484 - The King of Beaver Island

Timesuck with Dan Cummins

Dan Cummins

Cults, True Crime, Adult Humor, Religion, Conspiracies, Society & Culture, Education, History, Conspiracy, Biographies, Comedy, Dark Humor

4.8 • 22.4K Ratings

🗓️ 8 December 2025

⏱️ 150 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You read that title right. Are you familiar with the story of James Strang? A blatant con artist who converted to Mormonism shortly before Joseph Smith's assassination who used a forged letter and some "discovered" brass plates to establish himself as Smith's legitimate heir, and then convinced hundreds of followers to move to Beaver Island in Lake Michigan where they crowned him king in 1850 and formed a small army that included pirates? This true story is wonderfully bonkers. Hail Nimrod!

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, do you remember that one time when a band of rogue Mormons who decided not to follow
0:04.3	Brigham Young to Utah, instead followed a young lawyer from upstate New York who dreamed
0:08.5	as a teen of being a world leader on par with Napoleon Bonaparte and Julius Caesar to a place
0:13.5	called Beaver Island in Lake Michigan, where he would be crowned king in a low rent coronation
0:18.4	ceremony, then forced existing island inhabitants to either
0:21.7	convert and pay him as the resident prophet or be forced to leave the island?
0:26.6	Remember when this guy's followers became lake pirates and raided local fishermen's bounties
0:30.9	and attacked people along the shore as far away as Milwaukee? No? Well, do I have one hell
0:36.7	of a tale waiting for you then? The insane true story of
0:40.1	James Strang, King James of Beaver Island, a man who really did run a little kingdom that lived
0:45.9	by their own laws on an island inside America's borders for years, right here, right now,
0:52.0	on this part historical, part cult, cult, cult edition of TimeSuck.
0:58.0	This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to TimeSuck.
1:02.6	You're listening to TimeSuck.
1:17.7	Happy. Happy Monday and welcome or welcome back to the cult of the curious.
1:19.0	I'm Dan Cummins.
1:19.9	Sir sucks a lot.
1:24.2	Former mocha addict, current sugar addict, probably actual work addict.
1:26.2	And you are listening to TimeSuck.
1:28.6	Hail Nimrod, Hail Lucifina, praise me to good boy Bojangles, and Glory B to Triple M. I'm so excited to share the story with you. I laughed
1:35.2	so many times while getting this ready to record over the past few days. It is so delightfully absurd.
1:50.4	We're heading back to the land of Mormonism for this one.
	...

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