Ben Kissel

speaker

7,902 appearances 30 recordings 1 series first heard Nov 2024 last heard 21 Jun

Ben Kissel’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 18 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 4.

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Last Podcast On The Left · Episode 669: Anton LaVey Part IV - Old Wizards Die Hard · 19 Jun 2026 podcast

No, man.

Well, we're not going to get into the nerdy just yet.

We're still in the cool.

We're still in the story of Sammy Davis Jr.

When we last left the story of Anton LaVey and the Church of Satan, we were right in the middle of telling the tale of how one of their most unlikely adherents, entertainer Sammy Davis Jr., became friends with Anton and the rest of the Church of Satan crew.

Now, when Sammy Davis Jr.

's TV movie Poor Devil aired on NBC with obvious references to real Satanism, like Sammy's oft-repeated flashing of the devil horns.

The program caught the attention of the upper echelons of the Church of Satan.

Diane Higarty, co-founder of the Church of Satan, some might say the entire brains behind the entirety of the Church of Satan, she said that she was flabbergasted.

Henry, I like how you grabbed your book and then decided to put it back down.

Well, Diane Higarty said that she was flabbergasted when she saw a lovable, funny, harmless demon being depicted on TV by no less than Sammy Davis Jr., who, in 1974, was one of our more harmless celebrities.

She was also excited because if people began seeing Satanists as something closer to Sammy Davis Jr.

and further away from, say, Charles Manson, then the church could really get cooking on membership.

Michael Aquino, who was still Anton LaVey's right-hand man in 1973, he surprisingly agreed.

In his letter to Diane Higarty, in which he called Poor Devil a magnificent commercial for the church, he added that the show's message was not far afield from what Satanists believed.

And in this article,

I actually agree with Michael Aquino.

I noticed it as I was watching Poor Devil.

In Poor Devil, the accountant played by Jack Klugman wants revenge on his boss, played by Batman's Adam West, in his usual style of acting in which he sounds like he's constantly on the verge of a painful orgasm he doesn't actually want.

But Adam West's character is constantly taking advantage of Klugman's character and generally makes Klugman's character's life miserable, which made Adam West's character a perfect target for revenge.

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