Latest / The Christian Reeve Podcast / Understanding Cults With Gavri'el HaCohen (Part 2) | The Christian Reeve Podcast #247

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Understanding Cults With Gavri'el HaCohen (Part 2) | The Christian Reeve Podcast #247 · The Christian Reeve Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to another episode of The Christian Reef
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  Thank you so much and enjoy the show.
• 0:41
  I love how like some of them are like really really simple
• 0:43
  differences as well. Like isn't it 7th day Eventists?
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  Like don't they believe that like it's the holy day is
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  actually a Saturday and not a Sunday or something.
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  But like fundamentally, everything else in the religion
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  is pretty much the same apart from that one thing.
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  Dentists also, I think, have some very strange beliefs about
• 1:03
  the end of days and the like. This is this is another thing
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  that I could talk about for a long time.
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  So a lot of denominations of Christianity believe that the
• 1:19
  Book of Revelations is either metaphorical or it's a prophecy,
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  but it's already come true. There are some denominations of
• 1:31
  Christianity, especially ones that are like either 7th Day
• 1:34
  Adventist or Biblical literalist, like Christian
• 1:40
  fundamentalist in America, like Baptist.
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  Especially. Certain denominations of Baptist
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  in America believe that the Book of Revelations is a word for
• 1:53
  word, literal prophecy of things that are going to come true.
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  So they believe that literally all of the Christians are going
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  to be like are going to vanish from the world and be taken up
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  into heaven. And that there's going to be 7
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  years of tribulations against the people who are stuck down on
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  earth. And that like all the stuff with
• 2:14
  the mark of the beast, all of that kind of thing.
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  But then there's also different branches of fundamentalism that
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  believe that the rapture is going to happen part of the way
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  through the tribulation and not at the beginning of the
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  tribulation. And these groups of Christians
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  who believe almost exactly the same thing as each other except
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  for like when in the when in the End of Days timeline the rapture
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  is going to occur. They will fight with each other
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  and they will fight with each other and they will fight with
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  each other. But this essentially raises the
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  stakes and says, oh, well, there's a deadline by which you
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  need to get everybody saved because it's coming and it's
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  coming soon. And they will point to like,
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  like predicting the Rapture and predicting the end of days has
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  become kind of like a cottage industry in fundamentalism in
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  the United States. So they will point to things
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  like, oh, there's a war in the Middle East.
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  Or they will point to things like, oh, there is, you know, a
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  pandemic or there's earthquakes in diverse places is one of the
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  things that they say is going to happen.
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  And they will say, oh, no, there was a big earthquake at the same
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  time as there is like a war going on in the Middle East.
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  And now this means that the end of days is coming and we need to
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  all get ready. And they will doubt about that.
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  They think it's weird though that like, this happens again.
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  It's a meme at this point. Like it happens again and again
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  and again. And like they'll they'll be
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  like, right, this is officially the end of the day, this
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  specific date, and the date comes and nothing happens and we
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  move on. And it's like that.
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  There's been at least like fifty of those events, probably more
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  over the last like 20 odd years, right?
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  And they just keep believing in it.
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  And I'm thinking like, but if if you've been told like you know
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  this is definitely the case, there's there's no shadow of
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  doubt and then it doesn't happen, but why do you keep
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  believing in that? So here's The thing is that it
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  says in the Bible that no man can predict when it's going to
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  happen. So if somebody thinks that this
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  is when the Rapture, this is when the end of days is going to
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  start, then that's the one day where if you're a Christian,
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  then you know for sure it isn't going to be on that day because
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  it says that no man can predict it.
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  So what Sadie was telling me is that she would, she and her
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  friends would all get up in the morning and when they went to
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  the bathroom, they would look in the mirror and say the Rapture
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  is coming today. So that they would predict the
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  Rapture on that day just to themselves, so that they would
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  know for sure that it wouldn't happen on that day.
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  Because if no man can predict it and one of them predicts it,
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  then that means that it can't happen on that day.
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  This is like an actual thing that people would do.
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  Let's explore this a little bit more because we've we've touched
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  on it here and there. I'd like to kind of delve into
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  it. So I mentioned at the beginning
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  of the show that you host this podcast, Leaving Eden Podcast.
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  You host it with Sadie Carpenter, who as you mentioned,
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  had escaped this Christian fundamentalist Cole.
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  Before we sort of get into some of the specifics about it, one
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  thing I wanted to ask you, which I thought was interesting is
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  obviously you said that you guys came together during the
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  pandemic and decided to do this. But did you approach her or did
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  she approach you like talked about the setup of the show?
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  OK. So before we started, she and I
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  both had a job where we worked in like the office like of a car
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  dealerships, like service department.
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  Like I had a job in the back where I just did paperwork all
• 5:59
  day and she had a job where her job was like calling the
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  customers and telling them to come in and get their services
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  done or whatever. I mean like, oh, it's been six
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  months, come and get your oil changed or whatever.
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  And so our where we worked was like, right next to each other.
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  And we were both fans of, like, I had a messenger bag that has
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  the name of a of the Canadian prog rock band Rush on it.
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  And like, had their logo on it. And she was like, oh, you like
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  Rush. I like Rush.
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  And so we became like friends that way.
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  And we were both interested in music.
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  We were both, like, interested in religion just from like,
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  'cause, you know, she was raised like she wasn't.
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  I was interested in it also from like a like, I was.
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  I grew up Jewish. But like my religious education
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  wasn't really that strong. So I grew up like and I it's but
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  it's always kind of been like a topic of interest to me.
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  And so I've done a lot of like reading about it and a lot of
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  research about it. And so she and I would just get
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  to like talking about stuff. And we became friends and we
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  started like, you know, recording music together and you
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  know, just working on music projects.
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  And you know, we'd just go to my house and and you know, she
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  would always talk about like, oh man, I'd love to like do a book
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  or I'd love to like do a podcast or something about, you know,
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  about my upbringing or whatever. And it it was always just kind
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  of like a topic of conversation. And then the pandemic hit and we
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  were both just like, we're bored.
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  Let's do a podcast about this. And that's kind of just and then
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  three years like and we were collecting, we didn't have to
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  worry about making money from it for the first like year and a
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  half because we were both getting like the unemployment
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  check from the government that they were giving out in like
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  early pandemic like. I remember that, yeah.
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  Were giving out the they they gave.
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  They were giving out like the $1200 a month check, plus I
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  think I was getting close to like $900 a week in unemployment
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  money. Yeah, 'cause they, they passed
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  the bill that was like the $600 a week plus whatever I was
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  getting from the state, which was like 350.
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  And I was getting like more money being on unemployment than
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  I had been getting at the actual job that I had been working for
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  like a year and a half, two years.
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  And we were just kind of like hanging out and chilling and and
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  we're like, we can just do a podcast and we just did a
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  podcast. And so we didn't actually start
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  making money off of it really until like a year and a half,
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  two years after that point. And which like, you know, it got
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  to the point where I'm like, OK, this is my main source of
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  income. And that's, you know, and that's
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  kind of how it happened, is that we just kind of started getting
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  to talking and she decided, well, you're my friend and
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  you're good at, you know, you have the confidence to be a
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  podcast host and you think that you could be good.
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  Like that's kind of a lot of what being a podcast host is, is
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  that you just have to kind of be confident.
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  And also the other thing, the thing that I had to learn was to
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  know when to shut up. It's tough.
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  It's. Technical like equipment and
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  like I had the editing skills to like do the production and stuff
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  and so we did that. There's really not much more
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  than that to it. Well, let's talk about the
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  structure because that's something I've I've been doing
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  my show for close to four years and I think within the first
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  year I figured out, right, this is the structure, this is
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  essentially what the show is. It goes through phases, it
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  changes. I'm sure your show and by the
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  sounds of things your show has already kind of gone through
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  those phases already, like where when you first started,
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  obviously name of the game is we're going to explore Sadie's
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  story. But like how do you approach
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  that? Like where do you begin?
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  Do you just ask certain questions or like talk us
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  through the structure of like how you explored her story?
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  So I think when we started out, we made a list of like, and this
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  is something that like when people ask me, oh man, how do I
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  start my own podcast? Because they see, Oh well,
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  you've got a show that actually has a decent following.
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  How do I get to there? Because people want to have
• 10:07
  podcasts now, which is cool. People want to tell their
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  stories. I mean, people will say I want
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  to start a podcast. What should I do?
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  The first thing that I'll tell somebody to do is I'll say make
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  a list of like 50 episodes that you could do.
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  Make just like a a list of like 50 topics that you want to talk
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  about on your show. And if you can do that, then
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  that's like a year's worth of content that you can make and
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  that you can talk about. Think about like a list of 50
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  things that you can talk about for an hour or talk about for
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  two hours, and that can be the way that you go forward.
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  So, like, she was raised in this group for like 20 years, like
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  from when she grew up to the time when she was like 2019, 20
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  years old. And that's when she started to
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  get out. And she's the same age I am now.
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  So she was in for about twice as long as she's been out.
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  And so we found a list of, like, you know, I think the initial
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  list that we made was like 100 topics long.
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  But it would have things like, we're going to talk about dress
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  code. We're going to talk about this
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  specific pastor that committed this specific crime.
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  And we're going to tell this story like in a true crime
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  format, OK. No, we're going to do this
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  episode, which is going to be more of like a documentary
• 11:37
  episode about this theological concept.
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  And it was more just like let's give ourselves a wide scope of
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  things that we can talk about. We can talk about other cults as
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  well. We can talk about like, I think
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  when we originally started, we also had a plan that we were
• 11:56
  going to like have her review like cult make like cult
• 12:02
  Survivor reacts to thing that she didn't.
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  And like in the first, I want to say year of the show, we sort of
• 12:10
  figured out, OK, well when we do that, it's maybe not as popular
• 12:13
  and it doesn't work as well and it's kind of more difficult.
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  What do you think that is? Just because I think that the
• 12:23
  Cult Survivor reacts to is a format that works better if
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  you're trying to make YouTube videos rather than if you're
• 12:32
  doing an audio only podcast documentary.
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  Because like I I think in one of the early ones I was like you
• 12:40
  haven't seen Shrek. I'm going to have you watch
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  Shrek and then we can talk about that and that's cool And and we
• 12:49
  did that. But also you can't like if
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  you're doing an audio only content format then you can't
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  like pull clips of a movie and be like oh like and and do it
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  that way. And so I think that we were just
• 13:03
  kind of exploring a bunch of stuff at the beginning.
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  But where we really found our footing I want to say is we made
• 13:09
  this five part series called the First Family of Fundamentalism
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  that chronicled the ministry at this one church called First
• 13:19
  Baptist Church of Hammond which was a church in Hammond IN or.
• 13:23
  It is a church in Hammond IN and the scandals and the abuse that
• 13:27
  went on there surrounding the, the pastor Jack Hiles, who was
• 13:34
  essentially the most, I think the most influential, one of the
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  most influential fundamentalist pastors of the 20th century in
• 13:44
  the United States. And that was the ministry that
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  she was raised sort of in and around and in various what I
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  would call satellite churches of that main church around the
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  country. And the scandal that ended up
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  bringing down Jack Heil's successor, who was a man named
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  Jack Scott, who was arrested in 2012 because for a violation of
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  the MAN Act, which is for sex trafficking, because he had he
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  sexually abused a 16 year old girl and brought her across
• 14:23
  state lines to do it. And so while the girl was, I
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  think, above the age of consent in the state of Indiana, the
• 14:32
  fact that he brought a minor across somebody who was under
• 14:36
  the age of 18 across state lines for sexual purposes, made him in
• 14:42
  violation of sex trafficking laws.
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  So he ended up going to prison for, I want to say, nine years,
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  910 years. That scandal was one of the main
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  things that helped catalyze Sadie getting out of
• 14:58
  fundamentalism. Because at the same time as Jack
• 15:04
  Scopp was very publicly going through this trial and going
• 15:10
  through this legal battle, Jack Scopp's son, who was The Who,
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  who is one of the people who was in charge of the Bible college
• 15:21
  that Sadie was attending at the time, was coming down really
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  hard on Sadie for this infraction of getting a side hug
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  from her boyfriend at the time. Because physical contact between
• 15:38
  men and women is something that's absolutely not allowed
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  because of their purity laws or their purity rules with with
• 15:47
  like purity culture and that you have to protect your sexual
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  purity to the point where you can't even have physical contact
• 15:52
  with a man. And like, she was getting, you
• 15:59
  know, the book thrown at her and, like, being threatened with
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  expulsion because when she was going through a really hard
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  time, emotionally, her boyfriend gave her like a side hug.
• 16:11
  Right, Yeah. Saw them and reported them and
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  she was getting all of this, you know, disciplinary action done
• 16:19
  against her at the same time as this guy who was, you know, in
• 16:25
  charge of the disciplinary committee.
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  His dad was in legal trouble for sex trafficking, for like a
• 16:33
  literal felony for sexual abuse. And he was asking people all
• 16:38
  around the country who were supporters of this ministry to
• 16:41
  write letters to the judge asking for leniency in this
• 16:45
  case. That's wild.
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  Yeah, it is wild. I mean, if you want to see
• 16:51
  something crazy, the guy that arrested his name is Jack Scopp.
• 16:56
  If you Google Jack Scopp polished shaft.
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  Oh my God. What?
• 17:01
  Yeah, so there's this sermon where he and this is a sermon
• 17:06
  that Sadie was in the room for by the way at First Baptist
• 17:10
  Church of Haman her and like you know, 1015 thousand other people
• 17:12
  were in the room for. This.
• 17:13
  How old would she have been at the time when this is the
• 17:16
  sermons being given? 16 so.
• 17:20
  Child. Child.
• 17:21
  Literally a child. I mean, and also like, the way
• 17:24
  that they raise you in fundamentalism, in this
• 17:26
  particular fundamentalism, you don't know literally what sex is
• 17:30
  until like 3 months before you're married.
• 17:31
  You get engaged. And then they give you a book
• 17:34
  that explains how sex works. And so she's watching this guy
• 17:39
  who's this pastor who is, like, loved and adored by the whole
• 17:43
  community up there on the at the pulpit.
• 17:48
  And he's got this, like, arrow shaft, and he's talking about
• 17:52
  how God will take and like a stick and Polish it and Polish
• 17:57
  it and Polish it and turn it into an arrow so that it can be,
• 18:02
  you know, whatever, you know, weapon in the culture war that
• 18:06
  he wants you to be a good Christian soldier or whatever.
• 18:08
  This is like the the Christian soldier stuff.
• 18:10
  That's like basic fundamental. Would he?
• 18:12
  Would he use terminology like that as well?
• 18:15
  Christian soldier, Would he say things like that?
• 18:17
  Absolutely. That's like, I mean that's like
• 18:19
  Christian Nationalism 101, though.
• 18:21
  So like what he would do is when he was doing this sermon, he was
• 18:28
  making like he would have like this arrow shaft and he looked
• 18:32
  like he was stroking it. Like if like if you go and look
• 18:36
  up this video right now, Jack Scopp SCHAAP polished Shaft and
• 18:44
  you watch this video and you listen to him, he's like going
• 18:49
  like that. And I'm not even exaggerating a
• 18:51
  tiny bit. And he looks like he's stroking
• 18:56
  it. She was in the room for this.
• 19:01
  So what did she what did you, what did she think of that?
• 19:04
  Like, obviously she must have had a lot of different thoughts
• 19:07
  about this. Like what was her perception of
• 19:08
  that? She was 16 years old, but she
• 19:12
  didn't really know what sex was. But she knew that something was
• 19:15
  weird and that everybody around who was uncomfortable and she
• 19:17
  was uncomfortable and she didn't know why.
• 19:19
  As in, like the adults in the room were deeply uncomfortable.
• 19:23
  But, like, that's kind of one of the things that they do with
• 19:25
  that Colts will do is they will use its tactic of humiliation
• 19:29
  and they will make you, you know, sit through really
• 19:33
  uncomfortable experiences to kind of demonstrate their power
• 19:36
  over you. What are you looking up?
• 19:42
  Right now. No, no, no.
• 19:43
  I'm just there's so many things that are coming to my mind now.
• 19:46
  Right now. I just.
• 19:47
  I knew. I knew that this would be one of
• 19:48
  those topics in general where you.
• 19:51
  I mean it's. But like this was a church that
• 19:54
  there must have been 15,000 people in the audience for that
• 20:00
  one. And the crazy thing about it as
• 20:02
  well is, is like, it's one thing if you've got like, young people
• 20:05
  who have been indoctrinated into something like this and they
• 20:07
  don't know what you're talking about.
• 20:09
  But there's going to be people in there that would have joined
• 20:12
  maybe for a few years, maybe, you know, all right, maybe
• 20:15
  they've been in it a long time. But you know, they know what's
• 20:18
  up. They know what's going on.
• 20:20
  And they probably, I imagine many of them would have been
• 20:22
  like, I I need to get away from this.
• 20:23
  I need to take my kids away from this.
• 20:25
  What is this? What is this guy trying to
• 20:27
  promote? I mean, Jack Scott was a rock
• 20:29
  star essentially. Like with within this branch of
• 20:32
  fundamentalism, if you're one of these big name pastors, you're a
• 20:35
  rock star and you have a big following because God is
• 20:38
  blessing you. Think about what I said earlier
• 20:41
  with the the pastors who have like the small flock, they're
• 20:43
  struggling to get by. They're struggling to feed their
• 20:45
  family. A lot of them, you know, they
• 20:48
  may rely on something like a food bank to feed their family.
• 20:52
  Or, you know, if there's somebody who's working for them,
• 20:54
  if there's people who are working in their ministry, then
• 20:57
  they may say, you know, I'm going to pay the ministry people
• 21:01
  before I pay myself because that's the Christian thing to
• 21:03
  do. I mean, a lot of these people, a
• 21:06
  lot of these, you know, very devout Christians in America.
• 21:10
  If you're not abusive, if you're not a person who is willing to,
• 21:16
  you know, be to to berate your congregants and berate your your
• 21:23
  flock in order to giving you more money, you're going to be
• 21:27
  less successful and you're going to run into more trouble.
• 21:30
  And so if you're not willing to do that to people, it's a system
• 21:33
  that very much the IT success is often tied with how willing to
• 21:38
  be abusive you are to other people.
• 21:40
  And so the people who make it to the top are usually the ones who
• 21:43
  are just the most ruthless and the most like cruel.
• 21:46
  I mean, I could talk about the Jack Scott's father-in-law and
• 21:49
  predecessor Jack Hiles, who is, you know, one of the most
• 21:52
  legendary men in Christian fundamentalism in America.
• 21:56
  He would do all of these totally insane stunts to try and draw
• 22:00
  people to the church. Like one of the things that they
• 22:03
  would do is when he was, you know, trying to make a like a re
• 22:15
  enactment of like the feeding of the flock or or or the feeding
• 22:19
  of the 5000, he got a bunch of McDonald's filet of fish
• 22:25
  sandwiches and went up in a helicopter and threw filet of
• 22:29
  fish sandwiches out of the helicopter.
• 22:32
  All of the people like all of the church and this is like a
• 22:36
  church thing. This is like back I want to sing
• 22:38
  like the 70s or the 80s. He did this and people were just
• 22:41
  like, this is great. This is like like church in some
• 22:45
  ways becomes like, I mean it's the same sort of thing where
• 22:48
  we're Hillsong with the Christian music, they'll be
• 22:51
  like, OK, you can go to church, but it's like a rock concert.
• 22:53
  It's almost like you can go to church, but it's like a circus.
• 22:57
  That's what I mean. Like, I think the craziest thing
• 22:59
  I think about it is like how people don't just kind of go,
• 23:02
  well, this is weird, this is bizarre, this is not right.
• 23:06
  And but then again, goes back to what we were saying before.
• 23:09
  If you're indoctrinated, if you're like so reliant on this
• 23:13
  and it's all you know, then I suppose you're maybe you won't
• 23:16
  think it's weird. Maybe you'll think it's
• 23:18
  fantastic part of like entertaining even like, but I
• 23:22
  don't know like it's it's just, it's just it kind of reminds me
• 23:26
  of that film. I don't know if you've seen it.
• 23:29
  It's it's a horror movie thriller, horror movie from a
• 23:33
  few years back, Midsummer I think it was called.
• 23:37
  I've heard of that one. I haven't seen it.
• 23:38
  So basically, Cliff notes, It's supposed to be, I think about a
• 23:43
  group of like Swedish cultists. It's kind of a religious cultly
• 23:48
  type deal and there's a few Americans who have been
• 23:51
  encouraged by their friend to go and and join in the these
• 23:55
  traditions. And of course, throughout the
• 23:56
  course of the movie, it becomes quite clear that it's a very
• 24:00
  sadistic, like, death cult essentially where they sacrifice
• 24:05
  people and there's just like little things here and there
• 24:09
  that like are really off in the lead up to the big things.
• 24:13
  And it's funny how, like sometimes people will call it
• 24:16
  out be like, that's weird that the, I'll reveal A spoiler here.
• 24:20
  There's a thing where there's a sacrifice where people literally
• 24:23
  jump off a mountain and completely, you know, kill
• 24:26
  themselves and immediately they're like, what the hell is
• 24:30
  wrong with you? People like, how can you allow
• 24:32
  this to happen? And they try to explain it away
• 24:34
  by saying, well, this is a very sacred tradition for our people.
• 24:37
  This is, you know, this, that and the other.
• 24:39
  And like no one in the actual flock feels negatively about it
• 24:44
  at all. They're all like, no, this is
• 24:45
  the way of things, but these outsiders are looking at it
• 24:47
  like, Oh my God, this is awful, what's happening.
• 24:50
  And I think what's interesting about these cults is because you
• 24:54
  don't have that level of thinking there, as you said,
• 24:57
  like all the outside stuff is is deliberately kept out.
• 25:01
  It's almost like there's no way or even possibility of doubt
• 25:07
  coming into play. Yeah, or if you have doubts then
• 25:12
  you're told that's from the devil.
• 25:14
  Right, and you're slight, but it's normal.
• 25:16
  It's a very normal human thought process to have doubts, and it
• 25:22
  doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing.
• 25:23
  I mean, a lot of that comes from self preservation, from
• 25:27
  protecting oneself, like you know what I mean?
• 25:29
  Like innate programming within you just as a human being to
• 25:33
  protect yourself from danger. Well, so think about it this
• 25:37
  way. Is that if you have, if if you
• 25:43
  are, how? How they phrase it is if you
• 25:47
  believe in Jesus. If you truly accept Jesus's
• 25:53
  sacrifice and you get saved and you say I want Jesus, please
• 25:57
  take me to heaven. Like everybody has doubts, just
• 26:01
  like how they say everybody has sins.
• 26:04
  But if Jesus takes away your sins, then he would take away
• 26:07
  your doubts in him as well. And therefore, if you have
• 26:12
  doubts, then that means that you might not actually be saved,
• 26:16
  that Jesus's sacrifice might not have worked on you, and if you
• 26:20
  died right now, you might not go to heaven.
• 26:24
  It's just fear tactics, isn't it?
• 26:25
  Just like we were saying before, just just grabbing people by
• 26:28
  like, oh, if you don't do this, this could happen.
• 26:31
  And then the people like, no, I don't want that.
• 26:33
  And then of course, they're they're pushed into that
• 26:36
  behaviour from a place of fear. It's.
• 26:42
  Very. It's, I mean, that's kind of how
• 26:44
  it is. It's like I'm and there are
• 26:47
  people like if if you have listeners who were raised as
• 26:51
  this sort of hardcore Christian fundamentalist, even people who
• 26:55
  were raised from like the youngest of young ages to accept
• 26:59
  Jesus and say I want to go to heaven and they get saved, they
• 27:01
  get baptized. They will, you know, take you to
• 27:05
  like Christian summer camp. And they will say something like
• 27:10
  if you, you know, maybe you go out soul winning every day and
• 27:18
  you're a perfect Christian, you follow all of the rules.
• 27:21
  But you have ACD of rock music that you listen to in your car
• 27:25
  and you don't tell anybody about.
• 27:28
  That's a secret sin. And if you have a secret sin,
• 27:31
  then you might not have actually been saved.
• 27:34
  You might not have been, you know, because if you had truly
• 27:37
  accepted Jesus's sacrifice into your life, then Jesus wouldn't
• 27:41
  just take away your sins, he would also take away your desire
• 27:44
  to commit sins. And if you still have a desire
• 27:47
  to commit sins, then that means that you're not really saved.
• 27:52
  It just it just sounds like so like such a mindfuck like just
• 27:56
  constantly you got to constantly worry about like is this
• 27:59
  behaviour sinful? Is this behaviour sinful?
• 28:01
  Is this behaviour like, how do you just live a normal life?
• 28:05
  And do you know what I'm saying? Like, just like your just
• 28:07
  everyday life, you got to be living in this constant, I would
• 28:11
  imagine. I mean, OK, let's, let's, let's
• 28:14
  ask about Sadie's experience. Did she kind of feel, like
• 28:17
  constantly on edge, like and anxious like she's constantly
• 28:21
  treading on egg shells? Like everybody who comes out of
• 28:24
  this describes, you know, describes to me just this
• 28:27
  constant feeling of like of of like perpetual anxiety and just
• 28:34
  over analyzing every single behaviour that they have.
• 28:39
  It's it's truly horrible. Like I can't imagine living in
• 28:43
  that existence. I.
• 28:45
  Just want to go back to what was the catalyst for Sadie leaving
• 28:49
  that cult. So she sees this sermon.
• 28:52
  So is that when she left? No, actually, no.
• 28:54
  You said there was about four years afterwards, So what was
• 28:57
  the trial was on? So what happened was in, I want
• 29:05
  to say the summer of 2012, Jack Scopp, he was having he he was
• 29:17
  sexually abusing a 16 year old who was a student at the
• 29:24
  Christian high school that was associated with the church that
• 29:27
  he was pastoring. And this was discovered and the
• 29:33
  church to their credit in this case, I mean cause churches a
• 29:38
  lot of times will, you know cover up abuse and send a pastor
• 29:41
  to a different church or like they'll or or they'll try to
• 29:45
  hide it. To their credit they discovered
• 29:48
  it and they got the police involved and the police came and
• 29:51
  they arrested this guy. That's.
• 29:54
  Good. At the at the time and this was
• 29:57
  the summer between her freshman and her sophomore year at
• 30:01
  college and she was attending the Bible college that was also
• 30:05
  associated with this church. So she was going to a school
• 30:08
  called Hiles Anderson College. The Bible College was associated
• 30:13
  with the First Baptist Church of Hammond IN.
• 30:16
  And this was a scandal that just rocked the entire world and that
• 30:24
  there was so many feelings of anger, so many feelings of, you
• 30:28
  know, sadness because the pastor that did it, they truly believed
• 30:33
  that this guy was the pastor who was going to save America.
• 30:38
  Like, it's deep to the core of their beings that they believe
• 30:44
  that this path, that, you know, this fundamentalist movement is
• 30:49
  coming to save America from itself.
• 30:52
  And by saving America from itself, they will then save the
• 30:55
  world. And seeing him go down like this
• 31:00
  was just a shock. And so there is senses of like
• 31:03
  sadness and there is anger. She decided to go back to the
• 31:08
  Bible college for her sophomore year because she would, like
• 31:13
  everybody was dealing with so much, you know, emotion.
• 31:17
  She's just like, I just want my life to go back to normal.
• 31:20
  And so she chose to go back to this Bible college for her
• 31:22
  sophomore year because that's what, you know, she expected to
• 31:25
  happen in her life. And then her sophomore year, I
• 31:30
  think somebody started just like a weird rumor about her doing
• 31:34
  sex things or another when she didn't even know what sex was at
• 31:38
  that point. Hardly.
• 31:40
  And that was difficult for her because people were being mean
• 31:43
  to her based on that. And, you know, when the
• 31:45
  administration, this school who are, is basically run by church
• 31:49
  busybodies, you know, was like calling her into question about
• 31:55
  it. She was like crying.
• 31:56
  And she didn't know what anyone was talking about.
• 31:57
  But they were still treating her terribly because of it for
• 32:01
  something that, you know, that she didn't have anything to do
• 32:04
  with, just some random rumor that somebody started.
• 32:07
  And so at that point, the stress of that was so difficult on her
• 32:11
  that maybe, you know, she was faltering in her studies.
• 32:17
  And and I don't want it, not in her studies in just like her
• 32:19
  responsibilities that she had to do.
• 32:21
  And she was going like, you know, there's definitely like a
• 32:24
  tiered hierarchy of like how popular you are with the
• 32:28
  administration and they keep track of these things.
• 32:30
  And so maybe her social Credit was coming down a little bit.
• 32:34
  And then somebody who was in a similar boat as she was tried to
• 32:38
  rescue his own social Credit by ratting her and her boyfriend
• 32:44
  out because her boyfriend, like, gave her a side hug when she was
• 32:48
  trying to deal with all the stress of the things that she
• 32:50
  was going through. Oh, also, at this time, there
• 32:54
  was another student who was making threats of sexual
• 32:58
  violence against her that she did.
• 33:00
  She didn't do anything about. Yeah, they don't care about that
• 33:02
  stuff because what they They believe that women are
• 33:07
  responsible for men's thoughts. Yeah.
• 33:11
  So basically you have to cover up your entire body because if a
• 33:14
  man sees you and thinks of sexual thought about you, then
• 33:17
  that's your fault. And yeah, because men are
• 33:21
  uncontrollable animals, but they're also, you know, supposed
• 33:23
  to be the leaders of everything Anyway.
• 33:27
  They then somebody ratted her out for this side hug.
• 33:35
  And she was basically discipline.
• 33:38
  Like at this time, she started when she was going through this
• 33:42
  disciplinary process and she was seeing like the two faced side
• 33:46
  of what was going on. You know, she would maybe go
• 33:50
  outside of the campus and start reading things on the Internet
• 33:53
  about what was actually going on.
• 33:56
  And when she did that, you know, she started finding articles
• 33:59
  about the scandals that had happened with the church in
• 34:02
  generations prior that had been covered up and that had been
• 34:04
  like explained away as like the devil or people attacked the
• 34:08
  church. And that's when she started the
• 34:12
  deconstruction journey. But it and that was like 10
• 34:15
  years ago, so almost 11 years ago at this point.
• 34:20
  Like it it it takes a long time for people to get through this.
• 34:24
  I was. Going to say that, why would you
• 34:26
  say she's at mentally now, so 10 years removed like in in that
• 34:31
  journey? I mean, there's like, I mean,
• 34:33
  deconstruction is a lifelong journey and there's part of it
• 34:36
  that never really goes away. And, you know, she's got a lot
• 34:39
  of things that in her life, you know, just as like a person who
• 34:42
  has a job and she has a husband and she has a kid.
• 34:45
  And, you know, things are, I think, going mostly OK for her.
• 34:49
  But there are some things, you know, that she deals with as a
• 34:51
  result of, you know, I mean, like people who get out of
• 34:55
  fundamentalism. A lot of them, yeah.
• 34:59
  It is a lifelong journey of, you know, trying to deal with your
• 35:03
  religious trauma that you dealt with for years and years and
• 35:07
  years and years and years. And a lot of the listeners to
• 35:09
  our show are in the same boat as her in that they got out of
• 35:13
  fundamentalism and they still have a lot of religious trauma
• 35:16
  relating to that. And you know, we have a Facebook
• 35:18
  group with I think probably about 3500 people in it at this
• 35:21
  point. And a lot of our listeners have
• 35:23
  the same sort of experiences that she did.
• 35:27
  Some of them got out and some of them were, you know, also
• 35:31
  victims of terrible abuse but, you know, escaped.
• 35:37
  And they've been dealing with that for years and years and
• 35:39
  years and years and years. So you sort of create it off the
• 35:43
  back of Sadie's experiences and her sharing that with you and
• 35:46
  creating this show and exploring other cults etcetera.
• 35:50
  You've also created a community of people that are essentially
• 35:52
  kind of like helping each other out and and get through it sort
• 35:56
  of thing. Yeah, I mean we have people in
• 36:01
  like almost every single time zone in the world, which is
• 36:05
  pretty. I went and I looked at our our
• 36:07
  listener data and we have listeners in, I want to say like
• 36:11
  160 countries, something like that, something crazy like that.
• 36:16
  I don't think anyone's listening to us in like North Korea, but
• 36:19
  like. It's incredible, isn't it?
• 36:23
  Like I I I have the same thing with my community.
• 36:25
  Shout out to my community, love you all.
• 36:28
  You know when I started doing because basically I do acting
• 36:31
  and voice acting and podcasting, online stuff, etcetera.
• 36:35
  I've been chasing it for years and you know with things like
• 36:39
  the podcast and and live streaming, like I just started
• 36:42
  that because I always wanted to do that and you know, one thing
• 36:46
  leads to another, you know, the snowball keeps rolling, so to
• 36:49
  speak. It gets bigger and bigger and
• 36:51
  bigger. And I never kind of in my
• 36:53
  wildest dreams imagined that I would have like a little
• 36:56
  community of people who not only are there, you know, kind of as
• 37:03
  part of that and enjoying the content and being part of that,
• 37:05
  but like, they become friends with each other, They support
• 37:09
  each other. They are nice and pleasant to
• 37:12
  each other and that's beautiful to see.
• 37:13
  And you know, some of them unfortunately have gone through
• 37:16
  terrible things or are still dealing with like pretty
• 37:20
  difficult things. And it's amazing that there's
• 37:23
  like a positive space for them to be the.
• 37:27
  In many ways I kind of created by accident if, yeah, if I'm
• 37:30
  honest, like a lot of it came from like, you know, oh hey,
• 37:33
  wouldn't it be cool if we had this and then that was what my
• 37:36
  discord became and stuff like that.
• 37:38
  And I don't know, I think it's always kind of positive that
• 37:43
  people can have places, spaces that they feel safe, where they
• 37:46
  can share their experiences and kind of help each other get
• 37:50
  through these. Particularly when it's something
• 37:51
  like having been in a cult or or a religious organization that
• 37:57
  that wasn't in their best interests and now they're able
• 38:00
  to work for it with other people who are like minded and and know
• 38:03
  what that feels like. Because often when you, I think
• 38:06
  when you go through something difficult like that, the only
• 38:09
  person that's ever really fully going to understand you is
• 38:11
  someone who has the same, if not similar experiences to you.
• 38:16
  Yeah. And that's been interesting for
• 38:17
  me because I wasn't raised in anything like that.
• 38:19
  I'm almost, I'm sort of an outsider.
• 38:22
  But you know I've talked to enough people.
• 38:25
  I I don't want to say that I get it, but like I've, you know,
• 38:29
  I've, I've heard these stories enough times that I, you know,
• 38:32
  that I feel like I can kind of understand, which is pretty cool
• 38:39
  for me, you know, I mean you always want to go and you always
• 38:41
  want to like learn to understand more in different kind of
• 38:44
  people. And getting that opportunity is
• 38:47
  something that really does feel kind of special to me.
• 38:50
  So that's really cool. It's amazing stuff.
• 38:53
  You should be very proud of yourselves, honestly.
• 38:56
  I mean, like we had what's crazy is every time something new,
• 39:02
  like some new documentary or some new docu series or or like
• 39:05
  something comes out about Christian fundamentalism in
• 39:08
  America, Like it's always like whenever you see the people that
• 39:14
  are like doing that or that are leading the charge, you're like,
• 39:17
  oh, hey, I know that guy. Like, there was a documentary
• 39:22
  that came out earlier this year called Shiny Happy People on
• 39:26
  Amazon That was about the IBLP, the Institute for Basic Life
• 39:33
  Principles, which is one of the cults that we talked about
• 39:35
  earlier. And the the Duggar family, which
• 39:38
  was this TLC reality show family that had, you know, a show about
• 39:43
  how they had 19 kids. They had this documentary about
• 39:50
  like how messed up this whole thing is.
• 39:54
  And then when we turn on the documentary, who do we see?
• 39:57
  I see my friend Chad Harris who's like, yeah, who's like a
• 40:01
  guy that I know from doing this like deconstruction kind of
• 40:05
  content. I see people that I'm not like
• 40:07
  my friend. We have a friend named Heather
• 40:10
  who also, you know, who who does stuff on TikTok about
• 40:16
  deconstruction. And then she's in the
• 40:17
  documentary and you see people that you know and you're just
• 40:20
  like, hey, I know that like it's it is a whole community of
• 40:23
  people and it feels really cool to kind of see that and to kind
• 40:27
  of be like. I wasn't raised in this, but
• 40:30
  also they get to kind of be a part of it.
• 40:33
  I presume that you spoke to them about their experiences after
• 40:36
  the docs. Yeah, we had, we did an episode
• 40:42
  like Chad and Chad was in the documentary.
• 40:46
  He was he's one of the you you can find him on.
• 40:49
  I want to say tick I I think he's Arch Radish 85.
• 40:53
  If you look at him up on TikTok and Instagram, it's Arch Radish
• 40:57
  85. He talks about his experiences
• 41:03
  growing up in the IBLP and he's pretty popular with people who
• 41:07
  consume that kind of content. After it came out, he came on
• 41:11
  our show and we had a whole big conversation about what he went
• 41:14
  through and maybe some behind the scenes for the documentary.
• 41:18
  Same thing with the one that came out a couple weeks ago,
• 41:22
  which was let us pray, a Ministry of Scandals, which was
• 41:26
  on Investigation discovery in HBO.
• 41:27
  Max, if you're in America, you should check that out.
• 41:31
  Rachel Peach was one of the women who was featured in that.
• 41:33
  She was actually at the same Bible college at the same time
• 41:37
  as Sadie was there. And we had another guy on there.
• 41:42
  His name is Eric Squarzinski, who has this podcast called the
• 41:46
  Preacher Boys Podcast where he talks about his whole thing is
• 41:51
  he gets people who are survivors of religious abuse and gets them
• 41:58
  on his podcast. He also branches out and he
• 42:00
  talks about the troubled teen industry, which is this whole
• 42:03
  thing. I don't know if you guys have
• 42:04
  that over there, but if you there's like this whole, like,
• 42:07
  reform schools kind of thing where they'll basically take
• 42:11
  children and put them in prison camps if they're misbehaving,
• 42:17
  Yeah, it's horrible. But he had Paris Hilton on his
• 42:21
  show because apparently she was sent to a place like that.
• 42:25
  Really. That's interesting.
• 42:27
  It's, I mean it's totally, you never know who you're going to
• 42:29
  get in contact with and you never know who you're going to
• 42:30
  talk to when you do this stuff. But that's, I mean, he's another
• 42:34
  person that I should shout out because he does a great job of
• 42:37
  platforming survivors and platforming, you know, people
• 42:40
  who have really who are speaking out about their abuse and he
• 42:44
  provides a great platform for them to do that.
• 42:48
  OK, I got a question for you and this is interesting.
• 42:53
  Yeah. Can Colts ever be a good thing?
• 42:58
  Can Colts ever be a good thing? I would say no, because the idea
• 43:02
  of a cult is that is inherently coercive.
• 43:07
  Like if you can have all of the rules of a religion if you want,
• 43:13
  you know that might say you dress a certain way, you eat a
• 43:15
  certain way, you worship in a certain way.
• 43:20
  But if there's no and if there's no like coercion into, you need
• 43:25
  to follow this or else X thing will happen to you.
• 43:29
  Be that a spiritual consequence or be that a actual physical
• 43:34
  consequence, then that's not that, you know, they're like,
• 43:40
  that's a free choice. Like you could decide to convert
• 43:43
  to a religion that has you dress a certain way, eat a certain
• 43:46
  way. And if you're doing that because
• 43:48
  it makes you happy and because you like it, then that's fine.
• 43:50
  If there's no cults are inherently coercive.
• 43:55
  If there's no coercion, then it's not a cult.
• 43:57
  If there's no like cruelty associated with it, then it's
• 44:05
  not a cult. If there's no, like you know,
• 44:07
  brainwashing and mind numbing associated with it, then it's
• 44:10
  not a cult. One thing I I mentioned earlier
• 44:15
  which which we spoke a bit about Law and stuff like that and that
• 44:19
  one thing I want to kind of focus on, take like the Twin
• 44:22
  Flames thing as an example, right.
• 44:24
  Sometimes you get instances like the NXU and Cult where it got
• 44:27
  closed down and everything and that's great.
• 44:29
  But then actual crimes were committed there that they could
• 44:32
  trace, that they could track and from what from my understanding
• 44:35
  that on a small low level that's still, there's still some
• 44:38
  operation in in that cult that still exists to this day.
• 44:42
  But with the Twin Flames situation that's allowed to
• 44:47
  continue, there's many other cults, thousands, 10s of
• 44:51
  thousands out there that exist right now that are operating
• 44:55
  right now. And they've been exposed,
• 44:57
  they've been written about, They've had the entire
• 44:58
  documentaries made about them and nothing changes.
• 45:02
  You know, like I went to check on the the two heads of that
• 45:04
  Twin Flames cult and you know, they're still operating, They're
• 45:08
  still posting online. I mean, is it.
• 45:10
  I find it interesting that you can't, that they don't have
• 45:12
  their comments enabled on their Instagram.
• 45:15
  I kind of feel like that's by design because of what's coming
• 45:17
  out. But I guess my question to you
• 45:19
  is why do you think that these cults are still able to continue
• 45:23
  despite all this bad press that they're receiving?
• 45:29
  Because bad press doesn't actually.
• 45:31
  I mean it might hurt their bottom line, but it doesn't
• 45:35
  actually get people to get out of them like you.
• 45:39
  I mean you. That's the sort of thing where
• 45:41
  it's it's almost like cancel culture in that you can oh this
• 45:45
  person is cancelled now. Oh, they're like, say there's
• 45:50
  like AI mean Louis CK. Even after he did all of that
• 45:55
  sexual misconduct, he's still booking big comedy gigs and
• 46:00
  people are still paying him money to do comedy like people.
• 46:06
  You know that it's if if people don't care, then there's nothing
• 46:09
  that can be done about it. Like on some obviously with like
• 46:13
  the Nexium, they were doing actual crimes were doing that.
• 46:20
  You know, they they were doing sex trafficking.
• 46:22
  Or like, if you look at like Waco and the Branch Davidians,
• 46:26
  they were doing actual crimes there.
• 46:29
  They were violating firearms laws and they were sexually
• 46:33
  abusing children. But in the United States, it
• 46:38
  says, you know, if you have a religious belief, you are
• 46:42
  entitled to that religious belief as long as that belief
• 46:46
  doesn't spiral into, like as long as you aren't actually
• 46:51
  doing crimes. You can't punish somebody for
• 46:54
  having a belief. You can't punish people for
• 46:57
  saying, for, for having a religious doctrine that is
• 47:02
  harmful unless that doctrine is a threat of evil conduct or, you
• 47:08
  know, or unlawful conduct. And it is like an immediate
• 47:12
  threat. So, like, whether or not you
• 47:16
  think that, oh, this cult is evil, this cult is coercive.
• 47:19
  They're still protected by law. How can we distinguish A cult
• 47:26
  from a religious group since they have kind of similar
• 47:30
  similarities and shared traits? You've spoken quite heavily on
• 47:34
  Christian fundamentalism and stuff like that and I feel like
• 47:36
  we've we've kind of outlined a lot of it, but like if it was
• 47:39
  broken down to say like 5 or 10 like simple traits, what would
• 47:42
  the key distinguishing factors be?
• 47:45
  I'm sure I have to go back to the BYTE model.
• 47:48
  OK, Stephen Hassan go to freedomofmind.com and he has it
• 47:52
  all laid out there. In that you can.
• 47:56
  If it isn't distinguished by it does XYZ thing.
• 48:01
  It's distinguished by how much of A level of control you allow
• 48:05
  it to have over your life and how coercive is that control.
• 48:09
  It's not. Does it tell you to to eat a
• 48:12
  certain way, or to dress a certain way, or to go to
• 48:15
  services in a certain way, or to, you know, read this book and
• 48:20
  pray a certain number of times or whatever?
• 48:23
  It it it isn't distinguished by that.
• 48:24
  It's distinguished by what level of coercive control it has over
• 48:28
  your life, Which is why I think it's good that he, you know, has
• 48:31
  that wide description where it is about the actual coercion
• 48:35
  itself. It isn't about the aesthetics of
• 48:37
  the thing. Thank you.
• 48:41
  I don't, I don't know that this is true, but I I so massive
• 48:45
  thank you to Vilma for sending in your questions.
• 48:48
  As always, really appreciate you.
• 48:51
  One of the questions she sent in which I found this interesting,
• 48:54
  she said why isn't the term cult used anymore and why is the term
• 48:58
  new religious movement preferred instead.
• 49:01
  Now I'll unpack this a little bit.
• 49:03
  What I got from this is that maybe it's not so much that like
• 49:07
  it's not being used anymore, it's more that it's kind of
• 49:11
  they're trying to desperately move away from that term.
• 49:13
  Because obviously cult is a negative, has negative
• 49:15
  connotations obviously. And as you sort of outlined
• 49:18
  there that I don't think there really is a positive cult, a
• 49:21
  good cult really, but supposedly in many cases certain
• 49:27
  organisations are trying to use new religious movement instead.
• 49:30
  Have you heard this? Can you speak to this?
• 49:33
  I think that I don't think that any cult would describe
• 49:35
  themselves as a cult. No and 100%.
• 49:39
  And it's negative. So like and I I mean like the
• 49:44
  the new religious movement kind of thing there there is so much
• 49:47
  like cult crossover between the like new age spirituality.
• 49:53
  Right. Like, there is very much that I
• 49:56
  have seen like a a crunchy, too fundy pipeline.
• 50:00
  Like people get into like crunchy, like healing crystals
• 50:04
  and that kind of thing, and like this spirituality, kind of like
• 50:07
  an astrology. And then there's a pipeline that
• 50:10
  like, 'cause they're seeking bigger things and maybe they
• 50:14
  start following one of these influencers or something and it
• 50:17
  can take them in a spiritual direction that can take them
• 50:20
  into a very coercive branch of of Christianity.
• 50:24
  And that is a pipeline that very much actually does exist.
• 50:29
  I mean, I can tell you that there are people who like I'm
• 50:33
  from Oregon, which I don't know how familiar you are with the
• 50:39
  United States geography. It's over in the on the West
• 50:41
  Coast in the Northwest of the United States.
• 50:44
  And it's kind of the region that's got a reputation for
• 50:49
  having a lot of, like, old hippies that live there.
• 50:53
  And it's got kind of that culture in that people are
• 50:57
  really into like just the whole, like, New Age spirituality, the
• 51:01
  whole crunchy thing, the whole, like, really granola thing.
• 51:04
  And so like when I was watching the Twin Flames documentary and
• 51:09
  I was seeing like, I know people who I went to either high school
• 51:13
  or college with, who changed their name to some Indian, like
• 51:17
  white people that changed their name to some Indian shit and
• 51:20
  started trying to be spiritual influencers.
• 51:22
  I hate it so much. It's like I went to Thailand
• 51:25
  once and now, you know, I I'm just the king of spiritualism.
• 51:32
  They, like, visited the Buddhist monastery for, like, they're
• 51:35
  just like, oh wow, I learned about this thing.
• 51:37
  And then they like, went into a Wikipedia portal and then like,
• 51:40
  followed a bunch of influencers and stuff like that.
• 51:43
  And they go to Burning Man every year.
• 51:46
  Spiritual. I'm like, you like to party,
• 51:48
  buddy. You like to eat drugs and the
• 51:51
  desert and party, and it's like a spiritual thing, like watching
• 51:59
  as soon as that dude showed up on screen.
• 52:01
  And I'm like, oh, I know this guy.
• 52:03
  Like, I've never met him. But like, I know this guy, and
• 52:05
  there is a certain level of narcissism where if you believe
• 52:11
  that you are a spiritually enlightened person, it takes a
• 52:14
  certain level of narcissism to kind of believe that.
• 52:16
  And narcissistic people are people who are most likely to
• 52:20
  try to create a cult following around themselves because they
• 52:25
  desire that love, they desire that attention, they desire
• 52:29
  that, like validation. It's the same sort of thing
• 52:32
  where, like, you know, if you think about somebody who grows
• 52:35
  up in Hollywood and you think about, oh, this person wants to
• 52:38
  be an actor, Do they want to be an actor because they love
• 52:41
  acting? Or do they want to be an actor
• 52:42
  because they want to be a celebrity and they want to go on
• 52:44
  talk shows and they want everybody to tell them how great
• 52:46
  they are and give them awards all the time like?
• 52:49
  This is the thing I want to hook into for a second because, like,
• 52:52
  I don't think that, like, being spiritualist makes you a
• 52:54
  narcissist. I mean, for, for instance, I'm a
• 52:57
  spiritualist. I'm an actor.
• 52:59
  I don't do it because I want a bunch of attention.
• 53:01
  I do it because I love acting and spiritualism that comes from
• 53:05
  beliefs that I've kind of formulated over many years.
• 53:09
  And like, I still kind of keep my mind open.
• 53:12
  Like, I'll I'll tell you one thing.
• 53:13
  I'll say one thing. Like this is this is the but
• 53:17
  like you know what I'm talking about and that like.
• 53:20
  I mean, you're not wrong in the sense that there are people out
• 53:22
  there that think that way. Sure.
• 53:24
  And they will try to like tell you, oh, well, no, you're you're
• 53:27
  wrong. What I believe is the only way.
• 53:29
  And this is how things are. And it's like, well, that's not
• 53:31
  true. Like you know you you're.
• 53:34
  Not out here trying to tell people, oh, here's how you be
• 53:37
  spiritually. Enlightened, Yeah.
• 53:39
  Trying to like, I mean, you have a you're an actor with a
• 53:41
  podcast, which is red flag. No, I'm joking, but.
• 53:46
  No. Why?
• 53:46
  Why? Why is it red flag?
• 53:49
  Well, like you, you know that there there are some people who
• 53:51
  like, I mean, you're into acting.
• 53:53
  I'm sure you're into acting though, because you like, you
• 53:55
  love perform what you like performing.
• 53:57
  You like the the roles of different characters and having
• 54:01
  like, that's really cool. I mean, I'm a musician.
• 54:04
  I definitely know people who are like, I want to be a musician
• 54:07
  because I want people to cheer for me.
• 54:09
  I don't understand that I get, I get I get the like the logic
• 54:13
  behind it, but I I don't understand the whole please
• 54:17
  notice me, notice me, notice me thing like.
• 54:19
  I don't get that. Either that or it's people who
• 54:21
  you know, some of I I don't want to psychoanalyse everybody, but
• 54:24
  like some musicians, you know, they grow up being like, oh,
• 54:28
  music's the only thing I'm good at.
• 54:29
  Music's the only thing I've ever gotten praised for doing.
• 54:31
  Music is something I connect to and like that can be good.
• 54:34
  It's also like, I mean, there's some people, not everybody.
• 54:37
  I think, I think it really depends.
• 54:39
  I mean, what you're basically sort of breaking down there is
• 54:42
  having a healthy relationship with said thing.
• 54:44
  Yeah. And like that's that's also that
• 54:47
  is that like if you have a healthy relationship with your
• 54:49
  spirituality, if you have a healthy relationship with, you
• 54:53
  know, even like your profession and you're not out here trying
• 54:56
  to be like, I should be a model for everybody else.
• 54:58
  It's the same sort of thing with all of these like like we were
• 55:01
  talking about the relationship influencers and you're like my
• 55:04
  relationship is so good that I need to tell everybody else how
• 55:08
  to have a good relationship. It's the same thing with your
• 55:11
  spirituality. You're like or you're not.
• 55:13
  I'm I'm not I'm not using you as in the like the the royal.
• 55:16
  That's fine. No, it's it's I I can take it
• 55:18
  like, at the end of the day, like there's nothing wrong with
• 55:21
  being told like you're wrong or that like what you believe is
• 55:25
  and why. But like, except gentlemen, like
• 55:27
  I don't. I don't.
• 55:29
  Beliefs are exactly that. It's what a person believes.
• 55:32
  It doesn't make it fact, doesn't make it like like, Oh well, I
• 55:36
  believe this. They feel you have to believe
• 55:37
  this. Or if you don't believe this, we
• 55:38
  can't be friends. Like, I think that's crock of
• 55:40
  shit. Like so long as the things you
• 55:42
  believe don't like, hurt other people.
• 55:44
  Like believe whatever the fuck you want, like you know.
• 55:47
  That's true though, but like the the funding, like funding
• 55:49
  Christian fundamentalist especially, will say if you
• 55:51
  don't believe the same things as me or if you aren't willing to.
• 55:54
  Like there's the the separation in that you separate yourself
• 55:57
  from people who are not, who don't believe the same things as
• 56:01
  you. And then there's the secondary
• 56:02
  separation, where you separate yourself from the people who.
• 56:09
  Not just people. Not just separating yourself
• 56:12
  from the world. You're separating yourself from
• 56:15
  people who don't separate themselves from everyone else.
• 56:18
  It's just it's just it's just I really feel for people that are
• 56:21
  in this like that you're constantly tolerate you can't be
• 56:24
  around these people can't be behind these people can't be
• 56:26
  around these people. It's like, where's the room to
• 56:29
  live the. Thing is, political ideologies
• 56:32
  can get into this as well. Sure.
• 56:34
  I don't want to. I I don't want to go into that
• 56:38
  because quite honest, like, I mean during the pandemic, I also
• 56:42
  had a side gig where I was editing podcasts and I had to
• 56:45
  make a rule that said no political podcasts.
• 56:48
  If you're a political podcast, I won't edit your podcast because
• 56:52
  it was just so insufferable. But I.
• 56:55
  Get it? I mean like with my show, my
• 56:58
  rule has always been this I I'm, I will have religious guests on,
• 57:05
  I'll have political. I've had it before but it's not
• 57:08
  going to be like a I'm not going to try and promote that specific
• 57:17
  thing, if that makes sense. So like for instance I'm about 1
• 57:20
  religious person on my show who I was like, look I don't really
• 57:25
  do religion in politics. And he said, well, we can
• 57:27
  explore my stories like what I believe, etcetera.
• 57:31
  And I'm like, all right, maybe I'm being wrong in discounting
• 57:34
  this guy. Like, you know, maybe you know
• 57:36
  it is wrong with me. Maybe I need to learn the lesson
• 57:38
  here. So I had him on the show and to
• 57:41
  be honest, I had to cut a lot out of the show and there was a
• 57:44
  lot that was good and and was about him or his belief systems
• 57:48
  and and that was fine. But there was plenty of stuff
• 57:51
  that I had to cut out because it was just too much like a sermon.
• 57:53
  It was just too preachy. And look, there's nothing wrong
• 57:57
  with having those beliefs. But my platform is not to like
• 58:01
  sit and and promote like my show has always been more about like
• 58:05
  trying to approach things almost like from a scientific
• 58:08
  perspective. Other like heroes of mine like
• 58:10
  let's say Louis Theroux like you know I'm exploring it.
• 58:13
  I'm like with me and cults like I'm, I'm not going to sit here
• 58:16
  and giggle and laugh at it. I'll I'll give my opinion on
• 58:18
  things. But fundamentally I'm presenting
• 58:21
  something like this show is all about understanding cults.
• 58:24
  Because you're a man who spends a lot of his time like
• 58:27
  researching, conducting interviews, delving into this.
• 58:30
  So we can like delve in that together and explore it and give
• 58:34
  people like a a good kind of breakdown of cults.
• 58:37
  So like, let's say you know very little about cults.
• 58:40
  You can watch this show and be like, you know what?
• 58:42
  Now I've got a clearer understanding of like at least
• 58:44
  the principles of it, and like what to look out for and hey,
• 58:47
  maybe even what to avoid in some cases.
• 58:50
  Yeah. I mean the the thing that I
• 58:53
  would say I I don't want to. I I like.
• 58:56
  The thing is I just didn't want to.
• 58:58
  I don't want to get into the political ideologies thing
• 59:00
  because I don't want to. I I don't know what your
• 59:02
  listener base is like and I don't know if they I, I, I I
• 59:05
  don't want to maybe specifically call some people out because
• 59:08
  then that's going to get in. That's also going to get me in
• 59:11
  trouble. I'm just going to avoid that.
• 59:15
  I I would just encourage you know people if you're listening
• 59:18
  to this, if you're interested in learning more about, I really
• 59:22
  would just say go and look up the bite model from Steven
• 59:24
  Hassan and apply that to not just like your religious
• 59:31
  beliefs. Like try to take a real look at
• 59:36
  it with regards to maybe a political ideology that you
• 59:40
  follow or maybe a or or maybe just like a life coaching or
• 59:49
  spirituality or even just like mindset ideology that you follow
• 59:58
  and see if that could be having like a cult control level.
• 1:00:01
  Over your life, I mean, there doesn't necessarily need to be
• 1:00:04
  like a leader for a cult. There doesn't necessarily need
• 1:00:07
  to be like a leader for a movement or somebody who you all
• 1:00:09
  act as devotees towards. But like, there definitely are
• 1:00:15
  levels of coercive control that can occur when without somebody
• 1:00:22
  enacting them on you. It could be something that you
• 1:00:24
  research and that you find for yourself.
• 1:00:27
  Like there is one example that I wanted that I could give is also
• 1:00:32
  I want I think that like manosphere influencers in cell
• 1:00:39
  type thinking is absolutely I would say an example of cult
• 1:00:45
  control that people have where it's the other side of the coin
• 1:00:50
  where people like you we were talking about abusive
• 1:00:52
  relationships. Where people are saying my
• 1:00:57
  desire to be in a relationship is the one and only thing is the
• 1:01:02
  OR is the most important thing to my life.
• 1:01:06
  And that's where I get my validation from.
• 1:01:08
  And so that might be the kind of thing that would keep you in a
• 1:01:12
  relationship that you otherwise not might not be in.
• 1:01:15
  But also, if you're the kind of person that thinks, Oh, well, my
• 1:01:18
  worth as a person depends on my ability to either be in a
• 1:01:23
  relationship or attract women to me.
• 1:01:27
  And that's where my worth as a person comes from.
• 1:01:30
  And that's the lens through which I'm viewing everything
• 1:01:34
  that I do, then that's also a method of cult control over
• 1:01:39
  somebody. So if you're like obsessing over
• 1:01:43
  that and then you know you don't have that, then that can be so
• 1:01:48
  damaging that you might resort to some drastic measures.
• 1:01:52
  Or you might, you know, do some truly heinous acts or believe
• 1:01:55
  some truly heinous things about women, about you know the world,
• 1:02:01
  about the way that, like the world is going away from you.
• 1:02:05
  And if XYZ political thing were to happen, then that would
• 1:02:10
  reprioritize people who are like you and you would be attractive.
• 1:02:14
  Again, it's it's very much in that sort of sense of things as
• 1:02:18
  well. So don't just try to, like,
• 1:02:21
  apply the bite model to your religious beliefs also.
• 1:02:25
  Just look at it in the way that you view society and the way
• 1:02:28
  that you use, You know that you look at like politics or the way
• 1:02:31
  that you look at like relationships, because it's
• 1:02:33
  applicable everywhere. And it's like a good tool to use
• 1:02:40
  when you're trying to figure out the boundaries that you need to
• 1:02:44
  set with other people and the boundaries that you need to set
• 1:02:46
  with something that you could be a part of couldn't.
• 1:02:49
  Agree more I mean. There's like music fandoms or
• 1:02:54
  something that I think could it's like in some ways be a
• 1:03:00
  cult. Fans of certain bands if they
• 1:03:04
  take it too far. Fans of of certain.
• 1:03:07
  Well do you know what? That right there is a solid
• 1:03:10
  point. Just fandoms in general.
• 1:03:12
  I I feel that's very cult like in some respects.
• 1:03:15
  Like don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with being a fan
• 1:03:19
  of something or being really passionate about something.
• 1:03:21
  But do you know what a clue is in the name as well?
• 1:03:23
  Fan fanatic. You know it's fan now can be a
• 1:03:29
  healthy thing, but originally it didn't come from a healthy
• 1:03:33
  place. Like being fanatical about
• 1:03:35
  something, being obsessed with something.
• 1:03:37
  It's something you really need to be careful with because it
• 1:03:41
  can lead to something negative. It can lead to negative
• 1:03:45
  inappropriate behaviours, obviously.
• 1:03:47
  And it's, I don't know, sometimes I see some of the
• 1:03:49
  stuff like people fighting people in fandoms and stuff or
• 1:03:52
  going crazy with their beliefs of like trying to defend
• 1:03:55
  something and it's like you just need to chill out and just enjoy
• 1:04:00
  your the thing that you enjoy. You don't need to fight people
• 1:04:02
  over it. I never understand that.
• 1:04:04
  So like bad people or people that do bad things can make
• 1:04:08
  content that we find compelling. Just accept accepting that is
• 1:04:15
  is, is is part of life. If you know if you like
• 1:04:21
  something so much that you're not willing to accept that the
• 1:04:25
  person that made it because you emotionally identify with the
• 1:04:28
  work and you emotionally identify with the person that
• 1:04:33
  made that piece of content, that's not a you know, that's
• 1:04:37
  fair. But also like that doesn't mean
• 1:04:40
  that person can do no wrong. Yeah, I I I'm in the camp of
• 1:04:44
  like I find it difficult to support that person anymore.
• 1:04:47
  Like and it's not really that like I even what I'm doing is
• 1:04:53
  actively trying to support them. It's just that like I can't, I
• 1:04:55
  just can't listen to them anymore.
• 1:04:56
  Like if if it's a musician who's I found out it's a terrible
• 1:04:59
  person or an actor or like I like wrestling for instance.
• 1:05:03
  And there's been like professional wrestlers over the
• 1:05:05
  years that have done that, you know like big one Chris Benoit,
• 1:05:10
  we all know the story there. For those who don't know,
• 1:05:15
  professional bests are very successful, top of top of the
• 1:05:18
  game for many years. Unfortunately in in 07 he
• 1:05:22
  tragically killed himself, his wife and his child.
• 1:05:28
  And it's speculated over the years the motivations behind
• 1:05:32
  that. Was it?
• 1:05:34
  Was it, you know, did someone come in and do that?
• 1:05:37
  Was it purely him? Was it because of his CTE?
• 1:05:40
  Was it because of drugs, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
• 1:05:44
  But the thing that I hear that's very interesting is the split on
• 1:05:47
  whether or not people can go back and like watch his matches
• 1:05:50
  and enjoy them like they did before.
• 1:05:53
  It's the classic thing of can you support the artist?
• 1:05:56
  Oh sorry, separate your the art from the artists and I I'm in
• 1:06:00
  the camp of Icon, but I don't hold it against people that can.
• 1:06:03
  I think like fair play, if that works for you, I just can't.
• 1:06:07
  I feel like whenever I see that man, I just see the terrible
• 1:06:10
  person he became and not the wrestler and the legacy that he
• 1:06:13
  had. Yeah, I mean, but it also just
• 1:06:16
  goes to like everybody likes to, you know, say oh I I, I I can't,
• 1:06:24
  I can't watch it anymore. But then it there are always so
• 1:06:28
  some people who like, they're so iconic that people are just
• 1:06:34
  like, OK, well, you know, they get a pass Like, like, I mean
• 1:06:39
  like Led Zeppelin, man, I can't, like you stop listening to Led
• 1:06:43
  Zeppelin even though, like, I mean Jimmy Page had a 13 year
• 1:06:46
  old girlfriend. Jesus, I didn't know that.
• 1:06:48
  That's terrible. I mean like lots of, I mean back
• 1:06:52
  in the 70s, man, like that was everywhere.
• 1:06:55
  But, like, am I going to stop listening to Zeppelin now?
• 1:06:57
  No, I can't stop the the music's too good.
• 1:07:01
  It's too good. Like.
• 1:07:02
  And and this is kind of like one of the things where, like people
• 1:07:05
  always debate, you know, is Michael Jackson guilty?
• 1:07:07
  Is Michael Jackson not guilty? And I don't know if it's like as
• 1:07:11
  much of A, you know, whether people are are that upset about
• 1:07:17
  it anymore, I mean. You know the crazy thing with
• 1:07:20
  that though? You mentioned like iconic so big
• 1:07:23
  that you that they get a pass. Like, let's say it was proven
• 1:07:27
  100% definite that it was the case that he had committed those
• 1:07:31
  crimes, right? I think there'd still be a lot
• 1:07:34
  of people that would still support his stuff and as you
• 1:07:37
  say, try and explain it away because he reached the level of
• 1:07:42
  success that's like beyond the normal level of success.
• 1:07:46
  It's like like iconic. It's like you could try and
• 1:07:50
  delete him from history, but it'd be impossible.
• 1:07:52
  Like they tried to do it with the rest of Chris Benoit and
• 1:07:55
  it's like they've done a fairly good job of of sort of hiding
• 1:07:59
  him in a sense. But like, there's key moments
• 1:08:01
  that you can't hide. Like for those who don't know
• 1:08:05
  about wrestling, there's an event every year called
• 1:08:08
  WrestleMania, which is I guess like the Super Bowl of
• 1:08:10
  professional wrestling on the 20th and on the 20th show,
• 1:08:14
  WrestleMania 20. This guy, Chris Benoit was in
• 1:08:17
  the main event, the like the show ends with him and another
• 1:08:21
  legendary wrestler, Eddie Guerrero, holding hands,
• 1:08:24
  embracing each other like hugging each other like best
• 1:08:27
  friends, like it was real and that's forever tarnished.
• 1:08:32
  Like they like the company never promotes that.
• 1:08:34
  And I understand, even though it's the fairy tale ending, it's
• 1:08:36
  like they can't promote it because of what this guy did.
• 1:08:39
  And it's like like, but people are still into it, People still
• 1:08:43
  support it. And I get that.
• 1:08:45
  Like, I don't think that you can just, you can't take it out of
• 1:08:48
  history. You know you can, you can make a
• 1:08:50
  decision not to promote said thing.
• 1:08:52
  And I agree with that. But like, you can't delete it.
• 1:08:55
  You can't pretend it didn't happen.
• 1:08:57
  I mean, I'm. I'm Jewish, but I still listen
• 1:09:00
  to old Kanye, you know, I mean, but here's if it's so if Taylor
• 1:09:07
  Swift shot somebody, Taylor straight up murdered somebody,
• 1:09:12
  you think the Swifties would still be like, OK, well, I want
• 1:09:15
  to know the context behind. There's always going to.
• 1:09:18
  I mean, I think this is a very key point.
• 1:09:20
  There's always going to be a subset of people that will, that
• 1:09:23
  will defend something and defend it blindly.
• 1:09:26
  I mean like taking the Kanye thing as an example, I mean, I
• 1:09:30
  will say that I don't agree with anything he said on that.
• 1:09:33
  I think it's abhorrent. But that is a man who's clearly
• 1:09:37
  very ill, unwell and not in a good headspace.
• 1:09:41
  I don't think that by any means is an excuse.
• 1:09:44
  But at the same time, like I I wouldn't platform someone who is
• 1:09:50
  in that. Like, he needs help.
• 1:09:51
  He needs professional help. He needs to be supported.
• 1:09:53
  He needs to like, yeah, I don't. I don't believe that he truly
• 1:09:56
  believes the things that come out of his mouth.
• 1:09:58
  I think he's just like, so in that bubble of just like and so
• 1:10:05
  many of them are in that crazy Hollywood bubble where they're
• 1:10:08
  all just, like, not thinking clearly.
• 1:10:11
  I think. That I don't.
• 1:10:13
  Believe that stuff. I think he does believe the
• 1:10:15
  world's out to get him. Well, that's really terrible.
• 1:10:18
  If he does really believe that, I mean.
• 1:10:20
  Also I I think that it like because when you look at him I
• 1:10:24
  think and you look at his behaviour especially towards
• 1:10:28
  women. Yeah towards like the there was
• 1:10:33
  the whole like he was stalking his ex-wife Kim Kardashian and
• 1:10:39
  and you know all all of his you know bad think whatever you want
• 1:10:43
  to think about her. But all of the bad behavior that
• 1:10:45
  he had towards her when they were getting divorced and then
• 1:10:49
  the way that, you know, he had this other relationship after
• 1:10:53
  her with this woman Bianca, who was very much kept under a tight
• 1:11:01
  level of control and you know, not allowed to speak to outside
• 1:11:04
  people and isolated from her friends, from her family in it.
• 1:11:09
  Very cult, like, as you were saying in the beginning of the
• 1:11:11
  show, yeah. Relationships absolutely can,
• 1:11:14
  you know, be culty and and abusive.
• 1:11:19
  Relationships are. I would classify them as like a
• 1:11:21
  one-on-one cult. This is somebody who believes
• 1:11:25
  that you know, who has these beliefs that he is better than
• 1:11:29
  everybody and that anything that goes against him is a conspiracy
• 1:11:34
  against everybody else because he has this sort of narcissistic
• 1:11:37
  and abusive tendency. Right with us I was going to say
• 1:11:41
  is it speaks to like that's the classic narcissist, isn't it?
• 1:11:43
  That believes they're better than everyone.
• 1:11:46
  And you know the. That's sort of The thing is that
• 1:11:49
  like whether or not he, you know, he needs help or whatever
• 1:11:53
  there, there, it gets to a point where there's stop, there's no
• 1:11:56
  excuses anymore and you can't make excuses for things that
• 1:11:58
  people do anymore. And so it doesn't matter to me
• 1:12:00
  whether he believes it or whether he's unwell or whether
• 1:12:03
  he's needed help or this or that, because he.
• 1:12:06
  To be to be clear, I don't like don't ask ever an excuse guys to
• 1:12:09
  be very clear with just so we're clear.
• 1:12:14
  I just wanted to kind of mention that because I think that, like
• 1:12:17
  sometimes that gets glossed over.
• 1:12:20
  And I, I think that, you know, I mean, I don't know like a
• 1:12:25
  person's belief systems, ultimately it comes from, it
• 1:12:30
  comes from who they are and what they believe in their core.
• 1:12:33
  And it also comes down to like who they're surrounded by as
• 1:12:36
  well. I think like going back to, you
• 1:12:38
  know, Sadie and her experiences, I imagine that she had a lot of
• 1:12:42
  beliefs that she had to sort of remove over time that were
• 1:12:46
  difficult to dispel to remove because as you know, she'd been
• 1:12:50
  indoctrinated. She'd been around and said
• 1:12:51
  people for so long that that becomes your reality, you know?
• 1:12:56
  She learned in school that the Loch Ness Monster is real and
• 1:12:59
  that it's surviving dinosaur from.
• 1:13:02
  And the fact that the Loch Ness Monster is real is proof that
• 1:13:08
  the flood of Noah actually happened in real life.
• 1:13:11
  And because it's because basically dinosaurs lived before
• 1:13:14
  the flood of Noah and when the flood happened all the dinosaurs
• 1:13:17
  died because I guess they couldn't get them on the ark.
• 1:13:19
  The ark wasn't big enough or whatever, And the the dinosaur,
• 1:13:25
  the the the Loch Ness Monster is a dinosaur that survived the
• 1:13:29
  flood of Noah. And scientists are keeping that
• 1:13:33
  fact from the general public because they don't want people,
• 1:13:40
  because they want people to believe in evolution.
• 1:13:43
  And if evolution becomes the belief that everybody has, then
• 1:13:47
  the devil wins, and they're influenced by the devil to try
• 1:13:50
  to keep people from getting saved by Jesus.
• 1:13:54
  She was literally taught that in school in in in her Christian
• 1:14:00
  fundamentalist school that she grew up in.
• 1:14:08
  Let's switch things up. I've got a couple of final
• 1:14:11
  questions for you to sort of draw things to a close for
• 1:14:13
  today, completely unrelated to cults.
• 1:14:15
  So it'd be a little bit of breath of fresh air for us, for
• 1:14:19
  us both, because I don't know, I I find cults.
• 1:14:24
  I love this topic, but it is heavy.
• 1:14:26
  It, it does weigh on you quite a lot after a while, I think.
• 1:14:30
  And I when we're thinking that when I was watching the Twin
• 1:14:32
  Flames documentary, I was just like kind of really sad and
• 1:14:36
  empty afterwards. Just, I felt really bad for all
• 1:14:38
  these people, to be honest. That sort of.
• 1:14:41
  Thing like on the show that I do with Sadie, we don't go into
• 1:14:45
  details about the abuses that people suffered.
• 1:14:47
  No, of course not. We we just don't talk about
• 1:14:51
  that. But like, that doesn't mean that
• 1:14:53
  I don't read about it. So it's like, I mean, I I do
• 1:14:57
  spend a decent amount of time reading about pretty horrible
• 1:15:00
  sexual abuse that people went through when they're either, you
• 1:15:04
  know, a lot of them were children, some of them were
• 1:15:05
  adults, and that's not excellent.
• 1:15:08
  And I don't enjoy that. So I tend to try to not consume
• 1:15:11
  cult content when I'm outside of the out of work.
• 1:15:14
  I've kind of set that boundary for myself, so.
• 1:15:18
  It's important, yeah. I I have to do the same.
• 1:15:20
  Like I have to pull myself away from things because it's like it
• 1:15:26
  can affect you like in a big way, in a in a profound way.
• 1:15:29
  And I think we we have to do what we can to protect
• 1:15:31
  ourselves. Like, for instance, I know
• 1:15:32
  there's a lot of people that are obsessed with true crime, and I
• 1:15:35
  don't think that having an interest in true crime or
• 1:15:38
  enjoying true crime is is necessarily a bad thing.
• 1:15:40
  But I do think you have to kind of consider the fact that if
• 1:15:43
  you're consuming this content over and over again constantly,
• 1:15:46
  like, remember that it's negative content and you know
• 1:15:49
  you need to do what you can to just consume positive stuff.
• 1:15:52
  You know, like have that coming in as well.
• 1:15:56
  And if done in the wrong way, be a bit exploitative as well.
• 1:16:02
  And you got it like if you're making that kind of content.
• 1:16:04
  I mean some people are better about the way that they go about
• 1:16:07
  it than others. That's kind of been I I try not
• 1:16:11
  to listen to a lot of true crime stuff just because of the just
• 1:16:16
  because it doesn't necessarily have the best effect on me
• 1:16:18
  personally. I know what you mean as well,
• 1:16:20
  that certain hosts sometimes, well, it's like you're getting a
• 1:16:24
  bit of a kick out of it. And I'm like, you do realize
• 1:16:26
  these are real people that are going through like these
• 1:16:29
  horrible, horrible things. Like, it's not a joke, buddy,
• 1:16:32
  like, you know. Some people like if you make
• 1:16:36
  that content enough you can kind of get desensitized through it.
• 1:16:38
  So that's another reason why I don't like because I wasn't
• 1:16:40
  raised in this so I didn't live and breathe this for 20 years or
• 1:16:43
  25 years growing up like other people did.
• 1:16:45
  So anyway, I welcome your non cult related questions.
• 1:16:49
  Yes, let's do it. What's the best advice you've
• 1:16:53
  ever received? Best advice I've ever received?
• 1:17:02
  I don't know. Best advice I've ever received.
• 1:17:21
  What resonates with you? Let me I'm trying to think of
• 1:17:27
  something that I use in my daily life.
• 1:17:33
  Could be sent from childhood, maybe something your parents or
• 1:17:37
  family friends, something told someone told you that stuck with
• 1:17:41
  you. Best advice I've ever received
• 1:17:46
  is, oh, I know what it is, is that if you're frying an egg and
• 1:17:58
  you brown the butter before you put the egg in the in in the
• 1:18:01
  skillet, then it tastes better, yeah.
• 1:18:06
  There you go. Some solid cooking advice there
• 1:18:08
  guys. Brilliant.
• 1:18:09
  Thank you. That every day of my life.
• 1:18:14
  What's the biggest life lesson you've learned so far?
• 1:18:17
  Biggest life lesson I've learned so far is I know that you just
• 1:18:24
  kind of have to let people make their own choices.
• 1:18:32
  Powerful, particularly within the context of of what we've
• 1:18:35
  sort of discussed here today. Because, I mean, at the end of
• 1:18:39
  the day, it's OK to make mistakes.
• 1:18:42
  That's part of life. But we have to be free to make
• 1:18:45
  those mistakes and it can't be like people telling us what we
• 1:18:48
  should and shouldn't be doing. We need to figure that out for
• 1:18:50
  ourselves. Final question for you.
• 1:18:56
  Do you have any upcoming projects or final thoughts that
• 1:18:59
  you'd like to share with our listeners?
• 1:19:02
  Well, as always you can check out the Leaving Eden podcast.
• 1:19:06
  We we have, like I want to say 160 episodes out that you can go
• 1:19:11
  back and listen to. So if you want to, if you want a
• 1:19:15
  new podcast to listen to about cults, then you can go and check
• 1:19:20
  that out. I think episode 57 is like an
• 1:19:23
  episode that we made specifically for new listeners.
• 1:19:25
  So if you go back to episode 57 that you can check that out and
• 1:19:28
  you'll be and and we'll kind of introduce a lot of the basic
• 1:19:31
  terms to you. That's the main thing that I
• 1:19:36
  have to promote. That's not I'm I'm not really
• 1:19:38
  working on very much other than that I there's some shows that I
• 1:19:44
  edit and there's some shows that I produce, but none of those are
• 1:19:46
  shows that I'm on. So I not really going to promote
• 1:19:50
  those and they're not really relevant to this conversation.
• 1:19:52
  No, it's. Well, listen, I just want to say
• 1:19:56
  a massive thank you. We've been chatting for a long
• 1:19:58
  time. I'm very conscious of your time.
• 1:20:00
  Thank you so much for a fantastic conversation.
• 1:20:03
  I really really appreciate it. I'm glad to be here, Had a good
• 1:20:06
  time. It's a good conversation, a lot
• 1:20:08
  of fun. I'm glad to hear it, man.
• 1:20:09
  That's the main thing. That's the main thing.
• 1:20:11
  And everybody, make sure you go out of your way.
• 1:20:13
  Let's check out that show, the Leave A Needham podcast.
• 1:20:15
  I think the work that Gabriel and Sadie is are doing is
• 1:20:19
  absolutely fantastic. And yet again, another show that
• 1:20:22
  you won't want to miss. So go check that out.
• 1:20:25
  And thank you very much for listening to the show.
• 1:20:27
  As always, be safe. Be well.
• 1:20:30
  Thank you so much for listening. See you the next one.
• 1:20:33
  Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Christian
• 1:20:35
  Reeve Podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please
• 1:20:38
  leave us a review on Pod Chaser, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google
• 1:20:43
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• 1:20:45
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• 1:20:49
  all of that jazz. It really, really helped us out
• 1:20:52
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• 1:20:55
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• 1:20:57
  So thank you so much for your support.
• 1:20:59
  And also if you'd like to get yourself some bonus content and
• 1:21:03
  support me in the process, go to patreon.com.
• 1:21:06
  Christian Reeve, thank you so much.
• 1:21:08
  I'll see you in the next one.