--:-- Henry: There's no place to escape to. This is the last hot ass. On the left. That's when the cannibalism started.
--:-- Ed: Who's that? I want to dox ourselves, Eddie. I'm going to tell the audience where you live so they can come and see if my pee tastes good.
--:-- Henry: So hold on. You're going to send the pee to my house.
--:-- Ed: Oh, no, I'm going to be in the lawn.
--:-- Henry: Oh, you're going to be there.
--:-- Ed: I'm going to be on the lawn with my fresh bladder filled.
--:-- Henry: Front? Front lawn or?
--:-- Ed: No. Backyard. Backyard. Backyard. With the side gate open. Dude, I fucking piss all over my backyard.
--:-- Henry: But I'm saying I'm going to be putting it in a cup so that our wonderful listeners can come to your home. Pick one randomly.
--:-- Henry: A listener to come drink your pee at my house. John Reynolds. You hear that, Johnny? You've just been selected to come to Ed Larson's home for, it's at four, niner, eleven, four, seven, dumb ass lane.
--:-- Ed: It's nice that you don't know these actual facts about my life.
--:-- Henry: Seven. You're an irresponsible friend and it benefits me occasionally. I know the first letter of the street that you live on, and Google Maps completes it. And that's all I need. That's all I need. Where's my Christmas card? I'll show you. I'll show you. We're really filled with it today.
--:-- Henry: Hello. Welcome to It's Not Side Stories. It's Last Podcast on the Left, but it's side stories. Yeah. My name's Henry Zabrowski. I'm sitting here with Ed Larson. How you doing, buddy?
--:-- Henry: Will you explain yourself to the people or do you want me to? We'll do all this. Let's talk about this real quick. So just so you know, this week we had to change things last minute because I hate to even announce this. There is no announcement. There is no real announcement, but I don't really like telling the audience because sometimes they're so mean about things that we are happy about. I don't know why.
--:-- Ed: It's interesting because everyone thinks I'm the nice one, but you're the one that actually listens and cares.
--:-- Henry: Well, it's because I work really hard. And the show means quite a bit to me. I don't know. It seems like it's my entire life. And so I don't like telling the audience sometimes the things that we're happy about because they get really angry about things that make us happy sometimes. But we did actually hit a very historical landmark for Last Podcast on the Left this week. We filmed our first ever television show pilot. And due to my fucked up travel coming back from Salt Lake City, it has fucked with our normal recording schedule of this week. So that is why you have found yourself here listening to us talk like this.
--:-- Ed: I mean, you know, you don't have to say it's bad without saying it's bad.
--:-- Henry: What do you mean?
--:-- Ed: Everything's great.
--:-- Henry: Oh, you know, technically everything is awesome.
--:-- Henry: But this is a part of life. We did just jump right into it. You mentioned getting stoned before we recorded.
--:-- Ed: Yes. I was excited for that, but we don't have to. I guess the people deserve more than that.
--:-- Henry: Are you stoned now?
--:-- Ed: I took a hint, but nothing crazy.
--:-- Henry: See, I legit... I ate a mushroom pill.
--:-- Ed: Whoa! Good for you, dude. Do you want one? I brought some.
--:-- Henry: Wow! No, I got stuff I have to do today.
--:-- Ed: I'll just put them on the table and you can think about it.
--:-- Henry: Oh, wow. That's awesome. Well, guys, you see, today it really works out. So we figured that we could at least update you. Rob, you want a little helper?
--:-- Ed: You know what? Why the hell not? Yeah, give it to old boy. Give it to old boy. Let him try it. It's natural, man.
--:-- Henry: Whoa! He caught the mushroom pill in his mouth! He caught it in his mouth! It's already done! Wow, we already recorded enough for today.
--:-- Ed: Wow! I feel good now, man. Holy fucking shit.
--:-- Henry: Hell yeah, dude. Good work, guys. I took two lion's mane, and I took one real mushroom pill.
--:-- Henry: I really wanted to turn it up for you people today.
--:-- Ed: I'm proud of you, man. That's awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Good work, Eddie. Good work, Rob.
--:-- Henry: I fucking tossed that shit right in his fucking mouthpiece.
--:-- Ed: Yeah, yeah. You were like a Grateful Dead-themed sea lion. That was cool.
--:-- Henry: Yeah, that was cool, dude. Good work. Wow, I'm impressed by you. See you on the other side, man. But you, dude, you're just going to get slightly more energetic. It's very good. Well, we'll give you one update. Let's give them one update. The one update that we have from this week's Side Stories is the fact that we now know that Dan Rivera, paranormal researcher for the New England, I believe it's the Society of Paranormal Research, Nesper. You know it's Nesper.
--:-- Ed: I know it's Nesper, but I want to make sure I have all the acronym correct.
--:-- Henry: Oh, okay. So what I love is, obviously, he died in his hotel room while road managing for Annabelle the doll. We covered it this week. The whole internet is abuzz. I love the fact that we are still like us leading the way with other I guess paranormal edged podcasts have been really hammering this between this, we're the only ones covering this story and the Epstein story Annabelle's been hot news for a while yes, we're the only ones covering this is everyone talking about it?
--:-- Ed: I don't listen to other shows no, it's just us but I've seen other, but my subreddits are talking about it.
--:-- Henry: How do people not care about this? This is insane news.
--:-- Ed: Because there's some people that are just saying, oh, it's just some guy who died in a hotel room and you guys don't understand.
--:-- Henry: It's Annabelle! But this is the difference, is that we've taken this seriously enough that the coroner and the EMTs have made statements. Number one, coroner hopped on it saying, we are doing the autopsy right now. They are curious. They want to know what happened and they're digging into it. They say it might take a couple months. I guess you have to sift through his guck. You have to like, you know, you got to pop open the hatch and you got to play with his balls. But no foul play is suspected.
--:-- Ed: No, not necessarily. Police report says natural.
--:-- Henry: Natural. But there's a lot of ways things naturally happen. I mean, if Annabelle gets up and starts walking around and you have a heart attack, is that natural? Technically, but what it seems is we've taken this so seriously that the EMTs had to come out and say, no Annabelle was not in the room when his body was found so that means either Annabelle tried to get an alibi by leaving town.
--:-- Ed: Oh she grabbed the keys hopped in the car and then left.
--:-- Henry: Or someone's like hey there's a doll behind that wheel the car also or he left her in the car right where they're saying now he left her in the car which is we don't even understand we always bring all of our stuff when we're on the road we take it out of the car we bring it inside that He should have brought Annabelle in the car. Annabelle should be treated better than a dog.
--:-- Ed: So then my question is.
--:-- Henry: That doll is also probably worth. How much do you think Annabelle can get at auction?
--:-- Henry: No. I bet she gets like at least.
--:-- Henry: $150,000 at least.
--:-- Ed: Yeah, I would say so.
--:-- Henry: You have to identify her correctly though. We know it's her. We don't know. We don't really know. I guess not. We don't. Yeah, that could be. It does look new.
--:-- Henry: That is my problem with it. My other thing is that he left Annabelle in a hot car all night. Could Annabelle have gotten revenge for being left in the car?
--:-- Ed: Well, if you're going to leave anything in a car, night time is the better time.
--:-- Henry: No, no time. That's when Annabelle gets scared.
--:-- Ed: It is when she gets scared.
--:-- Henry: Annabelle's used to the company of other demons. Annabelle's used to being in a crowded room of other cursed objects that she can hang out with. That was her community. Those are her people. Dan Rivera, this criminal He stole her from her community.
--:-- Ed: Yeah, I'm blaming the innocent dead man.
--:-- Ed: He pulled her out of her community.
--:-- Henry: I mean, she should have been sleeping with the ghosts at Gettysburg. Who's the name of the guy that got sent to South America accidentally, everyone was upset about?
--:-- Henry: This is like that.
--:-- Ed: The guy who they thought was an MS-13.
--:-- Henry: Yeah, this is like that. Annabelle got taken from her community.
--:-- Ed: Multiple sclerosis 13.
--:-- Henry: That's what I got.
--:-- Ed: Actually, I got MS69. Woo!
--:-- Henry: Oh, hell yeah. Hard to do in the iron lung. Can't feel my dick and balls. But yeah, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, Jason Hawes. Jason Hawes, the ghost hunter guy. What about him? He says, recently, the world lost a good man. Dan Rivera was an army veteran, a father of four, a husband, and someone who truly cared about people. What's even harder to see right now Are the posts blaming his death On things like Annabelle the doll.
--:-- Henry: This is coming from a ghost hunter.
--:-- Ed: So what is he wanted to blame it on Like blood pressure and cholesterol and shit.
--:-- Henry: Like yeah sure.
--:-- Ed: Don't you know what your job is?
--:-- Henry: Investigate ghost hunter.
--:-- Ed: Yeah bro this is your industry dude.
--:-- Henry: You should be on a plane.
--:-- Ed: A private jet to Gettysburg.
--:-- Henry: Annabelle should be led from place to place in chains.
--:-- Henry: You should now, Annabelle should be double locked and you should be driving around with big tongs and hazmat suits. Hannibal Lecter style.
--:-- Ed: Pump it up, guys.
--:-- Henry: Yeah. This is about the industry as a whole, you fucking idiots.
--:-- Henry: Like, honestly, if it's not real, let's fucking bump this up anyway. Let's make it real. Put on a show, dude. Come on, motherfuckers. There's stuff out. People have a hard time believing in the paranormal. You need to be. Your job is to act dumb. This bitch doll killed your friend. And you don't give a fuck.
--:-- Ed: Yeah. Fuck you for that.
--:-- Henry: Unless you did talk about. I guess this is about, again, the fentanyl issue in the country. But I don't think, again, if he's got. I don't think necessarily he had that. We talked about it last week. I don't know if he had the Gettysburg toot.
--:-- Henry: You don't want to get it on the Gettysburg choo-choo train, buddy, because it goes straight to the hotel.
--:-- Henry: There's no check-in. You can check in. You can't check out. All right? You got to be careful. So Annabelle, so far, has an alibi. But I also believe that added alibi also adds a motive to Annabelle. I just don't understand. Another person here. ghostly images of Gettysburg manager Christina Rowan is brushing off speculation as well saying that Riviera's death is related to allegedly haunted Raggedy Ann doll telling everyone say there is a logical reason for this Dan has handled the doll for decades why now? Could it not just be natural causes?
--:-- Henry: It very well could be this man was living a chili fried lifestyle. Annabelle the doll is inhabited by an ancient ageless demon entity that thing has been sitting and waiting for it's moment at any chance all it wants to do is to jump into baron trump that's all it wants it knows the second it has access it's already in the area it's in the it's in it's close it's close enough this is a demon looking for it shot dan rivera i'm again i'm not blaming the dead man but i am let's say he's nine schlitzes in he's been fucking drinking all day everyone's telling him he's cool as hell Oh, he's kind of like having some fun, some groupies. He's got some anti-groupies in there. He's got people hanging out. All the ghost adventure scoos are like hanging out. You got all the fucking, you got your bros hanging. Maybe you do some dabs and shit. Next thing you know, you're not fucking maybe thinking so clear. You leave a gap. What do you think happened to Epstein?
--:-- Ed: What do you think did happen to him?
--:-- Henry: Santa Claus did it.
--:-- Henry: Yeah, dude. Also, you see the thing with the letter that Trump drew the naked woman with big boobies and then uses his signature as the pubic hair. That's kind of fun. It was to Epstein, and he said, here's to another wonderful year of secrets.
--:-- Ed: They're not secrets when you talk about them existing.
--:-- Henry: Here's to another wonderful year of secrets. I got to start writing that more. That's a good way to incriminate your friends Post death.
--:-- Ed: You never know.
--:-- Henry: You can always write that.
--:-- Ed: And also you know what's fun too.
--:-- Henry: You know what's great in this country right now If you want to freak out a dude That you don't know You can be like corner him at any point And just be like Hey dude I know what you did And you just fucking cruise man Ruin a bunch of guys nights.
--:-- Ed: That's what you gotta do.
--:-- Henry: Start making fake evidence put evidence on people have fun.
--:-- Ed: Yes that's a great thing to do.
--:-- Henry: We need to plant some of this evidence on dan rivera i know it's a little late.
--:-- Ed: Wow you know no no we don't want to do there's already plenty eddie.
--:-- Ed: I i mean i don't know there's more evidence against annabelle the doll than there was against eddie.
--:-- Henry: I think there's a more solid case against annabelle the doll.
--:-- Henry: Okay. Sadly.
--:-- Ed: Baby doll instead of baby oil.
--:-- Henry: Baby doyle? Baby doll? I'm trying to think of a pun. None of these are working, but they all sound gross. We work very hard this week. I work hard this week. We work extremely hard. You can't come up with every single baby oil joke in the world.
--:-- Ed: You're right. You're right.
--:-- Henry: There is something very funny and ironic about them saying that they don't want people turning Dan's death into some bullshit story to generate clicks and attention.
--:-- Ed: Dude, that's their whole business.
--:-- Henry: That's the whole point.
--:-- Ed: That's all they've ever done.
--:-- Henry: Lean in. If you want me to pretend like anything you say is real, this is real. Just lean in. For the sake of the rest of us.
--:-- Ed: They've leaned in forever.
--:-- Henry: You're selling.
--:-- Ed: They've killed a cop.
--:-- Henry: You're on tour with the doll that you are saying is cursed. So let's not all fucking pretend that the whole bit isn't that Annabelle's doll is cursed. So somebody's gotta help the industry, guys. Zach Bacons is the only people he's the only one trying and he's not good enough at it.
--:-- Ed: Yeah you know what if it wasn't real if Dan Rivera died of natural causes then you should just cancel the entire tour and do a memorial and everyone wear a black armband.
--:-- Henry: The only thing that those people should have done is scrawled demonic letters on his body and put a noose in there and then we all would be eaten for a month.
--:-- Ed: Yes it would be great news for everyone.
--:-- Henry: And you know who would want this? His kids.
--:-- Ed: Dan would want this.
--:-- Ed: His family wants this.
--:-- Henry: You don't think his wife... You know what you're saying? Dan died for no reason.
--:-- Henry: Dan died for no reason. His wife, I think it's triple the amount if he's killed by a doll. I think that she gets more money.
--:-- Ed: Or he might not have been able to afford health insurance at all.
--:-- Henry: Oh, honestly, though, if you say haunt a doll, if you put that on the death certificate, I don't know what life insurance you're getting. They might take everything. They might not get everything. This might be a whole life insurance thing. Okay, I see what we... Okay, now I think that maybe, yeah, now I'm starting to see how we might be hurting the dialogue.
--:-- Ed: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
--:-- Henry: If we... If this is really all about paying out for the kids.
--:-- Ed: Prudential don't give a fuck.
--:-- Henry: If they're like, oh, haunted doll? Really? Yeah.
--:-- Ed: Sorry. Sorry, you get nothing.
--:-- Henry: Have you heard of a little place called The Street or The Gutter? Because that's where your family will be. Also, how much money could he have? He's in doll money. He's breaking off a piece.
--:-- Ed: Oh, yeah, you know the guys over at Nesper are really raking it in. Selling out shows, man.
--:-- Henry: But I think you've got to break off to Annabelle. I mean, we sell out shows. It's not that much. Also, Tony Spera. Tony Spera is probably getting a big cut. I think that poor Dan. I can bet you right now that they're lowballing Dan. I'm already saying this. I'm talking shit against Rollshead. I think they're lowballing Dan. And I think there's no way he was getting the proper cut. Let me see. Tony Spera. Let's see what he's got. All right. I'm going to follow him. He's got 10,000 followers. I think he deserves more. Oh, it's private. Tony, you're a star. Get off of private.
--:-- Ed: Most people don't like him.
--:-- Ed: Most people don't like him.
--:-- Henry: Man. He's a bit of a scammer.
--:-- Ed: He's a bit of a scammer.
--:-- Ed: And he did protect the child molester, I guess. About one time.
--:-- Henry: Yeah. For a while.
--:-- Ed: For a couple decades.
--:-- Henry: But hey. His job was to protect Annabelle the doll. And if I was the guys in the EMTs that now have to deal with this, where's Annabelle now? Where the fuck is Annabelle now?
--:-- Ed: Oh, she's probably back home in her cage.
--:-- Henry: I don't think so.
--:-- Ed: By the way, is Annabelle not sitting in an evidence room?
--:-- Henry: Evidence locker.
--:-- Ed: Well, she was in the car. If she was in the hotel room, I feel like you would have to put her in an evidence locker.
--:-- Henry: Because what did she see?
--:-- Henry: Man, what if this whole thing's Robert?
--:-- Ed: Oh, my fucking God.
--:-- Henry: What if this whole thing, though? He sent a guy to whack him. If we find out down the road.
--:-- Ed: Yeah, he sent Lee Harvey Oswald's ghost to go whack him.
--:-- Henry: Dan Rivera was recently in Key West. Talk shit to Robert. Left. Annabelle finishes the job. Also, with the idea of Annabelle's there drinking Robert's milkshake.
--:-- Henry: If Annabelle's going to Key West, that's Robert's territory.
--:-- Ed: All right, that's like going into Caprese Town.
--:-- Henry: It's like going from Jersey down to Florida to mix with the Italian mafia in Florida.
--:-- Ed: Everybody's angry.
--:-- Henry: You're cutting in on their business.
--:-- Ed: The Haunted Doll Mafia.
--:-- Henry: Now that's a movie I really want to see.
--:-- Ed: Nothing would make me happier.
--:-- Henry: Just coming for Baggins.
--:-- Ed: Just the doll father.
--:-- Henry: The doll father. And it's just about, somebody's going to do something about this Baggins. Somebody's gonna do something. Like, it's a little actual Marlon Brando doll.
--:-- Ed: We have to free Betsy.
--:-- Henry: What's her name? Who's the doll?
--:-- Henry: Who's the doll that Baggins has prisoner?
--:-- Ed: Yeah, where's Becky?
--:-- Henry: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Honestly, I think a lot of this has got to do with Kamala.
--:-- Henry: Yeah, I think a lot of this is just a lot of rage. A lot of women are super angry right now. I don't know what for, but they're really, really upset.
--:-- Ed: Peggy, guys. Peggy.
--:-- Henry: I don't know who Becky is.
--:-- Ed: Yeah, some other bitch he's talking about.
--:-- Henry: Some other fucking woman he's got on his mind. Some soda, cotton-stuffed bitch. You know what he likes. Some dirty-ass, drag-along, old coos named Becky. And also, people were kind of getting on us for doing some censorship, but I'm going to let you guys know right now, if we really want to say the word cunt, I'm going to say it.
--:-- Henry: I just want you to know.
--:-- Ed: Did we censor that?
--:-- Henry: Yeah. I don't know. No, not that one. No. We're a bipin' of things. It's our choice. So if I want to say it, and I want to call some woman that, I will.
--:-- Ed: Yeah, or a man.
--:-- Henry: Or a fucking doll.
--:-- Henry: I can't. I'm worried. I'm scared.
--:-- Ed: Save. Save it. Save it till I see your fucking face.
--:-- Henry: You got to save it. No, also, I don't know if we should. Because she's on a roll. Would you go see Annabelle?
--:-- Henry: Yeah, right? Even more so now.
--:-- Ed: I feel that way too.
--:-- Henry: I feel like I'm more I want to go see her more now.
--:-- Ed: Oh yeah definitely.
--:-- Henry: This is the best thing that happened to Nesper.
--:-- Ed: Would you touch her?
--:-- Henry: Because he did touch her right before this happened.
--:-- Ed: Well yeah it's his job to touch her.
--:-- Ed: You can't leave her in the car.
--:-- Henry: I hate to go back to this.
--:-- Ed: What if it gets stolen?
--:-- Henry: That's expensive.
--:-- Ed: I just think that in the end he's like We'll just get another one.
--:-- Henry: We'll just get another one.
--:-- Henry: We'll just molest somebody in front of that one, and that one will get a new one. Boom, done. It does look new. I can't get over this fact. It's kept very well. My grandmother was in great shape at 93.
--:-- Henry: Just because she was a narcissist and full of shit.
--:-- Henry: She took great care of herself.
--:-- Ed: Technically, I think she had a great body.
--:-- Henry: Your grandmother?
--:-- Ed: I'm just saying for a 93-year-old woman.
--:-- Ed: She kept it tight, in a way.
--:-- Henry: Interesting.
--:-- Ed: Yeah, I don't like it.
--:-- Henry: I'm not saying I'm not admiring her body.
--:-- Ed: It sounds like you are, because I didn't even bring it up.
--:-- Henry: I'm just saying that she looked, you'd be surprised. If you had cut the clothes off of her, you'd be super surprised.
--:-- Ed: If someone did, you could probably ask.
--:-- Henry: Oh, yeah, I got all the morgue pictures.
--:-- Ed: Yeah, something my favorite.
--:-- Henry: I wanted to prove she was dead.
--:-- Ed: You wanted to restart rotten.com with your grandma's dead.
--:-- Henry: Listen, it's called OC. All right? It's called I get to farm this material from my family. So who's Annabelle killing next?
--:-- Ed: Well hopefully Spera right.
--:-- Henry: I mean he's got it.
--:-- Ed: I mean do you think he's scared right now?
--:-- Henry: Tony Spera is sending some other guy.
--:-- Ed: There's no way it's going to be Tony Spera himself is going to come and handle the situation.
--:-- Henry: Yeah he's going to get an intern in there.
--:-- Ed: I think this is the perfect place for a new grad from Delaware Paranormal Institute of America.
--:-- Henry: Where you can go and you can just kind of like pull one some guy like oh gee willikers yeah i can't wait i love working for experience.
--:-- Henry: Who's Ryan Buell?
--:-- Ed: Paranormal State.
--:-- Henry: Uh no he's no he's like if i was ryan buell i would be looking for my own annabelle at this point in time.
--:-- Ed: You need to source your own group dude.
--:-- Ed: If you look up any paranormal investigator right now Dan Rivera pops right up.
--:-- Henry: Of course this is big for him.
--:-- Ed: This is the biggest news that in the nicest thing that ever happened to Dan Rivera.
--:-- Henry: That is so sad.
--:-- Ed: That is so sad.
--:-- Henry: It's like when we were on that plane just now, we were just flying from Salt Lake, we were playing from LA to Salt Lake City, Jeff Probst was on it.
--:-- Ed: Oh my god, I didn't even know who he was.
--:-- Henry: Dude, he didn't know, I had to be like that little elfin man. I was like, people kept coming up to him and taking pictures and pitching themselves to be on Survivor. I was like, literally at the end, I was like, Henry, who is this little fucker? But then there was a part of me that realized if the plane went down, we'd die in obscurity.
--:-- Ed: Yeah, no one would know.
--:-- Henry: Yeah, it's just Jeff Probst's death. Now we're all fucking underneath Jeff Probst's fucking Wikipedia page.
--:-- Ed: And they also ran, guess who also died? Two C-list comedians.
--:-- Henry: Yeah. Great.
--:-- Ed: And everyone's like, thank God.
--:-- Henry: You know, the main paranormal convention where Annabelle's going to be is still happening.
--:-- Ed: Oh, no, they are.
--:-- Henry: Oh, buddy, they're in canceling shit.
--:-- Ed: And you know what? There's still so many tickets for all the time slots.
--:-- Henry: Wow, I'm so surprised.
--:-- Ed: At this point, you think that that would really give it the bump.
--:-- Henry: You would think it would give it the bump.
--:-- Ed: People are weak.
--:-- Henry: Yeah. Also, what is he doing playing Maine and Gettysburg? Annabelle's a star.
--:-- Ed: I think Maine and Gettysburg is actually a great place for people that want to just go look at a doll sitting in a chair on stage.
--:-- Henry: Specifically haunted locations.
--:-- Ed: They're going to haunted locations.
--:-- Henry: So that's why these strange spots.
--:-- Henry: What is haunted about the Augusta Civic Center?
--:-- Ed: I think that the nachos, they will haunt you all the way home. Don't get those.
--:-- Henry: Man, so Annabelle still on tour. She's doing it without Dan. His name's still on the poster. How long did it take Great White to go back on tour?
--:-- Ed: After they killed everybody?
--:-- Ed: It wasn't that long.
--:-- Henry: It wasn't long enough.
--:-- Ed: That should have ended it.
--:-- Henry: It really should have ended it.
--:-- Ed: I remember, because remember that happened right after 9-11, and for a little while we all thought it was a terrorist attack.
--:-- Henry: We're like, oh, no, this hair metal band is just stupid.
--:-- Ed: Right. The band has continued touring following their initial disbandment in 2001, and it came back, took a decade.
--:-- Henry: Took a decade, yeah.
--:-- Henry: I see them on bills sometimes, but it's like they're playing like, they're not doing nicer rooms. They're doing like the Whiskey Go-Go and stuff like that.
--:-- Ed: Well, I wouldn't have them in a nicer room.
--:-- Henry: No, you can't.
--:-- Ed: Well, they should be in a nicer room because we saw what happens when they play bad ones.
--:-- Henry: Did he go to jail? Or did the people on the venue go to jail?
--:-- Ed: I believe the people that went to the venue.
--:-- Henry: Yeah, because they're the ones that let it happen and had the horrible fucking sprinkler system.
--:-- Ed: That's what it was.
--:-- Henry: And the thing was like, yeah, the emergency system was disconnected.
--:-- Ed: I guess it isn't that much of great...
--:-- Henry: They share the blame.
--:-- Ed: They are very...
--:-- Henry: They were really sorry.
--:-- Ed: Yeah, I mean, of course.
--:-- Henry: You killed 70-something people.
--:-- Ed: They were upset.
--:-- Ed: And they weren't happy with it.
--:-- Henry: They started the fire.
--:-- Ed: Yeah, because it came from stage.
--:-- Henry: Right yeah uh the exits were the problem.
--:-- Henry: P Billy Joel's brain unbelievable.
--:-- Henry: They're gonna put his just his hands on tour that's what's gonna happen.
--:-- Ed: How are they gonna get the liquor out of it?
--:-- Henry: Yeah squeeze it from the fucking top of the stock got to man.
--:-- Henry: Well we have an hour-long interview that we're going to give you over to now.
--:-- Henry: Because we love you, you know, and we want to never disappoint you.
--:-- Ed: Yeah, we're not going to give you nothing.
--:-- Henry: We're not going to give you nothing.
--:-- Henry: We're here. We're hanging out, being loose, gay as hell. I have diarrhea.
--:-- Ed: Oh, that cruise ship got Montezuma's revenge.
--:-- Henry: That's what it was.
--:-- Ed: So it's not their fault.
--:-- Henry: So we were, just so you guys know, crimewaveatsea.com. Please come and see us on this tour. They were going to have us on a practice run. And then the people on that ship got wildly sick. But I'm looking So we dodged it. We dodged it. I am looking at it and the blame is officially going on Mexico and not the cruise ship. How convenient.
--:-- Ed: Now what do you mean the blame is going on Mexico?
--:-- Henry: Montezuma's Revenge.
--:-- Ed: But they went port and a bunch of people drank like...
--:-- Henry: Yeah. The ice is what gets you. Of course, you gotta forget that the ice is water. Because you're like, oh, I want a pina colada. I want a margarita. No, and they blend it all up. If you are on the island, this is a great teaching moment. CrimeWaveAtSea.com. When we go... But we're not going to Mexico.
--:-- Ed: No, but anywhere.
--:-- Henry: We're going to the Bahamas.
--:-- Ed: But any of them.
--:-- Henry: Bahamas, I think you can drink the water.
--:-- Ed: Get bottled water.
--:-- Henry: When you're off the boat, drink bottled water. When you're on the boat...
--:-- Ed: Drink bottled liquor.
--:-- Henry: Drink bottled liquor. All right?
--:-- Ed: Drink stuff that's got a top on it that you got to open.
--:-- Henry: That's what I'm going to say. That's my big cruise tip.
--:-- Ed: And don't take a joint from strangers.
--:-- Ed: Hang out with them for a while.
--:-- Ed: Get to know them a little bit.
--:-- Henry: Yeah, get to know them. This isn't a Doobie Brothers concert. Don't buy everyone. I've actually had a lot of people asking me questions about this process. And I will say, don't get weed on the islands. because you might not, sometimes unless it's right in front of you, never how many times do we have to say this? Never go to a second location. Did I hear about what happened? You hear about what happened to me when I was on a cruise? Last time I was on a cruise. I was on a week-long cruise doing a gig and it was the longest I had gone without smoking weed in a very long time. And it was the last night of the cruise and I'm sitting there with my fellow performers that I just got to know. Ashley Ward. Wonderful actors. Yeah, Ashley Ward's a wonderful lady. Linden Kingsley. Hilarious people. And we're just sitting there enjoying a beer at the end of the night. And I remember I just turned to them like, I've known you long enough now. I feel like I could be honest with you. I'm kind of going crazy because I haven't smoked weed in a week, you know? And then Langdon magically pointed and then a bag of weed was just floating along the deck. And she's like, look, weed! And then it was just like a bag of weed appeared out of nowhere as I was complaining.
--:-- Henry: Yeah, and then I actually bought a pipe at the straw market, and then I was just like, oh my God. And so we-
--:-- Ed: God, he works in mysterious ways.
--:-- Henry: Yeah, it's like, you should have asked on the first day.
--:-- Henry: We're just showing up.
--:-- Henry: Also, the key is, yeah, stick to cocaine.
--:-- Henry: That's what I say when you're on the boat.
--:-- Ed: Much easier to boof.
--:-- Henry: Just get it from the store.
--:-- Ed: Get it from the people working there.
--:-- Henry: Yeah. On the boat.
--:-- Ed: Not us, though.
--:-- Ed: I'm not selling.
--:-- Henry: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That stuff's ours. All right. Listen, guys. It's November 3rd to the 7th. Come, you know, again.
--:-- Henry: CrimeWaveAtSea.com. It's not on the land. It is out on the water. And also, September 21st, Henry and I are going to be in Kansas City, Missouri at the Truman Theater. Also, October 24th, we're in Redway, California at the Mateel Community Center. Going to be the best show of the year. Always is.
--:-- Henry: And November 30th, Henry and I are going to be in Columbus OH at the Newport Music Hall. I'm very excited about that.
--:-- Ed: And don't forget Epstein country.
--:-- Henry: Is that Epstein country?
--:-- Henry: I thought that was South Florida.
--:-- Henry: Well, that's where he's really from.
--:-- Ed: That's where he really made his nut.
--:-- Henry: Oh, in Ohio.
--:-- Ed: Yeah, with the Lex guy from Victoria's Secret.
--:-- Henry: Oh, that guy was a bad man.
--:-- Henry: You know, Ohio, you know, they don't get enough credit. They start shit and then other people take credit for Ohio's work all the fucking time.
--:-- Ed: I think people are starting to catch on.
--:-- Henry: You know, the Wright brothers, have we ever talked about this? They're from Ohio. North Carolina sitting here claiming their first in flight. The plane was made in Ohio. They drove it to North Carolina because the beach is windy. And they're fucking sitting here saying that they're the first in flight. The Wright brothers are from Ohio. The plane was built in Ohio. They fucking took it down to North Carolina and flew it.
--:-- Ed: But the air, unfortunately, failed them in Ohio.
--:-- Henry: Yeah, it did.
--:-- Henry: It did. That's why they lost it.
--:-- Ed: Yeah, the air is bad.
--:-- Henry: Don't count your wins. Don't collect the medal until you're on the podium.
--:-- Ed: Yeah, no, exactly.
--:-- Henry: But you know what Ohio does have? I can't wait. I'm going to Ohio over break. I'm very excited.
--:-- Ed: Yeah, sure. Ham salad, baby. Oh, yeah. Bridgetown Meats. I love shouting out Bridgetown Meats. You get that ham salad, take care of Janet Roseng. That's what I'm talking about. Every time I plug them, they give her free food.
--:-- Henry: That's amazing. My mother-in-law.
--:-- Ed: That's amazing. Wow. So go, do me a favor. Go to Bridgetown. If you live in Cincinnati, go to Bridgetown Meats.
--:-- Henry: This is him desperate trying to get his mother-in-law's approval. This is him desperately trying. I really want her to like me. We've talked about this, every parent in the world likes Eddie more than his mother-in-law and his father-in-law.
--:-- Ed: She loves me. It's just that everybody else loves him way more because he's not fucking their daughter. So go to Bridgetown Meats. Let them know that the ham salad is delicious and you need some and you're here on a rec from Janet Rosen.
--:-- Henry: Yeah, I'm helping Mike have the ham salad. We'll edit that into something that won't get me in trouble.
--:-- Ed: Oh, great. Another great joke lost. You didn't even hear that. He's got edited. That's what you get, folks. You fuckers. August 21st, Lesion Theater. Dead Men Tell Some Tales. Go check us out as well. I love you guys. Hail Satan. Hail Annabelle. Next week we'll be back with Molasses Flood Part 2.
--:-- Henry: Yes, we promise. We love you guys very much. Also, we know that it's Blackstrap, not Backstrap.
--:-- Ed: Oh, yeah. But we're going to leave that to Marcus because that's his fuck up.
--:-- Henry: Yeah, we're going to have-
--:-- Ed: And he gets to wallow in that because we don't know jack shit about shit.
--:-- Henry: Yeah, Marcus has to kill the fake stripper. That's his fucking life. That's his mistake. It's on his ass. Old Backstrap never had a chance. I'm not going to open. I'm not going to say to you what I was going to say to you. Because it's a direct comment from what we were talking about on Side Stories. That's actually like a super inappropriate way to open.
--:-- Ed: Okay. Like about the baby names? We'll all fly about it.
--:-- Henry: Oh, the baby names. What about the baby names? We're talking about the 11 baby names that got banned. What's inappropriate about it?
--:-- Ed: Oh, like Commander? No, like Adolf Hitler. A Commander's allowed.
--:-- Henry: Oh. You can name your child Commander in America.
--:-- Ed: Yes. Okay. I maybe came across some list about the names that were banned in Australia. Maybe. And they were just like very gently-
--:-- Henry: Jesus Christ. You can't be named Jesus Christ. But obviously Jesus is fine.
--:-- Ed: Fair. Again, unless you're ice. You can't be named three?
--:-- Henry: Yeah, the Roman numeral three. Yeah, I, I, I.
--:-- Ed: I thought it was ill. I was like, what if it's ill?
--:-- Henry: Oh, so you would pronounce that I, I, I. I think people would be angry, yeah.
--:-- Ed: Wow, is that why it is? You're so smart. That's why we have her here, Amanda Montell. Thank you very much. I am glad that you're here.
--:-- Amanda: I'm just here to help us all read. You can't name your kid Nutella?
--:-- Henry: I know. That's what I'm saying. That's so fun.
--:-- Amanda: One brand. Literally Adolf Hitler Nutella.
--:-- Henry: You know, but what if you put them together? Adolf Hitler Nutella Cranberry? You think that should be allowed? Throw a cute little thing in there, too.
--:-- Amanda: My spouse really likes the mouthfeel of the word chlamydia and thinks it would make a beautiful first name.
--:-- Henry: Oh, yeah. It would take an amazing publicist to rebrand the optics of chlamydia into a beautiful baby name. I'm going to be a lovely Greek girl.
--:-- Amanda: How about this? Cliffidia. Cliffidia.
--:-- Henry: Cliffidia. You take someone else's name, you take Cliff.
--:-- Amanda: Yeah. Oh, Cliff. Yeah, Cliff. Okay. You know, instead of Clifford, it's Cliffidia. It feels worse.
--:-- Henry: That's not good. Georgia-ria.
--:-- Amanda: Oh, Georgia-ria, the bad. Georgia-ria.
--:-- Henry: Georgia-ria. Well, now that just sounds like a bowel issue.
--:-- Amanda: It is. In the South.
--:-- Henry: Right. It's like you ate too many cling peaches and you get Georgia-ria.
--:-- Amanda: Herbies. Herbies.
--:-- Henry: Herbies. Well, I guess that is already a name. Herpes.
--:-- Amanda: Yeah, herpes. But herb. Herb, which is my grandfather's name.
--:-- Henry: Oh, okay. Oh, this is actually a fun game. If you take different sexually transmitted infections, you have to twist it just one letter to make it a beautiful name.
--:-- Amanda: Yeah. That is a fun word game.
--:-- Henry: This is my buddy Shades. That's only if he's cool. Because it only works if he's got sunglasses on at all times.
--:-- Amanda: Oh, yeah. Instead of Liv Tyler, it could be L-I-V.
--:-- Henry: Oh, wow. This is a great way to sell your book.
--:-- Amanda: Whoa. Okay, relatedly, I did write a book called Word Slut, and sometimes autocorrect will change it to Word Slit, which feels more vulgar.
--:-- Henry: It's worse. It's worse. Word Slit. Natalie, my wife, just said a whole thing. Somebody just called her a slit on YouTube, and she loved it.
--:-- Amanda: Okay. Because she was just like, it's been a long time.
--:-- Henry: Yeah. There was that punk band, The Slits.
--:-- Amanda: Oh, my God. Right, so technically, they retook the word back.
--:-- Henry: Yeah. So, in a way, it's cool to be a slit.
--:-- Amanda: Okay, reclamation. Reclamation.
--:-- Henry: I'm switching off. Beautiful name. I'm so beautiful. This is my daughter, Reclamation, Hitler, Cranberry, Nestle, Zebrowski.
--:-- Amanda: Oh, my God. By the way, you can name your kid Hitler. Just not Adolf Hitler.
--:-- Henry: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah. That's beautiful. Isn't that weird? Because you think, also, because they're like, oh, well, no one knows Brandon Hitler. I feel like Hitler's the important part of the name.
--:-- Amanda: Totally. Like, I feel like more people recognize Hitler than Adolf Hitler. They're like, who's that?
--:-- Henry: Yeah. They would be like, oh, if you just met an Adolf, you'd be like, oh, I bet you're a difficult man. Yeah. I bet you like regulation. Yeah. But then not necessarily you want to kill us all. Does Adolf still have a bad rep in Germany?
--:-- Amanda: I imagine. I do believe it doesn't go over well. They don't have a lot of patience for it over there.
--:-- Henry: Okay. Okay. They're right. They're not ready.
--:-- Amanda: No one's ready. And that's good. They're pretty upset with it. Do you know that the Hitler family, like the people, like the lineage of Hitler's family, they've all got together and agreed not to have children. So that all dies off.
--:-- Henry: No way. How hot is that? Whoa. Okay. God, imagine how hard it is for them to not fuck. Now that they've said that they won't.
--:-- Amanda: Whoa. That's very erotic.
--:-- Henry: And that's on edging.
--:-- Amanda: Oh, yes. It really is. As I'm like, I dare you to try to put another ancestor in me. I dare you.
--:-- Henry: Oh my God. I'm ready to boof this conversation. All right. Okay. Let's get down.
--:-- Ed: Okay. Okay. Brass ass tax. Great. Amanda Montell, host of the very popular podcast, Sounds Like a Cult, is also an accredited author.
--:-- Amanda: Oh, thank you. Very big time author.
--:-- Ed: Thank you. You've done a lot of this shit. Apparently you're very smart.
--:-- Amanda: Oh, well. We just did your show and got some social cred. So thank you. Oh my God. I love that. Yeah. More popular now, thanks to you, Sounds Like a Cult. Okay, I'm talking like Yoda. Scramble together the right order of that sentence. I appreciate you both so much for coming on the show. It was the episode on the Cult of Incels, and it was our most well-received episode of all time. And that is a miracle because I was scared shitless. My asshole was clenched through the entire editorial process.
--:-- Henry: Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah, same.
--:-- Amanda: Oh, absolutely.
--:-- Henry: Oh, yeah, no, they came for the DMs.
--:-- Amanda: Yeah. Oh, really? The men were real. Some of the men that happened to catch some of what we were saying, some of them were pretty upset.
--:-- Amanda: But the thing is, is that mostly they just look like men that, how do you put this? Have sex with the fish they catch.
--:-- Henry: Oh my God. Whose eyes are on either side of their head.
--:-- Amanda: Yes. So they weren't a threat.
--:-- Henry: Right. So you're like, when you know you're making that type of person angry, you're like, oh, we're in the right vein.
--:-- Amanda: Yeah. Yeah, they're alphas, but don't know the alphabet.
--:-- Henry: Oh, my God. A-O. Okay. A-O. I see you. Okay, word split. A-O. Yes. That's right.
--:-- Amanda: Well, our sweetie pie, mostly female and non-binary listeners, were eating you up. They were loving it. They were like, men on Sounds Like a Cult? What? It was honestly, it was a DEI situation. You on Sounds Like a Cult.
--:-- Henry: Thank you. Honestly, thank you for it. And I just feel like the time for the 40-year-old white man is coming.
--:-- Amanda: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
--:-- Henry: It was a diversity hire. It's time for our representation. That's all that it was. Don't call it a comeback. Been here for years.
--:-- Amanda: Right, right. They've always been here. Can I ask you straight up? You're now deep into cults. You're deep into cults. That sentence sounds like up to interpretation. Do you feel that your life has changed? On one angle, did you expect this to be your life?
--:-- Amanda: How did you start?
--:-- Henry: Great question. Okay, so context, the backstory, the lore, is that my dad spent his teenage years against his will in the cult Synanon.
--:-- Amanda: Are you familiar?
--:-- Henry: Oh, yes. Very familiar.
--:-- Amanda: So I grew up on his stories, which were enrapturing.
--:-- Henry: The OG crew? The old guy. Chuck Diedrich. That guy. Yeah. The man, the myth, the legend. That shit's fucking terrifying. It's absolutely terrifying.
--:-- Amanda: So he was 14 when his father, sort of inspired by the blossoming countercultural movement of the late 60s, moved him and his two toddler-age half-sisters onto what they believed was this socialist utopian compound to this experimental way of life. It started out as like a drug rehabilitation center that then grew to accommodate so-called lifestylers.
--:-- Henry: Yes. Yeah. People who just wanted in on that kind of communal living situation. Because they seemed to really help people for a while.
--:-- Amanda: It really did, you know, and then it kind of spun out of control. He didn't really know when to drop the Adolf off of the Hitler. Or the Hitler. It got bad. So anyways, yeah, my dad arrived and he was 14. And who knows, some combination of nature and nurture and the fact that he had grown up in like Manhattan School of Hard Knocks at that point caused him to be pretty skeptical and freaked out by the whole arrangement as soon as they got to the compound. It was a weird place even by then. Like kids lived separate from their parents and everybody dressed in these neutral, super conformist coveralls. People had to shave their heads as punishment. Everybody engaged in this really traumatizing ritual called the game, which was like catharsis therapy. And he wasn't loving it. So he kind of flew under the radar in the cult, escaped off the compound every day to attend an accredited high school in San Francisco because he knew he wanted to leave and attend college.
--:-- Henry: That's a willful kid.
--:-- Amanda: Totally, totally. I did the exact opposite with school.
--:-- Amanda: I left the school I was supposed to be in to join a cult.
--:-- Henry: Except the cult of marijuana.
--:-- Amanda: The cult of marijuana, totally.
--:-- Henry: Oh, my God, I'm in it as well. Hello. Not today. I am on the right drugs for this interview.
--:-- Amanda: Nice. But, you know, a little iced oat cortado moment. But yeah, so my dad, ironically, though, Synanon wanted to avoid outside hospitals whenever possible. It was this closed system. And so Synanon had its own microbiology lab. And my dad at the age of 15 was tasked with running it. And that was maybe irresponsible of the cult to be like, hey, kid, culture these cult followers' fingertips for tuberculosis microbes. But there he fell in love with laboratory science and that's what he majored in in college. And then he went and got his Ph.D. and now he's a neuroscientist and has been doing research my whole life. I grew up in Baltimore where he did his research at Hopkins. And yeah, so like ironically, that lab was kind of like a sanctuary of empiricism within Synanon's irrational grounds. And so, yeah, he left as soon as he could. And I came of age on those stories. I kind of cut my journalistic teeth, I guess, on probing my dad for details about this lifestyle. And the most fascinating thing about my dad's Synanon stories to me was the language that Synanon would use to manipulate its followers.
--:-- Henry: Yeah, go for it. I'm very, very excited because you wrote this whole book, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism. And I am like you in that, where I am fascinated with cult lingo.
--:-- Henry: Because it's in the details that you see why people get sucked in.
--:-- Henry: And it's the recreations and the changings of definitions that we see every day on a mass scale right now with how our government is reacting to the world and information.
--:-- Henry: And they're using the same exact tactics that cults use.
--:-- Amanda: That is so true. But it's very interesting. And like, what was the first cult that you cracked into as just a journalist?
--:-- Henry: Oh, well, the first interview that I did while I was putting together my proposal for this book was with a survivor of the Happy Healthy Holy organization, the Kundalini Yoga cult.
--:-- Amanda: No, explain.
--:-- Henry: Oh, OK. So Triple H, the wrestler.
--:-- Amanda: No, it was she. So 3HO does have some famous alumni, like Russell Brand was a part of it. Adrian Brody was actually a part of it. Demi Moore. Like they were, you know, it's kids.
--:-- Henry: No, as adults.
--:-- Amanda: So what is it? It's just because it's a, okay. So it's like one of those where there's a main guru that everybody goes to.
--:-- Henry: Is it the style of the other guru that used to be like, you're fat. You're fat. You don't do it right. You're looking at Mr. Tubby. Mr. Tubby's doing his triangle pose and he's not. Was that the Bikram guys?
--:-- Amanda: Yes. Yes. Yes. So it was in that same universe. So this guru was named Yogi Bhajan and he was this con artist who arrived to America.
--:-- Henry: Was he good at yoga?
--:-- Amanda: That's a great question. I have actually no idea. It was so beside the point, you know what I mean? It was about the dogma. And if you've ever seen photos of a group of white people in all white and white turbans gallivanting around a desert, that was the Kundalini Coachella.
--:-- Henry: Oh yeah, Coachella. That's Coachella.
--:-- Amanda: No, like literally it is giving Coachella. So I, you know, we live in Los Angeles. You can't attend a birthday party without running into an ex-Scientologist or, you know, just there is something about L.A. that attracts cultish affiliates because it's a town of manifest destiny.
--:-- Henry: This came out of nowhere. This is all sand, baby. Literally. This is not supposed to fucking be here. We made this out of pure manna.
--:-- Amanda: Out of pure delusion. And I don't know, the quest for celebrity and fame feels religious to me.
--:-- Henry: I've never really met any cult people in Los Angeles because I just stick to the people I know and only know their ideas.
--:-- Amanda: That sounds really lonely.
--:-- Henry: I'm just kidding. You're like, that's my cult.
--:-- Amanda: No, and that is kind of the argument that like we, you know, I went into the project thinking like, oh, I'm too skeptical. I'm too cynical. I would never end up in a cult. But it was all very humbling because I really do think that there's a cult for everyone. And sometimes my friend group of theater kids feels like a cult as well.
--:-- Henry: Oh, it is. It's a whole thing. Can I add? Which one would you join? If there was some, if you could with no consequences.
--:-- Henry: Because obviously what one of the big maxims on Last Podcast is that if you're going to join a cult, the key is to get into management.
--:-- Amanda: Yeah. Yeah. Of course.
--:-- Henry: Genuinely. You got to get into management because that's when the cult's working for you. You're not working for the cult.
--:-- Amanda: I do. Yeah. I mean, a structure that I kept finding in all of these groups or so very many of them is that there would be kind of a charismatic, populist, opportunist man at the top, a guy with a chip on his shoulder who felt sort of entitled to a certain level of power that maybe he didn't feel like he had access to as a kid.
--:-- Henry: I don't need you to roast me on my own fucking show. I don't need you to come into my place of work.
--:-- Amanda: I know. I feel like everyone who maybe felt a little left out in high school now has a podcast.
--:-- Henry: Oopsie doodle.
--:-- Amanda: But yeah. And then they're surrounded by an inner circle of beautiful young women who sort of exchange their sexuality and privilege for a little bit more power.
--:-- Henry: So if I could be in the top spot, not in the inner circle, but truly at the top. Let's see. Like who would you kiss?
--:-- Amanda: Yeah. Who would you kiss?
--:-- Henry: Are you a Keith Raniere girl? Are you a Jim Jones lady?
--:-- Amanda: I'm going to try Jim Jones, Steve-a. Steve and Baldwin. Let's see. Steve and Baldwin. Yeah. She can't even bite. I don't know. You can't get me. No, you really can. Let's see. I don't know. This is an earnest answer, but what cult would I join? The cults that I've orbited and almost joined have been helmed by celebrities.
--:-- Amanda: Like living in Hollywood, you know, like I have had an experience or two where some celebrity that I admire has slid into my DMs and been like, oh, my God, I just discovered your work. I'm like, what? It feels like a message from the great beyond. It's like, how did this God actually find a way to communicate with me? And then they'll invite you to a party or something. And then you really do get sucked in. I feel very susceptible to the orbit and the gravitational pull of a celebrity that I admire.
--:-- Henry: Look at Jared Leto. Literally that's such a great example. He's doing a great job. He really is.
--:-- Amanda: Did you hear about the sleepovers?
--:-- Henry: Oh yeah, I heard he was in trouble but I don't know what happened. I know he's got like eight or nine people after him.
--:-- Amanda: But what happened? There's a lot of allegedly's in this story.
--:-- Henry: Come on, look at him. Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly.
--:-- Amanda: Well, okay, it's Jared Leto. He's been talked about like this in a very broad manner for a long time.
--:-- Henry: Yeah. I mean, okay, he has, let me give you an anecdote.
--:-- Amanda: OK, this is an anecdote. This is totally fucking allegedly, allegedly, allegedly.
--:-- Henry: Yes, this is uncle dotes here, but we will take this.
--:-- Amanda: Yeah, you'll take an anecdote.
--:-- Henry: OK, it's feminism. That's feminism. This is an uncle don't an antidote, a cuntidote. OK, so when I was in college, I was friends with this girl who just looked so, so, so, so young. And when she was like 19, she met Jared Leto at a party in L.A. And they developed a sort of relationship. And he has allegedly a compound of a home. And he keeps allegedly like handguns in random drawers. I think he has a lot of paranoia, but he also whips up his followers allegedly into a sort of heat.
--:-- Amanda: I mean, the sleepover thing is like allegedly, allegedly, allegedly. I would love it if we had one.
--:-- Henry: We do sleepovers. I wish.
--:-- Amanda: That's so sweet. Belly to belly.
--:-- Henry: Bromance is beautiful. Belly to belly, feet to feet. That's gorgeous. I mean, imagine, though, if we had a nice sleeping bag, we're all over, having a good time watching some movies. The time is over for me.
--:-- Amanda: Honestly, yeah, I think he just blurs the intimacy boundaries with his fans. And because he operates in so many different mediums, it's kind of like a catch me if you can situation. I find it so fascinating nowadays that if an influencer who starts out on YouTube and develops a cult following there starts to become really problematic or reveals their true colors that have been there all along and is proverbially canceled or whatever, they can just switch platforms and go to TikTok. Like this person I'm thinking of specifically is Jeffree Star.
--:-- Henry: Jeffree Star was like, you know. I know that tangentially through my wife. She followed all of that. Natalie is a Jeffree Star diva.
--:-- Amanda: So like Jeffree Star, it was revealed that he's super racist and has just so many problematic attributes. And he kind of fell from grace on YouTube. So then he was reborn, like literally resurrected on TikTok as a farmer. And now he has a compound and he's farming. And so the people who only know him on TikTok-
--:-- Henry: I'm not fucking getting those pumpkins. I can't imagine he's good at farming.
--:-- Amanda: It's only white pumpkins.
--:-- Henry: Yeah, it's the best kind of seed. This one's too orange.
--:-- Amanda: Yeah, literally, the two orange ones are checked out. But now the people who only know him on TikTok are like, how could anybody be mad at Farmer Jeffrey? So I think people who are masters of the rebrand, masters of the resurrection, who sort of refuse to step back, who are kind of like, I mean, Keith Raniere was like this, too. He was a failed MLM-er.
--:-- Amanda: And he was a Keith Raniere to me is like the lowest of the low. Truly. Like I view him as such a hack. Like, I know that's the saddest way. That's what I don't like about it. You don't like is that he's a fucking have an original thought. My guy. He stole everything from Scientology.
--:-- Henry: Of course. And we know how much you love Elrond.
--:-- Amanda: Elrond is only reason why is because unfortunately, until our current president, he was the number one con man of all time.
--:-- Henry: Thank you for saying that. I would put him closest. Elrond is the closest to the guy that really figured it out. You know what I mean?
--:-- Amanda: What about the Pope? He's supposed to be chosen.
--:-- Henry: Totally. No, Elrond chose himself. And that's the American dream.
--:-- Amanda: Yes. No, but like, it's true. Elrond, the language of Scientology, one of the most fun parts in this book to write.
--:-- Henry: Have you read Dianetics?
--:-- Amanda: I have. I have. I've flipped through. I've perused. I've flipped through it. I haven't read cover to cover.
--:-- Henry: What's your favorite chapter?
--:-- Amanda: I like the clams. You know, I found-
--:-- Henry: So one of my best friends growing up, like I really helped Shane Morton, who did all the makeup for a show I did called Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell. He was the first person to give me the proper literature on Satanism and ritual magic and all that kind of stuff. And one of the things that he told me, which I thought was interesting, he's like, the key is you don't want to get locked into a guy's patter. Okay. Because what they'll do is, as we see, a lot of cults are presenting a very complicated lock that can be opened only by help of the guy that's given you a bunch of fake information about what goes into the lock. To reveal an empty safe.
--:-- Henry: Right. Nothing's in there. Yeah. But you've been there for so long in this process that you have to pretend with the guy that there's something in the safe.
--:-- Amanda: Totally. It's the self-delusion, emperor's new clothes, sunk cost fallacy, all of it. There's so much psychology. And the Scientological, like those things that they do, all the turns of phrases.
--:-- Henry: So I was for a while driving around with Technique 88 LRH, one of his last recorded talks on a CD. Someone gave me all the Scientology tapes and I just put them in the car.
--:-- Henry: And I was listening to him driving around. I'm listening to it for days, weeks. I'm listening to it. And then I begin to realize like, oh, he just started to make sense. I'm now actually following what it was that he was sort of talking about. And then I'm realizing, oh, I'm caught in the pattern.
--:-- Henry: I am a literal lemming doing the thing. I've just finally listened long enough that I've decided that the gobbledygook is coming together.
--:-- Amanda: Yes. Yes. Oh, my God. Why, as podcasters, do we Loki do this? But it is. I love it.
--:-- Henry: No, yeah, it is. What else would I be doing? Of course. It is absolutely fascinating. And L. Ron Hubbard really was, again, the master of the rebrand, the sort of failed sci-fi writer who was like, you know what would be much more clever and much more profitable? To turn this into a religion.
--:-- Amanda: I mean, J.R.R. Tolkien could have done it. He could have done it in a second.
--:-- Henry: He could have done it in a second because they both are, if I may say so, and this is without reverence for L. Ron Hubbard, but I know you have it.
--:-- Amanda: I am a Lord of the Rings girly, by the way. Everyone's allowed to make fun of L. Ron. It's fine. I understand.
--:-- Henry: Yeah, I don't actually, but I do, but I don't. But I do? No one understands that tightrope walk better than me, but like they are both masters of language. And you don't need to be that clever in coming up with neologisms. You just need to be able to twist existing language effectively enough to get people who know how to use that exclusive rhetoric to feel like they're on the inside of something. The very way that when you're a little kid learning pig Latin on the playground, it's literally just gibberish. It's just a phonetic puzzle. You're not saying anything that can't be said in plain English, but just the sheer fact that you've learned it and other people around you know it, too. And the kids who don't know how to speak it are instantly less cool. It fills you with a sense of not only intellectual, but moral superiority. And L. Ron Hubbard with his dictionaries and the way that he would co-opt language from scientific fields that he admired, like chemistry and software engineering and linguistics. He also did it. It was so clever.
--:-- Amanda: He did it as a bit, too. He knew the more science stuff I throw in this, the more people are going to think it's legit. I mean, he named it Scientology. It's so on the nose. It's everything he ever wrote. He knew it was easy for him to make it up because he'd already written it a decade ago. But he also was a highly prolific author and some of it was fine. But, you know, like, yeah, he wasn't even really a failed space fantasy writer. It was just packed, filled with shit.
--:-- Henry: This is my problem, though. So this is a thing I run into. Maybe I don't know. Not you guys don't have to because I. How do I say this? I love the con.
--:-- Henry: I am a part of a person that understands that the con and the salesmanship of esoteric principles is as important as the principles themselves.
--:-- Henry: And that I love the con because I know that as a person that you can as a regular human being, if you understand it, you can learn how to use these types of skills that can genuinely help you as a human.
--:-- Amanda: Absolutely.
--:-- Henry: What's the difference between a con man, a con person and an actual spiritual leader?
--:-- Amanda: Well, like the sting, you know, you're just a thief. I don't know. Like, what's the difference?
--:-- Henry: But really, though, what's the difference between if the con can help you? Is he a criminal? Is it criminality if the con itself works to actually do something for you?
--:-- Amanda: So actually, the criminality dimension is really interesting because psychological coercion is itself not a crime. That's why that Keith Raniere conviction was so unprecedented or precedent setting, because his main way that he destroyed people or really, really negatively affected people was by lying and gaslighting and manipulating. And of course, he committed physical crimes, too, but not-
--:-- Henry: Yeah, he was a rapist.
--:-- Amanda: Yeah, he was a rapist. He was a sexual predator, but not to everyone. So if he had gone like 80 percent of the way, it would have been awful and tragic and destructive, but it wouldn't have been criminal. But he was founded guilty on charges of racketeering and sex trafficking. And so that was such an important conviction because those are concrete federal criminal crimes. Whereas so many people who I believe have really powerful cult followings these days, I'm talking like QAnon conspiratorialists, Instagram therapists who teeter up towards QAnon. Teal Swan's making our way back.
--:-- Henry: Teal Swan. Yes.
--:-- Amanda: Like we are speaking the same language. It's really hard to hold them accountable criminally, which is why becoming aware of this language, which, to your point, is the abstract key that is like or the it's the lock and the key. You know what I mean? It turns out it's all it is. It's not tools that are leading you to helpful information.
--:-- Henry: No, it's just what the information.
--:-- Amanda: Yeah. So I think the helpfulness in some of these groups, because they would not be alluring were they not on some level helpful. They provide what the theologian Tara Isabella Burton describes as what religion provides, which is ritual, meaning, identity, and community.
--:-- Henry: That's interesting.
--:-- Amanda: And we crave those things as human beings, especially during times of crisis and tumult and lack of agency and lack of control. And to your point about using some of these con artists' techniques for good, there are linguistic techniques that are deceptively simple that a lot of grifters really take advantage of unabashedly. Like even just the power of repetition, even just the power of rhyme can be so impactful in making something false seem true. And the awareness of that effect is not enough to help you resist it. But people can use it to spread true information, too. Like we need to make true information a little sexier, I think, with cult leader tactics.
--:-- Henry: Honestly, you're on a thing I've been saying for a while in my head. I've been thinking about the concept of a good idea doesn't just win on its own.
--:-- Henry: A good idea actually must be sold and has to beat a bad idea.
--:-- Henry: And it's really hard for the good people because they don't understand that you actually do need to take some tactics from the other side to beat the other side.
--:-- Amanda: Yeah, they might not be natural marketers.
--:-- Henry: How many sensitive, wonderful puff people have we met in our life that have, you know, like the people at the Puppies Beyond Borders?
--:-- Amanda: Oh, I'd join that one.
--:-- Henry: But you know what I mean? That's like a thing where they don't have the skills of a Stephen Miller.
--:-- Henry: But they're like, I could bring puppies to your house. I'm like, that's you know. Puppies need a Stephen Miller. Puppies need, you know, it's like. You know what I mean?
--:-- Henry: Like that's where they need an evil genius, an evil fucker. I don't even, he's not an evil genius. They're not evil geniuses. They're opportunists.
--:-- Henry: They need opportunists. People who are listening, people who can pick up on populist cues and package them. It kind of reminds me of how, like, the best apartments always have the ugliest photos on Craigslist.
--:-- Ed: Sure, yeah, yeah.
--:-- Henry: You know what I'm saying?
--:-- Ed: Exactly. My house looked like shit when I looked at the Zillow thing. You go in the thing, and you're like, oh, it's actually, we're going to do something with this.
--:-- Henry: Literally. But yeah, I think, you know, I can't fault anyone for falling for genius marketing. Like that's the whole thing. But it is fascinating to learn about the tactics that make false or dangerous information seem true. Like there's this cognitive bias called the rhyme as reason effect, which suggests that rhyming statements aid in processing fluency. They make information feel more organizable and thus easier to remember and thus true. So there was a study that found that participants rated the phrase "woes unite foes" as more truthful than "woes unite enemies" just because it rhymes.
--:-- Ed: Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. I mean, look at Al Sharpton.
--:-- Henry: Literally. No, honestly, that lilt, like that lilt that some of these folks use.
--:-- Henry: Yeah, the patter. I saw Al Sharpton speak one time, and I've never seen anyone have that much control over an audience of people. And it was just because of his rhythm and his way he knew when to elevate his voice and when to take it down. And it was like half the shit he was talking about was nonsense. But he had like 150 people ready to storm anything. And it was just wild to watch. Now, I want to ask you a question because we touched on religion a second ago a little bit. And as a staunch atheist, I look at most religions. I grew up in Catholic school. I look at Catholicism as like a type of cult. But I also understand the need for community and religion and stuff like that. The Catholic church, I can't stand, but it helped my mother out when she needed some stuff at times.
--:-- Ed: I do love stained glass, yeah.
--:-- Henry: I'm fine with it. It fucked with my mother at the Catholic church as far as I'm concerned.
--:-- Ed: Go fucking self-esteem, yeah.
--:-- Henry: For sure, for sure, for sure. But how do we feel about like obviously like a Joel Osteen? Like is he a cult leader or is he just a thief?
--:-- Amanda: I mean, this is the type of semantic question that I'm always going to filibuster, not even filibuster, but sort of play with and reckon with because this term cult is so subjective and so context dependent. Looking at the etymology of it is a really fascinating way to understand it because the word cult didn't have such sinister undertones always. For example, I think it's so fascinating that in some romance languages, the word cult actually means what we would conceive of as a sect. And the word sect actually means cult. So it's reversed. Basically, the earliest usage of the term cult could be found in writings in the 16th, 17th century. And back then it just meant homage paid to divinity or offerings made to win over the gods. Because it used to be a little bit more segmented and people with the religions were a little bit more regional. You'd go to your local saint and then you'd become sort of the—especially when the Christian framework.
--:-- Ed: Yes, it was more like grassrootsy and ritualistic.
--:-- Amanda: And then as time went on in the United States in particular, a hotspot HQ of cultish belief, in my opinion, which we can talk about later. We fucking really did it.
--:-- Henry: Yeah, we really, really did.
--:-- Amanda: But by the 1800s, the word cult came to describe groups that were deviant, but not necessarily nefarious. And then it really wasn't until the 50s and 60s and 70s, this time that some scholars refer to as the Fourth Great Awakening, the word cult was kind of used to lambast some of these alternative spiritual groups that were coming up during that time, this peak cult era that we think of. But I do find it interesting. Immediately you could see, just like a way a cult leader does, that the change of the term, probably gamified by interested parties, other religions, the major religions, the government, all that kind of stuff. They see, oh, people are all breaking off.
--:-- Henry: They're experimenting. They're in their little pods. So we try to keep people together. The more we have little offshoot groups, that's bad for us. So we're going to call them cults.
--:-- Ed: Yeah. Those are bad to be in that.
--:-- Amanda: Totally. And I also think it's funny that as soon—well, I'll put it this way. Basically, that is absolutely true. And yet the word cult was still not on the mainstream radar. It had not taken a seat at the table of everyday English, not until the Manson family murders of 1969 and then the Jonestown Massacre of 1978. And that's really when the word cult became this national symbol of fear. And that gave way to the satanic panic of the 1980s and things like that. But I find it really fascinating that as soon as the word cult became something that everybody knew to be sinister, it also became cool. And that's when we develop terms like cult followed and cult classic to define Deadheads and things like that. So this word is so context dependent and sort of wiggly. And that's why, when I talk about these groups, unless we're literally talking about Jonestown, QAnon, groups like that, if I want to have a productive conversation and not make people feel shamed or shut down conversations completely, I'll either get really, really specific with my language, call it like a new age, high control conspiracy theory, or I'll hedge my language and just say that the group is cultish.
--:-- Henry: Honestly, I do think that it's a good way to kind of put it because people can't—I get it. Everything's a cult. Now we're in the post-ironic cult. Now we're in the cults that are openly saying that they're a cult because they think it's cute. Also very interesting, like the Zizians, that new crew of fucking villains on the scene. A good old-fashioned—I'm glad we got some trans representation in there, actually, I think it's really nice.
--:-- Ed: Henry, we told you, this is none of your Zizness.
--:-- Henry: I'm just—hey, hey.
--:-- Ed: None of your Zizness. Don't you fucking derail me.
--:-- Henry: That's so silly. Don't you fucking derail me.
--:-- Ed: I am so into this game where we replace one letter.
--:-- Henry: Yeah, Henry, yeah.
--:-- Ed: I am so happy about it. It really works. That just makes me light up like a twinkle toe.
--:-- Henry: Oh, my God. But these guys are—it's not centralized. It's another one of these new features that we're starting to see where they don't need a compound in Uruguay anymore.
--:-- Ed: That's right. No, it is really interesting how, you know, we traditionally, or I guess since that era in the 70s and 80s, when everybody started to understand what a cult was, we traditionally thought of them as a compound where people dance around barefoot, like the Midsommar thing.
--:-- Ed: And then Heaven's Gate became the new proto model.
--:-- Henry: Exactly, exactly. The cult of the 90s, beginning of digital technology. Spacey-eyed, super skinny losers. It's the truth. And I mean this in the nicest way possible. It became the way, which I also think speaks to your point of why it begins, people really start to think, I can't ever be in a cult.
--:-- Ed: Exactly, exactly.
--:-- Henry: And so we now in the digital age, we fail to realize that the new compound is a forum. It's a comment section. We don't—
--:-- Amanda: It's in your head, dude. It is in your head. It's in your fucking head. It's in your head. But yeah, we don't necessarily need one single charismatic leader with a face. QAnon, I mean, we could argue all day about who the leader of QAnon is.
--:-- Henry: Yeah, neither one of them are Mr. Charisma.
--:-- Henry: Well, that's right, too. And I think we talked about this in our incels interview. The standard for charisma for an influencer type cult leader is way lower.
--:-- Henry: Keith Raniere can suck my dick.
--:-- Henry: He's such a has-been, low-talent. Where is this guy even getting—I mean, I guess obviously, he pulled in Smallville.
--:-- Ed: He just pulled in Smallville. She's a flip. She's doing that a flip. Tell me.
--:-- Henry: I don't understand. First of all, pulled in Smallville, she's a—what is—give me any kind of context.
--:-- Ed: I know, we're speaking the language of Coltis.
--:-- Henry: Alright, so Allie, what's her name? What's her name? Allison Mack.
--:-- Henry: Allie, we're on a first nickname, basically. Love her. She is—Keith Raniere did a—he has a bit of a sex cult called NXIVM, it's over. There was an HBO doc. The New Babylon of the world, which is Birmingham, New York, which is not. And then he had this lady, they branded a bunch of people, it was a whole spiritual cult, a lot of midnight volleyball. Acapella. Sashes. That's his whole thing, but Ellie Mack was like his main right evil second banana henchman. And now she got out and she's gonna—she is in the process of flipping, but she lives in Brooklyn. And now there's like pap pictures of her. Have you seen her getting papped out?
--:-- Henry: What's pap? Like getting paparazzi.
--:-- Henry: I was kidding. Come on, man.
--:-- Ed: No, I'm kidding.
--:-- Amanda: But I think that is so interesting because I think it does have to do with the irony that is the most celebrated attitude on social media right now. If she could, I think in this culture where irony and humor is so celebrated, she almost could completely rebrand her reputation if she played it right.
--:-- Henry: Like, you know, what do we do? I don't know. Because as a 41-year-old man, I've watched things go from ironic back to full-throated, everybody feels things again, back to ironic. Now we're back, and now we're in a post-post-ironic, whatever. I feel bad for the Zoomers. They're not allowed to be cringe.
--:-- Henry: They're not allowed to feel vulnerable.
--:-- Ed: No, I know. No, it's fucked up.
--:-- Henry: Yeah, they're not allowed to be vulnerable. That's our fault, by the way.
--:-- Ed: Yeah, of course.
--:-- Henry: No, I know. They're all just making stuff up and they're all like pretend—I mean this as possible, I want to help—but it feels like a lot of the younger generation are sort of doing this thing where they are acting very mature without having experienced a single thing.
--:-- Ed: I've seen it too, yes. Where they are acting very like—and it's hard because what do we do for these kids? Oh my god, how do we help these kids? Because they're not going to understand because—I believe, believe me, I regress when you get a little older.
--:-- Ed: I mean, look at me. I'm wearing fucking colorful clothes.
--:-- Ed: I'm dressing like I'm 14.
--:-- Henry: Yeah. But it's different. It's like a thing where it—how do we teach them at some level this irony thing is going to kill you?
--:-- Amanda: I know. I know. It's so hard. Because I'm the first one guilty. It's really tough. And we did recently an episode on the cult of Mark Zuckerberg where the true, true evil. He is like a little bit of an evil genius and an opportunist.
--:-- Amanda: But Instagram is for old people at this point. But I really blame the surveillance culture of social media and the addiction absorption cycle on social media for so much of the lack of experimenting and lack of freedom and lack of liberation that a lot of young people feel. I sometimes do talks on college campuses. And I find that, first of all, there's such a split in culture. There's so much polarization on college campuses and also higher ed is dwindling in a way that is so sad. But I do find that among my readers or potential readers or the folks that I'm talking to, there is—and this is beautiful in a way, but also heartbreaking in a way—there is such anxiety surrounding potential to cause harm that people are so afraid of making a mistake, of being cringe, of saying something they haven't yet already heard, that I find that people aren't allowed to be inauthentic in an actually authentic way, if that makes sense.
--:-- Henry: I had to pretend to be somebody to become somebody.
--:-- Henry: But you're not an actor anymore.
--:-- Ed: No, but I—Fuck you! I'm getting back in! I'm getting back in! No, I don't mean to do this into this. I'm sorry. That was a bit of an outburst.
--:-- Amanda: It's a permission structure. It's less emotion.
--:-- Ed: I'm getting back in! But I got to be—I got to pretend in a vacuum.
--:-- Henry: Yeah, exactly. In a vacuum.
--:-- Ed: I got to go be—I am very thankful for the years that we got to do sketch comedy in Tallahassee. Nobody had any idea what we're doing. I'm very thankful the first couple years of Murderfest was no one could see.
--:-- Henry: Yeah, there was no internet. I didn't even have an email address. That was our old sketch group. We've been doing comedy together for 22 years. It's like one of those where that's what's hard is that so now you're naturally as a younger person looking to model yourself off of somebody higher than you. You're looking to do it. And what do we do when it's only grifters? Even the ones that are on the good side of the grift, you have to sort of understand that they're grifters first.
--:-- Henry: Because there's so much incentive to be overconfident online and we have phrases like shoot your shot, crush it, kill it. War language, the language of violence to incentivize people. "Let's go" is the most aggravating fucking thing for me. I can't even deal with it. It's so high temperature.
--:-- Amanda: I really do feel grateful that I was allowed to come of age in an environment where there wasn't so much chooser's paradox. Now we see so many potential identities online to triangulate amongst. And that's really overwhelming. I think it paves the way for culty grifters to come in and be like, "You know what, you should be a glossier girl. And this is what a glossier does." Do you know what that is? Glossier, it's a makeup brand. Never mind, let me choose a different reference. Goop. Let's do Goop. It'll be like, "You're a Goop girl. And this is what a Goop girl eats. And this is what a Goop girl—these are the podcasts that a Goop girl listens to. This is what a Goop girl reads. This is how Goop girl looks." Then all of a sudden it takes the pressure off of that chooser's paradox. And again, it isn't always bad, but my favorite way to participate in cultishness is to have a finger in a bunch of different culty pies and to experience irrationality and ritual and mysticism within the confines of a space and then be able to tap out and do something a little bit culty elsewhere. And when a group doesn't allow you to have one foot out the door, I think that's when it becomes a little too cultish for comfort.
--:-- Henry: Oh, yeah. It's like, you know, you stop being friends with someone that tells you you can't be friends with a certain people.
--:-- Henry: You know, it's one of those things. But I think it's super important for people to remember that you can experience any idea that you want. It doesn't mean you got to take it with you too.
--:-- Amanda: Totally. You can go learn the idea and then leave the idea behind.
--:-- Henry: I know. I think that's so important to communicate.
--:-- Amanda: I actually heard it—I was doing an Instagram live today with—which is like lol, so choogy—and saying "choogy" is choogy, and we're gonna get past this moment now—but I was doing it—cringe, cringe, and it's okay. As long as you don't name your child Adolf Hitler, you can do anything you want. Anything you want, as long as you don't name your child Nutella.
--:-- Ed: That's crazy. Crazy. Nutella's fine. That's a nice name. I wonder if Nutella themselves has anything to do with it.
--:-- Henry: Honestly, I bet you they do. Those goddamn Dutch hazelnut bastards.
--:-- Ed: Genuinely, did they trademark it like Paris Hilton and "that's hot"? They're like, you can't—I don't know. Any fucking way. Maybe they have to tell you if it looks like a Nutella. I'm going to be thinking about that for the next 10 minutes.
--:-- Amanda: Okay, but I was doing this dumbass Instagram live. No, it was very special. Anyway, I was in conversation with Jane Borden, who's a writer who wrote a book about Utah called Cults Like Us and Apocalyptic System. She's cool. And she was saying that a cult leader—and there are so many cool axioms and quotes to help define what a cult leader is because it actually is, again, kind of nebulous—but she was saying a cult leader is halfway between an abusive lover and a dictator.
--:-- Amanda: An abusive one-on-one lover. And that's the type of cult that I've certainly been in.
--:-- Ed: Well, yeah, that's even just high control. Just what you can be in a high control group of two.
--:-- Amanda: Literally. Yes, absolutely. And the terminology is different. What might be described as grooming in a one-on-one dynamic could be described as brainwashing in a cult dynamic. But so many of the techniques are the same. And I love all of those little axioms and aphorisms and maxims. Sorry, I read the thesaurus this morning. But I love all those different terms to describe—
--:-- Henry: You use good words.
--:-- Amanda: Thank you so much. Good to me and nothing. It's a defense mechanism. But I love all the little phrases that we have to help us orient ourselves around what a cult is. Quotes like, "Cult plus time equals religion." Or, "A cult is a group where the leader thinks he can talk to God. A religion is a group where that leader is dead." And it's just so interesting because it just illuminates how in the digital age in particular, the definition of what a cult can be is, I think, changing.
--:-- Henry: Can I ask some current people that I'm worried about? And I want to get your opinion on this since you're kind of an expert.
--:-- Amanda: Oh, I hope I understand the references.
--:-- Henry: Well, I mean, they're very out in the open. The first one's Kanye and what's going on in that warehouse. What do you know?
--:-- Amanda: Oh, my God.
--:-- Henry: Doesn't he just do—it's like everyone's hearing calisthenics being done and music being pumped into Koreatown. I think Kanye has officially crossed into the event horizon.
--:-- Amanda: I think so.
--:-- Henry: Oh, yee-yee, by the way.
--:-- Amanda: Oh, yee-yee, pardon me.
--:-- Henry: Yee-yee, please.
--:-- Amanda: He changed it today. I can. The rebrand. The resurrection.
--:-- Henry: Yee-yee. Sorry.
--:-- Amanda: Oh, yee-yee.
--:-- Henry: Aye, aye, aye. Two yees.
--:-- Amanda: Aye, aye, aye.
--:-- Henry: It should be illegal. It should be illegal. It should be illegal. Just out. Well, he's fucked.
--:-- Henry: Yeah. I think sometimes about when a celebrity crosses from cult followed into cult leader. And I think Kanye is crossing the threshold. It's the whole thing of, do you go crazy because this shit drives you crazy? Or do you—because I don't—I feel like Kanye, unfortunately, wants to be a cult leader.
--:-- Henry: I feel like he wants it too much. That's a huge part of it. It's like a thing where you're like—
--:-- Amanda: But he's got a crew following him.
--:-- Henry: Yeah. But they're all on the payroll. They're all dressing up together. He's got black KKK outfits.
--:-- Amanda: I know, but again, that's just—they're having fun. That's the funnest part of his day, he gets to put the—he had a school that was shut down by the government. It was a bad school.
--:-- Henry: I think cults are supposed to be fun.
--:-- Amanda: Yeah, in a way, right?
--:-- Henry: Yeah. I always kind of think about that with Scientology where I'm so jealous. The idea of you put on your space suit and you got to go in there and you got all your lapel awards and you go in and you're an admiral of a spaceship and it doesn't matter that you look like a pear, you're going to goddamn space and you're fucking not gay anymore, that's for certain. I'm sure it feels so satisfying to have a hierarchy to ascend, instead of just living in pure chaos like the rest of us dogs.
--:-- Amanda: But yeah, I mean, I don't know. When thinking about celebrities and other public figures and who has officially crossed over into that dangerous territory, I think about who's using the worst of cultish language. And one of the techniques that signals a red flag to me is the thought terminating cliche. That's a term that this psychologist coined in 1961, this guy named Robert J. Lifton. And it describes a kind of stock expression that's easily memorized, easily repeated and aimed at shutting down independent thinking or questioning. This is the number one most nefarious technique that all cult leaders have in their arsenal. So in Synanon, the group that my dad spent his teenage years in, the key thought terminating cliche was "act as if." So if anyone wanted to question a protocol or express any kind of pushback because they were feeling cognitive dissonance about their membership in Synanon, someone would say "act as if." And it kind of meant fake it till you make it. It was basically like, "Oh, you're questioning this because you don't yet understand Chuck Diedrich's vision. You're not deep in and out."
--:-- Henry: You're not deep in and out.
--:-- Amanda: So you need to act as if you understand it until you do. And then certainly you will because Chuck's wisdom—and this reminds me of so much of what you were saying earlier about the pattern getting sucked down the whirlpool—eventually you will understand it. And it was really effective because if you've sunk 10 years of your life and so much money into this group that was promised to be transcendent and it's not feeling that way anymore, you're going to be highly motivated to want to trust that thought terminating cliche.
--:-- Amanda: So when pushback is met with a phrase like that—and we hear them in everyday life, like phrases like "boys will be boys," or "everything happens for a reason," "it's all in God's plan," "it is what it is."
--:-- Henry: "It is what it is." Literally.
--:-- Amanda: Those are all thought terminating cliches. In QAnon, one that I hear all the time is someone poking a hole in some kind of logic and someone's like, "Oh, you need to do your research." The "do your research" thing really hits on what we were talking about on our episode together, the Incel episode.
--:-- Henry: The concept of secret knowledge.
--:-- Amanda: Yeah. That you don't have access to. And it's literally in Google. Morons have just really weaponized it on the Internet.
--:-- Henry: Because the Internet's nothing but gate kept little corners that you don't really understand and you feel outward. I feel like that's also part of you and I, maybe even what our fascination is into this, is that I looked at something like Scientology and there's always just a little part of me that's like—
--:-- Henry: What if it's in the center of this thing? What if the answer I'm looking for is in the center of this little thing here?
--:-- Henry: But what are you looking for? Your life's great. What the fuck do you care about?
--:-- Amanda: I know. Fucking ultimate knowledge. You don't have power and knowledge. All of those things are true at the same time. It's like, yes, I love my life. I appreciate so much. And yet, I don't know whether it's capitalism or just the existential pain of being a human on Earth and having awareness of our own mortality or whatever, a combination of the both. But there is always more that I'm going to want to know and find out. And it always feels like the secret to life is just around the corner.
--:-- Henry: It is how it feels.
--:-- Amanda: But that's why it's very lucky you wrote this book, because the secret of life is actually in this book.
--:-- Henry: It is. It's in Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell.
--:-- Amanda: No. And the answer's in here.
--:-- Henry: Yeah. I do have another person I want to ask about, if that's all right.
--:-- Henry: How do we feel about Mr. Beast?
--:-- Amanda: I don't trust this motherfucker. Oh, my God. I'm terrified of this guy.
--:-- Ed: Are we taking shots at Mr. Beast?
--:-- Henry: I just saw someone. Everyone was like, oh, are we? We have an episode coming up. We have an episode coming up. I can't wait to listen. This guy is terrifying.
--:-- Amanda: Can I also ask something genuinely? What's the difference between a bad boss and a cult leader? Because that's the thing. Mr. Beast seems to be kind of in this world.
--:-- Henry: You can quit a bad boss.
--:-- Amanda: I do think when you go down the checklist that folks like Robert J. Lifton have put together, one that always pops out at me is exit costs. How high is the barrier to exit? And what do you feel like you'll lose when you leave?
--:-- Amanda: Sometimes it's just psychological. I don't know. We haven't recorded the episode yet. And actually, my co-host Reese—sweet Reese, love me so much, love both of my culty hosties Reese and Chelsea, everybody please go check them out—but Reese is going to be handling that episode and I just can't wait to listen and learn more. Because the weird thing is that because the podcast is about the cultish groups we all follow, we'll just never run out of topics and I can never know about them all. So I'm excited to tune into that one as a listener.
--:-- Henry: No, honestly, that's very fascinating. I would like to listen to that too because he's somebody that I don't trust. I got my eye on this motherfucker. Especially when he did that humble brag where he's like, "You know, I actually don't have any money myself. I had to borrow money from my mother to do blah, blah, blah." And you're like, what the fuck are you talking about?
--:-- Amanda: The performative populism.
--:-- Henry: Piece of shit. Fuck you. I get so mad. Literally, no one flipped me out the most about him. I was like, I had never heard about him. And then I had my godson staying with me. He's like, "Can we watch Mr. Beast videos?" I'm like, "Sure, whatever the fuck you want. I don't give a shit." And then he puts it on. I'm like, 100 million views. It's so wild. What the fuck are you talking about? Every video? I'm trying to deal with the fucking devil. Like, what is going on?
--:-- Amanda: I'm so curious to know what's in your YouTube algorithms right now.
--:-- Henry: Oh, my shit's all Disney stuff.
--:-- Ed: Are you at Disney at all? This stuff's so aggravating and upsetting.
--:-- Henry: Body cam footage.
--:-- Ed: Yeah. Okay, cool.
--:-- Henry: All I've been watching every single day of the Lori Vallow trial and P. Diddy trial.
--:-- Henry: And all my goblins.
--:-- Ed: That's cool. Yeah.
--:-- Henry: It's just funk music in Disney for me. And dogs.
--:-- Henry: With the Diddy trial, do you think that now that they're trying to get him on the racketeering, I find it interesting that if you look at sort of what Diddy did versus what Keith Raniere did, they are both similar, but it's interesting to see because he has no central doctrine. It's just about glistening pornography.
--:-- Henry: That's all he wanted to make.
--:-- Amanda: I mean, I do perceive—is that what we're calling him? Sean Combs. Yeah, I do perceive him as a cult leader. When some documentary came out right before the trial that I watched late at night, I did not have good dreams that night. But I was like, wow, this feels like a cult story.
--:-- Henry: You should listen to the trial footage.
--:-- Amanda: I will. It's very, very interesting because what you're seeing is the defense and everybody else doing the same thing is basically the constant, "Oh, she benefited. So there's no way she could have been involuntary."
--:-- Amanda: That literally feels like defenses that people make of cult leaders.
--:-- Henry: It really does. It was all voluntary.
--:-- Amanda: Well, you know, I do understand at one point. But when you hear about the actual detail of the freak offs—
--:-- Amanda: It's like, oh, no. I'm not saying from my own self that it's all voluntary.
--:-- Ed: You're allowed to like freak offs. You're allowed to want to make and do and produce freak offs, Amanda. That's not your fault.
--:-- Amanda: Oh, my God. But no, it's the—there just can't be a guard at the door. It's the—literally, where is the line?
--:-- Amanda: The hallway video with Diddy shows exactly what you get. That is. Those were the exit costs.
--:-- Amanda: And that is the crime.
--:-- Amanda: And then Keith Raniere, same thing. You can have a bunch of skinny women in a field if you want. Sure. But once you start branding them, that's when everybody's going to get real upset. Literally.
--:-- Henry: Like, I should make a Coachella Midsommar Venn diagram.
--:-- Ed: You really should do it.
--:-- Henry: And then we should really take it back and we should be monetizing these brands. Honestly.
--:-- Ed: You really should be wearing a shirt with the brand.
--:-- Henry: Sounds like a cult brand image.
--:-- Amanda: Yeah. I'm talking about, like, with the irons.
--:-- Henry: I do. Ay, ay, ay.
--:-- Amanda: Yeah. I do need to get more into merch. Y'all are so good at your careers.
--:-- Henry: Yeah, you do. We'll talk a little bit later.
--:-- Amanda: I know I enjoy. My Eddie's Deli shirt. I love it. I love it. New merch. New merch alert.
--:-- Henry: But speaking of—this isn't merch.
--:-- Amanda: No, this is work that you've done here. I do care. I do care that it's pretty. Honestly, you did a good job.
--:-- Henry: As you should. You should. You're an elegant woman.
--:-- Amanda: Oh, my God.
--:-- Henry: And you wanted to look elegant.
--:-- Amanda: No one's ever called me that.
--:-- Henry: You're a very elegant lady. Look at this.
--:-- Amanda: Thank you so much. What would you do if a bunch of people just started following you and were like, "Anything you say, I'm into it"? Would you denounce it?
--:-- Henry: I would totally denounce it. It's very stressful to me.
--:-- Henry: I would. Sure, yeah. I bet she'd. Oh, yeah. When does Last Podcast and I Love become a cult? I've been working on it.
--:-- Ed: Well, this lady over here.
--:-- Henry: You guys are going to come to Henry Zebrowski's Thought Academy. I'm going to make your thoughts better.
--:-- Amanda: I would love to.
--:-- Henry: And that is the thing, and we've been saying this the whole time, like we critique what we love.
--:-- Amanda: Yeah, that's the whole thing.
--:-- Henry: We like what we love, and that is the lifelong journey that I'm going to be on, is teetering every second. I'm just going to be on the edge of falling into a cult, starting a cult, and I won't apologize. Henry Zebrowski's Thought Academy, fake breasts for your thoughts.
--:-- Ed: Fake breasts for your thoughts. I'm in.
--:-- Henry: Your thoughts are so loud. Where do I spill my blood? Your thoughts are a carpenter's dream. Here comes the thought doctor.
--:-- Amanda: I'm so there. Check out the language of fanaticism. *Cultish*, Amanda Montell. Smart lady, huh?
--:-- Amanda: Smart fucking lady.
--:-- Henry: A smart lady, if you can imagine it. Take a look at it, huh?
--:-- Ed: Sounds like a cult podcast.
--:-- Henry: Check it out where all podcasts are found. Now you gotta get out of here before our studio catches on fire. We have called ice on ourselves.
--:-- Henry: Yes, it is just because, honestly, I'm looking for a break. Honestly, just a little priz time. Take me, ice!
--:-- Ed: Yeah, I got crushed ice.
