One of my favourite podcasts is Dear Franklin Jones, a seven-episode 2018 production that detailed the narrator’s immersion into, and gradual estrangement from, an American cult led by Franklin Albert Jones (1939-2008)—aka Bubba Free John, aka Da Free John, aka Da Love-Ananda, aka Adi Da Love-Ananda Samraj. As a boy growing up in California, Jonathan Hirsch would listen to recordings of Jones’s speeches, and become mesmerized by his rambling, self-glorifying claims about human destiny. It was only when Hirsch got older that he suspected Jones was just another manipulative narcissist with a gift for exploiting the confused and vulnerable.
The podcast includes snippets from Jones’s recorded sermons. As a listener, you cannot believe that anyone would take his vapid exhortations as the basis for an all-encompassing system of belief. Here’s a small sample, taken from one of the dozens of cassettes that Hirsch found in his family’s storage locker.
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