‘Uncultured:’ Daniella Mestyanek Young on COG and the US Military (Pt. 2)

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[00:02:18] This stuff really is everywhere. The Cultiverse just keeps on expanding and so are we. Welcome to season five of A Little Bit Cultie, serving cult content and word salads weekly on your favorite podcast platforms. Learn more at alittlebitculti.com Welcome back to part two of Danielle Mastienak Young.

[00:02:53] If you missed part one, please stop this recording and put it in reverse. Go back, listen to episode one. You might also want to check out our book, but I think the interview stands on its own.

[00:03:05] Please let us know what you think of this episode and enjoy part two with Daniela. So I did not do the thing that a lot of people from hard backgrounds do and enroll in the military to pay for college.

[00:03:29] I went to college first. So I got through high school. In high school, I ended up writing an essay about how I was raised in a cult, which I owe so much to this counselor who had a thousand students to take care of and paid attention to me

[00:03:43] and really changed my life and helped me go to college. I went to college, which really was this kind of, you know, haven of learning and just wonderfulness and getting to question.

[00:03:54] And I found out you could major in books. I was very excited and got a major in literature, which I see now right studying literature and history was just me trying to learn about the world and normal humans.

[00:04:07] And as I was leaving college, I decided to join the military. And this was actually the hardest chapter in my book to write, which seems like a nothing chapter, chapter 17 is called Bring Me to Life.

[00:04:21] And it's actually written in two different ways. It's the happy go lucky story of I get to college. I joined the chess team. I find friends. I study abroad. I graduated as the valedictorian.

[00:04:31] But also I meet Jeff, who we can kind of tell from the beginning is this controlling pretty emotionally abusive dude, which of course I could not tell being drawn to some of the very similar things.

[00:04:44] And I marry him and then I kind of realize I'm sort of trapped into either being just his sort of trailing wife, or I can go join the military myself. What's interesting is now as cult scholar and as someone who's lived this whole life,

[00:05:04] I can see that all of the reasons that I joined the army were exactly the reasons that people joined cults. And actually saying to the world that I joined the army in part because of this toxic relationship felt really hard for me.

[00:05:19] And when I was writing, I just I had this moment that I was like, I'm either going to just choose to be vulnerable and put it all on the page and trust that it's the better story and the reader will come along with me.

[00:05:32] And I think it's interesting, right? Because cult scholars will call toxic abusive relationships one one cults because it's this very similar process as is ding ding ding army basic training, which was created by four psychologists who studied abuse, right?

[00:05:51] And how we we break people down and build them back up. And so there I am college graduate. I have signed up for this of my own free will.

[00:06:00] And I am you know the prologue of uncultured has me in basic training holding this 50 pound duffel bag above my head and realizing I just joined another cult. There was such a poignant moment. What a great way to start the book and really hooks the reader.

[00:06:14] At least it hooked me and like, oh, oh God, here we go again. What were the things that you like to share about that journey that you see as culty? Yeah, so you know the first thing is like about the duffel bag event itself, right?

[00:06:29] And this is a known event. All the services have some version of we get you. We're going to shock your system both by the way, both the Children of God and the US Army don't let you sleep for the first 72 hours when they get you. So that's interesting.

[00:06:45] And then this is about a week into basic training, right? So you've been at a week called reception, which is the same thing they call your first week in prison where you are going through the trauma of becoming systematized, right? Like you are a number.

[00:07:00] You are just, you know, being in processed and then you get to basic training and you have this duffel bag with about 50 pounds of gear and uniforms and stuff that you don't know how to use yet. And you're outside for two to three hours.

[00:07:15] It's always like either pouring rain or a lot of sun and you're holding this bag above your head for two or three hours rather yelling at you. And so there's two really important things about this event is one, it's impossible. No one can do that, right?

[00:07:31] So you drop it, you pick it up, you are realizing that you are impotent and insufficient and all of these things.

[00:07:37] And two is it's irrational, a guarantee that nobody who has not been in the military has gone outside and held 50 pounds over their head for a few hours.

[00:07:48] And research shows that when we do this first big irrational task on behalf of the group, we are so much more likely to stay with the group and continue to do irrational tasks for the group. So it's literally a part of getting you not to question.

[00:08:08] And I think when we talk about it that way, people can see that in other parts of their lives. Like what irrational tasks do groups that you're in ask you to participate in? It breeds obedience as well. The sort of thought stopping cliches.

[00:08:23] And one of my favorite ones is you knew what you signed up for. And I think as adults, we buy into our own programming and we are the first ones when things get hard or when things seem irrational to say, I signed up for this, right?

[00:08:39] Like I got to hang in there. I made this decision. And you know, we go along not questioning.

[00:08:45] And so, and then I guess, you know, the other important thing about what made it really culty was, you know, so when I have this moment of, oh, I just joined another cult. And I think it was necessarily me being scared.

[00:08:59] That was kind of me being like, cool, I know how to do this, you know, like I know how to be a group. I know how to tamp down my individualism and we were God's army, right? So going to Uncle Sam's army, like I expect these militaristic parallels.

[00:09:16] And I think that those of us from high control groups also are really good at kind of like suffering, right? Like the value of suffering. And so we can just like lock into that.

[00:09:28] But the more surprising parallels that I found and what the second half of the book really focuses on is that the sexual threat and sexual violence for women, I would say was equally as bad in the US army as in the sex cults.

[00:09:47] And then the other parallel was that we don't talk about it, right? So now that I started talking about what was happening to me in the cult, all of my cult friends, oh my God, the same thing was happening to me.

[00:09:59] And now that I really put on the page what life is like for the daughters of America when they disappear behind the big commune walls of the Department of Defense.

[00:10:08] All I hear from other women veterans is, oh my God, get out of my journals, the same stuff was happening to me. And that parallel there was we didn't talk about it. And even when you do talk about it afterwards, that's what they used to demonize you, right?

[00:10:25] Like why aren't you just a proud veteran? Why are you talking about the bad stuff that happened? It's like, well, both I'm proud of my service and I'm also traumatized. Well, we are talking about it now. Oh yeah, to absolute silence from the military. They won't admit.

[00:10:41] So I picked, right? Like, I wasn't necessarily writing this book to say that the army is bad. Right? I was writing this book to show like there were some really problematic things in the culture. I have a degree from Harvard and organizational psychology, right? Leadership and group behavior.

[00:11:01] And I was like, oh, like the military will like this, right? They're looking for books by women. They're looking to change their culture.

[00:11:08] And you know, in the year leading up to publication, I sent this book to 10 military men, all of whom are known names, all of whom publicly have a profile that is about social justice and changing culture and doing all of that stuff.

[00:11:23] And not a single one of them got back to me was willing to put their name on the book. Wow.

[00:11:30] You know, including like, you know, where you have a former secretary of defense who says sexual assault is a cancer on the service, but then tells my team, I'm not going to read this book because it's not my area of expertise.

[00:11:43] Like with all due respect, I understand that it's not your area of expertise. That is why we have to tell these stories. And I realized that really similar to in a cult, because we're not talking about the reality of the culture for us women that serve.

[00:12:01] Nobody knows, you know, everyone thinks like they know what's going on, but nobody really knows. I mean, I had no idea. Listen, I feel like I was completely naive, A being Canadian, you know, and having very limited access to any of anything that you shared truly.

[00:12:18] In my mind, I could see like, you know, it was definitely problematic, but I was shocked at some of the stories that you wrote about in your book.

[00:12:28] And I'm just like, like a such a princess in terms of like, there's things that you went through that I was like, I couldn't have handled so many of those things just physically, you know what I mean? Or like not having my things.

[00:12:40] There's so many things that I need to like feel comfortable to go to sleep, to go to sleep like earplugs and eye masks and heating. Pads and pillows and all the different things like how you even like live there. Never mind what you endured emotionally, physically, sexually.

[00:12:57] I have a couple of questions. Let's say I was your superior. I was your peer and you and I were friends. Could you come to me and go, Hey, what's the climate like? What's how is it reinforced? So generally I would say no, right?

[00:13:09] So my one senior military man who did let me put his full name in the book is the character who's kind of the good leader, also good uncle, you know, in the book, Scott Halter. And like he was a mentor.

[00:13:26] He's still a very good friend and I never had conversations with him about everything I was going through. Like, and he would have done something about it because he was that leader.

[00:13:38] But the culture is still like I need to be a consummate professional and I, the culture really is I need to do everything possible to make you forget that I'm a woman so that you will let me do my job.

[00:13:50] And in any high control group, the culture is you should never be an individual, right? In the in the military we say in the army we say all you need to be successful is being the right place, the right time, the right uniform and never volunteer for anything.

[00:14:04] Right? So it's basically never stand out. And, you know, so, and then sort of back to Sarah's the cliff notes, right? Like this appealed to me when I joined the army after six years of not fitting in culturally at six years of really flooding my brain with information.

[00:14:21] I remember looking forward to basic training. It would just be three months where people would tell me exactly what to do and where to go and I wouldn't have to think about anything. And this is why cults pop up in times of social turmoil.

[00:14:33] And so I did a direct commission program, which is basically anyone with a college degree who's physically fit the army will let you go in.

[00:14:42] And so I went to regular basic training and then I went to officer school, which I describe as 12 weeks of if you can put up with the hazing will let you be an officer. And supposedly they're training you to lead teams, but everything you're graded on is individualistic.

[00:14:58] So really we're just all fighting each other. And the one thing that the army worships is running, right? Maybe in next year it was volleyball. Also running though. I'm that person now. I'm a princess. I need all the things to sleep.

[00:15:17] I need everything, but one of the reasons I think that people from high control religions do really well in the military is because we know how to sublimate self sacrifice for the good of the group.

[00:15:26] And we also again were steeped in this value of the glory of suffering. So I don't think I was a good runner because I'm somehow above average physically.

[00:15:36] I think I was a good runner because I just threw myself at the pavement and nobody was going to beat me because I was going to be number one. And that is one of those healing things that I've had to work on.

[00:15:48] I think like the way I engaged with running itself was a bit culty. But anyway, so I am a runner, right? So when I run as fast as the boys, which means I'm at the top of my class in officer school.

[00:15:59] I get the career I want, which is military intelligence. I go out and I do a year of training out in spy school.

[00:16:08] And at every point in my career, what's interesting is like I never have to introduce myself to senior officers because they know who I am because I'm the girl that can run fast. So it's really interesting how these things in systems work.

[00:16:22] So then I get stationed at Fort Campbell, which is the home of the 101st, which is one of the big infantry bases.

[00:16:29] And I wonder how different my career would have been if I hadn't been sent to a big infantry base where, you know, women were probably one in 40 or something. Right? So just you are othered and you are alone kind of from the very beginning.

[00:16:45] And then I very quickly got deployed. So by the time I'm 23, I'm deployed to Afghanistan. And this is when I really start to get triggered. And my PTSD starts to become complex PTSD because I have this moment of like, again, what did I do?

[00:17:04] I signed up for this. And now I spent six years, seven years struggling to get away from toxic control and sexual violence. And here I am again on a commune that I can't leave with high walls, with men all around me that are sexually violent.

[00:17:20] And just to be clear, because this question is sometimes asked, I mean fellow American soldiers who I am warned will rape me if they get the chance. Before you go? Before you go? Was this common knowledge or was it when you got there?

[00:17:34] So before we deployed, my boss gave me an article that was all about how many women get raped while they're deployed. He was like, Hey, read this. It's good for you to know.

[00:17:44] And then the other captain on his team, who's the one that very quickly into the deployment pressures me to start sleeping with him says to me, you know, Janiella, I used to think it was silly that they say it's so dangerous for women over here.

[00:17:58] But now that I see what it's like, I do think you'll probably get raped on this deployment. He said that outright to you? Said it outright. There was a place called Rape Alley, which was the only way to get from where we slept to food.

[00:18:09] There was a time that I was advocating so bikes were like gold. If you had a bike, that was like you having a Ferrari back home, right? You are important. And I was advocating that bikes should be distributed to the women and not by rank.

[00:18:25] And someone said why? And I said, and this was in a room, tactical operation center. There's 25 people could hear this conversation. And I said, he said why? And I said because by the time I passed someone and they realize I'm a woman, I'm already gone.

[00:18:41] I'm a lieutenant. This captain rank above me looks me in the eyes and says, we know your route. We can string fishing wire. And nobody says anything. That's not in your book. There was too many stories to tell, right?

[00:18:55] So while I was writing on cultured, I was studying organizational psychology. And I was doing all of these projects on women's experience in the military. And I had this realization like, oh, women are an oppressed class in the military.

[00:19:12] I mean, I was part of repealing the combat ban, which was legally being segregated in our jobs. And as an oppressed class, it's impossible to separate like your pride and service from your trauma. Like there's no way you didn't have both.

[00:19:27] So this is why in un-cultured, you know, I show you this is part of the recap. Right? So I volunteered to be one of these women to go out on these infantry patrols, the first mixed gender, like deliberate combat operations. And I am super proud of that.

[00:19:44] Right? We eventually desegregated the army by gender. I like to say I won my war. But you also see me being pulled aside and told to watch my back against these 25 American soldiers on the objective. And what's not in the book is that happened three separate times, right?

[00:20:01] You only see one. And where I say this is a culture thing is like none of us, even me at the time, thought to question why are we afraid of this?

[00:20:11] Like why are we afraid that 25 American soldiers are going to simultaneously decide to rape an officer outside the wire? The fuck. And you know, my only thing I could say then was like you're telling me to watch my back, but what do you expect me to do?

[00:20:29] These are 25 fully armed Rangers and I'm the only woman, you know, you think I can do anything if this happens? How are you going to watch your back? So there's no one you can go to. There's no one like, hey,

[00:20:44] There's no one. And let me tell you the dehumanization right when you separate out a demographic, the dehumanization is so complete that at one point I was sent into an unclear building in Afghanistan with just my translator who's not armed and like senior officers flipped out when they found out.

[00:21:07] And these soldiers, right, they would never, never in their mind would they send an American soldier alone into an unclear building. But they're not thinking of me as an American soldier. They're thinking of me as a girl on the team, right?

[00:21:26] Like I say in the book, I'm a female shaped tool to help them get their job done. And these are Rangers.

[00:21:33] And the real reality of this is that when we come back behind the wire, right, those men all get to put down their weapons, take off their armor and relax until the next time they have to go outside the wire.

[00:21:48] I have to walk around everywhere with my rifle at the low ready because the only when I do try to talk to my superiors and tell them that I'm scared.

[00:21:56] On my second deployment, I specifically went to my male colleagues and I said that man scares me. Please always watch me when he's around. And the only response I would ever get is, Daniela, you have a gun.

[00:22:10] So now you're telling me one, I can't even get believed when I say that I got raped. But supposedly I'm going to get believed for self-defense rather than murder.

[00:22:19] But also I don't happen to find the idea of having to shoot a colleague dead to be less traumatic than being assaulted. Right? So and all through all of this, right? The attitude is still you girls wanted to be here.

[00:22:37] You knew what you signed up for. So suck it up. Right? Don't talk about it. Don't be different. And I think this is in some way this is true for everyone that's breaking glass ceilings.

[00:22:48] Right? You have to be the one to just, I think I say in the book, we're all standing here trying not to bleed to death from the shards of the glass ceiling that we helped shatter. Love that line. Fucking love that line.

[00:22:59] You know, really hoping that a decade later it's become easier for these women. But unfortunately a few viral videos about rape culture on TikTok have I think disabused me of the notion that it has gotten better.

[00:23:13] Is that accurate? That's true. It's not better. It's the same. I can't imagine. I don't know how it would be get better given the structure that exists. Yeah, what's going to inspire that to change? I mean.

[00:23:22] Yeah. Okay, so there are definitely some things. So, you know, the last part of my recap I will say is I do get assaulted while I'm deployed.

[00:23:31] And because I was breaking a rule, I'm not protected. I can't report it, you know, sort of all of these things we've talked about. And just to be clear, sorry, you were breaking the rule because if I recall you weren't supposed to be alone with him anyway.

[00:23:46] Because during deployment, the military decided to ban sex, something they never did before women were in the military. And of course it doesn't work. It just makes the whole situation more dangerous for us as is the case.

[00:24:00] So, oh what I was going to say about thinking it got better, right? So in my case, because I was breaking a rule to be alone with a man, I knew I couldn't report it, right?

[00:24:11] I knew I couldn't ask for help because they would have destroyed my career. What I didn't realize while I was writing the book was, oh damn, that guy knew that too.

[00:24:21] You know, he knew that he could victimize me and I wouldn't be able to do anything about it. So recently there has been a law passed called Safe to Report which says if anyone reports a sexual crime you cannot punish them for a lesser thing.

[00:24:37] So this really protects young soldiers in the barracks who are drinking and get assaulted but they're too scared to report because they're drinking underage. It also would have protected or at least helped me get justice. So that has changed, right? There's a couple of things that have changed.

[00:24:56] The military is finally, or Congress has finally pulled sexual crimes out from the chain of command which was a huge conflict of interest. So there's all these little things that say it should have gotten better but it really hasn't.

[00:25:11] And I think this is the, you know, when we try to say it's a few bad apples but really it's an organization that has had this stuff running through it all the way.

[00:25:21] What's interesting since you mentioned Canada is I've recently found out that Canada is sort of leading the charge on the big western English-speaking countries and how well they treat people.

[00:25:33] And that is because Canada's Department of Defense has successfully been sued by women for rape culture and by the LGBTQ community for discrimination. And I think that's probably what it's going to take in the US.

[00:25:47] I think we need a huge massive class action lawsuit for rape culture and then they will start changing. I also think that now it's finally affecting recruiting and so now they might actually try to change it. And I do think it's possible.

[00:26:04] Yeah, who wants to sign up for that? If the truth gets out people aren't going to sign up for that. Right. I just had a 12 year old boy still up here asking for help. He's emaciated, he's got tape around his legs. Ruby Frankie is his mom's name.

[00:26:53] Infamous is covering Ruby Frankie, the world of Mormonism and a secret therapy group that ruined lives. Listen to Infamous wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. What are your self-care non-negotiables? Maybe you never skip leg day or never miss yoga.

[00:27:14] Maybe it's getting eight hours of sleep. That's my personal and everyone's dream, isn't it? Well, I definitely have some non-negotiables like I'm in Vancouver right now and I'm spending literally as much time as I can outside of nature. Hashtag cold pools, hashtag crushing it. Nature is a non-negotiable.

[00:27:31] Not enough time in the fresh air and the trees around me and I start to feel not great.

[00:27:34] Therapy day is a bit like my nature walks. I try to not miss it and I know I'm just going to feel so much better all around if I make it a priority.

[00:27:42] I get so much out of it. It helps me put my worries and anxieties in their rightful place and helps me clear my mind so I can focus on what I really need and sometimes what I don't need.

[00:27:51] Like, I don't need to be overbooking myself just because I hate to say no to people. You know what I mean? Thanks therapy. Thanks for helping me see that. And if you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try.

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[00:28:30] Here is where I really think there's a parallel, right? So in the first half of my book and one of the hardest chapters, just chapter five, where I spend 10 hours in a basement with a pedophile

[00:28:45] and I am dragged by the hand into this basement right past my stepfather, right? Five years old crying, being dragged away, disappear for 10 hours. He's one of the good uncles in my mind. I have always thought that.

[00:29:01] But every time I, you know, look at these bad incidents in the story of my life, right? There he is in the background. And I really believe that all of these kind of good men in the military are worried

[00:29:14] that if we redefine what is acceptable in the culture, they will be called out on their bad behavior, right? Because that's the only way I can explain why there's another dead woman soldier at Fort Hood

[00:29:27] and all of the men in the military are not screaming about it at the top of their lungs. Like all of the good men. Like why am I the one talking about this and not General Mattis and the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff?

[00:29:40] I just don't get how you don't have allies, more allies than this that chaps my ass. Yeah. And you know, I hear this phrase a lot like, well, nobody knows how to change the culture.

[00:29:49] Actually, I have a 10 step plan. I have a 10 step plan and a model of how you've done it before. And I always say this, like as soon as the leaders at the top want something to change, they will change it.

[00:30:03] People say a lot that the military is not your social proving ground. And actually if we look at the entire history of the US military, it has almost always been a social proving ground because you can force people's actions. You know, the military desegregated before America desegregated.

[00:30:24] And they can absolutely do this if they want to. I just think if there were any base in America that was known to be dangerous for male soldiers, that problem would be solved in a week. That is such a good point.

[00:30:40] Do you think it's a case of they're going to have to hold some of their buddies accountable? Absolutely. I think that's the conversation we don't want to have. We have the social tolerance to say one in three women that serve the country is getting sexually assaulted.

[00:30:56] It's way higher than that, but we don't have the social ability to turn that around and say who is raping us. And this is really interesting when you talk about the male assault numbers because I hear infantry dudes say all the time,

[00:31:13] like, well, I served with all men and we didn't have a problem with rape culture. Actually if your unit had more than six people in it statistically you did because those were the reported numbers for men.

[00:31:25] So it's not just something that affects women but that is the way that it is briefed. I will say that in my experience every time there is an active rapist that is getting men, that person is found and shut down really quickly.

[00:31:39] Yeah, and those are probably just the numbers that are reported about you. They're numbers that aren't. But both sexes but probably even more for men, I'm guessing.

[00:31:47] Absolutely. I mean, I think there's a lot of what is considered hazing and rights of passage for men on men in the military. That is just straight sexual assaults.

[00:31:56] Wow. Well, you know, like I said at the beginning I had like a loose feeling about the problems in the structure of the military. But what I hadn't really kind of linked together before and I'm sure you have but I was telling Nipi,

[00:32:12] we always have a little walk debrief before our podcast and like get in the game in the headspace. And I was like, you know, thinking about my brief foray into the brownies and, you know, looking at the culture of here,

[00:32:25] like the Boy Scouts and like, like this is like Boy Scouts for grownups. Like we're all trying to get our badges and our stripes and our pins and like the and relating it to our experience with the straight path,

[00:32:36] you know, and how I saw your rise in the ranks. It's like this more, what did you say Nipi? It was like a more formalized structure of abuse, whereas next year was like more tacit. Do you remember what you were saying with that?

[00:32:49] Since evolved it the military is basically taking the extreme of masculinity and honing it using it as a tool to go use force. Yeah. If you were honing women in a certain way, the emergent property is probably not going to be forced. It's going to be empathy, right?

[00:33:04] So with that comes a lot of downside. And I think those people are scared to go in there and hold that accountable because that atmosphere cultivates it. So it's hard to refine.

[00:33:16] You know, also I imagine correct me if I'm wrong, Daniel, you're getting people who are using the military because it's the last resort in life. Yeah, you're definitely getting a lot of those people from poorer upbring. So you're going to get extreme, I would imagine.

[00:33:29] I saw in football locker rooms so I can imagine it's only times 10 in the military. So part of the reason I stopped playing football because I thought it was a little too extreme.

[00:33:40] So the military, I imagine has, it's normalized a lot of the worst parts of masculinity, I bet. Yeah, and it really is that, right? You know, like I was just reading this morning, like it's really rich when people say that soldiering is a male career.

[00:33:55] Because you held us out of it legally for 243 years and now you're like, well, y'all just aren't good at this. And sociologists actually defined this term from the women's experience in the military, which is called the third gender.

[00:34:14] So like when you joined the military, first of all, in my day, you had to get up on a table and let a usually male doctor look you in the vagina to make sure that you were a woman.

[00:34:25] So that they could then like slot you into a lesser class, right? So from day one, like your status as a female has probably never been so important in your life until you joined the army.

[00:34:40] And that's what they call us females, right, which is an adjective, not a noun. But to the outside world, they see us as overly masculine, you know. Interesting.

[00:34:50] I'll never forget the guy who didn't want to let me on a plane with my military ID because he was like, you're in the army? Yeah. I said, but you're really pretty. He's like, yeah, they don't kick us out for that, you know.

[00:35:03] So it's like we're this third gender, right? Like we're not feminine or we're too feminine for the military, but we're too masculine for the regular world. You're going from one standard of how men see you to another standard of how men see you and you fit neither, right?

[00:35:23] Yeah. A big realization for me, and I know this will speak to both of you who were successful in nexium was how much of the misogyny I had to internalize to be successful, right?

[00:35:37] And I think this ties back to why these senior men can't admit that there's a problem because if you've been successful in a toxic system, you're acknowledging that you benefited from a toxic system.

[00:35:48] And so where I thought, you know, first of all, it's like there's this great scene in uncultured where we get to the team, the infantry guys realize I can run fast.

[00:35:57] So then they have me just race sprints against like 15 guys and I sort of earn my way onto the team because I can run faster in my boots and all my gear than the platoon leader can in his workout uniform.

[00:36:10] But it's a great scene. But then I feel like what you don't see off the page is, you know, first of all, none of the men had to prove their way onto the team.

[00:36:20] And second of all, when we do a 10 hour patrol the next day, I'm broken and I'm not seemingly pulling my own as a woman.

[00:36:29] And I'm sure a bunch of those guys were like, you know, to the point that I got off the helicopter, kneeled on a cactus and then just did a 10 hour patrol without stopping and asking for help.

[00:36:42] Because I didn't want to be that girl, right? So it's not till after I get out of the military that I realize like I thought that improving that I was the top 1%.

[00:36:54] I was proving to these men that women were good enough. But really, I think what I was doing was just reinforcing their ideas.

[00:37:05] Right? Like I can't tell you how many times I heard like women can't do this. I mean, like Captain Messonette can do it, but she's not a woman.

[00:37:13] Right? You know, eventually you have to have this realization that like I cannot win at a game that is designed for me to lose. And that's why almost all women exit the military as captains or basically before their 10 year mark. And why did you leave?

[00:37:30] So it was really that, right? It's the decision is housed in a fun chapter called Mr. President We're Not Lesbians. But it, you know, it really just came down to the like I am too tired to keep doing this all the time.

[00:37:45] I've heard this referred to as the glass cliff when, you know, it's like when I was on that first deployment and I was gung ho and the army be safe.

[00:37:54] Hua, that's the word for like being super badass. And I was like, look, the writings on the wall, they're going to be sending the first woman to Ranger School. They're going to handpick them. I'm going to make sure I'm one of them.

[00:38:07] Two years later when that was actually happening and I was deployed on my second deployment. And I was just like, no, I'm too tired to let the younger girls do it. Right? Like, and it has these ripple effects now. Right.

[00:38:20] So now women have been allowed to go to Ranger School for 10 years. So when they're looking for like a senior woman to go advise the president on rape culture, they're going to look at, you know, someone like me, 35 who would be a major or Lieutenant Colonel right now.

[00:38:35] And they're going to be like, well, why don't you have a Ranger tab? Like it's been open for 10 years. So like clearly you're not dedicated.

[00:38:43] And I'm like, well, no, if you would let me go through at the prime of my career, like you did with the men, right? I would have had it then. But it's not necessarily true that just once we get rid of a ban, like it's reversible. Right.

[00:38:58] Those of us that were held out of the ability to advance in our prime are probably not going to catch up.

[00:39:05] I just, I got so tired of it. You know, I was trying to go over to a special operations aviation unit where I would have been able to be the assistant intelligence officer, but not the lead intelligence officer because you still had to be a man for that.

[00:39:21] And these positions sit right next to each other while deployed.

[00:39:24] And somebody told me they were like, look, you could totally do this job. But before you do it, talk to the last woman who did it because what she'll tell you is that especially for the women who are striving and out there and trying to break the barriers,

[00:39:39] like this job will break your soul. Seeing yourself held back for completely artificial reasons will break your soul. And I just eventually had that realization, right? Which was just like, there's so many stereotypes. There's so much. There's so much to overcome.

[00:39:58] Hey there listener. Hope you're enjoying this episode and that you're taking deep breaths when we cover the enraging stuff that cult jerks are up to. Let it out is in the yoga practice. Inhale, positivity, exhale, negativity. That's for you, Sarah.

[00:40:11] We got this. No hooking it out. Oh, you will hoaxers. And if you need some helpful resources on the topic of cult recovery, check out our website at a little bit culty dot com. And now here's a brief message from our sponsors.

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[00:42:19] I mean, can't they see that if you're the best person for the job, it helps everyone? Like is it that spiteful in there? Because the military is about survival.

[00:42:30] One bad mistakes and the wrong person in power people die. So are they not evaluating it like that or is it just so ingrained that it's a male thing and they can't evaluate that you at the front lines making decisions helps everyone?

[00:42:43] They definitely do not see it like that. And here's the story that you're really appreciate and it'll give Sarah a chance to say assai.

[00:42:51] So I joined the so the army's opinion, especially with officers is and this is super culty right? We don't care what skills you come in with. If we want you to have it, we will train you to have it. Right?

[00:43:04] So I come in, I speak fluent Portuguese, fluent Spanish, fluent English and I score really, really, really incredibly high on the aptitude test for learning languages.

[00:43:16] So like this should not be a hard decision at this point. I should have been taken out of regular army. I should have been sent to work for South Com Southern Command right or trained in French right set to work for

[00:43:26] Africa or trained in a hard language and sent to go do something. Instead, I'm sent to an aviation unit. So finally, again, as I'm making this decision to get out, I get recruited to go be a Portuguese professor at West Point, which I mean to be a Portuguese

[00:43:45] professor at West Point, you have to be a captain or a major that speaks Portuguese. So that's pretty limited. And I said, sure, no problem. I just, you know, I'm going to need to bring my husband along who's lower ranking than me, which should be easy.

[00:43:59] You can fit him into an aviation counseling slot. And they said, thanks, but no thanks if you choose to apply for this position, you need to accept that you will be a geographical bachelor for at least five years.

[00:44:11] Fuck that. And that's what I said. So just last week, and this story is going viral on TikTok too. Just last week I got a message from a recruiter asking me to consider moving to Florida to go be a Portuguese translator for South

[00:44:27] Kong. And I was like, this is a funny one for me, right? Because you've essentially mismanaged your people for so long and not listened to them, not put people in the best spot for them, which I think is part of breaking people down, right? Making them controllable.

[00:44:44] And now you're wondering why recruiting is suffering so much.

[00:44:48] Let me ask you, if you have an opportunity, someone comes to you here's your story and recognizing gives you an opportunity to go in and have a position within the military to help fix it. Would you that be something you're interested in or you just done?

[00:45:01] I'm definitely interested in consulting. And I'm doing some actually an international organization of English-speaking militaries has asked me to come give them my culture plan.

[00:45:12] So yes, I will say this and I'm sure this will resonate with you that after leaving cults, one of the things we have to be careful about is that transcendental mission, right?

[00:45:24] Letting the mission and the desire to serve like run away with us. So I'm putting really strict parameters about this for myself. Like I will do this, but this is what I want out of it.

[00:45:35] And this is, you know, ending sexism in the US military is not my life mission. So I absolutely would work on it.

[00:45:45] And I think I'm the type of person that they need to get like you need to get a civilian who doesn't answer to you, who's studied this stuff on the outside and who can help you see things in new ways.

[00:45:56] Because a big part of my plan is, you know, a decade ago they used to say or maybe two decades ago they used to say you can't make general without at least two DUIs.

[00:46:07] And then at one point they decided to change that and they absolutely flipped it. And now I would say there's less drinking and driving in military towns than in any other towns in America.

[00:46:17] And you could do the exact same thing with culture. I mean, you know how easy it would be if Nexium had decided to like get rid of a certain thing.

[00:46:27] You can mandate a lot from high control cultures and you need the people that know how to do that advising you to do it in the right ways.

[00:46:36] I hope someone's listening and they know how to put you in that position because you're clearly an asset and you can articulate it. It's just a practical move.

[00:46:42] Yeah. And you know, a big part of it comes down to telling our stories, right? That's a huge part and we talked about recommended reading lists, right? So every general in the Army, every base in the Army has a recommended reading list.

[00:46:57] And by the way, if you're not reading a book on that list, you're very looked down on which is an extra level of cult. And so my easy solution here is one, if you're not telling our stories, you are perpetuating the violence against us, right?

[00:47:11] Because most men that read my book or civilians say I had no idea. And so this is easy, right? You mandate that 25% of the books on your reading list have to be written by women and you've done a huge step for change right there.

[00:47:24] You know, they in the military, a commander who's like a 25 year old captain has every soldier they're in charge of in front of them every Friday. And they pretty much give them like the warning that you would give your son when you send him off to college, right?

[00:47:39] Don't drink and drive. Don't have sex without a condom. Don't fry bacon naked. All of these it's called a safety brief, right? And like it's too easy. That's a military term, too easy to say, you know, this is positive consent.

[00:47:54] I expect all of you to have positive consent. This is what I would do if I was a commander in the army. And if anything comes up that is questionable and you can't prove positive consent, then I'm referring this for investigation.

[00:48:07] And just saying that, right? Just the commander saying that every week to their soldiers would hugely impact the culture. Right? Because you are reinforcing that this will not be tolerated. And that's how they did it with drinking and driving is they made it unexcusable, right?

[00:48:27] The alcohol didn't make you do it. You made this choice. And they made it unforgivable. Like nobody is going to fight for your career. And we still don't have that with sexual assault. We still have when you report something, they will look you in the eyes and say,

[00:48:39] are you sure you want to ruin this man's career? Like yes, yes I do. I want to ruin all the rapists' careers.

[00:48:46] I hope that someone listening has the power authority platform to take your story and give you that platform and make that happen and whatever needs to transpire to make those changes.

[00:48:57] That would be such a win. And it's funny that you just said that, but what did you call transcendental mission? Is that what you called it?

[00:49:03] I hadn't heard that term, but I definitely been aware that like, you know, I'm on the flip side of the cult life doing the same. Have to help people. Have to change the world. You know, it is a personality type too.

[00:49:17] So that's what I was going to say. Right? It's like there's a personality type to that. And also I don't want to live a life where I'm not helping people. Right? But transcendental mission is one of the building blocks of a cult.

[00:49:28] And that's different from a mission in the ways of like, have you heard of smart goals? They have to be like, found in time, attainable, specific, all of these things. Well, a transcendental mission is the opposite. Right? Save the world for Jesus. Protect American interests abroad. Right?

[00:49:46] If your mission for this podcast was teach everybody about what cults are like in their lives, I would be like, a little bit of a transcendental mission. Right? But yes, I agree.

[00:49:59] And then Nippy to your point, you know, one of the reasons I wanted to do this book like this in parallel was first of all, just the way people talk about, you know, they're like, oh, well, the sex cult, that's obviously evil.

[00:50:10] I'm like, well, it's never obvious. Right? Even when they brand you, but they would say, but then the US Army, that's a wonderful organization. Right? And everything in my experience is screaming at that too.

[00:50:24] Because I'm like, even my specific experience aside, the US Army is 1.3 million people trained to kill other human beings. Right? So we should talk about this.

[00:50:33] But, you know, in putting these in parallel, and this is a little bit of my transcendental mission, it's, you know, it's really hard to know how to help kids in cults.

[00:50:44] It just is because we don't have good laws for that. They're so good at hiding and all of the things. But it's not that hard for the American public to care about what happens in their military. And that is what makes change.

[00:50:57] It's not the men in the military deciding to make change. It's American civilians insisting on change. It is Gen Z refusing to join the military. That's what will make the change. So that's what I'm hoping for.

[00:51:13] Wow, that is powerful. I love it. Thank you for coming to our TED Talk. That was great. I mean, I learned a lot today. So great. How'd you decide to write a memoir after all of this?

[00:51:24] Okay. So I didn't set out to become a writer. I, you know, realized that corporate wasn't for me. So I came home and told my husband I was going to make money from my brain.

[00:51:34] And I was like, I want to get paid for the rest of my life to talk about culture. And I can do that in three ways. I can get a PhD. I can start a consulting company and I can write a book.

[00:51:45] So being an excellent cult baby, I started all three at the same time. And I, I didn't really want to write like just the cult book that just tells the story and nothing else. And then I read educated in 2018 or listened to it.

[00:52:01] And my first thought was why didn't I write that first? And my second thought was, oh, I can build on this. Right. So I set about the process of putting together what became uncultured and selling it as the next educated, which I did.

[00:52:14] But then in 2020, and I would say, you know, there's the moment when you've started writing the book, but you're not sure if you're going to blow up your whole life because that's what writing a memoir does.

[00:52:24] And that was the summer that this woman, this low ranking Mexican-American soldier named Vanessa Guillen was murdered. And not only was she murdered, but she went missing and she was not found for over 60 days.

[00:52:38] And the reason the 60 days is important is because when a rifle or some other piece of important equipment goes missing for more than 60 minutes, everything on that base will shut down and everyone from general to private will work until that is found.

[00:52:53] So this was this symbol to all women who've ever served or are serving that we matter less than a rifle. And I kind of went into this really black moment of trauma.

[00:53:05] And this was when, you know, I'm sitting there in the dark going, why can't they stop raping and killing us? And I just remembered all of these kind of early rejections I was getting from publishers that were saying,

[00:53:18] we don't do children of God because the abuse is too horrible for readers. And we don't do stories by military women because nobody reads them. And I said, well, here's a parallel, right?

[00:53:30] And I just thought in that moment, I said somebody is going to have to bleed their soul onto the page and tell all of it, right? The proud stuff, the bad stuff, all of it.

[00:53:41] And then go out and get a big enough book deal that they can write what they want and not have to have the Pentagon's permission and support to protest them, which most military books need military support.

[00:53:53] And then about one second later, I was like, oh no, that's me. That person's me. And that became kind of the moment and the mission was to just tell America, right? Like what it's really like.

[00:54:05] And you know, it's again, it's that trend of, you know, when veterans hear my stories, they go, so what? You were told women in the Army, right? In basic training, I'm told women in the Army are either a bitch, a slut or the Dessler for lesbian.

[00:54:20] And everyone's like, yeah, we were all told that. And I'm like, yeah, but when outsiders hear that they really freak out, right? You know, like that thing of like you don't notice it's weird because it's so embedded in the culture.

[00:54:35] But when you tell the story and you put it all together, people like you and Nipi will say, oh my God, I had no idea, right? Yeah. That was the reason.

[00:54:45] Wow. I just remembering the equivalent of like telling people next to you about the brand and people in would be like, well, what's so bad about that? And then everyone in the outside world going, you got fucking branded?

[00:54:56] And my Jen finned again a dear friend of mine that I've known since we were like barely adults, you know, looking at me and holding my hand and crying and being like, you know, what the fuck? And me not even realizing how terrible it was.

[00:55:07] And so I started talking about it. Oh, that moment in the vow where you are just post brand and you're telling yourself, I did this. I did this hard thing. I survived. I was like, wow, you know, that is a that's that really poignant moment, you know?

[00:55:24] But yeah, that's what it is. We have to tell our stories out loud both so that we can realize how normal the trauma is but also how abnormal that group experience was. Do you use hashtag I got out? I've been on their show and stuff too.

[00:55:39] You have right, of course. You know, I just I just feel like what you just said about telling our stories is so important. Has this been picked up by any like mainstream, like, I don't know, like Ellen DeGeneres or Dr. Oz or like some.

[00:55:51] No, I need help with that. I just think we haven't gotten through to a lot of people fall of 2022 was a really hard time to get anyone's attention.

[00:56:00] Yeah, yeah. I have a secret fantasy of becoming like a manager slash agent for people like yourself to like, you know, like I will do my best with the connections, the little connections that I have to help elevate your platform and your story.

[00:56:17] So what's interesting is that my agent lives in LA, right? Big New York agent but lives in LA for the purpose of helping people get film deals could not find a film agent that wanted to represent me because they all say this is two different stories.

[00:56:31] Why that's interesting is because that's a lot of the same thing we got told about the book. People are like, this is one story about leaving a call and then another story about being a woman in the military.

[00:56:41] And I said, you know, I think this is this is one story and actually to sell the book.

[00:56:45] We had to have the book proposal because uncultured reads chronologically but in the book proposal it jumped like cult chapter army chapter cult chapter army chapter so that people could see the parallels all the way through.

[00:56:59] But yes, I have a secret dream that this becomes a Netflix series that is kind of like made meets Queens Gabin means band of brothers and Bella Thorne plays me. It's going to happen. It's going to happen. Mark my words. It's going to happen. I hope so.

[00:57:17] My Rolodex is already spinning in my head. Nippy can see me doing it right now. Can you see me? I do think there's definitely a lot of like wariness to engage in this topic. Like it is not an accident that my book sold after January 6th.

[00:57:31] It was actually supposed to go out on its last round on January 6th and as my husband and I are watching veterans storm the Capitol and 20% of the defendants who's you know, stormed the Capitol in January 6th were veterans, which 13% is the number in the population.

[00:57:49] Right. So over representation of veterans people are saying what is going on here and oh I should tell you about my next project because this ties in right.

[00:57:56] So I'm writing a book called The Culting of America and it is, you know, I told you kind of I have this 10 step definition for cults which is both the cult and the journey.

[00:58:08] But I've also realized that if it happened in the cult and it happened in the army, then it is about power and control or programming and influence.

[00:58:17] So I'm walking you through my 10 rules, 10 commandments for good groups that aren't cults, which is like sort of taking you through those 10 things but showing you how it's done in the cult cult, then the socially acceptable cult, the army and then, you know, where you see those things in and around you.

[00:58:37] And it's really to get people to understand that like it's not a binary cult, not cult. It's a spectrum. Right. If you have all 10 of these things dialed up to extreme as nexium and children of God both did right then whoa you're a cult.

[00:58:52] But even if you just have two or three of these out of whack right in your organization, it can cause a lot of trouble. And then the second part of the book is called The Second Wave.

[00:59:01] And that's where I'm really looking at what's going on in America right now, because you know I've been out of the cult for exactly 20 years this month.

[00:59:10] And I feel like 20 years ago was really rare to meet a cult survivor or someone who had lost family members to a cult. Now in America it's extremely common to meet people who have lost close close friends or family because of absolute ideological polarization.

[00:59:27] And I think in part that's because of our world right because in the 60s if you wanted to isolate an American, you had to take them to your compound in Texas or Brazil.

[00:59:38] Now when you can vote on like what commercial you want to see on your social media platform of choice, you know we don't even have like we used to have a shared reality that we could be on polar opposite sides of now we don't even have a shared reality anymore and everyone is kind of in their own little silos.

[00:59:56] So that's the next thing and I'm super active on TikTok where I am that cult slash army girl with a degree from Harvard that tells you all about what's culty in your real life. So yeah. Whilst knitting. Whilst knitting.

[01:00:13] And I've done a bunch of videos about the vow and there will be more. I love them. I've been commenting on Instagram. I'm where I suck at TikTok. I feel like I miss the boat age wise. I'm learning.

[01:00:23] I feel like I should learn, but I feel too old for it. But by the way as you were talking, I realized that your mom is only five years older than me. That's true. Can I tell you how great this was in the military?

[01:00:34] So, you know, I'm deployed and 23 and 24 my first deployment and the little blonde lieutenant. So of course there's all these creepy majors hitting on me all the time. And I would be at this uncomfortable situation and I would just go, oh, hey, sir, how old are you?

[01:00:50] And it would be like 38. Oh my God, that's so cool. You're like a year younger than my mom. And then they would just turn gray and walk away and never bother me again. Love it. But also very fluid. Very fluid.

[01:01:05] I would say relationship with age and as so often happens in cults, you know, my mom left a decade after me.

[01:01:13] You know, the relationship that we have now I would say is very not mother-daughter because we weren't allowed to perform that bond growing up for the first 10 years of my life. I pretty much saw her only an hour a day.

[01:01:26] But now as grownups, she's one of my best friends and we definitely talk culty stuff all the time. But like I'm the mentor if that makes sense. Right? So it's this interesting, interesting flip. So she's doing well.

[01:01:41] She, you know, left the cults to have six children at home. Obviously no one's been in education to speak of. You know, very seriously handicapped kid.

[01:01:49] She ended up getting her associates degree in court reporting, which is I think like the associates degree that you can make the most money with because as a court reporter, you can make more than a judge.

[01:02:02] And it really was such a great example of like taking the skills. She was a secretary since she was like nine years old. So taking the skills she had from the cult and using them in the regular world.

[01:02:14] I also have another friend who at 18 was forced to move to the current cult leaders commune and like write their religious ideology for them.

[01:02:25] And now she lives in DC and writes speeches for politicians, which I think is a very cool version of using your cult skills in the outside world. Is Children of God still active in any way or is everybody is at the front? They are.

[01:02:41] So in about 2009 they started to realize that they were on the road to cult death, which is I think when the next generation is just not joining. Just where the army is right now too.

[01:02:54] And so they were kind of like, hey, all that stuff we've been telling all of you about staying separate and you know living outside of the world. Like psych just kidding. Go get jobs, but we're still here if you want to pay your tithe.

[01:03:07] And so most people at that point I think woke up and went home and they still have this core following of 1400 members. My grandfather still runs the money. They still bring in over a million dollars a year.

[01:03:20] I am sure they are on the border of Ukraine up to no good because that's what they tend to do. But it is different than it was, you know, in the heyday. Like it's no longer 10,000 people living in communes around the world, but it definitely still exists.

[01:03:37] And I definitely think they're just right for us to sue them for child trafficking. So I was going to say as why has that not happened? It's just not been the right legal team or enough people wanting to speak up.

[01:03:49] Mostly I think nobody willing to speak up yet has had the resources to pursue it is one thing. The other thing is because we were raised all around the world, jurisdiction is really hard because they all have cult names.

[01:04:03] For the most part, we don't actually know the full names of our abusers like even the legal names. I know Uncle Jerry's legal name because he was famous, but many of the other abusers that I had, I don't even know their legal names. So that is really difficult.

[01:04:19] And I think because the sexual abuse always is what gets focused on and that's really, really hard to prove in the UK. I think it was Scotland removed statute of limitations on child sex crimes. And so two people of Children of God were prosecuted there.

[01:04:36] However, in Brazil, which has really good trafficking laws, a few people have been successful at suing like they would incorporate these businesses. To look legit. And then they were all built off of, of course, teenage and child slave labor. So they've been successful at suing them for that.

[01:04:54] So I have this idea that I could sue them because they trafficked me as a child actress and filmed it. So I think maybe I could sue for that. And I'm interested in checking that out.

[01:05:05] I definitely wanted to say I love that you and Nipi are still married because I know that relationships that you find in a cult can be really, really hard. To sustain after the cult rig because you both had to completely change and deconstruct while also staying together.

[01:05:23] And also, I think it is wonderful and really refreshing how open the both of you are to understanding kind of the cult experience in that you were programmed kind of, you know, without this justification, which sometimes can be not that it's wrong, right?

[01:05:42] We do want people to understand that everyone can join cults, but sometimes the justification takes more of the conversation than the like things we should look out for how this happened.

[01:05:51] Or that's just something that stands out to me from both of you as hosts and creators and as a scholar. I really appreciate that. Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you for saying that.

[01:06:01] I think our stories have a lot of wisdom at the end of the day and being able to put it into content so people can use that wisdom and apply it has been kind of our MO. And you just gave me wisdom.

[01:06:13] So it's pretty cool to have a podcast that I get to listen and refine deep in my understanding. Yeah, I mean, I think sometimes people approach cult survivors like the only thing that we can, the only value that we give is how to survive trauma.

[01:06:28] And really, I think there's so much value around the fact that we understand group dynamics and human nature just at this completely different level than ordinary people.

[01:06:38] Right. And one of the things that a psychologist said to me when I first started writing was we study the extremes to understand everyone else.

[01:06:47] Right. And that's why a little bit culty is so perfect because like you two are absolute pinnacle extreme but like everybody's in a group that's a little bit culty.

[01:06:57] And I always say like the thing I want people to take away from uncultured right is you probably never thought of all the parallels between a sex called the traffic children and the US Army.

[01:07:07] And one see it, I hope you walk into every group in your life and just ask the question is this a cult. And just by doing that, you're going to be so much further ahead. Well put. And if you can't laugh, the question is it a cult?

[01:07:20] That's your first question. Yeah, you gotta laugh. Oh, Daniel, thank you for your time and your wisdom and else. Oh, I'm going to cry. Sorry. Thank you for your service and all of your service, not just your service. Thank you. Both of you.

[01:07:35] Thanks so much for having me. Thanks for coming. This podcast is brought to you by Citizens of Sound, a podcast production agency committed to developing and launching shows with gravity and depth.

[01:07:47] From conception to launch, citizens will partner with you every step of the way, whether you're an actor, business owner, doctor, fitness coach, hairstylist or influencer. Connection is the future of communication. Jump on board with Citizens of Sound today and start your show.

[01:08:01] Go to CitizensofSound.com and follow them on Instagram. And trust me, it'll be a really good decision for you. So we signed in, you know, up to a five year $250 million deal. To be on what? Team Cult Awareness? Team Cult Awareness.

[01:08:20] She's going to have to knit the uniforms. That's a lot of knitting. Yeah, well, she's getting paid well. Thank you, Danielle, for sharing your story.

[01:08:27] Again, please follow her on TikTok where she breaks down everyday examples of toxic group behavior and how you, our dear listeners, can avoid it. Thank you for supporting our podcast, for supporting Daniela, for supporting us. And we'll see you next week. Next week. Bye for now.

[01:08:46] I hope you liked this episode. Let's keep the conversation going and come hang out with us on Patreon where we keep the tape rolling each week. Special episodes just for Patreon subscribers and where we get deep into the weeds of unpacking every episode of the VAL.

[01:09:03] And if you're looking for our show notes or some sweet, sweet swag or official ALBC podcast, merch or a list of our most recommended cult recovery resources, visit our website at alilibitculti.com. And for more background on what brought us here, check out Sarah's page-turning memoir.

[01:09:19] It's called Scarred, the true story of how I escaped Nexium, the cult that bound my life. It's available on Amazon, Audible, Narrated by My Life and at Most Bookstores. If you're interested in seeing more of our podcast, please check out our website at www.albculti.com.

[01:09:38] A Little Bit Culty is a talkhouse podcast and a Trace 120 production. We're executive produced by Sarah Edmondson and Anthony Nippy Ames with writing, research and additional production support by senior producer Jess Tardy. We're edited, mixed and mastered by our rocking producer Will Rutherford of Citizens of Sound

[01:09:56] and our amazing theme song, Cultivated, is by John Bryant and co-written by Nigel Asselin. Thank you for listening.