Flightless Bird: Waco

I'm David Farrier, a New Zealander accidentally marooned in America, and I want to figure out what makes this country tick. Now, I'm the first to admit this show covers a lot of ground, from soft drinks to toilets, circumcision to flags. And what's becoming increasingly obvious to me is something incredibly obvious America is very big and very confusing. I was reminded of this when I found myself in Texas recently for another episode of Flightless Bird.

The cult, actually called or known as the Branch Davidians, is an offshoot of the Seventh Day Adventist Church.

This year marks 30 years since the Waco siege, when federal officers, law enforcement and the military raided the compound occupied by the Branch Davidians. It didn't go well. The Branch Davidians had guns up the Wazoo and fought back, leading to a 51-day siege, which saw 82 church members or cult members killed, along with four ATF agents. Bullets flew back and forth, shit blew up and shit caught fire. And now I've found myself in Waco, where I got to thinking, what happened to the branch Davidians after all that went down?

I wish you had, Yeah, what? Well, let's end this episode. I don't want to do this episode anymore.

Can you explain to me Magnolia Kitchen or the Empire? It's these two reality stars that won a competition and now-.

Chip and Joanna Gaines.

Chip and Joanna, You talk about this like they're best friends. Yeah, Chip and Joanna.

I know them okay, I mean, I don't, but I want to.

But they are America's darlings.

Yeah, I don't think it's Magnolia kitchen.

I know nothing Magnolia-.

And don't say Magnolia bakery, that's not what it is.

That's something else.

Yeah, that's a bakery.

Magnolia Market.

Magnolia Network.

It's just magnolia, it's magnolia.

Yeah, what is it?

It's this couple and they have all these cute kids. They had a show on HGTV.

What's HGTv HGTv?

Oh my god.

Hey, I'm learning, I'm here to learn. Is it like a home renovation vibe? Okay?

The whole channel is home stuff.

Okay.

It's a great channel.

And what made them cut through? Because obviously they're huge, because they, from what I understand, they've transformed Waco into this whole other thing.

Exactly, yeah. So they had just this regular show and they renovated houses. They have a great aesthetic, it's very farmhouse American.

Okay, all American, yeah.

And it's very pleasing to most people, it draws in a lot of audience, a big old audience.

Yeah, right, right, right, right.

But then they show their kids. So I think that's a thing that also drew a lot of people in is, oh, this kind of picture perfect family. And they go, and he's the muscly man who tears down the house, he does construction, and she designs.

What a perfect union, what a perfect partnership, okay?

All right, everyone loves beauty.

Well, everyone, because when I went to the Dr. Pepper Museum, the Dr. Pepper Museum said. Since they have moved into town, the foot traffic to the Dr. Pepper Museum is through the roof, just because everyone's coming to town for them. So my point is, I'm sorry because I know you would have quite liked that topic.

Because I love design.

It did seem it's a bit culty as well, though, isn't it? I don't want to draw comparisons between the branch Davidians and Magnolia, please don't, but people love Magnolia. So it's that family unit. Man and woman, cute kids. I'll build the house, I'll pop the kitchen in. Boom.

I don't want to say they're culty.

No, I mean, they're definitely not culty. But I was just thinking, there's two things in this town that kind of define it for me. Or three, if you include the Dr. Pepper Museum.

I mean, I'll be honest, when I first hear Waco, for me, the very first thought is Chip and Joanna.

Yeah, right, Chip and Joanna.

And then very quickly, I go to the cult because all their renovation is in Waco, I think, or surrounding areas.

Yeah, maybe I can go back there and do an episode on them at some point.

Yeah.

But as far as today's episode about the branch Davidians-.

Taylor Kitsch.

Yeah, what?

Taylor Kitsch played Koresh.

Oh, I still haven't seen it, it's good.

It's really good, yeah, one of the Culkin brothers, too, is in it, yeah.

Where can I watch this documentary that I probably should have watched before? I? It's not a doc.

Yeah, it's a series.

Oh, it's a series. Yeah, okay, that explains why those people are in it.

It's getting exciting.

Remember how you're a documentarian and you should know what a doc is.

Yeah, I forget sometimes about these things. Sure, okay, so just to set the stage. What are your thoughts on cults in general? Are you pro anti? have you been a member of one?

Okay, I'm going to go on record saying I'm anti-cult, okay?

Good to point that out, however,-.

Oh, here comes the butt. I do believe that I have been involved in cult-like systems-.

Yeah, right.

That aren't cults.

Cult adjacent.

Cult adjacent.

Soul Cycle?

Correct.

Yeah.

Also UCB. I mean, these are things I love, so I'm not dissing them. But they have cult-like quality strategies, although, can we define it? This is like sandwiches, we need to define a cult.

Yeah, my understanding of a cult is where primarily you've got to have one person up top that is telling everyone what to do, so that's super important. Okay, like one leader that has mental and physical control over you.

Oh, okay.

That means so it's a stretch. But soul cycle. It's that idea of when a whole lot of people get together and are so obsessed and all starting to work in unison. And they talk-.

Like group think.

Yeah, group think, and I come from a church background, so that's a bit culty. In parts, you've got your main guy that you're all listening to and a certain control over you. And certainly in L.A. I feel like there's cults all around us all the time, that we don't even clock. Probably, yeah.

Okay, I like the definition that there's one or maybe two people controlling.

Yeah, it's really defined.

So I'm going to take UCB off of that table because that's not the case. However, it's still that mentality of everyone kind of speaks the same language, it's group think you're obsessed with it. You'll defend it till the end.

Yeah, it becomes everything you are, and then it becomes really hard to leave. Yeah, and inevitably it's a male leader, usually, right, because that's males want power.

Now do we think these men start the cult with that knowledge?

Yeah, I wonder, my feeling as a man is that you would maybe get into it thinking you were doing some good? Yeah. But then, as you figure out that you do have all this control and people idolize you, inevitably you just end up wanting to have sex with everyone.

Fucking yeah.

Horrific. It's just like, so-.

Men are so basic.

We are real basic, but it's an amazing thing. It's not just about money. Inevitably, there'll always be some sort of sexual thing. It's so gross and basic.

If you had a cult, what would you call it?

I mean, I'm kind of annoyed that these guys are called the branch Davidians, because that's like, it's not Davidians. It's like, my name's in there, I think that's kind of cool.

Oh, I didn't even get that.

Yeah, so I always thought naively, until this episode, that it was Drividians. I'd pronounced it that way my whole life, but it's yet Davidians. Okay, they love David.

You have no interest in starting your own.

No, I think these guys have modeled a good system.

If I had a cult, my minions would be called monions.

I love when you amuse yourself.

I love this would be called lily pads.

Lily Pads.

Or Monion? I mean, now I like both.

What's the lily pad?

Lily's my middle name.

Oh, Lily's your middle name.

And my last name's Padman.

Oh, I get it. Yeah, oh, that's really nice, I love that for you.

And it sounds nature-based, but I actually don't care about nature.

We've talked about this.

So I'll lure people in thinking, it's, you know-.

Not environmentally sound at all. Philanthropic. Yeah, yeah. What would your focus be?

I'd start off wanting to help fashion advice.

Okay, that's cool.

And then, ultimately, I would get drunk on power.

You would, you'd end up fucking everyone in there. Well, with that in mind, let's trundle off to WACO, Texas. Great and my journey into branch, divity and life.

Fresh chopped brisket on the board.

Most importantly, the gas station also boasts the cleanest bathrooms in America, with limited gaps in their cubicles. I'll return to Buc-ee's for a future episode, but this is the Waco episode and I needed to get to Waco.

How many gunshots did you hear?

It was quite a few.

You know, I couldn't really say how many it was, but he knew it was something that.

Wasn't normal.

I've always been sort of fascinated with what kicked off back on February 28th, 1993.

Hello, how are you?

Am I able to walk up? I'm from New Zealand, I didn't even know where I. It's nice to meet you, I'm David.

We had some people from New Zealand, Australia here, you know that, right? Oh, really.

Yeah, we're part of this. The woman in the car is really friendly, and she tells me there were some Kiwi members of the branch, Davidians back then, and says, I'm more than welcome. Here, she says. I can visit the church, which doubles as a kind of museum. To the raid, she points at a house and says, I should go talk to a man called Charles.

Yes, my name is Charles Pace, I'm the manager of Branch Davidian Memorial Park and Church.

Charles Pace is in a wheelchair and he's got a week's worth of stubble on his face. He tells me he's been a branch Davidian since 1973 and an ordained minister since 1980, and that, yes, the branch Davidians still exist and are still here. One of his eyes is glazed over, and as he looks at me through the other eye, the first thing he tells me is that I remind him of another David.

You look very much like David Koresh, you have the glasses, the eyes, the nose and the beard and the hair. Awesome.

I'm not so sure, it is awesome. Koresh was big into polygamy, and some former branch Davidians say he fathered at least 15 children with various women, some of them underage. At the compound, he was obsessed with the apocalypse and held a giant level of control over church members. And overall, I'm not sure I love the comparison.

Well, we are believers in Jesus Christ as our Messiah, our Creator and Redeemer. But we have learned that his new name is branch, and branch in Hebrew means son or daughter. We have a 364-day calendar that Enoch used to keep, so we go by that, but we do keep the feasts of the Lord on the days of the different months.

For some context, there would be no branch Davidians without the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, a denomination of Christianity. Seventh-day Adventists first appeared 160 years ago. In Michigan. Starting with about 3,000 members, today, there are about 19 million of them worldwide. The Seventh-day Adventists with whom their name has been associated, this sect has disavowed.

Any connection with these folks? Is that correct?

Yes, indeed, as I mentioned at the top of the live shot, they broke away from the Seventh-day Adventist church. It is an offshoot, but it is not in any way associated with that well-known organization.

Back in 1935, there was a spinoff from the Seventh-day adventists, who called themselves the Davidians. Two years later, when the founder died, there was a battle for power, and that's when another spinoff happened. The Branch Davidians The branch Davidians loved the name David, mainly King David from the Bible. They thought the apocalypse was coming very, very soon and that would lead to an entire kingdom of Davids. Which, to be honest, sounded pretty good to me. Then, in 1981, another David came along, David Koresh.

I see him as a martyr, I see him as a man that believed that he was actually called of God to take men's wives. To become an apostate, because we never believed in polygamy, we never believed in having guns, but he had to become an apostate.

All of David's guns and wives, mainly the guns, led to the government taking an interest.

They wanted to make David Koresh the scapegoat, so they started demonising him on the media, saying he's raping the women and molesting the children. But he was willing because he knew that they were going to massacre him. He knew it from the prophecy God had to raise an army, the government had to come in here, because that's what the prophecy says.

There's very little doubt that what took place here 30 years ago had some major implications for the man in front of me and for America. Because as more information about how the siege went down came to light, many began to see it as a massive overreach by the government and law enforcement. I've been watching old clips from the time and even the neighbours back then were a bit bamboozled.

Despite the tragedy, Xander says he doesn't mind having the cult members as neighbours.

If they mind their own business and we mind our own, they've got a right to be there, too.

And so, for many, WACO showed that maybe the government had too much power. It gave various militia groups the evidence that proved what they already thought, that the government was prepared to attack its own citizens with tear gas, guns and tanks. And as I talked to Charles Pace, I realised that what happened at Waco has sent him down a pretty big rabbit hole.

So God orchestrated this to get people's attention worldwide on what David Koresh had done. But now they're finding out why he did it. It was for the children's sake. And we see that's what's bringing down the cabal, it's what they've done, these crimes against humanity.

Apparently, David Koresh wanted to bring down the cabal, because, apparently, Koresh thought that his old nemesis, the hatchet-throwing George Rodin, had used his time as branch Davidian leader to turn the site into some kind of human-trafficking hotspot. In cahoots with the likes of Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein.

Holding the women and children hostage and using them as sex slaves for the clients that they had, who were senators, lawyers, judges, businessmen. Not only in the WACO area, but from all over the world. Because I believe Jeffrey Epstein had a hand in this as well. He was in the sidelines, giving them addresses where they could sell the women and children internationally. So what David Koresh found was a cache of child pornography, pictures and tapes that he found here on the property. When he came back and he was basically saying, this is what George Rodin ended up doing. He was recruited by these people, and he turned the church property into a gun-running, gun-manufacturing, human-trafficking, you know, child pornography.

It all gets quite intense. I've cut this whole conversation down quite a lot.

Well, the adrenochrome is a hormone that comes out of the adrenal glands. Of these children that are scared to death or raped to death, they have to be completely scared. What they end up doing because it's a satanic ritual is they, you know, eat them.

And so basically, what I'm being told, if I understand it right, is that the death of David Koresh did two things. Number one, it fulfilled a prophecy, which was a good thing for the branch Davidians. But it also allowed the government to cover up some kind of child porn. Ring simple.

So they committed a crime against humanity to cover their crimes against humanity here at Mount Carmel. Because he was going to expose them, he was going to tell everything that he found, that they didn't want him to, so they demonized him and murdered him. They didn't know who knew about it and who didn't, so they killed them all. And they not only burned the place down, made sure that the fire trucks didn't come and put it out because they wanted it all completely burned down.

So, yeah, pretty intense. Did you follow any of that?

Yeah, but this is a hard one because every other second I want to talk.

Yeah, it's a lot, it's a lot. Okay, so from the top, yeah, buckies.

So Buckies is not a gas station.

What is it?

It's a store.

I thought it started as a gas station and then got bigger. It's like they kept expanding the wheel, but maybe it was never that.

Maybe, Rob, look up the origin, maybe it started as a gas station.

But you wouldn't call it a gas station, now it's a convenience store.

Travel centers is what they call themselves.

Travel center.

Okay, so.

It was amazing, no, I loved it.

Well, we go way back with Buckies, Rob me, Dax and Jess. We drove from Austin to Dallas. This is like one of our first forays into live shows, and we drove by a Buckies. None of us knew about Buckies, so we were pretty intrigued. Jess said it in a really funny way, and then we just were making them say it over and over, and over again.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, it is incredible. They've got that beaver as a mascot, it's huge in there, there's like a deli in there.

That's so surprising that that happened to you. I'm so shocked you normally have such good willpower against sugar.

Yeah, no, it was amazing. So okay. So it's a store.

So the guy that opened it, his grandparents, owned a gas station, so he's got gas station roots.

Gas station adjacent, so I'm not completely mad, okay, but it's more store than gas station.

I would.

Okay.

Okay, branch Davidians.

Yeah, well, how do you feel about the conversation I'm having with the leader so far? He's a pretty intense guy, a lot of ideas bouncing around in that noggin.

A lot of ideas. I feel real angry. I didn't know Adrenochrome went way back.

It was interesting. It was one of those conversations that you get into sometimes, where it kind of starts in a bit of reality. And as you talk, things just spiral into a whole other place. And it's also a dissonance. He was so nice.

He's not belittling him at all, and I hear that as he still considers him a big, good part.

You're right, and when you go in there, there is a big monument and his name's up on there. And some of the other leaders. And you're also on the grounds where this raid happened. And it was huge, I didn't clock the size of the whole thing.

Right?

Hundreds and hundreds of agents. I mean, that's the interesting thing as well, because David Koresh was clearly a terrible person. But also the way it was handled was also so out of control and insane. And, you know, kids got killed.

Oh God, I mean, this is a slippery topic, honestly.

Oh, chaos all around, and I also know so little about the context of all this stuff.

Yeah, I think if they knew that he had all those weapons, which they did right by the time the raid happened, they had intel.

You had a lot of weapons. Yeah, I think they were still surprised by the number, but they needed to do something, or did they?

No, they did. There's kids and all these women. It is illegal, it's illegal in America to have multiple wives.

Yeah.

So regardless of what else he's doing, he's breaking the law there.

Oh, there's plenty of reasons to get involved. There was a lot of. There was former members had come out by that point. And there were stories of some of his wives were underage. There was the guns.

Exactly.

Stay tuned for more Flightless bird. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

I am not normally one to defend law enforcement, but I'm going to do it here. If you know that you're walking into a scenario where there's a cult leader with 300 guns, you better come prepared with a whole bunch of shit you have to. The branch. Davidians put the law enforcement in that position, in my opinion.

No, totally. I'd love to see a scenario play out where the raid went smoothly because the thing that's so crazy. I mean, I just don't think they expected that many guns to be that embedded. Yeah, I mean, what do you do with a cult leader?

Right, and it depends on what's happening in that car.

Totally a hundred percent.

If a child is being kidnapped in that car, I want them to chase that car down and help. But then, yeah, then what someone would say is, and then they killed the kid.

Totally, yeah. Does the chase itself make the situation even worse, much more escalated? And that's like a debate that I feel is happening in every....

Yeah, it's so tricky because you're dealing with irrational people here and brainwashed people, and that's a very deep psychological pursuit. Like, it's not like you're chasing you down the street, you'd probably stop.

I'd like to think I probably would thanks so much for really giving me...

But these are not people in that headspace, so you can't really think of it in the same way. I don't know.

No, a hundred percent. I don't know how you negotiate with the cults. it seems like a difficult job, and yeah, they obviously didn't manage to negotiate.

Did they try?

I think they tried, there was negotiations the whole way through, right? They were trying to get Koresh to let cult members out, right?

How did you feel about being compared? That made me feel awful.

It felt pretty icky. Yeah, I'm not a big David Koresh fan and that felt bad and but he was just being nice, you know? It's like someone saying, someone else saying, Oh, you remind me of, like, Brad Pitt.

Did he know him personally?

Like, was he part of the branch? No, no, no, there was an overlap there, so it's not like he was buddies, but his teachings.

I was going to ask, is the reason his eye? because he got shot?

Oh no, well, no, that's the thing I was wondering about because he was, he'd obviously physically been through some stuff and I was wondering the whole time. An awkward thing to bring up, like, Were you here during the siege?

He was converted by the siege.

He was just he'd always been into one of the offsets of the Seventh Day adventists, and when he sort of heard about all this happening. And some people, when they saw what happened, did side in a way with the cult. But just because of the overreach is this idea of, like, the overreach of the government, like, it's that whole thing, that whole thing, so like, certain people reacted to that.

Yeah.

Yeah, maybe Charles senses me turning out a bit from the conspiracy theory stuff. But he tells me he has some work to do and urges me to go and check out that church where he gives a sermon every Sunday. He points to a building in the distance.

This is what I teach here at Mount Carmel, and people come two to three hundred a week and I get to tell them about David Koresh.

Charles says the church doubles as a kind of museum and says I can learn more about the truth of the 1993 siege. And so I leave Charles's house and walk around the grounds a little. I see a giant marble memorial with the names of all the leaders I've been learning about. There's the founder of the Seventh Day Adventists, there's the founder of the first spinoff, The Davidians.

Well, we knew about the history, that's why we came by. My family is from Waukesha Hatchie, which is about 60 miles away, and I've never been here. I've actually not been here since about 30 years around when this happened.

We start looking around the church, there's a stage, a pulpit and a projector, normal church stuff. A Bible sits on a chair, but all around the walls, a chaotic assortment of images taped to the wall.

Well, I like history, so this is like a museum feel and I don't remember, so these pictures are very interesting. So you see the compound intact.

And what was it like being in America? Because I was in New Zealand and tiny when that was happening as a kid, what was it like hearing that on the news, and what do you remember feeling then?

Well, because I have Texas roots, it gave me more interest. And I'm an educator, a college professor, and at that time we talked about it. In my college course, I had a business course.

I leave the church and walk out into the sunlight. The grounds here are sprawling, but I'm not quite sure what this land is used for. Few cows here, the tractor and the grass.

I just I'm target practice, I got a flintlock rifle here too, I shoot.

I guess this is the perfect area for target practice. It's quiet, empty. And the F.BI lost interest decades ago. What was your name, sir?

Yeah, jim.

Jim, it's your, I'm David.

I'm a neighbor, I'm a neighbor. I live a half a mile from here, and I was 41 years old at the time.

So you are not a branch to videoing yourself. Jim tells me his friend was the first to die in the raid.

Yeah, I had two friends that lived here, I didn't know Koresh and all the other people I knew. Two fellows and their name were Jones, a Perry Jones and a David Jones, and Perry Jones was the elder of the building.

It's a strange conversation to be having on a nice, sunny, warm day. And while Jim keeps telling me he has to go and pick up his wife and can't talk to me much longer, he just keeps on talking. And as I'm getting used to today, things take on a slightly conspiratorial tone.

I was shooting rifle matches. I'm shooting four rifle matches a week at those matches. Some of the Texas Highway patrol would show up. Well. They found out that I live near here. One of them said, Hey man, I have my picture made during the fire.

You've been so generous. Go and pick up your wife. I think I really appreciate you stopping with me.

You're welcome.

Jim drives off and I think it's probably about time for me to drive off, too. I'm sort of blown away that after all that's happened here, the branch Davidians still exist. Their stance seems to be that, David Koresh said, and did some bad things. But that was so he could become a martyr and see one of their prophecies come true, which would mean God would come back sooner. All totally normal stuff.

Well, what makes it good is that there's a reawakening going on with the patriots. And they want to take back the republic under God, and they want to bring down the cabal or the deep state. Yes, it's a good place.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about this place, the memorial?

They believe we're a cult, but I never worshipped David Koresh. We worshipped the son of God, whose name is Branch in Hebrew.

The Branch Davidians here to stay, apparently fans of branch, fans of the name David.

The man was.

I leave Charles to his day, he's upset, and he has this week's sermon to prepare. What happened here inspired countless TV shows, documentaries, books and investigations. It changed the way lots of America thought about their government and what the boundary is between church and cult. There's a lot of information and confusion when it comes to exactly what went down here over those 51 days back in 1993. And that's led to a whole lot of baseless conspiracy theories.

Terror raids the land.

To ashes, we'll be sent in the name of God, lives cast away in the name of God. We're all dead. I keep driving, driving away from this very strange part of America's story.

It's funny until you let it sink in that. That's a real person who really believes these things, and there are many.

Yeah, it felt rough, it felt pretty bleak.

That is so upsetting.

Well, he preaches to 200 to 300 people a week.

I feel like he was exaggerating the number.

That doesn't seem possible.

But yeah, it was a really weird place to be. The atmosphere of the place was very quiet, there wasn't even really any birdsong or anything like that. It was all very quiet. And things like. That pool that was in complete disrepair, bits of a bus sticking up from under the grass that had been buried, little hints of what was there before.

He was more than saying, he's all right, he was crying over him.

And people don't often cry, so to have someone cry about this, it is a lot. Ultimately, what it boils down to is David Koresh terrible human, pretty weird. That branch Dravidians, still even happy to call themselves branch Davidians. Most people would be like, Oh, that got a bit out of hand, let's drop it.

But their narrative is they got a bit out of hand because of the government.

I mean, that's what sucks, that you've got a cult leader. And all these kids and young people drawn in who are then stuck there. I know they can't get away. And then, due to bad communication, the raid didn't go great and it all just escalated into horrificness.

Uh, and I mean, the kid part is so devastating.

It's horrific. Yeah, I mean, it's literally they were trapped in there, like David wouldn't let them leave, yeah.

And they aren't choosing any of these decisions. And one thing I do agree with the professor, that I don't think you should just blindly believe. Oh, of course, not. What you're reading, what you've been told, even if it's from something you trust. It's nice to have multiple sources. I sign on to that.

Leaps and leaps and leaps.

It's the government's fault, but also he knew it, he was supposed to die all along because it was the prophecy. But also it was the government's fault, even though they planned this for the government. Like, what?

I mean, what? I played there, we talked for a couple of hours and what I played was like the most distilled version. The loops and the convoluted storytelling to try and justify what had happened. And it's still being okay to be part of that particular religion, or a.k.a. cult. It's a strange thing to listen to.

Yeah, and it is a reminder that people, regardless of your ideology, you need other people. They want companions. That's how these cults happen. It's a fast track into friendship, really, and companionship.

Well, it's community.

Yeah.

It's what we all want, right?

Fine line between community and cult.

Yeah, and it's funny because everyone I met, like, honestly, people driving through. I didn't meet anyone there who was like, Yeah, this is fucking crazy. Everyone had slightly bought into it, or had friends that were involved and all had this conspiratorial extra. Bodies were being dumped or moved, or various things set up. Everything around Mount Carmel just can't get away from all that shit.

I didn't even understand that rationale. Why would the government be bringing in more bodies if the government's in trouble in the first place for having all these people dead at the end of it?

I'm not even going to try and pretend to answer the logic of any of that.

They're claiming to be victims of the government, killing them, but also the government's planning bodies.

I think extra bodies just to make it look worse, like maybe bringing in some more bodies.

But the government wouldn't want it to look worse.

That plays up more to the sympathy of the cult.

Yeah.

Yeah, moving, what? moving bodies around to make it-.

Or they're trying to make David look more evil?

More evil, like where he set the fire and move more bodies towards the compound or something, oh my god, something like that.

The logic breaks down a little bit.

Quickly, I mean, everything breaks down.

I think when you end up talking to someone that's talking about people eating babies, the logic's mostly gone. So, yeah, that was the uplifting Waco episode.

That was heavy.

But we'll go back for Magnolia, which will be a different tone, that'll be nice and maybe Bucky's.

Yeah.

I don't like, but I am fascinated by these really specific pockets that exist me too. I like that you can drive in and have a chat to them. It's an interesting thing. If that had happened in my particular cult, I would definitely drop it.

If that happens to the Monians.

It's going to strain our friendship, I think it'll be difficult, it'll be difficult.

You don't think we can come back from that.

It'd be hard.

I mean, look, I don't foresee how this is going to happen in a fashion cult, but you never know.

No, you never know, give your fashion cult a few years and you never know where it's going to end up. But yeah, I like to think, maybe in this episode. I've become less American, because I don't want to think it made me more American. Because it makes me feel like then I'm into cults or something.

No, but I think you learned about a big American incident. So in some ways.

Yeah, I did.

That makes you more American.

I'm more American.

Yeah, I'm going to give you some points.

Thank you. We will have a less death involved episode next time.

It was good, I didn't know a lot of that stuff, so that was.

It was a trip.

Yeah, all right. Well, have a great day.

Good luck with your cult.

All right, we're rolling on, important Adam.

Okay, just so everyone knows. We wrapped this episode, moved on to record something completely different, did some ads, and then I remembered I had something really important to say.

Okay, about Waco?

Yeah.

Okay.

I'm wearing cowboy boots today.

You are.

And I never wear cowboy boots. And we're doing an episode on WACO that's Sim.

This is a stretch.

So you looked down and saw your boots.

And said, Rob, open up the session again, we're going back in. Well, why don't you just march yourself into the branch to video and sign up?

It's another ding, ding, ding because of my fashion cult. Oh my God, it's everywhere.

Shut that session down, Rob.

So if you want to join Monica's fashion cult, go follow her at M.L. Padman on Instagram. Thank you.

I think you're a manian. That was really good.

They're good boots.