Sword and scale contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences.

Listener discretion is advised.

That's their logic, right? So they had working bodies, but they decided it was time to leave.

Their bodies got them where they wanted to go, and it was time to depart.

Music their bodies got them where they wanted to go, and it was time to depart. Welcome to Season 4, Episode 86 of Sword and Scale,

a show that reveals that the worst monsters are real.

You know, there's something inside of us that longs for acceptance and reaches out for community.

Perhaps it's part of our evolution, something that helped our descendants survive the horrors of nature, generation after generation.

This tribalism, which undoubtedly kept our ancestors

alive, doesn't seem to have changed much in thousands, if not tens of thousands of years.

We still long to be part of a group. We still segregate ourselves into communities. We still

exhibit the same tribal mentality. and it's all too apparent

nowadays in the age of social media. We've seen it again and again, whether the tribes are based

on sports or politics, gender, race, or religion. The problem with tribalism is that all too often the individual is lost.

A cult-like mentality develops where members lose any semblance of independent critical thought

and simply believe whatever the leader tells them to believe, whatever their leader wants them

to believe.

Something like this occurred a few decades ago with a group that called themselves Heaven's Gate.

And exactly 20 years ago, on March 26, 1997, it resulted in the willing suicides of 39 of its

members.

We're joined by Benjamin E. Zeller, Associate Professor of Religion

at Lake Forest College, and author of the book Heaven's Gate, America's UFO Religion.

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