Men in Gorilla Suits Ep. 121: Last Seen…Joining Cults

Oh, cults...you all so wacky! With your indoctrinating and control and all those other culty things. Which makes one wonder...where is the line drawn when it comes to cults?

With Josh Duggar in the news, recently , one must even question if even Christianity can have cultish sects. (Seen people defending him and molestation -- gah, people...what the fuck is wrong with you?! And should you be like, "It's liberals picking on conservatives!" instead of, "Holy shit, that's wrong," -- at least Christopher (and he's guessing, Shawn) would like to go on record as saying Roman Polanski (and those who'd work with him -- [probably] mostly liberals), [probably] Woody Allen, Jimmy Page, and a whole lotta other famous people are also vile and cannot be defended, so stop trying to defend a child molester, neo-cons! And also: we don't give atheists a free ride in this episode, so chill if you think we're picking on Christians. People in clusters can be the most awesome thing on the planet...and the scariest!)

The point: cults are probably much more common than many of us like to consider. So...it seemed a worthy topic for the week.

We begin by talking about the first time we ever heard of a cult, and then move on to why humans seem so fascinated by cults. After that, we discuss the most disturbing cult story we remember hearing or seeing. But it's not all doomsday and craziness -- we also talk about the silliest cults we've heard about.

But it's mostly doomsday and craziness because cults are dangerous things. We chat about the most dangerous cults we know of, and then talk about groups that aren't technically cults, but that we'd consider very cult-like. (If not full-blown cults in their own rights.)

The big question is what makes someone join a cult? We talk about that before talking about if we've ever known anyone who's actually been in a cult.

Is there a cult either of us even partially kind of agree with? And if we had to join a cult, find out which one we'd join.

We close out this episode talking about what kind of cult we'd start (what we'd call it, what the basic tenets would be...all kinds of nifty things like that) if we had to form a cult of our own devising.

If you're so inclined, join the Cult of a Divine Gorilla Suit by leaving a comment about this episode. We promise a ride on a comet, or something as equally far-fetched. (Although humans have landed a spacecraft on a comet, so maybe one day we can all don Nike space boots and one-up the Heaven's Gate cult with a groovy comet ride that doesn't kill us. Unless, you know...space mishap!)