When the World Didn’t End: Guinevere Turner’s Cult Memoir (Part 1)

[00:00:00] This winter, take your icon pass north. North to abundant access. To powder skiing legacy. To independent spirit. North where easy to get to. Meets worlds away. Go north to Snow Basin. Now on the icon pass.

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[00:00:36] Any of the fucking mazeball content provided by our guest bloggers, sponsors, or authors are of their opinion and are not attended to malign any religion, group club, organization, business individual, anyone or anything.

[00:00:47] We're not doctors, not psychologists. We're certainly not the AP that's associated press for those of you listening at home. We're two non-experts who found ourselves making a little podcast that people happen to like. Okay? Hey everybody, Sarah Edmondson here.

[00:01:11] And I'm Anthony Ames, aka Nippy, Sarah's husband, and you're listening to A Little Bit Culty, aka ALBC, a podcast about what happens when devotion goes to the dark side.

[00:01:21] We've been there and back again. A little about us, true story, we met and fell in love in a cult, and then we woke up and got the hell out of dodge. And the whole thing was captured in HBO docu-series The Vow, now in its second season.

[00:01:36] I also wrote about our experience in my memoir, Scarred, the true story of how I escaped next to him, the cult that bound my life.

[00:01:42] Look at us, couple of married podcasters who just happened to have a weekly date night where we interview experts and advocates in things like cult awareness and mind control. Wait, wait, this does not count toward date night, babe. We got to schedule that that's separate.

[00:01:56] So it's two days we gotta hang out? We do this podcast thing because we learned a lot on our exit ramp out of Nexium. Still on that journey, and we want to pay the lessons forward with the help of other cult survivors and whistleblowers.

[00:02:06] We know all too well that culty things happen. It happens to people every day across every walk of life. So join us each week to tackle these culty dynamics everywhere from online dating to mega churches and multi-level marketing.

[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

[00:02:36] Welcome back to ALBC everybody. We are in Vancouver recording an episode that you'll probably have in what three weeks? In about mid-August, and I hope that you have all had an incredible summer as we have here.

[00:02:56] Yeah, we were just reflecting this morning about how awesome our lives are right now. Yeah. We front loaded a bunch of episodes, got to take a break. Yeah, come on.

[00:03:05] I mean, for the most part we got to at least get away from our phones, have quality time with the fam. It's been the highlight of the summer so far.

[00:03:12] The fact that it's only rained one day since we've been here in Vancouver and it's the day right now that we scheduled to record. Just perfect. It's really hard if you live in Vancouver to get work done when it's sunny out during the winter months.

[00:03:25] Now that it's summer, it's been sunny every day since we got here. Except for today it's raining and we're doing all our recording and yeah, reflecting. It's been a great summer. Troy had a meltdown with the summer reading which I totally relate to.

[00:03:37] I hated all that summer reading stuff. That's the only meltdown though. Troy said to me this weekend, this has been such a weird but cool weekend. We went to Bowen Island for a music festival.

[00:03:46] We went to West Van and hung out at a friend's pool and swam in the air. And we went to the beach. We went to the beach. We went to the beach. We went to a friend's pool and swam in the ocean. Jumped on the dock.

[00:04:00] Like all the summer things went to Lighthouse Park. We also biked around Stanley Park. Many beach days, many kids pool days. Vancouver is the destination for the summer. I don't want to tell people here because I don't want them to come and crowd it up.

[00:04:11] But it really is. It's a great place to be in the summer because it's like one long day. And as much as I miss our friends in Atlanta, I'm happy to not be there right now when I see the reports.

[00:04:20] And also, like Peyton sent us a picture of the snake in our front yard, the six foot long black snake. Honestly, reptiles will get me to move out of your area. Note to self. And then football starts up.

[00:04:34] Football starts up and yeah, we're just plugging away enjoying summer. We've had some really fun guests over on Patreon including John Bryant, who as you probably know wrote the song Cultivated, our theme song a little bit culty.

[00:04:47] What you may not know is that he was also briefly in Nexium and he talks about his experience in that and something else a little bit culty before that, which we didn't even know about until we started chatting. And that's a really fun two-parter on Patreon.

[00:05:00] And this morning we also recorded with Sandra Nemoto, who was a student of a lot of different programs including OneAsian, which we have never really talked about. We don't really know. But we don't know because we are not Asian, it'd be an eye, big news flash.

[00:05:15] We weren't part of that group. So we got to hear a little bit about OneAsian and her journey in and out of Nexium. And that's on Patreon. I think that's going to be a good thing for people who don't want to come out,

[00:05:26] but also know that like Patreon is a safe place. A safe place, yeah. It's not totally out there in the public, but it was hard for us to find people in Vancouver to talk to that A, we're like we're on good terms with

[00:05:38] because news flash, not everybody likes what we did. Even though they don't like Keith, they don't like how we've handled it. That's fine. The public could be associated, who wants to be associated with a sex cult, not everybody wants to do that.

[00:05:52] A lot of people lining up for that one. Nope. So Sandra was one of the few who were like, sure, and there'll be more of that Sandra and John. Because as you know, most people were peripheral. I think it's time for your segue. How'd you know?

[00:06:06] I could tell I could see the way I was turning around. I was like our guest today was also kind of peripheral and not peripheral, like she grew up in this cult. But when we say like hashtag I got out, the hashtag they kicked me out, different ring.

[00:06:16] And that's actually what happened to our guest. So when the Lyman family called, gave 11 year old, one of your Turner the boot, actually their tactics worked. Turner was isolated from support and deprived of everything she knew in her family

[00:06:29] and community and she even tried to get back in. But people all over the world are glad she's out because she has written quite the memoir. Today, the acclaimed writer, director, actor has dozens of notches in her cinematic belt. But for the purpose of this particularly niche podcast,

[00:06:44] we've got American Psycho in the mind. A film she wrote and where a young Christian bail played the fictional extreme malignant narcissist killer Patrick Bateman. It's very meme worthy these days, the Patrick Bateman character. We're also thinking about our 2019 film,

[00:06:59] Charlie says about a woman who carried out murders for the ultimate culty villain, Charles Manson. Now one of our Turner is telling her own story in her recently published memoir, When The World Didn't End. I loved this book. It's unaudible. I cannot recommend it enough.

[00:07:15] Today, we dive into all the nuance. What distinguishes a Mel Lyman from a Charlie Manson? A cult from a commune and in a culture where everything seems to be a little bit culty, who were we to say which systems of belief are right and wrong?

[00:07:30] I certainly saw a lot of parallels that made this group definitely more than a little bit culty and we'll see what Gwenevere has to say herself. Enjoy. Welcome to this episode of A Little Bit Culty. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me.

[00:07:54] We know that you are on the circuit with your book coming out last week and you got lots of interviews and your life is full, so we appreciate you taking the time with our little podcast, but this is obviously right up our alley on A Little Bit Culty.

[00:08:06] It checks the boxes. It does. I mean, I'm interested. I want to interview you about specifically about a book and how you talk about cults and messed up things that people have asked you. You know what I mean? We have this thing in common,

[00:08:22] which is not only our cult experience, but also the process of writing a book, the response to writing a book, how we feel about our book. I want to hear a lot about that too. Absolutely. Well, you know what, I'm going to jump ahead

[00:08:36] a little bit and tell you that myself and three other women that we've also interviewed on the podcast, sorry to be, you're invited, I'm going to talk about their cult experience and memoir. We were going to do an episode together and I'm officially inviting you to the

[00:08:51] female ex-cult member memoir episode. Oh fabulous. You have to tell me who it is so I can read their books if I haven't already because I've read a few. Yes, their books are great. One of them is Daniela Mestanik Young who wrote Uncultured. Do you know that book?

[00:09:09] I do. I haven't read it but I've listened to the book. She's great. There are some parallels there. Her story is incredible. She's great and also for those of our audience who have not read your book and oftentimes we will give your book as homework to our audience

[00:09:29] and then they'll listen to it and if they're good students they won't be gold star, they'll read it and then listen to the episode but for those who haven't yet by the time this episode drops tell us a little bit about the book.

[00:09:45] I'm going to be a writer and an elevator. I am going to be a turner. My real life adult life is as a screenwriter and an actor. I've written a book about my childhood which was if you're listening to this you might guess in a cult.

[00:10:03] I was born into it. Left when I was 11 and the book is about what it was like to grow up there and then what it was as I spent a single day struggling it was like I was making money from trying to get it out.

[00:10:22] It wasn't like I was a job because it was hard for me. Oh my God. I have the worst trucker mouth. I owe my son over $180 for the square jar. She's in triple digits in that department. And what's interesting or perhaps unique about the book

[00:10:41] pieces of my diary. So in a sense, the book is co-written with my 11, 12 and 13 year old self, which is interesting and grounding and also means that people are less likely

[00:10:52] to come for me and say, how could you remember all that? I can say, because I wrote it down when I was 10. I love that you did. Yeah, me too. And I love that I've been carrying around diaries from 1979 and 1980 for my whole life. I'm 55 years old.

[00:11:07] You know, I'm in the same boat. I've got a whole like plastic Tupperware full of them, and I have not done what you did. So I think that might be my next memoir following your lead. When you were young.

[00:11:17] Yeah, diaries and also scrapbooks. I saved like every ticket stub and like wristband from every amusement park and wrote about it. Wow. But I haven't gone back yet. You inspired me. I actually have something because this

[00:11:28] is super interesting that in 1971 a Rolling Stone called your leader, Mal Lyman, quote with East Coast Charles Manson. Time has shown that characterization to be inaccurate. He didn't instigate murder and he died young in 78. And yet you wrote the screenplay, Charlie

[00:11:44] says that features culty details pulled from your own experience. Tell us about your childhood. Like what was life like with Mal Lyman at the helm? And what do you make of that comparison? That same journalist actually wrote a book called Minefuckers, which is about the Lyman

[00:11:59] family and the Manson family. I'm friends with him now as soon as David Felton. My childhood. I spent a lot of time unsupervised with a lot of other kids and those are good memories.

[00:12:11] We all sort of lived in this kind of low level of constant fear of being in trouble for big things, big things that we didn't understand about our souls. So there was just a lot

[00:12:22] of being careful and a lot of punishment and a lot of isolation and a lot of suddenly being moved to a different place, which would be a familiar place because you know we had all been to all of the places, but there was just a general instability, I

[00:12:35] would say. And people have read my book and said, it sounds so idyllic. You make it sound you know, so wonderful. I do what I say, read the whole book because what happens is

[00:12:46] that at a certain point when I am a young teenager, I start to think back on it. Yeah. And I start to think about some of the bad things that happen and sort of

[00:12:54] see them in a different light now that I'm older. And that's part of the journey of the book is kind of me going from longing endlessly for years, just really wanting to go back to the family and the cult that I grew up in to slowly

[00:13:08] realizing, oh, it wasn't this magical heavenly place. And an interesting thing too is that you know, I'm in a cult survivor discussion groups with the Lallich Center and meeting a lot of other people who have a similar

[00:13:22] experience to me. And at some point I thought to myself, can I call myself a survivor of a cult if I begged to stay? I mean, technically does that just makes me an outcast. It just makes me a wannabe.

[00:13:38] I think you can. Yeah. Yeah. I think you can. Yeah, because you survived. You didn't know it was bad till later. Because that's the thing that with all these things they get normalized. All that stuff was normalized. You didn't talk about it. You

[00:13:49] didn't figure it out later that there was sexual abuse going on. Right. And I grew up with girls who were just a little bit older than me being married off in quotes to men. And I was so obsessed with being an adult and

[00:14:04] being taken seriously that I wanted that too. Or so I thought. Right. So what's interesting is that probably if my mother hadn't left and I hadn't been cast out, I would have had that to contend with it was an inevitability.

[00:14:17] I thought about that. Yeah. I thought about like obviously things were not great when you were a teenager and we get into that shortly, but like you were also spared from being married off at the age of 12 to an older man. Right.

[00:14:28] Yes. And I was spared from what a lot of my generation had to deal with was becoming a teenager inside of the family and either realizing you wanted to go or realizing that

[00:14:42] they wanted to go to school or like to date someone outside of the family and then having to struggle with that, actually kind of fighting them. And there were people who wanted to go

[00:14:53] to college and they said, yes, you can go to college if you don't ever come back. Everyone of the people that I grew up with that I'm in touch with, they all stay across the board.

[00:15:03] It got so much worse. Oh, I bet. Yeah. Because it started just to give people some context. You were born in 68. Let's just go back a little bit to people understand the family and

[00:15:15] the communities and like what's this group all about? What's the belief system? And we always ask her, guess like, you know, what did you think you were signing up for? Like what was the vision?

[00:15:23] But you were born into it. You didn't sign up for it. What did your mom think she was signing up for? Like what was she buying into? What was the promise? Well, my mother was pregnant and had nowhere to go. Let's be clear.

[00:15:32] Okay. And it is 19 and 1968. You know what I mean? Like if ever there's a time in American history anyway where having nowhere to go, there actually are a lot of options because everybody's kind of wandering and seeking. It was 1968, but they had a free paper

[00:15:45] that they handed out on the corner called The Avatar and she was in college in Boston at Northeastern University. And before she realized she was pregnant and her whole life was about to fall apart, she would read Avatar. Avatar was mostly Mel Lyman's writing. She liked the ideas

[00:16:02] and what were the ideas? I challenge anyone to read his musings and tell me it was about, I mean, this is what I was raised with and I never understood it. And I just read as much

[00:16:13] as I could get my hands on again writing this book and I'm like, I still struggle to encapsulate what it was. But essentially it was this kind of, well, they were very anti being called hippies

[00:16:22] and let's me actually that they had in common with the Manson family. They were not hippies. Kind of striving for a higher consciousness, a state of awareness of openness of being present. I mean, that's like Ram Dass, right? Be here now. And but it's like sort of stole

[00:16:37] from like some Christianity vibes and like, you know, he wrote a book called Autobiography of a World Savior. If that tells you anything about his own perception of himself. And so it was

[00:16:46] kind of just be present, be honest, to be truthful, be yourself. But you know, especially when you're a kid, it's like in a given moment abstract at best. Yeah, we would just get in trouble for

[00:16:58] very grown up spiritual transgressions that we didn't understand. Yeah, I think the power dynamic depended on you not understanding it probably, which is why it was kept abstract. It's like religion, right? You don't get it. They keep these somewhat nebulous terms and all you know

[00:17:13] is that you're doing something wrong. Right. I mean, that was what they were doing for the adults, for the kids. I have to remind myself that these people were all in their 20s when I was growing up.

[00:17:25] Right. People in their 20s, in the 70s, doing a lot of acid and living their lives, but also just like side note raising children. Do you know what I mean? So I also think that a lot

[00:17:37] of what happened to me as a kid was people, adults barely paying attention, like getting mad and then forgetting about it the next day or being like, you're not allowed to speak, go be in that closet

[00:17:46] and then just forgetting. Kids raising kids. Yeah. Right. Well, hi. It did strike me that especially when you were quoting Mel Lyman, we had a segment called Word Salad. Were you familiar with that term? Yes. Word Salad? Yeah. So Nippy would like find a quote from the leader

[00:18:03] of the person that we were interviewing. From the subject of the week and read some of their greatest hits. Got to make this somewhat funny. Isn't that a tricky ground though, because for some people,

[00:18:12] isn't it like kind of triggering and upsetting to poke fun at those words? We warn them. Honestly, every episode is cathartic for some and triggering for others. We never know what's

[00:18:22] going to happen. A lot of tiptoeing in this space. Yeah. But like we say it all the time, like this is where we're at. We're six years out or six years out of our culty cult experience and

[00:18:32] we have to laugh. We have to laugh. Like that's us. If that part isn't resonating with whoever's listening, just turn it off and go to the next episode. The title of your show would suggest

[00:18:42] that we're here with a sense of humor about something that maybe isn't like funny to everyone, but you know, a dark sense of humor is something I've been accused of having. Well, then we're going to have fun. Well, you're in a safe space. You're in a very safe

[00:18:56] space right now. It's impossible to be sensitive to everything, but I think we've demonstrated that with our story, we've been a little bit sometimes tongue in cheek because ours is pretty dark and it can be. So obviously we're trying to be insensitive to all that stuff and

[00:19:09] we are attractive. People are outraged. Yeah. Doesn't happen often. But to your point, you did a couple of quotes from Mel in your book and of the whole time I was like, I have no idea what he's saying. That's why I put those quotes in the book

[00:19:21] because going back and reading that book, that book is called Mirror at the End of the Road that I'm mostly that I'm quoting in the book. Everything, every single word of it was familiar

[00:19:29] to me. And then when I was a kid, I just thought, oh, when I grow up, I will understand this. And I was like, nope. That's the tricky thing about word salad is because you can put stuff into it that triggers thought and you will start contemplating things,

[00:19:46] but that's just you taking what you've heard trying to make meaning of it. And because you're thinking about it, you think it was the word salad that did it, but the word salad is there for them to sound potentially intelligent to you and that you don't

[00:19:59] understand someday you will. I mean, it's interesting. I was writing with Sarah when you invited me into the show about when I first started going to these discussion groups, there are support

[00:20:09] groups for cult related people. When I was a general group, so it was those of us who were raising cults and people who joined and are no longer in them. I was like,

[00:20:17] I'm going to be in a group with those weirdos. I'm like arguably like those of us who are raising cults are really mad at people, adults who joined cults willingly. And that's our parents. You know what I mean? That's who we're at. And then I was like, okay,

[00:20:31] no, get over yourself. Everybody deserves their dirty and everybody's healing. And I was kind of amazed at how much I had in common with people regardless of whether or not they were raised in. But then also we then we have our own discussion groups that are just

[00:20:46] for those of us who are raised in. And it's really interesting because still, you know, because one woman that is in the group, she is guilty because her dad was the leader she's raised

[00:20:58] in but she just got out and she's guilty because her kids, her kids are just out now and they're like, you know, under 10. So I was like, okay. And so it's not black and white this divide

[00:21:08] because she is both right. Someone who raised her kids in a cult and someone who was raised, born in generations of. Is it still an existence? Are the communities still like active? Yes. Really? Wow. And is it still called the family or the communities?

[00:21:23] Yeah, they call themselves the communities I guess. Okay. You know, most of my generation left but a lot of those people had kids and want those kids to have relationships with their grandparents. So like the people who actually live in all those properties that I write

[00:21:38] about are not that many, but there's a lot of coming and going of my generation and the generation that they all gave birth to. I am not a parent. You're welcome universe. And in February, Jesse,

[00:21:49] who I write about a lot in the book who was the queen of it all when Mel Lyman died, she just died in February. Oh, it's gonna ask you about her. Yeah. So their whole world is

[00:21:57] upside down right now. She's been the, you know, the center of the guiding force of the whole operation for ever. But that comes at a nice time for me because it just means they're not paying attention to me and they won't bother with my nonsense,

[00:22:09] which might have pissed them off in a different era of their lives. Right. Too many things to deal with. Okay. So let me backtrack for a second. So there's all these communities living this seemingly idealistic communal isolated lifestyle away from the real world. So there's isolation. There's

[00:22:23] this dogma around this sort of pseudo, I don't know what you call it like pseudo mystical kind of non religious. Going to Venus. Oh, there's a belief about going to Venus. That's the main thing that you're the spaceships coming, taking you all to Venus.

[00:22:37] That doesn't happen in what year? 75. Okay. And then they restart the calendar. Yes. I've forgotten about that on your diary. You were saying 04 and I was like, wait, in 2004, she was 11. That cannot be right. It's funny because when I was writing the book,

[00:22:51] my editor was like, are you sure you want to do this? It's confusing because we've also lived through 04 and 05 and I'm like, I have to. It's so weird. And in my childhood,

[00:23:01] my childhood mind, I don't think I ever thought, oh, I'll actually be alive in the regular people 04 and 05. What did you think about regular people when you were a kid? World people, evil, scary, can corrupt you, don't have souls. You don't want to be around

[00:23:16] them too much. Like they're not even real people. They don't actually have a center. So you can imagine it was hard to then be told, but go live among them. Oh right. Yeah. And you didn't have much interaction unless there was an extreme

[00:23:29] medical emergency. Like one kid chopped off their fingers, but even when your hands got burnt, when you were little, they handled it internally. So you really, I mean, all the check marks, isolation from the outside world, us versus them, the grooming, ultimately, like looking back,

[00:23:43] I'm sure you see things you obviously couldn't see as a kid, but the young women were also trained to be subservient to the men. Right? Like that was their role. Absolutely. And yeah, I was talking with my friend, Clotilde, who's in the book a lot.

[00:23:57] She was my friend growing up. At some point, she just said to me, this is just like a few months ago, she's like, did you ever wish you were a boy when you were a kid? And I was like,

[00:24:05] yeah, but not in a gender fluid way. And we just talked about the fact that when we were kids, we would all be playing and it'd be fun. And then it would just be like girls come inside,

[00:24:16] it's time to make dinner and set up for dinner. The boys would just get to keep playing. We were like, no, we're not trans. We're just like, man, it just looks so much more fun to

[00:24:25] be a boy. Right? The roles and the duties of the roles were clearly defined from a young age, and that was something that struck me. And I see this a lot with Danielle and Mesa Nicky Young's

[00:24:35] book with Unculture growing up in the children of God. And a lot of these groups that were vibrant in the 70s, 60s, 70s and the 80s is just like the men thinking and pondering

[00:24:44] and whatever they're doing. And then the women just running this, there's so much to be done in an isolated community. You have to milk the cows and collect the eggs and set the table and make the food. And the kids are basically like slaves.

[00:24:56] Yeah, laundry was just a non-stop thing when you were that many people living together. And we also had crops with animals and crops. And we also just had a lot of property, like vacuuming these houses and schlepping a vacuum cleaner from one house to the next.

[00:25:13] And when I think of my childhood, I think of a lot, a lot. We were a child labor force. Yeah, you were. You absolutely were. And also it makes me sad because I feel like

[00:25:24] there is something I do like, and I talk about this a lot in the podcast, like I am drawn to community and communal living and being with people and shared spaces and raising families together. Like that really appeals to me. And how the fuck do you do that

[00:25:35] without a turning culty? Like I don't know. I know. I think about that all the time, because I also am drawn to that. I think it's one of the reasons I loved going to

[00:25:42] Sarah Lawrence is because it is so small that pretty soon you are walking on the campus and you notice if someone isn't from there. It's that level of once you're there for a couple years.

[00:25:53] And then I have been invited to go to these artist residencies where, you know, you're there for six weeks and you'll have a studio, but you eat dinner with all these people

[00:26:02] every night. And the first time I went to one, I was like, I love this so much. And I'm like, oh yeah, little culty bae. It's just like, it's just like, I just grew up eating dinner with 45 people and it comes very naturally to me.

[00:26:17] But yeah, there's no such thing as putting a group of people together in some utopian ideal without power structures and power dynamics emerging. That's the nature of humans. This is the golden age of cult recovery. The more we speak up and share our stories,

[00:26:35] the more we realize we are not alone. Your voice and your story can empower others. This is Sarah and I'm proud to be a founding collaborator of the hashtag I got out movement. Learn more at I got out.org. The Frankies were a picture perfect influencer family,

[00:27:00] but everything wasn't as it seemed. I just had a 12 year old boy, she appeared asking for help. He's emaciated. He's got tape around his legs. Ruby Frankie is his mom's name. Infamous is covering Ruby Frankie, the world of Mormonism and a secret therapy group that ruined lives.

[00:27:22] Listen to infamous wherever you get your podcasts. Meals bring people together, but for many families providing their next meal can be a challenge. You can help by participating in Macy's annual feeding the hungry food drive. All proceeds go toward local food banks and families. Now through January 31st,

[00:27:42] you can purchase an icon in store or online or watch out for the blue feeding the hungry shelf tags where a portion of your purchase will be donated to local pantries. Together we can combat hunger in our local communities at Macy's. It is nature humans.

[00:27:58] And it makes me sad because I want it like I should get like emotional thinking about it because why can't we do it? It sucks. I don't know where that came from. You can do it. It's just there's not many hierarchies that are built that aren't vulnerable

[00:28:11] to abuses of power. There's always someone who's just going to say, hey, I'm going to take this without earning it. And that ultimately becomes kind of the catalyst for its destruction. And then also so many men just wanting like, sorry to be vulgar,

[00:28:21] but like whipping their fucking dicks out in front of little girls. Like can you keep it in your pants? It chaps my ass that this goes on so much. I'm enraged actually by it.

[00:28:31] And it's just jaw dropping how many, I'm sure you've read and seen all the things on all the cults that have made the news. How often it all just seems like a giant ruse for adult men to have girls, you know, in some sexual context.

[00:28:46] Lucio Mundo is insane. Yes. David Koresh. Warren Jeffs. Warren Jeffs. Keith Ranieri. Yeah, even Larry Ray. You know, like that was also a much older man. Like what is it? What is it about young femininity that men need to own?

[00:29:03] Like what is that? Like and how do they go to such incredible lengths to get it? What is it? It's staggering. I mean, and also what they're willing to risk to do it.

[00:29:14] Look at Weinstein, look at Cosby and whatever your beliefs are on Epstein Island and all that stuff. Like I think it's a sickness personally. But what it feels like to me when you say it's a sickness, Nipi, is it can give a woman

[00:29:25] the sensation that the men that aren't doing that are just restraining themselves. That that's what all men want. And some men are in control enough to say, I'm not going to do that because I know it's wrong.

[00:29:37] Because it feels like when any man is given power, that's what happens. And that's through history. Like what the hell? Yeah. That's a fair assessment. I think what you're looking at and some of the stuff that we had

[00:29:49] conversations about in our cult is the male libido and the problems with it and what men are constantly having to restrain to restrain. I think it's something you outgrow. I mean, this is from my experience.

[00:30:01] And it's a primitive impulse and I think somewhat childish if you have to indulge it all the time. If you're not building something else, if you're left to your own devices, it's probably something that's going to consume you.

[00:30:12] And I think the more you feed it, the more you want it. But I'm also not in a position of extreme power where it might be at my disposal all the time. So I'm not particularly interested in it. And I've got two kids and I've got other

[00:30:23] things that I'm building. And I think that's what happens as you get older. That's my experience, my experience, but there's plenty of evidence to suggest that's not the case. So I can tell you what it is for me. I certainly don't consider myself evolved.

[00:30:35] I think there's societal things that put it in check, but there's certain people that are always going to want to scratch that itch and you're right. Right. Which further makes me think so most men would be raping all the time if they could get away with it.

[00:30:46] I think that's the primal primitive man. And what are we women? What primal thing are we holding back? I don't not holding back anything. Do you know what it means? Yeah. Yeah. It's a great question. Are men more primal than women then? Are you less evolved?

[00:31:00] Here's my thesis. I think men are less devolved in empathy. Generally speaking, I don't think there's not men out there with empathy. I think if men had empathy, they wouldn't be looking at women like that all the time because they can't picture themselves

[00:31:14] using power or force over these people to get what they want. I think that evolves. But I think there's a primal aspect to it that more conversations need to be happened around it and there ought to be space for it so that men can say the

[00:31:27] messy, ugly things that are going on with them. And right now they're probably feeling a little constricted. It's like I can't own and say those things. There needs to be a safe place for that. And I think women might be holding back their primal outrage at it.

[00:31:39] I'm not holding back right now. I try not to hold my primal outrage back at all. There needs to be space for that. I mean, you know, my wife was pinned down and branded with another man's initials for that reason. And you're not going

[00:31:53] to convince me it's not for any other reason. This guy wanted ownership and power over my wife. Right? That's not an impulse I know or understand. I don't have that. But the impulse I have is I will stop that guy. And I think a lot of cases

[00:32:08] men hold it back because they know there's other men that are going to stop them from doing it. You know, it's complex. It's certainly nuanced. I think the healthy conversations should probably start with what are natural inclinations as men and women.

[00:32:22] What primal forces are informing our behaviors? Get sensitive to those and then start from there. Me too. I'm resistant to essentializing gender in that way and to saying that men or if we all can understand

[00:32:33] that men are like this and women are like this. I mean, aside from gender fluidity and the spectrum of gender identity, it gets very dangerous when we talk about biological imperative, I guess.

[00:32:43] I've got to say I feel totally the same way. And it reminds me of what we were doing in X-Gam, which was we thought we were doing that. We thought we were looking at the extremes so we could understand it and evolve better and raise our conscious.

[00:32:56] It triggers me in a way and I'm going to use the word trigger because that's a trigger. It's just upsetting. I agree with you Nippy. I want to be able to get all this out in

[00:33:04] the open. I guess that's part of the reason why we're doing this podcast. And yet every single story almost, not every single one, but most of them has this at the root of it.

[00:33:13] And I feel like when we start going, well men tend to do this one. I know what you're coming from and that's a good intention. I just, I feel like it makes the divide more. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. Like I don't have a solution actually.

[00:33:24] Having a conversation about it makes a divide more than we need to evolve how we're having the conversations. There are tendencies, but I think in the extremes is where it gets abusive. And the thing is that, you know, I'm devil's advocating you a bit Nippy because part of

[00:33:39] me is like why the fuck are men like this? I'm guilty of essentializing men versus women. And you know, who are serial killers predominantly? Who are all the predators? Like women are such

[00:33:50] a small percentage of, you know, in all of those categories of people who are violent and horrible to other people, predominantly women. So it's like on the one hand there's just the scientific evidence. Like whatever it is, men are just more fucked up.

[00:34:02] Is it just because you're all physically stronger? It just started there. That's so basic. I want us to be more involved than that. Well, you have hormones that we don't have. That's a great place to start.

[00:34:11] I can answer just from my experience, like growing up primarily what I would call jock culture, which is something I later on as an adult had a major aversion to because the world's not a locker room. And I felt like I would grew it. I was like,

[00:34:24] okay, got it, you know, whatever. But there's always a packing order and there's always a tacit hierarchy amongst, I don't even call them alphas. I mean these labels, but like amongst men, and it's kind of tacitly understood or not. And there's kind of a hierarchy.

[00:34:39] Why I think men tend to do that is something that the conversation, it's another podcast. Can I add something to this that I was just putting together? Yeah. You know, I read your book, we've done one on a more ingest, all the people who just

[00:34:50] mentioned Will Luz Del Mundo, all these incredibly dark stories and almost every single leader that we've looked at. I don't know much about Mel Lyman and you can fill me in if you want. Keith Reneary, David Koresh, almost all of these guys were

[00:35:03] like super low self-esteem, either outcasts or nerds or like... Mommy issues too. Mostly mommy issues, like didn't feel loved by their mom, found some skill that they were really good at, whether it's playing guitar or like pontificating whatever. Or manipulating people.

[00:35:17] Or manipulating people and then they like created a little circle around them and then grew and made themselves the leader in this hierarchy. And then at some point, started making it okay to have sex with 12 year olds, you know, based on this premise

[00:35:29] of like they had a direct line to God, like God said, you know, I'm supposed to have sex with this young girl or whatever. But like it just feels like there's just from the narcissistic

[00:35:38] wound or whatever like we talked about with Dan Shaw, remember Nippy? Like they just feel like worthless and nothing. And it means something about them that they get to have this beautiful, new bile, young, perfect specimen of a woman.

[00:35:49] Teenage girls are beautiful. Like so that means something about them that they can acquire and have it and do what they want with them. It fills that wound in a way that it's hard to understand. Does that resonate? Does Mel Lyman fit that profile?

[00:36:01] You know, it's so interesting about how I grew up is that I never had the opportunity to ask anyone why they joined and what he was like before because I'm just a kid. Like, you know what I mean?

[00:36:12] Like I've never had an adult conversation with anyone about what he was really like, you know, he was just our Lord and Savior and he was all about his music. But how he

[00:36:22] transitioned from being a folk musician to being a cult leader, it happened before I was born. And so I have no idea what got him there. But you know, he did have a 13 year old as a quote

[00:36:33] unquote wife that was the daughter of his best friend who also had a 13 year old girl as a wife, blah, blah, blah. So wherever it came from, it ended up in that same place. I guess Manson

[00:36:44] is a little different because he wasn't a pedophile but he definitely was older than the women that he was manipulating. It seemed like he was more, I mean he wanted to have sex with

[00:36:53] all of them but he wasn't going all the way to under 18. And you know who's an exception to this rule and exception to a lot of the sort of like standard fair template of cults is Heaven's Gate

[00:37:05] and Martin Tiengo because they were like don't have sex and de-sexualize yourself. And when it all came out in the 90s, I was like, hey points for cult originality. Asexuality. I mean like, you surprised me. That's nice. Everybody else is just like uh-huh, uh-huh.

[00:37:22] I mean I remember when Waco happened, I was watching it unfold for all like 50 days or whatever and I was like do they not fucking understand? You do not confront an apocalyptic cult. They're gonna fucking kill themselves. Everything their leader said is now happening. Now you've

[00:37:41] given them a platform and a reason to live. And I was like watching it happen and I was like they need someone there who understands these dynamics. I just watched the most recent piece about Waco. It's so heartbreaking. It's so heartbreaking when actually happened. You haven't

[00:37:56] watched it? No, because I remember when I watched the series like the scripted series on it. It was too upsetting and with the children there, it derailed me. But they did a second part of the scripted series which goes back a lot and

[00:38:09] it's like the trial and stuff. And yeah, I just watched that too and you know how you, I'm sure you both have this where some days you're like yeah, cults, I'm gonna get into it.

[00:38:18] Some days you're like I can't with the C word. I can't. It's too emotional. It's too devastating. I am more than a cult person. I'm gonna go read about something that has nothing to do

[00:38:27] with any of this. Sometimes you feel strong or for me I just feel like I need to know because I'm constantly talking about cults and because it's for me, I'm sort of slowly trying to

[00:38:38] formulate what needs to happen in the laws, in the cultural consciousness. What needs to happen to chip away at this and to make it not something that can happen to people or at the very least

[00:38:49] that people can see so that if it's happening to someone you know, you have tools to help them out of it. If it's happening to you, you've heard enough about what that looks like so

[00:38:58] you're not as likely to get sucked in because this is kind of a mission of mine. I'm just looking at all of it and people always say like that could never be me. That could never

[00:39:06] be me and I need an answer for that. And I am trying to find the perfect sound right to say to someone who thinks they're better than you guys or thinks they're better than all

[00:39:16] the people we see on all the documentaries to say like you just don't fucking know until you know. 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.

[00:39:33] As in the yoga practice, inhale positivity, exhale negativity. That's for you Sarah. We got this no hulking it out all you will holksters and if you need some helpful resources on the topic of

[00:39:43] cult recovery check out our website at a little bit culty dot com and now here's a brief message from our sponsors. Meals bring people together but for many families providing their next meal can be

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[00:40:25] self-care non-negotiables? Maybe you never skip leg day or never miss yoga. Maybe it's getting eight hours of sleep. Maybe 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

[00:40:39] literally as much time as I can outside in nature. Hashtag cold pools, hashtag crushing it. Nature is a non-negotiable not enough time in the fresh air and the trees around me and I

[00:40:47] start to feel not great not myself not grounded. 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

[00:40:56] I make it a priority. 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

[00:41:05] what I don't need 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. It's entirely online

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[00:41:47] We have a sound bite and just so you know we're on the same mission just we're exactly on the same mission we could start a little club but won't be culty there'll be no power dynamics or hierarchies this is something I'm very passionate about and putting it into

[00:41:57] sound bites that like normal people understand who aren't going to watch a whole series on Waco or whatever or read your book which they should but if they're not here's a little sound

[00:42:04] bite. If you're the kind of person that doesn't think it would happen to you in a lot of ways you're the most susceptible because you're not going to recognize the symptoms and precursors

[00:42:12] that get you into it because you don't think you're susceptible to it and if you were someone who didn't think you're susceptible to it and I was a cult leader I'd target you. That's our sound bite. That's pretty much how it is. Yeah. The other thing too

[00:42:22] in hearing your story you know one of the things to prevent that kind of how could you fall for all that stuff which is you know ultimately in reconciling our delusion around this it's like I had to ask

[00:42:33] myself those questions and go kind of not kind of eat my humble pie and do that work and ultimately what I've come to the conclusion is the abuses of power that go inside these cults so to speak

[00:42:44] are very akin to the abuses of power that go into our culture and there's a lot in our culture that have just been normalized that have kind of culty feels to it hence a little bit culty.

[00:42:53] So I think how you can make your story our story wisdom is the extremes of these abuse of power that become so obvious to the outside world if you can start recognizing that those abuses are

[00:43:05] going on in our culture they just don't look as bad and they've been normalized and the quote I took from I think New York interview is you said something popularity and longevity

[00:43:14] can do a lot to render odd convictions reassuringly familiar. You are a genius. Yeah well I read that and I was like of course we walk around in our current culture and society and a lot of these

[00:43:26] things are reinforced but they haven't been evolved that creates culture wars in a sense so it's a process of self-awareness and I have another podcast and oddly a football coach said this

[00:43:38] he's like I'm determined to not be a part of the division and be a part of the unification of it and I just have to check myself in being that and just make sure I'm not going to be a

[00:43:48] part of that and I think that's for me just like a motto I have right now in going forward but that line just popped out to me because I think the cults are informative to us if we can take the wisdom

[00:44:00] out of them and look in our current society and go there it is there it is there it is yeah and then ultimately have legislation that's sensitive to it. Yes and mental health professionals who are trained specifically in this arena which is I know from personal experience not

[00:44:15] very few and very few who are survivors themselves and that's one of the many things like in these discussion groups at the Lallich Center I taught a writing workshop to some of the women

[00:44:28] in the group who was amazing and one told me that a therapist had said to her you know why don't you start by writing stuff down and what she said she totally shut down because

[00:44:37] you know part of her cult experience was that having to write to the leader all the time and so writing had kind of turned into this really upsetting like stress-filled thing and she and I'm like

[00:44:45] that's so basic ask your little culty patient what does writing feel like to you and understand that someone who's really fresh out right might not even be able to answer such direct questions

[00:44:55] like what makes them feel okay or not you know like really basic things I feel like I could be a great therapist and I have no training as such because I just really understand like

[00:45:05] your first instinct is going to be to say that you're fine right you know that you're being selfish by even being in therapy you know that you're being self-involved that like you're on your own

[00:45:14] trip and so that's another thing and it's just been so life-changing to even be in a room with people like me I tried really hard to find that you know IRL these are some silver linings of

[00:45:23] COVID I like to call them one of them is just that actually communities like this cult survivors can be together from all over the world on zoom and that's been something that people are now they can do so that's a silver lining of COVID right yes there were

[00:45:36] actually a lot for us to me going to therapy felt more indulgence of my internal world which I had done yeah because next scene was a therapy based cult yeah and so like I was going right back to the

[00:45:46] scene of the crime to fix the scene you know I mean and I was just like I can't I can't sit here this is like yeah and I wasn't self-aware enough at the time to know that's what was

[00:45:54] going on I knew I didn't have a therapist that was gonna figure that out we struggled there as well and I think also just as a positive note that's changed in the last five six years

[00:46:03] since we've been out largely because there's so many documentaries and podcasts and it's like the new you know we could be golden age of cult awareness and there's a lot of people have written to us

[00:46:12] saying like they were in school and they went in this direction to be a cult expert like a trained therapist or studying with Yanya Lalich and we were big advocates on the Lalich Center because Yanya's book Take Back Your Life was like crucial for our healing do

[00:46:28] you know that I narrated her book too by the way sidebar oh really yeah yeah because when I read her book I was like so fresh out I had a trouble sitting in reading like I was too agitated and I

[00:46:38] said to Yanya I'm like please put this on audible please put this on audible and I was like I'll do it like let me do it because I tell people all the time to read it and they some people can't

[00:46:47] read it some people just can't read afterwards you mean they're kind of we don't have that kind of focus or whatever or I just see a lot of cult survivors have a hard time picking up

[00:46:55] a book and reading like they're too in hypervigilance they're too much PTSD there's too much like stress to just chill the fuck out and read a book I listen and walk you know I still like I listen

[00:47:05] to your book at 1.75 speed so that I sound squeaky you didn't speak but you definitely speak very fast because but that's how my brain works with like a cat top of you so that's it was great

[00:47:14] it was great for me I think it's I already kind of talked fast I had to really train myself to you know to slow down when I was reading sir that was pretty good yeah that was a really

[00:47:23] good impression. Your book is so good and the thing that I really love about it because of your journals and because of your writing expertise I get blown away time and time again with these

[00:47:33] cult memoirs where you're writing about your childhood the way that you were able to explain like the way you talk about like static and what's happening internally when these things are going on externally and how you dealt with it and how the explanation of your coping strategies

[00:47:48] to deal with what you were seeing around you to survive was I think would be really healing and cathartic for other survivors to read your book to feel like less alone. I mean essentially

[00:47:58] it's just dissociation and I didn't have a name for it right but it essentially is just kind of like I don't want to be here anymore so I'm kind of not. Yeah but the way that you describe it

[00:48:07] and it's interesting because every person who has similar experience like you describes it differently and yet I can totally imagine it you know like there's different metaphors for it like you describe it as the static and like the voice far away saying like help now's the time to

[00:48:20] say something and you and the voice is like disappearing farther and farther away and you're like oh get that voice but like going no stay there say it say it say it. Oh just rooting for

[00:48:29] you. Yeah normally in the podcast and I've totally I derailed on the pedophile rant. We've lost the plot. Normally we share like you were in this thing but you got kicked out

[00:48:38] you got kicked out because your mother left and so you had to go be with your mother and you didn't want to leave I'm summarizing and again we're going to recommend people read the book

[00:48:46] but what was interesting to me is that you left the cult you wanted to go back and you were stuck in this situation with your stepfather and I'm wondering when did you realize that you were

[00:48:55] the family and the communities were a cult and when did you make the correlation between getting out of the cult and then getting into another culty or abuse of a situation? I knew almost immediately that he I call him FP in the book that's not his real name

[00:49:08] but not because I'm protecting him but because I just didn't want to look at his name over and over and say it over and over and I just want you to know so I call him FP that stands for

[00:49:15] fucking psycho and that's just a little present to myself because then I get to say this over and over. I was wondering about that I actually had that premonition that you were going to say that

[00:49:24] that it was an acronym. That it said we're fucking psycho? No not that one but there was an acronym for you it meant something to you I didn't know what it was yeah good for you

[00:49:32] that fucking psycho he is a fucking psycho. So I immediately saw that his main motivation for leaving was that he didn't have enough power and that he was going to not only have that power

[00:49:41] that he wasn't allowed you know he wasn't powerful enough to have a child bride you know but he was still spewing their doctrine his version of it which was even more mind-numbingly gibberish

[00:49:52] and you know framed photographs of the leader on the wall and preserving the way that they dealt with daylight savings time which was you know at some point it's world time and our time because we didn't observe daylight savings time because whatever and so I knew I could

[00:50:05] immediately see that he was having his own little cult when treating my mother the same way my mother was acting the same way so but in that case I just thought like how dare he try to be like them

[00:50:15] he's not them he could never hold a candle to them do you know what I mean right I wasn't like you know oh no it's the same fucked up way I grew up I'm just like you can't you you're not

[00:50:24] powerful enough to pull this off so it's a really really complicated kind of journey and figuring out where it came from and then honestly so I just stopped talking about it as soon as I

[00:50:35] realized that I went from eighth grade where everybody saw me come in as the total weirdo to high school which was a different school with more people and I was like okay e-race cult but

[00:50:45] I called it a commune and then I didn't call it anything I lied about how I grew up because I just was like I can't I need to put this away and I still didn't think of it as a cult until

[00:50:54] I was 22 and like most times that I've gone to therapy their relationship mandated i.e. in which the person says if you don't go to therapy I'm gonna have to break up with you

[00:51:09] haha they're hilarious and so this first woman therapist that I went to she listened to me and then she said you know that's not a commune you grew up in it's a cult and I was like rude

[00:51:22] how rude how dare you rude and then she gave me the cult awareness network newsletter which you know this is pre-internet this story it's is the early 90s and I read the newsletter

[00:51:32] and I was like god these people are they don't know anything about cults I just think that like everyone's a cult and they're just like out to bust them it's so it's so generic it's so broad strokes

[00:51:41] it took me another six months basically to realize oh no I did grow up in a cult and a lot of people are in cults and there's a pattern I mean I'm out here writing a term paper about Jim Jones

[00:51:54] when I'm 12 I'm being like what a bunch of weirdos like I was just circling it without seeing myself it so I mean with the thing about me is like I also asked my mom when I was 13

[00:52:03] like what would you do if I turned out to be gay I didn't think I was gay I was just like wow people are really rude to gay people like why and so I asked my mom that she was like I would think

[00:52:11] I'd done something seriously wrong with your upbringing oh and even then I was like god like my mom has a green piece sticker but she's so mean about gay people like poor gay people

[00:52:20] anyway my point is that things can circle around me for a long time before I realize I'm talking about myself right well Sarah and I joked when we got out we would look at other groups and

[00:52:31] go that's a cult like all the time meanwhile we're in our situation which is for sure a cult but we were like sanctimonious about it we're right Sarah remember we like that's a little

[00:52:43] culty and like I'm sort of fascinated by how the the new cult space things that morph into cults are things that are just at least coercive control in some way even if you're not living

[00:52:54] in an isolated compound are a lot in the self-help space the acting teacher turned life coach space and in the cult recovery space yeah and it's women it's like yay empowerment women are now becoming

[00:53:07] that also is good at being dangerous predators not in the way that men are and have traditionally been but it does seem like a lot of women are now the coercive control perpetrators yep which

[00:53:19] I'm like wow and in LA there's a never-ending influx of idealistic people from oh yeah elsewhere who really want to make it in Hollywood like what a fertile ground for cultiness and coercion this podcast is brought to you by citizens of sound a podcast production agency committed

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[00:54:08] next week for part two with guinevere turner seeking down to the depths of the ocean I'm hanging on to the way to my love if I let go of it all I could leave but I know I won't

[00:54:29] hope you like 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 and if you're

[00:54:42] looking for our show notes or some sweet sweet swag or official albc podcast march or a list of our most recommended cult recovery resources visit our website at a little bit culty dot com and for

[00:54:54] more background on what brought us here check out sarah's page turning memoir it's called scarred the true story of how I escaped nexium the cult that bound my life it's available on amazon audible

[00:55:03] narrated by my wife and at most bookstores a little bit culty is a talkhouse podcast and a trace 120 production we're executive produced by sarah edmondson and anthony nippy aims with writing research and additional production support by senior producer jess tardy

[00:55:18] we're edited mixed and mastered by our rocking producer will rutherford of citizens of sound and our amazing theme song cultivated is by john bryant and co-written by nigel aslan thank you for listening