10-minute radio interview with Kauffman that aired today on public radio:
On Jim Baker, later known as Father Yod, who founded a natural foods restaurant in Los Angeles and led The Source Family
“I think members of The Source Family are comfortable with that word ‘cult.’ He had been a bodybuilder, aspiring actor who moved out to LA in the 1950s, and he and his wife opened this early natural foods restaurant that was nothing like hippie food. But he had a kind of conversion experience, partially after he kinda committed a couple murders in self-defense, and went down … he had kind of a breakdown, and rediscovered himself and food through spirituality. So he eventually became Father Yod, and was teaching a colorful spirituality. But it also was combined with a largely raw foods diet. And so he and his followers all lived together in a big mansion, they all dressed in white … long-flowing beards. He had 13 wives, and they had this incredibly successful vegetarian restaurant in LA that drew everybody from producers to rock stars to the general public. … I think they felt like the food that they were eating would uplift them spiritually as well as physically.”
