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Speaker 1: Trust me? Do you trust me?

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Speaker 2: Right?

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Speaker 3: Ever?

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Speaker 1: Lead you as trust? This is the truth, the only truth.

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Speaker 2: If anybody ever tells you to just trust them, don't

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Speaker 2: welcome to trust me. The podcast about cults, extreme belief

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Speaker 2: and manipulation from two spiritual soldiers who've actually experienced it.

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Speaker 4: I'm Lola Blanc.

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Speaker 3: And I'm Megan Elizabeth, a spiritual soldier to My Core

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Speaker 3: to Your Core. This week, writer Harrison Hill joins us

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Speaker 3: to discuss his new book, The Oracle's Daughter, which follows

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Speaker 3: the rise and fall of a small cult called the

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Speaker 3: Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Court. WHOA, it's quite a mouthful.

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Speaker 3: He explains what the religious.

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Speaker 2: Landscape in America looked like at the time, with the

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Speaker 2: unrest of the sixties transitioning into a new Christianity movement,

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Speaker 2: and how this group's leader, Lila Carter, who later became Deborah,

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Speaker 2: began her spiritual journey on a commune called the Bear Tribe.

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Speaker 3: The Bear Tribe is something I would probably join. We'll

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Speaker 3: discuss the beginning of Leila's own visions of giving birth

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Speaker 3: to what she called spiritual soldiers, how her following grew,

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Speaker 3: and the parallels between her and Shaker leader Anne Lee

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Speaker 3: we'll talk about how the group became more controlling and

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Speaker 3: cruel over time, changing people's names to words like despise,

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Speaker 3: using physical punishment on its members, and even kidnapping a baby.

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Speaker 3: And finally we'll touch on how Llila's daughter, Sarah, the

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Speaker 3: subject of Harrison's book, found her way out. Very inspiring

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Speaker 3: story lots to dive into before we do that diving.

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Speaker 2: Since we're professional divers, are we No? I literally moved

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Speaker 2: in with my dad to avoid the diving program in

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Speaker 2: my school in middle school.

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Speaker 4: You I am like, like diving in the water.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, in Utah, my middle school had like a diving

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Speaker 2: like is.

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Speaker 3: The Mormon thing, like you guys are gonna have to

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Speaker 3: live in the ocean.

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Speaker 2: No, it was just like the pe decided like all right,

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Speaker 2: this quarter we're doing diving, and I was like, I'm

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Speaker 2: not doing that, So I'm gonna live with dad instead

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Speaker 2: because I that's how much I'm not a diver.

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Speaker 3: I learned to dive in a swimming pool. Well yeah,

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Speaker 3: this was a swimming pool as well.

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Speaker 4: It wasn't the ocean.

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Speaker 3: There wasn't the ocean and Utah, Yeah, okay, anyway, we're

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Speaker 3: not divers.

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Speaker 2: But on this podcast, sometimes we.

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Speaker 4: Dive into stories.

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Speaker 3: I get what you're caays, and you're probably wondering what

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Speaker 3: my cultiest thing is.

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Speaker 4: You're probably wanting to dive. Please let me dive.

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Speaker 3: Okay, diving straight in This week, according to The New

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Speaker 3: York Times and every other publication in the world, the

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Speaker 3: founder of One Taste.

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Speaker 2: Oh that was mine. Shit, It's okay, We'll share it.

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Speaker 2: We'll share it.

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Speaker 4: Nicole. How do you say her last name?

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Speaker 3: Day?

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Speaker 4: Don't?

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Speaker 2: I don't know Day don't. They don't.

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Speaker 3: She's gone to nine years in prison. She deserves. She

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Speaker 3: as a hefty.

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Speaker 4: Million upon million dollar fine.

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Speaker 3: We did do a rewind episode because we did speak

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Speaker 3: to somebody who very much was a part of One Taste.

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Speaker 4: Her name was Alana oak.

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Speaker 2: Our back again, another last name. I don't know how

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Speaker 2: to say. Why do last names need to be so hard?

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Speaker 2: No one's ever said mine correctly? So like, I get it,

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Speaker 2: but I'm sorry. If we're butchering, they will call me.

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Speaker 4: A Lola blank.

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Speaker 2: And by the way, if I mispronounce your name, you

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Speaker 2: can call me Lola blank anytime you want.

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Speaker 3: We care about mispronouncing names except for Nicoles.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, she sucks, Nicole de Doo.

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Speaker 3: She really sucks, and tell, since we're sharing a cultius thing,

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Speaker 3: tell the people a little bit what Nicole got herself into.

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Speaker 2: So for those who were not following this One Taste

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Speaker 2: saga that's been going on for years, this was a

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Speaker 2: self acclaimed like wellness and empowerment company. They had this

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Speaker 2: technique called orgasmic meditation and they were trying to become

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Speaker 2: as mainstream as yoga. All these celebrities participated in it.

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Speaker 4: Then it must be normal.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, of course Gwyneth Paltrow participated in it, so so

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Speaker 2: how could she not? And like it involved stuff like

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Speaker 2: group orgasm and was sort of like purporting to be

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Speaker 2: this like female led, like feminist, like you know, women

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Speaker 2: should have orgasms, they're good for you thing. But then

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Speaker 2: of course they were forcing labor from their followers, unpaid labor.

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Speaker 2: She was coercing people in all kinds of ways and

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Speaker 2: controlling their lives, as cul leaders tend to do.

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Speaker 4: So she has finally been sentenced.

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Speaker 3: Yes, as well as her co oc comp was Cherwit's

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Speaker 3: Rachel Cherwitz.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, they were also. I'm reading from the Times dot

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Speaker 2: Com an article written by Joshua Thurston called the Fall

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Speaker 2: of One Taste Orgasm meditation cult leader Nicole Dato or

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Speaker 2: however you say it. It says they used abusive and

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Speaker 2: manipulative tactics to gain control over some of the participants

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Speaker 2: when they were unable to pay the fees for the courses,

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Speaker 2: so they would force them to settle these debts by

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Speaker 2: working without pay, including manual labor as well as sexual

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Speaker 2: services exactly in some cases seven days, oh fucking week.

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Speaker 2: It doesn't say fucking I added the fucking yeah.

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Speaker 3: I mean, the sexual abuse is just built into the

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Speaker 3: system under the guise of like orgasms for women, and

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Speaker 3: then suddenly you're the vagina model that's supposed to be

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Speaker 3: uh getting orgasms.

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Speaker 2: It's just like, what the hell, yeah, because the conceit

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Speaker 2: of it is that someone else who has clothing on

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Speaker 2: masturbates a woman, and so like you are expected to

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Speaker 2: participate publicly in this like sexual ritual, which I'm sure, well,

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Speaker 2: I've actually spoken to at least one person who participated

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Speaker 2: and had a great time, but not everybody is going

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Speaker 2: to have that.

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Speaker 3: A year suggested that we go to it when we

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Speaker 3: first started this podcast in the early early days.

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Speaker 4: I was like, yeh, we were like, let's go look

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Speaker 4: at it.

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Speaker 3: Not for as investment to join it as investigative journalists,

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Speaker 3: of which we turned out never to, thank God, because

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Speaker 3: I would have joined it. You would have joined it,

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Speaker 3: for I would have joined it for sure. So yeah,

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Speaker 3: I'm glad we never went. I'm glad that they're being

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Speaker 3: held accountable, and I'm just feel so sorry for all

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Speaker 3: these women whose body was used and what should have

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Speaker 3: been a very empowering group.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, just like the time wasted to Sometimes I think

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Speaker 2: about that. I'm just like the years of your life

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Speaker 2: that is taken from you when you are exploited by

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Speaker 2: people like this. Yes, there's so many other wonderful things

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Speaker 2: people could be doing with their lives besides being exploited

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Speaker 2: by fucking Nicole Didaru. So I'm glad she's finally facing

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Speaker 2: some consequences for her actions. Yeah, well, do you know

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Speaker 2: who is giving nobody orgasms?

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Speaker 4: Pray tell who?

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Speaker 3: And Lee a shaker that we're going to get to

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Speaker 3: in this podcast.

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Speaker 2: That's right, because the leader of the Aggressive Christiani Emissions

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Speaker 2: Training Corps modeled herself after Ann Lee, and you'll get

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Speaker 2: to hear all about that.

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Speaker 4: Shall we talk to Harrison. Let's do.

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Speaker 2: Welcome Harrison Hill to trust me. Thank you so much

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Speaker 2: for joining us today.

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Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so looking

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Speaker 1: forward to this conversation me too.

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Speaker 2: Your writing is so literary and gripping for something that

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Speaker 2: is journalism, like I feel like normally when I read

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Speaker 2: a book about something from a journalistic point of view,

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Speaker 2: it can be quite dry. Shouldn't say normally, Sometimes it

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Speaker 2: can be quite dry. But it was so like gripping

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Speaker 2: the way. You're really beautiful writer, So.

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Speaker 4: I just want to say that, thank you.

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Speaker 2: So the book I'm referring to is The Oracle's Daughter,

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Speaker 2: The Rise and Fall of an American Cult, And so

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Speaker 2: of course we must first ask you what drew you

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Speaker 2: to this topic.

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Speaker 1: The story began for me back in twenty eighteen actually,

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Speaker 1: when my younger brother and his wife moved to an

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Speaker 1: apartment in Brooklyn, New York, which is where I myself live,

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Speaker 1: and their apartment flooded one day, and this woman across

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Speaker 1: the hallway from them came by and was like, let

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Speaker 1: me help clean up, and she did. And so in

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Speaker 1: the weeks following that, they of course became friendly and

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Speaker 1: you know, just got to know each other. And then

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Speaker 1: eventually this woman revealed that she'd grown up in a

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Speaker 1: cult and that it was a cult run by her mother,

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Speaker 1: and they, of course, my brother and his wife were like, whoa,

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Speaker 1: that's wild. We know somebody who's a writer who's always

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Speaker 1: looking for interesting stories. We should introduce you to him.

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Speaker 1: And that, of course was me and the woman, of course,

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Speaker 1: was Sarah Green. So we had our first interview back

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Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen. But yeah, it all began with a

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Speaker 1: flood in an apartment.

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Speaker 4: Whow kind of biblical?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, very serendipitous way

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Speaker 2: to get a story. All right, Well, talk to us

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Speaker 2: about Lylah Green, who later became Deborah, but let's start

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Speaker 2: with calling her Lilah because that was her birth name. Sure,

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Speaker 2: what was her early life like? She was kind of

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Speaker 2: an overachiever initially, right, and we're talking about the leader here.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, So the group in question is a group called

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Speaker 1: the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corp. I mean, it's quite

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Speaker 1: a mouthful. Whenever I say it, people's eyes kind of

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Speaker 1: expand as it gets to the end of the phrase.

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Speaker 2: The word aggressive, including that in the title is a

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Speaker 2: bold move, right.

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Speaker 1: It's not ambiguous what their vibe is.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So, anyways, the leaders of the group were these people

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Speaker 1: Jim and Lylah Green and Lilah was really the kind

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Speaker 1: of spiritual head of the group. She was the real

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Speaker 1: person at the top. But before she was a cult leader,

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Speaker 1: before she was you know, being tried for all these

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Speaker 1: various horrific crimes. She just a young woman in West Sacramento,

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Speaker 1: growing up in a very poor family. Her parents divorced

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Speaker 1: when she was young. Her father was an alcoholic, her

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Speaker 1: mom worked as an a as a she worked at

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Speaker 1: an almond processing facility. You know, just a lot of

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Speaker 1: poverty and difficulty in her early life. Her younger brother

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Speaker 1: died when she was in her early twenties, and this

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Speaker 1: for her was just this like incredibly cataclysmic event for her.

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Speaker 1: She just was just completely thrown and up to that

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Speaker 1: point she'd been something of a hippie and was like,

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Speaker 1: I've got to start over, I've got to do something new,

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Speaker 1: and so with them, and in practice for her was

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Speaker 1: that she joined a back to the land commune called

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Speaker 1: the Bear Tribe, which was located about an hour outside

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Speaker 1: of Sacramento. This is in the early nineteen seventies. Sorry

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Speaker 1: if I didn't mention that earlier. And yeah, she just

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Speaker 1: fell in with these group of people doing all this

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Speaker 1: wild stuff out in the woods.

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Speaker 2: I'm gonna pause you for a sec.

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Speaker 4: Much time, a little bit.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean well, first of all, I just want

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Speaker 3: to say, like she sounds like when she was in

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Speaker 3: high school and before she joined the Bear tribe, which

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Speaker 3: we need to do an episode on the Bear tribe.

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Speaker 4: That was fascinating.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems like she was a very I would

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Speaker 3: imagine her going into woman's studies like the top of

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Speaker 3: her class, like, yeah, the treasurer, like a type a personality.

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Speaker 1: I mean she literally was the treasurer of her of

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Speaker 1: maybe her junior high school class. That's very apt. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and she was this girl's vice president of her high school.

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Speaker 1: She was a real achiever. I mean, she was a

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Speaker 1: very very smart young woman who would read ed Girl

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Speaker 1: and Poe to for her younger siblings. She's a beautiful

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Speaker 1: writer in this kind of wild way. The mailings that

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Speaker 1: she made in this in this cult were very well written,

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Speaker 1: even though they were kind of insane.

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Speaker 4: I didn't notice that. I was like, that's crazy, but

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Speaker 4: it's well written. It's written. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, she as a young woman, she you know,

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Speaker 1: her mom is off working at this almond processing facility.

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Speaker 1: Her dad is off somewhere else, and so she's responsible

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Speaker 1: for taking care of the kids, and she was very diligent,

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Speaker 1: very you know, type a as you were saying earlier, Megan.

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Speaker 1: But she gets to college and then it's the late sixties,

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Speaker 1: it's the early seven is she's sort of letting free,

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Speaker 1: and so she had this real change in perspective, as

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Speaker 1: a lot of young people at the time did. But

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Speaker 1: for her, you know, she was just a woman who'd

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Speaker 1: always felt things incredibly deeply. Whatever she was doing, she

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Speaker 1: was doing to like the nth degree. And so when

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Speaker 1: she was a kid, that meant she was being very

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Speaker 1: accomplished in school. When she was a hippie, that meant

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Speaker 1: she was being a full bore hippie. And when she

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Speaker 1: was a cult leader, she was a.

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Speaker 2: Full cult leader, committing to everything. Can you just talk

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Speaker 2: a little bit about I mean, we obviously all know

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Speaker 2: that a bunch of people joined Colts in the sixties

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Speaker 2: and seventies, but do you talk a little bit about

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Speaker 2: that era and how it connects to Christianity, because that's

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Speaker 2: something we've talked about quite a bit on here, and

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Speaker 2: how it seems so contradictory that they were so linked

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Speaker 2: at that time, but yet they were right.

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Speaker 1: Well, so, I mean the most I would story from

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Speaker 1: a very big picture lens to say that, you know,

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Speaker 1: as I'm sure many of your listeners know, like cults

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Speaker 1: emerge often emerge out of periods of great transition or

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Speaker 1: social instability. People are looking for security, They're looking for

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Speaker 1: some kind of spiritual comfort. And if someone knocks on

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Speaker 1: your door and they're like waving little flyers and your

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Speaker 1: life is sort of unstable, you're much more likely to

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Speaker 1: follow them, as did the connection with Christianity. Yeah, so

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Speaker 1: the counterculture, it affected all parts of American society. It

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Speaker 1: just seeped into every little nook and cranny, and American

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Speaker 1: Christianity was not immune to that. There were parts of

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Speaker 1: the Church that really took on a kind of hippyish sensibility,

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Speaker 1: and in many ways sometimes it was kind of funny,

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Speaker 1: Like I thought, there was one person who talked about

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Speaker 1: how hippies would sort of coyly refer to this one

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Speaker 1: versus it would quote Genesis and say, you know, Genesis

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Speaker 1: says let the earth bring forth grass, and they would

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Speaker 1: use that as a kind of justification for smoking marijuana.

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Speaker 1: Or there was a bumper secure. I found where it

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Speaker 1: turned the anti war slogan hell no we won't go.

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Speaker 1: They turned it into a kind of proselytizing phrase. It

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Speaker 1: would be hell question mark no we won't go. So

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Speaker 1: some of it was really funny and some of it

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Speaker 1: I think was really sincere and frankly kind of beautiful,

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Speaker 1: because you know, American Christianity at the time had been

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Speaker 1: i mean just a painted extremely broad strokes. There'd been

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Speaker 1: you know, coming out of World War Two. People wanted stability,

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Speaker 1: and American Christianity reflected that, and so the children of

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Speaker 1: the people who had been in World War Two were

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Speaker 1: really wanting something different, and in terms of Christianity, what

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Speaker 1: they wanted was a more embodied, more emotionally connected kind

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Speaker 1: of faith. What that meant was that in terms of

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Speaker 1: doctrine things could get a little hazy. They weren't so

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Speaker 1: focused on like exactly what is the theology. It was

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Speaker 1: more about feeling. It was more about emotion.

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Speaker 4: It was more vibes.

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Speaker 1: It was more vibes.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeahseduff was vibes and Christianity was vibes.

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Speaker 3: But definitely like hippie bearer tribe pipe blind to Christianity

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Speaker 3: is something That is so fascinating to me because it

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Speaker 3: is sometimes a leap, but so many people were willing

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Speaker 3: to take it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So so many people went from free love to

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Speaker 2: highly controlled Christian groups, which is really fascinating.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, to me, it's all kind of a different

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Speaker 1: expression of the same impulse. Like, so I think that

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Speaker 1: the basic kind of aquifer of all this is the

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Speaker 1: same body of water. How it comes out is quite

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Speaker 1: different and sometimes like dramatically different. But for people who

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Speaker 1: feel things in an extreme way, they're looking for extreme expression.

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Speaker 3: When they're at the Bear Tribe, A man named Jim

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Speaker 3: comes along, and at the Bear Tribe they're kind of

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Speaker 3: just out in the wilderness, like beaten drums pretending to

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Speaker 3: be Native American, pretending to be Native American.

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Speaker 4: And her I want to call her Lilah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, we're calling her Lila for now. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Jim and Lilah at first, are like they're not getting along.

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Speaker 1: Well, Jim seemed.

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Speaker 2: Crazy at first, right, Yeah, Jim seemed like he was

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Speaker 2: going to be the one who was sending people off

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Speaker 2: the loopy deep end.

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Speaker 4: Yes, what changed?

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Speaker 1: Yeah? What changed? Well, they would say that God intervened.

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Speaker 1: I think what's also true is that Jim got very ill,

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Speaker 1: which is, you know, for someone living in a back

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Speaker 1: to land commune, is not exactly shocking. There's not a

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Speaker 1: lot of sanitation that happens in a place like that.

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Speaker 1: And so he came down with something perhaps hepatitis, and Lilah,

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Speaker 1: who had previously been just like totally at odds with

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Speaker 1: him because they were both very intense people and there

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Speaker 1: was a kind of competition in their intensity. Anyways, he

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Speaker 1: got sick and she felt called to sort of take

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Speaker 1: care of him. She had previously stolen something from his

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Speaker 1: tent and Jim had forgiven her and that had like

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Speaker 1: warm some of the ice between them. But as a

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Speaker 1: result of her taking care of him, she one night

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Speaker 1: was called by God to go to his tepee and

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Speaker 1: strip naked and give herself to him. And so as

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Speaker 1: a result of that they were pretty permanently a couple

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Speaker 1: since then.

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Speaker 2: God definitely told her to do that, and then still

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Speaker 2: are together to this day.

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Speaker 3: Two things to that, I mean, one thing, when she

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Speaker 3: stole food from Gem's tent, he didn't know it was her,

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Speaker 3: and he beat the shit out of a one armed

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Speaker 3: man that he thought did it. So we have a

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Speaker 3: little bit of a look in god Gem's personality. And

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Speaker 3: then number two she was topless a lot like this

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Speaker 3: was a woman who was just like, I'll be topless.

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Speaker 2: But again, and the setting is they are pretending to

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Speaker 2: be tribal people.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: I found the period where they leave that particular group

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Speaker 2: and before they start the cult interesting because it seems

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Speaker 2: like their lives just get really small. And she starts

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Speaker 2: kind of feeling crazy and stir crazy, trapped, and her

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Speaker 2: response to feeling trapped was then to start having these

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Speaker 2: sort of visions.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. So the way began is that she started to

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Speaker 1: feel called by God that he wanted her to start

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Speaker 1: raising up an army, that the world was going to

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Speaker 1: end soon, and that she needed to produce spiritual soldiers

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Speaker 1: who would help hasten the end of the world. And

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Speaker 1: so what that literally meant was she would become sort

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Speaker 1: of she would feel the presence of God. She would

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Speaker 1: get down on the floor, she would start moaning and

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Speaker 1: grunting and screaming as if she were a woman in labor,

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Speaker 1: and she would quote unquote give birth to spiritual soldiers,

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Speaker 1: which you know, there was nothing there physically, but she

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Speaker 1: said there were thousands of spirits that you know, over

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Speaker 1: the years came out of her, and those spirits kind

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Speaker 1: of went over the world and brought forth God's will,

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Speaker 1: And so that was one of the first kind of

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Speaker 1: rituals that she was engaged with. A very interesting thing

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Speaker 1: about her is that sometimes people ask me, like, you know,

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Speaker 1: how could she trick people into following her and all

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Speaker 1: that kind of thing, and then but to her, I mean,

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Speaker 1: my reading of it at least is that she wasn't

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Speaker 1: tricking anybody. She sincerely believed what she was saying. This

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Speaker 1: was a very heartfelt belief in her singular connection to God.

378
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Speaker 1: And there's something about that makes it even more tragic

379
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Speaker 1: to me that she it wasn't sort of nefarious in

380
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Speaker 1: her own mind, In her ow mind, she was doing

381
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Speaker 1: tremendous good.

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Speaker 2: Right right as I was first reading the first scene

383
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Speaker 2: sort of where you set up that she's having these

384
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Speaker 2: spiritual births or whatever. Of course, the first image that

385
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Speaker 2: came to my mind was the movie The Testament of Annlee.

386
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Speaker 2: And like three pages later you start talking about ann

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Speaker 2: Lee fascinating women, both of them and the connections between

388
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Speaker 2: them are so fascinating. Can you, briefly, can you just

389
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Speaker 2: tell us who Annlee is? Because a lot of people

390
00:19:47,520 --> 00:19:48,480
Speaker 2: might not know absolutely.

391
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Speaker 1: I mean, I'd love to sort of go a little

392
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Speaker 1: bit broader as well, if that's okay with you all, Yeah,

393
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Speaker 1: just to sort of give a general sense of this book.

394
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Speaker 1: This book is about this woman, Sarah, who escaped her

395
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Speaker 1: mother Lyla's cult. It's also about the rise and fall

396
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Speaker 1: of this cult, but it's also about much more than that.

397
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Speaker 1: It's about American history and American religious history and how

398
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Speaker 1: this one group kind of manifest and actors the kind

399
00:20:10,440 --> 00:20:13,600
Speaker 1: of Petri dish. It showed the broader sweep of American

400
00:20:13,640 --> 00:20:15,560
Speaker 1: religious history was kind of manifest in this group. And

401
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Speaker 1: so for me, what was important in this telling the

402
00:20:18,000 --> 00:20:19,840
Speaker 1: story was to make it clear that this isn't just

403
00:20:19,880 --> 00:20:23,199
Speaker 1: a story of one group. It's about the US more broadly.

404
00:20:23,240 --> 00:20:26,199
Speaker 1: And so you mentioned the Anlee and the Shakers. So

405
00:20:26,240 --> 00:20:29,080
Speaker 1: this was this group of religious dissidents that came over

406
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Speaker 1: from England in the late eighteenth century, and they they're

407
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Speaker 1: one of the groups that's profiled in this book. I

408
00:20:36,840 --> 00:20:39,359
Speaker 1: bring in sort of case studies of some kind of

409
00:20:39,359 --> 00:20:42,200
Speaker 1: religious movements throughout the book to just sort of demonstrate

410
00:20:42,240 --> 00:20:45,000
Speaker 1: how the cult in my book is in fact on

411
00:20:45,040 --> 00:20:48,359
Speaker 1: this continuum that contains other cults or religious groups throughout

412
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Speaker 1: American history, but the Shakers are an especially interesting example.

413
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Speaker 1: And I'm sure many of your listeners and viewers saw

414
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Speaker 1: the Testament of Anlely. I myself saw it. It's a

415
00:20:57,000 --> 00:21:01,320
Speaker 1: very generally accurate rendering of this woman, Ann Lee's life.

416
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Speaker 1: So Annlee was born in the eighteenth century. She had

417
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Speaker 1: several children, who all of them died. She had a

418
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Speaker 1: lot of really horrible experience with childbirth. As a young woman,

419
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Speaker 1: she'd been able to see and perhaps even hear her

420
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Speaker 1: parents as they were having sex in this sort of

421
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Speaker 1: squalid shack where they lived. So the result of all

422
00:21:18,960 --> 00:21:21,760
Speaker 1: of this, which was that she had a very she

423
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Speaker 1: was very against sex, really, I mean sex was for her.

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Speaker 1: There was just so much wrong with the world was

425
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Speaker 1: manifest in sex. And so just to make it all

426
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Speaker 1: summarize it much more cleanly, like, she founded this group,

427
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Speaker 1: this group of people called the Shakers that would shake

428
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Speaker 1: to manifest God's presence in their lives. And they were celibate,

429
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Speaker 1: and they built a number of villages in America. And

430
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Speaker 1: those villages have really dwindled since the nineteenth century for

431
00:21:48,640 --> 00:21:50,960
Speaker 1: reasons I probably don't even have to explain, you know,

432
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Speaker 1: if you're a celebrate, you're not having a lot of children, and.

433
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Speaker 3: You might have been having a lot of spiritual children.

434
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Speaker 3: Sure exactly, thank you, yes, very but yeah, but no, Lila,

435
00:22:01,240 --> 00:22:03,800
Speaker 3: Lila in this group, she was she was sort of

436
00:22:03,840 --> 00:22:07,040
Speaker 3: obsessed with Ann Lee. She became convinced that she herself

437
00:22:07,240 --> 00:22:09,880
Speaker 3: was a kind of second coming of Anlee. I think

438
00:22:09,880 --> 00:22:12,320
Speaker 3: that there was maybe an element of I mean, she

439
00:22:12,400 --> 00:22:14,399
Speaker 3: was sort of like a fan, you know, she was

440
00:22:14,480 --> 00:22:16,639
Speaker 3: like she was like an Ann Lee stand. She was

441
00:22:16,640 --> 00:22:18,480
Speaker 3: like I love her, I love her, I love her.

442
00:22:18,560 --> 00:22:22,880
Speaker 3: Vibe you and so yeah exactly. And so the group

443
00:22:22,920 --> 00:22:27,000
Speaker 3: AGGRESSI Christianity Missions Training Corps. They would do these Shaker dances.

444
00:22:26,600 --> 00:22:28,680
Speaker 1: And the Shaker rituals, and they even had a shake

445
00:22:28,720 --> 00:22:30,720
Speaker 1: They had a restaurant for a little while they called

446
00:22:30,760 --> 00:22:35,280
Speaker 1: Shaker Square. They made Shaker boxes and Shaker furniture and

447
00:22:35,320 --> 00:22:37,439
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. They kind of left it

448
00:22:37,880 --> 00:22:41,280
Speaker 1: behind somewhat after a kind of brief foray into it.

449
00:22:41,840 --> 00:22:45,400
Speaker 1: But for me it was all part of this broader context,

450
00:22:45,440 --> 00:22:47,639
Speaker 1: this idea that like this isn't just one group. This

451
00:22:47,720 --> 00:22:49,920
Speaker 1: is a group that I always think of them as

452
00:22:49,920 --> 00:22:52,840
Speaker 1: a kind of Forest Gump of American religious history. Like

453
00:22:52,880 --> 00:22:55,280
Speaker 1: they there's an element of them that's always popping up,

454
00:22:55,320 --> 00:22:57,639
Speaker 1: you know, we always see them in all these different ways.

455
00:22:58,000 --> 00:23:02,000
Speaker 2: Yeah. Interesting you bringing up and Lee losing all those babies.

456
00:23:02,680 --> 00:23:06,000
Speaker 2: Did Lilah's behavior begin to change after she lost her brother?

457
00:23:06,119 --> 00:23:08,000
Speaker 2: Do we think that's a contributor to the shift?

458
00:23:08,119 --> 00:23:11,000
Speaker 1: I mean, I obviously, obviously I can't speak for her,

459
00:23:11,400 --> 00:23:13,840
Speaker 1: but as an outside of the observer observing her life,

460
00:23:13,880 --> 00:23:15,919
Speaker 1: I mean absolutely I would say that I think that

461
00:23:16,000 --> 00:23:18,520
Speaker 1: the loss of her brother was the I don't know,

462
00:23:18,600 --> 00:23:21,160
Speaker 1: the kind of black hole of her life. Everything circled

463
00:23:21,160 --> 00:23:22,240
Speaker 1: around that point of gravity.

464
00:23:22,400 --> 00:23:25,240
Speaker 2: It's fascinating because so much of the time that type

465
00:23:25,240 --> 00:23:27,959
Speaker 2: of loss can be anything that sends people into colds.

466
00:23:28,240 --> 00:23:31,280
Speaker 2: But then the rare personality type is that's the thing

467
00:23:31,320 --> 00:23:33,840
Speaker 2: that I guess leads them to start one. You gotta

468
00:23:33,880 --> 00:23:34,840
Speaker 2: find meanings somehow.

469
00:23:35,040 --> 00:23:35,240
Speaker 3: Yeah.

470
00:23:35,359 --> 00:23:37,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, So how did she trans She starts having these

471
00:23:37,640 --> 00:23:41,639
Speaker 2: spiritual births and making these like big sounds and these

472
00:23:41,680 --> 00:23:43,000
Speaker 2: big movements, and.

473
00:23:43,040 --> 00:23:47,520
Speaker 3: You know, she's literally giving she's giving birth. Yeah, that's

474
00:23:47,560 --> 00:23:48,240
Speaker 3: how I pictured it.

475
00:23:48,280 --> 00:23:49,680
Speaker 1: Oh you should have seen me. You should see me

476
00:23:49,680 --> 00:23:51,720
Speaker 1: when I was recording the audiobook. I was like, I

477
00:23:51,720 --> 00:23:56,199
Speaker 1: feel like this's school. I'm like, I mean it was

478
00:23:56,240 --> 00:23:59,359
Speaker 1: like wacky, that's great. So yes, by the audiobook and

479
00:23:59,359 --> 00:23:59,880
Speaker 1: you can hear.

480
00:23:59,800 --> 00:24:04,320
Speaker 2: Me which, by the way, she was very anti Christianity

481
00:24:04,520 --> 00:24:07,919
Speaker 2: until she had this awakening. And yes, also fascinating and

482
00:24:07,960 --> 00:24:10,320
Speaker 2: just another example of how like the beliefs actually don't

483
00:24:10,359 --> 00:24:12,080
Speaker 2: really matter. It's more about what people are looking for

484
00:24:12,119 --> 00:24:12,600
Speaker 2: in that moment.

485
00:24:13,000 --> 00:24:15,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, of the question of being anti Christianity, to me

486
00:24:15,560 --> 00:24:18,400
Speaker 1: is part of what's most fascinating about this group because

487
00:24:18,440 --> 00:24:21,119
Speaker 1: they viewed themselves as one hundred percent Christians and regular

488
00:24:21,160 --> 00:24:23,880
Speaker 1: Christians is what they call ten percent Christians. And their

489
00:24:23,960 --> 00:24:26,919
Speaker 1: chief enemy was not just like the secular world. It

490
00:24:27,040 --> 00:24:31,160
Speaker 1: was quote unquote mainstream Christians. Those were enemy number one

491
00:24:31,200 --> 00:24:33,119
Speaker 1: because they were practicing faith, but they were doing it

492
00:24:33,200 --> 00:24:36,080
Speaker 1: a kind of diluted right, fake way.

493
00:24:36,240 --> 00:24:38,880
Speaker 3: I will bring that back to my growing up experience

494
00:24:38,920 --> 00:24:42,040
Speaker 3: with the two by twos. The Christians who were not

495
00:24:42,760 --> 00:24:46,160
Speaker 3: taking it as seriously as us were way more scary

496
00:24:46,240 --> 00:24:49,679
Speaker 3: and harmful, very understandable that world.

497
00:24:49,720 --> 00:24:52,040
Speaker 2: To me, the smaller the difference is, the more of

498
00:24:52,119 --> 00:24:54,560
Speaker 2: that we hate them.

499
00:24:53,640 --> 00:24:55,680
Speaker 1: Right, so true, so true?

500
00:24:55,920 --> 00:24:58,720
Speaker 2: So how does this start to transition into her being like, no,

501
00:24:58,840 --> 00:25:01,359
Speaker 2: I'm literally a prophet and people should follow me. Jim

502
00:25:01,440 --> 00:25:03,159
Speaker 2: is just cool with it. Jim's like, yes you are.

503
00:25:03,800 --> 00:25:05,600
Speaker 1: Yeah. So Jim is a very interesting part of this

504
00:25:05,640 --> 00:25:08,960
Speaker 1: because he was, you know, wild when he was in

505
00:25:09,000 --> 00:25:11,200
Speaker 1: the bear tribe. He was you know, cutting his arms

506
00:25:11,200 --> 00:25:13,120
Speaker 1: and raising his blood to the moon, you know, doing

507
00:25:13,160 --> 00:25:17,000
Speaker 1: all these wild things. He converts with Liola Christianity and

508
00:25:17,760 --> 00:25:20,080
Speaker 1: he really believes that she's a prophet too, and that

509
00:25:20,160 --> 00:25:23,119
Speaker 1: belief is held so sincerely that he really kind of

510
00:25:23,880 --> 00:25:26,919
Speaker 1: subjugates himself to her, you know, in a funny way.

511
00:25:26,920 --> 00:25:30,719
Speaker 1: It's like very feminist marriage, a real really like a

512
00:25:30,760 --> 00:25:33,400
Speaker 1: real expression of this kind of equality. I mean, that's

513
00:25:33,440 --> 00:25:35,280
Speaker 1: part of what's so interesting about this group that there

514
00:25:35,320 --> 00:25:37,680
Speaker 1: are elements of it that are like radical to the

515
00:25:37,760 --> 00:25:39,560
Speaker 1: left and radical to the right, and it's all mashed

516
00:25:39,600 --> 00:25:42,640
Speaker 1: up here. Anyways, he was just sort of following her

517
00:25:42,760 --> 00:25:46,400
Speaker 1: and really believed her. And how did she become who

518
00:25:46,400 --> 00:25:48,040
Speaker 1: she became from there? I mean, I think it's all

519
00:25:48,119 --> 00:25:51,240
Speaker 1: just the sort of slow dialing up. If the death

520
00:25:51,240 --> 00:25:53,719
Speaker 1: of her brother was the like I don't know, turning

521
00:25:53,760 --> 00:25:57,280
Speaker 1: the record player on now, we're just like slowly turning

522
00:25:57,320 --> 00:26:00,360
Speaker 1: the volume up. I think you know, she just kept

523
00:26:00,400 --> 00:26:03,160
Speaker 1: on having visions, she kept having. She just got farther

524
00:26:03,240 --> 00:26:05,960
Speaker 1: and farther away from the outside world, farther and farther

525
00:26:06,040 --> 00:26:08,439
Speaker 1: from external perspectives you could push back against her, and

526
00:26:08,480 --> 00:26:10,119
Speaker 1: so she was just sort of free to kind of

527
00:26:10,560 --> 00:26:14,240
Speaker 1: riff on her own what I would call mania.

528
00:26:14,320 --> 00:26:17,240
Speaker 3: And as you were saying earlier, the outside world is

529
00:26:17,400 --> 00:26:21,359
Speaker 3: just serving her so many experiences that reflect back to

530
00:26:21,359 --> 00:26:23,119
Speaker 3: her that she's on the right track. I feel like

531
00:26:23,480 --> 00:26:26,920
Speaker 3: you are corrected as the forest gump of like everything

532
00:26:27,000 --> 00:26:30,680
Speaker 3: kind of aligning and happening, and this interesting time frame,

533
00:26:30,760 --> 00:26:33,879
Speaker 3: like right as she's amping all of this up, a

534
00:26:33,960 --> 00:26:36,560
Speaker 3: volcano goes off and covers.

535
00:26:36,160 --> 00:26:39,320
Speaker 4: The whole sky. It's raining ass, it's raining ash, it's dark.

536
00:26:39,359 --> 00:26:42,000
Speaker 4: It's like a prophecy in the Bible is coming true.

537
00:26:42,119 --> 00:26:44,679
Speaker 4: So like she is like I told you so.

538
00:26:45,000 --> 00:26:48,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is Mount Saint Helens, which interrupted and

539
00:26:48,080 --> 00:26:50,840
Speaker 1: I'm forgetting nineteen eighty eighty one, early nineteen eighties. Yeah,

540
00:26:50,840 --> 00:26:53,120
Speaker 1: and so this is just as the ministry is sort

541
00:26:53,160 --> 00:26:56,560
Speaker 1: of getting going and yeah, what is a what is

542
00:26:56,560 --> 00:26:58,960
Speaker 1: a volcano if not evidence that you know Satan is

543
00:26:59,000 --> 00:27:01,439
Speaker 1: on the move. And the demons are spewing outward. And

544
00:27:01,480 --> 00:27:03,840
Speaker 1: that also has a really interesting parallel to the Shakers,

545
00:27:04,320 --> 00:27:08,880
Speaker 1: where there was a wildfires in Canada caused the sky

546
00:27:08,960 --> 00:27:10,879
Speaker 1: to go really dark at one point when the group

547
00:27:11,080 --> 00:27:14,119
Speaker 1: was in its early years, and that, to an Lee,

548
00:27:14,280 --> 00:27:16,400
Speaker 1: was the signal that they needed to take their message

549
00:27:16,760 --> 00:27:18,680
Speaker 1: farther out into the world. So I love this idea

550
00:27:18,720 --> 00:27:22,200
Speaker 1: that like the outside world, you can what do they say,

551
00:27:22,440 --> 00:27:26,240
Speaker 1: you find what you're looking for. They're looking for signs

552
00:27:26,280 --> 00:27:27,160
Speaker 1: and so they find them.

553
00:27:27,400 --> 00:27:29,760
Speaker 3: It's so apt for today too, because I just saw

554
00:27:29,760 --> 00:27:32,000
Speaker 3: something in social media a week ago where it was

555
00:27:32,040 --> 00:27:34,560
Speaker 3: like the sky is black in a war zone when

556
00:27:34,600 --> 00:27:35,439
Speaker 3: it should be sunny.

557
00:27:35,480 --> 00:27:36,720
Speaker 4: This is a sign of the prophecy.

558
00:27:36,760 --> 00:27:38,960
Speaker 2: And it's like, yeah, you just blew a sign of

559
00:27:39,000 --> 00:27:39,320
Speaker 2: a war.

560
00:27:39,440 --> 00:27:42,040
Speaker 4: You just blew it up. Yeah, there's dust everywhere.

561
00:27:43,000 --> 00:27:46,639
Speaker 2: I mean, such is the nature of humanity.

562
00:27:47,200 --> 00:27:48,080
Speaker 4: I hated so much.

563
00:27:48,359 --> 00:27:52,119
Speaker 2: Yeah, we will truly see whatever we were looking for.

564
00:27:52,400 --> 00:27:55,640
Speaker 3: Yes, Yes, really shitty time for the volcano honestly, which

565
00:27:55,680 --> 00:27:58,439
Speaker 3: it hadn't happened, because it seemed to really amp her

566
00:27:58,520 --> 00:28:00,960
Speaker 3: family up to where they were like, she's real.

567
00:28:01,400 --> 00:28:02,879
Speaker 1: I would say it was sort of a it was

568
00:28:02,960 --> 00:28:04,720
Speaker 1: more a quarter of sort of whipping. They say correlation

569
00:28:04,840 --> 00:28:07,159
Speaker 1: rather than causation. I think it was just sort of confirmation.

570
00:28:07,520 --> 00:28:09,080
Speaker 1: It just was going on in the background. She wasn't

571
00:28:09,119 --> 00:28:11,320
Speaker 1: like this volcano went off and like wow, next level,

572
00:28:11,400 --> 00:28:13,920
Speaker 1: let's go. It was all just part of this intensification

573
00:28:14,000 --> 00:28:14,440
Speaker 1: that was going on.

574
00:28:14,960 --> 00:28:18,080
Speaker 2: How did they start actually gaining followers? That's always the

575
00:28:18,119 --> 00:28:19,960
Speaker 2: part that's so interesting to me. I'm like, how are

576
00:28:20,040 --> 00:28:21,520
Speaker 2: you marketing this to people?

577
00:28:22,000 --> 00:28:24,639
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it just was like one by one. So

578
00:28:25,400 --> 00:28:28,440
Speaker 1: the very first members were a man and a woman

579
00:28:28,520 --> 00:28:31,119
Speaker 1: named Maura and Steve. Mora had been close friends with

580
00:28:31,280 --> 00:28:33,920
Speaker 1: Lyla back around the time when Lila's brother died, and

581
00:28:34,000 --> 00:28:36,240
Speaker 1: so they'd been they'd kind of bonded over the death

582
00:28:36,320 --> 00:28:38,640
Speaker 1: of the brother. Mara had gone off and gotten married

583
00:28:38,640 --> 00:28:41,880
Speaker 1: to this man, Steve, and after Jim and Lyla had

584
00:28:41,920 --> 00:28:45,000
Speaker 1: got had converted, they'd gotten back in touch with more

585
00:28:45,560 --> 00:28:48,640
Speaker 1: and that had led to the resuscitation of their friendship.

586
00:28:49,360 --> 00:28:51,680
Speaker 1: Steve kind of had probably had a bit of a

587
00:28:51,760 --> 00:28:53,920
Speaker 1: crush on Lila. I mean, Lilah. Both Lylah and Jim

588
00:28:54,080 --> 00:28:58,040
Speaker 1: extraordinarily beautiful, physically beautiful. They just were very striking, and

589
00:28:58,120 --> 00:29:00,120
Speaker 1: so I think that's actually part of their appeal. Well,

590
00:29:00,520 --> 00:29:02,080
Speaker 1: so yeah, Steve has a bit of a crush on

591
00:29:02,160 --> 00:29:06,000
Speaker 1: Leila maybe and more as a real secret type. And

592
00:29:06,560 --> 00:29:10,320
Speaker 1: they sort of start going to these these ministry meetings

593
00:29:10,400 --> 00:29:14,400
Speaker 1: that the Greens start having and it's just very very slow,

594
00:29:14,760 --> 00:29:17,160
Speaker 1: just peop, you know, words, spreading a little bit by

595
00:29:17,200 --> 00:29:19,360
Speaker 1: little bit. They got a radio show, they got a

596
00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:21,360
Speaker 1: show on Christian radio, so some people came through that.

597
00:29:21,760 --> 00:29:25,400
Speaker 1: They would put flyers around town, they would give people

598
00:29:25,440 --> 00:29:28,520
Speaker 1: free meals. I mean, you're hungry and someone's saying, here,

599
00:29:28,640 --> 00:29:30,680
Speaker 1: have some soup, and you know you can listen to

600
00:29:30,680 --> 00:29:32,520
Speaker 1: the sermon. It's like, okay, well I won't listen to sermon.

601
00:29:32,560 --> 00:29:33,760
Speaker 1: I'll have the soup. But then you know it's in

602
00:29:33,800 --> 00:29:35,760
Speaker 1: the background. Okay, whatever, I'll come for dinner tomorrow.

603
00:29:35,760 --> 00:29:36,000
Speaker 2: Why not.

604
00:29:36,040 --> 00:29:37,880
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah. And it can really kind of build

605
00:29:37,960 --> 00:29:39,840
Speaker 1: from there. I mean, I think it's sort of it's

606
00:29:39,880 --> 00:29:42,600
Speaker 1: like the prototypical story of how people join this classes

607
00:29:42,680 --> 00:29:44,080
Speaker 1: is just one by one, one by one, And a

608
00:29:44,120 --> 00:29:46,880
Speaker 1: lot of people didn't say a lot of people were like, no,

609
00:29:47,040 --> 00:29:49,040
Speaker 1: I don't want to beat my children. I don't think

610
00:29:49,120 --> 00:29:53,080
Speaker 1: that's great. But others did. I mean she would the

611
00:29:53,160 --> 00:29:55,440
Speaker 1: force of her charisma was so strong that she was

612
00:29:55,480 --> 00:29:57,800
Speaker 1: able to really draw people in. I mean she was

613
00:29:57,840 --> 00:29:59,880
Speaker 1: never the group was never more than like thirty f

614
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:03,520
Speaker 1: treaty fifty people max. It wasn't like hugely successful, right,

615
00:30:03,640 --> 00:30:05,000
Speaker 1: but it was successful enough.

616
00:30:05,320 --> 00:30:08,080
Speaker 2: But so many groups start out at that size and

617
00:30:08,240 --> 00:30:10,280
Speaker 2: do balloon up like so, like, those early days are

618
00:30:10,320 --> 00:30:14,120
Speaker 2: always super interesting to me. Some of the abuse stuff

619
00:30:14,800 --> 00:30:17,600
Speaker 2: with the kids and with the adults that was surely

620
00:30:17,680 --> 00:30:20,360
Speaker 2: not present in the beginning, right, correct.

621
00:30:20,720 --> 00:30:23,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wouldn't say too much because the I hope

622
00:30:23,560 --> 00:30:25,280
Speaker 1: people will check out the book, but a lot of

623
00:30:25,360 --> 00:30:27,360
Speaker 1: unfolds from the stuff that we're talking about, which is

624
00:30:27,400 --> 00:30:29,320
Speaker 1: really the beginnings. But yeah, the group, as you know,

625
00:30:29,560 --> 00:30:32,120
Speaker 1: like shockingly, there were a lot of abuses that ended

626
00:30:32,200 --> 00:30:35,360
Speaker 1: up happening in the later years of this story, and

627
00:30:35,480 --> 00:30:37,920
Speaker 1: at the very beginning. No, there was no there are

628
00:30:37,960 --> 00:30:41,080
Speaker 1: no whippings that kind of thing. But what there was

629
00:30:41,400 --> 00:30:45,400
Speaker 1: was this general ethos of any relationship that is not

630
00:30:45,600 --> 00:30:48,640
Speaker 1: oriented towards the group or towards Lyla and Jim, that

631
00:30:48,840 --> 00:30:52,240
Speaker 1: relationship is evil, and that even extended to relationships between

632
00:30:52,280 --> 00:30:56,320
Speaker 1: spouses and relationships between parents and children. So if you were,

633
00:30:57,400 --> 00:30:59,920
Speaker 1: say a guy married to a woman in the group

634
00:31:00,080 --> 00:31:03,440
Speaker 1: and you're you know, showing affection for your wife, you're saying, oh,

635
00:31:03,520 --> 00:31:06,640
Speaker 1: let me get you another you know, baked potato at dinner. Whatever.

636
00:31:07,240 --> 00:31:09,160
Speaker 1: That was evidence that you were guilty of what they

637
00:31:09,200 --> 00:31:12,160
Speaker 1: called spiritual adultery in the group. You were cheating on

638
00:31:12,360 --> 00:31:15,479
Speaker 1: God with your earthly husband. Same thing. If you were

639
00:31:15,600 --> 00:31:17,680
Speaker 1: nice to your children, if you were saying, you know, here,

640
00:31:17,760 --> 00:31:19,600
Speaker 1: let me let me comb your hair, no, no, you

641
00:31:19,680 --> 00:31:22,200
Speaker 1: were guilty of spiritual adultery. You were cheating on God

642
00:31:22,480 --> 00:31:23,520
Speaker 1: with your child.

643
00:31:23,840 --> 00:31:24,320
Speaker 4: Horrible.

644
00:31:24,760 --> 00:31:26,600
Speaker 1: I mean, it just speaks to how there's this weird

645
00:31:26,680 --> 00:31:29,240
Speaker 1: sexual energy is really at the core of the group,

646
00:31:29,800 --> 00:31:31,560
Speaker 1: largely because you know, it was just sort of like

647
00:31:31,640 --> 00:31:34,640
Speaker 1: by crying sexuality, they were really focusing on it. It

648
00:31:34,720 --> 00:31:36,640
Speaker 1: was part of what was so strange about it. But anyways,

649
00:31:36,680 --> 00:31:40,160
Speaker 1: that's sort of where the abuse began. Yeah, start small

650
00:31:40,240 --> 00:31:41,320
Speaker 1: and balloons from there.

651
00:31:41,560 --> 00:31:44,160
Speaker 3: So the spiritual affair is like you're supposed to be

652
00:31:44,200 --> 00:31:47,160
Speaker 3: partnered with God and that's your outlet for everything.

653
00:31:47,640 --> 00:31:48,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty much.

654
00:31:48,920 --> 00:31:51,360
Speaker 2: Like when people are married to Jesus. That kind of vime.

655
00:31:51,640 --> 00:31:55,320
Speaker 1: I think it's sort of yeah, sort of, it's hard

656
00:31:55,360 --> 00:31:57,680
Speaker 1: to kind of pin down, because I think it was

657
00:31:57,720 --> 00:31:58,800
Speaker 1: hard for them to pin down.

658
00:31:58,880 --> 00:31:59,760
Speaker 4: You know, some of these groups.

659
00:32:00,760 --> 00:32:03,320
Speaker 1: You're kind of like, I think I know what you're saying,

660
00:32:03,360 --> 00:32:05,360
Speaker 1: but like what she was saying was always kind of

661
00:32:05,440 --> 00:32:07,640
Speaker 1: more thing, and it was always sort of what this was.

662
00:32:07,680 --> 00:32:09,440
Speaker 1: The convenient thing about being a prophet is that you

663
00:32:09,480 --> 00:32:13,200
Speaker 1: can always get new information correct, you can pivot.

664
00:32:13,600 --> 00:32:15,880
Speaker 4: Yeah, and when did she pivot into being Deborah?

665
00:32:16,360 --> 00:32:18,680
Speaker 1: So yeah, So this is a big event in the book,

666
00:32:18,760 --> 00:32:21,920
Speaker 1: which is sort of a kind of culmination of those

667
00:32:21,960 --> 00:32:25,960
Speaker 1: early years and before things really explode. She decreed that

668
00:32:26,440 --> 00:32:29,920
Speaker 1: some of her followers should take new names, as people

669
00:32:30,080 --> 00:32:32,760
Speaker 1: in the Bible did, as people in just culture have

670
00:32:32,840 --> 00:32:35,640
Speaker 1: often done, sometimes to indicate a huge change or growth

671
00:32:35,680 --> 00:32:39,600
Speaker 1: in someone's lives. Lilah says, you know, we need biblical names,

672
00:32:39,640 --> 00:32:43,000
Speaker 1: we need new names that indicate we are reborn. And

673
00:32:43,240 --> 00:32:44,680
Speaker 1: some of the people took new names. Some of the

674
00:32:44,720 --> 00:32:48,960
Speaker 1: people didn't. But Lilah took the name Deborah, who's a

675
00:32:49,160 --> 00:32:53,280
Speaker 1: female prophet from the Old Testament, and from then on

676
00:32:53,480 --> 00:32:55,200
Speaker 1: she was known as Deborah.

677
00:32:55,360 --> 00:32:57,520
Speaker 2: Which is so funny to me because Deborah just seems

678
00:32:57,640 --> 00:33:00,920
Speaker 2: like the lady at the pot luck next door, whereas

679
00:33:01,040 --> 00:33:03,120
Speaker 2: Lilah feels very like beautiful and biblical.

680
00:33:03,160 --> 00:33:04,479
Speaker 4: I'm like, who chooses Debbie?

681
00:33:04,960 --> 00:33:07,400
Speaker 1: It's funny, you say Debbie. She never she never went

682
00:33:07,480 --> 00:33:09,440
Speaker 1: by Debbie. It's funny. I never thought of that.

683
00:33:09,640 --> 00:33:12,160
Speaker 2: I mean, I just I assume all Deborah's are Debbie is.

684
00:33:12,200 --> 00:33:15,560
Speaker 1: So I don't know, it's funny. I like the name Deborah.

685
00:33:15,600 --> 00:33:18,280
Speaker 4: I like Debbie, but Lilah is like such a dope.

686
00:33:18,400 --> 00:33:21,280
Speaker 2: Name Lyla feels more mythical to me somehow, it is

687
00:33:21,320 --> 00:33:24,960
Speaker 2: a little mythical, yeah, versus like grounded in like Suburbia.

688
00:33:25,400 --> 00:33:28,200
Speaker 2: But interesting that for her it was like she was like,

689
00:33:28,360 --> 00:33:31,240
Speaker 2: and now I am Deborah the Lord.

690
00:33:32,080 --> 00:33:33,120
Speaker 1: Yes, wild stuff.

691
00:33:33,760 --> 00:33:36,000
Speaker 2: And at that point they also changed the name of

692
00:33:36,280 --> 00:33:36,680
Speaker 2: the group.

693
00:33:36,840 --> 00:33:37,000
Speaker 4: Yes.

694
00:33:37,240 --> 00:33:39,320
Speaker 1: At this point originally had it had been called Free

695
00:33:39,400 --> 00:33:43,200
Speaker 1: Love Ministries, and then they were like, nope, now we

696
00:33:43,360 --> 00:33:46,320
Speaker 1: are the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps.

697
00:33:46,960 --> 00:33:52,000
Speaker 2: So there, from Free Love to Aggressive Training Corps is

698
00:33:52,400 --> 00:33:57,600
Speaker 2: wild C MTC. You got it, that's it a CMDC

699
00:33:57,760 --> 00:33:59,760
Speaker 2: of course. Yeah, I love ACMTC.

700
00:34:00,120 --> 00:34:00,840
Speaker 4: Gotta go join it.

701
00:34:02,800 --> 00:34:07,760
Speaker 2: So basically, over time, things just start getting weirder and

702
00:34:07,960 --> 00:34:13,680
Speaker 2: more controlling, and she gets fixated on getting children. Can

703
00:34:13,760 --> 00:34:14,400
Speaker 2: you explain this.

704
00:34:15,040 --> 00:34:18,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, so she Lilah slash Deborah, now we're going to

705
00:34:18,200 --> 00:34:21,400
Speaker 1: refer to her as Debra. She really predicted that there

706
00:34:21,480 --> 00:34:24,120
Speaker 1: was going to be this thing called the Children of Nations,

707
00:34:24,480 --> 00:34:27,320
Speaker 1: and it was going to be this huge group of

708
00:34:27,440 --> 00:34:29,840
Speaker 1: children who are going to be soldiers on behalf of

709
00:34:29,960 --> 00:34:32,400
Speaker 1: the group, and they were going to kind of be

710
00:34:32,600 --> 00:34:36,880
Speaker 1: this children's army. And the problem was that they needed

711
00:34:36,920 --> 00:34:39,319
Speaker 1: to get children. And so there were people in the group,

712
00:34:39,719 --> 00:34:42,040
Speaker 1: women who had children, but they weren't having them at

713
00:34:42,080 --> 00:34:46,040
Speaker 1: the rate that Deborah wanted them to have, and so she,

714
00:34:46,800 --> 00:34:49,239
Speaker 1: according to one of the members in the group, she

715
00:34:49,480 --> 00:34:53,880
Speaker 1: directed this woman to effectively try and kidnap a baby

716
00:34:54,000 --> 00:34:56,680
Speaker 1: from the Mexico border. By this point, the group had

717
00:34:56,800 --> 00:34:58,799
Speaker 1: fled to New Mexico because they'd run into all these

718
00:34:58,880 --> 00:35:00,560
Speaker 1: legal troubles that you can read a out of the book.

719
00:35:01,040 --> 00:35:06,759
Speaker 1: But this alleged kidnapping did not come to pass. But

720
00:35:06,880 --> 00:35:11,920
Speaker 1: what it did lead to was a just truly truly

721
00:35:12,080 --> 00:35:16,000
Speaker 1: shocking act of child trafficking that I'll sort of speak

722
00:35:16,000 --> 00:35:18,560
Speaker 1: about in kind of vague terms. But what happened was

723
00:35:18,719 --> 00:35:23,080
Speaker 1: that Deborah was so insistent on not only having children,

724
00:35:23,120 --> 00:35:26,400
Speaker 1: but having children from all over the world that she

725
00:35:26,520 --> 00:35:28,400
Speaker 1: and the group conducted all these mission trips abroad, and

726
00:35:28,440 --> 00:35:29,840
Speaker 1: some of that was about children, but some of that

727
00:35:29,960 --> 00:35:33,359
Speaker 1: was just about spreading God's word. But when the group

728
00:35:33,520 --> 00:35:35,880
Speaker 1: was in Uganda at one point, because they took mission

729
00:35:35,920 --> 00:35:39,080
Speaker 1: trips all over the world, they got in touch with

730
00:35:39,400 --> 00:35:42,719
Speaker 1: a woman who was pregnant and you know, long story short,

731
00:35:43,280 --> 00:35:46,759
Speaker 1: the baby that the woman was going to have, I'll

732
00:35:46,800 --> 00:35:49,040
Speaker 1: just say that the baby ended up having a kind

733
00:35:49,040 --> 00:35:51,800
Speaker 1: of lifelong association with the group in a way that

734
00:35:51,920 --> 00:35:55,080
Speaker 1: unfolded in a way that was kind of to me,

735
00:35:55,360 --> 00:35:56,160
Speaker 1: just mind.

736
00:35:55,960 --> 00:36:00,480
Speaker 2: Blowing, truly horrendous, Like what was described in the book

737
00:36:00,520 --> 00:36:01,239
Speaker 2: what happened.

738
00:36:00,960 --> 00:36:03,440
Speaker 4: To that child is truly like it's tragic.

739
00:36:03,480 --> 00:36:04,440
Speaker 1: I mean, it's totally tragic.

740
00:36:04,600 --> 00:36:07,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, the group escalates in other ways as well, like

741
00:36:07,760 --> 00:36:10,960
Speaker 3: it seems like people weren't really seeking medical treatment for

742
00:36:11,040 --> 00:36:11,760
Speaker 3: a lot of things.

743
00:36:11,840 --> 00:36:14,879
Speaker 4: And this ends and disaster and a part of your book.

744
00:36:14,920 --> 00:36:18,120
Speaker 3: And again we won't give too much away, but what

745
00:36:18,400 --> 00:36:21,200
Speaker 3: other ways were they just kind of accelerating.

746
00:36:21,600 --> 00:36:23,600
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean it was accelerating is the right word.

747
00:36:23,640 --> 00:36:26,520
Speaker 1: It just built and built and built. So yes, medical treatment,

748
00:36:26,600 --> 00:36:30,239
Speaker 1: they were really against medicine. A lot of people were

749
00:36:30,320 --> 00:36:34,840
Speaker 1: denied were allegedly denied medication, and you know, after surgeries,

750
00:36:34,880 --> 00:36:38,600
Speaker 1: they didn't get pain medication, horrible things like that. They

751
00:36:38,640 --> 00:36:42,040
Speaker 1: were also they didn't get enough food. They were just

752
00:36:42,200 --> 00:36:45,160
Speaker 1: always hungry. They're reading a largely vegan diet by the time,

753
00:36:45,360 --> 00:36:47,160
Speaker 1: by you know, the two thousands or so, just like

754
00:36:47,719 --> 00:36:51,640
Speaker 1: alfal fatigue and okra and you know, peanut butter and

755
00:36:51,880 --> 00:36:55,440
Speaker 1: so on, and then just the I mean, there's all

756
00:36:55,480 --> 00:36:57,840
Speaker 1: sorts of like sort of physical things, like they're working harder,

757
00:36:57,920 --> 00:37:01,720
Speaker 1: they're sleeping less. There the punishments are more and more intense.

758
00:37:01,880 --> 00:37:03,919
Speaker 2: The punishments were so bad.

759
00:37:04,160 --> 00:37:08,440
Speaker 1: They're rough, They're pretty rough, like medieval medieval, Yeah, I

760
00:37:08,840 --> 00:37:10,759
Speaker 1: should remember that word. That's the right word. But I

761
00:37:10,800 --> 00:37:14,080
Speaker 1: think the biggest kind of acceleration is there was a

762
00:37:14,200 --> 00:37:18,000
Speaker 1: tolerance for this, is that people were so embedded in

763
00:37:18,080 --> 00:37:20,360
Speaker 1: it that it became just so difficult for them to

764
00:37:20,480 --> 00:37:23,239
Speaker 1: see that it was bad. And to me, that's sort

765
00:37:23,280 --> 00:37:25,880
Speaker 1: of chilling because a lot of these people were pretty

766
00:37:26,000 --> 00:37:29,560
Speaker 1: normal people and in a lot of ways, and these

767
00:37:29,600 --> 00:37:31,200
Speaker 1: are people who I got to know in the course

768
00:37:31,239 --> 00:37:33,680
Speaker 1: of my reporting, and they struck me as totally normal

769
00:37:33,719 --> 00:37:34,960
Speaker 1: in many ways. I mean, none of us are like

770
00:37:35,040 --> 00:37:38,399
Speaker 1: quote unquote normal, but like, these are people who now

771
00:37:38,560 --> 00:37:40,400
Speaker 1: live regular lives and such. But when they were in

772
00:37:40,480 --> 00:37:43,680
Speaker 1: this group, they were party to or witnessed things that

773
00:37:43,880 --> 00:37:46,640
Speaker 1: just kind of blow your mind. So I think that

774
00:37:46,800 --> 00:37:47,760
Speaker 1: is the biggest acceleration.

775
00:37:48,160 --> 00:37:51,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that process is slow and happens step by step,

776
00:37:51,280 --> 00:37:53,319
Speaker 2: and one thing is normalized and then the next thing

777
00:37:53,400 --> 00:37:55,440
Speaker 2: is normalized and it doesn't look that crazy compared to

778
00:37:55,520 --> 00:37:57,439
Speaker 2: the previous thing, you know what I mean, Like, yeah,

779
00:37:57,520 --> 00:38:01,200
Speaker 2: it never happens overnight, which I think, right, it's important

780
00:38:01,239 --> 00:38:05,640
Speaker 2: to note about groups like this, Yeah, for sure, but yeah,

781
00:38:05,719 --> 00:38:07,880
Speaker 2: some of the abuses were truly terrible.

782
00:38:09,400 --> 00:38:12,360
Speaker 4: Were they wearing a uniform towards the end of.

783
00:38:12,400 --> 00:38:18,080
Speaker 1: This Yeah they were. They were wearing military uniforms. A

784
00:38:18,160 --> 00:38:20,360
Speaker 1: lot of the time. They had a couple of different uniforms.

785
00:38:20,400 --> 00:38:23,400
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll just say, there's like a big arrest

786
00:38:23,480 --> 00:38:26,120
Speaker 1: at the end of the book. And at the time

787
00:38:26,160 --> 00:38:27,920
Speaker 1: of the arrest, I mean I looked at the police footage,

788
00:38:28,719 --> 00:38:32,360
Speaker 1: Deborah is wearing this wild outfit. It's this kind of

789
00:38:32,480 --> 00:38:36,520
Speaker 1: in a weird way, kind of stunning white military get

790
00:38:36,600 --> 00:38:40,080
Speaker 1: up where she has a long, a long skirt, kind

791
00:38:40,120 --> 00:38:44,799
Speaker 1: of buttoned down white white jacket and a beret. I mean,

792
00:38:44,840 --> 00:38:46,920
Speaker 1: I'll actually tell your listeners. So this book began as

793
00:38:46,920 --> 00:38:48,839
Speaker 1: an article I wrote for The cut Back in twenty

794
00:38:48,920 --> 00:38:51,080
Speaker 1: twenty one. And if your readers want to look up

795
00:38:51,120 --> 00:38:52,239
Speaker 1: that article, they can see.

796
00:38:53,160 --> 00:38:54,600
Speaker 4: Oh see the photo.

797
00:38:55,040 --> 00:38:55,840
Speaker 3: I want to see it.

798
00:38:57,080 --> 00:38:59,719
Speaker 2: So yeah, oh my god, Okay, why does she look

799
00:38:59,800 --> 00:39:01,440
Speaker 2: like Vader Ginsburg.

800
00:39:02,680 --> 00:39:07,400
Speaker 1: And she hates Ruth Badergans work with different politics, very different.

801
00:39:08,560 --> 00:39:10,880
Speaker 1: I mean they would show up at the Undershriff's office

802
00:39:11,360 --> 00:39:14,839
Speaker 1: near their near their compound in just like complete head

803
00:39:14,880 --> 00:39:20,400
Speaker 1: to toe, perfectly ironed, spotless military uniforms. They instructed the

804
00:39:20,520 --> 00:39:22,759
Speaker 1: under sheriffs. They were like, you know, you will, you

805
00:39:22,800 --> 00:39:25,839
Speaker 1: will address us as generals and we will blah blah

806
00:39:25,840 --> 00:39:27,960
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. Wow. And so there was this real

807
00:39:28,040 --> 00:39:30,200
Speaker 1: I mean again, it's like there's a confidence. It's like

808
00:39:30,360 --> 00:39:33,360
Speaker 1: you can't make up, you can't fake that kind of confidence.

809
00:39:33,360 --> 00:39:35,160
Speaker 1: I don't think. I think it's a confidence born out

810
00:39:35,200 --> 00:39:39,640
Speaker 1: of a deeply deep conviction of certainty.

811
00:39:40,200 --> 00:39:44,200
Speaker 2: Right. Yeah, And so Sarah throughout the book, So Sarah

812
00:39:44,520 --> 00:39:50,720
Speaker 2: is Deborah's daughter. Yeah, I find her pathory interesting because

813
00:39:51,239 --> 00:39:53,399
Speaker 2: these are her parents, This is her whole life.

814
00:39:53,480 --> 00:39:54,440
Speaker 4: This is her community.

815
00:39:55,040 --> 00:39:57,279
Speaker 2: It's always interesting to me how people who are that

816
00:39:57,480 --> 00:40:01,160
Speaker 2: deeply in the thick of the cult are able to

817
00:40:01,520 --> 00:40:01,960
Speaker 2: get out.

818
00:40:02,360 --> 00:40:04,680
Speaker 1: Absolutely. I mean, that's sort of the central miracle of

819
00:40:04,760 --> 00:40:07,160
Speaker 1: the book in my opinion. So the book is called

820
00:40:07,200 --> 00:40:10,120
Speaker 1: The Oracle's Daughter, and the daughter in question is this woman,

821
00:40:10,200 --> 00:40:13,720
Speaker 1: Sarah So. Sarah's parents were Jim and Lila Slash Deborah.

822
00:40:14,400 --> 00:40:16,640
Speaker 1: She was a young kid when her mom started having visions,

823
00:40:16,680 --> 00:40:18,520
Speaker 1: which is to say that she knew something of the

824
00:40:18,560 --> 00:40:22,000
Speaker 1: real world before everything started to kind of fall apart,

825
00:40:22,280 --> 00:40:25,520
Speaker 1: and I think that that was essential in her being

826
00:40:25,560 --> 00:40:27,480
Speaker 1: able to imagine a life outside of the group. I

827
00:40:27,520 --> 00:40:29,920
Speaker 1: think if she'd been born in it, it would have

828
00:40:29,920 --> 00:40:32,480
Speaker 1: been another story, because then it's like, you have you've

829
00:40:32,640 --> 00:40:34,800
Speaker 1: never gone to the park, you've never gone to the movies,

830
00:40:34,840 --> 00:40:37,680
Speaker 1: you've never had like Lomain. You know, you've never you've

831
00:40:37,800 --> 00:40:41,520
Speaker 1: never done the things. Yeah right, she likes Lomaine. That's

832
00:40:41,520 --> 00:40:46,319
Speaker 1: why it came to mind, she yeah. So, I think

833
00:40:46,400 --> 00:40:48,480
Speaker 1: that was a big part of how she was able

834
00:40:48,480 --> 00:40:50,840
Speaker 1: to able to escape, because the book does open with

835
00:40:51,040 --> 00:40:52,759
Speaker 1: her escaping in the middle of the night when she's

836
00:40:52,800 --> 00:40:54,600
Speaker 1: twenty six years old, running away in the middle of

837
00:40:54,640 --> 00:40:57,640
Speaker 1: the New Mexico desert. It's a wild moment. She does

838
00:40:57,719 --> 00:41:00,120
Speaker 1: manage to get out, but she knew something of what

839
00:41:00,239 --> 00:41:02,000
Speaker 1: she was missing. I also think it was just a

840
00:41:02,120 --> 00:41:05,759
Speaker 1: question of character. It's like some of us are one

841
00:41:05,840 --> 00:41:07,440
Speaker 1: way and some of us are another way.

842
00:41:07,480 --> 00:41:07,600
Speaker 3: You know.

843
00:41:07,680 --> 00:41:09,200
Speaker 1: Some of us are good at basketball, some of us

844
00:41:09,239 --> 00:41:11,240
Speaker 1: are good at knitting. You know, Like she just happened

845
00:41:11,239 --> 00:41:15,400
Speaker 1: to be really good at holding onto a part of

846
00:41:15,440 --> 00:41:18,080
Speaker 1: herself that a lot of people gave away. And because

847
00:41:18,120 --> 00:41:22,239
Speaker 1: she never because she never chose to join the group,

848
00:41:22,680 --> 00:41:24,680
Speaker 1: she was always a little There was always a little

849
00:41:24,680 --> 00:41:25,520
Speaker 1: bit of resistance.

850
00:41:25,880 --> 00:41:26,000
Speaker 2: You know.

851
00:41:26,160 --> 00:41:27,880
Speaker 1: If she had been like, oh, yes, I want to

852
00:41:27,920 --> 00:41:29,359
Speaker 1: go in, I think that there would have been maybe

853
00:41:29,440 --> 00:41:32,840
Speaker 1: less resistance. But because she never chose, she just just

854
00:41:33,040 --> 00:41:36,040
Speaker 1: roped in. She was able to hold onto a little

855
00:41:36,080 --> 00:41:37,680
Speaker 1: something else. I mean, there's more to it, but that's

856
00:41:37,680 --> 00:41:38,720
Speaker 1: some of the stuff i'd mentioned.

857
00:41:38,960 --> 00:41:42,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true we rebel against our parents, and that

858
00:41:42,239 --> 00:41:44,920
Speaker 2: makes sense. And also I forgot that she actually was

859
00:41:45,000 --> 00:41:48,000
Speaker 2: not born into it, that she witnessed the beginning of

860
00:41:48,120 --> 00:41:51,120
Speaker 2: her mother having these spiritual bursts and being like, why

861
00:41:51,239 --> 00:41:54,680
Speaker 2: is my mom making these crazy sounds in the basement

862
00:41:54,760 --> 00:41:57,840
Speaker 2: that I used to play, and like I can imagine

863
00:41:57,880 --> 00:41:59,960
Speaker 2: that would be a very jarring transition.

864
00:42:00,880 --> 00:42:03,520
Speaker 1: Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, and an upsetting one because

865
00:42:03,560 --> 00:42:06,439
Speaker 1: she had friends. I mean, this is a woman who's

866
00:42:06,520 --> 00:42:08,480
Speaker 1: just as an extraordinary zest for life. And I think

867
00:42:08,480 --> 00:42:09,960
Speaker 1: that's part of why I wanted to write about her,

868
00:42:10,000 --> 00:42:15,080
Speaker 1: is that she's just an incredible person. And so she Yeah,

869
00:42:15,120 --> 00:42:16,960
Speaker 1: she wanted to go to school, she wanted to take

870
00:42:17,080 --> 00:42:19,720
Speaker 1: history class, she wanted to go play with her friends.

871
00:42:19,800 --> 00:42:22,680
Speaker 1: I mean she actually ran away from home for one

872
00:42:22,760 --> 00:42:25,239
Speaker 1: night when she was a teenager and tried to enroll

873
00:42:25,280 --> 00:42:27,640
Speaker 1: herself in high school. She missed that world so badly.

874
00:42:28,280 --> 00:42:30,960
Speaker 2: There's a moment in the book where you write about

875
00:42:31,239 --> 00:42:35,520
Speaker 2: how there's someone who kind of becomes a whistleblower, but

876
00:42:35,680 --> 00:42:39,279
Speaker 2: then it's like that person is kind of discredited, but

877
00:42:39,800 --> 00:42:43,320
Speaker 2: they are ordered to produce like twelve children.

878
00:42:43,239 --> 00:42:44,720
Speaker 4: Yes, and they just don't.

879
00:42:44,960 --> 00:42:45,200
Speaker 1: Yeah.

880
00:42:45,480 --> 00:42:48,760
Speaker 2: But what's fascinating to us we were talking about earlier,

881
00:42:48,880 --> 00:42:52,320
Speaker 2: is like the justice system just was like oh whatever,

882
00:42:53,040 --> 00:42:54,759
Speaker 2: Like they was like a wake up. There was a

883
00:42:54,840 --> 00:42:57,279
Speaker 2: post wag thing going on again.

884
00:42:57,160 --> 00:43:00,520
Speaker 3: The like outside world events are kind of protecting them

885
00:43:01,120 --> 00:43:01,959
Speaker 3: in real time.

886
00:43:02,520 --> 00:43:04,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, the fact that the abuse of children

887
00:43:04,800 --> 00:43:06,400
Speaker 1: was allowed to go on as long as it did

888
00:43:06,600 --> 00:43:09,200
Speaker 1: under the circumstances in which it progressed were to me.

889
00:43:09,480 --> 00:43:11,400
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the thing that makes your head explode.

890
00:43:12,440 --> 00:43:14,680
Speaker 1: I hope reading it, and certainly made my head explode

891
00:43:14,680 --> 00:43:17,000
Speaker 1: while I was reporting and writing it. As to the

892
00:43:17,040 --> 00:43:19,800
Speaker 1: Waco stuff, Yeah, I mean, so, you know, the Waco

893
00:43:20,040 --> 00:43:23,400
Speaker 1: disaster happens in the mid nineties, and law enforcement afterwards

894
00:43:23,520 --> 00:43:27,080
Speaker 1: is kind of understandably spooked. They don't want to interfere

895
00:43:27,239 --> 00:43:29,760
Speaker 1: with religious groups who were maybe a little bit different

896
00:43:29,920 --> 00:43:32,800
Speaker 1: and have something bad happen and then be called in

897
00:43:32,880 --> 00:43:35,080
Speaker 1: front of Congress to testify and get raked.

898
00:43:34,880 --> 00:43:37,640
Speaker 2: Over the coals because all those people were killed in

899
00:43:37,840 --> 00:43:42,400
Speaker 2: Waco by the authorities because this cult showdown for youngsters

900
00:43:42,400 --> 00:43:42,880
Speaker 2: who don't know.

901
00:43:43,080 --> 00:43:45,239
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you said something in your book I'd never

902
00:43:45,320 --> 00:43:47,440
Speaker 3: read before that one of the agents when they were

903
00:43:47,480 --> 00:43:50,719
Speaker 3: going to Waco to bust it up, one of the

904
00:43:50,800 --> 00:43:53,080
Speaker 3: agents had like golf plans that afternoon.

905
00:43:53,280 --> 00:43:56,800
Speaker 4: They were like, this will be easy, and it was not.

906
00:43:57,760 --> 00:43:59,720
Speaker 4: So this man thought he was going to golf.

907
00:44:00,280 --> 00:44:05,440
Speaker 3: Fifty one days later, they have basically burned down people

908
00:44:05,520 --> 00:44:08,320
Speaker 3: inside of a house and everyone's mad at them and

909
00:44:09,000 --> 00:44:10,680
Speaker 3: they don't want anything like that to happen again.

910
00:44:10,840 --> 00:44:12,560
Speaker 2: So yeah, no, and they're like, I don't want to

911
00:44:12,600 --> 00:44:15,360
Speaker 2: be the one in trouble for no, no killing the

912
00:44:15,480 --> 00:44:16,120
Speaker 2: people Nicole.

913
00:44:16,440 --> 00:44:18,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's a there's a part of that impulse

914
00:44:19,000 --> 00:44:21,600
Speaker 1: that I really respect, you know. I think that like

915
00:44:22,280 --> 00:44:25,080
Speaker 1: freedom of religion is at the core of the idea

916
00:44:25,120 --> 00:44:26,680
Speaker 1: of this country, and it is something that I think

917
00:44:26,760 --> 00:44:30,279
Speaker 1: is like a very good thing. But the underbelly of

918
00:44:30,360 --> 00:44:33,080
Speaker 1: it is that like the American justice system, to my

919
00:44:33,239 --> 00:44:37,040
Speaker 1: eye at least, just feels really reluctant to interfere when

920
00:44:37,360 --> 00:44:42,040
Speaker 1: religion is a is a factor. And so for ACMTC,

921
00:44:42,320 --> 00:44:46,080
Speaker 1: that meant that they were really able to function even

922
00:44:46,120 --> 00:44:48,320
Speaker 1: when all this evidence came up, they were able to

923
00:44:48,400 --> 00:44:51,600
Speaker 1: kind of continue operating. And yes, the thing again, the

924
00:44:51,640 --> 00:44:53,120
Speaker 1: thing that just blows my mind is that like they

925
00:44:53,160 --> 00:44:56,880
Speaker 1: were they were ordered to bring the children into the

926
00:44:56,960 --> 00:45:00,800
Speaker 1: authorities at least one moment throughout the story didn't and

927
00:45:00,880 --> 00:45:02,640
Speaker 1: then law enforcement kind of moved on.

928
00:45:03,040 --> 00:45:07,440
Speaker 4: They're like, well, they're probably fine, Like yeah, yeah, yeah.

929
00:45:07,480 --> 00:45:09,440
Speaker 1: There's there's like a there's a phrase at the end

930
00:45:09,440 --> 00:45:10,960
Speaker 1: of one of the documents I found that says like,

931
00:45:11,000 --> 00:45:13,880
Speaker 1: you know, the investigation was closed because they were unable

932
00:45:13,960 --> 00:45:18,000
Speaker 1: to locate the children, and it's like, yeah, that's the problem.

933
00:45:17,880 --> 00:45:19,440
Speaker 4: Right, No exactly.

934
00:45:19,560 --> 00:45:22,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I mean, you know, it's like very limited resources.

935
00:45:22,600 --> 00:45:25,040
Speaker 1: This is big, open, wide spaces. It's tough.

936
00:45:25,160 --> 00:45:25,600
Speaker 2: I get it.

937
00:45:25,760 --> 00:45:28,719
Speaker 1: But I also think you know that failure led to

938
00:45:29,840 --> 00:45:30,960
Speaker 1: extraordinary suffering.

939
00:45:32,239 --> 00:45:32,439
Speaker 3: Yeah.

940
00:45:32,880 --> 00:45:35,279
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've never heard of this group and the same.

941
00:45:35,480 --> 00:45:37,480
Speaker 4: It is so fascinating.

942
00:45:37,719 --> 00:45:41,400
Speaker 3: I mean it covers every single thing we see in

943
00:45:41,520 --> 00:45:45,840
Speaker 3: Culled to the ultimate degree. We've got death, destruction, abuse,

944
00:45:46,000 --> 00:45:50,879
Speaker 3: some quirk cases, all of it, and a female leader. Yeah,

945
00:45:50,960 --> 00:45:55,879
Speaker 3: and she really really turns into something quite monstrous. Yeah,

946
00:45:56,040 --> 00:45:59,640
Speaker 3: it's very interesting to watch somebody go from a hippie

947
00:45:59,719 --> 00:46:01,080
Speaker 3: too a profit.

948
00:46:01,640 --> 00:46:04,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an abusive, destructive, controlling profit.

949
00:46:05,160 --> 00:46:06,120
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.

950
00:46:06,560 --> 00:46:09,520
Speaker 2: How many people were you able to actually speak to

951
00:46:10,160 --> 00:46:10,759
Speaker 2: from the group?

952
00:46:11,160 --> 00:46:13,719
Speaker 1: All total, I spoke to about there were about two

953
00:46:13,760 --> 00:46:16,799
Speaker 1: hundred interviews that I did over the personal researching this book.

954
00:46:17,520 --> 00:46:19,480
Speaker 1: What was nice also is that, like, even aside from

955
00:46:19,520 --> 00:46:22,279
Speaker 1: the interviews, is that I had access to a lot

956
00:46:22,360 --> 00:46:26,799
Speaker 1: of huge troes of documents, and so this group, as

957
00:46:26,840 --> 00:46:28,680
Speaker 1: I mentioned, ran into a lot of legal trouble, and

958
00:46:28,800 --> 00:46:31,880
Speaker 1: so there was a lot of stuff that former members

959
00:46:32,000 --> 00:46:34,719
Speaker 1: or current members were required to say under oath, and

960
00:46:34,880 --> 00:46:37,480
Speaker 1: so I got a bunch of people that way. The

961
00:46:37,560 --> 00:46:41,719
Speaker 1: group documented its activities quite extensively, and so I was

962
00:46:41,760 --> 00:46:44,360
Speaker 1: able to love it when they do people's perspective from that,

963
00:46:44,520 --> 00:46:46,200
Speaker 1: I know, it's very helpful. I mean, it's very very

964
00:46:46,239 --> 00:46:48,000
Speaker 1: helpful for a reporter to be able to do that.

965
00:46:48,160 --> 00:46:51,680
Speaker 1: But there was like a group of five or so

966
00:46:52,400 --> 00:46:55,799
Speaker 1: former members who were for me, the kind of core crew.

967
00:46:55,920 --> 00:46:58,000
Speaker 1: There were others I spoke with, but it was a

968
00:46:58,080 --> 00:47:01,359
Speaker 1: pretty contained group that were I like, you know, week

969
00:47:01,440 --> 00:47:02,280
Speaker 1: by week sources.

970
00:47:03,040 --> 00:47:05,960
Speaker 2: There is a woman in the book Maura, who underwent

971
00:47:06,239 --> 00:47:15,320
Speaker 2: such intense punishment, isolation, separation from her children, humiliation, ritual,

972
00:47:15,520 --> 00:47:17,719
Speaker 2: like just every freakin' thing.

973
00:47:18,120 --> 00:47:20,759
Speaker 3: I you know, they started giving them names like the

974
00:47:20,800 --> 00:47:25,120
Speaker 3: people who are being punished like forsaken, Barren de spies, You're.

975
00:47:24,960 --> 00:47:29,279
Speaker 2: Now called despised. Imagine your new name is despised like.

976
00:47:29,760 --> 00:47:33,560
Speaker 3: And they're being accused of things like spiritual adultery or

977
00:47:33,840 --> 00:47:37,880
Speaker 3: whatever crime the only Deborah can see because she's the prophet.

978
00:47:37,760 --> 00:47:42,439
Speaker 2: And spiritual adultery is literally like being nice to someone yeah. Yeah, Yeah,

979
00:47:42,640 --> 00:47:43,560
Speaker 2: that's insane.

980
00:47:44,040 --> 00:47:46,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's wild. It's just wild. Yeah.

981
00:47:46,480 --> 00:47:49,000
Speaker 3: It seems to have a lot of really kind, wonderful

982
00:47:49,040 --> 00:47:52,600
Speaker 3: people in it and to see them all get wrapped

983
00:47:52,640 --> 00:47:53,439
Speaker 3: up and this is hard.

984
00:47:53,760 --> 00:47:56,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, just the point of them being kind of wonderful, Like,

985
00:47:56,680 --> 00:47:58,840
Speaker 1: I just couldn't agree with you more. And that was

986
00:47:58,880 --> 00:48:01,160
Speaker 1: actually something Part of what I really enjoyed about this

987
00:48:01,800 --> 00:48:04,560
Speaker 1: book is that, you know, getting to know people, getting

988
00:48:04,600 --> 00:48:07,279
Speaker 1: you know, any repertorial job is interesting because you get

989
00:48:07,320 --> 00:48:09,719
Speaker 1: to meet people that you would never otherwise get to meet.

990
00:48:10,120 --> 00:48:13,600
Speaker 1: But these folks, you know, they've been through something really rough,

991
00:48:13,760 --> 00:48:16,680
Speaker 1: and they were often, by definition, people who were looking

992
00:48:16,920 --> 00:48:20,680
Speaker 1: for something beautiful and meaningful in their lives. And so

993
00:48:21,280 --> 00:48:23,200
Speaker 1: if they managed to get out, I think a lot

994
00:48:23,239 --> 00:48:26,800
Speaker 1: of them still hold on to that sense of trying

995
00:48:26,840 --> 00:48:28,879
Speaker 1: to find and make something beautiful. And so when I'd

996
00:48:28,920 --> 00:48:31,560
Speaker 1: speak to them, I'd just be really moved by by

997
00:48:31,640 --> 00:48:35,560
Speaker 1: that impulse. And Yeah, a strange kind of and beautiful

998
00:48:35,640 --> 00:48:38,719
Speaker 1: kind of intimacy grows out of that connection, for sure. Yeah.

999
00:48:39,680 --> 00:48:40,880
Speaker 4: Are they okay?

1000
00:48:41,239 --> 00:48:41,399
Speaker 3: Now?

1001
00:48:41,760 --> 00:48:42,760
Speaker 4: Are people okay?

1002
00:48:43,680 --> 00:48:46,920
Speaker 1: I think I think they're sort of like provisional okays.

1003
00:48:46,920 --> 00:48:50,640
Speaker 1: I think they're okay. In the way that they're okay

1004
00:48:50,719 --> 00:48:54,080
Speaker 1: in like a real world kind of way. They you know,

1005
00:48:54,400 --> 00:48:56,840
Speaker 1: some parts of life are great and some parts of

1006
00:48:56,960 --> 00:48:58,560
Speaker 1: life are hard. I mean, I think that's true of

1007
00:48:58,600 --> 00:49:00,800
Speaker 1: anybody obviously, no matter they were in a culture not

1008
00:49:01,560 --> 00:49:05,000
Speaker 1: I'll speak specifically of Sarah because the book is mostly

1009
00:49:06,040 --> 00:49:09,000
Speaker 1: like her journey growing up in the group, escaping and

1010
00:49:09,120 --> 00:49:12,920
Speaker 1: starting over is like the narrative is the central narrative

1011
00:49:12,960 --> 00:49:16,600
Speaker 1: thread for the book, and so she has really managed

1012
00:49:16,640 --> 00:49:19,680
Speaker 1: to rebuild a life, a new life on the outside

1013
00:49:19,680 --> 00:49:23,200
Speaker 1: of ACMTC. She's still you know, she went through an

1014
00:49:23,239 --> 00:49:25,239
Speaker 1: extraordinary amount of trauma and so that's very much still

1015
00:49:25,280 --> 00:49:27,320
Speaker 1: with her, but she's really found very healthy ways to

1016
00:49:27,400 --> 00:49:29,640
Speaker 1: deal with it. Something I find really extraordinary is that

1017
00:49:29,719 --> 00:49:32,440
Speaker 1: she's just a huge runner. She's run like, I don't know,

1018
00:49:32,520 --> 00:49:35,239
Speaker 1: a couple dozen marathons or something. She's running one in

1019
00:49:35,360 --> 00:49:37,880
Speaker 1: London coming up, I think, and amazing, and so it's

1020
00:49:37,920 --> 00:49:41,439
Speaker 1: a really important way for her to just pound it out,

1021
00:49:41,680 --> 00:49:44,239
Speaker 1: you know. And she also was able to start a

1022
00:49:44,320 --> 00:49:46,480
Speaker 1: new family, and I think that you know, she got

1023
00:49:46,560 --> 00:49:49,359
Speaker 1: married and she had some kids and they're just sort

1024
00:49:49,400 --> 00:49:53,320
Speaker 1: of have allowed her to find meaning and beauty and

1025
00:49:53,360 --> 00:49:55,520
Speaker 1: all of that and then to other people. Yeah, it's

1026
00:49:56,400 --> 00:50:00,759
Speaker 1: people find their way to various degrees, and I think

1027
00:50:00,880 --> 00:50:03,200
Speaker 1: most of them. I mean, all the people I spoke

1028
00:50:03,280 --> 00:50:07,040
Speaker 1: to were together enough that they were able to talk

1029
00:50:07,080 --> 00:50:09,200
Speaker 1: to me about their experiences. So there's a bit of

1030
00:50:09,239 --> 00:50:11,040
Speaker 1: a sort of self selection thing going on there. But

1031
00:50:11,320 --> 00:50:13,560
Speaker 1: like I do want to offer like a little bit

1032
00:50:13,600 --> 00:50:15,719
Speaker 1: of hope more than a little bit I hope. You know,

1033
00:50:15,760 --> 00:50:19,880
Speaker 1: the book is talks about some really wild things that happened,

1034
00:50:19,960 --> 00:50:23,759
Speaker 1: but there is this element of like, you know, you

1035
00:50:23,840 --> 00:50:30,399
Speaker 1: see people with extraordinary resilience pushing through, managing to start over,

1036
00:50:30,600 --> 00:50:33,480
Speaker 1: And to me, it's just like endlessly inspiring. When I

1037
00:50:33,600 --> 00:50:36,439
Speaker 1: get really stuck in my own way of thinking about

1038
00:50:36,480 --> 00:50:38,840
Speaker 1: things and thinking you can't break out of something, you know,

1039
00:50:38,880 --> 00:50:40,920
Speaker 1: I think like, well it would be much heart Like

1040
00:50:41,000 --> 00:50:42,680
Speaker 1: what I'm stuck in is a lot easier to get

1041
00:50:42,719 --> 00:50:45,120
Speaker 1: out of than like what Sarah or Mora was stuck in,

1042
00:50:45,239 --> 00:50:46,800
Speaker 1: you know. And it's very inspiring.

1043
00:50:47,040 --> 00:50:49,799
Speaker 4: Yeah, true, And Mara had a big win.

1044
00:50:50,040 --> 00:50:52,960
Speaker 2: I mean, there are big wins for survivors in this book,

1045
00:50:53,040 --> 00:50:56,600
Speaker 2: which wins is really so great to read because that

1046
00:50:56,719 --> 00:50:57,880
Speaker 2: is not always the case.

1047
00:50:58,719 --> 00:51:01,120
Speaker 1: Sure, And you know, I I do honestly hope that

1048
00:51:01,680 --> 00:51:04,440
Speaker 1: my book can be a win for them. You know,

1049
00:51:04,760 --> 00:51:07,040
Speaker 1: I think that it's important to me that you know,

1050
00:51:07,120 --> 00:51:08,920
Speaker 1: like you're saying, this group has not been covered. I mean,

1051
00:51:08,960 --> 00:51:12,040
Speaker 1: I've basically written everything about this group that's been out there,

1052
00:51:12,080 --> 00:51:13,239
Speaker 1: and that was part of why I wanted to write

1053
00:51:13,239 --> 00:51:14,840
Speaker 1: the book, was because it was like, I feel like

1054
00:51:14,840 --> 00:51:17,600
Speaker 1: I'm like sort of breaking news. But I hope that

1055
00:51:17,719 --> 00:51:21,239
Speaker 1: the book can feel like a kind of you know,

1056
00:51:21,400 --> 00:51:25,000
Speaker 1: a two hundred and eighty page meaning making device, you know,

1057
00:51:25,400 --> 00:51:28,680
Speaker 1: taking things that happened that were really tough and making

1058
00:51:28,840 --> 00:51:31,359
Speaker 1: hopefully something beautiful out of them. And that can also

1059
00:51:31,440 --> 00:51:34,759
Speaker 1: be like just like literally useful to someone who's trying

1060
00:51:34,760 --> 00:51:36,319
Speaker 1: to deal with extremism in their own life.

1061
00:51:36,520 --> 00:51:38,800
Speaker 3: You can textualize it in a way that makes it

1062
00:51:39,040 --> 00:51:42,719
Speaker 3: both micro and macro at the same time, and you know,

1063
00:51:42,920 --> 00:51:44,680
Speaker 3: you can really see how we got here, how we

1064
00:51:44,760 --> 00:51:46,440
Speaker 3: can get out of here, and it's just it's a

1065
00:51:46,440 --> 00:51:46,879
Speaker 3: great book.

1066
00:51:47,200 --> 00:51:47,600
Speaker 1: Oh great.

1067
00:51:48,120 --> 00:51:51,000
Speaker 2: And my final question is, do you think we are

1068
00:51:51,200 --> 00:51:52,720
Speaker 2: entering a new age of cults?

1069
00:51:53,640 --> 00:51:56,799
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, the question. I mean, I guess, like from

1070
00:51:56,800 --> 00:51:59,239
Speaker 1: a historical point of view, like it would be like

1071
00:51:59,280 --> 00:52:02,000
Speaker 1: a categorical yes, because I think that this is a

1072
00:52:02,040 --> 00:52:08,040
Speaker 1: period of tremendous instability with political, environmental, economic, sociop I mean,

1073
00:52:08,120 --> 00:52:09,040
Speaker 1: like every possible way.

1074
00:52:09,160 --> 00:52:09,359
Speaker 4: Yeah.

1075
00:52:09,960 --> 00:52:12,040
Speaker 1: What that means with the Internet, I think is a

1076
00:52:12,200 --> 00:52:15,440
Speaker 1: really interesting question because to me, like the idea of

1077
00:52:15,480 --> 00:52:20,520
Speaker 1: a cult is really defined by like physical isolation, but

1078
00:52:20,760 --> 00:52:23,200
Speaker 1: with the Internet you can have a kind of isolation

1079
00:52:23,400 --> 00:52:26,160
Speaker 1: that's physically diffuse. You know, people are not literally next

1080
00:52:26,200 --> 00:52:27,719
Speaker 1: to each other, but they are in a kind of

1081
00:52:27,840 --> 00:52:31,279
Speaker 1: cultish relationship with each other. I don't think that to

1082
00:52:31,520 --> 00:52:33,480
Speaker 1: me that would quite qualify as a cult, but I

1083
00:52:33,520 --> 00:52:36,920
Speaker 1: think that there's maybe a tremendous amount of Internet based

1084
00:52:37,320 --> 00:52:42,799
Speaker 1: cultishness going on, and I can't see it changing a lot.

1085
00:52:43,000 --> 00:52:46,480
Speaker 1: I certainly hope it does. Yeah, Yeah, I'm curious what

1086
00:52:46,480 --> 00:52:47,080
Speaker 1: would you all.

1087
00:52:47,040 --> 00:52:51,360
Speaker 2: Say, yes, billion, I mean, because many of those online

1088
00:52:51,360 --> 00:52:55,319
Speaker 2: cults do then become physical cults, and right, of course, yeah,

1089
00:52:55,560 --> 00:53:00,440
Speaker 2: even the online ones often impact people the exisact same

1090
00:53:00,480 --> 00:53:02,560
Speaker 2: way as the real life. Once it's not like there's

1091
00:53:02,600 --> 00:53:05,719
Speaker 2: a distinction in our brains. Once we have accepted that

1092
00:53:05,840 --> 00:53:08,560
Speaker 2: somebody is the ultimate authority over our lives and we

1093
00:53:08,640 --> 00:53:10,399
Speaker 2: have to listen to them, it's kind of it's kind

1094
00:53:10,400 --> 00:53:12,440
Speaker 2: of irrelevant whether we're physically next to them or not.

1095
00:53:12,719 --> 00:53:15,000
Speaker 2: I mean, a lot of our guests never met their

1096
00:53:15,120 --> 00:53:16,759
Speaker 2: leader of their groups, you know what I mean, but

1097
00:53:16,880 --> 00:53:17,799
Speaker 2: they still.

1098
00:53:18,840 --> 00:53:21,799
Speaker 4: You know, there's nothing to do with their devotion meeting

1099
00:53:21,880 --> 00:53:23,399
Speaker 4: the person, yes matter.

1100
00:53:23,440 --> 00:53:25,160
Speaker 2: I mean, it can like be a thing that really

1101
00:53:25,360 --> 00:53:27,440
Speaker 2: like pulls you in or whatever. But like there were

1102
00:53:27,600 --> 00:53:30,240
Speaker 2: so many children of got outposts where nobody ever met.

1103
00:53:30,120 --> 00:53:32,600
Speaker 3: That dude, so many people who just saw them on

1104
00:53:32,680 --> 00:53:35,839
Speaker 3: screens or like heard their boy yeah, yeah, yeah. It's

1105
00:53:36,040 --> 00:53:38,919
Speaker 3: it's crazy and every group, every group that I'm looking

1106
00:53:38,960 --> 00:53:42,040
Speaker 3: at right now, whether it's like a pilates class, is

1107
00:53:42,080 --> 00:53:47,160
Speaker 3: getting so much crazier where it's really yes, yes, yes,

1108
00:53:47,239 --> 00:53:51,279
Speaker 3: because everybody feels so insecure and everywhere all feels so

1109
00:53:51,320 --> 00:53:53,279
Speaker 3: out of We're so out of control that it's like,

1110
00:53:53,480 --> 00:53:53,799
Speaker 3: this is.

1111
00:53:53,800 --> 00:53:56,000
Speaker 4: My Monday night pilates class, and we all better be here.

1112
00:53:56,040 --> 00:53:59,400
Speaker 3: Because we have to be together because like it's just

1113
00:53:59,600 --> 00:54:03,440
Speaker 3: really yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, strange times, strange times we

1114
00:54:03,560 --> 00:54:05,200
Speaker 3: all want to feel in control.

1115
00:54:05,600 --> 00:54:08,399
Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't have to be a bad thing either.

1116
00:54:08,520 --> 00:54:10,719
Speaker 1: That's sort of the kind of most interesting part of

1117
00:54:10,760 --> 00:54:12,560
Speaker 1: this to me is that like Platti's cross could be

1118
00:54:12,640 --> 00:54:14,080
Speaker 1: like really lovely and maybe you have like a really

1119
00:54:14,120 --> 00:54:17,080
Speaker 1: wonderful community. It's only when it kind of tips into

1120
00:54:17,360 --> 00:54:19,600
Speaker 1: something differently that it becomes destructive.

1121
00:54:19,719 --> 00:54:20,960
Speaker 4: No, no, so far, so good.

1122
00:54:21,120 --> 00:54:23,839
Speaker 2: But you know, like, although we've heard about a lot

1123
00:54:23,840 --> 00:54:26,040
Speaker 2: of yoga classes that did not go well.

1124
00:54:27,719 --> 00:54:30,600
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah great. I can't wait to see which

1125
00:54:30,680 --> 00:54:33,919
Speaker 4: cults come up next. Oh boy, yeah, where can people

1126
00:54:33,960 --> 00:54:34,279
Speaker 4: find you?

1127
00:54:34,680 --> 00:54:38,480
Speaker 1: They can find me on Instagram at one Harrison Hill.

1128
00:54:38,600 --> 00:54:40,800
Speaker 1: So that's at the number one. H A R R

1129
00:54:40,880 --> 00:54:43,680
Speaker 1: I S O N H I L L TikTok is

1130
00:54:43,719 --> 00:54:46,520
Speaker 1: the same and the book title. The book title is

1131
00:54:46,560 --> 00:54:49,360
Speaker 1: The Oracle's Daughter. The Rise and Fall of an American

1132
00:54:49,480 --> 00:54:54,200
Speaker 1: Cult comes out April seventh from Scribner, and hopefully it's

1133
00:54:54,239 --> 00:54:55,960
Speaker 1: got a little something for everybody in there.

1134
00:54:56,960 --> 00:54:59,440
Speaker 3: I think it sure does. It's a fascinating book. Thank

1135
00:54:59,520 --> 00:55:04,440
Speaker 3: you for writing, Thank you for being a guest. All right,

1136
00:55:04,719 --> 00:55:08,440
Speaker 3: and there we have it with Harrison. Go check out

1137
00:55:08,520 --> 00:55:12,800
Speaker 3: his book, Megan. We have two cults to ask about

1138
00:55:12,840 --> 00:55:15,680
Speaker 3: right now. The first one is, of course, the Aggressive

1139
00:55:15,719 --> 00:55:22,920
Speaker 3: Christianity Missions Training Corps. Thoughts couldn't last an hour, I

1140
00:55:23,080 --> 00:55:25,440
Speaker 3: guess I could last two hours if I got to

1141
00:55:25,520 --> 00:55:26,919
Speaker 3: watch her do a spiritual birth.

1142
00:55:27,120 --> 00:55:30,279
Speaker 2: I think the spiritual birth would be very compelling for

1143
00:55:30,440 --> 00:55:31,279
Speaker 2: a day for sure.

1144
00:55:31,560 --> 00:55:31,799
Speaker 4: Yeah.

1145
00:55:32,080 --> 00:55:37,040
Speaker 2: However, you did mention the original group that Leilah aka

1146
00:55:37,200 --> 00:55:39,279
Speaker 2: Debora was a part of in the beginning, which is

1147
00:55:39,360 --> 00:55:41,440
Speaker 2: the bear tribe, and how you would maybe like that

1148
00:55:41,560 --> 00:55:43,440
Speaker 2: one get me.

1149
00:55:43,560 --> 00:55:44,440
Speaker 4: To the bear tribe.

1150
00:55:44,520 --> 00:55:52,440
Speaker 3: Yesterday a lot of hot people cause playing as nature people.

1151
00:55:52,560 --> 00:55:55,120
Speaker 3: It almost sounds like a reality show like Love Island

1152
00:55:55,280 --> 00:55:55,720
Speaker 3: or something.

1153
00:55:56,920 --> 00:55:57,320
Speaker 4: Doesn't.

1154
00:55:57,560 --> 00:56:00,560
Speaker 3: It's a little because it was just hot young people

1155
00:56:00,880 --> 00:56:02,759
Speaker 3: like pretending to be native a bear.

1156
00:56:03,920 --> 00:56:07,399
Speaker 4: Yeah, that part not so much. But I will say

1157
00:56:07,560 --> 00:56:08,320
Speaker 4: you guys.

1158
00:56:08,760 --> 00:56:12,160
Speaker 3: To live like that, never waste any part of an animal,

1159
00:56:12,800 --> 00:56:16,279
Speaker 3: be close to nature. Although I don't like camping, So

1160
00:56:16,600 --> 00:56:18,920
Speaker 3: who the fuck am I to say any of this?

1161
00:56:19,120 --> 00:56:21,520
Speaker 3: I don't know shit about shit. I wouldn't join the

1162
00:56:21,560 --> 00:56:24,480
Speaker 3: bear tribe, I know. I'm like, could I actually picture

1163
00:56:24,520 --> 00:56:25,600
Speaker 3: you living off the land?

1164
00:56:25,880 --> 00:56:25,920
Speaker 1: Like?

1165
00:56:26,160 --> 00:56:29,600
Speaker 2: I don't think so. No. I think I could picture

1166
00:56:29,640 --> 00:56:33,040
Speaker 2: you on like a beautiful Joshua tree home where you step.

1167
00:56:32,800 --> 00:56:35,440
Speaker 4: Outside once in a whole. Yeah, like once a day.

1168
00:56:35,440 --> 00:56:38,520
Speaker 3: I'd go outside and and be like I am one

1169
00:56:38,600 --> 00:56:41,040
Speaker 3: with you, and then I'd go back into the air conditioner.

1170
00:56:41,320 --> 00:56:44,840
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's so Yeah. I feel that I'm.

1171
00:56:44,760 --> 00:56:48,879
Speaker 3: Having delusions of me being in the Bear tribe. It's

1172
00:56:49,040 --> 00:56:52,200
Speaker 3: absolutely false. I'm so sorry we wasted all of your

1173
00:56:52,280 --> 00:56:55,200
Speaker 3: time and me figuring out in real time.

1174
00:56:56,800 --> 00:56:59,600
Speaker 4: That I wouldn't join either of these groups. But you'd

1175
00:56:59,680 --> 00:57:00,919
Speaker 4: visit for a day.

1176
00:57:01,280 --> 00:57:01,480
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1177
00:57:01,880 --> 00:57:04,399
Speaker 3: Same, I'd visited any cult for a day. I would

1178
00:57:04,480 --> 00:57:05,920
Speaker 3: visit any cult for day. We need to go do

1179
00:57:06,120 --> 00:57:07,239
Speaker 3: we need to go do that? We need to go

1180
00:57:07,320 --> 00:57:10,360
Speaker 3: do an investigative undercover thing. Yeah, let's do it.

1181
00:57:10,480 --> 00:57:13,360
Speaker 4: You can wear a mustache, okay, and I'll wear a hat. Okay.

1182
00:57:15,320 --> 00:57:17,600
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for listening to another episode of

1183
00:57:17,640 --> 00:57:20,320
Speaker 3: Trust Me. We appreciate and love you so much. Rate

1184
00:57:20,440 --> 00:57:22,720
Speaker 3: us five stars if you feel the same way, and

1185
00:57:23,120 --> 00:57:26,240
Speaker 3: as always, remember to follow your gut, watch out for

1186
00:57:26,320 --> 00:57:30,480
Speaker 3: red flags, and never ever trust me.

1187
00:57:31,040 --> 00:57:31,560
Speaker 4: Bye bye.

1188
00:57:33,800 --> 00:57:37,120
Speaker 2: This has been an exactly right production hosted by me Lola.

1189
00:57:36,880 --> 00:57:40,720
Speaker 4: Blanc and me Megan Elizabeth. Our senior producer is Gee Holley.

1190
00:57:41,040 --> 00:57:42,840
Speaker 2: This episode was mixed by John Bradley.

1191
00:57:43,000 --> 00:57:46,280
Speaker 3: Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain, and our guest booker

1192
00:57:46,440 --> 00:57:47,480
Speaker 3: is Patrick Kottner.

1193
00:57:47,800 --> 00:57:50,120
Speaker 2: Our theme song was composed by Holly amber Church.

1194
00:57:50,440 --> 00:57:54,480
Speaker 3: Trust Me as executive produced by Karen Kilgareth Georgia Hartstark,

1195
00:57:54,560 --> 00:57:55,480
Speaker 3: and Danielle Kramer.

1196
00:57:55,720 --> 00:57:58,000
Speaker 2: You can find us on Instagram at trust Me podcast

1197
00:57:58,160 --> 00:58:00,280
Speaker 2: or on TikTok at trust Me coult Podcast.

1198
00:58:00,640 --> 00:58:03,680
Speaker 3: Got your own story about cults, extreme belief our manipulation,

1199
00:58:04,080 --> 00:58:06,880
Speaker 3: Shoot us an email at trustmepodat gmail dot com.

1200
00:58:07,120 --> 00:58:10,000
Speaker 2: Listen to trust Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

1201
00:58:10,160 --> 00:58:11,680
Speaker 2: or wherever you get your podcasts.