I want to start today by asking you to picture
a scene with me. It's late March 1997, and it
is unseasonably hot. in Rancho Santa Fe, California.
And we should probably be clear about what Rancho
Santa Fe is. This isn't just any suburb. No,
not at all. This is one of the most exclusive,
wealthiest neighborhoods in the entire country.
We're talking massive, gated communities, perfectly
manicured lawns, sprawling Spanish -style mansions.
It's the picture of American success, really.
But inside one of those mansions, a huge one,
like 9 ,000 square feet, there's this... The
silence, a really heavy silence. A heavy silence.
And as the first deputies on the scene would
report, a heavy smell. That's right. It wasn't
just the quiet that was oppressive. When the
San Diego Sheriff's Department deputies first
walked in, that was what hit them before they
saw a single thing. The smell of decomposition
amplified by that California heat. It was overwhelming.
Absolutely. And when they finally moved through
the house, what they found, this defies the logic
of what we typically think of when we hear the
term crime scene. Right, because it wasn't chaotic.
It wasn't what you'd call violent, not in the
traditional sense. It was orderly, almost ritualistic.
Military even. They found 39 bodies, 39 people,
all dressed in identical black shirts and plain
black sweatpants. And they all had these patches
on their sleeves. Heaven's gateway team. Lying
peacefully in bunk beds, each one covered from
the waist up with a pristine purple shroud. And
then, of course, there's the detail that just
burned itself into the public consciousness forever.
The shoes. The black and white Nike decades,
all 39 of them. Exactly. It was an image that
looked less like a mass suicide and more like
some bizarre, quiet dormitory where everyone
had just decided to go to sleep at the very same
time. It was the precision of it all that was
so deeply unsettling. And the world just, it
just exploded. I remember this so vividly. The
media circus was immediate and... Frankly, kind
of gross. Oh, totally. You had Saturday Night
Live doing skits about it within, what, a few
days? Late night hosts were falling over themselves
to make jokes about the crazy cult? Look at these
lunatics who thought a spaceship was hiding behind
a comet. That was the narrative. It was framed
as this inexplicable explosion of madness. A
freak show. for the evening news well it's always
easier to laugh at something you don't understand
right if you just label them as crazy you create
this safe distance you can tell yourself i would
never do that i'm sane but i think our mission
today is to do something much harder We have
to try and strip away that crazy cult label and
actually understand the internal logic of what
happened in that house. And that's the real challenge,
because as we've been digging through the source
material for this and we've got a lot, we have
biographical records, transcripts of their own
audio tapes, sociological studies by people who
studied them for years. The one thing that keeps
jumping out at me is that these were not. Stupid
people. This wasn't a group of, you know, lost,
drug -addled teenagers they picked up off the
street. Far from it. That's probably the single
biggest misconception we have to correct right
at the top. The away team, as they called themselves,
included some very accomplished people. Like
who? Well, for starters, a respected Republican
politician, the brother of Nichelle Nichols.
I mean, Lieutenant Uhura from the original Star
Trek. Wow. I did not know that. Yeah. And there
were business owners, mothers, fathers and some
incredibly skilled computer programmers. These
were articulate, intelligent, searching people.
So that's the real question we're trying to answer
today, isn't it? Yeah. How do you get from being
a rational thinking person with a life with a
family to to. Laying down in a bunk bed, eating
applesauce laced with phenobarbital, and willingly
putting a plastic bag over your head because
you believe it's a graduation. It's a terrifying
journey. But to understand it, we can't just
look at the end. The comet is almost a footnote.
We have to go all the way back to the beginning.
We have to look at the theology they built. The
theology, the psychology of what experts call
bounded choice. And most importantly, we have
to look at the two people who started it all.
The two. Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Ness.
But long before they were don't I before they
were supposedly commanding a starship crew they
were two very different very human people living
very messy lives in Texas in the early 1970s.
OK let's start with Marshall Applewhite because
if you just looked at his early resume he seems
like the kind of guy who would be a pillar of
his community. Oh absolutely. He was the son
of a Presbyterian minister. He was a gifted baritone
singer. He had a master's degree in music. He.
taught at universities, the University of St.
Thomas, the University of Alabama. And by all
accounts, he was charismatic, stylish. His students
apparently loved him. He just doesn't fit the
stereotypical profile of a madman cult leader.
He definitely had that stage presence, that charisma,
yes. But you have to look at what was churning
just beneath that polished surface. And you have
to remember the context. This is the early 1970s
in the American South. Right. Applewhite was
dealing with these deep, profound conflicts about
his own identity. specifically his sexuality.
He was gay. He had relationships with men, yes.
And in that time and place, especially coming
from a conservative minister's family, that wasn't
just a lifestyle choice. It was a source of immense
internal shame and turmoil. It led to real -world
consequences for him, too. Huge consequences.
He was fired from his teaching position at the
University of Alabama over an alleged relationship
he had with a male student. His wife... whom
he had two children with, divorced him. He was
losing everything that defined him. So you have
a guy who is talented, he's ambitious, but he
feels like his own desires, his own biology really
are just systematically ruining his life. Precisely.
That is the key psychological seed for everything
that follows. He felt betrayed by his own human
nature. He starts to fall into a deep depression.
He's hearing voices. He checks himself into a
psychiatric hospital. He was having what we would
now identify as a severe mental health crisis.
He was looking for a way out. He was desperate
for an escape from the pain of being Marshall
Applewhite. He wanted to transcend the very things,
sex, gender, human relationships that had caused
him so much suffering. And right at that moment
of crisis, he meets Bonnie Nuttles. Right. And
looking at her background, as you said, she seems
like his complete opposite in so many ways. She
wasn't an academic or a performer. She was a
registered nurse. A nurse and a mother of four.
Just a seemingly normal middle class woman. On
the surface, yes. But she was also a seeker in
the truest sense of that 70s term. While Applewhite
was struggling with the rigid structures of the
church, Nettles was diving deep into the whole
alternative spiritual scene. She was fascinated
by theosophy. Can we just pause there for a second?
Theosophy. I see that word a lot in the research,
but what does it actually mean in this context?
Sure. It's a spiritual movement that really kicked
off in the late 19th century. And it's, well,
it's a blend of everything, a bit of Eastern
philosophy, a bit of Western occultism. But one
of the core ideas is that there are these masters
of wisdom, these highly evolved spiritual beings
who live on another plane and secretly guide
humanity's development. So she's already primed
for this idea of higher beings communicating
with Earth. Completely primed. She was already
conducting seances, trying to talk to spirits.
She truly believed she was in regular communication
with a 19th century monk she called Brother Francis.
Okay, so she's very open to this kind of thing.
Very. And get this. She had also been visiting
fortune tellers who all told her the same thing.
They predicted she was destined to meet a mysterious
man. A tall man with light hair and a fair complexion.
Someone who was going to change her life. and
maybe the world. And then Marshall Applewhite
walks into Relay. He fits the description perfectly.
Now, the story of how they met in 1972 has become
a bit of a legend within the group's lore. How
does it happen? There are conflicting accounts,
but the one Applewhite always told was that he
was in the hospital either as a patient or visiting
a sick friend, and Nettles was his nurse. And
when she walked into the room, their eyes locked.
Like something out of a movie. Exactly. He described
it as a shared recognition of esoteric secrets
from a past life. He felt instantly that they
had known each other for eons, that they had
a shared cosmic purpose. It sounds almost like
a romance, but with this spiritual sci -fi twist.
And that's a good way to put it. But it was a
platonic spiritual partnership, not a sexual
romance at all. In fact, that was part of the
point. He felt that she was the sage. In the
beginning, she was the one with all the answers.
She was the one channeling the information. Yes.
And he was the speaker. He was the performer,
the one who could take her strange, mystical
visions and translate them, sell them to the
public. He had the charisma. That dynamic is
so interesting because usually we think of the
charismatic male cult leader as the sole mastermind.
But you're saying she was really the architect
of the whole belief system, at least initially.
Initially, absolutely. She provided the entire
framework. She was the one who convinced him
that his depression, his voices, that it wasn't
mental illness. What did she say it was? She
told him he was evolving, that he was being prepared
for a higher purpose. Now, imagine how incredibly
relieving that must have been for him to hear.
You're not broken. You're just special. That
is an incredibly powerful hook. The most powerful.
So they bond over this shared destiny and they
just. Leave. They drop everything. Everything.
Nettles walks away from her husband and her four
children. Applewhite leaves his old life in the
dust. They get in a car and just start driving.
They became nomads. Arethi spent the next few
years just wandering the country, camping in
parks, sometimes doing odd jobs. Odd jobs and
sometimes even selling their own blood plasma
just to buy gas. Selling their blood for gas
money. That is such a desperate, stark image.
It was a test. In their minds, they were undergoing
a process, a metamorphosis. They started to see
themselves as the two witnesses from the book
of Revelation. The two prophets from the Bible
who are destined to be killed in Jerusalem and
then resurrected three days later. Those are
the ones they believe they were the literal biblical
fulfillment of that prophecy. So this is where
the theology starts to get really, really blended.
Because on one hand, they're pulling directly
from the most apocalyptic parts of the Christian
Bible. But on the other hand, they're talking
about UFOs in space. How did they bridge that
gap? This is the absolute genius, if you can
call it that, of their synthesis. You have to
look at the culture of the 1970s. The ancient
astronaut theory was exploding. Right, from books
like Chariots of the Gods. Exactly. That book
was a massive bestseller. And the basic idea,
for anyone who isn't familiar, was that the gods
and angels you read about in ancient texts weren't
supernatural beings. They were extraterrestrials.
with advanced technology. So when the Bible says
Elijah was taken up to heaven in a chariot of
fire. To Applewhite and Nettles, that was just
a primitive description of a UFO abduction, a
beam up. And when the Bible talks about heaven.
It's not some spiritual dimension. No, it's a
literal physical place in the universe, a planet,
an actual physical level of existence above the
human one. And Jesus, Jesus wasn't God incarnate.
He was an alien. He was a next level being who
came down, occupied a human body for a while
and tried to teach a small group of followers
how to graduate to that next level. That completely
reframes the entire goal of religion, doesn't
it? If heaven is a real planet. then you don't
need to save your soul. You need to get on the
ship. You've got it. That's the core belief.
They called it tele, the evolutionary level above
human. They preach that humanity is just a larval
stage. We are all caterpillars. And the goal
of life isn't to be a good human and die and
go to a cloudy heaven. The goal is to biologically
metamorphose into a butterfly, a new species.
A species that doesn't have gender, doesn't have
sexual desire. doesn't die a species that is
efficient intellectual and pure all the things
applewhite desperately wanted to be and this
message as strange as it sounds to us now resonated
with people in 1975 they held a public meeting
in a little town called waldport oregon they
put a flyers right yeah posters that said something
like ufos why they are here when they are coming
they call themselves the ufo too and they expected
you know maybe a dozen curious locals to show
up the room was packed and what was the pitch
Exactly. The pitch was basically, the people
you know as Jesus and God the Father are extraterrestrials.
We are their representatives. The Earth is about
to be recycled, and a spacecraft is coming to
pick up those who are ready to evolve. We are
leaving soon. Who wants a ride? And it worked.
It worked spectacularly. About 20 people from
that area just... vanished. They left their homes,
their jobs, their families, and followed the
two. It caused a national media frenzy. I mean,
Walter Cronkite was reporting on it on the CBS
Evening News. 20 people missing in Oregon. Okay,
I have to stop you here. Yeah. Because this is
the part where my modern skepticism just kicks
into high gear. I can understand listening to
a lecture. I can even understand being interested
in UFOs. But packing a bag and leaving your entire
life behind because two strangers said get in
the van. Yeah. Who were these people? Were they
just incredibly naive? That's the lazy assumption,
right? That they must have been simple -minded
or gullible. But the sociologists who studied
them, people like Robert Balch, found something
very different. What did he find? He found that
these weren't followers. They were seekers. Many
of them had been bouncing around different spiritual
movements for years. They tried Scientology.
They tried Eastern mysticism. They tried various
New Age philosophies. They were spiritually homeless.
They were looking for something they hadn't found
yet. They were looking for structure and certainty.
There's a term sociologists use called shilaism.
It's named after a woman in a famous study who,
when asked about her religion, said her religion
was just shilaism, meaning she just picked and
chose whatever beliefs made her feel good on
any given day. That sounds like a lot of modern
spirituality. It is. It's very individualistic.
But it's also very lonely. It's uncertain. You're
your own guru. Applewhite and Nettles offered
the absolute opposite of Sheilaism. They offered
total certainty. We know the one true way. We
have the map to the spaceship. But you have to
do exactly what we say. For someone who feels
lost and adrift in the modern world, that strictness
isn't a bug. It's a feature. It's the main selling
point. So they get their first batch of recruits.
They have this crew. And this is the part of
the story that often gets glossed over. We tend
to jump from the 1975 recruitment straight to
the 1997 suicide. But there were 22 years in
between. And those years weren't just them sitting
around and waiting. It was a boot camp. It was
an intense, all -consuming classroom, as they
called it. And you're right, this is crucial.
You don't get 39 people to commit suicide on
the first date. You get there through two decades
of slow, methodical conditioning. They went underground.
Completely. They lived a nomadic life in campgrounds
all across the Rocky Mountains and the West.
They called themselves Human Individual Metamorphosis,
or HIM. And life inside the group was grueling
it was designed to systematically strip away
every shred of your old identity how did they
do that well first you gave up your name your
human name was a link to your past to your family
you were given a new three -letter name that
always ended in Odie, O -D -Y, like Jamodi, Arkodi,
Elvivodi. And what did Odie signify? It meant
child of the next level. It intentionally infantilized
them. It made them all siblings in this new cosmic
family with Du and Ti as the older members or
basically the parents. And the rules, the level
of micromanagement was just staggering. Unbelievable.
They had documents like the 17 steps. These were
detailed step -by -step instructions on how to
do everything. How to brush your teeth. How to
wash your face. How to... How to cut a pancake.
How to cut a pancake. You cannot be serious.
I am dead serious. You had to cut your pancake
in a specific grid pattern. If you did it the
human way, you know, like a wedge, it was seen
as a sign that your mind was still disorganized,
that you weren't thinking efficiently like a
next level being. You'd be corrected. That sounds
absolutely exhausting to have your every single
move policed like that. It's designed to be exhausting.
It occupies all of your mental bandwidth. You're
so focused on following the tiny rules that you
don't have time to question the big ones. And
then there was the check partner system. This
to me is one of the most terrifying aspects.
What was that? You were never, ever alone. You
were assigned a partner and your job was to watch
that person 24 -7 for any sign of human behavior.
So you were spying on each other? Constantly.
If your partner expressed nostalgia for their
family, or if they started humming a pop song
they remembered, or if they showed frustration
or anger, you were required to report them to
DO &T. It's a surveillance state within a campground.
Exactly. And the partners were rotated constantly,
so you could never form a genuine bond or friendship
with anyone. You couldn't have a best friend.
Your only real connection was to the leaders.
It was a system of perfect control. And they
had other rituals too. I read about the tuning
forks. Yes. They believed the air was full of
human static or luciferian frequencies, so they
would strike a tuning fork and hold it up to
their ears to supposedly tune out the human world
and tune into the frequency of the next level.
This is all about purging their humanity. Purging
everything. They went on extreme diets, the master
crins, where you drink nothing but lemonade with
maple syrup and cayenne pepper for wicks on end
all to purify their vehicle. Vehicles, that's
the word they use for their bodies. Always. The
body wasn't you. It was just a container, a suit
of clothes that you were wearing for a little
while. And this constant linguistic dissociation
is so important. If you spend 20 years telling
yourself, this body isn't me, it becomes a whole
lot easier to just discard it when the time comes.
But again, this is what's so strange. These weren't
Luddites living in caves. By the 1990s, they
were actually quite technologically savvy. They
were running a successful business. This is the
great paradox of Heaven's Gate. They became what
one sociologist called a cyber sect. In the early
90s, as the Internet was becoming a thing, they
started a web design company called Higher Source.
And they were good at it. They were very good.
They were coding and HTML and Java. They did
graphic design for all sorts of commercial clients
in the San Diego area. Clients described them
as polite, incredibly efficient, but... A bit
odd. Because of the identical haircuts and the
baggy clothes to hide their gender. Right. So
you have this bizarre situation where they're
building websites for like a local candy shop
or a cinema multiplex by day and then preparing
for the apocalypse by night. Using the tools
of the modern world to plan their escape from
it. Exactly. They saw the Internet as a powerful
tool to spread their message to a global audience.
But they viewed the society that built it as
fundamentally corrupt. Luciferian, as they would
say. That's a strong word. Luciferian. It was
central to their worldview. They believed the
entire planet was under the covert control of
Luciferians, these evil space aliens who wanted
to keep humans distracted and trapped in their
biological containers. And how did they do that?
Through sex, drugs, family attachments, consumerism,
pop culture. To them, watching a sitcom wasn't
just harmless entertainment. It was a weapon
used by the enemy to keep you from evolving.
Okay, I want to pivot now to a specific moment
in their history. Because for a very long time,
the plan was not suicide. The plan was that a
UFO would physically land, they would all walk
up the ramp and fly away. Alive. That was the
original promise. They called it the demonstration.
They believed they would literally ascend into
the sky without dying, just like Jesus supposedly
did. But then, in 1985, reality crashed headfirst
into their fantasy. It did. Bonnie Nettles' tea,
the sage, the direct link to the next level got
sick. She was diagnosed with liver cancer. And
she died. This must have been a catastrophic
failure for their belief system. The woman who
was supposed to lead them onto the spaceship
just died a very human death in a hospital in
Dallas. If I'm a follower at that point, I'm
thinking, wait a minute. She didn't ascend. She's
dead. Maybe this whole thing is fake. And it
was a massive crisis. The group nearly fell apart.
People left. Applewhite himself was distraught.
He went into a deep depression. But this is where
a charismatic leader shows their ability to improvise,
to reframe reality. He came up with a new explanation.
He went into isolation for a while and came back
with a new understanding from the next level.
He gathered the remaining followers and told
them that T hadn't died. She had simply exited
her vehicle. He moved the goalposts. He moved
them into a different stadium. He said that her
spiritual energy, her next -level consciousness,
had become too powerful for her human container
to handle, so she had to burn it out. She had
gone on ahead to the next level to prepare things
for their arrival. But the implication of that
is so dark. It's chilling, because it meant you
didn't actually need your body to travel to the
next level. In fact, the body was now seen as
an obstacle. a burden that is the moment it becomes
a potential suicide cult that is the pivot point
that's the theological justification before 1985
they were a group waiting for a ride after 1985
they were a group waiting for an excuse to die
the theology shifted from preservation of the
body to discarding the vehicle so let's fast
forward to the late 1990s they're living in a
huge mansion in rancho santa fe they're paying
seven thousand dollars a month in rent Paid in
cash, by the way, all money they earned from
their web design business. And then the comet
Hale -Bopp appears in the sky. Hale -Bopp was
a major astronomical event. It was one of the
brightest comets in history, visible to the naked
eye for a record 18 months. But for the group,
the real trigger wasn't just the comet itself.
It was a rumor associated with it. A rumor from
a late -night radio show. That's right. Art Bell,
the famous host of the paranormal -themed show
Coast to Coast AM, had a guest on who claimed
to have a photograph showing a companion object
trailing behind the comet. A large, mysterious
object. A spaceship. And astronomers debunked
this almost immediately, right? I mean, it was
just a background star that was distorted by
the telescope's movement. Yes. It was completely
and totally fake. Any real astronomer knew it.
But for Applewhite, it didn't matter if it was
real to scientists. It was real to him. He seized
on it. This was the sign he had been waiting
for. He told the group, Ty is coming back for
us. She's in the ship behind the comet. It's
time to shut our vehicles and go home. And the
preparations began in earnest. And this is where
we have to talk about the castration. It's one
of the most horrifying and, I think, revealing
details of their final years. A number of the
men, including Applewhite himself, underwent
surgical castration. Why? It goes all the way
back to Applewhite's original conflict, his self
-hatred for his own sexual desires. The theology
taught that sexual urges, what they called mammalian
vibrations, were like static interference. They
blocked the signal from the next level. They
were an anchor to this world. The biological
anchor. Applewhite convinced himself and then
seven of his male followers that as long as they
possess the physical capacity for sex, they were
fundamentally tethered to this corrupt human
planet. To be truly free, they had to remove
the source. So they went to Mexico to have it
done. They drove to Tijuana, used fake names
and paid for the surgeries. A former member who
knew the men said they came back smiling, relieved.
They felt they had finally fixed the last broken
part of their human vehicles. that shows is just.
Yeah. It's absolute. It's absolute. They weren't
playing a game. They were literally surgically
altering their bodies to match their image of
the androgynous, sexless aliens, the greys, that
they essentially worshipped. And then came the
final exit, videotapes. We've all seen the clips
of Applewhite staring into the camera, eyes wide,
talking about how much he hates this world. We
do in all honesty hate this world. That's the
famous quote. And he meant every word of it.
They truly believed the Earth was a failed experiment,
a garden that had become overgrown with weeds
and was about to be spaded under and recycled
by the cosmos. The apocalypse was imminent. They
believed it was days away, and the only way to
survive was to leave before it happened. The
other members recorded their own goodbye messages,
too. And when you watch them... They don't look
like brainwashed zombies. They look happy. They're
smiling. They're cracking jokes. That's the most
chilling part of it all. They look like people
who are about to go on a long -awaited, exciting
vacation. They talk about their vehicles, like
their old clunker cars they're finally getting
to send to the junkyard. One woman just beams
at the camera and says, I can't wait to get out
of this atmosphere. They had fully adopted the
Star Trek language by then. They were the away
team. And they were finally beaming up. So let's
talk about the actual days of the event. It happened
between March 22nd and March 26th. How did they
do it? Because as we said at the start, it was
so orderly. It was done in three waves over three
days. They started with a group of 15, then another
15, then the final nine, which included Applewhite.
And they had a recipe. A specific recipe. They
took applesauce or pudding, mixed it with a massive
dose of phenobarbital, a strong barbiturate,
and ate it. Then they washed it down with vodka
to speed up the drug's absorption into the bloodstream.
And the plastic bags, what was their role? Once
they fell into a deep sleep from the drugs, the
members who were still alive, the ones scheduled
for the next wave, would gently place plastic
bags over their heads to ensure asphyxiation.
It was a failsafe. And then those same people
would clean up. Yes. Once their friends were
gone, they would remove the bags, drape the purple
cloths over them, and tidy up the room. It was
an act of service, a ritual. They were helping
their friends graduate. In their minds, that's
exactly what they were doing. And the Nikes.
We have to come back to the Nikes. For a group
that so thoroughly rejected consumerism and pop
culture, why did they all buy... 39 pairs of
brand name sneakers. People have analyzed this
for years, looking for some deep symbolic meaning.
But the truth is much more banal. It was pragmatic.
It was totally pragmatic. Applewhite liked the
look of them, yes. But mostly they found a place
that would give them a good bulk discount on
the model. They needed shoes that look uniform,
were comfortable, and were cheap. That's it.
But you can't ignore the slogan. Just do it.
It's too perfect. You couldn't write that. You
really couldn't. And former members have said
that they did appreciate the slogan because of
its connection to their leader's name, Do. It
was a little inside joke for them at the end.
Just do it. Just follow Do's final instruction.
And what about what was in their pockets? I read
they all had a $5 bill and three quarters. Exactly
$5 .75. The media immediately called it an interplanetary
toll. Yeah, the media loved that angle. Like,
you need to have exact change for the saucer
when it lands. But again, the real reason is
so much more bureaucratic and sad. What was it?
Former members explained that this was just standard
group procedure. Whenever a member went out into
the city on an errand, they were required to
take $5 for food or emergencies so they wouldn't
get picked up for vagrancy and three quarters
to make a phone call back to the house. So since
they were leaving the house for the last time.
Yeah, you just followed the rule. They took their
pocket money with them. That is just, it's so
heartbreakingly mundane. Yeah. They were following
the cult's internal rules. right up to the very
last moment of their lives. It shows you how
deeply their minds were still operating within
the logic of that closed system. They weren't
panicking. They weren't having second thoughts.
They were following procedure. So the bodies
are discovered by a former member, Rio D 'Angelo.
The police arrive. The world finds out. What
was the immediate aftermath? It was a media tsunami.
Time and Newsweek both had it on their covers.
But the cultural reaction was interesting. Nike
actually had to discontinue that specific model
of shoe, the Decade, because the association
became so macabre. And the astronomer, Alan Hale,
the co -discoverer of the comet, he was horrified.
Oh, deeply. He had to hold this surreal press
conference where he basically pleaded with the
public, saying things like, comets are lovely
astronomical objects, but they don't Did the
group as an entity die with them? in that house
not entirely and this part of the story is just
tragic there were a handful of members who had
left the group or had been sent away by applewhite
before the final exit and two of them wayne cook
and chuck humphrey were devastated that they
had been left behind they felt like they'd missed
the bus they felt like they had failed the final
exam they attempted suicide later to try and
catch up with the group cook succeeded humphrey
survived his first attempt but then killed himself
a year later they were desperate to rejoin their
family And the website is still active. To this
day. HeavensGate .com. If you go there right
now, it looks exactly like it did in 1997. It's
got the blinking text, the Starfield background,
the slightly off -center text. It's a digital
time capsule. Who keeps it running? It's maintained
by two former members, Mark and Sarah King, who
operate under the name of the Telefoundation.
They pay the hosting fees every year. They even
answer emails from people. They believe their
job is to preserve the information until the
next level decides to open another window for
new recruits. It's a digital ghost town, a monument.
It really is. So we've laid out the timeline.
We've looked at the people. Yeah. But I want
to go back to that central question, the why.
You mentioned the term bounded choice earlier.
Can you break that down for us? Because brainwashing
just feels like such a lazy, simple word. It
implies they were just mindless robots. Exactly.
The term brainwashing implies total passivity,
that someone just reached into their heads and
flipped a switch. But sociologists like Janja
Lalic, who has studied these groups for decades,
argues that it's a much more active process.
She uses the analogy of a funnel. A funnel. Think
about it. At the top of the funnel, the rim is
very wide. You have lots of choices, lots of
freedom. You make a small choice. You decide
to go to a meeting. You read a pamphlet. Still
lots of room to move. But then you make a bigger
choice. Right. You choose to leave your family.
The funnel gets narrower. Then you choose to
move to the campground in the middle of nowhere.
Narrower still. You choose to give up your name,
your money, your past. You choose to ignore your
doubts. You're burning all your bridges as you
go further down. You're systematically dismantling
your escape routes. And by the time you're standing
in that mansion with a cup of poisoned applesauce
in your hand, you're at the very bottom of the
narrowest part of that funnel. You've cut off
everyone who ever loved you. You have no money,
no independent identity, no hair, no sex drive.
You have invested more than 20 years of your
life into this one singular truth. To turn back
now would mean admitting that your entire adult
life was a catastrophic mistake. It would be
psychologically impossible. So in that tiny closed
system at the bottom of the funnel, death becomes
the only logical step left. It's the only way
to validate the lifetime of sacrifice you've
already made. It's the sunk cost fallacy played
out on a lethal scale. That makes it so much
more terrifying to me than just saying, oh, they
were crazy. It means they were human. They were
making what seemed like rational choices at every
step within a system designed to make only one
final choice possible. They were looking for
meaning, for purpose. They wanted to feel special.
And Marshall Applewhite gave them a story where
they weren't just followers. They were the most
important people in the universe. They were the
elite away team chosen to save humanity's consciousness.
It's not hard to see the appeal. It reminds me
a little of how we all curate our identities
today. We might not wear purple shrouds, but
we all have our online tribes, our political
bubbles, the stories we tell ourselves about
who the good guys and bad guys are. We do, and
we all crave certainty in a chaotic world. It's
a fundamental human need. If someone comes along
with enough confidence and says, I have the answer,
it's simple, just follow me, trust me, and you
will be safe and special, that is an incredibly
powerful, incredibly seductive drug. So as we
wrap this up, I guess I want to leave you with
a final thought. The 39 people in Heaven's Gate
believed the world was about to be spaded under
and recycled. They were wrong. The comet passed.
The world kept spinning. But looking at our world
today, with the information overload, the intense
polarization, the widespread feeling that things
are spinning out of control, can we really truly
not understand the desire to just get out? We
can't condemn the desire. We can only mourn the
tragic final destination where their particular
search led them. What vehicles or containers
are you clinging to for your own identity? And
maybe more importantly, who's driving your bus?
It's something to think about. Thanks for taking
this deep dive with us. We'll see you next time.