Hi there, I'm Jason Gots, and you're listening to Think Again, a Big Think podcast.

In New York City, where we all live in little boxes on top of one another,

Ignore Thy Neighbor is a reasonable coping strategy. Live and let live, right? To each her own.

That works pretty well,

for the most part, but what's the tipping point at which thy neighbor becomes simply too

numerous, too loud, too different to ignore? I'd submit that whoever you are, wherever you

locate yourself on that spectrum of tolerance, you too have your limit. In the mid-1980s, a group of people in Oregon

discovered their tipping point when a massive commune moved in next door. The Bhagwan Sri Rashneesh

and thousands of his followers decided to build a city in the middle of nowhere, a utopia on

earth. Only, it was the middle of somewhere for the mostly white, mostly Christian

residents of a tiny nearby town.

It was home.

And like most humans, they weren't too excited about the idea of radical, unexpected change

in their own backyard.

I, on the other hand, am very excited to be here today with the Way brothers, Chaplin and

McLean.

They're the directors of the fabulous Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country,

which tells the very American story of this clash of cultures. There's God, guns, sex,

and mutually exclusive concepts of liberty. Like I said, it's about as American as it gets.

Welcome to think again. Thanks for everyone on, Jason. We appreciate it.

So, I mean, first of all, after watching Wild Wild Country, I was a child of the 80s,

and I realized that the only way I knew about the Rush Nishis was from, I think, Bloom County.

...