Part One: Bishop David E. Taylor: Jesus Christ's Best Friend

Summary

Behind the Bastards: Part One – Bishop David E. Taylor: Jesus Christ’s Best Friend

Podcast: Behind the Bastards
Date: October 28, 2025
Host: Brett (Robert) Evans Weinstein
Guest: Jake Hanrahan (Sad Oligarch)

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Episode Overview

This episode pulls back the curtain on Bishop David E. Taylor and his cult, known as the Kingdom of God/ Joshua Media Ministries International (JMMI). Host Brett Weinstein and guest Jake Hanrahan explore how Taylor transformed from the son of a Memphis Baptist preacher to the self-proclaimed “best friend” of Jesus Christ—and how he led a multi-state organization characterized by slave labor, manipulation of the vulnerable, and outlandish claims of supernatural powers. The episode combines grim humor, skepticism, and a cold appraisal of Taylor’s exploits, with a focus on cult structure, recruitment, and the social techniques of manipulation.

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Key Points & Discussion

1. Authoritarian Drift & Cultic Thinking in Modern Society

• Opening chat: Brett and Jake reflect on rising authoritarianism in the US and UK. They point out how cult-like, authoritarian behaviors are seeping into mainstream life.
• Quote:
  “It’s actually really boring. Like, it’s just happening and that’s it.” – Jake Hanrahan (01:50)
  “I think it’s almost a mistake to purely couch it in terms of fascism. Part of what’s going on is a growth in sort of, like, cultic behavior and cultic abuse techniques becoming normalized across the political spectrum.” – Brett Weinstein (03:45)

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2. The Kingdom of God Cult – FBI Bust & Initial Digging

• New cult to the hosts, recently subject to a major multi-state FBI raid.
• Previously unknown except for internal criticism from other charismatic Christian groups.
• “These guys are really… this is just a pure cult. Right? And when you’re getting called out by other members of that chunk of Christianity, you really have to be going hog wild on the stealing people’s money stuff.” – Brett (10:28)

Key Details:

• FBI discovered at least 57 people forced to work for the cult in slave labor conditions (food and shelter withheld if they didn’t meet work requirements).
• Notable: The labor was primarily operating a call center—effectively enslaved telemarketers (11:42-12:08).
• Sexual trafficking of female members by the cult leader.
• Organization leveraged sophisticated online stalking to identify and recruit vulnerable people, not just broad-based scamming.

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3. Cynicism, Facebook, and Digital Recruitment

• Discussion about Facebook and other social media as enabling environments for cult recruitment and personal harm (13:02-13:55).
• Quote:
  “I would love to know what percentage of [Facebook’s] profits is just a mix of inciting little kids to have eating disorders and directing people into cults.” – Brett (13:25)

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4. Origins of David E. Taylor

• Born 1972, Memphis. Seventh of nine children in a devout Baptist family.
• Influenced by his father’s heroic act (stopping an armed robbery as a young pastor).
• Claims of a wild youth: “gang life,” drug dealers, and a miraculous encounter at 17 when Jesus visited him in a dream.
• Brett and Jake call out the implausibility and performative aspect of his “bad boy” narrative:
  • “I love that he went from swearing to drug lords. Like, mate, fuck, swearing to drug lords.” – Jake (21:19)
  • “It sounds like the kid at school that's like, oh, yeah… you probably fucking haven't.” – Jake (22:01)

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5. The “Face-to-Face” Meeting with Jesus

• Taylor reports a highly eroticized account of meeting Jesus, using language of ecstasy, physical sensation, and “blistering with a static eruption.” (25:07-26:15)
• Jake and Brett riff on the overtly sexual undertones of the description.
• “That's a guy who wants to fuck Jesus, right?” – Brett (26:15)
• The pattern of cult leaders inventing intense conversion stories and supernatural encounters to justify authority.

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6. Taylor’s Path: The Cult Leader Script

• Taylor describes Jesus instructing him to cut off his best friend—a classic high-control group tactic.
• Quote:
  “You can’t truly follow Jesus and maintain worldly relationships or friendships you once had. You must be willing to give up your best friend if Jesus requires you to.” – Taylor, paraphrased by Brett (35:03)
• Brett notes the boldness: Taylor puts cult-control words directly in Jesus’s mouth.
• Comparison with other cult founders (Joseph Smith, L. Ron Hubbard) and their flair for creative mythmaking.

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7. Rise Through Charismatic Christianity

• Transition from Baptist roots to Pentecostalism under Bishop G.E. Patterson (a leading figure in that world).
• By the late ‘90s and 2000s, Taylor claims to have had over 150 face-to-face visitations from Jesus, and made big—usually false—prophecies involving Russia, 9/11, and American doom (43:04-44:29).
• Brett and Jake lampoon the vagueness and falsity of these prophecies—“if you throw enough shit at the wall, some of it’s going to stick.” (44:29)

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8. Cult Growth, Awards, and the “Best Friend of Jesus” Title

• The cult’s main work: 24/7 call center, outreach, relentless donation-seeking, and property hoarding (spread across multiple states).
• Taylor receives the Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award (from Obama)—but, as Brett explains, it’s a largely meaningless and easily self-nominated honor (53:26-54:41).
• Taylor’s church describes him as “Best Friend of Jesus Christ”—a branding decision both Jake and Brett find darkly comic.
  • “I am an apostle and the best friend of Jesus Christ.” – Brett, summarizing Taylor (56:20)

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9. Cult Operations: Call Centers, Lies, and the Preying on Desperate People

• The call center is the lifeblood of the cult—workers are unpaid, forced to shill for donations, and threatened with expulsion/homelessness if not productive.
• Members must sign over their money and property, isolate from non-believing friends and family, and work ceaselessly “for the great heavenly harvest."
  • “You can't do that [save 7 billion souls] by having people come into a physical church. 7 billion is a lot of people. There's only one way… The call center.” – Brett (59:20)
• The sales pitch is targeted at the most desperate and vulnerable—people at risk, ill, or in dire financial straits.
• Workers instructed to tell callers that donations would go to building wells/fighting human trafficking—when in reality it funds Taylor’s luxurious lifestyle.

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10. “Miracles” and Outrageous Claims

• Central to Taylor’s grift: the promise of supernatural interventions (raising the dead, curing the sick) in exchange for money.
• A recurring claim: Taylor can “raise the dead” by command—his cult’s propaganda includes dramatic videos and staged testimonials (65:21-66:36).
• Brett and Jake dissect one such story, revealing how a supposed resurrection was really a sham—an instance of Taylor taking credit for what was ordinary medical resuscitation, often with the collusion or credulity of cult members (68:47-69:45).

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11. How Cult Control Morphs from Hope to Threat

• The darker turn: For full-time cult members, Taylor’s supposed supernatural powers swing from blessing to curse—he threatens to bring divine harm if his demands are not met.
• Quote:
  “He’s telling them that, you know, I can save your loved ones or I can make God take them away, right? I can have God curse you or the people you care about and destroy them or you, if you’re not bringing in enough money…” – Brett (69:45)
• Psychological manipulation escalates from hope to outright fear-mongering and emotional extortion.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the banality of authoritarian creep:
  “The rapid descent into state control and authoritarianism is actually really boring… I’m still going to birthday parties and stuff.”
  — Jake Hanrahan (01:11–02:01)

• On cultic norm-breaking:
  “When you’re getting called out by other members of that chunk of Christianity, you really have to be going hog wild on the stealing people’s money stuff.”
  — Brett (10:28)

• On the arc of Taylor’s claims:
  “Jesus is thousands of years old, so it’s not problematic, right?”
  — Brett (31:52)

• On self-mythology:
  “Did you just do that or say you did that to have this, like, cool backstory?”
  — Jake (20:04)

• On outright manipulation:
  “It’s the evilest thing, I think, that you can pretty much do outside of, like, directly murdering people…”
  — Brett (63:22)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Intro & Authoritarianism Chat: 00:01–04:10
• Cult's FBI Bust & Structure: 04:10–13:57
• Digital Recruitment & Facebook Rant: 13:02–15:15
• Taylor’s Early Life & Family Mythmaking: 15:15–20:44
• Face-to-Face with Jesus, Conversion Narrative: 25:06–26:15
• Transition into Cult Leadership: 35:01–37:12
• Fantasy Prophecies & Cult Expansion: 43:04–46:48
• Cult Operations & "Best Friend" Branding: 56:20–59:15
• Call Center Exploit & Donation Extraction: 59:44–62:00
• Supernatural Claims & Debunking: 65:21–69:45
• Manipulation Turns to Threats: 69:45–71:23
• Outro & Jake’s Plug for Sad Oligarch: 71:35–72:23

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Conclusion

This episode provides a detailed portrayal of how Bishop David E. Taylor built a modern American cult on a foundation of grandiose biblical cosplay, strategic emotional manipulation, and call-center exploitation. It highlights not only the familiar mechanisms of cult control—emotional isolation, “miraculous” intervention, and the carrot-stick of hope and fear—but also contemporary twists: internet stalking, social media targeting, and grifts adjacent to corporate America’s worst instincts.

For Next Time

Part two will dig further into the cult’s practices, finances, and the fallout from the federal bust.

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Further Listening

• Sad Oligarch (Jake Hanrahan): Season 2 now out, as plugged at the end.
• Behind the Bastards: New episodes Wednesdays and Fridays.

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Transcript

[Brett Weinstein]

Call Zone Media. Oh, welcome back to behind the Bastards, the podcast that you're listening to right now. It's about the worst people in all of history. And we've got one of my favorite guests and the host of the podcast on our network, Sad Oligarch, which just got a new season, Jake Hanrahan. Jake, welcome back. How you doing?

[Jake Hanrahan]

Thanks for having me, mate. Long time no speak, man. How have you been?

[Brett Weinstein]

Ah, you know, I've been all right. Tired, like everyone, I think, especially where I am. Lots going on. How about you?

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah, like, your country's, like, actually fascist now.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're really speed running things, huh?

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah, everyone's saying it for years and now it's like, oh, no.

[Brett Weinstein]

They actually. It's happening. Oh, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jake Hanrahan]

That's fucked up.

[Brett Weinstein]

It has been fun to see all of the, like, debate go out the window and like, no, no, yeah, okay.

[Jake Hanrahan]

No, straight up. Like, it's.

[Brett Weinstein]

It's.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah, it's actually, like, very scary because it's happening here as well, like in England, and it's like, ah, there's like some consolidation of extreme authoritarianism happening.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, yeah, it's happening. And it's happening at the kind of speed that almost seems farcical. Yeah. So that's. That's good. I feel upbeat. I don't. I don't know. Like, it's. It's weird too, because it's one of those. Like, you. You would. I'd always kind of expect in the back of my head that if things got this bad, this quickly, there'd be stuff to do other, like, beyond just like, work like that. That wouldn't be. The primary concern is still, like, making rent and getting by. But everyone I know is walking around being like, yeah, it's crazy how fast things are going. Also, like, I gotta take my kid to a doctor's appointment at three.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah, no, that's.

[Brett Weinstein]

Actually.

[Jake Hanrahan]

I was talking to my friend about this the other day. I was like, the kind of rapid descent into state control and authoritarianism is actually really boring. Like, it's just happening and that's it.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm still going to, like, birthday parties and stuff.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Like, okay, yeah, my friend came back from a holiday and he was like, oh, yeah, I got fingerprinted and my mouth swabbed and everything. I was like, why? You're a British citizen. You're coming back to England. Like, what the fuck?

[Brett Weinstein]

No, yeah, talking to. And I'm in the same boat planning overseas trips and being like, well, now I have A phone I've bought just for flying that has, like, the minimum of everything on it because I'm going to have to hand it over to border patrol, and I don't want anything interesting to be on there, you know.

[Jake Hanrahan]

I mean, this must. Must be what it's like for people in, like, you know, countries that have been doing this a little bit longer, a little bit more direct, you know, and now we're like, oh, shit, we have to do it, too.

[Brett Weinstein]

Well, in this. I'm glad. I read there's a good book about, like, authoritarianism in Russia called Nothing is True and Everything Is Permitted, I think is more or less the title. Yeah. Which is. Which. Which did help. Actually, reading it years ago, was like, okay, well, at least there's a rubric. Yeah.

[Jake Hanrahan]

I love the way he kind of explains it through the reality tv, how, like, almost in. In the west, you show them something fake and everyone goes, oh, wow, look. Look at that. But then in the east or in Russia, when you show them something fake, the people go, yeah, wow. Like, they already knew it was bullshit. And it's like, I think we're coming to that level now where we're like, all right, we already have to be cynical because we kind of realize it's all nonsense.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, yeah. And it's just impossible to know, like, what is. I mean, like, just the ability of regular people to differentiate between truth and lies in a video now. I mean, this goes down to the AI and stuff, but there's so many more tools for just lying to everybody. It's great.

[Jake Hanrahan]

That's very scary. Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. And I think, in some ways, about what's happening just here and across a lot of other Western. Like you said, it's happening in the uk, too, as, like, part of what's going on. Cause I think it's almost a mistake to purely couch it in terms of fascism. Cause part of what's going on is a growth in sort of, like, cultic behavior and cultic abuse techniques becoming, like, normalized across the political spectrum. Right.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Hundred percent MAGA.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. MAGA's, like, a great example of that. And so I keep turning back to cults periodically. And this is not. This is not. We've just started this with kind of a political discussion about everything that's going on. This is not a cult that is particularly tied in to politics in the US or elsewhere, but it's a cult that just got on my radar, that they just got busted by the FBI. Like, the week that I wrote this episode, there was this massive multi state FBI bust cracking down on like a mansion that had been owned by Nelly. That was a cult property and a bunch of other crazy shit.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Nelly, Nelly, like the rapper.

[Brett Weinstein]

Nelly's not involved.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Okay, okay, okay, good.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, Nelly is uninvolved. This is just a house that Nelly owned that later got purchased by a cult. But the Nelly connection does exist. This is a cult that I hadn't heard about before the FBI raided all their. But there had been some stuff written about them, so I had to do some real digging to get a story here. But it's a group called the Kingdom of God. Have you heard of these people?

[Jake Hanrahan]

Do you know what? I feel like I have, but there are so many cults with similar names like that that it could just be.

[Brett Weinstein]

Such a cult name.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Very much, yeah. Oh, the Kingdom of God church. You're like, no, don't go there.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, I had to check to see. Cause there were like four different cults I thought this might be. And I was like, nope, nope, nope. Those are all slightly different names. This is a new one. This is a new one. And it's. You know, I try to be compassionate when I like, look at cults and study them and talk about them on this show because I do tend to believe that anyone can be taken in by a cult at some point in their life. Right. That doesn't mean that like, everyone is always vulnerable to being. I think. And in fact, I think most people grow out of it and reach a point where that's a thing that can't happen to them anymore. But I think most people have a point in their life where if the right cult were to come along, they'd be vulnerable to it. Right. I think that's generally accurate. And so I generally try to find some understanding with how people get involved in something like the Church of Scientology or like Synanon. And I don't really understand this cult, the Kingdom of God all that well. I don't understand how someone can talk themselves into letting the things that were being done to them be done to them. But I'll do my best to explain it here. You know, this may just be one that like, was never wasn't angled towards people like me, I guess. But yeah, we'll get into it. But that's the end of the cold open. So we'll come back in a second here and we'll talk about the Kingdom of God. This is an I Heart podcast.

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[Brett Weinstein]

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[Brett Weinstein]

And we are back. So, as I said, not a well known cult. If you haven't heard of these guys, you're probably in the norm. If you had, you probably found out the way. I reading articles published just recently about this massive multi state FBI raid of several cult properties. Prior to that, the only real interest this group attracted was internal criticism in places like Charisma magazine, which is like charismatic Christianity, is like a type of evangelical Christianity. Right like, these are. To kind of summarize it, these are the people who do, like, the crazy eating snake or letting snakes bite them kind of shit, right?

[Jake Hanrahan]

Oh, yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Like, Pentecostals are charismatics. Charismatics are not all just Pentecostals, but, like, it's the weird stuff, right?

[Jake Hanrahan]

I'd be honest, like, if I had to join a cult, I would rather be doing, like, snake church stuff than, like, fucking Scientology, you know?

[Brett Weinstein]

Absolutely. That. That I agree with. The snake church stuff sounds like more fun. Initially, kind of. The internal criticism of this group before they reached legal intention was other people who were kind of in lighter versions of the cult who were like, well, these guys are really. This is just a pure cult. Right? And when you're getting called out by other members of, like, that chunk of Christianity, you really have to be going hog wild on the stealing people's money stuff, because, like, this is the chunk of the faith where it's normal to be like, well, yeah, my pastor needs a private jet, obviously plated in gold. God wants him to have that. So the fact that, like, these guys got attacked by that community means they were really out of fucking pocket. When the FBI raided Kingdom of God properties, they found at least 57 people who had been forced to work for the cult in conditions that at least approximated slave labor. Right. These are people who are working and having food and shelter withheld if they don't work. And they're certainly not being paid. Right. So we're on that slave labor spectrum, Right. Somewhere in there, very heavy.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Like, normally cults start with, like, here's a pamphlet, you know.

[Brett Weinstein]

No, they're kind of starting with, yeah, you're not going to get paid, and we'll make you homeless if you don't meet your numbers. And what's weird enough is that this is the work they're doing. This is a call center cult. Like, that's what they're being made to do is operate a call center as slaves.

[Jake Hanrahan]

I worked in a call center. It's so bad, man.

[Brett Weinstein]

Fuck. It's only marginally better if you're getting paid, right?

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah. Like, not even barely.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, yeah. Already on the spectrum of yeah. Being forcibly forced to labor. So some number of female members were also sexually trafficked for the cult leader. Right? Which is, you know, a bummer, but pretty normal for a cult. And the cult leader obviously lived in luxury with a handful of his lieutenants, and off of the strength of tens of millions of dollars in donations brought in by the sophisticated network of call centers. And this network of online stalkers. There's a. This is a really savvy cult in terms of, like, how they operate and utilize social media to find vulnerable people. Which is one of I'm more interested in talking about is that it's not just. We're just throwing out a wide net and asking a million people for money in the hopes that, like, a couple hundred send it. They're actually going out and stalking people based on their social media to try to determine if they're vulnerable or not to be reached out to. Which is cool.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Just like Facebook.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, yeah. Facebook is where a lot of this happens. Absolutely.

[Jake Hanrahan]

But I mean, that's like, even part of their model as well. Like, they will advertise things to young girls that are, like, perhaps looking at pages about, you know, eating disorders, and they'll be like, oh, yeah, we'll use that to advertise to them. It's like the darkest thing ever. Doesn't surprise me. A cult would be doing it.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, I would love to. And this is the kind of thing it would probably require that, like, there be some sort of nuremberg, like, case that, you know, opens up Facebook's books. But I would love to know what percentage of their profits is just a mix of inciting little kids to have eating disorders and directing people into cults. Cause it's not nothing. It's not 0% of the Facebook income.

[Jake Hanrahan]

I bet it's massive.

[Brett Weinstein]

It's destroying people's lives at scale. It's gotta be like 40% at least, right?

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah, 100%. Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. It's at the point where I get advertisements every week for illegal suppressors for firearms. And that's not close to the worst thing on Facebook. It's like, that's wholesome. Honestly, that's just somebody wants a quieter gun to shoot people with.

[Jake Hanrahan]

It's a dark. I haven't had Facebook for, like, over 10 years, but whenever I see things from it, I'm like, is this like a fucking parallel universe kind of social media? It's next level.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. It's one of those things. Ethically, I guess I should totally cancel it. I still go on about once every two months. Cause there's, like, friends that I knew 25 years ago and for work too. Like, when there's a mass shooting, I need to be able to look up someone's family. Right. Or someone's posts. So I find use for it once every, like, two. But every time I'm on there, I'm just constantly like, oh, my God. Like, is what percentage of this traffic Is even real people watching shit. Cause this is all just insane.

[Jake Hanrahan]

I love the boomer stuff where like they'll fall for like there'll be like a fucking dolphin on roller skates and they're like, wow, look what the dolphins are doing. It's like uncle. Like, shut up, Go back to bed.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. Or like a poorly photoshopped or like a poorly AI generated image of like a soldier with like his hands bleeding from stigmata. And like, most people won't share this. Why would anyone share this?

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah, that's the best.

[Brett Weinstein]

Why is this. Yeah. So we're talking about the kingdom of God. And like all cults, this story starts with the cult leader, one David E. Taylor, who is, as of today, 53 years young. We know tragically little of David's early life. There's been no real in depth reporting on this guy as an individual. So like 90% of what I've got to work with here is what he wrote or had ghost written on his church website and a. A 2009 self help book that he wrote about talking to Jesus. Right. Those are our sources on this guy's early life. So take all of this with a grain of salt. Right. Cause this is not. Yeah. Per these sources, I can tell you he was born on August 3, 1972 in Memphis, Tennessee. I doubt he's lying about that. Cause I really can't think of a reason for him to lie about being 53 years old. His parents were in the church business. His dad was an evangelical pastor or his dad is a Baptist pastor. Right. So that is evangelical, but it's a very different chunk of the faith from like the Pentecostalism that he's going to come to as an adult. Right. Like Baptists are not the same kind of evangelicals.

[Jake Hanrahan]

I think you could be chill and be a Baptist still. Right. They're like pretty chill Baptists.

[Brett Weinstein]

There are some chill Baptists, yes. I don't know that his dad was. But it's very different. Right. Or somewhat different, we should say. And yeah, and a big thing that you can tell from his family in terms of the seriousness with which they take their religion is that his dad really embraced the commandment that Christians should be fruitful and multiply. Because David was born the seventh and at the time he was the youngest child in his family, but his parents had two more kids after him. So that's. You're really putting in the work when you're having nine kids. That's not insignificant.

[Jake Hanrahan]

No. Virile.

[Brett Weinstein]

He would later. Yeah, virile. And also really relying on those middle kids to raise the youngest ones. Now, he would later write that his mother told him while she was pregnant with him that she spent hours a day praying at her husband's church. And I haven't found much about his father other than that he was a pastor for close to 40 years. The only detail from his life that his son seemed interested in repeating is that when his dad was 23 years old, he stopped a gunman on a bus. And here's the version of the story that David published on one of his church websites about his dad. One day, as he was riding the Memphis bus transit, a young man pulled out a gun and stuck up the bus, robbing the people of their money. Minister Taylor boldly came on the bus and began to speak the word of God to the robbery. He then commanded him to give him the gun and put it in his hand in Jesus name. The man's instantly obeyed. Minister Taylor also commanded him to give the people their money back, which he did. Later, after he was arrested, Minister Taylor went and visited him in prison. When they saw each other, they both wept. He then led the young man to the Lord, resulting in him surrendering his life completely. Racial barriers were also broken at a time when racial tensions were high. The newspaper openly declared that a black man and a white man cried together. And in a shocking twist, this is a true story. Really? Yeah. This actually happened. There's a newspaper clipping about it. Fair enough. Yeah. There's a photo from the Memphis Press Scimitar with a picture of Minister Taylor and the robber. And the robber, he's wearing one of those striped prison shirts. It really looks like a scene from Cool Hand Luke. And the actual text of the news article is pretty close to what David said. The story, written by Paul Vanderwood, starts with the sentence, a Negro and a white man cried together today, which tells you a lot about where race relations were. That like. That's your lead?

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Oh, boy.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah, it doesn't look good.

[Brett Weinstein]

Things were bad if that's where we're starting. But yeah, seems to be true. And his dad seems nice. Cause his dad like the articles about his dad testifying in the robber's behalf to try to get him leniency. Cause like, he stopped rather than continuing with the robbery. So good on him. That seems like a nice story. And David is going to be raised with this tale of his father's heroism. But apparently the example wasn't enough to stop him from falling into an adolescence of sin and debauchery. His early life is summed up on the church website this. Raised in a Christian home in Memphis, Tennessee, he fell away as he was seduced into the gang life as a teenager. But everything drastically changed one night at the age of 17 when Jesus appeared to him face to face in a dream. Now, one thing I noticed straight away when I was going into this guy's life is that he spends a lot of time talking about how bad he was as a teenager while admitting that his father was this, like, great man who made him go to church three times a week. And this is kind of normal for guys in this chunk of Christianity especially who take to preaching as a family business because you both want to burnish your credentials that like, oh, my family's always been preaching. But you also have to be able to. You have to have a rock bottom narrative. You can't just be like. And so I was always a good gu.

[Jake Hanrahan]

I was about to say, they never do that, do they? They're never like, yeah, everything was fine, my dad was cool. Now I'm doing. It's like, no, like, I did heroin for three years. And it's like, did you just do that or say you did that to have this, like, cool backstory?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. Or is it. Is it like how, you know, some politicians will, like, join the army or the Marines to get, like a tour in so that they can campaign off of it for the rest of their career? Is it like, all right, I gotta spend three years doing heroin and skid row so that I. Yeah, it's like.

[Jake Hanrahan]

The law building, you know?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I got hepatitis from a dirty needle and that's like my combat action ribbon.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah, just like, yeah, based. I've seen shit.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. So anyway, in his first book, Face to Face Appearances with Jesus, David Taylor claims he was visited by Christ. And visited. He means in person, like, he means that they have, like, a physical relationship. In December of 1989, this was around a week before Christmas Eve, and David was, by his account, a pretty tough customer. He described himself in his book as your typical unsaved teenager. Smoking dope, marijuana, using bad language and cursing, partying and having premarital sex. I was even involved with gangs and hung around cocaine dealing drug lords.

[Jake Hanrahan]

I love that he went from swearing to drug lords. Like, mate, fuck, swearing to drug lords.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, that's the real gateway drug is cursing straight to cocaine dealing drug lords.

[Jake Hanrahan]

One day I said, shit, the next I was Pablo Escobar. Yeah, that happens all the time. Fucking idiot. You know, he's making this up like.

[Brett Weinstein]

Surely it's gotta be lies, right? It's gotta be. Part of that is he goes, I was smoking dope, comma, marijuana. So is he saying that he was smoking dope as in, like heroin and marijuana? Because I'm not impressed with the pot. If you were smoking like, fucking horse, right? Like, the pot doesn't even register if you're doing. If you're smoking heroin.

[Jake Hanrahan]

No, it sounds like the kid at school that's like, oh, yeah. You know, like when you're like six and there's a kid that's like, yeah, I've smoked weed. It's like, you probably fucking haven't. Like, he sounds like one of them kids, you know?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. It's like being like, yeah, you know, I used to shoot up $4,800 worth of heroin a week. Also, one time I took too much Benadryl to get high.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah, exactly.

[Brett Weinstein]

I'm not impressed by the other one.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

I also, I might be willing to buy this guy partied as a kid, smoked a little pot. Maybe he did a couple of lines of coke again at a party. A lot of people do, right? I would go so far as to say that, like, the average person has probably at least once or twice experimented with a harder drug in their life. It's very normal, maybe not more than 50%, but a lot of the population, you know. That said, there's no evidence whatsoever that he knew cocaine dealing drug lords. Maybe he knew a coke dealer. Again, a lot of people know, but a coke lord, that's a high level. That's a man who has money to buy a hippopotamus.

[Jake Hanrahan]

I'd love to know his remit. Like, what's his remit for, like, just dealer to drug lord, you know? It's like, come the fuck on, man. Maybe it was a Jesus thing, I don't know.

[Brett Weinstein]

There's two things for having known some drug lords. I have, like, two hard requirements. One, you have to have been measuring your drug by either the kilo or the ton, depending on the drug you're talking about. And number two, if you're a coke lord, you have to have been able to buy, like, African wildlife, you know, like, that's the level I need if I'm gonna call you a coke lord. Right.

[Jake Hanrahan]

I think you gotta be a.

[Brett Weinstein]

You better have a prankster, too.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Like a really horrible killer.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. And a lot of bodies, A lot of stacked bodies. Yeah. The only real detail he provides us anywhere about his supposed life of crime as a child is this paragraph. I remember one time before the Lord came to me and saved my life, I was caught in the crossfire of a shootout. There were bullets flying everywhere, and I could have possibly been shot and killed. Thank God he spared my life and protected me. And this is one where, like, he doesn't say, this was involved in the drug game and this is America. So, yeah, maybe he was in the middle of a shootout that happened. A lot of people have been in this country, right? That's not an uncommon experience, is just being uncomfortably close. I've been around, like. Like three different mass shootings in the United States.

[Jake Hanrahan]

I was gonna say shootings. Have you been, like, in that shit?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah. That's not unusual, right?

[Brett Weinstein]

I don't know. One of them was two victims, the other two were one. So not mass, but like three different shootings, right?

[Jake Hanrahan]

Oh, is that it?

[Brett Weinstein]

It just happens. It just happens.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah. It's like I've been jumped. I thought that was bad. Like fucking hell.

[Brett Weinstein]

Right? Yeah.

[Jake Hanrahan]

No, that sounds bad. That sounds fucking horrible.

[Brett Weinstein]

And I can believe that he was just uncomfortably close to a shooting and that maybe that did spur him to get more serious about the religion thing, you know, That's. That's not a wildly. That's not a huge leap. Right. David then says that Jesus appeared to him for the first time during a dream. Right? This is in 1989. It's like a week or so before Christmas. And here's how he describes it. And I'm gonna preface this by saying it's a weirdly erotic description of Jesus.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Oh, God, here we go.

[Brett Weinstein]

I gotta tell you that right now. Suddenly he was there with eyes glowing, full of love. Standing in front of me was the man I'd heard about as a little boy my entire life. I'd heard about this man from my mother and father and was taught that he died on the cross for my sins and rose again on the third day from the dead. He was not truly real to me, only a religious opinion. He was just someone my parents told me about because of their religious beliefs. Then out of nowhere, he was standing there in front of me, face to face. And that's not the horny part of the story. Right? I'm bringing in the intro, the next passage here he describes Jesus using the word ecstasy more than a drug dealer on telegram. Oh, God, it was ecstasy. For the first time, I was standing in front of Jesus. My whole being felt him. You can imagine the ecstasy I felt. It was a feeling of intense glory. It's like wherever he stands, he fills the very atmosphere, air and molecules all around you. Even the atoms inside your body and being respond to him. It was total ecstasy. Indescribable blistering with a static eruption. My whole being felt like it was caught up into heaven. The very atoms in my body made me feel like I was about to explode. Mate, that's a guy who wants to fuck Jesus, right?

[Jake Hanrahan]

I think that's a guy that did fuck Jesus.

[Brett Weinstein]

By the sound, he might have fucked Jesus.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Jesus Christ. Yeah, that's weird.

[Brett Weinstein]

Exactly.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah. He's projecting ever so slightly there. Definitely.

[Brett Weinstein]

Maybe a little bit. And we'll continue with the uncomfortably horny descriptions of Jesus Christ. But first, here's some ads.

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[Brett Weinstein]

All I know is what I've been.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Told and that's a half truth is a whole lie.

[Narrator (Graves County promo)]

For almost a decade, the murder of an 18 year old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[Brett Weinstein]

I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her.

[Narrator (Graves County promo)]

We know a story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national tv.

[Brett Weinstein]

Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Kerr.

[Narrator (Graves County promo)]

My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist producer and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find.

[Brett Weinstein]

I did not know her and I did not kill her or rape or burn or any of that other stuff.

[Incels Podcast Character]

That y' all said.

[Sheryl McCollum]

They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her.

[Narrator (Graves County promo)]

From Lava For Good. This is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame.

[America Y'all Better Wake Up (Promo Voice)]

America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people and small towns.

[Narrator (Graves County promo)]

Listen to Graves county in the Bone Valley feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

[Sheryl McCollum]

I'm Sheryl McCollum, host of the podcast Zone 7. Zone 7 ain't a place, it's a way of life. I've worked hundreds of cold cases you've heard of and thousands you haven't. We started this podcast to teach the importance of teamwork in solving these crazy crimes. Come join us in learning from detectives, prosecutors, authors, canine handlers, forensic experts, and most importantly, victims, family members. Listen to Zone 7 with Cheryl McCollum on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast.

[Incels Podcast Narrator]

From the studio. Who brought you the Piketon massacre and murder 101? This is incels.

[Jake Hanrahan]

I am a loser. If I was a woman, I wouldn't date me either.

[Incels Podcast Narrator]

From the dark corners of the web, an emerging mindset.

[Incels Podcast Character]

If I can't have you girls, I will destroy you.

[Incels Podcast Narrator]

A kind of subculture, a hidden world of resentment, cynicism, anger, and against women, a seed of loneliness explodes.

[Brett Weinstein]

I just hate myself.

[Incels Podcast Character]

I don't know why you girls aren't attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it.

[Incels Podcast Narrator]

At a deadly tipping point, INCELS will.

[Brett Weinstein]

Be added to the terrorism guide.

[Sheryl McCollum]

Police say a driver intentionally drove into a crowd, killing 10 people.

[Incels Podcast Character]

Tomorrow is the day of retribution. I will have my revenge.

[Incels Podcast Narrator]

This is Incels. Listen to season one of Incels on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Brett Weinstein]

And we're back. So, Jake, as I promised, that uncomfortably horny vibe continues for several pages, during which he repeatedly describes Christ in terms that would make an airport romance novelist say. Okay, it's time to dial things back a bit little. Standing in front of me was an awesome man. Handsome and perfect in stature. He was just a little taller than me, about six feet or more. The perfect height of a normal man. As I gazed upon him, I saw that the color of his hair was sandy, brownish and parted at the top, coming over the sides of his face and down his shoulders in waves.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Oh, alright. Sorry. What is. I love the normal man.

[Brett Weinstein]

The normal man? Yeah. Above six feet Is a normal man. Little bit of height, shaming there.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like, come on, man, this is very erotic.

[Brett Weinstein]

I mean, it's fine, it's fine. It's cool. If you're into that. Jesus is thousands of years old, so it's not problematic, right?

[Jake Hanrahan]

I mean, you know, if you saw Jesus, you'd be like, oh, yeah, I don't know, like long hair, like robes, halo. I'm not going to be like, pretty cut, yeah. Perfect cheekbones, beautiful eye. Come on now, like, yeah, I mean, it's fair, but let's, let's, let's know what you're really thinking, son. And I'm laughing because I'm going to guess, I'm gonna take a wild guess that this guy went on to be wildly homophobic in his cult.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, yes. I would say not to the point where, like, it's the main thing, but it's just a normal thing in that chunk of the crowd, right? Like, this is not Pentecostal. Christianity is not super great on gay people. You know, these aren't the Episcopalians. So given that this guy becomes a money grubbing cult leader, I'd expected Jesus to like mark him out as special and tell him he had some sort of great purpose to fulfill. Right? That's kind of what I was expecting to come. And that does happen. But what surprises me is that David Taylor's Jesus opens things up. Not just by like telling him, you're marked for something special. I need you to speak the word to the masses. But he talks like a cult leader, like a, like a real world cult leader. And I've run into a lot of different Jesus cults, right? Which is not to say like Christianity doesn't have a worse cult problem than any other chunk of our society. People make cults for no reason at all, right? People make cults without a God being involved with a God. Every religion has its cult. I'm not being particularly shitty to any one faith. What's weird is that his Jesus talks Exactly like a 21st century cult leader, which I haven't come across in the many different accounts like this that I have read. Because the first thing Jesus tells him to do. Cause he's like, I'll do anything, Jesus. Tell me what I need to do to serve you. And the first thing Jesus says is, you need to cut off all ties with your best friend. You need to immediately cut the closest person to you out of your life. And that's just straight cult leadership.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Right, Cool, thanks. Jesus fucking Out.

[Brett Weinstein]

Thanks, Jesus. Now, the way Jesus in the dream explains this is that David's best friend is a really nice guy. He says he's a good guy. He was a really good friend. He was a good influence, but he's not Christian, so he's not saved. Right. And so Jesus tells him, david, forsake your best friend, give your life to me and follow me. And again, I mean, I hate to. I'm not much of a Bible knower, but I went to church as a kid. I was confirmed. Jesus was friends with lots of people who were not good followers of their faith. Right. Like, that's just the text of the Bible.

[Jake Hanrahan]

I mean, this guy obviously is just. I mean, you know, I give him the benefit of the doubt, but I think it's pretty clear this guy just made this up. It sounds like it's a lie.

[Brett Weinstein]

Of course.

[Jake Hanrahan]

It sounds like he just had a problem with his best mate. You know what I mean?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. And Jesus sure did. Yeah.

[Jake Hanrahan]

I'm sorry, bro. Jesus said, you know, like, you gotta get. Go fuck yourself. Like, that's how it is now.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, we can't be friends anymore because the son of God doesn't like you.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah, right.

[Brett Weinstein]

Well, that's gonna make me become Christian.

[Jake Hanrahan]

I'd be like, oh, God, Jesus.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. It is weird to me that he describes Jesus as like the leader of a high control group. Right? Cause like, yeah, that's a normal thing. Cult leaders tell you to cut off your friends and your family, right. If they don't follow you. So, yeah, David writes in his book, you can't truly follow Jesus and maintain worldly relationships or friendships you once had. You must be willing to give up your. Your best friend if Jesus requires you to. So that's why he's putting this in the book. As you said, it's fake. He's throwing this in there so that to use Jesus to justify the different rules he's going to have for everyone in the cult, you know? So I guess what I'm mostly surprised at is that I haven't seen another cult leader do this. I've seen a lot of people put words in Jesus's mouth, but I haven't seen them do it this blatantly. And that's kind of like, oh, wow. I guess for me it's a marker of like. Like, you can get away with a lot more now, huh? Yeah. I thought you still had to be a little more cunning about it.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Right? Like, look, you know, I mean, no offense to Mormons, but, like, look at the guy that Jesus.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Jake Hanrahan]

You know, oh, I found these golden plates. I mean, that was pushing it.

[Brett Weinstein]

Like, this guy is really pushing it.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah. That you can tell. Just nothing matters anymore. You can just be like, oh, yeah. Jesus said, you know, I need a Porsche and you're my best friend's a. Like, it's very.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jake Hanrahan]

It's just. Yeah. Unimaginative. No.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, it is. I mean, it's. Cause that's the thing about, like Joseph Smith is at least the elaborateness of the golden plate and the weirdness is like, well, that's a man who was thinking on his feet. He had to come up with some lies real quick. He's kind of right creative. Yeah.

[Jake Hanrahan]

You know, like it's like borderline sci fi. Like. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. There's the. You know, they're all bad people. Please don't mistake me. Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard. But I respect them, like the craft. I respect the craft.

[Jake Hanrahan]

You know, put in some work, you know, like, obviously, yeah, they're fucking. They ended up doing really evil stuff. But like, at least at the start it was like golden plates, not just like fucking chatgpt tier.

[Brett Weinstein]

Right. Yeah. This is a very chatgpt ass cult. And I'm sure if it had been made a little bit later, he would have made heavier use of chatgpt because he does use a ghostwriter regularly. And that's basically an evolution of that.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yes.

[Brett Weinstein]

So after having this dream where Jesus tells him to cut off ties with his friend, David Taylor, threw himself hardcore into his religion, he gives himself up to Christ, he's saved all that good stuff. A few days after his first vision with Jesus, he decides to try and summon the Son of God this time, like purposefully and outside of a dream. So at about 11. And this is also the first one of these where I've heard where he is treating the cult leader is explicitly treating Jesus like a demon you summon, which is also kind of weird.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

So about 11pm On Christmas Eve, he begs Jesus to come to him in person and prove that he was really as alive as he'd looked in the dream. Which feels to me like maybe you don't have enough faith. Like part of the point is faith. Right. And if you're like, no, you gotta come when I'm awake, otherwise I can't believe that you weren't just a dream. That just seems kind of sacrilegious to me. But, you know.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah. You don't start telling the Son of God, like when and where to appear. Right. You Just go, oh, okay.

[Brett Weinstein]

He's literally the son of God.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah. No, I'm not getting it this time. Yeah, this guy's clearly like a massive narcissist, which I guess you have to be.

[Brett Weinstein]

Oh my God, Yes. Yeah. And it really comes across in the book because he orders Jesus, if you are truly real, manifest yourself to me more. David relates this moment in a chapter of his book titled the Supernatural Heavens Invade My Room, which sounds like some drug experience I had right around the same age. You know, like I could characterize an acid trip or two that way, like.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Sniffing solvents or something.

[Brett Weinstein]

Right, right. Yeah. After this, God comes to him, you know, he follows the summons and he blesses him with the ability to speak in tongues. And then his bedroom is transformed into some sort of strange ethereal masturbation cave. Quote, My room was engulfed with the atmosphere of heaven and a cloudy mist. My room was literally lifted to the atmosphere of heaven. My room did not actually have a door, so I had to put a bed sheet at the entryway. Often before I put the bed sheet up, every single day, a glistening angel with a sword would be standing at the door of my room. It was like I was not even at. My mother was worried about me because I stayed in my room for hours and days at a time. I would come out and fellowship with the family at times, but I was caught up in experiencing heavenly things in my room. My room was literally filled with the celestial air or an electrical atmosphere. Gooning. Yeah, he's gooning. I'm sorry, man. You're gooning with God in your bedroom?

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah, the word.

[Brett Weinstein]

17 year old boy won't leave his room for days at a time.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah, yeah, not good.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. So after this so called face to face meeting with God, our boy's life story is pretty nondescript for the next couple of years. We know he's an active pretty much the entirety of the 90s, working as a preacher and a religious motivational speaker. He claims the Lord led him to the work of Bishop G.E. patterson, who isn't a bishop in like the Catholic sense of the word. I would say not a real. I mean, real or not, there are Pentecostal bishops, but they're not. There's a bunch of them. And it's just like if you have a bunch of churches who say we're part of an organization, we're appointing bishops. Right. So it doesn't have quite as much of like a history as the Catholic term of the word. Right. But he's a bishop in the.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah, you don't really have to like work towards it sort of thing.

[Brett Weinstein]

I'm sure you. But it's certainly not the same degree to which cause you can just get appointed. Right. If like five guys like you, you know, I think it's a little harder to become a Catholic bishop. You have to cover up a lot more stuff. Child sex abuse. Right. I'm not saying this is a better thing or a worse thing. I'm just saying it's different. And yeah, Bishop G.E. patterson was an American Pentecostal leader who founded the Temple of Deliverance, Cathedral of Bountiful Blessings, which was one of the largest. I think it still is. He's not around anymore. Largest Pentecostal churches in the country. Since Taylor's dad was a Baptist preacher, Patterson acted as David's entryway into the Pentecostal faith. Faith. Taylor graduates from a Bible school at age 19, and he claims that Jesus came to him in another vision where Taylor demanded the real thing, as in the real Bible experience. So he has another talk with Jesus where he demand, he makes demands of Jesus. He's like, look, I'm not gonna just sit up here and preach the Bible and repeat the same old stories everyone else preaches. That's not enough for me. You have to give me the real Old Testament shit. Like, I want visions, I want magic powers, I want it all, baby. Otherwise I'm not gonna be a member of your faith. Jagen, he's like putting the screws to Jesus here.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah, I'm team Jesus in this.

[Brett Weinstein]

I don't think you're supposed to do this.

[Jake Hanrahan]

No, absolutely not.

[Brett Weinstein]

Again, not an expert on Christianity, but I'm pretty sure this is sacrilegious. But Jesus appreciates the moxie, I guess. So he's like, I'll give you the full Old Testament experience, but you gotta give up everything you own first. So next, per an article published by Taylor's Kingdom of God Global Church, shortly thereafter, he was given a series of dreams showing the future of the nation. Apostle Taylor was desperate to see a change come to America. He saw nine, 11, 10 years before it happened in a dream. In addition to that, he also saw a coming war upon America's soil from Russia. In the dream, America did not win this war. Now in modern times, he made a big deal after like the Trump got elected of the whole predicted a war on US soil against Russia thing. Because I think in light of the whole Russiagate stuff that seems compelling to people, right? But reading older articles prior to Trump's election, all that stuff about Taylor's prophecies. It made his dream of America fighting a war with Russia on foreign soil had nothing to do with Russian influence campaigns or anything that's happening recently. Right. He foresaw 911 and the global war on terror and thought that the Russian government incited them all. Huh.

[Jake Hanrahan]

I mean, pretty creative.

[Brett Weinstein]

Creative, not accurate. Yeah. You could say a lot about who was involved in 9 11. Not really Russia, not really their bag, as far as I'm aware.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah, no, well, yeah, yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

And anyway, so it's one of those things he's pivoted more recently to being like, oh yeah, all this stuff with Russia today. I predicted it, you know, 30 years ago. He didn't. He thought 911 was the Russians. Yeah. In a 2018 article for the Tennessee News Herald, Colin Mahoney included posts from an employee of David Taylor's summarizing the over 150 face to face visitations with Jesus and prophetic dreams. Dreams that he had, quote, in a series of dreams that he has prophesied for over 12 years, God revealed that Russia was going to attack America and that this war would begin during the presidency of George W. Bush Jr. In one of these dreams, the financial centers of America were attacked and this dream was fulfilled with a Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade center in New York. Don't be caught unprepared for what is about to hit America. So again, he's just completely wrong. Like he doesn't does say before 911 that the world Trade center will be attacked, which is not that much of a prediction because it had been in 93. And he thinks the Russians are going to do it. Right. He thought that W was going to go to war with Russia and we kind of do the opposite. Yeah, like we literally actually do the opposite.

[Jake Hanrahan]

I imagine he said like a hundred other things that were completely off as well. It's that thing, right? Like if you throw enough shit at the wall, some of it's going to stick.

[Brett Weinstein]

Stick, yeah, exactly.

[Jake Hanrahan]

And it didn't even stick. It was so wrong. Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

So yeah, it's the same thing as like Alex Jones in 2000 saying that there's going to be attack on the World Trade Center. Well, there just had been.

[Jake Hanrahan]

So yeah, he'd been saying that like for years before it, you know.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. It's like, if I'm gonna be like, Jake, I'm getting a vision from God right now. There's going to be an attack on a US military base at some point in the next five years. Yeah, I'll be right there. Will be somewhere. Right.

[Jake Hanrahan]

It's like me being like, you know what? I think there's gonna be a school shooting.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, there's gonna be a school shooting somewhere in the United States. You know, like. Yeah, these are easy predictions to make. The stock market will go up or down. Yeah, like, of course. So this guy, he's got about as much claim to accuracy as Alex Jones. In 1997, Taylor claimed that Jesus visited him and handed him the literal keys to the kingdom of God, quote from his church website. And now everywhere he goes, mighty regional ministries and deliverance take place to the kingdom demonstration. Drug busts take place by the kingly decree. Human trafficking rings have been completely dismantled by the kingdom and power of God. And he's actually correct about this, but not in the way that he wanted to be. Because as of late 2025, I can say that everywhere David Taylor goes, there are arrests of human busts of human trafficking at rings. It's just that there is. Is.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah, yeah, there's loads of them. That's why.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, there's loads of them. You are correct. There's a definite correlation between where you are and where human trafficking rings get busted. Yeah.

[Jake Hanrahan]

It's like the, you know, if you're in London, you're probably going to see a rat because they're fucking everywhere.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And not all of them at Parliament.

[Jake Hanrahan]

But also the same can be said about sex trafficking. Right, Rings.

[Brett Weinstein]

Right. Yes. Look, you know who's. Whose government isn't involved in some sex trafficking? I'm. I'm asking that question genuinely. I'd like to move.

[Jake Hanrahan]

No, yeah, generally not. Like, maybe like there's a place off the coast of England called Sealand where Sealand might be.

[Brett Weinstein]

Okay. Yeah.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Like it's basically like an old oil rig and some people like come commandeered it and declared like it to be a sovereign nation. And it kind of is.

[Brett Weinstein]

Sure. Maybe Sealand doesn't have a chimney ring.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Who knows?

[Brett Weinstein]

I want to believe the adorable president of Ireland doesn't have any involvement there. But I know politics too well. I'm sure there's something. There's something. Yeah. So the September 11th attacks did help to supercharge his fan base. Right. This is kind of why he starts to become a popular pastor is in the wake of that, he's really able to play his predictions and start, start drawing people to him. And he spends a lot of the early aughts collecting the kind of accolades and awards that allowed him to draw in more money and followers, often peeling people off of more reputable pentecostal organizations. In 2009 he wrote his Face to Face book which not only detailed his own conversations with Jesus, but was structured as a guide for worshipers to have their own in person conversations with Christ. And if you want to have an in person conversation with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, just purchase the products and services that support this podcast. All of them will give you a direct line to God. That's a promise we can absolutely make.

[Jake Hanrahan]

I don't know about that.

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[Brett Weinstein]

All I know is what I've been.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Told and that to have truth is a whole lot.

[Narrator (Graves County promo)]

For almost a decade, the murder of an 18 year old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[Brett Weinstein]

I'm telling you. We know Quincy killed her.

[Narrator (Graves County promo)]

We know a story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national tv.

[Brett Weinstein]

Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran.

[Narrator (Graves County promo)]

My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist producer and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find.

[Brett Weinstein]

I did not know her and I did not kill her or rape or burn or any of that other stuff.

[Incels Podcast Character]

That y' all said.

[Sheryl McCollum]

They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her.

[Narrator (Graves County promo)]

From lava for good. This is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find Someone to blame.

[America Y'all Better Wake Up (Promo Voice)]

America. Y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people and small towns.

[Narrator (Graves County promo)]

Listen to Graves county in the Bone Valley feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

[Sheryl McCollum]

I'm Sheryl McCollum, host of the podcast Zone 7. Zone 7 ain't a place. It's a way of life. I've worked hundreds of cold cases. You've heard of of. And thousands you haven't. We started this podcast to teach the importance of teamwork in solving these crazy crimes. Come join us in learning from detectives, prosecutors, authors, canine handlers, forensic experts, and most importantly, victims, family members. Listen to Zone 7 with Cheryl McCollum on the iHeartRadio app or. Or wherever you get your podcast.

[Brett Weinstein]

From.

[Incels Podcast Narrator]

The studio. Who brought you the Piketon massacre and murder 101? This is incels.

[Jake Hanrahan]

I am a loser. If I was a woman, I wouldn't date me either.

[Incels Podcast Narrator]

From the dark corners of the web, an emerging mindset.

[Incels Podcast Character]

If I can't have you girls, I will destroy you.

[Incels Podcast Narrator]

A kind of subculture. A hidden world of resentment, cynicism, anger against women. A seed of loneliness explodes.

[Brett Weinstein]

I just hate myself.

[Incels Podcast Character]

I don't know why you girls aren't attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it.

[Incels Podcast Narrator]

At a deadly tipping point, Incels will.

[Brett Weinstein]

Be added to the terrorism guide.

[Sheryl McCollum]

Police say a driver intentionally drove into a crowd, killing 10 people.

[Incels Podcast Character]

Tomorrow is the day of retribution. I will have my revenge.

[Incels Podcast Narrator]

This is Incels. Listen to season one of Incels on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Brett Weinstein]

And we're back. Jake, did. Did you have a face to face meeting with. With. With the Lord during our ad break?

[Jake Hanrahan]

Is it really called the Face to Face Book?

[Brett Weinstein]

Book? It's called Face to Face. My meetings with Jesus Christ or something like that.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah, I see.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Ransad did. I don't think he did either.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, I don't think he did either. Now, it is worth noting that kind of during the Obama administration, one of the things he does that kind of burnishes his reputation is he receives the presidential lifetime Achievement Award, which is like, signed by Barack Obama. The apostle David E. Taylor gets this award, and that's gonna sound more impressive than it is. So. Yeah, you can see that award, Jake.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, that looks like a real award.

[Jake Hanrahan]

You know, I was about to say that's like, canva looking award.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, it's not. It's not a great looking award, I'll be honest. And it's not really a real award. I mean, it's technically a real award, but it's not like the Barack Obama didn't, like, single this guy out for an award. The Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award is something. It's a volunteer service award anyone can apply to if they've done more than 4,000 hours of volunteer service for an organization in their lifetime. So basically, jmmi, which is his church, that's his church, the legal name for his registered nonprofit church, sponsored him for this award that anyone who volunteers 4,000 hours or more for any organization will get, right?

[Jake Hanrahan]

So there's hundreds of these thousands.

[Brett Weinstein]

And I'm sure for, like, people who really volunteer for a good cause, this is a nice thing to get. But his own organization just said he volunteered 4,000 hours at the organization that pays him. Like, if I just were to frame this podcast as a volunteer effort, I could get this award, right? I've spent 4,000 hours on this job.

[Jake Hanrahan]

I love that he speaks face to face with Jesus, but he got his congregation to plug him to get the Obama CANVA award. Like, it's talking to Jesus, wasn't it?

[Brett Weinstein]

Obama's a little harder to talk to, you know?

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah, yeah. Very, very interesting guy.

[Brett Weinstein]

He's a busier man than Jesus at this point in time. So again, and a big part of his. In 2009, this book, Face to Face, comes out, and it's a guide for how you too can talk to God one on one. And if that doesn't work for you, if somehow just reading this book isn't enough and you're not seeing God physically in the flesh and feeling him, well, he offers a more personal touch, right? This is what he's like. Because his cult, most of the people who are listening to his churches, who are watching him, watching the videos of his church services or going, going in person, they're not full on cult members. They're giving him money and stuff. He needs thousands of those people. His actual cult members are just a few dozen people. And these are the folks who. They're like, hey, this book, I'm still not talking to God. I really want to meet him in person. And David's like, well, then you gotta come work for me. You have to give up all of your money, sign it all over to me. Everything that you're worth, cut off. Your friends and family who don't recognize me as a prophet. Prophet and join the church. Right? And he promises, I can get you a connection directly to Jesus Christ because. And this is the official stance of his church, David Taylor is the best friend of Jesus Christ. That's his actual title.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Really?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, he's the best. Like he. That is his title. He is an apostle and the best friend of Jesus Christ.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Right, okay.

[Brett Weinstein]

Which, like, I would have guessed Paul maybe. Yeah, you know, like.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

I feel like they went through more together, but okay.

[Jake Hanrahan]

It's such a funny thing to go for.

[Brett Weinstein]

Very mad.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Like, a lot of these guys are like, I am the new Jesus. Or like, you know, like God is. This guy is like, nah, we're just best mates.

[Brett Weinstein]

No, we're super tight though. Yeah. Like, I'm not God myself, but I am his best friend, Jesus Christ. Exactly. Yeah. So through his church organization, jmmi, which stands for Joshua Media Ministries International, Taylor starts buying up properties during the Obama years. In 2011, they purchase a 29,920 square foot industrial building in Taylor, Michigan. And they move at least 10 people onto the property to start. Although it's sometimes occupied by more, up to a few dozen. And. And these people are some of their. There's somewhere I think 60 ish is the average number of full time cult members that he has. I think it's sometimes more like in the hundred or hundreds even. It's kind of hard to tell because I don't think we have a great accounting. Some of the sources are like there were 60 people in one of these buildings and they own buildings in multiple states. Eventually they start with this property in Taylor, Michigan, but they're gonna wind up buying properties like all over the United States by the time they get raided. In addition to the property in Taylor, Taylor, they have a property in Chesterfield, Missouri. They have one in Eureka, Missouri, Wildwood, Tampa, Florida, Ocala, Florida and Houston, Texas. So and these are a mix of. Some of these are just actual church buildings, some of these are mansions. Like again, Nelly's old place in St. Louis or near St. Louis is like one of the places they're occupying. Some of them are like warehouse spaces. So it's a variety of different kinds of properties, but they are in like five or six states. Right. So they're operating all over the place. And they're setting up not just like they don't just own these buildings, they have billboards on the way into and out of town that are like plugging both their churches and the services they're doing. He brings in other people as pastors under him because he can't Preach at more than one church at a time. Right. So this does expand to be a sizable organization. And the people who are full time cult members have to give up their bank accounts, they have to sign over their retirement accounts and inheritances in order to serve the apostle in his world historic mission, which is God wants him to prepare 7 billion souls for a great heavenly harvest. You know, like that's the, that that's what his ministry is going to do.

[Jake Hanrahan]

That sounds like things are getting a little bit darker.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, it's a little darker. It's a big job you're taking on. And yeah, now if you're trying to save 7 billion souls, you can't do that by having people come into a physical church. Right? You can't even really do that just by having a TV channel. 7 billion is a lot of people. There's only one way to reach that many people by using the most efficient form of outreach in existence. The call center.

[Jake Hanrahan]

I knew that was coming. Yeah, yeah. Zooming God. Basically.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, Zooming God. The cult starts operating in the early aughts, a 24, 7 prayer line. And they have online ads, they have billboards all over in states like, like Missouri, right. Where they direct worshipers to call in if they needed a miracle. And so this is framed as like, are you desperate? Are you maybe suicidal? Are you in like serious need of like some sort of help? You know, know, call this number and we can help you. Right? Like, and it again, it's kind of almost framed as like a suicide hotline. Or are you, are you about to get evicted? Is, is your life in shambles basically? Like we can, this cult can help you. Right? The kingdom of God can, can fix whatever the hell is wrong with you. Just give us a call. So they are deliberately going after the most vulnerable people. People. Right. Like that's obviously what's going on here. And yeah, the whole purpose of the prayer line isn't to actually help anyone. It's not even to really pray for anyone. The entire reason for this is to get people talking to his church's unpaid workers who were like, they were each supposed to talk to hundreds of people a day and bring in tens of thousands of dollars in donations. Right. This is just a donation thing. Because it becomes clear once you're talking to the prayer line that if you really want your prayers to work, if you want God to listen to you, you gotta pay up, you know, Otherwise how does he know you're serious? Per an article in St. Louis magazine, according to the indictment against Taylor and Brannon Brannon's like his top number one Lady Taylor instructed followers working the call centers to lie and say that collected money was to be used to build wells in impoverished parts of the world and fight human trafficking. So you have to put in some money to prove to God that you're serious. But we're only gonna use it to help people, you know, to further our great work. And from what I can tell, a lot of the appeal here is the promise that David is going to intervene directly with Jesus and use his friendship to save the lives of your dying loved ones. Right. If you have a serious problem, largely family members who are sick, David can intervene on your behalf for enough money. And this is a claim that they made specifically.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah, sorry. This is where, for me, it's just becomes so evil. Like, it's just so nasty to do that to people.

[Brett Weinstein]

You know, it's disgusting, right? Because people. I've had a loved one who had. Thankfully, it wound up being benign, but had a brain tumor, and we didn't know if it was cancerous or not for a while. We just knew it was affecting her memory. It was just really fucking her life up. And obviously, we went to doctors. We, like, did the. And that's how we found out. And we got it medicated and whatnot. But we were also trying all sorts of nonsense treatments. Right. Stuff that I would not have thought because you're just desperate and terrified. You know, you read on the. Maybe this fucking helps. Okay? You know, it's not smart. It's just when someone you love is sick and you have no idea what's wrong, it's very easy. Like, I do have empathy for the people being conned here.

[Jake Hanrahan]

It's so easy to be like, oh, that's fucking stupid. If you've ever been in, like, that dark trench of just kind of brain damage and fear. Absolutely. It is exactly that. Yeah. And you. It's incredible how quickly you will go, right, yesterday, that was the craziest thing ever. Now today, I'll try it. Whatever it is, you know, it's really.

[Brett Weinstein]

Anything.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah, exactly. Like, who knows? You know, it's very sad to prey on people like that. It's. It's just vile. Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

It's the evilest thing, I think, that you can pretty much do outside of, like, like, directly murdering people or whatever. I guess it's on the. I don't know. We don't need to quantify it. But, yeah, it's pretty hideous. So he is making these claims very directly. And my favorite specific example of this Is a claim repeated in numerous cult propaganda videos and articles. Here's one example published on his church's website. A pastor received a text message that his cousin had dropped down dead while taking a shower. He sent a text to David E. Taylor explaining the situation. Right after he released that command to get up. He being David Taylor, the young man's heart started beating again. And so this is the claim he's making that this like pastor calls and said, my cousin just dropped dead from a heart attack. And Taylor yells get up into the phone. And his cousin's heart starts beating again. And there's like. To give us proof, like in articles and stuff like this. There's pictures generally shared. I'll show you one example here you can kind. You can see there's a photo of the kid in the hospital giving a thumbs up. And then like a picture of him healthy outside of it. Before and after it says, young man raised from the dead by the Lord working through David Taylor.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah, sorry.

[Brett Weinstein]

Actually great.

[Jake Hanrahan]

The thumbs up. Fucking killing the thumbs up to let.

[Brett Weinstein]

You know that he's okay. Cause David Taylor prayed for him. Obviously I'm convinced. This seems like proof to me.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Came back from the dead and he's like, yep, thumbs up, thumbs up.

[Brett Weinstein]

I'm good. I do want to play you one of the YouTube propaganda videos the Colt put out, which focused on a different claim of power over life and death and actually gives you. You get to see some of David Taylor and his wife preaching in this. And as a bonus, Jake, keep an eye out. David Taylor is wearing what I can only describe as the most incredible outfit I have ever seen in my life. Okay. It is. Is. This is. This is special.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Sure.

[Brett Weinstein]

Experience.

[America Y'all Better Wake Up (Promo Voice)]

The dead being raised.

[Incels Podcast Narrator]

Critical condition tonight after a shooting outside a Georgia restaurant.

[America Y'all Better Wake Up (Promo Voice)]

How many have heard about this year of NFL Super Bowl? A young man was shot point blank for rooting for the 49er. It was national news. This is the young man. Four people had already died around him.

[Incels Podcast Narrator]

The doctor said, Chris is not going to make it.

[America Y'all Better Wake Up (Promo Voice)]

The young man with into a coma and died for 20 minutes.

[Incels Podcast Narrator]

And they said never in the history of the hospital have they lost four patients with a fifth expected. I text apostle Taylor. He said, Chris is not gonna die. He's gonna live.

[America Y'all Better Wake Up (Promo Voice)]

This was a resurrection.

[Incels Podcast Narrator]

Yes, it was.

[America Y'all Better Wake Up (Promo Voice)]

Shot me twice as here it is a year later and I'm standing before you.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Your dead can be raised.

[America Y'all Better Wake Up (Promo Voice)]

My cousin had just dropped down dead while taking a shower and I'd seen the Lord use David E. Taylor to raise the dead. I sent him a text. And he sent me a text and said the Lord told him only two words to say, and that was get up. And shortly after, Apostle released the command. My cousin was raised from the dead.

[Brett Weinstein]

Okay, well, for those of you watching the video, we'll cut in here, like, right now. While I'm talking. We'll have our editor throw in a screen grab of David and that incredible outfit. But Jake, how would you describe him?

[Jake Hanrahan]

You know. You know Beauty and the Beast. Like, the.

[Brett Weinstein]

There's.

[Jake Hanrahan]

There's a bit. Yeah, there's a bit where he gets really dressed up to, like, take Belle to, like. Well, not take her out, but they do some, like, fancy dinner. And it's basically that. It's literally that outfit, man. I'm telling you.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, yeah, it's literally. It's. It's something Michael Jackson would have worn.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Like, fucking mate. Something like Prince would have worn if he had a kid with Michael Jackson. Like, it's like, next.

[Brett Weinstein]

I do want that jacket, right? Like, I do want to wear it to wear.

[Jake Hanrahan]

And just people looking at you like, what? Jesus is my best mate. Fuck off. Can wear what I want.

[Brett Weinstein]

Incredible stuff.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah, the. The production of that is kind of wild, though. Like, I'll be honest. Yeah, it's pretty clever. Like, it's kind of.

[Brett Weinstein]

It's well made.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Yeah, it's well made. And it's presented as a news report kind of. I've actually not seen a culture do that, I don't think. Maybe not that level. Like, that's pretty dark, but unique in that sense.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, it's pretty novel. Right? And it's a cross, you said? Yeah, it's a cross between, like, a network news broadcast and like a movie trailer.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Exactly.

[Brett Weinstein]

Which is. Exactly. Interesting. Yeah. Now, I should say, before we close out here, the actual story of what happened to that young man who dropped dead and supposedly got brought back to life, but because Taylor commanded him to over the phone, there was a real young guy who, like, had a heart attack and I think was legally dead for a period of time. It was not his claim. The claim made by the church and all of Taylor's websites is that, like, a pastor called him and told him about this member of his church who had dropped dead. The young man was actually the cousin of a JMMI employee, by which I mean an unpaid worker named Joseph Butcher. So one of what. What actually happened here is that this dude who's a member of the cult's cousin, has a heart attack and is dead for a while and then gets brought back and is okay and recovers because that happens to people sometimes. And Joseph tells Taylor and Taylor's like, oh, I saved him, right? And then he starts massaging the story from there, right?

[Jake Hanrahan]

You know, this kid was in hospital with his stomach, but it was not.

[Brett Weinstein]

The reason, had nothing to do with David E. Taylor. And he was not called by another pastor. He did nothing over the phone. Cause that's just not possible. He found out about it cause one of his cult members was the guy's cousin. It's not a fucking other church or whatever. And yeah, I think that he either told this guy basically lie so that we can use this to recruit, or this guy is just enough of a cult member that he was like, yeah, that was me, you say? And the guy was like, oh my God, thank you. Something like that happened. One of the two. But it's not the story that's being told here. And this is all silly and fucked up, but it does get to the central darkness at the core of what is otherwise a pretty standard Pentecostal cult movement. The whole appeal of David E. Taylor, both to the dedicated cult members who staffed his call center and to the thousands of more casual members who came to see him speak at 3 day Miracle Raising events or those who called into his prayer line, the appeal was that this guy could save your loved ones from death. And for most people, the extra bit of hope they got sending in a donation or getting a prayer to Taylor's ears was enough, right? And I'm gonna guess that in a lot of cases it's somebody sick and you're worried about them, so you call and you send some money and then they get better. Because generally people do and you're like, probably helped, right? But for the folks who actually made up the manpower of his cult, the people who he is actually trafficking, right, the folks who are effectively enslaved working for him, the situation is a lot more serious, right? These are not just people calling in when they're worried and sending in a few bucks. And David isn't just promising that he can save the people they care about from dying, he's also threatening them, right? He's telling them that, you know, I can save your loved ones or I can make God take them away, right? I can have God curse you or the people you care about and destroy them. Or you, if you're not bringing in enough money and donation. That's, that's where this kind of morphs in fairly quick order over the course of like the late aughts, right? That's where David E. Taylor's ministry goes.

[Jake Hanrahan]

I saw, I saw this happen before in a cult and I found someone really interested in explaining, maybe not always, but they were saying, like, the reason that happens is because they get really angry that they're not like, they get rich and then they want more and they get angry that they're not getting it. And it's like they process the anger through being like, yeah, I'll smite your whole family or whatever. Like, it's, it's like directly linked to their own little feelings, you know?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, I agree entirely. And you know, Jake, that's the episode that's part one. You got anything you want to plug here at the end?

[Jake Hanrahan]

Well, Jesus is actually my best friend. So there we go. And also listen to Sad Oligarch. We just got season two out. It's some of the most.

[Brett Weinstein]

Most.

[Jake Hanrahan]

It's some of the most work I've ever done on something in such a difficult way. Like since we did season one, I'm not saying it's because of us, but since we did season one, it's extremely hard to get any info on anything right now. So I'm really proud of the work we've done, me and Sergi and Victor Mahal, and we've just absolutely smashed it, man. Really, really enjoying it. I think people like it. So, yeah, man. Sad Oligarch Season 2, it's out now.

[Brett Weinstein]

Sad Oligarch Season 2 is out now. Is Jake responsible for deaths of any of these oligarchs? You know?

[Jake Hanrahan]

No.

[Brett Weinstein]

We can't say no. We can't say no.

[Jake Hanrahan]

I promise.

[Brett Weinstein]

No. Jake says no. All right, that's it, everybody. Come back in part two and we'll hear more. Cult shit.

[Narrator (Graves County promo)]

Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media.

[Brett Weinstein]

For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit.

[Narrator (Graves County promo)]

Our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or.

[Brett Weinstein]

Wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is Now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday.

[Narrator (Graves County promo)]

Subscribe to our channel YouTube.com behind the.

[Incels Podcast Narrator]

Bastards.

[Narrator (Graves County promo)]

The murder of an 18 year old girl in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved for years until a local house housewife, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[America Y'all Better Wake Up (Promo Voice)]

America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people and small towns.

[Narrator (Graves County promo)]

Listen to Graves county on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and to binge the entire season ad free.

[Brett Weinstein]

Free.

[Narrator (Graves County promo)]

Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

[Sheryl McCollum]

I'm Sheryl McCollum, host of the podcast Zone 7 Zone 7 Ain't a Place. It's a way of life. Now, this ain't just any old podcast, honey. We're going to be talking to family members of victims, detectives, prosecutors, and some nationally recognized experts that I have called on over the years to help me work these difficult cases. I've worked hundreds of cold cases you've heard of and thousands you haven't. We started this podcast to teach the importance of teamwork in solving these crazy crimes. Come join us in learning from detectives, prosecutors, authors, canine handlers, forensic experts, and most importantly, victims. Family members, members. Come be a part of my Zone 7 while building yours. Listen to Zone 7 with Cheryl McCollum on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast.

[Incels Podcast Narrator]

On this podcast Incels we unpack an emerging mindset.

[Jake Hanrahan]

I am a loser. If I was a woman, I wouldn't date me either.

[Incels Podcast Narrator]

A hidden world of resentment, cynicism, anger against women at a deadly tipping point.

[Incels Podcast Character]

Tomorrow is the day of retribution, the day in which I will have my revenge.

[Incels Podcast Narrator]

This is Incels. Listen to season one of Incels on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Levittown Podcast Narrator]

In 2020, a group of young women found themselves in an AI fueled nightmare.

[Narrator (Graves County promo)]

Someone was posting photos.

[Sheryl McCollum]

It was just me naked can.

[Brett Weinstein]

Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts.

[Levittown Podcast Narrator]

This is Levittown, a new podcast from iHeart podcasts Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope about the rise of deep fake pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Brett Weinstein]

This is an iHeart podcast.