Sun Myung Moon claimed to be the Messiah who would bring about the kingdom of heaven. See God visited him and told him it was his turn to pick up where Jesus left off. And apparently that was convincing lonely college kids to peddle candy and flowers at street corners and airports. In this multi-episode show, cohosts Beth and Kelly talk about the Unification Church, the True Parents, and ways they could possibly convince loyal dashounds to peddle Strange Country merch to the masses.

Theme music: Big White Lie by A Cast of Thousands

Cite your sources:

Benscoter, Diane. Shoes of a Servant: My Unconditional Devotion to a Lie. Lucky Bat Books, 2013.

Blake, Mariah. “The Fall of the House of Moon” The New Republic, 30 Nov. 2021, https://newrepublic.com/article/115512/unification-church-profile-fall-house-moon.

Blake, Mariah. “EXCLUSIVE: Meet the Love Child Rev. Sun Myung Moon Desperately Tried to Hide.” Mother Jones, 9 Dec. 2013, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/12/reverend-moon-unification-church-washington-times-secret-son/.

Fessenden, Marissa. “A Brief History of Sesame Street's Snuffleupagus Identity Crisis.” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 20 Nov. 2015, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/brief-history-sesame-streets-snuffleupagus-iidentity-crisis-180957351/.

“Frontline: The Resurrection of Reverend Moon.” 1992, PBS. https://vimeo.com/520151453.

Gorenfeld, John. Bad Moon Rising: How Reverend Moon Created The Washington Times, Seduced the Religious Right, and Built and American Kingdom. PoliPointPress, 2008.

Hong, Nansook. In the Shadow of the Moons: My Life in the Reverend Sun Myung Moons Family. Little, Brown, 1998.

Kaplan, Anna. "The Moon's the limit." The Humanist, vol. 64, no. 5, Sept.-Oct. 2004, p. 14+. Gale OneFile: Popular Magazines, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A121765419/PPPM?u=nysl_sc_flls&sid=bookmark-PPPM&xid=e603ec35. Accessed 19 June 2021.

Levine, Martin, et al. “Sun Myung Moon, We Hardly Knew Ye-or Your Church's Finances!” Non Profit News | Nonprofit Quarterly, 12 Sept. 2018, https://nonprofitquarterly.org/sun-myung-moon-we-hardly-knew-yeor-your-churchs-finances/.

Shoaib, Alia. “Trump Spoke at a 9/11 'Moonies' Conference Organized by the Widow of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, Praising the Controversial Unification Church.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 12 Sept. 2021, https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-speaks-at-moonies-911-event-praises-unification-church-2021-9.