So hello, I'm Dr. Stephen Hassan, and I'm absolutely delighted and honored to have Dr. Trisha Jenkins

with me today.

Trisha is a podcaster and professor of film, TV, and digital media at TCU in Fort Worth, Texas.

She's the author of three books, including the CIA in Hollywood,

which I received, which looks awesome. But more interestingly, for my audience, you have a brand

new podcast, Trisha, called Worldwide, the Unchosen Church.

And it features stories about growing up in the worldwide church of God, a doomsday

apocalyptic cult.

And Dr. Jenkins, is it okay for me to call you, Trisha, for the rest of the interview?

Absolutely.

Thanks so much.

So this cult was founded by Herbert W. Armstrong.

Uh-huh.

On what year approximately?

So he starts out as a radio broadcaster in the 1930s.

And he dies in 1986.

So for a good 56 years, he's at the helm of the worldwide

Church of God. And this was on ABC on Sunday mornings at some point? Yeah. So one of the reasons that Herbert

W. Armstrong was successful, I think, as a cult leader, was that he was always a very early

media adopter. So he was buying radio time for his ministry in the 1930s, and he enters into

TV in the 1950s. And he does have a television broadcast called The World Tomorrow, which ran actually on Sunday mornings,

which is unusual because we were a sabbatarian church. So we went to church on Saturdays.

...