Monkey on a Stick: Corruption within the Hare Krishna Movement with Jason Lapeyre

A Little Bit Culty

Sarah Edmondson & Anthony “Nippy” Ames

True Crime, Society & Culture, Education

4.6 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 20 January 2025

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com/CULTY to get started today.

Remember the Hare Krishnas? The ones with the shaved heads and orange robes who used to chant and panhandle at airports? What started as a movement promoting inner peace and material detachment descended into chaos, corruption, and crime.

In this week’s episode, Sarah and Nippy sit down with filmmaker Jason Lapeyre, director of the new documentary Monkey on a Stick: Murder, Madness, and the Hare Krishnas. Together, they explore the movement’s descent into a shocking underworld of abuse, drug smuggling, and even murder during the 1970s and 80s.

Jason shares the heartbreaking realities of Hare Krishna boarding schools, the dangerous power dynamics within the group, and how charismatic leaders exploited followers while living in opulence. This conversation is a deep dive into the human cost of unchecked authority, religious corruption, and legal loopholes that allowed perpetrators like Keith Ham to evade justice.

Be sure to check out Monkey on a Stick: Murder, Madness, and the Hare Krishnas streaming on AMC+ and Sundance NOW in the US, or Apple TV+ and Youtube Premium in Canada.

Trigger Warning: This episode discusses child abuse, sexual assault, and violence.

And don’t miss next week’s episode featuring Nori Muster, whose personal experience with the Hare Krishna movement was also spotlighted in Monkey on a Stick.

Also… let it be known that:

The views and opinions expressed on A Little Bit Culty do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast. Any content provided by our guests, bloggers, sponsors or authors are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any religion, group, club, organization, business individual, anyone or anything. Nobody’s mad at you, just don’t be a culty fuckwad.

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CREDITS:

Executive Producers: Sarah Edmondson & Anthony Ames

Production Partner: Amphibian.Media

Writer & Co-Creator: Jess Tardy

Associate producers: Amanda Zaremba and Matt Stroud of Amphibian.Media

Audio production: Red Caiman Studios

Theme Song: “Cultivated” by Jon Bryant co-written with Nygel Asselin

Transcript

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0:29.7	This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal, medical,
0:34.0	medical, or mental health advice. The views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast and are not intended to malign any
0:41.5	religion group, club, organization, business, individual, anyone, or anything.
0:55.8	I'm Sarah Edmondson.
0:57.6	And I'm Anthony Nippy Ames.
1:00.3	And this is A Little Bit Calti.
1:01.9	Cults are commonplace now.
1:04.3	From fandums to fads, we're examining them all.
1:08.6	We look at what happens when things that seem like a great thing at first go bad.
1:12.0	Every week we chat with survivors, experts, and whistleblowers for real culty stories told directly by the people who lived through them, because we want
1:16.7	you to learn a few things that we've had to learn the hard way. For example, if you think
1:21.1	you're too smart to get sucked into something culty, you might be prime recruitment material,
1:25.5	and who knows, you could already be in a cult.
1:28.2	If you're not aware of your programming, you're probably being programmed.
1:31.4	So keep listening to find out.
1:33.2	We'll talk about all sorts of topics on the show, but be aware.
1:36.7	This podcast might contain stories that could be alarming to some of our listeners.
	...

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