From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of I Heart Grading. Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called me Ben. We are joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission controlled decond. Most importantly, you are you. You are here and that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Quick housekeeping note, folks, friends, family, phre enemies, fellow conspiracy realists. This is part two in a continuing series on colts you may have not heard of yet. And before we get to these cults which we're we're excited to explore with you, we want you to know that we may be leaving your earphones and coming to your physical presence. That's right. Longtime listeners who've heard the rumors were confirming them. We have a book. It is named Stuff they don't want you to know, and our corporate overlords are putting us on the road. Yes, we're gonna be hanging out in Atlanta on October twelve, I believe, or somewhere right around there. You'll you'll you'll see it when you check them out because you you're gonna need to look this stuff up. Then we're gonna head over to Washington, d C. And we're gonna be in Massachusetts as as well, So definitely come out and see us if you can, Like really, we need you there, so please come and see us. Head on over to stuff You should read books dot com to learn all the details and the book in question that will be out on the road. Promoting also has an accompanying audio book that will release on the same exact day as said book that Ben mentioned stuff they don't want you to know, uh, And it's voiced by the three of us, So we all had a good time doing that. And um, how by the book and get the audiobook two different experiences listening and reading, two very different sensory uh situations. So why am I not just cover all your bases. Yeah, it comes out October eleventh, so don't wait till then. By the way, you can order it right now wherever you want, it doesn't matter, just search for the book and preorder it now. Do it. It makes a great gift for your fellow conspiracy realist. And if you're listening and you don't care for someone, then it makes a great gift for your enemies too. It's really a win win situation, and we're being honest when we say that. But the thing is a lot of cultic organizations are not being completely honest with their and here with their followers, with the people that they have taken in. One thing that I think we should spend some time on at the top of part two, here is the concept of focus and where we found these cultic organizations and why we are highlighting them at least for this discourse. Of course, folks, uh, if you or someone you know has been taken in by a cultic organization, we're going to mention some resources at the end of the show that you can use to help you or your loved ones escape this sort of tyrannical, insidious control. But some folks had reached out to me via social media and said, hey, why are you guys focusing on cults in recent history. It's a good question. It's true that we're focusing on cultic organizations in these our modern days, and there are some compelling reasons for this. Let's get into it. Here are the facts for anyone who hasn't heard episode one. I think we need a quick recap of the C word problem. Riddle me this, Matt Noel. Why do a lot of organizations called cults not like to be called cults? I mean, it's become something of a not something very much a loaded word. It tends to be used by people who are trying to neg a thing. Um one person's religion another person's cult. This is the expression meaning religion is what people who are within that circle would refer to it, or perhaps a spiritual movement something like that. But then on the outside someone look again and said, oh, that takes a lot of boxes under the heading of the C word, and we're going to call it that. It is two religions, the same that I think the term conspiracy theory is to some historical research or you know, some of the connecting of dots that we do on this show. And then another a lot of people do, uh, sometimes less accurately. So, yeah, it is that. It's that thought terminating cliche in a lot of way has been Yeah, I agreed. Uh, And let us not forget that many of society's dominant religions today were in their early days considered to be what experts would call cults in the modern era. We didn't really get to this in the first episode. Part of the problem is the connotation of the phrase cult in in recent decades. By recent, I mean since the eighteen hundreds or so, cult had a derogatory connotation, like you were saying. The word itself dates back to the Latin term cult is, which just means quote, care, labor, cultivation, culture, worship, reverence. And interestingly enough, this phrase cult is is kind of vin diagram linguistic DNA, with the past participle of word colaire, meaning to till, like till the soil if you're a farmer. Weirdly enough, colony descends from that same thing. So long story short sixteen hundreds, the term cult kind of indicates worship or homage of some sort, and you can see echoes of this when you hear things like the cult of Delta Airlines or the cult of Kanye or Beyonce or what's a weird thing that people have a cult about Star Wars Star Trek. Maybe certain musicians, Um, yes, I really thinking about musicians like the Swifties sports teams. That's the beehive. Yeah, there we go. Well, well, and that's the thing too, because it's like a decentralized kind of cult where it's not like Taylor Swift is like commanding her hordes of well is she though? I mean, that's that's let's I hear you, man, I really truly do Like is there coded language? Is there like dog whistle e type things? Maybe, but it's not like this is a you know, figure standing on the on the podium, you know, preaching to to their converts, saying to those who oppose me. But the these followers, you know, we'll take it upon themselves to do that stuff like uh docs journalists that write bad reviews about Taylor Swift records. So you know, is it a cult if someone is an actively pursuing cult? Leadership status is a question too, you know. I I don't know. It's very uh, it's it's curious distinction when we talk about these musical kind of figures. Also celebrities should copy worshiped. It is one of the great mistakes of humans in this era. In the sixteen seventies, this definition narrows to quote a particular form or system of worship, and then the term falls out of popularity for a while. People aren't really talking about it. You know, a lot of stuff happened with religions of the day, and the sixteen hundreds, of the eighteen hundreds, they were sorting all kinds of stuff out. But in the mid eighteen hundreds, by at least eighteen nine, history proves the word cult had sort of a created the connotation of devoted attention to a particular person or thing and quote and less. You know, if you consider yourself as celebrity and or you're in love, you have a para social relationship with one, and you think I am being unfair, then let me note that, Uh, back in the day before the current information regime that exists now, many cities, particularly in ancient Rome and ancient Greece, Uh, they had their own sort of mascots. They had their own demi gods, which were sort of their celebrities. So humanity, being alarmingly uncreative in its creativity, has just replaced this thing, often to the detriment of those actual people who are treated as demi gods. And would society be better if people didn't worship each other that way? Yeah, it's objective and it's kind of stupid. I yield my time, please continue. You know, I have a question for both of you, which is why we're on the subject, and then it will move into you know, the today's specifics. But you know a lot of pop stars they're they're they're curated, and they're they're handled, and there are other people that lead to them being what they ultimately become in terms of their image, in terms of like you know that that level of of of adoration, it's not always something that the stars themselves do consciously. It's some um advisor that's telling them what to do or that's kind of like, you know, if it's a boy band kind of situation, maybe even picking out the members for maximum possible effects. Do you think someone can become like a occult leader almost by accident, like or used in that way by somebody else, like say like resputant. You know, it's sort of like this puppeteer for for the czar and things like that. I'm just wondering what your thoughts are around that. Mm hmmm. I'm trying. I'm putting it back to like the sports context now in my mind. I don't know, I'm jumbling things up here, but like I'm imagining the owner of the Philadelphia Phillies, making the Philadelphia fanatic certain things, you know, because he is now the demigod of Philadelphia. They are the yeah yeah, keep going that, No you're on. Well, that's the thing. Like even in the earlier video when I made about how to start a cult, when we defined cults by tactics. Uh, you'll notice, folks, if you watch that video freely available on YouTube, thank you. Uh. One of the things we did is have our characters there create that that that um strategy you're describing. There is a figurehead wild Wild Country did a great job of depicting this in real life. Uh. And then there is the proselytizer, right, the apostle disciple number one, who was getting in the nitty gritty, and increasingly, since cults are uh very bad at being good for people, uh, increasingly that apostle will attempt to supplant the figurehead who in many cases honestly believes what they're saying and as not trying to hurt folks. That's you know, tail as old as time. Somewhere along the way. Not for nothing, the word cult, as it's uh spoken in the modern English parliance became mainly an insult seventy percent and insult of warning, and we're glad that exists. We're focusing on more recent cultic organizations primarily because there is more objective information about them. The story, the long story, put short, is this, whether you're talking um, whether you're talking early Christian heresies which were often decided to be heresies after the fact, or whether you're talking earlier mystery legions of the Mediterranean and Malta. What you'll see is that as historians are looking at these ancient groups that would be described as cults in the modern day, they found that many of the primary sources writing about these groups, any of the contemporaneous or near contemporaneous sources, were written primarily by critics, by disillusioned former members, by other conscientious objectors. And with this in mind, an examination of early cultic activity always has to take that into consideration. Human beings back then were just as intelligent and just as fallible as human beings today, which means they come with all the bells and whistles and all the design flaws. One statistics we should reiterate from our previous episode, by the way, is that cults are not an infrequent thing nor is membership. Let's hit back on the stat we had in part one of this series. According to the International Cultic Studies Association, at least two point five million Americans have joined cultic groups in the past thirty to forty years. That's uh, that's intense. Two and a half million. I just I you have to see the list, right, what's included on that list of cultic groups just to have a full understanding of it. But that's a lot of people. Yea, more than I would have thought, especially since some of these are not like, you know, making the headlines exactly. And also, like I mean again interesting to break down this number, but do you think this this includes people that perhaps practice you know, maybe like the Satanic temple, or that they're practice you know, the occults. I know they're not the same word, but they are related. I'm wondering if there's any crossover in that number. Like what an excellent question. Yeah, because, as we discussed in part one, if we want to truly get to the heart of what a cult is, then what we really need to look at, if we're being intellectually honest, is not so much the beliefs as the tactics applied by the organization and its leadership. So, for example, there could be a commune of people who all live together there in an intentional community. What's a what's like a nice suburb, What's a nice suburb adjacent to a big towns Aurora, Illinois. Let's go with that. So there could be a group in Aurora, Illinois and they all lived together. They basically bought a neighborhood and they lived together because they are convinced that there is one earthly truth, and it is that what all society das before them, worshiped as God's were really only a specific series of mushroom. Right, Maybe it's a kind of puffball mushroom, hopefully a non poisonous species of puffball mushroom. But if they believe this, and religious freedom does technically exist in the US for now, if they believe this, then they are what some folks, especially folks who ascribed to different religions, may call a cult. But the thing is, you can look at the tactics as long as these mushroom worshippers can interact however they wish with outsiders, as long as they don't have a dictorial unquestionable, the radical leader. As long as they have freedom of speech, as long as they can read or interact with whatever media they want, they have financial freedom, they can spend their money as they wish. Then that group of mushroom worshippers doesn't necessarily function as a cult. They are just some people who are really into one very particular species of fungi. If you look at it, then if you if we flip the script and look at it in a bit of a more pessimistic frame, we'll find that many organizations that do not portray themselves in any way as religions, such as multi level marketing outfits, can and sometimes do, function as cultic entities. And you know, guys, we have received uh no shortage of harrowing personal stories from people who typically have a loved one that was roped in by m l M. And I think we were a little bit um. We didn't really delve into what a multi level marketing operation is in in part one of this. We've discussed it in previous episodes, but does anyone have a quick and dirty of an m all in anybody on an upstream or downstream here it's basically just the pyramid scheme. I mean that's what a multi level marketing organization does. You have to buy a bunch of product and then sell that product to other people, and have other people who are buying in bulk in the same way that you are sell their product in bulk, and you get a kick up from each person below you, and it goes all the way. It's the same thing all the way up to chain to the person that owns the company or at least has owning shares or whatever it's going to function in that particular MLM. It's not great in my opinion. But that's just my opinion. Wow, that's some real negative downstream energy, bro It's fully negative. So yeah, I know, that's a perfect description of an MLM and part of the reason. Part of their tactics deployed to control people are some of the ones that we have briefly outlined here. But again, you may be surprised. We were certainly surprised by the number of folks who are interacting with or um under the thumb or tentacle of these things that could rightly be described as cults, if not cultic organizations. So we're gonna pause for a word from our sponsor and then we're going to dive into several more cults. May have never heard of cheers where it gets crazy. More examples, more examples. Let's get creative. You guys like creativity. We're all creative people on this show. Yeah, like you know, making those snowflake things that you cut out with the paper, only these these are all shipped like swastikas. And the creativity movements. Yeah, yeah, it's a beautiful descriptional uh, the creativity movement is. But it's nice, it sounds Yeah, yeah, I know, it's like no judgment, just paint. The Creativity movement is, by its own account, a religion. But get this, fellow conspiracy realist, it is a self described atheist religion. A bit of a paradox. No, I was gonna ask that, Yeah, you mentioned that last episode. What what's don't you have to have? Is that doesn't there need to be some deity at the at the root of a religion? Or is it saysn't doesn't something else? At that point, I'm confused. It's maybe you just believe in yourself and you believe in your own creativity. Is that is that what this is? Perhaps the purity of Zamaster race ye closer to the latter. There of the suggestions, the ideas you start a religion and uh, white people, however defined right, are going to unite under the aggrieve it that there what whiteness is brightness or like somehow divinely inspired? This was this pretty recent was created in nineteen seventy three by a guy named Ben Classon. Ben Classen was regrettably one of the very few bad bends and I apologize to everyone I don't like him. Uh he uh. He published as self published a book called Nature's Internal Religion in three and this is sort of the manifesto for this thing. Uh. He originally called this outfit the World Church of the Creator h w C O t C. You'll see it abbreviated, as it was based on the previous work, which was also plagiarized of a failed artist uh known today as aid Al Hitler, also known as you know, a genocidal maniac and all around pill responsible for the Holocaust. Clausen pre baked his prostalization by going around and pitching his idea of a paradoxical atheist religion to existing neo Nazi groups. The best way to say it is that the what creativity movement calls its religion hinges on this argument of racial supremacy. You'll see lines in the book that say things like white people again somewhat nebulous, Lee defined our nature's highest creation. That's a quote, and weirdly enough, this is super confusing to me. Weirdly enough quote the creators of all worthwhile culture and civilization, which even in seventy three was for pretty easy to disprove objectively at your local library. Yeah, just to give you like a taste of some of the just really quick hits. This guy's whole vibe. Um, if you go to there's a page on them on the Southern Poverty Law Center dot org, and they pull some quotes. Uh, here's the line. We considered Hitler's Nazi Germany between nineteen thirty three and thirty nine as the finest and most efficient society the white race has ever produced. Uh y, no, no, no question about is intent there? And then he goes on to talk about how to bring about such a society. Uh, there are basically two ways. One is persuasion and reason. The other is terrorism. When persuasion and reason fail, the only recourse is violence, legal or illegal. Yeah, not for nothing, did the Anti Defamation League in Southern Poverty Law Center as well as uh rational Wiki, which is a good source uh not not for nothing have they spent some time singling out this group. They're they're like any other cultic organization. There's a lot of hypocrisy, there's a lot of what it or well call it double think. There's a lot of double think here, especially especially when they talk in terms of math, knowing uh or perhaps not knowing that the numerals they use, the symbols they used to indicate math are in fact Arabic creations. So given that race, as we understand it, is a social construct, this group didn't do the best job, doesn't do the best job of delineating what it is exactly that they consider quote unquote white. It's definitely not Jews. They're very like big on that. Uh, they're very you know, they're primarily anti Semits uh, and that's one of the big boogeymen of their ideology. But like other cultic organizations, they depend on the same old tactics you needed us versus them mentality, which fascism and supremacism are always uh always kind of starting from that point, but then you need an unquestionable leader and clawson. It was kind of like a door to door salesman of this movement to pre existing Nazi groups. But he kind of became a leader, became the leader, and then he took his own life in. Yeah, and then this other dude stepped in, guy named matt Bad, Matt Whole, Matthew Hale. Yeah, yeah, in this story are great, uh, or we just haven't identified them yet. Matthew Hale took the reins. He renamed the whole thing. He called it New Church. Pretty awesome, New Church the Creator. Coke. Yeah, yeah, it's like new car smell. I was, I was joking about New Church of the Creator. Uh, pretty pretty interesting, you know, similar to what we've seen happen in several organizations over the years, where there's just a new logo slapped on the front. Now all the other stuff we're all gonna forget about, right right, We're all gonna forget about it, um, forget about nothing. It's it's odd. It does seem like this is almost more philosophical organized crime or or organized crime philosophy. I don't know how to put this in the correct way, Ben and all, but it feels like crime but dressed up as a religion or you know, kind of forward facing front. Well, there's another question on the distinction, but the cult question, like what differentiates a hate group from a cult? They're aligning behind a charismatic leader a lot of the time, Like if you've seen the movie Mayor in History X, like the group that the the the all the you know, the neo Nazis in that movie here and I'll gather around. I think it's like Stacy Keach plays the kind of big bad who's who's the head of this group? Or like in that movie Green Room, um uh, Patrick Stewart plays that What what different ships that from occult? Or is is it really just kind of like a potato potato kind of thing? Well, students of history will tell you it is the benefit of retrospect and to them, I I I see what you're saying. Also, there is quite a muddy ven diagram look the creativity movement to your point, Matt, it is more like a supremacist gang or organized crime with a lazy window dressing of religion. You know what I mean. It's it's like think of a smoothie of pantheism, which is Pantheism is worship many gods, whichever God's want. But this smoothie uses racism as a base juice, so anything anything there starts from that foundation. They don't acknowledge the supernatural. They shoe Christianity, not because of the supernatural claims of that religion but uh oh, and not because of its practical tenets, the ones Jefferson agreed with when he rewrote the Bible. Uh. They don't disagree with be cool, help people, try to make the world better. They disagree with Christianity because of its Jewish roots. And if you are a member of the Creativity Movement, you're listening now. Yes, all sources agree Jesus Christ was a Jewish dude. Like many other cultic organizations they create, the Creativity Movement has like a baked in expiration date, a neat little TikTok TikTok tick talk act now right, Their great apocalypse is a racial holy war their phrase. Like certain Nazi propagandists before them, they sought to supplant existing like they're talking primarily at this point of their inception. They're talking primarily to established neo Nazis, who often have some version of um supremacist Christianity, right, And so what they're attempting to do, like the Nazis of old, is to supplant that with some other, some other system of holidays or holy days as they were called once upon a time. And you can look at the list, but like any other set of holidays, they seem super specific, super centered in the belief. But you know, why worry about contradictions if you're already hepting the idea of an atheistic religion. Like other cults, they also practice terminology and jargon. The short form for racial holy war is ra ho wa capital R capital H capital W. Yeah. I didn't know that word. I thought it was maybe some maybe German word or something, or the reference to something that I was not familiar with. But so is it like a is this some kind of shorthand? Um? Like like like what's the word like a portmanteau? Or do we do we know what it actually means? There's a kind of made up it's just their own lord. Yeah. Yeah, again it's ra ho wah capital R capital H capital W short for racial holy war shorthand for this there is uh. They also have commandments. Uh. They have sixteen commandments. I don't know how much air we want to give this. They're primarily what you would expect from a supremacist group. I want to be oddest folks. I went to a couple of different sources and I pulled one from believe this is UH source watch maybe or rational Wiki. So there's some snarky stuff here, but it's the important part to remember is it's not quite the same as the fourteen words, which is a shorthand reference to the supremacist ideology. A lot of white nationalist or neo Nazi groups. They also do the thing that colts do, wherein they constrain the activities of love and reproduction. Surprise, surprise, if you remember the creativity movement, your romantic partner has to be someone with whom you can reproduce. They have to fit uh the definition Classon's definition probably what passes as white. Uh. And if you are a woman, you have certain extra duties. They're not extra credit. There's more stuff you have to do. You can read this aspect of their lore and uh in a work called quote Declaration of the Woman's Frontier, which is you know, it's about oppressing women. Also, they are against homosexuality. They are against uh, interracial relationships. Surprise, surprise. I don't think they want people reading certain books. And oddly enough, that's how I'm creative. This one is oddly enough. It takes a lot of its ideology, perhaps unknowingly, from other movements, like the five per centers. The five percenters are in Islam will remember UH, they're considered a heretical offshoot and that beliefs iss M argues that all people that belief system considers white are mud people, the result of an experiment by a mad scientist many many millennia ago. Uh. And the Creativity Movement takes the same phrase literally verbatim. They take the same phrase mud people. At what you can you know? You can tell that a lot of these organizations don't spend a lot of time reading before they say stuff. Anyway, we might get in trouble for this one because, unlike many cultic groups, this entity, the Creativity Movement, which its adherents call themselves creators, it encourages violent acts of terrorism and a lot of those folks have been convicted of tons of offenses in US courts. All on setting this up, there's a plot twist at the end of this one. And you know, UM, as a result of of these UH organized acts of terrorism and and violence, you know that that this group is perpetrated. Multiple high ranking members of this organization UM have been convicted, UM of of various UH offenses in the United States courts, and and you know, in their defense, not me defending them, them, in defending themselves, UH might use that what about is m that we see so much you know, in the press and then rhetoric these days where it's like, well, what about all these other organized groups that do these same kinds of things? You know, Um, they would point to perhaps Muslim groups or even Christian organizations or Jewish organizations that have you know, to some degree or another acted extra legally. UM. It's it's a pretty pretty shallow and and thin defense, especially when you're talking when you're comparing you know, maybe like conscientious objection or something like that to you know, murder. And then of course, UH, we talked about the bad ones, the bad bends and matts. Well, Matthew Hale, the protege of the originator of this creativity movement, He is currently in jail because he decided that he was going to put a hit out, or at least he was convicted of putting a hit out on a federal judge, which is a bad move. That was a a oh four when he was convicted, and he's still hanging out in prison. I believe you get convicted of murderer, and you can get convicted of murder indirectly or is a conspiracy to commit murder if you're not the one who pulls the trigger using someone else as your agent. Yeah, you can definitely get convicted for that. And he did get convicted for trying to get a federal judge rubbed out uh in retaliation for a another legal action convicting another Creativity Movement member of a crime. The organization now is the best and remnant of its glory days. The adherents now overwhelmingly are primarily primarily dudes in prison in one incarceration system or another. And again, it's very not difficult to go to prison in the United States, which still has the highest incarceration rate in the world, depending on how you measure it. But I have a plot twist for you guys. Oh my gosh, I wanted to hear your action on air. Matthew hale Ak bad matt U went into court for a lawsuit in a case in twenty fifteen, the court found. The case is called Hail versus Federal Bureau of Prisons. The court found that the Creativity movement may qualify as religion under the First Amendment of the U. S Constitution, may be practiced in prison, and as a religion atheistic though it be, it may qualify for tax exemption. Wow, how crazy. That's insane. I mean, you know we know that that that scientology had to go through a whole lot to get that status and fights for it. Tooth and nail operations, snow white. It's such a yeah, well, yeah, exactly. And you know you could argue many do argue that they achieved this result nefariously. Um, but that isn't that that's the ultimate kicker, right if you get if you get in tax exempt status, you're not a cult baby, the government says. So cult still get tax exempt status so that you can be I mean this this term, I mean you getting caught up in this. But the cult was almost like a trash religion. It's like a fledgling religion that doesn't have enough support or juice to to to to properly build people out of their money too. No, no, I it's not that I disagree with you. I just it the way it hit was was hard. That was it. Um. Further, by the way, creativity is actually recognized as a tax exempt religion per a federal court decision in Wisconsin. Uh, this this stuff happens. You know what I mean. If you are listening and you ever thought maybe I should not pay Uncle Sam as much. Uh, these monsters got away with it. They made it a religion and they're a gang. Just to walk back slightly, I'm not saying things like tithing is be ripping you off. I'm not saying if you're a tithing member of your church that you're being sucker. That is not what I'm saying. I'm just saying the organizations they go to great lengths to get these types of status is are not always doing it with you know, you're a particular well being at heart. That's all. That's all I'm saying. No, I think it's a good point. And folks, from the magic of Editing, with the help of our own Mission Control, we talked backstage and we realize that there is much more to the story. There are actually cults we're not going to get to today. Several we're very excited to explore with you, but time, the only true currency of our age, continues to TikTok, TikTok, TikTok. So we're gonna take a break for a word from our sponsors and will return with one more deep dive and then maybe we give some honorable mentions or dishonorable mentions the cults we'd like to explore in the future. What do you think, guys? Does that sound on the level? It sounds like a plan to me, m and we have returned two. Some would say the land of angels. This is something we teased in part one of this series. Your call um, Matt Noell. We were very careful about our language regarding allegations versus convictions in our previous discussions, right we we were doing our best to be clear about when someone had been accused of a crime versus convicted of a crime. And we mentioned that we found one recent cult where someone was squarely convicted in a court of law. They actually did this stuff. And that's where angels landing comes in. Yeah, out in talk endsis there was an individual named Daniel I guess we can say full named Daniel perez Um, and he started a thing called angels Landing, the angels Landing Commune. And this is you know, it's it's one of those places where it's fairly small. I think it was well fairly small, relatively small, about twenty acres of land that was out there in Wichita. And you know, not everybody even really knew what it was. But if you live near the area, you probably noticed what was going on. Maybe you saw some kind of signs, maybe you heard some whispers, but everybody just kind of thought, oh, well, they must be you know, it must be a farm. They must be doing something out there there. They're clearly they're not needing of anything right now. It doesn't seem like they're out in the town doing work or anything like that. They seem to be fine. Well, it wasn't your run of the mill twenty acre plot of land that may be is growing something or creating you know, crafts or something on it to make a living for the people who lived there. They were doing something else. Yeah, So it turns out farming was not their primary means of income. Um. The real one that was actually paying the bills was it was murder. It was murder. An FBI investigation showed uncovered UM evidence pointing to the group UM having moved from state to state UH trying to bring along with the members that they had coerced UM into buying life insurance policies UH and then collecting the money. When at least six UH purported accidental deaths occurred across seven years, UM Perez was becoming essentially a organized kind of serial killer UM. And there's more. It goes, It goes further than that. That's not all, as Billy Mays was wont to say, there is much more. You may not have recognized the name Daniel Perez if you met this character in the wild. He also went by Leu Castro, several other monikers. He convinced his followers that he had magical powers, and this is stuff they believed. He persuaded them that he was actually an angel, as our pal Lauren Vogelbaum would say, he made them think he was a hashtag actual facts, angel, divine sent from God, hundreds and hundreds of years old, and the only way that he was able to exist on this or disappointing mortal plane was if he had continuous sexual activity with miners. If he sexually abused children, he would stay on the plane and reveal more of his wisdom. If he did not, he would die. This example shows us a cultic organization that honestly looks like it was purpose fleet designed to aid and a bet. This Perez Guy's proclivities and his crimes. His victims ranged in age from eight to sixteen years old. Just before he was caught and convicted and thankfully sent to prison, he knew the heat was getting autumn in Wichita, and so he relocated to Columbia, Tennessee. In April of two thousand and nine. That's how recent this is. He was found living in a two story home just outside city limits with his then fiance, her child, and another teenager. The story gained national recognition. Those of us interested in true crime in the audience today may be familiar with documentary programs like Deadly Colts. You may have seen a special on Dateline. The investigations revealed that this creature traveled through Texas, South Dakota and Kansas for more than two decades, always praying on children. And I want to shout out the Columbia Daily Herald, which gives a graphic description of of how he worked, how this thing worked. There's an excerpt here, I think we just read it in full. Yeah, from the Columbia Daily Herald. Quote. Whenever he was running low on money, Perez would foresee the accidental death of one of the commune members to fund his insatiable thirst for violence and control. Prosecutors and investigators found Perez that ties to six accidental deaths in which insurance companies paid out four point two million dollars to other Commune members whom Perez controlled. Yeah, so, so imagine this guy is not like Wilhelm Reich. He is not someone in love with his own magic. He is a con man and a predator, and he is and he is he is knowingly misleading cognitively vulnerable people, and he's hurting their children. And anytime he's running low on funds, he says, I had a vision something bad is going to happen to so and so, who just happens to have a lucrative life insurance policy. Yeah, man, I'm always suspective profits that don't foresee doomsday visions, you know what I mean? Like, I don't want to be associated with that give me give me a positive profit. You know, you can foresee like winning the lottery. Good. I don't want to hang out of the guy that's always predicting people die and then they die in his group. Yeah, we've got a list of the six people that were killed. I guess. Yeah, we'll just say that this is This is another excerpt from the Columbia Daily Herald quote. When Perez was finally apprehended, he was only charged with one of the murders with Hughes murders one of the people who lived there, but five other commune members with hefty life insurance policies also died died while living on the commune. Three victims were killed in a two thousand one airplane crash near this place called Norris, South Dakota. Another one of the victims was crushed by a car and oh six, when you know, somebody's working underneath the car, and then a jack allegedly failed and the car crushed that person. And the last was the death of a certain real estate agent that I guess was interacting with people on the commune or Perez himself. And Perez did, unlike many other leaders of cultic organization sations, he did get convicted for his crimes. This means that the allegations against him are considered factual. They are not rumor, they are not statements from disillusioned or disgruntled followers. Let's go to the Wichita Eagle. A journalist named amy Reneelker details how in Perez was found guilty on twenty eight different criminal counts, including crimes of sexual abuse and homicide. He was sentenced to two terms of life in prison. The judge also told Perez he would be serving four hundred and six months. That's a little bit. That's like circa will less than thirty four years in prison. On the remainder of the convictions. This guy is not getting out. So in at least one case, we have justice being brought to the leader of a cultic organization. And in many cases, these leaders, as divine as they may purport themselves to be, or only human, only as fallible as the next. And they are often predatory, perhaps not to the degree of a Perez, but dangerous nonetheless. And this again is just scratching the surface. There are many many organizations that might not call themselves cults, but certainly do things a cults would do. They check the boxes. This is where we go to our last note today. If you or anyone you know has been taken in by an organization that is abusive, emotionally or physically unsafe, please don't hesitate to reach out. We haven't talked about personal experiences of our own with organizations like this, they are closer than than one might assume. One good place to start is an outfit called Dare to Doubt all one word Dare to Doubt dot org. If you go to their website you will see a number of resources and one of the one of the best century points there is a quiz called what resources are right for you? Now? Of course a lot. There's a whole other episode about some of the dangerous practices of self uh self titled d programming of cults. That's a that's a different thing. I see you not even know you know about that? Uh yeah. But also like I mean, if you if you think you if you think you maybe in a cult, you might be in a cult. Just like I know a lot of times people get you know, in these situations, like it's like a lobster boiling or whatever. You don't know it's late, you know, by the time you actually realize it. But you know a lot of folks that have you know, gone through um the pandemic and have gone you know, down these rabbit holes with things like Q and on and like things like these more decentralized kind of cults of personality and ideology. I mean, I don't know, it sounds stupid now that I'm saying out loud, but just keep an eye on your people, man. And if you feel like someone's gone too far into even and a particular ideology that seems toxic, just I don't know what you do. You can't exactly have them like rescued or you know, spirited away, but maybe it is time to talk about getting some help, you know, or just at the very least let them know that you you see them and you love them. And don't make it about aggression. Make it about you know, trying to understand and trying to help them understand that you you care about them. I would say, just from the research of this episode, anybody out there that's considering joining some kind of ashram or yoga, like seriously serious yoga, but don't do it. We've we've read about multiple yoga groups that it becomes a cult of personality around the person at the head, and it moves away from teaching, you know, philosophical teachings handed down over centuries or millennia. It becomes the hot yoga guy. Mean, it's sort of it's detached itself from that legacy, I think for people that still enjoy doing a hot yoga. But that guy in l A. He was a total like sex predator, right, But it's not just him, and it seems to be tied often. I don't know if there is fully a connection here, guys, but when we mentioned it at the top of this episode, but cult activity with a leader where sex is almost always involved, I don't know why sexual activity is almost always involved with a creepy, powerful leader in one of in one of these cult like groups. And it's very I think, just something and about yoga, especially when it's really warm, uh, in the place where you're doing yoga, that just becomes this. I'm not saying yoga is bad. I'm saying when one of these cult leaders gets around the yoga experience, it's it's bad news. So stay tuned for our upcoming hit Peace on Yoga. No, no, no, it's true. You're right, You're right. You're right, But the thing again is uh, cultic cultic tactics are content agnostic. Okay, full disclosure, folks. They could even be a podcast, but they wouldn't be super effective as a cult in that regard because you would need you need to have the physicality, right, You need to have the control of the physical as well as the mental. We do not seek to control. We seek to liberate, sometimes their own detriment. Right. But we're doing this show. We haven't started a cult yet. But that same agnosticism about content empowers cults. That's why it can be about yoga, That's why it can be about how to feed your pets. Right, That's why it can be about therapy, psychology, even arguably architecture. Right. Not for nothing did people accuse Frank Lloyd Wright of leading something like a cult with all the trappings of a cultic organization. We want to hear your thoughts. One thing is clear, more people than you might know have interacted with an organization that, if not in name and practice, was a cult. Give us your stories. We're so glad you're here. Thanks for tuning in. Looks like there's gonna be a part three apart four apart. Who knows about this? Uh. In the meantime, we try to be easy to find online, super easy. Can find this on Facebook, which yeah, listen to reach out saying that our Facebook group was disappeared. I don't think that's true. Check check again. UM, yeah, I you you wrote and uh you wrote to us in group message and I wrote back, I could see it. Uh, I asked if you could see it? Well, can you see it? Maybe this is maybe this is a youth thing. Uh. It seems though that that the Facebook group is in tact. It's called Here's where it gets crazy. You can join it, um and see for yourself what kinds of goings on are happening in that place. You can also find us on Twitter, and you can find us on YouTube. All three of those places. We are conspiracy stuff on Instagram or conspiracy stuff show yes. And if you don't like social media, we also have a phone number call one eight three three std W y t K. 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