Cults Unpacked - The Peoples Temple

The Peoples Temple, run by Jim Jones and eventually headquartered in the northern chunk of Guyana in South America, is broadly considered the Big Daddy of cults. The cult to which all others are compared. The origin of the phrase “drink the Kool-Aid” and less popularly “we don’t want another Jonestown on our hands”.

Responsible for the death of more than 900 people on a single day, The Peoples Temple is almost a template for what we understand a textbook cult to be.