Cover Ups and Conspiracies

Ever wondered why people cling to conspiracy theories, even when faced with hard evidence that debunks them? Discover the intricate psychology behind these beliefs with our special guest, Dr. Lance Moore, an esteemed author and pre-sentence investigator. In this episode of Discerning the Unknown, we unravel the complexities behind the recent political shake-up as Joe Biden exits the presidential race and the conspiracies that are sure to follow. Dr. Moore also offers a fascinating look into his research on the JFK assassination, drawing parallels between past and present conspiracy theories.

Our conversation takes an in-depth look at one of history's most debated events: the assassination of JFK. We challenge the widely accepted narrative that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone by scrutinizing suspicious evidence, including a mysterious phone call between FBI Director Hoover and President Lyndon Johnson. By comparing these historical theories with modern-day claims involving figures like Donald Trump, we examine how misinformation and cover-ups shape public perception. Dr. Moore and I thoroughly analyze the evidence, offering critical insights into how such narratives are constructed and why they persist.

As we wrap up, we shift our focus to the psychology of cults and their charismatic leaders. Drawing from Dr. Moore's book, "Cults on Trial," we discuss the manipulation tactics of figures like Jim Jones, Charles Manson, Hitler, and Donald Trump. We explore how these leaders command unwavering loyalty and what this means in today's media landscape. Stay tuned for a sneak peek into our upcoming episodes, including a riveting interview with renowned archaeologist Dr. Zahi Hawass, where we'll explore the mysteries of the pyramids. Don't miss this enlightening episode that promises to challenge your understanding of conspiracy theories and the human psyche.

Chapters

• 0:05 Conspiracy Theories and Critical Thinking
• 12:15 JFK Assassination
• 20:28 Oswald, JFK, and Trump Theories
• 29:49 Government Cover-Up and Conspiracy Theories
• 37:19 Assassination Motives and Historical Patterns
• 44:37 Cults and Conspiracies
• 56:04 The Psychology of Cults and Leaders
• 1:06:56 Defining Cults and Cultural Tribes
• 1:17:50 Exploring Cults and Media Credibility

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

The Discerning the Unknown Podcast Critical thinking in the age of misinformation. Your host is Ryan Peterson. You're gonna like this. Here's Ryan Peterson.

Speaker 2: 0:40

Once again, hello to you. I am Ryan Peterson and this is the Discerning the Unknown podcast. Take a look at discerningtheunknowncom for information on upcoming guests and what we'll be doing on the show coming up. Got a lot of good guests on the way for you. A good guest today. You're really going to have fun with. Considering the news that came out today. We're going to talk a little bit about that too. It applies, so we'll go there. I'm talking about Joe Biden dropping out of the presidential race, so we'll talk a bit about that and some other conspiracies and so forth.

Speaker 2: 1:20

If you have followed me a bit on Facebook, that's facebookcom slash Discerning the Unknown podcast and I brought up that new intro video still a little long, I'm working on it, but I also mentioned that, rather than just focusing from this point forward on conspiracy theories, I've noticed that a few of my guests, the most interesting things they have to say are why we think the way we think and why some of us hold so fiercely to those beliefs, even when we're presented with some evidence that clearly shows maybe our theories are wrong. So we're going to focus on that a little bit kind of the psychology of conspiracy theories why we think those, why we spread those and why they so easily seem to take hold and really dig in their heels. They so easily seem to take hold and really dig in their heels sometimes when we're trying to defend ourselves or defend our beliefs. So that'll be a focus of the show moving forward Still kind of what I originally planned, but this is the third episode, so it's already evolving a little bit and we're having fun with the guests. One guest I want to tell you about coming up is the famed archaeologist and Egyptologist, zahi Hawass. I made contact with him just about a week ago. He replied right away and said he'd enjoy doing the show. So we've got a day set up and keep an eye on Facebook, keep an eye on discerningtheunknowncom and you'll find out exactly when that episode with Zahi Huas is going to drop. Of course, we'll talk about whether or not the pyramids were built by aliens, so have those questions ready. If you'd like to send me a question for Dr Zahi Huas, then get it to me anytime between now and then and I'll be sure to relay it to him, but that's going to be fun.

Speaker 2: 3:34

Today's guest this is one I've been looking forward to. He is a pre-sentence investigator for Alabama Circuit Courts, previous career as an ordained pastor, college educator and author. He's a doctor, holds a degree from Emory University and very glad to have him here. His book is entitled Cults on Trial a cross-examination of Jim Jones, charles Manson, hitler and Donald Trump. So very glad to welcome Dr Lance Moore to Discerning the Unknown. And Lance, how are you? Big news to you.

Speaker 3: 4:17

Yeah, I'm great Glad to be grateful to be a guest. Yes, it is an eventful day, an eventful week, an eventful year in politics, and so can I just real quick interject, whether listeners and viewers are left-wing, right-wing or, like probably me and you, independent thinkers, don't jump to conclusions about the topics. This is some interesting stuff we have before us, not just the politics but, as you said, the psychology. I think it's a great question you pose, ryan, of why we think the way we think. So I'm fully on board. I'd love for everybody else to stay fully on board and give us a listen.

Speaker 2: 5:01

Excellent. So yeah, I told you before we started recording that I was almost so engrossed in watching the news today I didn't even look at the clock and of course today the news dropped that President Biden has dropped out of the presidential race. He has endorsed Kamala Harris. Don't know if she's going to be the nominee yet. That's yet to be seen. Speaking of conspiracies, I guess this is one where we can start, maybe kind of touch on it before one starts. I haven't heard any yet, but do you think there are other issues at hand here? Is somebody behind the scenes saying we've got to get Biden out what he did, and what he thought.

Speaker 3: 5:45

Let's back up just a week to the other conspiracy topic about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.

Speaker 2: 5:55

I'm getting there.

Speaker 3: 5:56

Yeah, I'm jumping ahead with you. But, as you also know, another one of my several books is Killing JFK 50 Years, 50 Lies, subtitled, from the Warren Commission to Bill O'Reilly, a History of Deceit and the JFK Assassination. So I hate to boast to promote my own work, but that's the world we live in, where you have to do it or you don't sell books, but that book has been a uh, a bestseller as far as a self published books go. Uh, several of my other books have traditional publishers. But guess what?

Speaker 3: 6:37

Speaking of conspiracies, mainstream publishers only wanted to hear one side of the JFK um discussion and that was the lone gunman did it, and there was just overwhelming proof, facts, evidence that there was more than one person involved and there was literally a conspiracy to not only kill JFK but to cover up that fact. So that now fast forward. That's been 60 years ago, ryan. But now fast forward to 60 years till today, where we have an abundance of conspiracy theories floating out there in the Internet on both sides. On both sides, folks a little bit on the left saying maybe Trump staged this to boost his own standing in the polls or whatever, as well as folks on the right saying maybe Biden and or the deep state conspired to kill Trump and my quick answer is obviously it's just way too early to know what transpired. I don't, this is not one I'm going to jump on with both feet to say it's a conspiracy either way, because what I have learned in my getting to be long life is that people's incompetence and by this I mean the security folks incompetence can happen regardless of what one's politics are or who's behind something. As far as you know, is the Secret Service run by the deep state? Well, it's, it's got a lot of conservative folks in the secret service as well. You know as well as uh, uh, currently a uh democratic, uh, democrat, uh administration. So, uh, you know I would wave a flag of caution that, uh, this could be one of those cases of several coincidences, uh, combined with some gross incompetence, and we don't need to detail that because that's been discussed for a week now out there. So I'm just saying caution and maybe that helps viewers understand that I don't consider myself an irrational nutcake conspiracy theorist per se.

Speaker 3: 9:06

At the same time, I do know that conspiracies have happened in history and there's there's plenty of evidence for that in the past. Right now we don't have any evidence, because we don't have any documented. You know testimonies from anybody. We don't have any documentated. You know testimonies from anybody. We don't know what the full story is of what happened in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 3: 9:32

Now I warned you before time, ryan, that I tend to ramble, so I've rambled my way into let me segue, or ramble Segue is a fancy word for my rambling To the other topic of that day. You mentioned the colson trial, and that is one of one of the things that I argue in my book. Colson trial, and somewhat in the kennedy book as well, is that one of the best processes we have for determining truth in any situation is the adversarial court process where both parties have an attorney, both parties get to bring in documented facts, they get to bring in witnesses, they give testimonies, they get cross-examined again adversarial, so you don't just get a monolithic party line of what happened in any given case and then you have a judge and a jury. So it's a good process. I'm not saying it's perfect, but most of the time that's the better way to find out the truth of things.

Speaker 3: 10:37

And so I apply that to cults and to the phenomenon of cult leaders who have a knack for manipulating people and persuading people and having people do things they might not normally do if they weren't under the influence of a very charismatic leader. And so that book, while it emphasizes the importance of the trial process, it also connects with your good question why we think the way we think. Because, in addition to looking at facts and reason and logic and the trial process, half of my book talks about the emotional and psychological aspect of that, because emotions are in most cases more powerful than reason. I'm going to take a breath there and you tell me where we're at there.

Speaker 2: 11:38

Well, I really want to, because we went over JFK and we just we can't gloss over that, of course. We went over JFK and we just we can't gloss over that. Of course, when we're talking about conspiracy theories Probably the biggest one in American history, one of the two or three I guess that just popped into my head I really honestly have, over over the course of my life, have gone back and forth on the JFK conspiracy. It seems like every time I see a good documentary with reasonable evidence I think, oh, that may be it. So you know the JFK movie by Oliver Stone. I think everybody in the world after seeing that thought one of those that he presented. He presented a hundred, it seemed, of theories of who could have done it or who was involved. I think somebody you know everybody, thought one of theories of who could have done it or who was involved. I think somebody, you know everybody, thought one of those has to be true. But really the last one, I think the last opinion where I think I switched and I think where I'm holding today, is I really do think Oswald acted alone. I think that that first shot and you can tell me why. Your research may say I'm wrong, but I think that first shot at the time in 1963, there was a road sign between Oswald and Kennedy's motorcade. I think that first shot missed because of that it ricocheted and hit that guy on the ground and that's why the second two were better shots.

Speaker 2: 13:13

I think we've heard a lot about the magic bullet, of course, and that it had to have turned.

Speaker 2: 13:19

It was going to go through Kennedy and Connolly. Well, the seats that they were sitting in were not level with each other, or even one was off kilter, so the bullet didn't really have to turn in midair, it could have gone straight, because Kennedy was up higher, connolly was down lower and jutted a little out to the right towards the door. So I think that took care in my mind of the magic bullet theory. And then and this is one I really haven't been able to find the way they set it on the documentary since but the palm print on the rifle, oswald's palm print, there was something the Dallas PD, I think, found that first the FBI came in and took the rifle, eventually gave it back to the Dallas PD and then they couldn't find the palm print. Well, I've got a little bit of investigative training, a little bit of law enforcement training, and the answer to that is that the Dallas PD removed it. The way you get a fingerprint or a print is you literally put tape on it after you pull it, you lift it.

Speaker 2: 14:32

You remove it. So that's why the FBI couldn't find it and why it couldn't be found later. So there's my three points. Tell me if or why I'm wrong.

Speaker 3: 14:45

I can tell you that you're wrong. But in those points that you've laid out, those aren't the points that that's not the battleground I would choose. Those are not the points that I would be emphatic about denying. I think it's at least a 50-50 chance that Oswald was in the depository with a rifle and made a couple shots. And that's 50-50 because I can argue the other way, that he was purely a patsy. But that's harder to prove one way or the other than what I can say. That I think might flip you back to being a doubter of the official story. And again, we want to be concise because we had a lot to talk about today, I think. But in a nutshell, if you said I'm giving you three minutes, Lance, convince me that there was a conspiracy. I'll just do one.

Speaker 3: 15:43

And I could do again. My book contains 50 points. Okay, 50 years, 50 lies, 50 rebuttals is basically what it really is 50 points all documented. Let me add that book has over 200 footnotes and citations and a lot of those are government documents. So it's not you know, my book is not a case of well, my second cousin who's married to the third cousin of the ballast police chief. You know, it's not rumors, it's government documents and other documents and facts.

Speaker 3: 16:16

Which is exactly why I wanted you on this show, right, thank you, and I appreciate that you're, that you're, you have a you're, you're an officer of the law, so you understand the importance of facts and documentation. So allow me the ability to say if I don't convince you in these three minutes, remember I've got 49 other points to convince you.

Speaker 2: 16:42

But here's one I'm still open-minded about it.

Speaker 3: 16:45

Good, here's one that's just hard for the quote debunkers and the lone gunman theorists to argue with. Within 24 hours of the assassination, fbi Director Hoover was on a phone call with Lyndon Johnson, the then president, and some of it was recorded. Some of it we have on transcripts, but it is in government records that Hoover told LBJ well, we've arrested the guy, you know Oswald. But we have a problem. But we have a problem, and the problem is that we haven't pinned down this fellow who showed up some weeks ago in Mexico City Now I'm paraphrasing S Embassy in Mexico claiming to be Harvey Oswald, lee Harvey Oswald. But Hoover confesses it wasn't him and so he didn't go into a lot of detail because he probably knew that the phone call was recorded, being that everything Hoover did, he had bugs on everybody's phones. So they were both LJ and Hoover, both guarding what they said. But they said enough to admit that there was an imposter of Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico before the assassination. And so it begs question if Lee Harvey Oswald was simply a misguided young man, a nobody, a nothing, a lone nut, why would anybody impersonate him at a government building, which would be a crime if you walk into a government building and claim to be somebody you're not all right. It begs the question of why that would happen and the only answer that I can rationally come up with is that it was the beginning of the government's efforts to set him up as a, as a patsy. It started with when they sent him to Russia to be a spy over in Russia but posed as a defector of the US. And yet, even though he's a defector, he's allowed to come back into the US with no repercussions. Red flags everywhere on that.

Speaker 3: 19:17

So the very fact that we have LBJ and Hoover knowing that there's fishy stuff going on, extraordinarily inexplicable fishy stuff going on around their main suspect, and yet they move forward with the Warren Commission investigation, which was from the get-go, explicitly stated in the first meeting of the Warren Commission, alan Dulles, the ex-CIA director, the most influential member of the commission, making the case. This is a lone gunman. We got to convince, basically we got to convince the American people this is a lone gunman and they moved far with that. They never deviated from that. And yeah, a magic bullet is a hard bullet to swallow. Uh, there's a, like I said, 100 other other problems with their case, but there is no explanation for that, except that he was a patsy being set up by the cia as a Patsy, and we can go on and on from there.

Speaker 2: 20:26

So there you go. Okay, I wrote down a couple of questions on that and again, generally my questions. A lot of good lawyers will tell you. I don't ask a question unless I know the answer. I'm not like that. I'm not like that. I want to know. So I'll ask the experts. I don't know. So, this date that whoever it was claiming to be Oswald walks into this embassy, do we know what the date of that was?

Speaker 3: 20:59

It's in my book. I'm not good, I couldn't tell you. It's hardly my own birthday, I'm not good with numbers and with years. Hardly my own birthday, I'm not good with numbers and with years. But it is in my book and I can promise you it was before the shooting. It was before Oswald hit the press. Okay.

Speaker 2: 21:14

Was Oswald working at the Texas School Box Depository on that day?

Speaker 3: 21:19

I think so and I think that's. I think actually, if I remember correctly again don't have it in front of me but I believe that's, I think actually, if I remember correctly again don't have in front of me, in front of me but I believe that Hoover even said you know that one reason we know this guy's an imposter is we know where Oswald was that day and he wasn't in Mexico. So where are you going with?

Speaker 2: 21:37

that yeah, so well it it makes sense. Then if Oswald was at work that day, you know he would have been a guy to consider. You know, if it was just some guy and that day they happened to put him in the depository building, then you know that would have been something that was manipulated after the fact or too close to it.

Speaker 3: 21:56

You kind of asked me two questions. One he was in the depository, I believe I remember correctly on the day that he was being impersonated in Mexico, so you know it was not him in Mexico.

Speaker 3: 22:09

They even have pictures in the CIA file and there's a voice on tape that Hoover himself says we heard his voice. It's not Oswald, so we know that. But then there's a separate question. I think you're kind of conflating the two. We do know that several months before the assassination, oswald took the job in the Texas School Book Depository.

Speaker 3: 22:31

But of course, if you are behind the scenes manipulating things and you've got a patsy and either A, you have advanced knowledge that Kennedy's going to, you have advanced knowledge that Kennedy's going to do a campaign trip in Dallas, then you might work behind the scenes to get him hired there, and there's some evidence for that.

Speaker 3: 22:58

Or if you didn't do that but you happen to know he's there, then you change the parade route, the motorcade, to go in front of that building, and there's also evidence for that.

Speaker 3: 23:05

So, um, all of this, all of the indicators, when you look at it objectively, point to this is an unusual young man had been to russia, makes a great scapegoat, because we can kind of hint that the communists might have done it and he was a perfect patsy really, uh and and did he take a shot at kennedy? That, even if he did that doesn't change the possibility that any number of scenarios could have happened. They could have said we need you to shoot at the president, but miss because of this reason we want to do, and as an operative of the FBI or CIA he may have done that, thinking he was doing something patriotic. What I do know was that he was not a full fledged communist. The record shows otherwise. He went to Russia for ulterior motives, for secret motives that had to do with what US policy, what they wanted to do, not because he wanted to go become a Russian communist. Anyway, he met a woman over there in Russia and apparently fell in love with her and it kind of messed up his plans. We digress.

Speaker 3: 24:23

Hey let's circle this's let's circle this, let's do this. Let's circle this back to because I know it's crossing some people's, some people's minds back to this current conspiracy idea that maybe trump had someone shoot at him and miss, uh, in order to bolster his. You know that, I know I. What I just said could have happened with Oswald. At least that could have been the story. They told Oswald to get him placed in that building. Okay, though they never planned for the other gunman to miss.

Speaker 3: 24:54

In the Trump case, if you forced me to answer, I would say I don't find that believable that Trump or his people would have killed and endangered his own fans and followers in Pennsylvania that day and risk a bullet bouncing off or a stray bullet hitting Trump. And again, this bullet was amazing. It came within half an inch, they say, of killing or at least severely injuring ex-President Trump. So that's a hard one to convince me of. And then, real quick, since I told you I'm going to argue on both sides of left-wing and right-wing politics. I told you I'm going to argue on both sides of left-wing and right-wing politics. The other side is hard to believe too, because if the deep state, with the technologies and the gun accuracies and the things we have nowadays. If the deep state wanted to assassinate Trump or Biden, they could have done it and they probably would have already done it by now if that was their modus operandi.

Speaker 2: 26:06

So anyway, that's where I am on that. Do you think that the injury was caused by glass from the teleprompter? I personally, I think that was the bullet.

Speaker 3: 26:17

I know no more than what your listeners know, but I will throw, since you asked. I saw a close-up of his ear from the day of the shooting and the and you should know this is better than I do because I'm sure you study ballistics but it does not look like a glass injury. It looks like a channel through his ear, on the very outer layers of skin that looks very much like a grazing bullet to my eye, but I defer to your judgment on that.

Speaker 2: 26:48

Well, yeah, I think the same thing. I think Glass would have splashed up all over, left little specks of cuts or something all over his face. Yeah, I mean, and the way he reacted.

Speaker 3: 26:59

Yeah, and we know that somebody died from a bullet, for sure you know. Yeah yeah, and we know that somebody died from a bullet for sure, you know, yeah, and that's the point at which you know we get real sober in this conversation. There's a grieving family out there for this. There was a true hero that day. A firefighter in my book is a hero, you know, just like police officers are heroes, and it's just tragic that he died that day. But I think it's a tragic case of incompetence. Time will tell.

Speaker 2: 27:28

Yeah, yeah, right now it is tough, tough to say. I've said on Facebook and other ones, you just gotta, at this point, you gotta reserve judgment, because there could be a lot of things. It was. I'm in Wisconsin and a Wisconsin Senator, ron Johnson, today had had went on the air and said he thinks there were multiple shooters and and that I, I don't, I, I'm embarrassed to be from Wisconsin. Between you and me for that reason. Well, I'm from Alabama and one of our our senators is a football coach.

Speaker 3: 28:03

So I'm embarrassed too, but about politicians. And, by the way, that's a funny coincidence Cause in addition to going to Emory university, I did my undergraduate work at Auburn university, and the coach at the time that I was rooting for Auburn football was Tommy Tuberville, who's now a Senator. But he, I just think, was he had reached his, the peak of his intellect in coaching a team, but I don't think he's up to the quality of being a senator.

Speaker 2: 28:29

But wow, we digress yeah, yeah, there we go um. So again the uh. Well, you had a couple more points on jfk. Let's uh, let's touch on those, uh real quick you don't want to let that go?

Speaker 3: 28:40

okay, I don't want to let that go, I Okay, I don't want to let that go, I'm game, I'm game.

Speaker 2: 28:45

So yeah, the other points. On JFK, you said, if you had three minutes you could give me the three points.

Speaker 3: 28:53

No, it was three minutes for one point, but you have follow-up questions in fairness, so go ahead.

Speaker 2: 28:59

I see. Well, actually I checked off my major questions that I had about Oswald's employment status there, so that does put him there. I know I heard about the embassy, I've read about that but not the exact date and I really didn't put too much into that. But yeah, if it was an imposter, that's important to think about. What was the reason for that?

Speaker 3: 29:24

And let me add, the other importance of it is is that Hoover and LBJ knew that. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 29:30

And instead of and on the phone call. If LBJ had not been in on the plot a normal human reaction to that news from Hoover this is what I would have done. I think I'm semi-normal. If I had been LBJ, I would have gone. What the heck are you talking about? Mr Hoover, an imposter? I thought this guy was a nobody. Why would there be somebody in? Lbj wasn't stupid. He would have asked that question right off the bat. It's what he didn't say. That is as damning as what he did.

Speaker 3: 30:08

And he showed no interest in pursuing that line or knowing more about it and he proceeded to do a cover-up with the Warren Commission, which was his hand, in fact. In that same conversation he then ran some names. He'd already had an agenda. Lbj I'm talking about already had an agenda with Hoover about who he wanted to put on this cover-up commission Leading first name out of his mouth was Alan Dulles, the CIA director who had been fired by Kennedy, and, as I say in my book, it was the equivalent of putting Mr Fox in charge of the hen house. You know, if anybody had a motive to kill Kennedy, it was Dulles, because Kennedy wanted to get at that point, had decided to get us out of Vietnam, to reduce the military industrial complex and to tame, in fact destroy, the CIA as it was currently constructed, and he fired Allen Dulles. So that's just the beginning of it, and from there we go forward. You can look later at the, as the public did not in the long run swallow the colossal pile of BS that is is the warren commission with its all its self-contradictions. Uh, they eventually had to do a new investigation the house select committee on the assassination in the 70s, and so what they did was basically not much different than what the Warren Commission had done, which is to flood the flood people with so much information they can't digest it, so they can't get a clear picture. They had CIA testimonies at the House Select Committee that we know for a fact now through classified documents that have been released, that they were lying to that committee. I mean that is a fact, it's an that have been released that they were lying to that committee. I mean that is a fact, it's an established fact. Look at Douglas Horn's reporting on the Assassination Records Review Board, the AARB, I think it's called. Again, he uses government documents. So we know that was a fiasco. But getting to a point here, documents. So we know that was a fiasco. But getting to a point here, but at that point those who wanted to cover this thing up realized the American public wasn't buying it.

Speaker 3: 32:30

At that point in the 70s, about 70% of the population did not believe that there was just a single lone gunman. So they had to do what you're familiar with this term a limited hangout. So they had to do what you're familiar with this term a limited hangout, where they admit to something so that then they can still jump back and cover up the bigger picture. So they said maybe the mafia did it and that became then the new establishment mainstream story going forward. Well, ok, maybe there was a conspiracy, but it was the mafia, all right. So already that's discredited the 10 years of government established quote truth. They threw out to admit there was a conspiracy, but now they want to give us a new scapegoat, a new patsy the Mafia. Now, the Mafia may have been, probably was peripherally involved with some levels. In fact Jack Ruby is widely thought to have been affiliated with Mafia types.

Speaker 3: 33:37

But here's the problem with this new story, this new cover story the mafia does not have access to the military autopsy room. That was a high security autopsy room. There were no mafia people present doctoring the x-rays, doctoring the photos, and so that just falls apart real quickly. Uh, when? And this would be my one of my other big points uh, ryan, when you? This is another.

Speaker 3: 34:10

To me it's like kind of smoking gun revelation that is out. I didn't invent it, this has been out there for years. We have official government photographs of the back of kennedy's head, released supposedly from the autopsy, and it shows a hole in the back of Kennedy's head made to look like an entrance wound from a small caliber relatively small caliber the Carcano gun that Oswald used. That caliber, okay, it was an Army surplus weapon. It was not a frangible explosive bullet, you know that. So they wanted to stick with the story that that bullet went through, went into JFK's head from the back, from Oswald's side, not from the grassy knoll. So to do that they had to doctor or use a fake cadaver. Whatever they did, I don't know to show the back of his head and a little I'm using my pinky it was about the size of a pencil eraser hole in the back of his skull.

Speaker 3: 35:14

And you can see this, it's online and it's in government documents. No argument. And yet go back to the Warren commission and look at some of the testimonies that did not get covered up because they were done in public, in a public court-like setting where they were sworn in Secret service agent Clint Hill, for example. It's in there in black and white in the Warren commission report. Clint Hill was the one who jumped on the limousine to save Jackie, get her back in a seat, help her get back in her seat, and then threw his body over the dead president and the first lady to protect them. He was there in broad daylight, like you know, point blank range from the back of Kennedy's skull. And what did he say? Did he say, yeah, I saw this little entrance wound of about the size of a pencil? No, the testimony that's still. They didn't cover that up because they were sloppy. It says it in plain, black and white terms in the Warren Commission report. He said I saw a fist-sized hole in the back of JFK's skull.

Speaker 3: 36:19

Now if you want to persuade me that a professional Secret Service agent trained to be an observer, I mean, what is their number one job as agents? To observe right To be a good observer. If you want to persuade me that he was mistaking a pinky for a fist, then I give up. You can't answer that because it was a coverup. It was a fake photograph, and that goes circles back to who? But the government could have put that fake photograph out? Not the mafia, okay, not Russia, not the Cubans, but the US government. Are you back with me now?

Speaker 2: 37:03

I'm getting there. So okay, Then, with all of that, all that we've seen, all that we've heard, and along with your book, when we read that, why? Why was it done? Why did they have to get rid of Kennedy? Why did they have to do it? Why couldn't it be reelected? Why did they have to do it in Dallas? How organized was this?

Speaker 3: 37:30

Well, it was very organized. The better book. Actually. You know, I want everybody to buy my books, but one of the one of the best answers to your that's a good question you follow up with there is JFK and the Unspeakable, and I forgot the subtitle again, doing this off memory. But the gentleman who wrote that book, we've corresponded, he like I, we are pastors, we're theologians, if you want to say that. So we have that in common. But he wrote the book Independent of Me and it's also a bestseller.

Speaker 3: 38:08

And in that book he lays out documentation showing that while Kennedy publicly wanted to come across as being strong against communism and strong pro-military and all of that that any politician is going to do no president wants to appear weak on national defense right that, despite his public pronouncements that quietly behind the scenes, he had come to the realization that Vietnam was what it was a dead-end street, a foreign policy disaster, a military disaster. It was killing our young men by the thousands and had made zero progress. It wasn't stopping communism, it wasn't doing anything constructive, it was costing us millions of dollars and thousands of lives. And he had firmly decided and he told more than one person this, and it's in that book, among other places that he wanted to get us out of Vietnam. The military industrial complex did not want that to happen because they're making gazillions of dollars. Many of the military generals, they're going to see the world through their military perspective. They hated communism. Hoover hated communism, allen Dulles hated communism. Fine, hate communism. But my vote would be fight them in ways that are productive. Be pragmatic. Don't fight a losing battle in a worldwide war.

Speaker 3: 39:41

So there were several players there. Then you've got again I already said Allen Dulles, having been fired and not just a grudge, but wanting to retain power or resume power in the so-called deep state in the military intelligence field. And then you've got Hoover, who hated Robert Kennedy, who didn't care for John Kennedy either and knew that he was going to be replaced and he wanted to cling to his job. And then you've got LBJ, the obvious suspect, but one of them. He's vice president. He was getting some inklings from Kennedy's people that they would like to replace him on the ticket.

Speaker 3: 40:24

I don't know if that part is true or would have happened, but he began to fear that might happen and he didn't like John Kennedy for a variety of reasons. He was more conservative, but just Johnson was the kind of guy would not be happy, except with ultimate power. And so he had a motive. Because if he wasn't a young man, if Kennedy had been reelected which he was on the path to do the public opinion was swinging Kennedy's way. Johnson would have been relegated to vice presidency and then would have aged out of ever being president. So I just laid you out a good four or five reasons there.

Speaker 2: 41:09

Sure, a lot of that kind of conjures up the back to the JFK, the Oliver Stone movie, the X character. Yeah, mr X, he kind of got into the military power and the firepower how it's money, it's power, it's uh, it's everything to a nation who wants more of it hey, let me add, a lot of folk.

Speaker 3: 41:32

The reason why people get away with these kind of things, these cover-ups, is because a lot of good-hearted folks just can't wrap their mind around. Oh no, they would never kill a president, they would never kill a human being, and I'm that way too emotionally. The idea of murdering someone is just horrendous to me and to my values. But don't kid yourself People at those levels, people who had fought in World War II and in the aftermath had killed people and they have a different view of that. They have a justification If they believe that Kennedy was going to sell us out to the Russians and be soft on communism and the communists are going to long range, are going to win. If they believe that and they see that Kennedy is unstoppable politically, then people will do things like that.

Speaker 3: 42:33

I'm not saying everybody. Thankfully, most people in government are good people. Most people in the CIA are good people. Most people in law enforcement are good people. Most people in the CIA are good people. Most people in law enforcement are good people. But there are folks and they're often the ones who are ambitious who have risen to the top, like Dulles and JFK and Hoover. They see things differently than you and I might see them.

Speaker 2: 42:57

Right, sure, and of course it's nothing new. You know, you go back in history and it's been happening since the beginning of the time. You know, in the cave somebody killed somebody else with a rock over the head, all the way to Caesar.

Speaker 3: 43:09

And, after all, kennedy wasn't the first president assassinated, you know.

Speaker 2: 43:13

Yeah yeah, sure, you brought up the. I thought this was interesting and I wrote this down. Uh, moving on in in american history, you brought up lg lbj's reaction. Um, when, uh, when, hoover said this about oswald and it wasn't as surprising as it should have been, it wasn't genuine um, since the day of 9-11, I thought the exact same thing when that aide came to George Bush George W Bush, in that kindergarten classroom, I think, while he was reading my Pet Child, right, right.

Speaker 3: 43:52

Which was being filmed.

Speaker 2: 43:53

Yep, yep. And really Bush's reaction to me didn't look anything more than a minor annoyance Like, oh it's today, that's just immediately. I thought that doesn't seem like a genuine reaction. If what was said to him was America is under attack, he rolled his eyes. But I don't know if I can buy that 9-11 was an inside job it's a tough one.

Speaker 3: 44:24

His spin on that I've heard him say this is that he wanted to react. But there's school children there, so I don't know. I'll give him that, but I also I would take it to. I would say there's a similar scene with Dick Cheney and the things that transpired in the. I'd take it. I would say there's a similar, there's a similar scene with Dick Cheney and the things that transpired in the. In the I'd call it a safe room, they take him down the basement of the White House, so you know what I mean Down underground and there are things he did there that that were odd.

Speaker 3: 44:52

But the biggest thing, the biggest thing on 9-11 and I haven't researched that deeply, I've read. I'm a reader like you, I read a lot. I also am like one of those good hearted people. I would find it hard to believe that anybody would kill innocent people in an airliner. You know that an American would kill other Americans on an airliner. So I have trouble going there.

Speaker 3: 45:18

But there, I have to say there there was something very strangely fishy about the third building that fell that day, tower 7, which was not struck by an airplane. It just had a little minimal, minimal damage on the outside and had a few. They call it office fires. You know, like office fires, you know papers and desk caught fire. These are steel reinforced concrete structures designed to withstand even designed to withstand plane crashes and why that third building fell like a, like a controlled demolition, down in one pile. I've never heard a satisfactory answer and the work that I believe it's NIST, the National Safety, whatever investigation that was, you know, like the Warren Commission, voluminous in all its paperwork, has been shown to be very faulty, and so they have yet to explain that to our satisfaction. So you know, again, I don't want to be lumped in with the person who believes that everything in the world is a conspiracy, and in fact I appreciated that.

Speaker 3: 46:38

One of the reasons I was happy to be on your on your show is that, uh, you, you have uh rightly said that there are some myths we need to debunk and there's some conspiracy theories that don't hold water, and we don't need to be shy and saying, oh, that's bunk, uh, so if, if it's not thoroughly documented, um, then I'm not gonna stick my neck out too far.

Speaker 3: 47:00

But but there is the uh organization of architects and engineers that you're probably aware of that has done uh, in-depth research on, uh, the, the, the demolition of those three skyscrapers. Uh, and and these are not quacks either, these are scientists, engineers, architects, who have expertise in the construction and the demolition of skyscrapers, and they also go. This stuff has not been fully answered and, by the way, recently, like the Atlantic Magazine, which is a mainstream magazine, has come out with an article in the last, I think, month or so pointing out that finally, the government's admitting that the Saudis had a lot more involvement in 9-11 than they would admit 10 years ago. So we do know, we know two truths. We know that the government does lie to its citizens and does cover up things. We also know that not every conspiracy, that everything that looks like a conspiracy, is not necessarily conspiracy. So those two truths are not mutually exclusive, right?

Speaker 2: 48:18

Sure, sure and yeah, some things I've worked on cases myself some things just plain old, can't be answered. It was a conversation that was in a hidden room, in a hidden house. You don't know where it was and you just don't know for sure. You have to speculate. But that doesn't mean the whole story is bunk. It doesn't mean the whole story was made up just because and maybe that's where I was going on the JFK thing those three issues that I told you were like. Well, those can be proven different, but maybe the whole thing in the big picture it was still.

Speaker 3: 48:53

Well, let me just chime in there real quick. Unlike some other conspiracies, a lot of what transpired with the JFK assassination and cover-up is documented and there were a lot of photographs taken that day. Some of them were destroyed, but there were a lot of photographs taken that day, a lot of eyewitness testimony, a lot of forensics. Then we have the body itself, which those government records. There are some of them uh. Dr David Mantic, who is an expert in um x-ray and that field, um read his work. He's quite convincing uh that the autopsy was um fake and you you know've got to read the stuff.

Speaker 3: 49:41

But what I was trying to say was that it is actually one of those rare cases where a lot of this is in the public record. It's been redacted and hidden and all that, but a lot of it's not. A lot of it's out there and we've got videotapes of witnesses like the Parkland doctors our own screen on tape very credibly saying we saw the fist size hole in the back of Kennedy's head. And we cannot reconcile that with that little pencil hole that the autopsy claims. And those are doctors who are trained medical observers who were right there with the lights on looking at kennedy. Now they didn't all see the back of his head, but several of them did, along with nurses, uh, so so yes, it's a little different there, because the documentation is voluminous um, yeah, I, I and I want to move on from the conspiracies and stuff, because of course we want to get to the yeah, we've got lots to cover still, yeah, yeah, I'm speaking fast.

Speaker 2: 50:46

It's been years talking about these. We can't condense it into 15 minutes and then move to something else. We get questions constantly coming up, but 9-11, again, and George W Bush and that reaction. I think if he were to being in in the kindergarten classroom, I didn't buy that. I didn't want to, you know, scare the children. I didn't buy that. You know, at the time, if, if all of america was panicking, then we needed the leader at that time, the 12 school children, although I'm concerned about their well-being, you know. I think it was the time any kindergarten teacher would said, would have said okay, kids, the president has to do presidential things right now.

Speaker 3: 51:21

That part, yes. In other words, he didn't have to sit there and tell them oh no, there's been a destruction of a building in New York or whatever. He just needed to say oh I'm sorry, children, I have got an important call. My wife is calling. I have to go talk to her. You don't ever want to get in trouble. You're what you know. He could have made a number of excuses to get up and cut that short, but he sat there for the longest time.

Speaker 2: 51:41

You're right about that, yeah yeah, but again, that doesn't mean everything was was staged, it just it was weird and it makes you think weird.

Speaker 3: 51:50

We don't know what to make of it.

Speaker 2: 51:51

Yeah, yeah. So um want to talk about, uh, cults on trial. Good, um, let's start at the beginning. What is is a cult? A lot of people, I think, claim to know what a cult is and claim to know when somebody is in a cult but what's the definition of a cult?

Speaker 3: 52:15

One of the distinctions that I make that I think say the average layman needs to be reminded of is that the word occult O-C-C-U-L-T and the word cult are etymologically not connected. They're two different things the same word, and and a cult, as in a secret society or black magic or any, or satanism or any of that is is, is not part of the definition of what makes something a cult. Now, a cult might be overlapping into that. They might have secrets. They might, they do have secrets, but they might have a some kind of satanic undertones or whatever. But that's not the definition. The definition it means closer to the word sect, as in sectarian, but a cult is a group of people with a shared belief that is usually outside the mainstream. In Christian terms, we say non-orthodox, unorthodox okay, non-orthodox outside the mainstream, and it, a cult, is centered around a single leader, and that's one of the distinctive things that that defines a cult. Moreover, that cult is another word, for it is a group. That group does not have a democratic process. It is run functionally as a dictatorship. Now that central leader, usually kind of a psychopathic narcissist, may have the appearances of some kind of like a council or a committee that runs the cult's business and helps make decisions. But generally, if you study in cults and you look deeper, you find out that that's for show more than for substance. A quick example of that, and I want to continue with the definition for substance.

Speaker 3: 54:20

A quick example of that and I want to continue with the definition. You remember not long ago, the NXIVM so-called sex cult, the NXIVM cult with Keith Raniere. He did that. He had a leadership council, but when we got him in court remember the name of the book is Colts on Trial when we got him in court and we got witnesses under oath and we got documents taken through search warrants from the cult, we learned that he was a functional dictator and that he had people doing things that they wouldn't normally do. Not to be sensationalist, but it is part of the record that, for example, he had his harem of women who surrendered themselves to be branded in their genital pubic area, branded like cattle.

Speaker 3: 55:15

Now that shows two things. That shows that that's the definition of being outside of the norm, that is not normal behavior. And second, it shows the power, the manipulative power, of the cult leader to get people to do things against their own self-interest for the benefit of the cult leader. In this case, you know a sick sexual dominance thing. We could psychoanalyze that. But the point is that's a classic example of a cult where the decisions are made at the center with the leader for his own pleasure and sick psychological needs and power dynamics and all of that.

Speaker 3: 56:04

Now let's circle real quick. Let's circle and there's more definitions to what a cult is. That again is in my book. But that circles back to your great question I still want to get back to is why we think the way we think. And in a cult it always raises the question why do people fall for this? Why do people get into this? And that's also a multifaceted answer. But the number one thing is that cult leaders have a usually they are born with a spectacular talent for manipulation of people's emotions.

Speaker 3: 56:45

Now this is why I controversially have Donald Trump's name on the front of my book alongside Hitler and Jim Jones and Charles Manson. I say very plainly in the book I am not saying that Trump is Hitler. He has not done the crimes of Hitler, not even close. I'm not equating the two. But this is not so much a political book as it is a book of psychology, and the psychology we see with Trump, you have to admit, is fairly unique in American politics, fairly unique in American politics to find someone who is able to get the fervent kind of devotion, even when all of these scandals and horrible things that he said and done, you know, with women and with his crooked real estate deals, they've been proven in court places. He's lied when you look at all that stuff. And yet he's got followers who will not look at the facts, they will not look at court documents. You've got Fox News, people who were put under oath and who said things in the courtroom and yet on the air they'll say a completely different set of things. But the truth comes out in court. So we have all this documentation, kind of like the JFK case I was just making. The documents are out there, x-files. The truth is out there, the truth is out there but people don't want to hear it. In fact I probably, you know, a few of your viewers have just clicked us off because they don't want to hear anything negative about their fearless leader.

Speaker 3: 58:20

But when you look at this as a phenomenon, if you take the politics out of it and look at it as a psychological phenomenon I have a checklist in the book of about 10 red flags that identify cults. He checks off 80% of them in the way that he operates, talks, acts, etc. And then when I look at these other cult leaders that are all in different scenarios Jim Jones, manson, hitler I talk about Scientology Joseph Smith when you look at these it's striking how this list of red flags, the hallmarks I call it the cult culture template how consistent they are. Now that doesn't mean that every cult is is a exactly like every other cult. You know humans, different cults are different, they have different. Some of them are religious, some of them are political, some of of them are totally personality-driven. So you can't take that template and say, oh, every cult has to fit this exactly.

Speaker 3: 59:30

But at the same time, if you look at it as a psychological phenomenon, if you see, say again, just to throw a number out 70% of those red flags, those hallmarks are there with a particular group, then you kind of begin to think, oh well, maybe it is a cult. Can I throw a joke in there because I think we're ready for humor. On page one, I have a preface in my book that I hope people don't skip because it's important. But on page one, in chapter one, I have a kind of humorous quote from Stephen Colbert the late night guy. He says here's an easy way to figure out if you're in a cult.

Speaker 2: 1:00:12

If you're wondering whether you were in a cult, the answer is yes, the fact that you have to ask ought to tell you something ain't right Well that brings up a point.

Speaker 2: 1:00:28

A good friend of mine that I've known for years and years and years and years, since we were 18 years old, and suddenly, over the last couple of years, just a change. And we're sitting down to lunch. One day I had to ask her. I said Hutton, do you really think the democrats eat babies? And she thought about it and within about three, four seconds I had to say the fact that you're thinking of an answer really concerns me. And then her answer was well, not all of them of them. Well, I don't know what I'm dealing with anymore. That's a safe answer.

Speaker 3: 1:01:13

I'll stand on my principles. Not all Democrats eat babies. You can put me down for that.

Speaker 2: 1:01:18

Okay. So some of the cults that we know in history and I think time will tell with Trump, but Hitler, we know that. Jim Jones, we know that Charles Manson, of course we know that's a cult, but, in the grand scheme of things, who's more dangerous? Is it that cult leader or is it their followers? That will defend them? They would do anything for them. They will recruit others for them. They'll spread fake news for them. They'll do anything for them. Therefore, getting more people and the word out to more people, potentially more people buying in and becoming followers.

Speaker 3: 1:02:05

What's worse, Well, that's kind of a rhetorical question because the answer is both. I mean, just real quick. Let's take Hitler, for example. And, by the way, sometimes people don't think of Hitler as a cult, but Nazism has all the earmarks of a cult and historians who've been honest about it will admit that some don't want to admit it because it's kind of scary. Not only a cult, but he was involved in the occult he was involved in, in a black magic kind of stuff, but that's for another day.

Speaker 3: 1:02:37

Um, but to the point, you've got nazi leaders, the commandants of concentration camps that were gassing Jews. Are they more monstrous or less monstrous than Hitler? That's kind of a relevant question, right, they're all monsters. Hitler was empowered by Goebbels and oh gosh, I don't have it in front of me there's so many strong personalities who were plainly evil, who treated people as vermin, who treated people as animals, and it was a racial component, it was a nationalistic component, and they were all acting, acting monstrous. Now, further down and down in the ranks you can find certainly there were Germans who were just think, thought they were doing their duty to serve in the military or to follow their country, and who weren't well-read and didn't didn't have the inside scoop on stuff. Many Germans had no idea what was going on with the Jewish concentration camps, though they had they had seen and heard Hitler's horrible statements that Hitler had made against the Jews as an ethnic group. This is again where I don't want to be accused of calling Trump Hitler, but we know two things about Trump in this is that we know he read Hitler and was intrigued by Hitler's tools of propaganda, which propaganda is a big thing that cults do, either inside their cult or outside, depending on the cult. And second, we have seen that he has taken to heart these tactics and one of the tactics that Hitler used and hang with me here a minute other cult leaders use, and that is the us versus them scenario, which is speaking psychologically and emotionally.

Speaker 3: 1:04:48

If I'm a cult leader and I got these followers and I see them starting to get tired of our cult, starting to waffle, think they're starting to see my flaws and I want to cement them back together and get them excited, maybe get them to give some money or take some actions on my behalf what am I going to do? I'm going to start saying, hey, we need to gather around here, circle the wagons, circle the wagons, listen, start saying, hey, we need to gather around here, circle the wagons, circle the wagons, listen, there's an enemy out there. They're vermin, they're criminals, they're horrible, they're horrible people, they're communists, et cetera, et cetera, and they're coming after us and we have to gather together and we've got to be us versus them, and that creates an emotional bonding that is very powerful. And that's why I had to mention Hitler and Trump in the same sentence, because Trump is doing that exact thing today. He is saying they're not out to get me, they're out to get you, they're just coming through me.

Speaker 3: 1:05:46

And these are literally his words just from a few days ago. And so you need to get all worked up and afraid because of the boogeyman is coming for you. No, really, those, those courts that are that and the legal process that's unfolding against Trump they're not coming for me. I'm not a crooked realtor in New York. I didn't hide classified documents in Florida. I didn't sexually assault somebody. None of those are things that I did. So I don't have any fear that those people are coming for me. But fear is part of that, that, uh, those manipulative tactics that get people's emotions stirred and then then the cult leader gets to walk into that morass of fear and anger and a little racism uh, in Hitler's case a lot of racism and say but guess what Good news, I'm your savior, I'm your hero.

Speaker 3: 1:06:53

Follow me and we'll take these bad guys on. Does that sound familiar?

Speaker 2: 1:06:58

Oh boy, yeah, yeah, and you know, with Trump, the question that came to mind a long time ago. I mean, he talks and talks, and talks. So in a way, I feel like if I were to ask him a question or two, I think I would have an idea of how he would answer it. I don't know him.

Speaker 2: 1:07:15

I never talked to him, but Donald Trump doesn't give me the impression that he's smart enough to be a cult leader. How? How do he do this? I mean, you said he reads up on Hitler and stuff, but I just never thought he's. I would think a cult leader would need to be, you know, suave and manipulative and intelligent, and Trump you know he gets that.

Speaker 3: 1:07:42

I want to answer that. That's a great question. Another great question, ryan, because I have an answer. Yeah, let me give you another example. Charles Manson was not, was not, smart. Okay, he was not smart. Now, some of these other other cult leaders I'll talk about were smart, but he was not smart.

Speaker 3: 1:08:03

But intelligence is a funny thing. You know there's different types. I know you know this, but there just serves a reminder. There's so many different forms of intelligence. Some people, like my brother's, a physicist he's in a genius with mathematics. Sometimes I tease him. They didn't have a lot of common sense, okay, some people are. So some people are good with math. Some people are good with English and humanities. Some are good with math. Some people are good with English and humanities. Some are good with science, et cetera, et cetera. Some people can be not particularly smart with book learning but have a knack for people skills. And it's funny to say people skills.

Speaker 3: 1:08:43

When we go back to Trump, he's offended a lot of people, so you could question his people skills. But by people skills I'm talking about a different type, not just who's going to be most popular in high school, who's going to be captain of the football team or president of the junior class. I'm talking about the probably natural skill of knowing how, with any individual, but also with groups what strings to pull emotionally. What he had he identified early on Trump and Trump and his, his advisors Jared Kushner was one of them, who is very smart, by the way identified you know what?

Speaker 3: 1:09:22

There are a lot of folks in America who are tired of the status quo, tired of being left out of the American dream. A lot who have seen their wages go down compared to inflation. A lot who see our jobs being pumped overseas and are going why did you take my job from me? I'm nothing, I just want to work. I just want to be a good, hardworking citizen. And they felt betrayed by the American dream. And so Trump had that much intelligence. To identify what are people's frustrations goes back to emotion, right. And then how can I pull the strings and play to that emotion? Uh, so it's a skill. It's a manipulative skill the skill to know how to get people to follow your ideas because you promise them what they want to hear, whether you can provide it or not.

Speaker 2: 1:10:26

Yeah, well said. So, yeah, well, well said. And, and just you know, I am through at this point now trying to give somebody an argument for not following donald trump. Right, it's pointless, it's useless. I, I, I feel like, really, I, in my mind, I should be able to go up to pretty much any woman and say if you heard your husband, your boyfriend, whoever, say grab him by the genital, would you like that, would you defend that guy?

Speaker 3: 1:10:56

And I never heard that in a locker room. Yeah, Would you tolerate that in a workplace for? Example yeah, but they don't want to hear it.

Speaker 2: 1:11:05

Right, right, but they don't want to hear it right, right. So more of, and maybe not a cult, but something that that we really believe in. Again back to the question of what we think and why we think it. But I kind of category three big american pastimes together and I think of it in a way that I think I'm lucky to have been born an American. My dad is fortunate to have been born an American, and when I was born my dad was a Christian. So I'm a Christian. That's what dad said was right. When I was born, my dad was a Vikings fan. So I don't know. I'm a Vikings fan.

Speaker 2: 1:11:55

I've changed since I, you know, maybe around 40-ish. I've changed my views on religion, but my dad was a Democrat. I'm a Democrat. I defend the Vikings like I've defended religion in the past. I'll the Vikings like I've defended religion in the past. I'll defend politics like I've defended the Vikings. I defend Vikings fans like I defend political members. Have they all become such entertainment lately that we're grouping them all together? Some are more personal, but we're grouping them all together. Some are more personal, but we're putting them all kind of in the same category.

Speaker 3: 1:12:35

Well, again in my book there's two things I address. With that you always get right to the great questions. And first statement is I do state in the book there's nothing wrong with being on a team. There's nothing wrong, in my case, being a football fan. We all need some enjoyment in life and some fun. And there's also something like going back to caveman days where we want to have a tribe, we want to have a family, we want to have a community.

Speaker 3: 1:13:08

Those are, if you're a believer, you say that's something that's God-given, which I do believe, but it's also anthropologically, it's an evolutionary thing. Obviously, those who could fit together in a tribe for survival and common defense and farming and hunting and all those things, they're going to have a lot better chance of success, evolutionarily speaking, with survival and their genes are going to be passed on. So there's a genetic inborn trait. We need to have teams, we need to have tribes, but we're no longer cavemen. We now have to acknowledge that. That's okay, but set limits on it, set boundaries and reach beyond that to say, if we want to live together in a complex world where people don't just stay on an Island but they move around and you get a job offer. You know if you're, if you're an Alabama Republican and you get a really good job offer to say some liberal bastion in California, you probably want to take it because it's a great job offer. So you get over your tribal allegiance to go and be nice to those people that you now work with who might have a little bit of different political bent. So set boundaries on our caveman instinct to be in a tribe.

Speaker 3: 1:14:37

Do not let it turn into a cult and then a corollary to that or whatever that I also deal with. An entire chapter on is. My own faith is of the Christian faith. Like you, I was raised in it. I have evolved in my thinking too, on spirituality. I have changed my understandings, my limited understandings, from Sunday school to where I am as a 67-year-old theologian. But in the end I'm comfortable with being a Christian because I've made the examined choices to know what it is I believe and why I believe it, and so I'm comfortable putting a chapter in the book entitled Is Christianity a Cult is?

Speaker 3: 1:15:25

entitled Is Christianity a Cult and I admit in that chapter that the Christian faith started with something that looks very similar to a cult. It had a central figure Jesus. Circled around him was a very tight-knit tribe of Christians, the early church that evolved from that. And there are several of the cult culture template hallmarks. I mentioned those red flags about what defines a cult. Several of those do fit Christianity, but the distinctions? There's a couple of distinctions and two that are important I'll name in our limited time left.

Speaker 3: 1:16:07

One is was the original quote cult leader Jesus? Was he a self-serving narcissist who only had these people around him for his own benefit, or was he a caring, loving, self-sacrificial human who reached outside of himself to the world? And in fact, jesus not only sacrificed himself but he gave instructions to his followers. You know, go and reach out to the whole world. And he talked about feeding the poor and standing up for the oppressed. The poor and standing up for the oppressed. His whole outlook was outward, which is the second point.

Speaker 3: 1:16:52

Is this group that we want to know? Are they a cult or not? Are they inward focused or are they outward focused? If they're inward focused, they've got the wagon circled and it's us versus them. If they're outward focused. They want to be a part of the larger community. They don't want to just be quote Americans or white Americans or whatever. That's the problem with nationalism is you can't have peace in the world if everybody wants to have an exclusive cult. You have to find a way to live in a worldwide community with love and caring for more than just you know, my family and my circle of friends. Is that helpful?

Speaker 2: 1:17:44

Absolutely. Yeah, very well said. Good way to kind of start wrapping things up here, yeah we need to wrap up.

Speaker 3: 1:17:50

I get worn out. You know, I started out reminding you I'm an old man.

Speaker 2: 1:17:56

I've just still got so many questions, so many notes and so forth.

Speaker 3: 1:18:00

We can convene again sometime.

Speaker 2: 1:18:02

We've got to do it again.

Speaker 3: 1:18:03

When you get desperate for a host, I mean for a guest, you can have me back.

Speaker 2: 1:18:05

When you get desperate for a host, I mean for a guest you can have me back, but I mean, that's one thing I think we always have to consider. I think religion has to be personal and you know, of course, the oxymoron of a holy war I think is just ridiculous Sports. You know, now with cell phones, we see at every arena and stadium in the world people fighting in the stands. It's just ridiculous you know, my team is better than yours and you don't think so.

Speaker 3: 1:18:35

So so in political wars, it you know, it's we can sit here and say it's got to stop you know you and I could be in the same cult.

Speaker 2: 1:18:40

I think we see the world very similarly so, uh, dr lance moore is, uh, is the guest and the book I hear here Cults on Trial a close examination of Jim Jones, charles Manson, hitler and Donald Trump, and it's really it raises a lot of questions. So you know, just write for yourself Some answers, also get some answers, but where I've got your website?

Speaker 3: 1:19:06

Well, you can go to places to buy my books, which I pray people will do On the screen. You can just remember it's my name, books, plural Lancemorebookscom. It's not too hard, lancemorebookscom. Or you can go to Amazon. Now, if you, speaking of sports, if you, if a person types Lance Moore into Amazon, they're going to get a football player. They're going to get a football player. But if they type Dr Lance Moore, they'll get me and they'll see my at least most of my nine books are available on Amazon as well, so they can go either place to to to read, and you know you can get free samples on Amazon, so you don't even have to spend money to read more about what I have to offer. Excellent, excellent.

Speaker 2: 1:19:50

Dr Lance Moore. This has been fun, Like we're going to have to do it again so many questions and I think I think people are going to email me for more questions to ask you next time, so that'll be fun.

Speaker 3: 1:20:01

Super. Thank you again. You're wonderful.

Speaker 2: 1:20:04

Dr Lance Moore. Folks, that folks, that's good stuff. You know, like I said, he opened my mind up a little bit. I've told him for the last several years, last couple of years, I was kind of going towards the Oswald was the only guy theory because of a couple facts that I saw on a documentary that said, well, you know, that old standby theory of the magic bullet and the thing in the poem print and a couple of things weren't true. But yeah, he, he raised the point that that doesn't mean the whole thing isn't true. That doesn't mean that something else didn't go on. Maybe just that part of it is wrong and I got to keep that in mind from having done investigations at police department on my own. It's just some. Sometimes you will, at the end of a case, if it's solved, you'll still have unanswered questions. So you got to have an open mind to a point.

Speaker 2: 1:20:57

One thing I want to mention to you and I've been meaning to to bring this up I want to tell you about a website that I recently discovered, since I started looking for credible news sources and there's a lot of good ones. There's a lot of bad ones out there, but I found a browser extension and there's a charge for it, unless you have Edge, microsoft Edge, and that is newsguardtechcom. Now, I have no interest in NewsGuard, I have no financial backing to or from them, nothing. I just think it's an excellent site that if you add this little extension, it'll tell you, like when you bring something up on Facebook and it's a news station or site or paper, it'll tell you. It'll give you a little percentage. They've already vetted or analyzed these particular news sources and they look for a lot of things whether they're trustworthy, whether they will admit if they've made a mistake, who their owners are, who they're getting donations from or who's their financial backers. So is their news swayed in one direction On a lot of sites it'll give you a little 100% trustworthy, or it'll say 40% trustworthy. And, believe me, there's some of them and I had written down here some of them. A couple are surprising. Cnn, for example, was at 80%, msnbc about 60% and Fox, honestly right, about 70%, 65, I think it was. But even my local news stations, the little TV station down the street, it's got them on there. So take a look at it. It's newsguardtechcom and you can add it to your browser. It'll pop up there right away. You won't even notice it. It'll just put those little bubble of percentage on there and you can follow it and see how trustworthy that particular site is. And you can say if somebody's citing a source on Facebook and giving you a meme or something on Facebook and right next to it it says where they got it from and that news source is 40% trustworthy, well, you can make your decision from there. So take a look at it, if you will.

Speaker 2: 1:23:22

Again, I have nothing. I've been trying to get one of the founders of NewsGuard on the show. She won't respond to me. Maybe they're vetting me. I've been trying to get one of the founders of NewsGuard on the show. She won't respond to me. Maybe they're vetting me, I don't know. So I wish you'd take a look at my website. You'll see it on the bottom there discerningtheunknowncom. Take a look at Facebook. It's facebookcom slash discerningtheunknownpodcast. I am Ryan Peterson. I hope we can talk again soon. Remember, zahi Hawass is coming on the show, the world-famous archaeologist and Egyptologist. As I say at the end of every show, you know my own personal opinion men should never wear flip-flops. Thank you for listening. I'm Ryan Peterson. We'll talk next time.