On yet another exploration of weird American cults, Tom and Jenny discuss the bizarre UFO cult known as Heaven’s Gate. Founded in the 1970s by true believers Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles (later known as Do and Ti), the strange sect held to a strict ascetic lifestyle, and combined end-times Christianity, theosophy, New Age, and UFO-type beliefs into a quasi-religious stew that would ultimately lead to 39 of them taking their own lives in a mass suicide in 1996, all of them believing that a spacecraft following the Comet Hale-Bopp was going to be taking them to the next evolutionary level. Slip into your Nike Decades, put a five-dollar bill and three quarters into your pocket, and listen to Tom and Jenny break down the sad and peculiar tale on a live episode 231.

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Channel art and audio & video editing by Jenny Ashford. Music & sound effects courtesy of freesound.org users jamespotterboy, corsica-s, enjoypa, capturedlv, luffy, kiddpark, and justkiddink. Video clips courtesy of Videezy & Videvo.