4.4 • 15.7K Ratings
🗓️ 26 June 2025
⏱️ 88 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
David Berg starts the 1970s as a wildly popular cult leader and immediately goes insane. Robert walks Ed Helms through the invention of "flirty fishing" AKA prostitution for Jesus and a bunch of other nightmare fuel.
Sources;
Children of God cult was 'hell on earth'
'Children of God': Life and Death of the Messiah
The Children of God: Joaquin Phoenix, Rose McGowan Among Former Members of This Notorious Cult
Murder and Suicide Reviving Claims of Child Abuse in Cult - The New York Times
Life With Grandpa (1985) - more perverse puppetry from The Family International
"Everybody can be happy" - The Luvvets 1980s - The Family International Puppet Show
Treasure Attic: Let's Have Fun
(PDF) Lustful prophet: A psychosexual historical study of the children of God's leader, David Berg.
The Children of God \\ History \ Revolution for Jesus
https://www.xfamily.org/index.php/Main_Page
https://www.xfamily.org/index.php/Flirty_Fishing
https://www.xfamily.org/index.php/Love_bombing0
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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0:00.0 | Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the podcast that you're listening to right now, and this is part two of our episode on David Berg, so you know this is a show about the worst people in all of history. If this is the first episode you're listening to, don't go listen to part one. Don't be be cool like our guest for this week ed helms ed |
0:23.9 | welcome back for part two thank you if it's anything like part one wow yeah it's gonna be a lot |
0:31.8 | wrap in yeah it's gonna be so much worse than part one, Ed. But your podcast, Snafoo, gets better every single season, and you're in season three right now, |
0:43.5 | talking about when the government poisoned a bunch of people during Prohibition, |
0:46.7 | which is also a lot darker, actually, than your season two was. |
0:50.5 | We make it funny. |
0:51.8 | We make it fun. |
0:52.9 | We make it cheeky. |
0:53.8 | But also, it is disturbing on a lot of levels. |
0:58.5 | Highly informative, incredibly fun to listen to it. |
1:01.3 | A deeply immersive, highly produced audio experience. |
1:04.7 | Yeah. |
1:05.2 | About really important history. |
1:07.2 | It's not just people chatting. |
1:08.6 | Yeah. |
1:09.0 | No. |
1:09.6 | It's not just one of those dumb shows people chatting about stuff. |
1:12.6 | Yeah. |
1:13.6 | Not a chatting. |
1:14.6 | It's a, you know, we're all in the same business of like, wow, there's a lot of really dark history people should know. |
1:21.6 | I guess we have to make some jokes so they'll listen to it. |
1:23.6 | Yeah, exactly. |
... |
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