Heaven's Gate

This podcast does a wonderful job of humanising the deceased members, the families of those who perished, and the members who still remain. It gives you a better understanding of their beliefs and shows a beautiful kindness that seems to have existed in the group. If you’re looking for salacious - you won’t get it here. If you want to understand different perspectives and feel the humanness of this story and the group members then you will love it.

Jones Town wasn’t suicide. Jones Town was homicide. They were forced to drink the poison, and those who didn’t were killed. No one was forced to do anything in Heaven’s Gate.

The host is in love with the sound of his own voice and keeps inserting his own spiritual journey into the story. His cult experience sounds interesting but that’s a different podcast and would ideally be narrated by someone else. His style of intoning and bloviating is just annoying. It is expertly edited and I liked some of the space age sound effects. The overwriting borders on the silly in places (“they listened to the sound of salmons swimming”). There’s just a lot that distracts from the core of a good podcast. All the various interviews and especially the academic experts were really interesting to listen to but the podcast is ruined by the intrusive narrator. I finally gave up on it.

This is a great series but the narrator keeps referring to 39 people dying as “the worst mass suicide in American history” and that is simply false. Maybe the worst on American soil, but Jonestown killed 918 Americans. It may seem pedantic but facts matter.