It’s good week for journalism about cult-like groups. Once you’ve finished with Evan Ratliff’s Wired piece about the Zizians, you’ll be primed for the wild tale of Eligio Bishop—a.k.a. Natureboy, a.k.a. the leader of an itinerant band of off-the-grid disciples known as Carbon Nation. Bishop is currently serving a life sentence without parole, but that ending is anything but a spoiler; the real payoff is Peisner’s dogged reconstruction of the web Bishop spun, ensnaring young men and women who were justifiably tired of America’s structural imbalances.
Even when you can’t follow the internal logic or don’t agree with it, the sense that there is a logic can be enticing. It feels like a puzzle you might be able to solve with a little more time, a little more insight, a little more something, that an important truth is just around the next rhetorical corner. At times, Bishop talks like he’s bludgeoning you into submission, but at other times, it’s a delicate dance. He flatters (“You smart, bro.”), he threatens to hang up (“Why would I talk to you if you don’t feel I’m innocent?”), then insists I’m fated to help exonerate him (“Dave, that’s why we’re on the phone! You’re gonna help me. I already seen it!”).
More picks from Rolling Stone
The Artwork that Spawned 9/11 Conspiracy Theories and Mystery
“Twenty-five years ago, art collective Gelitin illicitly built a balcony, installed it on the 91st floor of the World Trade Center, and stood above New York City. A year later, the planes struck and conspiracy followed.”
White, Legally Armed, and Primed for Political Violence
“Ian Rogers was convinced it was up to him to save America. The gun industry’s sales tactics — playing up paranoia and glorifying combat — may be creating a pipeline of extremists willing to open fire.”
Inside the Grassroots Fight Against Trump’s Deportation Machine
“Armed with phone cameras and training, these groups stand between immigrants and ICE.”
My Best Friend’s Murder Was a Tabloid Circus. Now, I’m Looking for the Truth.
“When Nicole DuFresne was killed in New York in 2005, the media twisted the narrative by latching onto a phrase that fell out of her mouth: ‘What are you going to do, shoot us?’”
The Death of a CrossFit Athlete
“One of the fittest men on Earth drowned during a race in Fort Worth. How did it happen?”
‘It’s Like a War Zone’: What Happened When Portland Decriminalized Fentanyl
“Drug overdoses killed some 87,000 Americans over a 12-month period ending in September 2024 — more lives lost than the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq combined.”
