This episode discusses the beginning of Peoples’ Temple’s slide into radicalism after Jim Jones leads his people to California. We also talk about the development of 1960s radical political movements, and Jonestown conspiracy theories.

I had to record this episode in a hotel bathroom while on travel for work. The audio quality has some issues at various points, and I will probably try to redo the whole thing at some point in the future. Hopefully, it’s not too bad.

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In this episode I trace the trajectory of the civil rights movement through the 1960s, and the gradual shift in emphasis and leadership from the stoic southern marchers following Martin Luther King, Jr to the militant Black Power soldiers of the northern ghettos.

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This is part 2 of a podcast series on Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple movement. An eccentric loner as a child, Jim Jones finds purpose in the fight for racial and economic justice.

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By popular demand…

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This is the first episode of a series exploring Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. This episode is only a prologue, a few stories and ideas to serve as a backdrop for everything to come. The next episode will be along in the next few weeks, and every few weeks after that until we figure out why over 900 people committed suicide in a South American jungle in 1978.

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I was honored to have a discussion with two friends and inspirations about issues raised in the two-part series on Sand Creek and My Lai. Daniele’s broad academic perspective and Jocko’s on-the-ground experience leading men in combat helped untie some of the knots I left cinched at the end of the My Lai episode.

Episodes are available on both the History on Fire and Jocko Podcast feeds. If you haven’t, please go check out their podcasts and take a few moments to give them a good review. It’s important to me and it would mean a lot.

If you enjoyed our recent series on the Sand Creek and My Lai atrocities, you’ll love Jocko Podcast. Start with #31 for a different, maybe darker and more harrowing approach to the My Lai Massacre. On the down low, Jocko has the best book review podcast on the internet. Here are some of my favorite episodes:

#115 with Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer

#13 – Chechens vs Russians

#16 on the book Machete Season, about the 1994 Rwandan genocide

#85 on the book Ordinary Men, about a Nazi police battalion on the Eastern Front

It’s one of my top 2-3 favorite podcasts, so there are really too many to list, but those are a good place to start.

If for some silly reason you haven’t listened to Daniele’s History on Fire back catalog (lol wtf, srsly?), my all-time favorites are:

Series on the War for the Black Hills

Series on madman Italian Renaissance painter Caravaggio

Epic 4-part series on Crazy Horse

This is part 2 of a series I’ve been working on with Daniele Bolelli. In part 1, he covered the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre carried out by the US Army. I was working on my next major series when Daniele asked me to do a companion episode on My Lai, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. From his description:

“Because I felt like I was ordered to do it, and it seemed like that, at the time I felt like I was doing the right thing.” —Private First Class Paul Meadlo explaining his role in the My Lai Massacre.

“How do you shoot babies?” Meadlo was then asked. His reply… “I don’t know. It’s just one of them things.”

“I felt then and I still do that I acted as I was directed, and I carried out the order that I was given and I do not feel wrong in doing so.” — Lieutenant William Calley Jr. addressing his own leadership during the action.

“Every Day/ On our fellow man we prey/ Dog eat Dog/ To Get by/ Hope you like my genocide” — The Offspring

“Hello darkness, my old friend…” — Simon and Garfunkel

“I believe now it is but the commencement of war with this tribe, which must result in their extermination.” — Major Jacob Downing

“Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians! … I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God’s heaven to kill Indians. … Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice.” — Quote attributed to Colonel John Chivington

“They were so honorable and so strong, but I felt like they were alone and sometimes when you want to do the right thing, the people that want to do the right thing suffer… even today.” —Lorraine Waters about Silas Soule and Joseph Cramer

“It was hard to see little children on their knees… having their brains beat out by men professing to be civilized.” — Silas Soule

I’m not going to lie. This is one of the darkest episodes of History on Fire. But there are reasons for this journey into the heart of darkness. The stories of Sand Creek and My Lai offer an opportunity to explore human agency, the choices separating good and evil, and how some individuals can choose to become sources of light even in the most horrible circumstances. In part B, I hand the microphone to my friend and master podcaster Darryl Cooper (from The Martyrmade Podcast.) Darryl explores the context of the Cold War in order to come to terms with what happened at My Lai, in Vietnam, in 1968. Horror abounds, but if you are looking for heroes in the midst of the horror, you can do a lot worse than hear about the story of Hugh Thompson.

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This is the first episode of a collaboration with Daniele Bolleli, host of the great History on Fire series. In part 1, Daniele tells the story of the massacre at Sand Creek by the US Army in 1864.

In part 2, to be released tomorrow, I tell the story of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam that took place a century later.