Latest / Miss Understood with Rachel Uchitel / Journalist Josh Bloch Discuss Cults, CEDU, and Missing Person David Yuen

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Journalist Josh Bloch Discuss Cults, CEDU, and Missing Person David Yuen · Miss Understood with Rachel Uchitel

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Speaker 1: real conversations in a new language today. Daniel Ewan was
1:30
Speaker 1: 16 years old in 2004 when he went missing from
1:34
Speaker 1: Running Springs, California from his boarding school. The name of
1:37
Speaker 1: the boarding school was Seedoo Running Springs and it was
1:40
Speaker 1: a therapeutic boarding school known for its tough love approach.
1:43
Speaker 1: It was the last alternative for families who struggled with
1:46
Speaker 1: out of control kids. You may have heard the name
1:48
Speaker 1: Seedoo because Paris Hilton brought it to mainstream media when
1:52
Speaker 1: she talked about it in her documentary. She had spent
1:54
Speaker 1: a couple months there and in their sister school. I
1:58
Speaker 1: happened to go to this school. I went there for
2:00
Speaker 1: two years and seven months. I graduated from this school
2:04
Speaker 1: when I was just shy of being 17 years old.
2:08
Speaker 1: I blocked out my experience from the day that I
2:11
Speaker 1: walked off that campus. Recently, and it wasn't even that
2:16
Speaker 1: long ago, I heard that it had been shut down
2:18
Speaker 1: years ago for accusations of abuse and children that had
2:22
Speaker 1: gone missing. When I was at SEDU, we learned that SEDU,
2:25
Speaker 1: spelled C-E-D-U, meant see yourself and do something with it.
2:30
Speaker 1: And we heard that over and over and over. But
2:32
Speaker 1: it wasn't until recently that I heard that those letters
2:36
Speaker 1: actually might have meant Charles E. Diedrich, who was a
2:40
Speaker 1: leader of the Synanon cult. So I had to stop
2:43
Speaker 1: and think, did my childhood end abruptly when I walked
2:46
Speaker 1: onto that campus when I was 13 years old? Did
2:49
Speaker 1: I follow with blind faith and spend my teen years
2:52
Speaker 1: living in a cult? My next guest I'm so excited
2:56
Speaker 1: to have because I've never met him and I've heard
2:58
Speaker 1: so much about him. is somebody who is a journalist
3:00
Speaker 1: and a podcaster. He had an amazing podcast that when
3:05
Speaker 1: you guys are done listening to this one, you should
3:07
Speaker 1: go on and listen to called The Lost Kids, where
3:09
Speaker 1: he talks about the disappearance of Daniel Ewan, and he
3:12
Speaker 1: talks about SEDU. And then his other podcast that is
3:16
Speaker 1: absolutely spectacular is Escaping NXIVM, which we will also get into,
3:20
Speaker 1: which is about a self-help group turned into a sex cult.
3:23
Speaker 1: So without further ado, hey there, Josh.
3:26
Speaker 2: Hello. Thanks for having me on your podcast.
3:28
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming. So I wanted to
3:32
Speaker 1: start with how did you get into being interested in
3:36
Speaker 1: Daniel's case?
3:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, the connection actually, in a roundabout way,
3:41
Speaker 3: came through doing the NXIVM podcast. NBC had started this
3:46
Speaker 3: podcast studio. They were interested in investigating SIDU, and they
3:49
Speaker 3: knew about this connection to Synanon. And because I had
3:53
Speaker 3: been working in the cult space, they had reached out
3:55
Speaker 3: to me to host it. Um, and it is, you know, it,
3:59
Speaker 3: it turns out that, you know, not just that connection
4:01
Speaker 3: to sit in on, but the way that CDU operated
4:03
Speaker 3: itself had so many similarities to the way that, that
4:07
Speaker 3: high pressure organizations, high control groups, cults actually operate. So
4:12
Speaker 3: it turned out that the, the research I had done
4:15
Speaker 3: on NXIVM and the kind of the deep dive I
4:16
Speaker 3: had done into the cult world, uh, was very useful
4:19
Speaker 3: in investigating this program as well.
4:22
Speaker 1: So, uh, It's interesting because in listening to your podcast
4:25
Speaker 1: of the lost kids, it was widely known even by the,
4:29
Speaker 1: I guess, the staff members that it was based on
4:31
Speaker 1: the Synanon cult, but none of us knew about it.
4:34
Speaker 1: Our parents didn't know about it. A lot of the
4:36
Speaker 1: parents that dropped off kids there literally had no idea
4:40
Speaker 1: that there was such a connection. And there were, you know,
4:43
Speaker 1: things that literally went from the teachings of Synanon directly
4:47
Speaker 1: into the teachings and the curriculum. of Seedoo. Will you
4:50
Speaker 1: explain to people who don't know what the teachings of
4:54
Speaker 1: Synanon was and then how that went into Seedoo?
4:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting that you're pointing that
5:00
Speaker 3: out because there's two different versions of what Seedoo is.
5:03
Speaker 3: There is the version that was advertised to parents to
5:07
Speaker 3: get their kids. It wouldn't be a good calling card
5:09
Speaker 3: to say, you know, come send your kids to a
5:11
Speaker 3: cult Synanon spinoff. So there was a version that was
5:14
Speaker 3: advertised in the brochures and the website's and in the meetings,
5:18
Speaker 3: and then there was a version of actually what was
5:19
Speaker 3: going on. So Synanon was, it was an organization that started,
5:25
Speaker 3: a group that started in the 50s by Charles E.
5:28
Speaker 3: Diederich as an alternative to Alcoholics Anonymous. At the time,
5:32
Speaker 3: they weren't accepting drug addicts into Alcoholics Anonymous, and he
5:35
Speaker 3: felt like, and he was a recovered alcoholic himself, and
5:39
Speaker 3: he says that he noticed this rise in addiction rates
5:44
Speaker 3: you know, attached to perhaps the 60s counterculture movement, but
5:48
Speaker 3: just noticed that a lot of youth he felt were
5:50
Speaker 3: off course, and certainly a lot of adults were suffering
5:53
Speaker 3: from addiction and created this program. But really, you know,
5:56
Speaker 3: he has no credentials in terms of, you know, a
6:00
Speaker 3: therapeutic background or a social work background or a psychology background,
6:03
Speaker 3: but came up with this idea of using an aggressive
6:07
Speaker 3: form of attack therapy as like, that was like the
6:10
Speaker 3: therapeutic core of Synanon for an hour and sometimes hours
6:15
Speaker 3: and sometimes days, people would be put into this very
6:18
Speaker 3: high pressured environment where you'd sit in a circle with
6:23
Speaker 3: the other participants in the program. One person would be
6:26
Speaker 3: in the hot seat and they would be attacked. They'd
6:28
Speaker 3: be screamed at, yelled at. I mean, there was only
6:29
Speaker 3: two rules, which was that you couldn't threaten violence or
6:32
Speaker 3: be violent. Other than that, it was no holds barred.
6:35
Speaker 3: You could say whatever you want. And this idea of
6:40
Speaker 3: using The idea, you know, his logic was you use
6:43
Speaker 3: this tactic to show the person something truthful about themselves,
6:46
Speaker 3: that if after an hour of being screamed at and
6:48
Speaker 3: yelled at about your flaws, that somehow, I suppose, you
6:53
Speaker 3: would see something about.
6:55
Speaker 2: Yourself and do something about it.
6:56
Speaker 1: See the light, so to speak.
6:58
Speaker 2: That's right.
7:00
Speaker 3: And so that, you know, the Sinan House, when it started,
7:05
Speaker 3: was kind of like this fashionable play.
7:07
Speaker 2: It was in L.A.
7:08
Speaker 3: It had lots of connections to Hollywood. A lot of
7:10
Speaker 3: celebrities would come through it. It kind of was part
7:13
Speaker 3: of this whole human potential and counterculture movement that was happening.
7:16
Speaker 3: And people really raved about it and found that it
7:20
Speaker 3: was like, you know, there were all kinds of anecdotal
7:23
Speaker 3: success stories for folks. But the organization started to shift.
7:28
Speaker 3: And one of the key changes was when Charles Diederich said,
7:32
Speaker 3: you know, this is a two-year program. And after two years,
7:35
Speaker 3: it would be rehabilitated. And then he shifted to say,
7:38
Speaker 3: rehabilitation is a lifelong process, and therefore you can never
7:42
Speaker 3: leave Synanon. You have to be a part of it forever.
7:45
Speaker 3: And then a whole bunch of, you know, they became
7:47
Speaker 3: quite violent and started behaving in, they were called one
7:53
Speaker 3: of America's most dangerous cults. But what happened was, is
7:56
Speaker 3: that people from that organization and affiliated with that organization
8:02
Speaker 3: started to scatter and create a synonym-like program for so-called
8:09
Speaker 3: troubled youth. They borrowed the vernacular, they borrowed this therapeutic
8:14
Speaker 3: model of attack therapy, of a kind of shame-based attack
8:17
Speaker 3: approach to helping people, and they applied it to young people.
8:21
Speaker 3: And it was the seeds and eventually would become this
8:26
Speaker 3: billion-dollar industry what we call the troubled teen industry. And
8:30
Speaker 3: the connection to SEDU is really profound because SEDU becomes
8:33
Speaker 3: this foundational moment where you see that philosophy jump over
8:37
Speaker 3: from Synanon. And it becomes, in a lot of ways,
8:40
Speaker 3: the model that dozens of other schools, maybe even hundreds
8:43
Speaker 3: of other programs, use after SEDU creates it under Mel Wasserman,
8:49
Speaker 3: its founder.
8:50
Speaker 4: Right.
8:51
Speaker 1: So you bring up Mel Wasserman. When I went there,
8:53
Speaker 1: I went in, I guess, the end of 1989. Right.
8:57
Speaker 1: And so I was there somewhat at the beginning. I mean,
8:59
Speaker 1: I had been around for a decade at least, right?
9:01
Speaker 1: But Mel was a figure like our God, kind of.
9:05
Speaker 1: We heard about him in the rafters, and we would
9:10
Speaker 1: always wonder if he was going to show up. And
9:12
Speaker 1: our headmaster at the time was Bill Lane, who I
9:14
Speaker 1: think you spoke to. And Rudy Benz was my family head,
9:20
Speaker 1: who you also spoke to. So listening to your podcast,
9:23
Speaker 1: I had to really stop and hold in a lot
9:26
Speaker 1: of emotion because the voices I heard were voices that
9:31
Speaker 1: affected my childhood and my teen years for many years.
9:35
Speaker 1: But what you... say and bring up is really interesting.
9:37
Speaker 1: None of these people had credentials. So Mel Wasserman was
9:40
Speaker 1: a furniture salesman, right? I mean, this is the guy
9:43
Speaker 1: who started my school that we thought was this amazing
9:46
Speaker 1: school at the time and had been told, we are
9:48
Speaker 1: doing things that kids your age never get the chance to.
9:52
Speaker 1: And the price your parents are paying to send you
9:54
Speaker 1: here is like the price of what people are paying
9:57
Speaker 1: to go to the highest end college ever. And you
10:01
Speaker 1: don't know how much your parents care about you. But
10:03
Speaker 1: when we were there, we did not feel like that.
10:05
Speaker 1: Some of the kids that would arrive there would be
10:07
Speaker 1: kidnapped in the middle of the night and brought in
10:09
Speaker 1: at all hours of the morning and not know why
10:12
Speaker 1: they were there. For me, my situation was very similar
10:15
Speaker 1: to many people's situations where we thought we were visiting.
10:19
Speaker 1: I just thought I was there on a tour. And
10:21
Speaker 1: by the time I was up in the dorms being
10:23
Speaker 1: shown what the dorms look like, my mom had left.
10:26
Speaker 1: And I had to spend, you know, the next almost
10:30
Speaker 1: three years there and had no way out. And it
10:33
Speaker 1: was terrifying for a young girl who... had never done drugs,
10:37
Speaker 1: had never had sex, never really did anything awful. You know,
10:41
Speaker 1: the most kind of awful thing I had done was
10:43
Speaker 1: be very combative with a single mother and, you know,
10:47
Speaker 1: who didn't know how to deal with me. But you
10:50
Speaker 1: did see a lot of kids coming in from the California,
10:54
Speaker 1: you know, they were having issues and the courts would
10:58
Speaker 1: send them there, right? So I think they did get
11:00
Speaker 1: funneled in through that way. And it would be very
11:03
Speaker 1: interesting to see how their reaction would be versus someone
11:07
Speaker 1: who was like, why am I here? I really don't
11:10
Speaker 1: get what I did that was so awful. But the
11:12
Speaker 1: staff had no, to get back to what I was saying,
11:13
Speaker 1: the staff had no credentials, not only Mel Wasserman, but
11:17
Speaker 1: the staff who was around us on any given day, right?
11:21
Speaker 1: Is that what you found in your investigation?
11:23
Speaker 2: No, totally.
11:24
Speaker 1: I mean.
11:25
Speaker 3: there were staff members that seemed to literally being plucked
11:28
Speaker 3: off the street. And they, you know, people were coming
11:30
Speaker 3: with zero background in, in therapy or often working with
11:35
Speaker 3: kids at all. Um, there was, as you know, many
11:39
Speaker 3: people came through the program ended up being staff. So
11:42
Speaker 3: their training was just being participants in the program and
11:45
Speaker 3: their only exposure to what therapy would look like was this,
11:49
Speaker 3: that the form of attack therapy that you guys were doing. Um,
11:53
Speaker 3: I mean, I was shocked by that. And in the podcast,
11:55
Speaker 3: we do talk to Rudy Benz. I was surprised that
12:02
Speaker 3: he was going to speak, but I also was surprised
12:04
Speaker 3: that there was a sense that he questioned the value
12:10
Speaker 3: of the program on some level or he was open
12:12
Speaker 3: to some of the criticism. but fundamentally still seem to
12:17
Speaker 3: stand by the, this idea that like, what I saw
12:20
Speaker 3: was people change. What I saw was that if I,
12:22
Speaker 3: that I could modify and control the behaviors of, of
12:26
Speaker 3: troubled kids by using this. So I don't know, maybe
12:29
Speaker 3: like for 10% of the kids that went there, it
12:31
Speaker 3: was traumatic, but like for 80% of them, it was,
12:34
Speaker 3: it was profoundly. And people come to me today to
12:36
Speaker 3: say there was a difference.
12:38
Speaker 2: Um, So that's.
12:40
Speaker 1: What I was going to ask you. What was your
12:43
Speaker 1: what was the reaction from people that heard your podcast
12:47
Speaker 1: from former students? They must have reached out. How many
12:49
Speaker 1: said it was good versus bad?
12:53
Speaker 3: You know, there was a point that we so tons
12:56
Speaker 3: of people reached out after the podcast came out. And
12:58
Speaker 3: also I spoke to dozens of former residents in the
13:01
Speaker 3: process of putting together the podcast. It was very difficult
13:06
Speaker 3: to find folks who still supported it.
13:09
Speaker 2: It's there.
13:10
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm sure you've seen people on social media
13:13
Speaker 3: and Facebook and people did pop out. And we do include,
13:16
Speaker 3: I think in like the sixth episode, we did include
13:18
Speaker 3: a clip of someone who said, it might not have
13:20
Speaker 3: been for everyone, but it was, you know, it was
13:22
Speaker 3: transformative for me. But I have, my experience was that
13:26
Speaker 3: that was the exception. I think a lot of people
13:30
Speaker 3: seem to have an experience that you had, which was,
13:32
Speaker 3: I didn't talk about it.
13:33
Speaker 2: It was deeply traumatic.
13:35
Speaker 3: I had no way of even, I mean, part of
13:37
Speaker 3: I think part of, you know, Daniel Ewan's time and
13:40
Speaker 3: certainly your time was before social media. There was no,
13:43
Speaker 3: it was so difficult to form a community and to
13:47
Speaker 3: try and process what happened.
13:48
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14:08
Speaker 3: And then you're in your teens, you're already trying to
14:10
Speaker 3: understand how the world functions and who you are and
14:14
Speaker 3: kind of putting together what the world looks like. And
14:16
Speaker 3: to suddenly be dropped into this surreal, you know, high
14:21
Speaker 3: pressure environment, I think for a lot of people was
14:23
Speaker 3: incredibly traumatizing. And because, and so for a lot of
14:26
Speaker 3: people I talked to, they were like, I haven't talked, like,
14:28
Speaker 3: you know, like you, I hadn't talked about this in decades.
14:31
Speaker 3: I didn't know how to even put a, put a,
14:33
Speaker 3: there was no language I could use to describe what
14:35
Speaker 3: was happening. And I think that, that has shifted for
14:37
Speaker 3: a bunch of reasons, um, including social media, but, uh,
14:42
Speaker 3: but trauma, I think was, was a primary response I
14:46
Speaker 3: heard from, from people that went to the program.
14:48
Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's interesting that you say that because I
14:51
Speaker 1: pushed it down so much and didn't want to think
14:53
Speaker 1: about it. But then when I did think about it,
14:56
Speaker 1: it was very traumatic. There's so much that has to
14:59
Speaker 1: do with shame and humiliation from that school. Um, You know,
15:03
Speaker 1: let me just start with explaining to people what it
15:06
Speaker 1: was like. So first of all, there's a certain like
15:08
Speaker 1: vernacular when you go there. There are certain words that
15:11
Speaker 1: you follow. And when I hear these words, you know,
15:14
Speaker 1: your mind changes or certain music, you know, if certain
15:17
Speaker 1: songs come on. Sometimes I have a physical response and
15:21
Speaker 1: I don't even know why. And then it will occur
15:24
Speaker 1: to me like I can't listen to John Denver. I
15:26
Speaker 1: can't listen to Kenny Loggins. I can't listen to Crosby,
15:29
Speaker 1: Stills and Nash because those were we were only allowed
15:31
Speaker 1: to listen to certain music when we were there. And
15:34
Speaker 1: it was on repeat in that main house all the
15:37
Speaker 1: time for decades. you know, the years that you're there.
15:40
Speaker 1: And the songs play over and over in your head,
15:44
Speaker 1: and that's all you can kind of sing. Otherwise, you're
15:46
Speaker 1: out of agreement. The entire school is about being in agreement.
15:49
Speaker 1: And if you're not in agreement, you're punished. And you're
15:52
Speaker 1: literally punished for almost everything. And when you have to,
15:57
Speaker 1: you need to come clean, you need to cop out
15:59
Speaker 1: to the things that you're guilty for. So you're constantly
16:02
Speaker 1: either guilty, or you're on, you know, you're doing something good.
16:06
Speaker 1: And If you're guilty and you're copping out, you're on
16:09
Speaker 1: a ban from people. You're not allowed to smile. You're
16:11
Speaker 1: not allowed to touch people. You're constantly on work assignments
16:14
Speaker 1: or you're on writing assignments. You're alone. You're scrubbing the
16:17
Speaker 1: floor with a toothbrush. You're working on a farm for
16:21
Speaker 1: six months. You're chopping wood for six months. And that's
16:24
Speaker 1: not even if you're in a bad place. That's what
16:26
Speaker 1: you have to do there. That's what our curriculum was.
16:29
Speaker 1: We didn't go to school for the first year that
16:31
Speaker 1: we were there. Our school was physical school. You know,
16:34
Speaker 1: it was every morning until 12, you have to do
16:38
Speaker 1: something physical beyond the farm or chopping wood. And then
16:41
Speaker 1: in the afternoons, you went to wraps, which is what
16:43
Speaker 1: you're talking about, which was the game, where you're being
16:47
Speaker 1: attacked for three hours, where you sit in a circle
16:50
Speaker 1: and And they would call off your name Monday, Wednesday,
16:53
Speaker 1: and Friday, and you would be in a room with
16:55
Speaker 1: 15 to 20 people and you would be attacked. And
17:00
Speaker 1: it's almost emotional for me to talk about. I have
17:05
Speaker 1: talked about this in so many years, but they would
17:08
Speaker 1: find something. You could not get out of the room
17:11
Speaker 1: without them finding something to attack you for. And it
17:14
Speaker 1: wasn't just attacking, um, I mean, it could just be
17:19
Speaker 1: the smallest thing. If I was making noise with the
17:23
Speaker 1: spoons in the dining room, they would use that and say,
17:27
Speaker 1: but you only want attention. And it would go into
17:30
Speaker 1: God knows what. And the entire room would get on
17:33
Speaker 1: board and start screaming at you. And the kids would
17:36
Speaker 1: have to get up from one side of the room,
17:39
Speaker 1: change chairs. to yell at you and you couldn't survive
17:44
Speaker 1: unless you had an emotional breakthrough and started crying and
17:48
Speaker 1: screaming and hitting the floor to have this breakthrough. And
17:51
Speaker 1: you had to do this three times a week for
17:53
Speaker 1: years and it was horrible. So they had to break
17:56
Speaker 1: you down. I'm so sorry that I'm crying, but they
17:58
Speaker 1: had to break you down to build you back up.
18:00
Speaker 1: And it was horrifying. And then at the end, you're
18:03
Speaker 1: sort of like, they go around, how was your rap?
18:07
Speaker 1: And I remember everyone's response. oh, it was really hard,
18:10
Speaker 1: but good. It was, you know, I feel good. I
18:12
Speaker 1: feel really, I feel like I'm really making progress. I mean,
18:16
Speaker 1: that's crazy. It's crazy. It is.
18:19
Speaker 3: I mean, it took me so long to even try
18:22
Speaker 3: to wrap my head around this. And I felt like,
18:23
Speaker 3: you know, making the podcast, it felt like a daunting
18:27
Speaker 3: task of like, how do you even describe this weird
18:30
Speaker 3: alternate universe that people are dropped into? And I think
18:33
Speaker 3: like one of the things about Seedoo as compared to
18:38
Speaker 3: there's definitely been cases and allegations around sexual abuse and
18:41
Speaker 3: physical abuse at SEDU. Other programs employed that even more
18:45
Speaker 3: as a tactic. But I think one of the challenges
18:47
Speaker 3: with SEDU was that the abuse was psychological. And in
18:50
Speaker 3: some ways that abuse is invisible. And it's like, it's
18:53
Speaker 3: hard to always show it and prove it and have,
18:57
Speaker 3: you know, I think for a lot of former residents,
18:59
Speaker 3: they weren't believed. I mean, they come out of this
19:01
Speaker 3: thing and they just, they didn't, part of the not
19:03
Speaker 3: speaking they told me was because no one, I couldn't
19:05
Speaker 3: explain it. I didn't have the language to explain it
19:07
Speaker 3: and no one would believe me when it happened. But
19:09
Speaker 3: like what you're describing, those rap sessions, I mean, I
19:11
Speaker 3: think of, I can't even imagine, you know, and I've
19:14
Speaker 3: heard this so many times, but what it would mean
19:16
Speaker 3: for 13 or 14 or 15 or anyone really to
19:20
Speaker 3: be sitting there and subjected to that kind of abuse
19:23
Speaker 3: for that long. And so one of the responses I
19:26
Speaker 3: heard from people, I'm curious to know if this was
19:27
Speaker 3: your experience, is there's a certain period of time of
19:30
Speaker 3: resistance where your mind is like, What the hell is
19:33
Speaker 3: going on?
19:33
Speaker 2: This is not normal. This is not OK.
19:36
Speaker 3: And then there's a resignation to it. Like there's a
19:39
Speaker 3: kind of survival for a lot of people. I mean,
19:41
Speaker 3: some folks run away and then, you know, that we'll
19:44
Speaker 3: probably get to it in terms of what Daniel Ewan
19:46
Speaker 3: did after just 10 days was run away, which was
19:48
Speaker 3: what many kids did. and was a natural response to
19:52
Speaker 3: what happened but then there's kind of like a i
19:54
Speaker 3: have to survive this and resign to this environment and
19:57
Speaker 3: there's so few cracks that sound alike to um So
20:02
Speaker 3: a few ways to be resistant. I mean, resistance was
20:04
Speaker 3: met with punishment. So sort of like put your head
20:06
Speaker 3: down and get through it. I mean, is that what
20:08
Speaker 3: you found?
20:08
Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely. You could not resist anything. I mean, you
20:11
Speaker 1: even just from, again, being out of agreement, just peeing
20:15
Speaker 1: in the shower wasn't allowed and you would get punished.
20:18
Speaker 1: I mean, it was to this day, I will not
20:20
Speaker 1: spit my gum on the ground because in the back
20:23
Speaker 1: of my head, I'm like, I will get punished for that.
20:25
Speaker 1: So I am so careful on things that I do.
20:28
Speaker 1: But I want to go back to one thing you said.
20:30
Speaker 1: There was nothing tangible that happened to me there. You know,
20:33
Speaker 1: I didn't get physically abused. I was not sexually abused.
20:36
Speaker 1: So when people talk about SEDU and if you got
20:38
Speaker 1: abused there and I hear people that talk about this
20:41
Speaker 1: abuse that went on there, none of that happened there
20:44
Speaker 1: to me. None of that happened in the almost three
20:47
Speaker 1: years that I was there. I don't think to anyone
20:50
Speaker 1: that was at that school because it was run in
20:52
Speaker 1: a way that we were very, we would have seen it.
20:55
Speaker 1: No one's ever complained about it there at that time.
20:57
Speaker 1: But we were so abused emotionally. And when you don't
21:03
Speaker 1: have something tangible like that, it's exactly what you said.
21:06
Speaker 1: You can't explain it to anyone. You have no proof.
21:10
Speaker 1: And to this day, I try and bring it up
21:12
Speaker 1: with my mother. And, you know, she will not listen.
21:17
Speaker 1: She just says, you loved it there. What are you
21:19
Speaker 1: talking about? You did so well there. You had the
21:21
Speaker 1: best time. You had so many friends. And it just
21:25
Speaker 1: triggers me back to that place where I was 14
21:27
Speaker 1: years old. And I just feel like no one's listening
21:29
Speaker 1: to me. And I'm just stuck in this position where
21:31
Speaker 1: I'm just like, okay, forget it. And you had someone
21:34
Speaker 1: on your podcast that went by Medium, I think, who
21:36
Speaker 1: said he wrote an entire piece for the purpose that
21:40
Speaker 1: people could use that link to send to their parents
21:43
Speaker 1: and let it speak for themselves. And I had to
21:47
Speaker 1: stop the podcast when I was listening and be like,
21:50
Speaker 1: oh my God, because I did that. I read that
21:53
Speaker 1: piece on Seadoo and I forwarded that exact piece to
21:56
Speaker 1: my mother. And still to this day, she won't apologize.
21:59
Speaker 1: She won't even, not even apologize. She won't just acknowledge
22:03
Speaker 1: what happened to me. And that brought breaks my heart
22:07
Speaker 1: you know it's it's really tough on on me for
22:10
Speaker 1: that but to get back to what you're asking um
22:12
Speaker 1: yes for um it took me a while to um
22:16
Speaker 1: get the courage up to run away I ran away
22:18
Speaker 1: three times while I was there um the first time
22:22
Speaker 1: I um didn't get very far um the second time
22:27
Speaker 1: I was sent to juvenile hall um because my mother
22:31
Speaker 1: wouldn't take me home um she thought it was a
22:34
Speaker 1: great program and um you know, what I forgot to
22:38
Speaker 1: say before is our calls and our mail was monitored.
22:42
Speaker 1: So you couldn't write out and be like, this is miserable.
22:45
Speaker 1: I'm miserable. Come get me because they would not let
22:48
Speaker 1: you send that letter. And on our calls, we would
22:50
Speaker 1: have a call once every two weeks or so, 10 days,
22:54
Speaker 1: and it was for 15 minutes, but somebody would be
22:56
Speaker 1: in the room listening to you. So if you said
22:58
Speaker 1: anything remotely negative, the call would be ended and they
23:03
Speaker 1: literally would terminate the call. And so you started to
23:06
Speaker 1: learn not to say anything awful about wanting to leave
23:11
Speaker 1: because you didn't want that time to be terminated because
23:14
Speaker 1: you didn't get it back. You know, you just want,
23:16
Speaker 1: you were aching to speak to somebody and you no
23:19
Speaker 1: longer could speak to your friends from home. You had
23:21
Speaker 1: no access to the outside world. So you come to
23:24
Speaker 1: realize I'm not going to ask to go home anymore
23:26
Speaker 1: because they don't believe me. And And, you know, are told, listen,
23:33
Speaker 1: the kids are going to say this, this and this.
23:35
Speaker 1: So don't respond.
23:37
Speaker 2: Here's your response.
23:38
Speaker 3: Well, it's so interesting because that, you know, looking at
23:40
Speaker 3: this program through a cult lens, the experts I talked
23:43
Speaker 3: to said it was the parents who were groomed for
23:47
Speaker 3: the cult, not the kids. The kids were sent there unwillingly.
23:50
Speaker 3: I mean, unlike another cult where you have to entice
23:53
Speaker 3: people and love bomb them and bring them in in all.
23:55
Speaker 2: Kinds of ways. you have custody. So it's not an issue.
23:58
Speaker 3: You can't, you know, you could try and run away
23:59
Speaker 3: or whatever, but it's the parents that you have to convince.
24:01
Speaker 3: And one of the strategies is this different version of
24:05
Speaker 3: SEDU that is presented to them. And, you know, that
24:09
Speaker 3: and that close monitoring of information, not allowing the residents
24:13
Speaker 3: of the program to say anything to their parents, giving
24:16
Speaker 3: the parents a handbook. I mean, like that is such a,
24:18
Speaker 3: and Daniel Yuen's parents, Wayne and Lisa, talking to talk
24:22
Speaker 3: about this and how duped they felt because Daniel complained
24:25
Speaker 3: to them He was in there for a few days.
24:27
Speaker 3: This is a terrible school. And Wayne said, I had
24:30
Speaker 3: the handbook. I knew that Daniel was going to say this.
24:32
Speaker 3: And I was instructed to say, OK, it's going to
24:34
Speaker 3: be fine.
24:35
Speaker 2: Stick it out.
24:36
Speaker 3: And, you know, there's a huge amount of regret and
24:38
Speaker 3: guilt and pain, I think, associated with that con, that
24:43
Speaker 3: that dupe that he felt the program pulled the wool
24:45
Speaker 3: over his eyes and didn't. It gave someone like Daniel
24:48
Speaker 3: and it sounds like it gave you sort of no
24:50
Speaker 3: option to complain because how. You know, you can't turn
24:53
Speaker 3: to any adults in your life.
24:54
Speaker 1: Right. So then you start to feel like you want
24:56
Speaker 1: to take matters into your own hands. And you're like,
24:58
Speaker 1: I have to leave. I have no other option. And
25:01
Speaker 1: there were no gates. So you could leave. And it
25:05
Speaker 1: was really only the other students who kind of would
25:08
Speaker 1: talk you down from doing this. And they would be like, well,
25:10
Speaker 1: if you leave, you're going to hurt us. And you're
25:13
Speaker 1: going to hurt yourself. And, you know, all this bullshit, really.
25:16
Speaker 1: So on the third time when I attempted to leave,
25:20
Speaker 1: my father, my parents were divorced at the time. My
25:22
Speaker 1: father lived in Alaska and he had sent me, he
25:25
Speaker 1: didn't believe in the program and didn't like it and
25:27
Speaker 1: didn't like my mother and had sent me a thousand
25:30
Speaker 1: dollars in a Rick Astley CD. So it was considered contraband.
25:35
Speaker 1: And I opened the Rick Astley CD and I knew
25:37
Speaker 1: I was going to have to give it back because
25:39
Speaker 1: we can't listen to music. And I somehow saw that
25:43
Speaker 1: it was packed with something and I found the money.
25:46
Speaker 1: So I took the money out. I handed in the
25:48
Speaker 1: CD saying, oh, look, I'm copping out. I got this CD.
25:51
Speaker 1: I'm not allowed to have it. And I stuffed the
25:55
Speaker 1: money in my pocket and I immediately was like, I'm
25:57
Speaker 1: out of here. I didn't realize like I was going
25:59
Speaker 1: to run away again, but with that money, I knew, okay,
26:02
Speaker 1: I'm out of here. So I ran away a third
26:04
Speaker 1: time and I was going to go, the money was
26:06
Speaker 1: to get a plane ticket and to go see my father.
26:08
Speaker 1: So I get to the, I hitchhike down to the
26:11
Speaker 1: bottom of the mountain. This is a very dangerous place.
26:13
Speaker 1: I mean, going down to the bottom of the mountain,
26:15
Speaker 1: hitchhiking as a single female is was like not a
26:18
Speaker 1: very smart idea. But somehow I made it down, hitchhiked,
26:22
Speaker 1: got down to the bottom. I called my brother, my half-brother,
26:25
Speaker 1: who I had from my father's side, who I had
26:28
Speaker 1: not seen since I was four years old. He happened
26:30
Speaker 1: to live in LA. He picked me up and he
26:32
Speaker 1: was supposed to take me to the airport. And he said,
26:35
Speaker 1: this seems a little odd. I want to see the school.
26:40
Speaker 1: And if I don't like the school, I'll take you
26:43
Speaker 1: to dad. But our father had some drug issues so
26:45
Speaker 1: he didn't want me necessarily to go to my father's
26:48
Speaker 1: house so he takes me back up to the school
26:49
Speaker 1: after staying with him for a couple days and getting
26:51
Speaker 1: to know him and uh he goes and he sits
26:55
Speaker 1: in a room with rudy ben's and.
26:58
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27:18
Speaker 1: Elaine and these people. And I sat up on the couches.
27:23
Speaker 1: And four hours later, he comes back and he sits
27:26
Speaker 1: with me. And he's like, Rachel, this is an amazing school.
27:29
Speaker 1: And you have to stay. I'm not going to take
27:31
Speaker 1: you back with me. And I was just like, oh, fuck.
27:34
Speaker 1: I'm stuck here again. And so to answer your question,
27:38
Speaker 1: that's exactly, you know, at that point I was like, okay,
27:42
Speaker 1: I'm done. This was my last attempt. I'm never getting
27:44
Speaker 1: out of here. And something in me clicked and I
27:46
Speaker 1: was just like, I have no support. I have no
27:49
Speaker 1: way out. So I started thinking, all right, I only
27:52
Speaker 1: have a, at that point, I think I had like
27:54
Speaker 1: a year, a year and a half left. So I
27:56
Speaker 1: was like, okay, I'm going to just try and get
27:59
Speaker 1: through this because I'm never getting out of here.
28:01
Speaker 3: Right.
28:02
Speaker 1: Yeah.
28:02
Speaker 4: Right.
28:03
Speaker 2: And so and you and sounds like you graduated. I mean,
28:06
Speaker 2: you made it all the way through.
28:07
Speaker 1: I did. But I will say shortly after that, I
28:11
Speaker 1: had a phone call with my father who, again, on
28:16
Speaker 1: these phone calls, they're listened to. And my father had
28:19
Speaker 1: a drug addiction. And now that I had become the
28:23
Speaker 1: student that was following the rules, you draw a lot
28:27
Speaker 1: of boundaries. Right. And my father was high. And the
28:32
Speaker 1: person that answered his phone actually was Hector Macho Camacho.
28:36
Speaker 1: He was staying at his house. I don't know if
28:37
Speaker 1: you remember him. So my first like nine minutes of
28:40
Speaker 1: the call was with Macho Camacho saying, oh, we're busy.
28:43
Speaker 1: We can't talk. Your father's busy. I finally get my
28:46
Speaker 1: father on the phone and he's completely, you know, blasted
28:50
Speaker 1: on cocaine and high and whatever. And we get into
28:53
Speaker 1: this argument and a little bit. And I say, the
28:55
Speaker 1: woman's looking at me. It wasn't a woman. It was
28:58
Speaker 1: another student, as a matter of fact.
29:00
Speaker 5: And she's sitting there.
29:01
Speaker 1: And I know that I have to draw this boundary
29:05
Speaker 1: because I felt like I'm here at this program. I
29:08
Speaker 1: want to do it now, right? And I said, dad,
29:11
Speaker 1: now that you're doing drugs, you've chosen drugs over me.
29:14
Speaker 1: I can't have this relationship anymore. And he said, you're
29:18
Speaker 1: reminding me of your mother. You're such a fucking bitch.
29:21
Speaker 1: I've never loved you. So he goes on this whole rant,
29:24
Speaker 1: really getting angry with me. And he's like, fuck off.
29:27
Speaker 1: You know, and keeps repeating, I never loved you. So
29:30
Speaker 1: I hung up on him. And about maybe it was
29:34
Speaker 1: about six days later, my headmaster had to end up
29:37
Speaker 1: telling me that my father had died of a cocaine overdose. overdose.
29:41
Speaker 1: So that was a whole horrible experience I had, um,
29:44
Speaker 1: also at CDU. Yeah. Because I then realized I was
29:48
Speaker 1: really on my own cause he kind of was my
29:50
Speaker 1: last way out. And then I never went home after that.
29:54
Speaker 1: Like I, after I left, I went on to another
29:56
Speaker 1: school and went to graduate, uh, to college. And, um, so,
30:00
Speaker 1: you know, I realized that my life was like literally
30:04
Speaker 1: about being on my own after that. Um, so I
30:08
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you more about Daniel. Uh, Daniel left
30:12
Speaker 1: after a week, right? Of being there 10 days.
30:16
Speaker 2: That's right.
30:17
Speaker 3: He, um, he was there for 10 days, you know,
30:21
Speaker 3: a similar experience to you in terms of he got
30:24
Speaker 3: taken to the school by his parents and um, on
30:28
Speaker 3: what he thought was a tour and to kind of
30:30
Speaker 3: check it out. And, and, or he had gone, but
30:32
Speaker 3: sort of, you know, I think his parents said, if
30:33
Speaker 3: you don't like it, we can leave. And he, he
30:36
Speaker 3: didn't like it. He got totally, um, the bad vibes
30:39
Speaker 3: from the place from the get go, didn't want to go.
30:40
Speaker 3: And they said to him, you know what? They said
30:43
Speaker 3: to the parents, let's just take him to the headmaster.
30:45
Speaker 3: He'll talk to him and it'll be a fine. And
30:48
Speaker 3: then half an hour later, they came back to his
30:50
Speaker 3: parents and said, Daniel's fine.
30:51
Speaker 2: He wants to stay. You guys can go. And they left.
30:54
Speaker 3: Um, There's, you know, little evidence that Daniel changed his
30:58
Speaker 3: mind because he, 10 days later, decided to do what,
31:02
Speaker 3: you know, we found out hundreds of kids like you did,
31:05
Speaker 3: which was leave and supposed to run away. And as
31:10
Speaker 3: you mentioned, there's no gate, but Sidhu is very isolated.
31:15
Speaker 3: It's up on top of the San Bernardino Mountains. There's
31:17
Speaker 3: kind of two ways out. You either go down the
31:20
Speaker 3: one road that leads to the school or And the
31:22
Speaker 3: community is very aware of the programs that's there. And
31:25
Speaker 3: then we'll call the cops and people get picked up
31:27
Speaker 3: really frequently. Or another option is to go down what
31:30
Speaker 3: you call the backside, which was this, you know, basically
31:33
Speaker 3: the side of a mountain with nothing there. It's kind
31:37
Speaker 3: of a very barren desert landscape. You can see San
31:40
Speaker 3: Bernardino way in the distance. You might even feel like
31:42
Speaker 3: it's closer than it is, but it's not an easy
31:45
Speaker 3: thing to get to.
31:47
Speaker 2: And, you know, there's not a lot of water. There's
31:49
Speaker 2: a lot of wildlife.
31:52
Speaker 3: One theory is that Daniel did try to go down
31:55
Speaker 3: that route and didn't make it, but we don't know.
31:58
Speaker 3: His body was never discovered. When the program called Daniel
32:04
Speaker 3: Ewan's parents and said that he's gone, they suggested that
32:07
Speaker 3: he hire, they had a service, a private investigator that
32:11
Speaker 3: would look for the kids and sort of outsource the
32:13
Speaker 3: issue right away to this guy, Keith Raymond, who was
32:17
Speaker 3: supposed to be an expert in finding kids and the
32:20
Speaker 3: Ewans had to fork out a whole bunch more money
32:22
Speaker 3: to hire this guy to look for their son. And
32:27
Speaker 3: in my research or my investigation, I don't think this
32:30
Speaker 3: investigator was credible at all. I mean, I sort of
32:35
Speaker 3: went and followed his footsteps and he made claims of
32:39
Speaker 3: credible sightings of Daniel Ewan in San Bernardino. He even
32:42
Speaker 3: claimed that he himself got a phone call from Daniel
32:44
Speaker 3: Ewan saying, stop looking for me. When you kind of
32:47
Speaker 3: scratch beneath the surface, none of it really checks out.
32:50
Speaker 3: And it's a case, again, it's sort of like the
32:52
Speaker 3: double victimization of the UN family. They first were taken
32:56
Speaker 3: advantage because they didn't know what to do for their
32:58
Speaker 3: son who was struggling, you know, with mental health issues.
33:01
Speaker 2: Not crazy mental health issues.
33:02
Speaker 3: I mean, mental health or not abnormal, you know, outlier issues.
33:07
Speaker 3: It was kind of teenage depression, but they didn't know
33:09
Speaker 3: what to do. And that's where Sido swooped in promising
33:12
Speaker 3: that they could fix their son. And then and then again,
33:17
Speaker 3: you know, they're in this moment of vulnerability. Their son
33:19
Speaker 3: is gone. And suddenly this fairly sketchy private investigator shows
33:23
Speaker 3: up and charges them a bunch of money to look
33:25
Speaker 3: for their son.
33:26
Speaker 2: So it did.
33:27
Speaker 3: You know, their story was was tragic on a lot
33:29
Speaker 3: of levels, but spoke to how this industry can prey
33:34
Speaker 3: on on parents who are not sure how to help
33:38
Speaker 3: their kids.
33:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, 100%. Now, in your documentary, sorry, your podcast, you
33:44
Speaker 1: had mentioned about that phone call that Keith suggests he
33:49
Speaker 1: gets or alleges he gets. And I wondered, had he ever,
33:54
Speaker 1: had the parents asked to listen to the phone call,
33:58
Speaker 1: to the audio tape?
34:00
Speaker 3: The parents had, you know, he had a very strange
34:03
Speaker 3: story about it. And he was sort of promising to
34:06
Speaker 3: play it for them. And then he promised to send
34:08
Speaker 3: it to me.
34:10
Speaker 2: You know what?
34:10
Speaker 3: Actually, initially, the story changed. Initially, the story was that
34:14
Speaker 3: somebody else called and said, stop looking for Daniel.
34:16
Speaker 2: I'm his friend.
34:17
Speaker 3: That's what he had told the parents. When I talked
34:19
Speaker 3: to him on the phone, he said, no, no, no,
34:20
Speaker 3: Daniel called me. And by the way, he had this, like,
34:24
Speaker 3: I know it was Daniel because he had this kind
34:25
Speaker 3: of vague Asian accent. Now, Daniel Ewan was born and
34:28
Speaker 3: raised in New Jersey. I mean, I shared this with
34:30
Speaker 3: his friend, Nick Galeta, who was his best friend growing up.
34:33
Speaker 3: And Nick just laughed. He's like, The kid had a
34:35
Speaker 3: New Jersey accent. Like, why would he have his heritage,
34:39
Speaker 3: his lineage, his background comes from China, but that's not
34:42
Speaker 3: what his accent was.
34:43
Speaker 2: So clearly it was bullshit.
34:46
Speaker 3: But what I didn't understand.
34:48
Speaker 1: Is why the parents, if they're hearing that from Keith,
34:51
Speaker 1: why they didn't demand, I want to hear this voicemail.
34:55
Speaker 1: I need to hear it and go to the police. And,
34:57
Speaker 1: you know, instead it seemed like they were just very
35:00
Speaker 1: happy with him and they believed him. And that made
35:02
Speaker 1: me really sad for them.
35:04
Speaker 5: Yeah.
35:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, and my sense is that, and I agree, and
35:07
Speaker 3: I'm sort of even a little bit torn about, you know,
35:12
Speaker 3: what to say about Keith, because the UNs do believe
35:15
Speaker 3: that their son is alive, or at least they did
35:17
Speaker 3: at the time, and they had a lot of faith
35:19
Speaker 3: in Keith, at least at the time I was making
35:21
Speaker 3: the podcast. I think that shifted a bit, and he
35:23
Speaker 3: was quite manipulative. So, yes, they wanted, you know, once
35:28
Speaker 3: they knew about the recording, they wanted the recording, but
35:30
Speaker 3: then suddenly... He was had to run away from the
35:33
Speaker 3: police because he had been investigating the story too deeply
35:36
Speaker 3: and he was ruffling feathers. And then he was on
35:38
Speaker 3: his deathbed and was too sick to respond to anything.
35:41
Speaker 3: So he had a million stories and the stories were
35:43
Speaker 3: like he wasn't even a good liar. I mean, in
35:45
Speaker 3: my correspondence with him, I kept pressing him to say,
35:48
Speaker 3: you know, send me the tape, send me whatever.
35:51
Speaker 2: And then he said, I can't. You know, he had
35:54
Speaker 2: a bunch of different stories.
35:55
Speaker 3: Then he said, I have 48 hours to live.
35:57
Speaker 2: I'm on my deathbed. I'm sorry. This is my last dance.
36:00
Speaker 3: And then I got an email the next day from
36:03
Speaker 3: his email account saying, hey, Josh.
36:05
Speaker 2: This is Steve.
36:06
Speaker 3: I'm Keith's brother, and I see you've been corresponding with him,
36:10
Speaker 3: but I'm sorry. He's now incapacitated, and he's too ill
36:13
Speaker 3: to correspond with you.
36:15
Speaker 1: So is he dead?
36:17
Speaker 3: Well, it turns out a few months later, you Googled
36:20
Speaker 3: Keith Raymond, and his website popped up again, and he
36:23
Speaker 3: has a contact information there, and it seems he is
36:26
Speaker 3: alive and well and did not die. Oh, my goodness.
36:30
Speaker 3: I think he's... He's a strange and not a particularly
36:34
Speaker 3: good liar. And I think, you know, at the end
36:36
Speaker 3: of the day, I think the Ewans did start to
36:39
Speaker 3: realize that not everything he was saying was truthful.
36:42
Speaker 1: Which is so horrible for them. I mean, I just
36:44
Speaker 1: feel for them so much because, of course, they want
36:45
Speaker 1: to have hope. And there is an answer to what happened, right?
36:50
Speaker 1: I mean, nobody just disappears into thin air. But what
36:54
Speaker 1: happened with the police? I mean, why were they not
36:56
Speaker 1: more involved?
36:57
Speaker 3: Well, you know, a huge pattern I discovered in this
37:01
Speaker 3: investigation is the failure of authorities to do anything about
37:03
Speaker 3: this program. So, yes, you know, you were talking before
37:06
Speaker 3: about that primarily there was psychological abuse, but there was
37:10
Speaker 3: a lot of violations of CEDU's license as a program
37:17
Speaker 3: working with kids. And when we asked, we did a
37:19
Speaker 3: freedom of information with the California Department of Social Services,
37:23
Speaker 3: and we saw that there were hundreds of complaints made
37:26
Speaker 3: to them and they were not followed up on, including
37:28
Speaker 3: the type A complaints, which are the most egregious. So,
37:30
Speaker 3: you know, talking about withholding food from kids, you know,
37:32
Speaker 3: physical abuse. There were also allegations. One former resident said
37:36
Speaker 3: that she was repeatedly raped by two other residents and
37:39
Speaker 3: had complained to the teachers in the program and nothing
37:43
Speaker 3: was done. Um, and so what we saw, you know,
37:47
Speaker 3: and we press the, the, the department of social services
37:50
Speaker 3: on this and why, why did no one do anything?
37:52
Speaker 3: And we really got the run around on it. And
37:53
Speaker 3: a lot of it is just sort of shirking responsibility.
37:56
Speaker 3: It was previous, you know, previous folks running the department, um,
38:00
Speaker 3: you know, or we have limited information and it was
38:02
Speaker 3: the same thing with the San Bernardino police. I got,
38:05
Speaker 3: I was not able to get, um, very far. in
38:10
Speaker 3: an accountability. I mean, for why, for example, if you're
38:12
Speaker 3: getting hundreds of phone calls complaining about kids running away
38:15
Speaker 3: from this program, are you not investigating that and potentially
38:18
Speaker 3: shutting it down? Like it's, it's a waste of police
38:21
Speaker 3: resources and it certainly is a indication that it's not
38:25
Speaker 3: a safe space for kids. Um, so we couldn't, you know, there,
38:28
Speaker 3: there was a former police, there had been efforts over
38:31
Speaker 3: the years for people to try and investigate this and
38:33
Speaker 3: get accountability, but, um, it hasn't gone anywhere. And you
38:37
Speaker 3: mentioned before someone named Medium, who was a former resident
38:42
Speaker 3: who had written a blog post on CD. He's actually
38:45
Speaker 3: since come out behind his... He no longer is using
38:49
Speaker 3: that pseudonym. It's David Safran. He has been really doggedly
38:55
Speaker 3: researching this for years. He recently wrote a piece for
38:57
Speaker 3: the Los Angeles Times, and he came on board as
39:00
Speaker 3: a producer on our project. But he has been doing
39:03
Speaker 3: the legwork to try and file... to just get more information,
39:07
Speaker 3: to hold people accountable. He had another private investigator that
39:10
Speaker 3: had stepped into, a prominent detective that had stepped into
39:16
Speaker 3: the San Bernardino department and taken up this case, looking
39:21
Speaker 3: at past abuses, looking at not just Daniel Ewan, but
39:24
Speaker 3: there's two other missing boys from the program. And she
39:27
Speaker 3: was promptly shut down. I mean, she was just like,
39:30
Speaker 3: that was whisked away from her. There seems, it appears
39:33
Speaker 3: to me, like the behavior of the police is that
39:35
Speaker 3: they're hiding something, that they know more and they don't
39:38
Speaker 3: want somebody to dig into this too far.
39:41
Speaker 5: Right.
39:41
Speaker 1: Well, also, I just remember from when we were there,
39:43
Speaker 1: I mean, the credibility factor of the kids was at zero, right?
39:48
Speaker 1: I mean, the... Police thought that we were a bunch
39:51
Speaker 1: of crazies living at Sea-Doo and nothing we said should
39:55
Speaker 1: be trusted because I do remember running away. And I
39:59
Speaker 1: think once I ran away with another girl, maybe the
40:02
Speaker 1: first time that we didn't get too far, we got
40:05
Speaker 1: into the town, which is just past the road.
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40:28
Speaker 1: Far there and maybe a phone booth or something and
40:31
Speaker 1: a candy shop maybe. And I remember the cop finding
40:36
Speaker 1: us and we were trying to talk to him like,
40:38
Speaker 1: oh my God, okay, at least thank God somebody we
40:40
Speaker 1: can talk to. And he just was like, no. Okay.
40:45
Speaker 1: You know, and just did not believe a word we said.
40:47
Speaker 1: And we kept trying to explain, you know, oh my God,
40:50
Speaker 1: you don't understand. I had to dig a grave with
40:52
Speaker 1: a spoon and lay in it. Like, you don't understand.
40:54
Speaker 1: This is crazy what they're doing to us up there.
40:56
Speaker 1: And the guy's like, get in the car, girls, come on.
40:59
Speaker 1: And just took us back. And we were like, oh
41:00
Speaker 1: my God, no one understands what it's like there. And
41:03
Speaker 1: I felt like the people in the town just saw
41:06
Speaker 1: us as like these really over the top troubled kids
41:10
Speaker 1: and really didn't know what was going on there. Plus,
41:12
Speaker 1: The people that worked at that school also had a
41:14
Speaker 1: lot of, you know, their fingers were deep in that community.
41:18
Speaker 1: I mean, Dennis Dockstader worked there and he also owned
41:21
Speaker 1: the camp right there. I mean, when I later on
41:24
Speaker 1: in my, you know, years at the school, I ended
41:27
Speaker 1: up getting like an internship at his camp and, you know,
41:31
Speaker 1: spending time outside of SEDU and working for him. I
41:34
Speaker 1: thought he was the greatest, you know, so I became
41:37
Speaker 1: really brainwashed. thinking this was like, you know, where I
41:40
Speaker 1: wanted to be and who I wanted to be around.
41:42
Speaker 1: And by the way, at the end of my stay,
41:45
Speaker 1: I was the one running the dinner dishes committee, which
41:47
Speaker 1: was when you got in trouble, you would be on
41:49
Speaker 1: dinner dishes. You had to clean up the whole, uh,
41:52
Speaker 1: kitchen and do, you know, slop the pigs and do
41:54
Speaker 1: all this crazy stuff. I was in charge. So I
41:57
Speaker 1: had to decide what kid was going on, what work assignment.
42:00
Speaker 1: And I, you know, if they were scrubbing this or
42:03
Speaker 1: scrubbing that, and I had to be the one to
42:04
Speaker 1: check them off. Um, And I would have to go
42:07
Speaker 1: around and talk to each one about what they did
42:09
Speaker 1: wrong and how they feel now and do they feel
42:12
Speaker 1: regretful and then let them go back to their normal activities.
42:15
Speaker 1: So it was really monitored by the kids. And I
42:18
Speaker 1: was so... Thinking back on this now, I was so
42:21
Speaker 1: fucked up by being the person that wanted to leave
42:23
Speaker 1: at the beginning and then at the end being part
42:26
Speaker 1: of the problem. I mean, I was pushing them down, right?
42:30
Speaker 1: And I remember having those conversations with them being like,
42:32
Speaker 1: it's going to get better. It's going to get easier.
42:34
Speaker 1: I was just like you at the beginning. And, you know,
42:39
Speaker 1: the roles just turned, but that's how CEDU was. You
42:43
Speaker 1: started out being really rebellious, and you ended up being
42:46
Speaker 1: this disciple, a SEDU, and that's kind of how they
42:49
Speaker 1: got you to graduation. you know, being the person running
42:53
Speaker 1: out of these rooms with your hands in the air,
42:55
Speaker 1: going through these profits, being like, I'm number one. And like,
42:58
Speaker 1: I don't even know what that means. Like we were,
43:01
Speaker 1: it was just nuts. I mean, I hear the theme
43:03
Speaker 1: from Rocky and I think of coming through the doors
43:06
Speaker 1: from the, I want to live profit after we've spent
43:09
Speaker 1: two nights, totally not being able to sleep and having
43:13
Speaker 1: kids hold you down and try to get up and
43:16
Speaker 1: music blasting in your ear. And you come out of this, workshop,
43:21
Speaker 1: and you've just been totally brainwashed for 48 hours and
43:26
Speaker 1: humiliated and shamed and pushed to the end degree of abuse,
43:33
Speaker 1: and then you come out feeling so good. I don't
43:35
Speaker 1: even know how that happens to anyone.
43:36
Speaker 5: Right.
43:37
Speaker 1: Right. Right.
43:38
Speaker 3: But I mean, it is, people have, you know, reviewing
43:42
Speaker 3: that curriculum, they're like, oh, this is the same.
43:44
Speaker 2: I mean, you use the term brainwashing.
43:46
Speaker 3: When the experts look at it, they're like, it is
43:47
Speaker 3: the same kind of techniques that are used in CIA interrogations,
43:51
Speaker 3: like minus maybe the waterboarding. But when we talk about
43:53
Speaker 3: sleep deprivation, food deprivation, the use of music, like all
43:56
Speaker 3: those elements that people use to brainwash or to, you know,
44:00
Speaker 3: to torture people, that was the tools and tactics of SEDU, right? And,
44:06
Speaker 3: you know, you mentioned profites, just, you know, probably just
44:09
Speaker 3: to explain. Also, I couldn't, it took me a long
44:12
Speaker 3: time to wrap my head around this, but, you know,
44:13
Speaker 3: you talked about the rap sessions, which happened weekly, but
44:15
Speaker 3: these profites, which if I remember correctly, are like 48 hours,
44:21
Speaker 3: 72 hours. Sometimes you're not really even sleeping at all,
44:24
Speaker 3: that you run through this very intensive form of kind
44:28
Speaker 3: of like, kind of hippie, kind of CIA torture, kind
44:32
Speaker 3: of like human potential stuff. Um, until, you know, in NXIVM,
44:38
Speaker 3: they talked a lot about these like engineered epiphanies and
44:41
Speaker 3: it feels like that's what they were trying to do
44:42
Speaker 3: there as well, where they push people to this point
44:44
Speaker 3: of like, there's, um, all this pressure to have a
44:49
Speaker 3: breakthrough and to experience this kind of breakthrough. And that
44:52
Speaker 3: like part of making your way out of Sea-Doo from
44:55
Speaker 3: what I heard from people that went through this was
44:57
Speaker 3: to go to these profites that were scattered throughout the
45:00
Speaker 3: time that you were there. And show and prove that
45:03
Speaker 3: you were having this transformational experiences from, you know, from
45:08
Speaker 3: these really bizarre sets of exercises that are forced on
45:12
Speaker 3: the kids that are there.
45:15
Speaker 2: That part, again, wild, surreal. You know, I.
45:19
Speaker 3: Constantly and me and the producers talked a lot about, like,
45:22
Speaker 3: how do we. transport people into this world. It is
45:25
Speaker 3: so strange. It is so bizarre.
45:27
Speaker 1: Again, I hadn't thought about it for years, but there,
45:29
Speaker 1: I think there was seven prophets. By the way, they're
45:31
Speaker 1: based on Cahil Cabran's book, The Prophet. And, you know,
45:37
Speaker 1: There was, first of all, when you found out when
45:39
Speaker 1: you were going into your next profite, it was like
45:43
Speaker 1: you were so excited. You now got to the next level.
45:46
Speaker 1: And you were like moving up on the chain. And
45:49
Speaker 1: that's how you established who you were within the program. Oh, yeah,
45:52
Speaker 1: I've been through my I want to live. And people
45:54
Speaker 1: would look at you and be like, oh, my God,
45:55
Speaker 1: I can't wait to be her. Wow, she's so amazing. like,
45:58
Speaker 1: you know, she's at that level that she's done that.
46:01
Speaker 1: I mean, that kind of reminds me about what I
46:02
Speaker 1: hear about, um, you know, Scientology, like when you hear
46:05
Speaker 1: about people have hit certain levels. And again, I never
46:08
Speaker 1: thought about this before, but it was really like that.
46:10
Speaker 1: So the first one was like, the truth shall set
46:13
Speaker 1: you free. And then it was the children's profit. And
46:15
Speaker 1: then it was, um, you know, the, I want to
46:17
Speaker 1: live and the values and the, all these ones where
46:19
Speaker 1: each one for 24 hours or 48 hours, you do
46:21
Speaker 1: not sleep. Um, And you go in and it's basically workshops,
46:27
Speaker 1: but they're physical workshops where you're doing really crazy things
46:31
Speaker 1: that are stressing you out. There's a lot of crying.
46:33
Speaker 1: There's a lot of screaming. It's almost like a rap,
46:36
Speaker 1: but no one's really yelling at you. But you're doing
46:38
Speaker 1: a lot of intense work with the group, with your
46:40
Speaker 1: peer group that you go through the entire experience with,
46:43
Speaker 1: which is a group of like 18 people that started
46:46
Speaker 1: the school with you around the same two months. You
46:48
Speaker 1: all got there at the same time. And I can't
46:52
Speaker 1: even explain. I mean... the, you know, one of the
46:56
Speaker 1: things I do remember, I think it was in the,
46:58
Speaker 1: I want to live. I sort of mentioned it before, but, um,
47:02
Speaker 1: you had to lay on off, be on all fours.
47:05
Speaker 1: And then maybe a couple of the kids were instructed
47:08
Speaker 1: to put their hands on top of you. And then
47:11
Speaker 1: they said, we're going to turn on the music. And
47:13
Speaker 1: as soon as we turn on the music, do what
47:15
Speaker 1: we say. So there was an instructor, a staff member
47:17
Speaker 1: in my ear, and then an instructor standing with the
47:20
Speaker 1: people that were above me. And as soon as the
47:22
Speaker 1: music went on, I didn't really know what was going
47:24
Speaker 1: to happen. It was super loud. And the staff member
47:27
Speaker 1: yells at me, get up, do everything you can to
47:31
Speaker 1: get up. Oh my God, I'm sorry. No, it's fine.
47:38
Speaker 1: It's so horrible. And so you, it's just like, you're like,
47:43
Speaker 1: oh my God.
47:43
Speaker 4: Okay.
47:44
Speaker 1: So I'm on all fours and I try and get up.
47:46
Speaker 1: And obviously I can't because the kids have their hands
47:49
Speaker 1: on me and they're pushing me down. And so when
47:51
Speaker 1: the music started, the instructor yelled to those kids, push
47:55
Speaker 1: her down. Don't let her get up. So they're doing
47:59
Speaker 1: everything they can to push me down. I'm doing everything
48:01
Speaker 1: I can to get up. And then the other kids
48:03
Speaker 1: who weren't picked to do it are just watching from
48:06
Speaker 1: their seats. They're crying because they're watching this happen. And
48:10
Speaker 1: it's so emotional because we're all so close, right? We're
48:12
Speaker 1: all really good friends. And the staff is yelling at
48:16
Speaker 1: the kids pushing me down. Who have you pushed down
48:18
Speaker 1: in your life? What have you done to people to
48:20
Speaker 1: push them down? And the staff yelling at me. is saying,
48:24
Speaker 1: who's kept you down in your life? And who's been
48:27
Speaker 1: responsible for never letting you get up? Is it you?
48:30
Speaker 1: Is it your father? Is it your mother? What is it?
48:32
Speaker 1: And they're screaming at you. And it's so emotional and terrifying.
48:37
Speaker 1: And you don't know when it's going to end. And
48:39
Speaker 1: it's physically exhausting. Anyways, that was just one example of
48:43
Speaker 1: something I remember from a profit.
48:44
Speaker 5: So They were awful.
48:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
48:48
Speaker 2: Bizarre.
48:48
Speaker 1: And bizarre. Yeah, and bizarre. And then you're supposed to
48:51
Speaker 1: come out of them feeling like you had this big
48:53
Speaker 1: epiphany of, you know, and you come out with words like,
48:56
Speaker 1: I am forgiving. I now know that I'm honest, or
48:59
Speaker 1: I now know that I'm XYZ for everyone that was involved.
49:03
Speaker 1: So I will say, you know, with my experience at Seadoo,
49:08
Speaker 1: I know I'm a much more in-touch person than most
49:12
Speaker 1: of the people I know. I am so... deeply connected
49:15
Speaker 1: with myself. I've never lived at home since that day.
49:19
Speaker 1: I've raised myself basically. I find that when I meet people,
49:24
Speaker 1: I am very in tune with people and their energy
49:27
Speaker 1: and who they are. I learned that from being at SEDU,
49:30
Speaker 1: but I live in a much more heightened state awareness
49:34
Speaker 1: or threat or shame or humiliation than probably most people
49:38
Speaker 1: because I'm so used to the confrontation and always feeling
49:43
Speaker 1: like something's going to happen. So the way I react
49:47
Speaker 1: towards people is also very different. I might yell when
49:49
Speaker 1: I talk and not even realize that I'm being confrontational
49:53
Speaker 1: and then be like, okay, I want to get some pizza.
49:55
Speaker 1: And people are devastated. They're like, You were just screaming
49:58
Speaker 1: at me about something. And I'm like, no, I wasn't.
50:01
Speaker 1: I was just telling you how I feel. But now
50:03
Speaker 1: that's over. So like, let's go cuddle or whatever, you know,
50:07
Speaker 1: and it does not go over well. And that kind
50:10
Speaker 1: of thing has never left me. But I feel like
50:13
Speaker 1: I'm good about following agreements and rules and boundaries, so
50:17
Speaker 1: to speak, because of that school.
50:20
Speaker 2: That's interesting. That's interesting.
50:22
Speaker 3: Reflection is like one I heard both from former residents
50:25
Speaker 3: of these programs, but also from people that left NXIVM
50:29
Speaker 3: about the process of leaving and how there's a stage
50:34
Speaker 3: of like total rejection of everything. Like everything about NXIVM
50:36
Speaker 3: was bad. Everything Alert was bad or everything about CD
50:38
Speaker 3: was bad. Everything Alert was bad. All the people are bad.
50:42
Speaker 3: And then some people say, well, there's something more complicated
50:44
Speaker 3: going on. And I think even, you know, the experts,
50:46
Speaker 3: the ex-cult experts do talk about like there's a complexity
50:49
Speaker 3: there that. you can learn things. Some of those relationships
50:53
Speaker 3: can be real. Like, you know, it is not just
50:56
Speaker 3: what is those, those worlds are not just what was
50:59
Speaker 3: created by the people running it, but it's also a
51:01
Speaker 3: community of people that participated. So some of those relationships
51:04
Speaker 3: are authentic. Some of the things you learn and the
51:07
Speaker 3: growth that happens can be real. And I imagine it
51:10
Speaker 3: sounds like very difficult to parse out what of this
51:13
Speaker 3: is toxic and what of it's what's valuable. Um, you know,
51:17
Speaker 3: especially inside these programs that purport to be, to help
51:22
Speaker 3: people be better. And being in it so long, just
51:26
Speaker 3: like there's, wherever you would have been or wherever someone
51:30
Speaker 3: who lives from the age of 14 to 16 is
51:33
Speaker 3: a really profound age, you know, to develop and grow.
51:38
Speaker 3: And so not all that gets to be attributed to SEDU.
51:41
Speaker 3: You know, some of it is just what happens naturally
51:44
Speaker 3: in the development process in those moments and i imagine
51:47
Speaker 3: that that can just be a really exhausting task to
51:50
Speaker 3: be like is this bad or is this good was
51:52
Speaker 3: this valuable or invaluable and how do i figure out
51:55
Speaker 3: like which pieces to hang on to And.
51:57
Speaker 1: What I did learn from that program, too, is I
51:59
Speaker 1: do have some friends who are parents. I mean, I
52:01
Speaker 1: have a 10-year-old daughter, and they're talking to me about how,
52:06
Speaker 1: you know, their kids who are a little bit older now,
52:08
Speaker 1: maybe anywhere from 13 to 18, are giving them problems.
52:11
Speaker 1: And they're thinking of sending them to wilderness schools or
52:14
Speaker 1: some sort of therapeutic school. And I feel like I'm
52:17
Speaker 1: really knowledgeable on the subject. So I stop them and
52:19
Speaker 1: I say, listen, what I learned from my experience in
52:24
Speaker 1: having kids that happened to me is that your kids
52:28
Speaker 1: just want to be heard. And sometimes the acting out
52:31
Speaker 1: is about not feeling like they know that their place
52:35
Speaker 1: within your relationship with them. So I think that, you know,
52:39
Speaker 1: my advice for those parents that are having a difficult
52:42
Speaker 1: time with kids, and I'm not talking about kids that
52:44
Speaker 1: are doing illegal things. I'm talking about kids that are
52:47
Speaker 1: struggling with communicating with you or you're struggling communicating with
52:51
Speaker 1: them and you don't know what else to do. Sometimes kids...
52:55
Speaker 1: want to hear, I love you. They want to hear
52:57
Speaker 1: that you're needed, that you're important to them, that with,
53:01
Speaker 1: you know, and I know that kind of feels gross
53:02
Speaker 1: sometimes to like a 13 year old girl and her
53:04
Speaker 1: mom or whatever, but like sometimes they do just do
53:09
Speaker 1: not feel important. And so they look for love in
53:11
Speaker 1: other places and they get in trouble and they just
53:14
Speaker 1: feel lost and they're having a hard time in school
53:17
Speaker 1: and their parents.
53:18
Speaker 7: Okay, let's get started.
53:20
Speaker 2: Are you first time buyers?
53:22
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's our first time. So It's your first time here?
53:27
Speaker 1: No, it's first time buying.
53:30
Speaker 5: Did you say no for first time buying?
53:33
Speaker 1: No, wait, hold on.
53:35
Speaker 2: Okay, please hold.
53:36
Speaker 3: What?
53:38
Speaker 2: No, no, I told you to hold on.
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53:53
Speaker 4: and conditions will apply. EBS DAC is regulated by the
53:56
Speaker 4: Central Bank of Ireland.
53:57
Speaker 1: Parents don't understand that, so instead of listening, they punish them.
54:01
Speaker 1: And I think that that becomes the problem, and the
54:04
Speaker 1: kids just feel so lonely and misunderstood. And so that's
54:07
Speaker 1: what I saw from... the entire gamut of the kid
54:12
Speaker 1: that was brought in from Watts, you know, and got
54:15
Speaker 1: in so much trouble to the kid that was just
54:18
Speaker 1: truant and having some major problems. You know, they just
54:21
Speaker 1: didn't feel loved. And so I would mention that to
54:26
Speaker 1: any parents that right before they think about doing the alternative.
54:31
Speaker 1: So anyways, my question for you was, what did you
54:33
Speaker 1: find that finally was the reason that SEDU closed? Do
54:38
Speaker 1: you know?
54:39
Speaker 3: I think there was a bunch of different reasons, including,
54:42
Speaker 3: in no small part, there was mounting court cases against them.
54:47
Speaker 3: And so Seedoo Running Springs was just one of, I think,
54:50
Speaker 3: seven programs that they were running. Rocky Mountain Academy in
54:53
Speaker 3: Idaho was another one where there were a number of lawsuits.
54:56
Speaker 3: So they were being dragged through the courts. Some of
54:59
Speaker 3: those were successful. They had to make some big payouts.
55:01
Speaker 1: So parents were catching on to the fact that this
55:03
Speaker 1: was not a good place.
55:05
Speaker 2: Exactly. I mean, right.
55:07
Speaker 3: It's not good press, not good publicity for them. And
55:12
Speaker 3: so it kind of, you know, they had an opportunity
55:14
Speaker 3: to get bought out and they sold. I don't know,
55:17
Speaker 3: you know, all the ins and outs of what led
55:20
Speaker 3: to the financial collapse, but it just clearly wasn't helping
55:23
Speaker 3: them that they had all these court cases pending, including,
55:27
Speaker 3: by the way, that the UN sued them as well.
55:30
Speaker 3: And they eventually sold and then the company they sold
55:33
Speaker 3: to went into bankruptcy. And now those I think there's
55:36
Speaker 3: one program that still sort of exists, not run by SEDU,
55:40
Speaker 3: but sort of as the last remaining program for troubled
55:43
Speaker 3: youth that comes from that SEDU corporation. But there are
55:51
Speaker 3: hundreds that exist of other programs in the troubled teen industry,
55:56
Speaker 3: and they exist in different formats. So this is one,
55:59
Speaker 3: this therapeutic boarding school is kind of like one version
56:02
Speaker 3: of of the programs for troubled teens. But there's, as
56:05
Speaker 3: you mentioned, the wilderness programs, which is like the same thing,
56:08
Speaker 3: but in the wilderness and even cheaper to run because
56:10
Speaker 3: you don't have to like pay for a facility. There's
56:13
Speaker 3: the military boot camps. And then there's this kind of
56:15
Speaker 3: other scary, you know, cluster of programs that are religious
56:18
Speaker 3: based and they get it. It's much harder to regulate
56:21
Speaker 3: because of religious exemptions. And you kind of don't get
56:25
Speaker 3: the same oversight or scrutiny there. The limited oversight that
56:28
Speaker 3: there is on any of these programs doesn't even apply
56:31
Speaker 3: in a lot of cases to the religiously based programs.
56:34
Speaker 1: So now that you've done all this investigation, would you
56:37
Speaker 1: ever send your kids to one of these types of schools?
56:41
Speaker 2: Hard no.
56:44
Speaker 5: No.
56:44
Speaker 2: And look, I do.
56:46
Speaker 3: That's not to say that I couldn't imagine a situation
56:49
Speaker 3: where I would need support for a kid that's struggling financially.
56:53
Speaker 3: And we know that like mental health is a huge
56:56
Speaker 3: epidemic and was amplified by the pandemic. And there's a
57:02
Speaker 3: big gap, especially I'm based in Canada. We have, you know,
57:05
Speaker 3: a little bit more of a safety net, but in
57:07
Speaker 3: terms of resources for youth, I mean, we have a
57:11
Speaker 3: mental health crisis here for young people as well. But
57:13
Speaker 3: the thing that I would look for is credentialed people
57:18
Speaker 3: and organizations that have people with master's degree and higher.
57:23
Speaker 2: To work with kids.
57:24
Speaker 3: And one of the things that experts say is the
57:28
Speaker 3: best kind of help a teenager or a kid can
57:32
Speaker 3: get is one that keeps them in the community, keeps
57:33
Speaker 3: them in their home, allows them to thrive in the
57:37
Speaker 3: environment that they're in and not to remove them. There
57:39
Speaker 3: are cases where someone does need to get removed and
57:42
Speaker 3: there are programs that are good and legitimate where that
57:45
Speaker 3: can happen, but that should really be the last resort.
57:47
Speaker 3: The most helpful thing is to find people that are
57:53
Speaker 3: experienced and trained in this. And, you know, obviously, like,
57:58
Speaker 3: the thing is that SEDU was billing itself as a
58:01
Speaker 3: solve for ADHD and Asperger's and depression and truancy. Like,
58:05
Speaker 3: it was sort of everything, a one-stop shop for everything.
58:07
Speaker 3: That also doesn't exist. I think you have to be
58:09
Speaker 3: very targeted in giving kids the kind of resources they
58:13
Speaker 3: need to address the particular issue that they're facing. So
58:17
Speaker 3: that promise, which can be, I'm sure, very attractive, and
58:19
Speaker 3: I'm also a parent, and I can, you know, I
58:23
Speaker 3: can imagine the kind of stress that comes along with
58:27
Speaker 3: seeing a kid struggle with a mental health issue or
58:30
Speaker 3: with anything with growing up.
58:32
Speaker 2: And so.
58:34
Speaker 3: I do definitely empathize with parents that made that choice.
58:37
Speaker 3: But I do think now more than ever, we have
58:39
Speaker 3: so many resources at our fingertips to do.
58:42
Speaker 2: The research.
58:44
Speaker 3: And recognize that obviously the resources are limited, but in
58:49
Speaker 3: terms of financial resources, to get kids programs. But I
58:53
Speaker 3: do think turning to people that actually have a legit
58:56
Speaker 3: background in this is helpful, rather than a program that
59:01
Speaker 3: is a quick fix for all your problems.
59:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's actually very important advice. So what is the
59:07
Speaker 1: latest with the Daniel Ewan story? I read that there
59:09
Speaker 1: were sightings of him in San Diego and people were
59:12
Speaker 1: saying that he may be alive, but is that just
59:14
Speaker 1: because of the ridiculous comments from Keith?
59:19
Speaker 2: Yeah.
59:19
Speaker 3: I mean, there's, there's been no significant, um, um, update on,
59:26
Speaker 3: on his case. I mean, it's still unresolved. Uh, the
59:29
Speaker 3: only the only cases where someone has come you know
59:35
Speaker 3: and claimed to have seen him have been related to
59:37
Speaker 3: Keith and you know the UN's went out there a
59:41
Speaker 3: bunch of times the last you know there was an
59:43
Speaker 3: initial round of searching for him closer you know for
59:46
Speaker 3: the few years after his disappearance then Keith re-emerged back
59:51
Speaker 3: in 2017 I believe saying that he wanted to reinvestigate
59:54
Speaker 3: and at that time kind of dug up some more
59:56
Speaker 3: sightings but it's only really related to him Um, there, there's,
1:00:00
Speaker 3: there's no other advancement and, and it's not, again, it's
1:00:04
Speaker 3: both Daniel Ewan, but there was also two other boys that, uh,
1:00:08
Speaker 3: at a few years before Daniel Ewan disappeared, also disappeared
1:00:11
Speaker 3: from the program and, and no one knows what's happened.
1:00:14
Speaker 2: Those are. open cases.
1:00:16
Speaker 1: And what, do you know the details a little bit
1:00:18
Speaker 1: with those? Didn't they have something to do with, wasn't
1:00:21
Speaker 1: there a child molester in the area?
1:00:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there was, you know, no one has proven
1:00:28
Speaker 3: the direct connection between the two, but it did come
1:00:31
Speaker 3: out that James Crummel, who was eventually arrested and charged
1:00:36
Speaker 3: with pedophilia and child molestation, had been, spent time at
1:00:41
Speaker 3: the school and was at the school and had contact
1:00:43
Speaker 3: with the kids there.
1:00:44
Speaker 2: And he sort of was traveling around. Sorry.
1:00:47
Speaker 1: As a staff member or?
1:00:49
Speaker 2: Not as a staff member. He was visiting.
1:00:50
Speaker 3: He was on this kind of strange, he lived with
1:00:53
Speaker 3: his therapist and him and his therapist were traveling around
1:00:58
Speaker 3: to different programs that worked with youth. So he somehow
1:01:02
Speaker 3: had access for some, for a few weeks. I don't
1:01:04
Speaker 3: think he was on staff, but they'd obviously paid him
1:01:06
Speaker 3: or allowed him to come into the service.
1:01:08
Speaker 2: So we had contact.
1:01:11
Speaker 3: He was there around the time that those boys went missing,
1:01:15
Speaker 3: and there were other cases of kids going missing at
1:01:18
Speaker 3: that time that were related to him. So one of
1:01:20
Speaker 3: the questions is whether he was responsible. He's no longer alive,
1:01:26
Speaker 3: so it's hard to get it directly from him.
1:01:29
Speaker 1: He died in jail?
1:01:30
Speaker 2: He died in jail, yeah.
1:01:32
Speaker 1: And were those kids, they had run away and gone missing,
1:01:36
Speaker 1: or they just disappeared?
1:01:41
Speaker 2: I believe they had... No, those two had run away.
1:01:43
Speaker 4: Okay.
1:01:45
Speaker 2: And it was.
1:01:46
Speaker 3: I mean, I spoke with Blake Pursley's mother about her story,
1:01:52
Speaker 3: and it is just, like, unbelievably heartbreaking in terms, again, of,
1:01:55
Speaker 3: you know, Blake Pursley, one of the boys that had
1:01:57
Speaker 3: gone missing, was in a... was disabled from an accident
1:02:03
Speaker 3: as a kid, and they got a bunch of insurance
1:02:04
Speaker 3: money to give.
1:02:05
Speaker 2: Him, like, really.
1:02:06
Speaker 3: He needed really a lot of support, both mental and physical, and...
1:02:10
Speaker 3: The mom got totally duped by Sidhu and claimed that
1:02:13
Speaker 3: they had all these resources to support him. And he
1:02:18
Speaker 3: obviously was very unhappy in the place and ran away.
1:02:22
Speaker 3: But we don't know. The account is very limited. You
1:02:26
Speaker 3: have these reports from Sidhu that says, we saw him
1:02:29
Speaker 3: walk off the campus at X time and then we
1:02:31
Speaker 3: don't know what happened. So that's Sidhu's claim is that
1:02:36
Speaker 3: they both walked away.
1:02:37
Speaker 2: Wow.
1:02:39
Speaker 1: That's just incredible. Okay, so in doing your research on cults,
1:02:44
Speaker 1: you also did NXIVM. Talk to me about NXIVM. Explain
1:02:48
Speaker 1: what NXIVM is to people that don't know.
1:02:52
Speaker 3: So NXIVM, it's funny because when we started investigating it,
1:02:56
Speaker 3: really no one knew what NXIVM was. I think more
1:02:58
Speaker 3: people do now because it was in the media for
1:03:01
Speaker 3: a little while. But NXIVM built itself as a self-help
1:03:04
Speaker 3: organization organization. that then the FBI kind of shut down
1:03:10
Speaker 3: and eventually arrested his leadership for, I mean, they were
1:03:14
Speaker 3: charged for racketeering and a whole bunch of other kinds
1:03:17
Speaker 3: of abuses of the members there. But the critics of
1:03:20
Speaker 3: the organization say it was a cult, and it really was.
1:03:22
Speaker 3: This organization very tightly wrapped around a charismatic leader named
1:03:27
Speaker 3: Keith Raniere, who claimed that he had developed a philosophy
1:03:32
Speaker 3: that could help people you know, achieve their dreams and successes.
1:03:36
Speaker 3: Sometimes those dreams and successes were achieved by sleeping with
1:03:40
Speaker 3: Keith Raniere. And sometimes people were done that, were forced
1:03:45
Speaker 3: to do that because they were being blackmailed.
1:03:48
Speaker 1: Wow. So the thing that came out of NXIVM that
1:03:52
Speaker 1: I think surprised people the most is that women were branded.
1:03:55
Speaker 1: And your friend from childhood was one of the women
1:03:58
Speaker 1: that was branded. Is that correct?
1:04:00
Speaker 2: That's right.
1:04:01
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:04:01
Speaker 3: I mean, that's how I came by this story was
1:04:03
Speaker 3: that a woman who I have known since daycare was
1:04:08
Speaker 3: part of this organization for many years, for I think
1:04:11
Speaker 3: over 12 years. And she was actually their star recruiter.
1:04:14
Speaker 3: She lived in Vancouver. She opened up a NXIVM center
1:04:16
Speaker 3: in Vancouver. She brought in a lot of folks from
1:04:19
Speaker 3: the acting and from the yoga community to be a
1:04:21
Speaker 3: part of NXIVM and take... Next thing is bread and
1:04:26
Speaker 3: butter was running these expensive self-help workshops that people would
1:04:31
Speaker 3: pay more and more money to kind of ascend through
1:04:33
Speaker 3: the levels, maybe unlike Scientology in that sense, to learn
1:04:38
Speaker 3: to be a better person. But as you got higher
1:04:41
Speaker 3: up in the organization, you started to become privy to
1:04:45
Speaker 3: some of the more cultic and strange activities within the organization.
1:04:51
Speaker 3: Sarah was invited to become part of this secret women's group.
1:04:55
Speaker 3: that was supposed to take her training to the next level.
1:04:57
Speaker 3: So she herself had spent tens of thousands of dollars
1:05:00
Speaker 3: on her own curriculum and self-improvement and just sort of
1:05:02
Speaker 3: this endless hamster wheel of pouring in more money to
1:05:06
Speaker 3: deal with her deep deficiencies. And so when one of
1:05:10
Speaker 3: her mentors approached her and said, hey, you're going to
1:05:13
Speaker 3: achieve your greatest heights in NXIVM and really take your
1:05:19
Speaker 3: training to the next level, it's part of this all-women's group,
1:05:22
Speaker 3: and in order to be a part of it, you
1:05:24
Speaker 3: have to give over collateral. So things that if they
1:05:27
Speaker 3: came out would destroy your life. And at that point,
1:05:31
Speaker 3: you know, that concept of collateral had been introduced previously.
1:05:35
Speaker 3: But at that point inside the organization, it didn't feel
1:05:39
Speaker 3: strange enough not to do it. And so she gave
1:05:41
Speaker 3: over nude photos and videos and that, you know, she's
1:05:44
Speaker 3: supposed to give over the deed to her apartment. And
1:05:48
Speaker 3: she gave over, like, she had to create videos of
1:05:52
Speaker 3: her saying awful things about her loved ones, about her
1:05:55
Speaker 3: husband and about her mother. So these were things that
1:05:58
Speaker 3: then were given to the people running this secret women's
1:06:01
Speaker 3: group and would be released if she ever violated the
1:06:04
Speaker 3: terms of being involved. And it was kind of like
1:06:08
Speaker 3: a mini pyramid scheme inside NXIVM. So people, you know,
1:06:12
Speaker 3: she was then the slave of a master who had
1:06:16
Speaker 3: recruited her and she was required to recruit other slaves
1:06:19
Speaker 3: into it. And it became this incredibly... controlled group uh
1:06:25
Speaker 3: that if someone if your master texted you you had
1:06:28
Speaker 3: to text back within you know a circumscribed amount of
1:06:31
Speaker 3: time within minutes you know are you ready yes i'm
1:06:34
Speaker 3: ready you had to um there's a whole bunch of
1:06:37
Speaker 3: things that you had to constantly like achieve your goals
1:06:39
Speaker 3: you have to keep re-upping on your collateral to to
1:06:42
Speaker 3: you know show your commitment to the to the group
1:06:45
Speaker 3: um and then she was brought to albany or just
1:06:49
Speaker 3: outside albany where nexium was headquartered and told that she
1:06:53
Speaker 3: was going to be initiated in this final step to
1:06:55
Speaker 3: get into the women's group. And then discovered, you know,
1:06:59
Speaker 3: she was, it was a whole kind of ceremony and
1:07:01
Speaker 3: she was brought into this room naked. And a doctor
1:07:04
Speaker 3: actually that was part of the group was sitting there
1:07:07
Speaker 3: with a cauterizing iron and etched into her, like just,
1:07:12
Speaker 3: you know, right next to her crotch, this brand. What
1:07:16
Speaker 3: she was told at the time was a symbol, later discovered,
1:07:20
Speaker 3: that actually it was the initials KR, Keith Raniere. And
1:07:24
Speaker 3: when the FBI investigated, this specific secret women's group inside
1:07:29
Speaker 3: NXIVM became a huge focus for the FBI investigation. And
1:07:34
Speaker 3: they discovered, in fact, that he was the one running
1:07:38
Speaker 3: the all-women's group. All that collateral was going to him.
1:07:41
Speaker 3: He was well aware of what was happening. And some
1:07:43
Speaker 3: of the women.
1:07:45
Speaker 3: That were in that secret women's group were told that
1:07:48
Speaker 3: they had to sleep with Keith Raniere or their collateral
1:07:51
Speaker 3: would be released. So it was this crazy blackmail situation.
1:07:54
Speaker 3: Sarah Edmondson, the woman I knew from daycare, sort of
1:07:58
Speaker 3: has a wake-up call around that time and decides that she's,
1:08:03
Speaker 3: whatever the consequences are going to be, go public and
1:08:07
Speaker 3: leave the organization. And so I ran into her about it.
1:08:10
Speaker 1: What do you think that wake-up call was? I'm curious.
1:08:14
Speaker 3: You know, I think there was a bunch of converging forces.
1:08:18
Speaker 3: I think if you zoom out a little bit and
1:08:21
Speaker 3: look at what was happening with the organization, it was imploding.
1:08:25
Speaker 3: What was happening is that Keith Bruneri is a narcissist
1:08:29
Speaker 3: and he needed control. And if you track what was
1:08:31
Speaker 3: happening over the course of the decades that it was operation,
1:08:36
Speaker 3: feeding that narcissism meant having more and more control.
1:08:40
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:08:50
Speaker 3: Like great curriculum that we're learning and I'm helping people grow.
1:08:53
Speaker 3: But the more she got into it and the more
1:08:55
Speaker 3: red flags emerged and the more he had to control people,
1:08:58
Speaker 3: I think it became clear that this was not something
1:09:03
Speaker 3: she wanted to be a part of. Certainly the physical
1:09:05
Speaker 3: trauma of being branded, I think was a big wake
1:09:07
Speaker 3: up call. And then starting to realize actually what was
1:09:12
Speaker 3: happening and starting to hear rumors that he was actually
1:09:14
Speaker 3: at the top of this thing. She was getting bits
1:09:16
Speaker 3: and pieces of information that what she had been sold
1:09:18
Speaker 3: was not true. And I think it was obviously terrifying
1:09:22
Speaker 3: for her. I ran into her literally a month after
1:09:25
Speaker 3: she had left. I mean, NXIVM was like up and
1:09:27
Speaker 3: running still. People had tried to leave before and they
1:09:30
Speaker 3: were dragged in the, you know, their lives were destroyed
1:09:32
Speaker 3: by NXIVM in the same way that Scientology would go
1:09:35
Speaker 3: after people that defected. NXIVM would go after people really aggressively.
1:09:38
Speaker 3: And so when I ran into her, she was like
1:09:41
Speaker 3: reeling and barely intelligible. I mean, she was still trying
1:09:47
Speaker 3: to process things. what had happened to her and NXIVM,
1:09:50
Speaker 3: like Seedoo, uses a lot of like jargon. And so
1:09:52
Speaker 3: she's trying to explain the story to me and I
1:09:54
Speaker 3: couldn't actually entirely track it. But I did track, you know,
1:09:58
Speaker 3: I ran to her a few times. She said, people
1:10:00
Speaker 3: are being branded and there's branding. And then like, but
1:10:02
Speaker 3: the third time I ran to her, she said, I've
1:10:03
Speaker 3: been branded.
1:10:04
Speaker 2: And she showed me.
1:10:06
Speaker 3: And I just thought, oh my God, like it was, it's,
1:10:10
Speaker 3: you know, now obviously was like 12 years of indoctrination
1:10:13
Speaker 3: and that was the culmination of it. But That for
1:10:16
Speaker 3: me also was just a big wake up call about
1:10:17
Speaker 3: how serious the situation was that she got herself into.
1:10:22
Speaker 3: But she went to the New York Times and like
1:10:24
Speaker 3: a couple months after I first spoke to her and
1:10:26
Speaker 3: started recording the podcast, there she was on the front
1:10:28
Speaker 3: cover of.
1:10:29
Speaker 2: The New York Times showing that brand.
1:10:32
Speaker 3: And very quickly, the FBI launches an investigation and the
1:10:36
Speaker 3: whole thing starts to crumble. Actually, as we were reporting
1:10:40
Speaker 3: the story, it really went from this organization that was
1:10:42
Speaker 3: like running full speed to, The leaders have run off
1:10:46
Speaker 3: to Mexico to now they're arrested and then they went
1:10:48
Speaker 3: to a trial. So it was quite a heady time
1:10:51
Speaker 3: and just seeing how something can kind of completely crumble
1:10:55
Speaker 3: before your eyes.
1:10:56
Speaker 4: Wow.
1:10:56
Speaker 1: So she was one of the original whistleblowers and helped
1:11:00
Speaker 1: basically get him put away, right? And now isn't he
1:11:04
Speaker 1: going to be in jail? He's there for over 100
1:11:06
Speaker 1: years or something, yeah?
1:11:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's 120 years in jail.
1:11:09
Speaker 3: I don't think he's coming out.
1:11:10
Speaker 1: And other people were arrested too, I think, yeah?
1:11:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was a number of co-conspirators. I think three
1:11:17
Speaker 3: of the others are serving prison time. Two are under probation,
1:11:21
Speaker 3: kind of house arrest. Everyone else pleaded guilty and are
1:11:30
Speaker 3: facing between, I think, 12 months and five years in prison.
1:11:34
Speaker 1: Wow. It's so interesting. All right. So in your investigations
1:11:37
Speaker 1: with cults, with both these podcasts, I guess, with SEDU
1:11:40
Speaker 1: and with NXIVM, what was the most interesting thing or
1:11:43
Speaker 1: scary thing or, you know, that you uncovered for you personally?
1:11:50
Speaker 3: I mean, one of the things, especially doing the NXIVM
1:11:53
Speaker 3: podcast and after that came out was so many people
1:11:58
Speaker 3: came forward. with similar stories of being involved in a cult.
1:12:03
Speaker 3: I didn't realize the epidemic of cults that existed. I
1:12:06
Speaker 3: had heard about the high-profile ones and the big cases
1:12:09
Speaker 3: that everyone knew about, but there's so many rinky-dink versions
1:12:12
Speaker 3: of exactly the same thing, and they're all cookie-cutter versions.
1:12:16
Speaker 3: They all run by the same playbook. They all have
1:12:19
Speaker 3: a charismatic leader. They use the same kind of tools
1:12:22
Speaker 3: of pressure and indoctrination, and usually there's a sexual component
1:12:26
Speaker 3: to it, And often a violent and abusive component to it.
1:12:31
Speaker 3: But the scary thing to me was that sometimes it
1:12:34
Speaker 3: was 10 people living out in the woods somewhere, like
1:12:37
Speaker 3: in the Rocky Mountains, and it would never get any attention.
1:12:42
Speaker 3: So that to me was wild. I literally just got
1:12:45
Speaker 3: dozens and dozens of emails of people. And then there
1:12:50
Speaker 3: was a couple times that there were cases that we
1:12:53
Speaker 3: thought we might look into. And I started to be
1:12:55
Speaker 3: sort of so unsurprised. I mean, this is back to
1:12:57
Speaker 3: that cookie cutter part of it. It's like every one
1:12:59
Speaker 3: of these things just runs the same way. And then
1:13:02
Speaker 3: so to me, when I got to the Sedu stuff,
1:13:06
Speaker 3: that was novel in a sense because of what we
1:13:09
Speaker 3: talked about before. It's a surprising structure in terms of
1:13:13
Speaker 3: how they use the coercion because the kids are already,
1:13:15
Speaker 3: you don't have to indoctrinate them.
1:13:19
Speaker 2: They're already part of the program. They're stuck there.
1:13:21
Speaker 3: I mean, there is an indoctrination that happens, but it's
1:13:23
Speaker 3: really the parents that you have to dupe.
1:13:27
Speaker 2: So that's the thing.
1:13:28
Speaker 3: I mean, and then the other part of it is
1:13:30
Speaker 3: just the reason that it's so prolific and the thing
1:13:32
Speaker 3: that I've come to appreciate is how the kind of
1:13:36
Speaker 3: universal human fallibility that the cult experts say, and I
1:13:41
Speaker 3: do believe that not every person could be sucked into
1:13:45
Speaker 3: every cult, but every person at the right stage of
1:13:47
Speaker 3: their life could be taken advantage of by a cult-like organization.
1:13:51
Speaker 3: It'd have to be that right mix of a moment
1:13:55
Speaker 3: of disruption in your life, a moment of change, a
1:13:58
Speaker 3: moment of searching, and then the right person, the right
1:14:02
Speaker 3: organization comes along and scoops you up.
1:14:04
Speaker 2: And I really truly do believe.
1:14:05
Speaker 3: That there's nothing deficient or exceptional about the people that
1:14:10
Speaker 3: get drawn into these groups. I just think that it's
1:14:14
Speaker 3: wrong place, it's wrong time. Obviously, some people are more
1:14:16
Speaker 3: vulnerable to it But I do, you know, just the
1:14:20
Speaker 3: fact that these organizations have existed for so long and
1:14:23
Speaker 3: keep popping up in so many iterations speak to that
1:14:28
Speaker 3: kind of error in our hardwiring that makes us vulnerable
1:14:31
Speaker 3: to these kinds of groups.
1:14:33
Speaker 1: I think that's such an important comment because, you know,
1:14:36
Speaker 1: I sometimes watch these documentaries or listen to podcasts or
1:14:40
Speaker 1: think about what I've been through. And I look at
1:14:43
Speaker 1: the victims and sometimes I'm like, these people are so smart.
1:14:47
Speaker 1: How could they have fallen for this? How could they
1:14:50
Speaker 1: not answer these questions with a real answer? And I
1:14:53
Speaker 1: get so frustrated. And then I think about my experience
1:14:56
Speaker 1: and I'm like, but I didn't know at the time
1:14:59
Speaker 1: and I didn't know why I was doing it. And
1:15:01
Speaker 1: I thought these people were my family. I thought that
1:15:04
Speaker 1: they were my sisters, my brothers, the people that loved me,
1:15:07
Speaker 1: the people that cared about me. They were investing the
1:15:10
Speaker 1: time in me that no one else was. And everyone
1:15:15
Speaker 1: else had given up on me or... You know, whatever I,
1:15:19
Speaker 1: you know, did in my head to make sense of it.
1:15:21
Speaker 1: And then when you take a step back, I see
1:15:23
Speaker 1: that those similar qualities in the people that I'm watching.
1:15:26
Speaker 1: So I see them fumble through questions from journalists now
1:15:31
Speaker 1: and they're like, but how could you have been in
1:15:33
Speaker 1: that cult? Or why don't you have an answer for
1:15:36
Speaker 1: these things? And they kind of are like, well, I
1:15:38
Speaker 1: don't know. I know why they don't know. It's just
1:15:41
Speaker 1: because you didn't know how to get out of it.
1:15:46
Speaker 1: You don't even know who you were at that stage almost.
1:15:48
Speaker 1: And a very smart person can get sucked in and
1:15:52
Speaker 1: not even realize it just because you want to be
1:15:54
Speaker 1: part of something more. You want to be a better
1:15:56
Speaker 1: person and you don't realize how dangerous it can be, right?
1:16:01
Speaker 2: Totally. Totally. It can come from very good intentions.
1:16:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, right. All right. So what are you investigating next
1:16:07
Speaker 1: that we can look for?
1:16:09
Speaker 3: Um, so I actually, um, in a surprising turn of events,
1:16:13
Speaker 3: I ended up taking over the kind of day-to-day operation
1:16:17
Speaker 3: of the podcast studio where I made The Lost Kid.
1:16:19
Speaker 3: So I'm, I'm, I'm now kind of overseeing, uh, USG Audio, um,
1:16:25
Speaker 3: in a more of an exec, exec producer role. So
1:16:27
Speaker 3: I'm not doing as much on the, on the ground stuff,
1:16:30
Speaker 3: but we just released a really, uh, a beautiful podcast.
1:16:35
Speaker 3: a beautifully crafted podcast about a really intense subject, but
1:16:38
Speaker 3: about a hate crime in Chicago in the 90s. But
1:16:41
Speaker 3: it's kind of part memoir, part investigation about this hate
1:16:46
Speaker 3: crime that occurred against a young black boy that was
1:16:50
Speaker 3: sort of going to the white side of town to
1:16:52
Speaker 3: get air for his.
1:16:54
Speaker 2: Tires for his bike and is beaten into a coma.
1:16:57
Speaker 3: And basically overnight, it becomes a national news story, but
1:17:01
Speaker 3: basically quickly flips into the story about reconciliation and forgiveness
1:17:06
Speaker 3: and the host that was in his 20s at the
1:17:08
Speaker 3: time and was and is himself black and from the
1:17:10
Speaker 3: south side of chicago and is like what the fuck's
1:17:12
Speaker 3: going on here it doesn't make any sense like why
1:17:14
Speaker 3: are we talking about reconciliation this guy this kid's about
1:17:16
Speaker 3: to die and he investigates the story at the time
1:17:19
Speaker 3: and uncovers a fascinating um you know, network of power
1:17:25
Speaker 3: underneath that's operating that the guy, the main kid that
1:17:31
Speaker 3: was charged with beating up this kid was actually the
1:17:34
Speaker 3: son of a.
1:17:34
Speaker 2: Very powerful.
1:17:37
Speaker 3: Boss who people have alleged is a mafia boss in Chicago.
1:17:40
Speaker 2: And he was paying off.
1:17:45
Speaker 3: Or pressuring leaders of the black churches to preach reconciliation
1:17:49
Speaker 3: and to turn the story into one about kumbaya and
1:17:52
Speaker 3: let's hold hands together. And it was very effective in
1:17:55
Speaker 3: pivoting the media. Anyways, it's a long-winded pitch of that series,
1:18:00
Speaker 3: but I highly recommend taking a listen to it. It's
1:18:02
Speaker 3: called You Didn't See Nothing. But we have a whole
1:18:05
Speaker 3: slate of podcasts coming out and stuff that I'm very
1:18:09
Speaker 3: excited about.
1:18:10
Speaker 1: Great. Okay. And so, and where can they find this podcast?
1:18:14
Speaker 3: You find it wherever you get your podcasts. After they
1:18:16
Speaker 3: listen to your podcast, I'm sure it's up on Apple
1:18:20
Speaker 3: or Stitcher or Spotify.
1:18:22
Speaker 2: It's all available. But it's USG Audio.
1:18:25
Speaker 3: So we actually have a channel now that if you
1:18:27
Speaker 3: just punch in USG Audio, our whole slate will pop
1:18:30
Speaker 3: up and you can kind of scroll through it.
1:18:32
Speaker 1: Terrific. Okay. Thank you so much. I so appreciate your time.
1:18:36
Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you.
1:18:50
Speaker 7: Thank you for listening to the misunderstood podcast with host Rachel.
1:18:54
Speaker 7: You could tell executive producer Kelly Brink. If you have
1:18:58
Speaker 7: an episode suggestion or would like to reach out for
1:19:01
Speaker 7: collaboration and sponsorship opportunities, email us at infomisunderstoodpodcast at gmail.com.
1:19:09
Speaker 7: That's infomisunderstoodpodcast, all one word, at gmail.com. Be sure to
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1:19:19
Speaker 7: us a five-star rating and review because it helps the
1:19:22
Speaker 7: show so much. Watch full videos of each and every
1:19:25
Speaker 7: episode of Misunderstood on YouTube at Misunderstood Podcast. See you
1:19:31
Speaker 7: next time.
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