all it is.
But just I love this album. I just think it's

(47:30):
really really great. So it's very easy to come by.
Anywhere where you can stream albums, you can listen to it.
I like the whole thing, and I guess I should
describe it for people who don't know what this is.
This is rock, but it's not like heavy rock. It's
sort of more poppy that so it's very melodic but

(47:51):
maybe a little bit on the progressive side ish like
just sort of technically proficient guitar parts here and there,
and like their drummer is so good. He's such a
joy to listen to.

Speaker 2 (48:02):
So yeah, if you like stuff like Circus Survive things
like it's like kind of like it's like pop punk adjacent,
but like not pop punk. It's like that, it's like
post pop punk where it's like the vocals are really clear,
they're really clean, they're really catchy, there's good hooks, the
instrumentation is beautiful. It's like pop punkins grew up and
wrote like a really good prog rock album.

Speaker 1 (48:23):
Yeah, that's yeah, that's a good way of thinking about it,
because if you think of something like Blinkwin eighty two
doesn't really sound like say usin, but you could see
like the DNA of Blankwin eighty two in Sayasin, but
like what Saya Sin's doing, much more technical, much bigger sounding,
feeling like not the sort of like toilet humor like
they're it. Yeah, it feels just grown up and more

(48:47):
technically prepared, very mature.

Speaker 3 (48:50):
It's very mature, So.

Speaker 1 (48:53):
All right, cool that's my recommendation is say a Sin
by Sayas in an album, ghost stream it or some
songs from it. I mean even like first song is great,
barrier Head is great, Voices is great. Love this whole album.
So yeah, it's really really good.

Speaker 2 (49:06):
Cool. I'm I'm gonna listen to that when we're done, because,
uh man, I haven't listened that in a while, and
it's a it's a good one. Yeah, I'm gonna recommend
a book, and I'm gonna recommend a book that you
recommend it to me, So like, I actually this is
I think a lot of fun because you gave me
a recommendation and I took that recommendation and I really
enjoyed it myself. So now this is essentially a double
recommendation for the show. And that is a book called
The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi. So, man, it's

(49:31):
a quick read. Yeah, it's an easy read, not very long.
It's not very long. You don't have to worry about
like the character development is like very straight. It's very linear,
like you don't have a lot of like it doesn't
get too crazy. It's a really great story about like
how bullies suck but like it was a really fun,
like kind of weird sci fi book about a guy

(49:52):
who was kind of down on his luck and he's
doing like uber eats for work and then gets hired
into working in this like Destin's Secret Society where he
gets to like basically work with Godzilla's and it is
so fun and I want to share a story. So
I'm reading this on a plane. So I was I
was on my way to a conference and I'm reading

(50:13):
this on a plane and the flight attendant stops and
he goes, what are you reading? And I was like,
I'm reading you know, Kaiju Preservation side. He goes, I
went to high school with him, and I'm like, what, whoa?
This is wild and he goes he goes, let me
finish service and I'll come back and I'll tell you.
And I was like sure, Like I was like, this
is this is gonna be weird.

Speaker 3 (50:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:31):
So he comes back, he brings a picture of him
with the guy and he's like, He's like, it's so
cool to see him do well because he was bullied
in high school and he's doing well and none of
the bullies are doing well. And he's like, so it's
cool to see that like that he's doing well, and
he kind of came out on the other side of that.
He's like, but he's the nicest guy. He's it's great
to see him succeed. He deserves to succeed. So I'm

(50:54):
so glad, So like I'm going to tell him, and
I was like, please tell him. I love this, Like
this is absolute. I'm gonna buy every one of his
other books because it is so much fun, right, And
it was just like a nice, little wholesome moment to
be like, oh, somebody who like worked really hard deserved
to get there, come up like the the you know,
their rewards and whatnot, and it was just like a
weird happenstance type of interaction. So you know, maybe that's

(51:14):
the moral of the story. Maybe second recommendation is like
read books in public so people can talk to you.

Speaker 3 (51:19):
Right, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (51:21):
That's so fun.

Speaker 1 (51:21):
That's wild that you know the author and everything.

Speaker 2 (51:26):
Yeah, like best friends with him, that's wild.

Speaker 3 (51:29):
Man.

Speaker 2 (51:29):
My favorite anecdote was like he goes he in high school,
he couldn't stand Stephen King and now they're like best
friends and it's so upsetting to me. Yeah, like I
want to be best friends with Stephen King. But good
for him. I'm glad he's got that, you.

Speaker 3 (51:41):
Know, true true.

Speaker 1 (51:42):
So no, that's really fun, and I'm glad that you
enjoyed it too, because you know, I have repeatedly recommended
that to people, and I don't know that anyone has
taken me up on that recommendation except for you. But yeah,
I thought that great book was really really good.

Speaker 2 (51:56):
It was so fun.

Speaker 1 (51:58):
Yeah, and it's and as you said, it's like quick,
it's not like you're really committing a huge amount to it,
but you think you get a really fun story out
of it nonetheless, So yeah, yeah, very good stuff. So
that was the album Say us In by the band Sayasin.
It's their self titled album. And then the Kaiju Preservation Society,
a book by author John Scalzi. And we'll be back
next time with our second part of the Jonestowns story.

(52:21):
So we get into the stuff. So I guess we
didn't really get much into the abuse and stuff, like
slight descriptions of it here and there. Next time will
be a bit grittier, but nevertheless, that's where most of
the story actually sort of takes place. We built up
to it because we felt like it was really important
to understand how things got to where they were, Like
what was the path that Jim Jones and his actions

(52:43):
took to end up at Jonestown and then the things
that transpire there.

Speaker 2 (52:48):
Yeah, cultural behavior does not happen in isolation. It does
not happen in a vacuum.

Speaker 3 (52:53):
Yes, very much so.

Speaker 1 (52:54):
So come back next week for the conclusion of this
story so that you have all of the facts and detail.
But I think that's all I have for now. Anything
you'd like to add before we say our temporary goodbyes.

Speaker 2 (53:06):
Nothing at the moment.

Speaker 1 (53:07):
Okay, thank you all for listening, See you next week.
This is Abraham and.

Speaker 2 (53:10):
This is Shane.

Speaker 3 (53:11):
We're out, diya.

Speaker 2 (53:13):
You've been listening to Why We Do What We Do.
You can learn more about this and other episodes by
going to WWDWWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening, and
we hope you have an awesome day.