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Speaker 1: Trust me? Do you trust me?

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Speaker 2: Right? Ever lead you astray?

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Speaker 3: Trust?

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Speaker 1: This is the truth, the only truth.

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Speaker 4: If anybody ever tells you to just trust them, don't

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Speaker 4: welcome to trust me. The podcast about cults, extreme belief,

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Speaker 4: and of course, manipulation from two survivors have actually experienced it.

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Speaker 1: I'm Lola Blanc and I'm Megan Elizabeth Wow.

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Speaker 4: Today our guest is Poverty Shallow, reality TV icon who's

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Speaker 4: won Survivor twice and is currently on Traders, and author

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Speaker 4: of new memoir Nice Girls Don't Win. How I Burned

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Speaker 4: it all down to claim My Power. She's joining us

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Speaker 4: today to talk about her childhood in a commune called

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Speaker 4: the Kashi Ashram, led by a woman named Joyce Green,

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Speaker 4: who made everyone call her Ma. She'll tell us about

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Speaker 4: Ma's history, including her relationship with Ram Doss, who said

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Speaker 4: he had been bamboozled by her, and some of the

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Speaker 4: controlling behaviors that Ma exhibited in the group, including taking

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Speaker 4: children from their parents and making members scam their own

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Speaker 4: families for money.

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Speaker 2: She'll talk about how her parents escaped but ultimately came

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Speaker 2: back to the group, what it was like living on

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Speaker 2: the commune, being wild in nature, and how some of

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Speaker 2: the good and some of the bad of the group

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Speaker 2: helped give her some of her skills she needed to

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Speaker 2: win Survivor later on. Plus how she processed everything that's

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Speaker 2: happened to her. And that's cult resilience. And we have

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Speaker 2: an episode on it.

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Speaker 1: That's right. No, Parmony's book is really really great.

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Speaker 4: I connected with so much of it in there, and

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Speaker 4: we'll talk about a little bit of it in this episode.

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Speaker 4: Wish we could talk about it with her own five

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Speaker 4: more episodes.

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Speaker 2: I know, it's really interesting to see a female cult

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Speaker 2: leader because so many of them that we talked to

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Speaker 2: are mone And.

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Speaker 4: That's feminism, baby, yep.

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Speaker 1: Equal rights.

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Speaker 4: Although you know, we've talked to more people now who

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Speaker 4: had female cult leaders than I anticipated when we first

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Speaker 4: started the podcast. You're uncovering more and more I feel, yeah,

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Speaker 4: and that's feminism baby, totally.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's true.

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Speaker 2: Definitely still disproportionate, but no, for sure more than we expected.

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Speaker 1: For sure.

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Speaker 4: Yes, before we get into this particular woman cult leader

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Speaker 4: and what poverty experienced with her, Megan, can you tell

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Speaker 4: me your cultiest thing please?

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: My cultiest thing is a documentary I watched this week

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Speaker 2: on Netflix. It's called House of secrets, very dark.

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Speaker 4: House of Secrets is not the Army Hammer one. No,

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Speaker 4: that's is that called something similar?

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Speaker 2: Maybe it's called House of Secrets the Berrari Deaths and

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Speaker 2: I'd never heard of it before. I went into it

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Speaker 2: very blind, thinking what's this about? And it turns very culty.

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Speaker 2: I won't spoil it, but please, if you're gonna watch it. No,

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Speaker 2: It's like I almost feel like I'm telling people to

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Speaker 2: watch the real life version of the ring, Like I'm

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Speaker 2: like passing on some like, oh no, first.

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Speaker 1: Do you know what I mean?

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Speaker 2: Because it's so dark and upsetting, so upsetting. But I'm

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Speaker 2: also trying to keep it grounded because these are real

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Speaker 2: people and I don't want to sensationalize it, and like

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Speaker 2: they deserve, you know, to the story deserves to be told.

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Speaker 2: So if you want to see it, watch it. I'm

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Speaker 2: gonna contact people from it this week to try to

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Speaker 2: get somebody who knows about the case on the show.

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Speaker 2: I don't want to spoil it per se, but shall

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Speaker 2: I tell you a.

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Speaker 1: Little bit about it? Yeah? Tell me a little.

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Speaker 2: In this city in India, they find eleven members of

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Speaker 2: a family hanging in their house. In this very intricate pattern.

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Speaker 2: All of their hands are tight like and some of

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Speaker 2: them are young children, know, all of their hands are

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Speaker 2: tied behind their back, all of their mouths are taped,

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Speaker 2: there's cloth over their eyes, and nothing is disturbed. They

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Speaker 2: can't figure out, like, it doesn't seem like it was

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Speaker 2: a break in, you know what I mean, It seems

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Speaker 2: it seems like it was a suicide.

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Speaker 1: But they just can't.

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Speaker 2: Figure out how eleven people would do that. Then they

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Speaker 2: find this notebook where one of the uncles was communicating

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Speaker 2: with their dead grandfather, so his father. Oh, so he

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Speaker 2: was getting all of his life advice from his father.

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Speaker 2: And this is just completely ruining the end, which is,

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Speaker 2: you know, a murder mystery that if you want to

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Speaker 2: watch it, you should watch it, so skip this part.

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Speaker 2: But basically this uncle is like, oh, we have to

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Speaker 2: do a ritual of killing ourselves and at the very

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Speaker 2: last second we'll be freed and we'll have amazing karma.

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Speaker 1: Oh no, oh no, that's so horrible. Oh my god.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and a lot of really interesting psych

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Speaker 2: callous and stuff in India on the documentary just talking

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Speaker 2: about like how it just really showed. One woman says

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Speaker 2: something so interesting, which was like It showed me what

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Speaker 2: is the difference between my belief and a delusion? And

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Speaker 2: like our where does faith and and a delusion starts?

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Speaker 2: You know? And so yeah, I've never seen anything like it.

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Speaker 2: It's heartbreaking and it's a topic I would love to

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Speaker 2: explore further with somebody who worked on the case or

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Speaker 2: knows more about it.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, Oh my gosh, I have to know more. I'm

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Speaker 4: like scared to watch, but I also.

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Speaker 1: Really want to know.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know more about the case. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 2: pretty it's pretty intense. Well, no, it's extremely intense. So yeah,

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Speaker 2: you got to be ready for that level of horror.

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Speaker 2: But like I said, it's worth knowing how these things happen,

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Speaker 2: you know.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because.

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Speaker 2: Basically, you know, the like father's authority is so important

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Speaker 2: in India that when his father died, it's like, did

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Speaker 2: it trigger a psychosis in this uncle where like he

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Speaker 2: needed to be hearing from his dad or like, right,

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Speaker 2: it brings us back to that age old question of

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Speaker 2: like did he think he was really talking to her

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Speaker 2: his dad or was he just trying to control his family?

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Speaker 1: You know?

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Speaker 2: Anyway, what's your cultiest thing of the week. Well, to

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Speaker 2: switch tones for a second here please, So you know listeners,

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Speaker 2: longtime listeners will know. I am a quite political person.

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Speaker 4: I always have been, and I joined an organization that

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Speaker 4: I love currently, But like any organization, it's full of

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Speaker 4: humans and it's ups and downs, and it depends on

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Speaker 4: which chapter you're in, et cetera, et cetera. I'm a

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Speaker 4: member of DSA DSA LA, which is the Democratic Socialist

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Speaker 4: of America, which Zoramum Donnie came out of DSA. New

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Speaker 4: York Bernie Sanders is very associated with DSA, And it's.

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Speaker 1: The first time I'm like, oh.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, like this is how I would join a cult

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Speaker 4: because I feel so much better about Like it gives

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Speaker 4: me meaning and purpose, Like obviously there's been so much

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Speaker 4: in our country that's just off, and I am someone

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Speaker 4: like I really only feel okay when I feel like

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Speaker 4: I'm doing something instead of just handwringing and doom scrolling.

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Speaker 4: And it's been hard to figure out, like in all

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Speaker 4: my years of LA, it's been hard to figure out,

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Speaker 4: like where do I plug in?

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Speaker 1: Where am I useful?

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Speaker 4: How can I help beyond like posting in my story

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Speaker 4: was just nothing, you know, I mean, it does something,

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Speaker 4: it doesn't do nothing. But it's not great, it's not ideal.

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Speaker 4: You know, you want to like actually be doing work.

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Speaker 4: And so now I'm more involved in this organization that

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Speaker 4: is electing candidates here in LA who share my same

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Speaker 4: values and doing a lot of great work to combat

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Speaker 4: ice and doing a lot of great work for all

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Speaker 4: kinds of issues that I care about, the environment, queer liberation,

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Speaker 4: Palestinian liberation, all of it. So right now I'm like, ah,

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Speaker 4: thank god, I have some political community with people who

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Speaker 4: share like we all want to just make the world better,

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Speaker 4: and we're trying to figure it out together, and you know,

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Speaker 4: the goal obviously is to create a larger movement of

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Speaker 4: people who want to do this with us and get

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Speaker 4: politicians in office who are not beholden to like billionaire interests.

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Speaker 4: So anyway, I'm like able to be useful and that's

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Speaker 4: such a great feeling. And this particular organization is democratic,

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Speaker 4: like there are elections, it's it's democratic, so there's not

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Speaker 4: like a leader that's like dictating everything. So that's why

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Speaker 4: it feels healthy and fine for me at least right now.

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Speaker 4: But I can just totally see, you know, like we're

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Speaker 4: such an atomized nation, like we feel so lonely and

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Speaker 4: like we can't do anything. And it's just like such

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Speaker 4: a perfect time for an organization that maybe isn't democratic

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Speaker 4: to swoop in and be like I have the community

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Speaker 4: and the answers for you, and this is how you're

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Speaker 4: gonna make the world better.

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Speaker 2: You know.

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Speaker 4: It's like somebody cult start with those same ingredients. And

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Speaker 4: I'm like, if there weren't elections, like I'd be so

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Speaker 4: susceptible right now.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, now it's worth noting. I mean, we all are

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Speaker 2: right now because everybody has strong opinion, I mean hopefully

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Speaker 2: has strong opinions about what's happening in the world right

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Speaker 2: now one way or another.

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Speaker 1: And yeah, it's a very vulnerable time.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, and we're all it's like with a lot of

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Speaker 4: division division in my life with people I love very much,

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Speaker 4: and so it's it's just so like healing.

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Speaker 1: I hate the word healing.

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Speaker 4: It just like feels really nice to be like standing

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Speaker 4: like doing work next to people who understand basically is

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Speaker 4: the thing. And we're like, you know, able to actually

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Speaker 4: make a difference politically in our city. So you know,

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Speaker 4: if there's a cult, I would join it to be a

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Speaker 4: political one. Hopefully this is not one. I don't think

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Speaker 4: it is. I think they're doing really great work. But

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Speaker 4: I can see, you know, I could see the path

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Speaker 4: like I could see how it could happen.

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Speaker 2: Oh no, well I'll keep an eye on you.

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Speaker 1: Thank you. I know this, you know, and I'll let

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Speaker 1: you know. Great.

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Speaker 4: But listen, I'm aware that it could happen, and that's

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Speaker 4: the first step.

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Speaker 2: Perfect. You're actually very correct. Yes, just no know your

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Speaker 2: vulnerabilities exactly. Speaking of vulnerabilities, good, good segue. Yes it

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Speaker 2: shall we talk to poverty. Let's talk to Parverty. Welcome Parverty,

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Speaker 2: Shadow to trust me.

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Speaker 1: Thank you so much for.

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Speaker 3: Joining us, Thanks for having me.

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Speaker 4: When we told people you were coming on, the reactions

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Speaker 4: were so I had multiple people be like, shut, I

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Speaker 4: love Parvety.

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Speaker 1: People were so excited. So we're very excited as well

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Speaker 1: to have you.

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Speaker 3: Oh my god, me too.

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Speaker 5: I feel like the conversation topics that you guys discuss

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Speaker 5: is really my wheelhouse.

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Speaker 1: Amazing.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, well, we both just finish your book and there's

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Speaker 4: so much to talk about.

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Speaker 1: But first, obviously this is a cult podcast.

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Speaker 4: Your parents were in a cult when you were a child,

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Speaker 4: and can you just tell us a little bit about

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Speaker 4: how they first joined the Is it the Kashi Ashram.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, I did write about this in my book, and

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Speaker 5: both my parents they were was sort of the moment

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Speaker 5: in time when India and gurus were here bringing meditation

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Speaker 5: in go to the West. So a lot of people

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Speaker 5: in the United States were disillusioned with the government structure.

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Speaker 3: It was the Vietnam War.

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Speaker 5: Catholicism was kind of the predominant religion, I would say,

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Speaker 5: and I think it was just very controlling and a

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Speaker 5: lot of people were looking for some kind of way

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Speaker 5: to claim their freedom and serve in a spiritual way

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Speaker 5: and be a part of the solution make love not war.

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Speaker 5: And my parents both met this. I mean, she was

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Speaker 5: a self proclaimed guru. She was not from India. She

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Speaker 5: was Her name was Joyce Green. She was born in

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Speaker 5: Brooklyn and good old joy She was like a married mom,

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Speaker 5: Jewish mom from Brooklyn, and then went to this weight

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Speaker 5: loss clinic after she'd had her babies to lose some

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Speaker 5: weight and she learned breath work there and then that

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Speaker 5: sort of like opened up these hours for her and

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Speaker 5: she claimed to have had the stigmata, even though no

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Speaker 5: one else witnessed this except for her best friend friend.

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Speaker 4: It's not your best you she won't vouch for your stigmata.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean a T shirt.

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Speaker 2: So yeah, her best friend was like, yep, she really

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Speaker 2: was having this great movie, by the way, stigmata but

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Speaker 2: like bleeding from the you know, from the hands and

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Speaker 2: all the things that Jesus experienced, which.

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Speaker 4: Is interesting because she's raised Jewish and then she's saying, oh,

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Speaker 4: I'm doing this Jesus thing, but then she's doing this

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Speaker 4: Eastern religion like she's really mishmashing it all up here.

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Speaker 5: Well, they do say that Jesus went and trained with

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Speaker 5: the yogis, so he kind of considered a mystic in

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Speaker 5: that way and learned that sort of meditation technology.

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Speaker 3: But I mean, I don't who's a sick yea.

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Speaker 5: This woman also said, I mean she was very charithmatic,

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Speaker 5: she was very power full, she had some kind of

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Speaker 5: spiritual mojo because she was having meetings with I mean,

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Speaker 5: she dated Rhomdas for a while.

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Speaker 2: I love that lure doul so, I mean, not only

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Speaker 2: did she date him, he was like a devotee and

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Speaker 2: then he was like, wait, you're a fraud.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, and literally wrote an article about it, which I loved.

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Speaker 4: That detail called in your book called egg on my beard,

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Speaker 4: saying that he'd been duped by this woman.

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Speaker 5: Right because she was saying that she needed gold jewelry

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Speaker 5: to kind of tether her to this earthly plane.

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Speaker 1: I think of that.

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Speaker 2: Can you can you kind of tell us what this

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Speaker 2: woman looked like in the height of her this white woman,

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Speaker 2: shall I say, very.

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Speaker 6: Tan, okay, very damn Barry Tan could pass for Indiana,

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Speaker 6: had long dark hair, always wore the bindi dripping in gold,

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Speaker 6: always dripping and gold kind of war sorries, the like

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Speaker 6: Indian kind of clothing.

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Speaker 3: She dressed the part.

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Speaker 5: I was born there, and then my parents fled the commune,

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Speaker 5: and then they ended up going back, which you know,

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Speaker 5: it takes people many times to leave an abusive situation,

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Speaker 5: and so they went back because it was all they

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Speaker 5: knew and sort of the only community they had. And

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Speaker 5: things were okay for a while, and then the rampage occurred,

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Speaker 5: which was sort of it was like the hallmarks of

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Speaker 5: that time where the guru was getting more aggressive, like

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Speaker 5: physically violent, and people would be in meditation and she

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Speaker 5: would have these all night meditations, so it was like

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Speaker 5: she was using sleep deprivation. If anyone knotted off, would

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Speaker 5: kick them or slap them to wake them up.

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Speaker 1: My god.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and she.

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Speaker 5: Was saying that this time, like if you couldn't handle it,

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Speaker 5: you were weak. So she was like using people's humanity

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Speaker 5: against them and saying she was clearing their karma at

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Speaker 5: an accelerated right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's one of the things I was going to say.

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Speaker 2: I mean, it sounds like one of the reasons your

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Speaker 2: parents returned is because it seemed as though she'd put

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Speaker 2: a curse on them. So she's like promising to clear

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Speaker 2: your karma, also saying I can put a curse on you,

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Speaker 2: and like if bad things were happening, which they were

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Speaker 2: when your family left, it kind of makes it easy

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Speaker 2: to say, oh, like she's right, you know, very bad

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Speaker 2: timing on that front. Why did they leave initially?

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Speaker 5: Again, they left because they recognized that they couldn't have freedom.

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Speaker 3: It wasn't really what they'd been sold.

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Speaker 5: They were sold this community of like minded spiritual seekers

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Speaker 5: that were going to support one another and create a

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Speaker 5: sort of utopian, ideal neighborhood. And it turned into like

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Speaker 5: the Guru was surveilling people's phone calls, she was arranging marriages.

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Speaker 5: If people were dating without her approval, she would have

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Speaker 5: them broken up, and like one the man would have

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Speaker 5: to turn into a celibate monk, and then the woman

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Speaker 5: would be like assigned to job somewhere else on the commune.

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Speaker 3: She was just it was very like whiplashy.

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Speaker 5: I think for them where they realized like, oh no,

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Speaker 5: we gotta get out of here.

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Speaker 3: There might have.

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Speaker 5: Been a specific moment, but I'm not remembering right now.

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Speaker 5: I mean I was told all these stories, right because.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, and then they do leave, And then, as

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Speaker 4: Megan was saying, it seems like maybe.

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Speaker 1: The curses real.

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Speaker 4: Was your understanding of what brought them back, because that's

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Speaker 4: always just something that's so interesting to me. Obviously, we do,

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Speaker 4: like you said, see that in abusive relationships all the time.

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Speaker 4: A lot of the people we talked to, I feel like,

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Speaker 4: once they leave, their out, And maybe part of that

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Speaker 4: is because you know, the cult members will disconnect and

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Speaker 4: you'll be considered someone who's like bad and that shouldn't

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Speaker 4: be spoken to after or because you physically have to leave.

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Speaker 4: So I feel like I don't think we've had on

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Speaker 4: as many guests who like kept going back necessarily. It's

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Speaker 4: almost like once you've subretised with the cult, you've subvertized

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Speaker 4: with the cult. So I find those stories really interesting.

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Speaker 4: And when people do return after they have first made

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Speaker 4: that decision, just curious if you knew more about their reasoning.

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Speaker 3: How you know what?

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Speaker 5: I think it was the woman the guru, her name

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Speaker 5: was Ma. This is the name she gave herself.

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Speaker 3: She co opted, like she gave herself the title of mother,

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Speaker 3: yeah of the community.

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Speaker 5: So it really was this sort of like it reminds

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Speaker 5: me of narcissistic mothers or that kind of relationship where

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Speaker 5: they will use guilt or emotionally manipulate their children or

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Speaker 5: say they're bad, or say they're like they owe their

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Speaker 5: mom something. And I think for my parents, the guilt

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Speaker 5: was such a conditioned response because they grew up Catholic,

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Speaker 5: where there's so much guilt involved in being a Catholic,

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Speaker 5: and it's really is what manipulates people's behavior is through guilts.

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Speaker 5: So I think there was some of that laying apart.

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Speaker 5: It was like the distorted mother where they just they

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Speaker 5: wanted I think everyone in the community wanted the mother

348
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Speaker 5: to approve of them, to love them, protect them, guide them,

349
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Speaker 5: care for them, and they got glimpses of it. It was

350
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Speaker 5: like little bits of that kind of love, sort of

351
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Speaker 5: like how narcissists will like dangle the carrot and they

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Speaker 5: just keep you chasing this perceived goal.

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Speaker 3: It's just part enough off in the distance.

354
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Speaker 5: Then they moved the goalpost, and then they moved again,

355
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Speaker 5: and they're like, oh.

356
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Speaker 3: I can never get there. It makes you freaking crazy.

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Speaker 5: So I think it was some of that where it

358
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Speaker 5: was like they also didn't have enough of their own structure,

359
00:18:58,040 --> 00:19:02,119
Speaker 5: safety community the outside of that, Like my mom, they

360
00:19:02,119 --> 00:19:04,720
Speaker 5: didn't have anywhere to go. They moved back in with

361
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Speaker 5: my mom's parents, and there was like her sister, my

362
00:19:08,440 --> 00:19:12,080
Speaker 5: mom's sister was escaping an abusive marriage and her kids

363
00:19:12,119 --> 00:19:14,720
Speaker 5: weren't there, and it was just chaos everywhere, and they

364
00:19:14,720 --> 00:19:17,639
Speaker 5: were like, nobody understands us. And I think there was

365
00:19:17,800 --> 00:19:22,760
Speaker 5: some peace living in this commune because it was so

366
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Speaker 5: close to nature, like we ran around barefoot. Was very

367
00:19:25,960 --> 00:19:32,199
Speaker 5: sort of like survivor environmental environmentally. Yeah, so I'm like, oh, well, no,

368
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Speaker 5: wonder I recreated this five times in my life.

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Speaker 1: Tell us more.

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Speaker 4: I think that's a good way to transition us into

371
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Speaker 4: talking about what you experienced before your family left the cult.

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Speaker 1: What was that like?

373
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Speaker 3: Yeah, for me.

374
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Speaker 5: I felt like there was freedom as a child because

375
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Speaker 5: I was running around with a group I had, like

376
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Speaker 5: a girl gang that I ran with, and we were.

377
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Speaker 3: Just we wore whatever we wanted to weigh.

378
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Speaker 5: It felt like we were fairal children, sort of like

379
00:20:04,560 --> 00:20:07,200
Speaker 5: swimming in a pond, running around barefoot in the woods,

380
00:20:07,560 --> 00:20:11,280
Speaker 5: going to these fire ceremonies at night, where all my

381
00:20:11,320 --> 00:20:13,320
Speaker 5: friends would be there, all the adults would be there,

382
00:20:13,320 --> 00:20:15,520
Speaker 5: everyone's chanting and singing. It was all this kind of

383
00:20:15,560 --> 00:20:23,320
Speaker 5: like ecstatic communion with nature and this mysticism, this magic

384
00:20:23,720 --> 00:20:29,240
Speaker 5: existed there where it felt like something really special was happening.

385
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Speaker 3: And if the Guru turned her.

386
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Speaker 5: Light on me as a child, I was special in

387
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Speaker 5: that moment and I was always like hungry for that

388
00:20:38,680 --> 00:20:41,919
Speaker 5: as a kid, because it was strange, like I had

389
00:20:42,600 --> 00:20:45,840
Speaker 5: kind of three primary attachment figures I had, but the Guru,

390
00:20:46,280 --> 00:20:48,919
Speaker 5: which all the adults and everyone all the kids were

391
00:20:48,960 --> 00:20:53,159
Speaker 5: devoted to, and she was taking people babies and having

392
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Speaker 5: them live sort of in close proximity to her. There

393
00:20:56,119 --> 00:20:58,760
Speaker 5: were some kids that were called MAM's kids that were

394
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Speaker 5: seen as a special ones, but they were just sort

395
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Speaker 5: of like deeply neglected and abused.

396
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Speaker 2: And like kidnapped from their parents essentially.

397
00:21:07,760 --> 00:21:10,800
Speaker 5: Essentially, but like the parents gave them over sort of

398
00:21:10,880 --> 00:21:16,360
Speaker 5: like because they were manipulated into doing so. And yeah,

399
00:21:16,400 --> 00:21:20,120
Speaker 5: so there was this like beautiful it's been I've been

400
00:21:20,160 --> 00:21:23,360
Speaker 5: really working on untangling it for really, I mean ever

401
00:21:23,400 --> 00:21:25,920
Speaker 5: since I was started writing my book. I've been working

402
00:21:25,920 --> 00:21:28,359
Speaker 5: on unentangling this because I hadn't looked back at my

403
00:21:28,440 --> 00:21:32,119
Speaker 5: childhood at all until I fouled for divorce and moved

404
00:21:32,119 --> 00:21:35,080
Speaker 5: out and like got out of my marriage, and then

405
00:21:35,080 --> 00:21:37,400
Speaker 5: I had the like space and time to sit and be.

406
00:21:37,400 --> 00:21:39,760
Speaker 3: Like how did I get here? How did I make

407
00:21:39,920 --> 00:21:40,880
Speaker 3: this in my life?

408
00:21:41,320 --> 00:21:44,200
Speaker 5: And I think it was because I had this experience

409
00:21:44,200 --> 00:21:49,080
Speaker 5: as a child of this beautiful, ecstatic kind of like

410
00:21:49,720 --> 00:21:54,359
Speaker 5: peek experiences over and over again and then.

411
00:21:54,440 --> 00:21:57,560
Speaker 3: Like dry spell like kind of nothing.

412
00:21:58,640 --> 00:22:01,119
Speaker 5: And also there was a chef side of course that

413
00:22:01,240 --> 00:22:04,080
Speaker 5: was like not really spoken about in the commune. It

414
00:22:04,160 --> 00:22:07,960
Speaker 5: was like this beautiful on the surface, looks perfect on

415
00:22:08,000 --> 00:22:11,879
Speaker 5: the surface, is really like everything you could ever want

416
00:22:11,880 --> 00:22:15,919
Speaker 5: and dream of gives you all of these beautiful connections,

417
00:22:16,359 --> 00:22:19,840
Speaker 5: and then underneath it, it's like there's lying, there's course

418
00:22:19,880 --> 00:22:25,520
Speaker 5: of control, there's abuse, there's all this like power over domination, curses,

419
00:22:25,760 --> 00:22:29,239
Speaker 5: like so much shadow in there that I just it

420
00:22:29,320 --> 00:22:32,040
Speaker 5: was never articulated to me in a way that I

421
00:22:32,119 --> 00:22:34,720
Speaker 5: was like, oh, okay, that's what was happening.

422
00:22:34,760 --> 00:22:37,960
Speaker 3: So I had to uncover that for myself later in life.

423
00:22:38,160 --> 00:22:42,600
Speaker 2: Right, lots of cognitive dissonance there, Oh my god, so much.

424
00:22:43,040 --> 00:22:43,960
Speaker 1: I can't imagine.

425
00:22:43,960 --> 00:22:47,159
Speaker 4: Like the running freely through the woods with your girlfriend's

426
00:22:47,200 --> 00:22:51,800
Speaker 4: things sounds yeah, like a fucking dream. Like of course

427
00:22:51,960 --> 00:22:54,560
Speaker 4: you'd have these like conflicting ideas about this, because like,

428
00:22:54,600 --> 00:22:57,479
Speaker 4: what magical memories those must have been. I grew up

429
00:22:57,480 --> 00:22:59,760
Speaker 4: on a farm with woods, eighty acres of land, and

430
00:22:59,760 --> 00:23:01,520
Speaker 4: my memories of being in the woods are like the

431
00:23:01,560 --> 00:23:05,120
Speaker 4: most precious special thing ever. And if that was combined

432
00:23:05,160 --> 00:23:09,240
Speaker 4: with these weird like guru worship, guru taking the children

433
00:23:09,720 --> 00:23:13,840
Speaker 4: stuff like that, what a contradiction of feelings that must be.

434
00:23:14,400 --> 00:23:18,080
Speaker 3: It was such a distortion of the mother archetype.

435
00:23:18,640 --> 00:23:22,360
Speaker 5: And she the guru used she said she was teaching

436
00:23:22,560 --> 00:23:27,120
Speaker 5: through Collie, which is a goddess in Hinduism who's sort

437
00:23:27,119 --> 00:23:30,159
Speaker 5: of like the destroyer of death. So she's one of

438
00:23:30,160 --> 00:23:34,800
Speaker 5: the dark goddesses and she teaches through like struggle and suffering,

439
00:23:34,960 --> 00:23:37,720
Speaker 5: and pain and death like sort of in the underworld.

440
00:23:38,160 --> 00:23:41,640
Speaker 5: But then she's claiming to be this like benevolent mother

441
00:23:42,320 --> 00:23:46,040
Speaker 5: and doing these really horrific things.

442
00:23:46,600 --> 00:23:49,200
Speaker 3: So it was like, what is actually happening?

443
00:23:49,200 --> 00:23:52,159
Speaker 5: And as a kid, everything is just normal because it's

444
00:23:52,240 --> 00:23:53,320
Speaker 5: the water that you swim in.

445
00:23:53,520 --> 00:23:56,040
Speaker 3: You don't really like I didn't. I had no idea.

446
00:23:56,160 --> 00:23:59,080
Speaker 2: And yeah, I know that you end up going, you

447
00:23:59,119 --> 00:24:03,639
Speaker 2: guys end up leaving. But when you're on the commune,

448
00:24:04,080 --> 00:24:05,560
Speaker 2: what was the schooling Like?

449
00:24:06,200 --> 00:24:10,840
Speaker 5: There was a school in the community that was like

450
00:24:10,960 --> 00:24:14,159
Speaker 5: grade school, so I went there for kindergarten.

451
00:24:14,359 --> 00:24:15,040
Speaker 3: There was a daycare.

452
00:24:15,119 --> 00:24:18,320
Speaker 5: My mom worked in the daycare because everyone just worked

453
00:24:18,880 --> 00:24:19,480
Speaker 5: for free.

454
00:24:19,880 --> 00:24:25,000
Speaker 1: Of course they do as they do in these groups.

455
00:24:25,400 --> 00:24:27,040
Speaker 3: It's like support the community.

456
00:24:27,119 --> 00:24:29,960
Speaker 5: Give us all your money and your time and your

457
00:24:30,000 --> 00:24:34,679
Speaker 5: intentured servitude. And then when I turned when I was

458
00:24:36,080 --> 00:24:39,200
Speaker 5: started second grade, we had moved across the street because

459
00:24:39,200 --> 00:24:43,240
Speaker 5: my parents were starting to distance themselves. I think they

460
00:24:43,320 --> 00:24:48,000
Speaker 5: needed an escape plan that involved more sort of slower

461
00:24:48,080 --> 00:24:51,000
Speaker 5: structured stability where they were like, Okay, we're going to

462
00:24:51,000 --> 00:24:54,479
Speaker 5: slowly separate so it's not such a harsh cut.

463
00:24:55,280 --> 00:24:57,200
Speaker 3: And in that way they.

464
00:24:57,119 --> 00:25:02,199
Speaker 5: Were able to leave berga right but we first it

465
00:25:02,240 --> 00:25:05,679
Speaker 5: was like an intermediary step, sort of like harm reduction.

466
00:25:05,800 --> 00:25:09,359
Speaker 5: I think about like Heroin addicts who go on whatever

467
00:25:09,440 --> 00:25:10,440
Speaker 5: the suboxen.

468
00:25:11,160 --> 00:25:12,840
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, exactly.

469
00:25:12,960 --> 00:25:14,800
Speaker 5: It's like, okay, this seems like we're going to be

470
00:25:15,040 --> 00:25:17,760
Speaker 5: dipping our toe in and out. So we lived across

471
00:25:17,760 --> 00:25:21,520
Speaker 5: the street in our own house outside of the gates

472
00:25:21,600 --> 00:25:24,440
Speaker 5: of the commune, but we would go back for dinners

473
00:25:24,480 --> 00:25:29,320
Speaker 5: like group dinners and the fire ceremonies and any kind

474
00:25:29,359 --> 00:25:31,400
Speaker 5: of like event that was going on.

475
00:25:32,080 --> 00:25:34,480
Speaker 2: So how did the children that stayed there, Like how

476
00:25:34,480 --> 00:25:38,560
Speaker 2: did they learn to do all? I'm always so fascinated,

477
00:25:38,600 --> 00:25:40,639
Speaker 2: like how did they learn to read? How did they

478
00:25:40,720 --> 00:25:44,320
Speaker 2: learn math? How did they was a traditional classes.

479
00:25:43,960 --> 00:25:44,960
Speaker 3: It's like homeschool.

480
00:25:45,119 --> 00:25:48,840
Speaker 5: I guess, yeah, it was. I don't remember what the

481
00:25:48,880 --> 00:25:50,840
Speaker 5: classes were. The only thing I remember is we took

482
00:25:50,840 --> 00:25:53,879
Speaker 5: a field trip to an art museum and I remember

483
00:25:53,880 --> 00:25:57,760
Speaker 5: the African art exhibits. That's all I remember from school.

484
00:25:57,760 --> 00:25:59,440
Speaker 5: And then the Land Before Time story that I told

485
00:25:59,440 --> 00:26:00,080
Speaker 5: in my book.

486
00:26:00,160 --> 00:26:02,600
Speaker 1: Right, will you will you refresh us with us?

487
00:26:03,520 --> 00:26:06,119
Speaker 5: Yeah, so we took a field trip to the theater

488
00:26:06,280 --> 00:26:07,520
Speaker 5: to go see Land Before Time.

489
00:26:07,640 --> 00:26:09,240
Speaker 3: As we all know and love this.

490
00:26:09,280 --> 00:26:12,080
Speaker 4: Movie, loves Land before time? Are you kidding me?

491
00:26:13,000 --> 00:26:14,040
Speaker 3: They're so cute.

492
00:26:14,440 --> 00:26:16,760
Speaker 5: So we're in there and then all of a sudden,

493
00:26:16,880 --> 00:26:20,200
Speaker 5: there's like men dressed in black kind of silently moving

494
00:26:20,240 --> 00:26:23,679
Speaker 5: through the theater, and then they leave, and then the

495
00:26:23,720 --> 00:26:26,359
Speaker 5: teachers are like, we're leaving. So this is mid movie

496
00:26:26,520 --> 00:26:29,120
Speaker 5: and we all are forced to get up and leave

497
00:26:29,160 --> 00:26:32,880
Speaker 5: in the middle of the movie. And I'm like, what happened?

498
00:26:33,480 --> 00:26:34,920
Speaker 5: No one will tell us. We get back on the

499
00:26:34,960 --> 00:26:38,119
Speaker 5: bus and go, but there's a kid missing. And it

500
00:26:38,240 --> 00:26:41,320
Speaker 5: was this girl named Ganga whose parents had organized a

501
00:26:41,320 --> 00:26:43,680
Speaker 5: sting operation to get her back from the Guru because

502
00:26:43,680 --> 00:26:45,639
Speaker 5: the Guru would have returned their child.

503
00:26:46,119 --> 00:26:48,959
Speaker 1: This bitch was taking people's babies.

504
00:26:49,080 --> 00:26:53,080
Speaker 4: Like that's so crazy, and like was she taking care

505
00:26:53,160 --> 00:26:55,800
Speaker 4: of them or like was she just like mine? And

506
00:26:55,840 --> 00:26:58,160
Speaker 4: like they're just living in the house and no one's watching,

507
00:26:58,320 --> 00:26:59,600
Speaker 4: Like what was how did that work?

508
00:27:00,160 --> 00:27:03,240
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't really know all the specifics.

509
00:27:03,320 --> 00:27:07,040
Speaker 5: I do know that they were living in like sort

510
00:27:07,040 --> 00:27:12,120
Speaker 5: of her chambers, which they had like their own rooms,

511
00:27:12,240 --> 00:27:16,200
Speaker 5: and I think it was just like kids rooming with kids,

512
00:27:16,280 --> 00:27:18,720
Speaker 5: and so there were like six year olds and thirteen

513
00:27:18,800 --> 00:27:20,800
Speaker 5: year olds and like who knows what was going on

514
00:27:20,840 --> 00:27:21,120
Speaker 5: in there.

515
00:27:21,280 --> 00:27:21,960
Speaker 1: WHOA.

516
00:27:22,000 --> 00:27:23,480
Speaker 3: I mean, I know some of the things that were

517
00:27:23,480 --> 00:27:26,040
Speaker 3: going on, and it wasn't good. Yeah, I can imagine that.

518
00:27:26,160 --> 00:27:27,240
Speaker 3: Not my story to tell.

519
00:27:28,320 --> 00:27:30,800
Speaker 2: One of the things that struck me was just how

520
00:27:31,280 --> 00:27:33,600
Speaker 2: y'all were living when you were on the compound. Like

521
00:27:33,680 --> 00:27:37,560
Speaker 2: it was like closets would be transformed into bedrooms and

522
00:27:37,640 --> 00:27:41,920
Speaker 2: just so many people in one area. Like it's kind

523
00:27:41,920 --> 00:27:44,280
Speaker 2: of hard to even imagine what that looked like.

524
00:27:44,800 --> 00:27:47,040
Speaker 5: It's like I lived in a sorority house when I

525
00:27:47,080 --> 00:27:50,399
Speaker 5: was in college. Yeah, and they had three girls in

526
00:27:50,480 --> 00:27:52,960
Speaker 5: one bedroom and it's just a shit show.

527
00:27:54,880 --> 00:27:57,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you were used to it. You were like,

528
00:27:57,320 --> 00:28:00,000
Speaker 2: I lived with three people in a closet, Oh my god.

529
00:28:00,240 --> 00:28:02,480
Speaker 5: And then I go on Survivor and I'm like, oh yeah,

530
00:28:02,640 --> 00:28:04,280
Speaker 5: like sleeping in the dirt fine.

531
00:28:04,720 --> 00:28:16,360
Speaker 7: Yeah.

532
00:28:16,480 --> 00:28:16,640
Speaker 2: Yeah.

533
00:28:16,680 --> 00:28:21,200
Speaker 4: It sounds like you were very comfortable in discomfort from

534
00:28:21,240 --> 00:28:23,959
Speaker 4: a very young age and that kind of became normal

535
00:28:24,000 --> 00:28:26,320
Speaker 4: to you to sort of live in this chaos.

536
00:28:26,880 --> 00:28:27,240
Speaker 3: Truly.

537
00:28:27,560 --> 00:28:31,239
Speaker 5: Yeah, like I could step into chaos and be in

538
00:28:31,440 --> 00:28:32,359
Speaker 5: a place of power.

539
00:28:33,200 --> 00:28:35,800
Speaker 1: Interesting, I'm also shadowing.

540
00:28:35,960 --> 00:28:37,879
Speaker 4: I want to shout out what your parents did when

541
00:28:37,920 --> 00:28:41,520
Speaker 4: you left, because one problem that so many people run

542
00:28:41,560 --> 00:28:43,680
Speaker 4: into when they do attempt to leave these groups is

543
00:28:43,720 --> 00:28:45,400
Speaker 4: if they do it too quickly, they're not going to

544
00:28:45,440 --> 00:28:47,360
Speaker 4: have the infrastructure when they leave. They're not going to

545
00:28:47,440 --> 00:28:50,640
Speaker 4: have the job or the support system, or it's going

546
00:28:50,680 --> 00:28:52,880
Speaker 4: to be too much all at once. And making that

547
00:28:53,000 --> 00:28:55,240
Speaker 4: plan and being really careful and measured about it and

548
00:28:55,280 --> 00:28:57,360
Speaker 4: making sure you have somewhere to go and somewhere to

549
00:28:57,440 --> 00:29:00,320
Speaker 4: land is so important. And it sounds like that's believe

550
00:29:00,320 --> 00:29:03,280
Speaker 4: why they were successful in their second attempt, So yeah,

551
00:29:03,320 --> 00:29:03,880
Speaker 4: good on them.

552
00:29:04,200 --> 00:29:07,880
Speaker 5: And it took a really long time. I was born there,

553
00:29:08,080 --> 00:29:10,560
Speaker 5: they left, they came back, and then when I was nine,

554
00:29:10,600 --> 00:29:13,600
Speaker 5: we left for good. So it was like nine years

555
00:29:14,200 --> 00:29:19,280
Speaker 5: of them working on finding enough support and then enough

556
00:29:20,360 --> 00:29:23,120
Speaker 5: assistance to sort of change the way that they were thinking.

557
00:29:23,800 --> 00:29:28,360
Speaker 5: Because the Guru had such mind control over people, and

558
00:29:28,640 --> 00:29:31,640
Speaker 5: she really hooked into their fear of They were just

559
00:29:31,800 --> 00:29:35,600
Speaker 5: terrified if people left. She would have like a goon

560
00:29:35,680 --> 00:29:38,880
Speaker 5: squad go and terrorize them, like scientology, how do you

561
00:29:38,960 --> 00:29:41,920
Speaker 5: see people do that? Yeah, she would have people like yeah,

562
00:29:42,360 --> 00:29:46,240
Speaker 5: doing crazy stuff to scare people. My dad met these

563
00:29:46,280 --> 00:29:48,920
Speaker 5: people at he worked outside of the commune. A lot

564
00:29:48,960 --> 00:29:51,920
Speaker 5: of people did, and they worked outside the commune. They

565
00:29:51,920 --> 00:29:53,840
Speaker 5: would make money and then the guru would be like, Okay,

566
00:29:53,840 --> 00:29:57,040
Speaker 5: pay me the money that you win. So he worked

567
00:29:57,080 --> 00:30:00,320
Speaker 5: in a high school and there was a teach there

568
00:30:00,320 --> 00:30:03,280
Speaker 5: are two teachers I think that like heard historian. We're like, no,

569
00:30:03,400 --> 00:30:05,280
Speaker 5: you need to like get some real support. So they

570
00:30:05,320 --> 00:30:10,640
Speaker 5: helped him with some psychotherapy and well, yeah, like mental

571
00:30:11,080 --> 00:30:13,240
Speaker 5: health support to get him out of this magical thinking.

572
00:30:13,360 --> 00:30:16,080
Speaker 3: I'm back into a right frame of mind exactly.

573
00:30:16,760 --> 00:30:19,240
Speaker 2: And that's what it feels like. There was this trigger

574
00:30:19,320 --> 00:30:22,440
Speaker 2: switch you get. Y'all moved to Atlanta and there was

575
00:30:22,480 --> 00:30:25,600
Speaker 2: like some tornadoes and hailstorms and all this scary thing

576
00:30:25,680 --> 00:30:28,520
Speaker 2: and scary things, and like the instinct is to be

577
00:30:28,560 --> 00:30:30,960
Speaker 2: like we're cursed or whatever. And then I was just like, no,

578
00:30:31,200 --> 00:30:33,400
Speaker 2: we're gonna survive this. And there was kind of the

579
00:30:33,600 --> 00:30:37,920
Speaker 2: switch from magical thinking and this gurus world to.

580
00:30:38,000 --> 00:30:41,440
Speaker 1: Like let's dig in and get through it.

581
00:30:41,880 --> 00:30:45,800
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was a switch to self sovereignty from being

582
00:30:45,920 --> 00:30:47,080
Speaker 5: under a spell.

583
00:30:47,600 --> 00:30:50,240
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a theme kind of recurring throughout your book

584
00:30:50,280 --> 00:30:53,680
Speaker 4: where you know, talking about giving yourself this space to

585
00:30:53,760 --> 00:30:57,400
Speaker 4: actually really think about what you've been experiencing. And I

586
00:30:57,720 --> 00:31:00,600
Speaker 4: you know, we see over and over again, people, one

587
00:31:00,640 --> 00:31:02,880
Speaker 4: of the big reasons that they don't leave for so

588
00:31:02,960 --> 00:31:05,480
Speaker 4: long is because they don't have the time and the space.

589
00:31:05,680 --> 00:31:07,680
Speaker 4: They're not allowed at the time and the space to

590
00:31:07,760 --> 00:31:10,040
Speaker 4: pause and think critically about what they're experiencing and what

591
00:31:10,120 --> 00:31:13,600
Speaker 4: the contradictions are that the leader is telling them versus

592
00:31:13,600 --> 00:31:16,320
Speaker 4: what they're doing. And you know, it's like when you

593
00:31:16,360 --> 00:31:18,920
Speaker 4: do start to venture into the outside world and do

594
00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:20,840
Speaker 4: some things for yourself and take.

595
00:31:20,680 --> 00:31:23,280
Speaker 1: A little bit of time to actually consider what's part.

596
00:31:23,160 --> 00:31:25,719
Speaker 2: Of the design. All part of the design to keep

597
00:31:25,760 --> 00:31:27,600
Speaker 2: you busy all the time. And when we spoke to

598
00:31:27,640 --> 00:31:30,880
Speaker 2: that Sarah Lawrence kid, he had like two hours by

599
00:31:30,960 --> 00:31:36,400
Speaker 2: himself and he deconstructed it's like really interesting how that

600
00:31:36,520 --> 00:31:37,680
Speaker 2: works well.

601
00:31:37,720 --> 00:31:44,680
Speaker 5: And it's like this corporeal intensity, right, It's like she's

602
00:31:44,800 --> 00:31:50,600
Speaker 5: using sleep deprivation. People are working constantly to keep the

603
00:31:50,680 --> 00:31:54,840
Speaker 5: machinery going. I mean, it's sort of everyone kind of

604
00:31:54,880 --> 00:31:58,840
Speaker 5: had to learn how to dissociate. Everyone was existing in

605
00:31:58,880 --> 00:32:02,880
Speaker 5: fight or flight in that sympathetic nervous system and that's

606
00:32:02,880 --> 00:32:06,920
Speaker 5: addictive and it's self reinforcing those chemicals that we have

607
00:32:07,440 --> 00:32:10,520
Speaker 5: when we go into the sympathetic nervous system is like, okay,

608
00:32:10,600 --> 00:32:11,840
Speaker 5: you're in survival mode.

609
00:32:12,040 --> 00:32:13,640
Speaker 3: We're going to keep you here because it's the only

610
00:32:13,680 --> 00:32:14,440
Speaker 3: way you can survive.

611
00:32:14,840 --> 00:32:18,600
Speaker 5: So you're in that scarcity mode of operating in your body.

612
00:32:19,040 --> 00:32:22,040
Speaker 5: And then I think once we left the commune, my

613
00:32:22,160 --> 00:32:24,800
Speaker 5: parents stayed in that mode of operating because they had

614
00:32:24,840 --> 00:32:27,600
Speaker 5: to establish like a whole new life for their kids

615
00:32:27,640 --> 00:32:30,920
Speaker 5: without any friends or family or any money, so they

616
00:32:30,960 --> 00:32:33,680
Speaker 5: were working multiple jobs. And then my sister and I

617
00:32:33,720 --> 00:32:35,920
Speaker 5: were sort of on our own to figure out how

618
00:32:35,920 --> 00:32:39,920
Speaker 5: to assimilate into society where there's like clothes and music

619
00:32:40,000 --> 00:32:45,959
Speaker 5: and shoes and we're like, what, yeah, that's wild. But

620
00:32:46,760 --> 00:32:50,760
Speaker 5: doing the body practices for myself. Once I left my marriage,

621
00:32:50,840 --> 00:32:53,760
Speaker 5: I started doing a lot of somatic work to bring

622
00:32:53,800 --> 00:32:57,960
Speaker 5: me into a place of recovery in my body, which

623
00:32:58,000 --> 00:33:01,520
Speaker 5: created capacity in my nervous system. And then when I

624
00:33:01,600 --> 00:33:05,080
Speaker 5: had more space internally in my body and felt safe

625
00:33:05,120 --> 00:33:08,720
Speaker 5: in my body, my thoughts changed. It was just this

626
00:33:08,800 --> 00:33:12,000
Speaker 5: sort of like cause and effect of creating the safety

627
00:33:12,040 --> 00:33:12,959
Speaker 5: inside my body.

628
00:33:13,280 --> 00:33:17,040
Speaker 4: It's so important, it's so important, and I suck it

629
00:33:17,280 --> 00:33:21,680
Speaker 4: doing it. No, Like, there's so much there's so much

630
00:33:21,680 --> 00:33:23,200
Speaker 4: in your book where you're like, I'm go, go, go go,

631
00:33:23,320 --> 00:33:27,000
Speaker 4: I'm like, you know, achieve more, accomplished more, do more.

632
00:33:27,040 --> 00:33:30,240
Speaker 1: And I'm like, that's me. I relate to this very much.

633
00:33:31,320 --> 00:33:35,720
Speaker 4: Okay, your parents leave, then you are sort of hit

634
00:33:35,840 --> 00:33:38,440
Speaker 4: with this like normal life world.

635
00:33:39,240 --> 00:33:40,800
Speaker 1: What is that transition like?

636
00:33:41,320 --> 00:33:46,120
Speaker 4: And how do you think the cult experiences shaped who

637
00:33:46,160 --> 00:33:46,719
Speaker 4: you became?

638
00:33:48,480 --> 00:33:54,520
Speaker 5: I mean, they're completely The foundation from which I built

639
00:33:54,560 --> 00:33:58,360
Speaker 5: my entire life was my childhood and those the years

640
00:33:58,360 --> 00:34:04,360
Speaker 5: from zero to nine commune. I just I like absorbed

641
00:34:05,000 --> 00:34:11,320
Speaker 5: power and strategy and survival and how to stay safe

642
00:34:11,840 --> 00:34:15,040
Speaker 5: and how to maneuver in any situation. I knew I

643
00:34:15,080 --> 00:34:18,760
Speaker 5: could do that from how I grew up because everyone

644
00:34:18,800 --> 00:34:22,879
Speaker 5: on the commune had a different strategy to survive and

645
00:34:22,920 --> 00:34:26,239
Speaker 5: I think I just inherited it by being around it

646
00:34:26,800 --> 00:34:29,000
Speaker 5: and then moving into And I think also, I'm like,

647
00:34:29,080 --> 00:34:32,800
Speaker 5: I'm a very resilient person and I lead with courage

648
00:34:32,800 --> 00:34:35,920
Speaker 5: and I love adventure. I'm just like that's my style

649
00:34:35,960 --> 00:34:38,319
Speaker 5: of done. I'm a seven on the Endeagram. I've done

650
00:34:38,360 --> 00:34:39,000
Speaker 5: all the tests.

651
00:34:39,120 --> 00:34:44,400
Speaker 2: I'm like, you know, like, I know, I'm the prospective,

652
00:34:44,560 --> 00:34:47,000
Speaker 2: whiny one. I'm different.

653
00:34:50,040 --> 00:34:52,879
Speaker 3: You can't fight who you are where you are.

654
00:34:55,520 --> 00:34:57,720
Speaker 5: Yeah, so just sort of like I just I found

655
00:34:57,719 --> 00:35:00,360
Speaker 5: my way I know I always will. There's thing in

656
00:35:00,440 --> 00:35:02,880
Speaker 5: me that like it holds the light even in the

657
00:35:02,960 --> 00:35:06,600
Speaker 5: darkest places, in the darkest situations. I think that's why

658
00:35:06,600 --> 00:35:09,000
Speaker 5: I was able to do so well on Survivor and

659
00:35:09,040 --> 00:35:13,640
Speaker 5: a container like a game that's based on killer be Killed, betrayal, manipulation,

660
00:35:13,880 --> 00:35:16,120
Speaker 5: lying like I have.

661
00:35:16,000 --> 00:35:19,880
Speaker 3: A great time out there. Well, I love this.

662
00:35:20,080 --> 00:35:22,360
Speaker 1: I was going to ask you because like, sometimes you know, we'll.

663
00:35:22,200 --> 00:35:24,280
Speaker 4: Talk to people who work on reality shows or whatever

664
00:35:24,360 --> 00:35:26,359
Speaker 4: world sometimes we'll hear from people who are on them,

665
00:35:26,400 --> 00:35:29,640
Speaker 4: and like obviously completely depending on the show and the context,

666
00:35:29,719 --> 00:35:31,200
Speaker 4: Like a lot of people will be like, oh, it

667
00:35:31,239 --> 00:35:33,239
Speaker 4: was totally cult that experience.

668
00:35:33,840 --> 00:35:34,640
Speaker 1: But it seems like.

669
00:35:34,600 --> 00:35:37,920
Speaker 4: You really loved your Survivor experiences and you viewed these

670
00:35:38,000 --> 00:35:40,399
Speaker 4: them as these like great challenges, Like what is your

671
00:35:40,480 --> 00:35:40,960
Speaker 4: take on that.

672
00:35:42,320 --> 00:35:44,839
Speaker 5: I didn't know what I was getting into when I

673
00:35:44,880 --> 00:35:48,239
Speaker 5: first said yes to go play, and I got a

674
00:35:49,160 --> 00:35:51,880
Speaker 5: harsh education my first season, and then I was like,

675
00:35:51,960 --> 00:35:54,359
Speaker 5: you know what I'm gonna I'm gonna win this game,

676
00:35:54,560 --> 00:35:57,040
Speaker 5: like I'm going to this is going to be my game,

677
00:35:57,760 --> 00:35:59,560
Speaker 5: and I just decided to do it.

678
00:36:00,560 --> 00:36:01,120
Speaker 3: I don't have.

679
00:36:01,200 --> 00:36:05,919
Speaker 5: Any desire to control people's lives like that would bring

680
00:36:05,920 --> 00:36:09,440
Speaker 5: me no joy and sounds like far too much work.

681
00:36:09,800 --> 00:36:12,839
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I do have so a lot.

682
00:36:12,920 --> 00:36:17,400
Speaker 5: I have this like cult leader ability the galvanize people.

683
00:36:17,400 --> 00:36:21,960
Speaker 3: And I could bring them into my sphere and have

684
00:36:22,120 --> 00:36:24,960
Speaker 3: them do what I want them to do. We work together.

685
00:36:25,120 --> 00:36:27,640
Speaker 5: So there was something about Survivor where I was like, Oh,

686
00:36:27,719 --> 00:36:30,120
Speaker 5: we are match made in heaven, like we were destined

687
00:36:30,239 --> 00:36:31,840
Speaker 5: to connect in this lifetime.

688
00:36:32,840 --> 00:36:34,560
Speaker 3: I think I was kind of born into it.

689
00:36:34,760 --> 00:36:37,719
Speaker 2: And yeah, I mean you're out at the campfire, like

690
00:36:37,960 --> 00:36:40,359
Speaker 2: sitting around the thing, just like when you.

691
00:36:40,280 --> 00:36:40,759
Speaker 1: Were a kid.

692
00:36:40,800 --> 00:36:44,920
Speaker 2: It's it's very interesting how it copied itself into a

693
00:36:44,920 --> 00:36:46,040
Speaker 2: different version.

694
00:36:46,160 --> 00:36:48,960
Speaker 5: Like carbon copied. When I look at images side by side,

695
00:36:49,080 --> 00:36:49,680
Speaker 5: it's wild.

696
00:36:50,480 --> 00:36:53,520
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Yeah when you were a kid. Did Ma?

697
00:36:53,800 --> 00:36:55,879
Speaker 1: Do you call her ma? What do you call her now?

698
00:36:56,040 --> 00:36:56,239
Speaker 3: Yeah?

699
00:36:56,719 --> 00:36:59,920
Speaker 4: Ma? It's so weird. She doesn't deserve that the mother title,

700
00:37:00,120 --> 00:37:04,640
Speaker 4: I know. But did she have like specific things she

701
00:37:04,800 --> 00:37:08,400
Speaker 4: was telling people they needed to accomplish spiritually that like

702
00:37:08,920 --> 00:37:10,440
Speaker 4: did she have those moving goalposts?

703
00:37:10,440 --> 00:37:11,279
Speaker 1: And if so, what were they?

704
00:37:12,680 --> 00:37:16,960
Speaker 5: Yeah? I think so everyone, Like people wanted to be

705
00:37:17,480 --> 00:37:19,799
Speaker 5: people just want to be chosen. They wanted to be

706
00:37:19,880 --> 00:37:23,040
Speaker 5: close to her, She knew how to use people's desire

707
00:37:23,120 --> 00:37:27,440
Speaker 5: to be chosen to manipulate them and this desire to

708
00:37:27,440 --> 00:37:28,120
Speaker 5: feel special.

709
00:37:28,440 --> 00:37:30,080
Speaker 3: Oh, she really exploited that.

710
00:37:30,680 --> 00:37:34,000
Speaker 5: And I think she knew exactly what people wanted to

711
00:37:34,040 --> 00:37:36,800
Speaker 5: achieve and excel at, and then she would give them

712
00:37:36,840 --> 00:37:38,719
Speaker 5: like the thing like there was a guy who I

713
00:37:38,719 --> 00:37:40,520
Speaker 5: mean there was there was people who she would turn

714
00:37:40,520 --> 00:37:43,960
Speaker 5: into that She called them Sonyawson's and that was just

715
00:37:44,000 --> 00:37:47,080
Speaker 5: like a celibate monk. So she was like, Okay, you're

716
00:37:47,080 --> 00:37:50,040
Speaker 5: going to do this until I say stop basically, which

717
00:37:50,080 --> 00:37:54,120
Speaker 5: means you're celibate, you shave your head, you're pure. She

718
00:37:54,200 --> 00:38:02,240
Speaker 5: used the principles of Brahmacharya in Hinduism. There's I've studied yoga,

719
00:38:02,320 --> 00:38:06,560
Speaker 5: so there's like these different things to abstain from. There's

720
00:38:06,600 --> 00:38:10,120
Speaker 5: these different principles and qualities to adhere to. It's like

721
00:38:10,200 --> 00:38:15,520
Speaker 5: non harming and Brahmaturia is like essentially has been distilled

722
00:38:15,560 --> 00:38:19,480
Speaker 5: into celibacy, which I don't think that really was the intent.

723
00:38:19,520 --> 00:38:21,839
Speaker 5: I think the intent was more like communion with the

724
00:38:21,880 --> 00:38:24,840
Speaker 5: divine rather than getting caught up in sort.

725
00:38:24,680 --> 00:38:26,400
Speaker 3: Of the material world.

726
00:38:26,920 --> 00:38:31,000
Speaker 5: But she made it into like your celibate, like you

727
00:38:31,040 --> 00:38:35,120
Speaker 5: can't masturbate, you can't hook up with anyone. You certainly

728
00:38:35,160 --> 00:38:39,480
Speaker 5: can't date, and people would do it, and she promised

729
00:38:39,560 --> 00:38:45,600
Speaker 5: them whatever rewards, spiritual rewards like powers, enlightenment. Mostly she

730
00:38:45,719 --> 00:38:48,239
Speaker 5: was going for. People were going for enlightenment. They wanted

731
00:38:48,280 --> 00:38:49,839
Speaker 5: to achieve Nirvana.

732
00:38:50,640 --> 00:38:52,080
Speaker 1: Was she hooking up with people?

733
00:38:52,480 --> 00:38:54,760
Speaker 3: Honestly, I have no idea. I know she dated.

734
00:38:54,960 --> 00:38:59,719
Speaker 5: She dated the like karate teacher who was like the

735
00:39:00,040 --> 00:39:04,360
Speaker 5: dojo master, and that's why, like they started this business

736
00:39:04,400 --> 00:39:05,680
Speaker 5: that was like karate gear.

737
00:39:05,760 --> 00:39:10,319
Speaker 2: It was like foam pads for we've never heard of

738
00:39:10,320 --> 00:39:13,239
Speaker 2: that one or usually it's food. This is interesting.

739
00:39:13,360 --> 00:39:16,399
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think, yeah, I think they probably did food too,

740
00:39:16,440 --> 00:39:18,520
Speaker 5: but I know they definitely did it. It was called

741
00:39:18,600 --> 00:39:21,239
Speaker 5: macho and we would go into the plant. It was

742
00:39:21,280 --> 00:39:23,760
Speaker 5: like a rubber plant where they would like coat these

743
00:39:23,800 --> 00:39:27,600
Speaker 5: foam pads with rubber paint and it smelled cool, like

744
00:39:27,840 --> 00:39:29,240
Speaker 5: so disgustingly text.

745
00:39:30,280 --> 00:39:31,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that was the business.

746
00:39:31,560 --> 00:39:36,000
Speaker 5: And my parents were trained in taekwondo, and a lot

747
00:39:36,000 --> 00:39:38,160
Speaker 5: of people were trained in taekwondo, and they were also

748
00:39:38,200 --> 00:39:40,840
Speaker 5: eating a vegetarian diet because that's been sort of the

749
00:39:40,960 --> 00:39:44,399
Speaker 5: Indian yoga way, and so she would have because she's

750
00:39:44,480 --> 00:39:48,000
Speaker 5: dating the dojo guy. They would go and do these

751
00:39:48,040 --> 00:39:52,399
Speaker 5: tournaments all over Florida and they were passing out because

752
00:39:52,440 --> 00:39:53,640
Speaker 5: they didn't have enough nutrition.

753
00:39:53,840 --> 00:39:54,600
Speaker 1: Oh my god.

754
00:39:55,080 --> 00:40:00,279
Speaker 5: So she was like, okay, okay, we can eat fish.

755
00:40:00,320 --> 00:40:02,520
Speaker 2: We can eat fish so we don't pass out while

756
00:40:02,520 --> 00:40:03,160
Speaker 2: we're fighting.

757
00:40:03,480 --> 00:40:07,720
Speaker 4: Colt Leada doing taekwondo tournaments is such an incredible visual.

758
00:40:08,040 --> 00:40:08,759
Speaker 7: It's so good.

759
00:40:10,160 --> 00:40:15,000
Speaker 2: She's really intriguing. I mean, you want to lose weight,

760
00:40:15,200 --> 00:40:17,960
Speaker 2: you start doing breath work, you end up in Florida.

761
00:40:18,600 --> 00:40:20,560
Speaker 1: That's an intriguing arc.

762
00:40:21,160 --> 00:40:22,279
Speaker 3: It's quite a trajectory.

763
00:40:22,320 --> 00:40:24,719
Speaker 5: And of course she did a lot of charity work

764
00:40:24,760 --> 00:40:27,640
Speaker 5: as well, Like she worked with the AIDS epidemic in

765
00:40:27,680 --> 00:40:31,680
Speaker 5: a significant way and gave a lot to support that cause.

766
00:40:31,719 --> 00:40:35,799
Speaker 5: So we see that always as they offset the darkness

767
00:40:35,840 --> 00:40:37,959
Speaker 5: with like this kind of benevolence.

768
00:40:38,040 --> 00:40:40,920
Speaker 3: But you're like, where does that actually come from?

769
00:40:41,120 --> 00:40:44,000
Speaker 4: Meanwhile, I think you wrote correct me if I'm getting

770
00:40:44,000 --> 00:40:46,520
Speaker 4: this detail wrong, but I think you wrote that early

771
00:40:46,600 --> 00:40:49,200
Speaker 4: on she was having people call their family members to

772
00:40:49,280 --> 00:40:52,480
Speaker 4: essentially try to scam them into giving their money to her.

773
00:40:52,760 --> 00:40:53,600
Speaker 3: Thank you.

774
00:40:53,600 --> 00:40:56,279
Speaker 5: You reminded me that's why my parents left the first time.

775
00:40:56,280 --> 00:40:59,640
Speaker 5: When I was in the baby because she had already

776
00:40:59,640 --> 00:41:02,600
Speaker 5: taken and everyone's money, everything they had, Like she took

777
00:41:02,640 --> 00:41:05,800
Speaker 5: my dad's precious guitar and like fold it for whatever.

778
00:41:06,239 --> 00:41:06,600
Speaker 1: Damn.

779
00:41:07,080 --> 00:41:07,319
Speaker 3: I know.

780
00:41:07,360 --> 00:41:11,719
Speaker 5: People were giving her their like frised, heartfelt possessions for

781
00:41:11,800 --> 00:41:15,000
Speaker 5: whatever she used them for. And then she was asking

782
00:41:15,440 --> 00:41:17,880
Speaker 5: people to call their parents and say they had cancer

783
00:41:17,960 --> 00:41:20,000
Speaker 5: so they could get money from their parents.

784
00:41:20,040 --> 00:41:21,040
Speaker 3: And my parents were like.

785
00:41:21,080 --> 00:41:23,120
Speaker 1: That's so sad, that's the.

786
00:41:23,000 --> 00:41:25,919
Speaker 5: Line, and then we're not gonna do that, and they

787
00:41:26,120 --> 00:41:28,040
Speaker 5: fled and they the middle of the night.

788
00:41:29,040 --> 00:41:29,440
Speaker 1: Damn.

789
00:41:31,040 --> 00:41:35,160
Speaker 4: Somebody doing good deeds or you know, being charitable in

790
00:41:35,200 --> 00:41:38,520
Speaker 4: one area is just like not enough of an indicator

791
00:41:38,600 --> 00:41:40,880
Speaker 4: of whether or not you should trust them because so often,

792
00:41:41,120 --> 00:41:43,680
Speaker 4: I mean always, they're always doing something good or like

793
00:41:43,760 --> 00:41:46,440
Speaker 4: providing something helpful to the world, or they wouldn't get

794
00:41:46,440 --> 00:41:47,600
Speaker 4: followers in the first place.

795
00:41:47,880 --> 00:41:50,480
Speaker 2: It's just like priming you to trust them more.

796
00:41:50,760 --> 00:41:51,680
Speaker 3: To trust yes.

797
00:41:51,719 --> 00:41:56,239
Speaker 5: And it's like it's their public facing persona as benevolent,

798
00:41:56,320 --> 00:41:59,600
Speaker 5: generous mother who's caretaking the six sort of like mother

799
00:41:59,680 --> 00:42:03,560
Speaker 5: to style, and then there's photo ops for all of that,

800
00:42:03,880 --> 00:42:07,320
Speaker 5: and that's what the world sees. But behind closed doors

801
00:42:07,320 --> 00:42:10,360
Speaker 5: and we hear about this all the time in domestic

802
00:42:11,000 --> 00:42:15,359
Speaker 5: situations of abuse and control inside the house. But then

803
00:42:15,400 --> 00:42:18,759
Speaker 5: you see the partner whatever going out into the world

804
00:42:18,840 --> 00:42:20,840
Speaker 5: and being like the best dad at the pta.

805
00:42:22,120 --> 00:42:24,680
Speaker 2: You know, there's so many parallels you you wrote in

806
00:42:24,680 --> 00:42:28,440
Speaker 2: the book. Once her devotees were locked in, Ma began

807
00:42:28,719 --> 00:42:31,880
Speaker 2: behaving more erratically, And I think that that's just so

808
00:42:32,040 --> 00:42:36,520
Speaker 2: true of most cult most abusive relationships, Like as soon

809
00:42:36,560 --> 00:42:39,320
Speaker 2: as you are locked in, it all switches.

810
00:42:39,960 --> 00:42:42,919
Speaker 5: As soon as you're married and pregnant at waybe that's

811
00:42:42,920 --> 00:42:43,680
Speaker 5: when they get.

812
00:42:43,560 --> 00:42:45,080
Speaker 1: You, right, I get you.

813
00:42:45,920 --> 00:42:48,399
Speaker 4: I imagine myself in that scenario as the cult leader,

814
00:42:48,400 --> 00:42:50,319
Speaker 4: and I'm like, wouldn't that be the moment where you'd

815
00:42:50,360 --> 00:42:54,520
Speaker 4: be like, COOLT got the you know, Gumma followers, let's

816
00:42:54,560 --> 00:42:57,280
Speaker 4: just chill now. But instead they lose their fucking minds.

817
00:42:57,360 --> 00:43:00,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you're not mentally ill.

818
00:43:01,400 --> 00:43:02,280
Speaker 1: That's the problem.

819
00:43:02,400 --> 00:43:06,440
Speaker 2: And it's and it's true because if they want mentally ill,

820
00:43:06,680 --> 00:43:09,920
Speaker 2: it could just be fun, yeah, and it could just

821
00:43:10,000 --> 00:43:13,680
Speaker 2: be like a compound where people ran around and believed

822
00:43:13,719 --> 00:43:16,240
Speaker 2: in something bigger than themselves. But it's like these leaders

823
00:43:16,320 --> 00:43:19,920
Speaker 2: are always going to make it horrible.

824
00:43:20,480 --> 00:43:24,719
Speaker 5: I think it starts with such a lack of love internally,

825
00:43:25,239 --> 00:43:28,200
Speaker 5: it's like the hungry ghosts. Like gabora mate talks about

826
00:43:28,560 --> 00:43:31,319
Speaker 5: the land of the hungry Ghost. It's like this bit

827
00:43:31,400 --> 00:43:34,439
Speaker 5: of hell where there's a hungry ghost and you keep

828
00:43:34,480 --> 00:43:36,799
Speaker 5: pouring in and pouring in and there's it's just there's

829
00:43:36,800 --> 00:43:39,280
Speaker 5: a there's a hole in them or something. They can't

830
00:43:39,680 --> 00:43:43,960
Speaker 5: really fill up with anything, love, enough, material goods. Nothing

831
00:43:44,560 --> 00:43:46,200
Speaker 5: is going to be enough for them, so they just

832
00:43:46,760 --> 00:43:48,680
Speaker 5: like once they get more power, they just want more

833
00:43:48,719 --> 00:43:49,160
Speaker 5: and more and.

834
00:43:49,120 --> 00:43:51,600
Speaker 2: More, and they want to hurt people and they want

835
00:43:51,760 --> 00:43:54,440
Speaker 2: to like get you sicker.

836
00:43:54,960 --> 00:43:56,400
Speaker 1: I feel like sometimes.

837
00:43:55,920 --> 00:43:58,560
Speaker 4: They really and I'd be curious if you have any

838
00:43:58,560 --> 00:44:01,000
Speaker 4: strong opinions on where she is on the spectrum. But

839
00:44:01,160 --> 00:44:03,160
Speaker 4: as we talk about, like, I think sometimes they think

840
00:44:03,239 --> 00:44:04,400
Speaker 4: they are being good to people.

841
00:44:04,640 --> 00:44:06,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's and it's so hard to know which one

842
00:44:06,680 --> 00:44:07,000
Speaker 1: it is.

843
00:44:08,080 --> 00:44:12,880
Speaker 5: I do think she was definitely sucked into her own delusion.

844
00:44:14,160 --> 00:44:17,440
Speaker 5: I don't think she realized what she was doing was

845
00:44:17,480 --> 00:44:22,080
Speaker 5: so harmful. I really don't think she had that capacity

846
00:44:22,200 --> 00:44:26,440
Speaker 5: for awareness and that kind of conscious understanding of what

847
00:44:26,440 --> 00:44:30,120
Speaker 5: she was doing. But she had like a drug addiction problem,

848
00:44:30,560 --> 00:44:34,239
Speaker 5: and I think she just had that that delusion that

849
00:44:34,320 --> 00:44:36,120
Speaker 5: some people just get caught in and then the whole

850
00:44:36,120 --> 00:44:38,880
Speaker 5: world around them becomes the delusion, and then it just

851
00:44:38,960 --> 00:44:42,800
Speaker 5: reinforces that person's fantasy about who they are and what

852
00:44:43,680 --> 00:44:46,160
Speaker 5: they're doing, and they think they think they're good.

853
00:44:46,719 --> 00:44:50,000
Speaker 1: Were her kids in the group, I.

854
00:44:49,960 --> 00:44:51,800
Speaker 3: Actually don't know. I know that she had a daughter,

855
00:44:52,160 --> 00:44:52,880
Speaker 3: she had a son.

856
00:44:53,920 --> 00:44:56,600
Speaker 5: The daughter had some like there's some articles about the

857
00:44:56,680 --> 00:45:00,920
Speaker 5: daughter online where the daughter sued because she was married

858
00:45:00,960 --> 00:45:04,120
Speaker 5: off at thirteen years old to some older man by

859
00:45:04,160 --> 00:45:04,600
Speaker 5: her mother.

860
00:45:04,920 --> 00:45:05,320
Speaker 7: Damn.

861
00:45:06,160 --> 00:45:10,160
Speaker 4: Yeah, Wow, these dynamics are being modeled for you at

862
00:45:10,160 --> 00:45:13,640
Speaker 4: this young age, and it sounds like you learn these

863
00:45:13,680 --> 00:45:16,760
Speaker 4: skills that were helpful for you on Survivor. But also

864
00:45:17,160 --> 00:45:20,360
Speaker 4: you write in your book about how you were entering

865
00:45:20,360 --> 00:45:23,319
Speaker 4: these really really high intensity situations like for so many

866
00:45:23,400 --> 00:45:26,959
Speaker 4: years and kind of not stopping and then recovering would

867
00:45:27,000 --> 00:45:30,680
Speaker 4: be so difficult because all you knew was to keep going.

868
00:45:31,200 --> 00:45:33,280
Speaker 4: You touched on it earlier, But tell us more about

869
00:45:33,360 --> 00:45:36,399
Speaker 4: the process of learning how to recover from these high

870
00:45:36,440 --> 00:45:38,839
Speaker 4: intensity situations so you're not in fight or flight all

871
00:45:38,880 --> 00:45:39,280
Speaker 4: the time.

872
00:45:39,880 --> 00:45:42,360
Speaker 5: Well, it took me a really long time to even

873
00:45:43,080 --> 00:45:48,000
Speaker 5: start to believe recovery was a thing like I lift

874
00:45:48,000 --> 00:45:51,440
Speaker 5: weights now, and my weightlifting instructors are like, you need

875
00:45:51,480 --> 00:45:53,560
Speaker 5: a sleep, you need to take EPs and salt baths,

876
00:45:53,640 --> 00:45:56,200
Speaker 5: you need to have your nutrition. And I'm like what,

877
00:45:56,520 --> 00:46:00,560
Speaker 5: because I would just push myself on empty and accomplish

878
00:46:00,719 --> 00:46:04,799
Speaker 5: these pretty heroic feats. So I was like, oh, my

879
00:46:04,840 --> 00:46:08,560
Speaker 5: body doesn't need that at all. Once I made a

880
00:46:08,800 --> 00:46:12,600
Speaker 5: very big mess of my life, I was like, okay, okaykay,

881
00:46:12,760 --> 00:46:14,680
Speaker 5: like let's don't and also.

882
00:46:14,600 --> 00:46:20,160
Speaker 8: When let's like, let's take a look at what this is,

883
00:46:20,520 --> 00:46:25,120
Speaker 8: but really it was this I didn't want to Like

884
00:46:25,200 --> 00:46:29,560
Speaker 8: some like the pain in my present moment felt more

885
00:46:29,640 --> 00:46:34,360
Speaker 8: bearable and more acceptable than visiting the pain of my past.

886
00:46:34,880 --> 00:46:37,920
Speaker 5: So I think I just stayed in this cycle of

887
00:46:38,520 --> 00:46:41,560
Speaker 5: survival mode because it kept me only like in this

888
00:46:41,600 --> 00:46:44,520
Speaker 5: sort of surface level pain that was just like, oh,

889
00:46:44,560 --> 00:46:46,960
Speaker 5: I could handle it, Like if I'm doing an endurance

890
00:46:47,040 --> 00:46:49,920
Speaker 5: challenge on Survivor and holding my arm up for six hours,

891
00:46:50,200 --> 00:46:52,839
Speaker 5: I'm not thinking about how I.

892
00:46:52,840 --> 00:46:55,040
Speaker 3: Was totally exploited as a child.

893
00:46:55,200 --> 00:46:59,799
Speaker 5: And you know, my friends and family were really were

894
00:46:59,840 --> 00:47:00,840
Speaker 5: you used and abused?

895
00:47:01,320 --> 00:47:03,480
Speaker 3: So it's just it was too hard to look at that.

896
00:47:03,760 --> 00:47:06,480
Speaker 5: And also my family like we didn't open up the conversation,

897
00:47:06,960 --> 00:47:09,319
Speaker 5: like it was just we just moved on and that

898
00:47:09,520 --> 00:47:12,160
Speaker 5: was the survival strategy for us.

899
00:47:12,160 --> 00:47:14,400
Speaker 3: That just helped us create a new life.

900
00:47:14,320 --> 00:47:14,520
Speaker 1: Yeah.

901
00:47:14,560 --> 00:47:17,960
Speaker 5: So then now at this point in my life, I'm like, oh,

902
00:47:18,000 --> 00:47:21,160
Speaker 5: I don't. I want to create something very different in

903
00:47:21,200 --> 00:47:23,200
Speaker 5: my present and in my future than what I created

904
00:47:23,239 --> 00:47:25,200
Speaker 5: in the past. I want to have a life that's

905
00:47:25,280 --> 00:47:29,000
Speaker 5: really rich, really abundant. Really do you see loving fun

906
00:47:29,719 --> 00:47:32,680
Speaker 5: like feels good. I want to life that feel really good.

907
00:47:32,719 --> 00:47:34,759
Speaker 5: I want to be connected to pleasure and sensuality, and

908
00:47:34,800 --> 00:47:37,440
Speaker 5: I have to be in.

909
00:47:36,600 --> 00:47:40,560
Speaker 3: My body and enjoy being in my body to have that.

910
00:47:41,239 --> 00:47:46,520
Speaker 5: So I've started incorporating a buck ton of recovery. Like

911
00:47:46,719 --> 00:47:50,120
Speaker 5: I do acupuncture, I do roll fan, I go to

912
00:47:50,160 --> 00:47:51,040
Speaker 5: somatic therapy.

913
00:47:51,160 --> 00:47:52,640
Speaker 3: I'll take naps during the day.

914
00:47:53,360 --> 00:47:56,080
Speaker 5: I do yoga nindra, which is like a very gentle

915
00:47:56,200 --> 00:48:01,360
Speaker 5: form of deep relaxation, progressive relaxation. You just lay down,

916
00:48:01,080 --> 00:48:01,880
Speaker 5: I go into this.

917
00:48:02,320 --> 00:48:06,240
Speaker 3: I can't do that. Oh you would love that, I'm gonna.

918
00:48:07,600 --> 00:48:08,719
Speaker 1: You sound like me.

919
00:48:09,200 --> 00:48:11,040
Speaker 4: Like, So, I had a period which I talked about

920
00:48:11,080 --> 00:48:14,200
Speaker 4: endlessly on this podcast, where I was like in hardcore

921
00:48:14,320 --> 00:48:19,640
Speaker 4: OCB and like just recurring severe anxiety, and I did

922
00:48:19,920 --> 00:48:23,320
Speaker 4: so much mental health shit in such a short period

923
00:48:23,360 --> 00:48:23,840
Speaker 4: of time where I.

924
00:48:23,880 --> 00:48:25,480
Speaker 1: Was like, I'm gonna do everything. I'm gonna get the

925
00:48:25,520 --> 00:48:26,880
Speaker 1: most better anyone's ever gotten.

926
00:48:28,360 --> 00:48:29,960
Speaker 4: Even when it came to my recovery, I was like,

927
00:48:29,960 --> 00:48:30,960
Speaker 4: I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go.

928
00:48:31,520 --> 00:48:34,480
Speaker 2: Oh no, I'm gonna fix my brain more than anyone's

929
00:48:34,520 --> 00:48:35,040
Speaker 2: ever fixed.

930
00:48:35,040 --> 00:48:38,040
Speaker 3: The brain such a hard habit to break.

931
00:48:39,560 --> 00:48:42,600
Speaker 1: What do you a Scorpio moon, I'm a scorpio moon.

932
00:48:42,760 --> 00:48:45,960
Speaker 4: I'm a sagittarius. Everything I don't know what it means.

933
00:48:45,960 --> 00:48:49,600
Speaker 4: I don't do astrology. Well, your book is called Nice

934
00:48:49,640 --> 00:48:51,759
Speaker 4: Girls Don't Win. How I burned it all down to

935
00:48:51,800 --> 00:48:54,759
Speaker 4: claim my power? And I will say, like, beyond the

936
00:48:54,760 --> 00:48:56,600
Speaker 4: cold stuff, there's so much in this book that I

937
00:48:56,600 --> 00:49:00,600
Speaker 4: connected with, just like as a woman, it's like I

938
00:49:00,640 --> 00:49:03,439
Speaker 4: feel this, I feel this, I feel this even down

939
00:49:03,480 --> 00:49:06,520
Speaker 4: to brother overdose saying like there's just so much in

940
00:49:06,560 --> 00:49:08,719
Speaker 4: there that I really connected with.

941
00:49:08,840 --> 00:49:11,080
Speaker 1: So thank you for writing it and thank you for sharing.

942
00:49:11,760 --> 00:49:12,719
Speaker 3: Ah, thank you.

943
00:49:13,239 --> 00:49:17,080
Speaker 5: I haven't had a conversation that's been so focused on

944
00:49:17,719 --> 00:49:20,920
Speaker 5: my childhood. And it's so interesting because this is the

945
00:49:20,960 --> 00:49:23,320
Speaker 5: work that I'm doing right now is to go into

946
00:49:23,360 --> 00:49:26,959
Speaker 5: those memories and like feel that part of my life

947
00:49:26,960 --> 00:49:28,960
Speaker 5: because I haven't really touched on it.

948
00:49:29,080 --> 00:49:30,640
Speaker 3: So it was perfect timing.

949
00:49:31,040 --> 00:49:35,360
Speaker 4: Yeah, and there we will leave it with poverty.

950
00:49:35,719 --> 00:49:37,880
Speaker 1: I'm so glad she came on. Megan.

951
00:49:38,200 --> 00:49:41,600
Speaker 4: It's the time of the day where I ask you,

952
00:49:42,239 --> 00:49:48,000
Speaker 4: if you think you would join Ma's Ashram Ashram, how

953
00:49:48,000 --> 00:49:48,920
Speaker 4: do you say it?

954
00:49:48,920 --> 00:49:49,799
Speaker 1: It doesn't even matter.

955
00:49:49,880 --> 00:49:53,120
Speaker 2: I feel like we've just been mispronouncing so many Indian

956
00:49:53,239 --> 00:49:56,879
Speaker 2: terms this podcast that it's it's like it doesn't matter

957
00:49:56,920 --> 00:49:58,880
Speaker 2: how I say it, because it's going to be wrong.

958
00:50:00,040 --> 00:50:05,320
Speaker 4: Okay, the Internet or like dictionaries say it's ashram, but

959
00:50:05,360 --> 00:50:07,160
Speaker 4: I feel like nobody pronounces it that way, so I

960
00:50:07,160 --> 00:50:07,480
Speaker 4: don't know.

961
00:50:07,600 --> 00:50:09,440
Speaker 2: I mean, my cat just screamed at the top of

962
00:50:09,440 --> 00:50:13,799
Speaker 2: her lungs, so we're definitely saying something wrong and we apologize.

963
00:50:14,040 --> 00:50:19,000
Speaker 2: And indeed, indeed, would I join, Yeah, I probably would.

964
00:50:19,600 --> 00:50:23,440
Speaker 2: It has all the components that I am susceptible to,

965
00:50:23,960 --> 00:50:27,880
Speaker 2: such as a pretty piece of land. It sounds like

966
00:50:27,920 --> 00:50:35,680
Speaker 2: they were all doing like art and drugs and uh,

967
00:50:36,040 --> 00:50:39,680
Speaker 2: you know, just like the initial recipe of something that

968
00:50:39,760 --> 00:50:43,120
Speaker 2: I would think would be healthy. I can see how

969
00:50:43,200 --> 00:50:46,120
Speaker 2: quickly I would get sucked in, and then I would

970
00:50:46,120 --> 00:50:49,120
Speaker 2: be very confused when it started becoming abusive and horrible

971
00:50:49,160 --> 00:50:52,080
Speaker 2: and would probably go through the exact same story arc

972
00:50:52,160 --> 00:50:53,040
Speaker 2: as her parents.

973
00:50:53,320 --> 00:50:56,960
Speaker 4: Yeah, I see this for you, Yeah, I do. Yeah.

974
00:50:57,160 --> 00:51:00,080
Speaker 1: Not for me, No, not when I look at ma I.

975
00:51:01,000 --> 00:51:02,920
Speaker 4: You know, some cult leaders, I look at their photos

976
00:51:02,960 --> 00:51:05,520
Speaker 4: and I'm like, yeah, I could see it. When I

977
00:51:05,520 --> 00:51:07,680
Speaker 4: look at her, I'm like, I feel like I would

978
00:51:07,719 --> 00:51:11,800
Speaker 4: be repulsed by the way that this woman styles herself.

979
00:51:12,040 --> 00:51:14,560
Speaker 1: It was the seventies, Lola, I know, I know.

980
00:51:15,160 --> 00:51:18,680
Speaker 2: I do think it's interesting that ron Das did that

981
00:51:18,760 --> 00:51:21,279
Speaker 2: like hit piece on her of like she sucks, but

982
00:51:21,320 --> 00:51:22,399
Speaker 2: it was already too late.

983
00:51:23,000 --> 00:51:25,319
Speaker 1: That's interesting to me, Like, I don't know.

984
00:51:25,680 --> 00:51:27,960
Speaker 4: Yeah, it doesn't matter, like, doesn't matter what comes out

985
00:51:28,000 --> 00:51:31,000
Speaker 4: about I mean, we see so many examples of this

986
00:51:31,160 --> 00:51:33,920
Speaker 4: in modern politics. It does not matter what comes out

987
00:51:33,920 --> 00:51:37,920
Speaker 4: about someone to most people who have once they follow them, yikes,

988
00:51:38,160 --> 00:51:41,200
Speaker 4: exactly because their allegiance is to the leader. It's like,

989
00:51:41,680 --> 00:51:43,200
Speaker 4: we talk about this all the time, but like, yeah,

990
00:51:43,239 --> 00:51:45,680
Speaker 4: we connect to the person and so whatever choice they

991
00:51:45,680 --> 00:51:50,279
Speaker 4: make must be the right choice. Yeah, which is not true.

992
00:51:50,760 --> 00:51:53,439
Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much for listening to another week

993
00:51:53,440 --> 00:51:54,040
Speaker 2: of trust Me.

994
00:51:54,280 --> 00:51:58,600
Speaker 1: We appreciate you. Please rate us five stars by some March.

995
00:51:58,800 --> 00:52:01,640
Speaker 4: And exactly Right store dot com.

996
00:52:01,640 --> 00:52:05,560
Speaker 2: And as always, remember to follow your gut watch job

997
00:52:05,600 --> 00:52:06,840
Speaker 2: for red flags.

998
00:52:06,600 --> 00:52:13,400
Speaker 4: And that ever ever trust me, Bye bye. This has

999
00:52:13,440 --> 00:52:16,440
Speaker 4: been an Exactly Right production hosted by me Lola.

1000
00:52:16,160 --> 00:52:19,480
Speaker 2: Blanc A, Me, Megan Elizabeth. Our senior producer is G.

1001
00:52:19,680 --> 00:52:20,000
Speaker 1: Holly.

1002
00:52:20,280 --> 00:52:22,120
Speaker 4: This episode was mixed by John Bradley.

1003
00:52:22,280 --> 00:52:25,560
Speaker 2: Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain, and our guest booker

1004
00:52:25,680 --> 00:52:26,720
Speaker 2: is Patrick Kottner.

1005
00:52:27,040 --> 00:52:29,719
Speaker 4: Our theme song was composed by Holly Ambert Church.

1006
00:52:29,719 --> 00:52:33,399
Speaker 2: Trust Me as executive produced by Karen Kilgareth, Georgia hart

1007
00:52:33,440 --> 00:52:34,760
Speaker 2: Stark and Danielle Kramer.

1008
00:52:35,000 --> 00:52:37,240
Speaker 4: You can find us on Instagram at trust Me podcast

1009
00:52:37,440 --> 00:52:39,560
Speaker 4: or on TikTok at trust Me Cult podcast.

1010
00:52:39,880 --> 00:52:42,960
Speaker 2: Got your own story about cults, extreme belief, our manipulation,

1011
00:52:43,320 --> 00:52:46,360
Speaker 2: Shoot us an email at trustmepod at gmail dot com.

1012
00:52:46,400 --> 00:52:49,319
Speaker 4: Listen to trust Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

1013
00:52:49,400 --> 00:52:51,000
Speaker 4: or wherever you get your podcasts