Pod Insights Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks Rattlesnake Bite - The Dangerous Games Cults Play About this episode In 1977, attorney and journalist Paul Morantz investigated a drug rehabilitation institution and found himself on the receiving end of the wrath of a cult.
~~
To advertise on the show, contact us!
~~
Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts.
For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:
Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast
Twitter: @ToothandClawPod
Wes: @GrizKid
Jeff: @jefe_larson
Mike: @mikey3ds
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript 17,379 words · 4 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:13 Jeff Larson? Hello everyone, welcome to Tooth and Claw Podcast. We have our wildlife biologist, bear expert Wes Larson.
0:21 Mike Smith? Hello.
0:22 Jeff Larson? He's just sitting there.
0:23 Mike Smith? Just sitting here in my studio.
0:25 Jeff Larson? And then we got Mike Smith, co-host.
0:27 Wes Larson? Co-host extraordinaire.
0:28 Mike Smith? Thank you.
0:29 Jeff Larson? Co-host.
0:30 Mike Smith? Thanks for having me.
0:30 Jeff Larson? He's just sitting there. And then I'm Jeff Larson, Wes's little brother. I'm just sitting here. And we are Tooth and Claw Podcast.
0:38 Wes Larson? Just sitting here. That should be our tagline.
0:41 Jeff Larson? We just sit here.
0:42 Wes Larson? Yeah, talking sometimes.
0:44 Mike Smith? Less a tagline than like a goal for me.
0:46 Wes Larson? Something funny that happened to me this morning. This happened more times than I think happens to most people. I was just like sitting, putting some final touches on, on this episode. And I hear Jessie kind of scream. And I was like, what's up? And she says, oh, a flea just fell out of my head. And that's not uncommon at my house. And it's not that we live in like destitution or whatever the word is, but it's just, animals get fleas.
1:16 Mike Smith? So it's not uncommon that a flea will fall off of Jessie's head?
1:22 Wes Larson? Yeah. She just like, all of a sudden, one just like fell onto her notebook. Not just Jessie. I've had my, my fair share of fleas too.
1:29 Mike Smith? Oh, okay.
1:30 Wes Larson? Yeah. But it always is kind of discouraging. It's like, oh shit, now I gotta go comb through my hair and look for fleas again.
1:37 Jeff Larson? What's so bad about fleas? Is it just like the gross part of it?
1:41 Wes Larson? They're, they bite and it's really itchy. They drink a little bit of your blood and it, there does not. And they suck for animals too. They're really hard to get rid of once you've got them. So we got fleas.
1:52 Mike Smith? You should gather them all up and sell them in a little flea market. I think that's what those are, right?
1:58 Wes Larson? Or do a flea circus.
1:59 Mike Smith? Where you sell your fleas.
2:00 Jeff Larson? Yeah. Can't they like do chase?
2:01 Wes Larson? A flea trapeze? Yeah. Just talk to Dr. Hammond or Richard Hammond. Was that his name?
2:06 Jeff Larson? Doesn't sound.
2:07 Wes Larson? No, Richard Attenborough. What was his first name?
2:10 Jeff Larson? Doctor.
2:11 Wes Larson? Yeah. His were fake.
2:12 Jeff Larson? It doesn't sound that hard to get them out if they just fell out.
2:16 Wes Larson? Yeah, that's true.
2:18 Mike Smith? That one's got butter fingers.
2:19 Wes Larson? Yeah, they just lay lots of little eggs and stuff. They're annoying. That's farm life, I guess.
2:24 Mike Smith? Ooh, you could use those eggs too, just like you use your chicken eggs.
2:28 Wes Larson? Yeah, cook up flea eggs in the morning.
2:30 Mike Smith? Sell them.
2:31 Wes Larson? How do you like your flea eggs? Over easy.
2:34 Mike Smith? I like big ones.
2:36 Wes Larson? Well, shut up, you guys.
2:38 Mike Smith? Alright.
2:38 Wes Larson? Will you guys shut up for once?
2:40 Mike Smith? Thought you'd never ask.
2:41 Wes Larson? We've got a long story today, so would you just shut up, Jeff? You especially. Alright. Today's story is one that's been on my list for a long time. It's one that I've been thinking about since I first heard about it. And it's very different from our typical stories in that the animal plays a very small part in it, but it's a very important role. And the rest of the story is really crazy. Anyways, since I first heard about this story, I've been thinking about it. It's got a real true crime angle to it. It's about a cult, which I think people are very interested in cults. And there is a wildlife angle to it too. So, we're gonna get into it. You guys ready?
3:23 Mike Smith? Let's go.
3:24 Wes Larson? Uh, my main sources were an article in LA Magazine that was written by Hillel Aaron, an Oxygen article by Ted Quarterman, Oxygen True Crime, and HBO series The Synanon Fix: Did the Cure Become the Cult? There was also a lot of other articles and YouTube videos that I watched, but those three were my main sources for this story.
3:46 Mike Smith? Is Syn- what's Synanon? I'm not familiar with that one.
3:49 Wes Larson? We're gonna get into it.
3:49 Mike Smith? Oh, okay. Sounds a little like QAnon. Now I'm excited.
3:53 Wes Larson? It's similar, yeah. Alright, Paul Morantz was stressed out, to say the least. Every shadow in his house was hiding an assassin. Every footstep outside might be the last noise he would ever hear. And there's a good reason for his paranoia. Morantz was a lawyer that had made himself an enemy to one of the most successful and one of the most dangerous cults in American history.
4:16 Mike Smith? Oh, wow.
4:17 Wes Larson? He knew that they wanted him dead and recently he had bought a shotgun. He had been making a habit out of checking his car for car bombs before starting it up. And he had told all his neighbors in Pacific Palisades, California, to be on the lookout for anyone suspicious.
4:32 Mike Smith? That's not a bad habit to be in. I should start incorporating that into-
4:35 Wes Larson? Just checking for car bombs.
4:36 Mike Smith? Just in case. You can't ever be sure.
4:39 Wes Larson? But on the evening of October 11th, 1977, Morance had decided to give himself a night off from worrying. The Dodgers were in game one of the World Series. All he wanted to do was relax and watch the game at home. Yeah, I don't like me-
4:54 Jeff Larson? The cult probably knows though. He's like, during the Dodgers game, that's what-
4:59 Wes Larson? They might have. What he didn't know is that cult members had visited his house earlier that day, and their plot to end his life was already in motion. A living, breathing, slithering assassin had been left at Morance's house. One that had perfected its lethality over millions of years and was waiting for him silently in his mailbox.
5:19 Jeff Larson? Oh man.
5:20 Wes Larson? All right.
5:21 Jeff Larson? A leopard.
5:23 Wes Larson? Slithering in his mailbox.
5:25 Jeff Larson? You don't think they could slither?
5:26 Wes Larson? Uh, yeah, sure. There's only really one. Well, I guess, do worms slither? Cause it's gotta be a snake, right?
5:33 Mike Smith? Yeah.
5:34 Wes Larson? It would be very surprising to open your mailbox and have a leopard jump out. That would be... All right.
5:42 Mike Smith? Like, what's it doing slithering? That's not how they move. That would be surprising.
5:47 Wes Larson? We're gonna hop in our time machine. We're gonna head back to March 22nd, 1913, in Toledo, Ohio. We're in the hospital where baby Charles Diedrich is just starting to crown out of his mom's vagina as she screams through the pain of the contractions.
6:02 Mike Smith? You don't have to put it that way.
6:04 Wes Larson? All right, maybe we went back a little too far. Uh, let's skip ahead four years.
6:09 Mike Smith? Yeah.
6:10 Jeff Larson? That's when they should have got him.
6:13 Wes Larson? Yeah, true.
6:14 Mike Smith? Yeah.
6:15 Wes Larson? Instead of baby Hitler.
6:16 Mike Smith? Yeah, that's a good point.
6:18 Wes Larson? We could have done it, but we're skipping ahead four years.
6:21 Jeff Larson? Do you have to just choose one baby?
6:25 Mike Smith? You got time of one baby.
6:27 Wes Larson? You get access to a time machine and they're like, okay. You get to kill one baby.
6:33 Mike Smith? Do you think baby Hitler's parents let him get into like, cause you know, when you're little, your parents get you doing finger painting? Do you think his finger painting sucked too?
6:42 Wes Larson? Yeah.
6:43 Jeff Larson? And they were parents. He's solid.
6:45 Wes Larson? Art's not in your future. Yeah, but it was, it was boring. It was just like realism and not that good. Anyway.
6:51 Mike Smith? Okay.
6:51 Wes Larson? Everyone's a critic. Yeah. Let's leave our baby Hitler talk and we're skipping ahead four years. So in 1917, Chuck Diedrich is now four years old and his alcoholic father has just died in a car accident. Which you know, in 1917, you really have to try to die in a car accident. I feel like cars probably only went 15 miles per hour back then. His mom turns to religion to try and help raise her young son. And he's brought up a devout Roman Catholic, but at age 14, he reads H G Wells, History of the World. And it immediately turns him into an atheist and he also starts drinking. Alcoholism would prove to be a lifelong battle for him. He was a college dropout. He couldn't hold a job.
7:35 Wes Larson? At age 29, meningitis would claim part of the bone on the left side of his face. And by age 40, he'd be on his way to his second divorce, both of them being caused by his alcoholism. But it was that year when he was turning 40 that he would attend his first AA meeting. And he was an instant celebrity at these meetings. And that was because he had a knack for storytelling and his ability to go on these long, interesting monologues at the podium. So he'd go to these meetings, he would start talking, everyone would be enthralled. And he would even go from like one AA chapter meeting to like another. He would skip around, kind of like the guy in Fight Club.
8:11 Jeff Larson? Yeah, Fight Club, yeah.
8:12 Wes Larson? His love for being the center of attention kept him going back to these meetings, even though he didn't believe in the higher power message of AA. In 1957, he had been sober for one year and he enrolled in a study at UCLA that was looking at LSD as a cure for alcoholism. So that always goes really well, right? We've learned that in history that these guys that they tested LSD on always ended up being super normal afterward.
8:38 Mike Smith? Yeah. The old MKUltra.
8:41 Wes Larson? Ted Kaczynski, MKUltra, yeah. Taking LSD in the study changed his life. It turned him into a new person, one that was full of confidence, so much so that he viewed himself as a type of god. He credits it with being the most important single experience of his life. Now, not long after this LSD experience, he stopped going to AA meetings, but he'd become so popular at these meetings that some of the other members of AA would show up at his house to catch up and talk with him. And Diedrich was also really into philosophy and psychology, and these meetings would turn into kind of sermons from him, where he would preach to these AA participants about the philosophy that had been reading, about his experiences, and they would have
9:21 Wes Larson? these really intense group therapy sessions together. Over time, drug addicts started coming to these therapy sessions as well, mostly heroin addicts, and Diedrich really liked the sessions with these addicts because it could be a lot harder on them. He basically viewed them as if they were children, and he would talk to them as if he were their dad. And it was during that time that one of the participants in these sermons mixed up the words "symposium," "anonymous," and maybe something else, and this term "synanon" was born. So this organization, this kind of nascent group, was starting to be called Synanon. It's just kind of a weird amalgamation of a few different words.
10:03 Mike Smith? What time are we around again?
10:05 Wes Larson? This is in the late 50s.
10:06 Mike Smith? Late 50s, okay.
10:07 Wes Larson? Yeah.
10:08 Mike Smith? Interesting.
10:09 Wes Larson? So word of these meetings starts growing, and more and more people start showing up. And Chuck Diedrich moves the group to San Diego, he gets a storefront, and quickly they become too big for the storefront, and people kind of get word of what's going on and they push him out. So he ends up renting an abandoned military building on the beach at Santa Monica. And during those early years, he established Synanon as a nonprofit, but still got complaints about him treating people without a license or a permit, even spent some time in jail because keeps kind of treating these addicts, saying that he has a treatment for them, even though he's not licensed at all to do that.
10:46 Mike Smith? What was he doing that was illegal? Do you know?
10:49 Wes Larson? Uh, you have to be like registered as a treatment center to do that sort of thing.
10:54 Mike Smith? Okay.
10:55 Jeff Larson? To talk to him?
10:57 Wes Larson? Yeah, but he, he was like, we'll get into that, but he essentially was running this like a business.
11:02 Jeff Larson? He was marketing himself as like, come to me, I'm God.
11:07 Wes Larson? Yeah, exactly. And it, it gets, it gets pretty crazy. So we'll get into it. It keeps growing and it's actually kind of revolutionary at the beginning, especially because up until that time, drug addicts were typically just thrown in prison or a mental institution and they never really got better. But Synanon was actually one of the first rehab centers that focused on treating the psychology of drug addiction. And it was actually working pretty well. And the core tactic that they used was something called the game. So the Synanon game is like their main tactic.
11:39 Mike Smith? I saw that movie.
11:40 Wes Larson? Yeah, it's not the movie, but that is a great movie. This is created by Diedrich and the game was essentially getting a bunch of addicts together in a circle. And then they would vocally call each other out on their dishonesties, their hypocrisies and their secrets. Basically they could air out any bad feelings for each other in the most upfront and heavy handed ways possible. And it would devolve into these huge shouting matches full of verbal abuse that were often followed by a large emotional release. So it's just like brutal honesty and verbal abuse. They could like say anything they wanted. And I, yeah, Jeff, I feel like you'd like playing the game.
12:20 Jeff Larson? Put it all on the tape.
12:21 Wes Larson? Each other. Yep. And Jeff, you're, you're a very honest person. I think, I don't know. I, I think they take it way too far, but the crazy thing.
12:29 Jeff Larson? No, I, I have that where I just, I don't know.
12:33 Wes Larson? You say what's on your chest.
12:35 Jeff Larson? Yeah. Well, I mean, should we just do it right now?
12:39 Mike Smith? Start yelling?
12:40 Wes Larson? Nope. I would not like the game.
12:42 Jeff Larson? You've really lately.
12:47 Jeff Larson? You've been talking way too much about bears on the podcast.
12:51 Wes Larson? I'll shut up. I'll stop talking about bears. That's my promise. I would just immediately fold. I'd be like, you're right. I'm sorry.
12:57 Mike Smith? Yep.
12:57 Wes Larson? Okay. The crazy thing about this is it actually kind of worked. There were a lot of people.
13:02 Jeff Larson? You'd be like, no, you do that.
13:07 Wes Larson? There are a lot of people from the early days of Synanon that credit the organization with curing their addiction and saving their lives. One of those people was Betty Coleman. Betty was a black woman who'd been both a heroin addict and a sex worker, but found herself drawn to Synanon. At the meeting, she was impressed by the feeling of racial equality, and the game sessions helped her to feel activated and ready to kick her habits. She spent more and more time at the centers, and a romantic relationship developed between her and Chuck Diedrich. And they ended up getting married. I will just say, like, a quick aside. Synanon was really good with, like, diversity and racial equality.
13:46 Wes Larson? Everyone was welcomed equally. There wasn't any kind of preconceptions about race or background or anything. So I will.
13:54 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I like Syna- Syna Bun.
13:57 Wes Larson? Yeah. So far, yeah, so far it sounds great. If you've spent much time in the West, you know that every ski town has a brand that the locals are gonna wear before the rest of the country catches on. In Jackson Hole, that brand is Steel. Steel is designed and tested in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, right at the base of the Tetons by locals who ski, bike, climb, and fish there every day. I've spent a lot of time in Jackson Hole. I know that they deal with a lot of different weather there, a lot of different things. And so Steel really has to hold up in a ton of different environments. And they've been at it since 2011. Fifteen years in, it's the real gear that locals live in.
14:36 Wes Larson? It's made for the whole mountain day, beyond the summit, the first chair, the school run, dinner out, the dog walk when it's cold outside. It's just made for every moment of mountain life. And those are people that are living through Wyoming winters, so they really know warm. The hometown down jacket is 800 fill down, but it feels more like your favorite hoodie than it does a puffy. And for me, I am really excited about the men's Furnos Max Insulated Jacket. I'm constantly looking for a jacket that just ticks all the boxes and this one really does. It's stretchy, it's breathable, it looks great, it keeps me super warm. It's just amazing. I just absolutely love this jacket. So ski season's almost here. Gear up now the way that the locals do.
15:18 Wes Larson? Go to stio.com/tooth for 20% off your order. That's S-T-I-O dot com slash tooth. stio.com slash tooth. Stio, designed and tested in Jackson Hole.
15:31 Mike Smith? This episode is brought to you by Miracle Made. The weather is heating up and your nighttime bedroom temperature has a huge impact on your sleep quality. If you wake up too hot or too cold, I highly recommend you check out Miracle Made's bed sheets. Miracle Made sheets are inspired by NASA and use silver infused fabrics that are temperature regulating so you can sleep at the perfect temperature all night long. Like that, that one song?
15:52 Wes Larson? Which one?
15:52 Mike Smith? All Night Long, dude. Featured in Miami Vice, episode one, season one.
15:57 Wes Larson? They're talking about sleeping.
15:59 Mike Smith? Yeah, in Miracle Made bed sheets. They should be. So, like I said, they use silver infused fabrics inspired by NASA and they're thermo-regulating and designed to keep you at the perfect temperature all night long. Also, they're self-cleaning. I don't know how this works. They haven't, they haven't called me up and explained it to me, but they don't need to because I can feel it. Every morning I wake up, I'm feeling clean, feeling, feeling fresh and I don't smell as bad as I used to. Oh, man. Upgrade your sleep as the weather heats up. Go to trymiracle.com/tooth to try Miracle Made Sheets today. And whether you're buying them for yourself or as a gift for a loved one, if you order today, you can save over 40%. And if you use our promo TOOTH at checkout, you'll get a free three-piece towel set and save an extra 20%. Miracle is so confident in their product, it's backed with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
16:44 Mike Smith? So if you aren't 100% satisfied, you'll get a free refund. Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made. Go to trymiracle.com/tooth and use the code TOOTH to claim your free three-piece towel set and save 40% off. Again, that's trymiracle.com/tooth to treat yourself. Thank you, Miracle Made.
17:03 Wes Larson? So Chuck and Betty had just gotten married. Synanon starts getting kind of famous around this time. Actors, authors, politicians, musicians, all sorts of famous people were openly touting the organization and their success in helping people kick addiction and creating a really fun community. That's the other thing that I can't really overstate is that the thing that was really making people stick in Synanon was that they were surrounded by like-minded people. They would have really fun parties. It just seemed like a really interesting community. And do you know anything about the early 60s, especially pretty much all the 60s? Community was something that had started to become really important to people that kind of saw themselves as counterculture.
17:46 Wes Larson? So that's kind of what's going on here in the late 60s.
17:50 Jeff Larson? Well, it's really important for kicking like a drug addiction too.
17:54 Wes Larson? Totally.
17:55 Jeff Larson? Especially something like as hard as heroin. You need an alternative that is enjoyable, you know? You need something else to do that can like take up time.
18:06 Wes Larson? Yeah.
18:06 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
18:07 Wes Larson? Yeah, and they, I mean, they would have.
18:08 Mike Smith? Screaming at your friends.
18:09 Wes Larson? They would pretty much.
18:10 Mike Smith? About what you don't like about them. That sounds like a great way to kick a habit.
18:14 Wes Larson? They would live at these centers. Yeah, it's not like they were just like going to it for a few hours a day. They would live at the houses. They were like fully integrated into Synanon society. Jeff, you're fully integrated into Cinnabon society.
18:31 Jeff Larson? I can't kick it.
18:32 Wes Larson? You can't kick it.
18:33 Mike Smith? Whatever dude, I bought Cinnabon in, where were we? Ecuador? You wouldn't even eat any.
18:38 Wes Larson? Wasn't the same.
18:39 Jeff Larson? You got so mad at me for eating your food. I'm never gonna ask to eat your food again.
18:45 Wes Larson? All right. All right, in the late 60s, there were well over a thousand members in Synanon. They were receiving millions of dollars in donations each year. They owned over $7 million in real estate and Chuck Diedrich had created a whole marketing arm of the organization. They would sell Synanon branded merch to different businesses. They ran some gas stations. They were starting to make a lot of money and Diedrich was feeling more and more powerful. It was around this time that new.
19:11 Jeff Larson? They ran gas stations?
19:12 Wes Larson? Yeah. They had like gas stations.
19:14 Jeff Larson? I guess you have like the employees, you might as well start looking at things they can do.
19:18 Wes Larson? Yeah, he was a bit of an entrepreneur and he was always kind of thinking of new ways to make money, which is a common thing for cult leaders. It was around this time that newcomers, both male and female, were starting to shave their heads when they entered the organization. It's kind of like a punishment and a rite of passage all rolled into one. And there was also a lot of people who would wear overalls almost every day. And that's because that's what Diedrich wore. And he was kind of both a father figure and a religious leader to these people by this point. So when you see photos of Synanon from this time, almost everyone has a shaved head. And it's, it's pretty interesting. They starting, they're starting to look much more culty by now. By this point, most people still agreed that Synanon was pretty great overall,
20:02 Wes Larson? seemed to be making a real difference for the addicts that were becoming involved. Uh, most people would be in the program for two years, often living full time in a Synanon house. And they wouldn't be allowed to leave the program for those two years. And then they would graduate and go back out into the world. But in the late sixties, things started to change a little bit. First of all, Diedrich now saw the organization as more of a religion than anything else. And he decided that you don't graduate from a religion. So why are people graduating from Synanon? So people were no longer allowed to graduate. Once you were in Synanon, you were in for life.
20:38 Jeff Larson? Oh.
20:39 Wes Larson? He also started accepting a lot of people that weren't addicts, but wanted to be part of this community. And he called those people lifestyleers. They were a lot different than like the normal addict people. They got to have a lot more freedoms. And they were usually the ones that were kind of running things and punishing the addicts and yelling at them and whatnot. There were a lot of different Synanon centers by this point. And Diedrich installed speakers around the centers that would broadcast his speeches pretty much 24/7. And sometimes he would speak to people live through a private radio frequency.
21:14 Jeff Larson? It's not very fun anymore.
21:16 Wes Larson? It's starting to become less fun, but people are still really into it.
21:18 Jeff Larson? I don't like this speaker 24/7 thing at all.
21:22 Wes Larson? Yeah. He also started training some of the members in martial arts and basic military training.
21:27 Jeff Larson? Oh, I'm back.
21:28 Wes Larson? Yeah. You hear martial arts and you're in.
21:33 Wes Larson? He created a Synanon fighting force called the Imperial Marines. They were tasked with protecting Synanon from outsiders, but at least in the beginning, it kinda seemed like they didn't have much to do. He did spend like $300,000 on guns. Jeff, you're a gun guy. You would love to see that.
21:49 Jeff Larson? I mean, if I know martial arts, I probably wouldn't need the gun, to be honest with you.
21:53 Wes Larson? Yeah, your hands are weapons then.
21:56 Jeff Larson? If they have guns, I'll just take the gun from them.
21:59 Wes Larson? Yeah. I think they called their specific type of martial arts like "sindo" or something. It was pretty silly. That's so cool. Do they have a boat? Why were they Marines? Do you know? I don't know. Yeah. I mean, are Marines like, are Marines, are they associated with the water?
22:18 Mike Smith? They're naval, yeah. It's like, yeah.
22:22 Jeff Larson? The name Marine was?
22:24 Wes Larson? I know, but I thought Marine was like, I thought the Marines were a whole different thing than the name.
22:28 Mike Smith? I mean, they're a different branch in the Navy, but they're like, part, I don't know exactly how it works, but they're associated closely with the Navy.
22:35 Jeff Larson? They'll like snorkel into the zone if they have to.
22:40 Wes Larson? Love snorkeling, don't they?
22:41 Mike Smith? You think they'll snorkel into like war zones?
22:45 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
22:47 Wes Larson? Yeah, dude, frogmen. Isn't that what they call them?
22:51 Mike Smith? I thought that was French people.
22:52 Wes Larson? No, dude, they love being called frogmen when they're snorkeling around in their little black jumpsuits. They're so cute. All right. In the 70s, even though Synanon didn't have the correct licenses or permits for group care, judges and probation officers started to assign at-risk youth to Synanon centers against their will. Yeah. This is kind of, Synanon is often seen as the start of the troubled teen industry. Like what Brent went to, our cousin Brent, and all these different people get sent to. This is kind of... The pattern for all of those places.
23:26 Mike Smith? Wow.
23:27 Wes Larson? Because kids would get sent there and there was no oversight over anything. They would be put through boot camp like training and they would be almost consistently physically abused by Synanon leaders.
23:39 Jeff Larson? They had to dig holes as deep as their shovels, like longwise and widthwise.
23:45 Wes Larson? And there's venomous lizards. Everywhere. No, but they would like get the shit kicked out of them all the time, like really intense physical abuse. It wasn't this like happy-go-lucky place for them. It was really intense. And there was even like kind of an underground railroad to get people out of these Synanon centers, kids.
24:06 Mike Smith? Oh, like that one Elon Musk is trying to build?
24:09 Wes Larson? No, it's not like Hyperloop or whatever.
24:12 Mike Smith? Imagine how fast you could get them out with the Hyperloop though.
24:15 Wes Larson? Probably not that fast.
24:17 Jeff Larson? Still be there, yeah.
24:20 Wes Larson? You know, high-speed rail exists, people. We don't need to take people in Teslas one at a time.
24:26 Mike Smith? Nah, Hyperloop sounds cooler.
24:29 Wes Larson? So these kids would escape and they'd report this abuse to adults, but it often fell on deaf ears because they were already these kids that people saw as like delinquent. So, anyway, Diedrick started charging members a lot of money each month to be part of the group. And when the IRS started looking into Synanon in 1974, he was able to officially change the designation of the group to a religion, which meant he could escape paying taxes to the government.
24:56 Mike Smith? Yeah.
24:57 Jeff Larson? Oh, that's sick. We gotta do that with Tooth.
24:59 Wes Larson? Yeah, should we be coming up with a religion? Tooth and Colt, dude, Tooth and Colt.
25:05 Wes Larson? The organization was now making roughly eight million dollars a year and they owned over 20 million dollars in real estate, including some sprawling compounds that Diedrick kind of saw as the future of the organization. So it was during this time in the seventies that Synanon really started swinging from a quirky community of addicts that found peace in brutal honesty to a paranoid and hostile cult that saw Diedrick as their savior. And some big changes started happening. One of those changes was that members were no longer allowed to have children because Diedrick thought the world was overpopulated. My guess is that he was probably just like annoyed by some of their kids and was like, too many kids. You guys can't have them anymore.
25:47 Jeff Larson? I don't know. He's kinda right. The world was overpopulated back then.
25:53 Wes Larson? This wasn't a hard rule, meaning you wouldn't necessarily get kicked out of Synanon for having a kid. But there were definitely more than a few women in the organization that were coerced into having abortions. But surprisingly, the onus for making sure this reproductive control happened ultimately fell on the men. And that's surprising because usually when you're talking about reproductive control in any kind of situation, it's usually it's placed on women's shoulders, but Synanon really put that on the men. By 1977, all men over the age of 18 that had been in Synanon for over five years were required to have a vasectomy and vasectomies were often performed collectively in what Synanon called clipping parties.
26:37 Wes Larson? Should we, should we do one of those after this? Should we have a little clipping party, the three of us?
26:42 Mike Smith? No, I wanna, just in case things change, I wanna reserve the right to sire a child.
26:48 Wes Larson? I guess I'll have a solo clipping party then.
26:53 Wes Larson? For some of the men in the group, this was a step too far. One of those men was Phil Ritter. He did not want to be forced to get a vasectomy. This was like not the cult that he had signed up for. And he went and talked to the police about what was happening at Synanon. Somehow, a Synanon lawyer got word of him snitching and they wouldn't let him back into Synanon housing where his wife and his daughter were living. Around the same time, Diedrich's wife Betty passed away from lung cancer at the age of 55. And the cult really went off the rails when she died. One of the first things that happened was that Chuck pretty much held a tryout for his new wife. He picked a 31-year-old out of the six finalists and he was 64 years old at the time.
27:37 Wes Larson? Not long after, he said that marriage.
27:39 Mike Smith? That's not that. I mean, Leo would have gone younger.
27:42 Wes Larson? Younger. I, I think he was wrong, especially because he had, there's a total like.
27:48 Mike Smith? Power imbalance.
27:49 Wes Larson? A power, yeah, a power imbalance. Dynamic.
27:51 Jeff Larson? I'd wanna like see how she won the spot before I like make any judgment. Like if she just blew him away in the sack race competition, it's like how do you choose someone else?
28:03 Mike Smith? Interesting work. She ran like a four, three, 40 or something?
28:07 Wes Larson? Yeah.
28:07 Mike Smith? I, yeah, and a 31-year-old is an adult.
28:11 Wes Larson? So yeah, there's, there's worse examples, but it does feel a little icky that that's who he decided on. Anyway, they did. I do think they stayed together for the rest of his life.
28:22 Mike Smith? There you go, dude. This episode is brought to you by Beam. For my whole life, I've had a really hard time falling asleep. I have to have the perfect room temperature, the perfect bedding, the perfect white noise. Everything just has to be perfect. But you know what's made it so much easier for me is Beam. Beam's Dream Powder is made with clean, natural ingredients like reishi, magnesium, L-theanine, apigenin, and melatonin, formulated to help you fall asleep fast, stay asleep, and wake up refreshed. Try it and see why Dream by Beam has improved over 30 million nights of sleep for people across the country. And yeah, Beam does help me fall asleep easier, deeper, and better. But you know what's even nicer than that?
29:03 Mike Smith? Is drinking it in the first place. It's delicious. It's like a nice hot cup of cocoa right before you go to sleep. I just can't think of anything better, especially as winter's coming. And it's less than 20 calories per serving. So go to shopbeam.com/tooth, use code TOOTH, and get 50% off during Beam's Cyber Sale, only available while flavors are in stock. With this incredible discount, that means you'll pay just 83 cents per night for the best sleep of your life. So seriously, think about it. How much would you pay for a truly great night of sleep? Beam is just 83 cents per night. So go to shopbeam.com/tooth now. That's shopbeam.com/tooth.
29:44 Wes Larson? So I'm in a five-star hotel right now in Thailand. I'm sitting on the bed. It's a great bed. It's amazing. I'm still dreaming of my bed back home, and that's because it's a Brooklyn Bedding bed. I have the Sedona Elite from Brooklyn Bedding. I absolutely love it. Every night, I look forward to just climbing into bed and going to sleep because it's such a good mattress. And that's because Brooklyn Bedding has been assembling top-tier mattresses for over 30 years in their Arizona factory. There's no middlemen, there's no gimmicks, just top-tier quality, honest pricing, and real American craftsmanship for a better night's sleep. Brooklyn Bedding knows that sleep isn't one size fits all. And that's why they offer 15 plus different mattress models for every body, every sleep
30:26 Wes Larson? style, even in the hard to find sizes. And if you sleep hot, they use Glaciotex covers, copper infused foams, and temperature regulating materials to help keep you cool and comfortable all night long. Me and Jesse actually had a really, really nice mattress prior to this, and it was hard for me to give it up because I just didn't think that Brooklyn Bedding could possibly be better. And it is. I'm really happy. I'll never look back. I just love my mattress. So go to brooklinbedding.com, use our promo code TOOTH at checkout to get 30% off sitewide during the Black Friday sale exclusively with our code. That's brooklinbedding.com and promo code TOOTH for 30% off sitewide. Let them know that we sent you in the survey
31:08 Wes Larson? after checkout. Brooklinbedding.com promo code TOOTH.
31:13 Jeff Larson? Tooth and Claw is brought to you by Hims. Men, if ED is getting you down, you need Hims to help you get your confidence and other things back up. Hims provides access to treatments that can help you stay hard and last longer, so you can be ready whenever the mood strikes. And that's important, because sometimes, you know, you gotta be ready at all times. You never know what's gonna happen. I've been watching clips online. Sometimes it's pizza men. You'd never know what's gonna happen.
31:43 Wes Larson? Yeah, we've tried to tell you over and over again, those clips aren't real.
31:48 Jeff Larson? Yeah, it's crazy. Plumbers, you never know. For men, dealing with ED can be uncomfortable, which is why Hims provides access to a comfortable solution with an all online process and personalized treatment options. Hims is changing men's healthcare by providing you with access to affordable sexual health treatments from the comfort of your couch. Process is 100% online, so there's no need for uncomfortable doctor visits. No insurance is needed, and one low price covers everything from treatments to ongoing care. With hundreds of thousands of trusted subscribers, Hims can help you find the ED option that works for you. Start your free online visit today at hims.com/tooth. That's H-I-M-S.
32:31 Jeff Larson? com slash tooth for your personalized ED treatment options hims dot com slash tooth. The featured products include compounded products which are not approved or verified for safety, effectiveness, or quality by the FDA. Prescription required. See website for details, restrictions, and important safety information. Price varies based on product and subscription plan.
32:54 Wes Larson? But a crazy thing was not long after he got married, he said that marriage should no longer be permanent and that married couples should all be divorced and start forming three-year love contracts with people within Synanon rather than lifetime marriages. The next day, hundreds of couples filed for divorce. One of those people was Phil Ritter's wife. So Phil Ritter was the one that was kicked out of Synanon.
33:17 Jeff Larson? Oh shit.
33:17 Wes Larson? He wasn't allowed to see her or his daughter.
33:20 Jeff Larson? Owned.
33:21 Wes Larson? He is getting owned by this cult. Ultimately, he filed a legal motion to be able to see her more.
33:27 Mike Smith? Got that vasectomy. It's not that.
33:30 Wes Larson? He already had a daughter.
33:31 Mike Smith? Seriously.
33:33 Wes Larson? He's like, wait, three-year love contracts? I want back in.
33:38 Wes Larson? So he filed a legal motion to be able to see her more. And it turns out that legal action was really the thing that Chuck Diedrick hated the most and was afraid of. So not long after filing this motion, Phil Ritter was walking home one day when two men with shaved heads and wooden mallets approached him in the street. They beat him without saying a single word and left him bleeding in the street with a fractured skull. This would be just one of 18 attacks that would be linked to Synanon and the Imperial Marines.
34:08 Jeff Larson? Damn.
34:08 Wes Larson? Synanon is now making a lot of money through members themselves who would pay monthly dues, sometimes up to a thousand dollars a month in the seventies, which was a lot of money. So they were really focused on recruiting or receiving new members by whatever means necessary. Edwin was in over his head. His wife Frances had been having psychotic episodes and he was simply not qualified to handle them as they'd been getting progressively worse. In June of 1977, he could tell she was on the verge of another breakdown and he had made plans to take her to a treatment center after he got home from work. In the meantime, he told her to go to a clinic in Venice Beach for a tranquilizer to tide her over until they went to the treatment center that afternoon.
34:51 Wes Larson? But when Ed got home from work, Frances was gone. She'd gone to the clinic and while she was there, a nurse had recommended she try Synanon for treatment and had pointed her in the direction of a nearby Synanon center. When she arrived at the center in a nearly psychotic state, the Synanon people took her in, immediately shaved her head and started breaking her down through repeated sessions of the game. They locked her in a Synanon apartment and she had no control over when she was allowed to leave.
35:19 Mike Smith? Whoa.
35:20 Wes Larson? Ed figured out what had happened. He went to the center and demanded her release and he was told that he was not allowed to see his wife and that she did not want to see him. The next day, she was put on a bus and transferred to another Synanon facility north of San Francisco. So they pretty much like just kidnapped this woman.
35:37 Mike Smith? Yeah, so she had no link to this organization at all before showing up that day.
35:43 Wes Larson? She just showed up for treatment and they like shaved her head and threw her in prison, essentially, and broke her down verbally.
35:49 Mike Smith? Yeah, that's probably illegal, right?
35:51 Wes Larson? Yes, this is illegal.
35:53 Mike Smith? That's one of those things where...
35:55 Wes Larson? Well, kind of, we're gonna get into that.
35:57 Mike Smith? Wow, I'm really interested to hear how that might not be illegal.
36:01 Wes Larson? It's right, it's right now, actually. So Ed figured out what had happened. He went to the center, he demanded a release, this new center, and they again said no. So he talked to the police and he was told there was nothing they could do because she was an adult that had willingly checked herself into the shelter. So even though it's like she's psychotic, the police are just like, no, you know, she's an adult woman, she can do whatever she wants, which I, you know, I wonder how that would hold up in court these days.
36:30 Jeff Larson? Yeah, it's interesting. I feel like you need to talk to her to be like, do you want to be there?
36:35 Wes Larson? Right.
36:36 Jeff Larson? You know?
36:37 Wes Larson? Right, and like at this point, she probably doesn't want to be there.
36:39 Jeff Larson? Right.
36:40 Wes Larson? But they had told her that her husband had shown up and said that he wanted nothing to do with her anymore and that she should start paperwork for a divorce. And Ed had, yeah, Ed had traveled there and he's again told that he can't see her and that she wants nothing to do with them. So he's desperate. He starts reaching out to anyone that might be able to help him, including politicians and lawyers. And one of those lawyers happened to be Paul Morantz, and he was exactly the right person for Ed to find. Morantz had built a career helping people that had been coerced and controlled against their will. And when he heard Ed and Frances's story, he immediately knew that he had found a new purpose and that purpose was taking down
37:20 Wes Larson? Synanon. He calmly told Ed on the phone, "I'll get her back. I promise I'll get her back." Morantz did a tiny bit of research into Synanon and quickly realized that they didn't have any of the licenses, permits, or oversight required of a treatment care center. And he knew that he had to act fast to get Frances out. What he didn't know was that Frances had already entered into full-blown psychosis at this point, and Synanon was actually pretty ready to get rid of her as well. So, they arranged for, they arranged for her release conditional on Ed and Frances signing a waiver of liability for Synanon. So essentially, they said, "We'll let her out. She can go back to Ed, but you guys have to say this wasn't our fault." And Morantz was a really sneaky lawyer,
38:03 Wes Larson? as you know, as they tend to be, their sneaks. And, but in a good way, this time. He managed to write up a contract that left a loophole for the winds to be able to prosecute Synanon. So when Frances was released, they almost immediately launched their suit and they won. Synanon had to pay this couple $300,000 in damages. This is 1977, that's big money. For Diedrich, Chuck Diedrich, the public embarrassment was much worse than the payout, and Paul Morantz immediately became enemy number one for Synanon.
38:35 Jeff Larson? Those guys with the sticks are gonna get him, maybe?
38:38 Wes Larson? Yeah, those skinheads with mallets. Diedrich would rant and rave to his Imperial Marines about how Morantz was going to end Synanon and he needed to go. A lot of those rants would actually be recorded and would serve as valuable evidence in future court cases against Synanon. In one of them, he was recorded saying, and you guys are gonna love this, this is what he said, "It's scary. Don't mess with us. You can get killed dead. Physically dead."
39:04 Mike Smith? Whoa. Pretty intense.
39:07 Wes Larson? That is, yeah.
39:09 Mike Smith? Well, yeah, at least it's not like a spiritual death. Cause that's like the ultimate kinda.
39:14 Wes Larson? It's worse.
39:15 Jeff Larson? Kill your spirit, eh?
39:17 Wes Larson? Yeah, he's not to that point yet, but maybe, maybe someday.
39:22 Jeff Larson? Emotionally dead, that's probably the best option.
39:25 Wes Larson? Yeah, we're all there already, you know? And when it seemed like Paul Morantz might be contacting other disgruntled members of Synanon to represent them in legal battles, Diedrich launched into action. He had two Imperial Marines that he trusted with this task of eliminating Morantz. One was 20-year-old Lance Kenton, son of a famous jazz musician that had pretty much been raised in Synanon. The other was Joseph Musico, a former addict and Vietnam vet that would boast about wearing a necklace of human ears while he was in the war. So, not a, not a great guy, probably. So first Diedrich told them to look into hiring an assassin to kill Morantz. But the high price tag of getting an assassin, which was like 10 grand, I think is what they found, was too much for Diedrich.
40:10 Wes Larson? He didn't want to pay that much. So he assigned the assassination to these two men, Lance Kenton and Joseph Musico.
40:17 Jeff Larson? I don't know.
40:18 Wes Larson? Go ahead, sorry.
40:19 Jeff Larson? We're on the same wavelength, that thing.
40:20 Wes Larson? I want you to do it then.
40:21 Jeff Larson? If you're making that much money, you got, 10,000's not even a lot for an assassin.
40:28 Wes Larson? No.
40:28 Jeff Larson? That's something you want a good person for.
40:31 Wes Larson? Yeah, you want to overpay.
40:33 Jeff Larson? Yeah, there's like things you can skimp out on a bit. Assassins, I would recommend getting a pretty quality.
40:41 Wes Larson? Yeah, like spending all the money.
40:43 Mike Smith? You see in the Star Wars prequels, what a bad assassin, like it just doesn't work. They do a bad job and they end up killing the emperor eventually.
40:52 Jeff Larson? They probably would like talk about it afterwards and brag about it. The bad assassin would. Good assassin, you never hear from him again.
41:00 Wes Larson? Chucking some worms into their room that are gonna kill them.
41:03 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
41:06 Wes Larson? Never trust worms to do an assassin's job. That's what I was always told.
41:10 Mike Smith? That's rule number one as an assassin.
41:12 Wes Larson? Yeah. Anyway, I think he just kind of saw them as free labor and probably didn't value their lives very much. So he just said, why don't you two handle this? They had some time to discuss ways they might be able to kill Morants without implicating themselves and ways that would also send a strong message to Sinan on enemies. And during that discussion, Lance told Joseph that he was good with snakes.
41:36 Speaker 03 Progressive's Accident Response can contact emergency services if you're in a major accident. The only thing worse than someone you love being in an accident is not being able to help them. So Progressive is here to help when you can't. So get peace of mind knowing your loved ones are protected with Progressive's Accident Response. Learn more at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Limited availability in California. Driver is responsible for emergency and towing charges not covered by the policy. Coverage subject to policy, terms and conditions.
42:05 Wes Larson? You guys know I love my cat. Me and Toad, we're bros. We just, I love watching a movie late at night. He comes and lays on my chest and just purrs into my ear. He's just a wonderful ray of sunshine in my life. I love him. So for me, it's really important that he gets the best quality food possible because I know that's going to extend his life. It's going to make him happier, too. Pets don't deserve just to eat like processed cardboard kibble all the time. They deserve really good food. And for me, that food is Smalls. Smalls cat food is protein-packed recipes made with preservative-free ingredients that you would find in your fridge and it's delivered right to your door. Cats.com actually named Smalls their best overall cat food, which is pretty impressive.
42:50 Wes Larson? That's cats.com that we're talking about here, guys. Yeah, so cats themselves have made their voice heard. They have. Toad has definitely made his voice hurt. He loves Smalls. They sent us a package of a bunch of their different varieties of cat food and he really likes them all. And they even gave us this cool little, it almost looks like a chalice that he can eat out. So, you know, he's our little king that's eating out of his little chalice.
43:12 Mike Smith? I want a chalice to eat out of. That's cool. I'll order some.
43:17 Wes Larson? The thing for me that's so important is they have fresh protein packed meals. After switching to Smalls, 88% of cat owners reported overall health improvements, which is a big deal. And they're so confident that your cat will love their product that you can try it risk free. It means they'll refund you if your cat won't eat their food. Since making the switch to Smalls, I do feel like Toad has been happier. He's been more excited to eat his meals, has more balanced energy, and just kind of seems like his litter box is a little less stinky too, which is always a big plus.
43:47 Mike Smith? Whoa, nice job, Toad.
43:49 Wes Larson? For a limited time only, because you are a Tooth and Claw listener, you can get 35% off Smalls plus an additional 50% off your first order by using our code TOOTH. That's an additional 50% off when you head to Smalls.com and use promo code TOOTH. Again, that's promo code TOOTH for an additional 50% off your first order plus free shipping at Smalls.com. All right, back to Paul Morantz.
44:14 Jeff Larson? You can't just like not use snakes then.
44:17 Wes Larson? Yeah, he's like, okay, so you want to use snakes? Is that what you're saying?
44:21 Jeff Larson? He's like, I guess.
44:21 Wes Larson? No, no, no, no. It's not what I'm saying, but.
44:24 Jeff Larson? I mean, we could use a gun.
44:25 Wes Larson? If we wanted to.
44:26 Jeff Larson? I am good with snakes.
44:29 Mike Smith? It is like the Star Wars assassin then.
44:31 Wes Larson? Yeah, it is. It's very similar. All right, back to Paul Morantz. He's in his house settling in to watch game one of the World Series, Yankees versus Dodgers.
44:42 Mike Smith? The Dodgers. Oh, my gosh.
44:45 Wes Larson? He knew how dangerous Chuck Diedrich was. He knew that there was probably people planning to kill him, but he also needed to maintain his sanity. And for once, he was just gonna relax, watch some baseball, not think about Synanon. As he walked into his living room to turn on his TV, Paul could see something in the mailbox. The slit, it was kind of a, like a mailbox slit on his living room wall, kind of interesting mailbox. His glasses weren't on, but through the grate of the mailbox, he could see what looked like a large package that he thought might be a scarf or something long in his mailbox. So he reaches his hand in to open it up.
45:23 Mike Smith? Wait, so like, it was the length of a scarf?
45:28 Wes Larson? He, it just looked like something in there that was long and a package. So you thought like-
45:33 Jeff Larson? Be a crazy way to say scarf. Like, not to fold them up at all.
45:38 Wes Larson? Not wrapped in anything. What it was, was a four and a half foot long, southern Pacific rattlesnake that had been stuffed into this mailbox.
45:48 Jeff Larson? Whoa.
45:49 Wes Larson? Very stressed out and also injured. The men that had caught it, left it here in the dark, had also removed its rattles with a knife. It was in pure defense mode. Its tail was vibrating silently, as Paul Morantz opened the mailbox and light fell on the snake's face. Paul had just started to reach into the mailbox when the rattlesnake shot forward and sank its fangs into his hand, just below his left thumb. The pain was instant, and he felt as though his hand had been caught in a powerful vice. Pulled his hand back with the snake still attached, and it fell from the mailbox and plopped onto the floor. Paul immediately realized what had happened, and his first thought was, oh no, this isn't how they're gonna get me.
46:32 Wes Larson? And then he ran out his back door and started screaming for help. In those screams, he added, "It's Synanon. Synanon got me."
46:40 Jeff Larson? It'd be crazy if he didn't realize what had happened immediately.
46:44 Wes Larson? Yeah.
46:44 Jeff Larson? If he is still just like, "Where's, where's the scarf?"
46:49 Wes Larson? It's like, "I'll just push past this rattlesnake to get my new scarf."
46:56 Wes Larson? His neighbors would call an ambulance. One neighbor would enter his house and cut the head off the snake, which was still coiled up on his living room floor. Another neighbor would put a tourniquet on Morantz's arm and wait with him while the paramedics arrived. Which, you're not supposed to do with rattlesnakes, but, you know, they, they actually credit this guy with saving him. I don't know if that's true or not. All right, we're gonna do some quick biology. It's a longer story today, so we're not gonna do a ton. And a lot of this is similar to our other rattlesnake species we've covered. But there are some really cool, unique things about this particular species of rattlesnake. Southern Pacific rattlesnakes look a lot like a traditional rattlesnake, like the rattlesnake you'd picture in your head when someone says rattlesnake. They have a diamond-like
47:39 Wes Larson? pattern down their back, tan or brownish-gray coloration. They can also sometimes look a little bit green, and they don't have the black and white stripes on their tails like western diamondbacks do. If you ever see those black and white stripes, you're looking at a diamondback species of rattlesnake, I think. Actually, I shouldn't say that. There might be others that have that. Southern Pacific rattlesnakes are one of the more common species of snake in Southern California, and they're really the only rattlesnake that you'll find right in Los Angeles. There's only one photo of the snake that bit Morantz, and I had read somewhere that it was a western diamondback. I was excited to talk about them because I know how dangerous they can be. But I sent the photo to a snake expert friend
48:20 Wes Larson? of mine, Ian, shout out Ian, and he told me that it was a southern Pacific rattlesnake, which secretly I had suspected it was because I knew it was in Los Angeles. And I was a little bit disappointed, but then Ian told me that they have a crazy venom cocktail, and that it might be the number one snake in the US that he wouldn't want to get bit by, which I thought was interesting. So I had a look into their venom, and it is really interesting. One of the most interesting things about this snake is the way that their venom varies across habitats and elevations that they're found in. So you can take the exact same snake, and if you're in the desert, say Joshua Tree, like this is, it's likely that the snake that Clara Jessup was bit by, who we interviewed, it's likely that it was
49:02 Wes Larson? a southern Pacific rattlesnake, like you can find them in Joshua Tree. If you drive a couple hours to Idlewild, California, which is much higher, you're in like 6,000 or 7,000 feet elevation, their venom can be very, very different. So these lower elevation ones often have hemotoxic and myotoxic venom, which is very typical rattlesnakes. That's the venom that's gonna break down red blood cells, attack tissue. You it's it's typical rattlesnake venom. You see the necrosis and stuff, but it's not attacking your nervous system the same way. But then the ones in the higher elevation have neurotoxic venom, which actually disrupts nerve signals to muscles and is tends to be much more dangerous. It might not hurt as much, but it's like very dangerous venom.
49:47 Jeff Larson? Yeah, you want your muscles talking to each other.
49:49 Wes Larson? You do. Yeah, you need those nerves talking to muscles. And that's interesting because this is the exact same species of rattlesnake. But depending on the elevation that they live on, their venom can vary greatly. And that's really fascinating to me. That's not typical in snakes.
50:05 Jeff Larson? Probably like the prey that they.
50:07 Wes Larson? That's exactly what it is. Good job, Jeff. They think that these higher elevation ones have to kill their prey a little bit quicker because there's often more like escape terrain for them.
50:17 Jeff Larson? Well, moose or high elevation.
50:19 Wes Larson? They're not killing moose. Yeah. But they do think it's probably an evolution based on the type of prey that they're killing. Some of the potential symptoms of a bite from a southern Pacific rattlesnake include the following. Burning pain at the bite site, skin discoloration, the skin can change blue to black, blistering of the skin, swelling at the bite that slowly grows, bleeding from the wound, sensation of a metallic taste in the mouth, salivation, twitching of the eye in the mouth, tingling sensation.
50:52 Mike Smith? That sounds good.
50:53 Wes Larson? Salivation. You get saved. You also get to go to heaven.
50:57 Mike Smith? I'd take a bite.
50:59 Wes Larson? I would too.
51:00 Mike Smith? Free ticket.
51:02 Wes Larson? Chills and sweating, anxiety, breathing difficulties, nausea and vomiting, abdominal pain, blurred vision, death of tissue or necrosis, low blood pressure.
51:12 Mike Smith? Physical death of tissue or?
51:14 Wes Larson? Physical death, not emotional death or spiritual death.
51:18 Mike Smith? That's bad.
51:19 Wes Larson? Feeling faint or dizzy, weakness and malaise, bleeding disorder, blood and urine, bleeding from recent wounds, mucosal bleeding, anemia, acute kidney injury or kidney failure and intense neurological symptoms. So pretty bad. There's a lot like pretty much everything that can happen to you can happen with this rattlesnake bite.
51:41 Mike Smith? Having a cute little kidney injury doesn't sound too bad, just like a nice little cute one.
51:47 Wes Larson? Acute Tacoma.
51:50 Wes Larson? Tiny bit more biology here. Southern Pacific rattlesnakes don't have a huge range, or they're only found in Southern California, Northern Baja, Mexico. But it's really impressive how much variation there is in that small range. Aside from the venom variation that we just talked about, there's some really interesting behavioral variations. For example, the Southern Pacific rattlesnakes on Catalina Island attempted to bite people five times more than their mainland counterparts in a study. And they delivered more than two times the venom on those bites. So just these ones on the island, for whatever reason, are much more aggressive and deliver a lot more venom. And it's really interesting to see that kind of variation among individuals of a species of rattlesnake.
52:33 Wes Larson? And it makes sense to me now why it would be a really scary one to get bitten by, because you really don't know what kind of symptoms you're gonna have, how much venom was injected, and that makes treatment really difficult, too. Some of the antivenoms on the market that are used for the hemotoxic variety won't work very well on the neurotoxic ones. So it's kind of a Russian roulette kind of snake. You need to know like what type of Southern Pacific rattlesnake you were bitten by, which is kind of crazy.
53:00 Jeff Larson? That is interesting.
53:02 Wes Larson? A quick aside here, too. In the past, I've really vacillated between saying like anti-venom, anti-venine. I've recently learned that there's multiple accepted ways to say that. I like anti-venom the most, so we're just gonna stick to that from here on out. Great, okay. At least I am. I don't care what you guys do.
53:20 Jeff Larson? Dude, you sounded like such a dork when you were doing the anti-venine.
53:24 Wes Larson? I know, I hated saying it that way.
53:26 Mike Smith? Venine.
53:28 Wes Larson? I wish you guys would have used the game on me at that point and told me how stupid I was being. All right, so a neighbor had-
53:36 Jeff Larson? I tried, dude. You were like, no, you say it that way.
53:41 Wes Larson? I'm such a dick. Man, this is working.
53:43 Mike Smith? Classic Wes.
53:44 Wes Larson? Yeah, I feel an emotional release. I should join, send on. Uh, Morantz would spend six days in the hospital in an intensive care unit. During that time, there was a media firestorm about the attempted assassination and the dangerous Synanon cult. This is when the, the messaging around Synanon really started to change. It was the biggest error that Diedrich would ever make, and it would ultimately lead to the downfall of Synanon. A neighbor had seen the van stop at Morantz's house and had gotten a plate number. Didn't take the police very long to connect the plate to Synanon and to Lance Canton and Joseph Musico. Both men were arrested and placed into custody. And about a month later, Diedrich was also arrested.
54:27 Wes Larson? When police arrived at his residence, he was so drunk that he couldn't talk, which is kind of ironic. Based on like, this whole thing was based around him getting rid of his alcoholism.
54:38 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
54:38 Wes Larson? In the ensuing court cases, Morantz ended up taking pity on all three of these men. Both Canton and Musico pled no contest to attempted murder and received one year jail sentences with three years probation. Morantz knew the amount of brainwashing they'd both endured, and he felt as though a lifetime in prison wouldn't be fair. Diedrich was in really poor health, and Morantz again didn't feel like prison was the best option for Diedrich. So they offered him a deal. He pled no contest to conspiracy to commit.
55:07 Jeff Larson? Go to his own camp.
55:09 Wes Larson? Yeah.
55:09 Jeff Larson? As like a attendee.
55:11 Wes Larson? Just get the game nonstop. Uh, no, he pled no contest to conspiracy to commit murder. He got five years probation and a $5,000 fine. But the biggest part of this deal was that Diedrich was no longer allowed to associate with Synanon for the rest of his life. So he got it pretty easy, honestly.
55:29 Mike Smith? What did the snake get?
55:31 Wes Larson? The snake got death, unfortunately.
55:33 Mike Smith? Snake was. That's right.
55:34 Wes Larson? A real victim.
55:36 Mike Smith? Had the snake lived, how many years do you think that snake would get?
55:40 Wes Larson? I think the snake would have been let off, but the snake probably would have died without its rattle.
55:44 Jeff Larson? It'd be insane if the guy was like, yeah, go easy on those three, but that snake.
55:49 Mike Smith? The snake.
55:51 Jeff Larson? He's got a pen.
55:51 Mike Smith? Put him away for life.
55:53 Wes Larson? Yeah, in the seventies, that might have happened, or the eighties, I guess, is when this was all happening now.
55:58 Mike Smith? Tough for whoever has to be the cellmate, though, of that snake.
56:01 Wes Larson? To that snake.
56:02 Jeff Larson? I wouldn't mind that.
56:04 Mike Smith? Then you'd get bit?
56:05 Wes Larson? You're terrified of rattlesnakes.
56:07 Mike Smith? Oh, yeah.
56:07 Jeff Larson? I'm terrified of a cellmate?
56:10 Wes Larson? Yeah.
56:11 Mike Smith? You'd rather just have a regular cellmate than a snake?
56:14 Jeff Larson? Just put it in a corner.
56:15 Wes Larson? Snake than a regular cellmate.
56:17 Mike Smith? Oh, no way, dude. Are you kidding me?
56:19 Wes Larson? Like, you'd have to talk to your cellmate all the time. You'd hate it.
56:22 Mike Smith? I would get bit by the snake and die. Well, maybe that is a better alternative. Let me think about it.
56:30 Wes Larson? I don't know. Sometimes jail seems kinda nice. You can just, like, sit and read and watch TV.
56:34 Mike Smith? Yeah.
56:35 Wes Larson? Workout.
56:35 Mike Smith? I've been really thinking about committing some crimes over in Sweden. They sound, their, their prison system sounds pretty sick.
56:41 Jeff Larson? Oh, yeah.
56:41 Wes Larson? It's better than life here.
56:42 Jeff Larson? That's my, that's my, like, backup plan to two.
56:45 Mike Smith? Yeah.
56:46 Wes Larson? Yeah. Crime in Sweden. I like it. Uh, the cult quickly fell apart without Diedrich at the helm. They lost their tax-exempt status in 1982 and were required to pay 17 million in back taxes, which meant financial ruin for Synanon. Today, all of the chapters in the US have been long closed, but there apparently still is a functioning Synanon Center in Germany. Those Germans.
57:10 Mike Smith? Whoa.
57:10 Wes Larson? They just can't. They can't give up anything, can they?
57:14 Mike Smith? Yeah, there are a few things they've left, by the way, so.
57:17 Wes Larson? Nope.
57:17 Mike Smith? There is not, Mike.
57:18 Jeff Larson? I think, I think we should. I like the shaving heads part.
57:22 Mike Smith? Yeah.
57:25 Mike Smith? I think we ought to reboot Synanon over here in the US. It sounded like it started off pretty well.
57:30 Wes Larson? Yeah.
57:31 Mike Smith? Bring it back, you know? We're always rebooting old properties.
57:34 Wes Larson? I will say, it's, I think you can really judge these things by what they, what they birthed. And it seems like Synanon did help start rehab centers. Like, it was like one of the first rehab centers and some good came out of it from that. But also this terrible troubled teen industry also was, like, birthed from Synanon, which has just been so destructive to, to so many people. So, I don't know.
57:59 Speaker 03 Progressive's Accident Response can contact emergency services if you're in a major accident. The only thing worse than someone you love being in an accident is not being able to help them. So Progressive is here to help when you can't. So get peace of mind knowing your loved ones are protected with Progressive's Accident Response. Learn more at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Limited availability in California. Driver is responsible for emergency and towing charges not covered by the policy. Coverage subject to policy terms and conditions.
58:28 Wes Larson? Well, you guys just heard me talk about how much I love my cat and you know that I love my dog too. I sure love Polly. We lost Bryce last year and getting a new dog has just really reinvigorated both me and Jesse. She's such a joy to be around and we want her to live as long as possible. And for me, a big part of that is making sure that we're feeding her the best food possible. Healthier food means a happier pup, more energy, shinier coats, better poops and more excitement at mealtime. And that's why I really like Ollie. Ollie has fresh nutrition and five drool-worthy flavors. Even the pickiest dogs like Ollie, it's made in US kitchens with the highest quality, human-grade ingredients. Contains no fillers, no preservatives, just real food. And they have some great recipes, guys.
59:14 Wes Larson? Fresh beef with sweet potatoes? I'd eat that right now.
59:17 Mike Smith? Whoa.
59:18 Wes Larson? Fresh turkey with blueberries? Never had that combo myself, but it sounds great. What do you guys think?
59:24 Mike Smith? Sounds...
59:25 Wes Larson? Turkey and blueberries?
59:26 Jeff Larson? As a dog, I'd eat it.
59:28 Wes Larson? Oh, yeah.
59:30 Mike Smith? Sounds like I know what I'm eating for Thanksgiving this year.
59:33 Wes Larson? Yep, you guys are getting some turkey and blueberries, Ollie's.
59:36 Mike Smith? Thanks, Ollie.
59:37 Wes Larson? It's really easy to sign up.
59:38 Jeff Larson? But that's gotta be super expensive.
59:40 Wes Larson? It's not. You just sign up, you introduce them to your pup, you fill out their 30-second quiz. You get a welcome kit with two weeks' worth of meals and you can customize your plan. They offer different meal plans to choose from and you can really target it toward your specific dog. It's the only fresh dog food that comes with unlimited routine health screenings. So you can get your pup's health on track to living their healthiest, happiest life. Jeff, you said it might be expensive. But it's not, especially for our listeners. Head to Ollie.com/Tooth, tell them all about your dog, use code TOOTH to get 60% off your welcome kit when you subscribe today.
1:00:21 Wes Larson? Plus, they offer a happiness guarantee on the first box. So if you're not completely satisfied, you'll get your money back. That's O-L-L-I-E.com/Tooth and enter code TOOTH to get 60% off your first box. Alright, so Diedrich died in 1997, a few years short of his 84th birthday. Morantz would continue to focus on cults and coercive organizations for the rest of his career. He wrote several books. He did have health problems for the rest of his life, including a blood disease that doctors believed was an artifact from the snake envenomation.
1:00:56 Jeff Larson? Wow.
1:00:57 Wes Larson? In his later years, he would say that he would eventually set the record for dying from the longest murder ever. In October 2022, he proved himself right when he passed away at the age of 77 from existing health conditions that the rattlesnake bite may have played a part in.
1:01:13 Jeff Larson? Ah, that's crazy.
1:01:16 Mike Smith? I mean, by that logic, the only way you don't prove quote unquote is if you never die.
1:01:21 Jeff Larson? Mike, let's let him have this.
1:01:22 Mike Smith? Okay, well, you got it. You got him right.
1:01:25 Jeff Larson? No, but not necessarily. Like if he died in a car crash or something.
1:01:29 Mike Smith? That's true. Yeah.
1:01:31 Jeff Larson? Yeah. Or does he, yeah.
1:01:33 Wes Larson? If he was like shot in the face, you couldn't say, you know, I think the rattlesnake finally got him.
1:01:38 Mike Smith? Played a part, could have, maybe.
1:01:40 Jeff Larson? Could have survived had he not been bit that once.
1:01:43 Wes Larson? I, that's the end of the story, but for me, this one was really interesting because I had never really heard of Synanon. But meanwhile, there had been like movies made about it. There's this whole HBO documentary series. It's like one of the more influential cults that ever existed in the US. It really changed a lot. And there were a lot of people that were heavily affected by this cult. So it's really interesting to me.
1:02:07 Mike Smith? Yeah, it's fascinating.
1:02:09 Jeff Larson? Yeah, no, there's, I didn't really know any of that, so, but it sounds like it's a pretty big deal. That's crazy how bad those assassins were.
1:02:21 Wes Larson? Yeah, kinda good in a way, but also like.
1:02:24 Jeff Larson? Like it worked, but it's also like, you gotta know that a rattlesnake isn't necessarily gonna kill someone.
1:02:31 Wes Larson? Right. It's a very like low probability tactic, but it almost, it almost worked.
1:02:39 Jeff Larson? But then like to do it when like the neighbors can see your van and like.
1:02:44 Mike Smith? Bad work, real bad work by them.
1:02:47 Wes Larson? They were sloppy.
1:02:48 Mike Smith? It was kinda surprising to me and maybe it shouldn't have been. Do you think it's impressive that the snake even bit him at all?
1:02:56 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:02:56 Mike Smith? Because that, that was like, there's no good way to know that the snake's even gonna go for it, you know?
1:03:01 Wes Larson? I think when you aggravate a rattlesnake to that level, like you stuff it in a mailbox, you cut its tail off. They probably like shook it around in a bag before they put it in. It's much more likely to bite. It's in a very like defensive mindset. But I think more impressive than anything is like thinking that it would actually make contact.
1:03:20 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:03:20 Wes Larson? Because you would assume like maybe he would open the mailbox and be like, oh shit, you know, and knock it bit by the snake. But the fact that it worked as well as it did, I actually thought was kind of impressive.
1:03:30 Mike Smith? Really?
1:03:31 Jeff Larson? There's a little bit of blame on him for just opening the package when he feels like his life is threatened, you know?
1:03:38 Wes Larson? Yeah, for sure.
1:03:39 Jeff Larson? I just feel like, you know, a gun, they have guns at the compound.
1:03:45 Wes Larson? Yeah, three hundred dollars worth of guns. Let's get a rattlesnake. I do, I think the two, the thing too, that they probably didn't understand is how low probability it is that it actually kills him. We've talked about this before. I think in, just in California, every year, there's hundreds of people that get bitten by rattlesnakes. And they usually don't have any deaths, like not that many people die from rattlesnakes. I think it's between three and five people a year. And the entire United States die from rattlesnake envenomation. So it's really not a lot. It's a pretty low percentage. And even in the seventies, it was pretty low because they had already developed some of these antivenoms that, that worked pretty well. So, yeah. If you're gonna kill someone, don't use a rattlesnake.
1:04:29 Jeff Larson? How many people in California die from guns every year?
1:04:33 Wes Larson? A lot more than rattlesnakes, a lot. So yeah, guns definitely higher probability.
1:04:39 Jeff Larson? Even like a snake gun that, just like a gun that shoots the rattlesnake would be better.
1:04:43 Wes Larson? Now we're talking. That's what that guy says, like, hey, I'm good with snakes.
1:04:48 Jeff Larson? The other guy's like, I'm good with guns. It's like, oh, good idea.
1:04:54 Wes Larson? All right. Well, do you guys have any other questions about Synanon, Southern Pacific rattlesnakes, Paul Morantz, anything before we go to our categories?
1:05:02 Mike Smith? How are they doing? Are they doing all right, these snakes?
1:05:05 Wes Larson? Uh, yeah, we're gonna get to that in conservation, but I can just do it now. Their least concern. Their main threats are from habitat loss and just human intervention. People don't like snakes and they'll often kill snakes. So all rattlesnake populations in the US are declining, but this is one that has a pretty healthy population. One thing that's kind of a silver lining for them is that they often do pretty well on the fringes of human society because we tend to attract rodents. People, we're not good at disposing of our waste, which brings rodents in, and that's what they like to eat. So sometimes we can benefit them in that way, but we're ultimately hurting them by killing them directly and destroying their habitat.
1:05:48 Mike Smith? Is losing a rattle a pretty big deal for them? Is it like a death sentence almost or what?
1:05:54 Wes Larson? It's not a death sentence in that their rattle is purely defensive. Like they use their rattle to discourage predators. And for rattlesnakes, their main predators are coyotes, birds of prey, road runners will kill them. But they don't have like a ton of natural predators, especially once they're older. So it's not a death sentence. It doesn't affect their ability to get prey or anything.
1:06:19 Jeff Larson? Kind, there's, there's like species, or there's groups of rattlesnakes that have evolved to like lose their rattle or have smaller rattles. And I kind of feel like they're gonna move that way with like evolution. Just because now that when humans hear the rattle, they like kill rattlesnakes a lot of the time. So I feel like the snakes that rattle less are gonna be the ones that produce the most offspring.
1:06:43 Mike Smith? You're like Chuck Darwin, dude.
1:06:46 Wes Larson? That's an interesting concept. It's human induced evolution and that does happen. We've talked about it a little bit, like pheasants that fly are being selected against because they're the ones that get shot. So pheasants are starting to run a lot more than they used to. And that could happen with rattlesnakes. You're right, Jeff. It's very, it's an interesting thing to think about.
1:07:05 Mike Smith? That's by that logic, you think penguins are going to start flying because the ones that don't are the ones that are getting eaten.
1:07:11 Wes Larson? But I don't think they could change to do that. They probably wish they could. It sucked to be born a bird and then realize you can't fly.
1:07:20 Mike Smith? Yeah, that'd be tough. It's like Elsa, Elsa and Frozen. Her parents like, don't use those sweet magic powers. It's bad.
1:07:28 Wes Larson? Just dream powers.
1:07:30 Jeff Larson? Stay in your room your entire life. I think that's a good, that's a good idea.
1:07:35 Wes Larson? Yeah, she makes like one snowball and they lose their minds. All right, let's get onto our categories. They're very cult focused today. I asked you guys your best or favorite cult in pop culture history or real life? You can pick a real cult or a fake cult.
1:07:54 Jeff Larson? I like in The Office, just this line that Creed has where he's like, he's talking about cults and he says, "You make a lot more money as a leader, but it's a lot more fun as a follower." I just always think of that line when I think of cults.
1:08:09 Wes Larson? All right. So your answer is Creed's line from The Office. Okay.
1:08:14 Mike Smith? Uh, I'm going with Los Illuminados from Resident Evil 4. I think it's a pretty cool cult. They're just like zombie parasite people controlled by Sadler and uh, they play bingo. You know, there's the bingo. Where's everyone going bingo? That's the, that's the funny line everyone thinks about.
1:08:30 Wes Larson? That's my, that's definitely my favorite of the Resident Evil games. That's the only one I played start to finish. It's a good one.
1:08:36 Mike Smith? It's great.
1:08:36 Wes Larson? I picked the real life one. I picked Heaven's Gate. Do you guys remember Heaven's Gate?
1:08:40 Mike Smith? Yeah, the Nikes dude.
1:08:42 Wes Larson? Sweet. They pretty much believed that there was like extraterrestrial life and.
1:08:47 Jeff Larson? Are they the Kool-Aid ones?
1:08:49 Wes Larson? No, that we're going to talk about them too, but Heaven's Gate, when the Hail Bop Comet arrived in the, in the nineties. They all killed themselves thinking that there was a UFO behind the comet. And that when they died, they would like be taken up into that UFO. And they dressed in like the same outfit with the same Nikes. And they all had five dollars and three quarters in their pocket. And it was like, kind of a joke. It was just a really wonky, interesting, weird cult.
1:09:19 Mike Smith? Man.
1:09:19 Wes Larson? And it was like thirty something people that committed suicide when the comet passed. It was, it was a strange one.
1:09:26 Mike Smith? It's crazy. Real crazy. Is that how you pronounce that comet's name? I've always been confused because I always called, called it Haley bop.
1:09:34 Wes Larson? I thought it was hail bop, but I'm not sure.
1:09:36 Mike Smith? Hal. Hal bop, okay.
1:09:38 Wes Larson? Let's say you guys start a cult. What are three rules you're gonna have? And what's your outfit gonna be?
1:09:44 Mike Smith? Hmm, so I thought about this a lot. And I've been, I've been eating a lot of Mike and Ike's, the, the mega mix box. But the stupid thing is that I only like one of the flavors out of the ten.
1:09:54 Wes Larson? It's so dumb.
1:09:56 Mike Smith? The watermelon, it's so good and they don't sell it, it doesn't come in any other box. And don't come at me with the sour watermelon box. It's not the same. So the cult is there's only ten of us and each of us are devoting ourselves to one of the flavors. Uh, only people named, named either Mike or Ike can join. Or any variation of the name.
1:10:16 Wes Larson? You can have a lot of Mikes.
1:10:17 Mike Smith? Like Miguel or Michaela, like anything close enough. Because we don't, I don't want to be too excludes, exclusionary. I, yeah, Ike, Dwight D Eisenhower could have joined. So the rules are you have to be either named Mike or Ike. Everyone has to buy one box a day. And then we divvy up all the flavors and trade because we're only allowed to eat the one flavor that we like, you know? So I get all the watermelons, everyone gives the watermelons to me, et cetera, et cetera. And then we use the empty cardboard boxes because you can give them back to recycling companies and they'll give you money for them. I think it's like sixty dollars per ton of cardboard. And we're gonna be going through a lot of cardboard. So we're gonna make a lot of money. And we're gonna use that money to like lobby government officials and legislators to, I don't know, various Mike and Ike related causes.
1:11:02 Mike Smith? And then the bonus rule is if you chew with your mouth open, you immediately are sentenced to death.
1:11:08 Wes Larson? I like that. That's a good rule. I'll join your cult.
1:11:10 Mike Smith? Great.
1:11:11 Wes Larson? You can. I get watermelon.
1:11:13 Mike Smith? No, please.
1:11:14 Wes Larson? Your name is Wes.
1:11:16 Mike Smith? Oh, that's right.
1:11:17 Wes Larson? Forgot about that. Changed my name to Ike.
1:11:19 Mike Smith? Jeff, what's your cult?
1:11:21 Jeff Larson? Yeah, so I kinda took some inspiration from the Davidians, Davidians?
1:11:27 Mike Smith? Branch Davidians.
1:11:28 Jeff Larson? Yeah, Branch Davidians.
1:11:30 Mike Smith? Gun guy, you're a gun guy.
1:11:32 Jeff Larson? To me too, like cults, a lot of being in a cult is about sex, especially as like the cult leader. So if I'm the cult leader, there's a lot of sex motivation. But I liked how he did it, where it's like, he, he has to have sex with every woman in his cult, but he can't enjoy it. If he starts enjoying it, he has to stop. So it's simply just like, you know, I have to do this. It's like, it's like a, it's like an obligation.
1:12:00 Mike Smith? Yeah, oh, man.
1:12:02 Jeff Larson? Yeah, can't enjoy it.
1:12:05 Mike Smith? You're gonna need that hymns subscription.
1:12:09 Jeff Larson? We'll, we'll have, our whole like motto is save the sharks. So then like, it's a good, it's a good thing to care about. And also when people start getting mad at us for having a cult, we can be like, well, we're trying to save sharks. And they'll be like, oh, that is good, you know? That's like a public image type of thing, like people can't get, go too hard on us.
1:12:29 Mike Smith? Good PR.
1:12:30 Jeff Larson? Yeah. Yeah. And then we'll watch the Lord of the Rings Extended once a week.
1:12:36 Mike Smith? Wow, once a week.
1:12:38 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:12:38 Mike Smith? It's a lot.
1:12:39 Jeff Larson? And, uh, I mean, there's nothing else to do. And I think we'll dress kinda as furries, but like, not the full costume. Like, I wanna see people still, but then whatever animal you choose to dress as, and you can change it, you have to like have sex as if, in the way that animal would have sex. When you do have sex.
1:13:02 Mike Smith? So lots of doggy style sex in this cult.
1:13:05 Jeff Larson? I mean, the sharks, you could, Mike did the eagle ray where you bite the side. If you dress as an eagle ray, you bite them on the side, you know?
1:13:14 Mike Smith? Can you change animals that you dress up as, or are you locked in?
1:13:17 Jeff Larson? Preying mantis, like women can choose a praying mantis.
1:13:21 Mike Smith? Right.
1:13:21 Jeff Larson? And just lop the head off afterwards.
1:13:23 Mike Smith? I'd like to see him try.
1:13:24 Jeff Larson? Or eat, eat the head?
1:13:26 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:13:27 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:13:27 Mike Smith? They'd get like one bite into my head and I would put a stop to it.
1:13:32 Wes Larson? All right, my cult, uh, my rules are everyone has to be completely quiet for five hours in the middle of the day. That just sounds nice to me.
1:13:41 Mike Smith? Sign me up. I don't care what the rest of the rules are.
1:13:44 Wes Larson? Uh, we all stockpile Easter candy to eat it year round because it's the best candy and I'd just love to be in a cult where that's what you do. And then to be a member, you have to see 10 new animals each year, which is pretty easy to be honest. Like birds, you can see 10 new birds pretty easily. Uh, our outfit is gonna be robes. I think I'm always the most comfortable just in a robe. Every once in a while you get flashed by someone, so.
1:14:09 Mike Smith? So wait, what's the, what's, what's the upside of this? Like, what's the goal of the cult for you? Just seeing new birds?
1:14:16 Wes Larson? Just having some peace and quiet for five hours every day.
1:14:19 Mike Smith? Hmm.
1:14:20 Wes Larson? Yeah, there's not a big upside.
1:14:21 Mike Smith? There's not a whole lot of sinister.
1:14:23 Wes Larson? No.
1:14:24 Mike Smith? Angles going on there.
1:14:25 Wes Larson? I might be the only person in this cult. I'm pretty much doing all these things already. Aside from the quiet time, so. All right. Our next one is which real life cult would you be most likely to join?
1:14:39 Mike Smith? Oh, this is real life cult. I didn't.
1:14:41 Wes Larson? You can do, you can do a fake one if you want. That's fine.
1:14:43 Mike Smith? Hmm. Well, my fake one was there's a, there's always a bad team in the Pokemon games that's like trying to steal Pikachu or whatever. In one of them, I forget which one it was, but their whole idea was to take people's Pokemon and set them back into the wild and like free them, which I think is pretty, a pretty good thing. Instead of just making them fight each other all the time. I think that's probably, they were in the right.
1:15:08 Wes Larson? Much more ethical.
1:15:09 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:15:11 Wes Larson? Yeah. All right.
1:15:12 Jeff Larson? You go, Wes.
1:15:13 Wes Larson? Yeah. I said I was gonna mention this one, but Jonestown, the People's Temple, Jim Jones, he incorporated like Christianity, socialism and communism into the People's Temple, which was kind of, that's kind of been my track as I've gone through life. Uh, and I, I like, they were really big on racial equality. They moved to Guyana, which Guyana is a beautiful country. Um, he really loses. Me when they get to the drinking, the purple drink and all committing suicide. But you know, if I'm feeling it, if I'm feeling the vibes of racial equality and love and everything, maybe I'll drink it.
1:15:51 Mike Smith? There's a give and a take, you know?
1:15:53 Wes Larson? That one's crazy. When you think about it, nine hundred people like drank the purple drink and died. That's insane and not just so many people.
1:16:03 Mike Smith? Like children and stuff.
1:16:04 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:16:05 Mike Smith? It's gnarly.
1:16:06 Wes Larson? And they like killed a congressman and stuff.
1:16:09 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:16:10 Wes Larson? That one's wild.
1:16:10 Jeff Larson? You must have been saying some true stuff to get every like all of them to do it, you know?
1:16:16 Mike Smith? Right. Yeah. I'm sure a lot of people.
1:16:18 Wes Larson? It was against their will, but.
1:16:20 Jeff Larson? You think?
1:16:21 Mike Smith? Yeah, I would imagine.
1:16:23 Wes Larson? Yeah, nine hundred. Yeah.
1:16:25 Jeff Larson? To make like a good quote, you gotta make it really hard to leave too. That's why.
1:16:29 Mike Smith? Guyana, Guyana is hard to leave.
1:16:31 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:16:32 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:16:33 Jeff Larson? I I just made up my own that was I I was very sexually motivated in all of this.
1:16:41 Mike Smith? Sure.
1:16:41 Jeff Larson? So I just had a cult of all women where I'm like the one guy that joins.
1:16:46 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:16:48 Jeff Larson? It kinda sounds bad, actually.
1:16:50 Wes Larson? I'm pretty sure Jared Leto started one of those cults.
1:16:54 Mike Smith? How'd you come up with that? That's crazy. That's really inventive.
1:17:02 Jeff Larson? Yeah, that's a bad one. You know what? An alien cult would be the most fun, I think.
1:17:07 Mike Smith? Leaving whole hog and aliens.
1:17:10 Jeff Larson? Or like the start of Scientology. That's like, it's just like the start of some of these religious cults where it's just like every day. Like if you're really committed to it and you're just like, wait, we all watched a movie in a volcano? Learning that would be crazy.
1:17:28 Mike Smith? Learning that and still deciding that like, no, this is, this is good still. I still want to be a part of this. Yeah.
1:17:35 Wes Larson? Yeah. All right. Should we do some listener questions or I think we're doing some nice advice would suffice. Is that right, Jeff?
1:17:43 Jeff Larson? Uh, yeah, I got a few.
1:17:45 Wes Larson? Okay, I'm never giving up on that title.
1:17:47 Mike Smith? Should never give up.
1:17:50 Mike Smith? We should rebrand and spin it off into its own show.
1:17:53 Jeff Larson? Okay, and if you guys have listener stories, are we ever gonna do that again?
1:17:59 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:17:59 Jeff Larson? Tooth and tails?
1:18:00 Mike Smith? We're gonna do that for our Mother's Day episode this year, too.
1:18:04 Jeff Larson? All right, yeah, write it in, write in for advice, general advice, or if you have a good wildlife encounter story to [email protected] .
1:18:16 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:18:16 Jeff Larson? Okay, so this is from Jennifer, and it's actually the second part of what she wrote in, but I liked it a lot, the thought of it. So, P.S. I just listened to the episode with the snake falling from a hawk and landing on an innocent bystander below. I instantly remember my friend who had an Osprey drop a live fish onto their deck one afternoon. It's quite large, and the sound of it landing on the deck drew them outside to find the fish alive, and I assume very confused. They ended up eating the fish. I wish I had pictures to send y'all. This occurred on the Chesapeake eastern shore in Maryland.
1:18:56 Jeff Larson? So, I guess my question, or I guess what it is, is just like, what would you do if there's just a huge live fish on your deck all of a sudden?
1:19:05 Mike Smith? It's definitely not advice.
1:19:08 Jeff Larson? Well, we're giving advice right now. I don't know what you want out of this.
1:19:13 Mike Smith? I would put it in a bathtub full of water.
1:19:16 Jeff Larson? Would you?
1:19:16 Mike Smith? I think I would, yeah. Until, like, that's at least step one, because we're gonna be thinking about where we go from there. I actually think eating it's not that bad, because that's like, what are you always, you're always talking about, like, sustainably catching seafood, right, Wes?
1:19:30 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:19:31 Mike Smith? I think that's about as sustainable as it gets.
1:19:33 Jeff Larson? Is that locally caught?
1:19:35 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:19:36 Wes Larson? Locally sourced, caught sustainably.
1:19:38 Mike Smith? So, no issues eating it from there.
1:19:41 Wes Larson? Yeah, I'm impressed that they ate it. Like, I think that's admirable, because I don't think- I think for me, that would feel like a tainted fish at that point. I don't think I would want to eat a fish that an osprey dropped on my deck, but it's impressive that they ate it. So no advice for me. I think 10 out of 10.
1:19:59 Jeff Larson? What do you mean no advice?
1:20:01 Wes Larson? I think they did a great job in what they did.
1:20:03 Jeff Larson? Okay, well, what would you do if one dropped a fish on your deck?
1:20:08 Wes Larson? I would probably just hope that it would come down and take its fish again.
1:20:13 Jeff Larson? Oh, you just leave it out for the osprey to?
1:20:16 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:20:16 Jeff Larson? You'd just let the fish drown?
1:20:21 Wes Larson? Yeah, I guess. It wouldn't take long and I just feel like that osprey deserves its meal that it caught. So I'd probably just let nature take its course.
1:20:31 Mike Smith? I don't know if it deserves it. It dropped it at the goal line, you know? You're so close. You gotta keep your your talons on that. Eye on the prize. I should, we should give advice to the osprey, I think is what this question is about, right?
1:20:44 Wes Larson? Be better at catching fish.
1:20:46 Mike Smith? Right.
1:20:48 Jeff Larson? Yeah, hold on to Butterfingers. You gotta, you gotta to get some like wide receiver gloves or something if you're that osprey.
1:20:56 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:20:58 Jeff Larson? All right. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think I would have ate it, but may, now that I've heard that story, I might, but like, if it had happened without hearing that, yeah, I'd probably kill the fish and then just leave it out there.
1:21:13 Jeff Larson? All right. Next one is from Lauren, an undergrad student studying wildlife ecology at Michigan Technical University. And this one's just kind of advice for Wes to give the state of Michigan.
1:21:28 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:21:29 Jeff Larson? Wildlife. So recently, there have been two cougar cubs spotted in Untogan County in western part of the Upper Peninsula for the first time in over 100 years. There have been cougar sightings before the cubs have been reported, but the DNR reported that they've all been transient males. So like, there's never been cubs found in that section over this past 100 years, right? The mother of the cubs has not been. Found and it doesn't sound like the cubs have been found since they were spotted in March either. I assume that the mother was probably killed and the cubs believed to be around seven to nine months old. And without their mother, it's not likely that they will survive either.
1:22:11 Jeff Larson? I just wanted to get your thoughts on this. What do you think it means for cougars in Michigan? Do you think that there should be protections or repopulation efforts for cougars now that there's been confirmed breeding female? Do you think there could possibly be more breeding females in the area?
1:22:27 Wes Larson? Right. So I'm supposed to give advice to Michigan?
1:22:32 Jeff Larson? If you're hell bent on it being advice, I'm sorry.
1:22:35 Mike Smith? I mean, that is the category.
1:22:37 Wes Larson? I know, but it's like, I'm just, okay, just really quick for people.
1:22:41 Jeff Larson? I thought it'd be interesting to hear your input on what this listener wrote in.
1:22:46 Wes Larson? I agree. This feels like a listener question to me. And I do think when you people write into.
1:22:51 Jeff Larson? But like the questions are too small on the Instagram, you know?
1:22:55 Wes Larson? When people write into the mailbag though, or advice, it can be something that they need advice from us about. But I'm happy to answer this question for now. I think, I personally think you have to often rally a lot of resources, time, energy and money to provide new protections for a species that's been extirpated before. And you want to do that when you know that that animal has like established in that area. To me, just seeing two cubs, probably, I think it would maybe be a little preemptive to put all that effort behind it at that point.
1:23:34 Wes Larson? But I think it's when you start having those discussions, when you start really thinking about whether or not you need to start a mountain lion program or a cougar program. But the other thing I don't totally agree with is that it's very likely that that mom was still around when they saw these cubs and she just wasn't in view. Sometimes mountain lions will stash their cubs somewhere when they go to hunt and they'll leave them alone for hours at a time. So I don't think it's like a given that she's dead and she might be raising those cubs. And if they do continue to see female mountain lions in that area, then yeah, I think it's a great idea to start a program to protect them.
1:24:09 Jeff Larson? Thanks for that advice.
1:24:11 Wes Larson? You're welcome.
1:24:14 Wes Larson? Now Michigan knows what to do.
1:24:16 Jeff Larson? James, James asks, this one, their leg is probably healed by now, but we can still give them some advice. I have a broken leg and I was wondering if there's any good anime or just general TV shows to binge until I get better.
1:24:31 Wes Larson? I'll turn it over to you guys first.
1:24:34 Jeff Larson? Yeah, you know what show I think, a show that I think is really good is You on Netflix.
1:24:41 Wes Larson? Really?
1:24:41 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I, I, I think it's like a fun rewatch and a fun binge.
1:24:48 Wes Larson? I feel like the first two seasons were fun and then it got really bad.
1:24:51 Jeff Larson? I didn't say got good. I was just saying, I think it's a good show. I thought, I feel like they've done well every season. The third one went a little crazy, but I was like, you can't keep doing just, I don't know.
1:25:04 Wes Larson? Alright, yeah.
1:25:05 Mike Smith? For me, when I'm recovering from something, I want kind of like a low stakes episodic. Or something I'm really, really familiar with. So I don't have to be like totally locked in if I'm drifting in and out of sleep or whatever. So like the Twilight Zone, just small little vignettes of, you don't really have to be super locked into it. They're always just like fun concepts, but you don't have to like follow a storyline from episode to episode, season to season. So I would recommend something either you're really, really familiar with and know that you like. Yeah, I, I just, I think the Twilight Zones are really just kind of a fun, almost borderline campy sometimes. Just a, a nice thing to recover to.
1:25:42 Wes Larson? I got two recommendations quickly. I've really enjoyed the recent series Common Side Effects. It was created by Mike Judge and the animators behind Scavengers Reign, which was one of my all time favorite series. And then I really love Andor. I think Andor might be my favorite Star Wars story ever. So I know season two just started. I haven't started it yet, but um, I recommend both of those very emphatically. That's that Common Side Effects. Sounds interesting.
1:26:13 Jeff Larson? Haven't heard of it.
1:26:14 Wes Larson? Mike and Jeff to watch that for months, but they're never, I've, I've overdone it. They're not gonna do it at this point.
1:26:20 Mike Smith? Yeah, we'll never like it as much as you want us to.
1:26:23 Wes Larson? You won't. It's true. I need to just, I'm never gonna bring it up again to you two, but everyone else I will. I think you must have like drunk texted me the other night when you were like, so.
1:26:34 Wes Larson? Maybe time to watch side effects, common side effect? No, it was funny.
1:26:39 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:26:40 Jeff Larson? All right, here's one from Elizabeth. Looking for your advice on a family heirloom. My great grandfather was a furrier.
1:26:50 Jeff Larson? What's that? What's the difference of that and a furry?
1:26:53 Wes Larson? Uh, a furrier? Hold up. It's someone that's even more furry than just a regular furry.
1:26:59 Jeff Larson? Well, I can just tell you. The family still has a real leopard fur coat from his shop that's hanging on my uncle's closet. So it's someone who deals with animal fur. None of us are interested in wearing it and none of us would ever want to kill a leopard for any reason, especially to make it into a dumb coat. So the question is, what would you do with this item? What would be respectful and ethical?
1:27:26 Wes Larson? It's a great question. I think personally, the leopard's already dead. It's a family heirloom. If you want to keep it, I don't think you have to feel bad about keeping it. I don't think, you know, our ideals and ethics and everything have changed over time. And I think if that's something that is important to you or reminds you of your family, that's okay. I don't, I don't know if I'd like wear it out on the town, but like to keep it as a family heirloom, I don't think you need to feel any ethical hangups over that. But if you do feel weird about keeping it, you could give it to a museum or I'm sure there's like a natural history museum somewhere that would take it or like a
1:28:03 Jeff Larson? You think?
1:28:04 Wes Larson? Yeah, I do.
1:28:05 Jeff Larson? Like a coat?
1:28:06 Wes Larson? The Bean Museum in Utah, they take any kind of old taxidermy that people want to surrender. And they then like license it out to different museums and stuff. And if, if it doesn't get licensed, it just sits in a warehouse. But um, someone might want to display it somewhere, you know, even like a fashion museum or something.
1:28:27 Mike Smith? Yeah, maybe, maybe you could repurpose it as something else, like take apart the coat aspect and just have like a, I don't know what you would do with it from there, but I imagine a museum could do something like that as well, but.
1:28:40 Wes Larson? I don't think there's anything wrong with keeping it though. I really don't.
1:28:42 Mike Smith? Sure.
1:28:42 Wes Larson? I think as long as you're Not like wearing it and telling people, look how much I love my leopard skin coat, you know, I think it's okay.
1:28:50 Jeff Larson? I feel like it's a hard one, though, because it is like, I don't know, I don't think I'd want to display it or wear it. Because like if someone goes into your house and just sees like a leopard skin up on your wall. It'd be like every time I would feel obligated to be like, yeah, I didn't kill that and make it into a coat, just so you know. You know, I don't really know what I would do with it. And I feel like a museum, it's not like that rare of to have leopard skin. And people use leopard skin in a lot cooler ways. So I feel like the museum, unless it's like here, feel what a leopard would feel like. Maybe a zoo could do that. I don't know.
1:29:28 Wes Larson? So what are you saying? Like dispose of it?
1:29:32 Jeff Larson? I'm saying it's a hard one. Yeah, just give it to Goodwill.
1:29:35 Wes Larson? I think, I think like, I wouldn't do that. I think like the main, the main thing that my advice would be is that. I don't think they have to feel bad about it, regardless of what they do with it, unless they're like using it in a way that would encourage other people to like have fur. But I think if they want to just keep it, or if they want to put it in a closet or whatever, it doesn't really matter, but.
1:30:00 Jeff Larson? But I'm just trying to hash out, like, what would you do with it?
1:30:03 Wes Larson? I would keep it. I would just like have it in a storage closet. And I think it would be a, an interesting knick knack that I had for my grandpa.
1:30:11 Jeff Larson? I think I'd do that too. Just have it, I'd keep it, but probably not display it. And then just like, hey, you want to see this leopard coat? My grandpa hat.
1:30:22 Wes Larson? Right. That was.
1:30:22 Jeff Larson? Maybe like, if we started a cult, you could like make someone wear it and then shoot them with like a BB gun while they're wearing the leopard coat. And they have to like act like a leopard, you know?
1:30:33 Wes Larson? We did that with you once, Jeff.
1:30:36 Jeff Larson? Bison, right?
1:30:37 Wes Larson? Yeah, the bison hat. Okay, we did conservation already, least concerned, they're doing okay. But all rattlesnake populations are on the decline. Uh, just for people out there, a quick refresher on some safety and how you should treat these animals. These are very. Important animals to the ecosystems they're found in. They do a lot of rodent control for us. They're amazing animals that are beautiful, that have evolved a defense mechanism that's literally a warning for us. I mean, they they tell you to back off before they bite you generally. So they deserve our respect. They deserve our admiration. And if you do encounter rattlesnake, obviously, like, give it plenty of space.
1:31:20 Wes Larson? If you happen to get bit, what are the two things that you need? The first two things you should look for?
1:31:25 Jeff Larson? Cell phone and keys.
1:31:27 Wes Larson? Yes. Call the emergency center closest to you. Tell them you've been bit by a rattlesnake. And then get yourself there as quickly as possible. Anything else you do is window dressing, like.
1:31:37 Jeff Larson? And pick up the snake and bring it to the people so they can identify.
1:31:41 Wes Larson? You should not do that, but if you do have time to take a photo of it, that's also smart so they can identify the species. But really, what you want to do is just get to help as soon as possible. You want to get as much antivenom as you need. Make sure that you advocate for yourself. Because sometimes doctors really just don't have a lot of experience with these animals. And you need to make sure that you're telling them what you know about them. So that's basically it. Anything else you hear about how to treat a snake bite is just kind of not that important.
1:32:11 Jeff Larson? What about how to take down a cult?
1:32:14 Wes Larson? A cult? Yeah, just be a really intrepid, hardworking lawyer, I guess.
1:32:19 Jeff Larson? Don't open packages without shaking them first.
1:32:23 Wes Larson? If you see like, if a package shows up, that's like a 12 foot long poster, like, it looks kind of like a wrapping paper tube, don't open it.
1:32:32 Jeff Larson? It might have a snake in it. Can the rattlesnake like make a noise without its rattle?
1:32:37 Wes Larson? Yeah, even just their tail shaking can make a little noise and they can hiss.
1:32:42 Jeff Larson? They can hiss?
1:32:43 Wes Larson? Yeah, they definitely can make. Sometimes they like really hiss when they get into their coil position. It's pretty intimidating. Uh, I was gonna say one more thing. Oh yeah. So the other thing too, just if you get bit is to be as calm as possible. So, okay. Last thing, our claw rating for the Southern Pacific rattlesnake. I'll go first. I'll go quickly. Nine out of 10 for me.
1:33:04 Mike Smith? I love rattlesnakes. Every time I see a rattlesnake, I get really excited. I think they're incredible animals. And I just never get tired of seeing them in the wild. So nine out of 10.
1:33:15 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I'll probably give it 10 out of 10.
1:33:17 Mike Smith? Wow.
1:33:18 Jeff Larson? I just rattlesnakes are top five snake. I don't know exactly what species I'd put in the 10 spot, but like to me, rattlesnakes are pretty similar. I like them all around the same level, you know? And yeah, I just think they're awesome. I think they're cool.
1:33:37 Mike Smith? Nice. I think they're cool too.
1:33:39 Jeff Larson? A hundred or no, probably like 58 overall.
1:33:44 Mike Smith? Hmm. Okay. Yeah, I'll give them an eight. I just, I didn't really know this specific species of rattlesnake existed till today. I love all snakes. I think they're all cool rattlesnakes especially, but maybe that'll grow as I grow more familiar with them.
1:33:59 Wes Larson? Yeah. If you see a rattlesnake in Los Angeles or San Diego, it's very likely it's this species.
1:34:06 Jeff Larson? Cool. I saw one in Malibu once, so it's probably.
1:34:08 Wes Larson? It was the Southern Pacific.
1:34:10 Mike Smith? There you go, dude. Nice. Was it cool?
1:34:12 Jeff Larson? It's big.
1:34:13 Wes Larson? 10 out of 10. All right. Thanks everyone for listening. Uh, we appreciate all your questions, all your kind words, everything you guys do to support us. Thanks especially to our subscribers. Uh, you truly keep us going and we love you so much.
1:34:29 Mike Smith? Thank you.
1:34:30 Jeff Larson? Funny. The one that we saw is on like a walk with a girl and we both saw it and we both knew there's rattlesnake. She like lived there and would see him sometimes. And then we saw it and we like thought like, that's probably a rattlesnake and we had space to go around it. And we were walking around it and then it like coiled up and rattled and I jumped so high. And then I like already knew what it was and like there's just sitting like it wasn't like a huge threat, but once it rattled, it's still like scared me so bad.
1:35:05 Mike Smith? When they rattle, you know, they mean business.
1:35:07 Wes Larson? Well, they're, yeah, it's business time.
1:35:09 Mike Smith? All right. See you guys.
1:35:10 Jeff Larson? Love you guys.
1:35:11 Mike Smith? Bye.
Previous The Dire Wolf "De-Extinction" Situation - News Stories Including Dire Wolves(?), the Algae that Turns Sea Lions Violent, a Bear Swipe to the Face, and More Next A Venomous Conversation with Dr. Spencer Greene - A Toxic Tooth & Claw Interview Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated