Speaker 1: Al Zone Media. Oh Man, welcome back to it could
Speaker 1: Happen here, a podcast about it meaning bad things happening here,
Speaker 1: meaning you know here obviously here at cool Zone, we
Speaker 1: have a little bit of a habit of talking about cults.
Speaker 1: Some of you who have been listening to Behind the
Speaker 1: Bastard since the beginning will remember how we kind of
Speaker 1: started that series with several long episodes about a guy
Speaker 1: named Keith Ranieri. And today we're here to talk with
Speaker 1: a wonderful author and journalist, Sarah Berman, who has written
Speaker 1: both about the Nexium cult and about a new cult
Speaker 1: that some of you are probably familiar with if you
Speaker 1: caught the recent Netflix documentary. Prime has a documentary out
Speaker 1: too on the Twin Flames cult, and so we're going
Speaker 1: to introduce why this is such an interesting cult. White's
Speaker 1: kind of groundbreaking. But first, Sarah, welcome so much to
Speaker 1: the show. Graham, Hey, Hey.
Speaker 2: So good to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Sarah, your book is called Don't Call It a Cult,
Speaker 1: wonderful book about the Nexium cult, and yeah, you were
Speaker 1: You are kind of the person who first I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if you're the very first person to ever report
Speaker 1: on Twin Flames, But you're certainly the person who broke
Speaker 1: the story in a meaningful and detailed way. How did
Speaker 1: you well, First off, we shuld probably start with how
Speaker 1: would you describe twin Flames to people? Right?
Speaker 2: So, twin Flames Universe began as sort of a YouTube
Speaker 2: channel and a Facebook group that was all about finding
Speaker 2: true love. So this group promises not only that you
Speaker 2: find your true love, but also that you will find
Speaker 2: career fulfillment and enlightenment and basically everything good will happen
Speaker 2: to you. Miracles will happen only if you spend thousands
Speaker 2: of dollars on their coursework and keep up with their
Speaker 2: sort of spiritual homework, which is a never ending treadmill,
Speaker 2: and eventually it sort of becomes, you know, an all
Speaker 2: powerful control over people's lives, where they go, who they
Speaker 2: interact with, even their life partner, even their gender identity.
Speaker 2: So yeah, lots of people calling it a matchmaking cult.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a matchmaking I mean. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I think is interesting to me about the kind
Speaker 1: of like rhetoric of the of the cult leaders, and
Speaker 1: this is one that there do seem to be kind
Speaker 1: of two people heading it up, a couple is the
Speaker 1: idea that like they have the ability to see who
Speaker 1: someone's soulmate is, and like that's a that's kind of
Speaker 1: a it both sort of. I think the appeal this
Speaker 1: has speaks to, among other things, kind of the deep
Speaker 1: loneliness that a lot of younger people feel, you know,
Speaker 1: as we're dealing with this kind of increasingly closed off,
Speaker 1: isolated nature of society, especially since COVID, as well as
Speaker 1: kind of mixing that with some of these you know,
Speaker 1: much longer standing older cult traditions in a way that
Speaker 1: felt really really interesting to me and also like something
Speaker 1: that could only exist now. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's so much to impact there. So in their
Speaker 2: early days in twenty fourteen, this couple Jeff and Shelia,
Speaker 2: I mean Shell is actually a Megan, but Shelia is
Speaker 2: the name she arrived at through some conscious journeying. Sure,
Speaker 2: they have these videos where they just met and they
Speaker 2: are in love and they are making eyes at each
Speaker 2: other and this is something to attain. It was sort
Speaker 2: of started as this you know, romantic YouTuber content, and
Speaker 2: then they start selling Yes you can have this too,
Speaker 2: all you have to do is buy our you know,
Speaker 2: coursework and whatnot. And I think it does speak to,
Speaker 2: especially during the pandemic, a sort of deep dark loneliness
Speaker 2: in isolation that's happening where people are enticed by this
Speaker 2: couple who they're just regular, you know, Michigan white people.
Speaker 2: They're making eyes at each other. Doesn't look like anything
Speaker 2: special to an outsider, but clearly, you know, thousands of
Speaker 2: people have sort of lashed onto it. Have you know,
Speaker 2: hoped that this secret knowledge that this group is giving them,
Speaker 2: you know, will bring them happiness. And because it's sort
Speaker 2: of an all encompassing ideology where if you even question
Speaker 2: the group, well then you are definitely never going to
Speaker 2: see your life partner and will probably see hell at
Speaker 2: some point in your life, you know, it just creates
Speaker 2: this perverse incentive to just keep pouring time and effort
Speaker 2: into this group in a way that yeah, I don't
Speaker 2: think could exist in any other timeframe, especially not through Zoom. Right,
Speaker 2: so most of these classes that they sell are happening
Speaker 2: on Zoom, just like you and I are on today,
Speaker 2: so that you know, next could never achieve. Right, this
Speaker 2: group has achieved a level of you know, connection and
Speaker 2: I don't know, just getting into people's brain stems through
Speaker 2: a laptop screen, which is incredible for our time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very I mean again, this is part of
Speaker 1: what's so modern about it is that it appears to
Speaker 1: work entirely like cults and particularly cult leaders are tend
Speaker 1: to be such social phenomena. This is nearly always a
Speaker 1: thing that involves person to person contact, and in fact,
Speaker 1: one of the things any cult expert will tell you
Speaker 1: is a hallmark of a cult is it's the focus
Speaker 1: it puts on isolating members and perspective members away from
Speaker 1: their friends and their family and keeping them under the
Speaker 1: power of the cult leader at all times. And this
Speaker 1: is very people are not all together, they're not all
Speaker 1: living in one area, they're geographically isolated. The dynamics that
Speaker 1: this reproduces itself with our parasocial dynamics, the same dynamics
Speaker 1: podcast listeners have with like like like you know, it's
Speaker 1: a more extreme version of that. But it's part of
Speaker 1: this thing we see with twitch streamers, we see it
Speaker 1: with like YouTubers, this kind of and it solves one
Speaker 1: of the mysteries because I've watched this dock with a
Speaker 1: couple of friends who kept being like, well, these people
Speaker 1: don't seem charismatic. They don't seem this doesn't seem like,
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like they could be attaining this degree
Speaker 1: of control over people. And I think part of what
Speaker 1: explains that is just like, well, someone may not seem
Speaker 1: charismatic when you're watching little clips of them in a documentary,
Speaker 1: but when they're in your ears and you know, on
Speaker 1: calls with you and stuff all day every day, your
Speaker 1: body builds up like they get through your defenses that way.
Speaker 1: Like that's how parasocial relationships kind of work.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Yeah, you just have the binging quality of how
Speaker 2: people consume media these days. And it's the same for
Speaker 2: you know, YouTube rabbit holes that radicalize sort of right
Speaker 2: wing white men. So it's the same process. These folks
Speaker 2: who I was speaking to, they were consuming up to
Speaker 2: ten even fifteen hours of this content per day and
Speaker 2: they were feeling like they had to keep up with
Speaker 2: that just to maintain their coaching title or what have you. So, yes,
Speaker 2: they have Jeff inside their head at all times. They
Speaker 2: start speaking like him. You know, you can kind of
Speaker 2: tell when an still involved member emails you that it
Speaker 2: sounds just like the leaders. It is a yeah, fully saturating,
Speaker 2: indoctrinating process. And I guess. Yeah, you don't have to
Speaker 2: be particularly charismatic in person to achieve that kind of
Speaker 2: saturation when you have the YouTube algorithm. You know. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: my YouTube algorithm is also ruined, so oh, my mess
Speaker 2: up on YouTube is looking pretty It's yikes these days.
Speaker 1: No, I actually discuss a really effective method of for
Speaker 1: my own research in various cults, which is I just
Speaker 1: used my roommate's YouTube premium account, so I have ruined
Speaker 1: his life, but it's not a problem for me. So
Speaker 1: it's worked out really well, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: I mean, I might try that solution, but I live
Speaker 2: with my partners, so you might not appreciate. We'll see
Speaker 2: how it goes, though.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of curious how did you get on this story,
Speaker 1: Like was what was your backstory there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I was in the depths still of reporting
Speaker 2: on Nexium. I don't believe the sentencing for Keith Rnieri
Speaker 2: had happened yet at that point, so this was late
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen early twenty twenty. One of the mothers was
Speaker 2: the first to reach out to me, and she had
Speaker 2: two daughters who are featured in the Netflix series in
Speaker 2: the Group, and she had told me that she was
Speaker 2: cut off from all contact. That the only contact she
Speaker 2: did have with one of her daughters was when she
Speaker 2: sent thousands of dollars. And so that to me right away,
Speaker 2: like you said, you know, isolating people from their family
Speaker 2: members who might you know, raise questions or you know,
Speaker 2: want to know more about what's happening, asking for money
Speaker 2: so blatantly, you know, and denying contact based on an
Speaker 2: amount of money sent. That all sounded pretty bad to me,
Speaker 2: and so I started looking into it. That mom pointed
Speaker 2: me towards Elle, who is also featured in the Netflix series.
Speaker 2: She's also Katie in the Vanity Fair piece that later
Speaker 2: came out after our reporting, and it just sort of
Speaker 2: snowballed from there. I'll put me in touch with I
Speaker 2: would say, half a dozen ex members at that point,
Speaker 2: some different mothers started contacting me because they all were
Speaker 2: sort of in a group chat trying to figure out
Speaker 2: how they could rea established content contact with their mostly daughters.
Speaker 2: That was my origin story. We put out a piece
Speaker 2: fairly quickly. I tried to get it out within a
Speaker 2: month or two of that first contact.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that makes a lot of sense, and I
Speaker 1: want to continue talking about this. We'll get into a
Speaker 1: lot more, but first it's time for an ad break.
Speaker 1: So here we go, ah, and we're back. Miyah. Did
Speaker 1: you have anything you wanted to move into next? Yeah.
Speaker 3: So there are some parts of this that are very
Speaker 3: familiar in the sense of the combination of Christianity and
Speaker 3: weird New Age spiritualism stuff. I think it is a
Speaker 3: pretty old combination. I mean, the Moody is very famously
Speaker 3: sort of pioneered this thing, and you know, you can
Speaker 3: go back eight hundreds and find versions of it. The
Speaker 3: thing that I think is interesting about it is the
Speaker 3: way that they've effectively been doing conversion therapy on people.
Speaker 3: And I don't know, this is something I haven't really
Speaker 3: seen before from a cult, and I guess, I guess
Speaker 3: I think the way into this is talking about the
Speaker 3: sort of divine masculine, divine feminine stuff.
Speaker 1: For sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree that this seemed new and you know,
Speaker 2: sort of bizarre to me. And certainly I've already seen
Speaker 2: on Twitter some right wing takes on it that give
Speaker 2: me a lot of uncomfortable feelings because they're obviously taking
Speaker 2: the wrong opposite lesson. You know, when I guess when
Speaker 2: I watched this, I see see you can't tell someone
Speaker 2: what their gender is. You know, it doesn't work, It
Speaker 2: falls apart, it doesn't make sense. But I think, yeah,
Speaker 2: something that's been taken away in some smaller circles is that,
Speaker 2: oh see, you can coach someone to change their gender,
Speaker 2: and that's you know, blame teachers, blame whoever for doing that.
Speaker 2: So this particular group does have a divine masculine and
Speaker 2: divine feminine teaching that used to be a little more flimsy.
Speaker 2: So in the early days they just said, if you're
Speaker 2: in a queer couple, it just means one of you
Speaker 2: has the more wearing pants vibe. You know, it wasn't
Speaker 2: supposed to literally translate to a gender expression or a
Speaker 2: gender identity. But later on, when you know, you had
Speaker 2: this growing amount of you know, siss women who are
Speaker 2: I mean, they're interested in finding their man, and that's
Speaker 2: not happening because, you know, the group makes it very
Speaker 2: hard to actually meet outside people. If you're on this
Speaker 2: constant treadmill of doing spiritual homework, you don't have time
Speaker 2: to meet you people, and maybe when you talk about it,
Speaker 2: it's pushing people away. So eventually, in late twenty nineteen
Speaker 2: they started actually making pairings and to get around the
Speaker 2: fact that, you know, folks said, well, that's not my
Speaker 2: you know, orientation, I'm not attracted to women. They started
Speaker 2: actually telling people, well that you're the divine masculine and actually,
Speaker 2: you know, you, going back your whole life, probably knew
Speaker 2: this all along, and we're just revealing something to you.
Speaker 2: And that sat the wrong way in a lot of cases,
Speaker 2: and a lot of people left around that time, but
Speaker 2: they successfully paired up I think more than a dozen
Speaker 2: people around that time, and they continued to do pairings
Speaker 2: into twenty twenty, and some folks did come along on
Speaker 2: the journey. They did in some cases pursue top surgery
Speaker 2: and hormones and have changed their names, changed their pronouns.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, it's not. Obviously, there are moms who are
Speaker 2: just barely coming to terms with this, and you know,
Speaker 2: they're not always using the right language, and they're a
Speaker 2: little confused, you know, and that confusion was often used
Speaker 2: as a reason to cut off all contact, you know,
Speaker 2: say hey, mom, you're transphobic, you know, and push them aside.
Speaker 2: And so I think it is new in some sense,
Speaker 2: but it's also very old in the sense that cults
Speaker 2: often create a brand new identity for people, right, Like
Speaker 2: new names when you join a cult is not a
Speaker 2: new thing. That that's something that a lot of you know,
Speaker 2: and changing hair, right.
Speaker 1: Shaving the heads, that's like one of the O cult exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I mean this is I guess, an updated
Speaker 2: version where I mean it's kind of smart in a
Speaker 2: way that like people might be afraid to question it, right,
Speaker 2: Like you're hiding behind something that sounds very progressive and
Speaker 2: very inclusive. And that's what a lot of cults do,
Speaker 2: is they hide in very progressive spacesh But yeah, it's
Speaker 2: a lot. It's a lot to take in, and I
Speaker 2: definitely like to bring experts up to speed on this
Speaker 2: and get their perspectives because I don't know everything, you know,
Speaker 2: I can't possibly pretend to know what's in someone's heart
Speaker 2: and mind and body, you know, at any time. So
Speaker 2: everyone is just working through it. Like one of the
Speaker 2: experts in the documentary says, you know, some of these
Speaker 2: folks could have been transmit all along, but the way
Speaker 2: that they're being told to do it is can starting
Speaker 2: to say the least.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean I think there's some interesting stuff
Speaker 3: with how they were able to do this, which is
Speaker 3: even before they started forcely transitioning people, there was this
Speaker 3: is I think the most trans people I've ever seen
Speaker 3: in a cult like this, Like the number of people
Speaker 3: who were trans going in was really high, and I
Speaker 3: suspect that was how they were able to sort of
Speaker 3: like like you know, like one of the people in
Speaker 3: the documentary was talking about how she was like a
Speaker 3: transforman she was being basically like tokenized by the group
Speaker 3: as this like hey, we're like trans inclusive thing. And
Speaker 3: I wonder how much of the way they were able
Speaker 3: to do this is from basically taking the firsthand experience
Speaker 3: of like actual trans people and then like using that
Speaker 3: to try to convince people of this really weird sort
Speaker 3: of essentialist like we've decided that you're the divide and masculine,
Speaker 3: so you have to transition to be a and now stuff.
Speaker 2: The origin story of it is you're right in reaching
Speaker 2: out to LGBTQ type communities, So folks like our Celia
Speaker 2: who you see in the documentary, and also Jesse who
Speaker 2: you see in the Netflix documentary. They were sent out
Speaker 2: recruiting in queer spaces, so any type of queer Facebook group,
Speaker 2: Twitter user, you know, YouTuber. They were in the comments
Speaker 2: there talking about their twin Flame journey and talking about
Speaker 2: how queer inclusive it was. So they were actively doing
Speaker 2: that and it's fascinating to see. You know, you can
Speaker 2: go back through Twitter history and find, you know, how
Speaker 2: they were phrasing these things. You know, like that was
Speaker 2: their job basically to do outreach for the group in
Speaker 2: queer spaces. They also did lots of PTSD spaces, former
Speaker 2: military spaces. You know, they really like tried to find
Speaker 2: any slice of a person who might need a community,
Speaker 2: who might be lonely, and sort of feed them into
Speaker 2: the group. And you're right, I think if you have
Speaker 2: a bunch of queer, open minded people in a space,
Speaker 2: there's a lot you can do with you know, suggestion,
Speaker 2: There's a lot you can do with a deck of
Speaker 2: Tarot cards. It seems a lot of these, you know,
Speaker 2: gender conversions started with a tarot reading where they would
Speaker 2: just hold up a card that represented them or their
Speaker 2: supposed partner and you know, sort of building off of that.
Speaker 2: So it is it's new and old in so many
Speaker 2: ways because yeah, you're just using the divine to basically
Speaker 2: just dictate any aspect of someone's life. You know what
Speaker 2: they eat, what they wear, where they go everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean it's also we're talking about like
Speaker 1: how how much of this kind of plays on loneliness,
Speaker 1: the fact that people are desperate for companionship, that particularly
Speaker 1: younger people are like dating less or more socially isolated,
Speaker 1: and like, if you want to push that up to
Speaker 1: the nth degree, you take a group of people who
Speaker 1: is under siege right now and so particularly having trouble
Speaker 1: like being safely out and around people right like, you
Speaker 1: give them what looks like it's a safe, welcoming community
Speaker 1: that's supportive of them, and if especially they have not
Speaker 1: had that. Yeah, it's it's I mean, it's deeply insidious
Speaker 1: and evil.
Speaker 2: I would say, it's powerful stuff. I would say when
Speaker 2: I go on the Facebook group, you know, I'm blocked now,
Speaker 2: but when I could, it would you know, show folks
Speaker 2: really deep into a fantasy, you know, like they want
Speaker 2: a perfect life for themselves where they are openly welcomed
Speaker 2: with open arms, where the people that they care about
Speaker 2: care about them back, you know, and that's often not
Speaker 2: actually the case in their home life, but it seems
Speaker 2: to be real on this Facebook page, and they think,
Speaker 2: you know, if I just put in the work, this
Speaker 2: will happen for me, that straight guy who I'm into
Speaker 2: is going to come around and see that we're twin flames.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, it definitely also feeds into a bit
Speaker 2: of fantasy and delusion. That's you know, I think maybe
Speaker 2: a symptom of us being so isolated in our you know,
Speaker 2: pandemic brain spaces.
Speaker 1: Speaking of isolated shit, Well, it's an AD, it's an
Speaker 1: AD break. I don't I don't know anything it goes
Speaker 1: with that, But here's some ads. Ah and we're back. Sorry,
Speaker 1: you've just encountered some of our classic incombatant AD transitions.
Speaker 1: But what's not incompetent is your reporting on this subject.
Speaker 1: And I'm I'm curious as you realize how potentially a
Speaker 1: lot of what's going on in this cult, with this
Speaker 1: divide masculine divide feminine stuff, could, if not handled carefully,
Speaker 1: play into some really pernicious culture war stuff that's going
Speaker 1: on in the country right now. How do you kind of,
Speaker 1: like how consciously did you sort of work to avoid that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is definitely something I'm worried about, is that
Speaker 2: this could feed into some sort of culture war talking point.
Speaker 2: And you know, you're seeing the seeds of that. If
Speaker 2: you search Twitter very deeply, you can find it. I
Speaker 2: guess X, I'm calling it Twitter. It's still Twitter to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's still Twitter.
Speaker 3: It's only acceptable dead naming.
Speaker 2: Speaking of dead naming, yes, So I definitely wanted to
Speaker 2: be as careful as possible, listen to trans people as
Speaker 2: much as possible, you know. So that's why our Celia
Speaker 2: was one of the first folks that I talked to,
Speaker 2: and you know, she had just such an interesting understanding
Speaker 2: of this because she, you know, had transitioned before she
Speaker 2: came into this group, and she was able to witness
Speaker 2: so much of the coaching that was happening. And I'm
Speaker 2: just so grateful for someone who goes through that ringer
Speaker 2: and still is able to articulate what happened afterwards, because
Speaker 2: you know, not everybody comes around to understanding it as
Speaker 2: deeply as she did. So that was my main, you
Speaker 2: know thing, was I was going to listen to trans
Speaker 2: people and then yeah, I guess just trying to sort
Speaker 2: out what was the ideology of the group, how that
Speaker 2: was being you know, I guess executed, and yeah, just
Speaker 2: trying to come from this expert perspective that Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: nobody can tell you what your gender is, and this
Speaker 2: is actually an example of that. It was hard to
Speaker 2: wrap my head around and I still worry about it.
Speaker 2: I'm still worrying about my words kind of right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was something in the documentary that like you
Speaker 3: could see the filmmakers kind of like you can you
Speaker 3: can see them kind of going back and forth between
Speaker 3: wanting to use people getting top surgery as this kind
Speaker 3: of like shock factor thing, but then also like at
Speaker 3: the same time being like wait, hold on, like this
Speaker 3: is you know, this is something that you can very
Speaker 3: very easily like be a right wing transphobe and just
Speaker 3: like take a clip of and put on the internet
Speaker 3: and be like, hey, like we need to stop gender
Speaker 3: clinics from being able to do this. And I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think I think you've handled it pretty well, but
Speaker 3: I don't know, like this is this is something that
Speaker 3: is like I think like one of the important things
Speaker 3: is like this cult is ran by SIS people, and
Speaker 3: this is you know what. I think it was a
Speaker 3: good decision for you to talk about it in terms
Speaker 3: of conversion therapy, because that's a lot closer to what's
Speaker 3: happening than people transitioning and you know, I mean like
Speaker 3: it's I don't know, like I would say. The thing
Speaker 3: that's complicated about it, right is you know you it's
Speaker 3: you can't talk. It's really really it's almost impossible to
Speaker 3: like talk to the people who are going through this
Speaker 3: and get an understanding of what their sense of their
Speaker 3: gender is. I mean, like I've I watched a couple
Speaker 3: of the videos that they made and like, I don't know,
Speaker 3: it's it's it's really difficult to like it's it's it's
Speaker 3: easy to play arm tre psychologist with it, and I
Speaker 3: don't want to do that. And so yeah, I think
Speaker 3: I think you've been walking a difficult line. And yeah,
Speaker 3: I keep.
Speaker 2: My hands off that too. You know, like I am
Speaker 2: not going to tell any one of those folks, you know,
Speaker 2: Gabe Ray what's going on in their brains and bodies.
Speaker 2: I just do happen to know about the systematic sort
Speaker 2: of coaching that they were, you know, exposed to. So,
Speaker 2: you know, for in the case of Jesse Hersey, she
Speaker 2: had months and months of coaching around letting go of
Speaker 2: her entire life, her entire identity starting over, let go
Speaker 2: of any image of what you think your twin flame
Speaker 2: could be right, And so if you're doing that, you know,
Speaker 2: and eventually folks do sort of acquiesque. I think it's
Speaker 2: similar in a gender conversion coaching situation. Some people acquiesque,
Speaker 2: you know, they get into a high pressure situation, they're
Speaker 2: being told who they are, They're being told there will
Speaker 2: be consequences if they, you know, go back to their
Speaker 2: normal queer self. So so that actually does get somebody
Speaker 2: to change, but in a beer based situation. So I
Speaker 2: can speak to the coaching, but yes, I'm never going
Speaker 2: to be a person telling anyone what their gender is
Speaker 2: because we don't know. Hopefully, you know, they can break
Speaker 2: free of what I think is you know, pretty manipulative
Speaker 2: coercive practices and then they can tell us more about
Speaker 2: who they are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean I think the other thing I'll
Speaker 3: say about that is like, well, I mean, we know,
Speaker 3: just on a societal level, that it's possible to force
Speaker 3: people to live as a gender that they're not and
Speaker 3: to identify themselves as that gender by systematic social pressure.
Speaker 3: And we know this because this is the story of
Speaker 3: like every transperson who's ever lived, right and totally you know,
Speaker 3: and like it sucks, like it really fucking sucks, like
Speaker 3: having someone force a gender on you. And I really
Speaker 3: hope that these people, like I hope these people find
Speaker 3: fin and who they are and you know, whatever form
Speaker 3: that takes, that they're not being coerced into it, because like, yeah,
Speaker 3: and this is something I think that was in I
Speaker 3: think it was in the Netflix documentary that people were
Speaker 3: talking about. This is like, you know, in terms of
Speaker 3: people who could understand what this is like, Like I
Speaker 3: think other trans people are probably some of the only
Speaker 3: people in the world who actually do, like even sort
Speaker 3: of understand what it's like to be forced to be
Speaker 3: a gender if that you're not. And so yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: hoping that this develops in a way like of solidarity
Speaker 3: and not of weaponization by right wingers.
Speaker 1: But I mean, I think you guys have done all
Speaker 1: you could reasonably do to avoid that, like the culture
Speaker 1: war is going to do what the culture war does.
Speaker 1: I wanted to get into Keith Ranieri a little bit
Speaker 1: and kind of how what went on with the Nexium cult,
Speaker 1: because he's a friend of the pod over here a
Speaker 1: lot about the details of what he got up to.
Speaker 1: He's obviously probably the biggest recent cult in the US.
Speaker 1: And like us popular culture at least, you know, there's
Speaker 1: a couple other little bit of other competition for that title,
Speaker 1: but not a ton. And yeah, I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to you a little bit about how some of how
Speaker 1: people's awareness of that, because like, obviously, given the media environment,
Speaker 1: all the people getting pulled in by the Twin Flames
Speaker 1: cult were aware to some extent of cult dynamics and
Speaker 1: probably of this story of this cult that is not unrelated.
Speaker 2: Definitely. Yeah, So there is a bit of stories colliding.
Speaker 2: When you write about cults, there's only so many of them.
Speaker 2: Inevitably stories start to cross over. So I was still, yeah,
Speaker 2: covering Vnexium trial and you know, folloout sentencings when this
Speaker 2: story came across my desk, you know, and even the
Speaker 2: first person who talked to me about it, it was like,
Speaker 2: I think it's similar, you know, I think their practices
Speaker 2: are similar. And sure enough, I go and look at
Speaker 2: this mind alignment process and you're right, it's it's kind
Speaker 2: of similar to auditing, and scientology is kind of similar
Speaker 2: to you know, what Nexium was doing.
Speaker 1: So it's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the tools of manipulation are common across many of
Speaker 2: these groups, and I would say, you know, not just
Speaker 2: ex members of Twin Flames, but even potentially the leaders
Speaker 2: of Twin Flames have studied other groups, including Nexium. There
Speaker 2: is the detail in the documentary that Jeff actually made
Speaker 2: folks in the group write an essay about why Keith R.
Speaker 2: Nieri was a cult leader but why he was not one,
Speaker 2: based on watching the vow in seduced. So that's just, yeah,
Speaker 2: a world's colliding for me. But yeah, I think Nexium
Speaker 2: has in some ways brought a certain understanding. So of
Speaker 2: the sources I was talking to, yeah, had an understanding
Speaker 2: of how that worked. And you know what made that wrong,
Speaker 2: what made that coercion. Twin Flames doesn't have as many
Speaker 2: of the aspects as nexiums. So they don't have a
Speaker 2: blackmail program, right, there's no branding in Twin Flames universe.
Speaker 2: And you know their diet plan was actually you know,
Speaker 2: load up on calories. Right, So there's some various differences
Speaker 2: that you know, maybe Jeff studied and thought he could
Speaker 2: fly under the radar with that. I don't know. I
Speaker 2: don't know Jeff's motivations. He has only sent me long,
Speaker 2: rambling emails. He has never agreed to an interview. But yes,
Speaker 2: there's so much commonality, including the lawsuits that came out
Speaker 2: of this. So when I reported on this in twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: immediately after our first story, twin Flames Universe sent a
Speaker 2: bunch of threatening letters to all of who they suspected
Speaker 2: was cooperating with my reporting. So this was a group
Speaker 2: of some thirty five people. I definitely didn't interview all
Speaker 2: of them, but they were suspected collaborators. And it basically said,
Speaker 2: if you do not retract your story within twenty four
Speaker 2: hours and write a public apology, we are going to
Speaker 2: publish very damning information about you, and we might pursue
Speaker 2: a lawsuit. And this letter was not signed by a lawyer,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: So signed legit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in reporting on it, which we did, and of
Speaker 2: course nobody retracted, but sure enough, a couple months after that,
Speaker 2: they did file a defamation suit against I want to say,
Speaker 2: seven or eight members and one mom, And of course
Speaker 2: that got thrown out. But that's the next you and
Speaker 2: playbook is sue sue folks until they don't speak to
Speaker 2: anyone anymore. Right, So it's a silencing tactic and it worked.
Speaker 2: It really shook people up. I definitely wanted to give
Speaker 2: people space after that. Yeah, it was definitely deja vus.
Speaker 2: I guess to see that many lawsuits because there were
Speaker 2: two separate ones both thrown out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and that's like something I've had to
Speaker 1: like coach some some younger journalists and stuff through too,
Speaker 1: because it's a favorite tactic of a lot of terrible people,
Speaker 1: like send out legal threats and like, this is not
Speaker 1: legal advice. You should always consult a lawyer. But the
Speaker 1: vast majority of threats like that that are sent out
Speaker 1: cannot be backed up to any realistic extent. Again, don't
Speaker 1: ever assume that always consult a lawyer about this sort
Speaker 1: of thing. But like the fact that somebody sends you
Speaker 1: a we're going to sue you or like a cease
Speaker 1: and assist does not mean they can actually hurt you, right,
Speaker 1: It just means like for a lot of people, that's
Speaker 1: like a go to sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it does evoke emotions.
Speaker 1: In the Netflix, stuy, and it does mean you've got
Speaker 1: to reach out to a lawyer, which is scary, you know.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, thankfully we had vice lawyers that on that one,
Speaker 2: but I don't know. In the Netflix documentary, Jeff actually
Speaker 2: names me, you know, and tries to intimidate me by name.
Speaker 2: And that was actually cut from a much longer video,
Speaker 2: And I have to say, when it first came out
Speaker 2: it did make me want a cuke. Now when I
Speaker 2: see it in the series, it makes me laugh. But
Speaker 2: it Yeah, you can really intimidate someone with that stuff.
Speaker 1: Sure, I think we should probably end on kind of
Speaker 1: talking about where things are now, because again, if you've
Speaker 1: watched the documentary, I think the thing that was brought
Speaker 1: up to me by a couple of people I know
Speaker 1: who watched it was like, so, wait, they're so just
Speaker 1: out there doing it.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Used to when stuff like this gets covered, they're being
Speaker 1: some sort of satisfying narrative arc. They've been charged, they're
Speaker 1: in you know, prison, they're on the run. But this like,
Speaker 1: they're just continuing to do cult stuff. And I think
Speaker 1: part of like one of the things that is unfortunate.
Speaker 1: It's just I'm not a law expert. Again, but just
Speaker 1: from what I'm looked at, it's not clear to me
Speaker 1: that they've broken a law in a way that's going
Speaker 1: to be easy to come after them for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So this is the interesting thing about Twin Flames
Speaker 2: universe is. It does sort of straddle this line between
Speaker 2: you know, it's not nexium. They weren't clear up, they.
Speaker 1: Haven't abducted people, Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2: They haven't risen to that level. Although there are folks
Speaker 2: who are in this group who believe they were trafficked,
Speaker 2: which is an interesting perspective because they weren't able to
Speaker 2: choose the person that they were having sexual contact with,
Speaker 2: that they didn't even get to control when or how
Speaker 2: that sexual will contact happened. It would take I think,
Speaker 2: you know, a very ambitious prosecutor to take on that
Speaker 2: kind of case. But back in twenty twenty, some of
Speaker 2: these moms were already calling you know, the FBI and
Speaker 2: the local Farmington Hills police. Farmington Hills has been like,
Speaker 2: this is not our jurisdiction. If anything like, go to
Speaker 2: the FBI. We haven't heard any particular updates from that,
Speaker 2: you know case. Certainly, folks have said things to me
Speaker 2: that sound a bit like fraud. You know, wire fraud
Speaker 2: is a very broad concept. I don't know if that's
Speaker 2: actually the case. I am not a lawyer, I'm not
Speaker 2: a prosecutor, but definitely I think the filmmakers behind the
Speaker 2: Netflix documentary in particular, think that this is up to
Speaker 2: the FBI. They should be taking action, and they want
Speaker 2: their documentary to spur that action. So yeah, we'll see
Speaker 2: what happens. I you know, am as I said, not
Speaker 2: an expert, not a lawyer, but certainly a lot of
Speaker 2: the things that I've heard about sound very concerning and
Speaker 2: very similar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and I yeah, it's tough because, like
Speaker 1: I mean, I do. I will say I would be
Speaker 1: shocked if there's not an active FBI investigation purely based
Speaker 1: on how how popular the documentaries have been. Right, Like
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean anything will actually happen, but at this
Speaker 1: point I would be shocked if they were not seriously
Speaker 1: looking into it, just because it's like they're probably getting
Speaker 1: hassled by a bunch of people.
Speaker 2: Yes, and I mean it is a very culty thing
Speaker 2: that they also collect everything, you know, video of everything
Speaker 2: they've done.
Speaker 1: There's a lot to look into.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The Yes, the hard drive that one of the folks
Speaker 2: in the documentary named Keeley collected was literally called the
Speaker 2: Holy Grail. Right nextium for Keith Ranieri, his you know,
Speaker 2: damning evidence was called Studies. So I feel like this
Speaker 2: is the studies hard drive yeah.
Speaker 1: In that case, Well, we'll continue to all look into
Speaker 1: this and excited to kind of see hopefully eventually some
Speaker 1: sort of justice being done, although that's always a lot
Speaker 1: to ask for out of the world. Yeah, well, Mia,
Speaker 1: did you have anything else you wanted to get into.
Speaker 3: I think that's basically everything.
Speaker 1: Okay, And Sarah, did you have anything else you wanted
Speaker 1: to make sure to mention?
Speaker 2: Well, I would just like to mention that, you know,
Speaker 2: having a belief about something like a soulmate is not
Speaker 2: necessarily a bad thing. I don't want people to feel
Speaker 2: stupid for having weird beliefs. If you open your third
Speaker 2: eye and you know, believe your partner has been you know,
Speaker 2: in your dreams, since, that's fine to me. I don't
Speaker 2: want to disparage that kind of person. It's the systematic
Speaker 2: coersion that you know, I'm particularly concerned about in my reporting. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but yeah, maybe you could check out my book it's
Speaker 2: called Don't Call It a Cult. Yeah, about the Nexium case.
Speaker 2: You can follow me on Twitter Sarah Burns b E
Speaker 2: r MS not X I'm dead naming Twitter again. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's about it.
Speaker 1: All right. Well, everyone, that's been Another episode of it
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