Does Japan Have a Cult Problem? And The Curious Queue #5

Curious Cat

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Episode Intro:

Did you queue up this episode and wonder, why the heck the emphasis on cults? Well, I'll tell you. With the run up to the November election in full swing - saddled between the RNC and DNC national conventions, I thought it was a great moment in history to check our collective guts. To remind us to question everything. And to question what we are being force fed. In fact, if a message or news story comes into your feed or life over and over and over, for fun's sake, take the opposite side and do your own deep dive into the subject.

That is empowerment. That is exercising freedom.

The antithesis is mindless scrolling, eating up everything the lecherous 24-hour news cycle spits out - and it is not a path to peace and happiness. I've found the techniques used by communist China and cults to be disturbing, not just because of their blatant use of fear and insecurity-inducing tactics, but because I see them used all the time in mainstream USA. So, that's why my focus is on cults. To keep me from buying what they're selling, and remind me to (when I have to know the current events) pluck sources from the extremes, left AND right AND center and see where the information intersects. Even with those grains of tested truth, I always weigh my gut heavier than their headlines.

I'm diving into cults because of humanity's predilection to want to belong to a group, but at what cost?
Show Sources and Materials

5 Scariest Japanese Cults from Japan Daily

Aum Shinrikyo Cult Information on Wikipedia

The Unification Church and Its Japanese Victims: The Need for "Religious Literacy" article from Nippon dot com

Shinzo Abe’s Assassin and Japan’s Complicated Spirituality, The New Yorker, H. Yoda

The Curious Queue Links and Materials

Meet Crush, the rare orange lobster diverted from dinner plate to aquarium by Denver Broncos fans

Doomsday fish spotted near La Jolla

Mysterious 'Hearbeat' Sound Detected by Hydrophone Deployed at Loch Ness, Coast-to-Coast, T. Binnall

Loch Ness hunters pick up heartbeat deep under water and can't explain it, Daily Record, M. Davies

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Art Director, Nora, has a handmade, ethically-sourced jewelry company!