The third series of Spotify‘s The Louis Theroux Podcast has launched with Louis being interviewed by Adam Buxton in front of a live audience. The conversation covered incredible territory with Louis speaking about The ‘Heavens Gate UFO cult who died in a mass suicide just days after his team reached out for an interview and his protectiveness of vulnerable guests.

Louis said:

“The aim is not to make people look like dicks, we take it seriously, often times we will trim things, if it feels like it’s unnecessarily intrusive. There’s been times that I’ve felt the need just to protect someone from themselves. Some people who feel a little bit vulnerable, someone who is giving away more than I feel they should, then I would take it out.”

He went on to talk about how his team contacted members of the Heavens Gate cult for the first series of his Weird Weekends television documentary series:

“When I was making my first series of weird weekends, we were trying to make contact with UFO believers, I had given my team instructions to find a cult, f you have joined a cult that feels like next level commitment, one of my guys was like ‘I found a pretty good quote’ and thought okay great.

Then he got ill and he came back in 3 or 4 days later, and meanwhile in the news it was reported that a UFO cult had killed themselves, they committed mass suicide, they were called Heavens Gate and I thought that’s weird. My producer came back and said ‘those were the guys I was in touch with’. And not only that, but there was also an envelope on his desk and it contained instruction on the fact that they were about to kill themselves and by the time we received it, they wouldn’t have already ‘exited their vehicles’ and they wanted us to be the first on the scene to report this exciting event after they died.”

Louis also talked with Adam about what he brings that is different to the podcats table:

“One thing I can bring that maybe gives me a little bit of distinction some sort of difference in the crowded market place that is the podcast interview, is some sense of being pushed out of my comfort zone a bit, and rolling with aspects of life or culture, that might not seem like the most perfect fit for me. I’ve tried to embrace influencers and artists, like grime and drill artists. It can be a little bit of podcasters interviewing each other, it can get a little bit of a revolving door of comedians who ‘you come on my podcast and I’ll go on your podcast’

I try to get out of that a bit. I do try to explore worlds and interview people that’s not like me.”

Series 3 of the The Louis Theroux Podcast,featuring special guests from around the world, is available on Spotify now.