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Hello! Big news, everybody. Exactly Right's newest podcast, Trust Me, is finally here.
00:02:13
Trust Me is a show about cults, extreme belief, manipulation, and the people who've lived through it.
00:02:17
And it's hosted by two cult survivors, Lola Blanc and Megan Elizabeth. Every week, they talk to survivors, experts, and sometimes even people still inside these groups
00:02:25
to figure out how belief can turn into control and what it takes to break free. Today, you're going to hear the story of artist and writer Akina Cox,
00:02:33
who grew up in the Unification Church, also known as the Moonies. It is a fascinating, powerful story, and it's the perfect example of why Trust Me
00:02:40
is such an important show and why we're so excited to have them on the network. So settle in and get ready to hear the first episode of Trust Me here on Exactly Right.
00:02:49
Now, this is a two-parter, so when you are done with this episode you're about to hear,
00:02:53
head over to Trust Me's feed to hear part two, and then you can binge their back catalog of over
00:02:58
200 episodes. Listen to Trust Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
00:03:03
podcasts, and make sure to leave a rating or review. It really helps. And now, please enjoy
00:03:08
Exactly Right's newest podcast, Trust Me. Goodbye. Trust me. Do you trust me? Would I ever lead you astray?
00:03:17
Trust me. This is the truth. The only truth. If anybody ever tells you to just trust them, don't.
00:03:25
Welcome to Trust Me, the podcast about cults, extreme belief, and manipulation from two
00:03:30
future brides who've actually experienced it. I am Lola Blanc. And I am Megan Elizabeth.
00:03:35
Today, our guest is Akina Cox, artist and writer who grew up in the Unification Church,
00:03:40
also known as the Moonies. In part one today, we'll talk to her about the background on the
00:03:45
church and leader, Reverend Moon, how her parents both joined by getting rides from members in the
00:03:49
70s and getting a subsequent invitation to dinner, and what it was like being a member of this group
00:03:54
growing up. She'll tell us about the mass wedding ceremony that she participated in, how her family
00:04:00
moved to the border of North and South Korea, the lavish lifestyle the Reverend Moon was living
00:04:06
while its members were often working long hours without pay, and how she began to question the
00:04:11
church when she went to college. And next week in part two, we will talk more about our current
00:04:16
political landscape and the salon article she wrote about the parallels she sees between her
00:04:21
upbringing in a cult and the Trump administration's ice crackdowns. Before we get to our guests,
00:04:26
we do have a big announcement. What is it, Lola? Well, Megan, I think you already know this. But
00:04:33
for our listeners, we have transitioned to a new home and we are now at Exactly Right Media.
00:04:39
So exciting. This has been our dream network for so long. We are so excited to make this move and so happy to be back with y'all listening to us.
00:04:48
Lola, do you know how we got on Exactly Right Media? Tell me, Megan. I put Exactly Right on my vision board.
00:04:54
So here we are. And I think that's magical thinking. And I think you're wrong. And that's what we do a lot on this podcast.
00:05:02
We think each other are wrong. Indeed. Which is maybe a good transition to explain to y'all who we are.
00:05:10
I am Lola Blanc, resident skeptic, and I am somebody who believed in a cult leader myself as a child.
00:05:17
I was originally a mainstream regular Mormon, and then a man swooped in and manipulated my mother.
00:05:23
And then I believed that he was a prophet of God. And it was a scam. It was a very harrowing experience for my mother.
00:05:31
He did prey upon her LDS beliefs, and he has continued to do that with other people until we got out of it.
00:05:39
And ever since that experience, which you can listen to the full story of on episode one of this podcast, my mom was our very first guest.
00:05:48
But ever since then I have been extremely interested in how people beliefs get preyed upon by manipulators and how we are all influenced to believe crazy things and how it happens to people who are incredibly intelligent and wise and thoughtful and curious because so many of our
00:06:07
guests really are like that. So I decided that I wanted to create a podcast that centered the
00:06:13
survivors and centered the human experience of it and didn't make it this like scary thing,
00:06:19
but like really showed people what it's like to have that experience. And I was looking for
00:06:24
somebody who could share that with me. And I fortunately was introduced to Megan by a mutual
00:06:29
friend. And I got to hear a little bit about her story, which she can tell you about. Yeah. I mean,
00:06:34
the beginning of this podcast is really interesting. I was sitting with our mutual friend who was very,
00:06:39
we're very good friends with him, but we'd never met before. Like for years, we're both going to
00:06:42
his birthday tonight. How did we never meet each other? That's so weird. Anyway, I was sitting with
00:06:47
him and he got a text and he was like, oh my God, my friend just asked if I know any therapists who
00:06:53
grew up in a cult. And I was a therapist at the time who grew up in a cult. And I grew up in the
00:06:59
two by twos. It's really exploding into the news right now because it's somehow been kept a secret
00:07:04
for more than 100 years. But some people call it the truth, the way, the worker religion,
00:07:11
Cunyites, whatever you might call it. I've never heard that one. Yeah, there's a lot to it. We
00:07:16
actually have an interview with two ex-two by twos, Carrie and Kyle Hanks, that you can go listen to.
00:07:21
So I'm fourth generation on both sides of my family. My parents met through it and very odd
00:07:30
growing up experience because it's kind of like being Amish, but you have to live in the normal
00:07:35
world and go to normal school, but you just have to kind of look weird. Like you have to be weird
00:07:40
enough in the world that people are like, there's something special about you. Is it Jesus?
00:07:44
so no television long skirts long hair really scared of hell lots of lots of religious trauma
00:07:56
and this podcast has been such a gift because I just keep getting to deconstruct
00:08:01
with every episode that we do it's so amazing to be able to hear our guest stories
00:08:05
and connect with them and be able to joke about our experiences because that's very important
00:08:10
it can't just be we can't just live in the darkness although sometimes a little darkness is necessary. Yeah, sometimes a lot of darkness, sometimes a little darkness. But
00:08:18
I think we always come back to being very life affirming and hopeful and kind of the opposite
00:08:24
of what cults teach us to be. Yeah, we're all about that post-traumatic growth, baby. Resilience,
00:08:29
baby. Yeah. So for the next segment that we do on this show, the cultiest thing of the week,
00:08:35
I ask Megan what the most cult-like thing that she experienced that week is. So Megan,
00:08:42
I would love to know what your cultiest thing of the week is. Well, my cultiest thing was actually something that I read about in one of Akina's articles,
00:08:50
which is this woman known as the MAGA Grammy. You've heard of her, of course. Her name is Pamela Hemphill.
00:08:58
And she went and rioted on January 6th. And Trump pardoned her. And she said no to his pardon.
00:09:07
She said that she was being led by something that was not her critical mind and that she wants to serve her time and not be pardoned.
00:09:16
I mean, she did serve her time, but she still, you know, doesn't want the pardon.
00:09:20
That is so interesting. And I want to have her on so badly. I know. Me too. I mean, yeah, I'd be so curious to know.
00:09:27
I mean, and I did read a little bit about that when she first spoke out about that.
00:09:31
I'd be so curious to know more about just like what was going on for her when that happened,
00:09:36
how she thinks about everybody else who's gotten the part, you know, like there's just
00:09:41
so much there I want to know more about. Yeah. One of the interesting things she said that makes it my cultiest thing of the week was
00:09:47
that what got her out of her groupthink was that she started engaging with people on X
00:09:52
that had different thoughts than her. And they were like just being kind of conversational and not accusatory.
00:09:58
and she had, you know, interesting good faith dialogue. So that's actually also how Megan Phelps Roper, I believe,
00:10:05
who was a member of the Westboro Baptist Church, that's also how she began to question
00:10:09
and eventually leave that horrible family. Yeah, I mean, yeah, she was his daughter.
00:10:14
So great story. She was also just engaging with people who were having good faith conversations with her.
00:10:20
Yeah, not to say that always happens. No. But it is really interesting and gives me hope when it does happen.
00:10:26
Yeah, and I think next week's episode when we talk to her more, she kind of calls back to stuff like this.
00:10:31
So throwing it out this week. What about you? What's your cultiest thing of the week?
00:10:34
Well, this is another thing we will actually talk more about next week, but I feel I would be remiss
00:10:39
in our first proper episode back if I didn't address our current political landscape.
00:10:45
Of course. So, okay. We all know that Trump blames immigrants for all things in the world
00:10:51
and, you know, generally anyone on the left and trans people. He uses fear-mongering language about them
00:10:57
And now there have been these horrific ice crackdowns in which people are getting deported en masse at higher rates than ever before.
00:11:05
And I will say, like, Democrats were also engaging in too many ice deportations.
00:11:10
But this is now happening at a new level where people are being targeted simply for being brown.
00:11:16
And people who have the, quote, wrong perspective or think differently from what Trump wants are also being targeted.
00:11:23
These are all extremely culty things that are happening when you are demonizing a group of people and trying to eliminate anybody who is critiquing you.
00:11:33
He has used language like wanting to deport the worst, has used all this really, yeah, like fear-mongering language.
00:11:40
And I just want to shout out some statistics here because 72% of the people that have been recently detained by ICE have no criminal convictions.
00:11:49
using their own scale that rates the threat of each detainee, 84 of people detained by ICE were deemed to be level one which is no threat Of course if somebody is committing a violent crime sure But that not what happening here
00:12:06
And I will mention this next week as well. But the idea that immigrants are somehow more criminal than other people is false.
00:12:13
And it's actually the opposite because data consistently shows that undocumented immigrants commit less crimes than people who were born here.
00:12:19
A National Institute of Justice study examining data from the Texas Department of Public Safety found that undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rates of U.S.-born citizens for violent crimes and a quarter the rate of U.S.-born citizens for property crimes.
00:12:35
Another report found that immigrants have consistently had lower incarceration than people that were born here for the last 150 years.
00:12:42
this has been true. And meanwhile, the daily average of people being processed into the system
00:12:45
has doubled since the beginning of this year because of an arbitrary quota coming from Trump
00:12:50
who wants to enact the biggest mass deportations in history. And now, of course, with this big,
00:12:54
stupid fucking bill, we've expanded ICE funding to unprecedentedly high levels. And it is very, it's very alarming. I like, I would just would encourage folks,
00:13:07
and I know that if anyone listening is a Trump supporter, I probably already lost them.
00:13:11
I already lost him. But I would say like what I've been trying to do more of is look at some of what he writes and examine the language and the purpose of that language. He did this like crazy Memorial Day post that's just using like rapists, criminals, evil, murderers, horrible, you know, like look at the language and what the goal of that language is.
00:13:32
and then what is the result that's actually happening? Because what's happening right now
00:13:36
is just that like people who are working in farms and paying taxes are being sent away for no reason.
00:13:42
Right. That is not the America that I want to live in. Well, as she says in Clueless,
00:13:47
doesn't say RSVP on the Statue of Liberty. That is the correct way to end that comment.
00:13:55
To end my rant. Yeah, I have no good conclusion. That's the truth. I have no good conclusion.
00:14:01
It's very scary. I hope that we all can work together to combat this. Well, I think Akina gives us a lot of good perspective on how she grew up and what we can do moving forward.
00:14:12
So please listen to this week's episode. Enjoy it and listen to next week's as well because she gives some really great ideas.
00:14:18
Yeah, we will talk more next week about how to sort of manage our emotional state and also feel like we're contributing something.
00:14:25
But for now, let's dig in. Let's talk to Akina about her childhood in the Unification Church.
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00:15:07
Hey there, it's Ryan Seacrest for Safeway. For you, save days are here now through June 23rd.
00:15:13
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Restrictions apply. See the website for full terms and conditions. Hey everyone, it's Cal Penn, host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
00:15:42
This week on the podcast, I'm sitting down with divergent author Veronica Roth to talk about her sprawling new novel, Seek the Traitor's Son.
00:15:49
It's a sci-fi fantasy epic about two protagonists on opposite sides of a war and a prophecy neither of them wanted.
00:15:56
My first book was Divergent. And when that came out, like, because it was so popular, I think it attracted like mostly positivity, but the negativity I sucked in like a sponge.
00:16:07
And I think it was like critiques of things I liked when I was like, you know, I was 23 and I wrote this book and it had all my like dorky little cheesy or maybe unrealistic loves in it.
00:16:19
And I started to feel a lot of shame about those things. And so for the rest of my career, I steered away from those little things that like make you feel pleasure when you read.
00:16:31
But I also was like saying no to these parts of myself that I then was like, screw it.
00:16:38
So that's this book. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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00:17:21
Welcome, Akina Cox, to Trust Me. Thanks for being here in the studio with us today.
00:17:28
Yes, thanks for having me. Okay, so we have you here with us today because you wrote an incredible article for Salon, right?
00:17:36
Yes. About how you are seeing parallels between your childhood and occult and our current administration and some of the behaviors with ICE.
00:17:45
Let's just start out talking about how you grew up because we have not done an episode on the Unification Church, a.k.a. the Moody's, since Steve Hassan, which is years ago at this point.
00:17:54
So tell us how did your parents end up in the Unification Church Okay so I a second generation member of the Unification Church or I was before I left
00:18:05
which means that my parents joined, which is the situation for like a lot of people my age who
00:18:12
grew up in the church. A lot of our parents joined in the 70s or late 60s. And then we were born,
00:18:20
a lot of us in the 80s because Reverend Moon, who was the leader of the Unification Church,
00:18:26
he did a lot of arranged mass weddings. Both my parents were hippies and they were born in the
00:18:35
mid-50s. So my dad barely escaped getting drafted into Vietnam. And he was just hitchhiking across
00:18:44
the country and he met someone who was chatting with him and told him about world peace and,
00:18:51
you know, all these great things they could do together. And then he went to get some free
00:18:57
dinner with this guy and then, yeah, then went to that second location. Yeah. What a like quintessential, what year was that? Do you know?
00:19:09
It was, I'm guessing, like, 73. Yeah, I mean, when people were hitchhiking, a guy picks you up hitchhiking, tells you about world peace, and he pulls you into a cult.
00:19:20
And feeds you. That's a key. And you eat the food they give you. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
00:19:27
I mean, do you know, like, what was going on for him at that time? Was that something he was really, like, searching for? Was it a message of peace?
00:19:34
Honestly, I feel like his story is kind of emblematic of a larger story of like a bunch of kids who grew up right after World War II. Like my grandparents, my granddads on both sides were in World War II. And, you know, they came home and didn't really want to talk about it. And there was pressure to be perfect. And then all of a sudden, they're supposed to go off and fight in this Vietnam War, which sounded crazy.
00:20:04
And I think there was, they felt like they couldn't trust the dominant culture. Like, they don't want to trust this government that's sending them off to war to die.
00:20:16
So then they're, like, more open for these other groups coming along. Yeah. I mean, it makes so much sense and it makes me think about how this is such, we're in such a cult era again right now.
00:20:28
because that resistance to the establishment is very prevalent right now, understandably,
00:20:35
because the establishment is doing terrible things on so many levels. But yeah, I mean,
00:20:40
we'll get into that later. But just hearing you say that, I'm like, yeah, that's now.
00:20:44
I know. I feel like when I first left the church and I would talk about my experiences with other
00:20:50
people, there was this attitude of like, oh my gosh, that was so like an exotic time. And you
00:20:56
just kind of see it through the lens of a film camera, you know, like hippies in LA wearing
00:21:03
flowy dresses and talking about world peace and, you know, eating vegan food or whatever.
00:21:09
And it felt like such a time that was inaccessible, but it now feels like it's come back again.
00:21:15
Yeah, it's making a comeback. Yeah, I do. I feel like I connect with this. I know.
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Hey there, it's Ryan Seacrest for Safeway. For you, save days are here now through June 23rd.
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Enjoy savings on top of savings when you shop in-store or online for easy pickup or delivery.
00:22:52
Restrictions apply. See the website for full terms and conditions. Hey everyone, it's Cal Penn, host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
00:23:02
This week on the podcast, I'm sitting down with Will Wheaton, who played Gordy Lachance in Stand By Me 40 years ago,
00:23:09
and now narrates Stephen King's The Body, the novella that inspired it all. We talk about what it's like to return to a story that shaped his life,
00:23:18
channeling his memories of River Phoenix and the recording booth, and why the friendships you have at 12 might be the most important ones you'll ever have.
00:23:27
I know Gordy Lachance. I am Gordy Lachance. Like, I mean, even when I was a little kid, I was Gordy Lachance when I didn't know it.
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00:24:18
What about your mom? How did she get? So she joined in a similar way. Okay. So she, I don't think has been formally diagnosed with
00:24:27
anything, but she sees spirits. She's using air quotes. Yes. So my theory is that she was off to
00:24:38
college. I think she was starting to have some like mental health issues. She came home to Berkeley,
00:24:45
California. She didn't really want to talk about it with her family. Understandably, I'm sure she
00:24:50
was like not sure how to explain it. Like 70s mental health treatments were not that great.
00:24:57
Yeah. Right. So then she was like doing homework at the local library, met some guys who wanted to
00:25:06
give her a ride home and she took it. A lot of rides happening here. Yes. And they invited her to
00:25:13
come by their house for dinner. And then, yeah. Your parents are kind of the perfect couple.
00:25:21
They love rides and dinner. Which is funny because they're like not great cooks.
00:25:28
Like I would expect better food from them. Okay. Lucky I relate. I cannot cook and I do not cook.
00:25:34
And if someone was like, I will give you food, I always say yes. So that must have been a common
00:25:39
tactic to look for people who needed rides. It was a common tactic. I heard that they often,
00:25:45
like, recruiters would look for people with wearing backpacks because it meant you were,
00:25:50
like, going somewhere or in school or in some period of transition. And, I mean, they tried
00:25:57
this, like, all day, every day. So I'm sure they talked to, like, 100 people that day.
00:26:02
Right. And my mom is the one that fell for it. Wow. And before you were born, presumably, was when the mass wedding.
00:26:11
Yeah. So they were supposed to, back in the day, work for the church for many years before you have the option of getting married.
00:26:20
It was something like three or seven years, one of those where you're supposed to like essentially work for free and you're like volunteering 24-7, living out of a van, either going from like city to city fundraising, selling little tchotchkes and trinkets and saying it's, you know, for your world peace or for your youth group or whatever.
00:26:42
or they were living out of these church centers and just recruiting people from the nearby city.
00:26:49
And so they did that for several years. And then they got married in the famous Madison Square Garden blessing.
00:26:58
Well, we call it a blessing. It's a mass wedding ceremony. I think that was 1982.
00:27:03
I mean, it blows my mind how big this. It was. Can you tell us how big? Their blessing was several thousand couples.
00:27:12
I want to say 3,000 or 3,000 people. That's so crazy. Can you just like, for those not familiar with the Unification Church, also known as the Moonies,
00:27:23
they apparently say now that saying the Moonies is a derogatory term. I've heard they sometimes go out or they used to go after people for saying that like it's a slur or something,
00:27:35
but you can call it whatever you want to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. I mean, what was this group?
00:27:41
Paint a picture for those who don't know. Yes. So the Unification Church was started by Reverend Moon, Reverend Sun Myung Moon, in, I want to say the 1950s in Korea.
00:27:54
So after World War II, there was the Korean War. I think it started around 1950.
00:28:00
And he grew up in North Korea. He escaped by essentially walking down to the end of South Korea.
00:28:07
because, you know, it's kind of like this very long peninsula. So we have an exciting origin story from this one.
00:28:13
Wow. And I want to say there's like a million asterisks I'm laying in here because a lot of what he said was obviously not true.
00:28:21
Right, right, right. Like I heard this story that he like crossed the Han River,
00:28:25
which is, or no, maybe it was the Imjin River. Anyway, he crossed this river with a man on his back
00:28:33
that he carefully carried him down because this man wasn't able to walk. And there's like a picture of it,
00:28:39
like in a bunch of church centers. Turns out it's not the same guy. It's like not Reverend Moon in that picture.
00:28:45
Oh, really? It's like someone else. Just relying on white people's racism. Well, it was like,
00:28:51
it was a very blurry, like black and white picture from the 1950s. Yeah. So like everything is wrong.
00:29:00
Yeah. But from his perspective, from his perspective, He went to the South Korea.
00:29:07
He started preaching. There were a bunch of random cults in that area because my theory is, again, when like there's crazy upheaval, then there's more room for these cults to come about.
00:29:23
And so there were a bunch of other ones. He seems to have gotten some ideas from some cults.
00:29:29
He starts to get popular. he's getting in trouble with the law because he says he's anti-communist maybe the problem was
00:29:39
bigamy so anyway but he is getting bigger and bigger he moves to the states in 1971
00:29:47
and starts like going on these big speaking tours and getting lots of people to come and kids just start dropping out of high school joining It kind of started a moral panic And we have people like deprogrammers who started kidnapping people who are in the cult because
00:30:08
their parents were just like, where did these guys go? That was one of the most interesting
00:30:13
things about your story to me was that the deprogrammers for your parents became kind of
00:30:17
a repeatable story of like, we escaped the deprogrammers. Can you say a little bit more
00:30:22
about that. Okay. So I grew up with these stories of my mom trying to smooth things over with her
00:30:31
family, being like, it's fine. I'm in this group. Don't worry about me. Okay. I'll meet up with you.
00:30:37
According to her, my grandmother did hire deprogrammers to come and kidnap her. And she
00:30:45
like acted like everything was fine. And then my mom ran away as soon as she could and made her way
00:30:51
back to a church property. Yeah. The thing I'm just finding so fascinating with this story and
00:30:57
also with everything these days is North Korea, obviously very cult-like culture. You escape that,
00:31:05
you start a cult. Deprogrammers getting people out of the cult in that era were very much their
00:31:10
own cultic dynamic. Yeah. Were, you know, like in essence, like very abusive a lot of the time.
00:31:17
Yeah. Why can't we just respond to a cult culture by not creating a new one? Why is it so hard for us?
00:31:26
It's a cult within a cult within a cult within a cult. It's just never ending. We react.
00:31:30
Yeah. And it's just so interesting, the narratives that we make about what happened, because to your mother, this was like a heroic story.
00:31:38
Like, I escaped the deprogrammers. Which probably was partly valid. Yeah, totally. I later heard from another family member that it happened, like, according to them, like, much more relaxed. And, you know, they just wanted to talk to my mom. But my mom saw them and thought, I'm about to be kidnapped. Right. And so they were actually like on a boat and my mom jumped over the side, according to her, and just like swam away when no one was looking.
00:32:09
But yeah, so but that was before you. That was way before I was born. I think when I came along, well, first of all, when people got married in the church, if you're legally married to someone, then if they have like a psychotic break or if there's something wrong with them, then their spouse is in charge of them, right?
00:32:29
So once my mom got married, my grandparents couldn't really try and kidnap her anymore.
00:32:36
Because I think what they were doing with the Duke programmers was they were kidnapping them, bringing them to a favorable judge who would say, this person can't make decisions for themselves.
00:32:46
And then they would have to get treatment. I see. Or, you know, they would have to at least be under their parents' like legal control.
00:32:54
Like a Britney Spears in a good way. Or something. Yeah. Yes. So you can't really do that if someone is married because then it's just their partner that becomes.
00:33:05
And now the partner is also in the group. So they're. Right. OK. Right. So between that and then me being born, I think my grandparents were like, OK, we just want to like, let's see if we can like not be all be friends, but, you know, not trying to.
00:33:20
So that we get to see our grandkids sometimes. Right. So what were some of the beliefs of the group?
00:33:27
So it's kind of Christian and kind of weird. That describes like almost all of them.
00:33:36
So many. Like, I feel like it's like very like Mormon-y adjacent where you're like, oh, we have the Bible.
00:33:44
Then we have this other book. Right. And this other book says this other guy is the new.
00:33:49
Yeah, because he was prophet-y. Yeah. He was like. Oh, Reverend Moon said he was the Messiah.
00:33:53
He was Jesus back in a new form because Jesus took a time out when he got crucified.
00:33:59
Yeah. Yeah. So he was picking it back up from there. Yeah. Jesus pleaded with him to take over when he was 15.
00:34:07
And he graciously accepted. That was so nice. So sweet. Yeah. So he said everyone has to be married because that is the way to erase original sin.
00:34:20
And then you can, if you go to a blessing and you have babies, then your kids are going to be born without original sin.
00:34:29
Oh. Perfect way to create more members. Yeah. So that was the gist of it. There was like a lot of other stuff, like there's evil spirits everywhere.
00:34:38
And we're in a battle between good and evil. And there was a sociologist who coined the term doomsday cult.
00:34:46
And it was about the unification church. It's just, it's a very kind of a textbook cult.
00:34:54
And a lot of textbooks were actually written about it in the 70s because I feel like it came into prominence like while sociology
00:35:01
like was kind of really having a moment. So also the term love bombing was invented by the church.
00:35:08
It was like really into like being really nice to people and getting them to join the cult.
00:35:15
So these marriages were arranged, right? They were all arranged. So what were other forms of control that the church had over people's lives?
00:35:24
I'm like, what wasn't? I mean, in the beginning, people all lived together in like communes, kind of.
00:35:34
When I was like a baby, people started to move out because we were all supposed to like move away and start our own like little outposts, essentially.
00:35:45
but like we all woke up really early on every Sunday morning to recite a pledge at five in the morning
00:35:54
where we you know like reiterated it almost like the pledge of allegiance but it was longer and it was to the church or to Reverend Moon Do you remember it It changed around a little bit
00:36:07
So like every five or 10 years, it would change the words. There was something about blood, sweat, and tears.
00:36:15
There was something about vanquishing your enemy. Oh. Yeah. Yikes. Yeah. It was like it was a little bit more hardcore when I was a kid.
00:36:25
And then I feel like it tried to get a little softer when I was older. But, you know.
00:36:29
Wow. Interesting. And like were these instructions coming from Reverend Moon or was there local leadership?
00:36:37
There was local leadership, but it was very much a top down situation where we weren't supposed to really differ in any way from each other.
00:36:46
What were your thoughts about it? How did you like, yeah, how did you feel about it?
00:36:51
Um, I feel like when I was a kid, there was just so many opportunities to do something wrong that I was really caught up in the like, you know, you weren't supposed to date.
00:37:03
You weren't supposed to, you're supposed to not really talk about the church to most outsiders.
00:37:09
This is like the group I grew up in. This is like the two by twos. Yeah, we're not supposed to, we're supposed to act so different that people go, what group are you in?
00:37:17
Oh my God, same. No. Okay. So, yeah. Yes. And then there was this whole idea that there's like evil spirits everywhere and you have to appease them or you're like fighting them or whatever.
00:37:34
You know, you have to do. That would scare you. Evil spirits. Yeah. Are you talking about my sleep paralysis demons?
00:37:40
Yeah. And I feel like there's something similar with Mormons where Mormons, they baptize dead people, but we wouldn't marry dead people.
00:37:49
You'd marry dead people. Yeah. I'm sorry. What do you mean? So ostensibly, you would like go and pay for them to get blessed.
00:38:00
Like you would say, oh, my grandparents died before they could get married in the church.
00:38:05
I will pay money. And then in the spirit world, they'll be married. And so they'll be saved.
00:38:10
So they'll be saved because they can go to heaven. Are dead people marrying other dead people?
00:38:15
So mostly, but when I was like eight, I went to a mass wedding. I was in the nosebleed section
00:38:28
because it's often happens in stadiums. Yeah. And I saw like, you know, rows of big girls wearing
00:38:36
pretty dresses, which was exciting. And then at some point I hear the announcer saying like,
00:38:43
so-and-so is getting married to Buddha. So-and-so is getting married to St. Francis. So-and-so is,
00:38:50
I don't know, just like listing off all these famous dead people that are getting married
00:38:55
to women who were on the stage. Wow. And I was so far away. I didn't see that these were like
00:39:02
80-year-old women who were just like getting married to a dead person. Oh my God. I thought,
00:39:08
I thought like I was like oh is that an option for me am I going to like apply to be blessed
00:39:15
marry Elvis or something yeah and they'll be like here's I don't know general patent or something
00:39:21
I was like are they gonna like I don't how do you check a box to make sure you're not
00:39:27
given a dead person because I don't want that that would have kept me up at night yeah that
00:39:32
was a little scary yeah aside from that was it exciting like what was that like seeing those
00:39:38
ceremonies. They were long. Boring. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't like going to a pop concert.
00:39:45
Okay. So apparently Whitney Houston was supposed to sing at one of the blessings in Washington,
00:39:51
D.C. in like the late 90s. And she backed out last minute. And I was there and I had been so
00:39:57
excited to see her. I'm so sorry. Freaking jerk. Yeah. That might be one of the worst things that
00:40:03
happened in the story. Just kidding. No, it's so traumatic. I mean, how is he choosing who marries
00:40:12
who? So for my parents, it was like everyone who is eligible and who's central figure or like their
00:40:20
local pastor said it was okay. They would go to a big room and there'd be like women on one side,
00:40:25
men on the other. And you just go down, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Kind of just like be like you
00:40:29
and you or maybe you and like just take a second and then when I came along it was supposed to be
00:40:37
well he he still arranged people in person sometimes but he was like kind of retired from
00:40:42
that you could also just send in your picture and they would like pick out a picture of a dude and
00:40:49
send it back to you how many of these marriages were successful do we know um well according to
00:40:54
the church that were very successful. So I did end up going to one when I was 21, I want to say.
00:41:06
And of all my friends who were in one, most of them have gotten divorced. That makes sense.
00:41:14
Yeah. And there's like a couple of us left. And then there's like a couple of people who are like
00:41:21
still really in the church and have a bunch of kids. Wow. Yeah. We went to one. Do you remember that?
00:41:27
No. You went to a— You don't remember? No. Wow. Wait, you went to what? We went to a unification church Sunday service out of curiosity because it was like when
00:41:38
we first, first, first started the podcast and we hadn't even aired yet. In Pasadena?
00:41:43
Possibly. It was in like—I thought it was in more of like an outskirts town maybe, but it might
00:41:48
have been. Yeah. Like we were thinking maybe we would do an episode on it but it was so boring that there just wasn enough to talk about That a tactic don you think where it just like because I feel like again the two by twos kind of do that They make it so boring that you like hypnotized and somehow they not really saying anything but you think they said something smart
00:42:07
Yeah. Well, that's what I talked about in the essay was I was noticing that Trump kind of also
00:42:12
does that. It's called the shotgun argument where they just tell you a lot of random points
00:42:17
all at the same time. And the point is not to overwhelm you with their intellect,
00:42:23
but just to kind of stun you and so you don't have a foothold of like how to argue back.
00:42:31
Right. That's so fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. And it works because you just disassociate so much and it just goes straight into your brain.
00:42:40
That's so interesting to me though because I feel like the people who seem to want to stay in the
00:42:44
cults the most are the ones who are having more heightened emotional experiences.
00:42:48
But mine was like the fear was going straight into my— And the anxiety. The anxiety was, but like the thoughts weren't going through my critical mind.
00:42:55
I was just beamed with fear, but it didn't make sense what they were even saying because
00:43:00
it doesn't make sense. Mormon church used to be three hours long when I was growing up and it was so fucking
00:43:06
boring. But sometimes like a missionary would go up or you'd have an engaging bishop and he would
00:43:12
like start crying. And I don't know why I'm saying he, I feel like I only remember it being men for some
00:43:17
reason. Yeah. But somebody would go up and bear their testimony and it'd be really moving.
00:43:22
And those would be the talks that I'd be like, I believe in this church. It wouldn't be the boring guys ever.
00:43:27
Give me a testimony. When I was a kid, when it was like time for that at camp, I'd be like, yes, tell me your life story.
00:43:34
Were you into it? Were you like, I want to give my testimony. I love this church.
00:43:38
Well, so when I was a kid, again, I feel like I was just mostly anxious all the time because there were so many ways to sin or do something wrong.
00:43:48
you know and and my parents were like you know had anger issues and were uh abusive in different
00:43:55
ways so I was more like just like survival mode and like okay yeah let me try and do everything
00:44:00
perfectly to you know fit in here and when I was 16 I did have a moment where I was like oh
00:44:08
I think there's something to this church interesting and I like got really into it for like
00:44:14
I feel like a year or two. That was also a time where, so we're skipping ahead a bit, but
00:44:22
I had been raised on the Jersey shore mostly. And then my parents, because my mom had a vision from
00:44:29
God, decided to move us to Korea. This was in the year 2000. And she moved us to the border of North
00:44:37
and South Korea. So, so close that we could like hear the North Korean loud system. Wow. Yeah.
00:44:44
It was very close and we were in the middle of nowhere, like absolutely in the middle of nowhere. And like you had to walk two miles through rice paddies to get to a bus station. And I think part of me was just like almost had this moment where I was like, okay, I need to like belong here. Otherwise, I'm going to lose my mind.
00:45:03
Right. That makes sense. So I got really into it. And then I went to college and I heard a lecture about critical thinking about like how to tell what kind of arguments people are using against you, like the straw man fallacy or whatever.
00:45:19
It was just like a one hour lecture. But I remember reading it or like listening to the lecture and being like, oh, my gosh, this is great.
00:45:26
I will understand more about the church through this because I'll be able to make these critical
00:45:33
arguments in support of the church. And then I went back to my dorm room and I tried to read
00:45:38
church material and I was like, oh, oh shit. Oh no. What did that feel like? I just, I took my
00:45:45
books, my church books, and I just threw them in the back of my closet. And I was like, I'm not
00:45:49
going to think about this for a little bit. That sounds like a good, that sounds like a good plan,
00:45:53
to be honest. Yeah, that's what I would do too. That's for later. Yeah. So then it took me a few
00:45:59
more years. And then like, finally, there was a moment like in my mid 20s where I was like,
00:46:03
okay, now it's time to leave. Wow. What a great argument for having critical thinking classes in
00:46:09
school. I know. I want to go back a little bit though, because before you moved away,
00:46:15
you were in New Jersey. Were you on like a compound? No. So when I was born, my parents
00:46:22
lived in the New Yorker Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, which is a building owned by the church.
00:46:27
And like a bunch of church families lived in it at the time. And then Reverend Moon was like,
00:46:33
you all need to leave because you need to like start your own outposts. Because if we're all
00:46:39
together, we can't get more people to join the church. So my parents moved an hour south to the
00:46:44
Jersey Shore. And I grew up mostly there. But then we would do church stuff on the weekends or in
00:46:50
the summers, but then during the week, I sometimes was going to public school and just had to like
00:46:56
pretend I was normal, which was impossible. Wow. Yeah. It was impossible. It was like,
00:47:01
you relate so hard. I know. Well, at least you have a normal name. My name is Akina. And this
00:47:09
was the 90s on the Jersey Shore. Do you know how many Laurens I went to school with? Yeah.
00:47:14
Yep. And I was like, and they were like, what's your name? Why are you wearing like weird baggy
00:47:21
stained clothes? Like, or like just like big clothes to hide your body because you're modest.
00:47:27
And here I go. Was that a thing? Yeah. Girls are the devil. And you know, we, yeah, blah, blah.
00:47:34
As we all know. As we all know. Yes. So would that like, if I were walking down the street in
00:47:38
the seventies, would I be able to identify who the Moonies were? You probably wouldn't.
00:47:43
Okay. But there were giveaways. There was like a lot of times they were selling flowers on street corners of the city or yeah, that was the biggest thing was they were like selling things like little trinkets.
00:47:57
But I feel like I can... And I'm like, I can tell. Because oftentimes if someone was getting blessed, they would wear a blessing ring.
00:48:07
And so it's like, there's like little tells if you are a church member. I can also tell and no one else.
00:48:15
From your church. Yeah. And other members wouldn't be able to tell. But I'm like, oh, that's it.
00:48:19
And I'll ask and they'll usually be. I was convinced I had that power as well for Mormons.
00:48:23
I did identify successfully other Mormon children in random places like multiple times.
00:48:28
I'm sure they loved that. No, it was like a bonding thing. Oh, okay. But you were a child as well.
00:48:34
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I thought this was you. No, I was a child. She's at a playground.
00:48:41
Parents are calling the cops. That would be like, hey, you fell a 12-year-old who looks awkward here.
00:48:48
Yeah, yeah. And they often had CTR rings, too. That was one of our giveaways. Choose the right.
00:48:52
Every kid had a CTR ring. Amazing. Well, I mean, in the two-by-twos, they say that we can tell each other because of the spirit.
00:48:58
And it's not because of the bun or the long dress and the like very specific type of long dress.
00:49:05
It's just the spirit. So keep that in mind. Yeah. So you were allowed to go to college.
00:49:13
So what was the policy on or the thinking on outsiders versus us? So outsiders were being controlled by Satan.
00:49:23
Sure. Uh-oh. And we needed to like win them over, but they needed to be approached very carefully.
00:49:32
And they were essentially our enemy, but they didn't know that. And so it was very confusing for a kid to navigate.
00:49:41
I was allowed to go to college. You're right. But it was frowned upon. And a lot of my friends went and did like a two-year program, at least in between.
00:49:52
Very, again, similar to Mormons. It's like Mormons with the Asian twist. But they were doing a two-year program where they were going out, not so much to proselytize, although that did happen, but again, to fundraise and make a shitload of money for the church.
00:50:11
because they were just like cute 18-year-olds. They were just sending out to random street corners
00:50:17
in random cities with like a bucket of wind chimes or flowers and being like, you know,
00:50:24
selling them in cash for 12 hours, 16 hours a day. So a lot of people are pushed to do that.
00:50:31
My parents are a little bit strange in that they were very devout, but they did not want me going on that program.
00:50:37
There were kids who were badly injured and in a couple of cases were killed on that program.
00:50:43
How? So there were a few fatalities because they were sending out teams of these teens in vans
00:50:52
and they were working sometimes for 24 hours. Like they would sometimes do like,
00:50:58
it was almost like a fasting thing where they would, instead of fasting, they would be just fundraising for 24 hours.
00:51:04
They were insanely sleep deprived driving these large vans. So there were a couple, at least one or two car crashes.
00:51:12
Then they had also sent out a teenager and she was murdered because she like knocked on the wrong door.
00:51:19
Oh, my God. Yeah. So I had at the time been trying to get my parents to let me go on this mission because like all my friends were going.
00:51:27
And I was so tired of being like the only church kid at a school and not knowing anyone.
00:51:33
And I'd wanted to go. And then I was like, oh, they're never going to let me go.
00:51:37
but yeah so to my knowledge that program is still going on today oh really yeah well that leads me
00:51:45
to a question i have about the moon isn't money like we're yeah what was happening i feel like
00:51:51
that's a really good question and i feel like the story is under told even though it's been like
00:51:56
right under our noses the whole time so basically ever since the 70s when reverend moon was here
00:52:02
he was like starting businesses and like putting his henchmen in charge. So there was like nominally
00:52:08
not super related to the church, but definitely related to the church. And so he was like
00:52:16
plowing this money back into the church and back into these businesses. And then with those profits,
00:52:24
he was also donating them to politicians, to think tanks. He started a right wing newspaper
00:52:32
decades ago called the Washington Times. So he's like kind of the story behind MAGA,
00:52:41
in my opinion, is that like, I don't think MAGA would exist without Reverend Moon
00:52:46
because he started the Washington Times. He gave a voice to these Republican conservative
00:52:54
politicians. He gave them tons of money. They would do things like I even noticed you,
00:53:00
we spoke about January 6th. I even noticed on January 6th, Matt Gaetz got up in front of Congress
00:53:07
and said, oh, it's Antifa who is in charge of January 6th. The Washington Times said so. And
00:53:14
he like had an article from them with him. And so I feel like they've done that a lot. Like they
00:53:19
would write an article and like either Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity would pick it up in the 90s or
00:53:26
the 80s or and then like some congressman would use it as something they could point to and it
00:53:32
feels like to give them as evidence yeah validity it feels like family values were really at the
00:53:38
core of the message it was very much anti-communism and then it became like yeah
00:53:45
traditional family values and anti-gay anti-feminist just this is a bunch of boring
00:53:54
dude screaming Really And just like causing a lot of trouble Not only in America but they done this to other countries as well where they just like really I feel like are responsible for
00:54:07
a right wing lurch. Like by buying up a media? Yeah, by buying it up, by starting it. Like
00:54:14
Reagan said the Washington Times was his favorite newspaper and he read it every day. Wow. Yeah.
00:54:19
The amount of influence that you can have when you buy a freaking newspaper. Yeah.
00:54:24
It's wild. Yeah. And for a long time, like, they were there before Fox Media. They were there before OAN.
00:54:32
OAN started in their offices. Fox News, like, they have Washington Times contributors on there.
00:54:39
They kind of, like, were the mama newspaper to, like, birth all these, like, shitty conservative, like, media companies.
00:54:48
Yeah. So they're all connected. Wow, that is fascinating. And more than that, he like gave money to Reagan.
00:54:56
He was like very involved with the Bush family, Reverend Moon. He gave them tons of money.
00:55:03
Even though Reverend Moon died in 2012, the Unification Church, like they paid Trump to speak at one of their things just like a few years ago, like in 2022.
00:55:14
And Bush spoke at one of them. Bush spoke a lot. Yeah, like they were locked in with her.
00:55:19
in with Bush. Was he taking money for himself? Was Reverend Moon like living lavish? He's very
00:55:25
much a Trump guy, like in that he bought up a crap load of properties in the 70s, like a whole
00:55:33
university in Connecticut, farms in Hawaii, a seminary in upstate New York, a skyscraper in
00:55:41
midtown Manhattan. As one does. Yeah. He and his family had property everywhere. And like,
00:55:48
was he enriching like was he living a very lavish lifestyle himself yeah yeah golden toilet
00:55:54
i don't know about the toilet situation i know he had like helicopters and you know his wife was
00:56:01
always head-to-toe like designer gear but the members were not living well no the members were
00:56:07
working for nothing like i heard from someone who did work at the washington times when it started
00:56:14
that they were ostensibly paid, air quotes, they were paid for their time working,
00:56:22
but they would be handing out the checks on a Friday and be like, hey, does anyone want to,
00:56:30
like money is tight. Not get paid this week. Yeah, does anyone want to tithe? And like, so you'd have to like tithe
00:56:36
in front of your coworkers. So you're all church members. So there are just like a lot of church members
00:56:42
who are working for nothing. Or either volunteering their time or working for church businesses, you know, making hardly anything.
00:56:52
Which is so common. And I wonder, like, was there any chatter about that disparity and that being, was that a problem for anyone?
00:56:59
I don't remember hearing about that because I remember hearing like, well, Reverend Moon is like the biggest king of them all.
00:57:07
So he should, like, and he's meeting with presidents. He's meeting with kings and queens.
00:57:12
he needs to like be at their level. Oh, of course. That would make sense to me. You're like, okay, where do I sign?
00:57:19
Take all my money. I will live in poverty. Yes. Wow, so interesting. Okay, so did your parents, did they remain in the church?
00:57:28
They remained. But around when Reverend Moon died in 2012, like in a couple years leading up to that,
00:57:36
his large family kind of exploded into factions. and my parents went with the youngest son
00:57:43
whose name is Hyunjin or he calls himself Sean in America. Sean Moon. So the reverend's youngest son
00:57:51
your parents decided to follow. But the wife also was a leader, right? The reverend's wife.
00:57:57
The reverend's wife. Yeah, he was trying to pass her and give like the power to his sons at first
00:58:04
and she seems to have taken over the like kind of main church branch. It was photos of her on the wall
00:58:13
and they were talking about the mother when we went. Yeah, so people probably call her,
00:58:16
they call her True Mother. And so she's, I think, living in Las Vegas or South Korea or both.
00:58:23
And she's taken over the main church branch. And my parents are part of a splinter cult now
00:58:30
called Sanctuary Church or also Rod of Iron Ministries. And they got in the news a few years ago
00:58:37
because like, do you guys know this? They got in the news a few years ago because they were all had a bunch of AR-15s
00:58:45
and had this big like marriage rededication ceremony, but bring your assault rifle.
00:58:51
Whoa. Yeah. Okay, this sounds familiar. Yeah. If you go, yeah, if you Google Sanctuary Church.
00:58:58
I'm looking for pictures. Assault rifle. Oh my God. AR-15. It's probably a picture of my dad.
00:59:04
You're probably looking at a picture of my dad. It's a bunch of old ladies. Okay, maybe my mom.
00:59:09
This is wild. Yeah. Why did they choose him, do you think? Okay, so when my parents moved to South Korea with me when I was a teenager,
00:59:22
my dad started an English-speaking service in Seoul. There were like a few expat church members out there,
00:59:29
but there wasn't really a place for them. And then Sean Moon moved to Seoul, and he started his own.
00:59:36
and then they combined. And so by the time this break happened, my parents and him had been working pretty closely
00:59:44
for, I want to say, like almost 10 years, like more than five. And so it was very natural for them to go with him.
00:59:54
I see Splinter groups are endlessly fascinating to me Forever fascinating There so many Mormon offshoot Like there just there are so many How do you decide which prophet the prophet
01:00:05
I've just started as we're speaking. There should be a BuzzFeed article that's like, which offshoot would you belong in?
01:00:14
Yes, actually. Which kind of sourdough bread are you? Please pitch that. I'm curious if when the reverend died, if there was any legend around him being immortal
01:00:24
or if this was shocking or if it changed anything? So not a ton. Okay. There was this idea that like he had really wanted North and South Korea to unite before he died.
01:00:37
And there was like this big church event that happened around then that they were hopefully trying to work for.
01:00:43
So it's like, no, it wasn't one of those cults where they were like, he's never going to die.
01:00:48
Okay. Okay. But I think there were, I think if they weren't lying to themselves, they would have said they had hoped for something more to happen before he died.
01:00:58
That makes sense. Yeah. So you have this crack when you go to college. Yeah. Was there something specific that led you to like revisit some of those doubts?
01:01:10
So I tried to ignore it because even though I'd been like friendly with outsiders, I didn't have anyone I like really relied on.
01:01:18
anyone like I was so used to just like faking my life around them um so it was like oh if I believe
01:01:26
this I lose my family and my community and I did not want that so I ignored it I got married in the
01:01:33
church was it a mass wedding yeah oh but my husband and I were supposed to have an arranged
01:01:39
marriage but we already knew each other and we already liked each other and so that when our
01:01:44
parents were like how about this person we were like okay but we were like secretly making out
01:01:50
and then we went through the blessing and everyone was like you guys like this this is a sign that
01:01:57
the blessing really works really worked a miracle yeah well because when we came along sometimes
01:02:03
your parents could also bless you so we like so our parents they like chose us but i see yeah
01:02:10
How many couples were there? So they said 400 million because they were counting dead people.
01:02:17
Oh, cool. I don't know how many. I was looking this up the other day because I was like, how many were there?
01:02:27
And it was like. No, there was 400 million. I was like, were there even 400? I don't know.
01:02:33
And so I think there was like a couple thousand, maybe a thousand. That's wild. Yeah.
01:02:39
That's wild. this is wild do you have a photo of it i do have some photos they're like blurry and you can be
01:02:47
like there's a kina like in that row what did it feel like it felt kind of terrible i've been
01:02:55
thinking about it lately because now i'm 40 and you know i got blessed when i was 21 and i thought
01:03:02
i was an old maid i thought i was a spinster you guys there were girls who were getting blessed
01:03:09
that I had babysat. They were like 16. Wait, what girls were getting married at 16?
01:03:14
Yeah, just a few of them. Oh no. I know. It was one of those things where like, I've been sitting with him
01:03:21
and thinking about it a lot lately and I'm like, that was like way more traumatic
01:03:26
than I remember. Which is like, isn't that all of our childhoods? Yeah. Especially the cult life.
01:03:32
But, you're like, oh, we were all coerced into that. Like, like even though I loved the person I was getting married to I was like getting married with all
01:03:43
these people a lot of them I didn't know and he and I I don't think we would have ever chosen to
01:03:49
be married at that young age even though we liked each other a lot and then all the all the girls
01:03:55
the night before I was like we were in a dormitory and I just remember girls running around and like
01:04:01
crying like just they were like they didn't know their partner they were like 20 or 19 and had just
01:04:08
gotten off of a van where they were fundraising for a year and they were told like this is a guy
01:04:13
and some of them some of them were crying so yeah and then there were like 16 year olds or
01:04:19
you know 19 year olds i don't remember anyone like older than us that was like you know even in their mid-20s wow yeah it was really brutal yeah that's devastating
01:04:31
what if you get someone with bad breath also yeah there's like so many jerks and like just so many
01:04:38
and like you're wearing like there's so many ugly dresses too could you pick out your dress?
01:04:43
I actually what we were able to I've heard now you can't pick out your dress you just have an ugly dress
01:04:49
that your mother picks out for you terrible my dress was kind of cute it was like asymmetrical ruching
01:04:57
oh my god okay well then I guess it's all Yeah, I feel better. Never mind. Wow. I mean, do you still keep in contact with people?
01:05:09
Some. I still keep in contact with some of my good friends, like the girl who was sitting like
01:05:15
to my right when we were getting blessed. Yeah. We still talk. So when we were growing up, they called us blessed children because we were from the blessing
01:05:25
and we were told that we were all brothers and sisters. and so we had to really take care of each other and so that kind of made it almost easier to leave
01:05:34
because I remember some of my friends telling me like I have a secret boyfriend or I you know
01:05:39
I might be gay or I don't something and I remember thinking like it was drilled into me that this is
01:05:46
my brother or sister like I'm that bond is gonna remain and even when I thought I was a true
01:05:53
believer if people came and told me things like I made out with a guy I don know what to do I would absolutely hold their secrets and like not tell anyone And so I feel like you know I not friends with
01:06:07
everyone from the church or, you know, like I feel like I have a lot of good feelings towards
01:06:11
everyone. Like I know what a terrible childhood we all had and I wish everyone the best, even if
01:06:18
I'm not in contact with them. But I still I feel like I still love everyone. Wow. It sounds
01:06:26
somewhat unique in that, you know, so much of the time we hear about a culture within a cult of
01:06:32
ratting on everyone, like it being required to rat on everyone. There was definitely like,
01:06:37
yeah, there was definitely a lot of trauma that we all had to do. I think for me, even like if we
01:06:44
were acting kind of shitty to each other when we were teens or, you know, like some, like
01:06:48
some girl like ratted me out for like having not dress code at camp. I was still a little
01:06:55
bit annoyed with her. Still a little resentment there. But I'm like, we were all teens. Like what else were we going to do?
01:07:02
Yeah. You know, like I feel like I absolutely have forgiveness in my heart for any other blessed
01:07:09
child and I'm sure I offended or hurt other people and I would definitely be happy to ask
01:07:17
for forgiveness. I feel like I have a harder time forgiving a lot of the first generation who raised
01:07:22
us. I'm like, I know you were damaged and that's why you joined. But honestly, like, what the hell,
01:07:29
guys? One of the other things that you said that really interested me was how demonized therapy was.
01:07:37
Oh, yeah. And how that's just a warning that you're probably in a high control group. Can you say a little bit more about that?
01:07:45
Yeah. So it wasn't just therapy. It was like kind of like all medical professionals were a little bit treated suspiciously, especially therapists, because I think because they were so scared of the church in turn.
01:08:03
But I did go get regular checkups when I was a kid. I think a lot of that was also like I was going to public school and I needed to get like vaccinations.
01:08:15
I did have a health like health issues that like kind of got ignored for a while.
01:08:21
A lot of people didn't even go to regular doctors. It was like, don't don't even go if you have cancer.
01:08:29
And there's actually like it feels like a very huge crossover between that and like the RFK.
01:08:34
I was just going to say. Yeah, because there's like people being like, you can pray your cancer away or just drink this special tea or whatever.
01:08:43
You know, there's a lot of that, too. So it wasn't necessarily specifically don't talk about your emotions with a person because it might expose us.
01:08:52
It was more just like the medical. Oh, no, I think that was still there. It was just everything.
01:08:57
I have so many more questions about this. I think this would be a good time to break and pick this back up in the next episode.
01:09:05
She's so cool. I know. I know. Also, I want her to be a voice actor. I just want her to be my friend.
01:09:11
Well, that too. I asked her when you went to the bathroom. She seemed hesitant. Come on a little strong.
01:09:19
Okay, Megan, would you join the Unification Church? Okay, so if it's the 70s, right?
01:09:25
I think I might. Go on. I like flowers. Freedom. Okay. There was a lot of like, we're not working for the man. Like we're gonna live on a commune and be in the sun and make our
01:09:41
own garden. I'd like that. Make our own garden? Yeah. I just feel like there's a garden there.
01:09:47
You just decided there was a garden involved somewhere. I just would like it. I just think
01:09:53
I would like it. I like, it sounds like it started with things that I would like. I wouldn't like
01:09:59
him probably, the reverend. Yeah. But I can just see myself being swept away and maybe some of the
01:10:06
excitement of selling trinkets on the street and getting hitchhikes and free meals. And I would
01:10:12
join it. I just know I would. Yeah, I could see that for you. Yeah, I know. It's just, it's so,
01:10:17
I'll never stop being fascinated by the sort of like hippie-Christian cult combination.
01:10:27
Endlessly fascinating. Hippie, just like my idea of what it meant to be a hippie growing up just seemed so like the antithesis of being in like a strict Christian church.
01:10:38
But like so much of that movement turned into these like Christian cults. Yeah, and that's why you see them having so many weird different kinds of rules because they were like,
01:10:45
well, then we can do this actually. And we can do this. Yeah. It's just like picking and choosing
01:10:49
from this match. Yeah. It's very interesting. She referenced in this interview, uh, like creating
01:10:55
a BuzzFeed quiz. I think it would be a fun BuzzFeed quiz to pick which, which belief systems you want
01:11:01
to pull from and like create your own. We actually have to do that. Does BuzzFeed still exist? Yeah.
01:11:07
Okay. Shout out. Anyway, thank you so much for listening to this episode. Please rate us five
01:11:12
stars. If you don't have five stars, don't rate us at all. Share it with your friends. And as
01:11:16
always, remember to follow your gut, watch out for red flags, and never, ever trust me. Bye.
01:11:26
This has been an Exactly Right production, hosted by me, Lola Blanc, and me, Megan Elizabeth.
01:11:31
Our senior producer is Jiha Lee. This episode was mixed by John Bradley. Our associate producer
01:11:36
is Christina Chamberlain, and our guest booker is Patrick Kottner. Our theme song was composed
01:11:41
by Holly Amber Church. Trust Me is executive produced by Karen Kilgareth, Georgia Hardstark,
01:11:47
and Danielle Kramer. You can find us on Instagram at Trust Me Podcast or on TikTok
01:11:51
at Trust Me Cult Podcast. Got your own story about cults, extreme belief, or manipulation?
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Shoot us an email at trustmepod at gmail.com. Listen to Trust Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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