HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, you don't. You just be you, man.
BEN KISSEL
Just be me, man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Be you, bro. I think that's what every series we've ever done, that's really what it's ever been about.
MARCUS PARKS
Is just be you, bro?
BEN KISSEL
Be you, bro.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Be you, dude. Because guess what man? Guess what the other guy gets to do?
MARCUS PARKS
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Be them. Can't be you. The only person gonna be you is you. Except for me, I'm many.
BEN KISSEL
You're an actor.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm an actor.
BEN KISSEL
A man of many voices that all sound Jamaican at some point.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
At some point only because as we now know, as I have discovered which one day linguistic experts will say, they will understand that the base of every single speaking accent is Jamaican.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic. There we go.
MARCUS PARKS
And are you many or are you truly none?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm truly none.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. You're truly a picture waiting to be filled with another personality.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I am zero, right. Today technically I'm Chuck Dederich. Right? So again, Henry is gone.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All right.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's why I'm impervious to any form of crime or being accused of a crime because any time you put that on me, I'll be like who are you talking about? That was Mr. Benchipensch, right.
BEN KISSEL
Ah, Mr. Benchipensch.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Who is a magical haberdasher who happened to maybe not fill out all the forms for his taxes that he should have. But that was that guy doing it, not me.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. And when you get to prison of course you'll be the sexiest little mushroom boy around. Welcome to Last Podcast on the Left everyone. We are on to the troubled teen industry part two, specifically focusing on Synanon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Synanon!
BEN KISSEL
Before there was Qanon, there was Synanon.
MARCUS PARKS
Now as we said last episode, the troubled teen industry certainly had spiritual precedents in America, such as the American Indian boarding schools that operated until the late 1960s. But when it comes to direct inspiration, no organization was more influential than Synanon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And can you believe it was created by a 300 lb bag of gnocchi with half a missing face who somehow while being a true villain of American history is also one of the funniest guys you'll ever meet?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Well that's good, I'm happy he's fat and funny because fat and disgruntled, Michael Moore, Rob Reiner, it's a bad look. Rob Reiner being like, 'Meh, no one should smoke.' I was just watching the South Park episode where they made fun of Rob Reiner so basically I'll just copy and paste that into a written statement.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Same bit. Really good, really good.
MARCUS PARKS
See while the physical tortures inflicted on teenagers like spankings, solitary confinements, and beatings, they could be thought of by any regular old Joe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, man. I spanked myself today.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah!
BEN KISSEL
I know you did. I've seen the tushy footage. The thing about solitary, the thing about really suffering with torture, you can't flip it and reverse it. The spanking, you can get hard. The spanking you can really be like one more, daddy. And then they'll be like oh, let's not do it. But solitary, you really can't pretend to like it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love this! I love being alone a lot! That only can last for so long.
MARCUS PARKS
Well they can also just leave the room and then you're just screaming at yourself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And guess what? Once you're alone with yourself, I should know very well, everything stops being entertaining.
MARCUS PARKS
Well while any regular old Joe can do physical torture, the psychological techniques used to pound these teens into square pegs, they were adapted from a complicated method of attack therapy created by Synanon called the game.
BEN KISSEL
I've seen some YouTube footage and Steven Seagal also does attack therapy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He does. But all he has to do is use his tiny little flipper baby arms and then he can always defend himself. But today's episode is really kind of again the origins of what we just kind of touched on in the first episode and kind of where it all lead. Because this is again, it's not a Synanon series, it's a troubled teen industry series.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But then Synanon, there's a lot to unpack here.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There was a 10 episode podcast just about Synanon done by Robert Downey Jr.
BEN KISSEL
Is that right?
MARCUS PARKS
You say by Robert Downey Jr. What do you mean by?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was in an office at the same time when people under his name made a podcast about it.
MARCUS PARKS
Gotcha. So he showed up? You sure he showed up?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm certain that he was told at some point that he was doing that. But then when it came down to it, he's still begging to be Tony Stark again.
BEN KISSEL
I would believe Robert Downey Jr, he grew up in the troubled teen industry that is Hollyweird.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
BEN KISSEL
He was addicted to drugs, his father had him doing cocaine at like 12. So I actually think he might be a proper voice in this. Now he's totally sober, his wife saved his life. I actually like Robert Downey Jr.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, so do I.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I do too. That Letterman interview he did was actually very interesting.
BEN KISSEL
Powerful, powerful.
MARCUS PARKS
Well unfortunately the people who founded and ran these troubled teen programs that took inspiration from Synanon, they were mostly sociopaths. Ergo they simplified Synanon's game to such a degree that this well meaning method for kicking addiction became the worst psychological torture of all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what's fun about an effective tool is that it's a shovel, right? You can dig a trench, right? But it can be used to feed children.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You can fill it with slop and your children will eat it.
BEN KISSEL
Or water. Maybe water.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure, whatever. Yeah. But then at the same time, that same trench, you can then push the kids into the slop, now it's a grave.
BEN KISSEL
Great.
MARCUS PARKS
But before we get into exactly-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very good, right?
MARCUS PARKS
It's very good, I love it.
BEN KISSEL
A gravy grave.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, from slop bucket to grave.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's that simple.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All it takes is a there you go, just one little push.
BEN KISSEL
You can make any hole of grave if you just push somebody into it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just push somebody into it, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But before we get into exactly what the game was, let's talk about who created the game and where it was practiced. That was a drug rehab turned cult called Synanon. For this episode our main source is 'The Rise and Fall of Synanon' by Rod Janzen. While some argue that it's too soft on Synanon, it seems to be the most fair and balanced history of this fascinating organization right up to their dissolution following a bungled and bizarre attempted murder.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And if you do want even more information, there's a lot of it out there. Obviously I brought up that podcast but also there is the website paulmorantz.com that comes from the perspective of a person that very distinctly has a bone to pick with Synanon and you'll see why as we get through this episode.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But he basically, he's like 'The Rise and Fall of Synanon' doesn't understand the degrees of violence that we all suffered! But we'll see.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I mean it really is a perfect crop to pick from when it comes to Synanon, former drug addicts or people dealing with drug addiction.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
They're looking for help and then obviously they're going to be in a massive peril when they go through withdrawals and stuff.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now we get to experiment on you. We took you at your most babyish form when you were literally dying.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You were super sick and then we took that dismantled personality of someone getting over drugs and now we're going to rebuild you in our way, which is a yelling screaming soldier for a man with half a face.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's why I'm going to start a new company ice cream for diabetics. They need it to live.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There is that.
MARCUS PARKS
Well concerning that attempted murder, we also used an article about Synanon published in 2018 in Los Angeles Magazine by Hillel Aron, which nicely covers the incident that led to the downfall of the largest cult you've never heard of. Synanon was originally established as a sincere drug rehabilitation program in the 1950s that became a full fledged cult by 1975.
BEN KISSEL
What were the drugs in the 1950s? Whizzers, zappers, poppers, loopers?
MARCUS PARKS
Heroin!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Heroin.
MARCUS PARKS
So much heroin.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I see.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But also I'd love to find out because it seems like the heroin there was like real good in the 50s.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Really?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It's Charlie Parker heroin. It's good shit.
BEN KISSEL
Wow, okay. CIA heroin.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep. Well no.
MARCUS PARKS
Actually I would say later heroin is more CIA heroin.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's when they started like and then they invented crack which must have been a fun afternoon. That's a whole other episode that we'll do.
MARCUS PARKS
This is like mobster heroin.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now billed as a community striving for a creative and effective approach to drug rehabilitation, Synanon was not the first drug rehab center but it was among the first to be taken seriously. See prior to the 50s, people with drug addiction problems with substances like heroin, they were either thrown in jail or mental institutions without even an attempt at treatment because the word treatment concerning addiction wasn't even in the lexicon. Usually the addicts caught in this cycle were shuttled in and out of these institutions until they died from their addiction or diseases of poverty, while the general public sort of just shrugged and said what are you gonna do?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well because again it was a problem that was kind of new, even though it wasn't.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was an interesting way to kind of... We're looking at it for the first time, we're really now as a society all kind of seeing hey, it seems like a lot of people like heroin.
BEN KISSEL
I mean I think they missed a massive opportunity to give them a guitar, give them one of those little drums with the sticks that have the little things.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh again, jazz.
BEN KISSEL
Jazz.
MARCUS PARKS
You're talking about brush sticks.
BEN KISSEL
Brush sticks! It's about the notes you don't play.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Jazz drumming should make all the hair on your neck stand up.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But once Synanon became popular and once people saw that it got results, people began to believe that addicts didn't have to die in streets like dogs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
BEN KISSEL
What?
MARCUS PARKS
On the contrary, they could be rehabilitated and live normal lives under the right circumstances. And Synanon provided the framework for those circumstances by inventing a culture of recovery. Specifically Synanon pioneered the idea of the ex-addict turned drug counselor.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
And as a result, graduates of the Synanon program, ex-addicts all, opened their own successful treatment centers in San Francisco, Tucson, Manhattan, and Queens.
BEN KISSEL
I just really hope they don't try this same thing with pedophiles. Cause that's gonna lead to a lot of horrible...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Unless you could teach the pedophiles to be attracted to other pedophiles. Right? Like you get a super sexy pedophile in there amongst the other pedophiles-
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah, I've seen Chris Hansen, they're always super sexy when they come through the door.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Every once in a while there's kind of like an R. Kelly. Technically he's a handsome pedophile, right?
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Technically. Okay, sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so you get him in there, right. He gets them all lathered up and shit, maybe then they can also fall in love with each other and be like just imagine I have a big lollipop, imagine I'm much smaller.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right?
BEN KISSEL
I feel like you're really onto something.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. So your idea is to treat pedophiles with the magic of imagination?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You mean the power of theater. Which is why when I do my all pedophile Titus Andronicus, all of LA's fine art community will arrive to see my work.
BEN KISSEL
Just one lonely person clapping in the back and that indeed is Rob Reiner.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Synanon was actually founded right here in the Greater Los Angeles area, out in Santa Monica, by a man named Chuck Dederich who actually coined the phrase:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"Today is the first day of the rest of your life."
BEN KISSEL
Wow. You never realize that someone had to say that first.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. That was a Synanon phrase.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, so what's tomorrow?
BEN KISSEL
The second day of the rest of your fucking life, you moron.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whatever dude.
MARCUS PARKS
It's the second day of your life.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Second day's first loser.
BEN KISSEL
We're not playing Mario Kart.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Chuck Dederich was a-
BEN KISSEL
Doesn't even make sense.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Second day's first loser, man.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, you nailed it. Really good.
MARCUS PARKS
Chuck Dederich was a Gulf Oil sales executive from Toledo, Ohio who was a self admitted alcoholic for 20 years. His drinking problem was blamed on a bout of meningitis that required a mastoidectomy that caved in the right side of his face.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let's just say I got phantom cheek syndrome. The problem is that every time I try to drink, I just imagine I got an extra cheek I gotta fill. Turns out it's not there. So now I'm drinking double.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa! Was part of his brain gone, then?
MARCUS PARKS
No, part of his skull.
BEN KISSEL
Just part of his skull.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I think a mastoidectomy, I looked it up. I think they just kind of pull out part of your skull.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's all infected.
MARCUS PARKS
Meningitis, yeah, they just kind of scoop it out. And because they scoop it out like half your face is flat because it doesn't have any bone.
BEN KISSEL
How did he get meningitis, was he sucking toes or something? What happened?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He got it as a kid.
MARCUS PARKS
It was a whole thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Abraham Lincoln, didn't he have that?
MARCUS PARKS
Meningitis?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A mass-tec-tiotomies?
BEN KISSEL
No, he was just in the closet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Face. No, no, no, no, no. He sucked dick but he only did it with the half, half of his face that fucking worked. There was something that he did-
BEN KISSEL
No, he had a full functioning face until it was shot off.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, he was diagnosed with a facial defect.
BEN KISSEL
That's just people being rude in the 1800s.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he had an aberration called craniofacial microsomia.
BEN KISSEL
That's just what they called people who they thought were ugly back then.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hee just had skeleton head.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
By the early 1950s Chuck Dederich was just a regular schlub in Toledo with a divorce under his belt. So he moved to southern California to gain some perspective and he brought his drinking problem with him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'll tell you what, a divorce certainly was under my belt because she certainly was fucking me in my ass.
BEN KISSEL
There you go. I understand. Financially perhaps.
MARCUS PARKS
By 1956 when Chuck was 43 years old, his second wife left him because of his continued drinking.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man, he could still pull.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he looked like he looks like a fucking Captain Planet villain.
BEN KISSEL
It was back in the day where if you even look at someone for like 15 seconds you're like well we better make this official.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
And then you go get married.
MARCUS PARKS
Well after she left him, she suggested on her way out the door that he might try Alcoholics Anonymous if he ever wanted to get his shit together.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
He's 43 before Synanon even begins.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That shows life doesn't end at 40.
MARCUS PARKS
That's right.
BEN KISSEL
No, it doesn't.
MARCUS PARKS
And sure enough once Chuck started attending AA meetings in Beverly Hills, he fell in love with the AA process partly because he could use the meetings as an open mic to tell stories which were by all accounts quite entertaining.
BEN KISSEL
They better have been.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He stand up comedied his way into being a cult leader.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because he started going to AA... Because you do testimonies in AA.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We don't know because I am not a quitter. But you talk about what your experience was and he'd go up there and he'd Chappelle it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He'd take the mic for like fucking 45 minutes when everyone's waiting but he's crushing so hard and he's running the light, no one wants to stop him. He keeps slapping the mic with his knee every time he laughs.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. That's Chappelle, that's his copywritten move.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Tell.
MARCUS PARKS
Well after two years in AA, Dederich decided to participate in an experiment at UCLA hat wanted to test the effectiveness of LSD on alcoholics. And this may or may not have been one of the lighter MK Ultra experiments. But not every LSD experiment done at a university in the late 50s was funded by the CIA. Just most of them are funded by the CIA. The vast majority, 99% of them were funded by the CIA.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I definitely think it falls into the realm of coincidence of the fact that it's another person that is in this counterculture world that was touched by some form of... What did we learn about MK Ultra? The ultimate, the best part about them is that you don't even know you're MK Ultra until fucking years later. You didn't know until the fucking 80s that you were MK Ultra because you just were getting that shadow money. So apparently it had a lot of long reaching-
MARCUS PARKS
Consequences.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Consequences.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. What about sobriety?
MARCUS PARKS
Positive and negative.
BEN KISSEL
Doesn't taking a bunch of acid inhibit your sobriety?
MARCUS PARKS
No. That's what Dederich said, no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well we'll talk about this because-
BEN KISSEL
It seems like he's not sober if he takes a bunch of acid.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Technically you're Cali sober if you do everything but alcohol.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Because that's the thing, he's staying off of alcohol.
BEN KISSEL
But I thought a a was also like a wide-
MARCUS PARKS
That's what we're getting into, yeah. I mean Dederich said that the experience was highly beneficial, made him look at his alcoholism in an entirely new way.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Actually my alcoholism is a tetrahedron inside this crystal that is my soul and the only thing I need to do is understand me, understand pizza, and I will defeat my own alcoholism.
MARCUS PARKS
But it rubbed the Alcoholics Anonymous leadership the wrong way because they believed that the only things you needed to not drink alcohol was coffee, cigarettes, and a higher power.
BEN KISSEL
Also very bad for you.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Cigarettes, probably the worst of all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sometimes something's gotta give.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, we said it the last episode, let the kids vape.
MARCUS PARKS
Now this belief had actually never sat all that well Chuck Dederich in the first place. He'd never been comfortable with AA's religious focus because he believed that it was important for addicts to develop self reliance. He did however believe that the group therapy and community aspects of AA were key.
BEN KISSEL
You're never gonna find Helena Bonham Carter when you go to these meetings.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
BEN KISSEL
Fight Club.
MARCUS PARKS
Fight Club.
BEN KISSEL
It's all men that are overweight chainsmoking.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But in AA I believe you're not supposed to have sex with the other people that are in your chapter. I believe that that is against it. You're not supposed to date.
BEN KISSEL
You're not supposed to but I mean that's your friend group. What else you gonna do? That's the bar now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know, I feel like there's a lot of sexy challenged people in these groups. You never know.
BEN KISSEL
Maybe.
MARCUS PARKS
Might be, who knows? So after the AA leadership insisted that he find treatment elsewhere because of his LSD use, Chuck decided to start his own version of addiction treatment that would fall in line with his own beliefs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's confidence.
BEN KISSEL
So AA is the reason Synanon exists!
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. Well it's his reaction to it. Because he also was an atheist and he did not believe in a higher power aspect of it. He wanted to find a secular way to do it. But it is interesting to see that he just loved being on mic so much that he was just like I need to do this for a living, I need to call big J.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I need to get in the mix in the Austin scene.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
But once he began tapering off from AA meetings, other recovering alcoholics would check up on him because they liked him. Pretty much his fans were like hey bro, you never come into AA meetings anymore.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You fucking crushed it in the meeting dude, where are you, man?
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Fucking sucks without you there.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
And those checkups, they evolved into impromptu meetings. And those impromptu meetings evolved further into thrice weekly meetings in Dederich's apartment.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is correct in the fact that the fucking cult arrived to him at first before it became a cult, the group just showed up.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow, so this is really... He's like I didn't ask you to come here, you all just showed up.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I guess I'm a cult leader now?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think he did a little bit like yeah, I've heard those meetings are boring without me. Like he did a couple of that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He knew. And then he started hitting them with the charm, hitting them with the sparkle.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
What changed everything though was when a heroin addict named Whitey Walker joined the group just after he was released from prison. Now the group therapy sessions led by Dederich were always a little more aggressive than what they had in AA because that's how Dederich liked it. But Whitey Walker introduced a new dynamic. Soon Whitey was bringing other addicts that Dederich non pejoratively referred to as dope fiends and the more dope fiends that showed up, the coarser the language got and the more aggressive the sessions became.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dederich is of the Tony Robbins school that cursing and saying super hyper confrontational things helps engage street people.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And makes you feel more real or grounded, this idea that I'm a real guy, I'm just a normal guy.
BEN KISSEL
Don't demean the great name of Tony Robbins. He's 6'7" and above. So I must support him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's a lot of issues around Tony Robbins right now.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it's his style. This is kind of where it came from was because Diederich thought, he was like I'm yelling at these guys and he's calling them dope fiends in a way that's kind of like a light roasting because it's about us taking the word back.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, a little bit.
BEN KISSEL
Whitey Walker definitely should have been doing cocaine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
A name like Whitey Walker, that guy, all white suit, pimped out, full of beautiful pure uncut Colombian cocaine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It'd be cool if you find out you think he's a coke dealer but it turns out he just sells milk.
BEN KISSEL
2%, huh? Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
But the thing is that Dederich with these super abrasive meetings, very aggressive, he was getting results in a way that AA wasn't getting results. And he's getting results with fucking heroin addicts.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
So when the gatherings got too big for Dederich's apartment, he went for broke and leased a storefront in Santa Monica. He invited 20 alcoholics and so-called dope fiends to come live there in what was effectively an early version of a rehab facility.
BEN KISSEL
Hold on a second. We had a hard time getting a fucking lease in New York because we have a podcast studio.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
BEN KISSEL
How the hell did the landlord be like so 20 dope fiends, former alcoholics, come right in!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Actually incredible. I have a couple of couches I want to give you guys but I need them back, I'm just lending them to you. No, it was a different time period.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, they didn't like it. He didn't tell them hey, we're gonna be moving a bunch of heroin addicts and alcoholics into this place. And once he did, once they figured out what was going on, the entire neighborhood was like get the fuck out of here.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
It was the first of many confrontations that Chuck Dederich would have with his neighbors. He does not get along well with others.
BEN KISSEL
Much as people feel of influencers now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean technically I don't want to illustrate where we're at but there is an influencer house down the street and it is pretty funny to pull up and watch two guys doing weird like muay thai karate on a dummy out front while another guy shoots them and a girl's twerking next to them. And you kind of wonder are y'all paying for anything or is Robert Downey Jr paying for this too?
BEN KISSEL
I think they're making that money on TIkTok.
MARCUS PARKS
Now as far as what Chuck wanted to call his new venture, the origins of the name are debated. Some say that it's a combination of the words symposium and seminar, while others think it's a play on the word sinners, synthesize, or synagogue. But no matter the origin, what came out the other end was Synanon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well again, great name.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Three syllables. And it sounds like it's connected to recovery.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because you have stuff like Alcoholics Anonymous, there's Al-Anon, there's Narconon, like all those things that are a part of it. I think Narconon is technically Scientology.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh is it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't think Narconon is Scientology. Yeah, I know someone who does Narconon meetings and they don't seem like the type who will go to a Scientology thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They don't say. There's one of those that they don't say that it is.
BEN KISSEL
I was trying to figure out what the term anon means and evidently it means-
MARCUS PARKS
Anonymous.
BEN KISSEL
It means shortly. It says I'll see you anon which I guess means soon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Literally yes, that's Shakespeare.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, (British accent) I shall see you anon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
But in this case it's anonymous.
MARCUS PARKS
Anonymous, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I got you.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah it is on scientology.org, they have Narconon right at the very top.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
BEN KISSEL
Great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow. Okay.
BEN KISSEL
Good. Perfect. Good to know.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's how they get you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You just never know.
BEN KISSEL
You never know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
At least it's on the website. A lot of guys looking at pamphlets on this website so there's a lot of interest building.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now Dederich believe that addiction was not so much an illness that could be cured as it was a behavioral problem that was caused by underlying social and psychological issues which ain't a bad guess.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Bit of both, isn't it?
MARCUS PARKS
But it is worth noting that Dederich was a salesman before he founded Synanon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I'll tell you, I can sell a ketchup popsicle to a bitch that likes mustard.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, absolutely. I knew you were gonna steal that line from Tommy Boy and I called you on it. Your father was such a good salesman he could sell a ketchup popsicle to a woman wearing white gloves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
White gloves.
BEN KISSEL
Ketchup popsicle? We're 40. Marcus, you'll be 40 next week!
MARCUS PARKS
I will be. I'll be 40 a week from today.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
BEN KISSEL
Welcome to the club.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what? I'll tell you what. We're only getting younger.
BEN KISSEL
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And we're getting more fresh and we're getting more available to the young.
MARCUS PARKS
The culture is getting younger and older at the same time. So we're evening out.
BEN KISSEL
We're evening out.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm right in the middle. I'm where I should be.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We don't have any choice.
BEN KISSEL
No, it's not up to us.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Dederich had no more experience in treatment care than the people who founded Straight Inc or WWASP. But to place Dederich apart, he was rarely sadistic and could be said in at least the 1st 10 years to have been quite caring.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He seemed like a fun guy for a while.
MARCUS PARKS
For a while, yeah. And he was sadistic sometimes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh he got to there. No, he got extremely violent.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well I wouldn't say extremely violent. When we're talking about cults...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well after Ant Hill Kids nothing can be called violent again.
MARCUS PARKS
Or Jonestown, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, of course, yeah. But that was just the one big one.
BEN KISSEL
I mean I remember like sometimes you want to smack your friend who's just hungover because they're annoying.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
So it must truly be difficult to deal with a bunch of people who are going through withdrawal. Sometimes you just have to be like Tommy, your shit belongs in the toilet, not on your face! And so at some point you do have to kind of get upset.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow, that's the thing. Man, you're about to have your mind fucking blown here.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude.
MARCUS PARKS
Well similar to other cult leaders with initial good intentions like Jim Jones, Chuck's ego eventually got out of hand. And while it never got to Jonestown levels, Chuck and Jim's paths would cross just before the shit hit the fan in Guyana.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Think about this. This shit is happening in SoCal.
BEN KISSEL
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There is a lot of the same guys. L. Ron's in town, fucking Jim Jones is in town.
BEN KISSEL
Jim Parsons?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
These guys are all there, dude. It's just wild to think that like all of this shit was happening. Charles Manson, all this was happening at the same time.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And this guy, Chuck Dederich. Synanon became truly innovative starting in 1959 with the introduction of the cop-out method which was later used extensively and wrongly in the troubled teen schools. See a lot of addicts at Synanon were admitting that they were still using drugs and they knew that other people were still using drugs but they were keeping it all to themselves because their brains were hardwired against snitching.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the number one criminal crime is to snitch.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what I mean? And you learn it's omerta.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You don't fucking tell everybody everybody's business because you never know who's a fucking cop.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
But Dederich convinced everyone in Synanon that snitching on yourself and others was not only preferable but essential to the recovery process, to snitch. Honesty, he said, bound you to the community. And that concept became central to Synanon's most well known and influential method. See after several open ended discussions in which people snitched on each other's drug use, the group began digging deeper at what else everyone was keeping secret. People started getting very honest about everything.
BEN KISSEL
People stop being fake and start getting real. It's the Synanon Real World house.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is kind of where all that came from. I do believe that this is the true inspiration for all of that style of shit.
BEN KISSEL
The only thing missing is cameras and Dr. Drew.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But this inspired what came to be known as the game. In the game all players were required to be intimately honest with each other using a series of what they called indictments to attack hypocrisy and fraud in a fellow group member.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Also I know another game and you just lost it.
BEN KISSEL
What?
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
What?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The game. You just lost it.
BEN KISSEL
Why?
MARCUS PARKS
You don't need to...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He doesn't know this?
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it's like schoolyard, man. Schoolyard game.
BEN KISSEL
You never had time in the schoolyard.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I was out there with all the boys.
BEN KISSEL
No you weren't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I played handball.
BEN KISSEL
No you didn't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I played handball and then we did sometimes play married life where I would be a husband.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then I played superheroes and then we played with the Ouija board but I did play handball.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
You played handball.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes.
BEN KISSEL
Little hands. It's a little racket.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But the game is a thing that you say and then if you say the game, you become aware of the game, you've lost it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know. I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's like I'm talking to my father.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So disappointed.
BEN KISSEL
I'll be your father. (clears throat) Henry Thomas. End me! End me!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh god. Now you're making me sad. Now it's too real.
MARCUS PARKS
You sound like a teenager trying to explain 4Chan to his uncle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's difficult.
MARCUS PARKS
Like how cool 4Chan is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's cool, man.
BEN KISSEL
Now 4Chan, so that's the fourth grandson of Jackie Chan. Is that correct?
MARCUS PARKS
Well in the game, like I said all players were required to be intimately honest. And the idea was that this introduced a brutal kind of accountability that led to the development of personal integrity, a drop in impulsive action, and a sense of social responsibility.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And remember at this time period this is all done with consenting hardcore adults.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes it is. That is key.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
At the very top of this there was a kind of an edge to it that did seem to be helpful.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like it was a little bit of it.
BEN KISSEL
Because obviously we're discussing the troubled teen industry.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. And this is adults.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Because the idea is that you might think twice about doing something shitty if you knew that you'd be publicly balled out during a game session for doing that shitty thing.
BEN KISSEL
Gotcha.
MARCUS PARKS
And by Dederich's reckoning, drug addicts couldn't hide anything if they expected to be clean because secrecy was the root of their addiction.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean it's a simplification but yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I guess.
MARCUS PARKS
No, I mean that's the thing is that the game and Synanon worked for some people just like AA works for some people.
BEN KISSEL
Sure. I mean I'm just saying when I think of drug addicts I don't think of secrecy because you see them in New York-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All they do is run their mouth.
BEN KISSEL
They're talking or kind of falling over but also not. That's what the Twin Towers needed, heroin. Have you ever seen... They should have had one entire floor just full of heroin. They're like nah, I'll get back up just fine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But you know what they're not being honest with is anybody but themselves.
MARCUS PARKS
Well that's the thing is Synanon is a program for people who do keep it a secret.
BEN KISSEL
And they need to talk.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they need to talk.
MARCUS PARKS
They need to talk, they want to talk.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
They are actively asking for this. And people who participated, they said they felt invigorated afterward. Their behavior, some people, it changed significantly.
BEN KISSEL
Great.
MARCUS PARKS
As far as how a game session went, they lasted between 2-3 hours and were comprised of 8-15 players. And all of this was transposed in an extremely simplified form to the troubled teen industry, to many of the troubled teen schools.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Each player was asked to quote "run their story" which was their cue to open up their life to the other players.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like me, I'm a fuckable, unstoppable force of nature.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And everybody says Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, stop fucking, all right? Leave some ladies for the rest of us. And I was like all right, I will quit the booze.
MARCUS PARKS
Well after opening up, the other players confronted lies and weaknesses in a public forum of analytical and humorous gossip, no holds barred. You could attack interpersonal issues, work patterns, emotions, idiosyncrasies, basically any weak spot.
BEN KISSEL
Sounds like a Comedy Central roast of an alcoholic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And honestly a lot of those... More lives have been changed inside of roasts than have in most rehab centers, I'm pretty certain.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
But the thing, I mean it is a roast but it's an uncorked roast.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. Uncorked roast.
MARCUS PARKS
But, and this is absolutely key, the point of the game was not to attack the person but to attack the behavior.
BEN KISSEL
Hate the sin, not the sinner.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Exactly. This allowed the target to separate themselves and look at what they were doing rather than absorbing the abuse personally. The problem was that when the game was adapted to troubled teen programs like the Elan School or Straight Inc, no such distinction was made, that subtlety was lost. In essence they were handing this fairly complicated and subtle method to emotionally unstable, traumatized teenagers who were usually just looking to transfer the pain they'd received to whoever was next in line.
BEN KISSEL
So the drugs aren't the problem, you're the problem.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the idea. But then you even say that it's complicated and subtle but where would it go? Actually it's a different process that I think a lot of other therapies. Maybe I'm wrong here but it sounds like it started-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it doesn't sound complicated at all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it started complicated and subtle and actually became more simplified as it went.
MARCUS PARKS
Well yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because as they started doing the game more and more, the more abusive it became as we'll see.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. Oh yeah, very much so. But in Synanon the game, at least in the early days, it was described as an emotional dance. It was a dream that could either be a nightmare or a pleasant experience. And I realized there's no word for a good dream.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah there is.
MARCUS PARKS
Nightmare. That's one word.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, what's the word for a pleasant dream?
MARCUS PARKS
There isn't one.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah there is.
MARCUS PARKS
What is it?
BEN KISSEL
Euphoria.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the name of a tv show where teens are doing naughty things.
BEN KISSEL
No, there's gotta be something.
MARCUS PARKS
There's not.
BEN KISSEL
Dream...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Pleasurntdream.
BEN KISSEL
Plursurtdream.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Pleasurndream.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I guess you just say pleasant dream.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Nice dream.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's how very few times a nice dream happens.
MARCUS PARKS
That's right. Isn't that true?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I only have nightmares.
BEN KISSEL
I had a dream I couldn't stand up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
BEN KISSEL
I was going through a lot of knee pains because of the because of the weather, because of the rain. My knees were hurting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So you just sat in a chair in your dream?
BEN KISSEL
No, I was trying to stand up and fight people but I couldn't stand up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's really sad. That's hard.
BEN KISSEL
My knees were hurting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow. Interesting.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
Interesting.
BEN KISSEL
Move on.
MARCUS PARKS
I had a dream last night that I was being choked in a garage full of silver balloons.
BEN KISSEL
Buddy, that wasn't a dream.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude, that happened.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, we were there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sorry dude.
BEN KISSEL
Sorry.
MARCUS PARKS
(choking sounds)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, we fucked you up real good, dude.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We hired a TaskRabbit. Yeah, he was so good. I gave him four stars though because five stars is something special.
BEN KISSEL
He was actually dressed as a huge rabbit.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay. Well I thought it was just the breathing problems I've been having.
BEN KISSEL
Henry and I are doing our own CIA.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, we're PSYOP-ing you.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, you don't know that. We just blew the cover.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean but he'll forget.
MARCUS PARKS
I'll forget, yeah. That's the thing, you just say the magic word and it'll just go back. Say like peabody! And then I'm done.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Artichoke.
MARCUS PARKS
Ah! So in other words it was-
BEN KISSEL
Nailed it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wink.
MARCUS PARKS
In other words, it was something far too complex and sensitive to be directed by sociopaths and/or traumatized teens, because sometimes it was both. But one thing that both the game and the troubled teen attack therapies like a Elan School's general meeting shared was the use of extreme profanity.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's kinda fun.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Dederich believe that the use of obscenity and blasphemy helped lower inhibitions which can be fun if it's all adults. But when it's used by teens it's usually just a bunch of fucks strung together with no real structure or purpose.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel like I used more curse words in a general sense when I was younger.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But now I like to use them more and I use them more effectively.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
They're pointed. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Come!
BEN KISSEL
Come. Which is technically not even a curse word.
MARCUS PARKS
It's not but you made me laugh. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's that easy.
BEN KISSEL
I know, I used to just say full sentences that were all curse words.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All curse words.
BEN KISSEL
But you could understand what I... Get that fucking bullshit out of my goddamn asshole.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cock and ass and fuck, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And that's basically what happened.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the game wasn't the only method taken from Synanon. Like the Elan Schools, new Synanon residents had to break outside relations for the first 90 days.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the first step.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's bad.
MARCUS PARKS
Although that could be extended to a year if those outside relations were deemed detrimental.
BEN KISSEL
Well that's the first thing that is a red flag to me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And similarly anything that might distract the addict was taken away. For example, Synanon was extremely popular amongst the jazz community because heroin was very popular amongst the jazz community.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's how you get relaxed.
BEN KISSEL
It makes sense.
MARCUS PARKS
So most jazz musicians were barred from playing instruments or singing for the first part of their stay at a Synanon center.
BEN KISSEL
I actually wanna thank Synanon for saving my favorite bar on Friday nights. Jazz night has been canceled.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's kind of fun though. But it is sad to have a room where specifically no saxophones are allowed.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's weird.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that is weird. No saxophones.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not a single saxophone.
MARCUS PARKS
But it's specifically pointedly no saxophones or trumpets.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean that's also again, I feel like a saxophone's more friendly.
MARCUS PARKS
Really?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you're bringing a trumpet to a meeting it sounds like you're trying to disrupt something.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's true.
MARCUS PARKS
I feel like a trumpet is friendlier, I feel like a saxophone is a very aggressive instrument.
BEN KISSEL
No but you can play the sax and the sax can sound beautiful alone. A trumpet is just (trumpet sounds).
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(trumpet sounds)
MARCUS PARKS
Maybe I just have those associations because of the saxophone guy that used to be on the L train.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, pay me to stop.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, pay me to stop. Yeah. That was back when it was fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Back when it was fun.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
But all of this, these are the seeds of the cult-like behavior that Synanon would eventually fall prey to. Another was the institution of something nonsensically called Ramadula.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It will become a pattern.
BEN KISSEL
Sounds like a name from The Waterboy. Ramadula!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ramadula.
BEN KISSEL
You hanging out with them Ramadula (Southern mumbling).
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But Chuck Dederich loved the sound of his own voice, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he was constantly improving these monologues and people would go like this kind of started early and then just got worse and worse and worse as it went. But it does sound like a lot of people adopted his little pets sayings and then they became official terminology for the club.
BEN KISSEL
I mean fuck dude, literally fuck, we all say that sentence that he created, it's the first day of the rest of your life.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. No, he was a quote machine.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. I mean that's pretty incredible to be honest.
MARCUS PARKS
Well in Ramadula, Synanon members had to act unnaturally upbeat no matter what they were doing and visitors often described being met with an unsettling sea of smiles in Synanon facilities.
BEN KISSEL
Ugh. I hate that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's what he took from AA which is act as if. Act as if you were the person you wanted to be and the idea of you fake it til you make it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah but why would you want to be a smiling buffoon all the time?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know.
BEN KISSEL
Because that's not the right emotion for 90% of life.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But straight up Chuck Dederich said that I want you to be so busy when I look at you, you're nothing but a blur of teeth and pink.
BEN KISSEL
Sounds like my manager at Wendy's.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
That's what your manager at Wendy's said? That she wanted you to be a blur of teeth and pink?
BEN KISSEL
If you've got time to lean, you've got time to clean.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Actually leaning doesn't take a lot of time.
BEN KISSEL
No it doesn't.
MARCUS PARKS
It really doesn't. You really will not let go of if you got time to lean, you got time to clean.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the most offensive thing that has ever been said to him.
BEN KISSEL
I've worked at eight fast food restaurants, every time I got a fine for breaking the law I had to go pay it off and I had to go to a fast food job.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Synanon, they actually got a lot of positive attention in their early days and some of it was oddly prophetic. A senator named Thomas Dodd declared that Synanon could quote "lead the way in the future to an effective treatment for not only drug addicts but also criminals and juvenile delinquents."
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Senators immediately looking to find... Because they just want a one stop shop where it's like great, we'll take these troubled people, we'll fucking put them in a room, boom, done, they're done, they're fixed, boom back in the workforce. Like they just don't give a shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They don't care, they just think that they can do it fast.
BEN KISSEL
To be honest though it seems more sympathetic than the war on drugs.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh it's very much-
BEN KISSEL
At the very least they're like well let's not incarcerate them, let's go to meetings.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, sure, absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I could see this actually... Well no obviously because it's gonna spiral out of control but if it stays good, it could have been something good.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it could have been.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It just seems to be that it never does.
BEN KISSEL
No, it doesn't.
MARCUS PARKS
Well it's ego, it's always egos getting out of control. It's why Jim Jones and Chuck Dederich are very similar because they're men who start off with good intentions, I do believe they do have good intentions at first with. With Jim Jones it was racial equality, with Chuck Dederich it's treatment of addicts. But at one point either they get bored or their ego gets fed, their ego just gets too fat and they just lose it. And then when substances come into play, with Jim Jones it was amphetamines, with Chuck Dederich it's gonna be the relapse of alcoholism.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It just spins out of control and things get real fucking weird.
BEN KISSEL
I'm trying to think of anyone that has started anything with bad intentions and ironically it turned out to be good. It's kind of interesting that most things people do think they're doing good and then it turns bad.
MARCUS PARKS
That's why we have that whole saying, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel like we developed a whole series of drones that will blow people up and now they make incredible cheap shots in our favorite superhero movies.
BEN KISSEL
That's worth it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's worth the 20 year war.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Plus the next 1000 year war we're about to have.
MARCUS PARKS
It's pretty good, yeah. We got those cool shots in Smile.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey man, think about that!
BEN KISSEL
Oh really cool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They lent Tom Cruise, they lent that slaveowner full jest to just fly around in the sky. It's incredible.
BEN KISSEL
Big jets. That's true. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they're in movies and we like it but before they were being used as strafe by civilians.
BEN KISSEL
Okay great, good, sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Well a little like Scientology, Synanon attracted a fair amount of attention from the entertainment business. Besides the aforementioned jazz musicians, a feature film based on Synanon's founding called Synanon was released in 1965 co starring Eartha Kitt in a supporting role as Chuck Dederich's wife Betty.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
Let's play a little bit of the trailer.
BEN KISSEL
Can we see Eartha Kitt?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Oh yes.
BEN KISSEL
One of the most beautiful women that's ever lived.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's beautiful.
MARCUS PARKS
She's incredible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(purring)
BEN KISSEL
She's always my Catwoman.
MARCUS PARKS
(purring)
LPOTL
(Audio Clip)
Synanon is a real corporation. It's business is junkies. Chuck Dederich is the ex drunk who dreamed it up and fights to keep it from becoming a nightmare.
Get outta the car and shut up! Stand over there! Put your hands against the wall, get in that cell and stay there!
But nobody tells me what to do.
Then the ex-con with a killer's fist tensed so tight for a fix they bleed.
Look Betty, I don't make scenes with chicks because I've got other things on my mind.
Dollface with a deadly expensive appetite.
What are you my nurse?
No, just another dope fiend.
Zankie, the hiphop head up from the gutter to grab anything he could get.
BEN KISSEL
Cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, Zankie doesn't make it by the way.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, Zankie's not going anywhere.
BEN KISSEL
Wow, you could almost hear the big fat tithes of spenders.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, it's cool cause again, talk about a movie that at least everybody who's in it looks horrible.
BEN KISSEL
Do they? Not Eartha Kitt.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not Eartha Kitt.
MARCUS PARKS
Eartha Kitt looks great, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But Chuck Dederich, it's so nice to not have him not played by like Joaquin Phoenix.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's just like a fat ugly guy playing a fat ugly guy. It's revelatory.
BEN KISSEL
I loved the dude who played Penguin. He did a great job.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was great.
BEN KISSEL
But they could have just-
MARCUS PARKS
Danny DeVito?
BEN KISSEL
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, Colin Farrell.
BEN KISSEL
Colin Farrell.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh that's right, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
They could also just hire an ugly actor every now and again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's hard, man.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugly actors, a lot of times they're guilty of crimes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
The person who should have played the Penguin who truly seems evil judging by all of his stories is Joey Diaz.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Technically yes, he is guilty of kidnapping.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, you think about the ugly actors that would be good at playing Penguin that's also a criminal, Jeffrey Jones.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jeffrey Jones as well, actual criminal.
MARCUS PARKS
Actual criminal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Exactly.
BEN KISSEL
He's the principal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hire criminals to play criminals, please. Representation.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
Now within 10 years of its founding, right around the time that the Synanon movie was released in theaters, Chuck Dederich's unlicensed rehab startup had 1100 members and was getting $2.5 million a year in donations.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
It owned $7 million in real estate in five states, it had its own merch business, and it ran a number of gas stations.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He learned that from Scientology is that you buy into real estate.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
He actually is a better businessman than all of Adult Swim. They actually have merch.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is. Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
Yep. Well I mean that's the thing, you say he learned it from Scientology, I don't think he did because Scientology and Synanon ran parallel to each other.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Maybe it's because he was an executive already, he was working for a big corporation and then he just understood like oh I just use that structure.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I think he's just smart. A good idea is a good idea, you know what I mean?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now partly Synanon had gotten so cash rich because it had opened its ranks to non addicts in the late 60s because Dederich figured that anyone could benefit from the game and non addicts, they got a lot more money than drug addicts.
BEN KISSEL
You got one foot shorter than the other, you got one leg shorter than the other.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're gonna have to tug on that leg. Allegorically.
BEN KISSEL
I just feel like if you don't have a problem, why would you go to this?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it's because again, we're going to get into it, it's about building an understanding community.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Well these non addict Synanon members were called squares and once they joined, Chuck Dederich realized that people shouldn't quote unquote "graduate" from Synanon anymore. It used to be you could graduate from Synanon. Go form your own, be a seed in the world.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was supposed to correct you and help you and then release you.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But then he realized, what was the quote? He realized you can't graduate a religion.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah but he's not quite to that point yet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We'll get there.
BEN KISSEL
That's the beginning of a cult.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well he realizes at this point that Synanon can become a lifelong commitment. Why let people go?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. This is like what happens when they allow you to graduate with a master's in sociology and you're only profession is being a teacher.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's hard.
MARCUS PARKS
Now predictably once Synanon became a long term thing and more people with money joined, Chuck Dederich began building compounds.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
MARCUS PARKS
And by 1971, and this is what I'm talking about, the largest cult you've never heard of, almost 2000 people lived in Synanon facilities mostly here in California.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it was big.
BEN KISSEL
Good thing Janet Reno wasn't around then. She would have had a field day killing all of them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well consequently, Chuck Dederich and Synanon became more controlling and militant in the late 60s and early 70s. In 1971 for example, Dederich tried putting some uppity dope fiends in their place with an act that was later called the dirty double dozen.
BEN KISSEL
Oh baby! I've seen that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's really good with the names.
BEN KISSEL
Dirty double dozen.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh man, that sounds like a great donut shop in Portland.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh all I heard was bukkake.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, a little bukkake there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's all I saw in my head was bukkake.
MARCUS PARKS
I just thought of really unhealthy donuts. Like really good donuts.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the difference between us. I gotta take a break.
BEN KISSEL
I can see that being a special every Thursday at Burger King, the dirty double dozen.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I could see that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. So burgers, donuts, come.
BEN KISSEL
That's another show.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep, that's it. That's the show.
BEN KISSEL
That nails it.
MARCUS PARKS
Well after ordering 22 dope fiend old timers and two young squares onto a Synanon bus they dubbed the Syna-Cruiser-
BEN KISSEL
That's cool honestly. That's actually cool.
MARCUS PARKS
It was a Greyhound bus they bought. Like that's the Syna-Cruiser.
BEN KISSEL
It's sweet though.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Paul Morantz also hits it a lot with the term jitney.
MARCUS PARKS
Jitney?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He kept calling it a jitney.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then actually Chuck Dederich went as far as to say that the bus, the Syna-Cruiser, was the second most important element of Synanon other than him. He loved his bus.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. So L. Ron Hubbard had the seacraft.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He had the boat.
BEN KISSEL
The boat. And he's got the Syna-Cruiser.
MARCUS PARKS
He's got the Syna-Cruiser.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But the Syna-Cruiser is very necessary.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Because their two biggest compounds are in Santa Monica and in Marin County like right north from San Francisco.
BEN KISSEL
It's pretty far away.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
So they're about 400 miles apart from each other.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's a 5.5 hour drive.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You put them on the bus, zip, zip, zip. Back and forth.
BEN KISSEL
Oh man, being on a bus with a bunch of people who are recovering drug addicts. I mean it is just a Greyhound.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're singing songs.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But that's the thing is that they actually, no, total silence on this trip.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa.
BEN KISSEL
God, what a nightmare.
MARCUS PARKS
Total silence from Santa Monica to Marin County.
BEN KISSEL
Actually maybe that's best now that I think about it. If I was a passenger maybe silence is best.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well mandatory silence is definitely better than mandatory singing.
BEN KISSEL
Yes, yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is for certain.
BEN KISSEL
I agree.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the double dozen, once they arrived they had all their possessions taken away and they were then verbally attacked in a special game featuring Dederich, his wife Betty, the one that's played by Eartha Kitt, there was also the senate on director of the board, and an attorney square. And amongst the indictments were skimming community supplies and smoking which were two things that were newly banned in Synanon. Because it used to be smoking was almost mandatory. They sent actually spent something like $70,000 a year on cigarettes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah man, this was back when cigarettes were good for your teeth.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, this is back when cigarettes were like a dime a pack and they're still spending like 60 grand a year on smokes.
BEN KISSEL
You can't pull the rug out like that though.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You gotta wean them off the cigarettes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was all because Chuck Dederich had just stopped smoking cigarettes which becomes a theme. Every single time he decides he wants to do something, the whole group either says oh that's a great idea or Chuck Diederich has sort of hinted this would be a great idea for you all to say that this is a great idea.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that sucks.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And then it becomes a law.
BEN KISSEL
I see.
MARCUS PARKS
In addition, the double dozen was also accused of not playing the game enough which is basically you're not as invested in the cult as you need to be and also impregnating two other residents. That one is kind of serious.
BEN KISSEL
You're not supposed to do that.
MARCUS PARKS
You're not supposed to do that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. This is also a weird strain.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And so after over 100 confessions were made during dozens of games, the dirty double dozen were made to shave their heads as contrition.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
MARCUS PARKS
As was the Synanon custom.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes.
BEN KISSEL
Why is that? When it comes to a certain religious beliefs, the hair is so important. I mean obviously you go to prison the first thing they do is shave that dome off, military-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's to dehumanize you.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It really does change you, doesn't it? The hair.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It does. Look at the same thing we talked about with Heaven's Gate, that we joke about the haircuts and stuff on that episode.
BEN KISSEL
It's really important.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But again it's about creating a unified identity so that everybody looks exactly the same.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And at the very beginning of that, I listened to the first couple of episodes of the show about Synanon, I think it was called the Sunshine Place or whatever, because it was from two kids that were raised in it and one of them was saying it is just wild to see, once you get your head shaved and you're like oh I don't look like me anymore.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And that's why Ben Kissel's cult, bush hair-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A big old bush.
BEN KISSEL
It's got very specific rules and standards for your bush hair.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes because then you go around with a ruler to measure the level of bush hair, being like you need to actually be taking more keratin, this mound could be an inch higher.
MARCUS PARKS
Well that's the thing, everyone's got different curlies and everyone's got different thickness in their curlies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Technically I have a lot of bush hair but it's almost translucent.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And that's the thing, I got a lot-
BEN KISSEL
We have similar bush hairs.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah but I got really thick, I got bush hair like a fucking thorn bush.
BEN KISSEL
yeah. Well that's a lot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just glad Fernando's here in the room and that he knows.
BEN KISSEL
He knows, he knows.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's good for the company.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
But while the act of shaving one's head started off as contrition, everyone was eventually contrite so often that almost all Synanon members just kept their head shaved. In fact so many people in Synanon had shaved heads that George Lucas used a Synanon chapter as bald futuristic dystopian extras in his first movie THX 1138.
BEN KISSEL
You know things are going wrong when you're just cast as a dystopian nightmare race.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So fun. So you guys are all a bunch of slaves to a godhead, right? Great, perfect, stand over here.
BEN KISSEL
No makeup needed today.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Perfect.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
At one point Synanon did dip their toe into the troubled teen industry. But once they did so it was the beginning of the end of the good times for the soon to be cult.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That fast.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. See during the 60s and 70s, Synanon coordinated with the San Francisco and Oakland Police Departments to see if they could adapt the game to help juvenile offenders. This had come about because Synanon had previously hosted games between police and felons in order to improve relations between them. And at one point they had put on a very tense game between Oakland police and the local chapter of the Black Panthers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ooh man.
BEN KISSEL
That must have been really fun. That must've been a great game of laser tag.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The energy in that room must have just been out of control.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. What a game of dodgeball.
MARCUS PARKS
But since it seems like those games yielded positive results, Synanon took 49 adult criminals in an experiment that was overseen by California State University and they began gaming them. Surprisingly the program led to positive successes for 38 out of those 49 people.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
So they figured if it worked for adults, it must work for kids.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
So a Synanon supporter named Donald Cressey who was actually a sociologist and a criminologist, he worked with Synanon on what they called the punk squad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is just again, because adults can understand that you're making fun of me and I'm like owning it, right?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You can call an adult a dope fiend and they can understand the vague sense of irony that's kind of attached to it.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay, you got me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. But kids don't. On some level it's very difficult. I mean yeah, they do. But it gets in there, it fucks with a bunch of-
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Call them a bunch of punks and that's what you do where yeah, you're some troubled kid, we're gonna fucking straighten you out and shit. I feel like maybe I'm wrong but it seems that kids don't really respond to that as well.
MARCUS PARKS
They don't.
BEN KISSEL
Most don't. I certainly didn't, that's for sure.
MARCUS PARKS
No, they internalize it and it becomes trauma and they become what you tell them they are.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think so.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I used to get called a really cool kid.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's why look at him, man.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's why he rolled up here on a motorcycle. But what's weird is the engine wasn't going. And I was like how'd you do that?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I walked it with my feet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You just walked it with your feet. I was like how economical.
BEN KISSEL
Cool kid.
MARCUS PARKS
Now in complete contradiction to everything Synanon previously believed, none of the kids in the punk squad were in the program voluntarily which was a key component for the game to work. You gotta wanna be.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, otherwise you just got fucking forced into a room where everyone screams horrible things at you.
MARCUS PARKS
Exactly. And additionally the punk squad used physical force for the first time in Synanon's history because Synanon leaders decided that punks needed to be pushed to the ground by the chest when necessary if they didn't listen or participate.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And again they're kids.
BEN KISSEL
Well it seems like we are escalating quickly here.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very quickly. and these kids are not there on their own will, right. So they are prisoners there in a way.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so yeah, they're not really responding to the game the way you want them to.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So instead of you just kind of understanding and leaving room for that, yes, they just started like mushing their faces into the ground.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. They're juvenile delinquents.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
They don't wanna do your stupid little fucking game.
BEN KISSEL
Also they are probably right. This is the 60s and 70s, they're just like-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sometimes they're seeing through the shit, just being like y'all know that this is bad, right? Y'all know that this is gonna go south.
BEN KISSEL
You don't wanna go fight the Vietcong in the name of democracy?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You don't wanna do that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's like no, dude, I don't.
BEN KISSEL
Shit, you're a punk.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It really feels like I should just stay home.
BEN KISSEL
You're a punk.
MARCUS PARKS
Well treated as second class citizens within the already rigid Synanon hierarchy, punks had to sit in the back of the bus, hold doors open for non punks, address every non punk as sir or ma'am, they had to wake up at 4AM every day, and they were required to smile at all times.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I need you to do a little rigaloo. Rigaloo? Ramading?
MARCUS PARKS
Ramadula!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ramadula.
BEN KISSEL
The forced to smile thing is so nefarious to me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh it is.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's so gross.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah because it is literally trying to control the inner life of any one human being.
BEN KISSEL
And I would have said that they weren't smiling then some jackass would be be like where's your smile?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you get called out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Screaming at you and you'd probably get pushed to the ground if you refused to smile.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
One punk who was only 9 when he was put through the program-
BEN KISSEL
9?!
MARCUS PARKS
9 years old. He said that he was forced to run two miles as a punishment but ran out of breath less than a quarter of the way in. By his memory he was shouted at, punched, and kicked in the butt by a punk squad coordinator.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
MARCUS PARKS
They called the coordinators, they called them ramrods.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, the ramrods.
BEN KISSEL
Well that is not even a euphemism.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, it's all these weird names.
BEN KISSEL
That is a horrible... Ramrod?
MARCUS PARKS
Ramrod, yeah. And of course as soon as corporal punishment and physical intimidation was used on the punk squad with the kids, it slowly seeped into the rest of the community. It was a slippery slope.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
MARCUS PARKS
And that's where things started going very wrong for Synanon.
BEN KISSEL
It's like a multilevel marketing scheme but just with violence.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just with violence.
MARCUS PARKS
Now once Synanon began admitting so-called squares into the program, things became more cult-like and the adult members of Synanon began subjecting their children, sometimes as young as 3 years old, to the game.
BEN KISSEL
What?
MARCUS PARKS
Now in the early days-
BEN KISSEL
What the... Wait, hold on a second. What the fuck could a three year old be accused of?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know.
BEN KISSEL
Literally what does a 3 year old do that's purposely wrong?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's really difficult to kind of... It's weird because in some ways they treated kids like... We talked about this in the last episode but something about them not being people.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right? like they're these little robots, they're these things that we can just make them and break them and we do whatever it is that we want with them and that a 3 year old... Just leaving no room for the fact that these brains develop.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that they are changing and then the sea of hormones, all these bodies, things are happening. You're 3, you just started. It's very difficult to have a lot of baggage at 3.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And if you do, a lot of times it's because you've already been a soldier for two years like in some other country, right?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is very difficult to find helmets that small.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. Oh I've seen baby soldiers, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now in the early days of the squares, the early 70s, children of Synanon members reported more or less positive experiences with the game when it was complicated basically and you took your time with it. But in later years when things got a little looser, children found it traumatizing and this was the game being led by fucking experts. When interviewed as adults, many of these people said that children were nowhere near the appropriate level of maturity for the game and most of them incurred emotional damage because they couldn't play it correctly. It's like asking a 10 year old who usually only plays Fortnite to beat Dark Souls and when they can't do it, you call him a dirty cocksucker.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Actually I think in that way you might be right. I think that it's because you should force the child to understand that video games are important and that they need to get their shit together, all right.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because now videogames are money. You can be a professional video game player.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. That is true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So you sit there and one day you sit there, we'll have our adopted children and you'll look down at them and you'll force them to run Dark Souls again and again and again.
MARCUS PARKS
Over and over and over.
BEN KISSEL
Do a speedrun, yeah. That's a good idea.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Being like we'll get you good at this.
MARCUS PARKS
Don't tell them that you just run past the Asylum Demon the first time, don't tell them that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
See if that little fucker can beat the Asylum Demon with a broken sword.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fuck that little fucking piece of shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Fuck him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fuck him!
MARCUS PARKS
Fuck him!
BEN KISSEL
These games are too hard these days. I'm trying to play Callisto Protocol, man. I'm playing it on minimum security and I can't play it and I'm done now.
MARCUS PARKS
You want too hard, go back and try to play some Mega Man. Then you'll see some fucking hard.
BEN KISSEL
I don't wanna play fucking Mega Man. Also isn't he a woman? Which one's the woman?
MARCUS PARKS
No, Metroid. You're thinking of Samus Aran, Metroid.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Metroid.
MARCUS PARKS
It's Metroid.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kids need to be reading the damn encyclopedia.
MARCUS PARKS
Well speaking of kids, Synanon also had a fair amount of child abuse accusations. Not sexual but physical.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it seems like it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It's like when a 15 year old runaway said in court that she had been forced to clean up pig manure with carrot sticks as a disciplinary measure.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean we're gonna be eating that in 2030.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's gonna be a luxury. Ooh pig manure with carrot sticks. What kind of hummus is this?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Animal matter? This is incredible.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Now as far as the game itself went, it too took on a different structure in the 70s. Where before anyone could say anything in the game and not be punished, that was sort of the point of it, you could not be disciplined for what you said in the game.
BEN KISSEL
Well why would you tell the truth, then?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The whole point is again it's starting to create this system, it's eat your own tail system where no matter what you're guilty and you're guilty and you're guilty.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so you're forced to be like no, you haven't changed yet. You're not done yet, you're not done.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And because you could be disciplined outside of the game for things that you said in the game, players stopped being honest.
BEN KISSEL
Of course.
MARCUS PARKS
And the therapeutic benefits of the game were completely lost.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
The whole thing fell apart from here. And Chuck Dederich also began recording game sessions and Synanon meetings-
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
MARCUS PARKS
With the supposed idea that it would make everything open to everyone. But in reality it gave Chuck Dederich the ability to keep tabs on what everyone was saying and doing.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
And it was a further bad idea because those game sessions and meetings would later be used in court in various attempted murder trials.
BEN KISSEL
Oh it's like he's collecting evidence.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he did it accidentally at first and then realized that he can use it against everyone as another way to keep everybody in.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Leverage.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kompromat.
MARCUS PARKS
But it was also nearly impossible to understand the context of everything being said in those recorded games because the game itself had become so Byzantine and varied. It had become both more complicated and simplified at the same time because there were different kinds of games that everyone would play.
BEN KISSEL
Seems like everyone just made it up themselves which makes it extremely complicated.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Again, everybody's running train on it. I'm sorry I was just thinking about the story of the one cop that was blowing all the dude. The cop that was fucking all the other cops inside of the station while on duty.
MARCUS PARKS
The cop blow bank.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
You know about this, Ben, right?
BEN KISSEL
I don't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Have you heard about this? Have you seen this?
MARCUS PARKS
Have you seen this? Have you heard about this?
BEN KISSEL
This is one of the stories that must have fallen through my purview this week. Thank you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'll send it to you later.
MARCUS PARKS
You'll like it.
BEN KISSEL
I'll love it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's cop blow bank.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know how I missed it. That's all I do all day.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Synanon basically had four stages of development. The first and second stage from 1958- 1968, that was focused on the voluntary rehabilitation of alcoholics and drug addicts.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
It was there solely as a therapeutic community that made a little bit of money.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He made money.
MARCUS PARKS
Just a little bit of money.
BEN KISSEL
Well you need a little cash to keep it going, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're sitting here, we're creating here a proprietary system. Okay? A little bit of a proprietary system. Okay? You gonna be mad at me? You trying to come here, tell me this proprietary system isn't worth money?
BEN KISSEL
I'm fine with it, it was well worth it, I got better, okay.
MARCUS PARKS
The third stage that lasted from 1969-1975, that was focused on building a social movement to create a utopian society.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Utopian society!
BEN KISSEL
That's gonna be great. That's gonna totally work out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And that's in a time when many hucksters were trying to do the same. This is when they expanded it out to the squares and hen they expanded out to the squares, it made a little bit more money.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You mean to tell me you're gonna be mad at me because I'm bringing a bunch of extra people, yes, to my proprietary system? Yes, maybe I make a little money. You're gonna be mad at me?
BEN KISSEL
Make a little money.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's my business man persona inside of me. You're gonna me mad? I gotta do certain things, I gotta make some choices because we're looking at financial stability here.
BEN KISSEL
That's all you gotta do. Yeah, that's it.
MARCUS PARKS
But the fourth stage that began in 1975 and lasted until Synanon disintegrated in the late 80s, that was when they got greedy and began to self identify as a religion.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
That eventually became a full scale charismatic dictatorship run by Chuck Dederich.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey man, because he realized hey, if we center it, they did it, they came to the L. Ron idea all the way the backwards way.
BEN KISSEL
So the savior of the world is a dude named Chuck.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, buddy.
BEN KISSEL
Oh god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well Chuck, he doesn't need a whole head.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's got your number, dude.
BEN KISSEL
He's a half-headed dude named Chuck.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But that's actually the thing about it is that it's a religion, not a religion.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
To the IRS it is very much a religion.
BEN KISSEL
I see.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But within Synanon, because that was their kind of joke. It's like well who's god then? I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Must be Chuck. Yeah, they did make that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah but then it does become, Chuck becomes like god-like but not god god, he's-
BEN KISSEL
God-esque.
MARCUS PARKS
God-esque. Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
God-ish.
MARCUS PARKS
Demigod.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's like when you go to see a mall Santa.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Santa lite.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right? That's not the main Santa.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just one of Santa's helpers, god's helpers.
BEN KISSEL
It's like that representative, the guy George Santos who lied about his entire life who's currently in office and hopefully not for much longer. He claimed that he was Jewish.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And then he said no, no, no, I said I was Jew-ish.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ish!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, he watches Woody Allen movies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That just sounds like a review in a theater in the Upper West Side.
BEN KISSEL
Jew-ish.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jew-ish. Yeah. Does he look like a man that used to be a haunted clock? He looks like he was magically changed from being a fat little table clock to being a guy.
BEN KISSEL
I agree, there's something wrong with him, that's for sure.
MARCUS PARKS
There really is. But once the dictatorship came in Synanon, so too did the violence and sexual weirdness that seems to be a specifically Californian cult phenomenon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the sunshine.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, is that right?
MARCUS PARKS
It's always with the sex and violence out here.
BEN KISSEL
I mean every time I see a mountain I do see titties.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's my problem.
MARCUS PARKS
The Sierra Nevadas.
BEN KISSEL
Look at the butt on that California.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kissel out in the middle of the brush just holding onto the side of a mountain, likcing, being like gimme me the milk, come on, gimme the milk.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay, the sex I get, the landscape makes you horny. But what about the violence?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think he's just lonely.
BEN KISSEL
No, not the violence. I'm good on violence. I don't have any.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay.
BEN KISSEL
I don't see any violence.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
BEN KISSEL
Where's the violence?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where is the violence? Honestly-
MARCUS PARKS
I'm just saying that Californian cults are among the most violent.
BEN KISSEL
Oh when it comes to that, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's our brand.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Okay, you're saying that the sex comes from the landscape being horny.
BEN KISSEL
It's a horny landscape.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is. And the violence comes from TV, which we also make, which also California makes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it comes back around. I see what you mean.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Synanon made a very concerted effort to become a religion and they did so for practical reasons, namely the federal government recognized them as a religion in 1974, no taxes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Listen guys, and I'm saying this to our listeners right now, you look at me, look at me dead in the eyes and you know for a fact that I'm good for it. Right? If we start this, if you do happen to see a thing where they say Last Podcast Network's a religion, right, I'mma need all y'all to just roll with it, all right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Mark the box that says yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just roll with it. Cause no, listen, we're gonna give kickbacks to you. Cause guess what I get to do for you? When we're a religion guess what you get to be? Forgiven for free. Done.
BEN KISSEL
Wow!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You get to be done.
BEN KISSEL
Free forgiveness!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
As soon as we go, just listen.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're cool with me. Whatever you've done, I mean certain things I won't, I can't.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Can't forgive everything. You're not an all forgiving god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what's on you? Don't tell me about those.
BEN KISSEL
Boom.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Tell me only the things you want, I forgive you, you're done. It'll be completed, you're fixed.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Perfect.
BEN KISSEL
Too on the nose. Too on the nose.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What do you mean?
BEN KISSEL
Well you just said that publicly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
BEN KISSEL
Now I think the government's gonna be like oh they're scamming us.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no, no, no. You gotta understand that this is a part of my awakening period.
BEN KISSEL
The great awakening.
MARCUS PARKS
I see.
BEN KISSEL
Oh this is gonna go great.
MARCUS PARKS
Well additionally being a religion, that meant that they didn't have to be licensed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Isn't that cool? Less regulations.
BEN KISSEL
Nice!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No taxes, even faker bosses, right.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because you went from just being like there is no god to Chuck's god.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's just like wow! You get nothing but benefits.
BEN KISSEL
I love the government recognizes magic as a reason not to pay taxes. That's fantastic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Broken system.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But perhaps most importantly, being a religion meant that Synanon was forever. It would eliminate questions like when does a person graduate from Synanon because nobody graduates a religion. When do you graduate Catholicism?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The pope.
BEN KISSEL
When you say fuck you, dude.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You become the pope, you finally did it.
BEN KISSEL
You're done.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I guess you technically do graduate buddhism eventually when you leave the wheel of karma. That is great. You do graduate buddhism.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But does anybody? Has anybody? I want to see some proof.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay, show me proof of your enlightenment, all right. Send me a postcard from the netherworld.
BEN KISSEL
They wouldn't have to do that because they're enlightened and they don't care if you agree or not.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know, that's what's maddening about buddhism.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because they'll be like oh I know you don't care but you do care, you're wearing an outfit, just handed me the gold card and you're making me give you 10 bucks.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know. Either way-
MARCUS PARKS
That's not buddhism, I think you're thinking of Moonies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, is that Moonies?
MARCUS PARKS
I think that's Moonies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When the thing where they hand you the card for good luck and then when you go to take it they pull it back and they're like give me money?
BEN KISSEL
We're just gonna say that whatever you're saying is wrong. We're just gonna cover that base. I don't know what base we're covering.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The audience will know.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. We're here together, me and you.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When does my I'm sorry for everything run out?
BEN KISSEL
No, it never runs out.
MARCUS PARKS
No, it never runs out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I said I'm sorry for everything, I don't have to renew that, right?
BEN KISSEL
You do.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You have to. Yes, it's fine. You just did.
MARCUS PARKS
Think about it like every six months. Like you know when you have a medication that you have to be on forever and like once a month they have to like-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Reevaluate?
BEN KISSEL
Reevaluate.
MARCUS PARKS
Your doctor has to reevaluate. Yeah. So like once a year, yes, you do. You can get it done for the whole year right now if you want.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm sorry for everything.
BEN KISSEL
That's a whole year.
MARCUS PARKS
All right, see you in 2024.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All right, great.
BEN KISSEL
Boom.
MARCUS PARKS
It is 2023, right?
BEN KISSEL
It is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay, cool. And well around the time that Synanon started calling themselves a religion, shit started getting weird as it always does. Two years after they got their tax exempt status, Synanon instituted a policy that members would no longer have children because the world is overpopulated.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now no children wasn't a hard rule but women were coerced into having abortions more than a couple of times. But eventually Synanon put the onus of no kids onto the men.
BEN KISSEL
Snip it up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which actually I find weirdly refreshing.
MARCUS PARKS
It is refreshing. It's about time.
BEN KISSEL
It's a great way to get to come on titties, faces, butts, toes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come everywhere else.
BEN KISSEL
Everywhere else.
MARCUS PARKS
Everywhere else, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I mean it got rough.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Because in 1977 Synanon required that all members over the age of 18 who had been in Synanon for over 5 years, everyone's got to get vasectomies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a vasectomy! You get a vasectomy, you get a vasectomy.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa. Fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. It's like being on Oprah.
BEN KISSEL
It's reversible.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And these vasectomies were performed collectively at so-called clipping parties.
BEN KISSEL
I'm gonna need a doctor.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah. Can't just be some guy.
BEN KISSEL
I don't want...
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah. Over 250 men participated in these clipping parties.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And a lot of people immediately ask what do you bring to a clipping party if you go to one? And I'll tell you what, you bring ice.
MARCUS PARKS
Ice.
BEN KISSEL
Oh no. Yeah. And sadly you can't bring booze.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
All of this, all sober.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If an when I go and get mine, because I might do that, you can't show up drunk, right? Like do they numb it?
MARCUS PARKS
For a vasectomy?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Well you don't want the blood-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can't do one final like all right! And come out, like do one big come out?
MARCUS PARKS
You still come.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah I know.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, you still come with a vasectomy, there's just no semen in it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But come with living squids, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Come a couple living squids where they're like Gram Parsons when he partied really hard before he died.
BEN KISSEL
You can do that. I think you'll die though cause it thins your blood.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You don't wanna be super hammered during surgery.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
BEN KISSEL
Just in general.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool.
MARCUS PARKS
No, not super hammered.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm glad Kissel told me.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
Now this naturally led to a mass exodus of members, not everyone wanted to get clipped.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I could see that.
MARCUS PARKS
One member said quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"Hey, I'll give you my life, Chuck. But not my balls."
BEN KISSEL
That's how much men love their balls.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude, seriously.
BEN KISSEL
I will die but if you touch my nuts...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, like that's my come. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But things got weird again in April of 1977 when Chuck Dederich's wife Betty died of lung cancer at the age of 55.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
One day we'll do an Oscar style memoriam to all of the wives of cult leaders that died that allowed the cult then spin wildly out of control.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It has happened time and time again.
MARCUS PARKS
Yup.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They always have some form of stabilizing influence that vaguely keeps him in pocket for a certain period of time and then as soon as that's gone it's just like, all right, fucking finally, the mice can play.
BEN KISSEL
Well look what happened with George Lucas. If he would've stayed married, we never would have had Jar Jar Binks.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
His wife created Star Wars.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well yeah, she did the edits and all of the stuff on the scripts.
BEN KISSEL
And all the things that mattered.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Because when you watch the ones that didn't have her editing, you're like why is that there?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. She said give the Wookie hair, don't make the Wookie a space owl.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man, he's stupid. Man, George Lucas was... God, it just shows all you gotta do is be accidentally right once.
BEN KISSEL
Kind of.
MARCUS PARKS
Once, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what Warren Buffet says about billionaires, he was like you only gotta make three good decisions a year. And it's like what does that mean?
BEN KISSEL
He drinks Coca-Cola just like us.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't think he does! I think it's all a lie.
BEN KISSEL
No, he drinks Coca-Cola just like us.
MARCUS PARKS
He lives in a house, it's just a house.
BEN KISSEL
Just like us.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't understand.
MARCUS PARKS
Now so respected was Synanon that the mayor of Los Angeles proclaimed a Betty Dederich day to recognize her work in drug rehabilitation when she died.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
And condolences were sent by Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter who just can't catch a break when it comes to their associations.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah man.
BEN KISSEL
Jimmy just, he had faith in everybody.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Too friendly.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Rosalynn between John Wayne Gacy and-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Jim Jones.
BEN KISSEL
Jim Jones and the leader of Synanon. Maybe she wasn't the best judge of character.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what? I'm just gonna blame, and I don't mean this, it seems like the Carter whole administration, a lot of weird shit happened during that time period.
MARCUS PARKS
There was. The late 70s were an odd time to be an American.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It feels kind of similar now.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah. It actually does.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
In a way.
MARCUS PARKS
Odd. Do you feel the malaise?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I do!
MARCUS PARKS
Don't you feel the malaise?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I do!
BEN KISSEL
I don't feel malaise.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We have a skeleton president.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
People are scary.
BEN KISSEL
But Jimmy Carter was young then. Ish.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, ish.
MARCUS PARKS
But he was still kind of a skeleton peanut man.
BEN KISSEL
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the thing.
BEN KISSEL
He had a full head of hair.
MARCUS PARKS
But he was still skeleton-ish.
BEN KISSEL
He was just in shape.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But you guys call me skeleton. You guys have called me a skeleton since I was fucking 32.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You also like bones more than us.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it's more of a bone thing.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh, is it more of a bone thing?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I always thought it was-
BEN KISSEL
Because you saw bones. Our first gift to Patreon was you sawing bones.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Henry and I didn't be like give them bones. You were like I got a great idea!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I got all these bones!
BEN KISSEL
I'll saw all these bones. And then you would complain about how it was getting in your lungs. And we'd be like stop sawing the bones! You'd be like I gotta saw the bones, they're gonna stop listening if they don't get the bones. And I think it was illegal as well to send it through the mail but...
MARCUS PARKS
Well where I was doing it was also illegal.
BEN KISSEL
No, that helped the ambiance.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Don't worry, all you had to do was pay off the health inspector. Isn't that nice that you just say out loud?
BEN KISSEL
Well it's no longer in business.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But hasn't nothing felt right since about 2015 or so?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Things have been weird, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Things have been real odd since 2015.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, man.
MARCUS PARKS
January 2016, that's about right before Bowie died.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. A lot of people blame him, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Things have been real weird since then.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I'm just kinda used to it now I guess.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is now normal technically because it's been 7 years.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, RIP Bowie. We just passed the anniversary of his death just a couple of days ago.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jesus Christ.
BEN KISSEL
Ziggy Stardust.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Well you're gonna live longer than that because next week you're 40.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah!
BEN KISSEL
No, Bowie was like in his 70s.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I'm saying. But longer in January.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He's trying to be encouraging.
BEN KISSEL
Oh.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. As for Chuck though, his wife Betty, much like Marshall Applewhite's partner Bonnie Nettles, she was the one who kept him from doing anything too crazy or too sexual, although she was on board with the vasectomies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Every woman is.
BEN KISSEL
She just wanted not to get pregnant from fucking all the cult members.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But after Betty died, both the violence and the weirdness at Synanon escalated once again. At the age of 64, two months after Betty's death, Dederich decided to remarry. He told reporters quote, and this is a direct quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"I sent up a flare like any monarch of old times would have done. I let out the word that I was available."
BEN KISSEL
Monarch.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now all the girls came looking to see what was underneath the belly and guess what they found? A tiny little set of dick and balls.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, tiny little dick and balls.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
About four feet above that was the smartest half head that woman ever met in her damn life.
BEN KISSEL
Well indeed. So you think you're a king? Kind of a monarch then?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Who are you a king of?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm a king of this belt.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Come kiss the belt.
BEN KISSEL
All right, I'll kiss the belt.
MARCUS PARKS
King of this belt. I like that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
King of this damn belt! That's how I feel about all my clothes.
BEN KISSEL
I think out of all the cult leaders, Jim Jones would have... No, Charles Manson would have the best belt buckle. I can see Charles Manson-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was mostly belt buckle when he was wearing one.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I can see him having a belt. Just one day being like hey man, look at my belt buckle. I can see that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But that's the thing is that I think it's that thing, you know how most pornstars are tiny and that's why the dicks look so big?
BEN KISSEL
Yes exactly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's why.
MARCUS PARKS
It would be like Charles Manson because he's so tiny the belt buckle is gonna look a lot bigger.
BEN KISSEL
Optics.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Optics are everything.
BEN KISSEL
Optics are everything, absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
Well six women applied to become Dederich's wife.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Applied. But Chuck eventually settled on a 31 year old teacher at one of Synanon's schools, a woman named Ginny Shoren. Pretty soon after they got married though, Dederich declared that marriage should no longer be a permanent institution amongst Synanon members.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, dog.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is the monarch of that belt, dude.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because he understood, he got married and he's like there's this thing about getting married is that they call it an institution for a reason. So I say we let them out, let out the patients.
BEN KISSEL
Institutions have doors I suppose.
MARCUS PARKS
He told every married couple that they had to split up.
BEN KISSEL
What?
MARCUS PARKS
And form new three year long love matches with new partners plucked from the Synanon membership pool.
BEN KISSEL
So he's going fucking full crazy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's really interesting. Again, it's just every one, without even knowing that all these guys, other cult leaders do this where they all have the same revelatory like we need to fuck each other's wives.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, why? Why?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Actually it's more that I need to fuck all your wives.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
At least he spread the love.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
Now many of these couples had gotten married within Synanon in mass marriage ceremonies.
BEN KISSEL
How romantic.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. And they'd actually committed themselves not only to each other but to Synanon itself in their vows. During these ceremonies men wore overalls and dress shirts while women wore ankle length granny dresses and broad brimmed hats. Actually overalls were sort of the SYnanon uniform because Chuck Dederich, one day he's one of those guys that just decided I just want to wear overalls everyday for the rest of my life.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's it.
BEN KISSEL
Sure, he can do that. I'm wearing sweatpants. I don't ask you guys to wear the same. So basically he's like you bitches look like Diane Keaton. Dudes look like someone named Elmer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because again, he had a real overalls body.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now you might decide what is that? If you've seen magazines, a man in overalls a lot of times is really cut and he's about to drop it, he's going to show his hog, right.
BEN KISSEL
Really hunky. With one little suspender down.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But guess what? Most people in overalls look like Porky Pig.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's what he looked like.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah because you wear overalls so your pants don't fall down when you farm.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the idea. You now want a quick axis to shit.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you're sick of dealing with the hassle of all these tight fitting belts and pants.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And also they all got married dressed like that and they got married by a reverend who was riding a Shetland pony.
BEN KISSEL
Why?
MARCUS PARKS
Riding a tiny little pony.
BEN KISSEL
Why?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because then you have the majesty of a horse without worrying about the emasculating lack of height that you receive standing next to a man on a horse.
BEN KISSEL
Is he the bad guy from Shrek?
MARCUS PARKS
Now since many of these people had been married to and within Synanon, 230 couples agreed to Chuck's switcheroo plan. So 460 legally married people got divorces and hooked up with someone new.
BEN KISSEL
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I imagine at some point there's somebody who's just like yes!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, this is the excuse I needed. Yes!
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I'm sure. But I'm sure there's a lot of people who weren't like that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Who got excluded, Chuck's brother. He didn't have to do it. Everyone else had to do it but Chuck's brother got an exclusion.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Isn't that weird? He's like I kinda like my wife.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's like I kinda like her. All right, you fucking dweeb.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
But since this was another weird ass request, Synanon had another huge drop in membership and they lost 300 members in 1977 alone. They actually lost more people from the marriage thing than they did from the vasectomy thing.
BEN KISSEL
I could see that almost.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Then right around the same time that shit got weird, shit also started getting violent.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
See a few years before, Synanon had started stockpiling deadly weapons.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God, it's the stockpiling.
MARCUS PARKS
It's the stockpiling.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
They got 57 shotguns, 24 colt .45s, and 300,000 rounds of ammunition.
BEN KISSEL
Woo!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now this transition, we're doing a little bit of yada, yada, yadaing.
MARCUS PARKS
Little bit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because it's very difficult to put in. There's a lot of complicated shit happened during this time period. But it's just important for you to know that the shift actually did happen fairly quickly.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But the ramp up happened, but it started just compounding. It feel very exponential.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It felt like once one thing started happening, next thing started spilling to the next. And he was ramping up this talking point. Because everyone's living in a commune and so he's talking endlessly all day.
MARCUS PARKS
Multiple communes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Multiple communes. And they're playing the recordings of his speeches, they're playing this stuff.
MARCUS PARKS
He's got his own radio station that he called it The Wire so that people could listen to it all the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
That's a good name for a radio station.
MARCUS PARKS
It is, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
W-I-R-E!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He would go to his bedroom and literally start monologuing and the whole place was built for sound. So you're just living in Chuck Dederich's head all day.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He learned from Jim Jones in a way. Again, I don't know if he did or if it's just again-
MARCUS PARKS
No, Jim Jones is later.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel like in a way he's-
BEN KISSEL
The godfather.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's the Carlos Mencia and it's Jim Jones is still like the elite, right?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Why did they feel they need to start stockpiling weapons? Was the government coming after them?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Paranoia.
MARCUS PARKS
It's paranoia, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
And I think it's also just a general being plugged into the decade, man.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Because shit gets real dark starting in the early 70s.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
They're kind of caught up in this whole utopianism type thing and it's not working out and nothing's working out for anybody.
BEN KISSEL
No, in a utopia you don't need to stockpile weapons.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, not normally. No.
BEN KISSEL
That's kinda the whole point.
MARCUS PARKS
No. But it's about you gotta defend your utopia.
BEN KISSEL
No, I know. Because it's not utopia.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's not. Because a bunch of people are like hey, you might have developed a system of abuse in there.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And everything I hear coming out of your little group sounds shadier and shadier and shadier.
BEN KISSEL
Utopia.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he's like no, it's beginning the persecution complex. They're gonna come shut us down because they don't get our lifestyle.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I think it's fairly simple. You know that saying if it smells like shit everywhere you go, check your own shoe? I think Chuck Dederich was such-
BEN KISSEL
Wait a second. What? Oh my god!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thomas Jefferson said that.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, Thomas Jefferson. I love that.
MARCUS PARKS
If you're the type of person that says that everyone's an asshole-
BEN KISSEL
Everything sucks. Yeah, yeah, of course.
MARCUS PARKS
Everyone sucks, you suck. Why is everybody always mad at me? It must be their fault.
BEN KISSEL
No, you're an asshole, you're insufferable.
MARCUS PARKS
It's like no, you're the asshole.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And I think that's what happened with Chuck Dederich. Chuck Dederich had a way of antagonizing everybody around him, especially his neighbors.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well because they said his issue truly was the fact that he forgot, he'd spent so long in these Synanon groups that he forgot that other people don't talk like that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They don't curse and scream and yell at people and be a quote unquote "straight shooter". And a lot of times I find that when someone calls themselves a straight shooter, again they mean a fucking insufferable asshole.
MARCUS PARKS
Massive asshole.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then it's that where it's like always insulting people and talking all this shit. And so his world is really closing in and he's becoming way more isolated.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
And because he's becoming so aggressive, everyone around him is becoming so aggressive. He's getting what he's putting out.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Hence the guns.
MARCUS PARKS
Exactly. And Chuck Dederich started getting paranoid about the many splitees. That's what he called people who left the program. And that's another thing is that there's these multiple mass exoduses of people and he's thinking like they're all against me.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
There's no other reason why they wouldn't be down for vasectomies or leaving their wife so they can fuck someone random.
BEN KISSEL
Of course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah and group screaming sessions.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And everybody starting to get physically beaten and moved around and pushed around. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well pretty much anything bad that happened was blamed on splitees. And eventually that paranoia translated to violence. Synanon members began assaulting members of their communities seemingly at random, including a rancher who boarded their land. He sounds like such a sweet man, his name was Alvin Gambonini.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, hold on.
MARCUS PARKS
Alvin.
BEN KISSEL
First of all he does not, he sounds like he's on the lam because there's no... Yeah, name's Tony, no, Alvin Gambonini.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Gamboni-nu?
BEN KISSEL
Nini...
MARCUS PARKS
I can just see like Alvin Gambonini, you like my tomato sauce?
BEN KISSEL
No, he sounds like a man who's murdered.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Italian-American accent) I try to bring a fresh ricotta, I try to bring a fresh manicotti.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Italian-American accent) And this time you tell me I need to cut my balls?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Italian-American accent) The man, I go up to him, I say oh I got a little prosciutto, and he say why you come, why this still work? And I say I'm a Gambonini!
MARCUS PARKS
No.
BEN KISSEL
Seems like all of your horses don't have heads, Mr. Gambonini. Are you sending those to random beds?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sometimes a message must be delivered in a simple and direct manner.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
No, he's gonna knock on your door, he's like I got some good mozzarella.
BEN KISSEL
No, he's not. All right. Agree to disagree.
MARCUS PARKS
Alvin Gambonini.
BEN KISSEL
That's not the name of a farmer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you do want to know about the real... This fucking, it's crazy. There's a bunch of fucking shit. Look at the paulmorantz.com and go to the true story of Synanon violence and how it started. The rollup of him, there's a thing called the siege of Tamales.
BEN KISSEL
Geez.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So one thing we're yada, yada, yadaing is that they moved, right, they moved from Santa Monica and they moved to Riverside. They bought a bunch of complexes, right, they bought a bunch of land.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They went and isolated themselves. These neighboring towns are like who the fuck are these people just rolling in?
MARCUS PARKS
The same thing happened with Jonestown.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it was a shock to the community I would think.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Or not Jonestown, with Peoples Temple when they moved from Indianapolis to northern California, the Redwoods.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it started with that, right. Cause he's doing this but the local police department loves him, they're hiring members of Synanon to be deputies and shit. But they literally attacked an entire town because they believed that people were trespassing on their land and on their roads. And he would say hey, we're gonna go out and we're gonna attack these people, anybody tries to fuck with us, we need to go on the offensive and we need to show them that we're actually in control of this entire environment.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So you have a bunch of malnourished, bald headed people in overalls showing up and taking over town squares and shit with broomsticks and shovels. It's really weird.
BEN KISSEL
Just take the statues down, I don't care anymore.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just look up the siege of Tamales, it's very weird.
BEN KISSEL
Siege of Tamales.
MARCUS PARKS
It's just all very weird. I mean the way one former Synanon member put it is that Synanon wasn't very good at violence.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
That they were violent but they weren't very good at it.
BEN KISSEL
I could see that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're just lucky that they were not.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, we are. We're very lucky they weren't. But Synanon was also sometimes the target of violence. Synanon residents said that they were shot at sometimes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Said. Said.
MARCUS PARKS
They said. Teenagers would try hitting them with their cars.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, they said.
BEN KISSEL
I mean that's fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, exactly. They were on the street. But this is their extension out. This is the part of the prosecutorial thing that they said everybody hated us.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it was like no it's because you showed up and then you would claim back roads for Synanon and do this thing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Being like no, this is our road now.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you'd show up being like no, I've been driving this road for 25 years.
BEN KISSEL
Now you've forced us into conflict and then you're gonna blame me for having to react to you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. Exactly. But Synanon members, they began training with guns and batons and eventually they created their own martial art to defend themselves. They called it syn-do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I'm gonna shoot myself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See what you wanna do is you wanna pin the guy to the table, you wanna get him down into a chair, right.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And the thing is you put that fucking TV on, you give him some pizza, and you make him too lazy to fight you back. And then you take that knife, you stick it inbetween the left ribs and directly into the heart and then he's dead.
BEN KISSEL
Oh wow, the old Jesus death there. What if I just punch you in the head?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You'd have to fucking get the missing half!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well from what Dederich said, he was tired of turning the other cheek, tired of the spineless hippie shit, that's how we put it. In one case, Synanon members caught a guy siphoning their gas so they grabbed him, held him down, and shaved off his head and beard.
BEN KISSEL
I do like that people who siphon gas see everything as a cup.
MARCUS PARKS
Again, Synanon doesn't do violence very well.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
To them that's like oh, we're shaving his head, we're shaving his beard.
BEN KISSEL
Oh no, it's a hair for hair match.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is weird though.
MARCUS PARKS
It's weird. That's the thing, they're not good, they're just weird.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It feels like dream violence.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it does.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause it's a lot of pinning people down. Because again it sounds like there were several lawyers that were in the inner group of Synanon.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That I think were advising them in many ways, kind of in a way of if we do this, this, and this, this is what we get away with, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just pinning somebody to the ground.
BEN KISSEL
Sure. Shaving their head.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Adults pinning another. It's very difficult for people to prosecute these things. It's very difficult to call it assault.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Especially if you're in a town where half the police force is the Synanon members that are pinning the guy down on the ground.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it seems just juvenile, just juvenile enough.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's weird.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Where they're like all right, move on, we've got bigger crimes to worry about.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Synanon also built its own security force that they called the imperial marines.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
No, no, they're not marines nor are they imperial.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no, no, no. I don't know where the word imperial came from. I think it's because he's just again, Chuck in a way, he has his own sense of humor about how he's the god head of this group.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
They began running drills in which all residents had to stop what they were doing when they heard the words 'hey rube'.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey rube!
MARCUS PARKS
Hey rube.
BEN KISSEL
I would love to see them run drills. That would be amazing. In the army now, dude.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Bunch of jazz musicians trying to figure out how to be an army.
MARCUS PARKS
They then had to grab anything that could be used as a weapon and come running.
BEN KISSEL
That's my dick, dude.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And like Charles Manson, Dederich became convinced that a race war was coming.
BEN KISSEL
Great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he called it a holy war.
MARCUS PARKS
A holy war.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I see.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the thing is that Synanon was actually integrated at a time when-
BEN KISSEL
So what the races that are gonna be fighting?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The other ones outside of Synanon.
BEN KISSEL
Oh okay.
MARCUS PARKS
No, it's everyone in Synanon is going to be cool with each other but outside it's gonna be black vs white. It's the same thing, it's Helter Skelter.
BEN KISSEL
Great.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, basically.
BEN KISSEL
That's gonna work out fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And as such, Synanon members began reacting not only to actual attacks but to anticipated assaults.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. He's ramping it up, saying they're coming to get us, it's the same Jim Jones cycle.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You gotta have that fear I guess.
MARCUS PARKS
One former member named Phil Ritter was almost beaten to death by two so-called imperial marines in his own driveway. His skull was broken and he was in a coma for a week. But that wasn't meant to be a murder. Synanon's next major act of violence, one of the weirdest in cult history, was. See in 1978, an attorney named Paul Morantz that Henry has mentioned a couple of times already, he became involved with a case in which a woman with mental health problems was referred to Synanon. Without asking her what she wanted, Synanon whisked her away to a facility hundreds of miles away, shaved her head, and held her there against her will.
BEN KISSEL
Probably didn't want that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
BEN KISSEL
No.
MARCUS PARKS
All of this was illegal. It took nine days for her husband to find her and the man who assisted him was Paul Morantz. Now Paul Morantz caused a lot of trouble for Synanon, especially because his actions triggered charges of kidnapping, wrongful imprisonment, and practicing medicine without a license.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Those are all crimes he was actively doing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it was.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And also because she was mentally ill, she wasn't an addict. That's how they got the practicing medicine without a license.
BEN KISSEL
I think Synanon may have caused their own problems and this guy just sort of exposed them maybe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, I think they did.
MARCUS PARKS
But therefore Chuck Dederich began to see Paul Morantz as a mortal threat to everything he'd built.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Morantz knew that Dederich was a dangerous man because he'd heard about the severe beatings and threatening phone calls from Synanon members didn't help matters either. Eventually Morantz bought a shotgun and started checking his car for bombs every time he got in.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez.
MARCUS PARKS
And as it turned out, Morantz's instincts were correct.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because everyone thought for a while that he was crazy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They were like they're just a group of cooks, this is just a thing, it was like a fad or whatever, they're not gonna do anything. But he was like I think these guys are going to kill me.
BEN KISSEL
The idea of a car bomb, it's unique.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean it happened.
BEN KISSEL
Really, you think they're going to use a car bomb to kill you?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It definitely used to happen way more than it used to. I know that car bombs were used a lot in the Italian mafia.
MARCUS PARKS
Neo nazis.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
In the troubles in Ireland, there was a lot of car bombs and stuff.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You go through the drive through at Taco Bell, you got some friends in the car, next thing you know you got car bombs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now that is old fashioned humor.
MARCUS PARKS
That's good humor. That's a very good humor. I'm gonna call you the good humor man.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, they call me the poopy chalupa.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's bad.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
Well one night in October of 1977, Morantz said he was just gonna go home, sit down, watch the world series, and not think about Synanon for one goddamn second.
BEN KISSEL
Man, Mr. Morantz, that's a lot of detail. All right, I usually just say goodnight.
MARCUS PARKS
One goddamn second.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
One goddamn second.
MARCUS PARKS
But before he could do that, he had to check his mail.
BEN KISSEL
Uh Oh.
MARCUS PARKS
Now he didn't have his glasses on that night but through the grill of his mailbox he said he could see the outline of an unusually shaped package.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh look at that, somebody sent my slinkies.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, wow.
MARCUS PARKS
But When he opened the mailbox he found a 4.5 ft long rattlesnake with the rattle removed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, dude.
BEN KISSEL
Well is it poisonous then still?
MARCUS PARKS
Oh god, yeah! The rattle isn't the... What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh very much so. The rattle is what keeps the snake away from you! the rattle is there to...
MARCUS PARKS
What are you a-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He doesn't know.
BEN KISSEL
I'm sorry I'm not a fucking snake expert.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is the least of our troubles. You know what I mean? Of things that he's got incorrect, this is the very least.
BEN KISSEL
What have I got incorrect?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Technically he was correct about the bees last week so this cancels out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I am so usually correct. You can count the things I've got incorrect the amount of times a clock is broken.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The corn in the poop story, the clocks.
BEN KISSEL
No, corn is in poop!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, your allegorical tale.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That you said a long time ago.
BEN KISSEL
And the clocks actually holds up, I've had someone DM me and tell me that that was true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a long list. That's cause they're just trying to fuck you.
BEN KISSEL
No, man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're just trying to have sex with you for some reason.
BEN KISSEL
I've been told that that's kinda smart. They actually said that, I got a DM saying that's kinda smart actually.
MARCUS PARKS
That's kinda smart actually?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're just looking for money. They're trying to get involved in your life.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the snake immediately struck bit Morantz on the hand.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
MARCUS PARKS
And Morantz yelled, quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"Call the police! Call an ambulance! I've been bit by a goddamn rattlesnake! It's Synanon! Synanon got me!"
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god. Whoa.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he's running around his apartment complex screaming Synanon got me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Synanon got me!
BEN KISSEL
Jesus. There's something very symbolic about the snake as well I suppose.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, dude.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because he to them, he was a little snake in the grass.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed, he was.
MARCUS PARKS
As it turned out, the rattlesnake had been put in Morantz's mailbox by two Synanon members named Joe Musico and Lance Kenton.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let's just say you come at half face with even a little bit and you miss, you might get a little bit of a sniffing, snattling gift in your fucking mailbox.
BEN KISSEL
Something like a snake or something?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I didn't say it.
BEN KISSEL
Like a snake, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You said that.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Lance Kenton was actually the son of Stan Kenton, famed jazz artist.
BEN KISSEL
All right. You say that like anyone on earth knows Stan Kenton.
MARCUS PARKS
Fernando, play the tune. He's known for this one. The Peanut Vendor. (jazz music plays)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay.
BEN KISSEL
He's very famous. All right.
MARCUS PARKS
He's extraordinarily famous, Stan Kenton.
BEN KISSEL
Not extraordinarily famous but this is a famous song.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel like we're about to swap wives.
MARCUS PARKS
I feel like I'm at Christmas Eve in Puerto Rico.
BEN KISSEL
Oh very nice.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
From your mouth to god's ears.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
But as far as Stan Kenton's son went, it's arguable that the rattlesnake in the mailbox prank, that killed Stan because he died two years later, probably of a broken heart.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because you know once you break a jazz musician's heart, it's hard to put back together.
BEN KISSEL
It never goes back together, absolutely not.
MARCUS PARKS
This though was on Stan because his son had been a lifelong Synanon member who'd lived in one of their compound since he was 10 years old.
BEN KISSEL
So Stan sent him there because he didn't want him to interfere with his music career. Interesting indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't know, you're just saying that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jazz is sometimes about the sons you don't raise.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. You can't be a jazz musician and a father.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
BEN KISSEL
Ugh, yuck.
MARCUS PARKS
Well both Lance Kenton and Joe were picked up after the getaway vehicle was traced back to Synanon because they actually waited to make sure that the rattlesnake bit him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Got him.
BEN KISSEL
They are so stupid.
MARCUS PARKS
And then when they saw it was like oh, got him!
BEN KISSEL
Got him.
MARCUS PARKS
They of course sped away and it was like okay, this guy's screaming about a rattlesnake, those guys are peeling out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They brought the rattlesnake.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the rattlesnake's driver.
BEN KISSEL
So stupid.
MARCUS PARKS
And based on the tapes obtained from a raid in which Dederich said that anyone could get quote "killed dead", physically dead for messing with Synanon, Chuck was arrested too. But luckily for them, Paul Morantz, he got the antivenom in time.
BEN KISSEL
Good.
MARCUS PARKS
But he is still affected by the snakebite.
BEN KISSEL
Is he alive?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, it fucked him up. He was alive.
BEN KISSEL
Is he still alive?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, you can get antivenom for rattlesnakes.
BEN KISSEL
No, no, I'm saying he is alive in real life?
MARCUS PARKS
As of the article that I read like two years ago, yeah, he was still alive two years ago.
BEN KISSEL
No shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He died this October 23, 2022.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow!
BEN KISSEL
Really? Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Interesting. Yeah, that's what he said is that-
BEN KISSEL
The snake finally got him.
MARCUS PARKS
Well that's what he said, it was the longest murder in history.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Because this rattlesnake bite, it's kinda like, think of Jim Brady.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. It fucks with you.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now when the police found Chuck Dederich, he had long since tossed away his sobriety. He was arrested in his $1 million Lake Havasu compound, staring straight ahead in a stupor with an empty bottle of Chivas Regal in front of him. He was so drunk in fact and 300 lbs to boot that he had to be carried out of his compound on a stretcher.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man.
BEN KISSEL
That is the cult leader's way to go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the only way I want to go, dude. Having to be physically removed from my compound.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. I'm too drunk to arrest.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm too drunk to be arrested, sir, officer.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Dederich was able to dodge most of the blame. Actually he did kind of use the I'm too drunk to go to jail excuse.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He was able to dodge most of the blame because by the time the cops got to him he'd had a stroke from being so fat and he was suffering complications from drinking two quarts of Chivas Regal a day.
BEN KISSEL
So he's back to being an alcoholic, he has half a face, and now he's 300 lbs and suffered a stroke.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Why is he god again?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, hey, because sometimes god's gotta fucking relax. Okay?
MARCUS PARKS
But as far as Synanon went, it very quickly found itself in the wrong climate to be a crazy potentially murderous baldheaded cult. Five weeks after the rattlesnake incident, Jonestown. And Synanon had direct ties to Peoples Temple.
BEN KISSEL
Yikes.
MARCUS PARKS
Synanon had donated supplies to Jim Jones multiple times over the years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man, their sneaker collab was also out of control, dog.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's like donating the E. coli filled beef to Bob's Big Boy. Was it Bob's Big Boy that had the E. coli? Jack in the Box.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jack in the Box.
MARCUS PARKS
Jack in the Box. Yeah, don't malign Bob's Big Boy.
BEN KISSEL
I'm sorry, I take it back. It was Jack that did it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. In the late 70s, Synanon members had played the game with members of Peoples Temple where some very real feelings about Jim Jones were unloaded.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude.
BEN KISSEL
Oh shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then some of them they then got for Synanon.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So he brought them into their cult.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Synanon is still better than Jonestown.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well actually one of the women who survived the Jonestown massacre by virtue of being at their Georgetown base when the shit went down, same place where George Jones's son was- George Jones.
BEN KISSEL
He never went to AA. Synanon may have helped George Jones.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It might have.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Jim Jones, when all the shit went down with him, she was out in Georgetown, she participated in a Synanon game that was focused on Jonestown about a year after the massacre. Then she joined Synanon!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
One cult to another. She was only non cult for one year.
BEN KISSEL
I mean I guess it's like, oh I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
New cult, new vibes.
BEN KISSEL
It's like stopping McDonald's and only eating Subway because it's kind of healthier.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the idea. Oh yeah. When they started putting apple slices in Mcdonald's.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that worked out great.
MARCUS PARKS
Now while the two guys who put the rattlesnake in the mailbox got off relatively light with only one year in prison for conspiracy to commit murder, they both pled no contest-
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Synanon never recovered and they lost more members every year. After the rattlesnake incident they lost 500 members and by 1984 they were down to only 550 members, which was a precipitous drop from the almost 4000 they had just 13 years earlier.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, he's going in the wrong direction.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Then in 1987 there came what was eventually known as rape weekend.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ooh man.
BEN KISSEL
Okay?
MARCUS PARKS
Nobody was raped during rape weekend. Nobody was raped.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No man. I don't want to see the people that were disappointed.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, why is it called that?
MARCUS PARKS
The listener who was disappointed, yes.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Why is it called that then?
MARCUS PARKS
Well two weeks prior to this weekend, Dederich began showing major cracks during media interviews.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he started getting real loose lipped.
MARCUS PARKS
He invited various news outlets to talk but when they showed up, Dederich gave the interview shirtless with a half empty bottle of vodka in his hand.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Soon.
BEN KISSEL
Oh man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
One day.
BEN KISSEL
This is what happened with Dennis Rodman when he went to North Korea.
MARCUS PARKS
Interestingly, Dederich proclaimed that Oliver North was a hero.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Second time we've mentioned Oliver North in this series.
BEN KISSEL
Why the fuck is Oliver North involved?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You start of wonder why conspiracy theories really just start to shoot fucking everywhere.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like all of these things are all on top of each other, they all know each other, they're all touching.
MARCUS PARKS
No, they don't each other. No, that is conspiracy thought, they said they know each other. No.
BEN KISSEL
But it does tangentially tied to the Iran-Contra.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what I'm saying.
MARCUS PARKS
Somewhat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It adds to the coincidence.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Somewhat. Coincidence that this is where you circle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It just adds to the mess, it adds to the smoke.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It adds to the mess, yeah. Cause Dederich drunkenly mentioned Oliver North in an interview once.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'll tell you what because Oliver North's fun. Have you ever met his cousin Oliver South? Hell suck your fucking dick.
BEN KISSEL
I'm not even allowing it. It's struck from the record.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well Dederich proclaimed that Oliver North was a hero and he should run for president. And this is like in the middle of the Iran-Contra testimony.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a business deal! It's a proprietary business deal.
BEN KISSEL
But conspiracy does show we are all connected.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's really all it is, isn't it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's Ferngully but for people that are all alone in their homes.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Dederich drunkenly said that all of Synanon would vote for North because, and this is a direct quote, I want you to direct quote this one:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"They do what I tell them. Most of them don't even know why I do anything."
BEN KISSEL
Yeah but I mean it's still like what is it like 2000 votes?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They do what I tell them to do and most of them don't even know why I do anything.
BEN KISSEL
Ross Perot got like 19 million votes, he didn't even get one electoral college vote.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You tell me 5 things about Ross Perot and the only thing I'm gonna tell you is big eared dickhead.
BEN KISSEL
Those are the first two things I was gonna say.
MARCUS PARKS
Well two weeks after that, speaking into an intercom at one of his compounds, Dederich went on a tirade because he couldn't find his glasses.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
Someone had just moved them. They cleaned his desk and they moved his glasses. But he became convinced that someone had stolen them and he announced that quote "theft was similar in nature to rape".
BEN KISSEL
My glasses! My glasses!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Taking his glasses is definitely close to rape.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
He then set off the sirens to call all Synanon members to a general meeting. And he spent the weekend comparing his lost glasses to being raped during a series of lectures.
BEN KISSEL
God, Jesus criminy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a fucking long game of Whose Line Is It Anyway?
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is just a long weekend.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. God, I mean even a day of that. Can you imagine going to sleep and thinking oh thank god that's over and then you wake up and he starts it back again?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And another damn thing about why my glasses got raped!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Did I say my glasses got raped? Everybody get closer. Where's my belt?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. I mean I can't even handle Bonnaroo.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He then made an appeal for everyone to go get naked and do a game session in the pool.
BEN KISSEL
Why?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey man.
BEN KISSEL
Why?
MARCUS PARKS
Everyone get groovy, let's go do a game session.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let's relax.
BEN KISSEL
I mean that sounds kind of fun but it's totally not what we were talking about.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And if you're trying to set up like a fun pool weekend, maybe it shouldn't be called the rape weekend.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Maybe it should just be called hey, do we want to have a pool party? Not just like a long weekend, 72 hours of comparing all of this-
BEN KISSEL
My glasses!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Your glasses.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
To sexual assault.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But by that time nobody was listening to Chuck Dederich.
BEN KISSEL
He lost, he's gone.
MARCUS PARKS
After rape weekend as it came to be known, they referred to it as rape weekend afterwards-
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
More than half of Synanon left.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they're like ugh god.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Because up til that point they could still kind of say okay, he's got some good ideas. But then after spending a weekend of him comparing lost glasses-
BEN KISSEL
Hammered.
MARCUS PARKS
To something so fucking awful. Hammered the entire time, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
They're like okay, I'm out, I'm getting out of here. I don't care. I'll go back to the fucking streets. I can't listen to the shit anymore.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I will literally go back to the street.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Why not?
MARCUS PARKS
290 people were left out of 2000.
BEN KISSEL
That's it. This guy sucks as a cult leader.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. What finally killed Synanon though, the IRS.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They always get their man, don't they, man.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I guess so.
MARCUS PARKS
Synanon had lost their religious status and by 1989 they owed $17 million in back taxes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow dude.
BEN KISSEL
That's a lot. That's like one of those numbers you look at and you just laugh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
$17 million, let me call my accountant who's a leprechaun and then he'll call my guarantor who's a fucking unicorn.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, we'll get right on that.
MARCUS PARKS
They declared bankruptcy and Synanon officially dissolved. But Synanon's legacy remains. While the game went out of vogue with adults, plenty of people in the troubled teen community took it and ran with it-
BEN KISSEL
No!
MARCUS PARKS
In all the wrong ways, particularly the Elan Schools.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
MARCUS PARKS
So who would take a relatively benign concept like the game and turn it into a punishment? What kind of person is so sadistic that they would take something obviously meant for adults and skew it into something to be used on kids in the most brutal ways possible? The answer is Joe Ricci, the founder of Elan School. He'll be our focus for the conclusion to our series on the troubled teen industry, although he'll certainly share the bill with Elan School's most famous alumnus, convicted murderer Michael Skakel.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This whole story has been both, this is kind of the more funny section of a very intense, sad topic. And so next week, again, we're gonna get into Joseph Ricci's life. I wanna say thank you to everybody who sent me emails.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There are so many people that have been a part of these programs that are still going. Did you see the Agape, that place, the school?
MARCUS PARKS
This week?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It just closed.
MARCUS PARKS
Really?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It literally, I want to say like two days ago, they just voluntarily closed their doors.
MARCUS PARKS
Two days ago?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The Agape boarding school in Missouri.
BEN KISSEL
We did it again, boys.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is really weird.
BEN KISSEL
We caused another disgusting cult to close down. Well thank you all so much for listening.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Seriously. And there are many other shows that have covered from people that have had these experiences. There's The Sunshine Place which talks to a lot of people that experienced this, that TrueAnon story, a lot of those kids, those podcast people were in these systems. And so it's just everywhere. But next week we're getting into Joseph Ricci territory which is weirdly Chuck Dederich but without the charisma.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But people still like... We'll get to it. There's like a hero worship about him in a way.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a very weird thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Same thing kinda.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a hero worship amongst fucking sociopathic morons.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
That's the people that were really drawn to Joe Ricci. But yeah, he's a unique piece of shit, I'll say that.
BEN KISSEL
Indeed. All right everyone, well thank you so much for listening. Let's see, do we want to talk about the Release The Butthole Cut tour?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You want to come out and see the Release The Butthole Cut tour, Wizard and the Bruiser and Page 7 have been taking their entertainment wares across this country of ours.
BEN KISSEL
They are.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Some of them are out there and they're tap dancing for your dollars.
BEN KISSEL
Literally dancing. They dance more than us and they sing more than us.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They do.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So go check them out, they are in San Francisco at The Independent this Friday, January 13th, go check them out.
BEN KISSEL
Nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then this Sunday, January 15th in Los Angeles at The Bourbon Room and a couple of us will be there to yell at you as well.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. Don't expect me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, he's gonna be betting on his games.
BEN KISSEL
Don't expect me. All right, well thank you all so much for listening. Do we have anything else, boys? Thanks for supporting all the shows, we've got our Sirius shows which are going so great, Open Lines and Hail Yourself. Thanks for everyone who's calling in.
MARCUS PARKS
Last Comic Book on the Left is coming soon. Issue #2.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
We've got some great stuff coming up for Issue #3 as well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Yes we do! And then eventually we will tell you where you can purchase our new comic book that we're writing for Dark Horse called Operation Sunshine. So we'll let when that is coming out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Awesome.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But yeah.
BEN KISSEL
All right everyone, thank you for listening. Hail yourselves!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail Satan!
MARCUS PARKS
Hail Gein!
BEN KISSEL
Megustalations.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And always remember today is the first day of the rest of your life.
BEN KISSEL
I can't believe an alcoholic cult leader coined that phrase.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right, isn't that incredible?
BEN KISSEL
Nothing is sacred.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
BEN KISSEL
Nothing is right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yep.