January 21, 2026 • 59 mins
This week’s guest is Jonathan Hirsch, podcaster, producer, and author who grew up in Adidam, a cult led by new age guru Franklin Jones - also known as Adi Da. In this week’s episode, Jonathan explains how his parents joined the group while on a spiritual journey that started with them following a different guru, how many of Jones’s followers were indoctrinated by listening to his tapes, and the cult’s constantly changing belief system.
They discuss one follower’s fascinating experience seeing the doctrine differently after translating it into another language, what it was like growing up on the cult’s compound (with parents that were acupuncturists for the leader), and how helpful it is to know that there are other “cult kids” out there.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Trust me?
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Do you trust me?
Speaker 3 (00:04):
Here? Right ever lead you a story?
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Trust This is the truth, the only truth.
Speaker 4 (00:09):
If anybody ever tells you to just trust them, don't welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Welcome to Trust Me.
Speaker 4 (00:14):
The podcast about cults, extreme belief and manipulation from two
hippies who've actually experienced it.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I'm Lola Blanc and I'm Megan Elizabeth and.
Speaker 4 (00:23):
Today's part one of our interview with Jonathan Hirsch, podcaster, producer,
and author and friend of the show, who grew up
in a cult led by New age guru Franklin Jones,
also known as Audie Daw. In this week's episode, he's
going to tell us how his parents met while in
their spirituality and Psychedelics era, ultimately happening into Franklin Jones's group,
and how many of Jones's followers were indoctrinated just through
(00:45):
listening to his tapes.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
At first, we always come back to the tapes.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
On this podcast, we'll discuss the group's constantly changing belief system.
One follower is fascinating experience seeing the doctrine differently once
she had to try translate it into another language, and
what it was like growing up on the cult's compound
as a child, and.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
Next week we will get deeper into Jonathan's personal experiences
being in and then of course leaving the cult. A
lot of what we talk about today he gets into
even more on the podcast he made about this experience
called Dear Franklin Jones. And he also wrote a book
that also includes these topics called The Mind Is Burning.
(01:27):
But before we get into it with him, so much
to talk about, Megan, please tell me your cultiest thing
of this week now, Okay, fine, please, Okay.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
So this this podcast we record and then it gets
released later. So I know some people might be like, wow, hot,
take this happened forever ago, but still it's culty and
we're going to talk about it and it's kind of
more light.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Well, actually it's kind of dark. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
You tell me, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, mom. Groups right, Yes,
you were saying you're not very aware of them, like
groups of friends where well, no, it's like, let's say
you get pregnant, you'll go to maybe I don't know
if they're still called the mos classes, but some sort
of class where you'll meet ten other women who are
(02:19):
also at your same term of pregnancy and you'll say,
let's start a group chat, and you'll start sending you know, symptoms,
fears products. I've just witnessed my friends who've become pregnant
join these group chats that become their mom group, that
become I mean, my friends would run me over with
a car before giving up their mom group rightfully. So
(02:41):
it's like they are each other's lifeline and tether to
this experience. That's one of the hardest things a person
can go through. They get this kind of community that
becomes very important to them, cannot turn.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Culty hmm hmmm. Sometimes. So I've seen several articles where
this has gone bad.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
I've, of course, in real life experienced you know, one
mom going rogue, the drama, whatever.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
But it's taken on a whole new.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Level with Ashley Tisdale publicly calling out her mom group
oh shit, yes, and saying that she's been left out
of things. This is the way I read it was
she was actually invited to a dinner party and she
was sat away from the other moms like would I
(03:34):
imagine to be like more with the children?
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Okay, oh my god.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Yeah, and her mom group and includes Hillary Duff, Mandy Moore,
so yeah. So then Ashley Tisdale did this story with
the cut about you know, being left out of her
mom group and having to leave her mom group.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
This is insane that this is a news story, but okay.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Go on.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
So Hillary Duff's husband.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Claps and he makes a picture with a fake headline
reading when You're the most self absorbed, toned off person
on Earth. Other moms tend to shift focus to their
actual toddlers.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
Oh my god, this is okay.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Okay, So now I'm just getting into Hollywood goes up
and veering out of out.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Of the cult realm.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
But there is something to be said when you are vulnerable,
which you are when you're a new mother, and you're
forming relationships that are much deeper than normal relationships because
you're going through let's call it what it is, trauma
as well as love at the same time. But being
a new mom's very trauatic and sometimes it can go bad.
(04:46):
So I don't know that's my cultiest thing. I'm just
I would love to do a whole episode on somebody
who gets involved in a toxic and.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Some of them are great, and some of them are great,
of course they are.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Chats are like can go in every direction of good
or bad. This seems like the perfect example of our
previous guest, Renee drest Us, the term that she used
pseudo events yep, news stories that absolutely should not.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Be in the news, Like none of.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Us should know this, Lola, do you know where I'm
reading this from? Where CNN CNN stop.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
Yeah, there's like literally that we're like literally descending into authoritarianism.
But it's important to know about Ashley Tisdale's Mom group.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Mandy Moore might be mean There's no way I'm missing
you like Candy.
Speaker 4 (05:37):
I don't know. I love Mandy Moore. I loved this
is Us.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
I remember driving in my first car listening to the
song I'm Missing You like Candy on a tape so
good and thinking there's no way.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
I also felt this.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Way about I Get knocked Down and I Get up again,
that Chumbawamba song where I was like, there's no way
I will ever like a song as much as I
like these two songs ever again in my life, and
the verdict is incorrect. I've liked other songs more.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
I'm shocked. I'm shocked to hear that great songs both.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Yeah mom groups.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
I mean because Lola I'm just I'm just gonna add
one more thing. They're not just on text groups like
my mom friends are meeting up with these women regularly
and life and there is drama. And if you if
you get somebody who's like, maybe like I'm selling a
new oil for babies, like, it can turn weird.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
Okay, this is like the perfect segue into my cultist
thing though.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Perfect.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
So what's yours?
Speaker 4 (06:33):
Okay, So I read this article on Good Housekeeping dot com.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Oh wow, I didn't know you were a subscriber.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
I just google cults sometimes. Okay, Kay, well we're trying
not to use Google as much anymore. But anyway, this woman,
Anna stouthored she is an author. She has a book
coming out, but she wrote this article about how when
she was a new mom with identical twin babies and
she was getting like zero sleep. She said the most
(07:04):
amount of sleep she was getting out of time was
like forty minutes. While she's raising these twin babies, she
goes on Instagram to try like she's panicked, she's losing
her mind. She's completely sleep deprived and feeling just like
scared she's gonna kill the baby. You know, like as
moms do, and she finds an Instagram guru. Of course,
she finds a man on Instagram who is like a
(07:27):
wellness guy who's also advising on how to grow your vegetables,
talking about the frequency of gratitude, how pain is just
resistance to the present moment, and of course she's exhausted
and desperate for answers, so she starts, you know, heating
his advice and like viewing him as a spiritual leader.
And then over time he's sliding into her dms. He's
(07:48):
telling her what to do, and then he lives like
in another country, I believe.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
He sends her a picture.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
Of a park near her house and starts like fucking
stalking her, this man who had become her guru. And
she's like, fortunately I didn't spend the money that he
wanted me to spend, but I was so vulnerable due
to this state of like interesting, sleep deprived motherhood, which
I just have never thought about before.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Yeah, I mean it's an event that disrupts your entire reality. Yeah,
and everybody just thinks of it as good, which it is,
but also it's.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
You know, you're very tired.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
Yeah, Yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot stuff going on.
To be clear, neither of us are moms. We don't know, but.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Don't know our lives.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
I don't know, and I'm still very close friends with
my friends who are moms, and I do try to
go watch their kids at least once a week.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
I try. I do, Yeah, And I'm not by.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Myself, but my friends are there, but like they're watching TV.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Or something, and I'm like playing with them, you know,
like I try. That's not why watching kids, No, I'm
with your friends house there.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
I'm playing play though my friend's watching a TV show
in a different room. Like it can't replace an actual
mom of course, So like there's just the vulnerability there
if that other person happens to be whatever and and
your case, maybe it's not a mom, but it's a
person offering a solution.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Mm hmmmm hmmm. We should probably try to have her on.
We learn a little bit more about love to have
her on.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
And if anybody wants me to babysit their children and
just buy me food and basically watch Real Housewives with me,
and I can call it babysitting, let me know.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
Oh boy, all right, should we talk to Jonathan?
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Let's do it? Welcome Jonathan hirsh to trust me.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Thank you for having me, Thank.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
You so much for being here.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
We have like one hundred things we want to talk
to you about, but we're going to start with just one.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Okay, and buy just one. I mean, there's so much
to talk.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
About with that one thing, which is is the cult
that you grew up in.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
The one and only.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
Yeah, first of all, what was the name of this cult?
Speaker 1 (10:07):
So it had a lot of different names over the years.
It ultimately became known as Addidam, but it really, you know,
it changed not only the name of the group over
the years, but also the spiritual teacher guru himself.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
How changed?
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Yeah, yeah, dozens of times?
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah, dozens of times. Wow, Oh I thought it was
like three.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Oh no, there was. Well, he was born Franklin Jones, sure,
and then he became uh Da free John and then
Bubba free John. So forgive me, I'm going to butcher
the order because I don't really keep the chronology of
his names in my head too much anymore. He's Da Kolki,
(10:49):
da Utah. He basically created variations on Da quite a bit,
and then later it started to have quite complicated names
like Ruchira, avatar Adi Da Samaraj.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
She was like going the opposite of Prince. Remember when
Prince became just a like movement what Prince the artist, Well,
he became over this when he became like a sign.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Oh oh, I didn't know that.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
He was like, I'm simplifying it that this man was like,
I'm making it more complicated.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
It's actually a really interesting observation about him because you
see this person in the nineteen seventies becoming a sort
of hippie spiritualist guru type not uncommon for the time,
just sort of a friend literally Bubba like your friend
Bubba John or whatever. The sort of variation is there,
to something much more complicated Byzantine and reading the words
(11:46):
he wrote, they went from conversational English to some kind
of kuneiform symbol. Like there was just so much complicated
language in there that if you read some of the
books that he before he died, you can barely understand them,
and even the people within the group would have to
sort of refer to scholars to like, wow.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
Well, for purposes, he is Franklin Jones, but on Wikipedia
it's Audi Dap.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Most people would probably know him as Audi Da exactly
that's correct. And photos of this guy.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
Wow's a character full blown scullet, bald on the top,
completely long hair in.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
The back, I think I have.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
But that nails it.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
But like most importantly, like white as the day is long.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Yes, this is just the Queens, New.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
York man, just a guy from a blue collar neighborhood, yeah,
in Queens.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
But he does have a very like interesting face, Like
there's something about his eyes.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
That's like very sort of he looks like he'd be
a movie character.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
There's just something interesting about his face, which I that
look I imagine contributed to something some kind of aura about.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Him, definitely, And there was a sort of hypnotic effect
to the way that he would engage like eye contact
with people. Of course, you know, so it was like
even the way that I'm sure your listeners have like
some familiarity with with kind of how this these sort
of guru relationships might work. But you know, your followers
(13:21):
would sit in front of the teacher or guru. And
it was believed, at least in the group that I
was raised in, that Franklin Jones or Adi Da I
oftentimes refer to him as Franklin Jones because he's a
human being. Yeah, who, like the rest of us, lived
and you know, in his case, died. We will never die.
Never in the circle of friends. I'm out.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
I opted out.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Actually, I'm so glad that I did paint a little
bit more on the front end. But yeah, yeah, paying dividends.
But his followers believed, as my parents believed, that he
was actually physically an incarnation God.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
So immortal. Was that any was that a part of this?
When he died, were people like what?
Speaker 1 (14:05):
I think? The belief was that his physical body would die,
but that he was what immortality is, if that makes sense.
So when you die and you're reabsorbed into this universal consciousness,
it's actually Franklin Jones that you're reabsorbing yourself into.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
Oh yes, oh yeah, wow.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Man, yeah, scolet man.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
Yeah, I can't wait to be absorbed into Franklin Jones,
the sculet man.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
I'm pretty obsessed with him. I'm not going to lie
to you. Like the gall of this man, I mean,
he is he is something else. He is golful. It's
just so all the new vocab that you're introducing.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
I just made that one up.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
Okay, But tell us a little bit about your parents
and how they discovered him.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
I think they are both a window into the kind
of people that would have joined Franklin Jones's group, and
they're also, I just think a good window into the
kinds of people who were exploring different ways of being
in the nineteen sixties into the seventies. You know, my
father was a Hungarian immigrant who fled the war during
(15:17):
the Hungarian Uprising in the nineteen fifties. He arrived here
in the United States, like a lot of Hungarians, as
a refugee. He built a life. He had a first
marriage that did not work out so well, and then
he met my mom. He met my mom when he
had already moved to Los Angeles and started exploring psychedelics
in the form of acid and other things, and he
(15:40):
also was exploring alternative forms of spirituality. He felt like
there was something more to life than what he was
being afforded, and I think the drugs were an access
point for him, like so many people in the late
sixties and seventies, you know, acid literally like turn on,
tune in, drop out, that phrase that was promoted in
that era, this idea that you need to step out
(16:02):
of society to see something bigger than what everybody else sees,
and like, whatever that is, it's not what's being offered
within the traditional confines of the society. And so he
was a seeker. He was a spiritual seeker. And my
mom in many ways was on the other end of
the spectrum of that same kind of spiritual journey that
so many Americans in particular were on when the social
(16:26):
fabric was fraying in the late sixties, when the Vietnam
War was creating all this civil unrest, when the civil
rights movement was showing us that we do not live
in the picket white fan Sisenhower society that we think
we do. That it is a lot nastier out there.
It just depends on where you center the point of view.
(16:46):
And so I think for my mom, she was also
in search of something that looked bigger than the kind
of like nine to five suburban life that she was
raised in. She ended up living in Nepal for a
decade and go into acupuncture, became an acupuncturist and moved
back to the San Francisco Bay area in the nineteen eighties,
(17:07):
and was also, you know, by that token into some
of this new ag stuff and spirituality and Buddhism she'd
been exposed to when she was living in the East,
and the two of them found themselves at a meditation
of another guru.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
There were so many though at that time, I mean.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Yeah, yeah, so again to the point that it just
this stuff was in the ether. Yeah, And if you
were living in San Francisco in the nineteen eighties, you
might wander into a you know, alternative bookstore and find
this stuff in the back. In fact, in Marine County,
where they lived for most of my adult life, the
(17:49):
New Age bookstore, the alternative bookstore used to be a
Franklin Jones group owned bookstore before the group, before the Parties,
as far as I knew, defected and then like took
the bookstor oh wow, so you know warring New Agers. Yeah,
but anyway, back to the story. In the nineteen eighties,
my parents meet after they had seen flyers around town
(18:10):
for this spiritual teacher who went by the name Rama
or Frederick Lenz. I don't know if he's ever been
covered on trust Me, but he was again one of
these like hippie spiritualist kind of guru types who like
wore leather jackets and played in a rock band. Called Zazen,
and he was just again, a well educated white guy
(18:34):
from the Northeast who was presenting a sort of synthesized version,
a pop psychology version of more like ascetic Eastern philosophical traditions.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Right, yeah, sign me up. Unfortunately you're in. And then
I mean.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
He's pretty he's I mean, he was his own kind
of charming, fascinating, charismatic figure. And I think something that
Rama and Franklin Jones shared was this charisma and way
of talking that was quite compelling. I mean, you hear
some of the recordings in the podcast that I did
(19:14):
about this deer Franklin Jones, You hear recordings of Franklin Jones,
and you're like, I think some people feel I mean
I've told me they felt unnerved when they hear it,
Like it doesn't he's like really intense. But then other
people are like, wow, he's just he has a way of.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Yeah talking, Well, I hear both. Yeah, that's a good
point that we'll get into in a minute.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
But his laugh is very yeah booming. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
Your mom on your podcast, because you interview your parents
on the podcast, and your mom talks about this like
laugh And I was like, how booming of a laugh
could it be?
Speaker 2 (19:47):
And then you play him laughing and I'm like, oh,
it's booming.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Yeah, it's very booming. I do people say that it's like, oh,
person had a laughter that filled up the room. It's like, yeah,
I mean, you don't know what it fills up the
room with. It could be tear gas or something else,
but it definitely occupies the space, you know. And I
do think for people who were looking for this person
to occupy their space, which if I look at my
(20:11):
parents critically, I believe that they were looking for something
to fulfill them rather than maybe addressing some of the
traumatic features of their life. And here they meet each
other and their relationship is fraught for precisely the same reasons.
Over though they were together for a couple of decades,
(20:34):
but in those days everything was on the upswing.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
You know.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
It was like, we met this guru. He's really fascinating.
They literally were in line and they bumped into each
other at this it's a real it's like the most.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Heuy you've ever heard of.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
The story goes that my dad was in like an
all white outfit and my mom turned around and said,
either you're a pimp, or a limousine driver. Either way,
I like it. What a line, Possibly the funniest thing
she's ever said. But yeah, they were two very unlikely
people who were brought together by their shared desire to
(21:17):
find what they perceived to be some bigger truth.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
So how did they go from the first Guru to
Franklin Jones?
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Yeah, so they got involved with with Rama and in
the early days of Rama's group. I also did a
documentary about Rama later after this, and so I've learned
quite a bit about him over the years. But in
the early days it was a little bit more informal.
The people who were involved. He actually delineated between his
early phase followers and his later phase followers as like
(21:58):
st Ones and ST two use as in Star.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Trek Okay, oh my god, it's a thing.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Oh yeah, yeah, I didn't make it up. Yeah, I'm
just relaying the fact. But they were st once. And
so when the group started to sort of move towards
these other practices, which included making all of his followers
his meditation students, as he would have referred to them,
become computer programmers. Interesting split the revenues of course of their.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Of course, for sure, like what else would you do
natch right.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
That was the point at which my parents I don't
think had the core competency to become computer programmers.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
So your parents were like, we can't be programmers, will
join Franks Exactly.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
I thought it wasn't just that he moved to New
that he just left.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
I thought for some reason, Rama just like bailed to
New York and your parents were like, well, we got
to find another guy.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
He he did ish, he did discourage them from joining,
which seeing my parents mean, I mean, I've you haven't
seen my parents in front of a computer before. I
used to joke that my dad he had this like way,
he didn't have the language to understand computers, so he
would like psychoanalyze them.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
He'd be like this motherboards resistingly.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Oh my god, not the right.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Yeah, you know, so they probably were gently let go
in that regard. You know, they just couldn't keep up
with the times.
Speaker 4 (23:28):
You know, and there were other ways to make money,
but they're listen, I.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Guess they just could not deliver, and in that regard.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
Really interesting, so they got kind of side moved into
to this other group they.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Did, And you mean, to your point, Rama.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Did move to New York to Westchester County, and that
became part of where the group kind of established itself
to do this kind of work that they were not qualified. Right. Wow, Well,
I'm I feel bad talking about my parents in this way,
but like.
Speaker 4 (24:01):
Parents are supposed to be bad at technology. What that's
what they're there.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
They're so lovely and that the interviews, it's just like
they're lovely. I know, I'm so bad at technology because
how I was raised. We didn't have it like my cult.
So like I've gone to the Apple store before and
they've been like, we actually don't know how you've fucked
it up this much because.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
We've never seen this before. Like I've just clicked.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
Yeah, I could say she's exaggerating, but she's really not.
Like some of the most basic things, she's like, how do.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
I do it? Are you eighty years old?
Speaker 3 (24:34):
It's really because so like, no, no hate towards your parents,
it's just it is what it is.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Yeah, and if you're not raised with it, I don't know.
Fucker is just not. Also, this was the eighties who
was doing technology eighties.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
I mean he was a visionary and rama needed to
clearly do some corporate restructuring. So my parents were on the.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Out what your parents both did acupuncture?
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Yes, my mom was was that was a licensed acupuncturist.
My dad was an unlicensed acupunctist, which I he knew.
My dad would definitely tracks.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Yeah, I imagine your dad is like this person. I
don't know, I just I imagine.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Him doing acid and like seeing the other side of
the fabric of reality being very interesting for him.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
Because he lived like a straight normal by the book
life prior to that, right, and he like talk talks
about that moment where he woke up from acid on
and I was like, wow, that's just like you won
eighty You do acid one time? Does acid one time?
Joints the cult Like that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
He definitely felt like he saw something.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Yeah, we'll do that too, and sometimes in good ways.
You know, I want to I want to try ascid.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Well yeah, now, so.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
I've done aid a lot. Children don't listen.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Yeah, we don't have fun.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
And it does help.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Like you know, somebody from the two by twos will
be like, well, telling me like some doctrine and I'm like,
I've gone back through time on acid and seeing the
essence of reality.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
I'm I it's not real what you're saying, But.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
I can also have the opposite of that drives you
into the cult, as did for so many people in
the sixties, seventies, eighties, And.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
I think that was sort of the core of it
for them was that I think they from different places
saw the limits of their own lives and wanted this
bigger philosophy, whether it was because of spiritual exploration, traveling
to other cultures. Like my mom lived a very kind
of middle class Midwestern life as a child. She was like,
(26:39):
you know, the oldest of seven kids, Like my grandfather
worked really hard, but they had like you know, they
were Irish Catholic. My grandmother like, these were very solid,
good people, hard working people who were not like experimenting
with yea, you know, the fabric.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Of reality, right, That's how my family and I love
them for that.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
But it definitely I think she was looking for something
different and she got it in the form of Franklin Jones.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:13):
Yes, So talk to us about what actually happens when
they join, Like how how are they indoctrinated, what is
the like system of teaching? Are they interacting with him
directly in the beginning.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
So Interestingly, I think Jones is kind of an odd
character in this way. He appeared and disappeared out of
the lives of his followers for long stretches of time,
in part because he had so much property.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
What a life you go on from that?
Speaker 3 (27:44):
It was really interesting in the podcast that, like you
tried to find people who grew up with him, and
people from his high school were like, I don't remember him,
Like nobody remembered him. He was kind of a random dude.
And then to suddenly go to being a guru who
has like too much land to even hang out with
your followers, That's a wild.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Leap for me.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Yeah, absolutely, And you wonder what was motivating that arc.
This is just my opinion, but I feel like he
was under a pretty significant amount of public pressure right
around the time my parents joined, by the way, because
of controversy. There were some lawsuits that were threatened, there
(28:21):
were some you know, matters that were sort of settled
out of court. He was on the front page of
the news on the San Francisco Chronicle, and as somebody
who was coercing as followers, manipulating them in some cases,
you know, allegedly assaulting them. So that's when my parents
(28:41):
thought this is a great place to bring their kid
and raise a family. That was must have been what
you know, entered in their mind, but they weren't concerned
about it. It was almost like they were, you know, immune
to the world around them, and it made their search
for like answers so sad. Flying with Jones because he
offered this community, this world that was kind of outside
(29:05):
the boundaries of everything else. It felt special. So in
those days, in those early days, they didn't actually meet
him or encounter him very much. And I believe that
part of the reason for that was Jones kind of
tried to step away from the limelight when all of
these controversies started to reach the press.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
Right. I wonder if him not being there made them
more attuned to him because they're like listening to his tapes.
He's not doing anything wrong. All they have is positive
tape version of him.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Yeah, I mean, talk about what a like entrancing world
to be. And you hear this guy's voice and his
laughter and his words, and he's promising all of these things.
He claims to possess these things. You know, it's quite
a fantasy you can build up in your head. About
who this person is and what they do. I mean,
meeting him, there was all those expectations when I was
(29:57):
a young person, like there was. It was very intense.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
Yeah, it's like an early YouTube guru. I feel like
we have that now. Yeah, with these parasocial relationships with
all these figures on YouTube and stuff. But we've had
quite a few guests, I feel who were initially exposed
to their cult through tapes, through just like long tapes
of the guru talking yeah wow, and developing a relationship
(30:22):
to them that way initially.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Yeah. I mean it's funny too. Most of his followers,
even the ones that did encounter him physically, many people
went their entire lives being in this group and never
physically seeing this man wow, which is kind of wild.
You dedicate your life to being in a religion, right,
or he would call a non religion religion, but a
(30:45):
religion in the sense that it was an organized religious group. Yeah,
just putting hairs here, but you know it, oftentimes in
these groups there is an obsession with what they perceive
to be accuracy that somehow, if you like, said it
this exact right way, it didn't make it a religion
or it didn't make it a cult or it didn't
make it something that was dangerous, right, You just have
(31:05):
to explain it to people, which was so painful to
write about because you never satisfy these people who want
you to say exactly what their group says about what
their group is. Many people were disappointed in me for that.
But to your point, the relationship transcended that, you know,
(31:26):
that physical relationship. It was much more about what his
message was and the way that he said it, and
the tapes were a huge part of that. I think
it's why I wanted to frame the series around these tapes,
because everybody had boxes of them the way my parents did,
you know, you know, like back in the eighties and nineties,
like when people had cassette tapes. Oh yeah, for those
(31:47):
who may not remember, they like they had like big
you know, almost like.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
CD holders, but they were were tapes.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
I didn't know that massive. I remember my parents had
a few that were like almost like palettes, you know
what I mean, And you'd have all of your tapes
in there. I mean so many tapes?
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Did this man have hundreds?
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (32:08):
What was the core message? If we had to make
one up?
Speaker 1 (32:12):
It changed over time, okay, But I think the fundamental
message was rooted in this idea of non dualism, which
you see in Buddhism and in Hinduism, the idea that
we construct an image of ourselves in the world as
individual people, separate selves. They might have said, that is
(32:35):
an illusion, and in fact we are basically like all
of us are little, you know, molecules that are part
of the whole, one organism, one organism, one consciousness, which
is Franklin. Yeah, he'd be like, I'll get there, but yes,
short tail dry, But yes, I think so. In the beginning,
(32:57):
the idea was he was teaching people how to see that,
and that enlightenment was the recognition of the fact that
you were one consciousness, that you were undifferentiated from others,
that you saw yourself as that, and therefore you no
longer suffered the mortal life and pain of being a
(33:20):
human or being any kind of sentient creature. You know.
In Buddhism they have this idea that, like, you know,
one of the four noble truths I'm making that right
is like that life is suffering, and so our suffering
comes from our ignorance about our own impermanence. So if
(33:41):
you recognize that you are a mortal being, except for
the three of us were we're we're immortal. Thank god
I signed off on that. But if you recognize that,
then you no longer suffer in life because life is
a temporary thing. Right.
Speaker 4 (34:01):
So he's just stealing from Eastern religions, which is what
so many of these people do, and kind of mash.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
It all up together and stir it in a pot.
Take a little bit of this, take a little bit
of that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
My producer on Dear Franklin Jones is an old friend
of mine, Ashley Kleek, And I was grateful to have
my producer and my editor be friends of mine because
in a way, writing that story was very difficult and
very personal. Any Obvolesce was my editor, and the two
of them would sort of have to wrangle me from
trying to like reconcile what I wanted to believe even then,
(34:36):
from what the reality of the situation was. And to
that point, trying to define the group was always very
difficult and its beliefs were always difficult because I can
start to construct this narrative about it, right like that,
it's about nondualism, you see it in these other religions.
But then like how does he play into it? And
then later he becomes this other thing and the word
(34:57):
that the words that Ashley would always use to describe it,
or word salad. She'd be like, you're in the word salid. Yeah, yes,
it's not making sense anymore, like it's this is word salid.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Right.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
At first that process was frustrating for me because I
had to redefine my own understanding of a reality that
I had, like a philosophy I had inherited from my parents,
you know. But I now can see that very clearly, So.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
That's hard work.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
It is, Yeah, yeah, it is.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
I mean, I like, this is a tactic that a lot.
I mean, I don't even know how many of them.
Speaker 4 (35:29):
Are doing it consciously or if it's just spewing it
out of their mouth, But like word salad is a
key feature. It's a key like the function of a
cult leader's doctrine so much at the time, because if
you understand it, then you don't need to go to
them to try to understand it. Like the more ambiguous
and confusing it is, the more the goalposts can move,
and the more you're able to control people, Like the
(35:50):
guy that I grew up with. His shit changes every year.
He has a totally new thing every year.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
New Year's Eve.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
If he just writes neurals, that's a resolution and.
Speaker 4 (36:00):
It's completely different, Like it'll be religious one year, and
it'll be sci fi another year, and it'll be political
another year. Like it literally completely changes. And then if
you actually read it, it is fully word salad. But
like if you're not reading it closely, it might seem like, oh,
interesting language. He must know some things, but like when
you actually start to break it down, it means nothing.
(36:21):
And there's something in your podcast a woman you interviewed, Tanya.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Who talks about how she stopped.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
Believing this is before your parents' time, right, Yeah. I
thought it was so fascinating because she talks about how
she and another woman had to translate his books into French,
which meant she had to actually look at the language
and analyze it. And she was like, this doesn't mean anything.
If you have to translate something, you have to actually
like break down what the words mean and breaking it
(36:49):
was so interesting that that was what like, yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Yeah, and I mentioned this in the series too. I
think the thing that I could not come to grips
with was this idea of not just ubiquity that he presented,
this like sort of ubiquitous consciousness, this ubiquitous awareness, but
his unique ownership of it, which is I think back
to your point about like moving the goalpost. Oftentimes in
(37:14):
these high control groups, we find people who are presenting
a version of reality that they alone have access to exactly,
and so that reality can shift according to their whims
you know, and they're whimsical and they.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Are women out of controls.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Wow, yeah it is. No one has ever referred in
my knowledge to Franklin Jones as whimsical, but I love it.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
I just want to say something before we move on
that you know, when you can speak different languages, you
use different parts of your brains, and people say like
I'm funny in this language, I'm not funny in this language,
or you know, it's very interesting to me. And there's
somebody and the Two by Twos who was like I
believed in it in English, but not.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Whoa in Italian?
Speaker 3 (38:08):
You know what I mean, Like their brain was just
like not online for it. And then there was another
person in the two by Twos that I really want
to have on who had a stroke, and he was like,
I can't believe in this anymore. I just can't access
the part of my brain that believe. Fascinating, It's very fascinating.
So this woman translating it to French, I'm assuming she
(38:29):
was also just turning on a different side of her
brain that actually had critical thinking built into it, and
was like, what the fuck is this shit?
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Yeah, I mean it is quite remarkable, like the way
that we can sort of be able to disentangle.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Yeah, we should all have to learn a new language
to process are.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Amazing, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah, I love that.
Speaker 4 (38:51):
I was going to say, before joining a new religion,
you have to learn it in another language, yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Of your choice. Yeah, yeah like that.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:02):
Anyway, we don't have team talking about words, but I
do find the words. I find it very interesting what
words bring out for us emotionally and like by default
maybe in our native language versus like how we would
process it.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
So fascinating.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Well, ye oh, I mean to that point, Like I
was going to mention earlier that like he had this
doctrine that he ard this tape. One of those tapes
was called the Baptism of Immortal Happiness.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Love that title I mean.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
It's such a great title. It really does feel like
it gets you there, you know. But I remember listening
to it when I was young, and I couldn't get
past the idea that some of the things he said
in there felt like I would never know. I almost
like intuited before I could really understand or contemplate if
there was any sort of manipulation related to a high
(39:47):
control group. In that moment, I recognized, I think, or
what I was tussling with was this idea of moving
the goalpost, which was everything about the way that he
said it. He said I know it, and when he
meant it, he meant like the great truth of reality,
I know it and you do not, absolutely, and all
(40:08):
miracles are potent in my heart. So I've come here
to give you everything. And he says it in this
very kind of whimsical poetic way that he could do,
like it almost felt like he was a Thespian, you know.
He had this kind of like Shakespearean way of talking sometimes,
and I remember hearing that and being like, what how
(40:28):
does he give it to me? And then I know it?
But then I don't know it because he knows it,
like my brain couldn't put those things together, Like I
forget if it was like the name of one of
his talks or like something that he said, but this
idea that like you can't get there from here, and
like I am the way to myself. Yeah, And I
was like, oh, okay, so let me get this straight.
(40:50):
So to get to you, you have to give it
to me. But I can't be you because you're over
here and I don't get it. But once I get it,
I'm going to be you. But I'm not you, like I.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Ah, what a my fuck?
Speaker 3 (41:01):
Yeah, which brings us, of course to orgies.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Of course, naturally that's the next step.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
You know, Like when when there is all this word salid,
when there is all this complicated stuff, there's usually a
man having sex with a lot of women or at
least taking their money.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
But usually there are sex.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
Yeah, let's dive into that. So can you tell us
a bit about the orgies.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Well, there definitely was very little documentation about what happened
inside of these private parties that Jones would have for decades,
But what was widely understood from anecdotal reporting from people
who were behind closed doors in these rooms is that
(41:47):
there were some pretty wild drug fueled parties that would
be referred to as considerations. It wasn't exclusive to every
event where a consideration was taking place or a gathering,
but the idea was that a select group of followers
were privately partying with Jones, sometimes deep into the night
(42:12):
and for days on end, and there was all kinds
of sexual experimentation that happened during that time, and we
talk about it in the series. Numerous people have pointed to,
including on the record in you know, civil complaints, the
idea that Jones was manipulating those scenarios to like pair
(42:35):
other people up with each other who weren't together, like
people who were married having to have sex with other people,
all kinds of sort of you know, out of pocket.
I don't even know how to describe it, but you know,
like organizing or you know, or puppeteering orchestrating these events.
And the idea was somehow that this was going to
(42:58):
break them out of their own attachments because a big
part of what we were raised in the group to
believe through Jones was that like the ego, something we
just think of as our sense of identity, as a
literal physical being that I can see in touch and
feel is a problem. That it is the problem, that
(43:22):
the perception that you have one is a problem, and
everything you do to preserve that ego is a problem.
They would call it like a contraction, that the ego
was this literal physical contraction, which is such a clever
way of disambiguating nuance from uncomfortable situations.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
So you can say from your gut.
Speaker 4 (43:44):
It's like, this is good for you to challenge anything
I tell you to do that makes you uncomfortable is
actually good for you because like you less attached your ego.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
And meanwhile, there's like what's her name, a beautiful playboy
model is part of this, you know, And yeah, he's
like cut to the chain.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
Right.
Speaker 3 (44:01):
To get through to all of y'all's egos, I need
to have sex with a lot of hot women.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
Yes, And he had multiple wives at one point or
what he would you refer to as kind of like
they would they would take up issue with the idea
that I would refer to them as wives because they
had other names that weren't wives, that were spiritual in
some way. But ultimately he had multiple sexual multiple sexual
sexual partners. Yeah, over over many many years, and some
(44:30):
of them were plucked out of relationships with other people.
Speaker 4 (44:35):
I know that the geographically moves around a little bit,
but just a sort of center where we are in space,
Like was this on a compound at this time?
Speaker 2 (44:43):
And where was that?
Speaker 1 (44:44):
Multiple compounds? Okay, so I grew up in the San
Francisco Bay area. They had little I don't even want
to call it a facility. It was like an office
space in an industrial part of North.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Marin, Okay.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
I was saying, the Marine Ashram or sanga, whatever you
want to call it. And then they had a compound
in northern California that was like a wellness center that
had sort of gone into disrepair that they purchased, and
that was kind of the main place where people were
located land.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
It's in Lake County, so like a dorm kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
We usually see that these groups try to split up
families a little bit was that like kids over here,
adults over here.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
Was that happening?
Speaker 1 (45:31):
A lot of that was part of the group. So
like you know, people who were living in these comp
like there was one Lake County, there was one in Hawaii.
He purchased an island in Fiji.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
I do that all the time.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
Never Yeah, it's really easy. Apparently it's just swapped them
out sweaters. But yeah, so he owned up quite a
bit of property, and of these places people lived permanently
and in sort of collective environments, but even quote unquote householders.
People who lived in houses lived in oftentimes in shared
(46:13):
situations where they were with other members of the group.
And they had experimented with starting schools that didn't work
out very well for reasons that are unsurprising based on.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
The trajectory of the group.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
I did. I did well for a while. I went
to school until my freshman year of high school. My
parents were kind of on the periphery really until around then.
We were in the group, but not completely in it.
And then when I was in my freshman year of
high school, they became Franklin Jones's personal acupuncturist. And when
(46:52):
you were providing a service for Franklin Jones, you were
given very special in comparison to other members of the
group because you had access to.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
Him touching God's body.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
Yes exactly, you're sticking needles in him. Yeah, So at
that point, whenever he needed them, they get a call
and they would want to go up there, and so
we increasingly had this pressure in our life to be there.
You know, we were increasingly asked to be closer to
where Jones was, and he was living on this compound
(47:27):
in northern California at the time, and so there was
quite a bit of strife between myself and my dad
in particular during those years, because he wanted to be
with this guru. He wanted to be closer to him,
and I wanted to play with my friends and go
to high school, go to high school and play basketball.
Speaker 2 (47:47):
Were you in LA before that?
Speaker 1 (47:49):
No, we were in the Bay Area.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
Oh you were in the Bay Area.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
Yeah, yeah, so but farther north. They wanted to kind
of be on the compound, be near him, be at
his call and all that. And at one point there
was speculation about him going back to Fiji and maybe
my parents would go with him. And I remember them
coming into my room one day and being like, do
you want to move to Fiji? And I was like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
Of course.
Speaker 1 (48:11):
But things did start to come to a head as
I got older, because I wanted to be with my friends.
I wanted to have some normalcy in my life that
I just never seemed to be able to get. I
always felt like I was on the periphery of every
space that I was in because of the way that
I was raised. And then, yeah, my dad at one
point sort of said to me, you're either going to
(48:33):
join the group or find another place to live.
Speaker 4 (48:36):
Rewinding a little bit, like, so you were not living
on like a compound with the group when you were
a kid prior to that era, not.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
Then, Okay, Yeah, in the early days, we were part
of the group, and we would like go to the
services that they would provide on Sunday, which was you know,
in that industrial office space with like a meditation hall
and a big picture of Jones on like the far
end of it, and everybody would worship the picture and
sing songs had it.
Speaker 4 (49:05):
Yeah, I've gone to some churches before that like claimed
to be non denominational, but then there'd be like a
cardboard cut out of the leader and I'm like, this
isn't a good sign you guys, like that's a red flag.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
Yeah. Funny you mentioned that too, because speaking of cardboard cutouts.
When I was a kid living in San Francisco, when
I was up till about fifth grade, we lived in
San Francisco, we didn't really have a lot of visitors,
and I don't think I really appreciated why that was
until I got older and I remember, you know, I
can still picture it, like walking into the room. You'd
(49:38):
open the door to our garden apartment in cow Hollow,
like sort of near the ocean on the north side
of San Francisco, and you know, you'd open the door
and there'd be a couch and on the couch was
a life sized cardboard cutout of Jones on the couch
sitting looking back at it. Cardboard sitting, that's crazy, Yeah,
(50:00):
And you sort of meditate on that picture as though
he were sitting in front of you.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (50:06):
You know there's a cardboard caught out of me that
I was given to me as a gift one time.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
If we just kick it in the middle, it could
be sitting and then you could both worship it, and
then great, I see where this is going.
Speaker 3 (50:19):
I mean, I can relate to what it must have
felt like as Kimala to go to school with quote
unquote normal children while you're living in a completely different
planet than them.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
Can you say a little bit about what that felt like?
Speaker 1 (50:36):
Yeah, I mean it just I think it took me
a very long time to feel at home in the world,
the world and literally in the group, as is not
uncommon with other groups, Like there were people who were
followers of the group, who were in the community, and
then there was everybody outside of the group, which was
the world, which becomes very problematic when you're trying to
(50:59):
navigate a normal life to have to reconcile with twenty
years of living in this environment where the world was
something outside of your known safe experience, and so there
was a lot of masking that was happening there as
a young person going to public school, like where I
wouldn't talk about what happened inside of my home. I
(51:21):
didn't volunteer that information to my friends. I went to
their house, and nobody thought much of it that they
didn't come to mind, you know, And so I think
I always felt like I was on the outskirts, and
making Dear Franklin Jones was a step in the direction
of asserting for myself what I wanted for the remainder
(51:46):
of my life, which was probably most of my life, hopefully,
you know, because I made the show when I was thirty.
But I just felt that I did not want to
live the rest of my life with the sense that
my story was not for better or for worse, weirder,
just like everybody else, something that existed within our cultural
(52:09):
narratives about life in America. So it was like really
important to me to feel like I could tell that
story in a way that was relatable to people who
didn't grow up in it, and they could understand that
the things I was going through were very extreme versions
of things that they may have experienced themselves as young people.
(52:31):
Because it really hurt, honestly, it hurt to live in
a world where I felt like my story was not
only a curiosity but just something that couldn't be understood.
Speaker 2 (52:41):
Right.
Speaker 3 (52:41):
It takes teenager dumb and turns the volume up, right, Like,
I've never really thought of it like that, but that's
essentially what it does. Because you are already are going
to feel different and like a loser and whatever.
Speaker 1 (52:53):
But then you know, also try to explain that to
your buddies.
Speaker 2 (52:57):
Yeah, you know, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (53:00):
For me, my my belief system was a refuge from
teenagerdom because I was like, oh, yeah, I have no friends. Well,
I'm chosen by God to bring about the end of days,
So fuck all of you who don't.
Speaker 3 (53:12):
Want to be my friend. That brings up something you
having no friends. Lola has something in common with Franklin Actually,
oh very much. So they're both veloquests.
Speaker 4 (53:22):
Oh yeah, and I also performed at the Ventriloquist Convention
the same year that Paul Winchell performed.
Speaker 3 (53:30):
I didn't know you were gonna Paul Winchell.
Speaker 2 (53:34):
Was brought up on the podcast The Share Paul Winchell,
So wow, wow, so you know who knew? Who knew?
Speaker 3 (53:43):
But yeah, I guess talking about no friends, I was like, oh, yeah,
and that's why Lola has no friends had had.
Speaker 2 (53:50):
I also had no friends, but it was different circumstances.
I was dressed crazy.
Speaker 1 (53:55):
You know. Since doing Dear Franklin Jones and continuing to
do like sort of long form documentary style storytelling and journalism,
obviously cults have come up again and again, and I
do feel like there's this quiet community of us, those
of us who grew up in high control groups, cults,
(54:17):
whatever you want to call them. Where cult kids, right,
Like the sense that your your life is so distinctly
different than the experience of other people as to be unbridgable.
And that's a very difficult feeling to have. To reconcile
with on top of trying to make sense of whatever
(54:39):
the fuck was going on when you were in that
group in the first place. And I remember having this
conversation with somebody who was in one of these sort
of church cult groups in the Pacific Northwest, and we
met and I interviewed him for a series that I'm
working on, and he at the end of us doing
that series, or that the end of us doing the interview,
(55:02):
we both just had a moment where we kind of
broke the fourth wall. We were no longer interview e
and interviewer, and we were two people who were cult kids.
And I think something I shared with this man that
I feel like I've shared with a lot of people
who have gone through being raised in a group like
(55:23):
this is just having to carry the burden of explaining
yourself to the world because your identity is so inextricable
from the ideology that was imposed upon you that you inherited,
that you didn't go on a spiritual vision quest to
do like I wish I could have been like my
dad and done some ascid and seen the other side,
(55:44):
but I wasn't. I was born to two parents who
were convinced that the world was a very particular way
and that there was a man behind the curtain who
was all of us, and that we needed to worship
him and to reconcile that with a world that saw
(56:05):
this person oftentimes as dangerous as a pariah, whatever you
want to call it. Like, that's a very that's a
very tough thing to have to live with, and I
just I just hope that my story, in other people's
stories of growing up in these groups, helps to make
people feel a little bit less alone about those of
(56:27):
us who did.
Speaker 2 (56:27):
Go through that, you know, totally, totally. I mean there
are so many of us.
Speaker 4 (56:31):
Yeah, It's like I would never have thought when we
first started the podcast, I was like, oh, well, fine,
guess it's no problem. But like the amount of people
who have had some kind of manipulative or charismatic person
like leading their childhood or high control group or a
fucked up religion, Like there's so many of us out there,
(56:52):
which you wouldn't think that because it feels like such
this fringe thing, but like, how many people do we
know at this point? Like it's and now random at
parties people will be like, oh yeah, I mean too,
you know like we're coming out of the woodwork.
Speaker 1 (57:05):
Yeah right, exactly.
Speaker 2 (57:09):
All right.
Speaker 4 (57:09):
So we're going to leave part one with Jonathan there
for now, come back next week for part two, and Megan,
it's time for the question, the question being would you
join this cult?
Speaker 2 (57:23):
Yes? Yeah, that's what mark. Can I say? Psychedelics?
Speaker 4 (57:30):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (57:31):
Community? I'm yeah, I'm susceptible to this one. I could
see this for you.
Speaker 4 (57:37):
His parents being on this like journey, the spirituality journey,
and they're like, they're meet cute.
Speaker 2 (57:43):
Yeah, it's all calling my name.
Speaker 3 (57:45):
So as always, I'm just gonna lock myself in my room,
not talk to anyone, and stay out of cults.
Speaker 4 (57:53):
I think that sounds like a great idea. Don't speak
to anyone.
Speaker 3 (57:58):
I won't theismotic I missed that. Next week's episode we
get even deeper. It's really great. We can't wait to
see you come back for it. Rate us five stars
if you're feeling the New year's resolution to give some
good energy and as always, remember to follow your gut,
watch out for red flags.
Speaker 2 (58:19):
And never ever trust me. Bye bye. This has been
an exactly right production hosted by.
Speaker 3 (58:28):
Me Lola Blanc and me Megan Elizabeth Our Senior producer
is ge Holly.
Speaker 2 (58:33):
This episode was mixed by John Bradley.
Speaker 3 (58:35):
Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain, and our guest booker
is Patrick Kottner.
Speaker 2 (58:40):
Our theme song was composed by Holly amber Church.
Speaker 3 (58:42):
Trust Me as executive produced by Karen Kilgareth Georgia Hardstark
and Daniell Kramer.
Speaker 4 (58:48):
You can find us on Instagram at trust Me podcast
or on TikTok at trust Me Cult Podcast.
Speaker 3 (58:53):
Got your own story about cults, extreme belief, our manipulation.
Shoot us an email at trust mepod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 4 (59:00):
Trust me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts,
Trust me?
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Do you trust me?
Speaker 3 (00:04):
Here? Right ever lead you a story?
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Trust This is the truth, the only truth.
Speaker 4 (00:09):
If anybody ever tells you to just trust them, don't welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Welcome to Trust Me.
Speaker 4 (00:14):
The podcast about cults, extreme belief and manipulation from two
hippies who've actually experienced it.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I'm Lola Blanc and I'm Megan Elizabeth and.
Speaker 4 (00:23):
Today's part one of our interview with Jonathan Hirsch, podcaster, producer,
and author and friend of the show, who grew up
in a cult led by New age guru Franklin Jones,
also known as Audie Daw. In this week's episode, he's
going to tell us how his parents met while in
their spirituality and Psychedelics era, ultimately happening into Franklin Jones's group,
and how many of Jones's followers were indoctrinated just through
(00:45):
listening to his tapes.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
At first, we always come back to the tapes.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
On this podcast, we'll discuss the group's constantly changing belief system.
One follower is fascinating experience seeing the doctrine differently once
she had to try translate it into another language, and
what it was like growing up on the cult's compound
as a child, and.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
Next week we will get deeper into Jonathan's personal experiences
being in and then of course leaving the cult. A
lot of what we talk about today he gets into
even more on the podcast he made about this experience
called Dear Franklin Jones. And he also wrote a book
that also includes these topics called The Mind Is Burning.
(01:27):
But before we get into it with him, so much
to talk about, Megan, please tell me your cultiest thing
of this week now, Okay, fine, please, Okay.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
So this this podcast we record and then it gets
released later. So I know some people might be like, wow, hot,
take this happened forever ago, but still it's culty and
we're going to talk about it and it's kind of
more light.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Well, actually it's kind of dark. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
You tell me, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, mom. Groups right, Yes,
you were saying you're not very aware of them, like
groups of friends where well, no, it's like, let's say
you get pregnant, you'll go to maybe I don't know
if they're still called the mos classes, but some sort
of class where you'll meet ten other women who are
(02:19):
also at your same term of pregnancy and you'll say,
let's start a group chat, and you'll start sending you know, symptoms,
fears products. I've just witnessed my friends who've become pregnant
join these group chats that become their mom group, that
become I mean, my friends would run me over with
a car before giving up their mom group rightfully. So
(02:41):
it's like they are each other's lifeline and tether to
this experience. That's one of the hardest things a person
can go through. They get this kind of community that
becomes very important to them, cannot turn.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Culty hmm hmmm. Sometimes. So I've seen several articles where
this has gone bad.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
I've, of course, in real life experienced you know, one
mom going rogue, the drama, whatever.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
But it's taken on a whole new.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Level with Ashley Tisdale publicly calling out her mom group
oh shit, yes, and saying that she's been left out
of things. This is the way I read it was
she was actually invited to a dinner party and she
was sat away from the other moms like would I
(03:34):
imagine to be like more with the children?
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Okay, oh my god.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Yeah, and her mom group and includes Hillary Duff, Mandy Moore,
so yeah. So then Ashley Tisdale did this story with
the cut about you know, being left out of her
mom group and having to leave her mom group.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
This is insane that this is a news story, but okay.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Go on.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
So Hillary Duff's husband.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Claps and he makes a picture with a fake headline
reading when You're the most self absorbed, toned off person
on Earth. Other moms tend to shift focus to their
actual toddlers.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
Oh my god, this is okay.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Okay, So now I'm just getting into Hollywood goes up
and veering out of out.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Of the cult realm.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
But there is something to be said when you are vulnerable,
which you are when you're a new mother, and you're
forming relationships that are much deeper than normal relationships because
you're going through let's call it what it is, trauma
as well as love at the same time. But being
a new mom's very trauatic and sometimes it can go bad.
(04:46):
So I don't know that's my cultiest thing. I'm just
I would love to do a whole episode on somebody
who gets involved in a toxic and.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Some of them are great, and some of them are great,
of course they are.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Chats are like can go in every direction of good
or bad. This seems like the perfect example of our
previous guest, Renee drest Us, the term that she used
pseudo events yep, news stories that absolutely should not.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Be in the news, Like none of.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Us should know this, Lola, do you know where I'm
reading this from? Where CNN CNN stop.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
Yeah, there's like literally that we're like literally descending into authoritarianism.
But it's important to know about Ashley Tisdale's Mom group.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Mandy Moore might be mean There's no way I'm missing
you like Candy.
Speaker 4 (05:37):
I don't know. I love Mandy Moore. I loved this
is Us.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
I remember driving in my first car listening to the
song I'm Missing You like Candy on a tape so
good and thinking there's no way.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
I also felt this.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Way about I Get knocked Down and I Get up again,
that Chumbawamba song where I was like, there's no way
I will ever like a song as much as I
like these two songs ever again in my life, and
the verdict is incorrect. I've liked other songs more.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
I'm shocked. I'm shocked to hear that great songs both.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Yeah mom groups.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
I mean because Lola I'm just I'm just gonna add
one more thing. They're not just on text groups like
my mom friends are meeting up with these women regularly
and life and there is drama. And if you if
you get somebody who's like, maybe like I'm selling a
new oil for babies, like, it can turn weird.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
Okay, this is like the perfect segue into my cultist
thing though.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Perfect.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
So what's yours?
Speaker 4 (06:33):
Okay, So I read this article on Good Housekeeping dot com.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Oh wow, I didn't know you were a subscriber.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
I just google cults sometimes. Okay, Kay, well we're trying
not to use Google as much anymore. But anyway, this woman,
Anna stouthored she is an author. She has a book
coming out, but she wrote this article about how when
she was a new mom with identical twin babies and
she was getting like zero sleep. She said the most
(07:04):
amount of sleep she was getting out of time was
like forty minutes. While she's raising these twin babies, she
goes on Instagram to try like she's panicked, she's losing
her mind. She's completely sleep deprived and feeling just like
scared she's gonna kill the baby. You know, like as
moms do, and she finds an Instagram guru. Of course,
she finds a man on Instagram who is like a
(07:27):
wellness guy who's also advising on how to grow your vegetables,
talking about the frequency of gratitude, how pain is just
resistance to the present moment, and of course she's exhausted
and desperate for answers, so she starts, you know, heating
his advice and like viewing him as a spiritual leader.
And then over time he's sliding into her dms. He's
(07:48):
telling her what to do, and then he lives like
in another country, I believe.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
He sends her a picture.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
Of a park near her house and starts like fucking
stalking her, this man who had become her guru. And
she's like, fortunately I didn't spend the money that he
wanted me to spend, but I was so vulnerable due
to this state of like interesting, sleep deprived motherhood, which
I just have never thought about before.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Yeah, I mean it's an event that disrupts your entire reality. Yeah,
and everybody just thinks of it as good, which it is,
but also it's.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
You know, you're very tired.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
Yeah, Yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot stuff going on.
To be clear, neither of us are moms. We don't know, but.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Don't know our lives.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
I don't know, and I'm still very close friends with
my friends who are moms, and I do try to
go watch their kids at least once a week.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
I try. I do, Yeah, And I'm not by.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Myself, but my friends are there, but like they're watching TV.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Or something, and I'm like playing with them, you know,
like I try. That's not why watching kids, No, I'm
with your friends house there.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
I'm playing play though my friend's watching a TV show
in a different room. Like it can't replace an actual
mom of course, So like there's just the vulnerability there
if that other person happens to be whatever and and
your case, maybe it's not a mom, but it's a
person offering a solution.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Mm hmmmm hmmm. We should probably try to have her on.
We learn a little bit more about love to have
her on.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
And if anybody wants me to babysit their children and
just buy me food and basically watch Real Housewives with me,
and I can call it babysitting, let me know.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
Oh boy, all right, should we talk to Jonathan?
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Let's do it? Welcome Jonathan hirsh to trust me.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Thank you for having me, Thank.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
You so much for being here.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
We have like one hundred things we want to talk
to you about, but we're going to start with just one.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Okay, and buy just one. I mean, there's so much
to talk.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
About with that one thing, which is is the cult
that you grew up in.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
The one and only.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
Yeah, first of all, what was the name of this cult?
Speaker 1 (10:07):
So it had a lot of different names over the years.
It ultimately became known as Addidam, but it really, you know,
it changed not only the name of the group over
the years, but also the spiritual teacher guru himself.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
How changed?
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Yeah, yeah, dozens of times?
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah, dozens of times. Wow, Oh I thought it was
like three.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Oh no, there was. Well, he was born Franklin Jones, sure,
and then he became uh Da free John and then
Bubba free John. So forgive me, I'm going to butcher
the order because I don't really keep the chronology of
his names in my head too much anymore. He's Da Kolki,
(10:49):
da Utah. He basically created variations on Da quite a bit,
and then later it started to have quite complicated names
like Ruchira, avatar Adi Da Samaraj.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
She was like going the opposite of Prince. Remember when
Prince became just a like movement what Prince the artist, Well,
he became over this when he became like a sign.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Oh oh, I didn't know that.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
He was like, I'm simplifying it that this man was like,
I'm making it more complicated.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
It's actually a really interesting observation about him because you
see this person in the nineteen seventies becoming a sort
of hippie spiritualist guru type not uncommon for the time,
just sort of a friend literally Bubba like your friend
Bubba John or whatever. The sort of variation is there,
to something much more complicated Byzantine and reading the words
(11:46):
he wrote, they went from conversational English to some kind
of kuneiform symbol. Like there was just so much complicated
language in there that if you read some of the
books that he before he died, you can barely understand them,
and even the people within the group would have to
sort of refer to scholars to like, wow.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
Well, for purposes, he is Franklin Jones, but on Wikipedia
it's Audi Dap.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Most people would probably know him as Audi Da exactly
that's correct. And photos of this guy.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
Wow's a character full blown scullet, bald on the top,
completely long hair in.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
The back, I think I have.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
But that nails it.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
But like most importantly, like white as the day is long.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Yes, this is just the Queens, New.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
York man, just a guy from a blue collar neighborhood, yeah,
in Queens.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
But he does have a very like interesting face, Like
there's something about his eyes.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
That's like very sort of he looks like he'd be
a movie character.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
There's just something interesting about his face, which I that
look I imagine contributed to something some kind of aura about.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Him, definitely, And there was a sort of hypnotic effect
to the way that he would engage like eye contact
with people. Of course, you know, so it was like
even the way that I'm sure your listeners have like
some familiarity with with kind of how this these sort
of guru relationships might work. But you know, your followers
(13:21):
would sit in front of the teacher or guru. And
it was believed, at least in the group that I
was raised in, that Franklin Jones or Adi Da I
oftentimes refer to him as Franklin Jones because he's a
human being. Yeah, who, like the rest of us, lived
and you know, in his case, died. We will never die.
Never in the circle of friends. I'm out.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
I opted out.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Actually, I'm so glad that I did paint a little
bit more on the front end. But yeah, yeah, paying dividends.
But his followers believed, as my parents believed, that he
was actually physically an incarnation God.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
So immortal. Was that any was that a part of this?
When he died, were people like what?
Speaker 1 (14:05):
I think? The belief was that his physical body would die,
but that he was what immortality is, if that makes sense.
So when you die and you're reabsorbed into this universal consciousness,
it's actually Franklin Jones that you're reabsorbing yourself into.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
Oh yes, oh yeah, wow.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Man, yeah, scolet man.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
Yeah, I can't wait to be absorbed into Franklin Jones,
the sculet man.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
I'm pretty obsessed with him. I'm not going to lie
to you. Like the gall of this man, I mean,
he is he is something else. He is golful. It's
just so all the new vocab that you're introducing.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
I just made that one up.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
Okay, But tell us a little bit about your parents
and how they discovered him.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
I think they are both a window into the kind
of people that would have joined Franklin Jones's group, and
they're also, I just think a good window into the
kinds of people who were exploring different ways of being
in the nineteen sixties into the seventies. You know, my
father was a Hungarian immigrant who fled the war during
(15:17):
the Hungarian Uprising in the nineteen fifties. He arrived here
in the United States, like a lot of Hungarians, as
a refugee. He built a life. He had a first
marriage that did not work out so well, and then
he met my mom. He met my mom when he
had already moved to Los Angeles and started exploring psychedelics
in the form of acid and other things, and he
(15:40):
also was exploring alternative forms of spirituality. He felt like
there was something more to life than what he was
being afforded, and I think the drugs were an access
point for him, like so many people in the late
sixties and seventies, you know, acid literally like turn on,
tune in, drop out, that phrase that was promoted in
that era, this idea that you need to step out
(16:02):
of society to see something bigger than what everybody else sees,
and like, whatever that is, it's not what's being offered
within the traditional confines of the society. And so he
was a seeker. He was a spiritual seeker. And my
mom in many ways was on the other end of
the spectrum of that same kind of spiritual journey that
so many Americans in particular were on when the social
(16:26):
fabric was fraying in the late sixties, when the Vietnam
War was creating all this civil unrest, when the civil
rights movement was showing us that we do not live
in the picket white fan Sisenhower society that we think
we do. That it is a lot nastier out there.
It just depends on where you center the point of view.
(16:46):
And so I think for my mom, she was also
in search of something that looked bigger than the kind
of like nine to five suburban life that she was
raised in. She ended up living in Nepal for a
decade and go into acupuncture, became an acupuncturist and moved
back to the San Francisco Bay area in the nineteen eighties,
(17:07):
and was also, you know, by that token into some
of this new ag stuff and spirituality and Buddhism she'd
been exposed to when she was living in the East,
and the two of them found themselves at a meditation
of another guru.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
There were so many though at that time, I mean.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Yeah, yeah, so again to the point that it just
this stuff was in the ether. Yeah, And if you
were living in San Francisco in the nineteen eighties, you
might wander into a you know, alternative bookstore and find
this stuff in the back. In fact, in Marine County,
where they lived for most of my adult life, the
(17:49):
New Age bookstore, the alternative bookstore used to be a
Franklin Jones group owned bookstore before the group, before the Parties,
as far as I knew, defected and then like took
the bookstor oh wow, so you know warring New Agers. Yeah,
but anyway, back to the story. In the nineteen eighties,
my parents meet after they had seen flyers around town
(18:10):
for this spiritual teacher who went by the name Rama
or Frederick Lenz. I don't know if he's ever been
covered on trust Me, but he was again one of
these like hippie spiritualist kind of guru types who like
wore leather jackets and played in a rock band. Called Zazen,
and he was just again, a well educated white guy
(18:34):
from the Northeast who was presenting a sort of synthesized version,
a pop psychology version of more like ascetic Eastern philosophical traditions.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Right, yeah, sign me up. Unfortunately you're in. And then
I mean.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
He's pretty he's I mean, he was his own kind
of charming, fascinating, charismatic figure. And I think something that
Rama and Franklin Jones shared was this charisma and way
of talking that was quite compelling. I mean, you hear
some of the recordings in the podcast that I did
(19:14):
about this deer Franklin Jones, You hear recordings of Franklin Jones,
and you're like, I think some people feel I mean
I've told me they felt unnerved when they hear it,
Like it doesn't he's like really intense. But then other
people are like, wow, he's just he has a way of.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Yeah talking, Well, I hear both. Yeah, that's a good
point that we'll get into in a minute.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
But his laugh is very yeah booming. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
Your mom on your podcast, because you interview your parents
on the podcast, and your mom talks about this like
laugh And I was like, how booming of a laugh
could it be?
Speaker 2 (19:47):
And then you play him laughing and I'm like, oh,
it's booming.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Yeah, it's very booming. I do people say that it's like, oh,
person had a laughter that filled up the room. It's like, yeah,
I mean, you don't know what it fills up the
room with. It could be tear gas or something else,
but it definitely occupies the space, you know. And I
do think for people who were looking for this person
to occupy their space, which if I look at my
(20:11):
parents critically, I believe that they were looking for something
to fulfill them rather than maybe addressing some of the
traumatic features of their life. And here they meet each
other and their relationship is fraught for precisely the same reasons.
Over though they were together for a couple of decades,
(20:34):
but in those days everything was on the upswing.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
You know.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
It was like, we met this guru. He's really fascinating.
They literally were in line and they bumped into each
other at this it's a real it's like the most.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Heuy you've ever heard of.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
The story goes that my dad was in like an
all white outfit and my mom turned around and said,
either you're a pimp, or a limousine driver. Either way,
I like it. What a line, Possibly the funniest thing
she's ever said. But yeah, they were two very unlikely
people who were brought together by their shared desire to
(21:17):
find what they perceived to be some bigger truth.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
So how did they go from the first Guru to
Franklin Jones?
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Yeah, so they got involved with with Rama and in
the early days of Rama's group. I also did a
documentary about Rama later after this, and so I've learned
quite a bit about him over the years. But in
the early days it was a little bit more informal.
The people who were involved. He actually delineated between his
early phase followers and his later phase followers as like
(21:58):
st Ones and ST two use as in Star.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Trek Okay, oh my god, it's a thing.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Oh yeah, yeah, I didn't make it up. Yeah, I'm
just relaying the fact. But they were st once. And
so when the group started to sort of move towards
these other practices, which included making all of his followers
his meditation students, as he would have referred to them,
become computer programmers. Interesting split the revenues of course of their.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Of course, for sure, like what else would you do
natch right.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
That was the point at which my parents I don't
think had the core competency to become computer programmers.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
So your parents were like, we can't be programmers, will
join Franks Exactly.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
I thought it wasn't just that he moved to New
that he just left.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
I thought for some reason, Rama just like bailed to
New York and your parents were like, well, we got
to find another guy.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
He he did ish, he did discourage them from joining,
which seeing my parents mean, I mean, I've you haven't
seen my parents in front of a computer before. I
used to joke that my dad he had this like way,
he didn't have the language to understand computers, so he
would like psychoanalyze them.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
He'd be like this motherboards resistingly.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Oh my god, not the right.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Yeah, you know, so they probably were gently let go
in that regard. You know, they just couldn't keep up
with the times.
Speaker 4 (23:28):
You know, and there were other ways to make money,
but they're listen, I.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Guess they just could not deliver, and in that regard.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
Really interesting, so they got kind of side moved into
to this other group they.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Did, And you mean, to your point, Rama.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Did move to New York to Westchester County, and that
became part of where the group kind of established itself
to do this kind of work that they were not qualified. Right. Wow, Well,
I'm I feel bad talking about my parents in this way,
but like.
Speaker 4 (24:01):
Parents are supposed to be bad at technology. What that's
what they're there.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
They're so lovely and that the interviews, it's just like
they're lovely. I know, I'm so bad at technology because
how I was raised. We didn't have it like my cult.
So like I've gone to the Apple store before and
they've been like, we actually don't know how you've fucked
it up this much because.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
We've never seen this before. Like I've just clicked.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
Yeah, I could say she's exaggerating, but she's really not.
Like some of the most basic things, she's like, how do.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
I do it? Are you eighty years old?
Speaker 3 (24:34):
It's really because so like, no, no hate towards your parents,
it's just it is what it is.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Yeah, and if you're not raised with it, I don't know.
Fucker is just not. Also, this was the eighties who
was doing technology eighties.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
I mean he was a visionary and rama needed to
clearly do some corporate restructuring. So my parents were on the.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Out what your parents both did acupuncture?
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Yes, my mom was was that was a licensed acupuncturist.
My dad was an unlicensed acupunctist, which I he knew.
My dad would definitely tracks.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Yeah, I imagine your dad is like this person. I
don't know, I just I imagine.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Him doing acid and like seeing the other side of
the fabric of reality being very interesting for him.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
Because he lived like a straight normal by the book
life prior to that, right, and he like talk talks
about that moment where he woke up from acid on
and I was like, wow, that's just like you won
eighty You do acid one time? Does acid one time?
Joints the cult Like that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
He definitely felt like he saw something.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Yeah, we'll do that too, and sometimes in good ways.
You know, I want to I want to try ascid.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Well yeah, now, so.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
I've done aid a lot. Children don't listen.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Yeah, we don't have fun.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
And it does help.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Like you know, somebody from the two by twos will
be like, well, telling me like some doctrine and I'm like,
I've gone back through time on acid and seeing the
essence of reality.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
I'm I it's not real what you're saying, But.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
I can also have the opposite of that drives you
into the cult, as did for so many people in
the sixties, seventies, eighties, And.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
I think that was sort of the core of it
for them was that I think they from different places
saw the limits of their own lives and wanted this
bigger philosophy, whether it was because of spiritual exploration, traveling
to other cultures. Like my mom lived a very kind
of middle class Midwestern life as a child. She was like,
(26:39):
you know, the oldest of seven kids, Like my grandfather
worked really hard, but they had like you know, they
were Irish Catholic. My grandmother like, these were very solid,
good people, hard working people who were not like experimenting
with yea, you know, the fabric.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Of reality, right, That's how my family and I love
them for that.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
But it definitely I think she was looking for something
different and she got it in the form of Franklin Jones.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:13):
Yes, So talk to us about what actually happens when
they join, Like how how are they indoctrinated, what is
the like system of teaching? Are they interacting with him
directly in the beginning.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
So Interestingly, I think Jones is kind of an odd
character in this way. He appeared and disappeared out of
the lives of his followers for long stretches of time,
in part because he had so much property.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
What a life you go on from that?
Speaker 3 (27:44):
It was really interesting in the podcast that, like you
tried to find people who grew up with him, and
people from his high school were like, I don't remember him,
Like nobody remembered him. He was kind of a random dude.
And then to suddenly go to being a guru who
has like too much land to even hang out with
your followers, That's a wild.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Leap for me.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Yeah, absolutely, And you wonder what was motivating that arc.
This is just my opinion, but I feel like he
was under a pretty significant amount of public pressure right
around the time my parents joined, by the way, because
of controversy. There were some lawsuits that were threatened, there
(28:21):
were some you know, matters that were sort of settled
out of court. He was on the front page of
the news on the San Francisco Chronicle, and as somebody
who was coercing as followers, manipulating them in some cases,
you know, allegedly assaulting them. So that's when my parents
(28:41):
thought this is a great place to bring their kid
and raise a family. That was must have been what
you know, entered in their mind, but they weren't concerned
about it. It was almost like they were, you know, immune
to the world around them, and it made their search
for like answers so sad. Flying with Jones because he
offered this community, this world that was kind of outside
(29:05):
the boundaries of everything else. It felt special. So in
those days, in those early days, they didn't actually meet
him or encounter him very much. And I believe that
part of the reason for that was Jones kind of
tried to step away from the limelight when all of
these controversies started to reach the press.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
Right. I wonder if him not being there made them
more attuned to him because they're like listening to his tapes.
He's not doing anything wrong. All they have is positive
tape version of him.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Yeah, I mean, talk about what a like entrancing world
to be. And you hear this guy's voice and his
laughter and his words, and he's promising all of these things.
He claims to possess these things. You know, it's quite
a fantasy you can build up in your head. About
who this person is and what they do. I mean,
meeting him, there was all those expectations when I was
(29:57):
a young person, like there was. It was very intense.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
Yeah, it's like an early YouTube guru. I feel like
we have that now. Yeah, with these parasocial relationships with
all these figures on YouTube and stuff. But we've had
quite a few guests, I feel who were initially exposed
to their cult through tapes, through just like long tapes
of the guru talking yeah wow, and developing a relationship
(30:22):
to them that way initially.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Yeah. I mean it's funny too. Most of his followers,
even the ones that did encounter him physically, many people
went their entire lives being in this group and never
physically seeing this man wow, which is kind of wild.
You dedicate your life to being in a religion, right,
or he would call a non religion religion, but a
(30:45):
religion in the sense that it was an organized religious group. Yeah,
just putting hairs here, but you know it, oftentimes in
these groups there is an obsession with what they perceive
to be accuracy that somehow, if you like, said it
this exact right way, it didn't make it a religion
or it didn't make it a cult or it didn't
make it something that was dangerous, right, You just have
(31:05):
to explain it to people, which was so painful to
write about because you never satisfy these people who want
you to say exactly what their group says about what
their group is. Many people were disappointed in me for that.
But to your point, the relationship transcended that, you know,
(31:26):
that physical relationship. It was much more about what his
message was and the way that he said it, and
the tapes were a huge part of that. I think
it's why I wanted to frame the series around these tapes,
because everybody had boxes of them the way my parents did,
you know, you know, like back in the eighties and nineties,
like when people had cassette tapes. Oh yeah, for those
(31:47):
who may not remember, they like they had like big
you know, almost like.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
CD holders, but they were were tapes.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
I didn't know that massive. I remember my parents had
a few that were like almost like palettes, you know
what I mean, And you'd have all of your tapes
in there. I mean so many tapes?
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Did this man have hundreds?
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (32:08):
What was the core message? If we had to make
one up?
Speaker 1 (32:12):
It changed over time, okay, But I think the fundamental
message was rooted in this idea of non dualism, which
you see in Buddhism and in Hinduism, the idea that
we construct an image of ourselves in the world as
individual people, separate selves. They might have said, that is
(32:35):
an illusion, and in fact we are basically like all
of us are little, you know, molecules that are part
of the whole, one organism, one organism, one consciousness, which
is Franklin. Yeah, he'd be like, I'll get there, but yes,
short tail dry, But yes, I think so. In the beginning,
(32:57):
the idea was he was teaching people how to see that,
and that enlightenment was the recognition of the fact that
you were one consciousness, that you were undifferentiated from others,
that you saw yourself as that, and therefore you no
longer suffered the mortal life and pain of being a
(33:20):
human or being any kind of sentient creature. You know.
In Buddhism they have this idea that, like, you know,
one of the four noble truths I'm making that right
is like that life is suffering, and so our suffering
comes from our ignorance about our own impermanence. So if
(33:41):
you recognize that you are a mortal being, except for
the three of us were we're we're immortal. Thank god
I signed off on that. But if you recognize that,
then you no longer suffer in life because life is
a temporary thing. Right.
Speaker 4 (34:01):
So he's just stealing from Eastern religions, which is what
so many of these people do, and kind of mash.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
It all up together and stir it in a pot.
Take a little bit of this, take a little bit
of that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
My producer on Dear Franklin Jones is an old friend
of mine, Ashley Kleek, And I was grateful to have
my producer and my editor be friends of mine because
in a way, writing that story was very difficult and
very personal. Any Obvolesce was my editor, and the two
of them would sort of have to wrangle me from
trying to like reconcile what I wanted to believe even then,
(34:36):
from what the reality of the situation was. And to
that point, trying to define the group was always very
difficult and its beliefs were always difficult because I can
start to construct this narrative about it, right like that,
it's about nondualism, you see it in these other religions.
But then like how does he play into it? And
then later he becomes this other thing and the word
(34:57):
that the words that Ashley would always use to describe it,
or word salad. She'd be like, you're in the word salid. Yeah, yes,
it's not making sense anymore, like it's this is word salid.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Right.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
At first that process was frustrating for me because I
had to redefine my own understanding of a reality that
I had, like a philosophy I had inherited from my parents,
you know. But I now can see that very clearly, So.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
That's hard work.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
It is, Yeah, yeah, it is.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
I mean, I like, this is a tactic that a lot.
I mean, I don't even know how many of them.
Speaker 4 (35:29):
Are doing it consciously or if it's just spewing it
out of their mouth, But like word salad is a
key feature. It's a key like the function of a
cult leader's doctrine so much at the time, because if
you understand it, then you don't need to go to
them to try to understand it. Like the more ambiguous
and confusing it is, the more the goalposts can move,
and the more you're able to control people, Like the
(35:50):
guy that I grew up with. His shit changes every year.
He has a totally new thing every year.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
New Year's Eve.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
If he just writes neurals, that's a resolution and.
Speaker 4 (36:00):
It's completely different, Like it'll be religious one year, and
it'll be sci fi another year, and it'll be political
another year. Like it literally completely changes. And then if
you actually read it, it is fully word salad. But
like if you're not reading it closely, it might seem like, oh,
interesting language. He must know some things, but like when
you actually start to break it down, it means nothing.
(36:21):
And there's something in your podcast a woman you interviewed, Tanya.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Who talks about how she stopped.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
Believing this is before your parents' time, right, Yeah. I
thought it was so fascinating because she talks about how
she and another woman had to translate his books into French,
which meant she had to actually look at the language
and analyze it. And she was like, this doesn't mean anything.
If you have to translate something, you have to actually
like break down what the words mean and breaking it
(36:49):
was so interesting that that was what like, yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Yeah, and I mentioned this in the series too. I
think the thing that I could not come to grips
with was this idea of not just ubiquity that he presented,
this like sort of ubiquitous consciousness, this ubiquitous awareness, but
his unique ownership of it, which is I think back
to your point about like moving the goalpost. Oftentimes in
(37:14):
these high control groups, we find people who are presenting
a version of reality that they alone have access to exactly,
and so that reality can shift according to their whims
you know, and they're whimsical and they.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Are women out of controls.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Wow, yeah it is. No one has ever referred in
my knowledge to Franklin Jones as whimsical, but I love it.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
I just want to say something before we move on
that you know, when you can speak different languages, you
use different parts of your brains, and people say like
I'm funny in this language, I'm not funny in this language,
or you know, it's very interesting to me. And there's
somebody and the Two by Twos who was like I
believed in it in English, but not.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Whoa in Italian?
Speaker 3 (38:08):
You know what I mean, Like their brain was just
like not online for it. And then there was another
person in the two by Twos that I really want
to have on who had a stroke, and he was like,
I can't believe in this anymore. I just can't access
the part of my brain that believe. Fascinating, It's very fascinating.
So this woman translating it to French, I'm assuming she
(38:29):
was also just turning on a different side of her
brain that actually had critical thinking built into it, and
was like, what the fuck is this shit?
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Yeah, I mean it is quite remarkable, like the way
that we can sort of be able to disentangle.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Yeah, we should all have to learn a new language
to process are.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Amazing, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah, I love that.
Speaker 4 (38:51):
I was going to say, before joining a new religion,
you have to learn it in another language, yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Of your choice. Yeah, yeah like that.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:02):
Anyway, we don't have team talking about words, but I
do find the words. I find it very interesting what
words bring out for us emotionally and like by default
maybe in our native language versus like how we would
process it.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
So fascinating.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Well, ye oh, I mean to that point, Like I
was going to mention earlier that like he had this
doctrine that he ard this tape. One of those tapes
was called the Baptism of Immortal Happiness.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Love that title I mean.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
It's such a great title. It really does feel like
it gets you there, you know. But I remember listening
to it when I was young, and I couldn't get
past the idea that some of the things he said
in there felt like I would never know. I almost
like intuited before I could really understand or contemplate if
there was any sort of manipulation related to a high
(39:47):
control group. In that moment, I recognized, I think, or
what I was tussling with was this idea of moving
the goalpost, which was everything about the way that he
said it. He said I know it, and when he
meant it, he meant like the great truth of reality,
I know it and you do not, absolutely, and all
(40:08):
miracles are potent in my heart. So I've come here
to give you everything. And he says it in this
very kind of whimsical poetic way that he could do,
like it almost felt like he was a Thespian, you know.
He had this kind of like Shakespearean way of talking sometimes,
and I remember hearing that and being like, what how
(40:28):
does he give it to me? And then I know it?
But then I don't know it because he knows it,
like my brain couldn't put those things together, Like I
forget if it was like the name of one of
his talks or like something that he said, but this
idea that like you can't get there from here, and
like I am the way to myself. Yeah, And I
was like, oh, okay, so let me get this straight.
(40:50):
So to get to you, you have to give it
to me. But I can't be you because you're over
here and I don't get it. But once I get it,
I'm going to be you. But I'm not you, like I.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Ah, what a my fuck?
Speaker 3 (41:01):
Yeah, which brings us, of course to orgies.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Of course, naturally that's the next step.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
You know, Like when when there is all this word salid,
when there is all this complicated stuff, there's usually a
man having sex with a lot of women or at
least taking their money.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
But usually there are sex.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
Yeah, let's dive into that. So can you tell us
a bit about the orgies.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Well, there definitely was very little documentation about what happened
inside of these private parties that Jones would have for decades,
But what was widely understood from anecdotal reporting from people
who were behind closed doors in these rooms is that
(41:47):
there were some pretty wild drug fueled parties that would
be referred to as considerations. It wasn't exclusive to every
event where a consideration was taking place or a gathering,
but the idea was that a select group of followers
were privately partying with Jones, sometimes deep into the night
(42:12):
and for days on end, and there was all kinds
of sexual experimentation that happened during that time, and we
talk about it in the series. Numerous people have pointed to,
including on the record in you know, civil complaints, the
idea that Jones was manipulating those scenarios to like pair
(42:35):
other people up with each other who weren't together, like
people who were married having to have sex with other people,
all kinds of sort of you know, out of pocket.
I don't even know how to describe it, but you know,
like organizing or you know, or puppeteering orchestrating these events.
And the idea was somehow that this was going to
(42:58):
break them out of their own attachments because a big
part of what we were raised in the group to
believe through Jones was that like the ego, something we
just think of as our sense of identity, as a
literal physical being that I can see in touch and
feel is a problem. That it is the problem, that
(43:22):
the perception that you have one is a problem, and
everything you do to preserve that ego is a problem.
They would call it like a contraction, that the ego
was this literal physical contraction, which is such a clever
way of disambiguating nuance from uncomfortable situations.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
So you can say from your gut.
Speaker 4 (43:44):
It's like, this is good for you to challenge anything
I tell you to do that makes you uncomfortable is
actually good for you because like you less attached your ego.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
And meanwhile, there's like what's her name, a beautiful playboy
model is part of this, you know, And yeah, he's
like cut to the chain.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
Right.
Speaker 3 (44:01):
To get through to all of y'all's egos, I need
to have sex with a lot of hot women.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
Yes, And he had multiple wives at one point or
what he would you refer to as kind of like
they would they would take up issue with the idea
that I would refer to them as wives because they
had other names that weren't wives, that were spiritual in
some way. But ultimately he had multiple sexual multiple sexual
sexual partners. Yeah, over over many many years, and some
(44:30):
of them were plucked out of relationships with other people.
Speaker 4 (44:35):
I know that the geographically moves around a little bit,
but just a sort of center where we are in space,
Like was this on a compound at this time?
Speaker 2 (44:43):
And where was that?
Speaker 1 (44:44):
Multiple compounds? Okay, so I grew up in the San
Francisco Bay area. They had little I don't even want
to call it a facility. It was like an office
space in an industrial part of North.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Marin, Okay.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
I was saying, the Marine Ashram or sanga, whatever you
want to call it. And then they had a compound
in northern California that was like a wellness center that
had sort of gone into disrepair that they purchased, and
that was kind of the main place where people were
located land.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
It's in Lake County, so like a dorm kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
We usually see that these groups try to split up
families a little bit was that like kids over here,
adults over here.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
Was that happening?
Speaker 1 (45:31):
A lot of that was part of the group. So
like you know, people who were living in these comp
like there was one Lake County, there was one in Hawaii.
He purchased an island in Fiji.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
I do that all the time.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
Never Yeah, it's really easy. Apparently it's just swapped them
out sweaters. But yeah, so he owned up quite a
bit of property, and of these places people lived permanently
and in sort of collective environments, but even quote unquote householders.
People who lived in houses lived in oftentimes in shared
(46:13):
situations where they were with other members of the group.
And they had experimented with starting schools that didn't work
out very well for reasons that are unsurprising based on.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
The trajectory of the group.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
I did. I did well for a while. I went
to school until my freshman year of high school. My
parents were kind of on the periphery really until around then.
We were in the group, but not completely in it.
And then when I was in my freshman year of
high school, they became Franklin Jones's personal acupuncturist. And when
(46:52):
you were providing a service for Franklin Jones, you were
given very special in comparison to other members of the
group because you had access to.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
Him touching God's body.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
Yes exactly, you're sticking needles in him. Yeah, So at
that point, whenever he needed them, they get a call
and they would want to go up there, and so
we increasingly had this pressure in our life to be there.
You know, we were increasingly asked to be closer to
where Jones was, and he was living on this compound
(47:27):
in northern California at the time, and so there was
quite a bit of strife between myself and my dad
in particular during those years, because he wanted to be
with this guru. He wanted to be closer to him,
and I wanted to play with my friends and go
to high school, go to high school and play basketball.
Speaker 2 (47:47):
Were you in LA before that?
Speaker 1 (47:49):
No, we were in the Bay Area.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
Oh you were in the Bay Area.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
Yeah, yeah, so but farther north. They wanted to kind
of be on the compound, be near him, be at
his call and all that. And at one point there
was speculation about him going back to Fiji and maybe
my parents would go with him. And I remember them
coming into my room one day and being like, do
you want to move to Fiji? And I was like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
Of course.
Speaker 1 (48:11):
But things did start to come to a head as
I got older, because I wanted to be with my friends.
I wanted to have some normalcy in my life that
I just never seemed to be able to get. I
always felt like I was on the periphery of every
space that I was in because of the way that
I was raised. And then, yeah, my dad at one
point sort of said to me, you're either going to
(48:33):
join the group or find another place to live.
Speaker 4 (48:36):
Rewinding a little bit, like, so you were not living
on like a compound with the group when you were
a kid prior to that era, not.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
Then, Okay, Yeah, in the early days, we were part
of the group, and we would like go to the
services that they would provide on Sunday, which was you know,
in that industrial office space with like a meditation hall
and a big picture of Jones on like the far
end of it, and everybody would worship the picture and
sing songs had it.
Speaker 4 (49:05):
Yeah, I've gone to some churches before that like claimed
to be non denominational, but then there'd be like a
cardboard cut out of the leader and I'm like, this
isn't a good sign you guys, like that's a red flag.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
Yeah. Funny you mentioned that too, because speaking of cardboard cutouts.
When I was a kid living in San Francisco, when
I was up till about fifth grade, we lived in
San Francisco, we didn't really have a lot of visitors,
and I don't think I really appreciated why that was
until I got older and I remember, you know, I
can still picture it, like walking into the room. You'd
(49:38):
open the door to our garden apartment in cow Hollow,
like sort of near the ocean on the north side
of San Francisco, and you know, you'd open the door
and there'd be a couch and on the couch was
a life sized cardboard cutout of Jones on the couch
sitting looking back at it. Cardboard sitting, that's crazy, Yeah,
(50:00):
And you sort of meditate on that picture as though
he were sitting in front of you.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (50:06):
You know there's a cardboard caught out of me that
I was given to me as a gift one time.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
If we just kick it in the middle, it could
be sitting and then you could both worship it, and
then great, I see where this is going.
Speaker 3 (50:19):
I mean, I can relate to what it must have
felt like as Kimala to go to school with quote
unquote normal children while you're living in a completely different
planet than them.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
Can you say a little bit about what that felt like?
Speaker 1 (50:36):
Yeah, I mean it just I think it took me
a very long time to feel at home in the world,
the world and literally in the group, as is not
uncommon with other groups, Like there were people who were
followers of the group, who were in the community, and
then there was everybody outside of the group, which was
the world, which becomes very problematic when you're trying to
(50:59):
navigate a normal life to have to reconcile with twenty
years of living in this environment where the world was
something outside of your known safe experience, and so there
was a lot of masking that was happening there as
a young person going to public school, like where I
wouldn't talk about what happened inside of my home. I
(51:21):
didn't volunteer that information to my friends. I went to
their house, and nobody thought much of it that they
didn't come to mind, you know, And so I think
I always felt like I was on the outskirts, and
making Dear Franklin Jones was a step in the direction
of asserting for myself what I wanted for the remainder
(51:46):
of my life, which was probably most of my life, hopefully,
you know, because I made the show when I was thirty.
But I just felt that I did not want to
live the rest of my life with the sense that
my story was not for better or for worse, weirder,
just like everybody else, something that existed within our cultural
(52:09):
narratives about life in America. So it was like really
important to me to feel like I could tell that
story in a way that was relatable to people who
didn't grow up in it, and they could understand that
the things I was going through were very extreme versions
of things that they may have experienced themselves as young people.
(52:31):
Because it really hurt, honestly, it hurt to live in
a world where I felt like my story was not
only a curiosity but just something that couldn't be understood.
Speaker 2 (52:41):
Right.
Speaker 3 (52:41):
It takes teenager dumb and turns the volume up, right, Like,
I've never really thought of it like that, but that's
essentially what it does. Because you are already are going
to feel different and like a loser and whatever.
Speaker 1 (52:53):
But then you know, also try to explain that to
your buddies.
Speaker 2 (52:57):
Yeah, you know, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (53:00):
For me, my my belief system was a refuge from
teenagerdom because I was like, oh, yeah, I have no friends. Well,
I'm chosen by God to bring about the end of days,
So fuck all of you who don't.
Speaker 3 (53:12):
Want to be my friend. That brings up something you
having no friends. Lola has something in common with Franklin Actually,
oh very much. So they're both veloquests.
Speaker 4 (53:22):
Oh yeah, and I also performed at the Ventriloquist Convention
the same year that Paul Winchell performed.
Speaker 3 (53:30):
I didn't know you were gonna Paul Winchell.
Speaker 2 (53:34):
Was brought up on the podcast The Share Paul Winchell,
So wow, wow, so you know who knew? Who knew?
Speaker 3 (53:43):
But yeah, I guess talking about no friends, I was like, oh, yeah,
and that's why Lola has no friends had had.
Speaker 2 (53:50):
I also had no friends, but it was different circumstances.
I was dressed crazy.
Speaker 1 (53:55):
You know. Since doing Dear Franklin Jones and continuing to
do like sort of long form documentary style storytelling and journalism,
obviously cults have come up again and again, and I
do feel like there's this quiet community of us, those
of us who grew up in high control groups, cults,
(54:17):
whatever you want to call them. Where cult kids, right,
Like the sense that your your life is so distinctly
different than the experience of other people as to be unbridgable.
And that's a very difficult feeling to have. To reconcile
with on top of trying to make sense of whatever
(54:39):
the fuck was going on when you were in that
group in the first place. And I remember having this
conversation with somebody who was in one of these sort
of church cult groups in the Pacific Northwest, and we
met and I interviewed him for a series that I'm
working on, and he at the end of us doing
that series, or that the end of us doing the interview,
(55:02):
we both just had a moment where we kind of
broke the fourth wall. We were no longer interview e
and interviewer, and we were two people who were cult kids.
And I think something I shared with this man that
I feel like I've shared with a lot of people
who have gone through being raised in a group like
(55:23):
this is just having to carry the burden of explaining
yourself to the world because your identity is so inextricable
from the ideology that was imposed upon you that you inherited,
that you didn't go on a spiritual vision quest to
do like I wish I could have been like my
dad and done some ascid and seen the other side,
(55:44):
but I wasn't. I was born to two parents who
were convinced that the world was a very particular way
and that there was a man behind the curtain who
was all of us, and that we needed to worship
him and to reconcile that with a world that saw
(56:05):
this person oftentimes as dangerous as a pariah, whatever you
want to call it. Like, that's a very that's a
very tough thing to have to live with, and I
just I just hope that my story, in other people's
stories of growing up in these groups, helps to make
people feel a little bit less alone about those of
(56:27):
us who did.
Speaker 2 (56:27):
Go through that, you know, totally, totally. I mean there
are so many of us.
Speaker 4 (56:31):
Yeah, It's like I would never have thought when we
first started the podcast, I was like, oh, well, fine,
guess it's no problem. But like the amount of people
who have had some kind of manipulative or charismatic person
like leading their childhood or high control group or a
fucked up religion, Like there's so many of us out there,
(56:52):
which you wouldn't think that because it feels like such
this fringe thing, but like, how many people do we
know at this point? Like it's and now random at
parties people will be like, oh yeah, I mean too,
you know like we're coming out of the woodwork.
Speaker 1 (57:05):
Yeah right, exactly.
Speaker 2 (57:09):
All right.
Speaker 4 (57:09):
So we're going to leave part one with Jonathan there
for now, come back next week for part two, and Megan,
it's time for the question, the question being would you
join this cult?
Speaker 2 (57:23):
Yes? Yeah, that's what mark. Can I say? Psychedelics?
Speaker 4 (57:30):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (57:31):
Community? I'm yeah, I'm susceptible to this one. I could
see this for you.
Speaker 4 (57:37):
His parents being on this like journey, the spirituality journey,
and they're like, they're meet cute.
Speaker 2 (57:43):
Yeah, it's all calling my name.
Speaker 3 (57:45):
So as always, I'm just gonna lock myself in my room,
not talk to anyone, and stay out of cults.
Speaker 4 (57:53):
I think that sounds like a great idea. Don't speak
to anyone.
Speaker 3 (57:58):
I won't theismotic I missed that. Next week's episode we
get even deeper. It's really great. We can't wait to
see you come back for it. Rate us five stars
if you're feeling the New year's resolution to give some
good energy and as always, remember to follow your gut,
watch out for red flags.
Speaker 2 (58:19):
And never ever trust me. Bye bye. This has been
an exactly right production hosted by.
Speaker 3 (58:28):
Me Lola Blanc and me Megan Elizabeth Our Senior producer
is ge Holly.
Speaker 2 (58:33):
This episode was mixed by John Bradley.
Speaker 3 (58:35):
Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain, and our guest booker
is Patrick Kottner.
Speaker 2 (58:40):
Our theme song was composed by Holly amber Church.
Speaker 3 (58:42):
Trust Me as executive produced by Karen Kilgareth Georgia Hardstark
and Daniell Kramer.
Speaker 4 (58:48):
You can find us on Instagram at trust Me podcast
or on TikTok at trust Me Cult Podcast.
Speaker 3 (58:53):
Got your own story about cults, extreme belief, our manipulation.
Shoot us an email at trust mepod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 4 (59:00):
Trust me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts,
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