Podcast Review: Who Blew Up the Guidestones?

Spoilers!

It’s been a while since I’ve been enthralled by a podcast not related to comedy, professional wrestling, or politics, which is to say, those three categories are always in my rotation. And by not being enthralled, I’m specifically referring to some sort of true crime story. Throughout the years, a great many of those stories have grabbed me. I’m thinking about podcasts like Bone Valley, Serial, Your Own Backyard, Dr. Death, The Retrievals, S-Town, Dirty John, In the Dark (the Curtis Flowers season), Back to Bardstown, The Piketon Massacre, Accused (first season), and Collateral Damage. I’m sure I’m forgetting other exemplary ones. The point being, though, I haven’t stumbled into one of those in a while, and to throat-clear at the top, I still don’t think the one I’m about to talk about is in the aforementioned categories of great true crime podcasts, but it did capture my attention, nonetheless. I’m referring to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s podcast, Who Blew up the Guidestones? about a bewildering story out of the fittingly located “granite capital of the world,” Elbert County, Georgia. Hosted by Tyler McBrien, the 7-episode series tries to answer the question posed by its title. And in the finale, they arguably do.

The Guidestones were a 19-foot-tall granite monument commissioned in 1980 supposedly by someone going by the name R.C. Christian, who inscribed his own peculiar “commandments” upon them, not just in English, but a variety of languages, including Swahili, Hindi, Arabic, Chinese, and Russian. Some of the commandments are relatively benign, if a little esoteric, like, Prize truth – beauty – love – seeking harmony with the infinite. Others are rather sensible, such as, Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts. But then there are two that are unambiguously eugenics guidelines: Guide reproduction wisely – improving fitness and diversity; and Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature. For the record, there are currently about 8.3 billion people on the Earth. To maintain this “perpetual balance with nature,” R.C. Christian was suggesting, what, we exterminate 7.8 billion people? Grotesque and abhorrent. (Yes, even adjusting the population figures for 1980, it’s still grotesque.)

Which makes it all the more peculiar to me that the Guidestones were treated so reverently upon their completion and christening, as it were! When they were unveiled in 1980, the local Congressman, Doug Barnard, was there! As were other “dignitaries” and an audience of a couple hundred people. Why? Why were they celebrating the unveiling of a monument to eugenics and population control? To sterilization of undesirables?

I genuinely don’t understand the timeline, and McBrien didn’t explain it, either:

• Some person, R.C. Christian, wanted to commission these six 19-foot granite slabs weighing 237,746 pounds — no small project by any means and not a project the company would have been commissioned to complete on a regular basis — and he wanted to remain anonymous while doing so. Okay.
• ??? [This is where I lose the timeline already, but according to additional research I’ve done (Wikipedia lol), apparently R.C. Christian purchased the 5-acre site upon which the Gladstones sat, about seven miles north of Elberton.]
• Upon their completion, they’re being dedicated by local dignitaries, as mentioned.
• ??? [I could’ve missed this in the podcast, but again, I only know this from further research. After their completion, I guess R.C. Christian transferred ownership of the land and the Guidestones to Elbert County. Why did they take it?!]
• Elbert County begins maintaining the Guidestones, protecting the location with security cameras and barbwire fence, and otherwise fixing the Guidestones when any vandalism occurred (as the Guidestones attracted controversy and vandalism repeatedly). Why?! It’s all so bizarre.

It’s absolutely a legitimate question to ask of the Elbert County Board of Commissioners (the slogan for the county, by the way, is “Rock Solid”) from 1980 why they agreed to take on these monuments. Even more bizarre to me, McBrien goes into a soliloquy at one point about the importance of maintaining monuments, not because we agree with what they say (he draws a parallel to the debate about Confederate monuments), but because of the spirit of historical preservation. But they were created in 1980! And it was some random guy! With some odious crap on the monuments! I don’t think the Guidestones have anything to do with maintaining the integrity of historical preservation. But I digress.

On July 6, 2022, someone, a tandem, a trio, or a group of people (it seems to me you’d at least need one person to do the blowing up and one person to be the get-away driver) blew up the Guidestones, badly damaging them. Somehow, they ended up at some dude’s nearby quarry junkyard, with all manner of granite, stone, and rock. McBrien and his team even visit and stand upon some of the surviving Guidestones. This dude who has the Guidestones starts going off on the Lizard People conspiracy theory, wherein it’s believed that shape-shifting reptiles, who live under the Earth, control the world’s elites, and in this case, they were using the Guidestones as a portal to the surface. McBrien thinks the guy is just joking with him. But why?! People do genuinely believe this nonsense.

Interestingly, this conspiracy theory-thinking isn’t even that far afield of the main thrust of the podcast’s contention! Which is that the Guidestones are but a microcosm of the American right’s descent into conspiracy thinking, particularly over the past 10 years with the rise of Donald Trump and his approval and embrace of a multitude of conspiracy theories, including QAnon. The centerpiece within this microcosm is Kandiss Taylor, who was a candidate for Governor of Georgia in 2022. She embraced QAnon, and her controversial campaign slogan was, “Jesus, Guns, and Babies.” I love in that formulation, babies comes after guns. She’s running for Congress in 2026, for the record. Anyhow, one of her campaign planks — yes, it seemed that important to her — was to destroy the Guidestones through an executive order. I suppose in this case, the far-right is okay with tearing down monuments. In any case, on May 1, 2022, she dropped a campaign video about this. Two months later, they’re blown up. Did she have something to do with it? Or did she at least inspire the person or persons who did it? She was SWAT’ed shortly after the Guidestones were blown up. Suffice it to say, she did not win the race for the Governor of Georgia, but of course, like her idol, Trump, she doubts the veracity of the results, despite coming in a very distant third (3.4% of the vote, or 41,232 votes to Brian Kemp’s 73.7%, or 888,078 votes).

In the final episode, as alluded to, it seems like McBrien has zeroed in on the two people who seem likely to have blown up the Guidestones, Eric and Kenneth (he didn’t use their full names since they haven’t been formally charged with a crime). If I recall correctly from the podcast, Kenneth was a big fan of Taylor as a candidate (although he tried to downplay this when talking to McBrien), and Eric had a past with bomb-making. I know it’s in the title of the podcast, and McBrien was explicit about how they were setting out to solve that very question, but I’m somewhat uncomfortable with accusing someone of a crime or heavily insinuating that they committed a crime. What does seem abundantly clear, though, is that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which was handling the case, was rather inept in their investigative efforts. That said, it was likely seen as a rather low priority.

Overall, I had a good time listening to the podcast primarily because it’s such a bizarre story that I still can’t wrap my head around, and because I do think McBrien’s thesis about this being a microcosm story of conspiracy thinking as a pipeline to destruction and violence in the Trump Era is an apt one.