I Survived NXIVM (ft. Sarah & Nippy from A Little Bit Culty) | JHS Ep. 770

foreign [Music] Harbinger on the Jordan Harbinger show we decode the stories secrets and skills of the World's Most Fascinating People we have in-depth conversations with Scientists entrepreneurs spies and psychologists even the occasional Mafia enforcer Russian spy rocket scientist or hostage negotiator and each episode turns our guests wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better thinker if you're new to the show or you're looking for a way to tell your friends about it I suggest our episode starter packs these are collections of some of our favorite episodes organized by topic that'll help new listeners get a taste of everything that we do here on the show topics like persuasion and influence disinformation and cyber warfare crime and Cults and more just visit jordanharbinger.com start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started today we're talking with Sarah Edmondson and nippy Ames former members of a cult called Nexium now if you've seen the vowel on HBO you've seen the expose on this it's started as a self-help kind of corporate training group and ended up being a sex trafficking cult that abused people from all over the world took their money took their trust it's just a crazy crazy Amazing Story we're going to hear stories from the inside and how somebody who should know better in theory gets roped into and stays in a harmful and abusive coercive cult really a fascinating conversation with two people who've done a lot of thinking about this and a fascinating inside look at one of America's most famous cults and I co-hosted this one with none other than Gabe Mizrahi so we have two hosts and two guests why not kind of a different format for us here today here we go with Sarah and nippy so I I would love to start with what Nexium is or at least what it was supposed to be because it and it's faced it's like okay this is a personal growth seminar that probably had intros at a hotel near the airport and you show up your boss sends you there or something to learn how to be more communicative with your new team at work and it just looks kind of harmless and and then it turned out to not be harmless at all and it turned out to be this crazy crazy cult that was worth HBO creating two seasons and counting on what's going on there it's just it's it's shocking and I think that's part of the story of course but you know what what initially was Nexium supposed to be it's a great way to ask it there's what what we thought it was and then what it turned out to be and what we thought it was what we were signing up for was a personal and professional development program had I met you at a coffee shop or wherever I would find out what you were working on in your life what your goals were and what was stopping you from getting there um usually it was some emotional thing like you got angry at people or couldn't follow through on your goals or had limiting beliefs about yourself or your self-esteem and I would ask if it'd be worth two grand to fix that limitation for five days and if it was if it was I'd help you get into a program and that's what it was it helped me so much in my life that I was such a zealous promoter of it that you know when I when I met people it was a really easy pitch it was spend five days look at your life upgrade your software apply it to your life achieve your goals easy and in some ways I still think most of the five day was that if you didn't continue I've since learned that there was lots of things in that initial training that hooked people in and could be really abusive if used by people with that intent but for the most part people came and took trainings all the things you said better communication higher self-esteem working through what we called disintegration so areas that you felt Limited in maybe you had conflicting beliefs around things like money like I want to earn money but I also think it's the root of all evil like that's a really common thing that a lot of people have we found wouldn't you saying up growing up growing up growing up at Nexium we found there's a lot of common things that people would struggle with which I think was the intent of the curriculum find things that we can all kind of agree upon that we struggle with and have a curriculum in deep discussions around them and then provide kind of a working answer right right okay and there's nothing wrong with that on its face and that's one of the reasons that this is so interesting and I'll get into this a little bit later but I'm I'm watching The Vow on HBO right and I'm watching this terrible occult and I followed the news and I Know How It Ends and yet I hear Nancy Salzman who's one of the chief creators of the curriculum or the chief and I'm like this is so interesting I should totally take this class wait a minute no they're in prison now hold on get a grip Jordan this is not what you're these are not the droids you're looking for right this is not the thing because it's just it turned out to be like many self-help groups it had this dark underbelly it's it's funny a long time ago I wanted to take what was it called Landmark uh and I was people were like it's a cult and then other people were like it's fine I took it three years ago I sort of remember some of it it was kind of useful the end and other people are like I've been in it for five years and I my brain is I can't even talk like a normal human because all I all that comes out is Landmark words and I'm thinking like okay there's clearly a level where you go in and you come out and it's fine which is where most people went with Nexium they took the course that helped him a little bit and they left they never came back and they were like oh that was kind of fun I sort of remember it I think it helped me with XYZ and then there's the people who come out and they're like I was sex trafficked from another country and it's like wait is this the same thing how does that work it's like joining the YMCA to go to the gym and suddenly your organs are harvested you're like how did that happen it's such a good example we had a friend actually who did both landmark and esp's esp's executive success programs it's the program that we taught in Nexium the personal development stuff and she said you know with all of it it's like if you take the tools and put them in your life you're fine but if you make the tools your life is when it becomes a problem and I see that with both Landmark students and Nexium students the people that went up the strike path the people that became coaches and landmark and devoted all their time unpaid same prop problem in fact I have to be careful because Landmark is incredibly litigious they haven't yet done an episode on them we sometimes refer to them as Schmidt Mark right so thank you I didn't say landmark I should command Mark it's totally different you've used to see a similarity that's on you yeah exactly so schmann Mark in my opinion is the same thing as an axiom minus the the leader having a harem of women right minus anything that could incur legal liability for us doing this podcast right now of course yes exactly you might say they've done it smarter because it was originally the brainchild of Warner Earhart and then he in the early 80s kind of stepped out and I still think get some of the revenue or something like that so you know maybe for him it wasn't about sex with 15 year old girls it was about keeping the power and the money and he's able to Outsource it and smoke and mirrors it whereas Keith um he needed to be the Vanguard sure yeah he had his he had his own vices and couldn't temper them so for people who are like who's Keith what are these names I don't know who basically any sort of self-help seminar who these names are people that have started these seminars if you don't know the names it doesn't really matter but Keith Rainier or Rainier is it Ranieri or Rainier Ranieri Ranieri okay yeah you know Allen but that's okay you can call him Keith sure Allen's his middle name and we just like you know Keith a couple of people who have left have been like we're done using his name we're gonna go with this one got it okay it wasn't already idea yeah we just got on board with it what this guy is now he's in spoiler alert he's in prison for a long time lost his appeal we can talk about that in a little bit but he's the the leader and one of the founders of Nexium which was the cult Nancy Salzman as I mentioned earlier was the designer of the curriculum and you have some other notable names Allison Mack who was on Smallville she's an actress wasn't actress and Claire bronferman who is the heir to is it the I always get this wrong Seagram's Liquors yeah yeah so she's so her father is Edgar bronfman Jr who's who's head of the Hillel house and um Big Ten baller Big Time hundreds of millions of dollars right yeah yeah yes and he pulls levers he pulls levers yeah that that's one thing that was surprising about this too if my if my daughter's an occult and I'm a billionaire you think I've got people who can research this who can take this whole organization down because I am basically a billionaire with unlimited amounts of power and yet he still could just couldn't he either didn't pay attention early enough or he tried but yeah it looks like he tried and it's he tries in his way um I think he tried in his way but was limited apparently he's behind the first big article that was written against in the Forbes article that came out back when they were this tiny little group so it seemed that maybe he had something to do with that but we don't that's just what we were told when we were in it and there was we were told so many lies right we don't really know which land is that what anymore yeah so so Claire Bronson her dad the the wealthy liquor magnate this possibly the guy who ended up writing or having a big expose written in Forbes about Nexium uh it's just it's a very interesting set of circumstances that all came together to make this Keith got lucky and Nexium got lucky so many times but let's let's back up the truck here because we're probably confusing everyone and we'll probably have to edit some of that out for clarity but whatever so what does Nexium mean it actually sounds like the name of a medication um it is there's a heartburn medication it is oh it is oh okay I was like yes ium sounds so yeah like if you talk to your doctor about Nexium if you're in a sex trafficking called stop using Nexium immediately it's uh so it is a medication it's a made-up word yeah nxivm is made up we do know we've since learned that every name that he came up for H company is his own kind of little inside jokes for himself um dos which came later and we'll get to that is the first computer program that's what came up that that's what came up for me the first computer like the text-based before windows computer operations his era when he would have learned in the what is that like early yeah I don't know I don't know my computer history but um janess same thing that's the women's program that comes from the root word g-y-n like gynecological so it's like of the woman um and Nexium apparently um place of learning well he we were told it was place of learning in Latin or Greek or whatever but it's actually um from the root word which means debt bondage debt bondage that happened in Roman times that's wonderful yeah ivani found that out when yeah so I think that was his way of being like yes I'm going to lock you down forever and create dependency and you won't even know it and you think you're free but you're not this is if it's so on the nose it reminds me of you know those conspiracy theorists that say look if you look really closely here all these Illuminati super powerful people are leaving Clues and it's like if they're that powerful they're not putting a clue in a painting for some idiot who lives in his mom's basement to find and yet Keith Rainier is like you know what I'm gonna make this really obvious during trial then put evidence everywhere that only I understand and that somebody who has Google can find out later on and make me look really bad and also save all my text messages with my slaves about all the things I'm going to do funny you bring that up because when when I was looking at the trial here they said we got his WhatsApp messages and I was like crap the law enforcement can get WhatsApp messages I thought they were all encrypted and then two seconds later the narrator's like that's what he gets for saving all of the prosecutor says that's that's for some reason he saved all of his text messages and I'm just thinking like oh what am what are you doing you're using an encrypted chat app and you're like let me just make a record of all this in plain text for the FBI later on that's that's what I need to do well I saved everything everything was filmed every single thing was filmed and this was not in The Vow so just to give you an extent of it if he's went on stage and did a forum which is him speaking word salad for two to four hours he would have about 10 people in the audience of the clipboard marking down with the stopwatch oh at 10 42 Keith told a joke about flatulence at 16 he made a state like basically Gathering all the quotes in different categories and that would all be documented so that they could one day make a library of his genius this is why there was so much footage and so much audio because everything was recorded So The Vow for people who haven't seen it there's tons of footage and you think what is all this about how did they get this amazing insight into this and the reason is because this narcissistic cult leader wanted everything documented and he even says one day you know they might think we did something wrong and then they'll watch the footage and they'll realize we didn't it's like I you know that's not what happened actually what happened is there's a shitload of evidence for you being a narcissistic cult leader and it's all in HD and well I mean he should be credited no he should be credited as a co-creator it's a case study who are still loyal saying that was all planted and it's all been tampered with and he is good and yet it's like hey man there's a lot of there's a lot of stuff in there that probably didn't even make it into the valve that was probably used in court for sure um because you know for sure that's it's just amazing it's amazing it's amazing how like when we came forward with what we knew it was like a tenth not even like a two percent of what came out in court like what we knew was one thing and then that was the tip of the iceberg which was yeah we weren't their problem after a while yeah initially we were their biggest problem and then once we kind of broke the dam like or some of the initial whistleblowers and then once the prosecutor started digging and found all that stuff it was like thank you for your service I think we're okay here we've got plenty of this stuff it was actually just like that it was actually just like that Sarah had just uh had our second child and they were like because we thought she was gonna have to testify because we got dragged into this thing um and it turned out it was like yeah we'll call you if we need you there's plenty years we have a freight train full of incriminating text messages and in fact but if you want to help you can help us unload the footage right carry some boxes because we have a lot of tape um tell me about collateral because I think a lot of people are thinking how did you get you know what is this stuff that the cult does it's got the executive success program it's got this weird sorority of people that turned out to be kind of like sex slaves but how are you bonded in this organization why not just leave and that's where collateral comes in two things um and listen this that's like the number one thing people ask me to be like why would you give them a false confession or a photo or things that you wouldn't want leaked to the public and the concept of collateral had been built in three to four years maybe even longer before that Keith was so brilliant at the long game and say brilliant like sociopathically brilliant yeah knowing that he had to like plant seeds and build and build and build uh he in fact he even taught a class about how true sociopaths play the long game why don't just like key your car if they're mad at you they'll like slowly poison your dog over many years and watch you suffer so collateral is I think a good example of that we've been doing it for years as a practice in terms of putting something down as a wait for your word like I say that I'm going to go to the gym and if I don't I'm giving you this collateral nippy I give you permission to give 500 to charity or whatever like there is something that you'd place like the same thing collateral is used to purchase a home or any big asset right but it became more personal and more damaging just one caveats here those are clear exchanges yeah right you know what the exchange is and so it felt like in that community that was a normal thing normalized so this is like hey if I don't quit smoking you're gonna write a 500 check to the white supremacist nationalist party and I really don't want that so I'm not going to smoke that's the collateral whereas this was more like I just have damaging stuff on you that I'm Gonna Keep for an unspecified period of time to be used whenever you don't do what I want you to do exactly well it wasn't quite presented that way it was it was I was invited by Lauren who's my best friend and somebody I trust probably more than anyone other than my husband and she's saying I'm going to hold this to make sure you stay on path on track and in that context what she if what she was saying was true and it wasn't a women's organization started by a man who's collecting collateral for his spank bank you know then it might have been a nice thing to have a Sisterhood where someone's keeping you on track and you're accountable to somebody but it wasn't that was nude that was new you don't need new you don't need nude photos to do that right what's important uh yeah so the nude photos took things obviously to the next level I'm just saying for people who don't understand this is 12 years in this isn't a community where I trust everyone I think that the people who are helping me have my best interests at heart and that this exercise that we're doing is an exercise and it's a game she's not really my master and I'm not really her slave we don't even live in the same city like just a it's just an extra it's a title it's like Guru disciple everything was like that's just it's just this it's not a big deal when do you realize that you are in a cult right because Mark Mark Vicente your friend and colleague in the organization he says we didn't join a cult nobody joins a cult we joined a movement to do good and I like that because I think and he comes across as a pretty smart dude I think his point was that smart reasonable people can get caught up in organizations like this and the organization either becomes a cult over time or they it reveals itself to be a cult over time the point is because a lot of people are going to go I would never get caught up into this and it's like well you don't go high I need to join your cult I'm here to join your cult you join because you think it's going to help your acting career or your business or something along those lines and it's the frog in the boiling water concept you just don't realize it's boiling because it happened and so slowly and you start to you're rationalizing it yourself over a period of months or even years thank you for summarizing our main message from the past five years that's really it that's something that we've been really passionate about um but it's changed like when we got out five years ago it was more skepticism and a lot more like that could never happen to me and now thanks thank you to The Vow and many documentaries about cults that I I know that you're a fan of not just the vow I think people are more more on that side a little bit like well I might never joined Nexium but I definitely would have joined CrossFit or like that church or that yoga studio or whatever you know there's there's different draws depending on what people's values are but for us in terms of how we woke up there were so many things I mean there's so many red flags along the way from day one literally from the day one from day one but as as you probably know from watching The Vow we were trained to override our intuition we have the feeling of something's not right there must be something like a limitation within me I don't like the sashes I don't like the sashes oh it's because I have authority issues oh you're right I do have authority issues okay I'll stick it out I'm not going to say anything one thing too Sarah caveat to that like with the sashes and those things too yes they seem weird but when you're in a curriculum and they're saying you know human beings generally establish rules and rituals ours are we're emulating the dojo system as a ranking system I'm like okay I can get on board today yeah yeah for today right and like and there was other things that they kept going they minimized the weirdness pretty well and they got good at minimizing the awareness to the point where like okay I'll stay for a couple days I'll do my five day you know because I can remember for me it was I'm gonna do my five to eight I'm piecing out right and then over time I took a class here and there it was a slow kind of burn if that's right to your point to the frog in the water sorry sir I thought it was good to make uh to get people to understand the good of why you would stay yeah yeah and right the example they also gave was like when you go to someone's house and they take off their shoes at the hot like you take your shoes off even if you like it's gonna ruin your outfit maybe that's more of a woman thing but like okay I'll take my shoes off shoes off because it's your house and that's your rules so that's sort of How It's presented it's like it's what we do here while you're here you know wear the sash take your shoes off and we bow and say thank you Vanguard after every class because he created the curriculum yeah okay and you're like okay it's a little weird but who cares if I can deal with this for five days whatever right right exactly we even had a class about what a call is because we were taught that people are going to say are in a cult and how do you respond to that and we had a whole diatribe about that and like I didn't mind that objection because I knew how to handle it and specifically it was people use the word cult and I think this is true when they just want to say something's bad but they don't say specifically what's bad about it are you murdering children are you drinking Kool-Aid are you stealing people's money are you creating dependency are you isolating them from your families no so we couldn't see the bad thing so we saw the bad thing eventually which is all those things being isolated create dependency there's a lie there's a con there's sex happening like sexism itself is fine but the fact is is that he's saying he's celibate and now we find out that he's got a harem right the co-leader yeah I'm celibate except with the five underage women that I have locked in rooms in houses around the neighborhood like do you know what a betrayal it was to find that out after I've spent 12 years being like this is Keith Renee's most noble humanitarian ethical man in the world who created the most incredible curriculum that changed my life who also has a harem of women and he may or may not be poisoning them that's a whole like oh my God I don't even see that thing but in the book you mentioned a friend of yours tried to tell you that Nexium was a cult early on I assume when that came in you were like oh I took a class about this I'm going to tell you why you're wrong or ignore it or whatever yeah I was like I get it I'm like I you know if I didn't know what we were teaching and looking at from the outside I think it was a cult too and maybe it is a cult but it's a cult of happy successful people and you know that's a cult I can get behind right yeah yes well I mean look it's so interesting in season two of The Vow Nancy really grapples with the Paradox of Nexium looking back that a lot of what the organization taught the Core Curriculum outside of the horrible dark stuff Keith was doing that that material was still possibly good and valuable and maybe designed to help people and I'm sure she was somewhat biased because she created the program but as she comes to terms with how bad Keith really was she starts to ask herself like was the curriculum actually good or did Keith just create the good or have me create the good in order to justify or enable the bad I found that so interesting whether the teachings of Nexium Nexium are still useful in some way or if they were you know corrupted and manipulated to serve Keith's agenda what's your take on that I I would say because the curriculum never opened itself up to standard practices where we have in our society agreed upon this these are standards you should meet and all that stuff we're never going to know we do know that it was stolen from a lot of different places Sarah and I have subsequently gone out and find books I think to get Marty lefko is that was a method that we think he stole from I read a book called power versus Force by David Hawkins and down to the examples in the book were some of the examples in the modules almost he was too lazy to change the language it was I read it and was like [ __ ] me I was like what the [ __ ] like this is exactly like I could have read this right so there's a lot of that I don't know how much more there is I just think that she was a he was effective at cobbling together basic you know self-help stuff putting it into packages that were pretty digestible so people could have some shifts and then had to keep the gig going and Nancy was uh more than willing to do it um knowing what she knew so anyway go ahead just yeah just to add to that and I agree with nippy we don't really know but the jury's out like there's people in Nexium who are like [ __ ] all this baby throw the baby out gotta start again I spent 12 years there maybe in and out for 16. I didn't want to do that and I did get a lot of value I just had to find out where it came from originally so I don't have to say thank you Vanguard after right you know being more productive with my time or communicating better or lots of things that I learned were not from him sure I do think if if you pull all these things and also Scientology which is actually from like other things like the good parts there's good parts in all of these things otherwise why would people stay sure it doesn't justify staying it just you have to understand why people would even join there has to be good tools and most of the cool good tools like you can find in books and other leaders that are not culti yeah they're sort of universal and ancient I mean some of this stuff is in so many other texts I mean do you guys ever find yourself still using Nexium techniques and do you ever like turn to each other when you get into a fine you're like babe let's let's em that let me talk about that we we actually joke about it a lot use the language in a jokey she'll get mad at me and I'll be like that's your life issue yeah maybe we need to go visit Keith in prison and hash this one out between the bulletproof glass or whatever you have in the in the prison uh towards the end of the book you describe a very emotional scene having lunch with your parents after you made it out your mom says she feels like she got her daughter back and you ask her why she never tried to pull you out of Nexium and she says because it was your life I didn't want to lose you my connection with you is always the most important thing and I I wonder if do you think this is why many family members don't try harder to get their loved ones out of Cults because they know that I mean we've done shows on Cults before one of the primary defensive measures called to take is isolating cult members from people who either aren't in the cult or say negative things about the cult and I think a lot of parents realize this and if they don't realize that they realized it pretty quickly when they say hey I think we think you're an occult and you start chanting or singing something on the phone like the Moonies were instructed to do where they were instructed to do these chants and say like my you're not my real father or whatever it is I mean I think it makes a lot of sense I would if my kid was in a cult I'd be more even more scared of pushing them away completely than I would be of them being in the cult itself potentially yeah I think she did the right thing and we've subsequently instructed other family members in fact nippy and I are in touch with family and friends of almost everybody who's still loyal except for one person and that's the advice process we give them is like stay close give them a safe landing pad don't judge them don't criticize them if anything ask ask loving questions and I think my mom knew that and she's this is she's you know in the mental health profession she didn't know the extent of what was happening but she knew that um you know he was a megalomaniac and that it was a problem for sure I'd like to talk about some of the the classic cult tactics that Keith used to keep people on the hook sniffing out their vulnerabilities leveraging them uh one example is punishing People's Natural responses and intuition you sort of alluded to this earlier the skepticism retaining personal control wanting to protect your body framing things like resistance to a concept as Defiance in order to make people compliant I mean it's sort of gaslighting with a maybe a fancier label on it what else happened here because I think folks might be wondering what does this guy say to you to keep you here or to wrap you up it doesn't make any sense I think one of the first things is the creating the belief that we found the best thing which creates an US versus them so there was a sort of an internal righteousness and like for us as individuals but as a collective so the community that we came to love felt like they'd say things like this is eventually like chosen family so if anyone was criticizing that that created the isolation they never said you know don't there was never active like you can't talk to somebody but it was more like what does it mean if you're communicating with somebody who doesn't support what you do right okay so then you you almost come to the answer yourself which is oh it means I'm I've got one I'm not committed I've got one foot out right or whatever right it was it was always tacit tacit instructions it's like leading questions too that kind of um they hold you hostage with your principles in a lot of ways and they make you know like a question like that will go well my highest value is XYZ obviously I should do this um but I think it's also Case by case like I I remember initially with my family I chose some like once or twice chosen Nexium event over seeing family and I got a little pushback from that and I was and I and I evaluated and was like you know what this isn't more important my family so from that point on I never let a Nexium event take precedent over a family event and that was my boundary which is probably why he stayed for whatever reason yeah for whatever reason I I like my family more than the people that in the cult whereas I was more obedient that was that was well I wouldn't even say I wasn't being obedient I just decided they would have said that yeah they yeah they would have they would try things to get me to stay they would try to get me to stay and do things and be like what's your highest value and I'd be like my family yeah and they're like ooh wrong answer uh or they reframe I'd be like I would be like that's yeah it just did that didn't I that was solid in me I guess and I think that protected you from yeah it protected you and also yeah you never made brown belt or whatever brown sash um and that was fine yes I've I've been in these groups not deep enough at all I've taken taken like the intro seminar to some of these things and I'll it's funny because these people add you on Facebook and a year later or something on their birthday back when I used to do this I would check in and say how are you doing happy birthday and they would some of them were still in the group and it was mind-blowing because I thought this is such a weird oppressive um group with a lot of what's the word I'm looking for a lot of really inappropriate use of influence and since I've been studying this stuff teaching this stuff doing this podcast for so many years I remember being like this is a really creepy way to do the upsell to the advanced program and what it one of the program I don't mind naming it was called mitt my opinion is that it was really creepy and it was also a shoot offshoot of something called Life Spring which got sued into Oblivion back in the day yeah so you probably heard of this and I just remember they would say like anybody who wants the advanced go in this other room and then if there'd be this group of 40 of us left and then he'd go come up to the front of the stage and he'd be like why is it that you're so resistant to continuing your education with us and somebody would say I can't make the dates because it's my best friend's wedding shower or something next weekend and then the guy would just drill into them how often do you make excuses to not do things for you to do things for other people and she's like well this friend actually I'm kind of on her [ __ ] list because I missed other things in her life that were really important for work and they would go oh so your friend doesn't support your work or your personal development and I'm sitting there going no she's been a shitty friend she needs to go to this important life event for her other friend have her go to the one that you're having in a month and they're reframing it as this is a bad friend she's holding you what I'm thinking this person's holding you accountable and they're like no this person's holding you back in life because they don't want to let you go to our 500 weekend long thingamajig instead of her freaking wedding shower right and Jordan you just described the exact conversation I had two years in I didn't go to My Best Friend's Wedding because of Vanguard week I was going to leave early and then they were like why would you leave early for someone who doesn't support your values right right and it's like is she taking trainings with you why would you go there you know to me it's crazy but you when you're in the room and they they had this poor woman of course she's standing up because he's making her stand everyone's staring at her so she's got all this social pressure and if you don't agree you look really bad there was a doctor in the room who said I can't make it because I they have surgery scheduled and it's like well you need to take time and do the development for yourself you're never going to advance in your career as a doctor and he's like I'm the chief surgical whatever at this hospital and I'm the only person who can perform this tonsil not even a tonsillectomy it was like a very serious whatever it's like taking someone's pancreas out or something you know it's like a real thing and they just kept making this guy look like crap and they finally were like you're uncoachable and he's like fine I'm uncoachable but I have to do this this is I'm saving someone's life here and he walked out and I remember thinking like that guy has the right idea this is a smart person who wasn't about to take your [ __ ] and they they knew that from stage and they kicked him out of the room because they realized uh this guy is not going to be pliable and also I think there was probably when you're on stage maybe you can hear the murmurs of people going uh it's a surgery man it's important this guy's a doctor you know he had some Authority by virtue of his position they did not want him in the room for that reason they want people who are just going to be like drones and listen to anything that's coming from the stage and I think you know when you're you really do need a background and influence and persuasion and Cults otherwise you just kind of sit there and smart person or not you just get sucked in it's really easy to see yep 100 I wish I said more things like that doctor knowing what I know I would mean obviously sure I actually think I wouldn't even gone to the five day because they pressured me with the signing the application to get the discount and I think I would have said actually I feel pressured and I feel like you're using scarcity mentality to get me to commit and if this is really great it'll be here when I'm ready so thanks but I didn't know that right but it's so but it's so interesting because in the book Sarah you talk about struggling to engage with one of your early trainings where you guys had to write a personal mission statement or something like that and you broke into a sweat and and you say that you struggle to face your personal flaws and you were kind of Jarred I think by some of the stuff you were confronting about yourself but as it turns out the Nexium coaches you said were looking for your reaction in their eyes your sensitivity or your resistance to the curriculum actually strengthened your potential as a candidate for being a lifer in the ESP according to them this is a fascinating Paradox this idea that like your Healthy resistance to a curriculum that was ultimately was questionable was actually an asset what do they mean by that do they mean that you were an easier mark because you were a thinking person or were they trying to lower your guard by saying that your skepticism meant that somehow you would go further in the organization yeah you know I don't really know that there's answers that are still out there that I'm still figuring out I'm I can guess what I know now is that anything that they saw that they could flip for their own benefit they would so um I I was I was a mark for a lot of reasons being a natural recruiter like a you know I have a big Network I'm really passionate about things that I believe in even like what we're doing now on the other side of it all it's I'm still the same person um but I think the fact that I was I was like I was in a meltdown I and I wasn't happy like if somebody had said let's go I'll take you to the airport right then I would have gone but I had invested and I wanted to get you know my money's worth and I think they just saw um dollar signs with me in terms of what I could bring to the company which I did and the anything that I anything I presented they'd tell me why I was great like they made me very special got it so they they saw they saw that the skepticism that like that surgeon at that event might have had and they maybe were threatened by it or concerned about but anything that they could use to to keep you guys in they would use so that just became an asset and they just flipped okay got it I think so I think I mean I definitely saw them doing what they did with the surgeon they if people were super resistant to the sashes and they refused to wear them for example they'd ask them to leave like they just weeded out the people who were not compliant right from well also like there's there's an assumptive manipulation that goes on there that Sarah's going to continue so they say oh your XYZ will allow you to be a great recruiter and you can build a center here so they're creating the Hope they'd be like me saying your smooth voice will make you a great head trainer so I'm getting you to picture yourself as a head trainer and I'm planning the idea and like it's all this cultivating kind of mentality they have to get people right yeah the characters yeah whatever's important for that person and based on what I elicit about your values you know let's say I know you're ambitious to make money like you can make a lot of money as a head trainer you know just little impassing things that's that's interesting because that leads to my next question which is how do you think teachers and leaders or these cult leaders figure out which of these techniques to which of these techniques to use on which people you know how do they know okay I need to dangle the carrot of you know Gabriel a lot of powerful Hollywood people they're in these classes I mean that's what Scientology does in some ways right they're like you know Tom Cruise is always hanging out at the celebrity center why don't you go to this class there and you're going to meet a ton of powerful people and meanwhile you're like a 26 year old screenwriter who works at a gym folding towels and you're like this is my big break okay the Scientology stuff might be a little weird but what if I go there and I run into Tom Cruise and all these other important people that can make it happen for me which they're saying happens like they're keeping it in the family I need to be in the family let me just fake it till I make it and then I'll be a rich Hollywood person and I won't care that I spent 30 grand on auditing alien ghosts or whatever out of my body yeah how do they figure out which techniques to to work to use on who are you writing down things but I'll say this I don't know that everyone was like like if you came into a training Jordan I wouldn't be like how are we gonna dangle Jordan well you weren't you weren't the manipulator though yeah that's what I'm saying that's what I'm saying so I don't know how rampant that was except I think it was Keith doing it and Keith getting the flying monkeys to go out and get the information he was trying to elicit so he was basically Outsourcing his manipulation a little bit like for instance I did the did it for like two years and then I pieced out because I didn't really see anyone in the organization I looked up to I was like there's no one in this organization that is thriving in their world this is 2002 whatever it was brand new and they were trying to coach me and I was you know I structure I was going to classes I was doing my thing and I you know acting is something you need to create your own structure to to start having measurements and I got what I got needed from the organization and cut two you know I get cast in something in La I meet Mark Vicente who had taken a training at that point and then in 2006 they invite me back to come work on a film that they were I I was going to be in with some other people um and we're going into pre-production and they moved me from Los Angeles paid for everything which is kind of rare in the organization they didn't do stuff like this moved my car moved my life they're paying for my food and everything while I was there for that fall film never happens but I'm back in the community oh tricky tricky right yeah yeah and and I don't still to this day don't know why they targeted me because I was for all intents I was quote out I would take a training like once a year maybe because I liked just kind of looking underneath the hood figuring out how I could be better but I didn't want to be a part yeah I was going to say were you guys together at the time because maybe they're like piece no okay no when he when he came back to do the film was when we met but we were both dating other people and then we didn't hook up for a couple years um but in that I think they brought him back because he's a good represent there's so many women in the in the company and I think having a you know a handsome dude like an alpha male who can like stand up in front of a room be like yeah this helped me in my life that that's good you need people on the outside to be the face of it so I think nippy's maybe there was no guarantee I was going to come back and do that you know that's why I paid for you they had a plan yeah nippy alpha male square a perfect example technology devastating good looks look at this guy bringing the fire um but how do you speaking of which though how do you how does a cult member negotiate the tension between your impulses your instincts and what you're being taught because it sounds like nippy was like you know what I this is kind of I don't need this crap and then it's like well actually I do well actually I'm being pressured to feel like I do or whatever it is so to answer that question you know a lot of people say that I say that I want to say that how I was indoctrinated and bought in is different so my story is distinctly different from the one that you see there it isn't any less like I knew better and I'm trying to protect my self-image because I didn't fall for it I fell for it hook line and sinker I just fell for it hook line and sinker in a very different way and the one that I found I relate to the most was in a young Elitch's book take back your life where it talks about moral injury and I was very bought into the notion that we were making an impact and getting people to think critically about things and in ways that I felt like world leaders needed to so I was very kind of altruistic self-righteous at times perhaps about what I thought we were doing we were never doing that right so I think it's the kid the moral injury example in the book I think she cites how a soldier goes over to uh another country thinking they're fighting for Peace and Freedom and finding out that it's a totally different story and they feel that their principles were used against them to accelerate a clandestine agenda and that's very much how I felt when I found out what was going on and that moral injury was the thing that I felt like I had to tend to the most when I reconciled what what had happened so um it's different in in the traditional sense and I really want to pay attention to like me trying to minimize that I wasn't Khan it was just I want to emphasize it was different um because I think that's where the knowledge is and I think that's where people can get the wisdom out of something like this one of the Core Concepts of Nexium is these the the idea of an inner deficiency which is basically some specific void within each month within each member so for Sarah it looked like the idea was there's something fundamentally wrong with me and in your view at least According to some of the things you said before the belief made you uptight it made you judgmental there's also this desire to be light by people which you'd said drove pretty much everything in your life what does the organization do with these inner deficiencies and and the second part of this is are these inner deficiencies real or are they manufactured slash magnified by the organization to to get their hooks in and keep them there great question I think this is actually where where ESP or Nexium is very much aligned with schmandmark and things like that is that they have to like create a problem right within you that you believe is a real problem and then you want to fix it and then they present the path to fixing it and you're and you buy it we bought in that this is the path and the only way so they can't pull that completely out of thin air in terms of a completely made-up problem I did want people to like me I don't know now I don't really see that as like a major problem it's like it's a very normal thing that people want to be liked and belong and feel appreciated and validated maybe there's like healthier levels versus not healthy levels But ultimately I think that's what he did with everyone across the board we spent way too much time microscoping on feeling like [ __ ] about ourselves and that's was that and then we're like I feel like I'm an awful person like I do this and like I gotta do a collateral so I don't do this and I and you know we were doing all these exercises and penances and persistencies persistencies were like daily commitments to like you know doing sit-ups or like working on your taxes or learning Spanish we were just trying to be better and better and better and better it's fine if you want to be better but it's built on this belief that like you're not okay or you're broken or you're there's something wrong with you so the rot something wrong with you is it's not completely manufactured because I think many of us in life whether you're in a cult or not don't feel worthy or don't feel loved and that's a very common challenge that people have to overcome in their lives is to learn how to love themselves and not be looking externally you know do you like me do you like me you love me do you appreciate me like that's that can be a problem so I think one of the reasons Nexium hooked so many people at a young age is that most 20 year olds don't love themselves they don't have a strong relationship with themselves they don't have a solid sense of self-worth I think that's a normal thing but then they turned it into oh well that's just your inner deficiency right so it's so to answer your question both it's a real thing and then it's manufactured and highlighted in order to create a dependency and a hook for the whole path is that what it does and what's what's sort of Insidious here is that everybody is going to have aspects of their personality that would attract them to a group like Nexium my sense is okay a lot of you guys are Seekers you're ambitious you're curious you're hungry for Community eager to grow find more fulfillment there's not a person listening right now who's like I don't have any of those qualities right everybody listening certainly listening to a podcast like this has those but all humans that have more than two brain cells to rub together have some combination of the qualities that I just mentioned and all of those needs are legitimate these are not personal flaws these are qualities of really good people and so in organization like Nexium preys on those legitimate needs and I'm wondering if you think there are other qualities or other needs that made you and the other victims of this cult vulnerable for example in season two you really do see Nancy salzman's personal and I say innocence I don't mean like in the eyes of the law because she is in prison but or was but the uh the Innocence she was sheltered really it seems like not just by Keith but just maybe even as a kid this is all happening under her nose and here she is all Huggy and everything and it's like does being sheltered make people vulnerable as well because they just don't know how manipulative people or evil people can be you know what's going on here it's listen I don't I can't speak totally for her but theory that I get I put together from The Vow season two is that she talks about her mom her mother called her a dummy yeah so in that framework of deficiency she doesn't feel smart and Keith gave her a role that gave her a lot of clout as a leader and as a teacher she was the prefect she was the head of a school and people look up to her and you know literally threw flowers at her and just showered her I believe that there's a certain power that she got from that role that for sure she was revered she was revered yeah in fact I probably revered her more than I revered Keith like I had that relationship with her and I think that she enjoyed that and in those terms that would have covered up the inner deficiency yeah right just like she would when I know that she said this about nippy and I when we left they said that when I got married to nippy and had a baby that covered up minor deficiency that's a crap in those terms yeah it's a terrible thing it's a terrible thing to say and in fact I had so many EMS on my attachment to having children like it's a t like they would thrill you on like why do you want that throw into it as well Jordan that Nancy in about three years of the organization organization starting is having conversations with Edgar bronfman Stephen Cooper who is the new CEO of Enron um the health security of Mexico she's sitting down in a very short amount of time with some very powerful powerful people as someone who's esteemed for their intelligence ended up meeting with the Dalai Lama so all these things that are happening to Nancy that wouldn't have happened in her Wildest Dream I think we're intoxicating sure yeah I couldn't understand that and to be fair and I know I'm talking about somebody who led a cult so I'm gonna I don't I don't mean to hurt anyone's feelings here she comes across as really brilliant right the curriculum looks cool she's very well spoken I can see how she really was somebody who meant to do well in the beginning at least and this and get sucked in here not that she's blameless or uh completely a victim of all this and didn't victimize anyone else that's that's not for me to say but she she doesn't come across as some dumbass who can't ever do accomplish anything in life it's kind of the opposite it's really sad that this is how she ended up that she's going to lose a bunch of years of her life in prison and her parents possibly at least one of them has passed away while she was in I mean it's just it's really tragic it's heartbreaking yes it is yeah and yeah and you can tell in The Vow she feels really bad about a lot of this I mean just terrible not just getting caught but she just like she's looking back and going was I just a tool that he used to create something that he could use to bang underage girls I mean she didn't phrase it that way but she really is struggling she might as well she might as well have done that she actually said something really interesting about Keith let me find it in my notes Gabriel you know what I'm talking about with the water bottle yeah yeah about being objectifying she says this she holds up a bottle of water she's being interviewed she says this bottle of water is very valuable to me right now because I'm thirsty and there's water in it but once I'm done I just turn around and put it down I walk away and I forget about it and that's how Keith Ranieri treated everyone in the organization and how he treated people and I wrote that down and rewound it and pause it because I thought this is so interesting because that really is how a sociopathic victimizer looks at other people right these people are here for me to use as tools and in the moment they're the only thing in my world and I can focus on them and make them feel really special and do whatever I need to manipulate them but what I'm done I mean who gives a [ __ ] if they go if they get run over by a truck as soon as I turn my back I'm not gonna I'm not gonna scrape them off the road because I'm done I'm finished with them yep I said or to be able to do that you have you cannot have a conscience right I think of course yeah and I was just going to say ironically it's the opposite of being a humanitarian right yeah it is the opposite of being humanitarian you're just a person who's using people for their own ends full stop it's it's something that that really gnaws at my subconscious as well the manipulation here is always so unfortunately familiar right there's the idea of being at cause this was also a thing in the intro self-help creepy group that I went to uh want the intro seminar the at cause right everything in your life you're responsible for creating it and if you ask which I did what about children who are starving in Africa it's like you're just doing this to be difficult and it's like then it you know I got kind of almost shunned and disciplined for asking what about kids who get leukemia because they're like you're just picking an example that's going to discredit the leader here and the message and you're trying to find something wrong with it and it's like okay so I found something legitimately that pokes a hole in what you're saying and now I'm deliberately trying to disrupt the class with this example it's like wait a minute though if Jordan if you had been in an exim class it would have sounded more like that's an interesting example Jordan why do you feel the need to find a counter example versus looking how this applies in your life yeah yeah that's basically what it was exactly we were more gentle with the gaslighting we were like more subtle I I you know that also makes sense because this was a huge group that was probably 200 people in the room I think they almost wanted to get ready yeah my group yeah so I think they wanted to get rid of they were filtered the first intro thing was probably get rid of anybody who's going to put up any sort of resistance and be difficult whereas with Nexium later on especially in the smaller classes it's like no no if you're going to pay eight grand to be here for two weeks or whatever it is we want to keep you in and so we're gonna maybe Kid Glove you a little over here and try and make you fit whereas this was more like all right we're gonna get 200 people in here we want 150 people to sign up for the next thing and 100 people from that to go on to the super expensive stuff everybody else can get the hell out of here anybody who complains about us staying here till three o'clock in the morning can go home anybody who's got to do surgery in the morning can go home anybody who's going to find a counter example and you know try to apply logic can get the hell out of here you know it's a filtering process yep I think they all do that yeah it's funny you said that about the personal responsibility because live stream and Scientology and asked landmark and Nexium it all comes from the same [ __ ] you know and but that is a main tenant that I see throughout it all personal responsibility being at cause and the problem is is that there's truth in it something happens in your life something bad happens in your life you can go oh this always happens to me and complain and whine or you can go okay how did I participate in this like what expectations did I not you know was I not aware of that brought me here which can be really helpful if you want to have more potency and not make the same mistake again but if you are being victimized or someone's lying to you or conning you it doesn't apply and that's where these it's a self-protective mechanism of these groups because they can abuse you and if you put up any fight or any question it can always be flipped back at well how did you cause it right in Scientology terms how did you bring it in how did you author it and it's Norm it's also done normally under certain premises that you didn't know you agreed to or you forget agreeing to right so you come in you go well do you see how you authored it well yeah kinda but like because I've agreed to this process of accountability I'm now forced to go okay well I got to come up with how I authored it and I got to come up with how I offered it to end this conversation and go home so like you know I want to get out okay yeah I can see how I did it and then you know the gaslighting the subtle gas lighting has taken effect and then eventually you're doing it to yourself hey if you like what you're hearing and seeing check out the Jordan Harbinger Show podcast feed there's a lot more just like this you can find the Jordan Harbinger show in apple podcasts Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts now back to the show Gabe let's talk about The Branding I know I'm talking over Gabriel because we have no way we don't usually don't co uh host these interviews so we're we're a little bit I don't know what you say Rusty around the handoff here but I want to talk about The Branding I know we've and Gabe if you want to highlight some of the other topics in the notes because we're definitely going to run out of time no problem no but go ahead though let's talk about it yeah a lot of people are going okay yes self-help called I there's so much going on with sex with underage women and all these different things that people can see it when they watch The Vow and all the different individual abuses we don't have to categor we don't have to catalog all of those but there's The Branding right where women who joined this sort of sorority that was inside the cult uh the inside the group it was sort of the smaller much smaller organization the women were branded with what later turned out to be Keith's initials but was supposed to be some symbol before tell tell me talk to me about The Branding because this is I think a lot of people are going wait a minute how do you sign up for an executive seminar and dot dot dot you've got someone's initials on your pelvis and I'll let people use their imagination for where that where that ended up uh but it's just a really big leap I think for a lot of people to wrap their head around it is a big leap and it's why I'm so grateful that The Vow did such a good job of showing what we thought we were building and and leading people up to that spot that's why why I wrote a book actually so I wouldn't have to go to the details too much for the rest of my life right um but I'll give you the cliff notes and truthfully it's partly also just my own self-protection and when I go in into the nitty-gritty and I actually put myself there it can be still re-traumatizing so I try to kind of stay surface with it and you know the tone of this pot is intelligent but also light-hearteds right so and nippy and I laugh all the time and I kind of have to so that's my caveat is that many things happened for me to agree for that to happen and ultimately there was step-by-step things that I agreed to joining a secret women's group having Lauren be my master taking a vow of obedience all like I said earlier it felt like an exercise and I agreed to a tattoo and she told me it was gonna be very small and it would be this very symbolic thing that I did with my sisters and I'd never been in a sorority and there was an element that was definitely weird I mean my alarm my internal alarm Bells were going off from the from the moment she told me about all this but I was told I was doing it right because it had to be that's it was a very serious commitment and I was willing to make that commitment to her because I cared about her and I loved her and I trusted her but the night of it turned out to be a brand and I don't even I don't even have a concept of branding other than like what's done to animals up until that night right but that's what it is because you own that person's flesh right or that cow's flesh because it would be with right cattle which by the way was when I was telling people about it later when I was trying to tell people about it in the organization they were like what do you mean Brandon I'm like let's send farmers do to cattle to say that they owned the cattle and they said well that's only that if you make it mean that I said no that's what it is but anyway the night of um there's a lot of factors that's hard to explain and I think you actually did a pretty good job earlier Jordan in terms of the frog and the pot of water it's by that point I'd given collateral I'd make it made a valve obedience talk about a prayer peer pressure situation to the extreme and with my not only my friends but women who in that situation I'm one of the highest ranks of and I have Lauren in my ear I'm a singer I don't want this this is not a tattoo and it's not a dime size it was two inches it was like two inches by two inches it was big and without an aesthetic and she's the I didn't go first I'd watch two women go ahead of me and it was horrific and I had a like a now uh what's it called like a a gag no a um a mask because the smell of Flesh oh okay like and we also we didn't want like anything to go into the wound like it was it was something out of a horror movie and I quickly realized that and then Lauren even said to me like you need to show these women how it's done I I was gaslighting myself in my and I think that this is pretty clear in my book where if people want to know what the internal process is it's like I'm going get the [ __ ] out of here this is so [ __ ] up like people think we're a cult already this is this is a call to you know then going in my other side of my ear my brain Heath's voice saying all the things we've been indoctrinated to believe about women the worst parts of anyone but specifically we believe it's women women always are looking for the back door we're flaky we have no character we have no follow through [ __ ] I gotta follow through and I have this collateral over my head she's got nude photos she's got false confessions I mean never mind what I've given her she knows everything about me she's essentially my therapist so everything was on the line and I didn't feel like I had a choice and that was the nature and now now we don't call the collateral collateral blackmail right it's called blackmail and when you when when this happens outside of a group it's called blackmail or when it's used as a threat outside of anything like this it's called blackmail and of course it is blackmail uh inside the group too you just create the way that Cults and we did we talked about this with Amanda Montel the way that Cults control language is they go oh somebody might say that's blackmail let's rename this something else let's call it collateral for you to encourage you to follow through on your promises let's not call this something super uber creepy let's make a euphemism for it that we then Elevate to be something really great and religions do this too right um I don't want to get eight billion emails but religions do this too so we're gonna leave it at that but yes but but I got on that table and I said Master will you brand me it would be an honor as I was instructed and later we found out in the trial Keith tells Allison that he should that the women should ask to get it so it appears consensual right and I think anyone with a brain could tell you know I'm married to nippy I would never consent to have another man's initials next to my crotch and you can't I didn't find out about the initials still Weeks Later that was Kept For Me like even if I'd agreed and I wanted that brand or whatever the fact that that was kept from me was like the biggest betrayal of them all that's and to answer your question from about an hour ago that's when I figured out I was in a cult gotcha it wasn't even The Branding it wasn't because the night of the branding I was so bought in I was so indoctrinated you know I was proud of myself when I was done I even said to the other women who went after me like it's awful I'd push through it like I felt like we'd been taught that pain is love that sounds super abusive but okay I know I know I mean I know that now [ __ ] creepy holy crap yeah so I was and then I had Lauren's face looking at me and we're all crying and like it's emotional and I went through this thing and I came home and like I couldn't tell nippy and I'm like he's gonna [ __ ] know what I went through and I was so proud of myself and I kept it from him and I was like nursing this [ __ ] wound on my and it was like awful it was awful and also exciting I didn't when I did when I figured out that it was his initials and that's when Mark and I spoke and he told me they heard about women being invited to join Out secret society and that they were there was sex involved and women were being assigned to go seduce Keith that's when I put it all together because I didn't know about the sex he didn't know about The Branding and then we're like holy [ __ ] he's Economist yeah wow yeah so from a logistical how do you cover that up like what can you get a brand removed I don't even know what you do I've had it removed actually yeah they've spent years I spent years like putting oil on it and like exfoliating it and having treatments to get the keloid down because it was quite raised and that eventually two years ago I had a plastic surgery which was paid for by an anonymous donor I don't know what it is contacted my lawyer and said I want to pay for women to have the brands removed and it was like a three thousand dollar surgery they basically cut if you can imagine the square and you can imagine an oval being cut around it and then sewed back together sure okay so it's like tummy type type thing but like just for the star yeah so I just have like a three inch white very thin line you'd never notice smaller than a c-section scar and it's way better than Keith's for initialism was that a bit was that a big deal when you had that procedure done did you feel like you turned it was a big deal it was yeah because I had spoken to the surgeon she's like we can sand it now but you'll probably always see KR in the mirror I don't think you want that and I'm like I absolutely do not want that and it was a very emotional meaningful decision for me to and also harder to lie on a table and have surgery in the same spot where I'd been so violated three years before so it was it was intense but it was a big turning point for me in my healing I have to imagine that was huge because in the book you talk about how the brand isn't just a physical wound but a moral injury which nippy was talking about earlier this permanent trauma to your conscience as you put it so getting the procedure I know it seems sort of cosmetic but I imagine that that also must have helped to some degree with the emotional slash ethical aspect of it yes and yeah and up until that point I felt like I needed it because I had to I had the physical proof of his emotional abuse that had been incurring for decades to other women right and this was I mean I think one of his flaws one of not making it a religion to protect himself like Scientology as we learned from Mike rinder but also that he branded his initials in women's bodies like okay do that to the women you're sleeping with but you're gonna do that to a married woman married to nippy like what the [ __ ] are you thinking like when was that gonna how is that gonna play out right Mike render by the way high level Scientologist who sort of I guess you'd call it defected left the group and now exposes things that are or slash are going on inside Scientology yeah yeah this the whole thing is just absolutely insane I mean we're barely scratching the surface of the the stuff that's in The Vow the abuses that happened in this cult but we we only have so much time I do wonder and the delusional control that Keith wanted around the group and among the women in the group he wanted thousands of these women he talked about swinging the vote for the president of the United States because of the numbers Nexium would have and it's like when you see that you just like get a grip dude a bunch of people in a kitchen somewhere filming a dude in knee pads in a sweatband talking during volleyball you're trying to seduce a 15 year old girl right now like calm down Keith but the the brand really is a physical manifestation of the pain that this guy caused willingly and and put on a bunch of people there are still some people from Nexium who are I guess True Believers and they think oh it's so sad Keith's in prison this is the whole thing is a setup one of them in the Valley of the scale Nikki who actually brought you or you sorry you actually brought into the cult what is it like knowing that somebody that you recruited not only got hurt but still has not shaken off the spell honestly it's what keeps me going talking about this like I will not stop till she wakes up and unfortunately the more that I say that and more the more that she digs in to believing that I'm wrong and she's right and that's the hardest thing because she was a friend she was at our wedding um and I feel sad isn't even the right word it's just like it's so helpless like there's I can't I can't do anything because I'm the enemy right in her mind I'm the abusive one I'm the liar I'm the one who ruined everything not Keith so I can't help her right like she'll never talk to me or trust me I have to find other ways to reach her and I haven't stopped and I do and I continued I continue to and I hope that one day it's something I say or some something that somebody says wakes her up in the same way that we were able to wake up and I believe that's possible other people say it probably probably will never happen given the fact that she was you know has seen the trial she's seen The Vow every episode of season two I thought oh my God this is gonna wake up this is gonna think about wait Keith let Pam sit in her own [ __ ] while Nancy made breakfast right yeah yeah this like of course that's not illegal but that's that's awful right this is this anecdote is about there's a woman who's really really sick she's being taken care of she had cancer I believe right is that what it was and she's there's a scene in The Vow where he's like oh she had an accident oh and Nancy goes oh I'll go help and I'll change it he's like no no make breakfast sit down and talk with me and then they find out that she actually hadn't just sort of like wet her diaper or whatever I'm not trying to I want to make this sound dignified I am doing a terrible job but she had actually yeah she had been in her own feces while they sat and ate breakfast and he just didn't give a [ __ ] he just didn't care and it's so obvious even in the footage that he just doesn't he just it was like an inconvenience for him that somebody else wanted to take care of a cancer patient while he wanted to have a chat and eat an omelette I mean it really summarizes the guy in one anecdote but when you see something like that to your point Sarah it's like how does somebody see that part of the story and not think wait at a minimum I need to reevaluate what I think about this guy what do you think is going through Nikki's mind right now or people like Nikki who are still involved in the cult is it what is the psychology of somebody who clings to an organization after so much evidence has come out is it the inability to like tolerate the cognitive dissonance of hearing different you know competing evidence is it the are they embarrassed to have to stop and say wow I might have been wrong for a decade plus of my life like what keeps people involved I mean there's a long answer there's a short answer I'd say in short it's Pride um I think for the people that are remaining the fact that they can't get in a conversation with that they're not curating and they get their ideas challenged and they get um agitated when their ideas are challenged and you're not obedient to their narrative speaks to I think they're protecting their self-image and they will cling to anything that will allow them to keep their image of themselves intact right and they hide behind altruism as a means to do it so now they're social justice Warriors they're trying to fix the legal system because that's in line with the self-image they want to flex and portray um so they're willing to actually destroy the principle that they're pretending to uphold as a means to keep their self-image intact and then they pretend that they're not doing it and then they pretend that they're not pretending when you call them out on it um so I think the most compassionate thing to do is leave them alone I think any time you try to do something to help them they will make it bad villainize you and proof that that what they're saying and their narrative is true or being abusive or whatever and that's sometimes the hard thing um and I try not to talk about it um specific people but I'll talk about the process that I see in hopes that people can understand what they're looking at and I think that's a broad kind of generalization of what you're looking at with them what is somebody like Keith Ranieri really want you know watch The Vow I keep asking myself what is this guy doing you know I understand it's about power it's about attention it's about pleasure he seems to be a pretty textbook narcissist so and or sociopath with kind of a weird 12 year old boy level obsession with sex but I'm scratching my head it's true man I mean that's the best that's the best bio I've heard winter called Nexium Keith rainieri's wet dream so yeah it really it's just like I'm scratching my head about what the needs are ultimately about because it seems he spends so much time in energy gratifying these impulses that were ultimately just seemingly really superficial self-serving you know is there something that drives a guy like Keith deep down or our personalities like Keith's just black vortexes of of of need and approval seeking behavior and there's just no deeper principle both I we've we've learned from the experts that a lot of these people never get evaluated even when they're in jail so we don't really know but from our not expert research all of these guys like crash um David Crash from Waco uh Texas and um I think Dahmer as well and Keith they all have had these these um bad experiences with their parents and I'm sure you've heard about like attachment theory yes yeah so basically poor attachment which creates um this like in conjunction with I would say too yeah so basically like talking about an inner deficiency that exists in the real world he feels like a tiny little worthless piece of [ __ ] underneath it all and found a way to control through his you know his sexual prowess or whatever and we actually just interviewed his his girlfriend at 18 who's Karen underriner in The Vow and she shared how he was a stud it's hard to believe it's hard to believe in that when you watch The Vow but apparently in the 70s and late 70s he was built and had you know the feathered you know hair and he was smart and he was a stud and he like had lots of women going all the time and I think that just covered up the fact that he felt like a worthless little pudgy nerd on the inside who would never didn't get enough love from his mother that's my Dime Store analysis yeah yeah it makes sense it makes sense I mean he's just he he had a pathological need for whatever that was and that's one of the reasons he probably was built back then or whatever had the hair and then when that became impossible he became a Mr knee pad volleyball sweatband guy and like just different stages different phases yeah God helped me that he doesn't get out of jail because I will be sued for libel times a million after that yeah insulting somebody is not uh doesn't incur liability um also I think defamation has to do with the intent I don't remember the legal definition but I don't think we can argue that that's exactly yeah the absolute defense to something slander or libel is is proof that the thing you said is true and I think we can just cut to the footage and go is that not sweatpants is that it's not like and also really libel is when you say somebody's a pedophile which I'm just saying it's in the video also been also proven so I don't know we can really get in trouble for calling him discount David Foster Wallace like that's literally what he looks like yeah David Foster Wallace so now we're all getting sued Keith was given 120 year prison sentence he lost his appeal what like last week or something like that yeah so he's not getting out anytime soon maybe he's in parole here and there but he's sort of in that now Allison Mack got three years Nancy Salzman got three and a half years Claire bronfman got six years in nine months seeing the leaders of the cult get punished the the leaders of Nexium does that does that help you heal in some way or is the Criminal part of this more of a side show and not having to do with your personal Journey yes each person yeah overall I mean I think everyone's happy that Keith is behind about the world is safer the other people I don't know if the world is safer with them behind bars but there's also legal precedent so you can't you know you have to follow when people commit crimes um I'm really happy that Nancy seems to have woken up Lauren for sure woke up Allison apparently woke up I don't really haven't had much contact from her Claire is the only one who hasn't woken up and she got more time because of that because she refused to disavow him and I think that that's really key in understanding the whole case and ultimately people are always like do you think that's enough or does she need more I'm like I don't know I'm not a lawyer all I know she scares me the most yeah when she gets out because she's still wealthy is that why or if you if you haven't turned the corner by now or by the time you get out you don't turn the corner she's going to come out and she's going to come out for Revenge I just know her and I know how she was pointed in a certain direction and I don't think she knows any other way I believe that and I know that she's going to have probation for three years because this is something that's concerning to me and I've asked our lawyers about it um I don't know who she would go after and who she has the most vengeant for us for I think it might be Mark Vicente it might be some of the women but I don't think she's gonna not re-engage that somehow I think it's I think it's a itch that she can't scratch I hope I'm wrong but I just don't there's no indication that she's eaten her Crow on this appropriately right um like everyone else has and and dealt with the shrapnel that went off when Keith Renee went off um everyone else seems to have at least done that except for people that are loyal and Claire brofen and she's the one with the resources and probably the motivation to do something I don't know if you feel that way Sarah but I kind of feel that way I do look if nippy and I disappear in eight years please come looking forward it's scary that somebody with I don't know 200 million dollars or whatever she has or is related to inherit might also have it out for you and or other people that you know like that's scary if some guy who comes out of prison and has nothing is after you it's like okay I don't want to live in the same city as them fine or they're not violent they're just going to be pissed off at me but when somebody's like I can harass you with lawyers till the end of time that sucks you know that's scary and and maybe I'm naive but you know I I think it's a healthy Fear To Have and at least you know keep keep in my mind because you know this might not be over for us sadly yeah um yeah yeah but it has that feel right now well there's Seasons seven eight and nine of the podcast yeah that's right yeah plenty of material yeah well you know look I mean the reason Sarah and I do this is because we have some wisdom and we have uh some content that people can can take and make more informed decisions with and as long as that Lane's open to us I think we should take it which is why we were so excited to come on this show by the way Jordan because that says I know that's part of your log line is taking wisdom into people can think better yeah Jordan what your your podcast with Stephen Hassan was one of the first I listened to when I got out oh wow yeah and I listened to it again when we're we got approached about a podcast because I heard yours was good delivered yes I appreciate it delivered yeah we love it yeah yeah I would love to talk about that for a moment the the recovery of postnexium you guys have obviously been through a lot I know Sarah in the book you talk about working with a team of therapists and a specialist in Colts and a couples counselor and uh you say in the book and I assume to be for you as well doing the podcast that two things have helped you heal the most telling your story and doing the right thing in the face of adversity I think it might seem obvious but I think for everybody everybody who goes through a traumatic experience like this probably has a different response to to the aftermath and and how to work through it what is it about telling your story here on your podcast in the media that helps heal these wounds is it being vulnerable about it is it helping other people how does that process actually work it's all those things um sure I would just say I think it's a little bit different for both of us but I know for me because I was such a big recruiter and so such an advocate for him I have to kind of like clean up my mess on the other side as a part of it and also I'm the same person as I was before I bet on the wrong horse with Nexium but I've always wanted to help people and now I feel like actually can help people with the lesson that I learned and you know if I had these red flags as a knowledge in my tool belt I would have protected myself and there's so many people who are vulnerable as you know you talk about with Amanda Montel and Stephen Hassan these things are everywhere everyone's susceptible to it no matter what you think and it's such a clear purposeful thing that I feel and that that fixes for me this like mess of the 12 years before so it's just part of my healing journey and that's very cathartic and getting to work with my husband on something that we can do together that's positive and legitimately helping is is the best for us is that what that you're going to say for more yeah the gist of that and I think um to add a little bit is you know we have this Lane and it's important that we stay in it but the principle-based reasons at least for me is like the abuses of power that went on occult aren't proprietary to a cult they go on and a lot of other places in our society so if you can really articulate what they look like and sound like in your domain where it happened to you people can go oh well I see that here at work or I see it at the local YMCA or something like that so then they have a language and they have a means to identify abuses of power that's great I mean and I also figured at a certain point because Sarah is more inclined to say yes to things and I was more inclined to say no I recognize someone's going to grab my story and run with it and I have to tell my story I wasn't particularly interested in having our personal life become other people's entertainment and if it was going to happen it was going to happen or you know with my influence and what I had to say in my wisdom so that was my part is a large part of why I decided to get involved and do it and I also recognize you know Sarah has a demographic that she's going to reach and I have a demographic that I'm going to reach and while I think there's less men that were involved with this type of organization it was only because I was I was targeted differently not because I wasn't vulnerable to it and I'm kind of the guy who's in the back row with his arms folded a little bit cocky this couldn't happen to me sure and I was that guy I mean you know I was that guy I was like this couldn't happen to me I was you know cocky arrogant and it did and because I thought it couldn't happen to me it created that blind spot for me so in a lot of ways I'm talking to that guy right there who's out there thinking that you know it can't happen to me and hopefully I'll inform him to you know make a better decision in life what advice do you have then to somebody who's involved in an organization whether it's a self-help group or a religion or a spiritual Community or even some online Forum or something like that what would you recommend they do to determine whether they're involved in an unethical organization or whether their involvement or dependency on a group is on is unhealthy for me ask questions if you're if you challenge and you get pushback I would just I think that's enough and also research like we never researched next time yeah like research it and if there's any smoke there's probably fire and if they say oh that person was just a woman scorned or she's crazy you know like any any Guru or leader will say that about any defense any uh defectors that they'll just dismiss all of it as like lies or a smear campaign um and talk to people outside the group talk to The Experts and and research it if there's a cult website and it says this is a cult and this is why it probably is and there's so many resources in fact I'll give you for your show notes um I have a resource page on my website and there's a link to Stephen and Amanda and all those there's tons of videos and quick things on YouTube that you can watch and determine but if you're like being isolated if you're being gaslit if you're being encouraged to ignore your intuition if you're feeling pressured if you're being punished punished publicly um all of those are very obvious red flags that I see now that I think people can can look to how do people stay may be honest with themselves and with other people about their involvement of their feelings or their commitment because I would imagine at some point you're lying to yourself or hiding your involvement how deep you are in an organization like this because you maybe know it's a little bit weird well I think that goes back to the question you asked about the Loyalists I think part of them knows that it's bad but at this point it's like people trying to get their um get their money's worth you know I think that's a key thing that keeps people in and they're just unwilling to admit uh made a bad decision they ignore ignore ignore same thing in a domestic abuse situation they're like oh I can't I kind of missed that it I must be wrong so I think that plays a big part too so if somebody does ask these questions and then realizes hey I might be in trouble I might be part of something bad or something dangerous what do they do who do they turn to how do they get out safely is there anything they should not do yes do not go to the leadership and tell them they're thinking about leaving okay I tried try and talk them down yeah do not do that find a way find a reasonable reason to leave when I left it was my grandfather was sick in Toronto so I didn't attend that training and that was true actually but you know you can make something up find a find out what I left it was because my wife got branded yeah valid fair enough um but you know I I had to have a a story a cover story for a bit but most people can get away from the group some people are you know if you're stuck in a compound that's a different situation but any way to get out of the group and talk to um any of the cult experts that I mentioned or you know law enforcement getting therapy but definitely don't don't tell the group that you're leaving and just find a find an excuse that would be acceptable within that group to leave thank you very much Gabe is there anything that we have not is there anything you wanted to ask that I we haven't done yet otherwise we could wrap it this is great I'm this is an awesome conversation I have one other thing I'd love to ask you yes um even talking to you on the show and and certainly in the documentary you guys seem to have a really good sense of humor and it comes through on the podcast as well even when things got really dark you were able to laugh at yourself at the whole situation you know at Keith or whatever um do you think that your sense of humor played a role in your ability to see through Nexium to some degree and and more importantly your ability to process what happened to you and survive because I feel like there's something about humor that is you know it it entails a certain flexibility and a certain distance from what's Happening and I also wonder maybe if it's part of resilience do you guys think your sense of humor played a role in all this okay so here here's kind of like my little Ted Talk on humor I did it yesterday you have to do it in one minute though I can do it in one minute okay um Good Humor has truth in it right there's no way around it like because a good comedian can be meta about things in society and it's true and we're all laughing and nodding because it's true that's what makes it funny um I was never going to subvert that I think when I was applying it to really any aspect of of my own life like you know and I've got you know I come from a family where my brother's names are Huey Dewey and Louie and my little sister is Daisy that's true oh God that's true oh wow man yeah why yeah that's a whole nother like so like I always like will look at things through that lens at some point now how much that allowed me to protect me I don't know I think there was a certain kind of like I was always meta about the sashes so which means I think in a lot of sense I'm in but not like blind Allegiance and and I was somewhat shocked to see how there was a blind allegiance to what I believed 75 of right like it was it's staggering to me to see the people that are still and even like before like the all the information came out it was still kind of like are people not a little a little meta on this so I think if my definition of humor holds up I think that might be one of the things that always I had that meta lens and you can even see I do an imitation of Keith um it's hilarious and I just was pretty good at imitations and ended up doing one at Nancy's party and we had lost it for a while and the Val wanted us to find it and I didn't I couldn't find it for season one and I found it too late they didn't put it in or whatever but when we went back and watched it three years out we were it was funny like you know to make fun of them but it was also we were like oh my God the stuff I was saying was actually what he was doing and like so oh interesting there was something I was sensitive to I don't know why like I'm not gonna sit here and say you know whatever but yeah as Keith going on things you don't know are going on around here but I was just imitating what he was was doing I didn't know that like I had caught oh wow your subconscious picks up on his creepiness probably maybe I don't know it's safer to explore in a bit than to yeah can say all kinds of stuff and he goes just jokes people come on it's a comedy show and it's like no we're just kind of being a little bit racist but okay I need I need we need we need to see that video yeah you guys might appreciate this people tell the truth when they're joking right and lie when they're serious you know so an answer to your question also Gabe I don't think nippy and I would be together if he wasn't funny and I thank God because having to go through this healing process without him I don't I mean I don't know where I'd be like it's it and we've we we we've had hard times but we also laugh daily and you have to laugh like our hard times are Petty sex cult for 12 years and like we missed out on all that yeah we're in a sex College we didn't even get any sex I know right yes I say I'm winning I'm married maybe I got two beautiful boys but yeah I'd say we're waiting too I'd say there's the fact that my problems yeah I say the fact that our problems are getting our kids to school on time as opposed to what they could have been is one thing I'm very grateful for right now I gotta how old are your kids eight and three is there any sort of like hey you're the one I'm watching a thing about your mom on HBO where she got her vagina branded um anyway there's cookies and milk in the corn I mean that's a little bit like this Troy's eight we just recently told him more and he's like he's bright he's a bright he's like if I ever saw Keith I would knee him in the nuts yeah yeah so he's that's where he's at he said I'll tell him Morris he gets older but he he knows we were in a cult he knows we got out he knows Keith is bad and he's in jail and you know he knows his parents did the right thing and I think that's you know a good template for him I hope he you know there's going to be some high school chatter about mom for sure there will there will and maybe that will build some results he's gonna have a strong character well he doesn't have to worry about seeing Keith because he's got 120 year prison sentence and he just lost his appeal so and five years probation right so yeah is he is he getting 125 or 150 60 whatever it is we're gonna keep our eyes on you you know I mean he's that cause so yeah yeah it's like you know I'm sure this to yourself bro that's I wonder how he's rationalizing that well he knows all that stuff is BS anyways right or thinks a lot of it is BS the way it's applied so I'm sure it uh doesn't apply doesn't apply to Vanguard over there in prison um I wonder if he's up to his tricks in prison because that's a good place to get people wound around your finger and manipulate other people it's full of manipulators and sociops trying all sides all sorts of [ __ ] and getting in trouble and getting really what have you heard what have you heard always have gotten punched and he's just like you know trying to subvert the system he just sued the prison um the Bureau of the prisons or whatever it's called um because they stopped letting him talk to the Loyalists which he should never have been able to in the first place because then he's still pulling the lovers from jail but um yeah I know he's still just doing his thing wow keeping Keith yeah I saw he's like flashing the flashlight out the window and the women are dancing outside and I'm just thinking this is such a bad idea what are you doing um when I he's humiliated he's humiliating them and that's the other reason I forgot to mention Gabe you asked earlier why don't people leave or what like what's the psychology if they really were to admit what happened to them it's incredibly embarrassing incredibly embarrassing and the humiliation and the shame keeps it all shrouded like nippy and I were so embarrassed when we figured out that we were wrong we ate that [ __ ] sandwich and it was awful and it still is awful but for them it's like eight sandwiches because it's they've sat through a whole trial now and so much more evidence so oh doubling and tripling down doesn't help it either no they're kind of the cost of coming out and changing your mind gets higher and higher the more you invest which is terrifying to think about and that's like the organization who wants you to double down and be loyal but they're also ensuring that your self-image is going to be so much stronger and the cost of coming out so much higher that you probably won't leave the longer it goes on it's wild well this is this is what they say about Doomsday cults right Gabe it's it's you're you're in the Doomsday cult and the world's going to end tomorrow and then when it doesn't you think okay everybody's going to leave and the leader is going to be like uh oh oops and no one's gonna listen to you but what happens is people some people leave but most people double down and go no we just didn't believe hard enough that's why the aliens didn't come and pick us up or like oh we had metal in our clothing and so they find some rationalization for why it didn't happen and then they do it again the next time the comet flies by Earth or whatever that's supposedly hiding the spaceship and you just think how did this not how did that not break you right away when you sold all your possessions and did it because you sold all your positions and you invested so hard you now the price the cost of being wrong is too high so you double down on the nonsense and that's what's Happening Here the manipulators know that they understand that psychology of human beings extremely well thank you very much for coming on the show I know this is thank you so much thank you Jordan we were so looking forward to this and after after knowing you're such a cult Aficionado that we could have this conversation with you it was such a treat yeah I really appreciate it I appreciate the openness as well I know it's not easy to talk about this stuff although you've really leaned into it I mean a lot of people watching The Vow on HBO A lot of people listening to your podcast so yeah I think it's important to it really is important to shine a light on this stuff because somebody somewhere is is in a group and going I don't know it's a little weird and then they're going to hear this and go wait a minute this is this is what is happening to my friend or to me or to my mom and we get those kinds of notes all the time I didn't I wasn't sure if I was in a cult and then I realized after listening to your Steven house an episode or your Amanda Montel episode or an episode like this that there this group I'm in is using maybe maybe it's not a cult but they're using these influence techniques in a way that is coercive and I need to leave that's such a key point and we say that all the time in our pod we don't even have to call it a call it might not even be a call but if they're doing X Y and Z and you don't feel good about it then go join something else or go to like leave it you don't have or that per that person shouldn't be in the position of authority right like at worst case scenario so we appreciate you I also really appreciate you thanks for letting us reading the book too that means a lot it means you can have a whole different part of my psychology in your mind so thanks Gabe what a story I know it's it's hard to do these kinds of episodes where there's so much stuff like two seasons of a show in a book and the cult went for a decade and a half it's like okay what can we do in 90 minutes it's really hard to Encompass everything to talk about I know it's wild yeah and it's it's it's crazy because a lot of Cults do start with oh this is a great program for executive success where I can learn about some of the things that are holding me back a la Dale Carnegie at the Learning Annex and then right it's like dot dot dot eight years ten years later I have cauterized my vagina and I'm the guys on the run in Mexico and people are being torn away from their parents it's just it the the boiling frog really is it's quite a rolling boil yeah yeah absolutely and kudos to Sarah and nibby for being able to talk about it the way they did I feel like they were very open and vulnerable with us and I know for Sarah especially with the with the branding is probably an incredibly sensitive topic it's just so hard to to relive but um I I really admire her I admire both of them for being so open about what they went through uh and I know that that informs their mission you know like telling telling telling their story saving people who are in similar organizations like it is remarkable the work that they're doing it really is yeah there's so many different bits of abuse in The Vow season one and season two but let's talk about can we talk about the little gal from Mexico who gets locked in a room I mean look this was one of the probably the most one of the most disturbing stories for sure in The Vow season two so if you guys haven't seen it there's this family from Mexico that got drawn into Nexium and basically Keith ends up grooming and sleeping with all three of their very young daughters uh yeah underage I can't remember if I think one of them might have been 18 but then the other one was like 15. and I'm not remembering the ages perfectly but it was definitely illegal and very uncool very illegal very unethical and one of them gross yeah and super gross and one of them her name is Daniela she she's involved with Keith and then she kissed this is another guy and she tells him and Keith gets super jealous and possessive again like like a 12 year old right like a man child he convinces her to go into isolation in a room in her family's house for two years to quote unquote repair the ethical breach that she engaged in and in the dock it explains that she basically went insane in that room she had like a total breakdown of course she almost killed herself until she gets to this point where she's like I either have to kill myself or like and then she snaps out of it and she's like no what am I talking about this sucks F Keith F Nexium F this whole situation and she summons the courage to leave but what's so crazy about that story Jordan is plot twist she wasn't actually being physically imprisoned which is what I thought when I was watching it the whole time right I thought they locked her in this room the door was unlocked apparently the whole time right she could have left at any time but she was too afraid and she was too enmeshed in this organization to leave sooner and so what I keep wondering is like what keeps somebody like that locked in a metaphorical room you know what I mean and what narrative or what like mental model keeps you imprisoned in an organization that's doing these terrible things to you when you could leave if you wanted to I can't really wrap my head around that it's crazy to me right is it fear is it the desire to please the other people is it pure brainwashing is that part of it is it social pressure of other members because remember her family's in Nexium she's in her family's home they're the ones dropping food I think they'll probably played a huge role in it I think so and you got to wonder what the family members are thinking like oh this is the room where my sister's been locked in that we haven't seen for two years this is fine right this is totally fine that's just what she has to do yeah they're in the country illegally because they've overstayed their visas from Mexico so she she one of the reasons they asked her why didn't you leave she's like I didn't have a passport I didn't have anywhere to go I couldn't go to the police because they would have deported me but my family lives here so where was I gonna eat and what was I going to do yeah and and she was also like again 15 or so years old this is a kid and it's just absolutely insane to me that somebody would do this to a child and do this to their own family uh celebrities also played a role here I mean we've seen this with Scientology celebrities are a major commodity in Cults because they lend an air of legitimacy and Prestige to the group so Allison Mack from the Smallville series the Superman related thing was in Nexium and you know what's funny about this though Gabe she's so famous that when they go on the run in Mexico to escape the cops are like why is this famous celebrity with blonde hair maybe don't go on the run to Mexico with a blonde celebrity that people recognize all over the world my dude you freaking just one one of many bonehead moves that this cult leader makes Keith Ranieri where you're just like you're not nearly as smart as you'd like people to think you are well also like what a weird look for him as a cult leader to be hiding out in a house in Mexico and then the the F the equivalent of the FBI I don't remember who it was like local law enforcement or FBI or federales or whatever they find him at this house and he's just like hiding in a closet yeah like a weenie totally yeah it's just such a ignome IGN is this the word ignominious I don't know if I've ever used that word noble ignoble or ignominious or just like a sad end too the whole thing is that but it's pathetic it's like this is what it has come to but the crazy thing is that in his mind he's being persecuted he's being targeted this is a conspiracy to take down on his legacy and this amazing organization he created like one of the most disturbing parts of the vow is learning that the narrative Keith has in his mind is so different from the reality and that speaks to the narcissism and the sociopathy but it also just speaks to like this is so much of life is like I have this story and you have this story and I'm involved in this organization and these two narratives are completely incompatible one of the most interesting episodes in my opinion of season two focuses on they sort of cure people with Tourette's which has no cure and it's it's talked about in the book too how this treatment was so effective when the with these people who had Tourette's but and I didn't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater because I'm thinking wow this is something that actually worked that could have worked right it'd be a shame if something that was so promising ended up being discarded or lost as a result of this but then I do some research and I find out it's just cognitive behavioral therapy that they sort of bastardized and apply and put in and they say this is Nexium we invented this it's like no you didn't you're just grabbing vulnerable people with an uncurable condition and looping them into your cult because then they they owe you one because you've cured this thing that dominated their life I I wasn't sure what to make of that part in the documentary because they showed you know they follow two people there's the guy the very uh charismatic coach who apparently was cured of his tourettes and is like a motivational speaker and then there's this young woman who also had pretty severe Tourette's there there was a video of her after going through the treatment quote-unquote treatment with with Nancy and her Tourette's is you can't argue with it it's it's like mostly I would say 90 at least is gone I mean the symptoms of it yeah it was it was so bad before you felt really just crushed for this woman who's never going to live a normal life or a normal existence and then you look at her and you're like oh you wouldn't even until she says I have Tourette's and you're around her for a long time you wouldn't and freaking notice yeah but what was really strange about it is that there's then there's footage of her being miserable in the cult right there's like a footage of her in a training session and she's just like almost seems to be I mean it sort of seems like she's traumatized or just really Disturbed she's like staring at the table she's not really engaging she even might seem to be suppressing some symptoms at that point and it's I couldn't figure out if what they were saying is that it the Tourette's stuff worked on them but it came at a high cost like yes they got rid of the symptoms but now she's a cult member and she's indoctrinated and she's struggling and they're doing all the stuff that Sarah and nibby talked about or is the pr is is the process of getting rid of the symptoms suppressive in and of itself do you know what I mean like is this not just healthy therapy were they doing something to her to just like stuff it down so it didn't come out I couldn't really get a read on that could you yeah it was It was kind of tough I I don't know I'd have to hear from somebody who treats Tourette's with CBT cognitive behavioral therapy and find out like okay are they just co-opting this and and this is something that other therapists can use for Tourette's or does this have to come with all this bad stuff and maybe that's the def the the deal you make with the devil like I'll get rid of your Tourette's but you're going to be totally screwed up because you're going to traumatize you and indoctrinate you and make you feel like crap in a billion other other different ways that are not visible versus The Tourette's another thing that I found so interesting about our conversation with Sarah nippy is you know Sarah's big on telling her story and I I couldn't help thinking about all the times on feedback Friday we've heard from people who have been through some really heavy stuff and I'm thinking also recently about the person who wrote in at least one person has written into the show saying I was falsely accused of a crime I went to prison and now I think that everybody thinks I did this terrible thing something like that and oftentimes our Our advice is you need to start opening up about this and you need to start telling your story and you need to make it not a shameful thing as much as possible or or just own the shame and be open about that because the more it stays a secret the worse the shame is going to get the more you're going to isolate and the more this story is going to haunt you and I really heard of that in in their take on what to do with this I mean what do you do you spend a decade plus of your life in a cult you are culpable for some of the stuff you brought people into it it's just fascinating that that healing power of a story is real and it's what they've chosen to do with it and I thought that was really remarkable yeah I I the whole story really is really is something else I mean from from the humorous stuff where this guy I mean he's ahead of an organization he calls himself Vanguard how do you not stop and go okay this guy's a narcissistic prick and maybe this is a cult yeah Bob Iger head of Disney he's probably Mr Iger or Bob depending on who where your level in the organization Steve Jobs was Steve but Keith is some this tool is Vanguard and Nancy was prefect I mean come on at some point you're like come on folks well um and but they they said that they already knew that they were like Sarah didn't was already weird it was already weird the whole time I mean nippy was saying that he didn't really buy into the whole sash concept right which is really funny and Sarah in the book talks about meeting Keith and she's like I didn't really like him and I didn't really think he was that impressive and it's it's amazing that you can have those thoughts and you can still be involved you can still stay involved exactly yeah and I'd love I gotta say I love how talk about hoists with your own petard he's like you gotta film everything I do do because it felt if this blows up they're going to scrutinize the videos and no we didn't do anything wrong meanwhile here we are scrutinizing the videos in the valve and we see some narcissistic prick insisting on being filmed and adored while like dressed like a total [ __ ] open a friggin cereal box at 3am and playing volleyball and spouting word salad Philosophy for hours on end like not the effect you were looking for here Keith Vanguard nope I mean it's just a complete a narcissist to the point where anybody from the outside is just going this guy is pathetic really he really is um but what he did is so is so terrifying he was so effective at it because he was able to sniff out Nancy Salzman needing approval from her mother getting people in the loop withholding that approval knowing women in the organization wanted children promising to have babies with like a half dozen of them um keeping people on stage for hours and humiliating them and then being like good job you know offering them approval at the end of it it's just coercion tactics are everywhere and I think and I just can I just say not just in the curriculum but even the way they wove it into nexium's like operating procedures in the book Sarah talked about signing up for her first training and when she found out how much it was she balked at it understandably and she tried to back out and the person she spoke with on the phone said wait you're 28 and you have money problems how are you going to take charge of your life like do you she Sarah's like well I'm an actor and I might be up for a job and I'm hoping I get a job and when I get a job I can maybe pay for it and the person said well do you want to sit around and wait for your agent to call you or do you want to take charge of your life that is pretty I mean I it's a weird thing to say it's not impressive but this is the length they went to I mean it wasn't just what you learned in the seminars it was also what they taught the people who worked there to keep people on the hook like from a business standpoint wild yeah yeah the sales process itself also coercive really really wild really what but not surprising the self-help cult the intro that I went to people would call me and they'd be really bad salespeople and I would ask them like is this what do you do how long have you been in sales oh I'm doing the PHD program they called it which is funny because if of course they're not accredited for anything it's just some crap you pay for it yeah yeah when you're in this supposedly in this PhD program from uh this group you uh you have to make sales calls and sell other people the intro program and get people to upgrade and you're using like this crappy amateur sales stuff but you're also repeating and rehashing the stuff that they used in the first one like well do you not want to improve your life and it's like of course I want to improve my life but joining your stupid Advanced program is not how I want to do it well how do you know that you're on the right track because I'm enjoying success in multiple areas of my life and I don't feel like I need this and I remember the guy goes oh well it sounds like you're really happy I guess um that's done and I was just thinking like this guy failed someone behind it is gonna be like you failed this yep he's going to be in a cage for a few weeks yeah yeah now you have to eat dog food for a week or whatever but what that's so crazy because one of the things you know they talked about was this whole concept of being at cause which means being responsible for your outcomes and for your life or or even the concept of exploration of meaning Em Right these are not controversial ideas and they have value and it's like in any I mean it's pretty 101 therapy stuff right like you could look at a situation this way but isn't there another way to look at it or you're complaining about your life and you're playing the victim but didn't you play a role in this like we have to appreciate that too these are not crazy Concepts but they were weaponized by the organization to keep people involved and to make and to break them down and then to build them up and the great irony of that is that Keith had this idea of what he called a shifter which was an individual it's basically an individual or a corporation that creates a problem and then uses that problem in order to profit from the solution which the organization also offers this he talked about this Sarah talks about in her book this is literally what Nexium was doing and Nancy Salzman talks about about this I believe in the documentary too where she talks about how they would tear someone down and then show them that Nexium had the keys on how they could build themselves back up again the irony of that is so profound and it's another one of those moments that makes me wonder like you know I know it's hard to see through it but when they're teaching the very concept that they themselves are using and weaponizing it's hard to imagine your brain not going wait a second I have to raise my hand and ask or I have to take a break and ask myself why I'm in this organization uh yeah I I agree when they give you the game plan you got to be like wait a minute isn't that exactly what we're doing here yeah yeah it's so man but it's easy to say this from the outside and it's a lot harder to internalize the idea that you are loved you are whole you're already complete right this core wound that most human beings share and the idea that there's something inherently wrong or incomplete or unlovable about about us and that only this organization can help you fix this problem it just seems like tapping into that core fear is a universal cult tactic and frankly but part of most major religions but totally but again we'll leave that on the table but when you get down to it this is what dangerous organizations prey on to keep people on the hook yeah and it's available in every single human being especially I would argue people who are so keen on getting involved in an organization because they want to grow I think you touched on this in the interview Jordan like these people Sarah nippy and I would even say someone like me if I got involved it's like you want to understand what life is about you want to get better these are not crazy desires these are normal impulses these are needs that make us human it's crazy to think that those things can also be the the wound or the the vulnerability that the wrong person can get their hooks into absolutely man man wow fascinating conversation a little bit scary although not because Keith is going to get out anytime soon I mean he's in prison for sex trafficking for decades and for over a century among other crimes but just because it's so easy to see how smart people can get sucked into something like this slowly over time especially because somewhere in the United States or anywhere for that matter and I don't mean even Scientology or other Cults we already know exists there's another Nexium out there bubbling up slowly right now that we're going to see on HBO in five or ten years it's happening right now right there's somebody listening right now who's in a group like this and is going hmm maybe yeah Jordan I was also so interested by the whole humor thing and how they're they're being funny might have helped them get out nippy had his theory on on why humor is important Sarah obviously is very funny and she talked about why it's important to laugh at yourself but as they were talking I was also wondering whether being funny and having a sense of humor also makes you take yourself less seriously like it's okay to have a laugh at yourself or it's okay to be a little bit of a clown or it's sort of safer for you to look at your foibles or your mistakes and be like oh what a ridiculous thing I made that huge mistake ha ha ha and you can get through that whereas a lot of the people who are still stuck in Nexium you know nippy was saying that their self-image is so important it's so threatening to have to give up that self-image by con admitting to themselves that they were wrong and that they were conned and that they've been involved in this organization that's been hurting them but I do wonder if maybe when you're funny your self-image isn't quite as important it's not quite as brittle so you're able to look at yourself and maybe say oh [ __ ] yeah I need to yep made a mistake and then yeah maybe you don't laugh at it immediately but at least you have a little sense of irony or a little flexibility to not take yourself quite so seriously the idea that that could be a superpower that could save you is fascinating to me agree well again really fascinating conversation there's probably a lot more there big thank you to nippy and Sarah all things nippy and Sarah will be in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com transcripts in the show notes videos on YouTube advertisers deals and discount codes all at jordanharbinger.com deals please consider supporting those who support the show I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram you can also connect with me on LinkedIn Gabe where are you online uh you can find me on Instagram at Gabriel Mizrahi or on Twitter at Gabe Mizrahi I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using system software and tiny habits the same stuff I use every single day it's our six minute networking course that course is free over at jordanharbinger.com course teaching you how to dig the well before you get thirsty build relationships before you need them and no cult tactics promise uh pinky swear come join us come join us you'll be in smart company this show has created an association with podcast one my team is Jen Harbinger Jace Sanderson Robert Fogerty Millie Ocampo Ian Baird Josh Ballard and Gabriel Mizrahi remember we've Rise by lifting others the fee for this show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting if you know somebody who's interested in Cults has seen The Vow on HBO and is talking about it non-stop definitely share this episode with them the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about in the meantime do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen and we'll see you next time thanks for checking out this entire episode of the Jordan Harbinger show if you're interested in exploring this topic further check out the Jordan Harbinger Show podcast feed there we dive even deeper on this and many other topics in the audio podcast I also close open Loops cover things discussed off camera off air and give some parting lessons 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Channel: The Jordan Harbinger Show

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Keywords: podcast, interview, best podcast, top rated podcast, lifelong learning, the jordan harbinger show, jordan harbinger, soft skills, social science, social influence, social psychology, personal development, self development, podcast full episode, podcast clip

Id: DocsemsvM2A

Length: 116min 55sec (7015 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 28 2022