The Jonestown Massacre of 1978 (Episode 16)

Content Warning: this episode concerns an act of extreme violence: mass murder and mass suicide, including the murder of children. Please feel free to skip this episode if that's going to be hard for you to hear.

In this episode, we examine the life of American cult leader and mass murderer Jim Jones. We'll take a look at his strong beliefs in racial equality, and how this promising beginning descended into drug addiction, cultism, paranoia, power, and violence as we attempt to answer the question: how dangerous can blind faith be? As we learn from the events at Jonestown, Guyana, on November 18 1978 - if that faith is placed in the wrong person, it can be very dangerous indeed. 

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Partial sources for this episode include:

"Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones and His People", T. Reiterman and J. Jacobs, 1982

"Affidavit of Deborah Layton Blakey", "Transcript of Recovered FBI tape Q 642", and "Transcript of Recovered FBI tape Q 1053" , The Jonestown Project, San Diego State University, consulted 2021

Recording of FBI tape Q 042, "Death Tape", wikimedia commons, consulted 2021

"Father Cares", NPR audio documentary, 1981

"Jonestown FBI Files", Internet Archive, consulted 2021