[ominous music playing]
[traffic din]
[male announcer on PA]
[train chugging by]
[radio crackling]
[two men speaking Japanese
on radio]
[female announcer on PA]
[indistinct chatter]
[two men speaking Japanese
on radio]
[sirens wailing]
FEMALE ANCHOR: A frightening
development this morning,
a chemical weapon, nerve gas,
was released inside a crowded
subway system in Tokyo today
and police say it's a deliberate
attack by t*rrorists.
MALE ANCHOR: It was like a scene
in a science fiction movie.
People with no apparent
injuries collapsed.
Commuters stumbled into the open
air gasping for breath.
FEMALE ANCHOR: The deadly gas
that spread through
the city's subway system
Monday morning was sarin.
-[people screaming]
-It's a deadly nerve gas
first developed by the Nazis
during World w*r II.
-[sirens wailing]
-[heavy breathing on radio]
-[breathing stops]
-[music continues]
[upbeat music starts]
[plane engine whooshing]
ANDREW: Tokyo was a mixture
of a very futuristic city,
but also a little bit
backward at the same time.
I mean, when I first arrived
there, I remember standing
in a hotel room looking
out across the vista.
It was just like
all the movies I'd seen,
just like
all the films I'd seen.
So, it didn't disappoint
in that way.
And, of course, there were lots
of high-tech elements about
the city.
But also, I lived
in an apartment that if you put
the toaster on,
turn too many lights on,
all of the fuses would blow
and would go out.
So there was that sort of...
shell of oldness about it, too.
I was born in London.
I moved up to Scotland
quite early in my life,
and came to journalism
really quite late.
And then there was
a kind of crossroads.
I got a call
from my girlfriend at the time
who was just been offered
a teaching job in Japan,
and she said, "Do you want
to come along? It's well paid.
You can come and hang out
for a few months,
and we can have a look
at Japan."
And I said, "Why not?"
And I tagged along.
[traffic din]
I got a job
as the deputy editor
of a Tokyo city magazine
called Tokyo Journal,
which was this kind of
very eccentric mix between
hard-hitting political profiles
and practical jokes.
-[crowd chattering]
-[Andrew] I think
a very interesting time
to be in Japan, because,
viewed from the West,
this was a time where
Japan was approaching the end
of its mission of total
global domination.
I was tired, and I think a lot
of people are tired of watching
other countries ripping off
the United States.
Japan is one of
the wealthiest machines
ever created, Saudi Arabia--
And it's not--
hey, let me tell you,
I'm a big beneficiary
of Japan.
They buy my apartments
in spades...
['80s Japanese
TV theme starts]
[speaking Japanese]
SHOKO:
ANDREW: By 1989,
the stock market had peaked,
and Japan was really
entering this period
of economic stagnation
and possibly a sort of
cultural and political
stagnation as well.
And I think what was about to
happen was a symptom of that.
[atmospheric music playing]
The first day of 1995,
when I read a story
in the Yomiuri Shimbun,
and that story was about
traces of sarin had been found
by the police
at this place called
Kamikuishiki.
It was on the flanks
of Mount Fuji.
It was a very, very small story
and didn't go into
any more details
than that, but....
a n*zi nerve gas had leaked
in an otherwise obscure city.
It was a mystery
that begged to be solved
and begged
to be investigated further.
And so the next day,
I went to Mount Fuji
and set out to investigate.
[wind whooshing]
SEIICHI:
ANDREW: I mean, Fuji itself
is an amazing mountain.
It's a symbol of Japan.
It's been this pilgrimage site
for centuries.
And then plunked on the flanks
of the mountain
are these
great big ugly facilities.
At the time, I thought,
"They look like
a cross between factories
and prison camps."
It was interesting
when I went to talk
to the people
of Kamikuishiki
who lived near the facilities.
It was clear that for years,
the people of Kamikuishiki
had been in massive conflict
with the group
who were really,
really bad neighbors.
There'd be round-the-clock
construction noise.
They'd leave bags of garbage
and empty chemical containers
in the fields.
There would be, like,
chanting coming out of there
all times
of the day and night.
And there'd be leaks
of weird smelling stuff
coming out
of these compounds too.
Yeah. And I remember going
to this one area in a forest...
[leaves crunching]
...And pulling
some tarpaulin aside.
And behind was this
massive Russian helicopter.
I decided to try
to look deeper into it
and started talking to
members there
and seeing their operation.
Joyu, he was a graduate
of a top Japanese university
and a very smooth talker,
both in Japanese
and in English.
He worked for a while
at Japan's space agency,
it's the Japanese
equivalent of NASA.
How can I start? [chuckles]
[static crackles]
My fellow Americans,
thank you for sharing
your time with me tonight.
What if free people
could live secure
in the knowledge that
their security did not rest
upon the threat
of instant US retaliation
to deter a Soviet attack?
JOYU:
[expl*si*n booming]
[speaking Japanese]
I think Asahara
was really good at promotion.
Aum had lots of magazines,
they had just a huge
number of books.
They also made
a lot of cartoons of anime.
And that was a really,
really good recruiting tool.
[speaking Japanese]
ANDREW: Asahara, I think,
was a very charismatic person.
He described himself
as the reincarnation of Buddha.
He called himself the messiah
of the last century.
I think he was very down to
earth and approachable
and I think he knew
how to talk to the young people.
[speaking Japanese]
[applause]
Later on, he became
a very different figure,
somebody to fear and worship.
[ominous electronica playing]
[Asahara speaking Japanese]
[crowd chanting]
JOYU:
[Asahara chanting]
Aum was a strict hierarchy.
So at the very top
you had Asahara
and then under him
were like his priesthood.
They'd recruited
extremely good scientists
and chemists.
They were like
the top of Aum
and everybody else
was kind of beneath that.
JOYU:
[speaking Japanese]
MIKA:
SHOKO:
[phone ringing]
[speaking Japanese]
YUJI:
[speaking Japanese]
[Asahara chanting]
HIROYUKI:
[quiet music playing]
ANDREW:
Followers were totally fleeced.
All their money
was essentially
leeched away
from them by Aum.
Aum would slowly work on you,
then work on your property,
work on your parents' property
and bank accounts,
and they just, you know,
suck all of the money out.
ANDREW: There were
a number of initiations.
They charged huge amounts
of money for these.
One was called
the blood initiation,
where followers would actually--
supposedly drink some
of his blood.
That cost a lot of money.
There was something else
called "miracle pond,"
which seemed to be vials
of his own bathwater,
which you could drink.
ASAHARA:
JOYU:
SHOKO:
INTERVIEWER:
SHOKO:
[tense music playing]
[ominous music playing]
SHOKO:
ANDREW: Later on, an Aum badge
was found at the scene.
So, they were really
the prime suspect from day one.
[tense music playing]
DAVID: I'm an investigative
journalist by profession.
The one place
I've spent more than anywhere
outside the States
has been Japan.
I was working with Andrew
Marshall at Tokyo Journal.
Aum received an extraordinary
amount of deference
from Japanese authorities
at almost every level
During the '30s and '40s
Shinto became
the official state religion,
and all other religions
were heavily prosecuted.
The infamous Tokko,
the thought police,
and you could be
thrown into jail
for having the wrong thoughts.
ANDREW: So, the police and the
Japanese authorities in general
didn't want to be seen
as cracking down on religion
in any way.
They didn't
want to be associated
with that extremely dark time
in Japanese history.
And I think actually the Aum,
you know, milked that for all
it was worth.
It gave them
a certain amount of space
in which to expand
and operate with impunity.
[ominous music playing]
[ominous music playing]
SHOKO:
[ominous music playing]
YUJI:
YUJI:
YUJI:
FEMALE ANNOUNCER:
MALE ANNOUNCER:
TARO:
[audience cheering
and applauding]
ANDREW:
To what extent did he believe...
the things that he said
were happening?
To what extent
did he believe
in the supernatural powers
he had?
I mean, it's really hard
to tell, but he believed
in the impact.
They got him-- I mean,
they got him worshippers,
they got him
incredible wealth.
And that's quite
a step-up for someone
that was born into--
into poverty
and had so many challenges
early on in life.
[emotional piano instrumental]
JOYU:
JOYU:
His blindness probably had
an impact on who he was,
I mean,
how could it not, in a way?
But it didn't seem to stop him
doing most of what he wanted
to do.
He seemed to parlay it into,
you know,
part of the whole
Asahara personality
TARO:
ANDREW: He sold
kind of quack remedies.
Uh, there was one called
"almighty medicine,"
which was just
pieces of tangerine in alcohol.
TARO:
ANDREW: I think he was a hustler
right from the beginning.
I think money was the issue.
He found that through
this acupuncture clinic,
he could sell these remedies
which would earn him money.
And I think it just
kind of snowballed from there.
He starts these yoga schools
which bring in more money
and bring in more people
who come regularly,
they become his followers.
I mean, it's just a very
successful business model
in a way, isn't it,
starting your own religion.
MALE ANNOUNCER:
ANDREW: In 1990, there was
a general election in Japan,
and Asahara and Aum
decided to contest 25 seats
in Japan's
House of Representatives.
So Asahara would be
one of the-- the candidates.
At that point,
the money had been flowing in,
the-- the members had been
flowing in, 10,000 or more,
and they poured millions and
millions into this campaign.
JOYU:
[man singing]
ANDREW: They had these very,
very bizarre campaigns
where Asahara would,
you know, sit on the stage
and followers wearing
these papier-mch hats
in the shape of-- of Asahara.
Dance around to a song
which consists of--
just of his name being
repeated over and over again.
SHOKO:
INTERVIEWER:
It might seem bit odd
that a religious group
should, you know,
make a strike into politics,
but there was a precedent.
So, there's a group called
Soka Gakkai, a Buddhist group,
and back in the '60s
they started a political wing,
which became a political party
and quite a powerful one
in Japan.
[Asahara vocalizing]
ANCHOR:
ANDREW: It was a disaster.
They didn't win any of
the 25 seats they contested.
And in Asahara's district,
I think he got fewer votes
in that district
than there were Aum members
registered in that district,
so not even every Aum member
voted for him it seemed like.
SHOKO:
Imagine you're a cult leader,
everyone's adoring you,
you're being told that you're
a grandmaster and
a spiritual leader,
and that you're
the second coming of God,
and it's a little hard
to lose a local election.
[ominous music playing]
I think this was
a turning point because
up until then,
the money had been flowing in,
the members
had been flowing in.
And then you have
the expenditure
of all these millions
on an election campaign
which ends
in not just failure,
but a very,
very public failure.
Also, a number of Aum members
started leaving
the cult around this time,
because perhaps,
because as campaign workers,
they were interacting
with the public again
and started
coming to their senses.
YUJI:
ANDREW:
And it's really after that
that you can see a change
in Asahara's direction.
[speaking Japanese]
[intense music plays]
Armageddon becomes very much
a, you know, a bigger part
of-- of his teaching.
And also the w*r,
this sort of decisive,
apocalyptic w*r
starts to get closer.
And that was a really,
really good recruiting tool
for the cult to say,
"Look, a w*r is coming.
We live in these
incredibly unstable times,
but come to Aum
and we'll give you
the sort of spiritual,
physical abilities
to withstand this coming w*r
and you'll be the sole
survivors," essentially.
[loud expl*si*n]
JOYU:
[USSR National Anthem plays]
MALE ANCHOR: In Moscow,
the hammer and sickle
is lowered for the last time
and an era comes to an end.
Soviet President
Mikhail Gorbachev
has been removed from power
and there are tanks now
in the streets of Moscow.
ANDREW: Again, his timing
was quite impeccable.
Soviet Union,
Russians were struggling.
I mean, this was a chaotic
and difficult time for them.
And in walks this,
you know,
this man in robes
from Japan
and offers salvation,
offers to sort of
speak to Russian souls.
And he was
very successful there.
The numbers
went up to 20 or 30,000.
In a very short
amount of time,
they had more followers in
Russia than they did in Japan.
[foreboding music plays]
JOYU:
ANDREW: During the first Russian
salvation tour,
Asahara rented out
the Olympic stadium and filled
it with thousands of Russians
and did a meditation session
for all of them.
So, you know,
obviously he had pulling power.
DAVID: At the time, Russian
technology, Russian weapons
were on the world market.
They were experts in-- in
chemical and biological weapons
that the US and other Allied
powers were quite worried about
the potential for
proliferation.
You'd never had
a country collapse
with thousands
of nuclear weapons.
[foreboding music plays]
Aum sees
the apocalypse coming
and they want
to arm themselves.
What do you
arm yourselves with?
Weapons of mass destruction.
WMD.
ANDREW: Asahara met
a guy called Oleg Lobov,
who was part
of Boris Yeltsin's circle.
He helped them expand
not just in Moscow,
but other places in Russia.
Asahara was
interested in science,
so Lobov gave him access
to a number
of young scientists
who perhaps have
information that he needed.
And his construction minister,
a guy called Hayakawa,
actually did crisscross
these former republics
looking for
all sorts of things.
DAVID: They were looking
not only at chemical weapons
and biological agents,
but also nukes.
They were looking
at nuclear weapons.
ANDREW: Aum got some kind
of training from Russian
military types.
They bought Kalashnikovs,
as*ault r*fles
and also a helicopter that
I ended up seeing in Mount Fuji.
They were looking at how to
build an electromagnetic g*n.
ANDREW: Asahara was
really interested in lasers,
you know,
right from the beginning.
He met with Nikolai Basov,
who won the Nobel Prize
for physics
for his work on lasers.
DAVID: And also massive
production of narcotics.
They put electrode caps
on people's heads
to stimulate the brain
and synthesized LSD
and mescaline
that was given
to people during meditation.
The operations in Russia
were run by Joyu.
He had a reputation as being
just super loyal to the guru.
He was
one of Asahara's favorites.
I think,
you know, he's very clever.
He's been very cautious
in his approach.
His behavior in Russia
was never really looked at.
The Russian operation was--
I mean, it was pretty grim.
A lot of the Russian
followers were mistreated.
They were
possibly experimented on.
That was something
that should have been
investigated properly,
but wasn't.
After the Russian operation,
Aum started to accelerate.
When Aum was on the rise, there
was a lot going on in the world.
So you had, you know, '91,
you had the breakup
of the former Soviet Union.
You had w*r in Bosnia,
which started out--
that was a big w*r in,
in Europe for the first time
in a long time.
So there were other things
on the global security radar.
DAVID: CIA offices overseas
have collection priorities.
They have orders,
more or less,
on what they're supposed to
report intelligence on,
and what a new age
religious cult
outside of Tokyo was doing
was not on the list.
FEMALE ANCHOR:
ANDREW: So after I'd
investigated the sarin incident
at Kamikuishiki,
in the village,
the first thing I did was look
again at the incident in
Matsumoto,
which was this city
in the Japan Alps.
Dozens of people falling sick,
some people dying.
And one of the victims
was this machinery salesman
called Yoshiyuki Kono.
[ominous music plays]
[speaking Japanese]
[dogs barking]
[porcelain shatters]
ANDREW: When
the ambulance arrived,
Kono was saying
to the ambulance man,
I ate Thai rice pilaf
for dinner.
So he at this stage,
Kono still thought
that he had some kind of
violent form of food poisoning.
[eerie music plays]
ANDREW: The police
focused in on Kono,
because he had chemicals
in his house.
Supposedly,
he had a license to mix them.
Previously, he'd been
a pharmaceutical salesman.
And then traces of sarin
was found in his back garden.
So he was really
the prime suspect in this case.
The Japanese media had really
sort of pointed
the finger at him.
Somebody had even flown
a helicopter over his house
to look for sort of sarin
patches in his back garden.
And afterwards, actually,
Kono was briefly detained.
I think they needed
someone to pin it to.
It was such a mystery
and such a devastating
and sort of horrific attack.
ANDREW: His wife
was still in hospital.
His two daughters had
also spent time in hospital.
As he explained to me,
"Look, you know, if I knew
so much about chemicals,
why would I mix a herbicide
that was going to cause damage
to my wife and kids?
Why would I do that?"
I mean, that seemed
like impeccable logic to me.
And as Kyle Olsen,
this biochemical weapons expert,
told me at the time, you know,
you don't take chemical A
and chemical B and mix it
and just get sarin, you know,
the chance of that happening
are vanishingly remote.
So when I left
Kono's house that day,
I was absolutely convinced
he was innocent
and really couldn't see why
everybody else didn't think
that, too.
So after
I'd returned from Matsumoto,
I started to draw a line
between the Matsumoto sarin leak
and the cult,
and I started writing the story.
CULT MEMBER:
[gas hissing]
-[keys jingling]
-[engine sputters]
[gas hissing]
SHOKO:
EIKO:
TARO:
[soft instrumental
music plays]
ANDREW: In 1995...
there was the Kobe earthquake in
January, which was devastating.
Thousands of people
were k*lled.
SHOKO:
ANDREW: And I think that
for Asahara really showed.
It really helped
his apocalyptic creed
to have something
as awful as that happen.
But the cult
also made a mistake.
They abducted
this man called Kariya,
who was a notary public.
His sister had been
in the cult
and he'd been trying to get
his sister out of it.
SHOKO:
ANDREW: The w*r was very, very
real for Aum members,
because it was constantly
drummed into them by Asahara.
You know, we need to prepare
for this w*r that's coming.
And as police attention
and other people's attention
focused in on the cult,
that just became confirmation
that the cult
had to prepare even more
because they were at the center
of this persecution.
JOYU:
ANDREW: In my story, I quoted,
uh, Kyle Olsen, and he thought
that the Matsumoto sarin attack
was actually a t*rror1st attack,
and it was a trial run
for another attack,
probably on a big city,
probably Tokyo.
[eerie music plays]
[indistinct yelling]
[siren blaring]
[police whistles blowing]
[tense music plays]
[siren blaring]
[speaking Japanese]
FEMALE ANCHORS: A frightening
development this morning,
a chemical weapon, nerve gas,
was released inside a crowded
subway system in Tokyo today.
The police says it was a
deliberate attack by t*rrorists.
...the deadly gas that spread
through the city subway system
Monday morning was sarin,
said to be even more
powerful than cyanide.
It's a deadly nerve gas
first developed
by the Nazis
during World w*r II.
[low droning music playing]
ANDREW: Attackers had
sharpened umbrellas.
They had bags of sarin.
Once they got close
to Kasumigaseki,
they puncture them
with the pointed umbrellas,
and the sarin would seep out.
There were about
a dozen people k*lled in Tokyo
and thousands injured.
My reaction was,
of course, shock.
I couldn't quite believe,
I couldn't really process.
The attack on the Tokyo
subway was an attempt
to stop the police
from investigating the cult.
An attempt really,
to-- to slow them down.
So they had five attackers,
and they--
they had
three subway lines,
and the idea was
to puncture sarin
on each of these lines
when the trains intersected
at a place called
Kasumigaseki,
and Kasumigaseki is right
in the center of Tokyo.
It's where all the police
agencies are,
and it's where all of the--
a lot of the government
ministries are as well.
So it was seen as a kind of
strike not just at the police,
but, you know, at the heart
of the Japanese bureaucracy.
So this is the copy of Esquire
in which my story ran.
It's actually dated April,
but it came out in
the first few days of March...
just about a week
before the subway attack.
"The n*zi nerve gas mystery.
When death came to a Japanese
village."
And it's got quite
a number of pages inside.
You know, I'd written this
story, and in it there'd been
this prediction
that there would be
this subway attack.
Uh, I know
on a rational level
that the publication
and writing of that story
didn't cause the attack,
but I still felt this kind
of guilt that this awful thing
that had been predicted
in the article had come true.
[tense droning music playing]
ANDREW: The police began raiding
the Kamikuishiki headquarters
quite soon
after the subway attack.
And a lot of it was carried
live on Japanese TV.
And a lot of us were just
rooted to the screens.
You know, you had police wearing
these full biochemical
warfare kits
with big gas masks sort of
rolling into these facilities,
just bringing up
unbelievable amounts
of barrels of chemicals
and so on.
So right from the beginning,
from those initial raids,
you got the feeling that we were
dealing with something quite
exceptional.
[children screaming]
[people screaming, shouting]
ANDREW: Each facility
was called a Satyan,
which was supposedly derived
from a Sanskrit word meaning
"truth."
So you had Satyan one, two,
three, four, et cetera,
et cetera, and...
probably the most important one
was Satyan 7.
Aum said this was
actually a place of worship.
But Satyan 7 was
really where the sarin
was manufactured
in large quantities.
The cult also had
a factory where they were
trying to make
Kalashnikov as*ault r*fles.
And the plan was to make
a thousand of these
as*ault r*fles.
This helicopter that I saw,
it was the Mi-17,
which is a cargo carrier.
You can actually convert it to
carry missiles and machine g*ns.
It's a heavy duty
Russian helicopter.
They bought it in Russia
and dismantled it
and then just brought it in
through the port of Yokohama.
Asahara went into hiding
before the gas attack,
and he hadn't been seen
in public for quite a while.
You know, even though there were
hundreds of people on
these raids,
they didn't find Asahara.
JOYU:
ANDREW: It wasn't like
when the police started
raiding the facilities,
everything went back to normal,
in fact, everything seemed
to really speed up.
I mean, we all felt
in Tokyo a real sense
of vulnerability
that we hadn't felt before.
Japan's police chief, who has
been leading the investigation
into last week's gas attack
on the Tokyo underground
has been shot
and seriously wounded.
Takaji Kunimatsu was shot
four times from close range
outside his home by a masked
g*nman who fled on a bicycle.
ANDREW: Then a couple
of weeks after that,
there was an attempt to release
hydrogen cyanide at Shinjuku,
which is a very big station
in central Tokyo.
And then you add
to that following month
there was
the bombing in Tokyo.
FEMALE ANCHOR:
ANDREW: All of these events,
when you wound them into one,
just created
this incredible sense
of apprehension and fear,
of sarinoia,
as somebody called it,
that just went on for weeks.
[crowd clamoring]
Asahara was still at large
and a real focus of interest
became the Tokyo
headquarters of the cult.
And the cult members
would come back and forth
because they were
still at large. They weren't--
weren't being arrested
in those very early days.
So one day Murai comes
through the crowd and then...
[speaking Japanese]
ANDREW: ...a man steps
out of the crowd,
and this is in front of all
the cameras,
and stabs him fatally.
He dies later.
[crowd clamoring]
ANDREW: Hideo Murai was
the chief scientist of the cult.
He was very much
Asahara's right hand man
when it came to the science
and the architect
of the biochemical
weapons program.
An attack which was done
by a Yakuza gangster.
The attacker said
that he'd been ordered
by the head of a crime
syndicate to do it.
But the mystery still does
remain, who ordered that hit?
And of course, Asahara
was still at large then,
a number of
the other senior cultists
who had m*rder to their name
were still out there
and people would do anything
really to shut up Murai,
I suppose.
Aum had contacts in lots of
different organizations.
Uh, they had contacts
in the media,
they had contacts
in the military,
they also had contacts
in the police.
And I think this is
one reason why the police
did such a poor job
of going after the cult,
is that the cult had
advance knowledge sometimes
of what the police
were going to do
and could adjust
their plans accordingly.
FEMALE REPORTER:
ANDREW: So Asahara
was hiding out
in one of the Mount Fuji
facilities all along
in Satyan 6.
And in preparation
for his raid,
the police put up
these floodlights.
Uh, it was very,
very dramatic.
It was covered live on TV.
They found him
kind of secreted
in this secret compartment
between two floors.
And in within there were
supposedly a cassette player,
some medicines,
a stack of cash,
and by some reports he had
a Kalashnikov in there as well.
He was asked by the police,
"Are you Asahara?"
And he replied,
"I am the guru."
So right to the end,
he's still the guru,
not just a mere mortal
with a mortal name.
And as police
led him away,
he said to one of the police,
"Don't touch me.
I don't even let any
of my followers touch me."
[speaking Japanese]
[speaking Japanese]
YUJI:
[peaceful music playing]
ANDREW: Asahara was,
after his arrest,
he went on trial
fairly quickly.
He was charged with multiple
counts of m*rder and sentenced
to death.
He really spends
the rest of his time in jail,
fighting rather
in a futile way
these court cases
against him.
He was ex*cuted in 2018,
along with
12 other members of the cult.
SHOKO:
KONO:
ANDREW: After
the subway attack,
Kono was pretty much
cleared of suspicion
because it was very clear
who was responsible.
[speaking Japanese]
[outdoor ambiance]
JOYU:
ANDREW: They still seem to be
very present for me, I think.
It's not sort of consigned
to history as far as I feel.
And I imagine
a lot of people in Japan,
it's a pivotal event
for them as well.
I mean, it suddenly felt like
a turning point in the '90s
that you had this--
this country that had been
so exceptional in coming back
from the w*r years
and had this
very sort of hedonistic decade
where everything seemed
to be going right for them.
And then suddenly
the lost decade,
the 1990s began
and smack in the middle of it,
you get this dreadful
event happening
and this dreadful event that was
done by Japanese to Japanese.
I think that's the thing
that's really, really hard to--
to get a grip on
for many people there.
I don't think that you'd have
another religious sect
in a developed country
that would develop
that many weapons and be able
to get away with it.
But in terms of cults, I mean,
cults haven't gone
out fashion at all.
There's still
people that join them.
When you look at how polarized
politics is in the US
and in the UK, there's certainly
a cult-like element
of that where
you have both sides,
they have their own
sort of alternate reality,
if you like,
where they have their own facts
and they're really,
you know,
immune to outside influence
or what the other side
would call facts.
So it is a worrying time,
and you can see elements
of Aum in our modern lives.
The interesting thing
about Aum was that
we just didn't see it coming.
It makes me wonder now
what our blind spots are.
[droning music playing]
[music slowly fades]
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AUM: The Cult at the End of the World (2023)
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