Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets
Thu, 15 May 2025
Nature Boy is now in Central America, where he weaponizes the power of Instagram's algorithm to trick rubes into flying out to join him and handing over all their money.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: Who is Nature Boy and what is the conscious community?
I don't feel emotions correctly. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take phone calls from anonymous strangers as a fake gecko therapist and try to learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's very interesting.
Check it out for yourself by searching for Therapy Gecko on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
I remember some things about shooting the pilot. Right. I have some memories I can fill you in. That you're going to fill me in.
Yes, but then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up. I completely forgot about it. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I think it's a sign of great mental health to acknowledge the dark wolf inside you.
It's Mental Health Awareness Month. And on a recent episode of The One You Feed, Josh Radner from How I Met Your Mother joins us to talk about fame, self-acceptance, aging, and finding peace in discomfort.
That is the mercy of time. That time, it is a healer.
To hear this and more on healing, identity, and the wisdom of slowing down, open your free iHeart Radio app, search one you feed, and listen now.
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Chapter 2: What is the Black Consciousness Movement and its significance?
Biko was the first president of the South African Students Organization when it launched in 1969, and inspired by black thinkers like Frantz Fanon, he began publishing articles that posited an ideology he called black consciousness. He described his goal as to, quote, "...demonstrate the lie that black is an aberration from the normal, which is white."
Biko urged the black community to celebrate and take pride in their history and traditional cultural and religious practices as the indigenous people of South Africa, pushing people to decolonize both the state and their own minds. He was a cool guy, which is why the police murdered him. Very good article. Well, we're talking about a black radical leader in 1969 South Africa.
The odds are good he wound up getting murdered by the cops. Right. Like it's a bummer. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to quote from a very good article on Bicco in the Retrospect Journal. Quote, the apartheid government regarded black consciousness as a growing threat and placed a banning order on Bicco in 1973.
The repressive practice of banning originated from the 1950 Suppression of Communism Act, which regarded all political opposition as a communist threat. As a result, a banning order restricted a person's travel and social interactions, as well as preventing them from public speaking or distributing written material.
In Bicco's case, he was limited to speaking to one person at a time and forbidden from being a member of any political organizations. Several tactics were used to circumvent the strict measures of his band. Bicco struck up a close friendship with the white liberal editor of the Daily Dispatch, Donald Woods.
Over time, Woods became more educated about the plights of black South Africans, secretly writing Bicco's biography when he was himself banned. In 1977, Bicco was arrested for traveling outside of and therefore breaking his banning order. He was severely beaten whilst in police custody and died of his injuries at just 30 years old.
Again, literally banned from talking to more than one person at a time.
That is wild.
Fuck that government. So I bring this up because not because Nature Boy has any is is an inheritor of Biko's tradition, but because the black, the modern black consciousness subculture or conscious community. And I've heard both names used for the same kind of amorphous subculture is in some ways related to the black consciousness subculture. movement.
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Chapter 3: How did Nature Boy's mental health and beliefs evolve?
The first sign to outsiders is he stops bathing entirely, and he would angrily rant to anyone that you only need to bathe if you eat smelly foods, and he has at this point become a fruitarian, so he doesn't need to wash himself ever. Now, there's also some evidence that something diagnosable is happening here.
Myesha says that he starts to suffer serious memory lapses, often forgetting what day it is. He stops cutting his hair, which was for him a major red flag. Again, this guy is like a fairly skilled barber. Yeah. In one video talking about this time, he says, I had people like, dude, you good?
They would come to drop the money off from the barbershop and see him with his hair all crazy, ranting about conspiracies in Babylon. And they were just like, I don't want to hear that.
Yeah. I mean, all of this is somebody having some sort of mental breakdown. Being obsessive, locking yourself away, withdrawing, breaking down your consciousness. It's all alarming.
It's all alarming. And, you know, not bathing, not bathing. You know what I mean? Yeah. People are immediately aware. Right. Like it's not the kind of thing that's hideable. So my issue decides eventually she doesn't want to hear this either.
And she takes her kids and the child that they share, dumps his ass and moves to South Carolina and making the only good decision anyone will make over the course of these videos. Nature Boy is OK with this because it gives him more time to study what he has decided will be his next career, which is becoming a YouTube personality.
Now, right after she leaves, Young Pharaoh gets invited to speak on a podcast in New York City. And Nature Boy kind of brute forces his way into like, oh, I'll drive up there and be on it with you. Like, we'll hang out. We'll be on the show together. Right.
And as soon as I think Young Pharaoh kind of lets him because they're buds and Nature Boy at the start of this thing immediately elbows his friend out of the interview, basically.
to go on a rant and you can see the moment here again this is from the hood horrors video the original video was deleted long ago so it's really the only place i have to access this but it's kind of a noteworthy moment to look at here my brother nature is here from atlanta first i want to talk to my brother nature why are you so infatuated my brother we're going back to africa talk to the people
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Chapter 4: Who is Young Pharaoh and what is his influence on Nature Boy?
Now, his videos are not highly produced at this stage, but he's good looking and he's charismatic and he starts to draw in thousands and then tens of thousands of subscribers. He has an Instagram. He has a YouTube. I think he's initially more of a Facebook and Instagram person, but his YouTube starts to build.
And they get like 100,000 or so followers, right, each, which is not – he's not a massive star, but people are listening, right? And when you've got – 100,000 or so people who are semi-regularly watching your stuff, you can get some of them to send you money, and you can get some of them who start to develop a really strong parasocial relationship with you, which is what starts to happen here.
And he begins vowing that he is going to leave the United States, Babylon, to South America, where he is going to start a conscious community. And he starts talking to his followers like, you should follow me. We're going to we're going to completely change the world. This is going to be the spark of the revolution.
You know, I am I am going to end Babylon by beginning this movement, by getting everyone to start conscious communities in South America where, again, people already live. I know people already live there.
It's one of those things where I'm always like, okay, but if it was as simple as just we all need to go live on the land in fucking Peru or whatever, why didn't all of the people living on the land in Peru stop anything? Ding, ding, ding. Why didn't that make all of our problems? Because maybe they're more complicated than just living in Peru. I don't know, man. Yeah.
Maybe you haven't thought this one through.
Maybe people living in Peru have a lot of issues. All of our problems are more complicated than that. This is not about really solving problems. Again, it's going to be about being able to take videos of yourself in a very pretty place. And speaking of being able to take videos of yourself in a very pretty place, I don't know how that relates to our advertisers. Here you go. Here's ads. Oh.
I'm Soledad O'Brien, and on my podcast, Murder on the Towpath, I'm taking you back to the 1960s. Mary Pinchot Meyer was a painter who lived in Georgetown in Washington, D.C. Every day, she took a daily walk along the towpath near the E&O Canal.
So when she was killed in a wealthy neighborhood... She had been shot twice in the head and in the back, behind the heart.
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Chapter 5: How did Nature Boy start building his following on social media?
Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show.
I live with my boyfriend, and I found his piss jar in our apartment.
I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents.
Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it.
Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? What we have all been waiting for. Sarah Jessica Parker is here and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
I remember some things about shooting the pilot. Right. I have some memories I can fill you in. And that you're going to fill me in.
Yes. But then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up. I completely forgot about it. And she reveals what she thought when she read the script for Sex and the City the very first time.
He said he wrote this like I was in his head in some way, which I found really interesting.
And does she think Carrie is too good for Mr. Big?
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Chapter 6: What happened when Nature Boy moved to Central America to start a community?
We're polygamists now. Yeah. So very quickly, this turns from some slightly to moderately deluded hippie kids camping in a yard to nature boy telling multiple women that they are now his wives. And he also doesn't use the term wife. He calls them directs. They're his directs. So we've got a cult terminology starting to form. Okay.
In a video at the time, he explains, with polygamy, it's just, for me, being with four female students that I'm dealing with very intimately. It's nothing more and nothing less than that. Sex for me is me plugging into a woman.
and sending my knowledge like a USB to a computer and when I have sex I am putting fluid in you inside the fluid is DNA on that DNA is all the knowledge that I know and now you're getting a direct transfer from my file into your ribosome into your DNA and if you do that enough you can take me on long enough to the point where I'm inside of you Robert, I cannot believe you just read that.
I know, I know. That's one of my favorite pieces of cult leader nonsense I've come across on this show. That is. My dick is a USB.
Unbelievable. But also, thank you for reading that.
Beautiful stuff. Beautiful stuff. Yes.
Are they all shitting in that yard?
They are all shitting. Katie, everyone is shitting in every yard in this story. You have to add that they are all pooping in the yards. It's not that big a yard. It's not that presumably burying it, but... Again, they're all shitting in these yards.
Now, while he claims to be a guru, bringing people back in touch with the natural world, he very quickly spends the entire 20 grand, not just on this rental, but primarily, according to other people there, mostly on dirt bikes and iPads, which he's like, but I gave them away to other people in the group.
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Chapter 7: How did the Ethereans/Melanation cult develop and gain media attention?
So I'm going to play a clip from it, which shows Nature Boy giving his spiel to a group of followers.
Well, we really don't like using toilets like...
What is the thing you hate so much about the toilet?
The soil belongs to the trees, and I'm in an abusive relationship with the tree if I'm not giving it back.
Their community is cold, Melanie. Okay, so that's at least how followers are kind of describing their teachings at this point to a guy from the BBC. Now, this BBC guy does a short documentary just on the cult and a slightly longer one reporting on several different kind of utopian living projects in Costa Rica.
He spends a lot of his time online flirting with that Canadian lady in a way that makes me slightly uncomfortable. Or at least that's my interpretation. Watch it. You may feel differently. At one point, he asks her if Melanation is a cult, and she gives him an answer that was clearly scripted and drilled into her head by Nature Boy.
Canada is a cult. The US is a cult. Everyone is a part of a cult. Culture is a group of people who have similar beliefs.
Now, I say that he clearly said that because a bunch of his videos, he uses the exact line that like, well, the United States is a cult. And, you know, there's a lot to be said about cultic aspects of nationalism. But as a general rule, when you are saying that, you're saying that to be like, so it's fine for me to have a cult, too, as opposed to we shouldn't have cults.
You're being slippery here.
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Chapter 8: What are the core beliefs and practices of Nature Boy's cult?
Listen to Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O'Brien on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This week on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler. Ed Helms is here. I, of course, was drawn to the LSD story. In the 1950s, a CIA scientist secretly bought the entire world supply of LSD, embarking on a horrific attempt to discover the secrets to mind control.
This is so insane. This was all under like official government activity. They built a apartment in San Francisco that had a glass mirror where he could sit there and watch. And then they would drug these customers. And he was just sort of taking notes and God knows what else behind this double mirror. And this was all in the name of science.
This just sounds like a guy f***ing off behind a wall. It does. I would just also like to say if you don't have to take LSD like this, LSD can be microdosed. It's like an upper of energy, enthusiasm, makes you less nervous if I'm going heli-skiing.
If it allows me to go hella-skiing, then yeah, I'm hella on board.
Listen to Dear Chelsea on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating.
I don't feel emotions correctly.
I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not.
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