Episode 609: Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell - The Doomsday Murders Part I - Beyond The Veil
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I was trapped in the cult. A new true crime docuseries. Everything inside of me was screaming, just go. Ten cults. He claimed he heard the voice of God. Ten stories of escape. It was an emotional battle. We were brainwashed. My sister and I got on the snow machine and I'm like, there's no way out. And if I got caught, he would for sure kill me.

How I Escaped My Cult, all episodes now streaming on Hulu.

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To a pile of beans. A new cup of piping hot Polish-Italian java. Last podcast on the left and Spring Hill Jack coffee are rising from the rubble with a new brew on Butterfly Dude's Blue Eye Blend.

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Butterfly dudes, blue eye blend, from the cocoon to your room. There's no place to escape to. This is the last hot ass. On the left. That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? Yeah!

You don't do that? Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's refreshing. Yeah. Oh, when I sit down, definitely. Oh, I'm sitting. Oh, fuck. I'm not sitting. Now my butt's touching something. Oh, God, I'm sitting so hard right now. Oh, God, my butt is hard. Marcus, is that cancer? Do I have heartburn?

butt disease? Is this the beginning of me turning into stone? Yeah. Alright. You need to go and get your butt massaged a little bit and then you'd be able to get over your stone disease. See, I don't know how to do that on a table because they do work the back legs and I do wish that they'd manhandle my flaps more, but the problem is that I feel like the more I ask, they say go like north.

Go north. And it seems like I'm asking to be sexed. No, that's the thing is that you can't actually ask for it. You just have to find a massage therapist who does it anyway. And then you stick with that person. Remember in New Zealand, the massage? I mean, I don't know about you, but my lady was like, it was like 20% rubbing my ass. That was different. That was somebody special. Yeah.

That was somebody new. Well, that's more European because I'm a bit of a massage connoisseur. I love massages. And when you get outside of the United States, they get a little less afraid to get near the private parts. Yeah, because your butt is the most European part of you. And it's got lots of muscle in there. There's lots of going on in there. It's connected to the legs and all that. It needs to be worked. To glutes. Yeah. Speaking of glutes.

Today's episode makes me long for the Catholic Church and the simple honesty.

Of the leaders of the Catholic Church. Because you know what's nice about Catholic Church and their priests and their folks? They know they're evil. Yeah. They act like it. Yeah. And they're super confident about it. Yeah. And they don't need to pretend to be humble because they got big hats covered with diamonds on them. Yeah. And they spend their fucking money. They're spending their money. They're not just sitting on it like a bunch of fucking Mormons are waiting for a quote unquote rainy day, which is going to

kill the rest of us, and then they're going to spend their money. Yeah, buy your scepters, buy your big hats, buy bigger hats. Do it now, guys. It's not coming. Jesus Christ is not coming back to America. It sucks here. Welcome to the last podcast on the left, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Marcus Parks. What? Really? Yeah. After all this time, yeah.

Yeah, it's Marcus Parks. Nice to meet you. Here with Henry Zebrowski. I'm fucking angry today. Yeah. I'm angry. I'm full of it. I can't wait to come for these people and come on these people. And I also want to say this whole series is going out to our ex-mos. We love you. We love you. And our soon-to-be ex-mos. I want to say, if you somehow found yourself here right now, this is your signal to get the living fuck out.

Yeah, man. Ditch the backpack. Get a shirt with a color. You know, it's going to be a big day for you. Seriously, have a cup of coffee. I dare you to walk into a Dunkin' Donuts right now. Get a cup of coffee. See what happens. You will be having visions beyond the veil like this. You're going to be doing this already. It's called a cheap cult. It's called experiencing something. How do they hit the street so hard without a cup of coffee? God. They are.

It's the power of Jesus. And it's soda. They love sugar. And we also have the inquisitive Ed Larson. Now, what is morbid? No, I know what it is. It's stupid. Correct. I just said also again, up top.

This is not going to be super friendly to the Mormon religion. No. But we love all of you still. It's important for you to hear this because we've, just like with Scientology, we have seen the beginning of Mormonism and now we are seeing what I just straight up call the middle of Mormonism. We are in the middle of Mormonism. Yeah. And that's very...

interesting because we get to see a religion grow up and turn into whatever evil form it's going to in front of her own eyes. Well, it's not like Mormonism started off as a paragon of fucking virtue. No, if you go to the Mormonism series, like there was a lot of really horrible shit with Joseph Smith, with Brigham Young, the shit obsessed Brigham Young. If you remember, I don't know if you know this, but Brigham Young, you know, the guy who succeeded Joseph Smith obsessed with shit. Oh,

Really? Yeah, talked about it all the time. Now you're going to be horny. You're kind of guy. Now, correct me if I'm wrong. Joseph Smith had his followers. He's walking across America, and he shows up to Salt Lake City, and he's like, ah, I'm

It's Nevada. Actually, I don't think Joseph Smith made it to Salt Lake City. That was Brigham Young. Brigham Young brought him over there and then that was considered. If you do go across those salt flats, it is very interesting. It's very beautiful over there. The natural arches is extremely beautiful. I do see why they would, they think that Zion would be there. But they were wrong. It's interesting that they're so obsessed with the end of the world and like that lake is evaporating and the gases are going to kill all of them. It's almost like...

It's a feature and not a bug. And they can't wait for the rest of us to die. Well, why are we talking about Mormonism? It's because today we're going to be talking about the two biggest Mormons in true crime today, Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow.

Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow were two self-styled Mormon end times prophets who created and lived in a fantasy world in which they did personal battle with the forces of darkness on a daily basis. But in the pursuit of this personal war, Chad and Lori involved themselves in at least four murders. These murders were all committed in the year 2019. And you may very well remember the months long search for Lori Vallow's two children that ended when her kids' bodies were found buried unhoused.

on Chad Daybell's Idaho property. And now we know Lori Vallow has been convicted three consecutive life sentences for the deaths of her children and not yet Tammy Daybell. They are now, that's going to be the next trial. Chad Daybell, he's going to get charged with Tammy Daybell's death. But now Lori Vallow is going to trial for Tammy Daybell's death. I thought she's on trial for Charles Vallow's death. It's all fucking mixed. Is it? It's all just this shit. But Lori Vallow is...

She's representing herself. So it is wonderful. Currently, she is representing herself in her murder trial. Oh, wow. That's very impressive. She is very certain she is correct. And Lori Vallow is probably one of the more frightening human beings we will cover on Last Podcast on the Left. Now, when they bury their children in Idaho, do you think they were just fertilizing their potatoes? Yes.

Yes. Hey, man, that's what it gets. So big. Well, Chad and Lori were also involved with the murder of each other's spouses. Murders committed so they could be free to marry each other. This, however, is no simple tawdry tale of two middle-aged losers who erase their families so they can run off together unfettered. Although that is certainly an element at play here.

Mostly, the story of Chad and Lori is what happens when people let their fantasies take over their entire lives, encompassing their beliefs and worldview to such a point where they were able to snuff out the lives of their children and spouses with all the emotion we'd use in making a decision that might affect a karma score in a video game.

Now this tale is a very 21st century flavor of true crime story because Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow were both Mormon media figures, albeit very niche ones, and neither one of them would have gained much traction if not for the internet.

And I cannot stress enough how bad these books are.

I have attempted to read several Chad Daybell books, and I will not finish them. No. I refuse to finish them. Wow, and you finished David Icke. Yes. That's wild. You finished multiple L. Ron Hubbard books. I actually think that Chad Daybell might be the least talented person to ever live. What?

He might not have a single creative ability. Lori Vallow, meanwhile, was one of our new media brethren. She was a podcaster. Yay! This is the first podcast-based crime! Wow! It's true? Yeah, it is. And she regularly discussed being in contact with the Mormon angel Moroni on her podcast and claimed on her show to have been chosen by God as the future leader of the 144,000 Mormons who would survive the apocalypse after the events of the Book of Revelation came to pass. And also, who booked

How do we get him? How do we get him? Is it still out? Can you listen to it? It's very difficult to find. I went scouring the internet to find all of their podcasts. They've mostly been taken down. There's bits and pieces. Mostly what I have found is...

videotape of their various presentations at conferences, like preparing of people and of these other things that we will get to. But guess what, Eddie? You're not missing anything. They fucking suck! They suck at talking! They suck at humor! They suck at talking! They're the worst group of fuckfaces to exist! How did anybody get involved with this? Moments ago, Henry was like, I'm gonna be, I gotta chill out, I gotta be calm today, I gotta...

That's not even to mention how awful the producing is on the podcast. I mean, the sound quality is dog shit. But also, but also I will bring up quickly one tiny little weird theology thing. Very quickly. Is that the 144,000 can be interpreted in different ways. There's one way, which was the Joseph Smith OG way, which is the idea that 144,000 people were what were going to be left. Right.

Right. But what these guys have interpreted as is in terms also their mentor interprets it as is the 144,000 are the generals and the captains of the Mormon army that will live through the tribulations and they will go and they will gather all of the Mormons that are left after everybody's fucking dead. And they will also have special powers. More men, more like less men. Don't do this. It's more men because you get more power. Right.

Now, I know we're hitting the M word a lot here, but from what I've seen in the media coverage, particularly the Netflix series Sins of My Mother, the central role Mormonism plays in the story is glossed over all too often.

As one man who fell into Chad and Lori's sphere of influence put it, Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow basically turned Mormonism into a tabletop RPG, complete with weapons, magical powers, stats, and clear enemies to battle and defeat. Now, you're coming against RPGs. I'd play a Mormon RPG. Yeah.

But they are, this is LARPing. Yeah, no, it is LARPing, but it's LARPing combined with RPGs. I mean, stats, you can't argue with stats and you can't argue with magical powers. You're right, but it's the LARPing involved because it's like, it's crazy. It's so hard to just roll a natural 20 when you're trying to smother your children because that's what you have to get.

You have to roll it at 20 so that you can properly sink them into the hole so that nobody can see. That makes a perfect flat lay. Like, that's like, if you hit a critical success, that's huge. But, yeah, they're just doing it.

Sorry, I fell asleep. Soon as he gets, soon as tabletop games get involved. Yeah, you mentioned the words natural roll to add. Where do you go? Kaiser. Kaiser rolls. Yeah, they're great. That's what I was thinking about. Ham and cheese on them, a little mayo and mustard, maybe a pickle. Who knows?

I love rolls. Unbelievable. Well, in a way, the world where Chad and Lori lived reminds me of how the ancient Greeks and Romans looked at existence, where gods and evil spirits were believed to influence and interact with daily life. Magic was considered real, and displeasing the gods was met with swift and harsh judgment.

For example, Chad and Lori's most infamous belief was that the world was populated with 20,000 so-called zombies, people whose bodies had been overtaken and their souls bounced to limbo by dark spirits. And the only way to save these innocent souls was to literally kill the zombie.

Now, the zombies were usually just a convenient way to otherize people who disagreed with Chad and Lori or people who stood in their way. But when the fantasy took over completely, Chad and Lori used the zombie belief as justification for killing Lori's children and both of their spouses. Because that's what you don't understand, Marcus. They're not dead. You just call me Mircus? Mircus. Mircus.

They're not dead. They're not dead. They're in heaven. Yeah, of course. They're busy. And they're working. Have they got their own planets yet? No, they can't. They're fucking gross. It's a baby. It's like a lady. Gross. Yeah, yeah. She can't be in charge of a planet that's too emotionally insecure. It takes the stable nature of a man, a grown boomer.

To really run a planet correctly. Yeah. Especially Uranus. Yeah, a lot of boomers love Uranus. Yeah, they're fucking you up. Oh, man, I love it. Fill me up. Make me your jelly donut. It shouldn't be red. Oh, you're right. Boston cream pie. Yeah. Yum.

Now, the zombie thing sounds, in a word, stupid. Yes. Something created by a two-person echo chamber trying to find justification for murder. But Lori Vallow and Chad Dayball were not a two-person operation.

Because of Chad's writings and the talks he gave at conferences, Chad actually had a fair amount of followers, and both he and Lori were well-respected names in the Mormon neo-fundamentalist movement. Technically, Chad was the leader of an almost-but-not-quite cult, and the people who listened to what he had to say were not fucking around when it came to what they believed and how they lived their life. The slow roll-up

of capital M, straight down the line Mormon, to fringe Mormon, is not that far. It is very, it is, you can get over there very easily. The capital M Mormon is trying to make themselves now more reasonable, more approachable, more open to modern conventions, modern ideas. Well, that's how the Mormon church has always been. That's how they survived. They changed with the times. Yes, but these guys, these guys want to roll, roll, roll, roll, roll it back.

And they want to roll it back in a way that also never really existed. They want to roll it into a cartoon world that never was. But really the only way to do that, again, is if all the rest of us are dead. Yeah. Well, Chad had a whole crew of neo-fundamentalist Mormons who lived lives primarily informed by survivalist doctrine, New Age gibberish, millenarianism, and most dangerously, the belief that anyone not on their side had fallen under the influence of Satan.

That, of course, is their right as Americans to believe whatever they want. Yeah, that's the best part. Yeah, of course. It's in the Constitution. But the problem here is the neo-fundamentalist part. Yeah, it always is. These people were heavily influenced by the old Mormon concept of blood atonement, in which a Mormon is not only allowed to kill an enemy of the church, but is justified in that action because killing the victim gives them a chance at redemption because they can no longer sin on earth.

Put differently, Daybell's concept of killing so-called zombies to save the souls of the people whose bodies have been overtaken by dark spirits, that's just the fundamentalist Mormon belief of blood atonement wrapped up in modern terms. Oh, so it worked out and they're free and nothing bad happened to them? Yeah. Like Henry said, they're in heaven right now. Busy. They're busy, which is a very Mormon thing. Yeah.

If you're in, if you're, you can't never be, it's not like heaven's for relaxing. No. Heaven's just a work release program. You go up to heaven and work because remember in the Mormon world too, and specifically in the Chad Daybell world, there's no such thing as death.

you just move into another place. And there's ghosts all around us that are both sometimes physical, sometimes not. There's demons, ghosts, there's helpers, angels, disembodied spirits, non-bodied spirits, and then they all live and hang out, having a great time. So, yeah. Like, yeah, they didn't kill their children. They sent their children to college in space. And that's...

So huge for them. That's the idea, is that they are, that's how they slowly massage the extremism in, especially because Mormonism as a whole looks all innocent, and it looks all silly and goofy until you pop the top, and then you realize you're all fucking insane. Mm-hmm. Mm-mm.

Now, I know all this might lead you to assume that Chad Daybell is a charismatic Svengali who brainwashed his followers into committing four murders in his name. But I'll tell you right now that this could not be further from the truth. He makes Marshall Applewhite looks like Elvis.

The least charismatic human to ever exist. If I'm ever in the same room as Chad Daybell, I'm going to punch him in his fourth chin so hard. I hate that Winnie the Pooh motherfucker so much. He's got one of those heads that's as wide as his neck, which is good for swallowing his own bullshit. The, uh...

Right through. No, he's the thumb. He is a thumb in human form. He's pathetic. He's cowardly. He's a marshmallow of a man. And after watching his halting awkward speeches, the only thing I can possibly attribute his rise to is the obviously low standards of the Mormon survivalist community. It's also what they take to be rock star behavior.

In Mormon communities, which I've noticed, as we'll get to, this is a very deeper story. This isn't even a deeper story. It's that the Mormons, the Mormon people like somebody that's humble. Yes. They like a sickly prophet. They love going into and just hearing a man warble in a high, tremulous voice. And I knew that things were different. I saw him drink a full glass.

Coca-Cola. And I knew the next thing he would be is fornicating with a man in the jungle. And he's a, they are, because if you listen to them talk, it's a very specific style. They even talk about it in some great podcasts. I was listening to, they called it GA speech, which they, they are one of their big topics. Yeah. It was called Mormon stories. They're great. They're very, very dry. Very good.

And they talked about like, there's, it's called GA voice. So Mormons love somebody who takes a long, plodding, thoughtful, soft, kill me. Yeah.

Well, people who fell under Chad's influence were not really following Chad himself. Really, they were following his ideas and his philosophy, which thrust each one of his followers into a world of demons and monsters that was far more exciting and interesting than being, say, a thrice-divorced hairdresser, which was Lori Vallow's life before she met Chad.

But speaking of Lori, while Chad Daybell played a significant role in all four murders, I think the real incendiary figure here when it comes to homicide was Lori Vallow. Because when you listen to her speak on her podcast, you get the feeling that she's so detached from reality that murder would not only be okay in her world, but inevitable. Absolutely.

Adding to Lori's responsibility is the fact that some of Chad's most ardent and violent followers were Lori's own family members. Lori's brother in particular would play a key, if not leading role in the murder of both of Lori's children. Murders that would ultimately lead the media to dub Lori Vallow the Doomsday Mom. Cute! Yeah! Better than Tot Mom. I remember, yeah, Tot Mom was the worst. Yeah, yeah, Doomsday Mom's fun. Yeah. Being like...

I knew. Yeah, that's the Nancy Grace part of it. Being like, when we get down to the final days, it will be between me and Lori Vallow in a two-time fall competition. I can't wait to see Nancy in there. But this is, it's not, her whole family, we're going to, next episode, that's when we get to Lori Vallow. Yes. They,

They've been prepping. They prepped her with the prep sauce from the very beginning. Both of them were prepped heavily. But before we get into the story, let's acknowledge our two sources for this series. First up, we've got When the Moon Turns to Blood by Leah Sotil, which is more of a context-based take that explores the whys of this case, informed by years of investigation of right-wing extremist groups.

The other is The Doomsday Mother by John Glatt, which is more of an account of the day-by-day lives of Chad and Laurie. It's very much a he-said, she-said book. But together, these two sources have given us a pretty damn good picture of what really went down behind the scenes during one of the most fascinating true crime stories of the modern age. And I would like to thank, like, the research done at Hidden True Crime and Mormon Stories Podcast have so—there is, like—

If you want content, if you like a fucking hole to go down like I do, this is where you go. If you want to find the Chad Daybell, Lori Vallow, sweet marrow, it is within these podcasts and it is long. Like each one is like six hours long. There's so much information. You meet a lot of Lori's family. It's there's a lot to learn here and there's a lot to unpack.

Yeah, and we're going to do a fair amount of unpacking on this episode and on the next episode. But we're really going to try our hardest to not get lost in the sauce here because, I mean, that is sort of a feature, not a bug in the Mormon religion. There's just layer after layer after layer after layer. And secret layers. Then you get to the secret layers. Then you get to the code words. Then you get to the stuff that doesn't mean what they say it means. Like, it's a very mysterious religion. No, it's like it's...

There's a reason why we compare Mormonism and Scientology quite a bit. Mormonism is sort of the antecedent to Scientology, and they are both very American religions. Oh, yeah. And the fact that both—they're based a lot on magical thinking, and they're also both heavily entrenched with capitalism and making money. And the Mormons, don't they believe Jesus came to America? Yeah. Yeah.

It's fun. Absolutely. No, no, it's all the golden plates and all that shit. Spoiler, guess what he loved? Big gulps. They just didn't have them in Jerusalem. Yeah, the Garden of Eden is in where, Missouri? Yeah, the Mormon Garden of Eden is in, yeah, it's in Missouri, yeah. Love Missouri. We might be going to St. Louis soon, so we'll find out. Fly from your grave.

Hello, Florida. Your favorite son and biggest baby are coming home to bring you the laughs you deserve. Everyone likes to poke fun of the Florida man. Everyone likes to use Florida as a punching bag. Whenever an alligator on meth eats an old person, it can happen anywhere.

As a famous Floridian baby, I feel your pain. So that's why I'm coming home to let you know it's okay to be who you are. It's okay that the rest of America is scared of us. It's okay that books are illegal in our schools. It's okay whenever it gets cold, it rains iguanas.

I'm here to support you. So come on out. March, I'll be in North Florida. And in May, I'll be in South Florida and Orlando. It's the Invasive Species Tour. Ed Larson, me, is coming to Florida in March and May. I'm coming to Jacksonville, Panama City, Tallahassee, Marco Island, Dania Beach, Orlando, and Key West. So lock up your public subs now.

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Now to really understand how Chad and Lori got to the point where they could commit the murders of four family members without feeling an ounce of guilt, we've got to understand Chad Daybell and the decades-long slow burn that led to the creation of his worldview. So Chad Daybell was born in 1968 in the small town of Springville, Utah. Technically, Chad's Gen X.

Not Boomer. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We know this. We know. This is different. I was talking about the GA guys. This is different. No, no, no. He's new blood. He's super cool. Yeah, man. Yeah, he's super Gen X. He's super like, oh my God. I'm trying to think. That's the lithium voice. Yeah. Like Kennedy. You know, like it's the Kennedy voice. You know what I mean? Hot girl. Hot Gen X girl voice. Hey, we're here.

here to listen to alternative music. Like that. He just made me cut my pants. He's part of the caffeine-free Pepsi generation. Well, founded by followers of Brigham Young, Springville's population of 35,000 people is 80% Mormon and boasts not only 18 Mormon churches, but a drive-thru soda shop that sells dozens of sugary beverages, all, of course, without caffeine. And I'll always remember when I was an infant child,

All the first thing I had to do was wipe all that terrible vagina residue off of me because the stink of sin was all over my infant body. The slime of filth inside of my mother's cavern covered me with such sin that even at that moment, I wish I could burst into flames. I'll have a Diet Coke, please.

I mean, 18 churches in a town of 35,000 people. That's incredible. So, Rick Hill. But, I don't know. I grew up in a town of like 350 people, and we had, I think, seven churches. Yeah, because you have to have, I guess it's covering all of the bases. Yeah, you had the Baptist Church, Methodist Church, Church of Christ, Four Square, so on and so forth. But these are just Mormons.

These are all Mormon churches. Did they have normal churches too? Most likely. Yeah, they might have one or two because it's 80% Mormon. I wouldn't imagine the other 20% are Satanists. Man, that'd be awesome. That'd be a good way. I think that is equal. 20% Satanists. That is what Salt Lake City is. It really is. If you spend more time in Salt Lake City, it's like that old community is fucking wild. They drink blood.

Yeah. There's this record store that I go to every time I go to Salt Lake City and like their logo is like lamb chop, like as Baphomet. Yeah. They know what to do. Now, according to his memoirs, Chad Daybell is simply the next in a long line of Mormons who began their association with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a.k.a. the LDS, way back in the 1840s.

According to the story, Chad's ancestor Finity Taybell, it's the worst fucking name I've ever heard in my life. You also be prepared for the avalanche of terrible names in this entire fucking story. They all have the worst names. It's like Braxton and Fennekin.

and like, Tabula and Skye. Yeah, they're worse shit. Awful Mormon names. Well, Finity Daybell saved a nephew of Mormonism founder Joseph Smith from a crowd who had begun throwing eggs at Smith's nephew while he was publicly preaching. Happens a lot to Mormons. Not anymore. Too expensive. Eddie. They like the same money.

money also Mormons have been fine for like a hundred years now after saving Smith's nephew the Daybells became a fairly established Utah Mormon family but when it came to shaping Chad's worldview his lineage like many fundamentalist Mormons was full of stories of the supernatural

That's because Mormons are amongst the top when it comes to religions that claim personal encounters with gods and ghosts. Maybe it's because their founder was a grave robber and a wizard. Yeah, he was. That's actually Joseph Smith before he was a spiritual leader. That's kind of how he got his start is that he would rob indigenous grave mounds in upstate New York and sell the treasure.

That I believe, but I don't know about the wizard part. Yeah, well, he said he was. He also said he was a wizard at the same time. He used seeing stones. He actually used chaos magic and left-hand magic properties as a young man, and it's one of those things...

Same thing as the secret sauce of Scientology, which is the OTO structure. Like, it is the same thing. All of that wiggity stuff that they happen to be, quote unquote, against all that Harry Potter shit. That's what started them all. Yeah. The bland wizard. Yeah. Yeah. And the seeing stones that Joseph Smith used and, you know, the golden plates and all the accoutrement. That's partly why Mormons...

And New Agers touch tips quite a bit. We're going to get into that as the series goes on. But, you know, the idea of the supernatural, personal encounters with gods and ghosts, this is actually baked into the religion because Mormonism's founder, Joseph Smith, built the entire faith based on the concept of revelation in which God spoke to him personally and gave him directives on how to construct and run the church. Polygamy, for example, was a revelation God gave Joseph Smith.

Who's got the time? Well, that's the thing that you're missing, Eddie, is that with polygamy, the secret is ignoring most of them. Oh! Yeah. Oh, that sounds great. Ha ha ha!

But the power of revelation did not die with Joseph Smith. And every church leader from Brigham Young to the current president of the Mormon church has claimed the power of revelation in order to shape the LDS church to move with the times. For instance, revelation took polygamy out of the Mormon equation so Utah could join the United States.

And Revelation allowed black people to join the Mormon church after the Civil Rights Movement. Although God certainly dragged his feet on that one by waiting until 1978 to make it so. I can't do everything at once. I'm only the most powerful, omniscient, prescient entity born at the beginning of the universe. Yes, and in 1978 he said, let them dance. Laughter

This is all I can do. This is the best I can do. Do you know how long it takes to build a planet for each one of these fucking Mormons? I'll tell you. Instantly. I do it very, very quickly. And I don't really think about it afterwards. Honestly, you're cutting into my executive time. But that's all to say that Mormons are primed to believe that God can speak to them at any moment. Just like he spoke to Joseph Smith and the dozens of prophets who came after.

This is why so many cults spring from Mormonism, because people like Chad Daybell can suddenly say God is telling him to go his own way, just like God told Joseph Smith to go his own way. I got a sign the other day when I heard that old... It was this amazing... I couldn't even believe it. It even just said it on the radio. Go your own way. And I just said, go your own way. I'm gonna go your own way. I'm sorry, I'm singing. I...

know that that's prideful. Even God's like, hey, why don't you get out of here? Hey!

Hey, uh... Leave. You suck. Did you know that? What Revelation means is that Mormon cults can basically ignore anything the church has said after Joseph Smith died in 1844. They can go back to the beginning by saying that all the subsequent revelations that came after Smith's death are false, and only the new cult's leader has the true line to God. I mean, mostly these Mormon cults cut it off after Brigham Young.

because Brigham Young brought them to Salt Lake City and, you know, expanded the cosmology considerably. But yeah, usually after Brigham Young, that's when they're like, well, everything went to shit after that. Well, I did speak with Brigham Young. The problem is, is that I lost my original plan and I had to change my number. So difficult nowadays. It's so easy to switch, especially with Mint Mobile. Yes, I am God and I am here. I'm doing an advertisement for Mint Mobile.

Because I chose Ryan Reynolds. And Ryan Reynolds will be your leader. He will call. He will strike down various races because of my strength with the strength of God himself and Mint Mobile's ability to save you money. Mint.

When you believe that God can speak to you and give you direction, and I mean speak to you directly inside your head, tell you to turn left, turn right, it tends to warp your worldview. And Chad Daybell claimed from a young age a supernatural power that he called The Voice would give him direct guidance. So Michael Buble's in his head? Michael Buble, Lionel Richie. Oh my God, crazy. Xtina's there?

What do you say, Xtina? I say, show them titties and get out there, Mr. Man. Well, let me ask Lionel Richie.

When it came to Chad's first experiences with the voice, he wrote in one of his memoirs that when he was 13, he saw a honeybee fluttering around and he decided to smash it with his shoe. Mad with power, Chad began killing all the bees he could see until he had killed 120 bees. Have you ever tried to kill a bee? It's hard. Which one?

With your shoe? Impossible. The other bees attack you. Chad Daybell is a fucking liar. He's never stepped on a bee. He's never done a goddamn thing. I mean, when I kill a bunch of bees, I never count them. Yeah, it's hard to do. That's what always jumped out at me is that, like, I killed 120 bees. I just want to make sure I can put it down in my journal. One.

Two. Ouch. Ow. Ow. Hey. Ow. Three. Ow. Four. Ow. Five. Yeah. Six, seven, eight. Suddenly though. He's just like coming. I was talking to Xtina the other day and she said a bunch of crazy shit about me killing bees. She didn't know that.

Well, suddenly, though, once Chad reached 120 bees, he heard a voice telling him to stop. A voice that Chad was sure was either an angel or God himself speaking directly to him. No matter which one it was, though, Chad stopped killing the bees, and he claimed that the voice became a constant presence throughout his life from that point on. And it's presumably still speaking to him in his prison cell today. Yeah, it's saying stuff like...

Hey, you know, we could get a pack of cigarettes if you just touch that man's penis. And then we can use the cigarettes to get a law book. And then I could use that law book to rip out the pages and make a little fire inside of my prison cell and make s'mores. And all I have to do is have sex with that man. Well, sometimes. You're right. Yes, you gotta do. Thanks, Xtina. Yeah, it's me, Xtina.

Sorry. No, it's great. You're doing your own acting. Yeah, it's good. Sorry. Well, sometimes the voice whispered. Sometimes it shouted. Sometimes it urged. Sometimes it scolded. And sometimes it had specific directions or commands. But Chad wrote in his memoir that he trusted the voice implicitly and never disobeyed it.

It definitely wasn't his own thoughts. No, it's definitely not just thoughts. It's internal monologue telling him to do things. What was the last thing your internal monologue told you to do that you said no? Succeed. And I said, no, I got to leave room for others. Mine told me to burn down the Zanku chicken who didn't put chicken on my salad. I am so angry. I am so mad about this. It's cold in the name of the restaurant. Zanku.

Chicken! And the idea that you would sell a salad and not put... It should be difficult to remove the chicken. But I calmed myself. I did not listen to my voices. That's good. My voices made me yell at Eddie about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I took some of our ham and I tore it up and I put it on my salad and made it worse. And that's how you do it. That's how you strive to be a better person.

It was so sad watching him rip up the sheets of ham to put on his salad. It's the only thing that makes it edible.

Chad Daybell. Despite him being a quiet individual, he was a reasonably popular student once he reached high school. He'd also become a committed member of the LDS Church, having had his spiritual awakening in ninth grade while reading the Book of Mormon in his bedroom. Boing! The only thing that set Chad apart was his summer job working for the Springville City Parks Department as a gravedigger.

This was a profession he'd continue for many years and eventually used to his advantage when his beliefs led him to situations in which digging illegal graves became a part of his spiritual journey.

When Chad was a senior, he had an experience that changed him. An experience that many Mormons revere and crave. Especially now. That year, Chad Daybell had his first near-death experience, or NDE, while cliff jumping into a reservoir. So from now on, if you hear us say the acronym NDE, we're talking about near-death experiences. Chad said that when he jumped off the cliff and hit the water, he had a sharp shock throughout his whole body, and he believed he'd broken his neck.

He then realized that his spirit was leaving his body through the top of his head, but had gotten stuck in his skull. Once his spirit got stymied, Chad drifted beyond the veil. Wow. So wet. There's fish and there's coral and seaweed here. He crossed over from life into death where he heard a deep roar.

rich synthesizer melody and felt a soothing warmth all over him. Do you think the warmth that he felt was his own urine? Probably. Quite suddenly, though, he was yanked back into his body.

But he claimed, as many Mormons do, that his near-death experience ripped open his so-called personal veil and it never closed again. And the opening of this veil gave Chad magical powers. So this is one thing I also want to remind everyone, that I have to remind myself, is that every person in this story is a Mormon. So they have not experienced a heck of a lot. And so I realized at this moment,

is that he had the breath knocked out of him. He did not die. He just was shocked by having never experiencing a single thing. And then his buddies making him jump off a cliff, because that's what he said. He's like, you know, I had a bunch of prankster friends, and they thought it would be a real right scenario of hilarity if I were to jump off.

And I said, well, you can't pay me to be up there. But next thing I know, I'm up there. And it's the way he talks about how he falls because then he sees his grandfather and his grandfather downloads all this information into his head. His grandfather shows him all the books he's going to write. And he's like, these are all the books you're going to write. Enjoy yourself because you're the most talented Chad I've met since...

I don't know. Since I, as your grandfather, blew my brains out. Now, for some Mormons, near-death experiences are massive deals. Because if you go beyond the veil of death and come into contact with God himself, you can come away with special powers other Mormons don't have, like the ability to actually see into the future and witness the second coming of Christ. Most important amongst the powers an NDE can give you, though, and especially when it comes to our story, is the gift of discernment.

certain Mormons who go beyond the veil are believed to come back with the ability to tell if a person is good or evil just by looking at them. And they also get the ability to tell the difference between a lie and the truth. Well, also, the gift of discernment really supposed to be a power of the authorities of Mormonism. So if you get what you call the second anointment, which is the super secret thing inside of Mormonism, so you get the second anointment, which means you're super extra whole,

And you might be one of the 144,000. And you get superpowers when you get a second anointment. And that's the gift of discernment. And the gift of discernment is extremely important in this story because it makes everything concrete reality in the Mormon world. As soon as someone on the board of Mormonism says,

This is true. This is a part of capital M Mormonism. It is then concrete reality. And they are literalists. Everybody that is in the Mormon religion believes in the actual words of the Bible. They do not. They don't think it's metaphors.

They think it's literal. So this is the same. They are being told that you can now do this. You have superpowers now that you have done this thing. Yeah. And what happens a lot with Mormons as well is that they find a way around it because the, the establishment will say like, no, no, no, we're the only ones that are allowed to do this. Uh,

But eventually the rank and file find a way around that. And near-death experiences were how the rank and file found their way around the gift of discernment. Like, you don't have to wait for a second anointment. You don't have to be a person up top. You can have a near-death experience, and that's how you can get the gift of discernment. See, when you say near-death experience or NDE, I hear...

CTE. Which we all know makes you super peaceful and rational. I like to call it the Benoit-ization of society.

Now, Chad claimed that when he went beyond the veil during his near-death experience, the gift of discernment was bestowed upon him. This is the gift Chad would later use to deem who is and who isn't a zombie, which would be central to the belief system Chad sold to Lori Vallow and his other followers. But the thing about Chad Daybell is that he is an entirely unoriginal creation. He's a patchwork man.

Every bit of Chad's philosophy is either a rehash of fundamentalist Mormon beliefs or a straight theft from other neo-fundamentalist Mormon writers and thinkers. And that brings us to Tom Harrison. Now, this is where we're probably going to get some kind of flack from somebody, maybe, which I hope, because this is

This little line we're about to take is considered the most heretical version of Mormonism that you can be a part of. Like this here is what I call the Mormon deep state that we are kind of stumbling upon. I'm going to explain that more through the series. But Tom Harrison is a shyster.

a fucking con man and an absolute piece of shit. And I do think that at some point, like we're, who knows they, they are, we're going to, we're going to see what happens once we start talking about this. He's dead though, right? No. Ah,

Very much still alive, very much still important in the Mormon church. Well, in 2012, Tom Harrison was the subject of a book called Visions of Glory, a book that is key to the modern near-death experience world. Working with an author, Harrison outlined no less than four near-death experiences that occurred over the course of his life. And through these NDEs, Harrison had apocalyptic revelations in addition to gaining magical powers and secret knowledge.

There is a distinct difference between the other Mormon NDE literature. So there's a whole subgenre of Mormon NDE literature. It's massive. It's huge.

But everybody else up to this point, when they wrote one of these books, they wrote them in a kind of cushy way. It was very much like there's a heaven and it's nice and you'll meet your relatives and your ancestors. And it's and it was normally they were very positive and very fluffy and kind of garbage, truly garbage. They're all garbage. Visions of Glory is the most garbage.

But where Visions of Glory is different is the end sequence in which he talks about the end times and how he can prepare for the end times because he knows, because this isn't a quote-unquote Mormon vision, this is just a standard NDE, he now has...

actual confirmation in what is going to happen at the end of the Mormon storyline and the idea that Mormons are going to save the United States of America from invasions after massive earthquakes and tsunamis and all this shit. Who cares if we get invaded if there's only 144,000 people left? It's a massive country. It's a massive country. It's a lot of land.

Now, Tom Harrison is primarily a Mormon therapist and spiritual leader who used the name Spencer when giving his testimony to the author of Visions of Glory. And Harrison used a pseudonym for good reason. See, in the Mormon religion, anyone can have a personal revelation. In fact, personal revelations are encouraged because each LDS member is supposed to have an intimate relationship with God. And personal revelations are central to that. But,

But only the highest patriarchal leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are allowed to discuss and distribute revelations that address or adjust church doctrine. And the rank and file are supposed to keep their revelations to the personal growth category. In other words, the LDS maintains a rigid separation between personal and authoritative revelation because the whole LDS system falls apart if everyone has equal authority to say God told them this or that about polygamy or fucking whatever.

But that rigid separation means that Tom Harrison, in publishing his revelations and in publishing that he's got these secret powers and that he shortcutted the gift of discernment, that could very well have gotten him excommunicated for doing so. Or at the very least, it could have gotten him heavily chastised by the establishment.

The only reasons why Tom Harrison is still in good standing in the LDS church is because, one, he comes from a very powerful Salt Lake City family, and two, his book got the blessing of a high-ranking LDS apostle, a member of the Quorum of Twelve. See, these guys are... I mean it. If you want to...

to be honest, if you want to wipe out most of the governing body of Mormonism, I think a couple of well-placed air horns will surprise them to the point where their skin will fall off. The president of Mormonism right now, Russell M. Nelson is a hundred years old. Yes. He is, uh,

Looking like he's not going anywhere. He looks like Dan Aykroyd from Nothing But Trouble. He's turning into a urinal cake as a person. But this is also, it's slightly even more complicated than this because Tom Harrison was pulled aside. So Tom Harrison's... Yeah, of course it's more complicated. I'm just trying to simplify it. You're the best. Tom Harrison, he was in charge. So this isn't a nine-hour series. I want this to be! It will not stop! Tom Harrison started...

as a man who was a therapist for children who have experienced sexual trauma. And so that's what his job is. Now, Tom Harrison, he wrote this book. All this controversy came out saying, you have put yourself first.

Jesus Christ between Jesus and God as the person that has the most answers. That's his idea. That's what you've done with this revelation. Tom Harrison gets called into the main office. They say, you should have kept this in your pocket. This has been the thing you never should have put out, even though he used his own...

connections to the Quorum of Twelve to get it approved in order to backdoor get it published without anybody finding out until it was already too late. So when this comes out, they finally come in. They're like, you can't do this. This is fucking us up. He writes a letter of apology. Tom Harrison writes a disavowal of the book in which he talks about how he's Spencer and blah, blah, blah. But he's it's utterly full of shit. But then what he does is on the side. But it's actually all true.

true. And that is the superpower of it. It's the super, it's because now it's fringe, it's hidden, it's secret. Now Visions of Glory is a cult following. Now Visions of Glory is a thing that you're in the know. You have to know a secret about it and that's what gives it extra funky juice. Right from your grave.

No.

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Now, to understand why an apostle endorsing Tom Harrison's claims is a big deal, you've got to know a little bit about the modern Mormon hierarchy. Three men sit at the top, the president and his two counselors. The LDS president is believed to be a prophet who speaks directly to God, just like the pope. And it's through the president that God bestows revelations upon the Mormon people. Who do you think he likes better? Oh, do you think the Mormon president or the pope? Yeah. The pope!

You think the Pope's more fun than the Mormon? Yes. He drinks wine. He drinks wine. He's a better conversationalist. He lives in Italy. Yeah. Yeah, that's a lot more fun than Utah. Yeah, he's from Argentina. Where would you rather hang out? Someone from Buenos Aires or someone from Ogden? You know, I like Ogden, though. You've never been to Ogden.

It's all the same. If you... I imagine that table, because it's like, you know, the Pope, you got Russell M. Nelson, you got Tom Harrison, Putin, Yee, Kanye West, Tom Cruise, they're all in. That must be a crazy dinner. Yeah.

Well, under those three men at the top is the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, who do double duty as spiritual guides and business executives who manage the billion-dollar industries owned by the LDS Church. Basically, the Quorum are CEOs who give sermons and establish policy for the Mormon community. Now, from what Tom Harrison claimed, his family and friends ridiculed him for his vision, so he stopped talking about them.

But when an apostle from the Quorum of Twelve validated everything Harrison experienced, it legitimized Harrison's beliefs and therefore legitimized them for Mormons at large. It also made them concretely real. That is the key, is that when you get that yes, go ahead, it means you have created a series of canon-like stories for the Mormon religion as a whole. What?

corporations do they own? Like, how do they get their 200 billion? We're going to get into it later, but a lot of it is doomsday prepping. It's doomsday prepping. Real estate? Real estate. It's like the Catholic Church. So you've contributed. God damn it! God fucking damn it! Big dirt! We're all in on it! We're all in on it!

I hurt my hands last weekend by digging in the dirt too much. I use my hands. I use my shovel sometimes, but mostly I use my hands. And man, they hurt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you got to put little things over your fingertips. Yeah. Well, no, it was the wrists. Too much digging. Like, actual digging. You got jerk off more.

That's not possible. I'm out. Well, the other thing about this is that, you know, I know it might be a little bit confusing because, you know, you hear, you know, on one hand, you've got, you know, the quorum, a quorum member saying that it's legitimized. On the other hand, you've got the Mormon establishment telling him to, you know, disavow the book and all that. But the way...

It works in Mormonism. The way these things kind of make it through is when the Mormon church doesn't like something, they come out and they disavow it publicly. If it's something that they kind of don't want to fuck with, if it's something that's popular that people are enjoying, they just don't say anything about it.

They don't disavow it at all. And that's how Visions of Glory ended up being. The Mormon Church did not come out specifically and disavow it. How would they say about Kendrick Lamar's halftime show? Huge fans. Loved it. They loved subversion. So huge fans. No, they also are, you now see it with Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell. Chad Daybell was very publicly, he was very publicly excommunicated. Yeah. But Lori Vallow has not been yet.

because they don't want it to go back to her anymore. Chad Daybell, they feel a little bit of sense of responsibility for, but Lori Vallow, still the more dangerous, the truly more dangerous one. They just don't even want to mention. They just think, again, there's something about the Mormon humble arrogance that

that fills me with such a powerful rage where it's like, cause that's what this is. It's we're better than visions of glory. Nobody cares about visions of glory. We're not going to let, meanwhile, you are visions of glory. Eventually will be known as the Turner diaries for the Mormons. Yeah. It will be known as a book that creates radicalized murder cults. It is going to happen again. It already is. It's happening with Jody Hildebrandt. It happened with Tim Ballard. It has happened. It is, it is happening. It's real. Now,

Now, Chad Daybell stole quite a bit from Visions of Glory, details that we'll be peppering in throughout our series. And we know that Chad's partner in crime, Lori Vallow, was a fan as well, because when she was arrested, she had a copy of Visions of Glory in her bag. In fact, when Chad and Lori went to jail, they both had burner phones with Tom Harrison's number saved in the contacts under the name Spencer, Spencer's Harrison's alias. So it's almost certain that all three of these people were in regular contact with each other.

Are you sure it wasn't Spencer's gifts saved on their phone? Because I get it, you know. I always got to call and make sure they got the boob inspector hat. Because, like, I sweat through them so quick. And once you get the sweat ring around the top, you know, you can't wear it. It's not nice anymore. So you got to go get another one. I have to pay for the string.

To not go back to that horrible store and look at the man where you press the bulb and you see his little penis. I will not go back and look at Weedleaf tote bags again. Please release me from this coil. This horrible coil.

Oh, yeah, I'm always calling up Spencer's gifts like, hey, do you have birthday cards with 500-pound women on them? I need them. I got a lot of birthdays coming up. Excuse me, do you have a waifu pillow in? Sorry, no. I'm going to have to go kill my family. Sorry, my beer bong doesn't have a giant cock on the end of it. Do you have something that can fix that for me? I'll pray for you. I'll pray for you. Give me that bong.

What this shows, though, that is a thing that we really can't push under the rug because what it's showing is that Tom Harrison to this day says, I have nothing to do with it. If you go and look it up, there is a thing right now that connects. It's like I forgot. It's Tom. It's John Pontius's website. The guy who wrote vision, quote unquote, wrote visions of glory. It says specifically Tom Harrison has nothing to do with Lori Vallow and Chetty.

Dayball. Tom Harrison has nothing to do with Tim Ballard and blah, blah, blah. They were hanging out. They were texting each other. Tom Harrison was their Steve Bannon. Yes, he very much was. Now, all of these people knew each other and everybody who knew Chad and Lori and Chad Dayball and Lori Vallow after they were arrested, everyone was like,

like, I don't know them. Like, despite there being like mountains of evidence, like, you know, podcast appearances together. And they're like, I am. Good podcasts that were turned against them. But one of the big ideas that both Chad and Laurie remixed from Tom Harrison's book were Tom's visions of the apocalypse that he had after his fourth and final near-death experience.

In Harrison's vision, after the plagues and earthquakes and marauders have all settled down, a tribe of 144,000 Mormons would come together to build a new Jerusalem to prepare for the second coming of Jesus Christ.

This, of course, is taken from the Book of Revelation, which is incredibly important to the Mormons. It's right there in the fucking name. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Latter-day meaning the end times. As such, the Book of Revelation has influenced many Mormon cults, including Chad and Lori's. Four?

Near-death experiences. Yeah. That is like, you're clumsy. Well, he... You know, like... Yeah, who are you, Mr. Bean? He also cheated one. He said that his first near-death experience was because he was a premature baby.

Oh, okay. I'm going to go... You know what? I'm going to say it. He didn't have a fucking single one. No. He had a... One where he was sick and he almost died, he says, blah, blah, blah. He had a very traditional NDE in which he ripped it off of every other fucking book that's ever had an NDE in it, except for all of the mountains of lore, all the weird world that he creates that Chad and Laurie are going to try to make real. But later on, he also had the... It was when... This is what I was saying about... Remember, they're Mormons. Yeah. So Tom Harrison...

the second big NDE happened when he was, he took pain pills for the first time. He had surgery and he took pain medication and he was just stoned. Yeah. And he did not know what stoned was. Yeah, the same thing happened to my dog. Yeah. Yeah, ask Tootsie. If Tootsie could talk, I'm certain Tootsie's talking to

eye as well. Yeah. I don't want to follow Tootsie's revelations, though, because it's really just going to be about chicken. Talk about someone who's seen the other fucking sign. No, I know. Many times. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Four near-death experiences, though. It's like, if there is a god, God's trying to kill him. He's like...

He definitely doesn't want you to. You know, like if you came back four times to God and he's still like, uh, not your time yet. Uh, actually, you can actually get some time. I'm going to have to deal with this fucking guy eventually. Not this year. Put it off for another decade. Put it off for another decade and then we'll be ready by then. Why do you think the president's a fucking hundred? I won't die. Here's how the book of Revelation ties into all this.

He's not insulting you. It's all the horse shit. Feels like he's insulting me. I'm not. No, I love you. No, no, no.

As I said earlier, Lori Vallow would come to think of herself as a literal goddess who is gathering the 144,000 to prepare for Christ's return. That's a lot of contacts on a burner phone. It really is. And all thanks to Mint Mobile. My God. I'm out.

the increased amount of contact is so that you can gather the 144,000 in Ryan Reynolds' name and we will rise against the establishment. Us, Mint Mobile. Check.

Chad Daybell, meanwhile, having glimpsed the apocalypse as a result of his near-death experience powers, he claimed that when he saw the future, he did not see Jesus Christ leading the Church of the Firstborn. Rather, Chad Daybell saw himself as more or less the mayor of New Jerusalem. Oh my God. Now, Tom Harrison has made public statements saying that Visions of Glory is supposed to be taken as metaphor. How? It's not a metaphor. It's a story. It's a full story. There's nothing metaphorical about it. It just tells what happens.

But behind closed doors, it said that he tells people that everything in his book is 100% true. And it's almost certain that he told this to Chad and Lori personally. Well, this is called the power of the secret school. This is why ancient, when you'd say, like, if you ever, if you believe in anything about the idea that there might have been secret schools or, like, this is a function of it. What happens is you have something ludicrous. This is very similar to the Xenu reveal. Yeah.

where you've now come too far. You have to believe that this is real because... Xenu reveal in Scientology, when you get to OT8, you find out that Xenu is behind everything. It's the whole crazy fucking story. Well, it's the Great Wall of Fire, right? LRH said that you'll hear the Xenu story and if you're not, if you aren't ready to hear it, you'll go insane and die, right? They think that you'll flip

out and it's in a super secret room and they bring you a fucking suitcase and you open it up and it's handwritten pages from L Ron Hubbard himself and you read them silently in a room put them back in a box and then you just have to sit with it that's what they do and this is the same thing Tom Harrison is viewed as a true prophet the true prophet and these motherfuckers were

We're all scheming in order to flip the entire Mormon church. And that's my big leitmotif that I'm going to say at the end of this whole fucking thing. This whole thing is the deep Mormon state trying to get a hold of that 200 billion. You just said at the beginning. Well, now I'm going to do it later. Yeah, we're like 40 minutes into this. We'll get to the next one. Keep explaining. But for now, let's not get too far ahead of ourselves.

And let's rejoin Chad Daybell as a young man at Brigham Young University, where he studied journalism and somehow became a massive fan of everyone's favorite mopey Manchester New Wave group, the Smiths. Wait, the Smiths are amazing. I love the Smiths. I'm going to fucking stand up for the Smiths right now. You're allowed to. I love this. I mean, I'm not going to stand up for Morrissey. He's a fucking asshole. But the Smiths are incredible. Johnny Marr?

Johnny anyone? Johnny Marr? You know what's funny is that they never really took for me. Maybe it's because I'm not a big marshmallow of a man. I don't fucking want to kill my kids. I like happiness. I like anger in music. There's not really much. There's a deep undercurrent of anger in the Smiths music. Very much so. But I like sad dance. I do like sad dance music. So technically that's the peak of sad dance music. But it's not necessarily for me. I feel like Smiths fans just like chew on their own shirts. Some do. Carolina is one. Some do.

Is Carolina a huge Smith fan? Yeah, we both are. Well, you know, everyone has their flaws. laughter

Well, after a year at BYU, Chad took a break to go on his Mormon mission, and he spent two years trying to convert souls in New Jersey. God, what I would have given to see him on the streets of Newark. Oh, my God. Someone should have done the right thing. I think it was Newark. It sounds like Newark. He describes it like a torrent of sirens and insults, burning cars, and getting held up by gunpoint. Sounds like Newark. Could have been Elizabeth. Yeah.

Could have been Camden, you know, could have been Union or Linden. And the craziest thing I've seen is that they don't even chop their pork. It's in a roll. And also the women with their hair so high, it would be closer to God if I couldn't see their nipples. And oh,

Lord, I love the dump. I know, sir. I know you're lighting that tire on fire, but have you ever thought about Jesus? Yeah, dude! Yeah, man! Yeah, dude! Come here, man! Let me show you, dude! Please don't throw that shopping cart in that pool, sir. Ha ha ha!

On the airport. But Chad's experience, like the experiences many Mormon missionaries have when they leave the sheltered worlds they're raised in, this only confirmed his biases about the outside world. That we're all a bunch of fucking animals living in the absence of God.

Nevertheless, Chad reportedly set baptism records in New Jersey, not because he was charismatic, but because it was said that his calm, quiet demeanor comforted people and put them at ease. And that's a very important part of Chad Daybell's personality, like how he was able to bring people in. He is the polar opposite of like a Charles Manson or a Jim Jones. Like it's this bringing people in with calmness, you know, more like a Marshall Applewhite. I feel...

fucking hate him. I know you do. I fucking hate the style. I hate everything about him. The slow road, the bring in, the come on. Cause there's, I've watched, I just watched an hour long talk with him talking at a antique store where he's talking about his books and that motherfucker is, he's so non-magnetic. Uh,

He's the least magnetic human I've ever seen. Yeah. Yeah, he doesn't even make eye contact with the audience. No, he's a big, punchy piece of fucking shit. Yeah. But it was also in New Jersey that Chad said, but get it all out now. I know, it's hard. You can't do this for six hours. I will. But it was also in New Jersey that Chad supposedly realized that his near-death experience while cliff diving a couple years earlier had given him the power to discern between good and evil ghosts.

And that ended up being the first of many superpowers he would claim. At first, when you meet Beetlejuice, you are charmed by him.

But eventually you know that is a deal that you will regret because Beetlejuice is difficult to remove. You made me laugh. What about Casper? You ever come across Casper? Casper is, to be honest, is a pervert. He tried to make a Casper. He did. Made two.

Now, when Chad returned to Springvale, Utah after his two years in Jersey, he decided it was his mission to find a wife. And he basically treated his younger brother's high school yearbook as the catalog. Ugh. After flipping through the pages, Chad picked out a girl named Tammy. She seems...

Gettable. And they began dating after meeting at a local LDS singles night. It's that easy. Tammy actually worked at the Springvale Cemetery as a secretary. So after she and Chad started going steady, she got him a full-time job as a gravedigger. And the two of them would hang out listening to The Smiths together. Cemetery Gates being their natural favorite song. Yeah.

Tammy and Chad were soon after married, following a directive from Heavenly Father in 1990. Heavenly Father, that's the Mormon name for God. Yes, I've heard of that. They say it in Catholics. Do they? Oh, yeah.

Do they? Oh, yeah. Well, they say our heavenly father. Yeah. Like the Mormons refer to like heavenly father. Oh, like that's their name for God. It's like, you know, Jehovah, you know, like for them, it's heavenly father. My heavenly father's Pedro Pascal. He's talented. Spread him open. Yeah. Fuck his ass. Yeah. Cut his throat. Play with his fucking guts. I want to be inside him. I want to be with him till he's forever and be a part of me.

Imagine if you were him listening right now. Hey, huge fans. Yeah, please come on the show. Yeah, please. Love your work.

Well, two years later, Tammy and Chad had their first child, Garth, destined to be the oldest of five Daybell children. And that's important to also remember at this point is that going forward, like Chad is a family man with a wife and five kids. Normal guy. By like, I think like 97, 98, he's got five fucking kids.

Now, since Chad had studied journalism at BYU, he soon got a job in Ogden, Utah, at the Ogden Standard Examiner as a reporter, where he was given the ironic nickname of Chatterbox because he was too quiet and withdrawn. But it's Chatter with two Ds. Oh! Very Mormon-type humor. I get it. Two Ds, like his bra size. Ha ha ha!

You know, honestly, if I put a hand low and a hand high and I just look at the chest, I'm like, Kelly Riley. But soon after getting that job, Chad Daybell had his second near-death experience while vacationing on the beach in La Jolla, California.

As he and his brother were exploring rocks during low tide, the waves came crashing in, and they almost swept Chad away. Just him sitting there, waves. He's just at the beach, and the waves are coming. They're like, be careful, Chad, waves coming in. Waves! You know, like, he's just standing on the edge of the beach, like, these waves are crazy! Yeah, Chad, you're going to watch out for the waves. Yeah, yeah, these waves are really wild!

out here. Yeah, Chad. The way he talks about it, he's like, yes, it was low tide when we went out, but then the tide began to come in. It's called going to the beach. It's not like the tide comes in in like five seconds. It's a beach. It's a fucking beach. It's how oceans work. They tell you how the tides work every day on an app called a weather app that you can find out

But what saved Chad was the return of the voice, which told him, quote, Get down! I'm clinging to that rock! Get her up! Get her up!

Get down and clean that rock. Chad did so, but he was still... Chad did so, but he still smashed his head and started to drown. At that moment, he saw a tunnel of light and felt another warm embrace. Oh, wow. Oh, my God. Wow. What a tunnel. Wow. Sure sign of intelligence when you're at the beach. Swim towards the rocks.

And suddenly two male figures appeared above him. The figures were his Utah pioneer ancestors. And they asked Chad if he would agree to a series of tasks. Is it true, English, that there's a little box that you can see the human anatomy inside? Not Amish. Not English. Yeah, you'll see. Tell me I've heard of this thing. It's called gum. Forever food. Food that doesn't disappear. Yeah.

Once Chad said, sure, I'll do your tasks, he suddenly found himself back in his body. Later, Chad would say that his near-death experience was more like an urgent business meeting where he was given information and assignments from beyond the veil. Do you know what this...

assignments were at this point? Well, the assignments are him understanding his place in the revelation. Yeah. And that he is supposed to lead and that he is going to, he needs to write his books. He needs to tell everyone his story. Yeah. Yeah. The assignments for Mormons are like make pancakes and force people to eat them because they need food and then try and convince them to join your church. Yes. Normally an assignment for Mormon is like, I need you to build a barn and I need you to have sex with your daughter. Yeah.

Well, Chad's brother actually did come out later and say like this whole story is fucking bullshit. He said he's like, I remember that day and it didn't happen like that way at all. Like Chad got swept out from the rocks. He actually swam away from the rocks and there was no near death experience mentioned. Maybe I'll put it this way. Yeah.

Every single word he says is horseshit. Yeah. And that he never had one, and he stole it all from Visions of Glory. Yep. And Tom Harrison stole it from a psychiatrist that wrote about it during the Satanic Panic. Yep. They've all stolen it, and each one is plagiarized. They made fun of it. It's real. Also, almost dying a bunch does not make you strong. Except if you're...

And what doesn't kill you make you stronger. If you almost die four times, you become the Hulk. Oh, yeah. Now, Chad claimed that the veil was truly ripped open after his second NDE, and the voice continued to guide him in his day-to-day life. Chad became obsessed with near-death experiences and became convinced that they could only be divine visions from God.

Yeah, nothing makes me think of my bright future like digging a grave. Yeah.

He was real good at cleaning gravestones because he practiced every day when he washed his head. Yeah! I got them again. For example, when it came to his visions of the future, Chad once envisioned a Polynesian man running over his son in a Kmart parking lot. Some kind of Asian. It was some kind of Asian that ran over my son. Isn't it?

Some kind of Pauly Asian. Some kind of Pauly Asian. Pauly Asian. And in the vision, his son was wearing blue overalls. But don't worry. The next time Tammy Daybell dressed her son in blue overalls and said, I'm going to Kmart, be right back, Chad went with them. And by going with them, he altered the timeline and saved his son. What's important here, too, is the grooming of Tammy Daybell.

Tammy Daybell is a normal, quote unquote, normal Mormon wife. Sure. So during this time period, she was watching Chad change. And she, I imagine like many people at first is like, oh, she did support divisions. She supported a little bit of this. But

But it's becoming more and more real. He's making it more and more a part of their day to day saying, my visions are saying we should get McDonald's and my vision. They're like he's saying stuff like this where they're all like, all right, then they go do it. So you get used to it.

Now, after having visions for a while, Chad was given a new direction by his disembodied voice. A direction that ostensibly revealed why Chad was having visions in the first place. Quite suddenly, the voice told Chad, It's time to write your books, Deborah. Ha!

And with that, Chad Daybell began his career as an absolutely god-awful novelist. I know he killed Laurie's kids, and he probably killed his wife, and he probably helped kill a couple other people, but his biggest crime is his writing. It's awful. It's god-fucking-awful. Yeah, he is awful. Chad began with a trilogy, Errand for Emma, Escape to Zion, and Doug's Dilemma. Doug's Dilemma's terrible.

Sounds like he can't decide which dick to sit on. This trilogy imagined Chad's three-year-old daughter as a teenager traveling back in time to 1868 to solve the mystery of her LDS family history. Chad's publishing house, by the way, was the same that would later publish Tom Harrison's Visions of Glory.

But as bad as Chad's books were, they were an incredibly important step in his spiritual evolution. See, Chad claimed that these books were inspired by his visions, and he had a scene in his book Escape to Zion in which the World Trade Center was burning. Escape to Zion, however, was published in September of 2000. Whoa!

Yeah, of course, there's already been one attack on the World Trade Center by that point. It's also a very famous landmark, and it would seem like a really good way to show that society is falling apart, as if you kind of illustrate a famous thing like that, or the Eiffel Tower, or the Tower of Babel, like burning down. Yeah.

But when 9-11 occurred, almost exactly a year after his book was published, Chad came to believe that his visions were truths sent by God. And if that vision came true, along with the Kmart vision and all the other things, all the other coincidences that were coming true in his life, then that must mean that Chad's visions of the apocalypse were going to come true as well. I thought he was in on it, bro.

it bro yeah where was he where was he yeah ogden everyone knows that's where they trained but as it would be with tom harrison it was only a matter of time before chad daybell ran afoul of the mormon establishment and he hit a significant roadblock with his novel chasing paradise

See, one of the biggest LDS bookstores, Deseret Books, was refusing to promote Chasing Paradise because it had an extremely goofy scene in which a warrior angel dropkicks someone through a wall. He uses the term dropkicks in a book like he's 13.

13 years old. Like, that's how someone describes, like, I like a dropkick. I think a dropkick's really fun. I freaking love a dropkick. We all do. Yeah, but they're supposed to be in, like, you know, Sylvester Stallone movies. Yes. Yeah. Well, Deseret claimed the segment was too irreverent, so Chad got irate, took it personally, and came to believe he was being silenced. And I took that

personally. I drop-kicked the man at Deseret Books. I showed him. I didn't do any of that. I'm a liar. I can't make my legs parallel to the sky. I can't do it when I'm sitting down. As you can see, my FUPA...

goes over my dick and balls between my main thighs, leaving my legs at a permanent V. Now, really, Deseret Books was just looking for a reason to stop carrying Chad's novels because they were badly written and didn't sell. By Chad's own admission, his writing is terrible, rife with cliches, plot holes, and extraneous punctuation. But

But he insists that his failings are something the reader just has to, quote, glide past to reach the ideas and messages contained within his stories. That's not how books work. You have to like all of it. Yeah. And have an editor.

Yeah, that is true. He did, but it was not a good one. Yeah. But spurned by his so-called banning from Deseret Books, Chad decided to start his own publishing company called Spring Creek with his wife Tammy. And in addition to Chad's novels, they began publishing authors whose specialty was near-death experiences. Now, Chad believed that his experience beyond the veil gave him the power to tell whose near-death experiences were real and whose were fake. And he decided that a woman named Suzanne Freeman had the goods.

Let me show you around. Over here we have the steam room.

which is cool. We have some ice plunges. This is the Virgin Mary, not so much anymore, right? Now she can be fucked. She can be fucked a lot. She is fucked many, many times. We fuck. That's a great thing. She's my mother. Here in heaven, we're not held up by hang-ups, man. We have no labels. Yeah, me and mom talk about fucking all the time. She shows me how to fuck. I fuck now. Ha ha ha!

It's crazy up here. Suzanne's like, wow, I can't wait to get back. Jesus then showed Suzanne the apocalypse. This is where it gets sad. Or Suzanne claimed to see rivers flowing with the bodies of aborted fetuses. Fuck yeah, dude. Fucking be on one, man. Put a koozie in it. Sounds like something that stops the apocalypse. A bunch of abortions. That is true. It would. But you get too many abortions, that's when the...

the switch gets flipped. Because that's the thing. There's so many abortions happening, they're just tossing them in the river. You know, I think a river of floating dead children is more apocalyptic than a bunch of aborted fetuses. I would agree. But, you know, that's just me. You're not a writer. I'm not. I prefer a hot tub of aborted fetuses.

A cauldron, even. Yeah, a cauldron's actually quite nice. Then you make a stew. Oh, my God. Now we're making soup. Oh, my God. You ever put one on a flat-top grill, make a Billy cheesesteak? Oh, wow, cute.

Well, finally, after all that, Suzanne met the founding fathers of America, including Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, who were all hanging out in heaven. This is my place. Come on. You want to go see my place? Yeah. Here we go. It's a studio. But I like it. I'm Benjamin Franklin. It's fine. I thought I'd get more. I got to wait. It's something to do with what I did with my slaves or whatever. But this is the Murphy bed. It's funny that there is more slaves in heaven.

than there was in America. I was surprised too. When I met a bunch of them, I was like, oh, wow, I'm in some hot water.

Now, Suzanne Freeman's books were part of a trend in early 20th century Mormon publishing, where near-death experiences and apocalyptic visions rife with Mormon persecution were going hand in hand. See, the visions that Mormon near-death experience authors like Suzanne Freeman were bringing back from the veil, they not only prophesied plagues and nuclear war, but they also talked about prayer bands and concentration camps full of Mormons.

And Mormons are already primed for persecution stories because of the trials and tribulations of their religion's founding, where they were chased from town to town before finally settling in Utah. But these modern predictions began to freak out a lot of Mormons, and they began doomsday prepping en masse. Interestingly, though, most Mormons were already doomsday preppers because of a passage in the Book of Mormon that says, "...if ye are prepared, ye shall not fear."

In fact, doomsday prepping is a part of the LDS business model, as the church makes billions selling dehydrated food and other survivalist supplies to their flock. I knew their food sucked, but I didn't know it was on purpose. It's the last forever. But it is interesting is that it's a full part of the religion is this doomsday prep like section.

There's a whole version of it. And so it's normalized. And I also thought was really interesting while listening to Mormon stories, as I said, one thing that was interesting about the Chad Laurie's story is that, so every, they call them awards. That's like the neighborhoods, every Mormon award is like certain section of wherever you live. You were born to award. W A R D. Like Robin was, Robin was a ward of Batman. Yeah. The sixth ward, the ninth ward. Yes. And,

they believe that in, within those wards, you are like, essentially you're responsible and you're, you're just kind of dropped in. But within those wards, um,

There's always some kooky guy that had a dream that they know where Kolob is or they know where to go, where the new Nauvoo is going to be. And they say that it's so common that you're just so used to it. You're like, OK, and you just kind of roll past it. Yeah. Now, Chad Daybell was certainly one of the people who were influenced by the near-death experience slash apocalypse literature. And since he was having apocalyptic visions himself, he also became a heavy doomsday prepper.

As such, Chad Daybell refocused his writing career in the early 2000s from drop-kicking angels and time-traveling Mormons to near-death experiences and end-times predictions. This was also, perhaps not so coincidentally, around the time that the Left Behind series of apocalyptic Christian novels were selling millions of copies. But if you'll remember, Chad fucking sucked as a writer.

And his and Tammy's publishing company netted a profit of $2,000 a year in its best year. A couple more and you have yourself a cocktail.

So in 2008, Chad and Tammy's publishing company went bust and Chad filed for bankruptcy, although Chad conveniently blamed his failure on the Great Recession. It is key to remember that Chad is chasing trends. He is trying to be, quote unquote, savvy about his positioning of his near-death experience books.

and his own near-death experiences. He knows. This is one thing also Mormon Stories said that I thought was really interesting is that near-death experiences within wards are power grabs. They literally are a way to put yourself forward as a, I'm a new prophet, when you can. And so this is, it's...

His near-death experiences are self-made. Yes. He jumped into a sinkhole and he swam close to rocks. He's not a good swimmer. It's his own fault. He just suffers from not being good at a single thing. Yeah.

So after his company folded, Chad returned to grave digging while Tammy fell into a depression and tried escaping the pain by becoming addicted to a Facebook game called Frontierville. In other words, life was becoming real fucking mundane and Chad was not one to live in the mundane for long. I like excitement.

You know, Meat is Murder? It's one of the most exciting albums to ever be released. So incredibly exciting. Just wild stuff in there. Barely contained. I could barely, barely stay in this chair.

Oh my God, do you think they like the Smiths because of Joseph Smith? Whoa! You know what? It probably led them to that. It's like Joseph Smiths. I was in the record store one day and I saw a band called the Smiths. They can't be that far off if they're in the same family as our Savior.

Oh, wow. I have nothing to wear tonight. It's such a rare name. Well, by 2012, Chad was being a bit of a pain in the ass to his family and friends, pressuring them to prepare for the end times. He also was continuing to write novels inspired by beliefs that were only becoming more extreme and dangerous. This is also probably around the time that Chad discovered Tom Harrison's visions of glory.

Chad's beliefs were only made more extreme when he became obsessed with an online Mormon prepper forum called Another Voice of Warning, or Avow, which was filled with conspiracy theories, fake news, and neo-fundamentalist Mormon propaganda.

Avow was the other side of Mormonism, the stuff apart from like the cutesy world of sister wives. More so, it was the logical continuation of the aggression held by the Mormons who committed, say, the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857, where a group of Mormons slaughtered over 120 settlers from Arkansas. You'll have to tell me more about that later.

Yeah, it's a big story. But, you know, we're already running over. Actually, I think that show, American Primeval, I think the new one on Netflix. It covers the whole thing. Really? I think it's what it's about. Everyone's been telling me to watch this. It's great. I actually did start watching it because Natalie was watching it. Because also, you guys want to go check out someplace underneath in their coverage of the Mormon church. I'm going to keep plugging them because they've been getting into the money now. But yeah, we've been watching American Primeval. It's pretty good. Yeah. Fuck yeah.

Now, as I said, Chad was not a successful author when it came to sales or skill. But when he showed up on the eval forums, he was treated like a celebrity, not because his novels were any good, but because Chad was beginning to hit the end times and indie angles hard in his writings.

See, the people who love Chad Daybell's books, they didn't give a fuck about quality. All they wanted was lurid descriptions of the apocalypse that would justify their prepper lifestyle and beliefs. Imagery like rivers flowing with aborted fetuses. That was perfect for them. That was the type of shit they wanted. They wanted to get scared. And they want their beliefs, all this crazy shit that all their families tell them, like, you're fucking out of your mind. They want that confirmed by somebody else. In other words, Chad had foreseen

These are my people. Yeah.

I want my challenge. And so they are willing to do whatever it takes to bring about the end times so that they can LARP on our time. They want to go and live their survival stories out loud while we all die, just destroyed by walls of fire and floods and comets. And so that they can go live their Mormon romance fantasies of living in a world where your wives and children have to die so that you could do the couples ruse in the post-apocalyptic Mormon future where you can

cold hands. These are the fantasies they're talking about, too. They're not like they're fucking. No. It's not like it's cool stuff. It's like literally being able to, like, kiss another lady. Also, with all the doomsday prepping, you bought the gear. You know, you want to use it. The rest of us buy gear for shit we do. You know, and so, like, we use our stuff immediately, but if you're just sitting on it and looking at it, you're like, when are all these people going to die? Yeah.

Yeah, it really is. And I think there's also an element where they don't want to feel stupid. No. Because if they've spent all of their money and all of their time and their entire lives preparing for something that never comes, they're going to feel like a fucking moron. And Americans especially do not like admitting they're wrong. No. And we start to realize, though, is that what you can do to make your own reality, and it's a very good American concept, is that you can go out there and start it.

So that's kind of what they think is that if we just start acting like the end times are about to come, maybe they will. Yeah. And there's also and that's also partly where this accelerationist bullshit comes from. You know, these people that are trying to contribute to the collapse of society, you know, partly that's made up of survivalist people who just want this shit to be real. They just want everybody that they don't like to die. Yeah.

Well, Chad decided to restart his book publishing company around the time he discovered Avow. And in addition to four apocalyptic novels of his own called the Days of Turmoil series. Days of Turmoil sounds like he's got diarrhea. You know what's the worst part? You know what's the worst part of somebody who's bad at stuff like this is that he's also prolific.

Yes. Well, yeah, because he doesn't spend any time editing or putting any fucking thought. I could be prolific. I could fucking write. You are prolific. Well, yeah, but I could be prolific in fiction. I could write three fucking shitty books by the end of the year if I didn't do second drafts or if I didn't fucking go and actually read back what I wrote and there was any fucking thought behind it. Yeah, prolific is usually equal to shitty. Huh.

How's that novel you're working on where it's the reimagining of yourself as a gay octopus having sex with Carolina? You know what? It's going pretty badly. It was going good. The last draft was, you know what I said, the last draft was irresponsible.

I said what you wrote was incendiary. Yeah. And we really can't have another Visions of Glory out there. I mean, that's the thing. You can't change lives unless you take big swings. I know. I know. And that's when you got the eight tentacles inside of her. My first thought was, is this nice? Yeah.

I thought it was. Hey, it's love. It's romance. So in the end, now that I am thinking about it. Well, in addition to his own Days of Turmoil books, Chad also published another near-death experience author that he met on the Avow forums, a woman named Julie Rowe.

Julie Rowe is a character to say the least, who you may remember as the only neo-fundamentalist Mormon to speak on the Netflix documentary series Sins of My Mother, the one who bragged about being rejected by the LDS church for telling the truth.

Ro very much fits into the nerdy Mormon world, however, because when she would speak in public about her indie e-books, she would twirl these long colored ribbons behind her that would usually become tangled up. But the audience, full of polite Mormons, would never laugh and would only watch politely while she untangled herself. Should we get up? Should we help? No, no, no.

no, no, no. This is a part of it. It's this awkwardness. This is a whole vibe. I tried to help her last month and she bit me. She's, yeah, she is very ready. Yeah.

She's very hungry. She bites. Hold on. I need to start over. I'm going to sit there. I'm going to do it again. I'm going to start over. Start the music over. Pack it up. Lower the curtain. It's a great big beautiful tomorrow.

Well, author Julie Rowe was also one of the many members of the Avow Forum to have their own podcast. Rowe's was called Eyes Open, where she would talk obsessively about her so-called haters, flipping and reversing criticism by saying that the more haters she had, the closer the second coming was to come. Fuck yeah, dude. Of course. Yeah, that's how I feel about my haters, dude. Fucking whatever. You're about to meet Jesus soon. You're gonna be dead. Yeah.

Yeah, fuck you, haters. But even though Roe had her critics, her books far outsold Chad Daybell's. And they became so popular that the LDS sent out an official memo against her, saying that her books should not be recommended to students or used as a resource to teach them. You know, Chad, of course, wants his books to sell, but now he's making money. Yeah.

And this repudiation by the mainstream church caused both Julie Rowe and Chad Daybell to retreat even further from mainstream Mormonism. Now, the repudiation from the Mormon establishment only made Chad more popular with the neo-fundamentalists. And around this time, Chad began collecting actual followers, all of whom were members of the avow forums. And all doing it with the, you know, high...

You know, I don't have anything special about me. Pay attention to me. There's nothing special about me. I might be able to talk to God, but there's nothing special about me. No.

Now, quite quickly, the Avow Forum turned into an echo chamber of alarmist conspiracies, paranoid catastrophizing, and survivalist chatter. Their talk got so alarming that the aforementioned NDE author, Suzanne Freeman, she asked Chad for the rights of her books back because she was so afraid of being connected to Avow.

Rexburg. And honestly, if that's the only safe place, then fucking kill me. I did a Google walkthrough of Rexburg because I've never seen it. I just want to look at it. Not impressive. No, not impressive.

Now, it's a town of 35,000 people. Now, as far as the best location when the seals began to open went, Chad... That's seal number four. Oh, it's right there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The tight one. Yeah. It starts real loose. Yeah. It gets tighter as it goes on. Well, that's pestilence. Ha! Ha!

Chad believed that he found the perfect place while on vacation with his family in 2014. While at a gas station in a small town near Yellowstone National Park, Chad had a vision that ordered him to move to Idaho. You wouldn't believe it. I was sitting there. I was filling up, obviously, my Dodge Ram. Yeah. I was filling it up, all $95 of it. And I saw this little square hovering above where the gasoline prices were.

And in that little vibrant square, it said, come to Idaho. And I was like, no fucking shit. Isn't the end of the world supposed to be started by the geysers and Yellowstone? That's one theory. So it's technically not the safest place. No, no. Absolutely not. No, the super volcano is going to fucking destroy Idaho first. That is also one of the main features of the Mormon, like, post-apocalyptic world is rampant volcanoes. Yeah. Which is hilarious. Yeah.

Well, Chad's vision told him that there was a town called Rexburg, which would become a sacred place where the righteous 144,000 could survive the apocalypse because Rexburg, Idaho was destined to be the so-called New Jerusalem.

Now, Chad didn't really discuss the move to Idaho with his wife, Tammy, or his five children. Instead, he just kind of blurted it out at dinner. The gas station told me we should move to Idaho. It's a great chicken. I'm loving this. Well, Tammy was furious at first, but after Chad told her to pray on it, which is Christian speak for this is happening whether you like it or not, Tammy reluctantly agreed.

And so Chad moved his family to the mostly Mormon town of Rexburg in June of 2015. And Chad was almost immediately rewarded for his decision.

His extremist Mormon views were quite popular in rural Idaho, and he began doing local book talks and signings attended by like-minded Mormons who also believed the end times were coming soon. Basically, by moving from Utah to rural Idaho, Chad had broken away from the mainstream LDS and was now able to target fringe LDS church members to join what would soon become a very small but highly dangerous cult.

It also can't be stressed enough how non-urgent and how non-serious this very deadly thoughts were. Like when you go and listen to them talk, it's so cuddly. It's so like, oh, shucks. Oh, you know, and it's not until you're listening to the words that you're like every single time they say something, you're like that requires millions of people to die. Yeah, that's just called subjugation of a woman's body.

That's like something else. Like, you're literally just like, you're just saying horrible things. Yeah, but they're saying it very nicely. They're saying it in a very Mormon tone. Mormon-y. Now, since Chad was connected to the successful near-death experience author Julie Rowe, he had enough credibility to attend near-death experience conferences, as well as New Age gatherings that were more focused on psychic healing and crystals. Imagine the insurance for a near-death experience conference.

You're going near death There'll be saw blades everywhere broken

Well, concerning those New Age gatherings, in the last 20 years, the New Age movement has shifted to share far more beliefs with right-wing extremists than they do with San Francisco hippies. RFK Jr. is a prime example of this bullshit. And the near-death experience movement was one of the connections that brought these two groups together. They said that if I just committed, I could get all the way to the Mormon apocalypse, and they said, well, what little treatise will be my voice?

Every breath he takes is a near-death experience. Hopefully.

Well, I mean, yeah, it was near-death experiences, but the thing that really fused New Agers and the right-wing together was COVID. Lockdowns, vaccines, you know, all that shit. Yeah, now, like, seeing, like, the New Agers, like, are basically eugenicists at this point. Like, you know, if they die, they die. Like, some people should die. This is literally what they've been prepping for! They should be excited! This is the problem! They finally did it!

got the ball and they're like alright what do we do I had the same thought I had the same thought too it's just like oh you motherfuckers this is the plague it was the plague the plague showed up and you all dropped the ball yes fucking morons not this plague we thought the plague would have more boils we don't like this one it's not good what is it a cough

Now, even though Chad Daybell was a doughy-looking, mumble-mouthed, dad-jeans-wearing sap with a bad haircut... Hey, he's also a bad author. He used self-depreciating humor and a goofy charm to win over crowds at these conferences. I want to allow it. And within just a few months, he'd collected even more followers from the fringes of the Mormon church.

Now, incredibly, most of Chad's followers were women, but I think the reasons behind this are twofold. First, Chad Daybell is a fucking coward, and men scared the hell out of him. Yeah. Second, I think his affable, goofy, dad joke demeanor was disarming and kind of comforting. It's like having bad news delivered by a big, fat, dumb dog. That sounds nice. I know. It would be nice. Sorry, Mr. Zabrowski, your test came back, and you have anal cancer.

Oh, that sounds cute.

Fuck you, Chad. But in the end, I think Daybell's biggest strength that had nothing to do with gender was that he knew exactly what these crowds wanted to hear. And he knew how to regurgitate the ideas of other writers in a friendlier way. I also think there's something to be said about him being a somewhat boring presence because the way he would deliver things made it sound like he was trying to sell you printer toner, which I think made what he was saying seem a little more real.

They all have the very same kind of flat effect. Yeah, the cadence. It's very, it's purposeful. It is done on purpose. He is doing it to sound like Tom Harrison. Yeah. And Tom Harrison is doing it to sound like Russell Nelson. It's kind of like, it's a voice. It's a style. And so people kind of- This is aw shucks. I don't know about the- And the best part is that because they keep getting pushed into the fringe deeper and deeper, I think that really what comes about is that

how could I be dangerous? Yeah. I'm just this guy. I'm just talking my truth. I didn't want to. I'm a humble messenger. You know, like it's all of this horse shit where it's like they're all bloodthirsty maniacs that want to act like they're not. Yeah. Like if you look at, say, like Warren Jeffs, like he's, of course, creepy because we know everything about him. But really, like Warren Jeffs, when he just was out in the world before we knew everything about Warren Jeffs,

Non-threatening. No, I fucking, I, oh, he's creepy. Yeah, he's creepy, but ultimately, but you're saying, like, but what I'm saying is that he is not someone that you would see as dangerous. He doesn't seem like a threat. Yeah, exactly. That's what non-threatening means. Well, you know. Ha ha ha!

Those are all the ones that are all based upon plural marriage. One of my big major theories is that Mormon cults can be broke down by specific Mormon sins and what they don't want you to do and how certain things are hinged on it, like the blood atonement stuff is kind of based upon the two brothers that had a death cult and then we have this, you know, Warren Jeffs is all about literally just creating an entire system in order to have sex with children and that's kind of what Tim Ballard was doing too and this is about the gift

of discernment. It's about flipping the entire Mormon church. Yeah, but it's a lot of these things lie on the two original sins of Mormonism, which is polygamy and blood atonement.

Great. Well, now that Chad was based out of Rexburg, Idaho, and he was gaining followers, other extremist Mormons began to listen to his claim that Rexburg was going to be the new Jerusalem. And nobody listened to Chad more than a group of Mormon survivalists called Preparing a People, or AKA Kermit.

See, PAP had started off as a group that organized conferences for Mormon survivalists, but they soon moved into web design, marketing services, and videography before finding their true niche in podcasting. PAP had a series of...

at a series of three podcasts. The title podcast, Preparing a People. For Pabst, it stands for... There's Time to Warrior Up. That is the worst name for a podcast I have ever heard. Never heard anything worse. And there was Feel the Fire. That's a little bit better. Yeah, that's better. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That could be cooking. That could be hell. That could be... All kinds of... Camping. Yeah. But more than anything, more than the books, conferences, or forums, these Pabst...

These pap podcasts were what launched Chad Daybell as a leader. The host would constantly herald Chad Daybell as a true prophet. And as such, preparing a people, not going to fucking let you do it again, they moved their operations to Rexburg, Idaho in 2017 to join Chad in the new Jerusalem. I always said a PAP. So...

After building up Chad for a while on their podcasts, preparing a people began hosting conferences at Chad's home, where anywhere between 15 and 50 people, mostly women, would show up to hear about Chad's apocalyptic prophecies. Hey, mostly old women. Yes. The New Agers amongst the crowd particularly enjoyed Chad's new interest, reincarnation, because Chad was now claiming that he'd lived 31 previous lives on all sorts of different planets across the universe. I was a barber on Pluto. Ha ha!

I was a bike messenger on Jupiter 2. And I was just old Chad. Matter of fact, just here on Earth. The craziest planet of all. What's cutting hair like on Pluto? It's very difficult due to the gravity issue. Very difficult to clean. It's cold. Very cold. Get an umbrella. Yeah.

But don't worry, if you don't like the weather, wait an hour. Well, at these gatherings at Chad's house, Chad would divine the past lives of church leaders, friends, and celebrities. He would claim that Kim Kardashian, Elizabeth Taylor, Cleopatra, and Kim Jong-un had all lived past lives as characters from the Book of Mormon. So he likes Kim Jong-un?

Well, I think Kim Jong-un was an evil character in the Book of Mormon. Oh, okay. Yeah. Asian. He was an Asian character in the Book of Mormon. I am starting to see a bit of a trend with Chad Daybell. Oh, very much so. Did you ever read the chapter? Did you read Visions of Glory? No. There is a chapter. I don't have time. Yeah, well, I did.

And there is a chapter in Visions of Glory in which Tom Harrison says that he can psychically, he met a man from, I believe, I forgot what island it was from. He met a man from, I want to say it was Polynesia. And he said that he touched his hand. And then he said that he saw the entire history of the Polynesian people, including all of the rape.

and murder that they did and how they were an unsophisticated group of island brutes. And so it seems that he took it from that. Yeah. Yeah, it seems like he definitely has a bias. Yes, he does. He's racist. He's deeply racist. They both are. All of them. Oh, all of them are, yeah. And we're definitely going to get more into that on the next episode when we get into the other person in this story.

Our queen. Now, during a speaking engagement in the fall of 2017, Chad met a fellow prepper named Melanie Gibb at a survivalist camp in Ogden, Utah, where people discussed their spiritual experiences and visions in addition to learning survivalist skills. Chad and Melanie hit it off, and a few months later, Chad introduced Melanie to the Preparing a People group out of Rexburg.

Melanie was so impressed that she opened her own PAP chapter in her home state of Arizona. Thank you for not interrupting. I understand it. And she even began appearing on PAP podcasts. Before long, Chad and Melanie were meeting up again at another PAP conference in Utah. But this time, Melanie brought along a friend. That friend was Lori Vallow. And it's there that we'll pick back up for part two.

Part two of our series. Wow. This is just... I'm so happy that I got some of this rage out. Yeah, a little bit. I needed to get it out today. I think so. I feel like... I'm just calling it now. You do you. But I think you're going to be calmer next one. I feel like you really did get some shit out today. Yeah. I think so. And also, next episode, we're going to be telling the full story of Lori Vallow. And Henry doesn't get as angry about Lori Vallow. No, you know what it is about Lori Vallow? You like...

The way she looks. You know? You called her hot earlier. She is attractive. I do find her attractive, but I do think that she's... She's not attractive. She's the evil one. Yeah. So I'm a little bit... I like... We're about to get evil. Yeah. Part two is going to get... We're going to see the other side. What really creates the...

very, very dark edge of Chad Daybell is going to be what Lori Vallow brings to the table and her family, what she learned from her family, all this type of shit. That's what's going to create this fucking evil toxic soup. And it's just going to get worse from here. Lori Vallow's family is a den of fucking vipers. And they're,

that when we talk about her family, you know, we're going to be getting, you know, don't worry if any of you out there are, you know, big experts on this stuff. We're going to be talking about the white horse prophecy, of course, the next episode. And we're, of course, going to be talking about Laurie Fallow's father, the sovereign citizen.

Yeah. It's all coming around. Wow. It really links together. It all does. It's almost like every single group of villains in the United States of America are working together as a team. And we are suffering as a result. But otherwise, things are fine. And...

Go check out someplace underneath Run right now. Yes. Because they are really doing extremely deep work into the, they're going to cover the Tim Ballard story. They're going to cover kind of things that I even dropped. But right now they're running through all of the various sources of Mormon money because they're talking about these holdings, which is the, it's a

It's kind of a massive elephant in the room with all of these conversations, because, again, all of this humbleness hides the fact that they're sitting on a world changing amount of money. Two hundred billion. Something like that. It's like a huge it's a astronomical sum of money that they can do whatever they want with. And what's it going to be?

We'll find out. Also, if you want to watch something that pertains to this, watch the post-apocalyptic game show, the Hoopagoohoo game. There we go! It's very doomsday. Yeah, yeah. It's going to be, you can see that on our YouTube page. If you go to, you know, just go to YouTube, type in Last Podcast on the left or the Last Podcast Network and you can find all of our shows after the fact. But if you want to watch Hoopagoohoo live and can,

participate in the show when does Hoopa Goo Goo air? Yesterday but the next one's going to be on March 6th at 6pm Pacific 9pm Eastern all on twitch.tv slash LPN TV and check out Goodwood we'll be live next week on the 27th and we might be taking a little trip

To where? We'll see. All right. I'll tell you who is taking the trip. Us. We're in Dallas right now. Seriously, come out. If you're in Dallas, come out. We're going to have fun. Tonight's going to be a great fucking show. We got a lot of stuff. Tomorrow night. Tomorrow night. The 22nd. The 22nd. And then we've got dates. We're going to be in the Ryman. Come and see us at the Ryman. If you're in Nashville, we're going to have so much fucking fun. We're going to have the Ryman. I believe then we're going to Huntsville, Alabama for side stories. Yeah, that's going to be blast. On the 16th. And we're coming for you, NASA.

We are coming! The proof! Alright? You guys really need to go to Wernher von Braun's grave. Oh, we are going to. Is he there? Yes. I'm almost positive he's buried there. I looked it up. He isn't. He is there. Oh, we should totally go to Wernher von Braun's grave. Absolutely. We can do some Roman salutes. Oh, yeah.

Marcus said this, and I want to remind you, go to lastpodcastontheleft.com to buy those tickets. That is where you want to go. If you just look up Last Podcast on the Left Live, they will take you to see scammers, ticket scammers, which apparently is horrible. We can't do anything about it.

Yeah, we get we we seriously we are not charging three hundred and fifty dollars for a fucking ticket. We are like that's those are resellers. We just can't fucking we can't do anything about that unless we created our entire ecosystem of ticket selling apparatuses. It's very difficult. So if you want to buy resale tickets, go to any tunes dot com. I'll be reselling the tickets myself. That's a good idea.

idea. Double dipping. That's really, I can't fault that. And you can also get tickets to my tour, Invasive Species. The Ed Larson tour is Florida. So if you're in Florida in March or May, I'll be coming to your town. Hopefully if you're in Tallahassee, Panama City, Jacksonville, Dania Beach, Orlando, Naples or Key West, check that out.

And you also can see us again. Contact in the desert. 2025 from May 29th to June 2nd. We are going to be there. We're going to be doing several shows over the weekend. We're going to be around doing stuff. We're not, it's not finalized quite yet what we're doing. Yeah. And whatever shows we're not on, we will be heckling. Yeah. So be there, be in the crowd because we already walked one. Michael Sedona is not coming back.

He's not. He said our spiritual attack on him caused him to lose 25 pounds. Are you... Wait, us? Yes. He says our satanic spiritual attack on him ruined him and that he had to go into spiritual recovery.

He had to go into a prayer monastery. Like, he had to do all of this shit. This is a man who supposedly fought aliens. Yeah. The guy with the lasers that sang the song? Yes. And so we hurt him by going there and by talking about how insane he is. Yes. All right. It's awesome. So we will be the ones burning the effigy of the World Trade Center this year.

And we cannot wait. If you want to help us, if you want to send in a paper mache World Trade Center, go to the P.O. Box, P.O. Box 470, North Hollywood, California, 91603. If you're a lucky listener who sends in the first World Trade Center paper mache diorama, that's the one we're going to burn. Live on Contact Me Vessel.

All right. That's it. Later on. Hail Satan. Hail Gein. Hail Gladys Knight. I tried to find a cool Mormon, and that's the only one I could find. She's Mormon, huh? She converted in 1990. Okay. That's fine. Yeah, I know. What are you going to do? What about the Pips? I don't think they joined her. Oh. They stayed Christian. Yeah. Makes sense. Pips can't be Mormon. I love the Pips. Pips are way... That's too exciting. Pips.

Tallahassee, what's going on? Ed Larson here from Last Podcast on the Left to let you know I'm coming to you. That's right. I'm going to be at the 926 Bar and Grill on March 23rd doing some stand-up and some music with my good friends Evan Rossi and Danny Bedrosian, you know, the keyboard player from Parliament Funkadelic. What? He's performing live?

With Ed Larson in Tallahassee? Yes, it's happening. So come on out March 23rd, Tallahassee, Florida, to see Ed Larson, Danny Bedrosian, and Evan Rossi perform at the 926 Bar. You might just get a public sub. At Amica Insurance, we know it's more than just a car. It's the two-door coupe that was there for your first drive. The hatchback that took you cross-country and back.

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