Sofa King Podcast

On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we look at Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese “Death Cult” lead by the mysterious (and crazy) Shoko Asahara. Aum made international headlines in 1995 when they attacked the Tokyo subway system with Sarin gas killing 13 people and wounding thousands, but this bizarre cult did (and planned) a lot more than that. Their leader, Asahara, was born mostly blind to a poor family with seven kids. Once he graduated high school, he was unable to get admitted to a college and started to study Chinese herbalism and medicine as well as acupuncture, yoga, meditation, and various religions. He started his group innocently enough as a studio for yoga, but as he recruited some of the best minds from top Japanese universities, things took a dark turn. His religious teachings started to focus on the Bible’s Revelations and even the predictions of the end of the world by Nostradamus. He became obsessed with the US and thought they would start WWIII and nuke the world. Well, we still might to b