Behind the Bastards - Keith Raniere: The End of A Cult Leader

Episode Date: September 12, 2019

Robert is joined by Anna Salinas for an update on Keith Raniere and NXIVM.FOOTNOTES:1. Leader of Alleged Sex Cult NXIVM Hit With Child Porn Charges2. NXIVM Leader Keith Raniere Arrested Just Before Group Sex: Former ‘Slave’3. Keith Raniere's Nxivm sex cult trial: What we learned4. NXIVM Leader Held Woman Inside Bedroom for 2 Years, Ex-Lieutenant Testifies5. Allison Mack Kept Sex Slave Photos for Blackmail, Ex-NXIVM Member Testifies6. NXIVM ‘Sex Cult’ Leader Forced 3 Sisters to Get Abortions, Ex-Follower Testifies7. NXIVM Trial Opens: Feds Say Founder Keith Raniere Was ‘Crime Boss,’ Not Guru8. 6 weeks of testimony in Nxivm case reveal lurid details of alleged sex cult, including branding women and holding them captive9. Nxivm’s Keith Raniere Convicted in Trial Exposing Sex Cult’s Inner Workings Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science, and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated

two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What branding my sex slaves? Oh boy, that's a bad intro. Oh my gosh. When Sophie is not here, this gives off the rail so hard. I'm Robert Evans, host of Behind the Bastards, where we tell you about all the worst people in all of history. My guest today, Anna Salinas. Anna, how are you doing today? I'm doing great. I'm so excited to be here. Now Anna, you are of course

the author slash artiste behind Bad Comics by Anna. That's correct. Lovely comics. Anything else you want to plug up at the top? Oh god. Yeah, you know, if you're in LA, come out to UCB. I perform on some teams and check them out. Well, you know, UCB, about a year ago today, we taught well not today, but about a year ago, we talked about how it's a little bit culty, and we talked about it in the context of a guy who was definitely a cult leader named Keith motherfucking Ranieri. We did. That's so interesting because an article came out about UCB like two days ago that really hinted at its cultiness, and we're checking in about a real cult. Yeah. And it's one of those things like I do want to reiterate when I talk because I have a

lot of friends who are in UCB considered one part of their lives. Yeah, you got to be careful. This episode could get pulled. Yeah, it could get pulled if I trash talk it. Thankfully, that's never happened before. Any really good thing is going to have a couple of little culty elements to it. You know, I'm a big fan of Burning Man regional events. There's a little bit. A little bit. A little bit. The key is like no cult leader. The key is the things that make a cult like love bombing and stuff like that. If there's no purpose behind it, if it's just a way to make people feel welcome, then it's not necessarily a toxic thing. There's all these things that can be pieces of a cult, but if you don't have all of the pieces, it can just be like a bunch of buddies

learning how to do improv together. Which doesn't mean that there's not addictive aspects to that or they can't have problematic aspects to that. Yes. And the pay-in aspects. Yeah. And the pay-in aspects. Where you pay more to be more in it. Yeah. That's always the thing that I think that's one of the keys in addition to having a cult leader's potentially is like how much money is being asked of people. Right. And I guess when it's like a full-on cult cult, Keith Ranieri style cult, that cult leader is making all the money themselves. Yes. And now that we're back to Keith Ranieri, today's episode is of course... I say it wrong every time. Ranieri, Ranieri. I think it's Ranieri. Yeah. It is. Yeah. And I know I knew it when we did it last time, but

today we're talking about the end of Keith Ranieri. Yeah. Yeah. Because earlier this month, June of 2019, Keith Ranieri was convicted of running a sex cult, human trafficking, racketeering, child pornography, and child sexual abuse. He faces a 20-year-to-life sentence and although he plans to appeal his conviction, right now it looks like Vanguard will spend the rest of his life in a cold cell. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That's good news. That is good news. That is good news. I'm not a prison's guy. That's true. I'm not either. But he is one of those like usually I think that like even for like really bad people, like the folks behind the financial crash and whatnot, there's other things than prison that you could use to punish them or

whatever. A guy like Keith does need to be locked away. He's too dangerous. Wherever he is, he's going to do this, which is what his career has shown. Yeah. This is the only, like this, making cults is the only thing he's capable of doing. Absolutely. Yeah. That's his life. So yeah, keep him away from people. Yeah. Now, the six-week court case that led to his conviction has revealed a treasure trove of new information about how nexium, which if you remember is the name of his cult, spelled like in X. Spelled so confusing. Spelled like an asshole spells it. Yeah. Like when I look at it, my brain reads VIXXX. Navixim. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they, to make it more fucking confusing, I learned as I was reading through like stuff about the court

case that members of the cult call themselves Nixians, which is even more like- Oh, that sounds like the president. What? What? Like Richard Nixon. Oh, Nixon. Yeah, Richard Nixon. Yeah, that if they'd called themselves the Nixians. Yeah, like Nixian politics or something. Nixian politics, which is just yelling the N word while drinking heavily. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. And then like throwing up peace signs with your fingers. Nixin. Yeah. Goddamn. That's going to be a fun episode of the podcast. Oh, you haven't done him yet? No. I mean, I got like, it's one of those things like- There's so many to get through. There's a lot to say. Well, please have me for that episode because I'd love to learn about Nixon. Talk about tricky Dick Nix.

Yeah. And I mean, all I know about him, I learned in that movie with Kirsten Dunst. Yeah. I think that's got most of it. Dick? Dick? Yeah. Yeah. I think that's got most of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Never seen it, but I assume it's comprehensive. It's a delightful female-driven comedy. Just like Richard Nixon's life. Yeah. Now, this is kind of female-driven, but it is not a comedy. Although, you could make a solid comedy out of this story. Oh my god, this, I, not to be callous, but this deserves a comedy movie in the style of vice. Oh, yeah. That's who, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That would be really solid with Alice and Mack playing probably the Seagrams vodka air. Oh, yeah. Which one of the things that came out during

the court case is that Nixing was almost entirely funded by the Bronfmans, the Seagrams vodka girls. Oh. Yeah. Like they were, they really poured a lot of money into that. Wow. Yeah. I mean, Seagrams vodka, are they okay? Are they gin too? They're not good. Like in terms of the quality of their liquor. In terms of the business model though, they seem to be fine. Oh, the feeling I get of the Bronfman family wealth is that they could have given hundreds of millions of dollars to Keith and it wouldn't have mattered. Damn. We're talking like Elron Hubbard pockets here. Wow. I will say if you're an aspiring cult leader and you listen to this podcast, which is smart. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It's very smart. This is probably one of the biggest tips you could get.

Don't try to con a bunch of people. No. Con one dumb rich kid. Absolutely. Really rich kid. Yeah. Bottomless pit of inherited wealth. Yeah. Like could throw away passenger jets every month rich kid. Yeah. And they're out here. Yeah. There's a lot of them. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of them. And until we starving masses eat them, con them out of their money. Because I won't, I will not write about someone who just cons rich kids out of their money. No. That's a Robin Hood figure. And if Keith Ranieri had just been conning the Bronfmans out of tens of millions of dollars, be cool with him. And yeah, if that's all he had done, just none of the sex cult stuff. None of the sex cult stuff, which we're going to talk

about the sex cult stuff today. So in March 2018, Ranieri and his followers acted in the best traditions of scammers throughout history and fled the United States from Mexico. This was because numerous law enforcement agencies had begun investigating Keith and Nexium for their numerous crimes. Now, as everyone listening knows, moving is an extremely stressful process. Whether you're heading into a new apartment, two blocks away or fleeing the country, it always sucks. And after getting settled into Puerto Vallarta, Keith decided he and his followers needed a recommitment ceremony, which, you know, got to settle back in a recommitment ceremony. Yeah. That's smart. That's like I've noticed morale dropping. I just want to make sure everyone

psyched. Yeah. Yeah. And these are, you know, he had gone from his, his normal stable, his harem, I guess you might call it, was like 20, you know, 21, 22 different women. Right. And he was down to like seven when they moved to Puerto Vallarta. You know, you know, yeah, it's the same thing. You're going to, you're going to break a couple of knickknacks when you move. When I moved recently, I lost a beautiful end table that I loved. Oh, I'm so sorry. But you get more. But you get, you get more experience, but once you settle down, and that's what Keith was trying to do, you know? Absolutely. You lose a dozen or so sex slaves, but then you recommit to the ones you have. And when we say lose, were they like in the press? No, I think they're talking about it or

I think they just weren't quite loyal enough to move to Mexico. They just like quietly slipped away. Yeah, either that or it may have just been that like his funding got a little tighter and he can only afford to move so many of these women with him. Right. I don't know the exact reason. Okay. One of the women who went along with him is Lauren Salzman, who was Keith's long-term partner in Nexium and one of his first line slaves in the women's group DOS, which of course translates in Latin, like there's an acronym in Latin for women under a submissive master. I think it's like the rough translation. So yeah, yeah, yeah. Salzman claimed on the stand when she testified against Keith that the ceremony was meant to include group oral sex to do something special

for Keith. Quote, honestly, I didn't want to do a recommitment ceremony. I didn't want to start DOS again. We had to believe that we were under possible indictment, but I didn't feel like it was my option to not go forward with their ceremony. So Salzman claims that she's starting to get cold feet at this point and she's been with them for like years and years and years. Right. Well, they're about to be arrested. And I wonder how much of her contrition in like expressed disgust here is legitimate because I could totally see her being fucking tired of this guy. You never know though. You never know. You never know. She could just. She's gone along this far. Yeah. And I mean, at this point, you get the sense that everyone feels the shadow of the law.

And it's sort of hard to tell how much of their continuing devotion to him is like in for a penny and for a pound and how much of it is legitimately being taken in by the grift. But we'll talk a little bit more about that as this rolls along. Okay. So as the members of Keith's sex cult prepared to engage in their mass blow job campaign, federal agents with rifles posted up around the house. Salzman and several slaves had been taking a pre-origin nap with Keith. She says she went into the kitchen to make a smoothie when another first line slave ran in from the front room and told her police are out the door and they are looking for Keith. Quote, honestly, I went into one mode, protect Keith. I closed all the doors,

all the blinds and I looked out the window and all I could see was federal agents with machine guns surrounding the property and Keith refused to leave. He wanted to stay. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Was she really making a smoothie? Yes. She says she was like, they had like a pre blow job orgies. Smoothie? And then she was going to make a smoothie. I get it. You need nutrients. Yeah. And I feel like you want a smoothie after you do that with Keith Ranieri. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that part doesn't add up for me.

That part doesn't add up. Still listening. Now Keith had insisted to Salzman that he was the protector of all the women in his cult. But rather than taking action to protect the women in the compound, Rangard hid in the bathroom and desperately begged his slaves not to tell the cops he was there. My main concern was to protect Keith. It was almost automatic. I chose love over everything just like we were taught by Keith. Now Salzman claims it was Keith's arrest and the way he selfishly fled and abandoned his followers to hide in the bathroom. That was the thing that finally lifted the scales from her eyes and made her realize she'd been conned during the trial.

Yeah. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. I mean, this is truly a movie waiting to happen. Yeah. Yeah. That is your climax right there. And McConaughey would be a great Keith Ranieri. Oh my God, wouldn't he? Oh yeah. No, he would nail that fucking role. Yes, he would. He'd be such a good grifter. McConaughey would also be a good guru of a sex cult. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I hope he's not. I hope he's not currently. I hope he's not. I like to think better of Matthew McConaughey than that. Yeah. Only since the McConaissons have I wanted to think better of Matthew McConaughey than that. When did the McConaissons start? When he was on a true detective.

True detective, absolutely. Look, I didn't see Beach Bum, that Harmony Grind movie, but he looked like he was good in it. Yeah, I'm sure he was. Yeah. He's a good actor. Wolf of Wall Street. Pretty decent mediocre bourbon salesman too. Oh, it's true. Yeah, he's a solid salesman of indifferent bourbon. That's true. Doesn't he do the cars look? I'm getting so off topic here. Yeah, we're getting very off topic. I feel bad because this original episode was like five hours. It was a lot of stuff. We have less here. What we have is real fucked up. I'm staying on topic. So, uh, Salisman claims, yeah, that it was Keith's arrest and, you know, the way he reacted that

finally let her realize what was going on. During the trial, we heard from many, many other women and other than Salisman about their own journeys with Reneary. Prosecutors claim that he called himself the smartest, most ethical person in the world. That's a direct quote and compared himself to both Albert Einstein and Mahatma Gandhi. They made the wise decision not to let him take the stand himself. So he never testified, which I think is a good call. Don't let the cult leader testify. I wonder though, do you think he could have like hypnotized the jury? I don't know. I wonder if a guy's power like that is broken if he's not one-on-one because Keith was never the kind of guru. Like you look at his videos on YouTube, they never had huge,

he wasn't the kind of person like millions of people wanted to watch. I think he, he strikes me as the kind of person who had an intense one-on-one charisma and that's how he kind of worked everything, which is why his quote was pretty small. Right. Yeah, he didn't like start a giant mega church movement. He wasn't a Hubbard type. Like he clearly wanted to be, but like Hubbard had that ability to hypnotize on a scale. He didn't. And even Ted Bundy. Even Ted Bundy. Because he could do it from the stand. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I don't think Reneary could do that, but I still think it's probably a good idea. You know, just even if all you're saying is like, this fucker's talked enough. Yeah. Yeah, which he has. He has. Yeah. Yeah. Among other things,

the victims of Keith Reneary talked about Nexium's most beloved tradition, Vanguard Week. Every August, members of the group who called themselves Nixians would spend roughly $2,000 to attend a birthday celebrations for Keith in Silver Bay, New York. The center of the event were tribute ceremonies to Vanguard, a witness explained in court. There was always sort of entertainment or different kind of tribute ceremonies to Keith from the different centers, where there would be like performances of singers, but it was all kind of centered around the idea of a tribute to Keith and celebrating Keith's work. Sort of like a summer camp for adults. That sounds... Doesn't sound like summer camp. Fun if you're Keith. Yeah. Summer camp for me was

like learning how to start fires and kayak. Yeah. Where's the nature element here? Yeah. We weren't just celebrating a guy. Maybe like, because you have different tribes at camp. Are we... We had like four tribes and they were the different centers. They were the different tribes. Yeah. Yeah. And like, even that doesn't sound, because that sounds like fun, kooky, cultural appropriation as opposed to like, yeah, just tributing one guy. What do they mean by performances? So it would be like someone would come and do like a song. Yeah. I'm going to guess their songs about Keith and his wisdom and importance. Because now that you said there was like this oral sex thing going on in my mind, I'm like, oh, all the songs would just end with

Keith getting a blowjob. Yeah. I think like... I think maybe. It's like a whole week of Watski's going down, but all themed around fucking Keith Ranieri. Wow. Yeah. Creepy. Imagine getting, I assume it was an email, an email invite to that birthday party. Oh, probably. Yeah. Oh, get excited. Get excited. You're starting annual celebration. It's Keith's birthday. Yeah. You get to spend $2,000 and then come up and do a song about him. And put on little skits about his wisdom. Put on skits. I bet there were skits. Yeah. The skit part does sound like camp. Now I'm thinking about it. It's like camp theater. Yeah. I mean, I kind of want to do a Vanguard week where we all make songs about Keith Ranieri just without him

there and without people paying $2,000. Yes. Oh my gosh. And we're all liquored up to hell. Yeah. All of your listeners are going to want that to happen now. If we ever do, see this is just going to lead to me creating a cult. Yeah. This is just going to lead to me creating a cult. You're right. I got to be aware of that slippery. It's a fine line. It's a fine line. It's a fine line. And I am this close to starting a cult at any given moment. I can tell. Like right there. Give off that vibe. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. I shoot for that. I can feel you holding yourself back. Mm-hmm. It's like, I don't know what it's like. I don't have a good similar here, but I am trying. Yeah. Well, good for you. I'll fail one day. I'll fail one day.

And then you'll run for president. No, they'll catch me in the Adirondacks with like 70 or 80 people wearing like white sheets and like a cache of weapons. Oh my God. That's so going to happen. You'll have this long beard. You'll have been like hunting deer for sustenance. You'll have been there for seven weeks. Yeah. My goal is the Branch Davidian compound with better drugs and no kids. And no kids. Hey, man. Yeah, kids could happen. No. Okay. No, because one of the drugs there will be RU 486. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, everyone has to draw their line. I shouldn't joke about that because that's where this goes. No. Yeah. I shouldn't joke about that at all. This is the part where we can joke. I think before it gets worse. Yeah. Before

we get to the actual cult leader forcing women to have abortion. Yeah. We shouldn't joke about that at all. That's true. I apologize deeply. Yeah. If I have a cult, I won't do that. Well, good. It'll be a cult where women can choose to fend off the FBI and our mountain compound. Okay. Yeah. That's fair. But also men? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. No, no. I mean, I'll fuck whatever kind of cult members, you know? Sure. Once it takes you over, the spirit gets in you. Yeah. Until the FDA or ATF burns us down. I mean, it sounds like a commune. Yeah. A commune cult. That's a fine line. You just have to keep your profile low. No, I really, I'm not sure if it's the ATF I want to provoke or maybe, maybe the FDA,

because no cult's ever been murdered by the FDA yet. And I think that could be fun. Do they have that capacity? I feel like they got some grenade launchers locked away. I think the FDA is like four people who work for big corporations who just meet twice a month and move around some papers. Yeah. That's the uncharitable view. The charitable view is that it's two very tired people trying to explain to everyone that like turmeric isn't medicine. Yeah. You know what? That's true. They also serve an important function. Oh boy. Okay. So FBI Special Agent Michael Lever claimed in court that at its height, the organization allowed Keith to maintain a stable of 15 to 20 sex slaves at any given time. These women were forbidden from even touching another man,

in line with Nexium teachings that men were fundamentally polyamorous, while women were monogamous. Again, this is just bigamy. The most disturbing story in the whole Nexium saga is the tale of Daniella. When she was 16, her family moved to the US from Mexico after hearing about Vanguard in his wonderful organization. The six of them moved into a two bedroom condo in Albany and began taking self-help classes. We don't get many details on Daniella in the court documents, but I'm going to guess her family is or was rather affluent. Now, when she moved to the US, Daniella had never been kissed or had any kind of sexual experience. She was introduced to Keith during his Vanguard Week celebrations, and Keith clearly fell in love with this, again, literal

child. Quote, I didn't see Keith that way, but I could see in subtle ways that he was flirting with me. Now I believe he was grooming me. Oh, that word grooming. Yeah, grooming is 16, which, you know, if you remember from the other episodes, Keith did a couple of times. That was his MO. Yeah, yeah, one of them committed suicide later. Yeah, Daniella claimed on the stand that their relationship quickly escalated in a sexual way, but did not immediately escalate to sex itself. That would have been too pedestrian and normal crimey for a guy like Reneary. Keith told her that they would consummate their love when she turned 18 and it was nice and legal. In the meantime, he told her she was too fat and needed to lose weight so they'd be able to bone when she was

old enough. No. Yeah, yeah. This is such a tool of sociopathic manipulative dutes. Controlling weight. Yeah. I wonder how much of it was even like what he was actually turned on by and how much of it was just the need for control over them, which just it's an easy lever to pick. I think it's control. Yeah. I, there was a screenwriter who was not that recently outed, but like re-outed. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, we can, we can, we have an issue with saying is they was fucking Max Landis. No, it's Max Landis. Yeah, it's Max fucking Landis. But yeah, that was a thing he did. Yeah. He would tell his girlfriends or girls he was dating that they were too fat and they needed to get thin and they were anorexic. Yeah. Yeah. I shouldn't say that.

I mean, maybe they were, but I feel like they talked about that. Like they already had issues with that. Yeah, I think they were, yeah. He was saying. Yeah. It's, it's common. It's a thing for like controlling men to like, cause it's easy because like there's all these societal reinforcers too. Yeah. Where like any woman in the world can be convinced she's fat just because of like the way that. The way the, yeah. Yeah, exactly. World works. Yeah. Ranieri or Daniela said on the stand quote, he said he could not share his sexual energy with someone overweight. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. So we're going to talk more about what Daniela said on stage and we will get to the horrifying revelations that make it so very inappropriate for me to have joked about

RU 486 morning after pills. But first, this is maybe my worst lead into ads ever. You know, it's better than gaslighting women into believing they're fat and molesting children. Anything. Yes. Anything, but also products and services. Yeah. Please buy these things. Mm hmm. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson and I'm hosting a new podcast series, alphabet boys. As the FBI sometimes you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of alphabet boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in

Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy voiced cigar smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark and on the gun badass way. And nasty sharks. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure, he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to alphabet boys on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without

parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus. It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut

who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991 and that man Sergei Krekalev is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back! We're back and we're talking about Daniela, one of Keith Ranieri's victims, probably his like most hurt victim, like of the people in the least that we're talking about today, the one who got fucked over the worst by Ranieri. Okay. So once she turned 18 and was

presumably thin enough for Keith's sexual energy, Vanguard called Daniela to tell her that it was time and in the tradition of all great romances, he took her to an office building storage room to fuck. No! What? That's what women want. Now he's doing right there. He is so rich at this point, isn't he? Well, no, he lives a quiet church mount like existence, if you remember. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's true. So, okay, storage room best you can do? Storage, storage room. Well, that's what, yeah. I consider myself a romantic. And if I know one thing about women, it's that all of you desire the sheer erotic intimacy of an office building storage room. Oh, yeah. I mean, you read erotic novels and they are front to back, just storage rooms, boxes, a hammer mill paper, you know, you know, reams,

or like palettes of blue pens. Yeah. Oh, there's a whole series about those storage units where you pick up the, what are those called? You know, the retractable doors. Oh, yeah, the doors, like the metal doors that slide open. There's like a thrill you could get stuck in there. The smell of printer ink cartridges. That's why the most popular men's collode brands are printer ink cartridge. Oh, yeah. I bought one just to smell. Yeah, no, I'll rub, but like one of those from a dot matrix on me before going out for a date and really haven't had sex in years, but that's just unrelated. Yeah. Now, so they had their storage room liaison. And after this, Daniella was expected to constantly give Vanguard blowjobs several times per day. She alleges that

she and her sister were forced to have group sex with Keith several times, saying we cried the whole time in court. Yeah. Now, Daniella and two of her other sisters were impregnated by Keith Ranieri. And he forced all three of them to have abortions, which he paid for. Daniella claims that after her abortion, Keith tried to raise her spirit by telling her that the operation was a good opportunity to lose more weight. Yeah, abortion will make you thin. He told her, quote, Olympic athletes get abortions as part of training. What? That's so crazy. I mean, I can't, I guess at this point she's been groomed. She's like being deeply manipulated. She is brainwashed. Yeah. Where were her parents? Her parents are in the cult. Oh, yeah, they moved from Mexico to the US to be a part of

this thing. Oh my God. So yeah, they've clearly fallen for it. And like, you know, by the time they meet Keith's a guy in his fifties, she's 16. So like he's got two of her lifetimes of experience just manipulating people. Yeah. And she's a fucking teenager. Yeah, she's a kid. Yeah. Yeah. So Keith clearly took pains to make sure his sexual liaisons with Daniella and her sisters didn't start until they were of legal age. But she did allege and authorities found child pornography taken of the girls before they were of legal age. I'm sure. Yeah. This whole idea that he waited exactly until they were 18. I don't buy it. Yeah. Yeah. He definitely, at the very least, he had a legal porn of these girls before he started sleeping with them. It may have been one

of those things where he convinced himself that if he waited to actually fuck until they were 18 that he'd be safe. But like, I don't, to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised. He was probably sending dirty text messages. He was definitely doing a lot of that. Yeah. Yeah. It was, I mean, he was having her lose weight to be ready to fuck him for two years while she was a child. That's true. Which I don't know if that's exactly a crime, but it ought to be. It ought to be. Yeah. Let this be a precedent. Add that to the books. Yeah. So essentially, Daniella, at one point after like starting her relationship with Keith Ranieri, expressed an interest in a man who was not Keith Ranieri. She apparently kissed a male Nexium member and that made him furious. He told her

that she wasn't pure anymore. Then he threw her across the room and left her lying on the floor. Oh my gosh. She said, the world closed in on me. Every degree of freedom I had was lost. Daniella was imprisoned in a bedroom for two years, locked outside of where her family was living, but I didn't see her family for two years, even though they were living in the same house, was locked in a bedroom. This is, yeah. And now I see what you mean. Yeah. That's next level. Yeah. Keith billed Daniella's imprisonment as a solution to her problem behavior. Salisman testified to this. Quote, Keith told me that she was stealing and that she had said she was going to lose weight and instead gained 40 pounds. Daniella would spend days at a time in

the room sitting against the wall trying not to scream. She would count days and pour through her memories just to try and stay sane. Salisman claims she helped Vanguard punish Daniella because she was convinced it would help her prove to him that she could be a good mother. We were incredibly abusive to Daniella. Everything she did, we shot down. Nothing she could do was the right thing. Of all the things I did in this case and all the crimes that I admitted to, this was the worst thing I did, which I think she's accurate about. Yeah. So what's with this candor? Like, she was imprisoned? She pled, she pled guilty. Yeah, she pled guilty. I think to racketeering is what they got her on. Wow. Because you would think she would be like,

oh, I did what I had to do, but she's being so frank. She is being frank, and it is entirely possible. People do come to realizations that they did fucked up things and feel legitimately bad about them. And maybe that happened in Salisman's case. Kind of sounds... I get the feeling with that with her more than I do with Allison Mack, who we'll talk about more later. Oh, absolutely. But at the same time, it is important to remember, Salisman was an integral part of Nexium's leadership for a long time. Right. Just because she might feel some contrition doesn't mean it wasn't fucked up. Yeah, it was very fucked up. It does seem very possible she feels some real contrition. I don't know the person. While Daniela seems to have gotten the very worst of

Vanguard, every member of the DOS women's group, the so-called slaves, were victims of Ranieri, as well as, in many cases, perpetrators in their own right. Members were expected to provide their mentors higher level slaves with collateral, ranging from naked pictures of themselves to, in at least one case, a false confession of prostitution addressed to the slave's mother. That's a nice thing to make. What? Yeah. They needed collateral so that if these people left the group or spoke about it to the press, it would be released. That would be the idea to control them. Yes. Well... In a lot of cases, it was naked photos. At least one woman said Keith had her write out a confession to working as a prostitute that would be sent to her mom if she... Oh my

God. I think. I mean, you would never think that in the moment, but stepping back, those things seem not that powerful of blackmail because it's like once you escaped, you would be like, that was blackmail. I have to get out of a cult. Also, naked pictures is less of a... This is one of the things that I think might get better about society after we get used to deep fakes. It's going to be a rough couple of years at the start, but eventually it's like, who cares if you've got her naked pictures? You can have anyone's naked pictures at any point. It takes seven seconds to make the algorithm. Perfectly real. Yeah. And not just pictures, videos. Not just pictures, videos, and maybe we all just stop. Maybe everyone just starts,

stops wearing clothing. Maybe we're just hanging out our genitals for the rest of time and it's fine. I feel like you're kind of proposing that. I am. What I'm proposing is that the next set of presidential debates, everybody's naked. Oh my God. That would label. Everybody's naked. Level the playing field so much. It would. It would. Donald Trump would not have made it far. Absolutely not. Not. Weirdly enough. I mean, even clubs, I don't know how people start to get. Jeb Bush would have done a lot better. I believe that. You got to see the guy's abs. Like a fucking cheese grater. Hey, I believe it. The poor guy, he probably works out these games. He shreds it at the gym. Mad games. He's got a lot of regret that he's working out at the gym.

He's just listening to Fort Minor and doing crunches for hours. I will say the idea of all these people naked is making me slightly nauseous. It should. It should. But it would be for the greater good of democracy. So we have to do it. And also cops should always be naked. That would be crazy. Think of how different that world would be. I don't know. I feel like it would lead to maybe more sexual assault. It might. I feel like it would lead to less shootings, though, because less cops are going to pull people over. Because then they got. Oh, they're too embarrassed. Exactly. So yeah, I feel like you might get a net good out of that. But yeah, there's probably some more, more sexual assault. We don't have to

bring it. Yeah, maybe we should. We shouldn't analyze this theory of mine. These are supposed to be the moments of levity. Yeah, these are the moments of levity. That's on me. So this drop box folder of a collateral was kept organized by Smallville actress Allison Mack. The slaves who sexually serviced Mr. Ranieri were all put on extreme weight loss plans in order to make themselves into Vanguard's idea of a perfect woman. They started on 1000 calorie diets that were gradually restricted down to just 500 calories per day. That's nothing. That's not enough to survive. Victims would be ordered to send photos of their meals to mentors and ask permission before being allowed to eat. But of course, Keith himself was not required to abide by his own

rules for his slaves, according to the BBC. While he demanded the women around him remain excruciatingly thin, the Vanguard reportedly ate pizza around the clock and cakes galore, picking out on potato chips and hot sauce flown in from his devotees around the world. Jesus Christ. Why wouldn't he be able to eat stuff? Yeah, flown in. Oh my God. At least do some fucking crunches if you're gonna. Sorry, I don't want to say that he should be more like Jeb Bush, but maybe he should. Maybe he should. You know what? Jeb Bush, all things considered, nice guy. Married to a Latina, speaks Spanish. Then again, a lot of people speak Spanish these days who are running for president. A lot of people speak Spanish these days. That's the big

thing in presidency. Yeah. Yeah. It'd be fucking awesome if Elizabeth Warren just dropped a 10 minute speech in Dothraki at the next debate. That would be so cool. And then Corey Berker starts arguing in Klingon and it just like, what the fuck is happening? Yeah, like he gives her that sassy look that he gave to Beto. And then he starts being Klingon. Yeah. Fuck yeah. Now, in our prior episodes, we talked about the branding routines also required for DOS members. They were pressured in large group settings to spend half an hour naked being filmed while a cauterizing pen was used to scar a stylized brand of Keith Ranieri's initials into their pelvises. The court testimony revealed that victims were told the brand stood for the four elements,

air, earth and water and the pen represented fire. A recording was played in court of Keith discussing how to arrange the branding procedure with one of his high-level followers. According to CNN, he asked at one point, do you think the person who's being branded should be completely nude or sort of held to the table like a sort of almost like a sacrifice? That's cool. He had lost his mind. He had lost his goddamn mind. Yeah. I think he started out as a normal grifter, but then became an insane person. It always like you can't live that way and not lose your fucking skull. Right. People worshiping you is a cancer. I think that's true. As is power in general. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Salisman testified that branding victims were required to submit photos

of themselves after the procedure, which Alison Mack dutifully added to their Dropbox files. The photo had to be fully frontal naked. Our brands had to show and we had to look happy and uniform. One victim reported. According to the Daily Beast, quote, if any slave displeased Reneary, he would kick or whip them before threatening to release their collateral photos saved under a Dropbox named Brands. Oh my God. And also testified on Monday that Reneary had plans to jail women in a dungeon as a form of punishment. Oh my God. He said the jail cell was for people most committed to growth. They would get locked in a cage, she said on Monday. I was a slave with Keith as my master, Salisman said, adding that she was forced to keep the role of Reneary,

who they had to call grand master a secret. And the society demanded a lifetime of obedience to your master. This is the worst case scenario of 50 shades of gray. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, I think it's hard to say. Maybe he got off on the idea of torturing these women because the dungeon thing is like. He has to be on off on a little bit. Oh, you're envisioning like a medieval dungeon and that is delighting you for most committed to growth. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. That is fucking nuts. Wow. The group would meet three times a week in a sorority house. And whenever Reneary attended, the women had to strip naked, get on the floor and look up to him while he delivered lectures on matters ranging from his vision for DOS to write a book to recruitment

to his intent to create a dungeon where slaves would totally surrender themselves. Cool stuff. Sounds like fun meetings. I can't imagine it going that far. I mean, that's how these things work. I just can't imagine being in the room when all of a sudden it's like, we're all branded. Yeah. Someone just got whipped and he's talking about the dungeon he's about to build. It's all these little steps that lead up to it. You know, like that's the thing. That's how it happens. Yeah. That's how you get sucked up in a call. I think I'm probably involved in like four different almost cults if I look around closely. You do whip a lot of people and I mean to talk to you about that. I do. Yeah. You whip a lot of people in it. I do. I carry one around with me.

Yeah. Yeah. Like Hitler. Oh, you're right. Yeah. Oh, no. I've got to get rid of that. Yeah. You really got to get one day a week. Take the whip out. Yeah. No, I got to give it to Goodwill. Goodwill. Goodwill in LA has a really vibrant whip section. You know they do. Oh, yeah. That next to like their 5,000 different forks. Yeah. Yeah. That's Santa Monica. Goodwill. Yeah. Kitchen stuff and whips. Yeah. Another Rainiery victim who took the stand is known in court documents as Jay. She took her first Nexium class on August 2016 and it was a five day intensive in Albany. Jay found this course helpful so she got more involved with the cult. Before long, she wound up in DOS, forced to hand over collateral pictures along with sexy pictures

of herself on the first every month, which she described as being like rent for membership in the cult. Mark Agnifilio, Rainiery's attorney, insisted that all of this, the mind games and punishments and collateral photos were part of Keith's self improvement program. He claimed people signed up for it willingly. They were not there to go shopping. They are there to make their lives better. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I guess if you want to convince people to do all these awful, awful things and have awful things done to them, you say it's for self growth. Yeah. Hey. Classic grift. I'm doing the artist's way right now. It's all about creative growth and self reflection and growth and you're bringing up some of these buzzwords and I

am uncomfortable about how much they resonate with me. There's certain phrases that are like shortcuts to tricking people into taking extreme action and it's why I worry about the use of certain very specific words and growth is one of them. Really? Yeah. I've been using that word so much since I started reading the artist's way. Yeah. It's just today I've said it 16 times, trying to pitch someone on the book. It doesn't mean don't listen to anything that has that phrase in it or talks about it, but be really careful when people start talking about that. Right. It's attached to a lot of things. You wonder how old these women got into a point where they're letting someone brand them as sacrifice victims. It was because it was all

framed as growth and it didn't start there, but it started as this period of growth means pain. You want to grow into a more fit, healthy person, you go to the gym and that hurts and dieting hurts and you want to build a career in Hollywood or whatever and you have to make a lot of sacrifices and those hurt. Right. Yeah. That's how all of these people get you. Everyone talking about growth, every self-help plan isn't a cult, but be really careful when you start waiting into those waters because there's sharks in there. Exactly. Yeah. Cool. You know where there's not sharks. Products and services. Yes. Not sharks. Dick Pills are, which is one of our sponsors now, him's Dick Pills. Oh, I've heard. Yeah. Wonderful stuff. Again, this is a free ad for them. I don't

know. It could be a Microsoft ad. It could be Coca-Cola. We're just leading in with that. I'm just very enthusiastic about Dick Pills. They don't promise you, they do promise growth, but in a way that is very predictable. Right. Scientific growth. Scientific growth. Verifiable. Yeah. Dick Pills. That's great. Products. Not a scam. Not a scam. Yeah. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations and you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI, sometimes you gotta grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation.

In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And not in the gun badass way. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly

convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus. It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine,

I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991 and that man Sergei Krekalev is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back! We're talking about things that are, in fact, scams. So we were talking about Jay, who took the stage to talk about her time in Keith Ranieri's cult. I'm going to quote from Forbes

here. Her perspective changed after her master invited her into a shared Dropbox account where all the slaves in her group submitted nude photos of themselves and other compromising information each month. It got scary, Jay said, explaining how she would eventually realize that the photos could be used to blackmail her. Jay testified that she first considered Alison Mack a caring and good person who would help her with her acting career, but soon have found her to be emotionally abusive, vindictive, and manipulative. Now Mack seems to have been one of the key members of this group and was like the one of the top level slaves. So she was a slave to Ranieri, but she was a master to all of these women and was responsible for keeping them in line.

Right. So again, Keith is abusing all of these women, but he's also using them to abuse each other in sort of like this tiered system because he just doesn't have all the time to do that. Of course not. Yeah. Yeah, it's the herbal life of sex cults. It's the herbal life of sex cults. Yeah. Yeah. Downlines and shit. Jay was eventually ordered to move from Los Angeles to a house near Albany with Ranieri in his inner circle on the surface. It was so that Keith could help her launch a t-shirt brand. How delightful. How delightful. But once she arrived, she found herself trapped in a weird sex cult of women who were all clearly being ordered to starve themselves. Jay noticed that many of them were losing their hair, so she joined them, sending in her weight to Ranieri

each morning and restricting herself to the same 500 calorie diet. Wow. Yeah. Jay testified that volleyball was Keith's very favorite sport and in true narcissistic fashion, he required everyone to watch him play. DOS members would dress in their best clothes and put on makeup to watch Keith play fucking volleyball. Against who? Against, you know, I don't know. I guess whoever happened. There were men in the group too, so it was probably some of them. During breaks in the play, the women of DOS would line up so Ranieri could kiss them each on the lips and takes walks with them one-on-one to talk about their progress. Oh my god. Yeah. This is so weird. Wow. So again, Alison Mack was the person managing Jay and eventually told her that she had been tasked

with seducing Keith Ranieri. She insisted this was an honor and a privilege. She was asked to seduce Keith until he took a naked photo of her and sent it to Alison Mack as proof. This seems to be what finally shook Jay out of her involvement in the cult. Everything was crumbling. It was my worst nightmare come to life that it would be a cult and someone would want to sleep with me, and that's what it was. Yeah. Yeah. The somebody would want to sleep with me was sort of the fundamental part of this. Oh, when we were starving ourselves, I didn't know that was a cult, but yeah, there's a fucking, I guess everybody has that in a cult, that like moment of like, oh, shit, this is a cult. Right. You're right. And you know, everybody gets sucked into things.

I guess I can see if everyone around you is doing this stupid 500 calorie, literally wasting away diet, the pressure, because I even feel it. God, I mean, I feel it when I hang out with like, skinny friends and stuff, and they're like, I'm just going to get a salad. I don't need dinner. I'm like, I feel like such a fucking cow ordering my fried, whatever fried pickles. Yeah, I feel that way anytime I go to a gym in Los Angeles, like everybody looks like they were poured into a fucking mold. This is the worst place to go to gym. It's heartbreaking. Literal fitness models go to the gym. Going to Oregon for gyms. Great. Going to a gym in Los Angeles where it's like nothing but fitness models and stuff. It's the worst. Oh my god. I'm on a

treadmill and both sides of me are beautiful, gorgeous, tall models. Yeah. That doesn't make me want to keep going. Yeah, where there's guys just like casually bench pressing 300 pounds and like look like they walked out of an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, like look like somebody who fights John Wick. They really, yeah. And then, and, and they probably do. Yeah, and they probably some of them literally fight John Wick. Yeah. Oh, so Jay managed to escape the cult without ever actually completing her assignment to seduce Keith Ranieri. On the stand, Ranieri's defense attorney clarified that Jay was only asked to seduce Keith, not sleep with him because that makes it better. Okay. Okay. It's good defense to prosecution. You know what? I don't believe it.

You don't believe that? I don't buy it. I think it was. I mean, maybe he was like really into edging. Yeah. Maybe he was really into edging. Yeah. I'll give it some water then. Like sure. Can you say that phrase like that? Holds water. I'll give it some water. Give it a little little water. We'll see if it'll hold it. Okay. Now there are many other horrific details. One 31 year old woman who took the stand claimed that Ranieri blindfolded her, tied her up and made her lie in a cold table while another slave went down on her against her will. This woman claimed that she did not fight obeying Allison Mack's order to be a good slave. This is the part where it's like lots of rape happened. Yeah, there was definitely a lot of rape that happened. Yeah. That's sad.

Salisman and Mack both eventually pled guilty to charges of racketeering conspiracy. Both seem to have turned against their guru. During her testimony, Salisman went into brutal detail about the things she and Ranieri forced people to do. She told stories of women forced to stand barefoot in the snow or locked in a cage. She admitted to forcing Valium on a slave who had what she described as a psychotic break, which I'm going to guess was actually just omen reacting totally reasonably to the fucked up things Keith Ranieri was forcing them to do. Someone being like, finally, can you out of here? No, you did not medicate someone having a mental health issue. You drugged someone who realized they were put in a horrible position.

Yeah. Or I mean, look, if I'm to believe her fine, then you drove someone to a mental break. To a mental break, which is also possible. Yeah. After hearing all this, the Brooklyn jury tasked with deciding Vanguard's fate did not need a lot of time to make their decision. After four and a half hours, they returned a four page verdict, finding Ranieri guilty of all seven charges. According to the New York Times, celebration ensued. Prosecutors on the case hugged and kissed cheeks. Former nexium follower. What a weird detail. What a weird detail. Former nexium followers who had later turned on their leader pushed into the hallway to continue the jubilee. Mark Agnephelio, one of Mr. Ranieri's defense lawyers, later told news media that

when Mr. Ranieri learned of the quick turnaround, he remarked, that's not justice. Well, okay. Yeah, that's it. This feels a little bit like justice to me. Yeah. Of course they were going to walk away from that and think he was guilty. Yeah. The details are so damning. And horrible. And specific. Yeah. Like, you can't make that shit up. No, no. And there's like phone conversations and text messages. The fact that it's a drop box. There's a drop box full of evidence of people, like a full of blackmail material. What a 2019 crime. Very 2019 crime.

They're using drop box from blackmail. And social media cuts both ways. It can help you maintain your cult. I just don't understand why you would use drop box when you can just use Google. Gmail. Your Google drive had. You know, I do have a drop box. Look, I'm gonna, I'm an advice. I'm not getting funded by drop box, but I'm gonna advise my listeners if you start a sex cult and you need a place to keep your blackmail drop box. Really? Yeah. Well, it has that desktop feature where you can use your desktop to move a file. So if you have a big nude photograph that takes a lot of space, you want that feature.

You do want that feature. I convinced myself into using drop box. You'd convince it for your sex cult. Yeah. For my sex cult. Yeah. Absolutely. But mine won't be a bad one. It won't be like a non consensual. Yeah. Mine will be a good sex cult until the FDA starts firing grenades. Right. Yeah. Man, what do you have to do to anger the FDA? I really want to piss the FDA off.

I think you have to go around selling bootleg medicine. Are you comfortable with that? I feel like a lot of people do that and the FDA doesn't do anything. That's true. It's going to be hard to push them that far, but I'm going to try. I think you, I think you could. I think I could. Yeah. I just, I want to see what it looks like when they militarize.

That's the goal. That's the goal is to get the FDA tanks. They shoot pills at you? Yeah. Or like certified meat products? Yeah. That's something like that. Yeah. I feel like if I really play my cards right, I could get the FDA to assault ATF headquarters. And then like, then I've won.

Okay. Yeah. Well, you know, so you told me earlier you wanted to run for president at some point. It sounds like after all this unfolds is the time to run for president. Yeah. After I've gotten the FDA to take down the ATF. Yeah. I think so. Cause there's like a vacuum at that point. So much infighting. You just swoop right in. You'll have been in the Adirondacks for seven weeks.

So you'll be strong. You'll be full of natural foods. Well, yeah. And I feel like, like if I, if I attack the FDA enough that I make them come after me, like there's a way to do that as like negging. Where eventually they just like crave my approval enough. I don't know. You're sounding a lot like Keith right now. It's not ineffective.

You just have to get it to a positive goal. Like turning the FDA into a second branch of the military. You've got to neg the right people. I need to improve my ability to neg the right people. We all do. And that's how I'm going to start my cult is just teaching other people how to neg. It sounds like you're describing the game. It.

Shit. I keep doing that. You're going to be, what's his name? Mystery. Yeah. And teach young virgin men how to neg women into bed. But in my case, it's going to be how to neg the FDA into arming. Into arming.

Yeah. Right. It's the same thing. It's the same goal. I mean, these are small semantic details. Well, Anna, that's the story of Keith Ranieri. He's going to appeal. But I think there's probably about a 95% chance motherfucker dies in a cell. He definitely will.

Which is great. Fuck him. What an interesting thing to have, I guess, some semblance of a happy ending to one of your stories. It does seem like that. It seems like he got a thorough amount of obviously he was allowed to continue for too long and he really fucked up a lot of people's lives. Right. But like as much justice as could be gotten after this point seems to have been gotten.

Like he's never going to get out of prison. His crimes have been exhaustively detailed. His victims have gotten their day in court looking at him in the face and seeing him sentenced. That's about as good as it gets in one of these cases. Yeah. Yeah. Is there any, I mean, I wonder, is there any, this seems too good to be true. Is there any aftermath, any followers of Nexium that are going out and spreading his good word?

Well, the one kind of downside is that QAnon has really embraced this. Because they have convinced themselves there's big ties between Keith Reneary and Hillary Clinton, which there aren't, they just aren't. Yeah, that would be insane. Yeah. How would those connections even happen? And there's a bunch of people, like a bunch of talking QAnon boards about like the mainstream media is ignoring the Reneary verdict.

And it's like, no dude, the New York Times published a bunch of front pages. The Daily Beast has covered it exhaustively. Yeah, people care to a degree. People care to a degree. We're doing a third episode on them. Exactly. No, no one's covering this up. It just has nothing to do with global politics.

So they think it's connected, but. To the whole, all Democrats are pedophiles thing, they believe. Right, this, oh, here's one more reason the Democrats are pedophiles. Wow. That's picking and choosing which cult leaders you want to use as ammo. This is fucked up enough without like pretending it's other things. You spend a lot of time on those message boards though, right? I spend way too much time on those message boards.

Is it chilling? Yeah, it's unsettling. Because I read your tweets where you talk about like, just so you guys know. Just so you know what's going on in 8chan. And I definitely don't, because 8chan, so 4chan is here right after Reddit. And then 8chan is even insane, or do you have to like prove yourself to get on 8chan? No, I mean, anyone can view it. Like it's one of those things, if you start posting there and you haven't lurked for a

long time, they'll pick you out. And they'll be like, get out of here? They'll make fun of you and tell you to lurk more. Like it's one of those things, like it's essentially the same thing. It's like a foreign language. Like if you walk, like if you're Beto O'Rourke and you start talking in Spanish in a debate, people will know like, okay, this isn't a guy who grew up speaking Spanish. Exactly.

It's like that, like with these lingos. But the 8chan chunks that talk about QAnon are a lot different. Because their goal is to get a lot of like older people and boomers and stuff to like keep posting and like draw them in further and further. So they actually have a lot of conversations about like, like how to welcome older people who are getting like sucked into QAnon and stuff. Really? So like, yeah, it's weird.

You've got like these chunks of 8chan that are like literal neo-Nazis who are so online that it's broken their brains. And then you've got like grandma's like pouring over QDrops and stuff. It's really everything's so weird. Getting pulled in more and more. Yeah. And those people believe that Keith Ranieri is a front of the Democratic Party. Are you just a lurker?

Yeah, I just lurk. I don't post. Right. Because what would you post? Why would I even? Draw attention. Yeah. There's nothing to gain from it.

Right. Yeah. And do you think, I know this is a little off topic, but do you think that this is a growing problem? Oh, for sure. It's like, I mean, they've killed like 50, 52 people have been killed this year. And that gets fostered on the boards. Yeah.

I mean, the Christchurch shooting and the Potway shooting in the poll boards. And you know, QAnon, there's been two shootings and two murders in the last year. So yeah. Wow. So I guess 54 dead. You could try to tie to the board. I feel like you're like a soldier in the message board army. Oh, it's a really dumb war, if that's the case.

Going out and doing reconnaissance. Really stupid war. Boy. But real? No. No, just really dumb and frustrating. Yeah. I don't, I don't know how you have the patience for it.

I can't even like go to Breitbart and just remain sane. No, you know, we all pick our own private hells. Keith Ranieri's picked his private hell. Right. I've picked mine. And it's, it's browsing 8chan until the FDA finally comes for me. And you've picked improv, you know. And oh, what a private hell it is.

What a private hell it is. I mean, come check out our show, but it's a very public hell. You throw yourself in front of me. Yeah, my suffering is both private and public, unfortunately. Well, Anna, this is the end of our episode. Do you have any plugables to plug at the end of this, this little journey we take? Yeah. Check me out on Instagram, my comic, Bad Comics with an X by Anna with two N's.

Same handle on Twitter. Yeah. And I perform at UCB, which is Upright Citizens Brigade here in LA. Mildly a cult, but also funny shows. So you can look at my, I don't know, profile or I post about shows. Come to one. You can find me at IWriteOK on Twitter, which is a little bit of a cult. If you want to help me in my quest to arm the FDA and get them to take down the ATF,

you know, maybe hit me up there. You are starting a cult right now. That is the goal, yeah. Yeah, I've committed now. Yeah, okay. Fuck it, you know. In for a penny, in for a pound, I'm crossing that rubo. They're not all bad.

But fly the dice. They can be good. Good cult, a positive cult with the goal of getting tanks for the FDA. Okay. Yeah. You can find us on the internet at BehindTheBastards.com. We will have the sources for this episode. You can also find us on the Grams and the Twits at At Bastards Pod.

You can buy T-shirts, cups, stickers, and maybe other products that will help me in my goals. I feel like we've joked enough about the FDA thing, so I'm just not going to, I'm just going to let that, let that thread drop. Yeah, I'm drinking coffee out of a BehindTheBastards mug. It's good, fortifies it. Yeah, I feel smarter just ranking out of it. There's a lot of vitamins in that. I probably can't lie about that.

Ah, but the FDA will come after me. Yes. Vitamins are in the mugs. Drink the mugs, get vitamins. It's like an iron skillet. I will say these mugs will cure your diseases. Wow. Yep.

This episode's going to get pulled. Come at me, mother fuckers. All right, episode's over. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup back in the 1930s. A marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French.

And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price?

Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know because I'm Lance Bass.

And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.