Kayla: Hey, everyone, your charismatic leaders. Hosts Chris and Kayla here. The following is a quick primer on the show for first time listeners every.
Chris: Two weeks, well talk about a new group organization or whatever. That just seems a little bit off. At the end of the episode, we'll determine if the group is a cult or if it's just weird. We've got zero expertise but a lot of curiosity and a list of criteria.
Kayla: We also want to point out that for our first episode, while the story is amazing and fascinating and more than a little insane, we were still experimenting with sound quality. So youll notice a dramatic sound improvement starting with episode two. Thank you in advance for bearing with us, and try not to strain an eardrum trying to hear Chris.
Chris: Yeah, okay. I was just training for my future as an ASMR guy. Anyway, without further ado, episode one of Cult or just weird?
Kayla: So for our first episode and our first, what do we want to call the things before we decide if they're a cult or just weird? Because we don't call it a cult group. Our first group. Our first subject. Our first subject, okay, our first subject is probably not one that a lot of people are going to predict. I would say it also is particularly personal. So we are going to be talking about for this first episode.
Chris: I think part of what you're saying right now is that it kind of hit us at a left field, too, which is a big part of what prompted us to even do this in the first place, is that this group that were sort of, I guess you could say, involved with, which will sound a little bit less weird in a second. But, you know, the fact that it had some of these characteristics, perhaps to, it was really what led us down this rabbit hole that even prompted the podcast in the first place.
Kayla: That's why we're doing the podcast, right? So we're gonna be talking about the best friends animal society. So, yeah, I. This is.
Chris: What is best friends?
Kayla: Well, I have. Okay, so the best friends Animal society, I wrote a bunch of stuff down on Wikipedia, which I'm going to quote mostly Wikipedia here. I have a couple other sources that I'll name as I talk about this, but it's mostly Wikipedia because I'm lazy at researching. So best friends is an american nonprofit 501 animal welfare organization. If you're in LA, you probably know a lot about the best friends animal society we have here. And if you're in Utah, you probably know a lot about the massive sanctuary that they have there, because best friends, they work nationwide, so they have outreach programs, blah, blah. But mostly they are this massive sanctuary that sits in this tiny little town called Kanab, which we looked up the population, it's like ten or something. Ridiculous. It's this nowhere town in Utah.
Kayla: So they have this massive animal sanctuary. The sanctuary itself is 3700 acres. And then we found this out that the rest of the property that they have is 33,000 acres.
Chris: Like, what is that? The rough size? Is that the size of Rhode island? What is that?
Kayla: I don't know. If I were good at things, I would know. It's 130 km squared.
Chris: Okay, so I totally get that.
Kayla: But it's like they bought this land or they leased this land from the US Bureau of Land Management. So it's in the area that's in between Zion and the Grand Canyon and some other places.
Chris: Yeah, it is right out in the middle of nowhere in the american west. I don't know if this is how you wanted to approach this, but where might some of our listeners have seen best?
Kayla: That's actually the next thing we're gonna talk about.
Chris: What a good segue. First, I literally didn't know that was gonna be.
Kayla: Literally. Well, first I wanna say that when we talk about the sanctuary, they house about 1500 homeless animals that they try to rehome. So a lot of special needs animals that will have to live at the sanctuary their entire lives or animals that need a place to be until they can be adopted. They have a lot of dogs, cats, pigs, rabbits, guinea pigs, horses, goats. Is there anything else?
Chris: Birds?
Kayla: Birds, they have. Yeah, everything. You may have seen best Friends Animal Sanctuary on National Geographic channels show Dogtown. So Dogtown, if you ever watched that show, was filmed in their section of the sanctuary. That's called Dogtown. That's just for the dogs. It's a really good show. I think it's back on, but basically it was just like a reality documentary show about the day to day life of working at Dogtown.
Chris: Yeah, I watched it a few times. It's basically that they follow certain employees and volunteers. Do they? I don't recall if they had volunteers on the show. Dogtown.
Kayla: On Dogtown?
Chris: Yeah, they definitely followed the employees and the dogs, right? Yeah, it was a reality show format.
Kayla: You might have also heard of best friends, if you followed at all the Michael Vick dogfighting Sega saga. Which. How do you pronounce that? Saga?
Chris: Saga.
Kayla: They were the ones that Sega is the Sega Genesis. Yeah, they were the organization that basically took in all of the Michael Vick pit bulls and rehabilitated them and rehomed them. And they also did a lot of work with the Hurricane Katrina dogs. So they've done a lot of incredible work. And what's probably our way into this is that you can volunteer at the sanctuary. They obviously have a lot of employees, but they also rely a lot on volunteer work.
Chris: And we did do that.
Kayla: Yeah, well, I'm just like, that's what we did. We went and volunteered for a week. A week last Christmas, last December.
Chris: Yeah, we volunteered for a week and helped out with the dogs and got to pet the cats. And it was just really fun and relaxing. And the, I mean, Kanab, that area is just beautiful country too. It was a nice little getaway for Christmas.
Kayla: Basically, it's all like red rocks and like there's nothing around and beautiful views. And they have like this cafeteria where you get to, as a volunteer, you get to go eat in the cafeteria and it overlooks this beautiful scenic view of the 33,000 acres that are not being used. It's a wonderful place to be. Great volunteer opportunity. It was my second time volunteering. I volunteered few years back with my sister because of Dogtown, basically. It's. It sounds weird that we're talking about them in terms of.
Chris: Yeah, I'm not hearing anything cult like.
Kayla: No. So before we get into our story about why we think it might be a cult, if you check out the Wikipedia page for Best Friends Animal Society, if you, I don't know if you have donated money to them or if you just want to find out a little bit more about them. If you go to their Wikipedia page to learn about how they were founded, this is literally the only information you will get. This is the history of best Friends Animal society. The group originated in Arizona in 1971, developing from the foundation faith of the millennium, a religious group formerly known as the Process Church of the final judgment. The foundation church relocated animals from its Arizona ranch to property in Kanab, Utah, in 1984.
Kayla: In 1991, the church was renamed Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, which became a tax exempt, non profit charity and in 2003 renamed Best Friends Animals as a. So when that's it, that's the only information that is on the Wikipedia about how they were formed.
Chris: So church with a really weird name. You always know that a church, when it has like eight names, you know that it's definitely like super legit, right? So that's first of all. But then they just suddenly became something that's completely different. Like it sounds.
Kayla: I mean, best friends has no religious affiliation as far as we know. I mean, there's no sort of religious affiliation. There's a nothing on their website about religious background or it's. It's. Religion is not a part of what they are now. So it's really strange that if you try to find out any information about how they were formed, you're given two sentences about, first they were this weird church that no one's ever heard of, and then they were best friends.
Chris: That is weird.
Kayla: That's weird.
Chris: What prompted you to even look at the Wikipedia article, though?
Kayla: You're good at this. You're good at the transitions of the segues. It's a skill.
Chris: It's just my natural curiosity.
Kayla: As Chris and I were driving to best friends last December in our decision to take a week away from home, go and volunteer. Do something nice. I told you a little bit about the time that I had gone and volunteered five years ago with my sister for her birthday. There was one particular story that I always have liked to tell about my time at best friends, and it was about how she and I were eating in the cafeteria, and my sister and I call it social anxiety. Kali call it that. We're just bitches. We don't want to sit and talk to anybody at any given time. Like, if we're gonna sit down and eat a meal, we want to booth each other and not talk to strangers. I think a lot of people are like that, but crank that up to eleven for us.
Kayla: So we get our food, like our, like, vegan meal from the cafeteria line, and we go and we sit down and we're, like, eating our food. The tables are kind of communal, so we try to sit at a table that no one's at, and then this british woman walks over and she has her plate of food and she says, oh, can I? I'm not gonna do a british accent because that would just be embarrassing to me. Yeah, please don't. She walks over, she's like, oh, would you mind if I join you? And, you know, my sister and I kind of look at each other like, oh, fuck, but what can you do? So she, like, moves her purse so this woman can sit down, and she sits down and she says, hi, my name is Faith. I'm one of the founders of best friends.
Kayla: And so there's a moment where my sister like, oh, shit, yes. Like, this is actually really great. Oh, my God, this is so cool.
Chris: You get to meet one of the founders randomly at lunch.
Kayla: And she very specifically said, I'm faith. I'm one of the founders of best friends. And so when I told you that story about, like, oh, it's so cool. Then, you know, we talked to her about how they form best friends and how just kind of what goes into making animal sanctuary, blah, blah. I didn't really pay attention to kind of how weird the phrasing was to refer to yourself as the founder.
Chris: That weird, especially if you are one of the founders.
Kayla: So this was five years ago, right? So was it our third day there, our second day there for you and me five years later?
Chris: I think.
Kayla: So we're in line. You and I are in line for our food, and I go, oh, my God, look. That's. That's faith. That's the woman that. That's one of the founders of best friends. Oh, it's so great. Which is cool. But then we totally hear her in line. Introduce herself as, I'm faith. I'm one of the founders of best friends to somebody else. Same phrasing. Okay. We can chalk it up to, this is just this lady. She likes to call herself a founder. Cool. Great. You and I sit down, we eat our food, we sit down at a table that's only for two people, because we're all social anxiety bitches as well. I go to the bathroom, and what happens to you?
Chris: So you go to the bathroom, and I overhear a conversation between another gentleman with a british accent. Unfortunately, I don't recall his name, but he introduces himself to some other folks, some other volunteers that are also at the cafeteria. And he introduces himself in the exact same way. He says, I'm so and so. Let's just call him Bob, because I don't remember. But I'm Bob. I'm one of the founders. It sounds like a similar sort of conversation that you and your sister had, where he said, I'm one of the founders. And they say, oh, that's a awesome, you know, tell us. Tell us more. And they strike up a little bit of a conversation, but we just found it a little bit curious that within this span of five years and span of two different people, they introduced themselves in the exact same way.
Chris: And faith, again, introduced herself as, I'm one of the founders. And this guy introduced himself as, I'm one of the founders. It just felt just slightly off. Right? Like if I'm. If I'm getting food in a cafeteria at my company, right? Like, I'm not necessarily gonna overhear my CEO introduce himself consistently over the course of five years as one of the founders of the company, right? Like, either he's gonna be having lunch with somebody, they're gonna know who he is, right? They'll have like a normal conversation, but he won't consistently say, I'm one of the founders. It just felt a little bit off.
Kayla: Well, that's why this didn't take very long, because I was. By the time I came back from the bathroom, you'd already Wikipedia edit it, and you had read those first two sentences about the foundation church of the millennium and the. What was it? The process church of the final judgment.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: So that's. I mean, that's when we first started doing our research on this.
Chris: Yeah, that's where the rabbit hole began.
Kayla: And we started reading about. Okay, so what is the foundation faith Church of the millennium? What is the process church of the final judgment? So if you continue down the Wikipedia rabbit hole, it will tell you. So I'm going to just read to you some stuff from Wikipedia about.
Chris: This is where I start getting a little bit fuzzy. Yeah, you did this research.
Kayla: So the process church of the final judgment. Commonly. Apparently there is a commonly. Commonly known as the Process Church was a religious group established in London in 1966. Its founders were the british couple Marianne McLean and Robert de Grimston, also known as the teacher and also known as Robert Moore. Because having aliases is, like, totally legit. And if your leader of your church has multiple names, it's like, definitely not weird.
Chris: Maybe aliases should be another thing on my list.
Kayla: Let's think about it. So he was called the teacher. I'm pretty sure his wife, Mary Ann was called the Oracle.
Chris: Super normal.
Kayla: Yeah, totally normal to have those titles. The religion spread across parts of the UK and the United States during the 1960s and seventies. I'd never heard of this church. I know some weird stuff had never come up in my weird hippie research.
Chris: Was this like a new age church or was this like wacky Christianity? What was this?
Kayla: Wikipedia will continue to say that the pair had met several years previously when they were both members of the church of Scientology.
Chris: Oh, Scientology is very normal.
Kayla: Yeah, yeah. I mean, we are from the LA area, so Scientology is in the fabric of our lives. But I think it's safe to say that the reputation that it carries is a little fraught. So if a. If two people.
Chris: It sounds like your thetans are just low.
Kayla: Yeah, I'm just a suppressive person.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: Just like Robert and Marianne McLean, who were ejected from the Church of Scientology. They were kids. L. Ron Hubbard declared them suppressive persons and kicked them out. L. Ron Hubbard himself, according to some things I read on the Internet.
Chris: Good for them.
Kayla: Yeah. So they get kicked out of the church and then they get married, because that's kind of a bonding experience, I think.
Chris: Sure. Once you go through something like that.
Kayla: Together, it's like the crucible. You're bonded for life. And that's when they started a Scientology splinter group called. This is my favorite thing, compulsions analysis, which I need. That sounds like legit therapy that I want to have.
Chris: That sounds like part of what this.
Kayla: Podcast is, compulsions analysis. Yeah, that's actually what it should be called.
Chris: All right. Maybe we should reran the whole thing.
Kayla: I think that they even had, like, they didn't call them e meters, but they had, like.
Chris: They basically, they had their own little e meters.
Kayla: They ripped off a lot of Scientology.
Chris: Well, thanks. You know, great artists steal.
Kayla: Right, right, yeah. Robert and Marianne, the great artists. So they started compulsions analysis, and that kind of started to gain new religious elements. And for the purpose of. For our listeners at home, when something is referred to as a new religious or new religious movement, that's kind of a euphemism for cult. Just. Just saying. I don't even know if it's a euphemism. I think it's just, like, the more technical term. Right, right.
Chris: I think because cult has sort of the connotation, the pejorative connotation that does.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: I think the more academic way to refer groups that are younger and smaller than, say, you know, Roman Catholicism or something is to call them new religious movements.
Kayla: We have a plane flying overhead. I don't think we have to pause for it, but I'm just mentioning it.
Chris: Yeah, I think that's gonna happen for a while.
Kayla: We do live in a flight path.
Chris: Yeah, we live in a bit of a flight path.
Kayla: So eventually, compulsions analysis became the process church. This was in the UK. So Robert and Marianne were kind of, like, getting some people to hang out with them. They lived in a commune. So, of course, number one, there was a commune, and eventually they decided, like, I don't know, they needed to leave the UK. So I'm just gonna, like. I'm briefly brushing on the process church. I will get more into some of these, like, nitty gritty details later on, but this, I just want to kind of give you an overview.
Chris: Yeah, outline's good.
Kayla: So they're in the UK. They decide we need to find a new home. So they actually end up moving to this place called Sthul. I think that's how it's pronounced, Sthule, in the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Moved their commune there. I think that the word stool. I hope I have this written somewhere. Else. I'm pretty sure that means, like, end or something in mayan. Like, it. They specifically chose it, like, based on.
Chris: Like, mayan significance too.
Kayla: Yeah, I think it got all blown apart by a hurricane and they, like, almost all died or something. There was, like, some hurricane that, like, destroyed it, so they had to move again.
Chris: Holy shit.
Kayla: They then moved to New Orleans and.
Chris: Where you're totally safe from hurricanes.
Kayla: Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, New Orleans is kind of like new age voodoo. Like, there's weird stuff going on there. Right. It's like a cult.
Chris: It is both cult and weird.
Kayla: Yeah, it's both. So this is a nice little tidbit. Eventually. Okay, so after New Orleans, they moved to San Francisco because they had to move everywhere later on in 1969. This is gonna be part of the checklist for cults or just weird. Prosecutors investigating the San Francisco murders committed by the Manson family in 1969 suggested there were links between Charles Manson and the process church.
Chris: Oh, wow. So they're like. They're dovetailing with a future episode.
Kayla: Are we gonna do Manson?
Chris: We have to do the Manson family.
Kayla: Do we do the Manson family? Cause they just a cult, right?
Chris: Yeah, that does.
Kayla: I guess that's, like, our metric for what is a cult.
Chris: There's no question with that. Yeah.
Kayla: The Wikipedia article, which I didn't check who wrote this, but for all I know, it could be, like, a member of the process church. The article says, although no proof of such a connection was ever provided, the allegations damaged the church's reputation. Again, I'll get into that a little bit more. A little bit later. Yeah. So then in 1974, Robert de Grimston was kicked out of his own church that he founded. He was removed by the council of masters, which I don't know what that is, and I could figure out what that is. The council of masters. Yeah. They removed him and they renounced his teachings and his books. He tried to restart. So he had to leave. He tried to restart the church elsewhere.
Chris: He was forced out of his own church. Okay.
Kayla: Yes. Couldn't find a lot of info about why he was forced out, but he was forced out.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Tried to start the church elsewhere a few other times, but he really couldn't ever gain the same kind of following. So after he left, what was left of the church, which I think still included his wife, now ex wife, Marianne McLean, they started kind of undergoing a change, and they renamed themselves the foundation Church of the millennium.
Chris: So it was process church.
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: And now it's foundation.
Kayla: Now it's foundation church of the Millennium. In 1978, the foundation was renamed the Foundation Faith of the millennium, which. Why not? And then in 93, the foundation faith of God. So multiple. Multiple names, and then that's what eventually would become best friends, which, again, how is there not in any of these descriptions? How is there not more information between. First it was a church, and then it was animal sanctuary.
Chris: That's weird, right? It's very strange. So just so I'm clear on the timeline, though, or at least the entities there was the process church, and then.
Kayla: Wait, wait, so it goes Scientology. Scientology compulsions analysis.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: Process church. Foundation church of the millennium.
Chris: Wait, no. But now that's a splinter group, right?
Kayla: Well, now the process church, like, dissolves, basically.
Chris: Okay, so the council of masters, after.
Kayla: They kick out Robert, right, they become something new.
Chris: They kind of dissolve.
Kayla: Well, he takes the process name with him. Essentially. He tries to start process church elsewhere. Doesn't take. And at the same time, what was remaining of his original church now calls itself something different.
Chris: Oh, so they just rebranded after they kicked him out?
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: And he tried to keep his name, processed church, but it didn't quite take.
Kayla: Right. Because no one cared anymore because it was 74 and the acid was wearing off and people were now getting into coke.
Chris: I get it. This is sort of like when Baltimore stole the Browns from Cleveland, but then they renamed them to the Ravens.
Kayla: I'll take your word for that. You've told me that story before.
Chris: It's almost exactly that. Probably like, yeah, when we do NFL as a cult, we'll talk about that one.
Kayla: Is the NFL a cult, or is it just weird? I kind of want to do the NFL as an episode. Okay, so that's, like, the basic outline, the basic timeline. Here's our major players. Here's where they were. Here's what they were doing. Here's what happened. So I want to get a little bit into what the. Like, what the tenants of the process church actually were. I want. I want to talk about, like, what their beliefs were. Because while best friends animal society is supposedly not the process church, I think it's important to know what the beliefs were in the group that would later become it. Right, sure. Absolutely. So the process church.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: The process church held that God is made of four separate parts equally worthy of worship. So they worshiped four entities, which was.
Chris: Jehovah, better than Catholics. So that's.
Kayla: Oh, yeah, that's true.
Chris: You get a plus one.
Kayla: They were trying to one up you guys. They worshiped Jehovah, Christ, Lucifer, and Satan. And a person must worship all four in succession to gain enlightenment.
Chris: So they worship Jehovah, which is essentially, as far as I am aware, is like Hebrew God just the father, right. And then Christ, which is the son.
Kayla: But then they also worship Lucifer and Satan.
Chris: So they worship the devil and God at the same time.
Kayla: They worship the devil and the devil.
Chris: And then. But in the devil they can't seem to. Okay. I was always under the impression that Lucifer and Satan were the same person.
Kayla: According to them. No, but yeah, they worship God, essentially. They worship God and the devil at the same time.
Chris: Okay. Yeah. So it's, that's strange for two different reasons. One is you're worshiping the good guy and the bad guy. It seems like you're kind of like playing both sides there. Like, pick a side. We're at war. Number two, like, I don't, I still don't really understand how they get the, like, Lucifer and Satan are different, but whatever. I mean, they're, you know, the precious church.
Kayla: That's their business. Right? So this specific church, a lot of different commentators and like, academic people and people with actual credentials that should be talking about this kind of thing, not just randos like us. They have called it both a religion and a new religious movement, which, as we said, is just a fancy word for cult.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: There's this anthropologist named Jean La Fontaine, which I didn't research anything about this person, so they could also just be rando. But Wikipedia said they were anthropologist. This person said it was, quote, difficult to decide whether it's was a truly satanist organization. So just remember at this time, this is kind of like, this is sixties and seventies. This is still precursor to like the widespread satanic panic of the eighties, but people were still, like, talking about, was.
Chris: This pre leve Satanism?
Kayla: I don't know. Okay, but if we're going to really like, be technical here, they kind of were Satan worshippers, right?
Chris: They definitely were.
Kayla: They were Satan worshippers. I mean, they weren't just Satan worshippers, but they were Satan worshippers, right?
Chris: I mean, yeah, if that was one of the four.
Kayla: Right? So there's this other guy named, this is my favorite name. I also cannot pronounce it. Massimo introvigne. Gonna go out on a limb and assume that guy's italian. He's a sociologist of religion, which I want that job. And he studied a lot about Satanism. And he said that the process, church's doctrine, quote, doctrine was not Satanism in the more classical sense of the term. So this guy is saying, yeah, okay, they were worshipping Satan, but not in the way that you, like, think.
Chris: Okay, so Satan was on the menu, but they weren't necessarily, like, running around with like, goat skulls or whatever.
Kayla: Right? He literally said, like, he specifically distinguished it from Lavey's Church of saints. He was like, it's not the same thing. It's a different type of satanic group. Plenty still called the satanic group. So they were Satan worshippers as well as God worshippers. We don't want to, like. Sure.
Chris: Right? They were hedging. That's just smart.
Kayla: Okay. So that's the big chunk of what their deal was as a religious group.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: They worship these four things.
Chris: I definitely have not heard that elsewhere. So that seems pretty unique to them.
Kayla: It's interesting. So they started this, you know, they started believing this over in the UK. And like I said, I was going to have a little more info about how they moved around. They as a group, decided that they wanted to live in a more remote area. I don't know why you would all of a sudden decide you want to live in a more remote area, which to me feels weird as a religious group to move away from potential, like, converts into your own, like, little.
Chris: It does. However, I will say this, that I think we're a little bit biased as part of, like, a Christian, generally a christian country. Christianity is a very evangelical style religion. Not all religions are like that. Not all religions do seek converts. Like, for example, Judaism is not an evangelical religion.
Kayla: But there's a difference between being evangelical and literally trying to cut yourself off from other people.
Chris: Right, right. There's evangelical, there's neutral, and then this seems, like anti evangelical. This seems like we're gonna, we're hitting the road and going away.
Kayla: Right. As these kind of beliefs are forming, they're taking these movements around the globe. Okay? And Wikipedia says, quite simply, they flew to Mexico and brought along their six alsatian dogs.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Why is there not more information on that? Why do they have six alsatian dogs out of nowhere? I don't even know what an alsatian dog is. But they had six of them.
Chris: Right. Well, I actually think it's the other way around. Like, why were these six dogs important enough to, like, warrant a mission in an article about, like, this church's pilgrimage?
Kayla: I mean, the only reason I included it is because this is the first time in the, like, chronology that they've even mentioned anything about animals.
Chris: Right?
Kayla: So from kind of the beginning, there was some connection to animals with this church.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: So there is a little bit of a bridge there.
Chris: Right. So it's possible that these guys are just animal lovers.
Kayla: Right, right. Which, I mean, I can get behind. So they flew to Mexico. I think they, like, got a bus and just drove around until they found this place called Stollen. Totally pronouncing it wrong. But now that I'm looking at my notes, it's power through it. It does mean the end in mayan.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: And so they kind of took that as, you know, this is why we should settle here. They established their community. They faced opposition from the locals. And also, this is very important to me. Not only did they face opposition from the locals, they also faced opposition from the parents of several of their members, who enlisted anti cult groups to try and recuperate their children through legal means.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: So people whose family members were part of it considered it a cult.
Chris: That's pretty serious.
Kayla: So. And then also, this is something else that I wanted to talk about. And this might also be something that we need to include in our checklist is in Mexico. This is where they, quote, clarified its hierarchical structure. So there was a very specific hierarchical structure of the church. And this is. This put Robert de Grimstone and Mary McLean at the top, naturally. And eventually they started to be. So I said that he was the teacher and she was the oracle. Eventually, they started to be referred to as the singular, the omega.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: And they were.
Chris: George tried to get people to call him t bone.
Kayla: Yeah, yeah. But the omega stuck.
Chris: The omega stuck.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: Okay. Good for them. That's hard.
Kayla: So they've got a one up on George Costanza, which. That's a plus one in my book.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: So then their followers were called masters, priests, prophets, and messengers, kind of like, in a descending order. And also when I looked at, like, when I was reading about their members, like, a lot of them had also had titles like Father John or Mistress Faith or, like, they all had weird titles.
Chris: Did you get a sense for how many members there were at this point?
Kayla: No, I didn't. Which is bad research on my part. I'm gonna say 20.
Chris: Why are you gonna say 20?
Kayla: I'm just gonna say it.
Chris: I don't think you should.
Kayla: Just gonna say, I think I'm gonna say 20 because I feel like there were, like, 20 founders of best friends analysis.
Chris: Okay. But that doesn't mean that's not one to one. Like, you're not necessarily a founder if you were a member of the church.
Kayla: And you're.
Chris: And also vice versa. Right. I mean, it just sounds to me like there may be more than 20 if we're talking about, like, a stratified hierarchy like that, unless each person had.
Kayla: Their own title, I don't know. Sorry. I'm bad at research, so I'm just gonna move on.
Chris: All right.
Kayla: That's when the hurricane happened. Devastated their settlement, and they had to leave. But the interesting thing that I thought that happened was that the yucatan experience kind of became, like, a part of their own mythology, and there was a little bit of a schism or, like, a division within the group. In the coming years, that's how you.
Chris: Know you've made it as a religion.
Kayla: You have your own mythology.
Chris: You get your own schism.
Kayla: Oh, when you get your own.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: Well, there was this. There was, like, a divide in the coming years between the people, the members of the church, who had gone through that experience and, like, the members who had not. So you can see that there was, like, in the early stages, some cracks starting to show, and then. Okay, so in my research, the next part was that by November 1966, most of the process members were back in London. Okay, well, why. I'm gonna go ahead and assume it was because of the hurricane. And people were like, eh. And, like, also their parents trying to bring them back, so they just left, I guess. And so by the time the hurricane happened and then the next year, the process finally began to operate as, like, an official church.
Kayla: So up until this point, it had been more of a, like, self help group or something. Like, not really a church or a religion. It was more like a self help thing, which I thought was weird. I. And that's when it became increasingly evangelical and focused on attracting new members. I don't know why.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: It opened a library and an all night coffee shop known as Satan's cavern, which sounds like the baddest ass place to chill. I want to go to Satan's cavern.
Chris: It sounds like. Yeah, a super cool place. Given their background, though, that seems like that's maybe heavy with some meaning behind it.
Kayla: Satan's cavern. Yeah, yeah. It began issuing a magazine at first titled the Common Market, which is that just like the Economist. Like, the common market is the most boring title of a magazine I ever heard. And then they renamed it to the process, which isn't really that much more interesting, at least makes sense. And they also started to, like, get a celebrity. Like, celebrities started to get interested in it.
Chris: You gotta get on the ground floor, right? Like, if you missed out on Scientology, you gotta, like, figure out the next big cult religion so you can get it on the ground floor.
Kayla: I think their, like, most high profile person was Marianne faithful, which I don't really know who that is.
Chris: I don't know who that is, but.
Kayla: I know the name. And I'll talk a little bit later about some of their other recruits. Okay. Started to get a lot of publicity. In urban myth, the process church came to be associated with ritual murders.
Chris: Wait, what?
Kayla: In urban myth, the process church came to be associated with ritual murders, although no evidence was ever. Okay, there was no evidence of it, but in the collective conscious, they got associated with ritual murders. I think some of that had to do with their, like, loose affiliation with Charles Manson, which there was a few reasons why they were affiliated. And then also because rumors spread that a number of Alsatians, the dogs, had been sacrificed around San Francisco with these actions, sometimes being associated with the process church, which kept Alsatians as pets. So, okay, we're gonna talk. I'm gonna talk more about the animal sacrifices later, but just know that kind of in the late sixties, early seventies, I couldn't find any actual evidence of it, but there was definitely rumors of dogs being sacrificed in the San Francisco area.
Chris: Holy shit.
Kayla: So I don't want to accuse anybody of anything, but they somehow got associated with rumors of dog sacrificing.
Chris: Okay, okay. Like you said, it's a rumor.
Kayla: Okay, yeah, it's rumor, but. So is there anything else? Okay, so a little bit more about why they're associated with ritual murders is because police investigating the Tate LaBianca murders, which were the most high profile Manson murders, where they killed Sharon Tate.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: So they were. They, as the police were investigating it, they suspected a possible connection between the family's leader, Charles Manson, and the process church. When they asked Charles Manson if he knew Robert de Grimston or Robert Moore, Charles Manson responded, reportedly, allegedly, quote, you're looking at him. Moore and I are one and the same.
Chris: What?
Kayla: Charles Manson supposedly told police that he and the founder of the process church were the same.
Chris: Dude, is there any possibility that he was sung the truth?
Kayla: No, but, like, he.
Chris: Okay, so, you know, there was.
Kayla: There's definitely a Robert de Grimston, Robert Moore. There's definitely a Charles Manson. I think what Manson was referring to is more of a, like. Like a spiritual one in the sameness.
Chris: Right, okay, got it.
Kayla: But still, that's weird. So then members of the process church tried to, like, talk to the DA and be like, we don't have anything to do with it. They also, like, had an article in one of their magazines about Charles Manson. I think they even, like, went and interviewed him. So, like, there was weird connections with it. So later on, when, like, the Manson trial was happening, Vincent Bugliosi, who is the prosecutor, he suggested later on that the connection may have just been that Charles Manson borrowed philosophically from the process church. Okay, so that kind of makes sense. It is hard to know in, like, this timeline what the chicken and egg situation is. Did Manson borrow from them? Did they talk to Manson first? There definitely is a connection. It's just hard to figure out the exact substantial nature of it.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: And that really damaged the church's reputation. So after that, the number of donations received began to decline, and church members sometimes received abuse in public. So I think it's really important to note that at this time. So this is a couple years before the church would kick Robert de Grimston out, before they would become a different church, and later on become best friends, they started to experience a financial decline. When you experience a financial decline, sometimes you're going to have to figure out other ways to make money.
Chris: Pivot.
Kayla: Pivot. Not accusing anyone, but maybe they had to pivot later on down the line and be.
Chris: But it was the new. It was. It wasn't old process church that became best friends. It was the new thing that Robert Moore founded.
Kayla: No, best friends. No, no. Robert Moore did not found it. It was his wife. He's kicked out. He's gone. He, like, left and died or whatever. The foundation based church of the millennium was his wife and the other members that had kicked Robert out.
Chris: Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. I thought that he ended up.
Kayla: No.
Chris: Okay, sorry.
Kayla: So just so I'm clear, what is going on upstairs?
Chris: I don't know. So just so I'm clear on the timeline, process church kicks out Robert Moore, he goes, tries to do some other stuff. We don't know what happens.
Kayla: Fades into the background.
Chris: Then the process church itself changes its name to foundation.
Kayla: Yes. With the leader now being his ex wife, Mary Emily.
Chris: Oh, okay. I was not clear on that.
Kayla: Yeah. Okay. So continuing on this line of the Mason connections, there's this guy who wrote a book, Ed Sanders. He wrote like an investigative book about the church, about not, I'm sorry about Charles Manson called the family, and he alleges that Charles Manson was a member of the process church. And he cited the fact that Charles Manson lived on the same road as the process church's San Francisco address. But, like, it's. It's hard to know if this was just a loose connection or if they're like. It's just hard to know. There's a lot of weird Manson connections. There's a lot of other connections made by journalists and by people who wrote books that tried to connect the process church to weird Satanism and weird occultism and, like, Aleister Crowley and, like, all those people.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Okay. So I have a lot more information about the church. Okay, so they did have an e meter, but it was called a pea scope.
Chris: P scope. I think that's what you do when you get a drug test.
Kayla: A peace gulp. Okay, so going back to the belief of the four whatever, the church stated that Jehovah is strength, Lucifer is light, Satan is separation, Christ is unification. Each member was instructed to follow the God or gods, which were best suited to them. Each individual was understood as a combination of these two gods. The church taught that an individual's personality and relationships could be explained by reference to which gods they manifested. For example, Robert de Grimston described himself as a blend of luciferian. Luciferin what? Luciferian. Luciferian and christian straits. I can't speak luciferian.
Chris: That sounds right.
Kayla: Luciferian and christian traits. And his wife said that she was jehovan and satanic. So they had some weird beliefs. They also thought that the world was gonna end. Why? They actually called us.
Chris: Yeah, I mean, you gotta have a eschatology, like. Or else what are you even doing?
Kayla: As indicated by the group's name, the process church of the final judgment, the church taught a form of millennialism, which I think that means, like, that the world's gonna end. According to process eschatology, the four separate divinities would be unified in the end times. The reconciliation of opposites was kind of like the thing that would make the world end or whatever.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Process actually meant pro cessation. So they were totes for the end. Like, they wanted the world to end. They would bring everything back together. They strongly opposed vivisection.
Chris: Doesn't everyone oppose that?
Kayla: I think that this, at the time, there was, like, a lot of, like, animal testing going on. Oh, and they were, like, anti animal? No, they were anti human vivisection. They were, like, trying to make sure the aliens weren't abducting people to vivisectomy.
Chris: Controversial, but I guess, yeah, if you're saying, like, don't cut open mice and.
Kayla: Monkeys, that makes sense, right? They had public rituals. They also had a symbol called the p sign.
Chris: P or ps?
Kayla: P. The letter p. Like their p meter. P sign. You should totally google it because it looks like a swastika. Not you. I mean, our listeners. You can also google it. Okay, so after we, as the Wikipedia article kind of, like, outlines, like, deep dives into their beliefs. It literally ends with talking about this p sign, and that is literally where the Wikipedia info on the process church ends. It does not get into how it became animal sanctuary.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: And I will also take this time now to mention that when you go to the best Friends website, there is no mention of any of this. Like, they have a. About a section. They don't talk about this. All of the. They do have, like, info pages on all of the founders. They actually call themselves founders, like, the people that founded it, which I guess makes sense, but it's just. It's weird. They all have, like, their backgrounds and how they got involved with it. No one ever talks about the cult. They'll say, like, oh, we met when were, like, driving around the countryside in the seventies or whatever. Like, they don't talk about being in a cult. There is.
Chris: That's pretty strange.
Kayla: There's in the. You could probably get it online, but definitely in the. In the gift shop, you can buy, like, a book that's called, like, the complete history of best friends. Animal sanctuary does not talk about this. According to. According to the president of Best Friends, that was the author's decision, and it wasn't really them trying to, like, hide anything.
Chris: Right, of course.
Kayla: Yeah. So, like, they just don't talk about it. So trying to find some link between how this group later became animal whale.
Chris: Yeah, that's.
Kayla: I can't speak animal welfare. Animal welfare organization is tough to do.
Chris: That's the part that I'm, like, super confused about still. It's like, okay, so there's. I. You know, I know how best friends works because I volunteered there.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: I have a pretty good understanding of how the process church tended to work. From what you just told me, what I don't really understand is where that pivot came from.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: What exactly happened there?
Kayla: So, unfortunately, or fortunately, I had to go a little bit off Wikipedia and, like, off reputable sources to help try and establish this link.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: So you're gonna have to take a lot of what's coming next with a little bit of a grain of salt.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: But it gets weird. It gets weirder.
Chris: Wow.
Kayla: Okay, so to go back in the timeline, we're gonna start talking about when Robert de Grimston is ousted and he and Marianne McLean are divorced. So that's kind of where we're going to start the timeline for now. Oh, also, PS, I don't know a lot about Robert de Grimston's background. I think he was, like, a military man. But Marianne McLean supposedly was like, she spent some time in the states. She claims to have been married to Sugar Ray Robinson. Boxer. Right, yeah, the boxer.
Chris: Which seems unlikely.
Kayla: And then she apparently moved back to the UK and was a high end sex worker.
Chris: Oh, right. Naturally.
Kayla: So no judgment.
Chris: No.
Kayla: Just an interesting background tidbit. Right, okay. So they got divorced in 74 when Robert was ousted for whatever reason. And so then Marianne and several original members of the group continued as the foundation church of the millennium. Before that happened, some other things happened. So this information all came from this weird site called the dog press, which is a website I found that is like, this weird, like, geocities, DIY conspiracy theorist investigative journalism site about dog news.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Which. God bless that for existing.
Chris: First of all, was there a web ring?
Kayla: I don't know what that is.
Chris: You remember web rings? No, you're Gm.
Kayla: Forget it was a web ring.
Chris: Don't worry about it.
Kayla: Is it a cult?
Chris: No.
Kayla: The person who wrote this article is named Miss Jade. It's all I could get on her. Miss Jade. So she wrote this extensive investigative piece on the founding of best friends. So I might repeat myself a little bit here. So forgive me. And unfortunately, I could only get so much information from this article because at a certain point, it went behind a paywall and I'm not about to pay the dog press any money.
Chris: No.
Kayla: Just not going to do it.
Chris: Not if their website is shitty.
Kayla: Okay. So going back to the alsatian dogs. At just a certain point in the. In the early formation of the church, Bob and Marianne each acquired a large Alsatian, which apparently is a german shepherd. And, like, I'm assuming that they just did this, like, on a whim. Like, oh, we want some dogs. And they got their dogs. And then, because they were the leaders of the church, their acolytes follows, followed suit. As one member of the church explained, dogs are much more high level beings than we are. They're pure. Animals don't have conflicts of choice. They do as they're supposed to. They're not conflicted. So apparently, process members believed the dogs could sense the coming apocalypse as well.
Chris: Oh, wow. That's intense.
Kayla: So according to this article, there was, like, some early on reverence for pets and animals. During the time they moved from the UK to Mexico and then moved around the process. Members hit the streets asking for donations. Cult members were told to say the money was going to animal welfare, although most of it landed in the degrimstones pockets. So early on in the church, again, another, like, little bit of a bridge between the church and what would it later become? They asked for donations under the guise of animal welfare. So another website I found called conspiracyarchive.com. Mark Owens details how Robert de Grimston published several books on his favorite theme and commanded his followers. Thou shalt kill.
Chris: Thou shalt kill.
Kayla: Thou shalt kill.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Another process publication urged readers to experience the pleasures of grave robbing and necrophilia. What?
Chris: What the hell is going on?
Kayla: In the magazine, somebody wrote the main organ. Wait, no, this. Okay, sorry. Conspiracyarchive.com also said the main organ of process theology was their glossy magazine, the process. Sporting blaring red, purple and black psychedelic graphics, the editorial policy favored Hitler, Satan and Gore.
Chris: Ydez what?
Kayla: So thou shalt kill. Grave robbing, necrophilia. Hitler, Satan and Gore.
Chris: Fuck. Wait, Gorr is an al Gore?
Kayla: No, Gorr is in gory.
Chris: Oh, okay. Well, you listed. I don't know, man.
Kayla: Satan and Al Gore.
Chris: It's not exactly parallel.
Kayla: Was Al Gore even a thing at the time?
Chris: I don't know. What what year?
Kayla: Sixties and seventies.
Chris: No, but he was totally alive.
Kayla: Okay, so they also, this is when they started courting celebrities such as Paul McCartney, Mama Cass, Mick Jagger, Mary Ann Faithful.
Chris: Oh, wow.
Kayla: Salvador Dali and others. And then the degrimsens started to become more reclusive and weird. That's when they became the omega, and their secret rituals became a matter of speculation among the lower ranks. So this is when it gets into super cult territory. I'm sorry.
Chris: Like, it wasn't already.
Kayla: This is clearly cult, though, right? Like, this is bad cult. This is like cult, right?
Chris: Yeah. Okay. I have some things to say, but please continue.
Kayla: So also, apparently, like, the personal and private lives of the members were strictly regulated. Like, what they.
Chris: That's pretty culty, right?
Kayla: What they ate, what they wore. They enforced strict sexual abstinence upon their acolytes. But those rules did not apply to Robert and Marianne, clearly. And Robert apparently instructed followers to release the fiend that lies within you, which I don't know what that means, but he also had several ideas about how to go about that, some of which may have included bestiality.
Chris: Holy crap. Is this. This isn't one of the people we met in the cafeteria, right?
Kayla: No. Robert Dinkerson is the one that got kicked out.
Chris: All right, all right. Okay. Sorry.
Kayla: Yeah. So he may have been into animal welfare in the form of bestiality.
Chris: I guess that is welfare of a kind.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: Holy shit.
Kayla: Another connection. So the current president of best friends one of the founders is this gentleman named Michael Mountain, and he was part of the process church from the beginning. When they were in New Orleans, he used to preach about the coming apocalypse to Louisiana State University. And he would dress in white with a purple cape, and he would bring two dogs with him, a white dog in one hand and a black dog in the other. They were both german shepherds. And later on he like. So this was in this. This weirdo website, but he himself, in a different interview, confirmed this, that he did that. Okay, so weird. All right, so let's talk a little bit. Okay, so we've talked about bestiality. We've talked about animal welfare. We've talked about the black and white german shepherds. Let's talk about the animal sacrifices.
Kayla: So in the sixties and seventies, in San Francisco and also in New York, where members of the process church and foundation faith of the millennium were, rumors of animal sacrifices by members of the church started floating around. And there are also rumors that this is. I'm going to trigger warning you right now. If you are sensitive to the topic of dead animals, don't listen. There were rumors that the bodies of skinned dogs were being found in forest around the area. And I think I read the number like 85 or something.
Chris: Oh, my God.
Kayla: Like 85 skinned dogs were found.
Chris: That's not a small number of skinned dogs.
Kayla: And this is where I hit the paywall on the dog press.
Chris: Nowhere to put their monetization.
Kayla: So if you don't care as much about your money, go to the dog press, give them some money, and read more about this. Holy moly. So again, trying to bridge the connection between this weirdo cult church, which I think it's pretty established that this is a cult.
Chris: Yeah, I don't think there's any question that process church and whatever the hell were they.
Kayla: Foundation faith.
Chris: I don't think there's any question that those guys were definitely cults.
Kayla: Yeah. So that's for sure. So trying to bridge the connection between that cult and this incredible, widespread animal welfare organization, it's hard to do. The tendrils are like. They talked about animal welfare. They had dogs. They maybe were doing animal sacrifices or fucking dogs.
Chris: Are there any more details?
Kayla: There's a few more.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: And this is going way too long. That's all right. Definitely just for listeners, check out this book called love, fear and death. The inside story of the process Church of the final judgment, written by Timothy Wiley. So this is a lot more like. That's like an in depth look at all of this. It's probably got way better information than what I have to say, so definitely read it. Okay, so now we're going to talk about Michael Mountain. I think I mentioned Michael Mountain. Michael Mountain might be the guy that you and I saw in the cafeteria there. But he is the current president of best friends. Sorry, our cat is like trying to get at the mic. He's the current president of best friends and he's been a part of the church since the beginning.
Kayla: Oh, ps, did we talk about how all the founders live on the best friend's property?
Chris: We didn't talk about that, but that doesn't surprise me since they always seem to be around.
Kayla: All of the founders of best friends live on the best friends property in riddle houses with their like 20 animals. Okay, call it a commune. I don't know. In an interview with culteducation.com, comma, one of the founders and president of Best Friends, Michael Mountain, downplays the wackier aspects of the religious movements and says that all that bad shit and the Satan connections and the Manson connections were overblown. So he, in this interview, he acknowledges all of this stuff that we just talked about and says it was all just like, it was just the sixties. It was crazy. We were all like juvenile. We were just looking for something to do and it got overblown.
Chris: Fake news.
Kayla: Fake news. He says that the process church event, like stopped operating in the seventies. Everybody went separate ways. The reason why Robert Dickremson was ousted was that he was getting too authoritarian and structured in his beliefs.
Chris: Sounds like it.
Kayla: So then Michael and Marianne and a bunch of others now to Arizona, and they stopped talking about the occult. Like that kind of just ended with Robert de Grimston. But they still were very religious.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: And the incorporation paper said, the church, quote, has been called into existence by God to be made known to all the men that the latter days are upon us. And there are signs and wonders foretold in prophecy in preparation for the coming of the Messiah and the entry into the millennium.
Chris: I sort of followed that.
Kayla: Basically the church, the foundation faith church of the millennium, was still doing weird stuff. All of the group members kept their religious names. They dropped their birth given names on their birth certificates and now had like these weird religious names kept them. Michael Mountain's not his actual name. He's got a different name. Okay, so faith probably is not her name either, right?
Chris: Well, it is now.
Kayla: These are fake names. They started believing just in one God again.
Chris: Oh, that's a shame.
Kayla: Yeah, I know. And once they started to concentrate one God. The group discovered its mission. Apparently some members have been animal advocates for years, and german shepherds have been associated, as we know, with them. Marian de Grimston was active in the anti vivisectionist movement. So again, another bridge. So we've had some little breadcrumbs that would reveal that they would later do this. Michael Mountain recalls Mahatma Gandhi had a saying, a society can be judged by the way it treats its old people, its young people and its animals. So then as the foundation faith church of God, they started taking in strays and unwanted pets. Found the Arizona property too small, found this massive piece of land in Kanab, moved everybody over there. And essentially they started building on that property and took in animals. Literally.
Kayla: It was just that they were this, according to Michael Mountain, they were this crazy ass juvenile cult that later just got a little too big for its britches, broke up the core members kind of stayed together, like, spiritually and their, like, shared love for animal welfare.
Chris: Just chilled out of it on the cult thing.
Kayla: Yeah, chilled out on the cult thing. Just became like, spiritual and believing in Goddesse, the already existing, just like personal love of animals. Then just flipped into this animal welfare group.
Chris: Right?
Kayla: So literally, according to everybody, it literally was just, were a cult and then were animal welfare organization. It's literally just that.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Which I still think is weird.
Chris: It's definitely. Yeah, it's weird. It's odd.
Kayla: Definitely. Check out this interview on culteducation.com because it really gets into it. We can talk more. I don't really want to get into, like, how much money they make. They make a lot of money.
Chris: Again, all from donations, presumably.
Kayla: All from donations. Michael Mountain addresses the rumor that best friends might still be a cult. And he doesn't agree.
Chris: Okay, well, he says our whole thing right there.
Kayla: Well, he says, quote, the definition of cult is something that follows a single charismatic leader telling everybody what to do. And that never happened with this. It's just the opposite. We looked into many cults and found them all to be, frankly, ridiculous. So there you go.
Chris: They looked into cults.
Kayla: Yeah, I think you saying, like, you know, when were crazy kids in the seventies, we like, looked at cults and stuff, and all of them were ridiculous. So we did this. So, yeah, so Michael Mountain, the president of best friends, literally says, were in a cult. Then it was just kind of a bunch of God fearing folk. And then we just decided that our mission was to take care of animals.
Chris: Wow.
Kayla: So that was quite a journey.
Chris: That was quite the rabbit hole from hearing people at lunch say that they were founders.
Kayla: Yeah. So are they a cult? Is. I think we can safely say that the process church was a cult. The foundation faith church, maybe. Maybe a little bit more of a gray area.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: Is best friends animal society a cult?
Chris: Right. So. Right. I agree with you. I think that. That. Yeah, the process church was doing some weird stuff. Definitely a cult. The question is, did they eventually transition away from being a cult as they transitioned into best friends? Is best friends itself a cult?
Kayla: I'm gonna say no.
Chris: I think I'm inclined to say no as well, just because it feels like there is enough evidence. So here's the things that I'm really torn on. Are the founders of best friends just animal lovers?
Kayla: Right.
Chris: Or do they also have different motives? Right. So I think there's enough evidence to suggest that there is an evolution in this group.
Kayla: I've got some info on other motives, if you want me to get into it.
Chris: Well, maybe we should, because I do feel like there's potential here. Like you said, potential for the fact that they're just trying to get money. I mean, if.
Kayla: If they were, they make a lot of money as a organization. They do take in a lot of money.
Chris: Our friend Robert, in the past, had used the COVID of animal welfare to solicit donations, then lined his own pockets. So if that's the type of thing that's still going on, or if this weird animal sacrifice beast jet, like, some of these things that the previous incarnation of the organization had been rumored to engage in, like, again, maybe it's just rumors, but I don't know. It is. It's also a little strange. Right. So the question for me is the current organization just a group of animal lovers?
Kayla: Right.
Chris: Or is it a group of animal lovers that also does some other strange stuff? Because that might push it over the cult edge for me.
Kayla: Well, I was reading a little bit about, you know, I can't say a lot about, like, where their millions of dollars worth of donations go. Obviously, a lot of it goes back to the animals. They do have nationwide programs. They're super into rescuing and, like, spaying and neutering and catching. Like, they do a lot of really great animal work. But something interesting that I came across specifically about the gift shop at the best Friends animal sanctuary in Kanab. In general, in charitable organizations, gift shops are. It's kind of like an unspoken thing that the proceeds from the gift shop go back to the organization. Right. You're gonna go to the. You go to whatever. You buy a book for $10. And nine or ten of those dollars are gonna go back to helping the animals. Right?
Chris: Right. That's what I would assume.
Kayla: Apparently, specifically at the gift shop at best friends, only 7% of. And I can't remember where I read this, 7% of the purchases go back to best friends. The other 93 goes to the founders.
Chris: Interesting.
Kayla: So. And I think specifically Michael Mountain. So they are making money. Like, they're turning a profit off of those things in the. The gift shop.
Chris: That doesn't feel good to me.
Kayla: I know. That's why I said to you the other day, like, oh, I don't know if we should keep you in the money. I don't know what to do, because that felt. And I want to look more into it because this was just one allegation that I read on some website, and I believe Michael Mann himself has addressed it as, like, well, you know, blah, blah, we need to make money. I don't know, but it's something to look into. I'm not fully satisfied that there isn't some shady stuff going on.
Chris: Yeah, me either. I mean, like, it definitely seems like there's a lot of potential for shady stuff. So even if the only 10% of it is true, that still means that there's, like, definitely something shady going on. So I think I'm still inclined to say, until I have more evidence about the group and its current incarnation, I think I'm inclined to say just weird.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: But it's. It is close, and if you want, we can run through the criteria real quick.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: Because I think the criteria are kind of what seals it for me. So our first criteria is expected harm for members. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of expected harm from members, like, going on.
Kayla: Right. Are we talking about members, as in, like, their employees?
Chris: Well, so that was a question I was going to ask you. Like, what is, if anything, is the relationship between employees to the organization of best friends? Like, is it just, like, the same relationship that we all have with our employers?
Kayla: Right.
Chris: I'm assuming it's that. And there's not some, like, oh, yeah, and you also have to live here.
Kayla: And, like, no, I don't think so.
Chris: Do the best friends weird chant at 04:00 p.m. No.
Kayla: And I even read about how, like, there's lots of different, like, religious affiliations amongst the employees. Like, there's Christians and jewish people and Buddhists.
Chris: So, I mean, I haven't heard anything, and certainly in our discussion here, we haven't talked to anything about members of the organization, whatever that means. But certainly it doesn't mean employee. It must mean something else, like founder. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of expected harm there.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: The population is relatively small of this group.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: So that points more towards called because they haven't, you know, made it, quote unquote.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: The way that, you know, Christianity or Islam has anti factuality. Well, there's definitely some of that going.
Kayla: On with best friends.
Chris: With best friends. There's definitely some denial happening.
Kayla: Right, right. They totally are trying to hide the fact that they were, like, there's some.
Chris: Trying to hide the fact that.
Kayla: The fact that there's, like, a. The history of best friends book that has nothing about it.
Chris: Right. I don't know if it goes so far as to be, like, indoctrinated anti factuality where they're right, you know, trying to do the whole brainwash. You know, the more you see truths outside of the organization, the. The more you know that they're out, just out to get you. I don't feel like there's any of that, but there's definitely some anti factuality going on. Percentage of life consumed. Well, actually, the more I go through these, the more I'm, like, thinking that it is. You said the founders live there.
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: So that sounds like 100% for them.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: Ritual. I don't know, just going to lunch and talking about how you're one of the founders. Countess ritual.
Kayla: I don't know. And don't forget that they also have. They have, like, that whole, like, angels rest place. And not that I want to, like, I don't want to share that at all. So best friends has this beautiful. They've dedicated a portion of the property and in one of the most beautiful parts of the sanctuary to, like, basically like a cemetery for animals that passed while they're living at the sanctuary. And it's this beautiful location called angels rest. It's. I mean, we did. We drive by.
Chris: We did.
Kayla: And I drove by with my sister, and it's. It's. It's got a very spiritual feeling. And, you know, we. We saw in Dogtown how they, like, have, you know, funerals for the dogs and the cats and whatnot, and they talk about the rainbow bridge, and there's definitely some element of ritual in it, but it. I don't know if, like, in the general day to day, like, that's the only thing I can point to that's, like, this feels, like, religious and spiritually.
Chris: Well, let's go to our 6th criteria, then, which is presence of a charismatic leader. Now, Robert obviously isn't involved anymore, but is Mary involved? Is she one of the founders?
Kayla: She has passed away.
Chris: She's passed away. Okay.
Kayla: She did live on the property, but she has died.
Chris: Okay. So there was a charismatic leader. I mean, sort of.
Kayla: I mean, I think you could also maybe talk about Michael mountainous as a. If he's the president of best friends.
Chris: Is he now the charismatic leader?
Kayla: And he's like, who's saying, like, oh, well, you know, it's not a cult because you need to have a charismatic leader.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: We don't have that.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: But I kind of. His name's also not Michael.
Chris: So actually, the only one that really says not a cult is expected harm.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: The rest of these are kind of. Even with best friends, they're kind of there, I think, to a greater or lesser degree. They're not all, you know, very strongly present, but they're all present.
Kayla: I think I'm gonna go ahead and stick with just weird. I think it's just weird.
Chris: What makes you stick with that? Even though going through the criteria, I.
Kayla: Think the lack of, like, the lack of ritual and indoctrination of volunteers and employees, just the fact, like, yeah, there's anti factuality and, yeah, there's, like, hiding and. But the fact that the founders specifically try not to expose other, quote, unquote, members to, like, the weird parts of it. Like, it doesn't feel like there is an indoctrination going on.
Chris: Yeah. At least when were there, there was nobody that was, like, saying, you know, have you heard the good news of both Satan and Lucifer at the same time? Nobody was, like, trying to convert us or anything like that. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely in the gray area, which is what makes it an interesting topic. It's either a very benign cult or just weird, I think. Yeah, I guess I agree with you. Without the harm, without the evangelizing and with the only somewhat anti factuality, I guess that I will go with just weird as well.
Kayla: All right.
Chris: I think that it is an organization that came from way more than just weird, actual cults.
Kayla: Yeah, the process church is a cult.
Chris: For sure, that as it grew up and got older and mellowed out, I guess it mellowed its way into not quite a cult anymore. Just weird.
Kayla: I'll take it.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: So did we figure it out?
Chris: I guess so.
Kayla: So does this mean we can get.
Chris: Definitely curious to maybe hear from our listeners what they think, though?
Kayla: Oh, yeah, please, somebody buy the book and read it. And do our work for us.
Chris: Email us at cult or just weird@gmail.com.
Kayla: Is that our email?
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: Do we have that?
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: We also have a Twitter.
Chris: Yeah. Oh, tweet at us. Yeah. What do you think?
Kayla: I need to look up what our Twitter is. We do have a Twitter. I think we might have an Instagram, too. Our Twitter is. I think it's ultra. Just weird. I think my Twitter is not loading fast. It's ult or just weird. That's us.
Chris: Meet us ult or just weird and tell us what you think. What is best friends? Are they a cult or are they just weird?
Kayla: Are we okay to go volunteer there again? I just want to clear my own.
Chris: Guilty conscience, so I think so. And here's why. Sometimes it doesn't necessarily matter what. Particularly in the case of best friends, where we're volunteering, there's not really any money exchanging hands. We are making animals lives better. Right. Even if the. The infrastructure around that is this, like, swirling mess of, like, weirdness and potential cult enos.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: I don't think that we're doing anything that's necessarily supporting ill will or harm.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: We are doing stuff that is supporting animals. And besides, it's beautiful and it's fun to work with animals. I'll say this, though. I'm not gonna buy anything from their gift shop, I don't think, anymore. Yeah, that's a lot.
Kayla: No gift shop. Deaf fogo volunteer, though, because it's awesome.
Chris: Yeah. Plus, they have the kitten room, so.
Kayla: They do have a legit kitten room where you get to just sit there and pet kittens.
Chris: Yeah, that kind of traps everything.
Kayla: Yeah. Let us know what we can do to make this better. Let us know if you have any suggestions for future topics.
Chris: Yeah, we have a whole list, but obviously, suggestions are welcome.
Kayla: You're doing the research next week. Do you know what topic you're doing?
Chris: I don't think we've picked one yet, but we. Again, we have plenty to select from.
Kayla: So do Romtha.
Chris: Sure. What the hell? Let's do Romtha next week.
Kayla: Oh, my God. Are we really gonna do it?
Chris: Oh, boy.
Kayla: Oh, man. We also have a personal connection to that one, so we have to do it now just so people can hear it.
Chris: All right, next week on Culture. Just weird. Romtha.
Kayla: Do we have a sign off?
Chris: No. Let's make one up.
Kayla: What is it?
Chris: This is Chris.
Kayla: This is Kayla signing off and culture.
Chris: Just weird. See you next time.
Kayla: Bye.