S4E2 - The Tea (Celestial Seasonings & Urantia)

0:00 Kayla: But how did a handful of teenage hippies in 1969 create a multi billion dollar company out of some herbs they found in the rocky Mountains? Chris: Did they manifest it? Kayla: Well, they actually might have had some help from. Chris: From God? Kayla: From aliens. Why are you doing that?

0:46 Chris: I don't know. I just saw the Velcro, and I was like, because I'm an ASM artist at heart, it's gonna happen. Kayla: No, it's not. Chris: I wish it. I secret it into the universe. Kayla: That's not what we're talking about. On today's episode of Cult are just weird. Chris: Are we introing now? Kayla: We're introing now. Chris: Good. Good. I'm Chris. Kayla: What are you? Chris: I am a human data scientist. Actually. Kayla: Sounds good. I'm a human data scientist. Chris: I am a real, live human who sometimes does data science, and I actually haven't done it in a while. I just have an expertise in it. But I'm a game designer. I have done that recently. Kayla: I'm Kayla. I'm also a human. Chris: I don't know about that.

1:27 Kayla: I'm human data. Chris: You're human data. You are human. That's how Facebook thinks of you. Kayla: We're all human data. I'm a television writer. I have no expertise in anything. Chris: Yeah, that sounds about right. Kayla: Except for submarine cables. Chris: Is that what we're talking about? Submarine cables? Kayla: Okay. Except that's a cult of one, and I'm the only person. Chris: Well, then that's perfect, because you were the only person truly equipped to talk about that cult. Kayla: Literally everyone listening right now, please google submarine cables. The Internet gets to us via cables on the ocean floor. And sometimes sharks bite the Internet. And it's the. There's nothing better on the Internet. Chris: Literally. Sharks bite the Internet. Kayla: Sharks bite the Internet. And it's a problem sometimes if you're. Chris: Not streaming this podcast right now and there's, like, a little bit of a blip, it could actually because of a shark. At least if you're an international listener.

2:12 Kayla: God willing, it's because of a shark. Chris: Also, thank you to our international listener. Actually, we say that, like, every time. Kayla: You know what? We actually have some thank yous that we actually have to thank today. Chris: Oh, yeah. Well, so mea culpa. We were supposed to do the thank yous in. Kayla: It's actually mia culpa. Chris: It's mea culpa. Kayla: As I'm saying that. No, I don't know. Chris: Well, we're not looking it up live because one of us is gonna feel like a moron. Kayla: I don't know. Chris: All right. Well, I feel guilty. How about that? That's because I was supposed we had two new Patreon signups, two new patrons over our break, and I forgot to names. I forgot to say who they were in last week's episode. So we're gonna make up for that now. So thank you for supporting us, Megan Blackburn, and probably the best named patron we have, who is their name is Icspiders, where there are none.

3:06 Kayla: We love all of our patrons equally. Chris: We love you all equally. Kayla: But that's a damn cool name. So thank you. And if you want to join our Patreon, where we're. What do we post over there? We post bonus content. We post outtakes. We post games and little sh. Things that we do. Chris: Yeah. So our bonus content we try to do well, actually, we have done since patreon.com culture. Kayla: Just weird. Chris: Yeah. Since our third season. Since the start of our third season, we've been pretty consistent about a bonus episode for each of our regular episodes. We actually published one of our bonus episodes on our main feed last season. For our last episode last season where we talked about the making of the Lularoe documentary. And last week we did some bonus content where we sort of played the, it's called like, Wikirace or Wikipedia game, and it's where you try to get from like one page to another wiki page and as few clicks or as little time as possible. Except we did it on tv tropes. Because tv tropes is something we talked about with Mike Caulfield last week.

4:01 Kayla: So head on over there if you want to support us or don't. That's also okay. We just want to give you the content that you're itching for. That was really lame. Chris: It was. If you want to support us, give us money. If you don't want to support us, that's fine. Give us money anyway. Kayla: I would like some money. Do you? I think that we should get into it. Chris: Get into the episode. Kayla: We should get into the episode. Chris: That's probably a good idea because we. Kayla: Talked about, like, let's have 200 episodes this season, so we're not asking people to spend 4 hours at a time on our content. Chris: Yeah. Kayla: And I tried. I don't know if I. Chris: What does tried mean? No. Am I gonna be sitting here for 4 hours? Kayla: No, it won't be 4 hours. Chris: How did we do that for anti vast? How did we sit in one place? Kayla: I don't think I did. Chris: Talking for three and a half hours.

4:41 Kayla: Disassociated. I have adhd I don't think I did that. Chris: Jesus christ. Kayla: Okay. Do you have any business? More business? Chris: No. My only business was to thank our patrons. Kayla: So, like I was just mentioning, we wanted to do some things a little different this season. We talked about how we wanted the season to be more about, you know, like, self care and things like that. Chris: Yeah. And helpers. I think we did a pretty good job with that last episode. We did a great episode. Kayla: We're gonna talk. We interviewed a helper about the self care a little bit this episode. Chris: Oh, great. So we're gonna continue with theme. Kayla: Yeah. What are some things you do for. Chris: Self care, like, me personally does playing a video game while just, like, totally zoning out for 5 hours count?

5:22 Kayla: I mean, I think it can. Cause that's also one of my self care things. I think it can also not. I think that can be a self uncare. Yeah, it depends on how you use it. Chris: Funnily enough, I've had that exact conversation with my therapist. Kayla: Yeah. Chris: But, you know, so I think, yeah, sometimes it's a bit of a harm reduction to do that, and I think it's fine. I'm not, like, super guilty about it, but, like, you know, the more. The healthier self care are things like going on hikes. So I have, like, a consistent hike with a friend of mine that I do now. We try to do it every Monday, and we have for a few months. So, like, kind of getting out and getting active, like, we've talked about on the show before, touching grass. So that's, you know, that's one big thing. Getting enough sleep for me is big. My sleep has a tendency to fall off, so. And then I think I've mentioned on the show a few times now, but hobby stuff. So, like, my hobby, drawing is what I've been doing a lot lately.

6:14 Chris: And that's, you know, if anybody has. Kayla: Gone and looked at our twitter and looked at all of the art that this man does for our, like, little promo tweets, get on it, because he's a very good. Chris: Okay. All right. Kayla: Anyway, we're not here to talk about that. We're here talking about self care. But, yes, I love that one of your self cares is a hobby. I have a tough time with self care. Like, I've gone to therapy a lot for that. Some things that I do. I mean, a lot of self care for me is things like remembering to do chores. Like, sometimes I think we forget about. Self care isn't just like using a loofah. It's like making yourself a meal that, like, has rounded out nutrition. It's taking care of the stack of mail that's sitting on your desk, giving.

6:56 Chris: Yourself a living space. That's, like, one you deserve, right? Kayla: But I also like to do things. I love to take a bath. That's a big one for me. I've a good bath. I love to make myself a cup of tea. I love a good cup of tea. Or I like to have you make me a cup of tea, like, in the morning or at night or even in the bath. Maybe put them together. Chris: Is this a bath tea cult? Kayla: We'll get to that. Chris: What? Kayla: No, nothing beats a lovely little unproblematic cup of tea. What? What are some of your favorite. Chris: No, no, no. We're not talking about tea. We're not talking about tea. Kayla: Do you have any. Chris: There's no way we're talking about tea. Kayla: Do you have any favorite tea brands that you. Or like any. Chris: We're talking about tea. Kayla: Do you have any tea brands that you, like, recognize, even, like, name a tea brand.

7:39 Chris: Lipton. Kayla: Name another one. Chris: Is there something like nature something or other or mothers? Mother Earth? Kayla: Does that keep going? Chris: Mother's nature? That's probably a t. Nature of the Lipton mother. I don't know. I'm not big up on tea brands. If you told me, I'd probably hurt. Kayla: What about celestial seasonings? Chris: Oh, yeah, celestial seasonings. Kayla: You know, celestial. Chris: We have some of those in our closet, I'm pretty sure in our pantry we don't we? I'm like, we should definitely check that. 90% sure. Kayla: Yeah. I mean, it's the super famous tea brand. It's in everybody's grocery store. It's in everybody's closet. It's at least in your parents tea. Like, anybody's parent has sleepy time tea in their cupboard. And for our listeners, you might remember this specific kind of tea. It has a little, cute little bear on it in old fashioned pictures. Oh, sleepy time tea. Yeah, the sleepy time tea.

8:31 Chris: Wait, so sleepy time is celestial seasonings. Kayla: Sleepy time tea is a kind of tea sold by the celestial seasoning. Chris: I see. I didn't realize that because I recognize both of those names. Kayla: Yeah, of course you do. Maybe you'll remember that each box and teabag comes printed with inspirational quotes, sort of. Well, that's a quote. Chris: I remember that. Kayla, I have a question. Kayla: Yeah? Chris: Are we still talking about self care, or did we smoothly transition into the topic? Kayla: We're talking about the topic now because I have bad news. Celestial seasonings was started by a cult, and I'm not kidding, and I am very sorry. You don't even get to, like, enjoy a cup of tea without being reminded that this world is full of, like, crazies and grifters and new age weirdos trying to weasel their way into your life. No, I was trying to talk about self care, and then this happened. So why does this always happen? I'll tell you why this happens. Because I was scrolling TikTok.

9:29 Chris: Oh, okay. Kayla: I was scrolling TikTok. And then a specific TikTok popped up on my feed. It was a short video from TikTok user Ressi that said, and, like, it says, quote, she's holding up two boxes of tea. And she says, if I had a nickel for every time I found out one of my favorite tea brands was created by a cult, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice, right? Chris: No, twice. Kayla: I immediately sent this to you, and then I, like, deleted it. Cause I was like, no, we have to do this on the show. I thought about it for a minute, and I was like, we gotta do this on the show. Chris: Oh, my God. Kayla: And so I googled celestial seasonings tea cult, and guess what? This is a big, huge thing, and I am shocked that I did not know about it already. There is a ton of information about this claim. Like, there's articles, there's other tikToks, there's social media posts, there's blogs, and it's a fucking crazy.

10:29 Chris: Wait, so wait, twice, though? What's the other company. Kayla: Hold that thought. We'll get to that. Chris: Okay. Kayla: A lot of those initial returns on my Google search eventually became the basis for my research on this episode. So thank you to food and wine, to inverse thought catalog, cracked funding universe, raw story, Reddit, TikTok, and a now defunct website about sleep news called Van Winkles. Great title. Great title. Chris: Are they talking about the sleepy. It's not specifically the sleepy time tea. That's the call, right? This is actually celestial season. Kayla: We'll get to that. Okay, so on Van Winkles, I want to specifically call out an article written by Megan Giller titled cults, conspiracies, and the twisted history of Sleepy time tea. So just big shout out. Big thank you to everyone who wrote about this situation.

11:18 Chris: Okay? Yeah, thanks. Kayla: Okay, so in 1969, a young man named Mo Siegel had an idea. Around this time, he was tapped into Boulder, Colorado's health and natural food culture and even sold asian herbal tea. In 1969, in the States, herbal tea was still somewhat novel in larger circles. Are you okay? Chris: I'm just. I just. We're talking about tea. Okay. Kayla: The word tea actually traditionally refers to the beverage which originated in China and is made using the leaves of the camellia sinensis plant. So, like every single tea that is traditionally tea, it's all made from this plant. So green, black, white, yellow, and oolong teas.

12:00 Chris: What about Earl Grey? What about Earl Grey? Kayla: Hold on, hold on. Oh, hold on, hold that thought. Those kinds of teas all come from this one specific plant. And, like, those teas, generally contain natural caffeine from the plant, okay? Herbal teas, however, do not contain leaves from the camellia sinensis plant. So the word tea in that name is actually a little bit, like, misleading or misnomer. Herbal tea usually refers to a beverage made from non caffeinated plants like leaves, herbs, flowers and fruit. Often, herbal teas will carry medicinal claims, such as promoting sleep, like sleepy time tea, relaxation, supporting recovery from illness, improving fertility. But those claims are generally not supported by western science, but are supported by other health traditions, such as traditional chinese medicine and ayurveda.

12:49 Chris: Gotcha. Kayla: Anyway, before I go down a tea rabbit hole, let's try to get back on track. Tee hole? Yeah, tee hole. Chris: You gotta tee us off on this topic. Kayla: We are teed off. In 1969, many Americans recognize tea as the more british influenced beverage. So again, think your black teas, your english breakfast, your Earl Greys tea. Chris: Earl Grey, hot. Kayla: Think about. What is that? Chris: It's Captain Picard. Kayla: Oh, yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. So, yeah, like Picard, we think of the Brits. We think of, like, the tea party or high tea. That's just kind of what we're thinking about. Chris: Oh, the tea party. It's a tea party. What were they throwing over? Kayla: Like, black tea. Chris: Black tea? Kayla: Yeah. Chris: Okay. Kayla: The Brits were stealing from.

13:29 Chris: Oh. Cause it's the East Indian. Right, right. Kayla: Green tea, I think. And others were around to some recognition, but herbal tea was largely still reserved for natural food spheres. Okay, so Mosiegel decided to change that. Now, again, this was 1969. Mosegeagal was a typical flower child hippie. He had a group of friends that followed that same lifestyle and were on board with the idea of bringing herbal tea to the forefront. Chris: That's smart. Like, from a marketing standpoint. Yeah. Kayla: The group of friends started going on hikes in the Colorado mountains to forage for herbs, to come up with tea blends they could then sell to local stores, shops, and businesses. I think they initially found, like, 500 pounds of. Of herbs or something.

14:10 Chris: Just in the mountains. Kayla: Yeah. Chris: Damn. Kayla: In the mountains. Chris: Good for them. Kayla: They harvested that 500 pounds of herbs, came up with sleepy time tea. That was one of their first blends. Chris: Well, you said this is in Colorado. So is that herbs or is that herb? Kayla: It was by a man named Herb. Chris: It was actually by a man named Herb. Kayla: No, it wasn't. Chris: You know what I mean? Sometimes you can get sleepy type. Kayla: I think there was a lot of herb going around in this company in. Chris: The early days, a lot of sense, but it was like that weak sauce, like sixties herb. Kayla: The weed we have now would kill them. Like, honestly, the weed we have today is. Whew. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the sleepy time tea that they first blended. And they knew, like, okay, we have a business on our hands. And they named it celestial seasonings.

15:02 Chris: Okay, so did they have the sleepy thyme product yet, or was it still just celestial seasonings? The general. Kayla: They had the sleepy. They harvested those herbs and used it to create the sleepy time tea. Chris: Okay. And so then celestial seasonings was the business, and their first product was sleepy time tea. Kayla: There was sleepy time tea, and there was another blend called, like, moe's 36 herb tea or something. Those were, like, the first two. Chris: That's not as catchy. Kayla: No. Sleepy time tea is the one we all know. I think you might also recognize, like, red zinger. That was another one of their biggies. It wasn't. One of their first celestial seasonings was, to say the least, a huge hit. Chris: Right? Kayla: Distribution soon reached across the entire country. By 1974, they reached a million dollars in sales per year.

15:47 Chris: That's pretty. You said they started in 69. Just foraging. Okay. Not bad. Kayla: International distribution by 77. By 83, annual sales were at 30 million. Chris: Whoa. Kayla: By 84, they were so big, they sold to Craft Inc. Like craft foods. Chris: Craft. I've heard of Kraft. Kayla: You have heard of kraft craft? Chris: You make the blue box Mac and cheese. Kayla: They do. Chris: And they also own the Patriots. Kayla: The company got. Wait, they do? Chris: Bob Kraft dog. Kayla: Oh, fucking Bob Kraft. We're not talking about Bob Kraft. This company, under Kraft, they got bigger and bigger. And Mosegel himself became wealthy, powerful, connected. He had, like, I don't really understand. I think he stepped away at this time when they got sold. When they got sold to Kraft.

16:30 Chris: Okay. Kayla: But then he eventually bought his own company back by exchanging it for another company he had founded. He founded this other company called Earthwise that was like cleaning products. And he was like, you can have this, and I'm going to take celestial seasonings back. Chris: So Moe Siegel sold his tea company to Kraft and then bought it back from Kraft. Yeah, but he didn't buy it back with cash. He did like this weird, like, company barter. Kayla: I think so. I really think so. There's a lot of history about this company. He says that he bought it back when I think Kraft got bought by Philip Morris or merged with Philip Morris or something. And he was like, no, I mean, took his company back. Do it.

17:12 Chris: Yeah. Kayla: It was a good idea because sales hit 50 million in 92. Okay, smart buyback went public in 93 to great success by the mid nineties when sales were at $70 million per year. Chris: Holy shit. Kayla: Celestial seasonings controlled 51% of the herb tea market and is still the largest manufacturer of herbal teas in the us today. Chris: 51%, though. Kayla: In 2000, celestial seasonings merged with hain food groups to form the Hain Celestial Group, a company that has annual revenue of two and a half billion dollars. Chris: Oh, that's big. Kayla: That is huge.

17:53 Chris: That's some big tea. That's, you know, I would say, actually he's probably mongering at this point. Kayla: I think he is a tea monger. This is big tea. Chris: This is big tea. Yeah. What does mister t have to say about all this? Kayla: I think it's a different kind of tea. Oh, celestial seasonings. Kind of a big deal. Chris: Yeah. Kayla: And as you can imagine, its former CEO, Mo Siegel, retired in 2002 from Hain Celestial Group. He's quite a rich and powerful man. Today. He cuts a recognizable figure among entrepreneur and business circles. Chris: Sure. Kayla: But how did a handful of teenage hippies in 1969 create a multi billion dollar company out of some herbs they found in the Rocky Mountains? Chris: Did they manifest it?

18:34 Kayla: Well, they actually might have had some help from. From God, from aliens. Chris: Oh, from aliens. Yeah, yeah, of course. Right. Naturally. That's naturally. Kayla: Okay. The story from celestial seasonings is that they got their company name from the hippie nickname of one of the founders, supposedly a woman named Lucinda Ziesing. Her nickname had something to do with Celestial, and they named her tea that. Chris: Yeah, that doesn't sound that. Kayla: That's the company line. Chris: Yeah, that doesn't sound crazy. Kayla: But in Megan Giller's article for Van Winkles, she poses a different theory as to how the company got its name. But there might be another reason they named it Celestial. Mo Siegel and John Hay, two of the founders, were avid believers in a new age Bible called the Urantia Book, which followers call an epical revelation authored solely by celestial beings.

19:34 Chris: So written by aliens. Kayla: The book touches upon everything from mind control to a eugenics plot. Chris: Why does it always come back to eugenics? Goddammit, Kayla. Kayla: To eliminate the inferior races of our great nation. Oh, God. I. Let's just. Let's just pause for a moment and. Yeah, take it in. Why does it always go back to eugenics? What is it with these new agers? Chris: I don't know. Do I need to go throw away some tea? Do I need to go check? Kayla: I don't know. Chris: Throw away our racist ass tea? Kayla: I mean, we'll get to it, but holy shit. Chris: I mean, granted, like, eugenics does mean the later words, but usually people don't spell it out.

20:15 Kayla: Yeah. Yeah. Chris: Good lord. Kayla: Yeah. Okay, so this is. Chris: Wait. Okay. I just need you to go. I just need you to keep talking. Kayla: Megan Giller goes on to report, in fact, the religious text is responsible for much more than the name of the company. In another book called. You've got to read this book, 55 people tell the story of the book that changed their life. Mose Siegel discloses that the ideals he gathered from the Urantia book guided how he ran celestial seasonings from the beginning and provided a moral compass for himself and his employees. I had wanted to be bold. I found bold, he wrote. I wanted spiritual adventure, and I was on the ride of my life. I was searching for truth, and the book was loaded with it. End quote.

21:01 Chris: Cool. I'm glad. This guy that's like a very powerful multimillionaire now is a eugenics dude. That's. Kayla: Well, his religion is a eugenics. Chris: Oh, sorry. He believes his moral code is based on eugenics. Awesome. Kayla: But what is the Urantia book, you might ask? Well, it's super simple. It's very simple. The Urantia book is a 2097 page. Chris: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. A is it pictures? Kayla: At least 2097 page. Philosophical religious text written by anonymous author sometime between 1924 and 1955. The content of the book was supposedly transmitted directly from aliens to anonymous mail receiver who then manifested, dictated, produced the text.

21:53 Chris: So that's some seriously verbose aliens. Kayla: It was published in 1955 by the Urantia foundation, an organization dedicated to the dissemination of the book, which remains active today. The Urantia book contains many ideas similar to 7th day Adventism and is divided into four sections. Part one, the central and superuniverses. Part two, the local universe. Part three. Chris: It's like a whole cosmology of, like. Yes, okay. Kayla: Yes. Chris: And it's good. They're dividing it into parts because it's 2000 pages. That's a lot. Kayla: Part three is the history of Urantia, which is actually the book's name for earth. So Urantia is Earth. Okay, part four, the life and teachings of Jesus. This is the largest portion of the book.

22:38 Chris: Why is Jesus in this? Kayla: Because the book states that basically all recognized religious figures in christian theology. So Satan, Adam and Eve, Jesus, etcetera, these are all aliens who came to earth as part of a never ending cosmic quest to elevate, evolve, and enlighten the beings residing on said planet. Chris: Classic. Kayla: Again, from Giller's article. Quote. The book also purports that there have been many sons of God like Jesus, on many different planets because there are a billion worlds. When evolution is complete, each of these worlds will have 100,000 local universes with 10 million inhabited planets. Our earth is called Urantia, and it's number 606 in a planetary group named Satania.

23:19 Chris: Oh, I thought you were going to say 616. Oh, man, it was so close. Kayla: A planetary group named Satania, the headquarters of which is called Jerusum. When we die. Okay, very creative. Hold on. When we die, we're reincarnated from planet to planet, then finally to paradise, where the deity lives. There's a little piece of the deity in each of us called a thought adjuster. End quote. Chris: Thought adjuster. Kayla: I don't like this. Chris: Very scary. Kayla: It sounds like something from 1984, not the rest of it. Chris: Wild shit. Kayla: The phrase thought adjuster, and I looked into it, and I get what they're saying, and I couldn't explain it to you. Go look on their website, is not as scary as what they're saying, but just the phrase thought adjustment.

23:59 Chris: No, it's not a good phrase. Kayla: I don't like it. Chris: Kayla, we're not trying to control your thoughts, merely adjust them. Kayla: So super simple, right? Chris: I guess. I mean, I have que. Kayla: We'll get to your questions. Chris: Okay. Kayla: The Urantia book has been translated into almost two dozen languages, and it is even the basis for a well known operatic cycle. Because the source of the text is supernatural, it is not protected by copyright laws, and thus, the Urantia book is in the public domain. Chris: That, as you recall, was a bit of a contention with Ramtha and Jay Z knights. Kayla: Yes. Chris: Where she was like, I need to make me money off of channeling Ramtha. And so she had to admit or say in court, I guess, depending on your belief, she had to say that Ramtha was something that she made up.

24:49 Kayla: Well, but the problem with that is that there's no guy around to be like, this is mine. It's anonymous guy. The ruling that it was in public domain, I think, was in 95, so 40 years after it had been published. So it's like, I guess the foundation could go and be like, hey, no, but I don't know. It's public domain now. Chris: Right? Also, like, there's not. Nobody was, like, selling classes, I think, the way that Jay Z Knight sells classes on Ramtha. Kayla: So does that all make sense to you? Chris: No, none of it makes even a liquid sense. Kayla: No, it shouldn't, because, like, so much new age stuff, this shit just about aliens and evolving the human race, it just gets hella dark, obviously.

25:29 Chris: I mean, it started dark with that statement about eugenics. I also. I was gonna say, I really like how all of these. Every time there's one of these, like, weirdo. It doesn't even need to be weirdo. It's just like, somebody craps out a new religion. It always has this aspect of, like, oh, yeah, all the previous gods are, like, totally part of the thing that. Kayla: We saw, so just go read that book. But just. But just remember that we said that was aliens, right? Chris: Like, do you believe in Jesus? Oh, yeah, that's. That's actually us. That's good. So you could just come right on in. Do you. You believe in a different one? Oh, that's us, too. That's us, too. It's all us. So you should just. It's really. We are the one true religion, as it turns out. Kayla: The urantia religion. So let's get into. Let's get into it. I guess we're already in it. Let's.

26:13 Chris: No, we're in it. Kayla: Let's continue squirming around. Chris: You are spilling the tea. Kayla: Get out of here. The Urantia book was likely written in the early 19 hundreds by this guy named William S. Sadler. He was a surgeon, a psychiatrist. And I'm putting that in quotes, because psychiatry was like the wild west at this point. Chris: Yeah, that was like, when Freud was like, shit, that's science. Kayla: Yeah. He was also a quasi spiritual debunker who wrote about the various tricks mediums used to grif people, which is very interesting. The guy who wrote, just hold on. Chris: Okay. Kayla: Around 1911, one of his neighbors began having weird fits in his sleep, and the neighbor's wife asked Sadler for help. So our boy Billy sads, and his wife, doctor Lena Sadler, came over to observe the neighbor multiple times, and eventually he, like, began to talk in his sleep, except it wasn't actually him. It was quote unquote student visitor. Spiritual beings communicating through his body. And eventually these visitors began to communicate via writing, via text. And also the saddlers obviously took copious notes. And this went on for like ten years.

27:20 Chris: So this guy is talking in his sleep. And then these saddler bros come over and take notes. Kayla: Yeah. Because the guy goes, I'm an alien. I'm aliens talking to you. And so William Sadler and his wife are like, we're two doctors. We are people of science. This makes sense. And take notes from the aliens. Chris: Okay. So they were, they began credulous of the alien thing. Not like something's going on with your sleep. More like, oh, shit, it's probably aliens. Kayla: That's what it seems like. Chris: Okay. Kayla: Eventually a group of Sadler's friends and colleagues. So he had this group of like friends, coworkers, former patients that would, like, get together to have like a Solomon about religion.

28:03 Chris: What now? Kayla: A salon. Chris: What the fuck is that? Kayla: A salon. Chris: Oh, like salon. Okay, get out of here, friends. Kayla: I'm just gonna keep saying it about, like, religious and stuff. Like, they would talk about religion and they like, got wind of it because William Sadler went like, hey, this. I'm doing this thing. He talked about it and was like, oh, no, I really shouldn't be talking about this. Chris: This whole thing sounds very. Try hard. Kayla: They became very interested. So then the group came up with 4000 questions to ask the celestial beings communicating via the sleepy neighbor. Chris: Okay, that's a lot of questions. Kayla: The answers came in the form of fully written papers. And those papers were organized by Saddler's group, now known as the Forum. And eventually that became the Urantia book.

28:49 Chris: Okay, so salon Elite weirdos say to Saddler and his cohort, like, hey, Mandev, I heard that you have access to this alien channeling thing. Could you ask him the following 4000 questions? Kayla: Well, they all came. Like, Sadler and his friends all came up with these questions. Chris: Okay, so they all got into a room where they and also saddler were writing. Yes, the aforementioned 4000 questions. And then how, like, Sadler then asked these questions of the sleepy guy. Kayla: Yeah. Chris: Like, while he was asleep, he was like, hey, man, what's the meaning of life? Kayla: Yeah. Chris: And then he would reply back in alien voice, like, 42.

29:32 Kayla: No. Chris: Oh, no. Kayla: You said papers only replied back in talking for like a few years. And then he replied back in writing. And I thought that he was like, writing. But then they sleep, right? Hold on. The saddler's claim that the written answers materialize in a way that they don't understand. Chris: I also do not understand. Kayla: So take that with a grain of salt. I don't know what that means. Chris: Okay, so it's. They ask him questions while he's sleeping. Kayla: Yeah. Chris: Question mark papers show up, papers happen. Kayla: Yeah. Chris: Okay. All right. I just want to make sure. Kayla: Yeah. Chris: Okay. And then these papers, which are the magically spawning paper, answers to their questions, you collect all those together and you get a Urantia book.

30:13 Kayla: Yeah. Chris: Okay. Kayla: Anyway, the forum of sad learned friends eventually became the Urantia foundation, and they published the Urantia book in 1955. The original members of the Urantia foundation closely guarded the identity of the sleeping neighbor so that the focus would be on the content that was communicated to him rather than on him as an individual. They didn't want him to be like the messiah. She was just a conduit. Chris: Right. I was thinking, actually 4000 questions. So that's. They, they answered two questions per page. So all of a sudden now that's pretty good, actually. Yeah, the page count doesn't seem so bad. Kayla: What's more likely than all of that though, is that William Sadler wrote the book himself, possibly with the help of his brother in law.

30:56 Chris: Blasphemy. Kayla: Both were 7th day Adventists. The book is heavily influenced by 7th day Adventism, and Saddler had been duped by a 7th day adventist medium previously. Chris: So, good job, Debunker. So is this gonna happen to me someday? Kayla: No cause. No cause the next thing I read to you, it's not just the presence of 7th day inventist memes in the Urantia book that points towards Saddler having authored the text himself. There's also the deeply eugenicist philosophies present in said book. Because guess what? William Sadler was a full blown eugenicist. Chris: Well, he was a doctor in the late 18 hundreds, so, yeah, that was kind of the faddeen.

31:39 Kayla: It was. I also, I should have done like a content warning up top, but I'm going to do it here. Like, we're going to talk about. We're not going to talk too much about the, like, eugenicist ideas, but we are going to talk about the, like, you know, we're talking about eugenics right now. If you don't want to talk, if you don't want to hear about eugenics, that's okay. Chris: If you've heard of things like the Holocaust. Kayla: Yeah. If that's not your jam right now, totally understandable. That's what we're diving into. As a teenager, William Sadler worked at the 7th day adventist health resort Battle Creek Sanitarium. Chris: I've heard of Battle Creek. Kayla: You may recognize that name because it was run by the infamous adventist businessman, John Harvey Kellogg. Chris: Oh, yeah. Kayla: You know, like cornflakes.

32:19 Chris: Yeah, the Cornflakes guy. Kayla: Kellogg's cornflakes. Yeah, yeah. Was invented by a 7th day Adventist. Chris: Right. He was a weirdo. It was like, to get people to stop jerking off or something like that. Kayla: Literally that. It was part of the clean living movement. So this was a movement at the time that promoted things like vegetarian lifestyle, temperance, not drinking, bland health foods. Enemas were a big thing. Moral purity. He developed cornflakes as something called anaphrodisiac. That is, he believed that healthy foods lowered the sex drive. Having lower libido was, like, more moderate, was more clean, was more healthy. So, you know, so had. Chris: He just never had cereal, milk, ice cream? Cause that shit's delicious.

32:59 Kayla: No. Cause that didn't get invented until many years later. Chris: Oh, well, he needs a time machine then. Kayla: Yeah, think about that the next time you reach for a bowl of corn flakes. You should also think about the fact that John Kellogg was also a raging eugenicist. Chris: Right. He was a bad man. Kayla: He founded something literally spent the last 30 years of his life dedicated to the cause of eugenics. He founded something called the Race Betterment foundation. Chris: What? Kayla: A mensch tried to create a eugenics registry. Chris: Get it? Kayla: No. Chris: Cause it's Ubermensch. It's a eugenics joke. Kayla: Away from here. He tried to create a eugenics registry. He was pro forced sterilization of those he deemed, quote unquote, defective and was anti splendid. Racial mixing, not great.

33:44 Chris: Yeah, yeah. That's wonderful. Kayla: So William Sadler was personally mentored by him, by Kellogg? By Kellogg. Chris: Son of a gun. So wait, so you're telling me that one racist food mogul mentored another racist proto, like, a guy who was going to then a racist new age mogul, another racist food mogul. Kayla: That seems to be what happened. Chris: All right. Kayla: And I don't think what we're gonna talk about a little more later, I don't think that Mosegel is the level of pro eugenics as these two gentlemen that we're talking about. Chris: Okay? Kayla: I think it's one of those things that's more like. I don't think he's out here writing, like, manifestos about pro eugenics. But I. He's also not. Not doing that. And we'll get to it in a little bit. We'll get to that.

34:39 Chris: Is it the type of thing where it's like, the further, the more time that has passed between now and the Holocaust, the more people are like, oh, maybe eugenics is not that bad. It hasn't led to anything bad, has it? Kayla: But I mean, he. Okay, we'll get to that. I'm in this weird place where it's like, I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but also I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt because he's like a rich white guy and we need to stop giving those guys the benefit of the doubt. Chris: Also because it's scary to not give him the benefit of the doubt, because if you're not giving him the benefit of the doubt, then he is a truly evil person that has a lot of money and power. Kayla: That's most people. Chris: And that sucks. Kayla: That's most people that have money and power. It's just unfortunate. And I. We'll get to it. I want to get through the history of it so that we can talk about, like, we can talk about him with the full context.

35:23 Chris: Right? It's a sociopath's world and we're just. Kayla: All living in Ithoodae William Sadler. In his lifetime, he published not one, not two, but three pro eugenics books. Chris: After working in addition to the John Kellogg. In addition to the religious texts. Kayla: Yeah, three. All of them were about racial degeneration, heredity, how the world's ills could be traced back to a lack of eugenics. He did not have good opinions. Chris: Oh, boy. Kayla: And this isn't just one tie to John Kellogg either. He wasn't just mentored by him. He married John Kellogg's niece. Chris: Whoa. Kayla: So remember how I talked about Doctor Linus Adler? Yeah, yeah. Her maiden name was Lena Celestia Kellogg. Celestia Celestia. She was also a published eugenicist, FYI. And after he worked for John Kellogg, he went on to work for John's brother, William Kellogg, who was a health food salesman. And William was likely the guy who helped write the Urantia book. It all comes back to me.

36:27 Chris: Okay, so it's just a big eugenicist circle jerk. Kayla: Yes. Chris: All these guys getting into their salons and talking about how great racism is. Kayla: So, yeah, William Sadler was literally steeped in both eugenics culture and health food culture. I don't know if the health food culture thing had any eventual influence on Mosiegel directly. Maybe it did. I don't know. I just wanted to point out that connection between, like, even if there's not a direct connection, it's just another example of how there is a connection between health food and fucked up beliefs. Yeah, and that definitely repeats itself. Chris: Wellness in general. Kayla: Yeah, wellness gets connected to fucked up beliefs. And that happened here with the Urantia connection. The Urantia whatever. And then also celestial season and then everything Kellogg talk about.

37:15 Chris: Yeah. At least the early, you know. Right, today's Kellogg's frosted flakes. Whatever. Kayla: Probably not probably. Chris: Okay. But. But the original sort of like body purity. Kayla: Right? Chris: That sounds exactly like we're just saying body fascism. Kayla: Yep. Okay. Back to Sadler and his fucked up beliefs. Some of the shit he wrote about in his three eugenics books would later be directly lifted and placed into the Urantia book. Chris: Okay. Kayla: Because like we mentioned, the Urantia book is also hella eugenicist. Chris: Right. Cool. Yeah. Kayla: To quote Megan Giller again, the text itself is weighed down with some of the most racist ideas I've read in a long time. Chris: Well, that's saying a lot. In 2022. Kayla: She wrote this actually in 2015.

37:56 Chris: Oh, okay. That was back when weren't aware of, like, all of the, like, cesspool of racism. Kayla: This was pre Qanon. Chris: Right. Kayla: She goes on to explain one of the most egregious examples from the book, the six Races of Urantia. Sorry, everybody. Apparently 500,000 years ago there were six races that corresponded to six colors. So red, orange, yellow, green, blue and indigo. Chris: I feel like I've heard shit like this. Kayla: There's a hierarchy between those races. Naturally, some races inherently inferior to the others. The blue race represents white people and they are destined to subjugate the indigo race or black people. Chris: Okay. Yep. This all sounds super great. This actually, I feel like this. There was a number of races that were all cut. Like, remember how we talked about tropes last episode? Yeah, I feel like that's a trope. Like, I feel like I've seen that. And maybe I. Maybe it's like all from the Cyrantia book or something, but I'm pretty sure I've seen the, like, you know, you have like five or six or seven races and they're all associated with a color. I think I've seen that in, like, other racist spheres.

38:54 Kayla: You know what? I need to go back to something that I was saying 2 seconds ago. I was like, I want to give them the benefit of the doubt. No, I fucking don't. No, I need to not do that. Because again, it's like, fuck you. If this is the belief that's in your book, you're a fucking racist. You're a eugenicist. Fuck off. I shouldn't be sitting here going like, I'm scared to call Mosegel a racist. No, I'm a white person. I have the privilege to call Moe Siegel a racist. Chris: You heard it here first. Kayla: Fucking racist. Chris: Mo Siegel is a racist, and it should be. Come at me, bro. Kayla: Yeah, come at me, bro. Sorry. Go sue my company. You believe this shit? Chris: Sue sue culture. Just weird for all of our $0. Kayla: Have fun. Remember how I mentioned earlier that various religious figures are all aliens who came to Earth as part of a never ending cosmic quest to elevate, evolve, and enlighten the beings residing on said planet?

39:43 Chris: Ancient aliens, baby. Kayla: Yes. So Urantia. The Urantia book claims that on every single one of the hundred billion planets or whatever in the universe, aliens known as Adam and Eve show up, to, quote, upstephen the humans living there. Chris: Oh, uplift. Actually, the uplift series by David Brin is a pretty good Sci-Fi series. Kayla: It's pointed out that Adam and Eve are always white and blue eyed. The story goes that their children are supposed to have babies with the acceptable races and have more babies. And by doing so, they will eliminate the inferior stock quote in favor of a purified race. Chris: The word stock that these guys always use, it's like, I won't. I won't go into it because it's probably not something I should say on the show, but you should check it. There's a good key and Peele bit on how, like, what precisely was so offensive about Mel Gibson's rants that he did a few years back, but anyway, it's just racist. Yeah, it reminded me of that where it's like, almost like the most offensive thing. Sentence. The word in that sentence is the word stock. It's just. It's so, like. Yeah, it's just.

40:48 Kayla: It's just like dehumanizing. Chris: It's literally, bluntly dehumanizing. Kayla: Dehumanizing language. And so again, it's like, I don't. I don't care what Mosegel personally believes. If this is like, the book that has helped guide his life and anybody that's involved with this, you have racist beliefs. Chris: Yeah. Kayla: You are steeping yourself in racist beliefs. It's bad guys. What? Chris: Steeping? Kayla: Oh, my God, I'm so funny. Okay, so according to this book, this is where it turns into anime. This Adam and Eve. Chris: What? Kayla: This is like anime? The Adam and Eve eugenics process is supposed to happen on every universe until every planet is unified. But on urantia, it got fucked. Up.

41:31 Chris: Oh, here on earth, it got fucked up. Kayla: And that's why we have so many problems on our planet. Chris: It's all because of the inferior stock. Kayla: It's because we haven't eliminated our quote more markedly unfit, defective, degenerate, and antisocial stocks. Chris: Oh, my God. Kayla: I. I mean, the book literally calls out Africans, australian aboriginals, uses the word eugenics, like, uses the word eugenics as a prescription for worldwide prosperity. We have evil and diseases and sickness because we haven't eugenics hard enough. These are bad ideas. This is not good stuff. Chris: I don't have a react. I don't like it.

42:12 Kayla: But apparently, somehow this is the religious text that wooed Mosegel and these other founders when they created celestial seasonings. He found this book in 1969. He founded the company in 1969. It's the same year. Chris: I thought were going to talk about nice stuff. Kayla: No, we're not. Maybe you're wondering, like, hey, just because someone has certain religious or spiritual beliefs like that doesn't mean that those beliefs went into the creation of the company. Just because he was in something that literally has called itself a cult. Chris: I mean, maybe it was just his personal beliefs. Kayla: Followers of the Urantia book are requested by the book to foist out Christianity with a, quote, new cult. The book calls it a cult. Just because the founder was into this, like that doesn't mean the company sprang from it.

42:58 Chris: Right, right. It's maybe just his personal belief. Kayla: No, I'm sorry. No, no. Because from Megan Giller's article, quote, after studying the teachings of the Urantia book, I knew that it would feel selfish and wasteful to simply focus on material success. Mosegeagal said. So as a young man, when I began thinking of what I could do to make a living, I immediately turned to the health food industry. The ideas in the Urantia book were the inspiration for the uplifting quotes we print on the side of our tea boxes. Chris: Oh, God. Kayla: On our tea bags. Chris: The inspirational quotes are from a eugenic book. Kayla: They're not from the book. The idea to use the quote, I looked this up. Some of them might be, but they use little quotes from various texts and various people. But the idea to use inspirational quotes came from this religion. The article continues, quote, Mo and John used the Urantia book as a guiding principle and continually quoted from it. Caroline McDougall, the company's fifth employee and the current founder and CEO of something called Ticino. She said this at staff meetings. They would even use quotes to bolster their arguments. Quote, it was a guide for making sure of the moral values that underlay the company at the time, she added, okay, so.

44:16 Chris: So it wasn't just his personal belief. It was very much in the company's DNA. Kayla: Yeah. He said, I made this company because the year antia book told me to, and then I built the company in the books image. Chris: Okay, so if I go and look at the celestial seasonings tea in our pantry, am I gonna be like, one of them is gonna be like, leap, and the net will appear. Inspiration, don't quit. And then I go to another one, and it's gonna be like, white people are the superior race. Like, is that. Am I gonna be. Kayla: I don't know. It wasn't a passing fad, either. This was in a phase. Mosegel is still a follower of the Durantia book. Chris: Okay, so it's not like he hasn't done an interview. Cause I was gonna ask, like, couldn't he just get up and be like, you know, I was crazy back then. Kind of like they do with best friends, you know, they're like, yeah, that was crazy again.

45:04 Kayla: And this goes back to me being like, oh, I don't want to call him a racist. Yeah, there's no evidence here that he's not. He still follows the book. In fact, he is currently the president of the Urantia foundation. Chris: Oh, so he's the president of the. Kayla: Racism religion, the worldwide organization dedicated to spreading the word of the Urantia book and acting as stewards of the text. He hosts weekly study groups of the text at his home. He is still in it. Chris: Okay, so not only has he not bothered to denounce any of this, he is still, like, going full bore, and. Kayla: He has espoused eugenicist ideas himself. Chris: Okay. Kayla: In the Van Winkles article, Megan Giller found a quote written by Mosiegel on the Urantia Book Fellowship website. It's in a section called the 20 most asked questions. She writes that most stated, illness and disease result from evil and cause suffering. Unfortunately, several factors hinder progress toward the development of a disease free world.

46:03 Chris: Oh, boy. Kayla: Here it is. The laws of genetics are immutable. Chris: There it is. Kayla: And form the physical cornerstone of evolution. At the present time, mankind loses about as much progress as it makes by ignoring eugenics. I read this, and I did not believe it, so I went to check myself. I headed over to the 20 most asked questions section of the Urantia fellowship and looked for this quote, and I could not find it. There was no explicit mention of the word eugenics or even the rest of the quote from the article. That's funny. I wonder where the author got that quote. I wonder where Megan Giller got this quote from then. Chris: Right? Kayla: And then I remembered that she wrote this article in 2015, and I'm looking at it in 2022.

46:43 Chris: Oh, was it deleted? Kayla: So I headed over to my favorite place on the Internet, the Wayback machine. And I looked up a version of the page published before 2015. Chris: Just to be clear, the Wayback machine is it's a. It's a website, and you can go there and you can look at preview. They basically archive as much as they can. They archive the Internet. So you can look at previous versions of pages, you can look at old pages that don't exist anymore. Kayla: You should donate money to them because they are doing the Lord's work. Chris: Oh, the wayback machine is absolutely, like one of the most important, like, institutions of our time. Kayla: Yeah, literally. Literally. That's not an exaggeration, not a joke on the show. So I went to the wayback machine, and there it was staring me in the face. And it was so much worse than just the poll for the van Winkles article.

47:30 Chris: What? Kayla: I'm gonna read the whole thing to you. Chris: It was worse than what you already said. Kayla: I'm gonna read the whole thing to you. It's a little lengthy. Is that okay if I read you a couple paragraphs? Chris: I am okay with that. Listeners, are you okay? Hopefully, they told me they were. Kayla: So this is in response to the posed question, when will illness and disease abate or end? Chris: I'm pre triggered. Kayla: I mean, he doesn't say like a slur, but it's not good. As noted above, illness and disease are unlikely to end so long as evil remains in the world. Modern medicine is heavily oriented toward alleviating the discomfort and effects of illness. Great strides are being made towards extending the life of those who are ill or diseased. It is beginning to make headway toward preventing or curing many dread diseases and can make even more progress. But it is far from preventing or curing all diseases. For reasons indicated below, we should not expect a major reduction in illness and disease until our planet begins its settlement in light and life. Unfortunately, several factors hinder progress. This is the quote that was pulled for van Winkles. Unfortunately, several factors hinder progress toward the development of a disease free world.

48:39 Kayla: The laws of genetics are immutable and form the physical cornerstone of evolution. At the present time, mankind loses about as much progress as it makes by ignoring eugenics. Chris: All right, so he uses the e word in a plus, in a positive sense. Kayla: Throughout the ages, struggle and disease have destroyed weaker stocks and allowed only stronger stocks to survive and procreate. Even so, physical progress was slow. Civilization is reducing the purging effects of struggle, and modern medicine is preserving weak and disease prone human stocks to procreate, thereby creating a larger population of weaker and disease prone individuals to suffer such diseases. The future of humanity depends in part upon the quality of genetic factors which dominate its populations. And again, when I was like, let's give him the benefit of the doubt earlier, I fucking forgot all of this. He wrote this. He co wrote it, quote unquote, like as. But he fucking wrote this. He put his name on this and he had this on the Internet. I still have more to read. He had this on the Internet in the year of our lord 2015.

49:40 Kayla: This wasn't 1915. This was 2015. Chris: Right, right. Kayla: I can't say for sure, but it seems like he took it down just because Megan Giller found it. Chris: But it's on the Internet, dude. Kayla: I know, but they took it down. They took this part, clearly. Chris: They. Kayla: Yeah, after 2015. But it was. It was there until 2015. Chris: Yeah, that's what I mean. It's like, it's not. You're not. That's. Megan Giller didn't, like, break into your house and open, crack open your safe and find this quote. This was on the Internet. So, like, it's just so weird to me sometimes, like, these guys where it's like they'll publish something for the public to find, and then the public finds it and they're like, oh, shit. Kayla: Whoops. The quote continues. Ironically, the techniques used by modern medicine to increase the number of disease prone individuals inadvertently follow the laws of genetics to create hardier breeds of diseases to attack them. Just as pesticides, by killing off weaker bugs, have created strains of superbugs resistant to pesticides, so have antibiotics and other drugs created strains of super germs and super viruses resistant to conventional methods of destruction. Industry, which provides food, shelter, clothing, transportation, et cetera, to preserve the weak and increase the quality of life for everyone, also adds toxins to the environment, which in turn cause more diseases, some of which are new. That's the end of the quote. But that's the entire. So she pulled that one eugenics quote out of a much larger quote. That's.

51:01 Chris: That's like, even more pro eugenics. Yeah, and even more nut job. Kayla: And again, this was on the Internet. Latest, like, this was on their. A part of the website with Mosegel's name on it as late as 2015. Chris: And I just, there's another thing here, too, where I'm just like, what makes you think that you are an expert on genetics? And I know that's a dumb question. Well, actually, we'll get, oh, we'll get to that, too. Okay. But, you know, not to bring up the Jay Z Knight episode again, but, like, it reminds me of the quantum flap doodle thing where it's like there's this scientific theory out there. There's this piece of the scientific understanding of the world, and then whack jobs latch onto it and then think they understand it and then just go way off the goddamn rails. So again, with what the bleep and with much more that happens with quantum mechanics. And it's like, this is what it is with genetics, with the study of evolution and biology.

52:01 Chris: It's like, you get these guys and it's like, I like, how does, like, I guess you said we'll get to that. But it's the, we'll get to. Kayla: It a little bit. Chris: Where, how do you, like, you're, see this guy, his quote is talking about, like, well, you know, this is how. Kayla: It works is I founded a tea company, so I know everything about, but it's because he, yeah, because he believes his religion. Chris: I know his religion. Kayla: I know has the truth of this. Chris: Thing, but it's just, it's like, bro, you don't know how this works. You are not a biologist. What do you, what are you talking about right now? Kayla: So again, this was removed. This is no longer on the live version of the site post, the article that Megan Giller published. But given the content of the book and given the fact that this was up until there was like, an expose done of it, I do not have any confidence that Moe Siegel and the folks heavily involved with the Urantia book have actually changed their tune about eugenics.

52:51 Chris: No. Kayla: Maybe they're just trying to, like, hide a little better. I don't know. But they're not trying to hide it that much better. In 2010. And this, I found this in a number of articles. I'm referring to it as rumors. We'll get to that. In 2010, rumors swirled that the Urantia foundation put together a panel on eugenics and considered the information unsuitable for the website and so would only be disseminated to followers deemed, quote, forward looking. Enough. One, hold on, again, I'm calling this rumors. One man rumored to be part of the panel was named Kermit Anderson. Then the genetic screening program director at Kaiser Permanente in California. I think we might get killed. I think we might get killed for this.

53:37 Chris: Fine. I don't want to live in the world you're describing. Kayla: So I could not find any evidence of this eugenics panel outside of Giller's report and reports by others. I couldn't find an official urantia document being like, we did a eugenics panel. So I have no idea if this happened, if it's conspiracy theory. Chris: Right. Kayla: Giller claims that both Mosiegel and the Urantia foundation didn't respond to her attempts to connect. So, like, maybe this claim's a bit wild, but it's not that wild. While I cannot confirm the veracity of a 2010 eugenics panel, I can confirm that a man named Kermit Anderson has followed the Urantia book teaching since 1969, has hosted weekly study groups of the book in his home for 40 years, served in leadership positions in the Urantia Book Los Angeles Society, and currently hosts symmetry of Soul, a weekly two hour broadcast of Urantia book study. And he worked for 30 years in the fields of medical genetics, genetic counseling, and genetic screening at Kaiser Permanente in southern California. Do you remember a few days ago.

54:42 Chris: Very scared right now when I was. Kayla: Sitting on the couch doing my research? Chris: Yeah. Kayla: And all of a sudden, I went. I looked up and I said, this is really bad. Yeah, this is really bad. Chris: I don't. Kayla: That's what I read. Chris: I do not want. Do not want this. Kayla: It's just so information is all part of his written bio on the symmetry of soul website. Chris: So it is rubbing my face right now, which is why my nose sounds so. Kayla: A man, a very powerful man in the field of genetics. And not just, like, genetic study. Like, he worked with patients. A man who is a very high up authority on genetic testing and study is also a very high up authority in a religious organization that espouses eugenicist ideals. Also, there's tea involved.

55:37 Chris: Kayla. I understand. This is why I'm like, I kind of understand anti vaxxers. Cause, like, you sit here and you go like, oh, I wonder why we don't have any trust institutions anymore. God, that's fucked. Kayla: Yeah. So there's that. Just dropping that little nugget for you. Remember why were like, let's do a nice season. I tried, you guys. I really tried. Chris: I did. Kayla: And then episode two happened, and then this. When I saw the TikTok, I was like, ooh, this'll be fun. It was not fun at all. Chris: Fun little tequel. Kayla: This is one of the worst things I think I've ever covered. Chris: It's probably gonna be like a weird, like, hippie dippie flower children. Kayla: Like, this has to be one of the worst things I've talked about. Chris: Oh, for sure. This is like. This is on par with, like, creativity. I mean, this is like hyper racist.

56:22 Kayla: I need to remind our audience that while Mosegel is still the president of the Urantia foundation, he no longer runs celestial seasonings or Hain's celestial group. He's been retired from them for 20 years. So perhaps you can drink the current iteration of sleepy time tea without having to worry your funding. Eugenesis thought I. But I know that I'm probably not gonna be drinking it anymore. And I'm probably gonna, like, look at that box a little differently now that I know its origins and what the people who created it believe in. Chris: Yeah, I. Okay, so I didn't like. Yeah, when you said cult, I'm like, okay, that's gonna. It's gonna be some weirdos. But like, this went, like, way racist. I er than I thought. And not just like, racist. Like, there's like. Like, eugenics is real bad. Like, it's not just. I don't care for this.

57:07 Kayla: Yeah, I'm calling for genocide. I'm calling for like. Chris: Yeah, it's bad in a way that has proven vastly effective in the real world at killing large numbers of people. Kayla: And guess what? You genesis. Eventually it will come for you. Yeah, it will come for you. Your philosophy will eventually come for you. Chris: Right? Kayla: Because guess what? None of us are an Ubermensch. No, I should also say the Urantia book again, it's a 2000 page text. It's not all about eugenics. Maybe there's some other stuff in there that's like, super nice, but like. Chris: Well, it's like the. Kayla: But it comes with a side of eugenics, so it's tainted. It's fucked up. It's not to be followed. It is a book that should be thrown into the garbage.

57:49 Chris: Just like that dune book that I couldn't. Kayla: That was also about genocide, if you are wondering. Chris: Sorry, sorry. Not originally. I love doing. Kayla: No, no. Not original. Chris: Just to be clear up all the way up through chapter house. It was just. It was a. It was a newer copy. You know what? This is not what the episode's about. Kayla: If you are wondering, the answer is yes. Mose is still rich and well connected. Chris: Yeah, that makes sense. Kayla: He's currently the owner of Capital Peaks Investments. He serves on five food company boards of directors, two financial boards, two nonprofit boards, including, at one point, Whole Foods and great outdoors Colorado. And of course, he's still the president of the Urantia foundation. Woo hoo.

58:35 Chris: Kayla, I feel really bad now. Kayla: So that's. Chris: Can you give me something here to. Kayla: Honestly, no. Chris: Okay. Kayla: No, I can't. Chris: All right, I'm gonna do a callback to the thing were talking about, weed. I'm just gonna get all. Just blaze the hell out after this. Kayla: I might have to go smoke some weed after this. Chris: Holy shit. Kayla: Are you ready for the criteria? Chris: Cult. Called. Cult. Kayla: Call charismatic leader. What are we doing? Here's actually the question. This is actually a serious question for this. Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Kayla: Are we evaluating the Urantia foundation or are we evaluating celestial seasonings? Chris: I say we do both. Can we do both?

59:16 Kayla: Sure. So charismatic leader. Chris: I am not. Yeah. So the Urantia foundation, we would call. That is not Mosegel, but the other guy, Sadz Sadler. Kayla: But I wouldn't call it Sadler. I would call it the book. Chris: The book itself is the leader. Kayla: I think it's like anonymous book. The thing that's drawing people into this is not William Sadler. It's the book. Chris: If you put together William Sadler with the Sackler family, you could call them sad sack. Kayla: They are. They are a bunch of sad sacks. Chris: Sorry. Kayla: Wealthy. Though. Chris: I am not convinced as to how charismatic these folks are, but clearly Mosegeagle must have been charismatic enough to be a leader of a multi million, an eventually billion dollar sales company.

1:00:02 Kayla: I think the Urantia book only has a few thousand followers at that time. Helps. Yeah. Chris: All right. I'm gonna say it's present unclear on how charismatic it is. Kayla: Okay, so Urantia book, charismatic leader. Chris: Yes, I'm gonna. Well, no, I'm saying for Urantia foundation. No, for celestial seasonings. Yes. To summarize, we are saying, yes, mosegeagal is at least the presence of a charismatic leader. Tough to say how charismatic, but certainly enough to, like, in his business, be a billionaire. And for the Urantia foundation, we're saying, eh, not really. Like, there's a book, there's a guy that wrote it, but that doesn't really have a leader. Kayla: Okay, sure. Chris: What about expected harm, seeing as how eugenics is responsible for some of the worst harms that have ever befallen us as a civil society?

1:00:51 Kayla: It's high in Urantia. What about the tea? Chris: It's about as high as it's ever been on the show. Kayla: Yes, but with the tea, I feel like you could go your whole life drinking the tea and never even brush up against the eugenics. Chris: But the cult isn't purchasers of said tea, right? Like, hopefully, anyway, the cult is the company itself. People that, like, have to sit in a boardroom with Mo Siegel, as he, like, you know, cites the book of racism and 7th day adventism or whatever. Kayla: Right? Chris: So in that sense, I would say, like, it's high even for celestial seasonings because it is promulgating and giving life to set ideas, presence of ritual.

1:01:31 Kayla: Okay, tea, baby. So I didn't really get into this, but like, if you go to the Urantia foundation website, it is very intense. Like, there are offerings for weekly study groups. There are like courses that you can take. There's this weekly broadcast. There's like walls and walls information and text. Like, you are supposed to be really steeped in the ritual. I keep saying it and I don't mean to. You're supposed to really be marinating in this. Chris: You're supposed to be percolating. Kayla: As far as celestial seasonings, I don't really know. I know that they were really like. And I think maybe I talk about this later, but they were really, like, they helped pioneer the, like, casual, laid back company, baby. Like, I think they were smoking weed. They were like, we. We don't have company cars. We have company bikes. Like that kind of thing.

1:02:19 Chris: We don't have paid time off here. You can just take off whenever you want. Fuck you. Celestial seasoning. It sounds like there's maybe some. So it sounds like high for the foundation. But for celestial seasonings, the company, I would say unclear. Yeah, but it does sound like there's potential for it because it sounds like, again, there was probably some pretty weird meetings at that company where, like, it started normal and then somebody was like, yes, but as it says here on page 97 of the holy text. Kayla: Right? Chris: And then all of a sudden that. That Friday meeting is like, whoa. Kayla: I picture being very similar to if anyone's watching severance, how they refer to, like, the company text as basically religious. Chris: Yeah, that's exactly what I was picturing. Kayla: You guys should watch severance. Watch severance is real good niche. So Urantia foundation. Urantia book only has a few thousand followers.

1:03:04 Chris: So that's nice. Kayla: Celestial seasonings, a two and a half billion dollar. Chris: Not niche. Kayla: Not niche. Chris: Yeah. Kayla: Biggest, biggest tea herbal tea manufacturer in the state. Chris: Not niche. Kayla: Anti factuality again, I think it's high for both new age and just because. Chris: Of new age bullshit. Kayla: And then the, like, the sleepy time tea is. I'm sorry. The sleep. I'm sorry. Their fucking tea is fucking new age bullshit. There is nothing to say that sleepy times is actually gonna make you sleep. There's nothing to say. They're fucking, like, bullshit. Immune support tea or any of those other shit. Chris: Sorry. Kayla: I'm really mad. I'm sorry. Chris: You're right. It's all shit. And then as far as, like, the eugenics thing goes, like, there's so much, again, just to rehash, there's so much flap doodle going on there of, like, oh, you know, it's about the science of how the biology works, evolution. And if you do this, then, you know, the weaker stock.

1:03:48 Kayla: Right? Chris: Like, there's just a lot of, like, I don't know what. I'm just making shit up. Kayla: Right. Chris: So I would say pretty high life consumption. Kayla: Well, for Urantia foundation, or if you follow the Urantia book, that's like, they recommend that you study the book, or you at least go to a book study once a week for 2 hours. But there's probably daily readings. There's. I get the sense that, like, the people that are really in it. Like, I mean, moe Siegel has been in this since 1969. Chris: That's true. Kayla: Kermit Anderson has been in this since 1969. So many people involved. If you go on their website, on the leadership, it's like, I've been involved in this since high school. I've been involved in this for 40 years. I've been involved in this for, like, huge portions of my life.

1:04:36 Chris: People get into weird shit, man. Kayla: I can't do anything. I can't do anything. Like, what the hell? I can't even make a habit out of, like, going to, like, a support group. And these people are like, I've done this for 40 years. I'm like, how. How do you. I mean, I don't want to do. I don't want to do your thing, but I would like to know how you can, like, stick to something. Chris: I couldn't even stick to Catholicism that long. I mean, that's like, they have a much longer track. I don't know. Kayla: And great ritual. Chris: I know. Kayla: I mean, with ritual, great. Chris: Yeah. Kayla: The blood of Christ, to be determined. Chris: Okay. So I would say actually, for the year, anti foundation. It sounds pretty high because it just. It eats right the rest of your life.

1:05:18 Kayla: To a certain degree, yeah. You make entire companies based on it. Everything in your life is built around. Chris: And then I would probably need to hit up glassdoor to really get a good done that. Kayla: I really should have done that. Maybe that'll be actually. That'll bonus. Chris: That is definitely the bonus. Kayla: Into the next door. Chris: Go subscribe to our Patreon so we can tell you all. We can spill all the tea. Kayla: Oh, my God. Chris: From glassdoor. Kayla: Two mugs full. Chris: All right, what's next? Kayla: Dogmatic beliefs. Chris: So dogma is the sort of, like, where. Right. Everybody else is wrong. Kayla: I mean, I don't. I didn't necessarily get the sense of that. I also didn't look into it a lot. Tough to say. I think some of the, like, when you subsume another religion under your, like, umbrella, that feels a bit dogmatic. It's like, no, no. You think you know Jesus. We know Jesus.

1:06:05 Chris: Yeah. Although on the other. On the other hand, would dogma be more like, oh, no, this is the correct religion, you dumb christians. Right? Like, is it. Is it not dogmatic to be so, like, big tent, like, oh, Jesus. He's actually just part of our thing, right? It's. I don't know. It's. At that point, I think I'm, like, sort of, like, I've. I'm out of my element in terms of, like, the language we're using here. Kayla: It's just hard to. It's hard for me to say that eugenicist beliefs aren't dogmatic. Chris: Eugenicist beliefs certainly are. But I'm wondering if the, like, the larger religious stuff. And then for celestial seasonings, the company. I'm not sure. I think I would need more information as to, like, don't go work for that other tea company where all they care about is making tea.

1:06:53 Kayla: Chain of victims. Chris: Chain of victims. Kayla: I feel very victimized, personally. Chris: It seems like there was a chain. Kayla: I'm pretty. I'm honestly, I'm very upset that I spent so much of my life drinking cult tea. I really feel about. Chris: I feel like there's a chain here where you learned about something, and then I had to fucking hear about it. Kayla: Sorry. And were telling everybody else. Yeah, sorry. Chris: The chain of victims. I don't know. It doesn't seem, like very recruited, although I will say for the religion itself. The fact that we talked about sort of, like, two steps. We talked about the founding of it, the writing of the text, and then many years later, somebody found it and then used those teachings in his company, suggests that there's some chain there, but it doesn't have the same sort of MLM or QAnon where you get somebody into it, and then they get somebody into it. And they get somebody into it, and you lose the distinguishment between victim and recruiter. So I'm gonna say low.

1:07:52 Kayla: So, overalls your 9th foundation versus what? Chris: Can we do one more? Yeah, we talked about maybe doing another one. Kayla: Do it. Chris: Adding a 9th criteria. Kayla: Add it. Chris: It's how easy or difficult is it to leave this organization? The more difficult, the more culty. Kayla: I don't get the sense that you're gonna be excommunicated if you leave the. Your antia book foundation. But I do question why people are in it for solid. Who does something for 40 years? But I guess, I mean, plenty of people are religious their entire lives. It's just we more used to somebody being a lifelong Christian or a lifelong jewish person or a lifelong Muslim. Chris: So where we got this, or we started talking about this anyway, was when we did that. That interview with Stephanie McNeil about the Lularoe doc.

1:08:34 Kayla: Right. Chris: And they were talking about how, like, if you know, stop selling Lularoe, then you're, like, fucking, like, pariah. And we've seen that before with things like, that was the case with twin flames universe, right? Like, there was sort of this in group, and then as soon as Amish, as soon as you were out of it was like, don't fucking talk to them. We will kill you if you talk to this out person. Kayla: I don't get that sense for either of these places. Chris: Okay. So low for that. Kayla: I think so. Chris: Okay, so, weirdly, this seems like a mix. Kayla: It seems like a miss a mix, and yet I'm calling them both cults. Chris: But I think that, like, because it, like, scores so off the charts on expected harm. I think we have to. Kayla: They're both cults. Chris: It's like, because that one's such an extreme outlier, I feel like it makes it sort of like, you know, either you can score pretty high on everything or you can be a mix, but, like, you are literally the best in show for the. For one particular criteria. So because they're so high, unexpected harm. Yeah, I think that's warranted. Cults, cult. We should do, like, a sound effect. Have we talked about that?

1:09:37 Kayla: Cult. Cold cult. Chris: Well, thanks for, like, ruining my day and. Kayla: Oh, wait, wait. Chris: What? No, my days already ruined before we wrap up. Kayla: So maybe you want to steer clear of a cult founded tea brand. Maybe you're, like, celestial seasonings is not for me. Chris: I would prefer a different. I would prefer a more terrestrial seasoning. Thank you. Kayla: There is another tea brand that I love. So instead of reaching for celestial seasonings, maybe we can reach for another grocery store. Ubiquitous brand. Yogi tea. Okay, no, sorry. That's a cult too. Chris: What is this the thing where you were on TikTok? Kayla: Remember how that initial TikTok mentioned that she'd have two nickels for every time a tea brand turned out to be a cult?

1:10:22 Chris: Oh, God, yeah. Kayla: Yogi tea is the second one. Chris: Kayla, please. Kayla: Yogi tea. Chris: Are they, like, regular cult? Do we have another hour and a half show to talk about this? Kayla: We'll get to that. Yeah, no, we don't. Yogi tea was established in 1984 by Yogi Bhajan, a self styled holy man who came to the states posing as a guru. He established ashrams, garnered a large following, claimed to have special abilities, like seeing the future, and put himself on the radars of folks, like, complicated figure Steve Hassan. His teachings were like. Steve Hassan was like, this guy's a cult leader. Chris: Okay. Kayla: His teachings were less traditional than, like, that. He claimed it was Ayurveda, but it was, like, less traditional than that. And it was more like he was saying, this is Ayurveda. It was really new age bullshit.

1:11:08 Chris: Right? Okay. Kayla: And he created his own tea blend. His students then named it Yogi tea. Like, he would do these, you know, whatever, his classes, and they liked Yogi bear. Yogi bear. And then he exploited his followers and, like, encouraged them to establish businesses to sell his. And eventually it grew into a $30 million or more. Chris: Oh, my God. Kayla: After Bajan's death in 2004, content warning for sexual assault. Dozens and dozens of women came forward, reporting all manner of sexual assault from their former guru, including rape and other things that I'm gonna choose not to report on this podcast. Just know that it gets oh, my God. Real bad. And fuck that guy. And even though he's dead, I am not drinking his tea. Get the fuck out of here, Yogi tea. I'm not even gonna do a full episode on you. That's all we're gonna talk about for you.

1:11:55 Chris: So, yeah, so what can I drink? Kayla: That's the story. Chris: This is why I'm a coffee guy. Kayla: The tea that I make, that I hand blend the tea in there that. Chris: We have now, I don't trust you. Now. I'm like, what are you doing that you decided to blend some lavender and chamomile together? Like, why does this happen twice? Like, why is this happening with two different tea companies? Is it just that I haven't heard about it for coffee companies? Kayla: I think that I'm gonna ask you to hold that question because that might be a future topic. Chris: Wait, are you serious? There's coffee cults now? Kayla: No, not a coffee cult. But why? This has happened more than once. Chris: I mean, I was just gonna.

1:12:36 Kayla: I don't know how that's a future. Chris: My speculation was gonna be. I was actually gonna retroactively, like, change my grade for a ritual to be high, because I actually think maybe there's something to do with how ritualistic tea is just in the culture in general, especially eastern cultures. Like you said, it ties into this ancient medicinal practice where medicine and ritual and lots of other disciplines, it wasn't so separated the way we have it now, where it's like, you get tea at the grocery store and you get medicine at the doctor. Kayla: Right? Chris: And so maybe that's sort of like, when you trace that back. Tea being so integral to some of these practices is what lends itself to being a little wacky. And then some of them just happen to become billion dollar businesses.

1:13:30 Kayla: It's got to happen to someone. Chris: Oh, boy. All right, well, so I guess I just need to not drink any more of this fucking tea. Kayla: That's the story of how two beloved tea brands turned out to be run. Chris: By cults, you know? Kayla: And that's the story how one of my chosen self care methods is now inextricably tied up in the bullshit that we're trying to escape from. We can't fully get away from it. Yay. And you know what? That's okay. We just have to be okay with it sometimes. Like, I can't control what the most seagulls of the world are gonna do. The cults are all around us, and part of self care is understanding. You only have so much control over it all. And I'm not saying, like, just go and drink celestial seasonings with abandon. I'm saying in order to preserve your peace of mind, you have to accept that you cannot fully eschew this stuff from your life. And sometimes you have to just drink a cup of tea and not go to the Wikipedia for it.

1:14:28 Kayla: You just have to let that cup of tea be a cup of tea. Chris: This is Chris, this is Kayla, and this is. We have been spilling the tea here on cult or just. Kayla: Just weird.