Citation Needed - Celestial Seasonings and Other Culty Companies

Episode Date: January 24, 2024

Celestial Seasonings founders Mo Siegel, Peggy Clute, Wyck Hay, and Lucinda Ziesing started gathering herbs and flowers in the mountains around Boulder and selling them to local health food stores in 1969.[2][3]

Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, the podcast where we choose to subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts, because this is the internet and that's how it works now. I'm Noah and I'm going to be this cult's charismatic leader this week, but what's a cult without a few disciples? First up, two guys who aren't catching that comment if it doesn't slow the fuck down, Cecil and he will, however, lasso the moon for you. I like Ted Lasso. I wasn't ready. I wasn't ready for that

I just Only the show were You said that What is the budget Jones down Eli and Tom, excuse me for wanting to go out smiling. No, OK. I just wanted to have a little fun. Hey, putting the jungle and jungle juice since 1978. Fuck yeah.

And before we dive in, I want to thank our patrons, patrons. Thanks. Sometimes just straight up. Sometimes there's always had to be a thematic bit. Yeah. So so and of course, if you'd like to learn how to join their race, be sure it always had to be a thematic bit. Yeah. So, and of course, if you'd like to learn how to join their ranks, be sure to stick around to the end of the show. And with that out of the way, tell us, he, what person, place, thing, concept, phenomenon,

or event we'll be talking about today. We're going to be talking about companies that are heavily tied to religious cults. Interesting. Okay. So how did you land on that topic? Well, Noah, like all my amazing, great, genius ideas, this one started when I was doing some very serious journalism, like I do, about international commerce

and also the metaphysical underpinnings of our universe. So I went on Instagram. And you fuck with me for Bill Bryson and you're, okay. All right. Well, thanks to some guy on Instagram doing, you know those obnoxious like one man, two character videos they all do. I don't like those. One of those guys was doing that. And I learned that Celestial Seasonings T is run by a crazy person who is a prominent leader in a cult. And I learned that the same goes for a bunch of other companies

when I did a little bit more research. Even if you take away the cults called all the major religions in the world, it's still pretty hard to avoid spending money that eventually lands in the bank account of a sociopath who nobody would have sex with until he turned himself into a magical godhead wizard or something like that. Okay, patrons, do not listen to that man. I'm unlikely to turn into a wizard. Okay, just magical Godhead for time. And pretty much every time with those magical Godhead wizards, they start selling stuff. Apparently, that's like most of capitalism. So we're going to talk about some of the culty companies and their backstories.

Okay. But if we don't dedicate a section to everywhere that says, we're like a family here but doesn't have paid maternity leave, I do this episode under protest. Yeah. Well, to be clear, you're talking about companies that start as cults, right? So as opposed to like Apple and Tesla. Yeah. So before we get into the cult of sleepy time herbs,

I'll give you some of the other examples I found of companies that are tied to cults. And again, I'm a very serious podcast journalist. So, you know, but I'm serious. I didn't get all my information on Instagram. I also had a listicle on Ranker. So let's start with a citation needed topic. Instagram I also had a listicle on rancor Citation needed topic all the way back in January of 2018 the Challenger turns out that whole disaster was thanks to cult leader and

convicted sex criminal Warren Jeffs He's the president of the fundamentalist Latter-day Saints, or FLDS. To be clear, that's not the perfectly reasonable LDS church that's known for sex crimes and rampant fraud. This is the fundamentalist offshoot of the LDS church that's known for also sex crimes and rampant fraud. The FLDS split off in 1890 because God told them that you have to have abusive polygamy and the main LDS church in 1890 was ending that practice. Yeah, we're toning down the abusive to just damaging. It's not you, it's me.

It's me. It's not y'all, it's me in this instance. Yeah, it is. me in this instance. Yeah. Yeah. So the Mormon church of 1890, that recognized black people having souls 88 years later, Chris, they were too woke for the FLDS. That's our context for this cult. Warren Jeffs, his father, Rulan Jeffs ruled the cult for decades from their fortified compound in Utah where Rulan received messages from God about the extreme importance of that abusive polygamy. You know just if your message of eternal love means you have to breach

it from a fortified compound maybe you're a little Waco. Waco. Wait, you don't need fortified compounds. You just don't need those if you're cool. So during his time as the leader guy, Rulon amassed 50 wives, many of whom were children. Oh, Warren eventually took over in 2002 and did lots of those same things. He's currently serving a life sentence in prison for a bunch of that. But he's also terrible because he murdered seven astronauts and almost murdered Big Bird from Sesame Street. That's right. The challenger was his fault. During the early 80s Warren noticed the economic opportunity that's afforded by having a giant unpaid workforce of

cult members and he started several companies. That includes a manufacturing company called HydroPak, which got the government contract to supply NASA with O-Rings. They were really bad O-Rings as it turned out, and the challenge exploded. More importantly, don't worry if you really enjoy the water bottles and performance hydration reservoirs, whatever the fuck that means from HydroPak, that's actually a different company than New HydroPak. The bad one changed its name to Western Precision. Well, and then some other company was like, well, finally we can have the name of the guys that blew up the challenge!

Why? That was a weird move, yeah. Okay, but now that we're on the subject of companies to consider avoiding, yeah, the FLDS super bad, but so is the regular LDS. And they want a bunch of stuff too. Major companies with ties to the Mormon Church include Marriott Hotels, Black and Decker and Eli's favorite airline, JetBlue. They have Frey Snacks and TV.

Don't ruin this for me. Then write, don't you ruin this for me. Was Black and Decker originally called laminite and decker? Was that? All right, next up, we have the cults of breakfast cereal. There's more than one. So long time listeners might remember the story of John Harvey Kellogg from way back in episode 11.

So in case anybody missed it, John Harvey Kellogg from way back in episode 11. So in case anybody missed it, John Harvey Kellogg started a cult based on Seventh Day Adventism as well as the Battle Creek Sanitarium. He also started that where he claimed to cure all ailments using a combination of eugenics, celibacy, and corn flakes from his brother's cereal company. If you followed his advice of chewing every bite exactly 40 times and being white, I guess, you'd be happy forever.

Which is why John is still alive. John, welcome to the show. Ladies and gentlemen, John Harvey Kellogg. That was so cool. What's the voice for him? Doesn't matter. So here's the new serial cult that I just learned about. Apparently, the Purina Company has a very similar origin story to Kellogg's.

It starts in the late 1800s with a self-proclaimed fitness guru named Webster Edgrily, who started a pseudoscience propaganda mill called the Rauston Health Club. And just like Kellogg, the business model for Edgily was white power and crunchy cereal, like seriously, both of them. One of his followers was the owner of Purina, and Edgily wangled a deal that made him a partner in the company, and the company renamed itself to Rostin Purina. And he had the company start making whole grain cereal to cleanse whatever.

Using the profits, Edurley established a cult community for his followers in Eli Bosnick's Hopewell, New Jersey that he called a whites-only utopia. The core principle was creating a new race of humans that was free from, quote, impurities. Yeah, and y'all, I checked around my neighborhood. Good news, he did not succeed. So a couple other details about Edgerly. He was also a prolific author who wrote books on a variety of very important topics, including sex magnetism and how to become immortal and acting. How to because died in 1926, how to become a moral. But, you know, those who can't teach, I guess.

So, yeah. So in terms of the acting, Eli, I'm curious to hear your thoughts about this acting stuff. In Edgley's book called Lessons in the Art of Acting, he made a big list of possible emotions and he explained how to portray each one as an actor. For example, to do frenzy, you just need to, quote, incline the head backward, looking up and clutch the hair with both hands. Well, I'm glad you asked, Heath, because actually gesture-based acting was the standard. No, no, nobody cares.

Obviously, I was kidding. Just do it in your essay or whatever. Maybe I will do a whole essay on it. OK, but seriously, what did Stanislavski say? What? So Stanislavski is the first person who advises actors to work from the inside out, right? Where I suppose from the outside in because you were just imitated. Oh, I thought you were going to interrupt me in this.

I was so shocked. I really wanted to end it. I really wanted to end it again. But I kind of wanted to show together friends. I feel like you noticed that. Boo, nerd. I fucking tell you the score in the Michigan show. I've been looking for information in the Michigan game right now.

Learning is dumb. Learning stupid. Living on. I hate you. ES started in the Michigan game right now. Learning is dumb. Learning is stupid. I hate you. ESPN.com has numbers for me to read to you. Slurred. OK, moving on. Also worth noting about Edgily, he invented a language. Sort of. He called it Adam Man Tongue.

He chose the name because Adam and tongue is quote the language of man founded upon the primitive Adam Roots and terms that are the watch words of universal speech. It doesn't mean anything That was nonsense in English and then he tried to do another language Jordan Peterson, but nonsense in English and then he tried to do another language. I think Jordan Peterson. But I didn't. Yeah, could you actually speak that in Kermit? Maybe I would. Maybe some of that would have been much better.

Yeah, I actually posted a sample. You guys could see it here. It's a sample from his Adam Mann language book. So you had an idea of what it looked like. It's very silly. Yeah. Podcast listener, you can't see this, but Heath has posted a conversation about the weather. And to edge really credit, conversations about the weather do become more interesting when they're incredibly difficult to read.

I guess. Yeah, sure. There are words in this that are spelled W Q M N Q N and W Delta one H theta. Also, if any listener looks this up, I want you to know that this is literally how every script looks after Eli writes in it. This is it. I'm amazed Noah could tell this wasn't just jokes I had written. I know this is functionally indistinguishable from a text from my teen son, so I don't know.

That's a silly thing. functionally indistinguishable from a text from my teen son. So I don't Yeah. So that guy who invented that language was in charge of the Ralston Purina company, which made pet food and cereal for decades. Their cereal portfolio included checks and most importantly cookie crisp cookie. Crisp is pretty fucking important. Absolutely. Yeah. Here's the thing. Don't worry. You can still eat those. In 1997, the cereal division got purchased by General Mills. And I'm sure there's nothing evil happening with that giant food company. It'll be fine. And in terms of the pet food, that part of Purina is now owned by Nestle. And Nestle's biggest shareholder is BlackRock, the giant multinational investment firm. Again, nothing to worry about.

Good tippers. And one fact, according to Nestle's official corporate history, they like disavowed their own history. According to them, Webster Edgley does not exist. That's a hoax. Instead, they attribute the name Raulston to a fictional character they made up called Dr. Raulston. Huh? Nestle, I know that it's like the 20th most evil thing you do, but I don't think you just get to pretend you're former owner is a defunct mascot like the noise.

And that brings us to our first tea based cult. But I'll start with a quick note on tea in general. If you want to drink tea without funding liars, you pretty much have to cultivate and harvest your own leaves. Yeah. Most of the big companies are at the very least claiming that tea leaves have some sort of magic. They do not.

They don't have magic. Despite centuries of claims, we're not aware of any combination of leaves and hot water that cure cancer or boost the immune system, whatever the fuck. That means or detoxify your endoplasmic reticulum, whatever they're saying. It doesn't do that. If you like the taste of tea and maybe caffeine sometimes, that's what tea can provide. Sadly, it also provides money for cults. One big example is a product called Yogi Tea. You don't say. Yeah. Yeah.

It's made by a company that was started by... It's better than the average tea. It's made by a company that was started by a cult leader named Yogi Bajan. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha customs inspector. That's his entire job there. Also, even if he was all those things, those are nothing. You can stretch and eat healthy without any of that. So he gets to California and he notices that facts don't matter to the boomers of 1969. So he starts a cult and he makes millions. Somehow he ended up lying his way into meeting with Pope John Paul II and the Dalai Lama and also became a yoga mentor to Indira Gandhi when she was Prime Minister of India. When the doors closed on that meeting between the Pope and the Dalai Lama and this guy,

who do you think was the first to say, so how sweet is lying to desperately poor people to live like a god? Am I right? I bet it was the Pope. I bet the Pope led, but I bet they all. And of course, the cult started culting at that point. In addition to all the, you know, boilerplate stuff like horrible sexual abuse, financial fraud and torture, before this guy died in 2004, he also started two companies that still exist today and make a bunch of money

for the surviving cult. One of the companies is Yogi Tea, which made about $60 million last year. And their flagship blend of tea is made of cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, black pepper, and cloves. And according to Yogi Bajon, it increases circulation, decreases joint stiffness and enhances digestion all whilst decreasing gas and nausea Don't buy their tea because it's a cult The other company is called a call security which now earns about

500 million dollars a year in government contracts to protect American military bases and airports. Yeah, uh, don't buy their insane paramilitary consulting, I guess, if you're in charge of that. Cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, black pepper and cloves are the first draft of the Spice Girl names too. A little bit less problematic. Yeah. So the list of culty companies, it could keep going for a while, but I'll just give a quick warning about a few more before we get to the celestial seasonings in sanity. So if you're a big designer vintage jacket person who enjoys bedazzled denim as I'm sure many are listening. Yeah. Think about avoiding Tony Alamo's jackets like the one Michael Jackson wore on the cover of bad Also seen more recently being worn by Nicki Minaj a sap rocky and Miley Cyrus

Other ones. Let's see if you're looking for news. No, don't read the Washington Times That is not the same as the Washington Post the The Washington Times is owned by the Unification Church. That's the cult started by the Reverend's son, Young Moon. Also, don't eat at the Yellow Deli chain. Cult, don't eat at Chick-fil-A. Christianity cult, don't eat at most of the major fast food chains, sadly, because Republican donors.

Pretty much don't spend money at any corporations of business larger than maybe a couple dozen the thing that i know i think all consumption under capitalism quick commercial break commercial break no uh... right now for a counterpoint now i guess we're gonna advertise for a company with more than a couple dozen employees probably

and then we're gonna take it over for a little apropos of no. ["Petal Piano"] Pew! I don't know about you, Tom, but this episode is sort of making me... ...cognitively dissonant. Me too, Eli. You know, there's so many complicated questions of morality it's hard to keep up with them. Sounds like somebody needs to try. It's complicated. What's it's complicated. Doesn't count this is not a puzzle show. No no we said you can't start your own podcast for points this is different. What is a different situation.

What are they doing? What's- Don't worry about it. It's complicated once daily capsules will reduce all the hard moral questions about ethical consumption down to a general feeling of unease that patients are calling bearable. Okay, I guess. And only a problem if I think about it for too long. Sounds great.

But how does it work? I'm glad you asked, Tom. Say you're dealing with a moral quandary you'd rather not think about. Well, have you considered all possible factors that contribute to the question and all available information known and unknown? Wow, no. I guess not. That's right, because it's complicated. And that means you're off the hook. Yeah, I guess it does I

Don't know guys can't people just try their best to consume ethically and not make the standard some kind of arbitrary outside view of Perfection fuck up see so you have an iPhone you think you're better than me never mind Used for hundreds of generations It's complicated gets the grid out of any complicated moral question from politics to the fact that your grandpa probably hit your grandma. It's Complicated does the trick. I don't feel better, but the helplessness leaves me numb enough to move on. It's Complicated because trying is... Hey hey, it's Donna from Daily Dose of Donna. Every weekday afternoon on the Daily Dose of trying is be honest, all of the drama. I'll give you a day's worth of celebrity and reality news weekday afternoons in just under an hour. New episodes of Daily Dose of Donna post weekday

afternoons and are now available in video on Spotify. Subscribe to Daily Dose of Donna. That's D-A-N-A on your podcast app. Just admitting that you could fail. And we're back when we last left off. We were feeling better about ourselves than we are after that fucking sketch. Tell us more about people who are worse than us. Yeah, that brings us... His grandpa probably thinks that he's feeling great. No, okay, but that does bring us to celestial seasonings.

They're the largest tea company in North America, selling about 1.6 billion cups of tea every year, which earns them about $100 million. Okay, so admittedly, that's a lot, but counting by the cups, right, would that be like us multiplying our listeners by how many words they hear? We do 60 trillion words. Exactly. That's a lot. That's the number I tell people. I'm going to do it in loss. So the company was started in 1969 by a hippie guy in Colorado named Mo Siegel, who wanted

to bring herbal tea into the American mainstream. So he hiked into the Rocky Mountains with a team of friends and harvested enough herbs to make 500 pounds of tea. Then he put a sample into a Tupperware container and went down to a local bank to get a business loan. And apparently that just like works right away if you're a white guy in 1969 and he got it. He opened a production facility

and named the company Celestial Seasonings based on the flower name of his lady friend. Fuck you, you did. The company name was also very likely inspired by a new age religion manifesto called the Yerantcha book, which has a cult known as the Yerantcha Foundation. Mo Siegel is a very prominent leader in that group now, and he based his entire business philosophy for the tea company on this ridiculous book.

According to the Yerantcha Foundation, their book is, quote, an epical revelation authored solely by celestial beings What and quote and the main goal of the Celestial beings in that apparently eugenics. Oh, yeah, I any further. Okay, anyone else picturing like three angels and a gin Throwing a basketball into a little mini hoop in a rented office and a gin thrown a basketball into a little mini hoop in a rented office space. Well, they write this thing just like. Some guys like this is our totally cool lax workspace, man. Let me show you the reeducation break room.

It's right down here. It doesn't sound chill. Yeah. So let's learn about the your rancher book and its religion of celestial white power. And of course, it all starts in Chicago, Illinois. The book was written here by... Why does it start with what? Of course. What the fuck are you talking about?

We all know how that's a way of... Oh, we all know what Heath. You wrote this book, Cecil. That's what we know. You wrote the Eurangia book. Are you the Eurangia book? You have to tell us. You have to tell us if you are.

Yeah. This is the deep dish of religious manifesto cults. Satisfying. The book was written either by racist alien demigods in a realm outside of space time, or by a guy in Chicago who definitely wrote the book in the 19th one. Hard to say. Probably. It's 2,097 pages long. Jesus. What?

It's officially published for the first time in 1955. That's more than if we added the David Ike book that you guys read to the ones that we read with the Jesus. Let's do that. Let's do that. I want to do that one. It's so much. So the Chicago guy I'm talking about is William Sadler, a psychiatrist and a student of Sigmund Freud. Not great. According to Sadler, the content of I'm a student visitor from a distant planet in a different language I guess Sadler says he eventually figured out that other language. Wow. It's called Uversa by the way, and he had to translate Uversa

into Salvington what and then from that into Satanya and Salvington. What? And then from that into Satanya and finally to English. But he did figure it out. So Sadler did the translations and he spoke with this voice and several other voices for about ten years and then in the early 1920s Sadler and his wife and some of their friends put together a list of four thousand questions for the alien demigods to answer. And a few weeks later, lo and behold, that neighbor had dictated answers to everything. Wow.

Guys, please stop asking the alien demigod how many fingers I'm holding up. You're getting us all vaporized. We're gonna jump. So just to be clear about this backstory, the neighbor was being channeled by alien demigods who were communicating all their extremely important revelations to people of Earth for the very first time.

According to the cult, these were instructions about the fate of the universe. But I think they're lying because chunks of the book were later found to be played Well that works at Harvard too, so Work at Harvard Man, I wish this asshole could just translate his book from a magic rock and a hat like a normal Someone who really heard this story. Yeah. Problematic than that guy, yeah. And just a quick side note, if you claim that direct trance revelations are a thing,

that can easily backfire. And that's exactly what happened with the Erantric cult. In the 1990s, a bunch of cult members were like, hold on, I'm, I now am getting a revelation from the alien gods. It says I'm the new leader guy and everyone gives me blowjobs and candy right now. Because the alien man got set up. And the cult had to spend like the next decade having revelation duels with their members about this. Making new rules about, making new rules about

no making new rules on new rules on new rules and trying to discredit the fake revelations from alien demigods compared to their real ones. So another important piece of context here, William Sadler and his wife Lena were deep into the study of eugenics. William actually got his first job as a psychiatrist working at John Harvey Kellogg's Battle Creek Sanitarium for cornflakes and eugenics. And one of Williams' favorite books was The Passing of the Great Race, which claims that Northern European Nordic people are the ideal race and argues that cleansing the gene pool of other races would fix human society.

And Lena, his wife, also a doctor, wrote that eugenics would, quote, eliminate at least 90% of crime, insanity, feeble-mindedness, moronism, and abnormal sexuality, not to mention many other forms of defectiveness and degeneracy. Thus, within a century, our asylums, prisons and state hospitals would be largely emptied and exact quote. OK, yeah. But then who would keep our Illinois governor's company? You're not listening, Tom. 90 percent of criminals and feeble minded people would be gone.

There wouldn't be an Illinois. Shots fired. And fun fact, Lena Sadler was the daughter of John Harvey Kellogg's half-brother. Other fun fact, Lena's sister Anna was married to that neighbor guy who dictated the Orantia book during the alien demigod trance. And that neighbor is believed to be Wilfred Custer Kellogg, the full nephew of John Harvey Kellogg. So, uh, yeah, according to my math, uh, fucking gross, right? I mean, not according to your math, Heath, but someone's math. It's their idea of eugenics just plugging a power strip into one of its own open outlets. I don't understand what's happening.

Infinite power! That's the cult flag right there. So, in the interest of being fair and balanced, I decided to find a primer on the Orantia book from a source who's not pre-biased with, you know, ivory tower skepticism. So I looked on Medium where they don't gatekeep the title journalists. They require education. No, they do not. And I found an article from cult member Chad Gates entitled, The Best Book Ever Written Has No Human Author, The Yerantia Book. And he starts with a quote.

It says, your spirit rests ever so gently on the upper reaches of your mind, but it takes practice to perceive it. My mom. Hey, look, if it wasn't a needle point, it wasn't wisdom, okay? My mom. Hey, look, if it wasn't a needlepoint, that wasn't wisdom. So from there, we get a quick summary of the Orantia book quote. Orantia book is a post biblical revelation to this world. No one really knows where it came from.

We do though. We just told us in the essay podcast. We Learned the Universe is a giant, unfinished project being built on the individual decisions of ascending mortals like us. God indwells our young minds and participates with us in our struggles in order to overcome the only problem with perfection, i.e. a perfect being cannot experience imperfection. Keith, I did not spend three years reading David Ike's word salad only to watch it creep over here to this show. Okay.

You know, in fairness, in Christianity, a perfect being created imperfect beings so he could kill them all and then apologize for the prism. So maybe religious listeners should hold hold back their choppers. That's true. Yeah, this is post-biblical. They learn from it. Yeah. So at this point, somebody yelled from the back while this guy was writing his article, what about Lucifer and the atheists semen up a whole bunch of years ago? By which I mean nobody nothing. There's no back. What back with that? That's nonsense. But regardless, the summary continues. Great question, nobody from the back. Lucifer led an atheist

rebellion about 200,000 years ago. Earth, or your Rancher, was one of many worlds that participated and was quarantined. This tragedy resulted in our opportunity for the exercise of faith, which is the key to our long afterlife ascension career. And what's the sensual destiny with God in the geographical center of infinity. And Keith, you had me at geographic center of infinity. Right? Yes. Yes. I found it, Tom. I'm there. I'm cagged. Yeah, it's cute. I am. It's the picture of Kurt Vonnegut doing the asshole. Yeah, for sure. So here's what it says in the Euransha book about the origin story of Earth. Turns out the Bible had lots of the names right, but they missed the outer space part. Jesus is

the Son of God, but he's actually just one of the billions of different space Jesus is that God sends to each planet to fix it. Right, like the probe droids from Empire Strikes Back, which were also killed by fright and locals, but it was really a self-destruction. Oh, that's true. Wow. Reinterpretation. So, we also learned that Earth, or your Rancher, is planet number 606 in a planetary group

called Satanya. You'll remember that's also the name of one of the many alien god languages that William Sadler figured out. And the HQ for Satanya is called Jerusalem, not Jerusalem. Close. Just different. Very close. Different thing. When Earthlings die, the team at Jerusalem HQ reincarnates people on a new planet to continue their quest. And eventually, if you're good, you keep getting bumped up the planets or whatever, then you land on planet paradise where God lives.

It's like Frogger. And there's a tiny little God implant inside each of our brains. It's called a thought adjuster, and it helps us find the right path. Now, here's the thing. The adjuster can't directly help you, but they can give you a little hints along the way. And I cannot stress this enough. I'm not exaggerating about this. The human origin section of the book of

your rancher starts by literally ranking the races. Wow. There are six of the races. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue and indigo. I don't think that's right. Race is black people. They're the indigo race. And the book says that's the lowest rank. Wow. The highest rank is people with shockingly fair skin and blue eyes.

And that's that's the red race, apparently, with the blue eyes and the white skin. The blue are people who are holding their breath until they get to be number one So Apparently the six colors of humans just showed up on earth about 500,000 years ago According to the book quote the earlier races are somewhat superior to the later The red man is just sick for everything. I'm to say. This is just it's really a quote. I can't avoid saying it all. The red man stands far above the indigo black race. Each succeeding evolutionary manifestation of a distinct group of mortals represents variation at the expense of

the original endowment. The yellow race usually enslaves the green while the blue man subdues the indigo and the extended lyrics to Particle Man are fucking dark. They never play that second verse. You know what I mean? They never play the second verse. That's the problem. You see why now. This is where the story of Christianity comes into play, sort of with Adam and Eve.

Turns out Adam and Eve are fair skinned blue-eyed aliens. We've got to send every planet in the universe to quote up step the natives. Sounds racist. Sure does. And it is by up step. They mean like for real, the Aryan aliens are supposed to breed with the other colors that I ranked earlier until the planet's gene pool is cured. But unlike the perfectly successful intergalactic eugenics program on all these other planets, Adam and Eve fucked up the plan when they got to Earth, your ranch 606, whatever.

The book says, quote, having failed to achieve race harmonization by the Adamic technique, you must now work out your planetary problem of race improvement by other and largely human methods of adaptation and control. End quote. of adaptation and control." Okay, so the wisdom of the aliens was, have you tried just fucking your problems away? And then when that doesn't work, they shrug? That's it. That's the story. Also, I'm sorry, like largely human methods?

Is there one like, is that our problem? We need to bring a superwise otter into this at some point. Listen, a really dumb otter would be much better than everything in this book. So yeah, for sure. So a major goal for the cult is to switch out Christianity with space Christianity, the correct version with the white people. Your Rancho Foundation Christianity, the correct version with the white people. The Orantia Foundation vehemently claims they're absolutely not a cult. But anyone who's read the book knows full well that the divine space revelator named the brilliant evening star of Nebedon tells everyone to get

rid of Christianity and replace it with exact quote, a new cult. It's going to be the true religion of the future in the book. Okay. Well, if you read it, I mean, if no way, we weren't expecting anyone to read it. Much like many cults, they hope you don't really read all this stuff in their thing. Yeah, Catholicism. Yeah, Christianity. So this book, the Rancher book, it's full of science claims that the cult members love to mention as evidence of their futurism, the book got it right. But there's two major problems with that. One, the scientific claims have all

the exact mistakes of a person who learned science before 1955. Wow. And two, the revelator alien voice who dictated the book made it very clear that he'd love to tell us all about You know future inventions that aren't here yet, but his boss just won't let him because that would cheapen the Spiritual journey of finding oh my god in space Christ It actually says in the book like we cannot tell you yet. That's what yeah You'd think one divine revelation would try some moon boots. Am I right?

It's like you're all guys making shit up, you know? It's just a weird dynamic. Yeah, so fun book, good stuff. If we do have any seekers in the audience now that you've heard all this, you can download this amazing celestial book in its entirety for free. And the reason for that is, to think my favorite part, the Orantia Foundation tried to sell the book for years, but eventually a court ruling made the book public domain because the foundation itself

was claiming the authorship was alien demigods and the alien demigods never filed for copyright protection. Really gotta file for copyright. I'd be like, yeah, that's box cracked. Yup, fine. So yeah, if you're interested, grab a nice hot snapple. And a, not snapple. Yeah, no, I'll carry your, okay, diseases.

And if you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be? Religion is bad. Don't do... Wow. Religion is bad. They're all bad ones. As it turns out. All right, so are you ready for the quiz? Ready. All right, Heath, you mentioned a bunch of white supremacist cults, but you haven't talked about any of the non-white supremacist ones. Why is that? A. Whiteness is a nonsensical construct with no scientific or physiological basis. B. Therefore whiteness can only exist in contrast to the, by definition, ever-changing perception of non-whiteness. C. This means whiteness can only ever define

itself through supremacy or inferiority or D and nobody's gonna fucking choose inferiority for their race. I choose inferiority for white people on behalf of white people. I think most of them would be fine with that, right? Yeah, secret answer E. It's white people are inferior. Yeah, I can't imagine them freaking out about critical race theory. That's hard to imagine. So yeah.

Also, I'm allowed to make fun of white people. That's why I picked this one. You have to prove to me you're white. White people can't make jokes about anything else. I want my Netflix special now. Clap on the two and the four. Prove it to me. All right, Heath. I know you've grown tired of being pigeonholed

into the same tired jokes about your love of incest, porn, and eugenics. So obviously you, hey, wrote an essay about a cult formed by ranking the races. Don't do this. B, and which definitely had incest going on. It's not. C, the lady don't protest too much, me thinks. D, his next essay may be on the history of very tall men.

Wow. His next essay may be on the history of very tall men. Wow. Ooh. I don't get it. That's your tip. Pass? Pass? The only safe answer.

Yes, indeed. All right, Heath. What's the best name for your beverage-based white cult? A. Jesus Christ. Plowed boys. B. Fantastic.

B. Broth keep boys. B. Fantastic. B. Rothkeepers. C. Rothkeeper. Perry Arians. Or D. Perry Arians.

Oh. The tea party. So good. I'm gonna go with C. Perry Arians. Fuck yeah. Honestly. Uh, sure, correct? I Perrierian. Yeah, honestly. Uh, sure, correct, I guess. Yes, correct, correct.

Why not? Nice. Or not. I think we all knew it was obvious that as soon as we heard Plowboy's Cecil was the winner of this one. So, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so for Heath, Cecil, Tom, and Eli, I'm Noah, thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week. Bye then. Tom will be an expert on something else between now and then you'll find us on at least one of all but seven podcasts in the universe. And if you'd like to help keep this show going, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com.citationpod or leave a five star review everywhere you can. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check past episodes connected on social media or check the show notes be sure to check out citation pod dot com. And then this weekend we're headed over to Salton for like a climate change summit March thing. Oh, you're going to drive the climate change summit?

Yeah, like an hour away. I don't know. Okay. I mean, it's just like... Oh, hold on, sorry. Time for my pill. Anyway, that's the weekend. Cool, sounds fun. It will be fun. Nice.